On Western Civilisation

“What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea.”

– Mohandas Gandhi

A Short Digression on the Pig

‘All religions have a tendency to feature some dietary injunction or prohibition, whether it is the now lapsed Catholic injunction to eat fish on Fridays, or the adoration by Hindus of the cow as a consecrated and invulnerable animal (the government of India even offered to import and protect all the cattle facing slaughter as a result of the bovine encephalitic, or “mad cow,” plague that swept Europe in the 1990s), or the refusal by some other Eastern cults to consume any animal flesh, or to injure any other creature be it rat or flea. But the oldest and most tenacious of all fetishes is the hatred and even fear of the pig.

It emerged in primitive Judaea, and was for centuries one of the ways—the other being circumcision—by which Jews could be distinguished. Even though sura 5.60 of the Koran condemns particularly Jews but also other unbelievers as having been turned into pigs and monkeys—a very intense theme in recent Salafist Muslim preaching—and the Koran describes the flesh of swine as unclean or even “abominable,” Muslims appear to see nothing ironic in the adoption of this uniquely Jewish taboo.

Real horror of the porcine is manifest all over the Islamic world. One good instance would be the continued prohibition of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, one of the most charming and useful fables of modern times, of the reading of which Muslim schoolchildren are deprived. I have perused some of the solemn prohibition orders written by Arab education ministries, which are so stupid that they fail to notice the evil and dictatorial role played by the pigs in the story itself.

Orwell actually did dislike pigs, as a consequence of his failure as a small farmer, and this revulsion is shared by many adults who have had to work with these difficult animals in agricultural conditions. Crammed together in sties, pigs tend to act swinishly, as it were, and to have noisy and nasty fights. It is not unknown for them to eat their own young and even their own excrement, while their tendency to random and loose gallantry is often painful to the more fastidious eye.

But it has often been noticed that pigs left to their own devices, and granted sufficient space, will keep themselves very clean, arrange little bowers, bring up families, and engage in social interaction with other pigs. The creatures also display many signs of intelligence, and it has been calculated that the crucial ratio—between brain weight and body weight—is almost as high with them as it is in dolphins.

There is great adaptability between the pig and its environment, as witness wild boars and “feral pigs” as opposed to the placid porkers and frisky piglets of our more immediate experience. But the cloven hoof, or trotter, became a sign of diabolism to the fearful, and I daresay that it is easy to surmise which came first—the devil or the pig. It would be merely boring and idiotic to wonder how the designer of all things conceived such a versatile creature and then commanded his higher-mammal creation to avoid it altogether or risk his eternal displeasure. But many otherwise intelligent mammals affect the belief that heaven hates ham.’

– Hitchens. C. 2007. God Is Not Great London, Great Britain: Atlantic Books (2008) p. 37-38

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A baby puffin is called a puffling.

The peak weight of Khalid bin Mohsen Shaari was 610 kg. In August 2013, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia ordered him to be hospitalized and lose weight.

The brain cannot feel pain, even if you stick a knife in it.

The Parsi people of India leave their dead to be eaten by vultures.

Crocodile dung, blacksmith water, Weasel’s testicles, mercury, animal intestines, cola and other carbonated drinks, an acacia and honey tampon, an opium or lemon diaphragm and brewed tea with Beaver testicles have all been used as contraceptives.

See other: Quite Interesting Facts

5

In order to celebrate Knowledge Guild’s 5th anniversary we are going to take a closer look at the number 5. Do not worry, it is not as dull as it sounds.

