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marjaerwin
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In early August, the two Gothic armies converged from Cabyle [Yambol] and near Dibaltum [Debelt] towards Hadrianopolis [Edirne] and Ostodizum/Nice [Havsa]. [For simplicity, these will be described as the western and eastern armies, because I'm not convinced that the former was more 'Thervingian' or the latter was more 'Greuthungian.'] At the same time the Roman armies concentrated near Hadrianopolis and advanced against their Gothic opponents.
The Antonine Itinerary lists a road from Cabyle to Hadrianopolis, but archaeologists have not yet located it. If the road passed west of the Tonzus [Tundzha] River, it could have passed immediately west of the Tonzus Gorge. In this case, the Gothic army would need to cross to the east bank of the Tonzus River, preferably at a safe distance from the Roman Army, possibly north of the Tonzus Gorge. If the road passed east of the Tonzus [Tundha] River, it could have passed immediately east of the Tonzus Gorge, or through the [Bujuk Dervent] Pass. In this case, the Gothic army would avoid the need to cross the river.
The Antonine Itinerary lists a road from Anchialus and Dibaltum to Ostodizum/Nice, but archaeologists have only located parts of it. Konstantin Gospodinov argues that the road passed through the [Strandzha] Pass and then forked, with the main branch leading to Hadrianopolis and a secondary branch leading to Ostodizum/Nice.
Ammianus notes that Valens stationed light infantry and light cavalry to watch the passes through the Sakar and Strandzha mountains. The Roman outposts were unable to stop the Gothic armies from crossing the passes [on about August 5th]. The western Gothic army kept fifteen miles from Hadrianopolis while marching towards Nice. They had marched some three days from the pass when Fritigern sent a presbyter to Valens to negotiate [on August 8th]. The next day Valens and the Roman army marched out to attack the western Gothic camp [on August 9th].
Ammianus notes that the Roman army set out shortly after dawn. Ammianus' text is unclear whether the Roman army marched for eight miles or eight hours before reaching the Gothic camp. However, he states that the Romans marched through the middle of the day, apparently states that the armies fought through the afternoon, though his semi-astrological language is again unclear, and states that Valens fell after nightfall. I think this suggests a march of eight hours, and closer to fifteen miles than eight.
[Muratçali] and [Demirhanli] are the most widely-suggested battlefields. Simon MacDowall argues for [Muratçali], while Ferdinand Rünkel and Peter Donelly argue for [Demirhanli].
[Muratçali] is a defensible site, with reliable water supplies, and with woods and swamps impeding any approach from the south. But if the western Gothic army is marching towards Nice, and keeping its distance from the Roman army, [Muratçali] is in the wrong direction. [Muratçali] is about ten miles from [Edirne], ten miles from the Tonzus Gorge, and twelve miles from the [Bujuk Dervent] Pass.
[Demirhanli] is not as defensible, but it is in the right direction. [Demirhanli] is about ten miles from [Edirne], nineteen miles from the Tonzus Gorge, and seventeen miles from the [Bujuk Dervent] Pass.
Ammianus notes that the Gothic armies camped within a rampart of carts and wagons. Zosimus notes that the Gothic armies had many wagons, but does not note the rampart. Oxen were the most common draft animals in the Roman world. Oxen would limit the pace of any large Gothic army.
I suspect the western Gothic army arrived by the [Bujuk Dervent] Pass following the Cabyle-Hadrianopolis road. Once they were out of the mountains, they reached rolling hills cut by several northeast-southwest streams. A direct route towards Ostodizum/Nice would have required repeated zigs across the streams and zags along the ridges. An alternative route would take one long zig making for the Tarpudisum-Ostudizum road below the mountains, perhaps somewhere around modern [Geçkinli], and then one long zag along the Tarpudisum-Ostudizum road.
As noted above, Ammianus states that the western Gothic army kept fifteen miles from Hadrianopolis. Depending on the location of the Tarpudisum-Ostodizum road, this alternative route would bring them no closer than thirteen miles and no farther than seventeen miles from Hadrianopolis, while an approach through [Demirhanli] would put them only ten miles from Hadrianopolis. More importantly, this route would have kept the western Gothic army farther from the Roman armies and closer to the eastern Gothic army arriving by the [Strandzha] Pass.
