I wish I did have the time to reply to everybody individually but I don’t. I think I’ll only comment on any of the posts if there’s something factually wrong mentioned in them, and so far the only point I can remember is one where an ex-neighbour of ours recalled (in an otherwise entirely kind and welcome comment) me telling him, years ago, that my SF novels effectively subsidised the mainstream works. I think he’s just misremembered, as this has never been the case. Until the last few years or so, when the SF novels started to achieve something approaching parity in sales, the mainstream always out-sold the SF – on average, if my memory isn’t letting me down, by a ratio of about three or four to one. I think a lot of people have assumed that the SF was the trashy but high-selling stuff I had to churn out in order to keep a roof over my head while I wrote the important, serious, non-genre literary novels. Never been the case, and I can’t imagine that I’d have lied about this sort of thing, least of all as some sort of joke. The SF novels have always mattered deeply to me – the Culture series in particular – and while it might not be what people want to hear (academics especially), the mainstream subsidised the SF, not the other way round.
How did pre-colonization, Midwest, Native Americans deal with tornados?
I watched a documentary on tornadoes that mentioned that one of the plains tribes had an oral tradition of referring to one particular type of tornado as a "dead man walking." They had footage of a May 27, 1997 tornado that went through the small Central Texas town of Jerrell, that was described by storm-chasers as beginning with a medium dual-rope tornado or multi-vortex pencil tornado. (as it went through town it became lethal)
For the first and only time in my life, I saw the dead-man-walking. It looked like the hips, legs, and feet of a huge giant. The two tornadoes were connected at the top, which looked like hips/lower torso. The clouds obscured the imagined upper body, the bend in the "rope" made knees, and the point of contact with the ground made a dusty swelling that could be thought of as feet. As each of the twin tornadoes rotated around each other they created a haunting optical illusion of legs walking. It was a real heart-stopper. Edit: Still image found here.
After seeing that footage, I have no problem understanding how an oral tradition of an angry spirit scuffing his way across the landscape could occur.
Steve Wilhite, "then working at CompuServe (the nation’s first major online service) knew the company wanted to display things like color weather maps. Because he had an interest in compression technologies, Mr. Wilhite thought he could help."
There's a dragon charging down the street. Smoke pours out of his mouth and nose. Large, red eyes blink with malicious intent. The brown ridges along his back stand out against the blue sky. As he approaches, the crowd oohs and aahs with approval. Dramatic, orchestral music builds to a climax. Children yell with excitement. And then the dragon gets stuck. Clearly someone has miscalculated.
Carnival meets Cirque de Soleil. Montreal could juice up Carifiesta and put on something along the same lines.
“It must be so hard, being Prince Harry all the time,” said the Canadian model Jessica Stam, who despite the suburban setting and soggy weather, was dressed in a severe structured black dress by Thom Browne and a pair of that designer’s stiletto wing tips. “Everything is Prince Harry, Prince Harry, Prince Harry,” she added. Wouldn’t it be nice, she said, to be just plain Harry every once in a while?"
"Emancipation of women has made them lose their mystery"
"Grace Kelly's favorite fine jewellery house, Cartier, has opened its archives ahead of Olivier Dahan's film Princess Grace, creating five exact replicas of vintage pieces worn on-screen by Nicole Kidman."
Wait for me, Daddy is one of the most famous Canadian pictures of the Second World War. It was taken October 1st, 1940, in New Westminster, British Columbia by Claude Dettloff.
"After three years and £55million the Liverpool Central Library is finally due to be re-opened this week - and is already drawing gasps at the stunning result."
"The Battle of the Nations is an international historical medieval battles world championship, first held in 2009,[1] and held in Europe in April every year since. It is a full contact competition, using metal weapons, and a standardized list of rules.[2] National teams in HMB compete at the championship in several standard nominations, including 'Triathlon Duel', 'Professional fights', '5 vs 5', '21 vs 21' and 'all vs all'. All battles are full contact, no stage reenactment battles are organized at the championship."
Ost du Quebec representing for "Canada".
Team Quebec (also known at Ost du Quebec) was the first non European team to enter the tournament in Ukraine in 2011. Their captain put a team together of 9 fighters and 3 support staff who traveled from Montreal Quebec to take part in the tournament. They also held the first friendly tournament under the HMB rules in St-Eustache in February 2012 where participants from Ontario and USA took part. Together with Scallagrims group from Toronto they founded the National Medieval Martial Arts League in Canada, a league that is recognized in both Quebec and Canada.
Battle of the Nations - Cannabis Dei vs von Massow - Final Eliminations 2013 Poland.
"Fart Proudly" (also called "A Letter To A Royal Academy", and "To the Royal Academy of Farting") is the popular name of a "notorious essay" about flatulence written by Benjamin Franklin circa 1781 while he was living abroad as United States Ambassador to France.
"The National Park Service released video taken from the top of the Washington Monument as workers completed the scaffolding around the 555-foot obelisk. The monument is covered in scaffolding to prepare for work repairing damage it suffered in the August 2011 earthquake."
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