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And the only daughter of the Merchant Prince felt so little gratitude for this great deliverance that she took to respectability of the militant kind, and became aggresssively dull, and called her home the English Riviera, and had platitudes worked in worsted upon her tea-cosy, and in the end never died, but passed away in her residence.
A sort of survey:
The local paper includes, on Sundays, a cheaply produced reprint of early (1963) Spiderman comics. It is included courtesy of the same outfit that produces those booklets of coupons.
They're charmingly simple. I'm reading them as they come, and collecting them for a friend's son who is learning to read.
Anyone else out there get these?
fragmented moment
bright sun for once does not lie
warmer the morning
mariners chanting
far distant those seas are now
evening coming
For some reason, that thread number set me off:
nineteen seventy five was the year that life began
i was nineteen naive and living away from home
no idea that i was going to be a footnote of a man
wondering where on earth i'd go with only a poem
for heritage fearful of all those new things
i'd only read about false sophisticate really rustic
glad at least to be finally of the leading-strings
with odd bits of knowledge brittle and dry like fustic
but there i was never so scared in all my life
wondering where i'd sit in the large lecture-hall
the lady who smiled was the prime minister's wife
but i did not realise that i was blank as a wall
this might appeal i'd say to those of an odd humour
but i can look at myself and laugh or that's the rumour
Also a sort of question:
Are there usenet groups or blogs where, if a comment isn't obviously not a troll, the *only* response at first is "Hi, will you be back to talk about our answers to your question?" That is, unless it's a particularly interesting question, no one answers the uncollapsed-potentiality of trollness until the person shows they're not just a drive-by.
I'm wondering why this isn't done, or why I don't see it done. There's no (or very little) insult in simply asking "hi, will you be back?"
i.e. if Wrathkin from Sunnydale wandered into this thread and asked
"Hey, what do our hosts have against Publish Amirrorcan? Don't they know it's a legitimate way for the ordinary man to get published?"I'd guess that someone would soon ask "Is there a reason you're asking this here? Have you read this or that thread?"
But even here, I'm not sure how long people would wait for an answer. Elsewhere, drivebyers can start threads 10-20 answers deep, many of which aren't as interesting without the original questioner's responses. Yet no one asks the original poster if they plan to be back. Why not?
Once there was a sharp young fellow named Jack, always looking for the main chance that would make his fortune and put him on Easy Street. One day, Opportunity called on Jack, in the form of an old peddler who offered to accept Jack's cow in trade for a handful of magic beans which when planted, he said, would grow into a huge beanstalk that reached into the sky to amazing worlds beyond.
Jack made the trade, and resolved to hide the beans until they would come in handy. He buried them under the floor of his humble house, sealed in a can, and guarded the house day and night. So singleminded was he that his friends soon ceased to call, and his sweetheart reluctantly went to find another love. Jack didn't care; he knew that his fortune was made, and one day he would show them all.
It didn't take long for Jack to lose most of his possessions from neglect or by trading them for basic provisions. He grew some food in his garden, shot wild animals that came close enough, and slept lightly lest someone break in and steal his treasure.
After a few years -- not too many -- Jack died, alone, a crazed pauper living on inadequate food. When his neighbors realized he was dead, some men from the town broke into his house, having heard rumors of a fantastic treasure hidden inside. One of them was killed by a trap Jack had left in place. The others tore his wretched cabin apart, finally pulling up the floor and digging underneath, where they found a can containing a small quantity of dried-up shriveled bits of vegetable matter which might once have been beans.
Moral: Don't sit on it.
I've got a few fingers of Auchentoshan in my glass right now, and fresh baked bread to munch on.
From a DailyKos diary: I was just watching the six o'clock news on CBS here in LA. And they just got through showing a totally white haired sixty year old grandma who is a retired Air Force Major who has just been reactivated to Iraq.
This is insane. I can't deal. I'm going to bed.
Al-Sadr loyalists take over Iraqi television station
"BAGHDAD, Iraq - Followers of the militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr took over state-run television Saturday to denounce the Iraqi government, label Sunnis 'terrorists' and issue what appeared to many viewers as a call to arms."
Well . . . that's that.
Nothing left to do but witness years (decades?) of misery, knowing we helped trigger the mess.
And Sadaam gets the last laugh.
How come the Helsinki Complaints Choir hasn't yet made it to Sidelights? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATXV3DzKv68
They did, back on 14 November.
A beta--I think--version of the One Laptop Per Child machine has been delivered to ...somewhere... This may in the long run, matter more than all of our wars. I am wryly amused to note that OLPC's web site seems not to say what a "B1" version of the machine is, where the prototype has been delivered, or who the people who are unpacking it are.
The laptop's been delivered to Cambridge (ask not which Cambridge: both Cambridges!) and has been unpacked by a variety of malevolent-looking but really very bouncy hacker types (i.e., the OLPC devs).
At least one small child (Jim Gettys's son) has had a try. :)
(And `B1' == `first beta', a `make sure the hardware and software can talk to each other' release with an early alpha of the software on it --- as I understand it, I'm just an interested observer).
OLPC is ... well, colour me skeptical. It's a great idea for deprived inner cities in developed nations, and a sensible one for countries like Libya or China where per-capita GDP is over $1000, but for the third world it's missing the point: one of these white elephants costs as much as building a schoolroom or paying a teacher for a year or providing all the books, and unlike the books, the OLPC won't be in working order in a couple of years. Clean drinking water, not being shot at, and basic literacy, come first.
Sure, but solve the problem you know. If you don't know how to build a school, but you do know how to build a really cheap laptop, then why not build the laptop? Sure, they could donate the money to go towards building the school, but they wouldn't be able to donate their time or expertise -- and making a working laptop as cheap as they have is no mean feat, and as you have mentioned, there *are* places where the laptops would be useful.
The trouble is, the money for OLPC has to come from somewhere. Forget hitting on the Gates Foundation (hint: it doesn't run Windows); that means the governments whose people are getting the OLPCs are the ones who will end up paying.
Now, releasing the OLPC design and software as a GPL'd piece of freeware, for the cheap Chinese box-shifters to wholesale and then for the forthcoming generation of cheap 3D printers to run off retail -- that would be truly viral and insidious, and hopefully shift the balance of the "consumer electronics" industry back towards the consumers and away from the industry who've been feeding us expensive not-fit-for-purpose tat for the past decade. And it'd let anyone who actually needed cheap computing get their hands on it, as opposed to the people the starry-eyed OLPC enthusiasts think need it. B-B-but that would be communism!
PS: Sure, but solve the problem you know. If you don't know how to build a school, but you do know how to build a really cheap laptop, then why not build the laptop?
Because a laptop is not a school.
