It's perhaps appropriate that Santa Barbara the city is in a fireprone area.

(Where's the earth-shattering KABOOM?)

Before Euopeans cast cannon, they cast church bells, and since so much of that technology carried over to cannon manufacture, the foundry workers took Barabra with them--the presence of Stuff What Goes BOOM! in their new field just reinforced the wisdom of their choice, I suspect.

Of course no one outside the Vatican has dropped her--they know quite well what they're up against!

Yes, I do have a particularly sick sense of humor; did you really need to ask?

This is his day too. All over Cuba, santeros who have Changó are drinking rum, playing drums and otherwise celebrating their birthday.

Love, C.

Love, C.

I had no idea that Saint Barbara was the saint of mathematicians. My mathematician friends need to know this at once! Lord only knows which saints they've been praying to: Newton, Hilbert, and Turing, probably.

http://homepages.tcp.co.uk/~maya/barbara.html

Yes, actually, it is my admittedly ambitious goal in life to become Making Light's go-to source for Chesterton. What Jim Macdonald is to horrific trauma, abi is to bookbinding and the Netherlands, and Xopher is to chocolate, I will be to the poetry of portly Edwardian Anglo-Catholic conservatism.

If I were an aviator I would be disappointed by only having St Teresa, rather than the far more awesome St Christina the Astonishing, who could actually fly. As it is, I've always rather liked Elijah as a patron for artillerymen, specifically forward observers; went up to the massed priests of Baal on his own, mocked them (rather wittily) and then called in fire from heaven to prove his point.

As you know, Bob Fragano, in the early days of Santería they were also trying to hide what they were doing from the Masters...and the things they did to hide Yorubá* religion from the Masters became part of what they actually believed.

*In Yorubá the accent mark indicates high tone; the stress is on the initial, which makes the word 'Yorubá' a bit difficult for most English speakers to pronounce.

"I see," he said, when Matt was done. "It is true that some of the tests are psychological rather than overt. But this matter of the crash -- who fed you that nonsense?"

Matt did not say anything.

"Never mind. You can protect your informant -- it won't matter in the least in the long run. But about the crash --" He considered. "I'd give my word of honor to you -- in fact I do -- but if you accept the hypothesis your friend holds, then you won't pay any attention to my sworn word." He thought a moment. "Are you a Catholic?"

"Uh, no sir." Matt was startled.

"It doesn't matter. Do you know who Saint Barbara is?"

"Not exactly, sir. The field --"

"Yes, the field. She was a third-century martyr. The point is that she is the patron saint of all who deal with high explosives, rocket men among others." He paused.

"If you go over to the chapel, you will find that a mass is scheduled during which Saint Barbara will be asked to intercede for the souls of the men who were lost this afternoon. I think you realize that no priest would lend his office to any such chicanery as your friend suggests?"

Matt nodded solemnly. "I see your point, sir. I don't need to go to the chapel -- I've found out what I needed to know."

-- Robert Heinlein, Space Cadet

I would not be at all surprised if Jamie were well aware of St. Barbara - he might discount the whole thing as a bunch of folderol (being a skeptic and atheist, air), but he's likely aware of the historical relation.

(somewhere I still have my St. Barbara medallion, from when I was an associate of the East Kingdom Royal Artillery. I should dig that up, given the amount of shooting I've been doing recently - not really a believer, but, hey, every little bit helps).

Is it... ah... cannonical?

I am also enormously impressed by the idea of fortification builders and artillerymen sharing a patroness. It bespeaks an evenhandedness, and a sense of commonality even in war, which I can but admire.

* Yes, unfortunately this year it's lying in a ditch, suffering from a bad hangover from investing in too many dodgy financial instruments. So who's the patron saint of Greedy Financiers?

I found her long before I joined up. She is well known in the Army, even among those who don't belong to one of her canonic groups of charges.

Those of us who end up in one of those groups (I'm a armorer), well the church has been wrong before, we can live with Her being in error now.

The observance off sometime in the early 90s. Apparently MODERN university administration types don't like mixing fire, booze, and explosives. What a bunch of wet blankets.

Not that I would glow in the dark or anything.

Is it... ah... cannonical?

Yes, and secular as well.

You do know who's the patron saint of wet blankets, don't you?

Jim Macdonald.

Homemade Tesla coils?

@23:
I wonder how mathematician's ended up in this mix? Is it because of their role in computing optimal charges and angles for artillery?

Possible- aside from that, there's generally a lot of science and engineering related stuff on that list.

Is it... ah... cannonical?

[totally deadpan]
Yes, it portrays her in front of a pair of muzzle-loading field pieces, why do you ask?
[/deadpan]

hee hee... Serge is hoist on his own petard....

:-)

Ginger @33 St. Michael Archangel is the patron saint of radiologists. Which isn't the same thing at all. Hmm...

poo on them. that sucks. Almost any party is better with the addition of fire and explosives - as long as their usage is restricted to *before* the alcohol is imbibed, at least by the fire-wielders and demolitions people.

(A friend of mine describes the BATFE as "Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives - Use in reverse order for one hell of a party.")

It's nice that I haven't yet been called a bore.

Saint Ebenezer of Londinium.

I dunno if ranges thereabouts are legally allowed to rent firearms, but that would be one option.

(I would go shooting tonight, and bring the Nagant* - BIG BOOM - but the outdoor ranges close at sunset, and plinking away with the .22 just doesn't seem appropriate, somehow).

*Mosin Nagant service rifle, chambered for the 7.62x54R (for Rimmed, or sometimes Russian) round. Mine is the 1938 carbine version - and the normally peppy and boisterous cartridge the Nagant fires is... well, rather thunderous when fired from a barrel that's almost a foot shorter than the round was originally designed to be fired from...).

More to the point, it's hard to get ammo loaded out for the full-sized rifle anymore. Wolf is the only manufacturer I know of making it new, and the older stuff I have (with the heavier slug and powder charge) is almost all steel-cored, which; because of fire dangers, most ranges prohibit.

But the boom is nice.

An M-1, or M1A, fired with some speed, also makes quite satisfactory booms, if not quite the level of muzzle flash.

