Pretty good, very moody and flavorful*, but not as tense as it could be given that almost everyone who will go to see it knows roughly how things sorted out.

* One of the flavors has got to be nicotine.

Good stuff.

And let's just not go into finding a sharp copy of Vynalez Zkazy A.K.A. The Fabulous Adventures of Jules Verne. I want to give it as a gift, but I'm told the DVD sold in the U.S.A. is from a tired print and I'm not going to spend a fortune on a Japanese DVD of the thing without any info about picture quality. Grumble.

A pardon means all gloves are off. Any dirt that can get dug up will; love children will surface; more formerly reticent ex-insiders will come forth to describe administration shenanigans.

If there isn't a permenant demonstration in front of the White House I'll be very disappointed.

If the Democrats don't get a clue and use outrage over the pardons in their campaigns, they're hopeless. Anyone ever photographed shaking hands with Bush should be made unelectable.

Having only seen the picture on television (several times -- I'm guessing that Howard's local station didn't have a copy and mine did), I would be happy to have it in watchable but imperfect form, though a Criterion-level disc would certainly be a fine thing

Time, like an ever rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.

A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.

"Lead, Kindly Light, amid th'encircling gloom
Lead Thou me on.
The night is dark, and I am far from home.
Lead Thou me on.
Guide Thou my feet; I do not wish to see
The distant scene. One step enough for me."

Which is, of course, the best way to ensure that all imported live birds go through an effective quarantine procedure.

Muppets.

("How can it be American AND International?"
"Let's watch and find out.")

In his listing of various Warner Bros cartoons where real actors appear, I think John M. Ford forgot one that pops up every once in a while on TCM:

To Have and Have Not and Have and Have Not and Have and Have Not and Have and Have Not and Have and Have Not and Have and Have Not and Have and Have Not...

Last year, at Boston's worldcon, the movie program listed a bunch of Marvin Martian cartoons that would be shown right after It Came from Outer Space. They did wind up showing some Warner cartoons, but none of them were about Marvin. Sylvester and Tweety just isn't the same.

Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide
In the strife of truth with falsehood,
For the good or evil side.
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
'Twixt that darkness and that light.

Then to side with truth is noble,
When we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit,
And 'tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses,
While the coward stands aside
Till the multitude make virtue
Of the faith they had denied.

By the light of burning martyrs
Jesus' bleeding feet I track,
Toiling up new Calvaries ever
With the cross that turns not back;
New occasions teach new duties,
Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still and onward
Who would keep abreast of truth.

Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong.
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above His own.

--James Russell Lowell

(Still gives me chills. Not surprisingly, this hymn was removed from the Episcopal Hymnal--it was #519 in the 1940 version if you can find one. It has a great tune too--the Welsh "Ton-y-Botel" or "tune in a bottle".)

The BBC radio news on Sunday reported this incident thus:

"And, with the discovery that a parrot in quarantine at Heathrow was carrying avian flu, we ask: is Britain at risk from an epidemic?"
At this point, the producer rolled a taped piece, thus:
"This parrot is deceased! It is no more! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed it to the perch it would be pushing up the daisies! It's shuffled off its mortal coil and gone to join the choir invisible! This is an ex-parrot!"

Based on this, it is, I feel, safe to say that BBC Radio 4 is still far from panic. But then I would expect nothing less from the station which still forms a key part of Britain's nuclear deterrent command chain.

"Lead, Kindly Light" is Newman; it's a bit of cognitive dissonance to see the two authors nearly juxtaposed.

Along similar lines of public criticism to Lowell's hymn, there's Chesterton:

O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.

From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation
Of honour and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord.

Tie in a living tether
The prince and priest and thrall,
Bind all our lives together,
Smite us and save us all;
In ire and exultation
Aflame with faith, and free,
Lift up a living nation,
A single sword to thee.

God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle line,
Beneath whose aweful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine:
Lord God of hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget.

It has several more stanzas, which I can't remember off the top of my head. (Being able to remember first stanza and tune on a lot of hymns is a possible benefit of years of church-going of the Methodist persuasion.)

A couple of good ones from SF are 'Abide with Me' (Stephen Baxter's 'Voyage' uses it very movingly) and 'Jerusalem' (the hymn of the English Revolution in Ken MacLeod's 'The Star Fraction'). Blake would have hated the way that 'Jerusalem' became an anthem of English self-assurance; but I think he would have liked it as a revolutionary song...

No hiding place, down here
No hiding place
There's no hiding place
Down here
No hiding place
And they went to the rock to hide their face
But the rock cried out
No hiding place
There's no hiding place
Down here

The gospel song 'And the rock cried out no hiding place' used in the B5 episode of the same name always moves me.

The other Kipling one in this vein is his Hymn Before Action:

The earth is full of anger,
The seas are dark with wrath,
The Nations in their harness
Go up against our path:
Ere yet we loose the legions --
Ere yet we draw the blade,
Jehovah of the Thunders,
Lord God of Battles, aid!

High lust and froward bearing,
Proud heart, rebellious brow --
Deaf ear and soul uncaring,
We seek Thy mercy now!
The sinner that forswore Thee,
The fool that passed Thee by,
Our times are known before Thee --
Lord, grant us strength to die!

For those who kneel beside us
At altars not Thine own,
Who lack the lights that guide us,
Lord, let their faith atone.
If wrong we did to call them,
By honour bound they came;
Let not Thy Wrath befall them,
But deal to us the blame.

From panic, pride, and terror,
Revenge that knows no rein,
Light haste and lawless error,
Protect us yet again.
Cloak Thou our undeserving,
Make firm the shuddering breath,
In silence and unswerving
To taste Thy lesser death!

