Today's boycott: Industrial farmed meats
A friend related a story of once being sick with some kind of nasty bug, for which he took strong medicine. He would wake up in a panic thinking "I'm dying!" It was explained to him that living things share a lot of chemical signatures (hormones or enzymes or something), and that humans and tiny parasites both release similar chemicals when dying. If you kill a ton of bugs inside yourself, you get the chemical signal of all those bugs saying "I'm dying", in your blood, and you think it's your body that's saying it.
You wouldn't want to put this "I'm dying" chemical into your body. That's partly why it's important that animals raised for food aren't slaughtered in a stressful way. How they die matters. But what about how they live?
High-density hog factories are disgusting. There are plenty of surprising and disturbing documentaries that show the terrible conditions in which factory pigs live. People are willing to effectively torture animals if it means greater profit. Pigs are confined in dirty metal pens, squished in together till there's no room to move. The "stench of liquid manure" affects communities for miles around, and makes people sick outside of the farms -- imagine what it does to those living their entire lives inside.
One reason not to eat pork is simply that it's aesthetically and morally gross to eat something that has been raised in such filth and appalling conditions. There are other reasons: I've been told that pork is the closest meat to human flesh, and it doesn't digest easily, it just sits in your intestines rotting as much as being digested. Then there are parasites, etc.
Imagine though that when you eat meat, you are putting into your system the chemical signatures that an animal built up as it lived and grew. You are taking its chemical memories, and making them your own. So if you eat a ton of industrial hog factory meat, could your body be absorbing a feeling of being stressed out all the time, of being confined and crowded, frantic and agitated, living in filth? Could you be absorbing a little constant unhappiness, a desperate need to escape? Whether or not this actually happens, simply thinking about it might make you want to cut back on meat consumption.
Non-factory farms, where animals live and die decently, shouldn't have this problem. If you eat only ethically raised meats, it means lower-density production, which means that we can't all eat huge amounts of meat without requiring an impossibly large environmental footprint. But this isn't a problem; eating less meat is a solution.
Oink!
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
If we had some bacon we could have some bacon and eggs if we had some eggs
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science
Evolution is all about the chicken and the egg. If you get the paradox, you probably get evolution. If you don't believe in evolution, I'll bet you're also puzzled by the paradox.
So which came first, the chicken or the egg? The paradox kind of disappears if you accept that a chicken and chicken-egg go hand-in-hand... they are so interdependent that it neither makes sense nor is relevant to consider one existing without the other. So it's not sensible to consider one coming first, without the other. They both evolved together. *
To be puzzled by the C & E paradox, all you have to do is imagine one or the other existing completely on its own. Imagine just a chicken... how was it born? Imagine an egg with no chickens... what hatched it? It is exactly these types of black-and-white narrow perspectives that leave evolution non-believers perplexed by all that evolution explains. Usually the standard solution is, "Something must have created it"; thus the need for a creator. But understand that they evolved together, in long sequences of many steps, none of which was such a leap as to be inconceivable to happen randomly, and the puzzle disappears. There is no step where a chicken appears without something very chicken-egg-like, and no step where an egg comes from something not very chicken-like.
Understanding evolution by looking at its current state and then working backwards, we're certain to come across many different chicken-and-egg paradoxes. If we assume that a particular species or trait "should" have evolved, then we are puzzled by all the unlikely events that brought it about. If we think that species are pre-designed, then we tend to think that only an intelligent entity could have created it. But evolution doesn't work to fit any pre-existing design. The design evolves along with the species. The design is never more than one mutation away from what currently exists. Which came first, the human or its design? They evolved together.
A typical chicken-and-egg-type conundrum involves taking 2 things that are dependent on each other, assuming one of them once existed without the other, then trying to figure out how the other came to be. Sometimes one of the dependencies isn't properly considered, either assumed to be a constant, or not considered a product of evolution, or not even noticed as a key element in the problem.
