tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.comments2024-03-18T17:09:55.964-07:00CONTRARY BRINDavid Brinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comBlogger138315125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-69128069354332498932024-03-18T17:09:55.964-07:002024-03-18T17:09:55.964-07:00“ the ne plus ultra malus wizard Manshoon had stas...“ the ne plus ultra malus wizard Manshoon had stashed multiple stasis clones “<br /><br />See HARRY POTTER & THE METHODS OF RATIONALITY.<br /><br />“I've come to see Return of the Jedi as a retcon of the earlier Star Wars movies.”<br /><br />Threaten the cosmos with a planet killer gun… ‘solve’ by flying a little ship inside the big one, shooting the reactor and flying away REAL FAST! Count em up.<br /><br />Oh, in DUNE 2: “Your father didn’t believe in revenge.” There’s a whole scene in the book & 1980s flick where Leto sends a message swearing can-li or vendetta.<br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-12573660780380834142024-03-18T15:57:59.846-07:002024-03-18T15:57:59.846-07:00Darrel
It's quite difficult to "understan...Darrel<br />It's quite difficult to "understand" what is happening with a bike - your body movements obscure what is actually happening - but you can get a radio-controlled motorbike.<br />If you operate one of those the whole counter steer, then steer bit becomes very obvious.<br /><br />IMHO a gyro-controlled bike could be handy for when stationary and moving slowly - as soon as you are above about 5 mph its unnecessary. duncan cairncrosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14153725128216947145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-74685598456444439132024-03-18T15:31:57.029-07:002024-03-18T15:31:57.029-07:00Alfred & Larry,
To clarify, the other guy was...Alfred & Larry,<br /><br />To clarify, the other guy was indeed arguing that <i>riders</i> would not benefit from understanding how things work. Note, I was not arguing that understanding was necessary, which it very obviously is not. I was simply arguing that understanding the dynamics of motorcycles in general and this gyro stabilized gizmo specifically would be of benefit in operating the thing.<br /><br />Speaking of which, the dynamics of single track vehicles is quite different from two track vehicles. The self-stabilizing they exhibit when moving above a certain moderate speed is not due to gyroscopic forces generated by the spinning wheels. In fact motorcycle manufacturers do all they can within the cost constraints they have to minimize gyroscopic forces produced by the wheels because they are quite detrimental to good handling. This amounts to making the wheels, tires and brake discs as light as possible.<br /><br />What makes motorcycles self-stabilizing is that absent any steering input from the rider the steering head naturally reacts to any lean by deflecting towards the lean, which causes the motorcycle to lean back towards being upright. Absent rider steering inputs the steering head of a moving motorcycle is continuously making these little corrections, back and forth, back and forth.<br /><br />And trying not to write a wall of text, above a certain slow minimum speed leaning is what makes single track vehicles follow a curved path. To turn them you have to make them lean. You can make them lean in a number of ways, even simply hanging off the side and yanking them over, but there is a best way, called counter-steering. Deflecting the steered wheel on a single track vehicle doesn't directly cause it to change direction, like in dual track vehicles, what it does is cause them to lean, and the lean is what causes them to turn. And the reason it's called counter-steering, if you want to turn right then you deflect the front wheel towards the left, which causes the motorcycle to start leaning towards the right, which causes it to turn right.<br /><br />Another difference is that unlike a car in which you continuously point the front wheels in the direction you need to go while turning, you don't keep the front wheel turned on a motorcycle, because as long as the front wheel is turned the lean angle will continue increasing, until you lean right off the tires and hit the ground. Any given turn takes at least 2 separate steering inputs. An ideal left turn would be, deflect the front wheel towards the right until you reach the appropriate lean angle necessary for the turn, allow the front wheel to return to pointing straight ahead, which it will do naturally by itself, move through the turn, and then as you exit the turn deflect the front wheel towards the left (into the turn), which causes the motorcycle to lean back towards upright, and then stop steering when you are again straight up and moving in a straight line.<br /><br />All that just to say, the self stabilizing happens because, absent rider input, the steering head naturally reacts to the forces it is subjected to when perturbed by executing that second counter-steering input described above, the one you make as you exit a turn in order to stop turning and go straight again.