Messages

76

Welcome / Birthday / Seeya! Forum / Re: Welcome, welcome!

« on: October 26, 2011, 01:33:13 am »

Welcome!

77

General Discussion / Re: So, I Had This Interesting Dream...

« on: October 18, 2011, 04:32:47 am »

I need to actually get around to watching Dr. Who. I don't know if getting kidnapped by the Doctor is a good or bad thing!

Also: Monologues are something of a given with me, so you're dream was dead on. I'm quiet for the first few times I'm hanging out with someone (little bit of shyness, I guess), then anything and everything becomes fair game (especially concerning stuff like where the universe came from). ^_^

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General Discussion / Re: The $%*! frustration thread

« on: October 14, 2011, 01:49:18 am »

*sigh* Things are not looking so good on the work front...

I'm a writer. The Company approves us to work for various categories, including a general category. The work available in the general categories has dried up to exactly zero (which, for a lot of the people there, is extremely bad news). In the two specialized categories I write for, the work is on fast decline with no new work showing up. (And this is keeping in line with an announcement The Company made a few days ago, too... Ugh.)

Perhaps this is all a bit of paranoia, and there will be a last minute gush of work available. However, given the state of the economy, I am not optimistic (but then again, it's been pointed out to me before that I have a tendency to jump to the worst conclusions possible in a sticky situation... so I HOPE that I'm just being paranoid).

Either way, this means RW is going to be doing a lot of extra work in the very near future. If the work isn't going to be there in a few months when I need it, then my only choice is to do the extra work now!

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General Discussion / Re: Grand Request / Questions Thread

« on: October 14, 2011, 12:43:32 am »

I've had a lot of luck working with Wordpress. I've found it's very versatile, and you can build a website with it that doesn't resemble a blog at all. You can do all kinds of things with it, as it has all kinds of plug-ins you can install and use. And themes. (After attempt #484839, I officially decided I hate CSS, PHP, and XHTML, and so I've declared my undying love for Wordpress, heh. Not that I was bad using the other stuff, but it was always such a drain on my time that way. You can have Wordpress up and running in no time!).

As far as the legal side of things go, I don't have the knowledge to help you there. Sorry!

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General Discussion / Re: The $%*! frustration thread

« on: October 10, 2011, 10:25:57 pm »

YES. I can't stand the cries of, "But I want honeeeesty!" And then when you're honest, all hell breaks loose and you get shunned. Grrr.

I'm very fortunate to have some friends with whom I can be completely honest, without fear of losing their friendship! My family, however... I'm not so lucky in that regard!

Can't win them all!

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General Discussion / Re: Stuff you LOVE, baby

« on: October 10, 2011, 10:22:52 pm »

I has a pumpkin!

Tomorrow, the pumpkin shall be roasted, and I will make yummy things from it. First, pumpkin bread. And if there's enough pumpkin puree left over (which there should be!), pumpkin-chocolate chip cookies!

And later on this week (or month): Labneh!
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Fankhauser/Cheese/Making_Laban/Labneh.htm

(I love food. I'm also quite hungry right now, haha.)

82

General Discussion / Re: The $%*! frustration thread

« on: October 10, 2011, 09:52:28 pm »

I despise being put into situations where I can't say what I really think. People just want to be coddled, and I can't stand it.

EDIT: Lest this be misinterpreted, this isn't related to anyone here.

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Welcome / Birthday / Seeya! Forum / Re: The Whole of Time and Space...

« on: October 08, 2011, 10:11:47 pm »

Good luck, Thought! Moving can be stressful, so take it easy when you can!

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General Discussion / Re: The $%*! frustration thread

« on: October 08, 2011, 02:45:14 am »

After bragging to someone earlier this week about how I've got super-duper time management skills, I then proceeded to unwisely spend the rest of the week's time. Heh, whoops...

Well, lesson learned. I'll have to make up for my unwise choices tomorrow!

85

General Discussion / Re: The Romanticism of Violence.

