Inconsequential things you ponder on...

[mineofuselessinformation]

The local ice cream van plays the Match of the Day theme tune (has been doing it for years, so not to do with the Euros). I still can't work out the connection.

A neighbour over the road from me has a Ring doorbell. Since it plays the intro to the Go Compare jingle, is this some surreptitious form of marketing?

Yes, I probably do have too much time on my hands!

Our bones are actually wet.

Given the amount of birds there are, why don't you see more dead ones? And the ones you do see have usually flown into a wall - what happens to the bodies of the ones who die naturally? I know lots get eaten by other animals but you'd think there would be more birdy bodies around!

@suckingonchillidogs

Given the amount of birds there are, why don't you see more dead ones? And the ones you do see have usually flown into a wall - what happens to the bodies of the ones who die naturally? I know lots get eaten by other animals but you'd think there would be more birdy bodies around!

Omg I said this to DP the other day he thought I was mad! The only dead birds I've seen have either been because of a car or a cat really. They never just drop out the sky.

I always think its mad that tap water has been inside lots of other people before you.

Also what it would be like if the concept of time didn't exist. And why different countries speak different languages.

@BalloonSlayer

Calories in food are calculated by burning the food and seeing how much heat it produces.

One calorie = the amount of heat needed to heat 1 cc of water by 1 degree.

Therefore: if you burn your dinner, has it got less calories when you eat it?

I once read toast has few calories than bread, so I guess so.

Omg I said this to DP the other day he thought I was mad! The only dead birds I've seen have either been because of a car or a cat really. They never just drop out the sky.

Actually I was sitting in the garden with my carer when a pigeon did just that, it hit the shed on the way down.

Never seen anything like it before.

I think birds get swept up by street cleaners.

@Thelnebriati

When the ice cream van plays a well known tune and one note is out of tune, is that on purpose?

I think it's supposed to mimic the old fashioned vans where the tune was generated by the movement of the van - thus, as the van slowed to a stop the last few notes would slow down and be out of tune.

No thats not it, one note in the middle of the tune is off key.

Maybe by changing it by one note they get around copyright?

Dead birds are eaten by rats or seagulls.

I wonder what Neanderthals looked like and how they might have behaved differently to homo sapiens. I wonder how they died, did HS kill them all? As lots of us have small amounts of N DNA from interbreeding I wonder how that is expressed, particularly in terms of behaviour.

I also wonder how cave people looked after their toddlers.

@InTheCludgie I can sort of see a connection there. Maybe …
Benny Hill >> famous for Ernie (the fastest milkman in the west) song >> milk, milk float, delivery >> ice cream delivery. 🍦 🍦 🍦

@ImInACage

I often wondered how the first person discovered that food tasted better cooked. Was it an accident and they dropped some food on a fire, or did they experiment? Also, who first looked at a cow's udder and thought "ooh I'd like to taste the juice that comes out of there"?

And who decided to eat a food for the first time? Like, nettles make a nice soup??!

My dd asked me a few weeks ago whose idea was it to make kings and queens. Like why was there ever a first king. I had no idea.

How could you get a bunch of people to agree that one of those people should be in charge of all the other people?

Where do all the flies go at night or whenever they’re not buzzing around you?

How did the pyramids/cathedrals/palaces/etc get built without machinery? I can’t get my head around that when you look at the size and intricacy and beauty etc of some of those structures.

*How could you get a bunch of people to agree that one of those people should be in charge of all the other people?

I live on a quiet cul-de-sac on a rather large council estate, there are to families who you mess with at your peril.

If we were in a Neolithic village I'm sure they would be 'chiefs' and a king is just a chief with a lot of followers

The local Kng was the person who had killed all the other alpha males in the area and took their land, possessions, wives and daughters, killing the sons. The local Kings then did the same thing before finally the winner was crowned the national King.

As the generations grew from time to time someone would challenge (eg Wars of the Roses or Henry Tudor) but by and large the best way to gain power and influence was to marry your daughter to the King, willing or not (most famous examples Jane Seymour and Katherine Howard but this was still the case right up to Lady Diana Spencer).

And then employ fantastic PR which gets almost everyone to believe that being the monarch is a duty, a terrible burden and no one, absolutely no one, wants the job.

If the universe started with a big bang, then there must have been a time before the big bang. So what was there then?

Some cranes can build themselves, @InTheCludgie!

Thanks to everyone who helped expand my knowledge of cranes! Have definitely learned something new

I guess it’s pretty simple then! I knew it would have been originally from sort of tribal warfare, I just can’t imagine some guy in history saying ‘right I’m the most special person around here, and to show how special I am I’ll wear a big hat and you’ll all let me be in charge.’ It seems mad but I’d never thought if it before dd asked me who decided there would be a king.

Ooh @suckingonchillidogs we have a dead bird in a tree in our garden, like it just landed on a branch and died of old age 😱 I don’t know why that seems so much sadder than a violent death..?

I've never seen a naturally dead one in a tree GenevieveLenard - maybe I'm not looking hard enough!

It’s a bit weird! Not quite sure what to do with it so have just left it for now 😳