So I'm editing a local zine. At this point I'm still foolishly expecting a profit.

Postscript to the Marlowe snippet. A kind responder to my LJ points out that Marlowe fights crime on the BBC [internet radio] every Friday. Man, the things you learn! I am soooo pressing that button today.

Your lunchboxes have been lacking:

http://www.bananaguard.com/index.php

"Hey sinner man - where ya gonna run to?"

The perils of academic publishing -- may be of interest to denizens of this here bboard.

Language Log: Publishers are Good; Really!

Firstly, "bboard"? Secondly, it sounds like this author-friend of the article-author (who clearly suffers himself both from at least a little "My text, edited? How dare they!" syndrome and an obvious need for the talents of an editor) had similar problems in previous experiences with this publisher...was he under contractual obligation to stay with them, or what?

Clearly there are bad publishers out there, and bad editors too...but I think I'd try a bit harder to avoid such broad brushes as this article would seem to recommend.

The lurking reader
Comes out of his cave rarely,
Posts, then hides again.

Gotta go
I'm runnin' out of change
There's a lot of things
If I could I'd rearrange
The Fly (U2)

Setting the VCR this morning, it struck me that Friday is heavily loaded with geekvision. Star Trek, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Monk . . .

Are they trying to ruin what little social life dweebs have, or just figure they don't have one anyway?

Re: bananaguard.com, "Sometimes a bananaguard is just a bananaguard."

Re: Geek TV, one word, Tivo.

The lurking reader types; and, having typt,
Moves on: nor all you've Entertained or Quipt
Shall lure it back to SmileyFace or Scowl,
Nor even if the post Perl Disemvowel.

Stefan, Larry's not kidding. It's the new religion. It will change your life.

I used to think it regularly, but I'll go weeks at a time now without it occurring to me how crappy television is...because all I watch is great TV...well, and crappy TV that falls into my particular nostalgia-frequency bandwidth.

Stefan: Long ago, in the days of Plain ol' Television, skiffy and skiffy-like product used to show up a lot on Friday nights; I believe the idea was that kids were up later then. The CBS Late Movie -- along about '72 they gave up fighting Carson and started running B movies in the late slot -- was always an SF or horror film on Friday; some of them were pretty good, and THX 1138 actually had its television premiere there (which gives you an idea of how long a shadow George Lucas cast back then).

Some of it is probably just counterprogramming -- trying to take away the other channels' audience with stuff that appeals to the same audience (at least, it does so in the budgie-cage minds of TV program planners).

Me, I'm looking forward to Mr. Monk and the Cylon Menace.

Teresa continues to claw her way to the top of the Readers Poll book editor category.

Stefan, don't forget "Numbers". The hero is a ubergeek. I watched the premier, and it was good enough to pose a dilemma tonight - do I watch Numbers or Monk? I can't tape while I watch, not set up for that.

And sometimes, yes, I do have better things to do on a Friday night

Another vote for Numbers here. Well, two, if you count Juan's vote as well.

I've heard that TiVo is life changing from others . . . but do I really want to change my life in THAT WAY?

What I'd really love is a robot dog-walker, so I can use that extra hour each day to make headway on the pile of books in my queue . . . but then, walking is my exercise. Arrrrgghhhh . . . (And no, audio books aren't the answer.)

The VCR is my one concession to timeshifting. It does the job.

* * *

"Long ago, in the days of Plain ol' Television,"

I used to love the horror / monster / SF stuff that WNEW (NYC's Channel 5) showed on Fridays. That's when I first saw _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_, which was a real pajama soaker (figuratively speaking) for a twelve-year-old. I checked the bedroom closet and looked under the lower bunk for pods.

In the great SF drought of the 70s, SciFi was ghettoized on Saturday morning (more movies) and weekend afternoons, in the disposable timeslots subject to overflow by ballgames. But since we're talking about _UFO_ and at best _The Outer Limits_ maybe that wasn't a great loss.

I'm watching Numbers; Monk's not going to be canceled any time soon. (Query: does the network's use of "Numb3rs" mean that l33t is officially Over?)

Skwid: 1) bboard being an old abbrev for computer-based bulletin board, also being a joke kinda thing like.

2) Academic publishers are different than for-profits, and this poor sod probably had no choice at all -- these are the ones that accepted his book, and getting screwed over by bad editing, bad production, and bad everything is not the same as 'don't touch my work'. I wouldn't generalize at all to trade publishers, but I still thought it was a funny story for people here.

Also, the 'tude in the article? That's just the way Geoff Pullum talks.

TexAnne:

"does the network's use of 'Numb3rs' mean that l33t is officially Over?"

No. Styles come and go. "3" is the New Black.

For descriptions of tonight's basic plot and 2 more episodes, plus still photos, see:

Mathematical Association of America

and scroll down to Ed Pegg Jr's review of Numb3rs. Tonight's the test, ratingswise. If it keeps half of the 21,000,000 viewers of the pilot, it's a hit.

I'd like to see: Monk meets the obsessive math professor of Numb3rs.

You folks notice that the "crawl" at the start of Star Wars Episode 3 has been released today?

I basically agree with John Ford about TV SciFi of The Good Old Days, and wisely choose not to go on at length.

The Bosch figurines remind me of the Pope Innocent III action figure. He comes complete with a Latin scroll that says "Hohenstaufens kiss my ass."

Fun link, Zvi. I've heard similar horror stories. I haven't had anything quite as bad done to mine (just had a bunch of my serial commas removed once), but I'm just waiting for the editor unfamiliar with Tolkien who takes out all those funny little accent marks...

Two quick questions:

One, would it be daft to just skip Buffy season six altogether and go straight on to season seven? Local DVD supplier has s6 only in zone 2, oddly, but s1-5 and 7 in zone 1, and anyway I've heard that s6 was kind of crap.

Two, isn't John Crowley about due to write book four of AEGYPT &c?

For your knitting amazement and delight, someone has concocted a pattern for a raw chicken hat.

