Posts by GrimJack

AD - for an 'old' you are getting your history mixed up; Johnson had a war on poverty, it was Nixon who had a war on drugs. I am not disagreeing with your position on the stupidity of the war on drugs, just who started that particular war (I was there, too)

my thought is "#### you, bitch, I'm just being nice.

That right there is a warning 'this dude is an asshole and easily offended'. Any time 'eff you bitch' is your goto response (internally or out loud) you are not being nice for niceness sake you are being an asshole who wants to be appreciated.

The really interesting part of the research is that evolution re-uses and/or builds on what is there and this means that there is not necessarily one gene per attribute. Why don't people have purple hair? Why do redheads exist? What makes dogs different from wolves? (link)

There is an experiment in Russia in which a geneticist is trying to tame foxes. Only the most docile foxes are allowed to breed and any fox that was fearful or aggressive were 'culled'. After 54 years of research and 51 generations of foxes. What they ended up with were foxes with floppy ears, short or curly tails, extended breeding seasons, and morphological changes like the size and shape of the skull and teeth - they also lost the 'musky, fox smell' and changes in fur color. Of the original batch, they kept a base-line batch that were not culled. There were also physiological changes especially in certain hormone balances.

My point in bringing this up is that if 'gayness' is genetic, it is probably a consequence of a mutation that offers some advantage or, at the very least, does not lead to its own extinction despite the difficulties in same-sex couples reproducing. Like protecting the offspring of relatives. I am starting to get bogged down in the details. Anyway, I hope you see what I mean.

Well, I actually like Boole's original treatise Titled: An Investigation Of The Laws Of Thought On Which Are Founded The Mathematical Theories Of Logic And Probabilities. It was one of those 'lost' works that was considered interesting but of no practical use until someone working on the first computers brought it to prominance (the story is a little more complex that that). As far as I know, I am one of the few techs who have a copy and actually read it. I have been out of tech for about 15 years now; maybe I should re-read it and get back into some sort of tech support position.

Today is the 150th birthday of the London Underground (the Raw Meat reference is to an early horror movie that takes place in the Underground). The people who took that first ride on this day were the big wigs; tomorrow celebrates the 30,000 brave souls who rode the Underground when it was a dank, dismal place with steam engines pulling the trains.

Choosing the best is pretty much the one I am playing now. But there are some that I can go back and play again and again like the Deus Ex series and Prey - I like prey because of the crazy point of view shifts like paths that allow you to walk upside down.

Several species of small furry animals gathered together in a cave and grooving with a pict. It is rock song with the longest title and is pretty damn good - I heard it live on their Umma Gumma tour in quadraphonic stoned on acid. It still sometimes sneaks into my consciousness when I am in the wilderness (like that scene in Zatoichi when he is walking into the village before the grand finale dance scene. If you want to see some serious swordfighting, look at this or any of the original 21 Zatoichi films.)

My bucket list contains only one item - live for 250 years.

Sometimes, it is like axe-murder to walk into the dressing room and be overwhelmed by the cloud of Axe clinging to everything. Do those guys actually believe that pouring that stuff all over their bodies will lead to gorgeous models pawing them?

There are certain word pairs that have very specific rules for their usage and my nerves rage when they are misused:
farther/futher
fewer/less
There are others but these seem to show up more often.

There are more separate, living creatures in your body the you have cells in your body - by count.

On the other hand, I also use classical music especially the piano work of Glenn Gould - that guy is so good both as a concert musician and as the master of studio recording. Here is really cool part, if you listen really close you can hear Glenn humming along with his playing. I know, I know - the musician should disappear into the music but since Glenn could have removed himself from the music in the studio - it implies that as a musician, he wants to be in the music. Check out his Goldberg Variations sometime (er, of course you know Bach wrote the Variations). Some people think his focus on the G.V. drove him crazy.

I generally put on some old school German industrial - Kraftwerk, Rammstein, einstürzende neubauten - I am accepting nominations for more.

I went into Walgren's to buy my meds and their system asked if I wanted to donate to the RC - of course, I did.

Oh, man I want that! I just need a couple reconfigurations - I can make a deal with the older couple who live below me no problem but it will need to be unhinged so it would unfold in a wrap-around mode but yeah, I want one.

blog.Gawker.com is down - I kid, I live in Seattle so I am pretty far away from the disaster. I hope everyone stays well.

RevJim: Thanks for reminding me of that French quote - discussions with behaviorists always seemed to end like that.

