Cancer

They were inconsistent on defense. Sometimes were very good, other times you had 5 defenders standing around looking lost. Honestly, the score should have been much more lopsided. OU offensively did not have an amazing day. Got the job done though. 

Network execs, who don't know how to write (because execs never know how to do anything except give themselves money), think writing is unimportant because if it was important they'd do it.  And when writing is unimportant, if there is supposed to be any sort of story, the resulting product sucks.  This is why the only shows networks can do adequately are writing-free by their nature: home videos, game shows, competitive entertainment (best singer, dancer, etc), and screw-your-buddy reality shows.

IME, most of these missives are either down around 10, or well over 100, so a cut near 30 seems acceptable.
 
I might go back and look at some of the pages on that drivel site (see my post a few days back in the Random Links thread) and see how they score.  When I've had a few beers and am incapable of doing anything productive.  I promise I'll quit on a given page when it breaks 1000.

And since I'm about to make the assignment ...
 

Long preamble here.
 
The administrative unit in which I have the Associate Director title got moved out of one building last spring (that one was subsequently demolished and the spot is being built on now), and into another one.  The current location is a building that is older than the building that was demolished.
 
In this older building/new location, the only men's restroom is on the third floor (the only women's restroom is on the second floor).  Yes, classes are held in this building (which has three floors), and things get pretty congested during passing periods.
 
So ... unless it is pouring down rain, when my morning coffee demands liberation, rather than go upstairs, it is more convenient for me to duck outside and walk into another building right across the way, where there is a less-used men's room right near the entry on that entry level.  That other building houses the Business School.
 
I realized today that what I am doing is ... using the Business School as my outhouse.
 
After some consideration ... as a member of the College of Science & Engineering, I am oddly OK with that.

On this day in 1571, the Battle of Lepanto was fought between the galley fleets of the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League (Spain, Venice, the Papal States), ending in a crushing defeat of the Turkish forces, one from which their Mediterranean naval power never really recovered.  The Ottoman fleet by itself never regained the ability to strike into the western end of the Mediterranean, though their land forces engulfed the entirety of the south shore, and they continued land campaigns through the Balkans, and Venice continued to lose ground against the Ottomans in terms of territory, wealth, and influence.  But the operations of galley warfare was critically dependent upon experienced, highly-skilled officers in the galleys, and all but a few of these were lost at Lepanto (not least because any who were captured were identified and executed by the Christians after the battle; Philip II of Spain commanded the victorious admiral to do this, who coolly replied that the orders had already been given).  By the time another generation had mastered those skills, Western sea technology and tactics had changed and left the galley in obsolescence.

APOD April 8 2012: Io in front of Jupiter 

Sounds like a two-beer run to me.

The Patriots look awful.  However, they're playing a New York team as part of the easiest schedule since the spawn of coelacanths first invaded land, so it doesn't matter.  From what they're showing tonight, they'd be sub-.500 in a real division, like the Mountain West.
 
EDIT: and just like that, it's tied at 14-all.

I am seriously participating.
 
Lucius Alexander
 
The palindromedary is not

He certainly has tactlessness down, doesn't he?

Highlight 3: Variable gravity tank
 
This room -- spherical in shape, about 30 meters in diameter -- is one of the training simulator tools of the Arsenal, though it is not at all clear why the designers considered this important enough to build.  Within the room gravity changes in magnitude and direction throughout the room both in space (e.g., if one place with 1 gee downward relative to true Martian vertical), there may have another place three meters away where the gravity is 0.35 gees directed 120 degrees away from true Martian vertical) and in time (typically a change from one gee up to one gee down in one spot happens over about 10 seconds, though gravity in one spot may remain constant for intervals up to half a minute or so).  There are transient intervals of zero gravity throughout the room, albeit never all at the same time, as far as anyone knows; there are no known controls for the room.  It is speculated that this was intended to make the invading forces familiar, if not necessarily comfortable with, the descent from space to Earth's surface.  Finding controls for this facility is a high priority.
 
Whatever its original purpose, the variable gravity generator continues to operate within the room, the outer wall of which also rotates slowly and erratically with the sphere's various doors lining with a number of different corridors as the thing rotates.  The effect is terribly disorienting as well as vertigo-inducing.  Individuals near the walls can end up falling into a wall because of these gravity changes, but the distance and acceleration of such incidents is not usually sufficient to result in major injury.  Thrown objects rarely go where intended, and projectile weapons whose projectiles travel much slower than firearm bullets are usually too badly affected by the variable gravity field to be useful at ranges beyond about five meters.
 
