Normal everyday things that mess with your mind

I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

People who don’t pick up their stuff and get out of the way at airport security 😡 Although this is really for the “what grinds my gears thread”

Re. escalators; why people think it’s a good idea to get off at the top/bottom and just STOP! Gggrrrr wut

Strangely, most products of combustion contain things which are good at combusting, yet aren’t good at combusting themselves

Water being a product of fire doesn’t mess with my head any less. 😀

Do you also appreciate CO2 fire extinguishers, or is it just water?

Actually that reminds me – dry ice is one which messes with me, being so used to water, the lack of a liquid phase (in normal conditions) is weird.

The height of the light switches at Centreparcs.

The popularity of Pepsi.

The fact that there is no football team in the top 4 English divisions with a J in the name.

Ant and Dec.

Chicken crisps.

That our consciousness is just a series of electrical impules running around some matter.

Think of an experience from your childhood, something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all, you really were there at the time, weren’t you? How else would you remember it?

But here is the bombshell: You weren’t there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to become you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made.

The height of the light switches at Centreparcs.

The position of pretty much all the light switches in my house. I’ve been living here 6 years and still have to feel around the walls for them every time I go into a room

The height of the light switches at Centreparcs.

Need lower light switches coz’ there’s a lot of “bending over” at CentreParcs.

Apparently.

perchypanther – Member
The height of the light switches at Centreparcs.
Need lower light switches coz’ there’s a lot of “bending over” at CentreParcs.

Apparently.

Especially when you get the bill 😯

Do you also appreciate CO2 fire extinguishers, or is it just water?

No, CO2 somehow makes more sense to my brain* – like it stops the Oxygen bit being reactive by sticking in some “burnt” Carbon.

Water is just freaky because both parts are highly flammable. In the Macro world it seems like putting out a fire with a mixture of petrol and lighter fluid. 😀

(* I do realise “my brain” and the actual chemistry involved are quite separate things!)

Need lower light switches coz’ there’s a lot of “bending over” at CentreParcs.

Or more boringly for wheelchair users (which Centerparcs actually cater for pretty well).

When roadies constantly use a mountain biking forum to ask and post about roadie stuff. You’d think they had a special roadie forum somewhere where they could ask such things….

The amount of times I open a thread only to discover that it’s about waxing your hoods or taping your legs or some such other mystical roadie stuff not immediately obvious from the vague thread title….

I mean, I know it’s all bikes at the end of the day innit but….

Still, at least it never happens on this particular MTB forum… not more than every half an hour anyway…
😉

…that there are more stars in the Universe than grains of sand on all the beaches in the World. How do you count or even estimate those numbers?

When roadies constantly use a mountain biking forum

the need to pigeon-hole people into categories all the time 😉

Coffee shops in general and people being prepared to pay as much for a cup of mucky hot water as they would for a delicious foamy beer.

Football Supporters

Onesies

Not random dope testing MPs

Water is just freaky because both parts are highly flammable.

That’s just a lack of understanding.

Burning is just oxidation. Oxygen is a reactive gas, right, so lots of things will react with it to produce oxides, and oxidation is often exothermic. If you get something hot enough it produces vapour, which being gaseous and on earth mixes with well with oxygen, and the heat generated by the rapid oxidation reaction can produce even more vapour which is heated by the previous reaction and it becomes self sustaining.

H2O and CO2 are both already oxides, in other words they are spent fuel. They can’t oxidise any more, so they can’t burn. They have low chemical potential because the reaction has already happened.

So then they wont’ burn, so you have to consider the other effects they have on an already existing fire. CO2 just displaces the oxygen in the immediate environment (whilst not burning), which stops the fire. H2O, being the funny stuff it is, has a huge latent heat of evaporation. So when you put it on something hot and it evaporates, it removes a lot of heat from that thing. Put enough water on something hot enough to burn and its temperature will drop enough for the oxidation reaction to stop.

I am not a chemist mind, so I’d be happy for someone else to supply more accurate details.

Coffee shops in general and people being prepared to pay as much for a cup of mucky hot water as they would for a delicious foamy beer.

Pubs – how are people prepared to pay as much for mouldy wheat or grapes as for a lovingly roasted carefully sourced coffee.

The scale of a billion…. numbers get bandied about by businesses and politicians and the media as if they don’t matter.

A billion is treated like a singular quantity, much like an apple.

So… a bit of perpective on how much a billion actually is.

Look at your watch or a clock and watch the seconds tick past. If you were to do this for a million seconds without a break it would take about twelve days. If you were to do this for a billion seconds it would be nearly 33 years. 😯

Good one PP 🙂

Also a trillion, another commonly mentioned number, would have you sitting there for 33,000 years. So most of human civilisation so far.

