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BS: Boring science stuff we all believe...
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Subject: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Little Hawk Date: 24 Sep 04 - 07:26 PM The purpose of this thread is to balance all that flighty New Age mumbo jumbo and unverifiable spiritual stuff that irritates Pied Piper and various other down-to-earth people on this forum so much...with some nice factual stuff that will make them feel good, and that we can all agree on. Well, I hope so, anyway... Ahem! One plus one equals two. There ya go. Feeling better? Everyone...please feel free to contribute further examples of factual stuff that is absolutely proven, 100% verifiable, and about as friggin' boring at this point as counting up all the blades of grass on your front lawn... :-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: GUEST,Clint Keller Date: 24 Sep 04 - 07:34 PM If you add a pint of sand to a pint of marbles you don't get two pints of samd/marble mixture. I hated to tell you this. clint |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: CarolC Date: 24 Sep 04 - 07:35 PM I knew right away when I saw the title that this was your thread, LH. ;-) P.S. I think that Pied Piper guy is a bit obsessed with that New Age mumbo jumbo stuff. He keeps starting threads about it. Actually, now that I think about it, is seems like most of the threads here in the Mudcat about New Age airy-fairy stuff are started by people who "claim" they don't believe in it. Hmmmm... Well, so there's my "fact". Most airy-fairy New Age threads in the Mudcat are started by people who don't want to admit that they believe in what they're posting. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Little Hawk Date: 24 Sep 04 - 07:51 PM I have wondered about that too, Carol. I think they have a really deep emotional need for "New Age Mumbo Jumbo". Everyone needs something they can look down on, right? It's like how Republicans and Democrats NEED each other in order to find motivation to continue on. Quite fascinating. Okay, here's another boring fact or two: Fresh water freezes into a solid (called ice) if you lower the temperature to 0 degrees Celsius or below. When you drop something, gravity makes it fall down...as long as it's heavier than air. Or...well, if it's in a vacuum, then it will fall down even if it isn't heavier than air. But vacuums are hard to find, except under controlled laboratory conditions. Isn't this fun? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Little Hawk Date: 24 Sep 04 - 07:58 PM If you mix the primary colors yellow and blue, you get green! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Lighter Date: 24 Sep 04 - 07:58 PM If you drop a cannonball and a feather from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the cannonball will hit the ground first. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Little Hawk Date: 24 Sep 04 - 08:01 PM Oh! I like that one. Very good. If the cannonball lands on George Bush's head it will kill him. If the feather does, he will not suffer any notable injury. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: kendall Date: 24 Sep 04 - 08:02 PM The longest distance between two points is... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Ebbie Date: 24 Sep 04 - 08:02 PM Tomorrow, the sun will come up. Or the earth will turn just enough to expose one side to the sun. Whatever. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Bobert Date: 24 Sep 04 - 08:05 PM "...vacuums are hard to find..." False. The P-Vine leaves the danged thing where ever she likes and I more often than not find the hard way. Ouch! Bobert |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Little Hawk Date: 24 Sep 04 - 08:07 PM The jury's still out on that one, Kendall. :-) A circle has 360 degrees. It's round. All points on its circumference are equidistant from its center, which can be described as an infinitely small point. A square is a 4-sided figure, all of its sides being of equal dimension. Gawd...I could fall asleep any time here... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Little Hawk Date: 24 Sep 04 - 08:08 PM Black is darker than white. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Bobert Date: 24 Sep 04 - 08:09 PM Oh, science? Sorry.... How about: Nuthin's impossible except peein' in a naked man's pocket? I think that gets up into the 100% range... Bobert |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: GUEST,heric Date: 24 Sep 04 - 08:09 PM Timely thread for me in that my seven year old daughter, during our usual late night talk last night, was informing me that we don't know anything for sure. In fact, she said, and I quote: "We don't even know, for example, that one plus one equals two." Unfortunately I had to end the discussion right there as I knew I was in above my head. As I was backing away, she said "We don't even know if the Bible is the Word of God. Only God knows." I was OUTTA there. . . |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Peace Date: 24 Sep 04 - 08:10 PM (3x3)+(4x4)=5x5 |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Amos Date: 24 Sep 04 - 08:24 PM A pound of marbles added to a pound of sand will weigh two pounds. A pint by volume (as noted above) of each, combined, will not occupy two pints worth of volume. Volume and weight are therefore demonstrably different. An object falling freely in Earth's field of gravity will accelerate towartd Earth's center of mass at a rate close to 32 feet per second more for each second of falling, or 32 feet per second per second, also called 32 feet per second squared. Yawn. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: GUEST,Mrs Olive Whatnoll Date: 24 Sep 04 - 08:34 PM 1 excaped parrot + one 'usband 'oo is out puttin' up reward posters = a nice quiet 'ouse. You can lead a man to water, but 'e won't drink it if e's got any access to alcoholic beverages what so ever. Anyfink a man tells you about 'is vital statisticks can be counted on to be inflated by a factor of no less than 120 Per Cent, minimmum! And in most cases it's worse than that! Ask a Scotsman, and you can raise that factor to 300%. There's no use askin' an Irishman, cos 'e's probably too drunk to use it anyway! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: GUEST,heric Date: 24 Sep 04 - 08:48 PM Dogs (Border Collies, specifically) can smell or otherwise detect cancer cells. Bombardier beetles of the genus Brachinus evolved to manufacture chemicals in different glands, and, when the animal is threatened, these are squirted into a chamber near the rear end of the beetle, where they explode, forcing noxious (caustic and boiling-hot) liquid out through a directed nozzle at the enemy. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: GUEST,heric Date: 24 Sep 04 - 08:56 PM An African horsefly called Tabanus lays eggs in pools of water in which the larvae live and feed. Each larva buries itself in the mud and pupates. As mud dries out, it cracks, and there is a risk that a crack will tear right across the grub's refuge. Before burying itself in its own pupation chamber, it first corkscrews its way down into the mud in a spiral. It then corkscrews its way back to the surface in an opposite spiral. Finally, it dives into the mud straight down the centre between the two spirals, and that is its resting place through the bad times until water returns. Therefore the larva is encased in a cylinder of mud whose circular boundary has been weakened in advance by the preliminary spiral burrowing. When a crack snakes across the drying mud, if it hits the edge of the cylindrical column, instead of cutting straight across the middle it goes instead in a curved bypass around the edge of the cylinder, and the larva is spared. (I told you you should read Dawkins, LH. It's not boring.) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Sam L Date: 24 Sep 04 - 09:00 PM I'm with your daughter, and feel a swell of pride to know she exists, Heric. Indivisible monism holds, rather reasonably, that there are not two of any thing, because every individual thing is a singular instance. This leaves math a useful conceptual tool, but conceptually wrong as a proposition. 1 and one are just what they are, we merely choose to regard them as two. Has she been reading David Hume, or what? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: mack/misophist Date: 24 Sep 04 - 09:15 PM The number of all possible integer numbers is less than the number of all possible points on a line, which is in turn less than the number of all posswible geometric solids. Figure it out for yourselves. It's obvious. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: CarolC Date: 24 Sep 04 - 09:20 PM Ohmygod, she's seven now, heric? How time flies. Well, you already know what I think about your daughter's perspicacity and intelligence. You've got a pair of winners there, and no doubt about it. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: GUEST,heric Date: 24 Sep 04 - 09:24 PM Fred: I've stopped asking her. The answer is always "I was just thinking." When she was five she used to torment me with questions about the begoinning of time, and about God making himself - how and when (and where). Thanks Carol (she's an artist as well. . .) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Amos Date: 24 Sep 04 - 09:36 PM Good on ya heric -- please encourage her, no matter how rough it is ion you personally -- it is a noble sacrifice for the good of civilization as a whole! Mathematically, 1+1=2, because the rules are s defined. In the real world, the absolute uniqueness of an object means there is no true category (as Fred describes above) and in many other ways a great deal of our "knowledge" is elective. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Teresa Date: 24 Sep 04 - 09:52 PM There are billions and billions of stars in the universe. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Little Hawk Date: 24 Sep 04 - 09:56 PM And the light we see emanating from them happened a very long time ago...so they might not actually BE there anymore! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: GUEST,John O'Lennaine Date: 24 Sep 04 - 09:57 PM An infinitely small point is called a singularity. A black hole is a singularity. (I think) The sensitivity of dogs' noses is highly overrated. My dog needs to stick his nose right into a turd which I can smell from ten feet away. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Little Hawk Date: 24 Sep 04 - 10:04 PM Yes, but he LIKES the way it smells! Don't you stick your nose in things you like the smell of, John? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Bill D Date: 24 Sep 04 - 11:09 PM boring science stuff some of us believe: available living space and food supply is finite---population is expanding. The math is not pretty. in a few million years, a dumb ape-like creature's decendants can become a rocket scientist...or even j0hn from Hull. stopping distance in a vehicle increases on a downhill slope, on ice or water, and varies according to the amount of alcohol in the blood of the driver. bullets from a legal gun will kill the innocent just as easily as from an illegal gun. houses built in flood plains and on ocean fronts get flooded and blown away. Entropy will get you if you don't watch out..........in fact, entropy will get you if you do watch out. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: freda underhill Date: 24 Sep 04 - 11:17 PM the world is round nuclear power is safe and iraq has weapons of mass distruction (sorry) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Little Hawk Date: 24 Sep 04 - 11:19 PM What you see is what you get. (or not) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Stilly River Sage Date: 24 Sep 04 - 11:35 PM Western societies privilege science over other forms of knowlege or knowing, thus enabling this discussion to take place among members of those Western societies. Western societies are not good at questioning (challenging) science (aside from a few issues, such a medical topics where ethos sometimes manages to trump science.) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Mary in Kentucky Date: 25 Sep 04 - 12:27 AM ahem...Little Hawk...I hate to be the one to tell you this, but Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Lonesome EJ Date: 25 Sep 04 - 01:20 AM Bob mounts a bicycle in Steubenville. He pedals uphill for three hours, then pedals downhill for 1 hour at double the uphill speed. He arrives in Martinsburg at 5:45 PM. Meanwhile, Bob's friend Mike leaves Steubenville two hours earlier than Bob. Bob walks the uphill stretch at a speed of 2 miles per hour. Exhausted, he rests for 1/2 hour on a large rock near the road. At 12:15, Mike notices Bob pedaling past. Filled with jealousy and rage, he throws a 12 oz rock at Bob but misses, putting a hole in the windshield of a milk truck traveling 30 miles per hour and bound from Warrenton which is 14 miles away. The truck driver stops and chases Mike toward Steubenville for 15 minutes. Mike is a track athlete and is able to run at a speed of 7 mph. The truck driver has a weak heart, and chest pains limit him to a speed of 5 mph. If the truck driver stops after two minutes and resumes the pursuit in his truck at a top speed of 67 mph, will the truck driver be able to run Mike down and hide the body in some fallen timber before Bob reaches Steubenville where he is having an affair with Mike's widow? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Little Hawk Date: 25 Sep 04 - 01:45 AM LOL! An inspired entry, LEJ. I'm glad to see you're back in form. That reminds me of many similar and truly detestable questions I was asked in high school science and math courses. The people who dream up such stuff and inflict it on innocent youngsters should be suspended naked from coconut palms and assaulted by swarms of irritated iguanas. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Bev and Jerry Date: 25 Sep 04 - 02:14 AM Sorry, Little Hawk but: "Fresh water freezes into a solid (called ice) if you lower the temperature to 0 degrees Celsius or below." Only a at a pressure of one atmosphere. "A square is a 4-sided figure, all of its sides being of equal dimension." That's a rhombus. If it has four right angles in it it's a square. You see, here on Mudcat we can agree on nothing. Bev and Jerry |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Peace Date: 25 Sep 04 - 02:39 AM A square is someone who's not cool or hip. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Gurney Date: 25 Sep 04 - 02:44 AM Not even on the pint of sand added to.... I'd contend that a pint of sand added to the marbles doesn't make two pints, but marbles added to the sand WOULD. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: DMcG Date: 25 Sep 04 - 03:08 AM Scientific facts are always disputable, because either you don't say everything about them (dropped things fall at 32m/s/s? Not on the moon) or you don't say them precisely enough (32? Are you sure its not 31.99967523?) Scientific theories are always disputable. You can always replace a theory with a better theory (more accurate, simpler, more complete ...). Scientists are a completely different matter, and will insist they are right in spite of the above. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Teresa Date: 25 Sep 04 - 03:25 AM Well, I have to admit that I've always found science fascinating. And the fascination level depends on the one presenting it. People like Richard feynman, Carl sagan, and Isaac Asimov had a real passion for knowledge, and it showed. Now, if someone taught any subject/discipline, including spirituality, in a dispassionate manner, I'd be bored to tears. T |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: freda underhill Date: 25 Sep 04 - 04:03 AM a nut is something soft and tasty inside a hard shell. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: GUEST,John O'Lennaine Date: 25 Sep 04 - 04:08 AM Lonesome EJ - No, he won't. Not according to my calculations. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Georgiansilver Date: 25 Sep 04 - 04:30 AM I'm sure this came from another thread but here goes anyway with due respect to the person who submitted it. "If a man wishes to fight you, walk a mile in his shoes(now here comes the fact bit) That way you will be a mile away and he will have no shoes" Best wishes. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: kendall Date: 25 Sep 04 - 04:42 AM When it comes to lobsters, LH is right. There are two colors, blue and yellow that make up the green of a normal lobster. I have seen countless yellow lobsters, and countless blue ones. They are simply missing the other color.In a couple of very rare cases, I have seen one with yellow on one side and blue on the other; split right down the middle as if painted that way. Regardless, they all turn red when cooked. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Doug Chadwick Date: 25 Sep 04 - 05:10 AM "In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it." George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-Four |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: GUEST,John O'Lennaine Date: 25 Sep 04 - 06:48 AM E does not equal mc squared, it equals 2mc. Energy is circumfral. Eistein thought it was areal. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 25 Sep 04 - 08:25 AM Lonesome EJ The problem is insoluble! Insufficient data supplied! The driver, having stopped because he was totally buggered, decided to go back to get his truck. But if he was totally buggered, how long did he roll around on the grass clutching his chest before he got his breath back, and just how fast did he crawl back to his truck? Robin |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Chris Green Date: 25 Sep 04 - 08:28 AM "Did you know you've got four miles of tubing inside you? This means none of the food in your body is ever really fresh." Peter Cook |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Amos Date: 25 Sep 04 - 09:53 AM Light seemingly travels 186,000 miles in one second. We are roughly 93 Million miles from our sun; it takes light from the sun about eight minutes (480 seconds) to reach us. In one hour, light travels about 744 million miles. There are 8,760 hours in one year - a light year is about 6 trillion miles. The nearest star to our sun is four light years away. Our galaxy is about 160,000 light years in diameter, and about 2000 light years thick. We are located near the outer edge, on an inner spiral arm. We may not like it, but that is where we are. We are thinking of moving to a better neighborhood. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Boring science stuff we all believe... From: Stilly River Sage Date: 25 Sep 04 - 10:59 AM At the rate Dubya is applying his knowledge of political science these days, the planet will get there in wee bits. . . (that of course is conjecture not a fact) |
