That's alright. It was just obvious there was more to it. Watching Man Bait (1952) and wondering why HR never sent me a clerk who looked like that. Sigh.
It has been anticipated for 20+ years that CA will attempt a succession and then join either Mexico or China as their tea leaves indicate. Perhaps all 3 will happen and make an even bigger China. Perhaps this will be the decade that happens.
As you have learned as many have learned since the 1950s, no matter how fast your car is, you can't outrun the radio. It is foolish to do so and only encourages them to arrest, if not actually simply shoot.
So strange. Here when everything else checks out and they see your license tags are expired the first time they just give you a warning notice and enter it in the system as Warning Issued. The second time if it is more than 3 days later they may impound the vehicle (if you can't afford your own tow truck) and release with a summons. You can get the car back if you quickly register it and pay the impound fee upon presenting proof of new registration. But you still have to go to court and may have to pay a fine. Happened to me once ,decades ago. No one said give me your wallet at the traffic stop. For a simple 'dead tags' an arrest does not usually follow. Of course if one is under the influence at the time of the stop, or had a dead driver's license, etc. then an arrest with a complete search makes sense. But even then, after the Magistrate sets Bond and you leave the jail, you get your stuff back. So what did you leave out of your tale?
Why be diplomatic to a thief like Russia? Ukraine was never part of post 1992 Russia and never will be. If you find a burglar in your house would you negotiate with him? Or would you just exterminate the thief as is your Biblical right?
By NYC standards the crowds at the courthouse were small, much smaller than the Police and Court Security were prepared for. It seems Trump doesn't have nearly as many unpaid supporters as he claims. Of course just like last time he will do what was done before and PACs will pay for some unemployed people to attend the rallies and wave Trump flags. Obciously if he loses in the primaries that will be fake news and he really won them. .
"3) Nato promised not to expand east in 1991, so Soviet agreed to dismatle. After that how many more countries was enrolled?""
Total BS on both counts. The USSR fell apart under it[s own weight and in just 3 days that government no longer existed. NATO didn't make any such promise to the USSR. There was no need to, the USSR was dead and gone and history with it's former citizens now citizens of the new territorials the collapse caused.
Some parts of the former USSR call themselves Russian. Of course they are not because Russia ended when the Czar and his family were murdered and the USSR was created. No one born in the USSR after 1919 and before 1992 was ever a Russian citizen before 1992. They are just former Soviets. Yes people born after 1992 inside the land called Russia are Russian citizens. No one else is and certainly not Ukrainians. who never were.
There is no common sense in ending the conflict as long as Russians are in Ukraine's lands, or before the Kremlin lays in ruins. Which way it goes is up to Putin. That said, Ukraine's forces in bakhumet, inside Bakhumet while agreeing Wagner group has troops at the old city hall and controls the parks East of the river, totally dispute they have lost the city. Fighting and the death of Russians in the city continue.
Yes, growing old is a bummer. Number of people I knew when I was 5 still alive, 2. Number of (other) people I knew when I was 12 still alive, 1. Number of (other) people I knew when I was 16 still alive, 0. Number of people I have known in the past half century who are dead now, thousands and many were friends and or lovers.. Nothing lasts forever. We change and adapt, or we join the dead. Sometimes we join the dead anyway. Such is the way.
[quote=jac_the_gripper The thought of other life out there is likely pretty mind-blowing for most people. If other life is discovered, or even more so if contact is made, I'd be pretty miffed if I were deprived of that profundity during my lifetime.An Exoplanet is a planet orbiting a star other than our own. As of 1 March 2023, there are 5,332 confirmed exoplanets. They orbit 3,931 other stars. There were some studies done in the 1970s regarding chemistry based life (like ours). It was determined there were really only 2 elements that could combine with Oxygen and and perform the full range of biological functions needed to form cells and higher organisms. One is Carbon, which is the one known Earth life uses. Carbon based life requires the presence of both Hydrogen and Oxygen. Fortunately on our planet those are usually found together in the form we call water. For us on our planet Carbon Hydrogen and Oxygen with a little Nitrogen thrown in (the combination is usually called CHNO and with various numbers between the letters it forms the basis of many, many things on Earth). Luckily our atmosphere is just full of Nitrogen as a gas we breath. The other element that can support life is Silicon There is however a problem with Silicon based life existing on our planet. The postulated respiration by-product of a Silicon based life form that uses Oxygen for it's electron exchanges is SiliconDiOxide. On Earth Silicon DiOxide is a quartz. Breathing it out here would be painful. At a much higher temperature and pressure than a human could survive that quartz becomes more breathable. If silicon based life does exist somewhere, we probably won't have much contact with such creatures nor would they be terribly excited about coming here. We would turn to ash on their world and they would burst from internal pressure and suffocate here while also freezing. So we won't waste time on them and theirgiant molten worlds. To find life, we should probably find water first. As of 1 March 2023 there are 23 moons and planets with water (including Earth) in our solar system. Most of it is ice. Some far away moons are literally coated with ice that is miles thick. Because of internal planet heat it is possible down at the bottom there is liquid water and life of some kind, but not accessible in any way with today's technology and probably not for hundreds of years to come. Look instead for a world close enough to it's sun (aka the habitable zone) to have liquid water in a stable orbit, hopefully about the same size as Earth if you want to find life. Star Trek called worlds fitting that description with Oxygen atmospheres Class M planets. Earth is a class M planet. Using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, scientists have identified an Earth-size world, called TOI 700 e, orbiting within the habitable zone of its star – the range of distances where liquid water could occur on a planet’s surface. The world is 95% Earth’s size and likely rocky. There are three other planets in that star system. It is suspected one of the others may also have water. So that is two worlds where life is possible, both orbiting a Red dwarf star which is only 218 light years from Earth. The years there are short with a complete rotation of that sun only taking less than a month our time. Meanwhile Hubble has determined a large world in the Leo Constellation orbiting the sun known as K2-18 which reveals the molecular signal of the presence of water. This star is only 110 Light years away from us. That planet is in the Habitable zone making much of that water liquid. Since that world has 8 times the mass of Earth the gravity is much more than Earth's. Additionally that star, another red dwarf, is pretty active and there may be a lot of radiation hitting that planet. Not a good vacation spot. My point is we are just beginning to look and already we have found 3 worlds where life can, in theory exist
I am a tank buff and have been for about half a century. I have old technical and field manuals for a dozen different ones ranging from British Mk Vs to M48s. What I like about White Tiger was the incredibly rare shots of tank variants not seen in any other movie I know of. In it, besides the 2 variants if T35s, we also see a Matilda(!), an M3 Grant (I think H. Bogart's 'Sands of the Sahara' was the only other movie I have seen with an M3 Grant, Soviet BTs, okay 'My Way' had some decent mock ups of those. A friggin KV1(!!!) I don't think I have ever seen either KV variant in a movie before, Pzkpf IIIs and a IVH, a V and of course a Pzkpf VI (Tiger 1), There was even a quick shot of a JSI without it's auxiliary fuel tanks. I didn't care about the plot, for me it was just very cool to see tanks most folks alive today don't even know o, but which dominated many battles 70+ years ago.
