Pee Wee Herman

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In a response to my post about the Doctrine of "Real" Names, araquan provided the following insight from a Charlie Rose interview with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg:

Facebook COO Sandberg talked about the power of relationship-based networks, contrasting "the wisdom of crowds to the wisdom of friends ( Read more... )

It is a classic trope of science fiction that In the Future, We Will Have Numbers Instead Of Names.

In almost every instance of this trope more recent than Ralph 124C 41+, this is a sure sign that you live in a dystopia. It suggests a world in which human concerns are devalued, and society itself is engineered to make it easier for a large, ( Read more... )

Conspiracy rants are often amusing.

Conspiracy rants that cite Mage: the Ascension as factual material are Comedy Gold.

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Several years ago, I discovered a company that was making industrial diamonds out of cremated human remains, to serve as memorials.

I then posted a discussion about the necromantic implications thereof.

In the intervening years, it seems that multiple companies have cropped up to perform the same service -- for petsAs far as I can tell, while ( Read more... )

You know, for years, I've referred to "the inverse of Clarke's Third Law" when discussing fantasy literature, but I never really quite hit upon an elegant way to phrase it.

Thank you, Phil and Kaja Foglio:

"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!"

This made me happy.

(...I also really want to play in that game setting.)

In response to my post about " throwing the moneylenders out of the temple", toob asked:

I suppose a comment on how perverse it is what we consider a "temple" nowadays would not be out of order?Generally, I confess, I have little patience for rosy-hued visions of the "Good Old Days". However... I would argue, to the contrary, that it is perverse that ( Read more... )

Archaeologists Find Mayan Hell; Provide Plot of Mummy IV

It's like some kind of pulp adventure tale: deep in the Yucatan jungles, there's a flooded cave complex that the Mayans believed was the entrance to the Afterlife, Xibalba. Scuba divers have, slowly and carefully, explored the caverns and found vast, air-filled chambers filled with temples. ( Read more... )