Today I Learned

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Today I learned that cleaning a white hat can be done with bleach cleaner, but it’s important to rinse it before wearing it again. I also discovered that "oyster veneering," a woodworking technique from the late 1600s, is experiencing a minor revival despite its labor-intensive nature. Additionally, I learned that the factorial of 23 (23!) equals 25,852,016,738,884,976,640,000, which interestingly has 23 digits, a unique coincidence among factorials. I found out that medical specialists often spend less than 10 minutes with patients, and that watching TV can contribute to weight gain. Other insights included the fact that a kiss can transfer around 80 million microbes, and that bureaucracy can sometimes hinder employment opportunities. The discussion also touched on various trivia, such as the emotional sensitivity of barn owls and the complexities of gravitational lensing around black holes.
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fresh_42 said:
One of our ladies earned a shitstorm in Brazil for saying (in the Playboy):
It seems to be fair enough, they have not fully embraced the benefits of unsportswomanlike behaviour.
They are catching on though.
 
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  • #5,402
pinball1970 said:
Spain beat us in the world cup final today 1-0 but she did save a penalty to keep us in it.
I don't know where all - us - PF members come from but apparently, it is not from Spain. :-p
 
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  • #5,403
jack action said:
I don't know where all - us - PF members come from but apparently, it is not from Spain. :-p
Yes, I expected at least some traffic on this.
 
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Today I learned with a google that the chemical compound toluene, (## C_6 H_5 CH_3 ##), has the "l" before the "u". We were taught about it as sophomore high school students in a chemistry class ,(50 years ago), and I am unable to confirm it, but I do think the teacher pronounced it toulene and spelled it that way. It surprised me when I googled it, and it came up, do you mean toluene?
 
  • #5,405
toluene (n.)

colorless liquid hydrocarbon, 1855, from German toluin (Berzelius, 1842), from Tolu, place in Colombia (now Santiago de Tolu) from which "balsam of Tolu" was obtained from the bark of certain trees, which were known in Europe by the name of the port. The chemical so called because it was first distilled (1841) from balsam of Tolu. The place name is of unknown origin.
 
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  • #5,406
pinball1970 said:
Never thought Id say it but I'm really getting into women's footie.
I watched the highlights of the recent women's cricket between England and Australia. The standard was much higher than anything I'd seen before.
 
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  • #5,407
PeroK said:
I watched the highlights of the recent women's cricket between England and Australia. The standard was much higher than anything I'd seen before.
Beaumont was particularly impressive, every time she was at the crease she was just smashing it like Botham 1981. Loved it.
Work really gets in the way of me sitting in the pub watching live sports.
 
  • #5,408
TIL there are different types of nuclear warning sirens, some start on a lower note before they slur up, most overlay with another staggered slur up, hit the same note then fall off leaving one note, join at the bottom then start over.

Youtubing them and comparing modern to WW2 sirens today.

Why? They tested something that sounded exactly like it yesterday afternoon, no warning.

Needless to say, for a couple seconds I thought that was it.

Then I remembered that the UK government had previously issued a test run of emergency warnings to all mobiles in case of an emergency.

No one had the warning so on this occasion, we were good to carry on.

EDIT: I could have googled this, sirens now mostly dismantled.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-minute_warning#:~:text=Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.&text=The four-minute warning was,operated between 1953 and 1992.I did not want to waste a valuable 10 seconds googling!
 
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I was wondering where the news about FAST is. We get pictures from JWST all the time, but little is heard about FAST. Shouldn't it at least be as interesting? So I read the Wiki article on it and found at least some results. And the disturbing information that they look for alien radio submissions. What a waste! What do they expect to find? An alien baseball broadcast? This rock was 45,000,000 units of time without any human-made EM emissions, and only 1 unit with. That is 0.000002% of the time! What a waste of observation time!
 
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What is this FAST thing? What can I Google to read up on it? Is it a telescope?

Googling "wiki FAST" asks me Did you mean Fast and Furious?

