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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      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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A while ago I posted an image of Greek honor guards.

Well, these dudes are Russian honor guards.  The guy in focus looks like he has a bad case of the 1000 meter stare.

170509054010-02-russia-victory-day-0509-

The flowers are for the Grave of the Unknown.

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I just saw a clumsily phrased headline on Danish TV stating that a man had been convicted of murdering an entire municipality three times over and sentenced to a lifetime in jail. Given that about 100.000 people live (or at any rate, used to live) there, this struck me as a not entirely unreasonable sentence. Then I started to wonder. I am informed that in some parts of the US the punishment for repeating a crime is cumulative. Presuming that the convicted murderer was not actually sentenced to death, how many thousand years of prison would he be sentenced to?

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This isn't intended as anything political, but it amuses me to no end how Americans are so passionate about sports teams in American cities who's player base majority is from other countries.

I have heard Americans say "We have the best hockey teams!" ...but a third to half the players are Canadian, another quarter to a third are from other countries.... "That's because you can't afford to keep them in Canada."   O.o

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On the other hand, the few really good male American fútbol players generally play outside the US.

Of the four major American professional sports, NBA Basketball is the one least likely to have international players on a team.

NFL Football flirts with European Kickers from time to time.  And Samoa has produced some great players (although is Samoa really international?)

NHL games often start with two national anthems being played.  Even if neither team is officially from the other country.  And team owners in the US and Canada have no qualms about recruiting the best players from Europe.

And MLB Baseball was the first big sports league to look beyond the 48.  Latin America and Japan have been well represented for decades.

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2 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

On the other hand, the few really good male American fútbol players generally play outside the US.

Of the four major American professional sports, NBA Basketball is the one least likely to have international players on a team.

NFL Football flirts with European Kickers from time to time.  And Samoa has produced some great players (although is Samoa really international?)

NHL games often start with two national anthems being played.  Even if neither team is officially from the other country.  And team owners in the US and Canada have no qualms about recruiting the best players from Europe.

And MLB Baseball was the first big sports league to look beyond the 48.  Latin America and Japan have been well represented for decades.

Big talk from the Pharaoh of a country where the national sport was pyramid sandhockey. Did you ever ONCE get deities from outside the Egyptian pantheon to play?

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3 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

NFL Football flirts with European Kickers from time to time.

Don't forget Australia. At least one Aussie Rules player has come over as a punter. My own alma mater, UT-Austin, had an AFL kicker, who I think graduated this year.

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Just now, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

And MLB Baseball was the first big sports league to look beyond the 48.  Latin America and Japan have been well represented for decades.

Yeah, I used the NHL as being mainly Canadian, but for Baseball, The Toronto Bluejays may be the only MLB team in Canada, but of the 40 players on the team, 2 are Canucks.

Don't get me wrong, rooting for a team based on team pride is fine, and national pride is fine for the Olympics or World Cup (though World Series is somewhat misleading). But national pride in a "We're #1!" sense for a mixed nation roster seems silly. If the Blue Jays ever won the World Series again, I can be proud that Toronto was able to do it, I can be proud of the 2 Canucks for being a part of it, but the US can also be proud of the American players that are on the team, same with the Dominican Republic, and Cuba, and Mexico, and Venezuela.

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21 minutes ago, Scotty said:

Don't get me wrong, rooting for a team based on team pride is fine, and national pride is fine for the Olympics or World Cup (though World Series is somewhat misleading). But national pride in a "We're #1!" sense for a mixed nation roster seems silly. If the Blue Jays ever won the World Series again, I can be proud that Toronto was able to do it, I can be proud of the 2 Canucks for being a part of it, but the US can also be proud of the American players that are on the team, same with the Dominican Republic, and Cuba, and Mexico, and Venezuela.

Indeed, and this seems in no way a bad thing to me.

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On 5/9/2017 at 10:53 AM, The Old Hack said:

I just saw a clumsily phrased headline on Danish TV stating that a man had been convicted of murdering an entire municipality three times over and sentenced to a lifetime in jail. Given that about 100.000 people live (or at any rate, used to live) there, this struck me as a not entirely unreasonable sentence. Then I started to wonder. I am informed that in some parts of the US the punishment for repeating a crime is cumulative. Presuming that the convicted murderer was not actually sentenced to death, how many thousand years of prison would he be sentenced to?

Well, unless you have a means of extending the punishment into the afterlife, then "keep him imprisoned until he dies" is pretty much the longest sentence that he'll ever serve.