Ah, Mary pierced with sorrow,
Remember, reach and save
The soul that comes to-morrow
Before the God that gave!
Since each was born of woman,
For each at utter need --
True comrade and true foeman --
Madonna, intercede!

E'en now their vanguard gathers,
E'en now we face the fray --
As Thou didst help our fathers,
Help Thou our host to-day!
Fulfilled of signs and wonders,
In life, in death made clear --
Jehovah of the Thunders,
Lord God of Battles, hear!

Elegy in a Country Churchyard

The men that worked for England
They have their graves at home:
And bees and birds of England
About the cross can roam.

But they that fought for England,
Following a falling star,
Alas, alas for England
They have their graves afar.

And they that rule in England,
In stately conclave met,
Alas, alas for England
They have no graves as yet.

Dave

In other news, I just signed up for NaNoWriMo. *screams in terror, faints*

There are at least three tunes that I know of to which Recessional is sung. The best-known of them -- and the original one, I believe -- is Melita, the tune used for "Eternal Father strong to save"; the Canadian Anglican Hymn Book had a tune called Recessional, written for the text in the early 20th century. There is one other that I've heard of, but never heard.

The men that built America
They have their graves at home:
And bees and birds, America's
About their markers roam.

Some, told, "Defend America,"
Followed a ragged cheer
To fall, far from America
And then returnèd here

And they that rule America,
In stately conclave met,
Alas, alas, America
They have no graves as yet.

On another topic, I'll argue that birds being handled by people in importation are birds more likely to come into contact with people later on---I think all parrots scratch and bite, if given a chance, and their wastes are handled by humans---making a quarantine on them a good idea. Caged birds also spend a great deal of time near other caged birds.

Of course, that wouldn't be enough to protect one of our cats (the evil one), who this year was averaging a bird a week in August.

...Then up spoke brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate;
"To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late;
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods?"

...

"Horatius," said the Consul,
"As thou sayest so let it be."
And straight against that great array
Forth went the dauntless three.
For Romans in Rome's quarrel
Spared neither land nor gold,
Nor son, nor wife, nor limb nor life
In the brave days of old.

Then none was for a party;
Then all were for the state;
Then the great man helped the poor
And the poor man loved the great;
Then goods were fairly portioned,
And spoils were fairly sold;
The Romans were like brothers
In the brave days of old.

Now Roman is to Roman
More hateful than the foe,
And the Tribunes beard the high
As the Fathers grind the low;
As we wax hot in faction,
In battle we wax cold,
Wherefore men fight not as they fought
In the brave days of old.

B&N (at least the one in my neighborhood) has that coffee table book, The Pythons (the Pythons on The Pythons) on the remainder tables for $10 (down from the original $60).

I've realized I must go back and buy a second copy for my brother . . . .

1. The day is past and over,
all thanks, O Lord, to thee!
We pray thee that offenseless
the hours of dark may be.
O Jesus, keep us in thy sight,
and guard us through the coming night.

2. The joys of day are over;
we lift our hearts to thee,
and call on thee that sinless
the hours of dark may be.
O Jesus, make their darkness light,
and guard us through the coming night.

3. The toils of day are over;
we raise our hymn to thee,
and ask that free from peril
the hours of dark may be.
O Jesus, keep us in thy sight,
and guard us through the coming night.

4. Be thou our souls' preserver,
O God, for thou dost know
how many are the perils
through which we have to go.
Lord Jesus Christ, O hear our call,
and guard and save us from them all.

-John Mason Neale

Mithras, God of the Morning, our trumpets waken the Wall!
‘Rome is above the Nations, but Thou art over all!’
Now as the names are answered, and the guards are marched away,
Mithras, also a soldier, give us strength for the day!

Mithras, God of the Noontide, the heather swims in the heat.
Our helmets scorch our foreheads, our sandals burn our feet.
Now in the ungirt hour—now ere we blink and drowse,
Mithras, also a soldier, keep us true to our vows!

Mithras, God of the Sunset, low on the Western main—
Thou descending immortal, immortal to rise again!
Now when the watch is ended, now when the wine is drawn,
Mithras, also a soldier, keep us pure till the dawn!

Mithras, God of the Midnight, here where the great bull dies,
Look on thy children in darkness. Oh take our sacrifice!
Many roads thou hast fashioned—all of them lead to the Light,
Mithras, also a soldier, teach us to die aright!

when i heard "jerusalem" in a star trek: ds9 episode, i was certain i'd heard it before somewhere, but i still can't figure it out. maybe the tune was reused in some other hymn.

after singing john rutter's "gloria" in high school, i find i can recognize almost anything he's written. the gloria itself always makes me feel off balance - it was in 5/4 in several places, and we learned the rhythm by stomping on the accented beats.

In other news, I just signed up for NaNoWriMo. *screams in terror, faints*

Congratulations. I will be attempting it again this year, also. Hopefully in more style than last year, when I limped home on the last day. Anyone else?

Under a sky wide open
Alone on an empty plain
With distant stars far from us
We find out what we remain.

When wrong and when right are choices
Enforced not with hell's hot pain
With no hope of heaven's rewarding
We choose, and we choose again.

Some lie, some kill, some plunder,
Some struggle with might and main,
Some go on each day regardless
Some crack underneath the strain.

Some pause here to help a stranger,
Some act with no thought of gain.
Some seek out mysterious nature
To learn and to see it plain.

Under a sky wide open
Alone on an empty plain,
We live, and we go on living
To choose, and to choose again.

The people that built America:
they have their graves at home
and the bees and birds of America
about their markers roam.

