Escape Artists
The Lounge at the End of the Universe => Gallimaufry => Topic started by: SFEley on January 21, 2007, 05:18:00 AM
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You know you're definitely sick with something when Gatorade tastes really good.
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I've never tasted Gatorade. Does it taste as bad as Kool Aid? That's foul. So foul, I think the scariest thing about Jim Jones wasn't that he made people posion themselves, but he made them poison themselves with Kool Aid.
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no gatorade is not like kool aid... for one its not made of powder hehe. its really good, especially so when ya really need it (after excercize)
when ya dont need it, it doesnt taste as good, but i dont think its ever bad.
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no gatorade is not like kool aid... for one its not made of powder hehe.
You can actually buy gatorade as powder and mix it yourself, but anyways i agree that gatorade is amazing after exercise.
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whats Gatorade?
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Gatorade is the most filthy of all things drinkable, including HCL and other acids.
Seriously, Steve - you need medical attention. ;D
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whats Gatorade?
It's a sports drink meant to replace electrolytes and such. It does taste a bit like Kool-Aid, but much weaker. Unless you're sick, or dehydrated, or otherwise really need the electrolytes.
As for medical attention, yeah. I have a doctor's appointment in an hour.
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you ok?
hope all is well
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you ok?
hope all is well
This thread appears to have diverged from my intent (which was that more people would post Very Brief Observations) -- but yeah. I will be okay soon enough.
The short story is that I caught a virus from my toddler, who in turn caught it from day care. The bad news is that it's Herpes Simplex, Type 1. This is the "less scary" herpes, the kind that mostly just causes annoying mouth sores. Only in my case it also caused a low-grade fever for a couple of days, and I pretty much slept through the weekend, and my mouth and tongue really, really hurt.
HSV-1 is everywhere (about half the population already has it) and once you have it, it can pop up again the rest of your life. The good news is that it's never as bad as the first time. Which is very good news, because right now it hurts like hell. I mean, eating Jell-O is physically painful.
I'm just glad I don't have to narrate this week's story.
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:o how'd yer kid catch herpes in day care? heh the worst thing i ever caught in daycare was chickenpox or the flu...
Brief observation: you know you cant sleep when you start listenin to every old podcast again just to have something to do.
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Brief Observation: If it's 35 degrees or more in GA, torrential downpour. If it's below freezing, not a cloud in the sky.
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Gatorade is a relatively decent cure for a hangover. Not as good as a beer, but pretty good.
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:o how'd yer kid catch herpes in day care? heh the worst thing i ever caught in daycare was chickenpox or the flu...
Chicken pox and the flu are both worse. There are different (http://www.mult-sclerosis.org/HerpesViruses.html) kinds (http://www.herpes.com/hsv1-2.html) of herpes (http://www.theicepirateship.co.uk/theicepirates.html). This is the kind that's usually responsible for cold sores. And it's everywhere.
(Although typing "worse" above was a struggle to maintain my objectivity -- this one hit me really bad, and after four days of it my tongue is feeling like it's been flayed.)
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Youth is wasted on the young.
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Youth is wasted on the young.
Agreed. Though if you gave it to the old, I doubt they'd get much more done with it.
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Brief Observation #2:
Being educated and informed is fun! Whoever said "ignorance is bliss" was REALLY missing out.
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Brief Observation
BDoomed never had an educashon like mine
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Observation:
The other guy in traffic is always the Idiot.
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Coworkers you don't know have no problem giving their in put on your lunch.
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Youth is wasted on the young.
Agreed. Though if you gave it to the old, I doubt they'd get much more done with it.
"Call that youth? It's not proper youth, like we had in the old days."
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Youth is wasted on the young.
Agreed. Though if you gave it to the old, I doubt they'd get much more done with it.
"Call that youth? It's not proper youth, like we had in the old days."
When I was your age, I was younger and more vibrant! I had the energy of two of you, worked three full time jobs, and still had a girlfriend and volunteered 20 hours a week at the old folks home!
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When I was your age, I was younger and more vibrant! I had the energy of two of you, worked three full time jobs, and still had a girlfriend and volunteered 20 hours a week at the old folks home!
Just one girlfriend?
Slacker.
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When I was your age, I was younger and more vibrant! I had the energy of two of you, worked three full time jobs, and still had a girlfriend and volunteered 20 hours a week at the old folks home!
Just one girlfriend?
Slacker.
Margaret Dumont : All of us?
Groucho Marx : All of us.
Margaret Dumont : Why, that's bigamy.
Groucho Marx : Yes, and it's big of me too.
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VBO: It's 8 degrees Fahrenheit here in Michigan and I just realized that in times not long gone by people would have had to squat and hover over the outhouse from October to March, or risk frost bite.
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How much deeper would the ocean be if you removed all the water-absorbing sponges?
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(Although typing "worse" above was a struggle to maintain my objectivity -- this one hit me really bad, and after four days of it my tongue is feeling like it's been flayed.)
Lo siento, Stephen. I had it bad enough a year or so ago that I literally couldn't drink water for most of a day. I lived off of vanilla pudding for about a week (smoother than Jell-o).
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How much deeper would the ocean be if you removed all the water-absorbing sponges?
That's an even more dangerous experiment than you suggest. The hazard is that you'd have to put the sponges somewhere. If you took all the sponges out of the ocean and put them on dry land, at least a few of them could mutate to absorb dry land instead of water. Natural selection would then favor those sponges, which would multiply very rapidly until there was nothing on Earth's surface but non-porous sponges floating on water.
