-680-
[Most Recent Entries]
[Calendar View]
[Friends]
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
turnipking's LiveJournal:
[ << Previous 20 ]
| Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 | | 12:38 am |
| | Sunday, June 17th, 2007 | | 6:23 pm |
no sex with aliens : evolution like a wind-tunnel
If life has multiple points of origin across the universe, it is likely that there will be, at the very least, subtle differences in the biological molecules employed by alien lifeforms. Even assuming they use similar polymer-based mechanisms for encoding genetic information, it’s unlikely they’ll use deoxyribose sugars or the specific purine/pyrimidine bases we use. More importantly, the complement of amino acids (if they are used at all) will vary. Even the chirality of amino acids (all Earthling amino acids exist as L-enantiomers, for reasons unknown. Maybe coincidence.) could have significant effects. So when we encounter an alien, even if they’re carbon-based, proteinate, oxygen-breathing, sugar-metabolising multicellular lifeforms like us, it’s extremely likely they won’t resemble us at all biochemically. What this means is when Kal-El french kisses Lois Lane, he’s probably introducing a whole host of compounds into her mouth that she’s unable to process biochemically, and that might even be highly toxic to her. Akin to kissing a drum of oil. The wages of sin in this case could run the gamut of most kinds of poisoning you can think of. Even the dust produced by alien skin cells flaking off would be toxic, blessedly killing off allergenic dust-mites, but also instantly inducing lethal coughing fits as soon as you walk into your alien buddy’s studio apartment. As for sex? You can forget it. Even assuming that anatomical incompatibilities don’t render you unable to perform the act or make it exceedingly unenjoyable, short of wearing a full-body condom (including the mouth) there’s no possibility of you groping and fondling a strapping Klingon warrior or cuddling with Oola the Twi’lek dancing-girl. Melding sensitive membranous flesh together might result in subsequent necrosis and organ failure in both parties, which seems like a high price to pay for a close encounter.
from http://rhinocrisy.org/2006/06/the-nubile-beauties-of-rigel-6b-will-never-be-mine/
"Armed with such a principle, the biologist, like evolution itself, could become a communications engineer and consultant-of-choice in assessing stress limits of systems and in proposing appropriate system redesign. " Donna Haraway Current Music: internet radio alll weeek! | | Thursday, June 7th, 2007 | | 12:05 am |
it is all about the story - old fashioned stories! about invention and some sort of 19th century progressive darwinist model of how ideas out-idea but build from each other and eventually we will walk on the moon! -jj | | Tuesday, June 5th, 2007 | | 10:51 pm |
things almost lost from my typemachine on the bus
I'm like crosses the seperation between what is said and felt, and what is expressed and understood. I'm like is usually not what's said, but when he's like, that's the meaning, in the context of the story, of what he said. Although we can't say language and gesture are coded as severely systematically as technology, technology in its applications might be well understood as just as dialogic and negotiable as | | Monday, March 26th, 2007 | | 2:44 pm |
Colossal Squid Update
1 The fishermen were fishing for Patagonian toothfish in deep Antarctic waters when the squid - which was eating a toothfish - was caught in mid-February. 2 At the time of its arrival, Mr O'Shea said calamari rings made from it would be like tractor tyres - although would taste of ammonia. [ 3 There may be a sufficiently large microwave for the dethaw. (the problem with thawing it at room temperature is that by the time the center thaws, the skin will be rotting) Nguyen Tran, a professor in microwave engineering at Melbourne's Swinburne University, said he had made a machine large enough to take the 495kg colossal squid. 4 Vote about whether you think it could take a walrus: http://community.livejournal.com/whodwinafight/15758.html5 The brain of a 275-kilogram giant squid is only about 20 grams and shaped like a doughnut, he says, “There’s not a lot of comprehension going on up there.” Might the colossal squid be brighter than its smaller cousin? “Doubtful,” says O’Shea. “In all likelihood, it’s one of the stupidest creatures in the sea.” 6 International law requires that anything caught in Antarctic waters must be kept onboard and documented to guard against overfishing. So Bennett really didn’t have a choice but to haul in the squid. “We decided to get him onboard in as good a condition as we could,” says Bennett. “If we’d released him, he wouldn’t have survived.” 7 This was a male squid, females tend to be 50% bigger than males. so a 1 ton squid is definitely possible. (this one was half a ton) 8 Dolan, the Ministry of Fisheries observer, remembers being surprised at how docile and sluggish the squid was. “It really didn’t put up much of a fight,” he says. “Its tentacles were moving back and forth, but that’s about it. It certainly wasn’t grabbing crew members and pulling them back into the sea.” 9 There is video footage of the squid. There was a camera on board to make some boring ass footage for a documentary for a NZ tv station about fishing for chilean sea bass (aka patagoinian toothfish), but then they caught this fucking squid...so. This footage has been sold for a lot of money to some blokes who'll make a documentary with it and release it in april or something. look for some total shite that will be very popular. | | Friday, March 23rd, 2007 | | 12:00 pm |
