RIP Franchises of our youths

[Drunk Monk]

Collapsed. 

Huge Puerto Rico radio telescope, already damaged, collapses
By DÁNICA COTOan hour ago



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This satellite image provided by 2020 Maxar Technologies shows the damaged radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, Thursday, Nov. 17, 2020. The National Science Foundation announced Thursday, Nov. 17 that it will close the huge telescope in a blow to scientists worldwide who depend on it to search for planets, asteroids and extraterrestrial life, saying it’s too dangerous to keep operating the single-dish radio telescope because the entire structure could collapse. (Satellite image ©2020 Maxar Technologies via AP)
[url=https://apnews.com/article/technology-arecibo-observatory-puerto-rico-science--0da6abb251f455977bf0c752348e712e/gallery/bcc5eeddc3de435d90473d4518b81fda]ARECIBO, Puerto Rico (AP) — A huge, already damaged radio telescope in Puerto Rico that has played a key role in astronomical discoveries for more than half a century completely collapsed on Tuesday.
The telescope’s 900-ton receiver platform and the Gregorian dome — a structure as tall as a four-story building that houses secondary reflectors — fell onto the northern portion of the vast reflector dish more than 400 feet below.
The U.S. National Science Foundation had earlier announced that it would close the radio telescope. An auxiliary cable snapped in August, causing a 100-foot gash on the 1,000-foot-wide (305-meter-wide) dish and damaged the receiver platform that hung above it. Then a main cable broke in early November.

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The collapse stunned many scientists who had relied on what was until recently the largest radio telescope in the world.
“It sounded like a rumble. I knew exactly what it was,” said Jonathan Friedman, who worked for 26 years as a senior research associate at the observatory and still lives near it. “I was screaming. Personally, I was out of control.... I don’t have words to express it. It’s a very deep, terrible feeling.”
Friedman ran up a small hill near his home and confirmed his suspicions: A cloud of dust hung in the air where the structure once stood, demolishing hopes held by some scientists that the telescope could somehow be repaired.
The collapse at 7:56 a.m. on Tuesday wasn’t a surprise because many of the wires in the thick cables holding the structure snapped over the weekend, Ángel Vázquez, the telescope’s director of operations, told The Associated Press.
“It was a snowball effect,” he said. “There was no way to stop it.... It was too much for the old girl to take.”
He said that it was extremely difficult to say whether anything could have been done to prevent the damage that occurred after the first cable snapped in August.
“The maintenance was kept up as best as we could,” he said. “(The National Science Foundation) did the best that they could with what they have.”
However, observatory director Francisco Córdova, said that while the NSF decided it was too risky to repair the damaged cables before Tuesday’s collapse, he believes there had been options, such as relieving tension in certain cables or using helicopters to help redistribute weight.
Meanwhile, installing a new telescope would cost up to $350 million, money the NSF doesn’t have, Vázquez said, adding it would have to come from U.S. Congress.
“It’s a huge loss,” said Carmen Pantoja, an astronomer and professor at the University of Puerto Rico who used the telescope for her doctorate. “It was a chapter of my life.”
Scientists worldwide had been petitioning U.S. officials and others to reverse the NSF’s decision to close the observatory. The NSF said at the time that it intended to eventually reopen the visitor center and restore operations at the observatory’s remaining assets, including its two LIDAR facilities used for upper atmospheric and ionospheric research, including analyzing cloud cover and precipitation data. The LIDAR facilities are still operational, along with a 12-meter telescope and a photometer used to study photons in the atmosphere, Vázquez said.
“We are saddened by this situation but thankful that no one was hurt,” NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan said in a statement. “When engineers advised NSF that the structure was unstable and presented a danger to work teams and Arecibo staff, we took their warnings seriously.”
The telescope was built in the 1960s with money from the Defense Department amid a push to develop anti-ballistic missile defenses. It had endured hurricanes, tropical humidity and a recent string of earthquakes in its 57 years of operation.
The telescope has been used to track asteroids on a path to Earth, conduct research that led to a Nobel Prize and determine if a planet is potentially habitable. It also served as a training ground for graduate students and drew about 90,000 visitors a year.
“I am one of those students who visited it when young and got inspired,” said Abel Méndez, a physics and astrobiology professor at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo who has used the telescope for research. “The world without the observatory loses, but Puerto Rico loses even more.”
He last used the telescope on Aug. 6, just days before a socket holding the auxiliary cable that snapped failed in what experts believe could be a manufacturing error. The National Science Foundation, which owns the observatory that is managed by the University of Central Florida, said crews who evaluated the structure after the first incident determined that the remaining cables could handle the additional weight.
But on Nov. 6, another cable broke.
Scientists had used the telescope to study pulsars to detect gravitational waves as well as search for neutral hydrogen, which can reveal how certain cosmic structures are formed. About 250 scientists worldwide had been using the observatory when it closed in August, including Méndez, who was studying stars to detect habitable planets.
“I’m trying to recover,” he said. “I am still very much affected.”

