Cancer

I think you have to be able to examine and discuss works from an earlier era, explicitly including aspects of them which are now considered reprehensible, making due accounting for things which are now way out of bounds.  If you don't do that, then subsequent people will lose the ability to recognize those attitudes now deemed reprehensible, and they will arise again with new vigor.  In short, you will be empowering those attitudes you profess to despise.  I think a great deal of the polarization we have now in the US is in fact partly due to the wish to forget, to put old bigotries behind us, and it omits the fact that those bigotries spring back to virulence from those fetid corners where they've hidden when people stop remembering what evils they spawned.
 
Consider it a form of vaccination.
 
I ask my students from time to time if they know what a "necktie party" is.  The few that do look at me with shock, and they are unhappy when I tell them that choosing to overlook that part of our cultural heritage means that we're doomed to repeat it.

Nice open cluster image
Click on the image in the linked page to get the wallpaper-worthy version.

[url=https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25020]More on that interstellar visitor[/url] (could well be behind a subscriber wall)
 
From the abstract:
 
EDIT (after I've had time to read the paper): From the text:


 
Its 7.36 hour rotation period, for an object 800 m long, means that the object cannot be a "rubble pile", i.e., a mass of clumped-up small pieces; it takes some mechanical strength to hold itself together and in that shape with that rotation.  That mechanical strength is well within known substances (utterly nothing special needed), but many of Solar System asteroids seem to be collections of broken-up bits, and such a collection cannot hold that shape with that rotation.
 
Its incoming trajectory (i.e., the velocity at infinite distance, what it had before it was accelerated by the Sun's gravity) was remarkably close to that of the average space velocity of the stars around us in their orbits around the Galaxy; the magnitude of that velocity is about 26 km/s.  While that is faster than anything macroscopic that humans have ever made, at that speed it's about 600,000 years travel time to (or from ) Vega.  The orbit is beyond all doubt hyperbolic and the object is interstellar: the orbit eccentricity is 1.1929 +/- 0.0006 (zero is a circle, between zero and 1 is an ellipse, 1 is a parabola, and greater than 1 is a hyperbola).  We have seen comets with arguably parabolic or borderline hyperbolic orbits before, but those seem to be due to things on near-parabolic orbits getting extra boost on their inward leg from the gravity of jovian planets.  This is the first no-doubt-about-it interstellar visitor.
 
And right now, it's moving away from Earth at about 65 km/s.  No, we're not gonna catch up to them.

I think you have to be able to examine and discuss works from an earlier era, explicitly including aspects of them which are now considered reprehensible, making due accounting for things which are now way out of bounds.  If you don't do that, then subsequent people will lose the ability to recognize those attitudes now deemed reprehensible, and they will arise again with new vigor.  In short, you will be empowering those attitudes you profess to despise.  I think a great deal of the polarization we have now in the US is in fact partly due to the wish to forget, to put old bigotries behind us, and it omits the fact that those bigotries spring back to virulence from those fetid corners where they've hidden when people stop remembering what evils they spawned.
 
Consider it a form of vaccination.
 
I ask my students from time to time if they know what a "necktie party" is.  The few that do look at me with shock, and they are unhappy when I tell them that choosing to overlook that part of our cultural heritage means that we're doomed to repeat it.

I think you have to be able to examine and discuss works from an earlier era, explicitly including aspects of them which are now considered reprehensible, making due accounting for things which are now way out of bounds.  If you don't do that, then subsequent people will lose the ability to recognize those attitudes now deemed reprehensible, and they will arise again with new vigor.  In short, you will be empowering those attitudes you profess to despise.  I think a great deal of the polarization we have now in the US is in fact partly due to the wish to forget, to put old bigotries behind us, and it omits the fact that those bigotries spring back to virulence from those fetid corners where they've hidden when people stop remembering what evils they spawned.
 
Consider it a form of vaccination.
 
I ask my students from time to time if they know what a "necktie party" is.  The few that do look at me with shock, and they are unhappy when I tell them that choosing to overlook that part of our cultural heritage means that we're doomed to repeat it.

