Cancer

Victor "Renard" Zokas

NT: fictitious sciences or technologies

The "cosmological dark age", between about 400,000 and 10^9 years after the Big Bang.  A snapshot from that era would give potent (and all but unavailable) clues about structure formation at early times.

Fishing by towing a baited line at a low, constant speed through the water

Many fine crags are easily accessible from the road,....

Openguessr is just as hazardous as Geoguessr, but at least it's free.

... gunpoint?

Quote

Jones's father was summoned to the council; he suggested his son was insane.

"The answer is ... Catch-22."

(tears open envelope)

"The question is ... What happens if you hit the Dodger infield fifty pop flies?"

5040 = 2 * 3 * 4 * 5 * 6 * 7

Also, 5040 + 1 = 71²

Latest GOES-East color visible-bandpass satellite image of the US and Canada

Doesn't look real good right now for Monday's eclipse.

Criticism comes first from those who have never attempted what they witnessed.

On 4/2/2024 at 10:15 PM, Michael Hopcroft said:

A: If you like it, then you should have put a ring on it.

Q: (sigh) Another piston burned to hell... what am I doing wrong?

A: I hadn't seen Rule 34 applied to auto shop before, but I suppose it's better than some other alternatives.

Actually, if you want actual blood sport, the interesting thing to watch is tennis players versus pickleball players bickering over which sport makes better use of city facilities.

I am amused that the dead woman has received two more offers to purchase life insurance than I have.

If attorneys play an important role in your plans or your life, pay the attorneys first.

20 hours ago, BoloOfEarth said:

 

Is there such a thing as "enough whiskey"?

 

Edit to add:  As you think about that, imagine that you're giving or grading exams.

From a career of RL experience, the answer is yes.

When you wake up the next day and find there is still at least one bottle with some in it, then you had enough.

A disturbingly large proportion of the population needs that book, though the ones who need it most are least likely to read it.

(( merged ))

Tower of Skulls, by Richard B Frank, (c) 2020.  A detailed and well-researched book on the first segment of WW2 in the Asian and Pacific theatres, i.e., against Japan.  Intended to be the first of a three-book sequence on the war, in terms of coverage (with bits of earlier history as needed for background) it ranges from the "Marco Polo Bridge Incident" in July 1937 to the surrender of Corregidor on 6 May 1942.  It has much greater insight into conditions in China, the "workings" of the Japanese government (that word is in quotes because events by peripheral hotheads could and did overrule any policies that might have been concocted in Tokyo), and a better correlation of events in Asia with events elsewhere in the world than all the materials I'd read previously (which are strictly English language, albeit a mix of US, UK, and Commonwealth authorship). 

For instance, the victories of Allied cryptanalysis over the German Enigma-based cypher are well documented now, and the ability of the US to read the Japanese diplomatic code (what the Americans called "Purple"), are pretty commonly known now.  There is a very abbreviated account -- yet much more than anything I had previously read -- about how the breaking of Purple came to be.  At least as important is the evolution -- invention, really -- of how such intelligence came to be used by the American government and armed forces.

Soviet flip-flopping on its support (and lack thereof) of China is better correlated with events happening in Europe at the time compared to other works I've read, making clear that Stalin was paying attention to Japan and China but events in Europe necessarily commanded his policy decisions in ways that are easy to see.

Rear Admiral Isaac Kidd, commander of Battleship Division 1, was aboard his flagship, USS Arizona, on the morning of the Pearl Harbor attack.  "Of Kidd, all that was found was his Naval Academy ring fused to the conning tower."  It is also pointed out that all the battleship sinkings happened during the first wave of the attack, and that the Japanese planes suffered much greater losses in the second wave, suggesting that even twenty minutes' warning (as might have been provided by the radar "sighting" of the incoming first wave, had it been handled promptly) could have drastically altered the outcome if the attack.

Either that, or not enough whiskey.

Needs "who stole everything he had" appended to the closing line.

"Yes, isn't that how it's supposed to work?"

  Thinks a bit about silicon and sulfur there

Title: Speed, Distance, Alien Invaders, and Meep meep

And a lot more if you are driving through those parts of the Southwest where there's lots of area surrounded by military areas, bombing ranges, and so on.

New NFL kickoff rule discussion