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10:00 PM
what do you mean by 'sweet spot'?
 
That sweet spot is simply outside the distance most American cities are to each other.
 
Distance?
 
well, but what if, in George magical fairy universe, they made trains that go on straight tracks at 300mph. wouldn't that sweet spot expand?
I know it's not possible. I know there's no money for it.
 
If you live, work, love, and die entirely in Manhattan, then you can spend your life on trains. Those of us who live in the actual world are not able to play your fantasy game.
 
10:01 PM
I think I can live in the real world and be in my fantasy train land.
 
And mind you, I have taken cross-country trains here in America.
 
so have I
 
It is not reasonable.
 
nope.
it's terrible, even.
 
@tchrist The article gives us little to no information that we didn't already have.
 
10:02 PM
but if they had their own tracks and went 300mph, it would be amazing.
 
It gives you actual numbers about why this does not work here. You seem to have ignored that.
 
you have the wrong impression man. I'm not sitting here trying to bother @tchrist. we're having a conversation, and that doesn't have to be 100% reality.
I can say what I wish for.
 
George mentioned some scenarios where he though trains might work, such as betwene Chicago and New York, or between certain Texan cities. Not coast to coast.
 
yes, this too.
 
Do you want to travel faster than light too?
 
10:03 PM
no, that would do strange things to my mass.
 
Wisconsin and Florida already cancelled accepting highspeed rail that the feds would pay for because of teaparty zealotry.
 
just under though, would be great.
 
A state cannot afford it.
 
and super futuristic.
 
The feds tried to step in.
 
10:04 PM
@tchrist It gives no background numbers, just prices and travel times in the current situation, which are widely known.
 
The governors vetoed this.
 
whatever then! so it'll never fucking happen!
great!
this, to me, sucks.
 
As for “socialism”, I am now over $50,000 in debt to the socialist government here.
And there is no way out of it.
 
@GeorgeCapote Perhaps in the intermediate to far future, it might change.
 
what on earth are you on about?
 
10:05 PM
You cannot declare bankruptcy against the government.
 
I think you're going nuts man.
 
I have no other purpose in life now than to pay off your socialist masters.
That just isn’t enough to keep me going.
 
yeah, nuts.
 
One best seller and you'll be out pal :-)
 
Sorry.
So do not tell me about how blessed communism is. It does not work.
 
10:06 PM
communism != socialism.
socialism works in many situations, given certain criteria.
 
Socialism is the principle that the more I work, the less you have to.
 
but who cares, that's nothing anyone was talking about you crazy man.
 
I reject that idea.
 
@GeorgeCapote He's just ranting, not reasonable.
Moderate socialism works very well.
 
God help you if you make a mistake in your 80-page tax returns.
 
10:07 PM
and it's not at all what he said it is.
 
Are you a political science major?
 
Because you are a dead man walking forevermore.
Ask the Raven.
 
you went to school in wisconsin the same time my friend's dad went. he knows of you.
hehe.
 
@tchrist How about if we changed the subject to the wildlife of Colorado.
What's the last wild animal you have seen?
 
Dead deer walking.
 
10:09 PM
Lol
 
or just back to languages and western europe (without trains or socialism involved)
 
Haha what, dead deer?
 
They gave our cervids Mad Moose Disease.
As an experiment.
 
Oh, dear.
"They"?
 
To see if it was tranmissible.
 
10:09 PM
big brother.
 
And it is.
 
Must be!
Poor deer!
 
And not only that, it got away from them and is now infecting our herds.
 
Isn't that a general health risk for everyone, including humans, to spread some disease?
 
It is not just deer. It is elk and moose too.
If you think a mad cow is the worst of all possible things, you have not danced with mooses.
 
10:10 PM
The population will eventually recover...
 
And yes, if you eat them, you will get their prion disease.
 
Mad cow disease?
 
I thought it was only contagious if you ate the meat.
And only certain kinds, like brain meat.
 
Again.
 
@skullpatrol Yes. Now Mad Deer Disease. Wisconsin and Colorado both.
 
