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NY Times Building New Years 1905

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Monday, January 6, 2020 1:47 PM

"Star Trek Enterprise" ran from 2001 to 2005.

Quite honestly I didn't care for it at all, in fact the only impression I got was the franchise was starting to run out of steam.  No fault of the actors, the casting was fine, but I found the stories pretty lackluster.  

One thing I will mention though is, I'm still impressed after 50+ years of the genius of Matt Jeffries and the team that came up with the design of the original Enterprise.  Gene Roddenberry asked the crew to design him a spaceship that exuded power, but without effects like flame, smoke, or other kinds of exhaust.  The succeeded brilliantly, in my opinion anyway.  50 years on and the old Enterprise still looks good!  In fact, it doesn't surprise me that the starships that came after it were variations on the original.  How do you beat (near) perfection?

And of course the ship itself is part of the dramatis personae.  In the vacuum of space you wouldn't need streamlining or exotic stying, a large block would do for a ship, but how dramatic would that be?

And I still think it was a mistake to kill Enterprise NCC-1701 in "Star Trek 3, The Search For Spock!"  They should have stolen and lost Excelsior, not "The Big E!" 

 

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Posted by Deggesty on Monday, January 6, 2020 8:02 AM

Flintlock76

Gee, how did we get from the old New York Times building to mushrooms?

Amazing.

You know, there'd be sourpusses on the "Trains" Forum howling to the moderators over this!  Thank goodness we don't have to deal with 'em here!

 

Did we, perhaps, go down into the basement?Smile

Johnny

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Posted by Overmod on Monday, January 6, 2020 5:54 AM

It is a strange thing indeed, but just yesterday morning I was looking at an immensely-satisfying color picture (plate opposite p.168 in the Crown "The Great Trains" book) of two early ATSF PAs, from 1947 ... with a C&EI E7 nose visible in the left background ... and thinking 'gee, you never see pictures or discussion of C&EI  passenger trains; I wonder how many people on the Classic Trains forum know what that is...'

 

The NX-01 is so named because it is the eXperimental ship from which all the other Federation starships were supposedly designed.  Despite its design language being considerably more refined and modern than the original NCC (which is supposed to mean, possibly more than a bit retconned, 'Naval Construction Contract) 1701.  And 1701A,B,C,D ... insert silliness to preserve franchise.

There is a pretty good explanation, as these things go, from Doug Drexler (who laid out NX-01) on the Ex Astris Scientia site.  As I have never particularly thought highly of any of these things as functional warships of any kind, that should serve as an entry point for a good amount of the necessary entertainment you're seeking with a minimum of curmudgeonry.

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Posted by M636C on Monday, January 6, 2020 1:32 AM

Could we go back to Star Trek briefly?

Here in Australia, where we are all inside sheltering from fires or much more widely, the smoke therefrom, I have watched some daytime television...

At the same time we had original Star Trek, Star Trek The Next Generation and Star Trek Voyager running at different times on the same TV station.

Lately they stopped running "Next Generation" and replaced it with "Star Trek Enterprise" which is in 16 x 9 format so must be newer than the others...

How old is "Star Trek Enterprise"?

Why is the Enterprise registered NX 1 instead of NCC 1701?

Just to keep me interested until it is safe to go outdoors again...

Peter

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Sunday, January 5, 2020 2:40 PM

Gee, how did we get from the old New York Times building to mushrooms?

Amazing.

You know, there'd be sourpusses on the "Trains" Forum howling to the moderators over this!  Thank goodness we don't have to deal with 'em here!

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Posted by Deggesty on Sunday, January 5, 2020 2:31 PM

My mother taught me how to handle puffballs--small white mushrooms that spring up overnight; go out early while dew is still on the grass, pick the puffballs, put the skillet with butter in it on the stove, clean and slice the puffballs, and sautee in the butter (don't slice the great big ones--all you will get will be spores).

Johnny

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Posted by Miningman on Sunday, January 5, 2020 11:20 AM

We are blessed up here with Morels, Wild Rice, Wild Blueberries and Saskatoons ( looks like a big blueberry)... it's actually a pome, very high in antioxidants...the City of Saskatoon is named after this berry. Wild Rice grows like grass up here, in wet areas, which is basically everywhere. 

Another treat in abundance is something called Rat Root. It's looks like a thick twig, tastes a bit like licorice but sharp as horseradish. It's one of those claimed cure all for everything but I enjoy chewing on it, especially at work. 