And cockroaches. They'd still survive to battle over sponge-turf.
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That's an even more dangerous experiment than you suggest. The hazard is that you'd have to put the sponges somewhere. If you took all the sponges out of the ocean and put them on dry land, at least a few of them could mutate to absorb dry land instead of water. Natural selection would then favor those sponges, which would multiply very rapidly until there was nothing on Earth's surface but non-porous sponges floating on water.
Um...Steve? I think they're called "trees."
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Um...Steve? I think they're called "trees."
Yes! And the danger is imminent!
You've been listening to my documentary podcast, right? They're ready to start marching at any time.
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You've been listening to my documentary podcast, right? They're ready to start marching at any time.
It's not their fault! Trees are harmless if left alone and it's our fault for invading their natural habitat. How would you feel if trees came and pushed over your house and turned your family in to furniture and decorative trim work?
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You've been listening to my documentary podcast, right? They're ready to start marching at any time.
It's not their fault! Trees are harmless if left alone and it's our fault for invading their natural habitat. How would you feel if trees came and pushed over your house and turned your family in to furniture and decorative trim work?
It really depends on the quality of the trimwork. I really like quality trimwork.
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It really depends on the quality of the trimwork. I really like quality trimwork.
I suppose that's true... Grandma always brags that she had nicely turned legs back in her day.
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Brief Observation: You know you're hungry when you refer to the contents of the vending machines at work as a "cornucopia."
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You've been listening to my documentary podcast, right? They're ready to start marching at any time.
THE ENTS ARE COMING!!!
land absorbing sponges would be fun... infinate trampolines!
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how will the sponge empire get on whith the zombe over lords?
can we exspect to see SvZ some time soon?
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how will the sponge empire get on whith the zombe over lords?
Oh, not well at all. They've been going at it for ages...
http://www.utexas.edu/courses/wilson/ant304/projects/projects97/dentep/dentep.html
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Separated at birth!
Ursula Le Guin- Science fiction/fantasy goddess, genius etc. The Dispossessed may be my favourite SF book after Banks' Use of Weapons.
(http://www.msmagazine.com/summer2002/leguin.jpg)
Madalyn Murray o' Hair- Atheist activist, alternated between being highly unpleasant and highly entertaining. Except when she was being both.
(http://www.wittenburgdoor.com/images/ohair05.jpg)
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Holy Cow!
Is that Gomez Addams?
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Brief observation:
I discovered Escape Pod back in November. In December, I bought the complete archive, copied it and sent the originals to a friend. I've been plowing through the whole thing from the beginning, on my way to and from work, on my daily dog walk and when ever else I get the chance.
Now, whenever I read something, I hear Steve Ely's voice in my head, unless it's a woman, then it seems to be Mur Lafferty. Steve reads ASP code very well. :P
Also, whenever I close my eyes and try to go to sleep, I hear DaiKaiju playing in my head.
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Brief observation:
I discovered Escape Pod back in November. In December, I bought the complete archive, copied it and sent the originals to a friend. I've been plowing through the whole thing from the beginning, on my way to and from work, on my daily dog walk and when ever else I get the chance.
Now, whenever I read something, I hear Steve Ely's voice in my head, unless it's a woman, then it seems to be Mur Lafferty. Steve reads ASP code very well. :P
Also, whenever I close my eyes and try to go to sleep, I hear DaiKaiju playing in my head.
Assimilation is complete.
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Now, whenever I read something, I hear Steve Ely's voice in my head, unless it's a woman, then it seems to be Mur Lafferty. Steve reads ASP code very well. :P
Heh. Though in real life, I try not to. (PHP, Perl, and Ruby are more my things these days.) >8->
Very cool, Clint. And welcome aboard!
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Brief Observation: New Orleans is still a great city to visit, it is NOT underwater, and you would never know there had been a flood, unless you go looking for evidence of it by taking one of the "flood" tours.
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My neighbor has a Lexus. If he has more than one Lexus, does he have two Lexus, two Lexuses or two Lexi?
What if, instead, he has more than one Infiniti?
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There are few things in life more bizarre than being 13 years old and elbow deep in a heifer, groping around the uterus for a calf’s nose.
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My neighbor has a Lexus. If he has more than one Lexus, does he have two Lexus, two Lexuses or two Lexi?
What if, instead, he has more than one Infiniti?
The plural in all of these cases is the same: it's pronounced "too much disposable income." >8->
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My neighbor has a Lexus. If he has more than one Lexus, does he have two Lexus, two Lexuses or two Lexi?
What if, instead, he has more than one Infiniti?
The plural in all of these cases is the same: it's pronounced "too much disposable income." >8->
Or compensation for a short coming
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Hmm. I think that the "youth is wasted on the young" idea has the makings of a story [*scribbles something down*] alright.
In my personal, teenage opinion, yes, youth is wasted on the young, but it's not the young's fault. Wouldn't it be amazing to have genetic memory so that this problem could be avoided? Sounds like the "constant clone" idea from Aeon Flux, but this way, the industrialized education system would fall to something even better, because if the memory was even simply two generations long, we would progress in twice the speed. War veteran's would have a say in their thoughts, and there would be a huge problem with twins. I say two generations, because individuality has to be maintained. without it, we don't progress as a species, which is at least as important as evolving in terms of knowledge.
It's more realistic than living forever: having a continence forever. A constant memory...
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Hmm. This has the makings of a story [*scribbles something down*] alright.
