26/viii mmxv

Whenever the Torah is dropped on the floor, tradition holds that every person in the room must fast for 40 days in atonement.

One in four Canadian children between 7 and 12 are obese.

Approximately half the inhabitants of Indonesia live on the island of Java.

Jeremy Clarkson’s parents ran a business selling tea cosies before they invented the stuffed Paddington Bear.

The hemline index is supposed to predict how the market will fare. Coined in 1926 by U.S. economist George Taylor, the idea has been spookily accurate. When skirts get shorter, the market goes up.

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12/ii mmxv

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.

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4/ix mmxiv

About 78% of the food advertised on Canadian television is fast food.

The first ever hot air balloon passengers were a sheep, a duck and a rooster. They made their successful flight in 1783.

The Japanese and Russians call the sun red. The Chinese call it yellow and white.

George W. Bush was the first American President to come to office with a criminal record. He had been arrested for drunk driving. Bush was the second man with a criminal record to become President if you count George Washington’s record for treason.

If you spent one day visiting each of Indonesia’s islands, it would take 48 years to see them all.

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16/vii mmxiv

Under Chairman Mao, every Chinese family was obliged to kill a sparrow a week to stop them eating all the rice. The project was ineffective because sparrows don’t eat rice.

The word lethologica describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.

When the novelist, poet, designer, translator, and social activist William Morris died in 1896, his doctor attributed his demise to ‘his simply being William Morris, and having done more work than most ten men’.

The striped mittenfish, a deep sea species recently discovered in the Java Sea, can change its sex at will by turning its entire body inside out.

There is evidence to suggest that the fable writer Aesop, who married and divorced at least fifty women, was fond of non-traditional unions. He wed his daughter, his sister and his own mother.

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26/ii mmxiv

Christians eat their god.

When the soft drink 7-Up was launched in 1929, one of its ingredients was the mood-stabilizing lithium citrate.

Indonesia has a Bishop called Martinus Dogma Situmorang. Dogma is his middle name. Literally.

Because Tonto means ‘stupid’ in Spanish, for Latin America, the Lone Ranger’s sidekick was renamed Toro or ‘bull’.

Ironically, the first legal slave owner, in what would eventually become the United States, was a black man named Anthony Johnson.

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Linguistic Diversity

According to the Swedish linguist Mikael Parkvall: ‘Languages are very unevenly distributed among the countries of the world.’ He lists the world’s countries with the largest number of languages:

1. Papua New Guinea [823]
2. Indonesia [726]
3. Nigeria [505]
4. India [387]
5. Mexico [288]
6. Cameroon [279]
7. Australia [235]
8. DR Congo [218]
9. China [201]
10. Brazil [192]
11. United States [176]
12. Philippines [169]

It’s curious how the linguistically most diverse country in the world is Papua New Guinea – because it’s also the place with the biggest biodiversity anywhere, one of the last places in the world where new species get discovered regularly. It leads one to wonder whether there could there be a single explanation for both phenomena?

Age of Consent

The ages of consent for sexual activity vary by country and jurisdiction.

In Europe; Spain has the lowest age of consent with age of 13. Malta and Turkey are at the highest end with the age 18.

Surprisingly, or not surprisingly at all; the national age of consent in Japan is 13.

In Indonesia the national age of consent for heterosexual sexual activity is 19 years for males and 16 years for females. Ironically, the age of consent for homosexuals is 18.

Age of Consent Demonstration in London

In Iran, sex outside marriage, regardless of age, is illegal. The minimum age of marriage in Iran is 18 for men and 16 for women. However, ways around these regulations include temporary marriages called Nikah mut‘ah; a fixed-term marriage in Shi’a Islam. The duration of this type of marriage is fixed at its inception and is then automatically dissolved upon completion of its term. The marriage is contractual.

The age of consent in Angola is 12 which makes it the lowest recorded legal age of consent in the world. Bolivia however, has no specified age of consent; rather it is defined as puberty.

Tunisia has the highest age of consent; namely 20 years. Although, several Middle-Eastern states rule that sex can only take place in wedlock and any sexual activity outside the marriage is deemed a criminal offence.

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The Aggressive Eurasian Coot

The Eurasian Coot or Fulica atra is recognised by its snowy white bill and forehead shield, which probably gave rise to the expression: ‘as bald as a coot’. The remainder of the bird is dark sooty grey, except for its bright red eye. Immature birds are generally paler than adults with a white wash on the throat. Nestlings are downy, black with fine yellow tips.

An adult Fulica Atra or Eurasian Coot

The Eurasian Coot ranges from Eurasia (Europe and Asia in almost its entity) to Indonesia, New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand.

The Coot is a much less secretive animal than most of the rail family, and can be seen swimming on open water or walking across waterside grasslands. It is an aggressive species, and strongly territorial during the breeding season. Both parents are involved in territorial defence.

It is reluctant to fly and when taking off runs across the water surface with much splashing. They take off, but without actually flying, travelling a short distance at speed usually in territorial disputes. It bobs its head as it swims, and can make short dives from a little jump.

The Coot is an omnivore, and will take a variety of small live prey including the eggs of other water birds, as well as algae, vegetation, seeds and fruit. It shows considerable variation in its feeding techniques, grazing on land or in the water. In the water it may upend or dive in search of food.

Eurasian Coots can often be observed chasing and fighting each other as well as other birds for no apparent reason

Eurasian Coots may breed at any time that conditions are favourable, and may produce successive broods. During the breeding season pairs establish and maintain territories with vigour. Their aggression is also extended towards other species. Nests of ducks are often seized and used as roosting sites, the unfortunate owner’s eggs being pushed off into the water. Young ducks and grebes are sometimes killed. The nest is often a floating raft of vegetation or is built on logs or tree stumps that are surrounded by water. Both sexes share incubation and care of the young.

However, Coots can be very brutal to their own young as well, especially when under pressure from lack of food. When the parents are pressed, they will bite young that are begging for food and repeatedly do so until it stops begging. This usually means the young will starve to death. If the begging continues, they may bite so hard that the chick is killed.