In effect we've had an "information economy" ever since we invented money. But we still haven't learned to digest copper. | | Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 | | 6:44 pm |
| | Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 | | 5:58 pm |
Polydrug abuse is common among substance abusers, but few empirical or theoretical methods accurately characterize this phenomenon. This chapter describes a simulation paradigm that was developed to apply a behavioral economic analysis to understanding polydrug abuse. Heroin abusers 'purchased' drugs as the price of drugs or income varied. In Experiment 1, heroin price rose while prices of other drugs and income remained constant. Heroin purchases significantly decreased as heroin prices increased. As price of heroin rose, valium and cocaine purchases increased and cross-price elasticity coefficients indicated these drugs substituted for heroin. In Experiment 2, prices of both heroin and valium increased separately to determine symmetry of the substitution effect. While valium substituted for heroin, heroin purchases were independent of valium prices. Marijuana and alcohol purchases were independent of valium price, but both these drugs were weak substitutes for heroin. In Experiment 3, income rose while prices remained constant. At some changes in income, demand for heroin and cocaine was income elastic, with purchases rising in greater proportion than income. Marijuana, alcohol, and valium purchases did not vary significantly as a function of income. Choices in this simulation were reliable both between and within subjects. Moreover, drug choices in the simulation were correlated with drug use as determined by urinanalysis testing. These results are discussed in terms of the utility of a behavioral economics approach for characterizing polydrug abuse. | | Sunday, March 18th, 2007 | | 2:22 pm |
facts
where people do differ is on the facts (46). This point was well documented prior to the last elections in a report entitled ‘Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters’ from the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland. PIPA’s study found that Bush supporters had a significantly distorted view of the facts surrounding the war in Iraq and a serious misunderstanding of Bush’s views on a number of critical foreign policy issues. Kerry supporters, on the other hand, had a much firmer grasp on the facts surrounding the war and demonstrated a much stronger understanding of their candidate’s policy positions. Bush supporters showed a significant tendency to ignore dissonant information which subverted their attachment to the president. The report cites the trauma of 9/11 as lying at the roots of this resistance to dissonance. But the need for a coherent narrative that respects key beliefs is strongly evident here as well. Indeed, it seems that, especially in times of crisis, narrative coherence will be maintained despite strongly dissonant information. Current Mood:  saltCurrent Music: knifehandchop - we used to make love | | Tuesday, February 27th, 2007 | | 7:12 pm |
| | Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 | | 11:31 pm |
eskimo muthafuckas
The performance of a self-confident angakok is quite impressive—if one has not witnessed it too many times before. The chanting, or howling, is accompanied by contortions of the body and by sounds from a rude tambourine, made from the throat membrane of a walrus stretched on a bow of ivory or bone. The tapping of the rim with another piece of ivory or bone marks the time. This is the Eskimo's only attempt at music. Some women are supposed to possess the power of the angakok—a combination of the gifts of the fortune teller, the mental healer, and the psalmodist, one might say. Once, years ago, my little brown people got tired of an angakok, one Kyoahpahdo, who had predicted too many deaths; and they lured him out on a hunting expedition from which he never returned. But these executions for the peace of the community are rare. Current Music: mia - sunshowers (diplo mix) | | Tuesday, February 6th, 2007 | | 3:05 pm |
| What American accent do you have? Your Result: Boston You definitely have a Boston accent, even if you think you don't. Of course, that doesn't mean you are from the Boston area, you may also be from New Hampshire or Maine. | | The West | | | The Midland | | | North Central | | | Philadelphia | | | The Northeast | | | The Inland North | | | The South | | What American accent do you have?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz |
| | Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 | | 11:37 pm |
big paintings in my home here
here are pictures finally of these 2. they are both a few months old by now. i am working on something else but i dont think it is done and maybe it will never be since it is like a wall covering that has things on it...not the kind of thing that ever gets a frame?
