I am a Canadian businessman wrongfully accused of larceny. All othe avenues have been denied to me and, although I am an honest businessman, I have been force to take drastic measures and seek the assistance of a third party. As a result of recent ventures I have pursued, I am in possession of a bank account with a balance of $3,226,783.00 United States Dollars, but I have not been allowed by the authorities to acces these funds while incarcerated. I have been informed by another party (google) that you are an honest and godfearing individual whom I can entrust a mutually beneficial business opportunity. Should you assist me in making bail and paying my court fees, I will gladly split the money in the account as soon as I can reach the bank.
Please contact me during the specified visiting hours at the correctional institute where I currently reside. Ask for Cell Block 22A.
- JOHN DOE
PS: Apologies for not typing in all capital letters, but the authorities would not allow it. I mean no disrespect and hope this will not impact our potential partnership.
Beat me to it! That's always been one of my favorites at the New Yorker, just behind this other airplane themed comic (in the GIF it's almost indecipherable, but the text reads "Well, back to the old drawing board").
And for those keeping track at home, Ladies and Gentlemen, our score for witty observations stands at:
ConceptJunkie: 2
Embedded Geek: 1
Note, however that the goal for Embedded Geek was questionable and on review of the replay tapes will likely be revoked. He will also be given a red card , bludgeoned, and fed to the Slashdot Hooligans in the stands. Now, on to the latest Brockian Ultra Cricket scores...
In fact, I have heard both quotes - Sturgeon's (as I stated) and also Donaldson's. I was unable to remember the specifics of either well enough to have Google give me hits to correctly attribute.
Sorry to reply to my own post, but I had another thought...
For much the same reasons I ranted on above, I've always hated "Messianic" fiction. Specifically, one where the hero is "the chosen one," prophesized as being the hero. After all, if you're destained by God to be a hero, where is the sense of jeopardy? The tension? Neo in "The Matrix" is no hero - he's just a plaything of prophecy, an empty vessel. A blank slate. Viewed that way, casting Keanu Reeves as Neo was an act of absolute genius.
(I had problems over this with "Dune," too, but no where near as bad as Matrix)
Nah, give me a real hero. A guy covered in mud and crap,scared out of his wits over what is a really dangerous situation - Robert Redford playing a stunned bookworm in "Three Days of the Condor," Sigourney Weaver as the phobic Ripley in "Aliens," Tom Hanks in "Private Ryan" playing, well, Tom Hanks. Real people, with real fears, stepping up to the plate and doing their best.
And since it's fiction instead of real life, their best just happens to be good enough to beat the bad guys.
I tried Googling on "99% Rule" and couldn't find out who originally said it (or, more likely, who has become known for saying it - two entirely different concepts). If I'd been as optimistic as Sturgeon, I would have found his attribution.
Good points, but I feel these observations are more pertinent for the poorly written end of the genres (e.g. Sword and Sorcery on the one hand and imitative Cyberpunk on the other) rather than the well crafted works. A hero can be written to be interesting and still classically good by imbuing him with flaws, doubts, or inner conflicts. Conversely, a really vile villain absolutely needs to be sympathetic enough so the reader can relate to him/her/it and then pass judgement and say "I understand your motivation, but you've gone too damn far...". Dig through the best written examples in any genre - SF, fantasy, mystery Western, whatever - and you can find these are universal truths of literature.
As a total tangent, some of the best written examples of flawed, but still good characters I have come across are in Tim Powers' books. In The Strength of Her Regard he has a an addict as a protagonist (the whole book treats Vampirism as an addiction). In Declare, his OSS agent commits all kinds of horrid acts to prevent even worse from happening. Finally, his character in On Stranger Tides is a puppeteer (!) who finds himself completely out of his depth with pirates and occult magic, yet finds the strength to persevere, even when at one point when he literally all he wants to do is sit down in the mud and cry.
None of these protagonists could be considered selfish or amoral, their failings driven by fear or hopelessness. But by stepping past these flaws, they become heroes in the classic sense.
Apologies if I'm redundant on this (someone just dump a mod point on it - don't bother flaming), but you are demonstrating a very valid application of the 99% Rule of Art. Specifically, 99% of all art in any given media or era is garbage. It doesn't matter if you refer to science fiction or fantasy literature, classical or hip hop music, plays produced on Broadway, Geocities webpages, or Classical Greek and Roman sculpture. The vast majority is crap, some are pleasant and forgetable, but (assuming you have an open mind) there are inevitably a few gems floating about - usually under 1% of the total artwork produced.
Older works, however (e.g. Golden Age SF or Renisance portraiture) have had the advantage of seeing the worst of the garbage fall away (Heck, did *you* save the crappy poetry you wrote in 7th grade?). As a result, we tend to forget the garbage that came before it and treat the current crop more critically ("Back in *my* day the music was better..."). It's an ongoing process you can see it today if you turn to any oldies station - more Santana and less Partidge Family. The ratio is definately different than the actual play and sales ratios you saw when the songs were new.
