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Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change. If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away. I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!
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Stores with woodworking selections of wood are few and far between, indeed. Some big boxish stores may have some cabinet grade plywood with decent veneers and moulding available. On a smaller scale, a hobby shop may have some selection of hardwoods for doll house builders. Long enough would not be a problem, but you'd probably have to glue up enough bulk for a wand. If you wanted it hollow for the unicorn hair, that might not be a problem. Basswood is available in bigger hunks for carving, but it doesn't seem like good wand material.
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"This one uses a dragon's heart spring." "The watch chooses the wizard, Harry."
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NP Wednesday August 21, 2019
Alwaysnewguy replied to Pharaoh RutinTutin's topic in EGS: NP Discussion
I didn't know science was on the curriculum in ancient Egypt. -
Story Wednesday August 21, 2019
Darth Fluffy replied to Pharaoh RutinTutin's topic in Comic Discussion
Literally. I grew up (chronologically, if not other ways) in a place that did not have an overabundance of cats, but enough such that my parents did not have to explain to me what the animal in the Hat was. When I was three or four, my parents took me to the Philadelphia zoo. When we saw big cats, I did not have to ask what a cat was. Within the same year or so, my folks took me on a train to NYC (shortly before passenger service from our town in Pa to NYC shut off), and we saw the Museum of Natural History, the one off Central Park (I did not know that at the time). When we saw Smilodon, I did not need to ask about what a cat was; I did ask a bazillion questions, but that wasn't one of them. By the time I entered school, and my classmates and I learned to read using an off-brand primer with Alice and Jerry and Jip (Jip was a dog) and Jip had his encounter with Another Creature, out of thirty of us, exactly none had to have the concept of "cat" explained to them. We also had television, a big blond cabinet with a black and white screen. The shows had cats, the commercials had cats, my cartoons had cats. I recall Ruff and Reddy, I must have been all of two or three years old (three, per Wiki, when it was first aired). Of course, Sylvester, and then Katnip, which I only just learned is spelled with a K. (Also, Arnold Stang voiced Herman, the mouse, I did not know that. He was one of the mechanics who's service station is destroyed by Jonathan Winters in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Also voiced one of the cats in Top Cat.) Disney had a few, there was an antagonist cat in Cinderella, and the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. At no point did "What is a cat?" come up regarding these images, nor did any of my friends ask that I can recall. I do vaguely recall at some point even younger having a close encounter of the cat kind that did not go so well, where in I got scratched and was crying. I believe at that point the difference between cats and dogs may have been laid out for me, and I learned to give cats space. I don't think that's untypical. Had an almost-adult teenager asked, "What is a cat?" in my High School, there would have either been a punchline coming, or they would have been "special". Aw, that white fuzz ball is so cute. "Mommy, I shaved the cat." - Today
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NP Monday August 19, 2019
Pharaoh RutinTutin replied to Pharaoh RutinTutin's topic in EGS: NP Discussion
If the shop teacher is younger (under 35 or still has at least 9 fingers) there is a good chance that he knows nothing of wood beyond what is available at the local big-box home improvement store. -
Yeah, even on a 80486 with 8mb of RAM the *.exe filesize could not exceed 640k and with drivers for mouse, CDrom, sound, etc also needing part of that 640k, being able to manipulate the config.sys and autoexec.bat files were necessary.
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If it's wood, it can be identified by the colour (unless it's stained/painted) and grain, I wonder if it's too late to get into a woodworking course for the final semester of school?
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Elliot knew of Tedd before 4th grade though, Ellen compared Noah to being "3rd grade Tedd awkward", and I think Second Life Ellen knowing Tedd all the way back in kindergarten can be an indication that Tedd and Elliot have been in the same class together from that point too, it's just that in the main universe Elliot didn't step up to Tedd's defense and become friends with him until the 4th grade. Though I guess from Tedd's perspective, if he had been avoiding interacting with classmates (like we saw in the SL page), there's a good chance he didn't pay attention to who was who (other than maybe Tony who picked on him frequently) so Elliot coming to his defense in 4th grade would have been Tedd's first contact with Elliot. Hmm...considering Ellen felt the need to hug Tedd after the first night of SL dreams, do you think that maybe she felt bit guilty for Elliot(and by extension, herself) not having reached out to Tedd sooner?
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Yes, but remember, a HUGE amount of these casualties came from illness, infections, poor hygiene in general and stress exhaustion. Not to mention indirect warfare. It's a lot easier to lob artillery shells at human beings than it is to actually look them into the eyes as you kill them.
