You do well to flee, townspeople! I will pillage your lands and dwellings! I will burn your crops and make merry sport with your more attractive daughters! Ha ha ha! Mark my words! Ooh! Ale! I smell delicious ale!

Olaf the Troll ,'Showtime'


Natter 47: My Brilliance Is Wasted On You People  

Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.


shrift - Nov 07, 2006 5:16:29 am PST #8045 of 10001
"You can't put a price on the joy of not giving a shit." -Zenkitty

One person has already wandered around the office asking if people had voted. While I applaud the sentiment, oh my god, lady, right now I don't even have the fine motor control to keep my coffee out of my lap; I'll vote when I'm awake.


tommyrot - Nov 07, 2006 5:16:33 am PST #8046 of 10001
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.

Didn't we talk about this here?

From the Pharyngula blog (probably the most famous cephalopod-loving blogger out there):

How can you eat a genius?

Maybe with a little butter and garlic.

This article makes a troubling point: if cephalopods are so smart, shouldn't we feel some guilt about eating them?

I think I actually agree with some of the ethical issues raised, and probably should hesitate to kill and eat something like the octopus. However, it also commits the sin of lumping an extraordinarily diverse clade like the Cephalopoda into one poorly characterized gemisch. Yes, the Pacific octopus is a very clever beastie, but those schools of small, fast-breeding squid that get netted and chopped up for calamari? Not so much. The article makes a mistake comparable to highlighting the brilliance of Homo sapiens, and then arguing that we shouldn't eat cows for fear of losing the next Shakespeare. If you want to make an ethical argument against the consumption of squid, that's fair…but don't do it by falsely concatenating all cephalopod species into an inaccurate classification of 'smart, tool-using problem solvers'. It just isn't true.

I also find this weird:

This evidence has so convinced officials on the Animal Procedures Committee (APC), the experimentation watchdog in the UK, that it has recommended to ministers that the law governing animal testing be amended so all cephalopods are given the same protection as animals.

So what have cephalopods been considered until now, mushrooms?


tommyrot - Nov 07, 2006 5:18:00 am PST #8047 of 10001
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.

I'm annoyed by all the signs urging people to vote no on the Stem Cell issue. All the no signs are about stopping cloning and the amendment explicitly prohibits cloning.

The amount of brazen lying by Republicans seems to be higher than usual this year....


tommyrot - Nov 07, 2006 5:21:19 am PST #8048 of 10001
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.

Ooh - there's a nearby cafe that's giving away free coffee to everyone who voted... so off I go. (I'll be dark for about ten minutes.)


Gudanov - Nov 07, 2006 5:21:31 am PST #8049 of 10001
Coding and Sleeping

I think the stem cell amendment we have here will be bad news for the dems. It's helping to get the base out for the republicans. Every church in my area that's not methodist has a thick fence of 'vote no' signs.


Jesse - Nov 07, 2006 5:22:08 am PST #8050 of 10001
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.

Personally, I don't think cloning is all bad.

That's just because you're waiting for the day when you can release your own clone army onto an unsuspecting public.


Frankenbuddha - Nov 07, 2006 5:25:19 am PST #8051 of 10001
"We are the Goon Squad and we're coming to town...Beep! Beep!" - David Bowie, "Fashion"

I for one will welcome our clone masters.


shrift - Nov 07, 2006 5:28:06 am PST #8052 of 10001
"You can't put a price on the joy of not giving a shit." -Zenkitty

Now I have coffee in my eye. t sigh At least my pants didn't stain.


Hil R. - Nov 07, 2006 5:30:32 am PST #8053 of 10001
Sometimes I think I might just move up to Vermont, open a bookstore or a vegan restaurant. Adam Schlesinger, z''l

On the NJ ballot, there were a few things I didn't totally understand about reallocating some park money toward "recreation," and something about property tax reform, and a proposed new tax on gasoline, with the money to be used for improving the transportation system. Nothing terribly controversial.


Steph L. - Nov 07, 2006 5:31:25 am PST #8054 of 10001
I look more rad than Lutheranism

Now I have coffee in my eye.

....how?