Skwid - the movement is a saccade, adjective form saccadic. From dictionary.com: "A rapid intermittent eye movement, as that which occurs when the eyes fix on one point after another in the visual field."
(I'll admit that I had to go search for the term - learned it once, but my need for that field of study has diminished....)
I'm just going to note here that the Alibris "particle" link on the front page had me in stitches.
One of the best books on the Challenger disaster is Diane Vaughan's "The Challenger Launch Decision." It's a huge book, but she goes into a lot of amazing detail and analysis. One of the more important insights is her concept of "normalization of deviance." Each time the previous shuttle launches had pushed the boundary before - a little colder, a little more leakage pas the o-rings - everything had been ok. So all of these deviances from what was tested and ok were continually accepted and incorporated as "normal". It's kind of a slippery slope, because you don't know when you're going to hit the final non-ok deviance.
The sad thing is, if you read that book and then look at the later Columbia disaster - exactly the same thing had been happening. Little bits of insulating foam kept falling off - but hey, no problem, so it won't be a problem this time either, right? Wrong.
The Challenger disaster wasn't enough to get the NASA culture to change, and nothing's changing after Columbia, either. Which means that the same thing will happen again - maybe with the control system, maybe with spacesuits, maybe with a pressure leak - can't predict what, but we'll undoubtedly lose another one, because the culture inevitably leads to component failure because of the pressures to make everything seem ok.
HP said: Way back in 1975, when I was 11, My Weekly Reader did an article on special effects. In a sidebar, there was a tiny photograph of an enormous, strange-looking beast surrounded by seemingly tiny men, under the heading "What Is It?" The photo's caption read (roughly): "It's called a tauntaun. And it's not a real animal--it's a special effect for a new movie called Star Wars, currently being filmed by director George Lucas."
The tauntauns were on Hoth, which didn't appear until The Empire Strikes Back. I'd doubt they had models of them in 1975, or would have used them over other special effects from the first movie, which would still have been in early development at that point. Is it possible your memory has side-slipped a few years, and the tauntaun piece was from 78 or so?
I was able to get Heinlein on the first try (of trying for Heinlein, that is - my own answers, I get Greg Benford). After some fiddling (though not exhasutive), I believe the keys are being only a moderate asshole, more of a talker than not, "traitorous pinko", and "brimming full". (Interestingly, it's easiest to slip from being Heinlein to being Ayn Rand.)
And in case anybody is still pondering the "non-fiction novel", Critical Mass has a discussion of this topic, referring to Truman Capote and the more recent Jonathan Krakauer novel, Under the Banner of Heaven.
A comment on the selection of the name Benedict. The last Benedict (XV) has been most cited recently as a notable pacifist and humanitarian during WWI. However, he was also a strong administrator, who supported the first codification of Canon Law (1917), and moved the church's administration structure into a modern bureaucratic form.
Given that the late JPII was critcized for being a weak administrator, and that Ratzinger has spent the past two decades being a strong one, I'm taking the choice of his name as a reflection on the desire to reconstruct the administration of the Catholic Church. It probably is needed, but since administrative structures tend to be slow to change (the whole point of bureaucracies) whatever happens under Benedict XVI will probably then have lasting structural effects.
- You must start each paragraph with a sentence that describes what you will be addressing in that paragraph.
- You must summarize what you covered in the paragraph at the end with a summary sentence.
This brings back nightmares of my seventh grade English teacher. The crowning achievement of the year was the production of a book report. It contained some number of paragraphs, each of which addressed a specific topic (plot, main character, conflict, etc) - the specifics and order of these was provided to us as part of the assignment. Each paragraph had to have a topic sentence, three supporting sentences, and a concluding/summarizing sentence. Each paragraph was to be written on its own page AND (for this was all handwritten at the time), each sentence had to be labeled, in miniscule superscript, as to which role it played in the paragraph.
By seventh grade, I KNEW that there were better ways to write than that, and I knew that I had written a better (more interesting, more analytical) book report way back in fifth grade. It nearly drove me insane trying to meet her demands. Like Dru, it took me years to recover from that assault on my writing skills.
Paul - oh dear, if I were to do that with my name and my husband's, the best option sounds like a porn site (VainOralIdol). Not sure this is a good choice for a vanity domain name.
I'm down with a bad cold myself this week, so my sympathies.
I've always been able to take pseudoephedrine in the past successfully, but this time around I was overwhelmed by the side effects - spacey, tired, yet unable to sleep (up until 5am one night, woke up every two hours another). I can breathe now, although my sinuses are still congested and I have a cough, so I've sworn off of cold meds and am down to ibuprofen and the whiskey-lemon-honey concoction. For the latter, my preferred proportions are equal volumes of lemon and honey, twice as much whiskey as lemon, and three times as much hot water as whiskey. Good whiskey helps a lot, too.
You can't change anything from the top - with the rest of the country in the state it is, we'll never get a Democratic president elected. This is the signal - start at the bottom. City councils, mayors, state representatives - we've got to get liberals of all sorts into these positions. And then you move up from there.
And one of the key things that will help get liberals elected is to get the message organized. The Republicans win because they offer easy, black-and-white definitions and answers. The shades of gray that the Democratic party offers are too complex. Keep it simple - we want to make sure everyone is taken care of - and explain what that means in practical terms: living wages, health care, the right to vote the way you want to and make sure your voice is heard. That's where we begin.
On the San Francisco peninsula, the major roads run northwest-southeast - the futher south you get on the peninsula and into the Silicon Valley/San Jose area, the more they swing towards east-west. Nonetheless, everyone refers to the San Francisco-bound direction as North. This leads to utter confusion at a few interchanges marked with correct geographical designations. ("I want to get on Northbound whatever street - but I have to choose east or west?")
Well, I have to admit that I just bought a burnt orange suitcase. The choices (in the style I wanted) were purple (eggplant!), bright red, black, and burnt orange. I figured that the orange would stand out the most in the luggage pickup area....
I love sweet potatoes and broccoli, but don't do pickled/salty things, which to me are similar in yuckyiness. (This includes pickles, olives, kimchee, herring, sardines, and so on, as well as that asian candied stuff with the red salty-sour powder). I even drink my margaritas without salt!
The only reference in Lexis-Nexis is for the aforementioned Memphis Commercial Appeal citation, in a letter to the editor on 2/16/04, from Ken Haley, Olive Branch, Miss. It starts with the "Liberals claim" sentence and carries on from there as described.
"Nigel Stubbingwicke" apparently has a small website at http://members.lycos.co.uk/stubbingwicke. His resume begins with "1961 - Born". These guys are pretty thorough... but, it's a hoax.
Being one who aspires to cool yet geeky status myself, I was just clarifying the kind of coolness....geeky, as opposed to jocky, perhaps!
I took a class last fall (2002) from Reviel Netz on "The Invention of Science." Essentially, science from the ancient Greeks through maybe 500AD. Very cool (yet geeky) guy....when we were talking about the conception of the "mad scientist", we were treated to an excerpt from his favorite film....the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
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