I haven't played all of Star Control II yet, but I believe you're referring to the race who, if they were real, will one day be formerly known as the Ilwrath.

As Douglas Adams pointed out in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the ability to travel through time means for a multitude of temporal grammatical tenses.

Snaller:

So what am I breathing here at ground level?

Um, I was taking the piss out of pipingguy's often-used and tiresome excuse for an argument, "Check out the molecular weight of CO2 sometime", which implies that he really does believes the gasses in the atmosphere are neatly stacked in layers, sorted by molecular weight.

Why some people choose to believe this is a topic worthy of a whole new thread.

I did. I also checked out the molecular weight of oxygen, nitrogen and argon. There's no way oxygen can exist anywhere near ground level. There, the air is made entirely of argon.

If you want to breathe oxygen, you'll have to go up several hundred metres. Unfortunately, it will be relatively pure, highly corrosive even to organic materials and a terrible fire risk. To be safe, you'll have to go up much higher in the atmospheric layer cake to the boundary between the oxygen and nitrogen layers.

Beautiful! I'll do that!

Since they have no "souls" (that is, a centre of consciousness), they cannot really suffer. They're just meat robots.

That's why it's fine to forcefully have sex with them (it's not rape when they're your own property). It's why it's fine to make them wear robot suits whenever they leave your house to do your shopping for you. They are as disposable as Christmas Puppies. They're just meat.

OK, I'll stop pretending to be a devout Muslim or a particularly devout Christian of Orange County[1]

What I'm getting at is the way that people often come up with convenient ways to justify their treatment of what they find convenient to torture, rape or kill.

Slashdot readers should take more notice of films like Zardoz[2]. "Oh, you can't equate their feelings with ours!"

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    [1]They are _so_ miffed that marital rape became illegal in all 50 states that they have effectively re-legalised it (and acts of paedophilia, too!) in through marriages of convenience. Seventh degree marriages are fine in Orange County.
    [2]Zardoz is ostensibly about a bunch of people trapped in a malaise of artificial immortality, but it's really about cultural elitism. It's much like how Starship Troopers is ostensibly about alien bug-hunting, but is really about fascism.

The key spring for the numeric cluster is a bit sticky, probably from me picking up the keyboard and using it like a baseball bat on the desk in order to shake out the dandruff.

I'll get a blacksmith to look at it when I have the time. I hear that Model M springs are easy to rework.

I've worn out the G key plunger slightly, but I swapped it with "Scroll lock".

I've had it for six years. Not bad for a 1984-vintage keyboard for which I paid 3NZD at Supashed.

Those plsticky keyboards that come with computers, though, last about 7-10 days before my typing destroys their flimsy excuses for switches.

Funnily enough, I never have RSI/OOS problems.

I'm seriously considering printing and laminating copies of those fear posters to use here in New Zealand. First I'll put the rubbish-fear poster on the side of my council wheelie bin.

Then I'll splash the fear-CCTV-watchers poster somewhere prominent in town (I gather there are 30 CCTV in Cathedral Square alone).

I'm more tempted than ever to add a reassuring poster to any traffic counter I see. "ATTENTION, VISITING BOSTONITES: This is not a roadside bomb. It is not even a Mooninite. It is a traffic counter. DO NOT BE AFRAID!"

I expect people to fall over in the streets laughing when they realise that the posters are more than mere derivatives of the propaganda posters in Terry Gilliam's Brazil.

The seem to wear out at the crotch after only a year or two. My Utilikilts have proven to be far more durable.

You have to pay a little bit extra for someone of quality not made by slaves, but it's worth it in the long run.

BTW, I'm using a Model M I bought from Supashed (at the refuse station) for NZ$3. It's outlasted my Omnikey 101, though the numeric minus key is a bit stuffed after I banged the keyboard upside down on the desk like a cricket bat once too often, shaking the dandruff out. I take it apart and clean it evener it starts to look or feel grubby.

A Model M is nowhere as robust as a EMP hardened grenade-proof military keyboard[1] I once encountered or the great 7 kilogram cast iron 3278 terminal keyboard I used to use at work. It's good enough for me, though.

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[1] It was sleek and tough like a broadsword. You could do a lot more than merely bludgeon someone to death with it.

Isn't "culture" just another word for collective moral or mental retardation?

Here in New Zealand, we have a "culture" of driving the heads of children through bedroom walls in order to teach them to have respect for authority.

It's what the child abusers and murderers call it, whenever they end up in court.

Oooooh! I've been horribly negligent in my duty to augment my spellchecker's vocabulary with useful words like "orificer," "paedosmile" and "catamite."

[clickety-clack] Added those!

The set of paedophiles also includes orifiers of the CIA, the FBI, the police, court judges and city councillors.

This law, which gives those paedophiles the legal power to use another paedophile's account anywhere, anytime is a paedophile's dream come true.

Well, the "Fair" in Fairpoint's name is a bit like the "Honest" in Honest John's Used Cars.