Michael Flynn's Blog, page 28

Odds and Ends

How Can We Possibly Explain This Mystery?

"Despite Tax Increase, California State Revenues in Freefall"--headline, Breitbart.com, Dec. 8

Despite?
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"Christmas Time is Here, By Golly

Let's not forget what
office the dude held

Disapproval would be folly...."

It snowed for Christmas Day, but we had to hurry to shovel it off the sidewalk before it melted.  That's what TOF calls snow: just enough to be a decorative accessory for the holiday.  Number One son -- he is the only one, but that doesn't mean he isn't the first -- tells us that in Anchorage AK, where he lives, the snow doesn't melt quite so quickly. First, there's not enough sunlight for the task...

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Merry Christmas to All

A Meditation Upon Reading in the Historia Francorum

In Tolkien's The Two Towers there is a scene in which Aragorn and the other defenders of the Hornburg, hard by Helm's Deep, are beseiged by an army of orcs.  The odds are overwhelming, and there seems nothing else than to go down fighting.
And indeed, after two days of searching the horizon in vain, on the third day Aragorn spied Gandalf astride a white horse cast in a pearly glow, leading the Riders of Rohan down upon the orcish rear, peeling them away from the seige and destroying them.

Now, Tolkien was a scholar of the era and so could not have been ignorant of a certain passage in Gregory of Tour's History of the Franks. Read more »

The Shipwrecks of Time

The first experimental preview garnered a few comments -- c'mon, let's get to it -- which are now revealed on the main page. 

Meanwhile, a new scene has been posted on the preview page and your critique is invited. 

Why Science Fiction Once Prospered and Now Does Not

Because kids once dreamed dreams like this:Dec. 1922 edition of Science and Invention

Right Stuff Day

World's first test pilot makes world's first flight test+ + +
Dry WitDavid Warren who formerly wrote a column for the Ottowa Citizen or some such newspaper in the great white north has appeared in the blogosphere with Essays in Idleness.  He has a hand for the turn of phrase.  A few examples harvested at random:
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More Notes from the Untergang

Time for the miscellany again.
Babies, charity, science marching onward, catfish evolving, and more. 

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Slinky, by Wile E. Coyote

The Seven Sleepers

An Oddity While researching for The Shipwrecks of Time, I was reading Paul the Deacon's 8th cent. History of the Lombards and came across this odd story:

In the farthest boundaries of Germany toward the west-northwest, on
the shore of the ocean itself, a cave is seen under a projecting rock,
where for an unknown time seven men repose wrapped in a long sleep, not
only their bodies, but also their clothes being so uninjured, that from
this fact alone, that they last without decay through the course of so
many years, they are held in veneration among those ignorant and
barbarous peoples. These then, so far as regards their dress, are
perceived to be Romans. When a certain man, stirred by cupidity, wanted
to strip one of them, straightway his arms withered, as is said, and his
punishment so frightened the others that no one dared touch them
further. The future will show for what useful purpose Divine Providence
keeps them through so long a period. Perhaps those nations are to be
saved some time by the preaching of these men, since they cannot be
deemed to be other than Christians.

On the surface, this is simply one more telling of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus; but it has some peculiar features; to wit:
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