Hey, do I really get to crack this one? Shows I have no life, that that makes me happy.

::joins you in lifelessness::

It's time for that annual exercise in futility we call "picking the Derby winner". I'm down to a choice between Scat Daddy (bad pedigree for the distance, but the best preparation of any horse in the race) and Dominican (steadily improving; some believe he's only good on artificial surfaces, but I think it may be a coincidence that he started getting good while racing on Polytrack.)

::joins you in lifelessness::

It's time for that annual exercise in futility we call "picking the Derby winner". I'm down to a choice between Scat Daddy (bad pedigree for the distance, but the best preparation of any horse in the race) and Dominican (steadily improving; some believe he's only good on artificial surfaces, but I think it may be a coincidence that he started getting good while racing on Polytrack.)

It's also Cinco de Mayo, which gives rise to thoughts of Mint Julep Margaritas and such.

Here's a Lee Judge cartoon from the KC Star I saw this morning that I think some will find entertaining.

I'm going to try making Teresa's limeade. I have a microplane zester, thirtyish limes (I lost count and just bought 'enough' then couldn't force the checkout girl to do it for me), and no idea how much of anything to use. This could end very, very stickily.
On the other hand, every time I try a new recipe, I end up with more miscellaneous kitchen supplies. This one brings with it said zester, a funnel, and a tea strainer.

In this hour of darkness for the Rangers, I think of Messier 11.

there's got to be good sense as well as sound
adding things up doesn't tell us all we'd like
numbers are more pleasing when they're round

what we desire is not just what we've found
the numbers buzz like bees around their bike
there's got to be good sense as well as sound

into the soil the rods and rocks we'll pound
much hangs we learn upon a single spike
numbers are more pleasing when they're round

the words pile up they form a growing mound
against the current they form a large dyke
there's got to be good sense as well as sound

magical colours will in this space abound
the reader will crowd up upon the mike
numbers are more pleasing when they're round

i've staked this out and made this a home ground
what others find i'll count a lucky strike
there's got to be good sense as well as sound
numbers are more pleasing when they're round

The "thicket" of quotation marks in the Particle about "Borderline Personality Disorder" made my "eyes" "hurt." Can somebody who was able to finish it explain what the heck is going on?

Are there actually such things as mint julep margaritas? That sounds amazingly tasty, to the point where I'm tempted to run by the local liquor store to try making one if anyone has a recipe handy.

Can I get some moderately-priced restaurant recommendations for Nebula weekend?

We're going to be in midtown on Friday night. We're looking for good or interesting ethnic. If all else fails, we'll go to Virgil's.

Saturday lunch I'm guessing we'll grab what we can near the hotel (the Marriott Financial Center in downtown). Are some of the restaurants open in that part of town on Saturday? It looks like there's a lot of Thai in the area, which is nice to see.

On Sunday, I want to try to bring a group over to Chinatown for dim sum. It looks like it's only about a mile from the hotel over to Chinatown, which would be a nice walk if the weather is good. I've eaten at a few dim sum places in Chinatown, but I no longer remember the names of them.

Fade, somehow I can't see margaritas made with bourbon.

Linkmeister, this is probably true. But my vast ignorance of alcoholic beverages and endless optimism compels me to ask, just in case!

Jenny @ #9: The short version is that Borderlines, while genuinely in pain and wounded due to a shitty childhood, are very good at making other people feel and seem crazy.

My extended interpretation:

The further problem which that web-page itself embodies - rather than commenting on - is that if you try to deal with the BPD behaviors by forestalling or countermoving against them, you can only do it if you become and act completely paranoid, controlling, and start sounding crazy yourself. This confirms the suspicions of the person with BPD and the people they have convinced you are Bad.

"A strange game. The only way to win is not to play."

#6: I've tried straining Copious Lemonade with a tea-strainer, it's frustrating because the holes clog very quickly with the pulp and there's not enough area of sieve to get a reasonable amount of lemonade through between washings. I think you need a finer-mesh normal-sized sieve, though where one of those comes from I know not.

The microplane zester is very precisely the point of culinary extravagence up to which I will not go; I know they're lovely implements, a housemate had one, but I will not pay $35 for a grater.

Mine was twelve dollars and change, Tom at 15, but it was the grater-zester rather than a grater-grater. I don't have a cheese grater or anything at the moment, and I don't expect I will until Teresa posts a recipe that requires one. It's an adventure turning a post-dorm first apartment kitchen into an actual kitchen. You never know what you're going to need.

Doctor Who now skips a week: next week is something called the Eurovision Song Contest. And, maybe just age, skin-colour, and posh frock, I had one of those moments when, seeing Martha's mum, I wondered if they'd cast Eartha Kitt.

Which leads to the thought of Martha's mum being Catwoman.

"Something called the Eurovision Song Contest" is in fact one of the planet's great annual barking-mad festivals of aesthetic catastrophe. Here's last year's winner. Here's the contest itself.

European readers of Making Light can gloss all this better than I can.

Diatryma @ 16

Yuo'll spend the rest of your life accumulating kitchen tools as you find the need for them. (My mother had one drawer we called the 'funny shapes' drawer: all the odd-shaped things that didn't really fit (in either sense) into the 'spoon' drawer (also including turners) and the 'knife' drawer (the one you looked before reaching into, because everything in there was dangerous). Where do you put potato mashers and garlic presses?)

On straining lemon juice for lemonade: the normal-size mesh works fine; when it starts getting full of pulp, turn it over and pour water through it (unless you're like me and don't mind the pulp).

Can someone repost the lemonade recipe? PNH/TNH?

In other, personal news, my goal is to have the final edit of the thesis done before those horses cross the finish line. As I have about 10 more pages to edit, I should go focus on that rather than read ML.

Thank you, Alan Walker, for spotting the (possible? probable?) malware embedded in the Particle about Borderline Personality Disorder. The warning is much appreciated, and I've taken down the Particle.

PJ at 19, that's part of why I'm having trouble accumulating. It's so much easier in a dorm-- one person has the big pot, one person has the cookie sheets, one person has the electric mixer. Growing up, my family kept a big crock of spatulas, wooden spoons, and a weird springy thing we never used for cooking but were not allowed to play with. No potato masher, though.

Teresa @21, and Clifton @14,

Let me recommend Bully Online as a useful resource. It's the best website I've seen for learning about bullies:
1. what bullies do - see the 4 most common types of bully- and do to you: see am I being bullied?
2. how to recognize the effects bullies have. i.e. stress that often you blame yourself for, because bullies are sneaky like that.
3. how to start countering them and start reducing the stress they've caused.

I know several people who've been helped by this site, including me.

Four years ago I was working at a nonprofit* and getting increasingly and weirdly stressed. I couldn't figure it why, which itself was stressful. Once you've been working for a while, you'd like to think of yourself as fully capable of handling anything reasonable and rational.

Except my boss was an expert at couching the unreasonable and irrational as if they were the most innocuous requests.

Luckily I found the Bullies site: just being able to define the bully-caused stress as such took half the stress away. Her affects on me changed from chronic to acute.

I finished the project and happily went onwards. She died two years later from a stroke: sad, but not unexpected.

All to say that if you know anyone who is getting unusually stressed in a "blaming-themselves even though they can't name what they're doing badly" way, point them to this site. Because it's a UK site the legal matters won't necessarily apply to other locations, but then you'll have the terminology and knowledge to find your local equivalent.

---------
* low wages, good cause, at the height of the low-times for Silicon Valley so changing jobs wasn't easy.

Laurie D.T. Mann #11: One place that comes to mind is the Cabana Carioca Restaurante, Brazilian cuisine, at 123 W 45 St. (There's also the Cabana Carioca II, a couple of doors down at 133 W 45 St.) The times I've eaten there, the food has been good, but the service is uneven. (Sometimes they're quite slow.) Still worth it, and reasonably priced.

Diatryma at #22, I suspect the weird springy thing was a wisk used for scrambling raw eggs. We have one of those.

If you've got a rasp around, it can double as a lemon/lime zesting tool.

Potato mashers go in the crock to the left of the stove. It's the miscellaneous one, closer to the prep area, where things like meat pounders, shears, scissors*, and the big strainer all live. The crock to the stove's right has all the spoons, ladles, nylon cooking forks and spatulas.

There are also three tool drawers. One has stuff I'm most likely to use; the other two contain, respectively: stuff I almost never use, like cookie cutters; and all the impedimenta associated with blender sticks and food processors, along with some other pointy stuff.

I used to notice that every time I watched Alton Brown, I'd end up getting another piece of cooking equipment. (Now he's scheduled across from the late-night weather, so mostly we miss him. Equipment purchases have gone down somewhat.) (Never did feel the need for an Advantium oven, though.)

* It is my contention that the most important kitchen tool is the pair of scissors, so I can cut through all the disgustingly human-proof plastic that's in my way every time I want to open something.

Diatryma @22,

What you need in a kitchen often seems like the first chapter of many cookbooks, and could be a giant thread in itself. [Goes to kitchen. Checks. Perhaps not: several of my favorite cookbooks don't have a tools section. Thought they did.]

Two things I can strongly recommend:

1. splurging on, or not being cheap in getting your good sharp kitchen knives*. A high-quality knive is like a Great Weapon in Brust. It makes you want to use it. Whatever money you'd save on a cheap knife will be lost in spoiled produce and more expensive cuts of meat because you won't want to do as much work yourself.

2. Getting a set of Oxo Good Grips or similar implements**. Same argument as for the knives. Good design makes a tool fun, perhaps effortless, or at least not burdensome.

My Oxo mandoline- that's fun. I'll be looking at produce, and the thought will come "Hey, I haven't tried that yet on the mandoline. Why not?"

ok, three things
3. two silicone oven mitts, and, if you have nonstick pots and pans, a silicone spatula or two. Silicone is a relatively new material for the kitchen and I wouldn't use it for learning to bake, but it makes for much safer oven mitts. I also prefer my silicone basting tool to my old brushes- easier to wash. Note: test your potential purchase by twisting it: all-silicone won't change color, silicone with filler will.
-----
* back 10 open threads ago I'd written:
"A random observation of the really obvious which someone else could still find helpful:

Really sharp kitchen knives are a wonderful thing. I recently found my set of good German knives, the ones I'd let get buried in a box during my last move. I'd forgotten how much ease they add to cooking.

They add a +2 to all things culinary- shopping at farmers markets, browsing recipes- because any ingredient's food prep time/ effort is cut by half. Thus the complexity of recipes I'm willing to try for a given time-budget has gone up correspondingly.

And it wasn't that I was using butter-knives on raw squash, just good, not great, knives."

** Unfortunately I'm not immediately seeing any big sets for sale (i.e. a Costco version).

PNH #18: There's got to be something positive to say about an international competition one of the winners of which was an Afro-Caribbean man representing Estonia.

Diatryma @ 22

I'd recommend signing up for 'Cooks Illustrated' (if you haven't already) because they do reviews of equipment. (The expensive stuff isn't always the best, surprisingly.) They're the ones who do 'America's Test Kitchen Cookbook', the one in the five-ring binder. (Found at Costco a few weeks ago: only $20!) It has recommendations for tools that are necessary and those that are handy-but-not-necessary. Also lots and lots of recipes, in many sections. Got entertained by reading as sets the names of the recipes on the facing pages where the dividers go in.

Fade (#10): I'd try something like this:

Take a silver julep cup, run a lime wedge around the rim and frost with white sugar. In the bottom of the cup, thoroughly muddle, oh, a teaspoon or less of turbinado sugar and a small handful of torn mint leaves, and maybe a little squeeze of lime juice to get it going. In a cocktail shaker, shake 2-3 oz. of reposado or añejo tequila and the juice of half a lime with crushed (not cubed) ice. Pour into the julep cup and give the whole thing a gentle stir or two to work up the sugar and mint. Garnish with a lime wedge and mint sprigs. Strong tequila taste at the start, with a sweet, minty finish.

It's basically a no-salt margarita with mint, prepared like a julep. I have no idea whether this recipe would work, but it's what I'd do. The proportions might need some finessing. Have a backup cocktail available.

I'm getting together with friends tomorrow for Cinco de Mayo a day late -- I'm making ceviche. Spent much too long today juicing a dozen limes with one of those wooden citrus reamers. Luckily I had no hangnails. I wasn't able to get seafood as nice as I wanted--the snapper was a little soft, but it smelled clean. I hope it turns out. I'm thinking of roasting the corn tonight and chilling it overnight before assembly.

Then we're going to go see The Asylum Street Spankers here on tour, which I'm starting to really look forward to.

Howard Peirce:

I may try that! It certainly sounds like it has potential.

This may be a stupid question: how do I crush ice? What springs to mind is "ice cubes, hammer, cutting board on kitchen counter" but I can already picture the potential for ice shards everywhere. (My culinary aptitude is...not what it could be.)

Kathryn FS #27:

Mandolines scare the bejesus out of me (and I'm generally OK w/ sharp edges on things). Is the Oxo in some way considerably safer than the rest of the pack? (I've got a Star, and at this point you'd have to pay me to use it.)

Fragano #28: I know people who throw Eurovision parties every year. I had a few drinks with the Israeli entrants after one of the competitions held in Ireland as I was eating in the restaraunt in their hotel. I still think Patrick's capsule review could be printed on the invitations for next years event:

"One of the planet's great annual barking-mad festivals of aesthetic catastrophe" - PNH

I especially love his Euro-spelling of "esthetic".

Fade, I was kidding about the Mint Julep Margaritas, but apparently I lack imagination. And...ice cubes, dishcloth, hammer, etc. Or a cloth bag if you have one (and don't mind messing it up a bit).

Fold the ice cubes into the dishcloth, and hit it with the hammer. Or if you're very strong and have a marble rolling pin (a marvelous thing for pastries, I'm told), you could try that, but I'd still wrap it in a cloth first.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I've seen this year's British entry on Graham Norton's TV show. He said it was the first thing he'd had on that was gayer than him.

It's marvellous.

Niall McAuley #s33 & 35: Pity I won't be there for that party.

There's someone gayer than Graham Norton? How on earth is that possible?

Fade, use a good ol' Waring-style blender to crush ice. That's what they were originally designed for, before the invention of the smoothie. I used to see these mechanical ice crushers* a lot in thrift stores, which was the way to crush ice before the blender was commonplace. They were standard barware during the Golden Age of the Brandy Alexander, and go well with your Esquivel and Les Baxter LPs.

If you make Margarita juleps, let me know how they taste.

* I see by googling that you can still get mechanical ice crushers (e.g.), now with 21st-century styling. It seems a bit of an affectation to me, but of a certain appeal to the retro-lounge crowd.

Fragano, you asked for it.

Niall McAuley #38: Now I'm going to be really scared the next time I get on a plane....

33, 28, 18: I was talking with a Slovenian friend one night over drinks (a theme?), and he fell into the standard European ex-pat lament about how Americans are a bunch of Philistines with no appreciation for art, culture, or beauty, and I looked him in the eye and said, "Sascha, one word: Eurovision."

"Fair enough," he said, and that was the end of it. And it's a good thing, too, or I would've had to whip out the James Last.

Niall 38: Aaaaauuwww maaaaaaaii gawwwwwwdzzzz. They're doing a parody, right? No...they're serious.

Before seeing that (or rather as much of it as I could stand to watch) if someone had used the phrase "ABBA, only stupider" to describe something, I'd've thought they were exaggerating.

Niall @38: Thank you for that. I'm very pleased to see that Eurovision continues in the grand tradition of being more camp than a field full of pink tents.

Was that song a deliberate micturation extraction of those incredibly sexist "Fly me" ads BA used to run?

Wikipedia entry on Scooch's "Flying the Flag (For You)."

We're doomed, doomed I say. We started out our Cinco de Mayo by adopting two kittens, Siegfried and Yum. Brief trip to grocery store on the way home (someone stayed with them in an open car because of the heat) to buy kitten chow and a temporary litterbox.

Older two cats have noses out of joint but I think they'll adjust. So far: Angelina is on the hassock behind my desk which is her usual place, don't know where Badb Catha is, Yumi is running around on the 2nd floor and Siggy is downstairs running about/sleeping. Alternately. I've witnessed it.

I was just responding to a thread on a different forum, regarding what one does in the event someone has a seizure, and started a list of Jim Macdonald's informative emergency situation posts. Is there an existing list of Jim's posts already? I've been doing a search on all of Jim's posts here, and realizing he posts a lot.

By the way, the Union Jack in that video is flying upside down. Pointless pop trivia via the ever brilliant Pop Justice.

Finally, an Open Thread I can contribute something meaningful to! ("Nonsense up with which I shall not put.")

I haven't seen Bob Altemeyer's work mentioned here (not that I read *everything* here) and a search on Altemeyer brings back nothing, so...

Read his book -- free! Online! http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/%7Ealtemey/

It explains the psychology of social dominators and right-wing authoritarians. It is fan-damn-tastic, and I truly believe every progressive with any interest in American politics needs to understand the content of this book. And it's fun to read, too.

Thank you, and I return you to your previously scheduled Cinco de Mayo.

Limeade has been made and it may very well be lethal. There's a bottle of made-mostly-right and a bottle that's half made-mostly-right and half the Everclear that was left in the bottle because I am new at this and didn't think to buy cheapcheapcheap anything just for the glass.

Now how do I wash a microplane zester?

P J Evans @ 29

'America's Test Kitchen Cookbook',

I second this recommendation. We found it at Costco a couple of months ago and bought 3, one for us and two as gifts. It's especially nice because it explains a lot of the steps that other cookbooks take for granted, but that new cooks aren't familiar with.

I just want to say...

GO UTAH JAZZ! UTAH OVER HOUSTON! WHAT A GAME! WOOOOO!

Thanks. Just wanted to say it.

(Comment partially cross-posted at carpetbagger):

Wanted to highlight and respond to Patrick's particle on Thomas Sowell off of carpetbaggerreport.com. For those who haven't clicked it, Sowell is a popular and influential "intellectual" right-wing columnist. He just wrote the following, published in National Review:

When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can’t help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup.

Me: What’s really bizarre about this is, if you read the whole column, it looks like he was trying to be George Carlin. This is not a real column; it’s a serious of random observations where he’s trying to be funny or clever. He couldn’t come up with a real column, (probably trying & failing to defend Iraq, or Gonzales, or Attorneygate in drafts he threw away).

As I'm sure many readers of this page know, when you think of something small & clever you like, but there’s no room for it in the bigger thing you’re working on, you file it away for later. When you can’t produce a column on deadline, you collect all the little bits you have and publish them. There’s nothing wrong with this practice in and of itself, unless you’re a crypto-fascist like Sowell.

But think about it. This isn’t something he came up with randomly. This is something he wrote down earlier, decided he liked it, saved it for a rainy day, pulled it OUT again, and published it without hesitation.

Isn’t this patently Un-American? Shouldn’t he be fired for this, in a just world? It is, and he won’t (as it's not), but let’s stay outraged, just the same.

with regard to Eurovision-I'm addicted to "How Clean Is Your House"-and they have a particularly disgusting house the owner of which made her living writing songs for Eurovision contestants...

Greg @51 -- and then when you realize that an op-ed in the WSJ this week explicitly called for a dictatorship in America, you kind of think maybe they really are out to get you.

In Australian history, the "fifth of May" is sung as the death-day of Ben Hall in the ballad "The Streets of Forbes", said to be written by an eyewitness in Forbes that day. Those links have the right words, here's some more quick general background and a midi file.

<koff> Sorry, my post #54 belongs on another thread. I was meaning to post this one here.

Eurovision. Oh yes. Many will be the dress-up party and varying bouts of stunned silence with hysterical, unbelieving laughter around the TV. It's one of the big drawcards for our 'ethnic' station, SBS. (Another is their soccer coverage.) Next Saturday, the preliminary finals, and Sunday 13th May, the Big Night. "Barking-mad festivals of aesthetic catastrophe" is an excellent description.

Keir (#46) If the people hanging the flag knew it was a sign of distress and request for help, perhaps the upside-down Union Jack was deliberate?

Mez, for a distreass signal it would have to be the ensign, red, white, or blue as appropriate.

(The traditional snark on this is to then point out that the French use their tricolour as an ensign, thus saving them time in making distress signals at sea.)

I notice there's a Toohey's commercial in the Particles. I wish to add their new ad. Inflatable people meet Busby Berkeley.

The inflatable bit I thought worked really well; the beer commercial bit (including gratuitous shot of girl in bikini) not so well.

(Well, it might not be as new as all that: I don't watch a whole lot of television with ads; I in fact saw it at the cinema.)

Diatryma in 48 --

You clean a microplane rasp with water, from the back. If you must, and only if you must, clean the working surface directly use something durable -- stainless steel steel wool, say -- in quantity, and strictly from the direction the teeth don't point in a wipe-lift, wipe-lift motion. (Sideways is bad, because the teeth all point both sidewayses, too.)

Microplane rasps were originally developed for rapid stock removal in hardwood; they should be treated with exactly the same caution you consider appropriately applied to an exposed rack of razorblades, because that's exactly what they are.

