Grrl Power #446 – Confidence shattered
People think wolves howl at the moon, but a quick googling should be enough to dissuade them from the idea. From there it’s a small leap to disassociate werewolves from the moon as well. I’m surely not the first person to consider that… even typing out that sentence sounds like a douchey humblebrag, but I can’t think of anything I’ve seen where werewolves weren’t affected by the moon. There’s probably some prime example everyone is rushing to comment on, but it just struck me one day so I went and googled it. I mean wolves howling at the moon, not non-lunar werewolves. I suppose I could have googled that as well. :P
Of course that begs the question,* what triggers lycanthrope changes? Obviously Gregor can control his, as can any lycan that’s been doing it for a while. There are a host of reasons someone wouldn’t be able to control it though. When someone is first “brought into the were-fold” (not a double entendre in this case) they can change seemingly at random. It’s like adolescent boys and erections**. Well, it probably doesn’t happen nearly that often, but lycanthropy does introduce a whole raft of new hormonal imperatives to a body. Some people aren’t the most stable to begin with. Suddenly turning into a furry whatsit can pile on a degree of stress to one’s life. Some weres can have specific triggers though. The were-cats working at the pet store who just ripped a big bag of catnip all over himself is in for a surprise. Really his co-workers are in for the surprise.
Gregor’s exactly right though, it’s an example of snowballed confirmation bias. I don’t expect this myth to go away very quickly though. Lycanthropy is such a obvious allegory for adolescence it’s good material for fables and stuff like Teen Wolf and Gingersnaps. Myths I would like to see go away are the “you only use 10% of your brain” one. Limitless is a good show so I’ll give it a pass, but I would have enjoyed Lucy more if it didn’t start with Morgan Freeman authoritatively telling me something that’s patently false. It’d be like starting off a movie by telling the audience that the moon is made of cheese or that women have fewer teeth. That’s a real thing people used to believe that I just found googling stupid old misconceptions. Aristotle thought that. I mean… just count their teeth? Maybe he thought a woman opening her mouth wide enough for a man to count her teeth would make her uterus spray poison or something.
*It doesn’t actually beg the question. Begging the question is a logical fallacy involving circular reasoning. I’m just using it as a colloquial phrase to slightly shift topics, which I probably shouldn’t do, especially because too many people doing it too often changes the meaning of phrases and words. For example, “theory” now means both “A scientifically accepted general principle supported by a substantial body of evidence offered to provide an explanation of observed facts and as a basis for future discussion or investigation” and also “a big fat guess” and we’ve all seen how much trouble that has caused. Edit: It’s been pointed out that my original definition of theory wasn’t accurate so I’ve updated it. Laws generally state what and how, but not why. Theories deal with the why. Ranking them first and second in terms of scientific certainty leads people to believe that theories are sitting around waiting for a few more pieces of evidence before they’re promoted to laws.
**I just learned that the female equivalent of ‘morning wood’ is called ‘morning dew,’ which sounds like the Mountain Dew guys trying to obliviously market a breakfast drink.
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Paging Weird Al…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KThlYHfIVa8
Wolves howling usually have their heads lifted upward making people thing they’re howling in that direction. Dogs aren’t usually barking at the sun, they’re barking at whatever they’re looking at… the door, the mailman, the cat, the air. Dogs bark at everything.
And nothing.
Confirmation bias strikes again!
Dogs usually bark at things they can hear, as they rely on hearing and smell more than sight. Humans, who rely on sight more than hearing and smell, associate dogs barking with whatever they can see the barking dog apparently looking at. Dogs usually face the direction of wherever the sound was coming from.
Heh. And true. The change in behaviour of my dog highlighted that, as she became more hard of hearing.
Wait, you have a dog? It’s that like a BDSM relationship, owner/slave thing? How does it work? :P
:-P
We are equal partners. I just have a better grasp of the dangers facing her, so have to override some of her more dangerous suggestions. Like wandering out into traffic, to say hi to doggies on the other side of the road.
Poor Buffy…
It is OK, she gets to socialise as much, and as long, as she wants. Just not under the wheels of a combine harvester.
I saw a program on TV a while back, they explained that dogs bark as a warning. If for example a stranger walks down ally next to a house late at night the dog will hear then and start barking both as a warning and to scare them of, if the stranger climbs over the fence and into the garden, unless it’s been trained, the dog will look at them and run away .
Dogs bark at ABSO-FREAKING-LUTELY EVERY-FREAKING-THING.
FIFY.
I wouldn’t expect people to think dogs bark at the sun… I’d expect them to think that dogs bark at themselves. That’s the only single thing I can think of that would explain it.
This. My dog certainly barked at himself a lot! He’d bump into something, make a loud thump rolling over, (maybe even make the floor creak though it’s been long enough I can’t really remember that one well) and start barking. Heck, near the end, he seemed to bark more at himself than anyone else.
People used to believe that worms fell from the sky when it rained.
Humans speak about everything, incessantly.
Do you not speak canine? Perhaps the dogs around you are trying to enlighten you? Try not to blame them for your lack of comprehension.
Ugh, all the dogs around here just talk about baseball incessantly.
they’re not talking about baseball specifically, just balls in general. all kinds. :}
You mean, like the Secret Policeman’s Ball?
Dogs are basically talking about the same things humans talk about. Who’s the alpha male, who’s the hottest bitch, where the best place to eat is, what’s that smell? And of course who has the better human pet.
I have noticed a distinct, specific lack in canine language, concerning a particular danger that a dog’s human pet imposes upon them;
“My master loves me. He’d do anything for me. He cut my balls off.”
Of course, it’s still in debate whether or not a canine seen wearing the “cone of shame” is warning enough…
C’mon guy…………..
Stop “breaking” Syd…….
It’s cruel, funny, but still cruel…
Night howlers not moon howlers.
Is a moon at night also a confirmation bias? I often see the moon during the morning or evening, but everyobne always assumes it’s oposite of the sun.
FULL moon is always at night. the bright area of the moon is always opposite of the sun. The new moon is always mid-day.
The position of the moon relating to the sun is dependent on the phase of the moon. When full it is opposite the sun 12 hours behind. When new it is between the sun and earth, zero hours difference.. In the summer when the days are longest you can see a full moon before the sun sets.
They are not even strictly “night howlers.” Wolves pipe up more often during the night because they’re nocturnal but they can be heard howling at any time. In general, the primary reasons why wolves howl are:
A rally cry for the pack to meet up
A signal to let the pack know of a wolf’s location
A warning for outside wolves to stay out of a pack’s territory
A way to find mates (the best time to hear wolves howl is the winter breeding season)
Sydney — supernatural diplomat?
Yea, you’re going to have that reaction a couple more times tonight Sydney.
I wonder if the garlic thing for vampires is false in this universe. Maybe some vampire didn’t like garlic on their food a few thousand years ago and now everyone believes they’re allergic to garlic because garlic kills germs and vampirism is caused by an undead disease (paraphrasing where the thing actually came from).
I wonder if sunlight is a thing for Vampires. That’s the far more relevant question.
Maybe they just all have very light skin, like gingers. That would be enough to trigger such a myth.
Like Sydney running around in the sunlight outside the bank claiming it burns?
Thats… actually something I’ve been reading up on. Near as I can tell the whole “allergy to sunlight” thing seems to have started with the movie Nosferatu, and was introduced more for cinematographic reasons than anything else. They apparently couldn’t reconcile “vampire casts no shadow” with “1920’s filming doesn’t let us edit out someones shadow”, so had to come up with a reason for filming only in darkness or under artificial light.
Stoker’s Dracula is a good example. Sunlight just weakens him a bit. It doesn’t stop him being outdoors during the day. It certainly doesn’t cause the kind of pyrotechnics that’ve been associated with vampires & sunlight in more recent depictions.
Give me the choice between pyrotechnics and sparkling, and I know which one I prefer.
*gets out a 10 gallon drum of petrol, plus a flare gun, and starts looking for any sparkly vampires*
Do their ashes sparkle?
Are sparkles made of dead vampires?
I bloody well HOPE that’s where they come from.
OK, now I want to buy a ton of glitter, relabel it as “Dead Vampire (1)” and sell it at cons.
+1
Hang on, that would be a con!
I hereby sentence you to perform the Con Con dance at the convention! That will give the victims of the con the opportunity to throw glitter over you!
Or… we could give him a gun and have a couple of ladies do this to Mockery.
red nail polish with glitter = ‘bloody vampire’
There is only one way to find out. Time to do what needs to be done for SCIENCE!
https://www.spinnyverse.com/comics/2010-10-06.jpg
the bloke in panel 4 who “Thparkle in the thun” got his teef knocked out in panel 3 of the pervious page
Does that make him a crazy diamond?
no just Thparklely
Actually an allergy to sunlight is a real thing. :)
There are actually several types of varying degrees of severity. Actinic prurigo (which is hereditary), Polymorphous light eruption (mainly happens to women – rash), and solar urticaria (severe hives)
The Fury of Dracula boardgame sticks to this trope. Dracula can be encountered in either day or night conditions, but if you catch him during the day, his options are a lot more limited–no shapeshifting, no supernatural strength, and he can be destroyed with a stake.
There’s another board game (a very old one, circa 1975, from Steve Jackson Games) where you are vampire hunters. All you have to do is keep the vampire away from his lair until an hour before sunrise, because it takes an hour to move anywhere… even across the street. Can you say “crispy critter”? xD
depends on where you use it, but it can get a bit messy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-52jun8NXs
“How much blood can she have left?”
:-D
It depends on how many people she drank dry during the night before…Which raises the question on how much blood can a vampire hold.
O.o
Kind of like New Englanders on vacation in Florida.
Hey I resemble that remark! I went to Florida as a kid once (I lived in Maine at the time) on a summer break. I was at the beach on the gulf coast but the surf got a little to rough so I spent the rest of the day in the pool. I got burned so bad my arms and back were just blisters.
If you weren’t affected by garlic, you’d happily spread the rumour that it would kill your kind.
If you accidentally startle someone in a fresh fruit and veg stall, you’d rather they started throwing cloves of garlic at you and making signs of the cross with cucumbers than reach for the lemons and trigger your citrus allergy.
Evil Overlord List, item 221:
Whatever my one vulnerability is, I will fake a different one. For example, ordering all mirrors removed from the palace, screaming and flinching whenever someone accidentally holds up a mirror, etc. In the climax when the hero whips out a mirror and thrusts it at my face, my reaction will be “Hmm…I think I need a shave.”
My reaction would be to kill my opponent, then make a glib one liner.
Indeed, Item 221 is in clear violation of Evil Overlord Rule #7: When I’ve captured my adversary and he says, “Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?” I’ll say, “No.” and shoot him. No, on second thought I’ll shoot him then say “No.”
