My wife's iBook power adapter malfunctioned a couple of months ago, it started to crackle and even let out a few sparks! The replacement runs for about US$80.00, a ridiculous amount for a product that is raising a stink in forums all over the web because of its' horrible quality.
However, I decided to inspect the adapter, detached the A/C plug, which snaps on and off the corner of the adapter, and was horrified to notice it was thoroughly charred on the inside. Then, I vaguely recalled that a power cord came with the iBook, in the box. This is what I'm talking about: http://www.shentech.com/aprepog4ib65.html To my great relief, the new power cord snapped neatly into the corner slot of the adapter, and ran smoothly. It was the detachable A/C plug that was defective, not the adapter itself. Now, not only could we throw the defective plug where it belongs (in the trash), we also had made our device safe, as well as doubled the length of the cord, and saved ourselves $80.00 to boot! My wife and I were happy campers that day.
So, if you have an Apple laptop, check this out for yourselves and I'm sure it will allow you to solve/avoid this exact problem, and even if it's not malfunctioning yet, do it now, no use putting your expensive computer at risk. Also, even if you've misplaced the box and/or cannot find the power cord, buy that instead, as it's price starts at around $10.00, saving you quite a bit of cash in the process.
While republican pundits and gop congressmen were tearing their own shirts in self-righteous indignation over the result of an $80 million investigation over real estate deals (a stained blue dress), the rest of the world didn't snicker at Clinton's peccadilloes, they in fact snickered at "the ridiculousness of those american prudes, so hung up about sex".
And then, the ringleader of the impeachment movement, Newt Gingrich, resigned his post on the eve of Larry Flynt publishing in Hustler the nine extramarital affairs Gingrich had been involved in during the previous twenty years.
And then, Gingrich's replacement, Robert Livingstone, who promised to continue the good fight for morals, integrity and decency, withdrew when Mr. Flynt uncovered one of his extramarital affairs.
And then, the largest mouthpiece against Clinton's sins, thrice-divorced comedian Rush Limbaugh, is caught with industrial quantities of OxyContin and, later, unprescribed Viagra while returning from a caribbean vacation.
These hypocritical imbeciles are seen as 'martyrs' and/or 'heroes' in republican twisted family values circles, while Clinton is viewed as The Devil Himself. Yeah, right.
What many people do not get is that Clinton did not parade a stained blue dress in front of all the american public, children included, republicans did. Clinton did not flaunt and wave the image of a soaked cigar in front of the american public, republicans did. And then they tore their shirts in moral indignation at how the minds of children are being poisoned with decadence and depravity.
Under republican so-called standards of decency: In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, and that would be Bill Clinton.
I did a little Googling concerning the Florida harassment incidents, and uncovered a much bigger can or worms. Check this page out: http://www.policeabuse.org/badcops.html For the incredible Florida video, scroll down near the end, there's a link to Miami's CBS4 News story.
Should the police have any right to privacy while acting in the line of duty?
Check out the FBI mission statement, with the relevant part to this discussion in italics: The mission of the FBI is to uphold the law through the investigation of violations of federal criminal law; to protect the United States from foreign intelligence and terrorist activities; to provide leadership and law enforcement assistance to federal, state, local, and international agencies; and to perform these responsibilities in a manner that is responsive to the needs of the public and is faithful to the Constitution of the United States.
Google "Police Department" +"Mission Statement", and you will find that most state and local Police Departments do not explicitly mention the Constitution, which might tell us something on a philosophical level. However, even if a mention of the Constitution is not there, it is implicit, the public should be able to scrutinize employees on the public tit. When it comes to cops, an argument could be made for exceptions, such as undercover operations. However, most undercover operations are for drug busts, and I don't believe in the War On Drugs (check out Penn and Teller's "Bullshit" episode on the subject). If I pay your salary so you can carry a badge and a gun, you think you have special rights, but you don't: what you have is special responsabilities.
Sadly, whoever stays silent, grants, and the majority of the population remains silent. Why? Check out the Florida news report about undercover journalists who went to Police Stations all over the state, asking for complaint forms. Several pigs threatened them with arrest, one of them even had his hand on his gun, old west style, daring the citizen to take one step closer. All of this was caught on video. A constant trickle of news lead us to believe that Florida is the norm and not the exception: "Harass first, ask questions later (if at all)". Meanwhile, many decent men and women in the police force become disgusted, discouraged and quit, so that only pigs remain doing business as usual.
