Big Wheel

Full article here. Part of the problem for me is getting a handle on some of the terms being thrown around. And part of that is due to the sketchy reporting, frankly. What exactly is a partial meltdown? For that matter, what do people mean when they say "meltdown?" From what I can decipher, the situations at these nuclear plants mainly concern failing cooling systems rather than runaway reactors melting down. The reactors themselves are shut down, I think, and the problem is cooling off the damaged innards without releasing too much radiation. The WashPost has a fairly clear article on it all here. That's right. The fission reaction was trip stopped automatically at the first shock. The diesel pump and the secondary back up system for pumping the reactor cooling water both failed causing a build up of steam pressure that increased beyond the safety limits of the ceramic containment shielding. The No1 reactor has been cooled using sea water, rendering in an expensive heap of scrap. The situation at reactor2 looks very similar. My understanding is that No.1 was scheduled to be decommissioned anyway on March 26, so not a huge loss there. There is lots of iffy information flying around on Fukushima at the moment - while not without its flaws (like not mentioning that the No.3 reactor contains plutonium as well as uranium), I thought this was one of the most thorough explanations: https://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-worried-about-japans-nuclear-reactors/ Not a big loss? Surely you jest? We're facing wartime scale disruptions,massive panic buying, rolling power cuts and more than half, at best, of all trains and subways cancelled!! That's a good point. I still wouldn't want to be the guy explaining to the public that desperate times require running 40-year-old reactors past their intended lifespan, though...

And to think all this time I thought "Who Needs The Peace Corps?" might have been referring to Harold Ousley...

Full article here. Part of the problem for me is getting a handle on some of the terms being thrown around. And part of that is due to the sketchy reporting, frankly. What exactly is a partial meltdown? For that matter, what do people mean when they say "meltdown?" From what I can decipher, the situations at these nuclear plants mainly concern failing cooling systems rather than runaway reactors melting down. The reactors themselves are shut down, I think, and the problem is cooling off the damaged innards without releasing too much radiation. The WashPost has a fairly clear article on it all here. That's right. The fission reaction was trip stopped automatically at the first shock. The diesel pump and the secondary back up system for pumping the reactor cooling water both failed causing a build up of steam pressure that increased beyond the safety limits of the ceramic containment shielding. The No1 reactor has been cooled using sea water, rendering in an expensive heap of scrap. The situation at reactor2 looks very similar. My understanding is that No.1 was scheduled to be decommissioned anyway on March 26, so not a huge loss there. There is lots of iffy information flying around on Fukushima at the moment - while not without its flaws (like not mentioning that the No.3 reactor contains plutonium as well as uranium), I thought this was one of the most thorough explanations: https://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-worried-about-japans-nuclear-reactors/

BBC is saying a 7.9, USGS says an 8.9 which is truly huge. That wired/wireless Internet is robust enough for you guys to post is an encouraging sign at least. Hope everyone is OK. Edit - it sounds like 7.9 was what USGS originally reported, and then revised to 8.9. If that number holds it will have been the 7th largest earthquake ever recorded.

They are likely going to adjust this soon. On ESPN they just mentioned how low Bosh's production in the paint has been compared to Toronto and Bosh recognizes that he needs to roll to the basket more. As for me, I'd just be satisfied if they stopped letting LeBron chuck terribly chosen 3s, especially at the ends of games. The guy may be able to drive to the basket like nobody before or since, but I personally would rather put the ball in one of the point guards' or Miller's hands if I really needed 3 points.

I think Jim might have tweaked the skin a little bit today so it looks a little different. Also, if you are on your iPhone I'm guessing the skin appears a little different and shows you that link to get the app. On Android and my PC the mobile version looks like this at the bottom left: Whereas the regular version looks like this:

What's a "mobile skin"? Is it what you get if you go through a browser? Yes. You can check it out by doing the following: 1. Navigate to the forum through your phone's browser. 2. Locate the "version" dialog box at the bottom left of the page. If it says "IP.Board", change it to "IP.Board Mobile".

