is as American as apple pie. But it wasn't always this way. It blew my mind when this layperson opened up the September issue of Scientific American and spied a photograph of Albert Einstein being greeted by throngs of Americans upon his arrival in New York. Here was a media personality they admired on the basis of his intellectual achievements. Can you name a class of person other than a politician or professional athlete who would receive that kind of adulation today? Neither could I, and whatever sort of programming that could even begin to bring the realm of science, or even the lost art of critical thinking back to the American consciousness is a noble effort. We need this kind of thing very badly. Now, about those public schools...
Oh...[tired eyes grow distant]...Oh, I was paying attention, staying up all night and missing academic deadlines, missing dates (well, that would've happened anyway,) waking up with eyestrain so bad I thought I thought I had conjunctivitis because of my shitty old AST monitor with the 48 Hz refresh rate.
[voice rises with growing indignation] I PLAYED Doom. I PLAYED Doom 2. I EVEN PLAYED WOLFENSTEIN 3D, every single episode, in my parent's basement, ignoring the cold, stealing into the kitchen to snatch the cold chicken patties from the refrigerator, writhing around in my chair trying to hold the soda-piss in. I WAS THERE WHEN THE SHIT WENT DOWN, MAN! [hysterical] I was there when Hitler finally dropped in a hail of gatling gun bullets just as my health was running out and I thought I'd have to go back to my last savegame. I...I remember the...the same six or seven wall textures playing over and over again, the enraged howl of the Cyber Demon... Oh God, you brought it all back, the FPS-PTSD.
But seriously, I can't remember the Doom theme song...must've repressed that one.
Considering that Sam and Max was one of the few games of the 486/4MB era that I actually remember, I consider this good news. The game had humor, originality, an engrossing story, vibrant graphics (for the time,) and a groovy soundtrack that could be played on your CD player.
How many of these blood-soaked and mind-numbingly repetitive first-person shooters will be remembered a decade hence?
{Ahem.} Pardon the confusing previous accidental post. You say, "Even Yellowstone National Park is itself a former volcano."
It is by no means a "former" volcano, but rather a now-quiescent and immensely powerful volcano that is so large that it occupies a geological catagory of it's very own: "supervolcano."
Yes, that's right; lovely Yellowstone Park is the site of the world's most dangerous volcano. Should it erupt again on a scale similar to it's previous (and unprecedented) eruptions, we can expect to see a radius of devastation hundreds of miles wide from the blast itself accompanied by worldwide crop failures as the ash blots out the sun for several months. In short, if there's any geologic feature that has the power to turn life as we know it completely upside-down, it's Yellowstone.
Nice poem, but it isn't a Haiku. If you want to write a bona-fide Haiku, you have to mention one of the seasons in order to get that whole zen effect. Here, I'll use yours as a template:
I use Open Source and closed source software as well Both like spring blossoms
Every post I've read has assumed that the laser was ground-based. Could a laser designator/rangefinder on a military aircraft operating nearby be responsible?
"Imagine if it was considered patriotic (instead of crazy/granola) to use fewer/alternate resources!"
Think back a ways. During World War II, there were shortages and rationing brought on by the war effort. Propaganda messages instructed the public to avoid unnecessary car trips, and everybody with a back yard had a "victory garden." Now, if you could get people to do this shit without needing a war to do it...
Lucas' interest in making the sequels could be good news. It could represent the only chance that the excellent Timothy Zahn novels be adapted into the screenplays. We can always hope he could exhibit common sense and let a more capable writer handle the task.
"I don't know what Obi Wan and Quigon Jin were thinking when they said "Anikin will bring balance to the force", Because well..the scales were tipped heavily in their favor. They hadn't even seen a Sith in hundreds of years."
No, I think Lucas meant that Anakin restores balance to the force by throwing the Emperor to his death at the end of ROTJ.
"...it sounds like wet dog shit."
