The "I don't want to talk about AI" thread, and the new topic is: something that rhymes with "clicks"

[MillieDynamite]

Okay, had a few run-ins when I was on the streets. Won't talk about those. I was shot at once when I was on a fugitive recovery. It was too close for comfort, but it didn't hit me, though the spray of brick dust hit my face. Not actually a close call, but I found the shallow grave of a missing person, which shook me really bad. And I was in a car wreck, I wasn't driving but was on the side that was struck and knocked out. My life didn't flash before my eyes, but a bunch of shards of glass did.

 

[UsuallyPresent]

I've been shot at by a hyped-up hunter in the woods. Shotguns are impressive from the wrong end, glad he was so pumped he was shaking and missed, a slug would have ruined my whole day. That was a HUGE adrenalin dump....

 

[Rustyoznail]

The strangest, most disconcerting thing I’ve been involved with was when I was about 24. I was towing a rally car to the site outside Melbourne with my Leyland P76 - a V8 three speed manual. The rally car was a 67 Ford Falcon, about the size of a Mustang. I was a member of the local Rover Crew. Rovers are big Scouts, but with more alcohol and sex…

We hired a trailer but it was terrible. It had a mix of hydraulic and cable brakes which seized while going through a road work site. The workers weren’t happy when I had to drag the trailer, car wheels spinning, over the new gravel that was nearly ready for bitumen…

We pulled the master cylinder to pieces and cleaned the corrosion out of the thing. We then found that each brake shoe had to be adjusted individually. It was a horrible setup. Once I got into the mountains the trailer started wagging on the over run as the brakes grabbed out of sync. I was only doing about 30 mph but slowly sped up to try and drag it straight. It didn’t.

It was now pitch black. The fucking trailer would not behave. I was on a long downhill straight to a bridge then a straight uphill. I tried to slow down but the wag got worse. I buried my foot and hoped that I could pull the piece of shit straight. I was up to 80 using large handfuls of opposite lock trying to stay on the road and not fall off the cliff. I was getting a bit worried. I called out to the guys behind me on the CB radio and told them to hold everyone back. I looked out of the windscreen and all I could see was black. I looked out of the drivers side window and there was the white road center line. I seriously thought I was a gonna.

I lay down on the bench seat because I fully expected I’d be barrel rolling down the road. Things went blank. I sat up. The roof was where it was supposed to be. No glass was broken. I got out and I was parked on the left road shoulder two feet away from a concrete bridge abutment. The trailer was still behind the car but the rally car was on all four wheels on the opposite side of the road. Somehow it had come loose from the eight straps holding it down, done a 180 and landed.

And no one saw what happened. The guy following me in a Mini swore one moment he was looking at the underside of my car, then I was standing looking at the scene.

I have no fucking idea why I’m not dead. Or how it happened. Or why no one saw the rally car flip off the trailer.

 

[iwatchus]

It probably wasn't that close to killing me, but my life flashed before my eyes. My wife, son and I were all stepping from rock to rock in a creek in a nature area. I took a large step onto a boulder and just after I committed, I realized I had not gotten my center of gravity far enough and I was going over backwards and there was nothing I could do about it. I hit my head on an underwater rock, but managed to stay conscious and step back up. The creek was only thigh deep, so it wasn't dangerous, if I was conscious. I have no idea how soon my wife would have gotten to me if I hadn't stood up. Our son was about 7, so there wasn't much he was going to do.

There was a nearby ski resort that had a paramedic who bandaged me up enough to stop the bleeding so my wife could drive me to the emergency room. I ended up with many stitches and a permanent dent in my skill on the top of my head. I was also freezing cold, because I was soaked to the skin in Northern New England in October. That water was within a few degrees of freezing.

My wife and son still give me grief a quarter century later. I had been paranoid about him falling the whole time. And kept scolding him to be careful.

 

[NuclearFairy]

Alright, I'll share a little about my brushes with death. Every single last one of which happened as a child, growing up in the late eighties and early nineties in that ever so revered lack of parental oversight time. Most of them were highly traumatizing though and so the details will be skimpy.

There were several times on bikes where we had to dodge semi's, several more times when the brakes didn't work while going down hill and so I had to use my feet and unicycle it so I didn't loose traction on the front wheel.

There was the climbing of trees and throwing rocks to chase off known child rapists who the oldest of the group swore would accidentally kill a child one day. No one ever believed any of the victims who told. Although in hindsight, I think my parents would've believed us.

There was tying each other up in sleeping bags so we could try and figure out how to escape, and the several near suffocations we suffered.

