Old Man

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Killer Elite w/ Jason Statham, Clive Owen, Robert DeNiro. A well-executed but run-of-the-mill hitman movie, set in England and Oman in the 1980s. Fast paced and replete with chase scenes, melee combats that no real human could endure, and expositions about the morality of killing for hire. Loosely based on the novel The Feather Men by Ranulph Fiennes, which in turn was allegedly loosely based on reality. Worth the matinee price.

Re: Weird ship names requested. U.S. escort carriers were/are named after battles, e.g. Iwo Jima, Tarawa, Bunker Hill. You could extend this to include, say, Little Bighorn, Khe Sanh, Bay of Pigs, Operation Market Garden...

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN) There isn't much shielding you can really do. I believe neutrinos only interact through the weak nuclear force, so you can't do anything electromagnetic to stop them. But you can shield against other types of particles, if only by putting them behind lots and lots of matter, so that your neutrino detector detects only neutrinos and not stray protons or alpha particles or whatever. And then you pretty much look for a spike in the data at around the expected time. This is why neutrino detectors are usually built underground.

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN) The neutrinos in question seem to be coming out linearly from the collider parallel to the path of the initial particle beam. So in order to catch the neutrinos the detector has to be directly downstream.

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN) If we can--make the stutters--longer--more like occasional--pauses--for overdramatic emphasis--then we could call it--the Shatner drive!

Re: The "Nice Happy" Thread We have lots of heavy books, actually. Aside from my own, the older boy's obsessions with sharks and dinosaurs have felled many trees. But these bales of individually wrapped paper towels you get at Costco are fantastic for building with. The only thing that would make them better is if they could bear a kid's weight. This morning they were building cities and castles with the paper towels and laying into them with their nerf battle-axes. Would have been cuter if it weren't six thirty in the morning, but still pretty cool. It's not always this awesome with little kids in the house--not hardly. But they are the reason I am able to put up with the other areas of my life.

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Re: Musings on Random Musings Yes, but have you tried combining the two?

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN) Anyway, I found an interesting article that talks about possible non-error-related explanations for the result. In a nutshell the high energy of the collision may be ejecting the neutrinos out of the brane where they can travel at supraluminal speeds for a brief time, before they fall back in and become subject to relativity again. http://www.science20.com/alpha_meme/million_times_speed_light-83202

Re: The "Nice Happy" Thread Got home pretty late from a crummy day at work. Kids were still up even though it was past their bedtime. We built an awesome fort out of paper towel rolls, stuffed animals, and a blanket. One of them fell asleep in there. It's been so long since I was that age. I had almost forgotten what it was like.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings This is my life? Really?

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN) "Climategate" actually went pretty far toward disproving any sort of climate scientist conspiracy. These felons got thirteen years' worth of emails from hundreds of scientists and came up with one email that says "hide the decline" in a different context? Thanks for playing.

Re: More space news! Are these measurements at any particular wavelength?

Re: Quote of the Week From My Life. No, it'd be his maiden name.

Re: Jokes Some things are beyond even the omnipotent.

Re: The "Nice Happy" Thread Said the other rodent.

Re: "Neat" Pictures

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us Sounds to me like you need new players.

Re: Musings on Random Musings That was a long time ago--two versions at least. It might have been fixed by now, but at the time it was a known bug that Microsoft had no intention of fixing.

Re: Musings on Random Musings I used to do that before a relative of mine found the corrupt-your-file-if-you-save-too-often Word bug.

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

Re: Musings on Random Musings No, I was just working on a statement of work and Word "encountered a problem and had to close", i.e., crashed. I selected "reopen and retrieve my work", but it, like, didn't.

Re: Quote of the Week From My Life. Me: "Did you see my response to [stupid vendor]?" Young engineer: "Yeah, thanks for sending that, maybe now something will get done." Me: "That whole email thread read like a Keystone Kops episode." Young engineer: "What's Keystone Kops?" Me: *facepalm*

Re: The cranky thread Yes, but how many times has it been done well? Maybe they'll get it right eventually.