About a year ago, I shoved my name into Google and was suprised to come across an entry for myself in the Pen and Paper RPG database from an article I wrote for Dragon Annual 5. I never bothered trying to update them with my bio or the other articles I wrote for Dragon because I figured no one ever read the thing.
Since this posting is the first reference I ever came across for the PPRPGDB, I'm wondering if perhaps I should take a couple of minutes and update the entry. Does anyone out there actually use the thing? Should I bother?
IT people were outstandingly unsympathetic when factory workers' jobs started going overseas 30 or 40 years ago
Guilty as charged. 30 years ago, early in my career, I didn't give a tinkers damn about the plight of blue collar workers. "Look for the Union Label"? Hell no. Detroit autoworkers? Good ridance! It was all "me! me! me!" I was exceptionally self absorbed.
Of course, most four year olds are like that.
</likely redundant>
I have an 87 year old aunt in New Jersey (by the seashore, not where Tony Soprano dumps the bodies) and almost half the women in her garden club have busted their hips, most of them by slipping on the ice in the morning while getting their mail.
I have an 87 year old aunt in New Jersey (by the seashore, not up North where Tony Soprano dumps the bodies) and almost half the women in her garden club have busted their hips. While there are various scenarios, most of them were injured by slipping on the ice in the morning while getting their mail.
Several years ago, Alice decided not to become a statistic. She had always been a swimmer, but made a point to continue her exercise, swimming every day at the community pool. She took an additional, somewhat unorthodox precaution.
In the winter she changes her daily routine. Every morning, she opens her garage, backs her Buick down the length of her driveway, and parks the thing. She then leans out to get her mail from the box, cranks the engine, and returns.
Her neighbors used to think she was nuts.
She doesn't care. She has both hips intact.
I tried posting one a while back, along with a link to a site that translates dashes and dots back to plaintext. It didn't work, either. Instead, I wound up spelling "di-di-di da-da-da..."
Of course, no good deed goes unpunished. The only response posted was "STFU" in Morse. *It* got modded as "Funny."
Avoiding the obvious (and questionable taste) jokes about malt liquor and cardboard shelter focus groups, I really have to wonder about this. I mean, whenever there's a list of potential customers, someone in the marketing industry winds up using/exploiting it to go after the "next big demographic."
And, yes, I know the story indicates it would be a restricted government database, but I have to wonder if someone on Madison Avenue is already working on a privately held equivilent.
Just an idle thought (or as George Carlin said, "These are the thoughts that kept me out of the good schools")
There's been suggestions by other posters about putting sensors in these cylinders and also questions about making the packages survive the drop. The fact is this has all been done before.
The U.S. military actually used a lower tech version of the sensor net along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in 1966. The program was called "Igloo White" and involved a number of audio and seismic sensors. Check out this link and look at page 11 for details. Very interesting read.
Some bits:
Initially unit cost was $2145 and battery life was two weeks. By the end of the program, the battery was improved (the paper doesn't say by how much, though) and the units costed as little as $15. Presumably, costs would drop similarly when the modern version gets fielded.
IBM 360-65 mainframes were used to correlate massive amounts of data and choose targets for strikes, although the effectiveness of the system (like almost everything deployed in Vietnam) was likely exagerated.
Some sensors were booby trapped to prevent tampering. Nevertheless, some North Vietnamese troops developed countermeasures - shooting dropped units out of trees, playing tape recordings of trucks near them, or (presumably for chemical sensors) placing bags of livestock urine nearby.
Jonathan Shapiro of the
Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute recently posted a commentary on the fact that Windows 2000 (with service pack 3) has been assigned a Common Criteria certification Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) level of 4. In response to the question "What does this mean?", he replies:
Security experts have been saying for years that the security of the Windows family of products is hopelessly inadequate. Now there is a rigorous government certification confirming this.
<hologram salespitch, translated from Bovine> Good to see you in the slaughterhouse, Ms. Mirabelle! How're the calves doing? Perhaps you'd be interested in the latest cowbells from The Gap? Or perhaps some high quality hay from McDonalds for your last meal? After all, they serve McNuggets there, too!
</salespitch>
(Apologies if redundant because someone beat me to it - just mod it down. Don't waste time flaming)
Ironically, you can't *want* to die under this set of rules...
Having had a recent, miserable experience with an elderly relative who had made no provisions for his care, I would guess (hope?) that someone should be able to fill out the proper paperwork and make it stick. Even if it's as tough as you say in AZ, I'd bet someone on a bar assosciation committee is at least working on exactly what would be required.
