Ye sons of France, awake to glory;
Hark! hark! what myriads bid you rise!
Your children, wives, and grandsires hoary,
Behold their tears, and hear their cries!
Shall hateful tyrants, mischief breeding,
With hireling hosts, a ruffian band,
Affright and desolate the land,
While Peace and Liberty lie bleeding?
To arms, to arms, ye brave,
Th'avenging sword unsheath;
March on, march on, all hearts resolv'd
On victory or death.

Now, now, the dang'rous storm is rolling
Which treach'rous kings, confederate, raise;
The dogs of war, let loose, are howling,
And, lo! our fields and cities blaze;
And shall we basely view the ruin,
While lawless force, with guilty stride,
Spreads desolation far and wide,
With crimes and blood his hands embruing?
To arms, ye brave, etc.

With luxury and pride surrounded,
The vile insatiate despots dare,
Their thirst of power and gold unbounded,
To mete and vend the light and air.
Like beasts of burden would they load us,
Like gods, would bid their slaves adore;
But man is man, and who is more?
Then shall they longer lash and goad us?
To arms, ye brave, etc.

O Liberty! can man resign thee,
Once having felt thy gen'rous flame?
Can dungeons, bolts, and bars confine thee,
Or whips thy noble spirit tame?
Too long the world has wept, bewailing
That falsehood's dagger tyrants wield;
But freedom is our sword and shield,
And all their arts are unavailing.
To arms, ye brave, etc.

-- Claude Joseph Rouget de l'Isle
Translated by Percy and Mary Shelley

Lessons taught but never learned
All around us anger burns
Guide the future by the past
Long ago the mould was cast

For they marched up to Bastille Day
La guillotine claimed her bloody prize
Hear the echoes of the centuries
Power isn't all that money buys

(from Bastille Day by Rush)

Everyone should learn the words to the Marseillaise in French, so that if circumstances call for it, they can help perform the F2F equivalent of disemvowelling. There's a good demonstration of the technique in Casablanca.

We've got new generals our leaders are new
They sit and they argue and all that they do
Is sell their own colleagues and ride upon their backs
And jail them and break them and give them all the ax
Screaming in language that no one understands
Of the rights that we grabbed with our own bleeding hands
When we wiped out the bosses and stormed through the wall
Of the prison they told us would outlast us all

Marat we're poor
And the poor stay poor
Marat don't make
Us wait anymore
We want our rights and we don't care how
We want our revolution -- NOW!"

following in OT#87 to avoid the dread 1000-post bug:

Lee@955: My favorite, learned here, is Chino ("Christian in Name Only"). That's probably too obscure for mundane use; it's also prejudicial, but IMO the defining characteristic of all those groups is an un-Christ-ian intolerance.

Greg (from abi's substitute thread): Newsweek panned Phoenix, and the local reviewer was approving but not in raptures. A friend summarized it as leaving out (most of) one of the two plots; to me this was particularly grievous as they had time for a lot of cameos (instead of either making them real threads or dropping them) \and/ exaggerations or outright additions to what was in the book (which at ~350K words didn't need any additions, IMO).

James Macdonald @ #4, the best version I've ever heard of that is sung by Judy Collins on the 1966 album In My Life.

Open thread thanks to Tom Whitmore for spending time with a couple of AWers Saturday at his store. We had a great time and I look forward to going back and browsing some more.

When I saw Jim had added this thread and the Trauma thread right before I went to bed last night, they were in the opposite order. Why the change?

When love and law together take up rule
we'll wonder why we let the hostiles in,
we'll wonder why we thought love sin
and hold the one who does so a damned fool.
Let each of us, with patience like a mule,
take up the task to let clean sunlight in,
make honest pleasure come in for the win
and send the foolish master back to school.
All of our joys seem better in the sun
when cooling rain has dissipated heat
and swallows soar in the brightening sky.
We know then that before the day is done
we will with some most happy duty meet,
and know the world will thank us by and by.

i remember when the stars fell from the sky
i, the knight of the second chance
breathing in the forms floating in the darkness
i walk the precipice of a dream
about to plunge into the deeper unknown
it all vanishes, to awaken to the emptiness
the still clear void beyond reason
the end was like the beginning
a wondering about things that were not
a breath of life inhaled as the moment balanced
upon a single sliver of destiny, like yes
within an infinite nothing, blank, like no
the superposition of all things, about to collapse
to fall upon either the every, or the not
it wasn’t rigged: the coin fell where it might
just as He said it would: “Let there be light.”

Something fun to try at your next family barbecue:

When playing Monkey in the Middle with a mix of children and adults, the adults must behave like zombies. Slow, stiff-limbed, not too bright (vocalization optional)--this way the little folk have a chance at getting the ball (on the bounce, at least), and the adults get to be extravagantly silly.

It's called "Zombie in the Middle," of course.

One of the YouTube excerpts from Casablanca is the Wacht am Rhein/Marseillaise scene. One of the YoiuTube commenters claims to have done it for real, at a truckstop in Normandy, with a bunch of apparently-German truckers in the role of the bad guys.

It's a different version to the one linked to upthread, starting a few seconds earlier.

It's said that one reason for the effect of the scene is that a lot of the extras were refugees from Europe. But look at the dialogue--there's hardly any, and so much is carried by the expressions of the lead characters. As long as you realise there is a difference between French and German, you don't need to understand a word you hear. You have a group of people in one tyope of uniform singing a song, you see the faces of the rest of the people in the bar, both civilians and in different uniforms--why do you think there are people in French uniform still wearing their Kepi--and it all builds from there.

It's not a silent movie, but it has the portability of being wordless.

The French People back then had three advantages over us in America today -- they knew the names of the prisons, the number of them, and where they were.

So, I understand that many, many people are sick of political wrangling and sniping.

But, srsly, President Bush announces that, yes, someone in his administration leaked the name of an undercover CIA operative in order to punish her family, and tells us all just to get over it and move on and it passes with no comment whatsoever from y'all?

Vive la France! Vive la revolution!

Samantha, I'm rather glad that we don't notice these things in this place.

Some of the old fannish net-haunts have been killed off by politics. There's more apparent awareness of SF in uk.business.agriculture than there is in rec.arts.sf.fandom (If you've ever had to deal with DEFRA, you'll know what Speculative Fiction is).