Come to think of it, that book's also where I first learned that the Asteroid Belt is the debris of a blown-up planet - hey, I still get the chills thinking of that asteroid the space cadets come across with strata of sedimentary rock.

And ever since I read it, I've been confidently telling people that St Barbara is the patron saint of astronauts. (Which brings to mind the wonderful story told by William Dalrymple in his eye-opening book From the Holy Mountain, of finding a framed photo in a convent in Syria of Syrian (Muslim) cosmonauts who'd visited the convent to sacrifice a sheep to Mary in thanks for their safe return from the Soviet space station Mir.)

Science fiction, educating the youth of today for the challenges of tomorrow!

Oh, yeah - I was just talking about the noise (I shoot it with ear plugs and electronic muffs). The recoil is pretty brutal - without a slip-on recoil pad, I can shoot that rifle about six times before I give up, usually (which means one load-out - five rounds in the magazine, and one up the pipe) - it doesn't help that the stock ends in a flipping steel plate....

(God's honest truth, the one time I got to shoot a Barret .50, it hurt less than this thing does without the recoil pad).

Nagants have the advantage that they are cheap as hell (if you pay more than a hundred bucks for any Nagant, it's because it's a collector's item*, or you're getting ripped off), rugged as hell, and cheap to shoot if you can shoot surplus ammo. They are not, however, the most ergonomic weapons ever designed, nor, with stock sights, are they particularly accurate, imho (which is why mine is going to get a scout-rifle style forward scope mount, and a cheap 2-4x long-eye relief scope, sometime in January).

More to the point, it's hard to get ammo loaded out for the full-sized rifle anymore. Wolf is the only manufacturer I know of making it new, and the older stuff I have (with the heavier slug and powder charge) is almost all steel-cored, which; because of fire dangers, most ranges prohibit.

Advantages to living somewhere that has never had anything resembling a real forest fire (worst we occasionally get is field grass fires - and they don't go far), and barely knows the meaning of the word "drought" - my range doesn't give a damn what you shoot, as long as it isn't tracer, is legal for non-LEOs to own, and hits the target and the backstop - most of the ammo I have is surplus.

Other manufacturers for modern 7.62x54R include Baranul, Prvi Partizan (the other half of my ammo for the Nagant is Partizan), and the "Bears" - Silver and Brown Bear. I know all of them chamber rounds in the 180 grain range (182 for the Partizan, 185 for the Brown Bear I'm holding for a friend) - I don't know the powder load out on those, but the Partizan hurts as much as the surplus to shoot, so....

But the boom is nice.

It sure does attract attention....

An M-1, or M1A, fired with some speed, also makes quite satisfactory booms, if not quite the level of muzzle flash.

Yah. I might pick one up someday, to have in the safe, but I think for CMP I'm going to stick with my AR-15 - I'm too damn familiar with them.

*certain combinations of Nagant variant and armory are more or less common than others - for instance, the Tula armory made almost no examples of the 1938 carbine, and none from after 1941 are known to exist - so a Tula '38 is worth more than one made from other armories.

I am too damned familiar with the M-16 family. I didn't like it much 16 years ago, and while I dislike it less now (and can take it apart while 3/4s asleep, and blindfolded), it's not my first choice for most things.

The M1/M1A are much easier to maintain, and much less forgiving of things being less than perfect, while being more consistent (the tolerances aren't the odd mix of sloppy, and super tight.

They have a little more recoil, but...

I learned to shoot .30 cal with Mauser and Mannlicher bolt actions, metal buttplates and surplus israeli machine-gun ammo. I was 16, and had less meat on me then my present light frame possesses now.

I can shoot the Nagant carbine (which I think I paid all of $90 for at a Big 5) all day, with mil-spec surplus. The only thing I've ever fired which I had to stop because of the recoil was a Marlin carbine in 45-70, loaded out to launch a 405g slug at 1850fps. Two of those (out a weapon which had a very narrow buttstock, and comes in at 9 lbs, or so, fully loaded, i.e. about the same as an M-16 with a 30rd clip), and I was done for the day.

I do think about getting a pad for the Nagant, but I'm lazy.

Seriously, if you are serious--don't you dare apologize for puns! I couldn't make a decent pun (or even an indecent one) to save my life, but I love snickering over other people's. And yours are wonderful. So are everyone's response-puns.

Serge @ 58: I (personally) don't think it's possible to overdo puns. They're part of the kind of cheerfully illogical word-play that makes a language a language and not--well, whatever else it might be.

Sigh. I think maybe I've had too long a day myself, here . . .

Let's all salute him, for he is our punnery sergeant, and he never bores anyone. Why, he's got a high caliber of puns -- we shell admire them for years to come.

It had been a while since I actually owned one (I've been meaning to get one for a while,. but the combination of opportunity, money, and placement just came together about a month or so ago), so I can't field-strip one in my sleep any more - but I'm pretty sure I can do it blindfolded again.

The M1/M1A are much easier to maintain, and much less forgiving of things being less than perfect, while being more consistent (the tolerances aren't the odd mix of sloppy, and super tight.

I've never - and I mean never, even when I was in Basic, shooting an M-16A1 that barely qualified as such (I think the lower started as an M-16(nil)) and was so damn loosey-goosey it rattled when I marched with it - had the sorts of problems with the AR-15/M-16 family that other folks have described.

I was pretty religious about at least wiping down the bolt face running a swab up the barrel whenever I had the chance (and in Ft. Disneyland, you don't have much choice - damn pine barrens suck in August), but I don't think I was that much more assiduous in my cleaning than most of my mates were. In my hands, they've pretty much all been reliable tack hammers, every one I've gotten a chance to shoot. Maybe I've just been lucky so far.

And I like the option of being able to swap out calibers and configurations by swapping out the upper - lets me use a single rifle for multiple different sports (swap to 6.8mm or .50 Beowulf for hunting, switch between my current 16" barrel for three-gun to a 20" or 24" HBAR for distance shooting, etc.). This appeals to the cheap-ass bastard in me, since I can spend 300-800 on a new upper, instead of 700 - 1500 on a whole new gun. (Not that I'm going to be anytime soon, it seems - uppers are almost impossible to get ahold of right now - DPMS currently has a disclaimer on their webpage that basically says "we'll get it to you when we can, but assume everything is backordered. Yes, we mean everything.")