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He should be able to analyze the wand and determine what sort of stick makes a good wand "blank", and his first lesson was in making a stick into a true wand. There is probably less difference between "empty" stick and "empty" watches than between creating wand without and with help of computer.
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It was. OS/2 started to be developed in 1985 and first version was released in 1987. Never gained track. Also, compared to 80286 being introduced in 1984 it was sort of too late. And, 80286 already contained hacks specifically to allow older software to work (like A20 gate). It shouldn't. 640k might've been enough for anyone running 8086 or 80186, but NOT 80286, yet the limit still mattered even MUCH later on even newer CPUs. Also, that statement was possibly never made, so it's hard to analyze it's context.
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Even Grossman himself stated as much. I think that you are correct in that the exact numbers are uncertain. What does seem certain is that an unknown but large percentage of combat soldiers simply cannot bring themselves to kill other human beings even in extremis. He cites eyewitness accounts that confirm this, though these obviously are no good for statistical purposes. And I don't doubt the eyewitness account ; I just don't believe the statistics. Lot of people died in WW2 and someone must've killed them. Obviously, statistics on earlier conflicts would be even less believable (if any). There would certainly be lot of differences between various conflicts and armies. Those differences were probably not analyzed by psychologists, but I think they were noticed. And I don't believe generals, military commanders etc before second world war were idiots. They didn't have modern science, but some of them are regarded as tactical genies even today. Killing enemy soldiers used to be much harder work in past than today, and there certainly were ways how to make your soldiers more likely to do it. And one of those methods was dehumanizing the enemy. There probably isn't any scientific research about how effective it was, but considering how often it was employed, I think it must've worked. On the other hand, you are right that this has little to do with Susan. Susan didn't have any military training (and even Nanase martial art training certainly didn't included killing), and she was raised in 20th century with globalization and decline of nationalism and racism ... not in 18th or 8th. (You may complain about racism today, but it IS better than in past.) She was totally not prepared to see the vampire as something less than human, and explaining it to her afterwards wouldn't be very effective (although, as I mentioned, probably better than nothing). And, talking about how it used to be harder to kill someone ... she used axe, not gun. And while the vampire changing to dust afterwards instead of bleeding there certainly helped, it WAS harder than shooting him.
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640k was indeed enough for anyone--anyone who was running the models of IBM PC that existed at the time that this statement was made. Those were still the days in which a computer operating system was designed around a specific hardware program (e.g. the System 360 series of mainframes had their own OS). It was more or less assumed that by the time the hardware limits became a problem, a new OS would have superseded DOS.
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I remember being like twelve years old and seeing James Clavell's 'Shogun' among my mother's books. At the time, I thought it read 'Shotgun.' All you do is brutally abduct them from their homes, pack them in layers in stinking ship holds with insufficient food and drinking water, sell them off on markets like slabs of meat and then put them to work under conditions that would make an early 1800s factory owner blench. And then they get all upset about it. People are so thin skinned.
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I did. Quite a few of them do, but I am unsure they are any good for the purposes of combat statistics -- these seem to be mostly books about mental disorders in combat veterans and warfare survivors. I've noted British, German and Austrian works so far. I have noticed a few civilian efforts, too, if that is helpful. Also the author has conducted a lot of personal interviews with actual combat soldiers. Even Grossman himself stated as much. I think that you are correct in that the exact numbers are uncertain. What does seem certain is that an unknown but large percentage of combat soldiers simply cannot bring themselves to kill other human beings even in extremis. He cites eyewitness accounts that confirm this, though these obviously are no good for statistical purposes.
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He should be able to analyze the wand and determine what sort of stick makes a good wand "blank", and his first lesson was in making a stick into a true wand.
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My invitation to be a guest on Jon St. John's NotCon at Sea 2020 cruise became officially official this week with this announcement post:
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Someone said something like that about Susan and Jeremy, too, and I have to ask, where the h#!! do ya'll live that you do not have ubiquitous felines? Perhaps for someone living in Alaska, the eagles have carried them all off, but not near Chicago. Plus, Tedd reads the InterWebs, which as we all know, it primarily inhabited by cats. Lol. Can haz amenz? There is a big difference between toddler, child starting school and almost-adult teenager. I dunno how long the Dunkels have had Brownie, but if they had her longer than Tedd's had Jeremy, I'd be surprise if Tedd hadn't seen her before. And before anyone says that maybe Tedd had never been to Elliot's before, I gotta wonder who Edward would have trusted to watch over Tedd while away on "government business"? it might have been split between the Dunkels and Kitsunes, maybe not evenly split, like the Dunkels might have in case the Kitsunes weren't able. Earlier, someone though Jeremy is too old for cat. Brownie might be younger. However, even if not or if Dunkels had another cat before, there are different breeds of cats. Considering both of these are cats, realizing Jeremy is not just another little more exotic breed may not be so simple: Note also that I don't think Dunkels were involved in watching Tedd when he was young and needed it most. Remember that Elliot only met Tedd in 4th Grade. MAYBE Kitsunes were involved, but I suspect that Edward send some agents to watch Tedd ...
