Cold Feet and Random Balls

I learnt something new very early today - five past midnight to be exact. It came courtesy of everyone's favourite Teletext time-killer, Bamboozle. For me, Bamboozle brings to mind two things - the day we got Fasttext on our telly and could actually play Bamboozle, which made me feel like my family had suddenly hit the big time; and playing Kids' Bamboozle on a Saturday morning at the age of 17, and realising that my efforts to avoid A-Level revision had reached an all-time desperate low. On this occasion I was trying to extend a drab weekday evening by an extra five minutes, but I learnt something useful. Which is this:

England's first lottery took place in the 16th century.

The lottery, which we can safely assume was not preceded by a drawn out and unnecessary 'Ye Thunderball'-style draw, was put together by the medieval Eamonn Holmes, Queen Elizabeth I, to raise money for England's ailing harbours. Now I've been to Southampton and Portsmouth recently and can only assume that the money went on outlet stores and big ASDAs, rather than any proper regeneration work. Prizes in the Tudor tombola were money and tapestry. Pity the poor bastard who saved up all his groats for a ticket and 'won' a woven portrayal of the battle of Agincourt.

Lotteries have been crushing dreams for a couple of millennia, and are apparently even mentioned in the Bible, which probably reads something like "fall not into the temptation of wasteful gambling, except for this Sabbath, when it's a TRIPLE ROLLOVER!" I don't do the lottery much: I can still remember the predictable yet crushing disappointment when my dad's 'dead cert' ticket failed to deliver on the National Lottery's opening night. I think the atrocious ads have also played their part - the sight of her off Cold Feet talking to a camp Irish unicorn actually made me want to give money away in protest. I did go in for a recent Euro Millions uber-rollover, but having purchased my ticket I looked back at the queue and realised my chances were slim enough of having the best ticket out of the people in the shop at that moment. How could I take on the population of France? As the existence of this blog attests, I fell woefully short.

Paranoid & Delusional and Geri Halliwell

< Halliwell's lame LP: The title roughly translates as 'broken noise'

I had training today, which is always a good opportunity to pick up some useless information - I can sense the trainer's bemusement as I scribble down the entire list of opening trivial gambits they dole out, and then stare blankly at the window through the course material proper. Anyway, the course was all about people's mental health or lack of it, and there were plenty of brain facts that my brain, who really should have known already, could barely comprehend. Like most body-related stuff, it involved astronomical figures - we each have 100 billion nerve cells in our brain apparently. How could anything be small enough to fit inside a human brain 100 billion times? Apart from Pierce Brosnan's penis of course, but that's another story.

It's these sort of facts that people are drawn to: factoids along the lines of 'the brain is two-thirds water' which make us coo with awe and delight. The brain is in fact made of 77% water, but the trainer kept saying this was 'about two thirds', and I had to bite down on my knuckles in order to resist the urge to point out that it was in fact three quarters. But I digress - my issue is that I don't really care how much of my brain is made of water, or how many billions of teeny tiny things it has in it - the concept of my conscious self being no more than a series of microscopic electrical impulses is strangely unappealing to me. Instead, here is a much more topical piece of information, one that everyone should know and that I'm embarrassed to say I didn't before today:

Schizophrenics do not suffer from split or multiple personalities.

Split personality is a result of Multiple Personality Syndrome, or MPS, which is usually a form of regression or disassociation from traumatic events such as abuse. Symptoms that schizophrenics may encounter appear to include paranoia, delusions, hallucinations and psychosis, which makes you wonder why the mainstream media (who, I think it's fair to say, aren't generally too understanding about mental health problems) have focussed on the idea of split personality. The term schizophrenia is Greek for 'split mind', which may be where the confusion arises. Another common belief about schizophrenics is that they are more likely to cause other people harm - this too is total nonsense.

This is where very small pieces of information like the one above come into their own - if everybody knew just one thing about schizophrenia, wouldn't it help to tackle the stigmas that surround mental health and allow people with established mental health problems to lead happier, less isolated lives, and also encourage those who need help to go out and get it instead of feeling embarrassed? Just a thought. I remember a few years ago Geri Halliwell released an album that has probably paved many a road since, and wanted to call it 'Schizophrenic' to represent her different musical styles (she changed it to 'Schizophonic' in the end, not that anyone cared). Has there ever been, in the history of time, a more ignorant and damaging misappropriation of any disease? Answers on a postcard to Knowledge Towers please.

