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Post by confused on Aug 3, 2016 19:13:56 GMT
is it learnt or learned?
anyhoo today I went to Bletchley park. home of ww2 codebreaking, giant computers and super top secret nothing to see here.
I wanted to go for a while but then I watched 'the imitation game' t'other night which was the story of code breaker allan turing and his time at bp (Bletchley park, I can't be arsed to keep typing that) and thought. lets go.
bp mansion itself is just lovely. built in a very tasteful Victorian noveau style it was the home of a very wealthly 1 percenter. after he and his wife died it went up for auction and sold for £7500 to mi6 who decided they needed somewhere to be studying codebreaking, handy an all this being 1937 and just before the outbreak of war.
they chose the location cos it was on a major rail line to London and roughly half way between Cambridge and oxford where all the eggheads they'd need were.
part way into the war polish spies brought them a german cypher machine. the enigma. they neede to crack the cypher.
thing is these cypher machines weren't that special. it was their individual codes that made them secret. they were invented during the 1st world war then sold commercially for years for banking and stuff. so there were quite a few about.
anyhoo eventually turing and his chaps invented a giant decoding machine to decrypt enigma, which 'probably ended the war 2 year early saving millions of lives'.
in the film turing called the machine 'christopher' after his first love but in reality they were called bombes. named by polish codebreaker after their favourite pudding. allegedly. and one working, they're wasn't one machine, there was 2000! and they were all over the place, even America had some, cos after the war in Europe ended they started on trying to decipher Japanese codes- wayyy harder.
bp itself both in the war and now was just lots of prefab huts. its only in recent year that any kind of preservation and restoration has taken place. it all looked a lot better than I thought. nd actually very pretty, small lake, loads of grass and trees, picnic areas. and no screaming fuvkin kids cos it was be pretty dull for littluns (replacemt downside, old people everywhere!)
they have a working replica bombe machine, built to orginal plans, soe of which could only be found in the national archives in America!
its pretty awesome. and not as big as youd think. like it wouldn't fit in my car but it'd fit in lazy daisys van....
the enigma machine isn't very big either, but then that the point.
the renovation huts are all quite touchy feely, you can pick up the phone and fondle the typewriters. also pokey. on the film you see 'hut' as one big shed. in real its one big shed made up of lost of rooms each one more pokey and dark than the next.
and lots more things to see than I thought. vintage cars, extra exhibits loads of interactive shit.
plus also that turing was a dishy fellow and looked nothing like benedict cumberband.
and local fun. when renovating one of the huts a couple of years ago they found al sorts of papers and stuff lining floorboard or blocking up holes and stuff. they found some of turing original programming papers which were essentially punchcards.but they were called banburyisimus. named after the town were they had the special papers printed!! which town that then.
I was gonna post some pics but new laptop is not playing nice. see also; lak of spellcheck and for some bizarre reason not being able to move curser back with deleting. so soz for all typos hope you get what I mean.
i'll try and add some pics from t'interwebs.
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Post by confused on Aug 3, 2016 19:21:47 GMT
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Post by confused on Aug 3, 2016 19:23:42 GMT
as I supposedly said, the replica bombe machine front and back and one of the part renovated huts.
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Post by lazydaisy on Aug 4, 2016 20:05:42 GMT
It is a pretty awesome place indeed. Lin and I went last year on one of our Anorak days out. My cousin (not Kanuck this time) Nick. Was sent to boarding school in Milton Keynes in the late fifties. He says there was a mysterious building in the grounds known as hut 13. Hmmmmmmmm?
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Post by confused on Aug 9, 2016 17:42:13 GMT
There used to be a place called 'the kingdom of kandy'. An actual real land. Part of what is now sri lanka. Lets just take a moment to imagine the land of candy... Also imagine being the king or queen of candy...
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Post by confused on Sept 4, 2016 18:48:10 GMT
tody I learnt, or rather I did know this but had forgotten.
'apricity'. its the feeling of the suns warmth in winter.
also. 'petrichor'. the smell of rain in the air, the smell of rain when it hits warm, dry ground, especially tarmac.