Samantha Joy @14,

If I (or other folks here) have a question about your comment, are you going to be back to answer it?

For example, if you were going to be back, I'd first want to ask you which threads you'd read to test your theory.

#14: I remember an awful lot of discussion here about the administration disclosing classified information. Perhaps one of us is from an alternate history? (Just got up to the June 2007 Asimov's. Interesting story from Harry Turtledove where the premise is "What if FDR had provoked WWII?")

I don't know if anyone has posted a specific reaction to the administration's confession and its view that with Libby's "punishment" has handled matters. (The posting gets fast and furious some times and I don't always keep up.) However, I do know that chastising people for not reacting is not the best way to introduce a topic to an open thread. I guess it works, but it's liable to make people think less of you, whether you want them to or not (cf. #17).

As for the administration reaction, I'm unsurprised that it doesn't make any sense. Libby wasn't convicted for the leak. He was convicted for lying about the leak to the grand jury. So the matter is no where near settled. Say that there were a governmental process which regularly disclosed classified information as an unintentional side effect. Wouldn't you want an investigation to to find and repair the process? Now imagine if disclosing classified information was the intention. Isn't finding the leak's source even more important?

I'm also not surprised because it's exactly the same reaction Republicans, in general, had to the 2000 election. It pretty much boiled down to "This may not have been the fairest election, but what's past is past. Let's just move on." (This is not to say that Republicans in general have this reaction to the White House leaking classified information. This is just to say that we've seen Bush reaction similarly in similar situations.)

So, Samantha, the answer to your question might be: Well, it'd be like reaction to the notion that, yes, the sky is chartreuse. But it's been chartreuse for the past 2442 days. At some point, it ceases to be unusual. One might also think that not only is the sky chartreuse, but it has always been chartreuse. It says so in all the science books.

As for my opinion on Bush and shenanigans, if the ending of Harry Turtledove's story suits FDR, then it certainly suits Bush.

Samantha Joy @17
There is not* an editorial board among the commentors on Making Light that determines which stories deserve discussion, to ensure that everything is covered, or that balance is maintained, or that this site represents a fair picture of the political landscape.

Even among the admins, what gets posted is dependent on where the roving spotlight of transitory attention comes to rest for long enough to start a thread. Of late, that spotlight has been on matters outwith the site, and rarely on politics. They, too, have lives.

My suggestion would be that you take advantage of the openness of the thread to post something on the subject. Maybe you can start a discussion going. Then this aching gap will be filled.

Shorter me: the soapboxes here don't always come pre-populated.

-----
* that I am aware of. This is not to say that there isn't one, but Ockham is stropping his razor.

Samantha Joy @#14:

You forgot to say "You people..."

Samantha: Go here.

Samantha @ 14

Your statement is not exactly accurate. The President said that he was aware that "perhaps" someone from his admisitration leaked the name of a CIA operative. He didn't admit knowledge or that is was a vindictive act. He just simply said that Treason against the United States of America is beneath his notice. We kind of already knew that.

I'm reminded of that time when I went to school in the US for a couple of weeks.
Culture shock: there was a feeling of malaise among us French students when we realised the school had the Star-Spangled Banner sang every morning. A feeling which was only mirrored when, trying to be courteous on the first day, they decided to put the Marseillaise on for us to sing, which was answered with impassive silence, most of us not even standing (I think I remember one did, not really knowing how to react politely).
Never could get the American student sitting next to me to understand that it was because we loved our country we weren't singing.

So, yeah, thank you, Bastille day was happy. As far as I could see people did what you ought to do on such a day: strolling, shopping and invading restaurants, overall having a good time.

My favourite version of the Marseillaise must still be Serge Gainsbourg's, if not only because it keeps ironically closer to the original manuscript.

Since this is an open thread I thought I might throw out a random costuming question (or two).
I am not an historian but I am curious, so please excuse the silliness of the queries:

1) While watching a whole bunch of Sharpe episodes over the weekend, I noted that many of French the soldiers are wearing what appears to be a flour sack over their hats. Is this a cheap costuming thing* or is it somewhat accurate. Also, if it was accurate, why did they wear flour sacks on their hats?

2) In the Elizabethan era, the fashionable gentleman wore his cape jauntily draped over one shoulder and fastened under the armpit. Was there a reason for this too? I can see the peascod belly mimicing the shape of armor, but I'm not sure where the diagonal-armpit-cape comes from.

* Well, bad cheap costuming - "We've run out of budget for our French soldiers; here, throw these flour sacks over some extra top hats; no one will ever know!"

Samantha Joy @#14:

We might, fannishly, quibble about inaccuracies in your statement (as per CosmicDog) but I think most of us -- even the most grumpy, like me -- prefer to reserve our political ire for blogs & threads that are specific forums for that. (My own attention, at the moment, is directed mostly towards the recent bill, which passed the Senate with no dissenting vote, that accepts as fact the idea that Iran is guilty of acts of war against the U.S., and authorizes Mr. Bush to take certain steps, without furnishing much of a leash or toddler-harness to prevent him from taking the additional and probably-disastrous ones that he almost certainly plans on.)

Switching topics to other vaguely French-like things: Has anyone else here seen Ratatouille? I had heard, going into the movie, that this was the best film yet out of Pixar.

I don't know that I necessarily agree with that, but it's certainly a justifiable statement. The animation is amazing, and the story-line is fantastic.

Complaints: It occasionally felt as though the story were a bit rushed, and I personally felt that the could have done more with the whole synaesthesia aspect of things.

Switching topics to other vaguely French-like things: Has anyone else here seen Ratatouille? I had heard, going into the movie, that this was the best film yet out of Pixar.

I don't know that I necessarily agree with that, but it's certainly a justifiable statement. The animation is amazing, and the story-line is fantastic.

Complaints: It occasionally felt as though the story were a bit rushed, and I personally felt that they could have done more with the whole synaesthesia aspect of things.

Sorry for the double post (that's what I get for hitting the STOP button because I've seen a typo).

Malthus: I saw, and loved, "Ratatouille". I had to go straight from the movie theater to the grocery store and then home to cook ratatouille.
Neither "Big Night" nor "Tampopo" succeeded in making me that hungry. I haven't seen "Babette's Feast", so I can't include it in my comparison.

