Old Man

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

Re: The cranky thread Packing up to go home when the boss calls. "We need to go over the agenda for tomorrow's meeting, do you have a few minutes?". Sure, I have a few minutes. 90 minutes later...

Re: The cranky thread Dude, that sucks. I feel bad for the kid too though.

Re: The cranky thread What do you mean, 'pretend'?

Re: Castle Bathory Didn't find any plans, but I did find a whole lot of heavy metal bands I need to look into later.

Re: The cranky thread You named your cat God?

Re: A Thread for Random Musings Is it normal to wash baseball caps in the washing machine? My wife keeps doing that and it's destroying all my hats.

Re: Musings on Random Musings Are you kidding? I'd be an excellent reference. "Lucius can see both sides of any issue. Nothing can sneak up on him. It's hard to tell sometimes if he's coming or going, but he'll get there regardless."

Re: A Thread for Random Musings Now I'm just posting to try an iPad here at the apple store.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings Best internet comment I read today: "Please tell me you're joking, otherwise please do the species a favor and drink some antifreeze." In a climate change "discussion", of course.

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN) I don't follow the "droughts are nothing new" logic. Traffic accidents aren't new either but we keep inventing things like air bags and crumple zones and we're better for it. Here we have an opportunity to at least reduce the intensity of future droughts and avoid trillions of dollars in flooding, storm surge damage, and/or dike building. All of which will be borne by the taxpayer. The other issue is that while the climate has warmed in the past, this time the change is extremely abrupt (relatively speaking). That will make it very hard on existing ecosystems, and it's possible that the rate of change is so fast that it could cause certain ecosystems to crash--coral reefs, for example, are at particular risk. There is also the possibility of feedback loops causing the rate of warming to accelerate. Melting ice caps lower the overall albedo of the planet, causing it to absorb more solar energy. The Siberian permafrost could melt, releasing vast quantities of methane into the atmosphere and increasing the greenhouse effect. Will these come to pass? Maybe, maybe not, but I'm not anxious to find out either way.

Re: The cranky thread Ideally that's true, but I've seen that philosophy taken too far to the point where each page has a billion links on it. So you do have to take reality into account sometimes. That said, Cisco could do with a sweeping reorganization of its B2B websites.

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN) It's been generally accepted that development is responsible for the reduction in First World reproduction rates. After all, reproduction gets in the way of your wife's career and your ability to watch The X Factor. The famous example is that birth rates plunged in some African village when they were given a light bulb, because suddenly they could do things indoors at night. Conversely Japanese corporations are offering significant bonuses to employees who conceive, because birth rates there are too low and no one is going to be around to take care of the extraordinarily elderly population.

Re: "Neat" Pictures IIRC the Aliens universe hyperdrive still took months or years to get where it was going, and aside from the boredom and aging issues, there was also the problem of provisions and oxygen. Certainly without hypersleep Ripley would not have survived her 57-year drift in the lifeboat.

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Re: The cranky thread Not For Resale. We're a Cisco reseller and we're trying to buy some lab gear under an NFR discount. The online tool is... involved. But by wasting the time of myself and two engineers for an entire day, we got it figured out. Huzzah.

Re: Quote of the Week From My Life. "Kid, why do you keep coming into Mommy and Daddy's bed in the middle of the night?" "Because your bed is nightmare-proof."

Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits? When terraforming, it helps to take the long view.

Re: Paper I think it's fine. It might wrinkle up a bit as it dehydrates.

Re: The "Nice Happy" Thread Nice!

Re: The "Nice Happy" Thread Yes, but what did he tweet back? "Stop stalking me you freak or I'll call the police"?

Re: "Neat" Pictures These don't seem to be "official" but they are done by obsessed fans armed with some of the set blueprints: http://www.propsummit.com/viewtopic.php?t=1522&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=160

Re: "Neat" Pictures

Re: Toxic Laser Sounds like a linked area effect NND plus Charges. Is someone actually having to pay points for this?

Re: The cranky thread I have to sit through a training video to submit an NFR request? Really?