Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 177 posts

Re: Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years

#141

Post by defrost »

Schwolop wrote: post #133
xbryanx wrote: post #112

Pics of Ball's Pyramid from Bryden Allen, one of the first people to summit this wicked place: http://www.uq.edu.au/nuq/jack/Bryden.html

Bryden is my uncle, and although I knew he'd climbed a lot of cool stuff in his time (Centrepoint Tower in Sydney, for example), I'd never realised he'd done Ball's Pyramid. Now I'll actually have an interesting conversation with him for once!

There's an underground film "The only building I ever wanted to climb" showing the summiting of Centrepoint Tower after your uncle's attempt. The overhang of the restaurant base was what stopped him from going further, later parties had to pull the blueprints of the building and make up some rings to slot into the rails underneath.

See: http://brydenallen.com/sandstone_and_clock-towers.pdf

Re: Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years

#142

Post by chad_oliver »

andrewkreid wrote: post #140
xbryanx wrote: post #112

Pics of Ball's Pyramid from Bryden Allen, one of the first people to summit this wicked place: http://www.uq.edu.au/nuq/jack/Bryden.html

Summit is a verb now?

It has been for a while, in certain dialects. One of the wonderful things about english is that it evolves.

Re: Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years

#143

Post by cpursley »

kemo wrote: post #135
bonobo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stories like this always make me remember of the tasmanian wolf ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacine ). I always wanted to see one of those alive.

Your comment just made me spend 4 hours investigating the Thylacine, its DNA restoration process and other extinct species. Thinking about dedicating my life to genetics atm.

Ditto.

Re: Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years

#144

Post by stoney »

lionhearted wrote: post #25
srl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the few instances where I disagree with that attitude. The risks involved in relocating ill-studied life forms are, obviously, enormous, and it does need careful and dispassionate consideration. I'd much rather risk a mildly interesting species go bye-bye than risk introducing a major ecological stressor. On the other hand, I might just be taking this stance because I'm so unfamiliar with biological st…

Human error almost caused the species to go extinct -- I think it's fair, right, and proper to move to restore them to their prior condition if possible, and the situation was critical on the pyramid. It seems like a pretty docile species based on the articles facts, and they could keep them cordoned in a lab until they found what to do with them. If the researchers and biologists felt it was the right play (which th…

Australia has a long history of making bad decisions involving the local wildlife, which is why they are now super-cautious when it comes to things like this.

Re: Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years

#145

Post by kingkawn »

juliano_q wrote: post #78

This story gave me a weird feeling and reminded me of the Dodo ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo ). This animal was extincted by man only 83 years of it was discovered. I am glad we have will/technology enough today to try to repair this kind of mistakes.

And utter stupefying luck

Re: Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years

#147

Post by tsotha »

kpanghmc wrote: post #96

From the Wikipedia article on Dryococelus australis [1] "The ultimate goal is to produce a large population for re-introduction to Lord Howe Island if the project to eradicate the invasive rats is successful." I wonder what the 347 residents of Lord Howe Island think about this? It's an amazing story and all, but I sure wouldn't want a bunch of these insects introduced into my neighborhood. [1] http://en.wikipedia.or…

Sure, but you'd probably be happy to see the end of the rats.

Though it seems like even if the government eradicates the rats it will only be a question of time before they're back.

Re: Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years

#148

Post by jholman »

schiffern wrote: post #63
jimrandomh wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are dying at a rate of 1.8 per second, and every human death is a tragedy of greater magnitude than the extinction of an insect species.

Destroying the results of a genetic program that's reached an optima after hundreds of millions of years seems like an incredible waste of biological knowledge. When we can duplicate those results in an hour on a desktop PC, I'll agree with you. I'm not holding my breath.

Aside from the nit-picking fact that "optima" is a plural and you use it with a singular indefinite article ("an") ...

There is no reason to believe that this is an optimum. (That is, an optimum for its environment, or any extant environment. Since, of course, a very wide range of possible forms are optimal for SOME environment, like the environment with a mad god that kills all life forms that do not exactly match XYZ, but that sort of reasoning is obviously just silly). Anyway, blethering aside, my point here is that if you think existing species are at all likely to be "optimal" in any meaningful sense, you have likely misunderstood evolution.

Re: Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years

#149

Post by agravier »

juliano_q wrote: post #78

This story gave me a weird feeling and reminded me of the Dodo ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo ). This animal was extincted by man only 83 years of it was discovered. I am glad we have will/technology enough today to try to repair this kind of mistakes.

The dodo is just one among so many species that went extinct following human intervention, and not just in the modern age. I recommend watching http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/monsters-we-met/, that gives a better overview of the ecological impact of man across ages.
Post reply on HN