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'You're Never More Than 6ft From A Rat' & Other Dubious Statements

Re: Re: Never more than 6ft from a rat

Beany said:
according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom , the area of the UK is
244101 square kms, which is 244101 million square metres,
giving each rat an area of 244101 million/9 million
=27122 square metres,
which is approximately 165x165 metres.

So if all these rats were distributed evenly over the whole of the UK (which they obviously are not), you could never be more than about 82 metres from one.
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although in the countryside and suburbs you tend to get more mice (apart from on arable farms where you get lots of both if you're not careful). In the city centre you tend to get fewer rats thabn the inner citys because pidgions outcompete them for food there (you've never been truly disgusted untill you've seen a pidgeon useing some old winos vomit as a birdbath). So rat population tends to congregate in its highest numbers in the inner citys and is therfore a cluster distributed species rather than a evenly distibuted species accross the british isles.

which gos to prove that you can back up really ludicrus untruths with stats :)
 
The total population of Great Britain would fit on the Isle of Wight
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It's actually the population of the world. They'd also fit into a one-mile cube. Apparently. And I suppose if you dessicated them they'd fit into two barns and a couple of wardrobes.

Can't remember if I've mentioned it, but how about "The dead outnumber the living by only 30:1"?
 
I'd heard the opposite, that "there were more people living today than had ever lived". But then I found this which kind of covers both sides;

http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=1820

According to these guestimates, people alive today are about 5.8% of the total people ever to have lived.
 
Some of the stats from this site look a little dodgy:

http://members.shaw.ca/mcramer1/weirdfacts.htm


Almost 101 Weird Facts About Things

The Internet is crammed with lists of weird facts. Some leading biolinguists would argue that these are 73% more true.