That’s just a lack of understanding.

It’s more a failure of application. I understand the basics of the chemistry, but for some reason that doesn’t quite reconcile it in my jumbled mind. 😕

I have very much the same problem with electricity. I can read all I like about it, work with the equations, understand components etc – but somehow it is fundamentally still “magic” in my mind.

…that there are more stars in the Universe than grains of sand on all the beaches in the World. How do you count or even estimate those numbers?

Yep, that’s always blown my mind since I read it many years ago in this article (which covers some of the guesstimates).

http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~gmackie/billions.html

How things that can seem like a REALLY good idea one day…..aren’t the next.

Pubs – how are people prepared to pay as much for mouldy wheat or grapes as for a lovingly roasted carefully sourced coffee.

I’ve noticed coffee also makes people go a bit ratty and contrary too.

😉

And alcohol doesn’t? 🙂

I have very much the same problem with electricity. I can read all I like about it, work with the equations, understand components etc – but somehow it is fundamentally still “magic” in my mind.

Why? You don’t need to be able to visualise it in everyday terms. It just is.

Having education in Physics helps here, because instead of trying to explain things by likening things to everyday concepts, you just express it in terms of maths. Then the whole world becomes a load of maths. Which is great fun 🙂

Anyway – you can directly feel electric fields and see their effects, so it shouldn’t be to hard in that case. Rub a balloon on your hair (if you have any) and then the balloon is an electron, and the wall is the positive end of the circuit. They get sucked along the wires hopping from molecule to molecule in the metal.

Anyway – you can directly feel electric fields

What Molgrips is saying is – ‘go ahead and touch the bare wires, for the benefit of your understanding of science’

“it tastes hurty”

You can “feel” magnetic fields by holding a magnet in your fist, or [my fave] by wearing a magician’s magnetic ring.

In Essex there are signposts directing you to The Secret Nuclear Bunker.

Same here

Another thing that messes with my brain is David Camerons unnervingly immaculate skin on his face..
It’s so, so clean, so bright and soooo tight.

We’re the same age, I look 10 years older than he does.

I want to know his secret.

Been there ^^ interesting place – well worth a visit.

Why? You don’t need to be able to visualise it in everyday terms. It just is.

I dunno – it just screws with my mind (as per the thread).

I get the basic maths and the physics theory. But somehow the result is still “magic”.

I think I have a mind that likes to visualise and conceptualise things. And I find that difficult with electricity because any visualisation (like the typical water/plumbing/hydraulic metaphor) breaks down pretty quickly when you get into it.

I want to know his secret.

I used to have to look at a lot of pics of celebs for my job.

Botox, guaranteed.

Another thing that messes with my brain is David Camerons unnervingly immaculate skin on his face..
It’s so, so clean, so bright and soooo tight.

We’re the same age, I look 10 years older than he does.

I want to know his secret.

Pigspunk

Motorway bridge Lurkers

Seek refuge in the maths.

Pigs punk

FTFY 😉

I understand where you’re coming from here, Graham – and I’ve done an electronic engineering degree, so supposedly understand electricity. It’s an issue with being unable to comprehend the full details of something and having to accept some things just are.

Being an intelligent swot I made it through the first year of my degree having up to that point thought I understood all of everything I’d learnt. It was some time in my 2nd year I think when I realised that actually I was learning about stuff I didn’t know everything about and had to just accept some things, which given how I’d thought about things before really messed with my mind. I think it’s one of the reasons I really struggled in my third year as a lot of stuff was like that and I had trouble coping with the concept (I still don’t really get the particle physics which I for some reason chose as an option).

Electricity +1

How does it know [/u]the shortest route to take?? It’s not been that way before, it’s not grown up in the area, it’s not got a mate who’s a cabbie, it’s not got a map or a sat nav!

Websites that have a completely misleading name. My current puzzlement comes from http://www.kayak.com. Why doesn’t it sell kayaks? Or at least boats of some kind?

But here is the bombshell: You weren’t there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to become you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made.

Reeeeallllly? Brain cells? Unfertilised egg cells?

This would mess with my head if it’s true.

Coffee shops in general and people being prepared to pay as much for a cup of mucky hot water as they would for a delicious foamy beer

I’m trying to think of the last time I saw someone in a coffee shop keep ordering lattes until they were incapable of standing, or throwing up in the streets and fighting.

Sorry, I’m really against excessive alcohol consumption. It’s ruined millions of lives generally and my marriage in particular.

Memory, how does that work? Electrical impulses or something?

Thought so