• The number of people killed by sharks since records began is equal to just five per cent of the number of toilet-related injuries in the USA in 1996.
• In the 18th century, 75% of all children died before they were five years old. 90% of children born in workhouses died before they were five years old.
• As a trick, the writer Arthur Conan Doyle once sent a letter to five friends that read, “We are discovered. Flee immediately.” One of his friends disappeared and Doyle never saw him again.
• An enzyme found in pineapples called “Bromelain” destroys fingerprints. It was used as a plotline in an episode of Hawaii Five-O. This enzyme can also get rid of mouth ulcers.
• Chelmsford was capital of England for five days in 1381 during the Peasants Revolt.
• The Punjabi for the number “5” is “4”.
• The most dangerous sport for American women is cheerleading. In 2002, 22,900 children between five and eighteen years of age went to hospital for cheerleading related injuries.
• Charles Darwin is one of only five people who are not royal to be buried in Westminster Abbey.
• Smoking takes five years off your health expectancy on average. However, as a man, removing your testicles adds thirteen years onto it.
• The Hebrew for the number “5” is pronounced “Hey”.
• The average height of an Eskimo is 5’4″ and the average life expectancy is 39. If you put five Eskimos in car, every Eskimo in the world could fit into the Los Angeles International Airport car park.
• The best thing to do with an old Christmas tree is to contact your local zoo and see if they want to give it to their animals for food. In Germany people often feed Christmas trees to elephants, which can eat five of them for lunch. In Dresden Zoo they also give Christmas trees to giraffes, rhinos, camels, deer and sheep.
• In Alexandre Dumas’ novel La Dem Aux Camelias, the main heroine, Marguerite Gautier, wears a white camellia for 25 days of month when she is available for sex, and a red one for five days when she is not available because she is having her period. The novel caused scandal in 19th century France when it was published and the flowers popularity grew.
• The five appendages on most starfish exhibit pentamerism.
• Only five people died in the Great Fire of London.
• India has no speed limits and every car in the country within five years will be involved in a fatal road accident. The UK has the largest number of car thefts in the world.
• Five pound notes are made out of a mixture of cotton and linen. Wooden paper is too fragile.
• There are only five places in America which have an apostrophe in them which are Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts; Ike’s Point, New Jersey; John E’s Pond, Rhode Island; Carlos Elmer’s Joshua View, Arizona; and Clark’s Mountain, Oregon.
• In the British Army, you can tell which branch of the Brigade of Guards a soldier is in by the gaps between the buttons. If they are evenly spaced, they are in the Grenadiers Guards. Pairs mean they are Coldstream Guards, threes are Scottish Guards, fours are Irish Guards, and fives are Welsh Guards.
• The ideal way to kiss a Frenchman depends on what region of France you are in. Two kisses are normal in central and southern France and four in northern France. However, in Corsica it can be as many as five kisses. In Belgium and the Netherlands, three kisses is the usual amount.
• Anchovies are now mainly used for feed salmon in fish farms. For every salmon, five kilograms of anchovies are killed. Therefore, salmon farming is not really sustainable.
• Each country in the world has their own idea of how many portions of fruit and veg you should eat every day. The reason it is five in Britain is because doctors are of the belief that you cannot persuade the public to eat more than that. In Japan they recommend eating nine portions of fruit and veg, in Denmark it is six, in France it is ten.
• A Fitzroy is a bastard child of a royal. Charles II had five Fitzroys from his mistress Barbara Palmer.

See other: Anniversaries

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Henry IV of France promoted green parks in Paris. He is responsible for a street called the Street of the Bridge of Cabbages.

10,113 Americans insured themselves against giving birth to the messiah at the millennium.

The 10th President of Nigeria (that is, the 3rd President of the Fourth Nigerian Republic), was called Goodluck Jonathan.

Scorpions navigate by starlight.

More than 50% of the world’s languages are located in just eight countries: India, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, and Cameroon.

See other: Quite Interesting Facts

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About 7,000 litres of blood are pumped through the human heart each day.

A Spotted Hyena or Crocuta Crocuta

An average healthy human can urinate 1,4 litres a day. That amounts up to 511 litres a year. It would take over 13 years to urinate the same amount of fluid the human heart pumps in a day.

The ancient Egyptians trapped hyenas as pets and fattened them for the table. In the Ethiopian city of Harar, ‘hyena men’ still feed on wild hyenas at dusk.

In Japanese, two different sets of characters spell out the word danshoku meaning either warm colour, or male homosexual sex.

Assuming an average healthy man over 24 produces a tablespoonful of 15 millilitres of sperm by ejaculating two or three times a day, he will produce about 5.5 litres (5.475) of sperm a year. At this rate it would take an average 24-year old over 454,545 years to fill an Olympic swimming pool; it would take 166,666,666 men to fill it in a day – about all Indian men between the age of 24 and 27.

See other: Quite Interesting Facts

Good Friday 1930‏

Good Friday, April 18th 1930, BBC News had nothing to report.

As a result, ten minutes of light piano music were played instead.

Apart from football, there was a small rebellion in Chittagong, India. Where some telegraph stations were made inoperative. This only happened after ten o’clock, so it was to late for the news in London.

A newsless report never occurred again.

Juggernaut

In British English, a Juggernaut is both a literal or metaphorical force or object regarded as unstoppable, that will crush all in its path.

The term originated in India. It was a huge wagon bearing an image of the god Krishna. Especially at the town of Puri, it was drawn annually in procession in which devotees allowed themselves to be crushed under its wheels in sacrifice.

The word is altered from Jaggernaut, a title of Krishna (an incarnation of Vishnu), from the Hindi Jagannath, literally “lord of the world”.