Teresa, iirc some years ago you told me that (at least in terms of politics) fundamentalists never forgive. If I got it right and you still think it's true, what do you think might happen if Bush's fundamentalist supporters conclude it's his fault that they haven't gotten much of what they want?

The context for our conversation was that Pat Robertson running for President.

Posted April 10, 2006 9:23 AM by Nancy Lebovitz

Nancy: I can see it. I can't see him winning, though.

The Kwisatz Haderach couldn't see him winning...there are some futures even he won't examine.

Posted April 10, 2006 9:34 AM by Will "scifantasy" Frank

As James Brown would have said, "Please Please Please!" Pat Robertson for President in 2008!

I even have a slogan: Almost As Good As Ross Perot

Posted April 10, 2006 9:37 AM by adamsj

What happened to Open Thread 63? Or is there a joke I'm missing here?

Posted April 10, 2006 9:51 AM by Andrew Willett

speaking of presidential campaigns....

Senator Joe Biden was on Real Time with Bill Maher last night. Bill asked if he's running for president in '08 and Joe said "yes" without any hemming and hawing. During some of Bill's round-table discussions, Biden answered some questions in a way that reassured me that, yes, there are some intelligent people left in D.C.

Posted April 10, 2006 9:58 AM by Greg London

oh, and re the open thread quiz:
I'm going to guess "definition/explanation".
Did I win?

Posted April 10, 2006 10:01 AM by Greg London

Excuse me, guys--the Robertson campaign was back in the 80s, though I thought that conversation with Teresa was somewhat more recent than that.

Here's Robertson's campaign rant.

Posted April 10, 2006 10:09 AM by Nancy Lebovitz

Senator Biden is without a doubt a master of the art of looking "intelligent" on talk shows.

Posted April 10, 2006 10:17 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

I sense a distiction being implied between "looking intelligent" and, say, "being intelligent". oh, to have my hopes dashed so soon after having them lifted ever so slightly. And on a monday morning too. sigh.

Posted April 10, 2006 10:20 AM by Greg London

monocot/dicot (now eucot) is the superset of the grass/forb pairing. It was one of the first formal scientific distinctions I learned. It is still one of the ways I parse the world (or that part of the world that photosynthesises and flowers).

sophophene/sophopheme?
My Greek is rusty: sophos + phenos, seem, vs phemi, say?

Posted April 10, 2006 10:33 AM by abi

The second half of the previous comment was meant to refer to opinions of Senator Biden.

Posted April 10, 2006 10:35 AM by abi

Teresa: re. your "knitted chain" Particle, a much easier technique (with, IMO, indistinguishable results) may be found in Irene From Petersens's book, Great Wire Jewelery. Also, for a wonderful in-depth look at the fused loop technique, I can heartily endorse Jean Reist Stark's Classical Loop-in-Loop Chains.

Posted April 10, 2006 10:59 AM by protected static

sorry, abi, I'm a little dense, and round-about jabs at Biden don't quite register. What exactly is the issue with Biden? I read through the wikipedia article, and I'll guess it was that he voted for the Iraq war. yes? no?

Oct 2002 senate vote Vote is 77 for, 23 against. Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. Biden votes in favor.

July 2003 senate vote After March invasion, Senate has unanimous vote (97-0) saying the US should "remain engaged in Iraq in order to ensure a peaceful, stable, unified Iraq with a representative government". 3 abstaintions: Graham (D-FL), Lieberman (D-CT), and Miller (D-GA).

Posted April 10, 2006 11:21 AM by Greg London

Homoousian/homoiousian?

Posted April 10, 2006 11:35 AM by theophylact

Ha! The Centrifugal Hamster has made Cute Overload, and rightfully so. I must have watched that about a half-dozen times...

Posted April 10, 2006 11:38 AM by Skwid

I thought it was a Monty Python reference:

Open thread 63

Posted by Teresa at 09:09 AM * 9 comments

There is no Open thread 63.

Posted April 10, 2006 11:42 AM by adamsj

sacred/profane
exterior/interior
egalitarian/servile

Posted April 10, 2006 11:46 AM by Fragano Ledgister

Er, 63. Igor can too count. Just not in order.

Nancy, all my life I've been watching Republican voters get used and abused and then come back for more. Most of 'em still think the Republicans are the champions of the little guy, and the party of moral integrity and fiscal responsibility -- all evidence to the contrary. Some days I think their willingness to believe whatever they're told, as long as it's presented in certain style, is their defining characteristic. It makes me want to give them all bumper stickers that say MY BUTTONS ARE EASILY PUSHED -- AND I VOTE!

The hardcore fundies are something else again. I'm going to distinguish here between fundamentalism as a religious belief, which I'm not talking about just now, and the right-wing political forces that are rooted in the fundamentalist community.

There are leftist fundies. You knew that, right?

Anyway. The far-right-wing fundie tendency is heavily into the politics of power and resentment. Feeling like they haven't gotten all they deserve is pretty much their state of nature. It's the briar patch where they were raised.

Talking now about their leaders and activists: it's not like Bush has betrayed their innocent idealistic belief in him. Those people will back whoever they think will give them power. Here's a funny thing: It's clear that Gore is a genuinely religious man, whereas if George Bush wasn't constantly telling people he's a Christian, nobody would ever mistake him for one. Yet the proponents of Loud Religion backed Bush, because they figured he'd give them quid pro quo for doing it. They didn't get as much as they expected, but that's no surprise.

It's useful to remember that the Loud Religion faction isn't all that big. They regularly claim to have bazillions of adherents, speak for most religious believers in the U.S., and in general wield a lot of clout -- but they don't. Think chihuahua, barking. They make noise and bring pressure to bear, all the while working to consolidate real-world power. They have some. They want more.

Will they publicly express their disappointment with Bush? I very much doubt it. They may be heavily into resentment, but they're not going to make a big fuss about feeling slighted because that would make them look weak. Again, this isn't about religion; it's about power. They'll do most of their growling in private.

You read da skiffy stuff. Here's a worldbuilding detail: did you know that you can buy flashy jewelry featuring genuine Widow's Mite coins in heavy gold settings? It's just the thing for Katherine Harris.

Posted April 10, 2006 11:47 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Oh, I want Rick Santorum for president. Slogan: Even dumber than W.

Posted April 10, 2006 11:50 AM by Fragano Ledgister

Widow's Mite earrings. Whoah.

Then again, I still have a charm bracelet somewhere with a mustard seed encased in glass (or maybe it's lucite).

Also, happy birthday to Mr. Ford!

Posted April 10, 2006 12:00 PM by elise

Greg, it's just cool antonym pairs. I'm fond of them.

Now you've got me wondering what the antonyms are for definition and explanation.