Magenta, I'm going to solve my TV-watching problems at 10pm tonight by watching Battlestar Galactica, taping Medical Investigation on one machine, taping Numbe3rs on the other machine, and then taping the midnight showing of Monk on the first machine.

For what it's worth, Marilee, I noticed today that USA Network seems to be re-running episodes of Medical Investigation at 7:00 on the following Thursday evenings.

I might have roused myself once sufficiently to send email to a couple of networks pointing out that I have limited tastes in what they broadcast, and that they are NOT going to get me to watch other types of shows, no matter how much they put the only things I want to watch on their stations opposite the only things I want to watch on other stations. They are NOT going to "capture my eyeballs" for whatever "reality TV" crap about loser jackasses I don't want to be in the same universe with are being featured to perform on this week, or sitcoms or other stuff I don't want to watch, that's on before or after what I'm interested in watching -- the outcome these days usually is deciding I don't want to bother with watching either program that's on at the same time.

That is, Stargate and Andromeda are on at the same time on Saturday afternoon, what I wound up doing was not bothering either way. Andromeda's also on past midnight after Sunday and I sort of watch it then. Saturday afternoon to me is NOT appropriate TV watching time, to start with.

Teresa, I know you and Patrick are Richard Thompson fans, so if you haven't already check out:

http://www.richardthompson-music.com/audiodownloads.asp

Let me put in my own recommendation for Richard Thompson's immortal version of the B. Spears classic, "Oops! I Did It Again".

Teresa, did you see this?

http://www.flamewarriors.com/

You will almost certainly recognize many types.

First of all, thanks to all the advice from folks in an earlier Open Thread my wife got me a Kershaw/Ken Onion Scallion with a partially serrated blade for Christmas. I'm very happy with it, but I figured I'd better ask the best way to sharpen a serrated knife before it becomes necessary to do so...

On another front, I came down with pneumonia last weekend. I'm much better now--the antibotics seem to be doing their job--but I'm still pretty weak. Is there anything special I should do to recover beyond the standard "rest, don't overstrain" sort of thing?

Bruce, remember to eat yogurt (natural, live-bacteria kind) to repopulate your insides. Through the treatment or at least a couple of servings after the bout of antibiotics.

That's about all I can suggest. Margene got Mumps!!!!! from likely a child contact at New Year's (that's the time range)(and she never got it as a kid....) and the doctor placed her on heavy duty antibiotics to prevent any opportunistic infections taking advantage of her weakened immune system. I'm getting her same kind of thing tomorrow (I hope, snowfall and distance may prevent it....) from Whole Foods Market in Overland Park.

Ghost Prisoners

The CIA went to Iraq at midnight landed planes,
It took away a group of people battered and in chains,
But back at home the rulers of the country all denied,
Claimed everyone reporting on those prisoners all had lied,
Ghost prisoners, Ghost prisoners in the jails.

Lies from George Bush, Lies from Cheney,
Ghost prisoners in, Ghost Prisoners in Ghost Jails.

A plane's been seen around the world with ownership of spies,
The owners' names are fictional, around the world it flies
It's seen in Bedford Mass and Baghdad, Kabul and Cairo,
And rumors of it tortured victims Bush always says no,

Lies from George Bush, Lies from Cheney,
Ghost prisoners in, Ghost Prisoners in Ghost Jails.

The rumors were of Abu Ghraib and murders in Kabul,
The Red Cross said Guantanamo was full of treatments cruel,
"We do not torture innocents," George Bush he speaks more lies,
"The ones locked up in Abu Ghraib are terrorists!" he cries.

Lies from George Bush, Lies from Cheney,
Ghost prisoners in, Ghost Prisoners in Ghost Jails.

And what's become of human rights and warrants for arrest,
And what's become of freedom and the brightest and the best,
And what's become of liberty and guilt that must be proved
George Bush he is a tyrant and all rights he has removed

Lies from George Bush, Lies from Cheney,
Ghost prisoners in, Ghost Prisoners in Ghost Jails.

And what's become of speedy trials and open charges made
And what's become of justice and the fourth amendment's way,
No longer is that USA a nation under law,
It's Bush's vicious vicious version of a theocratic maw,

Lies from George Bush, Lies from Cheney,
Ghost prisoners in, Ghost Prisoners in Ghost Jails.

Their names are all kept secret their locations secret too,
The USA Star Chamber uses secrecy as glue,
It blocks all information and it hides chains of command,
The torture came from high up in the Bush plutocrats' band.

Lies from George Bush, Lies from Cheney,
Ghost prisoners in, Ghost Prisoners in Ghost Jails.

There's Condalisa Rice and Donald Rumseld and Cheney
Gonzales Bush's tool wrote the torture advocacy,
And then add Margaret Spellings' views of TV kids should see,
Sex and violence yes but ban a lesbian family!

Lies from George Bush, Lies from Cheney,
Ghost prisoners in, Ghost Prisoners in Ghost Jails.

Hey! Making Light was mentioned on NPR's Weekend Edition this morning! "Highly Recommended", "One of the warmest...", etc. Teresa mentioned by name! I was only half listening so didn't get all the details. They archive the show at npr.org so you can probably find it later today. It was at about 9:35 a.m. EST.

Congrats!

Just mentioned (with encomiums) by Henry Farrell on Weekend Edition Saturday with Scott Simon: Teresa Nielsen Hayden's blog, Making Light, one of three blogs discussed. The link is supposed to be up at npr.org.

The hit counter is about to go wild...and our hostess is from home. The timing is exquisite.

The recommendation of "Making Light" on SatEd ATC was made by Henry Ferrall (sp?) (a professor at American University in DC, I think). It was at the end of the first half-hour segment.

The link to the text article on NPR.

Tom, S6 of Buffy [SPOILER ALERT] was frequently depressing and soap-opera-ish, but also features Willow turning evil and flaying a guy, which is pretty frickin' cool, and it has "Once More, with Feeling" which is the singing/dancing episode which is cracktastic. And the overall arc of the season, while a bummer, is done fairly well - Buffy coming to terms with being alive again. They didn't just do the usual "oh, well, that was a dream" or what have you.