<DW>: There are certain things in life that require decision-making only once then it becomes a habit because life is too short to stop and decide which loaf of bread each and every time.

This is why most people with addictions (alcohol or drug dependancies) are rarely just addicts by choice.

This statement needs a bit of expansion/explanation - as it stands, it is just a tautology. Here in Seattle there is a program that allows homeless people to continue to use alcohol while in residence. It takes a --variable duration-- but they can stop drinking. It seems that when people are homeless they have a great deal of time to fill and the alcohol was a way to numb themselves. Sometimes it is the alcohol that brought them to homelessness but often it was something very different and the alcohol was there at the end.

R-J, about 20% of the audience believed in the broadcast - it was not the historians who would have had you believe in the 'rioting in the streets' it was the print media who blew it up out of proportion. B-t-b, 20% of the radio audience was just under a million people.

WOW - Aia, interesting person - is there any mention of him not in the Book of Mormon?

"X" There are a couple of things I would like to ask:

• Do Russians drink vodka similar to the way the Polish drink vodka? (a 6 ounce glass straight in one gulp, followed by chaser)
• Sitting alone at a table with a bottle of vodka; if you run 2 fingers down your lapel, you are asking for 2 people to come help - 3 fingers, 3 people?
• Has the Russian Orthodox church become a political power again?

I have more but I will have to organize my thoughts a little more. Years ago, a Polish fishing crew and ship stopped in Seattle; I helped them find a licquer store and we ended up on their boat drinking vodka with orange juice chaser and eating sausages. I knew no Polish and they knew no English but 'No Problem' - it was fun and funny.

Wolfram is not a forum but it is a site that specializes in the maths and a little bit of searching might give you some answers

Jim, since you asked me to do my research

A false dilemma (also called false dichotomy, the either-or fallacy, etc.)

I will change the parenthetical 'stupid' and say that argument from moral idignation does not really have a place in an exchange of ideas for many reasons including it allows for no introduction of contrary evidence. But if this is just chatting about how you feel about stuff, it is acceptable.

Your description of addiction vs choice does seem a little simplistic; studies on smokers who quit seem to imply that there is something a little more complex going on. Studies seem to imply that 40% of smokers who have quit are smoking again 2 years later (but such longitudinal studies are few and far between - other studies show 2-10% depending on age). One of really important lines from the end of the study is

More important, we were unable to identify a duration of abstinence after which former smokers had no risk of relapse. Thus, no definition of successful cessation can be absolute.
Once an addict always an addict, I guess - just like AA says.

I understand that anecdotal evidence is highly suspect but after being a smoker for 20 years, I have been a non-smoker for 22 years (with a short interval about 5 years ago when I realized I was inhaling my Cuban cigars so I had to cut them out). I could easily become a smoker again but I …

Maybe, just maybe, some of you should do just a little research rather than pull ideas out of your nether region. Here is an abstract that is readable for people who have a 2-year degree or above. Addiction is a complex interaction of neurotransmitters built on biological circuits designed to initiate and maintain survival behaviors. Now I understand that you have to accept evolutionary theory to progress past the (stupid) moral idignation. I could wire your brain with a reward circuit you could stimulate with a button and you would die happily within a week (of course, not me personally - I couldn't actually do the surgery).

Better yet, how many of you have coded for days on end, barely stopping to eat or drink? That is the reward circuitry at work - or gamed for that long. The abstract even breaks down the addictions into nicotine, stimulants, alcohol and opiates.

The OP asked the wrong question, created a logical fallacy called False Dilemma - giving us 2 choices that are not even relevant.

On the flight to Argentina I watched MIB3 and something forgettable. Higher on my list of what to see next is Duck you Sucker, The Nameless One for my western kick then go for El TOPO (the mole) - this is a western that will blow your mind. It is a Spanish with sub-titles and involves a gunslinger traveling the desert taking on other gunslingers like a pair of twin dwarves - one with no legs and one with no arms who are, together, the best gunfighter (there is a scene where the one with no arms braids the other's hair while he is taking care of the harness that they wear so the 2 of them together have arms and legs - yeah "porque demando porque" - why are foreign films so -- foreign?).

calculated goto statements in COBOL

Does anyone remember back in the bad old days when every house had at least one ashtray and it was considered very rude not to let people smoke in your house. If ashes fell on the floor, there would be an awkward laugh and someone would say 'it is good for the rug'

Ooh, ooh - you know you are old if you have a small pox scar on your left shoulder - that is the great generational divide.

