![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidc1. Nobody knows how genetics works. The sequencing of the human genome has led to biologists no longer even being certain they know what a gene is, and the one thing we still thought definitely worked on Mendelian rules - genetic disorders - sometimes doesn't, with people occasionally having two copies of a damaged gene and being fine.
2. When beavers were illegally released in England (not to be confused with the intentional reintroduction in Scotland), the authorities had to check what kind of beaver they were, because European beavers are a reintroduction of a formerly native species and that's probably okay, but American beavers with exactly the same behaviours and characteristics would have been an environmental catastrophe somehow.
3. The convention of SI units is that they're abbreviated with a capital if they're named after a person (K for kelvin, N for newton, etc.) The litre is another example, named after Claude Émile Jean-Baptiste Litre, one of the founders of the French metric movement, and the scion of a long line of wine bottle manufacturers, who produced the first litre bottles. Also, Claude Émile Jean-Baptiste Litre is entirely fictional, having been completely made up to pretend compliance with the above, when the real reason is that a lowercase l can be mistaken for a 1. While this was initially a joke, some sources have reported it as fact.
4.The Golden Gate Bridge has a "zipper lane" - a divider that can be moved from one side to the other, shifting the lanes from six northbound, four southbound to the reverse, thereby adapting to the morning and evening rush hours going in different directions.
5. The procedures for dealing with a lost mobile phone when you're 150 miles from the box it came in and more interested in getting it back than making an insurance claim, do not appear to be entirely fit for purpose. Still, I got to visit Rebus's nick, so that was interesting.
2. When beavers were illegally released in England (not to be confused with the intentional reintroduction in Scotland), the authorities had to check what kind of beaver they were, because European beavers are a reintroduction of a formerly native species and that's probably okay, but American beavers with exactly the same behaviours and characteristics would have been an environmental catastrophe somehow.
3. The convention of SI units is that they're abbreviated with a capital if they're named after a person (K for kelvin, N for newton, etc.) The litre is another example, named after Claude Émile Jean-Baptiste Litre, one of the founders of the French metric movement, and the scion of a long line of wine bottle manufacturers, who produced the first litre bottles. Also, Claude Émile Jean-Baptiste Litre is entirely fictional, having been completely made up to pretend compliance with the above, when the real reason is that a lowercase l can be mistaken for a 1. While this was initially a joke, some sources have reported it as fact.
4.The Golden Gate Bridge has a "zipper lane" - a divider that can be moved from one side to the other, shifting the lanes from six northbound, four southbound to the reverse, thereby adapting to the morning and evening rush hours going in different directions.
5. The procedures for dealing with a lost mobile phone when you're 150 miles from the box it came in and more interested in getting it back than making an insurance claim, do not appear to be entirely fit for purpose. Still, I got to visit Rebus's nick, so that was interesting.