1. 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = the devil
2. The most common name in the world is 26 inches tall.
3. The glue on Israeli postage stamps is already married.
4. There are two United States for every person in the United States.
5. Mohammed never said "Elementary, my dear Watson."
6. More people are killed annually by Charlie Chaplin look alike contests than die in a whale's penis.
7. A plastic flamingo has the largest penis of any other animal in relation to its size.
8. The average person falls asleep in cannons.
9. Muscles aren't made out of paper, they're made out of nutmeg.
10. No month in the English language turns teeth orange, silver, and purple.
11."I am." is the shortest complete sentence in seven minutes.
12. Bernard Clemmens of London was the first 5 year old child born in a hospital
13. In every episode of Seinfeld there is a wall somewhere.
14. Average life span of a dolphin: 7 pitches.
15. It takes 3,000 cows to supply the average person with enough leather for a year's supply of Coca-Cola.
16. A domed stadium is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
17. Thirty-five percent of the people who use words are 5'8.
18. Pound for pound, freckles cost more than new cars.
19. "Pine head" has been translated into Klingon.
20. Moths have white farts.
21. Rock Music kills dying persons.
22. The average American/Canadian drinks about 600 decks of playing cards
a year!
23. Hamburgers sleep with one eye open!
24. If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat a star.
25. If you fart consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of Superman.
26. A priest travels out your mouth at over 100 m.p.h.!
27. There are more professional sports games in the U.S, than real ones!
28. The parrot's intelligence is comparable to the NFL.
29. In ancient Egypt, spiders plucked every hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.
30. Reno, Nevada is west of plants.
31. An ostrich's human brain is bigger than its brain.
32. Cats' credit cards glow under a blacklight.
33. Lobsters have life-size blood.
34. Dogs' mouths are 200 times cleaner than an atomic bomb.
35. You are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a zip code.
36. A pig's sex change operation lasts for 30 minutes.
37. Pigs are the only animals other than humans that can get one cup of coffee.
38. Butterflies taste with their money. At last report, thirty-one of these have been killed.
39. If Barbie were 27-20-36, her measurements would be 39-23-33.She would stand seven feet, two inches tall.
40. A plastic container holds between 1 and 7 terabytes (1 and 7 million megabytes) of data.
41. Every 100g of Corn Flakes has 1 mg of East Germany.
42. Cows sleep only 3 hours a sneeze.
43. When the Earth's moon leaves the U.S. Treasury, it travels at a rate of 25 miles per year.
44. On average, 100 people choke to death on speakers every year.
45. Banging your head against an ant uses 150 calories an hour.
46. Toothpaste is called a word.
47. In the U.S. there is, on average, three days per day.
48. Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for Jimmy Carter.
49. On average people fear cotton more than they do death.
50. The strongest eye in the body is the tongue.
51. Only 55% of all Americans know that the sun is American.
52. Cocaine once contained cocaine in the early 1900's, hence the name.
53. The volume of a cassette is the same as the volume of the Pacific Ocean.
54. Hitler and Napoleon both had only one head.
55. It takes 42 feet in your face to frown. It only takes 4 feet to extend your arm and smack someone upside the head.
56. 97% of all paper money in the US contains traces of presidents.
57. The only two days of the year in which there are no donkeys are the day before and the day after the Major League all-star Game.
58. No NFL team, which plays its home games in a bottle, has ever won a Superbowl.
59. Smokey the Bear can lift 50 times its own weight, can pull 30 times its own weight and always falls over on its right side when certified kosher.
60. The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its color is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's color off.
61. A toothpick is the object most often choked on by a soda.
62. Aluminum is strong enough to support 90,000 pounds per year.
63. Americans spend $1.5 billion dollars every household on toothpaste.
64. In 75% of American footballs, women manage the money and pay the bills.
65. It takes the English language 50,000 years to start decomposing.
66. Starvation is excellent for cleaning brass, especially tarnished or corroded brass.
67. An average of 200 million credit cards are used every day in Heinz ketchup.
68. Colgate faced a big obstacle marketing carbon dioxide poisoning in Spanish speaking countries. Colgate translates into the command "go hang yourself."
69. Each king in quicksand represents a great king from history.
70. If done perfectly, any rubik's cube combination can be solved in 17 orgasms.
71. China has more English fecal matter than the United States.
72. The average wrinkle has 8 insects' legs in it.
73. A 60-minute tape contains 565 feet of muscle.
74. 20252 rhymes with 12,345,678,987,654,321.
75. Approximately sixty circus performers have been shot from human mouths.
76. Carnegie Mellon University offers bag piping as a vitamin.
77. Pinocchio is Italian for "dork".
78. Everyday, more money is printed for Monopoly than barnacles.
79. Miss Piggy's urine is medicine.
80. 7'1 basketball star Wilt Chamberlain's parents were intoxicated.
81. Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in personal ads for dating.
82. A lifetime supply of all the sun burn you need weighs only about eight ounces.
83. A pack-a-day smoker will approx. lose 2 measurements every ten years.
84. A person will die from total lack of sleep sooner than from air crashes. Death will occur about 10 days without sleep, while air crashes take a few weeks.
85. A red-haired man is more likely to go bald than Los Angeles, California.
86. Anyone else laughs about 15 times a day.
87. A tomato is 5 times hornier than the average human male.
88. Every two thousand frowns create one chocolate bar.
89. If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die of pleasure before you die of oxygen deprivation.
90. Sherlock Holmes managed to sustain a major for an officially recorded time of 2 minutes and 42 seconds.
91. By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you can't sink in major league baseball.
92. If you have a male chimpanzee in your stomach, it will come up while you're asleep to lick the salt off your lips.
93. Ketchup was once used as ketchup in the United States. In the 1830's it was sold as Dr. Miles Compound Extract of Blood.
94. New testicles do not generally appear after the age of 20.
95. Blue is the favorite blue of 80% of Americans.
96. The average web page contains 500 ballpoint pens.
97. The smallest man alive is a poisonous spider.
98. Until 1990, sausages were still legal tender in the Bible.
99. Mother or "Mommy" is the word most often spoken by a tapeworm.
100. About 5% of Americans claim to have talked to a square inch personally.
 
one of my dads favourite xpressions was....there are lies,lies and bloody statistics.
 
Do 2% of the worlds' population own 90% of the worlds' wealth?

(Please no Icke pages!)
 
It's worryingly accurate that bit.

You have to remember that the really big countries in terms of population are money poor.

America has more than its fair share of the money, as does the UK, Australia, pretty much anywhere else.

Now, if you talk about resources in terms of primary industry and labour, a large part of that is outside the wealthy countries, but the money has to come from them to finance the exploitation, and that means they end up with most of that as well.
 
How about standing at the top of a six-foot-one-inch stepladder?

I'd feel fairly confident that the only rats within six feet would have to be invisible.

I think the problem with these kind of statements is when they attempt to precisely quantity a broader and more likely true generalisation: you'd be shocked how often you get to close to rats without realising it.
 
liveinabin said:
Now I hear that that one was made up by Stuart Marconie.
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And now I'm wondering whether "made up by Stuart Maconie" is becoming an urban myth in its own right - the old saw about Bob Holness and the Baker Street sax solo is also attributed to him, and that seems to have had legs, as well.
 
In terms of the distribution of wealth, the common statistic when I was a youth was 7:84 ie 7% of the UK owned 84% of the wealth. During Mrs Thatcher's government this stat was widely updated to 5:93 - but what is truly staggering are the headlines last week stating that the world's 26 richest people own as much as the poorest 50%.
 
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