I love the ad at the side:

Discover the taste of Olde English

I suppose that'd help if I ever had to eat your words.

As I was sounding out the excerpt, it took me right back to one of my favorite college professors, who spoke beautiful old and middle English, and taught me the Pearl Poet one summer.

I love texts like this because my eyes won't scan them, but if I say it aloud phonetically, the words magically resolve themselves into something familiar. A delightful form of code-cracking - thanks!

That makes me wonder again why English got rid of thorns and eths. They seem like very useful letters to have. Anyone know?

'Souþeron' is spelled "Southeron" in the third line from the bottom. Sic?

Sic.

Makes one yearn for the days before English was "modern."

I wonder why we lost nice words like 'wone' (reside). Not to mention why we lost the yogh. (It was years before I understood that Puck, by swearing his oaths -- in Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies* -- 'by Oak, Ash, and Thorn' was invoking lost letters of the alphabet.

* It was from the poem from which Kipling took that title, by seventeenth century bishop Corbet, oddly, that I first learned the world 'slut'...

Farewell, rewards and fairies,
Good housewives now may say,
For now foul sluts in dairies
Do fare as well as they.

Fragano @7
The morpheme "wone" (to dwell) was ceded to the Dutch in the Treaty of Breda (1667), which ended the second Anglo-Dutch war*.

-----
* It is a little-known fact that the war started with the forcible annexation of the word "liefer".

Coolness! Startlingly readable.

abi #8: Thus the Dutch exercise I did years ago -- ik heb een broeder, die in Chicago woont. Hij is matroos.

My first thought was "Ah, Teresa's drunk again!"

Not much changes in seven hundred years over here...

Why moderation matters: a case study

I did a little googling, and this was one classic toxic waste dump of a community.

Avram, if I were that drunk I wouldn't remember to code the special characters.

Technically speaking those should probably be yoghs (Ȝȝ) rather than ezhes (Ʒʒ), which Unicode regards as separate characters.

I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the English teacher that required that we learn the first 34 lines of the prologue to the Canterbury Tales in Middle English before we graduated.

It's always a fun party trick to pull those lines out. But I can't say that I go to many parties where I manage to work it into casual conversation.

"Plus ca change, plus la meme."[0]

[0] apologies for the lack of accents - I've eaten all my memory

This is the followup to PNH's xkcd Sidelight.

Teresa 16: You haven't been to a party at the Nielsen Hayden house, have you?

In partial recompense for being clueless about spoilers, I present a visitor at the farm of a rather more fictional sort than usual.

Julia @13: And I thought 4chan was rough....

I've just now reading Pullman's The Golden Compass. Am I alone in picturing the villainous Mrs. Coulter as -- you know -- Ann?

Yoghs fixed.

I think it must have been the photo with the Tommygun that got Teresa the job.

JESR, bright visitor!

Lloyd at #22: I'm reading the Golden Compass as well and had the same thought. I also can't help picturing Nicole Kidman from the trailer for the movie, but she has blond hair, (like Ann) which only confuses matters.

It's odd how easily movies influence how we visualize characters in books. And hoe easily those of us who follow politics are influenced by current events.

I guess it's only natural that we reach for a familiar face but still, I've tried picturing Snape as someone other than alan Rickman and all I get are soft focus faces.

Teresa @ 16: I had to do that, as well, and I was tickled to recite it for my college Chaucer professor! I think he was tickled, too.

Also, I think my next story has to be called "Aliens That Speketh Strangelych."

Wone is alive and well in Scots/Lallans.

Anyone else going to NASFIC?

Marilee, bright indeed; I want to go into the Comicbook Store and see where they might have put it, as the place is jammed, already, but then I remember that they've moved the Serenity action figures right up front, and I don't trust my shaky impulse control not to spend money I don't have.

Keith #26: I've been known to mentally substitute a young Trent Reznor for Alan Rickman when I need to visualize a younger Snape.

Keith, I pictured Snape as Alan Rickman from the get-go, well before they announced the casting for the first movie, primarily based on his work in Dogma. Had they cast someone else as Snape, I don't know what I would have done.

Er, that should be Alan Rickman as Snape. I think.

#22, #26: Well, that's damn odd. I just picked up The Golden Compass and was planning starting reading it Any Minutes Now.