If you need schools, the correct response is to learn how to build schools, not to indulge in profoundly pointless (but expensive) activities that appear to have been conceived in total splendid ignorance of the needs of the people they're aimed at.
Just because the only tool you have is a hammer (or laptop), it does not follow that every problem is a nail.
Does anyone here know anything about protective wear (pads) for stunt work? No flames or high falls, just stage combat, tumbling, and harness stuff.
My eldest is on a stunt team and Christmas is coming.
Stefan,
We've been getting them in The Oregonian here in PDX.
"It's a great idea for deprived inner cities in developed nations, and a sensible one for countries like Libya or China where per-capita GDP is over $1000, but for the third world it's missing the point:"
Well there are different views as to how to deal with poverty. The normal view is as Charlie says, that one should build schools etc. in poverty stricken areas in third world. I think actually that this may be wrong, based on nothing more than the feeling of "it hasn't worked so far, let's try something new."
The one child per laptop program seems to be saying something like, don't lift the absolute bottom up one level, it is an insoluble problem, instead focus on lifting further something that the absolute bottom would consider really something and to us looks like hell.
So I'm starting a writer's group because, frankly, I can turn out pages and pages and pages, but I'm no good at all at judging whether I've said too much or too little or whether any of it even made sense. I've drafted my two roommates into the project but decided that for the health and sanity of all we needed two more people. Seven responded to my announcement, so I asked for submissions.
Now I'm torn. One of these submissions is utterly terrible. The first person male narrator sounds like an emo female, it builds to a twist that isn't there, and while everything is technically grammatical it's all very poorly done. Yet I see potential and want to make it better. I think, based either on the submission or a defense mechanism in my brain telling me that it can't be as bad as it looks, that she has potential. Besides, if I reject her, it's just the roomies and me. We're good roomies, I met one in a workshop, but I think it would be best to have strangers involved.
There are people here who know more about these things than I do. Help?
Since I don't see this in the sidelights: a Deseret News article on the trial of Warren Jeffs for "rape as an accomplice" in the forced marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old cousin.
If you need schools, the correct response is to learn how to build schools, not to indulge in profoundly pointless (but expensive) activities that appear to have been conceived in total splendid ignorance of the needs of the people they're aimed at.Just because the only tool you have is a hammer (or laptop), it does not follow that every problem is a nail.
You seem to be assuming that this laptop is intended solely for the most extreme third-world nations where there is no formal infrastructure to speak of, and that is not the case. Looking at the faq on their website you can see that they are currently in talks with "China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria, and Thailand." These are not third world countries in the most extreme sense of the world, but are in fact "developing nations" -- nations with an infrastructure but a lot of poverty. And you have already allowed that these machines would be very useful there.
Their FAQ, if you're interested, can be read here:
http://www.laptop.org/faq.en_US.html
At no point have I *ever* heard a representative of OLPC claim that their laptops would end poverty stop all wars, cure the sick, raise the dead, and make the blind see. Yes, there is hyperbole involved in the project, just as there is hyperbole involved in every attempt to do anything that requires convincing fence-sitters, but their goals are targeted at places where a child's access to a computer could have some genuine, concrete worth.
I'm not sure why that should be considered a complete waste of time.
Knitters Alert: There's a knitting cartoon in today's "Rhymes With Orange". (And the Sunday "Opus" is back to the anagram game.)
The big problem, IMHO, with the OLPC project is that they seem to be putting an awful lot of attention into designing what is --- to their credit --- a ground-breaking new piece of hardware, but a lot less time on curriculum development.
In part that's due to the project's heritage --- it came out of the MIT Media lab, where Seymour Papert spent years pushing the idea that if you just give children tools, they will figure out how to educate themselves. Well, even in the first world, tests show that it doesn't always work out that way. (Nor does Papert help his own case by responding that the researchers missed the point --- that "no experiment on the paradigm of school psychology could refute my thesis", which was really about "deconstruct[ing] the necessity of School" altogether).
Thus, Papert. On to OLPC project, whose own declaration of its educational philosophy seems, at points, distinctly Papertesque:
...while computers facilitate and improve presentation of material to students, their real, unique power is as a malleable tool for construction, expression, collaboration, design, modeling, visualization, reflection, and debugging. These are the capabilities that enabled the exponential growth of knowledge in the world, and children, given opportunity, freedom, and guidance, are the most capable to take advantage of these capabilities for growth and development.Educators have long recognized that children learn best when they are active, when they pursue their own interests, and when they participate in cultures of knowledge and engagement. However, until now it has been logistically impossible, except for the elites, to create such learning environments. With 1-to-1 access to connected laptops, children actively engage in knowledge construction and are not limited to passive reception of information. Each child can pursue learning in areas of strong personal interest and the classroom is not limited to a pre-determined, one-size-fits-all approach.
With connected laptops, learners are liberated to actively engage with others with similar interests in cultures of learning by doing without being limited by time or space. In this way children can learn by teaching, actively assisting other learners and thereby liberating the teacher to focus her experience and expertise where most needed. ...
For what it's worth, my own off-the-record interactions with OLPC staffers seem to echo this. They've gotten off to a late, slow start in curriculum development, and when that's pointed out to them, there's a disturbing tendancy to say, sotto voce, that it really doesn't matter, because once the kids have the machines, they'll figure out what to do on their own. But even bright, self-directed kids need some guidance, to point out resources and useful lines of inquiry, to suggest alternative strategies when they get stuck, to keep them from lollygagging around all day (as some will do), and simply to judge what's a good project and what isn't. It seems to me that this requires trained, highly tuned adult judgment to get consistently good results, even if the kids are on their own most of the time. Which may help to explain why Papert's learning theories work out so much better when one of his disciples is on hand --- and which may suggest why some of us believe that as "an education project, not a laptop project" (quoth Negroponte), OLPC is not on a firm foundation.
What really bugs me is that considered solely as a laptop project, not an education project, the thing is brilliant. The hardware and software are both innovative (the display in particular being a major advance on the state of the art), and there are great synergies with the rest of the free software community. But the deployment model is driven by one big idea conceived by do-gooding Westerners with little or no experience of local conditions, aided by a few coopted local elites who may themselves be years or decades removed from real experience with life on the ground. These things don't always work out well, no matter how good the technology.
Which leads to this odd conclusion: if they were just trying to sell the things for, say, $200, to anyone in the third world with a use for one, then, like Charlie, I'd be thrilled. (The $100 figure is, of course, wholesale). If you think it's best for third-worlders to figure out how to use the tech for themselves, why limit that to the kids?
But as is, they're soaking up large chunks of the education budget for technology whose worth as an educational tool is not yet proven. And my feelings on that are decidedly mixed.
The thing that baffles me about those Spiderman reprints is why Marvel is doing it. These are forty-year-old comics and they haven't aged well. They were groundbreaking when they first appeared, but they're incredibly crude by modern standards. Does it really benefit Marvel to put these hackneyed antiques on public display?
