DISQUS

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Jacob,

That's pretty smart, and it's what a lot of people would do. But, because of the problems of multiple entrances (and trying to maintain their stability), rotting food, marauding theives and animals, and the strange draw that shopping centers invariably have on zombies, I would still suggest stocking up on supplies ahead of time and finding a smaller place to stay that is off the ground.

Thanks for the question Jacob.

Great questions, Suzi!!

And you raise a few interesting points, that I should have addressed in this post. The reason I didn't is because I wanted to focus on the immediate question about high-rise buildings.

But, now the point has come up again, and I should mention it. The creatures in the original Richard Matheson novel, "I Am Legend," were definitely, and without question, Vampires and not Zombies. I saw the movie, as well, and I don't think that this point was made.

But, it does bring up an interesting comparison: If Zombies are undead and Vampires are undead, aren't they the same thing? And, the answer is no. The difference lies primarily behind intelligence (With the vampire in the lead) and motivation (The vampire feeds on blood in order to continue its existence, the zombie eats flesh for no immediately apparent reason), and in many cases (excluding "I am Legend") religion as well. The Vampire is a legend inspired by christianity, while we are unsure of what brought the first zombie into existence.

This is also important when considering the legend of the Uruk-hai, most notably from Tolkein's Lord of the Rings. The Uruk-hai's creation seems very indicative of the creation of undead, but in reality they are a real, living and breathing race. The Uruk-hai were a special breed of orc, that was possibly cross-bread with men (or possibly with a goblin/man half-breed).

Now to the fortified compound. If you were willing to upgrade the stockade fence to a high wall and combine it with another form of defense (e.g. The interconnected buildings on extremely high pier beams) I would concede that this would be a great plan. The problem with a fence is that eventually one of the creatures will hurt it in some way. And, eventually the weakness would become a path through the fence. Your compound, with no other protection, wouldn't go very far toward protection. For reference, see "28 Days Later," and pay particular attention to the compound that is the setting of the end of the movie.

And, always keep Murphy's Law in mind: If it can go wrong, it will go wrong.

Thanks for the Comment,
Justin

It doesn't bother me that I had to punch in my pin, what bothers me is the strange way they put it: "Do you know your pin?" I've never seen that before, and it struck me as particularly odd.

And, you're right about running it as a CC. Another good thing about doing it that way, that I'm sure many college students can attest to is: When you run it as a credit card it usually takes a couple days longer to clear. Especially helpful when you're waiting for a paycheck.

Thanks for the comment, Suzi.

Haha, I thought everyone there knew that I was working with Wade! And, yes - I am a truly weird human being... Just like you Suzi...

hehehe - Well, you should subscribe to the RSS feed - that way you can be sure to get all of the posts, since they are so random. I think the high rise question is a great topic, and probably deserves its own post.

Seriously, Jon - there's no pigseven account. I looked, I really did - and I was gonna make fun of you - I had some really good comment ideas, but you were no where to be found.

I deleted it. I'm going to check out your viddler account, if i don't see nipples I'm going to be sorely disappointed.

You know what's most interesting?: This blog post had more discussion than anything I've posted on here.

Good or bad, that says a lot about SEO and people interested in it.

@Ankit - That is certainly one opinion. Another side of that argument is that no one really knows all aspects of the search engine algorithms.

Throw in the reality that there are a lot of search engines out there with a lot of different algorithms, and you have to weigh the possible value of including keywords to the trouble of creating them.

Personally, I don't think it's that much trouble to go through, even if they are useless - if there's the slightest possibility they might help somewhere.

@Shane - Great point. I might add to your comment that it's a difficult thing to keep those percentages in a blog, simply because a blog is generally about a number of things. I find, if I start thinking too much about keywords and header tags, that my posts start getting really crappy.

Thanks for this post. I hadn't thought about comments in a while, and was horrified to find, on my own wordpress blog, I had "registration required" turned on.

EEEEeeek!

There will always be a disconnect between media and marketing. The marketers want the media to say what they tell them to say and, I believe, for the most part, the media wants to tell the truth.

I'm not as afraid about media (bloggers) becoming lazy. Readers aren't stupid, they can smell a fake a mile away. And dishonesty will make a popular blogger unpopular.

It's the invisible hand of democratic media at work. If readers don't like what they're reading, they'll read something else - and, I have to believe, that most readers don't want to be handed a pile of PR labeled as news.

Interesting ideas. But more to the point: I think that, as much as anything else, the "social media" programming language (and programming language in general) is moving closer to our language.

What I mean by that is that with each iteration of a new programming language - the language itself, while it does become slightly more complicated, tends to move closer to a human language.

So, for example, binary leads to assembly leads to fortran leads to lisp etc, etc.

The "social media" language (# signs that represent tags in twitter, the @ sign, etc) are closer to human language than "00011100".

Maybe I'm fooling myself but I like to think that the future of computers - their place in our social world - is an invisible one, where there are no learning boundaries for people. There are no walls to keep people out.

I think, while we certainly are making up the language as we go, that the language is moving closer and closer to being our spoken language; and therefore an open door to anyone that may want to contribute.

In the short term you're absolutely correct: an understanding of the social network language makes us stronger and more capable of living in this new world; but in the long term, I hate the idea of boundaries.

I would hope that we will advance to a point beyond specific "computer languages," where the tools that we have surrounded ourselves with understand what we want and help us to achieve our goals and most importantly understand our language.

This is just another form of the age old elitism that you face when there are any two groups delineated by any characteristics. This one though, is a bit more offensive to me than most.

Anyone who is really making this distinction and "laughing at the silly old people who are trying to be in on the fun," are really only fooling themselves. And, furthermore, proving that they really don't understand the concepts that drive social networking.

They're fooling themselves because they're only, at most, four years removed from being the very object of their own derision. They're proving their ignorance by assuming that they are the only people with a need for this type of network.

I'm inclined to disbelieve that most college kids, using facebook, are laughing at the rest of us. I'm more inclined to think that this is the voice of an ignorant elitist minority.

So, come on folks, let go of your socially-crippling elitism and join the rest of us. It's a lot more fun on this side.

I don't want to sound like a Google ad here but:

I've tried a number of readers, and Google's is, by far the best. With its shortcut keys and "trends" it makes reading the news and blogs I subscribe to as easy as checking email.

And, I suppose I fit very neatly into the demographic, because here I am leaving a comment.