There are definitely episodes worth skipping but S7 won't make a ton of sense without watching S6 first, and the musical episode ran 10 minutes longer than a normal one, which means it'll always be skipped or chopped in FX-channel reruns. I'd say you should either pretend the show ended with S5, or bite the bullet and get S6 online someplace so you can have the complete thing.

note: please excuse my wandering tenses in paragraph one of the previous post. I done just woked up.

Ah, so I wasn't imagining that NPR plug.

The mind can play tricks on a feller at 6-something in the morning, and then there was the distraction factor of a giant dog standing on the bed rattling her tags by way of letting you know she needs to be walked.

Congrats!

Season 7 of Buffy was, I'm afraid, worse than season 6. It did have a few standalone bright spots, such as the episode about the life of Anya early on. It seemed as if it were idling in neutral until the last few episodes, when the season arc kicked in in a hurried manner.

Pretending the show ended with S5 seems a good option in retrospect, except that you'd miss a few really good episodes here and there.

Bravo on the NPR plug!

As for Friday programming, is anyone else here a tennis geek? I was watching the bizarre women's final of the Australian Open (live, from "tomorrow afternoon").

Stefan - another Tivo note, it can pause what you're watching, so that when your dog appears, rattling her tags in desparation, you can walk her without missing a second of CSI: Dayton.

Re: Weekend Edition, my temporary digs, a dee-luxe apartment in the sky in Seattle, has lousy radio reception. Now I'll have to find an internet cafe (I think there's one down the street) to listen to the piece. (I'm using wireless dial-up right now. Kind of like being on the information cowpath.)

Teresa:

Congratulations on the NPR praise! I also had a Stefan Jones's "mind can play tricks on a feller at 6-something in the morning," as I keep my bedside radio tuned to the local NPR station (KPCC), and often have a final dream in which Condoleeza Rice or Porter Goss or whomever is being discussed becomes woven into the plot.

Larry Brennan:

"CSI: Dayton." At the Caltech screening of the pilot for NUMB3RS (the 2nd episode of which ran last night), the MC made the mistake of referring to the show as "CSI: MIT."

The Caltech audience booed loudly at this mention of the other geek-school with a Beaver totem, and the MC did a Johnny-Carsonesque recovery with "I mean, after this show is a hit, we'll spin off "CSI: MIT" for the East Coast market." he was lucky that Math-fans don't shoot each other the way that rappers are alleged to in an East Coast/West Coast antagonism.

Tom Scudder, even bad Buffy is filled with Buffy goodness. Season 6 didn't mesh together terribly well, it has to be said, but it still had some stand-out episodes.

I almost called you when I heard the NPR plug, but decided it was too early in the morning.

He recommended three blogs: one on the left, one on the right, and you. Brava!

Does anyone know where to purchase those Bosch figures? I've been looking online and can't seem to find a store (brick or virtual).

At a certain notorious party at Boskone not quite two years ago, I was talking with Jeff Hecht and an associate of his in science writing, who had been at Caltech when Jeff was there. The other fellow however had dropped out and not graduated from there, and they mentioned someone else who was a science/tech writer who'd dropped out of Caltech. Daniel Dern, who wasn't in the room at the time and is a tech writer/journalist and Paul Schindler who's a tech journalist, who were a couple years ahead of me at MIT and contemporaries on campus also got mentioned. "Ah, I see the difference between journalists who went to MIT and ones who went to Caltech," I said, "the ones who went to MIT -graduated-."

One appalling thing about Caltech and MIT -- I got to use the exact same line the same day to two different people [of common ancestry no further back than 2000 years, for that matter, my ancestry's common with their from back then....] one of them a Caltech graduate, the other an MIT graduate at ConJose, "David, you're a geek!"

[Yeah, I'm one too. Clueless R We... You never my uncle Leo, the eminent psychologist who was the dean of the psychology department at Suffolk University, BA, MA, Ph.D, and Diplomate for Harvard, and not one iota of commonsense.... hopeless cases, one of my mother's cousins was a physicist from Caltech, one of her other cousins went down into a mine after graduating from MIT, on his new job, and headed back east to get JD from Harvard and be a lawyer instead, a first cousin of mine is a physicist who went to MIT, a second cousin's son graduated from MIT, a first cousin of my father didn't merely go to MIT he's still there six decades later, my aunt's brother-in-law went to MIT, my sister and her husband graduated from Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute, etc. NOT MY FAULT!!!!]

Paula Lieberman:

You and I have exchanged Caltech critiques on these Making Light threads before, so I'm honestly continuing the dialog with you and not just name-dropping (Jeff Hecht has also published Fantasy) or ego-blogging, BUT --

your classification leaves me on a fuzzy boundary, as I am a journalist, DID drop out of Caltech (in the year when my mother was dying of cancer), but then went back, restarted my Soph year, and graduated. So, do I prove your theory, disprove it, or both?

Is this related to the Logic puzzle of whether a black hamster constitutes statistical evidence in favor of the proposition that all swans are white?

JVP, I've always thought of the logic example as collecting the set of all not grey things that are not elephants. Swans give it a whole new dimension - more graceful but meaner. Swans bite.

Bruce: to sharpen serrated blades, the best investment is a Spyderco Sharpmaker. However, it costs about as much as a knife. Many manufacturers will sharpen your knife for free if you send them the knife with appropriate postage -- see their website.

All this alma mater gropius werfel stuff causes me to think that, having been recruited by one well-known university and accepted at two more, but having actually gone to a completely different jernt, I should add to my CV, "Failed to graduate from MIT, Caltech, and Harvard."

No reflection on any of them; I wouldn't have graduated me either.

And can I cite my Boskone Life Membership as an Honorary Degree? (I think it probably puts me ahead of all those members of Our Beloved Administration with Dacron sheepskins from Lagos Internet Correspondence University and Goat Ranch.)