Pat, I arrived at the same place after seeing An Awfully Big Adventure. If I'd known then what I know now about the character I'd've thought it was even more perfect.

Bonus: one of those rare evil spoiled little shit performances in which Hugh Grant is not annoying.

Warning: neck and neck with Breaking the Waves and Limbo as movie you really, really don't want to watch if you're feeling at all vulnerable.

Saw, this afternoon, a wonderful documentary called Dr. Bronner's Magical Soapbox.

It is, duh, about the man behind the liquid soap that comes in bottles whose labels are packed with bizarre religious ranting.

Doctor Bronner was nuts. Certifiably crazy. In fact, he was committed to an asylum in the late 40s. (In his delusional universe, it was a communist concentration camp.) He got away (when his sister checked him out for a few hours so they could have lunch) and left his kids behind (well, they were in orphanages and foster homes anyway) to go to California and start his soap company. Apparently, his work ethic was as strong as his desire to rant, and his liquid soap became a hit with counter-culture types.

Bronner's kids and their families eventually took over the business. They're an interesting bunch too; hard working and off-beat.

The real star of the show is Ralph Bronner, who is the company's goodwill ambassador. He's kind of nuts too, but in a really nice way. He travels around putting on a one-man tribute show to his dad, dispenses free samples of soap, and offers hugs. He is unworldly, saintly nice. Like a Health Store guru version of Mister Rogers.

Poul Anderson used liefer in at least one of his books, Three Hearts and Three Lions, maybe.

Others are probably already aware of this, but I just found out that Zachary Quinto--as in, Sylar from Heroes--has been cast as Spock in the JJ Abrams Star Trek movie.

Part of me is like, oh, yeah, I can totally see that, he could totally pull that off, but then the other part of me is gonna be all, "No, Cadet Kirk! Don't trust him! He's going to chop off the top of your head and steal your special powers of self-righteousness and sexual atavism!"

I can already tell it's gonna be at least as weird as when Sarah Michelle Gellar was a Dead Dumb Blonde in I Know What You Did Last Summer, and I kept going, "God, Buffy, you know you shouldn't have just run up those stairs. Seriously! Just stake him, for frack's sake!"

Stefan Jones @#35: Awesome! I used to use Bronner's all the time back in college...back before I realized that my skin is as dry as tissue paper, so castille soap is verboten.

It is really good soap, and you can do your laundry (hand-washing, anyway) with it, as it says on the label. The label also has instructions for using it as a contraceptive douche, but I never tried that (and don't recommend it, not least because "contraceptive douche" is a contradiction in terms).

And Dr. Bronner's can be identified using field drug tests.

The theater gave away little sample bottles of Dr. Bronner's.

Too small for the rants, and the skipped the Essene birth control directions, but it does suggest using it to wash your car.

ALL-ONE! ESSENE MORAL ABC BRINGS TOGETHER ALL PEOPLE OF ONE-GOD SPACESHIP EARTH!

#26 Keith:

You might have ended up with that mental-imagery combination even without having seen the trailer. I read the books a few years ago and was flipping back and forth between Ann and Nicole in my mind; that one bit of casting alone got me really excited about the movie.

I think it's the descriptions of Mrs. Coulter which add up to, roughly "this person *should* be beautiful, according to society's standards, but is terrifically creepy anyhow" that does it.

ethan @ 37... Is JJ Abrams's movie a reboot of Star Trek, or an origin story in a setting where very few unexplored nooks and crannies remain? I hope it's the former and I'll drink trania to that.

While we're on the subject of casting, something everyone here already knew: Johnny Depp to play Barnabas Collins in big-screen Dark Shadows. Personally, I think he can and will pull it off without having to out-Collins Jonathan Frid, in the same way that Jack Nicholson recreated the role of the Joker without deposing Cesar Romero from his iconic place of honor.

(And with the trailers and preview stories for The Dark is Rising convincing me that they won't get my money even if they offer to show it to me free, I need something to look forward to. Of course, The Golden Compass looks awesome, and that will be out first.)

Um/Er/Uh/Whatever mumbly non-word indicates genuine confusion/mild disbelief and doesn't offend:

People don't use the words "lief" and "liefer" in everyday conversation? Are we supposed to be paying some sort of import duty or tariff in each instance of use?