Therefore, my answer to your question, Should the police have any right to privacy while acting in the line of duty?, is a resounding NO. And while we're at it, the safety and needs of the public, overzealous police policies that systematically abuse our rights are - high-speed pursuits, and - shootouts around innocent bystanders, in both of which our safety and rights are momentarily suspended. Here's a novel idea: Let them go, track them down, nail them later. Recovering a million dollars in the first ten minutes is NOT worth you or me getting shot by 'friendly fire', or splattered on the highway while minding our own private business.
Please mod this guy up, he's got one helluva point.
At least a quarter of the population was directly killed by the Plague within a six year span. As noted, this was bound to jumble and reassemble the social structure in a major way, a process that probably lasted for decades.
However, a bit of speculation: Many land-owning families must have been wiped clean off the face of the Earth, many others would probably have migrated elsewhere, London perhaps, in an attempt to find better fortunes. It's entirely possible that the canniest survivors took advantage of the chaos, changing their names overnight, becoming 'cousins' to the less fortunate families, claiming title to their lands. In this manner, the names would remain the same, albeit under false pretenses. So maybe the property structure was kept more intact than we might suppose at face value.
First off, what an incredible document, it has that whole Voynich Manuscript mystique to it. I'll be sure peruse deeper once the Slashdot Effect settles down a bit. I'll be a good cybercitizen today.
Secondly, Domesday is a word I've never encountered before, so that my brain filled in automatically with the second 'o' and erased the 'e', so as to spell Doomsday. It's a neat trick, and from what I'm reading in this thread, most of us fell for it. There you have it, the power of the brain in action.
BTW, check out the www.wfmu.org website, it's just as insane as the programming itself.
The programming for any given show depends on the DJ, his tastes and moods. One show is industrial noise, another is children's singalongs, another is antique 78s from the 1910's and 20's, and so on and so forth, basically a little bit of absolutely everything.
One show, Incorrect Music, plays only the worst songs ever recorded. In this particular show, the worst of the worst is a travesty called Baby Lulu; whenever they play one of her 'songs', a 'Baby Lulu Alert' is issued, giving you ten seconds to switch stations or put the volume on mute for a couple of minutes, in case you're chicken.
As for the website itself, check out the archives, as every single show from the last 5 or 6 years is stored in streaming audio. We are talking about tens of thousands of hours of archived audio!
Thanks for the tip! I like what I hear so far, but it keeps rebuffering on my DSL connection! I'll try again at another hour, maybe it's a server problem on their side.
If only 99% of all current legislation wasn't grotesquely tilted in favor of these corporate behemots, I would side with your viewpoint.
However, the cost to manufacture a CD is less than a dollar, yet their product goes for around twenty. Corporate robber barons, the de facto government today, bring to mind the attitude, espoused by Thomas Jefferson, that rebellion, every now and then, is a healthy thing.
I will neither endorse nor support these robber barons by voting for them with my dollars, and do not mind chipping a bit at their cornerstone as well, along with millions of other people, from the looks of it.
Radio Nova's website goes by the URL of http://www.novaplanet.com/ and they do stream in Quicktime (as well as Real Player and Windows Media), so you can get it to work with iTunes!
I was under the impression that 'piracy' in a modern context was the act of selling (or buying) duplicated goods, therefore an unauthorized profit is being turned. Maybe the definition has been revised since Napster?
However, if we use the term 'file-sharing', we are back on neutral ground, with none of those nasty, loaded terms that obfuscate polite conversation. I remember that a couple of years ago, the courts had not yet decided on the legality (or ilegality) of file-sharing. However, when the US Senate puts a man like Sen. Ted Stevens in charge of an internet oversight commitee, you know exactly on what side the law is going to be tilted towards. Remember, the internet is not a dumptruck, it's a series of tubes. Also, remember there are around 64 corporate lobbyists for every congressman in Washington, none of them representing your interests, or mine.
