[ggwhiz]

Cyberyeti, on 2013-March-12, 09:42, said:

(hence natural selection is in their favour).

You meant flavour

[mike777]

Now I feel old


I understand everyone on planes wear yoga pants

Yoga pants are see through

I have no idea what the heck these pants are


http://news.yahoo.co...-184931614.html

[Thiros]

I think it is time to wish Happy Birthday to our thread lord Aberlour10.

[Aberlour10]

Nice. Thanks

No champagne in this thread. A glas of bacon flavored vodka for all hijackers, cheers!

[jjbrr]

Happy birthday, Aberlour!

[jjbrr]

Happy birthday, ArtK!

[y66]

Random guest post on the topic of color sensitivity by Jon Bowen:

Quote

On Dec. 16, 1997, at exactly 6:50 p.m., 685 people in Japan, most of them children, simultaneously suffered epileptic seizures. When doctors around the country began looking into the cause of the outbreak, a surprising culprit emerged: Every one of the seizure victims, at the fateful hour, was watching the TV cartoon “Pocket Monsters.”

Since 1997 we’ve known that “Pocket Monsters” caused the seizures. Now we know why. Japanese researchers have found evidence that the seizures were provoked by rapid changes of blue and red in the cartoon’s color, and with this discovery, they believe they may have pinpointed a new type of epilepsy related to color sensitivity. Their report is published in the June issue of the journal Annals of Neurology.

Flickering lights — strobe lights, for example — can trigger epileptic seizures. Patients who experience such seizures are said to suffer from “photosensitive epilepsy.” Rapid shifting between light and dark causes nerve cells in the brain to fire electrical impulses more rapidly than usual. In people with photosensitive epilepsy, the resulting havoc in the brain can lead to muscular convulsions or blackouts.

Something similar happened to the “Pocket Monsters” watchers. Dr. Shozo Tobimatsu, along with colleagues in the neurology department at Kyushu University in Japan, studied four boys who had suffered seizures during the cartoon. Like most of the other victims, they had never suffered from epilepsy prior to the “Pocket Monsters” episode, although two of the boys had a family history of epilepsy.

The researchers measured EEG responses as the boys watched the cartoon — first in black and white, then color. Only two of the boys showed sensitivity to the black and white version, but all four boys experienced abnormal, epilepsy-like brain trouble when exposed to the color version. After further testing, Tobimatsu concluded that rapid color changes between blue and red in the cartoon were most significant in triggering the seizures.

In Britain in 1993, three viewers experienced seizures while watching a cartoon called “Pot Noodles.” A 1998 report on those color-induced seizures revealed a sensitivity to rapid color changes similar to that experienced by the “Pocket Monsters” watchers. Based on the findings of both reports, the Japanese team is proposing a new subcategory of photosensitive epilepsy called “chromatic sensitive epilepsy.”

Tobimatsu says, “Fortunately, this tragedy was only reported in Japan. The research committee of the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare estimated that about 10 percent of children have had visual symptoms or seizures,” resulting from photosensitive epilepsy.

“Pocket Monsters” was yanked from Japanese TV after the seizure epidemic, but now it’s back on the airwaves — after editors ditched the offending episode and winnowed out all strobing segments from other episodes. The show now runs in syndication in the United States, too, on stations that carry children’s programming. No further problems have been reported.

But it may not be the last time this kind of problem pops up. So should TV animators be held accountable for the health effects of their creations? “Sure, they need some regulations on TV animations,” Tobimatsu says. “Before this episode, only the U.K. [had] such guidelines. Since this episode, Japanese TV companies have also prohibited the use of rapid color changes in the animation.”

Cartoons aren’t the only potential offenders, though. In 1991, American Dianne Neale suffered seizures when listening to the voice of “Entertainment Tonight” co-host Mary Hart. Neale suffered from a rare form of epilepsy called temporal lobe seizure, and the mere sound of Hart’s electronically transmitted voice triggered abnormal discharges in her brain.

Sometimes, the only clue that a person is having a seizure is extreme confusion and posting stuff like this.

[Aberlour10]

Wow! revolutionary changes in the ACBL system restriction policy come soon. The Competition and Conventions Committee sent a proposal to the Board of Directors to tear down all these restrictions walls in the system policy. All systems and conventions will be allowed, starting at the ACBL Fall Nationals 2013. One of the ACBL officials has been quoted with following words:" This is a free country, you can play what do you want!!!!

[ArtK78]

Aberlour10, on 2013-April-01, 04:07, said:

Wow! revolutionary changes in the ACBL system restriction policy come soon. The Competition and Conventions Committee sent a proposal to the Board of Directors to tear down all these restrictions walls in the system policy. All systems and conventions will be allowed, starting at the ACBL Fall Nationals 2013. One of the ACBL officials has been quoted with following words:" This is a free country, you can play what do you want!!!!

April fool???

[ArtK78]

jjbrr, on 2013-March-21, 08:22, said:

Happy birthday, ArtK!

Just saw this. Thanks!

[Aberlour10]

ArtK78, on 2013-April-01, 05:38, said:

April fool???

