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" It's hard to find good numbers on how much force it takes to tear off a person's arm. [Which is probably a good thing, to be honest.]"
--
Rob Kelk
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them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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Weird that "lots of corpses floating around" is somehow an optimistic prediction about the future of space travel.
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Rob Kelk
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Except in KSP, where the death of one Kerbalnaut is a good day, but bad days tend to include things like 'the orbital station had an unexpectedly close encounter with Duna and attempted to perform an emergency lithobreaking maneuver. Unfortunately, the stresses caused by the attempted lithobreaking exceeded design tolerances and the entire thing underwent rapid unplanned disassembly, resulting in the loss of the entire crew.'
Yes, I'm bitter, why do you ask?
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Quote:Hazard wrote:
Except in KSP, where the death of one Kerbalnaut is a good day, but bad days tend to include things like 'the orbital station had an unexpectedly close encounter with Duna and attempted to perform an emergency lithobreaking maneuver. Unfortunately, the stresses caused by the attempted lithobreaking exceeded design tolerances and the entire thing underwent rapid unplanned disassembly, resulting in the loss of the entire crew.'
Yes, I'm bitter, why do you ask?
My condolences on the loss of your virtual materiel and Kerbalnaut crew. But I have to say that "lithobreaking" (should that be lithobraking?) is arguably one of the more amusing euphemisms that I've heard.
Ebony the Black Dragon
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Ebony Wrote:"lithobreaking" (should that be lithobraking?)
Depending on thec context, "lithobreaking" might actually be an appropriate euphemism. 
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@Ebony, I intended to use the latter. English needs less homophones.
My thanks for the condolences, I'll pass them along to the families of the crew.
I've found that I've become halfway decent at constructing (interplanetary) probes, but orbital stations remain a challenge to construct solidly enough and timing burns properly can be even more so, even with MechJeb handling most of the planning. I had intended an aerobraking maneuver to establish an orbit over Duna for a contract. I ended up with hosting a few funerals with empty caskets on account of there being no remains available even if I could afford to send a crew to look for them when I checked the orbital insertion trajectory too late to do something about it with the anemic but high I[sub]sp[/sub] station keeping drives I use for, well, stations.
@Tennie, sadly, lithoi did not break.
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Not a What If?, but Randall predicts that the end of human civilization will begin in 2042.Start preparing; you can't say we haven't been warned.
Ebony the Black Dragon
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It's good to have a map of Balrog locations, I think. After all, what killed Moria was that the Dwarves delved too greedily, and too deep. If they'd had a map, they could have detoured around the Balrog and just dealt with the Orks. A much simpler task, as any D&D veteran can tell you.
Ebony the Black Dragon
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IMAGE: "The Yellowstone superwhat?" "Oh, boy, someone's about to learn something cool!"
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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Rather than quoting from today's column, I'll just say that as soon as I saw the title, I thought of Ziggy Stardust.
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Rob Kelk
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"Pretty sure the pull I'm feeling is in that direction."
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Big Brother is watching you. And damn, you are so bloody BORING.
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I like spiders. Spiders are cool. If you haven't found it yet, I recommend "The Amazing Spider House."
Cockroaches, on the other hand, give me the willies. If it had been the gravitational pull of cockroaches, I would be totally out of here.
Ebony the Black Dragon
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Quote:Ebony wrote:
I like spiders. Spiders are cool. If you haven't found it yet, I recommend "The Amazing Spider House."
I respect spiders. Spiders keep insect populations down. I wouldn't deliberately kill a spider, unless I knew or believed it to be dangerously venomous and in a place where there was a high chance of it biting some human ... especially me (even then, I'd prefer to capture it and release it somewhere safer). But ... I can't stand anything crawling on me. If my convulsive "get it off me" jerk causes a spider's death, I'll only be mildly regretful.
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Big Brother is watching you. And damn, you are so bloody BORING.
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Quote:Spiders are quantized.
Also love the SI unit for milligrams of spider. We need to incorporate that into the classic "furlongs per fortnight" gag.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Temporary hiatus
05-08-2015, 11:13 PM
In case anyone else hasn't seen this.
From the what-if.xkcd.com page:
"Note: What If updates are temporarily on hold,
and will resume on July 14th, 2015 at 7:49:59 AM EDT. "
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Hmm, that is a very specific time to resume.
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I could understand if it was July 14th, 2015 at 7:49:5 7 AM EDT... but why two seconds after that?
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Rob Kelk
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Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe
05-15-2015, 02:28 AM
Randall has announced a new book! It comes out November 24, 2015
See http://blog.xkcd.com/2015/05/13/new-boo ... explainer/
Kilroy
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Kilroy Wrote:Randall has announced a new book! It comes out November 24, 2015
See %[link=http://blog.xkcd.com/2015/05/13/new-book-thing-explainer/]http://blog.xkcd.com/2015/05/13/new-boo ... explainer/] I wonder whether he used http://splasho.com/upgoer5/]this editor while writing the book.
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Rob Kelk
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- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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What if Randall Munroe was interviewed by The Register?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/29 ... _register/
![[Image: randallmunroe.png]](http://regmedia.co.uk/2014/11/20/randallmunroe.png)
--
Rob Kelk
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Hmm. As opposed to having his ducks in a row....
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Big Brother is watching you. And damn, you are so bloody BORING.
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" Here's the good news: NASA will have to pay for your car."
With a close second to the image text "STATUS: NEW HORIZONS HAS, AT LAST, CAUGHT AND DESTROYED PLUTO."
--
Rob Kelk
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" At the point in Jupiter's atmosphere where the density is high enough for a submarine to float, the pressure is high enough to crush the submarine, [Which makes it more dense.] and the temperature is high enough to melt it. [Which makes it harder to drive.]"
--
Rob Kelk
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" Jupiter's upper atmosphere (the part we would see before we died) ..."
(When the answer starts with "We don't know!", it's difficult to find a good line. Except for the final line, which I make a habit of not spoiling.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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