For example, one might ask, how did the human form "randomly" evolve into something so beautiful and aesthetically pleasing? Even our hands are works of art. If evolution favors functionally "fittest" traits, how did it also just happen to create such beauty? If your only answer is "Something must have planned it that way", or even "It must be a pretty big coincidence", then it may seem like evidence against evolution. But realize that our perception of beauty is also evolved. Our brains have developed to find the human form beautiful. You may equally validly ask, why did brains develop to find our form so attractive? Which came first, the human form or human perception of beauty? Chicken or egg? Of course, they developed together, hand-in-hand. If we had instead evolved to look like Darmok, then an evolved perception of beauty would have found his form as perfect as we consider the human form.
Questions involving the results of evolution must be asked within the context of what has evolved, to truly be answerable. Why do the conditions of Earth just happen to be so well suited to life as we know it? (Or the egg to that chicken: Why did we just randomly evolve into something that thrives here?) If the conditions on Earth were different (but still conducive to life), then life would have evolved differently, into something well-suited to those different conditions and vice versa. We can't answer any "How did evolution arrive at this unlikely point?" questions without realizing that what makes that unlikely point important is itself a product of the same evolution. Otherwise, it is simply a random point, as likely or unlikely as any other.
The Earth happens to be so well-suited to life as we know it, because life as we know it evolved within the conditions on Earth.
Evolution makes sense if you consider what may have existed before, and imagine how what existed later could have come about. If you focus on why certain things happened, it's not as clear. Asking "why" suggests there are predetermined reasons for evolutionary events, and having reasons leads to assumptions about some form of conscious thought involved in the process.
Because we tend not to naturally understand evolution, we create a need for and a strong belief in a supernatural creator. But once we've done this, even if we try to consider evolution from different perspectives, the assumption of the existence of a creator leads to further assumptions (such as predetermined reasons for events or existences) that make evolution confusing. Understanding evolution intuitively can remove one's intellectual need for a creator, but understanding evolution is much more intuitive when one fully suspends belief in a creator. This is another chicken-and-egg problem. Which comes first, understanding evolution without accepting it, or accepting it and then trying to understand it? Of course, they must come about together. The simple solution is to not try to require one side completely without the other.
* To be technical, and to avoid trying to make an interesting paradox disappear by saying "I couldn't be bothered to think about it", I submit that the egg came first. For one thing, other animals reproduced using eggs long before chickens existed. It is highly unlikely that chickens ever reproduced in any other way, and later evolved to use eggs (there is probably proof of this). Birds evolved through various species of kinda-chickens, all using eggs in reproduction, before finally evolving after a very long time, into chickens. But which egg was "officially" the first chicken egg? I assume (without bothering to look it up) that species-to-new-species evolution can occur through many different mutations over many generations, and that there isn't always a perfect dividing line that says "this is a chicken, and it's parents are not-chickens". I assume that species changes blur across several or many generations, and it may not even be valid to isolate a single individual and say "this is the first chicken". This would be a clear case where the chicken and egg paradox is neither solvable nor relevant.
But if it so happened that a single distinct mutation separated a chicken from its not-chicken parents, that at some point in prehistory there was some kinda-chicken that wasn't technically-chicken, but which then evolved into a full-blown-chicken, then the technically-chicken egg probably came first anyway, because it is most likely that meaningful mutations resulting in the technically-chicken occurred during the genetic recombination of parental DNA, and less likely (I assume) that it occurred within the first or first few cell divisions of the kinda-chicken's life (either way, within an egg), and much much less likely that a grown kinda-chicken mutated in some key way that turned it into a full-blown-chicken. For certain, as this article is all about, it is extremely unlikely that a non-egg-laying non-chicken suddenly evolved the ability to lay eggs in one mutation or generation, all at once taking on that and every other characteristic needed to distinguish non-chicken from technically-chicken.
That kind of argument goes against the point of this article. Evolutionary changes occur on the level of random molecular changes, a tiny change in a single cell's DNA that expands to a larger change after a ton of cell divisions, some tiny defect that can be used as a new advantage, or at least results in a still-viable living creature. The "What came before that?" is nothing more miraculous or unexplainable than "The same kind of creature, less that one mutation." Big changes occur over generations and generations.
