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

New Home · 05-02-2019 7:54pm

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

No mention of cortisone?

Not on that image, anyway.

New Home · 05-02-2019 7:54pm

New Home · 05-02-2019 8:06pm

Capt'n Midnight · 05-02-2019 10:25pm

Wibbs wrote: »

Another mad thing about them was the structure was so thin that it required pressurisation by fuel(or nitrogen) to stay rigid. If the tanks lost pressure the rocket would collapse like a deflated balloon.

It's called a balloon tank.

It meant you could make the fuel tanks much lighter so instead of having two stages you could use just a single stage. Well sort of , because you'd drop off some of the engines on the way up.

Russian rockets are a little more agricultural. When offloading one from a ship for a Paris Air Show, onlookers were shocked that the guy attaching the crane hooks was just walking along on top of the horizontal rocket. With an Atlas or Blue Streak you can deform the tank with a light push.

stimpson · 05-02-2019 11:17pm

The Darvaza gas crater, known locally as the "Door to Hell" or ''Gates of Hell", is a natural gas field collapsed into an underground cavern located in Derweze, Turkmenistan. Geologists set it on fire to prevent the spread of methane gas, and it is thought to have been burning continuously since 1971. The diameter of the crater is 69 metres (226 ft), and its depth is 30 metres (98 ft).

You can see it on Google Maps.

mzungu · 06-02-2019 12:45am

As part of an anti-drugs message aimed at school children in the US , there were pencils produced in the 1990s with the anti-drug slogan "Too Cool to Do Drugs." The only problem was that when the pencil was sharpened it would read "Cool to Do Drugs" and finally "Do Drugs." Unsurprisingly, they were recalled.

BhUx36nIUAASePA.jpg-large.jpeg?w=640&ssl=1

BhUx36nIUAASePA.jpg-large.jpeg?w=640&ssl=1

The Pheasant2 · 06-02-2019 1:14am

New Home wrote: »

Proportions probably not to scale, but interesting nevertheless.

Don't wanna be *that* guy but while very broadly correct this is fairly meaningless without specification of which neurological pathways they're referring to - for example the anxiety one; when applied to the nigrostriatial pathway in the brain would more be representative of Parkinson's disease.

New Home · 06-02-2019 1:16am

And that's also very interesting.

06-02-2019 5:27pm

There is a whole fleet of aircraft at the disposal of the POTUS, but only the one in use by the President at any given time is referred to as Air Force One. It's not the name of the aircraft, it's it's call sign.

06-02-2019 6:06pm

General anaesthetics not only block pain, they also cause amnesia. Patients can and do wake up and experience all the sensations involved with their surgery but it's very rare. Much more common is a half wakening that lasts a few seconds and is completely forgotten by the patient. Generals also cause what's called post-operative cognitive dysfunction, a general confusion and/or forgetfulness that resolves in hours. days or weeks. It's most notable in the over-65's, where it can endure longer.

More worryingly, studies carried out at Frances INSERM (Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale) suggests a link between general anaesthesia and dementia in later life. Over nine thousand older post-op patients were cognitively evaluated at intervals of 3, 7 and 10 years post surgery, and found to be over 30% more likely to have developed a level of dementia than those who hadn't been administered a general over the age of 65.

Fourier · 06-02-2019 10:49pm

A team at the University of Durham and Florence have performed a very detailed study of quasars in the early universe which has possibly revealed that Dark Energy works in the craziest way people have suggested so far rather than the more mundane models of it just being some invisible energy filling the universe which has been more accepted until now.

According to the study Dark Energy is denser now than it was in the past:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-018-0657-z (It's behind a pay wall, but just to show it's in Nature, the leading scientific journal)

If this result holds up it has a few weird possible consequences.

The precise measurements mean Dark Energy is some form of "fluid" with the right properties to hold open a wormhole throat.
It also means that around now (last 100 million years being cosmological "around now") natural wormholes will have begun to open.
Entropy doesn't necessarily increase until the universe is a homogenous inert soup.
Most fascinating to me, is that it allows the "Big Trip" end of the universe scenario, whereby billions of years from now a massive wormhole swallows the entire matter content of the universe, before the current one rips itself apart and deposits it "somewhere else" in a new universe.

