GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

I was not strengthening/weakening a case - just throwing a data point out. Back a ways, I mentioned how much I enjoy shooting (I grew up in Montana and used a .3030 to hunt gophers - not something I am proud of, just something I used to do).

Some of the Darwin Awards for gun use can stand with some of the Home Defense stories for gun use.

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

Yeah, I actually followed the whole thing when it first hit the news - it was first being swept under the carpet saying it was her fault for shooting at the police. Even then I was extremely torqued about her getting killed protecting her home even when it was believed the police were using SOP - then when it all unraveled, I nearly went ballistic.

How is a person to know if the home invasion is the police or not when they don't announce and have no-knock warrants.

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

This is why we need guns for protection. I just love stories like this with happy endings :)

Heh,heh - not all home defense gun use is of much use - is this why we need more guns for protection?

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

>greg bear

i dont know. i only ever finished one greg bear novel. i started several but i never finished it. he comes up with great ideas but i dont have the patience to read something where things dont happen quickly or something.

>stop being human.

lol. now that is actually easy. i guess that human refers to Homo sapiens. we will be human as long as we can have sex with the humans on this planet right now ( or if we can if a million years from today we are transported back into the past via time machine or recreate one from dna in a test tube etc etc) and the sexual intercourse produces fertile ofspring. that is how science defines a specie. so no i guess Australopithecus is not human. but cro magnon might be!

Then how about Neanderthals? Some geneticists think they have found pieces of Neanderthal DNA in Human DNA.

In the human body, microbial cells outnumber human cells by a factor of 10 to 1; there is a new field of research called metagenomics.

The source of energy in most animal cells that require their own source of energy are mitochondria - self-contained units of DNA passed from mother to child, essentially a symbiont without which we could not exist and without which we could not even think as the mitochondria fuel our brain cells.

Er, I have digressed to a point where I have lost my point, sigh.

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster
GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

The father of Gordon's love interest the HalfLife 2 series is in one of the picture phone adds (he is the grandfather seeing his grandchild for the first time). I was in the kitchen when I heard that voice - I have played so much HL2 that I could not miss it. Then I saw him and the rendering was perfect - down to the beard.

I love that game and drift back to it occasionally - I just wish they would release another episode.

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

Blueberries and cream, heaven on Earth!

Mmmmm, as soon as I read this I had to make a bowl of blueberries and Greek Gods Honey Yogurt

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

String cheese

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

Here is an interesting thread about the topic of individual rights to own and keep weapons in the USA. The original intent was to give evey American citizen the right to have weapons so that he can defent himself, his family, his home, and his country against foreign invaders (like England) or other people who intend to do harm. And that today is still the main reason. Americans are paranoid about any one or any nation enslaving them.

Sorry AD but that quote appears nowhere in Washington's papers or speeches - here is the closest quote

A free people ought not only to be armed but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well digested plan is requisite: And their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories, as tend to render them independent on others, for essential, particularly for military supplies.
---George Washington's First Annual Message to Congress (January 8, 1790)

I voted against the blanket ban because I ENJOY shooting but I am old fashioned enough to prefer a single action Black Hawk .357 mag and a lever-action .3030 carbine.

In the arguments for gun ownership, no one looks to Mogadishu or Mexico as examples the good that can come from unlimited gun ownership and Canada and the UK are good examples of the other end of the scale.

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

I wish you wouldn't shill for companies - have you ever researched any of the ideas you post?

I take it back - you are posting "News Stories of Possible Interest"

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

I had one of those but the wheels fell off.

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

I have heard that if you stop breathing you might die so I make sure to inhale after I exhale.

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

I still have discussions with Dave in my head - I miss him. When something comes up where I know we will disagree, I explain my p.o.v. - sigh!

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

Wasn't it Greg Bear who posited humanity reduced to intelligent goo - there was something similar in KW Jeter's Noir - large gelatinous oceans of 'people'

At what point do we stop being human? If we were Australopithecans, would we consider human 'human' - ie one of us?

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

"I was mainly referring to things like animal abuse and hunting of animals" That was a quote by the author of this poll on the very first page of this forum. Perhaps before you bash somebody, you should read the whole forum. The author of this poll was indeed referring to ANIMAL ABUSE as well hunting. Since I am not a hunter, I merely addressed the issue with which I could be familiar with. I think you should go back and read the forum before you embarass yourself further.

