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I bet you didn't know that this thread would have a part 2

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  • Registered Users Posts: 11,881 ✭✭✭✭GBX


    A story from Prague during the war: When Himmler was walking around Prague he looked up and saw the row of busts on top of the Opera House. One was of Mendelssohn. He ordered the removal of "the bust of that Jew"
    When the SS went onto the roof they had no idea which one was Mendelssohn, so they destroyed the one with the biggest nose. That happened to be Wagner, Hitler's favourite composer


  • Registered Users Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    So back to that cat in the box that time.

    Did he survive?
    Do you need to ask?

    He's been alive inside your heart all along.


  • Registered Users Posts: 10,940 ✭✭✭✭Say my name


    Western Sahara seems to be place where our megalithic builders started their trade before migrating north to NW Europe.

    This was in a time when western Sahara was a rich lush prime "garden of eden".
    Satellites have detected a river bed system buried beneath the sands that if the water was still flowing today and based on the cuts it made into rock, would rank it among the 12th largest on earth today.
    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/nov/10/ancient-river-network-discoverd-buried-under-saharan-sand

    Now on to our Saharan ancestors.

    During this time of plenty, society developed and building of stone circles and megaliths began.
    It seems to be a rich region in megalithic stone circles and structures all just covered nowadays by the shifting desert and hidden by constant warfare in the region. But anyway it was ongoing a millennium before the stone structures started in northwest Europe.

    https://jasperandsardine.wordpress.com/2019/02/10/western-sahara-is-covered-in-stone-megaliths/

    Then it seems the climate changed and the monsoons stopped and the deserts took over.

    People being people, migrated. And migrated north.
    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47938188

    The rest is history!


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,868 ✭✭✭Dick phelan


    In 3 years between 2011 and 2013 China used more concrete then America using during the entire 20th century.

    By 2050 it's expected the population of Lagos could hit 80 million, the estimated 3 biggest cities will be Lagos, Kinshasa and Mumbai.

    The population of Earth will be 8 billion people by 2025

    By 2030, Saudi Arabia may have become an importer of oil,


  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,538 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    By 2030, Saudi Arabia may have become an importer of oil,

    Saudi Arabia is an importer of sand.


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  • Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 7,117 Mod ✭✭✭✭cdeb


    Because desert sand is no good for building.

    We're running out of building sand. It's a huge ecological issue. Dredging to get sand is disastrous, and there's sand mafiosi now too


  • Moderators, Arts Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators Posts: 76,209 Mod ✭✭✭✭New Home


    cdeb wrote: »
    Because desert sand is no good for building.

    We're running out of building sand. It's a huge ecological issue. Dredging to get sand is disastrous, and there's sand mafiosi now too

    They need it to make concrete shoes.


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 6,306 Mod ✭✭✭✭mzungu


    In 3 years between 2011 and 2013 China used more concrete then America using during the entire 20th century.

    By 2050 it's expected the population of Lagos could hit 80 million, the estimated 3 biggest cities will be Lagos, Kinshasa and Mumbai.

    The population of Earth will be 8 billion people by 2025
    For perspective, that would be more or less putting the current population of Ethiopia into Lagos. Big and all as Ethiopia is, you can't go anywhere (and I'm talking rural here, not urban) without there being people around, so you can just imagine the infrastructure headache the Nigerian authorities are going to be grappling with over the next few decades to even keep things ticking over as they are now (and that's still a raw deal for the majority of it's inhabitants). Not to mention that as a city on the coast, it would be hit pretty badly by any rise in sea level.

    The population of Nigeria itself is expected to hit somewhere close to 400 million by 2050, meaning it will have a larger population than all of Central America.


    By the by, back in 2010, the BBC did a three part series called "Welcome To Lagos" detailing the lives of some of the lesser fortunate that live in the city. An interesting watch for anybody wanting to catch a glimpse of what day-to-day life is like in an extreme urban environment. It is on YouTube as far as I know, but might be on other forms of streaming media. Well worth the watch.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,986 ✭✭✭Noo


    Just wikied Nigeria, and the current population is around 200 million! That's INSANE and something I definitely did not know. Wow.


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,544 ✭✭✭Mollyb60


    cdeb wrote: »
    Because desert sand is no good for building.

    We're running out of building sand. It's a huge ecological issue. Dredging to get sand is disastrous, and there's sand mafiosi now too

    Funnily enough I listened to a podcast from 2016 yesterday about land reclamation and it mentioned the Eko Atlantic project in Lagos (https://www.ekoatlantic.com/) which is using land reclamation to create a huge new raised section of the city 3-4 meters above the rest of the land to make it more resistant to climate change and rising sea levels. Thereby creating a second strata of elites in Lagos that are protected while the rest of the population drowns.
    This is the podcast if anyone is interested. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/making-up-ground/

    I find it a really fantastic podcast full of very interesting topics.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,633 ✭✭✭✭Buford T. Justice XIX




  • Posts: 26,052 ✭✭✭✭[Deleted User]


    In September 1943, the Nazis took Rome for a relatively short-lived occupation of nine months. During those nine months, the population was devastated as civilians were used for slave labour and food shortages caused widespread malnutrition and starvation, and anti-semetic measures led to the Jewish population fleeing or succumbing to the horrors the Nazis visited on them.