I think you have to be able to examine and discuss works from an earlier era, explicitly including aspects of them which are now considered reprehensible, making due accounting for things which are now way out of bounds.  If you don't do that, then subsequent people will lose the ability to recognize those attitudes now deemed reprehensible, and they will arise again with new vigor.  In short, you will be empowering those attitudes you profess to despise.  I think a great deal of the polarization we have now in the US is in fact partly due to the wish to forget, to put old bigotries behind us, and it omits the fact that those bigotries spring back to virulence from those fetid corners where they've hidden when people stop remembering what evils they spawned.
 
Consider it a form of vaccination.
 
I ask my students from time to time if they know what a "necktie party" is.  The few that do look at me with shock, and they are unhappy when I tell them that choosing to overlook that part of our cultural heritage means that we're doomed to repeat it.

"Tidal locking is the final absolution of original spin."

[url=https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25020]More on that interstellar visitor[/url] (could well be behind a subscriber wall)
 
From the abstract:
 
EDIT (after I've had time to read the paper): From the text:


 
Its 7.36 hour rotation period, for an object 800 m long, means that the object cannot be a "rubble pile", i.e., a mass of clumped-up small pieces; it takes some mechanical strength to hold itself together and in that shape with that rotation.  That mechanical strength is well within known substances (utterly nothing special needed), but many of Solar System asteroids seem to be collections of broken-up bits, and such a collection cannot hold that shape with that rotation.
 
Its incoming trajectory (i.e., the velocity at infinite distance, what it had before it was accelerated by the Sun's gravity) was remarkably close to that of the average space velocity of the stars around us in their orbits around the Galaxy; the magnitude of that velocity is about 26 km/s.  While that is faster than anything macroscopic that humans have ever made, at that speed it's about 600,000 years travel time to (or from ) Vega.  The orbit is beyond all doubt hyperbolic and the object is interstellar: the orbit eccentricity is 1.1929 +/- 0.0006 (zero is a circle, between zero and 1 is an ellipse, 1 is a parabola, and greater than 1 is a hyperbola).  We have seen comets with arguably parabolic or borderline hyperbolic orbits before, but those seem to be due to things on near-parabolic orbits getting extra boost on their inward leg from the gravity of jovian planets.  This is the first no-doubt-about-it interstellar visitor.
 
And right now, it's moving away from Earth at about 65 km/s.  No, we're not gonna catch up to them.

Tomato ketchup, old boy.

A conversation with a colleague led me to the epiphany that when a potential employer requires a urine test, it could be that rather than checking for drug use they are checking whether you can hit the cup with your own pee.
 
That level of test would be challenging for our IT support workers, so I find it plausible.

.. while astronomy gets ... Megascale.  OK.

Guys!  HEY, GUYS!  We got rep back, kind of.
 
Go to your profile.  (I did this this morning for the first time.)  Heck, go to others' profiles and see there too.
 
There's a number there, which I had known before, and maybe a "You last won the day on..." thing.  
 
FWIW, it appears that Cygnia is kicking all our collective butts, but....

A conversation with a colleague led me to the epiphany that when a potential employer requires a urine test, it could be that rather than checking for drug use they are checking whether you can hit the cup with your own pee.
 
That level of test would be challenging for our IT support workers, so I find it plausible.

Needs more evil.

I had to do a bit of library searching to find this, but when synchronous rotation develops, the orientation of the spin axis also undergoes a forced change.   Exactly what happens depends on what other masses are in the system and where those are.  I have found decent discussions of this only in papers dealing with known systems with more than two bodies, for example Earth's Moon (considering the Earth-Moon-Sun system) and the satellite system of Jupiter (the planet plus three or four of the Galilean satellites).  For Earth's Moon, there are small but constant-in-magnitude-but-not-direction differences between the orientation of the Moon's spin axis and the orientation lines perpendicular to Moon's orbit around Earth and Earth's orbit around the Sun.  Put another way,  the spin axis and the normal to Moon's orbit plane around Earth precess around the normal to Earth's orbit around the Sun, and the three are always coplanar.
 
If the moon were perfectly spherically symmetric, or fluid, then the orbit also would be driven to circular.  But with a solid and rigid body, it may end up in a state close to but distinctly and persistently different from circular.  This is true, e.g., for Earth's Moon, which has an orbit eccentricity around Earth of 0.055 (compare the eccentricity of Earth's orbit around the Sun, 0.0167, a perfect circle is exactly zero).
 
