It's also the Number of the Joker.

Posted November 9, 2005 11:49 AM by Steve Eley

Wow, I did not know that. That's really cool!

I assume that in this context you're not counting 1 as prime, and that you mean one each of power of 2^a and 3^b, in either order (a and b being integers). Because otherwise, of course,

2^6 - 3^2 - 2^1
= 64 - 9 - 2
= 53

2^5 + 2^4 + 2^2 + 2^0
= 32 + 16 + 2 + 1
= 53

(i.e. 53 is 110101 in binary)

Posted November 9, 2005 12:09 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Umm...that second one on the fifty-three site? Does π(53) mean something besides π times 53? Because 5² - 3² is 16, not 166.5044...

Posted November 9, 2005 12:17 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

There's a question I've been meaning to ask for quite some time, what with all the editors and writers who post on this site...

What the heck is a hack?

Oh, I could come up with examples, such as Alexandre Dumas, but I'm really asking about a definition. Our American Heritage dictionary says that a hack is (1) a worn-out horse for hire, (2) a person who undertakes unpleasant or distasteful tasks for money or reward, and (3) a writer hired to produce routine or commercial writing.

A couple of years ago, though, I caught Stephen King coming up with a new definition during a talk on CSPAN2: a writer who plans a book in advance is a hack.

I guess that, by the same standards, Alfred Hitchcock, who extensively planned his films, was the ultimate hack of the movie world.

Posted November 9, 2005 12:21 PM by Serge

A hack is a writer who says that any writer who plans a book in advance is a hack.

Posted November 9, 2005 12:30 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Excellent Two Cultures moment going on here. Xopher: I believe they mean sum or difference of two powers; 64-9-2 has three terms, not two. 1 is not prime, but it is a prime power, e.g. 17=2^4+3^0.

Posted November 9, 2005 12:37 PM by D. Eppstein

Yes, that's what I thought, but it's not what "the sum of powers of the first two primes" means...by itself. You do know that I was doing a parody, right?

Posted November 9, 2005 12:49 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

By planning, do you mean outlines?
I'm fairly lax with those...and I've never been good at math. As a writer, I thought I'd take Symbolic Logic in university, which is essentially math, with words, and it succeeded in completely confounding me.

Posted November 9, 2005 12:55 PM by AnimeJune

King never said, AnimeJune, but that's probably what he meant.

Posted November 9, 2005 12:58 PM by Serge

A hack, originally, was any horse or carriage for hire (a contraction of hackney, which is why taxis sometimes have "hackney licenses"). A hack, in the sense of a writer, is therefore a writer for hire--someone who is not deeply engaged in his own work and is only in it for the money. Unlike the rest of us artists who don't care if we get paid or anything like that...

Posted November 9, 2005 1:07 PM by Madeleine Robins

I'm not sure what that definition makes Stephen King, other than possibly a writer who knows he can find a publisher without having to produce an outline. He sells Stephen King, not books.

Still, there's a difference between an outline and a specification, and I can see writing to a specification being one way of being a hack. Trouble is, I've seen some fine writing which, for various reasons, could be classified as hack writing. Go and check out some of what Diane Duane produces, such as for the "Net Force Explorers" series.

And looking at writers such as Dumas, or Dickens, churning out long books for money. I'm told that Dumas suffers from bad translation, but I hardly think that either can fairly be called hacks.

Bron Fane, maybe...

Posted November 9, 2005 1:10 PM by Dave Bell

Well, by Stephen King's definition I'm a hack through-and-through. I don't always write to an outline, but I do it more often than not. Moreover, just about every academic text is clearly an example of hackwork by this yardstick.

Moving swiftly on, the Schwartzian transform is a hack, although not as much of a hack as Duff's Device.

Posted November 9, 2005 1:17 PM by Charlie Stross

I heard the rumor that Robert Jordan's first Wheel of Time book was written based on him being asked to write a new Lord of the Rings. I don't know how much truth there is to that, but given that the novel starts with little people leaving their peaceful village in the company of a grumpy wizard and an exiled-king-turned-ranger, followed by evil dark cloak guys and dragons, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a very conscious Tolkien remake.

If so, that's what I'd call a hack job.

Stephen King, he's just... well... a rambler in dire need of an editor.

Posted November 9, 2005 1:18 PM by Christian Griffen

Saw "Mirrormask" last Saturday.

(Bless Portland and its many indie movie venues.)

The story struck me as . . . well, not bad, or lacking, but just kind of ordinary. Maybe more for younger folks than me.

The acting was good; the dialog and characterization were clever and enjoyable.

But the visuals, and the visual imagination behind the visuals . . . oh. Oh my. That was just incredible work.

Posted November 9, 2005 1:19 PM by Stefan Jones

Oh, no. I hope the planner vs. "pantzer" argument doesn't infest here, now, too. ("Pantzer" = somebody who writes by the seat of the pants, i.e. without outlining.) It's a very popular topic of debate on a writing site I frequent, and I'm always horrified at how quickly it devolves into an issue of moral superiority despite the efforts of most participants.

Stephen King is just wrong here, IMO. And I say this as a freak who straddles both sides of the planner-pantzer divide.

Posted November 9, 2005 1:25 PM by Sharon Mock

My comment about Alexandre Dumas wasn't a reaction to translations' Dave, because I read The Three Musketeers in French. It's not that his writing style was bad. But there were times when some scenes went on and on and on. I don't know how much you remember of the various movie adaptations, but at some point, Buckingham finally gets wise about Milady and confines her to her room, with a guard at the door. In the version with Gene Kelly and Lana Turner, Milady cooks up a sob story and the guard quickly falls for it. In the book, that sob story goes on for a whole long chapter. The only reason I could figure out for things to be that way is that Dumas had a quota to fill up that week.

Posted November 9, 2005 1:26 PM by Serge

By Stephen King's defintion, then, Harry Stephen Keeler was king of the hacks. He even devised his own system of plotting, with diagrams and everything.

Posted November 9, 2005 1:26 PM by Keith Kisser

Stephen King writes in a spirit of exploration. It's one of the known styles of composition. I'm surprised to hear that he thinks using other methods means you're a hack. Some authors can't write well if they know what's going to happen next, and others can't write well if they don't. I suspect it's a hardwired difference, or something close to it.

The American Heritage's definition of hack is perhaps not a specimen of their best work. (Among other things, they seem to have entirely missed hack as a synonym for taxicab.) When a hack is a horse, its primary characteristic isn't that it's old or broken down; it's that it's for hire, or adapted to general work, or both.

