TIL: Today I Learned

[The_J]

TIL that half an hour ago Eliud Kipchoge started a marathon in Vienna with as goal to finish within two hours.

And he did .
The conditions were hyper-artificial though.

 

[Kyriakos]

The original marathon actually was on rugged terrain, and there was a point to running the distance. It is why Pheidippides actually died upon completing his task and giving the important message "We won".*

Now it is mostly vanity fairs with fat locals, who are cheered for giving up a few hundred meters in, or fake events like the one in Fasaustria. (I am not counting the modern olympics, cause at least in that case there was a similar event added after Marathon, in the ancient era).
I am against "cultural appropriation" arguments, but if there is a case to be made for one, this would be it. It's beyond trivializing... The Athenians were contemplating evacuation to Thurioi (their colony in Italy) if they had lost the battle of Marathon or if they didn't get news of the victory in time. Such a move would have significantly altered western history. Such fake "marathons" are contemptible

*prior to that run (from the field at Marathon to Athens), the same hoplite was sent (cause he was the fastest) to Sparta, to ask for their help in the battle. There legend has it (Herodotos mentions it) that the god Pan appeared before him in Arcadia, claimed that he would help by instilling pan-ic to the persians, and complained that Athens doesn't yet honour him with his own temple.
The Athenians did in fact build a temple to Pan later on. Trivia: near a shrine to Pan is where the only fully extant play by Menander is set.

 

[rah]

Get a real word processor, a Wang 1200.

Spoiler :

We had a room full of these at one of offices back in the stone age.

 

[Ferocitus]

I am not counting the modern olympics, cause at least in that case there was a similar event added after Marathon, in the ancient era.

Hmm. I'd rule out the modern one in 1904.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hist...on-may-have-been-the-strangest-ever-14910747/
Dyskolos sounds like it had some depth and sophistication. The 1904 St. Louis Marathon was classic American slapstick.

 

[Kyriakos]

Hmm. I'd rule out the modern one in 1904.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hist...on-may-have-been-the-strangest-ever-14910747/
Dyskolos sounds like it had some depth and sophistication. The 1904 St. Louis Marathon was classic American slapstick.

Re Dyskolos, sadly it wasn't good, imho (maybe just not as good as I expected, though ok it wouldn't be quite on par with Oepidus...) Maybe parts are missing (seems to be the case at some point, with the young man's father, and there is no chorus at all), but it certainly isn't high literature plot-wise
It's just a comedy, about a misanthropic old farmer and his hot daughter. And a sub-plot is being kind to those who have little money. A couple of jokes are about slave girls being prone to blackmail their (non-slave) lovers to prevent scandal. There is also a wiseguy cook, who prepares the feast in honour of Pan, which is devoured by non-working high society types.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

TIL you have to adjust the tension on bike spokes after braking it in, especially if you're a fatass like me.

 

[Ferocitus]

TIL that Broca’s and Wernicke’s regions, parts of the brain that are important for certain aspects of human language, both contain several sub-regions that themselves connect to other parts of the brain that are relatively distant from those two regions.

 

[Estebonrober]

Shirihai and colleagues faced a difficult challenge to develop an approach to map the voltage on the membrane of mitochondria in living cells at a resolution never seen before. Two students, Dane Wolf and Mayuko Segawa, optimized a form of high-resolution microscopy to visualize the interior of mitochondria and watch energy production and voltage distribution inside the organelle.

“What the images told us was that each of these cristae is electrically independent, functioning as an autonomous battery,” Shirihai said. “One cristae can get damaged and stop functioning while the others maintain their membrane potential.”

Between each cristae, where the inner membrane of the mitochondria loops back outward, clusters of proteins form the boundaries of each cristae. Researchers knew that without these proteins, mitochondria were more sensitive to damage. Now, Shirihai has explained why: The proteins normally divide each cristae from their neighbors, acting as electrical insulators. In cells lacking those proteins, Shirihai found that each mitochondria became one giant battery.

