Michael Hopcroft

I don't think that's likely given Jack Chick's genocidal hatred of Catholics. Apparently he didn't like Mormons or Jews much either.
 
This priest would not approve of my sister, a Lutheran pastor who was quite fond of the Potter books and films. Rowling's magic may be a stand-in for something else more fundamental to human nature. Our intellects, for example, can be used for good or evil in all sorts of ways, as can the Scientific Method and just about any other source of temporal power. Even religious faith has the same potential when the intent of the "user" is clouded by hatred and fear. And we are all surrounded by Dark Arts of varying descriptions every step of our way in life,

I don't think that's likely given Jack Chick's genocidal hatred of Catholics. Apparently he didn't like Mormons or Jews much either.
 
This priest would not approve of my sister, a Lutheran pastor who was quite fond of the Potter books and films. Rowling's magic may be a stand-in for something else more fundamental to human nature. Our intellects, for example, can be used for good or evil in all sorts of ways, as can the Scientific Method and just about any other source of temporal power. Even religious faith has the same potential when the intent of the "user" is clouded by hatred and fear. And we are all surrounded by Dark Arts of varying descriptions every step of our way in life,

Even when not written to a concept, the Who's albums seem to revolve around themes that happen to be the things Pete Townshend felt was important. There are at two three tracks on Who Are You about the creative process, and several others ab out the changes going on in the music industry at the time (the collapse of the Disco bubble, the emergence of Punk).
 
This was Keith Moon's last album before his death. His alcoholism and other substance issues made recording difficult at best, and he was so far gone that Townshend even considered kicking him out of the band. Moon died witin a month of the album's release.
 
Townshend knew the world of music was changing, and that the Who may not have been the sort of band that could remain artistically relevant with those changes.

Even when not written to a concept, the Who's albums seem to revolve around themes that happen to be the things Pete Townshend felt was important. There are at two three tracks on Who Are You about the creative process, and several others ab out the changes going on in the music industry at the time (the collapse of the Disco bubble, the emergence of Punk).
 
This was Keith Moon's last album before his death. His alcoholism and other substance issues made recording difficult at best, and he was so far gone that Townshend even considered kicking him out of the band. Moon died witin a month of the album's release.
 
Townshend knew the world of music was changing, and that the Who may not have been the sort of band that could remain artistically relevant with those changes.

In defiance of the Republican and Democratic parties, Jesus of Nazareth has declared his candidacy for President of the United States in 2020! His biggest campaign promise is "to teach those fools what i really said".
 
NT: Subtle signs your visit to the local amusement park is not going to go as planned.

We propose to accelerate the Coyote up to 0.999999 lightspeed and collide him with the nearest sandstone cliff wall, in order to have a good laugh, because anyone must admit it would be hilarious.

Had training camp even started when this happened? If he's not in training, I don't see a reason for the team to say he can't do this. People have done much worse things in the off-season that have actually affected their ability to play.
 
This isn't Johnny Manziel here.

Changing gears again ...
 
 

Antonio Brown goes down with... frostbite. 
 
I don’t even think Hard Knocks started filming yet. 

Well, the luminosity class IV means it has already begun its post-main-sequence evolution: in the very center, hydrogen is exhausted or nearly so, and the star's energy is being generated in a fairly thick shell around the center.  But the core is not yet degenerate, and the envelope has not yet turned fully convective.  For higher-mass stars this subgiant phase doesn't last long, and there are relatively few stars seen in that transition from main sequence to the giant branch.  For lower-mass stars ... less than 1.4 solar masses or so ... the thick-shell-burning phase takes longer.  HD 140283 is in that stage, *and* it's an extremely metal poor star to boot.  With an apparent magnitude of just over 7, it's a long-known and often studied star.
 