The real issue, of course, is for a family to guess what the person wanted. When was the last time you sat down with Dad over a beer and asked him if CPR qualifies as a "heroic" action to save his life? A heart/lung machine? Intravenous antibiotics? Does he want dialysis 4 hours a day, 5 days a week if he winds up with dementia and can't communicate? Even if there's an off chance it'll cure the dementia?
A lot of this is not directly related to your EMT experieince, but the root issue is the same: proper planning for what your wishes are in advance. Heck, even after the 20 months of Hell we've gone through, my wife and I still haven't put together our wills or medical power of attorneys.
Human nature, I guess.
You got me there. Admittedly, you're talking about a very specific set of circumstances, but you've got a point. I have an argument that supports the idea, but it isn't all that strong, so please take it with a grain of salt:
Using your lawn mowing example, you could think of it as your yard getting *so* bad that the city is fining you as an eyesore. If city cleanup crews come up and do your yard after the deadline, the city can stick you with a bill (because you were violating the law and were given a reasonable time to correct the situation). In the ambulance case, ambulance services (as I understand it) operate under a monopoly granted by the municipality. Thus, they have the legal right to act as the city - e.g. drag your carcass to the hospital and then stick you with a bill (the rates for which were presumably set with the city's blessing when they granted the monopoly).
This, of course, compares someone getting injured and unconscious akin to a criminal (or at least someone who has commited an infraction [an "infractioner"?]). I'm sure there are other ways that the argument falls apart.
Slashdot Mirror
I am a Canadian businessman wrongfully accused of larceny. All othe avenues have been denied to me and, although I am an honest businessman, I have been force to take drastic measures and seek the assistance of a third party. As a result of recent ventures I have pursued, I am in possession of a bank account with a balance of $3,226,783.00 United States Dollars, but I have not been allowed by the authorities to acces these funds while incarcerated. I have been informed by another party (google) that you are an honest and godfearing individual whom I can entrust a mutually beneficial business opportunity. Should you assist me in making bail and paying my court fees, I will gladly split the money in the account as soon as I can reach the bank.
Please contact me during the specified visiting hours at the correctional institute where I currently reside. Ask for Cell Block 22A.
- JOHN DOE
PS: Apologies for not typing in all capital letters, but the authorities would not allow it. I mean no disrespect and hope this will not impact our potential partnership.
Apple iPod
15 GB model, lightly used
167 songs loaded
The RIAA says it's worth about $25 million. I'll let it go for $5 million, plus shipping.
(From rec.humor.funny)
Beat me to it! That's always been one of my favorites at the New Yorker, just behind this other airplane themed comic (in the GIF it's almost indecipherable, but the text reads "Well, back to the old drawing board").
- ConceptJunkie: 2
- Embedded Geek: 1
Note, however that the goal for Embedded Geek was questionable and on review of the replay tapes will likely be revoked. He will also be given a red card , bludgeoned, and fed to the Slashdot Hooligans in the stands. Now, on to the latest Brockian Ultra Cricket scores...(Translation: Good one, ConceptJunkie!)
In fact, I have heard both quotes - Sturgeon's (as I stated) and also Donaldson's. I was unable to remember the specifics of either well enough to have Google give me hits to correctly attribute.
Thanks for the catch.
For much the same reasons I ranted on above, I've always hated "Messianic" fiction. Specifically, one where the hero is "the chosen one," prophesized as being the hero. After all, if you're destained by God to be a hero, where is the sense of jeopardy? The tension? Neo in "The Matrix" is no hero - he's just a plaything of prophecy, an empty vessel. A blank slate. Viewed that way, casting Keanu Reeves as Neo was an act of absolute genius.
(I had problems over this with "Dune," too, but no where near as bad as Matrix)
Nah, give me a real hero. A guy covered in mud and crap,scared out of his wits over what is a really dangerous situation - Robert Redford playing a stunned bookworm in "Three Days of the Condor," Sigourney Weaver as the phobic Ripley in "Aliens," Tom Hanks in "Private Ryan" playing, well, Tom Hanks. Real people, with real fears, stepping up to the plate and doing their best.
And since it's fiction instead of real life, their best just happens to be good enough to beat the bad guys.
...well, except for the second head and third hand.
Thanks again.
As a total tangent, some of the best written examples of flawed, but still good characters I have come across are in Tim Powers' books. In The Strength of Her Regard he has a an addict as a protagonist (the whole book treats Vampirism as an addiction). In Declare, his OSS agent commits all kinds of horrid acts to prevent even worse from happening. Finally, his character in On Stranger Tides is a puppeteer (!) who finds himself completely out of his depth with pirates and occult magic, yet finds the strength to persevere, even when at one point when he literally all he wants to do is sit down in the mud and cry.
