Phi for All

You did fine. But you have to expect a little flack when you take a strong stance. Especially when you mix religion with politics. Are you used to everyone agreeing with you when you talk about religion and politics? Things may be a little different here. You aren't going to let it scare you away, are you?

Um, that wasn't your neighbour's cats....

Good books keep me awake. Bad books are better if you want to sleep. The first 10 pages of any James Michener novel, where he starts the story with how the earth cooled and the continents separated is pretty good for some zzzzzzzs. When would you? A Day in the Life of Sayonara³: 6am-Get up, dress, eat a bowl of rocks 7am-Verbally flay fellow bus riders on the way to work 7:30am-4:30pm-Debase myself analyzing business processes for those who have no business wasting air for breath, much less wasting my enormous intellect on their mostly self-induced problems 4:30pm-5:30pm-Practise kung fu on fellow bus riders who took all day to come up with retorts to my earlier verbal flaying 5:30pm-Blog 6pm-Look for spam at SFN 6:02pm-Destroy spammers 8pm-Upgrade computer 9pm Surf the Web 10pm-Write helpful emails to Tony Blair 11pm-Check for more spam at SFN Midnight-Start new computer project 1am-Open window and scream obscenities at neighbour's cats 2am-Write new biology texts for Cambridge and Oxford 4am-6am-2 hours of REM sleep

Even more than Superman, my two favorite Reeve movies were Somewhere in Time (1980) and especially Deathtrap (1982) with Michael Caine (God, I loved that movie!). Chris, you were a great man. Up, up and away!

Super human soul, Kryptonite found you too soon. Up, up and away!

I love it! Maybe it should be "incapacited" instead of "incapacitated". And maybe it could be Einstein with his hair really wild. Maybe bloodhound could photoshop something up....

How about: "Nothing shocks me anymore--I'm incapacitated!"

As in post #2 from this thread (a joke, not important, different kind of pudding). Definitely not my version of pudding.... Sounds good. And relaxing.

But not right before bedtime, right? That always keeps me awake if I get my heart racing half an hour or less before my head hits the pillow. Tell me about Black Pudding. Would that be good in a tub?

Some from emails friends have sent' date=' some from the web, but most are from memory. Have you ever had someone ask you to tell them a joke? I always draw a blank when this happens. But the minute someone [b']tells[/b] me a joke, I suddenly remember five more. And in telling those five, I remember ten more.... This last one was that way. Someone told me the joke about the wife who told her husband her car wouldn't start because there was water in the carburetor, which was true since the car was in the pool (it's already been posted). While I was being polite and listening, I remembered the joke with the pool full of alligators. It's an oldy and a goody. A warden from the Everglades Fish & Game Dept hears a commotion in the swamp one day and guides his boat over to investigate. Suddenly, he sees a blonde woman, dressed in a high fashion miniskirt and sweater ensemble, shoot up out of the water, wrestling a twelve-foot alligator! In awe, he watches as she drags the flailing creature to shore, throw it down on the ground and pin it on it's backside. The blonde looks at the creature's feet, and with a disgusted look on her face, jumps up and kicks the huge reptile back into the water, complaining, "Oh, poo! That one doesn't have any shoes, either!"

Once there was a billionaire, who collected live alligators. He kept them in the pool in back of his mansion. The billionaire also had a beautiful daughter who was single. One day, the billionaire decides to throw a huge party, and during the party he announces, "My dear guests, I have a proposition for every man here. I will give one million dollars, or my daughter's hand in marriage, to the man who can swim across this pool full of alligators and emerge unharmed!" As soon as he finished his last word, there was the sound of a large splash in the pool. The guy in the pool was swimming with all his might, and the crowd began to cheer him on. Finally, he made it to the other side of the pool unharmed. The billionaire was impressed. He said, "That was incredible! Fantastic! I didn't think it could be done! Well, I must keep my end of the bargain. Do you want my daughter or the one million dollars?" The guy catches his breath, then says, "Listen, I don't want your money! And I don't want your daughter! I want to know who pushed me in the pool!"

Poor PrimaryGun! Sleep eludes him like a ghost from the Ghostbusters.

If the pudding didn't help, or if you have the monkeys (those odd little thoughts that pop-up in your mind and race around in your skull when you are trying to go to sleep), think of a fantasy to play in your mind. You could be a superhero or a secret agent or a world-class lover or just about anything. Just make sure it doesn't remind you of anything that is currently keeping you awake (it shouldn't be about school, or a current love, or anything that will fixate you on real problems). If you find yourself thinking about reality when you're trying to sleep, keep going back to the fantasy. Practise and build on it and you should get pretty good at blocking out the thoughts that keep you from sleeping. I've never been good at emptying my mind, but this is the next best thing, I've found.

