I was going to say: dictionary. "Literal" is not a word that should be open to interpretation, unless you are literally illiterate.

Well. The Bible's a big darn book. And as Cindy says, some of the stories are pretty much explicitly stories -- but some people could read those as being literally true, while others could read them as being literally stories... I do think it's more complicated than that.

Sean was being goofy, and we mocked. It happened a lot. Almost as much as my goofiness being mocked, in fact. Though not quite.

Bizarrely, I remember not only the hand gesture, but the room where the conversation took place, the cause for the party, the present I brought to the party, the argument I got into at the party, and the pinata that made the party truly special. What was this, twelve years ago? More?

The science of Mentos and fizzy soda: [link]

The formula is simple: Plop a few Mentos candies into a 2-liter bottle of soda and behold! A fountain of fizz shoots high into the air--with a force and speed that surprises even grizzled chemists.

...

It turns out that Mentos dropped into a bottle of soda provoke an extreme version of the same process that produces bubbles in champagne, a frothy head on beer, and a painful case of "the bends" in unfortunate scuba divers.

It's effervescence -- a gas bubbling out of a fluid suspension--taken to the extreme.

What was this, twelve years ago? More?

Twelve years sounds about right, but so many of my memories of the group tend to run together in my head, so it can frequently be hard to put an exact date on something.

Wow. I've been a peripheral member of the group for ten years. Wow, I say.

And a hot and sexay periphery it is, too.

Aims, you are very much more than peripheral in my book, and have been for quite a while.

::blush:: times two

I suppose bearing the child of one of the founding members of The Group makes me more than peripheral, huh?

Has this been posted? How To Totally Fake Being A Geek

Math: Of course, if you have a calculator, use it. Geeks do that, too. It isn't about being able to do complex calculations in your head; it's about using the techie tools to free up your brain for less mundane functions. And by all means, top the other person in arcanity of equipment. If they have a Radio Shack, whip out a Texas Instruments. If they have a Texas Instruments, unclip your slide-rule. Facing a slide-rule? They make portable abacuses! Slide your beads around on your abacus and comment how you saw these things in a whole new light after you read Feynman about computing cube roots on them.

...

Pretend you like these: TV shows: Babylon V, Star Trek, Carnivale. When you meet a B5 fan, claim ST. Claim B5 to ST fans. Meet a fan of both, ask if they've seen Carnivale. No, Carnivale isn't true geek fare, but it's high-brow enough that you'll pass as one who has "burnt out" on the science fiction genre temporarily. Gain extra points by dropping "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or "X-Files" into the conversation. Avoid "Sliders" and "Quantum Leap", they died on cancellation. Don't even claim affection for "Firefly", because Firefly is so supercool, even it's fans disown it for fear of being flamed by the other fans. It's like the name of a diety: never say it out loud.

...

Books to leave out on the coffee table: Comics: Dilbert, Bloom County, The 5th Wave, The Far Side, and ANY super-hero comic, Marvel being preferably cooler to DC. What matters in comic books isn't which one, but that you, a grown adult with a job, like ANY of them enough to own one.

Other: Any book with pictures of the following on the cover: robots, vampires, barbarians, castles, aliens, UFOs, other planets, mythical beings (i.e. elves, unicorns, dragons), galaxies, spaceships, and equations. Bonus points acquire for each of these items on the cover of the same book. It doesn't matter what the title is, or whether it's fiction or non-fiction.

Much more at the link....

If you're really cool, you can probably spell "deity", too. Ijs.