Gimme A Pound · 06-02-2019 11:02pm

Two serial killers were born on consecutive February 29ths: Aileen Wuornos 1956, and Richard Ramirez (the night stalker) 1960.

(Now obviously why they turned out the way they did, is a tad more complex than due to being born on Leap Day

but I find it bizarre in a "What are the odds?" way).

mzungu · 07-02-2019 1:05am

Four out of Nepal's seven provinces don't have official names, and are just referred to as Province 1, Province 2, Province 3, and Province 5. The three provinces with names are Gandaki, Karnali and Sudurpashchim.

worded · 07-02-2019 1:39am

The endangered Siberian snow leopard can whistle but chooses not to ....

Cookie_Monster · 07-02-2019 4:11am

worded wrote: »

The endangered Siberian snow leopard can whistle but chooses not to ....

That sounds like a TopGear fact

07-02-2019 2:18pm

When New York City subway cars reach the end of their working life, they're taken to New Jersey and sunk off Ocean City beach to form an artificial reef.

Currently the fifteen reefs so far created have created about a square mile of substrate and the results have made it a popular area for fishing enthusiasts and divers and have eased fishing pressure in overfished grounds nearby. Populations of invertebrates and crustaceans have flourished.

redbird%20underwater.jpg

The long term plan is to form reefs all along the NJ coast to help keep populations up.

Artificial reefs aren't universally welcomed, and organizations including Ocean Conservancy express concern over the environmental impact of some of the materials used to form them, as well as the areas being prone to overfishing once the fish populations recover.

They don't always work, either. The cost/benefit ratio of a reef created off the coast of Florida is estimated to be 130/1, as a state of the art reef was sunk but no improvement in the fish stock or diversity has been tracked.

Conchir · 08-02-2019 2:05am

Candie wrote: »

There is a whole fleet of aircraft at the disposal of the POTUS, but only the one in use by the President at any given time is referred to as Air Force One. It's not the name of the aircraft, it's it's call sign.

Airplanes flown by the Air Force (i.e. the classic modified 747) yes

but if POTUS is flying in a helicopter, which he often does from the White House lawn, it’s flown by marines and called Marine One. Similarly with Navy, Army, and Coast Guard aircraft.

Navy One callsign has only been activated once I think, to fly Bush 2 to the USS Abraham Lincoln so he could announce “Mission Accomplished” after the Iraq invasion.

Army One hasn’t been active since the 70s, when the Army and the Marines used to share helicopter duties for the president. Since then it’s been solely the Marines.

Coast Guard One has never flown, but Coast Guard Two has. Any of these callsigns ending in Two instead of One are aircraft carrying the Vice President of the United States. Joe Biden flew in Coast Guard Two at some stage during his vice presidency, I think after a hurricane or flooding.

mzungu · 08-02-2019 2:07am

Have you ever walked into a room and forgot the reason why you were doing it?

This is known as the "Doorway Effect" and it is believed that walking through an open door and entering a new room creates a "mental block" in our brains and resets the memory to make room for the creation of new memories. It was previously suggested that these mental blocks came from not paying enough attention, but there now seems to be more at play.

The used video games to test the participants in the study:

Nueroscientists Gabriel Radvansky, Sabine Krawietz and Andrea Tamplin had participants play a video game in front of a computer screen in which they could move around using the arrow keys. In the game, they would walk up to a table with a colored geometric solid sitting on it. Their task was to pick up the object and take it to another table, where they would put the object down and pick up a new one. Whichever object they were currently carrying was invisible to them, as if it were in a virtual backpack.

Sometimes, to get to the next object the participant simply walked across the room. Other times, they had to walk the same distance, but through a door into a new room. From time to time, the researchers gave them a pop quiz, asking which object was currently in their backpack. The quiz was timed so that when they walked through a doorway, they were tested right afterwards. As the title said, walking through doorways caused forgetting: Their responses were both slower and less accurate when they'd walked through a doorway into a new room than when they'd walked the same distance within the same room.

