BruceH

What the ever-lovin' Hell? Why on God's green earth would someone "revise" a novel like The Man Who Folded Himself? It sounds remarkably wrongheaded. What are the differences? Does the eponymous time-traveling hero refer to President Bush? Sad to hear that Gerrold would mess up his own book like that. I reread a good part of the novel about 10 years back. I hadn't read it since I was in 9th grade, so the only thing strange that time was getting a more adult perspective on the old book.

RIP

Hey, I'M a WASP and I think Jenkins goes over the top with the damn strings, especially on "It Was A Very Good Year." Just my two cents, not looking for a fight. Actually, I don't much care for it as a SONG, never did. Truth to tell, the lyrics make me want to vomit, so that may color my reaction somewhat. But a more subtle, Nelson Riddle-type of approach may have worked wonders, for me anyway.

Congratulations!!! :tup So happy for you! Best wishes for a very happy future!

I'm really, really glad I'm not one of his neighbors.

Cop Killer----the penultimate Martin Beck book.

Very sorry for your terrible loss.

Isn't "no unreasonable searches and seizures (of one's junk)" in the bill of rights?

It's like I have a twin.

The one with Golson, maybe? They're all good, really. I know it's wimpy to say that, but it's true.

Oh yes, I'm a big fan of Roy Blount, Jr. too. How, I wonder, could anyone NOT like Blount's digressions, then I recall you said "Amazon reviews" and of course, that makes sense, because about twenty percent of Amazon reviews are shit. Conundrum solved!

400 CD's and 150 LP's? This is a joke, right?

I liked he and Stephen Colbert singing harmony on that Everly Brothers song the other night.

Saw it recently at the Castro. Wish the restored footage was in better shape, but it sure adds a lot to the story.

Shocking news. RIP

Seen this many times. It's a classic, though. The anchor is acting like a real jerk.

There are so many different types and degrees of bad movies, just as there are many different types of good ones, that choosing a single worst one is simply absurd. (Although, having said that, I must admit that watching Hudson Hawk on the big screen has to be one of the most unpleasant movie-going experiences of my life.)

Or else our awareness of the possibility of it just went up... I can't wait til our awareness of the possibility of faster-than-light travel goes up.

Ugh, me neither. He won't consider expanded replay but he's all eager to expand the playoffs? Why is Selig such a douche? Sounds like you're raising him right!

True enough, but I think it's kind of a nifty biosphere we inhabit.

What did I miss? Why would we not be here without the moon? If we didn't have an unusually large natural satellite to stabilize us, the Earth's orbital inclination would wobble drastically. IOW, our axis of rotation would wander all over the place, sometimes tilting by as much as 90 degrees, and back again, unpredictably. The climate, consequently, would be a chaotic mess. In the unlikely event that humans managed to evolve under such conditions, there'd be no chance that civilization could develop. So getting hit by that Mars-sized hunk of junk four-plus billion years ago is the best thing that ever happened to us, in a certain sense. Thank you Bruce. What about other planets that don't have one large moon, but rather a series of much smaller (relatively) moons. Do they wobble? Slightly, significantly? Maybe I'll go look it up later, but haven't the time now. I do agree that we're lucky (blessed, fortunate, what-have-you) to be here at all. There was an article in the paper a couple of days ago saying that some group of scientists somewhere had concluded that there are many more planets in our galaxy alone that are similar to earth than had been previously thought. Meaning, I suppose, that the likelihood of life elsewhere just went up. No comment about moons though. I've heard that Mars does, and that one of the outer planets, Uranus or Neptune, I forget which, right now has it's axis pointing almost flat with the ecliptic, which means it's sort of rolling along it's orbit right now. But my limited knowledge ends there. (Though I will say we're also lucky to have a spinning nickel/iron core which generates a strong geo-magnetic field. This shields us from the bulk of the solar wind, without which said wind would have long ago eroded our atmosphere to almost nothing. Mars doesn't have this, and look what happened to its atmosphere.)

For quite a long time Arthur was my favorite Kinks album. Then I went to the Something Else/Face To Face axis. Still like Arthur though. Somewhere shortly after Lola I had to check out of the train also. And I got the above Kinks Kronikles compilation in that all-important freshman year of college, on vinyl (CD's hadn't come out yet.) Good intro to the Kinks.

What did I miss? Why would we not be here without the moon? If we didn't have an unusually large natural satellite to stabilize us, the Earth's orbital inclination would wobble drastically. IOW, our axis of rotation would wander all over the place, sometimes tilting by as much as 90 degrees, and back again, unpredictably. The climate, consequently, would be a chaotic mess. In the unlikely event that humans managed to evolve under such conditions, there'd be no chance that civilization could develop. So getting hit by that Mars-sized hunk of junk four-plus billion years ago is the best thing that ever happened to us, in a certain sense.

Nice doggie...

I guess you have to decide how far out Earth's atmosphere extends and whether it appears that that is what's represented in the video. (The impact is the big thing.) I didn't question that so much as I did the final bit of information that "evidence" shows this has happened six times before in Earth's history. Regardless, it's a sobering but visually cool video. Actually, it has. But not all six impacts were quite THAT big. 500 km in diameter is one huge asteroid! In fact, it's not so much an asteroid as a planetoid, or minor planet (or dwarf planet, if you like.) OTOH, a collision between the early Earth and an object the size of Mars (!!) is what gave us the Moon, without which we'd be screwed. It's doubtful we'd even be here if we didn't have the Moon. So thank God for hyper-sized impacts, I guess.