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Sunday, January 5, 2020 10:23 AM

Decades ago my grandmother knew an old woman in the neighborhood who was good at picking wild mushrooms, the ones to take and the ones to leave alone, and never got it wrong.

Then one day she died (natural causes) and after that Grandma got her mushrooms at the A&P, she wasn't going to take any chances. 

Interestingly, at least once a year, usually in the spring, the North Jersey papers run "Don't pick wild mushrooms, get them at the supermarket!" articles, because every year, guess what happens?  Dead  

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Posted by NKP guy on Sunday, January 5, 2020 9:06 AM

   Even as a thrice-daily dog walker, chiefly in parks, I found Morels only twice in 35 years.  Then, one day last year, 11 of them, all at once in one spot!  Talk about feeling like a lottery winner!

   They're delicious; in my opinion much better than nearly all other varieties of mushrooms.

   Being a Carpatho-Rusyn, Lady NKP has nearly 60 years of mushroom knowledge and experience, plus a bunch of books to help her correctly identify them.  She's also a terrific cook.

   Early in our courtship I noticed that she left in the frying pan some of the mushrooms she had made for dinner.  When I inquired as to why, she replied, "For the coroner, just in case."  

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Posted by Overmod on Sunday, January 5, 2020 8:36 AM
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4913076/#!po=0.213675

 

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Posted by MidlandMike on Saturday, January 4, 2020 8:26 PM

Morels are best cut in half and sauteed in butter.  My wife has also made cream of morel soup.

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Saturday, January 4, 2020 7:37 PM

Looks like the saying's true, "The ugly mushrooms are the safe ones!"

Or so they say.  I leave picking "mushes" to the pros, I don't take chances.

How do they go with beef gravy or tomato sauce?

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Saturday, January 4, 2020 7:34 PM

Overmod

 

 
Flintlock76
Oh good Lord, I need a Tylenol...

 

No, what you need is Excedrin.  (For Excedrin Headache #MST3K?)

No one but a moron uses Tylenol.  It's one of the undocumented leading causes of actual deaths in modern America, and that it continues to be offered on the market is something of an insult to pharmacological science.

But hey! at least it doesn't cause imaginary Reyes syndrome!  Or the ulcers that we now know are caused not by acid but by H. pylori...

 

Oh, so there IS something to that old saying from the 80's...

"End it all with Tylenol!"  

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Posted by Miningman on Saturday, January 4, 2020 4:57 PM

They do! They consider it a rite of passage. They know they can offer benefits.

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Posted by Overmod on Saturday, January 4, 2020 4:05 PM

Miningman
They know things.

Do they know how tasty they are?

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Posted by Miningman on Saturday, January 4, 2020 3:59 PM

 Re: Spore Drive and related:

My friends have gathered to discuss. This is the Morchella Esculenta tribe which lives nearby me in the woods. They know things.

 

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Posted by Overmod on Saturday, January 4, 2020 3:40 PM

Flintlock76
Oh good Lord, I need a Tylenol...

No, what you need is Excedrin.  (For Excedrin Headache #MST3K?)

No one but a moron uses Tylenol.  It's one of the undocumented leading causes of actual deaths in modern America, and that it continues to be offered on the market is something of an insult to pharmacological science.

But hey! at least it doesn't cause imaginary Reyes syndrome!  Or the ulcers that we now know are caused not by acid but by H. pylori...

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Saturday, January 4, 2020 3:32 PM

Oh good Lord, I need a Tylenol, or as we used to call it in the business...

"The Technicians Friend."   Along with Tums, and Ben-Gay, and Band-Aids...

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Posted by Overmod on Saturday, January 4, 2020 3:19 PM

Miningman
Overmod-- A small criticism, if I may. Is it possible that you use far too many abbreviations and acronyms in your postings?

Specifically, I got carried away when you mentioned the Spore Hub Drive, and made some references from the 'official mythology' around it.  

Stamets and Straal are the researchers who supposedly started the research into the mycelial whatever-it-is-that-links-the-universe-behind-the-scenes.

They supposedly didn't get very far in using it effectively until a 'tardigrade' inadvertently thumped into their current 'time-space continuum' supposedly showed them how the other half navigates.  The (rather good, in my opinion) young-adolescent series about "Wond-La" prominently features tardigrades with very different characteristics, which I could evoke in context.