They have a little more recoil, but...
I learned to shoot .30 cal with Mauser and Mannlicher bolt actions, metal buttplates and surplus israeli machine-gun ammo. I was 16, and had less meat on me then my present light frame possesses now.

Most of my early shooting was low-caliber, or shotgun, with very little in-between - .22 match shooting most weeks, with the occasional trip out to the local FLGS (Friendly Local Gun Store - Creekside, for those who are familiar with the Upstate area) to shoot some clays, or (very occasionally) shoot up some paper with the M1 Carbine (the carbine was the family Shit Hits The Fan gun, and dad didn't like shooting through the stockpile of ammo he had for it) or (very occasionally) the .30-30 Winchester. The first extended exposure I got to major caliber shooting that wasn't blowing up clays was when I joined the Army - and most of that was 5.56mm NATO (although my MG qualification was on an M-60).

I've shot a lot of different stuff since, but haven't had many large caliber guns I could shoot often enough to get really familiar with them - the Nagant is the first 6mm+ rifle I've owned that I felt comfortable shooting (the Winchester is over a century old, now).

I can shoot the Nagant carbine (which I think I paid all of $90 for at a Big 5) all day, with mil-spec surplus. The only thing I've ever fired which I had to stop because of the recoil was a Marlin carbine in 45-70, loaded out to launch a 405g slug at 1850fps. Two of those (out a weapon which had a very narrow buttstock, and comes in at 9 lbs, or so, fully loaded, i.e. about the same as an M-16 with a 30rd clip), and I was done for the day.

Heh. Some of those lever-action carbines were chambered in some amazingly brutal rounds.

I'm sure I'll get used to the Nagant as I shoot it more (just bought *it* a few months ago, and haven't had much opportunity to take it out - especially now that the nights are dark, about the only times I get to shoot anything that isn't a .22LR are weekends).

I do think about getting a pad for the Nagant, but I'm lazy.

I got one of the Limbsaver slip-on pads, and it seems to be working pretty good. I'm thinking of re-stocking the Nagant with a synthetic Monte Carlo stock (to drop the weight, and make it a better rifle for brush hunting Whitetails) - if I do, I'll mount a permanent recoil pad on the stock.

Well, not just modern ones. In the early days of Oberlin College, they had to make a rule that said:
"No student shall burn gunpowder without the permission of the president."

This is lovingly re-quoted along with other quaint rules in their official histories.

Apparently the reason for this rule is it was once fashionable to light gunpowder trails. (i e make a line of gunpowder on the ground, light one end, and see the explosion rip across to the other end.)

Bruce Cohen, the patron saint of financiers, greedy or otherwise, is Saint Matthew, who was a money changer and tax collector before his calling.

Ginger, the patron saint of those who work safely with radioactive materials is Saint Michael the Archangel, on account of his protective shield. I haven't seen any mention of a patron saint for those who work with unshielded radioactivity, but I suspect it's Saint Leonard.

Ken, Saint Barbara obviously ought to be the patron saint of astronauts, and would have been a shoo-in if the matter had been considered at the time Heinlein wrote Space Cadet. Unfortunately, there's that silly business of her being ahistorical, so astronauts have officially been stuck with Saint Joseph of Cupertino. On the one hand, he's got the best aerodynamic characteristics of any saint in the calendar -- if the saints held an airshow, Saint Joseph of Cupertino would take top honors, followed by Saint Christina the Amazing, with Saint Teresa of Avila taking third. On the other hand, he was clearly of subnormal intelligence, and didn't otherwise have a lot of personality.

The question is, who's really in charge of assigning patronage? Historically, it hasn't been the Vatican. Patron saints become patron saints because people think they are. It's my honest opinion that a couple of centuries down the road, there's a better chance that spacefarers will be observing the Feast of Saint Barbara than that they'll be dutifully appealing to Saint Joseph of Cupertino. I wouldn't be surprised if Saint Nicholas got in there as well, since astronauts are sailors of a sort.

The patron saint of robots can only be Elmo.

It's my honest opinion that a couple of centuries down the road, there's a better chance that spacefarers will be observing the Feast of Saint Barbara than that they'll be dutifully appealing to Saint Joseph of Cupertino.

Around here, we presume that he is the patron of Macintosh users and Ipod wearers.

ObSF: "Chromatic Aberration" by Mike Ford, patron saint of neolithic catering.

This reminds me of a recent story about aircraft maintenance engineers in Pakistan (I think) being caught sacrificing a goat after successfully completing complex repairs to a Boeing 757.

Which further reminds me of an ObSF: Nevil Shute, Round the Bend. It's about a start-up air cargo operation in the UAE; just not one of the ones I'm interested in, which tend to work for the other guy.

But merely carrying a bag of Scrabble™ vowels to sacrifice as necessary would keep you safe from trolls and all other sorts of lowlife!

________________________________________________

Keying off "Plays Well With Lightning", which reminds me of the charge-tossing characters in Heroes, will somebody talk me down?

After grooving along with this show for a season and a half, suddenly I'm ready to give up on it, cold turkey. My suspension of disbelief just plummeted, and I can't get past that. It's not the characters, the superpowers, or the interminably twisted soap-opera plot. It's the solar eclipse in the last episode.

You know, the annular eclipse of the sun whose "totality" lasts for hours, so that the events of the entire episode can take place during it, concurrently in Kansas, Texas, New York, and Haiti -- all of which are simultaneously in line with the moon and sun in order to see that ring of fire hanging in the sky throughout the day.

Unlike real solar eclipses, which have a narrow track of totality (the "umbra") and somewhat wider track of only partial eclipse (the "penumbra"), outside of which no-one will see any eclipse at all -- and the period of totality along the umbra track never gets above 7.5 minutes, usually less.

Flying people I could take. Telekinesis, telepathy, invisibility, turning objects to gold, shooting lightning bolts from fingertips, sure, why not?

But placing the sun, the moon, Kansas, Texas, New Tork, and Haiti along a straight line -- concurrently -- for several hours -- and then putting everything back in its proper place and state of motion is such a major rearrangement of the world as to merit some recognition by the show that they are doing it. They don't appear to recognize that. Pfffffffff.

