The more you know!

[DaveTheFishGuy]

Hyenas are more closely related to cats than dogs, though.

[Shuckle]

There are 2 options here, the way I see it.

1. The ancestor of the dog was some kind of wolf - not a currently existing species, but something different. This would not be a difficult mistake to make because wolves don't exactly have a fossil record, and those who knew about the origin of the domestic dog didn't or couldn't record anything about it.

2. Human meddling has altered the relationship between dogs and wolves such that the similarities between them are reduced to a point where they act as though they are traits acquired through interbreeding.

3. The people conducting the study have very nebulous ideas about traits and where they come from. What's the difference between a "base" trait and what I can only label "peripheral" traits? How can you say for sure that the very well-defined canine traits that dogs and wolves share are "NOT basic traits" but instead something gained through interbreeding? This just seems fishy to me.

[Doppleganger]

Although panda bears almost exclusively eat bamboo, they have a carnivore's digestive system. They have special microbes in their gut that allow them to (poorly) digest the cellulose in bamboo. Baby pandas, born with sterile intestines, have to eat their mother's feces to get these bacteria.

Hypothetically, I think if there were ever a food crisis, young humans would be able to populate their intestines with panda bear flora by eating those feces. Since the panda is a carnivore, its gut flora would be more likely to not be out-competed by other bacteria in the environment, unlike say a human trying to adapt to a cow's intestinal flora.

I don't know the full extent of this, but I think one would be able to fully digest things like celery and corn, thus gaining more nutritional value from just vegetables alone.

Maybe it's a solution for vegan/vegetarians: go eat panda poop, and you won't have to eat amino enzyme pills.

[Mercutio]

I hate pandas so much for this and many other reasons.

[Doppleganger]

A Jesuit described discovering the skunk in a 1634 paper.

Originally Posted by The Jesuit Relations

The other is a low animal, about the size of a little dog or cat. I mention it here, not on account of its excellence, but to make of it a symbol of sin. I have seen three or four of them. It has black fur, quite beautiful and shining; and has upon its back two perfectly white stripes, which join near the neck and tail, making an oval which adds greatly to their grace. The tail is bushy and well furnished with hair, like the tail of a Fox; it carries it curled back like that of a Squirrel. It is more white than black; and, at the first glance, you would say, especially when it walks, that it ought to be called Jupiter's little dog. But it is so stinking, and casts so foul an odor, that it is unworthy of being called the dog of Pluto. No sewer ever smelled so bad. I would not have believed it if I had not smelled it myself. Your heart almost fails you when you approach the animal; two have been killed in our court, and several days afterward there was such a dreadful odor throughout our house that we could not endure it. I believe the sin smelled by Saint Catherine de Sienne must have had the same vile odor.

Spoiler: show

That reads like a modern-day blog post, rife with pop culture references of the day.

[Talon87]

Overdose deaths are now the nation's leading cause of death by injury, tallying more than 46,000 annual fatalities and surpassing car accidents and firearms incidents.

Source

[Talon87]

The eighth longest-running manga in Japanese history, Oishinbo, was placed on indefinite hiatus by its publisher in May 2014 in response to harsh criticism following a chapter in which the protagonist, on return from a trip to Fukushima, suffers a curious nosebleed. (The implication appears to have been that his nosebleed was the result of radiation poisoning, and that Fukushima will give you radiation sickness if you visit.)

Apparently this controversy led to renewed discussion about the dangers of radiation, the safety of visiting Fukushima, etc, by both sides of each debate. Consequently, people credit the manga's misstep as raising awareness about the issues at hand.

[Doppleganger]

I know about that well! In fact, it forms a major plot point of my visual novel!

Incidentally, the Japanese appear to have a very superstitious approach to radiation sickness, treating it like an infectious disease. Obviously, the atomic bombs are a driving reason why, as that incident has penetrated deep into the cultural awareness. There was a long, current even, history of discrimination against hibakusha.

It's interesting that Oishinbo might have believed in it! Or was it intended as a joke? If it was, poor taste.

Oh, but the nosebleed thing, I need to remember that one.

[Doppleganger]

"Eeyore" does not sound anything like "hee haw".

*attempts to pronounce Eeyore with a British accent*

Well fudge me silly.

[Talon87]

Even manufacturers of cotton underwear are requesting that consumers not use chlorine bleach on their products. Huh. Did some light research. Apparently it has something to do with 1) chlorine breaking down fabrics in general and 2) chlorine breaking down the elastic bands in underwear. The Internet's DIY sites are overflowing with Clorox-phobes who advise the use of peroxides and deliberately bluing your clothes.

I will continue to use Clorox when washing my whites. All you need is a capful, people, not a cup.

[Doppleganger]

Peroxide like hydrogen peroxide? That would be outrageously expensive, and far more costly than just replacing the white underclothes once they're worn out.

[Doppleganger]

Laser weapons don't only exist, you can make them in your own home!

What this guy accomplished makes me feel dumb and has created some sense of motivation for learning physics and engineering better. I saw a guy with an insane, home-made flashlight too. This kind of electronicware is really interesting.

But, as spectacular as that 40w laser looked, I don't think the burn would have been lethal. He'd have to upgrade the LEDs to something in the UV range, and then boost it even further with more LEDs.

[Doppleganger]

Reading the Japanese Wikipedia, I noticed today a certain article was featured, so I clicked it...