And they that fought for America
and fell on a distant shore:
their graves are here in America
and are honoured all the more.

And they that rule America,
no American should forget:
alas for the good of America,
they have no graves as yet.

Apologies for seeming to speak on behalf of America, when even my spellings reveal me as a Briton.

http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/recessional.htm

I made it up, feeling a need. I think it was all that Kipling.

Okay, well, I've been thinking about it, mostly to get my mind off of, well, life in general, and to force me to practice Uncle Jim's "butt in chair" method. But I've been worried that I'll just take it on, not follow through, and hate myself in the morning.

I guess the worst that could happen is that I could get busy at the office, have to travel half way across the country for depositions and not make it.

On the other hand, I could feasibly create a pattern of writing every morning before work. That could be worth it whether I make it or not.

As far as I know, there are no other words that have ever been set to Parry's tune, except in pastiche or parody. Some of his other pieces are similar in general style (e.g. the Coronation anthem I was glad) but are not so similar as to be confusing.

Yes. It's odd, that. I mean, look at this community. In all fairness, throwbacks like me aside, there's no real risk that anyone would mistake the mob here for a bunch of Godandmycountry rednecks. So why Kipling? I mean, Orwell more or less took him to the shredders sixty years ago. Bad good poet, he said. Jingoism and brutality, he said.

I don't say that, but remember, I'm a throwback.

I remember being taught this one in grade school because behind the school were some woods, left there for the nature trail. And it was a great joke, as cruel kids do, to dare people to sit between the pin oak and the ash, where the thorn bush had gotten pushed back. If you weren't english and sat there, so they said, it was unlucky and something would happen to you.

I'm just hoping we don't abandon those great strides forward and return to a world of bigotry and hatred to anyone different (read, not white or the "right" flavor of Christian).

"And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?"

Not being CoE, I don't know the words very well.

Xopher, I too will be joining the madness that is Nanowrimo.

The 23rd psalm seems apt as well, although I always hear the rather lovely descant when I think of it.

"Yea though I walk through shadows vale
Yet will I fear no ill
For thou art with me
and thy rod and staff me comfort still"

As to why mostly christian hymns? In my case it's simply the music that comes to mind most immediately, doubtless because a great deal of secular music deals with - well - themes of an immediately personal nature.

"And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?"

Being brought up CoE certainly made it easier to remember the lyrics - but we were put to memorizing Blake in grade school.

New York City's independant stations used to run stuff along these lines, usually on holiday mornings and afternoons. I seem to remember a Cinderella, but assumed it was an Italian production. There was a live-action Puss n' Boots for sure. Puss spent a lot of time fast-forwarding through the countryside.

I wonder if one of the reasons for its appeal is that the foundations are history, and it's a prayer to a not-very-specific deity that that we don't forget history.

1. Kipling's not a great artist by any means.
2. But dammit, he writes memorable verse. Not poetry; verse.
3. A lot of the people who like - and dislike - him haven't really read him very closely if at all. (They misunderstand things like 'the White Man's Burden' and think they are pro-Empire. Idiots.)
4. Kipling wasn't perfect - he was terribly patronising towards the soldiers he wrote about - more than he was to the natives, in some ways.
5. And, of course, he refused to contemplate that the Empire might be morally wrong. Which it is.
6. But on an individual level he was a moral man and his heart was in the right place. And, again, damn him, he wrote well.

Why Kipling? Because he was basically a humanist. He believed in people, of whatever colour; he didn't believe they were all alike, or even similar, but he believed they were all capable of great good. (He was nominally a Christian as well, but in a rather hands-off British way; not sure he took the creed very seriously. The tradition, yes.) He believed that things could get better, even if they were run by flawed people - who else could they be run by? And he abhorred not war in itself, but dominance.

Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives;
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honours at their feet.

Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.

Auden, of course, "Elegy for W. B. Yeats," and yes, I know there are variants, and no, it is very late and I am not going to explain who Paul Claudel is just now. You have an Internet spread before you, like a vast cybernetic forebespready thing; gigapythonesses, no waiting.

Anyone who wants to claim Kipling's not actually a poet has to go read Mary Gloster and explain why it doesn't count. There's a lot else, too, but that one is probably the toughest.

I don't think it was all that simple, myself; Empires are disasters because they conflate the military and the economic -- use military power to force market access and maintain a particular social order, until the whole thing crashes hard -- but this is only really well understood as mechanism in the last, oh, thirty years, maybe. What else you do is still an open question.

Kipling didn't have an answer to that; he certainly wasn't blind to the costs of it or the certain eventual fate -- that is, after all, what Recessional is about, and not just Recessional, it's not an abberation in his writing -- of Empire. He was on the side of doing the job, and not stinting the work, and there are a lot of people on that side in any functioning technical culture.

Figuring out what the job is, well, I think that's there, too, as a question and a problem and a necessary duty, in Kipling's work; it's not an easy question and it doesn't get easy answers.

Which, after all, even Orwell acknowledged it didn't have.

And the bitter side of his writing is missed - some of his postwar writing in particular would put him in with Sassoon, if he hadn't written anything before 1915.

Which surprised me a little, but it does seem to fit.

WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!

KING. What's he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

"...Bring me my bow of buring gold,
Bring me my arrows of desire,
Bring me my spear!
O, clouds unfold --
Bring me my chariot of fire..."

Wha be tha carl wha ne wolden flee
Whan peril bene all aboughte?
SHAFT!

2.) I first heard Jerusalem in that Monty Python "buying a mattress sketch"---singing it whilst standing in a fish tank is the only way to get Mr Lambert to remove the bucket from his head after someone's said 'mattress' to him.

