deskthority

I wasn't being snark. And over simplification was done on your behalf.

Yes, that's what I meant. Putting it passively was a dirty trick so I could enjoy some mockery at my own expense without directly owning it…

Argh, the Internet is no place to imply things. Why must I always forget? Yet this is how we speak where I'm from!

Meh, I don't like to mock people. Internet is toxic enough as is, we don't need yet another person doing it.

Sorry if I reacted too harsh.

My father and mother were biologists. You could say I was raised by Attenborough and Goodall. Our house was a zoo. I love animals. Except poultry (neurotic little buggers) and insects.

Insects are the ultimate aliens. Their lifecycles and anatomy is weirder than shit. I wonder how evolution came about making completely different life forms like that on the same planet as our own broad lineage. Seems like one should have outdone the other, yet both survive, itching and scratching the world over…

I don't mind that they are aliens, what I mind is that these aliens regard me solely as a source of nutritious biomass and blood. I once was in an expedition in a rain forest in Zambia, and was almost eaten alive by insects, mostly of the vampire type. One of the guys, he developed a bulge on his leg. We thought he had been stung, and it was a reaction, possibly an infection. It started to look real nasty. Then it burst. Out came crawling a large number of very tiny red spiders. Shit like that, man. If I had a flamethrower at that point, I might have mistakenly burned his leg off by speed of reaction. If you wanna go to the tropics, stick to islands.

When God started making animals, he had to experiment a lot. Please understand that nothing had been made before, he had to invent everything and then evolutionize his inventions.


Some of the experiments went wrong.


The attempt to correct everything with the great flood failed, because in Noah's yacht, too many animals that where supposed to die out (including his wife and himself) survived.


In fact, all the flood did was killing all large dinosaur races, because they did not fit into the yacht.

Now let me tell you about poultry...

Muirium wrote: Insects are the ultimate aliens. Their lifecycles and anatomy is weirder than shit. I wonder how evolution came about making completely different life forms like that on the same planet as our own broad lineage. Seems like one should have outdone the other, yet both survive, itching and scratching the world over…

We are the aliens.

Orson Scott Card studied this extensively in the series following Ender's Game. Although the insects and aliens he's on about are just a metaphor for humans outside one's monkeysphere, it's still quite interesting, and makes a good story. I still disliked the series as a whole because I find agnostics even more insufferable than religion, because of its cowardliness and stupidity on a grander scale.

webwit wrote: I don't mind that they are aliens, what I mind is that these aliens regard me solely as a source of nutritious biomass and blood.

essentially, so do cats.

Cats eat mice, which is good against RSI!

webwit wrote: I still disliked the series as a whole because I find agnostics even more insufferable than religion, because of its cowardliness and stupidity on a grander scale.

Trust me, gnostics are worse than agnostics…

The Zambian rainforest, eh? Something tells me there were tree huggy and nature hippy motives that took you all the way there. Or a chick with the above…

My father took me with some expeditions after I graduated. I think we were after caddisflies or something, I don't remember exactly, except hunting them with these:

Road Blog Post: oy!

i'm in ireland!

arrlind.

This blog is boring. Twitter is the new big thing!

New? I got bored with Twitter in 2008. Having joined it in 2008…

If you're well known for something (back in those days this meant a well liked Mac or iOS dev, or you were on American TV) it's fine. But if you're not, it's just a careless void, that won't ever answer your questions and is only interested in your aggregate eyeballs to whatever links. Without a following, it's a dumbed down and forgetful RSS service.

I appreciate that Twitter has made countless random folk famous in their own right. But I can't for the life of me figure out why. Much the same was true for bloggers, back in their day of course. But I read more blog posts than tweets. The latter are too much work.

Ahh, twitter. Currently it seems you're either a developer for anything or you're talking into a black hole.

I don't know why devs love it so much;
Apparently it's right down their street for some reason;
But not mine;

@Muirium: I'm with you regarding Twitter!

The daft thing is I still kind of want to like it. I know there's good people out there who rely on Twitter for creating the things they do. Or publicising them, more like. But quite what you're supposed to do without an existing following, ugh, it escapes me. Like YouTube videos of strangers pets…

Muirium wrote: The daft thing is I still kind of want to like it. I know there's good people out there who rely on Twitter for creating the things they do. Or publicising them, more like. But quite what you're supposed to do without an existing following, ugh, it escapes me. Like YouTube videos of strangers pets…

This is like entering the Twilight Zone. It's as if you are reading my mind! I am in an organization that is encouraging the use of all forms of "social media". I feel as if I ought to like such things as Twitter and Facebook, as if I am somehow neglecting my professional development by not embracing them. But to me, these things are more like a social disease. Somehow I also escaped Six Sigma without seeing my career go down in flames.

Disease is a bit far. Although I'm purposefully ignorant of Facebook. Rage quit it so many years ago I can scarcely even recall what it was like!

Twitter makes perfect sense from a push point of view. People have wares to hawk, causes to promote, links to foist. What I don't understand is what the majority of the users do on it, the ones no one gives a shit about! It seems to be just another passive way to waste time.

derp

That still running huh?

And what about Diaspora?

<Rimshot.>

Hey, maybe I WILL convert this blog into a Twitter.

Is there a short, "hip", platform-agnostic way to describe that? Like, I clearly don't have a Wordpress here, it's a blog.

Anyways Ireland was really nice. Very pretty country. Cork is pretty interesting; I'd like to go back there as well as to the Aran Islands again. Circumstances led me to leave a lot earlier than I had planned so I didn't get to see Dun Aengus or go to the cliffs or anything. I did take a nice nap on the beach though. Hostels are my hell on Earth. Did you know: I don't like most people? Lots of cows and hams and lambs out there though, so that made up for it.

Oh, as a matter of fact, you know what else? I read The Children of Hurin. Marvelous! The tragedy! The valor! Or valour, as is probably more appropriate in this case.
I'm going to reread the Silmarillion soon and then get started on the Unfinished Tales. After that I'm seriously considering investing in a Kindle or something to get through the History of Middle Earth because I really don't feel like I need to own all twelve books at this point in my life; however, my Tolkien library is growing and as it is I'm already going to have to undertake some consideration in getting it back to the USA.

new blog post: bloggin! WHAT IT IS and WHO CARES, or, WHY ALL OF A SUDDEN MY CAPS LOCK KEY IS NO LONGER MAPPED TO COMMAND AND IS NOW INEXPLICABLY REMAPPED TO ITS DEFAULT KEYBINDING, CAPS LOCK (DANG IT!) BUT FORTUNATELY THE UPSIDE TO THIS SITUATION IS THAT OS X RECOGNIZES ALL CAPS IN ITS DICTIONARY SO SPELLCHECK STILL WORKS

you know what, this is gonna have to wait until later.