Posted April 10, 2006 12:01 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

I can't help you with definition, but:

explanation/briefing by Scott McClellan

Posted April 10, 2006 12:05 PM by adamsj

Did you guys see this? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4847424.stm

Anonymous blog (Baghdad Burning) made into book and that book in turn short (or long? there's apparently some confusion) listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize.

I'd HEARD of that blog before, but this was the first time I started reading it a bit. Pretty interesting--though I'm sure most of you have been following it for some time already ;P

Posted April 10, 2006 12:07 PM by Daniel

Greg -- My problem with Biden is that he's the Senator from MBNA. He pushed for the new bankruptcy law which was a total give-away to the banking industry.

Posted April 10, 2006 12:11 PM by PurpleGirl

TNH: "Loud Religion". Great term and it describes them so well.

Posted April 10, 2006 12:16 PM by PurpleGirl

TNH: You're bang on (OK, that's always true, but still).

But the real power is the people being manipulated, IMHO.
The fundie/Repub/Red State constituency consists of uneducated white people with feelings of inferiority towards the "educated liberal elite" who are giving their taxes to black welfare recipients and useless scientists researching the sex life of insects and Piss Christ artists and long-haired hippies who protest our young men defending our freedom. This worldview is totally coherent and (did I mention these people aren't too educated) actual news doesn't really impinge on it much. It's a folklore thing, really. You can see the same thing in the peasantry anywhere in the world, and just because we're America doesn't mean we don't have a real live peasantry with real live folklore, albeit with a shorter pedigree than you're used to thinking about.

What I see a lot is people who make fun of this worldview thinking that it's just an act (and by the power people who play the role to get that power, of course, it *is* just an act) -- but it's important to understand that the actual community believes this stuff. Just like they believe in creationism, and angels, and chiropracty, and hell, a hundred other things which all go into the same bucket: "They aren't as smart as they think they are; I'm a worthwhile person, too."

Anyway, this small-town/rural community largely doesn't really get what democracy is. (Trust me, I'm working from life experience here.) That's why they don't see why torture (of "known" evildoers) is a problem, or why it's a problem when the (perceived) good guys steal an election. As long as the end is a good one, you see, the process doesn't matter, that's the view. We all know who the good guys are, right? (They're coming from a very monolithic society -- these assumptions generally work for a small town, but they break down quickly when you don't know everybody involved, i.e. on any larger scale, like towns of 30,000 or more, and even in those towns, everybody who "counts" knows each other, so it kind of still works, with a lot more corruption.)

The key is that the Republicans have brilliantly understood how this works and have brilliantly insinuated themselves into the script. Small-town folks think the Republicans are small-town folks, just like them, who are fighting the city slicker educated Democratic elite. It's a really powerful story, and that power allows it incredible ability to fly in the face of manifest facts.

It's my studied opinion that city people generally don't really understand what it's like to grow up where everybody knows everybody else. City people understand the importance of codified law in a way that small-town or rural people don't, always. (Now, if you ask these same people how they'd feel if they were outsiders, without the protection of their community, you can make some headway explaining why a system of laws is more important than they might think.)

And since Democrats -- or rather, the people Democrats hire to help them lose elections -- don't really grok this reality, they lose. Repeatedly. And they lose, not in the cities, but in the disproportionately represented rural areas, because it's an effective strategy on the Republicans' part. Democrats as individuals show signs of understanding this, and of course the actual rural Democrats always did. What's needed is for the jerk consultants to be fired forthwith, and replaced by somebody who isn't an idiot *trying* to lose. (Apparently.) (Yes, I mean Bob Shrum.)

My two bits. Not too coherent, now I read back over it, but eh. It's morning, sort of.

Posted April 10, 2006 12:25 PM by Michael

Abi, Jon Singer once temporarily curdled my brain by referring to a seedling he had as "tricotyledonous." That word wrenched the world out of shape for a while. It turned out, when I asked him, that he'd merely meant the seedling was now far enough along that it had three leaves. Foo.

I'm surprised no one's ever used "tricotyledonous" in a science fiction story. Not everyone will get it, but the ones who do will have that same moment of disorientation. Some may even have the afterclap: monocot, dicot, knitting.

Elise, Widow's Mite earrings could be cool. Except for weird rarities, which of course can sell for all kinds of money, the coins themselves retail for $3-$50, depending on how nice the specimen and the dealer are. The uncleaned ones, which are less expensive, are usually a nice shade of green, and being irregularly shaped would take well to wire wrapping.

I cherish the story of Katherine Harris conflating the Widow's Mite and the Pearl of Great Price, and applying both to her run for office.

Posted April 10, 2006 12:31 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Talk about your Widow's Mite, said the blogger with no knack for rhyming --

Happy Birthday Mike Ford,
Happy Birthday Mike Ford,
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday,
Happy Birthday Mike Ford.

Posted April 10, 2006 12:35 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Katherine Harris is a fine example of your basic, old-fashioned 'Christian' hypocrite.

Posted April 10, 2006 12:37 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Any backstory to the Centrifugal Hamster?

Does he do that on a regular basis, for fun?

* * *

No shittin': There was once a breed of dogs employed by restaurants to run in big wheels to turn spits.

Posted April 10, 2006 12:45 PM by Stefan Jones

definition/declaration
explanation/obfuscation

Posted April 10, 2006 12:58 PM by j h woodyatt

While we're open-threading:

I am looking to change web hosts and am considering between BlueHost and HostGator. Comments about those two hosts are welcomed.

(Comments saying "I really like X other host" are not sought, unless X other host is so good that you and at least ten other people have given up your most prized possession to X other host in gratitude.)

Posted April 10, 2006 1:03 PM by Kate Nepveu

TNH: and I see that the loop-in-loop artist sells Stark's book on her other site...

Posted April 10, 2006 1:06 PM by protected static

Michael -- I'm trying really really hard to work my head around to an understanding of your post that doesn't have it boiling down to "all those rural hicks are just plain stupid," and failing miserably.

Posted April 10, 2006 1:08 PM by Debra Doyle

Is there a photo or drawing of the loop-in-loop jewelry production process that gives a better idea of how it is "knitted" together? Thinking about it has nearly made my head explode.

Posted April 10, 2006 1:20 PM by DaveL

it's just cool antonym pairs. I'm fond of them.

Ah. I was feeling a bit of a breeze going over my head. Now I can take my hat off. thanks.

I feel the urge to post a cool antonym pair, but my brain just isn't up to it this morning.

Posted April 10, 2006 1:23 PM by Greg London

I considered a reply to Michael's post, but I'm spent.

