Things you'll have to explain to your kids.

I don't see the 2nd amendment going away any time soon in the States.

edited 14th May '12 10:41:12 AM by ch00beh

That's true, and the US constitution does give American gun owners more protection than their British counterparts ever enjoyed. On the other hand-

BRAIN: Wait. Hold it right there, Mister Heston. This is neither the time nor the place. Stop now before you derail the thread.

But I have pertinent information regarding-

BRAIN: You have not a damn thing, and you'll like it. Neither the time, nor the place. And even if it was, you know you lose all objectivity when gun control pops up; you don't sound like a reasonable, well-adjusted libertarian, you sound like that crazy guy in a trailer home that keeps his copy of The Turner Diaries on the shelf beside his Bible and the Ragnar Benson complete library. Take it to the NRA forums where it belongs; I'm not letting you make an ass of yourself here.

sigh... Ah well, another time.

there's a gun thread in OTC

BRAIN: Do not tell him that. You seriously have no idea what he's like when he goes off on the Brady Campaign. I swear, it's like a Molly Hatchet album learned how to type somehow. I do as much as I can to reign him in, but eventually he'll break out the Johnny Walker to shut me up, and it only gets worse from there.

While you're at it, you'll probably have to explain who Mr. Heston is, too.

I will have to explain what a floppy disk is, and how computers couldn't run without them at the very beginning.

At the very beginning? You weren't there. At the very beginning there was tape.

And God said, "Let there be disks."?

Computery type thingies:

• Trying for hours to code in BASIC (on a ZX Spectrum 64k) what your screensaver does automatically when you're feeling nostalgic for the '00s. And, failing to get the lines anywhere near as mystifying. Doing this for fun.
• Why an image of a badly cartooned paper clip tapping the screen sends me screaming when I come across it by accident on a random wiki walk.
• What a blue screen of death actually was. (And, why you had to break out the disks to reinstall everything. Again. For the third time that month.)
• Why Pine and Elm aren't always trees.

Media-type thingies:

• Why I grew up with basically 3 channels. (Two of which were not in my language for even half the time.)
• Why comics didn't used to come out on the web. Ever.
• Why teachers told you D&D would send you to straight to hell.
• What a pog was.
• That Simon Cowell has not been around forever. Thank goodness.

edited 20th May '12 5:33:41 PM by Euodiachloris

I still get blue screens on my computer when I've got heat related problems. If your kid ever gets into computer building, and given that like no one is doing research on heatless components, they will still understand what a blue screen is.

Oh, it's gonna be fun when my kid finds my old music collection...

"Dad, who was this Marshall Mathers guy?"

"The greatest purveyor of fantasy fiction of the twentieth century."

"Really? What did he do?"

"He convinced the world that he was a dangerous, violent thug, to be feared and respected. Despite having zero combat experience and the build of a taller-than-average woman."

"So, could he actually fight?"

"He took on a hand puppet once... he held his own."

"o_0"

edited 26th May '12 8:23:58 AM by SuperHeroineAddict

Dad? What was it like when we wernt organic battery's?

Organic batteries are a silly concept. Now, using your brain as a computer bank, that's at least got some merit.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/17/blood-turbine-to-power-your-pacemaker-become-legendary-band-nam/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy

it sure is cool how the law of conservation of energy stops converting mechanical energy into electrical energy

It sure is cool how turning nuclear or solar energy into chemical energy into mechanical energy and then into electrical energy is automatically less efficient than than directly converting nuclear or solar to electrical because of all the conversion loss.

it's not about efficiency, it's about filling niche cases. take for example that case in the blood turbine article—do you want to open up a person every time they need a new battery, or do you want to keep them closed by having a less efficient (but still entirely sufficient) power source that automatically recharges?

obviously it's not going to be the main power source for everything, but it still has its uses in certain areas.

Exactly, hence why turning humans into organic batteries is silly.

Kids? I'm gonna have to tell my siblings what a VCR was!

I feel you. I already had to tell my younger sister what a Beta MAX was...

Hey, I'm younger than your sister and I still knew what a Beta MAX was.

That's because you're a nerd, dearie.

MOST people don't know what a Beta MAX was. VHS and LD was where it's at!

I didn't know about Betamax until I started coming on TV Tropes. I know all about VC Rs, I mean we had one we used regularly until 2007. My mom probably wouldn't know either, because when betamax's were around she was living in Guyana and had never seen a TV.

I personally had heard of betamax thanks to various historical shows, but I had never heard of laserdisc until late in high school. The idea of disc rot in particular was a shocker to me.

On topic;

"Daddy what's this?"

"Well honey, before storage became cheap and internet became fast and affordable, most things had to be stored on physical media at the time of purchase. This is a video game."

"And why do they make such a big deal about its 'advanced physics?'"

"Well, at the time technology wasn't very advanced, so half the time the best we could do was to make something limp and fling it 2-30 feet in a random direction."

"And why is that lady only wearing half a dress?"

"Because at the time Japan was still working through some things."

edited 7th Jun '12 5:09:34 AM by CleverPun