Now, the problem with using the bomb at all is, we killed thousands upon thousands of civilians. This should have been off limits. Granted, it wasn't. We bombed the hell out of dresden in germany, though not with an atomic bomb, but it was wrong there too. Its one thing to fight a war with soldiers, but its quite another to slaughter civilians who are not involved in the war.
We bombed the hell out of Japan before dropping the atomic bomb also. Heck, the fire-bombing alone killed more people and devestated more area than the atomic bomb. As for bombing civilians, for one, as time goes on, we're finding it harder and harder to seperate civilians from soldiers. Even apart from guerilla forces like we faced in Vietnam, people working the factories creating ammunition, thinking up new ways to kill, designing the software for the guidance systems... they're all a part of the war. Sure, they can make excuses to themselves that theirs is not the finger that pulls the trigger, but they're involved. Now ideally, for things like factories, one warns the populace to evacuate so that you just get the infrastructure, but a) that warns the enemy that you're going to strike and b) the populace may not be free to move. *wry grin* If it's a choice between the possible death from bombs or an almost certain death at the hands of your country's soldiers who are standing guard at the border, you may be inclined to trust to the bomb shelters.
Also, there's a distinguishing between pre-teens and teens. Although 18 is usually considered the age of consent, mother nature attracts people to fully sexually developed children in the age range of 13-18.
The term you're looking for is Ephebophilia, attraction tothose who are sexually mature, if not of age. It's listed in psychology textbooks as being distinct from pedophilia. For one, it's not considered to be an actual mental illness. And honestly, doesn't that make sense? Being sexually attracted to a child is clearly against human nature, as there's no reproductive capability there. On the other hand, a sexually mature adolescent...
OTOH, to me, mental age should be a condition of ages of consent. I know some people who would have been able to handle sex from age 14 and a large amount of people will never be mature enough to deal with sex and its consequences.
Actually, wasn't there a big stink recently about how Windows Media Player automatically followed the URL involved with a license, meaning that it was virtual child's play to get a person to an exploited site, particularly if they're using the default setting of getting licenses automatically?
Seems to me that if the real concern is ONLY to not endanger children - then why doesn't the government create really good simulation software and simulate child pornography? Those who want to see child pornography get what they want, and the government gets what it wants since no children have to be abused anymore.
I'm forgetting the exact name of the act in the US, but there was a law put into force about 5 years ago, got repealed a few years ago, that specifically targetted simulated pornography for the reason you state, that the people involved might be emboldened by the viewing of the pictures to actually try something with a real child. *wry grin* I remember that when the law went into effect, the people who were most frightened were fanfiction authors. Suddenly, they had to come to grips with that the Sailor Moon characters were, in fact, defined to be about 15 and were therefore illegal to write sex scenes with. It did raise an interesting question, though, as to where exactly the line between appearance and reality needed to be drawn. In the case of these fictional characters, most of them looked much older, but official backstory was that they were younger. As an analogue, I have a female friend from high school who's currently 23, but doesn't look a day over 13, just something that runs in the females of her family line. Are pictures of her illegal? She looks underage and without context, any picture of her would seem to be illegal, but in actuality, she's in her majority. *wry grin* It raises all kinds of thorny questions, which is probably why the act was repealed.
Interestingly enough, I remember reading an article about a decade ago about how video-game manufacturers were trying to introduce legislation to make it illegal to sell used games unless you were a licensed reseller. Never heard much after that, but I'm sure they've flirted with the idea before.
A few computer programs already go this direction. AFAIK, 3d Studio is non-transferrable and I remember there being a big stink about World of Warcraft not being able to be re-sold because you couldn't acquire a new account with a resold copy. To make it illegal only requires some fine print in the licensing agreement. To make it impossible (or very difficult), you only need to have some way to link that specific copy of the software to the computer it was first installed on, not too difficult in this era of increased connectivity.
