Posts by GrimJack

so if you're going to ban guns so people don't kill people you my as well cut everyones fist off, ban knives, ban hamemrs, well ban basically everything.

No - here is the real issure: guns have only one use, kill things; fists, knives, hammers, well everything all have a main function/use that does not include killing things. So if we are going to talk about banning things (and we are not, we are actually talking about regulating - as in 'well-regulated') we only need to ban something whose only purpose is to kill things.

You honestly think if everyone had a gun on them at all times crime will increase?

We actually can look to a time in history where everyone who wanted to could carry a gun - the time between the end of the civil war and the beginning of WWI in the US. Everyone in the West could carry a gun if they wanted to and so what happened can be followed by researching the Earps and their attempts at law enforcement. The Cowboys ran roughshod over everyone, even those who had guns because they had more guns. I am not going to go over the entire story here because it is a story that ran to its inevitable end in every town in the west. Guns were outlawed in town - this is how the west was won. It is true in Tombstone, Virginia City, Deadwood, Hanging Rock, Cody, everywhere.

Ancient Dragon: See that is what I meant about how thoughtful the Founding Fathers wrote - I can believe those quotes (but I will verify them when I have time).

Speaking of the Hidehoshi comment: that is referring to the the 'involentary' collection of taxes wherein the tax collectors came to your home and took the taxes. We have what is known as a 'voluntary' tax collection system; voluntary in this usage has a specific usage that is different than common usage - I really do prefer to prepay my taxes to armed tax collectors stopping by on a regular basis. In 1536 3 forces were growing in power (the emperor no longer had any real power, his protector/commander/shogun had all the power. Their philosophies can be viewed by this schoolchild refrain:

• Nobunaga answers: "kill it"
• Hideyoshi answers: "Make it want to sing"
• Ieyasu answers: "wait"
  Just to make their history a little more interesting - they call the Hideyoshi era the Tokugara Shogunate and he is also referred to as Taiko (if there are any more versed in Japanese history on here please correct any of my outsiders ideas).

NardCake:
I am not sure the word 'trivial' means what you think it means.

Weapons are trivial for America to function,

This is not a grammar attack - I just want to make sure I understand what you are saying.
Do not loop me in with the …

I lurved House for the first 3 seasons (I think - I watched it every night in reruns so..) then he became 'petulant' and his quirks became a lazy replacement for good writing. For the same reason I like Ally McBeal until all the different interesting characters became charicatures. I loved Hugh in Black Adder (have you noticed that no one seems to mention BA when talking about his credits?) and yes, he would make a good father - now I want that very much and will use that image in my head.

(I am waiting for the resident gun nut to make an appearance and bring up the 2nd amendment - hehehe).

Wow - any conversation any one starts will bring out the gun nuts - I think the 2nd amendment should be added to Godwin's law as a corollary (there are other corollaries already under consideration).

What I really hate about the gun nuts is the stupid things that they blame on our founding fathers for quotes that they pull out of their asses like:

The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it." also "The people will not understand the importance of the Second Amendment until it is too late"

See Thomas Jefferson never said those things. I wish they would not believe everything thing they read on some random stranger's .sig or at the top of their blog; at the very least effing least use google to help them. There might be something in the many things TJ said that might be helpful to their cause but making stuff up just reverberates in the echo chamber where they seem to reside.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were very intelligent men and they very carefully chose their words (think Poor Richard's Almanac). Please stop attibuting thougbhtless bumperstickers to them.

Sorry, I just got back from Gawker and needed to vent.

I just ran across this article about a judge's allowing a subpoena of over 100 accounts, for over 9 years - blanket from google, ms, and yahoo.

Discuss

Oh, gawd - where to start. I recently moved (me and my now-ex split) and now I only watch 2 shows (unless I hear about something that interests me) and those are on Thursdays - Person of Interest and the following Sherlock Holmes (senior moment here). I see their holes but put up with them for the enjoyment and the acting. When my ex and I were together, the tv came on as soon as she came home and only turned off when she went to bed. I have no other preferences so she controled the clicker. Sherlock caused me some discordance until I realized that this was happening in a world in which the original books did not exist. I like the idiosyncrasies he shows, I like that his relationship with the beautiful Dr. Watson is not based on suppressed sexual urges.

Anyway, HI-50 the 'wifely' bickering with Dano in every show; that would be a punch down the second time that happened. The commander is an ex-military bad-ass who either tortures or talks about torture in every episode. So far every member of the team has been kicked off the team for some reason or another and end up immediately getting teamed up with the bad guys.