So which came first, the chicken or the egg? The paradox kind of disappears if you accept that a chicken and chicken-egg go hand-in-hand... they are so interdependent that it neither makes sense nor is relevant to consider one existing without the other. So it's not sensible to consider one coming first, without the other. They both evolved together. *
To be puzzled by the C & E paradox, all you have to do is imagine one or the other existing completely on its own. Imagine just a chicken... how was it born? Imagine an egg with no chickens... what hatched it? It is exactly these types of black-and-white narrow perspectives that leave evolution non-believers perplexed by all that evolution explains. Usually the standard solution is, "Something must have created it"; thus the need for a creator. But understand that they evolved together, in long sequences of many steps, none of which was such a leap as to be inconceivable to happen randomly, and the puzzle disappears. There is no step where a chicken appears without something very chicken-egg-like, and no step where an egg comes from something not very chicken-like.
Understanding evolution by looking at its current state and then working backwards, we're certain to come across many different chicken-and-egg paradoxes. If we assume that a particular species or trait "should" have evolved, then we are puzzled by all the unlikely events that brought it about. If we think that species are pre-designed, then we tend to think that only an intelligent entity could have created it. But evolution doesn't work to fit any pre-existing design. The design evolves along with the species. The design is never more than one mutation away from what currently exists. Which came first, the human or its design? They evolved together.
A typical chicken-and-egg-type conundrum involves taking 2 things that are dependent on each other, assuming one of them once existed without the other, then trying to figure out how the other came to be. Sometimes one of the dependencies isn't properly considered, either assumed to be a constant, or not considered a product of evolution, or not even noticed as a key element in the problem.
For example, one might ask, how did the human form "randomly" evolve into something so beautiful and aesthetically pleasing? Even our hands are works of art. If evolution favors functionally "fittest" traits, how did it also just happen to create such beauty? If your only answer is "Something must have planned it that way", or even "It must be a pretty big coincidence", then it may seem like evidence against evolution. But realize that our perception of beauty is also evolved. Our brains have developed to find the human form beautiful. You may equally validly ask, why did brains develop to find our form so attractive? Which came first, the human form or human perception of beauty? Chicken or egg? Of course, they developed together, hand-in-hand. If we had instead evolved to look like Darmok, then an evolved perception of beauty would have found his form as perfect as we consider the human form.
Questions involving the results of evolution must be asked within the context of what has evolved, to truly be answerable. Why do the conditions of Earth just happen to be so well suited to life as we know it? (Or the egg to that chicken: Why did we just randomly evolve into something that thrives here?) If the conditions on Earth were different (but still conducive to life), then life would have evolved differently, into something well-suited to those different conditions and vice versa. We can't answer any "How did evolution arrive at this unlikely point?" questions without realizing that what makes that unlikely point important is itself a product of the same evolution. Otherwise, it is simply a random point, as likely or unlikely as any other.
The Earth happens to be so well-suited to life as we know it, because life as we know it evolved within the conditions on Earth.
Evolution makes sense if you consider what may have existed before, and imagine how what existed later could have come about. If you focus on why certain things happened, it's not as clear. Asking "why" suggests there are predetermined reasons for evolutionary events, and having reasons leads to assumptions about some form of conscious thought involved in the process.
Because we tend not to naturally understand evolution, we create a need for and a strong belief in a supernatural creator. But once we've done this, even if we try to consider evolution from different perspectives, the assumption of the existence of a creator leads to further assumptions (such as predetermined reasons for events or existences) that make evolution confusing. Understanding evolution intuitively can remove one's intellectual need for a creator, but understanding evolution is much more intuitive when one fully suspends belief in a creator. This is another chicken-and-egg problem. Which comes first, understanding evolution without accepting it, or accepting it and then trying to understand it? Of course, they must come about together. The simple solution is to not try to require one side completely without the other.
Science: it's supercool!