Prototaxites is the genus of the 'spore-bearing' stuff that makes the s-drive work.  That it is somewhat similar to Midichlorians, the secret cause of humanity's ability to tap into the Force, as well as to Jack Chalker's chilling Dreel, is a source of fun to those who know or appreciate the literature of microscopic races...  Of course if it is 'mycelial' it's a fungus, not protozoan in the usual sense, hence the reason 'pond scum' while a fine thing for sarcasm is not quite exact enough for the science part of scientifiction...

"Speirin" is the highly-arcane (at least to me) equivalent of 'warp' levels for the s-drive.  They make even less sense than Stardate ... and that takes some doin'.  I made fun of the tendency by invoking Speirin 3000, or more precisely the initials for the (excellent!) show Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (the 3Kas in Y2K).  Think of the hyperdrive scene in Hardware Wars...

S-eye is a reference to jumpdoors in a couple of Frank Herbert's stories (you will know him most probably as the author of the early Dune books) and one of the problems with it was that, if one of the protagonists died, everyone that had ever used an associated jumpdoor would, too.  And planoforming is Cordwainer Smith, in particular from The Game of Rat and Dragon, which ends with the uncorrupted version of the quote in that pond-scum sentence. 

And of course, if you look up 'selachimorphic' in conjunction with 'jumping something' you will figure it out fairly quickly ... if you know your tropes.  (Which I've seen considerable evidence of in certain other threads.)

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Posted by Overmod on Saturday, January 4, 2020 3:02 PM

NKP guy
I thought SciFi was the abbrv. for SF.

Not your fault, and it did NOT help that the 'official' cable channel started out as 'SciFi' and then morphed after complaint into something even sillier.

Calling serious science fiction 'sci-fi' is (or was, when I was active in the culture) one of the deadliest insults possible; it's seen as a denigration of a form already prone to dismissal as 'not really literature'.  Come to think of it, not too different from popular perception of model railroading, or railfanning.  I do suspect I should be abbreviating it sf (in lower case) to avoid confusion with San Francisco.

Airport is SFO, though.  If we are allowed to mention such things on a railfan forum without disclaimer...

I generally hate it when there are common acronyms/initialisms that get named or defined right away.  On the other hand, I also hate it when I run across those like KTHXBYE or Z9M9Z that send me out for lunch to Google ... and sometimes a pus bath at Urban Dictionary before I can put the picture together.

If anyone has any complaints about salty jargon or abbreviations, let me know.  Either in posts or via PM.  (charlie hebdo certainly does!)  I'll try to fix the stuff that makes little sense.

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Posted by Miningman on Saturday, January 4, 2020 12:34 PM

Overmod-- A small criticism, if I may. Is it possible that you use far too many abbreviations and acronyms in your postings?

I swear you could compose an entire 2 paragraph explanation of something or other using nothing but abbreviations and acronyms although you may have to use an emoji or two here and there for clarity and bridging. 

I suppose you would need to use some words, such as 'is' 'up' and 'the' or combination like 'is up' or even better yet 'up the' but I suspect you would quickly establish IUT , meaning of course 'is up the' .

Now most of us know you use an iPhone for most postings but how difficult is it to write Sci-Fi instead of SF.  Most males would almost instantly think 49er's and therefore San Francisco. 

Perhaps upon first usage you spell out the full word and then after that the capitalized initials will become apparent. 

( Actually it would be quite amusing to see a technical explanation using nothing but capitalized initials, in the same vein as we had those funny scientific explanations straight from 'the professor in the lab' videos featured on a thread some time ago)

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Posted by NKP guy on Saturday, January 4, 2020 12:26 PM

Overmod
Oh, my.  I'm tempted to quote Jeff Foxworthy: "You may be a dane if...  you think SF means "San Francisco" when talking about speculative 'scientifiction'

   Chalk up my misunderstanding to yet another anagram I didn't get immediately.  Add it to the heap along with BOGO, FOMO, YOLO, AUCE, and others.  I thought SciFi was the abbrv. for SF.  At least I knew it didn't refer to the airport.

   So.  If I can't speak it, at least I can read danish, as it were.  Cool.

                                              * * * * * * 

I well recall that immortal line from Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific:

   "There is nothing like a dane, nothing in the world;

              There is nothing you can name, that is anything like a dane."

 

 

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Posted by Overmod on Saturday, January 4, 2020 11:29 AM

Flintlock76
When another one called me a "Damn good Yankee!" I knew I'd gotten the "galvanized" status!

