sideblog for stuff

And people are complicated. You might think that there's a lot of kinds of car, but at least Dodge generally made all of the Darts the same. Differences between kids go way further than "line worker was a little drunk and swayed this way when he put the windshield wiper hose clamps on." You can't get a Haynes manual, you have to just have the experience.

Me, I'm more of a "hands on" learner, but medical school really frowns upon you opening up the patients. It's one of those union things, I guess. You have to put in your dues, read some dry political literature, before they let you get right in there. Even if you bring your own knife. Medical school wasn't for me, in other words, but I still admire the commitment to public service that is figuring out all the things that can go wrong on a relatively low-mileage, single-owner human body.

It's time for an educational short film (produced in Microsoft 3D Movie Maker) from D. A. R. E., about the dangers of magnets.

"T0M-B1T was a regular guy with a lovely wife and 2.4 kids (one was still under construction), until one day he tried a magnet at a party. He goes to work the next day, but his job-disk has read errors, and his employment is terminated. He tries to go home to his wife and kids, but oh no! His map database is corrupt, and now he doesn't know where he lives! Now he's homeless, begging for batteries on the street. Don't be like T0M-B1T: don't do magnetism"

Because most Vulcans don't actually pretend they don't have emotions, it's all about self-regulation, right? And good comedy usually hinges on manipulating the relationship between our faculties of recognition and surprise in various ways, you can get pretty scientific with it.

So Vulcans go to the comedy act, and the idea is the comedian is trying to make you crack up, and the audience is trying to not even crack a smile, and if you do laugh, you lose. Like all in good fun, but Vulcans are both really competitive and really aware of how dangerous that urge can be to a society, so this could actually be classified as highly orthodox Surakian practice.

So of course the comedian has to actually be funny, or there's no challenge and the game is boring.

Which means the really good Vulcan comedians (most of whom tend to extremely dry delivery of their bits) are going to go around playing to packed houses, which mostly sit staring stonily back at them, with occasional breaks when someone loses it and reacts.

And after a show you'll have Vulcans walking out discussing with great approval how very humorous that was, with varying degrees of muted smugness or chagrin depending on if they won or lost.