Ironik

It doesn't matter where we were, what matters is where we are.












...going to hell, apparently. At least we can get group rate.

You haven't been inside a schoolbus in a while, have you?

Traded for Wonderman and a superhero sidekick to be named later.

To paraphrase Mr. Incredible: "No matter how many times you reap these people, they always manage to come back to life again. Sometimes I just want them to stay dead! I just killed you people! Can't you stay dead for ten minutes?!"

Holy crap you're hardcore.

Time to move on to the foot massager.

I get the impression Statesman doesn't read much, certainly not books. He's more of a doer than a thinker. My dad hasn't read a book since college and I think my brother has read maybe 5 since he put down the textbooks, so it's not like that would be unusual.

Edit: I'm ignoring the pictures because I like to sleep without bad dreams.

Helpful hint to my fellow fellows: many of the ladies love sparkly things and they LOVE it when you make something especially for them. Even if it's just a beaded bracelet with Swarovski and silver -- which any monkey can put together --you will be handsomely rewarded.

"I made this for you, honey, because it matches your eyes and reminds me of that lovely afternoon on the boat." She doesn't need to know it cost you $20 in parts and took 10 minutes to put together, it's the thought that counts.

I'm secure enough in my masculinity to do that. I also design jewelry.

I was specifically avoiding things added to the Oasis that are designed to entertain people such as the golf course, swimming pools and movie theatre. (Although I suppose one could argue that the movie theatre is just a vastly larger television, upscaled out of necessity to entertain larger crowds.)

Even if I substitute a really big yacht for the Oasis, I think the point still stands. It becomes more complex simply due to its size and the added requirements enforced on it by size. You have more stuff in it, so you need more things to control that stuff, all of which means increased complexity.

That's exactly the same sort of problem faced by a larger ship. A toilet used in a houseboat is relatively simple. Waste facilities in even a medium-sized yacht is tremendously complex. (This I know from first-hand knowledge, asking a lot of questions of the captain of the yacht I was on for a party. People thought I was weird for asking for a tour of the mechanical systems during a party, but I like learning and hate crowds, so... yeah. That's also when I learned large ships used the jet thrusters for fine maneuvers.)

That's what I'm saying!

I don't know if there are warships which do similar enough jobs for direct comparison. Destroyers and cruisers, maybe. But they're close enough to make the point.

You've blinded me...

with science!

While I take your point about the skyscrapers, I think those are directly analogous to small spaceships v. large spaceships, specifically Durakken's claim that larger ones aren't any more complex than smaller ones. They have all the same basic components: engine, sleeping quarters, helm, kitchen, deck, bathrooms, windows, propulsion mechanisms and so on. They serve the exact same purpose, as well: as pleasure craft.

But the stove in the houseboat is going to be singular and simpler compared to the hundreds of far-larger professional-quality stoves on the cruise ship. The houseboat probably has two propellers while the Oasis has multiple propellers as well as thrusters similar in design (but vastly larger) to those on jet skis. The houseboat has a single, compact motor while the ship has multiple gigantic engines. The houseboat's deck doesn't need to be as sturdy as ones on the Oasis, and the houseboat only has a single deck on the top with a smaller one on the back while the Oasis has dozens of separate decks. The houseboat has a single type of window, albeit in multiple sizes, but the cruise ship has a great variety of windows of all kinds, shapes and sizes to fulfill different functions. Plus there's getting electricity from the power plant to the rest of the craft -- the cruise ship has multiple generators as well as thousands of junction boxes and thousands of miles of wiring, while the houseboat only has a single junction box and a few hundred feet of wiring, and there aren't any redundant back-up systems on it. The houseboat has an air conditioner and heater, but the Oasis has multiple heaters and air conditioners as well as a couple massive climate-control systems for the public areas of the ship. Then there are the helms of the two ships. Even though they use similar basic components common to all watercraft, there's no question that the Oasis sports a bridge that is so much more complicated than the houseboat's that you might as well be comparing an Apple Macintosh G4 to an abacus.

Don't be silly -- he turns over slowly with much effort and grunting.

Yes it does. Look at the real world. Compare the world's largest cruise ship, the Oasis of the Seas, to a houseboat. Are you really going to claim that the Oasis is not orders of magnitude more complex than the smaller craft?

Rope? Come on Dur, that's just a stupid analogy.

Instead, compare cars to submarines. A car engine has fewer parts than a sub's nuclear power plant, but the sub's engine could be said to be "less complex". Having fewer moving parts doesn't necessarily mean it has less complexity nor does it mean that it's more reliable. The Navy spends a lot more time and money in maintenance on a sub's engine than you do on your car's engine.

Who cares if it's not logical? That's what JJ Abrams said happened, so that's what happened. Look, Abrams is a terrible writer, and this just underscores that fact. That he ripped off Star Trek: Nemesis for his basic plot should've been clue enough, without even getting into the silly details of his universe.