Having never heard the sound of wet dog shit, I find your analogy humorous rather than illustrative. Wet dog shit makes no sound, save when it strikes something. Otherwise, it just sits there, putrifying, unloved by all except scavenging insects and certain microbes.
Now, if you say, "Encoding Sony ATRAC3 files at low bitrates yields results as appealing as the smell of wet dog shit," the comparison at once becomes both humorous and illustrative.
How...profoundly Japanese. From the exquisite grace of the tea ceremony to the frenetic beep and clatter of the pachinko parlor, everything about these people is surreal. And now, cars that raise their eyebrows, glance around and whistle when you stomp the brakes to avoid hitting a pedestrian.
It's the final straw. I hereby give up my quest to understand Japanese society.
**The project we worked on was recorded onto a (state-of-the-art) laserdisc so it would "last through the generations".
Last year I read an article saying that dedicated enthusiasts were desperately trying to assemble a working laserdisc system, in order to archive all the data collected just 20 years earlier.**
So what's the problem? As long as they included instructions on the laserdisk as to how to build a laserdisk player then they could just...oh. Maybe I should sleep.
Actually, the sun will *not* blow the earth apart in a supernova. It may bake us to a crisp or consume all of the inner planets, but it isn't a sufficiently massive star for such a spectacular demise. You need either a binary pair or a solitary star of 1.7 or greater solar masses to get a supernova.
I stopped going to my old laundromat because of the music they piped in from a Clear Channel-affiliated station? Have you heard the *shit* that spews forth from their playlist? Rod Stewart and Lionel Ritchie weren't good when they were new, but now they are intolerable.
Slashdot Mirror
is as American as apple pie. But it wasn't always this way. It blew my mind when this layperson opened up the September issue of Scientific American and spied a photograph of Albert Einstein being greeted by throngs of Americans upon his arrival in New York. Here was a media personality they admired on the basis of his intellectual achievements. Can you name a class of person other than a politician or professional athlete who would receive that kind of adulation today? Neither could I, and whatever sort of programming that could even begin to bring the realm of science, or even the lost art of critical thinking back to the American consciousness is a noble effort. We need this kind of thing very badly. Now, about those public schools...
anti-intellectualism + pervasive fear = fascism
outrageous...but typical.
Oh...[tired eyes grow distant]...Oh, I was paying attention, staying up all night and missing academic deadlines, missing dates (well, that would've happened anyway,) waking up with eyestrain so bad I thought I thought I had conjunctivitis because of my shitty old AST monitor with the 48 Hz refresh rate.
[voice rises with growing indignation] I PLAYED Doom. I PLAYED Doom 2. I EVEN PLAYED WOLFENSTEIN 3D, every single episode, in my parent's basement, ignoring the cold, stealing into the kitchen to snatch the cold chicken patties from the refrigerator, writhing around in my chair trying to hold the soda-piss in. I WAS THERE WHEN THE SHIT WENT DOWN, MAN! [hysterical] I was there when Hitler finally dropped in a hail of gatling gun bullets just as my health was running out and I thought I'd have to go back to my last savegame. I...I remember the...the same six or seven wall textures playing over and over again, the enraged howl of the Cyber Demon... Oh God, you brought it all back, the FPS-PTSD.
But seriously, I can't remember the Doom theme song...must've repressed that one.
Considering that Sam and Max was one of the few games of the 486/4MB era that I actually remember, I consider this good news. The game had humor, originality, an engrossing story, vibrant graphics (for the time,) and a groovy soundtrack that could be played on your CD player.
How many of these blood-soaked and mind-numbingly repetitive first-person shooters will be remembered a decade hence?
{Ahem.} Pardon the confusing previous accidental post. You say, "Even Yellowstone National Park is itself a former volcano."
It is by no means a "former" volcano, but rather a now-quiescent and immensely powerful volcano that is so large that it occupies a geological catagory of it's very own: "supervolcano."