In my personal, teenage opinion, yes, youth is wasted on the young, but it's not the young's fault. Wouldn't it be amazing to have genetic memory so that this problem could be avoided? Sounds like the "constant clone" idea from Aeon Flux, but this way, the industrialized education system would fall to something even better, because if the memory was even simply two generations long, we would progress in twice the speed. War veteran's would have a say in their thoughts, and there would be a huge problem with twins. I say two generations, because individuality has to be maintained. without it, we don't progress as a species, which is at least as important as evolving in terms of knowledge.
It's more realistic than living forever: having a continence forever. A constant memory...
So whose memories would you get, mom's or Dad's? What if they don't agree on things? What if they get divorced?
"Your honor, I want her memories expunged from our child."
What if everyone gets' the same basic memories? Now there's a bit of state mind control to ponder.
Values forcibly instilled in one generation don't take effect until that generation comes to power, by then, the other side is in control.
To end this, the villian conconcts a plan to take control for 30 continuous years so that his side's values are forced on the generation that replaces him. Once that happens, then his side rules from then on.
(Bwahahahaha!)
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See! Good source for a story! I speculate that the "Mind Control" idea is still a bit far from reality, but "basic principles" is a good idea.. A national source could ispell anti-war thoughts into individuals who later pass them on to the next generation. Or the other way around. See how this could get to be a very complicated matter? Great for a story.
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A national source could ispell anti-war thoughts into individuals who later pass them on to the next generation.
<obcommandlinegeek>
I know you mean dispell. But when I read that, the national source ispelling anti-war thoughts, I immediately went to myself "Huh, now they won't even let the rebels spell things wrong! That's really dictatorial.
</obcommandlinegeek>
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See! Good source for a story! I speculate that the "Mind Control" idea is still a bit far from reality, but "basic principles" is a good idea.. A national source could ispell anti-war thoughts into individuals who later pass them on to the next generation. Or the other way around. See how this could get to be a very complicated matter? Great for a story.
Mind control was not the right term. "Thought Control" would be better, or how about "preemptive brainwashing" ? Now it would need a "Patriot Act" kind of name so something like "Value Installation" or "Morality Acquisition." The right phrase would be crucial.
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It's more realistic than living forever: having a continence forever. A constant memory...
So whose memories would you get, mom's or Dad's? What if they don't agree on things? What if they get divorced?
"Your honor, I want her memories expunged from our child."
Very cool. Here's another spin:
Let's say the "constant memory" works. Any time you want, you can have all your memories transferred to your fresh young clone. Poof, new young you.
Let's say that for strong reasons (probably technical, maybe legal), once you've done this the old you can't hang around any more.
Would anyone voluntarily live past, say, age 40? How old would you permit yourself to be if you could become young again (a kid, a teenager, whatever) at only moderate cost and inconvenience?
How different would the world be? And what sorts of new problems could we get from that?
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It's more realistic than living forever: having a continence forever. A constant memory...
So whose memories would you get, mom's or Dad's? What if they don't agree on things? What if they get divorced?
"Your honor, I want her memories expunged from our child."
Very cool. Here's another spin:
Let's say the "constant memory" works. Any time you want, you can have all your memories transferred to your fresh young clone. Poof, new young you.
Let's say that for strong reasons (probably technical, maybe legal), once you've done this the old you can't hang around any more.
Would anyone voluntarily live past, say, age 40? How old would you permit yourself to be if you could become young again (a kid, a teenager, whatever) at only moderate cost and inconvenience?
How different would the world be? And what sorts of new problems could we get from that?
Somewhere in one of my classic sci-fi collections, there is a short story with exactly that premise.
Which means you think just like a sci-fi master! :D
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[*In a Vulcan-like tone*] That is most certainly the case. [*Drops the tone*].
My Eley picks out the stories for EP, after all! He has to, at least think like a Sci-FI master, I suppose...
I hope that's not offensive in any way... I wonder which story has inspired people most. Would that be a good topic? I think so...
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Let's say the "constant memory" works. Any time you want, you can have all your memories transferred to your fresh young clone. Poof, new young you.
Let's say that for strong reasons (probably technical, maybe legal), once you've done this the old you can't hang around any more.
Would anyone voluntarily live past, say, age 40? How old would you permit yourself to be if you could become young again (a kid, a teenager, whatever) at only moderate cost and inconvenience?
How different would the world be? And what sorts of new problems could we get from that?
What if it isn't a clone of you that you have to be transferred in to?
Celebrity body of the week?
Prisoners sentenced to paralyzed bodies on life support?
Custom grown bodies?
Gender swapping?
What about animal forms?
Clone of the Month Club?
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Clone of the Month Club?
lol - now that's funny!
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But seriously. It could be the perfect method of infiltration. Switch a body with a mind, and a President is now a fool. Or vice versa. A fool is now President.
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Switch a body with a mind, and a President is now a fool. Or vice versa. A fool is now President.
Yeah, but how could we tell? ;P
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If it was a chemical thing, there could be traces...
But that's the thing. There would be no traces.
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But seriously. It could be the perfect method of infiltration. Switch a body with a mind, and a President is now a fool. Or vice versa. A fool is now President.
With the person not being your clone, you could write in a possibility of the body "rejecting" the swap, just to add tension. Or, you could say that the body is guaranteed to reject the swap after some unknown amount of time, thereby giving the her (or villain, depending) a time limit to complete whatever task they are trying to complete.