...and promptly freaked out.

It's an article about leukemia, but the image at the right is not leukemic. It's normal, with a big lymphocyte in the center. It looked to me like the article was suggesting the image as one of leukemia...the English equivalent had a much more traditional photo in its article.

But I Google Translated the Japanese caption:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia.jp

Healthy person of normal blood. One certain cells white blood cells in the center. White blood cells only a few of 1/500 from 1/1000 of red blood cells in normal blood. In addition, each photo is a stained image as easy to see. Leukocytes or immature cells that do not stain are colorless and translucent.

So all's well. Still an odd picture to kick off one's article.

[Doppleganger]

Okay, so my last post wasn't particularly topical, but this one sure is.

Lately, there's been this ad on some sites that says "Forget Googling your own name". I couldn't forget the ad, and being a disobedient son that I am, I did type in my own name.

That lead me to an interesting article...two identical Irish girls take DNA test to see if they're related.

Turns out that there's a third girl who also looks like they do, and is also unrelated to them. Such makes me wonder if Irish genes are more prone to the same error frequency that leads to that face and body-type, because the coincidence of three girls, same age, same area with the same face but are un-related seems pretty dang remote. There must be an underlying variable that's made this "doppelganger" phenomenon possible.

[Doppleganger]

Ravens can talk to one another.

No, I don't mean that "squawk when there's danger". I mean really talk:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Linguist Derek Bickerton, building on the work of Bernd Heinrich, has recently argued that ravens are one of only four known animals (the others being bees, ants, and humans) who have demonstrated displacement, the capacity to communicate about objects or events that are distant in space or time from the communication. Young, unmated common ravens roost together at night, but usually forage alone during the day. However, when one discovers a large carcass guarded by a pair of adult ravens, he will return to the roost and communicate his find. The next day, a flock of young ravens will fly to the carcass, and chase off the adults. Bickerton argues that the advent of linguistic displacement was perhaps the most important event in the evolution of human language, and that ravens are the only other vertebrate to share this with humans

[Doppleganger]

The Tsar Bomb, the most powerful nuclear warhead ever detonated, is definitely less well known than the two atomic bombs that ended World War II (Little Boy and Fat Man). At that, because fewer people, especially born toward the end or after the Cold War, know about it, it's difficult to visualize or empathize with why Europeans are so afraid of that name.

Here's a chart that helps visualize the strength of that bomb:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Although simplistic fireball calculations predicted the fireball would hit the ground, the bomb's own shock wave reflected back and prevented this.[12] The fireball reached nearly as high as the altitude of the release plane and was visible at almost 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) away from where it ascended. The mushroom cloud was about 64 kilometres (40 mi) high (over seven times the height of Mount Everest), which meant that the cloud was above the stratosphere and well inside the mesosphere when it peaked. The cap of the mushroom cloud had a peak width of 95 kilometres (59 mi) and its base was 40 kilometres (25 mi) wide.

The most powerful non-nuclear weapon, the Father of All Bombs (also of Soviet design), has a blast yield of approximately 44 tons of TNT. Little Boy (the Hiroshima bomb) had a blast yield of 15 kilotons (or 15,000 tons of TNT), 341x the strength of the FOAB.

[Talon87]

A friend at work shared this story of Diogenes with me:

When scolded for masturbating in public, Diogenes said, "I wish it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing my belly."

Amazing on several very different levels. I'm repulsed by his public indecency yet impressed by his sagacity.

[Doppleganger]

Dogs are omnivores. But cats are obligate carnivores.

Dogs can, apparently, eat and digest vegetables and grasses.

[Crys]

Originally Posted by Doppleganger

Dogs are omnivores. But cats are obligate carnivores.

Dogs can, apparently, eat and digest vegetables and grasses.

I thought this was common knowledge lmao. I see my dog eating plants all the time. Most of the time it's a "why the fuck are you eating that random plant" when he's outside, but sometimes he consumes actual vegetables.

[Mercutio]

Yeah you can get a lot of veggie dog food for this exact reason. It seems odd to me but vaguely makes sense when I consider that humans don't need to eat meat at all, we just like the taste.

[Selena]

No we "need" meat in the sense that we need to pay close attention to our diet if we don't eat meat. We can do without it, but we need to eat some specific stuff to still get the stuff we'd otherwise get from it. Going cold turkey on meat is not a smart thing to do.

[Doppleganger]

Well, the other part of this is that carnivores can eat almost any animal, including bacterial cultures, for food, while what we can consume on the plant side is more limited.

Chickens are omnivores, as are certain species of bats, but chickens eat seeds and bats eat fruit. You need a very specialized digestive system like the cow or termite to digest cellulose, both of which are comparatively rare among the omnivores.

That's why the dog part was surprising to me. Dogs can eat grass? That is super rare.

[Samayouru]

Gerbils express affection and gratitude by winking at each other. They also "cluck" when happy, but most of the time humans can't hear them.

Source? I own two Gerbils and I'm well versed in their "language". :P

[Doppleganger]

The easiest way to tell male and female brown bears apart:

Female bears urinate behind themselves, between their hind legs
Male bears urinate in front of themselves, ahead of their hind legs.

[phoopes]

Why are you watching bears pee you sick fuck? Geez I thought you cared about privacy