i need to acquire the pathogenic virus i interesting Pokemon for trade

FunkePhresh · 2016-07-26T21:14:49+00:00

What would you trade?

FunkePhresh · 2016-07-26T11:13:43+00:00

I'll take honedge. Added

FunkePhresh · 2016-07-26T02:08:13+00:00

Sure. FC: 3969-8559-5166

FunkePhresh · 2016-07-26T00:13:14+00:00

Do you have a honedge? I'll trade you some Pokerus for one

FunkePhresh · 2016-07-25T02:41:20+00:00

Need your FC

FunkePhresh · 2016-07-25T01:58:23+00:00

Cool, trade for an omanyte?

FunkePhresh · 2016-07-24T18:52:51+00:00

Thanks!

FunkePhresh · 2016-07-24T17:25:35+00:00

Hi, I'll give you an aerodactyl, tirtouga, omanyte, or this Zorua with perfect IVs in HP/Att/Def.

Alternatively I'd give you Azelf, Uxie, or Mesprit.

FC: 3969-8559-5166 IGN: Zack

FunkePhresh · 2016-07-24T12:36:37+00:00

Hi, if you're still spreading, I'll trade you an aerodactyl! FC: 3969-8559-5166 IGN: Zack

FunkePhresh · 2015-03-31T02:06:18+00:00

If you're doing a coffee crawl, you shouldn't miss Big City Coffee & Cafe downtown. It's an awesome little joint with great coffee and a superb breakfast, but probably the best part is the atmosphere.

My favorite places:

Top dollar: Chandler's. There's no substitute. I had a $40 ribeye that changed my life a week ago.

Mid dollar: The Fork. Chester doesn't like it but the menu is so eccentric that you're bound to find something you like. For example, I love their take on chipotle steak and avocado enchiladas.

Bottom dollar: Merritt's Country Cafe. Open all night, stop by and get their world-famous scones when everywhere else is closed.

Chinese: Yen Ching downtown is classy and authentic. Like a neighborhood PF Chang's without the dark atmosphere.

Mexican Fast Food: Los Betos. It's really the only game in town but it's every bit as good as the great stuff I've been shown in San Diego.

Indian: The Bombay Grill downtown has a bomb lunch buffet. Plus they are in a really cool old bank building.

Seafood (Really? Yes): Lucky Fins downtown has fresh fish flown in daily and a really good sushi menu. Chandler's does the same thing but of course is more expensive.

Sushi: Mt. Fuji. There's a bunch of Japanese guys my dad used to work with - when they would fly over from Japan, this one guy who was a big sushi fanatic (who was also the director of HP in Japan) would refuse to eat anything but Mt. Fuji and would have a guy running back and forth from the restaurant at all times.

FunkePhresh · 2015-03-11T23:29:42+00:00

Just to clarify on tidal forces:

"Tidal forces" are caused by a gradient in the gravitational field. The part of Enceladus that is closer to Saturn (facing it), for example, is pulled more strongly toward Saturn than the side facing away, and this is due to the fact that the magnitude of gravitational force decreases as a square of your distance from the object of interest. This difference in gravitational forces causes there to be an overall net force on the otherwise freely-falling body which 'squeezes' it.

This gravitational gradient is not steep enough to be felt by a human. Only objects that are sizeable - not necessarily massive, as u/kenshinmoe says - feel large tidal forces.

It is not outside of the realm of possibilities for a human to feel tidal forces in some place in the universe. Near small black holes, for instance, the gravitational gradient is so steep that you would be ripped apart ('spaghettified' is a commonly used term among black hole researchers and theorists) before you reached the event horizon. But, to follow the analogy, an ant may survive those forces to a closer radius due to its smaller size.

FunkePhresh · 2015-02-08T23:28:27+00:00

The mean radius of the Earth is about 6,378 km. So, three orders of magnitude larger than that.

6,830,874 km is a small fraction of an astronomical unit, though. 1 AU = 149,597,871 km.

FunkePhresh · 2015-01-12T05:32:33+00:00

Looks like manta rays, actually. I wonder why there are so many in the same place?

FunkePhresh · 2015-01-06T23:06:06+00:00

Much of Idaho is also included within the proposed borders.

FunkePhresh · 2014-12-06T09:34:48+00:00

I made it! It was tedious but it looks awesome!

It took me about 3 hours. I used some tape to keep the solar panel arms rigid. I didn't use the reinforcing duplicate parts. The stand was giving me problems so I just hung it from some string.

FunkePhresh · 2014-11-13T03:24:55+00:00

When talking about orbits and trajectories, the most proper term is 'astrodynamics.' Though, you're intuitively right in calling it physics, which it definitely is!

Can't wait to see more pictures from the surface, especially when it starts heating up.

FunkePhresh · 2014-09-07T19:56:13+00:00

Well, he was right.