When I first went down to Louisiana, I had heard of the terrors of Mr. Boucher's brother Creel.  He had been described as almost the quintessence of crotchety, high-intelligent meanness ... and as having a pathological, abiding hatred of "Yankees".

When I was introduced to him as someone from 'up north', I swear his eyes flashed yellow, and he said ... winding up for the first pitch, I suspect ... "So you're the Yankee I've heard so much about..."

I said ... looking him right in the eye ... "Yes, sir.  I am a Yankee, both sides of my family are from Connecticut, and I'm proud of it.  But sir ... I am no damn Yankee." 

He laughed, we hugged like brothers, and were close friends ever after.

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Posted by Overmod on Saturday, January 4, 2020 10:59 AM

NKP guy
 I'm sure you're right, but in what years was this term used?  I lived in SF for a while, yet I never encountered it.  Isn't "dane" really just another term for a "square"?

Oh, my.  I'm tempted to quote Jeff Foxworthy:

"You may be a dane if...  you think SF means "San Francisco" when talking about speculative 'scientifiction' (to use the term that pioneer Hugo Gernsback (for whom one of the premier awards has been named, tried to establish for the field).

SF is to 'sci-fi' as SF is to 'San Fran' for little Friskies.  And remember well that "Frisco" is the name of a RAILROAD, not a name that any Resident would tolerate...

I don't think the term ever made it even into mainstream literature, as it doesn't have the edge that, say, "cowan" does ... or something like "mudblood" either.  

Now, as I mentioned, there has been a snarky-at-best element in the fandom since, well, the 1960s.  To devotees of fanac the derived meaning of 'mundane' as ordinary and boring may indeed come to the fore.  I have never used it that way and certainly don't intend to start now, with Wayne of all people.

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Saturday, January 4, 2020 10:33 AM

Actually Johnny, the only time I was called a "carpetbagger" down here was all in fun by a co-worker who knew that I'd  know what it meant!  I didn't take offense at all and got a laugh out of it. 

When another one called me a "Damn good Yankee!" I knew I'd gotten the "galvanized" status!

Wayne

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Posted by Deggesty on Friday, January 3, 2020 8:56 PM

Flintlock76

Now I do have to admit "dane" must mean something I'm not familiar with.  I'm certainly not of that ethnic persuasion, I'm of Irish-Italian extraction for those who don't know, a "Carpetbagger" to some Virginians or a "Galvanized Yankee" to others, deep down inside still a Jerseyman, a former "Officer  and gentleman by act of Congress," and above all an American.  

Dane?  As in Great Dane?  I don't know, I've owned Basset Hounds since 1977! 

 

"Great Dane"? Isn't that a semi-trailer?Big Smile

No, you're no carpetbagger. I think you are more like the man who came down from New England for his health after the War, and my great-grandfather took him in and helped him regain his health--and he stayed in the South. His son was a good friend of the family.

Johnny

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Posted by NKP guy on Friday, January 3, 2020 8:26 PM

Overmod
In SF, 'dane' is short for 'mundane' -- not in the boring-and-ordinary sense, but concerned with actual-world things.

   I'm sure you're right, but in what years was this term used?  I lived in SF for a while, yet I never encountered it.  Isn't "dane" really just another term for a "square"?

   Is "dane"ever found in the works of SF's Beat poets?

   As far as Urban Dictionary, duly noted.

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Friday, January 3, 2020 5:46 PM

How about "Voyager" with Genevieve Bujold as Captain Janeway?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SIZcDWKyw0  

I'll tell you what, "Sci-Fi" and even comics left me in the dust a long time ago.  Every time I walk through the "Sci-Fi and Fantasy" and "Graphic Novel" sections of the local Barnes and Noble my eyes have glazed over by the time I get to the end of the aisle!  

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Posted by Overmod on Friday, January 3, 2020 2:19 PM

NKP guy
That term, "dane," is new to me, too, so I checked it out on Urban Dictionary, Flintlock.  I think you should as well.

Don't EVER go by what Urban Dictionary tells you.  There are all kinds of dubious 'wisdom' as you might suspect from a site that lets any anonymous troll provide their "insight" for the unwitting to stumble across.

In SF, 'dane' is short for 'mundane' -- not in the boring-and-ordinary sense, but concerned with actual-world things.  I admit Harlan used it with a sharper edge sometimes, but he's dead now.

I confess that I STILL think the original concept with Bob April should have been tried.  

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