#7 is for when the enemy is captured. #221 is for the SHOWDOWN, when the enemy is not captured. The glib one-liner at this point will disarm the hero, shattering their confidence as their main plan goes down the drain, giving you an opening to capture them. From which you can then move on to #7
Why not both? Shoot them not instantly fatal (like the lung) drop the verbal bomb THEN shoot them in the head.
If you have the chance, go for instant lethal. That’s somewhere at the top of the list (or should be)
Center of mass. Always.
Unless fighting vampires. You need to be a bit more precise, to ensure hitting the heart. And you decapitation attempts would not fare well, with that aiming strategy.
@Yorp: Cutting them in half is a form of decapitation.
But then you will have to sing “Soft Kitty” to them.
I still wouldn’t use mirrors as an example, those things are dangerous!
I’d pretend i’m afraid of diamonds…no wait someone’d shoot me with one.
Maybe tisues? Or rare orchids, those are always good.
Not bad reasoning. Barring the fact that if trying to misdirect, the absence of rare orchids, from your abode would not provide such misdirection. Contrast that to the absence of mirrors, which would be particularly noticeable in bathrooms.
That’s where you pick some kind of common item, that you wouldn’t mind doing without,
Like in-laws?
No, that’s a real weakness.
So are rent-sharing roommates.
In the cartoon Might Max, vampires were found to NOT be killable by sunlight, no aversion to garlic or running water, etc. And apparently it was all rumor which they allowed because it exposed hunters so they could be killed when they try to kill the vampires. Apparently, they were actually not even bat-like and didn’t turn into bats – more bug-like.
In Lost Boys, the traditional ‘rules’ all applied (including the more severe version of sunlight weakness, where they burst into flames)–but if you invite a vampire into your home, they cannot be driven out with crosses, holy water or garlic.
No, although in most myths, all you have to do is say “I revoke my invitation” and they’re immediately forced to leave. You have to invite evil into my home. (Better hope he doesn’t realize that all he has to do is burn your house down. You don’t have to be invited into someone’s home, when there is no home.)
Rrrrgh… Invoke evil into *your* home, not MY home. (I’m not sure that works. Can you invite evil into someone else’s home? xD
DaveB, you DO know that there is an add-on to the Gravitar software that allows people to edit or delete their own posts (within the first five minutes after posting), right? Kory Bing over at Skin Deep installed it on her server.
I liked that remake. RIP Anton.
The inviting vampires into your home is a very old one actually.
The level of freedom they have to interpret your words/actions as an invitation vary.
“Enter all yea, who seek knowledge” outside of a school, being a paraphrased example from the Buffyverse.
Which made no sense anyway, as a school is a public building. No invite required.
Actually the usual restriction is about not entering a home without permission. There is no mention of public/private ownership in there. If a janitor lived at the school, for example, it would be a home.
Likewise if one of the teachers lived by the motto “my home is where I hang my hat”. ;-)
In Angel, we were explicitly told that “public accommodations” like hotel rooms don’t require an invite, and we see vamps entering public buildings quite frequently on both shows.
It seems strange that the school would be invite only, but a hospital, hotel, or other public place wouldn’t be. I’m thinking Jenny just misunderstood how it worked.
Fair points. Entering shops would not be an issue, mind, as they are not homes.
I have only seen the first couple of seasons of Angel though, so was not aware of that inconsistency.
Mind you it was probably done just to avoid boring everyone with showing an obligatory invite scene in every episode. Sometimes you need to sacrifice continuity in order to preserve pace and interest.
Terry Pratchett played with the invitation thing a little in Carpe Jugulem. What happens if a king invites a vampire into his kingdom?
The garlic myth gets written off a lot these days, but interestingly enough, almost every culture that has a vampire myth also includes a weakness to garlic. This may stem from the idea that vampirism started as a sort of metaphor for disease and the plague, and even the ancient peoples were aware of garlic’s antibiotic properties.
As far as I’m aware, the weakness to sunlight first appeared in the movie ‘Nosferatu’, which had the vampire, Count Orlock, dissolve into nothingness at the break of dawn. I think the [i]actual[/i] myth involves hearing a rooster crow, and of course they tend to do that at dawn so… vampires don’t like cocks? Dunno.
No, roosters were the bane of Basilisks.
In some stories, basilisks were roosters, or at least they hatched from the egg of a rooster on a pile of dung (or something, definitely egg of a rooster)
As for Garlic, it’s simply that they could never get rid of the smell
Yes and no. The cockatrice is hatched from an egg lain by a cock/cockerel and incubated by a toad or serpent. The basilisk, however, is supposedly hatched *by* a cockerel from the egg of a serpent of toad. Suffice to say both myths probably have similar roots. And with their weakness to weasels, it’s likely that the story is based on Asian serpents (cobras and the like) and the mongoose.
…godsdamnit.
“…hatched by a cockerel from the egg of a serpent OR toad.”
To quote Gir,
“I wanna be a mongoose!”
I thought Dracula (in the novel) had a mild aversion to sunlight (as in, he wears a large hat and long sleeves). According to TVTropes, it weakens him but doesn’t actually do damage.
Dracula lost his Supernatural in Sunlight. He was trapped in whatever form he was in at Dawn until Sunset. He also had to have GraveDirt on him. So trapping him in mist form at Sunlight did some interesting things.
It was Victorian Britain. Everyone wore a hat and long sleeves. And usually a jacket, vest, and some kind of tie.
Shirts were still seen as underwear at that point. Forget short sleeved shirts, which is what you wore underneath your underwear. The Victorians really liked their layers.
I think part of it is there was a legend (can’t remember from where this was when I was in high school) that when Lucifer was cast down Garlic grew from his left footprint. Or something like that.
How’s that for a double entandre?
Now I’m just picturing a vampire runing away from a streaker
GARLIC IS A BLOOD THINNER. 1) If I drank blood, I wouldn’t want it watered down. 2) somebody that eats enough garlic to smell like it would probably bleed to death from lack of clotting, so unless I want to leave blood-soaked corpses behind, I’d avoid biting them.
Well, it does reduce clotting and the formation of some forms of plaques, so you’re reasoning seems sound enough. On the other hand, maybe some vampires like fast food.
::trots off with a quick shuffle step sounding suspiciously like a rim shot::
Now there is style. Having your own built-in percussion section, to accompany your dancing!
Not everybody like Riverdance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz9nHvmdAb4&ab_channel=DarthEon14
Listen till the end and they will tell you how they feel.
:-D
Yes, they loved them so much they wanted to have them in heaven with them
Considering that vamps are corpses (no, I don’t care what some stories like Twilight says) I can imagine them being vunerable to heat and sunlight. Better to stay in your dark, cold and dry coffin all day so you don’t start to smell. And don’t forget to drink a glass of embalming fluid after every meal.
For some reason, that made me think of Planescape Torment. Oh to be using embalming fluid as health potions, and needle and thread as a healing item… Good times.
There’s an actual disease that is thought to be the root origin for the vampirism legends as it causes a craving for blood (because the body’s not making its own properly), sensitivity to sunlight so that the skin burns easily, and yes a problem with garlic as well.
It’s called porphyria. The reason garlic may affect them is that garlic has a natural blood thinning effect, so it would cause increased bleeding in affected people. Ginkgo biloba does the same thing, but is not as common in the world as garlic.
It’s a good thing I checked my facts before I decided to type this. I was almost going to add that gingko biloba doesn’t have as strong a smell as garlic, so maybe the reason people thought vampires were repelled by garlic was the strong smell, but I would’ve been wrong.
Unprocessed, fallen seeds from the gingko biloba tree smell even worse. If I had a gingko biloba tree in my yard, I would probably be willing to keep garlic-scented air fresheners to ward off the smell! The seeds have butyric acid in them, so they smell like rancid butter or vomit. Eeugh!
or that thing with mirrors or crucifix’s (what happens if their Jewish)
I’ve seen it played both ways in different fiction.
If the idea is that the vampire is repulsed by some sigil of his former life’s faith, then if the vampire is (was) Jewish, he’ll be driven away by a Star of David, and ignore a crucifix. They will recoil from the appropriate symbol even if it is not ‘presented’ by someone else, or by someone who doesn’t share that belief system.
If, OTOH, the idea is that the holy symbol focuses the wielder’s faith into a force that is tangible to the vampire in some fashion, then any holy symbol will work, but only in the hands of a true believer. A cross hung on a window frame will have no effect, and Benny from The Mummy is screwed, despite his assortment of world religion bling. In this case, it may even be that a person with strong enough faith can actually harm the vampire, instead of just fending them off.
In the Mercy Thompson novels, it’s faith that’s important. Mercedes has repelled vampires with a pendant shaped like a sheep. (Jesus Christ was the “lamb of God”, after all.)
I thought vampires were repulsed by the faith of the person holding the symbol. So if an atheist or a jew holds up a cross, it won’t do anything, but a catholic could repel a vampire with it (and a Jew could repel a vampire with a symbol of his faith).
BTW: Star of David is actually a very recent symbol, that only emerged in the 19th century. For old ones, I’d go with the Menorah (candle holder). Also easier to beat the vampire with a heavy candle holder.
Hah! Now we have proof. It was RobK, who murdered the vampire, with the candlestick. Probably in the library.
By doing his research, RobK has found a better Clue.
Yorp!
No candles (or candlesticks) allowed in the library! Fire is BAD for Books!
sincerely,
A Librarian
Murder and attempted arson!
Mind you fire is good against vampires too, so I can see why RobK would utilise that weapon.
Clever thinking about how to kill batmen.
The thing about saying Vampires/Werewolves/whatever are weak to fire…. is that most living things don’t react well to being set on fire, so it’s hardly a unique weakness.
Just ask Sydney about her weakness to bullets :D
Yes, well… Vampires are vulnerable to stakes through the heart and decapitation. And so is everyone who isn’t a vampire. Werewolves are supposedly vulnerable to silver bullets through the heart. And so is everyone who isn’t a werewolf.
As tests for vampirism or lycanthropy they rank right up there in stupidity with the tests for witches: If you drowned you were innocent (but still dead), if you could swim you were a witch, and then were killed in some horrible way that was probably about as horrible and as permanent as being drowned to death because you were wearing about 50 pounds of sodden clothes and never learned how to swim in the first place.
The religious reason for using fire is that it’s linked with the burial rite of cremation. This is why zombies as well as vampires can be laid to rest permanently that way.
Of course, it’s also difficult for any type of corporeal undead to do anything when they lack their corpus, but that’s coincidental…
:P
ook ook ook ookk
the Libraian
Faith is typically how it’s handled. The split between Undead’s Faith or Victim’s Faith is pretty even too.
My favorite example though will always be when Kitty Pryde (yes, the X-man) drove of Dracula when he burned himself on her Star of David.
So are vampires part of the Marvel Print Universe again, or are they still “incapable of existing as the curse that allows them to exist no longer exists.”?
That was an odd story arc and an odd narrative choice, at least to me.
When Kitty Pride did that, it was before Dr. Strange cast the Montesi Formula spell from the Darkhold. That was the spell that allowed vampirism into the Marvel Universe in the first place & Dr. Strange used it to banish the curse from the universe.