To offer a fragment of useful information for once, there are commercial sharpening services almost everywhere; quite a few of them are a Guy in a Van who comes to you and does the job on the spot. Commercial kitchens just about always have their knives sharpened professionally -- as distinct from honing, which you can do in the kitchen with a steel. Yellow Pages, "Sharpening Services."

I don't even have cable any more, but there was one night on CBS that had MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart and, if memory serves, Carol Burnett

It was even then probably the only night of television I ever watched, which is probably why I remember it now as the golden age of TV.

It's something like the process where the handful of brilliant skits that stood out against the self-indulgent stuff that dragged makes me think of early Saturday Night Live as "when it was still funny"

Bruce: Re: Pneumonia
Been there. After the Zithromax ($8.00 a damn tablet!), I was healed. Sort of. I remember reading old books as a kid, and occasionally they would say of a person, "He recovered, but his health was broken." I always thought, what the hell does that mean? After my pneumonia, I knew. For six solid months, I slept every moment I wasn't working. Not sick, but not well either. If this happens to you, I urge you to let it run its course. You will eventually feel strong again....

The most interesting question about CSI: Dayton, of course, is how deep into the Who songbook they will go for its title music. "Boris the Spider"? "Pictures of Lilly"? Trying to predict such things is one of my favorite idle-moment gedankenexperiments, along with anticipating the next Law and Order spinoff (Transit Police? Or do they go geographic, and migrate out to Suffolk County?).

I don't even have cable any more, but there was one night on CBS that had MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart and, if memory serves, Carol Burnett

That was Saturday nights, from 1973 to 1978 or so (All in the Family was also on, as the leadoff hitter at 8:00 PM). Generally considered the best single-night lineup in TV history, although some permutations of NBC's strong Thursday night lineups have their defenders.

The NPR archive link pointed to does not appear to work.

Digging around a bit, I found this:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4461850

Or manually (in case they change URLs frequently for whatever reason), --

http://www.npr.org/

Scroll down; choose "Weekend Edition Saturday"
(on the left hand side)

Scroll down; choose the link right below "Digital Culture", titled "When Web Rumors Run Amok".

Bob should theoretically be your uncle.

I suppose that by next week, the manual instructions will have to include "choose 'Previous Week'" (or a program date of "01-29-2005"). And so on and so forth.

Hearing Henry Farrell's voice, I note that he has an Irish accent.
Which, checking his webpage, is as one might well expect.

Ray - was MASH on on Sundays? I seem to remember that they had The Jeffersons wedged in there somewhere.

The Bob Newhart Show remains one of my all-time TV favorites. The last sitcom that was even remotely as well written was probably Sports Night.

Whoops, meant Saturday night, of course.
Also noticed that I unwittingly came back to The Jeffersons after making a reference to its theme song above. And I never really liked the show.

Not only did our gracious host receive her dues on NPR, she was also once again BoingBoinged:

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/01/28/outstanding_tips_for.html

Faithfully reported by an everwatching lurker.

MASH may have moved at some point, but for a time, the Saturday night lineup was All in the Family, MASH, Bob Newhart, Mary Tyler Moore, and Carol Burnett, in that order, I think. Four half-hour sitcoms, followed by a one-hour variety show.

Actually, the more I see of it, the more I like Megas XLR on Cartoon Network.

Breaking in with very little easement; I just did a local site search here, and the 'search results' template has somehow gained a header with 96pt (or better, I've no ruler) fontsize. If I recall correctly, the 'search' templates are stored in a separate directory structure in the MT scheme, and it's possible that a change made to the CSS might affect the appearance of 'search results' pages independently of the rest of the site.

If this is not news, my humblest apologies for pewling.

pericat:
This was noted by my own humble self on November 07, 2004, 04:12 AM:, starting: "Aaaiiiieee!!! [quails] Has anyone else tried the search function on Making Light recently?" and Michelle called them BIG GIANT SCARY LETTERS, and wondered if they'd been eating comment spam and had grown uncontrollably as a result, thereupon earning the epithet Comment Spam of the Gods. On December 01, 2004, 05:37 AM:, they had seemed to be back to normal size, but checking after your note, "they're baaack".

Interesting suggestion about the Movable Type system, tho' I don't have any knowledge of it at all, so you can just ignore this sentence.

Megas is the bomb.

The bomb that blows up the "Conveniently empty building."

I just wanted to say "bravo!" to Paula Lieberman for "Ghost Soldiers" (way upthread from here). I have many times thought/felt the same things, only not put so eloquently.

Oh crap. I meant "Ghost Prisoners". My apologies.

Medical Investigations is total dreck - think of it as CSI:ER.
House, on the other hand is a medical 'detective' show with well-drawn characters and excellent plot puzzles.

The concept of Hieronymus Bush figures just occurred to me.

The Garden of Bibical Delights, down in the refilling marshes where the Tigris and Euphrates head into the Persian Gulf [one positive thing achieved... but the swamp never would have been drained in the first place if not for Bush I's misleadership and turncoat weaseling urging rebellion against Saddam Hussein and then doing nothing when Saddam sent his military and reign of brutality machines to subdue and eradication the rebellion and rebels. Draining the marshes destroyed the entire way of life of the people who had lived there and drove them out of Iraq to Iran, Saddam's goal was to get rid of dissidents and the populace of that area had objected to his rule--so he acted to get rid of them entirely, by violence and destroying the ecology which made it possible for them to survive there...]

Anyway, there could be figurines of torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, gunning down of prisoners in mass atrocities in Afghanistan [I'm trying to remember where the report of that is, but there are reports of it on the Web, [along with a lot of condemantion from is it www.rawa.org regarding US Government backing of warlords who are different from Taliban mostly only in who they're CURRENTLY allied with [remember that Osama bin Laden got US support a long time ago from apparatchik Bush I back when the USSR was occupying part of Afghanistan....], their attitudes towards women and treatment of them is virtually indistinguishable]...], figurines of US tanks a block away from libraries and archives and offices being looted and burned and with not the slightest preventive patrolling or policing done... just think what New York City would be like if the police and firefighters disappeared, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, the New York city archives, the police headquarters and all its records, City Hall and at its records, all the museums, and Central Park suddenly had all patrolling, all guards, and all alarm systems disabled or gone, and hardly anyone on-site even working with them. How long would it be before thieves, robber, looters, and vandals had made off with their choice of goods, vandalized the places, and set fire to them in a ombination of greed and avarice, viciousness, sense of entitlement, thought of selling for lots of money, joy of wanton destruction, the opportujnity to destroy records of their criminal past, and covering over theft and robbery with arson?

