Congrats, you're a half-billionaire!



Buy a tank and mess stuff up.
 
Sommerswerd said:
I dunno :dunno:, you just come off as the type that has money... My mistake I guess;)So you DID have money! Aha! So tell us where you hid it:D
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Consider that what you sense in both cases is the lack of a feeling of need, which can be achieved by methods other than having.

As to where I hid it, I guess the most accurate statement would be I gave it away. I made a habit of ending marriages/relationships by just walking away with the clothes on my back because I knew I could just make whatever I needed. Eventually I figured out that I didn't really need much so I stopped making much, leading to my current state of not really having anything.

Which would make winning the lottery a very bizarre experience for me. Not that it would be just ordinary for much of anyone else.
 
In fact, chickens are possibly the most common animal that isn't an insect in the entire world. (Well, maybe rats are more common. But certainly chickens are the most popular farmed animal.)

How many are there? Loads of them.

Some sources say 50 billion.

But I don't think it's that high. Maybe 25 billion.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/08/peak-chicken
 
Sleep on large piles of cash with many beautiful women.
 
Taking some time off to explore the world sounds like a good plan. Not immediately, since that would make it obvious something had changed, but in a few months. It'd be great to have both money to travel, and no constraints on a return date. But that wouldn't take very much of the half-billion.

After that, make Firaxis an offer to buy the Civ3 source code. I don't remember what the current highest offer is, but with 1/2 billion, it ought to be possible to make a pretty attractive offer. Assuming that doesn't work, gather up a few of the artists and programmers around here, and create a spiritual Civ successor that would take the best of Civ3 and Civ4, and fix the limitations of both engines (32-bit, maximum number of civilizations, etc.). Find a nice location for at least some of the group to have a central office, move there for a few years, and see what we can come up with working on it full time for 2 - 3 years. If it's working, fantastic. If not, oh well, move on to the next thing that's interesting.

And what would be the next thing that was interesting? I'm not sure yet. Just investing in a cool technology like electric cars probably wouldn't be that great unless I could be informed about it and actively involved. Maybe founding a fiber-to-the-house ISP, like Sonic out in San Francisco. That would take a fair amount of capital, provide some benefits, be challenging, and yet probably not require the full amount of capital available upfront.

Or maybe study up on public infrastructure for a few years, and then see what I could do to improve the infrastructure problems in the U.S. There'd be enough money to make a decent investment, as well as enough to advocate for hopefully at least one significant improvement (even if regional). If I'd won half a billion back in 2011, it probably would've enabled funding the Milwaukee to Madison railroad that Scott Walker turned down because it would cost $10 - $20 million a year to run.

Then again, I might just keep traveling until I found a really cool place to live, and then settle there. I would hazard a guess it would be Norway by the fjords, but it gets pretty chilly that far north, so I might prefer something farther away from the poles.
 
Borachio said:
In fact, chickens are possibly the most common animal that isn't an insect in the entire world. (Well, maybe rats are more common. But certainly chickens are the most popular farmed animal.)

How many are there? Loads of them.

Some sources say 50 billion.

But I don't think it's that high. Maybe 25 billion.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/08/peak-chicken
Click to expand...
I looked this up on Wikipedia recently. I recall a figure of 25 billion chickens alive at any given time. But we as a species go through about 50 billion per year; the mean chicken lifespan is brought down by the fact that broilers can reach slaughtering size in about 6 weeks, while egg-laying hens lay enough eggs to be viable for 1-2 years.

By way of comparison, a crude estimate of the number of humans that have ever lived is ~100 billion. We eat about as many chickens in two years as there have ever existed of us. :eek:
 
Bootstoots said:
I looked this up on Wikipedia recently. I recall a figure of 25 billion chickens alive at any given time. But we as a species go through about 50 billion per year; the mean chicken lifespan is brought down by the fact that broilers can reach slaughtering size in about 6 weeks, while egg-laying hens lay enough eggs to be viable for 1-2 years.

By way of comparison, a crude estimate of the number of humans that have ever lived is ~100 billion. We eat about as many chickens in two years as there have ever existed of us. :eek:
Click to expand...

I read a sci-fi book a long time ago...can't remember the title...but one of the in passing features of that fictional future was a thing they called 'chicken little'. It was a genetically engineered thing that amounted to a chicken with a breast that filled most of a building. It was on all kinds of mechanical life support because the organs were inadequate to support the giant blob of meat, but it grew continuously so they could just harvest giant slabs and cut it into 'breasts' to package and sell.

I think about that every time I see chicken on sale really cheap.
 
