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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Monday Night Open Thread

Monday Night Open Thread

by John Cole|  December 5, 20118:09 pm| 69 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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This seemed relevant:

Feh. Monday.

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Reader Interactions

69Comments

  1. 1.

    kindness

    December 5, 2011 at 8:10 pm

    Talk about dark humor John…

  2. 2.

    cathyx

    December 5, 2011 at 8:10 pm

    A little grumpy this evening, are we?

  3. 3.

    A.G.

    December 5, 2011 at 8:10 pm

    Wow.

    Happy Monday to you, too!

  4. 4.

    Lee Hartmann

    December 5, 2011 at 8:12 pm

    Take heart – many stars live longer than that.

  5. 5.

    cathyx

    December 5, 2011 at 8:12 pm

    Even though I’m pessimistic about the near future, I’m quite optimistic for the long run. I think everything will come out in the wash eventually.

  6. 6.

    Villago Delenda Est

    December 5, 2011 at 8:14 pm

    You are a fluke of the Universe.

    You have no right to be here.

  7. 7.

    SP

    December 5, 2011 at 8:14 pm

    Like a parsec, a light year is a measurement of distance. You can’t be “a light year late.”

  8. 8.

    Baud

    December 5, 2011 at 8:14 pm

    @cathyx: I don’t know. As they say, in the long run, we’re all dead.

  9. 9.

    robertdsc-PowerBook

    December 5, 2011 at 8:15 pm

    Heh. How Tunchian of you, John.

  10. 10.

    Gin & Tonic

    December 5, 2011 at 8:16 pm

    @SP: But you can be a light dollar short, no?

  11. 11.

    scav

    December 5, 2011 at 8:17 pm

    @cathyx: Mismatched Socks will inherit the earth. Just before it explodes.

  12. 12.

    Linda Featheringill

    December 5, 2011 at 8:18 pm

    I see that Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Marciopa County, Arizona is being criticized for not investigating complaints of sexual assault, especially towards children. Some of them were preschoolers. Many of the victims were children of illegal immigrants.

    http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/critics-tough-sheriff-botched-sex-crime-cases-15083848#.Ttz8d3MbVlM

    Fucketyfuckfuck! Damn him and all his helpers to hell!

    Yes, I am biased. I was raped when I was 3 1/2 years old. This was not touchy-feely, it was forced entry. The trauma has haunted my life for decades: The memory of the physical pain, the fear, the helplessness, the broken trust.

    Damned son of a bitch of a sheriff.

  13. 13.

    Villago Delenda Est

    December 5, 2011 at 8:20 pm

    @SP:

    Tell that to Han Solo, who made the Kessel Run in less than five parsecs!

  14. 14.

    Phylllis

    December 5, 2011 at 8:20 pm

    I only have one Monday left until Christmas break, so I’m not so down on the Monday. When I have to haul back in on January 2nd while the hubby gets to stay home and watch the Carolina/Nebraska game, I’ll probably be a little cranky, though.

  15. 15.

    Judas Escargot

    December 5, 2011 at 8:22 pm

    And 620 years from now, some fungoid cloud-octopus may be watching early Seinfeld reruns.

    It all evens out.

  16. 16.

    uila

    December 5, 2011 at 8:27 pm

    Light years are a measure of distance, not time. Stop embarrassing Levenson.

  17. 17.

    JPL

    December 5, 2011 at 8:29 pm

    @Linda Featheringill: Last Friday a little girl went missing in a city north of me. Today the local police finally called in state help. She was found in a dumpster in the apartment complex where she lived, raped and beaten to death. Her mother did not speak English. The state of GA has a missing child alert system but the police did not think it was appropriate in this circumstance. It goes without saying she did not have blond hair and blue eyes. Arpaio is a sick disturbed man but imo, there are a few other sheriffs that need investigating also.

  18. 18.

    Baud

    December 5, 2011 at 8:31 pm

    @Linda Featheringill:
    @JPL:

    It seems like the level of pure hatred toward other human beings we see in parts of the U.S. right now rivals what we say during the peak of the KKK’s popularity.

  19. 19.

    Punchy

    December 5, 2011 at 8:37 pm

    A lightyear is not a unit of time. It’s a unit of distance.

    Caption FAIL.

    Edit: beaten to the punch by like 34 other commentors.

  20. 20.

    Linda Featheringill

    December 5, 2011 at 8:41 pm

    @JPL:

    My sympathy to the little girl’s mother.

    And yes, the police should answer if they didn’t use all the resources available to find the child.

  21. 21.

