Page 67 - Other Facts

The deepest part of the ocean is NOT the part closest to the center of the Earth!

The deepest part of the ocean is, of course, the Mariana's Trench. Just to clarify, I’m not talking about the Canadian pop punk band, but deepest part of the world’s oceans located in the Western Pacific Ocean (a lot less musical, just as interesting). It reaches a maximum known depth of 10.994km (this is greater than the height of Mt.Everest), has a width of 69km, and is about 2500km long. 

However, contrary to popular belief and common sense, “the deepest part of the world’s ocean” does not equal “the part of the seafloor closest to the center of Earth.” This is because the Earth is not a perfect sphere; its radius is about 25km less at the poles that at the equator. 

Therefore, parts of the Arctic Ocean seabed are at least 13 km closer to the Earth’s center than Mariana’s Trench. But hey, they there’s no band named “Parts of the Arctic Ocean Seabed.” 

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The Gish Gallop is the debating technique of drowning the opponent in such fragmented information that they can’t possibly address it all!

The Gish Gallop is named after Duane Gish, and it’s a debate technique. The person drowns the opponent in such a torrent of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments that the opponent can’t possibly answer every falsehood in real time. The term was actually coined by Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education. 

The formal debate jargon for the term is spreading. It came about as a way to throw as much crap into five minutes as humanly possible. Some judges have called the technique out and only allow so many arguments to be heard at a time. In places like the internet, though, the technique can be very effective and time consuming. It’s often used as an indirect argument from authority. 

It paints the arguer as an expert in a broad range of topics and the opponent as a bumbling idiot. So, Duane Gish must have been an expert at talking his way into or out of anything.

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North Korea reportedly sends citizens to do slave labor in Siberia. They don't even know they left North Korea!

It turns out, that for the longest time, North Korea has been shipping its citizens to logging labor camps as a way to generate profit. These North Korean labor camps are hidden in a part of Siberia that can only realistically be reached via Trans-Siberian railway. Laborers reside in a North Korean-like village so that they never forget their homeland and its ideals.

These villages are equipped with North Korean homes, North Korean newspapers, North Korean propaganda, etc. to keep laborers in check. Each laborer is tied to a 3-year contract. The government mainly chooses men who have families back home as those men are less likely to run away. 

Russia provides the equipment for the labor camps, and North Korean laborers use the equipment to produce lumber. Many work as much as 16 hours a day. Some of them don’t even know that they aren’t in North Korea, and others think that they are in the cold, dry, middle of now-where, for the betterment of the motherland. 

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Two guys drove from New York to Los Angeles in just 31 hours!

The distance between New York to Los Angeles is 2,795 miles of interstate. Alex Roy and his copilot Henry Fyshe, an English racer, took all the possible precautions they could think of for the trip. Roy bought anything and everything he could think of and find that would potentially help on the trip. He dreamed about it and planned the trip for two years. 

They drove a E39 BMW M5 and carried all sorts of gizmos to spot cops and record the trip. They had an extra 20 gallon fuel tank attached to the car, Red Bull, Gatorade, and mail-order-porta-pissior bags of quick hardening gel. They kept several police scanners on to avoid the 31,000 cops between them and their dream. 

They also carried visine with them to keep their eyes prepared for the long drive. The goal was to beat the legendary Cannonball Run record by crossing the country in less than 32 hours and 7 minutes. What they did was totally illegal, but pretty cool nonetheless. 

Roy, with help from a car-crazy former New Jersey transportation department employee named J. F. Musial, has spent months loading Excel documents with the coordinates of all-night gas stations and open stretches of highway and weather projections — hundreds of data points arranged on an x-y axis, so that any deviation can be recalculated on the fly. The man was prepared. They made it in just 31 hours and 4 minutes.

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US presidents must pay for food in the White House!

You may be asking yourself how one of the most important men in the world can have to pay for his own families food when almost every desire he could ever want is at the snap of his fingers. It works in a simple manner: Whatever food the first family or friends consumes is written down on a bill and presented to them at the end of the month. 

But it’s not just food. Toothpaste, toilet paper, and nearly every commodity they personally use must be paid for by Mr. Obama! Pay for food? That could get pricy with all of the world famous guests and five star kitchen staff that are present at the White House, but luckily for the president the bill is only for times that are not official state functions. 

However, almost every president is shocked to learn this upon their arrival at the White House. Nancy Reagan said, “Nobody ever told us the president and his wife are charged for every meal, as well as incidentals like dry cleaning, toothpaste, and other toiletries,” after being presented with her first bill, and Rosalynn Carter commonly complained about the expensive costs her and her husband were forced to pay.

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