The topology of Interstellar. An interesting history of space colony design concepts.
El Nino
It seems to have arrived, but it’s unlikely to help break the drought.
My Site Improvements
For those curious about the differences between the out-of-the-box TwentyFourteen theme, and my child theme, I’ve done the following:
- Changed header and sidebar backgrounds from black to dark gray.
- Changed all instances of all caps to capitalized first letter.
- Switched from the sans serif typeface “Lato” to Georgia.
- Moved meta data from top to bottom of post.
- Added time stamp (without seconds) to the post date, and the word “by” in front of post author.
- Increased size of blog title.
Most of these involved style sheet changes, which will be preserved if I have to do a theme update, but a couple (adding time stamp and moving metadata) necessitated changes to the template and tag files in the parent theme. But they’re minor, and can be redone if needed.
One thing I’d still like to do, but have been unable to so far, is to change the color of the blog title from white to the same green as the search box. Not sure why a color change in the CSS won’t do it. I can change font size, but not color.
Bolden Versus Culberson
Marcia Smith has the story on yesterday’s NASA appropriation hearing, in which Chairman Culberson and General Bolden beclowned each other. More thoughts anon.
[Update a while later]
Here’s Culberson’s statement. I haven’t read it yet in detail.
Lindzen Versus Grijalva
More thoughts on the climate witch hunt:
How would the mainstream media react if a Republican congressman lobbed threatening inquiries hounding seven university presidents regarding the funding of professors’ research? Or if Republican congressmen sent threatening letters to the heads of left-wing think tanks? They would summon the ghost of Joe McCarthy. The Times would lead the pack and we’d still be hearing about it.
Yeah, but those Republicans are evil.
Millennials’ Tech Savviness
They don’t have that much.
This is the result of decades of terrible public schooling, thanks to the teachers’ unions.
Hillary’s Email Escapades
The wonderful thing about this is that it has the potential not only to take down the entire decades-long Clinton crime syndicate, but this administration, and perhaps the Democrat Party establishment, because they continue to circle the wagons.
[Update a few minutes later]
I saw what you did there, Instapundit.
[Update a couple minutes later]
The Clinton political machine isn’t as well oiled as advertised.
[Update mid morning]
She’s lost Gizmodo. Not sure what you’ve lost when you’ve lost Gizmodo, though.
[Update a couple minutes later]
When Mean Girls meets the Mob:
…this is what the American Experiment has come to in the hands of these awful people and their awful political party: “a symbol of status within the family’s inner circle, conferring prestige and closeness to the secretary.”
Think about that for a moment. Not only was Hillary’s use of private email for government business illegal and unethical (stop laughing), but it was used as a status symbol among the courtiers — including no doubt members of the lickspittle media, who tremble with near sexual-delight as they approach her majesty. In the incestuous club that houses the Democrat-Media Complex, every “job” is both temporary and secondary to the overall career, which is dominating American political discourse and becoming handsomely rewarded for one’s ability to manipulate the system. No wonder the Democrats have such contempt for the Stupid Party and the voters who foolishly support it.
In a just world, these people would be seen for what they are — nihilistic, dangerous, evil. Their fealty to the country is nearly non-existent and their “patriotism,” insofar as it exists at all, extends only to the imaginary country that may or may not exist after they get finished with the business of “fundamental transformation.” They enter “public service” as near paupers and leave aboard the Lolita Express as millionaires, having accomplished next to nothing except making themselves famous.
The Clintons were a criminal syndicate in the nineties, and nothing has changed.
[Early-afternoon update]
Hillary Clinton’s State Department fired an ambassador for using private email.
Rules and laws are for the little people.
Space Access 2015
After a one-year hiatus, the conference is happening again (though a few weeks later than usual, early May instead of early April). I think it’s the best value for the money to find out what’s going on in space transportation and reducing the cost of getting to orbit.
Rules Of The Roadrunner
This is great.
What a wonderful document: Chuck Jones's rules for writing the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. ht @AmosPosner pic.twitter.com/o5ziZymEcY
— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) March 4, 2015
WordPress Problems
So I’m slowly beating the site into submission, but running into a few issues. First, I’m using a child theme of TwentyFourteen, in order to avoid making changes to the main templates. The way that works is that I add changes to the child style sheet, which then supercede the parent. But there are some things that can’t be fixed with the style sheet. For instance, in order to move things around in the post, I have to actually change the PHP code in the templates, in the parent. Another problem I’m having is that, in theory, a new function file in the child will override a function of the same name in WordPress. I want to display the time along with the date on the post, which is generated by a function called “twentyfourteen_posted_on” (the original can be found here). It retrieves the date, but not the time. In order to get it to do so, I’d have to modify it. But when I copy that into my child theme directory, and make changes, nothing happens. Anyone have any idea what the problem is, or how to troubleshoot?
[Update a while later]
OK, I think I figured out the problem. Apparently you can only override functions that are in the function.php file, in the main template directory. This is a tag, buried in the “inc” directory. So I have to edit it in there. Which means that I’ll lose the changes if I have to update the template. But it’s not a huge deal.