And in other news, HBO decided that 10 hours was too long for most viewers of the World War II miniseries "Band of Brothers." Rather than follow EZ-Company from D-Day to VE-Day, the series will be reduced to one hour of some firefights with the Germans.
"We felt that the internal conflict between the characters, and the historical background, was too complicated for most viewers."
HBO is also planning on editing the 12 hour miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon." It will be re-released as "From the Earth to Shepard's 15 Minute Sub-Obrbital Flight," so as not to discourage viewers with a short attention span from watching the 1/2 hour special
Re:Arthur C. Clarke: "The View fro Serendip"
on
Mapping Gravity
·
· Score: 1
Now if I could only spell "from" correctly. Arrghh!
I apologize for the mistake.
Arthur C. Clarke: "The View fro Serendip"
on
Mapping Gravity
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Back in 1978, Arthur C. Clarke ended his book The View from Serendip by writing about a gravitational anomaly which was found off the coast of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) -- the small island near India where he lives.
I am able to visit my favorite spot (Chapter 13) for only a few days a year. But now, quite unexpectedly -- and literally since I wrote the preceding paragraph! -- Serendipity has struck again. While researching a totally different subject, I've discovered a good reason for spending more time on the south coast.
It concerns the greak Sanskrit epic, the Ramayana. In this 2,200-year-old poem, the demon-king Ravanna kidnaps Sita, wife of Rama, and takes her to his island stronghold of Ceylon. Needless to say, she is ultimately released, after aerial battles involving what look suspiciously like atomic weapons and laser beams.
To heal the wounded, the heroic monkey-general Hanuman is later sent back to India to fetch a medicinal herb found only in the Himalayas. Unfortunately, when he gets to the right mountain he is unable to identify the herb. No problem; he brings the whole mountain back! However, one piece drops off, on the southern tip of Ceylon. The locals believe this fragment is in fact my favourite bay, for its name in Sinhalese means "there it fell down" (onna watuna).
There it fell down. Place names usually have a meaning, though it is often lost in the mists of time. Did something really fall down, centuries or millennia ago, at Unawatuna Bay? A meteorite would be the obvious explanation; it must have been a big one for the legend to have lasted down the ages.
And here's another weird coincidence. Little Unawatuna, believe it or not, is the closest point on dry land to the world's greatest gravitational anomaly, a few hundred kilometres out in the Indian Ocean. On the Goddard Space Flight Center's 3-D map of the Earth's Gravimetric Geoid, that strange phenomenon looks liek a deep pit [1] into which the whole island of Sri Lanka is about to slide.
Let's put two and two together. A few thousand years ago, a huge object of peculiar density plunged into the Indian Ocean, creating a tradition that is remembered to this day. And it's still there, distorting the earth's gravitational field -- Terran Gravitational Anomaly I.
That might make an opening for a pretty good science-fiction movie . . . and an even better ending for this book.
Ayu Bowan.
1. One hundred and ten metres below zero reference on the Goddard model (March & Vincent, 1974).
I've even heard radio ads here in Colorado urging people to incorporate their businesses in Nevada, regardless of where the company is physically located. (I don't know who was paying for the ads).
Also, it would seem that the middle of a desert would be a good place to put a space port.
Wheat wrote: "Just before Bowman goes out on his first space walk, we see an exterior shot of Discovery. Two huge meteroids come hurtling past. Kubrick is symbolizing Odysseus's escape from the Laestrygonian rock attack."
Ummm, if I remember correctly, Poole went on the spacewalks, not Bowman. That's where he was killed.
Also, the rocks in the book (and I assume, therefore, the movie) "symbolized" the Discovery's passage through the asteroid belt on the way to Jupiter. Nothing more, nothing less. (In the book, they launched a probe at an asteroid, but that probably would have confused the movie audience).
As for the Trojan Horse symobolism:
The Trojan Horse was represented quite explicitly in the prequel "2000: A Space Illiad" (Henry Beard, et al. THE BOOK OF SEQUELS. 1990. p. 54).
"It was a gift horse from the stars. Did mankind dare look it in the mouth?" asks the movie poster. No hidden symbolism there.
This is a bit off the topic of the FBI NICS system going down, but Slashdoters might find this bit from Walter Olson's "A Smith & Wesson FAQ" (from Reason's Gun Page) contrasting the government's treatment of S&W and Microsoft interesting:
.
.
.
Q: Wouldn't it be easier for a dealer to drop the S&W line?
