Your terminal velocity depends on a number of factors, one of which is air resistance. That's why a spider can fall off of a sky scraper and land safely and why a mouse can survive a larger fall than a horse. One of the reasons that cats often survive big falls is that after they orient themselves feet-first, they spread their legs, making an improvised parachute out of their body and slowing themselves down. There's an excellent example of different falling rates at the beginning of GoldenEye, where Bond falls faster than a light plane, gets into the cabin and pulls it out of the dive.
I can't imagine where you got the idea that the word "cosmonaut" could possibly fit there. If you were to clean out your ears and listen, you'd see that the line is, "you're a pal and a confidant," which actually makes sense, unlike your garbled version.
Many years ago, I wrote that "Los Angeles really does have four seasons: fire, flood, earthquake and riot." Fire season can come at any time of the year, and it's defined as sixty days without measurable rain. Fire season can, and sometimes does turn into flood season with remarkably little warning, which is why the city plants rye grass on hillsides after a fire to limit the chance of mudslides if there's rain before the normal ground cover has time to recover. Earthquake season, of course happens at random intervals without warning, while riot season comes about once every twenty years or so.
MRSA is a very nasty form of staph infection that's resistant to most antibiotics. About the only thing that works on it is sulfa, or at least that was true about seven or eight years ago when I had it. (Twice!) I hope that the side effects of the new drugs aren't as bad as sulfa's because it did a really nasty number on my digestion both times, while doing an even nastier number on the MRSA.
It bugs the shit out of me that the deals these fucks make between each other is as important as how people vote in determining who gets elected.
And with all this going on, many young, foolish, ill-educated liberals (but I repeat myself) still go on and on about how much better the Australian system is that the "first past the post" American system. My guess is that they're talking about how it should work (in some imaginary "perfect world") instead of how it actually does work.
Actually, none of the western allies ever decided to form an alliance with Soviet Russia. The British found themselves in a de facto alliance with them when Germany declared war with the Soviet Union, and the US found itself in the same position when Germany declared war on the US, the day after the American declaration of war against Japan.
It seems likely that the stealth snowmobile would only be used for the last leg of any journey, or at least you wouldn't need the stealth mode until you got rather close. I can easily see a mission plan that has the team fly in from wherever's appropriate, land outside of any possible observation and use the snowmobile with stealth off (for greater speed) until they're almost close enough to be heard, then turn on the stealth for the final approach. In fact, it might be a case of several regular snowmobiles carrying supplies, personnel and one stealthed snowmobile being towed to a fairly close location where they set up a forward base so that the strike team doesn't have to carry enough supplies to make it back on their own. It may sound more cumbersome, but it gives the team a much better chance of escape if they only have to have enough fuel to get back to their base.
Cross-country skiing also takes a fair amount of training and practice, and there are going to be times when somebody you need on your team doesn't have either the skill or the time to learn it. Having some quiet way to get them where they need to be sounds like a good idea.
Thank you; that was very interesting. From what the article says, lower human population caused by the Black Death and resulting reforestation is one of several possible causes, but there's currently no way to tell just which cause or causes are responsible. Still, it's something to think about.
I've never run across your suggestion that the after effects of the Black Death might have caused the Little Ice Age before; it's an interesting idea. I do have two questions however. First, is this just speculation on your part or are you offering it as an explanation of what happened. Second, if you do think this is a serious theory, do you have any evidence other than the timing? I'm not trying to shoot you down, here, but if you have any more information, I'd like to see it.
Compatibility propably wasn't high on the requirements list.
Actually, in some cases, especially with some of the smaller insurance companies, I wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn that they were designed to be as incompatible as possible simply to make them harder for any of the big boys to absorb. The harder it is to import all of the company's records and the more time, effort and expense it would cost the less likely they'll get gobbled up.
Fedora is all about being a testbed for new programs, new technology, new ideas. It's not about being stable, it never has been and it probably never will be. If you want a RedHat based distro with community support that's stable, you don't want Fedora, you want CentOS.
There's a reason Godwin's law exists, a person who cannot construct a thought without referencing Hitler is seriously deficient.
But that's not what Goodwin's Law says. As originally formulated, it only said that if a discussion went on long enough, somebody would mention Hitler or the nazis. Now, of course, there's a corollary that says that anybody who makes a gratuitous mention of them or calls their opponent a nazi has lost the argument. However, simply mentioning him, especially in a context where such a mention is relevant as it was here, doesn't invoke Godwin.
Orbital Sciences has launched 10 Peacekeeper missiles into LEO. Even back in the 50s and early 60s, the Atlas and Titan lineages had moved into orbit-capable rockets which were already used for many NASA missions.
Even back when my friend (who died in 1986) was working on this, JPL was mostly concerned with going well past LEO. I'm not sure of the exact time frame of this, but I'm guessing that this was in the mid to late 70s, for the later Pioneer series. It's possible that the ICBMs simply didn't have enough delta-v and/or payload mass for the job.
