The Very-Many-Questions-Not-Worth-Their-Own-Thread Thread 36

[Takhisis]

Fever and paralysis? In the case of Alexander Γ' it's suspected that it was a case of Guillain-Barre's disease (I think I spelled it properly).

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Is there any easy to manufacture (or get hold of in a lab or elsewhere) fungus of the skin which could realistically cause fever (preferably) or paralysis? (And not lead to worse effects or at least not death).

I don't think it causes fever and rashes, but for something similar to paralysis, there's MPTP, which can induce severe parkinsonism but doesn't actually kill them. There's a PBS documentary called "The Case of the Frozen Addicts" about it. I think you have to ingest it, though.

 

[Bootstoots]

Found him! @Bootstoots please help!

I can't think of anything offhand that causes both fever and paralysis at the same time, nor either of those and a rash. I might be able to if it weren't for all the neurotoxins I've been playing around with lately...

 

[tjs282]

Is there any easy to manufacture (or get hold of in a lab or elsewhere) fungus of the skin which could realistically cause fever (preferably) or paralysis? (And not lead to worse effects or at least not death).

The tetanus bacterium (Clostridium tetani) can cause raised temperature during the initial infective stage, and some varieties may also attack the nerves.

Botulinum toxin (from Clostridium botulinum) causes paralysis.

So your hypothetical agent could maybe be bacterial, so long as you weren't too specific about which bacteria (though a Clostridium species seems like a good bet...).

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Question: Domain names were around since the 1980s. (Symbolics.com is the first one ever registered, although there's a few others predating it). What did they do with domains before the WWW?

 

[Takhisis]

Start reading and go about checking the sources the article quotes if they aren't behind a paywall. Happy wikiwalking!

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Question: At exactly 12:00 a.m. every night, the radio station stops whatever song was playing, even if it was in the middle of the song, and starts a new song. Is there a reason for this?

 

[Broken_Erika]

Crappy radio station software?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Yeah, maybe.

 

[Traitorfish]

A witch eats the song, so they have to do a new song.

 

[Cutlass]

Question: At exactly 12:00 a.m. every night, the radio station stops whatever song was playing, even if it was in the middle of the song, and starts a new song. Is there a reason for this?

Poor timing. All of their programming for a day is per-programed, not live. So they have a 24 hour program they have to start at midnight every day. But over the course of the day, those little local bits they throw in to convince listeners that they actually do have a live local broadcast going on run over their alloted time by a small amount. And so they compensate at the end of the day.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Huh. Interesting.

At least its not as bad as the radio station I used to listen to, which would end up playing advertisements on top of the songs or play the station bumper multiple times in a row. Maybe with all their budget cuts, they had to hire someone who didn't have any clue what they were doing.

 

[Cutlass]

Huh. Interesting.

At least its not as bad as the radio station I used to listen to, which would end up playing advertisements on top of the songs or play the station bumper multiple times in a row. Maybe with all their budget cuts, they had to hire someone who didn't have any clue what they were doing.

They really have cheapened the production of radio programs a whole lot since I was young.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Meanwhile my local radio station, one of the DJ's talks about the computer he uses there to play the music, a Pentium III with windows XP......

 

[Takhisis]

So basically he must use it for vintage games released in 1995-2005. And if he doesn't he should.

 

[W|M]

So Civ 2, Civ 3, Freecol and Civ 4?

 

[Takhisis]

For a start. Add Warcraft III, Rise of Nations, the early Total War games, Age of Empires,
Plus a good DOSBox running Doom, Doom II, Blood, Warcraft I/II, Dune II, UFO: Enemy Unknown, Freespace I and II… I wonder how much space there'd be left on that hard drive.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Plus a good DOSBox running Doom, Doom II

Wouldn't a source port work better?

 

[Takhisis]

That depends, in my experience. We'll know more once Erika has collected this technological wonder.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Pffft! I use ZDoom 2.0.63a.