3.) Regardless of version or scanning variation, the Chesterton poem could be sung to (wait for it!) County Down, a.k.a. Hie Thee to Kolob.

As for the more modern stuff, I couldn't really tell because I focus mainly on SF these days. But Locus could point you in the right direction. Or maybe other visitors to this site have suggestions for you.

I can see Macdonald hitting the ceiling....

"Confession allowed in alleged plot to kill Bush
"Federal judge rules prosecutors can use statement despite torture claim"

White House Seeks Exception in Abuse Ban

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 - Stepping up a confrontation with the Senate over the handling of detainees, the White House is insisting that the Central Intelligence Agency be exempted from a proposed ban on abusive treatment of suspected Qaeda militants and other terrorists.

So will they apologize when the suspected terrorists turn out to be innocent? Will they actually mean it if they do apologize?

Pretty near anything Cherryh has written will do for me (most of her fantasy doesn't work for me, though). The Foreigner series, for one. (I'm looking forward to finding out what the aiji-dowager and nand' Bren are going to do to fix the rebels permanently. I'm sure Cajeiri will figure into the solution.)

On the other hand, I loved Hammerfall. It's written with desert austerity, a very appropriate choice IMO, and there's an actual plot with actual events. Ate that up. Can't wait for more of the same from her!

Incipit gestis Rudolphi rangifer tarandus

Hwæt, Hrodulf readnosa hrandeor --
Næfde þæt nieten unsciende næsðyrlas!
[etc.]

I think it was a bad sign when she turned away from the tragic implications of the set-up she had with the early Fortress books to write yet another "our heroes resolve all misunderstandings and conflicts among themselves and go on to defeat some faceless bad guys we've never been introduced to" ending.

I think it was a bad sign when [Cherryh] turned away from the tragic implications of the set-up she had with the early Fortress books to write yet another "our heroes resolve all misunderstandings and conflicts among themselves and go on to defeat some faceless bad guys we've never been introduced to" ending.

It ain't over til it's over, as they say: you do know she's written another Fortress book, and for all I could tell from speedreading her online journal, that might not be the last one (anyone have better knowledge?) I'm not sure if it has a pub date yet, but it will be on my buy-in-hardcover list when it appears.

Harriet

Here's my ever-growing list of favorites.

I wonder where Bujold is going to take the Chalion series. Or maybe if: it's not at all clear if this is an ongoing set of books.

Seems to me there is an argument that Kipling is to MakingLight as Heinlein is to RASFW - a perennial McGuffin at worst and something of weight at best but always good for both starting and ending conversation as half the comments repeat?

Linkmeister: Kushner wrote Swordspoint, Thomas the Rhymer (A novel based on that and other ballads, not the ballad), several short stories, co-wrote The Fall of the Kings (Which is in the same world as Swordspoint, a generation and a bit later, but is not a sequel in traditional sense,) and has other stuff forthcoming.

I love that woman. Her books first, but she's just such a cool person.

Cherryh: I saw a "Faded Sun" entry at a WorldCon where Cherryh was a GOH. Absolutely stunning. BTW, I love her Russian Fantasy work as well.

I've a long list of favorite SF and F -- from Tanith Lee's wonderfully decandent fantasy to Sturgeon and Davidson's blend of SF and F to McKillip and **ANYTHING** by LeGuin (I just read a collection of "mainstream" stories... thud!)

I, personally, think that the FSM approves of it. Beer volcano, anyone?

Run, run, away
Run, run away,
There's a moron in the White House
And his friends have come to stay

There's a moron in the White House,
With a record full of wrecks,
With business fraud forgiven,
And Abramoff's pol-stacked decks,
There's the stench of greed, corruption,
And the holy hypocrites,
But the moron in the White House,
He sees nothing but his grits.

Run, run, away
Run, run away,
There's a moron in the White House
And his friends have come to stay

There's a moron in the White House,
Makes rich get richer still,
While the middle class goes under,
And the poor get bigger bills,
Out to China go the fact'ries,
With fact'ries go the jobs,
But the moron he gets richer,
With the robber barons' robs.

Run, run, away
Run, run away,
There's a moron in the White House
And his friends have come to stay

There's a moron in the White House,
When shall we be rid of him,
And his lying vicious buddies,
Drive the country to the rim,
Need a revolution brewing,
Get the rottens stinkers out,
And take and toss their asses,
In jail parole without!

Run, run away,
Run, run way,
There a moron in the White House,
Throw the Bush Gang out today!

You want Lois Bujold's entire Miles Vorkosigan series of novels, natch. It's "military SF", but seriously repurposed and reimagined. Without spoiling too much, it is set up quite early on that the hero - instead of your archetypal 6'6" blonde steel-jawed man of action - is a midget with brittle-bone syndrome (due to fetal exposure to military-grade Nasty Stuff), manic-depressive tendencies, and some rather dissociative traits. They are fast-paced, funny, contain characters who act like actual human beings not cut-outs, deal with some deep and serious issues, and there are a lot of them. They should keep you busy for quite a while.

Two thousand soldiers dead in Iraq,
Two thousand US soldiers that is.
There are so many others dead in Iraq,
The toll goes higher each day.

The British and others who went in there too,
Their lives cut short matter too,
Civilian Iraqis in unpatrolled streets,
The toll goes higher each day.

Saddam was a devil no holy man he,
But what has come after seems worse,
The Sunni, the Shi'ites, the Kurds ethnic strife,
The toll goes higher each day.

Dead are the barbers and bombed are the stores,
Where Christians once sold alcohol,
The women are covered in headscarves some veiled,
The toll grows higher each day.

