Something interesting you learned recently

I still have my “This Car Climbed Mt. Washington” bumper sticker that they hand out when you drive up rather than hike.

 

Average lifespan of a Greenland shark is 272 years old with oldest age limits approaching 400 years old.

 

I was wondering about your fact, because there should be tornadoes faster than that.

Apparently the world meteorological organization doesn't consider Doppler estimates to be official, and requires you to have a anemometer out.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/06/04/deadly-el-reno-okla-tornado-was-widest-ever-measured-on-earth-had-nearly-300-mph-winds

 

Its only in the last few years that physicists have finally begun to complete the equations describing turbulence, and meteorologists will simply have to wait for the technology to catch up. In fact, I suspect the technology will fall behind for the general public, because meteorology is as much a military secret as anything else, and the public doesn't usually benefit from high tech secrets until the commercial sector has a few years to develop products.

Meteorology is weird, weird, weird and its only reality TV that implies the weather makes sense. For example, if you've ever seen an overcast day where the clouds just seem to melt instantly and vanish into the 9th dimension, that's quantum mechanics on a macroscopic level.

 

If it were easy, we would not have companies like Lockheed Martin, and fusion power plants would already be everywhere.

 

I always thought the climbing everest thing was a bit of a wank, complete wank really

You are supposed to be a man or something afterwards, especially the number of ceo types that do it. Why not go clean up some garbage in a rain forest or feed starving kids in a remote village or something

Why not? Because they think people will think their balls are bigger if they say theyve climbed everest as opposed to installing a well in Zambia

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Mt. Everett has turned into a joke.

After Sir Edmund Hillary and a dozen other white guys, it was the first Woman to summit Everest, then the first black woman, then the first black man, then the first blind man, then the first cancer patient,
then the first quadriplegic, what’s next weekend at Bernie’s, oh that’s already happened 11 times this climbing season…sigh

 

I'd love to do everast. I wouldn't though. But I've thought about hiking from some place up to the base camp. -shrug-

 

I learned that there's a expedition in Lower Saxony for the growing population of wild wolves, the expedition is used to help increase wild wolf conservations, working in small teams learning how to track wolves and set up cameras etc.

Seems like a cool little camping adventure I might go on.

I already know how to track them, but I think gearing up in small adventure teams could be pretty fun.

 

Looking at another source and while currently sober I found age ranges listing them at likely AVERAGE lifespan of 390 years and up to over 500 years!

 

They're probably so frozen cold that they only live a few months a year and then freeze and then come alive again when it's warmer.

 

11 people died trying to summit Everest this season. Most because they had to wait hours in line and the other climbers were simply inexperienced.

 

Probably just to be like.. Ha! Well I'm alive!

 

Actually some nepalese guy was the first to do it twice in one week, a week or two ago.

Putting all foriegners to shame

 

Summiting Everest has always seemed incredibly foolish to me. High risk, relatively low reward. I love to climb mountains, but I'm not an idiot about it...

 

Hmm I think the reward of standing where almost every other person on earth will never stand would feel quite accomplishing.

I'm not sure what warring tribes walked the paths I walk in the forest and Alps, but it's cool to think maybe I'm the only one who's ever set foot in places.

 

It is super cool. I think about that a lot: "I wonder how many other humans have set foot in this exact place?" But the cost/benefit analysis of Everest falls short. Would I give my life to be one of the few thousand people who set foot here? Nah.

 

Something about Mt. Everest is a little icky to me.

The trash, the dead bodies, the entire adventure business model and the fact that these companies take advantage of inexperienced climbers

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer is a good read regarding the subject