Thursday Night Open Thread

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I was never a fan of Nirvana. But, I learned to tolerate some of their songs.

[The YouTube]

I became more of a fan of that video after … well, you’ll find out tomorrow night. Tonight, though, it’s your turn to take charge. It’s Thursday Night Open Thread.

What’s on your mind?

27 Comments

  2. Fun science fact (from the “science-isn’t-settled” file):

    Black Holes’ Magnetism Surprisingly Wimpy
    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171207141644.htm

    Black holes are famous for their muscle: an intense gravitational pull known to gobble up entire stars and launch streams of matter into space at almost the speed of light.

    It turns out the reality may not live up to the hype.

    In a paper published today in the journal Science, University of Florida scientists have discovered these tears in the fabric of the universe have significantly weaker magnetic fields than previously thought.

    A 40-mile-wide black hole 8,000 light years from Earth named V404 Cygni yielded the first precise measurements of the magnetic field that surrounds the deepest wells of gravity in the universe. Study authors found the magnetic energy around the black hole is about 400 times lower than previous crude estimates.

    .

    Maybe they shouldn’t make crude estimates such as “It’s **** ****** awe-******some, man!”
    .

    The measurements also will help scientists solve the half-century-old mystery of how “jets” of particles traveling at nearly the speed of light shoot out of black holes’ magnetic fields, while everything else is sucked into their abysses, said study co-author Stephen Eikenberry, a professor of astronomy in UF’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

    “The question is, how do you do that?” Eikenberry said. “Our surprisingly low measurements will force new constraints on theoretical models that previously focused on strong magnetic fields accelerating and directing the jet flows. We weren’t expecting this, so it changes much of what we thought we knew.”

    Study authors developed the measurements from data collected in 2015 during a black hole’s rare outburst of jets. The event was observed through the lens mirror of the 34-foot Gran Telescopio Canarias, the world’s largest telescope, co-owned by UF and located in Spain’s Canary Islands, with the help of its UF-built infrared camera named CIRCE (Canarias InfraRed Camera Experiment).

    Smaller jet-producing black holes, like the one observed for the study, are the rock stars of galaxies. Their outbursts occur suddenly and are short-lived, said study lead author Yigit Dalilar and co-author Alan Garner, doctoral students in UF’s astronomy department. The 2015 outbursts of V404 Cygni lasted only a couple of weeks. The previous time the same black hole had a similar episode was in 1989.

    “To observe it was something that happens once or twice in one’s career,” Dalilar said. “This discovery puts us one step closer to understanding how the universe works.”

    .

    The take-away from this article? Galaxies have rock stars.

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  4. Here’s a serious question for the music philosophers out there:

    Looking at the video today, and listening to its music, it is freshly evident to me why Nirvana and grunge music made NO impact or impression on me whatsoever.

    What is the difference between them and head-banger music, which had been around years and years before?

    I can’t quote the dates, but I know that in the late seventies and early eighties Aerosmith and Queen were tame, mainstream versions of — and moderate alternatives to — head-banger music that was already in existence. (When did Kiss and Ozzy get up to speed? It had to be around the same time! Metallica followed.)

    My question is: so what made Nirvana newer than head-banger metal that already existed, other than media hype and glossy videos?

    Reply to this comment

  7. Off-topic (what did you expect?)

    I just ran across this quote from a 1947 hit movie, “Life With Father” [a film successful enough to be referenced in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, on the assumption the audience would catch the allusion. Bugs (I think it was) throws away the script, saying, “Nah, it’ll never be a hit” as the punch line at the end]:

    “{Father:} “Why did God make so many dumb fools and Democrats?”

    imdb.com/title/tt0039566/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_32

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  8. And, in the 1951 Michael Curtiz movie “I’ll See You In My Dreams” we see a haughty prima donna actress rejuect the song “It Had To Be You” and turn it down with a Colin Kaepernick-like attitude (paraphrased — it was just on TCM a few minutes ago):

    “Only Jolson could pull off something like that! To go down on one knee, I’d need a lot more money.”

    It’s at the halfway point of the film if you want to nail it down. Couldn’t find the film for free on YouTube.

    Reply to this comment

  10. Funny. It could be recreated today with few changes.

    Never saw it before. It’s not in the canon of “greatest clips” from the Carol Burnett Show.

    Sociologically, it makes an interesting counterpoint to the Monty Python sketch on customs inspection from the same era. Which would make an interesting topic for a scholarly essay. Or a student’s one, which I would probably read.

    I remember going through airport “security” in this era, as a student, with practically no more scrutiny than you have today getting on a bus or a subway. PeopleExpress to North Carolina, with only peanuts for the snack. They went bust. No wonder: my fare ($89?) certainly didn’t cover my share of the aviation fuel alone.

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  12. This is my second Pearl Harbor Day without my grandfather. He enlisted in 1939, and was on the USS Whitney when the Japanese attacked (anchored about 1/4 mile north of the USS Arizona). December 7th makes me want to watch old John Wayne WWII movies, like In Harm’s Way.

    Reply to this comment

  14. Jean Sibelius, the greatest of Finnish composers (not that there’s a whole lot of competition), was born December 8, 1865, in Hameenlinna, in what was then the Grand Duchy of Finland, part of the Russian Empire at that time. Here’s Leonard Bernstein conducting Finlandia, probably Sibelius’s best-know piece, a section of which has been adopted as one of Finland’s national songs (I’m not quite sure what a national song is):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIe_r_E0Uyk

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