Misson

Yeah, but that's just one example. Surely in the hundreds of ship's surgeons some of them may have used something to create a portable kit. (Or maybe not - perhaps all surgery was confined to the location on the ship where they were performed. It's hard to re-focus your perspective when we've had portable medical units for so long.) From another site I found much smaller vials that are quite different than those pictured on that link. I'm sure the approaches to equipment were as varied as were the people and countries involved in sailing the Caribbean islands.

Well, ol' Albert has a company that sells carbon offset credits. I just hope we're not gullible enough to sell more of our freedom for a hypothesis. Actually, Patrick, all the GW discussions are hidden in other thread titles. One is the Live Earth thread and the other is the Ice Caps Melting thread. Both started out on one topic and then got into long discussions about GW. (Guilty as charged.)

Better to report them to us than not. To be honest, the first thing I do when I log on is clean the spam nests out. Continue to report them anyway, it can only help. That one from yesterday, something about Spanish Gay Sex...now that's what I call niche marketing.

The last two pages are priceless. I don't usually laugh that much at something like this.

You brought it back, but in a different forum, Silent. The other one is in Beyond. Mine are still the same. (Photo from the photo gallery on this site which appears on my desktop) and... (Photo of an actress from a movie's promotional materials which appears on my laptop. Anyone guess the movie?) The other thread is here. (I like being able to find all the responses to a thread. That's why I consolidate them when they're in my forum. Plus it saves them from being deleted when the powers that be decide to purge the forum.)

Well, how do you like that? Perhaps if they had cast Cruise or Law, it would have been better. (Sorry I went back and unwittingly caused all that trouble. I just wanted to make my raptor more realistic.) Several people have commented on how dangerous past periods would be to visit. (Which should give you greater appreciation for how good things are today, if nothing else.) If you were to go back and time and be killed, you would create a time paradox of sorts. The movies lightly dismiss this by suggesting that the person killed wouldn't be noticed, but even the smallest change in the past should alter the future, right? (Boy I miss our thread on time paradoxes...*sigh*) Although I wonder...if time travel were possible, wouldn't paradoxes be impossible? We would all still travel in a straight line (from our perspective) and our actions would have to be figured into the equation. "What if you killed your father or mother before you were born?" you might ask. I think it would be impossible. Either that or you'd start an alternate time line the coexisted with the time line your were experiencing up to that point and continue on unaware that you had changed anything. (Like BTTF part 2.) Curious...we're sort of back to perception again, aren't we? Only now we've codified it and made perception an integral part of reality, in a way. Cool.

This morning I was just thinking about how little we know about dinosaurs, despite what we claim to know. I think I'd want to (very briefly) visit the Cretaceous period and see just what velociraptors looked like. Particularly how they were colored, how their skin hung on their frame and what their eyes looked like. The movies have given them cat/reptilian eyes, but we really don't know that they looked like that at all. All we know is that they had eyes. (Wouldn't it be odd if they looked mammalian?) We also don't know (or really have any reason to suppose) that they were tiger colored and striped. I'd want to bring back a photo so's I could study it and repaint my velociraptor prop. I don't suppose there would be any reason whatsoever to share it wiht scientists and whatnot as no one would believe me, no matter how good my proof. I'd probably post the photo on my website with the prop, though, for comparison's sake. That would explain why I had painted it as I had, although I wouldn't say, "This is a photo from the Cretaceous period! Isn't that lovely? Hmm?") However, there would probably still be ramifications and I imagine the photo would somehow set off a series of events that would create chaos, intrigue and double crosses unlike anything that has been seen previously, probably causing some innocent victim to go running ragged through hair raising scrapes and situations until he or she were able to set things right. It might possibly star Tom Cruise or Jude Law.

That's pretty much what I heard about Jeeps...they're not the most comfortable vehicle, they get poor to reasonable mileage and the quality...well, it's not so great. So are the only real reasons to buy one for appearance and ruggedness? I wonder how many people actually take them off the tarmac? (They do look cool. Whenever I see a real jeep, I look to see who the person driving it is. I figure they're adventurous and potentially interesting. So I guess the appearance thing works, right?) I saw a bumper sticker that said, "Silly boy, Jeeps are for chicks!" Only it was on a Jeep Grand Cherokee. And I thought, "Silly girl, that's just the soft chick version of a Jeep!" (A real chick would drive a real Jeep, right? Adventurous.)