Posted April 10, 2006 1:27 PM by Greg London

Kate: I took a look @ BlueHost when I was looking for a host, and had problems with their terms of service - too general for my tastes. For instance, being owned & operated by an observant Mormon, they won't host any 'adult' sites. Okay, not a problem for you (unless you're being very, very subtle with your site ;-) ), right?

Well... yes and no. They also won't host anyone who links to any sites that are considered adult in nature. Well, since I was looking to host a horror-themed website that has been known to link to sites with, say, gothic erotica, that might be a wee bit of a problem. We also occasionally indulge in some political ranting, which has in the past involved freedom of speech issues - such as when the Justice Department came after the Suicide Girls. Linking to Suicide Girls would also constitute a violation of their Terms of Service.

Most hosts spell out their Terms in excruciating legalese - BlueHost doesn't, which surprisingly enough made me a little antsy. The CEO says that they don't actively go looking for violations of the ToS, and I don't doubt that - our site could probably have been hosted with them without incident. For your purposes, it looks like they'll be fine - just be aware that your content and your links could be subject to the 'community standards' of Utah.

As with anything, YMMV...

Posted April 10, 2006 1:27 PM by protected static

tying Michaels comments to the antonym theme yeilds

Springfield/Shelbyville

Posted April 10, 2006 1:30 PM by Dan R.

open thread non-sequitor that has nothing to do with Kate Nepveu's recent post, because if this were a reply, she would qualify it an an unwelcomed reply:

I really like my Site5 webhost company.

we now return to our regularly scheduled open thread.

Posted April 10, 2006 1:31 PM by Greg London

Debra --

Context counts. So does extelligence, and the amount of it to which you have access.

The everybody-known farming village a very effective -- it persists! -- social mechanism for that context, and it deals with the usual range of vicissitudes and disasters well; it does not scale to big cosmopolitan cities or post-industrial economies and really desperately needs replacing even in the rural context, because it's leading to the folks hewing to it getting abused.

The best comparison I can come up with off the top of my head is the abuse of the clan structure in the clearances, or possibly by Farmer George's use of highland regiments; an awful lot of instances of the little guy stayed loyal in the face of the direct, obvious betrayal of their leaders.

This is very obvious right now in the way the current US administration is abusing the army; it's just as obvious in the way agricultural product distribution is done.

So, no, the individuals aren't stupid, on the whole, but their social system can't handle enough complexity to protect them from the mechanisms being used to abuse them.

Posted April 10, 2006 1:33 PM by Graydon

Check out Webhostingtalk.com--it's a huge forum for discussing webhosts.

Posted April 10, 2006 1:35 PM by Nancy Lebovitz

For a moment I thought the mysterious words at the top were correct spellings of commonly misspelled words -- vaccuum, miniscule. Couldn't figure out a misspelling for "grass," though.

Posted April 10, 2006 1:43 PM by Lisa Goldstein

Stefan Jones: There was once a breed of dogs employed by restaurants to run in big wheels to turn spits.

Waiting . . .

Well??? What's the name of these dogs, and where are they now?

Posted April 10, 2006 1:44 PM by Laurence Roberts

When I access this site with IE (I'm at work, and I have no other options), when I open any of the threads, all the links for all the comments turn up as visited links.

In Firefox or Safari (meaning: at home) I can click on a specific comment link to mark how far I've read for the next visit. This appears to be impossible in IE.

Or is it? Is there some way I can change my settings here to mark my place? Because I tried to find a way to change it and came up with bupkiss.

Posted April 10, 2006 1:50 PM by Harry Connolly

Michael, after the last presidential election I recall seeing a map that depicted, nationwide, how the electorate in each county voted. Urban areas across the country (and even in red states) tended to vote Democratic, while rural counties were often Republican in their majority. You've very well defined one set of rural voters, but it seems to me that the oligarchs of many small communities tend to be Republicans and relatively well educated and informed. They're not necessarily ignorant fundies. My experience is that their values are typically those traditional to the GOP -- small gov't and low taxes perhaps being the foremost. Their kids tend to be educated and informed, too -- and often head to cities for college and better job opportunies. In essence, there's a brain drain (IMHO) from the sticks to the bricks, the implications of which I suspect are revealed in the Electoral College.

Posted April 10, 2006 1:56 PM by Richard Anderson

Certaiunly, as an ex-farmer, I would say that farmers have a different concept of business honesty to the corporations, and I wonder if it comes from a lot of agricultural business being between approximate equals. It's only in the last twenty years that the local businesses, the machinery dealers and the grain merchants, started to turn into larger operations.

One of the local grain merchants went out of that business and survives selling horse feed.

Hindsight is wonderful. I should have quit farming years ago. From what I've seen, and from what my family knows of people, your almost need to be a crook to survive.

Posted April 10, 2006 2:07 PM by Dave Bell

Schadenfreude / sour grapes

Posted April 10, 2006 2:15 PM by Lloyd Burchill

DaveL: I struck out on a Google image search for "loop-in-loop" (at least in terms of showing technique). The site I always fall back on for jewelery questions is here...

You start by squooshing the fused links into ovoids. Form a base for your chain by soldering 2 or 3 of these ovoid links across one another - 2 links into a cross at 90°, 3 links into a 6-armed 'cross' at 60°, and so on. (Fewer links results in a 'squarer' looking chain, but it'll be easier to make.)

Fold the arms of your 'cross' up into prongs. Squoosh more links into ovoids and squeeze them through the tops of the 'prongs' (they're still loops, remember?) in a regular pattern: A:B:A:B for the 4-armed cross, A:B:C:A:B:C for the 6-armed 'cross'. Fold these links up into prongs as you go, and squeeze subsequent links into them. This makes a looser chain. For a tighter (and much trickier) 'weave', do 2 links at a time: A:A:B:B:A:A:B:B or A:A:B:B:C:C:A:A:B:B:C:C. Stop when you've made a chain that's about 1/3 the length you want. Draw the chain through a hardwood drawplate to compress the links and stretch out the chain.

I promise, it isn't as confusing as I might have made it sound, but it is tricky and it can be tedious - winding and cutting all those jump rings can take quite a while. Also, fusing all those jump rings into links takes a lot of practice; last time I tried, I wound up with about a 3:4:3 ratio of melted silver granules, weak or unfused links, and completely fused links. All in all, I prefer an approach more like knitting or crochet than using individual links.

Posted April 10, 2006 2:23 PM by protected static

protected static: wheee, thanks. I'd read BlueHost's TOS but skimmed right over the no-linking to adult material--it's in the same bullet as not hosting it, I just saw "No pornographic or adult content" and moved right on.

I rather doubt it'll be a problem as well, but I crossed another host (LunarPages) off my list for a TOS I didn't like [*], so.

[*] "You agree not to make any inappropriate communication to any Newsgroup, Mailing List, Chat Facility, or other Internet Forum."