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25 minutes ago, ijuin said:

Well, unless you have a means of extending the punishment into the afterlife, then "keep him imprisoned until he dies" is pretty much the longest sentence that he'll ever serve.

Hasn't stopped certain courts. Wikipedia claims that the longest sentence given in the US was 30.000 years, six counts of five thousand years each. Then again, another man was sentenced to a mere twenty thousand seven hundred and fifty years, appealed and had his sentence reduced by five hundred years.

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3 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Hasn't stopped certain courts. Wikipedia claims that the longest sentence given in the US was 30.000 years, six counts of five thousand years each. Then again, another man was sentenced to a mere twenty thousand seven hundred and fifty years, appealed and had his sentence reduced by five hundred years.

Maybe they're future-proofing in case medicine or technology advances enough to extend the human lifespan or do the whole "brain-uploading" thing or what have you.

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2 hours ago, Zorua said:
6 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Hasn't stopped certain courts. Wikipedia claims that the longest sentence given in the US was 30.000 years, six counts of five thousand years each. Then again, another man was sentenced to a mere twenty thousand seven hundred and fifty years, appealed and had his sentence reduced by five hundred years.

Maybe they're future-proofing in case medicine or technology advances enough to extend the human lifespan or do the whole "brain-uploading" thing or what have you.

Maybe cryoprisons actually do exist and those people sentenced are currently frozen and having their brains rewired so that they can function as lawful citizens again upon their release.

Of course, it's not looking like Taco Bell will win the fast food wars.

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5 hours ago, Zorua said:

Maybe they're future-proofing in case medicine or technology advances enough to extend the human lifespan or do the whole "brain-uploading" thing or what have you.

 

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From the Bible to the popular song
There's one theme that we find right along
Of all ideals they hail as good
The most sublime is motherhood
There was a man though, who it seems
Once carried this ideal to extremes
He loved his mother and she loved him
And yet his story is rather grim

There once lived a man named Oedipus Rex
You may have heard about his odd complex
His name appears in Freud's Index 'cause he
Loved his mother!
His rivals used to say quite a bit that
As a monarch he was most unfit,
But still and all they had to admit that he
Loved his Mother!

Yes he loved his mother like no other
His daughter was his sister
and his son was his brother
One thing on which you can depend is
He sure knew who a boy's best friend is
When he found what he had done
He tore his eyes out one by one
A tragic end to a loyal son who
Loved his mother

So be sweet and kind to Mother,
Now and then have a chat
Buy her candy or some flowers,
Or a brand new hat
But, maybe you had better let it go at that
Or you may find yourself with a quite complex complex
And
You may end up like Oedipus
(I'd rather marry a duck-billed platypus)
Then end up like old Oedipus Rex!

Tom Lehrer, Oedipus Rex

Happy Mothers Day

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Oedipus gets a bum rap.

He was separated from his parents at a very early age (due to a prophecy that he would kill his father the king), so he didn't know his biological mother and father.

Years later some stranger attacked him on the road for no apparent reason, and he successfully defended himself from the murderous stranger.

Continuing on his journey, he arrived at a city in crisis. In addition to said crisis, its king was missing and presumed dead, and had no heirs. He resolved the crisis and in exchange was offered the throne if he would marry the prior king's widow - whom he had never met before. He accepted the deal.

Later he found out that the stranger who had attacked him was his father and the widow he had married was his mother. Which he got more than a bit upset about.

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Just now, Don Edwards said:

Oedipus gets a bum rap.

He was separated from his parents at a very early age (due to a prophecy that he would kill his father the king), so he didn't know his biological mother and father.

Years later some stranger attacked him on the road for no apparent reason, and he successfully defended himself from the murderous stranger.

Continuing on his journey, he arrived at a city in crisis. In addition to said crisis, its king was missing and presumed dead, and had no heirs. He resolved the crisis and in exchange was offered the throne if he would marry the prior king's widow - whom he had never met before. He accepted the deal.

Later he found out that the stranger who had attacked him was his father and the widow he had married was his mother. Which he got more than a bit upset about.

It really makes me shake my head when stories and film have characters that are told prophecies that they will be killed by their child or by someone from a village or something, so they go out of their way to do anything they can to prevent it, but it's the act of doing so that causes the prophecy to be fulfilled. It makes me wonder is said "prophecies" are more like a test. Give a king or emperor a prophecy, see how they react, a good king may ignore it, or takes steps so that people don't have a reason to kill him, a bad king would go on a witch hunt and try to use fear to make people think twice about going against. Maybe the "prophecies" are fabricated by people who wish to manipulate the king, get him to act in ways that would benefit them, or provoke a war with another king.

