Darth Fluffy

Many videos. I liked this quick one. Water hammer can burst plumbing. Good plumbing design incorporates trapped air 'springs' to absorb the shock to mitigate breakage. My parent's home had that, two coiled copper tubes with trapped air, capped, one for hot and one for cold. The coiling was to save space, not for function. We did not have a water hammer problem there, unlike other places I've lived.

John Prine (and I even called him by his name), April 7, 2020 Brian Dennehy? It does not say why he was in the hospital. Ten minutes searching, no more details (yet?) "Dennehy died on April 15 2020, of cardiac arrest due to sepsis during a hospital stay in New Haven, Connecticut."

I don't call myself late for dinner, so that's a start, right? I don't often call myself, although it is a good way to find a phone you've misplaced.

My school said I was special. They kept getting my name wrong though, called me 'Ed'. Go figure.

I loved working with PDP-11s. It was a clean, well documented architecture. No wonder DEC kicked butt and took names.

Lol, Baja NM. Macroscope by Pier Anthony had a different one of his games, Sprouts. It is an actual game. Life broached cellular automata as a serious topic, it became popular shortly afterward. I don't think he was the first, but I'm sure he's the popularizer (other than Martin Gardner quoting John Conway, which helped a lot). Output to print? That would be gnarly. ... but you are saying you had a Univac running in the mid 1990? That's kind of both awesome and sad at the same time. Not that they were bad machines, just a dying company. They were absorbed by Sperry at least ten years prior, weren't they?

I know I can't, that was too many machines ago. I recall attempting to do those by hand when Martin Garner's math column covered it. Short version, it does not work very well.

Hear, hear! Sense makes it not, so seconded.

The last line quacks me up.

Yes, the glass is too big.

You are thinking logically. I hear Elliot reacting from his gut. But maybe it is about Ashley.

I think this has to do with his concern about loosing the ability to transform.

Woke up to lightning and thunder today.

Did you see the question, "If so, can they have sex without involving a mortal?" ? Not only do we not know what sex between two immortals produces, we don't know that they can or do have sex with each other. Canon is they are aware of each other, but mostly avoid each other as a threat, don't treat each other particularly well (what we would call low social skills) and occasionally hang out as a couple, which could be like spousal, or could be sibs, or something else? So even if it is possible, it may be something they generally do not desire. It might be something like they have to become physical, and very vulnerable, to have sex. What they produce, if anything, should be not human, and not an elf, since how those are made is defined in canon. So I'm guessing, another immortal, or a different kind of elf that was overlooked. Or maybe an aberration. That would fit, low ethical standards and such, but seems unlikely.

Tedd has mentioned (s)he doesn't like using magic for medical-ish reasons, but never explained why. It could be something like Bilbo and the One Ring, his life is lengthened, but at a cost; it was described like stretching what life he had, rather than adding to it. So genetically, immortals can breed with humans. This does not exactly say that they were once human, but it kind of leads that way; like they might be some sort of ascended human, awakened ++. I'm guessing that Dan will decide on a canon backstory if and when it's necessary.

On nagging question behind all of this is, what is the immortals' motivation to procreate with humans? Do they enjoy sex? Is it at least interesting? If so, can they have sex without involving a mortal? It's maybe implied that some of them form couples. Wouldn't that be all around better? Take Pandora's case, she got pregnant. Doesn't that limit her options for the gestation period? Can she become incorporeal without endangering the fetus? If you get past all of this, and it is entirely positive, then why aren't these bored immortals doing it more? Shouldn't such a world be overrun with elves and wizards?

OK, I'll grant you the Uryuom probably wouldn't throw rocks if they have something better. But I doubt they'd haul tungsten telephone poles from another star system either. If you come right down to it, if they lack a third option, of two choices, they'd probably throw rocks. Much less effort.

And yet they persist. Yet another data point in favor of the notion that if there is intelligent life on Earth, it isn't us.

At this point, I'm hooked for the reveal. Spooky cloak bugs me.

Chickens are proper inside pets, because they are so yummy ...

It's just udder nonsense.

Narratives written to the (lack of) standards you are espousing. Ooo, I see a future in marketing in your career. "Buy Windows. It's an operating system." Which I believe has little to do with how this topic started. Wasn't the quote you responded to talking about Heinlein's book?

No, not normally. Spooky shroud is definitely weird; jumping to erroneous conclusions more than once, and has power to reset legitimate buffs. Isn't real, isn't even a real game, must be a dream.

True, but people actually do speed through red lights. People do not use rocket cars on the road. For numerous reasons. One of the earleir Darwin awards was a guy using JETO rockets to make his car go faster. 'Nuff said? Real rocket cars and their ilk, including down to dragsters and such are notoriously uncontrollable. This is why, when you attempt to break the land speed record, you do so on a very flat wide open plain, such as Bonneville Salt Flats. Of course, with a rocket car, you have an additional consideration of needing downward pressure to ensure that you remain a land vehicle for the records. Well, OK, then; I probably won't want to read your narratives. Well, Groundhog Day wasn't bad. Rocks are not ideal weapons. They are expedient weapons. In The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, they entail making calculations to use existing payloads and equipment for bombardment. Look at it this way. You might need to defend yourself. You have all kinds of options. You need to defend yourself in the next few seconds. You'll grab whatever you can.

We were, however unrealistically, talking about a motor vehicle. The very few rocket powered cars that have been built were not street legal. ... not enough of a story to earn the title, ' Narrans' . "Aleph null bottles of beer on the wall, aleph null bottles of beer, Take one down, pass it around, aleph null bottles of beer on the wall." It will, on the average, not change trajectory, so unless you split the remainder widely apart, you're still screwed. One thing they got right in Armageddon. Stationary with respect to what? The sun? It will fall toward the sun, then. Terminal velocity depend on factors, such as density. As you allude to, it only applies in the atmosphere, which, granted is a relative term. But for the most part, over most of the fall, terminal velocity does not matter until you are within near earth orbit. Then yes, your plummeting object will experience atmospheric resistance and heat up glowing hot and will loose some speed. If it is small enough, it will vaporize; larger, and a portion will hit, larger still, and you can effectively ignore the atmospheric taxation. Your tungsten telephone poles should do better than the average bear. An object does not have to be de-orbited to hit the surface. If you can make the orbit eccentric enough, it will hit at higher than orbital velocity, being on the downward side of it's eccentric orbit; but you'd have to account for atmospheric skip. Targeting would likely be a bitch.