tingilinde

a new year's eve address

(go to settings and use auto-translate set to English.. or what you prefer)

a tense christmas

this is so good - Brian Bilston’s work:

 

Tense Christmas

I The Ghost of Christmas Past Perfect Progressive

Midnight. Awoken by a ghost.
I thought I must be raving.
But then he went and showed me
how badly I'd been behaving.

 

II The Ghost of Christmas Present Perfect Simple

The next night, a ghost again:
with a much more recent scene.
More evidence piling up
of how unpleasant I have been.

 

Ill The Ghost of Christmas Future Unreal Conditional

A final late night ghostly vision.
But this one lacked the pain and strife.
I saw if I could be a kinder man,
I would create a better life.

 

 

time balls

Synchronized ship's clocks in the Victorian era..

 

three years ago yesterday

 

One of the first warnings from Wuhan makes it outside of China. Back when containment was possible ... but..

a tip of the hat to Sukie

And now XBB.1.5 - an exceptionally evasive strain - is dominating the Northeastern part of the US and spreading rapidly.  But people seem to have given up.

 

the january 6th report

Several publishers are making it available.  The New Yorker offers this forward by David Remnick.

snip

...

In his career as a New York real-estate shyster and tabloid denizen, then as the forty-fifth President of the United States, Trump has been the most transparent of public figures. He does little to conceal his most distinctive characteristics: his racism, misogyny, dishonesty, narcissism, incompetence, cruelty, instability, and corruption. And yet what has kept Trump afloat for so long, what has helped him evade ruin and prosecution, is perhaps his most salient quality: he is shameless. That is the never-apologize-never-explain core of him. Trump is hardly the first dishonest President, the first incurious President, the first liar. But he is the most shameless. His contrition is impossible to conceive. He is insensible to disgrace.

...

 

 

building a rather impressive movie camea

a tip of the hat to Greg

how it happens

Airline food preparation.

 

nice einstein piece

I re-read  it for the first time it first came out - Alva Johnston's two part New Yorker Einstein piece.

snip

...

They did incalculable harm to Church and State at an earlier time by casting suspicion on the Bible truth that the earth was flat and had four corners, and even today a man who meddles with the universe is regarded as unsafe. One of the organizers of the American Legion started an agitation to bar Einstein from the United States as a Red; the Woman Patriot Corporation lodged a complaint against him with the State Department; an American consular official nearly heckled the scientist into abandoning an American trip; Cardinal O’Connell denounced the Einstein theory as false, atheistic, and immoral; a religious writer charged that Einstein had cribbed the theory from the writings of a thirteenth-century saint. Nevertheless, Einstein slipped past the immigration authorities in 1930, and he did it again last October. Today, he is openly carrying on mathematical work at Princeton

...

 

happy birthday bjarne!

 

 

Happy Birthday Bjarne!

 

a serious celebrate is called for - potentially involving chocolate and beyond

 

when classified h-bomb documents were left on the train

I didn't know this story..

snip

...

Because the topic required considerable technical sophistication, Walker reached out to Wheeler for his assistance in composing the final version. Wheeler agreed to read a draft, which arrived at Princeton on 5 January. Despite being perhaps the most important technical section of the entire top-secret history, it was only classified as secret; a higher classification would have made it much harder to transmit to Wheeler. By virtue of running Project Matterhorn B, Wheeler had a high-grade Q security clearance, but top-secret documents could be sent only by armed guard, whereas secret documents could be sent by registered mail.

The document went into Wheeler’s office safe at Princeton. He had plans to be in Washington, DC, on 7 January to consult with representatives from the US Naval Research Laboratory on an unrelated project. A plan formed in his mind: He would take an overnight train from Princeton to Washington on 6 January, review the H-bomb history extract on the train, and meet with the Joint Committee staff to deliver his comments and corrections by hand.

A train ride between Princeton and Washington does not take all night—in 1953 it was a little over three hours. But if Wheeler spent the night in a Pullman car (see figure 4 for a schematic), he could avoid the extra inconvenience of checking into a hotel. He would take the train and sleep in a bunk. The train would begin its journey in the middle of the night and arrive at Washington’s Union Station early the next morning. The porter would wake Wheeler at a reasonable hour, and he could dress and tidy up before leaving the train. From there, he would head directly for his meeting near the Capitol, do his part to combat the enemies of the H-bomb, and return to Princeton by train that evening.

...