My best guess is that they need to reprint them to retain copyright.
My kids have used computers to help them educate and amuse themselves all their lives (sometimes doing both at the same time) as well as giving them 'friends' and like minded acquaintances everywhere.
Our 'adopted' boy, Momodee, used to walk five miles to school every day and five miles back. I've never encountered anyone so enthusiastic about education. He didn't have a computer, and couldn't have used one because his village didn't have electricity. Neither did his school. Neither did the nearest town. The only reason his village had water was because the charity through which we 'adopted' that great little guy dug them a well.
Then Charles Taylor took over in Liberia and we were told Momodee was probably taken off to be a boy soldier, but nobody really knew, and would we adopt another child, a girl in Alexandria.
We did, and she's just turned 18 and is training to be a nurse, so she's now been replaced, by a girl in China. That's right, the People's Republic of China, host to the next Olympics, shining star of unfettered enterprise and more millionaires every day than you can count.
First World, Second World, Third World - there's only one world and however good OLPC is (and I know it doesn't pretend to be a solution to poverty) the solution to poverty is to give people the tools and skills to help themselves, and the peace to use them.
Its that last that seems to be the problem.
Something popped up just now in my memory. A novel, published in the 1970s, in which the protagonist is a black Buddhist monk, living in New York, who is enlisted by the Devil (or a Buddhist equivalent thereof -- I also recall a reference to 'the Molochomaves, for all his Jewish head') from destruction by a nuclear plant going critical. What was it? Anybody else recall it?
#26: Note that one of the design parameters for the OLPC is that it can be powered by a hand-crank. Another is that the devices talk to each other without any intervening devices (they automatically form an ad-hoc network). Another is that if any of them do have access to the internet, the connection is shared with all the other machines on the ad-hoc network.
One of the problems in many developing countries is that they are so far behind and their demographics are so skewed, that even if you built schools (and added the books and other infrastructure necessary to make it useful), you wouldn't have the necessary teachers.
The OLPC is $100 today. In 2 years, they will likely be cheaper and more reliable. We only need a few iterations of moore's law to get to the $10 laptop, given an established and proven market.
OLPC isn't a cure-all, and it is a radical departure from previous attempts, and may well fail to achieve some of it's objectives, but doing the same-old-thing has been demonstrated to not work, so I'm all for trying something new in the way of building out infrastructure for education.
We have now seen that given a low-cost publishing platform, large-scale volunteer efforts can collaborate to create astonishing reference and educational resources, so I have no doubts that the necessary materials can and *will* be created, translated, internationalized, and distributed through these machines, and that the children they are given to will become active participants in these efforts very quickly.
#24: The problem with "curriculum development" is that it's nowhere near as portable (no pun intended) as the laptop itself. If we were talking about a curriculum for just one country (say, Brazil), then it would be a lot more feasible to ask the OLPC project to think seriously about it. But a curriculum that works (in the various senses of fitting into the school system, fitting into the local culture and environment, and meshing acceptably with prevailing local ideologies) in Brazil will not necessarily work in Nigeria or China, even if you ignore all the messy details of language and content.
David Levine @ 25: I don't claim to fathom Marvel's corporate logic, nor do I think that old Spider-Man reprints (or superhero stuff in general) are the best way to increase interest in comics.
But the Ditko/Lee Spider-Man issues certainly aren't worthless; they're a heavy influence on the Sam Raimi films, for example, and one of the few superhero works to make the Comics Journal's Top 100 English Comics of the 20th Century. See Douglas Wolk's article in Salon for a concise, thoughtful response to Ditko's work.
I think books are more important that schoolhouses in much of the global south, and the OLPC can hold a lot of books. The team is insisting on open source licenses for both software and content. It probably won't do everything that it's hoped to do, and there will also be some unpleasant unexpected consequences from its wide distribution, but I think it is going to make a big difference, and one on balance positive. It's easy to say that we'd like a complete solution to the problems, but the fact of the matter is that we don't know what that would look like and there are people willing to do this design and market it.
I'm quite cynical, by the way, of the utility of 3-D printers in much of the third world; I suspect that good old fashioned industrial production is more what is needed--they need lots of pipe, not fancy fittings. In particular, the 3-D printer technology is not likely to producing useful computer components anytime soon.
Randolph@31: that's actually the reason I'm not totally down on the project; there's a pretty good chance that these things turn into decent book readers even if the larger transformative vision completely fails to plan out. But even that can't be taken completely for granted; if nothing else, the books (in local languages, on locally relevant topics) need to be prepared for electronic distribution, and (pace my earlier remarks) that's a project all by itself. Which is why I'm bothered that in public (and, so far as I can tell, in private) this part of the job is getting so little emphasis.
Michael@28: the OLPC power story has been evolving somewhat since last year, when Lee Felsenstein (of Homebrew Computer Club fame, and a few third-world projects since) pointed out, in the course of a wide-ranging critique, that the amount of force you'd need to apply to the crank to generate the power to run the laptop, under very optimistic assumptions, was still well beyond what you could reasonably expect from a kid. I understand they're now considering string-pull devices, among other things. (They haven't publically disavowed the crank, but you can find mention of the string pulls, for the moment at least, on a talk page on their wiki). Also, the current price tag is really about $138 --- they do expect to hit the $100 price in the future, but that does already anticipate price drops in some components.
I'm in charge of the toy drive barrels at work this year. I thought I'd set a good example and prime them with a couple of bags of goodies.
I bought some fancy "older kids" gifts*, but thought it would be fun to go to the Dollar Tree and load up on stocking stuffers.
It is interesting to see what you can get for a buck. When I was a kid, there were always cheap "carded" toys that were embarassingly shabby, but now a days, thanks to the miracle of sweatshop labor, you can buy some fairly acceptable playthings.
Back in the early 90s, I worked for a third-rate software company whose big seller was a line of CD-ROM story books. Most of them were bundled with cheap home PCs, but the retail price was at least $15. Now, the equivalent, with better looking art, costs a buck!
There were some pretty good pirate figures. You can't go wrong with pirates.
Magnifying glasses. Big thick ones, in frames shaped like starfish and seashells and the like. In sunny weather, magnifying glasses double as Martian Heat Rays, which come in handy when you get tired of you pirate action figures.
There was an interesting mix of licensed and knock-off playthings. You could get a X-Men jigsaw puzzle for example. There was a licensed Play-doh set with a tiny plastic extrusion press, and an unlicensed "Fun Clay" set which with bigger tools and a more generous selection of d'oh. The book shelf had books featuring the "Mall Girl Pals," designed to look like Bratz* but not so much as to invite a lawsuit.