Of course, it takes a very powerful will to do that without losing their soul in the first place; Dr. Strange was the only one who could do it without paying the price.
So, what happened to Blade and Moebius? o_O
Blade is out doing his bit to rid the world of sparkly vampires.
Moebius keeps getting stuck in a loop, for some reason.
IIRC, Blade survived because he’d never drunk human blood. Morbius wasn’t affected because he wasn’t a “supernatural” vampire.
Actually, Blade had drunk human blood (at least in the movies)… Whistler mentions that he found him feeding off of hobos. In the comics? I dunno, I’m not familiar with the comic version of Blade.
Thank you, always get his name wrong :(
@Mspears:
The reason I figure that Blade survived is because he had used his serum exclusively for so long that there was no remaining human blood in his system at the time vampirism was banished. The vampire normally has to replenish blood fairly frequently because they “burn” it out of their systems to keep their powers & abilities strong, whereas Blade had his “substitute” to rely on for that purpose.
@MidnightDStroyer:
Fair enough. You could be right.
@MSpears (thread too deep to respond to you directly)
I have a couple Blade comics from a couple decades ago (at least). He was quite different from the movies. He used wooden knives, not a katana and firearms. Of course, those knives were something! They could pin a vampire’s arm to the wall behind then even thrown at a range, and prevented the weaker ones from escaping via mist form. Drac himself could do so, of course. But even Drac didn’t stick around for a showdown to the death. Of course, that’s fairly typical comic book writing for “Nobody ever dies (permanently, at least) who we might want to write about in the future.”
Unfortunately yes someone just had to bring them back many years later with the ‘reveal’ that Dr. Strange had a brother who was turned and had been kept in cryogenic storage so in spite of the spell destroying all vampires even those summoned from other dimensions it somehow didn’t affect the brother so when he was thawed it helped weaken the anti-vampire spell and eventually someone undid it completely using him as a focus.
The other version is that a vamp is a human corpse possessed by a demon (in the religious sense, not a Buffyverse or Charmed “demon”), so they would have the same vulnerabilities as any other evil spirit. Crucifixes and holy water are sacramentals used in the rites of exorcism (presumably, at least), so it was a natural extension to the myth.
Of course sacrementals have no power themselves, so presumably if they’re wielded by someone who doesn’t believe in God, they might very well not work.
Oh dear – I’m about to bust your new fact. “Morning Dew” is not really a thing. Or at least its a “thing” that has nothing to do with sexual arousal. To put it as delicately as possible – female parts don’t have a stopper at the end. And after a full night horizontal… and then standing up… Well its basically the female-only equivalent of the sleep gunk you get in your eyes.
Although that “Morning Dew” is waaayyy sexier way to explain to your lover why you need to change your underwear when you wake up. :P
Random boners don’t have anything to do with arousal either. They are just random swellings.
I read some time ago that it’s the body checking if everything still works. Multiple times a day, because why not.
I don’t see how that’s busting it, because morning wood doesn’t really have anything to do with arousal either. It’s just that the penile tissue happens to be engorged. You can be aroused or not, and I’m usually not when it happens. (I’m more likely to just have to pee.)
Source: I’m a guy, plus I paid attention in health class
Yes, exactly. It’s basically just a damned inconvenience. Women have change thier underpants and men have to contort ourselves into crazy positions to take our morning piss.
Source: Had to practically do a handstand this morning.
Personally, I just hold it for a bit. Then go.
I just realised what I just said.
I hold off visiting the lavatory for a while.
Still, you deserve a giant turnip for that one. It gave me a good laugh.
+1 for the first post.
+5 for the second post.
+1 for this one. :D
Only vaguely related to morning wood, but somehow this seemed like the most apropos place to put this:
My friend’s refrigerator failed recently, and he had it replaced, but not before he had to throw out most of the contents. Earlier today, he was complaining (via text message) about all the “condoments” he had to replace.
“No, Eric. It’s CONDIMENTS, spelled with an i. You’ve seen Lord of the Rings, right? A condom-ent would be a talking rubber tree.”
So if you had a “condoment” in your back yard, you’d have something to cover your morning wood with… (that’s my lame effort to tie this into the discussion)
Now, for something that actually is relevant to the discussion: “Morning wood” is called “nocturnal penile tumescence” (NPT), which happens three or four times a night during REM sleep. During REM, our brain slows the release of chemicals called neurotransmitters. It’s how the brain regulates our automatic body functions. It also keeps us from doing stuff like unconsciously attempting to act out our dreams.
One of those neurotransmitters, norepinephrine, plays a role in restricting blood flow. During REM, norepinephrine becomes less active, which opens up blood vessels and increases circulation throughout our body — including to the penis. The extra blood flow means more oxygen for all parts of our bodies, which is important for standard maintenance and repair.
Erections occur in the morning because we often wake up just out of REM sleep. A full bladder may also cause morning wood, because the increased size of the bladder can stimulate a part of the spinal cord that causes a reflex erection to prevent urination during sleep.
In other words, Can man is partially right. It’s either your body’s reaction to dilated blood vessels caused by the reduction in norepinephrine, or it’s a function to prevent you from pissing your bed. Or a bit of both.
And obviously I missed a closing /i tag. All that stuff after “norepinephrine” was NOT supposed to be italicized.
Hmm, a kinesiology student I knew explained it to me differently. He said that muscles will contract, unless they are given a signal not to, which is controlled by the parasympathetic nervous system. The penis is the same way, there is a control circuit that represses the erection, unless some stimulus causes it to be overridden and allows the erection to occur. That is why males who are paralyzed below the (shoulders, or waist, can’t remember) have permanent erections. The control nerve runs down your back, and if it is stimulated, instant erection, so fun thing you can do to your friends at the swimming pool. When you are in REM sleep, that same circuit is turned off, as you described, and erection occurs. This can be also be simulated by relaxation training, if you get very relaxed, you can get a very impressive erection, also can happen if you are very sleepy but are still awake.
Ooh, as an expert, can you predict what movements Sydney will make next?
That would explain a few awkward physics lectures.
Thanks for the info. I’m a science nerd, so the details are really interesting to me.
It’s still scientifically unclear but the link between morning wood and stuggling to pee may infact be the reason for its existance – as a biological countermeasure to wetting the bed.
And how was wetting the bed a biological inconvenience?
I though most animals pee over everything they own?
By the time animals start to manufacture ‘beds’ rather than build ‘nests’, the animal’s social behaviour may have also evolved.
Definitely not. Animals that make a nest always do their business outside the nest. Otherwise you’re just asking for infections.
They might pee over everything in the area, to mark it as property. But never in the bed/nest itself.
Not counting pets, and the influence of humans being horrible trainers, or unnatural stress factors.
Strangely enough, after all of this discussion so far, no one has thought about poor Math, might quite possibly still looking at boobies on a computer screen?
Why would we? Unless some of those grey figures do turn out to be pretty topless girls.
*starts peering eagerly at the background, tail wagging*
Well my source was Urban Dictionary. Maybe I should have put a poll on twitter asking about it, but that would be marginally creepy and it was 1 am and twitter isn’t usually hopping then.
Eh, I long ago decided that the Urban Dictionary is under the impression that almost any 2 or 3 word phrase actually has an erotic or vulgar meaning.
Urban Dictionary….
Hurr hurr hurr… Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more!
Language, please.
It sounds like the Bevis & Butthead language to me.
“Candid Photography”, better known as “Nudge Nudge”, is a sketch from the third Monty Python’s Flying Circus episode, “How to Recognise Different Types of Trees From Quite a Long Way Away” featuring Eric Idle (author of the sketch) and Terry Jones as two strangers who meet in a pub.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGrvQ1c5khU
That’s because it does.
That may be true, but females go through the same arousal sequence that males do when sleeping, and for the same reasons.
In case it is unclear, this is in response to the morning dew comment by Kin.
And ‘morning dew’ has a more pleasant sound than ‘morning crust’ :eek:
The state of dentistry back in Aristotle’s day may have made it difficult to find men and women with an intact set of teeth to count.
Actually, back in the ancient times, people had FAR better teeth then we do today. Thanks to the low sugar in food back then
Yup, you can blame bad teeth (at least for the English) on discovering the Americas
With notable exceptions, at certain times. As an example, one archaeological dig found a large population with incredibly bad tooth decay. The reason became apparent, when they found that they had found a way to cook some local nut (or something similar) with something sweet (the article mentioned, but I cannot recall the details, so am guessing honey). Ending up creating a very sticky, tooth-decaying treat, that everybody ate.
Plus various ancient (even including bronze age) populations actually practiced advanced dentistry (possibly including the one I mentioned above, due to an obvious need). Having developed hand-drills capable of excavating tooth decay. Despite modern scepticism that such would work, archaeologists even found teeth that had been fixed that way. And some ancient dentists even found ways to plug teeth.
Back in ancient times, people had FAR less tooth decays due to low sugar, which was very fortunate for them, because with the state of dentistry back then tooth decay usually lead to losing that teeth.
Also, scurvy was still problem. And more importantly, there is actual gender-specific reason to lose teeth: both pregnancy and lactating requires calcium, which can result in that woman teeth being weakened and then lost.
To conclude, I think that Aristotle DID counted teeth of few women.
I heard he counted teeth of horses and assumed it’s the same with humans
Back in ancient times, however, people might not have had as much tooth decay since their lifespans were much shorter. Same reason that not as many people died of stuff like cancer.
They didn’t usually have lifespans long enough to die of cancer. They usually died of other things first, like malnourishment. Or tiger, or bear, or spear. Same deal with
Same deal with tooth rot. A person who hasn’t lived long enough to have as many of their teeth get cavities, or who has a limited food intake isn’t necessarily going to get as many cavities (although they might lose teeth from malnourishment possibly – I dunno, I’m a lawyer not a dentist?)
That’s actually a myth/mixup. The average lifespan back then was low, but that was primarily because of high child death. People that survived into adulthood usually lived to 50/60+ (not counting, indeed, the bears and spears)
Correct. Most people don’t understand how averages work, and they can be highly misleading without the proper context. Extreme results can skew the average. For example, I could say a group of 76 men had an average net worth of one billion dollars, and most people would assume they were all fairly wealthy, but the description would still be accurate if the group included 75 homeless guys and Bill Gates.
In the case of life expectancy, high infant and childhood mortality drag the average down, since no one is living for five hundred years to pull it up. Like you said, most people who managed to survive to adulthood lived significantly more than 35 years. If you graphed death rate vs. age, I suspect you’d get something like an inverted bell curve, with deaths most common among the very young and very old, and least common among those in the middle. Of course, once you got to a certain age, the line would start curving down again, since few people lived that long, gradually trailing down to zero.
Well there was the problem of childbirth being a leading cause of death in women. Women were having far more babies and the level of pre and postnatal care was pretty low.
