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Things To Do Before You Die
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.'"
If you sit over the wing of most jets, you may get to see the shockwave that forms during high-speed flight (above about Mach .8 or so). It is visible in one of two ways. First, if the sun angle is just right, the shockwave will cast a shadow on the wing that is a faint span-wise line of darkness and brightness. Second, if you are sitting in just the right location (about in the middle of the wing) you can see the shockwave by looking for visual disturbances (like a fault line in your vision). Sighting along a line of rivets or the edge of the wing or the wingtips, you can sometimes see a cleft that wavers. (For extra credit, one can also find a smaller shockwave on the engine nacelle about 6" to 12" back form the leading edge by sitting in line with the front of the engine and watching for a visual fault line in the ground scenery passing just above the engine.)
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.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I've dreamed of standing on the moon, looking at the Earthrise. I've wished to stand inside a dome on the bottom of the ocean, watching sharks swim above. I've longed for a time machine so that I could watch dinosaurs; then finished with that, I'd journey as close to the Big Bang as I could. I want to chat with an Artificial Intelligence before I die. I want to stand in a world powered by the sun or the wind or clean fusion. In 2470, I want to walk within the ruins of a 20th century city, near the aforementioned solar powered, glittering metropolis, and tell the people around me about Times Square Stores and Broadway. I want a flying car, the sporty model, that I can fly along the New Miami skyline. Tired of that, I want a submarine to visit old Miami; zipping along South Ocean watching the sharks swim by.
- Imagine a people who found it so important
to know the reliability of information given to them, that they created two
past tenses to be able to tell the difference
- Thinking hypothetically, what if English
had adopted a similar structure. What would the politicians and media
do? Sound like? Say?
Yes, I know, completely pointless, but I thought it was an interesting mental hot foot.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.
At 3 A.M. you can see people's auras; at five you can see their contrails...