It's time for that annual exercise in futility we call "picking the Derby winner". I'm down to a choice between Scat Daddy (bad pedigree for the distance, but the best preparation of any horse in the race) and Dominican (steadily improving; some believe he's only good on artificial surfaces, but I think it may be a coincidence that he started getting good while racing on Polytrack.)

It's time for that annual exercise in futility we call "picking the Derby winner". I'm down to a choice between Scat Daddy (bad pedigree for the distance, but the best preparation of any horse in the race) and Dominican (steadily improving; some believe he's only good on artificial surfaces, but I think it may be a coincidence that he started getting good while racing on Polytrack.)

We're going to be in midtown on Friday night. We're looking for good or interesting ethnic. If all else fails, we'll go to Virgil's.

Saturday lunch I'm guessing we'll grab what we can near the hotel (the Marriott Financial Center in downtown). Are some of the restaurants open in that part of town on Saturday? It looks like there's a lot of Thai in the area, which is nice to see.

On Sunday, I want to try to bring a group over to Chinatown for dim sum. It looks like it's only about a mile from the hotel over to Chinatown, which would be a nice walk if the weather is good. I've eaten at a few dim sum places in Chinatown, but I no longer remember the names of them.

My extended interpretation:

The further problem which that web-page itself embodies - rather than commenting on - is that if you try to deal with the BPD behaviors by forestalling or countermoving against them, you can only do it if you become and act completely paranoid, controlling, and start sounding crazy yourself. This confirms the suspicions of the person with BPD and the people they have convinced you are Bad.

"A strange game. The only way to win is not to play."

The microplane zester is very precisely the point of culinary extravagence up to which I will not go; I know they're lovely implements, a housemate had one, but I will not pay $35 for a grater.

Which leads to the thought of Martha's mum being Catwoman.

European readers of Making Light can gloss all this better than I can.

Yuo'll spend the rest of your life accumulating kitchen tools as you find the need for them. (My mother had one drawer we called the 'funny shapes' drawer: all the odd-shaped things that didn't really fit (in either sense) into the 'spoon' drawer (also including turners) and the 'knife' drawer (the one you looked before reaching into, because everything in there was dangerous). Where do you put potato mashers and garlic presses?)

On straining lemon juice for lemonade: the normal-size mesh works fine; when it starts getting full of pulp, turn it over and pour water through it (unless you're like me and don't mind the pulp).

In other, personal news, my goal is to have the final edit of the thesis done before those horses cross the finish line. As I have about 10 more pages to edit, I should go focus on that rather than read ML.

Let me recommend Bully Online as a useful resource. It's the best website I've seen for learning about bullies:
1. what bullies do - see the 4 most common types of bully- and do to you: see am I being bullied?
2. how to recognize the effects bullies have. i.e. stress that often you blame yourself for, because bullies are sneaky like that.
3. how to start countering them and start reducing the stress they've caused.

I know several people who've been helped by this site, including me.

Four years ago I was working at a nonprofit* and getting increasingly and weirdly stressed. I couldn't figure it why, which itself was stressful. Once you've been working for a while, you'd like to think of yourself as fully capable of handling anything reasonable and rational.

Except my boss was an expert at couching the unreasonable and irrational as if they were the most innocuous requests.

Luckily I found the Bullies site: just being able to define the bully-caused stress as such took half the stress away. Her affects on me changed from chronic to acute.

I finished the project and happily went onwards. She died two years later from a stroke: sad, but not unexpected.

All to say that if you know anyone who is getting unusually stressed in a "blaming-themselves even though they can't name what they're doing badly" way, point them to this site. Because it's a UK site the legal matters won't necessarily apply to other locations, but then you'll have the terminology and knowledge to find your local equivalent.

---------
* low wages, good cause, at the height of the low-times for Silicon Valley so changing jobs wasn't easy.

If you've got a rasp around, it can double as a lemon/lime zesting tool.

There are also three tool drawers. One has stuff I'm most likely to use; the other two contain, respectively: stuff I almost never use, like cookie cutters; and all the impedimenta associated with blender sticks and food processors, along with some other pointy stuff.

I used to notice that every time I watched Alton Brown, I'd end up getting another piece of cooking equipment. (Now he's scheduled across from the late-night weather, so mostly we miss him. Equipment purchases have gone down somewhat.) (Never did feel the need for an Advantium oven, though.)

* It is my contention that the most important kitchen tool is the pair of scissors, so I can cut through all the disgustingly human-proof plastic that's in my way every time I want to open something.

What you need in a kitchen often seems like the first chapter of many cookbooks, and could be a giant thread in itself. [Goes to kitchen. Checks. Perhaps not: several of my favorite cookbooks don't have a tools section. Thought they did.]

Two things I can strongly recommend:

1. splurging on, or not being cheap in getting your good sharp kitchen knives*. A high-quality knive is like a Great Weapon in Brust. It makes you want to use it. Whatever money you'd save on a cheap knife will be lost in spoiled produce and more expensive cuts of meat because you won't want to do as much work yourself.

2. Getting a set of Oxo Good Grips or similar implements**. Same argument as for the knives. Good design makes a tool fun, perhaps effortless, or at least not burdensome.

My Oxo mandoline- that's fun. I'll be looking at produce, and the thought will come "Hey, I haven't tried that yet on the mandoline. Why not?"

ok, three things
3. two silicone oven mitts, and, if you have nonstick pots and pans, a silicone spatula or two. Silicone is a relatively new material for the kitchen and I wouldn't use it for learning to bake, but it makes for much safer oven mitts. I also prefer my silicone basting tool to my old brushes- easier to wash. Note: test your potential purchase by twisting it: all-silicone won't change color, silicone with filler will.
-----
* back 10 open threads ago I'd written:
"A random observation of the really obvious which someone else could still find helpful:

Really sharp kitchen knives are a wonderful thing. I recently found my set of good German knives, the ones I'd let get buried in a box during my last move. I'd forgotten how much ease they add to cooking.

They add a +2 to all things culinary- shopping at farmers markets, browsing recipes- because any ingredient's food prep time/ effort is cut by half. Thus the complexity of recipes I'm willing to try for a given time-budget has gone up correspondingly.

And it wasn't that I was using butter-knives on raw squash, just good, not great, knives."

** Unfortunately I'm not immediately seeing any big sets for sale (i.e. a Costco version).

I'd recommend signing up for 'Cooks Illustrated' (if you haven't already) because they do reviews of equipment. (The expensive stuff isn't always the best, surprisingly.) They're the ones who do 'America's Test Kitchen Cookbook', the one in the five-ring binder. (Found at Costco a few weeks ago: only $20!) It has recommendations for tools that are necessary and those that are handy-but-not-necessary. Also lots and lots of recipes, in many sections. Got entertained by reading as sets the names of the recipes on the facing pages where the dividers go in.

Take a silver julep cup, run a lime wedge around the rim and frost with white sugar. In the bottom of the cup, thoroughly muddle, oh, a teaspoon or less of turbinado sugar and a small handful of torn mint leaves, and maybe a little squeeze of lime juice to get it going. In a cocktail shaker, shake 2-3 oz. of reposado or añejo tequila and the juice of half a lime with crushed (not cubed) ice. Pour into the julep cup and give the whole thing a gentle stir or two to work up the sugar and mint. Garnish with a lime wedge and mint sprigs. Strong tequila taste at the start, with a sweet, minty finish.

It's basically a no-salt margarita with mint, prepared like a julep. I have no idea whether this recipe would work, but it's what I'd do. The proportions might need some finessing. Have a backup cocktail available.

I'm getting together with friends tomorrow for Cinco de Mayo a day late -- I'm making ceviche. Spent much too long today juicing a dozen limes with one of those wooden citrus reamers. Luckily I had no hangnails. I wasn't able to get seafood as nice as I wanted--the snapper was a little soft, but it smelled clean. I hope it turns out. I'm thinking of roasting the corn tonight and chilling it overnight before assembly.

Then we're going to go see The Asylum Street Spankers here on tour, which I'm starting to really look forward to.

I may try that! It certainly sounds like it has potential.

This may be a stupid question: how do I crush ice? What springs to mind is "ice cubes, hammer, cutting board on kitchen counter" but I can already picture the potential for ice shards everywhere. (My culinary aptitude is...not what it could be.)

Mandolines scare the bejesus out of me (and I'm generally OK w/ sharp edges on things). Is the Oxo in some way considerably safer than the rest of the pack? (I've got a Star, and at this point you'd have to pay me to use it.)

"One of the planet's great annual barking-mad festivals of aesthetic catastrophe" - PNH

I especially love his Euro-spelling of "esthetic".

Fold the ice cubes into the dishcloth, and hit it with the hammer. Or if you're very strong and have a marble rolling pin (a marvelous thing for pastries, I'm told), you could try that, but I'd still wrap it in a cloth first.

It's marvellous.

There's someone gayer than Graham Norton? How on earth is that possible?

If you make Margarita juleps, let me know how they taste.

* I see by googling that you can still get mechanical ice crushers (e.g.), now with 21st-century styling. It seems a bit of an affectation to me, but of a certain appeal to the retro-lounge crowd.

"Fair enough," he said, and that was the end of it. And it's a good thing, too, or I would've had to whip out the James Last.

Before seeing that (or rather as much of it as I could stand to watch) if someone had used the phrase "ABBA, only stupider" to describe something, I'd've thought they were exaggerating.

Was that song a deliberate micturation extraction of those incredibly sexist "Fly me" ads BA used to run?

Older two cats have noses out of joint but I think they'll adjust. So far: Angelina is on the hassock behind my desk which is her usual place, don't know where Badb Catha is, Yumi is running around on the 2nd floor and Siggy is downstairs running about/sleeping. Alternately. I've witnessed it.

I haven't seen Bob Altemeyer's work mentioned here (not that I read *everything* here) and a search on Altemeyer brings back nothing, so...

Read his book -- free! Online! http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/%7Ealtemey/

It explains the psychology of social dominators and right-wing authoritarians. It is fan-damn-tastic, and I truly believe every progressive with any interest in American politics needs to understand the content of this book. And it's fun to read, too.

Thank you, and I return you to your previously scheduled Cinco de Mayo.

Now how do I wash a microplane zester?

'America's Test Kitchen Cookbook',

I second this recommendation. We found it at Costco a couple of months ago and bought 3, one for us and two as gifts. It's especially nice because it explains a lot of the steps that other cookbooks take for granted, but that new cooks aren't familiar with.

GO UTAH JAZZ! UTAH OVER HOUSTON! WHAT A GAME! WOOOOO!

Thanks. Just wanted to say it.

Wanted to highlight and respond to Patrick's particle on Thomas Sowell off of carpetbaggerreport.com. For those who haven't clicked it, Sowell is a popular and influential "intellectual" right-wing columnist. He just wrote the following, published in National Review:

When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can’t help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup.

Me: What’s really bizarre about this is, if you read the whole column, it looks like he was trying to be George Carlin. This is not a real column; it’s a serious of random observations where he’s trying to be funny or clever. He couldn’t come up with a real column, (probably trying & failing to defend Iraq, or Gonzales, or Attorneygate in drafts he threw away).

As I'm sure many readers of this page know, when you think of something small & clever you like, but there’s no room for it in the bigger thing you’re working on, you file it away for later. When you can’t produce a column on deadline, you collect all the little bits you have and publish them. There’s nothing wrong with this practice in and of itself, unless you’re a crypto-fascist like Sowell.

But think about it. This isn’t something he came up with randomly. This is something he wrote down earlier, decided he liked it, saved it for a rainy day, pulled it OUT again, and published it without hesitation.

Isn’t this patently Un-American? Shouldn’t he be fired for this, in a just world? It is, and he won’t (as it's not), but let’s stay outraged, just the same.

Eurovision. Oh yes. Many will be the dress-up party and varying bouts of stunned silence with hysterical, unbelieving laughter around the TV. It's one of the big drawcards for our 'ethnic' station, SBS. (Another is their soccer coverage.) Next Saturday, the preliminary finals, and Sunday 13th May, the Big Night. "Barking-mad festivals of aesthetic catastrophe" is an excellent description.

Keir (#46) If the people hanging the flag knew it was a sign of distress and request for help, perhaps the upside-down Union Jack was deliberate?

(The traditional snark on this is to then point out that the French use their tricolour as an ensign, thus saving them time in making distress signals at sea.)

The inflatable bit I thought worked really well; the beer commercial bit (including gratuitous shot of girl in bikini) not so well.

(Well, it might not be as new as all that: I don't watch a whole lot of television with ads; I in fact saw it at the cinema.)

You clean a microplane rasp with water, from the back. If you must, and only if you must, clean the working surface directly use something durable -- stainless steel steel wool, say -- in quantity, and strictly from the direction the teeth don't point in a wipe-lift, wipe-lift motion. (Sideways is bad, because the teeth all point both sidewayses, too.)

