The Lounge

Well, at least those of you over eighteen and 110 pounds. Would you make an appointment to donate blood platelets tomorrow? And while you're donating, would you please seriously consider registering as a stem cell/bone marrow donor. Donating platelets takes a bit longer than giving blood, and it can feel a little weird, but it's worth it. And they can get stem cells from your blood, so they don't have to drill holes in your bones. Here are a couple of URLs for the U.S. http://www.givelife2.org/donor/apheresis.asp#top%20idtop http://www.marrow.org/cgi-bin/NETWORK/all_center.pl?ctr_typ=DC&sort_order=ctr_st You will save a life. If you are o…

...is now hanging on my wall. Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte: (and ugh, this scan can't come close to doing it justice) This painting embodies Seurat's disdain for the haphazard approach of the Impressionists and the crowning achievement of pointilism/neo-Impressionism. Seurat discarded the whimsical approach to color used by the Impressionists and sought out scientific and biological color theories when developing his pointilist technique. The painting appears as splotches of contrasting colors up close, but from a distance blends into a beautiful, vibrant whole. To me the painting represents the abandoment of a haphazar…

Say, why does it seem that when I exorcise I also snack less? I would assume exorise would encourage me to eat more to gain energy.

I'm not an expert on the economy, but I've heard from many sources that the United States economy could be heading in the wrong direction. In the US, we import a much greater value of goods and services than we can export. The latest statistics from the US Census Bureau show that the US economy had a total international trade deficit of $68 billion in the month of July 2006, and that number is increasing each month. You can visit http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/ to see the value of goods that the United States is trading with each country. The US used to have profitable trade with other developed nations, such as the UK. However, now it seems that the …

Today we passed 300,000 posts! congratulations Blike (SFN owner), Dave (admin), and everybody. Especially congratulations to people who have had ideas for some really intriguing provocative threads, which people liked to discuss about. At the risk of being unfair, I will mention a couple of people who have had some interesting ideas that have stimulated discussion. Bascule, IMM are two that come to mind. but then there are obvious other devisers of lively threads and i don't want to get into a long list, so apologies to Pangloss and other worthy thread-wrights. =============== well, does anyone have ideas about what sorts of discussion contribute to a liv…

am i the only one?

The web site facebook.com really annoys me! I've heard that it is similar to MySpace, but it won't let me view anyone's profiles. They actually expect me to give them my information before I can even view the site. Isn't that ridiculous? I sent them an e-mail saying they should visit MySpace because they obviously have no clue on how to setup a web site.

Latly I've been feeling a bit nostagic and have been trying to search the internet for old firends. One person I have been looking for graduated when I was a sophmore in high school and I thought went to UMaine like me. However whne I came here I did not find her, either physicaly or in the directory. I know that her family moved to North Carolina half a year after she graduated. How might I be able to find this old firend?

Ok, for those of you who've known me for the past year and a half, you probably already know that my husband and I divorced because we just werent in love anymore. I worked nights, he worked days, and we only ever saw each other for 2 hours at the most in a day, and usually one of us was tired and wanted to sleep... and it was like that for almost 4 years. Then he said, "are we still in love", and I said I didnt know, and he said "thats not really a yes is it?", and so we parted ways peacefully. And so for the last year, I've been using online dating services, because its really hard to meet vegetarians and vegans in the real world, so I put aside at least one night a wee…

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/daniel_davies/2006/10/faking_the_physics.html Harry Collins, a sociologist, managed to convince a panel of physicsts that he knew more about gravity waves than a gravity wave physicist. From the article:

I just noticed this book is number three bestseller (all types of books) at US amazon. http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/ref=pd_ts_b_ldr/103-6432418-0205431 1. State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III by Bob Woodward 2. a self-help book 3. Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris 4. a diet book 5. a success book ... ... (and so on) ================== It is probably significant what kind of book this Sam Harris is. Has anyone read it? I think it matters that it is selling a huge number of copies. excuse my being so quantitative:-) I'll get some review comment to help characterize the book

Glad to see a skeptical take on the peak oil issue: http://www.reason.com/0605/fe.rb.peak.shtml

No, not last call... I mean, what's with the coloured bars under users' sig lines? And how can I get one? It must be the longest. And the prettiest.