Or perhaps they died of bad dentistry. Not that the dentist killed them, per se, but I’m fairly certain that the four impacted wisdom teeth I had removed at the age of 18 could have been the cause of the end of my life at numerous other times in history.
A few semi-funny stories from that experience:
I breathed nitrous oxide for a bit, then the dentist injected me with whatever his knockout drug was and said “I’m going to count down from 10. When I reach 1 you should be asleep.” Which is the last thing I recall him saying to me.
I woke up alone in the room. A bit out of it, but not in any pain I guess because the anesthetic was still working. I wandered out of the room and down the hall a bit before being spotted by a nurse. Who immediately began yelling at me to sit down, and there were no chairs in the hall, so she, still quite flustered, finally led me to in interior waiting/recovery room. Where I sat down. Because there were chairs.
My father walked into the room a couple minutes later, took about 5 steps and passed out cold. Snoring before he hit the ground! I managed to slow his fall but only a little. (Later he said it was because he had been worried about me, and then I looked so pale when he walked into the room that it just hit him. Shock is a funny thing.) Which started the nurse yelling at me again, something about ripping my stitches. I was still out of it, but still managed to look her in the eye as I picked up my 200+ lb father and said “Well then why don’t you help me?” whereupon she moved to help me. We managed to get him on one of the benches in the room. The nurse left and returned quickly, and used smelling salts on him, which did the trick of waking him up in a hurry.
But I swear, that nurse was in the wrong field. Nursing and flight attendants and a few other professions really require the ability to remain calm and manage situations. And yelling usually does not do that well at all.
And then there’s this…
https://todaysorthodontist.com/exploding-teeth-why-did-it-happen/
I’ve the suggestion somewhere that science replace the word “theory” with the word “model”. This is especially true, as even DaveB seems to get it wrong.
No “Theory” is not the second highest form of scientific certainty, and it is not, inherently, second to laws. A theory is a work in progress model (see what I did there?) of how the universe behaves. It can be disproved, in which case it is wrong (but may, sometimes, still be useful, e.g. Newton’s laws), or it can gain the status of “laws” until it is disproved. Even then, it is still a theory, as it might yet be proven wrong.
“Model”, on the other hand, describes not what its purpose is in the flow of our understanding of the universe, but what the actual thing does. As such, the word is immediately recognizable to anyone actually practicing science for what it is, conveys a correct meaning for everyone else, and is not as attackable by luddites and nut-cases.
Shachar
Actually, I think model is already a thing, and it’s below theory.
The big bang model is a model that builds upon the theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics (I think. Not a scientists, just an enthusiast).
Like, a theory is just a giant stack of super complicated math. And a model is more like an actual scale model.
Our whole universe was in a hot dense state,
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait a second…
The Earth began to cool,
The autotrophs began to drool,
Neanderthals developed tools,
We built a wall (we built the pyramids),
Math, science, history, unraveling the mystery,
That all started with the big bang,
Since the dawn of man is really not that long,
As every galaxy was formed in less time than it takes to sing this song.
A fraction of a second and the elements were made.
The bipeds stood up straight,
The dinosaurs all met their fate,
They tried to leap but they were late
And they all died (they froze their asses off)
The oceans and Pangea
See ya wouldn’t wanna be ya
Set in motion by the same big bang.
It’s expanding ever outward but one day
It will cause the stars to go the other way,
Collapsing ever inward, we won’t be here, it won’t be hurt
Our best and brightest figure that it’ll make an even bigger bang.
Australopithecus would really have been sick of us
Debating how we’re here, they’re catching deer (we’re catching viruses)
Religion or astronomy (Descartes or Deuteronomy)
It all started with the big bang.
Music and mythology, Einstein and astrology
It all started with the big bang!
Wow, I had no idea that was a full song, I just knew the first part was the theme-intro to Big Bang Theory.
I didn’t know it had more than the first stanza, either. I’m also amused that the song is old enough (or not vetted well enough) to include what we now know to be inaccurate information:
“It’s expanding ever outward but one day
It will cause the stars to go the other way”
Not gonna happen, as the rate of expansion keeps increasing.
Perhaps those lyrics should be replaced by a pair describing how lonely the universe will be once all we can see is our own galaxy and no others?
I don’t know what your background is, but I am a statistician (Masters). And our view on models is “All models are wrong but some are useful” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong). Laws describe what something does; theories are ideas that have no disproof but insufficient weigh of evidence to be considered laws. Models are usually simplifications or estimates and are therefore often wrong on small or even large details.
Laws describe what something does
Absolutely right.
theories are ideas that have no disproof but insufficient weigh of evidence to be considered laws
Absolutely* wrong.
Laws describe what is happening, theories explain why it is happening. IOW, theories explain laws. In science, there is no higher level of understanding than a theory.
*To be fair, you did get the “no disproof” part right – theories are not “proven”, but rather “undisproven”.
OK.
Law: what we see happening repeatedly and assume will keep happening, the more precisely defined (idealy a mathematical formula) the better. If not precise enough they are often called “Principles”.
Hypotesis: a guess about why something could be happening.
Prediction: what should happen if the Hypotesis were true.
Test: to check if things go the way the Prediction say. If not the Hypotesis is disproved (proved false), otherwise the Hypotesis survived.
Theory: Hypotesis that has sustained enough Test and is then accepted as true. It can still be
disproved if an event that do not fit in is found.
Working hypotesis: Hypotesis that we temporarily take as true (although not yet a theory) in order to make further reasoning.
Model: an analogy, a “metaphore”, a description of a reality made in terms of another reality, that is easier of understand, as means of clarification (the hidraulic model of electricity, the rubber sheet model of gravity).
Laws do not need theories, they can be derived just from observation. We often have had laws before a theory got developed. Laws also can have a limited scope, like Newton’s laws working only at low speeds.
Al these terms had been used with slight (or major) differences in different times, sciences and beliefs. The definitions above are mostly from physics, but should work for any modern scientific field.
I wrote this in a hurry and didn’t checked the grammar thoroughly, sorry for any error/horror.
It reads well enough, and is well argued, in haste or not.
A theory is something that has so much evidence going for it that it would take significant evidence to begin to derail it. Evolution for example, isn’t just about inherited traits or birds on islands with specialized beaks. Evolution has massive piles of evidence from the fossil record, geology, radiology, anthropology, virology, etc. I say it’s the second highest level of certainty only because scientists like being accurate, and will never call something 100% certain. Laws, as far as I’m aware are really only seen in mathematics, where something can be starkly proven on paper. I’m not sure if the Laws of Thermodynamics are an exception to this, or just human parsable version of mathematical formulas.
I’ve updated my post with a more accurate definition of theory.
And I want to thank you for that. I personally have had the whole “scientifically accepted general principle supported by a substantial body of evidence” vs “a big fat guess” argument far too many times. I am sick of hearing “It’s just a theory” from people who try to (in the words of Asimov) “make it sound as though a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.” They have no concept of the high regard a theory holds in science. Theories are the life’s work of intellectual giants like Einstein & Hawking and multitudes of hard working researchers, not some noob who dropped out of high school.
I was always told that “Laws” aren’t used any more except for historical ones (laws of thermodynamics and Newton’s Laws) because they can always be incomplete at least.
The actual laws and theories are pure math. The laws and theories ‘us common folk’ know are simplifications.
Not quite, there are laws and theories that do not have a mathematical expresion, like Evolution theory or Mendel’s laws of inheritance.
Right. Physics theory.
“A theory is something that has so much evidence going for it that it would take significant evidence to begin to derail it.”
To improve the understanding notice that the “something” is a proposed why and the “evidence” can be tests, even if they are just observations. What you said can be rephrased as the usual definition: “Hypotesis that has sustained enough testing to be accepted as true”
“Laws, as far as I’m aware are really only seen in mathematics”
Laws do not need to be mathematical, although in exact sciences we usually can figure out a mathematical version of them. What is strictly defined as a law can vary between fields, though.
There’s quite a few works where Werewolves don’t care much about the moon, if at all. My own Werewolves (_Paradigms Lost_) don’t give a crap about the moon’s phase or even existence, although at times they’ve encouraged this mistaken assumption.
Hey, it’s what I’d do. In one novel about werewolves (I can’t remember its name, sorry), one mistaken assumption that werewolves deliberately encourage is the idea that werewolves are vulnerable to silver… when, in fact, it supercharges their healing.
“Oh, no. Silver bullets. I’m so scared! … What, you guys don’t have sarcasm any more?”
Morgan Freeman “You only use 10% of your brain.”
And by the end of the film, you’ll be using even less.
Aww don’t knock a fun film just because the premise is built on an urban legend. Provided you buy into that, and don’t let it keep winding you up, the film follows a reasonable progression,* and is actually very enjoyable.
* Applying the same weak scientific standards, to the ongoing story, as the base premise. Just go with it. Relax that sphincter. Err, no no, not that much!
Reminds me of a stand-up show i watched.
1: Now just relax.
*2 falls over*
1. …a little less relaxed.
Even ignoring that explanation (and considering other possibilities that would allow the drug to work, such as overclocking your brain with minimal side affects) and looking at the film in general, I didn’t really like it. More towards the end of it with the time travelling swivel chair. It wasn’t a satisfying ending to the film.
Or you could just assume it happened in an alternate universe where people do use only 10%.
I mean if other movies can just invent non-existant materials like admantium and such, this is totaly plausible.
I totally want to hug Gregor, he looks like he gives amazing hugs hehe
Unless he is wet. No one likes wet dog smell.
Must take him ages to shampoo and dry all that hair.
But his hair vanishes when he’s in human form. So maybe he grows new hair every time he were’s, so it’s always clean?
He could make a fortune making material for wigs.
In the, unfortunately now dead, webcomic Were-World. (In which Dabbler made a cameo.) Were’s fur would extend and contract out of the skin. One of the characters commented that retracting your fur without washing it first was a good way to get a skin infection.
That’s the most plausible explanation yet.
But you’d think their pores would be more durable, if it existed before soap was invented.
Many legends also describe that a werewolf also regenerates quickly to heal wounds…Handy for a predatory species, I’d surmise. In other works, the reason that is cited as to why it takes silver to kill a werewolf is because they can’t regenerate any wound made by silver. Also linked with these legends presumes that silver has some mystical link with the moon, which is why silver has such a detrimental effect on werewolves.
But, as Gregor is pointing out, many of the legends are false (at least in the Grrl Power universe).
Does mean if they get a trim while they wolf out, they could get problems with nasty ingrown hairs.
It’s his daughter I personaly would prefer to hug. I assume fluffyness runs in the family.
Because he’s so fluffy!
Sydney, admitting your ignorance is the first step to true wisdom.
If only more people did that the world would be a lot better off.
the modern ‘werewolf’ afaik originated with the Germanic pagan ‘werwolf’ a type of berserker fighter who wore wolf skins and went mad in battle (although there were wolf man stories before that, they lacked a lot of modern elements)- using terror as a weapon they would have, when using night attacks, attacked during the full moon
so there’s your legendary origin-
Whilst that is indeed one point of origin, there are others. Rather like dragons, there were several, distant and unrelated, cultures, which had such folklore.
