[quote=“urodacus”]you?
I have been hella busy with a new job and have been neglecting my duties here. I shall pop back and answer more as soon as i catch breath after Thursday’s deadlines have passed, hopefullly with my not actually dying.[/quote]
What about my Tsunami question? All I got was people telling me I’m crazy. If I’d wanted that opinion I would have listened to those doctors long ago and stayed on my meds… :saywhat: :saywhat:
Pfff–I want my money back.
you couldn’t surf a tsunami on the open ocean, it’d be too small and too fast to get on.
you probably couldn’t surf one on most places they might land as they just look like a wall of really messy white stuff with no decent shape (from pics and vids I have seen of the recent few), but i guess that there would be some beaches where they would pick up a great shape as they rolled inland. problem then would be knowing when to get off! also, not many waves form above high tide mark at most of the beaches I know, of, so how would you know which beach would have the best break inland?
Spamming are we? :ohreally:
Thanks man. That definitely makes sense. As a bit of an aside I was following yet another rancid tributary today, this one coming in from the other side of the river, across from guandu, and found two optimistic things:
In one stretch of the river they actually have front end loaders in scrapping the slime off the bottom. Don’t know what the ultimate intention is there.
In another they have an absoulutely massive project going to clean up the whole thing and turn it into a park.
Check my “a? river” thread after a couple of days if you have the time, I’m going to try to desribe a little better what I saw today. It’s not perfect by a long shot but definitely a BIG step in the right direction.
What is this gunk…
Is it the algae and bacteria that ferments and forms the festering globules?
That would make a lot of sense because the same places that have the festering globules also have that stuff. There are miles and miles of it coating the bottom of the ditches and creeks that flow into the river.
Also, what does that stuff actually do to the ecology of the river? I imagine it leaches oxygen out but are there other things as well? Algae and bacteria are naturally occuring so…
Oh, what do reckon causes the big fish die offs that you see occassionally?
I don’t mean to be a pest. Off the top of your head is totally OK.
Thanks.
all the added nutrients in the river (from sewage pollution and farming run-off) cause massive algal blooms that suck up all the oxygen, or pump toxins into the water that then kill the fish. it is not a sign of a river ecosystem in balance.
I can’t see what is in your picture, I guess you might be referring to white bacterial mats…
Sorry, but that’s actually what it looks like. That bit has about two inches of water on it. It’s just that colour and texture. I bet it is just what you say, a bacterial mat. It looks like a mat. (God it’s fun talking to smart people.)
I’m not sure if this is the right thread for this or if I should put this in the pet peeves thread, but . . .
Why are almost all peas in Taiwan tasteless?
Can’t they use a different variety or add something to the soil to make it more or less acidic? Can’t they do something?!
A good pea is a great veg. What Taiwan has is an embarrassment.
[quote=“zender”]I’m not sure if this is the right thread for this or if I should put this in the pet peeves thread, but . . .
Why are almost all peas in Taiwan tasteless?
Can’t they use a different variety or add something to the soil to make it more or less acidic? Can’t they do something?!
A good pea is a great veg. What Taiwan has is an embarrassment.[/quote]
This should be in ‘Pet Peaves’.
Is xanthium commonly used in modern medicine?? I am across it today for the first time, coz my son who has a cough (that often leads to bronchiolitis) was given that at the Adventist and the dosage is so miniscule, that it made me suspicious and I had to look it up on the net. I see its uses in Chinese medicine but not in modern…is it harmful???
it is not really harmful unless one eats it in large amounts. it is definitely harmful as a pasture weed to cows and horses who can eat vast quantities of it.
it is unusual to see it in any Western medicine these days, and even hundreds of years ago it was uncommon. In Chinese medicine it is still fairly commonly used in sinus congestion (warm, damp, lung meridian).
Tiny amounts are almost certainly safe, but its probably not effective in that case.
Thanks, it even sounded deadly (to me) 
So, do you think it’s like, gonna all dark n’shit again tonight?
Yup, it is where I’m driving.
you got weather issues or blackouts?
Whilst playing rugby a while ago I got elbowed in the 'nads, fortunatelly it was a glancing blow, but I certainly felt sick afterwards , and as we blokes all know a really good shot in the pills will have you vomiting until you dry heave…My question is in 2 parts…
#1. What possible advantage could nature be giving us by making male humans vomit like that 
after a knock to the nuts.