When a nation's political process has been hijacked by corporate interests, the law, on moral grounds, tends to slant towards illegality. Witness how the exclusive use copyright for Mickey Mouse was set to expire a couple of years ago, and congress took the time to vote for extending the copyright for Disney. That's illegal, man. But then, there's always a Palpatine or two: "I will make it legal."
I make it a point to buy CDs only from small, independent labels. All the rest of the stuff I listen to I download in industrial quantities, savoring the fact that I'm not putting a single additional cent into the RIAA's coffers. I refuse to subsidize Britney's or Mariah's multimillion dollar contracts. I refuse to subsidize corporate suits recruiting an army of shysters to terrorize the population, instead of creatively working towards win-win scenarios.
Furthermore, I do not listen to Clear Channel stations, for too many reasons to discuss here, but one of them is the payola monopoly they've built. I get my radio fixes through the internet, mainly public radio stations (KCRW, KFJC, WFMU) as well as Radio Nova from Paris.
Ever heard of a band called The Necks? They're an experimental ambient jazz outfit from Australia. I wrote them an email, asking them where I could buy one of their CDs, Sex. I got a great reply from the drummer of the band, telling me that they were in the process of getting a US distributor, Private Records, so it would only be a matter of a couple of months. How cool is that? I found the album (one track, sixty minutes long) on a certain P2P protocol, but opted not to download, as for guys like these, I'll happily wait and spend my money, which is exactly what I did.
Two questions: 1. What percentage of the music-loving public has taken the kind of boycott/support steps that I have? 2. What percentage is needed to bring the corporate bastards to their knees? This may be a principled but losing battle. Case in point: I refuse to go to Wal-Mart, but still the damn place is jam-packed.
"Why didn't you go to my wedding?" "Well, my grandma died" "For the eight time in the last two years?" "Well, also, etcetera" "Oh really? Well then... Okay"
Etcetera with quotation marks does read like Monty Python, doesn't it?
Some of the astronomers get frustrated sometimes because I'm showing a film they really want to see, but have to be at the observatory that week. There they are, doing the grunt work taking snapshots of Cepheid Variables in Andromeda, thinking about how they missed 'Eraserhead', 'Mean Streets', 'THX-1138' or 'Rumble Fish', to name a few.
Oceanographers and oceanologists usually do one-day on field excursions, so they're always back in town at the end of the day, therefore at the show.
To my huge surprise, a film that packed the place was 'Excalibur'. It was an extremely gratifying experience, to show something I love and have people truly appreciate it. '2001: A Space Odyssey' received a spontaneous ovation at the end, which just about made my year. I guess what I'm trying to say is that showing challenging films to people of intelligence, then watching them leave with a smile on their face, a step closer to film-buffdom, makes it all worth it.
Kirk - Freddie Prinze Jr. Spock - Jimmy Fallon McCoy - Johnny Knoxville Scotty - Bill Murray Uhura - Beyoncé Yeoman Rand - Tara Reid Nurse Chapel - Paris Hilton Checkov - Enrique Iglesias Sulu - Sean Ono Lennon
As geeks, we should'a been out there supporting Joss and his "new sc-fi series. We bitch about nothing good on, but then don't support it when it shows up.
Amen. Notice how most people talk the talk, but have second thoughts about walkin' the walk? In my hometown, many people complained about there not being any 'real' cinema. I actually went out and did something about it, screening films in a local cultural center once a week, with no admission cost. Guess what? NONE of the people, both men and women, who complained about lack of options in town, have shown up during the ten months I've been screening films, sheepishly delivering a barrage of chronic excuses: - "I was busy" - "I forgot (and went out on the town)" - "I don't have time" (but they do have time to go out on the town on that same night, week in and week out) - "Etcetera"
Fortunately, I have built up a modest but loyal audience, mainly composed of college science students (astronomy and oceanography). But if I hear any more complaints from poseurs, I'm gonna laugh in their face, spit in their eye and piss in their ear.
Considering that cops were caught red-handed fifteen years ago beating the living mess out of Rodney King, it was only a matter of time when they would attempt to strike at the heart of the problem...and outlaw cameras. Jesus Christ, these imbeciles are unbelievable! Be it drug hysteria or a phantom war on terror, right wingers always find an excuse to erode citizens' rights while erasing as much oversight for themselves as possible.