They had some nice musical instruments: Triangles and tambourines and recorders and the like. Now, I know from the anguished testimony of parents that noisy toys aren't appreciated, but parents do _choose_ the items from these barrels, so I figure someone would appreciate them.
Scariest product: A religious-themed coloring book titled "I'm Ready When You Are, God!"
Stefan
* Reportedly, toy drives are way overloaded with stuffed animals. Sentimental saps who hear a pitch for a toy drive picture beaming toddlers hugging teddy bears, and load up the barrels with plush, not thinking of the older kids. The local drive provided suggested toys for teens, including boom boxes, women's toiletry sets, electric razors, gift certificates for CD stores, and early-90s vintage Civic hatchbacks ready for conversion to street racers.
** The Bratz are an immensely successful marketing concept aimed at girls, centered around a line of dolls with heavily made-up faces bearing expressions of contempt and evil. As "aspiration figures" go, they're even worse role models than the Barbie (tm) Trophy Wife Pink Miata (tm) playset.
One further point on OLPC content development: a third-world Wikipedia (or more likely, several) would be a great thing, even taking the troubles of the first-world model into account. But Wikipedia did not spring into existence overnight; it took a few years after the widespread deployment of the web in the first world before it became a really useful resource. So, localized third-world equivalents would have to be seeded somehow to be successful --- including seed personnel to perform critical wiki-gardening and dispute resolution. Moreover, the most likely content authors for such a thing would be adults with experience to share --- but OLPC is emphatically one laptop per child, with no plans to distribute the machines to adults outside the educational system. Which also means that central resources within a country of any kind will be government resources, with the attendant distortion. (Anyone else remember when the proto-Internet was literally a Pentagon project, and the charades needed to keep the mere existence of the sf-lovers mailing list formally deniable?)
Which is another reason why I wish they'd stop insisting on their government-based deployment model and just sell the machines --- I think that spontaneous development of interesting content is more likely to arise among adults than kids, and without formal government involvement.
Charles Dodgson --
One of the financing plans, vice the friend who went to that conference, is to sell the laptops in the first world at 1-for-2 prices. His opinion of that is that if the things had been for sale both his kids would have one right now.
The government-based deployment model is utterly vital in, say, Libya -- if the OLPC guys can -- which it looks like all the world they can -- make providing every child in the country with a good communications tool a matter of leader-manliness, that's very, very important. Makes it that much harder for the local established order to go all change-disallowing on them, just for starters.
Market models fail at education, generally, anyway -- you need the education first, to evaluate what you need -- so government involvement is seriously important, and OLPC was fundamentally conceived as a transformative education project.
Oh, and component price drop -- really aggressive component price drop, sometimes exceeding half initial price over the course of an 8 month product production life -- is built into everybody else's hardware Bill of Materials planning. (Often by contract; it can make being a sub-assembly supplier very interesting.) Don't see why the OLPC folks shouldn't do it, too.
Kathryn at 4, we do that in rec.arts.sf.composition. Mostly people who post inappropriately are clearly spamming or trolls, but sometimes people seem to have just approached the group wrong, and then we tell them we'll talk about their problem if they want to stick around.
For the comics fans-just saw via Neil Gaiman's blog Dave Cockrum has died.
Just thought I'd drop a note here - Dave Cockrum passed away today from complications of diabetes; he had just turned 63 two weeks ago.
This may not be appropriate here since he wasn't a writer, but he was a storyteller, and as artist on The Legion of Super-Heroes, a science-fiction one at that. He designed some of the coolest looking comic book characters created in the 1970s, including several of the new X-Men, like everyone's favorite blue-furred Bavarian *BAMF*er, Nightcrawler, and the cool Kenyan climatokinetic, Storm.
The link above is to his Wikipedia entry, which includes a link to the announcement of his death on the Nightscrawlers forum.
Anyone remember an online quiz testing one's sense of continuity of personhood?
That is, it presented various situations to see if you thought the person entering the situation was the same as the person exiting the situation. i.e. are you the same if your brain is transplanted to a new body, or do you survive a transporter beam, etc. One could call it a 'can you Think Like a Dinosaur ?' (audio version link) test.
On the topic of personhood and memory:
60 Minutes (US news show) had a very SFNal segment tonight. They covered propranolol, an adrenaline-blocker that can erase the stress response to bad memories.
That is, if you have a tramatic memory, you take the drug and think of that memory. The scubbing power of propranolol detaches the stress-response from remembering. From then on, thinking that memory doesn't flood you with stress. Think of your most embarrassing or horrifying memory- then imagine being able to remember it simply as an event, without horror or fear.
They gave examples of it being used (currently used) to prevent ptsd in rape victims or car-crash victims. They had a contrarian bioethicist saying that it's a dangerous drug because it can stop shame. I'm not so worried about that- many idiots who do damaging stupid things don't seem to feel much shame now, so I don't want their shame to derail a useful PTSD treatment. However, I can imagine soldiers being given it just before combat, as an early version of Richard Morgan's Betathanatine: that's a dangerous use.
ugh.
i've had a hotmail account since i think late 2001, but ever since i got a gmail account & switched my address book over, i can go weeks without checking hotmail. apparently i went one or more too many weeks without checking it, & my account was gone.
they said they were "holding" an account for me, & i signed in & all that, but all my old messages are nowhere. goddamn it. i was planning to raid those for comic material before too long. i just kept putting it off.....
computer people: it's all gone now, right? that's it? there's no secret sneaky way i can get my freakin emails back?
Miriam @40,
Sorry, yes, that data is gone. I knew a person who once lost an account like that (also hotmail) and tried to recover it- not possible. Short of the NSA having a copy, and 50 years from now you datamining the Transparent Society's stacks... ouch. For hotmail, yahoo, etc, memory still costs... Gmail is a loss-leader, I've heard.
(on backups and memory, my 21st century moment:
Today I picked up a 20 gigabyte 1.8 inch (about the size of half a pack of cards or a very slim altoids tin) USB-powered hard drive. Into it goes my essential files, including all contents of all my hard drives from the 1980s-2001, a Matrioshka backup. $40. Sure, it's larger than thumb drives and smaller than the 1 terabyte hdds on Fry's shelves, but for today I'm amazed by it. It's a sleek small $2/Gbyte.)
nineteen seventy five was the year that life began
You too, Fragano?
#39 propranolol
There's a lot of SF you could attach to the good and bad uses! (Write on!). Howsoever, note that it doesn't interfere (claimed) with the recall of facts, just of the emotional load ... and with the "specially stored" aspect. The swimming rat tests were impressive. The idea is that it makes the traumatic day "just a day".
What about the courtroom drama aspects ... "witness J seems most uninvolved." "Your honor, see exhibit 955, prescription for propranolol..."