Whe you remember when you had to wait for an elevator with 15 other people and if you missed it, it was a 15 minute wait for another.

You know what a dial-tone is.

off-topic, I didn't do anything with my avatar either but here is my original 'Grim' GrimJack smiling(?) out. Also, I can't figure out how to reply-to -- guess I had better read the new instructions.

EEK! My old avatar mysteriously reappeared - cool, I guess.

Anyway, isaac asimov (mosel tov) offerred the best idea for god proving his/her existence - put a message in PI somewhere around the 4 billionth place. By the time we get to it, we will be ready for it. This is not to say that I believe it will happen but if god has/had a sense of humor, that is the place to hide it.

Getting my Rammstein fix in an odd place http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bqpRoVxH2jc

I am an athiest (this should come as no surprise to anyone who has been here for awhile). As far as I can tell, Spinoza's god was nature; that god can't be something outside of nature. Attributing anything that we recognize is just anthropomorphism; Spinoza dismisses the world view of the 'standard' Judeo-Christian as mere prejudice and superstition.

So what is it you want to talk about.

The Shiver - repent Walpurgis

`You know you are old when this makes sense

An army of ninja cats creeping up on you

My story is boring - GrimJack was an awesome graphic comic from the 1980s. I have used GrimJack as a username in one version or another since 1988 - the name was so popular at the time that I often had to use variants like GrmJck but I would never use something like <username>## - except once I used GrimJack666.

While in Paris, you go to bed at 9:00 in the evening.

For some reason, I noticed Chloe Grace Moretz doing some interviews then I saw her as Hit Girl in the movie Kick Ass. Probably not really what I am listening to but the clip score will be familiar to most.

If you remember that slot-car racing was big enough that there were 'professional' races with big money prizes and towns as small as 2500 people had a slot-car track. People would spend hundreds of dollars getting their car ready for competition. One of the more interesting tricks was to soak the rubber drive wheels in alcohol which softened them and they had better traction. I think a combination of Pong, computers, and PacMan killed them off.

Honest response - I don't affect anyone's rep by much but I always make a comment if I up or down vote.

I'm generally only downvoting and neg repping spammers so no ham done :)

Mmmmm - ham, <droools>

Audacity will do what you want and it is free - you will need a line out from your player to the line in on your computer.

Without line out/in you can use earphone out and microphone in but watch your levels.

sounds more like an urban legend than anything else to me. No fish will have evolved to do that, no evolutionary pressure to do so :)
And of course it'd be rather hard to target people wearing swimwear :)

That is why you should have clicked on the link. Once you have checked out the link, then we can discuss.

Wow! What a year, from worse to great! Excellent to hear, GrimJack :)
What sort of work do you do?

I work for the IRS as a seasonal which means I usually work from January to June. This year (well actually Dec last year) I was called in early and went into the first team for the 4 weeks of the early call-up. January 3rd was the beginning of my actual ToD (tour of duty) and I went to the team that I was assigned to. If it seems convoluted to you, you don't know the half of it.

Are you saying your a victim of the 'ball cutter' or you know people that are?

No, fortunately I do not know of anyone who has met one - it is just a weird bit of news that I wanted to pass along so that, no matter how bad things get, a fish did not bite your balls off while you were swimming.

Well, things were going terribly for the last month of 2010 - workplace horrors, then I was transferred to a different team and life is full and wonderful again. I like my boss (she was my manager a couple years ago); I like my team - heck, even the other teams on the floor are pleasant people. When I say floor, I mean I am floor 19 and was just transferred up from floor 17 - most of the people on 17 were unpleasant and non-responsive, whereas (so far, knock on wood) most of the people on 19 are really nice, pleasant people to work with. I am looking forward to the next 6 months on this team. So the new year has started well.

A little bit of a downer is the 'ball cutter' fish - it seems in the waters of Papua New Guinea there is a fish that bites off the balls of fishermen and/or swimmers. The thing is huge and, oddly enough, has very human looking teeth.

Have you ever taken a bite of fruit and thought "mmmm,. that is sweet" and the very next bite "ewwww, not sweet - what happened?" That is the difference between the blossom end and the stem end. The blossom end is the sweetest.

There are some that are in the $40.00 range that work pretty well. Check overstock.com; google.

Happy New Year to you all!

AD - while you are down there you might as well check out the Barrier Reef.

Moloko - had never heard of her before; that lead me to Roison Murphy - then I discovered that Roison was half of Moloko.

I agree! He was an interesting voice; I did not agree with everything he said, but I seldom disagreed with him.