Drhoz

Re: More space news! Well, if he does mean a Magnetar, then Phil Plait has some good articles on the burst in question - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/06/18/ok-so-maybe-we-can-be-a-little-frightened/#.UP6UxPI5t8E and http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2012/12/27/cosmic_blast_magnetar_explosion_rocked_earth_on_december_27_2004.html "... See, the magnetic field is coupled to the crust of the neutron star. The crust is extremely rigid and under vast pressure from the gravity of the star. If the crust cracks — a starquake, if you will — the energy released makes the strongest earthquake ever recorded on our planet look like a friendly pat on the back. I once calculated the strength of such a starquake, and it would register as magnitude 32 on the Richter scale. This ultraviolent blast shakes the magnetic field of the star, which in turn reacts by slamming around subatomic particles… the bottom line is that such an event can trigger a phenomenal release of X-ray energy from the star. And by "phenomenal" I mean "pants-wetting terrifying". In December 2004, the magnetar SGR 1806-20 underwent such a starquake. In one-tenth of a second the subsequent blast released something like 2 times 1046 ergs of energy — equal to about 50 trillion times the Sun’s output during that same period."

Re: Creepy Pics. Then I hope that's a reinforced window, or the piggies are in trouble

Re: More space news!

Re: More space news! via Phil Plait - With the fury of a million dying suns - Parkes Observatory maps colossal outburst from the Galactic Core

Re: And now, for your daily dose of cute... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnBh7OcilfM

Re: Quote of the Week From My Life. Purrdence: I got up and went looking for you but you weren't there. Me: I know. I'd been called into work. I told you. Purrdence: Oh. I thought I'd dreamed that bit. Me: Probably. Purrdence: So.. the bit where Sir Ian MacKellan was dancing a post-modern ballet in a trenchcoat? That was a dream? Me: Most likely. Purrdence: Pity... he was good....

Re: "Neat" Pictures If that's the film I think it is, the screenplay was by Jon Pertwee's (i.e. the Third Doctor Who ) brother.

Re: More space news! In?