Mormania

-- The mormon church at Isengaard... sorry, Chorley



Tonight my broadband is being more temperamental than a maverick cop who's just been busted down to sergeant by an irate police chief, so here's your fact:





The oldest surviving Mormon church in the world can be found in Preston.



Preston, Utah? Preston, Illinois? Nope: Preston, Lancashire. I discovered (via my mobile while my computer whirrs and squeals in an attempt to deceive me into thinking there's any hope) that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (otherwise known as Mormons) has had a foothold in the north-west of England since 1837, and according to a BBC article, the glacial building above is used as a sort of church/boot camp for young Mormon recruits (4,900 since 1998). Now any religion that involves a boot camp is never going to float many boats, but one aspect of Mormon life has always caught the eye of those who go into religion for the ladies: polygamy. In other words, Mormon husbands have a harem of wives to themselves, right? Well, not any more: polygamy was outlawed by the Mormon Church in 1890, as any misty-eyed Mormon who converted in 1891 will bitterly tell you.



There's plenty of other myths about the Mormons that can be laid to rest then, particularly regarding it being an American religion: there are 190,000 Mormons in the UK, putting it between Buddhism and Judaism in terms of UK numbers (if you don't count it as Christianity, which a nearby expert has confirmed should be the case). And as for all that nonsense about Jesus living in America, and Joseph Smith being a prophet rather than a shoddy trickster of the highest honour? Oh wait, that's true.

Imaginary, My Dear Watson

- Churchill & Eden following another ugly Commons brawl

In an effort to get the learning in early, I tend to, as you may have already gathered, pick up a Metro on my way into work. Sadly, it's been a wasteland of fact in recent weeks, and that's on the days I can manage to prise it open against someone's face on the train. Today it's back on form though, offering a frankly damning indictment of this once-proud nation's failing pub quiz abilities:

More than half of the population think that Sherlock Holmes was a real person, whilst 1 in 4 think Winston Churchill was not.

Ok, so the actual survey only asked 3,000 people, and you always have to account for the power of suggestion if people were asked whether the individuals above were real or imaginary. That said, it astounds me that even a child of three could get it wrong. Other famous figures that some incredibly believe to be works of fiction include: Richard the Lionheart, Charles Dickens, Gandhi, Cleopatra and Field Marshal Montgomery. Mostly unforgivable, although there are question marks over whether the smug sleuth Sherlock is in fact alive today (though he has let himself go a bit).

On the same page, in what is hopefully a sign that p20 of all future editions of Metro will be devoted solely to Churchill-based news, there's an article that reveals that Churchill had a Blair-Brownesque power struggle with his deputy, the future PM Anthony Eden. And while our modern-day dictators at least kept it civil when duking it out for unelected power (we never technically voted Brown in, but let's face it, nobody was voting for Blair last time out), it seems that when Winston and Tony had a bust-up, the gloves really came off. When Churchill refused to hand over power prior to a conference with US President Eisenhower, Eden shot back with a real zinger: "If I am not competent to meet Eisenhower then that would rule for all time". Ouch! Thankfully, the article has been toned down for more sensitive readers, but QFK can exclusively reveal that later in the same ding-dong exchange, some pretty tasty insults flew around the Cabinet office, including (time to put the kids to bed, don't give them nightmares) 'gadabout' 'ninny' and a final, show-stopping 'absolute shower'...

The 226-Year Old Fish

- A koi carp: Poor motor skills and refusal to adapt to new technology not pictured

I returned to The Book of Lists today in search of inspiration, and stumbled upon a list to do with the longest recorded lifespans for different animals. Sitting at the top of the list was the humble tortoise, whose longest-living member crawled to a mighty 188 years old. I've always been a big fan of the tortoise's attitude to life, particularly as portrayed in the story of the hare and the tortoise. I love this story because it allows me to get away with dazzling displays of laziness, apathy and weak ambition by claiming that "slow and steady wins the race". Never mind that it took a baffling display of arrogance from the vastly superior hare to blow his lead, and that even if he had slept for eight hours, it still would have taken an impossible range of unrelated events to drive the tortoise on to victory. Fact is, the tortoise won, therefore it is better to stay in bed until midday then get up and go for a run. Slow and steady, it's my mantra.

