Today I Learned

[fresh_42]

TIL, but I am not convinced, yet, what the second most mammal species after humans is.

Guesses?

 

[Bystander]

Guesses?

Rats?

 

[fresh_42]

Rats?

No. I even thought about cattle or pigs. But it is neither of them according to that documentary I watch.

Hint: we share the menopause with them! This is extremely rare. Females usually die before this happens.

 

[DaveE]

Bats?

 

[gmax137]

When I google it, I get "rats."

 

[fresh_42]

It was about orcas. I am skeptical, too. However, who knows anything about the worldwide population of orcas? The oceans cover almost three times the area of land.

Rats definitely do not have menopause. I wonder whether elephants have.

 

[BillTre]

what the second most mammal species after humans is.

By numbers or by mass?
Usually, the little things win both categories just because there so many of them. This makes me think mice would be the winners.
Ants for example may have the most biomass of animals.

I have seen things in the last few years about how the wild world is giving way to the domesticated world.
Human impact on wild habitat is extensive.

 

[gmax137]

The wiki on orcas says the population is 50,000, minimum. OK, it doesn't list the maximum. But 50,000 is a long way from 7 billion. Am I missing something here?

 

[fresh_42]

The wiki on orcas says the population is 50,000, minimum. OK, it doesn't list the maximum. But 50,000 is a long way from 7 billion. Am I missing something here?

Maybe the ocean biologists in that documentary had a bit of a biased view. 50,000 seems pretty low given that they live almost everywhere and the ocean is three times the area of land. 50,000 means around about 5,000 to 10,000 groups. I don't believe this number either.

 

[pinball1970]

T.i.l. 10,000 scientific papers retracted last year.

https://www.theguardian.com/science...ers-push-research-credibility-to-crisis-point

 

[fresh_42]

T.i.l. 10,000 scientific papers retracted last year.

https://www.theguardian.com/science...ers-push-research-credibility-to-crisis-point

Not really a surprise. It is the inevitable consequence of the introduction of papers per time as the only valid unit of science and justification for grants. Publish or perish - more than ever.

 

[BillTre]

 

[mfb]

Orcas as second-most common mammal species would be really weird. That minimum of 50,000 might be too low, but it won't be too low by several orders of magnitude. There are around 1.5 billion cows, 1.2 billion sheep and 700 million cats.

 

[pinball1970]

TIL the States get an eclipse in April https://phys.org/news/2024-02-countdown-april-total-solar-eclipse.html

 

[pinball1970]

It was about orcas. I am skeptical, too. However, who knows anything about the worldwide population of orcas? The oceans cover almost three times the area of land.

Rats definitely do not have menopause. I wonder whether elephants have.

I got rats also. About 10M in the UK, estimate. I thought there would be more based on sayings/old wives tales in my neck of the woods. "More rats than people" "You are never more than 6 feet from a rat."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20716625

 

[sbrothy]

Today I learned, or rather rediscovered this, admittedly factually wrong, qoute by Orson Welles:

The Borgia Dynasty gave us 30 years of constant war, power play, secret assainations, nepotism and general mayhem. This resulted in the Renaissance, Michelangelo and a plethora of high-quality art.

Meanwhile (and here it appearently breaks down), Switzerland prospered in peace, democrazy and what was the result?

The cuckoo clock.

Apochryphal and wrong. Switzerland, I think, wasn't democratic and the cuckoo-clock was invented elsewhere.

Nevertheless, I still find it funny.

 

[fresh_42]

Orcas as second-most common mammal species would be really weird. That minimum of 50,000 might be too low, but it won't be too low by several orders of magnitude. There are around 1.5 billion cows, 1.2 billion sheep and 700 million cats.

I said I had my doubts, too. On the other hand, I have read recently that 100,000 dolphins per year are killed by humans. So you need a considerably higher (orders of magnitude higher) population of dolphins to achieve this without extinguishing them.

 

[fresh_42]

TIL that Facebook bans photos of a 25,000-year-old sculpture as pornography. LOL.

 

[sbrothy]

TIL that Facebook bans photos of a 25,000-year-old sculpture as pornography. LOL.

That's not strange at all. That figure is so hot I can easily imagine it making teenagers do crazy things. Then again I can imagine teenagers do crazy things without much incentive at all. :)

 

[Hornbein]

TIL the 1983 final episode of MASH attracted 106 million viewers. Most ever in the fiction category.

