The Qibble Blogtag:www.qi.com,2009-01-09:/qi_quibble_blog//12010-02-02T21:25:02ZMovable Type 4.23-enThe Elves' Self-examinationtag:www.qi.com,2010:/qi_quibble_blog//1.272010-02-02T21:17:52Z2010-02-02T21:25:02ZChristopher Wallis writes:This may have been quibbled already, however I recently saw an episode on Dave were Stephen says that written exams were invented in England in 1792. I have learned through my University degree however that written exams took place in China as far back as 133 CE for qualification to the civil service.eggshaped
Christopher Wallis writes:
This may have been quibbled already, however I recently saw an episode on Dave were Stephen says that written exams were invented in England in 1792. I have learned through my University degree however that written exams took place in China as far back as 133 CE for qualification to the civil service.
An elf replies:
Thanks Christopher. I think we have been a little simplistic, or merely anglocentric here; it is a slapped wrist and 100 lines for the elves.
In 1792, the man who invented the sandwich was born and the guillotine was first used and a professor called William Farish came up with the idea of assigning a numerical ranking to academic work - it was the birth of the system that is used in the English speaking world today. Althought it's highly unlikely, he could easily have got his idea from Ancient China, where written tests had been going since at least the 14th century.
Although the Han Civil Service exams were taking place from around 115 AD, there is little evidence that they were written until 1370 when they definitely were so. At that time, candidates were placed in isolation cells for 72 hours. They were provided with food, water and bedding and lived in the cell for three days, during which time they were required to attempt all the papers. In order to ensure that the marker was not biased, students did not write their names on their scripts, but a code number - moreover, so that they could not recognise a student's handwriting, the completed scripts were transcribed by a third party before being submitted for marking. The exam was not finally abolished until 1909, by which time the syllabus had been little changed for a thousand years or more.
One could ask whether these exams were marked in the same way as the Farish numerical score. Well, the students in China certainly were ranked, in numerical order, with results being announced to all with the "releasing of the roll," it was a great honour to be ranked number one. If anything it was more thorough than today's marking systems. Overall, it must be said that the question is something of a black mark against the elves. C minus: Must do Better.
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Balls Up?tag:www.qi.com,2009:/qi_quibble_blog//1.262009-06-30T12:04:25Z2009-06-30T12:10:37Zeggshaped
Andrew Dixon writes:
Dear Elves
I was reading an article in Fortean Times reporting the interesting fact that Hitler really did have one testicle. This is at odds with a recent QI episode where this was claimed to be an urban myth.
An Elf replies...
Dear Andrew,
Thanks for your message. Well first we should say that QI loves Fortean Times. In fact, one of the QI Elves, Mat Coward, is a regular contributor to the magazine. Secondly, we should point out that Stephen actually asked: "Which dictator *definitely* only had one ball?" although it would seem a bit stingy to disqualify a quibble on that front.
Anyway. We were aware of the article you mentioned, but unfortunately it was published almost a year after we recorded that episode. In fact, the story was broken a little earlier - in November 2008 - sadly, again, a little bit too late for our needs.
Occasionally new research does come to light that contradicts our stance on a subject, and you'd be amazed how often it comes just after we've finished recording a show! In this case it was World War I veteran medic Johan Jambor who apparantly told his priest that Hitler had only one testicle. The priest wrote it down, and it the fact was hidden from the world until just after that episode of QI was recorded. Coincidence??????? Errr, almost certainly!
Even more research has come to light recently regarding monorchidism in dictators. As we mentioned, Chairman Mao definitely only had one, but recent files have confirmed that Franco lost one of his at the battle of El Biutz in 1916. It led to the question of if ANY dictators had a full pair of testicles; to which one wag replied: "Lady Thatcher??"
Interestingly enough, the song "Hitler has only got one ball" was written by a publicist for the British Council, which was tasked with helping build propaganda that would damage the Nazis. Originally the lyrics read: "Göring has only got one ball, Hitler's [are] so very small, Himmler's so very similar, And Goebbels has no balls at all."
