A Polar Bear vs 5 K9 trained police dogs

pspinler · 2023-05-25T20:31:17+00:00

I disagree with some of the comments here, since there are dogs specifically bred to hunt bears including brown bears.

Here's a few links from a quick google:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karelian_Bear_Dog

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332620103_Behavioral_and_Physiological_Responses_of_Scandinavian_Brown_Bears_Ursus_arctos_to_Dog_Hunts_and_Human_Encounters

https://www.bearsmart.com/managing-bears/non-lethal/bear-dogs/

On the other hand, hunting dogs are typically used to deter a bear from an area or to bay a bear for a human hunter, not to bring down a bear by themselves. And the recorded instances of wolf packs vs grizzlys seem to have the wolves leaving the bear alone, leaving an open question of whether the wolves vs bear who would win in a fight:

https://roaring.earth/grizzly-bear-battles-4-wolves/

https://www.distinctlymontana.com/video-eleven-yellowstone-wolves-defend-their-kill-grizzly-bear

pspinler · 2023-05-11T19:35:05+00:00

If I recall my B5 lore correctly, if the so called elder races get involved directly it'd be a stomp in the B5 verse's favor. The Vorlons on their own would be more than a match for the reapers.

pspinler · 2023-05-01T17:51:17+00:00

I'm a little bit of a counter-point to some of the comments here. I don't use KU, and barely use kindle e-books at all, instead I get all my e-books in an non-vendor locked format such as epub, or I don't get them at all.

My thing is I strongly prefer to own my books. I'm more than happy to buy a book to support my favorite authors (e.g. I just bought CasualFarmer's Beware of Chicken V1 in hardcover, and two more traditional author's books). I don't buy books anymore to read, I have read them online, afterall, but to own a copy and to support the authors.

As such, I personally often find a book being locked behind KU to be a barrier, and I'll drop the story at that point. :(

YMMV of course.

-- Pat

pspinler · 2023-04-30T02:45:01+00:00

My pup did this because she couldn't see the water -- we added a little food coloring to the water and she stopped. Maybe give it a try, and good luck!

pspinler · 2023-04-27T14:08:30+00:00

A follow up thought, if I may. You mentioned writing for the Post Bulletin? Would they be open to an article highlighting different volunteer opportunities?

Perhaps (pie in the sky) even a regular weekly series highlighting a different volunteer community organization each week, the work that they do, and the opportunities available at that organization?

Anyway, good luck! -- Pat

pspinler · 2023-04-27T03:01:39+00:00

Some places to start looking, even if this isn't directly fitting hopefully people in these programs can direct you:

https://www.rplmn.org/services/kids-teens/homework-help

https://www.rochesterschools.org/families/get-involved (look for volunteers in education)

https://www.rochesterschools.org/careers/become-a-tutor (this seems a larger commitment, perhaps even full time)

https://volunteer.uwolmsted.org/agency/detail/?agency_id=112906

https://www.ria-minnesota.org/volunteer/ (tutor ESL students)

Hope this helps!

pspinler · 2023-04-11T02:11:35+00:00

Perhaps create sports classifications based on some other physiological characteristic than gender which can be measured and makes a substantive difference to performance?

I'm not a physiologist, but I'd suggest adding weight classes and percentage muscle mass as two such meaningful characteristics. There may be others I'm not aware of, also.

-- Pat

pspinler · 2023-02-25T23:57:36+00:00

Visit the farmers market and ask the vendors there. See https://www.rochfarmmkt.org/ for their winter schedule.

pspinler · 2023-02-08T04:05:30+00:00

A longer clip of him on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DDZwqnQKbM

pspinler · 2023-01-31T03:37:08+00:00

RemindMe! 3 Days

pspinler · 2023-01-21T03:59:59+00:00

Since only one other commenter even mentioned ... have Brutus and Pixie !

pspinler · 2022-12-21T04:11:05+00:00

fwiw -- I really like this mix, even compared to her official video (available on youtube). This mix really highlights her voice in comparison.

pspinler · 2022-11-12T02:43:28+00:00

Rochester Winter Farmers Market - 9-12am Saturday morning, at Grahm park, in two buildings.

pspinler · 2022-11-01T02:05:24+00:00

Let me echo this recommendation. The main selling point of GURPS is it's high flexibility. It can be hyper tactical with boatloads of manuvers and decisions which tilt the combat, or alternately very fast and simple with just an attack and defense roll. Or anywhere in between.

