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[The Merchant Of Menace]

I'll try and get a bowl across the Irish sea, gives me a use for the trebuchet I have out back.

[Simmura McCrea]

Grab some more counterweight, you're gonna need to get it clean across Scotland too.

[RedKing]

P.S. Also, just found out why Beryllium-8 is so unstable. That thing had been bothering me for days.

That's a pretty awesome non-sequitur. Please tell me explosions and/or gaining superpowers are involved.

[Aklyon]

Spoiler: Because "No Littering" is too blunt. (click to show/hide)

We could do with more metaphorical signs. Confusing people reading the signs is kinda funny.

[Sheb]

Not really, although I guess if you manage to get a big pile of Be-8, you'd get a nice explosion, but since the half-life is something like 10^-17 second, it's rather unlikely.

No, I was just studying my Inorganic Chemistry course, and couldn't get why Beryllium isn't more common, since it's an intermediate in the nucleosynthesis of abundant element like carbon and oxygen. I guessed it was unstable, but since it has both even number of proton and neutron, it should be somewhat stable. Turn out it ca split into two atoms of Helium-4, and since Helium-4 is really stable (It's a huge peak on the Stability/Atomic Mass graph), Be-8 just split. The only stable isotope is Be-9, but it's only produced by splitting heavier nuclei with cosmic rays, so it's pretty scarce.

Tl;Dr: I was wondering why and learning it made me happy.

[RedKing]

Spoiler: Because "No Littering" is too blunt. (click to show/hide)

We could do with more metaphorical signs. Confusing people reading the signs is kinda funny.

Because Chinese and Japanese place such a premium on politeness and context and indirectness, ALL the public service announcement-type signs are like this. Some favorite examples that I shot personally:

Spoiler: No climbing. (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: No littering. (with a suprisingly blunt sign at the bottom, even though the actual Chinese above is far more polite) (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Keep off the grass. (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Only you can prevent Great Wall fires. (click to show/hide)

[kaijyuu]

More signs need poignant messages like that. I'll actually read them, that way.

[RedKing]

More signs need poignant messages like that. I'll actually read them, that way.

Menus are frequently the same way. I still remember the first time I cracked one open (and as the only person with any Mandarin comprehension, I was assigned to order for the whole table). After several minutes of staring at one, somebody impatiently asked what the holdup was, and I answered, "You don't understand....it's like trying to order in haiku."

Because the dish names were things like "palace explodes the diced chicken", "stir the beef briskly", "sizzling cooks the meat on the iron", "dancing shrimp see the Buddha", etc. 

[Aqizzar]

"dancing shrimp see the Buddha", etc. 

Is there not something unseemly about eating animals that were having a religious experience?  Those poor shrimp were like one step away from ascending the mortal coil, and then bam stirfry.

[Rose]

Their bodies were only holding them back. They are in a better place now.

[RedKing]

Well, one could argue that they were embracing their inner shrimp-nature by becoming one with the snap peas.

That just reminded me that you also sometimes see "Buddha chicken", which is basically their version of Tofurky.

EDIT: Also? "Buddha Chicken" is a great name for an college alt-rock band.

[Aqizzar]

That just reminded me that you also sometimes see "Buddha chicken", which is basically their version of Tofurky.

EDIT: Also? "Buddha Chicken" is a great name for an college alt-rock band.

I could swear I seen that before even.  Is it just me, or there is a certain amount of... levity in Buddhism that you don't much find in other faiths?  I suppose it comes with having a laughing fat man as a divine figure.

[RedKing]

That just reminded me that you also sometimes see "Buddha chicken", which is basically their version of Tofurky.

EDIT: Also? "Buddha Chicken" is a great name for an college alt-rock band.

I could swear I seen that before even.  Is it just me, or there is a certain amount of... levity in Buddhism that you don't much find in other faiths?  I suppose it comes with having a laughing fat man as a divine figure.

Well, it's not evenly spread throughout the religion (there are, in fact, humorless Buddhist fundamentalists). But you have to love a religion that spawns aphorisms like "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him" and "The Buddha's body is a dry piece of shit" (both coming out of the Ch'an/Zen tradition). The gist of both was that the individual personage of Siddhartha Gautama was unimportant, it was the teachings that were important. And even the Buddha himself taught that his teachings were a raft. Once you get across the river, you leave the raft behind. (this being an admonition against adhering to dogma).


Totally unrelated happy: co-worker's birthday, so somebody spotted the bucks to go buy about 30 high-end designer cupcakes. These things are like a pound each, eight inches high, and have enough sugar and cream in them to power a generator. Sooooo good...I'm eating one that's covered in peanut butter mousse frosting with peanut-caramel drizzle and crusted with honey-roasted peanuts. I call it the "George Washington Carver Muthaf**kin' Special".

[Sirus]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Aqizzar]

Totally unrelated happy: co-worker's birthday, so somebody spotted the bucks to go buy about 30 high-end designer cupcakes. These things are like a pound each, eight inches high, and have enough sugar and cream in them to power a generator. Sooooo good...I'm eating one that's covered in peanut butter mousse frosting with peanut-caramel drizzle and crusted with honey-roasted peanuts. I call it the "George Washington Carver Muthaf**kin' Special".

Your next bowel movement is going to look like a gravel road.  Patent the name while you can.