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RE: Weird & Interesting science
08-02-2019, 04:04 AM
ah. Okay, so not 'Getting it' means I might or might not be safe from San Loss.
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to rock the sky?
Thats' every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry!
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
08-02-2019, 04:24 AM
(08-02-2019, 04:04 AM)Star Ranger4 Wrote: ah. Okay, so not 'Getting it' means I might or might not be safe from San Loss.
It was Edgar Allan Poe's almost a hundred years before Lovecraft used it. But Lovecraft mentioned Poe's usage, so he didn't plagiarize. Instead he implied that Poe knew something about the Mythos, information he found in some "quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore." In both cases it deals with something weird in the Antarctic region.
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
08-02-2019, 05:07 PM
well, this is 'fun', a new species of giant centipede from SE Asia, which is amphibious (the first amphibious centipede discovered)
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/...w-species/
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
08-02-2019, 10:42 PM
Just when your players thought it was safe to go back in the water!
(The only TPK that ever happened to a group I was part of happened at the mandibles of giant centipedes, so it's always the first thing I think of when they come up...)
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
08-07-2019, 06:56 PM
Scientists discover fossils of giant parrot
Comparison artwork: "Reconstruction of the giant parrot Heracles, dwarfing a bevy of 8-cm-high Kuiornis, small New Zealand wrens scuttling about on the forest floor. (Brian Choo/Flinders University)"
Whatever Polly wants, Polly can bloody well have!
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
08-07-2019, 07:09 PM
Alas, it is an ex-parrot.
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
08-08-2019, 06:58 AM
And I'm suddenly picturing it with a tiny pirate on its shoulder.
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
08-14-2019, 06:12 PM
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
08-14-2019, 06:52 PM
(08-14-2019, 06:12 PM)robkelk Wrote: Looks like this is the month for giant-bird-fossil stories.
Fossils of giant, human-sized penguin found by amateur fossil hunter
Oh, dear. I'm beginning to regret my Lovecraftian wisecrack of two weeks ago....
Quote:For it was only a penguin — albeit of a huge, unknown species larger than the greatest of the known king penguins, and monstrous in its combined albinism and virtual eyelessness.
— At the Mountains of Madness, H. P. Lovecraft
Y'think I may've invoked something, accidental-like?
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
08-24-2019, 05:27 AM
(08-14-2019, 06:52 PM)DHBirr Wrote: (08-14-2019, 06:12 PM)robkelk Wrote: Looks like this is the month for giant-bird-fossil stories.
Fossils of giant, human-sized penguin found by amateur fossil hunter
Oh, dear. I'm beginning to regret my Lovecraftian wisecrack of two weeks ago....
Quote:For it was only a penguin — albeit of a huge, unknown species larger than the greatest of the known king penguins, and monstrous in its combined albinism and virtual eyelessness.
— At the Mountains of Madness, H. P. Lovecraft
Y'think I may've invoked something, accidental-like?
You seem far too coherent and rational to have done it on Purpose D.H. *thhhhbbbbpppppttttt*
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
08-29-2019, 08:33 PM
People who eat the same amount of calories and exercise the same amount as the 1980's are 2.3 BMI larger today than the 80's.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-i...ket-newtab
Abstract of the actual scientific article
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...3X15001210
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
09-13-2019, 07:49 PM
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23005-1
Cockroaches can be magnetized. Live cockroaches demagnetize much faster than dead cockroaches (50 min avg vs 47 hours).
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
09-14-2019, 03:14 AM
(09-13-2019, 07:49 PM)RMH999 Wrote: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23005-1
Cockroaches can be magnetized. Live cockroaches demagnetize much faster than dead cockroaches (50 min avg vs 47 hours).
That was one of this year's Ig Nobel Prize winners, taking the laurel in Biology.
My fav was the Psychology award, to Fritz Strack, "for discovering that holding a pen in one's mouth makes one smile, which makes one happier—and for then discovering that it does not."
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
09-16-2019, 08:52 AM
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
09-16-2019, 11:46 AM
<goes and reads> Ooh, cool. I'm well past the 25-year-mark...
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
10-01-2019, 06:56 AM
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
10-02-2019, 02:40 PM
It's a good start, but I feel like they're missing something glaringly obvious.
Simply, when you have a biological process that is critical to the survival of the species, then it's highly likely that evolution is gonna go in the direction that the process winds up being a pleasurable experience. Just like how we now have a problem with obesity - fattening foods were incredibly scarce in the wilds, so we evolved to seek that stuff out like a homing missile on a SAM site. Same applies to sex - survival of the species = having lots of babies. What to do? Make the most critical part of reproduction pleasurable.
So, while orgasm may have started out as a mechanism to trigger ovulation, it likely stuck around because the individuals that had the most pleasurable sensations were more driven to copulate as much as possible. Which means more babies. Which means that trait got passed on more than any other involving reproduction.
I read somewhere that the evolution of human reproduction is particularly complex - it was almost like an arms race between the sexes. When females evolved discreet periods with "spontaneous" cycles instead of a seasonal heat/estrus, males evolved to have semen loaded with all kinds of hormones like testosterone, progesterone, and a whole lot of others that wind up promoting female fertility in all kinds of ways (increased sex drive, more regular ovulations, better health in general).
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
10-08-2019, 07:48 AM
Who's got the most moons in the Solar System?
That we know about, that is.
Nope, not Jupiter...
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
10-22-2019, 02:10 PM
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
10-22-2019, 05:32 PM
Not entirely surprising; it's not as if criminals aren't just as susceptible to allergies or to taking care of family members with allergies.
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
10-22-2019, 06:18 PM
Hey, folks, how old is the Periodic Table this year?
Yea, that's a nice round number, isn't it?
So... Elements, one at a time. They're nowhere near finished the series.
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
10-23-2019, 04:27 AM
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to rock the sky?
Thats' every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry!
NO QUARTER!
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
10-26-2019, 04:03 AM
(This post was last modified: 10-26-2019, 06:31 AM by classicdrogn.)
I'd have put this in the Epic Quotes thread in OPF, but since it's my own post that would be kind of gauche. All you need for context is that the high chemical reactivity of oxygen and hydrogen came up in a typical SB thread derail, really.
"And that's why water is such a good solvent - at any particular time only part of it is the familiar, wholesome, family-freindly mickey-mouse molecule from junior high science classes. The rest lurks in various more predatory combinations, on the prowl to plunder some unsuspecting schoolmolecule's electrons, or shoot its own all over the gaps in their outer layer. DHMO: It's not just an environmental hazard, it's more rapey than ducks!"
e: and Pyrotech replied
What water really looks like:
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
10-29-2019, 06:01 AM
Ceres might not be the smallest dwarf planet
The ESO has photos that indicate 10 Hygiea is round.
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RE: Weird & Interesting science
11-13-2019, 07:18 PM
2014 MU69 has a name now
You've probably seen a photo of it - New Horizons did a flyby at the beginning of this year.
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