Hot and humid. Of course. And again. It was still 85F when I went to bed, and that hot when the day started. It’ll probably be higher than 105F today just to spite me. But I’ll deal.
Spent most of the day yesterday catching up on stuff online. Still a couple of small chest freezers in the auctions. If I had someplace ready for it, I’d get another. Or two.
Picked up the kid, and a friend. Had a long conversation with her mom when she came to retrieve the extra… she’s a teacher and we talked about school security issues. She wants guns in classrooms and schools. She can’t believe what happened in Uvalde. I’m pretty sure she’d carry if she could.
I’ve got to get out of the house today, and get some stuff done before picking up the kid again. We’ll see how it goes, of course.
And there is plenty to do around the house if it comes to that.
Stack stuff up. And do it with more organization than I did….
nick
Hollyweird:
Megan Fox Openly Admits That She Drinks Blood For “Ritual Purposes”
These frakking people are insane. This is NOT normal.
No doubt. I wonder how much of it is made up. You can only show your t!ts and butt so many times. If you aren’t actually acting, then you have to do SOMETHING to get press.
I agree in principle, but I made a judgement call to not fight it. The replacement tire is in the same class as the one it replaced, the tread on the remaining one is good, and you can’t visually tell unless you get up really close to look at the branding on the sidewall. It drives and handles perfectly fine. For the time and aggravation it would take to get another Michelin, I’m fine with the outcome.
Fun at work yesterday. We have a dedicated fiber internet connection for our labs – 700mbit up and down. It went down around 1330 yesterday. At first I thought it was a DNS issue, but no, can’t even get to the router’s gateway. I call up the ISP and they told me there was “a cut” somewhere and they would call me back with more details in a little bit.
A couple hours later, I call them back and finally talk to tier 2 support. It appears the city was digging and tore up two fiber bundles – a 26 strand and 144 strand – which killed around 70 customers. Service was finally restored around 2030 that evening.
I love how the people who always preach “call before you dig” don’t actually do what they preach. Yeah, I know, government.
Nailed it:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/07/jill_biden_got_what_she_wished_for_and_found_out_karma_is_a_bh.html
Including the Jim Butcher quote
83F and 87%RH, wife and kid fed and out the door.
The weather station says if “feels like” 83F but not to me. To me it feels like 93F. Part sun too.
Sure was quiet last night, made me think something was wrong…
n
Excellent. Europe keeps making noises about sanctions, and then keeps buying. It’s past time to “put up or shut up”. Nice of the Russians to force the issue.
Of course, it’s only one of many. Swiss gold refineries, for example, no longer import from Russia. Strange, how their imports from UAE have gone up by the same amount that their Russian imports have gone down.
It’s much the same for all sorts of businesses, in Europe, the US, or wherever: Some middleman steps in and relabels the goods, in return for a cut off the top. Western countries look briefly the other way, then congratulate themselves for “implementing sanctions”.
I don’t disagree, but I’m not sure that the infrastructure exists. That would be a lot of LNG shipments. Do the ships exist? Do the terminals exist in the harbors?
Edit: I see that Lynn confirmed the lack of infrastructure, with a lot more detail, in one of his comments.
Anyway, yes, it may be cold in Germany this Winter. Pick better friends, next time. Meanwhile, turn your nuclear power plants back on – it may not be gas, but it is energy, and everyone has electricity in their home.
Well, that’s not quite true. Americans as individuals tend to be well-regarded. Europeans hold the American political system in sneering contempt. With some justification.
I disagree. Putin wants to leave a legacy where he has re-conquered as much of the former USSR as possible. Anything about Ukraine/EU, Ukraine/NATO, Ukraine/whatever is just an excuse. Putin wants the territory.
@MrAtoz, they are not the first to admit it either, see also Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolee… and I’m pretty sure there were others who mentioned it.
They are profoundly damaged people.
And they are recruiting, see also Disney children’s programming director, and netflix.
n
Is it wrong that I mostly read my alumni magazine looking for grammatical and editing errors?
and that I find them in every issue?
n
Riddle me this: How the hell did minstrels and mummers become cultural icons, viewed as role models and persons whose thoughts and words deserve attention?