I'm not entirely clear on the etymological relationship between hack and hackney -- the latter being either a breed of flashy driving pony, or a carriage for hire. It occurs most commonly in hackney carriage, which is usually shortened to hackney or hack.

As you've probably figured out by now, a hack writer is simply someone who writes for hire. A secondary and somewhat outmoded sense of the word is that a hack is someone who's paid to clothe others' thoughts and opinions in more felicitous language. It isn't a synonym for "untalented." If it were, you wouldn't find old reference books temperately praising Defoe as "...the most practised and versatile journalist and hack writer of the day."

Posted November 9, 2005 1:30 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

And by the way, Patrick: all of Shwarzenegger's Props failed, including redistricting. The angels rejoice.

Posted November 9, 2005 1:31 PM by Madeleine Robins

And what is a commercial writer? Someone who gets paid for his/her work? I remember when I read Gustave Flaubert's Salammbo. My edition had an intro on the genesis of the book: he had been contracted to write a historical novel, originally set in Egypt but eventually he decided to use Carthage. My goodness... He was contracted to produce a story. How crassly commercial. Yeah, maybe, but it sure had very poetic language.

Posted November 9, 2005 1:33 PM by Serge

The thing is that I love King's early stuff. Later on though... It became obvious he needed to do some planning when I read the novella The Library Police then the novel Needful Things, and I realized, crap, he had the main character defeat Evil the same way in both places.

Anyway, he should remember that what works for him may not work for others. Different strokes for different folks.

I remember Leigh Brackett in an intro to a story collection saying how she didn't plan. Her hubby Edmond Hamilton, upon finding that out, apparently exclaimed that was a Hell of a way to write a story.

Posted November 9, 2005 1:45 PM by Serge

According to the ever-entertaining comments on dailykos, the One-Term-inator should face a Total Recall after that disaster.

Posted November 9, 2005 1:46 PM by Christian Griffen

Christian, the story about Jordan is an urban legend. To the best of my knowledge, he started out knowing how the story had to end, and has been working his way toward it ever since.

Posted November 9, 2005 1:56 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

The only translation of Dumas I've read is The Phoenix Guards, so IME he doesn't suffer a whit. In fact Brust is a good bit more careful than Dumas was--there are plenty of No-Prizes in the original. (Not that I can think of any just at the moment, of course.)

I've always found Flaubert kind of meh. But Victor Hugo, who also wrote for money, is one of my favorite non-sf novelists.

Posted November 9, 2005 2:01 PM by TexAnne

Thanks for clearing that up. I guess you would be in a position to know :)

It does have those certain touches I mentioned, howver. Maybe that was all subconscious.

Posted November 9, 2005 2:03 PM by Christian Griffen

I'm very proud of my state for voting against those ridiculous propositions, although I am a little sad that 79 (state negotiated drug prices for low-income citizens) failed, I am gladdened by the failure of the parental notification thing. I noticed a couple of hinky things at the polling place, but I'm not sure whether to be paranoid or not. My roommate and I are turning into quite the conspiracy theorists, and elections tend to set those off.

In a related note, I have going through season 1 of Xena (yay, Netflix!) and the plot of one of last night's episodes gave me pause: A minor king is moonlighting as a warlord and leading The Bad Guys on regular raids against his principality as a way of keeping the citizens in fear and keeping their high taxes for him and his cronies.

I sure hope tonight's episodes include some hot guest star (Ares? Hades? Autolycus?) to distract me from the notion that Our President is getting some of his ideas from campy TV shows.

Posted November 9, 2005 2:09 PM by nerdycellist

Xena as an inspiration for the Administration's current policies, nerdycellist? What a scary idea.

Posted November 9, 2005 2:16 PM by Serge

Returning to primes:
Some time ago I downloaded the first 1000 prime numbers for use in some program code, and did some fooling around with them in Excel.

Havin little prior experience of the properties of prime numbers, I was amazed at how regular their progression is: a simple x-y graph of prime number versus its sequence number produces a curve that is remarkably smooth (at least at the scale of a graph for the first 1000).

Probing ever so slightly below the surface, I plotted the differences between adjacent primes. While the result wasn't too edifying, I noticed that difference number 217 (between 1327 and 1361) was a notable outlier. The difference of 34 was the highest of all in the first 1000, and significantly higher than other differences in the first 250.

Can local wizards comment on this? You know who you are.

Posted November 9, 2005 2:17 PM by Dan R.

Back to the thread's original mathematics subject... A few weeks ago, there was an episode of numb3rs wher Charlie tells his older brother that there are no Nobel Prizes for mathematics. Apparently when Nobel was about to start his Prizes, his wife was fooling around with a mathematician. Considering that the show has a real mathematician as its technical advisor, I'll assume that this is not BS.

Posted November 9, 2005 2:20 PM by Serge

I suspect King might be using "outline" in the same weird way that he uses "plot" in _On Writing_; he expressed great disapproval there of "plot" defined as something that an author actively forces on a book (shoving characters to do something they wouldn't to make a necessary event happen, like that). Making an outline and sticking to it no matter what would be similar to him, I bet.

Posted November 9, 2005 2:22 PM by Kate Nepveu

Nobel wasn't married.

http://www.snopes.com/science/nobel.htm

Posted November 9, 2005 2:23 PM by Kate Nepveu

Perhaps King meant someone else's outline.

At least some of Dumas's works were written by another writer based on his outline, then polished up by the master. This may be why he is put in the "hack" category.

Posted November 9, 2005 2:26 PM by Robert L

It is BS. Nobel never married; and there are other good reasons as well.

Posted November 9, 2005 2:27 PM by theophylact

And there are cases where a writer cooks up an outline to get the basic idea of where to go and if problems still come up, or if a better idea comes up, then one feels free to diverge. I wonder if such a writer would then fall under King's definition of a hack.

Posted November 9, 2005 2:33 PM by Serge

Nobel was never married? Darn, gulled again.

Posted November 9, 2005 2:38 PM by Serge

I once saw a book called "Shrink-Lits" which was various classic books condensed into lite verse.

Posted November 9, 2005 2:39 PM by Erik Nelson

Xopher

pi(x) is the mathematical notation for "the number of prime numbers less than or equal to x". So pi(53) is 16, since there are 16 primes less than or equal to 53 (2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19,23,29,31,37,41,43,47,53).

I must admit I'd never seen the original proposition that Theresa wrote about. Now I have to go find out if it's a conjecture, and if not, the proof! Another couple of hours to waste!

Cheers, Julian

Posted November 9, 2005 2:46 PM by Julian M Bucknall

No kaboom for the MythBusters tonight but hopefully some big pop as, according to their web site, "...Adam and Jamie test the ability of steel toe boots to protect against heavy objects. In Bottle Blast Off, the Build team fills a soda bottle and watches as it lifts off, testing Newton's third law: every action has an equal and opposite reaction..."