Yes, that's right; lovely Yellowstone Park is the site of the world's most dangerous volcano. Should it erupt again on a scale similar to it's previous (and unprecedented) eruptions, we can expect to see a radius of devastation hundreds of miles wide from the blast itself accompanied by worldwide crop failures as the ash blots out the sun for several months. In short, if there's any geologic feature that has the power to turn life as we know it completely upside-down, it's Yellowstone.
<I>even</I>
Nice poem, but it isn't a Haiku. If you want to write a bona-fide Haiku, you have to mention one of the seasons in order to get that whole zen effect. Here, I'll use yours as a template:
I use Open Source
and closed source software as well
Both like spring blossoms
Mmmmm...(sigh.) I feel more relaxed already.
Every post I've read has assumed that the laser was ground-based. Could a laser designator/rangefinder on a military aircraft operating nearby be responsible?
"Imagine if it was considered patriotic (instead of crazy/granola) to use fewer/alternate resources!" Think back a ways. During World War II, there were shortages and rationing brought on by the war effort. Propaganda messages instructed the public to avoid unnecessary car trips, and everybody with a back yard had a "victory garden." Now, if you could get people to do this shit without needing a war to do it...
"Portland relies on hydro power rather than dirty power." That depends upon your definition of "dirty." Personally, I find pureed salmon disgusting.
Yeah. Here I was, ready to whip out one of the obvious jokes--I mean we've got "lubricants" + "faster" + "longer-lasting" + "hard drive."
[Rubs chin, stares at wall.]
Nope. This vein of sophomoric humor has run it's course.
Lucas' interest in making the sequels could be good news. It could represent the only chance that the excellent Timothy Zahn novels be adapted into the screenplays. We can always hope he could exhibit common sense and let a more capable writer handle the task.
"I don't know what Obi Wan and Quigon Jin were thinking when they said "Anikin will bring balance to the force", Because well..the scales were tipped heavily in their favor. They hadn't even seen a Sith in hundreds of years."
No, I think Lucas meant that Anakin restores balance to the force by throwing the Emperor to his death at the end of ROTJ.
"...it sounds like wet dog shit." Having never heard the sound of wet dog shit, I find your analogy humorous rather than illustrative. Wet dog shit makes no sound, save when it strikes something. Otherwise, it just sits there, putrifying, unloved by all except scavenging insects and certain microbes. Now, if you say, "Encoding Sony ATRAC3 files at low bitrates yields results as appealing as the smell of wet dog shit," the comparison at once becomes both humorous and illustrative.
Yeah, and a comparable percentage of Americans are so fucking dumb they can't find their own country on a world map. Coincidence? You decide.
How...profoundly Japanese. From the exquisite grace of the tea ceremony to the frenetic beep and clatter of the pachinko parlor, everything about these people is surreal. And now, cars that raise their eyebrows, glance around and whistle when you stomp the brakes to avoid hitting a pedestrian. It's the final straw. I hereby give up my quest to understand Japanese society.
there is but one solution to problems of this kind. Start your own business. Then you can be your own boss and have only yourself to hate.
That's a funny name for it. I've never had to get out of my chair to reboot.
**The project we worked on was recorded onto a (state-of-the-art) laserdisc so it would "last through the generations". Last year I read an article saying that dedicated enthusiasts were desperately trying to assemble a working laserdisc system, in order to archive all the data collected just 20 years earlier.** So what's the problem? As long as they included instructions on the laserdisk as to how to build a laserdisk player then they could just...oh. Maybe I should sleep.
I wasted a lot of adolescent hours playing that game, but I did beat it.
Actually, the sun will *not* blow the earth apart in a supernova. It may bake us to a crisp or consume all of the inner planets, but it isn't a sufficiently massive star for such a spectacular demise. You need either a binary pair or a solitary star of 1.7 or greater solar masses to get a supernova.
I stopped going to my old laundromat because of the music they piped in from a Clear Channel-affiliated station? Have you heard the *shit* that spews forth from their playlist? Rod Stewart and Lionel Ritchie weren't good when they were new, but now they are intolerable.