The General Discussion Thread

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[Publish Date updated to restore to front page]

Okay as an experiment here it is. Discuss your favourite generals here!

Well perhaps… Really this is simply the place to post news-items, fun-items or whatever takes your fancy. In short just post what you want here.

It’s just another wee experiment – comments welcome.

Squonk.

[Image: General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett (Stephen Fry)]

17,285 thoughts on “The General Discussion Thread”

  2. Villager; “Just to make it clear wrt my comment to Frazer, I did not use a single abusive word in that comment”

    Still not worked out yet that going against Craig’s friends & supporters, even useful idiots, is a BIG no-no ? !

  3. Ishmael; “That Tony…Who is he ? A man, A myth? Maybe I shall never know but I like him. Legendary perhaps. ”

    Somebody with a soul, and somebody whose middle of the night, perhaps booze inspired comments, make more sense than the immaculately written garbage of the automatons who mostly post at CM’s.

  4. Glen Hi

    Yes its been very cold in our summer for this year… i was on the Atlantic coast a couple of weeks ago, wearing ALL my winter Gear , and even then one could not hang aroon, that was mostly the wind, but all in all, it’s been very cold, i have Never had my heating on in May, or June before this yearwould love to get back to the Long distance running, and the Five a sides,

    Clark…. Keep an Eye , the planets get Closer,

    P.s i once seen Tears For Fear Live in Glasgow Barrowlands, Great Artits

    Peace All..am oot havin a wee Swally…Clouds, and no noctilucents, Typical

    Gabriel – Lay you’re Hand’s on me – the best , Live surf

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dohg5hdZWSM

    And From Listeningwater –

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rlgk-XlDB9Y

  5. Wet an Grey in the midlands atm.

    Macky, Must confess I thought Tony as some just nutter at first, so immediately felt kinship. Posting at inordinate times… But I don’t know, there is something wonderfully consistent, regular about him…It’s who I choose to identify with most even if imagined.

    Nice one seeing Tears Brian, never did ): ..Saw lenny kravitz @ the nec brum though. One of the only 2 good gigs i’v been to. Fish being the other. Seen loads outdoor, festivals, seems to suck a lot imo…

  6. Guess that’s the point, they are not inordinate. And you get a sense of the person, just posting as person. Asking no favors, skilfully dissecting the narrative.

    Coincidental or not it’s impressive to observe. Add very high probable levels of alcohol, doubly so.

  8. Nibiru or Planet 7x or whatever, keeps coming up. The god-botherers keep praying for disaster to prove the scriptural record.

    WISE hasn’t seen, but brown dwarfs are hard to spot with a telescope, so we must trust NASA to keep us uninformed, as panic shuts down productive society and THAT would be an apocalypse. Imagine a brown dwarf larger than Jupiter with it’s own planet passing by slowly. If scientists were aware and kept quiet….it’s so against the grain of human nature.

  9. Brian, yes, I saw Venus and Jupiter again tonight; just over finger-width at arm’s length apart this evening. Or my finger fattens.

  10. Ben, you read The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle? Recommended; short sci-fi novel. Hoyle was the astronomer who coined the term “big bang” – as a term of ridicule – he was a steady-state universe proponent.

    An object enters our solar system, gets spotted by a sky survey in the US, and the US government tries to hush it up. But a UK amateur spots the gravitational perturbations of Jupiter and Saturn and presents his results at the Royal Astronomical Society.

    Anyone worried about a ‘pole shift’ should nail a length of drainpipe to a couple of posts in their garden, lined up with Polaris, which stays roughly where it is while the sky revolves around it – it’s like the drawing pin the rest of the map rotates about. If you look through the pipe one day and Polaris is outside the view, either worry or check if the posts have warped.

  11. Ben, I haven’t given much away about the novel; the above happens in the first twenty-two pages, of just over two hundred.

    Alexis the Russian is my favourite character. And I love this section:

    ‘Ifs and buts are the stuff of politics, Mr Parkinson. As a scientist I am concerned with facts, not with motives, suspicions, and airy-fairy nothingness. The fact is, I must insist, that no one has learned anything of importance from me in this affair. The real gossip is the Prime Minister. I told the Astronomer Royal that that’s the way it would be, but he wouldn’t believe me.’

    ‘You haven’t very much respect for my profession, have you, Professor Kingsley?’

    ‘Since it is you who wish for frankness, I will tell you that I have not. I regard politicians rather as I regard the instruments on the dashboard of my car. They tell me what is going on in the engine of state, but they don’t control it.’

  12. RIP Chris Squire. Death announced on Glastonbury Sunday. Last time I say Yes was at Glastonbury 2003 on the Sunday.

    http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jun/28/founder-of-yes-and-renowned-bass-guitarist-chris-squire-dies

    Chris Squire, co-founder of prog-rock band Yes and renowned bass guitarist, has died aged 67.