I agree with you re visual beauty. Before this the only animated films I'd seen that made me gasp with pleasure were Miyazaki's (some of the shots in "My Neighbor Totoro" brought tears to my eyes). It did feel a bit rushed, but part of that may have been the false "ending" about 2/3 of the way through.

nerdycellist, 24: I think the flour sacks were to keep their shiny brass helmets either clean or unnoticed by riflemen.

the war in iraq,
victory is not in sight,
on to the next one

Visually, I think my favorite bit is nsgre Rtb chgf gur svefg ovgr bs engngbhvyyr va uvf zbhgu, ohg orsber gur synfuonpx, lbh pna frr gur lrnef whfg qebc njnl sebz uvf snpr. V whfg gubhtug gung jnf fghaavatyl jryy qbar. Gurer jrer cyragl bs bgure nznmvat fprarf, ohg gb zl zvaq, gung bar jvaf ba furre iveghbfvgl.

How about yours?

Nerdycellist @#24: Because of the movies I saw as a kid, I always assumed the cape-over-one-arm thing was to leave the sword arm free. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and assert that the buckle that holds the thing on is called a "swash."

Malthus @#28: Ratatouille was a hoot. I particularly liked the swarming effect. And the synesthaesia was neat--reminded me of Fantasia, a bit. However, I'm a little tired of the Pixar fish-out-of-water plotline, which is becoming like the kiddie version of the hero's journey. Having seen most of the others (I skipped Cars) I already knew what the beats would be in this one. And the little preview for the next one--about a Robot who "discovers what he's really meant for"--just reinforced that tired feeling. The dang robot even looks up at the sky and gets STARS IN HIS EYES in the tiny clip they showed. I'm going to bet that his fellow robots will try to hold him back, but his wacky non-robot friend will encourage him to follow his dream. Any takers?

I did enjoy the movie, though, and the short alien-abduction thing they played with it was really funny.

MD² 23: Never could get the American student sitting next to me to understand that it was because we loved our country we weren't singing.

Please forgive my ignorance. I don't understand. Why would it be unpatriotic (or whatever) to sing the Marseillaise?

TexAnne -

Thanks!

Covering shiny helmets makes a lot of sense, but then forces me to question why they went into battle with shiny helmets in the first place.

nerdycellist #35:

Same reason the Brits wore bright red coats?

The Palace of Versailles

The wands of smoke are rising
From the walls of the Bastille
And through the streets of Paris
Runs a sense of the unreal

The Kings have all departed
There servants are nowhere
We burned out their mansions
In the name of Robespierre

And still we wait
To see the day begin
Our time is wasting in the wind
Wondering why
Wondering why, it echoes
Through the lonely palace of Versailles

Inside the midnight councils
The lamps are burning low
On you sit and talk all through the night
But there's just no place to go

And Bonaparte is coming
With his army from the south
Marat your days are numbered
And we live hand to mouth

While we wait
To see the day begin
Our time is wasting in the wind
Wondering why
Wondering why, it echoes
Through the lonely palace of Versailles

The ghost of revolution
Still prowls the Paris streets
Down all the restless centuries
It wonders incomplete

It speaks inside the cheap red wine
Of cafe summer nights
Its red and amber voices
Call the cars at traffic lights

Why do you wait
To see the day begin
Your time is wasting in the wind
Wondering why
Wondering why, it echoes
Through the lonely palace of Versailles

Wondering why, it echoes
Through the lonely palace of Versailles

Al Stewart

This is a fun collection of cartoons featuring various usenet types. Apologies if this has already showed up as a Sidelight or Particle or somesuch! I just found it from a link in cuteoverload's glossary.

nerdycellist @ 35

Uniform regulations for armies usually come from the fertile imagination of rear-echelon chair-warmers, who have absolutely no idea what goes on in the field. For at least the first two or three years of the big buildup of American troops in Vietnam in the mid-sixties, the standard rank badges and name tags issued to army soldiers were bright yellow on green. There was another type, black on green, that was *optional* for combat areas, but often wasn't available at stateside bases. Of course, no soldier in anything close to a state of sanity would wear the yellow ones, which one of my drill instructors called "neon stripes, designed to advertise you to the Viet Cong". So as soon as they got to Vietname they changed all the yellow stuff on their uniforms to black.

Somewhat later sense finally penetrated to the windowless office in the Pentagon where uniform regulations are dreamed up, and everyone going to Vietnam was automatically issued the right rank badges and such. In the case of Napolean's troops, I'll bet the penetration took longer.

Terry Karney @ 37

Thanks for that post. Sometimes I get to thinking that nobody else remembers Al Stewart. Nice to know I'm wrong about that.

OT question:

I just finished Georgette Heyer's A Civil Contract. I have access to a whole pile of other books by her through my school library. What should I read next?

nerdycellist #35: It was a leftover from the eighteenth century. Bright, highly visible uniforms were important on a battlefield on which the quite literal fog of war would descend. Plus, I suspect, a lot of the spit and polish that produced highly-visible, not to mention shiny, uniforms was part of an effort to develop esprit de corps.

Hoping there might be some food experts who could point me in the right direction. Let's say, hypothetically, that I don't know anything about food nutrition whatsoever, and needed to learn more. Anyone got a book, or even a URL that would be a good ten-thousand foot viewpoint and intro with practical advice on putting said knowledge into practice?

Nancy:
I'd suggest Frederica, or possibly The Nonesuch; those two complete the three Heyer books that never seem to go back into the boxes in the loft (though I never tire of A Civil Campaign, nearly a quarter of a century after my pseudo-grandfather gave it to me in a vain attempt to wean me off of SF&F). Other firm favourites are Devil's Cub, The Convenient Marriage and Bath Tangle.

I am not much enamoured of The Grand Sophy, but I know many Heyer fans are. I'll let someone else speak on that. Nor, sadly, do I tend to appreciate her non-Regency stuff.

Greg London @#43: http://www.nutrition.gov/

Nancy: The nice girls over Smart Bitches Trashy Books reviewed Devil's Cub back in April of this year. The comments have a number of other Heyer recommendation. Have fun!

