Cancer

The tension between astronomical measurements of the Hubble Constant (the present rate of expansion of the Universe) and the value that comes out of analysis of the inhomogeneities in the cosmic microwave background (from the Planck satellite mission) is getting worse.  A direct calibration of the Cepheid distance scale by parallax measurements of seven long-period Cepheid variables, affirming the HST result obtained back in the 1990s and tightening its error bars, was submitted two weeks back.  The two values are 73.45+/-1.66 km/s/Mpc for the new Cepheid distance scale, compared to 67.74±0.46 in the same units from Planck; that's a 3.7-sigma discrepancy.  That's enough to start getting interesting and/or annoying.
 
Cosmology may not be as solved a problem as has been asserted.

Instant poll: what ending would be the most amusing to append to that?
In one week! Among girls Death Tribble snogged In section 243 during last weekend's Steelers-Jaguars game In the frozen foods section of the local Piggly Wiggly Involving four dropbears, six jackalopes, and the casts of three Mexican soap operas ... Foxbat wiggles his eyebrows ... cross-talk with an app for fast pizza deliveries is rumored to be a contributor all due on Groundhog Day!

Mercury conducts, so you could do both.

My eyes swept over the devastation, watering, I told myself, from the reek of death and the acrid smoke still twisting from ruins. 
 
Every house had been torched; the streets were choked with the massacred townsfolk, even to the infant cloven in two lying beside the burned chunks that might have been its mother.  Broken and charred goods lay strewn about, with a few things doubtless carried off, but most merely wasted in these ruins.  The dogs had been killed and chopped up; what livestock the invaders could not capture they had shot and left dead in the pens.  Even the cats had been killed and left where they fell.  Barns had burned down, and those small conflagrations had spread to other buildings as wind and fortune had permitted and consumed what it would haphazardly.  The well had had a number of severed parts of multiple bodies dropped into it, with a child’s severed head floating face-up in the undrinkable water several yards down.  In the church a dozen or more townsfolk had been slain on the altar before the other parts of the shrine had been pulled down, and it seems that a dozen or more looters had defecated in strategic places to put further personal emphasis on the destruction.
 
Only the buzzing flies survived here.
 
My escort was silent, whether in reaction to the totality with which this village had been expunged, or out of fear of what I might do, I was unsure.  Perhaps they were unsure of that as well.
 
The Sight showed only the last sniggerings of the Fire That Consumes in some still-smoldering corners.  Everything was dead.  
 
The utterly warmthless breeze from between the stars blew through my soul as my Sight registered the path the invaders had taken on leaving.  I let its coldness possess me.
 
“The nature of this war has changed,” the coldness said with my voice into the silence.
 
“The task before us now is to exterminate their race.  Only after that will we mourn and rebuild.
 
“We must feast upon the tomorrows they will never have.”
 
The wind from the Void blew away from me, leaving the frozen bits of my humanity to rattle against each other in my heart.  On its own volition it consumed the tiny remnants of Fire as it swept over what had once been a village on its way back to the infinite emptiness from which it came.  The wind chilled my escorts’ hearts so they too saw only the starkness of the Nothing to which we had to consign our enemy.
 
“That way,” I pointed, and we set out.

Check out the symptoms for late state syphilis some time. 

AND YOU CALL YOURSELF AUSTRALIAN?!?!?!!!?

Fly through the Orion Nebula

I'd like to go out more, but the drones are following my every move.  The worst ones are the ones you can't see or hear.  I figure I'll have the auxiliary tunnel finished by the end of CY 2019.  I do need to work on the seismometer jammer thing, but that's an easy tech, I think.

I know!  Could you pickle them in lye and sell them to the Norwegians?

Dune, because of Jailbait Babysitters of Dune.  (The saga did get that far, didn't it?  Or am I thinking of Gor?)
 
 
 
Things that went bang in the night:
 
Sanduleak -69° 202 versus GRB 080319B

Pigs 3, British Bipeds 1

No ... I wanted to catch the 3:30 bus, and good form snark takes more time than I had.

