What would happen to your body if you were suddenly in deep space without a spacesuit (our grandkids’ equivalent to up a creek without a paddle)? You would actually be ok for a while. As long as you don’t try to hold your breath.
Author Archive | weeklyrob
Anti-Fluoride Extremists Bare Their Teeth
This is in the small city closest to the teeny town where my wife grew up (and her parents still live). …anger over fluoridating Geelong’s water supply mounted today. P.S. Geelong is pronounce /jih LONG/
Old News is Good News
If you have hours and hours to kill, then check out Chronicling America, a site dedicated to old newspapers and the stories they print. At the moment, you can view papers from 1880 to 1922 (from California, DC, Florida, Hawaii, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Texas, Utah, and Virginia). Search, print, save, zoom in […]
Einstein Sees a Silver Lining
Or, at least, an unrelated happy event. Here’s a line from one of his letters to a friend: “The little one is very sickly and must go to Arosa [where there’s a sanatorium] for a year. My wife is also ailing. Worries and more worries. Nevertheless, I have found a nice generalization of the Sommerfield-Epstein […]
Error Message
Dealing with my health insurance’s online presence is amazingly frustrating. One small example is this error I received when trying to reset my password: “The reset function is unavailable at this time. NOTE: Representatives at this phone number can only help you with Registration, Forgotten User Name, Forgotten Password issues. For all other issues, please […]
Signing In
Some esoteric grammar talk coming up. Run and hide. I haven’t seen this addressed anywhere else, so here I am addressing a need. (I haven’t looked very hard, but whatever.) Do you “sign into” the web site, or “sign in to” the web site? It’s used both ways all over the place, but in my […]
Pan (ic; demic; demonium)
It means absolutely nothing has changed since yesterday, except for the way it feels. Swine Flue is a pandemic. Australia (especially my probably-someday-to-be-adopted city of Melbourne) has allowed the enemy to gain a foothold. Same with the U.K., I guess, and Japan.
Congratulations to English!
The English language has (arguably) hit its million-word mark. See for yourself. [Thanks to @foliosociety]
Big Book
If anyone’s interested in Agatha Christie, or books, check out this beast. The front cover is over a foot away from the back cover. Funny thing is, it’s only 4,000 pages. They could have made it bigger all round, sparing the footlongedness of it all. But obviously they didn’t want to!
R.I.P. Tom Paine
Tom Paine believed in Liberty, and he fought tyranny his whole life. His writings helped spark a revolution, the effects of which are still felt to this day, exactly 200 years after his death. He also believed in God, but not in the Bible, which got him in some hot water here and there. And […]