From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu May 15 2003 - 18:39:42 MDT
--- spike66 <spike66@attbi.com> wrote:
> This is a partial list of this year's imponderables,
> plus a few that I simply made up, or that someone
> would have asked, had we been inhabiting one of
> the other many worlds:
>
> If the market and google form two members of the
> holy trinity, what is the third?
Moore is the third, or rather, in inpersonal terms, the Spike.
>
> Why is it that about half the spam today is some prole
> who stole a bunch of money in Nigeria and they want
> to give it to me? Has anyone ever actually fallen for
> that silly gag? Since the Nigerian got my name as someone
> who is trustworthy, who is it that gave it to them?
> I want to know who considers *me* trustworthy.
I admit it. Since you let me sleep on your air mattress in your home
office at Extro5 without a) deflating the mattress on me, b) goofing on
my laptop, or c) fooding my inert corpse in the middle of the night, I
judged you to be trustworthy.
>
> What is the opposite of surreal? Is it surphony?
> Perhaps surfake? Surimaginary? Or just plain real?
> Surreal is kind of unreal, in a way, so the prefix
> sur must mean negative or not or un. So when someone
> makes a joke that offends or falls flat, could we
> say that person is surfunny?
Suryes.
>
> How did Palm Pilots get their name? What has a
> hand held computing device to do with guiding an
> aircraft or ship?
It pilots your life.
>
> The old movie The Birds caused us no end to
> curiosity. Many of us have not seen the movie
> for many years, so our memories are dim, but perhaps
> someone here can enlighten us. Clearly Hitchcock
> demonstrated sheer genius in making something truly
> frightening out of something as sur-scary as a flock
> of birds with their beaks out of joint. But what
> exactly was making these birds so crazy? Perhaps
> they explained it in the movie and we just forgot.
Unlike people, animals need no motivation to stay in character... or to
over act.
> What made them chill out in that last scene when
> the three (?) people get in a car and drive away?
> In that scene where they find the guy dead in the
> house, what exactly was the actual cause of death?
> Did a bunch of birds actually peck him to death? In
> that scene I do not recall seeing any bird corpses
> in the room. Was it not a quite poor showing, downright
> embarrassing, on the part of the hominid, considering
> he outweighed each of his opponents by a factor of at
> least 20 to 1, not to mention the opposable thumbs?
Ever been tied over an army ant mound??? Do you want to? I mean, ants
are puny little things, only 1/500,000 of a horsepower per. What can
they ever do to Mr Jones, engineer of scary secret weaponry?
> Is there anyone here who does not think they could take
> on a flock of birds in hand to feather combat, assuming
> the battle takes place indoors? (Come on Beak-boy, you
> wanna piece of me?) Could not one surely slay at least
> a few? Why was no one in that town armed? (Hey, Mr.
> Feathers, meet Mr. Twelve Gage.)
As I recall, the movie was set in Massachusetts, so that would be an
accurate assumption.
> Could not the NRA use
> that as a good reason for every man, woman and child to
> pack heat, as a precaution against crazed flocks of birds?
> One can never be too careful you know.
As Uncle Jimbo (if you watch South Park) says, "They're comin' for
me!!"
>
> Why is it that when extropian/SL4/singularitarian/
> transhumanist types gather, people bring *SO MUCH BEER*
> and then devour so very little of it?
They were expecting me???
>
> What the helllll did people do before there were
> computers? Sears and Roebuck catalogs?
Yes, sitting on the outhouse. Also shooting the bull around the wood
stove down at Dan & Whit's General Store.
>
> What did we do before there was an internet?
I remember reading a lot more, and having a lot more of a social life,
(and a lot more girlfriends...)
>
> What did extropians do before there was google? Did
> we just go around, like, not knowing stuff?
Before there was google, there was alta vista.
>
> When we get wearable internet connections with
> voice interface and fast google connections 24-7,
> how are we going to explain to young people how we
> ever got along without that?
Take it away from them for a week at a time. They'll get it.
>
> Do they have crossword puzzles in French? Do they
> have a bunch of American words in them? Still?
Oui, les crossworde puzzelles containement tres nomenclatures
Americains... Though I heard the french were holding their dictionaries
over the gutter, trying to dump out all those American words. It wasn't
working, it seems, so they are just more pissed. Last I heard this
afternoon, the French government wants to fund a 24 news channel to
broadcast the French perspective, not in France, but HERE... Of course,
it will have to be subsidised, since its Neilsen ratings are going to
suck so bad. Why don't they just call it "Les PBS"??? We'll even sell
it to them and get that anchor off of the taxpayers back. Hell, PBS
already broadcasts the French perspective so often they won't
transition that badly either.
