California authorities have captured an inmate who escaped from San Quentin and went on the run for four days.Isn't that nice? "A member of the public" gave Shalom Mendoza a tip. How big was the tip?
Shalom Mendoza, 21, was taken into custody at a Taco Bell in Paso Robles, more than 200 miles southeast of the prison, on Saturday after receiving a tip from a member of the public.
You see, in the olden days--back when grammar was still taught in schools--this used to be called a dangling participle. What actually happened was that the police received a tip from a member of the public regarding the estimable Mr. Mendoza's whereabouts, and those authorities then proceeded to apprehend him.
But that is not what the article says.
One would think that one qualifiation for being a reporter would be the ability to write correct, grammatical English. One would further think that the editor would catch such a bonehead mistake. But in a world where newspapers are more concerned with social justice than the clear communication of facts, something's got to go, I guess.
And no, I'm not the only one who noticed it.
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Yes, the glorious workers' paradise of China, where people don't have to worry about food or shelter or education or medicine. They do, however, have to worry about being arrested for having the wrong opinion. And I love this bit:
About 50 students and recent graduates of the country's most prestigious universities convened in August in Shenzhen, an electronics manufacturing hub, to rally for factory workers attempting to form a union....and she ended up in a "reeducation camp" for it.
Among them was Yue Xin, a 20-something fresh out of Peking University. Earlier this year, she made headlines by calling for the elite school to release the results of its investigation into a decades-old rape case.
This time, she was one of the most vocal leaders of the labour rights group, appearing in photographs with her fist raised in a Marxist salute and wearing a T-shirt that said "Unity is strength" – the name of a patriotic Chinese Communist song.
This is not a girl who advocated for freedom or the end of communism; she advocated for workers' rights. The problem is, she advocated for workers' rights against the wishes of an unrestrained communist dictatorship. Hence, "disappeared".
And the last line of the article tells what happens thereafter: "...most of those who are disappeared by Beijing are never seen or heard from again."
Tell me again how much better it is under socialism?
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Please go wish Wonderduck some wellness. He needs it.
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There is a reason they call it the strong force. 100 decillion pascals of pressure is 1.45 x 10e31 PSI, or 9.7 x 10e29 atmospheres.
Ordinary matter turns to neutronium at a tenth of that pressure.
There aren't words to convey the image in my head of what a proton is like, but it fits with this information. The three quarks are like the Norn, passing the eye around (except there are three eyes in play at any one time, rather than one) and their need to pass the eye is what keeps them close together, because the eye can only exist for a certain very short period of time, and if it takes too long for an eye to get to a Norn it turns into another Norn and the whole thing comes apart.
Which is why it takes a lot of energy to break apart a proton or neutron.
...but of course the Norn find each other repulsive (literally) so they never get too close to each other, either. And so the quarks do this endless dance, jangling around inside the radius of the proton, firing gluons back and forth.
I imagine they also change "color"; an up quark tosses a gluon at a down quark and in the process becomes down, and when the down quark receives the gluon it goes up. For a moment there's a huge repulsive force acting on that "extra" down quark, because a proton is made of two up and one down quark, and for a moment it has two down and one up instead. No idea if this is actually the case, but it makes sense to me.
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Laugh out loud moment: "In my defense, I am not very smart." Order of the Stick is the best.
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So, here's some insight into the whole stupid "caravan" thing. The organization that spurred the thing, a gang of marxist asshats named "Pueblo Sin Fronteras", promised the "migrants" that they would have easy entry into the US, and that they'd get all kinds of goodies from the US.
But of course none of that materialized. Fortuitously, though, the "migrants" blame the marxist asshats, who have made themselves scarce around those parts.
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The critics that say they love stuff may not actually love it all that much. But in order to keep their jobs, they say they love it.
Yet another chapter in "The Emperor's New Clothes" files.
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It occurs to me that I actually use the "emperor's new clothes" thing myself, in AV. Hmm.
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Inflatable rockets don't do so well if they should spring a leak. It's like a soda can, actually; the soda can stays rigid until the seal is cracked, at which point it becomes a lot less so. The same thing goes for water bottles, in fact, to a somewhat lesser degree.
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So, according to SpaceWeather.com, we had 221 spotless days in 2018. 221 days without sunspots. Solar minimum, here we come!
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Butthead is hacking his Subaru to remove the speed limiter. The speed limit most places is 55 MPH. 112 MPH is the vehicle's maximum speed. There is no reason to go faster than twice the speed limit on public roads.
If he is racing the car, on a track, that's entirely a different story; but nothing is said either way.
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We are missing some three kilometers of rock, all over the planet. Wow.
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This will not happen.
On January 1, 2024, we'll see the expiration of the copyright for Steamboat Willie--and with it Disney's claim to the film's star, Mickey Mouse. The copyrights to Superman, Batman, Disney's Snow White, and early Looney Tunes characters will all fall into the public domain between 2031 and 2035.Nope. The companies in question have far too much money tied up in those copyrights for them not to be lobbying Congress for changes to the copyright law.
You will not see any of those characters in public doman in your lifetime.
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We had a lovely holiday here. For our sixth anniversary we had steak and shrimp, and watched some SF on TV and relaxed together. Sixth anniversary is "iron". Mrs. Fungus gave me a pair of cast iron 6-siders; I gave her a pair of wrought iron roses. Heh.
Lit a pack of firecrackers and a "Beer Barrel" fountain that had been sitting on my desk since the 4th of July. Toasted with fizzy wine. Etc.
Took twelve calls yesterday, which was not bad. We'll see how we do today.
I expect tomorrow to be hellish. Not only because of all the computer problems that people have postponed calling about, but because I need to be here 1.5 hours early for training. *sigh* But, hey--tomorrow is Wednesday, already, and overtime is helpful, and once Wednesday is done there'll be only two days left before the weekend. So, what the hey.