What DON'T we know here? (A trivia thread)

Knurled wrote: That leads me in to a question that I've had for a long time. How did people figure out, say, that a given bean is inedible unless you soak it for 8 hours, or that you can boil a certain kind of leaf and make a refreshing drink? I had a scrambled egg and cheese sandwich. Cheese, fried eggs, and bread, three things that have an astounding amount of science behind them and how in the world did we get from milk, grains, and eggs, to those finished products? Especially bread, as that is something that requires a few intentional processes to do. You don't accidentally burn a wheat stalk or get bacteria on some grain and oops, I got a loaf of bread. Yet bread is one of the, if not THE, oldest manufactured foodstuffs. Apocryphally it is the baking of bread that caused people to settle into cities in the first place.

Arguably it was beer (although not what we would call beer) that did this. But then, "beer" and "bread" were denoted by the same characters in Egypt.

This one's actually pretty simple and straitforward. You harvest grains. Pretty easy to figure out that crushing them gives you more options on how to prepare them. Mix with water. Cook. Voila, bread.

As for the bacteria, it was more yeast. Wild yeast is EVERYWHERE. People discovered it first in beer. Grains got left out? They started to sprout. Bah! Dry them out again. Ooops, got wet again. Leave them out for a couple days and they're... foamy? Oh, and drinking this is more fun, and doesn't give you diarhea. This stuff is great! Let's mix this magic grain water in with our regular bread. Hey! The bread's puffy now! All praise and glory to Ninkasi who makes us happy and keeps us from getting the runs!

Where do all those 10mm we just had in our hand go?

In reply to mazdeuce:

I'm heading back home this weekend, I'll have a talk to mum and see what we can do. The owners are pretty proud of their product and manufacturing process and regularly allow tour groups through, so it shouldn't be to much of a problem to get a bit of footage.

That reminds me, might be time to hit up mum for a new jumper or two, those things are great and last forever.

Knurled wrote: Guess the dish having its invention being described: "Maggie, get dinner on!" "But Angus, all we've got left is leavings from the sheep slaughter and yesterday's porridge." "Well?" "..I'll see what I can do."

Haggis!

EvanR wrote:

codrus wrote:

EvanR wrote: Ever used a BNC connector? (Primarily for composite video, sometimes antennas).

Heh. I'm dating myself here, but to me BNC is mainly tied to ethernet. I was a college student in the early 90s, I rented a house with 3 other nerds, and we had a 10base2 ethernet running around the whole thing to interconnect all the computers with the 9600 baud SLIP line (precursor to PPP) connecting us to campus. 10base2 was a coaxial ethernet standard, and it used BNC connectors.

I thought any computer networking that involved BNC cables was ArcNet, but I've been wrong before. BNC is a Bayonet Nut Connector.

I was taught BNC stood for British Naval Connector. In my first computer class, early 96, we set up a network on the class with 10base2 using BNC, I think I still have a couple of network cards with the male end on them.

Rusted_Busted_Spit wrote: I think I still have a couple of network cards with the male end on them.

I think I still have a bag of terminators and the tool for making cables. We could get together and build a LANtastic or Novell network Oh man I bet there is even a 486/33 upstairs somewhere to act as the server

I was in IT from 92-98

RevRico wrote: Where do all those 10mm we just had in our hand go?

Still in your hand. I know... I don't know how it happens but it does. All the damn time.

How to leave well enough alone.

1988RedT2 wrote: Can someone explain to me what a quark is, and how we know that it exists?

A quark is the owner of the bar on a Federation outpost, and you can watch the documentary "Deep Space 9" for proof.

Jumper K. Balls wrote: I think I still have a bag of terminators and the tool for making cables.

50 ohm terminator.

Slightly less intimidating than the T-800. :)

Jumper K. Balls wrote:

Rusted_Busted_Spit wrote: I think I still have a couple of network cards with the male end on them.

I think I still have a bag of terminators and the tool for making cables. We could get together and build a LANtastic or Novell network Oh man I bet there is even a 486/33 upstairs somewhere to act as the server I was in IT from 92-98

I started in IT in 1991 and am still there. Cut my teeth on Artisoft's LANtastic (and the 10-Base-2 rocked over daisy-chaining custom-made DB9-DB9 networking... not quite serial cables) and on NetWare 2.2. Now doing a lot with IT security, virtualization and still networking. Fun stuff :)