Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Apr 05, 2016 5:36 pm

I wear things that are not orange, but I try to wear orange all the time. Even if only subtly. So like, my scrubs are dark blue, but they have orange trim.

-Username17

DrPraetor · Post by **DrPraetor** » Tue Apr 05, 2016 5:42 pm

I tried to get him to have one of his corneas dyed neon orange, and he was all "wah wah family medicine wah wah", like the adults in an old Peanuts cartoon.

In Britain, people are expected to be ugly and have tattoos. I think he would blend in better and it would reassure his patients, myself.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Apr 05, 2016 7:19 pm

I bought Frank an orange bathrobe as a house-warming present.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Tue Apr 05, 2016 7:42 pm

Maxus wrote:Anyone have any advice on places to stay in Philly? I got some relatives going out there for the Shriner's Hospital and they were wondering.

If I recall, Zherog is from Philly (or nearby suburb) you could try PMming him.

Eikre · Post by **Eikre** » Tue Apr 05, 2016 10:01 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:I wear things that are not orange, but I try to wear orange all the time. Even if only subtly. So like, my scrubs are dark blue, but they have orange trim.

-Username17

fbmf wrote:I've hung out in person with Frank three times (I think). Both times he wore orange.

Ancient History wrote:I bought Frank an orange bathrobe as a house-warming present.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Sun Apr 10, 2016 2:34 am

Plus there was the orange text on the Czech paperwork during that fiasco a few years back.

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Fri Apr 15, 2016 6:23 pm

Inspired by this:

How does modern history and the current state of affairs gets taught where you live?

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Apr 15, 2016 6:47 pm

No idea, been out of school for 13 years by now.
HOPEFULLY they changed it from:"egypt, middle east, rome, NAZIS ARE BAD! YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD FOR WHAT PEOPLE DID HALF A CENTURY BEFORE YOU WERE BORN! Oh and these are some of the names of people that came after the nazis BUT NAZIS ARE LIKE TOTALLY TO BAD YOU SHOULD FEEL ASHAMED OF BEING BORN HERE WITH THE WRONG SKIN COLOUR!"

Count Arioch the 28th · Fri Apr 15, 2016 7:04 pm

We got lectured about how America is the only democracy on the planet, that everyone in the world is jealous of our wealth and freedom, that we're doing everyone a favor by intervening in their politics and any dissension makes you a damn dirty commie. I've been out of school for 18 years so it might be different.

Stahlseele: For what it's worth, I don't judge the Germans at all for WWII because that wasn't too long after my country did something similar (except our genocide was successful, dammit!). I may however still make jokes at Germany's expense. Like that German/Chinese fusion restaurant I went to. Food was great, but an hour later I felt hungry. For power.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Apr 15, 2016 7:25 pm

Germans only have 2 settings:
Oktoberfest.
All out total War.

And yes, there is, indeed, a distinction in there, somewhere.
A bit hard to tell sometimes, but i assure you, it exists.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Apr 15, 2016 7:50 pm

Man, the last 70 years must have been one hell of an Octoberfest.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Apr 15, 2016 7:59 pm

So much so that some politicians are thinking about changing our constitution to again allow german military to go on little excursions.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Apr 15, 2016 8:11 pm

I'm sure they just want to spread the raging kegger to the rest of the world!

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Apr 15, 2016 8:22 pm

And the metric measurement system. And the 24 hour clock.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sat Apr 16, 2016 5:36 am

In NZ kids are mostly taught how the nation was forged in the fires of Gallipoli when the ANZACs all went and died for our way of life, and how we're the first country to give the vote to Women. Maybe they mention the Treaty of Waitangi as our founding document, around Waitangi day.

1: New Zealand became a country in 1947, not 1915, or 1893. We didn't even have a flag, as such, in 1915, New Zealand was just a minor department of the British Empire, and our conscripts fought under British officers, the British flag, and the British anthem. All the media and politicians at the time talked about was serving for the glory of the Empire, and anyone saying different was imprisoned for the duration.

