zompist bboard

So we're at about DH2 here. You mean you've decided to excerpt one sentence from my post and pretend that's the substance of my disagreement with Dawkins, instead of merely the root of my personal distaste for him as explicitly stated right there? Actually, I couldn't figure out where "objecting to...

ils wrote:Someone who adopts the same "I'm the middle of a Usenet flamewar" tone for all public occasions will tend to come off as a dick.

So we're at about DH2 here.

I Was Kidnapped By Lesbian Pirates From Outer Space

4-tonne railway bridge stolen

Shm Jay wrote:A nudist webcomic, whence else but Australia?

This is new to you?

It's hard to overestimate how completely stupid that article is. To borrow a paraphrase of Pratchett's analogy, it's the verbal equivalent of turning up in the court of saint james weating a bowler hat, a doublet, a kilt, cricket pads, sandals, bomber jacket, smart tie and rugby socks, with a shave...

ils wrote:Here's a weird one I stumbled on from a while back: Bush's mysterious Paraguayan fortress.

Think that's bad? Check out this more recent article.

I always assumed the whole Ring trilogy was propaganda for US involvement in WWII, so that would be a very eerie parallel indeed. You assumed wrong. The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then ...

ils wrote:The grisly story of a bizarre contest during the Japanese drive to Nanjing.

Shades of Legolas and Gimli at Helm's Deep...

If only he'd listened to Nanny Ogg.

It's not quite We Are the World.

ils wrote:Though, that said, Dawkins' take on astrology is just as humourless as I'd expected it would be.

Why would you expect Douglas Adams' (pbuh) best friend to be humourless?

A month old now, but... I want to work in Egypt.

Why I don't care for militant, pedantic atheists: Richard Dawkins illustrates . I agree, and Kay was completely harmless too. Despite being a catholic, he never insisted that anyone else share his beliefs (unlike some catholics I know). All he said was that he believed in [a] god. For all we know, ...

I mean, female's ovaries don't descend like the testicles of males, so there's no reason that male's nipples should have to break the skin either. Am I right? No. Sorry, males testes have to be outside the body because they need to be slightly cooler than the rest of the body for sperm to be produc...

zompist wrote:I'm going to say they have tails, to serve their swimming in place of a dorsal fin. The bas-relief is intended to be a picture of a ktuvok made by someone who's never seen one-- the tail won't be a long crocodilian thing.

Bugger.

The whole breasts-as-replacement-buttocks thing is one of Desmond Morris's less plausible ideas. Apart from anything else, breasts don't actually look very much like buttocks until they're squeezed into clothing — there's no central cleft, for instance. Sexual selection is a likely enough expla...

And as for Pratchett, his one flaw is running a good joke into the ground. It doesn't get any more funny if you hear it more often, and even if it's rephrased, it's still the same joke. No, I disagree. I think Pratchett's greatest genius lies in his ability to take an off-hand comment, usually a jo...

Ahem... Ehm... What? I don't understand the drawing. It's perspective is off. It seems as though the Iliu stands on the Ktuvok's knee with his other foot oh his sholder... A very strange way to fight an enemy. Not when you're three feet shorter than said enemy, it isn't. Yes, the iliu (who is a she...

Iliu and Ktuvok

Comments? Suggestions? Dismissals? Noises of disgust? Leave 'em here or on Elfwood.

(And, speaking of mistakes, that should be sgìth, not sgíth.)

For instance, my brother complained that when he began learning Spanish, German would pop into his head at the oddest times. I had the same trouble taking German. I'd try to recall some new vocabulary and the Spanish word would pop into my head. It's like your mind starts out with two settings, "Na...

Good gods, Verdurian is as old as me. Well, same year, anyway. When did you actually start ? The 1978 date is when Verdurian started... there's no real clear finish date, since I worked on it off and on for years, then redid a bunch of it in the 1990s. Yes, I figured that, I mean... roughly which m...