And I agree that the charm of saints is how democratic they are. Vatican only confirms -- they have to have a certain number of prayed-for-miracles (rules have changed lately on number, I think, but martyrs get a discount) to qualify -- which means people have to have been praying to 'em before they were saints. Me, I'd put my money on Joseph Bernadin of Chicago

Everyone now, a rousing chorus of "For All the Saints" -- Ralph Vaughn Williams setting, of course...

The area where I grew up in Germany, the Saarland, basically had its entire economy centred around coal mining for the last 100 years or so. We're now very very painfully moving out of that--people hate random mining quakes that in one case had a stone angel fall off a church onto a public square where just an hour earlier children had been playing, and pumping millions a year into an industry just to keep it running at a deficit isn't thrilling either, but mining is still somewhat of a sacrosanct concept in the Saarland. Someone tells you he worked in a mine once and you look at him differently. This is why I knew St Barbara mostly as the patron saint of mining. I know from my mother, who visited a mine with the town council she was part of, that each mine has a chapel to St Barbara and that miners still regularly pray before and after a shift.

I also knew vaguely that she was the Patron Saint of a Lot of Other Things, but damn, that is a LOT of things. Gunners, miners, brewers? Really? She must be the manliest female saint ever.

Band name!

"Hello, sailor."

"Hello, sailor."

Nothing happens here.

If so, may I suggest George "Bugs" Moran? He was a Catholic, an altarboy, and in later life attempted to follow the laws of the Church as much as he could (while still being a gangster--for example, while he had no problem with selling alcohol during Prohibition, he didn't run prostitutes because it was against Holy Mother Church). He showed mercy even while committing mob hits (which is why Johnny "The Silver Fox" Torrio is buried in Green-Wood cemetery (with an altar in his mausoleum all set for Mass, so on the Last Day he can get things rolling fast) rather than in Chicago), and he died after having made a full confession and presumably in a state of grace.

"O when the Saints, go marching in,
O when the Saints go marching in,
O Lord I want to be in that number
When the Saints go marching in!!"

Amen!! Hallelujah.

Or rather, I want to test one against a castle or modern house.

And it absolutely makes sense that this would bother you more than all the other impossible things you mention. Those things proceed logically from the one basic premise of the show, which is that superheroes and superpowers actually exist. But this has nothing to do with superpowers, it's just physically wrong. As such, it pings the "hang by the neck until dead" button.

In the course of checking that, I also discovered Saint Blandina, the patron saint of those falsely accused of cannibalism . . .

Explosive Virgin Martyrs

Band name!

#76 ::: ajay ::: (view all by) ::: December 05, 2008, 11:04 AM:

a US-built Galway hooker which has sailed to Ireland

"Hello, sailor."

I'm going to have to stop reading this blog at the Reference Desk. It's becoming to hard to stop laughing out loud.

As someone who has several generations of railroad workers in her family tree (thus the several train ornaments on my Christmas trees), I was curious about the association between St. Barbara and railroad workers. Ah! Blowing up mountains -- or at least their insides -- to make tunnels or other pathways for the steel rails. This makes sense. Not so much for yardmasters like my dad, or car inspectors like my great-grandfather, but I'll accept it on their (deceased Protestant) behalfs. (Behalves?)

Oh, and my Greek Orthodox co-worker assures me Barbara is still an official saint in her Church. So maybe we need more Orthodox astronauts.

Pyre (71), I'm so sorry. That one's unfixable. The very act of trying to imagine how it might have happened, of visualizing it, produces instant revulsion.

My advice: be patient. Let it float or hover there in your mind, not doing anything in particular. After some time, an ingenious thought will attach itself. Let it stay there and slowly take root. It will attract others. Eventually you'll accrete a strange but satisfactory explanation. It may be one you don't want to look at too closely, lest you see the holes, or it may be quite solid but lead off in strange directions. Whatever. The important thing is to not force it to make sense before its time.

I had to do that with every historical sequence in Buffy and Angel. I finally decided that there's an extra country just off the coast of Europe (possibly the remains of Atlantis) where all the historical bits took place.

Rams (72), a less practical saint would have just levitated and been done with it.

My theory is that historical sequences in visual entertainment media (especially including Highlander and Jossverse flashbacks, both the film and tv-series versions of The Wild Wild West, and just about everything anywhere in any format having to do with the Middle Ages) take place in the Hollywood Alternate Universe, where past reality is sometimes subtly and sometimes radically different from the one we think we know.

I'm not certain, but I believe that the same alternate universe also contains Medieval Ancient-Greece-and-Rome, and Shakespearian Italy.

It could happen. :-)

What though the strife be fierce,
the warfare long,
Beats on the ear the distant triumph song.
Then hearts rejoice again, and arms are strong
[ready for it?]
Ha.....AAA...le...LUja,(boomp) halle- lu - ja.

At the end, I say, you get to empty your lungs over two sinewy and convoluted hallelujas. Very satisfying.

(sorry-- hard to notate that appealing syncopation using this kind of keyboard.)

Did you know that she can toss fireballs?

My theory is that historical sequences in visual entertainment media (especially including Highlander and Jossverse flashbacks, both the film and tv-series versions of The Wild Wild West, and just about everything anywhere in any format having to do with the Middle Ages) take place in the Hollywood Alternate Universe, where past reality is sometimes subtly and sometimes radically different from the one we think we know.

I'm not certain, but I believe that the same alternate universe also contains Medieval Ancient-Greece-and-Rome, and Shakespearian Italy.

Long ago Jo Walton explained how The Past looks to some people. I found this greatly enlightening.

The Past happened one misty day a long time ago. Another name for the past
is Antiquity. Some people call the mist "The Mists of Antiquity". A lot of
The Past happened very early in the morning before anyone got up, and so
everyone missed it. Nobody knows what this bit of The Past was. This bit is
known as "lost in the Mists of Antiquity". There is an erroneous assumption
that The Past happened not only a long time ago but a long way away, hence
the phrases "The Distant Past" and "The Past is another country". This is
not true. The Past happened everywhere, it happened right here as well![...]

Someone really needs to stick the whole essay on a Web site.