Interesting suggestion about embarrassment - this exchange started with this:

However, the hunting of animals falls under the survival of the fittest. Animals are in our food chain. If we are not going to hunt animals you will run into too many environmental problems. If deer are not hunted, they overpopulate. Fish are the same way. The question is not whether we should hunt animals but where do we draw the line between hunting for food and hunting for sport. Hunting for sport is what leads to animal extinction. Hunting for food merely keeps the ecosystem in balance.

which I consider to be one of the least thoughtful posts I have seen on this site. There are so many silly statements in that quote it is not even worth pointing to any particular piece. Now, if you want to defend any of that, please feel free. I am interested in how you relate hunting and fishing to survival of the fittest. …

Ezzaral commented: Agreed. His original post was sheer nonsense. +0
GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

We are having a tribal gathering at a friend's home. He lives on a hill over-looking our Green Lake fireworks show. It is tribal because it is a group of (mostly) non-related friends who have connections going back to the early '70s and a group called The Society for Creative Anachronism (or something like that). There can be as many as 50 and as few as 12 people showing up.

We use to have 6 or 7 gatherings per year (I used to have the 'orphans' Thanksgiving' at my house) - we are down to the 4th and Xmas (the host is Jewish).

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

... when you remember the days when a tennis match was just that, and not a match of screams, squeals and groans. I cant' believe that every time they hit the ball, they have to let go of an annoying loud sound. Sounds so stupid!

Imagine programmers doing that with every keystroke.

About 20 years ago when I was hanging out with some fencers, they were complaining about this one woman who kept going "eep" when she struck - little did I/we know it would invade all sectors of sports. It is like they saw a martial arts movie and thought the 'kiai' sounded cool.

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

GJ: Difference between superstition | habit | logic. Do you check coz you think the devil's on your left shoulder, or is it you trying to make sense of an unfamiliar word?

I check because people are lazy and rather than make up words or get really creative and it is a really simple thing to do:
regdor, rollads, evol, dog. There is a naturalness to words, in the way letters are combined and that sort of thing. For some reason, words spelt backwards, appear awkward to me

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

Oddly enough - whenever I see a work that I do not understand, the first thing I do is check to see if it is a word spelled backwards - just to see

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

Browsing here listening to "Shaapit - Kabhi na kabhi to miloge"...

Thanks, that is pretty good (first try)sounded better in other versions

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

Sometimes I just have to geek out - warning , lots of strobe at this Dr. Who rave

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

On the one hand, there are:
John Wayne Gacey - he raped and killed children
Jeffrey Dahmer - he raped, killed, and ate young gay men
Ted Bundy - he raped and killed women, got caught, escaped and raped and killed more women. He tried to buy his life by saying he would tell where he buried the bodies.

Then there is the innocence project that has exonerated over 250 people since inception.

For anyone thinking that the DP is cheaper - no chance. It can take from 10 to 25 years to execute someone and during that time they are locked up on 'death row' which is about 2 times more expensive to operate AND then you have to add in the court costs.

I snapped at someone up-thread a bit for not doing research; I want to thank them looking around. This is not a simple, one-sentence subject and requires some thought no matter on which side of the issue you fall on. I personally can't make up my mind or my heart. One says kill them and the other says don't.

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

I cut my nails any damn time I want to.
I own a black cat.
What you dream has nothing at all to do with the future.

I have the superstitious belief that superstitious people will slowly kill themselves off.

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

After the fiasco with Michael Vic I wasn't aware I needed to clarify about laws against animal abuse. My fault for not realizing I had to spell everything out in black and white.

Michael Vic is not a hunter, was never a hunter and has nothing to do with hunting - therefore bringing him up to support a post that considers hunting a part of the 'balance of nature' is just pointless.

It is your fault that you do not understand the English language. It is your fault that you do not know how to argue a point of view. It is your fault that you post with no idea what you are doing.

jmg2hp commented: Does not pay attention in a forum and instead resorts to bashing a poster for their response. +0
GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

I strongly believe in the death penalty, especially in cases where people are given a life sentence without parole. My reason being is that we (as society) spend a great deal of money on their daily needs and support. In a country that is constantly cutting back schools funding, homelessness is a major issue, and too many are going without proper health care; I would think that there are better ways to spend tax money. If someone has committed a crime that grotesque that they are given life in prison, then they knew the consequences before they DECIDED to proceed with their actions. I don't think that it is fair to make many suffer to support them after they chose their fate. Besides, one can get accommodated to living in jail, there are a lot of luxuries that can be earned through time and good behavior. One could even argue that it would be preferable to be in jail than out in society where they have to work to find means to support themselves. In jail you don't have to think about how you are going to get your next meal, nor the next safe place you can lay your head at night. These are just my views.