Star Trek - it seems that in all its incarnations at least one of the team gets inhabited by aliens or computers but are back to normal by the end of the show (or shows arc if it is actually plotted …

Authorities now believe that it was not intentional. If the bathroom was equipped with a hole to stand over rather than a western style toilet, I can easily understand how it could happen by accident. And I would rather think of the best of people.

I am 35 years old and weigh 160 pounds with women vying for my attention.

Then I look in the mirror and I am 64 years old, 70 pounds overweight, and scare women and children.

Then I am 35 years old and weigh 160 pounds with women vying for my attention.

There is a possibility of 2 offspring from me - in one case the woman was smart enough to disappear without notifying me (friends told me about her 'broken arm' which is how the beauty school described why she was gone); the other woman sicked a motorcycle gang on me (that is a story in itself, I suppose) so my escaping her was a good thing.

There are a lot of words that are not in the English language so we steal them for out own use - that is how languages grow. Like a famous president said "the French don't have a word for entrepeneur".

Someone asked a really interesting question: "how do you say 'voilà' in your language" - almost every language had imported the word because it was so useful.

On the other hand, no matter what language the locals speak "no problem" said with a smile will get you out of almost any difficulty.

Yeah, I know a couple guys that should get 'fixed' so they stop having kids with multiple women. Damn, punk breeders.

Check out EULAlyzer at brightfort.com I am not sure if it will help you but the program will search any EULA for 'interesting' wording.

John Brunner named his book "Stand on Zanzibar" for how the world's population would stand on Zanzibar shoulder to shoulder. IIRC, they were neck deep in the ocean by the end of the book

firstperson: yeah - even better close your eyes turn off everything, unplug everything and listen carefully. I was going to go into a rant about the 8th cranial nerve but it is hard to tell the interference noise from that 60 cycle hum that is everywhere.

There was collection of essays in the early 1970s that included an article on how to learn to type in 72 hours with use of hallucinogenic drugs. I remember sitting in my small apartment, stoned out of my gourd wishing I did not already know how to type so that I could use the method on myself. Before all the anti-drug hoopla stopped most research into drugs like LSD and Mescaline, there were some very interesting experiments including one where (don't get squeamish on me) the optic nerve of rats was cut just behind the eyes. The rats were given acid and the optic nerve was sending visual signals as if the eyes were still functioning.

Once, when I was bartending in a dance-hall in 1971 (Billings, Mt - the place was called Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde's because it was a businessman's lunch place during the day and wild dancehall at night) I had just introduced a friend of mine who had some acid to sell to another friend who wanted to buy some acid to sell to each other - well, they each, separately, very thoughtfully dropped a hit of acid into my drink. So there I was watching the rock band play when suddenly a full 76 piece brass band appeared and marched across the dance floor. The bar I was working was not the typical bar against the wall that had only one side for customer, nope - this was central bar with customers coming up …

On May 29, 1913, one hundred years ago, Igor stravinski premiered The Rite of Spring. This was supposed to be the ballet concert of the year and all of the best of Paris society was in attendence; the music was so new and raw that after a couple minutes the audience began make catcalls and whistles but then they rioted. Yes, the audience rioted in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, smashed up the place, beat each other bloody and actually moved out into the streets - the riots continued for 3 days.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NikolaiRoerichRite1.jpg

One year later, the production was greated with great acclaim and Stravinski was carried victoriously through the streets of Paris. In 1940, The Rites of Spring was included in Fantasia as part of a children's musical piece.

This is an exageration (the riots were not that bad) but the musical concepts were new and, for the time, very disturbing. But even the Disney version is disturbing and brings to mind the much later animation for Ravel's Bolero - which is what the animator Bruno Bozzetto meant for us to see but is not as apparent until you view The Rite of Spring after seeing Bolero - with the 'monkey-man' appearing. Ravel's Bolero was commissioned to be a part of a ballet called Fandango - the scene was a smokey cantina with the basoon danced by the 'prima balerina' and the other instruments would emerge from fog/smoke for their part …

My ex was a geek - about as geeky as me (whatever that means) and she would always ask me to fix this or that like "why is my computer so slow","fix the router for me" but at work all her co-workers would come to her for geek help.

I would not trust the evergy drinks some of them are pure sugar and that will just cause a deeper crash.

Well, how about all the answers to the world's important stats about as current as you could possibly want:http://www.worldometers.info/

Well, all good advice - my little bit of advice is to 1) do not eat carbs for lunch, eat protein; 2) document the sleepiness so that you know when to expect the drowsiness then set an alarm (something like the calendar in Outlook) to alert (pun intended) you ahead of time so you can stand up and do some stretches or juggle or touch your toes then extend your arms over your head and stand on your tippy-toes (the first few times you do this you almost fall over - it is very hard to maintain your balance); 3) set a dead-man's switch that if you don't perform some action on your computer, your harddrive will re-format (this is a little harsh but better than the above mentioned electroshock therapy).