That particular legend was in reference to “skin changers,” those who don’t have the shape-shifting ability naturally, but must invoke a type of spiritual magic to invoke it. This goes even farther back in time, to the hunter-gatherer’s society, when the tribal shaman would emulate the prey species (by donning their skin) that they hunted in order to help track them down more effectively. They also emulated a “totem species” with skin-changing rituals to help the tribe take on the more admirable aspects of their totem.
You’re mixing werewolf and berserker. Werewolf, as far as I can tell comes from the Saxon. Were meaning Man or possibly male. Berserk appears to originate from the Norse. Ber meaning bare or bear (not sure which) and Serk (or sark) meaning shirt or coat.
So the Norse berserkers were either topless or bear-shirted men (not sure there’s a difference ;)
The Saxon werewolves were men-wolves or male-wolves depending.
When I was researching for my werewolf stories I decided to go with forced transformation on the full moon because the setting I share is based off the idea of narrative-causality. Namely things work the way they do because that’s how they work in stories.
I decided that the ritual to create therianthropes (animal shape-shifters) has to be performed on or near a full moon. Theiranthropes are also vulnerable to silver, a metal associated with the moon. So changing on or near the full moon seemed like a logical thing to include. I wish I’d thought of the hormonal/random triggers thing.
Germanic Pagan was an indo Germanic religious tradition that spread from Germany through most of northern Europe starting around the 4th century; so yes, it had both norse and saxon (as well as other) adherents.
The ‘werwolf’ is a type of berserker, but separate from the bear motif; often associated with Odin/ Donir/ Woden, due to his being the god of wolves (note Geri and Freki)
they definitely wore wolf skins, and liked to attack by the full moon, hence their other name kveldulf (night wolves) or Úlfhéðnar (wolf skinned)
note the eddas:
I’ll ask of the berserks, you tasters of blood,
Those intrepid heroes, how are they treated,
Those who wade out into battle?
Wolf-skinned they are called. In battle
They bear bloody shields.
Red with blood are their spears when they come to fight.
They form a closed group.
The prince in his wisdom puts trust in such men
Who hack through enemy shields
so imo, that’s where the were wolf/ full moon comes from; if you were a peasant in 8th century northern Europe, you barred your house door on full moon nights for fear of the.. wer wolves
There have been legends of animals taking human form or vice versa in almost every culture. Native American, Chinese, Japanese, African, European, you name a culture and it probably had one. And since wolves were on most continents and competed with early humans for prey they were a natural target for scary stories.
Well, finally something about this meeting manages to knock Sydney!
Not counting fainting when being introduced to the Council? o_O
I am with Gregor on that. The fainting was from delight. This is a fundamental shake-uip of Sydney’s world. Whereas the existence of vampires, werewolves, aliens, et al, was actually a long-held dream.
Oh that is lovely. I was laughing away at that being the thing which makes Sydney realise that not everything in her comics will be right. Despite, well, werewolves, vampires and superheroes actually being real.
…Especially when Sydney might have to call upon her “genre-knowledge” to help her plan tactics in the course of a fight. This shake-up of her foundation of knowledge may make her hesitate at a bad time, doubting what she thinks she knows.
If Sydney can walk away from this with the realization that she has yet to learn even more, then she’ll be a stronger person for it.
Actually, if you think about it, this may be part of the reason they’re telling Sydney about this so soon. Not just because she’d find out anyway thanks to the Truesight orb, but the impression I get is that she has a knack for tactics (as a side-effect of her ADHD, perhaps, but a knack nonetheless). Knowing the truth would help her tactical planning with potential allies (or against potential enemies).
Yep. As Sydney has taken to heart something that Math told her; if she can master that much, she will begin to really learn. As Sydney demonstrated during that fight with Vehemence, she was already using “3 steps ahead” strategy & with her ADHD for help, I don’t think it’ll take her too long to stretch that out even farther.
Letting her have access to a base level of real knowledge now, even if it’s above her paygrade, Sydney can avoid making costly mistakes in the future that would otherwise have otherwise been based on assumptions & innuendo.
Dave,
A scientific theory isn’t the “second highest form of scientific certainty, (second only to laws.)”. They are two very different things. Both are the highest degree of scientific certainty. Both are based on accumulated evidence. And both are repeatedly tested against nature in an attempt to prove they’re wrong. The idea that theories become laws with enough research is a fairly common misconception. ;)
A scientific law describes a phenomenon found in nature, but doesn’t explain why it exists. For example, the Law of Gravity, states that there is an attractive gravitational force between two objects, proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distance. Newton’s Law of gravity has been around for over three centuries, but nobody could explain what caused it.
A scientific theory explains why that phenomenon exists. For example, the theory of gravity (aka the theory of general relativity) says that gravity isn’t actually a force, but the consequence of the curvature of spacetime caused by uneven distribution of matter.
Interestingly enough, both the Law of Gravity and general relativity are known to be fatally flawed.
At huge scales, galactic size and bigger, Newton’s Law of Gravity doesn’t match up to observations. The most accepted hypothesis to explain this discrepancy is the existence of dark matter, a mysterious material that has mass, but doesn’t interact with “normal” matter ever, but there are several other hypothesis as well.
And of course, general relativity and quantum mechanics, which describe the physics of large things and small things respectively, are completely incompatible with each other. ;)
If you as me the only thing science have actualy proved is that the universe will always be more strange than we can ever understand. That doesn’t stop science from being incredibly fun and usefull of course.
It gives us interesting toys.
*uses paw to bat ball, and set executive toy in motion*
Science can only describe the manner in which things happen. “How” they happen. You cannot do tests of physical properties and find out “why”, you can only find out whether the thing did or did not happen according to the hypothesis being tested.
As far as I can tell, the difference between “theory” and “law” is politics and gravitas. Newton was an academic potentate, so he was able to claim his best theories were laws.
There may also be something to do with the accessibility of the theory – most of the physics laws I’ve seen are things that can be tested in front of freshmen physics classes. There may be some selection bias in that, as I wasn’t a physics major, and only took that class because my major required me to take at least two science classes outside my major.
Considering what a madman Newton was there were probably no one who dared telling him he was wrong.
But you are right, the so called laws and theories are nothing but creations of humans and we all know how humans are. It’s best to not take anything they say too seriously.
…Presuming that you’re human, we can’t even take that seriously either…
;)
Of course you shouldn’t. I say and do stupid things all the time.
However, how can you be sure that I am in fact a human? You never observed me writing this.
That’s exactly why I specified that presuming you were human. For all anyone really knows (excepting you, of course), you may be an experimental AI hooked into the ‘Net & learning human behavior from us…For whatever reasons.
I still think he is a robotic shark, swimming the internet, looking for tasty prey, thrashing around in its shores.
Fine, you got me. I am a little robot. However I just wish I could transform into a shark and swim away from all the stressfull things here on land. Those cybertronians have it so easy.
You will find a lot of your problems will vanish, if you just smile.
:-D
…Just don’t show that skark-toothed grin to us.
…Please.
(shudders)
I admit I have done a smiling shark impression on some occasions: https://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m251/alexfrith/surgrisesurgrise.jpg
Been meaning to ask you about your ole pal, Hammerstein
Well, as long as Yorp doesn’t pull this (https://www.creepypasta.com/smile-dog/) on us, I’m good.
;)
He has influenced an entire branch of human thinking. Be wary what you are sitting on, should you choose to saw it off!
*looks up, at head, in puzzlement*
How did that get there?
*throws ‘I ♡ science’ hat to one side*
Ooh, that was a heart, when I tested it. But here it displays as a pile of cookies.
I haz become an alchemist! I can turn hearts into cookies!
Newton would be proud of you. Alchemy was his big passion. Physics was just a minor side interest.
I can’t deny his brilliance though. His explanation why apples drop on your head and not the other way around is the best thus far.
“you can only find out whether the thing did or did not happen according to the hypothesis being tested.”
Very true, but since a hypothesis is a guess about why it happen, a repeated success strongly hints that the guess should be right.
“As far as I can tell, the difference between “theory” and “law” is politics and gravitas”
A law say “what”, a theory say “why”.
dark matter, a mysterious material that has mass, but doesn’t interact with “normal” matter ever
Not quiet right: The name refers to the fact that it does not emit or interact with “electromagnetic radiation”, such as light, and is thus invisible.
Well it also doesn’t seem to interact with normal matter through the strong or week nuclear forces either. It only seems to interact by gravity.
You’re probably right, I was listening to a podcast that ranked them like that, and it made sense to me because laws are usually purely mathematics. I’ve updated my post with a better definition.
If you moon a very hungry werewolf he may transform but that doesn’t have anything to do with the actual moon.
Or an easily iritable one.
That sounds like an action with consequences that could (literally) bite you in the @$$…
If you moon a werewolf and happen to be an attractive female……. don’t be too surprised at other results of your attempt.
There is a condition where people have psychotic episodes during the full moon which I’ve been lead to understand is one of the origins of werewolf myths.
According to multiple friends across the varying types of emergency services (police, ambos and hospital workers predominantly) full moons are by far the busiest nights they have. Something about the full moon makes people go nuts.
Hence the origin of the word “Lunatic” ;)
Yep and people going nuts means people not holding back their newish transformations, ergo more relatively recent weres would transform on the full moon, even if it’s not directly linked.
I believe that, while the Buffy universe does have lunar werewolves, this connection also comes up.
What’s weird about the stats regarding anti-social behavior and the phase of the moon is that the uptick varies quite a bit across cultural/ethnic groups, but it does seem to be ubiquitous (I lean to the “There’s more light, which messes with Circadian rhythms, which leads to poor judgement/lowered inhibitions from lack of sleep” model, but I admit my bias isn’t as well justified as I’d like).
That is probably a part of the picture. But the Moon’s influence on the Earth is more than that alone. It also visibly affects our tides. Plus that gravitational pull has a very slight effect on all of us. Some primordial mechanism, which we may someday find, could be influenced by that, and, in turn, be affecting our behaviour.
For example the menstrual cycle might have had its origins in some primordial mammal, scurrying around underground, and only emerging at night, to try and evade detection by nasty dinosaurs. The full moon would be the best time to find a mate. And that means that having a reproductive cycle linked to the phase of the moon would give an evolutionary advantage.
However said burrowing mammal’s body might not be able to respond to just light and darkness as its cues to set such a cycle. But the theorised mechanism, for sensing the gravitational pull, would be a reliable way of doing that. Even though it ceased to be of use, for later mammals that evolved, nature would keep the coding in the ‘junk DNA’ closet, just in case it turns out to be handy again.
Which could help to explain some individuals responding, to their primitive urges, to get outside and/or become more active, on the nights of the full moon.