General note on good knives --

Get a leather stop and some good (~1 micron grit) honing compound) and make a couple passes on each side of the blade before each use, or something completely flat like plexiglass or a small steel mirror and some 3M mylar-backed extra-fine microabrasive, and do the same couple passes per side of the blade before each use.

(Knife steels act to file and swage the edge; they're appropriate more or less solely for knifes you consider disposable or for knives that can't hold an edge anyway due to metallurgical deficiency.)

I am personally not fond of the German style of consumer cooking knife with the heavy handle and the quillions, and prefer the French, which is lighter in the handle and is easier to get without the quillions.

It is no longer true that you can get a finer edge on high-carbon knife blades than you can on stainless steel, but it is still true that they're easier to sharpen. (You can also get an excellent general purpose cooking knife for 25 CDN in high carbon.)

My personal preference (leaving aside the completely lovely antique Sabatier knives with blade forms no one still makes) are the Grohmann knives from Pictou, Nova Scotia. High-carbon stainless and they'll cheerfully sell the restaurant grade/style knives over the web.

I went to see Spiderman 3. The less said about that... Anyway, I got a few chuckles when I came across the theater's coming-soon posters: it shows a cityscape, and on top of the buildings a dog surveying everything, a dog with a red cape. The poster's tag line?

"One Nation, Under Dog."

I have a microplane zester the size of a large (woodworking) file. I can zest an entire lemon in under a minute, yielding extremely fine zest of exactly the kind you want to be able to mix into your cake batter or whatever. It accumulates on the safe, smooth interior of the zester (which has a cross-section like this: <__>), and I just push it out with my finger. I clean it by running it under water; I keep it in the plastic sleeve it came with.

It may be the only sharp cooking tool I have that has never tasted my blood. (ADHD is not an advantage in cooking.)

I also have a marvelous little microplane nutmeg grinder (with storage space for both whole nutmeg and the fresh-ground, with a shaker, all in an object smaller than my fist), but I haven't used it yet. Next time I bake that almond bread.

Which may be today, now that I think about it. My mouth is watering.

Graydon @ 58

I was lucky enough to have money at the same time that Lee Valley had some old-stock Sabatiers from a warehouse. I'm almost afraid to use it.

Do not ever, Ever, EVER leave a microplane grater in a kitchen drawer without some sort of protective covering around the blades.

Seriously.

(Luckily I had fast enough reflexes to freeze as I touched it, but I really don't want there to be a next time; while they're a great kitchen implement I can't help thinking that there's also a very grim role waiting for them in an as-yet unpublished Iain Banks novel ...)

I think Patrick's being too mild in his description of Eurovision as "barking-mad", I think it's absolutely Upminster.

I bought a tiny micro-plane zester for I think four pounds, in a really excellent kitchen shop in Ledbury. (Right next to a really excellent deli, and downstairs from a really excellent cafe. Ledbury's worth visiting, and that particular street corner is worth lingering on and going back to.) My microplaner wouldn't be any good for hardwood, but it's perfect for limes and lemons.

District Line jokes!

Xopher in 60 --

Honest to Tiwaz, it is a woodworking file. The Microplane people discovered there were better profit margins in kitchen implements, but the only difference is the packaging.

P J Evans in 61 --

That's where mine are from, too, and I use one of mine quite a bit. (Another is the serious-turkey carving knife and I rarely cook turkey, never mind serious-turkey; the third is the spare for the first one, still in Cosmoline.)

No sharp knife should ever be put in a dishwasher, which goes about double for high carbon steel bladed sharp knives and off into "AIGH! NO!" territory for those old Sabatier knives, but if they're wiped and dried immediately after use (and the wood on the handles gets some walnut oil from time to time) they're really quite durable. The trick of wrapping the blade in paper towel, soaking the towel in vinegar, and wrapping the lot in aluminum foil will give you a pickled gray/blue blade colour, and avoid issues with bits of the blade turning black.

Charlie @62: I do hope Mr Banks is not reading this thread, because I really, *really* do not want to read that scene.

We have one of the knives made by my great-grandfather (who was a blacksmith on the railroad, and illiterate until my great-grandmother taught him to read). The steel is much thicker than modern all-purpose knives, and the blade has kind of a machete shape. It takes a good edge, but it doesn't keep it all that well, and it turns black when you cut fruit with it. It's kind of too large for my nerve-damaged hands, but my son loves it.

Typewriter recycled into a waffle iron.

(via TreeHugger and Baking Bites)

This is probably a stupid question, but if one gets a new roof on one's house, does that process involve the upper floor of the house actually becoming open to the air for any period of time? Or do they just peel off some old layers of shingles and stick on new ones but leave some sort of roof-substructure intact so that the top floor still has a ceiling etc.? I need to both rent my top-floor apartment out and replace my roof, and I'm not sure if the sequence is critical.

This is a less stupid question: many moons ago we talked about Kalamazoo, coming up this week, so I know other folks here are going. Who else besides me, and does anyone want to meet up during the conference? I present Thursday afternoon and am free to play the rest of the time, minus whatever time I spend in my room writing my NEXT presentation (for 5/17). Also, any advice on dress for a female presenter? Do people do the formal business look, business casual, jeans and funky dresses....?

Susan--I haven't been in years, but it used to be slightly more formal than classwear. Meaning women have to wear suits or nice dresses.

Susan @ 69... It shouldn't involve exposing the upper-room floor, unless they discover, after removing the old shingles and tarp that parts of the actual roof are in dire need of replacement. As for that, I'd expect that those who do that kind of stuff could tell in advance.

(Will you be taking advantage of the situation to have a turret added to your abode?)

#69 Susan: Unless there is damage to the wooden underlayer of the roof, they either put a new layer of shingles on top of (at most one) old layer, or peel off the old shingles and put down new ones. The process generally takes a day or two at the most and never involves anything becoming open-air. Roofers generally schedule with an eye on the Weather Channel, as well.

The major annoyance is that unless your roofers are very, very neat, you will find bits of peeled-off shingle here and there for a long time afterwards.

Do people really put their good knives in the dishwasher? *shudder*

Heavy-duty cooks tend to look down on them, but we have a set of Henckels knives & love them.

As for summer movies--I wish _Spider-man 3_ looked good, but it really doesn't. I'd be excited for the third _Bourne_ movie, but it's directed by the same person as the second and the second made me extremely motion-sick (I haven't watched any trailers yet, because I didn't realize it was coming out until yesterday). And after the messes that were _Ocean's 12_ and the second _Pirates of the Caribeean_ movie . . .

Well, there's going to be a whole lot of waiting on reviews & word of mouth before I get excited about things.

(Oh! But there is _Stardust_, which I have hopes for. Almost forgot about that.)

Kate Nepveu... Halfway thru Spiderman, I found myself thinking "Ho-hum." As for my wife, she kept looking at her watch. This movie made me realize that X-men 3 wasn't such a big mess after all.

Meanwhile, I am cautiously awaiting the release of the Fantastic Four movie. Michael Chiklis, who plays Ben Grimm, is a big fan of the comic-book and I got the sense he wasn't too happy with the earlier movie, but that this time, with the Origin out of the way, they were able to tell a story. Galactus is supposed to show up at the end. I wonder if he'll be wearing the purple striped trunks and the purple head-bucket.

On being re-roofed:

Check the ground for nails, very carefully. You really don't want to step on a roofing nail, and the lawnmower won't appreciate them either.

Since it's Open Thread 84, here's Eighty Four, PA: http://www.hometownlocator.com/City/Eighty-Four-Pennsylvania.cfm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighty_Four,_Pennsylvania; and 84 Lumber, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/84_Lumber.

P J @ 75... You use your lawnmower on the roof? How come? Do you live in a hobbit home?

Serge @ #74: re: _Spider-man 3_: This movie made me realize that X-men 3 wasn't such a big mess after all.

Oh that's not good.

But does it have a covertly sexist plot for that extra level of unpleasantness?

(As for your other comments, I didn't see the first _Fantastic Four_ movie so am not particularly waiting on the second.)

Kate Nepveu @ 78... Well, Spiderman's lead female is always getting abducted and screaming. (Would I scream if I were stuck in a taxi hanging in a spiderweb way up there? I'd probably be uttering a non-stop string of 4-letter words, but that wouldn't do well for the movie's rating.) So the answer is yes, regarding the sexism. As for X3, what specifically did you have in mind in that area?

(cont'd from #79)

Actually, Spiderman's girlfriend becomes endangered only once in this movie, but it's still annoying. At least, in Superman returns, when Lois Lane is getting tossed around inside the plane, she tries to strap herself down. She's not passive. (Heck, she even saves Superman from drowning later on.)

On being re-roofed:

The contractors who worked on my house were supposed to use a heavy magnet to find all the roofing nails on the ground, but I still found roofing nails, and even a few gutter spikes (if that's the right term), in my flowerbeds after I had the old shingles torn off and new ones put on. But it was the nail my tire found in the driveway that made me wonder just how diligent they were with the magnet.

The *Coast Guard* produces skiffy? Who knew?

I'm verifying that Turkish statement in my Elementary Turkish textbook. (I had a roommate from Izmir at MIT, so my interest is not completely idle.) I can still count from one to ten in Turkish from memory; I know four is dört (the ö pronounced much like the German equivalent), and eight is sekiz, so I trust Wikipedia is correct, but the best thing Ronald Reagan ever said is "Trust but verify," (and he didn't even make that up!) so verify I shall.

Serge @ 74

This movie made me realize that X-men 3 wasn't such a big mess after all.

Would that be called praising with loud damns?

It sounds like Stan Lee and friends forgot the basic rule of show biz: "Leave the theater before the vegetables come out". I guess I'll wait for the DVD or the HD broadcast on HBO.

DaveL #72: Roofers generally schedule with an eye on the Weather Channel, as well.

When we had our roof done a couple of years ago after an epic hailstorm, the contractor informed us that his insurance didn't let him perform if there was more than a 30% chance of rain.

Bruce Cohen @ 84... Would that be called praising with loud damns?

Kind of, because X3 could easily have been a great movie, a great swan song. At least, unlike Spiderman 3, it had many moments of great beauty and sadness, like when the Angel refuses to take the Cure and literally spreads his wings and escapes, flying by Alcatraz where a young mutant is being prisonner and looks on with yearning.

Serge @ 86

Oh, I agree completely. X3 could have been X2 with more angst and grimness, if only.

Personally, I wish that they'd forgotten about X3 and spent some time and energy producing a decent film of Dr. Strange. I've been hoping someone with a lot of money would realize that modern CGI could do well by Steve Ditko's graphic concepts.

Hurray, standing-wave surfing in the Sidelights!

They have that in Munich, too; I was on a bicycle tour around the city, and they took us to see it. The main spot is in this lovely tree-shaded section of creek, and people in wetsuits line up on each bank and take turns in the wave.

It's on YouTube, of course; Here, here, and here.

Bruce Cohen @ 87... I'd love seeing a big-screen adaptation of Dr. Strange. But without the funny talk that's so overblown that it makes Prince Namor sound like a trash-talker.

Susan, TexAnne: Does the recommendation of suits/nice dresses for Kalamazoo hold for those of us no longer (or never) in the academic rat-race? I was obsessing about what to take for parties and such, annoyed that I had plenty of festive wear for winter, but somehow the spring and summer stuff shrank in the closet over the winter. Hate it when that happens! However, I did get a new pair of pointy-toed heels, this being a medieval conference. Tonight, the search for the cool jewelry, so I can avoid re-re-writing. Or fretting about a missing picure.

Tracie: Hmmmmm. I think if you're going just to go, you can wear what you want (but not jeans). Have you been before? I'd be cautious about the pointy-toed heels. Some of the buildings are far away from each other, and it really is uphill both ways.

Belated thank you to Kathryn from S @ #23:

I am no longer enmeshed in such a situation, but thank you for the thought and effort to provide a resource.

My response was partly based on my own experience and partly a reaction to the "helpful" suggestions in the web page - e.g. you need to quickly look around to see the facial expressions the BPD person is making at the people you're talking to, you need to quiz all your friends to find out what he/she is telling them, etc. That is just a recipe for becoming crazier yourself.

I was in a long-term relationship with someone who - in retrospect - I understand as having a lot of borderline behaviors and structure, briefly summarized as "You are a crazy and abusive person, why are you so terrible to me? Never leave me!" I am happily out of that relationship now, and in a much saner one. (My wife and I may both be a bit nuts, to various degrees in various ways, but our relationship is sane and sustaining.) Thus my War Games quote, "the only way to win is not to play."

My wife and I have also been dealing for the last few years with a foster child, the extent of whose problems only became clear after we had become her legal guardians. Right now she is living in a residential treatment program, which she hates, and is trying to "make nice" so she can come back and live with us - but without really dealing with any of her issues, learning to comply with rules, stopping the rages and property damage, giving up the self-injury, etc. She has some very strong narcissistic characteristics, and also some very strong borderline characteristics. While it is improper to diagnose personality disorders before adulthood, because virtually all teens have some characteristics in the personality disorder spectrum (Axis II), all the shrinks who saw her while she was inpatient last year seem to think she is well down that road. We really wanted to do something good, but it's not worked out too well.

Serge @ #78: The Phoenix plot in _X-Men 3_ was covertly sexist.

Kate @ #93:
The Phoenix plot in X3 was also a horrendous perversion of the original Dark Phoenix saga, which was a much-loved favorite of my teenaged self. I try not to think about that movie.

#76 Janet Brennan Croft: Oh, but wait, there's more. The 84 Lumber founder, Joe Hardy, who is currently 84, married his third wife on Saturday. She's all of 22. You can't make this up: http://www.post-gazette.com//pg/07127/784077-85.stm

#24 Bruce Adelsohn: Thanks for the pointer about Cabana Carioca Restaurante. Years ago, Jim and I found a good Brazilian place outside of Times Square, but when I tried to find it a few years later, I couldn't. I wonder if it's the same place.

Nemo@82, the American Society of Actuaries produces skiffy (well, actuarial fiction more generally, but a good proportion was science-fictional).

And no, I'm not linking to it.

It may (or may not) surprise you that some of it is quite good.

Kate Nepveu @ 93... Susan @ 94... X3 felt like they had a script for something called X3-The Cure and a script for X4-Dark Phoenix, but they ran out of money so they decided to crazy-quilt X3 and X4 into something that did disservice to both plots. Especially to the Dark Phoenix. God. I don't know how many times I reread the comic's issue where the X-men fought to save Jean's life and yet in the end she had to commit suicide.

(Cont'd from #97)

It's a good thing that X3 didn't also try to integrate the plot of my other famorite X-men plot of all time.

The Sentinels have taken over the USA and the moment they move out, the rest of the world is ready to nuke America. Almost all mutants and superpowered have been killed. But a few remain and Kitty Pryde is sent back into her younger self of today to stop the chain of events that'll lead to that grim future. And they succeed and History diverges. But the original future remains and Wolverine and everybody else dies.

"Once upon a time, there was a woman named Jean Grey and a man named Scott Summers. They were young. They were in love. They were heroes."

(That may not be a perfectly accurate quote, but I read the Phoenix saga 20+ years ago, and it still packs a punch for me.)

I not only reject X3, I reject all the ludicrous retcons the comic book has gone through since that made Phoenix really not Jean Grey after all.

Susan @ 99... That's how I remember it too.

Grant Morrison did some interesting stuff a few years ago when he brought Phoenix back into Jean. A souped-up Magneto was able to kill her, and her last words to Scott should have sounded ludicrous, but they did not.

"All I've ever done is die on you."

Oh, my. Words do fail me. The latest of TNH's particles, S.A. Wilson's Therapy Blend Coffee. seems to be for real. If it's a spoof, it's a very involved and complete one. If it's not, well, "so many rejoinders, so little time".

Bruce @101,

I like living in the 21st century. Strike that- love it. I've never been tempted by the "wouldn't you like to visit the 1800's?" thought experiments.

But every once in a while I'll see a website that has a particular kick. A kick like the Omelas residents got upon visiting the basement. It creates a sudden and intense desire to just shut off the computer and walk away.

That coffee site. Just... wow...
[stares in silence]

And speaking of 21st century moments:

There's been news today about the brightest and most powerful stellar explosion ever recorded by science having been recently recorded by science.

Fun story, especially as it may have relevance to Eta Carinae, which is only 8,000 light years away

However, model a version of yourself from 20 years ago, and then savor this sentence from the NYTimes article:

"Astronomers have been following the star since last September, when it was discovered in a galaxy 240 million light years away in the constellation Perseus by Robert Quimby, a University of Texas graduate student, who was using a small robotic telescope at McDonald Observatory near Fort Davis, Tex., to troll for supernovas."

Such a nice sentence.

Makes up for that :washbrain: particle.

Re: K'zoo

From observations: When you're presenting, a suit, or at least skirt and blouse. All other times, business casual/churchwear is just fine. I'm bringing several pairs of black slacks and a collection of haori, because it worked last year. I, too, present Thurs. afternoon.

Those of us who are going- How about meeting for dinner before the Pseudo Society lectures?

Kathryn @ 103

Thank you. It feels much better now.

Before I go wash out my brain and forget that site exists, I'll mention that I like the idea of calling that an "Omelas moment". Please don't tell me what association of thoughts brought that into your mind; I'm quite sure I don't want to think about it just now.

churchwear is just fine

(looking horrified)

The last time churchwear was a factor in my life it involved white gloves and a little pocketbook. And a skirt.

I'm developing enough of a case of nerves to plan to hide in my room the entire conference now.

What is the Pseudo Society?

Susan @ 106... I've seen you in action emceeing a masquerade before thousands of fans. You did fine there, you'll do fine at this thing too. And you won't have to warn people against using flash photography.

TexAnne, I'm going to present. The last time I went was almost 30 years ago, but I remember the hills, and I know they haven't gotten any flatter. The pointy-toed shoes are for standing around at parties, with a pair of walking shoes stashed in my purse. I just seem to feel more festive in heels, and today's pointy shoes are much more comfortable that those in the 50s and 60s.

This afternoon I talked with the person I'm riding up with, who is an associate dean in her department. She agreed with my suspicion that suits (except perhaps while presenting) mark you as on the prowl for employment. I'm decades past that! Not that there isn't some fashion competition at the more informal level. Slacks with a artsy top -- haori would qualify -- and cool jewelry should work well.

Meeting after the Pseudo Society would be perfect. The Society is a very special group that presents, well, very special papers, after everyone has had a chance to drink a lot. It is the successor to the American Committee on Jutish Studies. Is there some sort of token we could wear to identify us?

Susan, remember- Don't Panic!

I'm wearing the suit (or rather, brocade blazer and slacks) to present because I *am* looking for eventual employment. Heather Rose Jones did hers in khakis and a fun shirt last year, iirc...because she's now happily out of formal academia.

Before or after the Pseudo Society? After the lectures are the open bar of the SLU Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, cash bar from Four Courts (and someday I'm going to want to pitch them a manuscript. Need to finish it first), and the Dance.*

If after, how about the table at the left rear corner of the dance floor? I'd prefer before, between getting through the crush that is the Brewers Guild tasting and the Pseudo Society. Can someone suggest somewhere?

*Think high-school dance, except with alcohol and people who spend most of their lives teaching and researching.

Would it be petty for me to point out that I posted the Medieval Tech Support video particle to Making Light two months ago, and no one noticed, and I didn't even get a mouseover thank-you?

It could be that I'm just horrible at promoting Internet videos. Or maybe I really am a thread-killer. In which case, you should really check out the X Minus One trailer that I posted last week just before that thread died.

I would love to be employed as a dance scholar, but I suspect Kalamazoo is not quite the place to make that happen. I will wear my Nice Black Dress to present in, if I can get the cat hair off it, and wander around in my kimono and various pairs of pants the rest of the time.

The dance sounds horrifying in general but meeting people to talk to at it sounds good.

Howard @#110:

Nah. Been there, had that happen to me, too, except that it got incorporated into a front-page post rather than a particle. One might suspect our hosts actually have off-blog lives or something.

Given the X-Men comments upthread, I thought this might fit in:

From the LASFS newsletter, minutes of meeting 3630:

In response to Jerry Pournelle's question of 'what do you get when you cross Hellboy and Catwoman', the answer is 'Hellboy Catwoman sin (theta)'. (You can't cross Catwoman with Spiderman, because Spiderman's a scaler.)

Howard Peirce, #110: Not petty at all. In fact, we sometimes get a few days behind on the comments, particularly the open threads. It's exquisitely embarrassing to discover that the sidelight I put up ten minutes ago was suggested by a regular a week ago. Anyway, I believe the mouseover has now been fixed.

Niall, #38: Ye ghods and little fishes, someone's crossbred ABBA and Village People!

OTOH, watching that led me to this, which has a certain charm (the first 30 seconds aren't much, but it gets a lot better after the music starts). And that in turm led me to this slightly-more-professional job, and a whole list of similar efforts using the same music.

Graydon, #65: You also see this effect with beading supplies. You can get exactly the same Fireline stringing material in the sporting department at Wal-Mart (where it's sold as fishing line) for roughly 1/5 its cost at your Local Bead Store.

