Random Question of the Day Thread

[chefzombie]

when i see a feral cat suckling possum babies with her own because mama possum got run over. THAT is altruism. possums are kitten killers, yet she still took in those babies and saved their lives.

[RCMerchant]

when i see a feral cat suckling possum babies with her own because mama possum got run over. THAT is altruism. possums are kitten killers, yet she still took in those babies and saved their lives.

Thank you dear! 
Critters love!

[RCMerchant]

I had feral kittens and possums and coons under my old shed back when I lived in the house by the woods on Walker Street. Coyotes too! And I lived near town!  
Now me and Tiana bought a house in town, and coyotes are here too! 
And bats in the attic what like to come down and scare the s**t out of us sometimes. I got to scare it out with a broom!

[RCMerchant]

I wonder if you could catch a coyote and tame it to be your friend?  
( I don't think so myself. I think they would hate it!)

That's my Question of the Day!

Can a wild coyote be tamed?  

[claws]

It is tough to domesticate the coyotes as dogs since they are wild animals. They have developed natural instincts to function wildly. In some few situations, people have successfully tamed the wild coyote. The best way to tame the animal is by starting the process when they are still young.

I know of people who tried to raise and keep wild rabbits. At a certain age they start to bite and avoid being touched when held captive.

[ER]

Which book series do you like better A Song of Ice and Fire or The Lord of the Rings?

[Alex]

Ice & Fire. I found Lord of the Rings a tough read to get through and if I am entirely honest, overrated. I think just because people had managed to plow through the entire thing they said good things about it. Not saying it was bad, but I don't think of it as the crowning achievement of fantasy literature.

[ER]

I love both, they each have great characters and engrossing storylines in a grand scale. One is about love and honor, the other about sex and violence. In many ways they're two very different sorts of series.

The first time I read LOTR I was fourteen. It expanded my mind, swept me off into places I dearly loved and told a story that had tremendous meaning to me as few stories have since. The most recent time I re-read LOTR I could still feel the magical pull of sentimentality, but I wasn't prepared for how much effort it seemed to take me to get through novels I once adored re-reading.

Martin's series isn't finished, he might blow it at the end, and the journey so far has felt uneven, at times brilliant, at other times semi-dull, whereas Tolkien maintained a constant level of sound story-telling.  Martin's world feels bigger, more functioning, more alive, its citizens more grounded, their motivations more explicable.

While Tolkien suggests vile deeds, Martin plunges into them with descriptive delight, which is both good and bad.

So which is better? Once upon a time I'd have said no fantasy series could ever unseat LOTR in my affections, and I'd have been right, I love Middle Earth more than Westeros, but ASOIAF might actually be the better series when sentimentality is set aside.

[Alex]

I felt that LotR really dragged for part of it. When the Hobbits are climbing up the mountain and end up in Shelob's lair is normally where I read up to and then get bored, give up and have to come back to again and try and read again in a couple of years. Eventually, when I was going through basic training and had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do I managed to finally power through the whole book.

I find LotR unique in fantasy novels in that the heroes never at any point meet the big bad. It is for better or worse, the benchmark against which all other fantasy novels are measured. My favourite part is where the Hobbits encounter the Barrow Wights, and my least favourite is the bits where the Hobbits are wandering around on their own. Martin, well I was reading his stuff and got to the Red Wedding. It would be six months before I picked that book up again, but that isn't because I was bored with the story. He isn't my favourite fantasy author (I am not sure I have a single favourite author. It very much depends on my mood. Howard if I am in the mood for something brainless and fun, Fritz Leiber if I want something odd, Gemmell, for something well written (the Rigante novels actually had an emotional effect on me by the end) and so on).

Curiously, I have never reread The Lord of the Rings. I did try to once. I had recently found out the Ian McKellan was gay, which normally would be neither here nor there, but I got to the part of the story where Gandalf and Frodo were sitting on a hillside with their pipes and they start blowing rings. That put an unwelcome mental image in my head and I've never went back to the book.

[indianasmith]

I'm a hard core LOTR fan - I've read the books probably 25-30 times and love the rich descriptions and scene-setting as much as I do the unforgettable characters.
Martin's books are entertaining; hard, gritty, and some scenes heartbreaking.  There is little honor or decency in his world; squalor, treachery and cruelty rule the day.  There's enough of that in real life, IMO.

A fantasy series I have always enjoyed are the Thomas Covenant novels by Stephen R. Donaldson.  The original trilogy - LORD FOUL'S BANE, THE ILLEARTH WAR, and THE POWER THAT PRESERVES - will always be my favorites, but the second and third series are quite good as well.  Donaldson creates an unforgettable world with vivid, rich characters, an immortal, lurking evil, and a tragic antihero who is summoned from his doomed life as a leper to save this fantasy world he dares not let himself fully believe in.  If you've never read them, I highly recommend them.

[ER]

Do you think the ultimate impact in loss of human life to this terrible pandemic will be greater than projected, less than projected, or the projections will likely get it right?

[RCMerchant]

I'll bet it's either one or the other, or maybe all 3!

[ER]

I think it will be less than forecast but still an awful event that is going to disrupt life and send out ripples for a long time. Along with many others I've said for years we were due for a pandemic, and being right was a suckfest.

[Alex]

If the social distancing thing is listened to, then I reckon it will be slightly below predicted figures. If not, then it is a numbers game until each countries health care system can't cope anymore. I can't see it going over 5% tops, and it should be a percentile below that.

But mines is an uneducated guess.

[indianasmith]

Half of the 3000 people on my FB feed seem to think it's either "just like the flu" or a "Democrat hoax to crash the economy and defeat Trump."
Until that segment of the population takes it seriously, it's going to keep spreading.