::wails:: Why didn't anyone tell me??

On other topics, I too had to learn parts of Canterbury Tales in the original. However, I've always been jealous of the Italian exchange student that was in the class with me, and she shared that back at home, she had to read Dante and Boccaccio in the original. I quit feeling sorry for myself over a little bit of memorization.

me, previously. Floggings for grammar errors. Don't post when tired and monitoring multiple household situations. ::thwack thwack::

Apropos of nothing, I'm watching a HILARIOUS Miami Vice rerun from a season I apparently missed the first time around. Sonny seems to have gotten amnesia and became a smoove crime kingpin, complete with a blond moll and a pet black panther. He's wearing his mullet in a daggy little ponytail, too.

He's having flashbacks of Sheena Easton right now. Ooo, now he's walking out on the blonde girlfriend, who is wearing a headscarf in the same pattern as her dress.

Girlfriend (hollering): "You think you can just turn me on and turn me off whenever you feel like it? After I slept with Nicky and helped you take out the old man you think you can just walk out on me?" (Throws pillow)

Oooh, now there's a car blowing up! And a different blond girl running to Sonny's rescue. I wonder if being knocked out by the explosion will have any affect on his amnesia?

*effect,* damnit

FLUOROSPHERE BUTTONS FOR NASFIC

If anyone else is going to be there and wants one (and hasn't already responded), let me know NOW, preferably by e-mail to the mailto link on my name. We leave on Wednesday, and the next few days are going to be very busy. The buttons will be available at the Instant Attitudes table in the dealer room. We'll have some extras, of course, but so far the response has been limited.

Teresa R., #16: I can still do most of the opening to the Prologue and the naughty bit from the Miller's Tale (starting with "The nicht was black as pitch or any coal..."). I adored my college Chaucer teacher -- he had what I, at least, perceived as a very good Middle English accent.

JESR, #20: Coolness!

Bruce, #43: Even more coolness! If anyone can do justice to that character, it's Depp.

A dear recently departed friend, and John of Trevisa scholar, Dr. David Fowler, Professor Emritas at the University of Washington would so have loved your post. I'm enjoying it for him and for myself.

Linguistic worriting and close analysis compels me to wonder if perhaps "fluorosphere" is not quite right for Making Light.

"Fluorescence" derives from "fluorspar", which in turn derives from "fluorine", which does not, in point of fact, have anything in particular to do with light.

Of course, habit and custom being what they are, it is no doubt Too Late to change or modify. Still.

Phosphorosphere, anyone?

Well, there's always "dixitque Teresa fiat lux et facta est lux"....

Or photosphere, which, despite being taken by astrophysicists, has a particularly light-filled meaning, and is full of gravitas as well.

Incidentally, I was browsing the online OED, looking for the earliest citations of "sphere". While the earliest is 1300, I also found this, which seemed appropriate somehow:

c1340 HAMPOLE Pr. Consc. 4867 Alle þe fire þat es in þe spere, And under erthe, and aboven erthe here.

And speaking of appropriate citations, I went looking for the earliest ones the OED had for light, and found these:

c1000 ÆLFRIC Gen. i. 3 God cwæð þa: ʒeweorðe leoht, and leoht wearð ʒeworht.
c1250 Gen. & Ex. 44 Al was ðat firme ðrosing in niȝt, Til he wit hise word made liȝt.
1398 TREVISA Barth. De P.R. VIII. xxviii. (1495) 339 Lyghte shedyth itselfe fro the hyghest heuen anone to the mydle of the worlde.
c1460 Towneley Myst. i. 23 Darknes from light we parte on two.

Hm. This character—"ᵹ"— should be an "insular g". Does it work at all for anyone? I get a question mark (Firefox on Windows). I wanted to use it above, but ended up going with the ezh, because insular g failed.

For a good chuckle, check out:

SF writers as high school student/cliques

Sege @42-The movie isn't really a reboot I don't think,this comes from Lee and-it's going to feature Kirk and Spock on their first voyage of the Enterprise together,and maybe some stuff from Starfleet Academy. Not much more has been said-Lee was at that panel at Comicon,so I'll see what I can find out.

Lisa Spangenberg @28
Wone is alive and well in Scots/Lallans.

