Hypothetical thoughts
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Law Bringer
Member # 4153
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written Sunday, February 25 2007 11:20
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Ahem. First thing's first.      Okay, so next... A hypothetical question that matches up with the theme of the topic. If you had unlimited resources and unlimited time, what careers/fields/hobbies would you pursue? -------------------- Gamble with Gaea, and she eats your dice. I hate undead. I really, really, really, really hate undead. With a passion. Posts: 4130 | Registered: Friday, March 26 2004 08:00 |
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? Man, ? Amazing
Member # 5755
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written Sunday, February 25 2007 11:29
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How sagerific! Congrats to a worthy recipient of the title. I guess I would fish. From a boat. My own boat. All around the world. Looking for fish. -------------------- quote: Posts: 4114 | Registered: Monday, April 25 2005 07:00 |
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Shaper
Member # 7472
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written Sunday, February 25 2007 11:41
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Congratulations on three thousand posts and becoming a delicious seasoning! Computers definitely would be the field I would pursue. I just tend to have an affinity for them, and enjoy working with them. -------------------- I tried to think of something witty to put here. Needless to say, I failed. Posts: 2686 | Registered: Friday, September 8 2006 07:00 |
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Councilor
Member # 6600
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written Sunday, February 25 2007 12:01
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Yay Ephesos! Give Dikiyoba unlimited time and resources and eventually Dikiyoba would probably travel the world and study a bit of almost everything. Posts: 4346 | Registered: Friday, December 23 2005 08:00 |
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Guardian
Member # 2339
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written Sunday, February 25 2007 12:01
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I would pursue the field of biology. Cure disorders/diseases, learn about what makes life forms tick, research genetics and/or stem cells, and CREATE THE PERFECT BEING! Well, maybe create a species. Perhaps a servant species that is happy to serve, but you should know what will become of that. Frankly, I just find Biology fascinating, particularly how life forms work and develop, including genetics. [ Sunday, February 25, 2007 12:03: Message edited by: Zephyr Tempest ] -------------------- -Zephyr Tempest, your personal entertainer Posts: 1779 | Registered: Monday, December 9 2002 08:00 |
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Guardian
Member # 5360
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written Sunday, February 25 2007 13:22
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Oh, shoot. Zephyr beat Nalyd to it. Chalk him up for the above. -------------------- May the fires of Undeath burn in your soul, and consume it. Posts: 1636 | Registered: Wednesday, January 5 2005 08:00 |
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Lifecrafter
Member # 7538
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written Sunday, February 25 2007 17:08
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I would be a pirate or a bounty hunter. That would rock. Too bad pirates are highly frowned upon (and inevitably caught) and bounty hunters wouldn't have much work in the U.S. -------------------- Do not provoke the turtles. They do not like being provoked. -Lenar My website: Nemesis' Refuge Posts: 743 | Registered: Friday, September 29 2006 07:00 |
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Warrior
Member # 7000
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written Sunday, February 25 2007 17:29
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Congratulations, Eph. have a black forest cake! :)  -------------------- "It's sort of like Star Wars. Except Jeff didn't make Erika shoot first in Avernum 3, nor did he introduce annoying computer-animated aliens." —Arancaytar The Spiderweb Chat Room Shadow Vale - My site, home of the Spiderweb Chat Database, BoA Scenario Database, & the A1 Quest List, among other things. Posts: 178 | Registered: Thursday, April 6 2006 07:00 |
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Lifecrafter
Member # 6700
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written Sunday, February 25 2007 17:56
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I'd devote my life to art. I like architecture, interior and exterior design, a bit of sketching, and music, of course. As a main profession, I'd stick with storytelling. Storytelling is itself an art, and combined with other forms of art. Like film. Radio. BoA. -sigh- Congrats, Eph. -------------------- The Silent Assassin, if given infinite time and resources, would build a farm out in the middle of nowhere and proceed to blow it up on a weekly basis, just for the heck of it. -------------------- -Lenar Labs What's Your Destiny? Ushmushmeifa: Lenar's power is almighty and ineffable. All hail lord Noric, god of... well, something important, I'm sure. Posts: 735 | Registered: Monday, January 16 2006 08:00 |
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Shaper
Member # 7420
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written Sunday, February 25 2007 18:16
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Unlimited resources and time? Does that mean I would be omnipotent and immortal? Need I say what I would do with that? Way to stick around while others dropped like flies around you. -------------------- You lose. Posts: 2156 | Registered: Thursday, August 24 2006 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 6785
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written Sunday, February 25 2007 18:25
