Teach me stuff!

[Courk]

My county is misshaped.

[Kd]

Based on only 120,464 respondants? That's some serious mis-representation of soft drink naming going on there...
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Guess who's back, back again, Kd's back, tell a friend.

[Chuck]

[Courk]

When you have a fever, you shiver and feel cold basically because your body has reset its own thermostat to be higher than 98 degrees F. Because you aren't initially at that temperature, but you want to be there, you feel cold, and you shiver to create more heat.

[Chuck]

Found: Europe's oldest civilisation

[Chuck]

Before the invention of the paper clip, straight pins were used to attach papers to each other. That's why old documents sometimes have tiny spots of dried blood on them.

[Chuck]

[Leptonn]

The supercomputer that I use at work is named partly after Alex, partly after some dead prime ministers, and partly after SCTV's Bob and Doug McKenzie.

[EEEM]

Bonobos are the most sexual animal in existance. Like humans and dolphins they have sex for pleasure and to procreate as well as for conflict resolution. All bonobos are bisexual. Sexual intercourse as well as oral sex are common. Males are known to exhibit a "penis fencing" behavior where the hang from parallel tree branches and bang their erect penises together. Sex is the typical bonobo apology.

Good conversation starter too...

[MacSulach*]

Yes, I've heard about Bonobos and their sexual behaviour, In fact they have been know to escape captivity and to have sex with unsuspecting itinerants and vagrants!!

[rolandofthewhite]

Our psychology teacher made us watch a movie about bonobos. It was basically one giant monkey porn.

[Chuck]

On this day in history, August 15, 1971

U.S. President Nixon announced a 90-day freeze on wages, rents and prices.

[Da5id]

Oh that's brilliant.

[warpdragon]

[casinopete]

[Ctorj]

Looks like my state is the most variable....figures. (North Carolina)
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"Love is the absolute expression of the human perfection" -Me!

Created by MyFitnessPal.com

[austinap]

I'm interested in that almost perfect circle just southwest of chicago. It looks like its pretty much right on the boarder between the 'pop' part of the country and the 'coke' part of the country, but they almost all use 'soda'. I find that kind of odd, I would have expected the transition to blend a little more. I think the diversity all up the east coast is pretty cool though.

[warpdragon]

[MillerTime]

Only one team in NHL history has come back from a 3-0 deficit in games to win the Stanley Cup - the Toronto Maple Leafs did it against the Detroit Red Wings in 1942. Detroit almost pulled off the same trick in 1945, tying the series 3-3 against Toronto, but the Leafs won the seventh and deciding game.

[Dread Pirate Westley]

*St. Fyodor Ushakov is the Russian Orthodox patron saint of long-range bombers carrying nuclear payloads

[Courk]

Gastrin, a GI tract hormone, is released from G cells. That makes sense.
Secretin, another GI tract hormone, is released from S cells. This is easy.

GIP and CCK are two other GI tract hormones. And I cells and K cells are two other secretory cells.

GIP is released by K cells.
CCK is released by I cells.

You would think the logic would have been consistent, but alas.

[wordcross]

A simplified explanation of Diabetes:

Glucose is the main means of delivering energy to one's muscles. It is pumped through the bloodstream and the musclses break it down and use the resulting energy to move.

Inuslin is produced by the pancreas, and is actually like a key that allows the glucose to enter the muscle cells.

Diabetics have a problem with the pancreas where it does not produce enough insulin. When this happens, glucose cannot get into the muscle cells and therefore builds up in the blood.

The muscles, meanwhile, aren't getting enough energy, so they tell the body "We need more glucose, there not enough energy!"

So the body produces more natural glucose, pushing the blood-sugar level even higher. That is why Diabetics struggle with high blood-sugar levels. And also why some must take insulin shots to control it.
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Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

[Courk]

Type II diabetes is insulin independent because it's not the insulin that's defective. I believe it has something to do with the receptors on the cells.

[guest_austinap]

Yes, type II happens when the cells don't uptake glucose efficiently from the bloodstream. I think the mechanism is almost something like they develop a tolerance to insulin. Ill look it up in one of my biochem books and get back to you with something more concrete.

[Leptonn]

Venus and Mars are on opposite sides of the sky at this time of year. Venus is currently following the sun by about an hour and a half, and Mars rises about the same time that Venus sets.

[Courk]

Oligodendrocytes myelinate neural axons.

I love that word.

[Dread Pirate Westley]

Which one? Oligodendrcytes and myelinate are both worthy of being loved. Axons is pretty good, too, for that matter.

[Courk]

Oligodendrocytes is the specific fun word. The fun fom of myelinate is myelination.

[Agamemnon]

http://www.animatedatlas.com/movie2.html

Brief animated Yankee history

[!Chucklez!]

Why not contribute?

All the laughtracks in use on TV shows were recorded in the mid 50s. So every time you hear those people laugh on TV, they are either very old, or dead.
Kinda morbid. @_@

[Leptonn]

That explains the out-of-place background noise on Everybody Loves Raymond.

[Leptonn]

The phrase "you cannot comb a hedgehog" originates in Russian, where it refers to the impossibility of constructing a nowhere-vanishing tangent space to the (hollow sphere) S ² .

[worm]

i feel so out of touch for asking this, and i could probably find it through google if i had the patience, but i need help settling a debate (so, references would be helpful).

for best of 7 series for both the NBA and MLB, is it 2-3-2 (two games in one city, 3 in the next, 2 in the first) or 2-2-1-1-1? has it changed in recent years from one to the other?

[The Ragin' South Asian]

In the NBA, I think the finals are 2-2-1-1-1 and the other rounds are 2-3-2

[worm]

thanks rsa...found something of a ref
http://www.answers.com/topic/best-of-seven-playoff
it doesn't specify about the finals, but your explanation would make sense b/c we tried to get the answer by looking at the nba finals schedule last year and it was 2-2-1-1-1, which was what caught me by surprise. i thought they were all 2-3-2

[Chuck]

[Sessie]

Hey, my car has one of those. The handle has a little diagram of a stick figure escaping from the trunk.
_________________
"I have an everyday religion that works for me: love yourself first, and everything else falls into line." --Lucille Ball

[Dread Pirate Westley]

The world ended nine years ago yesterday, according to the prediction long ago of James Ussher, archbishop of Amargh, and 161 years ago the day before yesterday, according to the prediction of the followers of the Millerism movement.

[Chuck]

[Guest]