Things To Do Before You Die 675
Lu Xun writes "A group of British scientists has brought some meaning to our lives by providing a list of 100 scientifically-oriented things to do before you die. The suggestions include 'joining the 300 Club at the South Pole (they take a sauna to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, then run naked to the pole in minus 100 F) or learning Choctaw, a language with two past tenses - one for giving information which is definitely true, the other for passing on material taken without checking from someone else.'"
Anyone have more info (Score:5, Interesting)
Obligatory Fight Club reference (Score:0, Interesting)
OPMD2: "PAINT A PICTURE!"
Korean has two tenses for certainty (Score:3, Interesting)
The Lanuage isnt that weird.... (Score:0, Interesting)
Plus for every tense you have... past present, future, conditional,etc. there is the subjuntive that expresses desires and doubts. It seems to me that the argument for learning this language is rather weak as I can get a handful of confusion from Spanish, not to mention im sure there are alot more languages like this
DNA extraction with spit & gin (Score:2, Interesting)
Choktaw (Score:5, Interesting)
And if so, would that mean that an unscrupulous person would be more likely to use the "definitely true" tense?
Would marketing types use it exclusively?
#101: See the shock wave on an airplane wing (Score:5, Interesting)
As the plane goes faster, the shockwave is pushed back toward the trailing edge. As the plane slows, it moves toward the leading edge. And during turbulence, the wave will flutter.
Language with two past tenses (Score:2, Interesting)
For what its worth, my native language, Macedonian, has two past tenses almost exactly like the above: one for things you personally witnessed, and the other for things you don't know first hand but think are true.
I find this quite natural. Imagine like having a separate past tense form for "she was there" as opposed to "she supposedly was there".
99 things left to go.
What I wanted... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:DNA extraction with spit & gin (Score:5, Interesting)
Beer (Score:2, Interesting)
"NIPPLES!! I HAVE NO NIPPLES!!!" -Happy Noodle Boy
what a great idea (Score:1, Interesting)
For one thing there are only like a dozen things on the list. For another there are no instructions about how to actually accomplish any of those things.
Hey! I'd like to suggest that everyone should cure cancer before they die! Well that's nice, dipshit, but how would you suggest everyone accomplish that?
I looked for the link to the real list that was full of 100 things to do and had contact information on how you could actually do them, but didn't find it. What a great idea this article was. Some scientific publication should actually write such an article.
I'm bitter that this article wasn't as cool as it should have been.
Re:Brief primer... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Become a diamond (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Anyone have more info (Score:3, Interesting)
What these researchers had done was created a sled like device which they then placed cadavers on (they had cut the bodies at about mid-shoulder and mounted them on this sled) They then had implanted the spine with various sensors. They then basically sent the sled into a wall to simulate a front-end collision. The research was very interesting and at the same time very disturbing.
Try ecstasy (Score:1, Interesting)
There probably is no greater emotion, or feeling one could possibly feel than under the influence of E. It's something I think everyone should have the privilege of experiencing before they die.
I think people on their death-beds (cancer, pneumonia, etc) should be able to legally sign-up for it.
Re:Anyone have more info (Score:5, Interesting)
Cadaver studies are done in many interesting fields where trauma to the human body needs to be explored. In automotive crash tests, they don't usually strap a corpse into the driver seat and run the Nash Rambler into a wall.
Human cadavers are used for two purposes: calibrating test instruments and assessing traumatic effects of measured forces. The first use is simple - you can measure a force, but what exactly does that mean? Is it enough to crush a ribcage, or to fracture an average skull? Test dummies are designed to mimic tolerances determined by cadaver studies, and research with corpses continues in order to further development on the next generation of dummy and computer models. The second use is more medical - what happens to a joint, bone, or other tissue when subjected to a massive impact or torsional force? How does the body fail, and what methods can be used to repair it?
Current automotive cadaver studies are frequently being done with limb prosections, not the whole body. Automotive engineering protects the body trunk pretty well, to the point where previously fatal accidents are frequently survivable. Nowadays, the focus is on crippling injuries to the extremities - people are surviving, but are being left with crushed legs, hands, arms, etc.
An absolutely fascinating book is Mary Roach's Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers [amazon.com].