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/cells-mitochondria-tesla-battery-packs

The most fascinating organelle.

 

[Ferocitus]

The most fascinating organelle.

TIL that in most complex organisms, mitochondrial functions rely on >1000 nuclear genes. Not all of those genes were transferred over time from the ancient mitochondrial genome to the nucleus (i.e "vertically"), but from a variety of bacteria (i.e. "horizontally").

 

[Kyriakos]

TIL that in most complex organisms, mitochondrial functions rely on >1000 nuclear genes. Not all of those genes were transferred over time from the ancient mitochondrial genome to the nucleus (i.e "vertically"), but from a variety of bacteria (i.e. "horizontally").

After all, a mind is a terrible thing to chaste

 

[EgonSpengler]

TIL Greg Bear is Poul Anderson's son-in-law.

 

[bernie14]

TIL an optometrist is a "doctor"

 

[Timsup2nothin]

TIL an optometrist is a "doctor"

Ummm...of course they are? As opposed to an optician, who may be just moving into their second job after a career of burger flipping, the optometrist has completed medical school and a fair amount of additional specialized training.

 

[bernie14]

Ummm...of course they are? As opposed to an optician, who may be just moving into their second job after a career of burger flipping, the optometrist has completed medical school and a fair amount of additional specialized training.

No, the ophthalmologist completed medical school, the optometrist completes optometry school and gets an OD (doctor of optometry) degree.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

An optometrist is a "doctor" of optometry. An ophthalmologist on the other hand is a medical doctor specializing in the eye and is able to perform surgery on the eye.

Both can prescribe glasses for you.

EDIT: x-post with Bernie

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Oh. Well. TIL...

 

[bernie14]

An optometrist is a "doctor" of optometry. An ophthalmologist on the other hand is a medical doctor specializing in the eye and is able to perform surgery on the eye.

Both can prescribe glasses for you.

EDIT: x-post with Bernie

Yeah, i quoted "doctor" as well...

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Sooooo...a bit of research indicates that to get a doctorate in optometry is about the same process as getting a doctorate in most anything else, like philosophy or whatever. The odd ball out, as usual, is actual medicine, where the (theoretically eight year) schooling requirements of a typical doctorate must be supplemented by some sort of post graduate training (internship) before you get to be a real doctor. I dunno if that makes the quote marks on "doctor" a reasonable commentary or not, but I'm good with it myself since I consider most people who call themselves "doctor" to be pretentious twits anyway.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The original marathon actually was on rugged terrain, and there was a point to running the distance. It is why Pheidippides actually died upon completing his task and giving the important message "We won".*

Now it is mostly vanity fairs with fat locals, who are cheered for giving up a few hundred meters in, or fake events like the one in Fasaustria. (I am not counting the modern olympics, cause at least in that case there was a similar event added after Marathon, in the ancient era).
I am against "cultural appropriation" arguments, but if there is a case to be made for one, this would be it. It's beyond trivializing... The Athenians were contemplating evacuation to Thurioi (their colony in Italy) if they had lost the battle of Marathon or if they didn't get news of the victory in time. Such a move would have significantly altered western history. Such fake "marathons" are contemptible

*prior to that run (from the field at Marathon to Athens), the same hoplite was sent (cause he was the fastest) to Sparta, to ask for their help in the battle. There legend has it (Herodotos mentions it) that the god Pan appeared before him in Arcadia, claimed that he would help by instilling pan-ic to the persians, and complained that Athens doesn't yet honour him with his own temple.
The Athenians did in fact build a temple to Pan later on. Trivia: near a shrine to Pan is where the only fully extant play by Menander is set.

No, no, no! That's not what happened at all!

This event was covered in a recent episode of Xena: Warrior Princess, and because it was on a very loosely-based-on-history-and-myth TV series, that makes it a thousand times more accurate than your silly old history books, scrolls, and other primary sources.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

TIL there are recent episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess...