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8th January 2019, 06:49 PM | #281 |
Дэлво Δελϝο דֶלְבֹֿ देल्वो
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For small critters, the usual thing scientists think first is riding piles of storm debris like a raft.
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8th January 2019, 06:55 PM | #282 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Cool, I'll see what I can dig up.
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"... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." Isaac Asimov |
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8th January 2019, 06:56 PM | #283 |
Penultimate Amazing
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"... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." Isaac Asimov |
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8th January 2019, 09:30 PM | #284 |
Not a doctor.
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I think any nerd who likes cards knows that 52! is a pretty huge number. Big numbers are so hard to grasp though.
I saw recently that the number of possible shuffles for a standard deck of cards is actually greater than the number of atoms that comprise the planet earth. I also saw someone playing a solitaire game that tracked player stats. Some games were random and others were previously played by others. I mused about them using humans to build a database of solved solitaire games. Knowing that solitaire was one of the first computer games I started wondering about how long it would take for computers to solve all possible solitaire games. Throwing rough number at it I think I got to looking at how many lifetimes of the sun would it take for all current computing devices (something like 10 billion, IIRC) assuming they were optimized to solve a thousand games per second (although I found one article that it takes several seconds for computers to solve solitaire). 52! is just a really big number. |
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Suffering is not a punishment not a fruit of sin, it is a gift of God. He allows us to share in His suffering and to make up for the sins of the world. -Mother Teresa If I had a pet panda I would name it Snowflake. |
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8th January 2019, 10:10 PM | #285 |
Quester of Doglets
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Wow. I didn't know they were natives either.
I saw one up close once. I was sitting right next to the harbour at Cremorne Point (right next to the ferry wharf). This critter swam out of the water and popped up onto the rocks about three feet away from me. When it came out of the water, it looked like a drowned rat, but within a couple of minutes of grooming itself, it turned into this fluffy puffball. After all that, it scampered off into the nearby undergrowth, passing so close to me I could have easily touched it on the way past... At the time, I was guessing that it's vision was so poor, it may have been effectively blind. Now I'm wondering if its vision may be adapted for hunting underwater. |
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We would be better, and braver, to engage in enquiry, rather than indulge in the idle fancy, that we already know -- Plato. |
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8th January 2019, 10:25 PM | #286 |
Observer of Phenomena
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Yep. Turns out they're all over the bloody place and no-one realised because they look just like introduced rats.
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So take that quantum equation and recalculate the wave by a factor of hoopty doo! The answer is not my problem, it's yours. Three Word Story Wisdom |
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8th January 2019, 10:49 PM | #287 |
So far, so good...
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Over we go.... |
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8th January 2019, 10:57 PM | #288 |
In the Peanut Gallery
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A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. Sir Winston Churchill |
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8th January 2019, 11:21 PM | #289 |
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The terminal velocity of a cat is low enough that it's possible for cats to survive a fall from any height.
Of course, possible is probably the operative word here, and I don't know what the actual survival rate is from cats falling from extreme heights, but, still, pretty cool. ETA: And given the way scaling laws work, I'd expect that for animals significantly smaller than cats (mice say?) there's no real danger to falls from any height. This is obviously true of insects, for instance, and not primarily because they have exoskeletons. Scaling laws are pretty cool in general. |
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"... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." Isaac Asimov |
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8th January 2019, 11:50 PM | #290 |
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You may have seen it already, but On Being the Right Size by J. B. S. Haldane is a nice, quick read on the topic.
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9th January 2019, 01:02 AM | #291 |
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9th January 2019, 01:45 AM | #292 |
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"... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." Isaac Asimov |
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9th January 2019, 02:39 AM | #294 |
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Originally Posted by This is The End
ETA. Actually I think its both sphere and hemisphere, because for a hemisphere the height of the cone and cylinder will be r, but for a sphere it will be 2r |
9th January 2019, 03:06 AM | #295 |
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through a scribbled morning waving necessary ankles
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While we're on the subject of things learned from XKCD, one of my favourite scientific facts is that, if a there were a supernova at the same distance from the Earth as the Sun (not actually possible because the Sun isn't big enough), it would deliver more radiation energy to my retina than a hydrogen bomb pressed against my eyeball. By about nine orders of magnitude. And even the neutrino component of the radiation, at that distance, would be enough to kill me.
Dave |
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There is truth and there are lies. - President Joseph R. Biden, January 20th, 2021 |
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9th January 2019, 03:55 AM | #296 |
Illuminator
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9th January 2019, 05:00 AM | #297 |
In the Peanut Gallery
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A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. Sir Winston Churchill |
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9th January 2019, 06:12 AM | #298 |
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I don't know if it's been mentioned, but the fact that your 'mind' is made aware of your decisions quite a while after the unconscious processes have made those decisions.
That one's quite the cold shower. |
9th January 2019, 06:48 AM | #299 |
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9th January 2019, 11:50 AM | #300 |
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Cum catapultae proscribeantur tum soli proscripti catapultas habeant. |
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9th January 2019, 01:06 PM | #301 |
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Go to the Haldane essay linked earlier on the page.