Greg London @ #43: I've always liked the information at the Harvard School of Public Health

I don't know if it's appropriate to self-pimp on an OT (I'm sure you will tell me). I wrote a short story this morning about when my mother passed away last year. I posted it to my blog and ficlets. I am still trying to deal with the hurt and loss in a way that is somehow, strangely, positive. I would appreciate any feedback, if anyone is willing.

Well, These Old Shades, Devil's Cub, Regency Buck and An Infamous Army are more or less a set, since the characters overlap from one to the next. The periods run from the mid-18th century (at a guess) to Waterloo.

But These Old Shades is (imo) not so good. Devil's Cub and An Infamous Army, on the other hand, are two of my favorites.

Nancy, #41: Every Heyer fan has different favorites -- books that ping the reader's individual buttons. Some of the ones I really like, and the reasons why:

Venetia and The Grand Sophy both have strong-minded, determined heroines who are willing to buck convention to get the man they want. However, they are very different characters; Venetia is more the type to work within the system, while Sophy proceeds along her chosen path with a sublime disregard for the opinions of lesser mortals. I've always felt that Sophy would be a very uncomfortable kind of friend to have in real life, although she's extremely entertaining to watch from a distance!

The Quiet Gentleman and The Unknown Ajax both feature the kind of male lead who is initially underestimated, but proves to have much more strength and substance than one might first imagine; watching them effectively confound all opposition is a lot of fun.

I second the recommendation for Devil's Cub, but in order to fully appreciate it, you really need to read These Old Shades first; the protagonist of the latter is the father of the male lead in the former.

Also, The Black Moth is clearly a precursor to These Old Shades; although the names of the dramatis personae changed between books, there's a very clear reference to the plotline of the former in the latter. Some characters from the same family line make an appearance in An Infamous Army, but that's one I don't recommend; if you really want to read a Regency romance set during the Napoleonic War, look for Prior Betrothal by Elsie Lee instead.

The Masqueraders and False Colours are almost-Shakespearean comedies of mistaken identity; the former has some political intrigue (from the Jacobin uprising) thrown in.

Cotillion is a classic illustration of "the nice guy finally gets the girl" -- even though she initially thinks she wants the handsome, dashing asshole instead.

The Nonesuch features a beautiful, tempestuous diva of an ingenue (think "the head cheerleader") who finally gets her well-deserved comeuppance; the real heroine of the story is her long-suffering governess, who ends up with the rich, handsome hero. If I had the talent, I would LOVE to adapt this story into a musical, for the sheer thrill of having the soprano and the tenor be the Bad Guys!

One Heyer that I don't recommend is The Reluctant Widow, because it pings one of my negative buttons. The heroine is flung headlong into a confusing, distasteful, and (eventually) dangerous situation, and yet all of her perfectly understandable qualms are treated as trivial female whining by the hero and his adoring coterie of relations and servants. This is a story which could easily be rewritten into a much darker form, featuring emotional abuse and horror, and I have real trouble seeing it as a light-hearted romance.

Lee @51:
If not The Reluctant Widow, then not Cousin Kate either, which gives me much more squick by far.

But I read These Old Shades after Devil's Cub, and didn't like it, nor need it to understand DC. I kind of like the father as a shadowy figure.

And if you like strong women and men who deserve a strong woman, add Black Sheep to the list.

As an long time Heyer enthusiast, I will only contribute that I love An Infamous Army, and that I heartily second everything said above about Venetia.

But actually, I am reporting some mild weirdness on the site. The right hand column typeface is very large compared to the center and left hand columns, and the typeface of the comment thread to Jim's Trauma:Shock post is also quite large. The post itself is a normal size. Odd.

Lizzy

I havenb't noticed that with the type sizes myself. But I'm using WinXP.

Unknown Ajax, yes! Lady of Quality? Faro's Daughter? The Toll-Gate?

Mary@45, Tania@47,

Wow. Thanks for the links.
Looks like exactly where I need to start.
I've got a lot of studying to do.

Lizzy L @53: Regarding site weirdness, I'm getting the exact same thing you're describing. Had been about to post a comment on the 'We're Back' thread (where recent weirdness is commented on), but you've covered it here.

P J Evans @54: I am using WinXP myself, so it doesn't seem that could be the variable.

I am using Firefox/1.5.0.12, if that bit of info helps any.

Ignorance forgiven, Xopher.
I mean, if I can sometime forgive myself mine which, proportionally to the total pool of knowledge, is unconfortably close to infinity, I should have enough forgiveness left for anyone else's. People trying to quote me on that will be met with usual *but-I-am-clinicaly-mad-and-don't-remember-saying-that-anyway-lalalalalalalalalala* cop out.

What do you mean, my logic's deficient too ? @_@"

Hum... anyway...

For loads (you could say left leaning, but in my experience it's not always as clear cut as that) of people of my and the preceding generation the Marseillaise tends to feel like a pompous, needlesly militaristic chant with more than dubious xenophobic undertones (whether the feeling is justified or not is open to debate). Open singing of the Marseillaise out of official displays has long been the thing of the far right (the pseudo-controversy there was in France some years ago about the - clearly marked for the occasion as second generation immigrants - players of the French national soccer team not singing the Marseillaise along while it was being played was ridiculous: no one I know does, not even those in the military when they're off duty). I guess not singing was for us akin to sending this protest message: "this is not what we are", and was patriotic in the sense that none but us could actually do that.

[Cynical me wants to add this other way to read events: that's not something we'd do at the time. We were not used to doing it. We didn't.]

Hope I make sense.

The controversy about the actual text of the Marseillaise isn't new (see Jaurès's take on it, and he wasn't first), but I guess it was particulary prevalent in post 70's France, given its political climate. It would have been easy to find the hymn being ridiculed in mass media then (Gainsbourg was not alone in this). This has become rarer recently, though. There's been a gradual switch on the political scene in the 90's with a - for me disquieting - strong bipolarisation on republican symbols: some (among those our sometimes uncomfortably protofascist new President, which doesn't help) try to see their value renewed, while to others they've become reviled objects in, I think, an interesting reversal. The way I see it, that second faction is the republican equivalent of satanists, validating in displays of hatred the sacrality of what they claim to reject.
Fiercely interesting times ahead.

re uniforms: In the black powder age, being able to see the troops was important.

