Can you BEAR this!?!?

This weeks Random Wicked Weekly Wednesday Fact of the Week!

Great! Another Wednesday! I love Wednesdays!

TARDIGRADES!

I know it shouting that almost makes it seem like some sort of swear or insulting word, but you'll be glad to hear it is none of the sort!

MOSS PIGLETS!    WATER BEARS!     TARDIGRADES! 

- These are all names for the same cute little animal who I am now deeply in love with.

Behold their magnificent body of beauty!

I know - pure sex appeal!

Most of these little critters range from 0.3 to 0.5 millimetres in length - which is pretty small, and those are the adults! fresh little hatchlets can be around 0.05 mm - that's teeny weeny!

but I am stalling for time, what's so amazing about these guys?

As it turns out - these could be the hardiest organisms on earth! here's a list of what they can survive!

Extreme heat! They can survive heating for a few minutes of up to 151 degrees C!

EXTREME EXTREME cold! A few minutes at -272 °C ? No problem! (Oh for all the science nerds out there who didn't instantly realise... that is literally 1 degree off absolute 0)

They can even be kept for DAYS at -200 °C!

EXTREME PRESSURES! ranging from the vacuum of space to 1200x atmospheric pressure! 

(yea, pressure is purple - deal with it.)

Some species can even survive 6000 atmospheres - also known as ~6x the pressure found at the depths of the Mariana Trench! (The largest canyon underwater thing)

Don't stop there! These little suckers can even withstand huge amounts of radiation! Not only do they survive the vacuum in space but a few the solar radiation as well! Golly!

Put it this way - they can survive 5000-6200 Gy <-- some unit of radiation-ness - whereas humans will die with 5-10 Gy!

But what does all this mean!?

Could this be the downfall of the baddassery of the honey badger? - I mean , sure their sizes make a real fight impossible, and I would suspect that if it was the honey badger would win - but if the fight was in space (Like all good fights should be) then it is much more likely that the honey badger would explode in the vacuum that get in any good hits but remember - honey badger: just doesn't care...(place your bets)

I digress... 

Oh they also have a little anus at the rear end of their 4 piece segmented body, and also have some wicked awesome claws on their little bear feet!

They are found predominantly in water sources such as fresh springs or marine sediments, around in deserts, beaches, and even just soil. However if you want some as a pet get some lichen or moss and let it sit in some freshwater stream somewhere for a while and then you can take it home and have thousands of little Moss Piglets for yourself!

I'm going to have the coolest fish tank soon!

Thanks for stopping by!

Tickle me this?

This weeks Random Wicked Weekly Wednesday Fact of the Week!

Have you ever wondered what hell tickling is? - I, being the man who was recently tickled on a bus,
(screw you, girl on my bus)
 I decided to find out!

As it turns out - there's 2 types of tickling! What's more they have fancy names (Knismesis and Gargalesis) but I will just call them type 1 and type 2 respectively - because screw typing Kinee$%smesas more than once.

There are multiple types of nerves that react to touch, the 'light touch' nerves seem to be responsible for type 1 tickling, and the 'heavy touch and vibration' receptor nerves are associated with type 2.

In fact, type 1 barely even seems like real tickling - its the one where you get really lightly touched and then that spot gets itchy or something. It's thought that this could be part of the grooming response - so that when little bugs and what not, climb all over your back -

You can feel them and it incites you to itch them away - (and freak the fuck out)

So all we really want to talk about is type 2 tickling - which is that kinda tickling that you probably hated done on you, but quite enjoyed doing to other people.
Interestingly enough it seems only humans and other apes and primates can get this type of tickled!
(maybe rats too)

but WHY do we get tickled!?
Well its not 100% known but there's some pretty good ideas out there,

• Such as its a way to form bonding between parents and children
• Its a way for parents to punish children without resorting to physical violence.
• Its a way for siblings to tickle torture each other into submission to exert dominance over the runt.
• It's a way for adolescents to use an outlet for the release of sexual energy. (that's disgusting, girl on my bus)
• Also tickling can be used on certain erogenous parts of the body... In da bedruuummmm! (funnily this doesn't incite laughter)
• As ticklish spots are often in the same places as "weak spots" and also other protective reflexes it could be a way to elicit some to defend these areas.
• Likewise, it is a way of honing your combat skills in mortal combat against friends and siblings: the reason we are forced into laughter is so the assailant thinks its all OK and continues assailing the defender in this valuable life lesson of self defence.