Oh what is the reason and why is this toll,
Their GNP's dropped down to nought,
Most have no jobs and the streets are at war,
The toll grows higher each.

Creating a training ground of terrorists,
That was not there three years ago,
Extremists take over, life keeps getting worse,
The toll grows higher each day.

Two thousand USA soldiers are dead,
A foreign invasion force toll,
Iraqi youngsters made suicide bombs,
The toll grows higher each day.

The US invasion let libraries burn,
Left streets to the vandals who killed,
Let schools and the civil works all be ransacked,
The toll grows higher each day.

There once was a country with millions of books,
Some hundreds or thousand year old,
But gone is that culture and shattered their world,
The toll grows higher each day.

Will history repeat itself? How much of Bush Misadministration won't be indicted, or will evade being corraled and fingered from "collateral damage"? Stayed tuned, as the Crook Watch continues.

* "I am not a crook!" Richard M. Nixon's infamous word.

Raymond Chandler: ("I don't like guys who stone dames - wherever the dames have been running around - so I told them that he who was without sin was going to cast the first stone. I said it while I was holding a rock the size of a loaf of Wonder Bread. I think they got the message.")

Chuck Palahniuk: ("With spikes through both wrists you speak only in howls. In eighteen hours' time the sky over Jerusalem will darken. The veil of the Temple will be rent in twain. I know this because the Logos knows this.")

PG Wodehouse: (from "The Inimitable Judas": "The Earl of Gethsemane's garden was extremely pleasant, with all the fixings a man of taste could require, but I could not help feeling a lurking sense of what-you-may-call-it. Man was born to trouble as the sparks fly upward, as what's his name says, so it was without too much surprise that I heard Judas give a respectful cough behind me.
"Ah, Judas. More of the chaps arrived?"
"Not precisely, sir. The latest arrivals are a sizeable patrol of Roman legionaries, accompanied by His Reverence the High Priest."
"Egad, Judas! Caiaphas has turned up? That human gumboil?"
He didn't say anything but just raised a sort of sceptical eyebrow. Dashed superior-thinking fellow.")

Donald Kingsbury's Psychohistorical Crisis

In spite of its title, it is not a prequel or a sequel or a spinoff from Asimov's Foundation. One could say it's Kingsbury's homage to Asimov's concepts, which he takes way further out that even the Good Doctor did.

Where are some good discussion groups on higher education?
I especially need to discuss/access information on the following:
1. The ability to 'Challenge' courses and the effects on such ability on enrollment.
2. Pass/fail courses without the need for attendance (i.e. just showing up for tests) and the effect on enrollment of such courses.
3. The ability to earn life-credit and the effect on enrollment.
4. trustworthyness of degrees in the various situations outline above.

I need the information for some recommendations regarding european usage of opencourseware etc.

Thanks.

Newsday's story today on the official number of US military deaths in Iraq hitting 2000 pointed out that this is a significant undercount, for two reasons. It's a count of US citizens who have died in Iraq while serving in the US military. It omits at least 80 deaths of US soldiers who weren't citizens. It also omits all the contractors, many of them ex-military, who died doing things in Iraq that, in any previous war, would have been done by the government.

I can see why they only count people who are in the military when they die, but why on earth is everyone pretending that the resident aliens who died fighting for their adopted land, even though they weren't citizens, never existed?

Serge, I'm relatively ignorant of the fantasy genre. What are examples of its literary side. And perhaps more important, what's worth reading?

Sarah Avery already mentioned Hope Mirrlees's Lud-in-the-Mist -- probably one of the best fantasy novels ever. Besides the recent paperback reprint, there's also an etext (on my website, ZIPped text). Other people have mentioned a lot of series and epics, so I'll keep my list to mostly stand-alone novels, since that's my preference anyway.

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle

The Face in the Frost by John Bellairs (he also wrote some good children's fantasy and mysteries, but this adult novel is much the best)

Little, Big by John Crowley

Tim Powers' novels -- it's hard to pick out just one, but probably The Anubis Gates, On Stranger Tides, Last Call and Declare are among the best.

James P. Blaylock's novels, especially The Last Coin

Avram Davidson's The Phoenix and the Mirror (first of a trilogy, but stands alone well; the second and third (Vergil in Averno and The Scarlet Fig) are rare, and also somewhat less accessible than the first -- almost Joycean in spots)

I've heard that the US military is several per cent non-citizen (which, btw, is higher than the percentage of non-Iraqis in the insurgency...), but until this Newsday story, I had not heard that their deaths officially Don't Count. I'm dubious.

Attacks are reported, the Pentagon then confirms the casualties. The Iraq coalition Casualty Count doesn't seem to note a 4% discrepency. I don't see a step where 4% of the attacks would disappear from the casualty count.

Anyone want to dig up the Journal-Constitution article cited by Newsday and see what the original assertion was?

And yes, over 100 other Americans have been killed in Iraq. In a saner world, THAT would be a major story, but here in Bizarro World, that's beeb dwarfed by all the other disasters.

The phrase you want is Borrow-And-Squander Republicans. Rolls off the tongue really nicely. Make sure to sneer the word "squander" when you say it. I've used this verbally to fabulous effect.

Avram Davidson's The Phoenix and the Mirror (first of a trilogy, but stands alone well; the second and third (Vergil in Averno and The Scarlet Fig) are rare, and also somewhat less accessible than the first -- almost Joycean in spots)

I don't want to give an impression that the latter two are not as good -- Vergil in Averno is probably slightly better, and The Scarlet Fig (which I'm not quite finished reading yet) is also quite good -- but the second is out of print and hard to find, and the third is currently in print only in an expensive small-press edition -- so you would probably want to read them only after reading more of Davidson's easier-to-find books and deciding that you can't get enough of him. They're very enjoyable if you are willing to give them the close attention they require.

