fastortoise

definitely Kansas

Some tellers are just jerks. I was about to explode after this one teller kept denying me as I tried withdrawing money from my college fund account, asking for paper after papers after papers. Then one day she wasn't there and her replacement gave me the OK and wondered why I went through all the trouble trying to prove I was a full time student. I was like :angry: but then I was all :lol: because I had a wad of cash in my pocket.

Wow. that was an incredible final match. I don't think i'll be able to go back to watching the NHL after yesterday :ohnoes: As for ranking - I'm also getting tired of people debating the schematics. Canada won 14 gold medals on our own turf, that's enough to make me proud to be Canadian.

Nah, they changed the ranking rules. It used to be whoever had the most golds won, now it's the total. Also, the most gold medals any country has won in all winter olympics is 13 (Canada ties the USA and Germany), so if the men hockey team gets gold tomorrow, Canada will have the most golds in one olympics EVER :thumbsup: (I honestly doubt that canada will win gold in the 50KM ski, and those are the only 2 last competitions left in these olympics) I am going to be so hammered at 3 o clock tomorrow it's gonna be CRAZY

Sooo instead of going out with friends tonight I decided to stay in because I felt a little depressed. But why? I thought... maybe it was a lack of playing MW2 that got me down, but even after 30 minutes of playing I still felt off. I played cards with my mum to see if I was just deprived of human contact, but I was just annoyed the entire time. I went out yesterday and the night before anyways, so 'social me' was happy for the night. Then I realized - I haven't read a single page of a good book in a week!! I ransacked my basement for my dads old books and came up with Cosmos by Sagan, Collapse by Diamond and A Brief History of Time by Hawkin. I feel so warm and fuzzy on the inside right now, I can't imagine trying to explain how intellectual stimulation affects me this much to my friends without being criticized, so here I am :smile: Cars driving at night when its pitch black without lights are soooo hard to spot. Last summer me and a girl were walking around in the ghetto area of where I live and a car with 2 people pulled up next to us, so didn't even notice until the guy in the passenger seat started screaming at the top of his lungs. They obviously just did it to scare us, but gangsters are known to drive around with their lights (and sometimes engines) off and shoot rival gangs, so I was definitely shaken up afterwards. All that adrenaline cruising through both of us after that definitely lead to some things that made the night worth my time :thumbsup:

New setup: AK-47 + Extended mags Stringer Scavenger Pro Stopping power Pro Commando Pro The Extended mags + scavenger combo is INSANE. I can last all match without dying (in fact, the 2nd match I used that class in I went 18-0 then 28-1 :mrgreen: I also discovered that sniping with AOG scope is much easier, for me atleast (yes, even at long distanceS)

I never found those ones scary. The scary GIFs on that site are the ones of people dying. They freak me out so bad, but yet I can't look away. There was one of a man still alive but pretty much cut in half lying on the pavement. He was picking at his intestines that were hanging out and everyone around was freaking out. I was horrified but couldn't look away for a good 10 minutes, I felt like puking when I got up.

My friends and I want to take up a sport this summer with high physical and mental demands but wont tie us down to a schedule (we were convinced to sign up in a soccer league, but our schedules don't fit). We were thinking kite boarding too, but that's pretty expensive - so we're also looking for something relatively cheap to start up :smile:

I don't understand why people make such a big fuss over that.....they just won an olympic medal, I'd be partying if that happened to me. Yeah and after all, Canadian drinking age laws are just suggestions anyways. Canada vs Slovakia tonight! I love Halak but I reaaaally want him to fail tonight :thumbsup: Also, 6:0 USA:Finland 1st period :thumbdown: :thumbdown: :thumbdown:

Why'd you delete the thing about you shoveling half naked? Today I just realized it's everyone who goes to school's march break, so I can hang out with people in teh week :]. You kinda missed out, we're already Friday Today I will finally finish this ten page book report I've been working on since Monday. Good stuff :mrgreen:

I actually made a solar panel and it produced a lot more power than I expected since I too based my results on how much irradiance hit my city (got my figures from a large scale map which covered the entire earth though, so it wasn't accurate to start with). Solar panels are also more effective than what they're labeled as (for example, mine were something like 12% efficiency, when they were really around 14-15). But yeah, solar panels are only effective if you live in the desert or something.