Microplane rasps were originally developed for rapid stock removal in hardwood; they should be treated with exactly the same caution you consider appropriately applied to an exposed rack of razorblades, because that's exactly what they are.

General note on good knives --

Get a leather stop and some good (~1 micron grit) honing compound) and make a couple passes on each side of the blade before each use, or something completely flat like plexiglass or a small steel mirror and some 3M mylar-backed extra-fine microabrasive, and do the same couple passes per side of the blade before each use.

(Knife steels act to file and swage the edge; they're appropriate more or less solely for knifes you consider disposable or for knives that can't hold an edge anyway due to metallurgical deficiency.)

I am personally not fond of the German style of consumer cooking knife with the heavy handle and the quillions, and prefer the French, which is lighter in the handle and is easier to get without the quillions.

It is no longer true that you can get a finer edge on high-carbon knife blades than you can on stainless steel, but it is still true that they're easier to sharpen. (You can also get an excellent general purpose cooking knife for 25 CDN in high carbon.)

My personal preference (leaving aside the completely lovely antique Sabatier knives with blade forms no one still makes) are the Grohmann knives from Pictou, Nova Scotia. High-carbon stainless and they'll cheerfully sell the restaurant grade/style knives over the web.

"One Nation, Under Dog."

It may be the only sharp cooking tool I have that has never tasted my blood. (ADHD is not an advantage in cooking.)

I also have a marvelous little microplane nutmeg grinder (with storage space for both whole nutmeg and the fresh-ground, with a shaker, all in an object smaller than my fist), but I haven't used it yet. Next time I bake that almond bread.

Which may be today, now that I think about it. My mouth is watering.

I was lucky enough to have money at the same time that Lee Valley had some old-stock Sabatiers from a warehouse. I'm almost afraid to use it.

Seriously.

(Luckily I had fast enough reflexes to freeze as I touched it, but I really don't want there to be a next time; while they're a great kitchen implement I can't help thinking that there's also a very grim role waiting for them in an as-yet unpublished Iain Banks novel ...)

I bought a tiny micro-plane zester for I think four pounds, in a really excellent kitchen shop in Ledbury. (Right next to a really excellent deli, and downstairs from a really excellent cafe. Ledbury's worth visiting, and that particular street corner is worth lingering on and going back to.) My microplaner wouldn't be any good for hardwood, but it's perfect for limes and lemons.

Honest to Tiwaz, it is a woodworking file. The Microplane people discovered there were better profit margins in kitchen implements, but the only difference is the packaging.

P J Evans in 61 --

That's where mine are from, too, and I use one of mine quite a bit. (Another is the serious-turkey carving knife and I rarely cook turkey, never mind serious-turkey; the third is the spare for the first one, still in Cosmoline.)

No sharp knife should ever be put in a dishwasher, which goes about double for high carbon steel bladed sharp knives and off into "AIGH! NO!" territory for those old Sabatier knives, but if they're wiped and dried immediately after use (and the wood on the handles gets some walnut oil from time to time) they're really quite durable. The trick of wrapping the blade in paper towel, soaking the towel in vinegar, and wrapping the lot in aluminum foil will give you a pickled gray/blue blade colour, and avoid issues with bits of the blade turning black.

(via TreeHugger and Baking Bites)

This is a less stupid question: many moons ago we talked about Kalamazoo, coming up this week, so I know other folks here are going. Who else besides me, and does anyone want to meet up during the conference? I present Thursday afternoon and am free to play the rest of the time, minus whatever time I spend in my room writing my NEXT presentation (for 5/17). Also, any advice on dress for a female presenter? Do people do the formal business look, business casual, jeans and funky dresses....?

(Will you be taking advantage of the situation to have a turret added to your abode?)

The major annoyance is that unless your roofers are very, very neat, you will find bits of peeled-off shingle here and there for a long time afterwards.

Heavy-duty cooks tend to look down on them, but we have a set of Henckels knives & love them.

As for summer movies--I wish _Spider-man 3_ looked good, but it really doesn't. I'd be excited for the third _Bourne_ movie, but it's directed by the same person as the second and the second made me extremely motion-sick (I haven't watched any trailers yet, because I didn't realize it was coming out until yesterday). And after the messes that were _Ocean's 12_ and the second _Pirates of the Caribeean_ movie . . .

Well, there's going to be a whole lot of waiting on reviews & word of mouth before I get excited about things.

(Oh! But there is _Stardust_, which I have hopes for. Almost forgot about that.)

Meanwhile, I am cautiously awaiting the release of the Fantastic Four movie. Michael Chiklis, who plays Ben Grimm, is a big fan of the comic-book and I got the sense he wasn't too happy with the earlier movie, but that this time, with the Origin out of the way, they were able to tell a story. Galactus is supposed to show up at the end. I wonder if he'll be wearing the purple striped trunks and the purple head-bucket.

Check the ground for nails, very carefully. You really don't want to step on a roofing nail, and the lawnmower won't appreciate them either.

Oh that's not good.

But does it have a covertly sexist plot for that extra level of unpleasantness?

(As for your other comments, I didn't see the first _Fantastic Four_ movie so am not particularly waiting on the second.)

Actually, Spiderman's girlfriend becomes endangered only once in this movie, but it's still annoying. At least, in Superman returns, when Lois Lane is getting tossed around inside the plane, she tries to strap herself down. She's not passive. (Heck, she even saves Superman from drowning later on.)

The contractors who worked on my house were supposed to use a heavy magnet to find all the roofing nails on the ground, but I still found roofing nails, and even a few gutter spikes (if that's the right term), in my flowerbeds after I had the old shingles torn off and new ones put on. But it was the nail my tire found in the driveway that made me wonder just how diligent they were with the magnet.

This movie made me realize that X-men 3 wasn't such a big mess after all.

Would that be called praising with loud damns?

It sounds like Stan Lee and friends forgot the basic rule of show biz: "Leave the theater before the vegetables come out". I guess I'll wait for the DVD or the HD broadcast on HBO.

When we had our roof done a couple of years ago after an epic hailstorm, the contractor informed us that his insurance didn't let him perform if there was more than a 30% chance of rain.

Kind of, because X3 could easily have been a great movie, a great swan song. At least, unlike Spiderman 3, it had many moments of great beauty and sadness, like when the Angel refuses to take the Cure and literally spreads his wings and escapes, flying by Alcatraz where a young mutant is being prisonner and looks on with yearning.

Oh, I agree completely. X3 could have been X2 with more angst and grimness, if only.

Personally, I wish that they'd forgotten about X3 and spent some time and energy producing a decent film of Dr. Strange. I've been hoping someone with a lot of money would realize that modern CGI could do well by Steve Ditko's graphic concepts.

They have that in Munich, too; I was on a bicycle tour around the city, and they took us to see it. The main spot is in this lovely tree-shaded section of creek, and people in wetsuits line up on each bank and take turns in the wave.

It's on YouTube, of course; Here, here, and here.

I am no longer enmeshed in such a situation, but thank you for the thought and effort to provide a resource.

My response was partly based on my own experience and partly a reaction to the "helpful" suggestions in the web page - e.g. you need to quickly look around to see the facial expressions the BPD person is making at the people you're talking to, you need to quiz all your friends to find out what he/she is telling them, etc. That is just a recipe for becoming crazier yourself.

I was in a long-term relationship with someone who - in retrospect - I understand as having a lot of borderline behaviors and structure, briefly summarized as "You are a crazy and abusive person, why are you so terrible to me? Never leave me!" I am happily out of that relationship now, and in a much saner one. (My wife and I may both be a bit nuts, to various degrees in various ways, but our relationship is sane and sustaining.) Thus my War Games quote, "the only way to win is not to play."

My wife and I have also been dealing for the last few years with a foster child, the extent of whose problems only became clear after we had become her legal guardians. Right now she is living in a residential treatment program, which she hates, and is trying to "make nice" so she can come back and live with us - but without really dealing with any of her issues, learning to comply with rules, stopping the rages and property damage, giving up the self-injury, etc. She has some very strong narcissistic characteristics, and also some very strong borderline characteristics. While it is improper to diagnose personality disorders before adulthood, because virtually all teens have some characteristics in the personality disorder spectrum (Axis II), all the shrinks who saw her while she was inpatient last year seem to think she is well down that road. We really wanted to do something good, but it's not worked out too well.

#24 Bruce Adelsohn: Thanks for the pointer about Cabana Carioca Restaurante. Years ago, Jim and I found a good Brazilian place outside of Times Square, but when I tried to find it a few years later, I couldn't. I wonder if it's the same place.

And no, I'm not linking to it.

It may (or may not) surprise you that some of it is quite good.

It's a good thing that X3 didn't also try to integrate the plot of my other famorite X-men plot of all time.

The Sentinels have taken over the USA and the moment they move out, the rest of the world is ready to nuke America. Almost all mutants and superpowered have been killed. But a few remain and Kitty Pryde is sent back into her younger self of today to stop the chain of events that'll lead to that grim future. And they succeed and History diverges. But the original future remains and Wolverine and everybody else dies.

(That may not be a perfectly accurate quote, but I read the Phoenix saga 20+ years ago, and it still packs a punch for me.)

I not only reject X3, I reject all the ludicrous retcons the comic book has gone through since that made Phoenix really not Jean Grey after all.

Grant Morrison did some interesting stuff a few years ago when he brought Phoenix back into Jean. A souped-up Magneto was able to kill her, and her last words to Scott should have sounded ludicrous, but they did not.

"All I've ever done is die on you."

I like living in the 21st century. Strike that- love it. I've never been tempted by the "wouldn't you like to visit the 1800's?" thought experiments.

But every once in a while I'll see a website that has a particular kick. A kick like the Omelas residents got upon visiting the basement. It creates a sudden and intense desire to just shut off the computer and walk away.

That coffee site. Just... wow...
[stares in silence]

There's been news today about the brightest and most powerful stellar explosion ever recorded by science having been recently recorded by science.

Fun story, especially as it may have relevance to Eta Carinae, which is only 8,000 light years away

However, model a version of yourself from 20 years ago, and then savor this sentence from the NYTimes article:

"Astronomers have been following the star since last September, when it was discovered in a galaxy 240 million light years away in the constellation Perseus by Robert Quimby, a University of Texas graduate student, who was using a small robotic telescope at McDonald Observatory near Fort Davis, Tex., to troll for supernovas."

Such a nice sentence.

Makes up for that :washbrain: particle.

From observations: When you're presenting, a suit, or at least skirt and blouse. All other times, business casual/churchwear is just fine. I'm bringing several pairs of black slacks and a collection of haori, because it worked last year. I, too, present Thurs. afternoon.

Those of us who are going- How about meeting for dinner before the Pseudo Society lectures?

Thank you. It feels much better now.

Before I go wash out my brain and forget that site exists, I'll mention that I like the idea of calling that an "Omelas moment". Please don't tell me what association of thoughts brought that into your mind; I'm quite sure I don't want to think about it just now.

(looking horrified)

The last time churchwear was a factor in my life it involved white gloves and a little pocketbook. And a skirt.

I'm developing enough of a case of nerves to plan to hide in my room the entire conference now.

What is the Pseudo Society?

This afternoon I talked with the person I'm riding up with, who is an associate dean in her department. She agreed with my suspicion that suits (except perhaps while presenting) mark you as on the prowl for employment. I'm decades past that! Not that there isn't some fashion competition at the more informal level. Slacks with a artsy top -- haori would qualify -- and cool jewelry should work well.

Meeting after the Pseudo Society would be perfect. The Society is a very special group that presents, well, very special papers, after everyone has had a chance to drink a lot. It is the successor to the American Committee on Jutish Studies. Is there some sort of token we could wear to identify us?

I'm wearing the suit (or rather, brocade blazer and slacks) to present because I *am* looking for eventual employment. Heather Rose Jones did hers in khakis and a fun shirt last year, iirc...because she's now happily out of formal academia.

Before or after the Pseudo Society? After the lectures are the open bar of the SLU Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, cash bar from Four Courts (and someday I'm going to want to pitch them a manuscript. Need to finish it first), and the Dance.*

If after, how about the table at the left rear corner of the dance floor? I'd prefer before, between getting through the crush that is the Brewers Guild tasting and the Pseudo Society. Can someone suggest somewhere?

*Think high-school dance, except with alcohol and people who spend most of their lives teaching and researching.

It could be that I'm just horrible at promoting Internet videos. Or maybe I really am a thread-killer. In which case, you should really check out the X Minus One trailer that I posted last week just before that thread died.

The dance sounds horrifying in general but meeting people to talk to at it sounds good.

Nah. Been there, had that happen to me, too, except that it got incorporated into a front-page post rather than a particle. One might suspect our hosts actually have off-blog lives or something.

From the LASFS newsletter, minutes of meeting 3630:

In response to Jerry Pournelle's question of 'what do you get when you cross Hellboy and Catwoman', the answer is 'Hellboy Catwoman sin (theta)'. (You can't cross Catwoman with Spiderman, because Spiderman's a scaler.)