Laina, #81: There's at least a possibility that one of the neighborhood cats, or even a squirrel or raccoon, relocated that nail from some very obscure spot into your driveway after the roofers had gone over it.

You can buy small rare-earth magnets very cheaply on eBay. A few of those, attached to something that lets you cover a wide swath of ground fairly fast, would make short work of finding leftover roofing nails (and any other magnetic flotsam!). Note that the normal cautions about magnets apply squared to these things -- they are the magnet equivalent of those really good kitchen knives people have been talking about.

Sisuile, #104: May I assume that a professional pantsuit is also appropriate, or do I have to wander off muttering things like, "It's the 21st century, dammit, when are you people going to get with the program!"?

Susan, #69, unless the actual rafters are rotten (which is a much much bigger problem), the roof won't be open. Watch out for roofing nails, I got a flat tire from one, and that was after the roofers spent half an hour going around with giant magnets.

Howard, #110, I frequently post things that later turn up as sidelights or particles proposed by other people.

Laina @81

I'll second Lee @115's suggestion on super-powerful magnets. If you have a local tool-renting place handy check if they rent a magnet tool first.

We use magnets like that during clean-up at Burningman. There, to leave without cleaning up all of you moop is both a sin and a cause for getting one's camp demoted to the outer circles. Moop includes things as small as staples (or sawdust. or seeds. They want a clean desert)

Lee @115,
You asked on another thread if I have a LJ account. Inspired by that, I've actually started one today. (It'd been on my list of things to do for about 5 years now.)

Kathryn @ 117... So what is your LiveJournal's name?

May I ask for a technical recommendation?

I need to reload FileZilla on my wife's computer. Darn thing got hosed out when the laptop went thru a major virus cleanup. Two years ago, when I inherited the job of maintaining her site, I uploaded FileZilla from the link below, but I don't know if there are other places I should get the software from, these days. There seem to be quite a few such places, based on my googling.

Any recommendations?

http://www.download.com/FileZilla/3000-2160_4-10326071.html?tag=lst-0-1

Serge @ 119 - try the "portable" version from here. It's designed to run off a removable flash drive, but works just as well off a hard drive.

Thanks, Nemo.

I'm not someone who believes in God, but this comment

I sometimes feel that, back 6,000 years or so ago when God (assumning there is a God) used to speak occassionally to the peeps, one of them asked Him: “Where do we humans come from?” And God excitedly began to tell (and explain to) all the assembled peeps about DNA and cells and evolutionary type development and His experimentation with such things. God was on a roll with one of his best lectures/sermons, really getting into the discussion when, after about 45 human minutes, God looked up to see all of the peeps standing there slack-jawed, clearly not comprehending a single word he had to say. The silence He thought was amazement at the genius of it all was really only ignorance. God did not panic, though. He shook his head, looked at His feet, cleared his throat and began a story that a 3 year-old could understand, that being the story of Creation as told in Genesis, knowing that someday, hopefully sooner than later (although based upon the crowd He had before Him it very well might be MUCH, much later) humans would come to understand the science of it all. I still don’t think we are there yet.

from this thread at Carpetbagger on Republican candidates' beliefs in evolution and/or creationism made me smile.

Susan @ 122... Has that ever come up as an issue among Democrat contenders? Not that it is much of an issue among Democrats and other liberals, but I can all too easily see our contenders bend over backward on the off-chance they might woo others away from the GOP.

Just great, Teresa, now I have the urge to start Googling for Calvin-and-Hobbes-style haystacks. And I've got a meeting in 10 minutes!

Serge @118

So what is your LiveJournal's name?

It's not ready yet*.

I need to write some wonderful essays, and change the decor, and add pictures, and list some interests.

Darn: by taking one thing off my to-do list I've added four new things to it.

-------
* the cry of the shy perfectionist blogger.

Once at a dinner there were a few of us with the same "shy-perfectionist therefore the blog sits empty" problem.

A solution I came up with is that there could be a club of trusted s-p bloggers. If you wrote a post, you'd send it to another spb to review. If they liked it, they'd post it to your blog for you, using a satisficing (good enough is good) criteria.

It was proposed we start by making the spbloggers club blog. We then laughed and ordered dessert.

Kathryn @ 125... I need to write some wonderful essays, and change the decor, and add pictures, and list some interests.

The essays posts don't have to be wonderful. Just look at what I do on my own blog. ("Hey! You in the corner! Don't think I didn't hear you.")

While looking at friend's LJs I saw a link to What Be Your Nerd Type, yet another quiz you take only because your friends took it.

Then I got to question...
"26. How many books have you read in your life time?
a. Under 10
b. 10-20
c. 20-30
d. 30-50
e. 60+
f. Reading is boring."

Wow. When I was seven that range would've been an order of magnitude off- not including school books or books read to me. Now it's two orders of magnitude off.

I get that I'm on the flat part of the bell curve* for love-of-reading. But 60!?! In a lifetime!?! Of people with time and ability to read LJ? I count 48 books on my wallbed's shelf... so few only because of earthquake risks.

60!?! I think I'm experiencing a new type of Omelas Moment, because I refuse to believe in question 26.

----
* flat. There's a hill so far distant it's beyond the horizon.

Kathryn @ 127 Oh, sad! The link doesn't work. Be the low-rolling book numbers as they may, I want to take that quiz!

Susan- Pantsuit is ok. I was at a really stuffy conference this spring where it would have not been, but k'zoo is more relaxed.

Oh, and that is the *best* quote *evar*. The room cannot stop laughing, and we all needed that today.

Kathryn from Sunnyvale @ 127

60??? I'd be surprised if there were many who regularly hang out at Making Light who read as few as 60 books per year on average. And I'd bet that most of them are restricted by health or job considerations.

I've recently been trying to re-organize my home office so I can actually work there*, and added an additional set of shelves so I could get the books that are in front of the books out of the way. So I'm now in a position to actually count my books**, but haven't done so yet. I have no idea how many books I have now, let alone how many I've read in my life.

* The office became a storehouse when we had to move things to let the plumbers in to fix the broken water main, and then to get the drainage people in to put in the concrete drain and sump pump.

** That's just the books that only I will read, because they're reference or technical books in subjects that Eva isn't interested in. Then there are the books that Eva has that I'm not going to read, and the books that we both read, like sf and mysteries, and mainline, er mainstream fiction.

I've given away at least 60 books in my lifetime, if not two or three times that. It's what comes of moving a lot.

Kouredios @128,

oops. Here it is:
What Be Your Nerd Type?

OK, just have to say it.

GO JAZZ! HUGE WIN OVER GOLDEN STATE! HUGE! DERON WILLIAMS IS HOSS!

OK, thank you.

Thanks!
Social Nerd? That sounds like it belongs on the autism spectrum. Heh. A quiz that can't define me as a literature nerd is badly written, I must say.

Kathryn #127: Hmm... 60 books. On the best* of days I could name 60 books that had been my favourite book ever once-upon-a-time-for-at-least-one-day.

I'm a little fickle when it comes to favourite things.

On an entirely different note, my blog is scatterbrained and was when I put my first post up, and was even more so when I let people know about it. By design it avoids "Big Questions". It isn't supposed to make people think I'm smart, thoughtful, amusing or interesting. It's there to put things that I type that have nowhere else to go.

On the other hand I'm sure your livejournal will kick the pants out of anything I put on the internet. Once I used this as my tagline: "The magnitude of my dignity is such, that none of my actions can diminish it" - and that's about as good as it gets.

* Maybe worst, from some points of view.

Also Number 24 should separate the real nerds from the wannabes.

(literature nerd verging on science/math nerd, which is what I'm recovering from in all honesty).

Hmm. Retook it, with maybe one or two course changes, and now I'm a lit nerd. All is right with the world again.

Neil @136. Agreed, but I wish they had included CG...

Lee, #115, I don't shop at Wal*Mart, but I do buy Fireline at Cabelas online, where it's not only cheaper than the beading store, but comes in lots more colors. I already have Nymo in dozens of colors, but I'm not using it much anymore.

Kathryn, #127, you can lower your expectations for your LJ. The only exciting part of mine is that I have three different pictures.

There were numerous WTFs in that quiz, starting with the illiteracy (2 of 5 artists' names grossly misspelled? Horrible typos in the questions?) but as I read on I realized it's aimed at high-school students. ("Have you been in a school play?" "Are you in a school band?") So... that made it a little more understandable. I probably read over 60 books a year when I was in high school, but it wasn't so grossly off in scale at that age.

::does a double take::

I can say with certainty that I have over 60 books in my car, right now and at any given time*. Granted, half are cookbooks, but I have a lovely collection of fiction as well. You never know when you need something to read.

Oh, and I have about 20 audiobooks on my iPod.

The firewall here at work is preventing me from taking the quiz. I'm happy being a nerd for all seasons.

*Some on their way into the house, some on their way to the used bookstore, some enroute to a new reader.

Clifton @139,

it's aimed at high-school students

Good observation. I was thrown off by the age ranges at the start (and that I found it at a friend's blog).

I'd also forgotten about Q5:
"How many books per month? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5+" Those numbers make more sense, although I'd stretch the range a bit higher if I were designing this quiz for ML...

Kathryn, Kouredios and other book nerds... Did you become such ghastly creatures on your own? Or is your family responsible? It's the former for me.

I think I was reading close to 60 books a year by the time I hit high school. Of course, we had lots of books at home, even if some of them required a ladder to reach. In HS, we moved to a different city, and my parents' collection was 36 boxes. 1.5 cubic ft boxes. (My personal collection started at age 3, with Pedro the Angel of Olvera Street. I still have it.)

Serge #142: There were always books around when I was growing up. I was encouraged to read.

Serge @142,

Book nerd? Did I say I was a book nerd? According to that survey I'm a science nerd... ok, and equally as much a book nerd.

How did I become this way?

Well, I inherited "when reading, the rest of the world goes away" from my mom, and "reads really quickly" from my dad.

Some of my earliest memories involve playing by the bookshelves at home, or choosing books at the library, or my mom reading to me. I went to a Montessori preschool- that's good for learning words.

And then there's how I became a reader. I vividly remember that day:
I'd just turned 5. We were in Canada, staying with my grandparents. Their house bordered on a hilly park, the park bordered on a forest, and the snow was waist deep*. Until that visit I'd only known snow from pictures and stories. Plus one trip to a 1-inch snowfall up in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

That week, my mom started reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe to me each night before bedtime. It was magic: hearing the book in the evening, running through a snowy woods in the day. Each day I became more involved with the story, wanting to know what happens next.

And then it hit me: if I read the book myself I could find out what happens without having to wait until bedtime. I could find where she'd stopped the night before, and go on all by myself. I could just pick up the book, there on the nightstand. I did. I found the bookmark; I kept going. That was the day I started reading, and I measure my life since then in books.

All to say- family's fault.

-----
* which says these are older memories, because snow like that doesn't happen anymore, not there. A white Christmas near Toronto is a treat, now.

And the proselytizing continues. OUT with the theocratic fascist Oligarchia NOW!!!

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050807R.shtml
A Crusade and a Holy War in the US Military
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report

Tuesday 08 May 2007

An Orthodox Jew and former petty officer in the US Navy said his civil rights were violated after a chaplain and officials at a Veterans Administration hospital in Iowa City, Iowa, tried to convert him to Christianity while he was under the VA's care.

....

...Miller enlisted the help of the nonprofit Military Religious Freedom Foundation, whose founder, Mikey Weinstein,..has been waging a one-man war against the Department of Defense for what he says is a blatant disregard of the Constitution. He recently published a book on the issue: "With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military." ...

[in the past] 18 months ... Weinstein said he has been contacted by more than 4,000 active duty and retired soldiers, many of whom served or serve in Iraq, who told Weinstein that they were pressured by their commanding officers to convert to Christianity....

"The rise of evangelical Christianity inside the military went on steroids after 9/11 under this administration and this White House," Weinstein said in an interview. "This administration has turned the entire Department of Defense into a faith-based initiative."

Kathryn, that's a wonderful story - we just went through the same kind of moment with our 5 year old son. We had been reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to him at bedtime. One morning he couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen next, so he picked up the book and read the entire next chapter out loud while he was waiting for me to finish getting ready to drive him to preschool.

Since we finished that, he's been wanting to go through our Calvin & Hobbes collection as his bedtime reading (yikes!) but we'll be moving on to The Hobbit shortly, as the C & H is too big to take on our mainland trip.

Per the kitchen conversation upthread:

The NYTimes' Bittman on how to equip a kitchen for $200, $300 with splurges. I don't see much missing in his 37 item shopping list.

I'll only disagree with two things on his inessentials list: the microwave and the wok (the latter if you have a gas stove).

I think the microwave is good because:
1. it makes it easier to cook extra and freeze the leftovers as a planned meal. Maybe it's just psychology, but two containers in the microwave- no stirring needed- seem easier than two pots on the stove.
2. it can reduce cooking time by partially cooking ingredients before you finish them on the stove or in the oven.
3. who has time to remember to defrost frozen stock, or anything else, ahead of cooking time?

That discussion also made me think of a question:
"Which cookbook would you most want to send back to yourself in your 'learning to cook' stage"? (No, you can't write "buy YHOO" in the margins)

My #1:
CookWise by Shirley Corriher. A "how and why recipes work" cookbook focused on the chemistry of key ingredients. Useful for early to experienced cooks. It's similar to but easier to read and get a good topic overview than Cooks Illustrated. With only 230 recipes it makes a good "cook through the book" book.

Serge @ #142:Every home I've ever lived in either had books, or we made frequent trips to the library. My grandmother dropped out of high school, but drilled into all of our heads that we needed to get an education, either through the system or on our own.

Kathryn, #117 and following: I'm starcat_jewel on LJ; come on over and look around. And seriously, don't worry about writing Deathless Prose in your journal. Just pick a layout you like and start posting. LJ is a little different from most blog structures in that it started out as a way for a group of friends to keep track of each other after they left school, and many of the people on it still use it similarly.

Paula, #146: If you're not already reading Talk 2 Action, you should be. Its focus is about bringing the theocrats out of the shadows and letting the light of day display their true ugliness. There's a related LJ community, dark_christian, also.

Fragano... Kathryn from Sunnyvale... Tania... So, your families have a lot to answer for, re your being word nerds, eh? As for myself, well, it all started with reading the comic-strip adventures of Buck Rogers. Why a little kid living in the countryside, far from anything of any interest, would find Buck more exciting doesn't exactly elude me.

Oh, Kathryn, Lee said about LJs "...don't worry about writing Deathless Prose in your journal..." or about a great layout. Just write. Simply putting words out there will bring you pleasure.

Does anybody know where I could find a downloadable photo of Dubya looking very resolute and manly?

(I'd just surf the net and use my computer's screen-print key, but the key is busted.)

apparently, I'm a mad scientist type nerd. I need to win the lottery so I can go back to school for physical chemistry. electrical engineering is so 20th century.

Question 24 made me laugh loud enough that someone in the next cube came over to see what was so funny.

LG, of course.

Oh, and all hail the Unicorn Queen of Sparkly land.

Serge,

You don't need the key. Do a Google image search, pick the one you like and left-click (control-click for us Mac types) and select "save image as ..." or equivalent in the popup menu. Then print the file you saved.

If you don't find one you like, I've got a cool picture of him at a press conference I can send you. I've been playing with it photoshop; my new graphic tablet arrived yesterday, and now that I don't have to draw with a bar of soap I'm going to get serious about converting Bush into a Ferengi.

Hm. Nastiness via LJ meme: It seems that the LJ mojo meme was a cover for some guys playing a really nasty game. If you did the meme and posted it in your LJ, you now have a very NSFW picture (from goatse.cx) in place of the original results image. I recommend deleting the image or the entry (when you can; of course I don't suggest rushing to do so from work if that would be a problem), and see this entry for more details

(*sighs* Another layer of innocence, shattered...)

Bruce Cohen @ 155... True, I could have googled it, but that'd have meant seeing more instances of his mug than I could stomach. Could you send me your photo's unPhotoShopped version? I've got this item for my blog I've been itching to post (darn rash!) where I'd tie Dubya in with Dashiel Hammett.

Serge:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x795278
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x787320

BTW, Happy Birthday, Lee!

Alan Braggins... Perfect.

Happy B-day, Lee.

Kathryn from Sunnyvale, as soon as someone says a microwave is not essential, I label them as someone with no cows and no kids- and air conditioning.

And no wok? I'm on my...fifth? and use it more often than any other cooking container. This person does not share my lifestyle or diet, boy howdy.

As for a primer cookbook, if I could just have one to learn by, it'd be the checkered cover Better Homes and Gardens cookbook from the late fifties, or perhaps a midcentury edition of Joy of Cooking. If I used cookbooks. Apparently the cookbook collector gene skipped my generation, as my mother and daughter share it.

(See y'all at the end of five days of getting-the-kid-home-from-college. Now! Including Karma balancing dorm room cleaning!)

Serge #151: It's even worse than that. My maternal grandmother's great-aunt was a novelist.

Fragano @ 163... In other words, you were doomed to find pleasure in reading.

Serge,

I'll be glad to post that for you, but it's on my computer at home and not accessible externally, and I'm currently at work, so it will have to wait until this evening, probably 6 or 7 PDT.

JESR @ 162... as soon as someone says a microwave is not essential, I label them as someone with no cows and no kids

This reminds me of the episode of MythBusters where they wanted to test the urban legend of the woman who had washed her dog then put it in the microwave oven to dry it off.

Serge #164: It was inevitable.

JESR @ 162

Better Homes and Gardens cookbook

Indeed, yes. What little I know of cooking came mostly from that book, though the America's Test Kitchen book looks to supplant it. And while it's a great book for beginners, the recipes work quite well for day-to-day cooking of the non-exotic sort.

Bruce Cohen @ 165... Thanks. Later is fine. I won't be posting this until tomorrow anyway. I already have one photo of Dubya in his manly codpiece flightsuit, but two photos of him would belabor the point I want to make. And belaboring it indeed is my aim.

I come from a literate family, with some intellectual pretensions*, but I'm probably the most extreme reader of my family, out to 1st cousins. There aren't any serious writers in the family, though there are musicians and other artists. As far as I can tell my own habit just appeared, pretty near full blown, at 5, when I decided to learn to read so I wouldn't have to wait for my mother to read to me at night. Then at 7 I discovered the public library and sf (Heinlein), and my fate was sealed.

Libraries have been my havens and my sustenance all my life. When I was 9, I talked the librarian into letting me check out adult books, pretty much carte blanche, and for awhile I just roamed the shelves grabbing whatever looked interesting. The selection was ... eclectic ... for awhile until I started to home in on the subjects I was really interested in.

I remember sometime in my teens, reading Sturgeon's "The Dreaming Jewels". Theres a scene which describes the protagonist's readin schedule. He had an eidetic memory, photographic subtype, and a reading speed close to "flip past all the pages". So he had a deal with a lending library* to deliver 4 new books every morning and pick up the old ones, kind of like delivering the milk. I was quite jealous.

* Standard eastern european Jewish immigrant family with ambitions and socialist ties.

* Before the real flood of cheap paperbacks in the late '50s, a lot of small businesses like drug stores and neighborhood groceries kept a rack of popular hardbound books that they lent out for a small amount by the week. For people just looking for a quick mystery to read on the commuter train or while the kids were at school, this was much more convenient than going to the public library.

I'm a literature nerd with a bit of drama nerd mixed in.

5+ books a month?? Back in jr high and high school I kept a list of every book I read, from Star Trek adaptations and bodice-rippers up to Greek tragedy and the Decameron. I indexed the SF short stories and listed the historical fiction in chronological order (yeah, pure book nerd, destined to be a librarian). I probably averaged 275 books a year, more in the summer... Now it's probably more like 175 per year. This darn having a job thing really cuts into your reading time. Don't ever become a librarian because you like to read.

Did anyone else (aside from pnh, of course) shocked by the article on air traffic controllers being pressured to work, even while sick and impaired from carbon monoxide in their workspace? It is like a real-life Milgram experiment.

traffic controllers being pressured to work, even while sick and impaired from carbon monoxide

Yeah, we can either (1) delay traffic and have some people angry at us for mixed up travel plans, OR (2) endanger lives to avoid minor bad PR and hope no one dies.

see also space shuttle explosion.

Some people need to be beaten with a stick.

It's more like we can either a) piss off the holy and sacred airlines who everyone must bow down and worship, or b) endanger a bunch of union workers and ordinary peasants who happen to be on the planes.

Put that way, in Bush's America, the choice is obvious.

That guy who threatened to lock out the Fire Department needs to go to prison.

#162: My Chinese teacher in high school, who was also a gourmet cook, insisted that a cast iron skillet was far better than a wok for Chinese cooking on any kind of western stove. He felt that a wok worked great on an open fire, a brazier, or anything close to that, but that the flat-bottomed pan was better for transferring the heat on a stove. I've certainly always had good results following his approach, for Chinese, Indian, or western cooking. YMMV.