"Grumpy" transmission? What a phrase! My friend was a sort of a bug nut. In college (during the late 80s) he had a '57 Beetle. When he wrecked that, he sought out a '63 and drove that for awhile. He was pretty excited when the new Bug came out until he read Consumer Reports. (He loves Consumer Reports.) I guess they don't do very well. So he bought a Saturn. Anyone own a Jeep? (A real Jeep, like a Wrangler, not a Cherokee or a Liberty.) I guess they scrape the bottom of the barrel in ol' CR, but people who buy them really seem to like them.

I really liked the doctor character in M&C. Combined with some references to surgeons being shanghaied by pirate crews whenever the opportunity presented itself, I decided to play a surgeon. I'm going to pick half dozen of the most interesting (and naturally practical) instruments on the Godwin page to start off with. (It's too expensive to go gangbusters...especially since I'm still exploring this character concept.) However, I have a question. Is a pouch period correct for GaoP? (M&C takes place later than that.) Does anyone know what sort of pouch it would be? I'd carry a chest but...what a pain in the neck it would be to haul around with you, you know?

If you're a fan, they cleaned up and re-released all the classic WB cartoons on DVDs called WB Golden Collection with a bunch of neat extras. My local library has them, so I've been going back and watching them again. (There's this irritating Whoopie Goldberg intro to each one that you must watch (but can FF through) explaining how these were from a different era and the sensibilities were different and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, ok, we kinda' know that and the kids don't care.)

Oh, ah. I can see why that would be a problem. I grew up by a railroad track. We used to collect all the detritus in a barrel - plates, spikes, these J hook things that hold the rail in some fashion...I recall that there is definitely a gap (about 1/2" or so) in the rails which might present a failure point when traveling at high speed. hit repeatedly. I had a finicky carb on one of my cars. It got so bad that the car wouldn't run properly. Lord knows what the emissions on that beast were... Nobody seemed to be able to fix it so it worked completely correctly. So I, for one, was glad to see the back of them. (The Delorean came out at the very beginning of the fuel injector revolution - it had mechanical fuel injection - like large trucks! Quite a thing to look at - like Davy Jones face.)

Credit unions do seem to be more flexible. When I bought the Delorean, I got a loan at a reasonable rate from a credit union. No one else wanted to touch it because it was a "specialty car", unless they could charge a high rate of interest. The CU just gave it to me at the regular used car rate (after their board approved it - although I understand they did that with any used car.) As for new vs. used...I'll never buy a new car again. I had just as many issues with my new car as I did with most of my used ones. Besides, the vehicle depreciates something like 25 or 30% in value the minute you sign the paperwork. If you really want a warranty, you can can easily buy one and it will be less than 25% of the purchase price of any late model used car. (Although, to be honest, my experience with those extended warranties is that they're more trouble than they're worth. I got one on my VehiCross and I had to call them three times to get payment for a a part that failed which was specifically covered in the warranty. I barely got the price of the warranty out of that part.) Plus, if it's a late model, you can transfer the manufacturer's warranty. Although the way I figure it, if I spend less than 25% of the price of the car on repairs in the first three years, I've done as well as if I'd bought it new. (And I never have spent more than that yet...)

I was just looking at the synopsis for this over at Rotten Tomatoes website. It looks like it could be pretty good. Michelle Pfeiffer as an evil witch and DeNiro as a zepplin pirate captain? Who can resist that? (Claire Daines with blonde hair looks sort of odd, however. At least to me, she does.) I don't know if it's worth seeing in the theaters, but it definitely looks like good DVD fodder. (It's sort of curious to me how green fire has come to mean evil witchcraft lately. Green has normally been associated with positive things and red with negative things. Now the trend is reversing in the the fictional witchcraft world.)

I suggest spending the $70 if you can swing it. It's much simpler and the view out the plane window is kinda' neat. Although you might meet some really interesting people on a Greyhound. To paraphrase Gregory McDonald (as I don't have his book handy to give you the proper quote) "Key West looks and behaves like the udder of America. There all the cream and crap collect."

Pirates don't need loans! MW, take a ship! Although you might ask yourself why it is so urgent to get this particular car from said auction. Not to get too philosophical here, but in my experience any large (or even reasonably large) financial decision is best made when you are not under too much mental pressure. Although this is probably not quite your situation, I was once looking at a classic car that I had to have, but couldn't figure out how to finance. I finally figured out how to do it (through borrowed money and loans and just a rat's nest of financial wizardry) when it occurred to me to wonder what would happen if I waited. (With a little prodding and advice from my parents.) So I did. Nothing happened. The classic car bug didn't go away, so I bought my Delorean a few years later to satiate the perceived need - when I was better financially situated to do so. (And have since come to realize that the words "Classic car" = 'Extra maintenance." And "Extra maintenance" = "More money.") The original car I wanted would have entailed even more expenses because of its condition. There are lots of fish (cars) in the sea (lot).