-- Unknown
* To be technical, and to avoid trying to make an interesting paradox disappear by saying "I couldn't be bothered to think about it", I submit that the egg came first. For one thing, other animals reproduced using eggs long before chickens existed. It is highly unlikely that chickens ever reproduced in any other way, and later evolved to use eggs (there is probably proof of this). Birds evolved through various species of kinda-chickens, all using eggs in reproduction, before finally evolving after a very long time, into chickens. But which egg was "officially" the first chicken egg? I assume (without bothering to look it up) that species-to-new-species evolution can occur through many different mutations over many generations, and that there isn't always a perfect dividing line that says "this is a chicken, and it's parents are not-chickens". I assume that species changes blur across several or many generations, and it may not even be valid to isolate a single individual and say "this is the first chicken". This would be a clear case where the chicken and egg paradox is neither solvable nor relevant.
But if it so happened that a single distinct mutation separated a chicken from its not-chicken parents, that at some point in prehistory there was some kinda-chicken that wasn't technically-chicken, but which then evolved into a full-blown-chicken, then the technically-chicken egg probably came first anyway, because it is most likely that meaningful mutations resulting in the technically-chicken occurred during the genetic recombination of parental DNA, and less likely (I assume) that it occurred within the first or first few cell divisions of the kinda-chicken's life (either way, within an egg), and much much less likely that a grown kinda-chicken mutated in some key way that turned it into a full-blown-chicken. For certain, as this article is all about, it is extremely unlikely that a non-egg-laying non-chicken suddenly evolved the ability to lay eggs in one mutation or generation, all at once taking on that and every other characteristic needed to distinguish non-chicken from technically-chicken.
That kind of argument goes against the point of this article. Evolutionary changes occur on the level of random molecular changes, a tiny change in a single cell's DNA that expands to a larger change after a ton of cell divisions, some tiny defect that can be used as a new advantage, or at least results in a still-viable living creature. The "What came before that?" is nothing more miraculous or unexplainable than "The same kind of creature, less that one mutation." Big changes occur over generations and generations.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Question: What's cooler than being cool?
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Guide to living well
On a recent trip around the world and back, on foot I passed through the Rambo tunnels of Hope, British Columbia. There I met some fellow travelers also from Edmonton, who were making the same trek that I was. Here is a piece of worldly advice I picked up while conversing with these wandering strangers in that foreign land.
If you find an excuse to be out while the weather goes from okay to bad, it should be tolerable when it goes to worse. I will try to test the idea this coming fall.
For your health!
Bonus-beats advice!
[Top notch post but could you add a witty and original "nuts" joke before we send this off to print? Thx. Maybe get Vince in for ideas. --Ed. PS. don't forget to remove this note, this time]
- To endure a cold winter comfortably, spend at least a half an hour outside every day.
If you find an excuse to be out while the weather goes from okay to bad, it should be tolerable when it goes to worse. I will try to test the idea this coming fall.
For your health!
Bonus-beats advice!
- Soak raw nuts overnight before eating them.
[Top notch post but could you add a witty and original "nuts" joke before we send this off to print? Thx. Maybe get Vince in for ideas. --Ed. PS. don't forget to remove this note, this time]
Also ran
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edutising
GM's new slogan is "May the best car win. TM"
Um. Okay, but, like... didn't that, like, already happen?
American car companies recently fell hard on their asses and it seemed for awhile that they were desperate to clean up their act, to finally look to what foreign car companies were doing right, and to try to catch up. Their ads reflected this. Then they got all bailed out, and as far as I can tell from their commercials, they immediately returned to selling us crap that we don't really want: Bulkier trucks and SUVs; body detailing that looks like bad cheap stereos (about which I also feel curmudgeony... "Back in my day, a stereo looked like a stereo, not a carnival ride!"); and generally, fantasy over function. It seems that building a car that has what I want (high gas mileage, quality construction, doesn't die after a few years for no good reason, made out of duroplast and runs on solar power, etc) is only worth doing when you're against the ropes (that's a boxing reference, y'all). Any other time is business as usual: Making crappy cars, trying to sell them with deceitful advertising, and getting bailed out when you can't compete with companies who make decent cars.