What struck me was that none of the ATCs walked--they must be really cowed, and really used to working impaired. Walking is the smart thing to do; I've worked (briefly) in places where appallingly dangerous chemicals are used and--apart from personal safety--calling emergency response and getting out is what to do in that situation; an impaired person, adds to the danger. The policy that is in place is also a terror risk; what would these people have done in the case of a genuine gas attack as opposed to an accidental air-quality problem?

I am astonished at how angry that makes me feel.

Greg London #173: 'Beaten with a stick' might be better rendered 'toasted on a fork'.

I'm not really surprised that management found it relatively easy to intimidate people in the early stages of CO poisoning. The early symptoms are headaches, nausea, and something they call "dizziness" or "lightheadedness." People with asthma know what it does to your thinking to not quite be able to breathe. With CO poisoning, the air goes in, but it doesn't help. You start thinking something sensible, and then lose track of the thought. You stand up to go do something, take a step, and don't remember what you were going to do. It's extraordinarily difficult to plan any kind of resistance in that condition.

A person needs to be able to think clearly and act effectively to oppose confident statements like, "Don't be ridiculous. There's nothing to worry about. Sit down and get back to work." The whole problem is that those air traffic controllers could not think clearly or act effectively. I'm not saying anything about their characters; only that they were impaired by CO poisoning.

Serge, way back @ 142. A combination. My mom pushed books, and I have great memories of her reading to us nightly (preferably from Fox in Socks!) at a very young age. But neither of my parents were college educated and my brother and I are of the first generation in our family to go to college (and both of us are now at the graduate level.) Somewhere along the line, he became a total science nerd (engineering major) and I became the book nerd (classics and complit), and now, at this point in all our lives, the only things my mom reads are biographies of popes and saints. And edicts. But you get the point.

Insane as it sounds, the FAAs action is a common management pattern. I've been calling it "Best Case Planning", because it's the inverse of "Worst Case Planning": you assume that the best alternative will happen all the way down the decision tree. This isn't new to the Bush administration, nor unique to government; it's standard practice in many software project scheduling meetings.

The FAA manager involved simply asked himself, "What'the outcome I want here, the best thing that could happen?" and got the answer that the controllers would be able to do their jobs despite the carbon monoxide. So, since the alternative was to cause flight delays and confusion, which would count against the manager at the next performance review, it was a no-brain decision. In all senses.

kouredios @ 179... Family influences... Either they'll make you love something, or they'll make you hate it.

Thanks for the birthday wishes! Obviously several people came over and looked at my LJ; I'm flattered.

I friended some of the fluorospheroids on my livejournal; my lj is redrose3125.

I hope no one minds, and no one is offended if I missed them.

Serge, I've been thinking about it since I posted, and I'm not exactly sure when the shift occurred, but I think as soon as I was reading for myself, that was it. I associate picture books with my mom, not chapter books.

When I was 15 or 16, she took The Dark Tower away from me because she leafed through it and happened upon the worst scene that could possibly be taken out of context--when Roland puts his gun somewhere it most definitely doesn't belong. And more recently, when I tried to loan her The Kitchen God's Wife, she returned it to me, upset that I would give her so unsettling to read. Her unhappy memories about her own marriage are not settled enough for her to ever let her mind go anywhere near there. *sigh*

Going off to small, liberal arts college 6 hours away from home opened up my world. And I met people who actually still shared their parents' worldview, so I know it's possible, and I'm attempting to do that with my daughter.

Who, by the way, at all of two years old, already has a list of about 10 words that she can read. :D

Oh, and I'm an LJer too, if anyone's interested. It's linked to my name here, and is in fact the same name (a free transliteration of one of Athena's epithets, and a longtime handle of mine.)

Serge @ 169

The picture of the Bush is at http://speakertomanagers.googlepages.com/shrubphoto

OK, I've been dithering on whether to say something, but I guess I'm enough of a regular to. I'll be in the SF Bay Area Friday through Tuesday for my daughter's graduation, with wife and son in tow; we'll be staying in Oakland. I don't know if things will get too busy to make any connections, but if I've chatted with you here and you'd like to try for a meet-up, send me email. No guarantees.

All this talk of reading experiences inspired me to Google one of the first books I remember reading-- my first chapter book, I do believe. Lightfoot the Deer, by Burgess or somesuch name (I have forgotten it already-- it was one of the Yellow Books all in a row on the library shelf). I don't think that was what turned me into a reader. I'm not certain I had a turning point; I can remember learning letters in kindergarten, I can remember the first chapter books, but I cannot remember *getting it*.
Some people get good stories of impatience and suddenly Narnia, but I'm not one of them.

My parents, who never read anything but the newspaper, never questionned what it was that I read. Thank goodness for that. On the other hand, they did question the wisdom of spending money to buy stuff to read.

The most interesting experience I had with reading was in 2004, when I visited Quebec City after a 9-year absence. When I had last seen my friends, in 1995, their daughters were a grumpy 7-year-old and a babbling year-old. Skip ahead to 2004. The elder was just as grumpy, but this time because her parents had drafted her into cleaning up the house for a party of the old farts (that was us) when she'd rather have gone away with her boyfriend. But I digress... The year-old girl was now a charming 10-year-old who, like her parents, loved reading. And who casually used words such as 'lugubrious'.

And, on a complete different subject the 3-D candy fab.

Helvetica vs. Arial

(via a commenter in Pandagon)

#180: "Best Case Planning"

Bleargh. Yet another reason to criminalize the teaching and ownership of MBA degrees. The manager who endangered his ATC employees will probably get a Medal of Freedom and a promotion.

Randolph Fritz @ 190

That's a very nice piece of design, and a rather droll notion to use sugar as the raw material. I also like the idea of CNC toast. Come to think of it, these guys out to contact the Ace of Cakes. I bet they could make some really nifty cakes with that fab.

#88:

Drat! Our secret's out!

Kayakers have been surfing standing waves for, like ever. It's great fun.
Even I've done it and I'm clumsy and uncoordinated and (oops!) upside-down bailing out of a kayak. Never did learn to Eskimo roll...

Bruce Cohen @ 193... use sugar as the raw material

"I'm melting, I'm melting... Aaaaaahhhhhh... Oh, what a world, what a world!"

Randolph @ 190

That's wonderful!

I just encountered this on Hugo Schwyzer's blog and realized that I couldn't think of a poem more suited to Making Light.

The Riddle, by Richard Wilbur

Shall I love God for causing me to be?
I was mere utterance; shall these words love me?

Yet when I caused His work to jar and stammer,
And one free subject loosened all His grammar,

I love Him that He did not in a rage
Once and forever rule me off the page,

But, thinking I might come to please Him yet,
Crossed out ‘delete’ and wrote His patient ’stet’.

Korean acrobats linked to Jabba the Hutt!

A typeface question for the fluorosphere:

If you needed to print a document in the tiniest font you could reasonably still read (whatever that might be for you), which common typeface would you use? Assume an ordinary office laser printer. For software I use OpenOffice, but the font would have to be available in Word.

My understanding of the common wisdom is that serif is good for printed paper, sans-serif for onscreen reading.

Does that hold when going to tiny fonts?

And, since I'm curious, how does it hold for cheap printers- ones which can have lighter ink, or slight smudging, or "you've run out of one color, so you're printing in blue"? Would that become more like onscreen reading, so you'd use a sans-serif?

Kathryn @ 199

I've found that 8-pt Courier/Cumberland is readable, if small. I suspect that OCR-B would also be good, and possibly some of the 15-pitch typewriter faces.

There are flat-bottomed woks for use with Western stoves. I had a cast-iron wok made by Lodge which had the traditional shape and a thick, flat, round base. I used it almost exclusively to cook with during a year of being broke and really busy (rice with vegetables scrounged out of the damaged stuff at work, almost every night...healthy, but a bit dull after a while). Gave it away when I moved and now I regret that as I can't seem to find a new one.

Amazon has a large selection of lodge cast iron stuff, and what's more, they'll ship it for free.

I think it's easier to read Times or something like it, when you have to make it small. If you're trying to fit the most words in a space and legibility's second, that may change. Beyond that, I don't really know.

If I understand the etiquette of Open Threads properly, they can be used for posts on previous topics that have died down?

There's an interesting post here summarizing a research study showing that computing while female predisposes one to receiving nasty messages, even in the absence of content. It made me think of Kathy Sierra's experience as discussed previously under the moderation thread. Take an anti-female bias, add content with which someone disagrees, get response couched in highly personal and unpleasant ways. Bleah.

Kathryn @ 199: My understanding of the common wisdom is that serif is good for printed paper, sans-serif for onscreen reading. Does that hold when going to tiny fonts?

In my (decidely amateur) opinion, no. All else being equal (which it never is), sans-serif fonts are more legible on a letter-by-letter basis, especially in adverse conditions. That's why they're used on traffic signs, for teaching children to read, and are generally preferred for low-resolution devices like computer screens. Making the letters tiny has much the same effect as reducing the resolution.

Of the fonts I see in my (very old) Word menu, I would try Lucida Sans, Verdana, and Trebuchet MS first. Helvetica and Arial are not very legible at small sizes, mostly due to their very aperture and general failure at giving letters distinguishing features.

For "very aperture," read "small aperture."

Kathryn from Sunnyvale @199:

I'd suggest something that's designed for reading under adverse conditions (small type, bad paper, and so on).

Much as I dislike them otherwise*, something like Georgia or Times New Roman might be a good choice among common fonts. I haven't tried them on paper, but they're pretty good at small sizes on the web (which is an adverse viewing condition on its own, though it presents different issues than paper does).

Is there a reason for sticking to common fonts other than not wanting to buy something for the purpose, though?

If not, I'm quite fond of Gentium, by Victor Gaultney. It's nicely readable at a wide range of sizes, and it's available under the SIL Open Font License, so price (and redistribution) aren't issues. I've found it quite readable down to about 4 pt (12-pt text printed 9-up).

If it weren't for the fact that it's uncommon and pricy, I'd suggest Grade 2 of Mercury Text, by Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, but I know it doesn't meet your requirements.

* Nothing in particular against them; I just find them lacking in character.

That terraced field looks like something that should have come out of Tiffany's studios - I keep seeing it as really high-end stained glass.

For Small and information packed fonts, look for something similar to either a phone book or smallish bible. Both industries have made a living out of having something legible that takes 1% less space than before.

You might like to see this:

Meredith Patterson talks about how scam representation in the style of fake literary agentry has arrived in the technology startup world.

eric @209,

I've seen colophons in Bibles, but in phone books? Now that would be cool.

I can't remember learning to read. I know I was reading by age three, since I have photos of me holding my baby brother (newborn) while wearing glasses and a patch to correct the lazy eye I'd developed through reading. So I presume I was reading by about age two-and-a-half at the latest, since the patch came after the second operation to correct things. I can also remember working my way through the entire collection of Dr Seuss (as there was at 1976) in preschool. I know when my first grade teacher figured out I could read (1977, we'd just had the tail end of a cyclone through, and I stunned her by reading the two sentences she'd written up on the board about it) and what happened afterwards (I got sent to the next classroom, and my reading age was found to be around 9 years. I then went back to my teacher, who set me my first reading homework - two pages of the Grade One "Dick, Jane, Nip and Fluff" reader... thus beginning a long history of complete mental disconnect between what I was capable of, and what I had to do for school, not to mention a complete lack of interest in doing homework. Also a complete lack of necessity to complete homework - I still brought home good grades for everything except Phys Ed).

By the time I reached high school, I was going to the library with my Dad on a weekly basis (every Saturday morning) and getting out four books of my own. I'd usually have at least one of them finished by Saturday evening, and by the end of the week, I would have finished not only the four books I took out on my own account, but also made a substantial dent in the eight books Dad got out for himself and Mum. This alongside taking out at least four books a week from the school library, not to mention the ones I read during lunchtimes, my textbooks, the daily newspaper, and re-reading favourite books and magazines. I've kept up roughly that level of text addiction for most of my life (I don't go through as many books since I discovered the internet, but I certainly maintain a pretty high text load nonetheless). My bag generally has at least one book in it, often more, and if I work or study somewhere with ready access to a bookshop, I will spend at least $100 per week on new books.

I don't suppose it's any surprise I come up as a Literature Nerd.

(Oh, and re: the Coffee site - ohhhhkaaaaay... I'm just going to be backing away slowly for a bit, and hoping the stupid didn't come off on me).

PS: LJ is megpie71. If anyone wants to friend me, they're welcome to (provided you're interested in a profoundly self-centred view of my life).

eric @ 202: Amazon has been out of stock of the particular one that I want for a while (the single handle with the heavy base), and Lodge doesn't have it on their website.

Negative reviews have pointed out that it's not a great wok because it takes so long to heat up and stays hot for a long time afterwards, but I have to admit I never really used it as a wok. I really liked the shape and the heft of it - easy to stir things, hard to tip it over. Lodge does have a sort of Dutch Oven/skillet fusion pan that I might wind up trying out in lieu of the wok. For those who prefer a somewhat more traditional flat-bottomed wok, my mother has a carbon steel one that she likes quite a bit. The trick is to find one with sides high enough to suit your style.

Stephan @207,

Thanks. I tried and ended up printing with Georgia, as it's readable enough at size 9.

Gentium? Nice.

I imagine that slightly into the future one will be able to purchase a font that's optimized for one's personal likes / visual quirks.

Over at FireDogLake, there's an interesting post on "7 Tips To Build A Blog Community", that I think ties in a lot to some of the discussions in various posts here.

And, apropos of nothing, the new security software I'm using gives me a "Dangerous Web Site" warning every time I come onto Making Light. (Ha, I've known that all along!)

A.J. @210,

My first reaction to that essay was to find it an interesting and useful comparison.

But now I disagree with her*.
Here's how I see the choice.

For $5,000 you can:
A. Send two people to Supernova, where you'll run around like mad trying to find the interesting people you thought might be at Supernova, where the interesting people are trying hard not to be cornered by you because they're trying to find their own interesting people
OR

B. Be on stage at Supernova, where for 5 glorious moments everybody in the audience is meeting you, even if you're not meeting them. From then on, people will know who you are: you've become interesting. You can more easily walk into groups and join conversations as you speedwalk around like mad trying to find everyone else.

B in a heartbeat. Not to mention that Mike Arrington is now a kingmaker connector in Web2.0.

If this were publishing...well, I'm not sure who to compare him to in publishing, because the two fields aren't similar. "Money flows to the writer" in writing. "Friends, fools and family" is a common financing method in startups. Not the same.

--------
* disclaimer: I'm in Silicon Valley. I have a relative, an in-law, and a lifepartner who are doing startups.

P J Evans @ 208

I liked that image so much I'm using it as my desktop background. And every time I look at it I see it as a false-color aerial photo image; it takes a few seconds before I notice the trees again and can parse it properly.

Kathryn from Sunnyvale @ 216

Right, high-tech startups are not at all like writing. The publisher gives you an advance and never asks what you spent it on. The angel or vulture capitalist is always asking where the money is going and how fast*. If you do well as a writer your royalties tend to spread the income out over a long period; for a really successful writer that's the retirement program**. If you do well in a startup you get a huge bolus of money when you sell out, and you may never even see a Christmas card from your old colleagues.

* I once worked for a startup whose CEO was so excited by being rich that he spent at least 150% of his salary, and got so deeply and publicly into debt that the board forced him to sell back his stock so he could get back, then forced him to sign an agreement to keep his personal spending within his income. The company did not survive.

** Kids, don't count on this at home. Put money in an IRA, because the royalties can so easily just peter out for any number of reasons.

Bruce @218,

There's another difference I've seen- this is perhaps a Web.pi thing:
Your new company/ team is funded for your current project: geotag based classifieds via IM, say*. 16 months later Cisco buys your company, which makes a fpga-based Cray-1 emulator, and that's great, and not surprising, because you were funded for being a competent team.

Which is a bit like writing, but a bit not. Be like if LeGuin got an advance for "book set in the Ekumen universe," and 9 months later they (Stross and LeGuin) turned in their "aliens invade earth but no one notices post-singularity" graphic novel collaboration, and the publisher was still happy.

-----
* web two point oh company generator

Meg Thornton @ 212... I can't remember learning to read.

I will shamefully confess that I am one of those who had to wait until First Grade before learning to read. (No kindergarten when and where I was growing up.) But I do remember the day it all clicked together. I was staring at the newspaper's funnies (something I had been doing long before I knew how to read) and realized I understood the words. It was a new world that had opened up to me, appropriately enough, with the Buck Rogers comic-strip.

Kathryn from Sunnyvale...

I for one am still waiting for you to post prose on your LiveJournal. As was pointed before, it doesn't have to be deathless prose. And if it were deathless, would it also be zombie prose?

Bruce @105,

btw, "Omelas moment"-- good phrasing, and, as of the coining day, a new concept.

Please don't tell me what association of thoughts brought that into your mind

Sure thing!

I don't have the argument fully down yet, but it goes something like this:

1. Reading the raw web is like reading the slushpile.
1a. You should never want to read the slushpile, not unless it's for career advancement.
1b. Random reward reinforcement is the most addictive kind.
1c. Foresight tells experienced people that only 1 in 50 or 1 in 100 stories in the slushpile will be a gem. In hindsight, how many blog posts were gems? And from this you've learned...?

2. If you read all of your favorite blogs' recommended links, that's like reading Fanfic.
2a. When people blog or comment about "Here's this crazy site I saw, although you probably shouldn't read it," you'll probably still click on it.
2a1. Because we're primates, who'll run up in groups to stare at the dangerous novelty. How many readers listened to Harlan when he told them "don't read Deathbird Stories all at once"*?
2b. And once you read the Snape/Nazgul HP fanfic*, you'll never get those neurons back. Never.

3. ???

4. Three hours have gone by: you've now read that Coffee site and caught up on Cute Overload to scrub the coffee out and read an article about the worldwide economics of coffee to make yourself feel like you've learned something instead of having just spent an hour looking at LOLkittens.

5. Omelas Moment! You turn off the web and go to the library.
5a. Omelas Moment! You delete 90% of the blogs from your RSS feed and you feel great**.

---------
* I did. Don't.

** I did. Do.

Serge @221,

Maybe next week for the LJ: after work and for the weekend the only uses of "web" and "surf" I plan are to contemplate the web of life visible in the surf / intertidal zone.

And it will be lively prose. Zkathryn does Myspace.

Kathryn @ 223... "...must... drink... innnnnnkkk..."

Kathryn @ 219

I like that web company generator. The company names seemed interesting; it looked like the spelling was biased to produce high scores in Scrabble, so I looked at the code. As I expected, much less there than meets the eye. But an interesting demonstration that marketing is based on the Rule of Three.

Company: Squiodirati

Product: greasemonkey extension for dating via Ruby on Rails

See if your VC friends are interested.

Your company name: Meebeeshare
Your company product: greasemonkey extension for maps via XML

Which is funny, because I read maps for a living. (Now, if they could just tell me where this stuff actually is that I'm supposed to be looking at!)

PJEvans #226: I read maps for a living

*Please* expand on that to the ultimate limits of your considerable writing skills.

joann @ 227

I work in the mapping ('geographic services') department of a utility company. If you want to fix something, you need to know where it is, yes? Well, I try to make sure that where we say it is on our map is close enough to where it really is that there won't be an Unfortunate Occurrence. We're getting into GIS for this, and using GPS to locate the stuff, so it's getting more accurate - we hope - and with aerial photos - and Google Earth, as some of this stuff is really out in the sticks (try Needles to Victorville) - we think we have a handle on it. Mostly I do quality control. Think of it as grading papers ('You put it where?' 'You do know what exposed means, don't you?').

PJEvans #228:

Is that in actuality as fascinating as it sounds? (I love maps and messing around with same--I see them as sort of expanded floor plans.)

joann, there are long periods of boredom - you probably don't want to look at a couple of hundred miles of aerial photos of middle-of-nowhere - mixed with excitement as you go 'oh, that's what that is!' It's also nitpicky, since the theoretical accuracy is 15ft for what I'm working with. Fun is seeing things like the March Field air museum (SR71 and B52 are easily identifiable with Google Maps, although their pin is in the wrong place).

OK, does anyone know how to turn of confirmation of select-delete in Word 2003? I want to highlight text and press delete and have it be GONE. If I goof, I'll Undo it. I don't need a little Yes/No question (which I didn't even notice the first few times, giving me the impression that it just wouldn't let me delete highlighted blocks at all) poppiing up.

I've been all through the Options menus, and looked in the typically-unhelpful Help, and I can't find it. It's driving me crazy! How do I get rid of it?

P J Evans @ 230

That Blackbird still looks something from the future next to all those other planes, even from a couple of hundred miles up.

Bruce, I think it's more like a few thousand feet. (Google Earth has an altitude indicator, down at the bottom.) I still think B52s are impressive. You look at the wingspan on that, and 'Aluminum Overcast' makes more sense.

on the revealing our livejournal selves: i'm http://real-gone-girl.livejournal.com/. well mostly. for all intents & purposes.

i'm kind of at a livejournal crossroads. first i had a personal livejournal, read by friends, that i didn't update very often. then when we started doing comic cons, my partner & i decided we needed a "professional"/comics blog. i'd put pictures, con reports, news & art on the real gone girl livejournal, & whiny, private, & inconsequential stuff on the other livejournal. i keep a friends list through my personal livejournal, & don't friend people from our "company" livejournal.

now i'm really only reading my friends list & commenting on same from my personal livejournal, & only posting on the company livejournal. this is less than optimal, but that's where we are right now.

