Soccer / Football

Shortly there after, this player quickly learned how to do the splits.

 Hey there everyone! Sorry about the wait between posts. I'm not gonna lie, through a bizarre chain of events, I ended up getting my right foot caught in a blender, which was then turned on and resulted in a grotesque smoothie. I'll be honest with you in saying I tried a bit of it (it was nasty and tasty like foot) while in the haze from the pain and morphine that giant bug creatures gave me. Or maybe those were paramedics? In retrospect, I'm not even sure why I was on Venus in the first place. Wait a minute.....

EITHER WAY! Today's article is about...(Drumroll Please)...SOCCER! Why Soccer you ask? Because it's hard to play it without a foot! (Buhdumtish!)

How would you like to play against THESE guys?

Did you know...?

1. While generally known as Soccer in the Americas, this game is more commonly known as "Football" while "Football" in the Americas is known as, wouldn't you know it, American Football. It is also known as Footy/Footie and "The World Game". Getting a little arrogant aren't we here? Just because the game is played by over 250 million players in over 200 players doesn't mean you should get a big head.

2. Soccer/Football or games of a similar nature (i.e. foot-meets-ball) have existed in a multitude of countries throughout history; so far back even that there currently is not a single-solid determined date as to when it was first created. One form played by the Aztecs even combined the ideals of Soccer and Basketball in which players had to make the ball through an elevated hoop without the use of their hands! Apparently the desire to kick balls around is an instinctual desire in human beings; right next to that whole need-to-breed thing.

3. The association that deals with Soccer/Football as a professional sport around the world is known as FIFA, which stands for the Federation Internationale de Football Association, who organize the FIFA World Cup every four years for the worlds' teams to compete. Think of it sort of like the Olympics but if there was only one contest and no gymnasts. 

LAWWWWWWWWWW!

4. Soccer/Football does not have rules, it has LAWS; 17 to be exact. These 17 official Laws of the Game are designed for all levels of play with certain exceptions made for groups such as disabled persons, women, elderly, etc. All of the Laws are designed to allow for flexibility in their understanding and usage in the game. Just remember, you can never break the law when you ARE THE LAW!



5. The Laws of the Game are published by FIFA however they are actually maintained/created/modified by IFAB, the Internation Football Association Board. This Board is made up of a group of representatives from various Soccer/Football associations and meet twice a year to decide on any possible changes to the Game. Who'd have thought that Soccer was run by an aristocracy?

I wonder what the rules say about Super-Moves.

 6. Each team consists of a maximum of eleven and a minimum of seven players, one of which must be a goalkeeper. Incidentally, the goalkeeper is the only person who is allowed to touch the ball with his hands. They went with goalkeeper because Ball-Master just sounded way too creepy.


7. Having a fat dude on your team is probably not the smartest move. Cardio is key.




8. At a professional level, point scoring is actually relatively rare with comparison to other sports. One example from the 2005-06 season of the English Premier League only produced an average of 2.48 goals per match. That probably explains why people are so excited when someone actually gets one in.


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And that's it for the day! I hope you enjoyed some fascinating facts about FIFA (not alliteration intended...ok, I lied). Nonetheless, I hope you have a fun day and you enjoy the use of both feet (while you can. (MWHAHAHA)

SOAP!

Is it just me or does it look like the bowl is made of Soap too?

Given the kind of day that I had, there's nothing more relaxing than to just chew on a nice ivory bar of soap. What can I say? It's a habit I acquired when I lived for 3 months in the back of a locked delivery truck. Long story short it was held in an impound and they didn't realize I was in there. My doctor said that there were only minor medical issues from this, including a reduced ability to say curse words. All soap chewing aside.

Did you know that...

Gettin' clean Sumo-Style.

1. Soaps first appeared around 2800 BC in Ancient Babylon and were made out of ashes, cypress oil, and sesame seed oil. Interestingly enough it was not for washing people but clothes and animal hides. It wasn't til the Romans that people stopped putting clean clothes on dirty backs.



2. Today, soap is made from vegetable matter and/or animal fats combined in an alkaline solution which combines in a chemical reaction called "saponification". I won't lie, since soaps can be made from fat, I kinda want "Whale Soap"; that just sounds bitchin'.



3. Soap was a major form of governmental revenue during the 13th and 14th centuries and was heavily taxed. I guess there were just too many "dirty" deals going on at the time.


