Woldan

Played Magic The Gathering with friends and utterly destroyed them with my black-blue card removal and counterspell deck. I didn't win by getting their life points down to zero, nope, that would have been too boring and thats not how my deck works, I used combos and extremely nasty hard-to-remove creatures to slowly put their entire deck into their graveyards. They simply ran out of cards in a couple of turns and died while still having tons of health. I fed on their frustration and desperation like a tick on blood, I enjoyed it a lot. Though I think they'll never play MTG with me again.

I made a wetpack-test with hunting bullets I bought a few weeks ago to see how and if they perform. Wetpack means a box filled with soaking wet newspaper to simulate flesh and its by many considered to be more accurate in simulating flesh than ballistic gel. Anyway, the pack was about 25cm thick, shot it with an 8x57 200 grain bullet at about 2500 fps or a tad under 800 meters a second. The bullet used was a softpoint flatbase hunting bullet, tombac jacket. Which is typically used for medium to large game. (European red deer, moose, elk) Unfortunately I could no recover the expanded bullet because its deeply embedded in a large log which I used as backstop. Pics: The bullet type used: Entry. (I didn't even realize that there were kids on the top cover of the newspaper till I uploaded the pic. Bummer. *shrugs*) 5 centimeters in the wetpack the bullet started to expand: The ''wound channel'' 2/3 into the pack, approx two fingers wide. The exit after passing through ~ 25 centimeters of wet newspaper, creating a tennis ball sized hole. It really started to expand a lot in the last 7-10 centimeters. Result: Weight retention: the bullet didn't lose any material on its way through the wet pack. Expansion: the bullet needed 5 centimeters before it started to expand. It expanded in two stages, first moderate expansion after 5 centimeters and about 2/3 into the pack it suddenly started to expand wildly Also the sharp edges of the deforming bullets jacket ''cut'' through the medium like a couple of razors. The wound channel looks smaller than it actually is because the paper aroudn the channel expanded back. Conclusion: the bullet performed as expected, deep penetration with a bullet comparetively slowly expanding but staying intact to pass through medium to large sized game. Might not be the best anti-personnel bullet but it does far more damage than a full metal jacket bullet. A palm-sized exit hole without having hit any bones is nothing to sneeze at.

Me too, I've never really cared much for the film but I think she is gorgeous.

I've read a few war novels and the SS troops often called Russians illiterate, mindless savages and clearly put the them into the category Untermensch. The double standard was pretty funny though, late in the war they accepted anti-Stalin Belorussians and Mongolians in their ranks. The normal Wehrmacht seemed not to care all that much about categorizing the people they had to shoot and blow up by the thousands.

I don't think we would adapt nearly fast enough. We could adapt to slowly rising temperatures, or air slowly getting thinner / decreasing oxygen satiation, history has shown we can do that given enough time - but an instant change from 1G down to .38G pretty much instantly? Thats a dramatic change, I'm very sure people would wither and die a horrible death in max. 10 years. Astronauts get all sorts of problems only after a couple of months on the ISS, and we're talking about lifetimes here. And pregnancies, I'm sure very low gravity would cause all sorts of birth defects and developmental disorders on the fetus. It would be awful.

Ali Larter.

Mars' gravity is too little and would cause many long term arterial, cardiovascular and bone related health problems, human bodies are not designed to live in near zero gravity environments, I don't think sustained life could be possible up there. Not to mention due to the immense UV and x-ray radiation because of the missing magnetic shielding you couldn't leave your habitat for very long. A long term solution would be building underground habitats. Sustained human life wouldn't be possible that way, you'd better of living on the moon. Also terraforming Mars is probably not possible because the radiation and coronal mass ejections would literally blow away most of the atmosphere because -again- of the missing magnetosphere. IF Kepler 186f has a somewhat working magnetosphere to protect the surface and its habitants from deadly radiation, IF its dense enough but not too dense to create gravity around 0.8-1.2 G's, IF the weather isn't absolutely crazy (storms with wind speeds in excess of mach 2 are nothing special in our solar system), IF it doesn't have excessive geothermal activities and IF it has water it might be an option for human settlements in the very, very, VERY distant future.

It turns you into a nutter? Depends on the water temperature.

