Monkey Island 2 had something similar. There was this one puzzle where you had to go searching for some sunken treasure. You had a boat and no clue where to seach, so you just had to pick randomly or come up with some algorithmic way of searching. It allways ended up in the last possible place to search. Those bastards! Otherwise a great game.
It's a little late to reconsider once you've had the little bastards. Generally, the people that have the foresight to consider whether or not they can handle the responsibility of raising a child also have the foresight to use birth control and plan their families.
The human ecosystem (body) is host to ~10e14 bacterial cells. A bit more than a couple of billion. Your dirty. Scrub till you bleed if you want, it won't make much of a difference. They are everywhere, on your eyes, in your ears, in your GI tract, in every little pore on your body, all over the skin, in your mouth. Many of your normal flora can be pretty nasty too, if their virulence genes get turned on. You have a lot of Stahpolococcus sp. in your mouth and on your skin. Under the right conditions, they will betray you.
As for sterilizing a human, even if it was possible, it would be a very bad idea. Your normal flora are adapted to live peacefully side by side with. They protect you by outcompeting invasive foreign species. They manufacture vitamins in your intestines. It would not be a good idea to get rid of them.
Sterile people can be made in theory. It's been done with mice. Scientists aseptically cut them out of the uterous and raised them in sterile environments. They lived twice as long as ordinary mice, but they were weak and sickly the entire time and died of strange nasty diseases. Some of these sterile mice were exposed to a normal environment. They died soon after of horrible nasty diseases.
In summary. Long term refridgeration will cause your little buddies to turn on you and sterilization will lead to a bubble life.
Playing the Devil's Advocate here, I'm not -1 fucked up and by no means am I advocating incest or eugenics.
The main logical reason that siblings/close family members are prohibited from marrying and even having sex is that any offspring resulting from such a union would be more than likely to be unfit. Close inbreeding tends to diminish genetic diversity and increase homogenisity. That is, they would have a higher than average probability of having a rare genetic disorder. Hemophilia in the royal families of Europe is one example. The royal families of Europe have been interbreeding with each other for centuries, and there are not a whole lot of royal families. Since everyone has a common ancestor if you trace far enough back, some amount of mating with relatives has to be acceptable. I also add that cousins are allowed to marry in some states.
As for moral reasons, these unfit offspring are a burden upon society and the family. It is also a burden upon the resultant offspring.
Now, if the reason that we prohibit close family members from having sex is to protect the health of resultant offspring, and people are okay with this, than logically we should be able to prohibit a pair of carriers for some nasty disease, (hemophilia, tay sachs, etc...) from reproducing as it would produce unfit children.
Since homosexual relationships would not result in offspring, the aforementioned logical and moral reasons against incestual relations would not apply.
In truth, I think that a large portion of the incest taboo stems from the ewwww factor, an innate biological drive to not mate with siblings, but that's theorectical. In support, I offer the observation that in many (most?) mammalian herd/pack species, the male leaves the group it was born in and overtakes or joins another, whereas the females tend to remain in the group they were born into. This bioligical drive would reduce incest and unfit offspring. The ewwww factor is enough for me to not consider incest.
In contrast, there are many known cases of royal siblings marrying and producing offspring. One notable example is that of king Mausollos of Caria and his sister/wife Artemesia. They built the famous Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the world. The royal families of Europe is another example of incestual marriages, though they were more often cousins than siblings.
4) I have no idea when the fuck Apple became some sort of lightning-rod for computer-using fags, but it is really starting to piss me off. I loves me some pussy and I also use a G5 at home, and wish I didn't have to use Windows at work. I just have more of an open mind than about everyone I run into.
They want to have those special rights like hospital visits
That's not a right any more than drawing a paycheck is. I have the privilege of going to certain hospitals in particular because I pay for medical insurance.
You fail to understand that hospital visitation rights is not about going to the doctor to get a checkup or anything like that. It's about visiting a sick loved one in the hospital. Many hospitals will deny visitation rights to non-family members outside of limited hours. Hospitals have no right to define families. When the gay community demands hospital visitation rights, they are demanding that hospitals recognize their domestic partner (non state sanctioned spouse) as a family member.
When straight couples bow down before the state and the church and ask for their blessings and permission to form a legally recognized family with inheritance rights, the aforementioned hospital visitation rights, and over a thousand other rights that are granted exclusively to married couples.
Assigning power of attorney is often an expensive legal process. It is automatically granted to legally married couples.
