Random Thought Thread

[Munkie]

So 2 different pronunciations based on how Latin was pronounced at the time we decided to steal it? Good Lord, the idiocy of English knows no bounds...

Irregardless, the pronounciation "zoo-ology" sounds ridiculous and I've never met a zoologist that pronounces it that way. It is literally the worst.

[InfestedKerrigan]

20 minutes ago, Munkie said:

So 2 different pronunciations based on how Latin was pronounced at the time we decided to steal it? Good Lord, the idiocy of English knows no bounds...

Irregardless, the pronounciation "zoo-ology" sounds ridiculous and I've never met a zoologist that pronounces it that way. It is literally the worst.

[InfestedKerrigan]

1 hour ago, Ish said:

He’s a pretty high level Cleric. He can Turn Undead.

I'm pretty sure most of that line weren't clerics. 

 

And then there is Caligula.

[Munkie]

Just now, InfestedKerrigan said:

In every sense 😉

[Ish]

If you want a language that is logical, you better start studying a conlang. Real languages are organic, chaotic, horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, wobbly-wibbly, wibbly-wobbly, and ooey-gooey messes. 

 

[InfestedKerrigan]

2 minutes ago, Ish said:

If you want a language that is logical, you better start studying a conlang. Real languages are organic, chaotic, horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, wobbly-wibbly, wibbly-wobbly, and ooey-gooey messes. 

 

Sounds like thousands of years of cultural misappropriation at its finest. 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Munkie said:

So 2 different pronunciations based on how Latin was pronounced at the time we decided to steal it? Good Lord, the idiocy of English knows no bounds...

Irregardless, the pronounciation "zoo-ology" sounds ridiculous and I've never met a zoologist that pronounces it that way. It is literally the worst.

Dunno, I just know that I greatly offended a "zoologist" when I didn't know that it required a college degree. I thought zooology was on par with cosmotology in terms education required....

True story. But I did learn from the encounter, so there is that.

[Yarbicus]

22 minutes ago, paxmiles said:

Dunno, I just know that I greatly offended a "zoologist" when I didn't know that it required a college degree. I thought zooology was on par with cosmotology in terms education required....

True story. But I did learn from the encounter, so there is that.

I take it back. The Jurassic crocodile should eat Pax.

[Munkie]

53 minutes ago, Yarbicus said:

I take it back. The Jurassic crocodile should eat Pax.

There's room for us both!

[InfestedKerrigan]

😐😯😑

[Guest]

Been playing mechwarrior online, and a concept in that game has me thinking about other applications. The concept is "spreading damage." In the game, rather than a single health bar or wound pool, each section/facing of your character has different health pools. In order to maximize your life, the tactic of "spreading damage" comes into play by deliberately exposing different sections of your body to the enemy in order to be able to survive more total damage without dying. 

Thinking about it in human terms, rather than mechanical ones. An interesting idea. Hadn't really thought about it before, but I think it applies to human fighting as well. Just interesting. 

[WestRider]

10 hours ago, Munkie said:

So 2 different pronunciations based on how Latin was pronounced at the time we decided to steal it? Good Lord, the idiocy of English knows no bounds...

No. No it does not know any bounds. You are absolutely correct there. Consider that we have two different words that are both spelled "buffet" that are pronounced differently, and and mean completely different things.

44 minutes ago, paxmiles said:

Been playing mechwarrior online, and a concept in that game has me thinking about other applications. The concept is "spreading damage." In the game, rather than a single health bar or wound pool, each section/facing of your character has different health pools. In order to maximize your life, the tactic of "spreading damage" comes into play by deliberately exposing different sections of your body to the enemy in order to be able to survive more total damage without dying. 

Thinking about it in human terms, rather than mechanical ones. An interesting idea. Hadn't really thought about it before, but I think it applies to human fighting as well. Just interesting. 

In my experience (over a decade of martial arts, overlapping with the period when I played Battletech a ton), no, it does not apply well to human fighting*. You're much better off having (for instance) one arm that is essentially useless and one that's fully functional rather than two that are both somewhat beat up.

*Or non-fighting functionality, for that matter. As another example, it's easier for me to get around when one of my knees is almost completely out than when they're both having issues, but still supporting weight.

[Ish]

48 minutes ago, paxmiles said:

Been playing mechwarrior online, and a concept in that game has me thinking about other applications. The concept is "spreading damage." In the game, rather than a single health bar or wound pool, each section/facing of your character has different health pools. In order to maximize your life, the tactic of "spreading damage" comes into play by deliberately exposing different sections of your body to the enemy in order to be able to survive more total damage without dying. 

Thinking about it in human terms, rather than mechanical ones. An interesting idea. Hadn't really thought about it before, but I think it applies to human fighting as well. Just interesting. 