Imagine if Stitch had been a Warner Brothers cartoon creation...

Actually, it's not that I have a problem with hotel showers, it's that once you get used to the gentle rainfall sort of shower head, regular shower heads seem harsh by comparison. On the flip side, when I first got it, I thought, "That's it?" Funny how that works. As for hotel showers, in my personal hotel rating system there are several elements and one of them does happen to do with shower heads, but it's more about where they mount it. Any hotel that mounts a shower head such that I have to stoop to wash my hair loses a star. (Let's see AAA give you that sort of info in their rating system!)

That's what my re-enacting character should be! An undead pirate. I know just how to do that. (Let's see what the period folks make of that costume. Hey, I'll be sure not to wear bucket boots! )

It looks pretty much like that. Funny thing is, if you had looked at the links before I deleted them, you would have that they were all in English. (Funny about that.)

Got the Harry Potter book on Saturday. *Note: there are no real spoilers in this. Please don't post any for those who haven't read this and want to do so. Thanks * It was a decent read (as are all of her books). Actually, it went pretty much the way I suspected it would. There was only one real surprise to me as far as the basic arc went. [And it was very minor, involving a minor villain.] She sure took us on a whirlwind tour of the other books' locations, though. It had a tiny bit of the cloying "remember this bit?" aspect to it. Kind of like Episode 3 and Die Another Day.

Yes, it's a language. Spamese. Say how many people would decide to follow a link that you can't read in a post that makes no sense? (For those of you who didn't see the original posts, they were full of hot links to what appeared to be a Russian porn site. I edited them out and decided to have a little fun with the posts.)

Not to mention that their approach is much more socialist than ours and can more easily get away with legislating things. There are a group of people in the US that want it to be more socialist which I don't comprehend. Our freedom and independence is what made the US what it is today (Just as socialism has made Europe what it is today.) As you said, the US is too spread out to make rail transit the only answer. I don't know what the problems with the rail lines are, unless it's related to grades, turn radiuses and so forth. Or it could be that the equipment just isn't up to snuff. I was just reading about a company that's going gangbusters selling concrete railroad ties, though. They're more durable and last longer than the wooden ties. Isn't that sort of cool? Old tech applied in a new tech way to an old problem. In the article, they did explain how the rail lines have deteriorated because they're not worth fixing yet. This may or may not have anything with their suitability for rapid rail travel, however. When it becomes win/win, that will change. While many intelligent people are probably working on this problem, there isn't the galvanized will to do this yet. Haven't you ever noticed that whenever we have a real problem, we apply our collective creativity and solve it? (Speaking of fuel efficient cars, remember the introduction of the fuel injector on the heels of the gas "crises" in the late 70s? It was so much more fuel efficient than the carburetor that it practically doubled the number of miles we could get from the existing fuel supply. That's American ingenuity for you. It's also an example of why all this idiotic handwringing over "limited natural resources" is a waste of psychic energy. When it gets down to the wire, we apply the creativity that freedom and imagination support and solve the problem in ways no one has ever thought of.)

We actually have a pet photo thread over here: http://pyracy.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8776 I don't think the undead monkeys topic has been fully explored yet, however. [Copyright Disney and suchlike] Here's a shot of my model of Jack for a haunted house room. If it interests you, you can see the whole page on my version of Jack here. As for Planet of the Apes, the first movie was really good and they acquired an increasingly lower quality aspect after that. I understand that this was due to the thought process in Hollywood at the time on the nature of sequels. Back then, they thought each sequel would make progressively less money so they should invest less in them. Unfortunately, this has a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy aspect to it. If you put less money in, you can do less with the movie (especially effects intensive movies like the Planet of the Apes series - the make-up was horrendously difficult to do, especially at first.) Fortunately, Star Wars came along and Geo. L. proved this this theory was yet another example of why Hollywood "thinking inside the box" was hidebound and foolish. (OTOH, if you're talking about Tim Burton's take on the thing...it kinda' sucked IMO. Too much preaching a'going on in there IMHO. (Which is actually sort of odd, given the preachy nature of the original story.) The soundtrack has its merits, however.)

The Bothans were the spies who smuggled the plans for the Death Star out, right? They would speak in code, wouldn't they? "What's that stuff?" "It's a message. I have a code." "Perhaps you should take some aspirin."