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Interesting. But, then, if the body was to reject the transplant, it would be the perfect assassination attempt. I see what could become a low-budget film:
The President is "assassinated" but no-one can prove it because of a very revolutionizing procedure that takes the mind and allows you to change bodies for a period of time before the procedure kills you. The movie could be about the assassination, and the attempt to discover what is going on... Before the President's time runs out.
It could also be a book.
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With the person not being your clone, you could write in a possibility of the body "rejecting" the swap, just to add tension. Or, you could say that the body is guaranteed to reject the swap after some unknown amount of time, thereby giving the her (or villain, depending) a time limit to complete whatever task they are trying to complete.
"Come on! It isn't my fault I'm late. The other guy's hovercar swerved in to my trajectory." whines the Sacker Employee Archetype
"I don't care what your excuse is, this is the fifteenth time you've been late this quarter and we have to let you go." Says the Unsympathetic Boss Archetype
"Please. Can you give me 'till the end of the week? My daughter's turning 16 and she has to have an implant for school, and rent's already overdue on my clone. I… I just need a few more days."
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"to pay off your clone's rent?"
"Yes".
This would be a great if there was a way of policing clonage. Right now, there is none. But there are are no clones, either.
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Best single-panel comic ever:
(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/angular_momentum.jpg)
(From xkcd (http://xkcd.com/c162.html).)
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That's pretty good :). A picture tells a thousand words. Escape Pod usually tells about a million. A month.
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That's pretty good :). A picture tells a thousand words. Escape Pod usually tells about a million. A month.
:o ! Thats like... *calculates* 1000 pictures a month!
But Escape Pod is fun, while 1000 pictures is tiring after a while
Escape Pod>1000 pictures
and that is my brief observation for today.
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My brief observation is that that's a brief observation. No, really, my brief observation is that Toronto has finally been struck with winter - after a few months without -, and it's pretty good. Not for roads, but for... I don't know. I like it. But it does show the effect of global warming (or something else. Alien heat rays, that burned out about in January come to mind). Does that count as a brief observation?
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If you encountered a were-possum and killed it, how could you really be sure?
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Good question. That brings stuff up like "If my sister were suddenly replaced by aliens, would I notice?" there was an EP Flash with that as a subject.
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Let's say the "constant memory" works. Any time you want, you can have all your memories transferred to your fresh young clone. Poof, new young you.
Let's say that for strong reasons (probably technical, maybe legal), once you've done this the old you can't hang around any more.
Would anyone voluntarily live past, say, age 40? How old would you permit yourself to be if you could become young again (a kid, a teenager, whatever) at only moderate cost and inconvenience?
How different would the world be? And what sorts of new problems could we get from that?
Well, OldYou would still die. From his point of view nothing would have changed. YoungYou, though would feel just like OldYou, but be young. So the benefit is all YoungYou's. Would you still do this procedure, knowing how much YoungYou would enjoy it? Or would YoungYou suddenly start worrying about paying the mortgage, and health insurange, and oh shit, I have to go to college again and I have to pay for it this time.
I'm young again. Now I can put off writing my novel another 20 years.
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Best single-panel comic ever:
(From xkcd (http://xkcd.com/c162.html).)
XKCD is great. Especially the mouse-over texts that every comic has. :)
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Quote from: SFEley on February 23, 2007, 09:43:28 PM
Best single-panel comic ever:
(From xkcd.)
XKCD is great. Especially the mouse-over texts that every comic has. Smiley
Thanks guys. I had to go and read every single one. Look! Almost time to go home!
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Let's say the "constant memory" works. Any time you want, you can have all your memories transferred to your fresh young clone. Poof, new young you.
Let's say that for strong reasons (probably technical, maybe legal), once you've done this the old you can't hang around any more.
Would anyone voluntarily live past, say, age 40? How old would you permit yourself to be if you could become young again (a kid, a teenager, whatever) at only moderate cost and inconvenience?
How different would the world be? And what sorts of new problems could we get from that?
Well, OldYou would still die. From his point of view nothing would have changed. YoungYou, though would feel just like OldYou, but be young. So the benefit is all YoungYou's. Would you still do this procedure, knowing how much YoungYou would enjoy it? Or would YoungYou suddenly start worrying about paying the mortgage, and health insurange, and oh shit, I have to go to college again and I have to pay for it this time.
I'm young again. Now I can put off writing my novel another 20 years.
YoungYou would not have to go to collage. He could have DNA testing done on him to make sure that he's OldYou's clone - who is considered dead - and he could be tested on weather he has all of OldYou's knowledge.
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Ok, I'm only going to say this one more time....
A woodchuck would chuck all the wood that a woodchuck could chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood.
now stop asking.
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Well, I mean, that's really under 100% optimal conditions. We need to take into account things like forest growth rates, diet of aforementioned woodchuck, etc. There may be economic ramifications to the chucking of all this wood - perhaps a woodchuck COULD be chucking more wood than it would make sense for it to do so.
I suppose the woodchuck would be willing to chuck as much wood as it could, but whether or not it would actually do so is far too complex a question.
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Hi. I'm Tony Marmot. It's a fact: The average woodchuck uses practically none of his or her full chucking capacity.
But with my new seminar, "CHUCK YOU! YOU WOOD IF YOU COULD!" any rodent -- even you! -- can become a fully actualized chucking machine.
