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ScottS

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Posts posted by ScottS

  1. On 6/25/2023 at 11:17 PM, Scheiss Meister said:

    There's a reason for that.  As it was told to me, when the boundary between New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle was surveyed, Texas got to hire the surveyors.  They "somehow" got 13 miles off, to the west, of course, from the line that they were supposed to survey.  It was supposed  to line up with the western border of Oklahoma.  The current line was used for a while before New Mexico figured it out and took the dispute to the Supreme Court.  The Court was persuaded that it would cause too much difficulty to sort out private land boundaries, county lines, and back taxes, so they let it stand.  At least, that what I've been told.  Now I'm going to have to look up the real story.

    TL,DR: A state that wouldn't cheat for land don't want it enough.

    ETA - According to the Texas Historical Association online handbook entry on borders, the western border of the Texas Panhandle is supposed to be the 103rd meridian.  The surveying "error" was two miles west of the actual 103rd meridian.  Congress confirmed that boundary as surveyed in a joint resolution on February 16, 1911.

    I think this may have posted somewhere else on Surly.  Seems like the kind of thing you would find interesting.

    Colorado is not a rectangle - it has 697 sides

    Quote

    AMERICA LOVES ITS STRAIGHT-LINE BORDERS. The only U.S. state without one is Hawaii—for obvious reasons.

    West of the Mississippi, states are bigger, emptier, and boxier than back east. From a distance, all seem to be made up of straight lines.

    Only when you zoom in do you see their squiggly bits: the northeast corner of Kansas, for instance. Or Montana’s western border with Idaho that looks like a human face. Or Oklahoma’s southern border with Texas, meandering as it follows the Red River.

    New Mexico comes tantalizingly close to having only straight-line borders. There’s that short stretch north of El Paso that would have been just 15 miles (24 kilometers) long if it were straight instead of wavy.

    No, there are only three states whose borders are entirely made up of straight lines: Utah, which would have been a rectangle if Wyoming hadn’t bitten a chunk out of its northeastern corner; Wyoming itself; and Colorado.

    Except that they aren’t. for two distinct reasons: because the earth is round, and because those 19th-century surveyors laying out state borders made mistakes.

    Congress defined the borders of Colorado as a geospherical rectangle, stretching from 37°N to 41°N latitude, and from 25°W to 32°W longitude. While lines of latitude run in parallel circles that don’t meet, lines of longitude converge at the poles.

    This means that Colorado’s longitudinal borders are slightly farther apart in the south. So if you’d look closely enough, the state resembles an isosceles trapezoid rather than a rectangle. Consequently, the state’s northern borderline is about 22 miles (35 kilometers) shorter than its southern one. The same goes, mutatis mutandis, for Wyoming.

    That’s not where the story ends. There’s boundary delimitation: the theoretical description of a border, as described above. But what’s more relevant is boundary demarcation: surveying and marking out the border on the ground. Colorado entered the Union in 1876.

    Only in 1879 did the first boundary survey team get around to translating Congress’s abstract into actual boundary markers. The official border would not be the delimited one, but the demarcated one. Unfortunately, 19th-century surveyors lacked satellites and other high-precision measurement tools.

    Let’s not be too harsh: considering the size of the task and the limitation of their tools—magnetic compasses and metal chains—they did an incredible job. They had to stake straight lines irrespective of terrain, often through inhospitable land.

    But yes, errors were made—and were in fact quite habitual. Take, for example, the 49th parallel, which for more than 1,200 miles forms the international border between the United States and Canada. Rather than being a straight line, it zigzags between the 912 boundary monuments established by successive teams of surveyors (the last ones in 1872–74). The markers deviate by as much as 575 feet north and 784 feet south of the actual parallel line.

    The same kind of thing happened when the first surveying teams went out to demarcate the Colorado border. These maps magnify some of the most egregious surveying inaccuracies, where the difference between the boundaries delineated by Congress and the border demarcated by the surveyors is greatest.

    Four Corners (and Four More)

    Located in a dusty, desolate corner of the desert, the Four Corners monument seems very far from the middle of anything. Yet this is the meeting point of four states: Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. It is the only quadripoint in the United States. The monument’s exact location is at 36°59’56″N, 109°02’43″W.

