Old Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread

Posts: 545 · Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 4:55 pm

Anyone in contact with Faro? Been a month since he was on the forum. Hoping he is ok since he was struggling with health issues.

Posts: 36 · Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 7:56 am

Has anyone ever received 'samples' from Troll and Toad ?

I received a package yesterday which contained 4 D&D mini's that I didn't order. The package was marked as Commercial Sample.

I find it strange that they would ship that stuff overseas to Belgium. Is that a known practice of Troll and Toad ?

Posts: 3258 · Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 10:22 am

xRalphx wrote:

Has anyone ever received 'samples' from Troll and Toad ?

I received a package yesterday which contained 4 D&D mini's that I didn't order. The package was marked as Commercial Sample.

I find it strange that they would ship that stuff overseas to Belgium. Is that a known practice of Troll and Toad ?

You must be a preferred/favorite customer. Laughing

I have never gotten anything from them for nothing and have gotten less than I should have before too.

Posts: 3667 · Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 2:28 pm

Gotta love 'big' government:

http://www.city-journal.org/2009/eon0212wo.html

I especially found this part of the article funny:

Quote:

A further question is what to do about public libraries, which daily expose children under 12 to pre-1985 editions of Anne of Green Gables, Beatrix Potter, Baden-Powell’s scouting guides, and other deadly hazards.

I haven't looked at a Boy Scout Handbook in probably twenty years, but I do recall the handbook that I had when I was a kid showed me how to safely build a fire, descale a fish (with a knife!!!), set a small animal snare, and how to identify poisonous snakes and arachnids and deal with their bites. What the hell do the Boy Scout Handbooks of today show kids how to do? Twitter? Confused

Posts: 5163 · Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 3:23 pm

My kid is in Cub Scouts. It's pretty much the usual stuff, though I wouldn't be surprised if the Boy Scouts do the social networking thing. Ah, I miss the good old days....

Posts: 5194 · Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 3:47 pm

The Boy Scouts are not very politically correct.

They do emphasize safety...by teaching, rather than by failing to teach.

Posts: 112 · Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 5:13 pm

Ah, I see the concern is not with the books' contents, but rather potential lead poisoning. Hmm.... wonder what this says about the technique my dad taught me on how to put a lead sinker on my fishing line by clamping it closed with my teeth.

Crazy what they regulate now days. We used to play with mercury in our hands and roll it around. At my son's old school someone dropped a thermometer and the mercury got on the floor so they closed the school for a week while a HAZMAT team came in to clean up and eliminate the hazard.
Rolling Eyes

Posts: 36 · Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 5:18 pm

Gnat the Beggar wrote:

You must be a preferred/favorite customer. Laughing

I have never gotten anything from them for nothing and have gotten less than I should have before too.

The only thing I remember buying there was a lot of dragon magazines and a lot of spycraft books.

Oh well I'll put the mini's in my "please don't start collecting this too" stack Very Happy

Posts: 3667 · Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 5:32 pm

Rabbit_67 wrote:

Ah, I see the concern is not with the books' contents, but rather potential lead poisoning.

Ah but that is just what the government wants you to think. What they are really concerned about is kids using books such as the Boy Scout Handbook to learn how to tie competent knots and by doing so, use that knowledge to someday become one of those perverted serial rapists that likes to keep teenage women bound and gagged in their homemade basement dungeon.

Quote:

Crazy what they regulate now days. We used to play with mercury in our hands and roll it around. At my son's old school someone dropped a thermometer and the mercury got on the floor so they closed the school for a week while a HAZMAT team came in to clean up and eliminate the hazard.

No kidding. We did the same thing. I remember once we did an experiment that produced hydrogen as a by-product. We siphoned it through a tube into a balloon. When the balloon was full, our teacher moved it near a lit bunsen burner and it made a pretty impressive explosion. Nothing harmful mind you but very loud. We all got a kick out of it. Nowadays, that same teacher would probably be fired for endangering children and creating weapons of mass destruction. Rolling Eyes

Posts: 438 · Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 6:11 pm

RaisedFromTheDead wrote:

My kid is in Cub Scouts. It's pretty much the usual stuff, though I wouldn't be surprised if the Boy Scouts do the social networking thing. Ah, I miss the good old days....

Yes, back before they were becoming Brown Shirts for the Gesta... er... Fatherl... er... Homeland Security.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/us/14explorers.html?_r=2&hp

Posts: 5194 · Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 6:57 pm

SimperingToad wrote:

Yes, back before they were becoming Brown Shirts for the Gesta... er... Fatherl... er... Homeland Security.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/us/14explorers.html?_r=2&hp

It's a police and fire training course like they have in lots and lots of school districts around the country. These classes do all kinds of things related to those fields...most of them pretty mundane, but some of them pretty interesting.

In this article, the writer chose to cover the most interesting day of the course.

I guarantee you it was the day in that program where the kids got to do lots of special activities.

If the reporter had shown up on the day the kids practice writing accident reports, the article would have been about how the kids do nothing but crash derelict cars into each other.

If the reporter had shown up on the day the kids practiced rolling up fire hoses or put on bunker gear the article would have been all about kids practicing to save people from the World Trade Center.

