Misson

You might also mention that most pirates were actually trying to avoid a fight rather than start one. I was with Red-Handed Jill's group for a kids show and her mate Jack made this point by asking the kids what the pirates greatest weapon was. After he got all the standard responses, he showed them the pirate flag and explained that this was their greatest weapon because it could be used to make their prey give up before a fight was ever started. If you watch the Hollywood films, you'd think all these folks did was fight.

I have another link for a floating ghost project that I found a few years ago: http://www.phantasmechanics.com/fcghost1.html Admittedly, I've never done a floating ghost myself, I was using the details on that page for a story I was writing. I am changing my haunted house room concept for this year. I started out riffing "It's a Small World" with singing skull flowers and have since decided to modify the idea because I don't have a very large room to work with. I'm going to make a skeleton swamp scene with fluorescent lights and glow paint with the centerpiece being a "skeleton tree," made mostly out of bones and Great Stuff! where some of the branches ending in skulls will sing or talk or something (if I can get it to work). Good ol' Great Stuff!... a haunted house mavens best friend.

Probably because guilt is such a subtle and effective lever - up to a point. Take a look at many current marketing campaigns - several employ guilt. (If is see one more weepy billboard about how smoking kills kids or fighting global warming is about the future which shows some kid standing up to his waist in the water as proof, I'm gonna' puke.) Businesses are just as guilty of using guilt, though. Guilt - the real national past time.

I actually did do a search on it and most of the responses seemed non-scientific, so I discounted them. The ones I looked at didn't cite the find as being revolutionary, but I may not have come across the same info you did. Put up a good link, I'm always glad of interesting info. (Still, 2 million years ago is less than 3 million - the age of Lucy. You have to imagine that the evolution of the species took place over a very long period of time. On that basis, I personally don't quite see erect footsteps as being revolutionary. Admittedly, archeology is not my primary field of interest so I may be underestimating its importance.)

At one time, I collected SW Action Figures, coins, stamps, different sort of movie cards, movie posters, Mad Magazine, Bond stuff...a real assortment of crap. I've sold off parts of my collections and given away other parts. I still have way too much of the stuff. I became more interested in creating stuff rather than collecting it. Now I collect the stuff I create.

I have a cunning plan... I actually thought of an idea this morning, which I plan to suggest to Booty once I find out a little more info about the board. For the most part, however, you can't tell a spam registration from anyone else. Their IPs are all over the map (literally) and their usernames could easily be valid user names. The only way to really spot them is to see what they post. Then we eliminate them and block their IP. However, they switch IPs frequently (either that or there are several of them - which I think is more likely) and they only use each username once, so there really isn't an effective way to do it that I know of. (Except for my cunning plan - which may or may not work. Or it may be too much trouble to be worth trying.)

As a lad, I collected hand-carved lemur femur flutes. But that got too expensive. So I switched to rawhide commemorative state capital thimbles. But then I got them all. So I started collecting my thoughts - until I ran out of storage space. I was also gathering wool for awhile, but I lost track of it all. Now I just collect dust.

I wonder how "human" the human footprint is? It should be evolutionarily somewhere between the Lucy fossil (which I think they estimate to be 3 million years old) and more recent human history. If so, not quite so startling. The popular media (USA Today especially) probably doesn't spend a lot of time differentiating between what could be considered a human footprint and what could be just said to be an upright hominid footprint. Add to that the notion that carbon dating is more inaccurate the older the fossil and it may just be another link in the chain of evolution. Still, it is interesting.

And 5,000 movies containing comedic knockoffs ever since! (The Three Amigos comes to mind...) Bogey was something else in that movie. "Conscience. What a thing. If you believe you got a conscience it'll pester you to death. But if you don't believe you got one, what could it do t'ya? Makes me sick, all this talking and fussing about nonsense."

Curious the traits we ascribe to God. Has anyone else ever read Scott Adam's book, God's Debris? It has some interesting thoughts on the topic. I don't agree with them all, but it gives you another way of looking at it, which is always worth your time. Because he couldn't get anyone to publish it at first, he made it available on-line for free: http://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/godsdebris/

In addition to the correct movie, "I'm invincible" is a notable quote from Goldeneye. Alas, "You're a loony." is not.

Indeed. All my cleverness (not to mention sound file editing time) so easily athwart. That means it's your turn to come up with a quote. Now I must return to trying to extract Elmer Bernstein's wonderful Road Trip music from the sound files. No one ever even thought to provide the instrumental tracks to this movie! All we get is Louie Louie and such like.

I was sort of hoping someone else would get it, but it seems not to be so. The quote is from Mr. Bean. There's a new one coming out...this month? Next month? Ok, so here's the next quote: "Oh my God!" Easy, isn't it? Ok, it's so easy it's hard. Actually it's the way that it's said that makes this quote sort of entertaining for me, so let's break into 3 dimensional quotes (or something). This hint may help you get the quote: Oh my God!