I used to have a friend who worked for JPL. At one point, he was granted a Top Secret clearance so that he could examine the capacity of various IBCMs and find out if they were suitable as launch vehicles. It took him about two weeks to find out that none of them were, which is why NASA developed their own launchers. And, as it happened, he never needed to use that clearance again.
Kosher rules for whether animals are edible are defined by the shape of the hooves...
And for mammals, they have to chew a cud. Pigs don't, which is why they're not kosher even though they do have a cloven hoof. And for seafood, it's "scales and an upright tail" unless my memory is worse than usual.
If you're saying he might be making the whole thing up...
No, I'm sure that something's happened and that the only recourse he feels appropriate is closing the business. However, there's always the possibility that the actual reason is less sinister and that he's embellishing the circumstances to put the government in the worst light possible. Do I think that's probably what's going on? No, but I do consider it worth mentioning.
What I find interesting about this is the fact that almost everybody speculating about it is presuming that whatever the government's actually doing is unconstitutional, and they're violating his First Amendment rights to hide the fact. Now, I'll be the first to admit that this is probably exactly what's happening, but there's always the chance that it isn't. And if it's not, then there's the distinct possibility that this is being done precisely so that we will come to that conclusion; something like a "reverse-Streisand effect."
Yes. I know. I consider us lucky, although we'd probably gone to satellite if we had to. As far as Internet goes, we've always stuck with ADSL. Not only is it fast enough for us, it's far more reliable than TWC has ever been, even just with TV.
What I'd like to see even more is an argument between the Borg and the Vogons about whether resistance is futile or useless. Personally, my money's on the Vogons; pure, unadulterated, bloody-minded stubbornness has its uses, sometimes.
I remember them making the same threats here in the Los Angeles area about five years ago. And, although the local station (KCAL-TV) is owned by CBS/Viacom, it's still run as an independent, not as a CBS station. I don't, honestly, know why it was dropped so you may be right that this is just another case of corporate hardball, but whatever the reason is, the effect seems to be to drive long-time customers away.
Are you aware that this isn't the first time that TWC threatened to drop CBS? And, where I am, they've also dropped a popular independent channel that has broadcast rights to several local major-league sports teams, just because it's also affiliated with the local CBS station? I don't know all of the ins and outs, but I do know that where I live we're pretty much dependent on cable if we want to watch TV.
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Your terminal velocity depends on a number of factors, one of which is air resistance. That's why a spider can fall off of a sky scraper and land safely and why a mouse can survive a larger fall than a horse. One of the reasons that cats often survive big falls is that after they orient themselves feet-first, they spread their legs, making an improvised parachute out of their body and slowing themselves down. There's an excellent example of different falling rates at the beginning of GoldenEye, where Bond falls faster than a light plane, gets into the cabin and pulls it out of the dive.
There's nothing new here. Dick Tracy had one of these over sixty years ago.
you're a pal and a cosmonaut.
I can't imagine where you got the idea that the word "cosmonaut" could possibly fit there. If you were to clean out your ears and listen, you'd see that the line is, "you're a pal and a confidant," which actually makes sense, unlike your garbled version.
Mudslides and fire are seasonal possibilities...
Many years ago, I wrote that "Los Angeles really does have four seasons: fire, flood, earthquake and riot." Fire season can come at any time of the year, and it's defined as sixty days without measurable rain. Fire season can, and sometimes does turn into flood season with remarkably little warning, which is why the city plants rye grass on hillsides after a fire to limit the chance of mudslides if there's rain before the normal ground cover has time to recover. Earthquake season, of course happens at random intervals without warning, while riot season comes about once every twenty years or so.
Yes. That's why I said "most," not "all."
MRSA is a very nasty form of staph infection that's resistant to most antibiotics. About the only thing that works on it is sulfa, or at least that was true about seven or eight years ago when I had it. (Twice!) I hope that the side effects of the new drugs aren't as bad as sulfa's because it did a really nasty number on my digestion both times, while doing an even nastier number on the MRSA.
I'm not saying that it wasn't an alliance. If you'll read my post carefully I was only saying that it wasn't a formal alliance.
It bugs the shit out of me that the deals these fucks make between each other is as important as how people vote in determining who gets elected.
And with all this going on, many young, foolish, ill-educated liberals (but I repeat myself) still go on and on about how much better the Australian system is that the "first past the post" American system. My guess is that they're talking about how it should work (in some imaginary "perfect world") instead of how it actually does work.
Actually, none of the western allies ever decided to form an alliance with Soviet Russia. The British found themselves in a de facto alliance with them when Germany declared war with the Soviet Union, and the US found itself in the same position when Germany declared war on the US, the day after the American declaration of war against Japan.