OTOH, watching that led me to this, which has a certain charm (the first 30 seconds aren't much, but it gets a lot better after the music starts). And that in turm led me to this slightly-more-professional job, and a whole list of similar efforts using the same music.

Graydon, #65: You also see this effect with beading supplies. You can get exactly the same Fireline stringing material in the sporting department at Wal-Mart (where it's sold as fishing line) for roughly 1/5 its cost at your Local Bead Store.

Laina, #81: There's at least a possibility that one of the neighborhood cats, or even a squirrel or raccoon, relocated that nail from some very obscure spot into your driveway after the roofers had gone over it.

You can buy small rare-earth magnets very cheaply on eBay. A few of those, attached to something that lets you cover a wide swath of ground fairly fast, would make short work of finding leftover roofing nails (and any other magnetic flotsam!). Note that the normal cautions about magnets apply squared to these things -- they are the magnet equivalent of those really good kitchen knives people have been talking about.

Sisuile, #104: May I assume that a professional pantsuit is also appropriate, or do I have to wander off muttering things like, "It's the 21st century, dammit, when are you people going to get with the program!"?

Howard, #110, I frequently post things that later turn up as sidelights or particles proposed by other people.

I'll second Lee @115's suggestion on super-powerful magnets. If you have a local tool-renting place handy check if they rent a magnet tool first.

We use magnets like that during clean-up at Burningman. There, to leave without cleaning up all of you moop is both a sin and a cause for getting one's camp demoted to the outer circles. Moop includes things as small as staples (or sawdust. or seeds. They want a clean desert)

Lee @115,
You asked on another thread if I have a LJ account. Inspired by that, I've actually started one today. (It'd been on my list of things to do for about 5 years now.)

I need to reload FileZilla on my wife's computer. Darn thing got hosed out when the laptop went thru a major virus cleanup. Two years ago, when I inherited the job of maintaining her site, I uploaded FileZilla from the link below, but I don't know if there are other places I should get the software from, these days. There seem to be quite a few such places, based on my googling.

Any recommendations?

http://www.download.com/FileZilla/3000-2160_4-10326071.html?tag=lst-0-1

I sometimes feel that, back 6,000 years or so ago when God (assumning there is a God) used to speak occassionally to the peeps, one of them asked Him: “Where do we humans come from?” And God excitedly began to tell (and explain to) all the assembled peeps about DNA and cells and evolutionary type development and His experimentation with such things. God was on a roll with one of his best lectures/sermons, really getting into the discussion when, after about 45 human minutes, God looked up to see all of the peeps standing there slack-jawed, clearly not comprehending a single word he had to say. The silence He thought was amazement at the genius of it all was really only ignorance. God did not panic, though. He shook his head, looked at His feet, cleared his throat and began a story that a 3 year-old could understand, that being the story of Creation as told in Genesis, knowing that someday, hopefully sooner than later (although based upon the crowd He had before Him it very well might be MUCH, much later) humans would come to understand the science of it all. I still don’t think we are there yet.

from this thread at Carpetbagger on Republican candidates' beliefs in evolution and/or creationism made me smile.

So what is your LiveJournal's name?

It's not ready yet*.

I need to write some wonderful essays, and change the decor, and add pictures, and list some interests.

Darn: by taking one thing off my to-do list I've added four new things to it.

-------
* the cry of the shy perfectionist blogger.

Once at a dinner there were a few of us with the same "shy-perfectionist therefore the blog sits empty" problem.

A solution I came up with is that there could be a club of trusted s-p bloggers. If you wrote a post, you'd send it to another spb to review. If they liked it, they'd post it to your blog for you, using a satisficing (good enough is good) criteria.

It was proposed we start by making the spbloggers club blog. We then laughed and ordered dessert.

The essays posts don't have to be wonderful. Just look at what I do on my own blog. ("Hey! You in the corner! Don't think I didn't hear you.")

Then I got to question...
"26. How many books have you read in your life time?
a. Under 10
b. 10-20
c. 20-30
d. 30-50
e. 60+
f. Reading is boring."

Wow. When I was seven that range would've been an order of magnitude off- not including school books or books read to me. Now it's two orders of magnitude off.

I get that I'm on the flat part of the bell curve* for love-of-reading. But 60!?! In a lifetime!?! Of people with time and ability to read LJ? I count 48 books on my wallbed's shelf... so few only because of earthquake risks.

60!?! I think I'm experiencing a new type of Omelas Moment, because I refuse to believe in question 26.

----
* flat. There's a hill so far distant it's beyond the horizon.

Oh, and that is the *best* quote *evar*. The room cannot stop laughing, and we all needed that today.

60??? I'd be surprised if there were many who regularly hang out at Making Light who read as few as 60 books per year on average. And I'd bet that most of them are restricted by health or job considerations.

I've recently been trying to re-organize my home office so I can actually work there*, and added an additional set of shelves so I could get the books that are in front of the books out of the way. So I'm now in a position to actually count my books**, but haven't done so yet. I have no idea how many books I have now, let alone how many I've read in my life.

* The office became a storehouse when we had to move things to let the plumbers in to fix the broken water main, and then to get the drainage people in to put in the concrete drain and sump pump.

** That's just the books that only I will read, because they're reference or technical books in subjects that Eva isn't interested in. Then there are the books that Eva has that I'm not going to read, and the books that we both read, like sf and mysteries, and mainline, er mainstream fiction.

oops. Here it is:
What Be Your Nerd Type?

GO JAZZ! HUGE WIN OVER GOLDEN STATE! HUGE! DERON WILLIAMS IS HOSS!

OK, thank you.

I'm a little fickle when it comes to favourite things.

On an entirely different note, my blog is scatterbrained and was when I put my first post up, and was even more so when I let people know about it. By design it avoids "Big Questions". It isn't supposed to make people think I'm smart, thoughtful, amusing or interesting. It's there to put things that I type that have nowhere else to go.

On the other hand I'm sure your livejournal will kick the pants out of anything I put on the internet. Once I used this as my tagline: "The magnitude of my dignity is such, that none of my actions can diminish it" - and that's about as good as it gets.

* Maybe worst, from some points of view.

(literature nerd verging on science/math nerd, which is what I'm recovering from in all honesty).

Neil @136. Agreed, but I wish they had included CG...

Kathryn, #127, you can lower your expectations for your LJ. The only exciting part of mine is that I have three different pictures.

I can say with certainty that I have over 60 books in my car, right now and at any given time*. Granted, half are cookbooks, but I have a lovely collection of fiction as well. You never know when you need something to read.

Oh, and I have about 20 audiobooks on my iPod.

The firewall here at work is preventing me from taking the quiz. I'm happy being a nerd for all seasons.

*Some on their way into the house, some on their way to the used bookstore, some enroute to a new reader.

it's aimed at high-school students

Good observation. I was thrown off by the age ranges at the start (and that I found it at a friend's blog).

I'd also forgotten about Q5:
"How many books per month? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5+" Those numbers make more sense, although I'd stretch the range a bit higher if I were designing this quiz for ML...

Book nerd? Did I say I was a book nerd? According to that survey I'm a science nerd... ok, and equally as much a book nerd.

How did I become this way?

Well, I inherited "when reading, the rest of the world goes away" from my mom, and "reads really quickly" from my dad.

Some of my earliest memories involve playing by the bookshelves at home, or choosing books at the library, or my mom reading to me. I went to a Montessori preschool- that's good for learning words.

And then there's how I became a reader. I vividly remember that day:
I'd just turned 5. We were in Canada, staying with my grandparents. Their house bordered on a hilly park, the park bordered on a forest, and the snow was waist deep*. Until that visit I'd only known snow from pictures and stories. Plus one trip to a 1-inch snowfall up in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

That week, my mom started reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe to me each night before bedtime. It was magic: hearing the book in the evening, running through a snowy woods in the day. Each day I became more involved with the story, wanting to know what happens next.

And then it hit me: if I read the book myself I could find out what happens without having to wait until bedtime. I could find where she'd stopped the night before, and go on all by myself. I could just pick up the book, there on the nightstand. I did. I found the bookmark; I kept going. That was the day I started reading, and I measure my life since then in books.

All to say- family's fault.

-----
* which says these are older memories, because snow like that doesn't happen anymore, not there. A white Christmas near Toronto is a treat, now.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050807R.shtml
A Crusade and a Holy War in the US Military
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report

Tuesday 08 May 2007

An Orthodox Jew and former petty officer in the US Navy said his civil rights were violated after a chaplain and officials at a Veterans Administration hospital in Iowa City, Iowa, tried to convert him to Christianity while he was under the VA's care.

....

...Miller enlisted the help of the nonprofit Military Religious Freedom Foundation, whose founder, Mikey Weinstein,..has been waging a one-man war against the Department of Defense for what he says is a blatant disregard of the Constitution. He recently published a book on the issue: "With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military." ...

[in the past] 18 months ... Weinstein said he has been contacted by more than 4,000 active duty and retired soldiers, many of whom served or serve in Iraq, who told Weinstein that they were pressured by their commanding officers to convert to Christianity....

"The rise of evangelical Christianity inside the military went on steroids after 9/11 under this administration and this White House," Weinstein said in an interview. "This administration has turned the entire Department of Defense into a faith-based initiative."

Since we finished that, he's been wanting to go through our Calvin & Hobbes collection as his bedtime reading (yikes!) but we'll be moving on to The Hobbit shortly, as the C & H is too big to take on our mainland trip.

The NYTimes' Bittman on how to equip a kitchen for $200, $300 with splurges. I don't see much missing in his 37 item shopping list.

I'll only disagree with two things on his inessentials list: the microwave and the wok (the latter if you have a gas stove).

I think the microwave is good because:
1. it makes it easier to cook extra and freeze the leftovers as a planned meal. Maybe it's just psychology, but two containers in the microwave- no stirring needed- seem easier than two pots on the stove.
2. it can reduce cooking time by partially cooking ingredients before you finish them on the stove or in the oven.
3. who has time to remember to defrost frozen stock, or anything else, ahead of cooking time?

That discussion also made me think of a question:
"Which cookbook would you most want to send back to yourself in your 'learning to cook' stage"? (No, you can't write "buy YHOO" in the margins)

My #1:
CookWise by Shirley Corriher. A "how and why recipes work" cookbook focused on the chemistry of key ingredients. Useful for early to experienced cooks. It's similar to but easier to read and get a good topic overview than Cooks Illustrated. With only 230 recipes it makes a good "cook through the book" book.

Paula, #146: If you're not already reading Talk 2 Action, you should be. Its focus is about bringing the theocrats out of the shadows and letting the light of day display their true ugliness. There's a related LJ community, dark_christian, also.

Oh, Kathryn, Lee said about LJs "...don't worry about writing Deathless Prose in your journal..." or about a great layout. Just write. Simply putting words out there will bring you pleasure.

(I'd just surf the net and use my computer's screen-print key, but the key is busted.)

Question 24 made me laugh loud enough that someone in the next cube came over to see what was so funny.

LG, of course.

You don't need the key. Do a Google image search, pick the one you like and left-click (control-click for us Mac types) and select "save image as ..." or equivalent in the popup menu. Then print the file you saved.

If you don't find one you like, I've got a cool picture of him at a press conference I can send you. I've been playing with it photoshop; my new graphic tablet arrived yesterday, and now that I don't have to draw with a bar of soap I'm going to get serious about converting Bush into a Ferengi.

(*sighs* Another layer of innocence, shattered...)

And no wok? I'm on my...fifth? and use it more often than any other cooking container. This person does not share my lifestyle or diet, boy howdy.

As for a primer cookbook, if I could just have one to learn by, it'd be the checkered cover Better Homes and Gardens cookbook from the late fifties, or perhaps a midcentury edition of Joy of Cooking. If I used cookbooks. Apparently the cookbook collector gene skipped my generation, as my mother and daughter share it.

(See y'all at the end of five days of getting-the-kid-home-from-college. Now! Including Karma balancing dorm room cleaning!)

I'll be glad to post that for you, but it's on my computer at home and not accessible externally, and I'm currently at work, so it will have to wait until this evening, probably 6 or 7 PDT.

This reminds me of the episode of MythBusters where they wanted to test the urban legend of the woman who had washed her dog then put it in the microwave oven to dry it off.

Better Homes and Gardens cookbook

Indeed, yes. What little I know of cooking came mostly from that book, though the America's Test Kitchen book looks to supplant it. And while it's a great book for beginners, the recipes work quite well for day-to-day cooking of the non-exotic sort.

Libraries have been my havens and my sustenance all my life. When I was 9, I talked the librarian into letting me check out adult books, pretty much carte blanche, and for awhile I just roamed the shelves grabbing whatever looked interesting. The selection was ... eclectic ... for awhile until I started to home in on the subjects I was really interested in.

I remember sometime in my teens, reading Sturgeon's "The Dreaming Jewels". Theres a scene which describes the protagonist's readin schedule. He had an eidetic memory, photographic subtype, and a reading speed close to "flip past all the pages". So he had a deal with a lending library* to deliver 4 new books every morning and pick up the old ones, kind of like delivering the milk. I was quite jealous.