Nowadays, it seems some companies are taking advantage of the lax review of patent documents (not really the fault of the patent examiners... they're overloaded with applications and not enough funding's being provided to hire more people) to patent ideas or concepts that they don't properly know how to implement so that when someone else manages to invent it, they can steal the invention.
Kind of reminds me of a science fiction story I read as a kid... this engineer is walking down the road when he sees a guy peddling toy saucers based on anti-gravity devices. After watching the demonstration, he buys one and is taught the trick, a piece of black thread inobtrusively linked to a pully, that the switch just powers some lights and sounds on the saucer. The engineer smiles and says it will make for a fun trick for the kids. The narrative then follows the vendor home where he says tells a man at a workbench that he sold 15 units that day and why the hell were they selling these saucers for $5 each when they cost $100 to make? The man at the workbench smiles and explains that somewhere out there, some bright individual is going to notice that operating the saucer without flipping the switch results in a broken thread. The inventor has never been able to get his device to output more than a small fraction of anti-gravity, but one day, someone will figure out how to improve the process whereupon he can leverage the patent he's got filed... ^_^ It was an amusing twist in the story to me.
It's funny, though, because when you start writing, typically no one is reading unless you've gone to some pains to advertise the fact that you were starting the blog. Therefore, you get kind of a guilty pleasure out of airing all of your dirty laundry, all of your private thoughts, because you know that the only people who'll read it are complete strangers who don't know you personally. Then, one day, you're walking down the hall at work when a co-worker who's going the opposite way remarks casually, "Nice blog," and your blood runs cold as you realize that you've been caught with your wedding tackle waving in the wind. *wry grin* And then you get cases like one friend of mine who had excerpts from her weblog about lighting up with her parents used against her during her truancy case. Or, in my case, I found out that a good portion of the people at my local community theater read my weblog after I posted a heated entry about a particular director. {shakes head ruefully} You think no one reads it until one day, someone does.
On the other hand, just today alone, I noticed a "Spider Blog" in some posts here on/. and strangely... I've been looking for the posts with the continuations just to find out what the spider did!
Remind me of a (probably apocryphal) legend about the government worker who finds he's bored, so he starts a Flypaper Report, detailing the number of flies caught in a nearby piece of flypaper each day. Day after day, he did this to relieve his boredom, posting the reports publically much like any other. Legend has it that the employee retired, resulting in several irate generals calling up his office and asking what the Hell happened to the Flypaper Report they read each day.
'Course these days, he'd probably be brought up on charges for revealing information that could be useful to terrorists... Heh, and that reminds me of the story told by my computer professor of how several news companies found that the easiest way to find out when something big was happening in the Pentagon was to keep track of pizza deliveries. When something big was going to happen, employees would stay late and order pizza. I don't really know what it had to do with software, but my teacher was like that with his stories.
I totally agree. Blogs are basically how I keep up with my out-of-town friends and what they're up to, not to mention out-of-town siblings. Only problem is, my mother is reading my blog now... *wry grin* The way I see it, it's her choice. We always had a tacit agreement growing up that there were things she knew existed in my life that she didn't want to know about. If she doesn't ask directly, I don't volunteer information. If she asks, I'm perfectly honest. Before, she had my little brother read my blog (he has one of his own too), and asked him to relay tidbits of information. Apparently me making a post about having a prospective girlfriend broke that trend for her, and she's actively reading now.
Odd... I've seen them in several locations in Kentucky including at my grandparents. Yes, the one on their property is male, but I'm suspecting they're not as rare as one might think.
Supposedly the major annoyances in cell phone conversations isn't how loudly the other person is talking, but the fact that you only hear one side of the conversation. The human brain just doesn't like that. I'd quote the study (which was mentioned on Slashdot IIRC), but I've forgotten where to find it.
Hidden stats and formulas - It also meant that you didn't know your race/class combo was non-viable until you had been playing it for 2 months. It also means that the developers will change the values every patch just to see what happens, i.e. they are experimenting on you.