TNH & PNH: could Tor do an omnibus edition of the three Vergil Magus books? It's hard to recommend them when used copies of the second are $57+ and the limited edition of the third (50GBP) may already be sold out...

Who will be next?

It's not Borrow and Squander though, it's Squander and Borrow.

The "Tax and Spend" Democrats FIRST raised taxes, and then spent. They used the spending then as the basis for keeping the taxes high, keeping the tolls on the Massachusetts Turnpike (long before The Big Dig the tolls were supposed to be abolish, the original bonds had all expired, but the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority found or invented all sorts of projects to continue spending money on, and continued the tolls, and issues more bonds of some such based their rationale on "see, we have these construction projects and highway beautification projects we will need money for."

The Republicraps in Washington, however, first issue blank checks for Iraq, throw money to Hallliburton, Bechtel, and Florida residents for "hurricane damage" in areas not suffering any, and then belatedly issue legislation increasing the federal debt ceiling and borrowing limits.

Or perhaps, it should be "Misappropriate and Borrow"--they're cutting the life support programs for the poor and the unwell, and lining the pockets more of government contractors and sectarion bigot organizations all of which claim to be Christian organzations--the non-Christian organizations which appled for Faith-based program programs, somehow all got turned down....

Has anybody mentioned Lord Dunsany? The King of Elfland's Daughter is flat-out amazing. And, going with the Edwardian fantasy theme, I'd definitely recommend any of the short stories of Saki (H. H. Munro) and Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday.

I've never read The Face In the Frost, but Bellairs gave me some of my most fondly-remembered childhood trauma. That mummy-thing that makes you a mummy, and the blue-burning candles in The Mummy, the Will and the Crypt...god. *Shudder* Also, I'm firmly convinced that Tim Burton should get back in touch with his homey, creepifying roots and make a movie version of The House with a Clock in Its Walls. I don't care how many studio executives I have to kill to make it happen.

Tim Burton's version would no doubt be better, though.

LONDON, England (AP) -- King Tutankhamen was a red wine drinker, according to a researcher who analyzed traces of the vintage found in his tomb.

Maria Rosa Guasch-Jane told reporters Wednesday at the British Museum that she made her discovery after inventing a process that gave archaeologists a tool to discover the color of ancient wine.

"This is the first time someone has found an ancient red wine," she said.

Wine bottles from King Tut's time were labeled with the name of the product, the year of harvest, the source and the vine grower, Guasch-Jane said, but did not include the color of the wine.

It's been a while since I read it, but I recall "Cry Silver Bells" by Thomas Burnett Swann being a very good read.

But aphasia or minor malapropisms typing things??

Thank you for letting me know of the existence of The Purple Fig. But I've just discoverd that my admiration for the work of Avram Davidson does in fact have bounds: it's fifty bucks, and Amazon doesn't carry it.

I happily bought The Other 19th C and The A.D. Treasury AND Investigations... - - but fifty bucks for a book is Right Out. So I'll second your motion for a three-in-one omnibus edition of the "Vergil Magus" books. (A trade edition of PF would do the trick, too.)

I guess it's good to know that I DO l have limits.

The inability to buy books by Avram Davidson might be further evidence that I've crossed over to Bizarro World. Because on a rational-ordered planet, they should be readily available.

Tim Powers' Declare is a fine, fine book. Highly recommended.

Sorry for disturbing you, Brooke: I also have Poe, Damon Runyon, Anthony Burgess, Frank Miller and Arthur Conan Doyle if you scroll down the pharyngula thread...

I spot-checked some of the CentCom press releases looking for non-citizens - so far I've found one guy whose home is listed as "Saipan", but no explicit non-citizens. OTOH, the CentCom casualty releases don't say one way or another. So this is still a single unconfirmed news report.

In other news, Miers has withdrawn.

Citizenship is one of the carrots for enlisting, these days -- if you enlist, it's supposed to make the process of naturalization quicker.

I can't find the reference about not counting non-citizen deaths in the total, either, but I read something like it a while back -- a couple of years? And I know it wasn't in Newsday.

As to recommended books, I've been doing lists for somewhere around 2 decades now in Locus -- check old February issues for all reviewers' recs -- but won't try to boil them down here. The main point is, lots of people are still doing great books, and you've probably never heard of some of those folks since they just keep coming along.

If you can adjust to shorter works, genre mixing and occasionally-edgy topics, collections are another way to go. Margo Lanagan, Anna Tambour, Jeff VanderMeer.... Lots of great stuff out there.

Second verse, same as the first... A little bit louder and a little bit worse.

Who's second-best?

I do it more frequently in handwriting, because I have longer to think about the rest of the sentence and forget what I'm actually writing at the time. I often just skip letters when handwriting. It makes anything I write by hand very hard to read.

(On the side of enablers, however, I've discovered the madness which is Wodehouse fandom, and am now the proud possessor of a "What Would Jeeves Do?" t-shirt, from here: http://www.cafepress.com/lucylou.23993670 It's very obviously Stephen Fry as Jeeves, which I'm happy about as a ravening Fry fangirl. But the shirt would be worth it if only for the text on the back, which has already garnered me several splutters and lots of puzzled looks.)

I have been convinced from about age 12 that Wodehouse should be properly counted as fantasy, since his world is so utterly removed from reality. And it's right up there with Narnia in worlds I want to visit, or at least live up to.