#2. Do animals vomit if they get a good hit, kick or horn to the pills.
one last question why do some animals have their balls on the outside [us, dogs pigs, bulls etc] and some not ?[horses elephants, birds etc] 
certainly makes you respect how valuable they are, doesn’t it. I guess that’s the point: you become a lot more protective of them.
Animals that keep them outside use the scrotum muscles to modulate their distance from the body to control how warm the testes are, as in humans, for example, sperm production is best at a slightly lower temperature than the rest of the body’s insides: around 35°.
maybe internal balls are more common in animals that run a lot. I really don’t know…
[quote=“urodacus”]certainly makes you respect how valuable they are, doesn’t it. I guess that’s the point: you become a lot more protective of them.
Animals that keep them outside use the scrotum muscles to modulate their distance from the body to control how warm the testes are, as in humans, for example, sperm production is best at a slightly lower temperature than the rest of the body’s insides: around 35°.
maybe internal balls are more common in animals that run a lot. I really don’t know…[/quote]
Here’s something most guys don’t know. Ovaries are just as sensitive as “pills.” And sometimes, when a pregnant woman’s expanding uterus happens to squash one, the pain is so severe that the only way to releive it is surgery to free the ovary, which is done even at risk to the baby (as any surgery poses a risk to a baby) because the stress of the horrific pain is also considered unhealthy for the child and mom both.
I’ve seen on TV how you would go about milking a snake for venom roughly (or so it looks) stab the snake fangs through a membraney piece of paper on a jar, and thus collect the venom.
But, how would you collect venom from other creatures like spiders, scorpions and that?
[quote=“Funk500”]
But, how would you collect venom from other creatures like spiders, scorpions and that?[/quote]
Chop off the suckers’ head/tail. Suck the shit out with a thin needle/crush it and remove the extraneous. Then sell it as Chinese medicine. Guaranteed to give you a Long Life Hard-On.
Collection methods for spiders vary depending on the size of the spider, its readiness to release venom, and the amount of venom produced. With smaller spiders, like black widows, etc, venom is collected by jimi’s method (collect spiders, dissect out the venom glands, purify venom after removing as much of the outside of the gland as possibe). For many larger spiders (typically ground dwelling spiders like trap-doors or tarantulas, which have downward-pointing fangs rather than inwards-pointing) one can actually milk them by holding the spider and ‘encouraging’ it to bite over the edge of a small vial, just like collecting venom from a snake.
Other spiders are way too dangerous to handle, like sydney funnel web spiders, but fortunately they are so aggressive that venom drips from their fangs when they are agitated. This can be collected using essentially a tiny vacuum cleaner (I used to use a fish tank air bubbler running in reverse connected to the end of a glass pipette with about 1 mm opening at the skinny end). The funnel web spider in its laboratory house comprised of a large plastic jar with potting soil rears up on its back legs, exposing the face and lashing out with front pair of legs, trying to grab onto something to bite. Just hold the pipette near the fangs and suck up the venom. Maybe 20-40 microlitres can be collected from a single big male that way.
Scorpions also vary in size, but are more difficult to get venom from. One method is to remove venom glands from scorpions collected from the field, but you may as well keep them in the lab and milk repeatedly, like I did. Some scorpions will release venom if handled (carefully!) but it is easier and more productive to use electrical stimulation of a trapped scorpion’s tail (the venom gland is in the bulb on the tip) to make the muscle contract and expel the venom. That can be repeated every few weeks. For the larger scorpions (like the big Thai ones, or African lethals with big stingers and small hands) lots of venom can be collected, like 0.5 mL, but for the smaller ones I studied more often (and usually with strong hands and correspondingly with less lethal venom), normally only 2-5 microliters are recovered each time, which made life difficult for someone studying venom.
People often say that the daddy long legs has the most potent venom of any spider, but that’s crap. For all we know, they MIGHT have dangerous venom, but they would make vanishingly small amounts, and have consequently never been studied. Also, from an evolutionary point of view, there is no reason that they would need to have strong venom, unlike the ground dwelling spiders that live for a long time on or in the ground and thus are under significant threat of predation from lizards, mice, etc.