>
> Why is it, exactly, that sushi is soooo good? Its
> nothing but a wad of rice and a slice of bait, yet we
> cheerfully drive way across town to get some. Why?
Cause there aren't any hooks in it.
>
> How many jokes are there that start with some
> variation of: An engineer, a mathematician and
> a physicist go to a {fill in the blank}... We
> heard about 800 hundred of them, and we weren't
> even slowing down when the party spontaneously
> gave out. Why is it that the mathematician always
> says something silly and disconnected from reality
> as we know it? Are there any of those jokes where
> the mathematician is the smart guy? I like
> mathematicians.
Mathematics has no reliance on or connection to reality.
>
> Was I imagining it, or was there a spontaneous
> outbreak of niceness on the extropians list? I thought
> I detected it three weeks ago last Tuesday, for several
> hours.
After I did all my chicken jokes, I suddenly lost enthusiasm for
keeping up my end of the war and stopped playing.
>
> Are there any foods that Homer Simpson does not like?
> What would he say as a prefix to that food? Sur-mmmm?
As I recall, there are, but I don't remember which ones. They are
certainly good for you.
>
> What happens if an autistic prisoner is sentenced to
> solitary confinement? Would she know?
Yes, they'd probably enjoy it.
>
> How much power could be saved if the light inside
> the refrigerator were not left on all the time?
About twice as much as if your hallway night light sensed when it was
daytime and shut itself off.
>
> Why is it that there are so many extropians with
> such enormous IQ numbers who cannot deal with
> any mechanical device more complicated than a
> cerial box?
They haven't been broke enough for it to matter.
>
> Was Monte Hall intentionally screwing with people's
> minds all those years?
No, he was just screwing his hostesses.
>
> If Ameridebt got some loser's monthly payment cut
> in half, why didn't he just call them again and get
> it cut in forth, then an eighth and so on until he
> was debt free?
Not a bad strategy. I think, though, that it requires a) that you stick
to a payment plan, and b) you can only apply for reorganizing once in
so many years.
>
> Does *anyone* who hangs out on extropians or SL4
> ever read actual *fiction*, without the prefix
> science? Sears and Roebuck catalogs?
Yes.
>
> How did future fiction ever get the prefix sci to
> start with? Havent we always had science? Did the
> inventors of the genre assume we would have more
> science in the future?
Well, since science non-fiction already had a name, and Isaac Asimov
had a monopoly on that market at the time, the other supernerds, who
weren't nearly as original, had to come up with their own genre. Kinda
like how Arkansas was named after Kansas was: they were so dumb and
unoriginal that they said "You're Kansas? Well, well, this'll be
Our-Kansas!!! So there!"
>
> What do we call those oddball subcategories of
> speculative sci-fi like that show from the 60s
> called Wild Wild West, where they had some weird
> futuristic technologies but was actually set in
> the past? Is it still science fiction? For that
> matter, Star Wars is another good example.
It is alternative history.
>
> How did the diet thread get so huge?
Talking consumes calories (as does typing). It also makes you hungry...
>
> If we somehow accidentally discovered a seventh
> quark flavor, wont the physicists be majorly screwed
> up? Would they attempt a cover-up? Would we call
> it still-more-strange?
Given the symmetry rule, it would be Just-as-strange and would be
discovered by physicists in the axis of just-as-evil.
>
>
> Cannot book publishers invent a kind of paper that
> does not get that old book smell when one's text
> books get old? Would not it be a terrific business
> opportunity, to make replicas of old college textbooks
> with new paper, so that one is not constantly reminded
> that one is way into one's geezerhood?
Make the pages out of automobile pine trees.
>
> If Marilyn vos Savant were to get on drugs and lose
> her mental focus, would we have to rename her Marilyn
> vos Stupid? Or would she become merely vos Normal?
> SurSavant? Would anyone have guessed that a person
> could make a career out of simply understanding the
> Bayesian Theorem?
No, She'd be Marilyn idiot Savant, and would be seen chanting, "I'm a
very, very good driver..."
>
> Assuming the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum
> mechanics, how can we be *absolutely sure* that this
> is one of them?
If this weren't, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Man, it sounds like you guys really really really needed me. I had no
idea you were so lost without me, maybe I need to be made a Foresight
Fellow..... Reminds me of the time when the Bostropians were entirely
confused about what SKU stood for...
=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
- Gen. John Stark
Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.blogspot.com/
Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/greendragon
Pro-tech freedom discussion:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom
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