On flat ground, oxen can move about twelve miles each day, usually at one-and-a-half to two miles an hour; allowing two miles of work to form the wagon rampart each day, the army can move about ten miles each day. Climbing [Golam Dervent] Pass would take several hours' work, and the oxen could only move about three miles per day. Once they had topped the pass, they could move faster and might camp one or two miles south of the pass. As they descend into the plain, they can approach ten miles per day. Crossing [Syrt Chiftlik], [Syrt Mach], and the other ridges would take an extra half-hour's work each.
If they cross [Golem Dervent] Pass on [August 5th], they can move about twenty-five miles, crossing five ridges, in the next three days [August 6th through 8th]. A direct route, if it were practical, would leave them only about five miles from Nice [Havsa]. An alternative route, cutting towards the Tarpudisum-Ostudizum road, could at best reach modern [Haskoy] or at worst approach modern [Musuldzha].
I suspect the most likely battlefield is north of modern [Haskoy] and on the ridge west of the [Suloglu] River, especially if the Tarpudisum-Ostudizum road ran west of the river. No one spot stands out as more defensible than the rest of the ridge, although the area south and east of [Gechkinli] looks moderately defensible.
The largest uncertainty concerns Ammianus' meaning as he refers to 'the next three days,' probably from August 6th through August 8th. I assume he is referring to the next three days after the Goths cross the [Golem Dervent] Pass but I cannot be certain of this.
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olegvolk
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Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. Please leave any comments there. The guy with an advanced .308 bullpup topped with a Nightforce scope…
…or the kid with a GSG522 topped with a budget Primary Arms 1-4x?
PS: The kid should have been wearing safety glasses. That was fixed as soon as we noticed.
PPS: I notice that the PA scope is back in stock. $119 for a clear illuminated scope that holds recoil of 450Marlin is a pretty good deal.
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ilcylic
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THE GREAT SERPENT IS EATING THE SUN! EVERYBODY PANIC!
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bradhicks
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God knows how stupid this will sound, depending on how things turn out when the marchers reach McCormick Place, but I'm watching a little bit of the Chicago anti-war march provoked by the NATO summit there. Most of the police conduct looks like anything else you'd see at a routine, uneventful protest: lots of cops walking alongside the marchers, between them and the sidewalks, basic crowd-control, crowd-protection stuff. More of them are wearing helmets than I think makes any sense at this point, and even more of them are wearing visible armor vests, neither of which makes sense to me at this point, especially given the heat this weekend, but still pleasantly boring. Everybody looks miserably hot and exhausted on both sides.
But a little while ago, the protesters were being steered around a corner by the cops, presumably to make absolutely sure they didn't deviate from the approved parade route ... and at that corner, every single cop was in anti-riot helmets and, and here's the part that really caught my attention, every single one of them had their long anti-riot batons drawn and at the ready position.
If I'd been there, I would have wanted to stop at the barricade and ask one of them, at random, if he could spare a second to answer a question for me: "Officer, I'm not challenging your authority and I'm not going to cross this barricade. Can you help me with a question, though? In your personal opinion, not your supervisor's opinion, just your opinion, are the drawn, at the ready batons appropriate at this time? Do you, personally, think you need them, either to intimidate the crowd or because you think violence is imminent?" Either way, whether I got a "yes" or a "no" or a "no comment," I'd apologize for bothering him while he was working, thank him for his time, and move on. I wouldn't have been looking for an argument; I just really want to know?
So far, it's the only really weird-looking thing I've seen. Every protester and every other cop looks calm, if tired; that one squad looked like they were in a war zone. Everybody else looks, if anything, bored; they looked grimly terrified. I wonder what the hell they were thinking?
(This could all look either very stupid or very prescient in a couple of hours. It will pleasantly surprise me, and ever so slightly increase my faith in America, if there isn't a police riot when the protesters get to McCormick Place. This is an election year, peak "punch a hippy" season for Democrats.)
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jordan179
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Inspired by a comment I made to the blog of Sherwood Smith (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.7) sartorius).
He had written:
There is an entire subgenre, called Regency romance, that is largely built on Georgette Heyer's own alternate London.
and I replied:
Which is in turn largely built on Jane Austen's impression of Regency England. Here we have a different problem: Austen, who wrote fiction set in her own time, understood perfectly well how things worked and people thought, but
(1) did not always explain it in a way which someone from two centuries later -- why should she? She was a contemporary writer writing for a contemporary audience; and
(2) wrote from a particular point of view: that of a highly intelligent, in some ways idealistic and in some ways cynical unmarried gentlewoman, which is of course who she was; and
(3) advocated specific ideas, which were sometimes the ideals of her own particular class and generation, and sometimes her own personal obsessions, whether we tend to agree with them or not.
