ThePortForum.com

I wonder whether Mr Toad is giving up house boating (= port drinking) for the joy of motoring (= astronomy in a cloudy country). Is there any evidence to support this hypothesis?

jdaw1 wrote:I wonder whether Mr Toad is giving up house boating (= port drinking) for the joy of motoring (= astronomy in a cloudy country). Is there any evidence to support this hypothesis?

No. Mr Toad gave up daily house boating to increase his life expectancy. He took up motoring as a replacement for hill walking, which is no longer possible. A slight shift in investment vehicles might have eased the transition, but both house boating and motoring will continue in moderation.

Sorry. I got here late. But I wanted to point out that nobody self-identifies as politically correct. (By the way, politically correct is a phrase containing an attributive adverb. Why did you hyphenate it? The only reason I haven't reported you is that I find you such a recalcitrant student and I hate correcting your work.) Politically correct is a phrase only used by people who want to say that they are not politically correct, whatever that means. And last time I looked, political correctness had gone mad. That was possibly around 1998. Since then, everyone has just tried to be nice.

The Moon, Jupiter, Mars (very, very dim) and Venus in alignment this morning...

Some specks of dirt on your lens there Del.

djewesbury wrote:Sorry. I got here late. But I wanted to point out that nobody self-identifies as politically correct. (By the way, politically correct is a phrase containing an attributive adverb. Why did you hyphenate it? The only reason I haven't reported you is that I find you such a recalcitrant student and I hate correcting your work.) Politically correct is a phrase only used by people who want to say that they are not politically correct, whatever that means. And last time I looked, political correctness had gone mad. That was possibly around 1998. Since then, everyone has just tried to be nice.

What a garbled paragraph—multiple complaints, no organisation.

djewesbury wrote:nobody self-identifies as politically correct

Interestingly absolutist, but let’s ignore that. Those who, particularly on Amercan campuses, seemingly dedicate their lives to finding and exaggerating the slightest ‘micro-agression’: how do they describe themselves?

jdaw1 wrote:

djewesbury wrote:Sorry. I got here late. But I wanted to point out that nobody self-identifies as politically correct. (By the way, politically correct is a phrase containing an attributive adverb. Why did you hyphenate it? The only reason I haven't reported you is that I find you such a recalcitrant student and I hate correcting your work.) Politically correct is a phrase only used by people who want to say that they are not politically correct, whatever that means. And last time I looked, political correctness had gone mad. That was possibly around 1998. Since then, everyone has just tried to be nice.

What a garbled paragraph—multiple complaints, no organisation.

I'm quite happy that the main sin was accepted and atoned for in the Other Place.

jdaw1 wrote:

djewesbury wrote:nobody self-identifies as politically correct

Interestingly absolutist, but let’s ignore that. Those who, particularly on Amercan campuses, seemingly dedicate their lives to finding and exaggerating the slightest ‘micro-agression’: how do they describe themselves?

I honestly have not heard anyone except Rod Liddle and Jeremy Clarkson (and now you) use the words 'politically correct' (or, in your case, 'politically-correct') in recent decades. It's a gibe that fills me with nostalgia for the dying days of John Major's government, propped up by David Trimble's Ulster Unionist Party as they teeter from disaster to disaster, the streets left uncleaned, the dead left unburied because everyone was too bored to die, the nuns falling off their bikes as they cycle across cricket pitches that the groundsman has spiked with over-toasted crumpets.

More seriously, I think the coinage of the term in the USA in the 1980s is really so long ago, and the backlash against it was so extreme, that nobody currently wishing to suggest that perhaps language could be used with some sensitivity (to history, to any one of the many multiple barriers to equality of opportunity) would ever dream of calling themselves politically correct. Your opponent is a straw man, a vestige of political debates of the last millennium. You need to find a new one.

You call me absolutist, but I say that your phraseology is fallacious. Prove me wrong - and I will happily use the thread provided for acknowledgement of same.

I will attempt to find one person — one person would be enough to default “nobody” — who self-identifies as politically correct, with or without hyphen, and upon finding will invite the obvious.

Please take your discussion to another thread.

Well you're an admin. Don't tell us to do it. You have the power.

djewesbury wrote:Well you're an admin. Don't tell us to do it. You have the power.

An Admin who hijacks a thread should be gracious enough to do the work.

My head is swimming with being ill. Derek: choose the posts; move them; delete this one.

Did any of our more northern members see, or even better photograph the northern lights these last couple of nights?

Sorry. Too cloudy.

It may be effing freezing outside this event by, but it's a beautiful clear sky.