Re: The War on Christmas Well, if this had happened during Vitus' first year stuck on Earth, it would have made for an interesting conversation, and some memorable expressions on his muzzle. Beginning, of course, with Vitus asking how the deity being worshipped by this holiday is likely to react. Once that is explained to him, and especially if it leads on to the other kinds of Acts of God that get attributed to him by his cultists, then he he decide one of two things. 1) The cultists are insane. 2) The deity is insane, but has terrible aim, and be safely ignored. Then he'll probably head up onto the roof, Unseen Servant the snow off his observatory, and continue with his observations of the solstice.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... March 2nd – 10th, 1925 – Horror and stubble abound. Certainly, the tabloid press are delighted when Miss Kendall is found wandering the streets of Soho covered in blood, bile, and well-chewed fragments of unshaved human facial tissue, even if she does attack the ambulance officers. Police enquiries also locate the thankfully unchewed Johnson, but the Chief Inspector who is covering the Misr House Massacre is extremely unimpressed to find Johnson at the scene of more horrible carnage. Timmons is fetched from the hotel – after all, there aren’t many other party members left. Timmons: Please tell me my friends are still alive. Chief Inspector Kew: Yes, they're still alive. Timmons: Oh. This is better than last week Timmons manages to convince the copper that it’s in his best interests to let Johnson recover from whatever ‘mystery drug’ has lead to the carnage in Soho, before questioning him – it’ll make any subsequent charges more likely to stick. Timmons: It’s in your own best interests to give him this, show compassion, and THEN string him up the ba... come back tomorrow. Kendall: I’m sure he knows what he's talking about... Johnson: I know what he's talking about. GM: And what he's talking about is a pile about this big, and steaming. . Timmons: I’ll nip out and get some flowers. Do they have flowers in London? That aren't black and covered in soot? Johnson: Yes, they paint them. Timmons is also apparently trying to be McGinty’s spiritual as well as financial heir, and can think of some good reasons why Miss Kendall’s psychotic anthropophagy is useful for the party. Timmons: Sic 'em! Get 'em get 'em get 'em! Kendall: I'd have to wear some kind of Hannibal Lector mask or something... Timmons: And a bib. ( )He is, however, highly alarmed to learn that Virginia met and made a deal with Charles Aching. He immediately runs off to tell his ‘uncle’, and Agent Johnson. To: OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR UNCLE PATRICK AM IN LONDON STOP SPEAKING TO LADY WHO HAS DEALINGS WITH YOUR FRIEND CHARLES T A STOP YOU MENTIONED IF I HEAR NAME CONTACT YOU ASAP STOP SHE HAS FOUND WAY TO FIND CTA STOP Timmons: You know your friend? You know how McGinty had that enemy? Charles Tow Aching? Johnson: ....yesssss.... Timmons: She made a deal with him. The kind of deal you don't go back on. Johnson: ಠ_ಠ Agent Johnson's expression is a picture. Quite possibly one painted by Miles Shipley. Johnson: Why is it that I want to shoot every female party member shortly after they join? Timmons anticipates McGinty will unleash his wrath upon whatever continent contains Aching, even if that means visiting England. Timmons: McGinty is on his way. We might want to head for the bomb shelter now. Johnson: Or leave the country. Timmons: But we don’t know what country Aching was in. Johnson: I thought the painting looked somewhere tropical. Let’s head to the arctic. Timmons: There’s a reckonin' coming, and we're leaving the country. Kendall: We? Timmons: Johnson and me. We thought we'd pass on the information and give you a ticket, while we run. Kendall: Why? Timmons: HE is coming... Johnson: The eldritch abomination we fear! McGINTY.... Johnson: Do we have a standard 'the world is older than you know' speech? Timmons: That shit you saw? That’s regular. That’s normal. Johnson: Today was pretty tame, actually. Apart from the sorcerer. And the face-eating. Actually, Timmons is getting his stories confused. Carl Stanford in the cultist that Governor McGinty would cheerful burn down half the world to kill. Charles Tow Aching is the avatar of Nyarlathotep that McGinty cheerfully hopes he never runs into again. Aching is a foe that has McGinty, Rondale, and other investigators actively terrified. Indeed, McGinty is quite relieved to hear that Aching is apparently no longer in America. McGinty: *sings* He’s in England he's in England I hope he blows it up blows it up blows it up. Of course, nuking half the planet is still an option. McGinty knows how to summon the seething nuclear chaos that bubbles and blasphemes at the centre of all infinity, after all. Although only madman would worship, or summon, such a god. Johnson: Well, McGinty.... Fortunately, McGinty is only half-mad. Perhaps he'd only half-summon him?As it happens, Johnson’s story that they met Virginia in London (true) and that she lent him the money for the painting because she was there at the murder of Jackson Elias (true) and Shipley’s paintings were mysteriously connected to Elias’ investigations (true, as far as the investigators can tell) is enough to fit the Chief Inspector’s theory that the Shipley’s attempted to