Things you probably don't know, don't need to know, but might find interesting
 

Put 'em here.

The plural of enema is enemata.

I learned what an enema was by reading Stephen King's (Richard Bachman's) The Long Walk. Never heard the term before, had to look it up. In a dictionary. Made of paper. Ah, the old days.

And my Dad spoiled the surprise of the book for me.
When he gave it to me (he was in printing, he took books that should be pulped and then took them back after we'd read them) he said, "This is a great story about a game show where teenage boys walk until they can't walk any more. Only one boy wins. And he is the only survivor. If you can't walk you're killed."

I still enjoyed the story though.
So. I bet you didn't know that.

How interesting. I didn't know the plural of enema, and yet I bet I'm the only person here who actually has reason to use the word and its plural form on occasion.

Oh, you're going to impress them at your next visit to the gastroenterologists!

For the longest time, I thought that Jack Nicholson's Joker was pronouncing "enemy" with an odd accent.

you lose.

Well, there you go. Multiple Dwellars administering multiple enemata. That sounds like something that should go viral on YouTube.

Thread title delivers on 2 of 3 , I guess that's better than most.

Saturday, June 29
Saturn currently shines at magnitude 0.5 among the background stars of eastern Virgo,
where it sits just 0.4° (slightly less than the width of a Full Moon)
due south of the 4th-magnitude star Kappa (κ) Virginis.

The planet reaches its maximum altitude in the south around 9 p.m.
local daylight time and doesn’t set until well after midnight.

Although Saturn looks attractive enough with naked eyes,
it doesn’t dazzle until you view it through a telescope.
Even a small instrument reveals the distant world’s 18"-diameter disk
and the spectacular rings, which span 40" and tilt 17° to our line of sight.

Aside from humans and a few types of primates, the only animals with an overt menstruation cycle (i.e., inconvenient blood flow out of the body) are:

1. Elephant shrews
2. Bats


You're welcome.

so, when large numbers of bats are flying overhead, statistically, one should expect ...


thanks. :p:

That actually is interesting. The question is: Why?

How did we evolve this way? How are humans different from most animals? There must be a dangerous component to overt menstruation in other mammals that doesn't exist for humans. Does overt menstruation make it more likely for an animal to become prey? Do the social groups that humans form keep humans from becoming prey? There has to be some evolutionary reason behind this.

I saw recently on Reddit, that this is because "we have the most aggressively parasitic young (fetus) of any species."

FWIW.


ETA: What about chickens? Not so much blood, but when they ovulate, boy, do they OVULATE!