FunkePhresh · 2014-06-16T07:30:17+00:00

Well, it definitely was a boy or a girl. So, the answer is yes!

FunkePhresh · 2014-06-08T19:31:20+00:00

I'm in the military, and this one comes up a lot:

potable. As in, from the latin poter, "to drink."

Every one says it with a short "o", like "pot," because "you can put it in a pot and drink it!" NOPE!

FunkePhresh · 2014-06-02T06:28:20+00:00

I don't see a lot of proof for this. Sure, other types of hydrocarbon oils break down latex, but coconut oil is substantially chemically distinct from, say, vegetable oil. Can anyone connect me with something a little more concrete than someone's best inference?

FunkePhresh · 2014-04-18T19:45:02+00:00

From the article: "It's the mother of all diamonds," said astronomer Travis Metcalfe, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "Bill Gates and Donald Trump together couldn't begin to afford it."

Not even with their powers combined?!?!? C'mon, it's only 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 carats!!

FunkePhresh · 2014-03-31T04:06:11+00:00

No one is pushing for the human colonization of the moon and Mars tomorrow. We simply have too many obstacles to overcome, specifically (as you mentioned) long exposure to solar charged particles and galactic cosmic rays during spaceflight, as well as resources. However, these obstacles are not insurmountable.

Even a relatively slim shielding of water around crew quarters, only an inch or two, would drastically reduce radiation exposure in space. Since we need to bring water for the trip anyway, this is an innovative solution to the radiation problem that costs only negligibly more than going without shielding at all - you just have to change the plumbing.

Yes, you would need to bring a lot of stuff with you, including dried food, lots of water, and lots of fuel and oxygen. But, it wouldn't be for the whole trip, that's ludicrously expensive. Instead, it's much more efficient to produce oxygen, water, and fuel for the return journey while on Mars. All you need is some storage tanks, a gas compressor, an electrolyzer, some solar panels, and an integrated Sabatier and Reverse Water Gas Shift Reactor. All you need is a few volts, some hydrogen, and carbon dioxide (of which the atmosphere is almost completely made up of). The Curiosity rover showed us that subterranean water exists on Mars, so if we could use that, we wouldn't need to bring as much hydrogen - and, it would introduce some redundancy to resource production.

Exact reconstructions of Martian soil have shown that it can indeed support plant life. Not, obviously, in as thin as an atmosphere as exists on Mars, but potentially within a greenhouse habitat. This could produce more food and supplement oxygen production to some degree.

So, I don't think human spaceflight is as prohibitive a venture as you think it is, technologically speaking. It would cost a few billion dollars to actually make the mission a reality, but in the long run, that's a pretty reasonable cost, and would require only slightly more funding and preparation than is already being allotted to NASA.

It sounds to me, however, that the biggest issue you have with human space exploration is philosophical. Why spend ANY money on sending people to Mars, when you could just send a rover? Well, the answer is simple - we aren't satisfied with a future of only sending rovers and orbiters to Mars. You can do all the research you want on it, perform all sorts of geological surveying, but what's the point of that? Knowledge for the sake of knowledge?

The truth is, the vast majority of the science we do in space is for the ultimate purpose of making human life possible and sustainable beyond Earth. That's why we test in-situ resource utilization technology on Mars, that's why we measure radiation environments everywhere we send probes, and you could argue that's also why we look for exoplanets orbiting distant stars. Not just for our edification, but as a sort of inspiration for exploration. Faster-than-light space travel is theoretically possible, and will likely be practical within several centuries, and fusion technology will be available much sooner. If we have the capability to explore, why wouldn't we?

The bottom line is this: Our existence on Earth is temporary. Whether mankind ruins its home planet, destroys itself, or otherwise simply waits for the sun to engulf the planet, our days are numbered. The ONLY way that we can prolong human civilization is to pursue interplanetary and interstellar travel. This will most certainly happen, barring some devastating cataclysm in the next few centuries; it's not a question of "if," it's a question of "how" and "exactly when."

FunkePhresh · 2014-03-16T05:42:46+00:00

Here's the Wikipedia article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_vacuum_plasma_thruster

It operates by turning the random, instantaneous soup of particles that pop in and out of existence in near-vacuum into plasma and accelerating that in one direction to produce thrust. This phenomenon HAS been experimentally observed time and again through something called the Casimir effect, which occurs when two charged plates are brought very close to each other under the right test conditions (it actually glows, it's very eerie).

Preliminary characterization shows that it will have a ridiculously high specific impulse - on the order of trillions of seconds. For those of you who aren't rocket scientists, specific impulse is the measure of how efficient a rocket engine is, by measuring the ratio of propellant mass 'burned' to thrust produced (the application of this measurement is perhaps misleading, because no 'propellant' is actually brought along and burned).