I got a spectrum of it back in the early 1980s and was stunned to find a clear lithium line.  (Lithium is very easily destroyed by exposure to high-temperature protons, so any sort of mixing between stellar atmosphere and interior "astrates" the lithium and reduces its abundance; this has already happened in the Sun, where it is just barely detectable, and has been reduced by a factor of a hundred or so from its initial level.)  My advisor didn't urge me to pursue that because a Nature paper by Francois and Monique Spite was in press, where they'd looked at a number of these extremely metal poor dwarfs and subgiants, analyzed them for lithium, and found a more-or-less constant value.  They interpreted this as cosmological in origin: that "ceiling" for lithium in the old stars is Li from the Big Bang, which made hydrogen, helium, and a trace of lithium.  The proportions of those depend on the mass of the Universe and the baryon fraction.  The level they got was consistent with a density less than the critical value, a result the observational cosmologists had found (with substantial uncertainty) by other means earlier.  This came out of left field: it had not been realized that this ancient tracer was observable, and to find a completely independent (and unambiguous) sign that there was not enough ordinary matter in the Universe to make for a critical density was a shock.
 
The Inflationary Hypothesis was formulated a couple of years later; Rubin & Ford's incontrovertible results for unseen matter dominating the rotation curves in spiral galaxies had been out for 5 years or so; and the conclusion that ordinary baryonic matter made no more than a couple of percent of the content of the Universe was slowly gaining grudging acceptance.

He keeps spreading rebellion wherever he goes. And your Homeowners Association is next on his list.
 
(This may be my most obscure Scenes from a Hat joke ever.)

"Faith without works is dead."

Bach was nowhere more emotional as a composer than in his religious music. Take this gloriously joyful expression in his B Minor Mass, the "laudamus Te" ("We Praise You")
 
He also wrote five Passions (works describing the Crucifixion, the events leading up to it, and the coming Resurrection), of which only two survive. "O Sacred Head", one of the most popular Lutheran hymns, was an adaptation of music from The Passion According to St. Matthew. Like most of the Passion Plays performed in the early 18th century, there are whiffs of Anti-Semitism (the rather simplistic interpretation of the time blamed the entire thing on the Jews, with the Romans are largely bewildered bystanders. That colored just about all relationships between Christians and Jews.) Still, the music still sounds fresh and modern nearly 300 years later. Makes me wonder why the Cathedral of Leipzig and its musical college thought they had settled for a mediocrity in hiring Bach

Yes, here it is.
 
 
Hot dang, that's impressive.

That looks so good.

That looks so good.

I wish Day of the Dead got more traction in the US. A solemn remembrance that is also a party where you celebrate the legacy of your departed loved ones.

I'm preparing to publish a new RPG module after several years out of the business. This came up immediately when I was thinking about it.
 
I always have to remind myself about self-care, so this was really good timing.

"When did Motley Crue become Classic Rock?" -- Bowling for Soup, "1985"

I wish Day of the Dead got more traction in the US. A solemn remembrance that is also a party where you celebrate the legacy of your departed loved ones.

The City On the Egde of Forever. Arguably the best episode of the original series, and certainly one of the most powerful. I suppose that every sci-fi series eventually addresses the issue of "one (or few) must die if many are to live", but few do it in as heart-wrenching a fashion as this episode did.

"Dogs don't know it's not bacon."
'IT'S BACON!!!"

Perhaps Aron's geas is "Never touch weapons",  which poses a problem for a medieval royal who was expected to at least hold his own in battle. Nobody using weapons in his presence, or carrying anything on their person more deadly than a knife or a dress sword (neither of which can be drawn in his presence) would be awkward at best.
 
And of course the young woman to whom he is engaged (in an arranged marriage) turns out to be a major bad*** when the chips are down  -- not just brave but resourceful and clever. She has to outwit the Sidhe Queen who has him imprisoned in lifelong slumber, and is more than up to the task.

A swap of Beauty and the Beast would be interesting, if a little bit scary depending on your view of masculinity.

"...Kevin..."