drug and kill the investigators for their money. The discovery of a mystery drug on the Soho premises certainly helps. For once, the evidence actually makes the party looks good. Johnson: That’s a first. The investigators settle down to go over their assembled clues, such as the letter from the Misr House torture chamber. Virginia has to assure Timmons that not all English Stately Homes feature such decor. Kendall: My father has many foibles but that is not among them But it’s Johnson’s realisation that they somehow failed to notice the all-important lines from Elias’ final notebook – to whit “These dreams. . . . dreams like Carlyle's? Check that psychoanalyst's files. . . . All of them survived! They'll open the gate. Why? . . . so the power and the danger is real” - that shocks him to the core. Urgent telegrams are sent to New York, where the files from Dr Huston’s practise are obtained. Possibly by sending ONI agents around to yell at them until they run away and cry, then kicking the door in, or more likely by sending the unlucky Dr von Habsburg (a New York medic who among other injuries had a leg ripped off by Cthulhu) to obtain them less dubiously. What they learn from Huston’s notes changes everything they thought they knew about the Carlyle Expedition. Johnson is understandably horrified to realise that the entire Carlyle Expedition was compromised from the start, and under the influence of the High Priestess of the Bloody Tongue Cult, and that they could have learned this before they ever left New York – if they’d been paying attention. Perhaps they should have Jackson Elias raised from the dead, so they can learn what else they’ve missed. True, this would involve enlisting McGinty’s aid, and a very real risk of vampirism, but there’s enough stuff they can bribe McGinty with to ensure he co-operates. Aldous’ mortal remains, for example. But the Dark Stone and attendant evil seven-foot tall invisible demon-bunny are probably still out of the question, given what happened the last time McGinty had that artifact. TO: RONDALE HAVE MCG RAISE ELIAS STOP ENTIRE CARLYLE EXP ALIVE AND EVIL STOP BRIBE HIM WITH SOMETHING IF NEED BE STOP ALDOUS FOR STARTERS NO CRYSTAL STOP GET OUT OF TROUBLE FREE CARD STOP LIFETIME SUPPLY OF ALCOHOL STOP LIST GOES ON And McGinty’s reply: GET F-ED NOT WORTH IT GET STUFFED Johnson: Well, at least if we run into them, we don’t have to worry about keeping them alive. Timmons: And if they’re already dead we can’t even be charged with murder. Plans are brewed to use a star vampire as an intercontinental missile, in the event they can find a blood sample to use for the scent, and somebody willing to make a giant satchel charge with a five-foot detonator. Timmons: Mr McGinty has powers beyond those of ordinary men – he’s awesome. Indeed. For one thing he can drink enough to kill a horse and not die. Kendall: I thought you weren’t allowed to drink in America. GM: It’s not a crime if the President does it. And it’s not a crime against Nature, God and Man if McGinty does it. But perhaps the Governor has a point, even if he does intend to resurrect dead presidents based on their awesome hats or awesome propensity for violence. It’s a dog-shank-dog world. Timmons: Frontbottom taught me a lot, too. GM: You’ve got to twist the knife? Timmons: Nah, you’ve got to stick your tongue out of the side of your mouth as you’re doing it and go GNAHGNAHGNAH. Concerns are raised that the Beast of Derbyshire is not, in fact, a werewolf, but is the hyena-headed sorcerer that McGinty once encountered. Timmons recalls some sage advice regarding that entity – wear a protective cup with a spike on it. After all, that was the beast that McGinty started a transatlantic magic duel with, despite the threat of having his soul devoured by vermin. Timmons: ... god, McGinty is an arsehole. Yes, yes he is. While Abbagale, Johnson, and Virginia continue their recuperation, Timmons heads around to the Penhew Foundation. The board and the new Director are eager to cooperate, given the severe blow to their reputation they’ve suffered. And by the third day of going through everything they’ve got for any clue of the cult’s activities and destination, he discovers Gavigan did indeed leave something hidden here – a concealed room below ground level, cleverly concealed from all but detailed search. Wisely, given the way they’ve found zombie defending every other subterranean hide-out they’ve explored, he opts to go find the police and his colleagues to help. Johnson: The bad guy knows how to raise zombies because we gave him the book. Timmons: ಠ_ಠ Kendall: ... you expect to find zombies?... You two don’t have anywhere to stay, do you? Johnson: I think I’ve still got a room at the Temperance Hotel... oh, wait – we we gave him our address there too. Timmons: *headdesk* Kendall: ... Tell you what, why don’t you two stay with me when we get out of hospital. I’d hate to think of you out on the streets. There’s no need to dwell on the police efforts to sneak in through the window, to avoid alerting any cultists still on the staff, but the investigators do indeed discover a hidden room of evil at the bottom of the narrow stares. But no zombies, unusually. What it is full of is the private library and art collection of a powerful cultist. Complete with food supply, false passports, and everything else an up-and-coming madman could desire.

