mirabilia
Posted on Feb 28th, 2007
by 
antenna
antenna
I'm still here even though it must not seem like it. Life just grabs on sometimes and runs with me in its mouth, twinkle toes fluttering in the breeze behind as we race by.
Here I go co-opting someone else's writing again- this time it comes from Rob Brezny. Whether he compiled it all himself or co-opted it from another someone else- I have no idea:
MIRABILIA REPORT
(Mirabilia n. events that inspire wonder, marvelous phenomena, small
miracles, beguiling ephemera, inexplicable joys, changes that inspire quiet
awe, eccentric enchantments, unplanned jubilations, sudden deliverance
from boring evils; from the Latin mirabilia, "marvels.")
* The National Center for Atmospheric Research reports that the average
cloud is the same weight as 100 elephants.
* The seeds of some trees are so tightly compacted within their
protective covering that only the intense heat of a forest fire can free
them, allowing them to sprout.
* Thirty-eight percent of North America is wilderness.
* Anthropologists say that in every culture in history, children have played
the game hide and seek.
* With every dawn, when first light penetrates the sea, many seahorse
colonies perform a dance to the sun.
* A seven-year-old Minnesota boy received patent number 6,368,227 for
a new method of swinging on a swing.
* As it thrusts itself into our Milky Way Galaxy, the dwarf galaxy
Sagittarius is unraveling, releasing a thick stream of dark matter that is
flowing right through the Earth.
* A chemist in Australia finally succeeded in mixing oil and water.
* Except among birds and land mammals, the females of most species are
bigger than the males.
* The South African version of TV's Sesame Street has an AIDS-positive
Muppet named Kami.
* The sky not only isn't falling-it's rising. The top of the troposphere, the
atmosphere's lowest layer, is slowly ascending.
* To make a pound of honey, bees have to gather nectar from about two
million flowers. To produce a single pound of the spice saffron, humans
have to handpick and process 80,000 flowers. In delivering the single
survivor necessary to fertilize an ovum, a man releases 500 million sperm.
* Some Christians really do love their enemies, as Jesus recommended.
* Kind people are more likely than mean people to yawn when someone
near them does.
* There are always so many fragments of spider legs floating in the air
that you are constantly inhaling them wherever you go.
* "The average river requires a million years to move a grain of sand 100
miles," says science writer James Trefil.
* Because half of the world's vanilla crop is grown in Madagascar, the
whole island smells like vanilla ice cream.
* Your body contains so much iron that you could make a spike out of it,
and that spike would be strong enough to hold you up.
* In his book *The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and
the Resurrection of the Dead,* physicist Frank J. Tipler offers what he
says is scientific proof that every human being who has ever lived will be
resurrected from the dead at the end of time.
* In the Ukraine you can buy Fat in Chocolate, a food with a layer of dark
chocolate covering a chunk of pork fat.
* Robust singing skill is correlated with a strong immune system in
songbirds. Male birds with the most extensive repertoire of tunes also
have the largest spleens, a key measure of immune system health.
* Bali has 80,000 temples.
* Romanian physicists created gaseous globes of plasma that grew,
reproduced, and communicated with each other, thereby fulfilling the
definition for life.
* In an apparent attempt to raise their volume above the prevailing human
din, some nightingales in big cities have learned to unleash 95-decibel
songs, matching the loudness of a chainsaw.
* There is a statistically significant probability of world-class athletes and
military leaders being born when Mars is rising in the sky.
* Some piranhas are vegetarians.
* In the pueblos of New Mexico, bricks still measure 33 by 15 by 10
centimeters, proportions that almost exactly match those of the bricks
used to build Egypt's Temple of Hatshepsut 3,500 years ago.
* Childbirth is often joyful even though it's painful.
* In hopes of calming flustered lawbreakers, Japanese cops have
substituted the sound of church bells for sirens on police cars.
* Scientists believe they'll be able to figure out why cancer cells are
virtually immortal, and then apply the secret to keeping normal cells alive
much longer, thereby dramatically expanding the human life span.
* Clown fish can alter their gender as their social status rises.
* When she is born, a baby girl has all the ova she will ever have.
* Bluebirds cannot see the color blue.
* Gregorian chants can cure dyslexia.
* Bob Hope donated half a million jokes to the Library of Congress.
* Bees perform a valuable service for the flowers from which they steal.
* "Leafing through Forbes or Fortune [magazine]s is like reading the
operating manual of a strangely sanctimonious pirate ship," wrote Adam
Gopnik in *The New Yorker.*
* Revlon makes 177 different shades of lipstick.
* Your tongue is the strongest muscle in your body.
* The most frequently shoplifted book in America is the Bible.
Here I go co-opting someone else's writing again- this time it comes from Rob Brezny. Whether he compiled it all himself or co-opted it from another someone else- I have no idea:
MIRABILIA REPORT
(Mirabilia n. events that inspire wonder, marvelous phenomena, small
miracles, beguiling ephemera, inexplicable joys, changes that inspire quiet
awe, eccentric enchantments, unplanned jubilations, sudden deliverance
from boring evils; from the Latin mirabilia, "marvels.")
* The National Center for Atmospheric Research reports that the average
cloud is the same weight as 100 elephants.
* The seeds of some trees are so tightly compacted within their
protective covering that only the intense heat of a forest fire can free
them, allowing them to sprout.
* Thirty-eight percent of North America is wilderness.
