Nice. Most things are even understandable (I just browsed through it :D ;) ).

I personally still hold the theory that there might have been remnant Dinosaurs - been eradicated by early human - very much like the whole large fauna in North America.

Based on what?

pibbur who finds this hard to understand.

There is no real clear scientific evidence for the theory that the early humans did eradicate the northamerican pleistocene megafauna. At the moment the paradigma under most scientist is a mixture of several causes where the most dominant factor is the climate change at the pleistocene/quarternary epoch boundary.

And there is absolutly zero evidence for a human extinction of the dinosaurs. In fact some dinosaur remains where found in the oldest tertiary deposits, but milions of years before the first Anthropoidea (higher primates) came into existence if you ignore molecular evidence that at the moment is not backed up by the fossil record. So there is a hight probability that some dinosaurs survived the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, but they did not survive long enough to ever make contact with even the oldest human "forefathers".

While some of it I already knew, that griffin theory there is superb!
Never heard about it before and definetly feels possible. Great catch.

I am wearing denim jeans with a denim shirt today. I have been informed that this is known as the 'Canadian tuxedo'. Looking in the mirror, I think it looks a bit like the outfit worn by the young Castro.

LOL LOL LOL, when the family gets together and we look back on old pictures my sister always reminds me that I wore the Canadian tuxedo all the time. Plus I had hockey hair

Probably - but hunting them down would be a neat explanation as well.

I think that there is still some sort of hesitation to believe that early human could be responsible for such a greatg extinction. It's like naive believing about early humans being so much better than we are.

The Maori managed to do it, actually.

I know. But I can't help but imagine it.

At least - Dinosaurs had been able to adapt, just look at Antarctica. Even although it was located at a different place at that time, Dinosaurs were adapted so a colder climate.

But what I just cannot get out of my head is this : Why are "Dragons" so similar throughout the world ? Why are they known to almost every culture ?

To me, it's as if people either knew

- large skelewtons (which are gone by now)
- large reptiles
- or, least probable - surviving Dinosaurs, maybe even in Africa, then perhaps being carried out by the "out of africa" spreading.

There are so much tales of humans slaughtering "Dragons" that I believe that something must've spawned them. And so many humans killing them would surely eradicated any surviving rest of older species.

I also had hockey hair for many years. That made me think of the National Anthem scene in Goon, for some reason. I just love the announcer. :biggrin:

Language Challenge (German-Spanish-Swedish)

I understand some Swedish…

I haven't seen it mentioned in the "What I've been watching" thread, which is very understandable, but I don't want to create "What I've not been watching", thread, so I guess it fits here:

"United Passions".

For those of you who don't know, it's the story of FIFA, as seen by FIFA, starring Sam Neill(!) and Gerard Depardieu(!). It's paid for by FIFA, which according to reviewers is very apparent. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have bought enough reviewers, because the scores are terrible. 1 on Metacritic, 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, and it hasn't exactly been a success in theaters. Makes me wonder if the number of reviewers will exceed the number of ordinary watchers (and by that I don't mean Watchers).

It's still worth mentioning, because when a movie, a game, whatever is slaughtered, reviews can be very entertaining.

I give you The Guardian:
"Even without the current headlines, United Passions is a disgrace. It’s less a movie than preposterous self-hagiography, more appropriate for Scientology or the Rev Sun Myung Moon. As cinema it is excrement. As proof of corporate insanity it is a valuable case study"

New York Times:
"United Passions is one of the most unwatchable films in recent memory, a dishonest bit of corporate-suite sanitizing that’s no good even for laughs"

New York Post
"hilariously ill-timed film

I leave the rest to you, there's a lot out there well worth reading about a film that is wel worth not watching.

pibbur who hasn't seen the movie

A not particularly interesting list of possible superheroes: http://listverse.com/2013/03/24/10-o…e-superheroes/.

But I'll direct your attention to item 6, captain Australia@brisbane. I think I know the secret identy of this one.

Pibbur who is puzzled that nobody is able to figure out the secret identity of Superman, and even more, why he has to have a secret identity at all. The need for Superman things clearly demands 24/7, working as a journalist is a waste of time..

My brother lives in Vancouver (No 4) :)

Say no more!!!