AHB wrote:It may be effing freezing outside this event by, but it's a beautiful clear sky.

Not here

I saw a shooting star. With the skys we've been having, seeing any star seems like a bleeding miracle.

LGTrotter wrote:With the skys we've been having, seeing any star seems like a bleeding miracle.

+1

Looks like a good reason to be up early - or late - over the weekend if the skies are clear.

http://earthsky.org/space/comet-catalin ... -394533365

I have been hoping to have a date with Catalina for many weeks but the two of us just don't seem to be in the right place at the right time :

You've got a lovely high pressure coming in over the weekend, should be some clear skys. Wrap up warm though because it will be chilly. Minus ten to fifteen mentioned on the weather forecast. I hope this won't prove a problem for your twelve incher.

I nearly made it through without an innuendo.

Having read about this comet it sounds like one for the connoisseur, a Duckworth-Lewis for star-gazers. In other words most of us will have no idea what's going on.

Howl away, Gentlemen...
Only 99% this evening but tomorrow's 100% full Moon is likely to be hidden by cloud.

Very nice!

What happened to the comet I failed to see?

AHB wrote:What happened to the comet I failed to see?

And what of the ninth planet which nobody has seen but is definitely there?

LGTrotter wrote:the ninth planet which nobody has seen but is definitely there?

Video, not entirely convincing. If it is there, hopefully it has a big moon, not too close.

AHB wrote:What happened to the comet I failed to see?

Do you mean Comet C/2013 US10 Catalina?

Not easy to see this evening due to the full Moon, but relatively easy to locate due to its proximity to well known constellations. Look at that page again two weeks from now to see where it is and then look for it with binoculars. When you see an indistinct grey smudge with a faint green core you have seen the comet.

It doesn't look like this...
It looks more like this, but not so bright and well defined, more like a smudge...

Do look carefully for alien bodies.

By one of my former lecturers, Do black holes have no hair? Worthy of your attention.

jdaw1 wrote:By one of my former lecturers, Do black holes have no hair? Worthy of your attention.

It's not quite 9am on this wet Wednesday and my mind has already been blown by the fact that Murray (x2)and Konte are in the semi-finals of the Austrailian open, and that if I am going to get sucked into a Black hole...it needs to be a big one!
Strangely I was not too surprised in who Julian's former lecturer was.

Perseids go cray-cray tonight, according to the beeb http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37050631 . But it is clouding up here at present so I don't think I will see much.

Hopefully will have a relatively clear night tonight in Tokyo for the Perseids. The cloud cover seems to be dispersing.

Should be an impressive sight.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-41956191

Unfortunately it was cloudy this morning in my part of the world

Wow. Hope the skies are clear for a super blue blood moon, tonight.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/super-blue ... ing-jan-31

TLW wrote: ↑22:51 Mon 29 Jan 2018 Wow. Hope the skies are clear for a super blue blood moon, tonight.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/super-blue ... ing-jan-31

Learning something new every day. While I understand the colloquial use of "once in a blue moon", I did not know that this related to an actual lunar phenomena (the third full moon in a season with four full moons; though also now used by some more recently as the second full moon within the same calendar month), rather than some rare chance occurrence (such as specific dust particles in the air, or similar).

I always knew of a blue moon as being the second full moon in a calendar month - something which happens roughly once every two years.

I understand that a super blue blood moon happens about once every 150 years. Sadly for those of us in the UK, the lunar eclipse happens while the moon is below the horizon.

I'm not especially bothered about it being "blue" (since that's just a consequence of our choice of calendar and dateline etc), but I'd be interested to know when the next super blood moon will occur which will be visible in the UK.

It was mercifully clear in Tokyo, and the moon was indeed a red/orange, although it appeared to have been an incomplete eclipse at the time I saw it. However, I did see the total solar eclipse over Tokyo several years ago. That was good, too.

I caught the super blood moon from the office window on Wednesday night around 5pm. It was very impressive. It wasn't the blue moon since it was a few hours less than full, but it looked pretty damn impressive as it came up over the horizon.

Unfortunately I missed the blue phase and the red phase - I just caught a big white moon.

The blood moon is indeed an impressive sight. The blue moon reminds me of my mother singing at family gatherings in the 1970s

The brightest comet of 2018 will be visible to the naked eye over the next week - unless there are clouds in the way.

https://earthsky.org/space/46p-wirtanen ... e-dec-2018

And the Geminids are at their peak on 14th December

I have often wondered what planetary accretion looks like. Now we know.

Got to see the partial solar eclipse this morning in Tokyo - about a third, it seemed. Was lucky enough to see the full eclipse several years ago, as well.