"Meteor storm" (didn't happen)

Astronomers are reporting that there’s a chance that a “meteor storm” could occur on the night of Memorial Day. It probably won’t happen, but if it does, the display could be absolutely otherworldly... Meteor storms result when Earth enters an unusually dense and intense clustering of interplanetary debris — akin to driving through a swarm of bugs on the highway...

Meteor rates could range between one and 1,000 meteors per hour. If a meteor storm occurs, it would only last for perhaps an hour or two, and probably less... Astronomers have pinpointed the most likely time for the peak of whatever display may or may not transpire to be around 1 a.m. Eastern time Monday night/Tuesday morning. The shower’s “radiant” point, or the part of the sky from which meteors appear to emanate, will be high in the sky over North America at that time, so there’s no specific place in the sky to look...

A meteor storm came in 1966, igniting an equally splendid fireworks show in the United States. Eyewitness Christine Downing, who drove north of Mojave, Calif., saw a couple of shooting stars every five minutes, which “at the time … seemed extraordinary.” At 12:30 a.m., it began “raining stars,” and by 2 a.m. “it was a ‘blizzard.’ ”

Her description, which can be read in full on a NASA Web page, is one of many from that night. “There was the unnerving feeling that the mountains were being set on fire,” Downing wrote. “Falling stars filled the entire sky to the horizon, yet it was silent.”

More info and historic reports at The Washington Post.

Addendum:  no storm - not even a decent shower.

Recent "Pearls Before Swine"

More pearls.

Ominous

The Onion doesn't hold back

From The Onion: America's Finest News Source

Word for the day: "originalism"

“What principle of constitutional self-government requires that the permissible age to purchase an AR-15 should be 18 rather than 21? A recent ruling out of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit affirmed the right of 18-year-olds to buy what most of us would call ‘assault weapons.’ Its reasoning? ‘America would not exist without the heroism of the young adults who fought and died in our revolutionary army.’ In fact, the enlistment age for the Continental Army was 16 — just 15 with parental consent. Some served at age 14. Is this a sufficient legal and historical basis to allow young teens to purchase nearly military-grade weapons in 2022? This type of 'originalism’ is indistinguishable from idiocy.”

-- Michael Duffy, Washington Post

Pandemic, war, recession... now zombies...

 ... or else it's a crash blossom.

"Hot dog filler"

The crash of a tractor-trailer spilled about seven tons of "hot dog filler" onto the side of a Pennsylvania interstate highway.  

Absurdly filthy rich

Reposted from 2011.  You can access all the NonSequitur comics here.

"On second thought, I WILL have the garlic bread."

From The New Yorker.  Reposted from 2011.

Quvenzhané, star of "Beasts of the Southern Wild"

Excerpts from a review in Roger Ebert's Journal at the Chicago Sun-Times:

If there is one 2012 movie that seems to have a lock on a best picture nomination, it is "Beasts of the Southern Wild." And if there is a single reason its early viewers have loved it so much, it is an 8-year-old girl named Quvenzhané Wallis, who was six when she filmed it. Here is a case of a great role finding the perfect actress to play it.

"My computer has trouble pronouncing names," I told Quvenzhané not long ago in my living room.

"That's okay," she said. We worked together on a phonetic spelling: kwa van je nay. A beautiful name for this composed young woman, who deserves her own Oscar nomination, and whose nickname is Nazie.

The film is the feature debut of Benh Zeitlin, whose first short subject was made in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It's set in The Bathtub, an isolated island area offshore from New Orleans, where the poorest of the poor scramble to survive. Shanties perch on stilts in the delta marshlands. A boat is made from the bed of a pickup truck. The world of prosperity could be on a distant planet. We focus on a girl named Hushpuppy, whose mother has disappeared, whose father is loving but sometimes harsh, and whose determination is indomitable. The feeling is post-apocalyptic, and there are rumors of another storm on the way, one that will flood the islands and their people.

"Beasts" opens on July 6, but is already famous in film circles. At Sundance 2012, it won the Grand Jury Prize. At Cannes, it won the Camera d'Or as best first film. At both, the small girl from Louisiana won hearts with her spunky, straightforward manner in the face of calamity.

(The Ebert source has undergone linkrot since 2012).  Here is the official trailer:

Reposted from 2012 because I rewatched the movie last night (it's streaming on Amazon).  Ten years ago I rated the movie 4+ on my 0-4 rating scale ("worth watching again").  Last night I gave it a rare 4.1 - an improvement perhaps reflective of my increasing maturity, or perhaps because of a cannabis gummy on board.