Not an excuse for this policy, but a likely explanation: If Amazon is anything like my former employer, they may not have a good way to alter transactions once they are pending in their system. Once a purchase is "booked," it is tied to a specific form of payment (that is, credit card) in the database and the system has not been designed in a way that allows for easily untying the two, for manually booking a second transaction for the same item, or for easily dealing manually with your credit card number. There are probably also security and accounting reasons for this - you want to minimize your employees' access to customer payment info, and I'm sure there are all kinds of rules about how you process charges and connect them to the systems that handle your company's finances. For us, this kind of technical limitation meant that our policies were very anti-refund - when at all possible, give the customer a credit to their account instead, because the mechanics of processing a refund were a huge pain in the ass. (Granted, our business model was different from Amazon's and this policy was less likely to antagonize our customers than it would Amazon's.) I am actually kind of surprised they were able to go back and finish charging you. My experience with Amazon support with a similar issue resulted in their just writing off charges, but that was in the mp3 store and I bet their billing system for mp3s was more rudimentary then.

Yup, I noticed that also (I'm running Android 2.2), and that's why I don't really think a dedicated app would be that useful. It does look like you can't zoom, but I'm not sure how great it would be if you could, since the mobile board right now is formatted so the posts take up almost the entire phone screen. Any more zooming in and you'd be doing a lot of scrolling, either up and down or (worse) left and right.

Why would we need one, though? The mobile version of the board is lightweight enough that I really don't see what extra functionality an app would accomplish.

Very strange. Hasn't it been at least 7 or 8 years since the set was widely available? If there's a similar case of something being backordered for almost a decade, I can't think of one.

We'll certainly wait and see. I was one of those buyers last summer. I remember someone on eBay selling a mint copy for $130 around the same time and chuckling to myself, well I just scored a brand new one for less. Silly me. This time Amazon claims "Only X left in stock--order soon (more on the way)". Really? How endless is this supply? That usually does seem to be reliable, in my experience. Of course, all these descriptions are marketing language that likely not-so-perfectly maps to specific codes in their supply chain. For instance, the system might be set up to only show the "more on the way" message when a) the stock drops below a certain number of units AND b) their supplier has included that item in its next shipment, but if, say, it's set up to display that even if b) is not the case, then in a minority of cases you'll see "more on the way" even when the item is permanently gone. "Available from these sellers" doesn't seem to mean "we're never getting this back" - I noticed the Lady Day box on Amazon.uk disappeared for about a week in February after about a day showing something like "Temporarily Out of Stock", but then they appear to have gotten more boxes in and one is now on its way to me.

That remark is rather common on many amazon listings. Really? I don't think I've ever seen it for music on Amazon US. But maybe I don't often search for stuff that's likely to be backordered. I tend to think Stefan isn't far off the mark - could these be manufactured on demand?

Doing some searching, I found several threads on other boards that describe something similar happening with the Plugged Nickel box last summer. Amazon was ultimately unable to fill the orders...I wonder if some supplier is doing something shady that causes Amazon to list it as in stock, or if it's just an error of some kind. In any case I'm not holding my breath on this one.

Also bizarre: the price just dropped to 108.63 in the last couple of hours (for me at least - I dunno if Amazon is up to its old antics with personalizing prices). Just think, if this keeps happening, in a couple of weeks we'll be able to get the box for $40.

That's bizarre. "May require an extra 1 to 2 days to process"? I wonder where they are sourcing these from?

We do? What was the last movie that made you doubled over with laughter? I appreciated Annie Hall and chuckled through it, but it didn't leave me gasping for breath like some of the more absurd and stupid parts of The Hangover.

