Nightmare time. I feel sorry for the bears.
NIghtmare time? Wait until they start mating with each other!!! 
Pizza chains rue the inefficiency of baking round pies. I’ve wondered if they could bake rectangular pizzas in a tray with scalloped edges such that the pizza could then be cut into wedges and rearranged as a “pie”.
There are at least a couple of reasons for the better sound of long strings. First, you can achieve louder volume without the pitch running sharp. When the lateral deflection of the string is a significant percentage of the string’s length, the tension (at max deflection) increases, resulting in pitch increase. For a longer string, the same lateral deflection (same volume) is a lesser percentage of the string’s length, so you get less pitch distortion.
The second reason is reduced inharmonicity:
The largest upright piano I’m aware of is the Klavins M450, so named because it’s 4.5 meters tall. It requires stairs or a ladder to reach the keyboard. And yes, the sound, especially from the bass strings, is incredible. Here’s a video, cued to the start of a 40-second demo by its creator, David Klavins:
I suspect that that’s fundamentally the same effect as your first reason.
Don’t think so.
The first effect is fundamental pitch increase due to increased string tension, and only happens at lateral string deflections that are large enough (relative to string length) to significantly increase the length of the string (which in turn increases string tension).
The second effect is a deviation of harmonic frequencies from integer multiples of the fundamental. This happens regardless of string deflection amplitude, and is due to the bending resistance of the string.
To me, it looks like they built it upside down. Why have the strings descend from the keyboard instead of ascend?
It was built in Whosville?
In reading the Wikipedia page about wasabi, I was amused to learn this interesting random fact:
Inhaling or sniffing wasabi vapor has an effect like smelling salts, a property exploited by researchers attempting to create a smoke alarm for the deaf. One deaf subject participating in a test of the prototype awoke within 10 seconds of wasabi vapour sprayed into his sleeping chamber. The 2011 Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to the researchers for determining the ideal density of airborne wasabi to wake people in the event of an emergency.
“I had the strangest dream - I was trapped in a Sushi Bar and it was getting hotter and hotter”
Anyone who ever mixed up wasabi from powder and got a whiff of it would not be surprised. That stuff is usually just ordinary dried horseradish with some green dye but likely would work just as well. A powder spray near a sleeping person would probably do the job,
“A typical 21-gram African swallow (a South African cliff swallow, in particular) travelling at galactic speeds would have an energy of 420 million Joules, which is approximately the impact energy of an adult bull sperm whale (40 tons) plummeting off Canada’s Mount Thor, the tallest vertical cliff in the world (1,250 meters).”
This tidbit and other fascinating/useless facts about mass, velocity, and energy. A good humorous read. On meteors, TNT, swallows, and the end of the world - Scientific American Blog Network
But an African swallow is not migratory.
Can the swallow carry a coconut at that speed?
And is the whale accompanied by a bowl of petunias?
The article actually addresses that:
Yes, it a scandal. A Nazi-era law (1935) against people without a permanent residence and poor (that meant: gypsies and “unsocial elements”) that politicians have pledged to revoque over and over since forever, and never have come round to do. The fact that keeping those people in jail costs a lot more than the transport fares they skipped just adds insult to injury. It is a fucking disgrace (and yes: I regularly give to that organisation, it is money well spent. And yes, it is tax deductible, by virtue of which the state acknowledges that it is better for society not to spend 200 € per day for the inmates that are unjustly kept behind bars for not paying the 4 € fare.)
We’re at about same latitude. The shortening of the days certainly happens fast this time of year. Three minutes a day doesn’t seem like much on a daily basis but you certainly notice it over a week or two.
Somehow I can’t help but think that Brinks trucks must be mostly full of pennies and nickels. Stores have to provide correct change to their cash customers, obviously. But collectively, I can’t imagine that cash customers are spending as much small change as they get with their purchases. So the retailers need a constant stream of coins from the bank.
Would it be worth stealing a truckful of small change?
It would for this guy
There is one armored truck that I sometimes see that has duel rear axles. Like you would see on a tandem dump truck.
I figure It’s got to be coins. Or maybe it has some very, very serious and heavy armor.