For instance, how many modern readers of Pride and Prejudice understand that the entail of an estate could only be set aside by the agreement of the entailed heir and at least in the case of some estates by Act of Parliament (which is the spur driving the plot: any Bennett sisters who don't marry well are going to be in trouble when Mr. Bennett dies)?
For that matter, how many modern readers grasp that the Regency economy was far smaller and less fluid than the modern one, which is why everyone's so obsessed with inheritences and wealthy marriages in the first place? Anyone not inheriting well or marrying into a good inheritance is facing a grim and possibly sterile future of very hard work which might only lead to a young grave. Jane Austen doesn't need to explain this to her readers (she avoided this herself only because her brothers loved her, and even then she had to suffer some of the humiliations of being a "poor relation."
Jane Austen's characters are obsessed by the simultaneous importance and difficulty of marrying for love, which Jane herself saw as essential because she had seen so many women marry purely for money and suffer miserable marriages in consequence. They did this because they (rightly) feared poverty: Jane herself had loved a man whom she could not marry because he lacked the means to support her well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Langlois_Lefroy
What must have made matters even more personally painful for Jane, he did become successful, and mainly through his own intelligence and skills -- meaning that she may have chosen wrongly, moved by her belief that he could not provide for her. But that's exactly the sort of thing that happened in an economy where the benefits of industrial capitalism had not yet spread widely through the population -- though Jane would never have seen it in those particular socioeconomic terms.
What modern readers most especially don't get about Jane Austen is that she was advocating a (mildly) radical position regarding love in marriage. At the time, the assumption was that one should marry for money, with "love" entering into it only in that one should at least avoid marrying someone one was likely to hate. Either love would blossom after marriage, or the couple would produce an heir or two and then settle into a routine of amicable cohabitation, perhaps seasoned by discreet adultery.
It was precisely the hypocrisy of the latter arrangement which Jane found reprehensible, which is why she insisted on marrying for love. Things could be worse: a wife with a truly hateful husband might find herself essentially beaten and raped at regular intervals, with little or no legal recourse (this is precisely the behavior that the modern concept of divorce for "crulety" was invented to address). As long as he didn't literally kill or at least noticably maim her, no outsider was likely to intervene.
Even a genial but irresponsible husband might be bad for the woman. There was no fortune so vast that enough gambling might not run through it, and almost all of the wife's property save for that specifically defined as "dowry" became the husband's upon marriage. A woman might make a "good" marriage in ordinary social and financial terms and have it ruined by a fool of a husband.
A word on reputation and hypocrisy. The importance of reputation is frequently overlooked or belittled by modern writers who don't understand how it worked and why it was so important in the world of two centuries ago.
This is a world in which the economy as a whole is poor by modern standards, both criminal and civil law enforcement is minimal and extremely expensive to those attempting to make use of it, and consequently people are much more thrown onto their own resources, both personal and social, than is common today outside of the Third World. In fact, if you think of Regency England as being a lot like a more cheerful, dynamic and reasonable version of, say, Guatemala, you wouldn't be going so far wrong: economically, what you have is a tiny wealthy elite -- not so rich by modern American standards; a small middle class, and a huge mass of grindingly poor and uneducated people at the bottom.
The last thing you want in a world like that is to do something that causes people to think poorly of yourself or your family. Men do not want to be seen as cowards, because a lot of the protection they and their family enjoy from criminal and other violence comes from the knowledge that they are willing and able to fight at need. Women do not want to be seen as promiscious, because a lot of the social respect they and their family enjoy from other men and women comes from the supposition of virtue in both wives and daughters: this is why their heirs are assumed legitimate and their heiresses virginal and thus suitable for respectable marriages. And neither sex wants to be seen as bankrupt, because this will cut off their credit and possibly lead to incarceration for unpaid debts.
This is more than just melodrama. Gentlemen fought duels -- confrontations with lethal weapons -- over what seem to us extraordinarily-trivial points of honor. Yes, these usually proved non-fatal (deliberately shooting wide was not uncommon unless one actually hated the opponent), but sometimes someone shot straight instead of deliberately missing, smoothbore pistols were not exactly modern match firearms, and any wound to the torso was usually fatal. One of these points of honor was the reputations of their wives, sisters, daughters and even mistresses.