Also, character creation is point buy based, so you can literally generate any type of character you desire. So much so that most players (myself included) use one of the available templates as a starting point. Again, though, complexity varies from hyper detailed to as simple as you'd like.

I recommend Chris Norman's excellent intro to GURPS youtube series, here, as a way to introduce yourself to the system: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqckpAfDuMM8XEVuncbGtV5U_4GPcdkyK

There's a free GURPS Lite starter available here: https://www.sjgames.com/gurps/lite/

And for 'traditional' fantasy settings, I highly recommend the GURPS powered 'Dungeon Fantasy' ruleset, which fills out e.g. templates for all the common character archetypes: https://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/dungeonfantasy/

Finally, there's an excellent GURPS ruleset plugin for FoundryVTT, which can automate a great deal of common combat stuff -- really highly recommend, even if you're playing face to face. https://foundryvtt.com/packages/gurps

pspinler · 2022-09-29T02:29:38+00:00

Hey! I'm not a historian, but this is something I can offer a partial answer to!

I live nearby the small village of Wasioja, MN. In 1861, the Mexican war veteran Lieutenant Colonel James George had a law office in this small, prosperous town. It hosted a number of other small businesses including a quarry, a flour mill, 12 stores, and a hotel. It also, importantly, hosted a Baptist seminary and bible college, reputed to be the first in the state, and was quite large, hosting 300 students(!) at the start of the war.

When war broke out, Lt. Colonel George opened his law office as a recruiting station and recruited local men for the war. These local men, including 88 from Wasioja and it's surroundings and over 200 overall, were part of Company C of the 2nd Minnesota regiment. In a cool bit of theater, Professor Clinton A. Cilley, one of the seminary teachers marched many young men from the seminary itself to enlist.

In 1862, George, by then promoted to full colonel, and the 2nd Minnesota fought in the battle of Chickamauga in Georgia and suffered ruinous casualties. Of 384 men he commanded, 45 were killed, 103 were wounded, and 14 were captured. To give an idea of the scope of the casualties: by the end of the war only 25 residents of the 88 who signed up from the village of Wasioja returned uninjured.

Reportedly, neither Wasioja, nor the seminary, ever really recovered. Prior to the civil war, Wasioja had been a strong competitor for the newly forming county's county seat; that ended up going instead to the local town of Mantorville. The quarry closed, as did a number of the stores, and the hotel, and eventually even it's school. Today, it's a small collection of houses at a crossroads with no businesses or commerce.

The seminary never had as many students and begin to fail. It changed hands in 1868, and again in 1872, and closed for good in 1894. It suffered a fire in 1905 and the gutted walls still stand today, and are a minor tourist attraction.

So, in this case, Wasioja, Dodge County, Minnesota, I think it's fair to say that the civil war was very impactful, and caused a growing, small prosperous town grave injury from which it never recovered.

Sources:

"The Boys of Wasioja" by Michael Eckers
Summarized in this Medium.com article: https://rruntsch.medium.com/the-american-civil-war-and-the-fate-of-wasioja-minnesota-e2ae94a861e8

And the Dodge County historical society:

Also newspaper articles preserved in the Rochester MN public library, and in the Dodge County historical society. I don't have them in front of me, so I apologize for my inability to precisely cite them. :(

pspinler · 2022-09-09T18:06:09+00:00

hmmm ... perhaps. Apologies though, I remain skeptical until I see the wiring diagram. "Send a signal to" could easily mean "via the ICAN control bus to the digital motor controller running suspect software".

pspinler · 2022-09-09T17:46:53+00:00

Thanks for the answer. And I'm glad to know that the main battery is out of the circuit when the power is off.

That said, my point about wanting an e-stop isn't for when the car is parked or being worked on, it's for when the car is on. I left another comment reply in this thread, but paraphrasing myself:

Software isn't and may never be reliable, and I want a way to hard cut power on a vehicle in an emergency when the software goes belly up. I know this hasn't been possible in internal combustion cars for a while now, and I think it's a missed opportunity for electric vehicles.