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Congratulations on the milestone. Plant some herbs. Probably go back in physics research and hire people to do the boring parts of experiments I'm interested in doing. The worst part of graduate school was hunting for noise sources that obscured the signal I was looking for in the experiment. Oh, and hire someone to sit on ET. Preferably some one over 300 pounds (140 kilogram). Posts: 4643 | Registered: Friday, February 10 2006 08:00 |
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Agent
Member # 3364
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written Monday, February 26 2007 06:18
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I hate to be a copy cat, but my interests line up with those of Lenar. I tried to go to college for architecture. I picked the only school in SD with classes for it and applied to go. Got an acceptance letter and a one-year tuition scholarship, but when I showed up on sign-up day they told me they cancelled the classes. :( So, stranded there with a scholarship to use, I resorted to plan B. I became a music major. In general, I enjoy most anything that has to do with creation. Including, but not limited to; writing, drawing, composing, gardening(Though I'm terrible at it. Too forgetful.), woodworking, architecture, landscaping, interior design, photography, scrapbooking, web design, scenario design... The list goes on and on. With unlimited time and resources though, I'd do it all. I think I'd also learn lots of different languages and study some old ones, too. Being able to communicate in any situation would be really handy. Oh, oh! I'd learn to swing dance, too! How much gold and skill points left? Oh yeah, LOTS! and LOTS! Um... let's see. Martial arts... Auto mechanics... Space exploration... *continues rambling* -------------------- "Even the worst Terror from Hell can be transformed to a testimony from Heaven!" - Rev. David Wood 6\23\05 "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can." - John Wesley Posts: 1001 | Registered: Tuesday, August 19 2003 07:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
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written Monday, February 26 2007 06:36
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As I've indicated once or twice before, I'd probably buy an island in the Mediterranean, found a small university/tourist attraction, and revive Latin and Attic Greek. We're just now reaching the generational point in Classics where it is no longer inconceivable to revive Latin as a spoken language and teach it as one would a living language. Classical pronunciation (of Latin, at least) was solved several decades ago, and we could without too much difficulty develop truly authentic pronunciation and conversational vocabulary and syntax. At that point, it's just a matter of speaking it enough to be fluent. If the Israelis could do it with Hebrew, we can do it with Latin and Attic Greek. -------------------- Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens. Smoo: Get ready to face the walls! Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr. Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
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Skip to My Lou
Member # 40
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written Monday, February 26 2007 07:44
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 I would travel the world studying and researching psychology, neurology, and everything else to do with the human brain and mind. -------------------- Take the Personality Test! Deep down, you wish you were a stick figure. Posts: 1629 | Registered: Wednesday, October 3 2001 07:00 |
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Shaper
Member # 3442
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written Monday, February 26 2007 09:23
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quote:Same as this, just about. But I'd spend far too much time and effort on reading lots and lots, and of course, writing Macbeth 2 :P Edit: Fudge! Congrats, Ephesos. :D [ Monday, February 26, 2007 09:27: Message edited by: Nikki xx ] -------------------- And when you want to Live How do you start? Where do you go? Who do you need to know? *Name by Slarty, so blame him if it's filthy... Posts: 2864 | Registered: Monday, September 8 2003 07:00 |
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Lifecrafter
Member # 6388
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written Monday, February 26 2007 11:46
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quote:They do have bounty hunters in the US - they're mostly used to pursue difficult-to-pursue-otherwise warrants. It's not particularly steady work, but it's a living. They also have pirates, although less in the US than in major commercial straits through which pass many large, unwieldy ships (Malacca, Hormuz, etc). You can't exactly be blamed for not knowing that, because just about nobody actually does. (One of the tenets of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism is the bit about pirates preventing global warming, which is a well-meaning but false bit about the nature of causation versus correlation - in reality the pirate population has increased dramatically in the last half century, when global warming has been worst) Pirates typically attack large, clumsy ships - tankers, freighters, and the like - with small speedboats, armed with AK-47s and RPGs and that sort of thing. The weapons are mostly for deterrence, and instead of seizing the cargo (which is never practical - they don't have a tanker or freighter of their own, after all) they go for the payroll safe, which contains nice, light, portable, non-traceable money. Because the cost of installing a large security detail would be more than the cost of replacing the payroll, few countermeasures are typically taken against pirates. They're a seaman's nightmare, but don't matter much to the people running the ships. quote:Auto mechanics is actually fairly easy to pick up if you've got time, a beat-up old car, and an expert around. (And the Internet will usually suffice for an expert.) There's some auxillary equipment which helps a lot, but it's not incredibly expensive. Auto mechanics aren't too hard to pick up either, but I'm not sure if your husband would approve of that. :P quote:Fiddling while Rome burns, as per usual. :P 'Reviving' classical Latin is a little silly, considering as how it lives on in the Romance languages and the Latin of the church. It'd be as silly as 'reviving' Old English - it became Middle English for a reason. [ Monday, February 26, 2007 11:52: Message edited by: Protocols of the Elders of Zion ] Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