Posted November 9, 2005 2:48 PM by Serge

Speaking as an OCaml hacker, I have to say that giving a name to that technique, i.e. the Schwartzian Tranform, seems awfully presumptuous.

let sort f u =
let u = Array.map (fun x -> x, f x) u in
Array.sort (fun (_, a) (_, b) -> Pervasives.compare a b) u;
Array.map (fun x, _ -> x) u

In OCaml, I probably wouldn't start with this data in an array in the first place. It would probably be in a list. Or even more likely, a Cf_seq type, i.e. a lazy list.

Posted November 9, 2005 2:56 PM by j h woodyatt

Dan, primes have all kinds of interesting properties. They're catnip to mathematicians. Check out this site, or this one.

Watch:

What's your favorite prime number? Mine is 11.

Posted November 9, 2005 2:57 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Christian, Jordan was quite conscious of it, as you can see in this quote from the WoT FAQ:

The only direct influence we know Jordan has acknowledged is Tolkien: "The only deliberate connection between WOT and any other modern fantasy was giving the first 100-odd pages of TEOTW a Lord of the Rings-esque flavor, to start people off in familiar territory." [from Dublin talk, 11/93, Emmet O'Brien]

Personally, I think he maybe took the parallelism a little too far, but others maybe disagree.

In a complete tangent, I'm happy to report that Chicken Little is a quite fun light SF film suitable for all ages. Worth seeing.

Posted November 9, 2005 3:07 PM by Skwid

Another open thread diversion: the American Society of Civil Engineers has released its report on the NOLA levee failures.

Posted November 9, 2005 3:11 PM by alex

Keith Kisser,
Now that you've pointed out Keeler's writing, all I have to say is
"..."

-r.
p.s. Here's a pair of extracts for those who didn't follow the links:

For he was to become now, as I was shortly to find, as coldly calculating as an adding machine sitting on the North Pole!

Elsa, this day, had just completed a single leaf of those several million green leaves yet to be done, and had climbed off her stool to survey it from a distance--when her phone rang.

Posted November 9, 2005 3:31 PM by rhandir

Whoo! Harry Reid did predict the weather--the wind is blowing hard for the Democrats!

The Democrats still won't be my party, though. Oh, well, at least they're not crazy.

Posted November 9, 2005 3:34 PM by Randolph Fritz

Thanks, Skwid. It's good to see that I wasn't completely making something out of nothing. And I do agree with you on taking it too far. Of course, he then moved on to having his bad guy crush rats' spines as a pastime, and that's where he lost me. He should have stuck with Sauron's hobby of gazing about evilly.

As for favorite prime numbers, I claim 5.

Posted November 9, 2005 3:50 PM by Christian Griffen

Julian, thanks. I knew it hadda be something I didn't know about.

Posted November 9, 2005 3:52 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Teresa and I share a favorite prime. I was born on the 11th day of the month (though not, alas, this month...I have a friend whose birthdate was 11/11/55!); my last name is such that I was often 11th on the list of students at school; my first name has 11 letters; and other multiples of 11 keep cropping up in my life.

Posted November 9, 2005 3:56 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Christian, can we share 5?

I was born on 5/25 of a multiple of 5 year....

Posted November 9, 2005 4:02 PM by Nancy C

My favourite prime is 97. In fact it's my favourite number. I went straight to the 97 page at the site you originally linked to and discovered that 97 is the first "Bad prime." So that figures.

On hackery - we purchased, at a steam railway fair, an ancient book which consisted entirely of the fares for hackney carriages (as in the horse-drawn variety) for specific routes in London. An attempt to standardise charges before the advent of the meter. Hundreds and hundreds of routes in a London much smaller than it is now. Fascinating.

Posted November 9, 2005 4:02 PM by qB

I just made an interesting discovery. Sir Christopher Meyer's book, DC Confidential, is being serialised in the online (as well as print) versions of The Guardian.

This means that several substantial extracts are available at: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/page/0,12956,1636156,00.html (no subscription seems to be necessary) This page is list of extracts published to date, along with a leader, an interview, and a couple of related articles by Guardian journalists.

The extracts from the book by the man who was British Ambassador during much of the planning for the Iraq war contain some things worth knowing, such as:
"I found myself repeatedly answering the question: did something said by Jack Straw or Geoff Hoon represent the prime minister's views? Sometimes it did not. Indeed, throughout this period, the Foreign Office impinged little on my life. Between 9/11 and the day I retired at the end of February 2003, on the eve of war, I had not a single substantive policy discussion on the secure phone with the FO."
"When this document was drafted none of those conditions was anywhere near to being met. Nor, at the time the leaked cabinet note was drafted, had we left the starting gate in pursuit of the UN or building an international coalition."
"This was a lousy backdrop to taking part in any military action against Iraq."
"Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, said to me later that we were the only ally that mattered."
"Just before Blair arrived at Camp David, I received a phone call from one of the most experienced and prominent foreign policy practitioners of the Clinton administration. The familiar voice warned me that Cheney, Bush's sometimes intimidating vice-president, would be present throughout Blair's discussions with the president. "How the hell do you know?" I asked. "Don't ask, don't tell," was the enigmatic reply. "But Blair had better watch out.""

And also some things I'd rather not know:
"Blair put on a pair of ball-crushingly tight dark-blue corduroys. I was later told that his wardrobe for the weekend had been the result of intensive debate within No 10." A very bad mental image, but a very good metaphor.

Posted November 9, 2005 4:06 PM by Aboulic

Dan K:

The overall smoothness of the plot is the result of the Prime Number Theorem, which says that any positive number n has approximately n/log n primes less than it (with the approximation getting better as n gets larger). Since a plot of n/log n would look exactly like a smooth curve, this means that a plot of the nth prime number should look almost like a smooth curve.

I can't entirely account for the large prime gap you noticed. Part of the reason for it, though, is that 1320 has a lot of smallish prime factors (2, 3, 5, and 11); this means that, if we add some small number to 1320, odds are that that small number will share a prime factor with 1320, and so the sum won't be prime. This idea shows that all but seven of the numbers in your range (namely 1333, 1337, 1339, 1343, 1349, 1351, and 1357) have some small factor (because all the numbers between 7 and 41 are multiples of either 2, 3, 5, or 11, with the seven exceptions 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, and 37).

Posted November 9, 2005 4:33 PM by tortoise

Apropo of nothing, I spotted this:

DVDs are selling like hotcakes…and everyone’s buying (begging the question…have you ever seen a run on pancakes? Was there some Depression era shortage on pancakes of which I am not aware?).

that is all
-r.