We are already sending signals they read. We are all amused that because it is not announced you decide we have not received return messages. Need to know, decided by others is the operative phrase. Most humans have zero need to know.
Okay. General browning of the British Army was out of his depth when he was placed in charge of the 1st British Airborne Division and later the 1st Allied Airborne Army. He was a good pencil pusher and would have made a good S1 (Admin and training) or S4 (Logistics) officer, but he was a terrible S3 (Operations), then someone (Churchill and Montgomery) put him in charge, A string of cancelled Paratrooper operations left him growing desperate to come up with something to justify his remaining in charge and not be replaced by an American General as Ike wanted. He was assigned to develop a plan for Market Garden the securing of bridges in Holland while an American tank force came up the road connecting the bridge. He ignored advice and warnings of opposing forces and made plans to split his forces with different segments arriving on different days and places linking up as each preceding element advanced on schedule to its rendezvous, hopefully.. He ran the broad outline of the plan by General Montgomery without bothering him with details. When the concept was approved over the objections of Generals Patton and Bradley, General Eisenhower approved it. General Browning then ordered the British, American and Polish forces under his command to go forth and take all of the bridges. They did try. His operation to capture bridges too far away will always be used as a synonym for an impossible task. A Bridge Too Far. Excellent cast.
I retired my diver's watches when cell phones came out as being redundent as the phone shows the time. However, sometimes I work in places that don't allow cell phones inside. In such places I wear a cheap $20 Casio I got at Walmart.
Too simplistic. Which future and whose? Each decision made by each atom or molecule spins off a whole new entire Universe. Did the ball bounce to the left, go up, or did it go to the right? Somewhere there are an infinite number of Universes where it did the other thing. Then there are the futures coming from our kicking the ball when in others we threw it. The Universe where the dog died at 1PM is a different Universe than the one where it died 5 minutes earlier. Each has their own futures and end results. Then there are the other planets and things happening ther.
I suspect the slow moving ones that vanish when they hit the water are just a very, very old Earth life form we didn't ever before have the technology to notice. I am envisioning a large collection of Amoeba like cells linking together until they have an enclosure, then filling it with Hydrogen gas they profuse. Many Earth organisms have cells that produce H202 including our own internal white blood cells (which is how they kill foreign invading cells). If the organisms contain chlorpasts to make chlorophyll with, then sunlight feeds them and of course they could gather moisture from any cloud. Think of hollow Jellyfish and you get the idea. If they also have cell structures like those an electric eel does, well that explains why when it gets too close a fighter plane's electronics would act up. Like any living organism they would produce heat. Trapped air and moisture inside their balloon structure would also heat and expand. When they let it vent that would explain both their propulsion and their changing shape in flight. Being only 1 or 2 cells thick at the cell wall or course they would be translucent and almost transparent. Collectively they would offer enough thermal deviation from the background atmosphere for the thermal sensor on an AIM9W missile to lock in. Knock them down with a missile explosion and of course they would let go of each other when impact with the ground stunned them. No debris except maybe some patches of slime generated. Later on the survivors would regroup, form a new much smaller balloon and begin to inflate and rise again. Indeed that is probably their life cycle. They grow until their cell wars lack the strength to hold them together, breach, fall to Earth or the sea, then start anew. It is highly probable that infant cell balloons historically lay behind most human tales of ghosts, spirits over a elementary, or angels passing overhead. .If I am right they are just another of the many life forms we share this planet with and they have probably been here since the first reptiles crawled out of the sea. All that has changed is we now have the technology to detect the larger ones. Utterly benign and harmless.
I love the old watches. This is my Grandfather's Rockford Winnebago. I had it serviced in 2015. It still runs well. I also have a 1957 Hamilton Railroad Watch.
The cap on purchases of Russian oil by the West just began a few hours ago. China wants it, but the pipeline there is, is not big enough. Russia has only 10% of the oil tankers it would need to supply China, and those can't get the needed oil spill insurance anyway. China will have to just build it[s own pipeline as it takes it's territory back.
Ken_19 Blog Comments (3,903)
RE: #15
ibid