22lb Ice Blocks From the Sky 359
cavedwler writes "An article http://www.msnbc.com/news/814100.asp?0dm=-23ET over on MSNBC has an interesting writeup about large ice blocks forming in the upper atmosphere on CLEAR days. Pretty interesting read." The article talks about how this could be a harbinger of massive climactic change. Either way, I'd prefer to not have one of these things smack into my house.
Let's hear it: (Score:5, Funny)
You scream!
We all scream for ice-- SPLAT!
Re:Let's hear it: (Score:2, Funny)
Let's add a melody (Score:5, Funny)
And that prob'ly means concussion soon will make me dead
Re:Let's hear it: (Score:3, Funny)
>You scream!
>We all scream for ice-- SPLAT!
Hmph. At least you got to scream. Most of us just get "Mind that ice cube what ice block splat!"
- With apologies to Red Dwarf.
Best line from the article (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Best line from the article (Score:2)
Not the best line from the article (Score:2)
"I'm not worried that a block of ice might fall on your head," said Martinez-Frias, "but that one might fall on mine."
ok, he didn't say the last part, but I'm sure that's what he was thinking.
Re:Best line from the article (Score:2)
sorry, that fell from my giant scotch glass (Score:3, Funny)
I was swirling it above Spain trying to look down Xui Xuis top.
Sincerely,
--Galacticus
My fair ice block (Score:5, Funny)
So (Score:4, Funny)
Hey hey, put that chunk of ice away *ducks*
Understatement of the year (Score:5, Funny)
A quick look on mathsci.net shows other papers that they have published:
"Lake Superior: Gosh it sure is a lot of water," Journal of Hydrologic modeling.
But seriously (Score:5, Informative)
Martinez-Frias has also published around 130 articles in scientific and technical publications (mainly specialised in Earth Sciences -- Geology, Economic Geology, Mineralium Deposita, Computer and Geoscience, Neues Jahrbuch fur Mineralogy, Geotimes, GeoMarine Letters, Episodes, Geological Magazine, Applied Geochemistry, Journal of Chromatography, AMBIO, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, Meteoritics and Planetary Science, etc.), in high profile multidisciplinary publications (Nature), high prestige international books (Springer-Verlag, Geological Society) in popular magazines, (Mundo Cientifico, Fronteras de la Ciencia y la Tecnología) and in the Scientific supplements of national newspapers (ie El Pais, El Mundo, ABC).
Martinez-Frias is the author of the book "Sulfuros y Sulfosales de Metales Nobles" and co-editor of several books, among which are; "Recursos Minerales de España" (CSIC 1478p) (Spanish Mineral Resources), "Geologia y Metalogenia en Ambientes Oceanicos. Depósitos Hidrotermales Submarinos (Geology and Metallogeny of Seafloor Hydrothermal Deposits) (IEO, 162p) and "Esto es Imposible" (Aguilar, 320p).
Holy.... (Score:5, Funny)
Cut the guy some slack, you think it's easy being the son of God?
Re:Holy.... (Score:4, Funny)
Well, good. I was worried for a bit there.
Like a bad sci-fi movie (Score:2, Insightful)
What's with the dramatic pauses? I was expecting a violin crash after he uttered "Iberian rain".
Back to the topic, what are we to glean from such a shallow article from an entertainment company? Can we get an article from a scientific journal next time? Is this really a new phenomenon, or is it that accounts of ice falling from the sky are discounted? After all, you can't expect the evidence to last very long on a balmy summer day...
Another Slashdot formula crapsule... (Score:5, Funny)
"An article over at [some news site] has an article about [some subject]. Pretty interesting read. They talk about [cut n paste something from article]. Either way, [say something stupidly obvious]."
Sorry. It's monday.
Wha da ya mean? (Score:2)
Wha da ya mean? it beats thinking about it!
Acts of God (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Acts of God (Score:2, Insightful)
I bet somwhere out there there is a free standing rock weighing exactly 666.666kg. That doesn't mean its satan's rock, it means randomly its bound to happen.
Tom
Re:Acts of God (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Acts of God (Score:2)
Re:Acts of God (Score:2)
Kinda fishy (Score:5, Insightful)
mention that hail ONLY comes from thunderstorms.
Just like tornadoes ONLY come from thunderstorms.
