Not exactly obscure, either. But I was explaining Python to a 32 year old the other day, and couldn't believe anybody in this day and age wasn't familiar with dead parrot sketch etc. And this a fan of humor, too. Criminy, I first saw MP in 1978 when I was 7.
My user name was meant to be "Ole Biscuitbarrel" which is also an MP ref, with an accent mark over the first 'e,' but/.'s way of handling characters it doesn't like in the registration process is to simply ignore them, which is pretty lame. I should just reregister as Tarquin Fintimlinbinwhinbimlim Bus Stop F'tang F'tang or the like.
Kim Stanley Robinson has massive aquifers on Mars as part of his trilogy of novels set there. Dunno how far reaching such a speculation is, this piece from Oct mentions them at the end as the likely suspect in flooding events: Underground aquifers formed Martian lakes. If KSR is correct obtaining water won't be much of an issue in colonizing Mars ourselves.
Both of my parents died from pneumonia, or complications therefrom, and I was there when they went, too. My father simply slept very heavily for a couple of days, then the nurses turned him over, waking him up of course; he gasped for about a minute with his eyes wide open, then expired. As ways to die, relatively peacefully. This was just last month.
My mother died last year, and that was much harder to watch - she was heavily disabled from a stroke in 2005 and could never sit still, so was constantly pulling her oxygen mask away. Her condition grew worse and worse, finally the doctor said she had no chance of recovery, and said they could administer morphine so she could simply pass away in her sleep. It was left up to me to tell her what we were going to do, as neither of my brothers or father seemed up to it. That was about the most upsetting thing I've ever had to do, and she continued to fidget as long as possible, too.
That was in March '09; my father subsequently became more than a bit at sea mentally, which seemed to lead to swallowing difficulties and reoccurring bouts of pneumonia. Those started after a hospital stay in Dec '09, though, for an operation on his prostate; perhaps he wouldn't have picked it up otherwise. They say hospitals are good places to become sick, paradoxically. My Dad made it to age 82. We did have some good times in the last year and a half, despite his problems with dementia. He really enjoyed watching Airplane! one night, too. My whole family was nuts about the movie when it came out, and loved Police Squad! too - for years we kept telling people about this great TV show which, of course, was ignominiously canceled after far too short a run.
Frank Drebin: "It took me two weeks to find Stella's apartment...she had neglected to give me her address."
Having just today learned about the phenom of peons earning a few bucks a day to break captchas, your idea doesn't strike me as all that absurd. Cough up a couple bucks to have someone on another continent drive your car for you - I can see that being a hit with frazzled commuters. Or hell, someone in the same city - this must be one of those shovel ready jobs I've heard them talk about so much lately.
Or how about paying someone in pocket change to just ride along so you can tool down the HOV lane? I'm stunned how empty the HOV lane is on I5 in Portland, OR, which is as theoretically 'Green' as burgs get, right? Perhaps PDX's mayor should encourage slugging. Don't know why that hasn't taken off everywhere, either.
Wiki refs a Texas Transportation Institute study that says 5.7 billion U.S. gallons were lost due to congestion in 2007. This works out to 371,819 barrels/day of oil, which would be 1.9% of the 19,278,000 barrels per day we used in July 2010, or 4% of the finished motor gasoline. These numbers from the DOE's Energy Information Administration. I always thought traffic congestion must gobble up some huge amount of fuel, but it's actually more like the output of a few offshore oil fields. Still worth addressing, but I think encouraging HOV lanes and the like are more the idea.
The International Energy Agency published a good doc on Saving Oil in a Hurry (pdf). Lots of pertinent info therein.
Check out RS's debut film The Duellists if you haven't. Beautiful film. Listening to the director's commentary he doesn't sound utterly reprehensible, either. Might be holding himself in check, of course; whatever, he is a talent.
I take it STT isn't very accurate, then? On the other tack I'm constantly listening to TTS MP3s. Books and also/. posts - comments about hot grits/I for one/in Soviet Russia sound doubly whacky spoken at high speed by a robot.
Am making an MP3 of an early 2009/. article about Kurzweil right now. He made a prediction in 2005 of ubiquitous translation of foreign languages for 2010. Not happening, my FF does have a button on the toolbar for translating - humorously enough it shows up for articles from MacLeans.com. Speak American, eh! Anyway accurate STT would be an easier goal to reach than on-the-fly translation, I'd think.
