TIL 5: Iambic pentameter

[Gori the Grey]

Here's the iambic pentameter I promised on the music of the spheres:

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

From Merchant of Venice

Y'all are going to get so much iambic pentameter in this thread, due to Bird's subtitle.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

TIL that there are people who don't understand what the Sun is.

This is taken from the Cosmos group on FB. One person in the comments insisted that there are no stars in our solar system.

 

[Samson]

There are two hydrogen atoms in a molecule of water, and only one star in the solar system.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

There are two hydrogen atoms in a molecule of water, and only one star in the solar system.

Exactly. It's a simple, accurate statement. And there are people in a group inspired by Carl Sagan who just don't get it. Has basic science really gone downhill that badly in the last nearly 25 years?

 

[Gori the Grey]

Has basic science really gone downhill that badly in the last nearly 25 years?

More a case of reading comprehension, I suspect. Reading the kind of information you think a sentence is going to provide rather than really paying attention to what it says--a little like the old "ton of bricks or a ton of feathers" riddle. The sentence is structured on model by which astonishing scientific facts are sometimes conveyed: "do you know that there are more genomic permutations than there are stars in the galaxy?" The trick here is to pay attention to the actual content, do the math that Samson did, and get the funny answer 2 > 1,

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

TIL that you can (on Xiaomi phones at least) prevent specific apps from connecting to the internet

(though it won't work for every app)

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

TIL about remainder marks on books. I have a few, I'd assumed it was either an accident or a small child.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Today I realised that it's Khmer Rouge, not Rogue

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Today I learned about a song that somehow made it onto the Billboard chart in 1979 even though it was never released and never played on radio. It took until 2016 to track it down.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Interesting tale.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

In 2021, a user on WatZatSong posted a 17-second clip of an unknown song to see if anyone could identify it. Three years later, it was identified, and it turned out to be from an, uh, adult film. (The part that's especially funny to me, and not mentioned on Wikipedia itself, is that that clip was the only part of the song without certain... sound effects.)

 

[tjs282]

TIL a new (to me ) word: "taphonomic"

...which (according to Wiktionary) means "Of or pertaining to taphonomy (factors affecting an organism's remains after death)."

taphonomic - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

en.m.wiktionary.org

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

TIL about Null Island.

 

[Birdjaguar]

TIL: There is enough water in Lake Superior to cover all of North and South America in 1 foot of water.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

^Then let's hope it stays put!

 

[Plotinus]

And Lake Baikal has got more water than all the Great Lakes combined!

 

[Birdjaguar]

And Lake Baikal has got more water than all the Great Lakes combined!

It must be pretty deep.

 

[Plotinus]

It certainly is.