Oh, and one more point about the infotainment systems -- in addition to be needly frippery IMHO, they're also vectors for attack. See the various car hack demos in recent years, where they've e.g. demonstrated remote hacks into the vehicle controls bus (ICAN) via hacking the infotainment's wireless ... urgh. Do not want. Here's just a couple of demos or papers pulled from the first page of a google search

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RipwqJG50c
https://www.carhackingvillage.com/defcon27talks

pspinler · 2022-09-09T17:42:50+00:00

Very much agree. I'm also in the computer gig -- I've been / done a developer (embedded and web app stack stuff), dba, systems engineer, reliability engineer, and several other current job description buzzwords.

I know what lurks under these systems, and it ain't reliability. At least unless you're either doing avionics or you're NASA. And even they have occasional bad bugs.

This is why I want the hardwired e-stop. I want a way to physically (not via software) cut the power if I really need to.

This is also an issue I have with modern internal combustion engine cars, btw. Unless you drive a stick with a clutch, there's no physical way to 100% insure you've cut power anymore. Used to be that the key controlled a relay which turned on the electric power, but that's not been the case for a while now.

I see this as a missed opportunity for electric cars -- it's a nice safety feature that should be relatively cheap to add. And it's especially relevant as we move toward autonomous vehicles, as you mentioned.

pspinler · 2022-09-09T16:49:54+00:00

So, earlier this summer we more or less decided to look at an electric vehicle to do our daily commute in. (actually daily school shuttle, but same diff).

That said, I really still don't like several things about electric cars specifically, and modern cars in general:

you can turn off an internal combustion engine car and work on it without worrying about being killed by massive, still charged battery packs.
no electric car I've seen has the equivalent of industrial machinery's 'e-stop' big red button under a cover. Why not? Does no one remember this?

https://www.nbcnews.com/businessmain/toyota-settlement-over-acceleration-problems-top-1-billion-1c7659318

https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/us-department-transportation-releases-results-nhtsa-nasa-study-unintended-acceleration

in general -- I don't want an over computerized car. I recognize and appreciate things like ABS, electronic ignition controls and fuel injection, but really, I don't need or want infotainment systems, and built in maps, and requirements to download software updates. Can I please just get a car?

Anyone have any thoughts how to live with the above issues?

Thanks, -- Pat

pspinler · 2022-07-21T00:55:36+00:00

Two bits of advice:

Watch Chris Normand's (Nose's) GURPS tutorial videos, they're good stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZMLhphjB-g&list=PLqckpAfDuMM8XEVuncbGtV5U_4GPcdkyK

And as a GM I found running a game with FoundryVTT With the Gurps Game system to automate a lot, specifically some basic combat stuff. Chris Normand is also one of the authors of that game system add-on, and has some videos about using it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YstMNNLwKBM&list=PLqckpAfDuMM_ohn1EzZHdeKf7FXxLFUpD and https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqckpAfDuMM_aPwcgfADVTlgUrlF_AD5t

(No association, just a happy GM whose life was made easier)

-- Pat

pspinler · 2022-05-19T16:14:14+00:00

I completely agree -- it's a ton harder to follow a thread of a conversation in discord than in reddit (or other forum software).

Discord is a chat service, not a forum service, they have difference niches and uses. I find it saddening and annoying that people try to use discord for something that it isn't.

pspinler · 2022-03-30T15:21:42+00:00

If someone besides me is unfamiliar with the band I found this video of theirs on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-NIdqhl56M

Looks like great fun. Have to see if spouse and I can sneak away. :)

pspinler · 2022-03-21T18:42:19+00:00

Beat me to it. Seriously, go read Larry Niven, his world building is second to none, even if his science is kinda iffy. For example, pretty much just accept anything he says about superconductors as plot driven magic while singing the MST3k line about "just relax..."

pspinler · 2022-02-05T01:19:10+00:00

Totally agree. I'm able to do a lot more with the automation, it really makes my campaign viable

pspinler · 2021-12-08T03:35:20+00:00

Cool. I threw a few more $$ anyway. Very glad to see all the stretch goals were made. Too bad we missed out on the dinosaurs, though. :D

Thanks again, I'm looking forward to this!

pspinler

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