In defense of Prog Rock.
The Acorn Archimedes, state of the art computing 30 years ago. In case you want to see how far we've come. (Grokked from Dan)
"Swiss police say they've formally identified two bodies found on an Alpine glacier as those of a couple missing for nearly 75 years… Valais canton (state) police said Wednesday that forensic experts using DNA analysis identified the two as Marcelin Dumoulin and his wife, Francine. They were 40 and 37, respectively, when they disappeared on Aug. 15, 1942." Their children, now in their late 70s and 80s, will finally be able to bury them. But then there was this, "Regional police have a list going back to 1925 of missing people. They note that, because of climate change, bodies of people missing for decades regularly emerge from receding glaciers." So, that makes this a benefit of climate change?
The LA ground speed-check story told by the pilot. Uno Ab Alto. (Grokked from Dan)
"The box of prescription drugs had been forgotten in a back closet of a retail pharmacy for so long that some of the pills predated the 1969 moon landing. Most were 30 to 40 years past their expiration dates – possibly toxic, probably worthless… But to Lee Cantrell, who helps run the California Poison Control System, the cache was an opportunity to answer an enduring question about the actual shelf life of drugs: Could these drugs from the bell-bottom era still be potent?" Turns out, yeah, mostly. Also note that drugs in pharmacies and hospitals are stored properly in temperature (and sometimes humidity) controlled settings. Unlike the drugs in your medicine cabinet exposed to your half-an-hour hot showers… or a I may be speaking about myself here. So, yes, expanding "expiration dates" could save money in healthcare, but the pharma industry has no incentive (and a lot of legal reasons to not) get extra testing to expand those dates.
As anyone who works in the medical field knows, you can't trust what you read on the internet. Even in those Google quick topic boxes.
"On May 12, the 1,000-foot-wide (305 meters) Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico detected 'some very peculiar signals' apparently emanating from Ross 128, a red dwarf star that lies just 11 light-years from Earth." Say, when did Tobias Buckell visit Arecibo? (Dun dun duuuuun). Now, they're the first to say it's most likely not aliens because it hasn't been repeated and there's no other evidence (like laser light emissions) from Ross 128 which has held the attention of SETI researchers before this. "'The signals consisted of broadband quasi-periodic nonpolarized pulses with very strong dispersion-like features,' Abel Mendez, director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico, wrote…." Say, what would our SETI signature look like in the early twentieth century as we discovered and experimented with wireless transmissions of increasing power?
Take trip and never leave the farm. "With OpenSpace, you can fly over Martian mountaintops and swoop through the deep canyons of Valles Marineris with the highest-resolution views from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), creating sort of a Google Earth for Mars. And that's just the beginning; the makers of OpenSpace said they aim to ultimately map the entire known universe with dynamic and interactive visualizations created from real scientific data."
"The questions are part of an approach to care aimed at giving people with memory loss and other cognitive problems a greater sense of control and independence. At its core is the idea that an individual with dementia should be treated as a whole person and not 'just' a patient." That sense of control and independence is very important. They may not have much, but even having a little is life affirming.
"State legislatures and city halls are battling over who gets to set the minimum wage, and increasingly, the states are winning." Unfortunately it's the cities who have been raising the wages and the states wanting to roll them back. And the battle of home-rule continues unabated or resolved.
"And the story kept growing stranger." Except there's not much difference between those who hold violence ideologies except for the excuses they give themselves to justify their violence. "It's important to note no one in these cases has been charged with terrorism." Guess at the complexion of the suspects. Oh, it isn't any fun unless you guess.
"President Donald Trump said Monday that he doesn’t like 'Pinocchios,' referring to the Washington Post’s metric for pointing out politicians’ lies in fact-checking columns. Minutes later, he delivered a whopper of an untruth." I think I see the problem. (Grokked from John Scalzi)
"House Republican leaders have whistled past questions about the practicality of the spending levels (in the budget) they are proposing and instead have made the case to rank-and-file House members that passing the budget resolution — because of the reconciliation instructions — represents the only way to ensure a successful tax bill." Or, we'll fix it in rewrite. Although, technically (IIRC), this isn't a "budget" bill (which is typically passed in the Spring, I could be wrong, it's been a very distracting year), this is the appropriations bill (which is needed for the government to actually spend any money). The media tends to call each the "budget", which can make it confusing. So this is the real deal. Although they talk about "future spending", which isn't usually a part of appropriations (which is a "from Oct 1 of this year to the end of September next year, you can spend this much on these things" bill).
On the "Repeal and Do Our Term Paper the Night Before" healthcare plan now rising like a zombie to ravage the Senate. Yeah. They're going to kill us all.
And what this failure means for the Republican brand. Note, it's not Trump's fault. It's never Trump's fault. That's why he's known as the deal maker and successful businessman because none of his fuckups are his own fault. It's always someone else's fault. Because he doesn't understand that when you're in charge, when you're the leader, every fuckup is yours and yours alone (especially in politics). Victory has a thousand parents, failure is a solitary business. Except Trump sees that in reverse.
"According to Tuesday reports, in their second conversation, Trump spoke with (Putin) for roughly an hour, joined only by Putin's translator. The meeting had previously gone without mention by the administration." You know, you try and dismiss these collusion rumors, and then they pull something like this. (Grokked from Chuck Wendig)
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