Pibbur who says "no more"

An application of Algorithm/Computer theory from Scientific American: When the Mona Lisa is NP Hard

In the case you don't know what NP Hard means: It's a class of problems that are hard (computationally expensive) to solve.

NPibbur who finds things like this funny. Very funny.

Fox News almost kills a drummer by holding a battleaxe throwing contest in a busy city street.



Next up on Fox News, firing arrows directly upwards at a church fete.

The first post ever in this thread, by an earlier incarnation of mine was about the four rare earth elements Yttrium, Erbium, Terbiumn and Ytterbium. There are other chemistry releated posts somewhere in here.

I've decided to continue this proud traition by making a few posts about the transuranian elements, elements with atomic number > 92 wich are produced synthetically. All in all there are now 28 such elements.

We'll start with Californium, Cf with atomic number 98. It's a radioactive metal with half life up to 898 years, depending on the isotope. The most important isotope is Cf-252, with a half-life. Californium is made spontaneously during radioactive decay of Uranium, and can thus occur in the earth crust, but due to the short half-life only in very small quanta, not suitable for mining

Cf-252 is a strong neutron emitter, one microgram radiate 139 milliom neutrons pr minute. This has led to a few practical applications:
1. Starting nuclear reactors.
2. Neutron radiation therapy of some cancers
3. Neutron radiography can be used to check planes for corrosion, bad welding , cracks and others.

In addition, other Californium isotopes can be used as source material for synthesis of even heavier transuranians. The latest element synthesized, Ununoctium with atomic number 118 was made by bombarding Cf-246 with calcium-48, resulting in a total of 3, possibly 4 atoms, which stayed with us for approximately a few microseconds.

Since it has practical applications, some one must produce it, and there are in deed two "factories":
1. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States
2. Research Institute of Atomic Reactors in Dimitrovgrad, Russia

Together these 2 facilities produce 0.275 grams pr year (2003), at the cost of 27 million USD pr gram.

There is an urban legend saying that it can be used for very small nukes, due to it's low critical mass (2.7 kg for Cf-252). But at 27 billion USD per kilogram, and the very slow production rate, I think there's no immediate danger from that "device".

pibbur who currently thinks his critical mass is 113 kg, and is working hard to maintain and improve secure subcriticality

In case you were wondering… why do objects somtimes fall on their own?
It's a fairly wide-spread phenomenon as the following case studies show.

More about transuranian elements: ununoctium.

The element with atomic number 118 was first discovered in 2002 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research@Dubna@Russia (JINR) in 2002, and verified in 2005 by a group of researchers from JINR cooperating with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), USA. It's the heaviest element synthesized so far.

Some key data:

1. Like all new elements it's given a provisional name based on it's atomic numnber, hence ununoctium (from 118). Some time in the future, the powers-that-be (IUPAC) will agree on a permanent name.
2. Ununoctium is produced by colliding Californium-249 with Calcium-48.
3. The 2005 experiment involved shooting 4000000000000000000 calcium atoms at the californium target, over a period of 4 months.
4. In total, 3 or 4 atoms have been detected (indirectly), with a half-life of approximately 0,89 ms, which doesn't leave the scientists much to work with. Still a few predictions have been calculated.
5. It belongs to group 18 in the periodic system, which are the noble gases. But it most likely doesn't behave like a noble gas. In fact it may be more reactive than flerovium and copernicum. Who would have thought that?
6. With an estimated boiling point between 320 and 380 K, unlike the other elements in the group it doesn't even seem to be a gas at all.

BTW: Unonoctium was first announced by the Lawrence Berkely National lab, in 1999. However one year after publication, it was retracted, since 1) nobody, including the lab itself was able to reproduce the event. And 2) the principal author had fabricated data. Ooops!

pibbur who still find things like this very interesting, and who still thinks the element should be named pibburium (Pi).

Currently getting all the fake real men in a paddy of awestruck inadequacy is a quite remarkable youtube How-To video about how to build a Wattle and Daub hut crica somewhere pre BC and back a bit depending on your location:



Remarkably useful if you ever find yourself in a post-apocalypse or stranded on a desert island cut off from the internet and… oh…

Hmm. Seems like something you might need to know. Thus it should be posted in the Things You Need to Know thread. Which we don't seem to have. So.. ok.

pibbur who is not going to create the above mentioned non existing thread. Not today, at least.