None of these protagonists could be considered selfish or amoral, their failings driven by fear or hopelessness. But by stepping past these flaws, they become heroes in the classic sense.
And usually, the get the girl, too. (*GRIN*)
Older works, however (e.g. Golden Age SF or Renisance portraiture) have had the advantage of seeing the worst of the garbage fall away (Heck, did *you* save the crappy poetry you wrote in 7th grade?). As a result, we tend to forget the garbage that came before it and treat the current crop more critically ("Back in *my* day the music was better..."). It's an ongoing process you can see it today if you turn to any oldies station - more Santana and less Partidge Family. The ratio is definately different than the actual play and sales ratios you saw when the songs were new.
Just something to think about...
Are you guys hiring?
</obvious>
Since this posting is the first reference I ever came across for the PPRPGDB, I'm wondering if perhaps I should take a couple of minutes and update the entry. Does anyone out there actually use the thing? Should I bother?
I mean, c'mon, didn't these guys ever see the drag race scene from Grease?
IT people were outstandingly unsympathetic when factory workers' jobs started going overseas 30 or 40 years ago
Guilty as charged. 30 years ago, early in my career, I didn't give a tinkers damn about the plight of blue collar workers. "Look for the Union Label"? Hell no. Detroit autoworkers? Good ridance! It was all "me! me! me!" I was exceptionally self absorbed.
Of course, most four year olds are like that.
</likely redundant>
"This isn't the post you're looking for. Move along... Move along..."
Alcie decided not to become a
Several years ago, Alice decided not to become a statistic. She had always been a swimmer, but made a point to continue her exercise, swimming every day at the community pool. She took an additional, somewhat unorthodox precaution.
In the winter she changes her daily routine. Every morning, she opens her garage, backs her Buick down the length of her driveway, and parks the thing. She then leans out to get her mail from the box, cranks the engine, and returns.
Her neighbors used to think she was nuts. She doesn't care. She has both hips intact.
Of course, no good deed goes unpunished. The only response posted was "STFU" in Morse. *It* got modded as "Funny."
*SIGH* I hate playing the straight man...
And, yes, I know the story indicates it would be a restricted government database, but I have to wonder if someone on Madison Avenue is already working on a privately held equivilent.
Just an idle thought (or as George Carlin said, "These are the thoughts that kept me out of the good schools")
The U.S. military actually used a lower tech version of the sensor net along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in 1966. The program was called "Igloo White" and involved a number of audio and seismic sensors. Check out this link and look at page 11 for details. Very interesting read.
Some bits:
Security experts have been saying for years that the security of the Windows family of products is hopelessly inadequate. Now there is a rigorous government certification confirming this.
(Originally taken from rec.humor.funny).
Good to see you in the slaughterhouse, Ms. Mirabelle! How're the calves doing? Perhaps you'd be interested in the latest cowbells from The Gap? Or perhaps some high quality hay from McDonalds for your last meal? After all, they serve McNuggets there, too!
</salespitch>
(Apologies if redundant because someone beat me to it - just mod it down. Don't waste time flaming)
Having had a recent, miserable experience with an elderly relative who had made no provisions for his care, I would guess (hope?) that someone should be able to fill out the proper paperwork and make it stick. Even if it's as tough as you say in AZ, I'd bet someone on a bar assosciation committee is at least working on exactly what would be required.
The real issue, of course, is for a family to guess what the person wanted. When was the last time you sat down with Dad over a beer and asked him if CPR qualifies as a "heroic" action to save his life? A heart/lung machine? Intravenous antibiotics? Does he want dialysis 4 hours a day, 5 days a week if he winds up with dementia and can't communicate? Even if there's an off chance it'll cure the dementia?
A lot of this is not directly related to your EMT experieince, but the root issue is the same: proper planning for what your wishes are in advance. Heck, even after the 20 months of Hell we've gone through, my wife and I still haven't put together our wills or medical power of attorneys. Human nature, I guess.
Healthcare for poor people? That's just plumb weird. All I can say is I'd hate to get injured playing football and have to...
What? You call what "football"?
Forget it. I give up.
<\can't resist>
Using your lawn mowing example, you could think of it as your yard getting *so* bad that the city is fining you as an eyesore. If city cleanup crews come up and do your yard after the deadline, the city can stick you with a bill (because you were violating the law and were given a reasonable time to correct the situation). In the ambulance case, ambulance services (as I understand it) operate under a monopoly granted by the municipality. Thus, they have the legal right to act as the city - e.g. drag your carcass to the hospital and then stick you with a bill (the rates for which were presumably set with the city's blessing when they granted the monopoly).
This, of course, compares someone getting injured and unconscious akin to a criminal (or at least someone who has commited an infraction [an "infractioner"?]). I'm sure there are other ways that the argument falls apart.