Insurance companies will frequently provide a discount in insurance rates for married couples. If those same two people, even if they were heterosexual and lived together for many years, would have to pay higher rates because their relationship and love for each were not endorsed by the state.
The states recognition of a marriage is the only thing has any legal basis. The religious ceremony doesn't mean shit as far as the law is concerned, nor should it. Most of the arguments against granting homosexual couples the right to marry are based on arguments from tradition.
Personally, I think the state should get out of the marriage business altogether. It should divorce itself from promoting, regulating, and recognizing marriage. I have no problem with recognizing civil unions with most of the benefits that currently come with marriage though. I also have no problem with polyamorous marriages either. Whatever floats your boat, as long as it doesn't interfere with my rights.
A better name ... Propaganda
on
Paul Graham on PR
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Propaganda is the manipulation or fabrication of information for the sake of influencing public opinion, which is exactly what these PR companies do.
There is no discernible difference between propaganda and PR drivel. They both spin the facts to put a positive shine on their team and a great stinking stain on the opposition. See political ads. See those adds from Exxon on how they are helping to preserve the environment for tigers.
My former roommate worked for Gamestop for a while, and had to get a minimum of new subscriptions. I don't think it was too high, but every now and then, he would end up with a new subscription for himself. Every month I still receive three copies of the magazine.
And while we're at it, the Catholics didn't burn witches in the dark ages; it was a heresy to even believe in them until the High Middle Ages, and it was the Protestants who made witch hunting an organized sport.
First, the high middle ages lasted from 1000-1200 or 1050-1400, depending on your source. Either way, they started just before the time period given by the GP.
Second, the most famous witch hunting manuel is the Malleus Maleficarum, written by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, on orders of the Pope Innocent VIII, a Catholic. The papal bull was issured on Dec. 9, 1484. The protestant reformation didn't kick off until 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his edicts to the door. There were earlier attempts, but none of them ignited like his did. Henry V, in 1419, prosecuted his stepmother, Joan of Navarre, for attempting to kill him via witchcraft. So, what we can see is that witches and witch hunting were in vogue before the protestants were around.
The most famous witch hunting manuel is the Malleus Maleficarum, written by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, on orders of the Pope Innocent VIII. The papal bull was issured on Dec. 9, 1484. The protestant reformation didn't kick off until 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his edicts to the door. There were earlier attempts, but none of them ignited like his did. Henry V, in 1419, prosecuted his stepmother, Joan of Navarre, for attempting to kill him via witchcraft. So, what we can see is that witches and witch hunting were in vogue before the protestants were around.
We allready have illumiphiles, they just don't buy $400 light bulbs.
Having worked in photolabs for a couple of years, we had to get special daylight flourescent bulbs. We couldn't just throw in any bulb. This is because natural color was so important to putting out a quality product. Regular flourescent bulbs have a greenish cast to them. You can sometimes see this if your in an incandescent or sunlit room, and look off to a flourescent lit room in the distance. If you still have a film camera, try taking photographs under different lights. Flourescents will generally be green, especially if they are cheap. (You can buy color balanced flourescents.) Tungsten filaments will have a very orange color to them. Ask the tech not to do any color corrections on the film.
Are you perhaps going into flourescent lighting after sitting out in the sun?
Different bulbs emit light in different frequencies. If you take a photograph on color film of a room lit with a tungsten bulb, it will appear orange; with flourescent bulbs, it will appear green. You can sometimes see this if your sitting in an incandescent lit room and can see another room off in the distance lit with flourescent bulbs. You can even buy special filters for photographing under these light conditions. Flourescent bulbs can also be purchased with different color balances. 9500K and 6500K are two common ones. These are also the same as on your monitor and comes from Planckian black body radiation.
As another poster mentioned, your brain does compensate for these different light spectra, so you tend not to notice the differences between bulbs. If you have a pair of rose colored glasses or ski goggles (other colors will work too), try putting them on for a while. First thing you should notice is that every thing has a rosey tint to it. After a few moments, everything will begin to look normal again. Take them off and everything will have a bluish cast. The brain has one hell of an image processor, but that's a post for another story.
Try the writings of Epicurus of Samos. You can read them here: http://www.epicurus.net/ or just buy a printed copy like I did. Not religious per se, but a good guide on how to live the good life. And no, it's not about living a life of maximum pleasure.
You might also be interested in the Eddas, particularily the Havamal from the Poetic Edda. In my not so humble opinion, the Norse myths are better than the Greek myths. They're funnier for one, and as a non-theist, Ragnorak has a certain appeal.
