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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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3 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

If no one played Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer ever again, he would likely be nearly forgotten; only the song keeps him alive.

I'd say the Rankin-Bass special helps too (I don't know how popular it is these days, but they do still play it on TV, and I'm sure there are plenty of parents who grew up with it who show it to their kids). Though on the other hand the song is in the special, so you can't really play the special without playing the song...

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3 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

I'd say the Rankin-Bass special helps too (I don't know how popular it is these days, but they do still play it on TV, and I'm sure there are plenty of parents who grew up with it who show it to their kids). Though on the other hand the song is in the special, so you can't really play the special without playing the song...

Yes, there are some derivative works, but it's all rooted in the song. If the song died, the character would become unrelatable.

Frosty, the Snowman has the same kind of thing going on, but he does not make the overarching claim to fame.

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Another Christmas song that has interesting issues is Jingle Bells. We are not familiar enough with horse technology for that song to be written today. Why does the horse have a bobbed tail? I thought about it over the weekend when the song came on the radio, and my theory is that the tails were bobbed so ice would not accumulate on them. But it's just that, a theory. I don't know. Someone in the era it was written would have known.

 

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6 hours ago, mlooney said:

I'm an old fart.  2000's media barely registers on my radar.

Well, yes, there is a case to be made for the Vintage Flatus point of view, surely. :P

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15 hours ago, mlooney said:

Oh? Like that's a threat.  A lump of coal isn't all that bad as a present when you get down to it, you can burn it for heat.

“We were so poor, we were naughty on purpose at Christmastime so that Santa would bring us coal for the fire!”

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Fun fact: Rudolf started out as the title character in a children's book, ten years before the song was written.

I think the fact that Rudolf was created by a known individual (Robert L. May) who published his work recently enough for it to still be in copyright may be part of the reason Rudolph's legend is relatively limited. If/when Rudolph becomes public domain, if he's still popular, we'll probably see him fully integrated into the Santa Claus mythology.

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7 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

Fun fact: Rudolf started out as the title character in a children's book, ten years before the song was written.

I think the fact that Rudolf was created by a known individual (Robert L. May) who published his work recently enough for it to still be in copyright may be part of the reason Rudolph's legend is relatively limited. If/when Rudolph becomes public domain, if he's still popular, we'll probably see him fully integrated into the Santa Claus mythology.

Then there's Elmo, the Brown Nosed Reindeer ...

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When did decimal inches become standard?

I remember learning inch fractions in 1st grade, even before learning multiplication.  By the 3rd grade, the metric movement was telling us how much easier meters would be, because they were decimal.  

Now many rulers lack the fraction hashmarks.

I know I'm an idiot.  Do schools need to give kids tools letting THEM know I'm an idiot?

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15 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

When did decimal inches become standard?

I remember learning inch fractions in 1st grade, even before learning multiplication.  By the 3rd grade, the metric movement was telling us how much easier meters would be, because they were decimal.  

Now many rulers lack the fraction hashmarks.

I know I'm an idiot.  Do schools need to give kids tools letting THEM know I'm an idiot?

That sounds like a fairly stupid move, items denominated in English units use binary fractions. SAE wrenches, drill bits in the US, US plumbing, ...

Decimal inch fractions serves no one. It smells like a bad decision of an 'educator', but it might be an artifact of the supply chain; the source not using the English system, being very familiar with metric, and not grasping the way it is actually used.

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Per our topic, 'The Weather', sometimes the weather sucks. But the lack of weather sucks worse. Literally. Weather is an atmospheric phenomenon. Not having weather happens when there is no atmosphere.

But space has weather. Vacuum is relative, and in the vicinity of a star, stellar wind and flares are the weather. Lack of stellar activity is a harder vacuum.

So lack of weather literally sucks.

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5 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Daylight Time.

Why?

Not saying I love the idea; the gist is to align the available sunlit hours with typical 'awake' time hours. This is most useful in agrarian settings. OTOH, not sleeping through sunlit hours is generally a good thing; I find it depressing to drive to work or drive home from work in the dark, especially since my workplaces are artificially lit, so it means really not seeing the sun much at all.

Per wiki, Benjamin Franklin suggested it, in a letter spoofing the idea.

Of course, loosing an hour of sleep in the spring is tough. Pro tip: I beat this by setting my clocks 23 hours behind! I gain extra hours of sleep and time to do odd errands! :P

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