tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2814819843269246078.post571397040660241579..comments2023-12-30T01:23:38.125-08:00Comments on Riddled: Villagers call her: quicklime girl Behind her back: quicklime girl Behind the bush: quicklime girlHamish Mackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18079552635307235197noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2814819843269246078.post-18176609112660359242018-10-27T00:35:52.321-07:002018-10-27T00:35:52.321-07:00Can you really make money by lying to people about...<i>Can you really make money by lying to people about this stuff. You must be or you're very stupid.</i><br /><br />I could be both!<br /><br />If you came here to defend the honour of GcMAF, perhaps you should direct your comments to the people who are actually deprecating it... e,g, Marco Ruggiero, the author of many of those published studies, who now has new and different products he would like you to buy instead.Smut Clydehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09409476490132867809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2814819843269246078.post-67732769303714438532018-10-24T01:49:56.619-07:002018-10-24T01:49:56.619-07:00150150matthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12069814685576535731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2814819843269246078.post-2257809058905077162018-10-24T01:49:04.888-07:002018-10-24T01:49:04.888-07:00Can you really make money by lying to people about...Can you really make money by lying to people about this stuff. You must be or you're very stupid. All I can say is thank you about telling me what the new stuff is. You do know gcmaf has 250 published studies?matthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12069814685576535731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2814819843269246078.post-55506014471716139702018-03-13T03:31:20.751-07:002018-03-13T03:31:20.751-07:00You should know better than to mention invertebrat...You should know better than to mention invertebrate zoology, as it gives me an excuse for the Explaining Voice.<br /><br />I've come across all sorts of reasons why insects don't become megafauna. Personally I think it's their fault for never bothering to evolve a proper circulatory system. Invertebrates are not really clear on the concept of "blood", as a way of bringing important stuff like oxygen to all the far-flung musculature of a large body. Most of them have a blood-like internal fluid that soaks up oxygen at Organ A and nutrients at Organ B and then delivers both to Organ C, but it doesn't really <i>circulate</i>, it just sloshes around inside spare body cavities. This results in a satisfying splash when you swat an insect but it doesn't scale up.<br /><br />Spiders are ahead of the game here, having actually evolved an equivalent of lungs to be Organ A and get the oxygen into the haemolymph, but then getting the haemolymph to Organ B is a haphazard and poorly-planned affair. Insects don't even do that, they rely on a branching system of internal air-ducts to bring the air to the close vicinity of every muscle, and that <b>really</b> doesn't scale up.<br /><br />So to my mind, having an exoskeleton and (therefore collapsing under the gravitational strain of giganticness and killing their plans for world domination) is the least of the anthropods' worries. I'm sure they could design T-rex-sized exoskeleton anatomy. Just an engineering problem <i>[waves hand airily]</i>. First they need an enclosed circulatory system, which would be a major redesign. But if alien monsters want to look like giant bugs, why not? Fuck those scifi fact-checkers.<br /><br />Don't start me on sea-spidesr (pycnogonids), they're just weird.<br /><br />Cephalopod molluscs do have a half-decent closed circulation system so they can grow as big as they like. So be nice to squid.Smut Clydehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09409476490132867809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2814819843269246078.post-47833550575123284192018-03-12T09:32:04.816-07:002018-03-12T09:32:04.816-07:00Early transhumanism was a bizarre intellectual mov...<i>Early transhumanism was a bizarre intellectual movement</i><br />Modern transhumanism don't seem to be much to get up in the middle of the night and write home to Momma about, neither.<br />(I have just heard of Nick Land.) (Yeesh.)<br /><br /><i>Then they would find that the technology does not scale up, and things would go quiet for another two decades.</i><br />Sometimes I get irritated when people "fact-check" scifi, or demand its scientistic magic have a theoretical foundation — but clearly people who bother with this stuff are doing the Spaghetti Monster's work. If somebody doesn't put the brakes on somewhere, apparently, the novels themselves will be non-consentingly recycled into theories, in defiance of the natural order of things. Like, I remember one older dude who was annoyed that the space monsters in movies often look like giant insects (re: "Starship Troopers," I think), whose bodies would collapse under the gravitational strain of giganticness and kill their plans for world domination. That man probably saved Eric Drexler a decade's worth of work trying to come up with plans to turn people into enormous intergalatic spiders.<br /><br />You might think it's ridiculous <i>now</i>, but you won't be laughing when near-future arachanthromorphs have spun titanium webs between the planets, facilitating space travel for the masses.Emmahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11771959740072605857noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2814819843269246078.post-13697588539906856312018-03-04T16:36:01.008-08:002018-03-04T16:36:01.008-08:00Early transhumanism was a bizarre intellectual mov...Early transhumanism was a bizarre intellectual movement. Not that I am admitting to being there at the time, as that would imply that I am older than dirt, or lunar regolith as the case may be.<br /><br />I was just inspired to dig out the 1977 Space Colonies edition of "CoEvolution / Whole Earth Catalog". I had forgotten the role of mass-drivers / rail-guns, as the magical technology which will transport the components of the L5 Space colonies away from the lunar metal foundries, up into Earth / moon orbits. There is another recurring SF trope for you.<br /><br />Now the thing about rail-guns is that people have been building desk-top versions of them since the 1930s, each time thinking "Yay! New weapon / tool for conquering the New Frontier!" (I'm looking at you, Heinlein and Clarke). Then they would find that the technology does <b>not scale up</b>, and things would go quiet for another two decades.