Posted November 9, 2005 4:35 PM by rhandir

Blair's choice of pants... I heard about that a couple of days.

This reminds me of a comment made by a fantasy writer after we had seen Jim Henson's Labyrinth. She especially liked all the scenes where David Bowie was surrounded by muppets. Why? In those scenes, the camera was usually at muppet eye-level. And if you don't remember, Bowie's pants left nothing to the imagination.

I don't know which is worse, when thinking of Blair's: associate them with David Bowie, or with the Wallace & Gromit short film with trousers as their subject.

Posted November 9, 2005 4:38 PM by Serge

OK. So the Nobel comment on numb3rs are BS. What about the mathematics themselves, aside from their fanciful applications on the show?

Posted November 9, 2005 4:43 PM by Serge

Nancy, it sounds like you sure have a much better claim to 5 than I do. I just always liked the number because it was just outside my really weird quirk with the numbers 2 and 4 that involved obsessively counting the number of stairs on every flight I climbed anywhere, as well as my steps on differently colored tiles on the ground, and that will surely make me sound crazy if I don't shut up about it.

So yeah, let's share. :)

Posted November 9, 2005 4:50 PM by Christian Griffen

My favorite prime number is 17. I don't know why, it just is.

Posted November 9, 2005 5:06 PM by Marilee

There are an infinite number of favoritable copies of each prime number. Therefore any "claim" to any number is as vacuous as Balboa's Claim.

Posted November 9, 2005 5:10 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Dan R. wrote:

... difference number 217 (between 1327 and 1361) was a notable outlier. The difference of 34 was the highest of all in the first 1000, and significantly higher than other differences in the first 250.

The prime density is smoother than you'd expect from a probabilistic approach, because the prime density has a negative feedback mechanism--too few primes now translates into too few factors (so more primes) later, and vice versa. I recall something I heard thirty-some years ago about how the prime gaps are especially chaotic, too, but the details escape me. Google for "prime gaps" and you get hundreds of matches, many very good.

Can local wizards comment on this? You know who you are.

Posted November 9, 2005 5:18 PM by Dan Hoey

Duh. A hack is a writer which is not the sum of powers of the first two primes. Everybody knows that!

Posted November 9, 2005 5:22 PM by Michael Roberts

In other news, it appears that the Texas legislature and voters, in their on-going quest to protect the institution of marriage, has instead outlawed it. The relevant quote is: "This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage."

Suddenly, I am a strict constructionist.

Posted November 9, 2005 5:29 PM by Randolph Fritz

Marilee, my favroite prime number is 17, as well! I don't know why either.

Posted November 9, 2005 5:30 PM by Keith Kisser

I don't think I have a favorite prime number. Do I fail some kind of test?

Posted November 9, 2005 5:31 PM by Aquila

Hmm, how strange. I was going to make a comment here and was informed that my post was denied due to "questionable content" (I was informed almost immediately when I clicked POST, so it's clearly an automated check). Now, arguably anything I post is somewhat questionable, but as my post contained no swear words and no hyperlinks, I'm at something of a loss to imagine what it might be...

Posted November 9, 2005 5:34 PM by Michael Rawdon

My favorite cribbage hand score is 19.

Posted November 9, 2005 5:41 PM by Tim Walters

We both did, Aquila.

Maybe there's still time before we're consigned to Math Anxiety Hell... My favorite prime is 2.

Posted November 9, 2005 5:43 PM by Serge

Shrink Lits...just the other day I was thinking about Beowulf (the topic came up in my anatomy class, oddly enough) and into my head popped:

Monster Grendel's tastes are plainish:
Breakfast? Just a couple Danish.

Posted November 9, 2005 6:26 PM by Lila

I really meant to put shrink lits on the other thread "The answer, dear reader, is yes" since it's apropos of the limerick discussion there.

Balboa's claim sounds a little like Aguirre's claim: " we take more territory with every mile we drift"

Posted November 9, 2005 6:33 PM by Erik Nelson

Shrink Lits - wow. I have a copy of that, um, buried somewhere...

The verse for ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND always cracked me up. It began: "Holed up with bunny/ pre-teen acts funny..."

I loved that book.

Posted November 9, 2005 6:34 PM by Chris S.

From "ShrinkLits":

"Humbert gloats: his young nymphet
Is 'ineffable'--and yet
'Eff'able as she can get."

I used to have that book in college; I keep looking out for it at library sales. The other bit I remember is the Moll Flanders entry, where, after quoting the original title page (which lays out the entire plot for you: "five times a wife, whereof once to her own brother..."!) it ends, in reference to her eventual repentance at around age 75: "Love your sense of timing, Moll."

I would've assumed that the Stephen King quote was tongue-in-cheek. I'm sure he respects many writers who don't do improvisational plotting...could this be a sarcastic reaction to being so often called a hack himself?

Serge:

Milady cooks up a sob story and the guard quickly falls for it. In the book, that sob story goes on for a whole long chapter.

As a matter of fact, it's more like 3-4 chapters. Which are long, yes. Personally, though, they're some of my favorite of the book (she corrupts the Puritan guard through his own religious enthusiasm...which just rocks), since Milady's far and away the character I like best. Without even getting into the fact that D'Artagnian basically *rapes* her halfway through the book, I think I'd be pretty angry at mankind in general if, upon discovering that I'd been a thief at some time in the past, my sanctimonious asshat of a husband immediately stripped me naked and hanged me from the nearest tree. I mean, geez, Athos...way to love, honor and cherish.

Posted November 9, 2005 6:55 PM by Brooke C.

On the other hand, Brooke, Milday did kill Constance. Anyway, I wasn't saying that The Three Musketeers is a bad book, Brooke. I was only using it as an example of hackitude. I must say there were indeed times where d'Artagnan and his companions were such immature jerks that I did wonder if Dumas actually hated his characters and wrote about them just for the money. But by the end of the book, somehow, a feeling of melancholy permeated the whole thing, as if Dumas were sad to let go.

Do you have a favorite movie depiction of d'Artagnan? Michael York was accurate as far as the jerky d'Artagnan went. But I far prefered Gabriel Byrne in Man in the Iron Mask.

Posted November 9, 2005 7:11 PM by Serge

Oh, and as far as I remember, Brook, King wasn't facetious in his comment about what makes a writer a hack. I think. It was some time ago. And maybe King has a poker face. He didn't have a poker face though when he made a crack about pro-lifers whose interest in protecting life ends at birth.

