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Let’s Review 6

The Unity of the Diversity: A rare agreement between men of different ethnic groups has been reached.

Was hijacker DB Cooper’s escape hidden by FBI? 

Tsunami carried a million sea creatures from Japan to US west coast   

How to Make the Perfect Breakfast Taco  

The Art of Swedish Death Cleaning 

Nearly every country on Earth is named after one of four things

Showerthought: “If the media stopped saying “hacking” and instead said “figured out their password”, people would probably take password security a lot more seriously.”

The Life-Enhancing Qualities of Cemetery Cider

Iconic Arecibo Observatory Saved From Demolition

A Selection of the 30 Most Disappointing Under 30  

What the idea of civilisational ‘collapse’ says about history

The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the night, and had added the one stone face wanting; the stone face for which it had waited through about two hundred years.

The Gorgon had looked at the building again that night and had turned one more face to stone. The building had been waiting for this particular stone face for two hundred years.

It lay back on the pillow of Monsieur the Marquis. It was like a fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and petrified. Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it, was a knife. Round its hilt was a frill of paper, on which was scrawled: The stone face was that of the marquis on his pillow. It looked like an elegant mask that had been suddenly frightened, made angry, and had then frozen that way. A knife had been plunged into his heart. There was a piece of paper tied to the handle. On it was written: “Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques.” — Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

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  • Julie November 21, 2017, 4:34 AM

    (Lots of bad links in this one, Gerard)

  • Rob De Witt November 21, 2017, 5:53 AM

    G,
    The links in the above are including the Chrome coding as well as the address, and hence are unresolvable. An example is this one:

    chrome-extension://klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg/suspended.html#ttl=The%20Life-Enhancing%20Qualities%20of%20Cemetery%20Cider%20-%20Gastro%20Obscura&uri=https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/graveyard-hard-apple-cider-brooklyn-green-wood-cemetery

  • Gordon November 21, 2017, 7:15 AM

    The Pips…it’s like listening to the four separate tracks on the master of Sgt. Pepper. It’s got to be a special talent, to be able to hear the finished product in your head, and then to sit down and write all of the different arrangements needed to make it.

  • BillH November 21, 2017, 8:59 AM

    Julie, in the new, improved Firefox 57.0, those links try to open as Chrome extensions, which the new, improved Firefox 57.0 can’t handle (yet). The links look like this:

    chrome-extension://klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg/suspended.html#ttl=A%20Selection%20of%20the%2030%20Most%20Disappointing%20Under%2030%20%7C%20The%20New%20Yorker&uri=https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/a-selection-of-the-30-most-disappointing-under-30

    If you’re using Firefox 57.0, and really want to see the link, right click/Copy Link Locations, paste the copied link into a text editor, copy starting at http:// or https://, and paste that into the browser URL window.

    If you don’t want to copy/paste, use Chrome. These links work in Chrome.

  • BillH November 21, 2017, 9:04 AM

    Julie, if you’re using the new, improved Firefox 57.0, these links are Chrome extensions. They look like this:

    chrome-extension://klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg/suspended.html#ttl=What%20the%20idea%20of%20civilisational%20%E2%80%98collapse%E2%80%99%20says%20about%20history%20%7C%20Aeon%20Essays&uri=https://aeon.co/essays/what-the-idea-of-civilisational-collapse-says-about-history

    If you really want to see them, copy the link location, paste it into a text editor, copy all after http:// or https://, and paste that into a new URL window. Or if it’s easier, just use Chrome. The links work in Chrome.

  • Vanderleun November 21, 2017, 9:15 AM

    I guess it is as BillH helpfully suggests. I run Chrome and all those links work correctly and, in the code, are given correctly.

  • Tom November 21, 2017, 9:49 AM

    No link after The Pips Video works in Safari. Sorry, I’m roadkill on the information superhighway. What is this Chrome you speak of?

  • Julie November 21, 2017, 10:51 AM

    Thanks, Bill. I don’t use Firefox (may they suffer the full blessings of total convergence);Brave is my default. I was able to see the links and copy/paste the relevant bits, but for whatever reason none of the pages were loading with the full code. I’ve never had that happen before, so thought it worth mentioning.

  • Vanderleun November 21, 2017, 1:06 PM

    I think I’ve found the fly in the linkment now and fixed it. Thanks, Bill.

  • BillH November 21, 2017, 1:16 PM

    Links are now OK in Firefox 57.0 on my machine. Wish my HVAC guy would fix things that fast.

  • Tom November 21, 2017, 3:10 PM

    Thank you!

  • Ed November 22, 2017, 1:36 AM

    Skipped the pips yesterday since no Gladys, and can’t hear well enough anyhow, so missed the drama about links, etc. Had Chrome and ditched it for being too intrusive. Still using Firefox with DuckDuck just to poke a finger in Google’s eye. But, never had a failed link sans Chrome that I can recall. Don’t axe me how, as ghost might say.

    Why I’m really here is I just went back to catch up reading some of the links that sounded interesting and couldn’t stop chuckling at Ms Drake’s Arecibo reprieve article. Just today I read some lines at Woodpile Report that popped into my mind as I read Drake. The topic was some feat of astrophysicists finding a likely Earth-like planet only 22 light years distant, to which Remus observed: “I have a great idea. Let’s spend 82 billion dollars to see if it has pond scum.” I get the impression that NSF is facing some budget challenges, and themselves wondering how they can continue support for hobby-horsing astrophysicists. SETI comes to mind. If Drake’s dad was the Drake behind the Drake Equation, the whole picture becomes more clear, things begin to fall into place. Look it up, and then ask yourself if you really thought about it, if you couldn’t come up with the same equation, or one just as good. It’s all just speculation. I will give credit to Drake for at least keeping the damned thing simple. The rest is just snatching coefficients out of the air, or pulling them from the darkness, and then peddling the product to someone like Neil DeGrasse Tyson to bloviate about it.

    Regarding SETI, actually I can accept the notion that they are out there, probably, or at least possibly. I think it’s insane to invite them here, so I won’t donate. Proof of intelligent life elsewhere, if you need it, is that they’ve avoided coming here.

    If the funds are tightening up, it’s time for the folks in the ivory towers to look for projects with real payback to convince geezers like me it’s worth my taxes. Earth threatening asteroids come to mind. My take away from the Drake article at National Geographic (why am I not surprised it showed up there?) is Arecibo has had a reprieve, but it won’t be long til they come asking for grant dollars to continue their hobby-horsing.

    Contact was an entertaining movie. I’m not a Jodie Foster fan.

    Good night.