Quodsi ea mihi maxime inpenderet tamen hoc animo fui semper, ut invidiam virtute partam gloriam, non invidiam putarem. I have always been of the opinion that infamy earned by doing what is right is not infamy at all, but glory.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero
I think so, Brain … but why warn Trigger but not the other horses?
The Zeroth Rule of the Internet: Never try to outcrazy Stacy McCain.
This one’s a star cluster not a firecracker.
M80 is in the constellation Scorpius between the stars α Scorpii (Antares) and β Scorpii in a part of the Milky Way rich in nebulae. When viewed with a modest amateur telescope (like mine), it appears as a mottled ball of light. This Hubble image shows more detail. M80 is roughly 95 light-years in diameter. It contains several hundred thousand stars, making it one of the more densely populated globular clusters in the galaxy.
M80 contains a fair number of blue stragglers, stars that appear to be much younger than the cluster itself. Astronomers believe that these stars lost part of their outer layers during close encounters with other cluster members or as the result of collisions between stars in the tightly packed cluster. Images from Hubble show regions with very high blue straggler densities which suggests that the center of the cluster probably has a very high capture and collision rate.
Image Credit: NASA
This episode of Yours Truly, Johnny Atsign first ran seven years ago today.
* * * * *
ANNOUNCER: From Westminster, it’s time for—
SOUND: Old fashioned telephone bell rings four times.
JOHNNY: (Groggy) Johnny Atsign.
PRO BONO: (Telephone Filter) Good morning, Johnny. Did I wake you?
JOHNNY: Ah, yeah. It’s 5 o’clock out here on the West Coast.
PRO BONO: (Telephone Filter) Sorry about that, but this is important. You’re done out there, aren’t you?
JOHNNY: I’ve run down all the leads we’ve got.
PRO BONO: (Telephone Filter) OK. Look, I’ve got you booked on a 9 am flight from LAX to Chicago. There’s more digging to do there.
MUSIC: Theme up and under.
ANNOUNCER: The Lickspittle Broadcasting System presents W. J. J. Hoge in the transcribed adventures of the man with the action-packed Twitter account, America’s fabulous free-lance Internet investigator …
JOHNNY: Yours Truly, Johnny Atsign!
MUSIC: Theme up to music out. Continue reading
Some folks rail against other folks, because other folks have what some folks would be glad of.
—Henry Fielding
Georgia has early voting at polling places. Delaware does not.
Georgia has no-excuse absentee ballots. Delaware does not.
Georgia allows voters who are more than 150 ft from a polling place to receive food or drink even if they are in line to vote. Delaware does not.
Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines are incorporated in the State of Delaware. If they were serious about supporting voting rights, they would move to another state.
I think so, Brain … but where would be keep the excess neptunium?
MLB has moved the All Star Game from Atlanta (39 % White/54 % Black) to Denver (69 % White/10 % Black) because Georgia will begin requiring voters to show ID just as they must in Colorado.
I suppose that makes sense because Colorado’s raaaaacist election laws affect a smaller proportion of its population than Georgia’s.
Nighttime temperatures at Jezero Crater on Mars can drop to -90 C which can damage unprotected electrical components and ruin batteries. However, the Ingenuity helicopter survived its first night after being deployed from the Perseverance rover on 3 April. If all goes well, Ingenuity will be the first aircraft to attempt powered, controlled flight on another planet.
Image Credit: NASA
The members of Team Kimberlin lie so much that I wound up publishing posts called Prevarication Du Jour. Some days even wound up with a Bonus Prevarication Du Jour. One appeared seven years ago today.
* * * * *
Here’s the sort of nonsense that the Cabin Boy™ is tweeting on his protected Twitter account:
Well, let’s see who’s lying.
Here is my answer to his petition for writ of certiorari. It does not even mention Parkinson’s Disease.
Perhaps he means my answer to his motion for reconsideration of the Court of Appeals denial of a stay of the peace order pending appeal. Here are his motion and my answer. In his paragraph 8 he alleges that his Parkinson’s Disease makes travel to Westminster impractical. My answer denies that based on evidence of scheduling arrangements he had already made. I didn’t deny that he had Parkinson’s Disease, I denied the level of incapacitation he claimed—based on evidence.
Ahem.
UPDATE—I denied that the Cabin Boy™ was so incapacitated that it was impractical for him to appear in court for a hearing on his own motion to amend the peace order, and, behold, he appeared in court on 16 October at the hearing. That tends to confirm my analysis.
UPDATE 2—I’m informed that Schmalfeldt has a laundry list of questions I “must” answer over at Patriot-Ombudsman.
