metadigital

What do you mean? I've been here all along... Just maybe not as much, as I've also been busy with *gasp* my social life. (I know, I know... I should know how to set my priorities better. ) Funny enough, a couple days ago I was wondering the same about you. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah, I must have taken two days off this week: sorry about that.

Who goes first? :D

So a jiffy = 1 centisecond? What about left handed people? Approximately 70% of the world's legal crop of poppies is grown in Tasmania, Australia (for opiates used in medicine). Some people are starting to question this goldfish fact, most notably some followers in The Path of Nemo Doesn't a nickel have 119 ? (Or is it 117? can't remember and I don't have one to count ...) Yes.

Well it is also the main limiting factor to prevent Baley-like tsunami of philosobabble spam from every igqualified (like what I did there with prefix of opposition -- see I can be imaginative when it counts ) lunatic with an inadequate medical dosage. There is plenty of room to speculate on such things as we haven't satisfactorily explained so far; e.g. the before of the beginning of the universe ...

It was a couple of NY vets who noticed the pattern in cats that had survived after falls from high buildings, then conducted an a posteriori inductive analysis to provide their hypothesis.

Did you ever place a bucket of water perched on top of a half-open door just before this DM was due to walk through it? "

If I know you, it won't be a standard garden variety either, it'll be a less-known Arch-Rustmonster, with its even rarer cousin the psionic permaent-random-ability-score-sucker. <_<

Barring incompatible timezones, I don't see why not; we would need a central conversation with everyone in (a meeting or whatever the parlance is) and an individual converastion window with each player, each; for eight players that would be eight windows. W'd all have to use an agreed technology. We'd have to agree on a scheduled time to start and finish according to a schedule, otherwise it'll be difficult for all of us to manage (and if the timezones cause problems, it might be too difficult).

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is better on the radio. But then, what isn't? :D <{POST_SNAPBACK}> A slideshow presentation.

I prefer the first one, actually, but I will address my comments to the third. If you say that the physics that describe our universe are just a subjective false reality, an illusion, then it is not very easy to have a conversation against it. However, it is remarkably less probable that a given illusion will be consistent across so many different scientific disciplines for so many different witnesses. Now there are an infinite series of possible levels of "truth" between "What science says is absolute truth" and "The universe of my experience is illusion", and it is conceivable that for every advance I made in arguing from the latter to the former, you might just as easily take the next-least -difficult to prove position, ad infinitum. I would hold that, as appealing as your philosophy is from a chaotic stance, it is next to useless -- speaking form a utilitarian / logical positivism stance. Equally, although the discussion on what is absolute truth is fraught with more of these sorts of arguments than can be addressed in an infinite series of lifetimes, I would invoke Occham and just get back to what knowledge we can use. I mean, after all, even though the Earth and the Sun do revolve around each other, the Newtonian physics describes perfectly well how the size of the force driving their interaction is inversely proportional to the square of their distance apart, thus: Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour, That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned, A sun that is the source of all our power. The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see Are moving at a million miles a day In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour, Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'. Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars. It's a hundred thousand light years side to side. It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick, But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide. We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point. We go 'round every two hundred million years, And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions In this amazing and expanding universe. The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding In all of the directions it can whizz As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know, Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is. So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure, How amazingly unlikely is your birth, And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, 'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth. :cool: Now, can I have your liver?

HHGttG was almost written before I was born, so it may not live up to your expectations because it has been influential in a lot of SF since, so it may not be as fresh as you might expect. I particularly liked Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, too, but the sequel was a bit Meh.

Well, if everyone from the forum opens a browser on the site and starts continually downloading things --- anything -- then that should bring the site down for sure! (w00t) (Is that what you meant? <_< )

This sort of thing is common in slums of India, where the dispossessed have no claim to any land and must queue for water at a public dispenser, which only flows for a few hours a day. (I guess they might be able to move closer as people closer to the water die of some horribly degenerative, but curable, disease or move on some other place ... ). And they don't have work and aren't permitted to work in anything (caste system and the "unclean" people) ...

I bet you don't craft your own weapons and armour, either!

Mario has changed his outfit since I last recall ... and what is happenning in the third frame of that comic ...?

I'm all for it; most mods out there have a hak pack (and some have movies and sound files, too), so it makes no nevermind to me. And Rust monsters are cool, especially if you play a Monk ...

In fact I would argue it ensures a lack of contentment ... " Arrogant? Who are you calling arrogant? And no! I'm not paranoid, either. Who said that?