If a list with "The things that will never happen in North America" would really exist, this one would be surely in the top5 heh

[ArtK78]

Aberlour10, on 2013-April-02, 08:57, said:

If a list with "The things that will never happen in North America" would really exist, this one would be surely in the top5 heh

Funny thing is there was a period of time when there was an "anything goes" policy in the ACBL. I don't remember exactly when that was, but it was probably around the time that my partner and I won our first regional pair championship in 1978 playing the original ROMEX system in full. I know that we played the Dynamic Notrump and original Mexican 2♦ along with all of the other aspects of the original ROMEX system. I got a comment by phone from the Tournament Chairman several weeks later, but he did not say that there was anything wrong with what we did - just that there had been some comments about our system and he was following up. Nothing more was ever said.

I know there are not a lot of regular posters who were active tournament players back in the late 70's and early 80's. But if you are one of us, do you have a recollection of that period of time that matches mine?

[blackshoe]

I don't know how long the Dynamic NT and the Mexican 2♦ have been GCC legal (and I do know that the latter has changed at least slightly in what it covers and greatly in the follow ups over the years, the follow ups having changed several times). What I do know is that they are both GCC legal now, and have been since I've been aware of the GCC (the last fifteen years, at least).

Of course, there's a difficulty with the Dynamic NT around here - the club owners have basically said "no, you can't play it" in spite of it being GCC legal.

[Cyberyeti]

blackshoe, on 2013-April-03, 14:58, said:

I don't know how long the Dynamic NT and the Mexican 2♦ have been GCC legal (and I do know that the latter has changed at least slightly in what it covers and greatly in the follow ups over the years, the follow ups having changed several times). What I do know is that they are both GCC legal now, and have been since I've been aware of the GCC (the last fifteen years, at least).

Of course, there's a difficulty with the Dynamic NT around here - the club owners have basically said "no, you can't play it" in spite of it being GCC legal.

A big unbalanced 1N has been allowed in the UK for many years. I thought the problem of clubs barring systems was confined to the UK. I devised something designed to push the licensing regs as far as they would go 15 years back, and it was banned at one club without it ever being played there. (1♣/♦ both ♣/♦/bal, big unbalanced 1N, lots of canape etc).

[y66]

Camas Davis, the founder of the Portland Meat Collective, with some of the high-school students and teachers in her butchery class.

Story by Marnie Hanel. Photo by Holly Andres.

[y66]

Robin Williams recalls the lessons of Jonathan Winters

[y66]

From John le Carré Has Not Mellowed With Age by Dwight Garner

Quote

On a recent Saturday morning in February, two dozen or so scent hounds streamed through the streets of St. Buryan, a small village in Cornwall, England. Behind them drifted a loose formation of men and women perched atop well-groomed horses and wearing boots, breeches and hunting coats. As the fox hunt clopped through town, John le Carré, the pre-eminent spy writer of the 20th century, sipped from a paper cup of warm whiskey punch, doled out by a local pub to riders and spectators.

At 81, he remains an enviable specimen of humanity: tall, patrician, cleanlimbed, ruddy-complected. His white hair is floppy and well cut, so much so that the actor Ralph Fiennes, who starred in the 2005 film version of le Carré’s novel “The Constant Gardener,” badgered him for the name of his barber.

Le Carré is not a hunter himself, but he nodded at the people he knew and mounted a casual and running defense of fox hunting, as if he were doing color commentary from the 18th hole at the Masters. It’s an ancient part of the rural culture, he said. It’s egalitarian in this area (some 300 miles west-southwest of London), not an upper-class diversion. It’s also largely futile: an actual fox is rarely cornered. When one is, a trained eagle owl is brought in to kill it.

As the final horse strode past, le Carré swallowed the dregs of his punch and crumpled his cup. His eyebrows, so thatchy and animated that they seem ready to leap off his forehead and start nibbling the shrubbery, rose as he turned toward me, his blue eyes alight, and happily declared, “At least they aren’t hunting that poor ***** thing with drones.”

[kenberg]

In reference to fox hunting:

Quote

. It’s also largely futile: an actual fox is rarely cornered.

I used to read Pogo, a comic strip featuring animals with human characteristics and problems. Bun Rabbit is lamenting his difficulty in finding work and one of the others, I think Albert Alligator, suggests:

AA:
"I understand that there is an opening down at the track where the hounds chase the hares. The hounds scarcely ever catch the hare".

BR:
"That 'scarcely ever' has an alarming sound of frequency to it".

[gwnn]

The fans of Rapid Vienna are unhappy with the club's management so they built this in front of the club offices:

http://images05.kuri...x300/10.650.611

[Aberlour10]

gwnn, on 2013-April-29, 03:00, said:

The fans of Rapid Vienna are unhappy with the club's management so they built this in front of the club offices:

http://images05.kuri...x300/10.650.611

German fans are very happy with the most exciting football week ever. FC Bayern and Dortmund destroyed both Real & Barca in the CL.
FC Bayern try to destroy Dortmunds power by buying their two world class players.....and the supreme morilizer of the republic the Bayern Boss stands with one leg in the jail due to his tax affair.