3) You need a little science for this one, but it is possible to sequence DNA, and show mistakes happen.
You don't have to sequence DNA, just do an Ames test with a known mutagen. You probably have one of those in your kitchen or bathroom. Of course, a His- strain of salmanella or whatever easily selected strain of a species you want and some His- media aren't exactly the sort of thing that most people keep in their kitchen. Anyhow, what will happen is this, some revertant mutants will randomly appear throughout the plate, and if the chemical is a mutagen, there will be a distinct clustering of mutants around the paper disk soaked in the mutagen.
5) Such differences yield to different probabilities for a given organism to survive and reproduce.
See the average/. user for example.
6) More children are born than survive to adulthood.
Not every organism that reaches adulthood will reproduce. Many people die of old age without reproducing or having the capability of reproducing. Yes, i'm nitpicking.
You should also HAND write it. Don't send an email, don't print out a typewritten letter, hand write it. For some reason, politicians count these as being worth more than the email or typed letter. Probably because hand written letters take more effort and are more likely to be written by older people. Older people vote in higher proportions than younger people. At least this is what I was told when I worked for grass roots political group.
Attaching a contribution for his or her reelection fund is also a good idea, because then you are a campaign contributor and not just some curmudgeonly citizen.
This is why people have a large portion of their brain dedicated to ignoring stuff.
It's True!
The thalamus filters information heading towards the cortex, and the reticular activating system (in the brain stem) filters out extraneous information, i.e. constantly present odors, background hums, etc. You'd go crazy if this was broken.
http://www.geocities.com/satanicus_2/GodHelmet.h tm l
Micheal Persinger built a "god helmet" which induces feelings of being at one with god or the universe via magnetic fields. It should also be able to induce other sensory experiences as well. I think we have a case for prior art here.
Slashdot Mirror
Monkey Island 2 had something similar. There was this one puzzle where you had to go searching for some sunken treasure. You had a boat and no clue where to seach, so you just had to pick randomly or come up with some algorithmic way of searching. It allways ended up in the last possible place to search. Those bastards! Otherwise a great game.
It's a little late to reconsider once you've had the little bastards. Generally, the people that have the foresight to consider whether or not they can handle the responsibility of raising a child also have the foresight to use birth control and plan their families.
He's an American. Americans don't have world maps :-P
Sure we do. It's right here. Just take the map and go left. Or right, it doesn't make any difference.
http://www.google.com/maps
The human ecosystem (body) is host to ~10e14 bacterial cells. A bit more than a couple of billion. Your dirty. Scrub till you bleed if you want, it won't make much of a difference. They are everywhere, on your eyes, in your ears, in your GI tract, in every little pore on your body, all over the skin, in your mouth. Many of your normal flora can be pretty nasty too, if their virulence genes get turned on. You have a lot of Stahpolococcus sp. in your mouth and on your skin. Under the right conditions, they will betray you.
As for sterilizing a human, even if it was possible, it would be a very bad idea. Your normal flora are adapted to live peacefully side by side with. They protect you by outcompeting invasive foreign species. They manufacture vitamins in your intestines. It would not be a good idea to get rid of them.
Sterile people can be made in theory. It's been done with mice. Scientists aseptically cut them out of the uterous and raised them in sterile environments. They lived twice as long as ordinary mice, but they were weak and sickly the entire time and died of strange nasty diseases. Some of these sterile mice were exposed to a normal environment. They died soon after of horrible nasty diseases.
In summary. Long term refridgeration will cause your little buddies to turn on you and sterilization will lead to a bubble life.
Playing the Devil's Advocate here, I'm not -1 fucked up and by no means am I advocating incest or eugenics.
The main logical reason that siblings/close family members are prohibited from marrying and even having sex is that any offspring resulting from such a union would be more than likely to be unfit. Close inbreeding tends to diminish genetic diversity and increase homogenisity. That is, they would have a higher than average probability of having a rare genetic disorder. Hemophilia in the royal families of Europe is one example. The royal families of Europe have been interbreeding with each other for centuries, and there are not a whole lot of royal families. Since everyone has a common ancestor if you trace far enough back, some amount of mating with relatives has to be acceptable. I also add that cousins are allowed to marry in some states.
As for moral reasons, these unfit offspring are a burden upon society and the family. It is also a burden upon the resultant offspring.
Now, if the reason that we prohibit close family members from having sex is to protect the health of resultant offspring, and people are okay with this, than logically we should be able to prohibit a pair of carriers for some nasty disease, (hemophilia, tay sachs, etc...) from reproducing as it would produce unfit children.
