Monthly Archives: July 2017

Just the Factslap (K-line K-9 Remix)

Arf:

  • Dogs poop in alignment with Earth’s magnetic field.
  • The world’s oldest lived to 29. 
    • Humans and dogs first became best friends 30,000 years ago.
    • Every dog’s mitochondrial DNA is 99.9% the same as a gray wolf.
    • In English-speaking countries, the most popular names for dogs are Max and Molly.
    • Dogs and cats only sweat from their foot pads and nose.
    • Dogs have 13 blood types, horses have 8, cows have 9 while humans only have 4.
    • Paul McCartney recorded an ultrasonic whistle audible only to dogs at the end of A Day in the Life.
    • In South Carolina, the maximum sentence for beating your dog is longer than the max sentence for beating your wife.
    • A dog’s sense of smell is 10,000 times stronger than humans’.
    • Humans and dogs are the only two species known to seek visual clues from another’s eyes. And dogs only do it with humans.

I Just Saved 15% on My Car Insurance with My Crotch

 

I’ve resigned myself to some things I will never fully fathom: the electoral college; women; Pokemon GO (a videogame that requires you to go outside and walk? That’s the opposite purpose of itself. That’s like a treadmill-powered Twinkie dispenser.).

But I’m having real trouble with this concept, which I guess is more a question:

Why do men pay more for auto insurance than women?

The question seems obvious, and, indeed, insurance companies treat it so, even putting the rationale on their websites: Because men get in more crashes.

Data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that men do 60% of the driving in the U.S. — and are in roughly the same percentage of accidents, the companies note.

My question: Who gives a shit?

Empirical data would also produce (if the study were done) statistics about, for instance, race. What if that study were conducted, and it found that more black motorists were involved in crashes than white? Would State Farm advertise a honky discount?

It’s an absurd notion, but it underscores a real question. If you cannot discriminate based on race and gender in employment, housing, hiring, public transportation and nearly every facet of our lives outside of health insurance, why is it permissible for, say, Geico to do it?

The wrinkle gets one more fold with the times. How are insurance firms handling transgender motorists? If I’m a parent with a 16-year-old boy who just got his driver’s license, it would save me literally thousands to tell State Farm that, you know what, I caught Billy throwing the ball like a sissy. He’s a female driver.

It’s enough to make toilet controversies utterly flushable.

Now for some real answers:

  • The word “Afghanistanism”, which means focusing on problems in distant parts of the world while ignoring local issues, was first used in 1948.
  • Charles Darwin was the first to put wheels on an office chair, creating the modern office chair.
  • The highest accuracy calculations at NASA use just 15 decimals of Pi.
  • The artist formerly known as Prince was obsessed with lavender and that reporters knew he was entering a room: you would smell the lavender.
  • The hum that comes from electricity mains provides forensic scientists with a date and time stamp on audio recordings.
  • Dragonflies can get fat. And when they do, they become less successful at finding a mate.
  • The woman who made cannabis brownies famous by baking and distributing them to AIDS patients was actually named Mary Jane.
  • Dumbo was the first Disney animated feature set in America.