That I haven't heard these 14 years in Edinburgh. Ken, kirk, and kist, yes. I missed out!

I seem to recall that there was an exception written into the Treaty for Scots dialect, in honour of the Dutch gables in the Kingdom of Fife.

Tania @44
People don't use the words "lief" and "liefer" in everyday conversation? Are we supposed to be paying some sort of import duty or tariff in each instance of use?

Yes; the rate is calibrated by the size, importance and average cubic volume of hair (uncompressed) of your listeners. It is denominated in guilders, however, which are no longer valid currency since the Euro came to the Netherlands. I doubt anyone will be around your place to collect.

Top five Dr Bronner's bottle exclamations:

5. Essene, Chinese, and other birth control methods must reduce birth or Easter Isle type overpopulation destroys God's Spaceship Earth!

4. As teach astronomers Abraham-Israel-Moses-Buddha-Hillel-Jesus-Spinoza-Paine-Sagan & Mohammed, inspired every 76 years, 6000 years by the Messenger of God's Law, the Messiah, Halley's Comet: WE'RE ALL ONE OR NONE!

3. More good is caused by evil than by good, do what's right!

2. Don't Drink Soap! Dilute! Dilute!

1. All-One! All-One! Exceptions eternally? Absolute none!

Zander @12: At least in the middle ages they had a Council of the North.

Yoghs fixed. This is my favourite comment of all time, anywhere.

Keith @26: It's odd how easily movies influence how we visualize characters in books.

I saw a talk by David Cornwell (aka John le Carré) which had been carried on CSPAN. He said that after Alec Guinness had played his character George Smiley in the TV adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, he was not able to visualize Smiley as anyone but Guinness.

Apparently they became good friends. During his talk, Cornwell slipped into an credible imitation of Guinness.

Nina Amrstrong @ 54... The movie isn't really a reboot

Thanks, Nina. I think it's a mistake not to reboot, and it's not like the public wouldn't have accepted it. They did it for James Bond. They'd have done it for James Kirk. Hmm... Daniel Craig as Kirk... What a concept.

Speaking of Daniel Craig, I watched Renaissance last night. It was very smart and visually amazing, though I'd suggest you watch it in a darkened room. Highly recommended.

Julia #13:

Great story. I'm just amazed that more of that sort of thing doesn't happen. In many ways the internet is just a high-tech bathroom stall.

Lisa #28:

Keep an eye out for the mug.

Scott H @ 60... A few weeks ago, The Cate Blanchett movie about Queen Elizabeth was on TV. We were sort-of watching although we got a kick out of recognizing Christopher Eccleston. Then that assassin monk showed up and my wife said "Hey! That's Daniel Craig!"

61: that's the problem with a lot of Serious BBC Dramas: they star a lot of the same people over and over again and you get quite sick of them after a while.

Re liefer: it's spelled liever these days in modern dutch. Me mum always said liever koekjes worden niet gebakken ("rather cookies" won't be made) when we were whinging for something.

Martin Wisse @ 62... Actually that movie about the Virgin Queen was a big-screen thing (with Fanny Ardant as the Queen of France - be still, my heart). And from what some people said in these parts, it had so many inaccuracies that I doubt it could have been considered a Serious BBC Drama. (Then again, a couple of years ago there was a Serious BBC Drama with Ray Winstone as Henry VIII. Talk about weird casting.)

Just thought I'd mention.

"Ripper" may finally get filmed. Joss Whedon said yesterday at Comic Con that things look good for filming "Ripper" in 2008 as a 90 minute TV-movie for the BBC.

("Ripper" being a BtVS spinoff movie focusing on the character of Rupert Giles.)

#16, Teresa R, from memory:

Whan that Aprille with hys shoures soote
The droughte of March hath perced to the roote,
And beythed every veyne in swich liquoure
Of which vertu engendred is the floure,
Whan Zephyrus eek with hys sweete breethe
Inspired hath in every holte and heethe
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram hys halve course yronne,
And smale foules maken melodye
That slepeth all the nyghte with open eeye
So nature priketh hem in hir corages,
Thanne longen folke to goon on pilgrimages.

(my pronunciation is worse than my spelling, though, so not much good at parties)

Bruce @#43, I did NOT know that and I am GOBSMACKED! I used to run home from school in the 4th grade to catch Dark Shadows! Thank you for the heads-up.