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Post by lazydaisy on Sept 4, 2016 19:09:21 GMT
Gosh I did not know that......I shall try to introduce those words into everyday conversation from now on...... and watch the blank stares! lol
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Post by confused on Sept 5, 2016 14:49:04 GMT
actually I got petrichor slightly wrong, its when rain hit dry earth more so than tarmac, but applies to that also.
a lot of doctor who fans know 'petrichor', it was part of the telepathic tardis access code in the fantastic episode 'the doctors wife'; Crimson Eleven Delight Petrichor
sorry. nerd alert.
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Post by lazydaisy on Sept 6, 2016 20:19:53 GMT
What a Real book and a Fake book are. A real book is an accurate transcription of jazz music. If you were a guitarist and wanted to learn how to play a jazz standard. Someone will have done a chart of it. Melody and chords and it would be in the Real Book. Now because a lot of these were still within copyright a few years back you had to furtively go to a music shop and ask out of earshot of others for a real book. You might even have been asked for a musicians union card. The sale was mot strictly legal because of copyright. So Fake books were produced with near as charts not note perfect but enough to get round existing copy right laws. Now as many of the old standards are out of copyright you can buy a legal Real book. There now aren't you pleased you know that too.....
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Post by SleepyJohn on Sept 7, 2016 12:54:16 GMT
I didn't know that, so I'm pleased to learn it! Mind you, I can't play jazz. Too many chords!
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Post by lazydaisy on Sept 7, 2016 15:25:36 GMT
Yes you do need to know your Norwegians to play jazz.
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Post by confused on Sept 15, 2016 20:43:44 GMT
This here is a scottish £20 note. Thats robert the bruce  Now lets take a moment to look at the top right corner...  Thats a FRIGGIN SPIDER! Wh7ch is kinda awesome tbf.
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Post by kanuck on Sept 17, 2016 18:54:06 GMT
I was struck by the colour and general look of of the bill which is much the same as our $10 bill....... now if only I could get 20 pounds uk (sorry that squiggly thing dont appear on my keyboard) for my $10 Can bill I would be over there in a flash! 
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Post by lazydaisy on Sept 17, 2016 19:08:37 GMT
Won`t be long I expect Kanuck. The pound since the Brexit vote `aint what it was worth.....
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Post by confused on Sept 19, 2016 17:52:50 GMT
some marine animals are just perverts
In 2010, California Department of Fish and Game biologist Heather Harris and colleagues reported 19 individual cases of male sea otters trying to mate with, and often fatally injuring, harbor seal pups in the Monterey Bay, Calif. area between 2000 and 2002 alone.
Delivered in the scientific deadpan required of such papers, the Aquatic Mammals report attributes the incidents to three male sea otters “observed harassing, dragging, guarding, and copulating with harbor seals,” persisting for up to seven days after the otters killed the objects of their misguided advances. The ordeal must have been horrific for the seals. The victims that were necropsied by veterinarians had lesions around the nose, eyes, flippers, and genitals, including perforations in the vaginal and rectal tracts. A painful and confusing end for the poor pups.
Why are these male sea otters killing seals? Strange as it may seem, mating is a relatively common cause of death for female sea otters as well. Male sea otters typically grasp the female from behind and bite her face, and this rough behavior was associated with the deaths of about 11 percent of dead sea otters discovered between 2000 and 2003. Still, the attempts to mate with seals requires an explanation. The identity of a pair of repeat offenders held a clue. At least two of the sea otters had been previously held at the Monterey Bay Aquarium as part of their rehabilitation program for stranded and injured otters. There was nothing obviously wrong with these rehabbed otters, but the trouble they experienced early in their lives might have made them more likely assailants.
Male sea otters compete with one another for mates. If a male can’t find a mate because of his youth or inability to chase off competitors, Harris and co-authors suggest, he might search for a “female surrogate” that may take the form of a young otter or, as in their study, seal pups. This is especially problematic in Monterey Bay, where there are more male sea otters than females. The reason for this skew in the population is unclear, but it leaves male sea otters in a bind. The rehabilitated sea otters were released into an environment of intense competition and were at a disadvantage when it came time to find a mate.