10:11 PM
Or does that only apply to humans?
 
Colorado is only good for skiing vacations when you don't have time for Switzerland.
 
And people are actually dying of it now.
 
Aren't all mountains pretty much similar?
 
You said you didn't want to piss him off
 
> Two Denver residents died of CJD -- a cousin of mad-cow disease -- this year.
 
10:12 PM
That sucks. So how? They ate deer?
 
shuddana dun dat
 
that sounds extra scary.
 
I don’t understand how it is transmitted.
Deer are not cervivorous cannibals.
That was long ago. It has gotten much worse.
 
in Lounge<C++> on Stack Overflow Chat, 55 secs ago, by Rapptz
How do you accept a comment as an answer in SO ? Because in new interface of SO there is no OK check sign anymore near the comments. — Sonya Blade May 11 at 14:50
 
10:15 PM
I have an unstoppably hungry hind.
She wants my apples and my tomatoes.
She makes me mad.
And I don’t even eat her.
Every three year or so my apple tree goes nutzoid and produces a superbumper crop.
This brings in deer and bears.
I thought the deer at least I could keep out. But I was wrong, because they are jumping clean over the fence. The bears of course climb the rock walls.
 
@Cerberus I was just trying to piss off tchrist, @skullpatrol yes but I changed my mind for that one second.
 
The last wild animal I saw was undoubtedly my local locust, the mad doe.
 
Good idea :-)
 
the truth is, Colorado is great for skiing. I'd consider some places in it even better than anywhere I've been to ski in Switzerland.
 
@GeorgeCapote Haha you devil!
 
10:18 PM
I’m sure you would enjoy Utah.
 
Beaver Creek and Breckenridge for sure.
 
In fact, you should probably move to Utah.
 
Utah is okay. I've done Park City.
 
@tchrist Do you have bears in your garden regularly?
 
I'm moving back to Switzerland though.
 
10:19 PM
@tchrist Funny. How about...wire mesh around the tree?
 
as previously mentioned. they have good trains.
 
@JohanLarsson “Regularly” is hard to say. Based upon their scat, I would say that regularity is not their biggest trouble.
Oops, sorry, bad joke for a NNS. Apologies.
 
Eww.
 
> once per year | month | week?
 
I have bears in my garden maybe a couple of dozen times a year.
 
10:20 PM
It's just Greek.
 
per weekish
 
But I almost never see them, just their scat.
@JohanLarsson It’s utterly seasonal.
@Cerberus I see your NNS licence did not protect you.
 
I keep track of wild animal poop regularly too because I'm sane.
 
@Cerb I have not starred the fag one, just wantd you to know for some reason :)
 
If I have berries and applies, they are here a lot.
Or birdseed.
 
10:21 PM
Will mad deer pull Santa's sled?
 
In the winter, it’s always the birdseed.
Right now, it is the apples.
They can smell them from too far away.
 
@tchrist Once every two weeks? That's an excellent harvest. You probably have to give them away!
 
And lately I have been having this hawk glowering at my garden. It’s a Cooper’s Hawk, which is an accipiter, what we call an Old-World hawk here in the Brave New World.
 
Our bears hibernate in the winter.
 
@JohanLarsson I keep telling them that.
I’ve had birdfeeders ripped up right before Christmas. Shouldn’t they be sleeping for Christmas?
@Mitch A couple of years ago they figured out that Sunday night was garbage night. such a mess!
More than once I have come home to a squad blocking access to my street while the bears chowed on our garbage.
 
10:25 PM
@tchrist I'm sure many language have variations on scatologia...
@JohanLarsson Haha OK!
 
The thing with bears though is that we have a two-strike policy.
It is very sad, and you never want to call the cops on a bear with an ear tag.
Because that is a death warrant.
Now, if he is threatening your life, then it is fair and just to summon the death squad.
They just put up a new Moose Crossing sign on the road the Nederland.
 
Hmm.
 
This is scary.
Because there is no two-strike policy for moose!!
 