<br /><br />Anyway,<br />"I personally helped build a model mass driver section, out of ordinary wire (the real one would be superconducting, and hence have higher performance) that reached <b>34</b> gravities about three weeks ago. Students are upgrading it to <b>100</b> gravities. O'Neil is now talking <b>1,000</b>, and taking bests on a number in that range."<br /><br />This is our man Drexler again, at the end of his L5 period, before he decided that self-assembling Nanobots were a less implausible techno vision.Smut Clydehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09409476490132867809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2814819843269246078.post-39461047925731455952018-03-04T05:23:09.886-08:002018-03-04T05:23:09.886-08:00I can't remember whether Great Mambo Chicken g...<i>I can't remember whether Great Mambo Chicken goes into Drexler's youthful exploits, promoting space colonies and the L5 Society and speculative solar-sail technology.</i><br />Yes, yes, and yes! It was very quaint and romantic, except for the dirt tunnels and paramilitary rocket development.<br /><br />I was already familiar with O'Neill cylinders because I'd seen them (of a sort) in <i>Jack Glass</i> (one of my most favorite books ever) and in the last book in Anne Leckie's Radchaai trilogy (I think there might be fourth one, now, so I should probably say the 'third in the series'). They didn't look a lot more reasonable when described by a scientist, I'm sorry to say.<br /><br /><i>The AI people had convinced themselves that computer intelligence was an easy problem that would be solved in another year or two.</i><br />What was amazing to me about the cryogenics thing was that its most credentialed proponents adopted a Unified Underpants Gnome Theory of mind-transference based on Heinlein stories. Someone invents a way to download brains ⇒ we put the brains in computers, because "information" amirite ⇒ IMMORTALITY. Jesus Christ. Emmahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11771959740072605857noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2814819843269246078.post-38492911431345063442018-03-01T11:59:51.385-08:002018-03-01T11:59:51.385-08:00I can't remember whether Great Mambo Chicken g...I can't remember whether Great Mambo Chicken goes into Drexler's youthful exploits, promoting space colonies and the L5 Society and speculative solar-sail technology.<br />https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2007/04/19/building-vast-solar-sails-in-space/<br /><br />It was a Golden Age for magical thinking back then, with the L5 Society, and the Life Extension crowd, and the cryogenicists. The AI people had convinced themselves that computer intelligence was an easy problem that would be solved in another year or two. The only intellectual sin was to pay too much attention to facts or the much-maligned laws of physics.Smut Clydehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09409476490132867809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2814819843269246078.post-45684609541411537912018-02-28T16:49:56.944-08:002018-02-28T16:49:56.944-08:00"Specific" so nice I used it twice."Specific" so nice I used it twice.Emmahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11771959740072605857noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2814819843269246078.post-57385436467312134632018-02-28T16:49:03.067-08:002018-02-28T16:49:03.067-08:00Speaking of which! I'm just about halfway thro...Speaking of which! I'm just about halfway through <i>Great Mambo Chicken And The Transhuman Condition</i>. It's horrifying. My favorite part is probably attempting to determine <a href="http://www.quotehd.com/quotes/k-eric-drexler-k-eric-drexler-in-thinking-about-nanotechnology-today-whats-most" rel="nofollow">the specific moment at which Eric Drexler</a> decided to rely on The Secret to fulfill his vision of a nanotechnological future.* Everything about transhumanism is such a psychologically-creamy reservoir of sadness and Heinlein stanning — it's like the MRA movement, only worse. At least the meneninistists only want to be John Wayne, who was, in all likelihood, an actual person. Also, I think a great deal of this sort of "science" might've failed to develop at all if people had been able to classify themselves as furries in the 70s & 80s and be taken seriously.<br /><br />A couple of my favorite scifi authors, Octavia Butler and Adam Roberts, seem to rely entirely on this fertile bush of science — and I didn't know it until now. So, that's good. Information is the future. <br /><br />I'd go on, but unfortunately my computer recently caught on fire & died.<br /><br /><br />* One does not grow up in the Appalachian Valley and sneer at folk magic. One does, however, expect that one's tax dollars are being funneled into something a little more scientifically specific than self-insert fanfiction.<br />Emmahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11771959740072605857noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2814819843269246078.post-83412251750932247022018-02-28T16:05:09.781-08:002018-02-28T16:05:09.781-08:00The whole Immortalis scam is bizarre.It feels like...The whole Immortalis scam is bizarre.It feels like some plot device dreamed up by a Thomas-Pynchon wannabee. "How could anyone fall for such babblegab?" I ask myself; but the people involved in it are professional con-men, so I suppose they know what they're doing. They only need to batten onto a couple of wealthy suckers to make it all worthwhile, and "being rich" and "being as dumb as a sack of hammers made out of two short planks" are not exclusive.Smut Clydehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09409476490132867809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2814819843269246078.post-16066099904852738562018-02-28T13:35:13.216-08:002018-02-28T13:35:13.216-08:00My mother believes in the alkalizing powers of foo...My mother believes in the alkalizing powers of foods; what's weird is that the primary substance you're supposed to ingest, according to this doctrine, is apple-cider vinegar, which once gave me a chemical burn on my face when I tried to use it to treat acne as a teenager.<br /><br />Clearly I'm in the wrong line of work, also. I should be grinding up my dog's pills and selling them for $20,000 a bottle to, I am assuming, Sheldon Adelson. The steroids might even produce actual disease-treating effects! I am going to be a millionaire.<br /><br />Finally, you should be aware that in the Hero Mom/Homestead Idiot community, one of the top things you can do to become a guru is create a homebaked version of some complex & expensive medicine or skin care/food product <i>for pennies</i>. It is assumed, in these circles, that everyone but themselves is an untrustworthy scammer. They barely even hold it against people. It's odd, but not as noteworthy as many of the subculture's other characteristics.<br />Emmahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11771959740072605857noreply@blogger.com