JVP's LJ is still being updated, though his most recent activity is in his own reply threads rather than de novo posts.

At a library sale earlier this year, I picked up a biography of Teddy Roosevelt's youngest son, Quentin; it was written/compiled by another of TR's sons, Kermit. About half of the book is made up of letters of condolence received after Quentin's death in combat during WWI-- all three of Quentin's brothers also fought in WWI, and having survived that, re-upped with the military in WWII. I find it nearly impossible to comprehend that in itself, much less try to imagine a modern parallel.

But the connection to this from upthread is that one of the letters of condolence was from Lord Dunsany, who enclosed a sonnet. I'd been wondering whether it had been written expressly for that occasion, but apparently not; Quentin was shot down in mid-1918 and "A Dirge of Victory" was first published in 1916 with a number of other short pieces by Dunsany about the wreckage of France:

I saw a green door ajar in an upper room: the whole of the front wall of the house was gone: the door partly opened oddly on to a little staircase, whose steps one could just see, that one wondered whither it went. The door seemed to beckon and beckon to some lost room, but if one could ever have got there, up through that shattered house, and if the steps of that little staircase would bear, so that one came to, the room that is hidden away at the top, yet there could only be silence and spiders there, and broken plaster and the dust of calamity; it is only to memories that the green door beckons; nothing remains.

(Okay, so it's a joke video, but it's still amusing...)

We can only hope it's less closely than Chalion and Hallowed Hunt. As I have remarked on LJ, our protagonists in [insert title] are an intelligent, strong-willed young woman being buffeted by circumstance (and relatives), and the protective, world-weary, slightly-shady-but-loyal-in-a-pinch man with someone or something living in his gut. Oh, and the King is wasting away. Political hijinks ensue.

I liked it quite a lot, the first time.

Yes - and it's really, profoundly and absolutely distressing when you realize you're using structures from the wrong language.

And even when reality intrudes it is Wodehousified. The awful Oswald Mosely becomes the ridiculous Roderick Spode (secretly connected to the mysterious Eulalie... but I have said too much). Bertie Wooster sees an old Oxford chum on the Aldermaston CND march. The Russian novelist Vladimir Brusiloff arrives in England during the Russian Civil War to exchange merry stories about playing golf with Lenin (while inwardly rejoicing that three of his creditors have been purged to Siberia). The gangs of Prohibition New York are exemplified by Bat Jarvis, whose heart can be won through a shared interest in cats. A typical Wodehouse young man remarks, while waiting to burgle Blandings Castle yet again, that it reminds him of his time in the commandos in the war.

As you say, another world.

Nestman

An odd (also lovely and subtly disturbing) study in contrasts.

I knew it!!!!!

(Well, no I didn't, but it had to be said.)
(And actually when I was a young teenager Walter Koenig was my main lust-object of the Trek crew.)

Anyway, when I told my wife about Takei, she also said she knew it. Why? Because of the episode where Solu thinks he's d'Artagnan. I don't see it, but what do I know?

And about the Particle "A manhole cover with his name on it," there is NO WAY that was the path of the manhole cover. An illustrator's fanciful embellishment, no doubt.

re manhole cover: It probably flipped over only once on its trip; enthusiastic illustrator, as said. I do wonder about the size of the explosion, though.

It's probably premature to start flipping manhole covers, with or without fancily improbable loops. (I've seen one rise off the hole and 'dance' in heavy rain; water was coming out of the manhole and lifted the lid at least two inches above paving level!)

General feel about that: Big deal. "Tacky George" is a really nice guy and a great guest. Patient and friendly with fans (even the sad weirdos), hard working, understanding of the crap that a high-staff-turnover campus convention sometimes puts guests through.

At one convention -- 1985 as I recall -- Takei invited the audiance at one of his appearances to meet him at some ungodly early hour to go jogging around campus. What an uncommonly nice thing to do!

Did anyone show up?

As I recall, a dozen or so.

My new wife (mmm, that's nice to say) has a great story in which George shows up at her hotel room door at 6:00 one Sunday morning and asks if [her ex] could come out and play. Her ex, it seems, was the sole survivor of the previous morning's jog.

What kind of fan generation is this? Everybody knows, when you go jogging with an Enterprise officer, you don't wear a red shirt.

Your pocket handkerchief, however, is a matter of individual preference.

Is it safe if you're working in engineering rather than security?

(A couple of years ago, looking through the company org chart, I discovered I'm supposed to be a red shirt. Worse, my job title is suitably anonymous for a victim: 'technical specialist'. I think that means there's a target in UV on the back of my shirt.)

I don't live in New Jersey, nor is Newsday published there: it's a Long Island and New York City paper (HQ on the Island).

Hey, Stefan, i was doing radio at WUSB when I-Con first started up. I interviewed Nic Yermakov and Michael Swanwick the first or second year of the convention. I've got the tape somewhere . . .

"Though it originated before the pre-electronic age..."

So when exactly is "before the pre-electronic age"?

"You Knit WHAT?!": ROFL. I have been wondering what all that 'fun fur' was for. It might make nice tribbles, for those who feel the need.

Y'know... I've lately taken to threatening to send shiploads of tribbles to 'help' with our various technical issues...

At the foot of the Flatiron Building (and various other shorts from the dawn of cinema) is now available in the real world, on DVD.

The National Film Preservation Foundation has issued More Treasures from American Film Archives 1894-1931 on 3 DVDs (573 minutes). The set comes with an audio commentary track, and with a "Program notes" paperback.

The Amazon link doesn't seem to provide a full listing of the 50 shorts in the set (they list 11), but "The Streets of New York" shorts ARE on it.

