Geek the mage

Okay, so what’s the point of “proving” that there some “infinities” are “bigger” than others? What’s the practical application here? Because an infinite hotel with an infinite number of guests is physically impossible, so I don’t see the point.

I read about a version (don’t remember where) of dwarven reproduction where two (or more) dwarves lovingly carve their offspring from stone and then dwarven magic brings it to life. Therefore gender didn’t matter at all

I wanna ride an arthropleura so bad

I’ve always seen tomatillos for sale in supermarkets (western US). Are they not common elsewhere?

Well, childhood mystery solved. When I was younger, my family went to France to visit some relatives. One of the dishes we were served was a salad, and my mom told me it was called pee-the-bed salad. I was so confused and was terrified that I was going to wet my bed that night after eating it. I didn’t, but I had been wondering ever since then what it could have been and why it was called that.

My favorite myriapod is Arthropleura. Imagine a millipede the length of a car!

The best lesson I learned in chemistry class was to not put a wet beaker on a pre-heated hot plate

“Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway”

Unfortunately I live closer to the central part of the state, so if things are concentrated near Seattle then it would be a bit too far away

Washington state.

I’m an atheist / agnostic, but I miss the community of church and something about honoring the earth and the seasons FEELS sacred.

I can respect that.

On an unrelated note, anyone know where I can find one of these pagan potlucks? Asking for a friend.

Are you saying that if I picked up a copy of that differential equations book I might actually learn wtf is going on? Because I only passed that class with the help of wolfram alpha and never looked back

This one got me good because Saddam Hussein was the last thing I noticed

You’ve enlightened me. I love dragonflies too now.

Some kids at my high school tried that on their phones, but it never worked because all the other kids in the room would cuss them out for basically inflicting the entire room with mosquito-in-ear noises.

If it’s an alpha or beta emitter, sure, you’re probably fine standing near it. But if you find yourself next to a chunk of a gamma emitter, you should probably run away very quickly

So there’s four types of radiation: alpha, beta, gamma, and neutron. When you’re talking about radioactive materials, it’s almost exclusively the first three. In addition to the inherent danger of the object itself, there’s also the danger of radioactive contamination: not making other things radioactive, but shedding bits of themselves as dust and then that dust getting on other things, or getting ingested/inhaled by humans.

Active fission reactions, like what goes on in the core of a nuclear reactor (or perhaps messing around with some plutonium and a screwdriver), produce neutron radiation. Neutrons can make other things radioactive, via a process called “neutron activation”, whereby the neutrons bind to the material and change some of the atoms into radioactive isotopes.

I hope that helps, and feel free to ask me anything else about radiation. I have some education about it thanks to my job, and I’m always happy to help other people understand it more as well.

More or less. The difference is that, if they really wanted to, they could very thoroughly clean the notebook and take most of the contamination off. I’m guessing they won’t because a) It’s a historical artifact and they don’t want to risk damaging it, b) the contamination is so low-level that it’s not dangerous as long as you don’t lick it or something, and/or c) there’s a bit of a shock factor in watching a scientist’s notebook make a Geiger counter freak out.