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22 minutes ago, Scotty said:

It really makes me shake my head when stories and film have characters that are told prophecies that they will be killed by their child or by someone from a village or something, so they go out of their way to do anything they can to prevent it, but it's the act of doing so that causes the prophecy to be fulfilled. It makes me wonder is said "prophecies" are more like a test. Give a king or emperor a prophecy, see how they react, a good king may ignore it, or takes steps so that people don't have a reason to kill him, a bad king would go on a witch hunt and try to use fear to make people think twice about going against. Maybe the "prophecies" are fabricated by people who wish to manipulate the king, get him to act in ways that would benefit them, or provoke a war with another king.

There once was this Danish TV show that made a truly horrible attempt at deconstructing Oedipus Rex in a science fiction setting as, I swear to God, an opera. The prophet was replaced with a supercomputer and the King was a dictator. Interestingly, while the chosen method was rather painful to watch, the actors themselves did an excellent job and the story itself was well crafted. In brief: the King was told that his son would kill him but refused to have him put to death as the computer recommended. Instead he had him anonymously adopted into a privileged family. What made the story so interesting was that the King persistently refused to believe in the prophecy and every time the supercomputer made a recommendation he refused to follow it. However, the resulting policies nonetheless made life harder for the population and his son eventually became a revolutionary who led a resistance against his father. Finally there was a confrontation between him and the dictator where the embittered ruler confessed to all he had done and why. His son then asked if the computer had also foretold that he would die at his hands, and his father shouted, "Yes! That was why I did all this!" And then, finally understanding, the son stepped back from the precipice. He asked his father if he would resign, and his father agreed. The two of them embraced, the son refused to succeed his father, and the resistance began the painful return to democracy. The supercomputer, its prophecy thwarted by the human variable, went into an endless loop and ceased to be a menace, or at least ceased being annoying.

It's odd. I hated the singing and the music, but the rest of the story I rather liked. As a deconstruction it worked very well and its message was basically that prophecies, self-fulfilling or otherwise, may be thwarted by refusal to surrender one's free will. A rather hopeful ending for a dystopic story, really, and since most pretentious Danish taurine ordure has unhappy endings imposed by mandate, that gave it another plus point in my book.

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I think I have had this coffee.  Maybe even today, based on how things are going in The House1 of Looney

autoholycrapitsanotherfillerstrip.png

1For values of House that include a one bedroom apartment.

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I'm writing some stuff for my game.  I am doing some of the trickier parts of skill use in an in-universe context.

So, Ms "I don't have a name yet, maybe Suzi?" NPC is talking to the player about looting and salvaging and why salvaging takes longer.

Quote

Yeah, a lot of people don't quite follow the finer points of looting and salvanging a ship.  Let's put it more personal terms then.  If you wack some chum upside the head with a sock full of centi-credits, then take his wallet, he has been looted.  

If instead he wakes up in a cheap hotel room's bathtub covered in insta-ice, with a note that says he needs to go to a medico about his now missing kidney, then he has been salvaged.

Not real well, because there are some things in there other than one of his kidneys that sell for a lot more.  But you get where my laser is pointing

 

Yes, I'm amused by my NPC's explanation of things.

This might be the result of drugs and a lack of sleep.

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53 minutes ago, mlooney said:

I'm writing some stuff for my game.  I am doing some of the trickier parts of skill use in an in-universe context.

So, Ms "I don't have a name yet, maybe Suzi?" NPC is talking to the player about looting and salvaging and why salvaging takes longer.

Quote

Yeah, a lot of people don't quite follow the finer points of looting and salvanging a ship.  Let's put it more personal terms then.  If you wack some chum upside the head with a sock full of centi-credits, then take his wallet, he has been looted.  

If instead he wakes up in a cheap hotel room's bathtub covered in insta-ice, with a note that says he needs to go to a medico about his now missing kidney, then he has been salvaged.

Not real well, because there are some things in there other than one of his kidneys that sell for a lot more.  But you get where my laser is pointing

 

Yes, I'm amused by my NPC's explanation of things.

This might be the result of drugs and a lack of sleep.

So apparently my headcanon is that Ms "I don't have a name yet, maybe Suzi?" NPC talks with a cockney accent, was that your intention? :D

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