I recall reading that the long arms were supposed to indicate that she could cradle the kidnick properly, so it would be comfortable while suckling a teat. Maybe read this in PopSci? Or that book the Naked Ape?
Creepy envisioning a female version of Plastic Man.
Que? Was expecting copy along the lines of "The nose had a musty apertif of hazelnuts, OH, OH, OH, YEAH GODDAMNIT!" That was no more Kinison-esque as Michael Jackson's reviews of beer and wine dealt with pedophilia, glove on one hand, etc.
I've been listening to vocal jazz records from that era; it seems to me that recording quality was practically perfected in the 50s, all those Newman condenser mics giving such an intimate warm sound. The archetypal 60s studio sound you hear on LPs by the Beatles et al is almost bizarre by comparison - still fantastic music of course, but why the fixation on omnipresent semi-distorted reverb?
Fun fact: "She Loves You" is composed of 18 different takes spliced together.
Fun surveying trivia: Portland Oregon has a quirk where the streets south of Burnside on the downtown side west of the Willamette River are laid in a grid at an angle to the rest of the city. Reason is, natch, these early streets were laid out using compasses aligned to magnetic north, rest of city is aligned to true north. Wonder if that happened elsewhere. Streets north of Burnside have names familiar to Simpsons viewers - Flanders, Quimby, Lovejoy. Used to watch that show expecting to see new characters with names like Truman or Couch, this last pronounced "Cooch."
Slashdot Mirror
All cult classics.
Not exactly obscure, either. But I was explaining Python to a 32 year old the other day, and couldn't believe anybody in this day and age wasn't familiar with dead parrot sketch etc. And this a fan of humor, too. Criminy, I first saw MP in 1978 when I was 7.
My user name was meant to be "Ole Biscuitbarrel" which is also an MP ref, with an accent mark over the first 'e,' but /.'s way of handling characters it doesn't like in the registration process is to simply ignore them, which is pretty lame. I should just reregister as Tarquin Fintimlinbinwhinbimlim Bus Stop F'tang F'tang or the like.
Kim Stanley Robinson has massive aquifers on Mars as part of his trilogy of novels set there. Dunno how far reaching such a speculation is, this piece from Oct mentions them at the end as the likely suspect in flooding events: Underground aquifers formed Martian lakes. If KSR is correct obtaining water won't be much of an issue in colonizing Mars ourselves.
Both of my parents died from pneumonia, or complications therefrom, and I was there when they went, too. My father simply slept very heavily for a couple of days, then the nurses turned him over, waking him up of course; he gasped for about a minute with his eyes wide open, then expired. As ways to die, relatively peacefully. This was just last month.
My mother died last year, and that was much harder to watch - she was heavily disabled from a stroke in 2005 and could never sit still, so was constantly pulling her oxygen mask away. Her condition grew worse and worse, finally the doctor said she had no chance of recovery, and said they could administer morphine so she could simply pass away in her sleep. It was left up to me to tell her what we were going to do, as neither of my brothers or father seemed up to it. That was about the most upsetting thing I've ever had to do, and she continued to fidget as long as possible, too.
That was in March '09; my father subsequently became more than a bit at sea mentally, which seemed to lead to swallowing difficulties and reoccurring bouts of pneumonia. Those started after a hospital stay in Dec '09, though, for an operation on his prostate; perhaps he wouldn't have picked it up otherwise. They say hospitals are good places to become sick, paradoxically. My Dad made it to age 82. We did have some good times in the last year and a half, despite his problems with dementia. He really enjoyed watching Airplane! one night, too. My whole family was nuts about the movie when it came out, and loved Police Squad! too - for years we kept telling people about this great TV show which, of course, was ignominiously canceled after far too short a run.
Frank Drebin: "It took me two weeks to find Stella's apartment...she had neglected to give me her address."
It's a camel with no hump.
Won't a scheme like that get you locked up in Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison, too?
Video here explains FDM: First 3D-Printed Car Hits The Road : TreeHugger. It's additive where CNC and other milling processes are subtractive.
I like the idea of an "impossible" car body shape. This should be a hit with the Art Car crowd. Perhaps soon I'll own my very own motorized chicken.
I can't hear what you're saying, Chief.
Alligators on a Road? Will that be the sequel to Snakes on a Plane?
