Offsite Comments

FenelonSpoke, if you're around, ICYMI, I left you a late reply on the last thread.

FenelonSpoke, if you're still around:

I was just kinda joking about getting depressed. I highly value Vic's news. And views. The cynics and curmudgeons don't bother me - and often they have some great points to make behind the cloud of Doom.

I also greatly appreciate your upbeat stuff, and just because it may not get the same response as downbeat news, don't think you aren't read and appreciated. Sometimes there's just less to be said to the good things. Tolkien had a line about that, sorta.

In any case, sounds a little like you're letting the snark and grump get you down. That's worrisome, since you are the official beacon of light around here. Have a chocolate chip cookie, ponder Jesus saying what does it matter to a believer if the whole world should pass away (where is that, I want to find the verse), smile a big smile, then plow on through the mud like it's fun.

And I'll try to take my own advice on that.

Wait, wait, I'm still replying to last thread comments.

siiiiiiigh

I confess to the guilty pleasure of watching the imitation-TOS series Star Trek Continues. Mostly, it's fun to see James Doohan's son playing Scotty.

The fourth episode (I think) starts off with Kirk getting a brain disease and being cured of it (instant cures a specialty!) using an experimental non-approved drug. (Take THAT, FDA!) Kirk then remembers a gal that Spock had mind-melded him to "forget... forget...."

So instead of watching the Continues episode, we hauled out the original - "Requiem for Methuselah." I thought I had all the old ones memorized, from back in the college days when we got them from three different TV stations. But apparently I had blocked this one out, alllll out.

Boy, was it bad! Kirk falls in love with an android within about five minutes. I mean love, not his usual lust. Then he and the Lazarus Long character - the andorid gal's "father/lover" (!!) physically wrestle over her and she dies because love.

Made me not want to watch the follow-up Continues episode now.

Did they ever do a real "wagon train to the stars" episode (as Roddenberry sold it to the network)? I can't think of one. Those old half-hour westerns used to have some great tales. The lost art of TV drama.

Tmitsss: According to W. Joseph Campbell, the whole nationwide War of the Worlds Panic thing is a Media Myth

Yeah, but the old farmer who ran out and shot at a water tower is true, right? Right?

Morning, Glories! Only 150 comments to catch up this morning? I thought I was running later than that.

Mornings are like the resurrection, except instead of being in the next life, you're in a familiar one. (Presuming you didn't get drunk and wake up at some stranger's house.) Maybe that's not a difference?

Anyway, a new day feels like a renewed me and I'm ready to take advantage of the opportunities... until this cheeriness is chipped away. Which starts with reading Vic's news. Oh, well, nice while it lasts.

Wow, I'm depressed already...

I don't always post this comic link when the subject comes up... but since it's a Current Thing...

Time Traveler's Conundrum
We had the best of intentions.
http://bit.ly/rewrite-time

Thanks for another great ONT, Maet.

Good night, Gracies!

Can't be.

Well, close.

/rant on

Dear kids,

Don't screw critters.
Don't screw kids.
Don't screw people married to other people.
Don't screw unmarried people.
Actually, chemistry suggests, don't even French Kiss people you aren't married to.

Wait until you're married, and have fun then.
http://mindfulwebworks.com/art-of/correct-sequence.jpg

Be loyal to your spouse.
Think of your kids (real or future) first and foremost.
Think of your grandkids.
Don't do what you wouldn't want Gramma to know about.

If you think you're gay, seek counsel. Avoid nasty habits. Even if you're gay, monogamous fidelity is best.

If you think you like diddling kiddies, get help. Now!

If you think "polyamory" is cool, get help. And pray.

If you think your genitals are the wrong kind, get help. And thank God for who you really are.

Short form:
Keep it zipped. Or, for the ladies, cross the legs.
There is a lot to be gained by living a clean moral life.
Live it and you'll understand.

(Some) Christians will tell you, to be saved, you must
Believe every word of (their interpretation) of scripture.
Mary was a Virgin.
Jesus went to Hell.
blah blah etc etc

Just because something may or may not be true doesn't make it a fundamental of salvation.

Christians are often totally wrong.
Christ is not.

When a fellow asked Jesus what it took to be saved, Jesus replied,
Keep the commandments.
He even simplified it down to two sides of one coin, for those who can understand, but the old ten-or-so are good to study.

Like, that one about adultery that Jesus emphasized.

/rant off

There is no "slippery slope."

Vertical cliff.

Late Morning, Glories!

Just been going through the earlier post with its amusing day-late DST-adjusting time-shuffle of comments.

How izzit that this blog, the best on the web (including all the community of canny commenters), is the worst piece of technical junk?*

I'm no genius, but couldn't the time-stamps all be Universal Time and then only the display times would be adjusted, all together, for DST or whatever? No re-sequencing of comments? I can't even imagine how it actually is done. Main pages and comments aren't even the same clock!