Re: Quote of the Week From My Life. Was listening to a Dr Karl podcast, where he was discussing a Cold War plan to Nuke The Moon. Dr Karl: "Even if we used all the nukes we had at the height of the Civil War... I mean, Cold war..." Purrdence: Somebody is writing up a very alternate RPG setting as we speak Me: It'd make a pretty alternate Gone With The Wind, too "As God is my witness, I will never be radioactive again!"

Re: "Neat" Pictures six strands wrapped around a seventh, actually.

Re: Quote of the Week From My Life. Purrdence put $55 through the washing machine. As she cried afterwards "I'm a money launderer!"

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Speaking of Clue-Bats, and since Agent Johnson and Virginia are going to laid up in hospital for some time (assuming Virginia doesn't just get looked up when the Shipley's neighbours wonder what all the commotion is and come over to find Virginia gnawing off the late Miles Shipley's face), they should have plenty of time to go over all their accumulated clues. Since the most important one is the late Jackson Elias's last scrawled writings (yes, it was in italics) I'm anticipating something like "But.. but we read that!" to which I was say "Yes, yes I know." "How did we miss a clue that obvious?????". and my "If you ever figure it out, please tell me."

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

Re: "Neat" Pictures via Pharyngula : The Electrochemical Orange [ATTACH=CONFIG]45210[/ATTACH] "That’s an orange lit by the dim glow produced by the electrical interactions between zinc-coated nails and citric acid. It’s really dim: it took a 14 hour exposure to get that image."

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... The Gamer's Guild Masks of Nyarlathotep Part Twelve - Essex and Soho February 23rd to March 1st - Back over in the States, the first issue of the New Yorker has been published, and thermite has been used to break up an ice-jam in Washington. Similarly explosive have been the events in Essex, where the massacre of a dozen policemen has lead to front page news in most of the nation’s newspapers, questions have been raised in Parliament, and the authorities have gathered into a mutual arse-kicking circle while they try to find some-one to blame. After all, police might be wiped out all the time in the States, but Great Britain is supposed to be civilised, dammit.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Given how the previous session of Cthulhu ended, I opened this session with a song I came up with on the drive into town for the game - Tentacular, Tentacular, no words in the vernacular Can describe this dread event that you survived was wonderment (survival rate was 10 percent - you must agree that's excellent) The FIEEEELDS were alive, with the SOUND of SCREEEEAMIIING.... Actual retelling of the session to follow - despite only two players, they actually got major investigation done, solved one case, went insane, and had a deranged cannibalistic bite-fight with a 70 year old woman in the stairs of a two-story house. I was very pleased.

Re: "Neat" Pictures Bethe's got some awesome hair going there Bethe was also quite a joker, and got involved in one of George Gamow's pranks, when the latter's student Ralph Alpher was publishing a hugely influential paper on the production of Hydrogen, Helium, and heavier elements in the Big Bang. The paper, naturally, promptly became known as the Alpha-Beta-Gamma paper. to quote Gamow - [TABLE=class: cquote] [TR] [TD=align: left]“[/TD] [TD]The results of these calculations were first announced in a letter to The Physical Review, April 1, 1948. This was signed Alpher, Bethe, and Gamow, and is often referred to as the 'alphabetical article.' It seemed unfair to the Greek alphabet to have the article signed by Alpher and Gamow only, and so the name of Dr. Hans A. Bethe (in absentia) was inserted in preparing the manuscript for print. Dr. Bethe, who received a copy of the manuscript, did not object, and, as a matter of fact, was quite helpful in subsequent discussions. There was, however, a rumor that later, when the alpha, beta, gamma theory went temporarily on the rocks, Dr. Bethe seriously considered changing his name to Zacharias. The close fit of the calculated curve and the observed abundances is shown in Fig. 15, which represents the results of later calculations carried out on the electronic computer of the National Bureau of Standards by Ralph Alpher and R. C. Herman (who stubbornly refuses to change his name to Delter.) [/TD] [TD=align: right]”[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE]

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... *nods* I hope they come back. But there's a chance that Sue Isle - the author who used to play Amy Wells - will be coming back, and Ian should be back next session too

