I did not know that yesterday!

Hello people,
Because of the holiday season, it will be difficult to keep a regular update of the Blog. I will then try my best to update it whenever i can. If not, see you in January.
Have a fantastic xmas, and a brilliant new year

Regards
Christophe

Many, including the BBC Goldfish Quiz, believe goldfish have only a three-second memory. Alas, this is incorrect. Nevertheless, I was interested to learn that if you keep a goldfish in a dark room it eventually turns white, and the correct term for a pregnant goldfish is "twit."

The Mad Scientist notes that if you tap on the tank before feeding your goldfish every day, the goldfish will eventually learn to look for food immediately after the tank-tapping. This kind of "classical conditioning" indicates goldfish have some memory.

Dr. Karl seconds that emotion, citing anecdotes of goldfish responding happily to their owner's faces, while hiding in their tiny castles when confronted with strangers. And while goldfish were domesticated in China roughly a thousand years ago, they still swim in schools, and thus have some learned social behavior.

The MythBusters TV show taught some goldfish to swim through a maze, noting that their time got better on each successive run. And an interesting response to the AnswerBag Forum describes goldfish memory as "selective" -- they have a general idea of what happened on a previous occasion, they're just not sure what. I empathise.

I tried the shotgun approach to a google search and typed in "alpha bravo charlie," the three words I knew. I soon learned that the alpha bravo code is a type of phonetic alphabet used by NATO. The NATO alphabet sequence is:

Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, Xray, Yankee, Zulu

Once I knew what it was called, I tried a more concentrated search on NATO phonetic alphabet to learn the whole story. The first page returned offered some general information about phonetic alphabets. As the page explains, the title "phonetic
alphabet" is really a misnomer. Alphabets such as the NATO one do not describe the sound of the letters represented. They are just lists of words used to identify letters and avoid confusion in telephone and radio communication.

The page goes on to say that the NATO alphabet, also known as the ITU, International, and Aircraft alphabet, was developed after World War II in an attempt to internationalize the Allied Armed Forces alphabet currently in use. The spellings of certain words, such as alpha (often spelled as "alfa") and juliet (sometimes spelled "juliett") tend to vary, but the alphabet is a means for verbal communication so these slight discrepancies tend not to matter.

To learn about other phonetic alphabets, visit Phonetic Alphabets of the World or Morse Code and the Phonetic languages.

Oscar Victor Echo Romeo Alpha November Delta Oscar Uniform Tango.

AT&T introduced this toll-free area code in 1967, and as 1-800 numbers received seven million calls that year, quite a few companies must have participated. A Fast Company article mentions Amtrak and the airlines as early 800 customers.

Since the original system wasn't nationwide in the US, big companies had to maintain separate toll-free numbers for each geographic area in which they operated. By 1999, 30 billion toll-free calls criss-crossed the system. When the government broke up AT&T in 1984, new long-distance carriers were assigned blocks of 800 numbers, nontransferable if customers switched to another service. In 1993, by FCC ruling, 800
numbers became "portable," meaning they remained with their "owners" no matter which long-distance company provided the service. This precipitated a run on the 1-800 market, as businesses had found the right number could be a substantial advantage. (Think 1-800-FLOWERS, which generated 13 million calls in 1999.)

Though eight million possible 1-800 numbers exist, several factors eventually caused a shortage: a dramatic decrease in cost, increased competition, and even 1-800 use by individuals and families replacing the traditional "collect call." In 1996, the industry added another eight million numbers with the introduction of the 888 area code. 877 came online in 1998, 866 in 1999. If demand keeps up, you can expect more confusion with the rollout of 855, 844, 833, and 822 prefixes, all slated for toll-free duty.

We haven't the slightest idea. To this day, the primary architect behind one of the world's most famously defective tourist attraction remains unknown. A dissertation in Yahoo's Leaning Tower of Pisa category offers several possible suspects, all of whom were famous Italian architects at the time: Bonanno, Deotiusalvi, Gerardo, Guidolotto, etc. The tower is often associated with Galileo, because of the fabled illustration of his theories on gravity: the young Galileo leaning over the balcony, the differently weighted cannon balls, their synchronous fall through the air. But while the great man did conduct some experiments on gravity in Pisa during the 16th century, he never conducted that one.