Personally, I think a dynamic environment is where a lot of these games miss the boat. In the real world, if a particular tactic is extremely effective, features evolve to counter it. Heck, I suspect an automated system would even work a good bit of the time. If electricity is particularly effective against most monsters (which, oddly enough, is almost always the case in RPGs), it makes sense that the shockproof monsters would have a higher survival rate and start crowding out the others. If your character has the Lejendary Sword of Duality (+5 vs Idealists), word is bound to spread, and the player will find that he actually has adventuring parties sortying against him, seeking his mythic phat l00t. Fallout was interesting in this respect, as high level characters attracted more attention and stronger opponents, bounty hunters and the like.
For that matter, I think it would be interesting if the balance of power shifted over the course of a game. Maybe the magic is fading or the effects are changing. This would encourage players to generalize some and would reduce the this-race-and-class-is-best paradigm that often plagues these games. Now I doubt they'd go that far, as it would piss off the hardcore players who've done their best to min-max their character and would feel the hundreds of gaming hours they put into single-mindedly studying Flaming Fingers until it did uber-damage were wasted if fire-spells are becoming less powerful. *shrug* I do think it would be a cool idea, though. Heck, a single-player game would also be nice for that. It would reduce the boredom level of the higher levels where the games start lacking a challenge and it would inject a bit of realism into it.
Och... I hate quoting magazine articles which I lack cites for, but there was an article in Discover magazine that demonstrated that, with our current understanding of the mineral makeup of planets, Earth may be unusually rich in the proper types of elements for construction of radio equipment. ^_^ With the current debates on Intelligent Design, I'm surprised that hasn't come up...
"And note that Earth, the one planet that we know of that supports life, also has unusually high amounts of mineral deposits that allowed for man to develop higher technology. Clearly, there was intelligent design at work here."
Personally, I prefer the (probably mis-attributed) quote by Ben Franklin, "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
They're there because that's convenient for a primate to hold its baby, and they're that size in humans because a human baby needs a _lot_ of food.
I'll give you the first point. As for the second, breast size has nothing to do with milk production in humans. Small breasts tend to provide as much milk as huge ones.
My mother is manager of an elementary school cafeteria (my alma mater, actually) where they offer one lunch unless you have dietary restrictions (they've got diabetic kids, vegan kids, and a smattering of Hindu or Muslim kids who need slightly different meals). You get a main course, a side dish, vegetables, and a dessert. Government regulations require a nutritionally balanced and healthy meal to be served if you want any federal funding. *wry grin* And she knows many kids who eat nothing except for the dessert, tossing the rest, and then complaining of hunger throughout the day. It's kind of that leading a horse to water thing.
Now me, I never had anything to worry about. Mom packed us a sack lunch each day. IIRC, we were allowed to buy a milk once a week and a cafeteria lunch once a month. ^_^ And I had a tendency to circumvent things as the cafeteria ladies thought I was a darling child and had no problem with filling my lunch sack with food left over at the end of the lunch period. Ah, the days of coming home with bread bags (it's what my mother tended to package the sandwiches in) full of greasy cold french fries...
One of my co-workers used to have a newspaper humor column clipping about this. *grumble* Can't remember who it was by or great detail, but it was written by a woman, suggested that not only would it break down peoples' shame about their bodies, but that it would also allow for dermatologists to practice business while in-flight. ^_^ And then had a line afterwards about how she wasn't sure if she'd trust the bomb/drug-sniffing dogs to steer clear of her cockpit.
I think his real name was Angelo Espinoza or somesuch, was codenamed Skin and was a member of Generation X. You sound like a dead ringer for him. Gray skin, ethnic, narrow shoulders, flabby physique... (well, in his case, 6 feet of extra skin which had a tendency to bunch and fold in a way that made him generally look like he was melting unless he took great care to "suck it in." Congratulations! You've achieved superhero looks!
