SSgt Baloo

Re: "Neat" Pictures When I was 10 years old, my BIL, a civil engineer for the US Park Service, was issued a portable electronic calculator worth $10,000 (in 1968 dollars). It was about the size of a typewriter of the day and had a vacuum ("Nixie") tube display with an eight-digit read-out: Imagine some more of these all in a row and you've got it. It could add, subtract, multiply and divide (and that's it). I'd guess it weighed about 40 lbs. (20 of that was the battery pack). It held enough charge for about 1 hour's use and could be recharged in about eight hours. They were delighted that now they could use a calculator out in the wilderness where they did their surveys. Less than five years later they got a Hewlett Packard "Pocket Calculator" with trigonometric functions, a 12 digit display, and costing about 1/10th what the old one did. Nowadays I can pick up a superior calculator (alas, without the "Reverse Polish Notation" that used to be a feature of the old HPs) for less than a tenth of that.

Re: Toons Here's a link to a pretty exhaustive list of the Laws of Cartoon Physics. A few of my faves: III: Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation conforming to its perimeter. Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the speciality of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless cowards who are so eager to escape that they exit directly through the wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout-perfect hole. The threat of skunks or matrimony often catalyzes this reaction. VIII: Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent. Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than the traditional nine lives might comfortably afford. They can be decimated, spliced, splayed, accordion-pleated, spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot be destroyed. After a few moments of blinking self pity, they reinflate, elongate, snap back, or solidify. Corollary: A cat will assume the shape of its container.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Phineas and Ferb and Superfriends "Aren't you a little young to be superheroes?" "Why yes. Yes we are." "Moooom! Phineas and Ferb are leaping over tall buildings again!"

Re: "Neat" Pictures -

Re: "Neat" Pictures Heck, I can still remember when kilobytes were considered, if not huge, at least big enough. My first computer was a TRS-80 Pocket Computer*: *AKA the "TRaSh-80"

Re: A Thread for Random Videos Something a bit more quaint: Red Hot Riding Hood

Re: Quote of the Week From My Life. Does anyone else remember that same bit with Garret Morris at the end of SNL's Weekend Update?

Re: Naked Power Advantages Somewhere in the back of my mind is a small, raucus voice saying "The naked power advantage is that you never have to worry if you're wearing the right outfit."

Re: A Thread for Random Videos I wonder how many people will hurt themselves trying to duplicate this feat? Viral Video Film School: Bad Parents

Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible? That sounds like a lot of the places I was stationed. Noplace to go, nothing to do. Except for the vaccuum part.

Re: A Thread for Random Videos Evidence that the past is a foreign country:

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? I watched Witch Hunt on MSNBC. It was about how child protective services and the Bakersfield DA botched the investigation of what they believed was a child molestation ring. Yes, I believe most cops and DAs are honest, but it just shows how far even "honest" ones can go to achieve a conviction when they believe they are in the right despite evidence to the contrary. I also watched Doughgirls (1944) on TCM. I must say, Jane Wyman was such a cutie!

Re: Toons Upon further reflection, the year Who Framed Roger Rabbit came out I ran a short campaign where the characters could be "toon" or "real". The build we used for toons included Desolidification (ineffective against "the Dip", couldn't pass through solid obstacles unless it was funny, etc., no protection from stun) and a few other things I can't quite remember. ISTR we just house-ruled that toons operated by different natural laws than reals, allowing them to fail to fall (and other "toonpossible" shenanigans) until they make a Perception roll. Depending upon how good the Per roll was, they might even have a chance to mitigate the disaster about to befall them.* Nowadays I think I'd just have the toons created as characters w/o the "body" characteristic, with desolidification and some sort of luck-based skill that allowed the character to perform cartoonish stunts when the situation required. [i'm outta time on this computer so I can't edit for clarity -- sorry!] *Such as running back onto the cliff they just walked off of.

Re: Toons Here's a little study material in case you want it (look around about 7:30 for an example of "walking on air". Buckaroo Bugs More examples of cartoon mayhem for your perusal, including a flat refusal to fall by Elmer. The Big Snooze

Re: "Neat" Pictures Or Mr. Bill!

Re: "Neat" Pictures The above picture is not a photoshop, but a real vehicle. Stackable furniture! I wonder if they make a bedroom set?

Re: "Now I will RULE the CITY!!!" How does that work? [Emphasis added] I'm so sorry, but that word in that context is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me (nothing personal intended). The word you wanted wasn't the adjective: populous, but the noun: populace.[/rant] Actually, apart from that, pretty good idea. Last night I watched a Superman: the Animated Series episode (Unity) where an alien used a cult as part of its plan to take over the minds of Smallville inhabitants. Alien parasites infected the Smallvillians' brain stems, allowing the alien to control them. Superman and Supergirl were able to destroy the parasites because they (the parasites) were vulnerable to X-ray vision.

Re: "Neat" Pictures Couch transforms into bunk beds. Ecko Jason hoodie I'm almost certain this is a real display in a real museum. If I were a bird, I wouldn't go near this. How sweet! Baby's first speeding ticket!

Re: Free Trader Beowulf Good find. Do you think it's time for another space/starship images thread? I do, but that's just me.

Re: I have a dream. (and MAN was it wierd!) I've had a couple in the last few days, probably brought on by the bout I've been having with food poisoning. Soviet Russians (all of them -- go fig) are attacking my airbase from a bunker right on the corner of that airbase. The troops are massed to storm the bunker and suddenly I realize that if they launch their nukes we'll all be destroyed. The US base was ready to launch their missiles in retaliation. I and a few other guys managed to get close enough to explain that since their bunker would probably not survive if they hit the base they were sitting on that maybe they'd be better off negotiating for peace. Just after the Soviets opened up their bunker, the US base launched it's missile, but detonated it high above the atmosphere. I can remember thinking "Wait! They aren't going to launch. Why are you launching now?" I went to visit a suburban family of elephants in 1960. We went to an amusement park where I was the only human. Later, when we got back, we rescued ducklings from wild predators. Last night I dreamt I was working at WalMart and was getting ready to go home, when I found a cache of oversized hershey bars in my locker. I was wondering how to get them out of the store without anyone thinking I was stealing them (in the dream, they were mine, but I had no receipts). Fortunately, I found my mobility bag in the bottom of the locker and packed them in that.

Mostly in older comics, the Mad/Evil Scientist's plan is to rule the city. I've always thought this was kind of a stupid goal for a villain, since the county, state, and federal governments might object to some despot deciding to wrest control of even a small community from the citizens thereof. How could a clever villain with low expectations make this work? I've always thought that a smart villain would just subvert the local government to his own ends, thus flying under the radar of public scruitiny. Have you ever had such a local threat in your campaigns? How did you handle them?

Fire. Flood. Earthquake. Stampede. Volcano. Tornado. Hurricane. How do you model these (and other) disasters in your campaigns? What can the protagonists (PCs) do in the face of such disasters? Please elaborate at length.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Attack of the Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Re: A couple of brain cells connected... I believe you are underestimating the supply if nutjobs.

Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible? Which is probably stored on artificial moons, not because it's rational to do it that way, but because the author thought it was "neat".