I used to work in a physics lab and the good Dr. kept all the textbooks he received for review in said lab. One of them was called Physics for Poets. Jenny's response made me think of that. (I think we're talking about two different things entirely, m'dear.)

"I see a sequel in your future..."

Angelina's jolly boat? One of the photos in the Angela post was actually genuine. (I know cuz' saw the movie they swiped it from.) Who'da thunk? Ironically, it made the other pictures look even more fake. (If that was possible.)

Does anyone know how much variation there is in the volume of individual rain drops in a given storm?

I think you're preaching to the choir. The spammers don't stick around long enough to read your post. They are very clever about how the write things, register names and use IPs. (I notice they have started putting the links in the topic comment section.) I currently have a list of over 90 unique IPs from all over the world.

Perhaps one of the greatest rules of success (and failure) in my mind. You are responsible for your actions. A restatement of that is something I have mumbled several times on this forum: you are where you are and what you are because of the choices you have made. If you don't like either, make new choices. Your third rule has great application to the green movement. Even when we try to "save" something (a habitat, environment, the earth), we produce a long chain of events that has mathematically chaotic results. Look at the huge mess that this silly ethanol push has created.

Ah, so you get it, Phil. "Natural" and "un-natural" are just labels we create. Nothing we currently have can be inherently unnatural. What interests me is...what will come next? What is so far outside of our limited awareness that we cannot understand it? (Besides particle physics, consciousness and the motivation behind spammers who put no links in their posts?) What form will the next iteration of earth-based lifeforms take? (We arrogantly assume it will be something of a "lesser being" than us like cockroaches. I credit our limited awareness and sad capacity for imagination.) The only effective way to go completely green is to kill yourself. Then you leave no carbon footprint. Oh, wait, you leave your remains which impact the earth. It appears it is impossible to go completely green.

It involves WWII...

The Case of the Missing Neutrinos: And Other Curious Phenomena of the Universe by John Gribbin turned out to be a series of essays on extra-planetary phenomena, much of it dated, so I only read about a 1/4 of them before I lost interest. I switched over to Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind by V. S. Ramachandran et al and The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (thanks largely to the post by hitman). The Holmes mysteries have proved quite riveting.

The history of "terrors that threaten the population" is long and, in retrospect, somewhat silly. It used to be the vengeful God and now it is the vengeful earth. A re-visitation of the environmental terrors predicted in the past century or so in the popular media will show alternation between unstoppable warming and unstoppable cooling (both of which the more sensational scientific reporting tells us have occurred in the past.) The episodic nature of such scientific pronouncements plays well into the Whack-A-Mole approach the media has to human issues and crises. The core essence of the earth cares little for us or our feats and accomplishments, despite that lofty (and lowly) stature that some have ascribed to us. It could just as soon wipe us away through a series of catastrophes as not. (Fortunately, "not" seems to be the going rate.) There are certainly things we can individually do to care for ourselves vis-a-vis the planet, however. Like all such things, some will and some won't. As mentioned previously, the positive effect of the GW belief is that it draws some of the indifferent into thinking a little bit more about the big picture. (Albeit while precluding examination of the even bigger picture.) The negative effect is that it gives credence to and concentrates more power in the hands of the environmental bigots and zealots.

Ok, I know y'all have been waiting with baited breath (whatever that means), so here is the quote. I suspect it's hard b/c you won't be able to find it with Google, so I'll give you a hint: it is a black and white film. That and the content of the quote should be more than enough to tip off anyone who has seen this movie. "Look, I didn’t expect this any more than you did, but now that it happened, let it happen. They want heroes, we got six of ‘em. All right, we throw in a seventh for good luck. Who’s counting? We’re doin’ it for yer ma’, kid."

True. True. A matter of perception. (Itself apparently a uniquely human quality. As far as we know, of course.) Also true. My point above. There really is no "ideal" earth. There are a multitude of snapshots of earth and someone has chosen one "ideal" and tried to suggest that this is what we should all strive for. The woman I met yesterday made a very good point on this subject. Black and white is no way to live one's life. It doesn't exist in nature...and we are a part of nature. Like it or not. Some people seem to think we're above it or below it or whatever else they can come up with in relationship to "it", but all our actions are, by definition, natural. Our minds are composed of components of this earth and thus are natural. Anything they might come up with is also, arguably, natural. (Good and bad. As Tennyson noted, "Nature, red in tooth and claw..." and all that.) I think the estimable Sjöröveren made a very good point about us in the thread on infrastructure, so rather than try and sum it up, rephrase it or otherwise modify the thoughts which are already stated quite clearly, I'll just quote it: Indeed. (Note the second word in the quote. Funny about that.)