And don't forget military caricatures, Schmuck in flight suit in air vehicle landing on diverted aircraft carrier, the picture with the fake Thanksgiving Day turkey on platter, etc.

Taking advantage of the open thread again, this time to ask for writing advice. Murder your darlings - is there a rule of thumb for when it's a darling and when it's just a nice metaphor etc.? (That's nice in the old sense.)
I had figured that if it distorts the flow (eg. I must have one character be OOC so the other can make this witty remark) then it's a darling, but if there's a discussion in more detail anywhere, could someone point me the way?
Thank you!

Barbara --

I'm going to stick my oar in and say that murder your darlings is bad advice, full stop.

"Do I especially like this?" isn't a good question; authors are way variable on that point, and the same author will often be wildly variable over the life of the work.

"Does this serve the story?" and "Does this serve the story in more than one way?" are better questions, and get away from the (in my view bone stupid) "submit! submit! admit it's not good!" abstract-quality-is-real, it-is-it-is-it-is dance.

Barbara:

"Kill your darlings" was a phrase I first heard in an acting class: the idea being that any bit of business you grew too fond of would almost invariably grow stale or take on a kind of importance that takes away from the overall performance. On the other hand, a "darling" can be the thing that anchors a performance or gives the actor a point of access for a character.

It works similarly with writing, and it certainly doesn't mean you can't like something you've written or take delight in it ( "kill your darlings" has always had a sort of Puritanistic "enjoyment and craftsman's pride are sins" feel to me. I like enjoying my work). If you find that the "darling" bit takes on more importance than the writing around it, or that you're moving other things around to accommodate it, it's a good time to examine the whole work and see how its holding together. But that "darling" can also anchor a character or plot.

Medical Investigation was certainly the weakest of those four, but I was able to time-shift to still watch it.

The NPR plug was wonderful, of course (congratulations, Teresa!), but it did make Making Light sound a little more religously oriented than it actually is: a variety of subjects: Catholic saints, alligators, Mormon politics-- pretty well everything.

The museum of the Banque Nationale de Belgique are currently hosting an exhibition titled 'Euro Banknote Design Exhibition'. To make a long story short, it is about all the submissions that did NOT make it when the design was selected for the euro. There is a book containing all those 'failed' designs and short bios of the designers, all of them amongst the global top 50 in the field.

Albeit the format is not one of the best ones around and navigation is quite tiresome, the Bank of Greece has actually put up ALL the contents of the book, beginning from this page:

http://www.bankofgreece.gr/en/exhibition-euro/start.html

To find the actual designs, go to the designers' page and click on either the 'Ages and styles of Europe' and/or the 'abstract modern' icons. Some are cool, some are so-so, some are, um, less than inspiring.

Madeleine and Graydon, thanks for the words of wisdom. It had seemed to me that carried through, murder your darlings would lead to featureless utilitarian prose, but ... The Puritanical aspect is a good point, and serving the story is a better criterion.
I'd been recalling an anecdote I read long enough ago to have forgotten all the identifying details (so, last week then?) about a Renaissance(?) sculptor who finished a figure only to have everyone rave about the hands and ignore the rest of it. So he smashed the hands because they overwhelmed the whole figure.
If it had been me, I'd probably have sawn the hands off and sold them separately, but well, that's artists for you.

Evil Genius, I view that poll with alarm. I'm on it, but Beth Meacham isn't? (Also my name's misspelled, but that's nothing new.)

Zvi, Julie, you've been particled.

Tom Scudder, don't skip season 6. It must have been rough going, watched one episode a week; but a season on DVD is like a novel, and much easier to take. Also, you'll miss the musical, and you'll never sort out what happened with Willow or Tara or Spike.

Robert, Patrick says yes, he's known about it, and he was just checking it this evening.

Ray, that would be "Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt"? Snarf city, first time we heard it. It's weird: he makes it come out sounding complex and a bit archaic and threatening, just like any other Richard Thompson song.

Mad, I've long known about the Flame Warriors site. He's got a lot of the major types nailed. He's left out the stuffy pretentious youngish person who thinks the possession of an opinion constitutes a license to be listened to; and the probable sociopath who always skirts the edge of what's allowable while never quite going over the line; and the unexpected but inseparable allies who, when a flamewar starts, turn out to have fought on the same side in innumerable campaigns on three or four different bulletin boards; and the intelligence analyst who focuses the power of Google on the online history of the person with whom he's arguing; and the earless wonder who denounces the unfairness and hypocrisy of a board where (for reasons the e.w. can't fathom) his or her posts aren't valued as much as those by more gifted writers; and the participant who announces that she's small, cute, and stacked, then runs around loose playing "ain't I cute."

More tomorrow --

Flame warriors, heavens! I know about six of these types, personally, and that's only the ones I share my own head with.

In regards to the Richard Thompson thing, he did an album called something like "A Thousand Years of Popular Music", and, in addition to "Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt", there's also a recording of "Oops, I did it again."

Also, there's a good deal of music hall.

Nicole, Re:The bomb that blows up the "Conveniently empty building."
In addition to the many excellencies of Megas, please consider Kim Possible, to wit: the OBoyz episode. ("Wow. He really is the smart one!")

Or, at least consider the devilishly ironic premise of the series: a typical swashbuckling super spy with ditzy blonde sidekick, (often in need of rescuing,) with the expected genders swapped.

