The Higgins Armory in MA ([www.higgins.org]) does demonstrations at some of the local sf cons (including Arisia) of western martial arts. Good stuff.

That's the worst case of munchies ever, I'd guess.

copyright? or trademark? very different applications of intellectual property protection.

Okay, so now the news in FL is saying it was some "ultra-powerful version of lsd"? This is my skeptical face.

Nevermind the ships. Back in the day, the Soviets built a bioweapon research facility on Vozrozhdeniya Island, in the Aral Sea. Now it's a peninsula instead of an island, so all the land-based critters can go and contract whatever happens to be laying around on the ground, there.

I'm sorry, you seem to have mis-spelled "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". :)

Very nice effect with the creature's head/mouth. The tentacles were okay - clearly cheap cgi is getting better! It's a solid short - better than some of what I saw this past year at the Boston SciFi Film Festival.

Amusingly, being willing to fess up to ignorance and ask for explanations from those who do know - particularly in groups of people or in a work environment - is often followed by other people saying (quietly or via a backchannel) "OH THANK GOD I DIDN'T KNOW THAT EITHER."

I did a bit of looking, and it was 1995 that former Senator Bob Fletcher and some other militia folks testified. Apparently, thinking that weather is crazy because the government is fucking you up was an okay part of the self-proclaimed "civil rights movement of the 1990's" (seriously, that's what the militia folks…

IIRC, the Michigan Militia was the group that was invited to testify before congress around 1995 and talked about government weather control programs.

The 'militia' movement in the early 1990's (which included some prominent Michigan wingnuttery from the Michigan Militia) was full of conspiracies about how the salt mines under Detroit would be used for rounding up militia patriots once the UN took over the US Government with the help of FEMA. Some claimed that…

Okay, that's a pretty awesome graph. Also, looking at the 1980's, HELLO CYBERPUNK.

I've been enjoying this show. It's like a non-paranormal x-files, with the government conspiracies.

Interesting! I thought they had a shorter half-life. Thanks!

That is NERDTASTIC. I approve.

Okay, wait, CT patrol has radioactivity detectors kicking around near I84 that can detect someone in a car driving who's had a tracer injection earlier in the day? I think of most tracers as having a really short half-life. (The time I had a tracer used to track circulation and see if I had a hairline fracture in a…

"Soon after this happened, her and the chaperone left the tournament" should be "Soon after this happened, she and the chaperone left the tournament"

Same reason people talk about "dialing" a phone.

The maparium is fabulous. The acoustics in there are just incredible.

The Little A'Le'Inn also has (or had, back when I stopped there years ago (summer of 2000, I think)) a most impressive collection of crazy right wing bumper stickers adorning the walls. (eg "Hoover: A chicken in every pot. Clinton: A fag in every pup tent.") It was definitely enough to twitch out my queer urban dyke…