CritterKeeper

Ah, yes, passing on memes versus genes. (In the original sense of meme, not the current internet-fad usage.)

Even with a USB 3.0, it would take a long time to copy a file that big. Plus, I suspect that media large enough to hold it all is hard to come by. How often do you see a 32TB drive for sale to the general public, let alone how many people have one lying around ready to copy files onto at the drop of a hat? This was likely some sort of special media used only by archives and central information warehouses, not ships or backwater planets.

Thanks. Now next time I call up or try to chat with customer service, I'll be picturing the agent orgy going on while I'm on hold!

Not a bad idea, that. My mom once went to a car dealership that offered $1000 for anything you could drive in, and brought her old lawnmower. Offered/threatened to get up on top of it and ride it into the office. No, it wasn't a riding mower. She got the "trade-in" allowance, but they declined to actually take the lawnmower.

And the crowning glory, the piece de resistance, the final insult.... Guess they have too much money and need to annoy any more potential customers into going away! Seriously, at least be honest about whether you'll get to talk to someone!

We've all got excellent imaginations, so probably yes....

Shopping for a new cell phone. Considering how much money I'm willing to lay down, they sure don't make it easy to give it to them. All I want to know is, how much does your company charge for *one* line, per month, unlimited data, including taxes and fees, and how much data does that actually translate to before it gets choked down to dial-up speeds? (Seriously, I asked one company and the slower rate is 128 kbps.) Every company's web page seems to be overflowing with graphics and any actual information is carefully hidden. Even the sites designed for comparing between companies have so little information per entry that you can't actually make any sort of useful comparison without going to separate pages over and over. The other thing I'd like to know is how much I'd have to pay to get a smartphone from them. This is carefully obscured by listing it as $X down plus $Y per month for Z months, and no hint whether taxes and fees are included there, nor how much memory for models with multiple options, nor whether there is any discount for new customers, loyalty bonus for existing customers, etc. One company has a deal which requires you to give them your old phone in order to make use of it. My phone was $30 used at least eight years ago. Why would they give me what I think adds up to at least $150 (versus competing offers without the 'trade-in') unless they are going to get something out of it? Like, say, all the personal information stored on a person's cell phone these days....

Three minutes and 23 seconds is just about at the one hour mark. I would have left already but I'm kind of curious whether they'll actually pick up eventually.

Yes, Rogue One *did* cover the whole issue of the files being far too large to be able to propagate easily, but it was very quick so I'm not surprised so many missed it. It's sort of the equivalent of the plans being on a 32 TB hard drive. It takes time to transmit or to copy, and you have to have something to copy them *onto* as well. If everyone's cell phones* can only hold 32GB, and your 4G connection is 3MPS, then you are rather limited in how many copies you can make. Even a distributed download would take both time to set up and bandwidth to send across. *AnDroids, of course

I wasn't talking about genetics in that thread, but about the fact that a same-sex couple of a very distant species has been devoted enough long-term enough to raise a family together. Or, get the children of close relatives (who share a fair portion of your genes) to reproductive age.

Best of luck to you! May they get the analgesic cocktail right this time!

I can recall offhand a penguin couple who have raised eggs/chicks together, and a pair of swans.

Your settings are fine, and I found an old Amazon gift card in danger of expiring unused, so you can have a merry years-old Christmas and so can the kitties. :-)

Here's a twist, it's currently 87.6°F in Orlando, and 94.4°F where my sister lives! I should call her and ask if she's gone outside for a training walk. ;-) 74°F here right now, I should be going for a nice lunchtime walk. I'm still a bit worried about the weather next week, but ah, well, we'll make the best of whatever we get. And we'll know that anything we don't see this time around, there's always the option of coming back some other time.

Another idea of mine....a full-size screen movie theater complex where you can choose which movies to show in a given theater, ranging from current hits to old classics, or DVDs/blurays brought in from outside. It would require keeping track of who is owed what for the public exhibition, but surely modern computer systems could handle it by now! A theater can be rented/reserved for a flat fee (possibly plus a per-head royalty) by a group who already have their viewing planned. Any theaters not reserved ahead of time, the walk-ins can vote on what movie to show, if there are enough of them to be worth running the system. Perhaps they would split the fee for that showing, so the more people agree on a movie, the less each one has to pay to see it, and if someone was determined enough to see a given movie no one else wanted they could just pay the whole fee themself. A group of friends could get together and watch an old favorite while still getting the full big-screen popcorn-bucket surround-sound experience. Parents could make sure their kids' first experience of Jurassic Park had the same visual impact they had when they first saw that enormous dinosaur towering above the audience. Or, an enterprising group could rent a theater for a particular day and time for a flat fee, then do their own promoting and charge admission; if they do a good enough job they can make a little money and the complex makes more on popcorn sales and such. (Again, there would have to be some sort of arrangement for paying royalties etc but surely the modern information age can handle that!) It would cater to the modern tendency to want everything personalized and on-demand, and give movie theaters a new lease on life without having to invest in 3-D and moving seats and such.