Historically they were viewed as barely worthy of being part of civilization, little more than thieves, drunkards, idlers, and prostitutes. They were tolerated for the entertainment but not respected as individuals. Considering that demonstrated mental illness and antisocial behavior appears to be much higher among entertainers than among the general populace, I’d say that our European forebears might have been on to something.
(Yah, I know that I’m painting with too broad a brush. I think that the overall strokes are correct.)
When Hearst and Time-Warner had magazines to sell and the empty headed celebrities decided that they wanted to “make a difference” and get their vapid opinions into the public arena as part of shilling whatever projects they completed that year.
Time-Warner had more modern-era power, but, back in the day, Hearst also arguably helped give us Income Tax and the direct election of Senators, the 16th and 17th Amendments. Plus the Spanish-American War depending on which source you accept as credible.
Palate cleanser
https://hotair.com/allahpundit/2022/07/19/the-amazing-pizza-delivery-guy-fire-rescue-n483723
Respect.
Anyway, yes, it may be cold in Germany this Winter. Pick better friends, next time. Meanwhile, turn your nuclear power plants back on – it may not be gas, but it is energy, and everyone has electricity in their home.
They cannot restart the nuclear power plants without refueling them first and I’ll wager that they do not have the fuel rods built and ready to go. The old fuel rods are worn out and do not generate enough heat to make steam with.
A lot of countries, the USA included, have shut down their nuclear breeder reactors due to accidents and horrible long life radioactive side products. There is an immense public controversy concerning this, much more so outside the USA. If you remember, there is a buried train in Washington state that got exposed a decade ago. They threw dirt on it and wished the problem away. It will be back.
Lynn said:
Some of those “side products” included the radio-isotopes often used in medical treatments, and which are now in very short supply. They’re going to need to restart those reactors, or find new medical diagnostic tools to replace the old ones.
And from a more rational perspective, “long life” and “highly radioactive” are opposite terms. A highly radioactive substance has a short half-life and decays quickly. “Long life” elements will be around for quite a while, but aren’t very radioactive.
An interactive tool that compares Hubble images with those from the new Webb telescope:
https://www.webbcompare.com/index.html
Rhetorical question – Why is it always WA State? 🙂
If memory serves, Russia was also a key supplier of uranium before the war.
I’ve mentioned before that nuclear waste is largely a regulatory issue. We SHOULD be reprocessing fuel until everything left is light, fast decaying elements. If we really want to, we can use a fusion reactor to ‘burn’ them up further (assuming we get a fusion reactor that runs for a few seconds. We are close to that, and close to break-even. Long way left to research for a power source, but a helluva neutron source ).
SO much misinformation, especially from the US government.
Uranium in the drinking water might explain Seattle…
I think that Lynn’s views on the nuclear power industry and the dangers of nuclear waste are shaped by his living being made from the petrochemical industry.
VERY cool!
Regarding nuclear waste, I seem to recall Dr. Pournelle saying that the spent fuel should be encased in glass rods, and then dumped deep into the Marianas Trench.
I can’t find it with a quick search, but recall that he said that putting nuclear waste in a very deep hole in the ocean would be safer long-term than burying in Nevada (or elsewhere).
Oops. Clicked down by mistake.
Dilbert: Rush The Space Laser
https://dilbert.com/strip/2022-07-19
Dilbert is creating a picture of what a space laser might look like. He is going to need a lot more detail work done. They should have built the space lasers back in the 1980s when Reagan wanted to.
Oops. Clicked down by mistake.
There is no recourse from that mistake. The world is now burning in a fire of purity.
Regarding nuclear waste, I seem to recall Dr. Pournelle saying that the spent fuel should be encased in glass rods, and then dumped deep into the Marianas Trench.
I can’t find it with a quick search, but recall that he said that putting nuclear waste in a very deep hole in the ocean would be safer long-term than burying in Nevada (or elsewhere).
Anything would be better than loading up trains of waste nuclear material, running them up a valley in Washington state, and using Caterpillar D9s to push dirt on top of the trains.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/nuclear-waste-tunnel-collapses-hanford-site-washington-state
@Rick H
subduction zone.
Uranium in the drinking water might explain Seattle…
I think that Lynn’s views on the nuclear power industry and the dangers of nuclear waste are shaped by his living being made from the petrochemical industry.
