BellGab.com Archive

Here's one, to start things off:  Which is harder to imagine ... A finite universe, or an infinite one?  Think about it.

Some examples .....

The 2016 Election: silly

Star Wars The Force Awakens: watchable

Taco Bell quesaritos: cheesalicious

I say 1975.  The Stones, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Who, Steely Dan, Yes ... all were friggin' great right then.  I'd go back and see a different show every nite for the whole year.  (But I might choose '74 since Dylan had his comeback tour that year.)

I've been listening to podcasts on my headphones alot more, and invariably some stream will blow out my eardrums.

Is there some way on windows, either at the system level, or via software, to put a HARD LIMIT on the system volume, i.e. which says "No matter what any other setting says don't EVER play any sound over X decibels?"

Anyone know a Windows mp3 player that automatically remembers which track was last playing in a playlist, and the position within that track when the program exits?

I have tried this in VLC and VSO and have not been able to get it working.  When I reopen the player I just want it to go right to the last track & position where I left off.

If you're like me, and prefer old-school html tags to this newfangled wysiwig witchcraft, you can revert to the olden ways of writing posts by going to your Profile, Look and Layout, and unchecking "Show WYSIWYG editor on post page by default".  Now you can control your own tags again, like a boss.

Seems like all the paranormal baddies I hear about on c2c are male:  Mothman, Bogeyman, Hatman, Slenderman, Grassman, Men in Black, etc. ... Where are the Banshees, the Sea Hags, the Succubus, the Sirens .... the She-squatches? 

I just realized this is an important issue.  I'm talking all-time shows, not just current ones, but these are what come to mind at the moment:

Curse of Oak Island
Mountain Monsters
Mystery Science Theater 3000
Walker, Texas Ranger
Party Down South (1 or 2)
T.J. Hooker
Iron Chef (the original!)
(any movie channel showing martial arts flicks from the 70's-80's and/or Godzilla movies)

Ok so I'm a little late to the party, but having caught a few of these recently, I can't stop watching it.  This show is so idiotic that I just can't help myself.

I'm all for a little crypto-creature huntin', but these backwoods geniuses going out looking for the Wampus Beast, the Snallygaster, and my fave Sheepsquatch are friggin hilarious.  They're somehow always encountering exactly the beast they're looking for, but despite waving their guns around, driving around in their golf cart hootin' and hollerin', and laying all these brilliant traps, those wily beasts always just manage to elude them and escape leaving nothing but a few blurry infrared night-vision images as proof. 

I'm gonna get myself a bottle of the closest thing to moonshine I can find and watch the whole friggin season next time there's a marathon.  I gotta believe that, like their visionary team leader "Trapper" says, "We're gonna get that son of a bitch this time!" 

I was always intrigued by the mystery of Oak Island, ever since I first came across it as a kid - I believe it was on In Search Of.  This show on History Channel is pretty dorky with the two brothers looking to solve the island's secrets, and looks obviously staged. 

Just wondering if you guys think anything on it is legit, or is it just an excuse to come up with new wild speculations and dead-end discoveries each week to keep people coming back.  The whole thing has an Ancient Aliens ring to it, which does not bode well.

Go ahead, get 'em out of your system.  These are not necessarily bad movies, but overrated.  Critics, friends, awards shows all rave about them, but for you, they just didn't meet expectations - and all the hype mystified you. 

These just came to me now, I know I have more:  Gravity, Argo, American Hustle, The Hangover, Little Miss Sunshine, The Descendants, Silver Linings Playbook.

I've been on SU for so long.  It used to be so great, with that cool blue-green logo and it's simple all-in-one checkbox category page that you could update in like a minute.  One of the most fun, most useful sites for exploring the net.

Then the dreaded redesign happened, what like a year or two ago?  They replaced the logo with that ugly red one, and replaced the simple category-picker with that dreadful, slow, eyesore with all the graphics and silly colors and dumb descriptions (Really, if the category is Achaeology do I really need a huge picture of the friggin Sphinx with a cutesy little quip "Do you dig archaeology? Marvel at Roman artificts and more!").  And I swear one night I tried updating all my topics and it literally took like a half hour and I still wasn't sure what I'd selected and my eyes had gone blurry from all the graphics overload at that point.

But on top of all that, now you've just gone too far with those paid sites that you're sneaking into my stumbles like every 10 clicks.  Lately you're force feeding me over and over this site called "Makers" which is some hardcore feminist site.  Dude I lived in San. Fran. and Berkeley for like 15 yrs, trust me I've heard it all and do not need that shoved at me when I'm just trying to Stumble my harmless little sci-fi category or whatnot.

So from now on ... FU, SU!

I love odd places.  So here's a thread for them.  Post 'em if you got 'em.

To get us started ...

http://www.dirjournal.com/info/most-dangerous-bridges-in-the-world-rope-hanging-bridges/

Eating contests.

Commercials with talking babies/animals.