One of the quirks (reported often) of firing so many pieces at once, was a stillness which settled, no matter how the breeze was behaving when the shooting started.

Secondly, knowing where one's supporting troops was matters; so being able to look and see that, the 14th Fusilliers was moving forward could be the difference between staying in square, and moving forward.

And knowing which unit was which (at a detailed level, not just "French") also mattered. It's why commanders paid attention to the Order of Battle (because a company of skirmishers, even in ranks, was an easy-ish mark to a company of grenadiers).

The introduction of smokeless powder, and the adoption of open order, put paid to flashy uniforms on the battlefield. Being able to hit someone, reliably, at more than 400 yards; without huge amounts of training and equiment, well being seen became less useful.

Bruch Cohen (STM): Yeah, I like Al Stewart. Been to a couple of his shows, and (because I used to be active on the "Making Light" of Al Stewart fandom, I was the amazed recipient of his autograph on a birthday card.

That he signed it wasn't notable (he will sign his name to anything one offers him), but he appended a note (good luck). Since I was in Iraq at the time, it meant a little.

Greg London: What aspects of nutrition are you trying to find out about?

At one level, "On food and cooking" by Harold McGee, is great (there are specific appendices on nutrition, and how Americans deal with it) as well as really detailed writing on how food works.

What aspects of nutrition are you trying to find out about?

Er, well, at the most basic level, something like: This stuff is good for you. that stuff is bad. (in what way it is good or bad might be informative.) These foods contain this good stuff. those foods contain that bad stuff. Look for this on a label, avoid if it says X, use if it says Y.

I have been completely oblivious to what I eat and nutrition in general for, well, for ever. I've been informed that won't work anymore.

The hypothetical book would be something analogous to "Impatient Perl", practical, do this, don't do that, some description of the underlying functionality as to why, but to the point, action oriented.

Knowing the way I make excuses, if it's too complicated, or if I have to read an encyclopedia of books before I can even go to the grocery store, then I'll weasel out of it. I get easily frustrated around certain things, and food is one of those things.

Sideways cape for sword - makes perfect sense! Thanks Mary (#33). Since most of my exposure to that particular fashion choice has been either contemporary portraits which don't move or modern re-enactors who don't want to get their $1000(+) outfits all shmutzy I have totally missed the practicality of a cape-but-not-a-cape for easy sword-fighting. I suspect that, like the peascod bellied doublet, the diagonal cape for was more for decoration than actual quick drawing. But then again, Elizabeth did outlaw duelling - it must have been a problem.

Thanks all for the military uniform insight too. I knew that 19th century uniforms were not so big on camoflauge, what with the red coats, shiny epaulets and braid and some hats with truly redonkulous plumage. I guess they had to draw the line somewhere and that line was at "reflective headgear". It sounds like they wore their little muslin hat-cozies when they were sneaking about trying not to be noticed, but removed them when facing the enemy on the field of battle.

Yay! Learned something new today!

Greg @ 59

You wan a book like the American Heart Association cookbook, or one on diet. ('Nutrition' tends to tell you more than you want about minerals and vitamins, and I gather you want more general information than that.)

This is where label reading is useful. Generally speaking, sugar, fat, and salt are bad in large numbers.

Ingredients get listed in order of content, so if sugar is in the first three or four, and you're avoiding sugar, don't eat it. Same goes for most other things: if it's at the top of the list, and it's on your no-no list, don't eat it. Flour (and wheat gluten): real problem, because one or the other is in almost everything.
Liguid oils are generally better than solid fats (palm and coconut oils are an exception). Monounsaturated fats are generally better than polyunsaturated.
Avoid high-fructose corn syrup if you can.

58: IIRC Napoleonic troops couldn't even hit someone reliably at 200 yards. A single man has a good chance of surviving individual musket fire at 100 yards; and, by the time he's reloaded, you have him at the sword's point.

Muskets were really poor tech; noisy, smoky, slow, short-ranged and inaccurate. The Duke* actually asked the government to look into raising a unit of longbowmen for his army; but the skill base had atrophied. It takes years of training and physical conditioning to make an archer, who can fire twelve to fifteen killing shots a minute at 300 yards - British troops couldn't do that again until the introduction of the Lee-Enfield - but (the musket's only advantage) only weeks to make a musketeer.
Funny to think of red-coated archers fighting at Talavera or Assaye...

*You know. The Duke. There is only really one Duke.

On cryptic coloration in battle: the Rifles, of course, wore dark green with black buttons for that very reason. Also, no shiny bits on their shakoes. Read CS Forester, "Death to the French", for a gritty account of the Rifles in the Peninsula (makes Sharpe look like a lightweight).

Also, the obsolete word "camisade" meaning a surprise attack:

"What about the armed multitude, then? Easy does it; we shall know more o' them anon... oh, all right then, they're Spanish soldiers from Cartagena, wi' arquebuses primed, d'ye see, and naked blades, preparing a camisado [which is not a highly-seasoned Catalonian stew, but a night attack, so called because they wore their shirts over their armour]. Eddication, by th' powers!"

-- The Pyrates

Flour sacks on French helmets - the sister of a friend of mine was an extra in a Sharpe episode* and they were quite keen on correct uniforms. So helmet covers of some sort are probably historic. It may be that in Post-Revolutionary France some Cavalry Sergeant who knew how things worked found himself in charge of uniforms, and got them covers for all the cavalry work that didn't involve knee-to-knee charges (99.9% of it).

On the other hand, as regards sneaking and hiding, I'll note that Sharpe's men seem to have the closest to camoflage as uniforms, but Sharpe normally gives away his advantage of suprise and range in an ambush by shouting "Rifles!" and charging into the middle of the enemy.

* I think it was Sharpe's Sword but I can't be sure. Since she was on the opposite side to most of her friends every bayonet was aiming for her - if you know what you're looking for, you can see this for about half a second.

Many years back, I played a SF miniatures game called "Starguard." (I still have hundreds of the figures, FWIW.)

The rules carefully specified how the figures were to be painted. One of the forces -- the Starguard marines -- had gunmetal helmets with a colored stripe indicating their "element" (like a platoon) with a box in that indicating their rank.

