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Cave cows vs Ornks


Kurian

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Originally Posted By: Dantius
Swine flu is not "beating us up". You have a higher chance of dying from the normal flu than from the swine flu. The swine flu is incredibly contagious, just not very deadly.


With that phrase, I was referring to how contagious Swine Flu is. It's not dreadfully severe, it's just strong enough to spread fast, and force people to stay home sick. And, with its ability to spread, it can spread fast amongst many. So, if you've got up to 30% of a population, such as a student body, on sick days, then you're going to have a harder time operating. So, while it's not beating us up so much physically, it is doing damage to our efficiency at the institutional level.
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Originally Posted By: Dantius
Originally Posted By: Hypno
Hypno's Okay. YES! I am now above babling idiot!

Well, you were, but then you made that post.


We're talking about Ornks and Cave Cows. Some babling Idiot-ism is acceptable in this thread. Just like if I were to say Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoeconiosis.

Ornk Flu, isn't bird Flu derived from pigs aleady? What difference would a pig Hybrid make? Unless it makes a Super deadly Pig, Sheep, Bird, Human, Shaper, Martian, Astronuahgt flue.
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Originally Posted By: The Mystic
Seriously, who'd want to pick up a cow and throw it?

It'd be pretty useful for biological warfare.


Originally Posted By: Hypnotic
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoeconiosis

Please, I have hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia.

I like cave cows, though this is really more of an Avernum vs. Geneforge argument, I think.
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Originally Posted By: Anyone Else with Them
It just makes you feel worse. Comparing h1n1 to the regular flu is like comparing getting hit with a .22 to getting hit by a nuke.

Except neither one is as likely to kill you as getting shot, let alone getting nuked. H1N1 is highly contagious, less deadly (I'll accept this premise without examining data), and worrisome mostly as something against which vaccines weren't available and that doesn't seem to obey seasonal rules. The biggest problem? Now you can get the flu twice in a row.

—Alorael, who shudders to imagine what two concurrent cases of the flu would feel like. Possibly like getting nuked and not dying.
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Originally Posted By: Eponymous Heroics
Except neither one is as likely to kill you as getting shot, let alone getting nuked. H1N1 is highly contagious, less deadly (I'll accept this premise without examining data), and worrisome mostly as something against which vaccines weren't available and that doesn't seem to obey seasonal rules. The biggest problem? Now you can get the flu twice in a row.


Swine flu mortality is comparable to an average seasonal flu outbreak, if you don't count victims of the initial outbreak in Mexico. It's not really clear what happened there; it's possible that people who didn't get extremely sick simply weren't included in early case records, either because they didn't bother seeking medical treatment or their doctors didn't think it was serious.
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Quote:
One of the definitions of 'bovine' is slow-moving and dull-witted. I would argue, therefore, that ornks are more bovine. When cows were sent down to Avernum, most died, only the strongest and smartest could survive, so they must have lost some of their bovineness in order to continue life in such harsh conditions. Ornks, on the other hand, were specifically created to be slow and dumb, for easy harvesting, so the Shapers would have maximized their boviness, perhaps making them even slower and stupider than real life cows. Ornks are thus the more bovine. smile


Re: Which is more 'bovine' in the sense of slow-wittedness

Are there any talking cows in Avernum canon? Nethergate doesn't count as there is a talking Ornk in G5 and those religious Ornks in G1 (Which weren't altered they had just been left alone for a few centuries.
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On the topic of swine/H1N1, I believe that the regular seasonal flu is also classified as H1N1. According to Wikipedia, H and N just refer to protein markers in the capsid. Hence my distaste for calling "swine" flu H1N1. Also, true swine flu is different, and "swine" flu is more of a combination of multiple different strains (as of the last time I wiki'd it).

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Originally Posted By: Enraged Slith
Meat is murder. Eat more chicken.
Sort of reminds me of what I told a female coworker back in the late 90's. She told me that it was a sin to eat anything that once had a face (ironic beyond words, because we both worked at a Wendy's at the time), to which I replied--lying through my teeth--that I'd once eaten a bell pepper that had won a Col. Sanders look-alike contest. I also later told her that there probably was no plant matter on this earth that, at one time, had not been part of an animal; therefore, the salad she was eating on her break would be sinful to consume because there was a good chance it once had a face.
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H1N1 does in fact signify quite a number of different types of flu. The French name for it, "grippe A" also does, though most people don't know that.

Yesterday I announced to a group of people I had grippe A. They started backing away, and didn't believe me when I told them it was a pun until I got out a fairly large dictionary.

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Sounds like influenza A. "There are several subtypes, labeled according to an H number (for the type of hemagglutinin) and an N number (for the type of neuraminidase). There are 16 different H antigens (H1 to H16) and nine different N antigens (N1 to N9)"(Wiki!) There is more info there about different strains of flu. H1N1 is one of the two main seasonal flues, along with H3N2.

Again from wiki: Influenza A (H1N1) virus is a highly contagious subtype of influenzavirus A and the most common cause of influenza (flu) in humans. Some strains of H1N1 are endemic in humans and cause a small fraction of all influenza-like illness and a large fraction of all seasonal influenza. H1N1 strains caused roughly half of all human flu infections in 2006. Other strains of H1N1 are endemic in pigs (swine influenza) and in birds (avian influenza).

 

In June 2009, World Health Organization declared that flu due to a new strain of swine-origin H1N1 was responsible for the 2009 flu pandemic. This strain is often called "swine flu" by the public media."

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Originally Posted By: The Mystic
Originally Posted By: Enraged Slith
Meat is murder. Eat more chicken.
Sort of reminds me of what I told a female coworker back in the late 90's. She told me that it was a sin to eat anything that once had a face (ironic beyond words, because we both worked at a Wendy's at the time), to which I replied--lying through my teeth--that I'd once eaten a bell pepper that had won a Col. Sanders look-alike contest. I also later told her that there probably was no plant matter on this earth that, at one time, had not been part of an animal; therefore, the salad she was eating on her break would be sinful to consume because there was a good chance it once had a face.

That's a horrible pick-up line.
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