No ... I wanted to catch the 3:30 bus, and good form snark takes more time than I had.

Erf, ninja'ed.  
 
Cylons seem less likely to poop on the carpet.
 

Now the king told the boogie men
You have to let that raga drop
The oil down the desert way
Has been shakin' to the top
The sheik he drove his Cadillac
He went a' cruisnin' down the ville
The muezzin was a' standing
On the radiator grille
 
The shareef don't like it
Rockin' the Casbah
Rock the Casbah
The shareef don't like it
Rockin' the Casbah
Rock the Casbah
 
By order of the prophet
We ban that boogie sound
Degenerate the faithful
With that crazy Casbah sound
But the Bedouin they brought out
The electric camel drum
The local guitar picker
Got his guitar picking thumb
As soon as the shareef
Had cleared the square
They began to wail
 

The shareef don't like it
Rockin' the Casbah
Rock the Casbah
The shareef don't like it
Rockin' the Casbah
Rock the Casbah
 

Now over at the temple
Oh ! They really pack 'em in
The in crowd say it's cool
To dig this chanting thing
But as the wind changed direction
The temple band took five
The crowd caught a wiff
Of that crazy Casbah jive
 

The shareef don't like it
Rockin' the Casbah
Rock the Casbah
The shareef don't like it
Rockin' the Casbah
Rock the Casbah
 

The king called up his jet fighters
He said you better earn your pay
Drop your bombs between the minarets
Down the Casbah way
 
As soon as the shareef was
Chauffeured outta there
The jet pilots tuned to
The cockpit radio blare
 
As soon as the shareef was
Outta their hair
The jet pilots wailed
 

The shareef don't like it
Rockin' the Casbah
Rock the Casbah
The shareef don't like it
Rockin' the Casbah
Rock the Casbah
 

He thinks it's not kosher
Fundamentally he can't take it.
You know he really hates it.

I have just closed my eyes again
Climbed aboard the dream weaver train
Driver take away my worries of today
And leave tomorrow behind

Ooh dream weaver
I believe you can get me through the night
Ooh dream weaver
I believe we can reach the morning light

Fly me high and through the starry skies
Or maybe to an astral plane
Cross the highways of fantasy
Help me to forget today's pain

Ooh dream weaver
I believe you can get me through the night
Ooh dream weaver
I believe we can reach the morning light

Though the dawn may be coming soon
There still may be some time
Fly me away to the bright side of the moon
And meet me on the other side

Ooh dream weaver
I believe you can get me through the night
Ooh dream weaver
I believe we can reach the morning light

Dream weaver
Dream weaver

Welcome back, my friends
To the show that never ends.
We're so glad you could attend!
Come inside! Come inside!

There behind a glass
Stands a real blade of grass
Be careful as you pass.
Move along! Move along!

Come inside, the show's about to start
Guaranteed to blow your head apart
Rest assured you'll get your money's worth
The greatest show in Heaven, Hell, or Earth

You've got to see the show, it's a dynamo.
You've got to see the show, it's rock and roll

Right before your eyes,
We'll pull laughter from the skies
And he laughs until he cries,
Then he dies, then he dies

Soon the Gypsy Queen
In a glaze of Vaseline
Will perform on guillotine
What a scene! What a scene!
Next upon the stand
Will you please extend a hand
To Alexander's Ragtime Band
Dixieland, Dixieland

Roll up! Roll up! Roll up!
See the show!

Performing on a stool
We've a sight to make you drool
Seven virgins and a mule
Keep it cool. Keep it cool.
We would like it to be known
The exhibits that were shown
Were exclusively our own,
All our own. All our own.

Come and see the show!
Come and see the show!
Come and see the show!
See the show!

This is drifting towards politics quickly, unfortunately.  But I will admit here: I think the US is much closer to a corporate-controlled police state than anyone wants to admit.  And with that I'll shut up.

Quote Han Solo instead.  "I've got a bad feeling about this."