    Squire, who formed Yes with singer Jon Anderson in 1968, had been undergoing treatment for acute erythroid leukemia (a rare cancer of the blood and bone marrow) in his hometown of Phoenix, Arizona.

    In a statement released on Sunday, fellow Yes band members described Squire as a phenomenal bassist and the “linchpin” that held the group together.

    “It’s with the heaviest of hearts and unbearable sadness that we must inform you of the passing of our dear friend and Yes co-founder, Chris Squire. Chris peacefully passed away last night in Phoenix, Arizona,” the band said.

  15. They say you should write what you know, so a scientist seems the best prospect for writing SciFi. Black Cloud is supposed to be in reprint this year by Valancourt Press, Clark. I shall add to reading list…thanks.

  17. Ben, The Black Cloud really is science fiction; the main characters are scientists, and the story is about them doing science.

    I read some Lovecraft about three decades ago; I can’t even remember which books.

  18. Fred Hoyle also promoted the panspermia hypothesis for the origin of life being in space. I think he may yet be proven right about that. He also correctly predicted a specific nuclear resonance, having spotted that without it, the probability of carbon synthesis by fusion in stellar cores would be too low for the abundance that we actually find.

  20. Don’t see much re Hoyle and Quantum Theory, but it would seem as an outlier (refused to help with the BOMB) and the Nobel Committee dissing him, it would seem he liked exotic theories.

  21. Alternatively, Fred Hoyle was a member of the Illuminati, who had him publish The Black Cloud in 1957 so that when Nibiru comes barrelling through in, er, it’s a bit late init? But so that when it does, I’d trust the community of lying bastard amateur astronomer sociopaths and not panic and start eating the rich…

    Ask Tony_Opmoc; he’ll tell you.

  22. Are there amateur infrared astronomers out there?

    How close would a Jupiter-size brown dwarf have to approach to be seen by optics?

  23. Well I tried using Phil’s telescope to photograph Venus like I did Jupiter in March but nothing was any good, which does not bode well for photographing the conjunction tomorrow. Damaged a hair-band too.

    Looking through the telescope was excellent. With the 25mm eyepiece both planets almost fitted in the field of view together. Venus was a clear crescent and Jupiter’s moons were visible, even though the sky was still quite light.

  25. Farewell Chris Squire… i remember Being just Blown away the first time i heard ‘ Soon ‘.. so touching a piece of music..Thanks for the Glasto vid Squonk

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGq9MbjlQV8

    Ben

    i think a brown Dwarf of Jupiter Size would be an Optical View not much farther out than Jupiter… But i’m certain that Brown dwarfs can never be as low in mass / Size, of Jupiter.. they would be very much Larger.

    Nibiru, Clark is correct, it’s well Late… the damn thing must have the Velocity of a snail, But if something else passes just Handy Pandy… and if we go back to Mr Sagan’s fear of Deflection Technology.. Oops

  26. Must be an Amazing Sight Clark…Great stuff, ENVY the clear skies…And the Scope…they say we are in for clear tomorrow, and heat …at effin Last

  27. Clark cheers for Mrs O Connor Vid.. Love that wumin …Long time fan .

    Nothing Compares Vid…. ooch

  28. I was catching up on Sinéad recently, I was a bit stupid back then and didn’t really ‘get’ a lot of it. Never thought it could be as good as then. Such spirit. But now understand and maybe will return that passion. Right now i’m stuck panting white backgrounds…

    https://youtu.be/vPyqgZ6Yea4

    Maybe it sounds mean
    But I really don’t think so
    You asked for the truth and I told you

    Through their own words
    They will be exposed
    They’ve got a severe case of
    The emperor’s new clothes

  31. Some of the sky surveys for stray asteroids work by spotting background stars being occulted, don’t they?

  32. I think this leap second is just a clever ruse to give Greece more time time to sort out the debt problem – a whole extra second is surely generous 🙂

  34. [Squonk: Moved from Meteor Storm post]

    Can anyone explain why Germany has allowed Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz to be buried in hometown Montabaur while the German government of Angela Merkel has agreed to the building of a gas pipeline underneath the Baltic which will render Eastern Europe powerless to deal with Russia’s Putin for Washington?

  36. Phil’s telescope is trained on the conjunction with the 25mm eyepiece. Venus is a brilliant crescent. Jupiter looks about two thirds the size of Venus. I can see banding on Jupiter and all four Galilean moons, three on the same side as Venus and one far out on the opposite side. It’s magnificent!

    I might get the whole scene in view with the 17mm eyepiece… I suppose I should try a photo but the ones from yesterday were rubbish.