A: The Clinton administration was counting on S&W's status as the number one gun maker. Having absorbed that variety of antitrust analysis that describes a manufacturer as "controlling" a certain market share, the president's men thought helpless buyers would have no place to go. They figured they could leverage S&W's market share through what amounts to a tying arrangement: If dealers and gun shows wanted to stock the dominant manufacturer's line, they'd have to agree to stop promoting disfavored, competitive product lines.
Q: Wait a minute. Isn't that kind of like what Microsoft did to Netscape?
A: Yep. Tying arrangements aimed at excluding competitive products from the market are bad, bad, bad when dominant companies attempt them on their own. But very similar arrangements are to be applauded when companies do them in collusion with state attorneys general and cabinet secretaries.
Q: How did the tying arrangement work?
A: It was an instant flop. Rather than allow someone else's legal needs to dictate their business practices and inventory, many dealers resolved to drop the S&W product line. Instead of the race to settle that the gun suit organizers expected, they got a race to break ties with the (former) market leader. Aside from the dealers who jumped ship, some organizers of shooting matches have told S&W that it is no longer welcome, and other gun companies stopped coordinating their legal defense efforts with S&W, which meant it had to find a new law firm.
Q: What happened then? Did the anti-gun side admit it had miscalculated?
A: You're not going to believe this part. Several of the most combative state attorneys general, including Connecticut's Richard Blumenthal and New York's Eliot Spitzer, announced that they were going to sue the gun industry for not cooperating with S&W. On antitrust grounds, no less. This may be the first antitrust action in history aimed at smaller companies that refused to enter into tying arrangements with the dominant manufacturer in their market. It's a purely political move, meant to punish the still-free portions of the gun industry for their determination to remain free.
It's not just schools where people are encouraged to be spies. Check out this item from March 29, 2000 issue of Overlawyered.com
March 29 -- The bold cosmetologists of law enforcement. The New York Times took note this Sunday of efforts in Nevada and Connecticut to enlist beauty-parlor personnel in the task of identifying possible victims of domestic violence for referral to battered women's shelters and other social service agencies (see our March 16 commentary). Its report adds a remarkable new detail regarding the sorts of indicators that Nevada cosmetologists are being officially encouraged to watch for as signs of household violence (being licensed by the state, they have reason to listen with care to what's expected of them). "Torn-out hair or a bruised eye may signal abuse, but more subtle warning signs may come out in conversation. One Nevada hairdresser, [state official Veronica] Boyd-Frenkel said, told of a client who said: 'My husband doesn't want me to see my friend anymore. He says she is putting bad ideas in my head.'
"'Emotional abuse, intimidation, control, jealousy, overpossessiveness and constant monitoring,' she said, can be as sure signs of domestic violence as physical injuries." Does Ms. Boyd-Frenkel, who holds the title of "domestic violence ombudsman" for the attorney general of Nevada, really deem it "emotional abuse" and potential domestic violence when a husband seeks to warn a wife (or vice versa) away from a friend who's considered a bad influence? Is such spousal behavior really to trigger the notice of the official social-service apparatus, and its new deputies in the hair and nail salons of Nevada? (Jeff Stryker, "Those Who Stand and Coif Might Also Protect", New York Times, March 26).
I've heard 43-to-1 and 2.7-to-1 (usually rounded to 3), based on some articles by Dr. Arthur Kellerman, but 10-to-1 is new to me.
Although Kellerman claimed something like "a gun in the house is 43 times more likely to kill a member of that household than an intruder," he failed to mention that people living in a home without a gun are 99 times more likely to be killed in that house than a burglar.
As a gun rights activist, I wish our side would stop claiming that gun control has its roots in Nazi Germany. President Clinton, Sarah Brady, the Centers for Disease Control, and the rest of the gun-control lobby spread enough lies about the subject of gun control. We don't need to be doing the same. See: http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcnazimyth.html
Maybe Tim Burton can re-make Mission to Mars. But instead of the face artifact, the astronauts find a half-buried Statue of Liberty. "We've been searching on the wrong planet." And then Jerry O'Connel opens a portal to an alternate-dimension Mars which was once ruled by apes, while Gary Sinese joins the Martian exodus to the Vector Nebula...
Slashdot Mirror
Rumor has it that "The Tick" is going to be replaced with a live-action version of "Family Guy."
It must be true because it was on the internet.
In addition to what has been said about size of the network vs. complexity here;
Would the fact that English may not the only language used by the users add to the complexity?
And in other news, HBO decided that 10 hours was too long for most viewers of the World War II miniseries "Band of Brothers." Rather than follow EZ-Company from D-Day to VE-Day, the series will be reduced to one hour of some firefights with the Germans.
"We felt that the internal conflict between the characters, and the historical background, was too complicated for most viewers."
