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-   -   Amazing Things I Learned Today! (http://www.fiveminute.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1538)

Nate the Great 10-28-2009 03:39 AM

Amazing Things I Learned Today!
 
Hey, a new forum game! The title is pretty self explanatory.

Drumroll please!

The Amazing Thing I Learned Today Number 1 is...

The Barenaked Ladies sang the theme song for Big Bang Theory!

Nate the Great 11-07-2009 11:13 PM

TATILT #2

Barclay actually appeared in more episodes of Voyager (6) than NextGen (5)!

Nate the Great 11-15-2009 01:59 AM

TATILT #3

The movie "The Last Unicorn" can be considered a hybrid of anime and Rankin/Bass. This combination strangely works.

See MarzGurl's review on YouTube. (She calls herself the Nostalgia Chick because she was a contender for that title using this as her submission, but she didn't earn that title)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c5cnsjJwIQ

Nate the Great 11-15-2009 10:54 PM

TATILT #4

http://www.boston.com/business/artic...__for_parking/

A man paid $300,000 for a parking space. And this isn't even a parking space in a secure heated lot and security guards, this is a parking space On. The. Street.

Dude! If I had that much money I'd move to another apartment that had free parking spaces. Or maybe move to another city that had cheaper parking!

Nate the Great 11-19-2009 03:08 AM

TATILT #5

As I was driving today I was reminiscing about ''The Princess Diaries 2," and I started pondering where else I saw the actor who played Nicholas. It was really nagging me, then it hit me like a ton of bricks: that guy was Chris Pine, our newest Captain Kirk!

Wow. Just wow.

Nate the Great 11-29-2009 10:54 PM

TATILT #6

"Mary Sue" is a term invented in a Star Trek fanfic. Or maybe I already knew that, and the information's just been buried under all the other junk rattling around my head. Whatever.

Nate the Great 12-16-2009 11:31 AM

TATILT #7

Alan Rickman was in Die Hard! I've never seen the movie, but I saw this in the Nostalgia Critic's newest video...

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/vid...801-ncchlist11

Nate the Great 12-24-2009 02:56 AM

TATILT #8

Diagon Alley from Harry Potter is a pun on "diagonally." It is physically painful that in ten years I've never figured that one out.

MaverickZer0 12-24-2009 06:05 AM

Please tell me you got 'Knockturn Alley' (nocturnally).

Nate the Great 01-18-2010 08:49 PM

TATILT #9

The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny and the Potter Puppet Pals have the same creator, Niel Cicierega AKA Lemon Demon!

Wow. Just wow. This one is understandable, as I've always seen the name "Niel Cicierega" attached to PPP and "Lemon Demon" attached to TUSOUD. I never knew they were the same person, however.

P.S. Watch the Potter Puppet Pals!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx1XI...eature=related

Nate the Great 01-20-2010 05:02 AM

TATILT #10

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Clean

Mister Clean's first name is Veritably!

Ugh. Just ugh.

Nate the Great 02-02-2010 03:21 AM

TATILT #11

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael...and_television

The same guy did the score for The Incredibles, Speed Racer, and Star Trek 11!

Nate the Great 02-19-2010 12:49 AM

TATILT #12

I've long known that Ron Wasserman was responsible for some of the classic Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers music, but I just learned that he also worked on some music for the Sailor Moon dub!

http://www.linkedin.com/in/ronwasserman

Nate the Great 02-23-2010 11:07 PM

TATILT #13

I'm a big fan of both Ranma 1/2 and X-Men Evolution, so I was surprised to learn that they share a few voice actors!

Venus Terzo=Jean Grey and Female Ranma
Richard Ian Cox=Quicksilver and Male Ranma

Now that TVTropes has pointed it out, I'm having one of those slap my own forehead moments. Of course those voices are the same!

Nate the Great 04-05-2010 09:45 PM

TATILT #14

For complicated reasons I stumbled upon my old Yahoo account. I haven't signed into that account for at least five years. It's so old that it still listed the Five-Minute Stargate site (the GeoCities one) and the 3Sygma version of Five-Minute Voyager, plus Sev Trek from the days when the entire archive was still free. Seriously, an amazing thing I learned today!

Nate the Great 05-06-2010 07:32 AM

TATILT #15

There may be justice in the world after all!

Fan-game The Silver Lining (the unofficial King's Quest 9) was shut down a few months ago by the rights owners, but the overwhelming fan support and petitions have reopened negotiations!

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2010/...-quest-sequel/

Nate the Great 05-22-2010 10:55 AM

TATILT #16

There are actually Skeeball leagues! Skeeball has always been one of my favorite games in that category of arcade games.

http://unitedsocialsports.com/

Nate the Great 05-26-2010 05:24 AM

This one will take a little setup. I'm a fan of Hayley Mills' early Disney movies (Pollyanna, The Parent Trap, etc.), so I was delighted to discover someone had actually written a fan song about her...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csg9f0TXSK4

It's a relatively obscure song, so...

TATILT #17

Someone actually reworked it to be a fan song for the Beatles!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDMAES4utqg

Zeke 05-26-2010 05:33 AM

Here's something amazing I learned today: I'm not the only one who's joked about illegal Klingon immigration. I do seem to be the only one who came up with it unprompted, though.

Zeke 07-18-2010 06:40 PM

The best way to get two hexagons out of a square is actually <a href="http://s616.photobucket.com/albums/tt243/CZeke/?action=view&current=hexfit.jpg">simpler than you might expect</a>.

