BlueCloud2k2

Kirk wasn't as wise as he thought he was.

Bazza was once voted worst thing to ever come out of Tasmania, even though he does not come from there.

BC is so deep in the closet, he just met Aslan.

Q: How's it going grading that last batch of labs?
 
A: I've narrowed it down to two choices: finish doing my grading or set myself on fire. I'm looking more deeply into fire at the moment.

I don't teach it, though perhaps my teaching style is a lesser manifestation of it.
 
"Yes, I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial."

I've seen it. It's interesting to ponder, I suppose. My thought is that the Powers That Be, being omniscient, would have arranged to make Hell just precisely as large as it eventually needs to be. This renders the question of expansion moot, thereby nullifying the presented explanation.
 
A simpler solution, I think, is this: If anything is getting into Hell and nothing is getting out, then Hell is by definition endothermic.
 
But then, what the Hell do I know?

Estimate the EMF induced in the metal parts of an underwire bra during the spin cycle in a washing machine.
 
Wonder if I could get away with that ...

"No capes!"

"I've got four chainsaws. That should last me the fight. There's not quite a hundred of them [zombies]."

After bringing in a dog with some bad vomit issues (along with a sample):
Me :  "Do you want the photo of the vomit?"   (Before I figured out a good way to bring a sample in, I did photograph it)
Vet : "I like your photographery so I'm sure it's a beautiful photo, but no."
 
I did make a nice b&w image out of it, thinking of sending a 20"x30" of it to him... 

The observational cosmology folks seem to have detected gravitational waves at very early times in the Universe, which has been a Holy Grail in that racket for a long time. I am not a relativist, so once I have survived the coming 10 days (finals week and course grade frenzy) I will go looking for someone to explain all that to me.
 
EDIT: This made APOD the next day.

Civilization is walking the razor's edge that separates barbarism from decadence. The path is painful, but if you stray from it then your civilization collapses.

Are you sure it isn't a force manure?
 
Not the most perfect poop pun, but scats all I've got.

Debunked?  More like "today's opinion".  Generally debunked incorporates Proved.  I'm guessing they are reaching for something important to report.

And if you understand Nothing, you're Sgt. Schultz.

I brought pie to work for the second shift to celebrate Pi Day (3-14).  In response one employee asked:
"So, you gonna bring us hookers on Hump Day too?!"

"Yakkity Sax" plays as Kinetic races to get the nuclear bomb out of Millenium City.
 
NT: Subtle signs the vital report you are about to give to the board of directors was actually written by Princess UniKitty.

If cursing the heavens is all I can do, then cursing the heavens is exactly what I will do.

She just came home tonight. Was fixing coffee and heard her crying on the porch. Came running up to me as if to say "Let me in, let me in! Purr-purr-purr!"
 
Poor thing was skin and bones.

True story:
 
The first servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope was in December 1993. Very shortly after that, in January, the results of that servicing (which was to install the corrective optics to compensate for the flawed primary mirror) was announced at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington DC. I went to that meeting for other reasons, and my wife (we'd been married 16 months at the time) went also, planning to do mostly tourist stuff in DC while I went to the science meeting.
 
One session was, however, the announcement of the results of the HST servicing, and that session had lots of non-astronomer types in the room as well. The speaker got up to the podium, put his folder full of notes and overhead transparencies down, and said simply: "We got the sign right."
 
Then he gave the talk that had been planned, outlining the problem, what the fix was, and some of the details of the servicing. Then came some of the first pretty pictures with the corrected optics, and those went on the cover of Newsweek. The press and laypeople in the room were suitably impressed. The astronomers knew that even flawed optics can give impressive pictures, though, and were holding out for something more.
 
Then he put up an ugly black-and-white X-versus-Y dot plot, which could well have been something he'd made a transparency of late the night before from a working plot someone else had handed to him a few minutes before that. And that plot, before he said a word, was recognized for what it was and drew spontaneous applause from the astronomers in the room. (The laypeople in the room were mystified by that response from those who'd been impassive through the color images.)
 
In the context of science, it wasn't that dramatic a result. It was an Hertzsprung-Russell diagram for a field in the globular cluster M4, plotting the apparent magnitude versus color for stars in the field. But included on it were ten or so dots in the lower left part of the diagram, where the white dwarfs in the cluster (which had to be there) were expected to be ... but which could not be detected from the ground by any instrument then in existence. Exactly where those white dwarfs are is important; it tells you the age of the cluster in a novel way, because all those white dwarfs are doing is fading and cooling, so the brightness and temperature of the oldest white dwarfs tells you how long they've been cooling off. The theory to work out that age takes a lot of work, so that result wasn't in the plot, but the unmistakable presence of the white dwarfs was there. And that was, for the first time, science that could not be done from the ground, that the unrepaired telescope had not been able to do, and it was plain to any astrophysicist that HST was, finally, ready for the work it was built to do.

