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It was mildly interesting to read and well-written, and I read the whole way through without it feeling like slogging at any point, but it doesn't really grab me strongly. The effect isn't ultimately interesting.
As a side note, I would expect mice to see some negative effects from only drinking Coke for five days straight. Maybe change that line to "no unexpected ill effects".
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After seeing the piles of hate on the other pages in the recently created queue, I'm strangely pleased with a "Well, it doesn't completely suck" :-).
I really wouldn't have thought that five straight days of Coke would have any serious ill effects — I mean, I know humans that more or less do that. As long as their total intake of calories was kept constant, it wouldn't even lead to obesity. I'm not saying it's a great long-term idea, but what ill effects would it have after only a few days?
Most people don't drink ONLY coke for five days straight (I don't remember if the article mentioned they were also allowed food, if not that's even worse). I mean, if there isn't a problem here and I'm just assuming wrong then ignore this part.
Ultimately I don't hate the writing, but I was waiting your something amazing to come and nothing came. Some of the events seem like they don't add anything in particular to the article, like coissants and bibles.if something doesn't add to the article they weigh it down.
Living the dream, or dreaming the life?
Laboratory mice are routinely given materials (especially sugar) dissolved in their water supply as part of experiments, at concentrations far greater than typically found in soda. In other parts of the world, people routinely drink water with high carbonic acid content. As long as food was also provided normally, a mouse would suffer no significant adverse affect from having its water supply replaced with coke over a mere 5 days.
I'd like more hint as to what killed them. Did the mice integrate the sugars into their bodies' ATP, only to have the very atoms vanish all at once? That could leave some unique, bizarro effect that an autopsy would reveal.
Yes, that's exactly what happened — I assumed people would come to that conclusion, but I can make it more obvious if needed.
If the atoms all disappeared like that, they might do something more spectacular than just keel over.
My take on it was that the death was caused due to the loss of water, not things derived from the sugars or other constituents which in actuality comprise very little of the total content of soda. I would expect the loss of just the sugars to result in mutations possible resulting in tumors or autoimmune diseases, but those aren't instantly fatal. However, after 5 days a large portion of the body's water content would have been replaced with water from the sodas, and its sudden loss would definitely be immediately fatal.
Date: ██/██/████
Objects Observed: Unknown
Notes: The previous manifestation disappeared as expected, but no new manifestation was discovered. It has been suggested that a manifestation may have in fact occurred, but the object or objects were small enough or inconspicuous enough to have escaped notice.
It manifested a colorless gas.. Obviously, guh.
Maybe it's just me but I really didn't like that last SCP manifestation, it felt like the standard 'climax-being-last-item-in-list' entry and it didn't really add anything.
He/she redacted the abilities the SCP's did. Kinda made that last bit suck for me. It did not need to be redacted, could the author please tell us what abilities the SCP's had.
My reaction is similar to Scantron's: I like it well enough not to downvote, and the writing is fine, but it doesn't really have much of a personality: I don't know why it's producing the things it produces, why it makes so many of them, why the interval between new manifestations is so consistent, how it chooses what to produce next, how and why it exists in the first place, etc.
Not that I'm saying all of those need to be answered or hinted at in the article necessarily; it probably works better if some questions remain open. On the other hand, without any of them, it's just a random thing that makes random stuff for no particular reason. It definitely has potential, but I'm not upvoting yet.
DNA analysis found normal human DNA representing individuals of a variety of races.
Ethnicity does not equal race. When I saw variety of races, I immediately believe we had found neanderthal ears or something like that. But, that would be an outlier that would exist outside of "normal human DNA".
There are other tone issues that I have trouble believing that scientists would commit, and the last addendum is just completely retarded. No vote for now.
Of course ethnicity does not equal race — who said it did? Ethnicity is your cultural heritage, race is your genetic heritage. DNA analysis can certainly distinguish people of, say, African decent from people of Asian decent. And Neanderthals are, of course, generally considered to be a different species in the genus Homo, rather than a race of Homo sapiens.
Frankly, I'm not sure exactly what you're complaining about.
DNA analysis can certainly distinguish people of, say, African decent from people of Asian decent.
*descent?
I'm a little confused, to be honest. My understanding was that through DNA analysis, you can determine where someone's ancestors came from, but there is no standalone DNA sequence that would determine the race of an individual.
…I've written and rewritten this comment too many times…
Sorry, was typing in a hurry. Obviously meant descent.
And you are correct, there is no single trait or allele which unambiguously specifies someone's race. There are, however, useful regional averages. Maybe 60% of the people from West Africa have a particular variation of a gene, and only 40% of Eastern Europeans have that allele. That single allele by itself is almost useless — knowing that a person has that variation does not tell you they are from West Africa. But if you look at hundreds of such genes, and the Western African versions of them heavily predominate, you can have very high confidence that you are dealing with a West African individual. I know there's been a trend lately of people claiming "Race isn't genetic!", but that's so misleading that I'd outright call it a lie. We can easily tell someone's race by looking at their DNA. What we can't do is tell their race by looking at individual genes, because there is no allele that all Asians have but no Caucasians have.
The Wikipedia article on Race and Genetics looks to be a decent overview of the subject.
Whether "race" is a valid scientific description depends entirely on field. Ethnicity is not the correct term; that's a sociology concept and doesn't apply to ears. The strict biological definition of "race", if I remember right, is strictly in-species (ie, Neanderthals would not apply), but also implies more variation than we tend to see between humans (think dog breeds)- by that definition you're both wrong.
However, consider also http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_genetics
Only had time to skim it, but what I did read suggests that race may be an appropriate term here, albeit not in the sense that most of us would assume it to mean.
I would personally suggest the line regarding race be scrapped altogether. Also, if anyone's looking for a good reference on the subject, I'd recommend PBS. http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-experts-01.htm
I really don't understand this, frankly. I'm not saying that some races are better than others. I'm not saying that your race is a significant factor in your overall abilities, or even that it has any significance at all beyond mere scientific curiosity. What I am saying is that A) races exist, B) races can be determined by examining genes, and C) scientists given a large pile of ears might be curious about how many different populations they represented. (A) and (B) are simple facts (it is worth noting that agreement between self-reported race and DNA determination of your race is higher than agreement between self-reported gender and DNA determination of your gender). (C) seems pretty easy to accept. How are any of these assertions even the tiniest itty-bittiest bit controversial?
The issue is that a lot of people think that the concept of race doesn't actually refer to something- e.g. that there is no such thing as biological race.
You do realize that you just responded to a post from a year and eleven months ago, right? We here at the SCP Foundation wiki call that "necroposting," and it's a big no-no. Look at the date of posts before responding to them, so you don't accidentally bring threads back from the dead.
I'm pretty sure you've been told this before, Agent MacLeod, but there is nothing wrong with necroposting if the comment adds to the discussion. In this case, the comment is fine.
Please leave the calling out of users on their behavior to staff. You are coming off way too authoritative here.
Point of clarification: does island produce the originals, or duplicates? The tagging suggest duplicates, but it's not clearly stated.
Well, do YOU remember that time that you lost your left ear? Or that other time when Windsor Castle disappeared?
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
Personally I find this execution very hard to take seriously. The beginning (especially with the image) showed some promise, but I have no investment in just an island that produces absurd numbers of random items every five days regardless of conditions. Downvote.
