ooh - I just ran power and data for a thermal camera at work this week in anticipation of opening to the public, and I know it’s sensitive enough to spot a fart (straight up Predator vision). I just need to figure out how to, eh, bring one to work at the right time to check.
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…
You just want to use me to get high…
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Something like this with added penguin?
Thread tax:
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Today I learned that the difference between 2 consecutive shoe sizes (US and UK according to that Wikipedia article) is 1 barleycorn, roughly 1/3 (or 1/4 by some standards) of an inch (I am 216/288 barleycorns tall depending on standard used). Which of course has some history attached that is rather nifty.
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John Barleycorn is dead.
Long live John Barleycorn!
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Hummingbirds can see UV?? I knew bugs can but birds?
But bugs’ colour spectrum is fairly limited while humming birds can see red, yellow, blue as well. So they postulate : if they see UV, does it blend with red/yellow/blue and create a new single hue (as red+blue=green)? Or is it an overlay?
Dammit I’m going to have to be a bird next time so I can find out.
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I didn’t know hummingbirds could, but some raptors apparently use it to rodent scat in fields to find their trails/markers.
A lot of cell phone cameras pick up at least some UV spectrum (and show it as a pale purple). Handy for checking remote controls (Apple products don’t seem to do this if you iPhone fails this test).
You can extend the range of a number of cell-phone cameras if you’re not afraid to open them up and remove the filters. But some caution is required if you’re then going to run around taking pictures in bright daylight!
Interesting tech they’re using to map the underwater site and provide information to dive visitors. And quite the interesting bit of history and volcanology too!
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Came across this neat little thing :
It’s a 3D map of the human body. One can isolate a particular system (i.e. respiratory) or, on the last tab, a composite of the whole body. Then you can go layer by layer from skin to bones. If you mouse over a specific bit of anatomy it will identify it and give a link to describe it in more detail.
It won’t work if you have blockers in your browser - I use Ghostery and uBlock in Firefox so had to use Microsoft Edge to make it work. And it doesn’t seem to work on mobile - neither my wife’s Android’s stock browser nor my iPhone’s Safari would work.
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Apparently, boredom is more complex and nuanced than I had thought:
“Only boring people become bored” - Chris Hadfield
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How is it that BCers are not taught this in school? I know I wasn’t
BC’s first governor (1858-1864), James Douglas, was of mixed Scottish and African blood ; his wife was mixed Cree and Irish.
Organized into the “African Rifles,” as the Victoria Pioneer Rifle Corps was otherwise known, the volunteer militia was drawn from several hundred Black Americans Douglas had invited north in 1858 to escape the violent racism that afflicted California.
Around the same time, Douglas welcomed hundreds of Chinese settlers who had fled California for Vancouver Island, for the same reasons. It’s why Victoria’s Chinatown is North America’s second-oldest, after San Francisco’s.
Douglas mobilized a force of Metis fighters, the Victoria Voltigeurs.
Douglas managed to negotiate 14 treaties on Southern Vancouver Island, which set aside parcels of land as reserves, and guaranteed the rights of the indigenous peoples to hunt over the unoccupied lands.The “Douglas Treaties” of Southern Vancouver Island were the last covenants secured between the Crown and First Nations west of the Rocky Mountains until the Nisga’a treaty that came into effect on May 11, 2000.
Mifflin Gibbs became the third Black man elected to public office in North America when he was elected to Victoria council in 1866.
During Gibbs’ day, Victoria’s mayor was Lumley Franklin, the first Jewish mayor in what was to become Canada. Similarly, Lumley’s brother Selim had already been elected to serve in British Columbia’s first legislative council, in 1859, the third Jew ever elected to a legislative council in British North America.
Sounds like a propitious start, right?
Nope.
In 1863 & 1864, his replacements (his job was split in two : mainland BC and Vancouver Island) effectively whitewashed the province. Natives and pretty much all non-white immigrants got screwed.
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TIL a whole bunch of stuff, actually:
https://gem.cbc.ca/media/the-nature-of-things/season-59/episode-9/38e815a-0122947a376
Certainly food for thought! Not sure I want to try Chicago-style pizza though - that actually looked rather unappetising.
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I often wonder if we have physiologically adapted to radically increased salt intake over the last 5000+ years.
Sure some wild animals seek out salt but it’s hardly available in significant quantities, and certainly not daily.
“Carnivores get their salt from the meat they consume, especially the organs”.
One sees statements like this, but there’s only so much in a herbivore’s body (certainly not nearly enough for our taste buds) and where is the average herbivore getting their salt?
So if we have adapted, I wonder how it’s contributed to human development. Are we smarter? healthier? stronger? more emotionally sound? Or the opposite? Or negligible?
And for something completely different (although salt is relevant), the original Big Kauhuna’s birthday was yesterday. Duke pretty much singlehandedly introduced surfing to California in 1912(!) and Australia soon after.
I think the problem with statements like the one you quoted is the same issue I had with a number of the scientists in the video (including David Suzuki!) where they continuously treated sodium as synonymous with salt: it is not.
So, for example, the bit about salt build-up in muscles: they were measuring sodium build up in muscles, not sodium chloride. The cartoons made it look like a layer of sodium chloride crystals were being deposited on to the muscles, but that would likely be extremely painful were it to actually occur (the muscular equivalent of gout!). What is much more likely is that the sodium ions are attracted to the organic acid residues that exist in muscle proteins. In which case, the chloride is going to be elsewhere.
While our bodies do indeed need both sodium cations and chloride anions, we don’t actually need both to be from the same source. So it’s quite possible that a lot of dietary intake of sodium amongst carnivores is sodium in forms other than sodium chloride in the blood stream, such as from muscle (meat).
From plants, presumably, which pick up nutrients from the soil. And if the local plants aren’t a sufficient source (and there are no natural salt deposits in the area) then they need supplementation (hence salt licks).
Given how little sodium per kg body weight we need to stay healthy, that’s not really a stretch. And, as I said, if sodium does concentrate in muscle tissue over time you can see how herbivores could be a good source of it for carnivores.
Now, season some nice steaks and let’s get the BBQ going!
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Pat Martino, one the absolute all time great jazz guitarists and probably the one with the best tone, had an aneurysm in 1980 which left him with amnesia.
He had no idea how to play guitar and had to re-teach himself how to play - in large part by listening to himself!
Moral of the story : if you have brain damage, learn to play music!
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All stories everywhere are derived from Odin’s eagle vomit.
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Spaghettification is a word now. A scientific word no less.
An artists description of the event
However, since the initial event the Hubble telescope has revealed a better image
R’amen.
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I will never be able to eat spaghettie and meat balls again.
At least, not without a substantial covering of sauce and parmesan.
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You shouldn’t. Since they eat you!
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