"Kill your darlings" sounds almost like my observations on style, years ago. Basically, I concluded that style -- in a drawing or cartooning sense, anyway -- was the sum total of one's imperfections and inadequacies. Any time an element of one's own style was noticed, it should be worked on, if not expunged outright. Too many artists (like Rich Corben) disappeared into their own styles and never came back out.

On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with having a tool chest of elements or shticks to draw from in realizing a performance or work of art. The question is who's to be the master, that's all. (Hmm, I guess I still believe all that, more or less. Though I no longer think photo references are cheating.)

Stupid Bogus Entrail Reading

[from something I posted in a different forum.... what, a simultaneous submission?!... it's not as if no-pay commentary necessarly has Exclusives on it...]

And now that that got everyone's attention... "Stupid Bogus Entrail Reading"
is probably MORE accurate about "the Crisis [pah...] in Social Security" than the claims about "Social Security will have to cut benefits in 2052."

But "science" and scientific analysis aren't things that the regime in DC actually bases its policies on, as opposed to Faith, Junk Science, and redactions massaging the data and information to produce the desired "support" for the conclusions.

I mean, it's the regime that required the placement of a Creationist j/o/k/e/b/o/o/k
book about the Grand Canyon which discussed the the Biblical Flood made the Grand Canyon in as a "science book" in the federal park store there....

It's the regime which sneers and deprecates global warming, it abolished collection of data that provided statistical bases used for proving systematic discrimination in hiring and promotions on gender and such, it removed information on the NIH/public health sites that particular religious sects object to on religious grounds (but which other sects do find objectionable), it rewrote a report on stem cell research to comply with regime prejudices and values that are based on particular religious views that are not universal in the country, etc.

But getting back to Stupid Bogus Entrail Reading.... projects are based on all sorts of -assumptions-, and assumptions don't tend to be all that accurate for decades forward detailed predictions of longevity, birth rates, immigration/emigration rates, death rates, productivity rates, etc. They're GUESSES, repeat GUESSES, and often, are -biased- ones.

I did market research full of five year compound annual growth rate forecasts for five or six years in the 1990s. I liked doing research and analysis, I didn't like make guessing about market share of Company A, Company B, Company C... because of Engineer's Disease, "Make an engineer unhappy, TAKE A GUESS!" I wasn't happy with the level of uncertainty and guessing that I had to do, and couldn't put in effect error bars on--that is, the precision I was required to work to was FAR greater than the accuracy. Doing the qualitative analysis, writing up why things were likely to head the way things were being orecasted, I was MUCH happier with--

That is, I actually predicted that digital still cameras and digital camcordrers would be sizable future markets for analog to digital and digital to analog converters, back in the early 1990s, based on "see Kodak's $20,000 1.3 megapixel digital SLR [or whatever else was around back then, that model was actually out a few years earlier, but the technology was a long way from the consumer models with 3.2 megapixels for under $200 of today...] and on the then highly expensive digital video camcorders.... Predicting quantitative numbers though, aargh -- volume grows furiously when end products' Average Selling Price to the end buyers drop and when end buyers see the product out and marketed and available and get the idea that this is something they "need."

But, forecasting in 1994 say that there would however many xx.x million digital cameras sold in 2004, is a matter for utter hilarity. Similarly, forecasting Social Security in red ink in 2052 or 2042 is a stupid bad joke, on the order of the Augustine's Law that "based on the current trends in growth in the costs of military combat planes, in the year 2020 there will be -one- combat plane, half the year used by the Air Force, the other six months by the Navy, and by the Marines on leap days." This was all done on a forecast showing a graph with the increasing cost per plane over time versus budget for planes, and the lines crossing in 2020.

Social Security payouts are not straight linear projections and the uncertainties far outweigh any ability to do really accurate forecasting out 40 or 50 years. There could be a pandemic wiping out half the retirees in the country, and that would make a giant difference. There could be massive immigration full of people founding high growth rate high productivity companies paying high wages. There could be major changes in birth rates, and death rates. There could be an economic collapse, or boom, or series. The Madras Fault could let loose and wipe out the middle of the country. Etc.

Treality about forecasts is that they are -forecasts- and depend on lots of assumptions that often don't match what turns out to happen... that's why economic forecasts rarely go out beyond five years, and the forecasts get iffier and iffier in those... the forecast for the fifth year out might not be in the realm of -fantasy-, but the accuracy predicting economics and trends out to that fifth year, tends to be -poor-. Forecasting Social Security out 40 or 50 years, is in the realm of drekkish fantasy... it's all based on -assumptions- and a slight variation in the assumptions can make a HUGE difference.

Bottom line, the regime's focus on Social Security with its claims makes Eye of Argon and Atlanta Nights look like well-written coherent non-fiction.

It's abominable and MALICIOUS, bad fantasy.

Paula Lieberman:

Was it Yogi Berra who said: "predictions are difficult, especially about the future?"

Of course, faith-based predictions are easier, as faith (by definition) allows for ignoring evidence or lack of evidence.

And wasn't it George W. Bush, in his first presidential campiagn, who deflected quantitative questions with the phrase "fuzzy math?"

(but which other sects do find objectionable)
should be

"but which other sects do not find objectionable)."

Sigh...

Thanks for coming to Vericon, Teresa and Patrick (and Jim, whom I know reads ML, and everyone else who reads ML and was there). It was a lot of fun to meet you all, and I enjoyed listening to you on panels.

I think I saw this on The Regular first, and I thought our hostess and the host next door might be interested - Interview with a Comment Spammer

"Wonderfalls" is out on DVD!

There's an interview in The Register today with a link spammer:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/31/link_spamer_interview/

Evil man.

"Wonderfalls" is out on DVD!

I've been eagerly eyeing February 1 on my calendar ever since Wonderfalls first appeared in DVDPriceSearch's database a while back. Wheee!

As a distant tie-in to a larger point, I can see absolutely no chance that this would ever have happened if it weren't for theoretically illegal Bittorrent downloads.

For months after the show was killed, new episodes would trickle out onto the net, ripped from screener copies or stolen by mysterious insider gnomes, and the Bittorrent networks would go crazy for them. I'll eat something edible but vaguely unpleasant if someone didn't take a very good look at those internet traffic figures when trying to decide about releasing it on DVD.

