metadigital

There's also some interesting theory covered in recent Scientific American issues (say, the last five years) about multiple universes. Basically, even though Kyle Reece and the Terminator came back to 1984 to save and kill sarah Connor, respecitvely, the original universe and timeline would be intact, and the changes to the timeline would be in an alternate universe, when the time travellers appeared (because in the original universe, they did not appear). This is how such paradoxes as "killing your Grandfather" can be exsplained. That's my understanding, too.

That looks like the running man with the Governator. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Running Man is a good Arnie movie. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It's a much, much, much better Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King) book. It is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long. Mr Peter "Lord of the Rings" Jackson needs to stop believing his own press. He made an epic mess. The good: CGI Kong 1930s NY streetscape CGI dinosaurs CGI dinosaurs battling dinosaurs CGI dinosaurs battling Kong CGI Kong climbing Empire State building The bad: Introduction waaaay too long Too much CGI dinosaur battling: at one point the Spielberg-like action sequence goes on for at least ten minutes, by which time I was just bored. Too many "oo, here's somewhere else we can put another CGI monster" moments on the island: the (giant, natch) nemotodes and armoured arthropods scene was OtT. Very, very poor writing. The worst last line of any film in recent memory. I didn't give a f

I believe he mentioned that Bunny looked like she was carrying a little "excess". <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I bet bunny asked if her cottontail looked "bigger" ...

Astr0, I was merely suggesting that the "female" animal rights manifesto (that all things furry and cute should be preserved, whilst those creatures horrid and ugly, like spiders, should be exterminated) should not be persued: we need to respect all creatures in the web of life, lest we suddenly realise just how inter-connected humans are to their ecosystem. Steve: I'm just finishing a book called The Symbolic Species, by Terrence Deacon, which is subtitled The co-evolution of language and the human brain. While this is, in fact, a scientific dissertation and doesn't lend itself readily to summary, I can give a few points here. (I did intend to make a more detailed post about it, later, once I had finished.) Basically, humans are unique in that they use symbolic logic. teaching chimps is difficult (but see below), because they do not grasp some of the counter-intuitive logic required to make specific examples less important than the general rule they represent. For example, teaching a chimp a sentance requires that all the nonsensical sentences are overtly demonstrated as wrong; the chimp rarely (if ever) is able to make this judgement. I have copied a couple of relevant passages from chapter four, below.

Wouldn't surprise me ... after all, there seems to be a direct correlation between human civilization and deforestation (look at the Romans and what they did to Italy): so it makes sense to me that there was a civilization around before the Egyptians, busily deforesting North Africa.

Yep, it looks like generic king in chainmail to me ...

Custom PC have reviewed every card currently on the market in the current issue (47 in total), June 2006 number 33.

What humans have different from other species is the ability to change itself:

Kewl, Bok, but I'd expect you to have:

When anyone who knows that the English Channel shares the meteorological peculiarities of the scepred isle.

I shall now perform an act of public service and close this thread before more innocents are infected ...... with poor spelling disease ...

My god that was tedious.

Command line is less user-friendly, but much more precise. It gets a little silly with some of the old-school Unix commands (that can be a couple of lines long, complete with obscure punctuation marks used for actors), and it also doesn't require a top-heavy GUI to be effective. The downside is that the commands can be quite abstruce because of their obscure nature.

As someone who has used both OSes extensively (most of my university career was conducted on Macs) I can say that I find Windows irritating in that nothing works as designed or properly, and the error messages suck. Mac OS is brilliant, because everything just works. Until it doesn't. Which isn't often, but when it happens you have to replace whole parts. I like the flexibility of Windows, but then again I still use the command line.

Awww, what did Teddy do to deserve that?

Put out an APB on Balloon-headed Man, quick!

Yes, but five year olds don't have the vote ... That was the whole point (subtext) of the films and tv series based on the Planet of the Apes. Although I don't agree with the Judeo-Christian concept of the world and all her inhabitants are at the beck and call of humans, I think I would rather ask you what you are trying to achieve ...

Maybe they didn't realise that Ike postponed it for a day?

A middle manager in a HUGE company (think GE) equates to Rome, Inc, rather than being senior manager in Gaul Goatherders, Inc.

You never told me that before. Right, let's get building that rocketship ...

Benny Hill

Read the synopsis to this book in a recent Sunday Times: Basically why Rome succeeded (where others tried and failed, like the Carthaginians) was because Rome was (the first) BRAND: an ideal that the simple goatherds of Gaul could understand ... and more importantly the local hierarchy could identify the benefits and be quickly incorporated into the empire ... after all, it is better to be a middle-manager in a huge firm, than a senior manager in a tiny firm.

Yep, follow the bouncing ball ...

*goes off to play more games*