Truth or still fiction ?

Scary or what ?

http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/looflirpa/igrill.shtml

ROFLMFAO

If I knew how to post a POLL I would... do you think we should have a jokes section in the forums?

The Philosophy Forum

The Philosophy Forum

An independent community-run forum for philosophical discussion, since 2015

www.thephilosophyforum.com www.thephilosophyforum.com

But several months ago I was banned there, after creating a thread about Time Patrol, similar to this thread:

The decision of the forum moderator to ban me seems even strange, because this thread was highly philosophic and "not too pseudo-scientific" for that forum. Maybe this was a private decision of some forum moderator, not of the forum owner, and this decision can be challenged? If anybody here has an account at thephilosophyforum forum, maybe you can write there in the moderator section about my request?

Any other links to political forums will be good for me.

The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything

by Peter Brannen

2025

Peter is an american science writer and scholar and the book is fascinating.

The book is almost completely non mathematical, but he does manage to weave together a coherent story of modern investigations into the headline objectives using Chemistry, Biology and Physics, supported by an impressive list of references.

Here is a scan of a couple of pages.

Few can hold a candle to Elton John and Roger Daltrey

Except maybe Keith Moon and Tina Turner

I mean to use these examples in order to keep the kids interested in Nature. The youngest ones get bored very easily. Examples could be: a rare animal, plant or protist, an almost unbelievably beautiful geological phenomenon, an amazingly complicated molecule that looks like a tinker-toy assembly, spectacular phenomena in water eddies and such. You get the idea.

My getting-started examples:

Glasswinged butterfly

A family of butterflies that eat poisonous leaves when they're caterpillars and grow transparent wings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_oto

Rainbow Eucalyptus tree

A species of tree that looks as if somebody had Photoshop-painted them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_deglupta

Maths are also welcome. Things that look paradoxical like 0.9999999... = 1 would be the idea. I'm sure people will enrich this with possibilities I'm not foreseeing.

Read more on: https://www.forbrukerradet.no/breakin...

Shitty translation (premium users only): https://www.forbrukerradet.no/news-in-english/digital-products-and-services-are-getting-worse-but-the-trend-can-be-reversed/

Good Food

I've just sampled my second loaf (bit of crust lightly spread with bacon drip) and can definitely declare it to be edible.

Few questions:

The recipe I'm using seems to involve an awful lot of faffing about. Is this all absolutely necessary?

I've already upped the baking time from 35 to 45 minutes (at gas mark Nigeria). The crust isn't burning, but it is well crisp, and yet the heart of it is still definitely on the moist and claggy side. Is this how it is supposed to be?

The starter is very lively in my kitchen conditions, so rather than throw half of it away as instructed (wasteful), I'm using 200 g of starter as the levain. Is this a mortal sin?

The dough is a lot wetter than I'm used to. Is this normal?

I'm using approximately half quantities as I'm not exactly feeding the village here. Though it does seem to keep a lot better than my 'normal' 1 lb loaf.

• Air

• Water

• Food

• Gravity

• Atmospheric pressure

• Exercise

• Sleep

• Heat

• Social interaction

• Activities

• Sewer

• Medicine

• Reproduction

• Schooling

What else would you add ?

I recommend Molecular Storms (2023) as good background (almost) non mathematical reading with many insights.

It is physically well put together on decent paper with many colour diagrams and written by a professional Physicist with modern ideas.

In particular it explores many of the subjects that have been discussed recently at SF.

Entropy, Emergence, randomness, the origin of Life, the role of time, cosmology the physics of biochemistry and and more.

Every Chapter has good modern references at the end.

Here is a scan of an introduction to order and disorder.

Note the novel approach.

https://anthropeum.com

“Each daily game features ten artifacts from the Met's collection. For each artifact, you place a pin on a map (your best guess at where it was made) and select a time period. Points are based on how close you get on both dimensions. After your 10 rounds, you'll see your score on a distribution curve of everyone who played that day.”

