Monthly Archives: November 2005

Obsidian Wings: Requiem

The good news: the pseudo-judicial process at Gitmo isn’t absolutely rigged to find everyone guilty of terrorism. The bad news: innocence isn’t enough to get you out of the hole. (Cited by Gary Farber.)

Posted in militaria, security theater | 1 Comment

Merlyn the rocket scientist?

J R Stockton collects a lot of useful tidbits about orbital mechanics and the like.

Posted in astronomy | Leave a comment

it’s Bollywood Week

Netflix’s list of new releases this week has five Israëli titles, ten Chinese and 55 Indian – not counting 23 collections of songs from Indian film.

Posted in cinema | Leave a comment

mock violence

Pillow spends much of a typical day on my bed; when I find him there, I tussle with him. Now I have clear evidence that he enjoys these little skirmishes: whenever I go to that room (except at bedtime), he … Continue reading

Posted in pets | 1 Comment

it even has a distinctive gait

Avahi cleesei

Posted in sciences | Leave a comment

know your weapons

A dreadful blunder in Granada Television’s version (1985) of “The Greek Interpreter”: in a non-canonical scene, Mycroft Holmes refers to a derringer as a “revolver”. Tsk!

Posted in cinema, weapons | Leave a comment

i shot an arrow into the air

My bookmarks file has 4539 entries, most of which I intend to look at “someday”. So I’ve written a little utility (two lines of code, plus scaffolding) that other Unix users may find useful, provided that your favorite browser keeps … Continue reading

Posted in neep-neep | 4 Comments