Posted November 9, 2005 7:14 PM by Serge

Did Teresa or Patrick ever say why the producers of the new version of Pride and Prejudice thought their site was a good place where to advertise?

I was looking at a movie guide for information about the story's various versions when I came across this tidbit about the 1940 movie: one of its scriptwriters was Aldous Huxley.

Posted November 9, 2005 7:17 PM by Serge

Now, Duff's Device, on the other hand— there's a hack worthy of naming after an inventor.

Posted November 9, 2005 7:18 PM by j h woodyatt

Hack: a more highly paid writer than oneself, who has stepped out of the room?

Also, Dinosaurs and Sodomy may have changed my life. Mostly in the direction of more dinosaurs. Well. Wombats and moose, really, but still.

Posted November 9, 2005 7:42 PM by Marna

Serge:

On the other hand, Brooke, Milday did kill Constance.

Well, yeah. Years later. (She was only about 16, IIRC, when Athos-before-he-was-Athos did his little attempted murder. I know, thieves were commonly hanged in this time period. Still. Dude.) Anyway, I wasn't saying she was a character to emulate, just that I found her more sympathetic (even in her badly misplaced anger) than most of the Musketeers. And I totally wasn't disagreeing with you on the "hack" bit.

Dorothy Parker:

"Although I work, and seldom cease,
On Dumas pere and Dumas fils,
Alas, I cannot make me care,
For Dumas fils and Dumas pere."

In re: film adaptations...Byrne was good, you're right. Was that the same one that had Gerard Depardieu as Porthos? 'Cause that was great. The '90s era Disney adaptation, though, lives in infamy...despite the hilarious awesomeness of Tim Curry as a lascivious Richelieu.

Posted November 9, 2005 7:49 PM by Brooke C.

I'd like to take a moment to say thanks to Teresa and the other Firefly fans here-- if not for this entry from April, I probably wouldn't have given a second thought to Serenity, let alone the Firefly universe. Damn, that was fun going thru the DVDs, and seeing the BDM on the big screen--- and meeting a few people after the movie when I stood up and said "grrrrr, arrrrgh" after the closing credits...

Bwah.

Posted November 9, 2005 7:55 PM by Bill Blum

Point taken about Milady, Brooke. I confess I had compressed the years in my memory.

As for Gabriel Byrne, yes, that was the version with Depardieu as Porthos.

Posted November 9, 2005 8:00 PM by Serge

Marna:

That's pretty much what I always assume people mean when they use the word.

Unless I'm reading Georgette Heyer or something, and it's describing a horse. I wonder how those meanings are connected, and if it relates to the verb. Like, "this story was hacked out of the author's brain without any attempt at organization."

Off-topic: Heyer is occasionally hilarious in her blinker-wearing obsession with period language. One of my favorite quotes ever comes in "Sylvester, Or: The Wicked Uncle," when the hero says to the heroine, quite innocently, "You must allow me to mount you while you're in town."

He's offering to loan her a horse, of course. Why are you sniggering?

Posted November 9, 2005 8:00 PM by Brooke C.

Bill, I'm VERY bummed about Serenity not being a commercial success. They did promote it quite a bit and still it failed. I'm sad knowing I'll never meet the gang again. Well, at least, we did get to say a sort of goodbye to them.

Posted November 9, 2005 8:03 PM by Serge

You want a double entendre, Broke? How about a romance novel that opens with the line "What a beautiful cock!" and yes it was set on a farm, and it was about a rooster. Another romance titled "Proud Pillar Rising" is nothing to sneeze at either.

Posted November 9, 2005 8:05 PM by Serge

Totally. I would never have seen Serenity without reading the comments it on Making Light. A friend just burned me a DVD of the first 4-5 episodes of Firefly. Anyone know how many there were? He thinks there were two seasons. I have no idea. Anyone...?

Tim Curry is awesome in anything. I'll watch him in a commercial, I'll watch him even when he phones it in. I will watch him in a skirt, I will watch him with a quirt...

Posted November 9, 2005 8:10 PM by Lizzy L

It's even sadder being somewhere where it hasn't even opened yet and knowing it hasn't done well enough to fly again.

It opens tonight here. And yes, I have already seen it. And yes, I will be seeing it again.

Posted November 9, 2005 8:16 PM by Aquila

There's a great bit in Pratchett's "Witches Abroad" where Nanny Ogg says brightly, "My word! That's the biggest cock I've ever seen, and I've seen a few in my day," causing all the other witches to give her Looks and Granny Weatherwax to harrumph, "Don't mind her. She never had no proper upbringing." Nanny: "What with living next to a chicken farm, is what I was going to say next." I love Nanny Ogg.

And, with the unintentional, this is absolutely the funniest page of the Superdickery site:

http://www.superdickery.com/seduction/3.html

It...it just keeps going on! And on! And by the fourth panel I'm practically hyperventilating.

Posted November 9, 2005 8:25 PM by Brooke C.

The new Kate Bush album contains a highly suggestive song about laundry, and another song where she's singing the digits of pi in a wistfully romantic way.

It is perhaps the case that motherhood agrees with her.

Posted November 9, 2005 8:27 PM by Graydon

There were 14 episodes of _Firefly_ only.

For those wanting a bit more detail, I did a why watch post on LJ a while ago.

Posted November 9, 2005 8:57 PM by Kate Nepveu

Lizzy L wrote:

> Tim Curry is awesome in anything.

Congo? I mean yes, Tim Curry is great, but Congo?

Posted November 9, 2005 9:42 PM by Steve Taylor

Graydon wrote:

> The new Kate Bush album contains a highly suggestive song about laundry, and another song where she's singing the digits of pi in a wistfully romantic way.

I read a (quite positive) review of the album which described her as "still madder than a box of frogs". Quite.

> It is perhaps the case that motherhood agrees with her.

I've always found her music to be a fine emulsion of incredibly good and incredibly awful bits, and that's still the case. I'm very glad she's finally recorded again - and the second disk is just inspiring.

Posted November 9, 2005 9:46 PM by Steve Taylor

Steve --

Nobody is good enough that everything always works. (Though pretty much everything on "The Red Shoes" does.) I tend to take the occasional awful bits as an indication of not playing it safe. (Similar to Leonard Cohen's willingness to get up in public and sing his own songs.)

And, rather like the various comments about Tim Currie, I'll forgive the person responsible for "Waking the Witch" and that take on the Jig of Life almost anything.

Posted November 9, 2005 9:53 PM by Graydon

Marilee: possible reasons:

"'Seventeen!', shouted the Bug, who was usually the first with the wrong answer." (Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth)

The proof that 17 is the largest finite number, possibly out of the pejorative calculus (which also proves that Alexander the Great did not exist \and/ he had an infinite number of limbs.)