    On a small island in the Tibor, a hospital called Fatebenefratelli (the good brothers) that had grown from a settlement of clergy dedicated to the poor almost a thousand years before became a refuge for Jews during the occupation, which was led by a brutal Nazi called Albert Kesselring.

    The hospital itself had many Jewish doctors and nurses on it's staff, and to protect them they had papers falsified declaring them as Catholic, some were even falsely designated as medical clergy. Many of the Jewish staff managed to get shelter for their families and friends in the hospital, and did so by admitting them as patients suffering from Syndrome K, a highly infectious and deadly neurodegenerative disease that caused convulsions and/or paralysis as well as cognitive impairment. When Jews were admitted to the hospital under false identities, their diagnoses was always syndrome K and they were kept in isolation as a public health measure.

    Because of it's island location, the Fatebenefratelli was ideally placed to isolate contagious diseases, and Kesselring declared it off limits for the German occupiers for fear of the disease decimating his ranks. Not one German is thought to have set foot on the island during the occupation.

    It's estimated that the hospital saved between 100 -150 Jews, and of course Syndrome K never existed, the K referred to the Nazi, Kesselring.


  • Posts: 26,052 ✭✭✭✭[Deleted User]


    Adults have between 3 and 5 thousand taste buds and while they're mostly located towards the back of the tongue, there are also a number of tastebuds on the epiglottis, down the back of the throat, the back of your nose, and even some on the inside of the cheek towards the back of the mouth. The buds sit on the papillae, most visible on the surface of the tongue, but other types of papillae are invisible to the eye and also may or may not harbour tastebuds.

    When a baby is born they already have a developed sense of taste and their tastebuds are super sensitive to bitter or very sweet tastes. Mostly this is because of the greater number and also the distribution of their tastebuds, and limited experience is also a factor. Babies are born with about ten thousand buds, which drop in number as they are usually replaced every few days and that mechanism slows down as a child grows, leaving them with the average adult number of 3 to 5 thousand as they stop being replaced.

    The comparatively fewer tastebuds is why adults can tolerate hotter, spicer foods than children who's greater number mean they have much more intense taste experiences, particularly of bitter tastes. So that's the vegetable thing explained. Studies have shown that the location of the tastebuds can indicate a predisposition to certain foods and tastes. Higher anterior papillae density is linked with a sensitivity to sugar, something that declines in early teens as they learn to distinguish between more and more tastes.

    Just as the rest of you gets chubby if you gain too much weight, so does your tongue* which can have high fat levels. This is likely to be one reason why overweight people are more prone to sleep apnoea, as the bigger tongue forms a greater obstruction in the back of the throat in a sleeping person.






    Does my tongue look big in this?


  • Registered Users Posts: 18,625 ✭✭✭✭BaZmO*


    The sensitivity to bitter tastes is believed to be an evolutionary protective trait to veer children away from eating poisonous plants.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,633 ✭✭✭✭Buford T. Justice XIX


    George Armstrong Custer wasn't the only member of the Custer family to die at Little Big Horn. His younger brothers Thomas and Boston Custer died there also. His brother in law, James Calhoun and his nephew also died that day.


  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,538 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    Kukulkan the feathered serpent was the all-powerful Mayan sun god who gifted the world with chocolate.

    And chocolate was used to celebrate the sun god rising into the sky again .


  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,538 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    The speed record for a bicycle is 296.009km/h


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 6,306 Mod ✭✭✭✭mzungu


    Every time you remember an event from the past, your brain networks change in ways that can alter the later recall of the event. Thus, the next time you remember it, you might recall not the original event but what you remembered the previous time.


  • Registered Users Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    Meant to have this in the last post. Four images of atoms of roughly similar size. One image is phosphorus, the others silicon. You could have an image of silicon like the third photograph that looks pretty much identical (bit less "square") but I couldn't find one that was public domain.

    LIdqtR.jpg

    ZoXu8d.jpg

    TEXhoK.jpg

    7iM6v7.jpg

    So this is the same thing imaged using four different technologies. Just a nice example of how it clearly looks different depending on how you look at it.

    Also you see the answer to "Is an atom mostly empty space?" is "In one quarter of the ways to look at it yes, in three quarters no"


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,847 ✭✭✭764dak


    Noo wrote: »
    Just wikied Nigeria, and the current population is around 200 million! That's INSANE and something I definitely did not know. Wow.

