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rePost::Coming to terms with the final chapter – Books – Entertainment – smh.com.au

Remember that smash film Got To Believe In Magic with Rico Yan and Claudine Barreto?, Rico Yan’s character initially had trouble thinking he’d get old. I ‘m somewhat similar because I can’t imagine being old.
In some ways there is that thought of dying til you can no longer enjoy life. I don’t know. I salute Terry Pratchett’s courage in admitting to this arrangement.

Coming to terms with the final chapter

February 12, 2010
Fantasy author Terry Pratchett mulls over life and how to leave it, writes Sacha Molitorisz.
Terry Pratchett … ‘‘I’ll write in the coffin, too.
As in a well-plotted fantasy novel, life is full of surprises. Until recently, Sir Terry Pratchett was one of Britain’s best-selling authors, a comic fantasist best known for his Discworld series.
Two years ago, he announced he has early onset Alzheimer’s. Now, at 61, Pratchett has courted controversy by admitting he wants to choose when he dies.
”I have no desire to pop my clogs in the next few years,” he says from his home.
”But I don’t particularly want to spend a lot of time in bed being fed through a tube. That’s what my father said, too. He didn’t want to die that way but then he had to.”
Pratchett presented his argument for assisted suicide last week, while delivering a lecture for the BBC, saying: ”I would like to die peacefully before the disease takes me over.
”If I knew that I could die at any time I wanted then suddenly every day would be as precious as a million pounds. If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice.”
They were dignified, considered words. Even so, Pratchett expected all hell to break loose. To his surprise, it didn’t. ”Some archbishops have said nasty things but I look on that as a plus,” he says, lucidly and softly.
”Apart from that, not a single person has thumbed their nose at me. People are saying, ‘How can we join in?
”The baby boomers see how their grandmothers and grandfathers died, and they’re looking after their mums and dads, and they think, ‘Bugger this, who said it has to be like this?”’
via Coming to terms with the final chapter – Books – Entertainment – smh.com.au.

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rePost::Martian Settlers May Need Chickens To Conquer The Red Planet | Universe Today

This would be an interesting site to behold multiple phds with great physical conditions farming.

If humanity ever intends upon on settling Mars (by settling I mean a one way trip with no plans on returning back to Earth), they are going to need a whole lot of chickens if they want to survive–let alone thrive–upon the red planet.
Aside from providing an excellent source of protein, chickens could help future settlers raise not only crops (such as wheat, barely, etc.) upon the barren Martian soil, but also help colonists keep the lights on through a very useful by-product (aka chicken dung).
Unlike Earth, Martian dirt is very hostile towards plant life. Unless we can genetically alter plants to grow upon the red planets soil, future settlers will have to heavily rely upon the home world for their daily bread.
via Martian Settlers May Need Chickens To Conquer The Red Planet | Universe Today.

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rePost::Nuclear Fusion Power Closer to Reality Say Two Separate Teams | Universe Today

within 10 years? 20?

For years, scientists have been trying to replicate the type of nuclear fusion that occurs naturally in stars in laboratories here on Earth in order to develop a clean and almost limitless source of energy. This week, two different research teams report significant headway in achieving inertial fusion ignition—a strategy to heat and compress a fuel that might allow scientists to harness the intense energy of nuclear fusion. One team used a massive laser system to test the possibility of heating heavy hydrogen atoms to ignite. The second team used a giant levitating magnet to bring matter to extremely high densities — a necessary step for nuclear fusion.
via Nuclear Fusion Power Closer to Reality Say Two Separate Teams | Universe Today.

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rePost::12 Laws of the Emotions | PsyBlog

Nice list about our emotions.

8. The Law of Conservation of Emotional Momentum

Time doesn’t heal all wounds – or if it does, it only does so indirectly. Events can retain their emotional power over the years unless we re-experience and re-evaluate them. It’s this re-experiencing and consequent re-definition that reduces the emotional charge of an event. This is why events that haven’t been re-evaluated – say, failing an exam or being rejected by a potential lover – retain their emotional power across the decades.
via 12 Laws of the Emotions | PsyBlog.

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rePost:Spartans Lose to…. :Philip of Macedon, the Ultimate Authority on Gays in the Military, Speaks! – Grasping Reality with a Ten-Foot-Long Flexible Trunk

This is a Pink film waiting to happen. Spartans lose to the Sacred Band even with a 3 to 1 advantage. This could be legendary. hehehe!

The Sacred Band under Pelopidas fought the Spartans at Tegyra in 375 BCE, vanquishing an army that was at least three times its size. It was also responsible for the victory at Leuctra in 371 BCE, called by Pausanias the most decisive battle ever fought by Greeks against Greeks. Leuctra established Theban independence from Spartan rule and laid the groundwork for the expansion of Theban power, but possibly also for Philip II’s eventual victory.
via Philip of Macedon, the Ultimate Authority on Gays in the Military, Speaks! – Grasping Reality with a Ten-Foot-Long Flexible Trunk.

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rePost::Philip of Macedon, the Ultimate Authority on Gays in the Military, Speaks! – Grasping Reality with a Ten-Foot-Long Flexible Trunk

An interesting look at Gays in the Military History edition!!!

Philip of Macedon, the Ultimate Authority on Gays in the Military, Speaks!

Philip:
Let nobody say these men did or suffered anything shameful!
Philip II Argead, King of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, builder of the army that Alexander used to become Lord of Asia and that then–in splintered pieces under his and his son’s ex-generals and in turn their heirs the Antipatrids, Antigonids, Seleucids, Ptolemids, and others–dominated the Near East until the coming of the Romans in the second century BC, said this over the bodies of the Sacred Band of Thebes, who all lay dead in their places, killed by the attack of Philip’s army at the Battle of Chaeronea.
via Philip of Macedon, the Ultimate Authority on Gays in the Military, Speaks! – Grasping Reality with a Ten-Foot-Long Flexible Trunk.

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Essay – Why Orwell Endures – NYTimes.com

Nice article on one of the influential persons of the last 60 years!

Why Orwell Endures
By GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT
….
He has worn well for other reasons, of course. His deathbed fortune came with “1984,” which has been plausibly described by Robert Harris (another notable political novelist) as the most influential novel ever written. No other can have so enriched the language. Try a Web search for countless contemporary uses of Newspeak, the thought police or doublethink — the expressions, that is: a glance at the political pages or op-ed columns provides plenty of examples of what those brilliant coinings describe.
….
via Essay – Why Orwell Endures – NYTimes.com.