Posts made by ZimZaxZeo

YAY for Calvin & Hobbes!!

Also Doonesbury, supplemented by All the President’s Men (by Woodward & Bernstein).

Anything by Ray Bradbury.
Anything by Isaac Asimov.
Anything by Kurt Vonnegut.
Somthing by Toni Morrison.
The poems of Langston Hughes.
Anything by Mark Twain. Make that Everything by Mark Twain.
Any and all comic books, graphic novels, etc. (but especially MARVEL)
Anything by Shakespeare.
The Norton Anthology of English Poetry.
The Norton Anthology of English Prose.
Some anthology of American poetry.
Anything by Wendell Berry.
Ecotopia (can’t recall author).
Saul Bellow is good; Isaac Bashevis Singer is good; Gabriel Marques LLosa (name perhaps mixed up) is good.
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller.
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe.
Anything by Ken Kesey, but particularly Sometimes A Great Notion & One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
The Catcher in The Rye by J.D. Salinger.
Something by Arthur C. Clarke.
Bird By Bird by Anne Lamont.
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.
The Stranger & The Plague by Albert Camus.
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.
the Russian & Scandinavian modern playwrights (Chekov, Ibsen et al).
the American modern playwrights (Arthur Miller, Neil Simon, August Wilson, et al).
Biographies of Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Washington, et al.
All Quiet on the Western Front.
Anything by Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson.
Nigger by Dick Gregory.
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin.
The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan.
(this should be good for a trimester or two…)

Hey man: showtime!
Have a blast. Get an A. Have a transcendent experience!

@cystic:

@GeZe:

YAY, my 4th topic to be popular!

you see, i think that your post count should be halved based on this kind of thing. Good heavens. I think i’d be at like 4000 with these.

So, do wordcounts. (still no measure of quality…) Gracious sakes alive.

Thank you, Mr. crypt – still fuzzy for me.
1. Retro, meaning before, prior, backwards, reverse… are you saying that gene therapists create a retrovirus using an inserted groovy gene in a strip of DNA from a virus, and voila: here is the retrovirus to help the patient churn out good stuff?

2. It that is the case, then my HIV example would be different, i.e., a virus that attacks us by inserting its material into our healthy cells’ DNA, correct?

3. Also, when you refer to adenovirus, that’s a nice name, but confuses me: is the adenovirus you speak of turned into a retrovirus as it is genetically altered by the gene docs?

((short answers would be ok just this once…!))

whoops– now I need some definitions.
retroviruses = = like HIV?
magic bullet … as in a serum to counter the virus, or cure the cancer?
bad mutation disorder - - like HIV? (or like certain political situations)

Hey there fyrwurxx, have youse guys found this a compelling addition to the game? I mean, there seemed to be plenty of thought behind it – I’m curious how it plays out, affects strategies, outcomes, etc.

Originally, I was responding to this half-informative, half-nihilist post::::::

@Yanny:

Stem cell research is cloning on a small scale. With Stem Cells, you don’t grow humans and take their organs, you grow organs alone.

Overpopulation? Naw, theres a Nuclear war coming soon.

Yah, good targets for terrorists. I’m just gut-guessing that a major nuke accident will happen before a major terror strike on a nuke. Like, feeling out the odds… total guesswork.

As far as TMI, I won’t quibble. Chernobyl is what a meltdown looks like. An area now in Ukraine and Moldova as big as half of Pennsylvania where the health authorities advise not eating any food grown there for a very very long miserable time. The one piece of good luck was the wind was blowing away from Kiev. (Try to imagine the upper Midwest with Chicago taken out.)

I think TMI is generally considered a partial meltdown. The core elements began melting and fusing together, since the operators didn’t know the top of the core had been left exposed (cooling water leak), and the whole meshuggah slumped off center and started to head for the floor. They missed a total meltdown by less than an hour, I’ve read here and there. They had bad luck with faulty instruments and bad guesswork, and then good luck with better guesswork. The containment shell pretty much did its job, and the radiation stayed coiled in its cave, jealous of its treasure.

Thamor, you may consider me guilty of guesstimating.
I really haven’t played all that many games of A&AE yet.

Your points seem exceptionally well reasoned & backed by good evidence.

Sure, it seems a game may of A&AE might often be tipped one way or the other by the barest handful of infantry. The outcome in such a game would certainly be affected by the 8 Oil IPCs taken and held by Axis over several turns!

That oil in Axis hands is sand in the Allied machine.

ButtDude, it seems to me tis all of the above. I appreciate yer cynicism, that people follow raving bastards for their own selfish, pragmatic reasons (i.e., the loot) – but I guess in many cases lots of people just get swept up in an emotional, spiritual or whatever kind of ferment or fervor, believing in their own righteousness – or believing in their badness… at that moment it likely makes little difference. They become part of a greater animus… the mob. Can this be sustained beyond a fired-up bonfire moment? Sure. Desperation, as you point out, has plenty to do with it. So does routine.

The function of orthopraxy: when people are bent, or bend themselves, not to a set of ideas, words and beliefs (orthodoxy), but to a set of ACTIONS. Once masses of people are involved in a set of habitual actions (pick any: doing the nine-to-five thing – buying breakfast cereal in branded boxes in chain supermarkets you visit by car – marching in ranks and singing national fighting anthems – running through life with cell phone glued to ear – voting along party lines – not voting at all – etc.) once people are committed to such habitual actions, then they will adopt various convenient REASONS or rationales or theories or ideologies… to explain the consequences of these actions, and even to explain WHY they perform these actions in the first place. Nine times out of ten, the person prefers a quick, convenient, canned rationale. (Insert ideology, theology, philosophy, etc. here.)

