I bet you didnt know that

secondrowgal

Shamelessly stolen from the Dumb Facebook thread (YES - who knew there was actual information in there!!)

Sinister comes from the Latin 'left or on the left side' and supposedly being left handed is a negative in many cultures.

Dexter is the opposite meaning 'right or on the right side' and the words associated with it, dexterity and dexterous are all about having skill and ability.

dxhound2005

You could have been even more shameless and stolen it from previous posts on the subject here.

CruelCoin

If you take a spring and dissolve it in acid the resulting liquid is x temperature.

If you take a compressed spring and dissolve it in acid the resulting temperature of the liquid will be a few degrees higher than the other liquid.

Conservation of energy in action.

Got that from a Neil Degrasse Tyson podcast. Love that guy.

bnt

Here's a quick experiment you can try with an elastic band along the same lines:

• stretch it quickly, as far as possible without breaking it;
• the elastic band gets hot - you can feel if you touch it to your face;
• hold it fully stretched for a few seconds, so that the heat dissipates, then release the tension just as quickly;
• logically, the elastic band should get cold when you do that, but does it?
  It does.

Peregrinus

dxhound2005 wrote: »

You could have been even more shameless and stolen it from previous posts on the subject here.

Perhaps he did, but shamelessly lied about it.

PlaneSpeeking

mzungu wrote: »

In other shark news, a recent study of 18 Greenland sharks found that they were at least 272 years old. This makes the Greenland shark the longest-living vertebrate known to science.

Not Cliff Richard then ???

Wibbs

gozunda wrote: »

Big Tooth

The largest shark lived between 23.8 and 5.3 million years ago.

IIRC they lingered on until around 2 million years ago. Changing climate and the extinction of quite a number of smaller whales, which appear to have been their main food source, seems to be the cause. They lived through a period you could almost call "the Age of Whales" where whale species were more diverse and numerous than the present day, so when they went... Interestingly after megalodon went extinct existing whale species got larger in body size.

seagull

secondrowgal wrote: »

Shamelessly stolen from the Dumb Facebook thread (YES - who knew there was actual information in there!!)

Sinister comes from the Latin 'left or on the left side' and supposedly being left handed is a negative in many cultures.

Dexter is the opposite meaning 'right or on the right side' and the words associated with it, dexterity and dexterous are all about having skill and ability.

Along the same lines, you have the usage of gauche meaning clumsy, taken directly from the French for left

MikeyTaylor

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Sharks are carnivorous.

But nearly 2/3rds of the diet of Bonnethead sharks is seagrass.

There's a nurse shark in Birmingham Aquarium called Florence who is almost entirely vegetarian.

bonzodog2

seagull wrote: »

Along the same lines, you have the usage of gauche meaning clumsy, taken directly from the French for left

And adroit
1. skilful or dexterous
2. quick in thought or reaction

Kat1170

MikeyTaylor wrote:

There's a nurse shark in Birmingham Aquarium called Florence who is almost entirely vegetarian.

Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat, and may also include abstention from by-products of animals, so doesn't really pertain to animals who are in fact herbivores.

Most breeds of Piranha, despite their reputation are herbivores.

IvyTheTerrific

seagull wrote: »

Along the same lines, you have the usage of gauche meaning clumsy, taken directly from the French for left

And the French word for clumsy is maladroit, which means literally "bad on the right" or "difficult on the right".

blastman

Sean Connery was once stopped for speeding by a policeman named James Bond

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

blastman wrote: »

Sean Connery was once stopped for speeding by a policeman named James Bond

When he worked as a milkman, Connery delivered milk to Fettes School in Edinburgh, which is the school Ian Fleming's James Bond went to after he was expelled from Eton.

dball

Vanilla Ice, whose real name is Robert Matthew Van Winkle,

BaZmO*

dball wrote: »

Vanilla Ice, whose real name is Robert Matthew Van Winkle,

Is that the fact? Or is ther more to come. The comma would suggest there is. The suspense is killing me!

Ipso

BaZmO* wrote: »

Is that the fact? Or is ther more to come. The comma would suggest there is. The suspense is killing me!

Now he’s under pressure.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

BaZmO* wrote: »

Is that the fact? Or is ther more to come. The comma would suggest there is. The suspense is killing me!

I'll continue it for you.


..., Van Winkle, which is the surname of the man his mother was married to when he was born but not that of his biological father, who he never knew.

gozunda

Kat1170 wrote: »

Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat, and may also include abstention from by-products of animals, so doesn't really pertain to animals who are in fact herbivores.