I'll be keeping an eye out for the magic wand that actualy works, but until I find it, you have my best wishes and sympathies. It still boggles me that they can't give you any sort of pain med before surgery -- seems terribly inflexible of them, in both senses of the word "terribly." I do wish you could get to have a nice long talk with the anesthesiologist before the day of the surgery, so they could research and plan out how to handle pain control and positioning of the patient, etc. Seems unfair to them to spring all this on the day of the procedure.

You'd have to mean some pretty far-back ancestors, given that committed same-sex couples have been documented in not just various mammals but birds as well. (Hmm, and given that Aves is now a sub-category of dinosaurs, that means that we have genuine gay dinosaurs running around the planet at this very moment. XKCD, how did you miss this one???)

Someone I know has a brother with Huntington's, which causes both physical and mental deterioration. She's spent a fair bit of time wondering whether he's happier now, with his brain deteriorated enough to not be interested in the world very much, or whether he's still in there and it's just the interface with the world that's malfunctioning. Either way, medications that make him less anxious and upset seem like a mercy.

Well, technically, I can diagnoses and treat every species on the planet except the species Homo sapiens. There might even be some debate over jurisdiction if someone ever recreated Homo sapiens neandertalis, as to whether they were close enough to Homo sapiens sapiens for the MDs to claim, or different enough for the DVMs to be a better choice. Those MDs are way too used to every drug having about the same dosing, same effect, same potential side effects -- they don't cope well with variations like hundred-fold dosing differences in levothyroxine or healthy foods being toxic (grapes, avocadoes, Macadamia nuts, etc). Hmm, I don't know who takes care of them in the EGS-verse, but I always felt being a doctor on the Enterprise* would be more like being a zoo vet than an MD. *As opposed to The Doctor and the Enterprise, which was an excellent fanzine story I probably still have a copy of somewhere.....

Need more science-fiction fans in the field. Seven Days had an episode where a terrorist flew a plane into the White House, and I think I recall at least one other such planes-as-weapons plot before 9/11 although I cannot remember which series (books or TV) it was from.

Which is a reason to stick with interrogation without torture. Note that I specified "small children," who have a lot in common with animals, such as being non-verbal and having very different response to a great many drugs than adult humans have. Drugs which cause the patient to not remmeber the procedure are used all the time inanesthesia! Far more procedures are done with the patient awake (that is, responsive) than people realize. When I had my wisdom teeth out, I was asking the doctors about everything they were doing, including what they were giving me IV. The doctor told me that one of the drugs was "what makes you forget --" and the memory goes from clear to a complete blank as the drug hit my brain. If I hadn't been asking, I would have assumed that was the point when I fell asleep, but anesthesia is very different from sleep, and the drugs can have some interesting effects. As for rape, most procedures have several people involved at any given time, at least until recovery, and hospitals have plenty of procedures in place to try to prevent any misbehavior by staff of all sorts. All the more reason to listen to the testimony of interrogators such as the one TOH was quoting, people who are experts in the field. If you look at cases of torture like Guantanomo, it's generally people who weren't professionals, but rather sadistic amateurs who are either looking for an excuse to make their "enemy" suffer or think they know more than they do about how to get information. Let's keep revenge/punishment/deterrent apart from what will actually get the job done. If giving the kidnapper a nice meal and a pleasant conversation will get the information out of them better than torture, would you refuse to wine and dine them just becase they don't deserve it? Not to mention the whole "innocent until proven guilty" concept at the heart of our system of justice. How willing are you to torture someone who actually is innocent? Because if we allow torture, that is going to happen, and the more we use it, the more innocent people will be tortured. Ah, but either method takes time to work, and at any given moment, you have a choice between sticking with what you've already invested considerable time and effort into, or switching to something completely different which will be starting from square one. How can you really tell whether the interrogator won't get the information if given just a little more time?

I think we got the idea when you posted And of course you're worried about the outcome of all of these tests and procedures, and the logistics of it all, etc. All the more reason to let us help you out with the mental stress in whatever way we can. Mental stress and physical pain can affect each other, after all. We can't send you extra pain medsm but maybe we can reduce your stress hormones just a little bit. By the way, I know gabapentin has a reputation for helping with chronic pain and nerve-related pain in the critters, do you know if it's similar in humans?

Um....

Why should single payer be any worse than corporate-run? At least profit motive isn't a factor if it's government-run. As long as you don't have the opposing party sabotaging the system deliberately, like with the post office lately.....