Quote:
Originally Posted by Scar
That's pretty cool.
I still have to find out the exact year/model/whatever (not sure how these gun things are classified) of my dad's Winchester. I'll let you know when I find out...
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Scar
That's pretty cool.
I still have to find out the exact year/model/whatever (not sure how these gun things are classified) of my dad's Winchester. I'll let you know when I find out...
I was looking for that Far Side comic with doctors laughing and pointing at the patient to prove that "laughter is the best medicine" (going along with the FDT) but found this fascinating article instead:
The Science of Laughter.
Absolutely worth a read. Some highlights I found interesting:
Quote:
In cross-gender conversations, females laughed 126% more than their male counterparts.
I absolutely believe this story. Once, in high school, I started laughing so hard that I couldn't stop for several hours. Tears were poring down my face, and my stomach hurt, and I wanted to stop, but I couldn't.Quote:
Consider the extraordinary 1962 outbreak of contagious laughter in a girls' boarding school in Tanzania. The first symptoms appeared on January 30, when three girls got the giggles and couldn't stop laughing. The symptoms quickly spread to 95 students, forcing the school to close on March 18. The girls sent home from the school were vectors for the further spread of the epidemic. Related outbreaks occurred in other schools in Central Africa and spread like wildfire, ceasing two-and-a-half years later and afflicting nearly 1,000 people.
The whole article reminded me of a great book I read in my early twenties called The Theory of Comedy by Elder Olson. (Sycophant might understand why I think the author's name is funny.) It was a serious textbook trying to find out what humans find amusing in literature, and why. I wonder if I still have it somewhere...Quote:
Furthermore, laughter is not randomly scattered through speech. A speaker may say "You are going where?...ha-ha," but rarely, "You are going...ha-ha...where?" This is evidence of "the punctuation effect" -- the tendency to laugh almost exclusively at phrase breaks in speech. This pattern requires that speech has priority over laughter.
it's beyond me why society find the idea of "voice mail" helpful.
It's part of my life-long dream of avoiding phone calls.Quote:
Originally Posted by lovejuice
i don't mind phone calls, but there's very few things i hate more than calling a big company and have to spend half an hour talking to a machine. to no avail. people who invents this system should be shot to death.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mara
Wait. How is voice mail not helpful? Sometimes people aren't at their phones, but other people need to tell them things.
Actually, I sometimes find myself wishing I could call people's voicemail directly instead of the people themselves.
voicemail is good for personal call, but i hate it when i'm trying to contact my credit card company or something over the phone. just this morning, i spend about an hour trying to get something done. most of those time is navigating through all the voicemail menu. once i get to the right operator, i take only 3 minutes. :frustrated:Quote:
Originally Posted by Sycophant
Oh, well, there's a difference between voicemail and automated telephone answering systems. Though I find them frustrating, I suspect that there are a bunch of people who actually do find help while navigating these multi-layered menus when they hear things such as "Plug your modem into your computer" or "Is the power on?"
to be fair it used to do me good once. by telling me to turn off the modem and turn it on while waiting for the representative. and voila! it works. but that's just once.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sycophant
esp. in this economics. we should just fire the machine and hire more human operators. :evil:
Actually, sadly, in the current state of things, more people would be more inclined to lose more humans in favor of more machines.Quote:
Originally Posted by lovejuice
Most automated machines go pretty quickly for me nowadays as well. And they instantly recognize your phone number as well. So, 1, then 1, and boom, you get your balance.
And I'm with sycophant on sometimes hoping that someone doesn't answer their phone so I can leave a voicemail.
It's not something I do all the time, but I sometimes call people when I suspect they'll be at school or work, or when I can determine they're not available from their instant messaging status messages.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ezee E
I did it. I put in for South Africa World Cup tickets.
It's a random selection, so we'll see. I could've just followed Team USA, but I went for an alternative route that would meet my vacation ideas as well.
Awesome. Here's hoping you're successful.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ezee E
Random matches, I hope I'd at least get one of the five I went for.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kurosawa Fan
I hope you survive, E. :sad:
On top of South Africa, I'm also thinking NYC in February '10.
Why?
Spider-Man on Broadway.
No seriously.
Also, Sven.
Haven't met any MC, RT people in real life yet.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ezee E
We could meet up, too.
You, me, Jen and Sven could have a little MC get-together.
You'll be there in Feb?Quote:
Originally Posted by megladon8
Indeed then. Indeed.
And I'm sure you'd be down for Spider-Man U2 Spectacula.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ezee E
I'm sure I will be. This year is the beginning of my very long "move" to NYC. I'm going to start living there a month or two at a time, then increase that to a few months at a time, etc. building up my body of work to the point where I can start getting things published and get a VISA.
My mom and sister are bringing home 6 boxer puppies we have to take care of for (I think) two days.
I think they're 10 or 11 days old.
My sister is training to be a veterinary technician and is working at the local vet's office.
The mother of the puppies died because of complications during childbirth (there were actually 8 puppies, but one of them died in utero and ended up killing the mother, too).
So once they're home, I'll try to get a few pics and I'll post them on here.
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Originally Posted by number8
:lol:
Maybe it is time for a new avatar.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skitch
No, it was when I had the Akira avatar.
So I changed it.
Ah. I need another one of those.Quote:
Originally Posted by megladon8
There was this time that somebody had some A Scanner Darkly image for their avatar that MadMan had once had. I can't even remember who it was, because I couldn't keep it in my head.