Cancer

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat I'm not now, but I will be after the planet is destroyed and I escape to HD221287c.

Re: Complicate the Person Above Roter Baron only exists on Tuesdays and alternate Mondays in this Universe. The rest of the time is spent in other universes, where the calendar arrangements are understandably different.

Re: Musings on Random Musings Sure there are. Lots of 'em. As many as there are seven-sided triangles.

Re: The Last Word I thought the person(s) in the Burning Man had to be volunteers for the ritual to work.

Re: The Last Word Hey, at least we aren't settin' up to do the Joan of Arc thing to you.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER Whatever bug it is, it makes for an insane amount of acid secretion in the stomach. Anything that can be corroded is. And the acid makes its way downstream of the stomach, too, killing a lot of intestinal flora, and making it to the nether end still at appreciable strength. Which makes for a quite literally corroded, throbbing PITA. Acid reducers and more conventional antacids help with it, but for 30 hours or so ... life is Not Good.

Re: The Last Word In my field, grad school -- after the first year or two -- really is more like an apprenticeship than a specific curriculum. You hitch up with an adviser who makes sure your background is adequate for what you want to do, and then sees to it that you have the (intellectual) tools and raw ability to succeed. Cheating in grad school is more of a personal betrayal than just cheetin' in skool. Not saying it never happens, but it's a different sort of thing IMO.

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Re: The Last Word From http://www.ithadtobeyou.net/carpe/archives/2003_02.html, and you have to scroll down to "Advice for Undergraduates".... Part 4 - Cheating #1. Don't EXPECT to be able to cheat. #2. You may feel that it is your right or even your duty to cheat on multiple choice exams. Professors don't share this sentiment. #3. Don't write cheat notes on anything that can be easily identified as belonging to you, such as a favorite baseball cap. You can't write enough on there to make it worth the risk anyway. #4. If you secretly copy some notes onto a desk for the purposes of cheating, make sure to do it in erasable pencil, and don't forget to erase it after you get up to turn in the exam. Since professors who have fallen victim to this will typically perform a "desk check" prior to exams, you'll probably either be caught or too stressed to concentrate anyway. #5. Most professors think that burning at the stake is too lenient a punishment for cheating, but they'll go along with it anyway because it is cheap and convenient. #6. If you've cheated at some point during the semester and your parents don't know about it, be sure to avoid any kind of formal grade appeal situation in that class. It is certain to be the first thing brought to the attention of your parents.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER I meant internally. When the gas that's coming up smells like burned popcorn....

Re: The cranky thread A few snowfakes [that was intended to be "snowflakes", but it seems too relevant here] appeared over Seattle, so King County Metro went into their usual catatonic tizzy and any buses on routes that aren't strictly on the flats vanished into the void. And while I can get one of those flats-running routes into downtown, there is (oh no oh no i can't make it oh no) a HILL on which the university sits which prevents all bus service from running, even if there isn't a dribble of snow on it. And I know THAT because I had to hike up the damned thing to get to work. It's not like this snow thing doesn't happen every winter. Everyone who works at Metro above the level of driver needs to have his kneecaps broken and then made to crawl on their ample bellies through a particular 1.3-mile tunnel lined with broken glass and rock salt.

Re: The Last Word As I once said (though its not attributed to me), "Most professors think burning at the stake is too lenient a punishment for cheating, but they'll go along with it anyway because it's cheap and convenient."

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER Digestive tract viruses ... stink.

Re: The Last Word Grading exams is a drag. A direct insight into your ineffectiveness.

Re: The Last Word Well, I wouldn't actually call taking a physics exam a "power trip".

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat Go to a number of banks and make cash withdrawals.

Re: The Last Word Gotta make it possible for them to finish in 50 minutes. And, there was some overlap between that question and another.

Re: The Last Word Hey, these are health/life science people. I'm making it relevant for them.

Re: Musings on Random Musings Not in alphabetical order.

Re: The Last Word Well, I cut the question which asks if the bungee jumper survives.

Re: Musings on Random Musings Two 4-letter words that start with 'F'.

Re: The Last Word Nerts. First draft of the exam is too long, way too long. When I do it from a standing start, it takes me 17.5 minutes; they get 50 minutes. For an essay exam that factor of 3 is about right, but for a problem-based exam like this one it has to be a factor of 5 or so. Gotta chop stuff out.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER Yeah, the 2nd momcat was probably an abused, and the kittens picked up her habit of hiding from people as a first reaction. The 1st momcat was, by contrast, a real people-oriented sweetie.

Re: Astromancy Another question: how many Elements are you going to have? I see 3 (Fire, Wind, Spirit) listed. Are all the Elements known? If one (or more) Elements exist but are unknown to the astromancers of the world, then they are juggling unknown and hidden Elements when they do their thing ... which increases the hazard, perhaps drastically. That could be "lost lore" to be quested for. FWIW, you could do a mock-up using the real sky (88 constellations) and impose, say, a cut-off of a certain apparent brightness for determining the number of capital-S stars in each. (That seems likely to give you lots of constellations with zero Stars, though.) Then you could assign the Elements to the stars via an arbitrary thing like spectral type. Given that you can get the basic data file for doing that mock-up easily, it depends on how hot you are for the programming task. Then throw in jokers like variable stars (which sometimes contribute, sometimes don't), eclipsing binaries (where one Star has two Elements, except during an eclipse when one is blocked out), novae (rare, one-shot Stars with perhaps exotic or multiple elements), ....