OMG Teacher! We are NOT sending you to China!!
Thanks Tom. Iâll write myself a note.Thatâs the only way Iâll remember. Just too much stuff going on.
Yoink!
I suppose, if Iâm going to do this right, I should probably tell you all what really happened.
Some of you may be familiar with a certain goddess who likes to hang out at forums and tell stories, no? You can probably see where this is going.
Maybe this is just nostalgia speaking, but the Greeks had the best forums. The didnât call it that at the time, of course; it was an âagoraâ⌠but it was the same thing.
So, historians have been debating for ages who Homer was and whether he even existed⌠and with good reason. But why is he so mysterious?
Anyone? ⌠Anyone? ⌠Bueller?
Thatâs right â because I made him up. Well, sort of. I did actually get a conspirator to help out with an occasional appearance in the forum, to lend credibility, but he wasnât a blind poet, he was just a guy who appreciated a good joke. Heâd pretend to be blind and recite the scripts I made for him, and then weâd LOL over drinks after the crowds left for the night.
Now, this was back in my early days, but I still consider it one of the best pranks of all time. See, one of the perks of living so long is the jokes. I canât even explain how hilarious things get when an inside joke keeps snowballing for centuries or millenia and still nobody sees the punchline. I mean, sure, itâs fun trolling people on the internet once in a while⌠but you really havenât lived until youâve trolled historians.
So I took a bunch of old myths and legends and a bit of recent news and wove them together into a big epic story with Homer at the center, told in a way which suggested I was just passing along what he told me, or passing along a story I had heard third-hand from another fan or a scholar. Iâd go out to entertain the people in the forums with this story, some of whom were gullible enough to take it seriously⌠and then they would go off and re-tell it back in their home towns. Theyâd even memorize it word for word to make sure they got it right.
And nobody suspected what I was doing, even after I started adding obvious hints like âSelene of Toy Helen of Troyâ. They all just assumed I was doing the same thing they were doing â sending information down the grape vine.
It wasnât until pretty recently that anyone of note started to seriously suspect that Homer himself was part of the myth, that the whole blind poet thing wasnât real, that his works were actually a story within a story. Nobody even had a concept of âmetaâ at the time.
And so it went on⌠and on⌠and it became history. After a while it really took on a life of its own. And I still giggle every time I check in on the historians, every time a teacher assigns a Serious Essay Due Next Monday on the meaning of Homerâs tales. And I cringe when they make movies about Helen, completely missing the point by actually showing her face. :person_facepalming:
But the historians are finally catching on, so I guess I can finally spoil the joke. And I must say⌠Good job guys! Maybe next time it wonât take you twenty-eight centuries.
As I said though, the fun part is in the incredulity, letting the audience decide. Douglas Adams understood this well:
He wasnât the only one though. Others also have sometimes appreciated this concept:
So, ask yourself⌠do you believe?
Aha! Suspected something was up when Pheidippides ran 42 kilometers, thanks for finally giving some clarity!
Oh, that one is actually not my fault⌠itâs just the universe expressing its sense of humor. But Iâm glad Douglas Adams picked up on it, so more people can appreciate the universeâs jokes.
* 101010, LOLOL
Not many people have noticed this, but old UNIX geeks and some of the folks who made the American Standard Code for Information Exchange (ASCII) also picked up on the universeâs humor and embedded it into the codes weâre using right now on the internet. See, 42 is the answer, right? To Life, the Universe, and Everything?
In ASCII, character 42 is the asterisk, * , also known as âstarâ or âsplatâ or âglobâ or âwildcardâ. It is typically used in UNIX and related systems to mean âeverythingâ. It will expand into whatever space is available, like how in Windows a *.* is used to match literally every file with a dot in it.
So they got in on the joke by representing the universeâs favorite pun as a star, defined to represent⌠Everything. And now the universeâs âLOLâ is permanently embedded into the very fabric of the internet.
But I canât take credit for this one. I just appreciate the joke.
MARK
List updated
OOps sorry did not answer this (so good to have to work through all posts when udating lists, 352 post checked just now and a shame I missed this before
It was answered though, but here goes:
When done, we will snd a personal message with link and code to use on Banggood.
Lol. 500 posts behind but decided to jump to the end, I have no idea what is going on. All I can say is nice banter and keep up the good work! :student:
Thanks RobâB. I just checked it out, minimum $36 worth of plants. Thatâs too expensive for an experiment. Not everything grows well up here in Maine with our short growing season. Iâll wait for the seeds and just grow habaneros this year.
OT: loads of hot pepper seeds avail on eBay. /OT
Do you know the energy unit the âmillielenâ?
Thatâs the energy required to launch one ship.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/millihelen
Itâs encouraging to see that the same kind of collaborative design effort happening here happens elsewhere around the net.
e.g. http://forums.marineinsight.com/forum/naval-architecture-ship-design
What you didnât read all?!?
Heheh I had no idea small parts like resistors and now springs could be so exciting, these discussion and education rampages have proven more exciting then blockbuster movies for me
Yes. Did I mention how we have a short growing season? They needed to be started in February to have a chance for this season. Next year I can plant seeds. If the plants hadnât been so darn expensive and I needed to buy a 6 pack I would have gone that route. If Tom doesnât want to send me a few seeds heâs under no obligation to.
Plan on making a nice small nursery
Or better, wanted to use the elevator since we donât use it except for heavy stuff and it is a nice 1*1*2,50 box in the center of house with its shoot and thick metal door and power available for the aquarium pump and heating and grow light
My wife wonât have it so we plan on making a relatively south facing part of the old side shed a small greenhouse.
About 5 meter long, 1,8m deep in a lot of sun when the trees have shed leaves.
For the citrus plants in winter and for me to make the nursery there
That roof needs work, beams need replacing so why not make it all glass the October job
But I agree seeds are too late now and it is cool to have seed from friends
But is this pepper not a hybrid F plant? Then seed might not work right.
I donât know. The hybrid thought did go through my mind. I know nothing about them. If it is a hybrid then the seeds will be useless.
Iâd like to put in raised beds that I can cover with a cloche (sp?) thatâll give me an additional month or so of growing season.
screw the girl, Iâm itchy for the light, Can I order the light please ?
But, seeds arenât âuselessâ, obviously, because places sell the seeds, including the website linked above. So, you should still be good.
David you are right chances are something useful will grow but buying the hybrid seeds ensures you get what you want and not a yellow sweet paprika or something in this case. Tom what else is growing in the same family?
Heheh