    However, it’s not where Congress had decreed the four states to meet. That point is about 560 feet (170 meters) northwest of the quadripoint’s current location, at 37°N, 109°02’48″W. Did you drive all the way through the desert to miss the actual point by a few hundred feet?

    No, you didn’t: In 1925, the Supreme Court ruled that the borders as surveyed were the correct ones. But perhaps the original quadripoint deserves a small marker of its own, if only to provide the site with an extra attraction. Or why not go for three? Some sources say the original point deviates by 1,807 feet (551 meters).

    The La Sal/Paradox Deviation

    In 1879, a survey party marched north from Four Corners, placing markers at every mile. The surveyors eventually reached the Wyoming border, but not where they thought they’d end up. Later surveys, in 1885 and 1893, found out where the original surveyors had gone wrong, but by that time the border as surveyed had become the official one. Changing it would have required both Colorado and Utah to agree on a solution, and Congress to approve it.

    The biggest error occurs just south of the road connecting La Sal, Utah to Paradox, Colorado. Across an eight-mile stretch, the surveyors strayed westward before regaining true north. The resulting deviation is 3860 feet (1.18 kilometers).

    Things Go South After Edith

    West to east, Colorado’s border with New Mexico starts out fairly straight. However, just east of Edith, the border swerves southeast for about 3,400 feet (1 kilometer) before resuming its course due east, now 2,820 feet (860 meters) farther south than before.

    Why? It seems that for once, the surveyors have given in to the dictates of topography: the deviation follows a small valley oriented northwest-southeast.

    Panhandling Into Oklahoma

    Almost at the end of their surveying mission, it seems the party lost the plot again. In the last 53 miles (85 kilometers) before the border turns north, the stretch where Colorado rubs against Oklahoma, the line again swerves to the south, by as much as 1,770 feet (540 meters).

    Don’t blame the terrain: Appropriately for a place so close to the Oklahoma Panhandle, it’s as flat as a pancake. Perhaps the surveyors were confused by the very featurelessness of the place.

    Colorado Is a 697-Sider

    These are just four of the biggest, most easily spotted surveying errors. In total, Colorado’s borders have hundreds twists and turns—most much smaller than the Big Four.

    Accordingly, the state has not just four sides, but a total of 697 sides. So if Colorado is not a rectangle, what is it? Well, not a pentagon, (Greek for 5-sider), hexagon (6-sider), or a heptagon (7-sider), but a—hold on to something—hexahectaenneacontakaiheptagon (697-sider).

    Don’t Get Your Hopes Up, Wyoming

    With Colorado thoroughly disqualified to as one of America’s two truly rectangular states, does that leave Wyoming holding the crown all on its own? Nope. Turns out the surveyors who plotted the Equality State’s outline were just as fallible as the Colorado set. Interestingly, Wyoming’s deviations shown come in pairs, whereby the second ones seem to correct the deviation of the first ones.

    So, while Wyoming is just as imperfect as Colorado, it does seem that at least it is better at admitting (and correcting) its mistakes than its southern neighbor.

     

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  2. Did not see this posted anywhere else.  Did a search but who the hell knows.  Tangential to this thread but not sure if there is a better place to put it.

    Stephen F. Austin bowling assistant out after relationship with student athlete

    Quote

    A Stephen F. Austin assistant bowling coach resigned after it was discovered that he was having an inappropriate relationship with a player on the team.

    Steve Lemke, who is married to the team's head coach, Amber Lemke, was given a choice to resign or be fired by the school. He quit on April 10.

    "He’s not working here anymore," Stephen F. Austin athletic director Ryan Ivey said. "From a departmental standpoint, he had a choice and he chose to resign."

    The school won national championships in 2016 and 2019 and had runner-up finishes in 2015 and 2022.

    Steve Lemke said he did nothing wrong in having a relationship with the player and defended his actions.

    "I knew it was kind of a no-no, but there’s not a rule saying it can’t happen," Lemke said, via The Daily Sentinel. "There's not a law saying I’m going to go to jail for doing something like this. There’s nothing in stone. I guess it’s just an ethics code, like we frown upon it, but there’s no rule, there’s no law broken."

    The relationship between Lemke and the player was discovered when Amber Lemke saw a text from the player on Steve Lemke’s phone. The couple has since filed for divorce.