Don't believe it? Call now for a free video! You'll see how thousands of mere groundhogs, who never chucked even a sapling in their entire lives, learned the skills they needed to raze entire forests to the ground in weeks. What does that mean for you? More flatland! Prime real estate, my furry little friend.
So quit staring at your shadow. Climb out of your hole and start chucking today!
Tony Marmot's Woodchucking Success Seminars:
"Because if you're not chucking others, you're chucked."
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I notice that this "SFEley" character keeps acting like he runs the place...
::rolls his eyes::
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Let's say the "constant memory" works. Any time you want, you can have all your memories transferred to your fresh young clone. Poof, new young you.
Let's say that for strong reasons (probably technical, maybe legal), once you've done this the old you can't hang around any more.
Would anyone voluntarily live past, say, age 40? How old would you permit yourself to be if you could become young again (a kid, a teenager, whatever) at only moderate cost and inconvenience?
How different would the world be? And what sorts of new problems could we get from that?
Well, OldYou would still die. From his point of view nothing would have changed. YoungYou, though would feel just like OldYou, but be young. So the benefit is all YoungYou's. Would you still do this procedure, knowing how much YoungYou would enjoy it? Or would YoungYou suddenly start worrying about paying the mortgage, and health insurange, and oh shit, I have to go to college again and I have to pay for it this time.
I'm young again. Now I can put off writing my novel another 20 years.
YoungYou would not have to go to collage. He could have DNA testing done on him to make sure that he's OldYou's clone - who is considered dead - and he could be tested on weather he has all of OldYou's knowledge.
Anyway, wasn't this the plot of a Schwarzennegger film. Called Sixth Day or something like that.
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I notice that this "SFEley" character keeps acting like he runs the place...
::rolls his eyes::
A very brief observation! Well done. >8->
Now please stop rolling my eyes around. I'm using them.
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I established a new rule in my D&D game last night.
Puns attract monsters.
Two characters nearly died.
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I established a new rule in my D&D game last night.
Puns attract monsters.
Two characters nearly died.
hahahaha that's awesome.
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I established a new rule in my D&D game last night.
Puns attract monsters.
Two characters nearly died.
I'm in D&D withdraw. I don't have anyone over here who can play.
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I established a new rule in my D&D game last night.
Puns attract monsters.
Two characters nearly died.
hahahaha that's awesome.
You would have thought they'd have learned their lesson after the first one.
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I established a new rule in my D&D game last night.
Puns attract monsters.
Two characters nearly died.
I'm in D&D withdraw. I don't have anyone over here who can play.
Do you have friends at home (wherever that is) that still play? Join in by internet. We have a friend that lives 1000 miles away in another state. He plays every week via Skype and a couple of webcams. Timezone might be an issues, though.
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I established a new rule in my D&D game last night.
Puns attract monsters.
Two characters nearly died.
I'm in D&D withdraw. I don't have anyone over here who can play.
Do you have friends at home (wherever that is) that still play? Join in by internet. We have a friend that lives 1000 miles away in another state. He plays every week via Skype and a couple of webcams. Timezone might be an issues, though.
Our game broke up before I left. Our DM (a genius in the role) got married, had a kid AND went back to school. Other guys moved out of state and I'm now 6 hours ahead. Unfortunately it wouldn't fly.
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I established a new rule in my D&D game last night.
Puns attract monsters.
Two characters nearly died.
I'm in D&D withdraw. I don't have anyone over here who can play.
Do you have friends at home (wherever that is) that still play? Join in by internet. We have a friend that lives 1000 miles away in another state. He plays every week via Skype and a couple of webcams. Timezone might be an issues, though.
Our game broke up before I left. Our DM (a genius in the role) got married, had a kid AND went back to school. Other guys moved out of state and I'm now 6 hours ahead. Unfortunately it wouldn't fly.
thats grim
thares got to be some gamers near you some whare!
how lont will it take you to get to the north of england?
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I established a new rule in my D&D game last night.
Puns attract monsters.
Two characters nearly died.
I'm in D&D withdraw. I don't have anyone over here who can play.
Do you have friends at home (wherever that is) that still play? Join in by internet. We have a friend that lives 1000 miles away in another state. He plays every week via Skype and a couple of webcams. Timezone might be an issues, though.
Our game broke up before I left. Our DM (a genius in the role) got married, had a kid AND went back to school. Other guys moved out of state and I'm now 6 hours ahead. Unfortunately it wouldn't fly.
thats grim
thares got to be some gamers near you some whare!
how lont will it take you to get to the north of england?
I'm in Berlin
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The older I get, the less I believe in conspiracy theories.
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The older I get, the less I believe in conspiracy theories.
Really? The older I get, the more I believe in them.
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The older I get, the less I believe in conspiracy theories.
Really? The older I get, the more I believe in them.
It's because the older I get, the less faith I have in the ability for groups of people to get together, agree on something (sinister or not) and then agree to never tell anyone else what they are doing. I think it was Ben Franklin who said "three people can keep a secret as long as two of them are dead".
I think some things that are labeled "conspiracies" are just things that are allowed to happen because those who have the power to stop it don't because it is in their best interest for it to happen or because they don't realize what is happening. Other popular conspiracy theories (like the moon landings being faked or the holocaust never happening) are just absurd simply because the amount of people that would have to be involved is immense. That doesn't rule out everything. It's possible that some things (like the Kennedy assignation) were planned by a small group and other people allowed it to happen, even though they weren't involved. (I'm not saying it happened that way, just that it could have happened that way.)
