Canada has specifically banned members of the Westboro Baptist Church from entering the country!
Canada says good riddance to members of the Westboro Baptist Church located in Topeka, Kansas. The church is not associated with any of the major Baptist denominations.
In fact, they have all denounced the Westboro Baptist Church and adamantly state there is no affiliation. Canada isn’t the only country that has banned the church members from their country.
The United Kingdom has banned them entering their country, as well, on the basis of hate speech. The WBC is known for their outrageous stances and pickets. They travel all over making horrible statements about God hating…well, basically everyone who isn’t them.
They attack homosexuals, soldiers, and Jews among other groups with their pickets and protests. There doesn’t seem to be any real aim or goal for their protests, except to gain attention.
They’ve even been denounced by the KKK as being “hatemongers.” Now, that is a pretty serious statement, coming from one of the United States’ first recognized terrorist groups.
The entire GoldenEye 007 game on N64 is only 12 MB!
GoldenEye 007 is a first-person shooter game based on the James Bond film, GoldenEye. It was developed by Rare and released for Nintendo 64 in August 1997. The players assume the role of James Bond as he fights against criminals trying to use a satellite weapon against London.
The team that developed GoldenEye was fairly inexperienced. Eight of the nine developers had never worked on a video game before. Also rather than release the game along with the movie, GoldenEye 007 was released after two and a half years of development. The game's cartridge only ended up being 12 MB.
Despite the creator's inexperience, GoldenEye 007 was a critical and commercial success. It sold more than 8 million units worldwide, making it the third best selling Nintendo 64 game.
A student petitioned to make 10^27 a 'Hellameter' so that the universe would be 1.4 hellameters wide
The universe is vast. No one will dispute that. It encompasses galaxies upon galaxies and as far as we know, everything in existence. Scientists actually have estimated the universe's diameter.
As you may imagine, it's a very large number. It is even greater than a trillion trillions or 10 to the 27th power. In fact, it is 1.4 times larger than that. Kind of difficult to fathom or even talk about considering there is no unit of distance nearly that large.
This is why, in 2010, UC Davis physics student Austin Sendek petitioned the International System of Units to name 10 to the 27th power one "hella." Multiple units of this distance would be "hellameters." Sendek felt it was about time that large units of measurement got their own names and what better one than "hella?" If his petition goes through, people can officially declare the universe 1.4 hella meters wide. That's hella big.
There are stars in the universe that are cold enough to be touched by the human hand!
When you think about stars, you think about burning gas. You may imagine the intense heat of our closest star, the sun. And you would be right--the sun's surface temperature is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. However, not all stars are this hot. NASA has discovered certain astral bodies that are much cooler.
In 2010, NASA discovered 14 "brown dwarfs," which were 14 of the coldest stars it had ever found. Then in 2011, it found some that were even cooler. NASA calls these 6 stars "Y-dwarfs." These "Y-dwarfs" are even cooler than the human body.
Scientists designate these cool orbs "failed stars" because they cannot fuse atoms at their core like regular stars. They also gradually fade until their light is no longer visible to the human eye. In order to find them, NASA developed a special infrared telescope and attached it to a satellite.
One of the strongest predictor of a rise in obesity in the US is the decline in cigarette smoking!
Obesity is a national problem in the US. Some estimates say 30% of Americans are currently obese (defined by having a body mass index of 30 or more). This is a huge increase from just 25 years ago. So what is causing this increase? People gain weight by consuming more calories than they burn--what is influencing them to do this? Fast food? An increasingly sedentary lifestyle?
The National Bureau of Economic Research studied a number of socio-economic factors related to weight gain to see which had the most effect. Some of the factors they considered were food prices, employment, physical activity at work, urbanization, cigarette smoking, and prevalence of restaurants.
Surprisingly, they found that cigarette smoking had the largest effect. A decline in cigarette smoking, which can hinder weight gain, accounts for about 2% of the increase in obesity.