His name was used by Adams as the author of the worst poetry in the universe in the original radio broadcast, and first edition of HGttG, though this was changed to Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings for all subsequent versions.

Johnstone went on to achieve moderate prominence in the poetry world as an editor and festival organiser, including the 1977 Cambridge Poetry Festival.

So here's a thread for bad poetry. Whether it's a lump of green putty in your armpit or dead swans in a stagnant pool rotting away, let your Muse take you someplace truly awful, repellent, rancid, festering, or even confectious. Or feel free to post quotes from the worst poetry you've encountered (with all due respect to copyright laws and the health and safety of SFN members and guests).

To get the ball rolling, here's the peerless Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings to provide a little inspiration. ( her poetry is still considered to be the worst in the Galaxy, closely followed by that of the Azgoths of Kria and the Vogons, in that order.)

The dead swans lay in the stagnant pool.

They lay. They rotted. They turned

Around occasionally.

Bits of flesh dropped off them from

Time to time...And sank into the pool's mire.

They also smelt a great deal.

I will also offer, from beyond the Hitchhiker universe, i.e. the so-called real world, a snippet of what is considered one of literature's worst poems, The Tay Bridge Disaster, by the infamous William McGonagall:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Tay_Bridge_Disaster

Oh! Ill-fated bridge of the silv'ry Tay,

I now must conclude my lay

By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,

That your central girders would not have given way,

At least many sensible men do say,

Had they been supported on each side with buttresses

At least many sensible men confesses,

For the stronger we our houses do build,

The less chance we have of being killed."

Now, have at it, gruntbugglies!

I know women who go to dance clubs and make friends there; it seems obvious for me, that dancing itself is of no use or interest for anyone, but making friends is essential for everybody. Thus, dancing is a very effective way to improve one's social skills, but to use it, one must be sufficiently irrational— he or she must internally believe that dancing is a wonderful thing, which can save the world. Overall, I believe that dancing for women is roughly the same as beer, football, and fishing for men.

What I have described above is the cause of "idiocracy" and injustice in general; as the singer C C Catch sang, "good guys only win in movies."

https://halupedia.com/

Raising IQ negates the reward system. It doesn't feel rewarding. There's no feedback loop to say well done.

It "might" feel good when getting better grades or a promotion. But even then the promotion is a competition and I've even heard that top high school grades are actually limited to keep the top Universities from letting anyone in down the line.

Solving a puzzle which someone has been stuck on for a while may "potentially" feel nice. But then the person may feel a sense of dread about how it would have felt better and been more beneficial if they solved it sooner, like if they were on a tv game-show.

What are your thought on this topic?

Need to pickup an item or two at a warehouse that does NO shipping, and send it via UPS/Fedex/USPS to KY.
If carton is flimsy, to secure it with duct tape or properly. and take it to a shipper. Or do you know the way it is supposed to be done, or a person in New Orleans that does the service ? Paid, of course.

Tried the UPS store, they do not pickup. Tried Taskrabbit and found the nastiest automated non-human computer-only interface that does not want to interact with an old fart, and no phone.☹️
Edited: Just tried Uber-courier. Full computer interaction, they are assumming things and asking guesses from me. Zero humans.☹️

Thanks.

I normally use 3 types of flour, sometimes more.

How do you ensure a good mix ?

I use a riffle spoon for the dry ingredients (including yeast), see the photo in the mixer bowl, before adding the liquid ingredients.

Since day one, I learned this was named gimbal :

file:///home/externet/Pictures/Gimbal.png

Unable to insert image 😡, can be seen at --> https://lanternnet.com/product/wp-solid-brass-gimbal-for-large-yacht-lamp/

Trying to look for a manufacturer/vendor, only get crap results for cameras. Any special term I should use instead in a search ? Do you know a provider for large ~30cm ones? Has its name changed ? Plastic would be fine.