Stuff that 'boggles' your mind.

[Ahleckz]

So, by that reckoning if my son stands on a wall so that he is above me I'm still higher than him because I'm taller?

No, you need a scale. For example, many people determine Everest to be the highest mountain above sea level. But you can use a different base level, the centre of the Earth perhaps which would give you a different mountain, the tallest from the base of the mountain to the top, which would give you another.

When we talk about the highest mountain, we are usually referring to the highest above sea level because people are rarely below sea level (and you couldn't climb the ones under water!). But it is equally right to say that there are higher mountains when measuring from the base to the tip.

Your son is at a higher point, compared to you at that time. However, when you are using a uniform base point you will be taller. Everest is a higher mountain than the one in the ocean, when measured by above sea level.

 

[neodude]

I agree with everything you say. But Tallness does not equal Height. Everest will always be higher than a mountain under the water no matter where you take the reference from.

 

[Ekim]

This blew my mind when I read it the other day.

If you properly shuffle a deck of cards, in all likelihood, the resulting deck would never have been seen before in the history of the world.

 

[Ahleckz]

I agree with everything you say. But Tallness does not equal Height. Everest will always be higher than a mountain under the water no matter where you take the reference from.

It's an argument on semantics really, as no rule exists which states tallest or highest relates to one specific reference point.

This blew my mind when I read it the other day.

If you properly shuffle a deck of cards, in all likelihood, the resulting deck would have been seen before in the history of the world.

I trust you meant would never have been seen before?

Maths:
There are 8x10(to the power of 67) per*mu*ta*tions of a deck of 52 cards. The mod*ern deck of cards as we know it was invented in 1480. There are approx*i*mately 1.6x10(10) sec*onds between now and then. In order for there to even be a 0.001% chance of a ran*dom shuf*fle to have been seen before, the world would have needed to have gen*er*ated 8x10(62) shuf*fles to date or appropriately 5x10(52) shuf*fles per sec*ond.

Copied and pasted from elsewhere, so I await to be proved wrong!

 

[neodude]

It's an argument on semantics really, as no rule exists which states tallest or highest relates to one specific reference point.

Agreed.

 

[Spook187]

 

[gillywibble]

The golden ratio.

 

[Dannyb01y]

Ha I watched a program about this yesterday. Cant believe they named the second biggest found star beetlegeuice!

What boggles my mind is space, how vast it is etc. How big the unvierse is. How insignificant humans are. That there might be other advanced life forms, that there might not be! That we may never find out. That humans may never have existed. The nothingness before the big bang. Space in general is fascinating to me. Evolution.

Closer to home Religion boggles my mind and how people can blindly follow it and believe it when really its just a bunch of codswallop. Millions of people follow man made stories as something higher than human. Has there ever been a bigger cause of fighting, war and death for something supposed to guide humans? Crazy.

 

[SlyReaper]

Closer to home Religion boggles my mind and how people can blindly follow it and believe it when really its just a bunch of codswallop. Millions of people follow man made stories as something higher than human. Has there ever been a bigger cause of fighting, war and death for something supposed to guide humans? Crazy.

Borrowing someone else's words here. Religion has amazing powers. It can unite people by the millions, turn sadness into joy, it can soothe the shattered heart and triumph over mountains of contradictory evidence to inspire rapturous believe where none before seemed possible before. Unfortunately, you can say the exact same thing about lying.

 

[Skillmister]

Religion.

 

[Freddie1980]

A chronically obese teenager cut free from her home by workmen after she grew too big to go outside remained in hospital today.

Georgia Davis, 19, weighed up to 60st by the time she was urgently rescued from the house that had become her prison.

Neighbours claimed today that the teenager, from Aberdare in the South Wales valleys, had not been seen outside for up to three years.

....

More than 40 police, firefighters, paramedics, social services personnel, council officers and builders worked together to free her.

Full story

I saw on the news this morning that before they could knock down the wall to her bedroom that had to build a temporary bridge and the ambulance was reinforced to take the weight.

How doesn't anyone get like that? I mean someone has to go round and deliver all that food for her.

Edit:

Found the story on the BBC site. Here they have picture all the scaffolding and bridge they had to build before demolition work could be carried out on the house to get her out.

 

[Jay794]

Why American Kids TV has a women dressed as a clown, telling kids that "Some people think that ya'll came from monkeys, but those people, well they're wrong"

I knew religious nuts were well...nuts but I didn't know America bred these freaks

 

[Kosmiche]

The fact I'm human.

There's 200 milllion insects for every human on the planet, so the fact I'm not a insect is insanely remarkable.

 

[SlyReaper]

Why American Kids TV has a women dressed as a clown, telling kids that "Some people think that ya'll came from monkeys, but those people, well they're wrong"

I knew religious nuts were well...nuts but I didn't know America bred these freaks

What I don't understand is how anyone can look at the bone structures of animals and not see a startling similarity. 4 limbs, a head, a nose, two ears, two eyes, and a spine. If we really were magicked into exisence by an all-powerful deity, you'd think He would be a bit more creative.

And how anyone can look at the mountains of evidence in favour of evolution and just blithely denounce it as silly and wrong, is beyond me.

 

[Jay794]

What I don't understand is how anyone can look at the bone structures of animals and not see a startling similarity. 4 limbs, a head, a nose, two ears, two eyes, and a spine. If we really were magicked into exisence by an all-powerful deity, you'd think He would be a bit more creative.

And how anyone can look at the mountains of evidence in favour of evolution and just blithely denounce it as silly and wrong, is beyond me.

If God was/is all mighty-powerful creator, why wouldn't he just step on the Westboro Baptist Church, Hitler and the rest

 

[Maximum Triceratops]

How people on this earth still die from dehydration when most of the earth is made up of water :/

 

[SlyReaper]

How people on this earth still die from dehydration when most of the earth is made up of water :/

Because most of it has salt in it.

 

[cu3ed]

You would actually kill them faster making them drink it.

 

[Maximum Triceratops]

Because most of it has salt in it.

You would actually kill them faster making them drink it.

Yeah I know this but casting my mind back to science lessons at School, its fairly simple to extract the salt from sea water?

 

[SlyReaper]

Yeah I know this but casting my mind back to science lessons at School, its fairly simple to extract the salt from sea water?

Simple, but expensive. You need a lot of energy to do it. It's why we don't have millions of desalination plants. Maybe if fusion power ever becomes viable, it'll be more feasible.