Hell, I don't even have to bother with pulling up a screen -- at the place where I work the information on the PAPER printout includes the customer name, complete credit card number, and expiration date. Spits it out every time; if I had eidetic memory and a sociopathic streak I'd be a millionaire by now.
In all the time I've worked there, after thousands and thousands of transactions, I've only had one guy raise an honest-to-god stink about it. Everyone else who's ever noticed it just laughs, or maybe raises an eyebrow; but seriously, that's about it.
Most don't even bother to collect their copy of the transaction slip. Into our garbage it goes; but anyone with a little patience, savvy, and basic observational skills could easily put two and two together and discover the unsecured dumpster we toss all our trash into at the end of the day.
I was just on Some Random Website the other day reading about how before hops found its way into beers (sometime around the fourteenth century, I think), its principle use in Europe was as a medicinal herb. Usually brewed as a tea, as I recall.
Another Fun Beer Fact: before the British "discovered" how to put hops in their beer, the primary flavoring agent they used was creeping charlie. Ever since I found that out, I've always kinda wondered what that would taste like...
While I think of it as poorly-written, theologically-stunted crap, there are a number of people who seem to regard The Da Vinci Code as resting just this side of Inspired Word. Give it a couple of centuries or so, and it could make it into some sort of Canon.
Sure... yeah... laugh it up, fuzzball; but I'm only half joking. I can remember reading somewhere of a theory that the Old Testament Book of Esther started out as a work of romantic fiction.
... or else there are a whole lotta Christians who are in deep doo-doo with The Almighty.
Considering that the various Protestant denominations have pretty much uniformly yanked out the story of the Maccabees (which is in the Vulgate)... and that the Syriac Christians added the Acts of Thomas (or maybe the Catholics, et al., subtracted it?)... and the Ethiopian Orthodox Christians threw in Jubilees, Enoch, and a whole bunch of books that most other Christians never even heard of. Then there's the Copts, Armenians, Eastern Orthodox groups -- I'm too lazy to see what they've got cookin' in their Bibles, but I think you get the point.
No. The Bible is relatively consistent in describing the Earth as a circle, not a globe. There is an enormous difference between the two, both in terms of geometry and cosmology. Doesn't matter what translation you use, either; it's pretty much the same concept in English, Latin, Greek, or Hebrew.
This is in line with the worldview of all but the most keenly observant of the ancients (i.e. a few Greek and Egyptian mathematicians), who thought of the world as a flat disc of land floating on, and/or surrounded by, an unnavigable ocean, eerie void, mystic firmament, or whatever. Since the ancient Hebrews weren't nearly as into astronomy as their immediate neighbors, it stands to reason that this is just about how they saw Creation, as well.
is how this mutation got into the general population in the first place.
The current operating theory, as I understand it, is that it originated (uhhh... mutated?) somewhere in southern Finland, made it's way across the Baltic Sea to Sweden, and from there fanned out across Europe and West Asia during the period of Viking expansion -- from about the 8th-10th centuries.
The mutation is found in native populations as far away as Cyprus and North Africa; but the closer you get to Scandinavia, the more prevalent it becomes. So, really, the Vikings were doing the rest of Europe a public service while they were casually burning it into the ground.
I'll take your bet -- and I'm not even an atheist. Even if life is so ridiculously rare as to be evident in only one planet for each galaxy in the universe (with us representing the 100-billion-star Milky Way), that leaves something in the area of 100 billion galaxies scattered throughout the rest of Creation... each with its own attendant life-filled planet.
Life doesn't have to be easy to make for it to be all over the universe. Heck, it could be next to impossible to conjure up, and the odds are practically spot on that it'll still be there.
The Reanimator is definitely in the public domain by now; any creative works produced in the United States with a publication date prior to 1923 is considered to be public domain, no matter what. Reanimator just squeaks in at 1922.
Anything published after that is iffy -- but could very well be free, depending on how careful Lovecraft or his estate holders were in renewing their copyrights after the initial period was up. This includes Call of Cthulhu, which was written in 1926, and thus I assume published sometime in the late 1920's.
For much of the 20th-century, initial copyright and renewal was for 28 years, by the way, not 14. Later on the renewal period was extended to a whopping 67 years; this includes anything published after 1922 -- which, as I mentioned above, includes a substantial portion (but by no means all) of Lovecraft's work. This doesn't change the fact that it would have to have been renewed in order for Arkham House to claim ownership.
As for the "death plus 50/70" situation, that was generally only applicable for unpublished works. So if you're digging through some murky basement, and you stumble across a pile of ichor-splattered, hand-scrawled notes of hitherto unknown Lovecraftian ghoulishness, you can publish that in 2007.
Europe will need to send some of its strategic emergency stockpiles of petrol to the US if refinery damage caused by Hurricane Katrina proves severe, the International Energy Agency, which co-ordinates the emergency inventories of the world's biggest oil consuming countries, said on Monday.
No greater love hath one post-industrial nation-collective have than this, that they lay down their refined gasoline supplies for another.
That's provided, of course, that we determine that we actually need it. One of the chief reasons we don't get foreign aid is that we never actually ask for any.
I dunno about coffee and vitamin B levels; but as far as coffee and diabetes is concerned, it's probably a much better idea to be drinking the stuff rather than avoiding it. Throw in a little cinnamon with your drink, and you might even be able to consider it a powerful weapon against diabetes.
I also think coffee's association with heart disease is highly exaggerated.
I should point out that I do work in the industry; but I also drink 4-6 cups of the stuff each day, too.
