Quote of the moment

Chances of spotting a neutrinoless double-beta decay in Ge-76 are rare—no more than 1 for every 100,000 two-neutrino double-beta decays.

-- Vincente Guiseppe

Headline of the moment

Condom Snorting Challenge: Why You Should Not Inhale Condoms

-- forbes.com

Headline of the moment

Heart Penalty? Hockey Fans' Cardiac Risk Rises When Home Team Wins

-- healthday.com

Headline of the moment

Tabby's star dims again

-- phys.org

Headline of the moment

Newfound 'organ' could be the biggest in your body

--cnn.com

Headline of the moment

Caroline Sunshine: 5 Things About Disney Star, 22, Who Joined The Trump Administration

--hollywoodlife.com

Quote of the moment

A Brexit campaigner has told Channel 4 News that Vote Leave cheated in the 2016 referendum by over-spending. But the prime minister's political secretary says the allegations are "factually incorrect and misleading", and outs the accuser as gay.

-- Incredibly sharp (or possibly 3rd grade mimicking) writing on channel4.com

Conversation of the Moment

This is an email from my pal entropydave.  We've worked together at two different companies on two different continents.  

We've each wandered away for the pursuits where we met...I've retired...He's gone back to living in Scotland and has become a philosophy professor.

I'm saving it here for future reference... his writing is exceptional.

***

b1-66er-

So this article...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43515330

...makes passing reference to the definition of the Irish border.  How would ANY of this madness make a difference?

Man, I'll tell you what, if you're on this side of the pond, all this Brexit business makes ZERO sense.

***

entropydave-

It doesn't make a lot of sense here.  I can summarize though:

For venal political reasons, the political class permitted a referendum on an ill-defined question, confident that the country would vote—as in most referenda—for the conservative, no-change option.  For reasons of incompetence and arrogance, the no-change remain campaign ran a grossly ineffective campaign.  The pro-Brexit campaign ran a populist campaign using willful misinformation to stoke xenophobia, nationalism and parochial greed, never imagining they would win, but imagining the political gain from having tried.  The press failed.  Conventional wisdom held that Brexit would be an act of political self-mutilation that would cost the country dearly, never the mind the symbolism of dissolving the bonds that had grown in traumatic soil left by the Second World War.  The electorate, ignorant, ill-educated and similarly venal were deaf to conventional wisdom and desirous of the confections dreamed up by the pro-Brexit camp.  They voted to leave.

So now we have a pig, being a plausibly democratic mandate for a collective act of self-mutilation in the name of nationalism and xenophobia.  Onto this pig it is hoped may be applied much lipstick.  

It is not the definition of the Irish border that is in question but whether the border will be without border controls or not.  The porousness of the border is an axiom of the agreements that have brought peace to Northern Ireland.  If there is a border between Ireland (in the EU) and Northern Ireland (not in the EU), then the fear is for peace on the island of Ireland.  If there is no border there, then there will be a de facto border between the EU and the British mainland, meaning that there will be an ersatz international border within the sovereign territory of the UK.  That is to say, Britain will not have control of its own territorial borders.  So what we need in Ireland is a contradiction, viz. a border that is not a border.  That said, given that the majority of the population of that island believe that the father, the son and the holy spirit are all one and the same, there is hope yet that a contradiction might be built—you know, with technology.

Headline of the moment

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch counts 1.8 trillion pieces of trash, mostly plastic

-- LAtimes.com

Datum of the moment

In the world, water-borne diseases kill more children under the age of five than malaria, measles and HIV combined.

-- ABP news

Quote of the moment

The researchers split the plastic they collected into four size categories: microplastic (0.05 to 0.5 centimeters), mesoplastic (0.5 to 5 cm), macroplastic (5 to 50 cm) and megaplastic (bigger than 50 cm).

-- Amina Khan

Quote of the moment

In 2014, [Facebook] disclosed that it had tried to manipulate users' emotions as part of an internal psychology experiment.

--bloomberg.com

Quote of the moment

With supermarkets gone, you'll need to acquire foodstuffs the way your ancient ancestors did: By catching and killing it yourself. You'll need to know how to gut and scale fish, and how to humanely slaughter then butcher an animal. Not for the squeamish, but neither is starving to death.

--Jakie Summers

Quote of the moment

You don't have to take your passport photo at the drugstore.
The picture must be square, unaltered and on a white background, but you're allowed to take it at home! The rules do not stipulate that you stand in line for hours at Walgreens.

--Suzy Strutner

Headline of the moment

Ohio student suspended for staying in class during National Walkout Day

--foxnews.com

Headline of the moment

Turtle who was fed puppy in Idaho classroom euthanized

-- fox13now.com

Headline of the moment

NO, A MASSIVE GEOMAGNETIC STORM WILL NOT HIT EARTH ON MARCH 18

--newsweek.com

--

Quote of the moment

This new type of ice is about 1.5 times as dense as the ice we're familiar with, which is called Ice I.

--Fan Taylor

Quote of the moment

Massive discovery deep under the Earth shocks scientists

--morningticker.com

Headline of the moment

Putin says Jews, Ukrainians, Tatars could be behind U.S. election meddling

-- USA today

Ice in bottle

LV, NV.

Quote of the moment

The possibilities for my life and my progress that I can now dimly conjure are not so vivid that they haunt me, but they do give me a feeling that is a cross between vertigo and disappointment about what will never be.

-- Entropy Dave

Quote of the moment

We live in a dark age when the most nearly eloquent new structures are boutique condos—popping up mushroom-like in Brooklyn—which at least express kinds of niceness that money can buy.

--Peter Schjeldahl

Quote of the moment

[Brad] Kim says he forgets that not everyone has been desensitized by spelunking down into the muck every day for 10 years, but argues that meme culture isn't malevolent so much as it is amoral; it's a mirror held up to the culture of the internet, which "increasingly does not care about the truth, and cares only about the narrative, the myth."

-- Kaitlyn Tiffany

Quote of the moment

It's hard to know exactly when, but the [Chinese space] station will imminently fall from the sky.

-- Popular Mechanics

Headline of the moment

Elon Musk put a Tesla in space, but is that a good thing?

-- dailycal.org

Headline of the moment

Charged Black Holes Can Erase Your Past And Give You Infinite Number Of Possible Futures

-- techtimes.com

Me too! Headline of the Moment

He thought it was a blister. It was a deadly bacteria consuming his foot.

--Washingtonpost.com

(In a blatant attempt to be "more like" the New York Post.  Congratulations, you made it.  Be sure to collect your finishers' medal at the door on your way out.)

Quote of the moment

At one point, [Rose] McGowan could handle Poe, but not her own shoelaces.

-- SORAYA ROBERTS

Headline of the moment

Something huge is happening in Alaska right now

-- morningticker.com

Headline of the moment

1.5M 'rare penguins' discovered in Antarctica

-- foxnews.com

Headline of the moment

Selfies make your nose look 30% bigger, study says

-- cnn.com

Quote of the moment

Globalization does not support the global population.

--the dear hunter 

(not sic)