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Scarab Sages

Terrinam wrote:
...and the fact Ancient Egyptians were notorious in their own era for being racist against people with darker skintones.

I'd be interested in a source for this. Accounts from that far in the past are, naturally, hard to come by.


I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
Terrinam wrote:
...and the fact Ancient Egyptians were notorious in their own era for being racist against people with darker skintones.
I'd be interested in a source for this. Accounts from that far in the past are, naturally, hard to come by.

They're only hard to come by because early archaeologists were idiots. There is quite a bit of what is known about Ancient Egypt that is reconstructed from indirect evidence.

For example, Ancient Egyptians bleached their skin. Combine that with their generally-friendly relationships with the Middle East and Southern Europe contrasting with the mutual hostility they had with their African neighbors, and you can see that Ancient Egyptians were not very liked in Africa and the feeling was mutual.

It gets worse when you examine Egyptian Religion and discover that differences in skin tone were related to divine mandates. We don't have a lot of documentation as to what those generally were, but given how Egypt acted towards Africa in general, it's not hard to figure out. Given how Africa generally reacted back, it's also not hard to figure out they knew it.

Scarab Sages

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The Franklin Equation is an equation for intensity of sound in a room as a function of time after shutting of the source, involving the volume and exposed surface area of the room, the speed of sound, and the mean sound-absorption coefficient.

Scarab Sages

A Savonius Windmill is a windmill composed of two semi-cylindrical offset cups rotating about a vertical axis.

Scarab Sages

A Heater Treater is a vessel that uses heat to break oil-water emulsions so the oil can be accepted by the pipeline or transport. There are vertical and horizontal treaters. The main difference between them is the residence time, which is shorter in the vertical configuration compared with the horizontal one.


The current record to complete the original Super Mario Bros. is 4 minutes, 56 seconds, and 462 milliseconds. The current tool-assisted speedrun record is 4 minutes, 52 seconds, and 32 milliseconds. [Link.]

The Immovable Ladder is a ladder that has been sitting on a windowsill of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Old Jerusalem for over 250 years. Due to an agreement that nothing may be moved, rearranged, or altered without the consent of all six clerics, each representing a different division of Christianity, the ladder has remained where it is.

Apollo Robbins, a sleight-of-hand expert, once successfully pickpocketed Jimmy Carter's Secret Service agents, taking badges, watches, President Carter's itinerary, and the keys to his motorcade without the agents even noticing they were gone. He works as a performer, as well as a security consultant.

Sideburns get their name from Civil War General Burnside.

Americans spend more money on lottery tickets than on movies, sport tickets, video games, music, and books combined.

Scarab Sages

Tank blanketing, also referred to as tank padding, is the process of applying a gas to the empty space in a storage container. The term storage container here refers to any container that is used to store products, regardless of its size. Though tank blanketing is used for a variety of reasons, it typically involves using a buffer gas to protect products inside the storage container. A few of the benefits of blanketing include a longer life of the product in the container, reduced hazards, and longer equipment life cycles.

Scarab Sages

Even monkeys are capable of understanding the concept of income inequality - and more importantly, the concept of "THAT'S NOT FAIR!"

Scarab Sages

From the "AMERICA!!! F~@& YEAH!!!" Files: Riding a horse while drunk does not constitute a DWI (at least not in the state of Louisiana) - after all, the horse knows the way home.

Scarab Sages

From the "FORMER USSR!!! F&#! YEAH!!!" Files: Chechen surgeon Khassan Baiev served as the only doctor for over 80,000 civilians, and soldiers on both sides, during the Chechen Wars of the 1990s. He saved the life of a Chechen field commander with a million-dollar price on his head rather than let him die and collect the bounty, and once performed 67 amputations and 8 brain surgeries in the span of 48 hours. For his heroism, he was awarded by both sides with death threats and accusations of treason. He was granted political asylum in the United States in 2000.

Scarab Sages

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Adam Rainer of Austria is the only known human being in history to have been both a dwarf (4'8'' at age 19) and a giant (7'8'' at his death at 51).