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I guess some people have problems. The scary thing is, it's possible they don't notice it, and think that they're normal, when everybody else knows that something is wrong with them.
Or the other way around.
That's a scary thought.
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I guess some people have problems. The scary thing is, it's possible they don't notice it, and think that they're normal, when everybody else knows that something is wrong with them.
"Everyone's mad but me and thee, and I'm not so sure about thee."
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I guess some people have problems. The scary thing is, it's possible they don't notice it, and think that they're normal, when everybody else knows that something is wrong with them.
"Everyone's mad but me and thee, and I'm not so sure about thee."
The world has gone mad. Sometimes I feel like me and my invisible friend Chuck are the only sane people left
--Jeff Kay
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Mt. Dew has brominated vegetable oil in it.
A drink having vegetable oil in it (even if it's been brominated) is kind of gross.
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I established a new rule in my D&D game last night.
Puns attract monsters.
Two characters nearly died.
hahahaha that's awesome.
You would have thought they'd have learned their lesson after the first one.
Last night I had to amend my rule:
The experience point value of a pun attracted monster is zero.
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Hi. I'm Tony Marmot. It's a fact: The average woodchuck uses practically none of his or her full chucking capacity.
But with my new seminar, "CHUCK YOU! YOU WOOD IF YOU COULD!" any rodent -- even you! -- can become a fully actualized chucking machine.
Don't believe it? Call now for a free video! You'll see how thousands of mere groundhogs, who never chucked even a sapling in their entire lives, learned the skills they needed to raze entire forests to the ground in weeks. What does that mean for you? More flatland! Prime real estate, my furry little friend.
So quit staring at your shadow. Climb out of your hole and start chucking today!
Tony Marmot's Woodchucking Success Seminars:
"Because if you're not chucking others, you're chucked."
Observation: Disenfranchised prairie dogs could take up wood chucking.
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Hi. I'm Tony Marmot. It's a fact: The average woodchuck uses practically none of his or her full chucking capacity.
But with my new seminar, "CHUCK YOU! YOU WOOD IF YOU COULD!" any rodent -- even you! -- can become a fully actualized chucking machine.
Don't believe it? Call now for a free video! You'll see how thousands of mere groundhogs, who never chucked even a sapling in their entire lives, learned the skills they needed to raze entire forests to the ground in weeks. What does that mean for you? More flatland! Prime real estate, my furry little friend.
So quit staring at your shadow. Climb out of your hole and start chucking today!
Tony Marmot's Woodchucking Success Seminars:
"Because if you're not chucking others, you're chucked."
Observation: Disenfranchised prairie dogs could take up wood chucking.
I know one that would suit that to a "T".
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40°f in the spring is a whole lot warmer than 40°f in the fall!
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40°f in the spring is a whole lot warmer than 40°f in the fall!
I wouldn't know it was 56ºf here today.
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Bookkeeping would probably be easier if I didn't try to do the second half of 2006 in one evening.
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My "Night Time" cough syrup is 20 proof.
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"Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society."
If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write something worth reading or do things worth the writing."
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to prosper."
-Benjamin Franklin
VBO: Benjamin Franklin was The Man... or he had a good publicists.
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have you ever met people wh0 knowledge reacts with their brain like neutrinos react with the earth?
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My cat's breath smells like cat food.
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Verizon phone firmware is absolute crap.
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yea well sprint everything sucks.
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Because we have an 11-month-old, many of my observations will be baby-centric.
My baby cries when Mom leaves the room. Why does she do this? After all, Mom always comes back. I recently realized that, from the baby's perspective, sometimes people come back and sometimes they don't. I would be pretty nervous too if I had to roll a die every time the source of all that is good in the world goes into the kitchen.
"Oh, you got a critical failure. Tough break, kid."
"Man. And I just made in my pants. This is the mother of all bummers. Heh heh, get it?"
"An umber hulk enters the room."
"I wish mom were here."
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My baby cries when Mom leaves the room. Why does she do this? After all, Mom always comes back. I recently realized that, from the baby's perspective, sometimes people come back and sometimes they don't. I would be pretty nervous too if I had to roll a die every time the source of all that is good in the world goes into the kitchen.
Heh. This is a good point. Sometimes I think about how scary the world would be if I didn't know all the things I know about how it works. Your kid right now is still getting the hang of object permanence. Can you imagine trying to function if "objects you can't see continue to exist" was something you weren't quite sure about?
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And it's hard to imagine* an evolutionary situation in which a baby would be alone, where that baby *shouldn't* be panicking. A friend of mine has their nursery upstairs, and everytime they put the baby alone in the darkened room, she howls for hours. I imagine her hindbrain is waiting for the [a href="http://www.museon.nl/NR/rdonlyres/4E472C03-5D20-46B6-8416-C7F8B260BC21/2211/JWMWAndrewsarchus01.JPG"] andrewsarchus [/a](why yes, I am engaged to a paleontology geek, why do you ask?) to come and devour her.
*or, alternatively, my imagination's not good enough.
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Some of you probably heard on the Scientific American podcast that mother deer cannot recognize the cries of their own young, but young recognize the cries of their mother. The reason for this (near as we can figure) is that the young learns that crying for its mother is useless and stops doing it. So when a predator approaches, and the mother walks away to distract it, the baby doesn't give away its position by panicking. I thought this was pretty interesting. But the human babies, they love the panic.
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My baby's pants have pockets. Usually one, single pocket.
Sometimes I put something in there for her to discover later. That's got to mess with the ol' object permanence thing.
