Daily Fun Fact for 2/1/2012

Champion poker player Phil Bellamuth may have extracted millions from his poker opponents, but he doesn't intend to keep all of those chips to himself. Bellamuth has high ambitions in the world of philanthropy.

"Steve Jobs was a billionaire yet snubbed non-profits. I want to be the Bill Gates of the poker world...Phil Gates.”

Bellamuth's not bluffing. He founded The Poker School for Disadvantaged Children (PSDC), a K-12 charter school that promises to train the next generation of successful poker players. Funding comes from a variety of public and private sources, including a share of the students' individual winnings. Bellamuth is well-intentioned.

“Kids today lack direction. They must learn skills that will enable them generate an honest, sustainable income. PSDC teaches disadvantaged children two arts: well-timed deception and ruthless gerrymandering. We teach them mathematical cunning, uncompromising brinkmanship, and that morality depends on context. These are life lessons, not just academic ones."

The school's poker-focused curriculum reflects the school's immersive approach to education. Students learn math and statistics through repeated poker drills. The reading list comprises exclusively of poker books. In place of an athletic program, students take classes that range from card tricks to performance card throwing. Students wear poker memorabilia in place of standard uniforms.

Bellamuth remains optimistic despite having to endure harsh criticism from all sides of the political spectrum.

"We're going ‘all-in’ with this program. We're never going to fold. They deserve a second chance. We know all of these children have bright futures. Doubtless, you can 'call' me on that!"

Daily Fun Fact for 12/16/2011

Russian mobster Boris “Pretty P” Gorbachov was nearly allowed to settle permanently in the United States last year after winning a “Miss Bo Peep” costume contest that promised citizenship and a strawberry farm as the top prize.

Gorbachov was crowned “Miss Bo Peep 2011” after hiring Chris Crocker as his makeup artist and Judy Bloom as his pronunciation coach. Although some media pundits claimed that he won primarily for his beauty, esteemed former NYT journalist Jayson Blair praised his oratory ability:

“‘Pretty P’ recites every Mother Goose nursery rhyme with the dignified eloquence of a 10 year-old Russian female Barack Obama. Her angelic voice can restore the eyesight of the 3 Blind Mice and put Humpty Dumpty together again. Put simply, at this pivotal moment in history, this dark, cynical world desperately needs a sweet, innocent girl like Pretty P.”

Fortunately, the mobster was deported when police discovered that he had forced a legion of children, all aged 10-12, to do all manual labor on his new farm. Their tasks included picking strawberries, operating heavy machinery, and sometimes even pulling plows in small teams. They now live safely in foster care.

Fight child labor

©Factopolis - Daily Fun Facts and Useless Knowledge

Daily Fun Fact for 12/14/2011

Thirsty partygoers and responsible parents lookin’ for a frosty, fruity thrill can find drive-thru strawberry daiquiri stands just about anywhere in New Orleans. However, this local treat may be causing a very syrupy problem on its city streets: Clever patrons mask the fact that they are drinking and driving by keeping unopened restaurant straws handy.

Police aren’t laughing at the fact that these daiquiri-toting “straw men” tend to cause traffic accidents. Officer Rengold told Factopolis that “street hooligans driving with opened strawberry daiquiris are responsible for at least 35 injuries a year, mostly due to illegal street racing and gang-related drive-bys.”

Drive-thrus now limit customers to only one straw per visit, and they can no longer pack adult-strength strawberry daiquiris with kids' meals. Unfortunately, an underground market for daiquiri straws thrives on eBay and amongst NOLA’s most notorious drug rings.

Officer Rengold urges concerted action. “Not only do we need to brush our teeth of this sugary madness rotting our morals, but we also need to brush our streets clean of this ‘berry’ big problem by putting these thugs on ice.”


©Factopolis - Daily Fun Facts and Useless Knowledge

Daily Fun Fact for 12/9/2011

Today's fact is once again a guest fact:

Back in 1975, Jimmy Carter, soon to be 39th President of the United States, had a close encounter of the third kind. According to him, "Extraterrestrial bacteria in little extraterrestrial bacteria spaceships visited me on my peanut farm." What were they looking for?

Well, unbeknownst to most, many aliens (especially those largely invisible to the naked eye) power their ships with peanuts. Jimmy supplied them with enough peanuts for their journey, and they, showing their gratitude, plagued his opponent with the most severe case of explosive diarrhea yet experienced by man. From this originated the expression, "When the shit hits the fan," as that's exactly what happened (rather frequently) during the first presidential debate. As we all know, Jimmy Carter won, and the rest is history.

