I'd Whine

        Alas, whining* doesn't help.  This is an oucheriffic morning for me  Loud sounds -- like normal conversation or my fingers hammering the keyboard -- are unpleasant and the pressure/pain in my left ear is overwhelming, unavoidable and just, dammit, there.  But that does mean I hardly notice the tinnitus.

     See, there's always a bright side.
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 * Brits apparently "whinge," while here in the U.S., we "whine."  Not sure what they do in Canada -- complain very quietly to themselves in two languages and get back on-task, I suspect.  In Australia? "Something, something, beer," innit?  But maybe not.  Maybe we all gripe.

Tam Smithed Me

     Yes, now I have two S&W revolvers -- the lovely pre-18 .22, and this:

     "Right in your wheelhouse," she said, and she was right: a 1920s, nickle-plated .38 M&P, Model of 1905, 4th change (it says right here).  The very thing for discouraging ruffians!  And a little less quirky than the .380/200 Enfield revolver for that purpose. 

Note To Self

     Do not inhale oatmeal!  It doesn't work at all well like that.

And Now, The Weather...!

     Christmas Day was mild and lovely, a little hint of Spring.  Every day since, it has rained, varying from drizzle to downpour; when it isn't raining, it's about to and looks it.  The weather is growing increasingly unhinged, with floods overnight, freezing rain just to the north and a band of heavy rain sweeping into Indy as I type, with high wind warnings in its wake.

     The rest of the country is having their own versions of crazy weather, none of it pleasant.  It's not a typical winter but it's winter nonetheless: hostile and unforgiving.

      It is a reminder that lacking technology, a lot of the planet is unfit for human habitation.  Oh, it doesn't take power plants and gas pipelines; various peoples got by (and some still do) with little more than edged tools, fire, carpentry and leather-making...and working from sunrise to sunset, each and every day.  Thinking that, I'm all the more grateful for the roof over my head.

Family Christmas

    ...I went, I dropped off presents, I departed.  A dozen people in a very small house!  Wish 'em all well.

Forehand Model 1901

     Pocket revolver in .32 S&W* made by the Hopkins & Allen Arms Co.

     Five shots and a design that holds the firing pin well away from the primer at rest.  Christmas present from Tam, and a darned good one!
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* Or .32 Merwin & Hulbert.  ("Sittin' in a tree, r-e-b-r-a-n-d-i-n-g," which is what they did with this and .38 S&W.)

Merry Christmas!

     Here's the best wishes of the season, from all of us at Roseholme Cottage (yes, even Rannie Wu) to all you out there in blogland!

Happy Christmas! --A Seasonal Guide

     There's been a bit less grumbling over holiday greetings this year, but for those of you who need a reminder, when someone says "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" to you, or bids you a joyous Solstice, Happy Hanukkah, or the best Kwanzaa ever, they're wishing you well.  They're feeling the seasonal spirit and they're hoping you'll feel some touch of it, too.  They're not trying to colonize your mind.  They're not dissing your particular observance that just happens to fall on or about the day when days start getting longer again, they're feeling happy and attempting to share the joy.

     And what you do is, you wish the same right back to 'em.  No matter how dark your mood is or how unlikely you are to be burning the same kind of Yule log as your well-wisher, you pick whatever version of seasonally-appropriate good wish you like and you send 'em out to those who have expressed them to you -- and you don't whine about it, either.  People out there want you to be happy.  Go along with it, willya?

Stop, Thief!

     Dan Zimmerman, widely held to be a longtime intellectual property thief and, I am given to understand, founder of Dead Hooker Magazine, has stolen Tam's "Fun Show Song" and posted the lovely video made as a Christmas present for Tam by Ambulance Driver and Squeaky and posted it over at TTAG, the other sink of iniquity and inequity with which he is associated, utterly without attribution to anyone but himself.

     Other than polite reminders (already issued) and the distant possibility of lawyering up -- Tam's a writer and her stock in trade is the unique groupings of words she creates -- there's not a whole lot that can be done.