Ah here's one I don't mind talking about, actually made me see my uncles in a better light for once.

At the church we used to go to, there was an orchard right next door. The owner of the orchard would purposefully leave the apples on the trees growing against the fence unplucked so that we could go and pick some apples after church.

This particular day though, there was a sign or rather several signs on the fence saying, "Do not climb! There is a bull in the orchard."

We of course ignored the sign other than to give a cursory look before climbing the fence. Just as I reached the top of the fence, I was a the fastest climber of the lot of us, my uncles, those irresponsible teenage jackasses snatched us off the fence and started yelling at us.

They never yelled at us, they always laughed and egged us on but not this time.

Before they could start using those forbidden curse words though, the bull slammed right into the fence where I had been about to go over. I very likely would've been in the field with it if not for my uncles.

 

[MillieDynamite]

This happened when I was 14, it was late spring, and my new dad took me into the Rockies to fish. Fishing was something new. We went into the Poudre Canyon and up into the mountains on the south side to fish. We were on a creek that plunges through a small, rock chasm. Dad tied a rope around my waist and followed me down, using the rope to keep me safe. I had no fear because I already trusted him so much, but at one point, I lost balance and swung out over a small pond at the bottom of a waterfall. I'm hanging there, looking 20 feet down at a shallow pond that pours out and another 30 or 40 feet, and thinking, "OPPS." Dad pulled me up, and climbed down to the next level, and I said, "Guess the rope was a good idea." He said, "I think it was a bad idea to need it." We made our way back out of there and fished at the small lake that the creek fed.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I visited an active volcano with a tour group; obviously I knew there was some risk, but as it turned out rather more than I'd realised. A few years later it erupted and killed a bunch of tourists doing just what I did. Not a good way to go.

Not as direct a brush, but several friends of my own age have died in the last few years from cancer and heart attack. It could just as easily have been me, just that I was lucky and they weren't.

 

[Statius]

I visited an active volcano with a tour group; obviously I knew there was some risk, but as it turned out rather more than I'd realised. A few years later it erupted and killed a bunch of tourists doing just what I did. Not a good way to go.

Not as direct a brush, but several friends of my own age have died in the last few years from cancer and heart attack. It could just as easily have been me, just that I was lucky and they weren't.

Was that the one they did a documentary on? Netflix I think?

 

[Bramblethorn]

Was that the one they did a documentary on? Netflix I think?

Apparently so, but I haven't sought it out. I'd prefer not to be thinking too much about the conjunction of superheated steam and me.

 

[Z_TheWriter]

I once had to throw myself and my bicycle in a ditch, because a farmer wasn't paying attention. He hadn't bothered to remove the thresher from his combine harvester before driving onto the tiny road to my school, and it stuck out like a meter on each side.

I literally felt the thresher bump my back wheel before looking back in horror. I have never been so adrenaline fueled as those next few moments. Trying to get far enough ahead before throwing myself to the side.

---

Also I have a page of "If I don't make it..." text somewhere from a bad night when I had mono. I got it late enough that it was quite serious, and I was bedridden for a while.

I survived the mono, but the girl who gave it to me broke up on the first day I could stand. Still not certain which hurt more.

 

[Off_base]

I've survived a tornado and a car jacking.
Now I have a storm cellar and am a bit of a badass bitch who can kick some ass

 

[Statius]

I worked nights and got up at 300 pm for work one day, got in the shower and was extremely pissed off when I lost water pressure. When I got out I had 15 phone calls asking if I was alive. A tornado ripped apart the apartment complex I lived in. Never even heard it.

 

[UsuallyPresent]

I worked nights and got up at 300 pm for work one day, got in the shower and was extremely pissed off when I lost water pressure. When I got out I had 15 phone calls asking if I was alive. A tornado ripped apart the apartment complex I lived in. Never even heard it.

At least they had a reasonable excuse that time....

 

[Writer61]

Not had too many dangerous experiences.

Probably the worst was on holiday in Tanzania. We were camping in the Ngoro Ngoro Crater (the densest natural concentration of animals in the world, including four prides of lions) when an attack of diarrhoea struck me. I knew I needed to get to the toilet hut ASAP, but the problem was that some animal had been prowling around outside our tent. Should I shit the bed, or take my chances outside? My sleeping bag went unsullied, and I survived my dash to the khazi, but it was a stressful experience.

A close second was being in Beirut just before the civil broke out in 1975. A few weeks later I watched on TV as American marines evacuated westerners from the beach in front of our hotel.

At one remove: meeting the then deputy head of the Syrian secret police, the Mukhabarat, at a cocktail party in Damascus. I only found out who he was the next day. Probably the most evil person that I have ever met.