I suspect SPECTRE.

[Greg]

Curses. I say rebuild it.

[thatguy]

It was the monoliths, I know it...

--tg

[King Bob]

New Videos Show The Dramatic Collapse Of The Arecibo Telescope

[King Bob]

TIT-1-ASS: This came up at a barbeque we had way before Covid, and no other men had grown up here, so no one remembered it but me. I've been thinking about posting it ever since, so here goes. Does anyone else remember calling this number? It was a recording advertising some sex show. We would call it in fifth or sixth grade, and all I remember is that a lady said "Would you believe I'm sitting here completely nude, waiting for you..."

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Nope. Not one of those 900 numbers?

I do remember calling Popcorn to get the time

[thatguy]

I remember. You have the quote exactly right. I got in deep trouble from calling it multiple times during a sleep over at my friend’s house. I was showing off, but his mom got the phone bill and had a talk with my folks about it.

—tg

---

PS: the pop-corn party line used to actually work with any 767-xxxx phone number as they would all route to “time”

—tg

[King Bob]

TG - so was that a phone sex line? I guess we always hung up right at that point because I don't remember anything else.

Calling for time was completely buried in my memory until you mentioned it. As a kid I liked to stay on the line until the minute changed to hear her say "exactly."

[thatguy]

IIRC - it was just that recording of that quote. We just kept calling it over and over so everyone could listen to it (no speaker phone).

—tg

[Drunk Monk]

i remember calling popcorn after every power outage. I think I remember tit1ass, but that's just because you jogged my memory. Anyone try that number recently? I do remember that you could find scrambled porn channels at the end of the TV dial.

[Greg]

I called popcorn a lot. I had a friend who was very into phones. There were a lot of different numbers to call. Sadly, I can't remember any of them.

[Drunk Monk]

Renowned Cliff House restaurant to close permanently Dec. 31

Bay City News Service
Dec. 13, 2020Updated: Dec. 13, 2020 8:30 p.m.
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FILE PHOTO -- The Cliff House ended in-house dining in March, owing to the pandemic.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)
The Cliff House restaurant, which first opened 157 years ago, announced Sunday that the restaurant will close permanently on Dec. 31, a victim both of the COVID-19 pandemic and, its owners say, delays by the National Park Service in reaching a long-term operating contract with the restaurant.
The announcement of the permanent closure was posted Sunday by Cliff House's longtime owners, Dan and Mary Hountalas, on the restaurant's website (www.cliffhouse.com). They said 180 employees will lose their jobs.
The Cliff House ended in-house dining in March, owing to the pandemic. After 10 weeks of offering only takeout service, the restaurant shut down to diners as the pandemic struck. The operators said they attempted to try takeout-only service in early June, but after 10 weeks of that, closed down completely in mid-July, saying the restaurant was losing too much money as a takeout-only operation.
The last long-term contract between the Cliff House and the National Park Service expired in June 2018, and the restaurant had been operating since then under a series of short-term contracts, the current one set to expire on Dec. 31.
The owners said Sunday that COVID-19 exacerbated the problems, but that they go back to the 2018 expiration of the last 20-year contract.
"The National Park Service should have selected an operator on a long-term basis to ensure the continued operation of this national treasure," the Hountalases said in their statement Sunday.

I only remember eating there once. One of my Shaolin disciple brothers came through town and we went. He was into that sort of touristy overpriced crap. He was also loaded. This is the one who had a custom built fake hot tub cave complete with a waterfall and fireplace built in at his mansion in Vegas. We lost contact years ago (I'm sure he's a Trumper). The Cliff House view was spectacular but its food was expensive and mediocre.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

You definitely pay for the view. I hope it reopens under new management. I had heard that the food had improved, FWTW. It employs a lot of people, though.

[King Bob]

Only went there once, and we didn't have much of a view. I don't remember what I ate, but I do remember thinking it was mediocre. Since tourism will eventually return, I'm sure someone will buy it. Eventually.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

It's leased from the National Park Service. I have to think that that must be pretty complicated esp in a low-profit business like a restaurant