Thanks again.

Posted April 10, 2006 2:26 PM by Kate Nepveu

Perhaps:

explanation/bullshit

or

explanation/rationalization

Posted April 10, 2006 2:29 PM by Bruce Arthurs

"What's the name of these dogs, and where are they now?"

Skipping over obvious joke about Spitz . . .

Pictures of turnspit dogs resemble weiner dogs more than anything else. They just kind of died out. (This from The Lost History of the Canine Race.)

Oh, look: Whiskey the turnspit dog.

Google for "turnspit dog" to see a lot more.

Also: Sears, Roebuck used to sell treadmills so you could put your dog to work running farm equipment.

Posted April 10, 2006 2:31 PM by Stefan Jones

teresa: Thank you. Do note that this is in fact the Lang/Ford Joint Birthday Celebration, so save a glass of whatever you're celebrating with for the Ansible editor. The day also belongs to Joe Pulitzer, Bad Vlad Ulyanov, and Omar Sharif. (We were all supposed to be in "Lawrence of Arabia," but David Lean said something about "Super Panavision's not that by-our-lady wide," and the rest is history.)

Laurence: spit-turning dogs go a long way back -- about as long as spit-roasted meat in indoor hearths does. At the time, there wasn't a particular breed selected for it, though I suspect a short-haired dog with a long attention span was desirable. (A really big manor-house fireplace would need more power, and had spit-boys for the purpose; you can watch Tony Robinson enduring the process in The Worst Jobs in History.)

Posted April 10, 2006 2:41 PM by John M. Ford

Having grown up in small towns, I can see some of what Michael is getting at--there's always been a certain amount of resentment of, and resistence to, what we used to call the "city slickers" before we started being made fun of for using the term. Partly this is because a lot of the financial exploiters that screwed people over in a big way came from outside the community--buying mineral and timber rights, or large banks that bought out the small local bank and promptly demanded repayment of all loans, and so on. Partly it's because plenty of do-good reformers who have come in and tried to change things (never mind whether they needed changing or not--sometimes they did, and every so often, sometimes, they didn't), making the locals feel that they had been judged inferior and somehow lacking because they needed help--whether they'd asked for it or not, whether they felt like they needed help or not. (This is why so many don't like Hillary Clinton--this is as much, or more, the sore point she vibrates on as the uppity woman frame.)

Small towns are also very good, in most cases, at enforcing conformity--you either knuckle under, and learn to at least pretend to fit in, or you get out, or--what happens next depends on how far you're straying from the fold, really. The song "The Harper Valley PTA" had something to do with reality, at the time it was written (it's worth noting that people who are part of the culture can get away with making fun of it that way, even when outsiders can't). Coping with, let alone embracing differnce and diversity, can seem pretty strange--and uncomfortable.

There's also a certain level of naivety (which, as we all know, is not the same as stupidity) about how things work when they aren't like the world you're used to. A good many of these people, carefully handled, can work out the logic of why and even how things would be different if they are encouraged to think about it carefully. The Democratic party has typically done a lousy job of this lately, and the Republicans clearly have no interest in doing so.

I was talking with my mother a few days ago, and she started reminiscing about the 1932 election. Her home county in Missouri was traditionally Republican (a heritage of the Civil War)--it's a rural county, just south of the Missouri River. In 1932, it went overwhelmingly for Roosevelt; her father was one of the people who went out and campaigned for him. At that point, the Democratic party was still thought of as the party of Rum, Romanism (the Catholic Irish), and Rebellion in those parts and it's a symptom of how far things had gone that these people were willing to make that jump. They didn't do it because clever political consultants sold them on the idea--they did it because they were desperate. Many people still retained a good opinion of Herbert Hoover personally--they just didn't think he could fix things, for one reason or another.

I am not sure how to go about encouraging these people to think in new and different directions from the ones they are used to--I do know that the consultants the Democrats have used haven't been very good at it. It will probably take what it took in 1932--they'll have to be desperate enough to try something new. Whether that will be a Republican who can market himself as not-Bush, or better than Bush, or if a Democrat who can crack the code will get through (John Edwards is good at this, so is Gore when he can manage to kick the pundits and consultants to the curb). It's one reason the spinmeisters are working full-time even now; even if they aren't spinning for Bush, they can't afford to let these people be exposed to fresh air, daylight and enough peace and quiet that they could start thinking for themselves and work out some answers--because the answers might not be in Rupert Murdoch et al.'s best interests.

Rural people can come up with some pretty radical solutions to problems when they aren't blinded to the possibilities--utility cooperatives, credit unions and cooperative stores have as much to do with late 19th century farmers' issues with Big Money as they do with smart urban organizers. It's getting them to see things in a way other than what their are accustomed to that is the problem--and one side is very determined not to let that happen.

Posted April 10, 2006 2:42 PM by fidelio

I think Michael's getting at an aspect of something I've been trying to wrap my head around for a long time now, something I've been having a hard time describing.

(Context: I grew up in a town of 420. I now live in a major city, but spend a great deal of time travelling, including trips to rural areas and lots of red states.)

Not being an outsider -- growing up as someone who belongs in a small community -- gives you certain protections. It's not a matter of being uneducated; it's a matter of not seeing the need to develop, say, external support systems that kick in when an extended family or church support system cannot. If you've always had your church or your family as a support network, it's harder to grasp that some people don't have access to that, and that the government program you don't want to fund may well be the only thing they have going for them.

(Yes, blue states contribute more to programs like these than they take out -- I know that. But that's not the perception.)

Similarly, there's a security to be found in obscurity. People who live in NYC have a completely different perspective on terrorism than people who live in, say, rural Indiana. Someone who lives in rural Indiana is much less likely to have been immediately impacted by terrorism, and is therefore less likely to have a context to place it in. I would argue that they experience the fear of terrorism in a different way. People like to point to the red state/blue state divide on opinions about terrorism, but I suspect there's more going on there than the red state/blue state thing.

One of the more frightening coversations I've ever heard was one I eavesdropped on in a Thai restaurant in rural Texas right before the 2004 election. The best bit was when one of the women explained that she was voting for Bush because the terrorists already knew that Bush would be upset if they attacked, whereas the terrorists really couldn't be sure about Kerry. Therefore, if Kerry was elected, the terrorists would be forced to attack again to find out how Kerry would react to it.

(No, really. I couldn't make that up.)

Posted April 10, 2006 2:45 PM by G. Jules

Thanks, Stefan.

Posted April 10, 2006 2:46 PM by Laurence Roberts

And thanks, John, who posted while I was posting.

Happy birthday to the Lang/Fords!

Posted April 10, 2006 2:52 PM by Laurence Roberts

I should have quit farming years ago.