* Standard eastern european Jewish immigrant family with ambitions and socialist ties.

* Before the real flood of cheap paperbacks in the late '50s, a lot of small businesses like drug stores and neighborhood groceries kept a rack of popular hardbound books that they lent out for a small amount by the week. For people just looking for a quick mystery to read on the commuter train or while the kids were at school, this was much more convenient than going to the public library.

5+ books a month?? Back in jr high and high school I kept a list of every book I read, from Star Trek adaptations and bodice-rippers up to Greek tragedy and the Decameron. I indexed the SF short stories and listed the historical fiction in chronological order (yeah, pure book nerd, destined to be a librarian). I probably averaged 275 books a year, more in the summer... Now it's probably more like 175 per year. This darn having a job thing really cuts into your reading time. Don't ever become a librarian because you like to read.

Yeah, we can either (1) delay traffic and have some people angry at us for mixed up travel plans, OR (2) endanger lives to avoid minor bad PR and hope no one dies.

see also space shuttle explosion.

Some people need to be beaten with a stick.

Put that way, in Bush's America, the choice is obvious.

That guy who threatened to lock out the Fire Department needs to go to prison.

I am astonished at how angry that makes me feel.

A person needs to be able to think clearly and act effectively to oppose confident statements like, "Don't be ridiculous. There's nothing to worry about. Sit down and get back to work." The whole problem is that those air traffic controllers could not think clearly or act effectively. I'm not saying anything about their characters; only that they were impaired by CO poisoning.

The FAA manager involved simply asked himself, "What'the outcome I want here, the best thing that could happen?" and got the answer that the controllers would be able to do their jobs despite the carbon monoxide. So, since the alternative was to cause flight delays and confusion, which would count against the manager at the next performance review, it was a no-brain decision. In all senses.

I hope no one minds, and no one is offended if I missed them.

When I was 15 or 16, she took The Dark Tower away from me because she leafed through it and happened upon the worst scene that could possibly be taken out of context--when Roland puts his gun somewhere it most definitely doesn't belong. And more recently, when I tried to loan her The Kitchen God's Wife, she returned it to me, upset that I would give her so unsettling to read. Her unhappy memories about her own marriage are not settled enough for her to ever let her mind go anywhere near there. *sigh*

Going off to small, liberal arts college 6 hours away from home opened up my world. And I met people who actually still shared their parents' worldview, so I know it's possible, and I'm attempting to do that with my daughter.

Who, by the way, at all of two years old, already has a list of about 10 words that she can read. :D

The picture of the Bush is at http://speakertomanagers.googlepages.com/shrubphoto

The most interesting experience I had with reading was in 2004, when I visited Quebec City after a 9-year absence. When I had last seen my friends, in 1995, their daughters were a grumpy 7-year-old and a babbling year-old. Skip ahead to 2004. The elder was just as grumpy, but this time because her parents had drafted her into cleaning up the house for a party of the old farts (that was us) when she'd rather have gone away with her boyfriend. But I digress... The year-old girl was now a charming 10-year-old who, like her parents, loved reading. And who casually used words such as 'lugubrious'.

(via a commenter in Pandagon)

Bleargh. Yet another reason to criminalize the teaching and ownership of MBA degrees. The manager who endangered his ATC employees will probably get a Medal of Freedom and a promotion.

That's a very nice piece of design, and a rather droll notion to use sugar as the raw material. I also like the idea of CNC toast. Come to think of it, these guys out to contact the Ace of Cakes. I bet they could make some really nifty cakes with that fab.

Drat! Our secret's out!

Kayakers have been surfing standing waves for, like ever. It's great fun.
Even I've done it and I'm clumsy and uncoordinated and (oops!) upside-down bailing out of a kayak. Never did learn to Eskimo roll...

"I'm melting, I'm melting... Aaaaaahhhhhh... Oh, what a world, what a world!"

That's wonderful!

The Riddle, by Richard Wilbur

Shall I love God for causing me to be?
I was mere utterance; shall these words love me?

Yet when I caused His work to jar and stammer,
And one free subject loosened all His grammar,

I love Him that He did not in a rage
Once and forever rule me off the page,

But, thinking I might come to please Him yet,
Crossed out ‘delete’ and wrote His patient ’stet’.

If you needed to print a document in the tiniest font you could reasonably still read (whatever that might be for you), which common typeface would you use? Assume an ordinary office laser printer. For software I use OpenOffice, but the font would have to be available in Word.

My understanding of the common wisdom is that serif is good for printed paper, sans-serif for onscreen reading.

Does that hold when going to tiny fonts?

And, since I'm curious, how does it hold for cheap printers- ones which can have lighter ink, or slight smudging, or "you've run out of one color, so you're printing in blue"? Would that become more like onscreen reading, so you'd use a sans-serif?

I've found that 8-pt Courier/Cumberland is readable, if small. I suspect that OCR-B would also be good, and possibly some of the 15-pitch typewriter faces.

There's an interesting post here summarizing a research study showing that computing while female predisposes one to receiving nasty messages, even in the absence of content. It made me think of Kathy Sierra's experience as discussed previously under the moderation thread. Take an anti-female bias, add content with which someone disagrees, get response couched in highly personal and unpleasant ways. Bleah.

In my (decidely amateur) opinion, no. All else being equal (which it never is), sans-serif fonts are more legible on a letter-by-letter basis, especially in adverse conditions. That's why they're used on traffic signs, for teaching children to read, and are generally preferred for low-resolution devices like computer screens. Making the letters tiny has much the same effect as reducing the resolution.

Of the fonts I see in my (very old) Word menu, I would try Lucida Sans, Verdana, and Trebuchet MS first. Helvetica and Arial are not very legible at small sizes, mostly due to their very aperture and general failure at giving letters distinguishing features.

I'd suggest something that's designed for reading under adverse conditions (small type, bad paper, and so on).

Much as I dislike them otherwise*, something like Georgia or Times New Roman might be a good choice among common fonts. I haven't tried them on paper, but they're pretty good at small sizes on the web (which is an adverse viewing condition on its own, though it presents different issues than paper does).

Is there a reason for sticking to common fonts other than not wanting to buy something for the purpose, though?

If not, I'm quite fond of Gentium, by Victor Gaultney. It's nicely readable at a wide range of sizes, and it's available under the SIL Open Font License, so price (and redistribution) aren't issues. I've found it quite readable down to about 4 pt (12-pt text printed 9-up).

If it weren't for the fact that it's uncommon and pricy, I'd suggest Grade 2 of Mercury Text, by Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, but I know it doesn't meet your requirements.

* Nothing in particular against them; I just find them lacking in character.

Meredith Patterson talks about how scam representation in the style of fake literary agentry has arrived in the technology startup world.

I've seen colophons in Bibles, but in phone books? Now that would be cool.

By the time I reached high school, I was going to the library with my Dad on a weekly basis (every Saturday morning) and getting out four books of my own. I'd usually have at least one of them finished by Saturday evening, and by the end of the week, I would have finished not only the four books I took out on my own account, but also made a substantial dent in the eight books Dad got out for himself and Mum. This alongside taking out at least four books a week from the school library, not to mention the ones I read during lunchtimes, my textbooks, the daily newspaper, and re-reading favourite books and magazines. I've kept up roughly that level of text addiction for most of my life (I don't go through as many books since I discovered the internet, but I certainly maintain a pretty high text load nonetheless). My bag generally has at least one book in it, often more, and if I work or study somewhere with ready access to a bookshop, I will spend at least $100 per week on new books.

I don't suppose it's any surprise I come up as a Literature Nerd.

(Oh, and re: the Coffee site - ohhhhkaaaaay... I'm just going to be backing away slowly for a bit, and hoping the stupid didn't come off on me).

PS: LJ is megpie71. If anyone wants to friend me, they're welcome to (provided you're interested in a profoundly self-centred view of my life).

Negative reviews have pointed out that it's not a great wok because it takes so long to heat up and stays hot for a long time afterwards, but I have to admit I never really used it as a wok. I really liked the shape and the heft of it - easy to stir things, hard to tip it over. Lodge does have a sort of Dutch Oven/skillet fusion pan that I might wind up trying out in lieu of the wok. For those who prefer a somewhat more traditional flat-bottomed wok, my mother has a carbon steel one that she likes quite a bit. The trick is to find one with sides high enough to suit your style.

Thanks. I tried and ended up printing with Georgia, as it's readable enough at size 9.

Gentium? Nice.

I imagine that slightly into the future one will be able to purchase a font that's optimized for one's personal likes / visual quirks.

And, apropos of nothing, the new security software I'm using gives me a "Dangerous Web Site" warning every time I come onto Making Light. (Ha, I've known that all along!)

My first reaction to that essay was to find it an interesting and useful comparison.

But now I disagree with her*.
Here's how I see the choice.

For $5,000 you can:
A. Send two people to Supernova, where you'll run around like mad trying to find the interesting people you thought might be at Supernova, where the interesting people are trying hard not to be cornered by you because they're trying to find their own interesting people
OR

B. Be on stage at Supernova, where for 5 glorious moments everybody in the audience is meeting you, even if you're not meeting them. From then on, people will know who you are: you've become interesting. You can more easily walk into groups and join conversations as you speedwalk around like mad trying to find everyone else.

B in a heartbeat. Not to mention that Mike Arrington is now a kingmaker connector in Web2.0.

If this were publishing...well, I'm not sure who to compare him to in publishing, because the two fields aren't similar. "Money flows to the writer" in writing. "Friends, fools and family" is a common financing method in startups. Not the same.

--------
* disclaimer: I'm in Silicon Valley. I have a relative, an in-law, and a lifepartner who are doing startups.

I liked that image so much I'm using it as my desktop background. And every time I look at it I see it as a false-color aerial photo image; it takes a few seconds before I notice the trees again and can parse it properly.

Right, high-tech startups are not at all like writing. The publisher gives you an advance and never asks what you spent it on. The angel or vulture capitalist is always asking where the money is going and how fast*. If you do well as a writer your royalties tend to spread the income out over a long period; for a really successful writer that's the retirement program**. If you do well in a startup you get a huge bolus of money when you sell out, and you may never even see a Christmas card from your old colleagues.

* I once worked for a startup whose CEO was so excited by being rich that he spent at least 150% of his salary, and got so deeply and publicly into debt that the board forced him to sell back his stock so he could get back, then forced him to sign an agreement to keep his personal spending within his income. The company did not survive.

** Kids, don't count on this at home. Put money in an IRA, because the royalties can so easily just peter out for any number of reasons.

There's another difference I've seen- this is perhaps a Web.pi thing:
Your new company/ team is funded for your current project: geotag based classifieds via IM, say*. 16 months later Cisco buys your company, which makes a fpga-based Cray-1 emulator, and that's great, and not surprising, because you were funded for being a competent team.

Which is a bit like writing, but a bit not. Be like if LeGuin got an advance for "book set in the Ekumen universe," and 9 months later they (Stross and LeGuin) turned in their "aliens invade earth but no one notices post-singularity" graphic novel collaboration, and the publisher was still happy.

-----
* web two point oh company generator

I will shamefully confess that I am one of those who had to wait until First Grade before learning to read. (No kindergarten when and where I was growing up.) But I do remember the day it all clicked together. I was staring at the newspaper's funnies (something I had been doing long before I knew how to read) and realized I understood the words. It was a new world that had opened up to me, appropriately enough, with the Buck Rogers comic-strip.

I for one am still waiting for you to post prose on your LiveJournal. As was pointed before, it doesn't have to be deathless prose. And if it were deathless, would it also be zombie prose?

btw, "Omelas moment"-- good phrasing, and, as of the coining day, a new concept.

Please don't tell me what association of thoughts brought that into your mind

Sure thing!

I don't have the argument fully down yet, but it goes something like this:

1. Reading the raw web is like reading the slushpile.
1a. You should never want to read the slushpile, not unless it's for career advancement.
1b. Random reward reinforcement is the most addictive kind.
1c. Foresight tells experienced people that only 1 in 50 or 1 in 100 stories in the slushpile will be a gem. In hindsight, how many blog posts were gems? And from this you've learned...?

2. If you read all of your favorite blogs' recommended links, that's like reading Fanfic.
2a. When people blog or comment about "Here's this crazy site I saw, although you probably shouldn't read it," you'll probably still click on it.
2a1. Because we're primates, who'll run up in groups to stare at the dangerous novelty. How many readers listened to Harlan when he told them "don't read Deathbird Stories all at once"*?
2b. And once you read the Snape/Nazgul HP fanfic*, you'll never get those neurons back. Never.

3. ???

4. Three hours have gone by: you've now read that Coffee site and caught up on Cute Overload to scrub the coffee out and read an article about the worldwide economics of coffee to make yourself feel like you've learned something instead of having just spent an hour looking at LOLkittens.

