The Book of General Ignorance

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It is not necessary, and almost never adds to the performance. I'd rather the reader err on the side of too subtle than too much.

But, nonetheless, a good book full of interesting stuff. I've been perusing this one for awhile, as I find that trivia books are best absorbed in small doses. This is one of the better efforts in the genre, a little more erudite than some. The format is essentially this: "Here's a piece of trivia you thought you knew. But you're wrong, there's more to it than that. And while we're on the topic, here are a few more facts and observations that are sort of related to the original subject but perhaps not so much.

All in all, a useful resource for debunking those who presume to have knowledge of trivia that is superior to yours. Very good for reading just a bit of before bed, palate-cleansing during frantic essay writing, or sitting down with for an hour straight, thinking 'just one more page' I haven't actually seen much of the TV show, but I do follow qikipedia and have heard my mother hooting away with mirth when watching the tv show. The book isn't as funny, most of the time, but it does succeed in being Quite Interesting. It covers a lot of facts I've read elsewhere in other books some of which I suspect of tak Very good for reading just a bit of before bed, palate-cleansing during frantic essay writing, or sitting down with for an hour straight, thinking 'just one more page' It covers a lot of facts I've read elsewhere in other books some of which I suspect of taking their topics at least from here, if not the text and a lot that I've never read elsewhere.

If general knowledge sort of stuff is your thing, this and the New Scientist books are probably your best bet Mar 31, Rowena rated it really liked it Recommends it for: Any fans of general knowledge. Shelves: education.

I watch the BBC's Quite Interesting comedy quiz show this book is based on or is it the other way around? After watching the show and reading this book, I want to know what exactly are we taught at school? So many misconceptions, for one. I found the book very interesting and also humourous.

I definitely learned a lot of cool facts from it. How many penises does an European earwig have? The European or Black earwig carries a special one in case the first one snaps off, which happens quite frequently. I love trivia cue me spending hours on Cracked. I especially love strange trivia. Penis trivia?

QI: The Book of General Ignorance - The Noticeably Stouter Edition

This book was easy to get through too - one can pick it up at any point again to discover something new about the universe. I'm a huge fan of the TV series QI. Any lover of the Stephen-Fry-run quiz show should enjoy this, a How many penises does an European earwig have? Any lover of the Stephen-Fry-run quiz show should enjoy this, as will anyone who likes, well, penis trivia.

Everything You Think You Know Is (Still) Wrong

And who really invented the telephone, etc. Shelves: own , general-knowledge. Great little book of snippets of facts that one is unlikely to know. In fact it is written in such a way that it often turns misconceptions on their head with a touch of humour at the same time. The result is normally something like, "Oooh i didnt know that! Would you ever! Fun book full of interesting facts and unique snippets of information. I was finding it hard to dedicate a lot of time to reading each day, so this book was ideal, being divided into short, fascinating segments -- because I was picking the book up irregularly, it meant I was not constantly having to remind myself of where I left up.

Overall a fun, light read. Shelves: science , history , non-fiction , trivia. Bloody brilliant! One of the most fascinating books I have ever read. Highly enjoyable and highly recommended! Sep 25, Felicia rated it did not like it Shelves: nonfiction. Some things wrong in this book: 1. Saying they are not means that the author has a misunderstanding of phylogenetics. They are sister taxa, meaning that they are more closely related to each other than they are to their next closest extant relative anteaters.

They are also more closely related to each other than to any other taxon.

The Book of General Ignorance by John Lloyd

Therefore the two types of sloth are related. To say they are not just because their skeletal anatomy is different is grossly negligent [a side note: they say that the two-toed has 6 cervical neck vertebrae. It does, but only because three are fused together. Sloths are xenarthrans. This means they belong to a group of mammals that have weird fusions in their skeleton. Most xenarthrans have fused tibiae and fibulae, a heavily fused pelvis called a synsacrum , and fused cervical vertebrae.