©Factopolis - Daily Fun Facts and Useless Knowledge

Daily Fun Fact for 12/7/2011

Oprah has an ‘obsession’ with okra and incorporates it into every facet of her life.

“I love giving okra-related gifts from Oprah.com to my friends and family,” she said in an intimate, revealing interview with Factopolis. “Whether it’s comfy PJs with an okra print, professional-grade okra shaped stainless steel pans, fabulous okra earrings, or heavenly okra scented candles, okra gifts are always a big hit on Oprah.com.”

As one can imagine, Oprah loves cooking with okra. Her recipe book resembles a CEO’s rolodex and contains well over 300 okra recipes. She added, “I share tons of recipes to my Facebook friends through Oprah.com. You can also find several in my book Dreams of My Mother: Oprah and the Okra Empire, on sale now at Amazon.”

She reveals in her book that her love for the vegetable comes from her longtime partner, Stedman Graham, and her best friend Gayle King. “I call Stedman ‘my beard’,” Oprah said. “Um, by that, I mean, he grows on you quickly and can get scruffy at times, but at the end of the day he makes you look good in the public eye. I like him. He's sweet. He’s a pretty good guy.” Regarding her best friend Gail, Oprah has similar, if not more loving, words.

“She calls me “my little okra” and gives me little bunches of okra flowers and occasional pecks on the cheek. Our friendship has always been kind of playful; I like getting away from my ‘beard’ sometimes to focus on my friendship with Gayle.” She sighs and gets teary-eyed. “You always want to be with people you care about, but some people are more private. One day, maybe, when this is all over, we can experience the wonders of okra together and run away to ‘Okraland,” the theme park of our dreams.”

©Factopolis - Daily Fun Facts and Useless Knowledge

The information in this post is just for fun and does not reflect any judgments/claims about the subjects' preferences.

Daily Fun Fact for 12/6/2011

Contrary to the popular belief that grizzly bears are menaces to small, edible animals, they are inexplicably natural allies with certain animals one would expect would make to a great snack.

Bern Frank was a 650 pound grizzly bear at the world-famous zoo Berlin Zoo, named after US politician Barney Frank, and German cities Berlin and Frankfurt. One day, zoo keepers left the doors of the penguin pen open overnight, causing several chicks to escape. They were found next day cuddled against Bern Frank.

Ever the protective parent, Bern Frank charged at any zookeeper that tried to move the penguins. Eventually zookeepers permitted the penguins to play with their adopted parent for about an hour each day in order to, as one zookeeper said under the condition of anonymity related to Factopolis, “boost morale, but also to see if inter-species hybridity was remotely possible.”

The bear likely suffers from a rare disease similar to Prosopagnosia, a human disease in which sufferers cannot recognize faces. One potential corrective procedure would be to introduce wasps, which studies have shown never forget a face, into the pen to interact with Bern Frank.

©Factopolis - Daily Fun Facts and Useless Knowledge


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Daily Fun Fact for 12/5/2011

Today it is possible to buy and sell cattle, 40,000 pounds at a time, from a computer screen through the cattle futures market. The practice has been around for about a century now, but for a short period (1918-1919) the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was renamed as the New York Livestock Exchange because stock traders shared the floor with living, breathing livestock.

No one could predict the impact that the homecoming of thousands of soldiers at the end of World War I would have on the demand for cattle meat and leather. The cattle industry had been in dire straits for two decades and industry leaders wanted solutions to stabilize the market.

The decision to make live livestock trading available at the Exchange floor was mostly a personal decision by Gordon Logic, then the managing director at the NYSE, as a favor to a friend who had lost several barns in a fire. Regarding his decision to add dozens of mooing, clucking, and defecating animals to the floor, he gave an apprehensive response:

“Most traders loved the idea of being able to buy livestock in small quantities but for all the wrong reasons. Most regarded it as a cheap and convenient way to get a live chicken at “market” prices. They’d drive down the price so that they could purchase all of them at a cent or two a pound, then magically the price would skyrocket the next day. They’d all say the same, sexist thing the next morning: ‘My wife’s a great cook and does whatever I tell her to do, but I wish she wasn’t such a heifer.”

©Factopolis - Daily Fun Facts and Useless Knowledge