Do you have a bone to pick with QI? E-mail us here: elves@qi.com
Or watch us tweet at http://twitter.com/qikipedia ]]>
Cockeyed and Neutrinostag:www.qi.com,2009:/qi_quibble_blog//1.252009-04-21T16:51:10Z2009-04-21T17:16:30ZPubudu writes:Mr Fry mentions that neutrinos have no mass when describing how theytravel through pretty much anything. Neutrinos DO have a mass, albeitvery very small.eggshaped
Pubudu writes:
Mr Fry mentions that neutrinos have no mass when describing how they travel through pretty much anything. Neutrinos DO have a mass, albeit very very small.
An Elf replies:
Yes, you're spot on. In Series 4 Episode 12, Stephen did indeed say
"Neutrinos are weird things that go through everything.
There are millions literally going through your body now, all the time.
They have no mass. They'll go through light-years' thickness of lead
just like that, without leaving a trace."
This may well have been true in the Standard Model of the past, but it was shown in 1998 that neutrinos do indeed have a mass. If you google "Neutrino Mass" you will get only "non-zero" in actual fact we don't know what the mass of a neutrino is; all we know is that it's really small and it isn't zero.
So if they're so small, why should we care about their mass? Well the reason is that there's so many of them, so the mass adds up. In fact, neutrinos are sometimes put forward as a candidate for the missing "dark matter," the missing part of the universe that cosmologists are looking for. If they were proved to be responsible, these tiny particles could tell us more about the nature of the Universe than anything else.
Particles are just like quibbles; sometimes the smallest turn out to be the most important.
Quibble Qualified
Do you have a bone to pick with QI? E-mail us here: elves@qi.com
QI has claimed
that matches were invented by the scots. I would like to point out
that matches were invented by a guy from Stockton-on-Tees! There is
even a statue of a box of matches in his honour in the centre of a
roundabout - you can't that away from us!
An Elf replies:
This is without doubt a quibble that we are going to have to hold our hands up to, but with a few notes.
Our
error was that we credited Isaac Holden with the invention of the
match; though in our defence, Holden actually believed that he was the
inventor of the friction match - he independently came up with the idea
a couple of years after Stockton's own John Walker.
However, the
history gets even more murky.
The Chinese invented the match (as they
seem to have done everything else) in the 6th century - their version
had a sulphur tip, but they needed another fire source in order to light them; by the
15th century, these primitive devices had made their way to Europe.
The
first European match was patented in 1805, 21 years before Walker, by a
french chemist called Chancel, he sold a kit of wooden splints with one
end tipped in potassium chlorate and sulphur - the match was lit by
touching the chemical end with acid. Then came Walker and Holden.
So
to sum up, we were definitely wrong to say that matches were a Scots
invention, they were a Chinese one, or a French one, or - if you're
talking about a match lit by striking it on a rough surface - an
invention from Stockton-on-Tees.
Quibble Qualified
Do you have a bone to pick with QI? E-mail us here: elves@qi.com
Or watch us tweet at http://twitter.com/qikipedia ]]>
A Qibble with Bells ontag:www.qi.com,2009:/qi_quibble_blog//1.232009-03-11T14:07:53Z2009-03-11T14:17:39ZStephen Kelly writes:I recently watched QI and after hearing that Alexander Graham Bell "stole" the idea for the telephone from a "poor" Italian man, I decide to check that.eggshaped
Stephen Kelly writes:
I recently watched QI and after hearing that Alexander Graham Bell "stole" the idea for the telephone from a "poor" Italian man, I decide to check that. What was that Bells patents were defended in court on over 800 occasions and that in general there is debate about who really invented a working telephone, but to state that he stole it, as a fact on the show seems a little irresponsible and naive, don't you think?
An Elf Replies:
QI stands by our assertion. It is correct to say that the Bell Telephone
Company successfully defended themselves on a number of occasions
(which just goes to show how many people were working on similar items at the
time), but it is a fact that in the late 1880s the Supreme Court of the
US had agreed to a trial against Bell on the grounds of fraud and
misrepresentation: a lawsuit that was only dropped thanks to the death
of Meucci.
More pertinent perhaps, if we're talking legal
issues, is the House of Representitives Resolution 269 (actually issued
in 2002 - after the recording of that episode of QI) that recognised
the work of Meucci in the invention of the telephone. Specifically, it
was resolved that:
"If Meucci had been able to pay the $10 fee to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to Bell"
There is still some debate as to who invented the telephone,
and much of this discussion was studied by the researchers at the time,
however due to the nature of a 30 minute television show, what you
finally see is often only the tip of the research iceberg.
