zompist bboard

Oh yes. Right along around the edge.

Most delicious pasta ever: a) soffrito onions, mushrooms and plenty of garlic in plenty of mixed olive and chili-infused-olive oil. 5-10 minutes? b) fry lean miced beef with the soffrito; add artichoke hearts (I also added soe of the brine they came in) 5-10 minutes more? Add a bit more oil, and pep...

Jasper Carrot answers with "Slippery when Wet?".

He's not told me why, but he did take the disagreement to PMs. He said that he was just saying those things 'to have fun', and that he thought that it was still an RP discussion - and that consequently I should ask him how he could be certain of these things, because that 'made it less fun' for him....

It's not just viruses that replicate that quickly, of course. A single Yersinia bacterium can be lethal, with death coming sometimes less than a day after the onset of illness. FAKE EDIT: actually, plague has a fairly long incubation period, doesn't it? Tom: you say the eyam disease was DEFINITELY b...

The World's Worst Poet? Robot Chicken's collected odes to Star Wars . Gah!? How can anyone write an article on McGonagall (who we studied several times in school, for GSCE and A-level), WITHOUT mentioning his Magnum Opus, the Tay Bridge Disaster? It's a true triumph of gradually mounting ineptitude...

Ils: it did kill over 75% in some countries. Mostly countries that were helpfully heavily urbanised, like Venice. It may well be that it wasn't over half in any wider region, though.

So a megademic would have be be both contagious and dangerous. Smallpox and other Old World diseases are believed to have consistently wiped out 90-95% of the New World native populations they came in contact with, which I suspect is the model Tom had in mind. Diseases jumping into a population wit...

Bubonic Plague; Ebola; Influenza; Measles; Tuberculosis; Oroyo Fever; Malaria; Smallpox; Lyme Disease; Ebola; Influenza; Nipah; Hendra; Hanta; a dozen Rickettsials - typhus, rocky mountain spotted fever, oroyo fever, that new deadly bartonellosis they found a few weeks ago, trench fever and so on; t...

I think it's a mistake to view medieval morality as being utilitarian. The reason is simply that lying is worse than murder, and genocide is obviously not as bad as fraud. For a later demonstration, view Kant's insistence that if a blood-soaked serial murderer carrying an axe asked you if your best ...

I like the experiment in Geneva in november, which some experts have suggested could create a rapidly-expanding black hole that will destroy the galaxy. One scientist in chage said it was "probably unlikely" that his experiment would destry the planet, assuming that their theories about high-energy ...

The Second Defenestration of Prague, rather. And actually, iirc there were a number of less famous Defenestrations of Prague before the first and between the first and second, that never made it into the Canonical Numbering for Defenestrations of Prague.

I love Clinton and hate Reagan. I know little of their policies. I hate Reagan because he appears stupid and an arse. I love Clinton because he's the most charismatic man of my lifetime, and that deserves respect (especially now that he's safely out of office). Or awe, might be a better term.

Actually, that IS what our french textbooks said, back in school. Admittedly, this is England.

On those predictions: 1. The population bit isn't ridiculous, if you take the lower figure. The bit about new countries joining the union wasn't ridiculous, but was fucked up by American foreign policy (OK, it probably was never the most likely option, but it was a viable possibility in 1900). 2. Th...

It's been years since I've seen better fuel for a good old-fashioned Moral Panic than Sindergarten , mass regression therapy for latter-day raver kids. Come to think of it, I'm not even sure the story is genuine -- but if it's prank on a reporter, it's quite funny. (EDIT: It's a confirmed hoax .) S...

Well, that part at least makes sense. But yes, one problem is the 'absolute' that they keep putting in - without even defining what it means. In fact, their conclusions are correct, given the premises. The two bits where you are forced to accept their premises are their false universal/individual di...

My experimentation: Stuff a la Goo Salt cut pieces of an aubergine; leave for a bit. Add aubergine and oil to a pan, and cook. After five minutes, add a roughly cut red onion. Probably add some more oil, too, as the aubergine drinks it. Maybe two onions! (if small) At same time, begin cooking a norm...

Or perhaps they can be employed to provide certain males with a certain level of pleasure? I mean, I assume the scales are sharp and don't have to close all the way. This is probably too much information. "It's to stop rape" is clearly just the embarrassed cover story for when discussing anatomy wi...

I don't buy the idea that when babies are needed, women become 'baby-making machines'. It assumes that men are 100% in control of everything. In reality, while men have advantages, women are also a factor. In societies where women have lots to offer, their situation is usually better, and babies are...

Also, land prices. High land prices = starvation pressures if a family grows too large. Females have babies, so poor families want to get rid of their babies by killing or selling them. Women become unimportant, as everyone has plenty of them. Matrilinear and matriarchal societies very unlikely. Low...

Nuntar: unfortunately, it's hard to integrate into writing for an English audience. Terms like 'father/uncle', 'cross-cousin' and 'mother/aunt/cross-cousin-on-the-uterine-side' are hard to make make sense to normal people, I think. Family is one of the things people really struggle to see alternativ...

Can I point out to everyone that the Eskimo system that we use, with father/uncle contrasts, cross-cousin/parallel-cousin mergers, lack of distinction between agnatic and uterine uncles and aunts and so forth, is only found in about 10% of human societies, and generally only high-tech or very-low-re...

I don't do recipes. I fry things slowly with very little oil, and bung in stuff so that I don't get bored. Lamb, fryed with onions, with ketjap manis and (VERY LITTLE) red thai curry paste and some coriander and nutmeg and rosemary and pepper and maybe some chili oil. Make sure onions are really, re...

Rory wrote: Soy Sauce and Worcestershire Sauce - these two buddies don't go well together

HERESY!!!!

Also, note that real men call it /wUst@ sOs/