I know Oryx and Crake has ChickieNobs, which are balls of chicken flesh and wings fed using a tube through a mouthlike opening at one end. I could totally go for a bucket of ChickieNob wings right about now...

Of course, I'm the type that can watch documentaries about hot dog production and get hungry for hot dogs.

I wonder what the population of types of monstrous genetically engineered chicken-derivatives in sci-fi books is.
 
Timsup2nothin said:
I read a sci-fi book a long time ago...can't remember the title...but one of the in passing features of that fictional future was a thing they called 'chicken little'. It was a genetically engineered thing that amounted to a chicken with a breast that filled most of a building. It was on all kinds of mechanical life support because the organs were inadequate to support the giant blob of meat, but it grew continuously so they could just harvest giant slabs and cut it into 'breasts' to package and sell.

I think about that every time I see chicken on sale really cheap.
Click to expand...

I remember that book!

... I can't remember what it was called, either.
 
Borachio said:
I remember that book!

... I can't remember what it was called, either.
Click to expand...

Secret headquarters of the revolution accessed through a passage hidden under the giant chicken? Used some sort of cattle prod like thing to make the quivering chicken flesh draw up so they could get in?

Strangely I remember that, and literally nothing else.

@Boots...thanks a bunch, now I'm craving hot dogs.
 
Scum-skimming wasn't hard to learn. You got up at dawn. You gulped a breakfast sliced not long ago from Chicken Little and washed it down with Coffiest. You put on your coveralls and took the cargo net up to your tier. In blazing noon from sunrise to sunset you walked your acres of shallow tanks crusted with algae. If you walked slowly, every thirty seconds or so you spotted a patch at maturity, bursting with yummy carbohydrates. You skimmed the patch with your skimmer and slung it down the well, where it would be baled, or processed into glucose to feed Chicken Little, who would be sliced and packed to feed people from Baffinland to Little America. Every hour you could drink from your canteen and take a salt tablet. Every two hours you could take five minutes. At sunset you turned in your coveralls and went to dinner --- more slices from Chicken Little --- and then you were on your own. You could talk, you could read, you could go into trance before the dayroom hypnoteleset, you could shop, you could pick fights, you could drive yourself crazy thinking of what might have been, you could go to sleep.
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The Space Merchants - Frederik Pohl

(Published in 1952! You're older than you look, Mr Nothin.)

I have heard that the reason young people tower over me these days is because of all the growth hormones fed to chicken these days. A bit alarming. On the other hand, I may just be shrinking.
 
It wasn't exactly brand new when I read it, but I am extraordinarily well preserved for being a few years past fifty.

"Blazing noon from sunrise to sunset"?

I am compelled to find out how that works. Quick Robin! To the batmobile! We're going to the library!
 
This is the same as in Canada
Are hormones used in the production of chicken?
No hormones are used in U.S. chicken production. The Food and Drug Administration strictly prohibits the use of hormones in broiler-fryers. Nor are additives allowed on fresh chicken. If the chicken is processed, however, additives such as salt or sodium erythorbate may be added, but must be listed on the product label.
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http://www.uspoultry.org/faq/faq.cfm

Since the 1950s, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a number of steroid hormone drugs for use in beef cattle and sheep, including natural estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and their synthetic versions.
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http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/SafetyHealth/ProductSafetyInformation/ucm055436.htm

Chickens have gotten so efficient mainly through regular, ol', Natural Selection.

For the past several decades, geneticists have been able to cut roughly one day per year off the time it takes to reach a specified target weight. They have benefited from the short generation interval (lifespan) of the chicken, allowing them to make huge strides in a short period of time. Genetic improvement in the pork and beef industries comes much slower because of the increased generation interval and the time it takes to recognise genetic variation and improvement.
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http://www.thepoultrysite.com/artic...eive-growth-hormones-so-why-all-the-confusion
 
Let's see... half a billion dollars...

  1. Pay off all my debts, particularly school loans, and all my family members' debts - also includes supporting my brother's grad studies if he decides to go there
  2. If any money is left over, buy a decent but not too pricey house in the suburbs for my parents and me
  3. If any money is left over, buy a decent but relatively cheap PC for my entertainment needs (probably somewhere in the $1000 ballpark)
  4. If any money is left over, buy some legos
  5. If any money is left over, save the rest until I'm certain I have a decent job, then give half to charity and the other half keep in savings/retirement/whatever and maybe throw money at Bethesda so they can pump out TES games faster if I'm in the mood and I might give a bit of money to some of my friends who I know I can trust


Tolni said:
I wonder how much would it cost to make the Gamebryo/Havok code less buggy.
Click to expand...

Invest in Bethesda/Obsidian/Zeinmax/whatever?
 
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