Skip to main content

Did you know...

...that the average person swallows 8 spiders while they are sleeping?
Image result for person swallowing spider in sleep image

Totally gross.

Did you also know that that is an urban myth?

According to snopes.com there is no way that spiders would get near us when we are sleeping with our mouths open.  That is because if our mouths are open, we are snoring and if we are snoring, we are causing a vibration that would cause the spiders not to come near us.

Did you also know that this urban myth, in 2013, spawned a meme on Tumblr that not only is my daughter's ABSOLUTE FAVORITE but also taught an entire generation about statistics?

“average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted”


Spiders Georg was huge on Tumblr (spawning 90,000 posts) and even got his own Facebook page.

In our house, any time someone gives a statistic, Spiders Georg comes up.  It's one of our nerdy family jokes.

And here is one of my favorite quotes that I say to my daughter all the time.
"AJ kissed his daughter on the forehead.  He is delighted to have produced such a fantastic nerd" (Zevin 197).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hiiiiyeeee!

I didn't post Friday because I was watching TV with my daughter.  We were watching our favorite show-RuPaul's Drag Race. An interesting trend right now is that phrases from drag culture (which are also from African American culture-particularly women) are popping up on Twitter and are now mainstream.  In fact, I have heard students saying these phrases up and down the halls and I have to giggle to myself because I doubt many of them know what they are saying.  So here are few favorites and what they mean (just so you know). YAS! - This word was created as an exclamation to yell at drag queens while they were performing as a sign of support and encouragement. Spill the T/Tea-S lang for the word truth or gossip. Used in a sentence: "Girl, I'm about to spill the tea on everything that happened last night." Gagging-  Used when something is so fierce, you can’t help but want to gag from the overload of extreme fierceosity. Sickening- Amazing, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Since you asked...it's Gif (with a hard G)

The discussion began with changing the cat on Everett's blog.  Here's the Gif I used :) But do I call it a Gif (with a hard G like Gift) or a Gif (with a soft J like Jiff)? According to Newsweek (article link ) ,  it should be the hard G, like Gift.   Reasons: *The  "G" in GIF stands for Graphic , which is pronounced with a hard G. It's Graphic Interchange Format. *"Gift" is GIF's closest neighbor.   *A computer would pronounce the acronym with a hard "G." *Our brains logically just want to pronounce it with a hard G.  But the creator feels otherwise.  In his acceptance of the Webby Lifetime achievement award ( Not going to lie-kind of cool to think about the real people who created the things that we use everyday and that there are awards for this stuff!) . He says (Jiff) I think I will probably still say it with the hard G because it makes sense to my brain.  
Post a Comment
Read more

A round of applause or making a point?

I speak with my hands.  I am a very physical speaker both with my face and my gestures.  The other day in one of my freshman classes, I made a statement to a student and clapped my hands after every word.  I wanted to emphasize what I was saying.  This was met with much more laughter than I expected. Coincidentally, there was a Tweet I saw a few days later that had the handclap emoji between each word.  Ahhh..... The hand clap emoji when used in succession is a round of applause Why thank you! Between each word emphasizes your point Look at me being all relevant without meaning to. Where did this come from? According to the website Bustle, and several others I looked at, it comes from the African American culture.  It  is called "The Black Girl Clap" used often when a woman is explaining something (generally to a man). But online, according to Slate.com, it's become aggressive.  When you do this you are ...
Post a Comment
Read more