h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This one really surprised me. All my life, I've lived with the threat of fire ants. I distinctly remember a moment when I was maybe 4, when I stepped on a fire ant mound, they ran up my pants legs, and then began "biting". My parents ran over, pulled off my pants and proceeded to beat the ants off my legs with the pants. I was "bitten" many dozens of times.


All my life, I have believe that fire ants' BITES are what causes so much pain. I've often heard that their "bite" contains formic acid, and that's what stings so much.


But that's not what's happening. Yes, fire ants do bite, but just to hang on. They also STING, just like a wasp, with a stinger extending from the end of their abdomens.


http://petapixel.com/2019/08/06/scientist-captures-incredible-1000fps-close-up-of-ants-injecting-venom/

Oh, and it's not formic acid either. Their venom is comprised of mostly oily alkaloids with a small amount of toxic proteins mixed in.

Depends on the ants. Formic acid got its name from ants (formica in Latin) - so some species assuredly do use it in their bites/stings. But yeah a really nasty fire-ant I expect does use something more potent.

I worked with a guy who sprayed himself on his arm with neat formic acid once - it burned him - but it wasn't all that bad. If a tiny insect is doing that much damage then it's got to be something worse.

Yes, most ants do spray or otherwise deliver formic acid with their bites.

I miss the big red ants we used to have along the Texas Gulf Coast until the fire ants eradicated them. Compared to the little fire ants, these things were HUGE. I would occasionally, purposely let a red ant bite me as it was merely irritating rather than painful. I've even heard lore that these red ants can be used as makeshift sutures by picking them up, placing their pincers on either side of a cut, letting them bite, then pinching their heads off, leaving them pinching the cut closed. I hope this is true, it's just so wild.

:D. Perhaps a bit grim and and needle and thread is probably easier but I like the picture.

I found a short demo.
http://youtu.be/FFGcssKc4gk

This one I find fascinating in how our brains so easily "confuse the map for the territory" as they say.

Quick! Which planet is closest to the Earth?



You think you know. Or you think you know between two obvious choices. It has to be either Mars or Venus right!? (Some might argue that our Moon is actually a dwarf planet and that the Earth and Moon are a binary planet system, but that's another discussion.)

Right now you're probably wondering how could the answer be anything other than Mars or Venus. And, at times, either of those answers are correct.

But most often, the correct answer is Mercury!

Let's ask another question. Which planet is closest to Jupiter (or Saturn or Neptune or Uranus)? Most often, the answer is still Mercury.

We easily forget that the planets are extremely rarely aligned in a neat row, that our Solar System is a three dimensional array. When planets are on opposite or even at other oblique angles to each other, they are likely farther apart than either of their orbital distances. And since Mercury is near the center of every other planet's orbit (near the Sun), Mercury is most often closer to any planet than any other planet.

CGP Grey explains this better than I can here:

http://youtu.be/SumDHcnCRuU

Sure, but who thought that any other planet than Mercury was ever closer to the sun?

(wow did I misread your post there - sorry )

Yeah when people talk about relative distances from the Earth, really they're talking about the mean average orbital distance from the Sun.

That's mean!

I'm in the mode

Bit work related but I recently learned that adding aripiprazole can reduce antipsychotic induced Hyperprolactinemia, niche information but I thought it was interesting

I'll first look up some of those multisyllabic constructions before I even start considering the level of interestingness involved

Today I learned that my wife - who I've known for over six years - went to the same school as C-3PO.

A new fad? Someone has asked to book our village hall for a 'baby gender reveal party'. Whatever next!

That's better than setting a gender reveal wild fire.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/28/moment-gender-reveal-party-went-horribly-wrong-caused-wildfire/

And there I was thinking that 'sex' is the biological differences between male and female, while 'Gender' is increasingly used to mean an individual's concept of themselves - their gender identity. While you can certainly reveal a baby's sex, a person's gender would not have been established at that young age and would be something that that individual has to decide for themselves at a later stage.

You can picture the scene twenty years from now:
Child now Adult: Mum, Dad, I'm having a sex-change operation.
Both Parents: But you can't – we had a baby gender reveal party when you were born!

<BB<

Yes indeed - well said...

They do seem to be quite a 'thing' in the USA these days... I don't like them because as you say, they are either trying to enforce the prediction of something that can't be known until the child can articulate their gender, or they are saying to people, 'try to guess what the baby's genitals look like', which is creepy...

This one was somewhat better http://www.cnn.com/2019/02/08/us/mom-holds-gender-reveal-for-trans-son-trnd/index.html but it all seems a bit unnecessary - a 'baby shower' is vaguely reasonable, if you must have a party to get gifts of items to help care for the child, but there does seem to be an element of competitiveness to it all...

I am very grateful that my childhood was free from that sort of pressure