Here are some future slogan ideas for GM:
Um. Okay, but, like... didn't that, like, already happen?
American car companies recently fell hard on their asses and it seemed for awhile that they were desperate to clean up their act, to finally look to what foreign car companies were doing right, and to try to catch up. Their ads reflected this. Then they got all bailed out, and as far as I can tell from their commercials, they immediately returned to selling us crap that we don't really want: Bulkier trucks and SUVs; body detailing that looks like bad cheap stereos (about which I also feel curmudgeony... "Back in my day, a stereo looked like a stereo, not a carnival ride!"); and generally, fantasy over function. It seems that building a car that has what I want (high gas mileage, quality construction, doesn't die after a few years for no good reason, made out of duroplast and runs on solar power, etc) is only worth doing when you're against the ropes (that's a boxing reference, y'all). Any other time is business as usual: Making crappy cars, trying to sell them with deceitful advertising, and getting bailed out when you can't compete with companies who make decent cars.
Here are some future slogan ideas for GM:
- "Okay best car, 2 out of 3, wins!"
- "Do over? May the best car win, starting..... now!"
- "3 out of 5?"
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Is it bigger than a bread box?
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science
When I read about the giant rings recently discovered around Saturn, I wanted some frame of reference to help understand how big they are. So I started calculating some ratios between various measurements...
Scale: If you could walk around the earth
Suppose you made a map of the earth to the size of a city. The equatorial circumference of the Earth is 40,075 km. The length of Manhattan, or an average city like Edmonton, is about 21 km. This is a long walk for an average person, but most should be able to do it in a day.
If you laid a large map of the globe across such a city, the map scale would be 21:40075, or 1 to 1908.333 (repeating, of course). You can multiply this ratio by any map distance to find the equivalent distance on earth, or divide to do the reverse. For example, a big 1 m step taken in your city map would cover 1908 m on Earth, which is about half the length of Central Park (on your map, the park would be about the size of a tub). The distance from London to Paris is 343 km, which would be 180 m on your map. That's about the depth of the Met Museum of Art in real life.
Note: This ratio is actually only valid along the equator on the map, because the projection from sphere to plane will deform the map, but let's just pretend that the map was made in such a way that any of the distances we measure here share the same ratio.
By the way, the ratio also means that if you laid 1908 average cities side by side, they would circle the entire globe.
A map of Earth the size of a city.
Scale: 1 : 1908.3
Scale: The solar system in a ball park...
Suppose we have a park that is 60 m (just under 200 ft) from home plate to the outfield fence, and we want to build a scale model of the solar system with the sun at home plate and Neptune orbiting around where the fence is.
Home plate is 0.4318 m across, the pitching rubber is 18.44 m away, 1st base is 27.43 m away, and the outfield grass line is 47.40 m straight ahead.
Neptune orbits at about 30 AU, or 4.48794×1012 m.
Scale: 60 : 4.48794×1012 = 1 : 74799 million
In a model where the planets' orbits fit in a ball park, the galaxy fits in Saturn's "new" rings. The next time you make a model this big, have someone in another city 543 km away hold up a spitball, to represent the nearest star.
Scale: If the distance to the nearest star was the length of a house...
Length of house: 14 m
Distance to Proxima Centauri: 4.3 light-years = 4.07×1013 km
Scale: 1 : 2905733 billion
References: google, wikipedia
Scale: If you could walk around the earth
Suppose you made a map of the earth to the size of a city. The equatorial circumference of the Earth is 40,075 km. The length of Manhattan, or an average city like Edmonton, is about 21 km. This is a long walk for an average person, but most should be able to do it in a day.
If you laid a large map of the globe across such a city, the map scale would be 21:40075, or 1 to 1908.333 (repeating, of course). You can multiply this ratio by any map distance to find the equivalent distance on earth, or divide to do the reverse. For example, a big 1 m step taken in your city map would cover 1908 m on Earth, which is about half the length of Central Park (on your map, the park would be about the size of a tub). The distance from London to Paris is 343 km, which would be 180 m on your map. That's about the depth of the Met Museum of Art in real life.
