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I bet you didnt know that
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...I just have to post something to move the discussion on from talking a load of guano :-)...
The Parker Solar probe will undergo a number of Gravity Assist planetary flybys around Jupiter during its 7 year trip to get to within 3 million miles of the Sun.
Whats unusual about these manouveres is that normally NASA has used gravity assist to speed up a rocket , but in this instance they are being used to slow down the probe.
And the irony of that - is that without guano and saltpeter there would be no explosives and no rockets in space
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Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,966 Mod ✭✭✭✭
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Ah. For some reason that reminds me about Fermat's Last Theorem.Genuinely it equals 1 exactly. It's a mathematical statement, so not related to physical reality.
Paul Wolfskehl had been rejected in love and had resolved to commit suicide at the stroke of midnight. So to while away the hours he looked up some maths publications and got caught up trying to prove someone was wrong* he failed, but midnight was long gone and life went on.
Another version was that he was going to be a doctor but he had multiple sclerosis symptoms and so would be wheelchair bound but switching to maths meant he could still have a career.
Or was it simply to spite his wife ?
In any event he left a wad of cash** in his will to whoever solved the theorem.
The problem is that cash and fame attracted bad amateur maths like moths to a candle. Lots of head wrecking wrongness.
The solution was to let some of the worst offenders peer review each other.
* some things never change
https://xkcd.com/386/
**He was German so the Hyperinflation after WWI wiped most of it out.0 -
I only heard about this film a few years ago and finally the old Fast Show skit made sense:Well a German film by the name of Nosferatu(a largely invented "Romanian" word for Vampire). It ripped off the Dracula story, but in fear of legal repercussions the producers changed a few things. Dracula became Count Orlok and all the other characters were renamed or dropped.
From what I've read they weren't. Many shows and films also have his real name as Vlad Țepeș, but that's a nickname "Vlad the Impaler".Ipso wrote:Were they Szekelys, or was that just added in the book?
Note: Previous post had an error, last name actually spelled Basarab. Corrected now
In Romanian myth when somebody rises from the dead as a vampire they grow a second heart to replace the one that stopped. Since it is much more powerful than the original heart, one way to test for Vampires is to stake the corpses during the day. Those that emit a geyser of blood are vampires, as the second heart will gush the blood out with enormous force.
A self defense mechanism of vampires was to spray you with this blood, their corpses firing streams if approached. If the blood touched you, you either went mad or died.
There are many Vampire like creatures in other myths, but my favourites are the Rakshasas of Hinduism and the Strigae common to any group whose language comes from Latin.
The Rakshasas were made by the creator god Brahma to guard the Elixir of immortality. When not protecting the elixir they roam about feeding on human blood. To make them vicious enough to protect the elixir they were given an animal component, often a tiger and have skin covered in blood and eternal life. There was a group of sorcerers in ancient India who often tried to track down Rakshasas, as the myth was that eating the bodies they left behind turned you into one.
The Strigae have various subtle differences between ethnic groups, but overall they are black shadowy owls that come into houses at night to feed on blood. The result of witches casting a spell to preserve themselves after bodily death.
Finally there is the story of the unfortunately named Johannes Cuntius who died from being kicked by a horse in 1582. Unfortunately for Johannes he did rise as a vampire, but without any cool powers. He simply was immortal and stank to a disgusting degree. Annoyed at the smell, the villagers dug up the corpse and performed the usual mutilations to finish him off. Or so say their town records of the time.0 -
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Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,111 Mod ✭✭✭✭
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Here's the original flic restored with its original soundtrack...I only heard about this film a few years ago and finally the old Fast Show skit made sense:
Talking earlier about Kirk Douglas still being around. The chap was 8 years old when this came out. As was my Da. The blokes in my family live long and a couple growing up I encountered were born in the 19th century. I remember stuff like that putting things in perspective for me as far as time and 20th century history and progress went.
Ah jaysus S, at this stage I have narrowband.Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »It's about 35,000 times what I'm using.
Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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Alaska is the most eastern, western, and northern state in the United States. It is the most eastern due to the Aleutian Islands stretching across the 180º line of Longitude (see below).
