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Posts by Sparrow Letov

1) Message boards : Cafe MilkyWay : 40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing - 20th July 2009 (Message 28130)
Posted 21 Jul 2009 by Profile Sparrow Letov
Post:
I think it's astounding that we-the-US don't question the cost of waging unnecessary wars or saving corporations that deserve to sink, but we walk away from the most important challenge facing humanity with barely a glance back. Anyone who doesn't think the space program and related sciences and technologies are critical should note what happened to Jupiter in the past few days. As a friend of mine likes to say, "The universe is a dangerous place. Let's not leave all our eggs on one planet."
2) Message boards : Cafe MilkyWay : Milkyway chit chat - CLOSED (Message 27407)
Posted 9 Jul 2009 by Profile Sparrow Letov
Post:
I just failed the British Citizen test with a score of 11.

See how well you do: UK Citizenship test


I just scored 11 also. Since I'm American and have never even been to the UK, I don't feel too bad, although I would have thought that watching Torchwood might have helped a bit more. sigh...

Never took the MENSA test, which someone else mentioned. I might have, except that a long-ago ex with delusions of grandeur took it and failed, and then told me it was because the test was screwed up. Riiiight....

3) Message boards : Cafe MilkyWay : Waiting... (Message 26144)
Posted 21 Jun 2009 by Profile Sparrow Letov
Post:
What am I waiting for?

To see what happens next!
4) Message boards : MilkyWay@home Science : 2012 (Message 26084)
Posted 20 Jun 2009 by Profile Sparrow Letov
Post:
Emanuel, exactly right!

Stuff happens. Lots of bad things are going to happen! Absolutely no question about that! The question is whether you pick rational thought, empiricism, and science, or magical thinking and shamanism. And we all do both. Even Einstein blew off rationality for magic in some areas. The real trick is looking deeply enough into the mirror to figure out what you're doing and keep a close eye on yourself.

Now....The Tower covered by the Page of Swords, reversed. What the...?

5) Message boards : MilkyWay@home Science : 2012 (Message 26017)
Posted 19 Jun 2009 by Profile Sparrow Letov
Post:
News Flash - Galaxy To Collide with Earth!

Don't worry about planets or asteroids hitting us. The whole Andromeda galaxy is headed straight for the Milky Way, where we live, and nothing can stop it!

ETA: 3 billion years

6) Message boards : MilkyWay@home Science : 2012 (Message 26016)
Posted 19 Jun 2009 by Profile Sparrow Letov
Post:
Sorry if this sounds heretical, but I think Youtube is the biggest waste of bandwidth on the planet. Ninty-nine percent of everything there represented as "scientific fact" is total kaka. OTOH, there is some actual scientific information posted to this thread, by nickth and others. Of course, that stuff is boring and hard to concentrate on. So what the heck...Maybe just go with Youtube, huh? Or watch ghost hunters on TV for awhile.

For anyone who's read Dan Simmon's wonderful Hyperion books, I'd like to see Youtube get the same treatment the Fat Line got in those novels, i.e. shut down by unknown alien entities for being a wasteful abuse of the cosmos.

Y2K? Please don't remind me! I was an IT manager then, and I can't tell you how many hundreds of hours my peers and I wasted on that one, looking for hoodoos.

In the moderately likely case that I'm still here on 21 Dec 2012, and if the sky is clear, I'll step outside just before bedtime and check to make sure the stars aren't winking out or anything and have a good laugh.
7) Message boards : Cafe MilkyWay : Swine Flu (Message 26013)
Posted 19 Jun 2009 by Profile Sparrow Letov
Post:
Hey Az :)

True enough!
The only thing i deny is to
end up in a zoo... :p


Aw..It will be nice zoo, like one of those habitat things for gerbils, only bigger. But hey...what if we're already.....naw! Silly idea!

I`ll go and read my
tarot cards also.. Somewhere
you must have made a mistake.. ;-)


I agree. Checksum errors are my normal operating state. Besides, I forgot to ask the cards about gamma ray bursters and Betelgeuse blowing up. Major omissions! ;)
8) Message boards : Cafe MilkyWay : Swine Flu (Message 25909)
Posted 18 Jun 2009 by Profile Sparrow Letov
Post:
Things we would all do well to keep in mind:

1. CNN, Fox New, et al, must fill 7x24 news cycles. "If it bleeds, it leads." is the age-old mantra in the news business. This means if something horrible isn't happening or about to happen every hour of every day, to people we identify with, heads will roll.

2. In the US alone, over 50,000 people die every year in traffic accidents, yet many people drive 75 mph on the freeways and the news people don't report the body count because nobody wants to hear it. We see what we want to see.

3. The leading cause of death is birth.

4. According to my Tarot readings, we're overdue for extinction. That's why the aliens have taken our genetic material. Once we're extinct in the wild, we'll make very valuable zoo specimens.

5. The deadly mutation of H1N1 that's going to appear any minute now is really so much nicer than nuclear war, big rocks from space, or being shredded in the black holes the Large Hadron Collider is going to create. At least a good plague leaves this pretty little planet intact and also keeps us from mucking it up any further.





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