- “‘He was once somebody’s baby boy…'”: Critical appreciation of ten film performances by Gene Hackman.
- John D. Cook shares a graph of Voyager 2’s speed as it achieves Solar System escape velocity. “In a gravitational assist, the velocity of a spacecraft with respect to the planet doesn’t change, but the velocity relative to the sun changes greatly.”
- Increasingly Inconvenient MTA Service Advisories, by Tom Smyth.
Trains are being held due to an investigation at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station. They’re trying to figure out how to pronounce “Schermerhorn.”
- What better name can we give to the realm of music that we call (ill-advisedly) “classical”? My girlfriend in college preferred the term “art music,” but I think that term is too limiting. I’ve also heard “Western concert hall music,” which is getting closer. Matthew Aucoin has some thoughts.
- I’m not a big fan of our commonwealth flag (just the seal slapped on a field of blue), but there’s one element that I’ll speak up for: Texas schools nix lesson over Virginia state flag’s exposed breast.
“I see her as an Amazon,” said Virginia Senate Clerk Susan Clarke Schaar, recalling how a little girl summed up the motto during a tour of the Capitol: “Take that, big boy.”
- Early 20th-century home economics researcher Inga Allison experimented with baking at high altitudes to achieve the perfect Fort Collins brownie.
- I found eighty cents in my sofa cushions, how’s that? Fyre Festival’s embattled founder is selling the brand: ‘It’s time to pass the torch’.
Category: Fun
Puzzle time
Connections
Puzzle #645
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
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The purples: obscure or not?
No wave
Can we at least use “modern” to refer to the same time period across all media and disciplines? Utahraptor says no.
Some links: 106
Some posts about gratitude and the big picture:
- Day One, by Tim Sommers.
- Gratitude Monday: well, okay, by Bas Bleu.
- Not just heat death: Here are five ways the Universe could end, by Paul Sutter.
[A] phase transition would start in some random spot in the cosmos and race outward at the speed of light, containing within it a brand new kind of universe almost certainly incompatible with the kind of life, chemistry, and even atomic physics that our Universe has managed to concoct.
Because this phase transition bubble expands at the speed of light, there would be no warning of its arrival. One day, we would simply be going about our business and then blink: The new Universe takes its place. Whatever particles had composed our bodies and whatever forces held them together would vanish, to be replaced with a new quantum configuration.
Sleep tight.
- Process, process, process: Dwelling in the Doing: A New Year’s Resolve, by Gary Borjesson.
So, here’s to dwelling in the doing, learning how to love the very things we spend most of our time doing. Happiness itself is like this. It’s not the surge of joy we feel when we find what we’ve been searching for, cross the finish line, or finish building the boat. It is, rather, a way of living in active engagement with the good, meaningful things that make up our life. Your friends, for example.
And one simple way to make a time machine: Dinosaur Comics #4283, by Ryan North.
In other news
TIL that Merv Griffin got his start singing on the radio.
Some links: 100
- Walter Shawlee, slipstick reseller, has passed.
Over time, his customers included a weather station in Antarctica, where many electronic gadgets could not take the cold; photo editors responsible for adjusting image sizes (they like slide rules for their clear displays of different values for the same ratio); an archaeologist who found that calculators got too dusty to work properly during digs; the drug company Pfizer, which gave away slide rules as gifts during a trade show; slide rule enthusiasts in Afghanistan and French Polynesia; and “guys from NASA,” Mr. Shawlee told Engineering Times in 2000.
- Sorry, overwintering turtles don’t breathe through their butts.
The notion that cloacal gas exchange helps North American turtles survive long winters trapped under the ice is pervasive in pop science, but to date, there is no solid evidence that hidden-necked turtles use cloacal gas exchange. The skin and mouth lining are where gas exchange happens during winter hibernation.
- The Old English for spider is gange-wæfre (“walker-weaver”).
- From Zack Stanton for McSweeney’s, “Morrissey or Trump?”
This could only happen to me / Who has been through anything like this?
- Guest column for Washington Business Journal by Alan Berube and Tracy Hadden Loh: “Caps and Wizards moving to Virginia isn’t ‘regionalism.’ It’s gaslighting.”
Some links: 97
- Ooh, shiny, shiny.
- Hilary Howard visits the Jewel Streets neighborhood of Brooklyn/Queens, at 4 feet above MSE. It’s not often that you see Phragmites australis growing on a street corner.
- Yes, outdoor cats are a problem. Probably worse than you think.
Just the amount of different insects and invertebrates that they are eating in their diet. We know that they eat insects. That wasn’t necessarily new, but we didn’t really have an idea that they were eating so many things. And I think our concern there is that most scientists that have done these studies in the past were not really looking for insects and they’re not taxonomists trained to understand insects.
- Mary Pipher makes brightness in the dark. “We cannot stop all the destruction, but we can light candles for one another.”
Autry not Autrey
“Nasal bioluminescence in reindeer, Rangifer tarandus rubens,” by Martin Kemp.
I’m thinking that Kemp might have invented some of his references. Google Scholar says, “Sorry, we couldn’t find this article.”
Oh, the weather outside is frightful
Be advised that I will do what I can to make “colder than Harry’s todger” a thing.
More pix
- The last time with horses: backstage photos by Sinna Nasseri at the Metropolitan Opera. Joshua Barone reports on his experience as a supernumerary in Aida.
- Post-bougie: six decades of Barbie’s Dreamhouses. Analysis by Julie Lasky, photos by Evelyn Pustka.
That explains Blofeld’s cat
“No time to die: An in-depth analysis of James Bond’s exposure to infectious agents,” by Wouter Graumans et al.
We hypothesize that his foolhardy courage, sometimes purposefully eliciting life-threatening situations, might even be a consequence of Toxoplasmosis.
Particularly worrying:
While Bond was traveling to Japan (1967) shortly after the H2N2 pandemic (1957–1958), his actions were at odds with knowledge on the different modes of respiratory virus transmission. Bond regularly joined crowds without social distancing including on public transport.
“Lakeland, Florida but they will deliver it to your door step”
Ed Solomon keeps a text-message spammer-scammer going for an hour and a half.
10:41 A.M. “Richard Weeks”
i got $150,000 delivered to me when i applied for the grant and you dont have to pay it back.. you can also apply10:41 A.M. Ed Solomon
shut up. no way—are you serious??10:42 A.M. “Richard Weeks”
I’m very serious and am not pulling your legs. I’m so happy cuz when i received the Money from Ups, I quickly paid off my bills and saved the rest to the bank. Though, currently thinking on Investments
And so…
11:24 A.M. Ed Solomon
thanks. okay. and tell me honestly. and i promise i won’t tell her. Is SHE the one who gave you the rash? (cause i was wondering why you and i both have the same thing)11:26 A.M. “Richard Weeks”
yes shes the one
Ah, the power of saying, “yes, and.”
How to identify birds
In entertainment news
“The Lost Episodes of I Love Lucy,” by Julian George.
TIL about railroad worms
An oldie but a goodie: “Nasal bioluminescence in reindeer, Rangifer tarandus rubens,” by Martin Kemp.
There has been unwarranted confusion about the first record…