Profile for Student of Trinity
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Displayed name | Student of Trinity |
| Member number | 3431 |
| Title | Electric Sheep One |
| Postcount | 3335 |
| Homepage | |
| Registered | Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
Recent posts
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| Author | Recent posts |
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| Girls: would you prefer to lay eggs? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, January 16 2007 15:36
Profile
Of course, the lucky parents would get the lucky babies, because those babies are lucky. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| The Conspiracy in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, January 16 2007 15:27
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You have to be careful, with automatic translators, when there are different words in your initial language that happen to be spelt the same. For instance, 'will' can be several different verbs and nouns in English. I'm pretty sure 'mos' is not the verb. A while back here someone evidently wanted to shout 'Die!' in German, so they posted 'Würfel!'. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Skull Suggests Human-Neanderthal Link in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, January 16 2007 11:26
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Bob Dylan. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What have you been reading lately? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, January 16 2007 09:45
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Hmmm. How many good examples of alien psychology are there? I guess a few occur to me. -- The Pilgrim, by Gordon R. Dickson, has a surprising ending that turns on alien psychology, and that pretty much works, I thought. -- The Tines in Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep are pretty cool. I guess I'd have to say that this is the best example of alien psychology that I know. -- With the possible exception of Stanislaw Lem's Golem XIV, who is a supercomputer rather than a natural creature from another planet. -- The Moties of Larry Niven's and Jerry Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye have a couple of psychological quirks that are not very credible a priori but that are reasonably well developed in the story. The plot turns on them, in fact. Any others? -------------------- Listen carefully because some of your options may have changed. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| The Conspiracy in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, January 16 2007 09:34
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Some of us are secretly not participating in the conspiracy. When we meet, we check that no-one is looking, and quickly refrain from exchanging subtle signs. So beware. You will never know who the nonconspirators are, until too late. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| The sound of a dying glaahk in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, January 14 2007 13:13
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It is a particular pleasure to welcome you to the boards, sir. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Episode 3: A New Game in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, January 13 2007 14:35
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Rentar would do it once, then run away north, and do it again. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Episode 3: A New Game in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, January 11 2007 12:41
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Plus there's no reason why the two cannot be one in Dikiyoba's story. It's fiction, after all. Read the fine print at the bottom of the page. Whoops, out of rocks. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| OK JEFF in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, January 11 2007 12:37
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quote:So it was, but as you said, iTime is cool. All I had to do was click the 'Back' button ... -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| OK JEFF in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, January 10 2007 12:16
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It didn't, until after it was developed late next year. (My time in the Cosa Bianca has not been entirely wasted.) -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| OK JEFF in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, January 9 2007 21:29
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Coolest of all, though: the iTime. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What have you been reading lately? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, January 6 2007 18:32
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The Tale of Genji is on my shelf, taking up an impressive chunk all by itself. I have no plans to remove it. Man, hardly anything happens in it, and when anything does happen, it's very hard to figure out what it is. -------------------- Listen carefully because some of your options may have changed. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What have you been reading lately? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, January 3 2007 19:19
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Paula Volsky is pretty good, though my favorite books of hers are some of her earliest, and now (I think) out of print: The Luck of Rellian Kru and The Wolf of Winter. I re-read these both periodically. -------------------- Listen carefully because some of your options may have changed. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| A hypothetical scenario in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, January 3 2007 19:14
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The Geneva Conventions are narrower than one might think. It doesn't look to me as though they protect occupying soldiers who are merely off duty. Some of the rules people attribute to the Geneva Conventions are actually in the Hague Regulations of 1907, instead. Others are just things that should be so, but aren't. In any case, the Geneva Conventions do not protect soldiers of countries which have not ratified the Geneva Conventions. Only the defeated Japan of real history ratified them, in 1953. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| 5353: Pseudohistory Phatassathon in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, December 23 2006 17:54
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I'm too fuzzy on the details to actually tell the story well, but it is worth mentioning how we can be so sure that these purported minutes of a conspiracy are indeed forged. After all, one might think that it could be very hard to disprove the existence of what is supposed to be a masterfully secretive conspiracy. Well, such a conspiracy may well be hard to disprove, but we can pretty sure that this document is not its minutes. The Protocols first showed up in Russian in the early 1900's, but much of their dialogue is word-for-word translation of a French satirical "Dialogue between Machiavelli and Montesquieu in Hell", which was published forty years earlier, was directed against the regime of Napoleon III, was quite obviously fictional, and in any case had nothing whatever to do with Jews. I seem to remember finding a website once that went through both texts in impressive detail, and though unfortunately I have no idea now where it was, I'm sure the project could provide an entertaining evening with Google for anyone who is interested. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Career Choices in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, December 20 2006 11:24
