Sometimes it's just freaking beautiful. The man is a humanist with a really poetic way of expressing his opinion on what makes us human.

If you like Nick, check out The Red Hand files and sign up. He sends about one email a week.

>If you were on an asteroid it is extremely unlikely you could see another with your naked eye.

I remember science fiction shows when I was a kid, and they'd go through "The asteroid belt!!!' or a "meteor storm!!!" and were avoiding what looked like dozens of balls of crumpled-up foil, banging into their space ship. I think a lot of nerdy kids pictured the asteroid belt as a shotgun blast of planet chunks bouncing off each other. If one really want to bump into a lot of stuff in space, they might choose Saturn's rings though.

That's funny - my wife has a PhD in anthropology, she's been a hard core Jung scholar for like 10 years, teaches yoga, etc. I'm a photographer who came up playing years in bar bands. But we sit around the fire with bottles of wine and talk about this stuff a lot. Match made in heaven! (I gotta say though, a yoga teacher who is not a vegetarian - also known as a "unicorn"!)

Gratitude is stronger than love. To be grateful is to recognize that you love something vs. taking it for granted. To be genuinely thankful? It seems to posit an undercurrent of "...and do I really deserve this?" And the only answer to that is "Try to." Genuine gratitude - I dunno if it makes you smarter, but it makes you better. Douchebags and the entitled - they never express real, heartfelt thanks.

IMO, "the meaning of life" is to experience as many moments of joy as possible - that doesn't come at others' expense. And in my experience, the thing that brings more moments of joy is leading others towards joy. Big things like helping out a sick friend, or little things like throwing a dinner, giving a compliment, holding the door for someone. You can attract joy, and grow joy around you.

I was in line at the convenience store the other day - girl in front of me checked out, and accidentally dropped a folded stack of cash on the floor and started to leave. No idea how much it was, but I grabbed it and said "hey, miss - " The look on her face - surprise, relief, the sort of pure shock that someone looked out for her over themselves, big eyes and a huge smile - that still makes me happy. And maybe it helped her want to make others have that look on their face, no idea. But probably.

This relates a lot to thoughts I have about grief. Most people "read" others and have an idea of how to react - you can use the F-word with this guy, better not with this woman; as we know people better, some become close friends, but almost everyone we deal with, before long we have a "version" of us that's just for them. With some people, this version becomes very "rich", with shared memories and an intuitive, 2nd-nature way of interacting. I don't think these are necessarily "false" version of us, it's how we connect with others and form deeper bonds.

When we lose someone to death or even through events that de-attach us (like a romantic breakup), we lose the version of ourselves that was the version they interacted with. I feel that we don't acknowledge this loss - it's bad enough to realize someone we love is gone from our lives, but also a part of our selves no longer has a place, and lives only in our memories.

But I ain't got no college, I could be off here!

I'd throw in here that you're dealing with a same-sex couple. Lesbian couples may feel particularly protective of their privacy - you've got the "male fascination" thing that's been fed by decades of porn, and every day's news brings more and more just-plain-evil shit from the right, trying to negate the humanity and rights of LGBTQ-(whatever-this-week's-letter-combo-is, I'm too old to keep track, sorry!) human beings. If I were a woman in that camp, I imagine there'd always be some little edge of fear in me - plenty of people feel they can brazenly attack anyone that's different and that it's freaking "patriotic" or whatever.

As a 60+ guy, I'm amazed by the progress in being "out" these days and how quickly it's accelerated - but there are plenty of people looking for someone to hate. (Me, I'm thrilled with the progress of gay rights, and I have a gay daughter - I just want her to be happy as hell).

I liked the paper. It's a fascinating subject for me, and the one thing my wife and I really disagree upon (and she's a Jungian). I always say "You have all the free will in the world to do the one, exact thing you'll actually do". In my belief, "that one thing" is already written in stone, it just hasn't happened yet but it's the only thing you will do.

Maybe related - someone did a test some years back - took a handful of people into a room and let a dog in. Everyone ignored the dog except for one person, who petted it up and paid positive, emotional attention to it.

The a few years later, they took the same dog to a room of people and the "nice guy" was one of them. In every case, the dog "remembered" the "nice guy" and acted familiar with him.

Wish I could cite the actual test, simply can't remember where I read it (Maybe a Desmond Morris book? The guy who writes the animal behavior books), but it seems to play along with dogs having a "world" of scent information that's unimaginable to us. I guess if they have decent memories, there's a survival advantage in remembering a friendly scent.

The English Beat's "What is Beat?". I didn't even know it was a greatest hits album, but it really works as an "album". Fantastic start to finish.

I've got one of those 12" angle finders for cutting trim - I've done stuff like this with it, like measure at each end for the height of the rail, and run a string or tack up a straight scrap of wood. Find the angle for each end. For something short like this, I might first cut from plywood or a 2x4 to make a template, cut a little fat and shave it bit by bit on the chop saw til it's a perfect fit, then transfer to your actual lumber. Many ways to skin a cat, I'm not a pro but I really enjoy designing and installing trim; windows and doors are more my thing though.

Heck, I fell in love with PEX for remodeling my old house, but I've gone the extra mile to not have PEX fittings/rings inside a wall. And they seem much more reliable than Shark Bites with their moving parts and seals.

>popped into my head while watching The Expense series a series that the majority of you have likely either seen or heard about.

I watch "The Expense" all the time, it's about an accountant who does corporate taxes all day, right?

