Random Questions Thread

Garcon we don't have time for cynical realism here.

An important question is how badly was he effected by combat? Does he need the job to be radically different or can he work using the same skills in a similar setting.

Also does he have any interests that could be the basis of a job?

On that, he's conflicted.

On one hand, he has seen some serious stuff so he wants to settle down in his quite hometown, spending more time and reconciling with his teenaged daughter with whom he barely interacted. On the other hand, he has seen too much violence and it became a big part of who he is, whether he likes it or not. So although he does want peace, some part of him is addicted to danger and wants more of it.

As for his interest, well, his father was a police officer along with many of his friends, so he's quite familiar with law enforcement. He himself wanted to be a multilingual writer and as a result quite a polylingual, able to speak four languages (English, Spanish, German, and French), but ended up joining military to pay off his student debt, and settling down for 20 years. By the time his service was over, though, he just wants to spend time around kids or teenagers and guide them.

edited 6th Oct '15 11:04:34 PM by dRoy

It'd take a bit of study, but a second-language teacher sounds like a decent fit. Being polylingual is kind of distinctive really. I mean he could attempt the writing on the side, but it's unlikely to pay for dinner straight off the bat.

If people's knuckles turn white while being clenched and we have red blood, what color would a character's clenched knuckles be if they have brown blood?

I think clenched knuckles just turn white because the blood's rushing out of them.

Regardless of , wouldn't brown blood be just red blood with more iron in it?

Perhaps. I don't know much about the circulatory system. I know that when it comes to hemoglobin, the metal bound in the center of the porphyrin determines the color based on the color the metal turns when it comes into contact with oxygen.

Yeah, knuckles turn white because the blood rushes out of it. So that should work with almost any colour of blood.

On the other hand, becoming red with anger or embarassement may depend on the colour of the blood (but this time I'm not sure about the biological mechanism behind blushing).

Of course, that does assume that the person in question's flesh is the same colour as human flesh.

Question of my own: a Robot Girl has a removable panel (not unlike a battery or port cover) on her cheek, designed to blend in with the rest of the face, but has some sort of symbol or text on it that can be seen if you look closely. Any ideas what it would be for and what the text/symbol would be (ATM it's just Rule of Cool/Rule of Make-it-clear-she's-supposed-to-be-a-Robot Girl)?

Too broad. I suggest EVA/Vocaloid - styled double numbers or a Cybran emblem.

I asked a similar question a while back and was directed to the website Warning signs for tomorrow

I suggest looking at 'autonomous device' and 'self improving software'

edited 9th Oct '15 1:29:37 PM by MCE

That'd be interesting, but how would it tie into the panel?

Those symbols look cool, but I'm not sure they'd make sense on it (if they needed to be seen, they'd be more prominent).

edited 8th Oct '15 3:09:53 PM by Bisected8

There are various basic ones, like pictures of cogs, wires, integrated circuits and the like. Also consider computer code, 0's and 1's and others. Do languages like Japanese or one of the Chinese dialects have a word/symbol for artificial?

In the vain hope someone can save me from five hours at Google Maps: if there are any New York tropers out there, what's the main road from NYC to Albany?

Does anyone speak Hindi to a reasonable degree? Slightly embarrassing problem: I translated some individual words into Hindi using Google Translate, then wrote down the transliterated words in English letters. Now I want the Hindi script, but I can't remember what the original English was, so I can't re-translate them.

...damn, I wish I had something to contribute to any of the questions open right now.

Anyways. Provided they were never explicitly asked about it, would it be a crime if a person hid the existence of extraterrestrials, some of them threats to American security, from the American government? (Even using "extraterrestrials" instead of "aliens", results are a mix of Google misunderstanding my question, and pages about the government being the ones doing the hiding. This is the closest I got, but not precisely relevant.)

Almost anything is a crime if you interpret the laws liberally enough. We pretty much rely on prosecutors and courts to apply common sense.

It'd have to be a pretty unambiguous law in this case; the person in question is rich enough to have his lawyers flatten any case that isn't ironclad.

Night: according to Google Maps, I-87, although Taconic State Parkway is also an option. I don't live anywhere near NYC, though, so take that with a grain of salt.

Discar: I don't speak any Hindi, so again, grain of salt, but I did find this romanization-to-Devanagari tool. Type in your romanization, and it converts it to the Devanagari script. If you want the original English, you could then put the Devangari into Google translate to get it into English. It won't be perfect, but it might be enough to jog your memory.

Killer Clowns: While there might not be any national laws, the party involved would probably be breaking international laws, specifically Article XI of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. In short, signing parties need to inform the international community what they're doing in space. In long:

Although if this involves what I think it involves, and nobody actually goes to space to contact the aliens, there's room for a loophole. ("Technically, your honor, we never conducted any activities in space; the secrecy of solely terrestrial contact is not disallowed by Article XI.") There's also the question of whether individuals of a signing state should be considered as that state, even if they're not state-sponsored in any way.

You might also want to check out this article and its followups from a lawyer's blog I found. It's a blog, so again again, grain of salt, but it seemed fairly professional to me, and it is by a lawyer.

However, I'm pretty sure there isn't any US law explicitly saying, "If you make contact with an extraterrestrial, you must tell the government."

There might be a crime if the aliens were actually committing crimes, or intended to. But I don't know what the USA's laws are in that regard.

Given that "some of [the extraterrestrials are] threats to American security", might such secrecy not run afoul of some general Homeland-security-style law against concealing threats to national security? (Note: I don't know whether such a law actually exists—I'm neither a lawyer nor American—although it seems likely to my mind.)

I doubt there's any law specifically against that.

If you know for sure people are going to blow up a building and you don't say anything, that might be considered Conspiracy (IANAL of course), but that's obviously a different situation.

Failure to report is considered accessory. In practice it's usually not charged for minor crimes and usually dropped in exchange for testimony for major ones, as the bar to prove it is high.

I just had a random idea of a story, with species that are uniquely influenced by moon, and thrive in nighttime in general. The list include vampires, werewolves, and ghosts.

Now, in what way can human be associated with moons, and what kind of people are typically associated with night?

Well, as for people directly associating with moon...the only thing I can think of is women and their periods.

As for people typically associated with night, all I can think of are criminals and jobs with night shifts. XP

Desert peoples? The sun is a constant problem and a lot of life had to happen at night. The seasons are less obvious and the lunar cycle more prominent.

Fisher folk and boat people. The moon controls the tides