A defensive wall (or rampart) is a fortification used to protect a city or settlement from potential aggressors. In ancient to modern times, they were used to enclose settlements. Generally, these are referred to as city walls or town walls, although there were also walls, such as the Great Wall of China, Hadrian's Wall, and the metaphorical Atlantic Wall, which extended far beyond the borders of a city and were used to enclose regions or mark territorial boundaries. Beyond their defensive utility, many walls also had important symbolic functions – representing the status and independence of the...
 
If the moose comes back, they just ship him off again.
 
10:27 PM
One-boxing @Cerb?
 
I use it sparingly!
 
@Cerberus Do you have room in your flat for a spare moose or ten so that we can get rid of that sign?
 
What sign?
 
The new moose-crossing sign they just put up between Boulder and Nederland.
 
@tchrist I feel bad for them. They don't know our rules. "Look man the trash is just sitting there."
 
10:28 PM
@skullpatrol But I'll admit it is the wrong category: my intention was not really to provide information to one who asked for it.
 
I have this Europal who visited here once or twice. I explained to him that the deer-crossing signs were only put up in town once three fatalities had occurred at the point.
So then he pointed at the child-crossing sign and asked whether the same policy applied there or whether just one fatality would suffice.
 
But seriously, if your neighbourhood is troubled by wild animals so often, can't they put up a very high fence or unclimbable wall?
@tchrist Damn, another kid on my windshield. That means new wipers!
 
@tchrist ha ha clears throat uncomfortably
 
You aren’t using the right kind of wipers.
 
I hear some people have deer racks...
 
10:30 PM
You need those ones like the trains use to clear the buffaluppagous off the tracks.
@Cerberus Yes, but a deer rack ain’t big enough for a moose.
And I have no pickup.
 
Then maybe a fence.
 
@Cerberus I have a fence. Several of them.
I have seen the deer leap clear of it. I have seen the bears scramble up and over and down it.
 
I mean around the whole neighbourhood, a deer- and bear-safe fence.
If you make it high enough and smooth enough, it will stop them.
 
@Cerberus Then we could not see.
The new wipers might work though.
 
Well, if you place it far enough away so as not to block your view...
 
10:34 PM
 
Very convenient!
Especially against children and cyclists.
 
What happens if you have lights with motion detection?
 
Ah, good one.
 
@GeorgeCapote It is extremely unlikely but not quite impossible that anyone would remember me from my school days in Madison.
@JohanLarsson I do. Five of them. Plus a supergiant flood that I can trigger manually.
 
10:38 PM
I have only two problems with our cervido-locusts. One is that they complete with me for my own food, which doesn’t seem fair to me. The other is that they’re like having a lion-feeder hanging outside your home.
And no good ever came of that.
The song lies: the lion does not sleep at night.
The Cooper’s flew off with a big fox squirrel in his claws when I rounded the corner into the front garden once.
 
How about...a pet Cerberus?
 
And I have seen Golden Eagles take prairie dogs from the open space behind my house. I don’t know whether Yersina pestis is communicable to Aquilae.
@Cerberus Well, that would pester the deer, true enough.
 
Prairie dogs?? How large are those?
 
But dogs are too demanding for me, and my heart could not take their ephemerality.
 
@tchrist Or just any dog tied to the tree should deter the deer.
Yeah I'm not a dog person either.
 
10:42 PM
@Cerberus They are our second largest squirrel, exceeded in mass only by the marmots/mountainchucks/whistlepigs.
 
!!define ephemerality
 
Squirrel??
They're not hounds?
 
Golden Eagles seldom hunt hounds.
 
Wow, so they are rodents.
I had no idea.
 
Yes, prairie dogs are squirrels, while prairie wolves are coyotes.
 
10:43 PM
I thought they were like dingi.
 
@JohanLarsson fancy word
 
What did you think prairie-dog towns were?
 
@JohanLarsson Than you for providing yourself with that link.
@tchrist I do not know such towns.
 
Oh.
They are quite the political issue here.
Because when a housing subdivision moves in, they have to relocate the existing prairie-dog towns. They like to move them to highway cloverleaves.
 