That air traffic controller incident in NY? Well, something similar happened at Dulles on Wednesday and the sickest were sent out to the hospital and the others moved to a backup control center until the fumes dissipated.

Otterb, #204: Good to see this kind of thing actually getting some ink for a change. Any woman who's ever done IRC knows that the mean time from "sign on using female screen name" to "first instance of 'wanna fuck?' message" is generally 1 minute or less, but I think there are a lot of men who just don't believe it.

Actually, that gives me an interesting idea for an experiment. Take male volunteer whose answers on a selection questionnaire put them fairly high on the "institutionalized sexism" scale, and sit them down at computers running random IRC sessions. The rules: They must use a female ID, and they cannot say anything which would serve as a concrete indicator of their actual gender. (That latter might be hard to implement without running their responses thru a moderator.) After 3 or 4 multi-hour sessions of them being effectively female online, have them retake the questionnaire and see if there's any difference in the amount of sexist attitudes displayed.

Last night I dreamt I went to Mandalay again, and awoke in a bald funk, screaming for my mother. Which, if you're a hero of the Empire, with a VC and all that, is hardly the done thing. At least, not if you're a damned civilian. Real soldiers don't talk about it, but those of us who don't have bad dreams are the strange ones. Or the dead. I've known both in my time, though usually before they became the dead. The reason I am the famous hero is that I have taken good care to stay alive, using all my wit and cunning, and what schooling was beaten into me, to stay one step ahead of those who would wish me dead, whether through personal malice or a general hatred of whichever party I was associated with at the time.

Unfortunately, I was down at Newton Abbott, staying with Sir Sam Baker, who, but for his courage, would be a man after my own heart. It's not every knight of the realm who can wander across half Africa with a bint he bought in a Turkish slave-market, and then persuade her to marry him. Though he should have forged his marriage lines. People would have wondered about some obscure Balkan church, but he wouldn't have been exploring in sin.

And then he went back to the Soudan with his wife. They're both mad as hatters. I don't think they know what fear is.[1]

Hence my embarrassment.

From the Flashman Papers, bundle #27, undated, severely damaged and incomplete.

[1] While Flashman may be mistaken in his judgement of the Baker's character, his outline of their life together appears to be correct, although the slave-market story is poorly attested. Samuel Baker, brother of the notorious Valentine Baker, certainly met his future wife, Florence, in the Balkans, and she went on to travel with him in Africa, on his explorations of the White and Blue Niles. They married on his return to London and, while he was knighted for his discovery of the Source of the Nile, This impropriety led to his exclusion from the Court. While Lady Baker was reckoned quite pretty, as can be seen in extant photographs, by this time she would be considered "matronly".

Dave Bell @ 237

Flashman has the right of it in one respect:

but those of us who don't have bad dreams are the strange ones.

They're the ones who scare the rest of us.

Is it just me, or does someone else see a deep irony in Gen. John Abizaid being the commencement speaker at Virginia Tech this year? I mean, sure, he had some very good things to say about how to deal with the loss of comrades; he ought to know about that. But, I don't know, meaning no disrespect to the general*, it just sort of feels creepy for the ex-commander of Central Command in Iraq to be speaking at the site of a massacre.

* Really, it's not him, it's the juxtaposition of his recent job and what happened at VT.

The other day I woke up saying "But I don't want to be beaten into a plowshare!" with only the vaguest of memories of any context that would make that an appropriate thing to say.

The pilot episode of Cartoon Network's "The Drinky Crow Show," based on Tony Millionaire's comic "The Maakies, is online.

Warning: Not Safe For Work. Not Suitable for Children or Impressionable Adults. Really sick.

The funny thing, Xopher (anent #240) is that you don't look like a sword.

though we name fears they do not ever flee
minds have now fallen from their high estate
an angry tiger prowls beneath each tree

i could long view but never feel the sea
freedom began six inches past the gate
though we name fears they do not ever flee

with the stern voice we could not disagree
what mattered was what lay upon the plate
an angry tiger prowls beneath each tree

what we would reprehend is what we'll be
when all has turned to ashes in the grate
though we name fears they do not ever flee

our proper service isn't with bent knee
nor is our purpose merely to be freight
an angry tiger prowls beneath each tree

we all must do and not take time to see
no secret messages are left upon the slate
though we name fears they do not ever flee
an angry tiger prowls beneath each tree

Fragano 242: Yeah, I know. It was a metaphor. For what? That I don't know. It really was a direct reference to that bit of the Bible (those bits, actually; it occurs twice nearly word for word). That much I remember. What the context was, I'm not sure.

Xopher #244: It's a lot better (and a lot more interesting) than waking up and saying very loudly the name of a woman, a name which does not belong to the woman lying next to you. (My goodness, that happened 26 years ago, and it seems just like yesterday.)

Xopher... Are you sure you hadn't been watching reruns of Green Acres before going to sleep?

Lee @ 236... Last August, someone asked in these parts about meeting with me at then soon-coming LAcon. I told her where to reach me and how to recognize me in the con's crowd. Unfortunately, my grasp of English had failed when I posted that. She did find me, but said that my last comment had led to wondering if I was saying that I was a woman, in spite of my male nom-de-blog.

This makes me wonder if, had I posted here as Georgette from the very beginning, but written the exact same (numerous) posts, the assumption would have been that I obviously was female.

Serge @ 247

It seems to me that people are very bad at reading between the lines accurately. So much of what they perceive is colored by what they already believe to be true, that often statements are parsed, or at least interpreted, in ways totally different from how they were meant.

So, the sig makes a huge difference when it's obviously male or female, but assumptions based on conditioned stereotypes can make a difference too. A female posting an assertive, in-your-face response may be seen by the male poster she's responding to as a male, because females, in his worldview, don't respond that way.

It's an eye-opening experience to hear the private "man-talk" or "woman-talk" when you're from the opposite camp. Breaks all kinds of notions you picked up from your culture about who does what, and how they think. Especially when you hear how they refer to you. That experience should be required for everyone before they can be considered adults; it might prevent a lot of the sort of unpleasantness Lee described in #236.

Fragano @ 245

Ah, and you lived to tell the tale! I conjecture that either she couldn't find a knife quickly enough, or that the the window was not high above the ground.

Bruce, it might have been his mother's name.

Granted it doesn't sound like it from Fragano's description, but...

Serge, #247: For me at least, a female screen name is going to imply a female poster. If you then talked about your wife, I would have a moment of confusion and then conclude that you were a lesbian -- unless you said something indicating that "your wife" was male, in which case I'd conclude that you like bending people's brains with language.

I can't speak for anyone else, but that's how my brain appears to be wired.

Xopher @ 31 re: Word 2003:

You're getting "Delete block? No (Yes)" , right? That sounds like WordPerfect 5.1 (DOS) behavior. Word 2002 does it when "Navigation Keys for WordPerfect Users" is selected; I'm guessing things are similar with 2003. Unless things have changed between the two versions, you'll find the checkbox you need to clear under Tools -> Options -> General.

Lee @ 251... What I was trying to get at was, could people figure my sexual identity, based solely on the contents of my posts? Do I speak in the language associated with the gender of my blog name? We make assumptions based on that, like Bruce Cohen also said. I couldn't tell, looking at your own name, whether you're male or female. Then again, I've seldom been good at reading cues unless they hit me on the head. Whatever. It was late when I posted that item last night, and I was providing support for an office project, and a bit tired.

Bruce Cohen #249: I was a fortunate young man, that's all I can say!

Linkmeister #250: It wasn't!

Serge (247, 253): The content of your posts include references to your wife, which marks you either as male or as lesbian. If you were posting as 'Georgette', I would assume lesbian. If you were using a gender-neutral name, I would assume male (because we have many more married men than married lesbians in this country).

Incidentally, I remember the exchange which confused the other poster as to your gender, and I think the fault was not (entirely) on your end. At least, I wasn't confused.

Mary Aileen...Oh, it wasn't really a matter of anyone's fault. I was just curious about how one's posts (if free of any marital references) are perceived, depending on the label one uses. Back when nobody knew who James Tiptree was, I think some writers affirmed with great authority that Tiptree's voice obviously was a man's.

It's Mother's Day and Turner Classic Movies celebrates the occasion with movies where motherhood is the subject. Of course, such a celebration would have been incomplete without Joan Craford's Mildred Pierce.

Happy Mother's Day.

Oops. That's Joan Crawford, not Craford. The 'W' must have stuck in my craw.

Serge @ 259 - Not the Craw, the Craw![/getsmart]

Thinking of Joan Crawford, are they showing Mommy Dearest, too?

Serge @ 257

Many people do seem to weigh the name of author very heavily, and get very upset when they discover that the writing can be read in other ways if you just change the name. That's one reason why some people are annoyed by gender-ambiguous names: that clue they were counting on is not as useful.

There's also statistics: people go with what they think is most likely. Take Tiptree for example; when she started writing there were perhaps four accepted female sf writers*, so assuming maleness was a good bet on the odds.

And then there's the reaction of discovery. Most people are angry when they find out that someone they had pegged for one stereotype actually don't fit it. Some, however, react with delight, as they would react to a surprising and amusing punchline to a story.

Personally, names often do fool me, but sometimes not completely. And my discovery reaction is delight, because I like to see stereotypes bent around into strange shapes. The capacity of surprise is what keeps life interesting.

* I would bet there were a few more in the closet, operating under male pseudonyms.

My own experience of writing under a pseudonym has been interesting... Said pseud is biased male but essentially gender-ambiguous in the UK, but I'm told is male-only in the US. I write original slash for a romance small press. I use the term "original slash" quite deliberately here, because in my experience of fanfic culture, it will typically be assumed that a slash writer is female unless explicitly known otherwise, regardless of perceived gender of handle.

Write gay romance for a pro romance publisher with a predominantly female audience, and it's a different matter. Exactly the same sort of material (literally, in a couple of cases of filing off the serial numbers), still being sold to a mostly female audience, but I'm perceived as male. To such an extent that some people keep referring to me as "he" even after being told that I'm "she".

Preconceptions matter...

Nicole 252: I don't THINK I have that checked...I'll try it when I get to work Monday, and let you know. Thanks! If that's right, you just saved me a lot of trouble.

Bruce Cohen... Assuming maleness in Tiptree's case was probably reasonable, considering how few pros were known to be women. On the other hand... Based on what I read about that era after the fact, it appears that there was quite a debate in those days, so maybe it wasn't such a safe bet.

Julia Jones... Preconceptions do indeed matter. Maybe not so much anymore in the F/SF field, but what about the mystery field? If the author has an obviously female name, some men might stay away because, heck, how could a woman write hardboiled detective stories? And you have people like Lindsey Davis. Would some people have stayed away, had they known she was a woman? Does she write stories that only a woman could have written?

It annoys me when people assumne that, if you are a man, you must act THIS way, and if you're a woman, you must act THAT way. It took me a long time to accept that, yes, I am a heterosexual man even though my behavior, because it has some aspects of one sex and some aspects of another, sometimes throws some people's expectations off. If somebody has a problem, it's not me.

Blah blah blah...

Serge, #264: Re women writing hard-boiled detective stories, I have two words: Sue Grafton. OTOH, it's also true that the Kinsey Millhone series is the only hard-boiled one to have held my interest for any length of time*, so maybe there's a difference in the way women write hard-boiled vs. the way men write it.

Yes, my name is gender-ambiguous, and if I wanted to play concealment games, it would be relatively easy for me to do so by not mentioning things which mark me specifically as female. I also use the name Celine (definitely feminine) to post in some venues, but have never paid enough attention to identify whether or not people respond to me differently under that name. I certainly don't post any differently, no matter what name I'm using.

* And in an unusual switch for me, my interest in the series started to fade when Kinsey started having more interaction with her previously-distant-or-unknown family members. Apparently I liked the edgy loner enough that seeing her get all bogged down in touchy-feely stuff is a turnoff. This is odd, because normally I'm all about character growth.

Lee @ 265

I'll give you two more words: Nicola Griffith. I liked "Slow River", which is, among other things, cyberpunk, but I really flipped over "Stay". You might like it, because there is character growth, but a lot of very hard-boiled action as well. Warning: it's a sequel, and I haven't read the first book, "A Blue Place" yet. Probably it should be read first.

Lee and Serge,

Preconceptions matter a hell of a lot, so it's often best not to deliberately mislead or confuse people unless you intend the resultant irritation or even anger. For instance, I use a screen name that's completely unambiguous: it tells my gender (though not my orientation) and my ethnic background. I do that primarily because I have enough trouble with reactions to the things I say and profess belief in that I don't want to have to deal with less important issues. And the "Speaker to Managers" part says a little bit about my relationship with authority, if you read it carefully, and that's something I like to get out front.

Given a basic stereotype to work with, people assume a lot about the next level of detail, and those assumptions about me are almost always wrong. I don't care a lot about how people think of me in terms of gender or sexual orientation since those things are not important outside of meatspace, and only important there if you're sexually available and looking. Nor do I care much if people make assumptions about my religous beliefs, since I rarely discuss them. At least I can be fairly sure they won't assume I'm Christian, which is useful.

But there are a lot of other assumptions I do care about, because they're about parts of my life and my worldview that are not defaults I've kept from my upbringing, but attitudes and opinions I've formed on my own hook, that often don't jibe with the accepted standards of the culture I live in. And the assumptions about those parts of me bother me as much as assumptions about gender bother Serge.

Bruce Cohen @ 266... Preconceptions matter a hell of a lot, so it's often best not to deliberately mislead or confuse people unless you intend the resultant irritation or even anger.

Definitely.

When I was young and naïve, I had a hard time understanding that people would lie just to make a fool of me. Feeling foolish is not a pleasant emotion, and not one I'd wish upon others.

Lee @ 265... I've never read Grafton, but you gave up when the character reverted to more traditional 'feminine' concerns, as if it were unavoidable, right?

Serge,

Kinsey hasn't ever really been feminine. Acquaintance with her family hasn't changed that in recent books.

I find that my interest waned in the books where she was involved in family matters less because she went all girly and more because I like watching her investigate cases, not react to her relatives (even though her attitude of truculent hostility was much the same whether it was family or authority).

The series has been doing better of late. The last one was more on track.

But girly? Kinsey? No. You should read them, Serge.

abi @ 269... So, basically, Grafton's books became mess and less mysteries, and more and more soaps?

Would you recommend starting at the very beginning?

One series I really enjoyed was written by B.J. Oliphant in the early 1990s, a nom-de-plume for Sheri Tepper. They were definitely mysteries, and the main character was an older woman who was very angry at the fools who run the world. I haven't seen any book in a long time, which is a shame. I'd like to see her deal with the current political climate.

(cont'd from #270)

Oops. The earlier post should have said 'less and less mysteries', not 'mess and less mysteries', whatever the latter would mean.

Serge,

The first bunch of her books are hardcore private detective stories. A good place to start.

Somewhere in the early middle of the alphabet, she bumps into relatives, and loses her focus for a couple of books. She to's and fro's for a couple of books, still investigating cases, but a little off the boil.

But I contend that she gets back on track in recent novels.

They're never, ever soaps, though Grafton has a sure enough grasp of characterisation to write such books.

No soap, then. Thanks for the recommendation, abi.

Back when I was first on AOL, I found the SF forum to be split genderwise -- men ignored women's ideas and women ignored men's ideas -- so I made what I considered an androgynous name: Patterner. It turned out that everybody assumed I was male. If I was female, I would have had a female name, a Lady at the beginning, or an "a" at the end of the name. It was an interesting lesson.

Most people will assume white male in the absence of any evidence; I tend to assume white female. I don't know how 'Diatryma' sits, genderwise-- since it's me, I assume female, but I'm also biased because it's shortened to 'Dia' when necessary. I've used 'Glyptodont' and 'Titanothere' in online games, and that last is male in my mind. I'm not sure why a glyptodont is genderless. Perhaps the Y balances the not-ending-in-A?

Teresa, the limeade was a hit, though I think I made it somewhat wrong. It was fun to make, though, and not a project of weeks, so I can invest another weekend to zesting, sugaring, and bribing someone else to destickify the kitchen. The rest of the party seemed to like it, though they thought it too sugary.
Then again, we pretty much ignored the 'dilute if you value your sanity' instructions in favor of, "Oh no! We seem to be sober! Quick, fetch the shot glasses!"

Serge and abi re Grafton:

See, one of the things I like most about Kinsey is that she's a semi-misanthropic woman who's established a good sense of self and a balance in her life. She's had a few sexual encounters, and they went EXACTLY as I would have expected from someone with her personality. She has a few people she trusts, but that's a damn hard nut to crack. And at the same time, she doesn't see herself as defective or broken -- just different. It's easy to find male characters drawn that way, but much rarer to find a woman, far less one as engaging on the character level as Kinsey.

So when Grafton started pushing all the family-recontact stuff, it felt as though she'd decided the character was broken after all, and that we were on the way to seeing Kinsey experience something like a Heinleinian epiphany and decide that a "more traditional" lifestyle is indeed the way to True Happiness.

I happen to believe very deeply that there is more than one road to True Happiness, and that particular one-true-wayism bothers me more than almost any other... so when I started seeing what looked like a buildup to it, I quit reading. Now, having heard from abi that it seems to have been a temporary aberration, I might go back and try again.

Not so much that I lost interest when she started acting more feminine (because abi's right, she didn't), but a feeling of "It's not broken, quit trying to fix it!"

Lee, 265: Here's where I embarrass myself. When we first "met," I was convinced for a while that you were male, just like Céline the French author. I was quite relieved to discover that you're nothing like him!

In terms of James Tiptree, the famous example is Robert Silverberg's introduction to the collection Warm Worlds and Otherwise. As it happens, Katie has just borrowed my copy of it, so I can't post the exact words, but the relevant bit went something like:

"There have been some rumors that Tiptree is really a woman. I can't believe them. There is to me something ineluctably masculine in Tiptree's writing. I don't think that a woman could have written the short stories of Hemingway just as I don't think a man could have written the novels of Jane Austen, and in this way I believe that Tiptree is a man."

In later editions he added a postscript admitting his error, which I think showed grace.

Wow, I've been missing a good discussion. Gender in fora is really interesting to me right now. I used to have a gender. Now I have... a quirky collection of anecdotes and taglines about traveling around in gender. I'm much happier, all in all, with my collection of anecdotes and taglines (steadily growing as I play with this process) than I was with having the gender I had.

Tiptree is one of my great heroes.

If anyone wants my LJ name, email me. I'm quite shy about it, as it's not associated with my real name in background-checkable internet public space, as my livejournal is where I'm free with extremely personal details. I'll give it out on request, though.

Lee @ 265: I would assume "Celine" was a reference to Hagbard Celine, of the Illuminatus! Trilogy, and thus masculine.

I've been ducking the gender discussion.

This is one of the few places where I use an identifiably female name. Almost everywhere else on the net, I'm evilrooster, which is generally regarded as a masculine name. (Indeed, the only other evilrooster I've run across references to is a gamer in the Midwest named Joe.)

I've struck up friendships with men online under that identity, and had them say things like "I like you, but I'm straight," (that one made me laugh). I don't tend to post girly things, but then, I am not a girly girl*, even IRL.

I used to hang out in a forum with someone named Gritchka, and assumed for ages that that was a woman. Even after meeting him (dark hair, beard, very quiet demeanour), I still found myself thinking of him as the strong, vocal grey-haired woman I pictured when I met him online.

And was/would it be deceptive to post as a man when you're a woman? Maybe. But there are certainly fora where I would, where women are either ignored or abused. There, the choice is effectively, post as a man or don't bother**.

-----
* No, Serge, not even if you factor in the hair.

** Actually, with fora like that, I usually wouldn't bother. Unless there were a professional reason - why hang out with a'holes?

Having a somewhat-gender-neutral name (or at least abbreviated name; my full name is Julian, but I hardly ever use that) can be interesting at times. It seems most people encountering me online manage to guess my gender correctly, but there have been many exceptions. And I also tend to guess "Jules" == "masculine", despite the fact that (excluding myself) I've actually encountered more feminine Jules's than masculine ones in my various online travels. (IRL, I know many more male than female, however)

Check out Ask The Brontë Sisters for writerly advice.

My real name is obviously female. I stopped using it mainly because I was getting too much grief, but also because it's a very common first name and therefore didn't really work as a handle. Since then I've been using variants of ewe in most places. The plan is that intellectually there is information to give a clue that I'm female, but on a purely emotional level my femaleness isn't the first thing people notice about me. The second part works, the first part not always. I am often perceived as male and people are surprised when I point out that ewe is an explicitly feminine word!

My gender is pretty much "don't care". If I have to pick a side, I'm female rather than otherwise. But I'd rather not have to pick.

Fans of the nether reaches of British folk music may want to check out this BBC radio documentary on the history of Mike and Lal Waterson's album Bright Phoebus, a "lost" (i.e., in Trailer jail) freak-folk classic with an all-star supporting cast including Martin Carthy and Richard Thompson. You have to install RealPlayer (ick), but it's worth it.