Scarab Sages

Solar Turbines Incorporated, a wholly owned subsidiary of Caterpillar Inc., designs and manufactures industrial gas turbines for onshore and offshore electrical power generation, for marine propulsion and for producing, processing and transporting natural gas and oil. Solar Turbines is one of the world's leading producers of industrial gas turbines up to 30,000 horsepower (22,000 kW). There are more than 15,000 Solar Turbines gas turbine systems installed in over 100 countries worldwide that have collectively logged more than 2 billion hours of use.

The company traces its history to the 1927 founding of the Prudden-San Diego Airplane Company, which became the Solar Aircraft Company in 1929. Through the Great Depression they mainly produced components for other manufacturers, growing during World War II and diversifying into non-aircraft products after the war. During this period they won a number of contracts to produce jet engine components. Convinced that the gas turbine was the prime mover of the future, the company invested heavily in the development of small turbines.

The turbine never came to be the main prime mover, but Solar's expertise in small turbines found a number of niche roles. The company was purchased by International Harvester Company in early 1960, becoming the Solar Division of International Harvester in 1963. In 1973 the Solar Division exited the aerospace industry to focus solely on industrial turbines. In 1975 the development and manufacture of the Solar Division's radial engines was moved into a newly formed Radial Engines Group, renamed the Turbomach Division in 1980.

Solar Turbines Incorporated became a wholly owned subsidiary of Caterpillar Tractor Co. after Caterpillar purchased the assets of the Solar Division and the Turbomach division from International Harvester on 31 May 1981. In 1985, Caterpillar sold the Turbomach Division to Sundstrand Corporation.

Scarab Sages

What does it take to get our governments to act on such basic, universal, and inarguably real problems as crumbling infrastructure? The answer: Puerile graffiti.

Scarab Sages

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Abraham Lincoln is the only President in U.S. history to hold a patent. An avid boater in his day, he invented a device meant to lift boats over shoals and obstructions.

Scarab Sages

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There is a German beer named F%++ing Hell. It is a pale lager with average alcohol content (4.9%), and its name refers to F!*+ing, a village in Austria, and Hell, the German word for 'pale'.

Scarab Sages

Muhammad Ali was also "The Greatest" (and damn-near only) hero of the Gulf War.

Scarab Sages

A universal word, found independently in nearly all languages, that always sounds about the same, with the same basic meaning? HUH???


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I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
A universal word, found independently in nearly all languages, that always sounds about the same, with the same basic meaning? HUH???

I forget where I read this, but in one of the Australian aboriginal languages the word for dog is "dog". Purely coincidental, as the language bears no resemblance to English.

Scarab Sages

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I normally couldn't care diddly for sports, but I thought this was cool....

Back in his heyday with the Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan began to practice while being bombarded by strobe lights, in order to train himself to resist the onslaught of camera flashes at games - in so doing, he wound up breaking fresh scientific ground in such fields as neurology and perception!

Scarab Sages

Mutants with super-strength are real.


I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
Mutants with super-strength are real.

So a couple million specimens escaped into the wild. Just because they're genetically-engineered overly-muscled people doesn't mean they're not mutants!

Scarab Sages

John Napier 698 wrote:
I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
Do a Google search for "Count Dracula"...and this is the image they lead the character's profile with.
*Severe eye twitching, followed by a lengthy stream of profanity* No. Just, no.

ERRATA: Let the record state for posterity that when this tidbit was first posted, and for several weeks after at least, the leading image was that of Count Von Count of Sesame Street; it has since been changed (presently, to a cartoonish CGI stockart image, the preferability of which I, for one, would strongly question).


Mesons are found in the nuclei of atoms.

Scarab Sages

The true smell of death...is the true death of smell.

Scarab Sages

Have you heard that goldfish have a memory span of only a few seconds? Yeah, forget about that; it's actually at least three months.

Scarab Sages

While filming Spider-Man: Homecoming, Michael Keaton, who played the villainous Vulture, would occasionally remind his heroic upstart counterpart Tom Holland who he was really dealing with.

Scarab Sages

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Roller skates made their debut in London sometime during the 1760s. Their inventor, John Joseph Merlin, wore them to a masquerade party...where he crashed straight into a large mirror.