    Its population in 2000 was around 122 million.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 958 ✭✭✭Conchir


    The greenhouses or polytunnels of Almeria, Spain, produce huge amounts of fruit and vegetables each year, the majority exported around the EU. The white plastic structures have spread rapidly in the province, to the point that they now form a kind of 'plastic sea'. I was in the area last week and photos don't really do it justice. They stretch for miles into the distance, and driving amongst them you start to feel quite boxed in, it's a maze of plastic, really tight roads.

    There is so much white plastic that it has altered the area's albedo, the amount of sunlight reflected back off the Earth's surface. The albedo has been raised enough to cool this part of Almeria slightly compared to the surrounding areas.

    AlmeriaGreenhouses1974-2004.jpg
    1974-2004

    greenhouses-almeria%25255B1%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800


  • Registered Users Posts: 7,695 ✭✭✭StupidLikeAFox


    Maurice Tillet was a French wrestler and was used as the inspiration for Shrek

    latest?cb=20121030114037


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,339 ✭✭✭seagull


    Maurice Tillet was a French wrestler and was used as the inspiration for Shrek

    latest?cb=20121030114037

    And there we all were thinking Shrek was based on Wayne Rooney.


  • Posts: 26,052 ✭✭✭✭[Deleted User]


    I was wondering about that photo, and according to Wikipedia it turns out that M. Tillet suffered from acromegaly, a surfeit of growth hormone that results in bone overgrowth, enlarged hands, feet, skull, thickened skin, painful joints, quite a few other medical issues and to round things off, occasionally even gigantism.

    More than 95% of cases are as a result of a pituitary adenoma, and treatment can involve radiation, surgery or medication. The options were probably quite limited in M Tillets lifetime.

    And just when you think fate has dealt enough blows, as a post humus insult he gets a cartoon Ogre named after him. Poor M. Tillet. :(


  • Registered Users Posts: 40,060 ✭✭✭✭ohnonotgmail


    Candie wrote: »
    I was wondering about that photo, and according to Wikipedia it turns out that M. Tillet suffered from acromegaly, a surfeit of growth hormone that results in bone overgrowth, enlarged hands, feet, skull, thickened skin, painful joints, quite a few other medical issues and to round things off, occasionally even gigantism.

    More than 95% of cases are as a result of a pituitary adenoma, and treatment can involve radiation, surgery or medication. The options were probably quite limited in M Tillets lifetime.

    And just when you think fate has dealt enough blows, as a post humus insult he gets a cartoon Ogre named after him. Poor M. Tillet. :(

    Richard Kiel, the actor who played Jaws in a couple of Bond movies had the same condition. As did the wrestler Andre the Giant. They tend not to reach old age.


  • Posts: 26,052 ✭✭✭✭[Deleted User]


    Richard Kiel, the actor who played Jaws in a couple of Bond movies had the same condition. As did the wrestler Andre the Giant. They tend not to reach old age.

    Someone once told me that some of the very tall basketball players you sometimes see would have had pituitary adenomas but it would have been caught in their teens and treated appropriately.

    Apparently in M. Tillets time most people with the condition weren't diagnosed until they were middle aged and the damage was done. :(


  • Registered Users Posts: 16,067 ✭✭✭✭Grayson



    My family live a few minutes walk from the stone. Apparently people were charging visitors a fiver to get to it.


  • Registered Users Posts: 40,060 ✭✭✭✭ohnonotgmail


    Candie wrote: »
    Someone once told me that some of the very tall basketball players you sometimes see would have had pituitary adenomas but it would have been caught in their teens and treated appropriately.

    Apparently in M. Tillets time most people with the condition weren't diagnosed until they were middle aged and the damage was done. :(

    another WWE wrestler The Big Show has the condition as well but he had his pituatary gland removed in his early 20's.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 9,586 ✭✭✭ Chase Embarrassed Pod


    mzungu wrote: »
    Every time you remember an event from the past, your brain networks change in ways that can alter the later recall of the event. Thus, the next time you remember it, you might recall not the original event but what you remembered the previous time.

    Known as 'framing' when used intentionaly to re-program (negate, or super-enhance) a specific memory. e.g. Visualise a non-desired memory in a small picture frame, drain all colour and place the mono, blurred image on a distant poorly lit wall, and there it shall ideally remain.

    Common in NLP/CBT (other mind technologies are available).

    'Tapping' is another similar technique, useful for phobias, e.g. Think of the flesh eating camel spider whilst tapping your forehead. Next time you think of it, you will (ideally) just remember you don't like finger tapping.

    Similar too is 'Anchoring' - whereby a specific physical signal (e.g. connecting thumb to third finger on each hand) can be used to re-create a previous desired state.

    This of often used by track athletes before a race. If the race is won, it can be (cumulatively) locked in again using the same technique.

    That'll be $300, see Rosin at the desk on the way out, for your next appointment.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,995 ✭✭✭Ipso



    The people who built it were geniuses.


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