Mathematics Of Why The DNC Is All Wet Finally Revealed.
The relationship between a thin liquid film or drop of liquid and the shape of the surface that it wets is explained with a new simplified mathematical formula published recently in Physical Review Letters. The full story are over at Science Daily - where the journalists don’t know enough to come in out of the rain.
Professor Andrew Parry - from Imperial College London’s Department of Mathematics, author of the new paper - has devised and tested a new way to explain this process. His formula is really fucking complex, and takes into account fluctuations in the drop of liquid between the solid surface it sits on and the air above it, which have not been included in any previous formula.
“Previous descriptions have all ignored or misrepresented these interactions and consequently were at odds with experimental results and computer simulations. The new formulation appears to explain all these outstanding problems in a very elegant manner,” said Professor Parry. “So eat my shorts. losers!”
However, no one cares about mathematics. So there’s this:
There is an older story about icicles, mentioning that a team of scientists from The University of Arizona in Tucson has figured out the physics of how drips of icy water can swell into the skinny spikes known as icicles. Why someone in Tucson - possibly one of the hottest places on the planet - a place that has never seen an icicle - should study this remains a mystery.
These are ancient carrots - photographed from underground. Kind of an upskirt view of a root plant. The article is here.
Here is some smut.
Tags: Preparation H
April 9, 2008 at 8:23 pm
So why is the DNC all wet? ‘Cause they are turds floating in the potty politic?
April 9, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Because - like Science Daily journalists, and turkeys - they don’t know when they need to come in out of the rain.
PnB - what happened to Dawn? I lost her e-mail address in the hard drive disaster so I can’t ask her why she’s not posting anymore.
April 9, 2008 at 9:40 pm
I’ve always thought caves were cool. Alas, when I was a kid we lived maybe a couple hours away from Luray Caverns but we never visited them. They even have a stalagtite organ!
April 9, 2008 at 10:00 pm
I’ve always wanted to go spelunking. I bet if you ate those magic carrots in the cave you’d be able to see better in there.
April 10, 2008 at 12:21 am
McGoo, that is a beautiful pic of the water droplet. Oooh.
I went caving at a place called “Captain Jack’s Stronghold” years ago right on the Oregon/Kalifornia border. There was lots and lots of homemade Lynchburg Lemonade involved (first mistake). It was 11 or so at night, not that it mattered underground.
Then we climbed down a rock chimney that was 30 or so feet vertical.
We got a ways in and finally there was a crawl space about 3 feet wide, 20-30 feet long, and not very high at all (second mistake). Restricted enough that I was scraping both front and back as I went in.
This is a very bad place to experience claustrophobia for the first time in your life. Skittered out of there like water in a hot pan, ran for the exit, went too far w/o realizing it, and came to a dead end. Panic, too, can be cranked up to “11″. (mistake turned coup de grace)
Luckily one of the gals with us was cute enough to distract me and calm me down. Point to all this? Ah, shit, I don’t know. I guess it was, caves are cool if there isn’t a chance of getting wedged in tighter than a cork in a bottle.
Gee Pajama Momma - I don’t know that shrooming in a cave would be the wisest thing in the world. It would make for some interesting visuals and auditory effects, though. It’s so much like sensory deprivation when the lights go out that the movie “Altered States” comes to mind.
April 10, 2008 at 2:07 am
I don’t know about Dawn, McGoo. I’ve not seen hide nor hair of her around the innertubes.
I hope all is well with her. Perhaps her computer busted in the move or maybe she is taking a break. Watching the chimps in congress makes one want to blast a fruitcake into the tv (or Levin’ face), amass ammo, and become a hermit.
How are you feeling? You were under the radar today…or yesterday.
April 10, 2008 at 4:45 am
PnB - I’m just fine! Never better. Just busy and maybe a bit detached at the moment. Nothin’ really interesting going on in the ‘Tubes lately.
Caves. Missouri is known as the cave state in some circles. I was told in college that Missouri has more caves than any other state (by a BIG factor) and that Pulaski county (near where I went to school) has more caves than the rest of the state combined.
For several years while I was in school, my crowd used to go at least 2-3 times a month. Some caves went back 1-2-3 miles and we spent the night in them getting drunk and stoned.