Sea otters are hardly the only marine animals to behave in ways that make us cringe. Seals themselves have been observed to cause similar kinds of trauma when groups of males mob females. But if there’s any marine vertebrate that wins the title of the squickiest, it’s dolphins.
Less like Flipper and more like the megalomaniacal King Snorky of The Simpsons, a dolphin has a permanent smile that gives off a decidedly creepy vibe. Sure, dolphins may now and then help fishermen looking to snag fish, but dolphins’ intelligence and social complexity have endowed them with a suite of behaviors that make them seem less adorable than their carefully-groomed theme park images suggest.
The salty crew of Deep Sea News has been trying to counteract the cuddly image of dolphins for years. Without a doubt, dolphins are jerks. Male bottlenose dolphins will sometimes team up to target a single female and harass her persistently, forcing her to mate with them despite her attempts to escape. And delphine sexual aggression isn’t limited to members of their own kind. Dolphins have tried to force themselves on human swimmers, a prospect made all the more terrifying by the fact that they have prehensile penises. Dolphins kill other marine mammals and fish just for fun and commit infanticide. This only gets creepier given the recent suggestion that dolphins actually have names that they call one another. I can’t say I look forward to the day when scientists discover dolphin slurs. Seeing a dolphin at sea should be just as chilling as how many people feel when they see the sinuous silhouette of a shark.
Shocking behavior isn’t the sole province of marine mammals. One naturalist was so thoroughly disgusted with the sexual behaviors of Adélie penguins that his observations were hidden from view for almost a century.
Known as Pygoscelis adeliae to scientists, and as the Socially Awkward Penguin through memes, the Adélie penguin was one of the subjects that caught the attention of scientist George Murray Levick while he ventured to the South Pole with the 1910-13 Scott Antarctic Expedition. Levick wrote an entire book about the seagoing birds on his return, describing the impression of the elegant avians like so: “When seen for the first time, the Adélie penguin gives you the impression of a very smart little man in an evening dress suit, so absolutely immaculate is he, with his shimmering white front and black back and shoulders.” But the species shocked and horrified Levick so much so that his four-page report “Sexual Habits of the Adélie Penguin” was purposefully omitted from the official expedition findings and distributed only to a small group of researchers considered learned and discreet enough to handle the graphic content.
While visiting Adélie penguins rookeries, Levick was shocked by the activities of what he called “hooligan cocks.” Males accosted and copulated with other males, females that were injured, chicks that had tumbled from their nests, and corpses. In desperation, some male Adélie penguins tried to mate with the ground until they ejaculated. Levick recorded these behaviors as aberrations from the norm of nature. “There seems to be no crime too low for these penguins,” he confided to his journal.
Later researchers rediscovered what Levick had seen. Rather than being deviant, the behaviors were a regular part of penguin life, triggered by males associating a rather flexible interpretation of a female’s mating posture with receptiveness. As Natural History Museum, London ornithologist Douglas Russell and colleagues reported in a preface to Levick’s belatedly-released report, this behavior is so ingrained that when a researcher set out a dead penguin that had been frozen in such a position, many males found the corpse “irresistible.” In a bit of weird field work, the same researcher found that “just the frozen head of the penguin, with self-adhesive white O’s for eye rings, propped upright on wire with a large rock for a body, was sufficient stimulus for males to copulate and deposit sperm on the rock.” I fear I’ve just made the Socially Awkward Penguin seem just that much more socially awkward.
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Post by lazydaisy on Sept 20, 2016 16:51:51 GMT
Sounds almost like a scene outside the worst City centre nightclub in the world.....
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Post by SleepyJohn on Sept 27, 2016 11:59:02 GMT
Dolphins take drugs.