My favorite take on this is in Kris Straub's Starslip Crisis. The webcomic is set in the distant future and all of the characters are huge fans of a cop show called Concrete Universe which is set in the ancient city of Los Diego in 2005 and shows about the same level of historical fidelity to our time as Xena and Hercules showed to ancient Greece and Rome.

"Quick, the Bowler Derby Killer is escaping with a nuclear warhead in his horseless carriage! Use you cellular telegraph to wire the National Police while I give chase with my jetpack!"

Of course all the characters are really impressed with how historically detailed and accurate the show is.

First of all, all those events in different places happened at different times. They were just shown happening together for dramatic effect, and to simplify things they showed the events at similar points in the eclipse together.

Second, the totality appeared to last for hours because the heroes and everyone they came in contact with, all clocks etc. were subject to a time-distortion field as a result of the eclipse affecting the powers of an as-yet-unintroduced character.

Third, there was also some geographical distortion to bring the various locations in line with the path of the umbra. This was no ordinary eclipse, obviously: it was an Eclipse of Power, and caused great distortions in spacetime on Earth, and not even our heroes noticed...until later. Maybe. In a future episode, they'll sort all this out.

Now, I haven't ever watched this show, so I don't know if the above explanation is satisfactory, but at least you can kinda close one eye and pretend it is, right?

But then, I went on watching Stargate SG-1 even after I realized that the rules they set up made all but a few of their adventures impossible. They established the following:

1) DHDs, and stargates, have 38 symbols on them.
2) For a given planet in our galaxy, a "gate address" consists of seven of these.
3) The last symbol in each case is the Point Of Origin (POO), unique to each planet.*
4) All the DHDs and stargates are the same.**

They then conclude that there are billions of combinations, each leading to a planet (or a ship, or a black hole, but who's counting?).

This is wrong. There are 38 combinations. One POO, one planet, the same 38 symbols on each gate.

So the 39th through nth (where n is the total number of planets visited in the series and movies) planets are impossible. I suppose you could hypothesize that planets fall into 38 groups, and that within a group they share POO symbols, but that doesn't really work with other things they established (like the iconicity of the symbols themselves).

So if I can shrug that off and keep watching, maybe you can pretend "Oh, it's a special supereclipse with spatial and temporal distortions" and keep enjoying Heroes?

*Yes, planet, not stargate: Daniel uses Earth as the POO to dial on a foreign stargate that has just arrived in Earth orbit in an early episode.
**Otherwise you could only dial a subset of all addresses from any given gate. Besides, they interchanged DHDs all the time.

I always assumed that penultimate alleluia was notated:

Ha.....AAA...le...LUja,(BOMF!)

But I don't know how to read an organ score.

Learning about all these exploding/levitating/flaming saints has made me very pleased to be joining the Episcoplian church. Nearly as pleased as I was when I learned all the good hymns in the Mormon hymnal were stolen from the Episcopalians. (the aforementioned "For All the Saints", as well as "All Creatures of our God and King.)

I loved that one.

I've been known to suggest to appartment-hunting friends in the areas where he's popular to check the local candle supplies, and if he has his own shelf, you don't want to be in that neighbourhood.

(I have seen references that imply that during the first season, the producers really did try to come up with a different POO symbol for each new planet. Which meant that Stargates were *not* all the same. Which, if you carry through the logic, means that one symbol on the ring has to morph when you cart the thing from one planet to another. Which is why it's important to not think about it that hard.)

Noted. It's just as well I'm in the choir at a super-high church, smells & bells, funny hats parish. That way I never have to (mis)use the "E" word. Also, there's the added benefit of sounding both obscure and supercilious when stating my religion as "Anglo-Catholic".

Have your performances of "For All the Saints" also involved a chorister-initiated hairy-eyeball for that last beat before the singing starts? After hearing/singing it for over 30 years, I've begun to think that if the whole congregation isn't slightly nervous that someone's going to hit them for entering a beat early, you're doing it wrong. This is where Saints going Marching really excels - I don't think you can do it wrong!

And I think the appropriate all saints tune here would be "I sing a song of the saints of God", especially "one was a soldier, and one was a priest, and one was eaten by a fierce wild beast"!

I think they just figured that invoking a new theory of physics, the POO Theory, would take care of all that crap. Or sit down for elevenses and ignore any objections, like a good ol' bear.

As an idea, I rather like it*--our biggest war, swept aside by the tides of history--but it does have the morally troubling corollary that, in this future history, the Holocaust is *also* viewed as fictional. This may be accurate, given human nature**, but I still like to think that we'll remember it, at least as a byword for horrors.

* I have a weakness for the sort of future history that mixes up history and legend and pop culture and weird myths that no one in their right mind would believe, and lets the reader sort it all out. I have daydreams about the campfire stories of a post-apocalyptic America, wherein the trickster Coyote of Native American lore fights his eternal nemesis, Roadrunner, out on the endless crumbling concrete ribbons of the desert.

** Within a lifetime of the American Civil War, people were already saying things like, "Come now, former slaves, aren't you exaggerating your sufferings just a tad?" It's a damn good thing we have things like those narratives of slave lives collected during and after the Civil War to affirm that, yes, the life of a slave purely sucked.

I *don't* think the show was set up with an attitude of "magic physics, ignore all logical problems", however.

I make myself not think about historical accuracy and consistency in TV shows, or I get ranty and stabby about lousy research.

And then I am not sure exactly what the new splinter group folks are calling themselves, other than "The Anglicans in North America who are NOT those women-and-gay-loving Episcopal Church of the USA who are damned because they IGNORE SCRIPTURE or at least refuse to interpret it the way we do!"

Must not vent about stupid schismatics....must not vent about stupid schismatics.... Bitter? Me? Why do you ask?

On the lighter side:
How do you identify the corpse at an Episcopalian funeral?

They're the only person lying down.

Okay, okay, so it's not that funny -- I just thought it would be disrespectful to tell the Unitarian Jokes I know, seeing as how I am not a Unitarian. And while being Episcopalian where I am does have its advantages -- ritual mass and ordination* of women and gays! Woo hoo! -- some of us (not me) do have a tendency to take church very very seriously. It didn't take me long after converting from Catholicism to figure out why Episcopalians were sometimes called the "frozen chosen."