Naturally flying creatures take a while to become accustomed to the situation, but after that adjustment interval they can manuver from door to door without much difficulty.
 
At intervals, small rocket-propelled drones emerge from one of the open doors and fly around the room apparently randomly before disappearing through another door.  These drones, about 30 cm in size, move at about 60 km/hr and are robust enough to survive impacts with each other, the walls, and creatures in the room, apparently without damage.  The mass and speed of these drones is sufficient to injure most humanoids, though it takes truly bad luck for a lethal impact.  The rocket exhaust can set easily flammable things on fire, like papers, clothing, hair, and so on, but it is not intense enough to ignite, e.g., wooden tools (like axe handles and so on).
 
Creatures of Barsoom wander into and out of the room occasionally.  The large dangerous ones, the white apes, banths, orluks, siths (which are thought to be unrelated to the Star Wars Sith, but you never know), zitidars, etc., usually are quite enraged once they've been in there for a couple of minutes, and will attack others thrashing in the room if they get the chance.  Combat between mutually hostile teams of humanoids is possible in the room, but the circumstances are so unpredictably bizarre that such combats tend to be lethal and random, unless circumstances are extreme (e.g., one side has rifles, the other has axes and swords).  Also, the inability of most humanoids to return to -- or perhaps even identify -- the door through which one entered can completely disrupt planned operations.
 
Common torches and other open flames are extremely dangerous in this room; flames in microgravity behave in a way which is entirely unfamiliar to most people, and harder to extinguish than one might expect.  It is remarkably common for someone carrying a torch to end up setting themselves on fire after a couple of minutes if they persist in carrying the torch, as the flame always tries to extend "up", and that direction will often intersect the torch carrier while they are in this room.  Carrying a torch while bearing a load of flammable or explosive material in a sack or backpack is probably wantonly suicidal.  Large quantities of water will "ball up" in microgravity due to surface tension, and it is possible that someone who collides with a large water ball may find themselves engulfed and be unable to breathe until gravity strong enough to pull the water away from nose and mouth recurs where the victim is.  That is unlikely to be long enough to drown a humanoid, but thirty seconds of inability to breathe is at best very distracting.
 

Highlight 2: Conservatory of the White Apes
 
Not within Face Mountain itself, but under the surrounding Cydonian Plain on which the mountain stands, in the upper levels of the Arsenal is a very large room, about 200 meters on a side and 70 meters tall.  There are shafts from its ceiling to the surface (all blocked by strong bars set in a number of places along the shafts) that open to the surface, admitting fresh air and indirect natural light.  Many structural beams run at random angles through the room, and hundreds of heavy eye bolts are set into beams and walls, intended as anchors for ropes and chains; many such lines are present, running at all angles.  There are many shrubs and vines growing from planters set from walls, beams, and heavy chains throughout the room.  Some of these plants are edible, some are poisonous, others are hazardous in other ways.  A few pools and fountains exist at a variety of levels through the room, providing water to keep everything alive.
 
Intended as a training zone for commandos who would be infiltrating Earth's jungles and dense forests, this room has always been called the Conservatory because of its dense foliage.  After the decommissioning of the Arsenal and the removal of its garrison, Martian white apes found their way in and adopted the Conservatory as their dwelling.  Though they evolved in the near-deserts of the dessicated, dying Mars, they quickly adapted to greenery and the three-dimensional lifestyle afforded by the ersatz jungle.  Now there are scores of them living there, in a loose tribal sort of arrangement that humans have not parsed out.  Eager to supplement their vegetable diet with whatever meat they can get, the apes are eagerly anthropophagous, and are skilled in assembling attack parties numbering upwards of a dozen, which converge quickly and violently from all directions (including, of course, directions not in the horizontal plane) upon intruders who get incorporated into the apes' meal of the day.  They cleverly use the sight-line obstructions of both architecture and foliage to gain surprise, bursting into their victims' sight only when literally within ape-arm's length.  This combination of music and scene (it's a still image) is almost appropriate.

Woof.
 
See https://poweroutage.us/area/state/california for a map and other information.

What about robot anime love slaves?

At night, no one can see your fashion faux pas.

Looks to me like my radical paranoia over biological and physiological personal data has developed as I expected. Or, perhaps, worse, though my poorly-worked-out suspicions that spurious results will become possible for a fee don't seem to have been blown open yet.  Yet.

Any heroes smart, brave, and/or lucky enough to make it through the Chompers will next face an obstacle that will make them doubt not only their sanity, but the very laws of gravity and causality.
 