Scarab Sages

Brazos Bend State Park is a 4,897-acre (1,982 ha) state park along the Brazos River in Needville, Texas, run by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. The park is a haven for a diverse mix of native wildlife and plants covering an equally diverse range of ecosystems. Brazos Bend contains areas of coastal prairie, bottomland forest, and a wide range of wetlands including open and semi-open lakes and transitional marshlands. Highlights of the Park's numerous inhabitants include over 300 species of resident and visiting migratory birds and mammals such as the white-tailed deer, nine-banded armadillo, raccoon, and North American river otter. The most noteworthy and popular residents of the park are the relatively large population of American alligators. The park is open year-round, with the exception of several weekends a year during which it is closed for controlled hunts to manage the white-tailed deer population.

Scarab Sages

The heavy schedules demanded by filming Star Trek: The Next Generation and its affiliated movies prevented Patrick Stewart from accepting roles he could have had in many of the major Disney movies being made at the time, including (among others) King Triton in The Little Mermaid, Cogsworth in Beauty and The Beast, Zazu in The Lion King, Governor Ratcliffe in Pocahontas, and his "deepest regret": Jafar in Aladdin.

Scarab Sages

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Yesterday's pseudoscience: Spontaneous combustion.

Today's medical reality: Spontaneous your-toes-fall-off.


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I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
Today's medical reality: Spontaneous your-toes-fall-off.

DEY TOOK MEH JERB!!!

Scarab Sages

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What the World Needs More of is SCIENCE!: Rational, scientific thinking has been demonstrated to translate directly to moral behavior.

Scarab Sages

November 9th, 2017, Detroit: Real life briefly resembles a scene from a 4th Naked Gun movie.

Scarab Sages

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The warden of the notorious Alcatraz prison believed that “[m]ost trouble in prison is caused by bad food.” Consequently, its cafeteria served better food than many present-day American public schools.

Scarab Sages

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Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) is an American technology company that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globally. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, United States, TI is one of the top ten semiconductor companies worldwide, based on sales volume. Texas Instruments's focus is on developing analog chips and embedded processors, which accounts for more than 85% of their revenue. TI also produces TI digital light processing (DLP) technology and education technology products including calculators, microcontrollers and multi-core processors. To date, TI has more than 43,000 patents worldwide.

Texas Instruments emerged in 1951 after a reorganization of Geophysical Service Incorporated, a company founded in 1930 that manufactured equipment for use in the seismic industry, as well as defense electronics. TI produced the world's first commercial silicon transistor in 1954, and designed and manufactured the first transistor radio in 1954. Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit in 1958 while working at TI's Central Research Labs. TI also invented the hand-held calculator in 1967, and introduced the first single-chip microcontroller (MCU) in 1970, which combined all the elements of computing onto one piece of silicon.

In 1987, TI invented the digital light processing device (also known as the DLP chip), which serves as the foundation for the company's award-winning DLP technology and DLP Cinema. In 1990, TI came out with the popular TI-81 calculator which made them a leader in the graphing calculator industry. In 1997, its defense business was sold to Raytheon, which allowed TI to strengthen its focus on digital solutions. After the acquisition of National Semiconductor in 2011, the company had a combined portfolio of nearly 45,000 analog products and customer design tools, making it the world's largest maker of analog technology components.

Liberty's Edge

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Speaking of TI, I heard this from the CEO of the company where I worked at one time.

Back when TI was trying to get into the PC market, some guy working in a TI warehouse noticed that many TI-99/4As were entering the warehouse, but few were leaving. He correctly concluded that they were selling poorly, so he short sold TI stock, and encouraged his family to do the same. Sure enough, TI gave up on the PC market and dropped the TI-99/4A. The stock dropped in value and the family made piles of money.

The SEC noticed that several people with the same last name made money by shorting the same stock at the same time. It didn't take them long to figure out that one of them worked at TI. Unfortunately for him, his family sang like canaries, and he ended up in jail for insider trading.

Liberty's Edge

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Pepsi Cola was originally called "Brad's Drink".