That's a lot of ideas, and perhaps more than one is true, interestingly enough you cannot self tickle yourself with type 2 tickles, but you CAN self tickle yourself with type 1! This is due to you being able to predict your about to tickle yourself, it turns out tickling has to be a surprise, and the site of tickling not exactly known for maximum effectiveness...

FASCINATING!

What's more some schizophrenics CAN tickle themselves with type 2 tickling!

and certain people called Hypergargalesthesia (or something like that) - which means they are 

SUPER SENSITIVE to tickles! (screw you, girl on my bus)

"Tickling.  Not even once."

Tickling has also been used as a form of torture, and can cause someone to vomit or loose consciousness! This is why tickling without consent is considered physical abuse.
So kids... "ask a little, before you tickle!"
 - This applies predominantly to girl on my bus. Screw you, girl on my bus.

Stay classy San Diego!

Making my way downtown, walking FAST.

Faces past and I'm homebound... dunananananana dun dun dun dunanananana

time for a .....


RANDOM RICKEND REEKLY REDNESDAY RACT ROV RA REEK!...

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Ok I promise never to do THAT again!
but R is the letter of the week this week, so use it in all those words that contain or preferably start with the letter R, to show your appreciation of this glorious double limbed casual standing, weight on one foot 'O'.
...

What's on the agenda today?

SPEED! - or velocity, what ever.

 Yea I know it seems mundane at first - I mean, even as I write this - I am not even moving right?
WRONG! (or is it?)
technically I am moving because the earth is rotating!
The earth has a circumference of ~40,000 km , which if I was at the around the equatorish, would mean I would be travelling at roughly 1600 km/h! (less as you travel towards the poles of course)

thats 4 m/s FASTER than the speed of sound - which is 340m/s

so I am in fact moving incredibly fast - so are you, BUT this is irrelevent!

The EARTH rotates around the SUN, it takes ~365 days (screw leap years) to travel 150,000,000 km!

that's 17123 km/h !!!
 or 4760 m/s!

that's also known as freaken fast!

BUT WHATS MORE!
The sun is orbiting the centre of the milky way galaxy! (kinda floating around a super massive black hole just casually) , this takes approximately 220-250 million years to complete a circuit, speed varies but on average your looking at
220,000 m/s
that is REALLY FAST.

(It is however well known that velociraptor's could travel faster that this.)

-UNFORTUNATELY this is not as impressive as I have built it up to be....

DESTROYING THE FUN:
Earths diametre is 12,756,000 m - so relative to the centre of the galaxy - its only moving a whole of itself (what I like to call an "earth step") approximately once a minute. which seems disappointingly slow - that or the earth is waybigger than I actually imagine it is.

Additionally, all this SPEED is relative, according to the centre of the galaxy, I am the one who is moving really fast, and according to me, the galaxy is the one who is breaking the sound barrier - what does this mean? well, it gets complicated.
in fact scientists had a hard time trying to explain how anything actually moved at all for a long time - it didn't make sense, was one object moving away from the other or was it the other way round?
Luckily that smarty pants called Einstein came along and solved the problem for us with his theory on relativity and how time is also wrapped up in this delicious cake of a problem.

If you want to get a little taste of how Einstein did this - I highly recommend looking at this video! (quick I promise!)

Most of all
    - have a good Reek (I lied!)

In the spirit of winter moles!

This weeks Random Wicked Weekly Wednesday Fact of the Week!

Awwwww yea, Time for some epic animal fun!

Now some of you might of heard of this little guy, but its time to have a good look and go in depth, lets start with this sneezingly sexy picture:

That's right, this disgusting looking verminy hole face - which makes me want to choke on my tongue is called a...

WAIT FOR IT!

Star-nosed Mole! (or Condylura cristata whatevs)

and they're pretty cool - if only because it is one of the ugliest thing's I have ever seen.

They have 22 little appendages called Eiser's organs, which contain 25,000 (a metric crap tonne) of tiny microscopic sensors, which allows the mole to chill out and feel itself around underground.