Imprisonment for debt was not only legal but quite common. If anyone with money cared sufficiently for the debtor, his debt might be paid by a friend or relative; if not, hey, it wasn't the creditor who was spending the rest of his life in prison. Did I mention that criminal and civil prosecutions were both largely personal during this era? The creditor was not necessarily doing this to be evil either: if enough of his debtors defaulted, he might be unable to pay his debts too. People lived much closer to the edge of ruin then than is common today. Yes, even than is common right now in the middle of a Depression.
If you were deemed a coward, you might be exposed to all sort of insult by bullies, and bullying was then not uncommon among adults. If you were deemed a slut, likewise, and to rape as well (good luck proving it if you were a woman of bad reputation!) Your children were likewise so exposed.
If you were thought of poorly, for any reason, good luck getting financial credit. There were no credit reporting agencies at the time, and being "creditable" meant that bankers personally thought that you both had the means and the morals to be a good lending risk. And they could and did take into account all sorts of personal sins or even eccentricities with which no modern banker would bother.
Thus hypocrisy. If you were a cowardly man, you swaggerd and boasted and lied about your bravery, so that no one would suspect your cowardice. If you were a light woman, you held your nose high and sniffed and fainted with the best of them, so that no one would suspect your lechery. And man or woman, you dressed and ate and lived as well as you could afford, or better than you could really afford, and delayed and juggled and sometimes resorted to the most absurd ploys to hold off your creditors, so that no one would suspect your bankruptcy.
Hypocrisy was then not so much a character trait as a survival strategy. The only alternative to it was to be really BE brave (like Jane Austen's brothers) or virtuous (like Jane Austen herself) -- and even then, if you didn't act the part, people might suspect that you weren't. Hypocrisy bred conformity, because honest non-conformists tended to have short and miserable lives in a world constantly on the edge of ruin.
This doesn't come naturally to us, because we aren't. No, really: compared to them, we're all rich and secure in our lives.
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marjaerwin
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1. As an discussion of social injustice continues, the probability that some asshat will throw in a rape 'joke' increases.
2. If the discussion involves police brutality, infiltration, or the prison-industrial complex, the probability approaches unity.
3. If you try to use a rape 'joke' as an argument, you lose one internets.
4. Although there are many contexts where the argementem ad Hitlerum is appropriate, for example the ways those seeking war are responsible for the atrocities inherent in war, or the ways those supporting national-chauvinism are just plain wrong, I have yet to see any context where the argumentem e stupro is ever appropriate. If you use it, it just makes you look like you belong in the SCUM Manifesto instead of in this world.
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john_j_enright
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Police here have arrested a few people and accused them of making, or planning to make, Molotov cocktails. Alleged targets include Obama campaign HQ, Rahm Emanuel's home, and police stations.
The defense lawyer called it a set-up:At least two informants "ingratiated themselves" with the three men, brought the materials and made the alleged plans, he insisted, calling it "an entrapment to the highest degree." You have to be careful with the entrapment defense, since, like the insanity defense, it starts an admission that you did it.
Yes, your honor, I did it, but I've got a good excuse,
so I hope you'll let me loose.
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madfilkentist
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Operas have such a reputation for bad plotting that some people overconfidently nitpick them. Beethoven's Fidelio deserves some of the nitpicks it gets. Leonore infiltrates the prison disguised as a young man, and she's so successful that she gets engaged to the jailer's daughter rather than blow her cover. But there's at least one complaint that isn't justified by a careful reading. (Should I put up a spoiler alert? For an opera?)
As Leonore holds Pizarro at gunpoint down in the dungeon, a trumpet announces the arrival of Don Fernando. A few seconds later it sounds again, louder. Nitpickers point out that the trumpet shouldn't have moved, and there's no mention of a relay. But it actually makes sense. The exact stage direction is "Man hört die Trompete stärker," the trumpet is heard more strongly. Immediately after this second trumpet call, Jaquino appears at the top of the stairs and announces the Minister's arrival.
So it's very simple. The door was opened before the second trumpet call.
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olegvolk
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Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. Please leave any comments there. 
When I took the 522 carbine to the range first, I had a (broken) red dot sight with it — predictably, the results didn’t look useful until I removed it and used iron sights. The gun comes with several front sight posts (held in with a screw) but the one I had installed — a “big dot” type was not conducive to precision shooting. So I returned with a Primary Arms 1-4x scope.