    "It didn’t have anything in detail," Steve Lemke said about the text message. "It was just about how amazing I am, basically, in general perspective. Amber saw that and questioned me, and I got to the point where it just built up so much that I basically told her the truth after she dug through my phone."

    Steve Lemke was a volunteer assistant with the program until 2019, when the school hired him as an assistant coach.

    "I was the stay-at-home dad for five years with the kids while Amber got to go off and coach the team. And when she’d get back, I’d run practices on top of taking care of the kids while she was back," Steve Lemke said. "When they’d travel again, I would sit back and take care of the kids. Then when I got hired on, she almost forced me to run practices. I was a volunteer the entire time before that trying to help out Amber. Once I got hired on, one thing stemmed from another. I felt like I was doing too much for what I was being valued at."

    Amber Lemke will continue coaching the team, and the player has exhausted her eligibility.

    “As soon as we found out, we went through the process,” Ivey said. “We support our student athletes, and obviously Amber, with what was going on."

    The head coach of the bowling team.

    Amber Lemke

    Amber Lemke

  3. 3 minutes ago, LTtxfan said:

    What's worst defeat in championship series game??

    gata leads 22-3 in the 9th, and still batting.

    poor tigers 😋

    Quick look at Wikipedia shows a 14-2 Rice win over Stanford in the 2003 championship series.  Mississippi State had a 13-2 win over Vanderbilt in the 2021 final series.  Minnesota had a 12-1 victory over Arizona in the 1956 final.  The 2001 final had a 12-1 Miami win over Stanford.  Some other 9 run victories scattered over the history of the baseball finals.

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  4. Orca rams boat of Scottish coast 2000 miles away from original attacks

    Quote

    An orca has attacked a yacht off the coast of Scotland, U.K. — the first time this behavior has been recorded beyond Portuguese and Spanish waters. One expert believes it's a sign the boat-ramming behavior may have "leapfrogged" to a different orca population.

     

    The orca (Orcinus orca) in Scotland repeatedly slammed into the boat's stern, where Wim Rutten, who was the only person on the boat, had attached a fishing line to catch mackerel.

     

    Rutten said the orca seemed to be "looking for the keel," which is the part of the boat that orcas in Iberian waters have also targeted with ruthless efficiency. "Maybe he just wanted to play," Rutten told The Guardian. "Or look me in the eyes. Or to get rid of the fishing line."

    Iberian orcas, a small and endangered population of about 39 animals, have sunk three boats in the last 18 months and damaged over 100 more by ramming into boats and ripping off their rudders. Some experts think an adult female named White Gladis may have survived a traumatic event — such as a boat collision or entrapment in a fishing net — that flipped a behavioral switch and triggered the first attacks.

    Scientists have identified 13 orcas — 11 juveniles, White Gladis and another adult called Grey Gladis — that participate in these encounters and, in some cases, follow the boats all the way to port after breaking their rudders.

    The behavior appears to be spreading through social learning, with orcas imitating each other and reproducing acts they deem advantageous or interesting in some way, Alfredo López Fernandez, a biologist and representative of the Grupo de Trabajo Orca Atlántica, or Atlantic Orca Working Group (GTOA), previously told Live Science.

    The latest incident, which occurred on Monday (June 19) off the Shetland Islands in the North Sea, may suggest orcas in the area have acquired the skill from their southern European neighbors.

    "It's possible that this 'fad' is leapfrogging through the various pods/communities," Conor Ryan, a scientific adviser to the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust, told The Guardian. (A fad is a behavior initiated by one or two individuals, which others adopt through social learning and then abandon.)

    Although 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) separate orcas in the North Sea from the Iberian population, there might be "highly mobile pods that could transmit this behavior a long distance," Ryan said.

    Experts with the GTOA suspect the attacks are linked to human activities at sea. Fishing, noise pollution and boat traffic, "even in an indirect way, are the origin of this behavior," López Fernandez told The Guardian.

    The traumatic experience that may have sparked attacks off the Iberian coast was "perhaps related to a fishing boat while hunting tuna,'' Mónica González, a marine biologist working with the GTOA, told Yachting Monthly

    Every year, Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) pass through the Strait of Gibraltar on their migration path from spawning sites in the Mediterranean Sea to feeding grounds in the eastern Atlantic, according to a report by the European Parliament.