*priests and bishops, too: my diocese elected a woman bishop last year; the diocese immediately north nearly elected a gay man, which had they done so would have given Gene Robinson someone else kicked out of the Lambeth conference** he could hang out with.

**meetings of all the bishops of the Anglican Communion held every few years at Canterbury, unless you are gay, in which case you are disinvited. You can go if you're a woman, you just have to deal with bishops from other parts of the world refusing to talk to you, and (true: I heard it from my bishop) very polite English protesters who tell you to your face "I'm so sorry, but you're a whore of the church."

In Canada, it's the Anglican Church of Canada. (That's even what the ACC on my dog tags means.)

FWIW, Anglo-Catholicism is a flavor of Anglicanism/Episcopalianism noted for an almost rigid liturgical conservativism combined with a very liberal social outlook.* The clergy and majority of my parish are gay, and they are very pro-woman. The bishop of Los Angeles and one of the priests marched in Pride this year. I could not set foot in a church that spent any time whatsoever preaching misogyny or homophobia, no matter how great their music program was.

* please note these are the observations of a current catechumen and alto who has yet to be confirmed.

I try to take the long view, but sometimes it's very difficult...

I know, I know. It's like that in a lot of places. Mining is a fundamentally horrible and dangerous and shitty job. Further, burning coal is about as morally defensible or pragmatically sensible beyond the next five years as burning children.

But nobody bothered to find anything for the fucking miners to do, and so the Yorkshire coalfield was converted from a fortress of working-class pride and wealth (it paid good money) to a smack ghetto without the benefit of a smelly and creative city around it.

Am I bitter? Of course I'm bitter. Would it have been better to keep the mines open? Ask a polar bear. Better, ask a Bangladeshi...one who didn't emigrate to Yorkshire to start a shop.

And I doubt how many people on the coalfield really wanted their sons to go in the pit. But the disaster, when they shut down - that didn't care. So, yes, bitter.

Xopher @95: I may be misunderstanding your math. For 38 symbols and an address consisting of seven of them, you say: "They then conclude that there are billions of combinations.... This is wrong. There are 38 combinations."

Assuming no symbol can be chosen twice, the number of possible addresses is 38 * 37 * 36 * 35 * 34 * 33 * 32 = 63,606,090,240. (64 billion, rounded.)

If symbols can be repeated, the number of possible addresses is 38^7 = 114,415,582,590. (114 billion, plus.)

If you think of the issue as the number of possible padlock combinations on a padlock containing only 30 numbers -- or the number of possible phone numbers that can be dialed using only ten digits -- the multiplicative power of combination is really quite striking.

*I could have sworn that there were, but I may have made that up to resolve the problem in my own mind.

@Pyre: there are indeed billions of combinations - but there can only be 38 planets, if each is to have its unique Point of Origin symbol. They could've done something clever with the first half being the address and the second half being point of origin, which would've limited their numbers to less than billions, but significantly more than 38. However, that destroys the whole plot of the movie. Oops.

Anyway, what kind of awesome space-time wormhole makes you tell it where you're coming from in order to dial? Shouldn't that be obvious, based on what Stargate is dialing?

The people on the thousands of planets that were isolated by the new addressing scheme presumably don't mind, because if they did they could have stargated right over to complain, couldn't they?

Okay, must stop now, brain hurty.

This would seem to weigh in favor of the argument that the "Point Of Origin" symbol is singular, leaving 37 non-planetary (constellation?) symbols for "coördinate" address dialing.

Not to mention that a dial which had the symbol for the actual world you wanted on it should allow you to get there by pressing that one symbol, without the bother of pressing six others too.

Constellations are, of course, star-patterns as seen from Earth. This choice of a "0,0,0" center for an interstellar network eventually makes sense because the Ancient culture which originally built the Gates came from Earth long ago and seeded all these other worlds.

It turns out that this particular kind of awesome space-time wormhole uses seven-digit addresses for within-galaxy transportation, and eight-digit addresses for long-distance dialing, such as going to another galaxy, for instance Atlantis in the Pegasus Galaxy.

So pressing the "home" symbol amounts to hitting an "I'm done" key, like pressing the "#" on your telephone keypad after entering an account number at your bank's automated line, so the system doesn't keep waiting for you to enter another number.

nerdycellist... Anglo Catholic, very high church... St. Mary of the Angels? Hermn.... from subsequent comment perhaps not.

Scott Taylor: My 16 at basic was made in 1972. It had the upper replaced at least once. (I did basic in 1993). It didn't like blanks, and did a three round burst (impressive for a weapon with full auto and semi as the choices) when I was qualifying. Not so much fun.

We had one go off when the safety was applied in Iraq (the soldier was clearing it prior to re-entering the post. Place the muzzle in the clearing barrel, put the weapon on safe, drop the mag, clear the chamber; observe the chamber, close the chamber, drop the hammer. He got to "place the weapon on safe," and a rude surprise was had by all).

It's not a terrible design, but it is hideously flawed (the dumping of gasses directly into the chamber is just a bad idea). If you are thinking of gettig one, see about getting some form of the C7 (the Canadian Army version) which has a piston, rather than a gas-return tube, to fling the bold assembly back.

The Marlin was a modern rifle, the ammo was loaded out to max-spec. From here on out with it, barring a bear, cape buffalo or rampaging Mack truck, I'll stick with factory.

And whatever they say on official sites, in the series they clearly established that all the gates are the same. However they've tried to retcon it since, there are only 38 possible planets.

And btw when you're dialing with a DHD it knows when you're done because you press the big red button, so the POO isn't needed as a STOP code.

As an intellectual exercise Poul Anderson did an alt history story in which the last copy of the Christian Bible is so much waste paper and how from a point of departure to arrive there.

The Stargate Visual Companion is a book, not a website. ISBN 0-7566-2361-8. It has photos of the TV set and props, including the Stargate and its glyphs, numbered and named. Orion's on there, just the way Daniel explained it in the movie. The whole æsthetic looks just the same. I haven't gone back to do a glyph-by-glyph comparison, but if you think they might've revamped the whole design, I'll look.

