Cancer

Re: The Last Word I went away for a few days also.

Re: History's Most Overlooked Mysteries I might have put the Phaistos Disc on this list. As an undeciphered Bronze Age artifact that seems to be printing of some sort, it's a ticket for anything weird you might want.

Re: tech/campaign idea: bio-gel batteries Most likely: the bacteria die on contact with free oxygen. I'd expect anything that could do this would be obligate anaerobes. If you're looking for a nightmare scenario, then assert they can survive in sea water, and their electricity-producing effects stem from oxidizing iron. In their biogel cell, that iron is recycled by symbiosis with some iron-reducing bacteria (which use light) to recreate the elemental iron from the ferric oxide ... these iron-reducing guys die off when the cell wall is broken. The oxidizers get into the ocean, go nuts, and chew up all the iron & steel there. Their reservoir is old shipwrecks, but the thing they do that's apparent is dissolving ship hulls, drilling-rig platforms, etc. When multiple supertankers a week break apart and release their cargo into the ocean, I expect that'd get noticed....

Re: The Last Word More like Lawful Drooly.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER We had to give a kitten its first in-sink soap bath last night. It was shocked speechless.

Re: The Last Word Dogs tend to be lawful. They pay more attention to that stuff.

Re: Musings on Random Musings At one Former Employer, in the months before I was laid off, there was a big stink about trying to get our processes up to ISO something (I don't recall which) standard. I browsed what the standards were and what was needed to achieve them, and told the a couple of people high up that project that it'd never fly there. Because, in those standardized processes, people have to buy into things early, and that's the only opportunity they have to put the brakes on a project. It was very clear in the corporate culture that lots of people derived their importance from their ability to block just about anything from being finished just about any time in the process, so they had to be appeased continually to get anything done. Installing the standard process would remove lots of people's -- highly-placed people's -- only apparent reason for being in the command structure. They were not pleased by my analysis, which (I learned after my departure) was correct.

Re: The Last Word Of the two kittens still in our place, one is in the chasing-her-own-tail stage. The other has a stub pig-tail and will never do that, I expect.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER I am reminded of an acquaintance named Daniel who practiced an empty-hand martial art (don't recall which one) on whom we pinned a nickname purely by accident after sorting a list of personnel by first name. He became known as "9th Dan". I think he was gravely concerned that his sensei might hear this nickname.

Re: Is "Hollywood-style" decompression accurate? Of course, accurate tends to be cinematically boring.

Re: The Last Word Hmm, didn't know that. Though I suppose it's a mark of restraint on my part that I don't know: I haven't been in house where a litter was born since I was 5 or so.

Re: The Last Word Do they kick them out, or just wander off never to return?

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat The Marx-man

Re: The Mind Controlling Hero

Re: Complicate the Person Above L. Marcus is a second-order lycanthrope. He transforms into a narwhal during lunar eclipses. Doesn't remember a moment of it, either, just wonders how he ended up smelling like herring and old kelp.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat Sweetie Buns.

Re: Answers & Questions Q: What happened? The entire population of Amazons is dead, the morning after the Jean-Claude Van Damme movie marathon. A: That's not what is generally meant by the term "foot and mouth disease".

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat Only by courtesy. "Booha", a pronunciation of the acronym BUHA, "Broomstick Up His A**."

Re: Answers & Questions Q: Hey, man, did you know your head looks like a firebell now? A: On second thought, maybe Berserk (14-) on being woken up was a bad idea.

Re: The Mind Controlling Hero Y'know, it's nowhere required that a character with Mind Control must also have the ability to read minds. If he didn't, that could lead to ... interesting ... situations, where the character had no solid handle on motives at the time he impelled his target to a particular action. I'm with the crowd who think that a mind controller does not have to be evil; it is, as always, the actions chosen that make for heroes. Now, much depends on the campaign flavor: silver/bronze/iron age campaigns constrain actions differently by their flavor, of course. EDIT: I'm done editing this now, after hitting "submit" way too soon and working it after that.

Re: Musings on Random Musings Hermit, best of luck to you and your grandmother.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat You called? "I'm from Idaho. Out where I'm from, that means, "Got any chainsaw oil?" (image)

Re: The Last Word The one we are giving to my sister-in-law is black & white, & the one needing a few days more care is all black, so with the two senior cats, we have four black cats in the house. Siegfried just curses at the kittens. At first they were frightened (he is immense), but once they figured out all he does is cuss, they've been stalking him. Felix doesn't care much either way.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER Clouds over our house.

Re: Alien Stereotypes A variation on the energy people: the pure-mental people, just disembodied mentality.