In other news... (humorous news items)
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
A lot of people mistakenly think hippos are less dangerous than lions, too. The fact that an animal won't eat you doesn't necessarily mean that it won't kill you for other reasons.
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
Coyne wrote:I suspect that is true because most people see bears as dangerous, and moose...not. Which is an incorrect assumption.
Also, effecting the dangers of each, the relative ratios (and chances of encounter) of herding herbivores vs territorial omni/carnivorous beasties on a given footprint of land?
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
Elephants are herbivores too, but get a bull in must and it will tusk up your shit.
Also,

Also,

Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
Coyne wrote:I suspect that is true because most people see bears as dangerous, and moose...not. Which is an incorrect assumption.
I'm really not sure how someone looks at a moose and doesn't realize it could kill them. A moose is what happens when bears and deer mate.
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
By the rules of tigons and ligers I would have thought that would have been a dear or beer.
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
I mean, anything with a large array of pointy objects on it is something you should instinctively know not to screw around with, let alone one the size of a tractor.
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
commodorejohn wrote:I mean, anything with a large array of pointy objects on it is something you should instinctively know not to screw around with, let alone one the size of a tractor.

Oh, Willie McBride, it was all done in vain.
Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
Yablo wrote:Coyne wrote:I suspect that is true because most people see bears as dangerous, and moose...not. Which is an incorrect assumption.
I'm really not sure how someone looks at a moose and doesn't realize it could kill them. A moose is what happens when bears and deer mate.
+1
commodorejohn wrote:I mean, anything with a large array of pointy objects on it is something you should instinctively know not to screw around with, let alone one the size of a tractor.
Actually, it has more to do with words like "feral" or "wild." I once knew a guy who picked up a "cute" adolescent (wild) cottontail bunny rabbit, which bit him. The teeth went easily through his leather work gloves and also all the way through the webbing between his thumb and first finger. Thinking larger, one has to be wary of the damage that can be caused by a thousand pound animal that can move all that weight at a run...even if damage is not intended. And then there's the diseases you can pick up....
Nature is a fine thing to see...at a safe distance.
In all fairness...
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
Not to mention that virtually all animals will eat meat if given the opportunity. Deer actually are not herbivores; during mating season, to gather enough nutrients to grow the antlers, the males will look for bird nests in order to devour the baby birds, not to mention their willingness to scavenge carrion.
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
My general rule of thumb is anything half as big as you can kill you.
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
That is an absolutely terrible rule of thumb.
There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn't so easy in a car, and you can't cover as much ground walking.
Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
Can't be that terrible, a thumb isn't even a tenth of your size!
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
You could choke to death on a thumb though
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
jewish_scientist wrote:My general rule of thumb is anything half as big as you can kill you.
There's some microbes at the door that would like to have a word with you.
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
To be fair, though, the rule of thumb didn't specifically mention anything larger or smaller than "half as big as you."
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
jewish_scientist wrote:My general rule of thumb is anything half as big as you can kill you.
Did you just confess your Kryptonite Factor? You can only be killed by something that's exactly half your size? It's certainly a strange weakness, but it could have its advantages. "Silly you, that was only 49.3% of my size - I'm completely unharmed!" "Curses!"
I'd heard stories about moose, but I didn't necessarily believe them until a friend described driving by an accident scene where a car hit a juvenile. He didn't see the moose, or find out what happened to it, but he saw what was left of the car.
Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
You could also eat a raisin or spit to change your size instantly!
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
jewish_scientist wrote:My general rule of thumb is anything half as big as you can kill you.
Half a big by what measurement? Length, height or mass?






Thousands of deaths a year, 20,000 deaths a year, 2 deaths in 10 years, 3 deaths ever, none at all ever, probably hundreds of thousands, about 55,000.
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
at least two of them aren't animals, though.
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
speising wrote:at least two of them aren't animals, though.
Ooh, I know this. The copper penny is not an animal, and the gloves!
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
It is a trick question. It turns out the penny is an octopus in disguise. Don't fall for it!
Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
To be fair, j_s didn't say smaller things can't kill you; just that all larger things can. Which, given the right circumstances, is almost certainly true.
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
Not even that, as I (and at least one other person) read it…HES wrote:just that all larger things can.

Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
CorruptUser wrote:It is a trick question. It turns out the penny is an octopus in disguise. Don't fall for it!
They don't need to be octopuses in disguise, pennies can kill you on their own.
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
yeah....But; I'm not a Dog.Coyne wrote:CorruptUser wrote:It is a trick question. It turns out the penny is an octopus in disguise. Don't fall for it!
They don't need to be octopuses in disguise, pennies can kill you on their own.
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
Soupspoon wrote:Not even that, as I (and at least one other person) read it…HES wrote:just that all larger things can.
j_s never said "only," so ... really ... that statement wasn't worth much, was it? We have to add a few tacit things to it to turn it into a thing worth remembering.
Of course, circumstances are everything, aren't they? Gloves or no gloves, a blue-ringed octopus entering your brain at supersonic speed would be no more or less deadly than a whale shark doing the same thing.
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
Zohar wrote:Can't be that terrible, a thumb isn't even a tenth of your size!
He never said anything less half your size couldn't kill you

Death by thumb sounds absolutely terrifying
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
"Anything half as big as you can kill you" is equally as usefully interpreted as "Anything no more than half as big as you can kill you" as "Anything at least half as big as you can kill you".
In reality, pretty much everything can kill you, given the right circumstances, so "Anything less than half as big, exactly half as big or more than half as big as you can kill you" is an equally valid original axiomatic premise from which any and all more precise forms of JS's statement follows as derivatively true, so long as you don't need to start assuming "therefore !X=>!Y" out of thin air in any of those derivations.
(Natural language being messy that way.)
In reality, pretty much everything can kill you, given the right circumstances, so "Anything less than half as big, exactly half as big or more than half as big as you can kill you" is an equally valid original axiomatic premise from which any and all more precise forms of JS's statement follows as derivatively true, so long as you don't need to start assuming "therefore !X=>!Y" out of thin air in any of those derivations.
(Natural language being messy that way.)
Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
heuristically_alone wrote:Zohar wrote:Can't be that terrible, a thumb isn't even a tenth of your size!
He never said anything less half your size couldn't kill you![]()
Death by thumb sounds absolutely terrifying

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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
Ah, the perils of digital warfare.
Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
pkcommando wrote:jewish_scientist wrote:My general rule of thumb is anything half as big as you can kill you.
Did you just confess your Kryptonite Factor? You can only be killed by something that's exactly half your size? It's certainly a strange weakness, but it could have its advantages. "Silly you, that was only 49.3% of my size - I'm completely unharmed!" "Curses!"
I'd heard stories about moose, but I didn't necessarily believe them until a friend described driving by an accident scene where a car hit a juvenile. He didn't see the moose, or find out what happened to it, but he saw what was left of the car.
Yeah, moose are very bad for cars. A typical car is going to hit their legs, which will throw the body of the moose right through the windshield (although from my reading, more collisions are actually caused by drivers swerving out of their lanes to avoid a moose rather than actually hitting a moose).
Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
LaserGuy wrote:(although from my reading, more collisions are actually caused by drivers swerving out of their lanes to avoid a moose rather than actually hitting a moose).
Given the previous sentence, that's probably not a bad thing
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
When my brother and a good friend of ours moved up here to Alaska, they decided to drive. Our friend left Kentucky and picked my brother up in Wisconsin, and then they took Canada's highway west all the way to the traffic jam where a moose refused to move. Traffic on the highway was stopped for a few hours just because the moose wanted to be a dick and Canadians wanted to be polite.
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
That gets really good in India. The cows are very confident, you see them calmly walk onto the highway and lay down for a nap.
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
The male cattle are the worst. Even if you wanted to earn the wrath of the locals, an auto-rickshaw is not match against a bull-dozer…


Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
I see what you did there. Normally, I hate puns, but I find I have an appreciation for those rare few that have some quality.
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
"My rule of thumb, which is defined by Oxford Dictionary as a 'broadly accurate guide or principle, based on practice rather than theory' is that anything half as big as you or bigger can kill you."
There, are you happy now.
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Sableagle wrote:Half a big by what measurement? Length, height or mass?
Yes.
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
I took it as you meant it, and it's still dumb. Did you skip over the various critiques?
There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn't so easy in a car, and you can't cover as much ground walking.
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Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
Be careful skipping over the critiques. They're a potential tripping hazard, especially as they're only ankle high and installed right next to the knee-high 'guard rails' by the buckets full of ebola.
Re: In other news... (humorous news items)
As long as the critiques are less than half your size, you'll live.
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