Good grief. May I ask what sort of operation you run? I grew up on a 400 acre beef/hog/corn/hay farm. (long long time ago)

It's only in the last twenty years that the local businesses, the machinery dealers and the grain merchants, started to turn into larger operations.

And farms too. Thousand acre spreads are getting more and more common. The cost of equipment is so high that you need to have a lot more land to make the sort of profit to make the paymetns to John Deere. A combine, which is only one piece of equipment needed to grow crops, was selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars back when I got off the farm. Then you need a couple of tractors, wagons, elevators/augers, planters, plows, cultivators.... corporate farms are becoming more common place just because the numbers don't make sense any other way.

Posted April 10, 2006 2:54 PM by Greg London

Rural people can come up with some pretty radical solutions to problems when they aren't blinded to the possibilities--utility cooperatives, credit unions and cooperative stores have as much to do with late 19th century farmers' issues with Big Money as they do with smart urban organizers.
There's a scaling issue - see e.g. Ronald Coase - Saul Alinksy say and city people did much the same thing see also e.g. The Hyde Park Coop or the Harvard and Yale Coop for intellectuals in the city acting likewise.
"Community Organizing" was pioneered in Chicago's old stockyards neighborhood by the soberly realistic, unabashedly radical Saul Alinsky, Neighborhoods can do things cities can't. One of the things Saul Alinsky did was empower the back of the yards to do what they wanted not what others thought they should want. It wasn't always what Saul Alinsky thought folks really oughta want. Of course the back of the yards may have had more in common with agriculture than with industry in the day?

grass/forb->
graze/browse?

Posted April 10, 2006 2:55 PM by Clark E Myers

My current studies have filled my brain with a thousand pairs of relatively uninteresting antonym pairs (distal/proximal, origin/insertion...) so instead I offer a few favorite medical terms:

Lover's fracture: a fracture of the calcaneus or heel bone, as might be caused by jumping out a 2nd story window

Saturday Night Arm: paralysis of the arm caused by damage to the axillary nerve, as might be caused by passing out in a straight chair with your arm draped over the back, and remaining in that position till morning

Jumping Frenchmen of Maine: an abnormally strong startle reflex common among the Acadians of Maine--I swear to you I am not making this up)

Koro: a culturally-influenced belief that one's penis is retracting into one's body, with fatal results. (Koro is the Southeast Asian name; the same notion is found in China and some parts of Africa. See "penis panic" at Wikipedia.)

Posted April 10, 2006 2:56 PM by Lila

it's a matter of not seeing the need to develop, say, external support systems that kick in when an extended family or church support system cannot.

There were no homeless poeple in the small farm town where I grew up. People were poor, but no one was living under a bridge anywhere. Then again, the cost of living was *way* lower than in a city, so living on minimum wage, you could still probably buy a run down house out in the countryside somewhere. But it does give folks a different perspective on what is needed. Someone who probably would go homeless in a big city would be taken in by family. But in the big city, not everyone has four generations of family within a 15 mile radius to get help from.

Now, the interesting debate would be to put some big city folks and some small town folks in teh same room and ahve them figure out which way is right.

Posted April 10, 2006 3:03 PM by Greg London

Lila - you forgot SOCMOB, which is apparently the leading cause of gunshot and knife wounds. (Standing On Corner, Minding Own Business)

Posted April 10, 2006 3:05 PM by Xopher

Plenum...ah, I remember when I first realized that Bertrand Russell could be wrong. He claimed that there could be cyclic motion in a plenum. Not so, of course: the friction would be infinite.

Posted April 10, 2006 3:07 PM by Xopher

"Saturday Night Arm"

I've heard this referred to as "Drunkard's palsy."

Posted April 10, 2006 3:07 PM by Stefan Jones

Lila,

There's also carsonogenous monocular nyctalopia, night-blindness in one eye caused by watching (originally) The Late Show while lying on one's side with one's head half embedded in a pillow. As an earlier host of that show said, "I kid you not"; I first saw this described in the NEJM sometime in the early 70's.

Posted April 10, 2006 3:08 PM by theophylact

Michael's point above is well taken and illuminates a lot about how, for example, Hawaiian politics works. Except that we're mostly not white, and mostly not Republican (although, like the old Southern Democrats, many Hawai'i Democrats these days are Republican in all but the name). But even though we're a state of a million-plus people, sometimes it sure feels like a small town here, where it's 2400 miles over the water from the next big city.

Oh, and about the antonyms. I always liked the words which have diametrically opposed definitions, making them their own antonyms:

decimate/decimate
cleave/cleave

etc.

Posted April 10, 2006 3:21 PM by Eric Sadoyama

Michael, I come from a place where everyone who mattered knew everyone else who mattered, or at least knew where they fit into the general map of people who mattered. It left me with a profound respect for codified law.

I remember one junior high school assembly when the kid giving the prayer -- we did that back then -- finished by crossing herself. A scattering of kids in the audience crossed themselves as well. Immediately, a murmur went up from the startled Mormon majority: What? I was startled too, for a few seconds, but then I felt embarrassed and stupid. I'd known perfectly well that some of the kids at school were gentiles, but somehow I'd been assuming that prayers would be Mormon. It was a weird moment. I was suddenly aware of this little thing in my head that was saying, But it's ours!: our town, our school, our turf. There are plenty of people back home for whom that's still true.

A few years ago, I was poking around on the web and found sites devoted to denouncing corruption in the Mesa city government. They breathlessly revealed that the city is dominated by good ol' boys, most of whom belong to a much-intermarried clique of old Mormon families. "Well, no kidding," I said to Patrick. "How long did it take them to figure that out?"

Patrick dryly pointed out that the smallish Mormon town I'd grown up in has since ballooned into a large metropolitan area, bigger than both St. Louis and Pittsburgh: real money, real power, real corruption.

And here's what impartial, codified law is for: saving Randy Bailey's brake shop, which the City of Mesa tried to take under eminent domain so it could hand the parcel over to insider Ken Lenhart and his buddies for a private commercial development. That didn't work, though it took some doing to stop it.

People who don't respect democratic institutions suffer from a failure of imagination. They don't understand that the trouble with stepping outside the law is that they're not the only ones who've ever thought of doing it, and that some of the people who've been at it longer than they have are real professionals. It's a tribute to our civil society that they can achieve that state of being comfortably dumb, but I surely do wish they'd pass up the luxury, once in a while.