Why not relocate to the water? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The people who live there are probably not going to welcome them with open arms ... also, they are probably near their own farming land / places of work.

Falsity is true? What sort of doctrine is that? Unless you are arguing that all things are true at all times (and we therefore live in a huge multi-verse of universes, which bifurcate into each possible result of all options in space-time, every time a choice is made, everywhere in the universe), or that all things are an illusion (e.g. Buddhists, Existentialists), i.e. Science is a phantasm, then Ki Rin is wrong. PS If you are arguing that science is an illusion, then -- if you're right -- I'm probably talking to myself, anyway.

I loved (still do, I guess) John Wyndham, and I recommend The Chrysalids and The Kraken Wakes, too. I'm currently reading the 2005 EFA Global Monitoring Report, and what a hoot it is! For 'fun', somebody gave me a biography of Bill Clinton, but if it doesn't pick up soon, I'm giving up. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You read the EFA Global Monitoring Report for leisure? Boy, are you in trouble. (I didn't list any books I'm reading for work ...)

[2]Sprite just makes me thirstier (even more so than Pepsi, Fanta or the like). Don't know why. [3]The best drink ever is Melon Soda, available from the best vending machines in Japan. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> 1. You don't drink caffeine yet, Baley? Boy are you gunna be trouble soon ... 2. It's probably the eighteen grams of sugar / carcinogenic-sugar-replacement that you drink with the can ... 3. I shall continue to regard all products derived from a Japanese vending machine with paranoid skepticism, based on my mercifully-little knowledge and exposure. I'll stick to San Pelegrino for effervescence and Coca Cola for energy fuel (supra-zero cold, in glass bottles, just as God intended).

Funny you should ask... It was uploaded about 15 minutes ago! (Sorry Launch, I just couldn't wait anymore! )Right here The site hasn't been refreshed yet, so if you click on the link in my sig you won't find it. <_< (hence why I haven't changed it yet) The direct link should however work. This is a loooong chapter (hence why it took me so long to get it online). <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ah, I wondered where you'd been ... :cool:

Yep, you have to be pretty secure in your masculinity to wear such castrating clothes ...

I love HG Wells' style; it is luxuriant and harks back to the days when people spoke in complete sentences, and it also evokes very clearly the stentorian voice of Richard Burton, from the album. Haven't read Day of the Triffids (but I've heard some of their music ).

I tend to start reading lots of books, and then finish them in order of interest to me. (I tend to do this online, too; what I mean is, with my online reading I will follow a hyper-trail to its end, or my satisfaction, and then pick up reading at the next-most intersting place, to me.) Currently I am reading: Fiction: The Handmaid's Tale (Philosophical thought experiment about a totalitarian state based on Genesis 3:27-30.) Non Fiction: History of Western Philosophy (Bertrand Russell: a very readable book, actually; I stopped halfway through becuase I wanted to re-read taking notes, because it really is exhaustive, but the "fireside chat" style makes it difficult to scan for absolute historical dates; a blessing and a curse.) 1421 (The year China discovered the world) The Times Compact History of the World Birdsong (A book about the tranplanting of the miners who had just dug the Central Line in London to the trenches of WW1 to dig underneath the Central Powers' fortifications for to explode them from underneath, whilst avoiding their German equivalents as they did the same.) As well as a few more less intersting titles, like: Hacking Eposed, gamer magazines, and the odd New Scientist, etc. I will be reading next: Pat Barker's remaining two novels in the trilogy begun with Regeneration (WW1 British decorated officer designated "Deranged" for publicly stating that the Allies were guilty of War Crimes for not suing Germany for peace, at the time, in late 1918); The Eye In The Door and The Ghost Road; Melvyn Bragg's The Adventure of English; plus another half-a-dozen that I haven't started to ponder their place in my reading list yet, but that have been purchased and are in the waiting list for the reading list ... I just recently completed The Music Of The Primes, by Marcus de Sautoy, a spectacular reading experiences I can recommend highly. It is more an historical description of some of the best mathematicians in civilization (liked by the theme of prime numbers); a brief summary of the lives and their societies and even their social, political and psychological mappings -- all done with the bare minimum of little equations and graphs, (one may count them on one hand), so as not to scare the innumerate away. A very easy read, well worth it. (If you can't name three mathematicians -- exluding Newton: he's famous for being a physicists! -- then you must get this book.)