How about the epidemiological aspects? millions of people have been taking this stuff for high blood pressure, followup study anyone? Surely enough of them have been in car accidents, murders, divorces, etc. to make a statistical universe.
My wife asked the fascinating question "does it affect the recall of experiences of profound joy or excitement in the same way"?
#39, #43 ... forget propranolol being used by the military, as a pre-combat PTSD prophylactic: like all beta blockers in its class, its primary medical use is as an antihypertensive. The last thing you want your soldiers doing is fainting when they stand up, wandering around in a depressurized haze, and generally being unable to pull themselves together while the bullets are flying!
The Spider-Man reprints locally are carried in the New York Post. I already have two or three complete sets of the Lee-Ditko Spider-Man--the sequential reprints in Marvel Tales from the early 1980s and the complete Amazing Spider-Man CD package, plus possibly another that eludes me--so I haven't felt any compulsion to pick these up even though I could do so for free. But I think they're a great promotional; anecdotal evidence continues to support my belief that kids love comics, regardless of vintage, if they don't have to pay for them.
Miriam, there's probably a backup somewhere, but it's not very likely that Hotmail can be persuaded to have one of their engineers spend time recovering it.
Over on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books they've posted some haiku based on Nebula-winning novels. Take a look.
@#33
I'm very glad someone else realizes the complete and total evil that is the Bratz franchise.
Whenever I see any parent buying Bratz dolls I want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them, then shove them towards the My Little Ponies/Strawberry Shortcake while shouting "Your little girls are still CHILDREN! Their greatest aspiration in life shouldn't be to get laid in the back of a limo while wearing a $3000 prom dress!"
I used to watch a lot of saturday morning cartoons. There was a commercial for Bratz prom playset that strongly implied that scenario... renting a limo, dressing in an extremely slutty manner, and having a "very special" night with the hottest guy in school.
I watched in blank horror, wondering how our stories changed so much in 15 years. We went from a girl queen riding her magical horse on rainbows to return color to the world to... that.
We need a satire featuring the Grown-Up Bratz . . . living with mom and dad and trying to raise little Typhanee when not working in the Panda Express at the mall food court.
Henry #43:
My wife asked the fascinating question "does it affect the recall of experiences of profound joy or excitement in the same way"?
Ugh. What a horribly dystopian punishment that would make.
And it would ruin a great song forever.
Randolph @ #31
Utility of 3-d printers?
Making small, fiddly bits like valves, where close tolerances spell the difference between success and failure. Not everything can be solved with pipe. You need faucets too.
Kimiko, yes. But without pipe valves don't matter, and valves can be produced by industrial processes. There may be something that 3-D printing can do for places without industry, but I don't think that's it.
Just wanted to check in with everybody who gave me recommendations for my trip to Boston/Worcester to let them know that I had a great time, even if I didn't actually get to that many of the recommended attractions. The Flickr set documenting the trip has some pretty awesome shots of the Higgins Armory Museum in particular, and I want to give a special shout out to Pandemonium Books which was definitely worth the pilgrimage in to Cambridge all on its own. So thanks to all of you (especially Alex and Susan) for your guidance!
I enjoyed the trip so much, in fact, that I'm contemplating returning for Boskone...
Propanolol:
Took the stuff for three years for hypertension and all my old nightmares still have their full emotional charge. Also made some new ones while I was taking it...
OLPC:
If they're presenting it as the ultimate answer to everything, well, we all know how well that works.
What is the question?
But if it's just another tool, then criticizing it as Not the Ultimate Answer to Everything is probably not fair, or useful, and reminds me of the Seattle-based political organization called Citizens for More Important Things, who rally in full strength to put down levies to support sports venues, but never show up to actually be for anything.
#33 and #48: Add me to the list of folks who absolutely, positively, will not permit Bratz into their homes. With two children (one, a daughter approaching her sixth birthday), both parents agree that the message of that franchise is destructive and harmful to healthy development of children. Adults can get as trashy, provocative, or sexy as they wish. But marketing that stuff to four, five, six year olds is, we say, Right Out.
Charles@32,33--I suspect treadle-powered versions are practical; for sheer gaslamp sf wierdness, I like that idea. But, really, inexpensive PVs will probably do, most places.
It does seem to me that people like Juan Cole would be good to seed content.
While the current version is strictly an educational device, there's no reason why the software can't be made to run on other devices. Adult versions are also possible.
I think they've got a platform that someone will be able to do interesting things with. That said, I do agree that Negroponte, Papert, et al are trying to substitute content synopses for content. I also think that insisting on free content may turn out to be limiting. Authors and artists want to be paid; unlike major figures in FOSS few authors and artists have employers who fund them, or enough the free time and discretionary income that allows them to do work they can give away.
Leah Miller:
Whenever I see any parent buying Bratz dolls I want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them
Damn straight.
then shove them towards the My Little Ponies/Strawberry Shortcake
Whoa, there: you just lost me. There are tons of dolls out there--I know, I've got a niece--and I'll happily shell out for a Breyer horse when it comes time rather than a manufactured fad like My Pretty Pony. And whenever I look at the costumes and add-ons for Strawberry Shortcake I think of "Johnny Longtorso, the doll that comes in pieces!" (Thanks you MST3K.) Neither is Wrong like Bratz, but I tend to go for stuff that seems less engineered.
What bothers me as much as the Bratzs' icky suggestion of tweener sexuality (which hopefully might go over the heads of tykes) is that they look like "mean girls."
They look like they belong to the sort of clique that drives sensitive kids into neurotic isolation, teases the awkward and disabled, and fuels materialistic "arms races" in clothing and bling.
* * *
A few weeks back, I ordered a sample copy of CRAFT, the distaff-oriented companion periodical to MAKE. My intention was to give it a brief read-through, then pass it on to my sister and her kids. Thing is, it's awfully funky. A touch of Goth, a bit of Nerrrd Grrrrl.
My sister . . . she's Martha Stewart and the kids are Disney Princesses.
But I'm going to send it anyway. Maybe it will open their eyes a bit and keep the Bratz away.
@#58, from Bruce E. Durocher II
If I dismissed every toy that was made to sell like wildfire... well then I'd dismiss a lot of toys. The key here is to think of the creaters as writers, rather than marketing wonks. Are they good writers?
My Little Pony and Rainbow Brite are examples of manufactured brands that understood that you can be a highly successful brand and NOT pander to unhealthy expectations. I'm not saying they're the ideal toy. But there are two kind of toys: those with an inbuilt world and those without one. Every kid is going to want some toys with an inbuilt world, but you get to decide what world they come into.