10:46 PM
Yes, they are sciurids.
Which is a fancy word for squirrel.
Like bovid for bison.
By metathesis: squirrel > scuirrid > sciurid
At least, in Dog Latin.
Prairie-dog Latin, that would be.
The problem with the cloverleaves is that there are dead bodies on the pavement all the time, and it is very depressing.
I should find my picture of the great eagle carrying off the prairie puppy in his killer talons.
A “cloverleaf” is a kind of highway tied up in a bow.
I have pictures of prairie dogs climbing fences.
 
We have klaverbladeren.
So a prairie-dog town is like a colony of nests?
 
They tell you that a ground squirrel like a prairie dog or a marmot cannot climb. This is like Aristotle forgetting to count his wife’s teeth.
 
klöver
 
@Cerberus It’s a warren, yes.
 
Why move them to a place near the highway instead of somewhere in the wild?
 
10:50 PM
@Cerberus Because it is close by, I guess.
I don’t know why they do this.
 
@JohanLarsson Good. Is that also what they call the highway constructions?
 
Never heard it, 'trafikplats' is the only word for it I have heard. Kinda strange generic word for it.
 
Fyrklöver är en populär benämning på en speciell typ av trafikplats där två motorvägar korsar varandra. De av- och påfarter som då finns i anslutning till denna gör att trafikplatsen påminner om en fyrklöver till utseendet betraktad uppifrån. Det rör sig om en motorvägskorsning eller trafikplats där två motorvägar korsar, och det finns möjlighet att byta väg planskilt. Planskilt betyder att trafikflödena korsar varandra på broar och att inga vänstersvängar finns där man korsar mötande trafik....
 
10:52 PM
 
@Cerberus That’s a cloverleaf!
 
@tchrist Apparently, Google does not know the proper plural of the rather simple word blad.
Klaverbladen sounds...odd.
 
What gets me is why it offers me a Spanish traduction instead of an English translation!
 
I am so bored I am considering just going to bed.
 
Never!
Look how exiting, pictures of highways!
 
10:53 PM
@RegDwigнt How do you keep the deer from invading your tomatoes?
 
By not having a deer. Works like a charm.
 
@Cerberus does not look like Sweden, never been there at least.
 
@RegDwigнt Have you played the latest puzzle game yet? It's kind of fun, and very easy to get into. And levels are very short.
 
I need one of your charms.
 
@Cerberus that squares thing?
 
10:54 PM
@JohanLarsson But it has a Wiki article!
 
Yeah I played it at work till I got bored. Level 17, I think.
 
@RegDwigнt Yes, the squares that move in one direction?
Oo OK.
 
Now I'm at home and damn me if I'm playing it all over again.
 
Yeah, I quit around the same level.
 
On a second thought...
 
10:54 PM
Hehe.
I, too, lost my progress.
 
Also, its jokes got old fairly quick.
It should have no text.
 
Mutant clover!
 
Can you imagine Tetris cracking jokes in-between tiles?
@tchrist so many déjà-vus right now.
First the dinky train, and now the clovers.
I don't even remember in which context we discussed either.
I actually asked about the dinky trains, but don't remember what it was.
 
@RegDwigнt The jokes were elderly from the beginning, horrible.
 
The cloverleaf in Dallas where LBJ and Central have intersex is the worst. It requires benzodiazepines just to negotiate.
 
10:57 PM
And those clovers, I remember reading a whole Wikipedia article on them, cover to cover. It had like 15 types with images.
 
Looks like an amusement park.
 
Try to imagine having gone the wrong way on that one.
 
nice engineering though
 
10:57 PM
Because I certainly have done so.
 
Nightmare maintenance, though.
 
did you U-turn?
 
@JohanLarsson hehehehehheeh
 
Can you not U-turn just by using this damn thing?=
 
Yes and no and yes again: I drove a long ways until I took one of those funny uturn-only exits that has no stopping.
 
10:59 PM
I would pray to Google that it has mapped the thing correctly and turn on navigation. "Go right in 200m", etc.
 

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