2: Oh, and we were invading a neutral country for something that wasn't even important by the time we got there, landed in the wrong place, mostly shelled our own troops for the first few days, occupied a single ridgeline for a couple weeks, then went home after killing tens of thousands of the locals for basically no reason at all. It was, of course, illegal to say any of that during the war, and for a very long time afterward.

3: All while telling, you know, the Armenians to rise up in support of our invasion of Turkey, which resulted in the Armenian genocide after we packed up and left them to it. NZ is still one of the countries who doesn't like to talk about that.

Most NZ troops died on the Somme, to disease and mustard gas attacks, same as everyone else, though mustard gas usually took years to actually kill people, with the cough that just kept getting worse. One of our British officers got us to run at machine guns on the last day of the war so he could get a medal, which they gave him, and we actually celebrate that. People who refused were routinely shot for cowardice.

4: Massachusetts was the first state where Women won the vote. New Zealand was second, but we did later become a separate country. Note that it only applied to land-owning women and couples in both places, poor people still weren't allowed to vote, and Māori here only got an equal vote in 1996. Yes, just twenty years ago.

Really, NZ was forged because the Prime Minister of Australia in WWII suddenly found the courage to ask for some of his troops to be used in defence of his own country after it was invaded by Japan, tolling the British and Americans they could go fight their own fucking wars from now on if they didn't get them.

NZ was still under their wing, so we got independent by default, eventually passing all the needed documents into law to make it fully official by the mid 70's. We didn't have any choice really, no one else would have us, the bloody British even joined the European common market and we got left with a huge glut of excess raw agricultural production and no one to sell it to. Which eventually bought down the old socialist governments and got us radical neo-liberalism instead.

5: No one talks about how the settler government spent most of a century after Waitangi stealing land from Māori under grossly racist laws so as to avoid setting taxes on white people for anything as they paid for more people to come over from Britain.

It wasn't far off anarchy in much of the 19th century, with little brushfire wars kicking off all the time between rival groups, with the Governor always backing the landholding British colonists or whatever would get him the most land to sell between other groups, and when there wasn't enough wars he'd just declare some group to be subversive, enslave them, and steal the local land anyway. But you certainly don't tell kids about that sort of thing. We had a parliament, but they almost never met and were just a few rich folk deciding to upgrade whatever infrastructure their own businesses needed, while violently repressing any organised labour or anything.

We ended up out of that with a Māori land tax, and a Chinese poll tax, and a lot of laws limiting how anyone who wasn't white could spend their money, or what jobs they could have, and used a fair chunk of that money to pay for more unmarried white women to be shipped here. No one tells kids that shit.

6: Almost nothing is said about the first Labour government, who basically wrote almost all of our modern systems of law and government over the 30's and 40's. Nor about the governments of the 80's who removed huge chunks of the protections for the poor and waged, while preserving the state's protection and support of large industry, and also radically liberalising and equalising all the social laws, and instituting a corporate model of governance with the citizens as "shareholders" with a right to know what's going on, and everything functioning under contract law.

Like, when I was born, compulsory democratic unions wrote the wage and conditions laws under the arbitration of award courts (who were legally restricted to limiting the ability of businesses to profit much if something could go to the workers instead), and the teacher's union set the curriculum to provide the necessary workforce to fill all the jobs. Now the state does all that and basically just does whatever the biggest party donor asks for (which is usually punitive and stupid), except they do a lot of polling and have to pass laws to repress whatever cruelty gets traction in the media for a while, generally without actually fixing anything but saying they did anyway.

Roog · Post by **Roog** » Sun Apr 17, 2016 3:38 am

That's strange, Tussock, the things you mention as not being talked about were major history topics in my schooling (in NZ).

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sun Apr 17, 2016 10:52 am

How come i feel worse after 13 hours of nonstop total warfare Battletech 3025 Wargaming with buddies than i did after emptying, disassembling and moving down 3 stories a bunch of big old heavy wooden cabinets? x.x

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Apr 17, 2016 11:08 am

Stahlseele wrote:How come i feel worse after 13 hours of nonstop total warfare Battletech 3025 Wargaming with buddies than i did after emptying, disassembling and moving down 3 stories a bunch of big old heavy wooden cabinets? x.x

Being excited without subsequently engaging in heavy activity is quite draining. Your body liberates a bunch of fuel in preparation for some exertion and if it doesn't spend it on anything shit gets out of whack. Being afraid and then running for your life doesn't make you feel as bad as being equally afraid and then doing nothing but waiting for your adrenaline to wear off.