Yeah, I heard that (in dental offices) some patients very often call on a full moon and complain that a tooth hurts them, and they want to have it checked, and it’s usually nothing.
So they just call them the “lunar patients” and just allow them to come for a checkup, becuse otherwise they will complain for hours.
…Plus, the dentist still gets paid for his/her time…
I recall reading that there are actual crime statistics that show that violent crime goes up during full moons.
But don’t fall into the trap of believing that the moon is causing that behavior, somehow influencing human to violence.
It’s just as likely that it’s easier to pick out an easy mugging mark when there’s a full moon out, but it’s still darn enough that you might just get away with it.
Dark enough, damnit!
Next thing he’ll tell her is that dogs don’t bark at the door every time the doorbell rings.
They usualy bark before the doorbell rings.
Hmmmm…. I think Ivan Pavlov might say differently about that?
Somehow they know if people outside are about to ring the bell.
That’s true, my parrot always squawks at me when i enter the flat, before i even come to my door.
Out of curiosity, how do you check that your parrot is not just squawking all day long?
1) He’s got a really good baby monitor.
2) His cat told him so.
Sounds reasonable. Everyone knows that cats have psychic powers and know everything.
You mean, cats are psychotic and tell the dog they know everything
They hear the footsteps before the doorbell is rung or the door opened..
Funny thing is my dog used to bark at everyone BUT the pizza delivery guy. I guess he smelled the pizza.
Mmm, interesting theory. So the animal is responding to subconscious cues given off by the owner. Who is clearly unaware of the approaching individual…
Unless they have awakened their precognition, but are repressing it at a conscious level! The dog would be able to pick up on the conflict, that would be apparent in their pet’s behaviour, through changes in body language and vocal tone. So would be asking “Is Timmy approaching the door?”
..
No, no, wait! That was a trick rhetorical question, wasn’t it? Pavlov believed he had taught his horse to count. So he would say “They have been counting the number of visitors, so they are saying, ‘the fourth visitor, of the day, is just about to arrive’!”
And at rubber duckies buried in a bag.
As found out one day by a friend who dealt with a jerk of a police officer. And all the “backup” he called for. Over a suspicious duffle bag.
The police dog kept poking the rubber ducky, barked when it squeaked, poked again. It took 5 minutes of interrogating said friend for them to figure out why the dog was freaking.
Same friend went to the station later to contest the ticket. Before the court date. The police supervisor threw out the ticket, in front of the officer that started it all. With the words “He’s a dumbass. Don’t worry about it.”
They don’t bark at the door. They bark at the boss, to warn them.
And at helicopters. To keep them away and protect the family.
In a way, you’re right; dogs bark at the door but not because the door is the “threat.” They bark to issue the warning of danger, they bark towards the door as the direction from which the danger is approaching. Essentially, they’re saying “Look that way, stupid!”
Wait…. zootopia lied to me?!
I feel dirty….
Huh, my comment doesn’t seem to have gone through (yet?) Anyway, it’s night howlers, not moon howlers. I don’t think anyone is denying that wolves howl, nor that other wolves may respond.
And night howlers are not animals anyway (not going to spoil a great movie)
If your system is being extremely laggy, that can happen. Possibly even loosing a post, as it never arrives at the server. When my old set up was at its worst, I used to copy the message, immediately prior to hitting the submit button, just in case.* But you would need an antiquated computer and a very bad connection to get close to how bad mine was.
Alternatively, sometimes, the moderation software will kick in. Typically if posting many links. But, if that is the case, you will get a message saying that ‘the post is awaiting moderation.’
* However, I found out that, most of the time, your computer will still have the message, as it has not received confirmation that the server received it. If that happens just use the ‘go back to previous screen’ arrow (or equivalent option) in your browser. This will take you to the previous post. But it will no longer be in ‘submit comment’ mode.
Just click on ‘reply’ (taking care to pick the correct comment, but it should be the most prominent one). With luck, your entire message should appear in the comments box. Provided you have not undertaken any other browsing activity in the meantime.
oh the were-wolves bound to the moon thing some argue it a curse some say gravity like the tides are affected so is the were-wolf. ((and crazy people)) this is something different though i like it.
oh i forgot i even came across a book were werewolves were never human in the first place had diamond claws could shapeshift into other people after touching someone once and they fed off negative emotions ie psychic vampires.
that was a FUN book. :D
Paradigms Lost by Ryk Spoor. Who comments here fairly regularly, btw.
They show up in some of his other books, too.
But the fullness of the moon as no influence on it’s gravity effects.
Mmm, good point. Let me scratch out about 2/3 of one of my other posts…
*scratchy scratch scratch*
But the moon’s orbital distance determines the effects of its gravity. According to NASA, the moon is gradually drifting away from the Earth, about 1″ per year. They know this due to one of the moon-missions that planted reflective mirrors on the surface. they know the moon’s orbital distance by beaming a laser at those mirrors (accounting for atmospheric conditions) & time how long it takes for those lasers to reflect back to the Earth. So they calculate the orbital distance with a high degree of accuracy. With regular readings over decades of time, they know that the moon is gradually pulling away; our distant ancestors (from a few thousands years ago & earlier) would seen the moon as bigger than we do today.
So…Are there any “climate change alarmists” going to blame humanity for what happens to Earth’s tidal patterns (which also has an effect on the ocean’s currents) when the moon finally breaks from orbit & careens off into the void?
:P
Only if there is anybody still alive to debate that, when it occurs.
Perhaps some Venetian* archaeology might be able to give us perspective on how they viewed the greenhouse gas effect, on their civilisation?
* Planet, not city. Although I guess the inhabitants of the city are quite keen followers of climate change and its potential effects on them.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Interestingly the BBC invited me to debate climate change, on air. Only trouble is they were looking for someone who could support the argument that “industrialised nations should not bear the costs”. Apparently they did not think that my suggestion that “a cull should be implemented, in industrialised nations, until the climate stabilised,” would go down well on that side of the debate.
The correct adjective is “venereal,” believe it or not.
Not. On account of the discrepancy between an academic demanding that “this is the word that should be used” and the populace agreeing with that, and actually using it.
Fair enough. Then perhaps “Venusian,” which avoids confusion with both Venice and certain unfortunate diseases.
Sounds like a good compromise to me. :)
Incidentally, if you are ever in Italy, and looking for the city, follow the signs to Venezia. I also found the locals responded more favourably if you used their name for the city, rather than the one foreigners dreamt up.
Always understood it to be “Venusian”
Oh, a couple of little things about “greenhouse gas” & “world climate fluctuations” that I ran across. Enjoy!
This is only the (proverbial) tip of the iceburg.
Don’t know why I keep messing up the code for links, even though I normally just copy/past the pages in with my text. One link is missing altogether & is https://constitution.com/great-climate-war%E2%80%A8/
Interesting how paranoid conspiracy nuts feel that the rest of society is in on the plot, and only those who agree with their minority view are actually enlightened. Likewise attempting to frame the reason why the majority of scientists do not agree with his position, as being down to government funding.
Whilst ignoring that the majority of scientists, world-wide, including those with no government mandate, take the opposing view. Barring, of course, picking out Russia and China and attempting to tar all dissenters with that brush. Not that much else can be expected from a non-scientist, writing a political piece aimed at an unquestioning like-minded audience.
To attribute the opinions of the vast majority of the most qualified scientists on the planet, as being motivated by some US government conspiracy, to bribe them ,to give a particular opinion is to willfully ignore the entire scientific process. Such issues should be debated on scientific merit.
Listening to nutters, with tin-foil hats, claiming that there is a world conspiracy, will not help anyone objectively understand the issues.
Well, on some occasions the majority have been wrong (“let’s vote for Hitler!” for example) so some more or less nutty people critisising is usualy a good thing.
But when it comes to burning stuff I think we should stop doing that anyway for many other good reasons.
The ignorant masses often fall for rhetoric such as “That religious group is the cause of all our troubles, not our own political system. We should persecute them and that will make our lives better. That other minority group is responsible for all the crime, we should go hard on them.”
“Oh and that third minority are stealing all the jobs from us honest people. We should get rid of them… somehow. Using harsh interrogation techniques on these religious deviants, criminals and undesirables is a good thing.”
However that is a very different situation to saying that the majority of experts, in their specialist field, using ever-increasing research data, steadily improving techniques and continuous critical examination, are all wrong.
Well, you can’t just “stop doing that,” you’ve gotta have a replacement first. And most alternative energy sources simply aren’t ready yet. They’re getting better, but not fast enough. And let’s not forget the sheer amount of existing infrastructure built around fossil fuels. Coal and gas fired plants are designed to operate for decades–and will. And I, for one, probably won’t be buying an electric car for at least 20 years, even if they became widely available now. Since they’re not, it’ll be even longer.
At this rate, we’re looking at at least another century of fossil fuel dominance. And that’s probably an optimistic estimate.
That’s a bit negative to be honest. You got to start somewhere and we humans can be very adaptable if we realy need or want to. But of course I don’t want to force change on anyone.
I for one am a bit tired of being so dependant on just one type of fuel. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket and all that.
His Imperial Majesty is just pointing out the practical problems. There is no ideal solution readily at paw. Fusion power has only reached proof of principle break-even point so far. And breakthroughs are progressing at such a slow rate that (unless there is a radical, unexpected, leap) we are unlikely to see society powered by fusion for a long long time.
The best alternative is not even being developed (namely liquid thorium reactors) although, thankfully there is ongoing research and a number of effective, working, thorium reactors are operating. Which do not have all the advantages of their more advanced liquid cousins, but are none-the-less still a viable alternative to conventional nuclear reactors.
Conventional nuclear reactors have a lot of issues working against them, but are presently, along with thorium reactors, the only practical way of significantly reducing our dependency on fossil fuels. Which is of most importance when trying to counter climate change.
Renewable energy is good for small, localised energy production, in suitable areas. E.g tidal production for coastal cities, limited to areas where it will not cause problems with sea traffic, fishing, the ecosystem and so on. Where possible we should, of course, endeavour to have as high a percentage of renewable energy production, to meet each nations needs, as possible.
However, when you look at proposed schemes to switch over most, or all, energy production to renewable sources, they are clearly not viable. The infrastructure costs
are simply too much, at the present time. As our technology improves, the proportion of renewables we can use goes up. But that too is progressing at a slow pace.
The most significant boost to renewables is how close we are to bringing fuel cells to the market. Once we have those, and can store energy efficiently, at times we are producing a surplus (e.g. daytime for solar energy), for use when that source is not available, then renewable energy will take a big step forward in practicality.
But the costs will still remain. For England for instance you presently need to input more energy, into the creation of solar panels, than you are likely to get back by their lifetime of energy harvesting! Hence solar powered energy there is only viable with subsidies. Importantly there is no net benefit to countering global warming, because the initial production is using conventional power.
Hopefully fuel cells will tip that equation though, in such regions, by making optimum use of the power harvested. But the biggest problem is the time delays in all of these projects. Nuclear power plants take twenty years to build, as an example.