    Tom

    December 5, 2011 at 8:49 pm

    Reminds me of the Alan Price song from the O Lucky Man! soundtrack:

    Hope springs eternal in a young man’s breast as he dreams of a better life ahead/without that dream, you are nothing, nothing, nothing/you’ve got to find out for yourself that dream is dead.

  22. 22.

    smelter rat

    December 5, 2011 at 8:51 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Heh. I see what you did there….

  23. 23.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    December 5, 2011 at 8:53 pm

    @JPL: I heard that on the radio this evening, my heart broke. What kind of sick fuck rapes then beats to death a 7 year old? What kind of sick fuck?

  24. 24.

    Linda Featheringill

    December 5, 2011 at 8:54 pm

    By the way, dreamers, it never was the star’s dream. It was your dream. And the star can’t make it happen. You might. And you still might.

  25. 25.

    Bago

    December 5, 2011 at 8:56 pm

    You are my density.

  26. 26.

    The Dangerman

    December 5, 2011 at 8:57 pm

    Star light
    Star bright
    First star I see…

    …ah, fuck it.

  27. 27.

    Schlemizel

    December 5, 2011 at 9:06 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est:
    And whether you can hear it or not the universe is laughing behind your back.

    Though, for some of us the universe has stopped pretending & laughs in our face.

  28. 28.

    SiubhanDuinne

    December 5, 2011 at 9:09 pm

    @JPL:

    I heard that this evening on the way home and was just sickened. What a terrible thing.

  29. 29.

    jl

    December 5, 2011 at 9:09 pm

    Well, that cheered me up. Thnx, Cole.

    Cole owes us three super cute LRT pet pix.

    Right now.

  30. 30.

    SiubhanDuinne

    December 5, 2011 at 9:09 pm

    @Bago:

    Heh.

  31. 31.

    PurpleGirl

    December 5, 2011 at 9:14 pm

    @jl: You’re right, he does owe us LRT pics.

  32. 32.

    schrodinger's cat

    December 5, 2011 at 9:16 pm

    What no update about the most massive black hole evah?

  33. 33.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    December 5, 2011 at 9:22 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est: Tell that to Han Solo, who made the Kessel Run in less than five parsecs!

    LOL – or southern Californians, who measure distance in hours.

  34. 34.

    amk

    December 5, 2011 at 9:24 pm

    s&p about to fuck europe.

  35. 35.

    amk

    December 5, 2011 at 9:27 pm

    Astronomers confirm Earth Twin.

    So your gloom & doom is unwarranted, cole.

    btw, light-years is not about time, it’s about distance.

  36. 36.

    Jenny

    December 5, 2011 at 9:27 pm

    Did Obama order DHS to help Tebow engineer yet another come-from-behind victory?

    New photo evidence released under the Freedom of Information Act, says yes.

    http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/5156/dhsb.jpg

  37. 37.

    xanax

    December 5, 2011 at 9:28 pm

    It’s not the star that grants the wish, it’s the magic of the star beam falling on you. The magic light of stars long dead ricochets across the universe spreading wishful properties willy nilly. The caption fail has nothing to do with distance vs. time, but a basic misunderstanding of the science of magic.

  38. 38.

    amk

    December 5, 2011 at 9:29 pm

    Why are so many airline bosses Irish?

  39. 39.

    jl

    December 5, 2011 at 9:31 pm

    @PurpleGirl:

    No pet pix yet? After depressing the BJ audience (and goodness knows we are depressed enough as it is).

    Harrumph.

    May John G. Cole undergo 100 billion kalpas of rebirth on an ocean covered super earth, in the habitable zone, as a delicious slow moving soft bodied sea creature, among a teeming population of ravenous alien shark life forms, with fricken laser beams on their heads.

    Edit: on second thought, Cole did register as a Democrat, long after he was of age and presumably mature judgment, so, I probably need to think up a better curse. He’d be down with the weak sauce I just dished out.

  40. 40.

    Steeplejack

    December 5, 2011 at 9:36 pm

    Light-years: distance, not time.

    Justin Bieber in a Barbarella spacesuit, can no one make a “play on words” in a joke?!

  41. 41.

    jl

    December 5, 2011 at 9:40 pm

    @Steeplejack:

    “Justin Bieber in a Barbarella spacesuit,”

    What the hell is that? The meaning does not compute in my mind.

  42. 42.

    Steeplejack

    December 5, 2011 at 9:46 pm

    @jl:

    Emerging Internet tradition of using “Justin Bieber” instead of “Jesus Christ” in exclamations. So, instead of “Jesus Christ on a pogo stick!,” what I said above.

    If it is offensive, I’ll stop as soon as everyone else stops using “also, too” in every other comment.

  43. 43.