It seems likely that the stealth snowmobile would only be used for the last leg of any journey, or at least you wouldn't need the stealth mode until you got rather close. I can easily see a mission plan that has the team fly in from wherever's appropriate, land outside of any possible observation and use the snowmobile with stealth off (for greater speed) until they're almost close enough to be heard, then turn on the stealth for the final approach. In fact, it might be a case of several regular snowmobiles carrying supplies, personnel and one stealthed snowmobile being towed to a fairly close location where they set up a forward base so that the strike team doesn't have to carry enough supplies to make it back on their own. It may sound more cumbersome, but it gives the team a much better chance of escape if they only have to have enough fuel to get back to their base.
Cross-country skiing also takes a fair amount of training and practice, and there are going to be times when somebody you need on your team doesn't have either the skill or the time to learn it. Having some quiet way to get them where they need to be sounds like a good idea.
Thank you; that was very interesting. From what the article says, lower human population caused by the Black Death and resulting reforestation is one of several possible causes, but there's currently no way to tell just which cause or causes are responsible. Still, it's something to think about.
I've never run across your suggestion that the after effects of the Black Death might have caused the Little Ice Age before; it's an interesting idea. I do have two questions however. First, is this just speculation on your part or are you offering it as an explanation of what happened. Second, if you do think this is a serious theory, do you have any evidence other than the timing? I'm not trying to shoot you down, here, but if you have any more information, I'd like to see it.
Compatibility propably wasn't high on the requirements list.
Actually, in some cases, especially with some of the smaller insurance companies, I wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn that they were designed to be as incompatible as possible simply to make them harder for any of the big boys to absorb. The harder it is to import all of the company's records and the more time, effort and expense it would cost the less likely they'll get gobbled up.
Fedora is all about being a testbed for new programs, new technology, new ideas. It's not about being stable, it never has been and it probably never will be. If you want a RedHat based distro with community support that's stable, you don't want Fedora, you want CentOS.
There's a reason Godwin's law exists, a person who cannot construct a thought without referencing Hitler is seriously deficient.
But that's not what Goodwin's Law says. As originally formulated, it only said that if a discussion went on long enough, somebody would mention Hitler or the nazis. Now, of course, there's a corollary that says that anybody who makes a gratuitous mention of them or calls their opponent a nazi has lost the argument. However, simply mentioning him, especially in a context where such a mention is relevant as it was here, doesn't invoke Godwin.
Orbital Sciences has launched 10 Peacekeeper missiles into LEO. Even back in the 50s and early 60s, the Atlas and Titan lineages had moved into orbit-capable rockets which were already used for many NASA missions.
Even back when my friend (who died in 1986) was working on this, JPL was mostly concerned with going well past LEO. I'm not sure of the exact time frame of this, but I'm guessing that this was in the mid to late 70s, for the later Pioneer series. It's possible that the ICBMs simply didn't have enough delta-v and/or payload mass for the job.
I used to have a friend who worked for JPL. At one point, he was granted a Top Secret clearance so that he could examine the capacity of various IBCMs and find out if they were suitable as launch vehicles. It took him about two weeks to find out that none of them were, which is why NASA developed their own launchers. And, as it happened, he never needed to use that clearance again.
Kosher rules for whether animals are edible are defined by the shape of the hooves...
And for mammals, they have to chew a cud. Pigs don't, which is why they're not kosher even though they do have a cloven hoof. And for seafood, it's "scales and an upright tail" unless my memory is worse than usual.
If you're saying he might be making the whole thing up...
No, I'm sure that something's happened and that the only recourse he feels appropriate is closing the business. However, there's always the possibility that the actual reason is less sinister and that he's embellishing the circumstances to put the government in the worst light possible. Do I think that's probably what's going on? No, but I do consider it worth mentioning.
What I find interesting about this is the fact that almost everybody speculating about it is presuming that whatever the government's actually doing is unconstitutional, and they're violating his First Amendment rights to hide the fact. Now, I'll be the first to admit that this is probably exactly what's happening, but there's always the chance that it isn't. And if it's not, then there's the distinct possibility that this is being done precisely so that we will come to that conclusion; something like a "reverse-Streisand effect."
Yes. I know. I consider us lucky, although we'd probably gone to satellite if we had to. As far as Internet goes, we've always stuck with ADSL. Not only is it fast enough for us, it's far more reliable than TWC has ever been, even just with TV.
What I'd like to see even more is an argument between the Borg and the Vogons about whether resistance is futile or useless. Personally, my money's on the Vogons; pure, unadulterated, bloody-minded stubbornness has its uses, sometimes.
I remember them making the same threats here in the Los Angeles area about five years ago. And, although the local station (KCAL-TV) is owned by CBS/Viacom, it's still run as an independent, not as a CBS station. I don't, honestly, know why it was dropped so you may be right that this is just another case of corporate hardball, but whatever the reason is, the effect seems to be to drive long-time customers away.
Are you aware that this isn't the first time that TWC threatened to drop CBS? And, where I am, they've also dropped a popular independent channel that has broadcast rights to several local major-league sports teams, just because it's also affiliated with the local CBS station? I don't know all of the ins and outs, but I do know that where I live we're pretty much dependent on cable if we want to watch TV.