Since homosexual relationships would not result in offspring, the aforementioned logical and moral reasons against incestual relations would not apply.
In truth, I think that a large portion of the incest taboo stems from the ewwww factor, an innate biological drive to not mate with siblings, but that's theorectical. In support, I offer the observation that in many (most?) mammalian herd/pack species, the male leaves the group it was born in and overtakes or joins another, whereas the females tend to remain in the group they were born into. This bioligical drive would reduce incest and unfit offspring. The ewwww factor is enough for me to not consider incest.
In contrast, there are many known cases of royal siblings marrying and producing offspring. One notable example is that of king Mausollos of Caria and his sister/wife Artemesia. They built the famous Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the world. The royal families of Europe is another example of incestual marriages, though they were more often cousins than siblings.
4) I have no idea when the fuck Apple became some sort of lightning-rod for computer-using fags, but it is really starting to piss me off. I loves me some pussy and I also use a G5 at home, and wish I didn't have to use Windows at work. I just have more of an open mind than about everyone I run into.
When Apple became fabulously stylish.
* Ability to live in neighborhoods deemed "families only"
Do these really exist? How is this legal?
They want to have those special rights like hospital visits
That's not a right any more than drawing a paycheck is. I have the privilege of going to certain hospitals in particular because I pay for medical insurance.
You fail to understand that hospital visitation rights is not about going to the doctor to get a checkup or anything like that. It's about visiting a sick loved one in the hospital. Many hospitals will deny visitation rights to non-family members outside of limited hours. Hospitals have no right to define families. When the gay community demands hospital visitation rights, they are demanding that hospitals recognize their domestic partner (non state sanctioned spouse) as a family member.
When straight couples bow down before the state and the church and ask for their blessings and permission to form a legally recognized family with inheritance rights, the aforementioned hospital visitation rights, and over a thousand other rights that are granted exclusively to married couples.
Assigning power of attorney is often an expensive legal process. It is automatically granted to legally married couples.
Insurance companies will frequently provide a discount in insurance rates for married couples. If those same two people, even if they were heterosexual and lived together for many years, would have to pay higher rates because their relationship and love for each were not endorsed by the state.
The states recognition of a marriage is the only thing has any legal basis. The religious ceremony doesn't mean shit as far as the law is concerned, nor should it. Most of the arguments against granting homosexual couples the right to marry are based on arguments from tradition.
Personally, I think the state should get out of the marriage business altogether. It should divorce itself from promoting, regulating, and recognizing marriage. I have no problem with recognizing civil unions with most of the benefits that currently come with marriage though. I also have no problem with polyamorous marriages either. Whatever floats your boat, as long as it doesn't interfere with my rights.
Propaganda is the manipulation or fabrication of information for the sake of influencing public opinion, which is exactly what these PR companies do.
There is no discernible difference between propaganda and PR drivel. They both spin the facts to put a positive shine on their team and a great stinking stain on the opposition. See political ads. See those adds from Exxon on how they are helping to preserve the environment for tigers.
Buson-Marsteller, the worlds largest PR firm, has in the past contracted their services to governments, including brutal dictators.
The better name you seek... is propaganda.
My former roommate worked for Gamestop for a while, and had to get a minimum of new subscriptions. I don't think it was too high, but every now and then, he would end up with a new subscription for himself. Every month I still receive three copies of the magazine.
"device designed and marketed as useful primarily for stimulation of the human genital organs; "
Sounds like dildos are illegal.
And while we're at it, the Catholics didn't burn witches in the dark ages; it was a heresy to even believe in them until the High Middle Ages, and it was the Protestants who made witch hunting an organized sport.
First, the high middle ages lasted from 1000-1200 or 1050-1400, depending on your source. Either way, they started just before the time period given by the GP.
Second, the most famous witch hunting manuel is the Malleus Maleficarum, written by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, on orders of the Pope Innocent VIII, a Catholic. The papal bull was issured on Dec. 9, 1484. The protestant reformation didn't kick off until 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his edicts to the door. There were earlier attempts, but none of them ignited like his did. Henry V, in 1419, prosecuted his stepmother, Joan of Navarre, for attempting to kill him via witchcraft. So, what we can see is that witches and witch hunting were in vogue before the protestants were around.
