AdamSmith

Interesting! What are they really up to?

I think this subtle pope is crazy like a Jesuit. He has not wrenched any set dogma into a new position from which it would snap back to orthodoxy immediately on his demise. But I think what many may dismiss as atmospherics are actually his efforts to weaken the mortar in the edifice of the Church's top-down structure, and insinuate if not exactly bottom-up then at least a movement toward middle-out governance that may gain enough momentum to live beyond him. We'll see.

'Bloom County 2015': Berkeley Breathed Revives Comic StripFans of the well-loved comic strip Bloom County are celebrating this morning, after cartoonist Berkeley Breathed issued the first panels of his satirical strip in decades. Breathed won a Pulitzer Prize for his work on Bloom County back in 1987; two years later, he quit producing it. On Sunday, he posted a photo of himself to Facebook in which he sat in front of a computer screen with an empty cartoon template titled Bloom County 2015. "A return after 25 years. Feels like going home," he wrote. And on Monday, one of Breathed's central characters, Opus, awoke from his long slumber with a question: "That was some nap!! How long was I out, Milo?" "25 years." Breathed released the new strip via Facebook. The most popular comment on his post seems to sum up many fans' response: "And suddenly the world is back in alignment. Thank you Sir." Fans of Bloom County had been anticipating the strip's return — particularly after Breathed responded to a commenter's request for new material last week by writing, "Watch this space." The strip's return promises to reunite readers with Opus, Bill the Cat and other characters that were previously seen just in Breathed's two Sunday-only strips, Outland (1989-1995) and Opus (2003-2008). They're likely to have plenty to talk about: Bloom County, whose small-town characters often found absurdity in America's cultural and political life, returns as the country heads into a new presidential election season. It's unclear whether Breathed will syndicate his new work in newspapers; he recently recalled how an editorial dispute with a publisher had a direct role in his decision to quit cartooning in 2008. His Facebook postings, Breathed said earlier this month, are "nicely out of reach of nervous newspaper editors, the PC humor police now rampant across the web ... and ISIS." When Bloom County went idle in 1989, it was one of several clever and inventive comic strips, such as Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side, that were beloved by fans and yet were also comparatively short-lived. Today, devoted fans are treating its return as a small miracle. "As every day there's some part of my childhood dying off, this morning I awoke to see one part be brought back to life," a reader named John Lowry wrote on Facebook. "Thank you from the bottom of my heart Mr. Breathed, you made my day!" http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/13/422545636/bloom-county-2015-berkeley-breathed-revives-comic-strip

Urine Nation?

I see a companion to the Fart Filtering Underwear thread.

Neat astronomical virtual-observatory web site: http://main.slooh.com ..."Slooh" a cute webification of "slew" the telescope into position to look at whatever. Nothing to do with slaying the telescope although you sometimes want to do that because you didn't balance it right and it keeps vibrating, or you just brought it out from the warm house into the cold and so thermal air currents in the tube are fucking up the seeing, or you dropped an eyepiece on the ground and can't find it, or the finder scope seems to be aligned approximately 90 degrees off from the main telescope, or...

Well, this is a relief. After a gung-ho group of businessmen and like boosters got Boston into the bidding to host the 2024 Olympics, the local populace woke up and said Whoa Nellie. And today Mayor Walsh poured enough cold water on the process that Boston appears to have been spared what I have no doubt would have been a ruination of the city in many ways: http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jul/27/boston-mayor-2024-olympic-bid-doubt

Exactly! Expenditure does not necessarily equal efficacy.

Yes, Mr. Clemens. On the other hand: "Winter temperatures in San Francisco are quite temperate, with highs between 55øF and 60øF and lows in the 45øF to 50øF range..." http://ggweather.com/sf/narrative.html

Relief as San Francisco tests out urine-repellent paint Anyone urinating on the specially treated walls will get the spray splashed back on to them http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/26/relief-as-san-francisco-tests-out-urine-repellent-paint

I did sneak in "thus far." And as you know I intend to live forever.

The formerly pacifist Oppenheimer's answer to all who resisted his efforts to recruit them to Los Alamos: "What if Hitler gets it first?"