I really like that scope: it’s cheap, sharp, fairly bright and holds more recoil than I am willing to experience myself. I’ve also been converting most of my rifles to Magpul type 2 slings.
For lack of a front sling loop, para cord around the sight tower had to do.
The ribbed surface is rubber and feels nice in hand. The charging handle would be a little longer.
The carbine has a good trigger. At 25 yards, I put most of a full 22-round magazine into one hole, losing my concentration on one shot. To me, this seems adequate for a plinker. Ammo: bulk Federal from 550-rd box. I did not have the time that day to re-shoot without a flinched shot. The gun runs with 30 or 40 grain ammunition equally well, and accuracy is also similar.
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john_j_enright
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This would have been a regular workday in downtown Chicago. But due to all the scare stories about the NATO confab and the protesters...
downtown
was mostly shut down.
I went to work. But a lot of people didn't. I think my morning train was one quarter full at best.
I saw the protesters go by my building 3 times. I had a good view. There weren't a lot of them. My favorite sign:
Give Class War A Chance!
Well, they've got 3 more days to protest before the NATO Show blows town.
Maybe this was just a warm up.
Maybe tomorrow they'll swarm up
in much bigger groups
of class warfare dupes.
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greendalek
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Magnificent work. Thank you Joss, thank you Scarlett and Gwyneth, thank you Mark and Chris E. and Chris H. and Robert Jr. and Clark and Jeremy and Stellan and Samuel L., and of course Mr. Hiddleston.
Thank you Mr. Silvestri (and also Mssrs. Doyle, Djawadi, Armstrong, and Harnell, who were definitely also present).
Thank you to each and every one of my LJ friends and my Facebook friends for not spoiling a single thing these past two weeks.
And most of all, thank you Mssrs. Simon, Kirby, Lee, Arad, Heck, Leiber, Rico, Bendis, and Allred, for coming up with all of this.
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jwz
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Ad·ver·sary calls out Combichrist for being misogynistic, racist fuckheads -- while opening for them.It was when I got booked to play Kinetik, and I found out that I was scheduled to open for Nachtmahr and Combichrist. Given how strongly I feel about the way they do what they do, I didn't think I could just get up there and play and pretend as though I wasn't going to be followed by these two acts that I've openly criticized. I actually considered just cancelling my performance, and being done with it. I don't want to be associated with what they do, and I don't want to be a support act for them, even in a festival setting. But I took some time to think about it, and at some point I was listening to Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death and thought, "What would Jello Biafra do?" He'd use the stage time to tell people why he's pissed off. And so here we are. They played this PowerPoint behind their last song: Later in the linked article, the Combichrist guy rebuts with, "Hey, I'm just kidding with all that misogyny and racism, can't you take a joke?" In case you couldn't have predicted that. Industrial music began circling the drain in earnest in around 1995 and has been fully dead as a genre since 1999, and this brodustrial jock-rock bullshit from bands like Combichrist certainly brought nothing to the party. "Football season is over, Veronica. Kurt and Ram had nothing left to offer the school except for date rapes and AIDS jokes." Mirrored from jwz.org.
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madfilkentist
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One of my current tasks is to determine whether a software toolkit called Kakadu is suitable for our needs in processing JPEG2000 files. At first I had a hard time making sense of their licenses. We can obtain the software for free indirectly by getting an open source package called Djatoka which incorporates it; the Djatoka people paid for a license which lets them distribute the binaries for free. After a while I figured out that Kakadu is, in effect, giving away the software but selling the documentation. Only after we get a license do we have access to the full documentation.
To make things more confusing, an evaluation license costs $500, but a full license will cost us only $250. The reason for this is that the evaluation license is priced for for-profit users, and we qualify for the cheap license as an academic library.
This strikes me as a dubious marketing model. It means that we can't really tell if the software is suitable for us till we buy it. This isn't all that big a deal at the price, but I've been getting third-party reports about what it can do that seem inaccurate and unfavorable to Kakadu, based on the limited documentation they've made public. By not letting the API be public, they've invited evaluation by rumor.
I'm inclined to recommend Kakadu anyway, but my job would have been easier if they hadn't gone about selling it the way they did.
Update: Making things more confusing, the description of the "Non-commercial, Named User Licence" says, "This licence can only be purchased by individuals, Academic Institutions, not-for-profit organizations and libraries which do not gain financially by using this software." However, the actual license text says: "Licensee means the individual single end-user that has purchased the KAKADU Software and is granted the non-commercial license under this Agreement." There's no mention of institutional licensees. The license is sloppily written in other respects as well, and Kakadu has been unresponsive to our queries.
