Things you don't need to know...

Ah, but do you look like Maria Shriver? :)
 
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dattaswami is back.

pibbur who in a sequence of incarnations has been here for quite a long time
 
pibbur who (no) thanks to dart found one thing where he was wrong. And who remember one episode in 1980. BUT APART FROM THAT …..

I admit that I expected at least some of you would inquire about my mistake in 1980. Nobody did, so I guess you don't want to know this. No surprise then that I post the details here.

In 1980 I had my final exams in surgery at med school. For my oral test I got a patient suffering from prostatic cancer. The examiner asked my about surgical treatment for the disease, and of the side effects of the procedure. After elaborating on this for a while, the examiner interrupted me and said: "From where do you have this information". Which wasn't very encouraging, and it resulted in my lowest grade on any test during my 6 years of studying medicine. However, on my written test I got the best result of my class. I think the average of these two tests represented what I actually knew about surgery.

pibbur who got his best results in ophtalmology (diseases of the eye) and psychiatry, but who regrettably did not specialize in any of those subjects. Eye diseases were fun (admittedly not for the patients).
 
You don't need to know that one Ichtyosaur was called Ophtamlosaurus for having extraordinarily big eyes (perhaps he was a hunter of the great depths ?).
 
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According to Wikipedia there are 6000 spoken languages.
According to Answers.com there are 6000 programming languages.

pibbur who says hello to the world.
 
You don't need to know that one Ichtyosaur was called Ophtamlosaurus for having extraordinarily big eyes (perhaps he was a hunter of the great depths ?).

Or he was extremely myopic. With possble detached retinas. If so he could not see much. No surprise he's extinct. Like the dinosaurs.

pibbur who prefers to be extant and kicking.
 
The Thapsia is a genus of plants belonging to the Apiaceae family. They're commonly known as the deadly carrots and are one of the few groups of deadly living things that don't inhabit Australia. Yet.

Anyhow, here's how to defend yourself if you find yourself threatened by one of them.

pibbur who is a bit puzzled that there appears to be no metal band calling themselves Deadly Carrots.
 
In his new book "Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years", linguist Geoffrey Nunberg traces the origin of the insult "asshole" to the soldiers of World War II where it was used for abusive and self important officers. After the war the term spread to "movement radicals" (which pibbur doesn't know what is), and, by the 1970s, to everyday discourse as a replacement for "heel" and "cad" (which pibbur doesn't know what is either, in this particular context). Nunberg argues that the use of the term generates a sense of solidarity among those who are not assholes themselve (so called anti-assholes).

Book is available from Amazon for £15.29. Pibbur wants it for christmas.

pibbur who observes that the author suggests there are more assholes on the right wing of American politics than the left, but decides not to mention that in this forum. And who claims that since "asshole" is an english word there are more assholes in the US than in Norway (which otoh has more "rævholl"). And who is sorry for all the swearing in this post.
 
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And who claims that since "asshole" is an english word there are more assholes in the US than in Norway (which otoh has more "rævholl").

Since you can't have more assholes than people, or rather not often by many and only then in areas neighboring industrial chemical factories and nuclear test sites, countries with a larger population obviously have at least a higher potential total number of assholes. Going by this the US ranks quite high among potential asshole repositories as the third most population nation - though its total asshole potential is roughly only a quarter that of China or India.

If the observations made about about big cities by those who have never actually visited one are to be considered infailible and accurate, then one might presume that the relationship might even asymptotically increase towards a 1:1 ratio with total population for higher populations and density. Since every person who I have ever heard comment on that particular nature of big city folk has done so as though it were unassailable fact, I would hesitate to doubt them lest they presume I were just such an asshole.

I'd say by sheer weight of numbers and because correlation between quantity of people and number of assholes is more or less a direct one that it would stand to reason China and India may very well have the rest of the world beat on this one. If my neighbors are correct in their observationless observations regarding large populations, I would surely expect the export of waste-treatment systems to China and/or India to be a booming business opportunity.

My neighbor, a grackle-toothed young gent by the name of Shemp, provided a more elegant hypothesis:
People are all assholes and everyone's shit stinks
Given that he said that, perhaps I shouldn't actually be surprised if I AM knifed a few times next time I'm in NYC. Either that or something about dumb people inevitably saying smart things and vice versa.
 
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Yes, several years ago there was such a case in the press here - a young boy transferred from a country where the poor parents couldn't afford healing him. It could have meant his death. But everything worked out fine and he could go back to his parents again. From time to time thre are similar reports in the press here, like a young girl which has had malformed legs, but can now walk again, because they were using a new method to correct her lgs so far that she could at least walk again (she'll never be able to walk like a healthy human, but at least she'll be able to walk at all ... ) ...
 
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Yes, several years ago there was such a case in the press here - a young boy transferred from a country where the poor parents couldn't afford healing him. It could have meant his death. But everything worked out fine and he could go back to his parents again. From time to time thre are similar reports in the press here, like a young girl which has had malformed legs, but can now walk again, because they were using a new method to correct her lgs so far that she could at least walk again (she'll never be able to walk like a healthy human, but at least she'll be able to walk at all … ) …

Considering the drastic advancement of bionic replacement limbs, I wonder how doctors will deal with patients in similar conditions who might be able to argue they'd get better results with amputation than corrective surgery. While hip replacements have become somewhat routine to many doctors, it seems like this is something that would be seen as a bit ghoulish - perhaps recalling gruesome earlier times in the history of surgery.

Of course I don't think doctors will have people with limb deformation (but not life-treatening conditions or traumatic damage) asking to have their old leg chopped off and replaced with the newest iWalk just quite yet. Yes, it's called the iWalk and I too would be terrified to ever have to update the firmware on mine if I had one. Looking at the newest replacement arms actually give sensory feedback, it might not be that far off that a bionic replacement will offer advantages over not just corrective surgery but even to your own healthy original parts.
 
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Cyborgs are approaching rapidly. "Human Revolution" ?
 
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in 1971, Alex Johnson said he would prefer "playing in hell" than remaining with the Californian angels. Unless indians from Cleveland or rangers from Texas, yankees from NY or tigers of Detroit are devils, the first part of his wish remains unfulfilled. Probably. One Alex Johnson was also bishop in chrurch of Norway. He's probably not "our" AJ, as the bishop died in 1989, while AJ the baseball player, whether in hell or not, is still alive and but not hitting anymore.

pibbur who in general avoids tigers, no matter where they come from. Unless they're about the size of the common house cat.
 
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