Well, sure, we all have, but when you're dealing with written correspondence like that, you're not dealing with a faceless person. You're dealing with somebody who may very well be not unlike yourself, a front-line staffer who's doing the gig to make their nut, not because they really get off on any kind of a power trip. But that's kind of Thorne's point, I think. These people may only do this kind of stupid, soul-draining, often antisocial work because they have to make a living, but they still do it. I can see how people could see an adolescent solipsism in that ("I am a CREATIVE INDIVIDUAL and the rest of you are stupid soulless drones in the machine!") but hell, there's a reason we tend to laugh the hardest at dumb adolescent humor. And the cat thing, well, that's funny because a) it would take virtually zero effort for the coworker to have done an acceptable-looking version herself; b) the coworker not only is demanding it be done immediately, but also is leaving work in the middle of the day and isn't even considerate enough to ask him if that's OK; c) if Thorne's impression of her work is accurate, the 5 minutes spent in MS Paint would only be cutting into her time goofing off and socializing at work; d) she can't come downstairs and just discuss this request with him in person? Thorne's managed to take what would ordinarily be a really sad situation and make the character in it just unsympathetic and manipulative enough that we don't feel too bad when Thorne turns the tables and toys with her.

I think virtually all of them have been cleverly fabricated. That said, aside from the Missy one, which plays on a relatively powerless person's bereavement for their pet, most of them are taking on people with some degree of authority or power. Who hasn't wanted to exact this kind of revenge on self-important cops or faceless corporations?

this was the one that started it all for me: http://www.27bslash6.com/overdue.html

Listened to "Delirium" on Tadd Dameron's Fontainebleau today and thought this guy sounded almost like a cross between early Hank Mobley and Charlie Rouse. (There's a little lick at 1:10 that Rouse used all the time.) Anyone else hear this resemblance? And is much known of Alexander? The Lewis Porter Coltrane bio appears to have a sentence or two on him but I can't see more than the preview in Google Books.

You haven't been in an American school recently, have you? Many urban schools now feature metal detectors and the Supreme Court has held that students in school do not enjoy the usual complement of rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. I had a douchebag assistant principal in high school who insisted on bringing in rent-a-cop goons to rifle through people's bags to search for weapons, even though our high school consisted of 400 arts students. We're talking about a place with only about 140 straight men in it. I remember exactly one fistfight - the idea of someone bringing in a weapon to school was absurd. Only rational explanation I can think of is that maybe he was covering his own ass by complying with a districtwide policy handed down to all principals to enforce. FWIW, I think people are probably forgetting that this kid's school is only about a half hour's drive from Littleton. Not that that excuses it, but I can certainly understand why people in this area would be touchy about anything depicting the violent deaths of teachers...

The mother of all 419 scam threads: Thomas Mallory vs. Albert Abossi

Ah, thanks. I was looking at that but had lazily skimmed over the part on track times. The "These Foolish Things" edit is even weirder than Losin describes it: listening more closely, it sounds to me like they repeated that particular chunk of Bird's solo because the chunk starts with him quoting the head of the tune. Therefore, they probably thought they could get away with passing it off as the actual way the head was played if they just threw it in at the beginning of the track.

I recently bought the Savoy/Denon/Nippon Columbia CD An Evening At Home With the Bird, but just realized a couple of things: 1) This session (discussed here in more detail) appears on the Savoy Jazz Originals 4-CD box Charlie Parker: The Complete Live Performances On Savoy, which came out in 1998 and which I own. So it appears I duplicated this session accidentally and can probably sell the single CD. 2) HOWEVER...the track times do not line up. The tracks on the single CD are longer. "There's a Small Hotel" is 10:51 on the single CD, but only 10:14 on the box. The most elongated is "These Foolish Things," which is 3:54 on the CD but only 2:06(!!) on the box. So...what the heck happened here? Listening to the version of "These Foolish Things" from the box, it sounds like the track starts in the middle, during Bird's solo. Did Orrin Keepnews intentionally cut portions of the music to save playing time on the box, or is there some other explanation like different sources being used?