Fun facts!

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The majority of all genetic material amplified and isolated from random soil or water samples comes from entirely unidentified organisms.
 
Back in the 1970s, the US had a plan to nuke the moon to prove our technological superiority to the Soviets. The cost was deemed too high for a dick waving contest. Plus, no one could say with certainty that setting nukes off on the moon wouldn't have an adverse affect on it, and therefore us.
 
Ever walk into a grocery, look around, and realize, they're really just selling the raw material for sewage?
 
Galvatron said:
Scientists also consider it possible that early humans may have crossed this Isthmus, searching for a new land to call home, and may have hunted the Terror Birds, also contributing to their extinction.
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It always amazes me that our ancestors were perfectly capable of bringing down colossal monstrosities, when the modern man can barely walk up a fleight of stairs without getting winded.

Evolution at its finest folks!
 
Count groudon said:
It always amazes me that our ancestors were perfectly capable of bringing down colossal monstrosities, when the modern man can barely walk up a fleight of stairs without getting winded.
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You don't even have to go that far back to realize how pathetic we are to our ancestors. Do some research on America's whaling industry in the 1800s. They were going out in small rowboats to harpoon gigantic creatures of the sea and we were doing it en masse. We're practically ants compared to whales, but that didn't stop us from killing them.

It almost makes me sad whaling is illegal in America. I would have loved to give it a shot if only for the experience.
 
Count groudon said:
Evolution at its finest folks!
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There's no evolution at all, just massive social and technological change

It's the result of humans innovating so that we no longer need to do these things. If modern man trained for it, he would be perfectly capable of performing the same feats of bird-killing*. He wouldn't need to, he'd just need to hop in a helicopter with a high-powered rifle.

*If they still existed
 
DrJonesHat said:
Back in the 1970s, the US had a plan to nuke the moon to prove our technological superiority to the Soviets. The cost was deemed too high for a dick waving contest. Plus, no one could say with certainty that setting nukes off on the moon wouldn't have an adverse affect on it, and therefore us.
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There were also plans to use thermonuclear bombs to make an artificial deepwater harbor in Alaska, enlarge the Panama Canal, and flatten a mountain pass in San Bernardino County.

Baldur's Gait said:
You don't even have to go that far back to realize how pathetic we are to our ancestors. Do some research on America's whaling industry in the 1800s. They were going out in small rowboats to harpoon gigantic creatures of the sea and we were doing it en masse. We're practically ants compared to whales, but that didn't stop us from killing them.

It almost makes me sad whaling is illegal in America. I would have loved to give it a shot if only for the experience.
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Whaling was an insanely dangerous and tough business. Not only did they have to kill the whale, they had to tow its carcass back to the ship, lash it to the side, and use the ship's capstan to drag hooks through its blubber to carve it into manageable proportions to boil down for whale oil.
 
Sable said:
There's no evolution at all, just massive social and technological change

It's the result of humans innovating so that we no longer need to do these things. If modern man trained for it, he would be perfectly capable of performing the same feats of bird-killing*. He wouldn't need to, he'd just need to hop in a helicopter with a high-powered rifle.

*If they still existed
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I dunno, olympic level athletes apparently have trouble recreating the feats regularly required of Athenian oarsmen on a trireme in the historical record. Re-enactors have tremendous difficulty living up to the standards in surviving training manuals for things like English longbowmen.
 
Francis E. Dec Esc. said:
There were also plans to use thermonuclear bombs to make an artificial deepwater harbor in Alaska, enlarge the Panama Canal, and flatten a mountain pass in San Bernardino County.
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Also, theoretically, you could use nukes to launch a (very) carefully shielded spacecraft into orbit. It's called an Orion drive.
 
Your Weird Fetish said:
I dunno, olympic level athletes apparently have trouble recreating the feats regularly required of Athenian oarsmen on a trireme in the historical record. Re-enactors have tremendous difficulty living up to the standards in surviving training manuals for things like English longbowmen.
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That's because they're re-enactors - they can get close of course, but bear in mind there's a lot of factors meaning they wouldn't be able to match these feats.

A longbowman for example would train for so long (pretty much from childhood) and for so extensively that it caused massive changes to their skeletal structure. As the saying goes, 'If you want to train a longbowman, start with his grandfather'.

Funnily enough, some people were unhappy when people were playing earlier forms of football, simply because it took away from time used to train with a bow.
 
Your Weird Fetish said:
I dunno, olympic level athletes apparently have trouble recreating the feats regularly required of Athenian oarsmen on a trireme in the historical record. Re-enactors have tremendous difficulty living up to the standards in surviving training manuals for things like English longbowmen.
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When they can jump over charging bulls completely naked then I'll officially consider them worthy of being called olympians.
 
Count groudon said:
When they can jump over charging bulls completely naked then I'll officially consider them worthy of being called olympians.
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If you can perform any physical task other than fucking completely naked, you're pretty good. It gets drafty down there without shorts on, and it's distracting.
 
Maybe those historical records were exaggerated because they were originally created as way to brag to/intimidate other people.

Whalers are pretty fucking metal, though.
 
AnOminous said:
How, though? He took a photo from that cliff he fell off. What happened after he took that picture? Did he just lean over like a total tard and then fall off the cliff? Because that's my theory.
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I have no idea, this video shows the part of the cliff that he fell from. It looks incredibly steep, I can guess that once he took the picture of what he wanted, he tried climbing up and probably slipped off a rock and tumbled down to his death.


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There is a OVA series of Starship Troopers before the 1997 movie came out.

This little series is a bit more faithful to the novel.

 
While Vikings did often have very glorious beards, it was actually quite rare for them to have long braided hair. The most common hairstyle of the culture at the time was a reverse mullet, the hair on the back of the head was shaved completely off, and the front was grown out to a length that the wearer was most comfortable with. Some did tie back their long fringes into a sort of hipsterish manbun to keep it out of their face, but most simply kept it neatly parted. The whole braided appearance they're known for today was actually the result of many operas based on them that featured the actors wearing braided wigs. They were also mocked relentlessly by other cultures as an entire culture of girly men because they bathed once a week (Saturday is actually based off the old Norse word for bathing day) and made a lot of effort to groom themselves every day.

Celts also used to wear their hair in dreads. Many countries that went to war with them often described them as savages with snake-like hair. This is most likely a because the ancient celts used to style their long hair into braids to make it more manageable, and due to the grime and mud they would accumulate from spending extended periods of time in the wilderness this caused their hair to eventually clump together into dreadlocks.
 
Count groudon said:
While Vikings did often have very glorious beards, it was actually quite rare for them to have long braided hair. The most common hairstyle of the culture at the time was a reverse mullet, the hair on the back of the head was shaved completely off, and the front was grown out to a length that the wearer was most comfortable with. Some did tie back their long fringes into a sort of hipsterish manbun to keep it out of their face, but most simply kept it neatly parted. The whole braided appearance they're known for today was actually the result of many operas based on them that featured the actors wearing braided wigs. They were also mocked relentlessly by other cultures as an entire culture of girly men because they bathed once a week (Saturday is actually based off the old Norse word for bathing day) and made a lot of effort to groom themselves every day.
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Here's an image of a so called "Suebian Knot":
1200px-Osterby_Man_Suebian-Knot.jpg
 
In 1958, Mad Magazine wrote an article that compared a picture of an eight year old Prince Charles to Alfred E. Neuman. A few weeks later, an angry handwritten letter arrived at Mad's office, postmarked London and written on Buckingham Palace stationary. It read:

"Dear Sirs No it isn't a bit—not the least little bit like me. So jolly well stow it! See! Charles. P."
 
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