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madfilkentist
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Charles Schumer, who first came to national prominence by derailing the hearings on abuse of law enforcement power at Waco, has once again shown how slimy he is just by his choice of name for a piece of legislation. He sees it as a major problem that U.S. taxes may drive Americans to renounce their citizenship. Rather than doing something about this burden, he's proposing a bill which is very vague in its current description but either would be an ex post facto law or would claim taxing authority over non-citizens in foreign countries, it's not clear which.
But what's impressively slimy is the name: the "Ex-PATRIOT Act." This is an obvious play on the legislation which has torn down so many civil liberties, combined with a McCarthyist assault on people for ceasing to be "patriotic." Schumer not only isn't hiding his desire to punish disloyalty, he's making it the theme of his attack.
But Schumer's a Democrat and he's trying to take money from rich people, so progressives will goosestep right behind him.
Update: A third point is the appeal to illiterates who can't tell "expatriate" from "ex-patriot."
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john_j_enright
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Our production of Into The Woods opened tonight, with a big burst of energy. I think Act One was 15 minutes shorter than it was the night before in dress rehearsal. And I didn't hear of any mistakes that the audience was likely to detect as such.
The audience gobbled it up like the wolf gobbled up granny, laughing, clapping, cheering.
It's great fun to have a crowd
that's happy and loud.
(photo by one of the Murphy boys)
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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MassadAyoob/~3/3Hdm50tfm0Q/ http://backwoodshome.com/blogs/MassadAyoob/?p=1775 I had grown up reading about Ray Chapman, the man the late, great Jeff Cooper called “the maestro” of practical handgun shooting, and got to meet him in Los Angeles in 1978 during a practice session for the National Championships of IPSC, the International Practical Shooting Confederation. I was running a particularly difficult stage, and since he was watching I asked, “Mr. Chapman, could you give me any pointers?” He replied that I should start the stage with my toes pointed in a slightly different direction, and should slap the barricade (the second firing point of the stage) with my support hand when I reached it.
I remember thinking “Wow, big deal…the World Champion’s only advice is move my toes and slap some wood.” But I tried it…and cut a significant few seconds off my time on the next run. The slight change in foot angle had saved me a turn as I started the run, and the slap on the wall brought me to a stop and into firing position on the barricade much more quickly. Ray Chapman had just given me my first preview of his extraordinary coaching ability.
I got to his Chapman Academy advanced pistol school in Columbia (actually adjacent Hallsville), Missouri a couple of years later, and wound up teaching with him for many years. Trained as an engineer, Chapman brought an engineer’s analytical eye to teaching the gun, and I learned more from him than from any of my many other mentors over the decades of my shooting career.
Ray’s retirement and subsequent death were sad chapters in firearms training, as was the temporary shutdown of the Academy program. 2012 is a banner year in that Chapman Academy is now open for teaching again, at the same famously well-equipped facility! Head of the program now is Rich Greiner, one of Ray’s protégés. There is no doubt in my mind that Rich will continue Ray’s successful approach of starting with accuracy and building to speed.
I’m delighted to see Chapman Academy open again. What you learn there can cut years off a trial-and-error learning curve in making you a fast, accurate shooter. Info is available at http://www.chapmanacademyofpracticalshooting.com/. I’m proud to be a Chapman Academy alumnus, and believe me, you will be, too.
The Chapman Academy is open again…
…in the picturesque Missouri heartland, on the same great facility that has hosted the Bianchi Cup since 1979…
…and now headed by Rich Greiner, one of Ray Chapman’s proteges.
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aldoushuxley
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So the NATO summit will be in Chicago, and people seem to be getting a bit hysterical over the protestors that supposedly will be here tomorrow. Many businesses downtown will be closed and people are being told not to wear suits so they don't look like business people. I was walking around at lunch time today and there were many police and Homeland Security people about. I guess the plan is to have an overwhelming show of force to discourage protestors from getting out of hand. I am going to work tomorrow and will be wearing a regular suit. I predict it will end up being a big nothing.
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alexparte
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I finished my first year of law school. It feels literally unbelievable. I do not believe it.