Scarab Sages

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A vapor–liquid separator is a device used in several industrial applications to separate a vapor–liquid mixture.

A vapor–liquid separator may also be referred to as a flash drum, breakpot, knock-out drum or knock-out pot, compressor suction drum or compressor inlet drum. When used to remove suspended water droplets from streams of air, it is often called a demister.

Scarab Sages

Does correlation really imply causation? Read these remarkable correlations, and judge for yourself.


Germs with unusual antiobiotic resistance widespread in the United States.

TL;DR: The antibiotic resistance problem is much worse than previously thought.

Scarab Sages

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For the 2012 Disney film Brave, two additional software programs were specially developed by Pixar in the period of three years. One of them allows simulation of Merida's 1500 strands of hair curls to move together with her movements.

Scarab Sages

Molyneux's problem asks: If an individual born blind can feel the differences between shapes such as spheres and cubes, could it, if given the ability to see, distinguish those objects by sight alone, in reference to its familiarity already possessed with those shapes by touch? A philosophical riddle when posed in the 17th Century, it advanced to a full-fledged science experiment in the 21st Century, when MIT professor Pawan Sinha granted sight to several previously-blind patients and asked them to identify shapes by sight that they had previously identified by feel. After over 300 years, Molyneux's problem had a clear answer: No.


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Pathfinder LO Special Edition, Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, PF Special Edition Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber
Theconiel wrote:

Speaking of TI, I heard this from the CEO of the company where I worked at one time.

Back when TI was trying to get into the PC market, some guy working in a TI warehouse noticed that many TI-99/4As were entering the warehouse, but few were leaving. He correctly concluded that they were selling poorly, so he short sold TI stock, and encouraged his family to do the same. Sure enough, TI gave up on the PC market and dropped the TI-99/4A. The stock dropped in value and the family made piles of money.

The SEC noticed that several people with the same last name made money by shorting the same stock at the same time. It didn't take them long to figure out that one of them worked at TI. Unfortunately for him, his family sang like canaries, and he ended up in jail for insider trading.

So guys who work in warehouses are "insiders"? Sheesh.


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Ed Reppert wrote:
Theconiel wrote:

Speaking of TI, I heard this from the CEO of the company where I worked at one time.

Back when TI was trying to get into the PC market, some guy working in a TI warehouse noticed that many TI-99/4As were entering the warehouse, but few were leaving. He correctly concluded that they were selling poorly, so he short sold TI stock, and encouraged his family to do the same. Sure enough, TI gave up on the PC market and dropped the TI-99/4A. The stock dropped in value and the family made piles of money.

The SEC noticed that several people with the same last name made money by shorting the same stock at the same time. It didn't take them long to figure out that one of them worked at TI. Unfortunately for him, his family sang like canaries, and he ended up in jail for insider trading.

So guys who work in warehouses are "insiders"? Sheesh.

Yep. They have access to certain bits of insider information.

This is why I use time travel for all of my stock trade fraud.

Scarab Sages

Pablo Picasso's full name was: Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso.

Scarab Sages

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Keep your eyes on the heavens! A supernova, visible to the naked earthbound eye, is due in about 4 years!

Scarab Sages

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In 1952, Wernher von Braun wrote a book called Project Mars, in which the first human colonists on Mars were led by an individual named "Elon."

Scarab Sages

Winston Churchill's famous line about the relative speeds of lies and truth has now been vindicated by science (Note the emotional reactions most associated with each in the abstract!).

Scarab Sages

Schlumberger Limited is the world's largest oilfield services company. Schlumberger employs approximately 100,000 people representing more than 140 nationalities working in more than 85 countries. Schlumberger has four principal executive offices located in Paris, Houston, London, and the Hague.

Schlumberger is incorporated in Willemstad, Curaçao as Schlumberger N.V. and trades on the New York Stock Exchange, Euronext Paris, the London Stock Exchange, and SIX Swiss Exchange. Schlumberger is a Fortune Global 500 company, ranked 287 in 2016, and also listed in Forbes Global 2000, ranked 176 in 2016.

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