Politicians who answer a question with "More research is needed."

Previews for tv shows (Coming up next! ...)

The Lifetime Channel.

Any variation of the martini which does not contain gin and/or contains anything sweet.

The "size matters" double entendre.

"Young Country" music.

Frozen pre-made hamburgers.

Superhero movies (except Batman & Spiderman).

Automated customer service menus (Our menu has changed!...)

Olympic ice curling.

Females dancing together in clubs in the defensive "wagon circle" formation.

The phrase "It is what it is".

Cigars, unless you work on Wall Street and simultaneously wear a top hat and a monacle when you smoke them.

LARP (Live Action Role-Playing games).

Any tax code that can't fit on one page.

Sci-fi movies where explosions happen inside the ship, but the hull is never breached.

Squirrel stew.

Ok, I admit it's pretty cheesy, but I'm hooked on "The Last Ship".  There's some silly dialogue with a side serving of melodrama, but it's got some good mindless action and I only have to use about 5% brain power to follow it. 

Which means I can simultaneously catch up on bellgab and/or compose Noory haikus without missing much.  So fess up, what's yours?

Ok Discovery Channel's out with another so-called "documentary".  This one is "Megalodon: The New Evidence".  I'll admit I got pulled in by the Yeti / Dyatlov Pass show - which almost seemed plausible.  And my mom is still convinced that the Mermaids one was real. 

But this Megalodon thing is just so friggin' staged it's obvious.  Wasn't Discovery once a legitimate science channel?  How can they air this stuff?

http://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/2014/08/9.htm#.U-sGeO8d2uk

Blue cheese dressing & black pepper.

Also, cinnamon on espresso drinks.

Just try and beat those.  I dare you.

I've seen where some people can post animated gif's.  I always get an error. 

I need to know how to do it as I have an important gif of ice cream sandwiches being made that I must post asap. 

Is there such a thing as a bedside/tabletop mp3 player that can play files off an SD card or the like?  I'm looking for something very simple for an older, techno-phobic family member, which would be a kind of "Art Bell Box".  I basically just want to load it with a bunch of my AB files, plug it into a wall outlet, and tell her to press Play/Stop. 

She's not going to want to deal with ipods or USB cables or computers or complicated menus and the like.  I looked all around but it seems everything is about portability (i.e. batteries/headphones/bluetooth/docking stations etc.) but I want something more retro like an old-school cassette player.

Anyone see the Animal Planet show called "Russian Yeti: the Killer Lives"?  I've been curious about the Dyatlov Pass incident for a long time so this show which makes the case it was a Yeti attack caught my attention.

I don't know what to make of it.  Some of it seems legit, but some seems to have a contrived "reality show" air to it.  And the lame sensationalistic dramatizations do not give one confidence. 

However I'm still curious about some of the evidence they show which I didn't know before like the secret Russian program to find the Yeti which was oddly cancelled the same month as the Dyatlov hikers incident, and also the purported newly released photo by one of the hikers of a possible Yeti stalking them.

What do you guys think?

Maybe they're good books but were just too long, or complicated, or dense, or weird.  Here's mine:

Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Dhalgren - Samuel Delany
The Silmarillion - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Waves - Virginia Woolf
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas Hofstadter

Anyone know how to block these new kind of popups that are showing up more and more?  My standard popup blockers don't work for these.  I think they may be some kind of javascript, but if so, disabling javascript completely doesn't seem practical anymore. 

They're annoying because they're often modal and force you to click on the X to get rid of them.  Sometimes they're delayed and popup when you're halfway through reading an article.  They seem to be showing up everywhere now.

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I've realized that the reason I keep turning into c2c is just old habit, since I know it's gonna be on at my preferred listening time every night and I can just lazily flip on the radio to find it.  Dinner is done, dog is walked, and scotch poured on the rocks has just reached that perfect slightly melted state for sipping.

So what I need is a go-to podcast/streaming schedule for preferably live shows that start at that nice 10pm Pacific hour.  But I'm confused and ignorant of all the various offerings out there and wonder if anyone has any suggestions.

Thanks for any help in my efforts to de-Nooryize my life.

I was gonna get the tuna on sourdough, but he insisted I try the mortadella special on whole wheat.  Was a good choice.

Anyone else have a similar experience?

These may have been posted before but I didn't see them.  I've been enjoying them both.

Michio Kaku's show Exploration:
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/show/complete/51

Big Picture Science from SETI Institute (Seth Shostak and others):
http://www.bigpicturescience.org/episodes

West coast live feed at 7pm is often just not clicking for me.  Can't get into the "midnight in the desert" mood that early, and I have to break in the middle to make dinner, etc.  Also I like to have a nice brandy or such along with the show, and I don't usually hit that till after ten.  Would prefer to listen live but guess I'll have to try out the refeed at 11pm.  Hope there are some nite owls out there doing the same, and posting to the DM show threads too, since they've been fun to follow along with sometimes.