5. Omelas Moment! You turn off the web and go to the library.
5a. Omelas Moment! You delete 90% of the blogs from your RSS feed and you feel great**.

---------
* I did. Don't.

** I did. Do.

Maybe next week for the LJ: after work and for the weekend the only uses of "web" and "surf" I plan are to contemplate the web of life visible in the surf / intertidal zone.

And it will be lively prose. Zkathryn does Myspace.

I like that web company generator. The company names seemed interesting; it looked like the spelling was biased to produce high scores in Scrabble, so I looked at the code. As I expected, much less there than meets the eye. But an interesting demonstration that marketing is based on the Rule of Three.

Company: Squiodirati

Product: greasemonkey extension for dating via Ruby on Rails

See if your VC friends are interested.

Which is funny, because I read maps for a living. (Now, if they could just tell me where this stuff actually is that I'm supposed to be looking at!)

*Please* expand on that to the ultimate limits of your considerable writing skills.

I work in the mapping ('geographic services') department of a utility company. If you want to fix something, you need to know where it is, yes? Well, I try to make sure that where we say it is on our map is close enough to where it really is that there won't be an Unfortunate Occurrence. We're getting into GIS for this, and using GPS to locate the stuff, so it's getting more accurate - we hope - and with aerial photos - and Google Earth, as some of this stuff is really out in the sticks (try Needles to Victorville) - we think we have a handle on it. Mostly I do quality control. Think of it as grading papers ('You put it where?' 'You do know what exposed means, don't you?').

Is that in actuality as fascinating as it sounds? (I love maps and messing around with same--I see them as sort of expanded floor plans.)

I've been all through the Options menus, and looked in the typically-unhelpful Help, and I can't find it. It's driving me crazy! How do I get rid of it?

That Blackbird still looks something from the future next to all those other planes, even from a couple of hundred miles up.

i'm kind of at a livejournal crossroads. first i had a personal livejournal, read by friends, that i didn't update very often. then when we started doing comic cons, my partner & i decided we needed a "professional"/comics blog. i'd put pictures, con reports, news & art on the real gone girl livejournal, & whiny, private, & inconsequential stuff on the other livejournal. i keep a friends list through my personal livejournal, & don't friend people from our "company" livejournal.

now i'm really only reading my friends list & commenting on same from my personal livejournal, & only posting on the company livejournal. this is less than optimal, but that's where we are right now.

Actually, that gives me an interesting idea for an experiment. Take male volunteer whose answers on a selection questionnaire put them fairly high on the "institutionalized sexism" scale, and sit them down at computers running random IRC sessions. The rules: They must use a female ID, and they cannot say anything which would serve as a concrete indicator of their actual gender. (That latter might be hard to implement without running their responses thru a moderator.) After 3 or 4 multi-hour sessions of them being effectively female online, have them retake the questionnaire and see if there's any difference in the amount of sexist attitudes displayed.

Unfortunately, I was down at Newton Abbott, staying with Sir Sam Baker, who, but for his courage, would be a man after my own heart. It's not every knight of the realm who can wander across half Africa with a bint he bought in a Turkish slave-market, and then persuade her to marry him. Though he should have forged his marriage lines. People would have wondered about some obscure Balkan church, but he wouldn't have been exploring in sin.

And then he went back to the Soudan with his wife. They're both mad as hatters. I don't think they know what fear is.[1]

Hence my embarrassment.

From the Flashman Papers, bundle #27, undated, severely damaged and incomplete.

[1] While Flashman may be mistaken in his judgement of the Baker's character, his outline of their life together appears to be correct, although the slave-market story is poorly attested. Samuel Baker, brother of the notorious Valentine Baker, certainly met his future wife, Florence, in the Balkans, and she went on to travel with him in Africa, on his explorations of the White and Blue Niles. They married on his return to London and, while he was knighted for his discovery of the Source of the Nile, This impropriety led to his exclusion from the Court. While Lady Baker was reckoned quite pretty, as can be seen in extant photographs, by this time she would be considered "matronly".

Flashman has the right of it in one respect:

but those of us who don't have bad dreams are the strange ones.

They're the ones who scare the rest of us.

* Really, it's not him, it's the juxtaposition of his recent job and what happened at VT.

Warning: Not Safe For Work. Not Suitable for Children or Impressionable Adults. Really sick.

i could long view but never feel the sea
freedom began six inches past the gate
though we name fears they do not ever flee

with the stern voice we could not disagree
what mattered was what lay upon the plate
an angry tiger prowls beneath each tree

what we would reprehend is what we'll be
when all has turned to ashes in the grate
though we name fears they do not ever flee

our proper service isn't with bent knee
nor is our purpose merely to be freight
an angry tiger prowls beneath each tree

we all must do and not take time to see
no secret messages are left upon the slate
though we name fears they do not ever flee
an angry tiger prowls beneath each tree

This makes me wonder if, had I posted here as Georgette from the very beginning, but written the exact same (numerous) posts, the assumption would have been that I obviously was female.

It seems to me that people are very bad at reading between the lines accurately. So much of what they perceive is colored by what they already believe to be true, that often statements are parsed, or at least interpreted, in ways totally different from how they were meant.

So, the sig makes a huge difference when it's obviously male or female, but assumptions based on conditioned stereotypes can make a difference too. A female posting an assertive, in-your-face response may be seen by the male poster she's responding to as a male, because females, in his worldview, don't respond that way.

It's an eye-opening experience to hear the private "man-talk" or "woman-talk" when you're from the opposite camp. Breaks all kinds of notions you picked up from your culture about who does what, and how they think. Especially when you hear how they refer to you. That experience should be required for everyone before they can be considered adults; it might prevent a lot of the sort of unpleasantness Lee described in #236.

Ah, and you lived to tell the tale! I conjecture that either she couldn't find a knife quickly enough, or that the the window was not high above the ground.

Granted it doesn't sound like it from Fragano's description, but...

I can't speak for anyone else, but that's how my brain appears to be wired.

You're getting "Delete block? No (Yes)" , right? That sounds like WordPerfect 5.1 (DOS) behavior. Word 2002 does it when "Navigation Keys for WordPerfect Users" is selected; I'm guessing things are similar with 2003. Unless things have changed between the two versions, you'll find the checkbox you need to clear under Tools -> Options -> General.

Incidentally, I remember the exchange which confused the other poster as to your gender, and I think the fault was not (entirely) on your end. At least, I wasn't confused.

Happy Mother's Day.

Thinking of Joan Crawford, are they showing Mommy Dearest, too?

Many people do seem to weigh the name of author very heavily, and get very upset when they discover that the writing can be read in other ways if you just change the name. That's one reason why some people are annoyed by gender-ambiguous names: that clue they were counting on is not as useful.

There's also statistics: people go with what they think is most likely. Take Tiptree for example; when she started writing there were perhaps four accepted female sf writers*, so assuming maleness was a good bet on the odds.

And then there's the reaction of discovery. Most people are angry when they find out that someone they had pegged for one stereotype actually don't fit it. Some, however, react with delight, as they would react to a surprising and amusing punchline to a story.

Personally, names often do fool me, but sometimes not completely. And my discovery reaction is delight, because I like to see stereotypes bent around into strange shapes. The capacity of surprise is what keeps life interesting.

* I would bet there were a few more in the closet, operating under male pseudonyms.

Write gay romance for a pro romance publisher with a predominantly female audience, and it's a different matter. Exactly the same sort of material (literally, in a couple of cases of filing off the serial numbers), still being sold to a mostly female audience, but I'm perceived as male. To such an extent that some people keep referring to me as "he" even after being told that I'm "she".

Preconceptions matter...

Julia Jones... Preconceptions do indeed matter. Maybe not so much anymore in the F/SF field, but what about the mystery field? If the author has an obviously female name, some men might stay away because, heck, how could a woman write hardboiled detective stories? And you have people like Lindsey Davis. Would some people have stayed away, had they known she was a woman? Does she write stories that only a woman could have written?

It annoys me when people assumne that, if you are a man, you must act THIS way, and if you're a woman, you must act THAT way. It took me a long time to accept that, yes, I am a heterosexual man even though my behavior, because it has some aspects of one sex and some aspects of another, sometimes throws some people's expectations off. If somebody has a problem, it's not me.

Blah blah blah...

Yes, my name is gender-ambiguous, and if I wanted to play concealment games, it would be relatively easy for me to do so by not mentioning things which mark me specifically as female. I also use the name Celine (definitely feminine) to post in some venues, but have never paid enough attention to identify whether or not people respond to me differently under that name. I certainly don't post any differently, no matter what name I'm using.

* And in an unusual switch for me, my interest in the series started to fade when Kinsey started having more interaction with her previously-distant-or-unknown family members. Apparently I liked the edgy loner enough that seeing her get all bogged down in touchy-feely stuff is a turnoff. This is odd, because normally I'm all about character growth.

I'll give you two more words: Nicola Griffith. I liked "Slow River", which is, among other things, cyberpunk, but I really flipped over "Stay". You might like it, because there is character growth, but a lot of very hard-boiled action as well. Warning: it's a sequel, and I haven't read the first book, "A Blue Place" yet. Probably it should be read first.

Lee and Serge,

Preconceptions matter a hell of a lot, so it's often best not to deliberately mislead or confuse people unless you intend the resultant irritation or even anger. For instance, I use a screen name that's completely unambiguous: it tells my gender (though not my orientation) and my ethnic background. I do that primarily because I have enough trouble with reactions to the things I say and profess belief in that I don't want to have to deal with less important issues. And the "Speaker to Managers" part says a little bit about my relationship with authority, if you read it carefully, and that's something I like to get out front.

Given a basic stereotype to work with, people assume a lot about the next level of detail, and those assumptions about me are almost always wrong. I don't care a lot about how people think of me in terms of gender or sexual orientation since those things are not important outside of meatspace, and only important there if you're sexually available and looking. Nor do I care much if people make assumptions about my religous beliefs, since I rarely discuss them. At least I can be fairly sure they won't assume I'm Christian, which is useful.

But there are a lot of other assumptions I do care about, because they're about parts of my life and my worldview that are not defaults I've kept from my upbringing, but attitudes and opinions I've formed on my own hook, that often don't jibe with the accepted standards of the culture I live in. And the assumptions about those parts of me bother me as much as assumptions about gender bother Serge.

Definitely.

When I was young and naïve, I had a hard time understanding that people would lie just to make a fool of me. Feeling foolish is not a pleasant emotion, and not one I'd wish upon others.

Kinsey hasn't ever really been feminine. Acquaintance with her family hasn't changed that in recent books.

I find that my interest waned in the books where she was involved in family matters less because she went all girly and more because I like watching her investigate cases, not react to her relatives (even though her attitude of truculent hostility was much the same whether it was family or authority).

The series has been doing better of late. The last one was more on track.

But girly? Kinsey? No. You should read them, Serge.

Would you recommend starting at the very beginning?

One series I really enjoyed was written by B.J. Oliphant in the early 1990s, a nom-de-plume for Sheri Tepper. They were definitely mysteries, and the main character was an older woman who was very angry at the fools who run the world. I haven't seen any book in a long time, which is a shame. I'd like to see her deal with the current political climate.

Oops. The earlier post should have said 'less and less mysteries', not 'mess and less mysteries', whatever the latter would mean.

The first bunch of her books are hardcore private detective stories. A good place to start.

Somewhere in the early middle of the alphabet, she bumps into relatives, and loses her focus for a couple of books. She to's and fro's for a couple of books, still investigating cases, but a little off the boil.

But I contend that she gets back on track in recent novels.

They're never, ever soaps, though Grafton has a sure enough grasp of characterisation to write such books.

Teresa, the limeade was a hit, though I think I made it somewhat wrong. It was fun to make, though, and not a project of weeks, so I can invest another weekend to zesting, sugaring, and bribing someone else to destickify the kitchen. The rest of the party seemed to like it, though they thought it too sugary.
Then again, we pretty much ignored the 'dilute if you value your sanity' instructions in favor of, "Oh no! We seem to be sober! Quick, fetch the shot glasses!"

See, one of the things I like most about Kinsey is that she's a semi-misanthropic woman who's established a good sense of self and a balance in her life. She's had a few sexual encounters, and they went EXACTLY as I would have expected from someone with her personality. She has a few people she trusts, but that's a damn hard nut to crack. And at the same time, she doesn't see herself as defective or broken -- just different. It's easy to find male characters drawn that way, but much rarer to find a woman, far less one as engaging on the character level as Kinsey.

So when Grafton started pushing all the family-recontact stuff, it felt as though she'd decided the character was broken after all, and that we were on the way to seeing Kinsey experience something like a Heinleinian epiphany and decide that a "more traditional" lifestyle is indeed the way to True Happiness.

I happen to believe very deeply that there is more than one road to True Happiness, and that particular one-true-wayism bothers me more than almost any other... so when I started seeing what looked like a buildup to it, I quit reading. Now, having heard from abi that it seems to have been a temporary aberration, I might go back and try again.