Chosing a toy series is a lot like chosing a world setting for a roleplaying game. What assumptions, what powers, what morals do you want? To me a Breyer horse speaks of reality and of nature. I had a lot of photorealistic farm animal toys, and mostly they led to setting up farms, and having my dolls ride them, and other fairly down-to-earth adventures. But a My Little Pony is obviously from "somewhere else" and the ponies are obviously sentient. In their earlier incarnation they were also implicitly magical, which is a theme that's less present in the newest generation. Still when I see girls play with them they somehow instantly know that they're in a world that is not like this one, and some really awesome things come of that.
I still cling to the idea that manufactured and marketed doesn't always equal badness. Look at The Real Ghostbusters,: though it was an incredibly shrewdly marketed spinoff to a hollywood movie, it told a lot of great stories about the occult. When I was a kid I wanted a copy of Tobin's Sprit Guide more than anything. It was a cartoon show that made 7 year old me wish for an encyclopedic reference of old gods and monsters.
It's like Tarzan. Extremely highly polished brand identiy franchise. Does that mean it's no good for kids?
When I look at kids brands I ask myself "What story does this tell? What goals do these stories have? What motives are rewarded? Is there room to go outside the lines here?" If I like the answers to these questions I put it in the "good brand" box. If I don't, then I don't buy them.
I like Groovy Girls - they're less plastic-y. This is a personal prejudice. Mind you, if my niece were totally into Strawberry Shortcake, I could cope. I've coped so far with the Disney Cinderella Princess request and so forth.
But what I send her on a semi-regular basis is stuff like fancy paper, stickers, and a set of 100 colored markers in neon, glitter, and everything! Must talk to parents and see if she needs a new marker set.
I finished reading The Year's Best SF #11 yesterday. Good stuff, although I prefer longer-length stories to 2-pagers. I especially enjoyed Paul McAuley's "Rats in the System". Can anybody recommend any other New Space Opera story of his? I took advantage of my trip to the Bay Area for a visit of bookstore Dark Carnival in Berkeley on Friday afternoon, hoping I'd find collections or novels by McAuley, but they didn't really have anything that'd qualify as Space Opera new or old. (I also saw Lisa Goldstein at the store when I came in, but she was talking with someone else and I also didn't want to make a fool of myself even if it was just to say hello - I can compress an amazing amount of foolishness into opening my mouth to say a single word.)
I had a dream last night about a real-life Making Light salon at the home of our esteeemed host and hostess.
Interestingly, the chief feature of this dream was the delicious brunch they laid on for everyone. It began with lemon muffins and fruit, and by the time I woke up, we had proceeded to sandwiches and salads of all kinds, genuine Indian chai with genuine spices, something involving great slabs of ginger the size of my hand, and a large bowl of something surrounded by stacks of tortillas.
I think the secret meaning of this dream is that I am hungry. I believe the occasion of my first comment here was a recipe for nectarine salad.
(If we did all descend on the Nielsen Haydens and demand brunch, the recipe for Hot Gingered Pygmy Mammoth might have to be attempted [and maybe that's what the great slabs of ginger were for]. We'd have to bring our own mammoth, though.)
Caroline, if I may paraphrase Sigmund (Poulet) Freud, sometimes a brunch is just a brunch.
Leah Miller [60]:
It's like Tarzan. Extremely highly polished brand identi[t]y franchise. Does that mean it's no good for kids?
I'm not sure where Tarzan as it exists today fits in this, mind you, it was just a convenient hook on which to hang the thought.
Sarge @ 62: I also saw Lisa Goldstein at the store when I came in
Good god. Of course you should have said hello. I hardly ever recognize anyone -- once I didn't even recognize my brother.
Yes, it's a true shame about Dave Cockrum. I expect that Marvel will do a tribute of some sort to Dave, because it's so much easier to give a tribute to a dead man that they can get people to buy than to pay him his fair share of the friggin' X-Men, or to even cover his medical expenses.
So, what did you guys think of the new Beatles albums?
#48, Leah Miller:
I watched in blank horror, wondering how our stories changed so much in 15 years. We went from a girl queen riding her magical horse on rainbows to return color to the world to renting a limo, dressing in an extremely slutty manner, and having a "very special" night with the hottest guy in school.
Cynical part of me was about to say "You do realise they're basically the same stories, only the form has changed ?", to which neurotic part of me pre-emptively answered "Duh ! And what else of worth is there to change according to you ?".
Thankfully, autistic part of me doesn't care and is dominant as long as coffee hasn't been supplied, or it would have put everyone in it's place with a cold, oddly peremptory, "You're all wrong, you know ? And who cares anyway ?".
Also, as long as we're talking equestrian wonders, psychotic part of me would like to know who thought it was a good idea to shave the unicorn's beard.
"Every kid is going to want some toys with an inbuilt world [...].
Every kid that had more fun with the cardboards and wrapping-ups than with the actual offered toys each christmas might beg to differ. (I was one, yup, never liked that my parents got to impose me the "inbuilt world" of their choice. I mean how could they give my younger self Big Jim trash when all he wanted was the new Régis Boyer translation of the Sigurdr Saga he couldn't even really read yet [but hey, was that cover nice !] ? See what it did to me ?)
Hum.
#68 MD²
Aw darn, I used an absolute. Doh! Never 'every', always 'most', I say!
Still, I'd be very interested to know what era/area you grew up in that none of the manufactured story toys appealed to you. I'm not just talking about the ones your parents actually bought, was there never a toy you wanted that had a story with it? I'm not saying that free play toys aren't better, I'm saying that there can be balance and that some fun can be had from the story-made ones.
Not that I wouldn't want to encourage kids that way. I've babysat for kids surrounded by crafting materials, art supplies, solid pine wooden blocks, etc... and seen them treasure above it all a single spongebob toy they got out of a happy meal when they were at a birthday party. The parents tried to avoid that stuff, but sometimes you can't. In some cases the refuge is an American girl doll... which isn't bad because it's history, but it's still a brand-marketed world with a built in character history. Sometimes you just want a friend you feel like you know. Sometimes you want a real superman cape, or a real Alf stuffed animal.
I was in the middle of all of this. I spent more time climbing trees, collecting rocks, building forts or cities, making dresses out of scraps of cloth, etc then playing with ponies or dolls; but I played with the ponies too, and the dinosaurs and the trucks, and the superheroes... often all at the same time.
Then again, at that age in that era "marketed brands" were basically the only stories telling me I could be or do whatever I wanted to, as a girl, and that I could come out on top. I could win, I could rule. And the thing was, I didn't have to be the only girl in a bunch of guys to do it. I could rule, win, create, and I could be surrounded by other girls while I did so, and competing against them for men didn't enter into it at all. Even mythology and fairy tales didn't really let me know that very often.