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Guardian
Member # 6670
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written Monday, February 26 2007 11:57
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Finish my Stats homework due at 4:00. Get off my rear end and work on BoA. Learn Greek and Arabic. Take a few philosophy and theology courses. Make a webcomic on Canadian politics. First learn how to draw. And take some courses on Candian politics. Brush up on Java. And C/C++. And SQL. Practice my gimmick more in postcount celebration theads. --------------------  Posts: 1509 | Registered: Tuesday, January 10 2006 08:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
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written Monday, February 26 2007 13:56
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quote:No, not really. Spanish-speakers and Italian-speakers can kind of understand some basic Latin (especially once they get some sound changes figured out), but they certainly can't read or speak full Ciceronian Latin. And Ecclesiastical Latin is fine for hymns and chants, but one would be hard-pressed to speak it, since it destroys certain distinctions that are critical to comprehension (not just authenticity). I might equally argue that it's silly for a speaker of German to try to learn Icelandic, because the two are almost the same thing. quote:And that "reason" is... mispronunciation? It's not as though sound change replaces an older form with a better new form. Alternatively, I could argue: there's a reason why stage English pronunciation is more archaic than conversational English pronunciation. But my real goal in doing this would be to have people learn Latin better and faster than they do now, because living-language teaching techniques beat the stuffing out of dead-language teaching techniques. -------------------- Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens. Smoo: Get ready to face the walls! Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr. Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
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Lifecrafter
Member # 6388
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written Monday, February 26 2007 14:38
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Well, yes, but what of the poor souls who have to have Latin as a native language? Nothing has been written by native Latin speakers since the consensus was that slavery was A-OK, the Earth was the center of the universe, and women were inferior to men. The same argument can be made for Hebrew, but Latin isn't an emblem for an oppressed culture (although to be fair, the motives behind reestablishing Hebrew were even more suspect than yours for reestablishing Latin; the early Zionists were less concerned with alleviating oppression than they were with wonk-ass mysticism and racialist theories). There's a lot more you could do for the world as a linguist and grammarian than reviving a language time subsumed into other, more complete tongues. (If people wanted to speak Latin, they would have maintained it as it was, wouldn't they? Each romance language in existence in fact originated with a form of simple, fast-and-loose Latin, and evolved separate vocabulary and pronunciation in isolation from one another.) As for the superiority of later languages to Latin: Latin's glaring insufficiency for modern life was enough that, in the Middle Ages, the language needed to be seriously reformed to be at all relevant to the time. The biggest innovations between the Middle Ages and the fall of Rome were the moldboard plow and feudalism. What are you gonna do with Latin - classical Latin, no less! - to relate to a world replete with quarks and skyscrapers? [ Monday, February 26, 2007 14:39: Message edited by: Protocols of the Elders of Zion ] Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
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Agent
Member # 8030
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written Monday, February 26 2007 15:41
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By Protocols of the Elders of Zion quote:Which is one of the reasons Latin is useful. Not only would it help in learning a Romance language, but better comprehending the English language too. Also, Latin is used frequently among the world's scientific community. If it weren't for Latin, we probably wouldn't be as technologically advanced as we are today, since scientists from different countries communicate with Latin. Besides, Roman and Greek history, culture, religion, etc. is cool! -------------------- WWJD? Posts: 1384 | Registered: Tuesday, February 6 2007 08:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
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written Monday, February 26 2007 15:48
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Latin by native speakers has not been written in about fifteen hundred years, sure. But science was written in Latin up until pretty recently, and scientific terms are mostly still in Latin and Greek. Teaching science in Latin would be incredibly easy (think of species and genera names in biology). I'm not saying that I'd avoid new phrases for new concepts, but I'd make some effort to make sure that the basic language was the same, even if the technical vocabulary wasn't purely, one-hundred-percent classical. And if we could teach science, everything else would follow pretty easily. quote:I'm hoping that you're kidding, because this is otherwise an incredibly stupid thing to say. quote:This is completely false, and it's so wrong that I don't have any clue what gives you this idea. How did you come to this conclusion? -------------------- Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens. Smoo: Get ready to face the walls! Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr. Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
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Agent
Member # 5814
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written Monday, February 26 2007 17:45
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Ecce Vicipaedia! -------------------- quote: Posts: 1115 | Registered: Sunday, May 15 2005 07:00 |
