Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Fri May 25, 2012 8:44 pm

Pfft, as if I expect to be paid back. I consider it a gift, but if I ever got paid back, bonus.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri May 25, 2012 9:16 pm

Ted the Flayer wrote:
Prak_Anima wrote:Ted, on your last day, I would say just show up in a bathrobe and wrinkled lounge-y, don't give a shit clothes, with your cat, and sunglasses.

Hell, I didn't intend it, but I'll just say it, The Dude+cat.
Getting the sunglasses to stay on the cat might be a challenge though.

Look into a product called doggles.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun May 27, 2012 2:16 am

So, some toxins are basically the same every time you take them.

Others, like wasp venom or most heavy metals, build up in your system (or in the case of wasp venom fuck around with your immune system so that next time you might be allergic, whatever) and make repeated doses even more dangerous.

Then there are some that you can slowly build a resistance to, if television is to be believed - I can't actually name any that do this though. But given most drugs require more and more to get the good effects over time, that's kind of the same thing.

Which category does chocolate fall into, assuming you're a dog? My mum has a chocolate Labrador (looks like a chocolate lab, acts like a meth lab) who seems to think "Chocolate Labs need chocolate!" In the last month she's three times stolen large amounts of chocolate and been very sick the following night (and then fine the next day).

Just curious, and a little bit worried. It's a good thing she's so big and heavy though, I imagine a slipper dog would already be dead.

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Sun May 27, 2012 2:43 am

Chocolate is not "toxic" to dogs. Chocolate is simply something that dogs are deathly allergic to more often than not.

Keep in mind that doesn't actually mean anything, I didn't realize I was allergic to yellowjacket stings until the fourth or fifth time one stung me, so I wouldn't recommend that you feed chocolate to your dog because the first couple times were okay.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Sun May 27, 2012 2:57 am

Oh, yay. Chocolate and dogs. My dachshund ate some once and that's when I learned that the theobromine in chocolate acts like a neurotoxin to dogs. The first minor symptoms of toxicity are excessive urination, dehydration, and hyperness, followed by vomiting, diarrhea, heart arrhythmia, muscle twitches, seizures, and leading up to death.

Different kinds of chocolate have different amounts of theobromine (the darker it is, the more it has), and despite the fact that it will kill them, dogs are easily addicted to it (much like humans). It's not an allergy.

Desdan_Mervolam · Post by **Desdan_Mervolam** » Sun May 27, 2012 4:18 am

Ted the Flayer wrote:I didn't realize I was allergic to yellowjacket stings until the fourth or fifth time one stung me, so I wouldn't recommend that you feed chocolate to your dog because the first couple times were okay.

Koumei wrote:Others, like wasp venom or most heavy metals, build up in your system (or in the case of wasp venom fuck around with your immune system so that next time you might be allergic, whatever) and make repeated doses even more dangerous.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Mon May 28, 2012 7:36 pm

Wikipedia to the rescue!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobromine_poisoning

including LD50 info for dogs: 300mg/kg.

also, theobromine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobromine

looks like the high point is in cocoa, at 20 mg/g. That means the LD50 for cocoa in dogs is ~15 g/kg. Average female Lab weight is around 30kg, so that's about 450g of cocoa at once.

However, dogs metabolize theobromine slower (half-life of 17.5 hours), which is bad ('dogs process it slower' is a good rule of thumb for anything metabolized by the liver, actually). That means a full day after they eat it, roughly 1/3 of the original dose is still in their system. Two days later, ~10% is still there. The upside is that most chocolate has only 2-10% of the theobromine by weight that cocoa does, but the LD50 also probably vastly overestimates how much is safe for dogs who already have some sort of heart condition.

There's one more piece of the puzzle: "racing heart" means high blood pressure, which is super-bad for your kidneys (and liver to a lesser extent).

Long story short: lots of chocolate is super bad; chocolate at short intervals is super bad; regular chocolate intake is bad, but more long term. Unless the dog develops an actual allergy, regular chocolate intake will probably be about like really heavy drinking binges: slight accustomization, dangerous short term, bad news long term.

Really, really loosely, allergies happen when stuff gets where it oughtn't. So if you have a torn up gut and food gets into your bloodstream whole, you will be allergic to that food afterwards. That's way too approximate to be an actual rule of thumb, but it is why you don't want to eat complex foods when you have a bad stomach bug, or (on a personal note) why you shouldn't try to subsist on lots of black coffee and pesto (pesto gives me hives now).

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon May 28, 2012 11:55 pm

So, my parents giving their dog small bites of chocolate glazed doughnut and chocolate dipped cookies, or letting him lick the bowl after they've had ice cream with chocolate syrup isn't quite as risky as I thought. Well, it's good to know that the dog isn't likely to keel over from that...

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Tue May 29, 2012 3:05 am

A general rule of thumb is that EVERYTHING metabolizes things slower than humans. Our livers are freakishly oversized in proportion to our body mass.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue May 29, 2012 8:15 am

Ok, so I know I (and others) have grumbled about this before, but, seriously, what the fuck is up with the philosophy in Book of Exalted Deeds (and occasional other RPG supplements) that causing unbearable pain and suffering, coercion, unending imprisonment, and flat out brain washing aren't evil if the victim is evil?