3. During the Napoleonic Wars, i.e. wars involving Napolean (short French dude with a big hat and an even bigger inferiority complex), soap was so important that tax inspectors actually locked up soap pans to stop illegal production at night. It was like the Prohibition but with less booze.


4. Soap is not often used during anime and comic-book conventions.


5. There are multiple ways to make soap including "Cold..." and "Hot Processes", both of which result in different types/looks/and feels of soaps. The type of process used depends on how much glycerine the maker wants to remain in the soap. Note: Soap Glycerine is not explosive, just cleanly.

Way, way too much time on their hands (but cool nonetheless)

6. "Nanoscopic" (i.e. really really tiny pieces) Metals including Titanium Powder and less commonly Nickel, Aluminum, and Silver are added to soaps for both coloration as well as anti-bacterial properties. So, theoretically, if you have way too much time (and soap) on your hands, you might be a very rich person.


7. There are soap hobbyists. I'm not kidding, there are people that go out and make soap for fun. I don't even have a punch-line for that.



8. Until the Industrial Revolution, soap was only ever made on a small scale until Thomas Barratt opened a factory in Isleworth in 1862.


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Hopefully, that is all you ever wanted to know about soap and then some. Before we get out, we wanted to take a minute to thank the Blogger "Fang" for his shout-out about the binary computer language yesterday. Something I had failed to mention was that the 1's and 0's are literally switches for "on" and "off"in the computer. Kudos to Fang for throwing that out there. I appreciate you lookin' out!

The Computer

Is it just me or does the keyboard look like it has a smiley face?

Alright fellow bloggers and readers, for our first post I figure I'll start with something that we all know and love...The Computer! If you don't know what this is I need you to contact me right away so I can figure out how you're reading this. So, starting off..


Did you know that...

1. A Computer is designed to carry out sequences of mathematical and logical operations. In short, every computer program from the website you're looking at to the game you are playing is made via math!

2. The very first digital computers were developed in the mid-20th century, around the second World War (in the early 40's). They filled up entire rooms AND consumed as much electricity as several HUNDRED desktop computers do today. Did I mention that it only had a couple of kilobytes of storage. That's about 1/1000 the storage of a 1GB iPod while taking up about 100,000 times more physical space.

3.  The very first computing device of any kind of was created by Joseph Marie Jacquard who modified a textile loom, used for making cloth, to use a series of hole-punched paper cards. Using these cards, Jacquard could tell this textile loom what he wanted done, i.e. "program" it, albeit in a very limited manner.

4. Binary is the basic language of computers, consisting of series of 1's and 0's to represent words, letters, etc. 010010000110010101101100011011000110111100101110 ("Hello!")

5. Computer "bugs" simply refer to computer programing that is illogical, incomplete, etc. and therefore cause the computer not to work as intended. The phrase was coined back when the very first computers were made of a series of tubes and a moth accidentally got caught inside one of them, causing the unit to malfunction.

Curse you Microprocessors!

6. Hard-drives space refers to how much stuff you can save on a computer. Memory refers to how much information your computer's can process at once.

7. Hardware refers to the actual physical computer (or Terminator). Software refers to the programs on it (i.e. the desire to kill all organic life-forms).

8. Computers will eventually rise against us. It's true, go watch the Movies!

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I hope that this has been enlightening and interesting little examination of The Computer. If you have any particular interests, helpful comments, or even if you just want to talk about what you had for lunch: Let us know! Hopefully we will be giving the site an overhaul soon to give it a more amiable appearance. See you tomorrow!

Starting Off

Have you ever noticed that some people just seem to know way too much about the most random things in the world? Have you ever had somebody walk up and start talking about the top speed of a cockroach? Or perhaps you met a person who just so happened to know when the first elevator was created? Ever get in an argument with someone concerning the buoyancy of a pickle?

Welcome to just where they got that knowledge (unless they went out and actually hunted that info for themselves in which case that's just scary).

As I'm sure you gathered, the purpose of this website is to provide you fun and interesting facts on things from every walk of life. As we are a bit new, we are hoping to update multiple times a week with a goal of once a day, but we will get back to you on this one. So why don't you strap in and take a gander, I don't doubt you will find something that makes you stop and go "Huh, I never knew that before!"