    SiubhanDuinne

    December 5, 2011 at 9:53 pm

    Remember when John had all that trouble with Paypal that time? Between that story and one I just read about on FB from someone at Regretsy trying to do something nice for kids at Christmas, I truly believe Paypal is an evil company. I won’t use them.

    Here you go: http://www.regretsy.com/2011/12/05/cats-1-kids-0/

  44. 44.

    RossInDetroit

    December 5, 2011 at 9:53 pm

    If our universe is a 3 dimensional surface of a 4 dimensional realm and space is finite but unbounded, the star you are looking at may be our own sun.
    I dunno what that means in terms of dreams, though.

  45. 45.

    Raven

    December 5, 2011 at 9:53 pm

    @JPL: “Authorities did not issue a Levi’s Call — the state’s version of an amber alert — because officers didn’t have any information about the girl’s abductor, which is a requirement for issuing such an alert”

  46. 46.

    Raven

    December 5, 2011 at 9:56 pm

    Activation Criteria

    Before Levi’s Call can be activated, the following “Alert Criteria” must be met:

    Law enforcement officials have a reasonable belief that an abduction has occurred.
    Law enforcement officials believe that the child is in imminent danger or serious bodily injury or death.
    Enough descriptive information exists about the victim and the abductor for law enforcement to issue a Levi’s Call: Georgia’s AMBER Alert.
    The victim of the abduction is a child age 17 years or younger.
    The child’s name and other critical data elements – including the child abduction (CA) and AMBER Alert (AA) flags – have been entered into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) system

    Activation will not be granted for:

    Non-custodial abductions where no danger exists to the child
    Runaways

    Over use of Levi’s Call will cause the program to be ineffective.

  47. 47.

    Boxer

    December 5, 2011 at 10:12 pm

    A solid piece of journalism with more to come regarding how incredibly awful police can be in Florida yet retain their badges. I’m kind of glad they’re releasing one story per day, because I don’t think I could handle reading it all in one sitting….

    http://cops.htcreative.com/

  48. 48.

    David in NY

    December 5, 2011 at 10:36 pm

    Let me be the fourth (or maybe fifth or sixth) to object that “lightyears” are a measure of distance. At least Cole could have made a footnote about it, or something.

  49. 49.

    Glen Tomkins

    December 5, 2011 at 10:49 pm

    Whatever the philosophic merit of the sentiment, the astrophysics is all wrong.

    You can’t see any stars with the naked eye that are anything close to millions of light years distant. The closest, Alpha Centauri, is only 4.5 ly away, and furthest at all bright stars, ones that you are at all likely to notice as individuals and wish upon, are no further than about 2,000 ly away.

    Now, the two thousand years that it takes for light to reach us from these 2,000 ly-away stars is indeed a long time in human terms. But in terms of the lifetime of the stars, it’s the blink of an eye. Even the millions of years mentioned would not be very long to a star. It is almost a certainty that none of the stars you might conceivably have ever wished upon has died since the light from it that you see left it.

    Hopefully your dreams are as alive as all those stars.

  50. 50.

    dmsilev

    December 5, 2011 at 10:56 pm

    Wow. Triple fail.

    (a) As noted by many, light years are a unit of distance, not time. Assume whoever made this actual meant ‘years’.

    (b) Naked-eye visibility distance for individual stars is just a few thousand light-years, so for millions, substitute thousands, unless you’re wishing upon a star using the Keck Telescope or something.

    c) Main sequence stars live for multiple billions of years, so if you *were* wishing upon an object millions of LY away, the chances are pretty good that it’s still there.

  51. 51.

    suzanne

    December 5, 2011 at 10:58 pm

    The baby has had a cold for over a week now, and last night decided it would be awesome to stay up until midnight, then get up at 3 to fight for her right to PAAAAAAR-TAAAY! I’ve also started having a weird side effect from my anti-seizure medication: abnormally low blood pressure. So I randomly feel faint and disoriented and like I’m gonna hurl.

    And now the baby is asleep on my lap. Whaddya bet she decides to go for 3AM Part II: The Revenge? FUUUUUCK.

  52. 52.

    Cap'n Magic

    December 5, 2011 at 11:15 pm

    And in the alternate universe that is known as the GOP road to nomination, Phyllis Schalfly endores Michelle Bachman.

  53. 53.

    Steeplejack

    December 5, 2011 at 11:27 pm

    @suzanne:

    Condolences on that. The worst part of being sick and/or nursing someone who is sick is that it’s so tiring. You feel like you’re never going to get back to “normal” energy level.

  54. 54.

    licensed to kill time

    December 5, 2011 at 11:34 pm

    Thanks to all the actual scientists who pointed out that stars have a life span unimaginable to us puny humans and that we can still safely wish upon a star, no matter where we are, and have a reasonable expectation that it might make a difference. Or at least make us feel better for a nano-second.