I liked the 1990s series.  Green Hornet and Green Lantern too.
 
There! I said it! 

Reposting from Random Links thread
 
http://www.tickld.com/x/20-jokes-that-only-intellectuals-will-understand
 
#5 of course is a paraphrase one of Zeno's paradoxes and is hardly a joke.  

Axes flash, broadsword swing,
Shining armour's piercing ring
Horses run with polished shield,
Fight Those Bastards till They Yield
Midnight mare and blood red roan,
Fight to Keep this Land Your Own
Sound the horn and call the cry,
How Many of Them Can We Make Die!

Follow orders as you're told,
Make Their Yellow Blood Run Cold
Fight until you die or drop,
A Force Like Ours is Hard to Stop
Close your mind to stress and pain,
Fight till You're No Longer Sane
Let not one damn cur pass by,
How Many of Them Can We Make Die!

Guard your women and children well,
Send These Bastards Back to Hell
We'll teach them the ways of war,
They Won't Come Here Any More
Use your shield and use your head,
Fight till Every One is Dead
Raise the flag up to the sky,
How Many of Them Can We Make Die!

Dawn has broke, the time has come,
Move Your Feet to a Marching Drum
We'll win the war and pay the toll,
We'll Fight as One in Heart and Soul
Midnight mare and blood red roan,
Fight to Keep this Land Your Own
Sound the horn and call the cry,
How Many of Them Can We Make Die!

Axes flash, broadsword swing,
Shining armour's piercing ring
Horses run with polished shield,
Fight Those Bastards till They Yield
Midnight mare and blood red roan,
Fight to Keep this Land Your Own
Sound the horn and call the cry,
How Many of Them Can We Make Die!

Maxim 1 - Pillage, then burn.,
It's not surprising that the Maxims work well for Shadowrun.

Inkubus OoC: We still have to figure out how we met.
Felix OoC: Craigslist.
Inkubus OoC: I probably used my usual trick - turned up with a really expensive bottle of wine.

Inkubus: Felix and I both like the good things in life
Titus: It's your only good point
Inkubus: I like all the debased things in life too. I just like life

On Inkubus' ability to solve every problem with his 'charisma'

Inkubus: When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail
Felix: 'the hammer is my penis'?

Anyway, regarding the latest job, getting the band back together. Specifically, the Elementals, back to their recording company. This we achieved by convincing them Shadowrunners were after them, staging a raid on our home, and dragging their unconscious behinds off to one of our hideouts.

We then reinforced this 'ransoming' them back to their company, thus making the company look good, and the band unlikely to try going independent again in future. Just a little bonus for our employer - it's little touches like that that ensure repeat business.

Inkubus: Not bad for having a concussion grenade go off between my legs.
Titus: How are the plums, anyway?

In fact, the client is so impressed he immediately offers us extra work - in order to promote the Elemental's latest album, they were going to be filming a music tri-vid. Of course, the band doing a runner wrecked the schedule, which is extremely inconvenient, since they were going to be filming outside Seattle's border in Salish-Shidhe (one of the Native American States) and the permit to do so has now expired. Perhaps our team can escort the band and film crew across anyway, so they can get the filming done anyway without anyone noticing?

Inkubus: I wonder where they want to film that's so important
Inkubus: Mt Rainier?Felix: Mt. Rainier? That's an active volcano isn't it?
Inkubus: We better not be filming there.
Felix: Wouldn't surprise me - they are the Elementals.

Felix: Bloody artistic integrity - can't they find a forest this side of the border to film in?

A major challenge, given half the team were the ones that 'kidnapped' them the day before. This new mission will need some thought before we accept - even though Labrat actually has dual citizenship of Seattle and Salish-Shidhe, we're going to need bribe money at the very least.

Greenlight: We're going to need extra money for this - one of us has already taken a stun grenade to the balls tonight.

GM: He's willing to let you keep the any vehicles and materiel you require.
Felix: 'We require a nuclear submarine.'

Inkubus: We'll use a novel technique to get past the border patrol - the truth. 'We HAD a permit, and these pricks went and run off to do their own thing - you know artistic types - and by the time we got them back the visa expired.'
Felix: 'and THIS prick insists on artistic integrity, so we have to film in your forest'.

Greenlight: Get your Inkubus Action Figure!
Felix: With Realistic Hip Thrusting Action!
Greenlight: Irrational Hatred of Scarves!
Felix: Dressed like a Chippendale Dancer!

Thus back to Titus' hide-out - the one with the sealed-up windows, sunlamps, and indoor farm. Of vegetables and chickens, not weed, since real food is rather more desirable than drugs these days. It also has something new - a vampiric assassin, who drops on us from the ceiling, spraying magic and automatic gunfire with gay abandon.

Inkubus OoC: Fangs for the Memories! One Shadowrunner! Two Shadowrunners! Three Shadowrunners! HAHAHAHA

FelixOoC: I wonder who we pissed off so much that they sent a vampire after us.