The cool thing is that these guys don't dig very deep and they often dig straight into little ponds and streams and are often seen foraging underwater... even in an iced over winter pond of cold and uncomfortableness.

(uncomfortableness is a word now.)

Something that you might not suspect of this blind excuse for an animal is that its most probably the fastest eater of all the animal kingdom! It takes on average 227 milliseconds (also known as 0.227 seconds or 227x10^-3 seconds if your that way inclined - I'm not judging.) to identify and gobble down a single food item! with the fastest recorded feeding frenzy being at a mere 120 milliseconds! It takes ~8ms for its brain to decide if something is worth eating or not - AMAZING!

I would like to see a blindfolded human gobble down a toffee pop in that time...
Heck I would like to see a fully optical functional person attempt that too...

Additionally this little badass can smell UNDERWATER - this initially seems trivial until you realise that smelling requires air and you can smell water (tasting doesn't count)
This amazing ability is achieved by blowing bubbles onto what it wants to smell and then inhaling those bubbles back through its nose and smelling the air inside the bubbles! INCREDIBLE!

I'm kinda disappointed actually - I originally wanted to have a rant about a useless ugly looking pathetic animal but I suppose I'll have to save that for next week - this critter turned out to be too Bad-Ass.

Leprosy?

This weeks Random Wicked Weekly Wednesday Fact of the Week!

Test, test 1 2 3 check TEST.... yup - the keyboard is working. EVEN CAPS LOCK
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LEPROSY! 

Many people when thinking 'leprosy' words come to their minds - such as ew, gross or highly contagious skin disease.

Leprosy is in fact a disease that affects your nerves, limbs, skin and eyes - and contrary to popular belief - doesn't make your bits fall off. - and by bits I mean fingers, or other small protruding bits.

What you might be surprised to learn is that the exact method of contraction of leprosy is uncertain - its actually not as contagious as what you might of assumed... , although there's some probably correct ideas about respiratory droplets 
(tiny bits of water that you breath out and some else breaths in which act as little micro organism taxi's)
which take the bacteria that cause leprosy from one host to another..

In OTHER news there is also a bit of evidence of armadillo's transmitting leprosy to humans.
This basically means be careful of armadillo's - no matter how cute.

Another interesting bit about leprosy is that its been around for AGES!
something like over 4000 years ish!

 I have heard rumour of our ancient dinosaur ancestors making leprosy with the sole purpose to plague the human race so as to prepare us for the imminent return of their rightful place as our rulers.


Anyway, you do not really need to worry about contracting leprosy and having to live in a leper colony (yes these still exist, there's like over 1000 in India) these day's because it can easily be cured, 12 months of taking 3 drugs will not only cure you - but after the first 2 weeks your not even contagious anymore! SWEET!
 infact - hug all the armadillo's you want cause 95% of the human population (more or less) is actually immune naturally to leprosy, which is again, really useful.

Thanks Immune system - you rock.

on a final note:
Today's Word of the week is "January" - hahahahah good luck using that!

Additionally January 30th is Leprosy day. (that's my use of the word, your're not allowed to use it)

Generic Sign off!

This weeks Random Wicked Weekly Wednesday Fact of the Week!


What's on the agenda this time?

Take a look at this image, it's is a lovely example of something that is - Silly. (Silly is also this weeks word) 

Did you know, that you have a nerve, that travels down your neck, underneath your aortic arch (just a heart artery thing), and then back up your neck to terminate (at the Larynx) a few centimetres away from where it originated?

Ya wanna know what's even funnier - all the other animals - er well vertebrates... have it too!!!
This means that Giraffes are not only silly because they are tall and drink like dorks, but also because of their

"Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve" Which literally travels approximately 4.57 metres (yea that's right, metric system first!) or 15 feet to get to a place that was a few centimetres from where it started!  Silly!

Ya wanna know what else? Because Dinosaurs are vertebrates - they would of had it too! Which means that Sauropods like Brachiosaurus would of had incredibly long recurrent nerves - which is - Even Sillier!

A real Brachiosaurus that I keep for occasions like this.

Wanna know more science about Laryngeal nerves?
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_laryngeal_nerve  - Boom wikipedia link.

Thanks for stopping by and remember to use the word Silly - preferably in italics - until it looks weird to read and looses its meaning.