I like all means of power generation except wind turbines. Wind turbines are a waste of space.
I almost became a nuclear power plant engineer back in 1983 at Comanche Peak SES. But I did not like the terms of the job and turned it down.
I don’t think that they have done that for years. The tunnel collapse was in 2017. The last reactor was decommissioned in 1987.
The “B” reactor was decommissioned in 1968. You can tour it, since it has been preserved: https://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/201001/potter.cfm
See Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site
And found the reference on Dr. Pournelle’s site about putting nuclear waste in the subduction zone: https://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail318.html#waste
I don’t see how the land from a wind turbine is easily reclaimed for farming. A lot of the new construction between Busch Gardens and the University of South Florida in Tampa was simply dropped on top of the Army airfield runways which were built on the land during WWII, the concrete so thick that they could not be easily removed.
The parking lot for Busch Gardens’ waterpark, Adventure Island, sits on top of what used to be the landfill for the base. If you’ve ever been there and wondered about the wildly uneven terrain under the parking surface, now you know.
Twenty years ago, a lot of the old runways were still visible from sources like Google Maps satellite view. Now, not so much.
Uranium in the drinking water in Seattle?
In Vantucky, after we left, the new Native American casino was unable to cut a deal with the nearby town for a sewer connection so the tribe simply applied for permission from the Feds to build a septic field on top of what were the well fields for the county at the time.
Yummy. In theory, the aquifer should be deep enough to avoid problems with contamination. In theory. I wonder if that mess was ever resolved.
Didn’t the “Skunk Works” claim a couple of years ago they were working on a microwave something something fusion reactor that would fit in the back of a truck? Fusion – it’s just around the corner.
“$3,835,390,000,000: Federal Tax Collections Set Record Through June”
https://www.cnsnews.com/article/washington/terence-p-jeffrey/3835390000000-federal-tax-collections-set-record-through-june
“(CNSNews.com) – The federal government hauled in a record $3,835,390,000,000 in total taxes in the first nine months of fiscal 2022 (October through June), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.”
“That was up $502,438,730,000—or 15.07 percent—from the then-record $3,332,951,270,000 (in constant June 2022 dollars) that the federal government collected in taxes in the first nine months of fiscal 2021.”
Trump was right, lower the corporate tax rate and the money will come zooming in. But Biden wants to raise the personal and corporate tax rates, therefore crashing the economy.
And yet, we are running a $515 billion deficit spending so far this year with Biden aching to spend trillions more on dubious green energy projects.
Hat tip to:
https://www.drudgereport.com/
If they only had some water to put it out:
WATCH: Fire and explosion reported at Hoover Dam; Update: Fire extinguished
How low will it go?
I don’t think that they have done that for years. The tunnel collapse was in 2017. The last reactor was decommissioned in 1987.
I think that the Pampa, TX nuclear missile reprocessing facility was running a nuclear reactor into the 1990s but am not sure at all.
The reason why we have not put any nuclear waste into long term storage is that we are storing 30 to 50 years of old fuel rods at the nuclear power plants in ponds and then casks. I do not know about the medical nuclear waste, there is a lot of that also. I have had nuclear materials in my body six or seven times now for medical tests. The wife has also had some for cancer diagnosis and treatment.
I would love for plugs to try this:
‘Quite insane’ –> Climate Advocate Ryan Maue takes Biden and his possible ‘national climate emergency’ APART in thread
He is so brain dead he’ll sign anything Dr. Jill puts in front of him. After he gets his “pills” of course.
Here’s a Reddit post making fun of February 2021 in Texas vs. July 2022 in Europe:
https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/w2urt8/infrastructure_is_adapted_to_climate/?sort=confidence
Seems nobody is prepared for the extremes.
They like to “swim naked” in Europe too.
Being a central flyover state and landlocked by 1,000+ miles we get both extremes and our houses are built for both 100°F (38°C) heat in the Summer and -10°F (-23°C) cold in the Winter.
Right now, the utility companies in Texas are doing whatever it takes to keep Governor Abbott’s reelection chances alive, and it is “all hands on deck”. That is the key difference between the current situation an February 2021, when most of government and industry were enjoying the double holiday weekend despite warnings all week from the forecasters that something bad was going to happen.
