Today I Learned #2: Gone for a Wiki Walk

[Berzerker]

Tortoises?

Thats what I thought too...

used radiocarbon dating of crystals within the lenses of their eyes to determine their approximate ages.

wow

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_by_country_or_territory#Europe

Female always legal

lol

 

[Hrothbern]

TIL about Uranium glassware
it was a hype somewhere in the 30ies
even chandeliers were made of it

 

[hobbsyoyo]

TIL about Uranium glassware
it was a hype somewhere in the 30ies
even chandeliers were made of it

View attachment 568952

There was also a popular orange-glazed ceramic made with uranium called fiestaware:
https://www.thoughtco.com/how-radioactive-is-fiesta-ware-608648

I had a physics professor that would go to yard sales and thrift shops with a Geiger counter to find pieces for her collection.

 

[Hrothbern]

There was also a popular orange-glazed ceramic made with uranium called fiestaware:
https://www.thoughtco.com/how-radioactive-is-fiesta-ware-608648

I had a physics professor that would go to yard sales and thrift shops with a Geiger counter to find pieces for her collection.

Glazing is a beautiful tech
I really loved at school glazing small statues etc I had made from clay.
Always tricky to combine, to compose colors because the material that bakes into glaze has so much a differing color than it becomes after baking.

I saw a while back a documentary on the tower of Babylon and the Isthar gates of Babylon with that beautiful blue color, close to the blue of Lapis Lazuli.
In that doc it was assumed that a small temple like room was on top of the tower that was blue.
And how fitting... lapis lazuli has often small pyrite inclusions giving small gold dots like shining stars in a blue sky heaven.
For sure Nebuchadnezzar II would have loved to use real Lapis Lazuli, and Afghanistan not that far away, but would there be enough for the huge surfaces needed for the Isthar gate and the tower.
People from Babylon used the words "Lapis from the mountain" and IIRC "Lapis from the oven"
The blue glazed tile was invented using Cobalt.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Today I learned that plastic bags can be recycled into wood (or...something like wood I guess):

An entrepreneur in Stewiacke, N.S., hopes a new wharf in Hubbards will inspire Nova Scotians to use recycled plastic lumber in marine applications.

"Be able to walk on it, you know, touch it and get a good feel for the advantage that we can have by using the recycled material," Dan Chassie, president of Goodwood Plastic Products, said.

Goodwood Plastic Products grinds up recycled plastic at its factory in Stewiacke and extrudes the plastic lumber in sizes from two-by-fours up to eight-inch-by-eight-inch beams.

Chassie claims his plastic boards will last many times longer than marine-grade, pressure-treated wood.

"Instead of having something that is going to last maybe 10 years, it's going to last a couple of lifetimes," Chassie said.

 

[CKS]

I had a physics professor that would go to yard sales and thrift shops with a Geiger counter to find pieces for her collection.

Sadly, I broke my casserole dish and haven't replaced it yet. We are still using the broken pieces.

 

[AdamCrock]

It is sad but I've learned noting new today ! .... I must be pathetic.

 

[Synobun]

It is sad but I've learned noting new today ! .... I must be pathetic.

Chin up. That can count as what you learned.

 

[AdamCrock]

Chin up. That can count as what you learned.

Can doing laundry in space can be attributed to what I've learned today ? In that case I'll try and stay positive.
Thank You.

 

[Takhisis]

Can doing laundry in space can be attributed to what I've learned today ?

Once again I must honour Daria Morgendorffer and wonder whether it is a phrase so profound that it seems shallow or the other way around.

 

[Cutlass]

All I really know is that the Montreal Botanical Garden crushes my more local variety even though Canada is a frozen hellscape.





There are a dozen more just like it.
https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1...rAhWRbc0KHc-9BasQsAR6BAgEEAE&biw=1281&bih=971

I was there once. It was like 15 years ago. But I thought it was really nice.

Where do you live? If you've said I've forgotten.

