Ask Uncle Matt, Summer 2006
Jul. 17th, 2006 03:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nemorathwaldDear Uncle Matt,
How many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop? Please do NOT ask Mr. Owl, as he cheats!!
- Pop Tootsie
Dear Tootsie,
This depends on one's saliva and licking technique. If your saliva has a high viscosity and you use twirling licks, it can be as low as 600, but if your saliva has a low viscosity and you take dainty licks, it can be as high as 800. If you are an expert on licking, or have experienced a vast array of licking techniques, you might wish to invent a standardized human licking scale to settle this question. It could be a unit of lick known as the "tootsie."
-Uncle Matt
Dear Uncle Matt,
I've noticed more and more people involved in polyamorous relationships lately. Whatever happened to good old fashioned fidelity?? Is keeping one's pants fastened around people other than one's spouse no longe fashionable?
- God Wears Prada
Dear God Wears,
I don't know why you think it's unfashionable to fasten one's pants around people who are not one's spouse. In fact it's downright kinky. But whenever I've tried it, the person I was not married to always wiggled out and freed herself. After that I just used rope. What's your secret-- denim?
Unfastened belts have been all the rage on the runway from Paris to the Riviera. Fashion critics rave about how the buckles swash, and the other ends dangle and swing so rakishly. "Relationship Fashion" magazine predicts that next year, four-year-pre-limited marriages will become fashionable, and also bell bottoms and afros will go back out of style. Gucci is coming out with a ring-shaped circle of undying and unrequited infatuations, to compete with the radical new five-way pentagram-shaped relationship configurations of Prada's hot new designer Guido Della Croce.
"Fidelity" is an interesting word when it is taken to mean having no additional romantic relationships. That implies that multiple relationships constitute "infidelity"-- that a married polyamorist has somehow ceased to be faithful to his or her spouse. And yet being unfaithful means breaking the terms of an agreement, and you can't break a promise you haven't made. If you are not monogamous with those who have not asked you to be, are you harming them? Would they benefit from monogamy? So far, I've never heard a good description of how they would.
If I rephrase your question as "what ever happened to monogamy", the answer is another question. It is not rhetorical; I ask this question in all seriousness, wondering what the answer is. "What took so long?" Something caused monogamy to be so popular so long, and this is the mystery. Monogamy, not polyamory, is the conundrum; withholding love from other people is the lifestyle that needs an explanation.
The explanation could be that this is just the way that evolution set up the human brain chemistry. Like hunger and boredom and the sex drive itself, sometimes people just get a feeling of unhappiness for no good reason, just because they do not have exclusive access to their loved one's heart and body. The emotion might even fool them into believing groundless fears that they are unloved or that their relationship is not secure.
It makes no sense that people's minds work that way, and it's terribly unfair and harmful, but there does not seem to be any solution to the monogamy problem. Those whose brains are not wired that way merely need to identify those whose brains are wired that way, and respectfully leave them alone.
-Uncle Matt
Dear Uncle Matt:
I am in search of the PERFECT cup of coffee. Where can I find it?
- Roast Grind
Dear Roast,
In your own home, with a bit of effort and expense. Once you pass a threshhold of quality in beans and preparation, as described on on any further perfection is a matter of taste. For instance, the most perfect cup of coffee, if measured by financial expense, would be made from coffee berries that are shat out of the digestive systems of civets. Clearly, standards vary. But you can reach the threshhold of basic non-crappiness as described in this quick guide:
1. Start with freshly roasted whole bean coffee and grind it as you use it. Basic non-commercial coffee grinders are affordable.
2. Use good water. Coffee is 98-99% water. Need we say more! Do not use distilled water due to the absence of minerals, which actually help the coffee taste better.
3. Measure your coffee. 2 Tablespoons of coffee to every 8 oz. cup of water.
4. Brew coffee by an Auto-Drip coffee maker or French Press. If possible, do not use a machine with a burner, unless you are diligent about turning off when coffee has completed it's brew cycle. The fresh brewed coffee will burn and the great flavors, body, & aroma will be lost! A gold filter versus paper filters will give you a great flavor and minimize any paper taste.
Nevertheless, I recommend you start with "An alt.coffee guide to the proper method of brewing great drip coffee at home". Here is an excerpt:
"Just make sure you get the old coffee grounds out of the coffee maker before you brew a new pot. Poor college students may want to actually re-use old grounds, to avoid purchasing new coffee. If should be noted, however, that re-using grounds more than 10 times could result in an overly bitter brew which might not be to your personal liking."
-Uncle Matt
Dear Uncle Matt,
So, explain this to me: why lobsters?
-Puzzled
Dear Puzzled,
Because the neural structure of lobsters is so simple that they are easy to upload into a computer simulation.
The "Moravec operation", named for Hans Moravec, could create a vector of the state of a complete nervous system: a "nervous system state vector". From Accelerando by Charlie Stross: "...take a neuron, map its synapses, replace with microelectrodes that deliver identical outputs from a simulation of the nerve. Repeat for entire brain, until you've got a working map of it in your simulator."
It goes on to describe why not lobsters:
Awakening to consciousness in a human-dominated internet, that must be terribly confusing! There are no points of reference in their ancestry, no biblical certainties in the new millennium that, stretching ahead, promises as much change as has happened since their Precambrian origin. All they have is a tenuous metacortex of expert systems and an abiding sense of being profoundly out of their depth. (That, and the Moscow Windows NT User Group website–Communist Russia is the only government still running on Microsoft, the central planning apparat being convinced that if you have to pay for software it must be worth money.)
The lobsters are not the sleek, strongly superhuman intelligences of pre-singularity mythology: they're a dim-witted collective of huddling crustaceans. Before their discarnation, before they were uploaded one neuron at a time and injected into cyberspace, they swallowed their food whole then chewed it in a chitin-lined stomach. This is lousy preparation for dealing with a world full of future-shocked talking anthropoids, a world where you are perpetually assailed by self-modifying spamlets that infiltrate past your firewall and emit a blizzard of cat-food animations starring various alluringly edible small animals. It's confusing enough to the cats the adverts are aimed at, never mind a crusty that's unclear on the idea of dry land.(Although the concept of a can opener is intuitively obvious to an uploaded panulirus.)
That's not half as chilling as the fate of the uploaded cats. In this story, the Pentagon wants them for onboard missile guidance systems.
-Uncle Matt
Dear Uncle Matt,
I laughed when I read about your college and how they have a rule against optical intercourse and making eye babies. Were you ever tempted to watch a movie of people having optical intercourse. And what is the best optical intercourse you've ever had.
- Cornea Porn
Dear Cornea,
"City Slickers" did not actually mention the term, but has the best description of making eye-babies that I've ever seen in a movie. The cowboy played by the elderly and leathery Jack Pallance told the story of the only time he was in love. He rode up on his horse and saw a woman working in a field. She stood up, brushed the hair out of her eyes, and for a long time they gazed at each other over a distance. "So what happened then?" He rode away and never saw her again. He loved her with no thought of possessing her. That was, for him, the love of his life. It was a cute story.
In the spirit of your question, I'm limiting my selection to those experiences in which I was in public and not actually having sex at the time.
My own favorite experience of optical intercourse did not take place during my attendance at PCC. It was late at night during Penguicon this year, with someone I had met that weekend. You know how when things are going really nice, sometimes you don't even need to say very much anymore? You just smile at each other and gaze deeply.
Then an accquaintance of mine shouldered between us. He began carrying on a one-sided conversation with her as if I were not present. I was not too upset because these experiences are a fun little thing that happens sometimes. I excused myself and walked away smiling, satisfied.
My god, that woman can dilate her pupils like some kind of contortionist...
-Uncle Matt
How many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop? Please do NOT ask Mr. Owl, as he cheats!!
- Pop Tootsie
Dear Tootsie,
This depends on one's saliva and licking technique. If your saliva has a high viscosity and you use twirling licks, it can be as low as 600, but if your saliva has a low viscosity and you take dainty licks, it can be as high as 800. If you are an expert on licking, or have experienced a vast array of licking techniques, you might wish to invent a standardized human licking scale to settle this question. It could be a unit of lick known as the "tootsie."
-Uncle Matt
Dear Uncle Matt,
I've noticed more and more people involved in polyamorous relationships lately. Whatever happened to good old fashioned fidelity?? Is keeping one's pants fastened around people other than one's spouse no longe fashionable?
- God Wears Prada
Dear God Wears,
I don't know why you think it's unfashionable to fasten one's pants around people who are not one's spouse. In fact it's downright kinky. But whenever I've tried it, the person I was not married to always wiggled out and freed herself. After that I just used rope. What's your secret-- denim?
Unfastened belts have been all the rage on the runway from Paris to the Riviera. Fashion critics rave about how the buckles swash, and the other ends dangle and swing so rakishly. "Relationship Fashion" magazine predicts that next year, four-year-pre-limited marriages will become fashionable, and also bell bottoms and afros will go back out of style. Gucci is coming out with a ring-shaped circle of undying and unrequited infatuations, to compete with the radical new five-way pentagram-shaped relationship configurations of Prada's hot new designer Guido Della Croce.
"Fidelity" is an interesting word when it is taken to mean having no additional romantic relationships. That implies that multiple relationships constitute "infidelity"-- that a married polyamorist has somehow ceased to be faithful to his or her spouse. And yet being unfaithful means breaking the terms of an agreement, and you can't break a promise you haven't made. If you are not monogamous with those who have not asked you to be, are you harming them? Would they benefit from monogamy? So far, I've never heard a good description of how they would.
If I rephrase your question as "what ever happened to monogamy", the answer is another question. It is not rhetorical; I ask this question in all seriousness, wondering what the answer is. "What took so long?" Something caused monogamy to be so popular so long, and this is the mystery. Monogamy, not polyamory, is the conundrum; withholding love from other people is the lifestyle that needs an explanation.
The explanation could be that this is just the way that evolution set up the human brain chemistry. Like hunger and boredom and the sex drive itself, sometimes people just get a feeling of unhappiness for no good reason, just because they do not have exclusive access to their loved one's heart and body. The emotion might even fool them into believing groundless fears that they are unloved or that their relationship is not secure.