This is a stupid, thoughtless post. There is nothing in the post that shows any knowledge how the expenses of life in prison w/o parole vs death penalty. You have no grasp of either side of the argument and are just spouting …

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

I agree that there should be laws against animal abuse. However, the hunting of animals falls under the survival of the fittest. Animals are in our food chain. If we are not going to hunt animals you will run into too many environmental problems. If deer are not hunted, they overpopulate. Fish are the same way. The question is not whether we should hunt animals but where do we draw the line between hunting for food and hunting for sport. Hunting for sport is what leads to animal extinction. Hunting for food merely keeps the ecosystem in balance. Why would we try to change what has been going on since the cavemen? Why is it now wrong to hunt for food?

Hunh? You need to do a little research - there is nothing in your post after 'laws against animal abuse' that has the vaguest basis in the real world.

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

Well, someone has to take the job optimist - thanks for that.

Nature/natural selection does not care if humanity/homo sapiens sapiens survives. Outside of religious beliefs, there is no mandate (heh, heh - no pun intended) that ensures our survival. Mammals have not yet equaled dinosaurs for longevity so don't count your chickens (pun intended) before they're hatched.

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

This was not a joke:
A house-mate of mine was looking out the window and said "look how big and beautiful the orange harvest moon is!"
I said "that is a Union 76 gas station sign"

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

There are people who think 'www' (the web) is the internet - the internet was declared dead Sept. 1992 when all the university students discovered usenet.

Others claim that it died when CVC added Windoze 3.0 to their support in 1993 and became AOL.

Almost everyone claims the internet should have been closed right after they found it.

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

I have some 'interesting' medical problems - someone told me to try homeopathy, that would cure me.

Homeopathy is one of the worst scams with the most bizarre process I have ever run across (even more ridiculous than scientology):
take a healthy adult and give them increasing doses of a substance (any substance) until they get sick. The symptoms they develop is what the substance will cure when diluted ten to one 10 times (a dilution of 1 to 10,000,000,000) - this is the equivalent of pouring a tablespoon of something into the Mediterranean and coming back the next day and taking out a tablespoon.

The claim is that the 'essence' of the substance remains.

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

Baked Muscovy duck - heart, gizzard and neck - next will start working on the rest of the carcass, mmmmmm! Wonderful flavor

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

For a while we(*) were calling them 'stiffies' but it never caught on.+

* very local

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

Asians tend to have dry, gold-colored ear-wax as opposed to the reddish, sticky stuff Europeans have.

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

Nah, we are going to burn up in a gas cloud of Energetic Neutral Atoms

The model they developed suggests that the boundary between the Local Cloud and the Local Bubble might be not within a few light years from the Sun, as it was believed earlier, but within just a thousand astronomical units, a thousand-fold closer. This might mean that the Solar System could enter the million-degree Local Bubble cloud as early as the 22nd century.

Here is a diagram

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

Did you notice - he netted the entire room - I bet he broke a lamp or 2 before he wised up.

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

Well, I just thought I would tickle this back into a more painful position:
this is real

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

I wonder how long it took him to learn to fly this thing?

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

Doctor: Mr. Jones, you have to stop masturbating.
Mr. Jones: But why?
Doctor: Because I am trying to examine you.

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

President Bartlett:
The War Years

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster
GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster
GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster
GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

if you remember when 'tea baggers' proudly named themselves tea-baggers

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

You had a Dial Phone? Trying to put operators out of work?

You remember when you picked up the phone and said "Sally, connect me to my dad at the bank please" -- party lines, saying goodnight to your girlfriend and 5 people hang up before you do.

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

in Seattle, we have a new downtown library. A Rem Koolhaus design, it's very nice. but the bathrooms are painted entirely in this horrible lime-green color that makes you want to get out of there as soon as possible.

they did that on purpose, you see. the research shows that the grating color deters people from loitering in the bathrooms, and thus keeps the homeless and the junkies from setting up shop.

Did you notice the library is laid out in a spiral that leads up to a dead-end that is a drop down to the main floor - seems designed for jumpers.

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

Mixing it up this week end:
Pendulum
and
Client

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

Just go to the "Daniweb Community Feedback" forum, there is a whole topic on the situation that explains a lot about what is going on.

You shoulda linked to it - I could not find it.

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

(heh,heh) This is what will kill us all off.

iamthwee commented: Freudian slip no doubt. +0
GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

it is too 'fat' (not phat)

GrimJack 1,414 Posting Maven Featured Poster

the president doesn't have to be smart, he just has to look good on television and be able to follow the instructions of his teleprompter.
Ergo Obama, the TOTUS (Teleprompter Of The United States).

Are you still on about that? One would think that you would have some concept of the stupidity of that teleprompter whinge is. Name one politician/public speaker (other than Palin who writes on her hand) that does not use a teleprompter.

jephthah commented: no shit. what's up with the broken record? it doesnt even make sense. +0