Link: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-walking-through-doorway-makes-you-forget/?fbclid=IwAR14FtAob8W9Yicw3HPnNMdBuJeEEWy-ohMM7lLPR-Dozr4v9E5R_hAFkoQ

After the computer based test, they replicated the test in the lab and when participants walked through the door similar results were recorded. It would appear that the "doorway effect" occurs in both the real and the virtual world.

08-02-2019 2:15am

mzungu wrote: »

Have you ever walked into a room and forgot the reason why you were doing it?

This is known as the "Doorway Effect" and it is believed that walking through an open door and entering a new room creates a "mental block" in our brains and resets the memory to make room for the creation of new memories. It was previously suggested that these mental blocks came from not paying enough attention, but there now seems to be more at play.

The used video games to test the participants in the study:

After the computer based test, they replicated the test in the lab and when participants walked through the door similar results were recorded. It would appear that the "doorway effect" occurs in both the real and the virtual world.

This was explained to me as an assessment of each newly entered or re-entered environment, as the brain runs a checklist to make sure nothing has changed for the worse/that it's safe to venture further, causing the momentary blip that results in the distraction.

Looking in the fridge was an example used. You open the door of the fridge to asses it's contents or look for something, and your mind expects the doorway to open to a much larger arena and gets distracted looking for 'landmarks'. So you wind up closing the fridge without having really noted any of it's actual contents.

I guess it's the same thing; each assessment updates the information and removes the need to store the outdated version.

mzungu · 08-02-2019 2:31am

Candie wrote: »

This was explained to me as an assessment of each newly entered or re-entered environment, as the brain runs a checklist to make sure nothing has changed for the worse/that it's safe to venture further, causing the momentary blip that results in the distraction.

Looking in the fridge was an example used. You open the door of the fridge to asses it's contents or look for something, and your mind expects the doorway to open to a much larger arena and gets distracted looking for 'landmarks'. So you wind up closing the fridge without having really noted any of it's actual contents.

I guess it's the same thing; each assessment updates the information and removes the need to store the outdated version.

When I read it the first thing I thought of was the fridge. It happens way more than it should (and a bit with the freezer, too) and previously I always put it down to just not paying enough attention.

08-02-2019 2:34am

Entering any room to look for my specs. At least 20% of the time I'll wander back out having lost the train of thought completely!

Carry · 08-02-2019 2:35am

You probably know, recently was the Chinese New Year, starting the Year of the Pig.

The Year of the Pig symbolizes wealth and good luck, but not only in the Chinese horoscope but in many cultures. In Germany for example you’ll get a little pink marzipan pig for New Year, sometimes adorned with a four-leaved clover (symbol of luck) or a little black card-board chimney sweep (likewise symbol of luck).

The sentiment is understandable. In the not so good old times it was a sign of good luck if you still had a pig to make pork in the middle of winter. Until today it’s an usual saying in German “Schwein gehabt”, translated as “have got pig”, meaning, I was lucky or had a lucky escape. Or you would know the famous piggy bank, a reserve fund for hard times.

The pig was first domesticated about 8000 years ago in Mesopotamia. It was especially appreciated in Iran, Palestine and Egypt – that was before Islam by the way. It not only provided meat but was used to cultivate fields because it was always digging up the soil.
Only when the Hebrews moved into this area, who as semi-nomads couldn’t rear pigs (pigs are very domestic after all), the consumption of pork was dismissed because the animals were seen as possessed by impure spirits. Which wasn’t that wrong because the pig carried and still carries diseases that could kill humans. The Islamic peoples later adopted these rules and made it a law according to the Quran.

For the old Germanic peoples the pig was a ritual meal (and sacrifice) in honour of the Earth Mother and the fertility demons. And they served as a kind of barometer: If pigs started to carry straw into their sty you could count on rain and bad weather.

Now the Christian Church as per usual didn’t like all this Pagan nonsense. They spread the rumour that pigs are the mounts, or riding animals, of witches and devils and that cursed souls (like female adulterers) would be transformed into pigs.The pig therefore wasn't honoured anymore, but dismissed as the most inferior animal (beside cats).
Somehow the poor pig got a bad reputation under any monotheistic religion.