I'm partial to 137, which in addition to being the fine structure constant (? reciprocal?) was snuck into the ST:TNG pilot -- probably not because it was running around fandom at the time, but one never knows.

Posted November 9, 2005 10:49 PM by CHip

Graydon writes:

> Nobody is good enough that everything always works.

Oh I agree completely - I think she's capable of doing excellent work for exactly the same reasons she's capable of doing awful stuff - taking chances. The sublime and the ridiculous are very close companions.

Nick Cave is someone who's spent a lot of time in that territory too.

>(Though pretty much everything on "The Red Shoes" does.)

Oddly enough, I work with a rabid Kate Bush fan who thinks that's her one unlistenable album - damned if I see why.

Though thinking of granularity of tastes, I realised the other day that both my wife and I love half of a particular Sonic Youth song and hate the other half. Needless to say, we don't agree on which is the good half. I don't think granularity comes much finer.

Posted November 9, 2005 11:02 PM by Steve Taylor

Any thoughts on Ann Rice's turn to Catholicism and Christian fiction?

Genuine? Or a turning to greener pa$ture$, inspired by the caustic reception of her last horror novel?

Posted November 9, 2005 11:03 PM by Jon H

"The '90s era Disney adaptation, though, lives in infamy...despite the hilarious awesomeness of Tim Curry as a lascivious Richelieu."

I've only ever seen this dubbed in Japanese. I don't speak Japanese. Maybe that's why I enjoyed it thoroughly. The voice actor they hired to speak all of Tim Curry's lines was awesome.

I wonder how many bad films are substantially better when you watch them dubbed in languages you don't understand. I saw Cube in a French theatre, and found it delightfully confusing. Later, I watched it in English and wanted to destroy the rented DVD rather than give it back.

Posted November 9, 2005 11:03 PM by j h woodyatt

j h woodyatt wrote:

> I wonder how many bad films are substantially better when you watch them dubbed in languages you don't understand.

I used to buy a lot of French comics (or should I say Bandes Dessinees) because of the jaw droppingly beautiful artwork. Finally getting to read some in translation didn't make me very happy.

Posted November 9, 2005 11:17 PM by Steve Taylor

Where did people read that Serenity was a box office flop?

Out here, it is still playing in multiple theaters a month after it opened. If it was poison it would have been long gone.

I did read that Whedon got it made well under budget and got some attention for that feat.

Posted November 9, 2005 11:27 PM by Stefan Jones

Mention of Tim Curry reminds me to menton my theory of Why Tim Curry On TV Has Flopped:

Twice. On THE TIM CURRY SHOW and on the remake of FAMILY AFFAIR. And the reason those showed flopped was because they were comedies.

My theory is that Tim Curry is, at heart, a dramatic actor, rather than a comedic actor. He's been cast in many comedy films, but his portrayals of the various characters of those films have always had a certain gravitas, a dignity, that wasn't present in the failed tv series. He's been essentially a straight character caught in comedic circumstances.

So I was thinking, what remake of a tv series WOULD be suitable for Curry's talents?

And I think the answer is: LOU GRANT

The original tv show had its comedic moments, but overall was mostly dramatic in tone and execution. And I think Curry as the aging, sardonic editor of a major newspaper (Ed Asner in the original) would be friggin' great!

[aging fanboy exits stage left]

Posted November 10, 2005 12:28 AM by Bruce Arthurs

Just watched 4 Firefly episodes in a row. Good. Looking forward to the other 10.

Tim Curry now... I would watch him in a box; I would watch him without socks. I agree, he has great gravitas, and it makes the comedic parts funnier. Rocky Horror is the ultimate example. I didn't see Congo. I didn't know Curry was in Congo, and to tell the truth, never mind Dr. Seuss, I wouldn't watch Congo despite Curry's presence in it. (But the Green Eggs and Ham rhyme is so fun...)

Posted November 10, 2005 1:13 AM by Lizzy L

Dumas a hack? I... don't know how to react to that. I'm reading the unabridged Count of Monte Cristo for the first time and it is perhaps the most enjoyable book from that era I have ever read.

Though actually, reading the various definitions for "Hack" offered here it seems that a conglomerated definition would be something like this:

Hack
A writer who produces a great volume of work according to a basic set of themes/forumlas who is handsomely rewarded with both money and popularity.

In which case I'll give Dumas a strong Maybe in the Hack department. I'm only halfway through Monte Cristo now, but I am definitely in love, in a "Man I should go to sleep I have to work tonight but maybe one more chapter arg can't stop!" way.

Posted November 10, 2005 1:22 AM by Leah Miller

I would watch Tim Curry sodomise a dinosaur in a box of mad frogs.

Wait. What am I saying?

OK, I'd listen to Leonard Cohen do that.

I wouldn't watch anyone do that.

... *wanders off singing 'young men will do it/if they come to it/by cock they are to blame...' but not in the direction of running water*

Posted November 10, 2005 1:44 AM by Marna

Heyer is occasionally hilarious in her blinker-wearing obsession with period language. One of my favorite quotes ever comes in "Sylvester, Or: The Wicked Uncle," when the hero says to the heroine, quite innocently, "You must allow me to mount you while you're in town."

If it were occasional...

After the ending of The Corinthian, I have come to believe she was about as innocent as O'Brien, if so innocent.

Posted November 10, 2005 1:51 AM by Marna

Er, with all this mathematics being tossed around, where is Jonathan vos Post?

Posted November 10, 2005 2:25 AM by Linkmeister

OK, I'd listen to Leonard Cohen [commit anatomically difficult saurian/amphibian act].

Well, so much for everything sounding like Coldplay.

Looking forward to the "Make:Out" issue of Make magazine, with such articles as

Let's Play "Hide the iPod"

MIDI Moan Enhancement

Eight Ways to Humiliate Your Roomba

DRM for Teledildonics: You Know Sony Wants It

Reich Meets Fuller and They Get to Talking: The Legend of the Dymaxorgone Chamber

Posted November 10, 2005 2:43 AM by John M. Ford

Well, so much for everything sounding like Coldplay.

"every dino wants a box of chocolates/and a long stemmed rose ..."

Posted November 10, 2005 3:33 AM by Marna

My favourite prime number is 982067, which was our home telephone number when I was a boy. We only found out it was prime when one of my older siblings got a TI programmable calculator, which took hours to work it out.

We moved when I was in college and got 985937, also prime.

Sadly neither of these is a valid phone number anymore since the phone company added a prefix digit, depriming both numbers in the process.