Orion's glyph, as Daniel explains, looks like a simplified sketch of the constellation itself, shoulders, belt, and knees.

Triangulum's glyph is an isoceles triangle.

Gemini's glyph looks very much like the Roman numeral II, which is also its symbol in astrology.

Et (as the King of Siam would relish saying) cetera.

St Mary of the Angels? Are these the papist splitters? Perish the thought! (said with gentle, loving humor of course...)

I'm currently singing at St. Thomas in Hollywood, where I'm frantically preparing to sing a counter-tenor solo next weekend, the alto parts of the quartet in the Haydn St. Nicolas mass for Xmas and all the usual ensemble parts in the anthems and lessons & carols. I've been there about a year and I've never heard the hymn with the saint being eaten by a great wild beast (or meeting them at tea or in the lanes at sea...) I think I may start agitating for it; it sounds delightful.

The glyph designs roughly correspond to those on the gate.

"Dialing seven symbols chosen from a pool of 38 non-repeating candidates results in about 63 billion possible stargate addresses."

One oddity: only 38 symbols on the DHD, compared to 39 on the gate ring.

Aquila, the Eagle, glyph #13 on the ring, is missing on the DHD!

Who knew the Ancients were superstitious?

This may very well spawn its own entry & comments.

I Sing a Song of the Saints of God
lyrics by Lesbia Scott

You can hear the music Episcopalians grew up with here (not work safe - makes a lot of noise)-

http://www.hymnsite.com/lyrics/umh712.sht

Therefore, we should start praying to Bugs Moran for intercession.

Therefore, we should start praying to Bugs Moran for intercession vigorish a piece of the action.

obMobster and obStarTrek!

I knew a family where a male Leslie married a female Lesley; their son was Leslie, but their daughter wasn't Lesley, alas.

"The odds of getting a royal fizzbin are astronomical. Spock, what are the odds of getting a royal fizzbin?"
"I have never computed them."

The upcoming Martin Luther King Day is January 19, 2009. The new president will be inaugurated on the 20th.

I like the symbolism, which of course was not intended or thought of when the legislation was passed that designates the third Monday in January, rather than Dr. King's actual birthday, as the holiday in his honor.

Let's not forget the Time Tunnel. I think one episode had Tony & Doug run into Robin Hood, and another had them deal with the Round Table, if I remember correctly.

This brings to mind one of the few times I've used Wikipedia. I was trying to find the weight of a Tardis (bear with me), which according to Wikipedia is "5 × 106 kilograms (5000 tonnes)" This is apparently the weight on the outside, not the inside, unless the various entities that have picked it up and carried it are a lot stronger than they looked.

I was trying to find the external TARDIS weight from the outside for a thought experiment. If I have it correct there are indications that one and possibly two Doctors were on the Titanic---leaving out the time the Titanic rammed the TARDIS, which doesn't really count. (I wonder what the two of them made of Scrooge McDuck, who was on the ship as well--I don't remember how he survived.) I thought that the combined weight of Tony, Doug, possibly Tony1 and Doug1 (depending on the last 30 seconds of the last episode of "Time Tunnel" as broadcast by ABC), Phineas Bogg, Jeffrey Jones, six dwarfs and Kevin all arriving on the same side at the same time wouldn't be enough to make the ship lurch into an iceberg so I was wondering if at least two Doctors and two different TARDISes would give enough mass to do it. Since then I've been told that one of the Doctors may have taken the voyage without his TARDIS, which makes the numbers even screwier than trying to deal with the number of closed loop Tony x N and Doug x n that might be created until the Tunnel's reactor burned out, so I said the hell with it.

This sort of question is why Phil Foglio hasn't done any more Rogers Park stories. I told him of a Usenet newsgroup where someone had been very excited that Park was shown in a Buck Godot story and he said "Plotting time travel stories makes your brain hurt." Which is why I was so startled with the apparent time travel in Girl Genius, but by then I'd decided to sit down and sing the last verse of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 theme...

I'm not sure the mass/weight would be additive in that event. From the outside, to all appearances, there is only one Tardis there and then -- and that might well include "to such instruments as massometers and weight scales".

Thanks for the correction on the weight--I just cut and pasted the figure from Wikipedia, and didn't think any more about it. So, if I understand you correctly, we're probably dealing with one object whose apparent mass is something that can be picked up and carried by a group--even though it's actual mass is much larger than that--rather than two? O.K...

Don't forget the time travelers from the Jack Finney novel.

And Time Tunnel showed that the Titanic's Captain really was Klaatu.

So when billions of time travellers turn up on the same day 65 million years ago, to find out what really killed off the dinosaurs, a chain reaction starts...

Note also that people sometimes accidentally (or not so accidentally) sing "slain by a fierce wild priest" which spurs a completely different set of visuals.

Not any kind of Episcopalian, but we went to Compline last night, and there was a prayer toward the end that, among the usual bits of comfort the sick, help the needy, and so forth, also had "shield the joyful". Is that a standard prayer/trope, or just part of yesterday's liturgy? In any case, it's a wonderful thought; I've never heard of anyone considering the joyful as an at-risk category--and yet we are. All the time.

The upcoming Martin Luther King Day is January 19, 2009. The new president will be inaugurated on the 20th.

I like the symbolism, which of course was not intended or thought of when the legislation was passed that designates the third Monday in January, rather than Dr. King's actual birthday, as the holiday in his honor.

The third Monday of January fell on the 20th in 1997. This will happen again in 2025.

The obvious question is, did Bill Clinton namecheck King in his Second Inagural? Yes, he did:

Thirty-four years ago, the man whose life we celebrate today spoke to us down there, at the other end of this Mall, in words that moved the conscience of a nation. Like a prophet of old, he told of his dream that one day America would rise up and treat all its citizens as equals before the law and in the heart. Martin Luther King’s dream was the American Dream. His quest is our quest: the ceaseless striving to live out our true creed. Our history has been built on such dreams and labors. And by our dreams and labors we will redeem the promise of America in the 21st century. To that effort I pledge all my strength and every power of my office.

(Rev. King was actually born on 15 January 1929.)