I'm taking three weeks off to visit people I love and read and cook and shop and ride my bike, and then Ian & I are moving up to Arlington. Serendipitously, our jobs are in the same city and start on the same day. (Serendipity is bullshit: he picked a job near mine and I picked my start date to match his.)
Look at these pictures I took of my (ridiculously handsome) boyfriend (for work):
I want to bite his jaw and nibble his Adam's apple and lick his eyeballs and kiss his nose and just eat his entire face.
We were playing Hot Seat (like Truth or Dare without the dares) with some of my classmates a few months ago, and someone asked Ian how he would kill me (if for some reason he had to kill me). He answered without skipping a beat: "I'd squeeze her to death."
Well, I would definitely eat his face.
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jwz
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 "The elves will travel in a basket lined with sheep skin so that they can be comfortable on the journey." MP for the Independence Party Árni Johnsen arranged for the relocation of a 30-ton boulder, which he believes is home to three generations of elves, from Sandskeið on Hellisheiði in southwest Iceland to his home Höfðaból in the Westman Islands today.Árni first encountered the elves’ dwelling when he was in a serious car accident in January 2010. His car overturned and landed beside the boulder 40 meters away from the highway, Morgunblaðið reports. His SUV was damaged beyond repair but Árni escaped the accident unharmed. He considered whether the boulder might be a dwelling for hidden people and had it saved from landing underneath the south Iceland Ring Road when the highway was widened. “I had Ragnhildur Jónsdóttir, a specialist in the affairs of elves from Álfagarðurinn in Hellisgerði, Hafnarfjörður, to come look at the boulder with me,” recollected Árni. “She said it was incredible, that she had never met three generations of elves in the same boulder before.” “She said an elderly couple lives on the upper floor but a young couple with three children on the lower floor,” the MP described. The specialist concluded that the boulder’s inhabitants were content with the move. “But they asked whether the boulder could stand on grass. I said that was no problem but asked why they wanted grass. ‘It’s because they want to have sheep,’ Ragnhildur replied,” Árni continued. The specialist also said that the elves wish for the boulder’s “window side” to face the view. “I promised to do so,” Árni stated. The boulder will be moved on the ferry Herjólfur and the elves will travel in a basket lined with sheep skin so that they can be comfortable on the journey. Ragnhildur explained to Árni that when he was in the accident everything went crazy on Hellisheiði. Elves from all neighboring settlements were called out and there was much confusion until one large being took control of the situation. “Ragnhildur said it was my protecting spirit, because my time hadn’t come,” he concluded. Also: Angry Elves Said to Have Wreaked Havoc in West Fjords Vigdís Kristín Steinthórsdóttir, a nurse, healer and hypnotist, believes hidden people, or elves, who live in the mountain were upset when the tunnel through Óshlíd was made and are causing these mishaps. Mirrored from jwz.org.
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jordan179
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Nationality: Republic of Oberon
Type: Oort Sloop
Launched: 2300
Mass: 3000 tonnes.
Configuration: Close Structure.
Construction: Polyphase osmium-iridium steel reinforced by monomolecular carbosilanes.
Powerplant: Deuterium-trihelium vortex nuclear fusion reactor, also capable of running on deuterium-tritium mix in emergencies, at the cost of neutron-flux damage. Power storage carbon-based nano-bloc chemical batteries.
Propulsion: Advanced plasma rocket drive, cruising speed 0.6 G, full fusion afterburner thrust 2.0 G.
Computers: Main computer VH-AINT (Very High Artificial Intelligence); also at least one low-level AINT per crew member.
Sensors: OmniDAR (Omni-spectral Detection And Ranging) electromagnetic: 200 thousand kilometers range detection versus concealed or stealthed objects.
ECM: Basic cloaking device, adequate to defeat long-range detection.
Controls: Standard Immersive neurolinkage at all main sations; advanced ordinary neurolinkage at all terminals.
Shields: Dynamic electromagnetic screens, optimized against space dust.
Armor: Light multiphase steel forward; very light polyphase steel over control and engineering modules.
Weapons: Varies from ship to ship; generally includes multiple batteries of X-Ray Lasers designed to destroy chunks of space debris, but also effective against small craft and other small ships.
Auxiliary Craft: One 10-person passenger longboat, capable of short interplanetary flights; and one 6-person gig, capable of shuttle operations.
Crew: Generally around 10 incarnates for long voyages, plus 1 main and around 10 subordinate Aints. Can theoretically operate with 1 or 0 incarnates, but this is not optimum for prolonged missions.