Seriously though, Marvel seems to not have too many problems in, at least, making their male superheros not always paragons of good looks. The females, on the other hand... short of the Morlocks (which had their share of stunning good looks), there aren't many ugly female superheroines. ^_^ Reminds me of a semi-serious article I saw once postulating that the mutant physiology resulted in no overweight mutants outside of those whose powers tended that way. Essentially, if you look at the massive amounts of energy these people expend or simply put out, they must be eating like horses just to keep from wasting away. Which, of course, doesn't entirely explain the large breasts, although the fact that they must be mainly muscle tissue explains their defiance of gravity...
As a lawyer's son, my response would be that the defense lawyer would surely hear of the photograph of the original being submitted for evidence and he would provide a photograph that was substantially similar, and submit it as a counterpoint. No matter how good of a photo you make, there will always be light differences in lighting and material angles. Heck, if these scrolls are hundreds of years old, I would be surprised if there were any way to get them to lie entirely flat that didn't also risk damaging the scrolls.
{shakes his head} Please don't think I'm attacking you in all of this. I agree that photographic evidence is something which should solve a lot of problems. Problem is, it doesn't. Truth of the matter is, law pretty much comes down to how good your lawyer is at presenting the case and how good he is at dismantling the other side's case. Evidence and testimony play a part, but in the end, it comes down to the lawyers and the whims of the jury.
The next question would be whether the jury would buy this. One of the consequences of a jury-based legal system is that it doesn't matter how right you are if you can't convince the jury to accept what you're proposing. Now admittedly, probably all that needs to happen to get that to occur is to get one of these CSI or Law/Order shows to introduce the technique.
*shrug* Some of it depends on how good you are at car shopping. Then, there's the matter of durability. I can get a POS car for about $500 locally. It will even run fine for a while after a few minor repairs. Unfortunately, after a year or two, the car's age will start showing and I'll be left with the choice of either doing costly repairs on it, or junking it and getting another car. I suspect that over the course of several years, the junk-and-buy-a-new-one might actually save me money. It would, however, add to the general waste in the environment and it would mean the additional hassle of switching cars every few years and quite possibly some sub-standard performance. While cost does not guarentee quality, you generally cannot get quality without some cost.
The MPAA doesn't see any additional licensing fees from me.
The RIAA doesn't count me, and I pay considerably less by being patient.
This works really well for video games and computer hardware too. I don't need to show anyone how cool I am by having the latest and the greatest because I'm patient.
I do much the same, although my motivation started more out of lack of money and hardware obsolete enough that I couldn't run the latest games. The only thing I'd add to that is that if you find a band or company that produces something you like, please find some way to support them. For instance, I really like Bethesda's software. I enjoyed Daggerfall. I'm still enjoying Morrowind years after its release (you've got to love open-ended worlds and the ability to change just about anything with their editor). I felt mighty proud when I bought copies of that software, figuring I was supporting them. Then, it hit me that I'd bought it used. Bethesda never saw a cent of my money unless you include what they got from the original owner. *shrug* So when I decided I had to have the next Freedom Force game, I bought directly from their website. As a pre-order, I waited an extra day and paid more than people who went to Best Buy (which, incidentally, is more than a tad messed-up, but apparently such was not their intent; there was a confusion with the shipping company), but I'm fairly sure my money is going directly to them. When Bethesda comes out with TES4:Oblivion, I will buy it off of their website and similarly, I'll hope that they get what's coming to them. *shrug* The only other thing I can think of to do to support them would be to buy the used copy and then send the difference as a donation (which might reduce the number of middlemen getting money, although I suspect the legal costs of accounting for donations might eat that up), but that seems kind of silly.
And in terms of music, support your local bands. If you hear some great music at the coffeehouse and the band has CDs for sale, go ahead and buy them. Yes, they tend to be fairly expensive, but with the small print run, the costs are a bit higher. And at least there, you can be pretty sure the band's getting the money, not some nebulous publisher.