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Information overload, apparently. Given all the work I put into index cards, and What You Know So Far Sheets, and making sure they all read the book summaries I prepared... Weldun even corrected details on one of them, so I KNOW he read it - the Command Ghost spell was right there in front of him.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... The Gamer's Guild Masks of Nyarlathotep Part 11 - Essex February 22nd – The Day of the Raid. The investigators and the police have all day to prepare for the evening’s strike against the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh. This is probably just as well, since Dr Briggs proves entirely uncooperative, merely repeating dire threats against his captors and ranting and raving in fine old fashion. And before they raid the Brotherhood, they’re going to want better armaments, an aim complicated by the local authorities’ ignorance of the Mythos, gun laws, and Customs. Johnson trying to explain his cases of dynamite, ammunition, and late 20th Century machine pistols might be difficult. Johnson: It’s mining equipment. GM: Tractor Parts? In the end the investigators leave Einstein to terrorise British physicists, and Timmons drooling peacefully into his translations of the Livre d’Ivon. Fakebottom: It’s like any Friday night for him, then. At least Johnson has had time to peruse the Africa’s Dark Sects book, even if he fails to learn the zombie-raising spell contained within. McGinty will just get to keep that knowledge to himself. After all, if he ever wants a drinking partner, he can head down to the cemetery and raise one. Quinn: He already did. But his drinking partner doesn’t drink... wine. Customs: Why do you have 50 feet of rope in your luggage, sir? Fakebottom: You never know when it might prove useful. Customs: Most people carry string for that, sir. Customs: So why do you have 50 feet of rope in your luggage, sir? Johnson: The question is, why don’t you? They decide to wait in an unremarkable lorry down the road from the Blue Pyramid Club, until Yalesha can identify the vehicle the cultists use, then have her taken back into protective custody while the investigators, a dozen armed police, and Inspectors Carlton and Barrington, tail the cultists to wherever in London they’re having their monthly meeting. Then they’ll fire off a flare and police will converge to assist in the mass arrest. They can easily fit twelve police and one woman in the back of the lorry. Quinn: Typical evening for you, Abbagale? Stants: ಠ_ಠ Spoilers ahead for Masks

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Basically they've screwed up since the first session, and it finally all came to roost. To whit... Right from the very start, and pretty much one of the first clues they got, which they read out to each other and still ignored. They kept the handouts with your character sheets, and even on the single occasion they double checked them, STILL ignored them. I put the clues in the campaign journal, on LiveJournal, on the HERO forum, on Yog-Sothoth and not one of them noticed the VERY IMPORTANT DETAIL THAT WAS RIGHT THERE. I put clues they missed at the end of the journal and none of them read to the end. I emailed them clues that they missed and they didn’t take the hint. I gave Abbagale the chance to do basic research before she left New York (since nobody else had bothered) and she decided not to, thus wasting their last chance to discover some extremely important facts about the Carlyle Expedition. I suggested multiple times that they consider what Elias may have missed, and they ignored me every time. Even cult leaders were suggesting other leads to them and they ignored them. At any point, a single Library Use check could have saved them from disaster... but despite all my hints that using the British Library or pretty much any newspaper on Fleet Street, they didn’t make a single Library Use check. Despite me having told them repeatedly over the last few years that :Library Use is one of the most important skills in the game. I gave them Miles Shipley’s paintings, which might have warned them they were heading into a trap, and they never went back to look at the rest I gave them a spell that would protect them from the minions of Nyarlathotep, reminded them about it twice, and they never had the medallions made. They let a cult leader escape in New York and make zero effort to hunt him down or even find out who he was. Despite having had a bar full of people that could have identified him arrested, and then ordered released with asking them anything. And a truckful of corpses they could have magically interrogated. Thanks to this gobsmacking incompetence they ended up telling a cult leader all about their plans to raid his cult - and kept him safe from the cultists! And when they actually checked for the cultists that have been following them around London since shortly after they arrived, they assumed they were police tails... And never asked the police to confirm it, when they met the Inspectors a few minutes later!!!!!

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...