"Flood in the Desert"

"Just before midnight on March 12, 1928, about 40 miles north of Los Angeles, one of the biggest dams in the country blew apart, releasing a wall of water 20 stories high. Ten thousand people lived downstream. Flood in the Desert tells the story of the St. Francis Dam disaster, which not only destroyed hundreds of lives and millions of dollars’ worth of property; it also washed away the reputation of William Mulholland, the father of modern Los Angeles, and jeopardized larger plans to transform the West. A self-taught engineer, the 72-year-old Mulholland had launched the city’s remarkable growth by building both an aqueduct to pipe water 233 miles from the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and the St. Francis Dam, to hold a full year’s supply of water for Los Angeles. Now Mulholland was promoting an immense new project: the Hoover Dam. The collapse of the St. Francis Dam was a colossal engineering and human disaster that might have slowed the national project to tame the West. But within days a concerted effort was underway to erase the dam’s failure from popular memory."

A fascinating documentary I watched earlier this week.  Available on DVD from your library, streaming on PBS, or at the American Experience website.

Dog meat

The image speaks for itself.  Photo credit Aaron Gekoski/The Evidence Project, from a gallery at The Guardian.

U.S. helpless to prevent tragedies

UVALDE, TX—In the hours following a violent rampage in Texas in which a lone attacker killed at least 21 individuals and injured several others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Tuesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said Idaho resident Kathy Miller, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this individual from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past eight years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

See also: Buffalo, Milwaukee, Dayton, Indianapolis, Boulder, Atlanta, San Jose, El Paso, Pittsburgh, Parkland, Thousand Oaks, Santa Fe, Virginia Beach, Bakersfield, Sutherland Springs, Las Vegas, San Bernadino, Roseburg, Isla Vista, Charleston, and this could go on all evening, but I'm tired of typing.

Related: NRA Sets 1,000 Killed in School Shooting As Amount It Would Take For Them To Reconsider Much Of Anything.

But... The NRA Is Banning Guns for Trump's Appearance at Its Upcoming Convention.

Addendum:  So who's to blame???

“It’s the parents,” Pollack told Ingraham. “It’s your responsibility where you’re sending your children to school … You need to check where your kids go to school. You need to go back to school and see. Is there a single point of entry? Do you have guards at the school?”

He went on to suggest that it’s better for parents to take their kids out “of public school and put them in a private school because a lot of these private schools, they take security way more serious … Parents it’s your responsibility where you take your children.” Ingraham was very pleased with that analysis. “Andrew is exactly right,” she concluded.

Pollack has previously expressed the idea that regulating guns is not the answer to preventing school shootings, and has advocated for schools to put in more “safety” measures like barriers, bulletproof glass and security officers. Ingraham pressed him on that point, stating that “[schools] still don’t have those safety mechanisms in place”.

There you go: it’s all the parents fault! If you don’t have the money to send your kids to private school then it’s your fault if they get shot!

Here's another analysis of absurd claims and conspiracy theories. 

Related:  Tearful Uvalde Residents Thank Police for Protecting Parking Lot from Gunman.

If you find bright yellow spots on your garage floor

Here in the Upper Midwest, one of the rites of spring is to hook up the garden hose and wash away all the crap that has built up on the floor under the car during the winter months.  When I got ready to do so last week, I was startled to see four or five yellow spots.  The embed above may not do the color intensity justice; they weren't just yellow - they seemed to be of neon brightness.

I immediately popped the hood of my car to check the brake fluid, and to my delight and surprise, the reservoir was totally full.  The position of the spots was midline, not near the debris from the tires and wheelwells, and not near the axles.  

So I asked Mr. Google, and discovered that these stains result when road salt gets up onto the hot components of the exhaust system.  Those components often are coated with zinc as an antioxidant, and the road salt can catalyze a reaction resulting in the formation of a yellow zinc oxide, which is most often spotted in the snow under cars parked outdoors.

I had my Subaru in today for its 11-year checkup, and the staff confirmed that the exhaust system shows no evidence of corrosion.  So this was just an incidental finding.  Good to know.

"Three Thousand Years of Longing" trailer

Great special effects and I think an interesting vehicle for Tilda Swinton.  I'm looking forward to seeing it.