I am eating a honey/mustard/curry lamb shank that I just finished cooking - it is like heaven in your mouth. Soon I will have a rye and cola (used to drink bourbon and coke - but I cheapened out).

I was pretty sure that this conversation would eventually bring JW out of his hidey-hole - spewing his own particular version of history and bile. The poor downtrodden rightwing - always being bullied by the facts and history.

My first name is Gregory; my middle name is Rodger - sometime in the early1970s I decided to go by Rodger. My family all call me Greg/Gregory, my friends all call me Rodger (if someone calls me 'rog' I say you must have mis-heard, my name is Rodger). Phone calls are easy to sort as all my documents are in Gregory. I don't dislike my first name and at work my phone lists me as Greg so my boss and my lead call me Greg because that is what they see all the time. It no longer makes a diff to me but I used to be really serious about what my name is.

Agilemind: RadioLab if my favorite!

Xantipius and agilemind: See, I still go catatonic and mis-read things - I now remember those studies about caloric reduction and longevity. Do you know what 'half-cocked' means? (on a revolver, half-cock is sort of a safety in that the trigger won't fire the pistol and the cylinder spins freely - sort of)

Just came back from the link to the article - thank you very good read.

I graduated 52nd in my class

Medical statistics shows that those who smoke 1-10 cigs per day live longer than abs non-smokers

IIRC, this was one of the odd statistical findings of the original Surgeon Generals report back in the '70s just an anomoly.

One more interesting recent medical observation:
those who in their childhood were always half-hungry (due to poor, unlucky families etc)
they preserve the lucidity of mind till deep old age.
Opposite case with those who were growing without any stresses.

Sorry but I have to disagree with this completely and absolutely. Please check out epigenetics. Please do not think I am attacking you - I am not, it is just that the results of this study are so horrendous that when I first read it I almost went catatonic and I can't help but remember it. The effects of the starvation during The Dutch Hunger Winter, seem to have affected not only the children of the population pregnant at the time but the grandchildren - this result is almost Lamarckian. How could acquired characteristics be passed on to a third generation?

Epigenetic effects must be caused by some sort of physical change, some alterations in the vast array of molecules that make up the cells of every living organ­ism. That leads us to the other scientific way of viewing epigenetics—the molecular description. In this model, epigenetics can be defined as the set of chemical modifications surrounding and attaching to our genetic material …

My first cigarette was about age 6 or 7; my brother and I would steal a pack of cigs from the freezer (my dad bought cigs in bulk) crawl into the hopper of a combine and smoke on the way to school. When it was really, really cold (Livingston MT - this is about 20 below Z), we would smoke in a coal shed near school - this is where we got caught. Dad quit cold turkey, threw out all his cigs and punished us. To this day, if I smell that very first ignition of the cigarette end I am back in the hopper with my brother and I am happy and safe. Both my brother and I went in for tonsilectomies right around that time and we didn't smoke again until much later.

My brother started back up when he was 15; he died of congestive heart failure when he was 44; he was still a smoker. I did not start again until I was 19 and smoked until I was 40 - I suppose I was at about 1-1.5 packs per day often more. My employer paid for a quit smoking plan so I went to Schick Electro-Shock™. They don't actually call it that but they are the old fashioned, negative reinforcement type place. You put the electrodes on your non-dominant wrist and attach a loop to the little finger of your 'smoknig' hand. Everytime you bring the cigarette up to your lips you get a shock; …

A goshawk strike at 5,000 frames per second; around 3 minutes, it is almost a POV of the strike (if you were a water baloon).

Some of the first 'computer music' I heard was working with people who would hack (probably not the correct word) a chaintrain printer. The printer had a chain drive that contained 4 (sometimes more sometimes fewer) full character sets and a set of hammers and everytime a the correct letter was under the correct hammer it would be struck. The machines were awesome - the rythm was set by how often a set of hammers hit and the pitch was set by how far the chain had to move for the set of hammers to hit. It was really nerdy but not as nerdy as the guys who could get the 8in floppy drives to play Daisy.

Xanti: Do people still pass out drunk and freeze to death? It seems like comfortable way to go but....

An old joke: What is vodka roulette? Answer: 6 Russians go into a room and drink 6 bottls of vodka each - 5 leave the 6th has to figure who is still there.