So a simple statement of a change in policy is not sufficient on its own. There would be decades of delay before any practical changes (on national or world scales) come into effect. And that would be subject to the vagaries of policy makers potentially changing, every four years or so, and reversing, or altering, policies and investment.
Yorp just explained my views better than I ever could. :)
Anyway, it’s not like I’m saying we should spend the next century doing nothing, only that, at current rate of development it will take at least that long before alternatives can realistically replace fossil energy. Even a massive scientific breakthrough would still take years or decades before all the kinks are worked out and it starts to be implemented on a large enough scale.
Until then, we can work on small scale solutions that may eventually lead to something more significant, like the wind farms in my own oil-producing state (though environmentalists still complain that they kill migratory birds). But let’s not kid ourselves, this is a long term scientific, political, and economic problem, and there is no quick and easy solution. There’s little benefit to panicking and trying to rush things.
By the way, Yorp, don’t fuel cells require large amounts of expensive platinum and palladium, as well as access to free hydrogen? It’s been a few years since I read up on them, but I seem to remember that being one of the biggest challenges.
I typed an insightful reply to this. But the internet ate it. Time for walkies now. I will keep my claws crossed that the internet will regurgitate it by the time I get back.
*sigh* Here we go again. GRR. OK taking out a link. And once more…
There are a wide variety of fuel cells, not all of which have that problem. But look down the article linked for criticisms of the technology. However, in doing so, bear in mind that the article is unduly focused on the use of fuel cells in cars. One additional problem, not listed there is water pollution.
At our present technology level fuel cells are limited to niche uses. However arid regions could receive particular benefit from renewable energy generation, having power stored via fuel cells, and receiving water as a byproduct. Given many areas (such as in parts of the Australian outback) are depleting their water table, this would be a welcome option.
They would, as you say, require hydrogen supplied to them, in order to operate. However safe and efficient transportation of such could be significantly improved by use of lightweight hydrogen-impermeable meta materials. These do exist, but we would need to see them in low-cost mass production before such would be practical.
One of the criticisms is the lack of infrastructure to support hydrogen fuel cells (namely hydrogen stations, which would replace petrol stations). This aspect though is just a political, rather than a scientific hurdle. And one which would be helped by the above solution.
There is informed speculation that fuel cells may never be a practical solution for use in cars. However such folks are focused too much on a like-for-like replacement. The car is a highly specialised response to the capabilities of the infernal combustion engine. Which has been refined by over a century of development.
The correct way to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, for that sector, is to design a transportation network which utilises the strengths of the new technologies, and caters for its weaknesses. What worked for the old, planet-harming, technology will not be what is optimal for the replacements.
So schemes which transmit power to cars, as they drive over an appropriately equipped road, are good routes to follow. They could provide for most of the urban transportation needs. Which, given that humanity is now an urban species, will be the bulk of journeys.
Likewise the Wikipedia article suggested that busses are proving to be viable with fuel cells, along with other specialised forms of transport. So, as a society, we could actively encourage their use more and fossil fuel cars less. if we chose.
Not to mention designing a replacement for the car, which does not require an internal combustion engine, but which does make use of renewable energy and fuel cells. But one which offers far more utility (in its own way, rather than the way the car provides it).
The latter I have done. But I am just waiting for a couple of technologies to mature enough. to make it viable. Which are just a matter of when, not if. Although I would opt for liquid thorium reactors, for the larger vehicles. But that is just a dream. The greater challenge is dragging me away from my cosy kennel, long enough to actually get the ball rolling on developing them!
It’s not a completely unreasonable position, if viewed in a certain light.
After all, there were a large number of scientists with impressive credentials who did something they called research which led them to conclude that cigarettes were not harmful in any way, and defended that position tenaciously until overwhelming evidence finally proved otherwise. And there are yet another fairly sizable group of scientists who just coincidentally happen to work for oil companies or conservative think tanks and the like who dispute the findings of the vast majority of climate scientists who haven’t sold their souls for a few dollars.
Meh, I saw through the tobacco industries lies as a ten year old. It was easy to spot the pattern that only research sponsored by the tobacco industry came out in favour of their product.
Which is not the case with climate change. The bulk of climate scientists, in many disciplines within it, and from innumerable institutions and many different governments are singing from the same prayer book. Notably they are not getting their funding on the proviso that their results come out a particular way.
Further look at it logically, governments would rather not have the huge costs involved in combating climate change. So why would they force scientists to abandon their ethics and lie about their research? Whatever cock-and-bull story the deniers feed to American voters, to try and convince them, does not pull the wool over the eyes of the public in the rest of the world.
Where you do have similarities though, between the tobacco cancer debate and climate change, is that there are powerful lobby groups, with very deep pockets. Who spend a lot of money on trying to influence public opinion. Which is why I disregard all politically motivated analysis and trust purely in the science.
We would need serious amounts of climate change to chase away the Moon before the Sun eats us (if I recall correctly). Let’s not take the risk of the Moon leaving us soon anyway because I like having it around. Even though I am not a wolf or werewolf.
Love the way Gregors Ears flatten when he’s angry… Pnl 2
Dave is a good observational artist.
*sets ears to a jaunty angle*
With confidence shattered,what will Sydney’s outlook on what Gregor just said???
Fairly confident that she will bounce back fairly quickly
Especialy in a place full of distractions like this.
“This depression will never end… Oh look! A unicorn! Yaaah!”
Great, you broke her. Not that it’s any kind of difficult task.
:-D
Yeah, the “joy feint” earlier, she just needed someone to hit the reset switch. Now I think someone has to call customer support.
In her defense. Except for the scuba diving mentioned early on, she’s a city girl. Most of what she knows about wildlife comes from what she reads and sees on tv.
my puppy (ok, 4 years old, still my puppy) barks at hot air balloons, must be airborne vigilantes.
A friend, with a holiday home here, has brought over his dogs, for the first time. One of them is still trying to get used to me. And failing, every time I change my hat. They have a big garden, so it can see me long before it smells me. So keeps thinking ‘this is a stranger.’ Despite having been friendly with me previously. Compounded by then being too wary to approach and sniff, to check who I am.
So I am having to gradually show it that I am the same person ‘hat on’ and ‘hat off’. Very slow going though, as it is very suspicious, of my shapechanging ability!
Those must be nize hats…
Come take one off me, if you think you are tough enough.
Not a good thing to issue such a challenge to a Jaeger, hope your legs are strong enough to outrun them…
Outrun zem? Dem I canz fight, without having to hold back! Iz fun!
I enjoyed ‘Lucy’, and while there were many problems, Morgan Freeman’s character said humans use ten percent of the brains POTENTIAL. Which sadly is worded really similar to the common misconception.
That is an interesting, and fair, distinction to make.
Honestly, I’m not sure that wording is much better, for a scientist character especially. Saying that we have reached a specific percentage of our ‘potential’ means that we must have the other 90% mapped out already, and that would mean that they should already know what Lucy’s powers will be as she grows into them. (Think of it as saying, “We’ve explored ten percent of this island.” You can only make that statement after you’ve sailed around the outside of it to get a better idea of how big it is.)
Whoooooa!
Two problems with your stance. Firstly it looks silly, you should have your hands on your hips… no wait… the other stance…
First all we have done is mapped what genes appear where in the human body. That does not mean we actually know what they all do! Plus much of the guess-work that we apply in trying to figure them out could well be based on flawed assumptions. Which is why I get twitchy about ‘gene therapy’, with plans to swap out ‘defective’ genes with ‘healthy’ ones.
We have seen arrogant scientists at work, in previous generations, and such approaches can have nasty long-term consequences!
Secondly “potential”, especially given the context of the film in question, includes all of the things which humanity does not know about. Which I am confident far outweighs the bits that we do!
What gene allows humans to walk on burning hot coals, without suffering damage? Which combination of genes allows us to alter our body’s autonomic systems just by what we are thinking?* How do we unlock any of our mind’s ESP potential.** If we can answer these questions, and then utilise the ability, to directly control what our body is doing, via our mind, then we are unlocking more of our potential.
* This is what the placebo effect is measuring, but no scientist can properly explain what is happening. All they have is guesswork. Despite the fact that this is the most tested phenomenon in scientific history!***
** I phrase it this way because I have experienced precognition first paw. Whilst I can offer no proof, to substantiate it, it still leaves me in the position of knowing that such will be understood one day. Allowing us to vastly increase our potential!
*** Every clinical trial, which uses a control group, is contributing to the pool of data we have on the placebo effect.
“First all we have done is mapped what genes appear where in the human body. That does not mean we actually know what they all do!”
In the same way that you can see a satellite image of the whole island even before you set foot on it to explore. That “10% of potential we know of” is a way of saying that we can’t see the trees because of the forest…We’ve only begun to look at the trees from close range, instead of seeing only the whole forest.
Can we be said to be exploiting the potential of a forest, if all we do is map them from space, and chop them down to make furniture and clear land for farming? Is that sufficient understanding of the potential of something? Within that forest could be the cure for cancer. That is a far greater use of a forest, than making some chairs or switching it to beefburger production.
Having Sean Connery bring out the cure increases the usefulness of that forest, to humanity, a thousand fold. Let alone a mere ten fold increase, as per the Lucy film.
The point is that being able to see the elements does not equate to even understanding them, let alone using their potential to the maximum effect.
And it gets even more complicated than that because it seems genes can be “turned off or on” by environmental factors too. Add to that the new science of Epigenetics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp1bZEUgqVI&ab_channel=SciShow
The “you only use 10% of your brain” is quite true, but that doesn’t mean that the rest isn’t used; it means that you only use 10% AT A TIME. You use pretty much all of it in the course of a day. When you aren’t using them, parts of the brain shut down to save energy; as it is, with only 10% active, your brain uses 25% of your metabolism. If you could use all of it at once, your brain would consume 2.5 times your total metabolic output, and getting rid of the heat and metabolic wastes would overload your body. But that wouldn’t make for a very appealing movie…
Actually you are missing the point of the opening comment in this thread. Humans do not use 10% of their brain. They use 100% of it. What that comment is saying though is that they do not use it well. They are under-utilising their potential, not the amount of grey matter involved.
If during the course of a game, you run over 100% of the pitch, but only score one goal, you are not making good use of your potential. However if you improve the quality of what you are doing, you could score 10 goals in a game.
This probably would not even require using all 100% of the brain, but just focusing on using parts of it, in new and interesting ways. Thus properly exploiting the potential.
Even THAT is false. There is evidence that up to 16% (not 10%) of our brain is in use at any given time. I know I’m being a little pedantic, pointing out a difference of just 6%, but the whole “you use only 10% of your brain” thing is one of the world’s most annoyingly persistent myths.
I hated the evolution part more,where organism would stop reproducing when the environment gets rough and cells show the same stupid behavior.