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Isn't 'itur' just the third person singular present passive of eo? One of the few remaining fragments of my own classical education is this very quotation, which my high school Latin text had at the head of its chapter on the impersonal passive construction. So 'sic itur ad astra', literally 'thus it is gone to the stars', is the Latin way of saying 'thus does one go to the stars'. So normally there is not much call to use the passive voice of 'go', but for an impersonal passive like this evidently Vergil at least could get away with it. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Career Choices in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, December 20 2006 09:37
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quote:A.J. Leggett, who shared the Nobel Prize a couple of years ago for his theory of fermionic superfluidity, read classics at Oxford, and only went into physics afterwards. So maybe it somehow helps. Oh, yeah, what I meant to say in this thread: a mathematician would surely say that mathematics is the least artificial of all sciences, since humans have no power to alter logic in any way. [ Wednesday, December 20, 2006 09:39: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Rising in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, December 18 2006 13:35
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What a catastrophe! We have to increase the density of the RWG forum, so that it will sink again, hopefully crushing its rivals below. Wecanstartbyleavingoutallspacesfromnowon. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| House Unshaperlike Activities Committee in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, December 18 2006 13:29
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This revives the debate we had a while back about just how effective the Shaper leadership has been in living up to its claims. I am happy to note that G4 provides some explicit narratorial confirmation of my own hypothesis, that the Shaper Council is a pack of incompetents lurching confidently through the minefields of history. Or at best that they have a Kyshakk by the tail, and they pretend that everything's under control because that pretence is part of not letting go. They may not have had too many recent wars, but gruesome catastrophes seem to be routine. Even Monarch seems to be a bad case, but far from unprecedented. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Elegance is a function. in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, December 18 2006 11:43
Profile
To Alorael: Hmmm, that was a pretty good reply you gave to that G4 question, succinct enough to get the elegance sticker. But the link above makes me try to write a response myself. If this was a way of making some subtle point, then it's elegant as heck, but I missed it. To Salmon: Some forms of elegance, like Alorael's coding one, probably can be defined objectively. But if others are in the eye of the beholder, so what? I am speaking of 'function' in the sense of a thing that a product can do, and products are mostly made to do things for people. If people find something elegant, this elegance may really be doing something valuable for them, apart from just making their pupils dilate. That's the only claim, and I don't think subjectivity of elegance affects it. [ Monday, December 18, 2006 11:52: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Elegance is a function. in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, December 18 2006 10:27
Profile
Sometimes the inelegant explanation simply conveys no understanding, even though in principle the necessary material is all in there, while the elegant one gets the point across. This is the sort of thing I mean. Or, what actually prompted this slogan for me: a shareware organizer app that is elegant enough that using it makes me feel calm and organized, where an awkward or ugly one that technically did all the same things would not. And at least for me, feeling calm and organized is much more important than making all the right lists and schedules, because that's what lets me actually do the things I've planned. Or, for that matter, pithy slogans. Fully recognizing (I believe) their limitations, I'd still say that a good pithy slogan stakes out prime mental real estate for an idea, so that you pay real attention to it, and (maybe) remember it when remembering it is useful. Saying the same thing in a less elegant way fails to do this. [ Monday, December 18, 2006 10:29: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Elegance is a function. in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, December 18 2006 08:42
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It is supposed to mean something, but not that. By 'function' I mean 'feature' or 'purpose', not a mathematical function. The idea is that doing something elegantly is sometimes really important, to the point where it would be misleading to describe the elegance as a way of performing a function that could also be performed inelegantly. Sometimes doing it inelegantly means not actually doing it at all; sometimes doing something elegantly means doing something new. The idea isn't a truism, because sometimes it's not true at all. With plenty of things, good and bad, elegance is irrelevant, and done is all that matters. I don't claim the idea is original, but I've been struck by it lately as important, and this slogan seemed a good way of claiming importance for it. Making something elegant can be making it perform a new function. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Elegance is a function. in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, December 18 2006 06:36
Profile
This is the pithy quote which I have just coined. At least, I think I just coined it, and it doesn't show up on Google; but I can't rule out cryptomnesia. It sounds like something I might have read somewhere. Whatever. Is it true? I think it is, or at least can be. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Uber-Long Census in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, December 18 2006 06:13
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I am disturbed to find that the only question I find interesting is the one about firearm use. I felt like starting a good ol' redneck poll about how many different kinds of weapons people had fired. The only problem is that, this being the internet, I'd suspect everyone who gave interesting answers of being dangerously wacko. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| 8000: Pseudoscience Postravaganza in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, December 18 2006 06:05
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The remark I read in a seemingly authoritative debunking of SHC, by some kind of arson inspector guy who ought to have known all about fires, was that totally charring bone does not require extreme heat. Doing so quickly does, which is why crematoria are very hot. But an ordinary fire can reduce bone to ash if it burns long enough. I mean, if you think about it, why not? -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |