@Doctor-Phibes said in Who here had grandparents who got a college degree?: @Aqua-Letifer said in Who here had grandparents who got a college degree?: @Doctor-Phibes said in Who here had grandparents who got a college degree?: @Horace said in Who here had grandparents who got a college degree?: The Chinese guy we went camping with last summer grew up in the middle of nowhere in China where there was almost no schooling. He taught himself math, because he had a knack for it and it was the sort of subject that you need no materials for, just text books. Which he somehow procured for himself. He eventually got a PhD in math and now works for a major bank in this area. I can promise you he wouldn't have been able to do what he did without the sort of intelligence that happens to be testable. 'Intelligence' is a rather nebulous concept. Personally, I'd say somebody who is really good at maths is intelligent, but some people would say that it means nothing if he doesn't know how to breed pigs. It might be better to say this guy is really good at maths, and this other guy is good at breeding pigs. Most of us probably equate intelligence with being good at stuff we respect, and not with stuff that we don't understand. I think that there's natural aptitude, and then there's curiosity. Natural aptitude is something like fluid intelligence, which is highly overrated. Because a natural ability to pick things up means nothing if you don't actually try to pick anything up. Curiosity, on the other hand, will always get you there. But the vast, vast majority of us would rather be socially acceptable than curious. And those two are almost always at odds. I think the ability to work really hard is probably better than all of them. Something I've never had, except for short periods of time, when I go freaking nuts at something before inevitably losing motivation. Gary Kasparov said that the question about whether talent or hard work was more important was missing the point, since the ability to work really hard is a talent. I'd argue that you're never going to work really hard at something on any sustained level of enthusiasm unless you're really curious about it.

I use the word curated sometimes. Correctly, as far as I know. I like the Steam "curators" feature too.

That's so white it's like listening to mayonnaise.....

That's why when I was in the piano business I threw bid request forms in the trash can.

@Axtremus said in Ohio GOP Senate candidates debate: Any idea who the GOP primary's winner will run up against from the Democratic side? Tim Ryan.

To make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.

@Horace said in Ganging Up: Nearly meaningless. This was about guns. "Machine guns," @horace.

Aqua's sister in 1...2...3..

Reynard didn't kill himself!

The fool on the hill also works, but might be pushing the Liverpudlian influence on Washington a bit.

@Catseye3 said in Water lilies indoors: @brenda Love that art! Please show it here when you're done. Maybe a compatible mix of his art and a same-only-different selection of water lilies without animals? This one is a 3'x5' rug pattern, and there's still lots of room for some water birds. I'll see what appeals, and whether it adds to the piece or doesn't. The water lilies for this design are in the central medallion and the interior border, with an outer border of oversized cattails. There are two hares peeking through acanthus leaf foliage of the William Morris style, and the stork and frog duo make an appearance on each end of the rug among the foliage. This is a floor rug, so it has matching images on each end and each long side. Wall rugs tend to have a definite top and bottom orientation, while floor rugs are usually meant to be viewed from all sides. You are correct that the water lily theme could stand alone for an entire rug, too. I can see that becoming a runner for a hallway. I've been mulling over a hallway rug plan, and that would be a fun one to explore. Thank you! I'm mixing the William De Morgan and William Morris ideas, because they are of the same era, and the men were friends as well as business associates. Morris was primarily into fabrics and wallpapers, while De Morgan was mostly into pottery and tiles. They both had other uses of their works, but they seldom crossed over to the other's dominant field. De Morgan gets top billing for this rug with his distinct animals, although many Morris works include hares, other animals, and birds, too. Perhaps the runner should be more Morris-ish, with water lilies, but I've only seen his yellow lilies that are not water plants. I'll look again for water lily themes in his work, although that's a real 'rabbit hole' activity for me. Once I get started searching through De Morgan and Morris images, it can be hours before I resurface. Of course, for water lilies, Monet beckons, and that's yet another rabbit hole. Now you know why it takes me a while to design a rug. Since I will be spending a year or more hooking it, I had better love the design, which requires some serious time in creating it. BTW, for creating my own personal designs, not ones for commercial use, there is no worry about copyrights, especially with design elements that have become ubiquitous in art, such as the Morris acanthus leaves. Even though I don't copy the designs of others, I certainly get inspiration and design concepts from them, so I have asked permisson to use work from living artists, or from estates of writers whose words I want to incorporate into a design. No one has ever said no, but there was an estate representative who said I could use a quote in my design, but it could never be shown in prints, photographs, or in any way in public. I thought that was odd, but not a problem. I made the rug to use up a boatload of scraps, so I had no plans to show it anyway. I've never had a 'show' of my projects other than the pics here.

Just finished Peacemaker. Giving James Gunn a longer story telling format and going rated R was an excellent choice…

One could get that impression.

@Aqua-Letifer said in Phibes: I burned through that circa 2020. (I think I posted it here, too?) Anyway, it is indeed awesome. Well, thanks for posting it here, Aqua. Perhaps you're the one who deserves the credit after all.

That's like the ultimate embarrassment for gators.

We find evidence in 71 of these reports, spread nationwide, that brain death could not have properly been declared. In these cases, the removal of the heart during organ procurement must have been the proximate cause of the donor's death. Yeah, the "must have been" quotation is interesting, isn't it? The PRC papers we have identified do not describe how the donor was incapacitated before procurement, and the data is consistent with multiple plausible scenarios. These range from a bullet to the prisoner's head at an execution site before they are rushed to the hospital, like Tsai's description, or a general anesthetic delivered in the operating room directly before procurement. Paul et al. have previously proposed a hybrid of these scenarios to explain PRC transplant activity: a lethal injection, with execution completed by organ procurement. They write: “in cases in which thiopental's effect is insufficient and organ explantation begins immediately after cardiac arrest, the inmates may suffer from excruciating pain induced by organ explantation surgery, the surgical opening of the abdomen and/or chest.”11 It is also possible that a specialized device was used to inflict brain death in close quarters and thus insulate medical professionals from the process. A patent for a “Primary brainstem injury percussion machine” was held by a former PRC police chief involved in organ transplants.53 The patent description says it was to be used for medium-sized animals. There is no public evidence that it was ever used on humans. Previous anecdotal, eyewitness, and textual evidence is consistent with these accounts—including procurement from donors prior to death,12 and targeted execution procedures intended to forestall cardiac arrest and thus minimize warm ischemic time. There's a lot of speculation in the paper, and the only thing that I can see is that they can't document brain-death prior to organ harvest in those cases. Again, I completely believe that execution by organ procurement is a real possibility (China is an asshole), but I don't see this in the meta-analysis here. You?