More
on QI's opinion on the telephone debate, and dozens of other
contentious issues, can be found in our book: "The Book of General
Ignorance."
Do you have a bone to pick with QI? E-mail us here: elves@qi.com
Or watch us tweet at http://twitter.com/qikipedia ]]>
Toad-ally Wrong?tag:www.qi.com,2009:/qi_quibble_blog//1.222009-03-08T10:56:01Z2009-03-08T11:03:19Zeggshaped
Andy Arthur writes...
On Monday's episode Mr Fry mentions that there is "virtually no
difference" between frogs and toads. This is incorrect because as far
as I know they have different eyes. Toads have slitted reptile eyes and frogs have round pupils.
An Elf Replies...
While I'm sure that your technique is a good rule of thumb for
distinguishing between frogs and toads (especially in the UK) there are
still exceptions to this rule. For example, check out this Grey Tree
Frog whose eyes are slit and this spadefoot toad with round pupils.
There's no strict difference between frogs and toads - toads are a subset of frogs. Generally speaking, toads crawl instead of hopping, have rough skin, are fat-bodied, and live drier lives than frogs. Most frogs have teeth; most toads don't.
As far as the eyes of these animals is concerned: they certainly are quite interesting. All toads and frogs
blink when they swallow. This pushes the eye right up against the roof
of the mouth, which helps force the food down the throat.
Toads' poisons come from glands behind their eyes (and in some species skin warts.) Some toads can squirt poison from behind their eyes.
We're also told that some frogs have a non-lethal mutation that means their eyes develop on the inside of their heads, so they have to open their mouths to see.
So there you have it, we stand by the fact that toads and frogs are virtually indistinguishable. You might be interested that the same is true
of moths and butterflies and of doves and pigeons.
Do you have a bone to pick with QI? E-mail us here: elves@qi.com
Or watch us tweet at http://twitter.com/qikipedia ]]>
Registration Celebrationtag:www.qi.com,2009:/qi_quibble_blog//1.212009-03-05T12:04:34Z2009-03-05T12:07:35Zeggshaped The registration problem has been tackled by the technical elf, and you should now be able to comment to your heart's content. Please be gentle. ]]>
Quibble Nibblestag:www.qi.com,2009:/qi_quibble_blog//1.202009-03-05T11:01:45Z2009-03-05T15:57:48Zeggshaped
elves@qi.com has been getting lots and lots of traffic of late, it's great to see that we have so many eagle-eyed viewers who refuse to take everything they see on television as gospel truth. Here are a number of snippets that I felt were worthy of a mention; though perhaps not of their own blog entry...
One of the questions referred naming a "nuclear powered device" "incorrectly" predicted to be in regular in the future. The answer was "vacuum cleaner." Given that ~19% of the UK's power grid is supplied by nuclear power stations isn't this in some sense true? ~ David Ronayne
Excellent spot David; couldn't agree with you more: Quibble Qualified
In episode 9 of the current series Stephen Fry suspects that cricket is not played in Suriname (after it is wrongfully suggested that Gyana is the only South American country to do so). In fact, cricket is one of the oldest sports in Suriname. It was introduced in the late 1880s by Indian immigrants and got popular again at the end of the last century after immigration from Gyana reached its peak. ~ Cor Gujit
Indeed. I can only imagine that we were thinking about the West Indies Cricket team; Guyana is the only mainland country whose players are eligible to play for the Windies. Suriname is definitely an affiliate of the ICC though. Quibble Qualified
On a recent programme Stephen asked when would they finish painting the
Forth Rail Bridge; sadly no such bridge exists. The structure you
referred to is the Forth Bridge, the suspension bridge next to it is
the Forth Road Bridge. ~George McClaren
I'm afraid I can't agree with this one: The Forth Bridges Visitor Centre Trust appears to support our view that the bridge in question is known as the "Forth Rail Bridge." For this reason, we feel that both names are valid. http://www.forthbridges.org.uk/railbridgemain.htm Quibble Quashed
Stephen Fry said that the marriage of Henry II to Eleanor of Aquitaine was the cause of the 100 years war. Surely that's hundreds of years too early!! ~Ray Garrod & "Mark"
Thanks Mark & Ray. This flippant point about the broad historical context in which the 100 Years' War took place really didn't come across correctly at all when the show was edited. Way too simplistic, for which we apologise. Quibble Qualified.