I was therefore somewhat disappointed to discover that it appears that the tortoise's laid-back style doesn't always come up trumps; the slowest and steadiest of all his house-carrying brethren, a tortoise by the name of Tui Malila, lived to be 188, but was not the oldest vertebrate ever to have lived - that honour goes to:

A koi carp called Manako lived longer than any other vertebrate in recorded history, dying at the age of 226 years.

Manako was owned by Dr. Komei Koshihara, who told her enraptured home nation of Japan in 1966 that her pet koi carp, Manako, was 215 years old. You can read a transcript here, which has been translated into reliably poor English. Further investigation shows that an examination of one of Manako's scales showed it's advanced age. Hanako was born before America, but much like flared trousers and socialism, died in 1981, or as it's known in Japan, Showa 56. That's right, in Japan, years are named after the current emperor, with the number signifying how many years they have been in power. Quite possibly a better fact, but thought I'd save it for the end. As we all know, slow and steady wins nearly every race.

My Eyes Are Pies

< Bowie's eyes: pretty freaky, man

Weekend fact-hunting is always tricky, what with no free papers to flick through, but I got something hot off the press first thing this morning, courtesy of my girlfriend, who told me that she'd read an article claiming that blue eyes are the result of a genetic mutation which occurred in the distant past. Further perusal of the article reveals that apparently every blue-eyed person is descended from one individual, as DNA tests demonstrate a change in the eye pigment at the same point in each person's DNA.

However, this isn't today's fact for two reasons: firstly, I don't really understand it, and crucially, as we concurred at Knowledge Towers, it appears to be groundless speculation of the highest order. The tell-tale sign is that Professor Elberg, the man touting this spurious claim, states that "originally, we all had brown eyes" in a brazen attempt to gloss over several millennia of human evolution. It did, however, lead me to look into eye colour in general, and particularly the odd phenomenon that gives me today's slice o' learning:

Heterochromia is the term given to the condition where a person has differently coloured left and right eyes.

Famous folk with this odd condition include Demi Moore, Kate Bosworth and, er, the singer from Rise Against (clearly they've got a rocker working in Wikipedia's typing pool). David Bowie does not suffer from heterochromia; he got his wrong eye from a playground punch-up, possibly instigated by turning up to P.E. in full make-up and calling the recent school rugby match "a freaky show". The fact that people can have different coloured eyes within their own face doesn't really add weight to the genetic mutation theory behind blue eyes, but maybe there's something in it. I think I'm just not buying it because I myself have blue peepers, and I had always hope that if I was a mutant, I might get X-ray vision, or really long arms, instead of runty eyes lacking in pigmentation. Oh well.

Rat Humour & 'Two Pints Of Lager'

< "Dude, you fell off the cheese!"

We march into February with another undiscovered nugget of knowledge, today coming courtesy of my sister, who has informed me of the following:

Rats can laugh.

The most succint statement to date, but as ever, there's a world of ambiguity behind it. Apparently a scientist by the name of Jaak Panksepp (hey, if you were suggesting rodent wit, you'd use a false name too) put together a report that claims that several animals, including chimps, dogs and indeed rats, make noises akin to laughter when playing with each other (not like that). You can hear the rat noises here, where they are repeatedly pestered by a 1970s Open University physics lecturer; to me it sounds more like high-pitched growling, like the Bee Gees having a row.

To clarify, the theory being put forward is not that our animal brethren like to share a witty anecdote over a glass of Merlot (though we do know a certain mongoose who liked a good laugh). Instead, the suggestion is that laughter is an intrinsic human expression that may have existed within us before we discovered language. Seeing as it doesn't involve words, that seems pretty plausible. Jaak does push the boat out a little too far by claiming that any rodent humour would be "heavily laced with slapstick", which is pretty much the stupidest thing I've ever heard. My personal belief is that they're not laughing at anything, which does make them similar to humans; humans who've just puffed their way through a £20 bag of mungo weed and are sat watching an omnibus of Two Pints of Lager. The rat-stoner theory gathers pace as we witness them here, making a midday dash to the local KFC.

A couple of updates from previous posts:

Regarding my anti-Gillian McKeith rant, I have recently discovered, to my utter delight, that she is no longer allowed to call herself Dr Gillian McKeith, because she got her degree from 'an unaccredited U.S. college', i.e. from eBay. "The only things getting thinner here are her credentials..."

Regarding smart people not getting decent degrees, here's the other side of the coin: George W. Bush went to Harvard and Yale, and attained a degree and an MBA, despite being, by some distance, the stupidest person who has ever lived.