Since this is an open thread, I present this random comment: my new favorite word is "toerag". Thank you, J.K. Rowling.

The Cate Blanchett movie about Queen Elizabeth was on TV.

A sequel will be coming to the big screens this October.

It's going to focus on the Spanish Armada, with a side-order of infatuation with Ralegh (Clive Owen)

When I watched the concluding naval battle in POTC3, I thought it was about time for a big-screen version of the Armada battle.

Scariest thing about the "for lack of moderation" particle:

"Tavares took leave from his post as a weapons systems operator at the AEGIS Training and Readiness Center in Dahlgren, Va...."

Holy cow. Al-Qaeda is apparently ignoring a vast untapped resource: easily tweaked unstable nerds with access to useful military intelligence.

From Dahlgren's website:
The AEGIS Training and Readiness Center (ATRC) is staffed and maintained by a team of professional military and civilian instructors and technicians who provide training to both enlisted and officer personnel in the skills they will need to operate the United States Navy's most sophisticated warships, the Ticonderoga class cruiser and the Arleigh Burke class destroyer, both equipped with the AEGIS Combat System and the AEGIS Weapons System.

I had to memorize the opener to the Canterbury Tales as well, back in high school. Coincidentally, this class was in the fall before "A Knight's Tale" came out in theaters - a fluffy movie that happens to have Chaucer as a secondary character (played by the lovely Paul Bettany). I went to see it with a load of friends who'd been in the class with me, all unsuspecting, and we rolled about in the aisles and left chorusing the prologue together. Oh, to be young and geeky.

Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap: scent of my childhood, bane of my stinging eyes and dry skin. Dad still gets the giant gallon jugs and can't believe that my sister and I use - o heresy! - body wash.

I'm half and half about what this new Trek movie could be...part of me thinks a reboot would be a great idea (as it most certainly was for Bond), but then if they reboot they're committed (it seems to me) to retracing the continuity from the early Kirk-Spock days. I've already been pissed for a while now that we got left in the 24th century at the end of Nemesis and never came back--I want more of that world. New creative team, new creative direction, that would definitely be ideal (the old one was getting mighty stale), but I wish it didn't have to start over entirely.

Although the movie poster is pretty awesome.

ethan @ 69... The important thing is that a reboot would have allowed them to keep the essence of Star Trek without being bogged down with the specifics of the existing continuity. Look at Galactica... It took the original concept and ran with it.

Yes, photosphere is perfect for Making Light. Chromosphere is also nice...

Owlmirror, I use "fluorosphere" based on "fluorescence." A material is fluorescent if it absorbs light, then emits light at a different wavelength. (Fluorite does it, but so do lots of other things.) It's not just the raw photons, it's the conversation, and the way we inspire each other.

Adrian @ 72... Let's not forget that ML is sometiems refered to as the flourosphere.

#4: Speaking as someone who spent 15 months fighting with character representation:\any/ variations in a widely-used alphabet are a pain in the neck; having a common character set across languages is a Good Thing, even if you disagree on how they're pronounced (cf 'x', 'j'). Teresa: any comments on where the assorted continental "th" pronounced "t" come from? Was the Scandinavian parliament once pronounced with a thorn? (I've heard of massive vowel shifts but had the impression consonant pronunciation tended to be stable.)

#55:
Yes; the rate is calibrated by the size, importance and average cubic volume of hair (uncompressed) of your listeners.

Doesn't that give preference to the tribe of the hair-inflating? Not that I imagine they'd make all that much use of it, but still.

chris y (#57): Yoghs fixed. This is my favourite comment of all time, anywhere. But now they can no longer reproduce!

I too had to memorize that passage in college, though the only bit that really stuck is the opening, about showers and drought. Teresa, as an Arizonan did you want to update that a few months so it would fit monsoon season? It has been very soggy here lately, though Prescott's mostly too hilly for actual flooding.

@#72:

A material is fluorescent if it absorbs light, then emits light at a different wavelength.

Granted. Yet consider that phosphorescence is an extension of the phenomenon of fluorescence; hence phosphorosphere.

Do we stop making light when not on Making Light?

chris y (#57): Yoghs fixed. This is my favourite comment of all time, anywhere. But now they can no longer reproduce!