Do you have a bone to pick with QI? E-mail us here: elves@qi.com
]]>
Con? Err...tag:www.qi.com,2009:/qi_quibble_blog//1.192009-03-03T15:42:18Z2009-03-03T15:47:24ZThe Sunday Mail writes:Telly know-all Stephen Fry has been embarrassingly duped by the story of a mythical Scots conman....eggshaped
The Sunday Mail writes:
Telly know-all Stephen Fry has been embarrassingly duped by the story of a mythical Scots conman....
Fry - who often ridicules contestants for their wrong answers - said of the 1920s crook: "There was a great former actor from Glasgow called Arthur Furguson.
"He sold Nelson's Column - lions included - to an American tourist for £6000 and, on a trip to Paris, he managed to sell the Eiffel Tower as well, for scrap, to another gullible American.
Author Dane Love claims that the story was a media spoof - with Furguson having the same initials as April Fool.
An elf responds:
Much of the information that you see on QI is already "out there" in the public domain: the elves visit museums, lectures, search the net, magazines and newspapers, and contact experts in order to bring you the most interesting nuggets in humankind. When we find a fact, we attempt to verify it in a number of places that we consider trustworthy - two of our favourite books mention the Furguson story - but occasionally the entire media can be hoaxed.
Is this the case with Arthur Furguson? Well the fact is not as cut-and-dry as the Sunday Mail might have you believe. Dane Love certainly makes a strong case for the fact that Furguson is a myth, but, while it is hard to prove a negative, we would prefer a complete debunking. This could well be possible if someone could find the original source of the myth.
Which is where you could come in. QI has issued a plea for help. If anyone can disprove the existence of Arthur Furguson then - well, I'll let Stephen continue:
"I've instructed my elves to track down the shifty Mr Furguson and see if they can get him to stand up in court.
"That wise Scottish compromise 'not proven' is how the verdict stands and I'm eager to see if the QI team comes away the winner.
"If not, I look forward to welcoming two guests for the next series."
So far we've not been able to find a definitive answer, so can you help?
Do you have a bone to pick with QI? E-mail us here: elves@qi.com ]]>
Singa-Poortag:www.qi.com,2009:/qi_quibble_blog//1.182009-02-26T11:31:56Z2009-02-26T11:34:49ZJM Wong writes:Hello dear elves! I'd like to correct some of the finer points about Singlish as a language....eggshaped
JM Wong writes:
Hello dear elves! I'd like to correct some of the finer points about Singlish as a language....
Singlish is more a patois/creole language, but is NOT a substitute for English in everyday life. Words like "layleo", "Lolex" and "oleng joo" are mostly mispronounciations of the actual English words, and most of the people that say them are of the older generation where English isn't their first language.
An Elf Replies:
Thank you for your e-mail (as well as Julie, Caryn and Francesca and all who kindly pointed this out).
The QI elves are a well travelled bunch but there is no substitute for local knowledge, and so we occasionally do find ourselves challenged by viewers when we talk about their home country. This will come in the form of us saying "People in 'x' do 'y'." which give us numerous replies of "I live in 'x' and I've never heard of 'y'."
In the future show, we reported that the language of the future might be Panglish, an odd creole predicted by Suzette Haden Elgin, a retired linguist formerly at San Diego State University and a team of mathematical biologists led by Mark Pagel of the University of Reading.
The idea is that in thousands of years, English may not have died out, but could have evolved into an all new language. In 1200 years time, Harry Potter may be as intelligible to the children of the future as Beowulf is to us.
Ok so far, but then we gave examples of a similar langauge around today: Singlish.
Singlish is an English-based creole used by young people in Singapore, incorporating English informalities as well as a number of Chinese and Malay words. Words that we covered, including Layleo, Lolex and Orlang Tzu (meaning Radio, Rolex and Orange Juice) would be much more likely heard by older Singaporeans who struggle to get their tongues round a new language. They are not Singlish words.