"You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes." Elephants aren't even mentioned. |
9th January 2019, 02:36 PM | #302 |
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Indeed. I am oft troubled by the UKian expression "gone all pear shaped" used describe a situation that has gone awry, or "perhaps horribly wrong". What do they have against a pear's shape? To a pear, it is the perfect shape. I also remember from one Astronomy class that if you were to draw a circle using a compass the amount of eccentricity in the Earth's orbit from a circle would be the width of the pencil line. Which gives a new appreciation of Kepler's achievement in figuring out that the true orbits of the planets are elliptical. Another "fact" from the same class, if you take the average of the Earth's distance from the sun (93 million miles) and times it by two (186 million miles) and then divide that number by one thousand you get 186,000 miles which is the speed in which light travels in one second. Now, I can't remember exactly what necessitates the division by 1000 in the formulae* but I believe it has something to do with the predicted conjunction of Jupiter's moons being off (timing wise) when observed from the Earth at the winter and summer solstice. *and for the purposes of this conversation, I am not going to look it up. |
9th January 2019, 02:43 PM | #303 |
Now. Do it now.
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"The Conservatives want to keep wogs out and march boldly back to the 1950s when Britain still had an Empire and blacks, women, poofs and Irish knew their place." The Don That's what we've sunk to here. |
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9th January 2019, 02:54 PM | #304 |
The Clarity Is Devastating
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"*Except Myriad. Even Cthulhu would give him a pat on the head and an ice cream and send him to the movies while he ended the rest of the world." - Foster Zygote |
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9th January 2019, 03:19 PM | #305 |
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Caption from and old New Yorker cartoon - Why am I shouting? Because I'm wrong!" |
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9th January 2019, 03:32 PM | #306 |
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Thinking is a faith hazard. |
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9th January 2019, 03:36 PM | #307 |
Philosopher
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Thinking is a faith hazard. |
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9th January 2019, 03:38 PM | #308 |
Quester of Doglets
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We would be better, and braver, to engage in enquiry, rather than indulge in the idle fancy, that we already know -- Plato. |
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9th January 2019, 04:02 PM | #309 |
Penultimate Amazing
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"... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." Isaac Asimov |
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9th January 2019, 04:05 PM | #310 |
Philosopher
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9th January 2019, 05:01 PM | #311 |
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So, if he's doing it by divine means, I can only tell him this: 'Mr. Geller, you're doing it the hard way.' --James Randi |
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9th January 2019, 05:01 PM | #312 |
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9th January 2019, 05:13 PM | #313 |
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You've lost me... let's start over. If anything is 3:2:1 then surely it is cylinder:sphere:cone ? I just double checked the math and that looks correct to me. Either way, clearly a hemisphere would be less than half of the cylinder? So there is not way it would be the 2 in 3:2:1. I think catsmate is correct in the bit of trivia; he just typed hemisphere instead of sphere on accident. |
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9th January 2019, 05:14 PM | #314 |
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Said in an attempt to blow my mind by my friend's five year old daughter:
"The starfish is neither a star nor a fish." Think about it. |
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So, if he's doing it by divine means, I can only tell him this: 'Mr. Geller, you're doing it the hard way.' --James Randi |
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9th January 2019, 05:27 PM | #315 |
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While not a scientific fact, Benford's Law is pretty interesting. Usually when I explain it to people, I just choose a few sets of data that I know will adhere to the law and state that they have a certain distribution of the leading digit. Then hope they protest so I can attempt to explain how it works.
One of the best examples I was able to come up with was the odometers of all cars in NYC. If you recorded all of these numbers and then just considered the leading digit (ignoring the zeros to the left). Most people intuitively think that there is a random distribution of numbers on the odometers and since there are nine digits to choose from (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9) there would be an equal distribution with 11.11% of each digit. |
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So, if he's doing it by divine means, I can only tell him this: 'Mr. Geller, you're doing it the hard way.' --James Randi |
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9th January 2019, 05:38 PM | #316 |
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9th January 2019, 06:22 PM | #317 |
Observer of Phenomena
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We're pretty sure that space will keep expanding and stars will keep exploding until all the matter in the universe is sucked up by black holes. Then those holes will v-e-e-e-e-e-r-r-y slowly evaporate, until the entire universe is completely uniform in every way and no activity of any kind can occur. There is no matter and no energy.
I find this idea incredibly beautiful. |
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So take that quantum equation and recalculate the wave by a factor of hoopty doo! The answer is not my problem, it's yours. Three Word Story Wisdom |
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9th January 2019, 06:27 PM | #318 |
Penultimate Amazing
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"... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." Isaac Asimov |
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9th January 2019, 06:33 PM | #319 |
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The man with one watch knows what time it is, the man with two watches is never sure. |
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9th January 2019, 06:34 PM | #320 |
Penultimate Amazing
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"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" -Mark Twain "Half of what he said meant something else, and the other half didn't mean anything at all" -Rosencrantz, on Hamlet |
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