Will Shortz, puzzler extraordinaire for the NYT, selected such optional courses in college that he actually invented the Puzzle Major curriculum, I'm not sure if he's still the only one who's done it. When Shortz took over the NYT crossword, it was an arid, stodgy affair, but he soon transformed it into a lively feature.
As a sidenote, the Monday crossword is quite easy and usually solved quickly. Tuesday is a little bit tougher and so on, until you get to the wickedly difficult Saturday edition. And then, of course, the stellar Sunday Edition. This approach has created legions of crossword junkies, allowing them to start easy and work their way up the ladder. How does it work? When you begin solving Monday crosswords, you won't touch Friday, but when you reach the point where can solve Friday, Monday editions will only suffice as a quick aperitif when there's nothing better to do.
Which brings me to a secondary point: I call Ethan Hawke's bullgashitza on the film Waking Life, where he says that they did an experiment with the NYT crossword, making people solve day-old puzzles, so the result was that more participants were able to solve day-old puzzles. The conclusion? That the answers are floating around in the collective consciousness, and you can just pluck them up out of thin air. Yeah, right. Looks like somebody didn't do their research properly.
I leave y'all with a little puzzle I learned a couple of weeks ago. Replace the # sign with the correct mathematical functions, so that all statements are accurate. Good luck and have fun!
Tycho Brahe was the last person to discover a Type Ia supernova.
I'm not sure I would use the word "discover", since Brahe's star was visible all throughout the northern hemisphere even during the daytime. Brahe, a drunken and rowdy old fool at the time (his nose had a gold tip, as he lost the flesh one in a drunken brawl), darling of the danish king and surrounded by cronies and hangers-on in his opulent estate, just happened to witness the event with not the slightest idea of what he was looking at, just like millions of other people at the time. Johannes Kepler, the greatest astronomer of the era, spent a period in Brahe's "circus" and stormed away in frustration at being unable to get Brahe to do any real work with him. In fact, Brahe wouldn't even give Kepler access to his past observational records. I would take Brahe's title as "discoverer", rubber-stamped by the danish king, with a grain of salt.
As for Francisco Garcia Diaz, the term "discoverer" hits the nail squarely on the head.
Wikipedia lists ones occuring in our galaxy in 1006, 1054, 1181, 1572, 1604, and I remember from other sources that several were observed during Roman times.
Isn't that typical. Before the telescope, there was a frickin' smorgasboard of supernovae at close range, then no sooner does man invent the telescope and the party's over, which draws me to the conclusion: I blame this supernovae drought on Galileo.
...if that supernova sends a gamma ray burst in our direction, we can kiss our asses goodbye...
Which begs the all-important question: Has the correlation between Type 1a Supernova and Gamma Ray Bursts been confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt?
The way I understand the theory, which is not yet engraved in stone, if either of this star's magnetic poles are pointing towards Earth, we're gonna get zapped. However, if we're facing the star's equator, or anywhere but the poles for that matter, we're home free.
Astronomers believe that they can be used as what they call "standard candles."
Something to add here, in regards to cosmic cartography:
Parallax can only be used to measure distances within a radius of a couple of dozen light years beyond Earth. This technique gave us the Herzprung-Russell diagram, which is basically a profile of all known type of stars in the main sequence, various combinations of age, size, color and temperature.
Cepheid variables allow us to measure distances outwards to around 35 million light years, I believe. This technique confirmed the Hubble Constant, which describes not only an expanding, but also an accelerating universe.
Type 1a supernovae take the game to a whole new level, giving us distances beyond a billion light years. The benefits of this technique have not yet been reaped, but I'm convinced that the further out and back we go, the more mind-boggling those benefits will be.
These are the only "standard candles" that I know of, if there are any others, please post about it!
Slashdot Mirror
My wife's iBook power adapter malfunctioned a couple of months ago, it started to crackle and even let out a few sparks! The replacement runs for about US$80.00, a ridiculous amount for a product that is raising a stink in forums all over the web because of its' horrible quality.
