Or the Willamette River in Oregon.
Or the St. Johns River, on which Jacksonville, FL is situated.
I know. I had none as an undergraduate (1946-50) and had to be bludgeoned into taking some at UCLA when I got a year’s free graduate work from the Navy. Those who are lucky enough to get into something that requires statistics have to learn it on the job. And the first thing you learn is to consult a statistician in designing your experiments.
On one project there was a squib igniter that set off a propellant grain to run a turbine connected to an electric generator. The squibs were brand new experimental gadgets and since their performance was crucial to the success of the project it was desirable to test them for reliability. However, they only had 5 of them on hand and needed two for tests that were coming up. So I overheard the project manager, who was a PhD Physicist and former UC Berkeley professor and one of the best teachers and smartest guys I ever knew (name and credentials available on request by email), say to his compatriot that if the three spares were tested and all worked they out to be pretty confident of the other two.
I immediately spoke up and said that such a test wouldn’t give all that much confidence. Of course I was just a peon with a BS in EE and was totally ignored. However I was right and it illustrates your point exactly.
In fact, at a confidence level of 80% a test of three units without failure means that the failure rate for the population will be no more than 37%. And you will be wrong 2 times in 10 in claiming that failure rate because the failure rate of the population will be greater than that.
Okay, that’s what I thought, but when you said the science folks had all gotten it wrong, I got worried :).
Siege, I bet you’re right. I saw posters for that movie when it came to town, and shuddered: it looked as though I’d really not like it. My not having seen it hasn’t kept me from coming up with a theory that there’s no overlap between people who like that movie and who liked I Heart Huckabees.
Daniel
Rivers all flow south? How about that little creek called the Rhine? Come to think of it, I assume all rivers in northern Poland, Germany and France flow into the Baltic or the North Sea.
Hate to admit it, but I have a friend who warned me not to let my female cats out at night because 'the 'possums’ll fuck 'em!"
:sigh::
I call it Pub Quiz Syndrome. The wankers who come up to you after a pub quiz and say “I coulda done a (hic!) better job than you - can’t (hic!) believe you didn’t know the answers to those questions”, when what they really mean is “There were two questions there which you didn’t know the answer to, and I did; there were also approximately 20 about which I had no fuckin’ clue and you got ‘em right. Stick it there if it weighs a ton, mate. You’re a fuckin’ genius…By the way, what are you having? My shout.”
Of course that’s where the problem lay, I know, the nurses of the time didn’t is what I’m saying. My suggestion, in the nurses’ defence, was that perhaps a full understanding of the way plants use/produce oxygen wasn’t widespread at that time and so this wasn’t ‘bad science’ just incomplete science. (I’m not familiar with your terminology, I’d have put it this way Plants respire all the time, a process which requires Oxygen and produces Carbon dioxide; in light conditions plants also photosythesize, a process which produces Oxygen and requires Carbon dioxide.)
On the rivers flowing south thing, there’s that… oh what’s it called?.. oh yes. The Amazon. Running generally west>east, but the mouth is still slightly further north than most of the rest of the river and its tributaries.
Well, there are tons of examples. But I like to just ask people if there are any river mouths/delta’s on the north of any landmass…Which, by there logic, would mean that the oceans and seas drain into the land.
As for the Amazon, I think it is the neatest river in the world for one main reason: look at a S.A. map with different colors for different elevations. From start to finish the river is the same color…which means from the beginning (not the tributeries) to the mouth it drops less than 500 - 600 feet in elevation…for over 2000 miles!
-Tcat
I worked onsite as a corporate travel counsellor at a major hospital campus. One of the doctors called me from the airport absolutely APOPLECTIC. He claimed that he was FORCED (?) to pay for an upgrade to first class because there were no more seats in business class available.
Well, I checked his reservation and verified that he had the correct airline ticket in his possession (this was before electronic ticketing). I verified his origin, destination, ticket number, confirmation number, seat assignment, etc. Everything seemed to be in order and I still had no idea why he was forced to pay for the upgrade.
One of my co-workers, who was familiar with this doctor whispered to me that this guy has a fear of the number 13; and, it seems, his seat assignment was in row 13 in business class. There were no other empty seats in which he could sit in business and, it seems, asking to change with another passenger was out of the question.
I talked him down out of his rage and he was fine after that.
This was a highly respected surgeon in his field and lectured all over the world.
I thought for sure this was a ploy to get into first-class.
I was wrong.
He never worked on the 13th of the month. He had season tickets to The Cleveland Indians and Cleveland Browns, but refused to attend the 13th game of the season; and subsequently the 113th game for the Indians. Refused to drive on E13th street in Cleveland. He once even returned a ticket to our office because it had the digits ‘1’ and ‘3’ in succession in the body of the ticket number.
Then I’m sure he wouldn’t have touched one of the better batches of homebrew my former roommate and I made. We dubbed it “Triskaidekaphilia” because we made it with 13 pounds of malt, and it was quite tasty.
I’m so glad to know that mine is not the only family where the great aunts take a lively interest in goat fucking. 
My family is, um, colorful in the double-wide sense.
The spoiled applesauce post made me remember one. There are a lot of cooks around here who won’t make crab soup if there’s a thunderstorm coming or if it’s actually storming. They truely believe something about the stormy weather spoils the soup.
Whenever my late MIL was in the hospital, she’d insist that any flowers or plants that people had sent her be removed at night. They’d suck out all the oxygen, of course.
When I was in the hospital when my son was born, she was appalled that the nurses didn’t come in and take out all the flower arrangements every night.
I used to work with a woman whose husband claimed to be able to tell when a woman was having her period by the way her breath smelled. Whenever they’d go out to a party, he’d either do that cheek-kiss thing or just try to smell every female’s breath by talking to her. Then on the way home, he’d tell her which women were menstruating. What this was supposed to accomplish, I don’t know.
I had a little conversation with my bio-major roommate in college. We were discussing whether rabbits were rodents or not, and the following exchange took place:
Me: A squirrel is a mammal.
Him: Huh. I thought it was a rodent.
Me: … A rodent is a mammal.
Him: What?
Me: Yeah. What about a giraffe?
Him: No.
Me: Yes.
Him: I thought it was like a horse?
Me: <disbelieving stare> A horse IS a MAMMAL!!!
Him: Oh shit.
Me: Kangaroo?
Him: Uh … Marsupial.
Me: Yeah, but mammal?
Him: Well, a few minutes ago I would have said “no.” Now…
Me: Hang on. Name some mammals.
Him: Uh. Dolphins, platypusses, people, uh … whales?
Me: <laughing uncontrollably>
He knew the “trick” mammals, but almost nothing else.
I will always treasure that conversation.
I had one girlfriend who I am convinced had a particular breath when she was about to become pre-menstrual. Almost not an odour, but a slight sweet sensation. I don’t see why it’s completely implausible that a very definite hormonal change, with many physical results, cannot cause a change in breath odour.
Of course, what knowing this is supposed to achieve, I don’t know. Except when it’s your girlfriend, and you know to stock up on chocolate.
Bingo, you have it. Not only is it true “on paper”, but by experiments I have found that a room of mine with many windows and no heating vents becomes profoundly colder on cold nights when the Venetian blinds are open, versus when they are shut. As in 10-15 F colder than normal, with nearly the same outside ambient temperature.
Didn’t they make a movie out of that starring Mandy Moore? Wow.