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Totally useless information/trivia


RunRickyRun

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I've been thinking about boobies ceaselessly ever since AVFC forever posted a picture of a lovely pair of them in the Pics thread. Here are some facts about boobies:

The blue-footed ones live in the Pacific waters of central America, from Baja to Peru and the Galapagos.

Sexing them is a walk in the park: The male has smaller pupils and slightly lighter feet.

The bluer their feet, the more attractive they are as boobies, and the more action they see. Here is a booby lifting his feet alternately in a display, a rough translation of which is "Hey girls, how do you like these? Pretty blue, eh? Yep, knew you'd like them. How about it then?"

399px-Blue-footed_Booby_%28Sula_nebouxii%29_-one_leg_raised.jpg

Further facts:

The colour in their feet is indicative of the health of the bird, because the chemical that provides the colour is also used by their immune system.

Boobies have their chicks in stages. In hard times the elder sibling will kick the younger sibling/s from the nest so that the selfish little bastard has more chance of survival. This is known as facultative siblicide. This phenomenon is considered to make the species an effective model for studying parent-offspring conflict and sibling rivalry.

Boobies are members of the same family as gannets.

If you would like to know more, look them up on Wikipedia yourself - see how easy it is!

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Watching The Battle of Midway on TV and it has made me consider the absolute supremacy of the US Navy in the world today. There are 22 aircraft carriers in service in the world at the moment, the US has 11 of them.

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Reflects worldview, technology and finances.

We had an enormous navy when we had plenty of overseas interests to protect/exploit.

The aircraft carrier has ruled the roost for many years, but they're becoming more vulnerable to smarter weapons.

Lots of resources on one spot.

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We only have one. Its small and is being decommissioned next year.

Yep, but building two brand spankers for commissioning in 2014 and 2016 or something. They'll be 65,000 tons vs the Nimitz's 101,000, but I think they'll only have about a third of the aircraft. So...it's still a very very bad idea to go to war with the yoo ess eh, no matter how much one might like to sometimes :)

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Indeed. I think the US military probably has a bigger dominance over everybody else than any army has had over it's rivals at any point in the history of the world. It's just a shame for them that global politics now mean they cant use it to have an empire like we did. :P

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Reflects worldview, technology and finances.

We had an enormous navy when we had plenty of overseas interests to protect/exploit.

The aircraft carrier has ruled the roost for many years, but they're becoming more vulnerable to smarter weapons.

Lots of resources on one spot.

They're still one of the most effective ways to project power though. They've always had drawbacks (an aircraft carrier alone may as well have a target painted on it, so they end up needing vast investment in support craft to look after it, and they are fairly prohibitively large resource dumps, hence so few nations having any, and so on) but if you wish to maintain the ability to impose military might across the globe, the aircraft carrier is amongst the best ways to do it...

Indeed. I think the US military probably has a bigger dominance over everybody else than any army has had over it's rivals at any point in the history of the world. It's just a shame for them that global politics now mean they cant use it to have an empire like we did. :P

It's arguable that they do have an empire... just a different one to the old fashioned notion. And it's also arguable that they wouldn't trade their 'empire' for one even vaguely like the former British Empire.

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Baseball's peak popularity in Britain was in the years immediately preceding World War II. Baseball teams shared grounds with football clubs (hence Derby County's home ground was named the Baseball Ground), and the game was run at a professional standard with up to 10,000 spectators per game.

One milestone of baseball in the United Kingdom was the 1938 victory of Great Britain over the United States to win the inaugural World Cup of Baseball.

John Devey was originally signed as a baseball player. He also played for Warwickshire.

C.B. Who?!

EDIT : Looking up his profile on the British Baseball Hall of Fame, here, he was both a pitcher and a batting champion which is even more remarkable.

Edited by RunRickyRun
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