    (I have no idea what a nano-second is, or might be, or if it is even a term. I just like the way it sounds.)

  55. 55.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason

    December 5, 2011 at 11:36 pm

    @SP: Comment #7 for the light-year vs. year correction. I kind of thought BJ’ers would have jumped on it a little earlier than that.

  56. 56.

    suzanne

    December 5, 2011 at 11:46 pm

    @Steeplejack: Thanks. It kind of sucks. I was driving home last week, and I suddenly felt so awful and dizzy that I thought for a little while that I was actually having a seizure and I had to REALLY concentrate on not throwing up all over myself. I mentioned it to my mother, who suggested taking my blood pressure, so I did: 93/66. Rut-roh. Couple that with a whiny, needy infant, and I’m THRILLED.

  57. 57.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason

    December 5, 2011 at 11:47 pm

    @licensed to kill time: Nano — one billionth. Or an iPod. Whatever

    Going smaller:
    deci: one tenth
    centi: one hundredth
    milli: one thousandth
    micro: one millionth
    nano: one billionth
    pico: Really? you want to go that small?

    Going bigger:
    deca: ten
    hecto: hundred
    kilo: thousand
    mega: million
    giga: billion

    This has been another episode of Too Much Boring Information from Another Pedantic Asshole

  58. 58.

    Egg Berry

    December 5, 2011 at 11:49 pm

    FFS people, it’s a fucking joke! on the Internet!

  59. 59.

    Steeplejack

    December 5, 2011 at 11:55 pm

    @suzanne:

    I mentioned it to my mother, who suggested taking my blood pressure, so I did: 93/66.

    Did you have a pulse? LOL. Remimds me of that Groucho Marx line in A Day at the Races, taking the pulse of someone who has fainted: “Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped.”

  60. 60.

    licensed to kill time

    December 6, 2011 at 12:06 am

    @Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:

    Thank you, Mr. Another Pedantic Asshole. The information was quite welcome, ectually (monocle firmly inserted, pinkie finger raised)….

  61. 61.

    suzanne

    December 6, 2011 at 12:10 am

    @Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:

    This has been another episode of Too Much Boring Information from Another Pedantic Asshole

    That’s my favorite show. Never miss an episode.

  62. 62.

    suzanne

    December 6, 2011 at 12:10 am

    @Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:

    This has been another episode of Too Much Boring Information from Another Pedantic Asshole

    That’s my favorite show. Never miss an episode.

  63. 63.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason

    December 6, 2011 at 12:52 am

    @licensed to kill time:
    More Pedantic Info:

    Did you notice, you classicly trained non-engineer geeks, that the smaller prefixes are from the Latin and the larger ones are from the Greek?

    A-and when they’re abbreviated, the larger ones are capitalized (Kg for kilograms, KW for kilowatts) and the smaller ones aren’t (mg for milligrams, mW for milliwatts).

  64. 64.

    licensed to kill time

    December 6, 2011 at 1:20 am

    @Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:

    I recognized the Latin (from my phar.macy tech days reading scrips) and vaguely recognized the Greek…but this is one of the things I love about BJ; the arcane side-trips threads take, informed by knowledgeable people. I learn a lot and I like it!

  65. 65.

    Glen Tomkins

    December 6, 2011 at 7:58 am

    @suzanne: You need to change seizure meds, or at least dosages. Even if the regimen you’re on now has been the only one that has worked well so far at preventing seizures, it sounds like your hypotensive episodes are nearly as disruptive as seizures, specifically in the sense that it sounds like it’s not safe for you to drive on these meds. And unless you know exactly what effect of the meds is driving the BP down, it’s possible that the low BP is just a symptom of something inherently dangerous, like a heart rhythm problem.

  66. 66.

    Glen Tomkins

    December 6, 2011 at 8:01 am

    @Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: From your handle, it sounds like you’re related to Peace Through Superior Firepower, his more intellectual cousin perhaps.

  67. 67.

    Glen Tomkins

    December 6, 2011 at 8:05 am

    @Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: The Greeks were megalomaniacs, while the Romans were more modest, no doubt reflected in their preference for engineering instead of the Greek’s interest in theoretical science.

  68. 68.

    Paul in KY

    December 7, 2011 at 10:21 am

    That’s a stupid poster, since the vast majority of stars are in our galaxy & are no farther away than 100,000 years.

    Yes, I’m pendantic ;-)

  69. 69.

    Paul in KY

    December 7, 2011 at 10:41 am

    @Paul in KY: I mean’t the vast majority of stars you can see with the naked eye…

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