Not so much that I lost interest when she started acting more feminine (because abi's right, she didn't), but a feeling of "It's not broken, quit trying to fix it!"

"There have been some rumors that Tiptree is really a woman. I can't believe them. There is to me something ineluctably masculine in Tiptree's writing. I don't think that a woman could have written the short stories of Hemingway just as I don't think a man could have written the novels of Jane Austen, and in this way I believe that Tiptree is a man."

In later editions he added a postscript admitting his error, which I think showed grace.

Tiptree is one of my great heroes.

If anyone wants my LJ name, email me. I'm quite shy about it, as it's not associated with my real name in background-checkable internet public space, as my livejournal is where I'm free with extremely personal details. I'll give it out on request, though.

Lee @ 265: I would assume "Celine" was a reference to Hagbard Celine, of the Illuminatus! Trilogy, and thus masculine.

This is one of the few places where I use an identifiably female name. Almost everywhere else on the net, I'm evilrooster, which is generally regarded as a masculine name. (Indeed, the only other evilrooster I've run across references to is a gamer in the Midwest named Joe.)

I've struck up friendships with men online under that identity, and had them say things like "I like you, but I'm straight," (that one made me laugh). I don't tend to post girly things, but then, I am not a girly girl*, even IRL.

I used to hang out in a forum with someone named Gritchka, and assumed for ages that that was a woman. Even after meeting him (dark hair, beard, very quiet demeanour), I still found myself thinking of him as the strong, vocal grey-haired woman I pictured when I met him online.

And was/would it be deceptive to post as a man when you're a woman? Maybe. But there are certainly fora where I would, where women are either ignored or abused. There, the choice is effectively, post as a man or don't bother**.

-----
* No, Serge, not even if you factor in the hair.

** Actually, with fora like that, I usually wouldn't bother. Unless there were a professional reason - why hang out with a'holes?

My gender is pretty much "don't care". If I have to pick a side, I'm female rather than otherwise. But I'd rather not have to pick.

One thing they failed to mention is that Lal later made two outstanding albums with her son Oliver Knight, which are at least a little easier to find.

(*) Mind you, some men might take on female names because they don't want to be seen as a threat simply on the basis that they are men. And wasn't there a discussion in these parts about perfectly valid reasons why people post anonymously, or pseudonymously?

Mary Aileen @ 256:
Incidentally, I remember the exchange which confused the other poster as to your gender, and I think the fault was not (entirely) on your end. At least, I wasn't confused.

That was me, and I'm not particularly embarassed about it. I'd assumed Serge was male not because I identified "Serge" as a male name but because I identified it as a fabric and felt with no particular justification that it was a fabric more associated with men. Then Serge posted this:

If you see Jerry Pournelle walking around, and if there's a short-haired woman behind and she's sticking her tongue at Jerry's back and if there's a tall guy with her, that's me.

I misread "that's me" as referring the short-haired woman sticking her tongue out rather than the tall guy with her. Not a big deal and straightened out quickly.

Back in my more active usenet days, people would occasionally accuse me of being a man masquerading as a woman, due to either my opinions or my willingness to mix it up in debate.

As for your saying that "...people would occasionally accuse me of being a man masquerading as a woman, due to either my opinions or my willingness to mix it up in debate..."

And that was in the late 20th century, right? What Reality did those people come from to reach a conclusion based on your expressing your own opinion?

"Calling corporal Bonaparte to the front-desk..."

- Still won't talk, huh? Squad Leader! Give him a taste of ... the AGNOIZER!
(radiophonic noises, screams)
- So, Terran. Now, perhaps, you will be more... forthcoming. Where are you planning your counterattack?
- Er... I'm not really sure now.
- Dammit!

Thank you! Even the Help people at my company didn't know that one.

Hm. I thought it was a moving tale of misunderstanding and obsession, with

(jung nzbhagf gb) n trahvaryl perrcl tubfg fgbel

thrown in (spoiler encrypted for those who haven't read it, including those who've only seen the film). I didn't think it relied on plot twists particularly (unlike the film); it did ask the reader to compare the accounts of two unreliable narrators, though.

I'm honestly not even sure what you mean by the "'nothing up my sleeves' gag." Probably I've forgotten something, as I usually do.

I got the "nothing up my sleeves" line from the Borden section, where he's telling his diary that he'll tell the whole truth, leaving nothing out, and at the end the reader still won't know how the trick was worked. Meta Meta Meta!! I just thought the trick wasn't worth the buildup, to borrow his metaphor.

I think the page he wanted is:
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/dept_of_evil_all_of_you_must_die

A.J., #279: Fascinating. I haven't read that, and was thus unaware that there was a well-known male SF character called Celine. That'll teach me to make assumptions!

Actually there's supposed to be an accent-aigu on the first "e" -- for me, it's the French form of the moon goddess Selene -- but in the fora where I used to post with that name, it was far too much work to put the accent in, so I didn't bother.

On a completely different topic... anyone here planning to attend ApolloCon, SoonerCon, Conestoga, ConGlomeration, or FenCon? If you'd like to meet up, drop me a line.

saw the movie, didn't read the book.

Bar thl'f frperg gevpx jnf gung ur unq na vqragvpny gjva. Gur bgure thl'f frperg, ncneg sebz orvat n evpu aboyr, jnf gung ur unq n culfvpny pbcl znpuvar ohvyg ol grfyn. Ur gura frg hc bar uhaqerq fubjf jurer ur jbhyq perngr n pbcl bs uvzfrys hc va gur onypbal, juvyr ur sryy guebhtu n genc qbbe vagb n jngre svyyrq gnax jurer ur jbhyq qebja. Ur pbhyq bayl ubcr gung gur bgure zntvpvna jbhyq fubj hc naq tb vagb gur onfrzrag naq trg pnhtug naq oynzrq sbe uvf qrngu. vg jnf bar uhaqerq fubjf orpnhfr ur bayl unq bar uhaqerq jngre gnaxf. naq ur jnf bayl jvyyvat gb xvyy uvzfrys bar uhaqerq gvzrf.

Jul ur qvqa'g chyy bhg gur obql naq qvfcbfr bs vg naq erhfr gur gnax, V'z abg fher.

I am often perceived as male and people are surprised when I point out that ewe is an explicitly feminine word!

Thus providing more evidence for my point about preconceptions, above. The first preconception seems to always be based on the notion that someone posting on a thread involving firm convictions and passionate opinions is probably male; name comes after, and if only part of the name is just suggestive, it often won't override the basic preconception.

Serge @ 285

The Silverberg faux pas was a classic case. As soon as Tiptree publicly revealed herself as Alice Sheldon, a large troop of know-betters stated that Silverberg must be a real chauvinist pig, to use the language of the day, and that they had known better all along. In the face of that, I agree that Silverberg showed real grace in just admitting his mistake and apologizing for his bigotry without turning it into part of a show trial or firing back at his detractors.

Serge @ 289

Well, if you believe that ghosts are resonances of strong emotion reverberating around the circumstances of their generation*, then why can't Significant Pronouncements or Important Plot Devices remain echoing in the room where they were said?

* Just to tie this thread into a bow knot, refer back to Tiptree's story (sorry, can't remember the title) about aliens triggering the resonances of dead humans as part of an archaeological expedition.

ajay @ 298

Nyah, nyah! You missed me. I had just put the coffee cup down and swallowed a mouthful when I read that joke, so no liquid moment. I did snort some air, so I'll give you half points.

Professional artists are invited to submit materials for selection to become published in Masters of Today 100 Contemporary Artists global art book edited by WOA Publishing.

the selection
ll entries go through the selection process. Place and availability in the book are subject to quality and acceptance. The nominations and inclusions are judged solely by visuals submitted as attachment send to: info@worldofartmagazine.com. The editors will review all submission and make decisions on acceptance.

After notification of acceptance a inclusion fee is required no later than the artist will receive a layout alternative in the books.
The inclusion fee of Euro 990 for two-page spreds in the book may be provided by a gallery or museum, corporation or individual contributor representing the artist.

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unfortunately, the movie blew it badly enough that I can't bring myself to read the book.

just to satisfy that we're talking about the same thing, though, could you define in short what you mean by "postmodern"?

They must be harvesting addresses, because I've gotten at least two from them, plus another art-related one. (Most of the spam I've gotten lately has been in Cyrillic.)

At least I have accounts on a few art-related sites.

No cigar, Bruce. In his biography, Charton Heston recounts the time he and Orson Welles met fans of the latter. When one of them humbly came up and asked Welles how anybody could have heard Kane's final word, Welles realized that someone had finally caught him.

It reminds me of those pathetic poetry contest scams.

Anyhoo...the conversation at Marusek's reading ended up mentioning Silverberg's "Tiptree can't be a woman" comment.

Everyone present at the reading had read the book, so we ended up chatting for a few hours instead of listening to him read. Mr. Marusek was interesting to talk with, and I found him quite charming.

Because I see at least the potential need for some sort of token to indicate thought and art that's later than and different from "modern", I differentiate between "postmodern" things, which may or may not be valid and useful, and "pestmodern" ones, which definitely aren't. What percentage of self-styled "postmodernism" actually fits in the first category is left as an exercise for the reader.

I believe so.

And, btw, since I own my home in Hoboken, if I were postmodern I'd be a pomo homo Hobo homeowner (say THAT ten times fast).

Dr. Seuss would have a field day.

So, if Xopher moved temporarily to Paris, he could be a pomo homo bobo hobo.

Just a thought.

No thanks at all to me, we tended to kick ass.

There is, or at least used to be, a gay black theatre group in San Francisco that calls itself the Afro Pomo Homos.

In the movie, there's a scene with Borden working as a stagehand for another magician, gur bar jurer ur zrrgf uvf shgher jvsr. Gurer'f n inavfuvat oveq-gevpx va juvpu gur oveq qvrf. Vg'f na htyl, oehgny genqr-bss: n oveq'f yvsr sbe n zbzrag'f snagnfl. Vg vfa'g, gb nal fnar crefba, jbegujuvyr. Bapr lbh xabj gur gevpx vg vfa'g nznmvat, whfg ubeevslvat. (Gung'f gur erny ernfba jul Obeqra pna'g gryy nalbar uvf frperg: vg'f gbb shpxvat fnq.) Naq gung'f gur cbvag bs gur fgbel: gurfr zra ner frrxvat gb perngr jbaqre, naq perngr ubeebe vafgrnq. Vg'f bayl jbaqebhf vs lbh qba'g xabj jung vg pbfgf. Vg'f zntvp nf ubyybj gevpxrel, nf qrprcgvba--hygvzngryl, nf frys-qrprcgvba. (Qnagba'f fcrrpu ng gur raq nobhg srnevat gung ur'q or gur bar va gur gnax nf cevpryrff--ur jnf nyjnlf gur bar va gur gnax.)

Niall McAuley: I have that "What If The Beatles Were Irish" Youtube clip open in a tab right now. I couldn't help but think that PNH would enjoy it.

*Wow. LeetKey knows not to ROT-13 html tags. Awesome.

Thank you for helping me put my objections into words.

Was it? I missed that. I started out watching it, trying to figure things out. At some point probably before the halfway mark, I remember thinking, what is the point of all this? At some point, Hugh Jackman's character became nothing more that a plot device needed to carry the story to the ending that the writer wanted to have.

If there was a point, I would guess it was something to the effect of "Look at me! I, the writer, fooled you, the viewer"

You wallpapered the suite with the students's papers, or with the students themselves?

Montana, although unarguably beautiful and full of wildlife, is hell to get around in.

I have a frustrating-Montana-driving memory:

We arrived at the Montana border on a summertime day back when the daytime speed limit was "Reasonable and Prudent."(1)

We were going to be on some of the big wide highways, and so finally we had a chance to legally autobahn in North America.

Except we were in a 25 foot RV.

I got it up to 90mph on a wide, empty and gently sloping downhill section of I-90, but only for an instant, and only by pushing it into a "Scotty yells up from the Engine Room that she canna take more and is about to rattle apart" zone.

-----
(1) Generally known at the time to top out at 100mph depending on local law enforcement. This was too vague for the U.S.'s Supreme Court, and they stopped the law.

There are no short-cuts in that state, no bypasses, no alternate routes. There is, however, Rattlesnake Creek NRA, which has some amazing, amazing wildflowers, and which is a place the road-weary traveller should stop and walk out the kinks before heading out of Missoula (or, for those with fewer bad bendy bits than I, the Kim Williams Nature Trail, which is long and switch-backy and unforested).

I found out about that one even before it hit the news: the ashes from 200 other people were on that flight, including those of my brother-in-law's grandfather.

I believe my b.i.l.'s family is amused more than annoyed by this coda- evidently the grandfather had been a rocket scientist but didn't have the best sense of direction.

Sorry, was that in bad taste?

What rather disappointed me was hearing that the plan was just to shoot the rocket up some miles, and then it would fall back to earth. I'd assumed it was meant to head everlastingly into space, or join the asteroid belt, or fall into the sun as the ultimate funeral pyre.

