Your host is on the road to New Mexico where he will celebrate his mother’s 91st birthday.
So it’s up to you, Dear Reader, to add your wisdom in the comments, along with the links to what should have been in today’s Scroll.
(1) MEOW MIX. Not just for bodegas: SJW credentials defend a fannish habit: “Distillery Cat Wanted: Must Be Affable, Brand-Boosting, Cold-Blooded Killer”.
Inviting a cat to live in a distillery is like offering a child free room and board at a Disney World theme park. In a distillery, there are tall stacks of shipping pallets to climb, oak barrels to jump on, pipes to nimbly tightrope-walk across and — of course — a steady supply of rodents to hunt.
People and cats have always had a businesslike relationship. Where human agriculture goes, a smorgasbord of rats and mice are sure to follow. And distilleries, which turn various grains into grogs, have been battling these pests for centuries. Distillery Cats, a new book by Brad Thomas Parsons, is based on his popular Instagram chronicle of these mousers.
(2) LOCATION SCOUT LOSES OUT. The BBC learns, “Star Wars filming request turned down by Queen’s Crown Estate”, over worries about impact on the park: “If it doesn’t work for here then, no matter who you are, I’m afraid that dollars, bright lights and names don’t sway us.”
(3) REFERENCE DIRECTOR! Almost the Flower of Forgetfulness? “Chinese Ru-ware bowl sets $38m auction record in Hong Kong” (wrong dynasty, but similar nature.)
A 1,000-year-old bowl from China’s Song Dynasty has sold at auction in Hong Kong for almost US$38m (£28m) – a record for Chinese porcelain.
Sotheby’s, the auction house, said the rare Ru-ware brush-washer sold after 20 minutes of tense bidding from a handful of phone bidders, and one in the room.
The little piece measures 13cm (5in) across and is glazed in a blue-green colour.
The bowl’s buyer has chosen to remain anonymous
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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Now 8249. Still no one bringing me tea. Let’s keep exploring…
@1 interested me because I’ve visited Highland Park, which claimed to be the only whisky distillery still doing its own malting; a malting floor is much more like a rodent buffet than sacked grain is, so they had a cat — but weren’t certain they would get another as the new maltmaster (in 2005) didn’t favor them.
Pictures of the start of Australia’s solar-powered–car race. I want to know how the one car that extended its roof beyond the rear bumper (to support more solar cells) does compared to the others — it seems like an obvious improvement, so there’s got to be some reason they don’t all do it.
Sacrificial fourth…
You are in a gadda da vida.
Kip W: You are in a gadda da vida.
>> pick apple
You are now holding an apple. A snake slithers up to you.
AOL Instant Messenger – one of the most influential and important instant messaging chat clients of all time – will shut down for good on December 15… AOL said on its website that people still on the platform cannot save or export their buddy lists, and that “data associated with AIM will be deleted after December 15.”
I have returned from Capclave and my brain is still tired.
The highlights included the mass author signing, where I talked to a lot of old friends, the WSFA Small Press Award ceremony (congratulations Ursula!), and the Eye of Argon reading, complete with acted out parts and the text projected onto a big screen.
For those losing AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ is still in business. And Pidgin is a fairly good free-ware interface.
Would someone please get Lis Carey some Daughter of Fishes and maybe some fish shaped cakes?
This would probably be more appropriate in yesterday’s scroll, but to keep moving forward…Revisiting Star Trek’s Most Political Episode.
Meredith moment – McKillip’s Song for the Basilisk is on sale at US Amazon for $4.99.
I like the projection of Eye of Argon on a large screen. And while I’ve heard that various East Coast cons have been acting it out (likely having come up with the idea themselves), I think Baycon was the first to do so, having been doing it for over a decade. I often played Grignr at first (the roles change during the play as people get their turn to read or are back out there playing another role when a previous role comes back on stage).
Well, I succumbed to temptation: having finished Gladstone’s The Ruin of Angels, I made the next thing on my list be Matt Wallace’s “Envy of Angels”. Given the theme of Wallace’s titles, succumbing to temptation seems somewhat appropriate.