Actually, if you RTFAed, one of the techniques listed does essentially that, albeit also analyzing the photo to determine handwriting style. The problem faced, apparently, is convincing the jury to consider this as true evidence that the two scrolls are the same. Handwriting analysis has been in courts (and public consciousness) long enough that people generally accept that you can show that a particular set of whorls and jots is characteristic of a particular author. Digital photographs... the precision involved in these scrolls means that the text is practically identical between scrolls, at least until you start getting on a very high level of magnification. Theoretically, the background could be analyzed, but I don't know how certain it is that the animal skin would remain looking the same over a few months or years of exposure to the ambient environment.
I wonder whether they could do a DNA analysis of the animal skin... I would imagine that for any given scroll, it's probably composed of a number of different individual animals and the mix is probably not the same for any given scroll. The catches would be a) DNA testing is not horribly cheap still, and b) DNA testing AFAIK, is still a mildly destructive process with dead materials.
Huh... I just took a trip to Germany and our tour guide said that one of the reasons that prices were so high in Germany were that originally the prices were in Deuschmarks and when the Euro was introduced (worth about 2 DM each), the shopkeepers simply changed the currency sign. Then again, she also seemed to have a grudge against the Germans (she was Hungarian), so it could be that this is more hearsay than anything else. Then again, your story seems to pretty much bear out.
What really bugged me, though, was how many European stores, particularly the ones that are franchises of American establishments, have started using the (n-1).95 prices instead of n. Darn it, it was kind of nice to be able to do business without accruing pockets full of change.
Or, alternately, a metal grill on the other end with a suitable amount of charcoal and you've got a food source too. Mmm... endangered species flesh. Can I interest you in some baby harp seal patties? It goes wonderfully with the bald eagle liver pâté...
But by far the most unpleasant part of the whole experience was the mundane discomfort of repeated wiping. (Tip: instead of TP, use your bathtub as a bidet and a plush towel to dry off.)
You might also try buying a packet of the flushable baby-wipes. I picked some up when I was going through a bout of discomfort and I've never looked back. You only really need one per visit and the material is durable enough that you can even insert a corner of it and swab out the inside.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, the problem with using the bomb at all is, we killed thousands upon thousands of civilians. This should have been off limits. Granted, it wasn't. We bombed the hell out of dresden in germany, though not with an atomic bomb, but it was wrong there too. Its one thing to fight a war with soldiers, but its quite another to slaughter civilians who are not involved in the war.
We bombed the hell out of Japan before dropping the atomic bomb also. Heck, the fire-bombing alone killed more people and devestated more area than the atomic bomb. As for bombing civilians, for one, as time goes on, we're finding it harder and harder to seperate civilians from soldiers. Even apart from guerilla forces like we faced in Vietnam, people working the factories creating ammunition, thinking up new ways to kill, designing the software for the guidance systems... they're all a part of the war. Sure, they can make excuses to themselves that theirs is not the finger that pulls the trigger, but they're involved. Now ideally, for things like factories, one warns the populace to evacuate so that you just get the infrastructure, but a) that warns the enemy that you're going to strike and b) the populace may not be free to move. *wry grin* If it's a choice between the possible death from bombs or an almost certain death at the hands of your country's soldiers who are standing guard at the border, you may be inclined to trust to the bomb shelters.
The term you're looking for is Ephebophilia, attraction tothose who are sexually mature, if not of age. It's listed in psychology textbooks as being distinct from pedophilia. For one, it's not considered to be an actual mental illness. And honestly, doesn't that make sense? Being sexually attracted to a child is clearly against human nature, as there's no reproductive capability there. On the other hand, a sexually mature adolescent...
OTOH, to me, mental age should be a condition of ages of consent. I know some people who would have been able to handle sex from age 14 and a large amount of people will never be mature enough to deal with sex and its consequences.
Actually, wasn't there a big stink recently about how Windows Media Player automatically followed the URL involved with a license, meaning that it was virtual child's play to get a person to an exploited site, particularly if they're using the default setting of getting licenses automatically?