Heck, the forecasters were predicting minus temperatures for Austin, which never happened.
If they only had some water to put it out:
WATCH: Fire and explosion reported at Hoover Dam; Update: Fire extinguished
Looks like a transformer fire. Electricity and oil in those bad boys, water is not good for fires with them. Best just to let it burn out without spreading.
“China Has Dumped Over $100 Billion Of US Treasuries In The Last 6 Months”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/china-has-dumped-over-100-billion-usts-last-6-months
Don’t worry, we have more for sale.
There have been reports of record-setting temperatures country-wide. In excess of 39C, 102F in and around London, and 40+C , 104F in Lincolnshire.
The Chinesium thermohygrometer in the study is currently saying 33.4C, 92F, and 41% RH. And to top it off, we’ve just had several heavy rain showers.
Forecasts are for no more than 28C, 82F, in the next week.
G.
They like to “swim naked” in Europe too.
Building power, food, natural gas, water, sewer, roads, etc (infrastructure) systems to serve 100% of the population is expensive. If you just ignore the needs of the last 2 to 5% of the population then your costs drop significantly. Just ignore the screams of the underserved, they probably would not appreciate the service anyway.
Regarding nuclear waste, I seem to recall Dr. Pournelle saying that the spent fuel should be encased in glass rods, and then dumped deep into the Marianas Trench.
I can’t find it with a quick search, but recall that he said that putting nuclear waste in a very deep hole in the ocean would be safer long-term than burying in Nevada (or elsewhere).
Godzilla !
I would love for plugs to try this:
‘Quite insane’ –> Climate Advocate Ryan Maue takes Biden and his possible ‘national climate emergency’ APART in thread
He is so brain dead he’ll sign anything Dr. Jill puts in front of him. After he gets his “pills” of course.
Is this before or after they are going to put us all in FEMA camps ?
Boys, avenge me !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu3FRRXqazw
WRT Yucca Mtn: It was all a scam & fraud by Senator Harry Reid (dumbocrap). He supported it until it was 99.99% complete, the he had it shut down.
>>Chinesium thermohygrometer <<
Quickly say that three times in row!
(Hey, at least it wasn’t a sphygmomanometer)
@Geoff
Why do the Brits pronounce lieutenant as ‘lef-tenant’?
Learned a new word today: intermarried:
Rep. Jerrold Nadler suggests Justice Clarence Thomas didn’t mention Loving decision because he’s ‘intermarried’
Dumbocrats are racist as Heck.
To expand, in the Queen’s English, would “In lieu of” be pronounced as “in lef of?” 🙂
Man, I am not liking this. You know what happens at the end of these long extra hot summers ? We get a nasty old hurricane: The Galveston Hurricane of 1900, Carla, Alicia, Katrina, Rita, Ike, Harvey, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_hurricanes#Texas
106F in the sun here. Only 41%RH.
Did one pickup, hit the goodwill outlet on the way to get the kid… found a clock worth $150, some pokemon cards, lego of course, and a wii organizer tower worth $50+. Those two items will double what I paid, and the rest is either for the house or gravy…
n
sphygmomanometer
– I can’t see or hear the word without hearing the muppets singing it…
n
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dfmur6IkM7U
Austin’s retro gaming show is this weekend. Last year, the place was overwhelmed with dweebs looking for a deal on Pokemon or N64, but they all came away disappointed.
Anyone spending the cash for a booth on the floor in that place is going to know exactly what their items are worth so real bargains are rare. OTOH, it is a great place to get an idea of retail prices.
That is irrelevant to the adherents of the High Church of the Cognitive Dissonance as I’ve seen/heard it referred to elsewhere online.
I’m starting to wonder if the Texas Supreme Court is waiting until after the election to issue their ruling on where power lies to impose masks in the state. Yeah, it will suck to have a patchwork of rules, but a Robert Francis win in November virtually guarantees masks will return in January, at least until the regular session of the Legislature convenes.
@~jim:
No idea. I would have expected us to maintain the French-derived pronunciation, while you Yanks used the “lef-” pronunciation.
No.
But then, English doesn’t just borrow from other languages, it sneaks up on them and mugs them for new vocabulary. And then Webster rewrote it for you.
