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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.'"
"Threesome with Japanese twins"
Amen.
Free XBox, PS2
A list of 100 things to do before you die? On /.? Is one of the first ones to "finally RTFA"?
take a sauna to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, then run naked to the pole in minus 100 F
Introduce the Celsius system to the US
I don't need a signature.
Here's there website
From the site:
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Nothing to see here
and solve the mathematical mystery of the number 137
To join that 'elite' group you need to insert another 3 in the middle.
;-)
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Pick of the list
Extract your own DNA by spitting gargled salt water into diluted washing-up liquid and slowly dribbling ice-cold gin down the side of the glass. Spindly white clumps which form in the mixture are, basically, you
You know, there are easier, and much more fun, ways to create clumps of white goo that contains your DNA.
Use your excreta to enter the amazing world of the dung beetle. Much more basic but just as fascinating for some. If you are ever caught short in the open, says New Scientist, turn the accident into an opportunity by lingering nearby and watching what happens. "It won't take long for the beetles to appear, scuttle boldly up to your deposit and begin rolling balls of it away, head-butting it and pushing it with their forelegs." Reassuringly, it gets used as food and a beetle breeding nest
I tried this in the food court at my local mall, but security showed up before I saw any beetles.
"then run naked to the pole in minus 100 F"
/.er who runs naked in their direction....
Why the *FUCK* would I want to do that??
I really *shouldn't* be telling you this but....
There are rumors that, at the Pole, there are nubile virgin maidens ready to pleasure any
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
How about yelling: "You'll never get away with this!" while slowly being lowered into liquid hot magma?
Ñ'
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.
> The common saying goes "Plant a tree, have a child, write a book" before you die.
I'm impotent, allergic to trees, and have lost the use of my right hand. Thanks for making me feel good.
Two bottles of "Hello Kitty" hand lotion doesn't count.
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.
(Their storage area is already full of bare-ass frozen tourists-onna-stick with a very stupid expression on their faces.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
- 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.Star in your own Murder mystery:
Your demise is inevitable, why not make good fun of it:
- Pick a handful of suspects to frame for your "murder"
- Plant, and contrive evidence to implicate the "suspects" in your death
- Secretly make silent calls from suspect's phones, nearing the night of your demise. When questioned they will deny any knowledge of such phone calls further raising the suspicion
- Intentionally accuse potential suspects of plotting your death, say things like "I know what you're doing, you won't get away with it!," just load enough to be overheard
- Change your will to benefit the suspects, but don't make them aware, they'll deny any knowledge of the change the in the will. But it gives them a motive
Watch the hilarity ensue
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...
The Tariana language does this, and more. When stating a fact you must specify as part of the grammar whether you know it because you saw it yourself, or because somebody told you, or you deduced it from other evidence, or you know it as a general principle.
Yes, it would have interesting an effect on political debates.
...laura who will stick to Russian verb aspects for now
of 100 nerdly things to do before you die.
... /.
...
43. Get a FP on
44. Modify a computer to look like something else
45. Contribute some code to an open source project
46. "Daydream" about two chicks at the same time
47. Reference the movie Office Space 400 times in a single day
How do you spell "weapon of mass destruction" in Choktaw ?
As a member of the Choctaw Nation (my great-grandfather was an original enrollee), I'm proud that the language has been recognized as worth learning.
If you are interested, here is a link to Chahta Anumpa (Choctaw Language) classes via the Internet.
You can click here for more information about the Choctaw Nation.
You are worried about frostbite on their feet?
Choctaw does have two past tenses, but they are not differentiated in the way claimed. The regular past tense, written -tok (or -tuk in older orthogrophies) is used for completed events ranging back about a year. The other suffix -ttook is for events that were completed more than a year ago. Furthermore, events that happened within the past few minutes and are still relevent for the current situation are often marked as "present" (-h).
Choctaw, and a huge number of other languages in the world, also have what are called evidentials. These are suffixes that indicate how you know the statement is true. In Choctaw, there is a first-hand knowledge suffix -hlih, used when you have direct evidence of the claim (you saw it, heard it, smelled it, etc). There is also the suffix -ashah which indicates that you are guessing that it is true -- you have some indirect evidence, such as hearsay, or very circumstantial evidence.
Tense and evidentiality are definitely distinct, as you can find tense and evidentiality marked at the same time on the verb.
Checkout the papers by a Choctaw expert: Aaron Broadwell.
White man.
--- I do not moderate.