i'm feeling rather festive

so have a brazil nut

From the Christmas Cards challenge. See all 446 entries (closed)

( lo, the Greebo Warrior doesn't update his sig often enough, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:08, archived)

Brazil nuts
are buggers to crack and get out whole. I suggest just cruching the whole thing down in one

Edit:
1: woo yay to the pic, btw
2: George Washington used to crack Brazil nuts between his teeth, and they all fell out as a consequence, so he got ill-fitting dentures fashioned from hippo bone 100% FACT
( dotmund shut up dotmund, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:09, archived)

Oooh,
you are not wrong.

My mum nipped the skin on her stomach once with one of those old style types of nut crackers after struggling with all her strength to crack one of the buggers.

Looked bleedin painful when the blister came up.
(Marwood, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:12, archived)

i'm afraid that anecdote made me giggle
despite being unfortunate
( lemony, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:13, archived)

Dont worry
There was many a stifled giggle at the Marwood family home that afternoon!
(Marwood, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:15, archived)

They're evil bastards.
Use a hammer. They're pretty good, and if you practice you can get 'em out whole.

Walnuts are easiest, you can spend a couple of minutes crushing them barehanded.
( Lethe is carrying a spade. SPANG., Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:14, archived)

I just shove a handful of hazelnuts up my nan's arsehole
and wait for her to sit down: then I reap my rewards!
( dotmund shut up dotmund, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:16, archived)

well quite
its the best way
( lemony, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:17, archived)

anh with brazill nuts you just have to find the weak spot
i suggest investing in an SEM and mapping the surface to look for hairline fractures before alligning your nutcracker
( lemony, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:17, archived)

Scanning electron microscopes
have this annoying tedency of destroying stuff you put in them... ^_^
( Lethe is carrying a spade. SPANG., Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:20, archived)

pah!
you're just unambitious
( lemony, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:21, archived)

I had the ambtion of
using molecular beam epitaxy to coat a lve chicken in a thin layer of gold and then used a SEM on the bastard, with a negatively charged mesh shielded photomultiplier to catch the secondary back-scattered electrons.

*Frantically tries to recall which electrons that photomultiplier would deflect. Hmm, he low energy ones, so I think i'm right by saying secondary electrons.
( Lethe is carrying a spade. SPANG., Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:24, archived)

i dread to ask why this was such an ambtion?

( lemony, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:25, archived)

It'd be
funny.
( Lethe is carrying a spade. SPANG., Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:27, archived)

always the best answer

( lemony, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:28, archived)

clone your nut before you scan it
then use the scan of one as a rough guide indicative of where hairline fractures are likely to lie on the other, use coordinates accordingly and bobs your uncle.
it's almost too easy....
( jme, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:22, archived)

or wallop
the hell out of it with the heel of your welly boot
( dotmund shut up dotmund, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:24, archived)

I would say
that a nut's hairline fractures are caused more by environmental considerations than genetice, meaning no cloned nuts surface would be identical due to chaos theory...
( Lethe is carrying a spade. SPANG., Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:26, archived)

no they dont
they actually translocate them into an alternate dimension
( lo, the Greebo Warrior doesn't update his sig often enough, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:23, archived)

You can disintegrate diamonds
using a high powered electron gun. Blats the carbon atoms straight off. Always wanted to try that.
( Lethe is carrying a spade. SPANG., Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:27, archived)

but if you duck taped an almond
to an atom bomb and blew it up, the bloody nut would still be intact: lesson from this, almond shells are the hardest substance known to man. Crash helmets should be made out of the stuff, come to think of it
( dotmund shut up dotmund, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:28, archived)

but what happens to the ducks?

( lo, the Greebo Warrior doesn't update his sig often enough, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:34, archived)

They ducked.
And managed to survive.
( Lethe is carrying a spade. SPANG., Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:36, archived)

Assuming that is true.
Take an atom bomb then, and stick it within a hardened steel ovoid. Place the atom bomb at one locus, and the almond at the other. Blow up atom bomb, Almond is history.