G.
@~jim:
It’s a combination thermometer/hygrometer of Middle Kingdom origin, so…
G.
@nick:
No. That’s a bit like me – I don’t watch TV very much, because a career of training leads me to see all the little things that are wrong.
Also no. Language evolves, and those of us of a certain age see (and hear) the neologisms, and complain about them.
Get Off My Yard!!!!!
G.
>>I would have expected us to maintain the French-derived pronunciation, while you Yanks used the “lef-” pronunciation. <<
I think that’s why you guys say ‘spesh-ee-al-it-ee’ and we say ‘spesh-ul-tee’.
*****
Has anyone tried to watch the SyFy channel’s production of Childhood’s End ?
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt4146128/
It’s a one-off for the Syfy channel. The production values are great but it’s so slooow. I get about an hour into the first of three parts and start to doze off. Perhaps it needs more suspensefulness. 🙂
The book was great, though. Hard to believe it’s 70+ years old.
“The production values are great but it’s so slooow. I get about an hour into the first of three parts and start to doze off. Perhaps it needs more suspensefulness.”
Name one memorable character in an Arthur C. Clarke story…
aside from HAL and Dave, both only memorable from the movie.
~jim, can you play back at 2X speed?
>> Looks like a transformer fire. Electricity and oil in those bad boys, water is not good for fires with them. Best just to let it burn out without spreading.
Like what you do when your EV spontaneously catches fire.
>> I almost became a nuclear power plant engineer back in 1983 at Comanche Peak SES. But I did not like the terms of the job and turned it down.
Thus saving Homer Simpson from unemployment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLUOZOVpJLA
>> I can’t find it with a quick search, but recall that he said that putting nuclear waste in a very deep hole in the ocean would be safer long-term than burying in Nevada (or elsewhere).
The late Harry Reid spent most of his tenure in the US Senate keeping the Yucca Mountain disposal site from opening.
>>~jim, can you play back at 2X speed? <<
Heh, that’s not a bad idea. I’ll give it a try. I already do that with those excruciatingly slow YouTube videos. x1.5 or 1.75 is about my limit, though.
*****
I will be curious to see If Greg’s prediction holds true in regard to the effect of student loan forgiveness on junior level nursing assistants. From this morning’s, err, paper:
WA hospitals are far over capacity, as backlogs and staff shortages add up
>> They are profoundly damaged people.
>> Riddle me this: How the hell did minstrels and mummers become cultural icons, viewed as role models and persons whose thoughts and words deserve attention?
Lacking any real talent, they start out with pushing themselves on social media to the point that some record exec decides all those hundreds of thousands of followers can’t be entirely wrong so some dollars flow their way. The comes the paid PR teams and the “millions” of followers (ahem, note to Tony if he’s listening) and more screeching music that all kinds of sounds the same and has mostly unintelligible lyrics. Thankfully I have better options on SiriusXM.
~jim – (regarding the WA hospital story you linked)
I’m not sure that the Seattle Times is a valid source for any news that might be true.
Me too. +1000!
It will be the highest educated professionals in healthcare, physicians and ARNPs, who shrug, not the lower levels, nursing aides and LPNs.
The current staffing crisis in WA State and elsewhere is due the vaccine requirement for healthcare workers, which the Old School Marm Roberts and his monkey boy, Kavanaugh, joined with the liberals to uphold.
Didn’t the P-I buy out the Times, Rick? Not that I would trust the P-I either as a source, but I thought they were under the same management.
>> Elon Musk Soaks Up Sun While Spending Time with Pals Aboard Luxury Yacht in Greece
https://people.com/human-interest/elon-musk-spends-time-with-friends-aboard-luxury-yacht-in-greece/
Looks like Tony’s had a few too many cheeseburgers.
https://youtu.be/puJePACBoIo
The Times bought the P-I. I’d be a little suspicious of the Seattle Times myself if I hadn’t spent about 3 weeks in hospital and then the last 2 months trying to get some decent post-op care. There’s far too little staff and far too much bureaucracy. It’s a really sad state of affairs and I suppose this is what the NHS looks like.
Unlike YouTube, speeding up playback sort of ruins the experience. It was worth a try!