Such rationales can be perfectly straightforward and common-sense: “I have to make money and save up so my kids can make it to a better college.”
Other rationales can be absurd or mystical or untestable for most practical purposes available to the average person: “We have to strip minority X of their property because our religious leaders say they are filthy devils.”

Anyway, don’t take my word for it; for further reflection, read about it in “Propagandas” or anything else written by Jacques Ellul.

I think, Yanny, you are right on using stem cells to grow organs alone – but wrong on the next nuke war as a population-buster. I don’t see the global thermonuke holocaust (like the US-USSR Cold War-Dr. Strangelove scenario) happening. {knock on wood} I see an exchange of fewer than 10 nukes, and not between superpowers… 50-50 chance one or more superpowers does take part, but not directly against another superpower.

(by “superpowers” here, let’s suppose I mean US, Russia, China, UK, France :::: the major nuke stockpilers)

So who else does that give us, looking only two or three years down the line:
India, Pakistan, NKorea, SAfrica, Israel, certain of the former Sov republics that have supposedly disarmed, various non-state organizations, some nation or non-nation based in South America, Africa, Europe, Asia - - - and of course::::: CANADA!!!

Anyway, not enough to cause nuclear winter, not enough to make much of a dent at all in human population, but more than enough to give just about everyone a really rotten day.

Now here’s an ax to grind: the non-weapon nuke power reactors around the globe… I see a meltdown due in a country other than US (TMI) & Ukraine (USSR at time of Chernobyl). The real nuclear war is ongoing punishment of air, water, wonderful dumb animals, plants, and those mischevious human beings who insist on digging up, concentrating, enriching and dispersing uranium and plutonium to the four corners of the world.
Why a new meltdown? Well either we must assume that in the years that have passed since TMI & Chernobyl, most nuke power facilities around the world have been really professionalized and hardened vs. negligence, accident, terrorism, etc. … or that most have not. If the latter is true, I think it is just a matter of time, and I could be wrong about all of this but I don’t think terrorism will be the cause – more likely to be corporate greed and negligent safety, construction & maintenance procedures and practices.

This is well off the subject of cloning. But it certainly has to do with population pressure. All I know is, the expense of building a billion windmills, and the human and property cost if they all fell down… well, it would have to be less than one single Chernobyl. Clone solar!

There was a saying ca. 1970… give Abbie Hoffmann credit for publishing it: “Stay away from needles. The only dope worth shooting is Nixon.”

But then, he was an excitable boy…

Nostradamus predicted that Canadian technicians would abduct frozen Alabaman embryonic blood packets in order to utilize their stem cells as a medium in which to clone Jerry Lewis – and he further predicted that this cloned comedian would operate the first no-cover night club on Mars. He did not predict, however, whether the club would be a swinging success in its first season.

@yourbuttocks:

Then how do you explain the fact that rates of pedophilia are higher among married men than unmarried men?

How do you explain the high rates among protestant ministers? day care workers? teacher’s?

People who have an axe to grind with the church should come out and be honest, insteading misleading by using an inapplicable pretext.

Well, I won’t pretend I can explain any of this, seeing as how I am not familiar with how any of those data compare with what’s been stewing in the U.S. Catholic Church. Bringing these things into daylight frequently seems to have at least a touch of “witchhunt” – for example the daycare scandals of a decade ago.
I will agree with the Yannster: the Church created a system or environment of coverup. This is the huge “sin” as far as Cardinal Law and his ilk go.

As regards your point about an ax(e) to grind, well… maybe see my earlier comments in this thread: I am wondering out loud why, at a time when an established, powerful religious institution – Islam – is being scrutinized publicly in the town square on matters of life, death, liberty, etc., we turn to see what’s up with this other established, powerful religious institution – Catholicism – and find that here in the US it is racked with a power-sapping, influence-draining, effectiveness-eroding scandal of a sordid nature, of its own making.

The irony in it to me, is that some of the more politically active ((and I’m not saying these are spiritual leaders, or even leaders of the Church)) Catholics in the US are among those most vociferous in calling for a “crusade” against a demonized external threat to our civilization. It’s the IRONY that gets me going, not necessarily an ax to grind against this specific religious institution.

I will “come out and be honest” that the Catholic Church is the one religious institution with which I am most familiar. I don’t think that makes me allergic to its misdeeds, however. I am equally amused, angered, frustrated, etc. by the misanthropy demonstrated from time to time by persons of influence within ALL other big organized religious powerhouses – and almost as amused, angered and astonished by the malevolence of some very very small religious groupings, from time to time. ON THE OTHER HAND, there is almost universally some grain of good in each and every one of these cults or sects or houses or temples of worship. Tis an ambivalent world we inhabit, and also tis a not-yet-mature species, or people, we be.

Peace to guys & gals of good will…

Sheesh!!

Yah, but before I upgrade, I want to make sure it’s really worth it – I’m waiting for the helmet. Solves all ergonomic issues permanently. You know, virtual – just lemme strap that baby over my punkin head. Gimme the helmet!!

Well, TG, chalk it up to that footsie-thing I learned at an early age from Bokonon… besides, Nostradamus predicted I would score ecstasy on this quiz!

Usta play Risk forever as a young kid. Had the wooden pieces. My cousins got heavy into Avalon Hill strategic games, like Stalingrad and D-Day. truly wack.

Anyway, the years go by, I stop in to the local momandpop game store Nov. 2001 and see Risk 2210. I’m in love. Grooviest game upgrade ever.

Then, fall 2002, same store and now it’s A&A display that catches me eye – but one copy of A&AEurope is open. I start reading the manual, and a half hour later I am hooked. It’s Hellllllooooooooo Barbarossa!

Play a game or two then turn to the net for tips, etc. Encounter significant A&A fanatics society. Will report back to Earth later.

Why, sure!

No restriction on either of those.

Bombs & tubes away…