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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

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Don Edwards

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Posts posted by Don Edwards

  4. Posted

    Some years ago I read an estimate that if we eliminated all contagious, genetic, and lifestyle diseases, plus the debilitating effects of old age, human life expectancy at birth would be... um... I can't recall if it was 600 years, or 800. Due to accidents, murders, and suicides.

    Rather short of eternal life.

    Imagine, though, with this many-worlds theory, a world where nobody dies. In our world, out of every human that has ever lived, somewhere under 1 out of 10 are alive today - exactly how far under depends on exactly how one defines "human" and thereby which species other than H.sapiens are included. Does this "nobody" include chimpanzees, whales, cattle, ants? Could be a rather crowded world.

  5. Posted

    1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    You might have an allergy to the adhesive. I get a rash from off-brand adhesive bandages that aren't Band-Aid. I think it's a sensitivity to latex. Might be something to mention to your healthcare providers, they can use hypoallergenic tape.

    Yeah. My lady has to use the clear bandaids. The regular ones cause a rash after an hour or two.

  6. Posted

    9 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    I forgot that Ashley does ballet, which seems like an unnecessary embellishment for this comic; holding her aloft would be impressive even if she did not. I guess she would not be able to stay rigid in the last panel without some practice.

    There's also the matter of knowing just where Ashley's center of gravity is. With her being essentially horizontal, that's a very important bit of information that the average person wouldn't know about themselves let alone any other adult.

  9. Posted

    17 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    I am amused that competent engineer Florence like to play fetch.

    She is a canid.

    Several years ago we saw a fox going through the RV park we were in. It had stolen a toy that the folks and dog in another RV had left outside. The fox was throwing the toy (about as ineffectively as you'd expect) and then chasing it. Four or five times that I saw.

     

    Darth Fluffy reacted to this

  11. Posted

    5 hours ago, ijuin said:

    Assuming that she gets herself to Moperville, yes. For all we know, she might be in Manhattan in this scene.

    In-world, no telling.

    Meta, yes she'll get to Moperville, probably pretty quickly. Unless most or all of the Main 8/10/however-many suddenly decide to go to college in some other ONE city, then she'll show up there - but that seems unlikely.

  12. Posted

    The RV park we're in did a pot-luck. We brought deviled eggs and cranberry sauce.

    Deviled eggs, I did a half-dozen eggs in each of three varieties. Regular with pickle relish, spicy, and curry. (I put signs on the latter two.) There were none left to bring home afterward.

    My lady mixed some cinnamon into the can of cranberry sauce. Someone else brought two other varieties: one plain, one with orange juice mixed in. Any one of the three containers would have been enough.

  13. Posted

    3 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    (Google 'Waffle House Index.)

    It's not an official index. However, it is used, in part because it's a very easy and quick test - one brief phone call per Waffle House store in the affected area.

  14. Posted

    10 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    The European participants at the original event were Pilgrims. The Puritans came later in large numbers and took over the colony.

    Both were dicks to the Native Americans

    To be fair, the Puritans were dicks to everybody. Including each other, on the slightest excuse.

    The Pilgrims came for freedom of religion (or at least of various forms of Christianity - don't know if they went further than that). The Puritans had just lost a war over which version of Christianity would be mandatory for everyone in England, then learned that being refugees in Holland didn't give them the power to make their version mandatory there, and came to North America to establish a place where they could dictate everyone's religion.

    The first European settlers in at least two states adjacent to Massachusetts were people escaping from the Puritan regime.

    (I still don't understand how anyone can take seriously a cleric who preaches hatred in the name of a loving God.)

  19. Posted

    Not impressed by the study at the "dogs and voice" link - assuming the article describes it accurately. (Which is quite an assumption.) They proved that dogs like (a) their owners and (b) the idea of going for a walk, better than they like (a) strangers and (b) discussion of what the strangers did last night. And from this data the researchers concluded that tone of voice matters.

  20. Posted

    We're very carefully avoiding being too close to the path of totality for a few days before & after - just at the time of year when we're heading south for the winter.

    In western Utah, sites I found recommended being based no further north than Salt Lake - that's if you DO want to see the eclipse - so we're spending the weekend about 50 miles north of Salt Lake and some distance off the freeway and into the mountains.

    Our normal migration pattern, we would have been spending tonight & tomorrow night pretty much dead center for totality - those being the two nights it would be most difficult to find a space in an RV park, and that being the absolute least likely area to find one.

    Monday night should be a lot easier.

    If we could have scheduled the whole thing, maybe three months ago, we might have taken a different approach. But there are reasons that wasn't feasible for us.

  21. Posted

    As we pulled into an RV park this afternoon, I saw four adult women and three children (the oldest about 6, I think) trying to catch a dog. Who was wearing a harness and leash. The dog, on the other hand, was playing chase with them and having a heck of a lot of fun.

    The dog came running up to me, so I tried to grab the leash. Touched it, but couldn't get a grip before the dog was off teasing someone else.

    So I went over and laid on the grass.

    After a bit the dog noticed me there and came running over. A little too fast, couldn't stop in time, stomped on my hand as it went by. But then it came back and started licking my face.

    So I grabbed the leash and stood up. And then picked my glasses up off the ground, as the dog had knocked them off me. And handed the leash off to one of the ladies.

    They were impressed by the trick. One I've used a few times before, and never had it not-work with a dog that was friendly with strangers and enjoying itself.

     

    Darth Fluffy reacted to this

  22. Posted

    4 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

    You mean my grandparents could just have gone to a presumably Nazi-controlled immigration office and asked for permission to legally flee to Sweden, awaiting an answer?

    Why do you think the German government can give permission to immigrate into Sweden? Getting out of Germany probably would have been tricky, but to then legally be in Sweden they'd need approval of Sweden's government, not Germany's.

    And it can be gotten after the fact - go there, promptly notify local authorities that you're there and why.

  23. Posted

    3 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

    That puts you miles ahead of a great many other Republicans.

    Please, stop the insults already.

    3 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

    Yes, how horrible, offering people a safe place to live when they could just stay home and be killed instead.

    The people you're referring to here don't need to enter the country illegally - they can claim refugee status and ask for asylum.

  24. Posted

    33 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

    Well I live enclosed by walls. I use them to keep wind and weather out.

    Anyway, can you cite figures for how much good Trump's wall fragments have done?

    I was referring to walls around properties or housing developments. Walls with no razor wire, no monitoring cameras, no patrolling security folks...

    I believe it was documented that Trump's walls were encouraging illegal immigrants to cross the border at other places, where there were no walls yet. Ya know, a gate across the path doesn't keep people out if they can just walk around it because it's a standalone gate with no fence or other barrier in sight - but that doesn't mean an actual fence won't keep people out.

    But I doubt that a completed wall, even with adequate security patrols, would have had sufficient effect to be worth the expense, as long as we continue to reward people for entering the country illegally. And we've done even more of that since Trump left office than we were doing before he was elected - because the Democrat and Republican leadership keep cutting deals where we'll increase those rewards now, in exchange for a promise to think about tightening immigration rules later.

  25. Posted

    The dynasty that built the wall between China proper and Manchuria was the one before the Manchurian dynasty.

    That appears to be the pattern for several other segments of the Great Wall.

    The surprising thing, though, is how many people who claimed that Trump's proposed wall would do no good, live in properties with walls around them.