I'm forgetting the exact name of the act in the US, but there was a law put into force about 5 years ago, got repealed a few years ago, that specifically targetted simulated pornography for the reason you state, that the people involved might be emboldened by the viewing of the pictures to actually try something with a real child. *wry grin* I remember that when the law went into effect, the people who were most frightened were fanfiction authors. Suddenly, they had to come to grips with that the Sailor Moon characters were, in fact, defined to be about 15 and were therefore illegal to write sex scenes with. It did raise an interesting question, though, as to where exactly the line between appearance and reality needed to be drawn. In the case of these fictional characters, most of them looked much older, but official backstory was that they were younger. As an analogue, I have a female friend from high school who's currently 23, but doesn't look a day over 13, just something that runs in the females of her family line. Are pictures of her illegal? She looks underage and without context, any picture of her would seem to be illegal, but in actuality, she's in her majority. *wry grin* It raises all kinds of thorny questions, which is probably why the act was repealed.
A few computer programs already go this direction. AFAIK, 3d Studio is non-transferrable and I remember there being a big stink about World of Warcraft not being able to be re-sold because you couldn't acquire a new account with a resold copy. To make it illegal only requires some fine print in the licensing agreement. To make it impossible (or very difficult), you only need to have some way to link that specific copy of the software to the computer it was first installed on, not too difficult in this era of increased connectivity.
Kind of reminds me of a science fiction story I read as a kid... this engineer is walking down the road when he sees a guy peddling toy saucers based on anti-gravity devices. After watching the demonstration, he buys one and is taught the trick, a piece of black thread inobtrusively linked to a pully, that the switch just powers some lights and sounds on the saucer. The engineer smiles and says it will make for a fun trick for the kids. The narrative then follows the vendor home where he says tells a man at a workbench that he sold 15 units that day and why the hell were they selling these saucers for $5 each when they cost $100 to make? The man at the workbench smiles and explains that somewhere out there, some bright individual is going to notice that operating the saucer without flipping the switch results in a broken thread. The inventor has never been able to get his device to output more than a small fraction of anti-gravity, but one day, someone will figure out how to improve the process whereupon he can leverage the patent he's got filed... ^_^ It was an amusing twist in the story to me.
It's funny, though, because when you start writing, typically no one is reading unless you've gone to some pains to advertise the fact that you were starting the blog. Therefore, you get kind of a guilty pleasure out of airing all of your dirty laundry, all of your private thoughts, because you know that the only people who'll read it are complete strangers who don't know you personally. Then, one day, you're walking down the hall at work when a co-worker who's going the opposite way remarks casually, "Nice blog," and your blood runs cold as you realize that you've been caught with your wedding tackle waving in the wind. *wry grin* And then you get cases like one friend of mine who had excerpts from her weblog about lighting up with her parents used against her during her truancy case. Or, in my case, I found out that a good portion of the people at my local community theater read my weblog after I posted a heated entry about a particular director. {shakes head ruefully} You think no one reads it until one day, someone does.
Remind me of a (probably apocryphal) legend about the government worker who finds he's bored, so he starts a Flypaper Report, detailing the number of flies caught in a nearby piece of flypaper each day. Day after day, he did this to relieve his boredom, posting the reports publically much like any other. Legend has it that the employee retired, resulting in several irate generals calling up his office and asking what the Hell happened to the Flypaper Report they read each day.
'Course these days, he'd probably be brought up on charges for revealing information that could be useful to terrorists... Heh, and that reminds me of the story told by my computer professor of how several news companies found that the easiest way to find out when something big was happening in the Pentagon was to keep track of pizza deliveries. When something big was going to happen, employees would stay late and order pizza. I don't really know what it had to do with software, but my teacher was like that with his stories.
I totally agree. Blogs are basically how I keep up with my out-of-town friends and what they're up to, not to mention out-of-town siblings. Only problem is, my mother is reading my blog now... *wry grin* The way I see it, it's her choice. We always had a tacit agreement growing up that there were things she knew existed in my life that she didn't want to know about. If she doesn't ask directly, I don't volunteer information. If she asks, I'm perfectly honest. Before, she had my little brother read my blog (he has one of his own too), and asked him to relay tidbits of information. Apparently me making a post about having a prospective girlfriend broke that trend for her, and she's actively reading now.