This wonderfully erratic timeline of events details the tumultuous history of the listing monolith in question. Construction started in 1173, then stops 5 years later (some trouble with the foundation, perhaps?), then recommences 100 years later, then stops after 6 years, and on and on. Why does the tower tilt? It's built on especially sandy soil, which has settled unevenly over the years.

A lot of effort has gone into straightening the tower, including an ill-advised drilling technique in 1934 that only exacerbated the problem. As it stands today, scientists and engineers are slowly but surely righting the structure to a stable angle. The aim isn't to straighten it (what's the Leaning Tower of Pisa without its lean?), but to stop it from tumbling over.

As optometrist Kenton McWilliams of the MadSci Network explains, those blotchy shapes are formed by momentarily stunned bioluminescent microbes who live within your eyelid. Kidding! They're actually the result of the light-sensitive rods and cones in your retina becoming momentarily overwhelmed by an immediate influx of light. As you may recall from your high school anatomy class, the rods register lightness and darkness, while the cones distinguish color. The rods vastly outnumber the cones; there are roughly 120 million rods to 7 million cones.

The cones are probably responsible for the strange colors involved, as they are concentrated in the central part of the eye. According to the American Optometric Association, your rods become more active in darker environments -- it can take up to 25 minutes for your eyes to become fully "acclimated" in a dark room.

If you're seeing spots without the benefit of a flash or a sudden change in ambient light, you may want to get to an eye doctor. You may also be interested to know that those strange shapes you occasionally see floating across your field of vision are known as "floaters," and are actually tiny clumps of cells floating inside the vitreous, or the clear jelly that fills your eye.

The big numbers past a trillion, in ascending powers of ten, are as follows: quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion, septillion, octillion, nonillion, decillion, undecillion, duodecillion, tredecillion, quattuordecillion, and quindecillion (that's 10 to the 48th, or a one followed by 48 zeros). But wait -- there's more.
The highest number listed on Robert Munafo's table, which coincidentally is my new favorite number, is a milli-millillion. Say that three times fast! That's 10 to the 3000003rd. For something closer to home, a centillion is 10 to the 303rd.

The googolplex has often been nominated as the largest named number in the world. If a googol is ten to the one hundredth, then a googolplex is one followed by a googol of zeroes. Ugh, we think we feel a headache coming on.

The aforementioned mathematician and large number fan Robert Munafo offers a table of megadigits on his personal page. You'll also find some biggies at Russ Rowlett's page at the University of North Carolina.

Turns out, the man who began the wall was fond of large projects. Around 220 B.C.E., Qin Shi Huang unified much of China, as well as conceiving of what would be later known as the Great Wall of China. He is often called China's first emperor, and his name "Qin" or "Ch'in" influenced the country's name.

Emperor Qin connected a series of earthworks forming a few smaller walls along the border, with the goal of keeping out invaders. He reinforced these walls and conscripted peasants and others to build the start of the Great Wall. Later rulers continued to reinforce and add onto the wall, often with forced labor. Construction lasted for more than 2,000 years and when it was done, the wall stretched an astounding 4,000 miles (6,700 kilometers).

Emperor Qin is also known for his elaborate tomb filled with life-size terra-cotta warriors. Over 7,000 pottery soldiers, horses, chariots, and other artifacts were buried with Qin, and the mausoleum wasn't discovered until 1974.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, in 1921, the world's first faux hemicorporectomy was performed in London by illusionist Percy Selbit. In the original version, the girl was entirely enclosed in the box. So, the "ta-da effect" must have been somewhat underwhelming.

But time brings progress, and later that year the American Horace Goldin performed the trick in New York with his assistant's head and feet protruding from the box (the assistant, incidentally, was male). The rest is history.

As Wikipedia explains, the trick is fairly basic. The assistant just curls up in the top half of the box. Since the audience only sees the box from the side, it appears much less spacious.

But how do we explain the feet, which often wriggle and squirm? Well, if they're not fake and being powered electrically, they usually belong to a second assistant hiding inside the table upon which the box is resting.

The Mallusionist goes on to explain the mechanics behind several other variations of the trick. Incidentally, this is a great resource for finding how other kinds of illusions work. Rabbit from a hat, anyone?