<br /><br />It's a bit harder to see this behavior as clearly on a bicycle because the ratio of rider weight/machine weight is so much higher, the tires so much narrower, much slower speeds, that just moving your body weight around has a much bigger impact. But you can clearly see it. Get up to a decent speed someplace you have plenty of room and then deflect the front wheel towards the right (gently!) and you'll clearly see that the bicycle will turn towards the left, quite abruptly.Darrell Ehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14054311762477388637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-9237145457160786202024-03-18T14:13:02.577-07:002024-03-18T14:13:02.577-07:00@Dr. Brin: (Now, if only we manage to get rentier ...@Dr. Brin: <i>(Now, if only we manage to get rentier inheritance brats to let go of millions of homes they cash-grabbed with their parents’ supply side lucre.)</i><br /><br />I was under the impression that <i>at least</i> as much of the problem was the use of US real estate as a store of value and rentier income by oligarchs -- Russians, Chinese, r'oils, and others who prefer 20-fold nested shell companies and anonymized bank accounts. <br /><br />Which is much of a muchness, of course. It's still underappreciated how much of the fall of the Roman Republic -- much less that of the Western Empire -- was caused by "r > g". Catfish 'n Codhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07727883524069548484noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-55667773179510290702024-03-18T14:05:18.814-07:002024-03-18T14:05:18.814-07:00Assets that won't or can't be used immedia...<i>Assets that won't or can't be used immediately are devalued. Assets that probably won't be used in your lifetime have a value converging on zero.</i><br /><br />Then there is a failure of the market mechanism. By that logic, hardwoods can never be cultivated for the market, or anything that has a lifespan approaching that of a human. I appreciate the devaluation that long-term asset freezing causes, but that should only be approaching zero if the harvest time is not only far away but unknowable. <br /><br />Pumping out oil barrel X for use in plastics, carbon fiber construction, biomass for terraforming kits, etc. may be much further out in time, but it <i>does</i> have value. It just isn't <i>enough</i> for their voracity.Catfish 'n Codhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07727883524069548484noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-26811025499874553352024-03-18T12:38:04.427-07:002024-03-18T12:38:04.427-07:00Larry,
And I still say that the people arguing wi...Larry,<br /><br /><i>And I still say that the people arguing with Darrell E …</i><br /><br />That might be the case. I'm not sure, but I've seen too many internet 'discussions' where people talk past each other to discount the possibility. I'd say making that mistake is as easy as falling off a bicycle, but we eventually learn to stay on them. 8)<br /><br /><i>...making slight turns feels like it's happening by magic.</i><br /><br />It is. 8)<br /><br />I learned my undergrad physics in a small school where TA's were in very short supply. Shortly after passing the first few physics classes, the department hired me to be a lab TA. That gave me full access to the equipment room and that was a HUGE benefit in my future classes. I could play with the flywheel and feel the torque in my hands. I could mess around with current carrying wires and watch the magnets. Play is the primary technique for building intuition and I got to do it. No grade pressure.<br /><br />What I find so neat nowadays about bicycles is those tiny shifts in weight that create the torques fly under our awareness. When I was told 'just try' that is exactly what my parents were aiming to build even though they had no deep understanding of either subject. Humans do a whole lot of things with tiny bits of knowledge flying well below our levels of awareness. That's a kind of magic. 8)<br /><br />———<br /><br />OTC H2O2 is about 3% and will sting. <br />I think one can buy H2O2 at about 35% for industrial uses. <br />It will 'burn' organic material without combustion.<br /><br />It's not difficult to distill the industrial stuff to higher concentrations, but newbies who do often die in flash fires with the last thought passing through their heads being "What catalyzed that!?"<br /><br />Wonderfully dense stuff when stable, but super-heated steam in an oxygen rich environment otherwise. <br />I don't mess with it anymore.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-20395385752688250702024-03-18T11:50:38.275-07:002024-03-18T11:50:38.275-07:00Alfred Differ:
Many years later I learned physics...Alfred Differ:<br /><i><br />Many years later I learned physics and finally understood what my muscle memory model had acquired without a deep understanding.<br /></i><br /><br />When I ride a bike today, making slight turns feels like it's happening by magic. As if I simply will the bike to make the move.<br /><br /><i><br />I think it IS possible to learn to ride motorcycles without deep understanding, but riders with no understanding are heading for a lot of pain<br /></i><br /><br />And I still say that the people arguing with Darrell E weren't advocating for riders with no understanding, but for motorcycle <b>builders</b> with no understanding. A different thing, almost the opposite thing.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />My own "lot of pain" bicycle story happened on the University of Illinois campus. I saw the other bike headed straight for me, but couldn't get out of the way. All I could do was plant my legs and brace for impact. My injury was limited to a really deep scrape on one knee, and I happened to work at the Water Survey lab at the time, so I decided to apply some of the hydrogen peroxide that I knew they had on hand. What I didn't realize was that theirs was not the 3% retail solution, but the pure stuff. All I can say is that I'm pretty sure no infection stood a chance.Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-51057003670922631272024-03-18T10:52:40.596-07:002024-03-18T10:52:40.596-07:00Darrell E,
My first thought to your story with th...Darrell E,<br /><br />My first thought to your story with the gyro stabilized motorcycle is that the wheels ARE gyros or a sort. Then I kept reading and saw where you were taking the story. 8)<br /><br />When I first learned to ride a bicycle, I was told 'just try' by my parents. Lots of kids around me had it figured out within a day. Took me four days, but I got it. Many years later I learned physics and finally understood what my muscle memory model had acquired without a deep understanding.<br /><br />I think it IS possible to learn to ride motorcycles without deep understanding, but riders with no understanding are heading for a lot of pain. I did my graduate school years at UC Davis. It's a bicycle town for a large fraction of the university population. Every fall we'd have an influx of people who could ride, but didn't really understand much about riding in groups or in traffic or in mixed traffic.* Every fall we'd have a lot of those newbies wind up in the campus emergency room getting patched up. One of my roommates was a paramedic and brought home a story of one hitting the ground chin first. That poor guy's shattered teeth were found at quite a distance.<br /><br />I'm generally FOR automation on vehicles but AGAINST willfully ignorant vehicle operation. The less I have to know details the better, but only in the sense that I don't have to know how my heart beats. That it does and its general care instructions are still important to me.<br /><br /><br />* Even years later I was still doing stupid stuff like riding without a helmet. I'm lucky to be alive after the head injury I received. I have in my research journal the before and after periods around the 'accident', so I can look back from today and see how impacted my brain was even after I was healed in the externally visible sense.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-25737652519723261582024-03-18T09:19:27.499-07:002024-03-18T09:19:27.499-07:00Darrell E people that think knowledge is not only ...Darrell E <i>people that think knowledge is not only not necessary, but something to be made fun of</i><br /><br />Story of my life. The single best argument I have in my citizen science work is this: I'm not a shill for academia (they've been quite mean to me actually), so lower your shields.scidatahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07152319593457629592noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-34229698480340881672024-03-18T09:11:00.771-07:002024-03-18T09:11:00.771-07:00Darrell E:
I started out making some comments abo...Darrell E:<br /><i><br />I started out making some comments about how, judging from an interview, the builders didn't understand the dynamics of two wheeled single track vehicles, which somehow lead to discussion of whether or not knowing how a motorcycle works (dynamically) would be of any use to a person riding a gyro-motorcycle on which all of the handling was taken care of automatically<br />...<br />another commentor who adamantly opined that it would be useless to a rider to know anything about motorcycle dynamics generally or how the gyro-motorcycle worked <br /></i><br /><br />It sounds as if even within the context of their POV, they missed your point. They're insisting that a <b>rider</b> doesn't need to know how the motorcycle works as a rejoinder to your assertion that it would be helpful for the <b>builder</b> to know. I would think that the latter is close to self-evident.Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-90446855574716870382024-03-18T08:28:38.075-07:002024-03-18T08:28:38.075-07:00Alfred Differ said...