- repeat after me, kids "I will appreciate the good fortune of others." These are rough times for everyone. When someone shares their happiness with you, be thankful, not resentful.

5,000 tonnes is one of these. (Well, ok, technically, one of those 230 tonnes lighter than that.)

Not pick-up-and-carry-able without really serious ground pressure issues, even by a whole lot of people.

Though given that the TARDIS does not sink into the pavement, I suspect this value is variable at need.

My home town, which owes its existence to mining, doesn't seem to be worried about Saint Barbara being ahistorical. The annual Saint Barbara's Festival (held for the tenth time this year) postdates her eviction from the official calendar by quite a bit, as does Saint Barbara's square in the centre of town (created in a bit of urban redevelopment when I was a lad). Likewise, obviously, the statue in the square, which was unveiled at the first of the Festivals.

An interesting thing about the statue is that neither the thing itself nor the explanatory inscription make any reference to the tower or the lightning. The summary of her story in the inscription focusses on how she was sheltered in a cave by miners before being ratted out by a shepherd (a nice moment of contemporary topicality there: miners and pastoralists still don't get on). The statue depicts a young woman holding a cup, standing in a cleft between two rocks (the young woman and the cup are made of metal, but the rocks are made of rock). I think they were trying to avoid confusing people about what Saint Barbara has to do with mining, but if so they didn't entirely succeed; before I came across one of the longer accounts of Barbara's life that includes both the tower and the lightning and the mine and the shepherd, I was seriously wondering if there were two Saint Barbaras and they'd somehow commissioned a statue in honour of the wrong one.

It may have changed back sometime when I wasn't looking, but I think these days the Planet That Became The Asteroid Belt is, like Saint Barbara, officially considered to be ahistorical. (But it does make a good story.)

Shakespearean Italy (along with Shakespearean Bohemia, etc.) is clearly in an alternate universe where past reality is sometimes subtly and sometimes radically different from the one we think we know; the question is only whether it's the same alternate universe as Hollywood History, or yet a different one.

Poul Anderson (as I expect you know) wrote a novel set in that universe, but he didn't address the question specifically, and I don't recall any conclusive hints.

I can't recall when mine was made, at this point - I did BT in '87, so....

We had one go off when the safety was applied in Iraq (the soldier was clearing it prior to re-entering the post. Place the muzzle in the clearing barrel, put the weapon on safe, drop the mag, clear the chamber; observe the chamber, close the chamber, drop the hammer. He got to "place the weapon on safe," and a rude surprise was had by all).

Yikes. That's when you very carefully remove the mag, clear the chamber, take the upper off of the lower, and hand both sections to the unit armorer with a "I don't like this one. And it doesn't like anyone either. It's got the death sentence in twelve provinces. And I'll be dead...."

...after you get done with the shakes.

It's not a terrible design, but it is hideously flawed (the dumping of gasses directly into the chamber is just a bad idea). If you are thinking of getting one, see about getting some form of the C7 (the Canadian Army version) which has a piston, rather than a gas-return tube, to fling the bold assembly back.

The "don't shit where you eat" thing is kinda annoying. Unfortunately, the gas piston uppers I've seen have all been really, really expensive (two and a half to three times the cost of a standard 20" HBAR upper of similar quality), and the only conversion kit I've seen is in the $400 dollar range. I've got it on the "if I see one at a semi-reasonable price, I'll get it" list, but I'm not holding my breath.

(I've got an AR-15 - a DPMS Panther with a 16" HBAR upper with mid-length gas block. I was holding a 20" flattop HBAR upper (free-floating) on Saturday that I nearly bought - but five hundred (plus forward sight and carry handle, for CMP - another hundred-fifty or so)was more than I can justify right atm).

The Marlin was a modern rifle, the ammo was loaded out to max-spec. From here on out with it, barring a bear, cape buffalo or rampaging Mack truck, I'll stick with factory.

(nods)

Pre: Paul A. @ #160
It may have changed back sometime when I wasn't looking, but I think these days the Planet That Became The Asteroid Belt is, like Saint Barbara, officially considered to be ahistorical. (But it does make a good story.)

You want a good story, consider BD +20 307.* Two Earth-sized planets, habitable-zone orbits, a few billion years old, and both now a 100 degrees Kelvin ring of dust because they collided with each other sometime in the past 100,000 years. Death of a planet seen in a PPT chart.** Their sedimentary layers could've had fossils, but I really hope not.

---------------

* technically BD +20 307b and BD +20 307c, or however one labels an ex-planet.

** although when that PPT was made they didn't yet know how very old the star was. Bit of a story in how they learned about that.

Not pick-up-and-carry-able without really serious ground pressure issues, even by a whole lot of people.

Though given that the TARDIS does not sink into the pavement, I suspect this value is variable at need.

Thanks for the good visual reference! To quote Wikipedia on their 5000 Tonne TARDIS weight figure: "This presumably refers to its internal weight, as the external part of the TARDIS is light enough for it to be lifted or otherwise moved with relative ease (although most real police boxes were concrete and hence quite difficult to move): several men lift it up in Marco Polo, a group of small blue maintenance workers on Platform One push it along the ground in "The End of the World", and a quartet of Weeping Angels are able to rock it back and forth in "Blink", to name a few. If the exterior of the TARDIS is moved, the movement is transmitted to its interior." So, as I said, either the guys in Marco Polo are much stronger than they looked or the TARDIS is much heavier on the inside than on the outside.

I always assumed that the Tardis exterior was a shell, projected into 4D space from where the Tardis interior resided. Probably, anchored to the black hole at the center of the galaxy by Rassilon.

I took that thing down as far as I was allowed, looked it over something fierce. Went after it with a badger shaving brush. Reassembled it, did my best to make it malfunction again.

It steadfastly refused. "x" it, took it to the commander and told him to circle the x, issued it back out. Then I had to write up the report, assinging the misfire to a, "non-repeatable, non-replicable condition." McKinnon had to write up the incident, and the CO had to sign off on the expended round.

Oi... what a day.

My CMPish arm is an M1A1S (the short barrelled M-14, based on the "tanker Garand". An unexpectedly large TDY payment was found money, so the 1,100 was affordable.

And I like the platform, so getting it was worth it to me.

What a very weird coincidence!