Current Music: some philip glass or other | | Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007 | | 9:04 pm |
new drink
champ: 1 part hennese 4 parts gatorade extra bit of gatorade powder Current Music: hed kandi - milky | | Tuesday, December 26th, 2006 | | 8:19 pm |
my other blog
i have a new blog that is for academickish writing. marisa reminds me i should let readers know. its on a separate blog bc i dont really want to subject you to that kind of shit here. i mean, i probably wouldn't want to read you writing about your absurd racial theories and shirt. i like to read about your quotidia and quizzes and angst, plz. thats what lj is 4. http://c25i.blogspot.com/ | | Thursday, December 21st, 2006 | | 1:11 am |
| | Monday, December 11th, 2006 | | 11:15 pm |
how i painted my computer
this is something i did way back in september but im only finally now putting this shit online for all yall, this was soo hot when it came out. now it is ok. Current Music: slsk001 - soulseek compilation | | Friday, December 8th, 2006 | | 9:28 pm |
poem in the middle of my paper
There are also menus and loading and saving, there are options and settings and quitting, restarting, and starting all over, there are load screens and cheat codes and graphics gone wrong. There’s the grind and forgetting how you got where you were when your character fell when you slipped up and died just a moment ago. There is micromanaging and changing your character’s clothes or sculpting their face, there’s getting lost on the way to some newer place because around you now everything's been dead on the floor for an hour or more. | | Thursday, December 7th, 2006 | | 11:39 pm |
Of course, with such deadly power, good aim is still essential. Thankfully, our weapon is equipped with a special x-ray sighting system, which magically allows the assassin to see through walls. In the real world, when a patient is x-rayed at the doctor's office, the rays are absorbed by his bones while passing through the rest of his body. Exposing a photographic plate to the x-rays as they exit the patient's body reveals a silhouette of his skeleton where the x-rays have been absorbed. In Arnie's world, however, bones (and other miscellanea) reflect the x-rays back to the scope, allowing the assassin to see his victim's skeleton through walls. The only place for our heroes to hide is behind the refrigerator, kryptonite for super assassins with x-ray scopes, as our movie-makers would have us believe. | | 6:57 pm |
this is an actual law review article
In fiction, however, there is often a price for entering into these fantasy worlds. As Alice discovers during her visit to Wonderland, the laws of commonplace reality change, sometimes bizarrely, in these fantasy worlds. 2 At other times the price is levied upon reentry to reality. [*3] In English folklore, one who visited fairyland might spend a magical evening only to emerge and find decades or centuries had passed in the real world. 3 In fact, so much time might have passed in the real world that the travel would cause one to crumble into dust as the cumulative years collapsed into one. 4 The journeys to these magical locations were not only trips to a new lands but to different realities where the laws of humans and of physics might be equally inoperable. Albert Einstein's findings from his theory of special relativity, in which a traveler on a rocket ship experiences time passing at a slower rate than his earthbound peers, suggests a scientific basis for this myth. 5 A similar price is being paid today by those who participate in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMOGs) or, more frequently, virtual worlds. Current Music: adam freeland - essential mix 5-2003 |
[ << Previous 20 ]
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
turnipking's journal