It makes no sense that people's minds work that way, and it's terribly unfair and harmful, but there does not seem to be any solution to the monogamy problem. Those whose brains are not wired that way merely need to identify those whose brains are wired that way, and respectfully leave them alone.
-Uncle Matt
Dear Uncle Matt:
I am in search of the PERFECT cup of coffee. Where can I find it?
- Roast Grind
Dear Roast,
In your own home, with a bit of effort and expense. Once you pass a threshhold of quality in beans and preparation, as described on on any further perfection is a matter of taste. For instance, the most perfect cup of coffee, if measured by financial expense, would be made from coffee berries that are shat out of the digestive systems of civets. Clearly, standards vary. But you can reach the threshhold of basic non-crappiness as described in this quick guide:
1. Start with freshly roasted whole bean coffee and grind it as you use it. Basic non-commercial coffee grinders are affordable.
2. Use good water. Coffee is 98-99% water. Need we say more! Do not use distilled water due to the absence of minerals, which actually help the coffee taste better.
3. Measure your coffee. 2 Tablespoons of coffee to every 8 oz. cup of water.
4. Brew coffee by an Auto-Drip coffee maker or French Press. If possible, do not use a machine with a burner, unless you are diligent about turning off when coffee has completed it's brew cycle. The fresh brewed coffee will burn and the great flavors, body, & aroma will be lost! A gold filter versus paper filters will give you a great flavor and minimize any paper taste.
Nevertheless, I recommend you start with "An alt.coffee guide to the proper method of brewing great drip coffee at home". Here is an excerpt:
"Just make sure you get the old coffee grounds out of the coffee maker before you brew a new pot. Poor college students may want to actually re-use old grounds, to avoid purchasing new coffee. If should be noted, however, that re-using grounds more than 10 times could result in an overly bitter brew which might not be to your personal liking."
-Uncle Matt
Dear Uncle Matt,
So, explain this to me: why lobsters?
-Puzzled
Dear Puzzled,
Because the neural structure of lobsters is so simple that they are easy to upload into a computer simulation.
The "Moravec operation", named for Hans Moravec, could create a vector of the state of a complete nervous system: a "nervous system state vector". From Accelerando by Charlie Stross: "...take a neuron, map its synapses, replace with microelectrodes that deliver identical outputs from a simulation of the nerve. Repeat for entire brain, until you've got a working map of it in your simulator."
It goes on to describe why not lobsters:
Awakening to consciousness in a human-dominated internet, that must be terribly confusing! There are no points of reference in their ancestry, no biblical certainties in the new millennium that, stretching ahead, promises as much change as has happened since their Precambrian origin. All they have is a tenuous metacortex of expert systems and an abiding sense of being profoundly out of their depth. (That, and the Moscow Windows NT User Group website–Communist Russia is the only government still running on Microsoft, the central planning apparat being convinced that if you have to pay for software it must be worth money.)
The lobsters are not the sleek, strongly superhuman intelligences of pre-singularity mythology: they're a dim-witted collective of huddling crustaceans. Before their discarnation, before they were uploaded one neuron at a time and injected into cyberspace, they swallowed their food whole then chewed it in a chitin-lined stomach. This is lousy preparation for dealing with a world full of future-shocked talking anthropoids, a world where you are perpetually assailed by self-modifying spamlets that infiltrate past your firewall and emit a blizzard of cat-food animations starring various alluringly edible small animals. It's confusing enough to the cats the adverts are aimed at, never mind a crusty that's unclear on the idea of dry land.(Although the concept of a can opener is intuitively obvious to an uploaded panulirus.)
That's not half as chilling as the fate of the uploaded cats. In this story, the Pentagon wants them for onboard missile guidance systems.
-Uncle Matt
Dear Uncle Matt,
I laughed when I read about your college and how they have a rule against optical intercourse and making eye babies. Were you ever tempted to watch a movie of people having optical intercourse. And what is the best optical intercourse you've ever had.
- Cornea Porn
Dear Cornea,
"City Slickers" did not actually mention the term, but has the best description of making eye-babies that I've ever seen in a movie. The cowboy played by the elderly and leathery Jack Pallance told the story of the only time he was in love. He rode up on his horse and saw a woman working in a field. She stood up, brushed the hair out of her eyes, and for a long time they gazed at each other over a distance. "So what happened then?" He rode away and never saw her again. He loved her with no thought of possessing her. That was, for him, the love of his life. It was a cute story.
In the spirit of your question, I'm limiting my selection to those experiences in which I was in public and not actually having sex at the time.
My own favorite experience of optical intercourse did not take place during my attendance at PCC. It was late at night during Penguicon this year, with someone I had met that weekend. You know how when things are going really nice, sometimes you don't even need to say very much anymore? You just smile at each other and gaze deeply.
Then an accquaintance of mine shouldered between us. He began carrying on a one-sided conversation with her as if I were not present. I was not too upset because these experiences are a fun little thing that happens sometimes. I excused myself and walked away smiling, satisfied.
My god, that woman can dilate her pupils like some kind of contortionist...
-Uncle Matt
