Old Man

Re: The cranky thread People still use IE? I use Firefox almost exclusively, mainly for the Adblock and Flashblock extensions.

Re: Musings on Random Musings That sounds like fun, but water is still awfully hard when you fall into it from a high enough height.

Re: "Neat" Pictures

Re: I have a dream. (and MAN was it wierd!) I have yet to post any of my really disturbing dreams in here. Like the one where there were a whole bunch of people lined up against a wall in a warehouse and I was walking down the line casually executing each one with a pistol shot to the head, mostly to impress some in-dream friends. I was keeping count and was up in the 200s when I woke up.

Re: Musings on Random Musings I'm not sure things got radically better within the lifespan of most individual members of those groups. The latter two groups only "improved" their lot via the collapse of their respective civilizations. That said, things do get better, if only because technology improves. The web that lets me hang out with you guys has only existed for less than twenty years. Effective smartphones have existed for less than ten. There's a vaccine for chicken pox now. There are downsides to many technological developments, but it's clear to me that the positives greatly outweigh the negatives.

Re: 'Mars by 1965, Saturn by 1970' I'm kind of picturing Gamma World or Fallout with spaceflight here.

Re: Musings on Random Musings Don't worry about it, just don't get tornadoed. If you do, watch out for flying monkeys when you land.

Re: Musings on Random Musings I'm sure you already know this, guys, but you have a tornado watch in effect for the area including St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Memphis. Guess it takes a while for the effects of the orbital death ray to dissipate.

Re: Musings on Random Musings Couldn't you have eaten something else? Like Log-man?

Re: A Thread for Random Musings Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at 'Philosophy'. Is this true?

Re: I have a dream. (and MAN was it wierd!) That would explain a lot, come to think of it.

Re: Musings on Random Musings We got him surrounded, boys!

Re: A Game Of Questions Does this g-string make me look fat?

Re: Musings on Random Musings Rain hurts bad enough at 40mph. But I, too, think it would be "neat" to be in a tornado, for however many seconds it took before something hard hits you. You know, like the ground.

Re: Musings on Random Musings Glad you didn't get tornadoed, Tim.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings Sometimes I'm forcibly reminded just how recently mankind has developed in certain areas. We didn't start keeping detailed records of tornado fatalities until the 1950s? Really? Doppler radar for weather wasn't invented until then either? Weather satellites not until 1960? I think of things like this, and all the basic unanswered questions we have in physics, and I realize just how much further we have to go before we can even begin to understand our universe.

Re: I have a dream. (and MAN was it wierd!) The airport terminal was ugly, a study in sterile white geometric '50s Bauhaus architecture. Fortunately, we wouldn't be here long. We were going to Afghanistan, and we were running late. Everything about this trip was last minute--so last minute that the company hadn't even given me a chance to pack. I was going halfway around the world with nothing but what I was wearing, which fortunately was a comfortable shirt, jeans, and boots. My coworker had had a little more chance to prepare, but not much. He didn't have any luggage either. I didn't remember going through security but it must have been a breeze. We strode up to the desk at the gate to get our seat assignments. My coworker was of Arabic descent like the gate staff, so I let him take the lead. I didn't speak Arabic but the discussion got pretty heated as they discussed a printed-out seat map. Finally they all seemed to settle on a solution, and the staff colored in a couple of the seats with a blue crayon. I looked out the window and noticed that while they were arguing, we'd somehow gotten on the plane, which was taking off at that moment. My coworker and I walked to the back of the plane and got off at our destination, which turned out to be a shopping mall. Now that we'd made it to Afghanistan there was less urgency to our trip, so I took a moment to duck into a clothing shop. I wanted to blend in with the locals and jeans weren't going to cut it. As I browsed, I noticed a robed figure in the store who seemed to be stalking me with a bow and arrow. I tried to move to put some of the clothes racks between us, but before I knew it, there was an arrow lodged in a mannequin behind me--it had missed me by inches. Enraged, I walked up to the shooter. It turned out to be a young girl in a blue burka. I snatched the weapons away and yelled at her for a few minutes in English, which I knew was probably ineffective. She fled. I looked at the weapons she'd left behind. The bow had turned into a rhinestone-encrusted figurine of a snake. I stuffed it and the arrow into my pocket. I'd lost my coworker by this point so I had to catch up. I walked out of the mall, down a sidewalk with grass growing out of the cracks, and turned right down a narrow paved road. Shortly I came to another ugly building, this one a plain rectangular reinforced-concrete structure. I walked in past a row of elevators, the old kind with the round black buttons that you always see in medical buildings, and headed down the main passage. There were quite a few people walking in and out, and I realized that the building had been converted to a brothel. But that was not why we had come.

Re: A Game Of Questions Would you folks like me to strip naked?

Re: The answer to the most important question in Space Sci-Fi It's kind of hard with their jacked-up site layout and ads. As for the most important question, I really think it's an area that requires further analysis. I have a list of potential test subjects.

Re: The cranky thread

Re: The cranky thread This is probably the worst thing about foot pain. It's really not that bad... but it makes me want to get up less. And so I don't want to play with my kid as much, and I don't exercise as much, and I favor the one foot so it screws up the other foot and my back...

Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... I could have put up with all of those except comic relief Gimli. He deserved better. Indeed, his badassitude was almost equal to Legolas' in the books, and it was the mutual respect they developed on the battlefield that improved future elf-dwarf relations, which up till then had been cool at best.

Re: Musings on Random Musings I thought that's what background checks were for. Oh, and hostages. Definitely hostages.

Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... That still only counts as one. And even the Peter M Jackson Legolas wasn't as badass in some ways as the Legolas in the books, who could determine the color of a rider's hair from ten leagues away. The difference, I think, is one of attitude, not actual level of badass.

Re: If powers were related to personality traits, what power would you have? Stubborn: 12 levels Density Increase No, I Mean Really Stubborn: +30 EGO, +25 resistant Mental Defense And I Don't Panic Easily Either: +30 PRE defense But One Day I Won't Be Able To Keep The Rage Bottled Up Any More: 8d6 RKA Explosion, Megascale