"The only sane way for...Alfred Differ said...<br /><br /><i>"The only sane way forward is to create something of a hybrid. A centaur. Rely on those high-tech tools, but understand their capabilities and limitations."</i><br /><br />This brought to mind a long "conversation" I had on the CosmoQuest forum many years ago. It was about a small start-up trying to make a gyro stabilized motorcycle, their idea being that you wouldn't need to learn how to operate a motorcycle to use it, and you'd never have to worry about it falling over. There have been a few tries at something like this and I can't remember offhand which one this was.<br /><br />Anyway, I started out making some comments about how, judging from an interview, the builders didn't understand the dynamics of two wheeled single track vehicles, which somehow lead to discussion of whether or not knowing how a motorcycle works (dynamically) would be of any use to a person riding a gyro-motorcycle on which all of the handling was taken care of automatically via the gyros. I opined that of course it would be of benefit, which really offended another commentor who adamantly opined that it would be useless to a rider to know anything about motorcycle dynamics generally or how the gyro-motorcycle worked because the goal was for the machine to be fully automated.<br /><br />I still can't really understand the mindset that knowing how something works offers no advantage to a person using the thing. Necessary? No. We try hard to minimize the knowledge and experience necessary to use things so that ideally anyone can use it. But of no benefit? Of course it is. That's why to be a US Army helicopter pilot entails training that is equivalent to at least a couple of bachelor degrees worth of education to enable a certain level of understanding of the complex aerodynamics of helicopters, even though their helicopters are nearly all flown by a computer.<br /><br />But it wasn't just that. This person was outright contemptuous of me having a detailed understanding of a technical issue. That was the first time I'd really ever directly encountered such contempt for knowledge, and it was on a website dedicated to science! Since them I've had my nose rubbed into the fact that there are <i>many</i> people that think knowledge is not only not necessary, but something to be made fun of.Darrell Ehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14054311762477388637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-37476614713700588042024-03-18T08:13:57.990-07:002024-03-18T08:13:57.990-07:00https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/15/opinion/columni...https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/15/opinion/columnists/trump-biden-rematch.html<br /><i><br />...Lozada, who also notes that the Heritage [Project 2025] vision “portrays the president as the personal embodiment of popular will and treats the law as an impediment to conservative governance.”<br /></i><br /><br />That is tragically ironic, considering that Democratic presidential candidates of this century have won the popular vote all but one time (2004).Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-3675226394908089952024-03-18T07:15:14.915-07:002024-03-18T07:15:14.915-07:00From the last thread:
DP I get that Frank made th...From the last thread:<br /><br />DP I get that Frank made the Fremen supermen.What a yawner. There’s no reason for that to have been true. IF IT WERE TRUE…. Then the Fremen would have been asked to name their own Duke and be treated as a member of the Landsraad and that would have been that! Rent out soldiers to all the Houses, as Viking Varangians served as bodyguards all across the world in the 1300s But HERE is the problem… the same Huge Problem as in AVATAR.<br />WHO WERE THE FREMEN FIGHTING ALL THESE CENTURIES TO MAKE THEM SUCH WARRIORS?<br />(Likewise the Na’avi?). Obviously each other.<br /><br />The super-soldier is an SF trope as old as time, Herbert wasn't te first and won't be th last to use it.<br /><br />But yes, the Fremen tribes were fighting each other (the Jacurutu Fremen were especially nasty, called "water stealers" by the other tribes who banded together tried to wipe them out, see Children of Dune) as well as the Harkonnens for the centuries that they owned the planet. Add BG infighting skills and the Fremen exceed the martial prowess of the Sarduaker from their prison planet Salusa Secundus.<br /><br />Herbert probably modeled the Sarduakar on the French Foreign legion, made up of cut throats and rogues escaping justice by in listing.<br /><br />But Paul is obviously TE Lawrence, uniting the bickering Arab/Fremen tribes against the decrepit Ottoman/Padishah empire, learning to ride a camel/worm in the process. Technically Paul like TE Lawrence was a bastard (Leto never married Jessica), and like TEL was a military genius who thought outside the box. "Lawrence of Arabia" came out in 1962 and Dune was published in 1965. Mind expanding drugs like LSD/Spice got their first clinical use in the late 50s.<br /><br />The parallels and sources are there for anyone who grew up in the 60s.<br />DPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07087941506162882852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-91750423129173574782024-03-18T06:52:47.358-07:002024-03-18T06:52:47.358-07:00I had to look up "tl;dr". But I have r...I had to look up "tl;dr". But I have read Pinker.Howard Brazeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08837948125432719131noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-34057458681732803622024-03-18T05:31:31.366-07:002024-03-18T05:31:31.366-07:00Alfred Differ:
I was taught recently to see all s...Alfred Differ:<br /><i><br />I was taught recently to see all sequels as adaptations. One doesn't need perfect alignment between them all..<br /></i><br /><br />Perhaps "retcons"* is a better word.<br /><br />I do enjoy a well-written multi-part story where the parts are faithful to each other, but as you say, they're not <b>all</b> going to be like that.<br /><br />The tv series <i>Enterprise</i> can only be considered as a retcon of established TOS and TNG history, like the 22nd century Enterprise encountering both the Borg and the Ferrengi. Yet, TNG itself seemed to operate well as a true sequel to TOS.<br /><br />I've come to see <i>Return of the Jedi</i> as a retcon of the earlier <i>Star Wars</i> movies. Luke and Leia being siblings was not in the writers' (or viewers') minds in those earlier movies, most especially when Leia kisses Luke full on the lips. And the contorted explanation of why Ben told Luke that "a young Jedi named Darth Vader" betrayed and murdered Luke's father just doesn't work ("Certain point of view," my ass!). The way I reconcile it is that the prequels and <i>Return of the Jedi</i> function as a unified story, but they've retconned the backstory originally established in the first two movies.** They are not faithful to the films that came before. YMMV as a viewer how important that is to your enjoyment.<br /><br />* short for "retroactive continuity".<br />** In the retconned universe, maybe Greedo really did shoot first. In the original, no way.Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-4923707534333914392024-03-17T21:29:18.379-07:002024-03-17T21:29:18.379-07:00Pappenheimer:
The wicked, being wicked, can't ...Pappenheimer:<br />The wicked, being wicked, <i>can't</i> gang up on the good. They fall to fighting each other before they can complete operation Kill All Good. The good <i>can</i> gang up on the wicked, being good enough to cooperate for a good cause; but not all of them believe that Kill All Wicked isn't itself wicked.Paradoctorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04821968120388981470noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-39892778364636391722024-03-17T21:03:16.541-07:002024-03-17T21:03:16.541-07:00This is true.
Professor Xavier was disassembled a...This is true.<br /><br />Professor Xavier was disassembled at a molecular level and STILL came back iirc.<br /><br />On the other hand, in the Forgotten Realms, the ne plus ultra malus wizard Manshoon had stashed multiple stasis clones all over Faerun and actually got permakilled. Think he ticked off the wrong goddess(es)<br /><br />Pappenheimer<br /><br />Re: voting based on moral turpitude, the kid in Hamlet, on being told that wicked men outnumbered good ones, asked why the wicked men (instead of waiting around to be hanged) didn't gang up and hang all the good men instead. This seems to be a possible ending to the US's current political issues.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08628667566485965800noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-15324886954263488072024-03-17T20:44:35.978-07:002024-03-17T20:44:35.978-07:00I was taught recently to see all sequels as adapta...I was taught recently to see all sequels as adaptations. One doesn't need perfect alignment between them all... because one never gets that with adaptations.<br /><br />Struck me as lazy, but then I thought about the original Planet of the Apes movies. There was no way they could have done sequels any other way. So... when someone throws enough money at you, an adaptation screenplay becomes the obvious result. It becomes the producer's problem if they spent their money unwisely.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-60360885650529154362024-03-17T18:36:20.776-07:002024-03-17T18:36:20.776-07:00Dr Brin:
resurrects an emperor who not only fell ...Dr Brin:<br /><i><br />resurrects an emperor who not only fell lethally down a pit, but was blown up with the 2nd death star.<br /></i><br /><br />Again, that's the influence of superhero comics.<br /><br />When I was barely a freshman in high school, Spider-Man was forced to battle a clone of himself. An explosion killed both the clone and the villain who created it. Afterwards, the surviving Spider-Man couldn't be sure that he himself was the original, so he stashed the clone's body away until he could prove to himself that he was the real Peter Parker. Then, we'll he couldn't have a Parker corpse around to invite questions, so finally (days if not weeks later), he takes the body to an incinerating plant and drops it down one of the smokestacks.<br /><br />Twenty years later, the latest Spider-Man writers decide to revisit this as if it were an unresolved plot element. So they attempt to establish that not only was the "clone" actually the real Spider-Man all along, but that he is <b>still alive</b>. The discarded corpse has been operating under an assumed identity, and the Spider-Man whose adventures we've been following since 1975 is actually the clone. The flashback "explanation" was that after the living Spider-Man abandoned the supposed-clone, he simply awoke a bit confused and walked away.<br /><br />Never mind that the supposed-clone had been:<br /><br />+ dead after the explosion (I presume someone had checked for breathing and pulse)<br />+ left for an extended period without food or medical attention for the explosion effects<br />+ dropped down a smokestack that would have been high enough to kill anyway<br />+ ...into a live incinerator<br /><br />It used to be the case in comics that no one was dead if you didn't see the body, but since about the mid-1990s, even <b>seeing</b> the body isn't sufficient.Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-65296834651912294552024-03-17T16:28:47.028-07:002024-03-17T16:28:47.028-07:00But them JJ Abrams waves one hand and in less than...But them JJ Abrams waves one hand and in less than 40 seconds kills a quadrillion people... then with the other resurrects an emperor who not only fell lethally down a pit, but was blown up with the 2nd death star. Ah... the power of the Lost. (Get it?)David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-84436139122527985752024-03-17T14:35:26.610-07:002024-03-17T14:35:26.610-07:00Dr Brin:
But. Doesn’t a Jedi kill him minutes aft...Dr Brin:<br /><i><br />But. Doesn’t a Jedi kill him minutes after that?<br /></i><br /><br />Grabbed from behind and dumped unceremoniously into a machine. That might not count as the kind of death in battle that Force transcendence requires. Maybe it has to specifically be death by lightsaber, of which there are also very few in the galaxy at the time.<br /><br />Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-73837878211266007932024-03-17T14:08:39.978-07:002024-03-17T14:08:39.978-07:00'Excluding Utah and Illinois, red states avera...'Excluding Utah and Illinois, red states average far more violent than blue ones, along with every other turpitude. And the Turpitude Index ought to be THE top metric for voting a party out of office.'<br /><br />But, which party? ;)Dannyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11915977609430813824noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-81806612178530662742024-03-17T13:34:12.390-07:002024-03-17T13:34:12.390-07:00SW makes a lot of sense when viewed as a sort of &...SW makes a lot of sense when viewed as a sort of 'Force for Darthula' franchise.<br /><br />No wonder Chris Lee got pulled into it. Tony Fiskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14578160528746657971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-66640018194196759732024-03-17T13:17:43.467-07:002024-03-17T13:17:43.467-07:00Catfish…. Geothermal is a matter of tech . Planty ...Catfish…. Geothermal is a matter of tech . Planty of places where a deep enough hole can circulate hot water. If you perfect the circulation system to resist corrosion etc, it is almost eternal and runs day & night. But yes, solar for individual homes takes us out of the grid crisis.<br /><br /><br />LH: “ that scene makes so much more sense if only it were intentionally set up that the Emperor required a Jedi to kill him in battle in order to achieve Kenobi-like transcendence and, in effect, become The Force. “<br /><br />Never thought of that one! But. Doesn’t a Jedi kill him minutes after that?<br /><br />Catfish that is an amazing Jedi exegesis! If I cared about that crap universe, that is….<br /><br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-78455142053898761082024-03-17T12:21:53.188-07:002024-03-17T12:21:53.188-07:00I ve seen commentary elsewhere that a lot a Star W...I ve seen commentary elsewhere that a lot a Star Wars imagery is pulled from Dune - everything from the obvious (every hero's favorite stopping point is H20-impaired Tatooine, which now, by canon, has sandworms/sand dragons) to personal duels deciding the fate of empires. I can't disagree. Both are pretty low on the Mohs scale (try to calculate how much friction a giant sandworm would actually generate at a significant speed, unless it is somehow emitting enough gas to fluidize the medium.) Don't much care; Shai-Hulud = much cool.<br /><br />Pappenheimer<br /><br />P.S. catching up with favorite harpist, who was telling me about the time she got purple hair instead of being paid for a gig...Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08628667566485965800noreply@blogger.com