Agreed. I don't get it why people focus that much on building a base on mars. NASA already invented pretty cool inflatable yet highly spacious and robust space modules and we're blessed with a large extremely stable moon right at our doorstep. What we need is a second Cape Canaveral up there, that would make the true start of space exploration. Also, what most people don't realize - you can build more effective space exploration vehicles in near zero gravity, those vehicles don't have to survive re-entry and escaping gravity and atmospheres. It offers many design and effectiveness advantages.

Baby steps. We can't get there the conventional way, it would take so much time that it would become highly unpractical. Don't forget the weight of all the equipment required just for the journey, then add all the supplies and stuff people would need to build a colony there, then add the time to get information back to earth. Radiation shielding isn't a problem but its very heavy. Also during the hundreds if not thousands of years the space ship is traveling to that distant planet scientists might discover a far more efficient and faster way of space travel which makes the whole trip kinda dumb. Extremely unpractical². IMO things we need to invent before we can travel to planets light years away: * Space elevator or an accelerator cannon to get thousands of tons of equipment and supplies into orbit * Moon base to assemble the space vehicle * Space warp/bubble engine Check back in 300-500 years or so.

Any planet that doesn't instantly deep freeze, fry or squish you and you can't fall through is a win in my book. Maybe terraforming can increase the temperature to a more comfortable level one day.

Today I found out that my shower is like a vertical version of a Goa'uld sarcophagus.

Needs more basic information: The artist's concept depicts Kepler-186f , the first validated Earth-size planet to orbit a distant star in the habitable zone—a range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the planet's surface. The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that Earth-size planets exist in the habitable zones of other stars and signals a significant step closer to finding a world similar to Earth. The size of Kepler-186f is known to be less than ten percent larger than Earth, but its mass, composition and density are not known. Previous research suggests that a planet the size of Kepler-186f is likely to be rocky. Prior to this discovery, the "record holder" for the most "Earth-like" planet went to Kepler-62f, which is 40 percent larger than the size of Earth and orbits in its star's habitable zone. Kepler-186f orbits its star once every 130 days and receives one-third the energy that Earth does from the sun, placing it near the outer edge of the habitable zone. If you could stand on the surface of Kepler-186f, the brightness of its star at high noon would appear as bright as our sun is about an hour before sunset on Earth. Kepler-186f resides in the Kepler-186 system about 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The system is also home to four inner planets, seen lined up in orbit around a host star that is half the size and mass of the sun.

Almost died laughing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4S08VnDWE4#t=10 *edit* Why can't I embed YT videos anymore?

Did some really heavy dumbbell flies and some push ups while having a friend sitting on my shoulders/back. Push ups are boring unless you're pushing your own + someone else's weight, then they get interesting very quick. Sounds good, I'd say go for it, in times like these few things are more valuable than a stable job that pays well and as a bonus having people you already know as partners.

Had an extremely vivid and glorious dream about stealing a friends (fast) car and going completely nuts with it on nightly country roads. In the dream I felt every single bump on the road, the lateral acceleration in tight corners, the sudden traction loss when a tire touched the grass, the stiff gear stick, the desperation when entering a corner a little too fast. Speeds well above 250 km/h on tight twisty country roads at night. See, thats why I don't own a car or motorcycle anymore, I know for certain that I don't have enough self control and that I'd kill myself in no time at all. Reality y u so boring?

Just yawned and inhaled a moth. I thought stuff like that only happens in comedies.

This made me laugh more than it should have

'Merica. Lots of fun when holstering the gun, the lawyers are going to have a field day.... You don't holster a gun with an axe on it.

'Merica. Lots of fun when holstering the gun, the lawyers are going to have a field day....

I reckon it's the galvanic invigoration being delivered by all the misplaced cutlery sticking out of your ears. Haha misplaced. A funny little human you are. If anything all that metal cutlery safely stored in my ear is solving my increased demand for iron. You can't have to much iron when pumping lots of...iron. Chopping firewood is strangely addictive and satisfying. I was really pissed and angry when the wood guy (who brings me all the wood to heat my furnace) started to bring me chopped wood. Though I didn't say anything because the wood guy happens to be my neighbor and I don't want to be known as an axe-swinging lunatic around here. My reputation is already beyond repair but I still don't want to throw bricks at it.

Ahh, there is absolutely nothing better than really heavy lifting for 1.5 hours and later eating a tasty healthy self prepared meal while playing a good atmospheric RPG and/or watching a film you love. Throw your antidepressants, alcohol, cocaine and whathaveyou out of the window and try my method, I can guarantee you if you get off your lazy butt and do it properly you'll never need any of that stuff again.