The most comprehensible discussion of this that I've found is in one chapter (chapter 19, "Europa" by Chyba and Phillips) of a team-written book Planets and Life, edited by Sullivan and Baross, published 2007 by Cambridge U Press.  While some chapters from that book can be found separately and downloaded for free, I haven't found this one in that form.  It's written as a graduate-level textbook for students coming from a variety of disciplines, which means it's a bit more approachable.  See if you can find it in a library.
 

A conversation with a colleague led me to the epiphany that when a potential employer requires a urine test, it could be that rather than checking for drug use they are checking whether you can hit the cup with your own pee.
 
That level of test would be challenging for our IT support workers, so I find it plausible.

We finally had the first real session of our new Gold Age Champions campaign.  Our heroes:
Amon-Ra: Archaeologist who found an artifact that is a conduit to an ancient god.
Diamondback: Exposure to a strange crystal gave her immense strength and durability.
Double-Time: Given incredible running speed during a lab accident.
Faceless: FBI agent with the ability to assume the shape of any person he sees.
Professor Polar: Discoverer of "cold energy".
Shard: Exposed to the same crystal as Diamondback, but instead has the ability to grow and control similar crystals.
Tarraingteacht: Agent Carter's skills with Polaris's powers.
Zoltan the Magnificent: Stage magician who also knows real magic.
 
*****
 
Zoltan [while performing his stage act]: ...as taught to me by the maharajas of far-off India...
 
Diamondback [whispering to her sister]: I don’t know what that is, but it sounds impressive.
 
*****
 
Tarraingteacht [OOC]: Why is my character a Missouri Prisoner of War?
 
[confused looks from the rest of the table]
 
Double-Time [leaning over and looking at her character sheet]: "MoPow" is an abbreviation for More Powerful…
 
*****

Shard [to her sister, Diamondback]: I hate you!  Why did you have to be born?  … I mean that in a loving way.
 
*****
 
Full session write-up here.

That's harder to quantify, and a well-defined data set and firm numerical validation is a joy these days.

I was going to ask why you only went with 5.5 lies per day, and then I found this:
 
 
Well played, sir.  Well played.

Batagaika Crater deep in Siberia is a bizarre, awesome and somewhat frightening place.  The crater is over 300 feet deep and half a mile long and grows 60 feet a year.  What was it caused by?  For a long time people didn't know, they suspected things like climate change, but the reality is that the Soviet government scoured the ground down to the permafrost and were digging up the dirt and rock for road material, and exposed to the sun the permafrost started to melt.  For decades it did, melting and eroding deeper and now its enormous.
 

I had to do a bit of library searching to find this, but when synchronous rotation develops, the orientation of the spin axis also undergoes a forced change.   Exactly what happens depends on what other masses are in the system and where those are.  I have found decent discussions of this only in papers dealing with known systems with more than two bodies, for example Earth's Moon (considering the Earth-Moon-Sun system) and the satellite system of Jupiter (the planet plus three or four of the Galilean satellites).  For Earth's Moon, there are small but constant-in-magnitude-but-not-direction differences between the orientation of the Moon's spin axis and the orientation lines perpendicular to Moon's orbit around Earth and Earth's orbit around the Sun.  Put another way,  the spin axis and the normal to Moon's orbit plane around Earth precess around the normal to Earth's orbit around the Sun, and the three are always coplanar.
 
If the moon were perfectly spherically symmetric, or fluid, then the orbit also would be driven to circular.  But with a solid and rigid body, it may end up in a state close to but distinctly and persistently different from circular.  This is true, e.g., for Earth's Moon, which has an orbit eccentricity around Earth of 0.055 (compare the eccentricity of Earth's orbit around the Sun, 0.0167, a perfect circle is exactly zero).
 
The most comprehensible discussion of this that I've found is in one chapter (chapter 19, "Europa" by Chyba and Phillips) of a team-written book Planets and Life, edited by Sullivan and Baross, published 2007 by Cambridge U Press.  While some chapters from that book can be found separately and downloaded for free, I haven't found this one in that form.  It's written as a graduate-level textbook for students coming from a variety of disciplines, which means it's a bit more approachable.  See if you can find it in a library.
 

"Tidal locking is the final absolution of original spin."

"Tidal locking is the final absolution of original spin."