Hey everyone, I am exceptionally excited right now - my business partner and I launched our first fully automated internet based service website Its for graphic designers and basically lets people build presentations online and CD-ROMs easily, and its really exciting but I don't want to post the URL in case I'd be breaking spam rules. I am not trying to push it here of course I just want to do a little happy-dance and share a really cool milestone that I got to experience. Would it be in bad taste to share the URL so people could look at it?

What new and exciting developments are happening/have recently happened in your field of science? It'd be nice to hear about the cutting edge, especially if you guys are involved in it.

I'm beginning to realize that one can do a kind of "bestseller sociology" to get an indication of what mental climate prevails amongst various reading publics. I noticed an odd thing, just comparing the all-books bestseller lists of US and UK amazon. (this is all-books, not down in some category like "science" or "general physics"---so it is the most massive gauge of the mass market) the US list has a substantial minority of women authors. Less so the Brit list. The FIRST 25 of the brit list, the first page in other words, has only ONE woman-author book (#12 a cooker by Tana Ramsay) unless you count #17 "The Official Keeley Calendar for 2007" and Keeley is the w…

I heard of an essay written by a Nobel winner in the economy field. The title is "Hong Kong Wrong" It is published in the US newspaper but it is indeed too far for me to reach it. May anyone give me the link to the essay?

Is it physically possible to generate the type of holographics as seen in Star Wars?

Heres a thread to celebrate our stupidity, by telling our stories about the really dumb things we've done... I think I'm just a stupid prone person... I have so many stories to tell. Once, when I was a teenager, I ran out of razors, so I tried to shave my legs with a serated knife. Around that same time, before I came to my vegan sensibilities, I made a blow torch out of hairspray and a lighter and tried to set bugs on fire in my parents house, and I almost burned a couch down. Specifically, this thread was promted after something I did today: Today I got that idea that I should be more responsible with my money, instead of spending it all on cute skirts an…

Just for reference, this region is approximately the size of the state of Colorado: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&z=8&ll=-10.822515,-61.693726&spn=4.196764,7.080688&t=h&om=1 That's really, really scary (Zoom in)

In that other thread, post #23, Blike stated very clearly and concisely his views on religion in 75 words or less. I thought that was great. An open and generous contribution to our understanding of each other. I would like to hear what anyone else here can say, like that, in < 75 words. It can be what you think real religion is, or what your view is of the organized established, or what things are of ultimate concern to you--your beliefs about ultimately what you think matters most, or you can talk about your affiliation to this or that religious community. Nobody can say it all in 75 words, but I am curious to know what you choose to say in the space ava…

so my gf had a drunken threesome with two people who werent me. i just walked two and a half miles and i have a bunch of alcohol in me, which are the two best stress relievers i have available and i still feel like poopy. im out of ideas.

We were talking about taste today, yet another subject that we are clueless about. Were wondering why melted cheese seems to taste better. Is it just a texture thing that we interpret as better taste?

A group of friends and I have decided to rent out an ice rink for a few hours each week this winter. I used to play hockey when i was very little so I know that it can be very expensive to get equipment My question is, does anyone know about how much it is to get all the equipment I need. I want to get used stuff to cut down the price and I have no clue how much used equipment is. I dont have anything at the moment, I have to buy skates, a stick, pretty much everything I need I would have to buy. If someone knows how much it would be and could give me a ballpark figure on how much it might be it would be greatly appreciated.

That's not true at all! Just because somebody does something once doesn't mean they'll do it again. I'm just saying that there is room for error, and we should forgive that. I think that repeated "offenses" are a different matter, however. But repetition is NOT inevitable. And, if that happens, than you know she's not interested in an exclusive relationship with you. But, if that happens only once, that's not necesarily the case. I'm sorry, but I don't believe people are as black and white as you make them out to be.