Where's the Bezoar?

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

In the current Straight Dope Classic column (Arnold does a more professional looking job of making lnks, but I don’t want to get yelled at), the follow on letter writer sent in a picture of a large bezoar. Any chance of this getting scanned in and posted here? (In the name of science, of course.)

It is too clear, and so it is hard to see.

2

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww :eek:
http://www.melfisher.com/artifact.html

Any similarities between your reality and mine are purely coincidental.

3

Well, while you’re waiting, I was curious about the polished bezoars that were collected as charms/art objects and I found this:
http://www.melfisher.com/artifact.html

Not that attractive, IMO.

4

I fail to see how this thing can be worth $6.8 mill. Yuck, yuck, yuck.
http://www.rareends.com/html/atocha.html

:eek:

Any similarities between your reality and mine are purely coincidental.

5

I guess there are worse things to wear around your neck. I think it’d be waay cooler to have a coprolite necklace.

Your brain-in-a-jar,
Myron

Imbibo, ergo sum.

6

:stuck_out_tongue:

Only in the Straight Dope can one carry on such an enlightening and educational conversation. While you’ve extended my vocabulary, Myron, I can’t say it’s a word that will work itself into my everyday speech…

Katt

Any similarities between your reality and mine are purely coincidental.

7

I had read that Erik Estrada (from CHiPs) carried a piece of his son’s umbilical cord in his chain around his neck, and, lo and behold, due to the information superhighway, I can confirm my answer by pointing you here.

CHiPs Chat

8

Thanks all. I’d still like to see that picture of the turkey leg shaped one, though.

It is too clear, and so it is hard to see.

9

Nuts! Forget about bezoars and coprolites, what I want to know is what search engines Katt and Cher are using, to come up with answers so quickly, while I was still futzing around with–no, I won’t name it, because obviously it’s the wrong one, and everybody will make fun of me. :frowning:

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen

10

The search engine is not the only thing.
You should probably be using quote marks, boolean logic, and +/- (if they are supported). Selecting words that closely match your subject probably help too, but in this case, the word bezoar seems like it would be pretty unique. I tried it on several search engines and usually found pictures in the top few hits.
My fav’s.
google.com for it’s caching and site popular measurements.
infoseek.go.com out of habit.
metacrawler.com as my favourite metacrawler (ask.com is too annoying)
northernlights.com for articles
yahoo.com and dmoz.org for directories.

11

Concerning bezoars and poisons. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/6581/unicorn.html
Has an entertaining list of various poison detectors and neutralizers from that time.

The end of the site degenerates into a justification of them using homeopathy, and a justification of homeopathy using (surprise, surprise) hand-waving over QM entanglement, as well as more understood (although perhaps not to them) areas of modern physics.

12

I use Google. It’s been my fave for most searches since very shortly after it came out in Beta. It automatically “ands” any words entered into the search box, and also sorts hits in an order which usually matches what I was looking for.

Any similarities between your reality and mine are purely coincidental.

13

I use google as well. I’ve also found that it provides more useful hits, as well as a greater number to choose from.