I think that's why I'm so defensive of these things... at that time to me these were the most real and powerful and adventurous stories I had. Trying to say they weren't important strikes some deep chord with me, much in the same way people who try to tell me that sci-fi and fantasy isn't for grown ups hurts. I know a lot of other girls of my era who feel the same way,
And that is, to me, why the stories are not the same, as you implied above. In one a girl's ultimate victory is a man. In the other it is creation, and color, and a kingdom of her own. And that was the only story I knew where a girl ended up that way, though I could have told you a hundred where boys did.
Lisa... It's not that you didn't recognize me at Dark Carnival. You never happened to look in my direction and it'd have been rude of me to insert myself into the conversation. I guess I could have done a Chevy Chase impersonation of Gerald Ford to draw your attention...
When I was a young girl, back in the pre-Pleistocene, the only "came with a story" toy I can think of was Barbie. And she came out just after I mostly gave up dolls. What I used her for was to learn to sew; I was given a bunch of Barbie clothes patterns, a toy sewing machine, and some fabric scraps. Some amazing creations resulted.
(Wait, did "Chatty Cathy" have a story? Not that I ever had one.)
If any of my other dolls (including a Raggedy Ann imitation with a vinyl hat brim) had stories attached, I didn't know them; my biggest doll thing was the time I lined them all up in the front hall and conducted a fully choral church service.
I got a toy oven and a not entirely toy iron; you definitely made up your own stories for that. The tea set in a metal suitcase was the trigger for all sorts of grow-your-own things. The toy airplane, the toy truck, and the little cars were all totally generic; I remember seeing the child-size T-Bird (almost certainly pedals instead of engine) offered as a sweepstakes prize and thinking "wow" simply for its connection to the "real" world.
The things I played with the most were the Tinkertoys and the weirdly shaped wood scraps from my father's workshop. I generated whole buildings and city architectures.
Last Xmas, my wife gave our 4-year-old nephew a generic cape and he's still using it to make up his own superhero adventures. Imagination isn't dead. It helps of course when my nephew has a 51-year-old uncle (that'd be me) around to be the big mean supervillain intent upon crushing Captain Underwear (as his mom calls him)
Aw darn, I used an absolute. Doh! Nearly never 'every', almost always 'most', I say! -_^
About toys, nay I really didn't liked them (grew up in France in the heighties if it can help). The worst was that as soon as my family got out of dire poverty (I must have been around six at the time) my parents did all they could to shower me with them each christmas, and I used to feel somewhat guilty for not caring about them.
The only ones I liked were: the two plush I had been offered at my birth (still have them right there next to me on my bed) and a UFO transformer-like toy with which I never really played. But I loved it; it was offered to me by a friend when I was sent to the hospital after being hit by a car, and apart from the purely sentimental value, there was something about its shape when in UFO form I really found... let's say "elegant" though that was not the word I'd have used at the time. I like it the same way I like the shino ceramics I own. Purely because of the direct sensual/aesthetic pleasure it gives me.
As for the importance of differences of those stories, of course you're right. Don't mind cynical and neurotic me anyway, they're pretty bad company in general (plus, as autistic part of me pointed out, they were both wrong).
Now cooking part of me will go finish making crêpes, but only after confusing part of me has presented some kind (don't ask which, I don't know) of excuses in the name of all "me" versions for nearly only talking about myself... or something.
Anyone want some rhubarb ?
MD2:
Real as in grow-in-the-ground rhubarb, or already picked and cut? Because if it's roots, I'll sign up. (Ever the optimist, trying to grow it somewhat out of its best climate range, but knowing that it can be done.)
I love that Lester Dent story outline (Sidelights). There was a version of it -- apparently abridged some -- in Steranko's history of the comics, and I typed it out for my own reference. It's still in my papers somewhere. I have saved the more complete version.
Charlie @44,
Oops, meant to say 'just after combat,' as a way to take the edge off of civilian casualties. The fight-or-flight chemical flood shouldn't be sidetracked if one is about to go into a fight.
Another thing certain beta-blockers can do is give one an instant case of depression.
Happened last year to a good friend. She started taking one for a condition, and within a few hours she called me because she'd become horribly depressed. Not just stressed or worried, but a full 'your family is dead, all is lost, the sun will never rise again and its all your fault' deep pain depression.
She was barely able to make a phone call. I looked up that beta-blocker, saw depression as a side-effect, zipped over to her house and had her call her doctor. After stopping it (changing to one that doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier) all was well within a day.
Certainly a strong argument against the [cruel idiots] who say that depression is nothing but not thinking the right thoughts. If they're susceptible to that beta-blocker, their happy thoughts would help like an umbrella against a tornado.
So, no recommendations re Paul McAuley and New Space Opera?
Stefan @ 33: Magnifying glasses... which come in handy when you get tired of you pirate action figures.
Heh. When I was a kid, I used a magnifying glass to put a very satisfactory smoldering dent in GI Joe's chest. He was pretty robust, having also survived a run in with a push-mower while being buried chest-deep in hard dirt.
My friends' slightly spoiled kids just had a new load of booty dumped on them for their 3rd (boy) and 5th (girl) birthdays. It's astounding how strongly gender-typed toys have become. My little niece got a dance lesson DVD, targeting girls only, with a bright pink balance bar and a video led by an android-like perky dance teacher who was somewhere between 18 and 22. The thing really pushed the girly-girl thing to the limit. I predict a generational backlash in about 10 years.
Me, I get Legos or Playmobil for toy drives.
Larry, the way you treated your toys remind me of the movie Toy Story. Remember the evil kid next door?
Serge - It was just GI Joe who got the, er, enhanced interrogation techniques. I guess I just didn't like his narrative.
Does anyone know what happens to contact lens solution in checked baggage these days? Do they make you pour it out, or do they only do that if you try to carry it with you...? I'm flying in January -- need to know.
Lizzy - You can carry any size container of contact lens solution in your checked baggage, but if it's open be sure to squeeze the extra air out and put the thing in a zipper bag, lest the air pressure changes dampen your clothes.
You can carry a 3oz or smaller container on board, but it has to fit in your Freedom Baggie (a 1 qt zippper bag for all your carry-on fluids and gels - limited freedom for a limited future!).
The TSA is making it sound like an exciting new feature to be allowed this limited liquid level. Oh, and a bottle of water is now between $2.15 (@RDU) and $4 (@EWR) on the "secure" side of the checkpoint.
Serge @ #72:
It helps of course when my nephew has a 51-year-old uncle (that'd be me) around to be the big mean supervillain intent upon crushing Captain Underwear (as his mom calls him).
Captain Underwear? Or Captain Underpants? If its the latter, there's a whole series of books detailing the comic (and, perhaps unsurprisingly, scatalogical) adventures of this atypical hero (Tra-la-la!). Also, perhaps unsurprisingly, they are calibrated for the sense of humor posessed largely by 4-8 yr-old boys.