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Dave Grossman's excellent book 'On Killing' describes the problems and cites multiple sources. I will send you some of the sources he used in a private message later when I have slept. Yeah, that book is also mentioned on one of my links. BECAUSE it apparently uses Brigadier General Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall as source. Can you also specifically look if some of those sources are involving other than US army? Note that I'm not disputing the solution. One post in that thread says it nicely: What is not in any doubt is that western militaries have gone to great lengths since the end of World War Two to develop sophisticated, realistic training environments to prepare soldiers for battle and develop instinctive responses to stimuli: in effect to stop the soldier from thinking. It just seem that how bad the problem actually was in WW2 - and how big effect had dehumanization of enemy especially in German and Japan armies - was poorly researched subject.
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NP Wednesday August 21, 2019
Darth Fluffy replied to Pharaoh RutinTutin's topic in EGS: NP Discussion
To paraphrase Daniel Tosh; "We were ... ... ... ... and I was homeschooled." -
On August 21 in History: 1192 - Minamoto no Yoritomo gains the title of Shōgun, basically a field marshal. If a field marshal ran the government and could even tell the emperor what to do. 1680 - Pueblo forces capture Santa Fe, essentially completing the expulsion of Spanish presence from New Mexico. Now, as long as they don't extend the "get rid of anything Spanish" policy to things like food crops, livestock, and useful technology, this should go well for them. 1770 - James Cook names eastern Australia "New South Wales", because never have two places looked more alike, and also because fuck North Wales. 1772 - Gustav III of Sweden completes a coup of his own government with a new constitution, snatching back a bunch of power from parliamentary hands. It's all right, though; he's enlightened. 1791 - A Vodou ceremony turns into a slave revolt, which will turn into the Haitian revolution. Well that escalated quickly. 1858 - Well-known and popular Illinois senator Stephen Douglas debates some lanky new guy named Lincoln from that laughable new party. 1911 - Vincenzo Peruggia, an employee at the Louvre, steals the Mona Lisa with the plan of returning it to Italy where it "belongs". This has the interesting side effect of making the painting one of the most famous in the world, which made no difference to his friend who sold copies of it, I'm sure. 1986 - Birth of Usain Bolt, one of the best contemporary examples of nominal determinism. 1991 - Latvia to the USSR: "We out, too." 2017 - A solar eclipse traverses the continental United States. Their stable genius president gazes directly into it on national television.
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Dave Grossman's excellent book 'On Killing' describes the problems and cites multiple sources. I will send you some of the sources he used in a private message later when I have slept.
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... so, you're saying, he's also educational?
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Expressing my actual opinion of him would take me weeks or months and would end up looking something like 'The Oxford Dictionary of Obscenities and Vulgar Expressions'.
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You might be surprised to learn that this isn't very effective either. Careful investigation of soldiers in battle showed that in an average WW2 army only 10% of the soldiers in any given unit actually attempted to directly kill the enemy soldiers. In some exceptional units this rose to as much as 20%. Humans just aren't that happy about killing one another and simply dehumanising the enemy is not enough. If it is shaped and moves like a human being, your basic person on the street will face stiff psychological resistance against killing it. Couldn't this be just because in WW2 they failed to dehumanize the enemy enough? Was the investigating really done on all armies or just Allies? Or was that "investigation" just claim of Brigadier General Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall, which only referred to US army and is not exactly considered true, sometimes even called debunked? (Another link). I don't want to claim the problem doesn't exists ; I just find hard to believe that even AFTER military training for WW2 it was THIS serious, and sorry, but my internet search doesn't seem to confirm what you said, so I would like some sources. (Note: of course, what is problem for effectivity of soldiers in battle is considered advantage in civilian life. That aversion to killing another human being may be mostly result of "civilian training".) ... yeah, on second though it's really unlikely to be effective afterwards ... ... and of course Susan had no training ... and even if Helena and Demetrius though about it, they would be unlikely to manage to train her enough in the short time they had ... ... also, originally it was Nanase who was supposed to kill the vampire ... not that SHE had more training ... ... still might be better than nothing, which appears to be what she got.
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