Reporters don't write about the day the kids studied for a test on fire ladder safety, or watched a movie about traffic tickets because that does not make an exciting news story.

ADDITIONAL: The article talks about Explorer scouts having been abused by police officers. That's because the boys and girls in that program are older teenagers and they also do things that school kids would not do...like ride along on actual police patrols and assist at special events. I'm not excusing the cops who do this, mind you. I'm just pointing out that it isn't like the activities in this article are where abuse might occur.

Posts: 1753 · Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 7:24 pm

SimperingToad wrote:

Yes, back before they were becoming Brown Shirts for the Gesta... er... Fatherl... er... Homeland Security.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/us/14explorers.html?_r=2&hp

I think you are confusing them with the Obama youth program.

Posts: 3002 · Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:26 pm

Rabbit_67 wrote:

Ah, I see the concern is not with the books' contents, but rather potential lead poisoning. Hmm.... wonder what this says about the technique my dad taught me on how to put a lead sinker on my fishing line by clamping it closed with my teeth.

Y'know what a child can legally purchase? Chain saws*. They even have toy versions so the little tots can get in some practice:
http://www.honeybros.com/gbu0-prodshow/04649340000.html

I know what you're thinking, I felt the same way. "My God, won't someone think of the children?" Fear not, the government has stepped up. Toy chain saws with lead-based paint will no longer endanger our little ones.

---
*At least, I could find any laws to the contrary via Google. If you have sensible anti-chain saw laws in your region, kudos.

Posts: 112 · Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:46 pm

Kingofpain89 wrote:

No kidding. We did the same thing. I remember once we did an experiment that produced hydrogen as a by-product. We siphoned it through a tube into a balloon. When the balloon was full, our teacher moved it near a lit bunsen burner and it made a pretty impressive explosion. Nothing harmful mind you but very loud. We all got a kick out of it. Nowadays, that same teacher would probably be fired for endangering children and creating weapons of mass destruction. Rolling Eyes

In high school AP Chemistry we made a volatile explosive by combining iodine and I believe sodium hydroxide. Once it dries it becomes highly unstable. I remember setting that stuff off with a yard stick and when it exploded (on the floor) it would let of a nice little cloud of purple iodine gas. Yeah, we knew it was poisonous, but figured the concentration would be too small to ever do any harm. Then of course we made gun powder and put it in aluminum pop cans and set them above the bunsen burners. Once that ignited it was quite the fire works. Very Happy

Posts: 112 · Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:50 pm

deimos3428 wrote:

Y'know what a child can legally purchase? Chain saws*. They even have toy versions so the little tots can get in some practice:
http://www.honeybros.com/gbu0-prodshow/04649340000.html

I know what you're thinking, I felt the same way. "My God, won't someone think of the children?" Fear not, the government has stepped up. Toy chain saws with lead-based paint will no longer endanger our little ones.

---
*At least, I could find any laws to the contrary via Google. If you have sensible anti-chain saw laws in your region, kudos.

Yeah, they can't even get a bb gun any more. I got my bb gun when I was 9 and I've carried a pocket knife with me every where I go since I was in 5th grade. (OK, not the airport any more).

Posts: 1924 · Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 2:22 am

In one of my final years at school a chemistry teacher at our place had an experiment go wrong, blew out several windows, many of the class were injured with several ambulances arriving from memory. She was suspended for 2 weeks as a result and that was pretty much an end of it.
Fast forward 25yrs and if that happened today, she would be fired and parents would have sued for millions!

Posts: 1671 · Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 2:26 am

ashmire13 wrote:

In one of my final years at school a chemistry teacher at our place had an experiment go wrong, blew out several windows, many of the class were injured with several ambulances arriving from memory.

You are just SO lucky - my school was crap in comparison Very Happy

Posts: 5194 · Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 3:01 am

ashmire13 wrote:

with several ambulances arriving from memory

Cool! It sounds like the ambulances were either conjured by mental imagery or there was...like...a nearby parallel world called Memory, from which ambulances were quickly dispatched in a sort of ether response system.

England is cool. Shocked

Posts: 1427 · Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 7:45 am

Oh yeah, our chemistry teacher, in 11th grade, was making pure hydrogen adding sulfuric acid to zinc, I believe. He filtered it through some calcium carbonate and wanted to show how pure hydrogen was not super flammable unlike hydrogen mixed with oxygen. Anyway, the calcium carbonate tube was stoppered with those rubber stoppers that bounce like super balls. It had a tiny hole for the "pure" hydrogen to exit. The teacher got the acid and zinc going and we waited for a few minutes to supposedly allow the calcium carbonate tube fill with only hydrogen. He lit the end of it, and POW! that calcium carbonate tube exploded and the rubber stopper went bouncing all over the room like ricochet rabbit. Everyone dove for cover. Thank goodness no one was injured. Ahhhh, good times! Very Happy

Posts: 1924 · Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 8:55 am

FormCritic wrote:

Cool! It sounds like the ambulances were either conjured by mental imagery or there was...like...a nearby parallel world called Memory, from which ambulances were quickly dispatched in a sort of ether response system.

England is cool. Shocked

Have you never visited Memory?? You've missed so much...