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I was driving around yesterday listening to NPR. Here in Michigan they've just started their spring pledge drive, so I switch over to the other station on the button (car radio) for a few minutes. It was supposed to be country (living in Detroit, it's that or rap), but I had tuned in to the NASCAR pre-race show just in time to hear the good 'ole boy say this to his co-host:
"Well you know, Frank Herbert, author of the Dune series of said 'The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.' and that's what these Cars Of Tomorrow are all about..."
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:o how'd yer kid catch herpes in day care? heh the worst thing i ever caught in daycare was chickenpox or the flu...
It's actually pretty easy to catch. It tends to run in families as a result. Person A is exposed and contracts it. They drink out of a glass while they have a "cold sore" Person B drinks out of same glass Person A is currently drinking out of (or shortly there after without it being cleaned well). Person B now contracts it. Think how many times young kids reach for and drink out of their parents glass. Think how many kids put their mouths on things. Or rub their eyes after handling things that someone put their mouth on. I would wager that most sickness in homes with children comes home from school/daycare. Kids are filthy disgusting germ spreaders, doesn't mean don't love them or have them (if that's what you want), but kids like to explore, don't notice how filthy they actually are, etc. My friend's son is 5 now and he hates having to take baths, wash up, etc. Herpes of all forms are amongst the more contagious viruses known to mankind. It's why people with active outbreaks on suppression therapy are told not to have sexual contact with their partners.
Brief observation: you know you cant sleep when you start listenin to every old podcast again just to have something to do.
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Here are three things, among an infinite possible list, that will make the universe pop into place and convince you that the balance of the world is weighted toward Good, and that all things are wonderful:
[ul]
- Weddings done well.
- Meeting someone new and finding that you like each other pretty much on sight.
- The absolute smile of a child.
[/ul]
It was a great weekend. Hell, it's Tuesday, and I still feel fucking good.
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"Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society."
If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write something worth reading or do things worth the writing."
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to prosper."
-Benjamin Franklin
VBO: Benjamin Franklin was The Man... or he had a good publicists.
He was his own publicist. He was Poor Richard of Poor Richard's Almanac.
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"Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society."
If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write something worth reading or do things worth the writing."
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to prosper."
-Benjamin Franklin
VBO: Benjamin Franklin was The Man... or he had a good publicists.
He was his own publicist. He was Poor Richard of Poor Richard's Almanac.
Poor Richard's Almanack (sometimes Almanac) was a yearly almanac published by Benjamin Franklin, who adopted the pseudonym of "Poor Richard" or "Richard Saunders" for the purpose of this work in the title. It appeared continuously from 1732 to 1758. The almanac was a best seller for a pamphlet published in the American colonies; print runs typically ran to 10,000 per year.
It contained the typical calendar, weather, poems, and astronomical and astrological information that an almanac of the period contained. It is chiefly remembered, however, for being a repository of Franklin's aphorisms and proverbs, many of which live on in American English. These maxims typically counsel thrift and courtesy, with just a dash of cynicism.
Benjamin Franklin, the American inventor, statesman, and publisher, hit a publishing home run with Poor Richard's Almanack. Almanacs were very popular books in colonial America. People in the colonies sought them out for the mixture of seasonal weather forecasts, practical household hints, puzzles, and other amusements Franklin published in them. Wordplay also had a large role in Poor Richard's Almanack, with many examples surviving into the American vernacular today.
During the final year he published The Way to Wealth, a collection of maxims from the almanac that remains widely-read today.
Yep. Well, I guess that makes him "The Man" then...
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Don't mess with the Jews, they really know how to curse!
http://www.yiddishradioproject.org/exhibits/stutchkoff/curses.php3?pg=3
#4. "Finstere leyd zol nor di mama oyf im zen." - "Black sorrow is all that his mother should see of him."
#26. "Got zol im bentshn mit dray mentshn: eyner zol im haltn, der tsveyter zol im shpaltn un der driter zol im ba’haltn." - "God should bless him with three people: one should grab him, the second should stab him and the third should hide him."
#34. "Migulgl zol er vern in a henglayhter, by tog zol er hengen, un bay nakht zol er brenen." - "He should be transformed into a chandelier, to hang by day and to burn by night."
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Wisdom from my nine-year-old.
"Dad, something smells bad, really bad, like.....mold and lipstick."
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Based on my experience with cell phones, I have concluded that when we get teleportation technology, it will suck.
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I don't know what made me think of this, but a few years ago I got to work and found an email from tech support warning me of the "blaster worm" virus and giving me instructions on how to get rid of it. I was annoyed because I had lots to do, but this stupid thing had to take priority. As I was watching the blue bar on the Blaster Worm Extractor window creep towards 100% I realized that this was an experience I'd been waiting for my whole life. If you had told me when I was ten that I would one day be extracting a blaster worm virus from my own computer I wouldn't have known what to do with myself. I would even have the Deckard from Bladerunner world weariness about the experience. We live in a sci-fi world, and yet it is still mostly annoying.
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We live in a sci-fi world, and yet it is still mostly annoying.
I think it's because the sci-fi we see and/or read is always either too optimistic and glosses over the downsides (Star Trek) or too pessimistic and is all about the downsides (1984). You don't often see material that takes that bad and the good together.
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We live in a sci-fi world, and yet it is still mostly annoying.
I think it's because the sci-fi we see and/or read is always either too optimistic and glosses over the downsides (Star Trek) or too pessimistic and is all about the downsides (1984). You don't often see material that takes that bad and the good together.