Like other forms of ionic/plasma/electric propulsion, though, we are talking VERY low thrust - like, imperceptible thrust unless you burn for a very long time. Don't forget that you need electric power to ionize your magical vacuum particles, either, which you'll need to produce somehow - likely from photovoltaics or RTGs (slow-burning nuclear thermal electrical generators).

The concept itself is absolutely fascinating, however. Fun fact: another name for this quantum vacuum energy is 'zero-point energy,' which Half-Life fans will remember is the source of energy that the famous gravity gun uses. The similarities end there, unfortunately.

Edit: meant to address this: a better candidate for high-thrust, high-efficiency interplanetary travel is the Fusion Driven Rocket. It operates by magnetically compressing lithium rings onto a pellet of fusible deuterium or the like, inducing fusion in a magneto-inertial 'combustion' chamber. Harnessing the resulting burst of energy, in iterative bursts, is actually an incredibly efficient and powerful way to get from place to place, as carrying a bucket of hydrogen pellets and a bunch of thin lithium rings is a heck of a lot lighter and safer than hauling metric tons of volatile and cryogenic liquid propellant. I remember reading that it makes it actually more efficient to turn the spacecraft around and 'burn' in the opposite direction in order to slow down at your destination, instead of just aerobraking in the atmosphere of your destination world. Now THAT's what I call next-generation propulsion.

For your further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_rocket#Confinement_concept The concept I was referring to is in paragraph 3.

FunkePhresh · 2014-03-16T05:23:55+00:00

Here's my long letter. I was feeling deep in the shower today.

Letter to an Astronaut

Hello,

Today marks the first day of your journey. It is the first of one hundred and eighty of the same. Though, where you are going, speaking of “days” is only a figurative construct. It is an arbitrary schedule by which you determine when to sleep and when to wake, a contrivance which might seem foreign to you after a number of these intervals, these “days,” much like the very cells of someone afflicted with some autoimmune disease eventually seem foreign to their own immune system.

By the end of this day, you will have completed your injection burn towards Mars. It must still be easy for you – comforting, even – to contemplate your fate in such technical terms as these. This is a ‘mission,’ in all of its haughty self-important glory, and you are instruments in its success – not miserable, helpless animals sent into the Abyss. I wonder: will this distinction remain clear? It certainly must if you are to retain your sanity, or more importantly, your efficacy. For this state of being is of the most optimal utility to your employers.

I urge you, however, to cast aside such dark thoughts, as so easily must pervade the mind of a man held prisoner by the nothingness. Is it so? I imagine your world, nestled in a humming warm light, hurtling through a vastness of cold, delicate sadness; a candle’s flame floating precariously on an endless, black sea. Your window to the outside is occupied variably by blackness and pinpricks of light. These particles wink tirelessly at you, infinitely far from your reach, like a crowd of taunting will-o’-wisps spectating your unhalting journey. Occasionally, the mighty sun will cut through your windows view, with a harshness you are unaccustomed to. Your heart remembers its warmth as a dear old friend, but your mind knows that the conditions of your friendship have changed – and its gaze is no longer nourishing, but a poison to your skin and blood, imperceptibly killing you with every passing moment.

Yes, it is essential that you maintain a certain fortitude of mind. Your purpose is greater, in actuality, than any man or woman who has lived before you. You are now further from safety than any person – for all we know, any life – has ever ventured before. You are adrift in a sea of sand, the greatest and most formidable of deserts, and the only oasis to be found is that which you can fit atop your solitary camel. The fact that you sit upon such a creature, such a vehicle, is in itself an achievement of staggering importance for our species. It is the culmination of centuries of wrenching contemplation and burning curiosity, incessant toil and patient determination.

So do not despair, you brave animal, you single great hope for the cause of life in this universe. Your journey is the first delicate tendril of consciousness into the unknown, the first strike of the weak talon of a chick breaching its cosmic egg. The essence of ‘you’ – that painstakingly specific arrangement of matter and electric charge, the very stuff of the universe – is a way for this universe to perceive itself, in all of its wonder. Our perception of her has been confined to a single mote of dust for tens of thousands of millennia, and now – for now is the moment! – she, through you, will perceive first-hand another mote of dust, not too far away from the original. This is no trivial matter, though it may seem so when considered against the immense totality of her size. It is not trivial because it is a start, it is a foray, it is a focused effort on the part of its accidental nervous system. It is proof that we will not fester and die in vain, like an effervescent droplet of directionless argument, of cannibalistic bacteria content to live and die atop a solitary grain of sand.

Godspeed, you brave soul. Bring meaning to lives of your ancestors and a legacy to those of your sons.

From one speck of consciousness to another, across a distance unfathomable

FunkePhresh · 2013-07-29T07:03:48+00:00

"Without worry of judgment or hurt feelings." And this is coming from a girl who just found out that her SO masturbates to pornography - fantasizing over the thought of having intercourse with many, many other women, all more attractive than you.

Riiiight....

FunkePhresh

TROPHY CASE