Featured Highlight #2: The Escherian Stairwell
 

Highlight 1:  The Dark Passage to and from Earth.  About 35 meters vertically below the main entrance to the complex on the shoulder of the Face Mountain, accessible by a gently-sloped convenient passage about 600 m long as travelled on foot, is a side passage filled with impenetrable darkness.  Artificial lights of all kinds are suppressed in the side passage, which experienced spelunkers estimate to be about 30 m long.  All travelers negotiating the darkness experience at least one episode of disorientation, and while magnetic compasses cannot be read in the darkness, recording compasses and similar instruments lose all bearings for at least minutes during the passage.  
 
The darkness ends in a rougher passage of comparable width and height that slopes up to the surface, where the cave mouth is obscured from observation by several large cottonwood trees growing at the edge of a lake.  With some above ground exploration, it can be ascertained that this passage opening is near the Pecos River, within the boundaries of Bottomless Lakes State Park, not far from Roswell, New Mexico.
 
We speculate that it is this location where John Carter took shelter from hostile Apaches, and continuing on, first arrived in the subsurface caverns in Cydonia on Mars.  It is believed that other passages exist, linking points on Earth to locations on Mars, but no others yet are securely documented.  The remoteness of the location on Earth (especially in the late 19th Century) is enough to explain why no major incursions by Martians have been recorded.  Its proximity to Roswell is suggestive, however, that a team or small vehicle of Martian origin came through in 1947 and gave rise to the Roswell UFO incident.  US military security, working at fever pitch at the beginnings of the Cold War, prevent access to the artifacts needed to confirm or refute this suggestion.  The CIA explicitly disclaims knowledge of the incident, but this is widely believed to be disinformation.
 
Letting that be as it may, the state park is wide open to visitors (though long duration stays are prohibited and camps and vehicles are removed and impounded by the state), and an accessible and reliable channel exists for Earthers to visit Mars, arriving near the main surface gates to the Face Mountain arsenal.  That portion of the passage is kept empty to avoid encouraging traffic; attempts to block the passage (from either end) fail mysteriously.  Earthers who proceed downward rather than up to the surface on arrival on Mars are captured and used as experimental subjects, military training aids, or food.
 
EDIT: added a highlight name to make roster compilation easier

Who built it?  Though the Arsenal Behind the Face is centuries old, it had a very specific purpose, to be the arsenal that assembled the fleet that invaded Earth.  In principle (and original concept) labor could have been "recruited" from Earth by sending raiding parties through the Dark Passage.  But, since the construction of the Arsenal started before Europeans discovered America, and because the Pecos valley was never populated by anything other than pastoral nomads (which invariably have a low population density), there was no adequately large population of Earthlings to enslave.
 
The project was set in motion by Issus, self-proclaimed (and therefore false) God of Mars (as documented in the first couple of Barsoom books by Edgar Rice Burroughs).  When the Earthling population proved to be simply too small to provide the needed labor, she sent her devotees to war to obtain the thousands of slaves needed to excavate the tunnels.  These were whatever color of Martians that had the ill fortune to be captured and failed to profess immediate faith in Issus.
 
The shops, foundries, furnaces, etc., for actual weapons production required more skilled labor than can be collected by raiding armies, as did working out the details of the design of the facility and planning for its physical maintenance and subsequent operations.  Most of these folk were native Martian hirelings, intelligent enough to recognize they could have a comfortable enough living working on the armament projects for the ambitious "goddess", and were willing to make mouth noises in acknowledgement of her divinity so they could keep their comfortable lifestyle (and life).  Others were contracted from other worlds (Jupiter, Venus, and a few itinerant specialists on the lam from interstellar authorities).  Earth contributed a couple of these (mostly as overseers of slave regiments), but since most of this phase of construction was during the Earth calendar years 1200 to 1600, there were very few Earthlings adequately skilled for other roles in the project.
 
Once the excavation was done, the requirements for brute labor diminished.  Never intended to be a palace or a site of splendor or elegance, nothing like decorations were put in place, aside from a bit of dynamiting and earthmoving to enhance the surface features so the face looked more like the Face of the Goddess.  Once enough water had been brought through, it was planned to make a major forest and gardens on and around the mountain and build an icon of Issus of hundred-kilometer proportions.  The intervention of John Carter and his friends in pulling down Issus, and the failure of the invasion of Earth a few years later (the spoils of which, had the invasion succeeded, might have propelled Issus's successors and devotees back to planetary power), aborted this stage of planned development.

That "molten aluminum in an anthill" video is pretty good impressive.