Lizzy,
You can have liquid meds larger than 3.4oz (100ml) with you in carry-on, but you're supposed to "declare" them. Meds shouldn't go into, and don't count towards your one liquids and gels freedom baggie.
If you wanted to proactively follow the rules exactly you'd tell them you've got liquid meds greater than 3.4oz, and they'd write something on the back of your boarding pass. The TSA doesn't insist on this, though*.
Here's the TSA on medicines. While they don't specifically mention contact lens solution, it is for medical uses. From what I read on Flyertalk (Here's a good thread, which also discusses the existence of 2oz bottles and how to pack lens solution):
1. If you have a prescription on your solution, no problem at all.
2. If you declare it, you usually won't have a problem.
3. If you don't declare it, you might not have a problem, but every once in a while a TSA agent wants to play diagnosis and doctor and tell you that lens solution isn't medical.
If you have the time, temperment and inclination, please do fight back if faced with an agent practicing medicine like that.(After the agent, ask for the supervisor, then for the "Ground Security Coordinator." I wrote about this recently on ML, but the "see all by" isn't working?)
* For me this means I take my freedom baggie out of my bag and into the xray trays. *If* they ask about liquid meds still in my bag, I tell them "Those are medicines."
Kathryn @ 84 - Given that the TSA recently seized my Rx nasal spray (which fit in the freedom baggie and was way less than 3 oz but had "scary" packaging) I wouldn't want to argue with them as to whether contact lens solution was "medicine" or not. I'd just buy a small bottle for travel. My first take on it was that it was a hygiene product, not a medical product and needed to fit in the freedom baggie. I wouldn't be surprised if the highly skilled TSA screeners thought the same thing.
The donation barrels arrived at work today. Two from the Oregon Food Bank, two from the Tualitin Valley Toy and Joy program.
I seperated them a bit, and just - in - case put signs reading FOOD over the first pair and TOYS over the second. Then I seeded them with the bags of goodies I had bought over the weekend.
Then, as an afterthought, I put a cardboard box halfway between the two pairs of barrels and labled it SOCKS, using the same jolly typeface as the other signs.
I'm going to buy a few pair at the Dollar Tree tomorrow and put them in the sox box. Who knows, maybe I'll start a trend.
Larry,
The TSA agents were wrong. If they're telling you you don't need that Rx nasal spray, then they're practicing unlicenced medicine, and that is illegal. Of course they don't see it that way. The system lets them get away with it because they have little incentive to learn to be right.
One incentive can be a passenger who escalates the incident- calls for the supervisor- but most passengers aren't in a position to fight back. If someone does have a little extra time and patience, then it's worth trying. Or if one can get a badge number, then write a letter afterwards.
But then again, the TSA is just scary. If they're searching my bag- touching personal items with dirty gloves!- I have the right to ask them to put on fresh gloves. You'd think I'd always ask for fresh gloves. I wish I did, but I don't, not if the flight is departing soon.
Re-reading the flyertalk thread, lens solution probably isn't the thing to choose a battle over- it packs, there are 2oz bottles (mostly samples for doctors, but at least one in stores), and it's sold everywhere.
larry,
I predict a generational backlash in about 10 years.
o, i hope it happens earlier. i want to have children before then.
babysitting for my tiny niece in september, the thing that struck me is how gendered shoes for freakin two-year-olds are. we just couldn't find any that weren't mary janes, pink, sparkly, or all three.
Stefan (#86): I put a cardboard box halfway between the two pairs of barrels and labled it SOCKS, using the same jolly typeface as the other signs.
I'm going to buy a few pair at the Dollar Tree tomorrow and put them in the sox box. Who knows, maybe I'll start a trend.
A long-time institution here in NYC is the NY Cares Winter Coat Drive (this is its 18th year); you may have seen the ads at some point (especially if you were in this area during December), with the Statue of Liberty shivering and huddling in a thin blanket. I've given, and also done some volunteer work for them during the drive a few years ago, and it's a terrific cause.
If socks are what works out there, then go for it. Who knows; I could even buy a few packages (kids' socks? or adult?) and send them, myself.
Captain Underwear? Or Captain Underpants?
I don't think my sister-in-law would know about the latter, protected static. I probably should mention it to her as I'm all for corrupting young minds with comic-books. It's like last year when I went to my barber and the only seat was near a 3-year-old girl. As I sat down, she looked up at me and I smiled but she responded with a you-weirdo expression. Until I started reading some comic-books of mine and I found myself having to explain that Ben Grimm may look mean, but he really is a nice guy.
More evidence that Jeph Jaques reads Making Light:
today's Questionable Content. Read to the end for Bratz doll funnay.
Jon Carroll today:
"...There's a new social problem, and I think we need to be aware of it. According to the New York Times, the gap between the rich and the super-rich is expanding. The people who fly first class are resentful of the people who time-share private jets. The people with two houses are getting fed up with the people who have four. There is turmoil..."
In the hey-that's-NOT-what-I-thought-I-was-buying dept...
I went to Borders yesterday to do some Xmas shopping. Meaning I bought for myself the DVD of Superman returns and Superman ii as its original director intended it to be. (I wonder if this version has General Zod expecting as much kneeling from his opponents.) And for my father-in-law I got the restored version of The Big Red One. Or so I thought. When I slid the DVD out of its cardboard container, I found myself staring at a romantic comedy with Laura Linney and Matthew Broderick.
Thanks, everyone. Sounds like it's perfectly okay for me to carry lens solution in a bag I am checking, which is what I will do. And yes, if worst comes to worst I can not carry it at all, and buy some at my destination. I don't wear contacts when flying so I won't suffer any hardship not having the stuff with me.
As another kid from the pre-Pleistocene, I also got a Barbie just when I was getting tired of dolls (but I never did get into sewing, so the most I did was try to change her makeup with crayons -- crude and ineffective). The pink-sparkles-and-ponies thing was big in the Fifties too, but that doesn't mean the kid has to accept it! Wooden construction sets and interesting books should work a lot better as gifts.
The only dolls my wife ever played with were action figures, but, unlike Larry Brennan, she never used a death ray to punch a hole thru their chests. I think.
PS to Serge: If you have access to old issues of Locus, check the online Review Index to see what other reviewers thought of McAuley books (they don't send me that kind of skiffy, so I can't help you myself).
Thanks, Faren. I do have access to old issues of Locus, going all the way back to the summer of 1975, when they were adorned with illos by George Barr and Bill Rotsler. I dread to think of the kind of dust I'll kick up into my nostrils when I dig them out of their boxes though. Heck. It's worth the risk, if it means a good read.
Here's an excerpt from the latest newsletter of the Annals of Improbable Research, where they took the title of a real scientific paper and asked people to write a poem around it.
Some scientisst have way too much free time on their hands.
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The judges have chosen a winner for last month's "Image
Management: Image
Comments on Open Thread 75: