Laundry day, and after laundry… maybe *i hope i hope* laptop day. I really have put off getting one for far too long.

Lone Gunmen keen last night… I didn’t even mind the 2 ‘intruder’ characters.

Well, laundry and chores won’t do themselves…. be back in a bit.

Holy moley!! My Hippie Buddies are preggers!! Dave & Cathi are at least 3 weeks late for her period… She just took her 2nd test, and it lokos like the seed took hold!

That’s very cool. They’re going to make great parents, good guides, and make a life that’s worthwhile in this world… I know it.

*does the happy Scotto dance. I’m going to get all the details shortly, probably take ’em out to a late supper & a movie in the near future.

Yay! Happy Parents, and good parent-types. 🙂

Taken last earth-day… awwww!!

I’m looking for a job as a flaneur… anyone want to hire me?

I am amazed at the even distrobution of blondes, redheads and brown haired folk… each account for just about 1/4 of the list!

How loud does something have to be to kill someone? I heard once on BattleBots that it took 150 decibels to stop the human heart. Is this true? If so, I’m afraid, since I work in a VERY loud job environment (I assemble 747 engines). So is there a fatal decibel level? And if so, is it really 150 decibels? Please tell me. I’m scared.

Nick, just a hint–next time you broach this topic with a scientist over lunch, don’t let it slip that you got your information from BattleBots. A 150-decibel noise isn’t loud enough to kill you, and even if it were, the immediate cause of death in most cases wouldn’t be direct trauma to the heart. But the TV show was right in the big-picture sense: if a noise were loud enough, you’d die.

What we’re talking about here is high-energy-impulse noise, also known as blast overpressure or air blast, which is “the sharp instantaneous rise in ambient atmospheric pressure resulting from explosive detonation or firing of weapons” (N.M. Elsayed, “Toxicology of Blast Overpressure,” Toxicology, 1997). What, you say this isn’t noise in the usual sense? Nonsense. It’s no different from a thunderclap or a sonic boom. It’s true you might not hear a truly titanic air blast, but that’s because your eardrums would shatter, and worst case you’d be dead.

The lethal effects of air blast first became evident during World War I, when soldiers were found dead in the vicinity of an explosion despite having no external injuries. There was plenty of internal damage, though, particularly to hollow organs such as the ear, lung, and gastrointestinal tract. Partly for that reason the exact cause of death due to air blast was debated for many years. The prevailing theory at the moment is air embolism originating in the lungs. The blast’s immense pressure on the chest ruptures delicate lung tissue, admitting air bubbles into the arteries that travel to the heart, brain, and other organs and cause sudden death.

How loud does a noise have to be to kill? Let’s see. The threshold of ear pain is around 130 to 140 decibels, roughly equivalent to a jet engine at a range in the tens of meters. Eardrum rupture occurs around 160 decibels (conventional sound) to 185 decibels (nonperiodic blast pressure). Lung rupture and presumably embolism due to air blast occur at 200 decibels. German physicist Jürgen Altmann, who has written about the physiological effects of high-intensity sound (see www.einaudi.cornell.edu/PeaceProgram/acousticweapons.pdf) tells me the threshold for suffocation or embolism following lung rupture is 2.6 to 11 times atmospheric pressure, depending on pulse duration. The point is, instant death requires a noise that’s pretty damn loud.

That’s not to say lesser noises are harmless. The medical literature is full of reports of people with medical conditions who heard a loud noise and then, say, suffered a seizure and died. Some say (relatively) low-level noise can be bad for you even if you’re (relatively) healthy. The subject remains controversial. One infamous study claimed that jet noise boosted the death rate among people living near Los Angeles International Airport. But the effect disappeared when other scientists reviewed the data, and chances are it’s a crock.

Another possible use of nonfatal doses of noise is “acoustic weapons,” now under secret development by the military. Supposedly, acoustic weapons will use infrasonic sound or some such to incapacitate rather than kill an enemy, turning him into a bleeding, puking mess. Or maybe they’ll kill him, using baseball-sized “acoustic bullets.” Despite persistent reports in the press and much hand-wringing about the dire import of this new technology by human-rights groups, no one has actually seen a practical demonstration of such a weapon, and very little has appeared in the scientific journals. Then again, I suppose very little had appeared in the scientific journals about the Manhattan Project before they crisped Hiroshima. All I’m saying is, while there’s no question the military is putting some serious money into acoustic weapons research, a lot of people are pretty skeptical. But if something does come of it, we’re ready. The U.S. military already has experience serenading the likes of Manuel Noriega with ear-shattering rock ‘n’ roll, and if that fails, there’s always gangsta rap.

wow… looks like this aol/icq problem is epidemic.

That’s like taking the stash from a million junkies.

yikes. everyone hang on. 🙂

Some mook is playing with the network again.

I’m going to chop off the hands of that infidel for disrupting my aim session.

Where’s my Scimitar?

tri·age (tree-äzh)
n.

1 – A process for sorting injured people into groups based on their need for or likely benefit from immediate medical treatment. Triage is used on the battlefield, at disaster sites, and in hospital emergency rooms when limited medical resources must be allocated.
2. A system used to allocate a scarce commodity, such as food, only to those capable of deriving the greatest benefit from it.

——————————————————————————–
[French from trier, to sort, from Old French.]

*noticing patterns.

redhead leaders, brunette villains/rebels. blonde sweeties/airheads.

Note –

Powerpuff Girls
Josie & the Pussycats
The Archies

Lovely morning walk… the sun was shining, birds singing, and I wasn’t easily winded.

It’s come to my attention that I really haven’t posted much prose or poetry lately, and that I need to get back on that path, as well as others.

Thinking about spirituality lately, what I’d like to attain, where I’d like to be.

I would like to be more kind, more loving, and more trusting. I try to be nice to everyone…but I don’t deal well with people who are in my opinion consistently cruel, thoughtless, disloyal or vulgar. That’s a lot of people to have a problem with. Well, let’s narrow it down. I don’t deal well with people who are like that with me or my friends.

Lately, I’ve encountered that sort of stuff in a lot of different places. Work, LJ, and much of the rest of meatspace and cyberspace too. That’s one reason I don’t visit IRC unless I know a friend will be there. I Don’t play AOK online, generally, unless I know a buddy will be there… it’s not worth wading through the literally hundreds of socially retarded (I mean it. the growth there is literally hampered. they need to get out, go camping or something) folks that seem to wreck it for everyone else.

Don’t get me wrong… I know a *lot* of sweet folks online, and off. I’ve no problem with them. Sadly, they seem to be in the vast minority in public forums.

So, the question remains. How do I treat those that are less than kind with kindness? I don’t want to become condescending, but it seems that my approach of “they don’t know any better” or “they have a lot of anger” or “that’s just ignorant” or “they’re that needy for attention” all seem to be a little bit so. I don’t want to put on airs of superiority, I want to fix the situation…but it seems as if that’s not always possible. I know I’m not a superman, and it’s not my job to fix everything, but I have a very real drive to want to help folks, especially those who are so visibly broken.

I’ve had friends in the past that I wanted to help, but they didn’t want it. That’s a hard situation to be in. I’ve been friends with a lot of different sorts of people. Some Vulgar terms for them might be Adulterers, Amoral People, Liars, Bastards, Finks ,Snobs, Thieves, and Whores, some of whom fill more than one category. (Whee, alphabetical order!) I cut them some slack, because I thought I could help. I’ve since learned that sometimes I can’t help, and I shake them loose. Sometimes with an argument, sometimes they shake me loose, and I don’t pursue. (to any of the above that I’m still friends with… I still care about you, I just really dislike that aspect of your personality, and I wish that you’d cut it out, with or without my help.)

I went to get past my triage mentality of helping. An economy of kindness isn’t what I want to be a part of. I want to dish it out wholesale.