dewline: For when I want to discuss Star Wars stuff (star wars)
Phil Plait does a write-up on a planet orbiting a tight-orbit binary star system. Of course, there's a deep-cut Star Wars comment in there...

TIC 172900988 is the simplest catalogue number on file for that star right now. Here are the others on file at SIMBAD:

TYC 2483-160-1
2MASS J08343881+3133147
Gaia DR1 709709089004925440
GSC 02483-00160
Gaia DR2 709709093301608448

Note: For Trekkers' purposes, it's 800 light-years away, viewed in the constellation Cancer from here on Earth. So I guess that puts it well past the Klingon holdings...?

https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/7989/tic-172900988-b/
https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/overview/TIC%20172900988
http://exoplanet.eu/catalog/tic_172900988_(ab)_b/
dewline: "Fail" (failure)
I want to note for whatever records survive these times the following: there is no way on or off this Earth, nor in Heaven, Hell, Limbo or any point in between those places I've named that Charles Koch is ever going to offer the likes of me money of any sort by way of a GMail account. Nor from an eircom.net address disguised as a GMail account for that matter.

Whoever you really are?

Nice try.
dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)
At least, it ought to be famous.

I doubt that "Mercer Street" is named for Rick Mercer...especially after reading Toronto Street Names by Leonard Wise and Allan Gould, specifically page 148. But maybe, given the proximity to the CBC Broadcast Centre where Rick's Report was made for 15 years, it ought to be renamed in his specific honour.

Where Baseball and Comedy Meet?
dewline: (quiet jokes)
On The Sunday Edition this morning: "Now is the window of our discotheque!"

You go discover the context yourselves, okay?
dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)
The first planets humans found orbiting any other star at all couldn't be ordinary. Nope. The first two that humans found back in 1992 by Aleksander Wolszczan, just as I was winding up my animation studies at Algonquin College, were found orbiting a pulsar.

To oversimplify, a pulsar - or neutron star - is a corpse of a star. It's dead, Jim. But what's left of it still has an energy output or we wouldn't have been able to notice it at all.

Small wonder, then, that when the International Astronomical Union started up a program or contest - I'm trying to remember which at the moment - to give as many stars as possible proper names in addition to the various catalogue numbers that they've all accumulated across the last couple of centuries, that...to quote the Wikipedia entry of the moment:

In July 2014, the International Astronomical Union launched a process for giving proper names to certain exoplanets and their host stars. The process involved public nomination and voting for the new names. In December 2015, the IAU announced the winning names, submitted by the Planetarium Südtirol Alto Adige in Karneid, Italy, were Lich for the pulsar and Draugr, Poltergeist and Phobetor for planets A, B and C, respectively...

A "lich" is a kind of undead being, usually depicted as a sorceror who's managed to keep their remains active and controlled by their intellect or soul or whatever after death. And the names of the associated planets were kept in related themes as well...
dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)
I think that BBC goat video - of a story that's actually happening - is as close to a joke that I want to get today. Especially this year. If there's anything else really happening that I deem ought to be shared on the strength of its amusement value, I may well post that instead.

Back to the job search...
dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)
Jeet Heer accidentally triggered a better joke in the comments, but the Manhattan Vandal's got a ways to travel to get that title added to his list of ascribed "honours"...say, roughly 310 lightyears to the Canopus system!

https://twitter.com/HeerJeet/status/1164753167617183744
dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)
I note that I have just learned from CBC Radio's _Sunday Edition_ that Peter Navarro - he who's been pushing this trade war nonsense that DT-45 has been pursuing of late - is known among serious economists as "Peter Rabbit".

This is the source of that info:

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/canadians-should-understand-that-we-are-under-attack-says-canada-s-former-trade-ambassador-1.4569371
dewline: (canadian media)
I saw this image in the Toronto Star a few days ago, and thought the photographer lucked out on the timing of the shutter during that speech in Richmond Hill, Ontario. See for yourself. Source is credited in the resultant image.

Op-Ed Photoshopping re: Canadian politics after the cut )
dewline: (canadian media)
"Silent Steve Vodka...does not mix well...with anything."

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)
Thanks to [livejournal.com profile] rjsawyer for inspiring with this question:

What's the difference between a bum and a reader at the library?

One possible answer:

A bum shows up in a three-piece suit (or the womens' equivalent) to
praise the library whilst announcing cutbacks for the good of the
library's users.
dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)
...courtesy of [livejournal.com profile] coudal: Destination Typeface.

In which your victim - er, gift-recipient - gets a "bus destination sign roll"-style banner featuring all their favourite typefaces...or alternatively, the default list shown in the photos on that page.

Update 7 Feb 2017: As part of the sprucing-up process of getting the links fixed up after moving to Dreamwidth, it seems the link above to the Schtickers site is gone. RIP. :-(
dewline: Text: Memetic Prophylactic Recommended (warning)
With specific allowance for co-ownership by the company that makes Spam® the luncheon meat to the tune of 50% (should that company express any interest/concern over the matter at all)?

I am claiming the phrase "Russophonic TobaccoPorn Spammers".

Discussion of other topics will resume later today!
dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)
Courtesy of [livejournal.com profile] coudal: Forensic pillows.

For that special someone in your life whom you wish to become a murder suspect, perhaps?
dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)
Closing out Map Week with a bit of cartographic humour.

I'm tempted to swipe [livejournal.com profile] hawkward's "Snerk" icon(or whoever it is that designed it originally) for this one. Honestly.

Can you believe that once someone suggested, in all seriousness, that the planet Earth would evolve into a tetrahedronal shape?. It's a joke now, yes. But to the people who wrote the 1918 magazine article linked to by this Strange Maps blog posting? Not so much a joke at the time to them.

Oh, what the Hell. I'll say it anyway.

*snerk*

PS: Tomorrow, it's back to the normal chatter about comics, politics, entertainment in general, life in general. Thanks for putting up with my diversion into maps this week!

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