And almost all lighting comes from, you guessed it,
thunderstorms. They also fail to talk about the
freezing level. That's how a thunderstorm becomes
a thunderstorm. A cumulus cloud that's growing
upwards because of vorticity (air rising fast)
grows past the freezing level. The top of the
cloud and the bottom of the cloud get different
charges and blammo, you have a big floating battery in the
sky. The hail forms because there are rapidly
moving columns of air moving up and down
in the cloud and water trapped in that column
gets frozen, recoated with water, frozen again,
etc.
The ice clouds he's talking about are
cirrus clouds of some kind. That's basically
any cloud made up of super tiny ice crystals
because they are above the freezing level.
a VERY VERY rare type of cloud is called
cirrocumulus. This is ice crystal clouds in
the shape of the puffy white clouds called
cumulus that sometimes turn into thunderstorms.
The reason these clouds are so rare is because
they are unbelievably heavy. It takes an
incredible amount of 'vorticity' to keep
them up there, and they don't last long.
If you ever see very high puffy cottonball
looking clouds, there's a great chance you'll
have a thunderstorm soon (24-48 hours) because
vorticity (air rising fast) is one of the major
things needed. There is NO WAY upper atmosphere
vorticity is going to hold water in the air
long enough for it to weigh 10 friggin pounds.
There is no way that ice clouds would clump
together and form ice. There is simply no force
there to do that work. You might get a ball of
something more like snow, but definitely not
ice. I'd be more willing to bet some smartass
with a catapult is having fun at the ice factory.
If they said this was related to thunderstorm
activity, I might buy it. But on a clear day?
No way.
Re:Kinda fishy (Score:5, Informative)
Vorticity actually means rotation (turning) of the air, not lifting. However, positive (cyclonic) vorticity near the surface is associated with lifting of the air. That doesn't necessarily mean dramatic convective lifting that produces thunderstorms, but air will be lifted in those regions.
Hail forms in thunderstorms with strong updrafts. These updrafts are needed to keep the hailstones from simply falling out of the cloud. In order to get giant hailstones, the updraft has to be very strong indeed.
A 35 pound chunk of ice is on the order of a 10-inch cube (if it's really solid). That's much bigger than any hailstone ever recorded; the biggest known was about 7 inches long and 4-5 inches on the short axis; hailstones are rarely that solid, and it probably didn't weigh more than 5 pounds or thereabouts. I think it fell in Coffeyville, Kansas during a severe thunderstorm (surely a supercell, with a very persistent, rotating updraft, that may well have spawned a tornado). This isn't rocket science; think about what the terminal velocity of a 35 pound chunk of ice is, and the updraft has to be close to that in velocity.
Any situation where the air is rising that violently is either going to have a very obvious cloud (read: thunderstorm) associated with it; the heat released by the condensation of the water makes the air more buoyant, and hence increases the lift. A dry thermal isn't going to approach that kind of velocity, and even if it did, it would be...well...dry.
What all of that basically amounts to is...well...that dog don't hunt. The only realistic source of that kind of thing is water being dumped by airplanes at high enough altitudes so that it has time to freeze before reaching the surface. A chunk of ice that big should be easy to save long enough to be examined; they should give a few samples to NOAA, say, and let them inspect it.
Re:Kinda fishy (Score:2)
How about Louis Franks ice comets [slashdot.org]?
Re:Kinda fishy (Score:3, Interesting)
> source of that kind of thing is water being dumped by airplanes at high enough altitudes so
> that it has time to freeze before reaching the surface. A chunk of ice that big should be easy to
> save long enough to be examined; they should give a few samples to NOAA, say, and let them inspect
> it.
Agreed. I'd like to see some hard evidence of this given our present knowledge of precipitation formation and cloud physics (which admittedly is pretty limited, but certainly precludes events of these kinds).
The problem I have with the airplane theory, however, is that the instant that the water is ejected from the plane it will break up into thousands upon thousands of tiny drops which will instantly freeze at that altitude. A large mass of water would not freeze instantly due to its large heat capacity, yet at the same time it will not remain together due to the various forces yanking it apart (esp. friction).
So in other words our "megacryometeor" would (for it to form in the 4-9km AGL range) have to grow from a infinitesimally small nucleus (since allegedly the composition of these things is similar to the composition of rain) to the size of at least a basketball before it strikes the earth. Keep in mind that it can't simply start out as a mass of water the size of a basketball (as mentioned earlier), and thus must grow slowly enough to have all the water freeze/vapor condense onto it without losing it all, and yet somehow stay up in the air without the support of a strong upward current of air to balance out its terminal velocity, which will be on the order of 50 m/s (110mph) by the time it is the size of a baseball, let alone a basketball or more. Note that these upward currents of this magnitude occur *only* in the presence of strong thunderstorms.