     But there is one thing.  Cato famously ended every speech he made in the Roman Senate with "Carthage must be destroyed," even if all he was talking about was proclaiming Junior Vestal Day.  The phrase I'd like you to remember and to post all over the Internet is "Dan Zimmerman. Intellectual property thief. Dead Hooker Magazine."  And good morning, search engines! 

     Retraction: Readers, I may have been mistaken; I can find no link between TTAG's Dan Zimmerman and Dead Hooker Magazine other than they show up in the same search results.  There are credible allegations connecting TTAG's Dan Zimmerman with intellectual property theft, though they do not appear to have been pursued past posting of links and screencaps. Certainly that blog has a long and well-documented history of "scraping" content from other blogs and presenting it as their own, without backlinks or attribution.

Science Fiction

     So, home after an early-shift day yesterday, I watched some more of The Expanse.  It remains visually nice but muddled of story and a bit weak on that "science" stuff -- "SF" as produced by people who picture the fan base as a seething mass of Star Wars and Star Trek fans, but fail to understand the specific collections of tricks that keep those two series afloat.   The setting and much of the "feel," the political tension between Earth and The Belt, is deeply derivative of C. J. Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe, possibly with a side order of Larry Niven's Known Worlds -- and they both do it far better than this TV series has managed.  Of course, their casts and crews are orders of magnitude less expensive....

     An antidote to bad art is good art; I picked up a paperback of Kim Stanley Robinson's The Martians, which appears to be a collection of short stories set in the same universe as the Red Mars novels.  He and I would probably have terrible arguments about political systems, but he is one of the very best writers working in SF, ever.  His settings are lived-in and he gets the science either right or well-handwaved without being obtrusive about it.  In terms of clarity and precision, his work cannot be beaten and is only rarely equalled.

Homemade Corned Beef Hash

     Turned out pretty fair.  I gave it the full treatment: potatoes, corned beef, onion and two different (mild) peppers, an Anaheim and a yellow bell pepper.  Fried up an egg for on top.

     Cooking it all, I was reminded that I miss high-walled iron skillets.  But you can't just rinse one of those out and put it in the dishwasher.

     ...Readers will note that I sat out the Democrat debate.  Y'know what's even less interesting to me than Trump and the Seven Dwarves spatting and playing fast and loose with the Bill of Rights?  Hillary and Bernie and what's-his-name trying to look as if they are making nice while playing fast and loose with the Bill of Rights.  H'mm, seems to be a common thread here.

The Expanse: Disappointing

     I watched the pilot of The Expanse and gave it benefit of the doubt on an implausibility or two.  Making decent film or video SF is tricky and the line between handwavium and hokum can be pretty thin.

     In the first twenty minutes of episode two, a crucial complication depends on the inner door of the airlock a small spacecraft being routinely left open.  I have trouble with that: it creates an avoidable single point of failure.  It's stupid engineering.  Then we find out the acceleration chairs don't support the astronaut's head and neck, despite the ship being capable of considerable thrust, possibly even as much  as the previous episode showed requiring special medication to endure.  Yet this is not a problem.   And then--

     Then, in a scenario similar to the one at the heart of Robert A. Heinlein's 1948 short story Ordeal In Space, a character goes out on the hull to repair Something Important.  The spacecraft is apparently under some acceleration -- and the character doesn't have a safety line.* While attempting the repair, a wrench slips from his hand and goes flying away.  No safety line on people working on the hull I might grant, especially in an emergency, especially with some of the alternative hardware already shown.  But no lanyard on tools?  No.  Ballistic junk is already enough of a problem in 2015 that when ISS crew is working out on the hull. their tools are on short cables, connected to the worker or the space station.   It's routine when working on the outside of tall structures; it's not uncommon for divers.  An advanced spacefaring civilization would be very cautious about this.

     When your story counts on bad engineering that none of the characters find remarkable, you've lost me.  You don't care enough about suspending the viewer's disbelief to even try to fast-talk your way through it -- because you either didn't notice, or figured no one watching would -- and that ruins it for me.  It's either ignorant or condescending.

     I may watch more of the series; the visuals are pretty good.  But the science -- no, the technology -- isn't.
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* Heinlein's did, if I remember correctly. Then, for a logical reason, he has to go farther than it will allow.