Smith's Derived Law of Montana Driving:

Look carefully to see if there's someone crazier than you coming, then gun it.

Meanwhile... I just went to the post office two blocks over from the office. Between there and here is Albuquerque's convention center, and I was wondering why there were so many teenagers around until I noticed the MPs and the banner: Intel is having its science fair here this week. I guess I'll be going. I probably won't understand even a fraction of what the kids are doing, but it gives me hope for the Future.

Anyone got any rumors about which books they're animating?

---L.

There have already been two rounds of animated Tintin movies:

One was broadcast on American TV in the mid / late '60s. If memory serves, they ran on Channel 9 WOR in the NY area, and the episodes were split in two. I don't remember if these ran for an hour or half-hour.

The only adventure I recall watching way back when is the trip to the moon one. There were others, but they didn't make an impression.

A Belgian friend came back from a business trip to China with a set of DVDs full of more recently produced Tintin adventures.

No it can't.

Over the last week, I caught up on three weeks of various incarnations of Law & Order:

Love-crazed diaper-clad astronaut story: Check!

Brain-damaged vet turned out on the streets after stay in squalid VA hospital story: Check!

I guess we'll have to wait until next fall for a deranged student shooting up campus story.

http://thinkprogress.org/comey-testimony/

It actually makes me respect and appreciate John Ashcroft, something I thought impossible. And it makes me despise Alberto Gonzales even more.

Much better, thank you. And look, it's available in Region 1 DVD as well! I could actually play it!

Nobody seems to have noticed the extra character retroactively stuck in the burning pool of shit in Dante's Inferno. He's returned to his master for his reckoning.

We need a L&O: D.C. Beat.

Must be catching.

Also, am I the only one to be 1. excited and then 2. slightly deflated that 1. Peter Jackson has optioned Temeraire and 2. he's only optioned Temeraire?

Gonzales is thoroughly despicable, and it hasn't even got the humorous value of e.g. when a certain person called to ask a couple if the person could borrow the couple's van, and wasn't deterred in the quest to borrow it even when old that one of the couple was in labor and they needed the van to go to the hospital!

Apropos of nothing: Does anyone happen to have the link to that very large page of gender-switched-pose superhero fanart? Not this one (and that's the one that was a Particle back in May 2005) -- I remember a much longer page, some of which was women in "male" poses.

My google-fu has utterly failed me. I keep finding all these pages that I have tantalizing memories of, but not the one I'm looking for.

The topic has come up again recently, with the new Mary Jane figurine, which is why I ask.

The least plausible bit is the dog spacesuit for Snowy; secondly (spoiler*) fbzrbar orvat noyr gb fgbj nobneq.

(Just to clarify, I read as much Tintin as I could get my hands on between the ages of 8 and 14, some of it in French, but I picked up the DVDs last December. It's just that the films have been in existence since before I was born, so I don't feel pressured to watch them; I'm 35+ years late, another 6 months doesn't make any difference... does it?)

* But why haven't you read it already? Go. Go now! Read them both! Destination: Moon (Objectif Lune) and Explorers on the Moon (On a Marché sur la Lune) - I keep putting the french titles in as Tintin is the about the only thing I've read in French and understood, and found I wasn't missing the point entirely when I read a translation.

At this rate the only way I'll be able to watch everything I want to this year is by getting my friend who holds movies nights on his "big" "screen" to show only my selections. And to go round every night.

I'll call him tomorrow.

The site I linked to above claimed that Asterix and Cleopatra was better, which makes me want to take a look.

I think a phrase you were looking for is styrofoam tits, as in "why was my first reaction on hearing of the death of a styrofoam tit happiness, not sadness?" Or "where was that thread with the interesting links to anatomically-impossible women I saw?"

I'd go look it up, but I am getting ready to go to a conference, and should be working. Boo hiss on work.

Within a day or so we'd located the nearest grocery store, and we students brought back a number of things of various utility, from a new pot, assorted food that didn't require cooking, some plastic cutlery, and a spear gun which two of our male students wandered off with while drunk. For myself I bought a set of Tintin silverware, and I still have it and treasure it to this day.

bellatrys had some comparisons of typical poses used to sell animation software on her livejournal:
http://bellatrys.livejournal.com

The least plausible bit is the dog spacesuit for Snowy

Oh, yeah?

(Guess who has been researching the history of space suits for the upcoming Heinlein Centennial...)

Excellent, got any new info on the skintight suit design? If Nasa needs good PR*, suiting their astronauts up like 30's pulp covers is bound to help.

* Is a bear Popish?

This sort of thing makes me want to change the world. Or cry, one of the two.

------
* I was looking for a house to go with that nice job I got. I found one, too, a fantastic converted schoolhouse, currently owned by a painter. We had a fascinating talk about painting, bookbinding, and philosophy, only briefly stopping to agree terms so the bewildered real estate agent could go off and draw up paperwork.

"Does this make me look fat?"

~

* They seem to be particularly trying to appeal to the fanfiction.net crowd, who are (believed to be) younger and more naive than the lj crowd.

I don't like the selections, and the reply cards don't have a "Don't Send" check box on them.

[just venting]

It sad, and getting more bad,
I say, douxdoux, capitalism gone mad!

Or, as I explain every semester to my American government students 'the poor always pay more'.

(And if I'm wrong again, that's even better)

A ghost-haunted computer room center tale...

* Sometimes, especially under the influence of insomnia, I'll go browsing one of those "share your true ghost stories" websites. Generally, I can just go through the links and mentally check off all that apply: [ ] Paraeidolia, [ ] Sleep Paralysis, [ ] Hypnopompic/Hypnogogic Hallucination, [ ] Autosuggestion. Every once in a great while I come across one and am forced to mentally check off [ ] Other. There's something fantastically wonderful and addictive about those stories -- it's like pure, distilled essence of storytelling, with no distracting plot or style to get in the way.**

** I feel the same way about old charity fundraiser cookbooks, except that I see them as the essence of technical writing.

And I was just started to wonder if there is a list of wheels anywhere. I've seen some short story magazines have lists like "Plots we've seen too often", but it's not quite the same.

I realize it would be a rather long list, no easy task to compile, and would be good for something like the Good version of wikipedia to create...

;)

But from a purely educational point of view, it struck me as an interesting problem of trying to get someone up to speed on decades worth of fiction, without them having to read decade's worth of fiction.

The Joker with a French accent?
I shudder to think.

I had the strongest experience of auditory pareidolia the other night. There were several sources of noise going on in my place -- I was listening to an mp3 playlist, and the dishwasher was going, and the clothesdryer, plus whatever sounds were coming from the computer. The playlist ended, and I could still hear music. It sounded like one of those earnest young singer/songwriters with a guitar, and he was singing/chanting "I love some juice; 'A Love Supreme.' I love the Jews; I love to sing." Over and over he sang this catalog of things he loved. Mostly juice and Jews.

It was driving me crazy. I checked all the electronics in the house. I went outside to see if it was coming from a neighbor. Finally I was able to track it to something rubbing against something in the dishwasher. The weird part was that well after I figured out what was going on, the illusion remained just as strong until the dishwasher changed cycles.

Related video: Steve Winwood is hungry for breakfast.

Also, check out this one, which has links to lots of similar artwork down in the comments. I was especially taken by the one of Rogue and Remy...

I'm visiting my Bay Area friends next weekend. Maybe I can borrow their Tintin vintage-1990s DVD. (I blew the kids' minds last year, when I loaned them a "Best of the Thunderbirds" set.)

Anyone remember the National Lampoon Tintin parody? Tintin and Snowy visit Beirut. This was when there were Marines stationed there. After snowy is captured, the military gets involved and either nukes or carpet bombs the city.

Pareidolia can be the grain of sand dropped into the oyster of the artistic mind. I think it also could go a long way to explaining why a lot of artists have mental problems; lower your "Is it real or is it pareidolia" filters too far or too often and you wind up really seeing the Closet Monster.

May 17 in Florence, MA: Small Beer Press with John Crowley, Elizabeth Hand, and Paul Park.

I'm going to try to be there and would love to say hello to any of you in person.

I've got that one, along with the complete series. So, the kids liked the show even though they grew up puppetless?

(Ever seen Joe 90? Nine-year-old boy with dorky glasses gets to save the day again and again and again because dad has got this machine that instantly transfers into his head whatever skills are needed during that episode. Talk about power fantasies for nerds.)

"Joe 90" (nor "Supercar") never made it to local TV when I was a kid, and I'm trying to avoid the temptation of buying DVDs just to catch up.

I test a new mug by putting it empty in the microwave along with a Pyrex cup of water for one minute. If the empty cup is too hot to touch, I don't microwave it again.

So that's what it's called! I usually describe it as "I hear Dead Can Dance playing through the waterpipes."

Excellent, got any new info on the skintight suit design [139-page PDF]? If Nasa needs good PR, suiting their astronauts up like 30's pulp covers is bound to help.

Not much happened for decades, except that Jerry Pournelle did everything possible to spread enthusiasm for that style of space suit to all within earshot.

But now something is happening. Sorry I don't have time to write more, but look at
this. A group at MIT is trying to push the old idea further.

...which, considering his stentorous voice, covers a very wide area.

I saw an artist rendition of a... uh... space ball. It was presented as a "life boat" of sorts. The idea being that if things got bad, you'd put yourself in a four foot diameter rubber sphere with it's own life support thingy.

Of course, you've got no arms or legs sticking out, so you had to wait for someone in a suit to come pick you up, but I think the idea was that it might be too expensive to have a suit for everyone, but you might be able to have a space ball for everyone because, no moving joints, nice spherical shape, etc.

The shwartz is strong with this one...

<Litella>Never mind.</Litella>

I thought the whole point was that it squeezed you exactly as tight as a one-bar atmosphere would.

The trick, I'd think, would be getting into the damn thing. NASA might have to sub-contract some latex fetishists...

And, no, I will not ask about George Clooney's batnipples.

Basically, each skintight suit would have to be made especially for each person

No, there are ways to tighten the suit down to fit. One simple way is zippers, like the ones you see on the legs of some running pants or overalls. You could also use Velcro, though it might not be as reliable a closure. I think I know another way to do it using something called a LADD cell, but I'd have to spend some time doing some research and computing to see if it would really work.

#442: ... damn.

No. But that didn't stop me being nicknamed Joe 90 when I was a seven year old with dorky glasses. I also got nicknamed Brains after the Thunderbirds character, again because of the dorky glasses (at least partly).

Bill Higgins... I think it was 20 years ago that I read an article about NASA experimenting with armor-like spacesuits. If I remember correctly, because they were rigid shells, it took less time between getting into the suit and being able to go out with it, something about the inside pressure not being unlike what a human body is used to. Does this make sense, or did I dream it?

Yes, it makes very good sense, and some engineers think it is the Right Way To Build A Space Suit. "Hard suits" have usually lost out to "soft suits" historically, although the Shuttle EVA suit is a hybrid with a hard torso.

Bruce Cohen at #446:

Serge @ 443

Basically, each skintight suit would have to be made especially for each person

No, there are ways to tighten the suit down to fit. One simple way is zippers, like the ones you see on the legs of some running pants or overalls. You could also use Velcro, though it might not be as reliable a closure.

Another split in pressure suit design choices is "full pressure" vs. "partial pressure." It was discovered in the 1940s that a really tight garment could do nearly as good a job, at keeping a pilot's bodily fluids from boiling, as encasing the pilot in an inflated rubber bag. It was really hard to make an inflated full-pressure suit mobile and flexible enough to fly an airplane, and the partial-pressure suit offered much more flexibility.

As a consequence, contracts for military suits went to underwear companies (David Clark, International Latex (Playtex) and the Berger Brothers) as well as to rubber companies (B.F. Goodrich).

Eventually the full-pressure style won, as astronauts and X-15 pilots headed into hard vacuum. But mobility is still an uphill battle, and there are many difficult design compromises. It's still difficult and tiring to do lots of work in Shuttle suit gloves.

One hopes that astronauts returning to the Moon or going to Mars will be provided with much better EVA suits than we have today.

The design that excited* me about the skintight was basically the one Pournelle was touting: the unpressurized suit. The idea is that human skin works fine to hold air and body fluids in as long as it's restrained from expanding (hence the highly elastic material). The suit has to be permeable to sweat, giving you a crude cooling system that only requires an auxiliary cooler to smooth the cycles out and assist when in direct sunlight.

Yes, it's sort of like wearing a tight corset all over your body**, but because you're not fighting air pressure when moving, mobility is far better xn movement less tiring than in a pressurized suit. If the material of the suit is a relatively thick foam stretched over the body, it should fill any shallow dimples such as behind the elbows and knees, and fit curves well. Men will in fact need some sort of special jockstrap or codpiece, and women will need a specialized support bra to hold the undersides of the breasts***. Zippers on the outside that pull the material together for that tension will not press directly on the skin; the foam will soften their impact.