The only thing I can think of that might remotely be able to do something like this is a very strong jet stream placed favorably next to a mountain range. You could then possibly have very strong vertical winds (this is very favorable for cloud formation, however) up to and even exceeding 50 m/s, and under *just* the right conditions you could probably grow a chunk of ice from nothing other than vapor over a long period of time...however we're talking about growth rates on the order of days and even weeks in the absence of clouds for a chunk of ice of any reasonable size. Thus even this highly idealized setup is not realistic, as it would have to persist steady-state for weeks.
In short, there could be some really weird process out there we haven't the foggiest notion about that is causing this, but I'll believe it when I see it...
Re:Kinda fishy (Score:4, Informative)
One news report that I saw not too long ago was that an ice block smashed through the roof of a house, and investigators on the scene said it came from an airplane. Indeed, it was the same color of blue as the disinfectant in the airplane toilet flushing water. IIRC, they said that the holding tank had a slow leak, and the water made its way to the exterior of the fuselage (sucked through a hole from a popped rivet, perhaps) where it was broken up into a spray by the air rushing past. The spray collected and instantly froze directly behind the leak on the cold aluminum skin where one of the tail fins joined to the fuselage, collecting and forming a sizeable ball of blue ice. (Heating due to friction would have been negligeable here.) As the plane approached for a landing, slowing down and descending into a warmer layer of air, the aluminum skin conducted just enough heat to cause the blob of ice to separate from the surface and fall, crashing through the roof. Into the bathroom of the house. Imagine the odds.
Re:Kinda fishy (Score:2)
Uhhh, terminal velocity is TOTALLY dependent on friction. Without friction, the object would just keep accelerating until it reached relativistic velocities or (much more likely ;-) impacted the surface of the attractor. F = ma = GmM/r^2 and all that...
Re:Kinda fishy (Score:2)
Re:Kinda fishy (Score:2)
dentist give me his expert opinion on some
matter related to brain surgury.
Re:Kinda fishy (Score:2)
Roger Buick is a scary looking guy (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Kinda fishy (Score:2, Interesting)
It must be some monster catapult, considering that these ice hunks have hit in Spain, Australia and Mexico. Or perhaps it is the mutual hobby of ice factory workers all over the world.
Re:Kinda fishy (Score:2)
Err, I think you will find that when there is lightning thunder will invariably follow, unless of course the two events coincide at a point you had chosen to occupy in space-time.
Ergo all occasions at which lightning is present will be definition be classified as thunder storms and no event in which lightning is not present can be so classified.
Re:Kinda fishy (Score:3, Informative)
I said almost, because there are other events that
can cause lightning. Volcanic eruptions and massive
smoke clouds from forest fires come to mind.
However, in accordance with the FMH-1b
(Federal Meteorlogical Handbook) that I had to use
as both a weather forecaster, and weather observer,
YES. In the interests of flight safety, any lightning
observed will generate an immediate SP or (special)
observation to be automatically taken and
recorded as a thunderstorm. (if my memory serves
me correctly. It's been a while)
Re:Kinda fishy (Score:2)
The way I would see it, a volvano erruption could cause a thunderstorm...
Actually, one event that you do list might be the exception is a nuclear explosion. Lightning has certainly been observed in mushroom clouds, however you are not going to be hearing any thunder 'cos there is another noise thats a lot louder....
Re:Kinda fishy (Score:3, Funny)
Y'know, I always thought that lighting came from computer monitors and the sun
It's started (Score:3, Interesting)
It has started:
as heavy as a talent [between fifty and sixty pounds],
of immense size, fell from the sky on the people;
and men blasphemed God for the plague of the hail,
so very great was [the torture] of that plague.
(Revelation 16:21 [biblegateway.com])
Trust me; Fundamentalist sermons will be referring to this story for a long time to come.
Re:It's started (Score:2)
© Copyright 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation?
Re:It's started (Score:5, Funny)
OT: It's started (Score:2)
Would it interest you as much if the passage you found was from old greek myth, or Native American pagan stories?
