The very many questions-not-worth-their-own-thread question thread XXVIII

[Borachio]

previous thread

How long is a piece of string?

Seriously, how short can a piece of string be before it's no longer worth calling a piece of string? When a neighbour of mine died, the relatives found a brown paper bag (containing pieces of string) bearing the legend "pieces of string too short to be of any use".

This means, to my way of thinking, that the pieces of string had to be too short to be tied (or even spliced) together to make a longer piece of string.

How short is this, please?

 

[Old Hippy]

How short is this, please?

they can never be too short, they always have a use as a collectible

 

[Borachio]

What? Even those grey and grubby frayed bits of string?

 

[Old Hippy]

What? Even those grey and grubby frayed bits of string?

yep
you could post any you have to me...
but to be honest, I am more interested in the stamps

the bits of fluffy frayed string stuff, i would use to start the Barby, if they are too short to tie up the tomatoes

 

[Arakhor]

Twice as long as half of it!

 

[The_J]

Since you asked...

Too many different measurement systems o_O. And for sure one, where D and NL do different things, tststs.

But whatever. Got a cheap "friendship ring" (reduced from 60 to 18, even silver). Too big for my ring finger, a bit too small for my middle finger, so it might maybe fit on her middle. If not: I have exactly one day to exchange it. Might work. Or not, doesn't really matter, it's a symbol ^^.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Is the scientific answer to mimicry is that it is just a coincidence?

 

[Lohrenswald]

Did your friends explain what kind of mimicry they talked about?

Also, on issues like this, there's bound to be competing and conflicting theories

 

[Chukchi Husky]

How certain animals and plants look or smell like others to convince those animals that they are one of them. The example they gave was the bee orchid, another is a caterpillar that gives off a pheremone that makes ants think it is one of them, and a wasp that can track that caterpillar by using another kind of pheremone to confuse the ants.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Well, the answer would be evolution then.
That is to say: Is it random? Yes and no.

The mutations are random, the natural selection is not.
This actually goes through a lot of steps, but really simply: certain individuals "randomly" becoms able to mimic something else, in if this proves benefitial, this individual will be able to spread these genes, thuslyspreading the mimicry through the species.

Note that this is overly simplified

 

[Borachio]

I don't think the scientific answer is coincidence. At least not how I understand coincidence, I think.

Isn't the scientific answer that the morphology of an organism is determined by the fact that even minute similarities to, say, parts of bee, will be selected for since those plants will enjoy greater reproductive success.

And over several hundred generations the morphology will gradually shift towards greater and greater resemblance to the bee.

Isn't that basically it?

 

[Chukchi Husky]

They told me that things appearing randomly like that is completely ridiculous.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Tell them otherwise

 

[Farm Boy]

They told me that things appearing randomly like that is completely ridiculous.

There is a key difference between not probable and not possible. When you repeat not probable enough times it becomes nearly inevitable.

If you want to go all meta on the religiosity of the thing perhaps just consider that the whole system was designed such to allow for and encourage such amazing and unlikely diversity. Refusal to accept the design of the system because the mechanics don't work the way one wants it to is refusal to accept the design out of pride. Which should be shameful.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Tell them otherwise

I tried that but they just laughed at me.

 

[Arakhor]

They've apparently being doing this for years and yet you still apparently listen to them. Something here is an exercise in futility.

 

[Takhisis]

You are speaking about women, right?

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Are people supposed to breathe in by pushing the ribs out or by pushing the stomach out?

 

[Borachio]

Neither. I think the recommended technique for breathing at rest is diaphragmatic breathing. You deliberately breathe out by pulling in the stomach, and then let the breath inhale naturally without making any effort at all.

But it's a complicated business.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pranayama

Although, most people can manage to breathe most of the time without giving it any thought at all. I, for instance, a person practiced at breathing all his life, can even breathe while fast asleep.

 

[Takhisis]

Wow! I'm a sleep-breather too.

Does any/everybody see any graphic difference between these letters on their browser?

Ö/ö Ō/ō Õ/õ​

Currently I do, but on some fonts the three letterforms look the same.