(Basic workings of a H-Bomb, except the other locus has hydrogen at it rather than an Almond)
( Lethe is carrying a spade. SPANG., Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:35, archived)

I bow to your superior knowledge of physics
I will stick to nutcrackers, hammers and welly boot heels again this year, before meddling with explosives on any kind
( dotmund shut up dotmund, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:37, archived)

wuss
make a landmine, go on....
( lo, the Greebo Warrior doesn't update his sig often enough, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:41, archived)

H-bombs are fun.
The first one they built was on an atoll in the pacific, and was the size of a large house. They evacuated it, and blew it up. They didn't evacuate far enough and a lot of sailors got radiaton poisoning. The atoll ceased to exist, completely destroyed.

I think guy who worked on the maths that made the H-bomb possible topped himself when he discovered what his work into geometric shapes had been used for.

And my final H-bomb fact. They were worried at the time that there was the possibility that the initial fusion of the hydrogen may set off a chain reaction in the atoms of the sea and air, and blow up the planet. So they did it anyway.

I think I got all that right, correct me if i'm wrong. :)

Edit: Coincidentally, the same thing occured with the original atom bomb. They thought there was a chance that setting one off would blow up the world. So they did it anyway.
( Lethe is carrying a spade. SPANG., Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:42, archived)

fucking mad scientists

( lo, the Greebo Warrior doesn't update his sig often enough, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:44, archived)

I put it to you
that this is why I'm a good science teacher...

Hehe.

Edit: I am wondering if I can get away with having the kids design using the chemicals available in the lab, and their knowledge of reactions etc. Landmines, and giving a prize to the most destructive design.

Think I may have trouble getting that past health and safety...
( Lethe is carrying a spade. SPANG., Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:46, archived)

it would be legal if
1. the kids are a LONG distance away
2. the landmines contain no shrapnel or debris
3. your bury them in pots of soil (to absorb some of the blast away)
4. no-one find out
( lo, the Greebo Warrior doesn't update his sig often enough, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:56, archived)

all walnuts
can be opened with the correct and careful use of a small amount of high explosives... In fact, most problems can be solved this way! ;-)
( Henny, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:29, archived)

True.
Or a large amount. Which is more fun.
( Lethe is carrying a spade. SPANG., Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:36, archived)

2 = 50% FACT
his teeth were wooden

edit: i stand corrected, it was hippo IVORY
so 2 = 75% FACT

www.americanrevolution.org/dental.html
( lo, the Greebo Warrior doesn't update his sig often enough, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:15, archived)

I'll tell you what IS 100% FACT, either way:
his teeth were 100% fucked
( dotmund shut up dotmund, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:17, archived)

I thought they were wooden teeth.
why the hell would they make them out of hippo bone?
ivory was FAR more plentiful and durable.
( zog knees! knees! nuh nuh nuh nuh knees!, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:15, archived)

they had a coupla
spare hippos about the place that morning
( dotmund shut up dotmund, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:16, archived)

maybe he REALLY hated hippoes
and this was his expression of that hatred...
( jme, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:17, archived)

I don't think so
he expressed most of his hippo loathing by daubing 'all hippos are a bunch of smelly bastards' on the back of the Declaration of Independence
( dotmund shut up dotmund, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:19, archived)

ahh
my mistake, silly to overlook it really :)
( jme, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:21, archived)

Wooden false teeth last about a week
before they turn green and slimy.

Ivory teeth last longer but eventually get things growing in them.

(I used to make false teeth)
( Duncan Disorderly, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:46, archived)

i'm festive now
apart from christmas songs and decorations
( lemony, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:09, archived)

I decorated today
but if anyone sings a Christmas song they risk a punch in the face
( dotmund shut up dotmund, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:11, archived)

i hurt one of my firends quite a lot for whistling wham
and only feel a little guilty
( lemony, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:12, archived)

HAHAHA
I scared my dog laughing at that...WOO!
( Az The Spaz, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:14, archived)

eep

( Milkman Dan, Sat 20 Dec 2003, 23:19, archived)