End of World Doesn't Meet Expectations (Score:2)
Obvious solution ..... (Score:5, Funny)
One word... (Score:3, Funny)
Sky + Falling = Bad News (Score:2)
The Real Question (Score:4, Interesting)
for me is not whether or not ice can form. Of course it can form. The question in my mind is what kind of wind can sustain such a large glob?
Traditional hailstones form in the updrafts of thunderstorms--the more forceful the updraft, the larger the hailstones. This begs the question of what kind of wind is keeping these things aloft and allowing them to form. The answer could be easily found in a wind tunnel. What you need to know is the terminal velocity of these ice "blocks". I assume they are not actually blocks. That would just be too wierd.
Perhaps, there is some kind of ice structure that forms and has a very low terminal velocity... ice parachutes with thick centers? Then, as it falls through the atmosphere whatever it is that reduces the terminal velocity melts, leaving the "payload".
Also, is there any correlation between these things and anything else (like contrails?). If there is, then maybe we could use doppler RADAR to look for clear-air updrafts, and a telescope to view these things as they form. Of course, maybe these things are highly localized--little tornados in the upper atmosphere... maybe they are smaller than the resolution of the RADAR.
At any rate, I just hope these things stay away from my head.
Re:The Real Question (Score:2, Informative)
The wind that's holding up the block wouldn't be very visible either if it really was in a clear sky. Rain reflects back to the radar, but plain wind isn't very easy to see.
The real meal deal (Score:2)
So THAT'S what that was... (Score:2, Interesting)
Actual Martinez-Frias Research Site Link (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Actual Martinez-Frias Research Site Link (Score:2)
Yeah, well I went and looked at those links and while the first one contains lots of explainations as to what didn't cause the ice blobs to form, there was no clear theory as to what did. There was, however, quite a number of links to sites and reports by the various Chicken Little departments of the UN, NASA, etc.
So, as far as I can tell, this dude says "it's not meteors, comets, or frozen piss from planes, so it must be global warming."
Either Way (Score:3, Funny)
Massive climactic change? My ass. (Score:2, Insightful)
Pfft. The media talks about how EVERYTHING could be a harbinger of massive climactic change, and furthermore how it's OBVIOUSLY the fault of technology and Western democracy.
I've quit listening to their made-up crap. It's blips of statistical noise overlying a long-term cycle of temperature variations that pre-existed any human life.
Climate change has become grant-grubbing junk science harnessed to the service of failed leftist political ideologies.
Pay no attention to the watermelon wackos. Buy that SUV if you want one and drive on without guilt!
-ccm
Re:Massive climactic change? My ass. (Score:2)
I live on a mountain in Vermont, and even then there are days when I have to be careful what I do- because I'm asthmatic, and believe it or not we get dangerous levels of SMOG occasionally. Worse than LA, sometimes. It comes up from New York and New Jersey when the weather conditions are a certain way.
We also get to have meat with feces again, Bush has rolled back some of the FDA regulations thanks to lobbying from meat packing corporations, and people are already getting sick. The tainted meat, when discovered, is not destroyed- it's just cooked and resold.
Sure, there are people out there who are as utterly irresponsible as the original poster. And some of them are completely shameless. There's also a mental illness called 'schizoid' which is similar, as it's about complete disregard for society and for others.
Nobody said this was a virtue, or even socially acceptable- nobody worth listening to, anyhow.
So the next time you see someone spout off with some 'go buy your SUV, dammit, no guilt!', think to yourself: if it wasn't for the social responsibility that YOU scorn, buddy, I would gladly beat the crap out of you, or simply off you to improve the species.
These guys DEPEND completely on OTHER people being socially enlightened enough to not kick their asses...
Jan. 8 2000 - Spain (Score:5, Informative)
When and where falled the spanish Ice Blocks:
Lluvia de Hidrometeoros [anomalia.org](Spanish)
cronology [worldonline.es](Spanish)
Aeroliting for profit & fun: How to make an aerolite [wanadoo.es] (Spanish)
Are aerolites alien creatures? [retecal.es](Spanish)
Good Aim (Score:2, Funny)
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/nypost/index.html?t
In other words ... (Score:2)
Sounds like Louis A. Frank's ice comets... (Score:2)
Why is everything that seems newly discovered suddenly a sign of impending doom?
