How to go to space

[DJ's left nut]

The XKCD guys are awesome.

Relativstic Baseball remains among my favorite short reads out there, but they will also occasionally throw out some really fascinating stuff.

Relativistic baseball:

https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/

This is also an awesome little exchange:

So while there are other animals that use projectiles, we’re just about the only animal that can grab a random object and reliably nail a target. In fact, we’re so good at it that some researchers have suggested rock-throwing played a central role in the evolution of the modern human brain.

Throwing is hard. In order to deliver a baseball to a batter, a pitcher has to release the ball at exactly the right point in the throw. A timing error of half a millisecond in either direction is enough to cause the ball to miss the strike zone.

To put that in perspective, it takes about five milliseconds for the fastest nerve impulse to travel the length of the arm. That means that when your arm is still rotating toward the correct position, the signal to release the ball is already at your wrist. In terms of timing, this is like a drummer dropping a drumstick from the 10th story and hitting a drum on the ground on the correct beat.

In other words, humans are the only creatures with brains advanced enough to 'cheat' on our release point and burn into our minds that to throw a ball where we want to, our mind has to actually send the signal to release the ball before we want the ball to be released. Our brain just automatically compensates for it without us thinking about it. And when you think about it, it makes sense. When you hand a ball to somebody who's never thrown one, what usually happens? Ball thrown into the ground. Their brains simply haven't re-rigged the calculous yet.

Seriously, just mow through the XKCD site when you have a chance, they're funny and they're damn smart.