I too had to memorize that passage in college, though the only bit that really stuck is the opening, about showers and drought. Teresa, as an Arizonan did you want to update that a few months so it would fit monsoon season? It has been very soggy here lately, though Prescott's mostly too hilly for actual flooding.

@#73:

Let's not forget that ML is sometiems refered to as the flourosphere.

With many the jape about Baking Light, too. "I got this excellent set of croissant recipes from the flourosphere."

Owlmirror @ 77... Do we stop making light when not on Making Light?

Think of us as the light that comes on only when you open the fridge door. (Does that mean there are elements in ML's hidden corners that's turning into horrible biological experiments, the equivalent of that bow of potato salad?)

@#80

(Does that mean there are elements in ML's hidden corners that's turning into horrible biological experiments, the equivalent of that bow of potato salad?)

You mean like the spammers and young punks who use old threads (and sometimes new threads) as their own personal graffiti walls?

I think we all make light in different ways, some folks are positively incandescent, some have a soft little phosphorescent glow of their own, some of us need the input of some outside energy to fluoresce, others reflect or even focus the brilliance of others. Bill Higgins, of course, scintillates by the decay of high-energy sub-atomic particles.

Owlmirror @ 81... Yup. As for your suggestion to rename the site to Baking Light, I think that, should that be implemented, an image should then be displayed at the top showing Kenner's EasyBake Oven.

Lila at 67, yes, that scared me too. I also wondered if Tavares was/is a member of the NRA. Just askin'.

If the movie The Golden Compass looks as good as the material on the website, it's going to be f*cking awesome.

Laura, I like chromosphere...

BTW, I saw Sicko last week. If there's anyone left who hasn't seen it, go thou and do so. It's tremendously entertaining, and you get to see some great footage of Richard Nixon, with subtitles.

Serge #70: I'm a bit embarrassed to say it, because I made ruthless fun of all the BSG purists, but I don't want anything that extreme happening to my Star Trek.

Or, OK, maybe if it's that good, I could handle it. But I don't have nearly the faith in JJ Abrams that I do in Ron Moore.

Lizzy L @ 84... I like chromosphere

Remember the following episode of The Outer Limits?

The Mice
Original Airdate: 01/06/64

"In dreams, some of us walk the stars." - narrator

Henry Silva pops up again, this time as a prisoner who is given two choices: life imprisonment on Earth or the chance to take part in the so-called "inhabitant exchange" with the planet Chromo. Of course he chooses Chromo, but it seems the Chromoites have a slightly more devious plan in mind, and only Silva can potentially save the day. Dabney Coleman has a supporting role in this episode.

ethan @ 85... I didn't mean to suggest making Star Trek into the pit of despair that BSG is for those who are prone to depression. BSG's very premise in both incarnations is that humanity has pretty much been wiped out and must try to survive. Star Trek without the optimism that we can keep from killing each other and that we can indeed flourish? That wouldn't be Star Trek. But starting all over again would give us some suspense. There's no suspense when you know that Kirk dies from falling off a collapsing platform while defeating Malcolm McDowell...

Let a thousand light-related words and phrases bloom. Or rather, shine.

"Jim McDonald's post on emergency tracheotomies had quite a photoelectric effect on me"

"It's quite fascinating how an idea will propagate through the luminiferous æther of Making Light."

OK, I just wanted to use the 'ae' ligature there.

I was pondering other light-related compound words like "luminasphere", but I think that sounds like something vaguely steampunk. Which I suppose isn't entirely inappropriate either.

"Luxosphere" makes me think of vacuum cleaners. I would prefer not to associate Making Light with sucking.

A question to the fluorosphere: would someone who knows something about cosmology take a look at this (scroll all the way down to the last item) and tell me whether or not the writer is barking mad?

I'm correcting a glaring omission in my exposure to the classics by reading Earthsea, and I want to applaud the author and publisher (Bantam) for including maps. If you're going to make up a world, it surely helps the reader if you draw the geography.

Fragano at 89: I scrolled up and found this.

Our group is studying coherent population control of electrons in atoms. We are developing analytic methods to understand how to move electrons from one state to another in an atom when we want, where we want, as completely as we want, as fast as we want, keeping it there as long as we want, using simple mathematics.

I don't know how to answer your question.