Yawn.
He just doesn’t understand that he has no standing as the Grand Inquisitor of the Interwebz, and that no one owes him any answers about anything.
* * * * *
Given that the Cabin Boy™ claims to be a genuine GS-13 editor with actual Navy PR flack training (JO rating), he must have missed the day they covered fact checking.
He is happy, whose circumstances suit his temper; but he is more excellent, who can suit his temper to any circumstances.
—David Hume
Science Alert reports that accurate testing of the so-called EM reactionless drive showed that it does not produce any thrust. A previous test at NASA Eagleworks lab claimed to have detected thrust, but at a statistically insignificant level.
The latest attempt to replicate the shocking results has resulted in a simple answer: the Eagleworks measurement was from heating of the engine mount, not any new physics.
The Conservation of Momentum is a bedrock principle of Physics, so no one should be surprised when a real world apparatus conserves momentum. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
I think so, Brain … so an ape, a lizard, and a robot walk into a bar …
Video Credit: ESO
Vandalism is quite rare in my neighborhood, but during the first couple of years of my writing about Team Kimberlin, there were several incidents at stately Hoge Manor. One morning, I found that my car had four flat tires, and seven years ago today, I ran this post titled This Afternoon’s Adventure.
* * * * *
This is what the front door to my house looked like as I returned home from work this afternoon.
The door handle was properly attached and not the least bit loose when I left for work. It appears that while my wife and I were gone today, someone pulled so hard on the handle that the screw at the bottom was striped out of the door. Note the broken material around the screw hole.
Not knowing whether this was vandalism or an attempted break in, I called the Sheriff’s Office and then walked around the house to see if any of the other doors or windows had been disturbed. Nothing else was wrong, and the dead bolt on the front door was still locked. When a deputy arrived, we went in, cleared the house, and found nothing wrong. Some fingerprints were lifted and paperwork filled out, and the adventure, such as it was, came to an end.
Hmmmm.
* * * * *
Part of Team Kimberlin’s response to that post was to make snide remarks about the cheap door on my house. In fact, the door was not overly pricey, but it was more expensive than most exterior doors. It’s made of composite material that has better insulating properties than most of materials available when we replaced the original front door a couple of decades ago.
Our policy was to provide an affluent life for the people. There were mistakes made in carrying it out. Several thousand people may have died.
—Pol Pot
I think so, Brain … but which came first, the Peeps or the marshmallow eggs?
The Veil Nebula is about 2,100 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus (the Swan), making it a relatively close neighbor in astronomical terms. It’s the visible portion of a supernova remnant formed around 10,000 years ago known as the Cygnus Loop.
This image which only shows a portion of the nebula. It was assembled from data taken using five different filters with the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope. Post-processing of the data brings out enhanced details of emissions from doubly ionized oxygen (blues) and ionized hydrogen and ionized nitrogen (reds).
Image Credit: NASA / ESA / Z. Levay
I find some of the parallels between various copyright trolls to be interesting. The TKPOTD from seven years ago today explored one.
* * * * *
Yesterday, I noted a similarity between the Prenda Law case and the Virginia Walker v. Kimberlin, et al. case—that both Penda’s lawyers and The Dread Pirate Kimberlin had taken the Fifth during civil lawsuits. There’s another parallel between Prenda and TDPK.
Porn.
Prenda is a copyright troll going after individuals who have downloaded pornographic videos for which it claims to control the copyrights.
Brett Kimberlin dealt pornography to other inmates while he was in prison and was also involved in a porn related lawsuit. There’s a section (pp., 202, 203) in Mark Singer’s book Citizen K that describes TDPK’s attempted suing of his source for $150,000 in damages because the porn wasn’t sufficiently exciting.
* * * * *
That porn LOLsuit was the first of the four RICO lawsuit that the Dread Deadbeat Pro-Se Kimberlin lost.
τί ζητεῖτε τὸν ζῶντα μετὰ τῶν νεκρῶν οὐκ ἔστιν ὧδε ἀλλὰ ἠγέρθη Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!
—Luke 24
I think so, Brain … but ethanol is just water with some extra hydrogen and a small carbon footprint.
Stacy McCain, Dianna Deeley, and I will be at our mics at 7 pm ET for the next episode of the The Other Podcast Live. Join us on Podbean.
Likely topics include Science Deniers, Misdemeanors, Baseball, and Crazy People Are Dangerous™.
Major League Baseball games are played in these American cities—
If they go woke and move the All Star Game out of Atlanta, they will likely find that a significant percentage in their fan base resides outside of those cities in flyover country. Local politics may not be good for a national pastime.
Video Credit: NASA