Because There Hasn't Been An Open Thread In A While
Slave Lake, Alberta, very nearly wiped off the map by forest fires.
“Heartbreaking” is about the only word that I can think of here. Over 30% of the town (population 7,000) has burned down; still yet more devastation is expected beyond that, if it has not already occurred. Blessedly, nobody seems to have been killed (or even hurt) in all of this, and the town has been evacuated. But even so, there are a lot of Albertans right now without homes, jobs, or anything but what little they could stuff into their cars and vans.
So, as I say: heartbreaking. And rather close to home. This Reddit thread is pretty up-to-date with information; check it out if you want the latest details. Offers of prayer, good intentions, positive thoughts, and charity donations are encouraged!
I’m here (assuming the Google Maps embed works):
A long way from home!
16-year old finds possible new cystic fibrosis treatment.
This is cool:
A 16-year-old high school student may have found a new, viable treatment for cystic fibrosis through the use of computer simulations.
Marshall Zhang, an 11th grade student at Richmond Hill’s Bayview Secondary School in Toronto, Canada, used a supercomputer system to figure out how certain drugs react with proteins associated with cystic fibrosis.
Cystic fibrosis is a recessive genetic disease that causes thick mucus to build up in the lungs and throughout the body causing progressive disability and even death. This disease occurs in about 1 out of 3,000 live births, and has no cure.
This kid is…’ow you say?…going places.
Sixteen tips. Pay particular attention to #10 (never grill burgers on weak heat), and also #14 and #15. Especially #15, unless the full taste of the meat is unimportant to you.
Not that anyone here has that problem. But I’m sure we all know victims of this tragic condition, right?
Is it just me, or has traffic died around here lately?
Without taking the time to read the links, the idea of a town being practically decimated, or reduced by a factor of ten, is sad indeed.
While it might sound narcissistic, I’d like to add that I’ve been considering the repercussions of forest fires in Sanctimonia for some time. As soon as I came up with the idea I thought about some fool throwing a torch and an entire forest being burned up in a few days. I thought about the impact of that on the ecosystem as well as local economies, and decided the rules of conflagration should minimize the spread of uncontrolled fires. I still think that, but have decided that entire regions of forest should be allowed to burn if the fire moves correctly through them (fire AI).
The perfect burger is made from freshly killed animals whose muscle tissue has been recently and cleanly ground and formed into patties. The patties are placed on a hot iron and flipped once to achieve “medium-rare” status. Plate, eat and chill. While it sounds disgusting, if the animal is killed cleanly, without suffering and is needed for survival then we are truly the apex predator. And it’s tasty, though I was a vegetarian for over seven years and know what’s up with eating onion rings and french fries for a meal.
Digital overload is having more TBs of stuff than you have time to watch or listen to. If it takes more than a year of constant playback, without repetition, for your audio or video collection to finish playing then not only do you have a healthy collection, but you may suffer from this disorder.
And while off-topic, everyone watch Game of Thrones. Awesome.
Yes, Game of Thrones is definately awesome.
I just wish the season was longer than 10 episodes. It has only just started and it is almost over.
Yes, it should be made regularly. Ten hours per year is pretty good though for a show of that caliber. Hopefully it will last many years.
Watching GoT is a little like playing Ultima for the first time. Hard but orderly.
For the record: comments are down in frequency, but daily visit stats are holding constant.