I just reread this whole thread. Some great stuff. Sorry, it's been awhile since I checked back. Pangloss, to me, the neo-con agenda seems very scary indeed. It ties in with how immense businesses are being awarded contracts only they can fulfill because of how easily they can pull political strings and get the contract parameters set in their favor. Why, in the final analysis, don't they scare you?

This is positively, ninja-lutely true. Shuriken is a collective term for all the ninjas throwing darts, knives, etc, which I simply wanted to point out was not only the little spinny, wheely things that Hollywood has ninjafied.

Fill a large tub with pudding (any flavor), climb in, wiggle your toes, plug in your laptop and visit this thread: http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=5069&page=1&pp=20 Compose some mind-soothing haikus and post them, and if you still feel stressed, then visit this thread: http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1911 Read them all and if you know one that isn't in the thread, post it. Laugh long, laugh loud, laugh often.

Just a tip: any sword that is only $80 is only fit to decorate your wall. Not that there is much else to do with them, short of mayhem, but I like to collect weaponry that won't break the first time you were forced to use it. Throwing stars (shaken) are fun but not very accurate. Knives (shuriken) are more accurate but require more practise. Swords are fantastic for cutting your own leg off, unless you're willing to practise every day. Not having that much time to invest (lazy), I prefer the spear (yari) or the staff-mounted blade (naginata). Longer reach is the key, never let a ninja within 3' of you, I always say. Pointy-end toward the enemy, keep it between them and you.

A guy sticks his head in the barber shop and asks, "How long before I can get a haircut?" The barber looks around the shop and says, "About two hours." The guy leaves. A few days later, the same guy sticks his head in the door and asks, "How long before I get a haircut?" The barber looks around the shop full of customers and says, "About two hours." The guy leaves. A week later, the same guy sticks his head in the shop and asks, "How long before I can get a haircut?" The barber looks around the shop an says, "About an hour and half." The guy leaves. The barber looks over at a friend in the shop and says, "Hey Bill, follow that guy and see where he goes." In a little while, Bill comes back into the shop laughing hysterically. The barber asks, "Bill, where did he go when he left here?" Bill tells him, between bursts of laughter, "To your house!"

The widow takes a look at her dear departed one right before the funeral and, to her horror, finds that he's in a brown suit. She'd specifically told the undertaker she wanted him buried in his blue suit. She demanded that the corpse be changed into the blue suit she'd brought especially for that purpose. The undertaker said, "But madam! It's only a minute or two until the funeral is scheduled to begin! We can't possibly take him out and get him changed in that amount of time. The lady said, "Who's paying for this?" The reluctant mortician wheeled the coffin out, but then wheeled it right back in a few moments later. Miraculously, the corpse was in the proper blue suit. After the ceremony, a well-satisfied widow complimented the undertaker on the smooth and speedy service. She especially wanted to know how he'd been able to get her husband into his blue suit so fast. The funeral director said, "Oh, it was easy. We'd accidentally dressed another body in your husband's blue suit, and your husband in his brown one. All we had to do was switch heads!"

The young clerk's responsibilities included bringing the judge a hot cup of coffee at the start of every day. Each morning the judge was angry that the coffee cup arrived two-thirds full. The clerk explained that he had to rush to get the coffee delivered while it was still hot, which caused him to spill much of it along the way. None of the judge's yelling and insults produced a full cup of coffee, until he finally threatened to cut the clerk's pay by one-third if he continued to bring one-third less coffee than the judge wanted. The next morning he was greeted with a cup of coffee that was full to the brim, and the next morning and the morning after that. The judge couldn't resist gloating over his success and smugly complimented the clerk on his new technique. "Oh, there's not much to it," admitted the clerk happily, "I sip some coffee right outside the coffee room, and spit it back in when I get outside your office."

Personally, I think the whole Threat Level system aids the terrorists more than it aids us. It keeps people fearful, and I don't like how easily led we become when we're afraid. I don't think any of the alerts are fake. But if the Intelligence community has some specific information about an attack, they should try to keep it as local as possible, let the people know in the affected area only, instead of telling the whole country to be on the alert, signalling the terrorists to try again some other time. I agree that kind of alarm makes us numb after awhile. Car alarms are a good example. Too many, too often.

YES!

True, but AL was singled out previously and personally by yourdadonapogos, who attacked his patriotism for standing up for the right of others to vote. Not that AL needs defending by the likes of me, but it's easy to see if you check out AL's past posts that he is a thoughtful member of this community, like many, but unfortunately not like all.