The most famous witch hunting manuel is the Malleus Maleficarum, written by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, on orders of the Pope Innocent VIII. The papal bull was issured on Dec. 9, 1484. The protestant reformation didn't kick off until 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his edicts to the door. There were earlier attempts, but none of them ignited like his did. Henry V, in 1419, prosecuted his stepmother, Joan of Navarre, for attempting to kill him via witchcraft. So, what we can see is that witches and witch hunting were in vogue before the protestants were around.
What other lights?
That blue led from the computer.
We allready have illumiphiles, they just don't buy $400 light bulbs.
Having worked in photolabs for a couple of years, we had to get special daylight flourescent bulbs. We couldn't just throw in any bulb. This is because natural color was so important to putting out a quality product. Regular flourescent bulbs have a greenish cast to them. You can sometimes see this if your in an incandescent or sunlit room, and look off to a flourescent lit room in the distance. If you still have a film camera, try taking photographs under different lights. Flourescents will generally be green, especially if they are cheap. (You can buy color balanced flourescents.) Tungsten filaments will have a very orange color to them. Ask the tech not to do any color corrections on the film.
Are you perhaps going into flourescent lighting after sitting out in the sun?
Different bulbs emit light in different frequencies. If you take a photograph on color film of a room lit with a tungsten bulb, it will appear orange; with flourescent bulbs, it will appear green. You can sometimes see this if your sitting in an incandescent lit room and can see another room off in the distance lit with flourescent bulbs. You can even buy special filters for photographing under these light conditions. Flourescent bulbs can also be purchased with different color balances. 9500K and 6500K are two common ones. These are also the same as on your monitor and comes from Planckian black body radiation.
As another poster mentioned, your brain does compensate for these different light spectra, so you tend not to notice the differences between bulbs. If you have a pair of rose colored glasses or ski goggles (other colors will work too), try putting them on for a while. First thing you should notice is that every thing has a rosey tint to it. After a few moments, everything will begin to look normal again. Take them off and everything will have a bluish cast. The brain has one hell of an image processor, but that's a post for another story.
Targeting emotions IS targeting the brain.
Try the writings of Epicurus of Samos. You can read them here: http://www.epicurus.net/ or just buy a printed copy like I did. Not religious per se, but a good guide on how to live the good life. And no, it's not about living a life of maximum pleasure.
You might also be interested in the Eddas, particularily the Havamal from the Poetic Edda. In my not so humble opinion, the Norse myths are better than the Greek myths. They're funnier for one, and as a non-theist, Ragnorak has a certain appeal.
3) You need a little science for this one, but it is possible to sequence DNA, and show mistakes happen.
g yP ages/A/AmesTest.html
/. user for example.
You don't have to sequence DNA, just do an Ames test with a known mutagen. You probably have one of those in your kitchen or bathroom. Of course, a His- strain of salmanella or whatever easily selected strain of a species you want and some His- media aren't exactly the sort of thing that most people keep in their kitchen. Anyhow, what will happen is this, some revertant mutants will randomly appear throughout the plate, and if the chemical is a mutagen, there will be a distinct clustering of mutants around the paper disk soaked in the mutagen.
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/Biolo
5) Such differences yield to different probabilities for a given organism to survive and reproduce.
See the average
6) More children are born than survive to adulthood.
Not every organism that reaches adulthood will reproduce. Many people die of old age without reproducing or having the capability of reproducing. Yes, i'm nitpicking.
Piggybacking here,
You should also HAND write it. Don't send an email, don't print out a typewritten letter, hand write it. For some reason, politicians count these as being worth more than the email or typed letter. Probably because hand written letters take more effort and are more likely to be written by older people. Older people vote in higher proportions than younger people. At least this is what I was told when I worked for grass roots political group.
Attaching a contribution for his or her reelection fund is also a good idea, because then you are a campaign contributor and not just some curmudgeonly citizen.
This is why people have a large portion of their brain dedicated to ignoring stuff.
It's True!
The thalamus filters information heading towards the cortex, and the reticular activating system (in the brain stem) filters out extraneous information, i.e. constantly present odors, background hums, etc. You'd go crazy if this was broken.
No, because strippers don't like coins.
You might want to look into the idea of memetics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
http://wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/7.11/pers inger.html?pg=1&topic=&topic_set=
What about this guy?
He seems to have developed and built a device which induces religious feelings in people.
Seems we have prior art too.
http://wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/7.11/pers inger.html?pg=2&topic=&topic_set=
h tm l
http://www.geocities.com/satanicus_2/GodHelmet.
Micheal Persinger built a "god helmet" which induces feelings of being at one with god or the universe via magnetic fields. It should also be able to induce other sensory experiences as well. I think we have a case for prior art here.