* Anthropologists say that in every culture in history, children have played
the game hide and seek.
* With every dawn, when first light penetrates the sea, many seahorse
colonies perform a dance to the sun.
* A seven-year-old Minnesota boy received patent number 6,368,227 for
a new method of swinging on a swing.
* As it thrusts itself into our Milky Way Galaxy, the dwarf galaxy
Sagittarius is unraveling, releasing a thick stream of dark matter that is
flowing right through the Earth.
* A chemist in Australia finally succeeded in mixing oil and water.
* Except among birds and land mammals, the females of most species are
bigger than the males.
* The South African version of TV's Sesame Street has an AIDS-positive
Muppet named Kami.
* The sky not only isn't falling-it's rising. The top of the troposphere, the
atmosphere's lowest layer, is slowly ascending.
* To make a pound of honey, bees have to gather nectar from about two
million flowers. To produce a single pound of the spice saffron, humans
have to handpick and process 80,000 flowers. In delivering the single
survivor necessary to fertilize an ovum, a man releases 500 million sperm.
* Some Christians really do love their enemies, as Jesus recommended.
* Kind people are more likely than mean people to yawn when someone
near them does.
* There are always so many fragments of spider legs floating in the air
that you are constantly inhaling them wherever you go.
* "The average river requires a million years to move a grain of sand 100
miles," says science writer James Trefil.
* Because half of the world's vanilla crop is grown in Madagascar, the
whole island smells like vanilla ice cream.
* Your body contains so much iron that you could make a spike out of it,
and that spike would be strong enough to hold you up.
* In his book *The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and
the Resurrection of the Dead,* physicist Frank J. Tipler offers what he
says is scientific proof that every human being who has ever lived will be
resurrected from the dead at the end of time.
* In the Ukraine you can buy Fat in Chocolate, a food with a layer of dark
chocolate covering a chunk of pork fat.
* Robust singing skill is correlated with a strong immune system in
songbirds. Male birds with the most extensive repertoire of tunes also
have the largest spleens, a key measure of immune system health.
* Bali has 80,000 temples.
* Romanian physicists created gaseous globes of plasma that grew,
reproduced, and communicated with each other, thereby fulfilling the
definition for life.
* In an apparent attempt to raise their volume above the prevailing human
din, some nightingales in big cities have learned to unleash 95-decibel
songs, matching the loudness of a chainsaw.
* There is a statistically significant probability of world-class athletes and
military leaders being born when Mars is rising in the sky.
* Some piranhas are vegetarians.
* In the pueblos of New Mexico, bricks still measure 33 by 15 by 10
centimeters, proportions that almost exactly match those of the bricks
used to build Egypt's Temple of Hatshepsut 3,500 years ago.
* Childbirth is often joyful even though it's painful.
* In hopes of calming flustered lawbreakers, Japanese cops have
substituted the sound of church bells for sirens on police cars.
* Scientists believe they'll be able to figure out why cancer cells are
virtually immortal, and then apply the secret to keeping normal cells alive
much longer, thereby dramatically expanding the human life span.
* Clown fish can alter their gender as their social status rises.
* When she is born, a baby girl has all the ova she will ever have.
* Bluebirds cannot see the color blue.
* Gregorian chants can cure dyslexia.
* Bob Hope donated half a million jokes to the Library of Congress.
* Bees perform a valuable service for the flowers from which they steal.
* "Leafing through Forbes or Fortune [magazine]s is like reading the
operating manual of a strangely sanctimonious pirate ship," wrote Adam
Gopnik in *The New Yorker.*
* Revlon makes 177 different shades of lipstick.
* Your tongue is the strongest muscle in your body.
* The most frequently shoplifted book in America is the Bible.
Access: Public
art
August 2007 
A couple more:
-The Goddess is making a comeback. Tune in for further instructions- every evening after dusk in the western sky.
-Your Mother Loves you.
-scratching a whale's beluga will make her come around more often. Getting there the first time is the trick.
The DNA in your body alone stretched end to end would reach to the Sun and back 70 times.
-In November 2006 14 United Airlines workers at O'hare including 2 pilots filed official reports that a metalic disc hovered over gate C-18 for 20 minutes before leaving so fast it blew a hole in the overcast. The Chicago Tribune put the story on the first page and it was the most viewed story in Chicago Tribune online history.
-We are not alone. Far, far from it.
-The opposite of any Great Truth is another Great Truth.
Only one of these is a lie!
Great stuff but I have a couple of snarky comments, or one at least–
What is a “typical cloud”? How would such a statistic be calculated? Sometimes the whole sky is covered with a single cloud; sometimes it’s hard to tell when one cloud ends and another begins.
A rainforest Indian told me that among the traditional kids’ games in his tribe was hide and seek. I started thinking about that, and came to the conclusion that evolutionarily, the instinct to play hide and seek is the best way for kids to prepare themselves for the eventuality that their home area might be overrun by enemies. That’s a real possibility in some places now, as it was for one of my female ancestors in Poland, who survived a Cossack massacre by hiding. So it’s a good thing it’s so much fun to play.
It’s funny, I remember the charge I used to get out of playing it when I was a kid. One loses one’s urge to play it at puberty, I think.
Re: the seahorse sundance, at the zoo a few years ago I saw lemurs do something similar. Two species in two cages. When the sun came out they all stopped what they were doing and faced the sun with their paws held up. Beautiful and weird. When clouds passed in front of the sun, they went back to running around the cages and stalking each other.