I saw several cases of claustrophobia, although never when we were way back in one.
Claustrophobia is not pretty - and can turn deadly very quickly. Panicking in a cave is second only to panicking while scuba-diving in the “get you killed in seconds” department.
I do have the unique experience of having shoved my arm past-elbow-deep in bat shit. No shit! So I have that going for me at cocktail parties.
April 10, 2008 at 10:48 am
Used to dive old, extinct volcanic lava tubes on Kawaii, You crawl until you can’t see any more and you’re completely sandwiched, top and bottom. Lay there and listen to the Earth for a while and drift off. Very nice. But then, I was a submariner at the time so claustrophobia was for others.
April 10, 2008 at 11:57 am
Gee Pajama Momma - I don’t know that shrooming in a cave would be the wisest thing in the world
why you gotta spoil my fun?
I do have the unique experience of having shoved my arm past-elbow-deep in bat shit.
{{{shudder}}} Are you gonna expand on that?
April 10, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Not much to tell:
I was caving with friends. There was a little stream flowing inside the cave that I needed to get across. There was a big mound of dry cave dirt/sand next to the stream and I squatted down and leaned against it with my hand - for balance, y’know. That’s when my hand, wrist, forearm, and elbow disappeared into the goo that was underneath the thin dry exterior shell. I damned near went all the way in - head first - but a friend grabbed me so I could regain my balance.
For weeks I was saying stuff like, “Have my dinner desert, Jim- you saved my life!” to him.
What it was was a hundred-year old huge mound of bat shit from the bats that roosted directly above it. They’d hang up there and do their little batty poo-bidness and it fell down to the growing pile.
April 10, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Yeah, PJM has a point… was there some compelling reason to thrust your arm into a warm pile of flying vermin shit or did it just “feel” like the right thing to do?
As to shrooming in a cave - I don’t know… Let’s just say I have this friend who always felt the need for a safe/friendly environment for that sort of thing and that caves probably could not meet those needs.
I’m a SCUBA diver and years ago we handled a hairy situation with far more calm than the cave incident. My buddy’s mouthpiece just fell off. I feel this and she’s holding up a hose. She didn’t have an octopus (spare) so we had to use my tank all the way back in - we were 1/4 mile off the beach and down at 90 feet when it happened. Lot closer to the continental shelf in that area than I like for things to go wrong. I recall being a bit nervous but nothin’ real bad.
April 10, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Heh. LK, when you mentioned mouthpieces falling off, I thought you meant the rubber thingy you put in your mouth that attaches to the second stage part (the mechanism directly in front of your mouth that the hose attaches to).
I had that happen (the rubber thingy in my mouth stayed - the rest fell off) because the tie-wrap holding it on was loose.
Being a prankster, I tapped my buddy, pulled the rubber thingy out of my mouth, shook my head, banged it on the side of my tank, put it back in my mouth, pretended to try to breath again, shook my head, pulled it back out, shook it a bit, and looked at my buddy and scratched my head like “duh?”. Knowing I was fucking with him, he flipped me the finger and offered me his octopus.
I declined, reached for my own octopus and used it while I refastened the mouthpiece onto the second stage.
April 10, 2008 at 2:28 pm
McGoo, I am tagging you with the “six word meme” and please don’t hate me for it. The rules say nothing about the use of porn, so if you choose to participate, the field is wide open.
Rules here:
http://nicedeb.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/meme-six-word-memoir/
April 10, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Uh-huh. I spread the wealth, bmac.
Y’know, with all the linking involved, we can trace back to see who started this thing. Then we can exact a bit of revenge…
On second thought - it took care of my post subject search for the day.
Thanks, bmac!
April 10, 2008 at 4:48 pm
I think that’s a great way to offer dessert mcgoo. Here, have some chocolate pudding pie, it’s ok, I finally got all the batshit off my hands.
April 10, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Oh, I had a lot of fun with him about it, and made a bunch of remarks having to do with “nearly being in the shit”, or “ain’t that the shits” or “going batshit”, etc.
I didn’t mention that - after we determined just what it was I’d been squishing around in - I washed my whole arm about 50 times (in freezing cave water) and inspected it with multiple flashlights to see if there were any scratches. I was worried for days that I was going to catch something evil.