More Atomic Cafe stuff: http://www.rockyflatscoldwarmuseum.org/ Web site about the Rocky Flats, Colorado nuclear weapons site, with fascinating oral-history interviews (transcripts and recordings) with people who worked there.

People like him make me realize just how little I've accomplished thus far in life.

Dr. Brian May blogs about his experience with the New Horizons team and shares his stereo images of Pluto in this July 20, 2015 entry from his website: "***Mon 20 July 15*** FIRST HIGH QUALITY REAL STEREO IMAGE OF PLUTO First high quality REAL stereo image of Pluto. I had an unforgettable 3 days with the amazing New Horizons team. I’m still 'coming down’. Alan Stern, leader of the Science Team at APL in Laurel, Maryland, personally made sure I was treated like one of the family, as a collaborator, and I felt privileged to the nth degree. I was, of course, as always, obsessed with finding stereoscopic opportunities while I was there, and the Gods of the Underworld must have been with me, because I was there when the first 2 by 2 mosaic full-planet picture was downloaded from the probe, and assembled into exactly the required highish res partner to the iconic ‘last-look’ photo which preceded the final fly-by. Baseline must be a few hundred thousand miles, but I’ll need to check that. Of course the New Horizons guys were already doing serious science on this image as it arrived, but I was able to assemble the two images to make the most satisfying stereo view I can ever remember making. I got some help making some prints on site, so I was able to show this 3-D to the entire team through the lenses of some OWLS I took over. So this is definitely the first REAL high quality stereo image of Pluto in history. And we can say it’s officially NH approved ! No fiddling this time. The right image is the ‘last-look’ photo from 15th July, and the left image is the ‘two-by-two downloaded from NH on the 17th. All I did was fine-adjust the orientations to match up, and match up the colouring by eye. ENJOY ! High quality stereo image of Pluto assembled by Brian May. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI If you’ve been following the New Horizons mission closely, you’ll have seen Amy Teitel’s Pluto in a Minute videos. Well, before I left, we did one together, which I think will make you smile. It features this stereo view, so now you can see it as she saw it at that moment (we got a good ‘wow!'). We’ll post up a link to that vid as soon as we have it. Cheers Bri" Republished with permission of the author. To view the images of Pluto in 3-D, you need to buy or make a stereoscopic viewer.​ Dr. Brian May has been fascinated by stereoscopic imaging since he was a child. In this interview with "Pluto in a Minute" producer Amy Teitel, he demonstrates how he brings New Horizons Pluto photos to life in 3-D.

I Did Not Know That... Rock Star/Astrophysicist Dr. Brian May Goes Backstage with New Horizons Queen lead guitarist and astrophysicist Dr. Brian May and NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden discuss the New Horizons mission prior to a science briefing on July 17, 2015 in Washington, D.C. Dr. May described the long weekend with the New Horizons team as “the best birthday gift ever.” Credits: NASA/Joel Kowsky As lead guitarist for the legendary rock group Queen, Brian May has spent an entire career in the spotlight. But last week, May traded the music for his other passion – science – and spent some time backstage with the New Horizons team as it dived into the first results from the Pluto flyby. May, who has a doctorate in astrophysics, was awed by the opportunity to meet the team and sift through images and other Pluto system data in real time. And he’ll have other opportunities down the road, as mission principal investigator Alan Stern added May as a New Horizons science collaborator. Astrophysicist Dr. Brian May is recognized during a July 17, 2015 New Horizons science briefing at NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C. May spent a long birthday weekend with the science team, attending two morning science plenaries, a meeting with the Student Dust Counter group, and working on stereo images of Pluto with the Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team. http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/nh-brian-may-conference.jpg

That was from here: https://www.facebook.com/classicalartmemes?fref=photo

It's always something.

My very favorite Johnson bon mot was what he said about Paradise Lost: "None ever wished it longer."

I 'Liked' your post, but come to think, who is 'SA'? Sam Adams? The brew meister? Dr Johnson became a teetotaler later in life and quite insufferable about it too.

What a great time waster instructional resource! http://www.samueljohnson.com/index.html