One thing they failed to mention is that Lal later made two outstanding albums with her son Oliver Knight, which are at least a little easier to find.

David Goldfarb @ 278... So it was Silverberg who said that about Tiptree. As for his assertion that he doesn't think a man could have written the novels of Jane Austen, I disagree. I couldn't have, but then again I could barely write my way out of a paper bag.

abi and all others... I hope that my comment about misleading others thru one's screen-name wasn't taken as an accusation thrown at women who use a neutral or male name. My original point about 'Georgette' was, if I had used a female name, would I have been perceived as male or female? Someone could decide to go back to my previous posts to see if she/he could have figured it out, but people do know that I am male, and hindsight is a wonderful thing. Thus the only way for me to know would have been to fake my gender. But that would have been an act that'd mislead others, and I don't do that(*). As for women using a neutral/male screen name, that is totally different. There are plenty of valid reasons for that, like preventing others from thinking of hitting on you, or being taken seriously by men who will attribute any validity to their opinions only if their plumbing is similar to theirs. I don't hang around places with people who think like that. That's why I'm here.

(*) Mind you, some men might take on female names because they don't want to be seen as a threat simply on the basis that they are men. And wasn't there a discussion in these parts about perfectly valid reasons why people post anonymously, or pseudonymously?

Fragano @ 255... Did your significant other then try to find out who that "Rosebud" lady was?

Serge #287: Since the lady in question was asleep herself (remember, this was 26 years ago), all that I did was wake her suddenly. I recall mumbling something.

Fragano @ 288... Sure, but, when Charles Foster Kane said "Rosebud", there was nobody in his room. The nurse came in after he died. And yet they knew what his last word was.

Serge @ 247:
She did find me, but said that my last comment had led to wondering if I was saying that I was a woman, in spite of my male nom-de-blog.

Mary Aileen @ 256:
Incidentally, I remember the exchange which confused the other poster as to your gender, and I think the fault was not (entirely) on your end. At least, I wasn't confused.

That was me, and I'm not particularly embarassed about it. I'd assumed Serge was male not because I identified "Serge" as a male name but because I identified it as a fabric and felt with no particular justification that it was a fabric more associated with men. Then Serge posted this:

If you see Jerry Pournelle walking around, and if there's a short-haired woman behind and she's sticking her tongue at Jerry's back and if there's a tall guy with her, that's me.

I misread "that's me" as referring the short-haired woman sticking her tongue out rather than the tall guy with her. Not a big deal and straightened out quickly.

Back in my more active usenet days, people would occasionally accuse me of being a man masquerading as a woman, due to either my opinions or my willingness to mix it up in debate.

Susan @ 290... Like I said earlier, my grasp of the English language had failed me by then. In fact, the sentence's construction was terrible and I should have had my agnoizer cranked all the way up for it.

As for your saying that "...people would occasionally accuse me of being a man masquerading as a woman, due to either my opinions or my willingness to mix it up in debate..."

And that was in the late 20th century, right? What Reality did those people come from to reach a conclusion based on your expressing your own opinion?

I think of "Celine" as female, because it was the name of one of my great-aunts on the originally French-Canadian (transplanted to California)side of Mom's family. My own name can be mistaken for male, or just ambiguous, but long-time readers of Locus and "Making Light" will know better. And I'm so used to it, anything more overtly feminine just wouldn't seem right -- though there's nothing remotely macho about me! (I'm way too short for that.)

(cont'd from 291) Oops. That sentence should have said "...I should have had my AGONIZER cranked all the way up..." An agnoizer sounds like a joke about agnostics.

I just finished reading The Prestige. Was there anything to it besides the Sooper Surprising Plot Twists and the postmodern "nothing up my sleeves" gag? Or was the pomo thing the whole point?

Faren @ 292... there's nothing remotely macho about me! (I'm way too short for that.)

"Calling corporal Bonaparte to the front-desk..."

Serge (#295): Well, I'm not very Napoleonic either!

Faren @ 296... You have no wish to reshape the world to be as it should be?

An agnoizer sounds like a joke about agnostics.

- Still won't talk, huh? Squad Leader! Give him a taste of ... the AGNOIZER!
(radiophonic noises, screams)
- So, Terran. Now, perhaps, you will be more... forthcoming. Where are you planning your counterattack?
- Er... I'm not really sure now.
- Dammit!

ajay @ 298... coughgagsplutter

Montana, although unarguably beautiful and full of wildlife, is hell to get around in.

Serge #289: I don't believe the spirit of Orson Welles was present. Nor even that of John Houseman.

Nicole 252: Well, I didn't have "Navigation keys for WordPerfect users" checked, but I did have "Help for WordPerfect users" checked. Putting that functional difference there is clearly a bug, but clearing it worked. How it got set in the first place remains a mystery (I was a WP user a decade and a half ago, but not since).

Thank you! Even the Help people at my company didn't know that one.

TexAnne @ 294: I just finished reading The Prestige. Was there anything to it besides the Sooper Surprising Plot Twists and the postmodern "nothing up my sleeves" gag? Or was the pomo thing the whole point?

Hm. I thought it was a moving tale of misunderstanding and obsession, with

(jung nzbhagf gb) n trahvaryl perrcl tubfg fgbel

thrown in (spoiler encrypted for those who haven't read it, including those who've only seen the film). I didn't think it relied on plot twists particularly (unlike the film); it did ask the reader to compare the accounts of two unreliable narrators, though.

I'm honestly not even sure what you mean by the "'nothing up my sleeves' gag." Probably I've forgotten something, as I usually do.

Tim, 303: I disagree with nothing you said. I just thought that after the raves I heard, there would be more there there.

I got the "nothing up my sleeves" line from the Borden section, where he's telling his diary that he'll tell the whole truth, leaving nothing out, and at the end the reader still won't know how the trick was worked. Meta Meta Meta!! I just thought the trick wasn't worth the buildup, to borrow his metaphor.

Not sure where I should mention this. The "Department of Evil" link in Patrick's sidelights links to a missing page.

I think the page he wanted is:
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/dept_of_evil_all_of_you_must_die

I just stopped by Borders and bought Sandra McDonald's The Outback Stars, a Navy-in-space which was recommended by a fellow LiveJournaler, who also promised that its politics won't have me tempted to test the book's aerodynamics. And it was edited by one James Macdonald.

TexAnne, #277: *boggle*

A.J., #279: Fascinating. I haven't read that, and was thus unaware that there was a well-known male SF character called Celine. That'll teach me to make assumptions!

Actually there's supposed to be an accent-aigu on the first "e" -- for me, it's the French form of the moon goddess Selene -- but in the fora where I used to post with that name, it was far too much work to put the accent in, so I didn't bother.

On a completely different topic... anyone here planning to attend ApolloCon, SoonerCon, Conestoga, ConGlomeration, or FenCon? If you'd like to meet up, drop me a line.

I got the "nothing up my sleeves" line from the Borden section, where he's telling his diary that he'll tell the whole truth, leaving nothing out, and at the end the reader still won't know how the trick was worked. Meta Meta Meta!! I just thought the trick wasn't worth the buildup, to borrow his metaphor.

saw the movie, didn't read the book.

Bar thl'f frperg gevpx jnf gung ur unq na vqragvpny gjva. Gur bgure thl'f frperg, ncneg sebz orvat n evpu aboyr, jnf gung ur unq n culfvpny pbcl znpuvar ohvyg ol grfyn. Ur gura frg hc bar uhaqerq fubjf jurer ur jbhyq perngr n pbcl bs uvzfrys hc va gur onypbal, juvyr ur sryy guebhtu n genc qbbe vagb n jngre svyyrq gnax jurer ur jbhyq qebja. Ur pbhyq bayl ubcr gung gur bgure zntvpvna jbhyq fubj hc naq tb vagb gur onfrzrag naq trg pnhtug naq oynzrq sbe uvf qrngu. vg jnf bar uhaqerq fubjf orpnhfr ur bayl unq bar uhaqerq jngre gnaxf. naq ur jnf bayl jvyyvat gb xvyy uvzfrys bar uhaqerq gvzrf.

Jul ur qvqa'g chyy bhg gur obql naq qvfcbfr bs vg naq erhfr gur gnax, V'z abg fher.

Greg, 308: Yeah. The book isn't QUITE that stupid; the thing you point out is taken care of in the book. It's just either way overrated or I'm completely missing the point.

Individ-ewe-al @ 283

I am often perceived as male and people are surprised when I point out that ewe is an explicitly feminine word!

Thus providing more evidence for my point about preconceptions, above. The first preconception seems to always be based on the notion that someone posting on a thread involving firm convictions and passionate opinions is probably male; name comes after, and if only part of the name is just suggestive, it often won't override the basic preconception.

Serge @ 285

The Silverberg faux pas was a classic case. As soon as Tiptree publicly revealed herself as Alice Sheldon, a large troop of know-betters stated that Silverberg must be a real chauvinist pig, to use the language of the day, and that they had known better all along. In the face of that, I agree that Silverberg showed real grace in just admitting his mistake and apologizing for his bigotry without turning it into part of a show trial or firing back at his detractors.

Serge @ 289

Well, if you believe that ghosts are resonances of strong emotion reverberating around the circumstances of their generation*, then why can't Significant Pronouncements or Important Plot Devices remain echoing in the room where they were said?

* Just to tie this thread into a bow knot, refer back to Tiptree's story (sorry, can't remember the title) about aliens triggering the resonances of dead humans as part of an archaeological expedition.

ajay @ 298

Nyah, nyah! You missed me. I had just put the coffee cup down and swallowed a mouthful when I read that joke, so no liquid moment. I did snort some air, so I'll give you half points.

So is World of Art a self-publishing scam targeted at artists? Or is it just expensive, but not really a scam? I've gotten two different spams from them, describing two different services; here's the one that sounds most fishy:

Professional artists are invited to submit materials for selection to become published in Masters of Today 100 Contemporary Artists global art book edited by WOA Publishing.

the selection
ll entries go through the selection process. Place and availability in the book are subject to quality and acceptance. The nominations and inclusions are judged solely by visuals submitted as attachment send to: info@worldofartmagazine.com. The editors will review all submission and make decisions on acceptance.

After notification of acceptance a inclusion fee is required no later than the artist will receive a layout alternative in the books.
The inclusion fee of Euro 990 for two-page spreds in the book may be provided by a gallery or museum, corporation or individual contributor representing the artist.

The cost includes full editing, creative layout and design per-page, text review & post-editing, plates, offset printing, binding, packing, shipping, distribution. Our distribution is through large book wholesalers and ecommerce channels, in US bookstores and internationally including Barnes and Noble, Borders, and Amazon in USA, Amazon Canada, Amazon France, Amazon Germany, Amazon UK, Amazon Australia and others. Each artist will receive three free copy of the book. Additional copies may be purchased at shipping and handling cost.Subject to availability, additional copies may be purchased at shipping and handling cost.

The book isn't QUITE that stupid;

unfortunately, the movie blew it badly enough that I can't bring myself to read the book.

just to satisfy that we're talking about the same thing, though, could you define in short what you mean by "postmodern"?

Bruce @ 311

They must be harvesting addresses, because I've gotten at least two from them, plus another art-related one. (Most of the spam I've gotten lately has been in Cyrillic.)

World of Art sent their emails to me.

At least I have accounts on a few art-related sites.

Bruce Cohen @ 310... Well, if you believe that ghosts are resonances of strong emotion reverberating around the circumstances of their generation*, then why can't Significant Pronouncements or Important Plot Devices remain echoing in the room where they were said?

No cigar, Bruce. In his biography, Charton Heston recounts the time he and Orson Welles met fans of the latter. When one of them humbly came up and asked Welles how anybody could have heard Kane's final word, Welles realized that someone had finally caught him.

Bruce Cohen @ 311... I got that email too. I deleted it without opening it.

I've gotten several World of Art spammails.

It reminds me of those pathetic poetry contest scams.

Greg--well, no, not "in short". I recognize "postmodern" the way I recognize "medieval" or "Victorian" or "Italian Renaissance." I know it when I see it based on experience. I do tend to use the term as an insult, if that helps at all.

Odd convergences of ML and Real Life -- I went to a reading of David Marusek's on Friday evening. We have friends in common, but Friday was the first time I'd met Mr. Marusek.

Anyhoo...the conversation at Marusek's reading ended up mentioning Silverberg's "Tiptree can't be a woman" comment.

Everyone present at the reading had read the book, so we ended up chatting for a few hours instead of listening to him read. Mr. Marusek was interesting to talk with, and I found him quite charming.

TexAnne at 318

Because I see at least the potential need for some sort of token to indicate thought and art that's later than and different from "modern", I differentiate between "postmodern" things, which may or may not be valid and useful, and "pestmodern" ones, which definitely aren't. What percentage of self-styled "postmodernism" actually fits in the first category is left as an exercise for the reader.

Did anybody else just receive a newsletter from Grafton Entertainment?

Bruce @ 311 - Yep, I got that spam too. The only art-related site I'm on with this address is JPG Magazine, so I suspect that they're harvesting from here. Their most recent missives have been shunted straight to the spam folder, though.

I do tend to use the term as an insult, if that helps at all.

I believe so.

Around these parts, people don't even bother saying "postmodern" any more. They just say "pomo." This is probably so that postmodern gays can call themselves "pomo homos."

And, btw, since I own my home in Hoboken, if I were postmodern I'd be a pomo homo Hobo homeowner (say THAT ten times fast).

Dr. Seuss would have a field day.

"bobo" is a key term to learn if you are thinking (as a friend of mine is) of getting into the Paris property market. A bobo is a boheme bourgeois, a hip urban type with a bit more cash than an impoverished student; and you should be looking for property that is adequately boboisé.

So, if Xopher moved temporarily to Paris, he could be a pomo homo bobo hobo.

Just a thought.

In college I was on a gay softball team, and we'd regularly have games against the radio station team. Thus, it was "The Homos vs. The Pomos."

No thanks at all to me, we tended to kick ass.

Xopher #324: Or, perhaps, so that incorrigible punsters can refer to the 'po-mo slo-mo'. Back in the late 80s, early 90s, one of my teachers referred to postmodernists as 'posties'. I pointed out to him that where I came from, that meant the person who delivered the post.

Bruce, 320: So brilliant I'm stealing it and telling all my friends.

Xopher @ 324

There is, or at least used to be, a gay black theatre group in San Francisco that calls itself the Afro Pomo Homos.

ethan @ 326... Hey, Toto, let's do the promo for the "The Homos vs. The Pomos". And we'll all stay at the HoJo in Soho.

Have you seen the Department of Evil sidelight yet? Well worth a look. By the Dark Powers, it shows the most appropriate use for PowerPoint I can think of.

So, I watched the Particle That is the War on Terror, and Youtube next served up What if the Beatles were Irish, which is also good stuff.

I want to plug Charlie Stross' "Shaping the future" article (transcript of a talk):
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/05/shaping_the_future.html

Troll Whisperer particle:
It's Bryant Durrell, not Darrell, who wrote the MT plugin. I believe this is the same Bryant I used to hang out with back in the late 80s when we were both trying to run university SF clubs. We had a gonzo suite stacked to the walls with students at the '89 Noreascon. Small world.

TexAnne@294: I've only seen the movie, but my two cents: I thought what made The Prestige great wasn't the plot twists or the postmodernism (whatever you mean by that). There wasn't single twist in the whole damn thing that wasn't well-telegraphed, and deliberately so. It's hard to say exactly what it is that makes it amazing, but it wasn't that it was really good at tricking the audience. Kind of the opposite, really. It tells you everything. How much of it you figure out has more to do with how willing you are to believe that a human being would do that to himself.

In the movie, there's a scene with Borden working as a stagehand for another magician, gur bar jurer ur zrrgf uvf shgher jvsr. Gurer'f n inavfuvat oveq-gevpx va juvpu gur oveq qvrf. Vg'f na htyl, oehgny genqr-bss: n oveq'f yvsr sbe n zbzrag'f snagnfl. Vg vfa'g, gb nal fnar crefba, jbegujuvyr. Bapr lbh xabj gur gevpx vg vfa'g nznmvat, whfg ubeevslvat. (Gung'f gur erny ernfba jul Obeqra pna'g gryy nalbar uvf frperg: vg'f gbb shpxvat fnq.) Naq gung'f gur cbvag bs gur fgbel: gurfr zra ner frrxvat gb perngr jbaqre, naq perngr ubeebe vafgrnq. Vg'f bayl jbaqebhf vs lbh qba'g xabj jung vg pbfgf. Vg'f zntvp nf ubyybj gevpxrel, nf qrprcgvba--hygvzngryl, nf frys-qrprcgvba. (Qnagba'f fcrrpu ng gur raq nobhg srnevat gung ur'q or gur bar va gur gnax nf cevpryrff--ur jnf nyjnlf gur bar va gur gnax.)

Niall McAuley: I have that "What If The Beatles Were Irish" Youtube clip open in a tab right now. I couldn't help but think that PNH would enjoy it.

*Wow. LeetKey knows not to ROT-13 html tags. Awesome.

Heresiarch, 335--Aha!! Bingo! When you say, "It's magic as hollow trickery, as deception--ultimately, as self-deception," that's why I didn't like it. The book is about hollow trickery, expressed by means of hollow trickery. The form and the substance are the same, and that's why I didn't like it.

Thank you for helping me put my objections into words.

And that's the point of the story

Was it? I missed that. I started out watching it, trying to figure things out. At some point probably before the halfway mark, I remember thinking, what is the point of all this? At some point, Hugh Jackman's character became nothing more that a plot device needed to carry the story to the ending that the writer wanted to have.

If there was a point, I would guess it was something to the effect of "Look at me! I, the writer, fooled you, the viewer"

Susan @ 334... We had a gonzo suite stacked to the walls with students at the '89 Noreascon

You wallpapered the suite with the students's papers, or with the students themselves?

Well, I'm glad I could help. S'funny, though, because that's why I like it. Different strokes and all that, I guess.

JESR @300

Montana, although unarguably beautiful and full of wildlife, is hell to get around in.

I have a frustrating-Montana-driving memory:

We arrived at the Montana border on a summertime day back when the daytime speed limit was "Reasonable and Prudent."(1)

We were going to be on some of the big wide highways, and so finally we had a chance to legally autobahn in North America.

Except we were in a 25 foot RV.

I got it up to 90mph on a wide, empty and gently sloping downhill section of I-90, but only for an instant, and only by pushing it into a "Scotty yells up from the Engine Room that she canna take more and is about to rattle apart" zone.

-----
(1) Generally known at the time to top out at 100mph depending on local law enforcement. This was too vague for the U.S.'s Supreme Court, and they stopped the law.

Kathryn @ 340... Speaking of Mister Scott, you heard what happened to James Doohan's ashes? The rocket failed, plowed into New Mexico's idea of what constitutes soil. And Doohan's ashes apparently are lost.

Kathryn, we were driving a Sienna minivan with my daughter's dorm room contents jammed in (and I'm still wondering at how we removed the minifridge and several other things and stored them at her other home and still ended up with the resultant load making it impossible to recline any seats) but doing at least the posted car speed limit until our lives were complicated by a 25ft RV pulling a Jeep with Georgia plates. Every time we'd finally pass them, it would be time to pull aside for breakfast or photo taking and then they'd be in front of us again... all the way from White Sulphur Springs to Missoula.

There are no short-cuts in that state, no bypasses, no alternate routes. There is, however, Rattlesnake Creek NRA, which has some amazing, amazing wildflowers, and which is a place the road-weary traveller should stop and walk out the kinks before heading out of Missoula (or, for those with fewer bad bendy bits than I, the Kim Williams Nature Trail, which is long and switch-backy and unforested).

Serge @341,

I found out about that one even before it hit the news: the ashes from 200 other people were on that flight, including those of my brother-in-law's grandfather.

I believe my b.i.l.'s family is amused more than annoyed by this coda- evidently the grandfather had been a rocket scientist but didn't have the best sense of direction.

Jerry Fallwell is learning first hand what God thinks of sanctimonious assholes.

Sorry, was that in bad taste?

Serge (#341) My reading of the ash-rocketing was that only a small portion of each person's "cremains" was on board, so there would still be identifiable James Doohan ashes for his terrestrial family and fans.

What rather disappointed me was hearing that the plan was just to shoot the rocket up some miles, and then it would fall back to earth. I'd assumed it was meant to head everlastingly into space, or join the asteroid belt, or fall into the sun as the ultimate funeral pyre.

Stefan 344: No. Good riddance. It's a pity he didn't suffer more, but the world is a better place.

Stefan @ 344... No. Ding dong, the witch is dead.

I should have added:

Smith's Derived Law of Montana Driving:

Look carefully to see if there's someone crazier than you coming, then gun it.

Kathryn and Mez... Still, it's a bit embarassing that Doohan's final sendoff was marred this way. I find myself envisionning Mister Scott's ghost coming out of the ashes and trying to make the recalcitrant rocket do what it's supposed to do.