« on: October 08, 2011, 02:41:33 am »

I think Lord J covered it very well. As for that kind of behavior extending to the real world, to the point where women would send love letters to sex offenders/murderers... I have no idea. While I can somewhat grasp the reasons why this may be, I can't truly comprehend them. These people aren't "misunderstood." When someone gets super-excited when its time to go out and kill/maim/assault someone, there's no misunderstanding. They need to be removed from society!

This reminds me of when I read Hannibal (the sequel to Silence of the Lambs). Clarice, after being drugged and brainwashed into thinking she's Lecter's sister, comes to her senses.... and goes on the run with Hannibal Lecter as her new lover (and she's supposedly completely sane). What the everliving fuck? The novel's ending generated a lot of controversy, and even the film adaptation completely changed the ending to avoid controversy. I am hopeful that because there was such an outcry about it means that the majority of the public considers these kinds of things unacceptable.

86

Chrono Compendium Discussion / Re: The very first Compendium Chronology

« on: October 08, 2011, 12:08:00 am »

Let me explain why this image matters. (At least, I think it's in the right place!)

I do freelance writing for a living. Our assignments are conjured up by Google search algorithms and search trends. I do come across some weird titles sometimes, and I keep a list of them for laughs. However, this one just made me smile! For this to show up in an assignment list means that a very sizable amount of people have been googling for Prophet's Guile lately. (Unfortunately, I probably can't meet the editorial guidelines for writing it, which makes me sad   )

Obviously, we don't have Prophet's Guile anymore. But, since it was a Chrono Compendium Special, seeing it show up made me squeal with delight! It's still famous, and people (a lot of them!) are still looking into it. It's a lasting example of the Compendium's awesomeness. 

(The blacked out stuff is personal work info.)

87

General Discussion / Re: Another celebrity dead!

« on: October 05, 2011, 11:51:48 pm »

Steve Jobs' "How to Live Before You Die" commencement speech is very moving:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1422863/posts

(Forgive the link to Free Republic, but it's the only transcript of the speech I can find!)

For the love of everything holy, modern medicine needs to find a way to deal with pancreatic cancer already. Long-term survival is almost non-existent. Steve Jobs had a rare form (5% of pancreatic cancer cases) that is treatable... and he still died. The other 95% is silent and horribly aggressive. (A lot of people learn they're going to die from pancreatic cancer while they're still feeling 100% healthy.)

For that matter, we need to get rid of all cancer already.

88

General Discussion / Re: Stuff you hate

« on: September 25, 2011, 01:04:33 am »

I'll qualify my post by admitting that I am by far the most obsessive dieter on this forum.  Now your point about fiber is a seldom cited one but certainly true. In particular if you are trying to lose weight, you will burn significant energy digesting fiber which is why i wont recommend full plates of broccoli or fibrous vegetables in that case.  Tushantin also has a good point though, the ratio of healthy food to unhealthy garbage available in large supermarket chains is almost astronomical.

Indigestible doesn't mean you spend a lot of energy digesting it. It means your body doesn't digest it at all. Many vegetables are low calorie because of this, and they're good on a diet because fiber takes up room in your stomach that digestible (and therefore, caloric) food would inhabit. Celery, for example, is almost entirely fiber and water, neither of which you get any calories from. As for whether your body burns energy trying to digest that which is indigestible, well, I don't know. Anyone with a biology/medical background care to chime in?

(On that note, beware of common diet science: 90% is stuff that gets repeated so often that people just assume it's true.)

I'm curious, why would you not suggest plates full of vegetables? If your statement about fiber being energy-consuming to digest were true, wouldn't you want to eat more to lose weight?

Oh, I agree that eating your veggies is far better than indulging in microwaveable Tostino's pizza rolls, or other crap like that. You'll clog up your arteries eating nothing but stuff like that! And when you're eating things that provide you with necessary trace minerals and vitamins, that's always good for your body. That's not exactly what I was getting at in the former post. I suppose I was being a little unfair to Tushantin, as this can be a topic I get upset about. The alternative health market would tell you that eating all organic foods would cure you of everything. People have died following that advice, believing themselves to be better off without modern medicine's care, and that is what I rail against. (Which was not what Tushantin was saying at all... Sorry about that!)