Posted November 10, 2005 6:15 AM by Niall McAuley

Re: Anne Rice - everything I've read (not that much) seems to indicate genuine Christian conversion. I can't believe money is a big factor - she has to be pretty much set in that department.

I dropped the vampires after #3 or 4, but admire her ability to present the experience of supernatural realities in something like an accurate way. This gives me hope for the Christ series. A concern would be that she seems to excel in portraying narcissists, and hope she doesn't go there with Jesus....

Leah - I envy your first encounter with the Count. May I ask, are you reading it abridged or no? I listened to it abridged and A) did not feel cheated at all, and B) was totally captivated. It seems to me to contain the original of so many figures and plot points that are patterned in later fiction. The experience was, "Aha! So THAT'S where that came from!" And - what a story.

Posted November 10, 2005 6:45 AM by Mark D.

Note to self: read post you're answering more carefully. Will now read the unabridged CoMC as pleasant penance.

Posted November 10, 2005 6:47 AM by Mark D.

As one of the more enthusiastic candidates for a JVP standin, a few comments are in order. :)

(1) 1 is not prime because it is a unit. This in turn is the algebraist's fancy way of saying "It screws up our later constructions!" (to be quite exact, the ideal within Z generated by 1 is all of Z. Thus 1 doesn't generate a proper ideal, whereas all prime ideals are proper...)

(2) The Nobel story is indeed very snopes-worthy, but it is also very common among mathematicians as well - it took me several years until I bothered to convince myself it wasn't true.

(3) My favourite prime, hands down, is 91. Why? Because (as John H. Conway points out) it is the smallest almost-prime. It fails all the 'obvious' divisibility checks: Not even. Number sum not divisible by 3. Not ending in 5 or 0. Not two equal digits after another. And not a square.
Ok, so it's not a -prime-.... But it's neat!

Posted November 10, 2005 7:24 AM by Mikael Johansson

Where did people read that Serenity was a box office flop?

I agree that it hasn't flopped, but it hasn't been a box-office success either. According to Box Office Mojo, it's grossed about $35 million so far, which is less than the production cost of $39 million. DVD sales will presumably give the total a healthy bump, but I can't imagine that Universal will do much more than break even. A pity - it was a fun film, though the series at its best was better.

Now, Duff's Device, on the other hand— there's a hack worthy of naming after an inventor.

When interviewing we used to give this to people and ask them what it did. Reactions varied between horror and admiration, and sometimes both from the same person.

Posted November 10, 2005 7:52 AM by Paul Clarke

Serge: In those scenes, the camera was usually at muppet eye-level. And if you don't remember, Bowie's pants left nothing to the imagination.

Yes, no codpieces for that coming-of-age fantasy.

Posted November 10, 2005 8:10 AM by Aconite

Yup, Aconite. By the way, do you know what other movies Labyrinth's young female lead later was in? I'll give you a hint: Russell Crowe.

Posted November 10, 2005 10:14 AM by Serge

Speaking of numbers, even if they're not primes...

"I'm NOT fifteen."
"I know, you're too old for me"

(Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant in Charade)

Posted November 10, 2005 10:20 AM by Serge

Yesterday's episode of MythBusters indeed had no kaboom - not of the pyrotechnic kind anyway. But in the process of preparing for Kari's test flight of their water-bottle rocket backpack, they of course had to test the bottles to see how much pressure they could take before blowing up. Rather spectacular. More spectacular than the backpack's flight when they moved on to the let's-try-it-on-the-dummy stage. That convinced them not to try with beany Kari. Much to her relief.

Posted November 10, 2005 10:26 AM by Serge

Dinosaurs, sodomy AND Tim Curry? Well, that should do it for the Rapture Index.

Tim Curry in a dramatic series? Been done already. Remember Earth 2?

Posted November 10, 2005 10:28 AM by Serge

I don't feel any impulse to google myself, but it seemed important to find out whether my phone number is prime. Not only is it not prime, but apparently its only appearance online is as my phone number.

Google your phone numbers! Are they doing anything extra, or are you their only escape from total obscurity?

Am I the only one who liked Rucker's discussion of unmanagebly large numbers? IIRC, the idea was that, due to real world constraints, there are numbers so big and so far from handy landmarks that they can't be specified.

Posted November 10, 2005 10:44 AM by Nancy Lebovitz

Just a couple quick notes, the first of which goes back to Marna's proposed definition of hack, "a more highly paid writer than oneself, who has stepped out of the room," to say that can't be the definition King's using, because I can't really think of a higher paid writer than King. I mean, Grisham, Brown, Koontz, they're all up there, sure, but King's first novel earned $400,000 for the paperback rights, and I can't imagine that's declined. And that was "Carrie", back in 197-something, before I was born, so I don't even know how that compares, inflation-wise, to now.

"I'm partial to 137, which in addition to being the fine structure constant (? reciprocal?) was snuck into the ST:TNG pilot -- probably not because it was running around fandom at the time, but one never knows."
This rang a bell to me. 137, I mean. When I was younger, I started a book called "The God Particle," by Leon Lederman, and I think 137 was mentioned in the foreword (which is about all I ever managed to plod through). Isn't this Planck's constant, or something? I remember his saying that there's some whole big equation thing, with various units of measure, etc., but when you solve, everything magically disappears except for 137.
Admittedly, my memory is fuzzy.

I've been reading about "Out of Egypt," Anne Rice's new novel, and I think her conversion is pretty genuine, and seems to coincide with the death of her husband. I won't read it. I read twenty pages of "Interview with the Vampire," and that was about it. I've heard she's cut down her language considerably, and that this present story is told from the perspective of a seven-year-old Yeshua ben Miryam, and I've even heard it compared not unfavorably to Hemingway, but, then, I was never a huge fan of his, either.

And I love "Labyrinth". And Jennifer Connelly. Soooo beautiful. Ironically, I think she's rarely looked better than she did in "The Hulk." I look forward to "Dark Water," too, because I've heard it's a lot of Jennifer Connelly wet.

I can't comment on hackdom. I don't really know quite what the qualifications might be. I'll end up being called one, one day, though.

Posted November 10, 2005 11:14 AM by Will Entrekin

Steve Taylor writes that he "...used to buy a lot of French comics (or should I say Bandes Dessinees) because of the jaw droppingly beautiful artwork. Finally getting to read some in translation didn't make me very happy..."

I think this trend in French comics started in 1975 when the magazine Metal Hurlant was born. If you ever bothered reading its American offspring Heavy Metal, you'll notice that the graphic aspect is superb while the storytelling aspect fell off to the side. Up till then, most comics were mostly staid, graphically. And there were some things they just didn't deal with. Then the above magazine was born and gave artists way more freedom. Some of which was used for rather disgusting stuff. But there is good stuff, although I don't really keep in touch much anymore now that I'm in the USA.

