Our local paper, the Denver Post, reported that as many as 4000 stranded passengers spent the night at the airport. Bet it got ugly as the bars closed and the snack machines and toilet paper ran out.

BTW it wasn’t that bad at our home in the suburb of Arvada west of Denver. The severity definitely decreased as you moved west. The roads went from almost impassible around DIA to kinda sorta normal winter snow in our neighborhood.

This bomb cyclone was no joke.

I barely even knew of the existence of the Jonas Brothers when they were at their peak of fashion. But then again, I’m sixty-two, so they weren’t really ever in my generation’s gestalt.

Not quite the same thing, but I’ve read all of the late Robert B. Parker’s “Spencer” novels, and I don’t believe we ever learn Spencer’s first name, nor his friend Hawk’s real name.

I dimly recall from decades ago that the main character in H. G. Wells’ iconic novel THE TIME MACHINE was never given a name.

When the spousal unit and I were first married - that would have been thirty-five years ago *yesterday* - we lived in the Dayton Ohio area, which at the time was a hot bed of test marketing. Domino’s Pizza test marketed breakfast pizza there. I dimly recall they had three of them: one with scrambled eggs but no meat,…

In some contexts this is referred to as the “swiss cheese” mode of failure... sometimes the holes all line up and everything fails: the primary, all the redundancies, and secondary, the backup, etc.

Perhaps Foone mentions this, but I’m fairly certain that “Normalization of Deviance” originated with Diane Vaughn and her 1996 book THE CHALLENGER LAUNCH DECISION. I read this massive tome by Vaughn, a sociology professor at Columbia, cover to cover some years ago. (I dimly recall that the later edition I read had an…

I always pack my Fusion 5000 in my travel gear. But I do have two complaints about it.

I always pack my Fusion 5000 in my travel gear. But I do have two complaints about it.

I am inclined to agree with you. But a couple of summers ago my wife and I were on a road trip from our home near Denver Colorado, driving on a state route through Arkansas in my 2016 WRX with Subaru’s “Eyesight” package. This was a divided multilane highway but *not* controlled access; there were turnoffs, sometimes…

(Because I know people will wonder, I take three handguns to the range to practice with: an H&K VP9, an H&K VP9SK, and a Walther PPS. My choices have evolved over the years. They’ll probably evolve again. And yes, I do practice with my Remington 870.)

I own my share of handguns. I don’t need them. It’s just a hobby. I’m a little surprised from time to time to get asked gun advice by my more left leaning friends. And they are in turn surprised when I tell them that handguns are a poor choice for home protection. A better choice is a sturdy bedroom door with a good…

This. The weight machines are not furniture. And playing with your phone isn’t a workout. Get your set done and get off. If everyone did this, none of us would have to wait very long for a machine.

His CRYPTONOMICON might just be the best novel I’ve *ever* read. But that’s just me: I read his THE BAROQUE CYCLE - which is a three thousand (!!!) page historical novel published in three volumes in the U.S. and eight in the U.K. - over a four months period, and if you had told me there was a three thousand page…

I recall that William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and Lauren Beukes all have new novels coming out in 2019. They’re each on my “must read” list.

In the spirit of full disclosure, my daily driver is a 2016 Subaru WRX, in the summer I can often be found on a Triumph Bonneville, and I own a *lot* of watches. Used, new, mechanical, quartz, automatic, windup, you name it, I probably have one. I am not wealthy by any means, but I own *three* Rolexes, and at the…

Preaching to the choir. Car & Driver made the case for this decades ago - putting snow tires on a Porsche made it a passable winter driver. I’d been driving all season radials for decades, but when I bought my WRX, I splurged for a set of aftermarket wheels on which I but Blizzaks. Takes the tire shop maybe ten…

From Nobel prize winning physicist Kip Thorne’s 1994 book BLACK HOLES AND TIME WARPS. I was forced - FORCED, I tell you - to order three inexpensive wooden meter sticks from Amazon just so I can do this in real-life.

Get three meter sticks: that’s a measuring stick like a yard stick, but it’s one meter long, it’s divided up into one hundred centimeters, and every centimeter is divided up into ten millimeters.