How the Thai boys and coach were rescued

During the time when the boys and their coach were being rescued from their long stay in the caves, there was not much information about how the rescue was carried out. More details have now emerged of how they survived their ordeal in the cave and how the rescue endeavor that was much more harrowing and difficult than I had imagined. It was sad that a navy seal died in the rescue attempt.
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An expandable round table that remains round

We used to have a circular dining table that was expandable in that you could separate the two halves and insert an extra leaf in the middle. The extra leaf was rectangular shaped which meant that the expanded table was no longer circular.

Seamus Bellamy points me to this expandable circular table that remains circular. Pretty cool and clever. It would have helped King Arthur as the number of his knights fluctuated.

Female sports reporters are routinely harassed while on camera

Take a look at the video below taken during the soccer World Cup in Moscow. What impressed me is how calmly she continues with her report, without missing a beat. It shows to me that she has experienced this kind of thing many times before.

This reporter also at the World Cup expertly avoided the kiss and used the occasion to angrily lecture the man on proper behavior, saying “Never do this to a woman, ok? Respect!”

A bridge too far for a cat

The agility of cats is truly amazing. There is a cat in our neighborhood that occasionally wanders into our backyard when I and Baxter the Wonder Dog are there. The cat, seeing Baxter, will watch him warily. If Baxter happens to see the cat, he will dash towards it barking loudly, as he does with any intruders, including birds and squirrels, on what he considers his territory. I never worry about this because this scene has played out many, many times and there is not a chance that Baxter will get even close and the cat will simply leap over the fence and escape.
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Is this normal?

As a blogger, I get quite a few emails from people I don’t know. As I see it, there are various forms of salutation that are polite when writing to a stranger: the formal ‘Dear Mr. Singham’ to the more casual ‘Dear Mano’ to the even more casual ‘Hi Mano’. Some use the ‘Dear Mano Singham’ which is helpful if one feels that using the just the first name is too familiar but is not sure what gender prefix to append to the last name. All these modes are fine by me.
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Smarmy Piers Morgan is a fool – example XLVI

I hate people who try to show their intellectual superiority by asking people to answer esoteric questions. It only reveals them to be annoying pedants. Knowing random facts is not a sign of intelligence. Smarmy Piers Morgan tried to embarrass a person on a reality show by asking her “Do you know what Pythagoras’s theorem is to the nearest five decimal places?” and embarrassed himself instead, as this clip shows.

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HAL has entered the building

Ibrahim Diallo was fired from his job by a machine algorithm that, once set in motion, no one in his company seemed to be able to override however high they were in the administrative structure.

The story of Mr Diallo’s sacking by machine began when his entry pass to the Los Angeles skyscraper where his office was based failed to work, forcing him to rely on the security guard to allow him entry.
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