    Encounters with orcas could be linked to these migrations, González said.

    Bluefin tuna were overfished from the 1980s until 2010, but stocks have now recovered, according to the report. Nevertheless, experts think orcas may perceive boats as a threat to their food supply and survival.

    "We think that the other orcas are juveniles and are copying [White Gladis'] behavior because she is an adult and they think that as an adult 'we need to do this to survive,'" González said.

    Also, orca males are apparently a bunch of mama's boys.

    Orca males are burnouts who let their moms do all the hunting, surprising study finds

    Quote

    Killer whale mothers are sacrificing their own reproductive prospects to guarantee the future success of their sons.

     

    While it's no surprise that mothers make sacrifices for their young, researchers have found that orca (Orcinus orca) mothers are taking the mama's boy notion to the extreme, continuing to care for their sons into adulthood, even if it affects their future chances of reproduction, according to a new study published Feb. 8 in the journal Current Biology.

     

    Researchers have found that this doting mother-son relationship is true amongst the 73 resident orcas that currently make up the "southern resident" population, a group that inhabits the waters off the coasts of Washington state and British Columbia. Since 1976, researchers from the Center for Whale Research in Harbor, Washington, have been monitoring this well-studied population and noticed this "bizarre social system" where the mothers continue to hunt for their adult sons, according to a statement

    Because orca groups are matrilineal, "both the sons and daughters stay within their mom's group for their whole lives in this population of killer whales — and we think in most resident killer whale populations," first author Michael Weiss, research director for the Center for Whale Research, told Live Science. "But the sons especially keep strong social ties with their mothers and are more likely to follow their moms around."

    While sticking with their moms may prove beneficial for the males, the daughters, on the other hand, are cut off entirely from prey sharing by their moms once they reach sexual maturity, typically sometime between 6 and 10 years of age, according to the statement.

    So, why are mom orcas giving their sons preferential treatment and not their daughters? Researchers think it all comes down to an evolutionary cost/benefit analysis.

    "Males are quite a bit bigger than females, so they need more calories and are also a little less maneuverable, so they may have less luck catching fish," Weiss said. "From the mom's point of view, there are some good reasons why they might want to preferentially help their sons. When daughters reproduce, their calf is in the same group as the grandma, and that means there's another mouth to feed in the group that might compete with the female's other offspring. So, there's a cost there to helping your daughter reproduce. Whereas with males, when they have their kids, they're usually born in someone else's group."

    He added, "You get the same benefits in terms of evolution, with your genes being passed on to the next generation, without the cost of having another mouth to feed."

    However, this coddling of males costs the mothers in the long run. Researchers found a "strong negative correlation" between females' caring for their grown sons and their probability of producing a viable calf. Each surviving son cuts a mother's chances of having a new calf by more than 50% in a given year, according to the statement.

    "As an example, a 21-year-old female who doesn't have any kids she's taking care of right now and hasn't reproduced in the previous year, has about a 1 in 5 chance of having a calf," Weiss said. "If that female has one son that she's taking care of, that chance drops to a 1 in 10 chance. By taking care of these sons, the mothers have less of the food resources they need to carry these really costly pregnancies, which makes them much less likely to further reproduce.”

     

  5. 7 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

    Jr’s Smokehouse on 59. Just past buccee heading south. Would I order a plate here, nope. Would I order a chopped beef with chopped sausage ? Hell to the yes…..

     

    IMG_5087.jpeg

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    IMG_5089.jpeg

    When I used to make the trip on 59 between Houston and the coastal bend I stopped here many a time to avoid the crowds at the Wharton Buc-ee's or at Prasek's, especially when I was headed south on 59.  Loved being able to pull in here, get gas if needed, take a piss, grab a chopped beef sandwich, and let the dogs out in the field next to the store while I ate my sandwich.  I also would pick up a jar or two of their salsas from time to time.   Great place that feels like a hidden gem right in plain sight.

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  6. 6 hours ago, Tomatillo said:

    It’s a totally different kind. Think of it as spaghetti with a unique sauce and a lot of cheese. 