So question (homeowner, not a plumber) - I redid my counters and a new dishwasher, didn't put an air gap in - I routed the dishwasher drain to the disposal, and it loops way up behind the sink and then to the disposal entry. It's secured with zip ties, no issues for 17 years - so is that a "high loop"? (Well, only issue has been coffee grounds in the disposal getting flung up into the drain port and clogging it a bit, but I spoke to the Mrs. about that...)

That's why there's one outlet in my house that gets blue tape over it when it's freezing out, it almost whistles cold air in! (Yeah, I need to fix that properly...)

It's like insulating you home. You can go nuts with fiberglass and house wrap, but one little crack letting cold air in will chill a room out very quickly. Inflitration vs. insulation. Similar with sound, though sound travels "through" things (well, transfers through things). There are lots of construction tricks, like for a quiet room use 2x6 headers and floor plates and frame with 2x4's staggered, so the drywall of both sides isn't physically connected except for the top and bottom. Double up the drywall for more density with the seams staggered. Then fill the space with rockwool or 703 (if you can afford it). But to really have a soundproof wall, far as I know you'll use blocks and fill the voids with concrete.

I'd start with the steel-edged rubber weather stripping and a door sweep. Get the thing completely sealed. You could hang a sheet of concrete in place of the door, but sound will travel through all the gaps.

Then, get some Owens Corning 703 insulation - it's like fiberglass, but very stiff and you can cut it into shapes, and it's very dense for its weight. Wrap it in burlap or make 1x lumber frames for it and then wrap those - the burlap keeps fibers from shedding, and you can get all sorts of colors. You can treat the panels like bulletin boards and pin photos/etc. to them. Mount those to the door to fully cover the "hollow" panels. That's what's used in sound deadening panels, bass traps, and corner traps in recording studios and is a popular DIY sound deadener. All of that may not make a huge difference though, soundproofing requires a lot of density and air sealing. Putting acoustic panels on walls and ceilings doesn't soundproof a room, it just deadens sound reflections. (I do a lot of video and music editing; my office space has 703 panels hanging from the ceiling, in the corners and on the back walls - it's very noticeable when you walk in the room that something's "changed", but if you don't point out that it has to do with sound, it can kinda freak people out).

Doh, good catch! I think I shaved a year off!

Why don't you look at the history and see if it answers your question?

Apollo 1: Three astronauts die in a horrific fire incident, during a launch pad test. Senate inquiries and review boards, including non-NASA personnel. Fucks-up are discovered and dealt with. Many systems are re-designed and many more potential safety hazards are uncovered and solved. The program wasn't "stopped", but manned flights were put on hold. In fact, the fire gave NASA time to sort out myriad issues with other flight hardware like boosters and so on. About 5 months after the fire, the next manned mission launched and the program carried on.

Challenger: pretty-much the same thing. A two year and 8 month hiatus from launch. Problems addressed (sorta), things redesigned, replacement orbiter built.

Columbia: pretty-much the same thing, and a flight hiatus of about the same time as Challenger.

So, 17 dead astronauts, programs all continued after inquiry boards, redesigns, and some re-structuring of chains-of-command and so on. Don't know hwy an Artemis tragedy would be any different, other than the program isn't as well established as the shuttle program was at the times of those accidents, and Apollo was its own lightning-in-a-bottle thing. IMO, we won't see anything with all the supporting factors of Apollo until we (a) discover a doomsday object heading for earth, and (b) develop a program to stop it.

>This isn't realistic

Same thing people said about "computers will be in every home" in the 70's.

Specific: NASA is pretty open about what they're looking for and ways to get a foot in the door. Be the kid that bugs them, calls the switchboard, calls the PR folks, tries to get a human being for a moment. Make it a goal to actually talk to an astronaut on the phone. Start networking now.

General: I was a corporate art director but fell in love with the photo shoots. Took me 9 years, but I went free lance as a photographer in the late 90's and did lots of fashion and product. That was over three decades ago, I still do it but these days, more video than stills and I love it. Obsession and drive will take you a lonnnnnng way - drive and desire are amazing forces to harness. I was shooting free-lance work at night in my garage when everyone else was watching "friends" in a daze, and then getting up and returning to my cubicle the next morning. I've sat up all night learning to animate and composite green screen footage while devouring all the info I could. And it was a total blast. (And I taught my son stop motion animation when he was like 12, he's an animator for Adult Swim now and killin' it - he's got some of dad's DNA). Make a plan, adjust your plan, dig in and never think "I'm only 15" or whatever. Neil Armstrong was 15 once.

Not specific to traffic jams, but if you want to read some work that puts you in the head of someone who's stressed and overwhelmed, "Operation Wandering Soul" by the great Richard Powers is amazing. A beautiful book, but oppressive. Martin Amis' "The Information" also really puts you in a distressed person's head, but it's a bit more satirical than Powers' work.

I don't think this sort of thing can be answered by tips specific to a situation, it's more studying how good writing sucks us into an imagined psyche. Everyone's annoyed by car horns and traffic jams, but the specific reasons and ways your character is annoyed should teach us something about the character or build up things we're learning about his/her emotional state.

While it's not going to get ya to 5 seconds, a big issue with kettles is how full they are. My wife fills ours up all the way and boils it, uses one cup of water. I boil a cup at a time which is very quick and beats standing there waiting for a whole kettle to boil. And... the more you boil water, the "flatter" it tastes (to some people anyway).

(I've got one year of college, my wife has a PhD, but I still can't get her to go to "cup at a time").