  37. Damn. Distant clouds have obscured the view.

    I got some photo’s. I tried my other camera. I’d tried it before but I’d never been able to see anything on the viewfinder screen. This time I could so I took some pictures, but I hadn’t got set up with the hair bands to hold the camera to the ‘scope so I just hand-held the camera and there’s camera shake. I’ll find the least bad examples and post them anyway.

  39. Like the photos. Just had a look outside and had good naked eye visibility. Also for me some clouds started to intervene before I could go back and get the binoculars.

  40. Jeez. They’re forecasting 30 centigrade here tomorrow. The forecast for Thursday has changed radically every hour, today and yesterday, from heavy rain all day, to thunderstorms, to sunshine and heavy showers, to light rain all day, and now sunshine and light showers. However, the predicted temperature has remained at 24c throughout.

    Maybe there’s industrial action at HAARP.

  41. Squonk, it’s a shame my photos don’t show Venus as a crescent properly. It was about half way between a sliver and a half-moon shape. However, the colour difference between Venus and Jupiter is clearer in the photo’s than by eye.

  42. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/30/windows_10_wi_fi_sense/

    Public warning: Windows 10 will share your Wi-Fi password with your friends’ friends

    A Windows 10 feature, Wi-Fi Sense, smells like a significant security risk: it shares access to password-protected Wi-Fi networks with the user’s contacts. So giving a wireless password to one person grants access to everyone who knows them.

    That includes their Outlook.com (nee Hotmail) contacts, Skype contacts and, with an opt-in, their Facebook friends. There is method in the Microsoft madness – it saves having to shout across the office or house “what’s the Wi-Fi password?” – but ease of use has to be tamed with security. If you wander close to a wireless network, and your friend knows the password, and you both have Wi-Fi Sense, you can now log into that network.

  43. “Public warning: Windows 10 will share your Wi-Fi password with your friends’ friends”

    Hmmm. Doesn’t this only matter if systems on the local Wi-Fi network are set so as to allow access (to the file system, for instance) from the local network? Otherwise, all a friend (or a friend’s friend) could do is use your Internet download allowance. Most systems don’t have local file sharing enabled anyway.

    I’ve thought for a while that Wi-Fi encryption serves the ISPs and government surveillance at the expense of the users. If everyone turned their Wi-Fi encryption off, we’d have Wi-Fi access to the Internet almost everywhere populated. Encryption enables individual billing for bandwidth usage, and it enables specific traffic to be traced to individual users.

  46. Now former deputy editor of The News of the World Neil Wallis , who got the position by helping give Captain Simon Hayward an alibi for having created a serious crime in Sweden, especially having assassinated its statsminister Olof Palme, while working for The Sun, has been found not guilty of master-minding its phone hacking system of news-worthy people.

    NOW reporter Sean Hoare had first leaked it to the NYT, claiming that it was rampant, but then Hoare conveniently died, and it became much more restricted.

    Would if Wallis had been convicted if Hoare had lived to testify?

    Just shows what a rampant police state the UK is?

  47. Thanks to Mary, we have Phil’s censored post;( I wonder if the named two pro war mongers comments can also be retrieved ?);

    “I am appalled that some people here are calling for more war. A war to end war of course. Perfect. Cause that works. Iraq and Afghanistan worked out well! Daesh have nothing to do with us. They are simply evil. Nothing to do with us.

    How about NATO withdraws? How about not selling arms to every mad motherfucker around the globe. How about not drawing lines that serve resource grabs at the expense of people. How about not fueling divisions with a little murder to control both sides? How about not having alliances with the financiers of Daesh. How about not training them. How about asking NATO members to stop attacking forces fighting these clerical fascists? How about arming the Kurds? How about not bombing everyone? How about not installing tyrants? How about not killing democrats? How about not creating global murder and mayhem for profit? Jesus. Have all these ideas been tried and failed. Well that’s evil for ya. Damned unreasonable, this pure evil.

    Why troops on the ground now? Because of dead English holiday makers? Because a relative of someone you know was shot? It’s personal now!

    People are killed in numbers that dwarf this horror day in day out. What about the dead of Kobane. Same day. Way, way more dead. More dead children. especially. I thought you lot didn’t like dead children. Yet the outrage here is saved for our few dead and injured. Just like the Daily Mail. No different than the BBC. You people think you are so clever cause you understand that the media lies. Yet you are so stupid you can only react to an agenda set by the media you bemoan. And now some of you are calling for more NATO war. You excel yourself.

    You volunteering to fight then Clark and Daniel? Or just hoping to send someone elses son to kill the sons of someone you don’t know. You brave old men.

    Troops on the ground my arse. You fucking NATO war machine cocksucking wankers. Go vote SNP.”

  48. I won’t defend myself here because Squonk, this blog’s owner, has asked that we refrain from animosity on this blog.

  50. Clark; You and phil seem to have transcended your differences by star-gazing.

    Finding common ground covers a multitude of sins.

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