Many years ago I picked up a couple hitchhikers in downtown Seattle - they had no English, I had no Polish but they made it understood they wanted the nearest licquer store. No problem, I took them back to their ship and they invited me on board. We drank vodka all night - none of this mixed stuff, a juice glass drank at one gulp and the wimps (me) chased it with O.J. They broke out some Polish sausage and gave me a can of their condensed milk to take home. I still have it - it no longer has a can shape, it is now almost round - can you say botulism - it's like living with a live grenade, I should probably throw it away soon. Since we could not speak each other's language, we did a lot of gestures, laughed a lot and said "no problem" a lot. The next day it was reported in the newspapers that 2 of the fisshermen had fled the ship - this was back in the day when there was still an Iron Curtain and no free travel.

Basic back in '77, then Fortran then COBOL - then I found VAXen and learned DCL and worked it from 84-99. Compaq bought DEC, gutted the company, keeping only the the the (OMG - brainfart, I can't remember what the DEC Micros were called -Alphas, maybe) I no longer have the attention span to learn to program though I keep menaing to pick up some language, then I realize I no longer have the drive or desire to stop gaming long enough to code, I am so sad.

I started programming on a TTY (teletype - worse than manual typewriters, hit a key wait a second or more for the letter to print, then repeart as necessary) that had a built-in papertape puncher. I wrote and saved my first D&D program in basic using the damn things. For class itself, I wrote my programs on paper blocked out for 80 characters that I wold then hand over to the students taking keypunch class who would punch my program into cards so I could take them to operator who would take the card deck and put it into a queue for evnetual running after hours in batch mode and i would get a listing of all my errors the next day so that I could rinse and repeat.

The knife - funeral corporate

no offence, but look around. in the UK there's this one workless guy, has 17 kids with about as many (15) different women, and he lives on child support. now, lately, the guy has murdered (or attempted) to murder some other guy while he was drunk.

No offense but look around Utah near the borders - the guys marry then divorce 14 year old women who each have 3-10 kids, and the guys do not have to work because their harem of 5 wives with 40 kids on welfare keeps them in a good cash flow (hint: yes I am talking about Mormon bigamy).

TonyG -"stranglehold of short-sighted gimme,gimme,gimme unionists" and privatized the country, turning it over to the ever-so-nice corporate goons who aren't in the least short-sighted. Fortunately, the unionists are still there and will dance and piss on her grave.

Let's see - she trained the Khmer Rouge goons in the art of murder and mayhem - even though she know of Pol Pot's atrocities;

between 1985 and 1989, the Special Air Service (SAS) ran a series of training camps for Khmer Rouge allies in Thailand close to the Cambodian border and created a 'sabotage battalion' of 250 experts in explosives and ambushes. Intelligence experts in Singapore also ran training courses,

she called Nelson Mandella a terrorist and fully supported the South African Apartheid

On a different not - I really like your avatar (and the vent. who does that dummy) - my alter-ego on most other sites is Grumpy Old Man and your avatar personifies him/me

Let's see... profound difference in the world - was losing politically so she started a war with Argentina over some island they took back in 1812 after Argentina kicked their asses out - check. Killed off the milk program for school lunches, she abolished the minimum national nutrition standards then passed regulations that required schools to accept the cheapest food available meaning fried everything, nothing fresh and then she cut thousands of children off the free school lunch program. She sold off all the school fields (ie playgrounds) - it wasn't until 1999 that there was semblance of nutritional balance put back into the school lunch programs

She probably ruined the health of 2 generations of poor children so that she could cut government spending.

but I digress - I think I might hate her what she did to the UK as much as I hate Reagan and what he did to the US.

I just found the coolest new BOINC project (BOINC projects are distributed projects that use your spare computer cycles to solve HUGE computational questions from SETI to Malaria to climate research) - it is called Quake-Catcher out of Stanford University. They send you a sensor that you screw to your floor and connect to your computer. The screen-saver is a 10-second delayed view of all the quakes being recorded all over the world - it ab-fab. I live in Seattle which is a subduction zone so they were particularly interested getting a sensor here. I am on the ground floor and leave my computer on 24/7. They have sensors for laptop and desktop; they prefer desktops because of the stability factor.

My current, active projects are World Community, Malariacontrol, and Rpsetta (inactive are UFluids, Lattice, and SpinHenge) on my laptop; on my desktop are climateNet, Einstein, SETI, QuakeCatcher, and a couple others I am too lazy to look up. My group (whick is just me) is Patosi and I am, of course, GrimJack. I know that DaniWeb has its own team.

I, too, have been here for 9 years; I am an intermittant poster spending almost all my time here in 'the lounge'. My current avatar was the very first one I used here, I eventually changed it to other things (to the surprise of many) then one day, it mysteriously came back and I haven't bothered to think of another one.