Re:Sounds like Louis A. Frank's ice comets... (Score:2)
A snowball's chance (Score:2)
kinetic energy is one half mass X velocity squared. The latent heat of vaporization of H2O is 560 calories. The latent heat of fusion of H2O is 80 calories. It takes 100 calories to raise a gram of water from 0 to 100 degrees. At least at sealevel it does. 740 calories to vaporize a gram of ice. And each gram of meteoric ice will have something like 10^10 to 10^12 calores per gram.
I am not a physicist, so I may have fucked up the math. Even so there would be plenty of energy to vaporize the snowball.
Slashdot covered quite a few stories about the Earth being struck by comets and asteroids. I was surprised to learn that asteroids had to be pretty large to survive all the way to the surface.
Where is Charles Fort when you really need him? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm inclined to take a very skeptical view of any stories about weird stuff falling from the sky. Maybe it's true about the blocks of ice, and maybe Fort's falls of frogs and fishes were true, and maybe other accounts of worms, snails mussels, snakes, turtles, and even a whole calf are true.
But I'd want to see heavier evidence than an MSNBC story.
Anyway, Fort would have loved this one.
Ice blocks might be climate change? (Score:4, Insightful)
It is time for a new fear. Climate change is getting trite!
WOW (Score:2)
6 mi * 1600 m/mi = 9600 m
Kinetic Energy = Potential Energy, so 0.5*m*v^2 = m*g*h, and the m's cancel, and then we solve for v:
v=sqrt(2*g*h)
h=9600m, g=approx. 9.5 m/s^2 at that height.
Therefore, the ice will hit the ground at about 430 m/s, almost the speed of sound!
Chicken Little (Score:2)
The above opinion has been created without basis or research into the referenced articles.
Dubious Science (Score:3, Insightful)
Ermm... how do they count what they haven't seen?
"Martinez-Frias suggests that because global warming involves one level of the atmosphere getting colder while another gets hotter, some ice clouds now remain longer."
Logic dictates that if global warming causes one level to get colder while another gets warmer, that global cooling would cause one level to get warmer while another gets colder. Am I repeating myself? And besides, this is a suggestion, not a formulated hypothesis based on evidence. At least not yet.
Scientific fact is that water vapor and carbon dioxide are the most abundant greenhouse gas. As our combustible-fuel appliances become more efficient, there are less hydrocarbon emissions and more H20 and C02 emitted; the net effect on greenhouse gases is the same. Besides, it has been argued that a single volcanic eruption has a far greater effect (neg or pos, you decide) on the atmosphere than the entire history of mankind burning stuff.
One more thing: there's no such thing az a ZEV (Zero-Emission-Vehicle). Electric is displaced emissions -- unless your power is hydro (and "we all know how bad that is for the fishies"). The manufacture of solar cells and batteries/fuel cells require the use -- and disposal -- of tons of toxic chemicals. Nuke also involves toxic waste (nevermind it's the cleanest and safest form of electricity, it's gotten a bad rap by the actions of irresponsible people).
To say that man (woman too!!) is causing global warming is a crock. If we all went back to eating wooly mammoth cooked over teradactyl dung, I don't think we'd notice any difference in the rate of global climate change.
at this pace (Score:2)
Scareing open the money bags (Score:2, Insightful)
Is chicken little going to become a
Since we are dusting off the 1970's shoes styles, we might as well pull out the good old fashioned scare mongering too.
For those who have not seen a good example of history repeating itself, sit back and watch the 70's replay themselves. But I must warn you, the stories have to get much more spectacular before the trend comes to a close.
The whole scene can be put into perspective if you view it from a great distance. This should be fodder for some great flame wars on motives.
TOP SECRET! (Score:2)
-
The art of incontextual quoting (Score:2)
Well Buster, I'm not so worried about YOUR head either!
"It's very easy to tell real and false ice blocks apart."
False ice? I have heard of people forging money, IDs, painting and even dog poop (for their percieved entertainment value, not their nutritional value) but this has got to take the fake cake. Fake ice? Does he mean one of those clear plastic ice cubes with a fly inside you dropped into the lemonade glasses of your friends when you were a kid?
"Glad you came professor, we need to know if it's real ice or just an imposter."
"This *holds it up to the light* is a block of fake ice."
"Ohh, but Professor, how can you tell?
"It has a fake fly in it!"
why 22? - maybe should be 20 (Score:2)
Danny.
use the simplest explaination (Score:2)
I shave with Occam's Razor (Score:2)
"worse", damnit! (Score:2)
MSNBC uses Cookie Exploits so stop linking to them (Score:2, Interesting)
You see that msnbc link ? seems innocent huh
when you click it though you are actually sent to msn in order to transfer your cookie from any of msn's domains which includes hotmail (any of the *.msn.com domains) in order to track you personally (if you use hotmail notice hm is actually a subdomain of msn)
so while you click on the story link of
www.msnbc.com/news/814100.asp&0dm=-23ET [msnbc.com] [msnbc.com]
you are actually sent to here
http://msid.msn.com/mps_id_sharing/redirect.asp?w
why ? so they can steal your hotmail/msn cookie and transfer it to the msnbc domain and track you across any of microsofts domains (hence the msid = microsoft id or guid), this gets round all browser cookie privacy limitations that browser manufacturers (including mozilla/msie/ns) implementation so websites cannot read cookies from other domains and is a blatent privacy breach,
whats happening is msid server is reading your cookie and passing it to the create_p1.asp page via a GET which then creates a new cookie with your old cookie values then finally redirects you to the story complete with transfered cookies contents, clever but not clever enough for those that spot it
of course all this cookie sharing happens in the blink of an eye so the average user doesnt see it (dont believe me look at the 302 redirect headers sent when you click the msnbc link) and has no idea they have actually visited msn.com in order to steal their msn cookie
more information about this exploit can be found here
http://www.pc-help.org/privacy/ms_guid.htm [pc-help.org]
http://online.securityfocus.com/news/83 [securityfocus.com]
i really wish that the
of course if you block msid.msn you cannot access the msnbc site , basically if you wont let msn track you they wont let you in the site
yeah im anon cos who iam doesnt matter
Priorities? (Re:Smash into your head) (Score:2)
We could be killed, or worse, expelled!
She has *got* to get her priorities straight
Re:Space junk (Score:2)
Re:Space junk (Score:2)
Re:Lava (Score:2)
Re:Lava (Score:2)
Old Lady & Meteor (Score:2)
Allegedly, her insurance company balked and said that her policy - which included everything from fire and flooding to sinkholes - did not cover Acts of God. Clearly, a meteor hurtling through the atmosphere to striker her house was an Act of God. However, the company ultimately paid, bowing to public pressure.
Ran keywords against google [google.com], but couldn't find a reference - so it's probably bullshit.
Re:Old Lady & Meteor (Score:2, Funny)
RTFA (Score:2, Informative)
If you were to Read The Fucking Article right now, you--like the rest of us--would realize what a dumbass you sound like. Too bad whomever modded you up also didn't RTFA.
Re:Could this be airplane shit ? (Score:3, Informative)
The chemical toilets on airplanes are emptied by connecting a big hose to a fitting on the bottom of the airplane, opening its valve, and pumping the contents out. The valve has a rubber seal, and the toilets occasionally collect small metal objects -- jewelry, coins, keyrings, OJ's knife and so forth -- which can damage the seal on the way out.
So once in a while the seal springs a leak, and since the airplane is pressurized in flight by as much as 8 pounds per square inch, a lot of the water can leak out. At jet cruising altitudes it immediately freezes, and a ball of ice collects on the outside of the airplane. Then when it lets down into warmer air, the ice gets dislodged and, well, bombs away.
After three or four of these incidents over a couple of years, the industry worked out some design changes and inspection requirements that seem to have pretty well stopped it. But if one hits your property, you should immediately note the time and location, put the biggest chunk in a baggie, and stick it in your freezer for proof. You can count on a rather nice settlement from the airline, especially if keeping it quiet is part of the deal.
rj
It actually happens (link enclosed) (Score:2)
Since the airlines use some kind of blue dye in their toilets the ice was blue, which I'd imagine prevents me from pissing in a coffee can, freezing it and asking the airlines for money.
I seem to recall the article (sorry, the above link is only a free preview) mentioning that airlines "weren't supposed to do this until they got out over open water" (paraphrasing). As if it was standard operating procedure to eject the holding tanks out in the middle of nowhere in the ocean; who knows, maybe on a 747 doing the Kennedy to Johannesburg route you *have* to eject the crap at some point to avoid overflowing tanks.