Disappointingly, I personally visited the beautifully clean and green country of Singapore only a few weeks after this show was written and had first-hand contact with the language which is notable for its enchanting lilt, and the word "Lah" that finishes almost every sentence. If only I had gone a month or so earlier, perhaps this error would never have been made.
Quibble Qualified.
Sources: New Scientist: Mar 08 Lonely Planet - Singapore
Do you have a bone to pick with QI? E-mail us here: elves@qi.com ]]>
Not Mush-room for Errortag:www.qi.com,2009:/qi_quibble_blog//1.172009-02-25T12:34:23Z2009-02-25T12:44:19Zeggshaped Such an incident has happened relating to our "Killer Mushroom Roulette" feature of Series 4. Towards the end of the question, Stephen said: "It's very, very rare. The last recorded death by mushroom
in Britain is too long ago for anyone, basically, to be confident about."
Sadly, this information is now out of date, after an incident on the Isle of Wight last year where a woman in her 20s died after eating Death Cap Mushrooms. It just goes to show that despite our regular debunking of old wives' tales, some information that we are given as children is important: "wild mushrooms or plants should not be eaten unless the picker is certain it is safe to do so."
Quibble Qualified (with thanks to Bernadette Allen who brought this to our attention)
Do you have a bone to pick with QI? E-mail us here: elves@qi.com ]]>
Minding Our Languagestag:www.qi.com,2009:/qi_quibble_blog//1.162009-02-17T19:13:02Z2009-02-17T19:37:10ZSimon Davis writes:I received your
excellent original QI dvd game for Christmas and; while enjoying it
immensely, I noticed that the answer to one of the questions, namely
"what is the 3rd most common language?" was given as Spanish. Now
according to a book I have in front of me called "The Meaning of Tingo"
by Adam Jacot de Boinod who it says in the foreword was a researcher on
the tv programme QI, the answer should be Hindi...eggshaped
Simon Davis writes:
I received your
excellent original QI dvd game for Christmas and; while enjoying it
immensely, I noticed that the answer to one of the questions, namely
"what is the 3rd most common language?" was given as Spanish. Now
according to a book I have in front of me called "The Meaning of Tingo"
by Adam Jacot de Boinod who it says in the foreword was a researcher on
the tv programme QI, the answer should be Hindi...
An Elf replies:
Adam Jacot de Boinod was indeed a researcher on the first series of QI. In fact, The Meaning of Tingo was inspired by a section of the original QI Database and by work he did on the Albanian language for the programme.
The
question of how many people 'speak' any of the world's languages is not
as easy to answer as you might think. To what degree of competency do
they speak it, for a start? Are they native speakers? Is it their
(fluent) second language? Or do they merely dabble in it?
If the
latter, I would guess there's a very good case for English (rather than
the usual answer, Chinese) being the world's most commonly spoken
language, since surely almost everyone in the world knows a few words
in English such as 'OK', 'Hello' and 'Coca-Cola' (from movies and
advertising & marketing etc), but almost no one except the Chinese
knows any Chinese words at all. English in some form, incidentally, is
spoken in well over half the countries of the world.
It's an interesting sub-question - what is the most widely-spoken (or widely-known) word in the world?
But,
to the point. Based on numerous academic sources we at QI Central think the best general compromise
answer for the world's third commonest language is Spanish, and we stand by the statement in our DVD.
The next best candidate for the world's third commonest language is English, and we also like the left-field suggestion offered by WikiAnswers Sign Language. (We did some research on this for Deafness in the QI 'D' Series and we think there's a good case to answer there).
Hindustani or Hindi,
by comparison, is of course one of the world's major languages -
certainly up there in the top ten in anybody's list, but, though we can
find sources that claim it as the 2nd (3 sources), 4th (2 sources), 5th
(2 sources) and 6th (1 source) most commonly spoken language, we cannot
find one single example which cites Hindi as the world's third most common language.
That's not to say that one of our eagle-eyed viewers will not be able to find one...