By the bye, LADD cells are ingenious devices for converting rotary (plus compressive/expansive) to linear motion and vice versa using a sort of cylindrical cat's cradle of cords. I got interested in them as a mechanism for controlling focus and focal length in optical assemblies; turns out they're not all that useful in that application because they need additional rigid parts to hold the lenses in position, and so there's no real advantage. But if the suit material were formed around a set of LADD cells, one for each major part of the body, the suit material would do the job of he holder. And note that lower arm, upper arm, lower leg, upper leg, and torso are all roughly cylindrical.

* Yeah, Serge, it was the nipples.

** So Nasa is going to have to start hiring bondage fetishists. Hmm ... so vacuum construction workers are going to have to be bonded?

** As will some men.

Of course, you've got no arms or legs sticking out, so you had to wait for someone in a suit to come pick you up, but I think the idea was that it might be too expensive to have a suit for everyone, but you might be able to have a space ball for everyone because, no moving joints, nice spherical shape, etc.

Bujold used the idea in one of her Barrayar books - The Vor Game, I think. They were called "bod pods" or something like that, but the concept was similar - cheap and easy escape pods, one-size-fits-all, bob around in space and wait/hope to be retrieved.

Is this your subtle way to bring us back to the comments made by Kathryn from Sunnyvale about styrofoam tits?

Hmm... This'd all play well on American TV... Female astronauts with huge busts, and male astronauts with huge schwanshtukers...

IIRC, Kingsbury did something similar (The Moon Goddess and the Son), but it had a handle and one arm, so you could zip it from the outside (sort of) or grab the next guy.

The other reason for using rescue balls is that they're much cheaper than suits, and you can scatter lots of them around a spacecraft or a habitat. If there's an SDE (Sudden Decompression Event) and someone is not near enough to a suit, or there isn't time to put one on, there's likely to be a ball nearby. They could be stored all over in small pouches that automatically pop open when there's a pressure drop, like oxygen masks in an airliner.

I remember watching Joe 90 when I was a kid here in Perth, back in the 70s. The thing that troubled me most was that the 9-year-old kid had a gun, and that he wasn't averse to wasting bad guys with it. (I could be misremembering about this, but I'm sure I saw the kid using that gun to deal with bad guys.)

This is just my way of giving back to the comic book artists who gave me such pleasure* when I was a lad. Making the real world more like comics every day.

* Make of this what you will.

That means that, when you're at work, you say things like "It's clobbering time!" or "Curse me for a novice!" And you start meetings with "Avengers assemble!" Right, bub?

I saw something a few years ago that was a rigid space suit design. It claimed that one of the problems with rigid suits is that as you move, twist, turn, bend a rigid suit, you may increase or decrease the air volume inside, thereby increasing/decreasing the airpressure inside. (Bend your elbow all the way and you might pop your eardrum). The thing about this rigid suit was that all the joints were designed to be constant volume, so that if you bent a joint, the air volume inside the suit remained the same, therefore the pressure too.

Basically, every joint looked like a ball/socket contraption. Thought it was interesting...

Reminds me of a Dave Chapelle skit where they try to envision what it would be like if the treatment of corporate fraud and drug crimes were reversed. Police Chief: "Ah, Mr. Drug Dealer, I hate to bother you, but, well, this is embarassing, really, but I have a warrant here for your arrest...do you think you could come by the station some time this week and we can take care of this?" vs. Police Officer: *busts down door* "FREEZE MOTHERFUCKER!" Blam! *shoots dog*

One of the objects of hardsuit design is to have constant volume joints, This can lead to needing to make awkward seeming limb movement to get a hand, or foot, from one position to another.

I've seeb it claimed that curreht softsuits also have limits on how the joints move, different to a hardsuit, but that astronauts know how to use them.

Think of the mimes/dancers who pretend to be robots.

Another comment I recall was that nobody seemed interesting in making a robot hand that used some sort of glover controller, and astronauts were using gloves that were awkward, uncomfortable, and expensive.

But maybe Jack Coggins and Fletcher Pratt has the right idea.

It was a wedding reception with no menu written out. The leaves were plated as a vertical spray from a cored cucumber stump; when tugged out, they had been grown/harvested in smaller groups of maybe 2-5 leaves attached together at the base. They tasted like, well, lawn grass when eaten (very tender, no tough fibers), but had a remarkably distinctive, sweet aftertaste that several people compared to aspartame or some other artificial sweetener. My first thought was stevia, but apparently that looks nothing like these grassy things.

What the heck was this stuff? Any ideas? I was the only one at the table who ate all of mine and I'm not dead yet, but it would nice to know what it is regardless.

Wheatgrass? Hm. Maybe-- I'll have to nick a sample blade of the green stuff to compare the taste.

I felt slightly bad for the chef (or catering company), in terms of having lots of people decide that certain things were inedible garnishes. Especially the zillions of little spun-glass filigrees sticking out of the secondary desserts.

Wheatgrass has a very small sweet green aftertaste, and would not have the spoon-shaped end to the leaves evident in your photo; it's also really floppy when blanched. And every kind of dandylion I've had is herbal and astringent, even when blanched.

Well, it looks like it's been closed in favour of keeping the article, and one of the admins who supported keeping it has raised the question of what can be done to prevent this kind of issue in future on a relevant policy discussion page. Now would probably be a good time to go back and make relevant comments.

Blanched celery, huh? I have no idea whether I can find any locally for a direct comparison, though then again, I'm not sure how interested I am in eating a lot more of them. I've eaten the tiny yellow stalks/leaves in the middle of standard green supermarket celery and they weren't terribly similar to these; otoh there seem to be several distinctively different kinds of celery that I can't instantly find pix of on Google.

#395 et al: Business Week has something. The particle, on the other hand, is comparing apples and oranges, i.e. now vs. a period when the U.S. was >25% of the world economy (as much of the once-industrialized world was still digging itself out of the ruins); absent competition, the U.S. could indulge in massively wasteful practices. (Remember when Reader's Digest tried to counter The Wastemakers with "Waste Not, Have Not?"?) One point they should have made and didn't: in those wonderful 50's, the marginal tax rate on bloated incomes was 90%, which helped hold the bloat down -- there wasn't as much point in mulcting your employees when you had to pass 90% of it on to the government.

#468: JESR, are there \any/ celery leaves that look spiky like grass instead of leaflike? Flat vs. curly doesn't seem to be the issue, unless the original description is off.

But yes, the interior leaves of blanched celery can be vertical and spiky.

Huh?

Huh?

And the first google result was for "ommunity ervices" and led to a real webpage on the city's site which as far as I can tell contains the relevant words with their initial letters properly attached.

I think either I need more sleep or google is playing a joke on me. Or both - maybe I'm too tired too properly admire this?

(double post was accidental, sorry....)

Xopher - Glad to hear I was at least on the right track and you are no longer being frustrated unecessarily by Word. At least, not in that particular way.

Serge @270 - I was unaware there was a pseudonymous Tepper bibliography out there. Putting that on my "to search for and read" list with the Marianne books (of which I've only read one so far). My suspicion, alas, is that the Oliphant heroine, were she to be resurrected in order to comment on today's politics, would be indistinguishable from any other Tepper herione since, say, 2001. The Fresco marks the point beyond which pretty much any Tepper book will leave skidmarks on my wall, or would if they weren't property of the Boulder Public Library and I were free to mangle them.

(I'm fairly opinionated about Sheri Tepper's body of work. I categorize it into stuff I wholeheartedly enjoy, stuff where I tolerate the preaching in order to enjoy the worldbuilding and characters, and stuff where the book hits the wall. There's overlap, of course. My husband and I are working our way through the True Game novena, which is in the "enjoy" category, but we just got to the point towards the end of Necromancer Nine that caused us to blink and go "This is the 'blame the patriarchy' portion of our feature entertainment, isn't it?" We also WTF'd a few chapters back where the sermon appeared to be "See what happens when you criminalize euthanasia, you morons?")

Pareidolia - is that in play when we get story ideas from misreadings, typos, and corner-of-eye misglimpses?

I read the Marianne books a long time ago and found them quite charming. Then I read a number of Tepper's later books, and discovered that some of them irritated me a little for the preaching, and that I didn't remember anything about them just a short time after I read them, even though the writing was not bad. So I stopped, and I haven't been tempted since. Am I missing anything?

If it is not too late, I would like to take this opportunity to offer the traditional warning:
Do not read the last three books of the True Game series.

(Why not? Search me: I took the advice when it was offered to me. But I expect there's a good reason for it.)

(I am involved in a plot to get Gore appointed head of the EPA. Shhhhhhh, though! Secrecy is of the essence.)

That being said, I'm with Fragano. Besides, as you pointed out, the next Prez will have to spend a lot of time cleaning up the current mess, and I'm not sure the currently known Democratic candidates have what it takes.

Maybe none of them do. More to the point, if it weren't for the alternative (another 4-8 years of Republican insanity), why on earth would any sane individual want to be President of the Superfund site that is the Federal bureaucracy after it's been infiltrated by "loyal Bushie" hacks?

It's mostly the political appointees that are Bushie hacks. Plus a few very specific areas (e.g. some sections of the Justice Dept.) where Bush has exerted especially strong pressure.

It's not easy to infiltrate the entire bureaucracy. All those pesky civil service rules that make it difficult to carry out political purges. Even someone like Bush has to pick a few relatively small sections to concentrate on.

Maryland Jockey Club president Joe DeFrancis, to Bob Costas at the Preakness trophy presentation: "And now for the presentation of, as you know Bob, the most valuable trophy in American sports..."

Dear Friend:
We are in desperate need of help. I am a US. Vietnam Era Veteran living in a Veteran's shelter in Las Vegas, unable to work. My wife who lives in Mexico has dual kidney failure. Due to my low disability income and her sickness, she is not a candidate for a US. visa. In Mexico there is not a donor registry for transplants and her peritoneal dialysis is becoming less effective every day. She is literally on her last leg, with possibly two to four months remaining. We have an eleven year old son who is totally confused as to why his mother is so sick and his father can not come back to Mexico.

We have found a donor match in Mexico, however he is demanding a sum of money to donate his kidney. Like most of you, I do not approve of people who are greedy and are willing to sell body parts. However, this is a last resort, and it is a fact of life in other countries. We can not possibly raise this kind of money on our own and are asking for help from anybody who can save a life. Mary Cruz is only thirty five years old and does not deserve this. There is no cost for the transplant because she has medical insurance to cover this, but no money for the donor. We have asked for help from many US. agencies and have been denied mostly for immigration reasons. Just because I am married to a Mexican does not give my wife automatic entry into the US. Also US. medicare will not pay for her dialysis. She is young and vibrant, and with a new kidney she could be a mother again.. I can not go back to Mexico for medical reasons, and also my meager pension is not enough for us to live on, let alone pay for a kidney. Please help us if you can. A dollar or two would be greatly appreciated, if not, I ask for your prayers for Mary Cruz.

Some scenario like this is certainly possible, even likely. We all know -- and most of us have posted about -- the horrors of American medical care. Michael Moore's new Movie, Sicko, is going to be preaching to a very large choir. I understand Fox News has already reviewed it favorably. Still, the request to send money to Paypal kind of gives this one away...

So it's almost certainly a scam. Not a really smart one, though; I offhand can't think of a really good way to use a PayPal account as a money laundry or to have a cutout that prevents the fraud squad from finding the owner. Always assuming that the cops give a hoot in hell about this sort of thing.

* I can just see it: she gets on an airliner and takes it over by threatening to detonate her portable dialysis machine.

*gapes*

Why yes it does! That looks (and sounds) *exactly* like the same stuff!!

(I have no idea what I will now do with this information, but it's nice to know anyway.)

I know--it kind of makes you all tingly to hear something that sensible from a major political figure, doesn't it? But I don't think he would have the same freedom to speak the truth so clearly, were he to dive back into the maelstrom. Like President Carter on Israel/Palestine, he can say things now that he could never get away with were he still political.

We've seen exactly what politics does to Al Gore. It's not pretty. He places far too much importance on the truth, on getting things right, to do well in that world. The inevitable compromises sap his spirit and leave him wooden, playing a part he hates. From the outside, he can say what needs to be said without worrying about whether it's politically wise or not. I think he is far more effective from where he is now than he would be were he to reenter politics. He does a good job of serving as a check on the other more, ah, flexible politicians.

Heck, I haven't seen one either and the first thing I did after becoming an American was to mail my registration to the Democratic Party. Hmmm... Thrilling Democrat sounds like an old pulp mag's title.

Oh, bloody hell, and general inarticulate noises. I used to work in Greenwich and I loved that ship. I am getting incredibly irate at the thought that it might be a deliberate act of ship-murder.

*sigh* If only such a system could be put into place without it becoming yet another club to beat over the heads of the powerless!

And the news conference on the BBC site was tending towards thinking it was an accident: I know that it makes no practical difference, but I'd like to think that it happened in the absence of human malice...