^ personally I just wait until my friend does his sets before I do my next one. It's not based on anything scientific, it's just what works for me and him.

I just read in my organic textbook that they already knew the Murchison meteorite had the amino acids required for life.... But even more interesting is the fact that there is a 7-9% excess of L-amino acids :blink: As anyone in molecular biology or chemistry would know, pretty much all amino acids that make us who we are are left handed, even though there is no 'reason'. It's interesting to know that even amino acids on super old meteorites are also favourable left handed.

Good point. Always worked for me

Yeah, I don't know how I would be able to handle that in his shoes. I mean, he was by far the fastest and everyone knows it, yet he didn't even get a medal. His coach played a huge part in the mistake, and I think the skater will always blame him for it. However, he'll always know in the back of his head that he shouldn't have listened to him.

Ever since my braces came off 2 years ago I've flossed every night & brushed every night and morning :thumbsup: . I also brush my tongue with toothpaste every morning... the gimmic in the vid is a useless waste of money.

An enemy sidled up next to me in a corner on Terminal earlier today, and I let him stay there. I waited until three of his teamates ran right in front of us, shot them all (they were lined up) then knifed the guy next to me. Great success :thumbsup:

You guys only run inside? That's terrible; I'd run on my own :blink: I just don't run at all during the winter. I'll probably start up again in April, when most of the snow is gone and the temperature hovers above 5C.

Here's a fun story for all the kids on tip.it. Tonight i was playing a friendly ice hockey game with friends and randoms, about halfway through my friends and i are destroying the other team (4v4). That's when one of the randoms checked me in mid-ice and i went freaking flyyyying. He said sorry and my friends said it looked like an accident so i didn't mind, it's hockey after all. Then, not even a minute later, he keeps slashing at my stick and hitting my shins with his stick. Then he takes a wrist shot into my shin (you never lift the puck in a friendly game, because nobody has equipment on). I lost my cool and checked the [bleep]er into the boards, but it was a in all honesty a clean hit so he was fine. Well, he didn't get back up, but if he wanted to play contact ice hockey he shouldve been prepared for the hit. Then his idiot friend skates up to my and elbows me in the side of the head, so now I'm down. Since my friends are pretty big and love fighting, I started getting worried for the two [wagon] picking on me... they definitely crossed the line. Two of my friends came at the guy who nailed me in the head with their sticks and took out his legs. One of the two caught him falling so the other could disfigure his face properly. My third friend just sat on the guy i downed, but he was resisting him so my friend gave up and bloody nose and some more. That's when the two other randoms, two teens slightly younger than us, ran to get help. So we ran too, thankful that we've mastered the art of getting our skates off faster than the speed of light to get out of sticky situations. I laughed so hard when my friend, who now has a few broken fingers and blood all over his hands asks me; "you okay?" The lesson: See what happens when you play dirty? You get stitches, a broken nose, black eyes and a sore body for the next month. As for me, I only have a bump on the head and my shin will probably have a huge bruise on it in a few hours. Or, if you really do want to play dirty badly, make sure you have bigger backup with you than the other guys.