Note: This ratio is actually only valid along the equator on the map, because the projection from sphere to plane will deform the map, but let's just pretend that the map was made in such a way that any of the distances we measure here share the same ratio.
By the way, the ratio also means that if you laid 1908 average cities side by side, they would circle the entire globe.
A map of Earth the size of a city.
Scale: 1 : 1908.3
| Measurement | Actual size | Size on map | About as big as... |
| Width of a house | 10 m | 5.2 mm | a pea |
| Height of CN Tower in Toronto | 553.3 m | 0.29 m | the height of a garden gnome |
| Height of Mount Everest | 8848 m | 4.637 m | the height of a house. Imagine a city the size of Manhattan with nothing taller than 1-story buildings. That's how relatively "flat" the Earth is. |
| Average city length | 21 km | 11 m | a house |
| Length of the equator | 40075 km | 21 km | a city, of course! |
| Diameter of the moon | 3475 km | 1.820 m | half the length of central park |
| Average distance to the moon | 384,403 km | 201 km | Long Island |
| Diameter of the sun | 1,391,000 km | 728.9 km | New York to Chicago; highway driving for 7 hours |
| 1 AU (Distance to sun) | 149,598,000 km | 78391 km | 6 Earths side by side |
| Distance to Proxima Centauri (nearest star to sun, 4.3 light-years) | 4.07×1013 km | 21,317,173,156 km | 142.5 AU... within the heliosheath of the solar system; 5x the distance from sun to Uranus |
Scale: The solar system in a ball park...
Suppose we have a park that is 60 m (just under 200 ft) from home plate to the outfield fence, and we want to build a scale model of the solar system with the sun at home plate and Neptune orbiting around where the fence is.
Home plate is 0.4318 m across, the pitching rubber is 18.44 m away, 1st base is 27.43 m away, and the outfield grass line is 47.40 m straight ahead.
Neptune orbits at about 30 AU, or 4.48794×1012 m.
Scale: 60 : 4.48794×1012 = 1 : 74799 million
| Measurement | Actual size | Size in ballpark model | About as big as... |
| Diameter of the sun | 1,391,000 km | 18.60 mm | a nickel |
| Diameter of Mercury | 4,879.4 km | 0.0652 mm | the width of a thin hair. All of the inner planets are like hairs of varying thickness. |
| Distance to Mercury | 59,839,200 km | 0.8 m | a big step |
| Venus | 12103.6 km | 0.1618 mm | |
| To Venus | 104,718,600 km | 1.4 m | a short person laying down |
| Earth | 12756.2 km | 0.1705 mm | |
| To Earth | 149,598,000 km | 2 m | width of a car. If you tape a nickel to a window and stand 2 m away from it, the coin should just eclipse the sun. Try this with the moon to be safe, if you're curious. The moon looks slightly (103%) bigger than the sun, on average. |
| Diameter of the moon | 3475 km | 0.0465 mm | |
| Average distance to the moon | 384,403 km | 5.14 mm | a pea |
| Mars | 6794 km | 0.0908 mm | |
| To Mars | 224,397,000 km | 3 m | |
| Distance to the Asteroid belt | 418,874,400 km | 5.6 m | a limousine |
| Jupiter | 142,984 km | 1.9116 mm | |
| To Jupiter | 777,909,600 km | 10.4 m | |
| Saturn | 120,536 km | 1.6115 mm | width of a grain of rice |
| To Saturn | 1,421,181,000 km | 19 m | just past the pitching rubber |
| Diameter of Saturn's main rings | 273,560 km | 3.66 mm | the width of 3 pennies |
| Saturn's new ring | 13,000,000 km | 173.8 mm | a cantaloupe. As seen from Earth (2 m from home plate), this should look twice as big as the moon or sun. |
| Uranus | 51,118 km | 0.6834 mm | Uranus is huge. |
| To Uranus | 2,932,120,800 km | 39.2 m | halfway between 2nd base and the outfield grass line |
| Neptune | 49,528 km | 0.6621 mm | |
| To Neptune | 4,487,940,000 km | 60 m | the park, to the outfield fence |
| Solar system bow shock | 34,407,540,000 km | 460 m | a few long city blocks |
| Distance to Proxima Centauri (nearest star to sun, 4.3 light-years) | 4.07×1013 km | 543 km | Toronto to Montreal. If it took us a year to get from the sun to Neptune's orbit, it would take 9064 years to get to the nearest star. |
| Diameter of Proxima Centauri | 201,695 km | 2.70 mm | a spitball |
| Size of the galaxy | 9.50×1017 km | 12,700,705 km | Size of Saturn's newly discovered rings. 33 times the average distance to the moon and a twelfth of the distance to the sun. |
In a model where the planets' orbits fit in a ball park, the galaxy fits in Saturn's "new" rings. The next time you make a model this big, have someone in another city 543 km away hold up a spitball, to represent the nearest star.