However, I decided to inspect the adapter, detached the A/C plug, which snaps on and off the corner of the adapter, and was horrified to notice it was thoroughly charred on the inside. Then, I vaguely recalled that a power cord came with the iBook, in the box. This is what I'm talking about: http://www.shentech.com/aprepog4ib65.html
To my great relief, the new power cord snapped neatly into the corner slot of the adapter, and ran smoothly. It was the detachable A/C plug that was defective, not the adapter itself. Now, not only could we throw the defective plug where it belongs (in the trash), we also had made our device safe, as well as doubled the length of the cord, and saved ourselves $80.00 to boot! My wife and I were happy campers that day.
So, if you have an Apple laptop, check this out for yourselves and I'm sure it will allow you to solve/avoid this exact problem, and even if it's not malfunctioning yet, do it now, no use putting your expensive computer at risk. Also, even if you've misplaced the box and/or cannot find the power cord, buy that instead, as it's price starts at around $10.00, saving you quite a bit of cash in the process.
Since the most vociferous libertarians in the US seem to be WASPs, maybe it should really be property-aryans?
Absolutely. Amen to that.
While republican pundits and gop congressmen were tearing their own shirts in self-righteous indignation over the result of an $80 million investigation over real estate deals (a stained blue dress), the rest of the world didn't snicker at Clinton's peccadilloes, they in fact snickered at "the ridiculousness of those american prudes, so hung up about sex".
And then, the ringleader of the impeachment movement, Newt Gingrich, resigned his post on the eve of Larry Flynt publishing in Hustler the nine extramarital affairs Gingrich had been involved in during the previous twenty years.
And then, Gingrich's replacement, Robert Livingstone, who promised to continue the good fight for morals, integrity and decency, withdrew when Mr. Flynt uncovered one of his extramarital affairs.
And then, the largest mouthpiece against Clinton's sins, thrice-divorced comedian Rush Limbaugh, is caught with industrial quantities of OxyContin and, later, unprescribed Viagra while returning from a caribbean vacation.
These hypocritical imbeciles are seen as 'martyrs' and/or 'heroes' in republican twisted family values circles, while Clinton is viewed as The Devil Himself. Yeah, right.
What many people do not get is that Clinton did not parade a stained blue dress in front of all the american public, children included, republicans did. Clinton did not flaunt and wave the image of a soaked cigar in front of the american public, republicans did. And then they tore their shirts in moral indignation at how the minds of children are being poisoned with decadence and depravity.
Under republican so-called standards of decency:
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, and that would be Bill Clinton.
I did a little Googling concerning the Florida harassment incidents, and uncovered a much bigger can or worms. Check this page out:
http://www.policeabuse.org/badcops.html
For the incredible Florida video, scroll down near the end, there's a link to Miami's CBS4 News story.
Should the police have any right to privacy while acting in the line of duty?
Check out the FBI mission statement, with the relevant part to this discussion in italics:
The mission of the FBI is to uphold the law through the investigation of violations of federal criminal law; to protect the United States from foreign intelligence and terrorist activities; to provide leadership and law enforcement assistance to federal, state, local, and international agencies; and to perform these responsibilities in a manner that is responsive to the needs of the public and is faithful to the Constitution of the United States.
Google "Police Department" +"Mission Statement", and you will find that most state and local Police Departments do not explicitly mention the Constitution, which might tell us something on a philosophical level. However, even if a mention of the Constitution is not there, it is implicit, the public should be able to scrutinize employees on the public tit. When it comes to cops, an argument could be made for exceptions, such as undercover operations. However, most undercover operations are for drug busts, and I don't believe in the War On Drugs (check out Penn and Teller's "Bullshit" episode on the subject). If I pay your salary so you can carry a badge and a gun, you think you have special rights, but you don't: what you have is special responsabilities.
Sadly, whoever stays silent, grants, and the majority of the population remains silent. Why? Check out the Florida news report about undercover journalists who went to Police Stations all over the state, asking for complaint forms. Several pigs threatened them with arrest, one of them even had his hand on his gun, old west style, daring the citizen to take one step closer. All of this was caught on video. A constant trickle of news lead us to believe that Florida is the norm and not the exception: "Harass first, ask questions later (if at all)". Meanwhile, many decent men and women in the police force become disgusted, discouraged and quit, so that only pigs remain doing business as usual.