(Wonderful things, public libraries.)

http://www.livejournal.com/users/magicdragon2/3176.html?mode=reply

(And my abject apologies if I have inadvertently duplicated an earlier link to the same. I did make an honest search, but my eyes are not what they once were.)

Too bad about that, Protestant women who have no representation on the Supreme Court, Roman Catholic women who have none, Hispanics who have none, people of east and southern Asian descent (one could argue that Ruth Bader Ginsburg is of west Asian ancestry, though not for a very long time....), those of non-Judaeo-Christian religions, Muslims.... Schmuck's court is made of Anton Scalias, who don't believe that other people's religiosiyt or lack thereof and values have any place being considered when sitting in judgment, only -his- religious values have merit and gravitas to apply...

Skin!

Sounds kind of boring, but watch this video supposedly demonstrating this new material - you tell me if it looks like a scientific demonstration, or - well, something else entirely.

Here is the video demonstration

Many thanks to gizmodo for bringing this to my attention.

A Tyrannosaurus Rex? Please, let it be a T. Rex.

The engineers who designed the floodwalls that collapsed during Hurricane Katrina did not fully consider the porousness of the Louisiana soil or make other calculations that would have pointed to the need for stronger levees with deeper pilings and wider bases, researchers say.

And if they'd been better designed, a dinosaur or two could have walked across them during a flood without making them collapse.

Collect them all!

Gracious Teresa: I am pleased the link did please.

I don't think they intended it the way it reads. But I wouldn't put it past the Pentagon.

The text says "You'll spot him wearing a top hat, black coattails and dark glasses," but there are none such in the picture. Also he looks kind of white-bread, really. Not spooky enough.

http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2005/11/emw303435.htm

And the actual patent is here:

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=knight.IN.&s2=plot&OS=IN/knight+AND+plot&RS=IN/knight+AND+plot

While I would like to chant "prior art!" and make it go away, there have been enough bonehead software patents granted that I'm not at all certain that it will be dismissed.

I don't know the patent process well enough to know if this is something to be concerned about; I don't know who would step in to fight this. Wouldn't one of the automated fiction tools (plot builder or whatever) be sufficient evidence of prior art? I don't think Polti's 36 Dramatic Situations describes it in sufficient detail, but maybe something more recent does (such as Tobias' 20 Master Plots).

(Oh, hi--first time commenter here.)

Still, the patent will be published as a matter of routine. What happens next?

There's lots of info in the /. commentary, if you don't mind sifting out the dross:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=167277&threshold=5

Take Leonard Cohen songs out of playlist on gloomy, rainy Friday afternoons when the weekend forecast is for more rain and wind, too.

Specifically, the distributors of the film "13 Going On 30" would be infringing.

The problem with this approach is that the patent application is substantially more specific than the general plots of this kind, and relates to a story element more than the plot itself: a character who makes a wish to remain asleep until something happens, the wish becomes true, but the character then discovers that he has had a life in the meantime that he doesn't remember.

The comments on Kos range from the totally skeptical ("Karl Rove is behind it") to the deliriously happy ("Impeachment Now!! Woo hoo!!")My guess is, the Times is trying to redeem itself after the Judith Miller fiasco, and with Bush's popularity numbers dropping it feels emboldened...

On a much more minor note, there's an ABC (Australia) survey about "Your favourite opera moment". But the trouble is that my top few "moments" don't have much music in them - it's when something happens in the plot or action, like the moment that the Countess forgives Count Almaviva in the Marriage of Figaro (where my favourite music in it is the letter-writing duet) - or in the case of Tales of Hoffman, one tiny phrase that appears just once as the "Muse" reveals herself.[/tangent]

Since this is Sunday and I've been online reading the "newspapers" for ages, I can't say anything more coherent at this point!

Niven's Phssthpok the Pak and the Brennan monster at least. Heinlein writes about Bonobo with bigger brains.

On the other hand if there is anything at all without "something or other in common with some SF" then once announced it will be the most popular story idea of the month.

I'd have thought PET scans superior to magnetic resonence imaging for the research but what do I know?

The last time it was brought up, the argument lasted six months or more; I still have the scars.

It is four years later, I'm now a mod on that board, and someone brought it up again.

http://www.strangebuttrewe.com/Crafty.htm

On another subject, I believe there are some haggis fans around here. The Vermont Country Store is now selling tinned haggis. As a holiday treat, apparently.

Signed,
You Might Be Surprised How Hard It Is To Find A 36A Bra And No, 34B Is Absolutely Not Equivalent No Matter What Anyone Says

http://www.decentexposures.com

They'll work with you to get the bra right.

That's odd, Barbie didn't complain once in the bench tests.

Next up: Nitinol Underwires -- It Knows When You Are(tm).* And for the gentlemen, Trojan Graphite and Durex DU.

BoingBoing can't get all the, er, scoops.

*Slogan tested 13.4% better than "Deploys for the Boys."

There was just a clip on The Weather Channel that was captioned "Mission to Venus blasted off today for Europe."

Bloody metric/English confusion again, I suppose.

Victoria's Secret has over 35 styles in 36A. I know, I used to wear that size. Then I had kids, and now I wear a 38B. They're not that much easier to find, as most bra-makers seem to think that anyone wearing a 38 band *must* be fluffy.

I also had good luck with Playtex Thank Goodness it Fits line.

Victoria's Secret may or may not still use whatever it was to scent the place that sent my sinuses into revolt, I haven't had the inclination to make the experiment and go inside one in quite a long time.

Mike: Barbie had cones. Cones, melons, cannonballs, torpedoes... different shapes. Hmm, Barbie is like silicone pads? (artificial inflation...).