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Post by lazydaisy on Sept 27, 2016 19:49:27 GMT
Bet they have the munchies now......lol
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Post by confused on Oct 2, 2016 20:40:08 GMT
dolphins are like really just a bunch of fuvkin scoundrels ain't they. getting wasted, shagging anything that moves, generally taking the piss. oh look at us all so super intelligent, and pretty and everyone loves us. they're like a frat house or something? a frat house getting away with murdering porpoises and its ok, cos everyone loves dolphins
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Post by SleepyJohn on Oct 3, 2016 8:57:16 GMT
I could post another dolphin video, but you'd be scarred for life!
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Post by confused on Nov 5, 2016 19:24:50 GMT
So it was pointed out to me today that in a certain shoppe, the bananas are actually in the veg aisle not the fruit aisle.
And like, thats something an nothing really, and I know where they are, but I just never twigged they're in THE WRONG PLACE AND ITS TOTALLY BLOWN MY MIND. IT'S ALL SO WRONG!
Its been bugging me all afternoon, and maybe forever now.
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Post by lazydaisy on Nov 5, 2016 22:06:32 GMT
Das Shoppe sucks majorly.
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Post by thesentientpasty on Nov 7, 2016 9:37:10 GMT
Bananas aren't strictly fruit, so they shouldn't be in the fruit aisle.
They're herbs.
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Post by confused on Nov 7, 2016 13:26:44 GMT
you know I did actually know that!
but they're not in the herb aisle either.
and now I think, peppers are in the salad aisle.
omg my brain hurts.
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Post by thesentientpasty on Nov 7, 2016 14:34:08 GMT
Oranges are not the only fruit. Because of tomatoes, for one.
Strawberries aren't fruit. And walnuts aren't nuts.
It's very complicated. I blame the EU, judges and the BBC.
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Post by lazydaisy on Nov 9, 2016 20:29:11 GMT
Well of course the E.U stopped us selling bent walnuts. I know that to be a fact because the Daily Mail is where I get all my facts from.
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Post by thesentientpasty on Nov 10, 2016 22:59:31 GMT
The Daily Mail.
Whenever in need of a bit of rage and anger, I often pop over to the DM website and click on an article or two. If not immediately incensed enough, I'll dip a toe in the comments section, where the scummiest low-life in the known universe often posts.
I can't stay more than a minute before Apoplectic Fury has been restored.
Thanks, DM!
...for nothing. You're a shitload of Nazi shit.
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Post by confused on Dec 20, 2016 20:26:38 GMT
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Post by confused on Mar 14, 2017 17:34:35 GMT
I've been learning some science shit;
*did you know that plate tectonics or continental drift as its also known, which is the theory of the land masses of the earth very slowly moving around the planet, splitting apart, bumping together etc, wasn't widely accepted by the science community till the 1960's!!!
*at any one moments there are 1800 thunderstorms in progress around the world. that's 40000 a day!
*no-one really knows what dodos actually looked like. it had been made extinct by the late 1600's- long before photography, and the few contempory paintings were based on 'unscientific descriptions' of the day. there are no preserved dead specimens, though the ashmolean museum did have one, but threw it on the bonfire in the 1700's after it went musty.
mmhhmm. science shit (c)
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Post by confused on Mar 14, 2017 19:06:06 GMT
cool science shit(c) continued *we've all heard that 66 million years ago and asteroid slammed into what is now the gulf of mexico, causeing so much climate grief it caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, right? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_impactorcommon knowledge yeah? but did you know that this wasn't even suspected as a cause until the late 1970's? the impact crater was discovered by researchers looking for oil, and the notion that it caused a global catastrophic extinction event wasn't even properly researched until...wait for it, the 1990's!! in fact, there hasn't even been much actual research of the impact crater (mostly cos its under water), much of the knowledge of the event comes from other science shit, like minerals being in the wrong place and stuff. this is fucking with my head, not because science doesn't know- because science is a process and theres always new stuff- but because this theory - dinosaurs wiped out by giant meteor- is so commonly known, that I can't imagine what we were being taught when I was at school! the theory is only about 25 years old! what were we taught? nobody knows? they all caught dino measles? what? mind blown that this is so new!
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