I take it you've never studied biochemistry or molecular biology? We know that lipids agglomerate to form cell membranes due to hydrophobicity, we know that hydrophobic amino acids cluster together in the centre of proteins by the same mechanism. We also know this is how different proteins can cluster together to avoid the aqueous environment in which they find themselves. We know that certain amino acids can donate protons/react with certain molecules in other ways to facilitate chemical reactions in cells (i.e. catalysis). We know that complementary, single stranded DNA molecules join by hydrogen bonding and this is the basis of reproduction (four bases where A binds T and G binds C leaves few options for mistakes or deviations from this plan). We know that adding a phosphate group to certain proteins can modulate their shape due to local electrostatic interference, hence changing the active site of the protein and changing it's ability to do its job. We know how amino acids join by dehydration reactions and even the biochemical pathways by which they are formed (either from sugars or other amino acids, mostly). We know how inactive proteins can be activated by having part of their amino acid sequence chopped off by other proteins. We know that certain charged amino acids are attracted to others of an opposite charge, and we know how hydrogen bonding between amino acids can take place to form secondary structure, both helping form the shape of proteins. We know the pathways by which sugars can be broken down for energy or stored, or how they can be partly broken down and converted to fats. We know how oxygen can complex with the heam group of hemoglobin in red blood cells and be carried around the body.. We know all this, and a heck of a lot more. The problem in creating life from scratch is not with our knowledge, it's with the application of that knowledge. It's just impossibly impractical to create life at this stage. I have taken those classes, but those concepts are still all elementary Biology and Chemistry. What I'm talking about isn't the chemistry within living cells. We can recreate these things, yes, but it's not practical or even possible for us to comprehend how all of these properties come together to form an entity that can preserve itself and reproduce. One of the main things I find most "alarming" is that nature ALWAYS does things that require the least use of energy, but reproduction and the creation of life basically kicks Nature in the balls. DNA and proteins shouldn't be coding for and creating other proteins when it's obviously more efficient to just hang around in a liquid medium in a shape that minimizes polar/non-polar interactions. And even if this were possible, why do these chemicals (after all, life is just a jumble of chemicals) insist upon recreating copies of themselves? This expends vast amounts of energy and it isn't beneficiary to the individual cell in any case. Think of how efficient bacteria would be if they didn't feel the need to devote a large portion of their cell cycle into reproducing. Sure, it creates genetic variability, but what does that contribute to the individual? Think of all the things you posted, and then think of how emergent properties could possibly combine all of those things and contrive what we call life. It's just not within our current knowledge. Jumping in here. If you take the Richard Dawkins view on genetics/evolution of the genetic code, all this makes sense. Taking your bacteria for example: it's not the bacteria that cares about reproduction - indeed, he'd have more resources for himself if he just lived. However, if you turn the answer on its head and reason that it's the genes that care about reproduction, it kinda fits it all in place. It's the genes that decide a bacteria will reproduce after x amount of growth at a time x. He argues, basically, that all living things are machines built by genes to become the predominant gene. I'm not the best at explaining these things because I forget the details, sorry about that. As for the entropy question - the second law of thermodynamics (right?) clearly shows that everything will indeed assume the state of least energy, and that going from the energy of high energy to low energy will produce heat. So obviously going from a zygote to a full blown adult human goes against this law, but if you take a step back in the time scale of things, we still in the end increase entropy. Our metabolic processes (those that build up molecules) revert entropy, but in the long run it'll all just be heat anyways. So (this is my own theory) maybe living things (which as I just argued do not revert entropy) accelerate the entropy of the universe faster? This is clear in the example of humans, who are currently breaking down everything in their past. Sure, we've built cities and spaceships, but we've mostly just degraded things and produced lots of heat. I'm not sure this long-run entropy increasing lifestyles are in all of nature, but that's what would make sense to me.

maybe you should hhospital

I swear to god if the canadian men's hockey team doesn't make it to the semis im gonna rage so hard

or pick up a sport like soccer or hockey

I'm pretty sure you can find this exact post in this same topic but here it goes: I'll only get a specific tattoo which I've already thought of when I was about 13. I want to get a squished spider tattooed under my foot, but everybody I know discourages me to get it. As I get older I increasingly want to get it done, but I don't feel like walking around on crutches for weeks. However, if I break my leg/sprain my ankle I might as well get it done.