The Random Image Thread (keeping it PG-13 at the worst)

[TOS]

[juice]

"super", indeed.



edit: dammit, tos.

[Pithecanthropus]

http://youtu.be/41ws8trjL0I

[rjprice]

[DukeofNuke]

Where is that?

[rjprice]

Reykjavik

[DukeofNuke]

Nice!

[TOS]

funny how the light reflections seem so much brighter than the sources

[Séamas]

Cool.

One of my college roommates lives there, he and his husband own a cafe..

[Freakout Jackson]

The-Difference-between-your-mother-and-the-Prime-Directive-.jpeg

[DukeofNuke]

Picard IS Wesley's father !

[TOS]

[maurvir]

I wonder if they put the police dog on suspension?

[TOS]

[Freakout Jackson]

My-room-when-my-webcam-is-on.png

[jkahless]

funny how the light reflections seem so much brighter than the sources

The light sources are washed out at their point source, the reflections are much dimmer.

[rjprice]

Blahblahblah, technical mumbo-jumbo. Boo.

Let's have some really bright lights and reflections, I says!!!

[TOS]

[ukimalefu]

The-Difference-between-your-mother-and-the-Prime-Directive-.jpeg

That's wrong. Funny, but wrong. (and funny because of Weasley)

Also, yes, he did violate the prime directive all the time.

[maurvir]

[Kirk]

Dragonfly larva?
Probably not, maybe tent caterpillar larva

[user]

Larva that invaded Lady Gaga's dresser.

[Yori]

Caddis fly nymphs, I think.

[TOS]

[DukeofNuke]

I bet coming down is more fun.

[sturner]

I bet coming down is more fun.

In the winter.

With snow and ice.

[DukeofNuke]

I think my Wrangler will climb that

[TOS]

[DEyncourt]

I have some problems with that population graphic.

First, the usual reckoning for human generations is about 30 years and not the 20 years (5 generations per century) used there. Certainly a particular generational separation could be as small as 14 or as large as 45 (ignoring lab-implanted embryos for a few women further past menopause as this has been available only for the last generation) but usually 30 is used as an average for the general popluation in the long run. Using 3 generations per century one winds up with a genetic pool of 2^18 or about a quarter-million people in 1400 CE--still a large number but not the billion people in that graphic.

Second, aside from the emigrant exodus from Europe, Asia and (sometime involuntariry) Africa which began as a trickle in the early 1500's and reaching into the millions per year by the late 1800's, humans are mostly a stay-at-home bunch. Sure, war and drought and other natural and man-made disasters have caused some mass movements at times, but even after such there is a tendency for people to return to where they are from if it is at all possible. Even for much of the immigrant population into the US which have almost entirely stayed there was the strong idea that after these people got rich in the US that they would return home wherever that might be.

There is also the (sub)urbanization of local populations where to one degree or another the Industrial Revolution has forced people to move from farms to cities (and then to the suburbs in the 20th century), but this can be viewed as a kind of man-made "disaster" for which the movement was more often one way than not, and this is a more modern phenomenon dating from about 1750 CE or later depending on from which particular people you are descended.

Still, even today there are many localities in Europe and Asia and Africa where despite considerable modern mobility there are distinct local populations that share characteristic speech and sometimes ethnic distinctions. To be sure: this was sometimes because some groups were despied by others like the Jews or the Untouchables in India, but even when you discount these prejudicial cases you can find considerable distinctions between people from relatively close Old World towns like, say, Liverpool and Manchester in England. Confine yourself to the travel possibilities of 1400 CE and these local populations were all but locked to the locality (aside from such disasters as cited above).

So are you "related to everybody...twice" by statistical reasoning? It is a nice sentiment but not at all realistic. My ancestors in 1400 CE Japan were highly unlikely to have had even a notion of anyone's ancestors in 1400 CE Europe or Africa much less engage in sex and thus be directly related. On the other hand each of us is likely to be related to nearly everyone in the district or town of origin in 1400 CE via dozens if not hundreds of paths.

[sean]

Photoshop.

[Séamas]

I have some problems with that population graphic.

First, the usual reckoning for human generations is about 30 years and not the 20 years (5 generations per century) used there. Certainly a particular generational separation could be as small as 14 or as large as 45 (ignoring lab-implanted embryos for a few women further past menopause as this has been available only for the last generation) but usually 30 is used as an average for the general popluation in the long run. Using 3 generations per century one winds up with a genetic pool of 2^18 or about a quarter-million people in 1400 CE--still a large number but not the billion people in that graphic.

Second, aside from the emigrant exodus from Europe, Asia and (sometime involuntariry) Africa which began as a trickle in the early 1500's and reaching into the millions per year by the late 1800's, humans are mostly a stay-at-home bunch. Sure, war and drought and other natural and man-made disasters have caused some mass movements at times, but even after such there is a tendency for people to return to where they are from if it is at all possible. Even for much of the immigrant population into the US which have almost entirely stayed there was the strong idea that after these people got rich in the US that they would return home wherever that might be.

There is also the (sub)urbanization of local populations where to one degree or another the Industrial Revolution has forced people to move from farms to cities (and then to the suburbs in the 20th century), but this can be viewed as a kind of man-made "disaster" for which the movement was more often one way than not, and this is a more modern phenomenon dating from about 1750 CE or later depending on from which particular people you are descended.

Still, even today there are many localities in Europe and Asia and Africa where despite considerable modern mobility there are distinct local populations that share characteristic speech and sometimes ethnic distinctions. To be sure: this was sometimes because some groups were despied by others like the Jews or the Untouchables in India, but even when you discount these prejudicial cases you can find considerable distinctions between people from relatively close Old World towns like, say, Liverpool and Manchester in England. Confine yourself to the travel possibilities of 1400 CE and these local populations were all but locked to the locality (aside from such disasters as cited above).

So are you "related to everybody...twice" by statistical reasoning? It is a nice sentiment but not at all realistic. My ancestors in 1400 CE Japan were highly unlikely to have had even a notion of anyone's ancestors in 1400 CE Europe or Africa much less engage in sex and thus be directly related. On the other hand each of us is likely to be related to nearly everyone in the district or town of origin in 1400 CE via dozens if not hundreds of paths.

I was thinking the same thing.
I am pretty certain that a lot of my great-great grandparents were second or third cousins.


I don't know much about Manchester--but one huge distinction for Liverpool is that a huge amount of its population descend from Irish famine refugees.

The British Isles are interesting in just what you are saying--there are regional ethnic differences that are still evident from migrations hundreds and thousands of years ago.

I don't know much about Manchester, but one major difference between it and Liverpool is that Liverpool absorbed a ton of Irish after the famine.
I know all through the British Isles there are some fairly ancient ethniic differences

[Kirk]

Photoshop.

If I remember correctly, that track up the rock is real. The house on top is not.
Still its a nice touch.

[TOS]

Photoshop.

i thought that was fairly obvious

[Old Yoda]

[Kirk]

New scorpion species discovered in the Santa Catalina Mtns outside Tucson, AZ. This one is carrying its young on its back.
http://www.livescience.com/27265-new-ar ... ecies.html

[TOS]

[Séamas]

My sister's husband is in FDNY, and has done that a couple times--other times they just roll the car end over end out of the way. He once kicked in a windshield when a car tried to pass them on a street where they were responding to a fire.

[dv]

"New York, New York, it's a hell of a town."

[DEyncourt]

The happiest (red) and saddest (blue) states as determined by keyword analysis of 10 million tweets:

[Kirk]

I knew I liked it in Hawaii.