...A Bit About Bird Eggs.

There are some things that give me nothing but enjoyment. The clickity-clack of trains, playing with Lego, and looking at bird eggs (but not chicken eggs, they're boring). The colours and sizes are really neat to me.

Sadly, making eggs from Lego isn't fun.

One bird, the Cuckoo Finch, lays its eggs in another bird's nest and lets them do all the work of raising the chick. Birds are pretty dumb and on top of that chicks sorta all look the same. I wouldn't even be able to tell the difference between two. I find the behaviour odd and don't see how the Finch benefits from this behaviour. The surrogate bird now has more mouths to feed from limited resources. So the chance of survival is lower for all chicks. The Finch frequently lay eggs in the nests of the Tawny-Flanked Prinia, so the Prinia has to figure out how to avoid feeding a chick that's not its own. It has done this by changing the colour of its egg. This way the Prinia knows who's who. The Finch however also adapted to this and started changing the colour of its own eggs to try and match the Prinia's.

Which one doesn't belong?

This came about when some researchers looked at some specimens of older eggs for some project or other. They found that within just the past 40 years, the birds have fully changed the colour of their eggs. A split second in terms of an evolution time scale.

No he's not. He doesn't even have a Blackberry

And that is what I learned today.

...How to Fight a Ticket.

Came across this news story about a physicist who used some clever trickery to get out of paying a ticket. He was fined for not stopping at a stop sign (roll through) by a cop watching that intersection. The news article was brief so this post might be as well but I'll do my best.

I said you failed to stop

When Mr. Physicist showed up to court to fight hs ticket he had a full scientific paper with him proving his innocence. There were three factors that coincidently happened to him that day that led the police officer to conclude he failed to stop. The first was the angle at which the observer (police) was at when the object (car) approached. Something about angular speed vs. linear speed and constant speed vs. deceleration made the cop percieve the car didn't stop but it in fact did. There's a lot of math involved. Next, he stated that he did fully stop but accelerated too quickly for the police to notice him stop. Third, another car was in the way when he stopped and the officer didn't see it for the obstruction.

Its simple really.

He won in the end. The judge probably just had enough of it since the man had all sorts of graphs and calculations for his presentation. What's funnier is that the second it would have taken him to actually stop takes WAY less time than writing a paper and preparing a presentation. So next time you get a ticket say 'goodbye' to Pointts and 'hello' to your old text book. You can read the paper here.

And that is what I learned today.

OTHER THINGS I LEARNED:
-There's such a thing as Strawberry Blond Cat

...How Killer Whales Hunt.

I'm sorry for the shortness of this post, but the video will explain it so much better than I. I knew whales worked together to hunt but I didn't know they did this. My experience with whales hunting was that they blew bubbles while in a circle. As the air rose it would trap small fish in the circle and the whale would just shoot in and eat all he could. But I hadn't seen/heard this before. I'm amazed at how synched they are together and how complex it is when you think about it. Now drift off as you listen to the enchanting voice of Mr. Attenbourough.

Watch it here

And that is what I learned today.

OTHER THINGS I LEARNED:
-I share a birthday with Wonder Woman, Kenny (South Park), and James T. Kirk (probably because Shatner also has this birthday).

...The First Known Vending Machine Was for Holy Water

It was invented by a man named Hero of Alexandria (more on him in a bit) who was the Thomas Edison of his day. He invented dozens of 'machines' during his life and was a highly regarded mathematician as well. I say 'machines' becasue they weren't what we would typically call machines today. But he invented an early version of the steam engine, automatic doors, and a force pump (used by fire fighters for a time). He also came up with a 10 minute mechanical play for the stage. Using all kinds of ropes and pullies fake characters would move around and create sound effects. He also figured out how to get water to go uphill.

Hero's were less deadly.

The vending machine operated how you would probably think. A coin was put into a slot and rolled onto a lever. The weight of the coin tilted the lever, opening a valve, and out came the water. As the lever fell, the coin would slowly roll off and a counter weight would pull the lever back to its original position. I have no idea why people would need all that holy water in the first place. But I do love the irony (I think its irony) that people were stealing it in the first place to necessitate the vending machine in the first place.

3 Sheckles please.

And that is what I learned today.

...How Time Used to be Kept.