EDIT: Greg’s conjecture makes more sense than my memory of same. It’ll be interesting to see if it plays out.
>> Looks like a transformer fire. Electricity and oil in those bad boys, water is not good for fires with them. Best just to let it burn out without spreading.
There appears to be a deluge system bolted to the wall just behind this particular unit, not sure why the firefighters were also hosing things down. It does appear to be somewhat different, with a horizontal tank in front.
Old WPA unit, with trouble expected? New unit built out of Chinesium, with trouble expected?
I’ve heard that the hospital that fired me for not taking the “vaccine”, Houston Methodist, is severely understaffed and can’t find people who want to work for them.
Recapping: I was in a 100% remote IT position, and they had already determined that it would remain 100% remote permanently.
My heart bleeds for them.
>> Looks like a transformer fire. Electricity and oil in those bad boys, water is not good for fires with them. Best just to let it burn out without spreading.
There appears to be a deluge system bolted to the wall just behind this particular unit, not sure why the firefighters were also hosing things down. It does appear to be somewhat different, with a horizontal tank in front.
Old WPA unit, with trouble expected? New unit built out of Chinesium, with trouble expected?
When it got above 110 F in Dallas, we had to put water sprays on many of our large generation unit transformers and the auto-transformers. That deluge system is probably an automatic sprinkler system.
>> Fusion – it’s just around the corner.
Parked right behind Tony’s Jesus truck.
– in other words, could be, might be, might not be, and we don’t know.
n
Looks like ERCOT set another instantaneous peak today, 79,728 MW with 9,000 MW solar and 12,000 MW wind turbines. The wind finally started blowing today. That extra wind allowed ERCOT to keep the prices under $100/MWH most of the day with a brief excursion to $400/MWH.
https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards
I watch two youtubers at 1.25 speed, one is a country boy in Georgia, one a transplanted Brit in Vegas. The speech still sounds natural but all the grinding slowness is gone.
n
>> ~jim, can you play back at 2X speed?
I could though play Strawberry Fields Forever backwards and see if Paul is still buried.
But I highly doubt there was any blood swapping going on.
So, no objective measure, just whatever some committee feels…
Yep, noticed that too.
Move the goal posts, change the criteria, makes all the historical comparisons moot.
n
So, no objective measure, just whatever some committee feels…
Kinda sounds like a lady lawyer describing a biologist describing a woman.
Masks don’t work? I realize that lots of folks have a political angle on this. However, if you take that away, this is just a dumb thing to say.
If someone sneezes or coughs, they spray stuff everywhere. Watch someone talk against a bright backlight, like a sunset. Just talking, people spray. If they are wearing a mask, that spray is reduced. Obviously masks work, at least at this level.
Let’s leave Covid aside. I always get 2-3 colds a year. I haven’t had a cold or the flu for nearly 3 years now. There has been a massive drop in flu cases across the world. This is more than anecdotal.
People can say “so what, I still don’t like masks” and that is absolutely fair. However, saying “masks don’t work” is basically denial of reality.
Perhaps it should have said “masks of the type commonly used, in the way people commonly use them, don’t work to reduce the spread of chinkyflu in the general population.”
n
A genuine, properly fitted N95, will at least protect you from…some of the foul odors you’re likely to encounter in the Wally Mart checkout line 😉
This is why I wear mask and gloves at the goodwill outlet.
n
@jim:
Yes, I have. That’s several hours of my life gone away, that I can’t get back.
Objections:
Why is Stormgren portrayed as a MidWest farmer? And granted power and influence? Or even believed? In the novel, he’s Secretary General of the UN, so plausible. (He’s also Finnish, so that’s probably the reason – gotta get a Merkin hero in there)
Why did we need the tortured romantic relationship between Stormgren and his ex?
Despite your complaints about pacing, the Overlords are accepted unreasonably quickly, mere years in story time, versus centuries in the novel.
The Overlords have wings, dammit, and black skin, not red.
That’s just off the top of my head. I’m sure that if I cared enough to waste more of my life refreshing my memory, I could object more. (I DVD’d it off the SyFy UK transmissions, via $ky)
Summary: typical HollyWeird butchery of an intriguing concept. And yes, I am a fan of Arthur Clarke’s writing.
G.