Do you have a bone to pick with QI? E-mail us here: elves@qi.com
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Pointing the Finger at QItag:www.qi.com,2009:/qi_quibble_blog//1.152009-02-15T16:22:00Z2009-02-26T11:31:32Zeggshaped
Gav Lyk & Rob Dielemans write:
QI has claimed that there are no muscles in the fingers, but goosebumps are caused by tiny muscles, aren't they? The fingers contain arrector pili muscles: 'muscle fibers' that are connected to every hair follicles.
An Elf responds:
Dear Gav and Rob,
Of course, you're right. This came up in the course of our research, in fact, Stephen's card on the day had the following:
"However, if one wanted to be ultra-pedantic, one could say that there are actually thousands of muscles in each finger, if you include the tiny muscles that cause your hairs to stand up, or your blood vessels to contract. "
However
due to the constraints of a half-hour (or now 45 minute) show,
sometimes Stephen doesn't get a chance to mention every fact on his
cards - and indeed sometimes he mentions things that get cut in the
editing suite.
So this piece of pedantry unfortunately never saw the light of day.
While we're here, here are some other factoids on Stephen's card that never made it to air:
To move your fingers side-to-side, like to do
the "live long and prosper" sign, you work muscles in your hand, again
these are not in the fingers themselves. A human hand has 27 bones; in fact, over half
the body's bones can be found in the hands and feet. The human body has
over 600 muscles, the word comes from the Latin for "little mouse"
because the movement of the biceps was thought to resemble the movement
of a mouse under the skin.
A commonly seen factoid on the net says that the
tongue is the strongest muscle in the human body. This is completely
wrong, no matter what definition of "strongest" one uses. The strongest
muscle will actually be the largest (which means it's either your
gluteus maximus or the quadriceps in your thigh) or the one that can
exert most pressure on an object which means it's your jaw muscle. A
strong case though can be made for the uterus, which is probably the
strongest "pound for pound", it weighs around a kilogram, but during
childbirth can exert a force equivalent to a modern longbow.
This is just a small percentage of the hand and muscle facts that were at Stephen's fingers for the show; hopefully it gives an idea of the work that the elves do for each question.
Do you have a bone to pick with QI? E-mail us here: elves@qi.com
]]>
Registration Frustrationtag:www.qi.com,2009:/qi_quibble_blog//1.142009-02-15T12:04:22Z2009-02-15T12:07:11Zeggshaped In the meantime, if you have any quibbles with any of QI's output, don't forget to e-mail us on elves@qi.com ]]>
Wide of the Arc?tag:www.qi.com,2009:/qi_quibble_blog//1.132009-02-12T15:39:26Z2009-02-12T15:47:10ZIan Dunn writes:I would like to point out two errors made in the "France" episode, both occuring while talking about the Arc de Triomphe....eggshaped
Ian Dunn writes: I would like to point out two errors made in the "France" episode, both occuring while talking about the Arc de Triomphe....
First, Stephen says that there is a large elephant-shaped building in Bangkok. However, to quote Stephen himself, "Only ignorant foreigners called it Bangkok." He should have said Krung Thep. Second, despite what Stephen said, the Arc de Triomphe is not the largest triumphal arch in the world. This title goes to the Arc of Triumph in Pyongyang, North Korea.
An elf responds Dear Ian: Merci bien for your eagle-eyed quibbles.
I guess the correct wording would be "there is a large elephant-shaped building in Krung Thep, the correct name for the city that we know as Bangkok" because (especially as we have a new audience on BBC1) we can't rely on people remembering what we said in previous episodes. As I'm sure you'll agree, this would be a little bit clunky.
There is also a difference between something being the official name and something being the regularly used name. When we ask the question, we are specifically asking what the city is called; when Stephen mentions the city in conversation he is attempting to put across an idea in the least ambiguous way by using common parlance.
However: as for the largest triumphal arch... Well we certainly have to hold our hands up there.
The Arc of Triumph in Pyongyang, North Korea does indeed hold the record as the largest triumphal arch in the world. As you mention in your e-mail, the Arc de Triomphe is 49.5 metres high and 45 metres wide, while the Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang is 60 metres high and 50-52.5 metres wide. In fact, it was deliberatly built with the French dimensions in mind and is supposed to celebrate the resistance against Japanese in the decades leading up to WWII as well as to celebrate the "Great Leader"'s 70th birthday.