Meanwhile... I just went to the post office two blocks over from the office. Between there and here is Albuquerque's convention center, and I was wondering why there were so many teenagers around until I noticed the MPs and the banner: Intel is having its science fair here this week. I guess I'll be going. I probably won't understand even a fraction of what the kids are doing, but it gives me hope for the Future.

Wait wait wait wait. Tintin movies? Hello!

Anyone got any rumors about which books they're animating?

---L.

Stefan Jones #344: What god would have him? Venus Cloacina, maybe.

Serge 347: ExCUSE me? That man made life HELL for us Witches...please tag him some other way.

Xopher @ 352... No offense was intended. I could call him a nasty son of a b*tch, but that would be an insult to three of my four dogs. Smug bastard? Again, that's an insult to my four dogs, all of them mutts. Evil? Yes, evil.

"Whited Sepulchre" works.

Lovecraft or Poe probably have something that could describe Falwell accurately. Something about ghoulish and fleshy white worms.

One thing that Spielberg and Jackson will have to deal with: Herge decreed that there would be no new Tintin adventures. Anything they do will have to be an adaptation. Presumably with the author's chauvanism gently excised.

There have already been two rounds of animated Tintin movies:

One was broadcast on American TV in the mid / late '60s. If memory serves, they ran on Channel 9 WOR in the NY area, and the episodes were split in two. I don't remember if these ran for an hour or half-hour.

The only adventure I recall watching way back when is the trip to the moon one. There were others, but they didn't make an impression.

A Belgian friend came back from a business trip to China with a set of DVDs full of more recently produced Tintin adventures.

I like "Whited sepulchre." It links nicely to "Heart of Darkness," which is also appropriate.

On Tintin, I TA'd a course last year, Myth, Folktale and Children's Literature, in which Prisoners of the Sun was a required text. We saw a bit of the video for that one, which can be found here.

kouredios @ 358

No it can't.

Ack! try this? I forget that I have to use the quotes here.

Ripped from the Headlines Update:

Over the last week, I caught up on three weeks of various incarnations of Law & Order:

Love-crazed diaper-clad astronaut story: Check!

Brain-damaged vet turned out on the streets after stay in squalid VA hospital story: Check!

I guess we'll have to wait until next fall for a deranged student shooting up campus story.

Incredible testimony from James Comey. Take a look.

http://thinkprogress.org/comey-testimony/

It actually makes me respect and appreciate John Ashcroft, something I thought impossible. And it makes me despise Alberto Gonzales even more.

Best suggestion I've seen so far re: Falwell -- that he found the Pearly Gates guarded by a giant Tinky Winky.

kouredios @ 360

Much better, thank you. And look, it's available in Region 1 DVD as well! I could actually play it!

Stefan Jones @ 361... Didn't Criminal Intent have the Anna Nicole Smith plot last week? Goodness, those shows are getting a worn-out feel to them.

Tintin... That brings back many fond memories of my tender youth, especially his Trip to the Moon of a few years before the real thing happened.

Re Falwell:

Nobody seems to have noticed the extra character retroactively stuck in the burning pool of shit in Dante's Inferno. He's returned to his master for his reckoning.

#365: Oh, I almost forgot that one. How wonderfully squalid.

We need a L&O: D.C. Beat.

Stefan Jones @ 368... Or maybe Law & Order should branch off into something like Baywatch Nights. Yes, there was indeed a show where David Hasselhoff meets the X-files. 'Ghastly' accurately describes it.

I think Law & Order needs some more CSI vibe, but we don't want to just clone CSI:NY, so how about "L&O:Forensic Accountant". Put it on late at night and bill it as an insomnia cure for the innumerate.

Bruce Cohen @ 370... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz... snort... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Serge @ 371

Must be catching.

I have 3 Tintin animated films sitting waiting to be watched - The Calculus Affair (L'Affaire Tournesol) (1964), Prisoners of the Sun (Le Temple du Soleil) (1969) and Mystery of Shark Lake (Le Lac aux Requins) (1972) - I had intended to gather some friends to see them (since they've been waiting to be watched since before I was born) but may move them up the list.

Also, am I the only one to be 1. excited and then 2. slightly deflated that 1. Peter Jackson has optioned Temeraire and 2. he's only optioned Temeraire?

Neill Wilcox... It's been years since I read it, but I think that, along with the Moon story, Tintin au Tibet is one of the series's best.

Since 3 1/2 years of my life were spent tracking space junk, I am not a supporter of putting MORE detritus into orbit. There are already far too many human-put into space orbiting hazards and debris making life "interesting" for people to have to keep track of, and threatening to damage anything which intersects orbits (a marble hitting at orbital velocity a spacecraft, can cause a lot of damage... think of how much damage a bullet can cause, and bullets are moving a lot slower).

Gonzales is thoroughly despicable, and it hasn't even got the humorous value of e.g. when a certain person called to ask a couple if the person could borrow the couple's van, and wasn't deterred in the quest to borrow it even when old that one of the couple was in labor and they needed the van to go to the hospital!

Xopher, Serge, and Stefan: I felt very bad today when I saw the news of Falwell's death and my first reaction was a sigh of happy relief. I'm usually not like that. I was scandalized when one of my friends expressed happiness at Reagan's death. But my first, natural, unedited response to seeing that headline today was something like "Oh, good."

Apropos of nothing: Does anyone happen to have the link to that very large page of gender-switched-pose superhero fanart? Not this one (and that's the one that was a Particle back in May 2005) -- I remember a much longer page, some of which was women in "male" poses.

My google-fu has utterly failed me. I keep finding all these pages that I have tantalizing memories of, but not the one I'm looking for.

The topic has come up again recently, with the new Mary Jane figurine, which is why I ask.

Caroline @ 376.. That means we have more of a conscience than people like Falwell ever did.

Unless I'm very much mistaken, Tintin goes to the moon in an atomic rocket (my memory suggests that Professor Calculus says something like "Imagine an atomic bomb, but going off over a few days"), and when I came back to it with some knowledge of rockets and nuclear engines (at the age of 16) it still looked pretty plausible.

The least plausible bit is the dog spacesuit for Snowy; secondly (spoiler*) fbzrbar orvat noyr gb fgbj nobneq.

(Just to clarify, I read as much Tintin as I could get my hands on between the ages of 8 and 14, some of it in French, but I picked up the DVDs last December. It's just that the films have been in existence since before I was born, so I don't feel pressured to watch them; I'm 35+ years late, another 6 months doesn't make any difference... does it?)

* But why haven't you read it already? Go. Go now! Read them both! Destination: Moon (Objectif Lune) and Explorers on the Moon (On a Marché sur la Lune) - I keep putting the french titles in as Tintin is the about the only thing I've read in French and understood, and found I wasn't missing the point entirely when I read a translation.

What I'd like to see as a film is Asterix and Cleopatra. I've nothing against Tintin, but Asterix has always struck me as superior.

Neil Willcox... I have of course have read each and every Tintin story. More than once. Of course I always preferred the SF stories, with the Moon one at the top (and yes, it was indeed an atomic rocket). Would the Tibet one qualify as that? I think so. Darn. Now you make me want to take them off their shelf and read them again.

Yikes! A google suggest there is an Asterix and Cleopatra.

At this rate the only way I'll be able to watch everything I want to this year is by getting my friend who holds movies nights on his "big" "screen" to show only my selections. And to go round every night.

I'll call him tomorrow.

Neil Wilcox #381: Now, I'm going to have to find it. Thanks.

There was an animated version of Asterix and Cleopatra done circa 1970. There was a live-action version done a few years ago with the guy from Il Postino. My understanding, from the opinion of those who grew up with that stuff, is that it wasn't very good.

I saw the animated Asterix the Gaul some years ago, and it was about how you'd expect, considering it seemed to have been done on the cheap, then translated into English by people who, from what I could remember, seemed to think "I don't really get what's going on, but that doesn't matter as it's for kids"

The site I linked to above claimed that Asterix and Cleopatra was better, which makes me want to take a look.

Caroline @376,

I think a phrase you were looking for is styrofoam tits, as in "why was my first reaction on hearing of the death of a styrofoam tit happiness, not sadness?" Or "where was that thread with the interesting links to anatomically-impossible women I saw?"

Caroline @ #376: I think I've seen something about that (with pics) over at girl-wonder.org.

I'd go look it up, but I am getting ready to go to a conference, and should be working. Boo hiss on work.

Serge, #344, I had two young plumbers here, brothers, the younger apprenticing to the older, to replace the inlet valve on my toilet (the older brother accepted that I knew what I was talking about, which is unusual in plumbers these days) when the Special Bulletin came on the TV about Falwell. I went back and mentioned it to them and only the older could identify him. I told them I was voting on a heart attack. Then I came back to the computer and thought about all the times that Falwell said god had struck someone dead for doing something bad and wished there was a god who'd done that to him.

Well gosh-- last week on vacation in Quebec City, I just saw a fairly large Tintin museum exhibit. It was nicely balanced between the historical background/artifacts behind "Prisoners of the Sun" and Herge's R&D process in creating the story, though the gift shop mostly pitched the Peruvian angle in favor of a whole wall o' Tintin swag (mostly reprints in various languages).

In my early 20s I spent a summer living in a castle in France studying art, and for all of us 21 students they provided us in the kitchen: 2) spoons, 1) bent knife, and 1) pot with a nearly-spherical concave bottom.

Within a day or so we'd located the nearest grocery store, and we students brought back a number of things of various utility, from a new pot, assorted food that didn't require cooking, some plastic cutlery, and a spear gun which two of our male students wandered off with while drunk. For myself I bought a set of Tintin silverware, and I still have it and treasure it to this day.

So I'm finally starting to catch up on ML after 1 convention, 3 concerts, release hell, and other interesting artifacts, and I figure this is a good place for a question one of the concerts brought up. Bach's Johannes-Passion repeatedly says -"to make X happen as it was written"-, in more-or-less direct quote of the Bible. Can anyone cite \where/ it was written? Is it someone in the OT, or the OT Apocrypha, or was John (arguably the least literal of the four Gospelists) just blowing propaganda smoke? This is an irritating thing to come into your mind when you're trying to remember exactly how the conductor said he'd beat your next entrance -- and I may be doing this piece again so I'd like to know.

Caroline @ 376,

bellatrys had some comparisons of typical poses used to sell animation software on her livejournal:
http://bellatrys.livejournal.com

Neil Wilcox #378:

The least plausible bit is the dog spacesuit for Snowy

Oh, yeah?

(Guess who has been researching the history of space suits for the upcoming Heinlein Centennial...)

When I was thinking about the merits of a drink vs the merits of doing more work, working to get liquid out of the basement was not what I had in mind. Bah.

Bill Higgins @ 392

Excellent, got any new info on the skintight suit design? If Nasa needs good PR*, suiting their astronauts up like 30's pulp covers is bound to help.

* Is a bear Popish?

The sidelight on "why you can't get ahead" reminds me of the article I saw while leafing through Business Week at Schiphol Airport* yesterday. (The Poverty Business)

This sort of thing makes me want to change the world. Or cry, one of the two.

------
* I was looking for a house to go with that nice job I got. I found one, too, a fantastic converted schoolhouse, currently owned by a painter. We had a fascinating talk about painting, bookbinding, and philosophy, only briefly stopping to agree terms so the bewildered real estate agent could go off and draw up paperwork.

Bruce Cohen @ 394... suiting their astronauts up like 30's pulp covers is bound to help

"Does this make me look fat?"

Has anyone here noticed FanLib? There are a couple of rants against it on the metafandom lj comm*, but I thought it might be of interest here because some people are claiming that this organization used to prey on wannabe pro writers. I wondered if anyone here could tell me if they know that to be true.

~

* They seem to be particularly trying to appeal to the fanfiction.net crowd, who are (believed to be) younger and more naive than the lj crowd.

How do I cancel the gift membership someone apparently gave me in the Unexpected Major Expense Of The Month Club?

I don't like the selections, and the reply cards don't have a "Don't Send" check box on them.

[just venting]

abi #395: In the words of The Mighty Sparrow:

It sad, and getting more bad,
I say, douxdoux, capitalism gone mad!

Or, as I explain every semester to my American government students 'the poor always pay more'.

Bruce Arthur, that club must be having a membership drive this year, as I have incurred $2800 in debt for my teeth, and then had my elderly iMac die. Also, there have been automobile issues. Maybe they're phishing?

#392 - Great Snakes! I've confused Snowy's spacesuit with his radiation suit. For, you know, taking your dog for a walk through a nuclear reactor.

(And if I'm wrong again, that's even better)

Neil Willcox @ 401... So, 'Snowy' is what Tintin's canine sidekick is called in English? In the original language, it is 'Milou', which I only recently realized sounds like a phonetic transformation of 'mi-loup', or 'half-wolf'. The little guy is fierce, that's true. Of course, that's purely conjecture on my part, and I have no idea if that's why Hergé called him that.

Serge @ 407: The English-language "Tintin and Snowy" article on Wikipedia claims that "Malou" was originally a nickname for Hergé's first girlfriend Marie-Louise.

Serge @ 407: The English-language "Tintin and Snowy" article on Wikipedia claims that "Malou" was originally a nickname for Hergé's first girlfriend Marie-Louise.

Julie L @ 404... So it started with his girlfriend Malou and became Milou? Interesting.

Julie L @ 404... Let me guess. His girlfriend's name actually was Louise. Which then became 'ma Louise' (my Louise) then 'ma Lou' then 'Malou'.

I wonder if he skipped to her?

Xopher @ 407... Meaning?

When I see a Particle title like "Patrick vs. Norman at the Nebs" I half-expect it to be about a fight over a boombox.

Serge #408: Look here.

Fragano @ 410... Duh. (Sayeth Serge in a moment of eloquence worthy of Demosthenes.)

Serge #411: It happens to all of us.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/offtherecord/archives/2007/05/ghost_of_the_ma.html?source=NLC-RECORD&cgd=2007-05-16

A ghost-haunted computer room center tale...

We used to get Tintin animation on Scottish TV in the 1960's. Short serial episodes; alas, I can't remember which stories.

Henry Troup @ 414... I remember those. There was "le crabe aux pinces d'or", the Moon story and "l'étoile mystérieuse". There might have been others. But it was a long time ago. Besides, the wench is dead.

They had animated Tintin in France in the early 90s, too, paired with the animated Batman. (In case you were wondering, the Joker did not sound right.)

Paula (413): Thanks for that link. I may be a rationalist-materialist-nihilist-humanist-atheist, but I dearly love a good* first-person ghost story.

* Sometimes, especially under the influence of insomnia, I'll go browsing one of those "share your true ghost stories" websites. Generally, I can just go through the links and mentally check off all that apply: [ ] Paraeidolia, [ ] Sleep Paralysis, [ ] Hypnopompic/Hypnogogic Hallucination, [ ] Autosuggestion. Every once in a great while I come across one and am forced to mentally check off [ ] Other. There's something fantastically wonderful and addictive about those stories -- it's like pure, distilled essence of storytelling, with no distracting plot or style to get in the way.**

** I feel the same way about old charity fundraiser cookbooks, except that I see them as the essence of technical writing.

So, in the "Patrick vs the Normans" sidelight, there's a bit that says: "Roth's novel is merely the most blatant case of authors and editors who, not having read decades' worth of science fiction, fail to realize the extent to which they're reinventing the wheel."

And I was just started to wonder if there is a list of wheels anywhere. I've seen some short story magazines have lists like "Plots we've seen too often", but it's not quite the same.

I realize it would be a rather long list, no easy task to compile, and would be good for something like the Good version of wikipedia to create...

;)

But from a purely educational point of view, it struck me as an interesting problem of trying to get someone up to speed on decades worth of fiction, without them having to read decade's worth of fiction.

TexAnne @ 416... I never saw those more recent Tintin animated films, having by then left Canada for many years.

The Joker with a French accent?
I shudder to think.

I had to look up Paraeidolia, and now I know why the peacemaking aliens in FarScape were called Eidolons.

420: Xopher, I just realized I misspelled pareidolia. It probably wouldv'e been easier to look up if I hadn't.

I had the strongest experience of auditory pareidolia the other night. There were several sources of noise going on in my place -- I was listening to an mp3 playlist, and the dishwasher was going, and the clothesdryer, plus whatever sounds were coming from the computer. The playlist ended, and I could still hear music. It sounded like one of those earnest young singer/songwriters with a guitar, and he was singing/chanting "I love some juice; 'A Love Supreme.' I love the Jews; I love to sing." Over and over he sang this catalog of things he loved. Mostly juice and Jews.

It was driving me crazy. I checked all the electronics in the house. I went outside to see if it was coming from a neighbor. Finally I was able to track it to something rubbing against something in the dishwasher. The weird part was that well after I figured out what was going on, the illusion remained just as strong until the dishwasher changed cycles.

Related video: Steve Winwood is hungry for breakfast.

Caroline, #376: I think this might be the page you're looking for.

Also, check out this one, which has links to lots of similar artwork down in the comments. I was especially taken by the one of Rogue and Remy...

#414, 415; those were probably the ones I saw as a kid. I figured the serialization was an artifact of American TV, but perhaps they were made that way.

I'm visiting my Bay Area friends next weekend. Maybe I can borrow their Tintin vintage-1990s DVD. (I blew the kids' minds last year, when I loaned them a "Best of the Thunderbirds" set.)

Anyone remember the National Lampoon Tintin parody? Tintin and Snowy visit Beirut. This was when there were Marines stationed there. After snowy is captured, the military gets involved and either nukes or carpet bombs the city.

Howard 421: Yes, though Google nicely put "Do you mean pareidolia?" at the top of the page, and that's where I found the information, I assumed it was just an alternate spelling, like 'synæsthesia'.

Pareidolia can be the grain of sand dropped into the oyster of the artistic mind. I think it also could go a long way to explaining why a lot of artists have mental problems; lower your "Is it real or is it pareidolia" filters too far or too often and you wind up really seeing the Closet Monster.

Are any Making Lighters going to this?

May 17 in Florence, MA: Small Beer Press with John Crowley, Elizabeth Hand, and Paul Park.

I'm going to try to be there and would love to say hello to any of you in person.

Stefan Jones @ 423... I blew the kids' minds last year, when I loaned them a "Best of the Thunderbirds" set.

I've got that one, along with the complete series. So, the kids liked the show even though they grew up puppetless?

(Ever seen Joe 90? Nine-year-old boy with dorky glasses gets to save the day again and again and again because dad has got this machine that instantly transfers into his head whatever skills are needed during that episode. Talk about power fantasies for nerds.)

I microwaved a ceramic plate and it broke weirdly. That isn't supposed to happen. Is it?

#426: My friend reported that his kids liked TB, but that the episodes were awfully long.

"Joe 90" (nor "Supercar") never made it to local TV when I was a kid, and I'm trying to avoid the temptation of buying DVDs just to catch up.

Stefan Jones @ 428... I guess kids can't deal anymore with anything longer than 30 minutes.

Susan, 427: I believe it has something to do with the type of ceramic. Earthenware in particular acts funny sometimes--I once had a mug on which the glaze melted the first time I microwaved it. It immediately became a pencil cup.

I test a new mug by putting it empty in the microwave along with a Pyrex cup of water for one minute. If the empty cup is too hot to touch, I don't microwave it again.

pareidolia

So that's what it's called! I usually describe it as "I hear Dead Can Dance playing through the waterpipes."

Bruce Cohen at #394:

Excellent, got any new info on the skintight suit design [139-page PDF]? If Nasa needs good PR, suiting their astronauts up like 30's pulp covers is bound to help.

Not much happened for decades, except that Jerry Pournelle did everything possible to spread enthusiasm for that style of space suit to all within earshot.

But now something is happening. Sorry I don't have time to write more, but look at
this. A group at MIT is trying to push the old idea further.

Bill Higgins @ 432... Jerry Pournelle did everything possible to spread enthusiasm for that style of space suit to all within earshot...

...which, considering his stentorous voice, covers a very wide area.

This made me think of you guys:
"Dinosaur dicks"--did dinosaurs have penises?

Bill@432:

I saw an artist rendition of a... uh... space ball. It was presented as a "life boat" of sorts. The idea being that if things got bad, you'd put yourself in a four foot diameter rubber sphere with it's own life support thingy.

Of course, you've got no arms or legs sticking out, so you had to wait for someone in a suit to come pick you up, but I think the idea was that it might be too expensive to have a suit for everyone, but you might be able to have a space ball for everyone because, no moving joints, nice spherical shape, etc.

The shwartz is strong with this one...

Bill Higgins... I think it was 20 years ago that I read an article about NASA experimenting with armor-like spacesuits. If I remember correctly, because they were rigid shells, it took less time between getting into the suit and being able to go out with it, something about the inside pressure not being unlike what a human body is used to. Does this make sense, or did I dream it? I never came across anything like it since then.

#425: I'm strongly tempted, since this is right in the middle of my neck of the woods, but I don't know yet if I'll be able to make it.

I'm not sure if I should be amused or revolted at this thread about James Nicoll" at wikipedia.