Most breeds of Piranha, despite their reputation are herbivores.

A similar situation to those who ascribe human morality to animals- describing wild carnivores with an epithet of 'serial killer' :rolleyes: The general idea being that wild predators should be eradicated ...

The majority of the planet's 50,000 or so vertebrate species are vegetarian. But among the minority of carnivorous species are some of the best known creatures on the planet. Should these serial killers be permitted to prey on other sentient beings indefinitely?

It's crucial that at some point the animal-rights movement moves beyond farm, laboratory, and companion animals. The scale of brutality in nature is too vast to ignore, and humans have an obligation to exercise their cosmically rare position as both intelligent and empathetic creatures to reduce suffering in the wild as much as they can.

See:

https://foundational-research.org/the-importance-of-wild-animal-suffering/


https://www.hedweb.com/abolitionist-project/reprogramming-predators.html


Ps - At best its all complete lunacy but unfortunately these ideas appear to have a bunch of adherents on social media..

Kat1170

Ipso wrote:

Now he’s under pressure.

Not anymore, he claims he bought it.

cdeb

A one with nine zeroes after it is a billion.

Except that's just the American convention, which has by and large won out worldwide now. In Britain, a billion is technically a million million, which has 12 zeroes. 1,000,000,000 is a milliard. This is the same in other languages too, including French, Danish and German.

In India, meanwhile, there are two zeroes per comma - so they write 1,00,000 (a lakh) instead of 100,000, and 1,00,00,000 (a crore) instead of 10,000,000.

Realt Dearg Sec

gozunda wrote: »

A similar situation to those who ascribe human morality to animals- describing wild carnivores with an epithet of 'serial killer' :rolleyes: The general idea being that wild predators should be eradicated ...





See:

https://foundational-research.org/the-importance-of-wild-animal-suffering/


https://www.hedweb.com/abolitionist-project/reprogramming-predators.html

Jesus, I couldn't read those sources for long, the combination of stupidity, pig-headed ignorance, and jawdropping, monumental arrogance, was too much for me.

SimonTemplar

There is a place in west London in Richmond Park that has a protected view of St Paul's cathedral. The cool thing about that is St Paul's is 15km away. So the trees have to be cut and no new building along the view can obstruct the view:



There are seven other protected view of St Paul's but that is by far the furthest one away

the purple tin

A one man submarine called the Turtle was used by America (pretty unsuccessfully) to try to sink british ships during the war of independence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_(submersible)

mzungu

2013 was the first year since 1987 to have different numbers

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

mzungu wrote: »

2013 was the first year since 1987 to have different numbers

Or even four different numbers.

mzungu

Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »

Or even four different numbers.

Ooops! Yep, that's what I meant!

mzungu

Research suggests that Voyager 1 has left our solar system behind. This would make it the first man made object to do so. There is still a bit more left to go on the journey as it will not run out of propellant energy until 2025 by which point it will be much further into interstellar space.

Up to date mission status for voyager 1 (& 2) can be found here: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/

Capt'n Midnight

mzungu wrote: »

Research suggests that Voyager 1 has left our solar system behind.

http://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1189:_Voyager_1
So far Voyager 1 has 'left the Solar System' by passing through the termination shock three times, the heliopause twice, and once each through the heliosheath, heliosphere, heliodrome, auroral discontinuity, Heaviside layer, trans-Neptunian panic zone, magnetogap, US Census Bureau Solar System statistical boundary, Kuiper gauntlet, Oort void, and crystal sphere holding the fixed stars. :pac:

Capt'n Midnight

mzungu wrote: »

Research suggests that Voyager 1 has left our solar system behind. This would make it the first man made object to do so. There is still a bit more left to go on the journey as it will not run out of propellant energy until 2025 by which point it will be much further into interstellar space.

It's not propellant energy that keeps it going.

The nuclear fuel is decaying so there won't be enough heat or electricity to keep the lights on. Even now lots of stuff is turned off.

There's hydrazine fuel which is used to rotate the spacecraft for pointing the camera or antenna. So not used much now.

When it was launched it was impossible to take pictures of the outer planets.
But thanks to two software changes it could. The first was data compression so pictures didn't take as much memory so more could be stored for sending back home later. The second was that they were able to fire the thrusters in millisecond bursts so they could keep the camera pointed at the planet for the much longer exposure times needed that far out into the darkness.