One example of a world where lycanthropy is unaffected by moon phases is Winter’s Tale by Emrys Vaughn, which can be read for free at emrysvaughn.com. It’s the author’s first series and it takes a little while to actually get anywhere, but by book four or five it gets really, really good.
Part of me felt like Sydney there when I left my religion, then again when I came to realize there is no supernatural, no magic, no soul.
As to Werewolves and the moon: In the worlds I’ve been writing there is no moon. There’s the 17 Sisters, but those are held in geostationary orbit above one specific city, they don’t rise or set or wax and wane. All of my worlds have something one would call a kind of were, but without a moon, there’s no cultural lunar connection. In one they all look like three eyed elven women when they aren’t expressing their more ‘animal’ features. In another, werewolves are associated with the Astral Plane and can be from any of the other animal peoples, but they just turn into wolf people sometimes. In yet another they transform if electrocuted.
I would argue that electrocution as a trigger is a weird one but that transformation as a survival mechanism in response to severe pain is a lot more logical and achieves mostly the same results.
no soul you, best not tell that to a bluesman…or an artist or a poet or a chef. :) Yes all the religions are not real, Yes so far no proof of supernatural. But soul? heh, heh, heh…go listen to some Howlin’ Wolf or John Lee Hooker or dig even further back to some Charlie Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson heck even Soliari (contemporary of Mozart tres underrated) Even some ZZ TOP. Now listen to that while having some FINE FINE gumbo and corn bread (the kind of gumbo so good you be selling yo momma to get another bowl good) or maybe good ol’ comfort food. :) Trust me there’s soul, it just ain’t that mystic mumbo jumbo the spiritualist and deists want you to believe. And the devil is not one it’s many and it’s them folk what don’t put gravy on their potatoes.
But, eh, what do I know. I’m old, I slept in everything hurts, can’t type for diddly squat. Not much for thinking for that matter. So I believe I’ll stumble ’round find m’ shoes and leave.
One kind favor I’ll ask of you
One kind favor I’ll ask of you
One kind favor, I’ll ask, of you… See that my grave is kept clean.
*bass guitar jam session*
Where could we read these works ? Always need some more stories to read ^^. And if they stray from the conventional pathes that’s even better
I always thought a soul was just a story, the composed memories of an individual shaping their personality.
Magic might not exist in the form of an esoteric energy, but I feel that luck is occasionaly magical in itself.
And supernatural is just everything we haven’t discovered yet. There’s plenty of that around.
“And supernatural is just everything we haven’t discovered yet.”
…And hence the term supernatural. There’s still a lot we don’t know about our own universe & that which we can’t understand (at least, not yet) is that portion of our universe that operate on “laws of physics” that we haven’t learned yet…completely natural, but (superimposed) above our level of understanding.
For example, what do we know about any physics that operate only faster than the speed of light? Nothing, because we can’t even perceive anything that might move at such speeds. If we cannot perceive it, then “science” cannot observe it & cannot learn from it. They say that the Scientific Method of Inquiry is to Observe, then Theorize, then Test the theory against the observation. I say that they got it wrong, in that an event must be perceived first, then it can be observed for study.
Of course, we do have means to observe some things indirectly, as in sub-atomic particles are too small for direct observation, but we can observe what effects on the surrounding environment they have when moving through it. For example, we can’t directly see the air with our eyes, but when air is in motion we see what it does when leaves blow along the ground. Sub-atomic particles are studied in that same way…They can’t been seen, but we see the effects they produce.
What we normally call “supernatural” may have observable effects occasionally, when the local conditions are just right, but since we don’t know how to artificially duplicate those precise conditions, it’s hard to observe & study.
You’ve nicely described the limit of science; it must be able to perceive and measure that which it investigates. Anything currently beyond our ability to perceive, directly or indirectly, can’t be adequately discussed.
Which leads to the clash of science and faith systems and magic. The often-taken stance is for the scientifically minded is to say those things don’t exist because they haven’t evidence. It’s more accurate to say, “We don’t have tools to investigate those things, so attempting to do so isn’t a profitable use of our time, given the vast array of things we can investigate now but haven’t yet investigated.”
That said, Scientific Method is a better method of approaching truth as it forces us to question. If only those of us who believe in something larger than ourselves were more secure in our Faith to question it more closely; maybe we might arrive at better answers to the existential questions Faith is designed to address.
“The often-taken stance is for the scientifically minded is to say those things don’t exist because they haven’t evidence.”
In short, those are the people who mistakenly equate “lack of evidence” as being the same as “evidence of lack.” A bad stance for an intellectual to take, no?
;)
Vampires smell blood and just generally have far better noses than your average human. Given that some people with heightened senses can be caused pain by the strong smell of garlic, I reckon that it would really put them off a meal, though any resulting death is a tad far fetched.
Don’t forget the “Surround you house with mustard seeds” thing was because of ONE Peeping tom with OCD.
Maybe the “give them a bag of rice and the’ll count it” is because there was one really famous vampire with OCD.
It was a European superstition, regarding vampires in general. However, that is an interesting similarity to Loo Garoo, the witch.
Oh and while we’re dropping shocking facts that people are stupid for not knowing, the moon doesn’t “come out” exclusively at night.
Yups, have often seen it well into the morning
The moon will be visible any time of day depending on the phase. At new moon, the sun and moon are in the same direction. Each day it gets a little further from the sun, and shows more lighted area, until full moon when it is opposite the sun, rising when the sun sets & vice versa. At half phase, the moon will be rising or setting at noon(ish).
I know, but everyone just assumes it’s perpendicular to the sun for some reason.
I meant oposite, like double perpendicular.
So the Moon is gay not only during the month of May but also all-the-live-long day?
Such a happy Moon. :D
Gregor: “Umm Max? Emergency over here!”
Max: “I can’t turn my back one minute…”
May just be me, but after all the extra-ordinary stuff that has been proved to be true, it makes sense that wolves don’t howl exclusively at the moon (a seemingly mundane everyday fact) being proved wrong is what breaks Sydney
What next? Gravity doesn’t smell of purple? o_O
That is the point of the joke. But it is also in keeping with her character. Sydney has always assumed, deep down, that vampires etc are real. Look at her play-acting being a vampire, in the car-park, to see that expressing itself. So seeing vampires, and werewolves, came as no surprise to her.
Trouble is she also had a definite set of attributes associated with them. So, for example, if it turns out that vampires can walk in sunlight (without burning or sparkling) then her assumptions are wrong. As Dave says, popular culture intrinsically links werewolves to the moon. Sydney could not picture them any other way. Hence her reaction, to this revaluation, given that she is smart enough to know it will apply to all her preconceived notions.
Yup, also why the joke about the purple smelling gravity (everyone knows it smells like taupe :rolleyes: )
:-D
“Passing along directions to her as I followed my tracking spell was an interesting experience. “A bit to the left. Alright, now green. Alright, now un-purple-smell, but with a bit of a sound-of-chocolate twist to it.”
Strangest. Navigation. Ever.”
I’ve always smelled it as sort of an orange-y greenish purple… With just a hint of taupe.
No, some genre savvy vampire was asked how she could be killed, and so chose to have vampire hunters attempt to kill her with her favorite spice. She was already preparing herself for this and other idiotic weaknesses, such as holy water, by making sure she had plenty of ash on her, so when she turned to mist form – holy of holies, it worked, she turned to ash! After that, she just needed to move far enough away that people didn’t link the next vampire activity with her.
Sigh, apparently having javascript turned off doesn’t disable reply, but makes it anchor to the last message. I’d been trying to reply to 5007’s response at 2016 August 4, 5:10. (Comment 456135)
Reminds me of some anecdotes in Harry Potter books, about old witches during the Witch hunts of old. Apparently, real wizards were just able to cast an anti fire spell, and the flames would just tickle as they were being ‘burned’.
Wait. Am I reading Grrl Power or xkcd.com?
Yes.
Either way though, you exhibit good taste.
Wait, no connection of werewolves and the moon?
The next thing you are going to tell me is that ripping out someone’s heart with an obsidian knife at the top of a pyramid does not make the sun rise.
It doesn’t.
That’s for bringing the rain. Tlaloc accepts your sacrifice and your humble obedience.
Now if you want to make the sun rise, see me after class. It’s a whole other ritual.
Don’t listen to him(her?)! Kukla Khan disdains the practice of human sacrifice & has told the Mayans that the gods do not need human sacrifice! Kukla Khan forbade the practice for worshiping the gods! Far too many people did not listen to Kukla Khan & the Mayan civilization was struck down for it!
I think smallpox was a bigger factor but maybe that’s how he rolls.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea
I think smallpox was a bigger factor
But maybe that is how he rolls
…
No, no, no, that just does not scan!
Xanadu!
This counsel implies a larger number super/meta-humans than is given at the beginning of the comic. Keeping this population a secret is the obvious intent of this secret counsel. But it still raises the question, why did Archon such a low number for supers when the higher-ups knew the figure was so much higher
There is a huge difference between the entities on the Council and regular humans gaining advanced abilities while remaining effectively human
Not one member of the Council is a Super Human (Max is not on the Council, she is a liaison between Archon and the Council)
The earliest mention Of werewolves that I am aware of comes from the Kingdom of Rome (yes, before the republic). In the story two men encounter each other on the road at night, they greet each other, and share gossip. One man mentions a wolf has been heard in the hills, and the other man smiles at him (the latin uses a pun on ‘canus’ here). The smiling man then removes his tunic and sandles, and turns into a huge wolf, who menaces the traveller before running off into the woods. When the traveller works up the courage, he sees that the clothes have turned to stone.
So yea, werewolves in Rome were voluntary shapeshifters between men and wolves who’s clothes turned to stone. Weird, huh?
The first reported story of a drunk trying to explain why he tried to punch a wolf in mouth
Interesting. Especially given that Romulus and Remus cast wolves in a good light, to them. Without which Rome itself would not have been founded.
I wonder why they chose to call the city after just the one of them. Perhaps Gregor and Clovis have relatives, who live in the hidden werewolf city of Reme?
The problem isn’t that everything you think you know is wrong, Sydney.
It’s that you know nothing….
And for everyone who couldn’t help but insert “Jon Snow” there, please sent my a dollar for my “Got ya”-fund
Socrates once said
“To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.”
But if you knew that you know nothing, then you would know something, which would mean that you did not know nothing, so you would not know that knowing nothing is what you should know.
That’s what made Socrates “the smartest man in the world.” He KNEW that he knew nothing, but no one he talked to knew that about themselves…So Socrates knew at least ONE thing more than anyone else knew.
Then again, Socrates could talk pretty much anybody into contradicting themselves…
:D
There are two types of people in the world: The stupid and those who are too stupid to realise they are stupid.
Or as Weird Al would say: Dare to stupid.
there’s 3 types of people in the world. those who can count, and those who can’t.
Plants can count. Tap a Venus fly trap once and it ignores you. Tap it twice though, and it will snap shut. Hoping to trap a tasty insect.
Is that enough to make them people?