Scale: If the distance to the nearest star was the length of a house...
Length of house: 14 m
Distance to Proxima Centauri: 4.3 light-years = 4.07×1013 km
Scale: 1 : 2905733 billion
| Measurement | Actual size | Size in house model | About as big as... |
| Diameter of the sun | 1,391,000 km | 0.000479 mm | a bacteria cell. Though not visible to the naked eye, if it was very bright and seen from across a dark house, it would be a visible, single point of light, just like a star in the sky |
| Distance from sun to Earth | 149,598,000 km | 0.0515 mm | width of a thin hair |
| To Neptune | 4,487,940,000 km | 1.54 mm | width of a grain of rice |
| To bow shock | 34,407,540,000 km | 11.8 mm | a marble |
| Distance to Proxima Centauri (4.3 light-years) | 4.07×1013 km | 14 m | length of house |
| Size of the galaxy | 9.50×1017 km | 327 km | Distance from Edmonton to Calgary |
| Distance to nearest galaxy | 2.37×1017 km | 81.4 km | |
| Distance to Andromeda Galaxy (whose size is comparable to the Milky Way Galaxy) | 1.89×1019 km | 6512 km | Radius of Earth |
| Size of the visible universe | 4.40×1023 km | 151,395,348 km | Distance to the sun |
References: google, wikipedia
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Uhhhmm... the planet just exploded sir.
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drivel
We apologize for the recent technical difficulties that have prevented updates of this blog. Earlier in the summer, a wild pack of feral wookies chewed on some vital cables within the MegaCorp(tm) North Compound reactor core, causing a minor nuclear holocaust which disabled the satellite uplink. Please bear with us while we carry out the necessary repairs and cover up. Our sincerest apologies to all who were affected by the blackout.
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"Choose MegaCorp Formula B General Purpose Peanut Butter, the only non-corrosive mucilaginous anti-frictant with that acceptably peanut-like taste, for all your high-volume edible filler and biodegradable lubricating mechanical adhesive needs!(tm) Now in regular and extra-salty."
Legal disclaimer: This apology is not endorsed by Bloggo Corp(tm), nor its parent company MegaCorp(tm), nor any of its affiliates, including FudgeMuffin Industrial, DeathCorp, Superhappy Positiveness Funtime Productions, nor the author. Pursuant to section 12.3, MegaCorp apologizes for nothing(tm)! No refunds will be provided for any real or imaginary losses. Subscribers of the Post Picayune Premium Pack Infotainment, Edutising, or Cryptofaciofunpack Super Mega Bundles may be compensated with a complimentary 12kg canister of MegaCorp Formula B General Purpose Peanut Butter and will be charged a nominal fee plus shipping and handling.
"Choose MegaCorp Formula B General Purpose Peanut Butter, the only non-corrosive mucilaginous anti-frictant with that acceptably peanut-like taste, for all your high-volume edible filler and biodegradable lubricating mechanical adhesive needs!(tm) Now in regular and extra-salty."
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