In 1981 I bought a 1963 Rambler Classic for either $200 or $400. I paid the Earl Sheib on Arden Way $59.99 to paint it the turquoise-green-aqua-blue that the far right side of the rectangle above calls /blue/. That was the most beautiful car I ever had, but not the coolest-looking, which would be the car I have now: a 2004 Prius, original silver-gray everywhere but primer-black front fenders and bumper from CarParts.com. It looks like a little spaceship. It looks like a genius high-school kid's science-fiction car that he bought from the neighbor for in trade for mowing the lawn, built flight into and experiments with it in the desert, being spied on by the CIA with binoculars, from a mountain, where they're about to make the bad decision to go down and capture him, triggering his casual /bye, fellas!/ literal flight to a secret cavern stocked with food and water and further experiments; he suspected the spying and planned for this. It looks like a plucky underdog robot Mexican race car. But imagine a turquoise-green-aqua-blue 1937 Talbot-Lago T-150 teardrop coupe, converted to electric. That wouldn't have to fly. It would win in all the art and design and coolness categories, with or without a winged chrome eyeball for a hood ornament.
For me, it's /cheers/ at the end of a comment or opinion post. I just hate it. Logically it can't always be childish and sneery and wannabe bullying, but that's the way it sounds in my head. Also, it bugs me when a writer, and usually this is a fellow old person, leaves out the word /I/ at the beginning of a paragraph. As in, "Went to the store for milk," or "Took a stroll past the eyesore in question," or "Never heard of such a thing!" or "Will check it out." Not "We'll check it out," which would be fine, even the royal /we/. But "Will check it out." Ugh.
People who use their powers to enrich themselves are not superheroes but supervillains. The writer mentioned /Heroes/ but seems to have missed a major point made there, where Hiro grasps this principle. Hiro's use of his power to control time to gain money, not to do good but simply for money's sake, results in a frightening lesson, which he learns. He won't do it again.
The liver excretes bile. If you've got little livers all over the place, where does the bile that comes out of them go? Back into the blood the liver filtered the toxins out of in the first place?
Of /course/ a clairvoyant or spoon-bender or spirit medium or faith healer or astrologist or time-traveler feels a test is unfair by being designed to make it impossible for him to cheat. If there's truth to a claim, then it will survive magic-trick-exposing testing. And I say this as a huge fan of charismatic bullshit artists. Maybe they're crazy, maybe they're not, maybe they're fooling even themselves, but they're entertaining, and that's okay. Until their magic power is unambiguously validated by real testing, entertainment is all it is.
Can't the mystery mass be the "mass" of all the light going between everything that ever generated light and everywhere the light is all still on its way to? If all those photons since the beginning, that are still out there, or are freshly out there, having not collided with anything yet, were condensed into matter, would its mass equal the amount they're saying the dark matter must be? And it would make sense that it seems associated with galaxies, which are fresh sources of light.
I always spell no one no-one and pronounce gala guh-LAH, vegan VEJ-un, and renaissance re-NAY-senss (renascence) because that's the way they should be. I've worried that it might be a red flag clue in a robbery or ransom note or call, but then of course I'll spell and say everything the wrong but normal way during a crime and get away with it, in case the need ever comes up. There's a science fiction story from the early 1960s where an energetic brilliant exotic immigrant man earns his place in the U.S. space service but is kept from high-profile missions. Somehow he replaces the astronaut meant to go to, I think, Pluto, and he gives away who he is in a radio interchange by his pronunciation of the number six. He says, "Nine, eight, seven, sikkis... The flight director grasps this, but too late to stop the launch. The rocket is away and the man gets his chance.
My favorite is where Tracy, retreating from the ship's bridge after being shot, in /The Message/ episode of /Firefly/, shouts, "Gorrammit, Mal!" Which is meant to be Chinese for /God dammit, Mal!/ The subtitle track on the DVD says, "You're a rabbit, Mal." Also, of course, there's the famous, "You see what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps, Larry! You see what happens when you feed a stoner scrambled eggs!" in /The Big Lebowsky/.
Also, it bugs me when a writer, and usually this is a fellow old person, leaves out the word /I/ at the beginning of a paragraph. As in, "Went to the store for milk," or "Took a stroll past the eyesore in question," or "Never heard of such a thing!" or "Will check it out." Not "We'll check it out," which would be fine, even the royal /we/. But "Will check it out." Ugh.
There's a science fiction story from the early 1960s where an energetic brilliant exotic immigrant man earns his place in the U.S. space service but is kept from high-profile missions. Somehow he replaces the astronaut meant to go to, I think, Pluto, and he gives away who he is in a radio interchange by his pronunciation of the number six. He says, "Nine, eight, seven, sikkis... The flight director grasps this, but too late to stop the launch. The rocket is away and the man gets his chance.
Also, of course, there's the famous, "You see what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps, Larry! You see what happens when you feed a stoner scrambled eggs!" in /The Big Lebowsky/.