HBO is also planning on editing the 12 hour miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon." It will be re-released as "From the Earth to Shepard's 15 Minute Sub-Obrbital Flight," so as not to discourage viewers with a short attention span from watching the 1/2 hour special
Now if I could only spell "from" correctly. Arrghh!
I apologize for the mistake.
Back in 1978, Arthur C. Clarke ended his book The View from Serendip by writing about a gravitational anomaly which was found off the coast of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) -- the small island near India where he lives.
I am able to visit my favorite spot (Chapter 13) for only a few days a year. But now, quite unexpectedly -- and literally since I wrote the preceding paragraph! -- Serendipity has struck again. While researching a totally different subject, I've discovered a good reason for spending more time on the south coast.
It concerns the greak Sanskrit epic, the Ramayana. In this 2,200-year-old poem, the demon-king Ravanna kidnaps Sita, wife of Rama, and takes her to his island stronghold of Ceylon. Needless to say, she is ultimately released, after aerial battles involving what look suspiciously like atomic weapons and laser beams.
To heal the wounded, the heroic monkey-general Hanuman is later sent back to India to fetch a medicinal herb found only in the Himalayas. Unfortunately, when he gets to the right mountain he is unable to identify the herb. No problem; he brings the whole mountain back! However, one piece drops off, on the southern tip of Ceylon. The locals believe this fragment is in fact my favourite bay, for its name in Sinhalese means "there it fell down" (onna watuna).
There it fell down. Place names usually have a meaning, though it is often lost in the mists of time. Did something really fall down, centuries or millennia ago, at Unawatuna Bay? A meteorite would be the obvious explanation; it must have been a big one for the legend to have lasted down the ages.
And here's another weird coincidence. Little Unawatuna, believe it or not, is the closest point on dry land to the world's greatest gravitational anomaly, a few hundred kilometres out in the Indian Ocean. On the Goddard Space Flight Center's 3-D map of the Earth's Gravimetric Geoid, that strange phenomenon looks liek a deep pit [1] into which the whole island of Sri Lanka is about to slide.
Let's put two and two together. A few thousand years ago, a huge object of peculiar density plunged into the Indian Ocean, creating a tradition that is remembered to this day. And it's still there, distorting the earth's gravitational field -- Terran Gravitational Anomaly I.
That might make an opening for a pretty good science-fiction movie . . . and an even better ending for this book.
Ayu Bowan.
1. One hundred and ten metres below zero reference on the Goddard model (March & Vincent, 1974).
After accomplishing his mission to save the Federation, Dr. Sam Beckett leaps out of the body of Capt. Jon Archer...
I just got DSL from Qwest, and was provided with an Intel 3200 external DSL modem, which connects to my PC via a USB cable.
As far as I know, the Linksys and Netgear routers all use RJ-45 connections for the WAN side of the network.
Is there a router out there than I can connect to my DSL modem via USB?
Thanks.
To tell the truth, it would have been better to have a revisit from Harry Mudd, or something.
Somehow, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Mudd just doesn't seem right.
Unless it was a reference to Harry's wife...
Does this mean that the NRA is not pro-gun, but pro-choice?
Nevada does not have a corporate income tax, so it would make sense for a venture like this to incorporate there.
I've even heard radio ads here in Colorado urging people to incorporate their businesses in Nevada, regardless of where the company is physically located. (I don't know who was paying for the ads).
Also, it would seem that the middle of a desert would be a good place to put a space port.
Wheat wrote: "Just before Bowman goes out on his first space walk, we see an exterior shot of Discovery. Two huge meteroids come hurtling past. Kubrick is symbolizing Odysseus's escape from the Laestrygonian rock attack." Ummm, if I remember correctly, Poole went on the spacewalks, not Bowman. That's where he was killed. Also, the rocks in the book (and I assume, therefore, the movie) "symbolized" the Discovery's passage through the asteroid belt on the way to Jupiter. Nothing more, nothing less. (In the book, they launched a probe at an asteroid, but that probably would have confused the movie audience). As for the Trojan Horse symobolism: The Trojan Horse was represented quite explicitly in the prequel "2000: A Space Illiad" (Henry Beard, et al. THE BOOK OF SEQUELS. 1990. p. 54). "It was a gift horse from the stars. Did mankind dare look it in the mouth?" asks the movie poster. No hidden symbolism there.
Q: Wouldn't it be easier for a dealer to drop the S&W line?