Having just today learned about the phenom of peons earning a few bucks a day to break captchas, your idea doesn't strike me as all that absurd. Cough up a couple bucks to have someone on another continent drive your car for you - I can see that being a hit with frazzled commuters. Or hell, someone in the same city - this must be one of those shovel ready jobs I've heard them talk about so much lately.
Or how about paying someone in pocket change to just ride along so you can tool down the HOV lane? I'm stunned how empty the HOV lane is on I5 in Portland, OR, which is as theoretically 'Green' as burgs get, right? Perhaps PDX's mayor should encourage slugging. Don't know why that hasn't taken off everywhere, either.
Wiki refs a Texas Transportation Institute study that says 5.7 billion U.S. gallons were lost due to congestion in 2007. This works out to 371,819 barrels/day of oil, which would be 1.9% of the 19,278,000 barrels per day we used in July 2010, or 4% of the finished motor gasoline. These numbers from the DOE's Energy Information Administration. I always thought traffic congestion must gobble up some huge amount of fuel, but it's actually more like the output of a few offshore oil fields. Still worth addressing, but I think encouraging HOV lanes and the like are more the idea.
The International Energy Agency published a good doc on Saving Oil in a Hurry (pdf). Lots of pertinent info therein.
Check out RS's debut film The Duellists if you haven't. Beautiful film. Listening to the director's commentary he doesn't sound utterly reprehensible, either. Might be holding himself in check, of course; whatever, he is a talent.
Reading AC posts is like being beaten with a bag of oranges.
Wiki has a list of Bradbury 6 adaptations to other media. There's a whole Movies and Films based on works by Philip K. Dick site. I count 7 theatrical releases based on RB, vs. 9 for PKD and 2 more in production. This doesn't count miniseries...miniserieses? or other TV adaptations.
Wrong, cretin!
Parsec is a measure of time, not currency. Duh.
Sounds like a job for Astrochicken.
Wasn't System 7 reallllly late in arriving, too?
I take it STT isn't very accurate, then? On the other tack I'm constantly listening to TTS MP3s. Books and also /. posts - comments about hot grits/I for one/in Soviet Russia sound doubly whacky spoken at high speed by a robot.
Am making an MP3 of an early 2009 /. article about Kurzweil right now. He made a prediction in 2005 of ubiquitous translation of foreign languages for 2010. Not happening, my FF does have a button on the toolbar for translating - humorously enough it shows up for articles from MacLeans.com. Speak American, eh! Anyway accurate STT would be an easier goal to reach than on-the-fly translation, I'd think.
I recall reading that the long arms were supposed to indicate that she could cradle the kidnick properly, so it would be comfortable while suckling a teat. Maybe read this in PopSci? Or that book the Naked Ape? Creepy envisioning a female version of Plastic Man.
Remember this 'un? A Hard Day's Night of the Living Dead. Somebody has on option on a book about Zombie Beatles!! Zombie Beatles!! Zombie Beatles!!, too. Grrr... Help me if you can, I'll eat your brainzzz...
It was invented to be cool. Man, did that ever backfire. "I've made a huge mistake."
Mars isn't geologically dead, some of the flows in the Cerberus Fossae are believed to be only 2-10 my old.
Que? Was expecting copy along the lines of "The nose had a musty apertif of hazelnuts, OH, OH, OH, YEAH GODDAMNIT!" That was no more Kinison-esque as Michael Jackson's reviews of beer and wine dealt with pedophilia, glove on one hand, etc.
I've been listening to vocal jazz records from that era; it seems to me that recording quality was practically perfected in the 50s, all those Newman condenser mics giving such an intimate warm sound. The archetypal 60s studio sound you hear on LPs by the Beatles et al is almost bizarre by comparison - still fantastic music of course, but why the fixation on omnipresent semi-distorted reverb? Fun fact: "She Loves You" is composed of 18 different takes spliced together.
Fun surveying trivia: Portland Oregon has a quirk where the streets south of Burnside on the downtown side west of the Willamette River are laid in a grid at an angle to the rest of the city. Reason is, natch, these early streets were laid out using compasses aligned to magnetic north, rest of city is aligned to true north. Wonder if that happened elsewhere. Streets north of Burnside have names familiar to Simpsons viewers - Flanders, Quimby, Lovejoy. Used to watch that show expecting to see new characters with names like Truman or Couch, this last pronounced "Cooch."