If we take Alaska and Hawaii out of it, the most northern point in the US is Angle, Minnesota, most southern point is East Cape, Florida, most eastern point is West Quoddy Head, Maine, and the most western point is Cape Alava, Washington.0 -
The guy who plays Dracula, sorry... Orlok in the 1920's flic? He went by the name of Max Schreck. Schreck in German translates as fear/terror. Freaky looking dude when made up too.
As an aside in the category of useless information:
Max Schreck married an actress called Franziska Ott. After the wedding she went by the name Fanny Schreck.
Just saying
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Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,111 Mod ✭✭✭✭ Join Date:Posts: 59040
Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,111 Mod ✭✭✭✭ Join Date:Posts: 59040
You Sir, win the internet.With terror fannies and vampire fannies, I might as well finally post this.
In ancient Sumeria there was a priest known as a Gala who served Inanna, the goddess of sex and war. They specifically dedicated their anus to her service. A gala could be male or female, however they always spoke in a special dialect of Sumerian called eme-sal, normally reserved for recording the words of female godesses.
As for their function: Gala rhymes with the Sumerian for vulva but was spelt with two cuneiform signs, the one for arsecrack and the one for penis. So they performed sacred anal sex, most likely with important nobel figures. There were rituals for wiping their crack so as not to offend Inanna by touching her property. Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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Capt'n Midnight wrote: »Not in this universe.
If our universe was infinitely old and infinitely vast then night sky would not be dark.
Because there isn't time or room for all those decimal places it can only approach 1, admittedly very closely.
Infinity innit:)
It's a confusing concept, it's practically impossible to imagine. It's endless yet it comes in different sizes - how the fúck does that work!
For example the infinite set of real numbers is larger than the infinite set of whole numbers even though both are technically infinite. Which to my simple mind is simultaneously obvious and also not so obvious.
If you could "count" all the whole numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 ......you'd come up with infinity - but then consider all the whole numbers, plus all the tiny fractions between each whole number and you'd also come up with infinity but it must be a bigger infinity than the first one - infinitely bigger!
It's just a concept - you can't physically write down an infinite number - obviously because you'd never stop writing, there could always be another 9 tacked on at the end. That's the very reason there are people who argue that .9999... doesn't actually exist, because it cant be physically represented.
But I suppose you could argue the same thing about any other "endless" number, like pi for example.
I know Pi exists - I ate some yesterday:D0 -
Ummm, worst job ever!!!!!
I can think of worse jobs than bumming Gala to be honest with you
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Moderators, Arts Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators Posts: 76,642 Mod ✭✭✭✭
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sbsquarepants wrote: »Infinity innit:)
It's a confusing concept, it's practically impossible to imagine. It's endless yet it comes in different sizes - how the fúck does that work!
For example the infinite set of real numbers is larger than the infinite set of whole numbers even though both are technically infinite. Which to my simple mind is simultaneously obvious and also not so obvious.
If you could "count" all the whole numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 ......you'd come up with infinity - but then consider all the whole numbers, plus all the tiny fractions between each whole number and you'd also come up with infinity but it must be a bigger infinity than the first one - infinitely bigger!
It's just a concept - you can't physically write down an infinite number - obviously because you'd never stop writing, there could always be another 9 tacked on at the end. That's the very reason there are people who argue that .9999... doesn't actually exist, because it cant be physically represented.
But I suppose you could argue the same thing about any other "endless" number, like pi for example.
I know Pi exists - I ate some yesterday:DRescuing this thread again from the bumming Gala discussion ...
There are two types of infinity.
Big infinity - C
and small infinity - c
or one could argue there are in fact an infinite number of inifinities ...
Indeed there are, but what I can't get my head around (my mathematical skills are limited to counting to twenty, but only if I'm wearing sandals...) isn't that there's an infinite number of numbers of any category, but that 0.9999... is equal to 1, i.e. that one infinite is equal to another (but really, a whole number and therefore, in my head, not infinite), in a way.
Better go to the beach and see if I can fit the whole ocean into this hole I've dug, using my little bucket..
Also, SBS? Fair play, that's the only rational thing to do with pi of any kind. 0 -
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This discussion has been closed.
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