Michael I @#64:

"Ripper" may finally get filmed.

Oh, crap, another chance for Joss Whedon to xvyy n snibevgr punenpgre.

Fragano:

I have gathered that Tipler is or was a fairly respected physicist, but that does not preclude barking mad. I think he started out by drawing some interesting conclusions that if certain conditions were met or assumptions made as to physics principles, then information would be conserved over the lifetime of the cosmos, including in the Big Crunch which occurs for some ranges of the cosmological constant. He then went on to argue this meant there would be a kind of apotheosis at the end into an omniscient intelligence, or ultimate Singularity. It now sounds like he is taking that conclusion as an article of quasi-religious faith and arguing that therefore physical constants and laws must meet the requirements for it to be true. Current discoveries in physics, however, seem to be pointing the opposite way. So, yeah: if not barking mad, meandering in that direction.

Fragano @89, Lizzy L @#91:

I followed the link to the head researcher's web page...

In a compelling example, he illustrates how the God depicted by the Jews and Christians is completely consistent with the Cosmological Singularity, an entity whose existence is required by physics. His discussion of the scientific possibility of miracles provides an impressive, credible scientific foundation for many of Christianity's most astonishing claims, including the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, and the Incarnation.

I suspect his work is a bit on the fringe.

Lila @65, if memory serves, "Toerag" was also the name of an evil little character in The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul," by Douglas Adams.

Thanks, Mary. I read the first chapter of Tipler's book, The Physics of Christianity, online, and I think the response to Fragano's question should be, Sadly, Yes.

I mean, he talks about Jesus's DNA and asserts that an analysis of the Shroud of Turin can be used as evidence for what he claims, with not a footnote in sight... Nuh-uh.

Eternel baptême d'une luminescence et ses origines: coruscation d'une photo-genèse, by the Making Lighters, soon in an online shop near you.

Grumble... one accent and the French title would have perfectly worked.

Serge-I do think a reboot is necessary-I agree that J.J. Abrams is not the person to do so. I do have hopes the film will at least be entertaining,which is more than the last couple.
What I would've liked to have seen was the J. Michael Straczynski reboot of the show-it sounded really interesting.

Nina Armstrong @ 98... What would Straczynski's reboot of Star Trek have been like? I'm one of those people who were very unhappy with Babylon 5 after Sinclair got whisked away, but I loved its first year.

Lizzy L @ 96

Sadly, indeed, I have to echo what you said. Tipler was in fact a very well-respected physicist; he published a paper in the early '70s which was the first* to show that closed timelike curves were possible in an Einsteinian universe in which General Relativity applied. In other words, that time travel is at least theoretically possible. This is quite orthodox physics, these days.

Reading the first couple of chapters of "The Physics of Immortality" was extremely painful for me, because it was clear that much of it was written as a result of emotional trauma, not from rational thought. Some of the physics is fascinating, but has a highly questionable basis in observed fact. Some of the later conclusions are, to be kind, shakey.

Since then, Tipler and his work have become the basis of a cult related to the Extropians: they believe in the resurrection and subsequent immortality of all intelligent beings, as the work of beings resulting from the evolution of intelligence through something like the Singularity. It sounds to me a lot like a sort of scientific cargo cult based on a retelling of the Christian myth of the Resurrection and the Final Judgement.

"Barking mad" is a little too harsh, I think, but Tipler and his followers are not what I'd call sane.

* Actually, I believe Gödel did some work on this towards the end of his life, but I don't believe he published it.

Re: Tipler.

I have to confess to not having followed the evolution of the Tiplerite cult, any more than I've paid much attention to the Extropians in the last 10 years or so. If anyone in the Fluorosphere has had more recent contact or at least knowledge of them, please let me know, by email if you think it offtopic enough. I've been thinking about writing a story based on some of the Tiplerite mythology, and I'd appreciate an additional objective view of their current beliefs.

Fragano @ #89 - my cosmology is about 10 years out of date and never really on that level, but it reads like a lot of possible or conceivable (but mostly not the most accepted) ideas put together into one grand theory. Or, as other commenters have said, on the fringe. Which may or may not mean barking mad; they are all things to investigate, but maybe all together at the same time is putting the cart before the horse.

pat green @95, yes, Toerag is the old man's minion, although not responsible for the vital work of changing his high-count linen sheets every day.