We all know that back in the day the sundial was the go to clock for most people. It was consistent, accurate, and reliable. Learning about sundials when I was a kid I always used to wonder how they would keep time on a cloudy day? I just assumed that they didn't, but I should have given them more credit.

The sun is never around when you need it.

Water clocks were the big seller and the Persians along with the Ancient Greek and Romans used them. You would poke a hole in a bag or bowl, fill it with a set amount of water, and when it ran out time was up! Plato even invented an water alarm clock. Any water that fell out of the bag would fill up a tub below it. A small bowl with steel balls would float to the top and as the balls spilled out they would hit a copper plate making all sorts of racket. Another version of the water clock worked almost in the opposite fashion. A small bowl with a hole in the bottom would be placed in a tub of water and slowly fill up. Once it was full your round of  Scategories was over. My favourite was how the Chinese would do it. They would light incense sticks of different scents throughout the day of a certain length that would burn for a set amount of time. People could then tell what time it was just by the smell.

It smells like Jasmine o'clock.

Of course Hourglasses were eventually used, but they were rare as glass working was difficult to do for a long period of time. Once glass blowing was fine tuned, the pendulum clock had already started to make its appearance. Here, someone figured out that a coiled wire or spring took a set amount of time to uncoil. Attach it to a few gears and winches and you were set. Today we generally use atomic clocks where a radio active material emits it's protons or electrons or whatever trons they want. And so you know, a second is traditionally defined as 1/86,400 of the earth's rotation. Officially its: 'the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom'.

So much easier than an hourglass

And that is what I learned today.

OTHER THINGS I LEARNED:
-Canada has a glow in the dark quater that'll set you back $30.

...We'll Have a Second Sun Soon.

Well, not soon as we define soon. But soon within the cosmic reality of the universe soon, within the next 1,000,000 years or so. There is going to be a huge supernova (exploding star) and the light from it will shine on the earth for weeks. We won't be able to tell night from day when it happens.

We'll all end up like this.

The star in question is Betelgeuse. It's a bit of a mystery to astronomers, they don't quite know exactly how far it is away or it's mass but have some good guesses. Not knowing the mass is why we can't say for sure when it will blow, but its estimated to be at least as heavy as 10 of our suns (about 20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kgs). It could have collapsed already and we don't even know it, since it will take 640 years for us to see the explosion. What they do know is that it is the 8th brightest star in the sky and is so large that if it were to replace our sun it would reach Jupiter. You 've seen it before, we all have. Its the left shoulder of the constellation Orion (upper right section).

Hey there!

It's also thought to be a runaway star. These things scare me. Runaway stars are stars that were once paired with another star of similar size and type. As they slowly moved through space, one of the stars will fall victim to a black hole. As one gets sucked in the other gets slingshoted away....at millions of miles an hour. Its name comes from what could be a few Anglicized Arabic words such as the Arabic name for the constellation and possibly the word for 'armpit' as that is where the star is located on the Hunter.

Weeeeeeeeee!

And that is what I learned today.

...Some Caterpillars Puke.

One of the stranger things I find about the animal kingdom are some of the ways animals defend themselves. Some are obvious like a poisonous snake or thorns on a rose bush, but some are odd. Like how a squid shoots ink or how a hagfish makes the water around it all slimy or fainting goats are all odd examples. Some caterpillars puke because it smells awful, bad enough that a little drop of the stuff scares away birds and other, much bigger, predators.

If you're going to regurgitate to defend yourself, regurgitate into this.

The stranger part of this caterpillar is that it usually only throws up when alone. The defence act does harm to the caterpillar in the long run and they try not to do it. By vomiting they now have empty stomachs and no food for energy. The lack of food leads to predictable problems such as lower survival rates, less egg production in females, and slower growth. But I suppose being smaller is better than being dead.

Last one to puke dies.

So why do they do it alone? Turns out they also like to gamble. When in a group they won't throw up for a very long time/unless they HAVE to. In a group they have a dramatically less chance of getting picked up by a bird. They're also competing for food on the same leaf so not purposely blowing  chunks is a good thing.

And that is what I learned today.

OTHER THINGS I LEARNED TODAY:
-I should cheer for the Jets
-Some workout rules are wrong.