Seriously, BoED has "Phoenix Fire" or some such, which instantly immolates the caster, and hits all non-good creatures in the area with napalm, then resurrects the caster 10 minutes later. Which is fine, except that the spell is accompanied by a picture of an Erinys being graphically immolated by the fire. I mean, I get that it's a bit hypocritical to object to heinous pain and suffering in D&D where you messily hack apart evil critters to steal their treasure on a regular basis, but good is supposed to be held to a higher standard.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue May 29, 2012 10:08 am

Good is highly subjective.
The Victors usually decide what's good and what's evil . .

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Tue May 29, 2012 12:31 pm

I think the issue is more that D&D operates as though they aren't subjective. Then, it becomes an issue that it's okay to do these terrible things if the other guy is on the Wrong Side.

D&D has always been stupid when it came to alignment. 3E considering poisons evil makes no sense whatsoever. I could maybe see this being extended to poisons that deal HP or Con damage, but everything else is nonlethal by definition (you can't die from ability damage that isn't Con damage under normal circumstances). So, D&D considers tranquilizers evil, but face stabbing and burning are A-OK.

erik · Post by **erik** » Tue May 29, 2012 3:05 pm

And don't forget the old horse that it was okay to bludgeon people to death but not stab them.

But of course brainwashing evil is okay. Their brains are dirty with eeeeevil.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue May 29, 2012 3:07 pm

Tranquillisers (that don't do ability damage) are actually called out as not being evil. Yeah, nasty evil drow mainly use the NICE poison!

And one of the alignment books explains that hitting somebody with a fireball inflicts terrible wounds and pain, much like hacking at them with a sword does (no mention of how it doesn't actually do that because HP represents avoiding them - HA!), but is just as not-inherently-evil as the sword-stabbing, that it's who you stab/burn that matters. You're just trying to take a foe down. That to be evil, it actually has to spread disease, cause misery and suffering for its own sake, hurt the soul, "bring evil energy into the world", shake hands with evil forces, or "because I say so".

So they did kind of explainhandwave the phoenix inferno. That's simply killing people with fire! And that's totally okay, as long as they're people who needed killing to begin with!

BoED does have a [Good] Mind-Control spell that forcibly brainwashes the target into being Good. Apparently it's okay to do that because it makes more Good people.

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Tue May 29, 2012 6:30 pm

That makes sense if you see "good" and "evil" as two different teams whose fans tend to be hooting dickholes and riot in the streets after their football matches, but is really crappy if you're trying to tell the narrative that good is something to be strived for, and evil is bad and should be fought.

I can see valid stories being told from both perspectives actually, but they aren't compatible in the same game.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue May 29, 2012 8:55 pm

Actually, they can exist in the same game if you have characters who see good as something to strive for and wish to tear down the sports team model.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Tue May 29, 2012 9:43 pm

The important thing to remember here is that burning slowly to death is the best and most merciful way to execute someone- it gives you the longest time to repent and turn to God. As such, the Phoenix Inferno is the most [Good] way of killing- hideously painful death to make them decide to worship Good gods and turn away from being Evil.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed May 30, 2012 1:36 am

Except that means they go from being eternally rewarded in [Evil plane] for their awesome evil deeds to being eternally punished in [Evil plane] for being a traitor.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Wed May 30, 2012 2:36 am

The explanation for why Clerics used to be able to use blunt weapons but not edged ones is fairly hilarious.

You see, at some point a pope told Scandinavian clergy that they could not use edged weapons. Being Scandinavian, they quickly decided that meant beating people to death with hammers was totally acceptable. This went on for a while.

So the reason was seriously that real priests went around beating people up while being forbidden to use edged weapons.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed May 30, 2012 2:56 am

The specific prohibition was against shedding blood, and it was a bishop who is most well known for that loophole.

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Thu May 31, 2012 3:43 am

Why do some people not have a voice mail message? Most people have something along the lines 'You've reached Bob's voice mail', but a lot of people I've been trying to contact about apartments will either have a blank message or just the phone number. Why wouldn't someone want to identify their voice mail?

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Thu May 31, 2012 3:59 am

Normal security concerns - you have a crazy ex and don't want to advertise your new number, or you're a celeb (imagined or otherwise) and don't want fan mail, or you work in a sensitive area and don't like death threats.

Of course, I'm willing to bet that the main reason is laziness.

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Thu May 31, 2012 5:57 am

If someone you don't know and don't want to know phones you, they will then waste more of your time pretending legitimacy. Or, worse yet, get to talk to someone gullible in your family and cause actual harm.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Thu May 31, 2012 6:22 am

I don't use voice mail at all. I will call back if I can't take a call. Or people can send me an e-mail or message. But voice mail? Forget it, not gonna waste my time and money listening to a recording.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Thu May 31, 2012 7:40 am

If we assume the Erinyes is a totally and permanently evil forever being, I can totally see giving her an unpleasant death as an acceptable cost to ridding the world of her. Particularly if it's a flash of agonizing pain before being immediately reduced to ash. No, that isn't the nicest possible way of killing someone, even someone who needs to die, but maybe magical fire is just the only way to make the spell work and fire is going to burn the things you kill no matter what you do. If we assume that you have go be a genuinely and unambiguously awful person to qualify as Evil and not just a darker shade of Neutral, it's even prioritized to only hit people who've done something particularly nasty to deserve it.