Anyway, the original Caribs didn’t eat pork, because they believed, that eating pork would give them small eyes. They weren’t all that wrong. Pigs have a similar tissue structure as humans and that’s why porcine cardiac valves are (or were, I’m not up to date) used as tissue tolerant implants for humans. Humans and pigs are very similar, in many (genetic) ways.

But for all the luck that pigs provide for humans, it was the downfall of the pig. This highly intelligent animal was finally so overbred that it carries potentially even more diseases than the original breed.
Not only is it fed and mistreated in tiny stys were it can hardly move and reaches it’s slaughter age after around 175 days (around 1700 it was after 5 years and in freedom), it is injected with so many antibiotics that the impact on human health is immense.
Apart from that the farmers administer psychotropic drugs, because of their appalling living conditions the pigs start to eat the tails off each other. They get hormones as well to artificially swell the meat, which means that your pork chop shrivels when frying. Not to forget the beta-blockers they get, because they suffer from immense stress in their lives. And a pig that dies of a heart attack is of no use for a pig farmer.
The chemical content in pork is surely a delight for humans, isn’t it?

So the Chinese Year of the Pig should not only be celebrated for good luck and wealth for us humans, but maybe for at least a better life for the pigs as well.

This is a quickly translated summery of a feature article I’ve intensively researched, written and published as a young journalist. I’ve never eaten pork ever since.

Carry · 08-02-2019 2:50am

Candie wrote: »

Entering any room to look for my specs. At least 20% of the time I'll wander back out having lost the train of thought completely!

Gosh, I know that feeling!

Gloomtastic! · 08-02-2019 3:03am

On pigs/pork.....

I remember my mum telling me that, in her day, you could never eat pork unless there was an ‘r’ in the month. Bit like oysters.

Sleepy · 08-02-2019 5:00pm

I've heard it repeated many times that the main reason that the desert people who founded the Jewish and Islamic faiths forbade the consumption of pork is down to the fact that it's apparently indistinguishable from human flesh in terms of taste and texture...

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1 · 08-02-2019 5:15pm

Sleepy wrote: »

I've heard it repeated many times that the main reason that the desert people who founded the Jewish and Islamic faiths forbade the consumption of pork is down to the fact that it's apparently indistinguishable from human flesh in terms of taste and texture...

Archaeological evidence shows that pigs were kept and eaten from 5000bc to 1000bc but that their consumption had died out before the old testament 'decrees' against pig flesh. It's thought to have been replaced by chicken when many of the people of the area adopted a more nomadic lifestyle in areas with less abundant water supplies. Keeping pigs requires more husbandry and more water than fowl which provides the same protein.

Ipso · 08-02-2019 5:34pm

Sleepy wrote: »

I've heard it repeated many times that the main reason that the desert people who founded the Jewish and Islamic faiths forbade the consumption of pork is down to the fact that it's apparently indistinguishable from human flesh in terms of taste and texture...

I thought it had to do with tape worm, if you undercook pork you can have a nice long visitor in your intestine.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1 · 08-02-2019 5:34pm

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

On pigs/pork.....

I remember my mum telling me that, in her day, you could never eat pork unless there was an ‘r’ in the month. Bit like oysters.

Plenty still say so. It seems to stem from an era before refrigeration, when pork would spoil in the summer months.

Ipso · 08-02-2019 5:37pm

Nevaeh Shaggy Destroyer wrote: »

Plenty still say so. It seems to stem from an era before refrigeration, when pork would spoil in the summer months.

Likewise shellfish is considerd an abomination, desert regions back in the day weren’t known for their refrigeration.

ohnonotgmail · 08-02-2019 5:39pm

Ipso wrote: »

I thought it had to do with tape worm, if you undercook pork you can have a nice long visitor in your intestine.
Doesn’t the word pork share a root with orc (linking tonwhat was said about evil spirits)? I think this is also where Orca for Killer Whales comes from.

If you undercook pork that is infected with Trichinella spiralis you can develop something called Trichinosis. Pretty nasty apparently.

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

Comments