This is not without precedent: It is an open secret that American distributors of Japanese anime and manga titles carefully track the popularity of fan-translated versions of Japanese originals which aren't otherwise available in America when making decisions about which properties to license for stateside distribution. Theoretically illegal fan-translated versions of Naruto, for instance, were hugely popular before it was licensed (they're still hugely popular, but, well, that's another story). Fruits Basket, I think, is another title which never would have been licensed for America if the internet underground hadn't demonstrated its appeal.

I've often wondered about how the Japanese companies feel about their American counterparts' carefully averted official gazes, especially given that those Japanese companies are much more likely to be huge media conglomerates like Sony.

It is apocryphically said of Eisenhower, when planning the Normandy landings, that he asked his meteorologists to provide him with detailed weather forecasts five days in advance. They quite reasonably objected that the state of the art did not admit of an accuracy that differed noticeably from chance (within the physically possible) so far ahead. The General was said to have replied that it didn't matter, but he had to have something to go on.

A substitution of the names and purposes in the above, germane to the discussion, is left to the audience.

Taking advantage of the open thread...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20050201/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_palestinians

"Israel is going to slow its planned pullout from five West Bank towns after a day of violence strained an informal cease-fire, and it will stop the process altogether if Palestinians don't halt all attacks"

Is it just me, or is this a recipe for permanent war?

The palestinians attack jewish settlements because they're pushing into what was supposed to be palestinian land. The isreali's won't pull out until the palestinians stop all attacks on their illegal settlements.

I know we're not supposed to be here, and we took your land from you, but its OK for us to stay here as long as you attack us.

Ray:

As I understand it, most tolerate it. There is one company who is looking into the potential of suing US bittorrent distributors, but that hasn't gotten anywhere. Yes, it's covered in international copyright, but it's difficult to prosecute when the person isn't making any money off it.

So far, the most newsworthy clash of fansubbers vs. faceless corporations came with the Ninja Scroll TV series, which was being funded by a US company due to its popularity here (not so much in Japan, apparently). When they were about to release the first DVD (already having owned the rights to do so since it was in pre-production), they asked the fansubbers politely if they would please stop distributing this title. Most fansubbers responded that of course they would. One company thumbed their collective nose, responding that licensed anime was so expensive, they had a right to distribute it for free.

I never did find out what happened to that group . . .

Hey, speaking of which:

http://news.com.com/Anxious+times+in+the+cartoon+underground/2100-1026_3-5557177.html?tag=st.num

The article has an annoying habit of referring to anime as 'cartoons,' or worse, the redundant, 'anime cartoons,' but it has a lot more in-depth information than my above ramble.

For those who wanted to know . . .

If you liked KeyKatcher (from Particles) you'll love RealTime Spy.

Someone just walked into my office and explained that this story, about an American soldier captured by Iraqi bad guys, may be explained by this.

See, I knew you'd appreciate that article.

The high-school sex map one is interesting, but they don't address the incredibly obvious flaw: lying. The article doesn't say anything (that I could find) about what makes them think the reported sexual habits of these kids are ANYTHING like their actual behavior.

Identifying your partners by NAME?!?!? Good grief, that would get you killed in a lot of places.

I noticed also that there were only two same-sex hookups on the map page: one blue-blue and one pink-pink. Now I don't know whether to be surprised that any were reported (see above) or, if I believe they used nipple and scrotum electrodes to make sure the kids were telling the truth, amazed that there weren't more.

My general take: it's a hoax.

Xopher, I'm not sure I'd agree that it's a deliberate hoax—if that's what you're saying here, and I'm not sure that you are—but I do agree with you that the question of whether or not the researchers got the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is, um, questionable.

And in my case, too, the big red flag is the conspicuous absence of same-sex activity. I really don't buy the assertion that there were only two same-sex pairings over the eighteen months, regardless of where these kids go to school.

Xopher, I looked up the original paper when I saw the link on Boing Boing. If it is a hoax, they've taken the journal in too, and it would be on the order of the Great Sokal Scam. That would be cool.

When I sent the link to my father, he pointed out the lack of same-sex couples (couplings?) as well. I sent him this reply, based on extracts from the paper:

This might have something to do with it (emphasis mine):

Jefferson High is an almost all-white high school of roughly 1,000 students located in a midsized midwestern town. Jefferson is the only public high school in the town. The town, "Jefferson City," is over an hour's drive from the nearest large city.

According to the paper (conveniently accessible via the Penn library website), there are almost no self-declared gays or lesbians in the high school:

While homophily is strong, the preference for similarity does not extend to all characteristics, most obviously sex and age. Almost every single reported romantic relationship at Jefferson is a cross-sex relationship, and as is true in most high schools, girls at Jefferson tend to be involved with older boys. Ninth grade girls tend to be in relationships with ninth and tenth grade boys, tenth grade girls with boys in the tenth and eleventh grades, and so on. Among all partnerships involving Jefferson students, we observe a mean grade difference of .9, less than expected if relationships were formed independent of age (mean difference = 1.23 in the randomly assigned pairs), but evidence of a female preference for older boys (or male preference for younger girls).

Obviously that constitutes a criticism of their data set. (Or you could just take their results to apply primarily to midsized midwest towns.)

Three pairings. There's a second M-M in the big circle.

But yes, I did wonder that they seemed to be taking the students' word for it all around.

Unfortunately, the by-name would be necessary to get the data in the first place, or you could never make the connections. I presumed some obvious level of concealment regardless - that every student told the researchers whatever they told in terms of deep confidentiality.

Since the point is partly to consider things like the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, even partly accurate information that shows a link-up that big is significant, especially since the most likely way anyone will lie is by omitting partners.

Robot hip-hop office worker existential anxiety - Scent of a Robot.