Slashdot Mirror
Hell, I don't even have to bother with pulling up a screen -- at the place where I work the information on the PAPER printout includes the customer name, complete credit card number, and expiration date. Spits it out every time; if I had eidetic memory and a sociopathic streak I'd be a millionaire by now.
In all the time I've worked there, after thousands and thousands of transactions, I've only had one guy raise an honest-to-god stink about it. Everyone else who's ever noticed it just laughs, or maybe raises an eyebrow; but seriously, that's about it.
Most don't even bother to collect their copy of the transaction slip. Into our garbage it goes; but anyone with a little patience, savvy, and basic observational skills could easily put two and two together and discover the unsecured dumpster we toss all our trash into at the end of the day.
I was just on Some Random Website the other day reading about how before hops found its way into beers (sometime around the fourteenth century, I think), its principle use in Europe was as a medicinal herb. Usually brewed as a tea, as I recall.
Another Fun Beer Fact: before the British "discovered" how to put hops in their beer, the primary flavoring agent they used was creeping charlie. Ever since I found that out, I've always kinda wondered what that would taste like ...
Another plant that seems to have tremendous health benefits (fightin' cancer, and alzheimer's, and as a general anti-inflammatory, etc.) is turmeric -- which is one of the primary ingredients of curry.
Hmmmm ... beer and curry ... the British must live fer freakin' ever.
While I think of it as poorly-written, theologically-stunted crap, there are a number of people who seem to regard The Da Vinci Code as resting just this side of Inspired Word. Give it a couple of centuries or so, and it could make it into some sort of Canon.
Sure ... yeah ... laugh it up, fuzzball; but I'm only half joking. I can remember reading somewhere of a theory that the Old Testament Book of Esther started out as a work of romantic fiction.
... or else there are a whole lotta Christians who are in deep doo-doo with The Almighty.
Considering that the various Protestant denominations have pretty much uniformly yanked out the story of the Maccabees (which is in the Vulgate) ... and that the Syriac Christians added the Acts of Thomas (or maybe the Catholics, et al., subtracted it?) ... and the Ethiopian Orthodox Christians threw in Jubilees, Enoch, and a whole bunch of books that most other Christians never even heard of. Then there's the Copts, Armenians, Eastern Orthodox groups -- I'm too lazy to see what they've got cookin' in their Bibles, but I think you get the point.
No. The Bible is relatively consistent in describing the Earth as a circle, not a globe. There is an enormous difference between the two, both in terms of geometry and cosmology. Doesn't matter what translation you use, either; it's pretty much the same concept in English, Latin, Greek, or Hebrew.
This is in line with the worldview of all but the most keenly observant of the ancients (i.e. a few Greek and Egyptian mathematicians), who thought of the world as a flat disc of land floating on, and/or surrounded by, an unnavigable ocean, eerie void, mystic firmament, or whatever. Since the ancient Hebrews weren't nearly as into astronomy as their immediate neighbors, it stands to reason that this is just about how they saw Creation, as well.
is how this mutation got into the general population in the first place.
The current operating theory, as I understand it, is that it originated (uhhh ... mutated?) somewhere in southern Finland, made it's way across the Baltic Sea to Sweden, and from there fanned out across Europe and West Asia during the period of Viking expansion -- from about the 8th-10th centuries.
The mutation is found in native populations as far away as Cyprus and North Africa; but the closer you get to Scandinavia, the more prevalent it becomes. So, really, the Vikings were doing the rest of Europe a public service while they were casually burning it into the ground.
Plunder. The gift that keeps on giving
Well, at least now we know how the Space Pope wound up reptilian.
I'll take your bet -- and I'm not even an atheist. Even if life is so ridiculously rare as to be evident in only one planet for each galaxy in the universe (with us representing the 100-billion-star Milky Way), that leaves something in the area of 100 billion galaxies scattered throughout the rest of Creation ... each with its own attendant life-filled planet.
Life doesn't have to be easy to make for it to be all over the universe. Heck, it could be next to impossible to conjure up, and the odds are practically spot on that it'll still be there.
The Reanimator is definitely in the public domain by now; any creative works produced in the United States with a publication date prior to 1923 is considered to be public domain, no matter what. Reanimator just squeaks in at 1922.
Anything published after that is iffy -- but could very well be free, depending on how careful Lovecraft or his estate holders were in renewing their copyrights after the initial period was up. This includes Call of Cthulhu, which was written in 1926, and thus I assume published sometime in the late 1920's.
For much of the 20th-century, initial copyright and renewal was for 28 years, by the way, not 14. Later on the renewal period was extended to a whopping 67 years; this includes anything published after 1922 -- which, as I mentioned above, includes a substantial portion (but by no means all) of Lovecraft's work. This doesn't change the fact that it would have to have been renewed in order for Arkham House to claim ownership.
As for the "death plus 50/70" situation, that was generally only applicable for unpublished works. So if you're digging through some murky basement, and you stumble across a pile of ichor-splattered, hand-scrawled notes of hitherto unknown Lovecraftian ghoulishness, you can publish that in 2007.
Here's a nice site with a handy-dandy chart that can help clear away some of the murk for you.
From today's Financial Times:
No greater love hath one post-industrial nation-collective have than this, that they lay down their refined gasoline supplies for another.
That's provided, of course, that we determine that we actually need it. One of the chief reasons we don't get foreign aid is that we never actually ask for any.
I dunno about coffee and vitamin B levels; but as far as coffee and diabetes is concerned, it's probably a much better idea to be drinking the stuff rather than avoiding it. Throw in a little cinnamon with your drink, and you might even be able to consider it a powerful weapon against diabetes.
I also think coffee's association with heart disease is highly exaggerated.
I should point out that I do work in the industry; but I also drink 4-6 cups of the stuff each day, too.