My bad. I've never rented a place in NYC where the landlord allowed us to put anything in the basement, so I was foolishly extropolating that to your situation, and wondering why you were willing to sacrifice your own apartment to the landlord's empty space. I apologize.
Thanks for the link to the mesoscale convection complex. Nice to know what hit us.
Theresa, clearly you have an "english basement" garden apartment like I do, and it's not like you own the building, so .. sacrifice the basement! let the water just go down the steps. Anywhere other than into your own space.
I mean, if the flood ruins your boiler, that just lets you push for solar heating, no? And what else is down there?
When my mother died, we tried to donate her body, but because she had died of cancer the hospital said they could use only her corneas. (Since she was extremely near-sighted, we joked that the only thing they wanted was the one organ that didn't work.)
By all means donate, but what they really need are healthy young people killed in car crashs
"I could show you stuff centuries old—heck, some of it’s millennia old—that’s fanfic by any modern definition."
The entire cycle of stories, plays and poems about Troy is fanfic to Homer, including the Aeneid. And then the ghost of Virgil guides Dante throught Hell. Now there's a fanfic touch if there ever one.
My very minor contribution, as to why the day has twelve hours, the hours sixty minutes, the minutes sixty seconds:
The Summarians/Babylonians used base 12 as their numbering system, instead of base 10 as we do (it works quite well until you start serious multiplication & devision). They also had quite an elaborate calendar, and divided the day into twelve hours (because they divded everything into twelve) and then the hours into sixty minutes.
The Greeks and the Romans inherited the hours and the "lore" about the minutes and seconds, but without clocks or a religion that hung on the calendar, didn't really keep much track of them. The Romans at least were quite comfortable with the idea that hours could change their actual time -- summer day hours were longer than winter hours, and winter night hours were longer in winter.
Medieval alchemists, in their attempts to regain the ancient wisdom of the Chaldeans, timed their experiments in turning lead into gold by "Chaldean time": 12 hours in a day, sixty minutes in an hour, sixty seconds in a minute. This established the idea that an hour was a standard length of time, unlike a day, and as part of their equipment they created elaborate clocks. Since alchemy was at least partly a hobby of the rich, the clocks got pretty fancy.
Next thing you know, clocks with twelve hours, sixty minutes, sixty seconds were toys of the wealthy, to be displayed upon the marble mantle of your chateau.
And thus modern time was born.
Alas I haven't a cite for this. But this is a pretty literate crowd -- check your medieval history of the alchemists, that's where it should be.
that comment about the Group of Seventeen made me reach for my copy of the Citadel of the Autarch ... but I found nothing as good as "behind our efforts, let there be found our efforts."
However, I remember that somewhere Severian notices that Ascian officers did not carry weapons, as if they regarded actual fighting with contempt. This now reminds me of our chickenhawk neo-cons, none of whom ever actually served in the army and most of whom went to great lengths to avoid the draft.
Our administration loves war, but they do indeed regard actual fighting with contempt -- look at the scorn they have heaped on Kerry, and the bandaids designed to mock the wounds that earned him his Purple Hearts.
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