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Comment Re:Frilly, not obtuse (Score 1) 14

Yes. I remember, years ago, writing a program where I reversed the standard meanings of TRUE and FALSE, not to obfuscate the code (although it did) but so that I could write the one test central to the program in the way that looked right to me. It's a tiny change from what you'd normally use, but most people reading over the code wouldn't even notice it at first and end up completely misunderstanding how it managed to work. To me, at least, that's what the judges should be looking for, rather than odd formatting and other typographical legerdemain.

Comment Re:Black Holes? (Score 2) 43

Years ago, I was giving a physicist (who happened to be a friend of a friend) a lift home, and the conversation drifted to the problems of reconciling those two theories. I had a sudden inspiration and suggested that the main problem might be that relativity deals with point sources of gravity but at quantum distances Heisenberg raises its ugly head and what you get is "blob sources" that relativity can't handle. My acquaintance was quite impressed that I'd come up with the idea on my own and told me that this was, in fact, a major stumbling block. I'm not sure where the idea of knowing what happens inside a black hole came from, but under the circumstances, I doubt that it's as important as you were told. Of course, I'm a layman so ICBW.

Comment Re:Mixed Feelings (Score 1) 51

It sounds to me like the idea behind that law is to make it possible for parents to control what their children are able to use on the Internet while keeping enforcement for the most part up to the parents. That way, if the parents really want to prevent their children from seeing any adult content (Good luck with that!) they can keep their credit cards and other ID away from them and let them register at those sites if they have a more relaxed attitude about it.

To give you an idea where I'm coming from, I went through puberty and adolescence in the '60s well before there was a WWW that random people had access to. Dad had a subscription to Playboy, and didn't care if I read it. I didn't realize until later that the reason that all of the adult pictures had the model's pubic region concealed was to avoid censorship issues with some of the more restrictive jurisdictions.

Comment Re:Unintended consequences... (Score 1) 106

I can well remember the LA County Health Dept. offering to give any resident who had standing water on their property a breeding stock of some species of small fish (I don't remember them ever specifying which species.) that preys on mosquito larvae to keep them under control. Does anybody know if health departments are still doing that?

Comment Re:You can desalinate seawater (Score 1) 27

I take it, then, that you've never run across Destination Gobi, an early 50s movie about a Navy weather station in Inner Mongolia early in the Pacific War. It's based (loosely) on a true story, and may have been the inspiration for McHale's Navy. I don't know if it's available any more, but it was quite popular in the 50s when many TV stations used old movies to fill out their schedules.

Comment Re: I'll get the popcorn... (Score 1) 131

I'll add the Arctic Convoys to that, with most of their actions taking place inside the Arctic Circle including several actions big enough to be named and at least one German battleship, the Scharnhorst, being sunk by the Duke of York. Also, some of the ports in the White Sea were near enough to Occupied Norway that the Germans were able to bomb them with short range bombers.

And as far as South America goes, the U-Boats were ordered to "punish" Brazil for cooperating with the USN, and did such a good job that Brazil declared War on Germany.

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