Posted November 10, 2005 11:14 AM by Serge

Yeah, Connelly looks rather skelettal in the Hulk movie. It's as if she'd heard too many comments about her curves in Rocketeer.

As for Ann Rice, I tried reading her Mummy book. I tried.

Posted November 10, 2005 11:19 AM by Serge

Among the controversies at Wikipedia's Lamest edit wars ever page is a dispute over whether potato chips are flavored or flavoured. The disputants eventually compromised on seasoned.

Posted November 10, 2005 11:20 AM by Steven desJardins

It sounds like there are lots of definitions of what makes a writer a hack. About as many as there are for SF.

Say, was L.Ron Hubbard a hack? (I never tried to read him. When I think of him, I think of 1984's LAcon II and the giant inflatable mosquito/man/alien the scientologists had on display just outside of the premises.)

Posted November 10, 2005 11:24 AM by Serge

1/137.036 is the fine-structure constant of electromagnetism; in natural units used by particle physicists, it appears in many formulae describing the strength of the electromagnetic coupling to charged particles. Arthur Stanley Eddington once claimed to have proved that it was exactly 1/136; then when it was found to be closer to 1/137, he proved that it was exactly 1/137. But it isn't that either, though it's close.

Posted November 10, 2005 11:36 AM by Matt McIrvin

My favorite unimaginably large numbers are the busy-beaver sequence: these describe the number of steps taken by the Turing machine of N states that halts, but goes the longest before halting (there are slightly different variants, but that's the gist). This sequence increases so rapidly that it cannot be computed; the proof is that if that were not true you could solve Turing's Halting Problem.

(Let's see if the content filter accepts this version of the post...)

Posted November 10, 2005 11:40 AM by Matt McIrvin

I'm partial to 137, which in addition to being the fine structure constant (? reciprocal?)

OK, what the heck IS the fine structure constant? I don't mean the actual number. What's it govern or determine? What things is it a ratio of? Or whatever?

Posted November 10, 2005 11:48 AM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Sigh. I had my edit screen up too long. Thanks, Matt.

Posted November 10, 2005 11:49 AM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Turing's Halting Problem sounds like the way Windows operates.

Posted November 10, 2005 11:50 AM by Serge

Whatver a hack is eventually defined as, I suspect L. Ron Hubbard is it's archatypal incarnation.

Posted November 10, 2005 12:13 PM by Keith Kisser

[fondness expressed for the non-prime number 15]

IBM were quite proud a few years ago to have factored 15
with a quantum computer. They had reasons to be proud
of this, but explaining them would take us too far afield and
be too much like work.

Returning the theme to fiction writing, what is your favorite
page of a novel to read in isolation as a sample of the writing
style? I think there was a ReaderCon panel sometime back
about the "page 117 test". But 117 is not prime either...

Posted November 10, 2005 12:29 PM by Dave MB

Last week, the subject of Charles Stross's beard came up. Then I saw a Locus report on the Glasgow worldcon with photos of the bearded one. It doesn't quite look like the one worn by Monty Python's intro character so I presume that this is the post-passport one, on its way to full recovery.

Posted November 10, 2005 12:29 PM by Serge

Serge said:

I think this trend in French comics started in 1975 when the magazine Metal Hurlant was born. If you ever bothered reading its American offspring Heavy Metal . . .

Doesn't "Metal Hurlant" mean something more like "Screaming Metal"? Do francophones use that same phrase to refer to heavy metal music?

Posted November 10, 2005 12:41 PM by Laura Roberts

17 is my favorite prime. It's been called "the first random number." It has few if any associations (unlike 13), appears in no nursery rhymes, has an extra syllable adding unwieldiness and is a low enough number that, when asked to shout out a random number, people will tend to pick it.

Terrible movies being better when you don't understand the language: I've experienced this. We were watching a really GREAT Jet Li movie on one of the Spanish HBO channels. After about half an hour we switched to the English version of the movie and it was dreadful.

And, for the twelve-year-old in you:
David Bowie's Area

Posted November 10, 2005 12:42 PM by Sandy

Yes, Laura, 'metal hurlant' does mean 'screaming metal'. As for what French-speaking people call heavy-metal music, I don't remember, if I ever knew. I presume that this music label came from the magazine. Still, no matter what the label's origin, if things follow the usual pattern, even francophones probably refer to heavy-metal music as heavy-metal music. But don't quote me on that.

Posted November 10, 2005 12:56 PM by Serge

In re: Firefly

Yeah, only 1/2 of a full season.

If you're a huge fan or have a lot of time on your hands, there are a couple of scripts for unproduced episodes of Firefly floating around on the internet. They were readable but nothing spectacular, IMHO.

There was a comic book tie-in with the Serenity movie that filled some gaps between the original Firefly episodes and the film. IIRC, the storyline (and possibly the actual text) of these was provided by Joss Whedon. I haven't read it or talked to anyone who has.

Slightly off-topic, there have been serious stirrings about seeing the further adventures of Buffy's Spike and Angel's Ilyra in made-for-TV movies. Joss Whedon and the actors (James Marsters & Amy Acker) were dropping a lot of hints to that effect during the pre-Serenity hypefest. It remains to be seen whether the will actually happen and, if so, to what degree Joss Whedon will be involved. You probably already know that Whedon is currently signed to do a Wonder Woman movie.

Digging deeper:

If you're a deeply, insanely hardcore fan of all things even peripherally Whedon, Marti Noxon (one of the creative forces behind BTVS) had a short-lived series called Point Pleasant last year. It was a pretty seriously flawed variation of a typical teens-on-the-beach soap revolving around a girl who was the devil's daughter. I watched maybe half of the aired episodes. I can see why the show didn't do well, but there were a couple of good bits in most episodes, and one or two episodes aired that were actually pretty good by any standard. The total series, including some unaired episodes, is now on DVD but, again, I haven't seen it. My understanding is that the unaired episodes were among the best of the series in that they dropped most of the smooching on the beach to make more room for evil.

Posted November 10, 2005 1:02 PM by Scott H

Oh, gosh. I'm suddenly reminded that in my old Penguin Classics edition of The Three Musketeers* they had an article by some Scholar or other who was also puzzling over Athos' extreme reaction to Milady's trefoil scar. He came to the conclusion that the scar was actually Dumas' symbolic represention of the fact that Milady was a transvestite, i.e. a man dressing as a woman, and that discovering this was what set Athos off.

The passage of t