Science It Works Bitches
Just a nerdy 21 year old guy living the desolate regions of Wyoming...On here to discuss and rant about my greatest loves...Science, Engineering, Astronomy, and Religion.
Seriously, who was the first moron to decide that we needed to start mutilating ourselves to please some unseen deity?
![uglyuglyugly:
A group of chimps watch silently as a loved one is wheeled away to her burial. This is such a moving photograph.
On September 23, 2008, Dorothy, a female chimpanzee in her late 40s, died of congestive heart failure. A maternal and beloved figure, Dorothy had spent eight years at Cameroon’s Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center, which houses and rehabilitates chimps victimized by habitat loss and the illegal African bushmeat trade.
After a hunter killed her mother, Dorothy was sold as a “mascot” to an amusement park in Cameroon. For the next 25 years she was tethered to the ground by a chain around her neck, taunted, teased, and taught to drink beer and smoke cigarettes for sport. In May 2000 Dorothy—obese from poor diet and lack of exercise—was rescued and relocated along with ten other primates. As her health improved, her deep kindness surfaced. She mothered an orphaned chimp named Bouboule and became a close friend to many others, including Jacky, the group’s alpha male, and Nama, another amusement-park refugee.
Szczupider, who had been a volunteer at the center, told me: “Her presence, and loss, was palpable, and resonated throughout the group. The management at Sanaga-Yong opted to let Dorothy’s chimpanzee family witness her burial, so that perhaps they would understand, in their own capacity, that Dorothy would not return. Some chimps displayed aggression while others barked in frustration. But perhaps the most stunning reaction was a recurring, almost tangible silence. If one knows chimpanzees, then one knows that [they] are not [usually] silent creatures.”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4x24jvDMF1qb53jco1_500.jpg)
A group of chimps watch silently as a loved one is wheeled away to her burial. This is such a moving photograph.
On September 23, 2008, Dorothy, a female chimpanzee in her late 40s, died of congestive heart failure. A maternal and beloved figure, Dorothy had spent eight years at Cameroon’s Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center, which houses and rehabilitates chimps victimized by habitat loss and the illegal African bushmeat trade.
After a hunter killed her mother, Dorothy was sold as a “mascot” to an amusement park in Cameroon. For the next 25 years she was tethered to the ground by a chain around her neck, taunted, teased, and taught to drink beer and smoke cigarettes for sport. In May 2000 Dorothy—obese from poor diet and lack of exercise—was rescued and relocated along with ten other primates. As her health improved, her deep kindness surfaced. She mothered an orphaned chimp named Bouboule and became a close friend to many others, including Jacky, the group’s alpha male, and Nama, another amusement-park refugee.
Szczupider, who had been a volunteer at the center, told me: “Her presence, and loss, was palpable, and resonated throughout the group. The management at Sanaga-Yong opted to let Dorothy’s chimpanzee family witness her burial, so that perhaps they would understand, in their own capacity, that Dorothy would not return. Some chimps displayed aggression while others barked in frustration. But perhaps the most stunning reaction was a recurring, almost tangible silence. If one knows chimpanzees, then one knows that [they] are not [usually] silent creatures.”
(via lstjedi82)
we ran out of plates
I don’t know why I snorted as loudly as I did
(Source: pork2k, via orgy-of-nerdiness)
Milky Way Doomed to Crash with Andromeda
Four billion years from now, the Milky Way galaxy as we know it will cease to exist.
Our Milky Way is bound for a head-on collision with the similar-sized Andromeda galaxy, researchers announced today (May 31). Over time, the huge galactic smashup will create an entirely new hybrid galaxy, one likely bearing an elliptical shape rather than the Milky Way’s trademark spiral-armed disk.
Why your body jerks before you fall asleep
Today in “Things you’ve always wondered but never thought to ask at the right time”.
I have kicked the sheets clean off my bed before. I’ve smacked my wife in the head and I’ve sent my dog flying. All because of involuntary jerks at the brink of slumber. Scientists think it’s the result of the final moments of a battle between your sleep and waking cycles.
Deep in the core of our brain, a region called the reticular activating system controls our feeling “awake”. Elsewhere, near the point where the nerves from the eyes cross inside your head, the ventrolateral preoptic nucleus senses the cycles of light and dark and shifts our brain to a deep sleep mode.
As your waking motor system teeters on the brink of control at that point just before the VLPO takes over, WHAM, KICK whatthehell?!
Now you know. Sleep tight.
(More info at BBC - Future)
The above article is an update. Her mother went to appeal to keep her out of the psychiatric ward and lost. She will be institutionalized because of her expression of her gender. She will be held until she conforms to male gender and then released to foster care, not her mother who was supporting her.
Please, if you haven’t signed the petition, sign it, reblog it, ask your friends to sign it. We’ve managed to get 40K signatures for a pageant model, we’ve only gotten 11K for a little girl about to have her life ruined. Lets get on the ball and spread the word.
This is just absolutely outrageous…All of Germany should be ashamed for locking up a poor 11 year old girl in a Psych ward simply cause she was born with a male sex. Fuck you Germany…I hope you get fucked sideways with a rake.
(via pseudofailure)
NASA to Reveal Hubble Discovery of Milky Way’s Violent Fate
Figure: Galactic Cannibalism of two galaxies that wandered too close to each other’s orbit.
NASA will reveal new discoveries about the violent fate of our Milky Way galaxy on Thursday (May 31), the space agency has announced.
NASA will hold a press conference at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT) Thursday at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Scientists will discuss new Hubble Space Telescope findings about the inevitable crash of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, which will occur billions of years from now.
“Because of uncertainties in Andromeda’s motion, it has not been possible to determine whether the Milky Way will have a head-on collision or glancing blow with the neighboring galaxy billions of years in the future,” NASA officials said in a media alert Friday (May 25). “Hubble’s precise observations will settle this question.”
Superb shot of the SpaceX Dragon capsule as it approached the ISS last week, taken by Don Pettit. Biggified version here.
Previously: The photography coming from the ISS expeditions is just superb, as this collection shows. Also don’t miss this feature on how all that great photography is done.
(via discoverynews)
Spectacular Libraries in Europe. (via Mental Floss)
