Official "Hot-houri" thread

[kladner]

This is a drinking song. The 'dead men' referred to are empty bottles under the table. Hence, "Down among the dead men let him lie" translates as "If you don't agree with us, may you pass out drunk and slide under the table."

I have taken liberties with the lyrics to suit my orientation. Substitute 'woman' for 'cutie', if you are an originalist. I also changed 'rights' in the last verse, to 'rites'.

Here's a health to the Queen, and a lasting peace
May faction end and wealth increase.
Come, let us drink it while we have breath,
For there's no drinking after death.
And he that will this health deny,
Down among the dead men,down among the dead men,
Down, down, down, down;
Down among the dead men let him lie!




Let charming beauty's health go round,
With whom celestial joys are found.
And may confusion yet pursue,
That senseless cutie-hating crew.
And he who'd cuties' health deny,
Down among the dead men,down among the dead men,
Down, down, down, down;
Down among the dead men let him lie!




In smiling Bacchus' joys I'll roll,
Deny no pleasures to my soul.
Let Bacchus' health round briskly move,
For Bacchus is the friend of love.
And he that would this health deny,
Down among the dead men,down among the dead men,
Down, down, down, down;
Down among the dead men let him lie



May love and wine their rites maintain,
And their united pleasures reign.
While Bacchus' treasure crowns the board,
We'll sing the joy that both afford.
And they that won't with us comply,
Down among the dead men,down among the dead men,
Down, down, down, down;
Down among the dead men let them lie!


(Note: High dynamic range. You need the volume up to hear the quiet parts, which carry most of the message.)

[kladner]

I will carry on here from the RIP thread, regarding the death of Gene Amdahl, and my comments on my father's involvement with the IBM 360 (model 50, I think, early on.) He spent long extra hours in Fortran classes to transition from the analog geophysical equipment at Exxon (né Humble Oil). He would turn over his programs to punch-card operators, and maybe the next day he would find out if it crashed, or not. This might have been in 64-66, when I was 11 to 13. He was still commuting 60+ miles roundtrip to Houston, then, from where we lived, halfway to Galveston.

Anyway, this is the model I remember him working with:
https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/e...me_PP2050.html

[kladner]

The New Decade Volcano Program, is a project of people involved with the website VolcanoCafe.org. The site seems to be Iceland-based. The aim of the program is to investigate and determine what they see as the ten most dangerous volcanoes in the world. In particular, they look at explosive volcanoes near, or in, densely populated areas, where casualties could exceed one million.

Ioto, the first on the list, is also known as Iwo Jima. The island is part of a large caldera complex, much of it submarine, which lies in mega-tsunami distance of Tokyo (1h39m), Shanghai (2h48m), and Luzon, Philippines (2h50m).

Some of the most destructive and disruptive eruptions in human history have been from volcanic islands where the collapse of the edifice has allowed water to come into contact with the upper magma chamber, something that has compounded the magnitude of the eruptions manifold.

Note that the main body of the text is a fictional projection of how a multiple-cubic-kilometer eruption, caldera collapse, and subsequent explosion as the sea rushes in might play out. However, there is plenty of data, even in the story part, to support the hazardous nature of this volcanic island.

[kladner]

I will carry on here from the RIP thread, regarding the death of Gene Amdahl, and my comments on my father's involvement with the IBM 360 (model 50, I think, early on.) He spent long extra hours in Fortran classes to transition from the analog geophysical equipment at Exxon (né Humble Oil).

His earlier employment with Humble Oil included being the seismograph operator, kind of the crew chief, in the swamps of Louisiana, where he was one of two outsiders with a crew of Cajuns. The way the Cajuns put it was, "A bunch of coon-asses. and two horses' asses."

However, his job: riding around on boats, in oil-company-dredged canals through the swamps and marshes, and overseeing the setting off of dynamite charges (it may have been TNT, which, of course, changes the equation.)

As I remember his stories, the oil exploration crews were supposed to be limited to 40 lb charges. There was a State of Louisiana Inspector on board, whom my Dad said, "Sat in the shade and drank." The Humble Oil crew was setting off several times the limit, on occasion, and the Inspector might rouse himself enough to say something like, "That was a big one." He, and his superiors to the highest levels in the State were, of course, firmly in the pockets of the OilCos.

EDIT: In other words, he unwittingly participated in some of the prelude to the Katrina catastrophe, by helping destroy the wetland barriers protecting the Gulf Coast. However, the canal, MR-GO, which the Corps of Engineers dredged from the Gulf into NO, did the greatest immediate damage by giving the Storm Surge free passage.

The Mississippi River – Gulf Outlet Canal (abbreviated as MRGO or MR-GO) is a 76 mi (122 km) channel constructed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers at the direction of Congress in the mid-20th century that provided a shorter route between the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans' inner harbor Industrial Canal via the Intracoastal Waterway.

Still, exploration and drilling in the Louisiana swamps, combined with the locking-and-damming of the Mississippi, destroyed the buffer zone. The silt of Big Muddy was greatly reduced, and canals were dredged through the vegetation which bound that silt, so that every storm eats away at the coast, which is no longer replenished by the Mississippi floods.

Instead, the silt which is not impounded clogging lock and dam installations, along with a glut of fertilizer runoff, is channeled swiftly into the Gulf of Mexico, where it makes beaches brown, and creates ever-growing oxygen-depleted dead zones.

This is really ironic, since my father was a bird-lover, who undoubtedly saw many wonders, as well as difficulties, during this phase of his geophysical career. And this for a history major, who also was the Master Sergent chief of a ground crew for a recon squadron in North Africa. He was strongly recommended by his superior for OCS, which he turned down.

I will continue my Katrina story, as I experienced it, in another post.

[Xyzzy]

We took 15 minutes of video to get 10 seconds of action.





126: 2 3 3 7

[kladner]

Originally Posted by Xyzzy

We took 15 minutes of video to get 10 seconds of action.




126: 2 3 3 7

He still moves like a puppy. How's he doing?

[Xyzzy]

Originally Posted by kladner

How's he doing?

Pretty good. He isn't house trained (yet) so that makes things interesting.



128: 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

[ewmayer]

Friday night funny: What's in a name?

Received a small airmail parcel today containing some replacement attachments for my Dremel moto-tool ... package was addressed from the Chinese industrial city of Shenzen, specifically the "Fuming Manufacturing Park". So they name them after the average air quality, then?

[davar55]

Originally Posted by Brian-E

There once was a limerick by me,
Which didn't rhyme at all,
It didn't have those two lines in the middle which are shorter than the others,
Or scansion at all,
That limerick by me.
And it had one line too many.

I needed a rhyme for antidisestablishmentarianism.
But the closest I could find was floccinaucinihilipilification.
So I invented the word antidisuncategorizabilizationalismophobiatizinglynessmentarianism.
And then took a vacation.

[kladner]

[kladner]

Stark images of Shackleton's struggle -BBC

For the first time, Hurley's images have been scanned digitally direct from the original glass plates on which they were taken - revealing details never seen before. The mid-ground and background in each shot is crisper and sharper.