Nate the Great 08-17-2010 11:07 PM

TATILT #18

The actress Kaley Cuoco was in both 8 Simple Rules and The Big Bang Theory. Wow. Just wow.

Zeke 08-18-2010 04:24 AM

What's so "wow" about that?

I guess I'll start numbering mine. Here's ATZLT #3:

There's a show called The Thick of It which has a character named Malcolm Tucker. And there's another one named Reeder!

(On the off chance someone reading this doesn't get the point, Enterprise has a Tucker and a Malcolm Reed.)

Nate the Great 08-18-2010 10:48 AM

It's wow because I hadn't noticed it, and the two characters seem quite different from each other.

Grayvorn 08-20-2010 01:30 AM

That as of today August 20th, I am the same age as current Doctor Who Matt Smith!

Getting older ain't all bad :)

Tate 08-21-2010 07:20 AM

Oh, uh... happy birthday!

...I'm too late, aren't I?

Grayvorn 08-23-2010 12:08 AM

Just a tad, but meh............ta!

Today I learned..........um........well nothing really, but it does the brain good to rest now and then :D

PointyHairedJedi 08-27-2010 08:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeke (Post 77993)
There's a show called The Thick of It which has a character named Malcolm Tucker. And there's another one named Reeder!

Malcolm from The Thick of It says "fuck" an awful lot more than the other one does. Peter Capaldi actually came to the island for an event a month or two back, it's was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the arts centre. I did not go, it was a fundraiser and thus the tickets were unfortunately quite expensive.

I don't think I've learned anything amazing recently, but I do think it's pretty neat that we've directly imaged the first exoplanet recently (as opposed to more indirect methods of detection). I also learned that the ancient Greeks really were not people you'd want to hang out with, Athenians especially. I probably could have guessed that before though, to be fair.

Sa'ar Chasm 09-02-2010 07:32 PM

Apparently you can buy deuterated, HPLC grade acetonitrile by the litre.
The price is "please inquire".

To put this in perspective, HPLC-grade solvents are generally more expensive than regular solvents because extra effort has gone into removing the impurities. You can generally buy this in 4L bottles.

Acetonitrile saw a spike in price because the industrial process that produced it as a byproduct went belly-up during the economic meltdown. The Great Acetonitrile Shortage is over, but I think the price is still hovering above where it used to be.

Deuterated solvents have had all their Hs replaced by deuterium (the stuff that makes the Enterprise go), a rarer isotope of hydrogen and the stuff that makes heavy water heavy. These are typically sold on a much smaller and can go for $30-$50 for 10 grams (about 10-10 mL).

Putting all that together and then selling it by the litre must be monstrously expensive, as is the HPLC-NMR instrument that requires it. If you want to use it for an experiment, it has to be really important.

Nate the Great 09-21-2010 10:42 AM

TATILT #19

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/foru...-mind-is-blown

1337% (LEET, natch) of pi is 42.

13.37*3.14159=42, give or take.

Yeah, yeah, it's all a coincidence and you could find similar examples all over, but I was still tickled by it.

PS: "Natch" is lifted directly from editorial comments in old Marvel Comics. "We last saw Villain X escape from Hero Y in Issue Z, natch."

Nate the Great 10-23-2010 12:51 AM

TATILT #20

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6235040.html

Yahtzee is a fan of Spoony!

Nate the Great 10-30-2010 06:34 AM

TATILT #21

Jonathan Frakes used to play the part of Captain America in public appearances.

Check it out!

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...26tbs%3Disch:1

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...h:1%26prmd%3Do

Nate the Great 06-28-2011 05:51 PM

TATILT #22

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelatin...#Gelatin_shots

There's an urban legend that Tom Lehrer invented the jello shot!

Nate the Great 09-26-2011 08:29 PM

TATILT #23

Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens (of Schoolhouse Rock and Ragtime fame) wrote the songs for Anastasia!

Grayvorn 10-28-2011 05:54 PM

TATILT # 24

Zooey Deschenal was in one of my favorite films ever 'The New Guy'. I'd watched it dozens of times and never realised until now.

Nate the Great 12-26-2011 04:52 AM

TATILT #25

The city of Cape Suzette from TaleSpin was a joke based on a real dish called the Crepe Suzette.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cr%C3%AApe_Suzette

MaverickZer0 01-03-2012 05:58 AM

Oh man, Crepe Suzette. Those are good. Really, really good. Anyone who hasn't tried one should.

Nate the Great 02-02-2012 01:06 AM

TATILT #26

I'm reading a compilation of Isaac Asimov science essays, and after mentioning the scientist Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky he uses a footnote to mention Tom Lehrer's song. Furthermore, he was a fan of Lehrer.

Listen to the song on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQHaGhC7C2E

Nate the Great 05-20-2012 10:33 PM

TATILT #27

The same guy voiced the Teeny Little Super Guy on Sesame Street AND Mr. Glitch in Square One.

His name was Jim Thurman, and he passed away in 2007.

NAHTMMM 06-20-2012 08:13 PM

TATILT #28

Paul Simon and Carrie Fisher were married at one point (only for a year or two). That's kinda weird and kinda, well, amazing.

Nate the Great 07-07-2012 06:46 PM

TATILT #29

The Captain Kirk Internet Meme "I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am" came from a quote from a fiver!


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