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That Pluto is a planet.
That’s more a function of us not having the current definition of what a planet is growing up than anything.
Pluto got “downsized,” because we had to refine the definition of what is and isn’t a planet. Not our fault, and also not the fault of the previous scientists.
Kinda the one thing that I hate about the public’s understanding of science. Most people do not grok the concept that, “no one can ever prove a theory correct, but one person can prove that, at least in specific circumstances, it is wrong.”
I always thought cigarettes contain tar, as in the substance asphalt on the road is made from. It always felt weird to me, why would they put it in the cigarettes but I figured maybe they need it so the tobacco doesn’t fall out or something.
Wait, they don’t contain tar?
In the same way that they don’t contain ash. The tar and ash are produced by combustion.
That the Mormon god was totally real
That I could dig to China
Technically you could. It would be a marvel of engineering and would cost billions of dollars, and you couldn’t go through the center of the Earth, but technically it is possible
Do we have the technology to do that considering the increasing heat, gravity, and magnetic force as one goes deeper? I feel like anything we could do would involve lots of nukes that would basically destroy the planet in the process.
Nobody said how deep the tunnel has to be. Could be just below common tunnel depth.
There’s a reason we don’t have a tunnel between North America and Europe. Don’t think we’re there yet.
A Bering Strait tunnel/ bridge network has been proposed, and it wouldn’t cost too much for the US to build. Only a few billion dollars, which Congress can sneeze and accidentally spend that much. The real issue is that connecting The US and Russia with the interstate highway system has political problems that seem to be insurmountable at the current time.
I personally would support the plan. That would allow the US to deploy HIMARS systems to the Ukrainian forward fronts in Siberia and Chukotka.
Edit: if such a highway network were to be completed, it would theoretically be possible to drive/ take trains to get from anywhere in North America to anywhere in Europe, Africa, and Continental Asia. Connecting South America, and Australia would be the challenges at that point.
A few billion? Vancouver BC is spending that on an new sewage treatment plant.
How could a tunnel like this be built and functional for a few billion? Perhaps hundreds of billions… maybe.
It may have been a hundred or two billion. I haven’t read the proposal in over a decade, and I just remember that the number, while large, was still a rounding error compared to the US budget.
You’ve got me there!
That prayers appease god to make things better.
it still blows my mind on a daily basis, the arrogance of humans to think they not only know what their creator-god wants but can sway “Him” with some fucking magic words
I mean… If I was playing like The Sims and one of the Sims was like “yo can I get a new bike?” I might be like sure bro. From their perspective I’m a god that exists outside time and space.
That’s not really how Christianity talks about its God though, usually. But also like the story of Job does seem like a kid and his friend fucking with their game.
The more complex computers get, the greater probability that we are actually living in a simulation!
I don’t think we could classify it as “false belief” since we can’t verify that statement.
Even a recent book advocating the efficacy of prayer in treating disease (Larry Dossey, Healing Words) is troubled by the fact that some diseases are more easily cured or mitigated than others. If prayer works, why can’t God cure cancer or grow back a severed limb?
– Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World (1995)
I’m completely on board with that, except for the “wish fulfillment”. I don’t know how it got twisted around that you could presume to tell God what to do or that he would - it seems so entirely inconsistent with anything else about religious beliefs
So we have this all powerful and all knowing supreme being , right? And he’s got a plan for the entire universe and all of time, right? But he’ll disrupt all of that to grant you a favor if you wish hard enough? Or you can blame him if something bad happens to you specifically, out of all the universe over all time? What hubris, what ego could make us think we’re in control and can use it for personal gain?
Sure you can!
Get a coin, and flip it 100 times. Record each time it lands on heads/tails.
Now get a devout believer, and have the believer continuously say devout prayers petitioning God to make the coin read heads. Then, flip the coin 100 times, and record heads/tails.
Do statistical analysis to see whether there is a statistically significant difference between the control group and the prayer group. Pretty easy to verify if true.
That line of thinking led to the “docudrama” ‘What the bleep do we know?’ and the extended version “What the bleep, further down the rabbit hole.” Both of which can appear to be rational to most laymen, but are basically religious BS forced on a quantum physics foundation.
I can’t believe we’re still talking about that shitty propaganda! I remember anticipating an interesting documentary about quantum implications, then went to see it with some other physics nerds and being disgusted by the hamfisted mix of fundamentalist religion framed as “science”. What have they done to us? WHAT DID THEY DO TO US
We can verify that prair has no effect and is at best a placebo.
That our blood was blue, but turned red when exposed to air and light. All because a teacher told us so.
I heard this one from a teacher as well when I was very young! And it may well have been the same teacher telling us that blood was made of white blood cells and red blood cells, and I knew from my deep work in relevant fields (paints and crayons) that this combination did not result in blue.
We were told that the arteries carry oxygen rich blood, that was red because of a high iron oxide content, away from the heart and lungs to the extremities of the body. At that point capillaries get involved, and it’s really best not to worry too much here. Then the veins carry the oxygen depleted blood back to the heart and lungs to be reoxygenated, and that that blood appears blue through your skin. I think copper may have had something to do with the blue coloration, but that blood is also red in color, even if you managed to pull it directly into a vacuum tube. It just appears blue because of your skin or something.
Oxygenated blood is bright red, whereas deoxygenated blood is a darker red. And it looks blue because blue light doesn’t penetrate the skin as deeply as red light. The ones closer to the surface appear blue while deeper ones are purpleish due to the red light reflecting deeper.
I thought that dogs were boys and cats were girls. No idea why.
Its funny, my niece made it to like 8 thinking that aunts were adults and uncles were kids. She had one young uncle, and me. Called me “Auntie Phanto.” I still haven’t lived it down.
Troy is that you?
my niece made it to like 8 thinking that aunts were adults and uncles were kids
This fits well with the accidental mild misandry in Catholic school when we learned about differences between men and women. One of the books we had to read said something like “men consistently outperform their female counterparts at making almost miraculously stupid decisions”
Dogs = boys due to energetic, clumsy and loud.
Cats = girls due to classy, well-behaved and quiet.
I’d guess it would be a trend similar to saying girls play with dolls and boys play with action figures.
classy, well-behaved and quiet
Except when they decide not to be, of course. Or when they’re in heat.
I do not know where I got this from, but I thought all dogs were male and all cats were female. I thought this while I had a dog named Betsy and a cat named Sebastian.
If that’s not bad enough on its own, I think I was in first or second grade when I learned the surprising truth. I wasn’t a dumb kid, either. I learned to read when I was about 3.5 yrs old and started 1st grade as a 5 yr old.
I’m now in my 70s and I still can’t figure out where I got that from!
Einstein said that if you move close to the speed of light, you’ll go forward in time. Therefore, I thought, if you go backwards at close to the speed of light, you’ll go backwards in time.
deleted by creator
I didn’t understand time zones, but heard about “losing” or “gaining” hours when flying, so I thought that time moved differently while you flew, depending on if you were flying with or against the spin of the Earth.
Hiccups mean youre growing.
Thanks parents.
This is a good one, filing it away for future children…
Volcanos being caused by overpopulation in hell.
I thought elevator shafts were the gateway to hell
There was a place by the beach called Helenback.
My siblings and I in the car: Where are we going?
Mum (shouting): Hell and back!
I was an adult before I realised it had another name.
When I was very young, my dad told me we were going to Miami. I thought he said “my Ami”, which I assumed was a word for some kind of relative, like Auntie, Granny, etc.
That my grandma’s name was “grandma”.