Re:It actually happens (link enclosed) (Score:2)
It's not just blue dye; it's Sodium Hydroxide (or something similar) added to the waste tank to keep the stink down and to prevent stuff from growing in the effluvia. Also, it's not just the airlines-- all chemical toilets use it.
ice happens (was: Could this be airplane shit ?) (Score:2, Funny)
My wife would absolutely kill me if I put frozen passenger turd in our freezer, regardless of container. Big no no. Whoever wrote that must be single.
Re:Could this be airplane shit ? (Score:2)
Re:Could this be airplane shit ? (Score:2)
Kudos.
Re:Could this be airplane shit ? (Score:2)
Then you would get hit by an Icy BM. (Score:2)
Re:Isn't this in the Bible? (Score:2)
Re:Isn't this in the Bible? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Isn't this in the Bible? (Score:2)
2. Exaggerate them all big time
3. Incorporate the exaggerations into stories
4. Gather the stories into one book
5. Look like a Prophet! to zealots during bad weather.
There ain't no question marks in this gag
Re:Isn't this in the Bible? (Score:2)
Re:Isn't this in the Bible? (Score:2)
Really? Wow, what a bummer. I thought all those things were miracles.
Seriously, are you implying that it's possible to:
- make a living man out of clay?
- flood the earth to a depth of over 29,000 feet?
- turn a staff into a snake and back again?
- stop the sun from moving in the sky?
- raise a man from the dead after three days?
The significance of the Biblical story is not that it's never been proven impossible, but that it's never been proven incorrect. Archaeological discoveries have time after time reinforced the historical accuracy of both the old and new testaments. If all the miracles were mere inventions, why would the rest of this massive text have been kept so accurate? There's no reason at all, so I'm inclined to believe that the miracles occurred as well.One that truly amazes me is the miracle at Bethsaida (Mark 8:22-26), where Jesus healed a blind man. Suddenly the man could see, but he perceived people to be like "trees, walking around." Jesus touched him again, and he could see clearly. Not until John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding is the concept mentioned in literature, that vision might require experience to be properly interpreted. A writer in the first century would have naturally assumed that someone whose eyes were healed would immediately see, regardless of how long they'd been blind. This story, however, presents a man who was healed twice, for reasons that would not become clear until the mid-twentieth century. Anyone reading this passage without an awareness of the neurological basis of sight would simply believe that, for some unknown reason, Jesus at first healed this man only halfway (something not done anywhere else in the Scriptures). Only a modern reader can see what the ancient writer could have only understood by inspiration: Two miracles had occurred, and the second was even more astonishing than the first.
Was it possible? Of course not. Did it happen? I am convinced that it did.
Now, as for the hailstones... in the book of Revelation, the original Greek indicates that they weighed one talent. According to a handy dictionary, "A talent of silver contained 3,000 shekels (Exodus 38:25,26) and was equal to 94 3/7 lbs. avoirdupois. The Greek talent, however, as in the LXX., was only 82 1/4 lbs. It was in the form of a circular mass, as the Hebrew name kikkar denotes. A talent of gold was double the weight of a talent of silver. (2nd Samuel 12:30)"
So if you've been reading the apocalyptic Left Behind book series and you're afraid of being pelted with hundred-pound hailstones, relax. They may only be 82-pounders.
Someone has to say it (Score:2, Offtopic)
After all, you would want someone to be dropping Icy BMs on Europe, would you?
Yes, it was used in one of Spider's Calahan stories [Or maybe a Lady Sally one]. It's people like him that cause good pun shortages, and we have to get by on stupid Xanth level stuff. Those kinds of dangerous memes should never be published.
"Dangerous Memes", hmm, I'll suggest that to Keith Henson as a title if he ever writes a book about his experiences with the Co$ merry-go-round. Harlan Ellison wouldn't sue over that, would he? (Okay, he would, but after Co$, who cares!)
You in the back, say it slowly and think of the letters while you're saying it. Sheesh!
Re:Wait... [OT] (Score:2)
Having lived in both LA and Florida, the drivers in LA in the rain are a lot worse. I knew this place had a different view of rain when during the first year after arriving here (from southern Louisiana in '88) after a small rain, there was a front page headline on the LA Times (the biggest LA paper) the next day that read "Rain in the Southland".
Okay....
Re:what do we do with ice blocks....? (Score:2)
Re:22 pounds? You mean 10 kilograms. (Score:2, Funny)
True, but it's always better to put these things delicately. We wouldn't want the Americans to believe there is something (or someone living) outside their vast continent?