Stupid things that occur to me late at night

[kaiwik]

@Atheist Princess

There are people living in Antarctica. Scientists. And they dress like eskimos. But my original brain-fuzzer was supposed to be “How DID eskimo’s tell that it was summer or winter considering it was cold all the time. I don’t know exactly how they would tell that days are longer or shorter considering I look at the clock when I assume its about 1pm and its really 11am or 3pm. So if I din’t have a watch, I’d only be assuming. Did that mean that the eskimos just had to assume?”

Or something like that

http://www.kingeider.net/king5.html

For 82 days the sun rises and never sets between May 10th to August 2nd and from November 18th through January 24th the sun never rises above the skyline.

Archaeological sites in the area indicate the Inupiat Eskimos lived as far back as 500 A.D. at Ukpeagvik, as Barrow is traditionally known.

“Eskimo” is a term much like “Indian”. The northern Alaska Natives are mostly Inupiat, Inuit, and Athabaskan.

I believe the cite above makes it clear how the Natives would know the difference between summer and winter. Also, there is plant growth during the growing season, and blizzards during the rest of the year.

Having lived in a village, and being married to an Aleut, “time” is not relevant. There are the long, light days and the short, dark days. When the days are long we work hard to harvest, hunt, fish, preserve food, and make preparations for the dark days. During the dark days indoor chores replace the outdoor work for the most part. Furs are tanned and sewn, sewing and other needlework is done, carvings, beading, and other Native arts are worked on, and much of the waking time is spent keeping warm and preparing food.

In the winter we have a three storey igloo, in the spring it melts down to a single storey!

[Chairman_Pow]

@LifeOnWry

You know, whenever you see TV news coverage of a shooting, there’s invariably a witness who says, “We all thought it was a car backfiring.”

Yet talk to someone who has had a car backfire on them and they will says, “Man, I thought it was a gunshot!”

Why is that, do you suppose?

Do people ever get surprised by freight trains and say, “It sounded like a tornado!”?

Well, people have lots of experience hearing cars backfiring and not a lot of experience hearing gunshots. Gunshots IRL sound different than gunshots on TV, so there’s the explanation.

Unless you life in Plainfield IL, you’ve probably heard more freight trains than tornados.

[Excalibre]

@Lissa

In line with these thoughts, how come mean people never die?

Anytime you hear on the news of someone getting killed, the victim was mere inches from sainthood: kind, loving, funny, beloved by the community and gentle to small kittens. You never hear someone saying, “Man, he was a nasty sonofabitch,” or even, “I didn’t like him. He never recycled.” I mean, I can understand not saying bad things about the dead, but they lay it on thick.

A year or two after I got out of high school, a girl a year older than me died in a traffic accident - killed by a drunk driver. She was more an acquaintance than a friend, but I still knew and liked her. And she honestly was one of the nicest, most decent human beings I ever knew, at least as far as I could tell.

When she died, I must admit to having thought, Huh. Maybe they’re not always just saying sweet-sounding bullshit about the folks who died. Of course, it’s also more likely that they’re gonna interview the dead person’s family or friends. They aren’t gonna try to track down their worst enemies to get their perspective on the issue. But still. It does sorta seem like cantankerous jerks live longer than everyone else.

[The_King_of_Soup]

@Excalibre

But still. It does sorta seem like cantankerous jerks live longer than everyone else.

Do you have a cite? Of course, I’d take your word for it. But my insurer won’t.