 

[AdamCrock]

Once again I must honour Daria Morgendorffer and wonder whether it is a phrase so profound that it seems shallow or the other way around.

She said "other way around !" hu-huh-huhuhu-hu-huhuhuhuh !

 

[Takhisis]

Oh, it's you two. You've learned nothing today then.

 

[W|M]

Afghanistan not that far away

 

[Kaitzilla]

I was there once. It was like 15 years ago. But I thought it was really nice.

Where do you live? If you've said I've forgotten.

I'm from St. Louis

The botanical garden has a fun amount of overfed Koi fish and a neat n-sided building, but no outrageous hedge sculptures.

 

[AdamCrock]

I'm from St. Louis

The botanical garden has a fun amount of overfed Koi fish and a neat n-sided building, but no outrageous hedge sculptures.

Been a pleasure - totally owning us mere peons in Civ IV

 

[Zkribbler]

It is sad but I've learned noting new today ! ....

Not true. You learned that "nothing" is spelled with an "h."

 

[Hrothbern]

Well... relatively short distance for something as wanted and beautiful as Lapis Lazuli.

Romans were not the first to recognise the value of long distance roads

The famous Royal Road of Darius the Great to the West was build upon the remains of the older roads of the Assyrians.

Road network[edit]
The Neo-Assyrian Empire built a highway system connecting all parts of the empire. These roads, called hūl šarri (or harran šarri in the Babylonian dialect, "the king's road"), might have grown out of the military roads used for campaigning. They were continuously expanded, with the largest expansion occurring between the reigns of Shalmaneser III (r. 858–824 BCE) and Tiglathpileser III r. 745–727 BCE.[9]
Like caravanserai in the Muslim world (Kyrgyzstan's Tash Rabat caravanserai depicted), Assyrian road stations were purpose-built structures providing shelter and supplies for long-distance travellers. However, unlike the caravanserai, the Assyrian stations were exclusively for official use.[10]
To support the communication system, governors of the empire maintained a series of stations in their provinces at regular intervals along the king's road.[3] In Assyrian they were called bēt mardēti ("house of a route's stage").[3] At these stations riders passed their letters to new riders with fresh mules.[11] They were either located within established settlements, such as the one in Nippur, or in remote locations, where they constituted isolated settlements on their own.[3] The distances between stations were around 35 to 40 kilometers (22 to 25 miles).[8] The stations provided short-term shelter and supplies for riders, envoys and their animals.[10]

These stations were comparable to the later caravanserais built throughout the Muslim world for commercial travelers, in the sense that they were purpose-built to provide shelter for long distance travellers.[10] However, unlike the caravanserais, the Assyrian road stations were for the exclusive use of authorized state messages and not open to private travelers.[10] No surviving road stations have been identified or excavated[10] and historians only know their descriptions from Assyrian texts.[12]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_communications_in_the_Neo-Assyrian_Empire

Trade routes were usually the precursors of the military state roads of the greater empires who could not have their army everywhere and needed fast messager connections to their borders and beyond.
trade happened from any to any location in Europe since the bronze age at much further distances than between Babylon and Afghanistan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_sources_and_trade_in_ancient_times

One of the nice but unproven stories is that the mines in the Ore Mountains (border Czech Republic and Germany) is the root of the stories on dwarves (like in Snow White) dressed with their red hats etc.
Minoan workers with much shorter bodies than the tribes living in that Ore Mountain area digged tunnels fitting their small size which was ofc very convenient because veins with ore are often not broad (it's not like coal mining)
Their worker dress included hats to protect their head and eyes.
And yes... the Ore Mountains are also famous for the rich amounts of mountain crystal fitting the archetype dwarves.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Today I learned there's an experimental map thingy made by NOAA for predicting where fire smoke will go. I can't figure out how to make it work though.

 

[Synobun]

Today I learned there's an experimental map thingy made by NOAA for predicting where fire smoke will go. I can't figure out how to make it work though.

Click on Near-Surface Smoke.