Facts are hard to find these days. There are more facts than you would believe, but you hardly see them anymore – at least not in what you read and see today.
However, they do exist. For example, are you aware that there is an Air Horse One Plane? It is a 727-200 that flies whole horses to wherever the owner wants the horse to go. It is not cheap to use the whole horse plane, but it gets the job done at much less than some other planes. You never see a good fact like that in a newspaper today. In fact, there is not one opinion writer that I have noticed who has written anything about whole horses. Some of the horses are very popular too. They win big races and are very lovable.
Then, there is the @ symbol. We call it an “at”. Other countries are more adventuresome and refer to it by other terms. In Israel for example it is is called a strudel. It is called a snail in Italy, a puppy in good old Armenia, and the little duck in Greece. There are other names for it in different countries, some of which may be unprintable for all I know. The fact is that they are not as staid as us and others who call it simply an “at”. True, there is the fact that there has to be care when communicating among the countries. For example, the puppy might grab the strudel. Strudels are very good as you know. The little duck might eat the snail as well. It is like everything else when countries get involved – they find something to cause issues.
Then there is bubble wrap. Everybody loves bubble wrap especially if it can be popped. However, there are spoil-sports everywhere and there is now an unpoppable version. Believe it or not, the product was invented way way back in 1957. The brilliant inventors developed it as wallpaper. Yep, it was their opinion that the modern young folks would love to have it on their walls most likely in different colors. Unfortunately, nobody bought the idea. The apparent problem was that some folks love to bounce off the walls which drove other folks crazy with all the popping sounds. The divorce rate went up pretty rapidly for a while until better uses were found for the bubble wrap. It is used for all sorts of things now. It is even used to wrap wedding cakes – which some say is also a cause of divorces. People can find more ways to ruin things.
If questioned, most of us would say that the Sahara was the world’s biggest desert. Naturally, they are wrong in classifying that as a fact. Technically, a desert is an area that has less than 10 inches of rain a year. Therefore, the Antarctic is the biggest desert, followed by the Arctic. The poor old Sahara is just number three. I suppose if they could bring enough ice from the Arctic and the Antarctic, they could dump it on the Sahara and return it to a lush area. Nah, people would be involved and it would become a problem. Some nonscientists would indicate that if the ice were removed from its present location and taken to the Sahara, it wouldn’t melt in the oceans, raise the sea level and drown poor old Florida. Many would take that as a slam about climate control and we would have more arguments. We had better let well enough let alone in that area.
Facts are facts, we just have to find them. I wonder who cleans the stalls on Air Horse One?
Barry Evans is a columnist for Villages-News.com