I was once behind Gregory Benford on a line for a buffet. Somehow the topic of the skin-tight pressure suit came up. He thought it was a terrible idea. I forget the details, but the gist of his argument was that wearing something that put that squeezed you that tight would be incredibly uncomfortable.

Xeger @438: after reading that debate, I'm left with the impression that Wikipedia is striving to become the net's largest repository of ignorance.

I'm going to go out on a limb and assert that five or seven or twelve of you will be amused by the just-released cover for Gail Simone's first issue of Wonder Woman. File it under 'Sauce for the Gander'; it brought to mind this old ML post about Frank Miller, egregious pin-up-ness in comic-book women, and the Nielsen Hayden Styrofoam Tit Hypothesis. (By the way, the Frank Miller issue discussed in that old post hit the racks today at last, just 364 days after the previous issue appeared on the shelves.)

Aw, nertz. It's a fake! How embarassing.

<Litella>Never mind.</Litella>

Stefan Jones @ 439... Basically, each skintight suit would have to be made especially for each person. And, as Benford said, it'd be very uncomfortable. Especially for male genitals, unless we are provided with a codpiece. That would be quite a sight.

Stefan Jones @ 439: "I forget the details, but the gist of his argument was that wearing something that put that squeezed you that tight would be incredibly uncomfortable."

I thought the whole point was that it squeezed you exactly as tight as a one-bar atmosphere would.

The trick, I'd think, would be getting into the damn thing. NASA might have to sub-contract some latex fetishists...

Heresiarch @ 444... Speaking of latex fetishists, how did Kate Beckinsale get into that outfit of hers, in Underworld?

And, no, I will not ask about George Clooney's batnipples.

Serge @ 443

Basically, each skintight suit would have to be made especially for each person

No, there are ways to tighten the suit down to fit. One simple way is zippers, like the ones you see on the legs of some running pants or overalls. You could also use Velcro, though it might not be as reliable a closure. I think I know another way to do it using something called a LADD cell, but I'd have to spend some time doing some research and computing to see if it would really work.

Bruce Cohen @ 446... I'd hate having a zipper, or any crease of the material, pressing that tightly against my skin for a long time. I'd rather wear Tintin's Moonsuit. On the other hand, I don't know about those LADD cells you referred to.

Andrew, #441: Hooboy! I read some of the commentary, and if that doesn't hit fandom_wank I'll be amazed. Just listen to all the guys being scared of gay cooties. But ye ghods, that's awesome.

#442: ... damn.

Ron Paul: Black people aren't smart enough to be libertarians. What an awesome argument!

#426 "Ever seen Joe 90? Nine-year-old boy with dorky glasses"

No. But that didn't stop me being nicknamed Joe 90 when I was a seven year old with dorky glasses. I also got nicknamed Brains after the Thunderbirds character, again because of the dorky glasses (at least partly).

Serge at #436:

Bill Higgins... I think it was 20 years ago that I read an article about NASA experimenting with armor-like spacesuits. If I remember correctly, because they were rigid shells, it took less time between getting into the suit and being able to go out with it, something about the inside pressure not being unlike what a human body is used to. Does this make sense, or did I dream it?

Yes, it makes very good sense, and some engineers think it is the Right Way To Build A Space Suit. "Hard suits" have usually lost out to "soft suits" historically, although the Shuttle EVA suit is a hybrid with a hard torso.

Bruce Cohen at #446:

Serge @ 443

Basically, each skintight suit would have to be made especially for each person

No, there are ways to tighten the suit down to fit. One simple way is zippers, like the ones you see on the legs of some running pants or overalls. You could also use Velcro, though it might not be as reliable a closure.

Another split in pressure suit design choices is "full pressure" vs. "partial pressure." It was discovered in the 1940s that a really tight garment could do nearly as good a job, at keeping a pilot's bodily fluids from boiling, as encasing the pilot in an inflated rubber bag. It was really hard to make an inflated full-pressure suit mobile and flexible enough to fly an airplane, and the partial-pressure suit offered much more flexibility.

As a consequence, contracts for military suits went to underwear companies (David Clark, International Latex (Playtex) and the Berger Brothers) as well as to rubber companies (B.F. Goodrich).

Eventually the full-pressure style won, as astronauts and X-15 pilots headed into hard vacuum. But mobility is still an uphill battle, and there are many difficult design compromises. It's still difficult and tiring to do lots of work in Shuttle suit gloves.

One hopes that astronauts returning to the Moon or going to Mars will be provided with much better EVA suits than we have today.

Bill Higgins @ 451, Serge @ 447

The design that excited* me about the skintight was basically the one Pournelle was touting: the unpressurized suit. The idea is that human skin works fine to hold air and body fluids in as long as it's restrained from expanding (hence the highly elastic material). The suit has to be permeable to sweat, giving you a crude cooling system that only requires an auxiliary cooler to smooth the cycles out and assist when in direct sunlight.

Yes, it's sort of like wearing a tight corset all over your body**, but because you're not fighting air pressure when moving, mobility is far better xn movement less tiring than in a pressurized suit. If the material of the suit is a relatively thick foam stretched over the body, it should fill any shallow dimples such as behind the elbows and knees, and fit curves well. Men will in fact need some sort of special jockstrap or codpiece, and women will need a specialized support bra to hold the undersides of the breasts***. Zippers on the outside that pull the material together for that tension will not press directly on the skin; the foam will soften their impact.

By the bye, LADD cells are ingenious devices for converting rotary (plus compressive/expansive) to linear motion and vice versa using a sort of cylindrical cat's cradle of cords. I got interested in them as a mechanism for controlling focus and focal length in optical assemblies; turns out they're not all that useful in that application because they need additional rigid parts to hold the lenses in position, and so there's no real advantage. But if the suit material were formed around a set of LADD cells, one for each major part of the body, the suit material would do the job of he holder. And note that lower arm, upper arm, lower leg, upper leg, and torso are all roughly cylindrical.

* Yeah, Serge, it was the nipples.

** So Nasa is going to have to start hiring bondage fetishists. Hmm ... so vacuum construction workers are going to have to be bonded?

** As will some men.

Bill Higgins... I wonder if one reason that NASA and the Soviets stayed away from hard suits is because they were too bulky for the original vehicles, where things were cramped. And, their storage would take up more room.

Greg @ #435:
I saw an artist rendition of a... uh... space ball. It was presented as a "life boat" of sorts. The idea being that if things got bad, you'd put yourself in a four foot diameter rubber sphere with it's own life support thingy.

Of course, you've got no arms or legs sticking out, so you had to wait for someone in a suit to come pick you up, but I think the idea was that it might be too expensive to have a suit for everyone, but you might be able to have a space ball for everyone because, no moving joints, nice spherical shape, etc.

Bujold used the idea in one of her Barrayar books - The Vor Game, I think. They were called "bod pods" or something like that, but the concept was similar - cheap and easy escape pods, one-size-fits-all, bob around in space and wait/hope to be retrieved.

Bruce Cohen @ 452... If the material of the suit is a relatively thick foam stretched over the body, it should fill any shallow dimples such as behind the elbows and knees, and fit curves well. Men will in fact need some sort of special jockstrap or codpiece, and women will need a specialized support bra to hold the undersides of the breasts...

Is this your subtle way to bring us back to the comments made by Kathryn from Sunnyvale about styrofoam tits?

Hmm... This'd all play well on American TV... Female astronauts with huge busts, and male astronauts with huge schwanshtukers...

Greg @ 435

IIRC, Kingsbury did something similar (The Moon Goddess and the Son), but it had a handle and one arm, so you could zip it from the outside (sort of) or grab the next guy.

Susan @ 454

The other reason for using rescue balls is that they're much cheaper than suits, and you can scatter lots of them around a spacecraft or a habitat. If there's an SDE (Sudden Decompression Event) and someone is not near enough to a suit, or there isn't time to put one on, there's likely to be a ball nearby. They could be stored all over in small pouches that automatically pop open when there's a pressure drop, like oxygen masks in an airliner.

Susan and P J... Great. To escape destruction, we have to dress up like the guys in those Fruit of the Loom ads.

#426 "Ever seen Joe 90? Nine-year-old boy with dorky glasses"

I remember watching Joe 90 when I was a kid here in Perth, back in the 70s. The thing that troubled me most was that the 9-year-old kid had a gun, and that he wasn't averse to wasting bad guys with it. (I could be misremembering about this, but I'm sure I saw the kid using that gun to deal with bad guys.)

Alan Braggins and Adrian Bedford... I don't remember whether or not Joe 90 used a gun, but I definitely remember that I wore glasses as dorky as his when I was 9 years old. My parents have a lot to answer for.

Alan Braggins and Adrian Bedford... I don't remember whether or not Joe 90 used a gun, but I definitely remember that I wore glasses as dorky as his when I was 9 years old. My parents have a lot to answer for.

Serge @ 455

This is just my way of giving back to the comic book artists who gave me such pleasure* when I was a lad. Making the real world more like comics every day.

* Make of this what you will.

Bruce Cohen @ 462... Making the real world more like comics every day.

That means that, when you're at work, you say things like "It's clobbering time!" or "Curse me for a novice!" And you start meetings with "Avengers assemble!" Right, bub?

Serge@436: Bill Higgins... I think it was 20 years ago that I read an article about NASA experimenting with armor-like spacesuits. If I remember correctly, because they were rigid shells, it took less time between getting into the suit and being able to go out with it, something about the inside pressure not being unlike what a human body is used to. Does this make sense, or did I dream it? I never came across anything like it since then.

I saw something a few years ago that was a rigid space suit design. It claimed that one of the problems with rigid suits is that as you move, twist, turn, bend a rigid suit, you may increase or decrease the air volume inside, thereby increasing/decreasing the airpressure inside. (Bend your elbow all the way and you might pop your eardrum). The thing about this rigid suit was that all the joints were designed to be constant volume, so that if you bent a joint, the air volume inside the suit remained the same, therefore the pressure too.

Basically, every joint looked like a ball/socket contraption. Thought it was interesting...

Arthur D. Hlavaty @ 449: My favorite bit was where he was complaining about how street crime isn't being cracked down on as hard as complex embezzling. I mean look at those INTIMIDATING white-collar crime sentences! Sometimes they even have to serve, like, half of it!

Reminds me of a Dave Chapelle skit where they try to envision what it would be like if the treatment of corporate fraud and drug crimes were reversed. Police Chief: "Ah, Mr. Drug Dealer, I hate to bother you, but, well, this is embarassing, really, but I have a warrant here for your arrest...do you think you could come by the station some time this week and we can take care of this?" vs. Police Officer: *busts down door* "FREEZE MOTHERFUCKER!" Blam! *shoots dog*

It's the change in volume with joint movement which makes soft suits such hard work. And it's mostly the neutral position of the suit which forced the body positions in early spacewalks.

One of the objects of hardsuit design is to have constant volume joints, This can lead to needing to make awkward seeming limb movement to get a hand, or foot, from one position to another.

I've seeb it claimed that curreht softsuits also have limits on how the joints move, different to a hardsuit, but that astronauts know how to use them.

Think of the mimes/dancers who pretend to be robots.

Another comment I recall was that nobody seemed interesting in making a robot hand that used some sort of glover controller, and astronauts were using gloves that were awkward, uncomfortable, and expensive.

But maybe Jack Coggins and Fletcher Pratt has the right idea.

I have a food-identification request to the fluorosphere: as part of an elaborate salad (in Montreal, if that makes any difference), we were served some long yellow leaves that looked like lawn grass that had grown in the dark (picture here).

It was a wedding reception with no menu written out. The leaves were plated as a vertical spray from a cored cucumber stump; when tugged out, they had been grown/harvested in smaller groups of maybe 2-5 leaves attached together at the base. They tasted like, well, lawn grass when eaten (very tender, no tough fibers), but had a remarkably distinctive, sweet aftertaste that several people compared to aspartame or some other artificial sweetener. My first thought was stevia, but apparently that looks nothing like these grassy things.

What the heck was this stuff? Any ideas? I was the only one at the table who ate all of mine and I'm not dead yet, but it would nice to know what it is regardless.

Julie L. your mystery plant looks, to me, like the very top leaves of well-blanched celery, which would, indeed, have a sweet aromatic (perhaps cloying to some palates) aftertaste.

Julie, perhaps it was wheatgrass, grown in the dark so it wouldn't look like grass?

Aren't celery's top leaves still kinda curly-like in a parsley sort of way?

Wheatgrass? Hm. Maybe-- I'll have to nick a sample blade of the green stuff to compare the taste.

I felt slightly bad for the chef (or catering company), in terms of having lots of people decide that certain things were inedible garnishes. Especially the zillions of little spun-glass filigrees sticking out of the secondary desserts.

It looks like blanched dandelion leaves to me. (The cultivated kind, which doesn't have teeth like the stuff in the lawn.)

Julie @470, some varieties of celery are curly to the extent that Italian Parsley is, yes, especially when they are grown in full sunlight and wind- which would not be the case for blanched celery.

Wheatgrass has a very small sweet green aftertaste, and would not have the spoon-shaped end to the leaves evident in your photo; it's also really floppy when blanched. And every kind of dandylion I've had is herbal and astringent, even when blanched.

xeger @438: I'm not sure if I should be amused or revolted at this thread about James Nicoll at wikipedia.

Well, it looks like it's been closed in favour of keeping the article, and one of the admins who supported keeping it has raised the question of what can be done to prevent this kind of issue in future on a relevant policy discussion page. Now would probably be a good time to go back and make relevant comments.

Doh-- in 470, I meant spun *sugar* filigrees, not spun glass.

Blanched celery, huh? I have no idea whether I can find any locally for a direct comparison, though then again, I'm not sure how interested I am in eating a lot more of them. I've eaten the tiny yellow stalks/leaves in the middle of standard green supermarket celery and they weren't terribly similar to these; otoh there seem to be several distinctively different kinds of celery that I can't instantly find pix of on Google.

After reading PNH's latest Sidelight, I have one question: Why in the name of all that is human is Al Gore not the Democratic candidate for president of the United States?

#452: I'm curious. How many men with tits \needing/ \support/ (i.e., Schwarzenegger as Conan doesn't count) are fit enough to work in space? Is it possible that somebody could lose enough weight to have support issues and still be fit enough that a ]fetishist[ suit would be a better choice than a rescue sphere?

#395 et al: Business Week has something. The particle, on the other hand, is comparing apples and oranges, i.e. now vs. a period when the U.S. was >25% of the world economy (as much of the once-industrialized world was still digging itself out of the ruins); absent competition, the U.S. could indulge in massively wasteful practices. (Remember when Reader's Digest tried to counter The Wastemakers with "Waste Not, Have Not?"?) One point they should have made and didn't: in those wonderful 50's, the marginal tax rate on bloated incomes was 90%, which helped hold the bloat down -- there wasn't as much point in mulcting your employees when you had to pass 90% of it on to the government.

#468: JESR, are there \any/ celery leaves that look spiky like grass instead of leaflike? Flat vs. curly doesn't seem to be the issue, unless the original description is off.

Fragano @ 475... My hope is that Gore will run for President, but he's saving his resources while those who have already announced their candidacy are beating the crap out of each other. I hope.

Serge #477: That would be an excellent outcome.

About the Meta-LOL: I've read of an even better version, a photograph (of a soldier in Iraq standing partway up a building) with a caption reading "I'm in Ur city climbing Ur ziggarat."

Chip, I think the only way this is going to be solved is for all of us to meet in Montreal and have the salad. Or for a very high-definition picture to be posted. Thing is, to me (foody, gardener, ethnobotanist) that doesn't look like grass, or have the structure of blanched grass.

But yes, the interior leaves of blanched celery can be vertical and spiky.

CNN.com has a story about NASA trying out an exploration robot in a cenote in Mexico. With this line in it:
Mars, Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus are the only known places in the solar system known to have or have had water, the basis for life. [emphasis mine]

Huh?

CNN.com has a story about NASA trying out an exploration robot in a cenote in Mexico. With this line in it:
Mars, Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus are the only known places in the solar system known to have or have had water, the basis for life. [emphasis mine]

Huh?

I just googled the New Haven library by its official title, which I mistyped as "new haven free public ibrary".

And the first google result was for "ommunity ervices" and led to a real webpage on the city's site which as far as I can tell contains the relevant words with their initial letters properly attached.

I think either I need more sleep or google is playing a joke on me. Or both - maybe I'm too tired too properly admire this?

P J... No wonder I feel thirsty today.

usan @ 483... aybe oth.

Susan: Were those letters some kind of graphic?

(double post was accidental, sorry....)

Susan @483: Looks like the first document that search returns is a (searchable) PDF file. Firther investigation reveals that the creators didn't use the proper "small caps" font type to create the look of the "Community Services" text, but they put the first letters in 24pt, and the rest are 19pt caps. I suspect in doing so they somehow deranged some style type that Acrobat used to identify the title text of the document, which resulted in only the 19pt characters getting so ascribed.

Wow. Color photographs from Imperial Russia. Really.

And now it's time for Totally Belated Responses To Stuff, the LeBoeuf-Little edition. Whee!

Xopher - Glad to hear I was at least on the right track and you are no longer being frustrated unecessarily by Word. At least, not in that particular way.

Serge @270 - I was unaware there was a pseudonymous Tepper bibliography out there. Putting that on my "to search for and read" list with the Marianne books (of which I've only read one so far). My suspicion, alas, is that the Oliphant heroine, were she to be resurrected in order to comment on today's politics, would be indistinguishable from any other Tepper herione since, say, 2001. The Fresco marks the point beyond which pretty much any Tepper book will leave skidmarks on my wall, or would if they weren't property of the Boulder Public Library and I were free to mangle them.

(I'm fairly opinionated about Sheri Tepper's body of work. I categorize it into stuff I wholeheartedly enjoy, stuff where I tolerate the preaching in order to enjoy the worldbuilding and characters, and stuff where the book hits the wall. There's overlap, of course. My husband and I are working our way through the True Game novena, which is in the "enjoy" category, but we just got to the point towards the end of Necromancer Nine that caused us to blink and go "This is the 'blame the patriarchy' portion of our feature entertainment, isn't it?" We also WTF'd a few chapters back where the sermon appeared to be "See what happens when you criminalize euthanasia, you morons?")

Pareidolia - is that in play when we get story ideas from misreadings, typos, and corner-of-eye misglimpses?

As an aside to Patrick's recent sidelight: LOLcatz for physics geeks.

Nicole @ 489... But wait, there is more! Not only did Tepper in the early 1990s write those B.J.Oliphant mysteries (I've never met the author, but I get the sense the main character is a barely disguised version of herself), but she also wrote others as A.J.Orde. Got a solid wall? Me, I enjoyed the Oliphant books. Besides, the bedroom's wall was made of bricks.

Nicole @ 489

I read the Marianne books a long time ago and found them quite charming. Then I read a number of Tepper's later books, and discovered that some of them irritated me a little for the preaching, and that I didn't remember anything about them just a short time after I read them, even though the writing was not bad. So I stopped, and I haven't been tempted since. Am I missing anything?

Julie L. #467:

Popcorn shoots.

Nicole @ #489:

If it is not too late, I would like to take this opportunity to offer the traditional warning:
Do not read the last three books of the True Game series.

(Why not? Search me: I took the advice when it was offered to me. But I expect there's a good reason for it.)

Fragano, Serge: I think Gore would make a fabulous president, but whoever's elected president in 2008 is going to spend 90% of their time and political capital dealing with the mess in Iraq. It's worth considering that maybe being president isn't really important enough to interfere with the work Gore is doing now. It'd really suck to get out of Iraq just as the big wave rolls over the world.

(I am involved in a plot to get Gore appointed head of the EPA. Shhhhhhh, though! Secrecy is of the essence.)

Heresiarch #495: I can see your point. However, Al Gore is the first politician in years who has clearly, unambiguously, intelligently, and sensibly articulated just what a republic is. I think he'd be wasted in any other office.

Heresiarch... Now that we've found out about your plot, are you going to have to kill us? But there are too many of us, and the Truth will out! Hahahahahah!!!

That being said, I'm with Fragano. Besides, as you pointed out, the next Prez will have to spend a lot of time cleaning up the current mess, and I'm not sure the currently known Democratic candidates have what it takes.

#497, Serge:

Maybe none of them do. More to the point, if it weren't for the alternative (another 4-8 years of Republican insanity), why on earth would any sane individual want to be President of the Superfund site that is the Federal bureaucracy after it's been infiltrated by "loyal Bushie" hacks?

#498 infiltrated by "loyal Bushie" hacks

It's mostly the political appointees that are Bushie hacks. Plus a few very specific areas (e.g. some sections of the Justice Dept.) where Bush has exerted especially strong pressure.

It's not easy to infiltrate the entire bureaucracy. All those pesky civil service rules that make it difficult to carry out political purges. Even someone like Bush has to pick a few relatively small sections to concentrate on.

linkmeister @ 498... Why? Because they might actually want the world to be a better place, especially if they can take credit for it.

Real Life "As you know, Bob" sighting:

Maryland Jockey Club president Joe DeFrancis, to Bob Costas at the Preakness trophy presentation: "And now for the presentation of, as you know Bob, the most valuable trophy in American sports..."