I think it's rude to be so presumptive of the background of our hosts. This is, after all, the same Heinlein who writes a whole lot of sex, nudity, incest, and polygamy into his novels, and for whom Campbell famously commented "Bob can write a better story, with one hand tied behind him, than most people in the field can do with both hands. But Jesus, I wish that son of a gun would take that other hand out of his pocket." I can see many reasons for not having read Heinlein's oeuvre like I have. It's hard to read "Stranger In A Strange Land" (where the female lead declares 'Nine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped, it’s partly her fault') as a strong feminist/gender equality book, for example, and for many making him a hard no when there is so much other great SF out there. FWIW, I think a movie like "Forbidden Planet" is a better fit for the sketch. Sigourney Weaver's character in Galaxy Quest is an effective critique of the women-as-sex-object in older SF, even though Emma Peel's man-appeal was definitely also highly competent.
Heinlein liked his female characters sexy *and competent*. The closest to this is likely Dejah Thoris "Deety" Burroughs Carter in "The Number of the Beast", whose father created the continua device, but she is herself smart. The novel is (at least according to one popular review) deliberately written to parody bad SF while showing how to do it right. The very first line is "He’s a Mad Scientist and I’m his Beautiful Daughter."
It looks more like the cooked body scene at the end of the crime drama "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover." Which is one of about three scenes I remember from that film.
That looks like it would be so satisfying to operate! There's the fun of operation, the finesse of control, and the immediate feedback of success to see the power lines become unweighted.
I came for the rabbit and the adultery in his heart. I left content. Carter was the most honorable president we've had in modern times. I'm glad he pushed the effort to return the Panama Canal to Panama, despite Republican opposition. I helped on one Habitat house. Every time I drove by, after the owners moved in, I felt a bit of pride that I could help out.
I knew that bubbler was a regional term for water fountain, but this is the first time I've heard someone actually use it. So I'm guessing Wisconsin? ... Yup! "Charlie was born and raised in Wisconsin."
Wikipedia insists The Brickyard, while the largest sports venue, is not a stadium. It adds that the The Great Strahov Stadium, which no longer hosting competitive events, had a capacity of 250,000, but was never filled.
That's going to be contentious. Like, how do you date "Long before the Spanish" and compare it to roads in, say, New Mexico, where Taos Pueblo is 'one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States'? Or consider the Cumberland Gap, 'Long used by Native American nations'. When did that go from a trail, or route, into a proper road?
I think it excludes those, similar to how the overseas collectivities of France are not included. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_France says 'Overseas regions have exactly the same status as France's mainland regions', but there are no overseas regions in both the S and W hemispheres. OTOH, French Polynesia is in the south Pacific, but it's "an overseas collectivity of France and its sole overseas country", and does not have the status of France's mainland regions. To my surprise, the US does not have land in the S+E hemispheres. Looks like we did until we renounced claims to Funafuti and three other Tuvaluan islands in 1983.
Today I learned about the TORRO scale, which is "primarily used in the United Kingdom" . For us non-Brits, the Malta tornado was "equivalent to F3 on the Fujita scale".
TIL that my old school district, Dade County (now Miami-Dade), started three weeks later than the rest of Florida until 2004. That Wikipedia link tells me it gave more time to prepare for the state's FCAT exams, which makes sense given how the test results were increasingly used punitively during Bush II.
That leaves me begging for more details, like how the introduction of A/C affected things (my elementary school in Miami didn't get A/C until I was in 4th grade), or if the starting differences in neighboring states with similar weather are big or small, or the push for a longer school year.
I can see many reasons for not having read Heinlein's oeuvre like I have. It's hard to read "Stranger In A Strange Land" (where the female lead declares 'Nine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped, it’s partly her fault') as a strong feminist/gender equality book, for example, and for many making him a hard no when there is so much other great SF out there.
FWIW, I think a movie like "Forbidden Planet" is a better fit for the sketch. Sigourney Weaver's character in Galaxy Quest is an effective critique of the women-as-sex-object in older SF, even though Emma Peel's man-appeal was definitely also highly competent.
Carter was the most honorable president we've had in modern times. I'm glad he pushed the effort to return the Panama Canal to Panama, despite Republican opposition. I helped on one Habitat house. Every time I drove by, after the owners moved in, I felt a bit of pride that I could help out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_France says 'Overseas regions have exactly the same status as France's mainland regions', but there are no overseas regions in both the S and W hemispheres.
OTOH, French Polynesia is in the south Pacific, but it's "an overseas collectivity of France and its sole overseas country", and does not have the status of France's mainland regions.
To my surprise, the US does not have land in the S+E hemispheres. Looks like we did until we renounced claims to Funafuti and three other Tuvaluan islands in 1983.