It's not just DST comment shuffles and the lameness of commenter tech (e.g. no live links) - much of which I can understand in the name of avoiding abuse.

With high traffic, posting pix and vids would make any page overloaded. (Not that kbdabear's compliance pix on the ONTs wouldn't brighten it up... ahem.)

And not long after I started visiting, people had found ways to post words outside the gray boxes & other silly stuff, and those were alleged friends of the blog. Imagine what the enemies could do!

Some of the "problem" comes from maintaining something most of us appreciate & respect, no sign-up required to comment, plus the ability to post anonymously and play with our socks. This means trolls switching IPs can be difficult to suppress, and if it's a choice between signed-up members allowed to post pix and playing with socks, I think the PTB have made the right choices.

But it's also little things most folks might not notice, like, if you jump to comments from an article (not the front page) or from the archives, you go to the old minx:1080 address (which IIRC was a fix for a server crash early last year) instead of the acecomments domain. Or, there's no links to previous/next article anywhere on the comments pages. And probably other things I'm not recalling at the moment.

Oh, yeah, the 500 errors on any Unicode. (bit.ly/pixyize)

*Just a rant, posed as academic questions, and with all due respecks to the obviously overworked Pixy and the Hamsters.

But, I mean, really!

/rant off, smiles back on

*read read read read*

Finally m/l caught up on thread.

I was going to comment that if Dunham is a 5 it must be a logarithmic scale, or whatever it's called, like earthquakes.

And that I can't believe of all the topics that one took so many comments. I actually skipped that part of the ONT and tried to scroll past the pic as fast as I could.

But the Series knocked her out of the thread, so I won't say any of that.

Good night, Gracies!

Hey, bookies, I've been sitting here this morning talking with my mom about movies, politics, history, and morons on the book thread. Hope I can hold such intelligent conversations when I'm 95.

She told me she has problems with her Kindle. Too many buttons/controls that force her to hold it in a way that causes her hands to cramp up. Maybe someone here can suggest a more ergonomic digital reader? Not that she will buy it - she generally prefers dead trees editions. Understandably.

Can't tell you the model she had - she gave it away. It was quite a while back she got it, though.

Decades ago (so, take my biomemory with a shaker of salt), I recall reading that Asimov was in front of his typewriter at 9am and worked through (presumably with lunch break) until 5pm. Probably wearing a tie.

Product aside, I always admired that work ethic for a self-employed arteest. Although it may say something about the dryness of his ouvre.

I read Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy back when I was in high school. It must have not made much of an impression on me, because I don't remember that much about it, at least not like other science fiction books I read back then that seemed to stick with me a lot more, for whatever reason, like Stranger In A Strange Land....

Must be something about "polyamorous" messiahs from Mars that sticks with you better than dry scientific eons-spanning psychodrama. Especially if you're a high-schooler.

Ten comments in the time I took to walk around the long block? Did everybody flee to the Library?

Colin: Chicago Police: Customer with concealed carry license kills robber...

One encouraging thing I noticed traveling around north side Chicago last month, several places offering CC classes. Glad to see they're effective.

Parking meters: Chicago had this deal, no meters, but you walked down the block, paid into a box that spat out a ticket you had to walk back and put on your front dashboard. Or for a fee you could sign up on your cell. Yeah, that was handy -- not.

Since I'm actually urban this morning, I think I'll take my doggie for a walk around the block. We could both use it. BBL

J.J. Sefton: Whenever I see BLM, I think Bureau of Land Management.

Me too. "Why is the BLM protesting? Oh, that BLM..."

In my more lysdexic moments I'm thinking Major League Baseball.

Morning, Glories!

It's a new day. A new week. A new month. A new time zone (depending on where and how you live).

Let's make the most of all of the above. Except maybe the last - it's just nonsense.

Oh, another ambush of reflugicans is happening? I'll try to contain my excitement.

I enjoy watching comments on AoS about it. That's as deep into it as I can get.

Just finished watching Star Trek Continues episode 5, "Divided We Stand," where Kirk and McCoy get thrust back into the US Civil War.

Always enjoy when commenters here re-fight the "unpleasantness." I learn something every time. Although there are things to argue about in this episode (esp for those who don't think much of Lincoln), I thought in most ways in this show they did a good job. We sure did lose a lot of good humanity.

ST Continues is the best of the Trek OS re-creations, especially with the casting coup of Doohan's son as "Scotty," and they seem to have a good budget. Especially notable in this ep was the reference to the real-life Union officer, James T. Kirk.

Nothing like having half a century of Trek fandom behind you to build from.

http://www.startrekcontinues.com/episodes.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_T._Kirk_(Union_officer)