Get Your Facts Right

[Nimrod]

Another favorite, another living fossil...

Saw video of this on PBS years ago...very cool.

This, from the internet...

Male alligators turn on some nifty waterworks to woo their mates. Their backs vibrate beneath the swamp surface, sending columns of water shooting up like a fountain, while the gators punctuate the display with booming bellows. It turns out that this is no ordinary splash: The vibrations and booms create Faraday waves in the water — special oscillations that are not usually found in nature. 

Peter Moriarty, a mechanical engineering major at Boston University, spilled some of the secrets of the Florida swamp at the Acoustical Society of America's annual meeting in Seattle last week.

During a trip to the Gatorama alligator farm in Fort Myers, Fla., Moriarty observed the wobblings and warblings of two bull alligators, nicknamed Goliath and Mr. Chicken. He recorded their bellows and water displays, and played back audio tracks to see how they'd respond.

When Moriarty analyzed the recordings, he found that the gator waves had the signature frequency of Faraday waves.

Faraday waves don't just create a fancy water display — they also travel long distances. Even though people can't hear these subsonic vibrations, they can feel them from far away. "You could be 50 feet from an animal and feel the vibrations up your leg. It’s very powerful," said

Because low-frequency Faraday waves travel so well through water, it makes sense that swamp-living alligators use them to make contact with mates over long distances. "Perhaps the [alligators] that make Faraday waves better would propagate more effectively," Moriarty said.

Next, Moriarty will study the structure of an alligator's armor, to see if there's something about the shape, size or spacing of the protrusions on the back that helps some gators create fitter Faraday waves than others.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Quality Nimrod

No piece of paper can be folded in half more than 7 times

Ironically, watermelons, which are 92% water originated from the Kalahari Dessert in Africa

The fur of the Binturong (Asian Bear Cat) Smells like popcorn. The scent is believed to come from a gland located near the tail.

[gromit]

their is more technology in an I-Phone than was in the lunar lander that landed on the moon,............GOD BLESS ,NIEL ARMSTRONG AND RIP,...........

[RvanSteensel]

Quality Nimrod

No piece of paper can be folded in half more than 7 times

Ironically, watermelons, which are 92% water originated from the Kalahari Dessert in Africa

The fur of the Binturong (Asian Bear Cat) Smells like popcorn. The scent is believed to come from a gland located near the tail.

ive always wanted one of those as a pet.
it used to be quite common in indonesia apparantly , though it may take up to 5years to be able to cuddle them etc

[gromit]

a human spend the average of 3 years of their life on the toilet,..............

[Rusty Shackleford]

@Rvansteelsel Aye that's what they say, but I reckon it would have your finger off first chance it would get

Somniphobia is the fear off sleep

Goodnight

[Taylor]

In 2002, Britney Gallivan got more than seven folds by folding toilet paper over 4000' long. It took seven hours in a shopping mall, but Brtiney was able to achieve 12 folds and also derive an equation relating the width and thickness of a paper to the number of folds achievable.

[Rusty Shackleford]

In 2002, Britney Gallivan got more than seven folds by folding toilet paper over 4000' long. It took seven hours in a shopping mall, but Brtiney was able to achieve 12 folds and also derive an equation relating the width and thickness of a paper to the number of folds achievable.

Britney sounds like a right show-off

Well there Taylor

[Nimrod]

Providing this October goes off as planned, I will have spent 12.5% of my birthdays in Amsterdam. Not bad for a filthy Americano.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Watched James May`s "Everything you need to know about Einstein" tonight

The original autographed print of that pic was sold for $74,324

Taken from the web*

One of the original signed prints of Albert Einstein sticking his tongue out at photographers has been sold by a New Hampshire auction house for $74,324.
Bobby Livingston, of RRAuction.com in Amherst, says the picture was taken in 1951 after a 72nd birthday celebration for the physicist.
Einstein had nine prints made. He signed the print that was auctioned on Thursday and gave it to journalist Howard K. Smith. In his inscription, Einstein said his gesture was aimed at all of humanity. Livingston says it also was aimed at the Red Scare and the McCarthy anti-Communist hearings of the 1950s.
David Waxman of Great Neck, N.Y., is the new owner. He is a specialist in important scientific books and autographs.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Blue Moon coming to a sky above your loaf 31/8/2012



Taken from here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/2 ... 40504.html

Your last chance to see a blue moon until 2015 will come around this Friday (Aug. 31), but don't expect an azure hue in the sky.

In fact, "blue moon" refers not to color, but to rarity. Blue moons are defined as either the fourth full moon in a season, or, more recently, as the second full moon in a month. It's the second definition that covers August's blue moon; the month's first full moon was on Aug. 1.

Blue moons happen because our calendar months don't precisely sync with the moon's orbit. It takes the moon 29.5 days to wax and wane from full to new to full again. With the exception of February, months are longer than that, meaning that once in a while the timing works out so there are two full moons in one month.

Blue moons are best known from the phrase "once in a blue moon," meant to refer to something extremely rare. Two blue moons in a month aren't all that unusual, however; they occur 2.7 years apart on average, though not with great regularity. The last blue moon occurred on Dec. 31, 2009. That "New Year's Eve Blue Moon" also coincided with a partial lunar eclipse for viewers in Europe, Asia, Africa and some parts of Alaska.

Another truly rare event is a year with two blue moons. The last time a single year had two months with two full moons was in 1999. The next time double blue moons will occur is in 2018.

All of these dates are based on a new definition of "blue moon," however. In traditional folklore, blue moons were defined as the third full moon in a season with four (three being the norm). But that definition shifted in 1946, when a writer for Sky and Telescope magazine simplified the definition (or got it wrong, depending on your perspective) to the two-in-a-month phenomenon. The simpler definition caught on.

The moon will be at its fullest at 9:58 a.m. EDT (1358 GMT) on Friday. The next blue moon will occur on July 31, 2015.

[Rusty Shackleford]

[EasilySuede]

Whale vomit and snail secretions are ingredients used by the cosmetic industry...
http://www.smashinglists.com/10-weirdes ... cosmetics/

ye olde whale vomit...


from...
http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012 ... vomit?lite

[Nimrod]

That dead-looking opossum you find might not really be dead.

When threatened or harmed, they will "play possum", mimicking the appearance and smell of a sick or dead animal. This physiological response is involuntary (like fainting), rather than a conscious act. In the case of baby opossums, however, the brain does not always react this way at the appropriate moment, and therefore they often fail to "play dead" when threatened. When "playing possum", the animal's lips are drawn back, the teeth are bared, saliva foams around the mouth, the eyes close or half-close, and a foul-smelling fluid is secreted from the anal glands. Their stiff, curled form can be prodded, turned over, and even carried away without reaction.  The animal will typically regain consciousness after a period of between 40 minutes and 4 hours, a process which begins with slight twitching of the ears.

Ripped from the bosom of Wikipedia.

[EasilySuede]

Nimrodpark is in Hilversum.