Posted April 10, 2006 3:34 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

sessile/motile

Posted April 10, 2006 3:35 PM by John Aspinall

Ah, yes, there would be that. In the decades that I've been following the news and gossip in my old home town, not once was there any sort of the mass corruption of power for those in public office. First of all, there just wan't that much money that a shyster would find worth their trouble. I recall at one point the the mayor of our town also happened to be the guy who owned the local diner/greasy spoon, the mayor position being a part time job. But no gossip ever muttered a moment where someone was using their position to grease some wheels and get some kickbacks. Stuff like that would get your car vandalized beyond recognition. Which I suppose is the strength of small town politics. It's generally transparent adn no one can get away with anything without everyone else knowing. It isn't because folks in small towns are better, but that the gossip system is ruthless and there are no secrets.

Of course that's painting with a broad brush. individual results may vary.

Posted April 10, 2006 3:51 PM by Greg London

Greg,

I was merely referring to the previous comments, about someone who seems intelligent verses someone who says intelligent things. I have no personal opinion in the matter, because I am not much exposed to American politicians on chat shows.

Teresa,

They are cool antonyms. I'll join Eric and add:
inflammable/inflammable
and, in Dutch, with spoken emphasis indicated,
VOORkomen (occur)/voorKOmen (prevent)

fidelio,

Small towns are also very good, in most cases, at enforcing conformity--you either knuckle under, and learn to at least pretend to fit in, or you get out, or--what happens next depends on how far you're straying from the fold, really....Coping with, let alone embracing differnce and diversity, can seem pretty strange--and uncomfortable.

Yes and no. The tiny town (pop 2337) where I spent some of my childhood had some pretty strange characters, and they were tolerated even when they were unspeakably obnoxious. (Well, up to the point of attempted murder, when the civic patience became a bit strained.) There is space made for fools and madmen in intact communities, in a way that does not happen in the city.

Posted April 10, 2006 3:53 PM by abi

My favorite antonym: "irrotational."

carsonogenous monocular nyctalopia: I've gotten this. Usual process:
Read in bed with the reading light coming from close overhead.
Finish the book.
Turn off the light.
Think I've gone blind in one eye.
Remember the thought process from LAST time this happened.

Posted April 10, 2006 4:00 PM by Sandy B.

Well, apparently the conservatives even need instructions on how to be rude visitors:

"How to Handle an Open Thread on Liberal Blogs"

Posted April 10, 2006 4:03 PM by Kayjay

ravel/ravel

Posted April 10, 2006 4:03 PM by TexAnne

Easter is coming. For the past several years, I have been fascinated by pysanky and have tried my hand at it with varying degrees of success. This year I am ambitious and would like to attempt to tesselate an egg with an Escheresque design. Does anyone know where I might find designs, or pointers on how to wrap an Escher tesselation around a 3D object like an egg?

Posted April 10, 2006 4:09 PM by Eric Sadoyama

Re: the toleration of eccentrics by small towns (as long as they're OUR eccentrics)--Tony Hillerman's essay "The Education of Cletus Xywanda" from The Great Taos Bank Robbery is a nice example ("In New York I do not think they would let that man pretend to be a policeman."). The title essay is also a great illustration of the flow of information in a small town ("The police are approximately the last to know.").

Posted April 10, 2006 4:17 PM by Lila

leftist fundies
Are those like hard core UU vegans who live in nonair-conditioned houses and ride their bicycles everywhere?
Anyway
The only reason I'm commenting here is to say Happy Birthday to Mike Ford (because I forgot to send him a card, and I know he reads all of this blog.) So Happy Birthday Mike!

Posted April 10, 2006 4:21 PM by Gigi Rose

Lila:

Womb fury (17th century medical ailment) makes a nice analogue (perhaps even an antonym pair!) to penis panic.

I'm just sayin'.

Posted April 10, 2006 4:24 PM by Sarah S

autological/heterological

Posted April 10, 2006 4:24 PM by candle

Sarah,

"womb fury" more or less = "hysteria"? ("womb sickness" in Greek)

Posted April 10, 2006 4:28 PM by Lila

cleave/cleave

Posted April 10, 2006 4:37 PM by Andy

Oriental/Occidental

Posted April 10, 2006 4:38 PM by Joe J

This week's NYT Magazine had a story about small towns/farms in North Dakota. It discusses, among other things, the consolidation of quarter-section farms into several-section farms for various reasons, both demographic and economic.

Posted April 10, 2006 4:47 PM by Linkmeister

Greg, 230 acres of arable land in Lincolnshire, rented from a family who sold the land to the local big farmer, whose father and father-in-law were two of the biggest crooks in the local Black Market during WW2.

Produce prices dropped, costs increased, and there wasn't the land available to expand. Then I fell off a combine harvester and broke my leg.

Currently, it seems you need about a thousand acres to support one man, and land prices in the UK means that would cost about GBP 2.5 million.

While I was winding up the business, still with my leg in plaster, I had a phone call from the Estate Agent, who has left work early for a long weekend, and was calling me on a mobile phone while driving to her holiday cottage in Devon. She charged her full hourly rate for the call, which she bills in 20-minute units.

I hope she was going for a dirty weekend and picked up one of the more persistent venereal diseases.

Posted April 10, 2006 5:03 PM by Dave Bell

In reading the "How to Handle an Open Thread on Liberal Blogs" link, I also followed the How To Be A Good Christian Wife Link.

Point #2 was my personal favorite, but they're all pretty good.

Posted April 10, 2006 5:04 PM by Scott H

Kayjay, yes, they do, dmb sns f btchs that they are. But I think Jim jeered at them pretty effectively, not that they'll notice.

Posted April 10, 2006 5:07 PM by Xopher

Yes indeed, happy 49th birthday to John M. Ford!

Posted April 10, 2006 5:17 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

I'm trying to figure out if the "Blogging Points" blog is meant to be ironic or what. It seems so over-the-top that I wonder if it's not just a joke on conservative blogs.

Case in point, the Bush quote at the top of the page: “Our nation must come together to unite.” That's a real absurd Bushism. Of course, for things to unite they must come together. That's like saying we must inhale to breathe. And considering the content of the blog, unity seems to be the last thing that the writer is interested in achieving.

Though, it is just crazy enough to be real, as frightening as that may be.

Posted April 10, 2006 5:19 PM by Joe J

Joe J wrote:

I'm trying to figure out if the "Blogging Points" blog is meant to be ironic or what.

Yeah, I was wondering about that myself.

Also, it occurs to me that my previous post might be taken in the wrong spirit if you don't know anything about my wife

Posted April 10, 2006 5:28 PM by Scott H

I'm putting my money on "satire" because while the Pharisees want their wives to behave that way they're too canny to say it out loud.

Posted April 10, 2006 5:38 PM by TexAnne

Scott H, you're her husband? Wow, I'm impressed. Tell her I said "Jai Ma, jagatambe je je Ma," would you?

And I think the "How to be a good Christian wife" post makes it clear that the whole blog is satirical.

Happy Birthday, Mike! And many, many more.

