knowledge project

We fill each other (and you, our dear reader) in on the ginormous amount of things that we don't know.

The richest fake things

People:
No.1:  Uncle Sam
   -Net Worth: Infinite, Source: Engraving
No.2:  McDuck, Scrooge
   -Net Worth: 29.1B, Source: Treasure Hunting
No.5:  Hutt, Jabba The
   -Net Worth: 8.4B, Source: Crime
No.13:  Burns, Montgomery
   -Net Worth: 0.9B, Source: Energy
No.15:  Mr. Monopoly
   -Net Worth: 0.8B, Source: Real Estate

Company:
No. 2:  Acme Corp
  -Net Worth: 348.7B, Source: Making EVERYTHING

5 words that should be in the OED

Happification
Rejoicifying
Disrespectation
Swankified
Dictionarised.

Thanks, C! :)

How do new words come about in the Oxford English Dictionary, the self-exulted "definitive record of the English language"?

All of Oxford's English dictionaries aim to include primarily those words that have genuinely entered the English language. The use of a newly invented word by a single person is not sufficient to merit a dictionary entry (unless the person happens to be, for example, William Shakespeare or Jane Austen).

...There is nothing to stop you using an invented word - so long as you don't mind the fact that it will not be understood and will have to be explained every time. If it genuinely fills a gap in the language, then it may well catch on among a significant section of the population. It will then have become part of the language, and if it is used in print (or can be traced, for example, in scripts or transcripts of broadcasts), it will fall within the sphere of the OED's Reading Programme.

From askoxford.com.

So all I have to do now is become William Shakespeare. Or Jane Austen. Or, if you read the entirety of link above, Rudyard Kipling, Emily and Anne Brontë, J.R.R. Tolkien, or Edward Lear.

Choices, choices.

How lazy can I be?

Purpose:  Can you get stronger and grow new muscle by simply cutting yourself?
Background:  How does all this weight lifting make us stronger?  Supposedly the answer is you microly tear (microtear) your muscle when you use it, then new muscle grows on top of it.  So if you combine this "fact" with the another fact that 'bigger is better', if I just knife my arm and make a huge tear, I'll have accomplished weeks of lifting in one day, right?
Methods:  Internet
Results:  False  :-(
Discussion:  Muscle grows from protein synthesis - but what triggers it?  Muscle tear?  As it turns out, muscle tearing is just the result of using muscle.  That's it.  The actual trigger for protein synthesis is the neural drive that stimulates muscle contraction.  The more that pathway is used, the more some chemicals are released and those activate the genes for protein synthesis.  So ends up, there's no short cut for this.  Boo.  (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_hypertrophy)

Miwok

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So I'm lurking on REI, ogling at the Gregory Maya bag I want to get, when I chance upon its male counterpart, the Gregory Miwok. Picture courtesy of REI.com .

Miwok sounds like ewok, but it's not a cute furry thing. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miwok :

Miwok (also spelled Miwuk, Mi-Wuk, or Me-Wuk) can refer to any one of four linguistically-related groups of Native Americans, who lived in what is now Northern California, who spoke one of the MiwokanUtian family. The word Miwok means people in their native language.

Brown...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Shirlene Liew
Date: Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 4:59 PM
Subject: Brown...
To: #knowledgeproject@posterous.com

  
"... when used as a general term, is a color that is a dark yellow,
orange, or red, of low luminance relative to lighter or white colored
objects."

 "... was the first college in the nation to accept students regardless
of religious affiliations. The school also has the oldest
undergraduate engineering program in the Ivy League (1847)."

 "... is the second album by rock group P.O.D.. The album was released
on Rescue Records."

 gotta love wikipedia. test post for posterous.