Somewhere along the line it became practice to just paint the whole helmet the bright color. It was just easier. My cousin suggested that troopers would try anything to avoid being assigned to elements with red or yellow colors, or to avoid having a promotion that led to having a gold officer's box painted on there.

I've crossposted with Ajay, but I seem to have actually added something. For once I don't feel stupid for not checking before hitting post. Hooray!

Monounsaturated fats are generally better than polyunsaturated.

That's one of the areas that causes my eyes to glaze over. So, based on that rule, the numbers on the second table over here explain why people say canola oil and olive oil are good for you?

I feel like I just wrote a "Hello World" in nutritional language and am waiting for it to tell me I have a syntax error somewhere. Maybe I need to readjust my expectations on how long this is going to take me to figure out...

Greg @#59: The rules I try to use are:
Eat as close to the animal/dirt as is reasonably possible aka avoid processed foods
Eat a variety of colors red/green/blue/purple/yellow/etc.
Be willing to try new foods*
All things in moderation**

One of the advantages to working in a hospital and socializing with the dieticians is I can call them up and ask for information. I described you as a computer geek that would deal ok with a RTFM approach, but it better be user friendly. They suggested the following:

American Dietitic Association Complete Food and Nutrition Guide

Nutrition for Life

Hot, new, explosive discoveries regarding nutrition seem to come up about every two months. And they contradict previously accepted dogma, as seen in last week's Telegraph article on full fat dairy products.

Knowing what is going into your body and how to keep yourself healthy is good, but it sure is confusing.

*whole kiwi fruit look wrong to an eight year old that was raised with livestock, but they sure do taste good
**except foods you're allergic to!

ajay @ 62... You know. The Duke. There is only really one Duke.

If I remember correctly, in the Sharpe movies, he was referred to as Nosey, when he was nowhere near. I wonder what else they called him.

Tania, #68: Eat as close to the animal/dirt as is reasonably possible aka avoid processed foods

Greg, this is probably the single best thing you can do to improve the overall healthiness of your diet. If you lack the time and/or enthusiasm to cook regularly, one-pot meals and Ziploc containers can be your best friends. We have a large freezer which normally contains lots and lots of individual-sized servings of things like chili, chicken soup, pasta with sauce, black bean soup, curry with rice, already-baked frozen potatoes, etc. It's terrifically convenient to just pull out one of those and heat it in the microwave; add a side serving of frozen veggies and a piece of fruit, and you have something quite like a TV dinner, only better for you and (often) more filling.

If you get into this sort of thing in a big way, or if taking a homemade lunch to work has become critical, you might want to look into Bento boxes -- a step up from "put everything in Ziplocs and shove it all in a paper bag". I have several friends who swear by a combination of make-ahead and bento boxes, so that putting a lunch together is a matter of two minutes' assembly in the morning.

High-fructose corn syrup (generally abbreviated as HFCS) is the biggest thing I'm trying to eliminate from my diet right now -- and it's hard. The manufacture of it is heavily government-subsidized, to the point where it's cheaper than sugar, and as a result it's in damn near every processed food there is. Soft drinks are Right Out for the most part, though I've found a few brands that don't use it. Virtually anything sweet, and a lot of things that aren't (soups, sauces, etc.) will have it. An awful lot of stuff marketed as "healthy" has it, too. I have issues about most artificial sweeteners, so I look specifically for things made with sugar, but if you need to cut back on sugar you may not have that luxury.

Serge at 69: They called him "Old Hookey" -- same reason they called him "Nosey." Check out a picture of him and you'll see. He was also called "The Iron Duke," and "Beau Douro," or just "The Beau." Those are the ones I remember. There were more, I am sure.

Tania@68:

Thanks. I decided to order the "American Dietitic..." book. After reading the summary, and skimming through the two websites (one from you and one from Mary), I figure I need a hardcopy I can mark up and make notes on. I don't think I can read a website and remember all this. The book is 600+ pages, so hopefully I don't have a meltdown when it shows up on my doorstep.

PJ @ 61 (and Lee @ 70): Avoid high-fructose corn syrup if you can.

good lord, you've wiped out 90% of what I eat.

:(

I'm not sure how helpful this suggestion will be, but my favorite small book on nutrition is a British book, Nutrition, Diet and Health by Michael J. Bigney, Cambridge University Press (1986 paperback edition), which I picked up in the book-trade section of the cafeteria of the place where I was working at the time.

It has brief descriptions of the various types of nutrients, what they do, and how to eat them; it also has some surprisingly lively prose, for example this excerpt from p. 70:

Consider an English gentleman, who, with his mad dog, walks out in the mid-day sun. He perspires heavily in the intense heat and loses water and salt, but proportionately more salt. The concentration of sodium in the fluids bathing the cells rises above the desirable level. Thirst ensues. The gentleman abuses his dog, curses the colonies and adjourns, hastily, for a cold lemonade. Later that evening, he feasts on salted groundnuts and anchovies, leading to a sudden rise in sodium absorption (sodium freely crosses the gut). Once again, there is more salt than desired in the fluid bathing the cells and he becomes thirsty. This time he abuses the servant, curses the colonies, thinks of England and downs a thirst-quenching beer. Thirst, real thirst, is a most distressful experience, aptly summarized by Coleridge's hallicinating Ancient Mariner: [Coleridge quotation omitted]

They finished reading Lord Foul's Bane in five years! And understood it 1 time!

More than I can say.

Regarding Georgette Heyer Favourites:

"A Civil Contract" is definitely one of my favourites. It grew on me as I got older; I could better appreciate the dynamic of the pretty adolescent crush being a terrible personality match! I think the complexity of personalities is way beyond the usual "romance" while still having the style and interactions (and some of the stock characters) that make Heyer so much fun.

I don't think anyone here has mentioned another of my favourites, "The Spanish Bride". It is based on the real-life marriage of Harry and Juana Smith, and as I discovered when I put Harry Smith's autobiography on-line at the Celebration of Women Writers website, many of the most enjoyable incidents in the book are taken directly from Harry and Juana's own writing. One of the things I lover about Heyer is that she puts lots of period detail in, without making it annoying.

I should also mention that I've put up an on-line edition of "The Black Moth" at the Celebration. The original printing is in the public domain in the United States. I had lots of fun finding period illustrations that matched the descriptions of the characters in the book, and adding them to the on-line edition. It's definitely one of my favourite books on the site. (Another is Dorothy Sayers, "Whose Body?" as first published in the U.S., but that's a whole other line of posts...)

Greg, #59, does your health insurance have consults to a nutritionist? Once something is wrong with you, your "good" and "bad" may not be the norm. For example, because my kidneys are spilling protein, I can only have 40gr protein a day. Most people won't have that kind of restriction.

does your health insurance have consults to a nutritionist?

I... have no idea. I'll have to ask around for that one.

FLUOROSPHERE BUTTONS FOR NASFIC?

My partner has a button-making machine, and we will have dealer tables at NASFIC. If there is sufficient interest, we could bring along a bag of buttons to help Fluorospheroids identify each other. My design concept: the word "Fluorosphere" around the upper rim, with a light bulb beneath, and space at the bottom to write one's posting ID with a Sharpie marker, on bright-yellow paper (the better to represent light and catch the eye of fellow travelers).

It would help if we had some idea of how many to make. If you're going to NASFIC and would be interested in having a button, please comment below and/or drop me an e-mail at the mailto link from my name. Thanks!

Greg,

Marion Nestle's What To Eat might also be something you'd want to check out. Structured around a trip down grocery store aisles, she details what can be found, what the words on the labels actually mean, how nutritionally useful the food is for you and some various potential hazards from foods.

I think you have to be a teenage girl to love These Old Shades; it was my favorite book ever when I was fifteen or so, but when I tried to reread it in my thirties, not so much.

CosmicDog @#48: Perhaps because there are so many professional writers and editors here, I haven't normally seen non-pros (such as myself) discussing their own efforts in depth at ML. And asking for a critique can be a bit awkward when the room is full of people who do this for a living...that's my sense of it, anyway.

Probably the best place to go to get support for your writing is Absolute Write - it's a very helpful community of writers, and many ML regulars are regulars there as well. That said, I'd be delighted to read your story and offer comments (speaking purely as an amateur, but one with some experience of loss, at least). Just email me with the best way to find it and we can take the conversation offline - I'm alchemist@canary3d.com.

Mary Dell,

Thank you for your suggestions (both here and over there). I really appreciate it.

CosmicDog @#82: My pleasure!

This weekend my yearning for shelving to place my cookbooks upon was satisfied. Behold... My New Shelves

Really, I'm not a difficult person to make happy. Of course, I now realize just how many cookbooks are AWOL, and I need to find them. Rascally little buggers.

For anyone that has someone in their life that has body image issues, and complains about how s/he never takes a "nice" picture:

Faith Hill before and after retouching

Greg, let me warn you, there's a lot of really awful advice out there. There's a whole industry dedicated to churning out a new fad every few months (the business advantages are obvious, the serious detriment to the health, both mental and physical, of anyone who tries to keep up with that sort of snake oil hawking may be less so). I suggest you avoid anything promising weight loss, most particularly anything that tells you to cut out entire food groups from your diet (such as fat, sugar, carbohydrates).

Couple of links to help cultivate a healthy cynicism: Michael Pollan in the NYT earlier this year says: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. and then goes on to explain why this works and why a lot of dieting advice is nonsense if not positively dangerous. And Steven Bratman on orthorexia, his term for the mental disturbance that can result from making a near religion out of following arcane rules for "healthy" eating.

Good luck, though. Educating yourself about what you eat is a really good idea, if daunting.

The current issue about food that's worrying our household is the lack of country-of-origin labels. I'd really like to avoid Chinese exports for a while, but our illustrious FDA seems to be in avoidance or denial about this as it is about so many other things since January 20, 2001.

(Which is not to say it was wonderful, fully funded, and had enough inspectors even prior to Bush, but at least I didn't feel it was actually conspiring against me back then).

#57 ::: MD∑

I love to bellow out the chorus of the Marseillaise -- both the words and the tune are transcendently inspiring -- but I suspect that the verses sound better if one doesn't understand French.

On another hand ... the Shelley translation, like the Bill of Particulars in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, seems to me to have special significance in the modern (American) political context. (*sigh*)

# 62 The Duke. There is only really one Duke

Yes, but I didn't think John Wayne was around during the Napoleonic wars...

:-)

Tania (#84): Am I the only one who feels the retouch work was clearly overkill here ? I mean, what was wrong with the original picture ? o_O"

@Don Fitch (#88): "MD∑"

Shhhhh... that's my secret ridiculously overpowered japanese cyborg self. Don't want that info to spread too much. At least not as long as I haven't done my software update and my spamdar hasn't be properly recalibrated.
How do you know, anyway ?

Oh, and songs almost always sound better when you don't understand them.
Well, at least I think so.
(French comic Antoine de Caunes had a sketch in which all he did was translate carefully selected english pop songs in french. Though he sometimes resorted to voluntarily poor translations, most of the time he didn't even have to. People were laughing. Which didn't prevent them from buying and enjoying the original records.)

Greg London: You might want to take a look at The Hacker's Diet. It was devised by John Walker of AutoCAD fame, and takes the geek engineer approach to diet and nutrition. It's been a while since I looked at it, but I seem to recall it had some stuff on nutrition. Good stuff anyway.

MD2@ #90: I completely agree re the Faith Hill picture. Good grief. Now it's not enough to be skinny and gorgeous; you have to be skinny, gorgeous AND look like you've been dipped in plastic.

Re song lyrics: one of the things I like about listening to Bollywood songs is that I don't understand the lyrics and therefore can't be annoyed by their banality and/or failure to rhyme and scan, as I so often am with English lyrics.

Re: Heyer: _The Grand Sophy_ has a really horrible anti-Semitic episode that is like running into a brick wall, particularly since it was written in 1950 or so.

I will second the recommenations for _The Unknown Ajax_ and _Frederica_.

89:

The last of the kilted soldiers shuffled into line on the top of the ridge behind Belle Alliance. Their austere chief swept a critical eye along their ranks before turning to his staff.

"Waa-al, I dunno what they'll do to the French, but darn it, they frighten me," drawled the British commander from his position atop Mont Saint-Jean. "And stop that darn chawin', Yer Majesty."

The Prince of Orange spat out his tobacco and looked guilty.

"Now, whar the heck are those Proosians?"

"I think I see them over there to the east, Your Grace," suggested the Earl of Uxbridge, pointing vaguely in the direction of Ligny with his telescope. The great general regarded him with disdain.

"Son, if you can see 'em, they ain't Proosians."

MD2 (90) -

Thanks for that. I just got finished responding to my sister in law, who requested a picture of my new haircolor. I told her I wasn't sure I wanted to take pictures anymore; that while I've made peace with the wacky fat chick in the mirror (even bad dressing room ones! and I don't take my glasses off first anymore), I still somehow have problems with photgraphs. Of course I knew about airbrushing and all that - but I guess it just never sank in until looking at that little transformation.

Mary @ 75

Oh, yeah, I forgot about The Spanish Bride!

---
Greg, I'm supposed to be on a low-fat diet. (Mostly it is, just not as low as it maybe could be). Label-reading is a good habit to get into. As far as the nutritional labelling goes, the stuff at the top is important, the vitamins/minerals less so, unless you have weird needs (I tend to have a low banana level; it's actually a legitimate reason for eating fries, but I can't do that often).

Found in the printer at work:

"BLUE BLOBS"
(INSPISSATED
MUCUS)
PRESENT

It's so reassuring to know these things about my office.

Blue blobs, Susan?

"Gothic dolphins! Not bombs!"

I saw this anti-war slogan on the side of a building not far from BART's Oakland West station yesterday.

Individ-ewe-al at 86, that article by Steven Bratman is wonderful. It is so very easy to obsess about food. I'm not a therapist or any kind of professional people-analyzer, but it seems to me that particularly for people who have grave medical problems, making those decisions about what to eat, how much, etc. allow one to re-assert some semblance of control over one's own body, and going to extremes in those decisions may provide some kind of psychological comfort. I find I have some of those tendencies. My own personal antidote to obsessive food monitoring is an occasional helping of my favorite dessert -- coffee ice cream.

Indivd-ewe-al@86, thanks for that link. it was longer than I was expecting (had to read it over three sittings), but probably the best 10,000 foot level perspective on eating well.

hm, better book mark it while I'm thinking of it...

ajay @ 94

It's a good thing I finished the bagel before I read that, or I'd have to clean both monitors ....

#97: the question is: what is the next line going to be?

"BLUE BLOBS"
(INSPISSATED
MUCUS)
PRESENT
an evening of improv comedy and music on the theme of the Decameron
Tonight, 8.30 at the East Mudflat Community Center
Tickets $15 from wwww.inspissatedmucus.com

"BLUE BLOBS"
(INSPISSATED
MUCUS)
PRESENT
FOR
NORMAN DAVIS
WHO IS RETIRING TODAY
FROM ALL HIS COLLEAGUES AT MIDSTATE

GOOD LUCK NORMAN!

(ANGIE, PHIL, SUNIL: YOU STILL OWE ME $10 EACH FOR YOUR SHARE OF THE MUCUS! THANKS - K)

"BLUE BLOBS"
(INSPISSATED
MUCUS)
PRESENT

"WEIRD ORANGE GLOW" (TRANSPLANAR KORCHAKOV RADIATION SIGNATURE)
PRESENT

TENTACLES
PRESENT (EST. 6-8)

SQUAMOUS EXTERIOR
PRESENT IN PATCHES (10% OF SKIN AREA)

HORRIBLE SMELL
ABSENT THANK GOD

REEK OF WRONGNESS
PRESENT

Recommendation:
Maintain surveillance and await further developments. Two further surveillance teams authorized for short term use - review by 8/12. Incursion status maintain at HOLD-A. DDO/NE, DDOPS, RDO/MA informed.

Signed: Katherine J Levi
Acting Senior Agent
Arkham Field Office
FASU

75/96: The Spanish Bride is indeed excellent. And I think I may have been confusing it with An Infamous Army when I praised the latter so highly.

"BLUE BLOBS"
(INSPISSATED
MUCUS)
PRESENT

CORRECTION PRE-SENT
GREEN BLOBS AND YELLOW PUDDLES TO FOLLOW

REGARDS
HEINZ-PETER LIEBESHANDWERK
I.G. SCHLEIMFARBEN
DORTMUND

One of the things about that Faith Hill picture is that some of the weaknesses in the original could have been sorted with a few tweaks in the lighting and posing.

I do wonder just how close the "before" picture is to the starting point for the cover shot.

P J at 96: What does this mean? I am totally flummoxed.

(I tend to have a low banana level; it's actually a legitimate reason for eating fries, but I can't do that often).

Lizzy:

Low potassium leading to possible muscle cramps. (Trust me, you don't want to go there, especially since they like to happen in the middle of the night.) Also Does Things to blood pressure. I now eat a banana every day; orange juice is also good.

P J 108: And pickles. And avocados, but they're high in fat, though it's the good kind.

"BLUE BLOBS"
(INSPISSATED
MUCUS)
PRESENT...

MUMAKIL RAMPAGE & NAKED ON A FUTON
with Special Guest
TORPID CORGI

18+ SHOW - DOORS @ 8:00

P J, thanks. I couldn't figure out what "low banana level" meant -- you meant potassium, yes? Yes, I also eat a banana a day to keep the potassium level up, but there are plenty of other high potassium foods: avocado, salmon. I still don't get the fries comment.

For those of you who want to increase your potassium intake but don't like bananas, go here:

High Potassium Food Summary

Another way to look at the "processed" issue, though this only helps in the grocery store and not in a restaurant:

No ingredients list: Good. This means it's something like fresh produce, grains, unprocessed meats, milk, eggs.

Short, comprehensible ingredients list: Pretty good. Your eyes don't glaze over from the length, and you don't need an organic chemistry book -- or a "nutrition" book -- to figure out what stuff is.

Long lists of multisyllabic ingredients that don't correspond to recognizable foods -- Bad. Now we're into the realm of heavily processed foods.

And don't sweat the details. Cut down on the animal products, increase the veggies, and you can hardly help but improve your diet.

The "don't eat something your great-grandmother wouldn't have recognized as food" advice (which may in fact be in that NYT article linked above) got a lot of bad press,