Posted April 10, 2006 5:46 PM by Xopher

I'm trying to figure out if the "Blogging Points" blog is meant to be ironic or what.

I found my answer to that one here: last line, item 1, on how to be a good christian wife:

"ALWAYS serve fresh orange juice. Only whores use frozen."

I mean... come on. I laughed out loud.

Posted April 10, 2006 5:51 PM by Michael Weholt

No apologies if it turns out to be satire. Where's the art in writing something that's indistinguishable from a lackluster lower-tier right-wing weblog?

Posted April 10, 2006 5:56 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

With reference to 'incorporating [...] knitting', here are some of the most beautiful knitted animals that I've ever seen: http://www.fadeeva.com/animals.html

Posted April 10, 2006 6:00 PM by Madeline Kelly

Where's the art in writing something that's indistinguishable from a lackluster lower-tier right-wing weblog?

Well, but... in my mind it is distinguishable. But hell, I could be wrong. It just seems like the kind of satire you get from somebody who is really good at adopting a particular character, to me. Somebody who has that character in his/her blood.

Posted April 10, 2006 6:03 PM by Michael Weholt

I can't tell if BloggingPoints is satire or not.

If it isn't, it's ood.

If it is I can't decide if I think it swell (a la JC General) or ham-handed and inept (which is the lot of most satire. JC is ham-handed, but enough over the top that it plays well).

TK

Posted April 10, 2006 6:03 PM by Terry Karney

Happy birthday Mike, from all of us in my household. (100% of us happen to be fans.)

Posted April 10, 2006 6:36 PM by Georgiana

Michael, I have every respect for your ear, but what's the use of satire that makes no especial point, and will be undetectable to the great majority of its readers?

Posted April 10, 2006 6:45 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Michael, I have every respect for your ear, but what's the use of satire that makes no especial point, and will be undetectable to the great majority of its readers?

My ear is more or less tuned to writing that is meant to be performed. There are always great spaces left between the words when you are writing for performance. Those spaces are left for the performers to find their characters in, of course, and if you are writing for performers and not leaving those spaces, the actual work, when performed, is going to be dull and wordy. The flip side of that, of course, is that when you are just reading "performance writing" on the page, the exact intention of the writer is a good deal harder to pin down.

Now, I'm not saying the writing in question is some sort of "performance piece", but I think my innate response when I encounter stuff like it is to imagine it being performed. And when I do that, it seems abundantly obvious to me that it's a goof. Probably written by somebody who grew up with these sorts of characters and has their voices, as I said before, in his or her blood. I really have no doubt whatsoever that this writer actually heard somebody say once: "Only whores serve frozen orange juice."

But as you will have noted, I'm bringing a lot to that table. Everybody does the same, of course. Bring something to that table, I mean. My covered dish happens to be Playwright Ears au Gratin. Like I said, I could be wrong, but that's the way I hear it.

My guess is that this writer is probably a born playwright. Whether he or she knows that yet is a question I can't answer.

Posted April 10, 2006 7:05 PM by Michael Weholt

Completely unconnected to the rest of the thread - I have just posted my first "PA are bad news. Run away. Here is where to go to find out why not to sign the contract. Here is where to go for advice if you have already signed the contract." (Referencing "Follow the money" amongst other sources.)

Now biting my nails wondering what sort of reaction I'm going to get...

Posted April 10, 2006 7:19 PM by Julia Jones

Loop-in-loop chain is wire work, you don't knit it. (I do have a friend who crochets in fine silver.) You don't usually make the links oval, and if you have any combination of four rings (3-in-one, two-in-two, etc.) you don't need to solder the rings, you have enough support already.

Protected static, there are loop-maker-and-cutter machines. Most of my friends who do maille use those.

Posted April 10, 2006 7:51 PM by Marilee

Where's the art in writing something that's indistinguishable from a lackluster lower-tier right-wing weblog?

Damn, that's more or less what I've been trying to say in successive posts on Open Thread 62. I guess there's a reason why you're an editor, Teresa. :)

Posted April 10, 2006 8:02 PM by candle

Marilee: Protected static, there are loop-maker-and-cutter machines. Most of my friends who do maille use those.

Typically, they're too big for jewelery-scale work. At least, that's always been my experience. And the ones that are scaled for jewelery work don't anticipate you making quite the quantity of rings that loop-in-loop requires.

I think in large part it depends on the gauge of wire being used. I cringed at your "you don't need to solder the rings" - until I remembered making a Byzantine chain w/ 16-ga. brass wire. Butted links are indeed fine in such a case.

When making 'woven' chain, you're using 22-ga. or 24-ga. wire; I'm not sure how well that'd stand up to the drawplate if it was only butted.

Posted April 10, 2006 8:21 PM by protected static

I've been seeing 'maille' a lot lately; where did that come from, anyone know? It makes me teeth itch when applied to armor, but it just might be a specific term of art for jewelry making...

Posted April 10, 2006 8:26 PM by Graydon

Graydon, "maille" is French for, um, lots of things: rings in chainmail, stitches in knitting, holes in bobbin lace and fishing nets, and probably other sorts of things too. IYDMMA, why does it make your teeth itch?

Posted April 10, 2006 8:50 PM by TexAnne

I'm repeatedly hearing newscasters refer to the proposed federal immigration legislation as "seeking to criminalize undocumented workers" or as "something that would criminalize people who are here illegally".

Isn't that redundant, verging on gibberish? There are lots of points to argue on the immigration question (though I think it's a massive distraction from Iraq and Bush's own self-criminalization) -- but surely we're all agreed that right now, being here as an illegal alien is, er, illegal?

Posted April 10, 2006 8:59 PM by Kate Yule

Kate Yule - It isn't so much whether being an illegal alien is, er, illegal, but rather the degree.

The GOP would like to make it a felony. Or at least the GOP leadership would like a certain subset of their base to believe that harsh criminal penalties for illegals are a core GOP position.

Personally, I believe that there's little stomach for this, since the House bill, as passed, would also make the farmers that hire them felons.

Posted April 10, 2006 9:17 PM by Larry Brennan

Harry Connolly: The browser's looking at 'history' and seeing that you hit the thread at some time in the past. You can clear the history and have all the posts look brand new, but if you come back without clearing it first, they'll all look visited.

Eric Sadoyama: I'd suggest treating the egg as a distorted sphere, but I still don't know whether it would work for translation of a 2-d Escher to a solid. (I usually use watercolor for decorating blown eggs.)

And on the subject of farming and the cost of equipment: many farmers hire a contract harvest crew; that way they keep the expenses down and don't have to have people and equipment they don't usually need. The tractor (which runs in the high 5 figures, last I heard) is a different story: it's used fairly frequently, so they'll buy that, and the basic tools needed (a roll-over plow, a disk harrow, that sort of tool).