Basically, your frozen/microwaveable veggies are just as good for you as the fresh ones. It's kind of silly to think otherwise, as freezing doesn't destroy the nutrients within. It doesn't make sense to claim that stuff magically loses it's nutritional value because it has some added margarine/fillers (not that the margarine is good for you, but that's not my point, heh).

I will add here, as a footnote, that I'm no expert at biology or digestive science, so I could always be wrong on some of these points.

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General Discussion / Re: Stuff you hate

« on: September 24, 2011, 09:32:45 pm »

What does the word "organic" mean to you in this case?

In simplistic terms, something that's not processed with preservatives, unnecessary filtering, artificial flavoring and chemicals, etc. I like my food full, fresh and real, which is why I don't buy "packs" from supermarts or big stores and prefer to get the real things from local farm distributions and dairies. Even "Fat Free" milk is a pointless abomination of the term food.

Not only do they taste horrible but there's very little nutritional value to them (many of these "processed" foods also contain elements that are indigestible by human beings). It's heart-breaking that some companies are willing to slow-poison their consumers just so they can take cheaper alternatives and make more sales.

Fuck you, Capitalism...

I would like to note, just briefly, that water itself is a chemical. It's dihydrogen oxide. It makes up something like 85% of your body! Just because food contains chemicals does not mean those chemicals are necessarily bad for you.

Fiber is also 100% indigestible. It's probably the most indigestible thing anyone could eat, lest you start eating mud. But you'll get a lot of that from every single fruit or vegetable you eat! When we eat something that is indigestible, it passes through our systems. That's all. (Unless you eat a bona fide poison like arsenic. You'd know within a minute of consumption that something was seriously wrong on that one!)

The idea that food loses all its nutritional value when processed is also a fallacy. That would suggest somehow we're fundamentally changing what the original food is composed of at the molecular level simply by creating a heterogeneous mixture with other ingredients. This view disregards everything we know about basic chemistry. It may surprise you to learn that many processed foods are actually more nutritious than their unprocessed counterparts! For example, many cereals and milk products are fortified with folic acid, calcium, and other trace minerals.

There's also the false belief that fruits and vegetables that are mass grown (or not organic) have little/no nutritional value. If the nutrients weren't in the soil for the fruit, guess what? It wouldn't grow at all. Your organic fruit is going to have nearly the same chemical makeup as a non-organic counterpart. (Some of the people who advocate this stuff hard-core say that you should take all kinds of herbs to supplement your diet. Sometimes, I want to ask these people what they think herbs grow in. Soil! So somehow, the fruit is nutritionally deficient, but the herbs are not?)

The alternative health market is a big-money industry, something that often gets overlooked since real medicine is also a billion dollar industry. They preach things like "diet cure" and "eat only organic," and their false messages kill many people who might otherwise have seeked proper medical care for their ailments. That's my biggest issue with these kinds of things--they do real, serious harm, and people get hurt and die because of it (especially when it comes to supposed cancer cures).

Does the food taste better, though? Maybe! (At least I think so when it comes to some foods!) Since a lot of organic food won't use cheap fillers, you'll probably end up with better tasting food. For those who prefer organic for the taste, it's all good.

And cheap yogurt is often disgusting, I agree. I don't care for the taste of the fillers. Personally, I like plain, unsweetened premium greek yogurt the best! Get a cup, add a spoonful of honey, and mmmmmm. Delicious treat with lots of awesome muscle-building protein.

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General Discussion / Re: Stuff you LOVE, baby

« on: September 22, 2011, 02:23:32 am »

Found out today that I've been accepted at the university I wanted to go to as a geology/physics double major. WOOT.

I am very happy, but this is so not going to be easy, haha...