extropy

trustycoffeemug
(n.) a word used in wishful thinking to describe a condition of increased order and technological progress with time.

the supposed end result of extropy will be the achievement of some kind of technological singularity. fingers crossed, i suppose.

face

trustycoffeemug
(n.) bit of flesh stuck to the front of your head. the standard issue face tends to include two eyes, a mouth, and a nose.

one with hidden sinister intentions is said to be two-faced
according to one expert, the world may be seen crashing down all around one's face, unless it's only mesh and lace

(v.) to aim one's face at another's face, for face-to-face combat, or, as some call it, conversation

brazil

rolatorta
(n.) a country on south america, possibly a place where scientists test what would happen if everything that could go wrong went wrong in the same place at the same time

drugs

orikami
(n.)
narcotics? yes.
your prescription at the pharmacy? yes.
psychedelics? yes.
coffee? yes.

the associations, implications, and moral judgments behind 'drugs' varies widely. so instead of 'drugs', use the specific category you mean.

the most limited definition I've seen is, "a substance recognized or defined by the US Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act."
a drug is a drug because of the effects it has on a person when used, not because of a label slapped on it by some top-down council. this definition only works in its legal function. and yet, this narrow style of thinking about 'drugs' (for example, all drugs are bad; drug use is always drug abuse; see also, thinking such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2djwbhadeY) is pervasive beyond the legal system.

(also: medicine)
(also: harm reduction)
(also: addiction)

(also: immoral vs illegal)
(also: social norms)
(also: black and white thinking)

doctors

douglas adams
The major problem with the medical profession in the most advanced sectors of the galaxy had to tackle after cures had been found for all major diseases, and instant repair systems had been found for all physical injuries and disablements except some of the more advanced forms of death, was that of employment.

Planets full of bronzed healthy clean limbed individuals merrily prancing through their lives meant that the only doctors still in business were the psychiatrists, simply because no one had discovered a cure for the Universe as a whole -- or rather the only one that did exist had been abolished by the medical doctors.

Then it was noticed that like most forms of medical treatment, total cures had a lot of unpleasant side effects. Boredom, listlessness, lack of... well anything very much, and with these conditions came the realization that nothing turned, say, a slightly talented musician into a towering genius faster than the problem of encroaching deafness, and nothing turned a perfectly healthy individual into a great politician or military leader better than irreversible brain damage.

Suddenly, everything changed. Previous best selling books such as How I Survived an Hour with a Sprained Finger were swept away in a flood of titles such as How I Scaled the North Face of the Megapurna with a Perfectly Healthy Finger But Everything Else Sprained, Broken or Bitten Off By a Pack of Mad Yaks.

And so doctors were back in business recreating all the diseases and injuries they had abolished in popular easy to use forms. Thus, given the right and instantly available types of disability even something as simple as turning of the 3-D TV could become a major chanllenge, and when all the programmes on all the channels actually were made by actors with cleft pallettes speaking lines by dyslexic writers filmed by blind cameramen instead of merely seeming like that, it somehow made the whole thing more worthwhile.

medal

the devils dictionary
n. A small metal disk given as a reward for virtues, attainments or services more or less authentic.
It is related of Bismarck, who had been awarded a medal for gallantly rescuing a drowning person, that, being asked the meaning of the medal, he replied: "I save lives sometimes." And sometimes he didn't.
(also: war)
(also: sports)
(also: the devils dictionary)

looking-glass

the devils dictionary
n. A vitreous plane upon which to display a fleeting show for man's disillusion given.
The King of Manchuria had a magic looking-glass, whereon whoso looked saw, not his own image, but only that of the king. A certain courtier who had long enjoyed the king's favor and was thereby enriched beyond any other subject of the realm, said to the king: "Give me, I pray, thy wonderful mirror, so that when absent out of thine august presence I may yet do homage before thy visible shadow, prostrating myself night and morning in the glory of thy benign countenance, as which nothing has so divine splendor, O Noonday Sun of the Universe!"

Pleased with the speech, the king commanded that the mirror be conveyed to the courtier's palace; but after, having gone thither without apprisal, he found it in an apartment where was naught but idle lumber. And the mirror was dimmed with dust and overlaced with cobwebs. This so angered him that he fisted it hard, shattering the glass, and was sorely hurt. Enraged all the more by this mischance, he commanded that the ungrateful courtier be thrown into prison, and that the glass be repaired and taken back to his own palace; and this was done. But when the king looked again on the mirror he saw not his image as before, but only the figure of a crowned ass, having a bloody bandage on one of its hinder hooves—as the artificers and all who had looked upon it had before discerned but feared to report. Taught wisdom and charity, the king restored his courtier to liberty, had the mirror set into the back of the throne and reigned many years with justice and humility; and one day when he fell asleep in death while on the throne, the whole court saw in the mirror the luminous figure of an angel, which remains to this day.

(also: life lessons from boomers)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

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