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Learning has occurred
Tova:
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddiOJLuu2mo
Morituri:
Bob Dole has recently passed away. I was a resident of Kansas while he was serving as a senator (and Senate Majority Leader, and chair of more important congressional committees than I can count) for that state.
People who didn't like his politics all thought he was a crook, but also knew that he was a very effective crook who did a lot for the interests of his constituents. People who liked his politics also knew him as a very effective senator, and generally looked into things and decided that once you got past the hyperbole he had done a lot of tricky deals but wasn't an actual crook. Veterans, whether they liked or didn't like his politics, respected the hell out of his military service record and the circumstances under which he got his Purple Heart. Everybody knew that he was smarter than a bathtub full of professors. The sheer raw intellect of the man was astonishing. But not very many people liked him personally. There was just something offputting about him.
A thing I didn't learn until his ill-fated run for the Presidency, however, was that "Dole", if you spell it in the Arabic alphabet, and in such a way that people would pronounce it correctly, is inescapably the Arabic word for "Penis." How to spell his name for purposes of news headlines apparently became something of a controversy in the Middle East.
Morituri:
The Crocodile is more closely related to birds than anything else which is not actually a bird. (Common ancestor lived 240 mya).
The Coelecanth is more closely related to cats than it is to other fish.
Hyenas are more closely related to elephants, cats, and golden moles than they are to dogs.
Sea squirts (you know, the ones that are famous for finding a nice spot to spend the rest of their lives, digging into it and then devouring their own brains because they're not needed any more after that?) are more closely related to vertebrates than they are related to any other invertebrate.
hedgie:
So maybe cœlecanths should be renamed "catfish".
Tova:
--- Quote from: Morituri on 19 Dec 2021, 12:20 ---The Coelecanth is more closely related to cats than it is to other fish.
--- End quote ---
I take it that this means that the Coelacanth and the cat have a more recent common ancestor than the Coelacanth and other species of fish.
I've come across this kind of factoid quite a few times, and to be honest, I mentally lump it with other TBU* knowledge, like "tomatoes are a fruit" and "I am 37% Scottish." Most people don't put tomatoes into fruit salad. A precise percentage of heritage doesn't translate into just how "Scottish" you look, act, or sound. Coelacanth probably don't purr to self-heal.
* true but useless
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