Re:Riiight ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Here's a Cluestick (Score:4, Interesting)
F puts 0 and 100 at the edges of the extreme temperature ranges experienced in my country. In January, it can get to around 0 (some years not quiet, others a bit below), and summer heat tops out at 100. So, it seems to be a better fit for describing the weather.
The Mystery of 137 (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a most profound and beautiful question associated with the observed coupling constant, e the amplitude for a real electron to emit or absorb a real photon. It is a simple number that has been experimentally determined to be close to -0.08542455. (My physicist friends won't recognize this number, because they like to remember it as the inverse of its square: about 137.03597 with about an uncertainty of about 2 in the last decimal place. It has been a mystery ever since it was discovered more than fifty years ago, and all good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it.) Immediately you would like to know where this number for a coupling comes from: is it related to pi or perhaps to the base of natural logarithms? Nobody knows. It's one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man. You might say the "hand of God" wrote that number, and "we don't know how He pushed his pencil." We know what kind of a dance to do experimentally to measure this number very accurately, but we don't know what kind of dance to do on the computer to make this number come out, without putting it in secretly!
The real mystery to this number, which the article hints at, is that it can be defined in a variety of interesting ways, including as (charge of an electron)^2 over (4 pi epsilon-naught h-bar c)- a formula that involves quantum mechanical (Planck's constant), relativistic (c) and mathematical (pi) constants produces a dimensionless number in the neighborhood of 1/137. The number itself is not so important (except to a bunch of people who have applied numerological methods to its study, most notably Arthur Eddington); rather, the issue figuring out the relationship between the fundamental constants that pop up everywhere in calculations (like h, c, and pi) and the universe that these calculations describe.
Re:The hardest part (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Language with two past tenses (Score:2, Interesting)
taa beshe tamu = she was there
taa bila tamu = she allegedly was there (or "she was there, I'm told")
Similar forms exist for all other verbs.
In your language, which looks like Serbian if I'm not mistaken, I think there is no such distinction (but I may be wrong, don't know it that well).
As for for your question about the 4 past tenses you mentioned, yes, we do have additional past tenses similar to those, e.g. definite vs indefinite, and also finished vs. unfinished, i.e. forms for describing events that happened in the past and finished, versus events that started in the past and may still be ongoing. I didn't mention them as they were not relevant to the discussion.
Choctaw pedantry (Score:4, Interesting)
1 -- The distinction between direct and reported speech is not one of tense
2 -- Choctaw has _three_ past tenses
This pedantry brought to you by Pedant's Revolt (tm)
In Canada (Score:5, Interesting)
Fun fact, -40 degrees F is equal to -40 degrees C. At these temperatures, the radio weather reports from the little town in northern Alberta where I lived use to include how many minutes it would be before exposed flesh froze (if there was a wind, the time dropped significantly, to under a minute in severe cases). Working outside at these temps is not fun. I'm just glad I didn't have to do survival training at -60C like some of my friends where were in the Military had to do.
Linguistic Silliness (Score:3, Interesting)
Every language I've seen so far has some way to indicate doubt or lack of authority about what you're saying. For example, many Indo-European languages use the subjunctive mood (also called "conjunctive") rather than a separate tense for that purpose, and even English still uses the past subjunctive to indicate a condition that is contrary to fact: "if I *were* god" (but I'm not). We also use the subjunctive for something that someone else wants to happen: "I insist that he *go*" (the indicative would be "goes").
Perhaps those scientists could find something more useful to do with their time, such as encouraging people to send postcards to a dying boy.
Re:Here's a Cluestick (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Riiight ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah, but just think of how easy it would be to filter out people as they talk.
A nice simple "this man has no idea what he's talking about" test to determine that salesman has no concept of what any of the features actually do.
Oh, the possibilities
=)
Choctaw (Score:2, Interesting)
To Spin the Moon? (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides, who knows what boondoggle projects the Solar Congress of 2470 will be involved with? Properly terraforming Venus might involve speeding up the planet's rotation. If you consider changing the rotation of a planet to be impossible, calculate the relative magnitudes of the angular momentum of its spin, and of its orbit around the sun. Moving some of the anglular momentum from the orbit to the spin can change a planet's orbit slightly while changing its spin drastically. This process can either release energy or require it, depending upon the direction of change. If the process releases energy, it might be used as a power source in 2470...