 

[BillTre]

TIL that the word "zoophytophagous", as in zoophytophagous stink bug, Nesidiocoris tenuis
is used as:

This bug possesses both phytophagous and entomophagous food habits, enabling it to obtain nutrition from both plants and insects. This trait allows us to maintain its population density in agricultural fields by introducing insectary plants, even when the pest prey density is extremely low.
From this wonderful publication.

zoo: has to do with animals
phyto: has to do with plants
phagous: has to do with eating
entomo: has to do with insects

 

[BillTre]

Happy Darwin Day (Darwin's birthday)!

 

[Frabjous]

Mathematics has its roots in numerology, geometry, and physics.

-the first sentence of the introduction to Functional Analysis by Reed and Simon

 

[fresh_42]

-the first sentence of the introduction to Functional Analysis by Reed and Simon

One could as well claim that mathematics has its origin in accounting. Sumerians, Assyrians, and Indians lived long before the Greeks arrived at the scene.

 

[Swamp Thing]

TIL that there was a person called Sophie de Grouchy.

https://aeon.co/essays/the-radical-political-writings-of-sophie-de-grouchy


(only it was probably pronounced "grew she" which is not quite as funny)

 

[Hornbein]

-the first sentence of the introduction to Functional Analysis by Reed and Simon

"Mathematics has its roots in numerology, geometry, and physics."

The ancient Egyptians had mathematical astronomy. But being priests of an esoteric order, they failed to publish and hence perished.

 

[BillTre]

More heat for the New Year:
(NY Times article)

 

[Astronuc]

Westarctica: The micronation with a real-world purpose​

https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/westarctica-the-micronation-with-a-real-world-purpose/
The Antarctic Treaty of 1959 prohibited nations from making new land claims on the continent. But it never mentioned claims from private individuals.

Interesting.

 

[docnet]

Today I learned if you make your cheeks sleeker by shaving, it makes a louder and more articulate sound when you poot.

 

[fresh_42]

TIL that Wikipedia is in fact a commercial website and only money counts. Pure politics behind the scenes. Time to quote nLab instead. nLab has a higher scientific value anyway.

 

[jack action]

Wikipedia is in fact a commercial website and only money counts.

Sources for that statement?

 

[fresh_42]

Sources for that statement?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_...c_Enby-20240222143500-Fresh_42-20240222134800

So let me get this straight: you have no problem with listing SE that went for 1.8 billion dollars over the counter (https://tex.co/stackexchange-verkauft/), and no problem with listing physics.org, a commercial popular and science website (https://phys.org/ - note the ads), but you do have a problem with some professional science enthusiasts who teach students for free? Guess, I ran into politics here. We cannot compete with 1.8 billion. Interesting to know. I once joined Wikipedia on the editorial level after I mocked about a tiny but significant error on a mathematical page. Someone, who already contributed to Wikipedia said: "Then sign in and change it instead of complaining about the absence of scientific rigor." So I did. Maybe that was a fault.

 

[jack action]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_...c_Enby-20240222143500-Fresh_42-20240222134800

From your source, the problem is that you are considered potentially biased, not that you do not have money. Have the SE and phys.org pages been written by their members? I think the following response you got was a valid concern for Wikipedia:

Also, I see that multiple accounts connected to Physics Forums have recently edited the page. Please be honest, was there any off-site coordination between you? That is also something that should be disclosed for the sake of transparency.

 

[fresh_42]

From your source, the problem is that you are considered potentially biased, not that you do not have money. Have the SE and phys.org pages been written by their members? I think the following response you got was a valid concern for Wikipedia:

This is BS, sorry. I am not biased. There is actually a) a request pending from another mentor to remove me from staff, so that little "mentor" badge is overestimated, b) who else than a member of PF could write an article about it? Disappointed former members? c) Do you really think those other articles I quoted haven't been written by their staff? Really? We were only honest and they cheated better. You bet they were involved, I mean, $1,800,000,000! That shows were the big donators of Wikipedia are.

As I said: commercial websites are listed (fact) and our website causes problems. QED.

Edit: I saw a typo on Wikipedia today. I won't correct anything like that again for free. I work and they collect the money. Not any longer. I am fed up with politics.

 

[PeterDonis]

I am not biased.

Not about math, true. But about PF, you are--as am I, and pretty much anyone who is going to have sufficient motivation to edit a Wikipedia article about PF (a class which does not include me--I concluded years ago that trying to edit any Wikipedia article was a waste of time; I would rather focus my efforts on a site like this one). Nobody who is truly "neutral" about it (if there are any such people) is going to care what the Wikipedia article says.

From your source, the problem is that you are considered potentially biased

Which is a bogus excuse from Wikipedia, for the reason given above.