One Of My Very Own
Attempt #2...
Joy to the World (Three Dog Night song)
NEWSY BITS
Sad day for Arecibo.
I had the pleasure of visiting that extraordinary instrument in Puerto Rico, but the times they are a changing.
This from a trusted scientist I know:
"The line feed antenna that I use for my research (the long pointy thing hanging off the bottom of the platform), broke in half and dropped into the dish, punching holes in several places. It will take months to fix, but Arecibo was supposed to undergo a transition to new management in March. The proposals are still under review by NSF, and the current managing institution (SRI International) did not submit a proposal since the new operating budget will be so low. I'm not sure there will be any funding available to repair it unless Congress itemizes it."
Note: After receiving the email, I asked if I had her permission to use her data. Then I added, Am I mistaken in thinking it had outlived its usefulness?
This was her reply:
You are very, very mistaken about its usefulness. It's a precious resource to the geospace science community I belong to. It is the only telescope in the US that can detect killer asteroids with enough warning to do something about it. Its radar is strong enough to image the surface of planets and moons. Only the radio astronomers have exhausted its utility (mainly because it can't point).
Note: After receiving the email, I asked if I had her permission to use her data. Then I added, Am I mistaken in thinking it had outlived its usefulness?
This was her reply:
You are very, very mistaken about its usefulness. It's a precious resource to the geospace science community I belong to. It is the only telescope in the US that can detect killer asteroids with enough warning to do something about it. Its radar is strong enough to image the surface of planets and moons. Only the radio astronomers have exhausted its utility (mainly because it can't point).
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In the last few days I have made some observation about myself that I would like to share.
1. I shake two pills out of a jar every night. Some nights 3 come out and I take great pains to make sure the third delinquent pill is shoveled back into the jar. I don't know why, but it just seems the right thing to do.
2. I heard these lines in a commercial for this or that drug: "Don't take this if your are allergic to it" and "It may cause allergic reactions." Seriously, what's your take away from such information?
3. I have a physical exam at the VA once a year. This last visit mere days ago I was informed my care giver had changed, and moments later met a very large - not fat, just large - black woman who introduced herself and began the physical protocol. During this I detected a couple of verbs that did not match their nouns in sentences, so after I was all zipped up and ready to go I asked where she went to school. These are her exact words: "Greenville tech for my undergraduate and online for my masters." I but smiled and said, "How nice."
4. Because of my physical I got to my bar late without having eaten lunch, so I grabbed a hot dog. Later, my wife met me at the bar for supper and my friend, the manager, said, "Boy, you've eaten two meals here in one day." I said, "So, do you have a 'Eat here ten times and you next meal is free' deal going or what." He said, "Well, no." And I said, "So what's your fucking point?"
5. I was actually rather sad that my hog's skull was hauled off.
6. I'm listening to "The Castle" by Franz Kafka. Basically it's a condemnation of government bureaucracy, but it was the forward that gave me pause. On his death bed, Kafka told his agent to burn all of his unfinished manuscripts. After the author's death, the agent did not, in fact, burn anything. His reasoning was thus: "He told the one man he KNEW would not burn them." And everybody just accepted that reasoning.
7. I discovered where this image came from.
I've seen it often online to indicate all sorts of debauchery. I think I may have used it once or twice myself. Well, in the last week I discovered that it came from the movie Metropolis, the restored version, and they are responding to this seductive dance by a very special woman.
Made in Germany during the Weimar Period in 1925, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and follows the attempts of Freder, the wealthy son of the city's ruler, and Maria, a poor worker, to overcome the vast gulf separating the classes of their city.
I have no idea how I've missed this movie for all these years.
Note: It had a much more complicated plot than any silent film I have ever seen, and some A-one special effects. Cast of thousands more well coordinated than any modern film. Damn!
8. I used to shave the high cheek part of my beard. But no longer. I'm going with the full-homeless look.
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My wife uses an electric toothbrush.
I use an acoustic.
I use an acoustic.
PEOPLE
70 year old Aleksander Doba, Polish engineer just Kayaked across the Atlantic ocean. This was his third time. He's also National Geographic's 2015 People's Choice Adventurer of the Year.
So, you're saying he's too much of a cheapskate to buy a plane ticket?
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Do you do your job as well as this guy does his?
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Lena Headey in a tweed suit and sensible shoes.
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Texting and driving.
We've seen the stats and yet many of us still do it.
It reminds me of a study they did about multi-tasking. They found that women do in fact multi-task more than men. They also found that while a man was accomplishing one task, the woman was screwing up 5. The quality decreased with each new task added.
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When you forget to get high before the gig and you're just not yourself.
"I'll take amateur dentistry for $1000, Alex."
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I was as good a dad as I knew how to be. I only really fucked up once.
My young daughter saw something about CPR and asked me about it. So I laid her on the floor, told her to relax, blew into her mouth, and watched her chest swell. She got really excited and demanded that she do it to me. So I laid down and right before her mouth touched mine I blew real hard in her mouth, expanding her lunges again. She got mad, but still wanted to do it to me and I promised I wouldn't blow in her mouth...then ...I did it....again. She was, justifiably, furious and remembers that betrayal to this very day. And of course I still regret my betrayal.
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Imagine how terrifying horses would be if they were carnivores.
PLACES
Do you see how intelligent this is?
You push the call button for the elevator prior to getting to the doors.
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One of the last photos taken by Cassini before descending into Saturn was of Earth
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us.
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This is a photography studio.
In college we had a lab with an island in the middle surrounded by enlargers. 20 students would crowd in there at one time and it was tight. So tight that when moving behind someone you had to press you dick up against their butt.
We being Southern and thus polite, would say "Excuse me" over and over again, until one girl screamed that she knew that we were all polite, but that had to stop. And it did.
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What I imagined space travel to be as a kid.
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So is all that greenery growing from that thin layer of top soil on top of the chalk?
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Earthporn
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I think we should have a space day every month where the lights are shut off for an hour so we can all see the galaxy and shit.
THINGS
It kind of looks like it should spell something.
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How effective.
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Twins
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Australian F-111 lands gear up using arrestor cable to stop.
How in the world do they secure the cables? I don't think all airbases have those.
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Top YouTube hits over time...
That's fucking amazing.
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Why do otherwise normal people put up with this shit? Seriously, the first time I witnessed this, that cat would be an outdoor pet.
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This can't be good. We have already done that with TV "news" and now no one wants to hear ANY view that differs from their own. Total confirmation bias, all the time.
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How extraordinarily satisfying.
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Cup holders are just cup cups.
AND, OF COURSE, LANGUAGE
Funny enough to read the whole thing...
Please don't tell me if that's not true.
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So there's one word for a chair and a table.
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Ouch!
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How sexually active modern teenagers have pretty much solved the pregnancy problem.
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In other words "The fact that I like cocks doesn't make me a chicken."
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Eating meat is just eating grass with a middleman.
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Language...deniers. All my young friends just laugh and say the whole flat earth crap is just people trolling to upset other people.
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