Therefore, my answer to your question, Should the police have any right to privacy while acting in the line of duty?, is a resounding NO. And while we're at it, the safety and needs of the public, overzealous police policies that systematically abuse our rights are
- high-speed pursuits, and
- shootouts around innocent bystanders,
in both of which our safety and rights are momentarily suspended. Here's a novel idea: Let them go, track them down, nail them later. Recovering a million dollars in the first ten minutes is NOT worth you or me getting shot by 'friendly fire', or splattered on the highway while minding our own private business.
Please mod this guy up, he's got one helluva point.
At least a quarter of the population was directly killed by the Plague within a six year span. As noted, this was bound to jumble and reassemble the social structure in a major way, a process that probably lasted for decades.
However, a bit of speculation: Many land-owning families must have been wiped clean off the face of the Earth, many others would probably have migrated elsewhere, London perhaps, in an attempt to find better fortunes. It's entirely possible that the canniest survivors took advantage of the chaos, changing their names overnight, becoming 'cousins' to the less fortunate families, claiming title to their lands. In this manner, the names would remain the same, albeit under false pretenses. So maybe the property structure was kept more intact than we might suppose at face value.
First off, what an incredible document, it has that whole Voynich Manuscript mystique to it. I'll be sure peruse deeper once the Slashdot Effect settles down a bit. I'll be a good cybercitizen today.
Secondly, Domesday is a word I've never encountered before, so that my brain filled in automatically with the second 'o' and erased the 'e', so as to spell Doomsday. It's a neat trick, and from what I'm reading in this thread, most of us fell for it. There you have it, the power of the brain in action.
BTW, check out the www.wfmu.org website, it's just as insane as the programming itself.
The programming for any given show depends on the DJ, his tastes and moods. One show is industrial noise, another is children's singalongs, another is antique 78s from the 1910's and 20's, and so on and so forth, basically a little bit of absolutely everything.
One show, Incorrect Music, plays only the worst songs ever recorded. In this particular show, the worst of the worst is a travesty called Baby Lulu; whenever they play one of her 'songs', a 'Baby Lulu Alert' is issued, giving you ten seconds to switch stations or put the volume on mute for a couple of minutes, in case you're chicken.
As for the website itself, check out the archives, as every single show from the last 5 or 6 years is stored in streaming audio. We are talking about tens of thousands of hours of archived audio!
Were they lobbying the courts?
The legislative branch of government makes the laws, the judicial side implements them in the courts.
In your quest to avoid clear channel, I would like to make a suggestion for you: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/services/th e_current/
Thanks for the tip! I like what I hear so far, but it keeps rebuffering on my DSL connection! I'll try again at another hour, maybe it's a server problem on their side.
If only 99% of all current legislation wasn't grotesquely tilted in favor of these corporate behemots, I would side with your viewpoint.
However, the cost to manufacture a CD is less than a dollar, yet their product goes for around twenty. Corporate robber barons, the de facto government today, bring to mind the attitude, espoused by Thomas Jefferson, that rebellion, every now and then, is a healthy thing.
I will neither endorse nor support these robber barons by voting for them with my dollars, and do not mind chipping a bit at their cornerstone as well, along with millions of other people, from the looks of it.
Radio Nova's website goes by the URL of http://www.novaplanet.com/ and they do stream in Quicktime (as well as Real Player and Windows Media), so you can get it to work with iTunes!
I was under the impression that 'piracy' in a modern context was the act of selling (or buying) duplicated goods, therefore an unauthorized profit is being turned. Maybe the definition has been revised since Napster?
However, if we use the term 'file-sharing', we are back on neutral ground, with none of those nasty, loaded terms that obfuscate polite conversation. I remember that a couple of years ago, the courts had not yet decided on the legality (or ilegality) of file-sharing. However, when the US Senate puts a man like Sen. Ted Stevens in charge of an internet oversight commitee, you know exactly on what side the law is going to be tilted towards. Remember, the internet is not a dumptruck, it's a series of tubes. Also, remember there are around 64 corporate lobbyists for every congressman in Washington, none of them representing your interests, or mine.
