Craig Sawyers

Bloody hell. Smith went from having a laugh to full on aggression in a second. He needs therapy, real bad.

Apparently he had a cocktail of ten substances in his body. Sad though his death is at the too young age of 50, and a superb drummer, it is little wonder he failed to wake up.

He has two.

I've posted this before, but Carl Sagan's commentary is worth repeating here. The image is called Pale Blue Dot, and was taken by Voyager 1 from about the same distance Neptune (6 billion km). Although the Earth is clearly blue, it is actually only 0.12 of a pixel in Voyager's camera. "From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

At least they got one vowel correct. The only vowel, grantd.

My mother's maiden name is Styants, which is pretty unusual (like Samost). Because it is so strange it is easy to trace back. I've got as far as the late 1600's, but its root is the Anglo-Saxon Stigand. In fact the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1066 when William of Normandy invaded was called Stigand. But clergy back then would commonly take a wife or two, and/or other women, so who knows - I might date back to a very naughty Archbishop 960 years ago.

I have a similar problem with my name. I used to say "Spelt like Tom but with an S at the end" until I realized that the vast majority of people haven't read much at all, let alone The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (which we did at school). But I've seen so many spellings of my name. Sawyer is most common, but I've had Saunders, Saywers, Swayers and just about every variant under the sun.

From the link above it looks like Maersk isn't the only shipping outfit to pull out. It might be the biggest though by a decent margin. Nestle's position is totally untenable. That it is "only" supplying "essential" items like baby formula and pet food to Russia misses massively the point that a number of Ukrainian cities are under siege, the population is starving, and have had no power, food or potable water for weeks. And they are having seven kinds of shit bombed out of them daily. Well Mr Ulf Mark Schneider with your $20m salary - how about some essential items for Ukraine? And how about pulling the plug on Russia, like over 400 companies so far? Bastard.

Who would have thought that KitKat chocolate finger biscuits was a global brand? I ain't buying any more of them.

Yup - this is the opportunity to apply the rest of the world sanctions on Nestle products. Looking at the brand diagram, the only one we regularly buy is KitKat. No longer.

Very belated best wishes Al - hope it was a spectacular day!!

Astonishingly though this is the first step - alignment of the primary to one instrument. There are umpteen other steps involving the whole suite of instruments, followed by "fine alignment". But that image is a first taste of what this machine will do.

I missed this a couple of days ago courtesy of Covid - but the JWST has reached full optical alignment. The alignment object is a star well within our own galaxy, and you can see the 6-fold diffraction from the hexagonal mirrors. It is only visible because of the extreme brightness of the star. But everything else you can see are galaxies - right down to the faintest streaks you can pick out. This image is a tour de force of stunning optics and an astonishingly complex machine.

Good on Schwarzenegger. I really hope it makes some difference, but most information channels have been shut down in Russia to make sure that the Russian citizens have no access to anything remotely true.

Panic buying Russian tubes

Thank god he is not in charge of anything. We'd all be going to hell in a nuclear handcart

Donkey's years ago, my Dad really mashed his thumb. My Dad could never afford a decent car, so he had a succession of old beaters. One day he was working on the starter motor, and for whatever reason needed a hefty 2lb hammer. He picked a one that my Grandad (by this stage, dead) has fettled, by replacing the shaft. But he has put the head on at a jaunty angle of maybe 15 degrees or so the the shaft axis. So my Dad (a quarter century dead himself by the way) took a massive swing with this thing - and of course the head missed the target and hit his thumb. Which split wide open. Of course his hands were coated in black grease and road dirt, not ideal for sterility, and he had to press on to repair the starter, and put it back in the car, before he could drive to the Hospital. I really cannot recall him making a big fuss about this. Other than quietly cursing his Dad for the "repaired" hammer! Come Monday he got in the car and drove to work. Tough cookie.

Fuck me, Steve (not an invitation 😁) that looks bloody awful. I'd be heading for casualty for sure.

It is on YouTube too - the link is for the full movie. And yes - HBO. The basic topic is how a limited nuclear war breaks out. In the days of the USSR. Thinking of James Earl Jones, we were lucky enough to see him on the London stage, with Vanessa Redgrave in Driving Miss Daisy. Front row seats. Around 10 years ago. Awsome. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/oct/06/driving-miss-daisy-theatre-review

I think that is unclear