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Lifecrafter
Member # 6388
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written Tuesday, February 27 2007 00:30
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quote:Yeah, but try teaching women's studies in Latin. Or the liberal arts in general. quote:But 'basic language' itself has changed astoundingly since Latin flourished. My reference to women's studies exemplifies that: what a Latin-speaker would mean by 'domestic' and what we mean by 'domestic' are so wholly unrelated that it almost seems inappropriate to use the same word for both. I'll admit that specific example is a little dodgy, but in general the humanities have outstripped the ability of Latin to follow. (The last humanists to write primarily in Latin were Renaissance thinkers; the last humanists to write in Latin much at all were from the Enlightenment. We've come a long, long way since both.) My objection isn't to the ability to cover science, but in Latin's basic robustness as a language for the modern era. The Latin of a scientist in 2007 has kept up with the development of science since 1807, but neither scientist would be speaking in Latin were she to go home and be beaten by her husband - even though the use of language would be much different for the two scientists in question. There aren't facile pop-puns about history versus herstory in Latin. And try constructing 'head shop' in Latin - not just translating it, but constructing it so that it makes sense in Latin - you'd have to translate about the entire freaking counterculture, 30s through 60s, first. Pick up any book devoted to obscene, vulgar, or otherwise modernized slangy Latin and you'll pretty quickly see what the biggest problem with this entire deal is: Latin has been dead so long that even a fluent expert in the language can't sound like anything except a stuffy, giggly geek when swearing in it. You can science it all you like, but you can't profane in it ('Hercule!' doesn't count; cartoons and TV series to the contrary, he's been dead longer than Latin), you can't paint protest signs with it ('Who watches the watchmen?' is a fine enough saying, except it was originally in reference to the watchman getting it on with your woman) and you can't make love in it (there's copious documentation seemingly to the contrary, but all of that ignores the fact that nothing native speakers of Latin did would qualify as anything better than screwing now - the idea of equanamity and respect between the sexes would have been viewed as risible). quote:Easy there, Seabiscuit. I'm just saying that if Latin had any business surviving into the modern era there'd be people speaking it now. And every romance language out there has some weirdoes who claim that every other branch is just a perversion, but none of them are exactly right (well, except for the Romanians, but try getting the filthy western curs to agree to that). People have spoken it continuously since it disappeared, but that's a case of affection - the Church, scientists, and so on. Nobody has grown up speaking Latin for centuries precisely because nobody has thought of it as a particularly good idea to speak Latin exclusively at home in centuries. I'm not qualified to say why, because I'm no linguist, but it doesn't at all strike you that a language whose vulgar dialect has split a hundred different ways (or a thousand or more, depending on how generous you want to be with your definition of 'language' here) has reasons for doing that? The sole reason isn't the vulgar, vulgar barbarians; the speakers of Latin were complicit in the language disappearing from the face of the Earth. quote:[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Latin]Medieval Latin was characterized by an enlarged vocabulary, which freely borrowed from other sources. Prominent among those sources was Greek, from which much of the technical vocabulary of Christianity came. The various Germanic languages spoken by the Germanic tribes, who invaded western Europe, were also major sources of new words. Germanic leaders became the rulers of western Europe, and as such words from their languages were freely imported into the vocabulary of law. Other more ordinary words were replaced by coinages from Vulgar Latin or Germanic sources because the classical words had fallen into disuse. Latin was also spread to areas such as Ireland and Germany, where Romance languages were not spoken and which had never known Roman rule. Works written in these lands where Latin was a learned language with no relation to the local vernacular also influenced medieval Latin's vocabulary and syntax. Since abstract subjects like science and philosophy were communicated in Latin, the Latin vocabulary developed for them is the source of a great many technical words in modern languages. English words like "abstract", "subject", "communicate", "matter", "probable" and their cognates in other European languages generally have the meanings given to them in medieval Latin.[/url] Unless I wholly misunderstand the meaning of that, or it is inaccurate - possibilities to which I am open - you pine for a language that did not have a specific word for abstract. [ Tuesday, February 27, 2007 00:32: Message edited by: Protocols of the Elders of Zion ] Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Tuesday, February 27 2007 03:00
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quote:Pfft. quote:Arabic numerals? Such fakers. :P (Joke. I wasn't suggesting writing MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. Relax.) [ Tuesday, February 27, 2007 03:02: Message edited by: Dr. Johann Georg Faust ] -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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...b10010b...
Member # 869
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written Tuesday, February 27 2007 03:22
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quote:I believe the correct notation for 100,000 is C with a bar on top, but that's a little hard to type. EDIT: Apparently I'm mistaken! The correct notation is an I with a bar on top and vertical lines on both sides. [ Tuesday, February 27, 2007 03:26: Message edited by: Cryptozoology ] -------------------- The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure! Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00 |