I am a rat; my time of day is 11pm to 1 am - the rat is the first among the animals of the zodiak because he rode on the back of the ox (who is second) and jumped off to arrive first.

<M/>- I googled it - it is called pleurisy and can be caused by pneumonia, t.b. among other things.

VernonDozier - I agree about long term vs short term pain. The pain that is there all the time, unaffected by opiates or other pain relievers reduces all other pain to ephemera. The human mind is a wonderful thing - it does not let you remember pain, it only lets you remember concept of it. Neuropathies on the other hand, don't go away so the mind is unable to 'move it to long-term storage where it can collect dust and get smoothed over'. It is there when you go to sleep, it is there when you wake up - the only relief I have found is distraction: reading a good book, watching a good movie, playing a kick-ass game - these are some of my favorite things because I can not be here now for a short time.

Three bouts of pain I can think of:
I kicked a heavy door with a vent - my big toe-nail went above the louvre and my toe below, tore the nail right off.
I had a spinal tap and the hole did not close which allowed a little, tiny bit of spinal fluid to leak out and I thought my brain would implode; I spent the entire weekend on my back - they patched the hole when I went in on Monday
I had a viral infection of the lining of my lungs - every inhale was like a knife stabbing me in the chest. I could sit up for about 15 minutes before tears came to my eyes and I had to lie down. Watching me walk must have been a hoot because I would fall down and whimper, curled up in a ball. I used to know the name of this but have forgotten it.

I have ADD, a short attention span, poor memory but an incredible focus. My work habits are terrible because if it is not 'right now and in my face' I forget about it. Sadly, this is even true for relationships, I actually forget people if I have not seen them for a week or 2 (this can really piss off a girlfriend to no end). The only reason Mrs. Grimjack and I lasted for 25 years is we lived together for that time. She finally wised up and left me a couple months ago.

I started making glass beads again - I play hardcore industrial turned up really loud and i shout invective against the world while working with glass at 2200 F. For safety's sake, I don't drink or take medication until after I have made some beads (I lose interest after about doing 8 beads, anyway - my lastest venture is trying to make a glass pinky-ring, it is just a bead with a larger hole, it is tempering now so I won't see it until tomorrow)

Other than that, I am a pretty nice guy

ooh look shiny thing

I work in front of a computer 8 hours a day, play computer games a couple hours a day, and spend at least 2 hours an evening making glass beads.

I don't drink wine much any more; same with port. I like IPA, the bitterer the better - I prefer the IBU to be above 80 but had difficulty with an IBU above 135 - took me an hour to drink that one.

Madredeus - electronica - That woman has the purest, sweetest voice since young Grace Slick. Just listening to her, my heart aches. Put some earphones on and she will seduce you.

Broccoly steamed then dipped in margarine right from the tub -er, yes I am single, how did you guess?
Oh, yeah some really cheap rye with really cheap, generic cola.

God, I am making myself sick - but since Mrs. GrimJack left, I don't care.

Is there a "jump to first unread message" button?

Some people think "I am American" is the same as "I am a citizen of the USA" but really "I am American" can be said by anyone on the western hemisphere. And people from all the other countries in the western hemisphere think "there is an asshole" when said asshole says "I am an American" when he means "I am a citizen of the USA"

We are a lazy people and there is no easy way to say "USAian" or "united statesian" so we say 'american' cuz it is short, sweet and easier than anything else.

but I digress

Thanks, I needed the laugh.

But I digress.

Arrgghhh - sorry, I probably should delete my comments but screw it - I will just go away for another couple months and cool down.

There were some comments back there dragging in child abuse (ie 'spanking') into the reason for the decline of civilization. I am seriously fucked up and I was spanked - I was spanked with a 'martinet' (grandpa got mad at mom when she was young, took his belt off, cut it into strips and nailed the strips to a short broom-handle - grandpa's father used to use a board much like those cute 'for the little deer with the bear behind' paddling boards). When I left home, I took the martinet with me and threw it off a cliff while I was at college - there was no way I was going to let anyone in my generation carry that particular tradition on. We had friends in Ryegate who liked the idea so much, they duplicated it but put knots in the end of leather strips. You may call it spanking but people see it as child abuse because a 2 year old (3 or 4 or 5) has a body with bones so soft that you can kill them by shaking them, you can ruin their shoulder by grabbing them by the upper arm and spanking them while they try to escape. If you hit bone instead of butt, you can screw up their hips - there are so many fucking things that can go wrong when you hit someone in anger when you outweigh them by 100 or more pounds pounds.