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A tinamou and a swan have different skeletal anatomy the swan has many more vertebrae than the tinamou and there are different bones fused in the swan's pelvis compared to the tinamou but I'm not sure who would say they aren't related. Figure 1: Bradypus three-toed and Choloepus two-toed are sister taxa 2. The authors state that whales and "most other mammals" have them. Baculi are found in Primates minus humans , Rodentia mice, rats, squirrels, gophers, porcupines, beavers , Insectivora shrews, moles, hedgehogs , Chiroptera bats , Carnivora dogs, cats, raccoons, weasels, mongooses, hyenas, bears, seals, walruses , and Lagamorphs rabbits, hares, pikas; although this was discovered in The baculum is not found in Edentata anteaters, sloths, armadillos , Pholidota pangolins , Macroscelidae elephant shrews , Scandentia tree shrews , Dermoptera colugos or flying lemurs , Artiodactyla pigs, deer, cattle, goats, sheep, hippos, camels , Cetacea whales , dolphins, porpoises , Tubulidentata aardvark , Perissodactyla horses, tapirs, rhinos , Hyracoidea hyraxes, dassies , Sirenia manatees, dugong, sea cows , and Proboscidea elephants, mammoths, mastodons.

There are several extinct clades of eutherian mammals that also lack baculi Creodonta, Condylarthra, Desmostylia, and Embrythopoda.

Most eutherian placental mammals do not have baculi. Yes, there is no stub of bone protruding from the nasal bones on the skull, but the nasals have thickened, rough bone marking the base of the horn. This is an indication that some sort of soft tissue sits there. This is another instance where the author does not have an understanding of phylogenetics. The sentence in question reads as such, "This creature [what humans evolved from] descended from squirrel-like tree-shrews, which in turn evolved from hedgehogs, and before that, starfish.

The fallacies in that sentence. That sentence implies that we know direct ancestry. In paleontology under the phylogenetics framework, it is not possible to know that one species directly led to another and so on. It is not possible to know that the population of fossil specimens you just found is the ancestral population that led to another species.

There is nothing that differentiates that population from another found, say, 10 miles away as being the ancestral population. Another sentence: "The latest comparison [the book was published in ] of genomes of humans and our closest relative, the chimpanzee, shows that we split much later than was previously assumed.

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This means we quite possibly interbred to produce unrecorded and now extinct hybrid species before the final separation 5. What is a "hybrid species"?

I have three science degrees including a Masters in Paleontology. I have never heard of this. If it is different enough to be called a species, then call it such. Also, the authors clearly have not heard of ghost lineages. A ghost lineage exists when a divergence dating analysis puts the date of speciation divergence before the age of the oldest known fossils from either of the resulting lineages species. The time between the divergence date and when the first fossils show up is the ghost lineage. Paleontologists might not find the fossils in this period of time for a number of reasons.

The area where the fossils should be found may not have any sediments rocks dating from that time. Maybe they were deposited but then the environment changed and they were eroded away.

The Book of General Ignorance

Maybe they were never deposited in the first place: during the time in question, the environment was erosional rather than depositional. In erosional environments, nothing can fossilize. Fossilization can only happen in depositional environments where the dead can be quickly buried and stay covered. Another reason why we may not have found the fossils in the ghost lineage is that we may not have searched all of the sediment dating from that time.

Which just means we need to go searching some more. Another thing wrong in the last sentence I quoted: If the supposed "hybrid species" are unrecorded, absence of evidence is evidence of absence. You can't just go making them up if there is not evidence that they ever existed. So to say that it has largely been replaced by the hot plate is false. As a biochemistry major in undergrad, I can assure you that there are some experiments in high school and college that can only be done with the heat of an open flame. In high school, I remember being tested multiple times on my ability to start a Bunsen burner and keep it going.

All are dogs. The same species. The creation of dog breeds is an example of artificial evolution, in which the creation of new breeds or sometimes species is often accelerated. If I could give it 0 stars, I would.

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