Odd... I've seen them in several locations in Kentucky including at my grandparents. Yes, the one on their property is male, but I'm suspecting they're not as rare as one might think.
Supposedly the major annoyances in cell phone conversations isn't how loudly the other person is talking, but the fact that you only hear one side of the conversation. The human brain just doesn't like that. I'd quote the study (which was mentioned on Slashdot IIRC), but I've forgotten where to find it.
Personally, I think a dynamic environment is where a lot of these games miss the boat. In the real world, if a particular tactic is extremely effective, features evolve to counter it. Heck, I suspect an automated system would even work a good bit of the time. If electricity is particularly effective against most monsters (which, oddly enough, is almost always the case in RPGs), it makes sense that the shockproof monsters would have a higher survival rate and start crowding out the others. If your character has the Lejendary Sword of Duality (+5 vs Idealists), word is bound to spread, and the player will find that he actually has adventuring parties sortying against him, seeking his mythic phat l00t. Fallout was interesting in this respect, as high level characters attracted more attention and stronger opponents, bounty hunters and the like.
For that matter, I think it would be interesting if the balance of power shifted over the course of a game. Maybe the magic is fading or the effects are changing. This would encourage players to generalize some and would reduce the this-race-and-class-is-best paradigm that often plagues these games. Now I doubt they'd go that far, as it would piss off the hardcore players who've done their best to min-max their character and would feel the hundreds of gaming hours they put into single-mindedly studying Flaming Fingers until it did uber-damage were wasted if fire-spells are becoming less powerful. *shrug* I do think it would be a cool idea, though. Heck, a single-player game would also be nice for that. It would reduce the boredom level of the higher levels where the games start lacking a challenge and it would inject a bit of realism into it.
Och... I hate quoting magazine articles which I lack cites for, but there was an article in Discover magazine that demonstrated that, with our current understanding of the mineral makeup of planets, Earth may be unusually rich in the proper types of elements for construction of radio equipment. ^_^ With the current debates on Intelligent Design, I'm surprised that hasn't come up...
"And note that Earth, the one planet that we know of that supports life, also has unusually high amounts of mineral deposits that allowed for man to develop higher technology. Clearly, there was intelligent design at work here."
Personally, I prefer the (probably mis-attributed) quote by Ben Franklin, "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
I'll give you the first point. As for the second, breast size has nothing to do with milk production in humans. Small breasts tend to provide as much milk as huge ones.
Now me, I never had anything to worry about. Mom packed us a sack lunch each day. IIRC, we were allowed to buy a milk once a week and a cafeteria lunch once a month. ^_^ And I had a tendency to circumvent things as the cafeteria ladies thought I was a darling child and had no problem with filling my lunch sack with food left over at the end of the lunch period. Ah, the days of coming home with bread bags (it's what my mother tended to package the sandwiches in) full of greasy cold french fries...
One of my co-workers used to have a newspaper humor column clipping about this. *grumble* Can't remember who it was by or great detail, but it was written by a woman, suggested that not only would it break down peoples' shame about their bodies, but that it would also allow for dermatologists to practice business while in-flight. ^_^ And then had a line afterwards about how she wasn't sure if she'd trust the bomb/drug-sniffing dogs to steer clear of her cockpit.
Seriously though, Marvel seems to not have too many problems in, at least, making their male superheros not always paragons of good looks. The females, on the other hand... short of the Morlocks (which had their share of stunning good looks), there aren't many ugly female superheroines. ^_^ Reminds me of a semi-serious article I saw once postulating that the mutant physiology resulted in no overweight mutants outside of those whose powers tended that way. Essentially, if you look at the massive amounts of energy these people expend or simply put out, they must be eating like horses just to keep from wasting away. Which, of course, doesn't entirely explain the large breasts, although the fact that they must be mainly muscle tissue explains their defiance of gravity...