Oh, OK. Found it.

Saaay, that is big...
1693190083175.png
 
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...people are drinking more...the reason is up for debate/discussion
 
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  • #5,412
kyphysics said:

...people are drinking more...the reason is up for debate/discussion

I would guess that is the same in the UK.
 
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Greg Bernhardt said:
Every day we learn new things. Sometimes it's just a small fact or realization. No matter how trivial or random, let's start recording our daily lessons.

Please start off with "Today I learned". Keep commentary to a minimum and just LIKE posts. I'll start!

Today I learned that you clean up a white hat by spraying some cleaner with bleach on it (rinse before putting it back on your head!)
Today I learned that there are ways to connect things and practical is real while theory is ideal.
 
  • #5,414
pinball1970 said:
I would guess that is the same in the UK.
I would guess it is the same everywhere Covid hit (i.e. Earth)

Keep commentary to a minimum and just LIKE posts.

(Oops. Missed this. OK, I'll start now.)
 
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  • #5,415
TIL an acronym I'd never heard of before.
vanhees71 said:
Quantum tunneling of macroscopic objects is so improbable that FAPP I guess, we'll never observe it.
:oops:

I ... don't think we should promote this acronym to common use.

 
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  • #5,416
FAPP is a famous acronym coined by Bell. He means it in a very negative way ;-)). The problem, however, is that Bell with his idiosynchratic "new language" (like "beables") rather adds to the confusion than helps to overcome it. One should only read the sound and solid mathematical parts of his papers, if one doesn't like to be confused even more, but it's the fate of quantum theory to trigger philosophical nebulae even from some of the founding fathers (particularly Bohr and Heisenberg). There were also some antidotes against it early on (first of all Dirac but also Pauli, who amazingly could keep his very esoteric side (lived out by being a convinced Jungian) from his very solid no-nonsense science, and Sommerfeld).
 
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  • #5,420
TIL that Neil Armstrong had to go through US Customs after returning from the moon.

o-u2?auto=format&q=60&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&dpr=2&w=650.jpg
 
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  • #5,421
If I was a customs officer, I would prank him by planting some white powder and pretending to arrest him.
 
  • #5,422
Swamp Thing said:
If I was a customs officer, I would prank him by planting some white powder and pretending to arrest him.
Hey, at least that way he gets to stay on Earth. Imagine...

"I'm sorry sir. Your application has been rejected. You will have to return to your place of origin and wait to be seen. Current wait times are 1-2 years."
 
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  • #5,425
davenn said:
not in my part of the sky yet
I hope you get a good view. Possibly some images?
 
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Nearly all cars & trucks have a "black box" (like airplanes) that tracks a vehicle's movements. . . .I learned this from a 48 Hours episode (called, "Kassanndra's Secret"), in which the detective/investigator used one to see where a suspect may have dumped a body.

Didn't realize our cars have these things. Pretty cool!
 
  • #5,428
kyphysics said:
Nearly all cars & trucks have a "black box" (like airplanes) that tracks a vehicle's movements. . . .I learned this from a 48 Hours episode (called, "Kassanndra's Secret"), in which the detective/investigator used one to see where a suspect may have dumped a body.

Didn't realize our cars have these things. Pretty cool!
AFAIK, the ones in cars only record a few seconds before a crash. It would be far easier to track the suspect's cell phone.
 
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Borg said:
It would be far easier to track the suspect's cell phone.
Do the telecoms really keep records of every cell phone location? They do "on TV" as well as time and duration of all the calls and texts. This seems like an overwhelming amount of data.
 
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gmax137 said:
Do the telecoms really keep records of every cell phone location? They do "on TV" as well as time and duration of all the calls and texts. This seems like an overwhelming amount of data.
Everytime a phone pings a tower or a tower pings a phone - which can be minutes or less apart - it is processed. Dont know how long that data is kept.

But its only a triangulation between towers so not too accurate positioning, and i assume it needs to be requested processing
 

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