Cargo: Bracing for around 1000 tonnes internal, fitting for up to 2000 tons external cargo stowage. At maximum capacity, performance is limited to 0.3 G cruise and up to 1.0 G afterburner. Use of afterburners may be hazardous with full external load.
Comments: Small private merchantmen like this made many of the great pioneering voyages of the early 24th century that first opened the Oort Cloud: more mundanely, they also plied the trade routes to Triton, Pluto, Quaoar and the other worlds of the Kuiper Belt. The ship described here is clearly configured for Oort Cloud operations due to her powerful engines and relatively modest cargo capacity; she would be inefficient on a Kuiper Belt cargo run. The museum piece here is the Sally Fernandez, owned by Jacob Morningstar III and kept in service until 2402: her retirement to a distant parking orbit saved her from destruction during the Second Solar War.
Oort sloops were far from luxurious, but they could carry up to 10 incarnate organics and support their lives for as long as the power held out, and repair most damage they were likely to suffer from long and hard running. Though their technology was hardly cutting-edge, the crews were highly professional, as only skilled hands were normally selected for what were for their day very long voyages. Some of the best spacefarers of the Republic of Oberon -- which is to say of the whole late 23rd and early 24th century -- served long years in the Oort trade. This included many who fought in the Second Solar War and the many wars of its aftermath.
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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jwz
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 Renouncing Citizenship Makes Facebook Co-Founder Inadmissable To US Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin's decision to renounce his U.S. citizenship just in time to avoid a large tax payment essentially means he will not be able to re-enter the United States again, immigration experts say."There's a specific provision of immigration law that says that a former citizen who officially renounces citizenship, and is determined to have renounced it for the purpose of avoiding taxation, is excludable," said Crystal Williams, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "So he would not be able to return to the United States if he's found to have renounced for tax purposes." The provision of law isn't usually enforced, added Williams, "however, this guy is so high profile that this is probably going to be the test case." [...] Two immigration lawyers said his explanation hardly passes the laugh test. Saverin's move was timed to the initial public offering of shares of Facebook stock. The valuation of the Facebook IPO explodes Saverin stake in the social media company to some $3 billion, on which avoiding taxes could save him at least tens -- if not hundreds -- of millions of dollars. Nor does it help his case that he relocated to Singapore, which levies no taxes on those earnings. Two senators mobilized Thursday to crack down on Saverin and other tax dodgers. "He's fucked," said Adam Green, an immigration lawyer based in Los Angeles. "He must have gotten horrendous advice." It's plausible that Saverin simply decided the money he'd save would be worth saying goodbye to the United States forever. $100M is 3.3% of $3B. It's a rounding error to this bozo, but he thinks it's very important that he give none of that back to the people who made his lottery win possible. Bravo, Sir, you are a true Hero of Capitalism. Previously. Mirrored from jwz.org.
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madfilkentist
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There have been several sightings of a coyote in our condo complex. I haven't seen it myself, but the list of roads on which it's been seen includes mine. I posted a link on my unofficial Ledgewood Hills website to tips by the Nevada Department of Wildlife, which looked as reliable as any I could quickly find, even though New Hampshire has a very different environment. Any other suggestions or links are welcome.
So far no Acme delivery trucks have been seen.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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john_j_enright
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The young woman in charge of costumes, for the play I'm in, thought it would suit my character to be wearing a red bow tie. So I bought one. And then I had to learn to tie it!
I've worn bowties a few times in my life. I think I had a clip-on bowtie in elementary school. And the couple of times I've rented a tux... but they came with pre-tied bowties that you just fastened somehow.
Anyway, I found a video on the web, and worked at it. Well, I'm getting better. The good thing is that my character, Cinderella's father, is a bit of a wino, so you wouldn't expect his tie to be too perfect.
Now I sort of know
how to tie one in a bow
I should maybe buy some mo.
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Wednesday, May 16th, 2012
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jwz
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DNA Lounge update, wherein there are some awards, and some photos, and some epic douchebaggery. Mirrored from jwz.org.
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olegvolk
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Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. Please leave any comments there. A friend just graduated from college and looking for a job in accounting, preferably in Kentucky or Tennessee. If you have any leads on such position, please let me know and I will forward the resume.
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olegvolk
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Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. Please leave any comments there. 
A friend’s cat relaxes on a guest.
Gremlin is waiting out the rain.
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contemplative.
pleased.