{shakes his head} Please don't think I'm attacking you in all of this. I agree that photographic evidence is something which should solve a lot of problems. Problem is, it doesn't. Truth of the matter is, law pretty much comes down to how good your lawyer is at presenting the case and how good he is at dismantling the other side's case. Evidence and testimony play a part, but in the end, it comes down to the lawyers and the whims of the jury.
The next question would be whether the jury would buy this. One of the consequences of a jury-based legal system is that it doesn't matter how right you are if you can't convince the jury to accept what you're proposing. Now admittedly, probably all that needs to happen to get that to occur is to get one of these CSI or Law/Order shows to introduce the technique.
*shrug* Some of it depends on how good you are at car shopping. Then, there's the matter of durability. I can get a POS car for about $500 locally. It will even run fine for a while after a few minor repairs. Unfortunately, after a year or two, the car's age will start showing and I'll be left with the choice of either doing costly repairs on it, or junking it and getting another car. I suspect that over the course of several years, the junk-and-buy-a-new-one might actually save me money. It would, however, add to the general waste in the environment and it would mean the additional hassle of switching cars every few years and quite possibly some sub-standard performance. While cost does not guarentee quality, you generally cannot get quality without some cost.
The MPAA doesn't see any additional licensing fees from me.
The RIAA doesn't count me, and I pay considerably less by being patient.
This works really well for video games and computer hardware too. I don't need to show anyone how cool I am by having the latest and the greatest because I'm patient.
I do much the same, although my motivation started more out of lack of money and hardware obsolete enough that I couldn't run the latest games. The only thing I'd add to that is that if you find a band or company that produces something you like, please find some way to support them. For instance, I really like Bethesda's software. I enjoyed Daggerfall. I'm still enjoying Morrowind years after its release (you've got to love open-ended worlds and the ability to change just about anything with their editor). I felt mighty proud when I bought copies of that software, figuring I was supporting them. Then, it hit me that I'd bought it used. Bethesda never saw a cent of my money unless you include what they got from the original owner. *shrug* So when I decided I had to have the next Freedom Force game, I bought directly from their website. As a pre-order, I waited an extra day and paid more than people who went to Best Buy (which, incidentally, is more than a tad messed-up, but apparently such was not their intent; there was a confusion with the shipping company), but I'm fairly sure my money is going directly to them. When Bethesda comes out with TES4:Oblivion, I will buy it off of their website and similarly, I'll hope that they get what's coming to them. *shrug* The only other thing I can think of to do to support them would be to buy the used copy and then send the difference as a donation (which might reduce the number of middlemen getting money, although I suspect the legal costs of accounting for donations might eat that up), but that seems kind of silly.
And in terms of music, support your local bands. If you hear some great music at the coffeehouse and the band has CDs for sale, go ahead and buy them. Yes, they tend to be fairly expensive, but with the small print run, the costs are a bit higher. And at least there, you can be pretty sure the band's getting the money, not some nebulous publisher.
I wonder whether they could do a DNA analysis of the animal skin... I would imagine that for any given scroll, it's probably composed of a number of different individual animals and the mix is probably not the same for any given scroll. The catches would be a) DNA testing is not horribly cheap still, and b) DNA testing AFAIK, is still a mildly destructive process with dead materials.
What really bugged me, though, was how many European stores, particularly the ones that are franchises of American establishments, have started using the (n-1).95 prices instead of n. Darn it, it was kind of nice to be able to do business without accruing pockets full of change.
Or, alternately, a metal grill on the other end with a suitable amount of charcoal and you've got a food source too. Mmm... endangered species flesh. Can I interest you in some baby harp seal patties? It goes wonderfully with the bald eagle liver pâté...
But by far the most unpleasant part of the whole experience was the mundane discomfort of repeated wiping. (Tip: instead of TP, use your bathtub as a bidet and a plush towel to dry off.)
You might also try buying a packet of the flushable baby-wipes. I picked some up when I was going through a bout of discomfort and I've never looked back. You only really need one per visit and the material is durable enough that you can even insert a corner of it and swab out the inside.