When a nation's political process has been hijacked by corporate interests, the law, on moral grounds, tends to slant towards illegality. Witness how the exclusive use copyright for Mickey Mouse was set to expire a couple of years ago, and congress took the time to vote for extending the copyright for Disney. That's illegal, man. But then, there's always a Palpatine or two: "I will make it legal."
I make it a point to buy CDs only from small, independent labels. All the rest of the stuff I listen to I download in industrial quantities, savoring the fact that I'm not putting a single additional cent into the RIAA's coffers. I refuse to subsidize Britney's or Mariah's multimillion dollar contracts. I refuse to subsidize corporate suits recruiting an army of shysters to terrorize the population, instead of creatively working towards win-win scenarios.
Furthermore, I do not listen to Clear Channel stations, for too many reasons to discuss here, but one of them is the payola monopoly they've built. I get my radio fixes through the internet, mainly public radio stations (KCRW, KFJC, WFMU) as well as Radio Nova from Paris.
Ever heard of a band called The Necks? They're an experimental ambient jazz outfit from Australia. I wrote them an email, asking them where I could buy one of their CDs, Sex. I got a great reply from the drummer of the band, telling me that they were in the process of getting a US distributor, Private Records, so it would only be a matter of a couple of months. How cool is that? I found the album (one track, sixty minutes long) on a certain P2P protocol, but opted not to download, as for guys like these, I'll happily wait and spend my money, which is exactly what I did.
Two questions:
1. What percentage of the music-loving public has taken the kind of boycott/support steps that I have?
2. What percentage is needed to bring the corporate bastards to their knees?
This may be a principled but losing battle. Case in point: I refuse to go to Wal-Mart, but still the damn place is jam-packed.
"Why didn't you go to my wedding?"
"Well, my grandma died"
"For the eight time in the last two years?"
"Well, also, etcetera"
"Oh really? Well then... Okay"
Etcetera with quotation marks does read like Monty Python, doesn't it?
Some of the astronomers get frustrated sometimes because I'm showing a film they really want to see, but have to be at the observatory that week. There they are, doing the grunt work taking snapshots of Cepheid Variables in Andromeda, thinking about how they missed 'Eraserhead', 'Mean Streets', 'THX-1138' or 'Rumble Fish', to name a few.
Oceanographers and oceanologists usually do one-day on field excursions, so they're always back in town at the end of the day, therefore at the show.
To my huge surprise, a film that packed the place was 'Excalibur'. It was an extremely gratifying experience, to show something I love and have people truly appreciate it. '2001: A Space Odyssey' received a spontaneous ovation at the end, which just about made my year. I guess what I'm trying to say is that showing challenging films to people of intelligence, then watching them leave with a smile on their face, a step closer to film-buffdom, makes it all worth it.
Kirk - Freddie Prinze Jr.
Spock - Jimmy Fallon
McCoy - Johnny Knoxville
Scotty - Bill Murray
Uhura - Beyoncé
Yeoman Rand - Tara Reid
Nurse Chapel - Paris Hilton
Checkov - Enrique Iglesias
Sulu - Sean Ono Lennon
As geeks, we should'a been out there supporting Joss and his "new sc-fi series. We bitch about nothing good on, but then don't support it when it shows up.
Amen. Notice how most people talk the talk, but have second thoughts about walkin' the walk? In my hometown, many people complained about there not being any 'real' cinema. I actually went out and did something about it, screening films in a local cultural center once a week, with no admission cost.
Guess what? NONE of the people, both men and women, who complained about lack of options in town, have shown up during the ten months I've been screening films, sheepishly delivering a barrage of chronic excuses:
- "I was busy"
- "I forgot (and went out on the town)"
- "I don't have time" (but they do have time to go out on the town on that same night, week in and week out)
- "Etcetera"
Fortunately, I have built up a modest but loyal audience, mainly composed of college science students (astronomy and oceanography).
But if I hear any more complaints from poseurs, I'm gonna laugh in their face, spit in their eye and piss in their ear.
In Soviet Russia, shark jumps YOU!
Nazdarovia.
Considering that cops were caught red-handed fifteen years ago beating the living mess out of Rodney King, it was only a matter of time when they would attempt to strike at the heart of the problem...and outlaw cameras.