Beautiful amazing works of paint on glass here:

http://www.carolcohen.com/pages/coglass1.html

re. presence or absence of specific worthies in the Readers Poll book editor category-- last year at the Hugos, Ginjer Buchanan bemoaned the way that book editors get no respect when it comes to rocketships for Best Professional Editor. Well yeah, but that's because the magazine editors have their names on their work. I know Tor identifies the editor at least sometimes -- do other publishers?

Look at what fraudulent malicious piece of shit showed up in my email... antivirus software nuked the rid of the malicious worm or virus payload. Note the identity fraud with the malicemail having a faked sender....

===========================================

X-Symantec-TimeoutProtection: 0
X-Symantec-TimeoutProtection: 1
Received: from mx08.gis.net ([208.218.130.52]) by mail.gis.net; Tue, 01 Feb 2005 16:15:48 -0500
Received: from your-marvm4jnjy ([172.216.15.183]) by mx08.gis.net; Tue, 01 Feb 2005 16:14:55 -0500
Message-ID:
From:
To:
Subject: I'm nude
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 21:15:21 +0000
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="jy>"
X-Rcpt-To:
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.63 (2004-01-11) on spamassassin.gis.net
X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.3 required=5.0 tests=NO_REAL_NAME autolearn=no
version=2.63
X-Spam-Level:
Return-Path:
X-DPOP: Version number supressed
X-UIDL: 1107311310.138545
Status: U

--jy>
Content-Type: text/plain

--jy>--

Oh, the From: line had pnh [at] panix.... and the To: address was my email address. The probability of it being real email from Patrick being NFW, I figured posting the headers here would do be the most sensible thing for me to do, given attitudes, connections, and abilities of various of the people here.... Fraud, identity theft, forgery, malicious code in email....

fyi, the new No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency book is out.

More likely than fraud or identity theft per se is that someone who has both you and Patrick in their e-mail address book has gotten hit by an e-mail virus. Much like I used to regularly get virus payloads sent to me via e-mail which claimed they were from Terry Karney.

The virus payload grabs one address at random from the address book, and uses it as the "From:" field.

The reasons why this is a good idea from the viral POV tie right into the same Social Network theory that researchers are trying to address in their studies of "Jefferson High School," of course. :-)

There's still fraud and identity theft involved, though, on the part of the person who wrote the virus and infected other people's equipment with it. That's fraud and malice intentional on thee part of that perpetrator, the intentional originator was deliberately sending out a tool committing/designed to falsify identity and spread maliciously.

So far, the most newsworthy clash of fansubbers vs. faceless corporations came with the Ninja Scroll TV series, which was being funded by a US company due to its popularity here (not so much in Japan, apparently). When they were about to release the first DVD (already having owned the rights to do so since it was in pre-production), they asked the fansubbers politely if they would please stop distributing this title. Most fansubbers responded that of course they would. One company thumbed their collective nose, responding that licensed anime was so expensive, they had a right to distribute it for free.

Yeah, the general social norm which has evolved is that once the title is licensed, the licensor lets the fan community know, and asks them to stop the fansub distribution; and once the licensed product is actually available, they ask again. :-)

At that point, the fansubbed episodes do tend to fade away; and if they don't vanish entirely, they do at least become a lot harder to find. As long as the licensor can at least pretend not to notice it, they seem to be okay with it; but obviously, there are times when it becomes impossible to ignore, and that's when the lawyers parachute in.

The other factors involved seem to be how large the backlog of original fansubbed material is, and how fast the new material is reaching the market. The fansubbed Narutos that are out there right now, for instance, are years ahead of any possible legitimate American release, which may be why no one seems to be getting bothered about them.

It's an interesting balance that is being struck here, and it's not hard to see how it could be seriously upset at any moment; for the time being, however, it's an arrangement which does a pretty good job at maximizing both product availability for fans and profit for licensors (and hence, by extension, for licensees). I'd like to see it survive.

Lord knows the economy of Japan has gotten a lot more money out of my pocket then it would have had Bittorrent not existed. And if any American publisher would see fit to license Anne Freaks or Death Note, they'd get a little more.

Recent incarnations of malware will snarf email addresses from ANYTHING they can find on your system-- address books, browser cache, etc.

And, wouldn't you know it, just on the heels of this discussion, comes an entry on Slashdot pointing to a CNet article about just such a legal threat from a Japanese studio, Media Factory.

Looking at the list of offending titles, and the larger list of titles the company produces, I don't see much of a pattern. Two or three of the titles, such as School Rumble, are popular online as fansubs and not yet otherwise available in English; RahXephon, on the other hand, has its own shelf at your local Best Buy. And then there's Genshiken, which has managed to fly completely under my radar, at least, despite the fact that Del Rey has evidently licensed the manga it is based on, with the first volume scheduled in April (but of course Media Factory has no connection to the manga; that's Kodansha's business).

Like I said, I hope that other studios and publishers in Japan do not follow suit.

Re: The Structure of Romantic and Sexual Relations in High School (or the nifty chart)

It took me a few minutes to work out what you were talking about. (Apparently I have not been following the preceeding threads here closely enough.) I took the liberty of tracking down the original citation for the curious:

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/chainspix.htm
Cited in: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/01/28/romantic_and_sex_rel.html

I'll point out that while it is impossible to rule out a hoax, the research required to produce such a chart is not impossibly difficult. People, even (especially?) high school students like to talk about themselves. Reading the article, proper, one discovers that this is an analysis of data collected in 1995 as part of a larger survey.

Note that 63 pairs were "traditional" dyads, precisely the kind of thing that teenagers would be willing to report. ("Do you have a girlfriend? No, but I used to.) The low numbers of same-sex coulples isn't terribly surprising either; the incidence of homosexuality in the general population is about 3%, but being homosexual is not the same as being able to find a partner, any more than being heterosexual. (Note the large number of respondents who did not claim a relationship!) It would also be reasonable to assume that given this and a reluctance to admit to deviant (in that society's context) behavior.

Oh, did I use that semicolon correctly? I was told in grade school that people weren't going to be useing them anymore by the time the 90's came around.

An astonishing picture of Escher done in Legos.

Re: The Structure