     

    3 hours ago, Kyrie Eleison said:

    The Big Short Stop GIF - The Big Short Stop Stop It GIFs

    ^^^What he said.  I am aware of what it is, but I cannot and will not ever consider it "chili".

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  7. 1 hour ago, Tomatillo said:

    5. Kentucky - Stadium is pretty blah, but you can visit the race track nearby (Kenneland) and see some quality horse racing. Bourbon trail is also nearby if you'd like to learn more about America's whiskey. Lexington is in a beautiful part of the country with rolling hills and horse farms surrounding their basketball nirvana. this might be an even better place to go for a basketball trip. Cincinnati is 1.5-2 hours north if you want to catch a Bengals/Reds game and try some of the best chili in the world. 

    I really hope you are trolling us with this statement and it is not an actual statement of belief.  The part about the chili, that is.  If it is not a troll, then you are about to learn a very painful lesson about Texans and chili...

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  8. Do you need a new cast iron skillet?  Do you have $400 to spend on a cast iron skillet?  If the answer to both questions is "yes", then Yeti has got you covered.

    The $400 Yeti cast iron skillet

    Unfortunately they are out of stock right now but you can be notified when they are available so hold on to your cash.

    • Haha 1
  9. On 6/12/2023 at 4:37 PM, Captain Ron said:

    Or you just might find that now that you're doing it, you might do it again and again and again.

    Have to see how this first one goes.  Not going to rule out doing it again at some point.

  10. I don't know why it annoys me, bur for some reason, Whataburger's new practice of asking for a name with the order instead of giving me a number on table tent really bugs me.  At least that is how my local Whataburger is doing things now; I don't know if it is done that way everywhere.

    Also, if the customer is sitting down inside the restaurant, it should be automatic that napkins are brought out with the order.  It is bad enough I have to request ketchup but to also request napkins is just idiotic.  And it is also idiotic that I just cannot grab a handful of napkins myself.

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  11. Avoid going to Mexico to get plastic surgery right now.

    US and Mexico sound alarm over cosmetic surgery-linked fungal outbreak

    Quote

    US and Mexican authorities are urging the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a public health emergency over a fungal outbreak linked to cosmetic operations in Mexico.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said two people who got surgeries involving epidural anaesthesia have died of meningitis.

    Almost 400 people in the US and Mexico are being monitored.

    Two cosmetic clinics in the Mexican city of Matamoros have been shut.

    Authorities in both the US and Mexico have urged people who had surgeries involving epidural anaesthesia at either the River Side Surgical Center or Clinica K-3 since January to get evaluated, even if they are currently asymptomatic.

    The CDC said it had already identified 25 people in the US with "suspected" or "probable" cases of fungal meningitis.

     

    Many US citizens travel to Mexico for cosmetic procedures such as liposuction, breast augmentation and Brazilian butt lifts, which all require the injection of an anaesthetic into the area around the spinal column.

    The CDC's Dallas Smith said that medications used during anaesthesia in the current outbreak may have been contaminated either in the epidural itself or in other medications that are added in conjunction during the surgeries like morphine.

    "There's a shortage currently in Mexico, and there could be potential for a black market that could have contaminated medicine," said Mr Smith.

    Last October, a batch of a local anaesthetic commonly used for operations such as Caesarean births was found to have been infected by the same fungus, leading to the death of 39 people in the Mexican state of Durango.

    The most common early symptom of fungal meningitis is headaches, followed by symptoms like fever, vomiting, neck pain, and blurred vision.

    Fungal meningitis is not contagious and can be treated with antifungal medicines - but it can can quickly become life-threatening once symptoms begin.

     

    Americans often travel to Mexico for low-cost medical services.

    The WHO declares a public health emergency when a disease spreads between countries and a co-ordinated international response may be required to bring it under control.

     

  12. 6 hours ago, DFW Horn said:

    OU vs Arky as a 3rd rival makes the most sense long-term even though it'll benefit the dirt burglars short-term.

    For two schools in adjoining states and in towns that are only about 4 hours apart, OU and Arkansas have played each other a surprisingly small number of times.  Only 15 games, and 12 of those came in 1926 or earlier.  Three matchups since 1978, all in bowl games.  So paring up those two seems to me to be forcing something that is not there.

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