Mechs don't bleed, don't feel pain, and don't suffer from traumatic shock... A human taking a knife to the forearm (or an arrow to the knee) is going to react very differently than a mech taking a autocannon hit to their leg servos. 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Ish said:

Mechs don't bleed, don't feel pain, and don't suffer from traumatic shock... A human taking a knife to the forearm (or an arrow to the knee) is going to react very differently than a mech taking a autocannon hit to their leg servos. 

Yeah, so part of the concept is that you don't take lethal damage on any portion of the body because you are spreading it across. So in the case of being stabbed or arrow in the knee, it doesn't really apply because that's too much damage to a given area. So the idea, however theoretical, would be to take the stab wound and somehow divide it across the body (so, 1/4th stab wound to an arm, 1/4th stab wound to a leg, and so forth). Yeah, rather abstract concept.

Pain and blood loss are a real concern, through, but not really part of my thought regarding this topic. I agree those are definitely real considerations.

1 hour ago, WestRider said:

In my experience (over a decade of martial arts, overlapping with the period when I played Battletech a ton), no, it does not apply well to human fighting*. You're much better off having (for instance) one arm that is essentially useless and one that's fully functional rather than two that are both somewhat beat up.

*Or non-fighting functionality, for that matter. As another example, it's easier for me to get around when one of my knees is almost completely out than when they're both having issues, but still supporting weight.

But you still have the arm, right? A critically damaged, but long term heal-able arm would qualify for this speading damage concept. In mechwarrior, the destroyed systems would be equal to the arm being severed from the body, destroyed internal organs and so forth. The idea isn't about avoiding being damaged, the idea is to increase the amount of damage you can take before you start getting dealt permanent damage. The whole concept would only really apply in a fight of desperation anyway, since the whole concept of a real fight is about avoiding damage in the first place.

I will note that I don't really think any of this would work for humans against firearms (and other piercing weapons)...They're kinda designed to counter this sort of damage "spreading." Maybe with regards to armor on humans, but not just blocking with flesh.

[Ish]

There's no such thing a "1/4th stab wound," you either get a superficial cut/scrape, a wound that is instantly threat-ending*, or a wound that is threat-ending in a few minutes. If you'd like to learn a lot more about just how nasty, brutish, and short combat can be, I highly recommend Battle Trauma in Medieval Warfare: Wounds, Weapons and Armor by Robert C. Woosnam-Savage and Kelly DeVries. It's a really approachable work, as far as medieval forensic archaeology goes. 

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/books/b9789004306455_003

* Not necessarily fatal. You can often end a threat simply by hurting the other person: shock, trauma, pain, and fear can all cause someone to decide that continuing the fight is not an option. 

[WestRider]

36 minutes ago, paxmiles said:

Yeah, so part of the concept is that you don't take lethal damage on any portion of the body because you are spreading it across. So in the case of being stabbed or arrow in the knee, it doesn't really apply because that's too much damage to a given area. So the idea, however theoretical, would be to take the stab wound and somehow divide it across the body (so, 1/4th stab wound to an arm, 1/4th stab wound to a leg, and so forth). Yeah, rather abstract concept.

Pain and blood loss are a real concern, through, but not really part of my thought regarding this topic. I agree those are definitely real considerations.

But you still have the arm, right? A critically damaged, but long term heal-able arm would qualify for this speading damage concept. In mechwarrior, the destroyed systems would be equal to the arm being severed from the body, destroyed internal organs and so forth. The idea isn't about avoiding being damaged, the idea is to increase the amount of damage you can take before you start getting dealt permanent damage. The whole concept would only really apply in a fight of desperation anyway, since the whole concept of a real fight is about avoiding damage in the first place.

I will note that I don't really think any of this would work for humans against firearms (and other piercing weapons)...They're kinda designed to counter this sort of damage "spreading." Maybe with regards to armor on humans, but not just blocking with flesh.

Again, personal experience here. When sparring (so no permanently damaging single moves like knee-breakers or something allowed), we would maintain a given side forward, because it's better to take all the punches on one arm/shoulder and have that one bruised into uselessness than to have them both bruised to the point where it's affecting you, but not to the point of uselessness.

Also seconding Ish. Despite what you might see in movies, in a truly serious fight, injuries tend to be either negligible, or fight-ending. There is very little in between. If you get four minor slashes/stabs from a knife (the closest equivalent I can think of to 1/4 or a proper stab), it's not going to be any better if there's one on each limb, vs all on one arm. You're either going to be able to continue the fight or not, based on your pain/shock tolerance, not on where those are. I would actually argue that it's better to have them all in one place, both for the reasons I've mentioned previously and also because that's fewer locations where you have to worry about another hit exacerbating the original injury.

tl;dr: People aren't Battlemechs. Battletech's damage system (which is what MWO uses) is not based on anything remotely realistic, it's just something that makes for a good game mechanic.