-Username17

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sun Apr 17, 2016 11:48 am

That sounds logical. Thank you.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Apr 19, 2016 5:34 am

What does it take to make a big box store, like Barnes and Noble, or Borders was until they schwanked the online thing, and how do you do so successfully? Could there be a "Barnes and Noble" of comic/game/pop culture merch?

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Tue Apr 19, 2016 6:35 am

Prak wrote:What does it take to make a big box store, like Barnes and Noble, or Borders was until they schwanked the online thing, and how do you do so successfully? Could there be a "Barnes and Noble" of comic/game/pop culture merch?

Probably not, the consumer base is probably below a critical mass of both total numbers nationally and concentrated numbers in any particular metro except for the very largest few.

A successful big box store is a low margin high volume business that needs a lot of customers making a lot of purchases and probably you need a bunch of those purchases to be of items people don't really need but function on trends - Borders et al made lots of money pushing massive numbers of recent bestsellers out the door which is why the country is awash in Dan Brown, Tom Clancy, and Jon Grisham novels that no one wants. And it made money on this sort of thing because it could order hundreds of thousands of the things at a time at a reduced price to increase the margins - one of the reasons Wal-Mart is so successful is that they soak their vendors to acquire the goods as close to at cost as possible

In order to make this work you also need a supremely advanced and integrated supply chain to move your product and keep your shelves filled - because churn is absolutely essential. This doesn't always work, when Target tried to expand into Canada they couldn't successfully integrate with Canadian suppliers or effectively import everything they needed so they had empty shelves and eventually closed all the stores at a huge loss.

Also comics specifically are vulnerable to Amazon due not only to volume and consolidation but to long-tail purchases. Consider the college kid who falls in love with Guardians of the Galaxy from the movie, picks up a comic in the Barnes and Noble, and decides its the greatest thing ever and they must have all of it. Barnes of Noble doesn't have that stuff on their shelves - its not feasible to display something like that. Sure they can probably order it for you, but you'd need to know what you want and still have to come back later. Amazon has everything displayed on their website and is easily searchable and while their recommendation system isn't as good as a highly knowledgeable and trusted FLGS clerk (usually) they're better than big box employees tend to be.

Count Arioch the 28th · Tue Apr 26, 2016 9:39 am

Asking for a friend, but if you are going through a divorce is it normal to not hear from your lawyer for a month? She's sent this chick 4 messages in the past 3 weeks and hasn't received a reply back. Is this normal, or is she basically telling my friend to go fuck herself? I'd assume it was, but I've known quite a few lawyers and none of them were in any way reluctant to tell people to go fuck themselves.

sendaz · Post by **sendaz** » Tue Apr 26, 2016 9:42 pm

where in the process is she at? Once the lawyer files the Summons, the defendant (other party of the couple) has to be served and they get 20 days usually to reply to this first stage. Once pas this stage then the proper divorce papers can be sent to the courts and it can take awhile, anywhere from 6 weeks to 12 months.

However, that doesn't really explain why the lawyer has not responded at all, you would think they would have at least said something to the effect of where they are in the process..

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Tue May 10, 2016 12:09 am

Recently eggs started mysteriously appearing in my house, all in the same spot. At first I found three. I left them there, but one more was added to the pile every day, somehow, when I wasn't looking.

This continued until I had eleven eggs in the pile. The day after that, I could not count the eggs, because there was a hen on top of them. That was five days ago, and she hasn't moved since.

What should I do? What do Hens eat? Do they need to eat while they're incubating?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue May 10, 2016 1:45 am

If I were you, I'd make a trip to a bookstore/library and pick up a basic book on chicken raising, more so that maybe you can sex the chicks when they hatch and then sell them.

Mostly chickens eat grain, like corn. As to whether they need to eat while incubating, I don't know for certain, but I would imagine so. Chicken feed should be cheap enough at a feed store. Put some out, if the hen doesn't eat it, then it's not hungry, I guess.