 

[AwkwardMD]

I nearly walked into a hippo when I was 10. It was night time and I was out in the hotel grounds, looking up at the monkeys in the trees with my torch. Didn't know the hippo was there until it grunted. I brought my torch down to find it about a meter away. Luckily, I was shining my torch right in it's eye and was able to back way, flooded by hot fear.

It was a big beast.

Three days later, the authorities shot a hippo in the same spot as it had a festering arrow wound and was behaving aggressively.

That's my brush with death story. Hard to work into an erotic tale really, but feel free!

Just the first minute

Also just the first minute

Hippos will end you.

 

[Writer61]

I nearly walked into a hippo when I was 10.

IIRC, hippos kill more humans than any other large animal.

 

[MillieDynamite]

If you go swimming with hippos, what would you expect to happen?

IIRC, hippos kill more humans than any other large animal.

You must remember this: don't walk near the Hippos in the dark of the night! Also, the middleast has always and forever been a dangerous place.

Not had too many dangerous experiences.

Probably the worst was on holiday in Tanzania. We were camping in the Ngoro Ngoro Crater (the densest natural concentration of animals in the world, including four prides of lions) when an attack of diarrhoea struck me. I knew I needed to get to the toilet hut ASAP, but the problem was that some animal had been prowling around outside our tent. Should I shit the bed, or take my chances outside? My sleeping bag went unsullied, and I survived my dash to the khazi, but it was a stressful experience.

A close second was being in Beirut just before the civil broke out in 1975. A few weeks later I watched on TV as American marines evacuated westerners from the beach in front of our hotel.

At one remove: meeting the then deputy head of the Syrian secret police, the Mukhabarat, at a cocktail party in Damascus. I only found out who he was the next day. Probably the most evil person that I have ever met.

 

[Writer61]

If you go swimming with hippos, what would you expect to happen?

They are pretty dangerous on dry land, too.

Also, the middleast has always and forever been a dangerous place.

Which is such a pity. There is so much history and learning to be found there.

The concepts of zero and algebra came from Arab scholars. Damascus is the oldest continuously occupied city in the world, and the Umayyid Mosque there is beautiful. And don't forget the Alhambra Palace in Granada. Plus, they gave us the word alcohol.

 

[EmilyMiller]

The concepts of zero and algebra came from Arab scholars.

Correct on algebra - but I believe Indian scholars first conceptualized and then codified zero.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Absence makes the heart grow 0....

Correct on algebra - but I believe Indian scholars first conceptualized and then codified zero.

 

[Writer61]

Correct on algebra - but I believe Indian scholars first conceptualized and then codified zero.

Wikipedia suggests that it is pre-Arabic, but whether it is Indian is not so clear. Certainly, it appears to have reached Western thinking via Fibonacci, who grew up in North Africa.

 

[iwatchus]

Wikipedia suggests that it is pre-Arabic, but whether it is Indian is not so clear. Certainly, it appears to have reached Western thinking via Fibonacci, who grew up in North Africa.

Marcus du Sautoy is a researcher who specializes in the history of 0. He had identified a Hindi temple as the first usage of 0, in the 600's, I believe. About two years ago, he identified a much earlier usage in a hindi manuscript. The western usage of 0 (and our digits) almost certainly came from India, through the Islamic middle east, then Fibonacci brought it into Europe.

If you want a simplification of this history, he made a BBC/PBS film (about 55 minutes long) detailing this. It's called The Story of 1 and is on YouTube.

But other cultures did understand zero and could express it. Quipas (many varant spellings from different transliterations) are pre Colombian new world knot systems that describe sequences of numbers, including zero.

 

[EmilyMiller]

But other cultures did understand zero and could express it.

It was a kinda placeholder in many cultures, including Babylonian. But the Indians made it a number like any other.

As well as a public educator, De Sautoy is a bona fide mathematician, focusing on aspects of Group and Number Theory.

 

[iwatchus]

It was a kinda placeholder in many cultures, including Babylonian. But the Indians made it a number like any other.

As well as a public educator, De Sautoy is a bona fide mathematician, focusing on aspects of Group and Number Theory.

The Babylonian did not really have a way of representing zero. The Quipas were somewhere between Babylonian and Hindu-Arabic number system.

We should probably stop our sweet nothings to each other now.

 

[EmilyMiller]

The Babylonian did not really have a way of representing zero. The Quipas were somewhere between Babylonian and Hindu-Arabic number system.

We should probably stop our sweet nothings to each other now.

i agree.