[InfestedKerrigan]

It amuses me, how upset those who are disrespectful of other people's time get when they have their time disrespected.

[PourSpelur]

It's like when you hear someone say, "I don't like drama". It's only true insofar as they don't like it, they LOVE it.

[Guest]

Is a person pushing a shopping cart a pedestrian or the engine for a vehicle?

[dalmer]

3 hours ago, paxmiles said:

Is a person pushing a shopping cart a pedestrian or the engine for a vehicle?

In Washington, neither... doesn't qualify as a vehicle.

[Guest]

22 minutes ago, dalmer said:

In Washington, neither... doesn't qualify as a vehicle.

Legally, I'm pretty sure they are treated as a pedestrian, but, as a random thought I can't help but wonder where the line is.

I know in Oregon, skateboards and a whole bunch of other man-powered vehicles are subject to the bicycle laws, despite rather vague laws linking the vehicles together. Though the Oregon bicycle laws are written so that a bicyclist is subject to bicycle AND pedestrian laws while on the sidewalk, and, to car AND bicycle laws while on the street. 

Meanwhile, handicapped people in those perscription go-karts are considered pedestrians, at least in Oregon.

But, yeah, when I get to an innersection with my bicycle, shopping carts give me pause when trying to decide which set of laws I should be following with regard to how I interact with them. Anyway, just a random thought. Not really any point here. 

I am pretty sure I'm going to cause an accident eventually, just because no one expects the law abidding bicyclist...Safety in traffic comes from being able to predict the movements of the other vehicles/pedestrians - law abidding bicyclists just seem to throw people off. 

[Duckman]

2 hours ago, paxmiles said:

But, yeah, when I get to an innersection with my bicycle, shopping carts give me pause when trying to decide which set of laws I should be following with regard to how I interact with them. Anyway, just a random thought. Not really any point here. 

You should be being polite and following the golden rule.

First, that should eliminate any real possibility of injury and, as Raindog will probably tell you, if you are following rule one most police will tell you what the real laws are and let you off because it is clear that you are trying to be conscientious (at least as a white male, they will).

 

As you demonstrated with the discussion of handicapped people with mobility assistance, the legal definition of vehicle is ambiguous and generally stupid.  This is not uncommon since laws and language are intended to serve different purposes and so you'll see it in lots of places (e.g. the legal definition of person not including a black man or a woman or being 3/5ths of a person for a black man for years).

Personally, I tend to reserve the term "vehicle" for "motor vehicle" and then look for context, otherwise you get into literal interpretation which allows you to define a hand-truck or dolly as a vehicle which is accurate but confusing in most contexts...  (If you call the police and say "My vehicle was stolen" and then explain that you were talking about your dolly when they get there you are going to get some interesting looks.)

[Ish]

Pedantic point of order, but the Constitution never said a black man was “3/5ths of a person,“ that’s an annoyingly common false belief spread by bad social studies teachers and middle schoolers who didn’t pay all that much attention in class.

Article I § 2 seals with the apportionment of Congressional representatives and the allocation of tax burden to the states. These are based on population numbers, with free citizens counting as “1,” Indians counting as “0”*, and everyone else counting as “3/5.” This meant slaves, yes, but it also meant foreign nationals, resident aliens, and so forth:

”Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States... according to their [population], which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons [and] three fifths of all other Persons.”

 

* Even this is as racist as it sounds, remember that in 1789, the various Indian nations were still foreign sovereign nations. Giving potential hostile powers the ability to influence political elections is not a good idea.

[Duckman]

As you said.  Very exacting language defining specific persons as 1, 3/5ths or 0 persons in the eyes of the law for very specific purposes (and only those purposes).  Only in law and theoretical math can you see 1 == 0.6 written so clearly.  As I recall, there were other laws that then referred to this for other purposes in the day as well.

I won't claim to be a Constitutional Scholar or anything but there a number of neat little bits of trivia that turn out to be kinda scary if you look at what they mean in a legal sense.  See the proposed "Right to Vote" Amendment (2013) as a prime example.

[VonVilkee]

41 minutes ago, Duckman said:

As you said.  Very exacting language defining specific persons as 1, 3/5ths or 0 persons in the eyes of the law for very specific purposes (and only those purposes).  Only in law and theoretical math can you see 1 == 0.6 written so clearly.  As I recall, there were other laws that then referred to this for other purposes in the day as well.

I won't claim to be a Constitutional Scholar or anything but there a number of neat little bits of trivia that turn out to be kinda scary if you look at what they mean in a legal sense.  See the proposed "Right to Vote" Amendment (2013) as a prime example.

Start a realm of chaos post? I'm intrigued...