The Gladstone was terrific: he just keeps getting better.
The Wallace was fun, and I’ll probably read the rest of the series eventually.
For now, though, Provenance beckons.
re Chip’s comment on solar powered car race:
The url is broken, the correct url is http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-41541243
There’s also more images here https://www.worldsolarchallenge.org/dashboard/galleries (and obviously more info on that site.)
If you mean the red car in the second image, I’m fairly certain the overhang is in the front and not the back. Anyway, the total area of solar panels doesn’t seem that much larger than the other designs – it seems more like they’ve moved the front axle backwards than extended the solar panel forward.
@Chip: There’s a maximum limit on the total area of solar cells depending on the class being entered and the technology used, so the deck extensions are just to get the allowed area on what is a tiny vehicle.
@Iphinome-
Thank you. Just reading the story helped!
Because we all need some good news: A survivor of the Grenfell Tower fire was reunited with her SJW credential two months after the fire.
Rewatched Blade Runner last night, in hopes of seeing sequel sometimes this week. Or, should I say, I tried to watch Blade Runner, but here in 1631, there are massive electricity issues..
I’m trying to decide whether I should go watch the new Blade Runner this week. On the plus side, seems it might be visually impressive on the big screen and in Turkish cinemas you always have an intermission so people can go smoke, so the length is manageable. On the negative side, the film has been censored here with nudity and discussions of evolution being removed. I’m not that keen on rewarding censorship.
[godstalk]
This weekend I saw the theatrical cut for the first time in probably close to 30 years. I can finally appreciate how why the voiceover was disliked.
@Johan: thanks for correcting; I can see what’s wrong and figure how it happened, but I don’t know why the display software shows it as a valid link.
@Anthony: if the overhang is in front, how do they see low obstacles? OTOH, somebody may be content with leading overhang, as the first few pix in “Day 2 Action” (2nd cell in Johan’s 2nd link) suggest that both leading and trailing overhangs are used. But the little red car seems to have a much more extreme overhang (almost the length of the chassis), so the question stands; is there an advantage to making the chassis so small (while somehow fitting in the class — do class definitions not include weight?) that the overhang is legal? I get that the race isn’t testing all the conditions under which such cars could be used, but I’ve been in the neighborhood of the course and would expect it to be a reasonable test of a car’s durability. I guess we’ll find out; from the details in Johan’s link it looks like this is the Western Sydney car, whose page shows it as 6th place after 2 days despite not being listed in the overall standings for day 2 (scroll down). Yes, I’m geeking ridiculously over this.
@Chip: The regulations run to a 50 page PDF. Can’t see any mention of weight, other than the driver plus ballast must be at least 80kg and there’s a weight limit on battery storage. Forward and sideways vision (page 30) must be direct, no mirrors or electronics, rear vision can use mirrors and electronics but from the pictures on page 31 of the regs ot looks like a sizeable blind spot directly behind is acceptable.
Highlights of Conversation w Cast of Star Trek Discovery at NYCC 2017:
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
The Rolling Stone has an interview with Daniel Richards who wrestles as The Progressive Liberal in Appalachia. Turns out that it’s not much of an act. In the interview they discuss if Donald Trump is just a wrestling heal.
Still no word on SJW Credentials. Maybe he’ll address it on his recently launched website.
Facebook is reporting the death of San Francisco area SF writer ElizaBeth “Lace” Gilligan from cancer. (Wikipedia entry confirms.)
(ETA: I see Cat Rambo already posted the news on the 10/6 scroll.)
October 8th is the 40th anniversary of K-9’s first appearance in Doctor Who.
Sometimes I get the scrolls confused; I wish this was a discussion board but then there would need to be more moderation.
I finally coughed up Part Three of the SFWA and Independent Writers series here: http://www.kittywumpus.net/blog/2017/10/10/sfwa-and-independent-writers-part-three-launches-and-lurches/ Tomorrow that fantasy storybundle link will work and lead you to some AWESOME stuff.