Posted April 10, 2006 9:18 PM by P J Evans

Kate: Right now it's a civil violation. The new legislation would make it criminal. The effect of that would be to make a total bar to any future hope of legal entry.

TexAnne: It makes his teeth itch because english has a perfectly good word for maille, it's mail.

It irritates me too. Almost as much as those who pronounce cache as caché

Posted April 10, 2006 9:35 PM by Terry Karney

Well, I'm ok with caché as a pronunciation if you mean the social accolade transfer thingy; if you're talking about the 8MB caché on a hard drive, I'm going to go mildly cross-eyed.

And yes, the English word for armor made of little rings linked together is mail; it got borrowed from the common root back when people might well know what you meant by lorica hamata, for pity's sake, and then generalized to mean armor of all sorts in a lot of contexts. This pseudo-gothy extra syllable strikes me as a symptom of the same process that makes all the really sexy vampires Anciene Regime French for no really obvious reason.

Posted April 10, 2006 9:45 PM by Graydon

Actually it gets used to describe "cachés" of weapons, explosives, even foodstuffs.

People who don't mispronounce it when they refer to a RAM cache will give briefings were they use the wrong pronunciation.

Worse, they will try to correct me into making such a wrong pronunciation.

Posted April 10, 2006 9:51 PM by Terry Karney

Maille make my teeth itch, too. I suspect it is popular because of D and D, bad fantasy of all sorts, and because it can be found using a search engine. Searching for "mail" on an armour website or search engine finds lots of things that aren't linked armour
mark

Posted April 10, 2006 9:54 PM by gaukler

Happy birthday to John M. Ford and Colonel Potter....

Posted April 10, 2006 9:58 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Well, I'm ok with caché as a pronunciation if you mean the social accolade transfer thingy

Which word is spelled "cachet."

Though the idea of designer CPUs with "two full meg of cachet" is something I'm surprised hasn't occurred to somebody in marketing. Maybe it has, but the geeks asked to come up with an implementation wiped all his personalware, put a "possession of four tons of pseudoephedrine" flag on his record, and then let events follow like virtual dominoes.

Posted April 10, 2006 10:23 PM by John M. Ford

The immigration thing? The GOP is trying to drum up a big set of fake issues, in hopes that during the next national elections we'll all talk about those, instead of how badly the Republicans have screwed up. There's no way the Republicans, the party of cheap labor, are going to throw eleven million immigrant workers out of the country.

Posted April 10, 2006 10:29 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

A question, if any who knows would be so good as to answer it. I'm preparing a pseudonymous chapbook for a specific audience, and I've heard it said many times here and in other fora (usually, while the sins of Pblshmrca are being recounted -- and no, I don't know why I disemvowelled that, but I've read all the threads here on the topic and usually the word is de-searchified, so I will assume, sheeplike, that there must be a good reason for it) that a major problem with most non-professionally-printed books is that they're typeset badly.

I know about widows and orphans, single spaces after periods, and the use of real em dashes and smart quotes. What greater subtleties of the art of typesetting should I become aware of?

What sets apart a word-processing font from a typesetting font? I don't presently know the names of any good typesetting fonts, as such, and I'm wondering if anyone here would be willing to enlighten me.

Thanks for the help!

Posted April 10, 2006 10:32 PM by A. J. Luxton

But "maille" and "mail" aren't the same. Mail is made up of lots of little mailles. "Maille" is properly pronounced something like "Maya," only without the final "a," as in "Myyyyyy...this is getting complicated."

(And of course we all know that "Maille" is a particularly delicious moût-ardent de Dijon.)

Posted April 10, 2006 10:34 PM by TexAnne

A combine, which is only one piece of equipment needed to grow crops, was selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars back when I got off the farm.

Dave -- does the UK not have hobo combines? I've read that in the US there are many people who follow the harvest north not by begging rides but on their specialized equipment, and make good money in doing so; I would have expected enough climate difference between, say, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire to make this worthwhile -- or are the crops too different?

TNH: Did More actually say the famous line (re laws and the devil) attributed to him in A Man for All Seasons, or is that as much the playwright's imagination as "It's 1183 and we're all barbarians!"? Seems to me that a lot of people need the Bolton text drilled into them.

Debra Doyle: are rural U.S. people closer to the participants in this blog, or to Milosevic partisans? I'll admit that's not an entirely fair comparison -- today's Globe has a story that South Dakota's citizens are rather less reactionary than the legislature apparently thought -- but there's some of the same credulity when presented with "The bad man over there wants to hurt you but I can protect you."

Posted April 10, 2006 10:45 PM by CHip

Stefan Jones: No shittin': There was once a breed of dogs employed by restaurants to run in big wheels to turn spits.

'Coz if they did, it'd be a health violation.

--

Re: caché, I had a (truly abysmal) high school French teacher who would rant at this by proclaiming "Parkez cette Chevrolet coupé chez Pelham Bay Parkway!"

When I see Army guys on the TV saying "caché" I figure that they're just trying to show off and use a word they've never heard pronounced. Or perhaps it's become like "nook-you-ler". Shudder.

Posted April 10, 2006 11:19 PM by Larry Brennan

A Very Happy Birthday to Mike Ford, from your co-celebrationist. (Coincidentally the reprint of The Dragon Waiting was high on my wish-list, but as I haven't opened presents yet, I don't know whether I achieved that synchronicity.)

Posted April 10, 2006 11:50 PM by Clifton Royston

I know about widows and orphans, single spaces after periods, and the use of real em dashes and smart quotes. What greater subtleties of the art of typesetting should I become aware of?

I would recommend picking up a copy of Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style. It's a great pleasure to read, and your best one-volume guide to the subject.

What sets apart a word-processing font from a typesetting font?

A font suitable for typesetting has a lot more glyphs, including text figures and real small caps.

Posted April 10, 2006 11:54 PM by Tim Walters

"Parkez cette Chevrolet coupé chez Pelham Bay Parkway!"

Nothing wrong with that. At my last job you would occasionally hear "Checkez le bug fucké!" out of the developers. Only in Montreal.

I ranted about the cache/caché/cachet thing not too long ago. I'm seeing "caché" as a typo for "cachet" more and more, and it drives me nuts. Also "latté" for "latte" which is just wrong and bad on so many levels.

Posted April 10, 2006 11:54 PM by Electric Landlady

Electric Landlady: I didn't use the accent as a typo, I did it to point out that the Army mispronounces the word.

And it drives me up the wall. I've beaten it into the heads of a few of my fellows, but it is becoming either jargon, or a term of art.

Ghleahhhh!

Posted April 11, 2006 12:24 AM by Terry Karney