Cancer

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER So is there a place where one can see the rules & a coarse description before one actually does character creation and starts? So I don't do the equivalent of dumping campaign-limit character points into COM, or some such?

Re: The Last Word

Re: The Last Word Looks like the university has on-site search access, but the lame library interface doesn't seem to let me simply grab and read the newest issue. So I have to know titles, or other useful search criteria; I haven't found a convenient way to get to something as useful as a table of contents for an issue. I have to be on-site to check the other location's access; that won't happen for at least a couple of days.

Re: The Last Word I don't see it that often, that's all, and it's not worth enough to me for me to subscribe.

Re: How long does tech last after The End? Actually, get it above its Curie temperature, and you don't need to hammer it. As long as the magnetic incident is transient (and doesn't impose that powerful field permanently) that's all you need to do; on cooling, the magnetic domains in the metals will be randomized. You can find more here.... FWIW, I don't think it's possible to have a magnetic event that powerful without something else going on. Creating a neutron star makes for an impressive magnetic pulse, but that only happens when you're in a Type II supernova, and there's Other Significant Stuff happening there.

Re: Answers & Questions Q: Mmmrfff? Wmmf mbimmd mm mmfmmmfffllmm mmbllmmffl? A: And that's just the appetizer!!

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat NoMan. Why not? After all, he's already dead. NT: Bad things that happen when the local superheroes group is dissatisfied and want a new contract.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER I'll look at it tomorrow.

Re: The Last Word That's perilously close to "sh*t on rocks" for my taste.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER You're being redundant, of course. CIOs are by the nature of being corporate officers a proper subset of Dilbertian dumb@ss's who don't know any better.

Re: The Last Word Heh, if you read Hofstadter's stuff, consciousness is the result of logical inconsistency. I haven't read his latest book yet, though, just a couple of reviews. I don't read New Scientist on a regular basis; it's one of those things skim through at irregular intervals.

Re: "Neat" Pictures Actually, broken shards of ceramic would make an interesting breath weapon SFX. PD would apply rather ED, but that's all right.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Terrier by Tamora Pierce. It's set in the same universe (Tortall) as a bunch of her other stuff (the Lioness, Wild Magic, and Protector of the Small tetralogies, and the Trickster's Choice/Trickster's Queen duology), but set about 200 years earlier in time. This one's a first-person-POV detective story in a high fantasy universe. The protagonist is a trainee city cop on her first "beat" assignment in the slums of a major city. I think it's probably billed as Young Adult, like much of the rest of the author's work, but I don't have the book at hand to be certain of that. I think you could read this and find it a decent read without having read the rest of the stories, though the overlying "frame" in which the first-person narrative fits wouldn't make much sense. It's a solid read.

Re: How long does tech last after The End? I admit that back on 12/31/1999 where I was there were enough survivalist nutcases who'd been hoarding food, supplies, and above all ammunition that I expected them to come out and start raiding their neighbors immediately after midnight when the Y2K Crash rendered the rest of civilization helpless.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER How often do you run into an IE-only site, besides M$'s own places? Or is that part of your duties?

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat Xbox players attend class? When did that start? "Coach? Hey, we got problems. The judge over in Bordello County is an alum of our opponent tomorrow, and this being 11:20 Friday night and all, he won't hold bail hearings for all the guys in our #1 and #2 offense until Monday morning." NT: Signs the other team's all-star linebacker is a werewolf.

Re: The Last Word Or herniated a disk.

Re: My mostly hard sci-fi campaign Found one paper of a direct imaging survey of the area around L4 & L5. They didn't find anything. Their limits are such that this means nothing 175 meters in diameter or larger if it's S-type, that is, silicaceous rock-type stuff, or 350 meters or larger if it's C-type (carbonaceous, a type of primitive rock we don't have on earth any more). C-type is substantially darker, so the limit on brightness means more "room" for a dark thing to remain undetected. Heh. Only marginally related, but this looks interesting; it's from a forecast of the next fifty years, made in 1986. EDIT: That's talking about Jupiter's Trojans, not Earth's. That's from a more powerful survey than the one I found mentioned above looking for Earth-Trojans.

Re: My mostly hard sci-fi campaign I'll look into the question about how much debris is at L4/L5. I think that in Earth's case people have recognized that it's going to be out there, but I'm not aware of any identified objects. Now, given that stuff does accumulate there, you could use that part of space as the place where whatever billion-year-old extrasolar McGuffin Machine that you might feel like introducing into your campaign is likely to be found. For Jupiter, there's a population of largish asteroids (the Trojans) at its L4 & L5. Those guys will be kilometers in size. More than that I don't know at this point. EDIT: There's been something in Scientific American in the last couple years about spacecraft in L2 and other "unstable" orbits. I'll see if I can find that more precisely.

Re: The Last Word Paychecks shouldn't be literally painful, no matter what employers tell you.

Re: The Last Word Careful, you're talking to a martial arts instructor. Their whole reason for being is to make it pointlessly painful.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat Keep 'em out back in a snowbank for six weeks. Then take 'em out and throw 'em in the stewpot. By that time folks'll be wanting fresh meat so bad it won't matter.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Driving Miss Daisy-Cutter

Re: Answers & Questions

Re: The cranky thread Ah yes, that annual creative angsty writing exercise, the self-appraisal form prerequisite to yearly evaluations. A stressful timesink of the same order as one's first 7th-grade love note, and even less productive. Ptui.