Jesus Christ, these imbeciles are unbelievable! Be it drug hysteria or a phantom war on terror, right wingers always find an excuse to erode citizens' rights while erasing as much oversight for themselves as possible.
Will Shortz, puzzler extraordinaire for the NYT, selected such optional courses in college that he actually invented the Puzzle Major curriculum, I'm not sure if he's still the only one who's done it. When Shortz took over the NYT crossword, it was an arid, stodgy affair, but he soon transformed it into a lively feature.
As a sidenote, the Monday crossword is quite easy and usually solved quickly. Tuesday is a little bit tougher and so on, until you get to the wickedly difficult Saturday edition. And then, of course, the stellar Sunday Edition. This approach has created legions of crossword junkies, allowing them to start easy and work their way up the ladder. How does it work? When you begin solving Monday crosswords, you won't touch Friday, but when you reach the point where can solve Friday, Monday editions will only suffice as a quick aperitif when there's nothing better to do.
Which brings me to a secondary point: I call Ethan Hawke's bullgashitza on the film Waking Life, where he says that they did an experiment with the NYT crossword, making people solve day-old puzzles, so the result was that more participants were able to solve day-old puzzles. The conclusion? That the answers are floating around in the collective consciousness, and you can just pluck them up out of thin air. Yeah, right. Looks like somebody didn't do their research properly.
I leave y'all with a little puzzle I learned a couple of weeks ago. Replace the # sign with the correct mathematical functions, so that all statements are accurate. Good luck and have fun!
1 # 1 # 1 = 6
2 # 2 # 2 = 6
3 # 3 # 3 = 6
4 # 4 # 4 = 6
5 # 5 # 5 = 6
6 # 6 # 6 = 6
7 # 7 # 7 = 6
8 # 8 # 8 = 6
9 # 9 # 9 = 6
Tycho Brahe was the last person to discover a Type Ia supernova.
I'm not sure I would use the word "discover", since Brahe's star was visible all throughout the northern hemisphere even during the daytime. Brahe, a drunken and rowdy old fool at the time (his nose had a gold tip, as he lost the flesh one in a drunken brawl), darling of the danish king and surrounded by cronies and hangers-on in his opulent estate, just happened to witness the event with not the slightest idea of what he was looking at, just like millions of other people at the time. Johannes Kepler, the greatest astronomer of the era, spent a period in Brahe's "circus" and stormed away in frustration at being unable to get Brahe to do any real work with him. In fact, Brahe wouldn't even give Kepler access to his past observational records. I would take Brahe's title as "discoverer", rubber-stamped by the danish king, with a grain of salt.
As for Francisco Garcia Diaz, the term "discoverer" hits the nail squarely on the head.
Wikipedia lists ones occuring in our galaxy in 1006, 1054, 1181, 1572, 1604, and I remember from other sources that several were observed during Roman times.
Isn't that typical. Before the telescope, there was a frickin' smorgasboard of supernovae at close range, then no sooner does man invent the telescope and the party's over, which draws me to the conclusion: I blame this supernovae drought on Galileo.
...if that supernova sends a gamma ray burst in our direction, we can kiss our asses goodbye...
Which begs the all-important question: Has the correlation between Type 1a Supernova and Gamma Ray Bursts been confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt?
The way I understand the theory, which is not yet engraved in stone, if either of this star's magnetic poles are pointing towards Earth, we're gonna get zapped. However, if we're facing the star's equator, or anywhere but the poles for that matter, we're home free.
Astronomers believe that they can be used as what they call "standard candles."
Something to add here, in regards to cosmic cartography:
Parallax can only be used to measure distances within a radius of a couple of dozen light years beyond Earth. This technique gave us the Herzprung-Russell diagram, which is basically a profile of all known type of stars in the main sequence, various combinations of age, size, color and temperature.
Cepheid variables allow us to measure distances outwards to around 35 million light years, I believe. This technique confirmed the Hubble Constant, which describes not only an expanding, but also an accelerating universe.
Type 1a supernovae take the game to a whole new level, giving us distances beyond a billion light years. The benefits of this technique have not yet been reaped, but I'm convinced that the further out and back we go, the more mind-boggling those benefits will be.
These are the only "standard candles" that I know of, if there are any others, please post about it!