Despite the fact we outnumber him severely, the vampire is a formidable opponent. Even the fact that the entire team consists of mages and adepts didn't given him reason to pause.

Felix OoC: So six of us vs. one guy is a worse fight than us vs. several hundred bikers.
Inkubus OoC: Yup. Conservation of ninjitsu - 'hey, they only sent one ninja! ..... We're boned.'

Felix calls up a bound Earth Elemental, before being gunned down ( good thing he bought that very very expensive bulletproof coat ).

Labrat: So a big orange rocky thing has appeared, saying 'It's clobbering time!'?

Actually, no - the elemental itself is badly outclassed. Especially since the vampire can go to mist form and still cast magic. It's only Titus' desperate swing with his sledgehammer that saves us, since even in mist form, carriers of the vampire virus are still violently allergic to wood.

Labrat: We have wood for vampire

Greenlight manages to disarm and stun the bastard with a shock baton, and we tie him to a wooden chair for magical interrogation. We haven't figured out the allergy thing yet, but once we notice the haemorrhaging hit points we realise we'd better hurry. Since we don't dare risk untying him, either. Inkubus gets to work, telepathically ripping out the vampire's banking details, safety deposit box numbers, and anything else we can use. Such as the information that he was trying to kill us, as a favour for his friend Eclipse - the music exec that hired us.

Inkubus: Jeez, I know they say the music industry is a bunch of bloodsuckers, I didn't think they meant it literally.

We are more than slightly pissed off - after going to all that trouble to make the exec look good, being assassinated as loose ends is a bit aggravating. Naturally, we intend to reciprocate.

Inkubus: We'll send him a photo of his assassin tied to a chair
Greenlight: With a caption - See You Soon

Labrat: I'll include a musical sting 'nana nana, nana nana, hey hey hey, goodbye'

To add insult to injury, we'll 'rescue' that band and help them go independent.

Inkubus: We're going to rescue them. I 'hired' the very Shadowrunners that kidnapped them in the first place
Felix: Schlock Mercenary -
All: WE GET PAID TWICE
Inkubus: Do the happy dance, Tagon!

Labrat finishes off the dying assassin in a manner that would make Cronenberg or Kurosawa proud.

Greenlight: Jesus Christ, Labrat, what the fuck?!?! I thought you were going to cut his throat, not cut his fucking head off! Are you fucking Yakuza!?!

Hopefully, nobody will catch HMHVV from all the blood that sprays around.

So, time for revenge - Inkubus and Felix will set up shop a few kilometres away with telescopes, where they can overlook the exec's penthouse apartment in an otherwise empty ten-storey block. Line-of-sight magic is so damn useful. Labrat and Greenlight will go up the inside of the building, working their way past any security. Titus and Warhammer will climb up the outside. Then, when we're all in position, we send the 'Seeing You Soon' gif to the target and each other, to scare the execs shitless and then render him lifeless while he's panicking.

Greenlight: This is a military-grade lock. I've only heard of these things in a theoretical 'zine. This might actually be a challenge.
Labrat: *ClickclickclickPOP* Or not.

As it happens, our elaborate efforts are wasted - he's not home. His giant salamander fire elemental is.

Felix: He's got a fucking pet crocodile!

There's a naga too, hiding in the teepee/medicine lodge set up in one of the rooms, but after he sees what happens to the salamander he surrenders without a fight. At least this explains how the exec knew where to send the vampire - he's a magician. And according to certain notes on his computer, found while the team is busy ransacking the place, he's intending to use the band to awaken an ancient and probably evil spirit called Twilight.

Greenlight: Eclipse? Twilight?
Inkubus: Noooooooo! The Sparkles! The Sparkles!
Felix: And their video director is Lupus.
Inkubus: Damn you Stephanie Meyers!

It's also a full moon. But at least this explains why he tried to have us killed - we were rather more important loose ends than we thought.

GM: Who enters the teepee first?
All: *point at the troll*

Kaa, the Naga, happily comes with us. He should find the sunlamps and pond at Titus' hide-out quite comfortable. Such are the drawbacks of using intelligent creatures as your slaves - they tend to resent it.

Titus: Kaa... Which is... Ukrainian for Penis?
All: *give Titus a Look*

Inkubus: Hang about, I've got the badge - Nagas Are People Too

Just prior to setting the apartment on fire and blaming the salamander, one last ransacking for anything valuable, anything magical, anything that should be given to the band, and anything we can use for a long distance magical attack on the exec. Hair and fingernail clippings would be good.

Felix: Did you check the drain in his shower?
Greenlight: I was afraid to touch it
Labrat: He was afraid it would become sentient and attack him.

So off on a cross-border roadtrip, to stop a major ritual, kill a backstabbing exec, liberate a band, and avoid whatever werewolves, snipers, and other protections Eclipse has arranged. There's no point telling the authorities - even if they believed us it would take too long for them to get off their collective asses.