I can't remember the source of the quote, but it's been said that "science fiction is the only truly optimistic literature because it insists that we have a future."
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Based on my experience with cell phones, I have concluded that when we get teleportation technology, it will suck.
VBO: You should take a good look at the other subscribers before selecting a teleportation service.
(Yeah, I was bored and thought this would be fun.)
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Based on my experience with cell phones, I have concluded that when we get teleportation technology, it will suck.
VBO: You should take a good look at the other subscribers before selecting a teleportation service.
(Yeah, I was bored and thought this would be fun.)
Some can't leave the dead well enough alone.
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My neighbor has a Lexus. If he has more than one Lexus, does he have two Lexus, two Lexuses or two Lexi?
Lexuces or Lexim. Either is acceptable.
What if, instead, he has more than one Infiniti?
Then he is the ideal target of the Ad Infinitum
viz:
(http://www.401dixieinfiniti.com/Infiniti%20ad.jpg)
The President is "assassinated" but no-one can prove it because of a very revolutionizing procedure that takes the mind and allows you to change bodies for a period of time before the procedure kills you. The movie could be about the assassination, and the attempt to discover what is going on... Before the President's time runs out.
It could also be a book.
Or very much like a series of podiobooks.
J.C. Hutchins' 7th Son - got clones, memory and personality transfers, conspiracy for world domination, etc.
http://podiobooks.com/title/7th-son-book-one---descent
http://podiobooks.com/title/7S3-Destruction
http://podiobooks.com/title/7th-son-book-two---deceit
VBO:
Negotiating a smooth transition from the 12-fret palm-muted double-picked descending glissando to the E-B-G-B bass fill in the opening of Pipeline (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VP15xzNBnQ) (The Chantays - 1963) is much more difficult than I thought it would be.
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My neighbor has a Lexus. If he has more than one Lexus, does he have two Lexus, two Lexuses or two Lexi?
Lexuces or Lexim. Either is acceptable.
The Lexicon - dictionary for luxury cars, or extraordinarily small gathering of pedantic linguaphiles? (I'll choose "A", please!)
VBO:
Negotiating a smooth transition from the 12-fret palm-muted double-picked descending glissando to the E-B-G-B bass fill in the opening of Pipeline (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VP15xzNBnQ) (The Chantays - 1963) is much more difficult than I thought it would be.
What a relief... I thought I was the only one! :D
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I established a new rule in my D&D game last night.
Puns attract monsters.
Two characters nearly died.
hahahaha that's awesome.
You would have thought they'd have learned their lesson after the first one.
Last night I had to amend my rule:
The experience point value of a pun attracted monster is zero.
Oh man, this made me laugh! :D
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I established a new rule in my D&D game last night.
Puns attract monsters.
Two characters nearly died.
hahahaha that's awesome.
You would have thought they'd have learned their lesson after the first one.
Last night I had to amend my rule:
The experience point value of a pun attracted monster is zero.
Oh man, this made me laugh! :D
Man... I'm glad those monsters haven't found their way to the newcomer thread! ::)
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After the New Members thread postings, you may want to get your dice hand warmed up.
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After the New Members thread postings, you may want to get your dice hand warmed up.
VBO: If I refrain from the really juvenile joke I'm thinking, maybe they'll let me off the hook for the pain-inducing puns...
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VBO: If I refrain from the really juvenile joke I'm thinking, maybe they'll let me off the hook for the pain-inducing puns...
Nope. Part of being a heretic is losing credit for everything you do.
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VBO: If I refrain from the really juvenile joke I'm thinking, maybe they'll let me off the hook for the pain-inducing puns...
Nope. Part of being a heretic is losing credit for everything you do.
That would explain a lot about the world financial markets, lately...
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And it's hard to imagine* an evolutionary situation in which a baby would be alone, where that baby *shouldn't* be panicking. A friend of mine has their nursery upstairs, and everytime they put the baby alone in the darkened room, she howls for hours. I imagine her hindbrain is waiting for the andrewsarchus (http://www.museon.nl/NR/rdonlyres/4E472C03-5D20-46B6-8416-C7F8B260BC21/2211/JWMWAndrewsarchus01.JPG)(why yes, I am engaged to a paleontology geek, why do you ask?) to come and devour her.
*or, alternatively, my imagination's not good enough.
Andrewsarchus has been extinct for 36 million years. That means that human (or even ape) babies have never needed to worry about them. Some of the early proto-monkeys, maybe...
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Falling is simply flying from a different perspective. There just happens to be a very large, inevitable wall in your way
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Falling is simply flying from a different perspective. There just happens to be a very large, inevitable wall in your way
The pertinent quote on flying as falling is here (http://www.skygod.com/quotes/hitchhikers.html).
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Falling is simply flying from a different perspective. There just happens to be a very large, inevitable wall in your way
The pertinent quote on flying as falling is here (http://www.skygod.com/quotes/hitchhikers.html).
Actually, the line struck me after reading Ender's Game because I was thinking a lot about shifting perspectives in a zero-gravity environment as well as my own shifting emotional perspectives.
But yeah, Adam's description of flying as falling is wonderful. What was the name of the story that Escape Pod published about the boy who fell into flying? I thought that was one of the more interesting and touching character studies that EP has done so far.
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What was the name of the story that Escape Pod published about the boy who fell into flying? I thought that was one of the more interesting and touching character studies that EP has done so far.
"The Angle of My Dreams".