A: The Clinton administration was counting on S&W's status as the number one gun maker. Having absorbed that variety of antitrust analysis that describes a manufacturer as "controlling" a certain market share, the president's men thought helpless buyers would have no place to go. They figured they could leverage S&W's market share through what amounts to a tying arrangement: If dealers and gun shows wanted to stock the dominant manufacturer's line, they'd have to agree to stop promoting disfavored, competitive product lines.
Q: Wait a minute. Isn't that kind of like what Microsoft did to Netscape?
A: Yep. Tying arrangements aimed at excluding competitive products from the market are bad, bad, bad when dominant companies attempt them on their own. But very similar arrangements are to be applauded when companies do them in collusion with state attorneys general and cabinet secretaries.
Q: How did the tying arrangement work?
A: It was an instant flop. Rather than allow someone else's legal needs to dictate their business practices and inventory, many dealers resolved to drop the S&W product line. Instead of the race to settle that the gun suit organizers expected, they got a race to break ties with the (former) market leader. Aside from the dealers who jumped ship, some organizers of shooting matches have told S&W that it is no longer welcome, and other gun companies stopped coordinating their legal defense efforts with S&W, which meant it had to find a new law firm.
Q: What happened then? Did the anti-gun side admit it had miscalculated?
A: You're not going to believe this part. Several of the most combative state attorneys general, including Connecticut's Richard Blumenthal and New York's Eliot Spitzer, announced that they were going to sue the gun industry for not cooperating with S&W. On antitrust grounds, no less. This may be the first antitrust action in history aimed at smaller companies that refused to enter into tying arrangements with the dominant manufacturer in their market. It's a purely political move, meant to punish the still-free portions of the gun industry for their determination to remain free.
Contributing Editor Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, edits the new Web site Overlawyered.com . Visit Walter Olson's official Web site
Nelson "Pete" Shields (then Chairman of HCI). Guns Don't Die: People Do. (Priam Books, 1981), pp. 47-48.
By the end of the 1980s, HCI was (and still is) advocating further controls on rifles and shotguns...
March 29 -- The bold cosmetologists of law enforcement. The New York Times took note this Sunday of efforts in Nevada and Connecticut to enlist beauty-parlor personnel in the task of identifying possible victims of domestic violence for referral to battered women's shelters and other social service agencies (see our March 16 commentary). Its report adds a remarkable new detail regarding the sorts of indicators that Nevada cosmetologists are being officially encouraged to watch for as signs of household violence (being licensed by the state, they have reason to listen with care to what's expected of them). "Torn-out hair or a bruised eye may signal abuse, but more subtle warning signs may come out in conversation. One Nevada hairdresser, [state official Veronica] Boyd-Frenkel said, told of a client who said: 'My husband doesn't want me to see my friend anymore. He says she is putting bad ideas in my head.'
"'Emotional abuse, intimidation, control, jealousy, overpossessiveness and constant monitoring,' she said, can be as sure signs of domestic violence as physical injuries." Does Ms. Boyd-Frenkel, who holds the title of "domestic violence ombudsman" for the attorney general of Nevada, really deem it "emotional abuse" and potential domestic violence when a husband seeks to warn a wife (or vice versa) away from a friend who's considered a bad influence? Is such spousal behavior really to trigger the notice of the official social-service apparatus, and its new deputies in the hair and nail salons of Nevada? (Jeff Stryker, "Those Who Stand and Coif Might Also Protect", New York Times, March 26).
I've heard 43-to-1 and 2.7-to-1 (usually rounded to 3), based on some articles by Dr. Arthur Kellerman, but 10-to-1 is new to me.
Although Kellerman claimed something like "a gun in the house is 43 times more likely to kill a member of that household than an intruder," he failed to mention that people living in a home without a gun are 99 times more likely to be killed in that house than a burglar.
See: Is My Own Gun More Likely to be Used Against Me or My Family?
and this section of Dr. Edgar Suter's Guns in the Medical Literature: A Failure of Peer Review.
A fatal shot with a semi automatic pistol is as likely to kill as a fatal shot with an automatic rifle
Considering the definition of a "fatal shot," doesn't that go without saying?
As a gun rights activist, I wish our side would stop claiming that gun control has its roots in Nazi Germany. President Clinton, Sarah Brady, the Centers for Disease Control, and the rest of the gun-control lobby spread enough lies about the subject of gun control. We don't need to be doing the same. See: http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcnazimyth.html
Maybe Tim Burton can re-make Mission to Mars. But instead of the face artifact, the astronauts find a half-buried Statue of Liberty. "We've been searching on the wrong planet." And then Jerry O'Connel opens a portal to an alternate-dimension Mars which was once ruled by apes, while Gary Sinese joins the Martian exodus to the Vector Nebula...