Snowflake's Forum

  “Back in my day, we… / we didn’t…” (fill in the blanks).  We’ve all heard that when we were younger.  Maybe we even say it to the young snots of today.  But face it, would you really want to go back?   Bunny grumbling about all the hassle it will be tomorrow to get to the airport, security and immigration check, and the long flight.  But wait.  Bunny will be on the other side of the planet in under 24 hours.  Aside from leaving the front door and getting into the cab, he will not be exposed to the elements at all.  On demand entertainment on the plane.  Bet granny and gramps would never dream of such. Since we are living in the now, what would you say to those clamoring for the good old days? J.P. Bunny

In the last ~4-5 years I started noticing that more and more people are having a hard time checking out of grocery stores and other retail places. In these bouts of bizarre behavior, I look very closely at what the check-out impaired people say and do. They act confused, overwhelmed and/or somehow paralyzed or mentally slowed down. It isn't just old people with this problem. It is  EVERYONE!  It includes middle-school and high-school students, of which there is an abundance of in our happy little neighborhood.  When whining about this, I describe the increasingly annoying check-out problem something like this: Fumbling, bumbling, mumbling, stumbling, fiddling, piddling, diddling, floundering, futzing, putzing, dawdling and farting around. I swear, the problem continues to slowly get worse. Either that or I am getting worse. Something is getting worse.  Today I stumbled across a possible explanation for "impaired check-out syndrome."  Smithsonian Maga...

Quanta magazine reports about a line of research on dark energy that I know all of us have been following very closely: Is Dark Energy Getting Weaker? New Evidence Strengthens the Case. Computer-simulated  flight through the Dark Energy  Spectroscopic  Instrument’s (DESI ’ s)  new map of millions of galaxies  Cosmologists have mapped billions of years of cosmic expansion based on the new data and analysis Last spring, a team of nearly 1,000 cosmologists announced that dark energy — the enigmatic agent propelling the universe to swell in size at an ever-increasing rate — might be slackening . [But that] was tentative and preliminary. Today, the scientists report  that they have analyzed more than twice as much data as before and that it points more strongly to the same conclusion: Dark energy is losing steam. Portions of the newly mapped universe by two observatories 15 million galaxies spanning 32 billion light-years of space[1]  (I think: Top: Southe...

The WaPo reports  ( not paywalled ) about life found in the water and on the seabed after a 19 mile long chunk of ice broke loose in the Antarctic: A huge iceberg broke off Antarctica. What scientists found under it startled them. Crustaceans, snails, worms and fish are among the dozens of creatures that deep-sea explorers discovered under a massive Antarctic ice shelf.  Expectations weren’t high. The scientists didn’t think much life could thrive tucked under such a thick blanket of ice. .... In total, the researchers believe they will be able to identify dozens of new species from the expedition. The tentacles of a solitary hydroid drift in currents 360 meters deep A large sponge, a cluster of anemones, and other life ~230 meters A stalk of deep-sea coral at ~1200 meters A helmet jellyfish drifts with tentacles splayed A giant phantom jelly is documented in the Bellingshausen Sea off Antarctica, at an area where the shelf break and slope are cut by several underwater gu...

  As the title says.  Bunny would like to learn the bagpipes, but not really able to here.   You really need a tutor or instructor for hands on instruction.  None anywhere around here.  Practice at home not good as Mrs. Bunny works at home, plus we have kitties.   If a private tutor found…great.  But scarce as hens teeth here. Is there some skill you would like to learn, but the odds are against it? J.P. Bunny

  Bunny shall give his curmudgeonly side a break and ask if the week has been good for you.  Bunny’s final day of work was last Friday.  This morning, woke up to a nice heavy snowy morning.  The expected root canal out not to be such. Anything good or pleasant for you? J.P. Bunny