Lila says,

Holy cow. Al-Qaeda is apparently ignoring a vast untapped resource: easily tweaked unstable nerds with access to useful military intelligence.

What makes you think this firebombing wasn't an Al-Qaeda plot?

Tonstant vigiwance is the pwice of fweedom!

Serge 2 99-I don't remeber the details-when Lee gets home from San Diego I'll ask him.

I'm now reminded: fans of both Alan Rickman and Kevin Klein should add January Man to their queue of obscure, under-appreciated films..

Nina Armstrong @ 105... Or the two of you could tell me in person, provided you're still planning to come to Albuquerque for Bubonicon. I'm not attending, but it's a 10-mile drive from here to there so there's no reason I couldn't meet you at the con's hotel.

Serge, 73: "Let's not forget that ML is sometimes referred to as the flourosphere."

Well, we were originally hosted on Panix.

Taking a break from domestic chores, I was watching a rerun of the first episode of Brimstone, still one of my favorite supernatural stories from TV. And I suddenly realized, the hero, Detective Ezekial Stone, is the only character on television who has a real excuse for always having a one-day growth of beard: he is dead, but is resurrected every morning, always with a day's beard, his clothes and a raincoat, and $37 and change in his pockets, the only money he ever has.

#7
I think in England 'slut' means 'lazy housekeeper'. The USA meaning of 'good date' is much younger- Kipling probably meant the housekeeper thing

þeos offereode; þisses swa meag.

Now if only I could remember the other phrase, the really good one that's a variant of, "Well, I guess we're going to die, then."

Lizzy L #91: That wasn't the one, it was the astrophysics research piece at the end, which Clifton Royston, I've just noticed, picked up on.

Clifton Royston #93: I'm no physicist (my older son is planning to start grad school next year, and I've been encouraging his search which is how I came to find this page -- my lad wants to do astrophysics, after discussing this strange piece, the conclusion was that Tulane is probably not the place for that), but the life at the final singularity will be 'collectively intelligent computers' trope gave me the willies. I think you're right.

@#110:

I think in England 'slut' means 'lazy housekeeper'.

It occurred to me that I could check that.

The first def in the OED says "A woman of dirty, slovenly, or untidy habits or appearance; a foul slattern."

Random thought: Could a shining magic crystal ball on Discworld also be called an octarine phosphorosphere? ("Bloody useless thing's been stuck on 'Reply Hazy, Try Again' for nearly a year. I think it might be traumatized from when the Librarian sat on it.")

Mary Dell #94: A bit on the fringe sounds like an understatement.

Fragano, I know -- I saw it. See my comment at 96. I just wanted to bring attention to the idea of population control of electrons...

But as I said upthread, yeah, the guy's bonkers. Wacko. Three queens short of a deck.

Lizzy L #96: Thanks. I thought so, but not being a physicist or anything near one, couldn't be sure.

(I'm not looking forward to one of the tasks I have tomorrow, which is asking the editor of a volume of essays what persuaded her to include a collection of apodeictic assertions about Greek myth in the volume -- I'm copyediting/critiquing the thing.)

pat greene, sorry for the lacking "e."

I need to wear my reading glasses more regularly, although they only solve the smaller of my posting problems.

HOLY CRAP RIPPER!!!!

Ahem, sorry.

Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) #100: That is sad. However, when I read about life becoming 'collectively intelligent computers', I tend to think 'barking mad' about right, but that may be an overreaction.

Neil Willcox #102: Thanks, that does clarify things.

B Durbin #111: You mean, of course 'Hige sceal the heardra, heorte the cenre, mod sceal the mare, the ure maegen litlath', which a friend of mine used to recite frequently when we were undergraduates. Never having studied Old English myself, I have to resort to a translation, which goes: 'Mind must be firmer, heart be keener, courage stronger, as our might grows less' (though, frankly, 'littleth' is a fine word).

Bruce #110: Originally 'slut' was synonymous with 'slattern', but the terms have diverged.

B. Durbin, Fragano: You mean that quote that is revealed when you mouse over the Making Light title thingummy?

Fragano, my dictionary says that "apodictic" -- that's how The American Heritage Dictionary spells it -- means "clearly proven or demonstrated; incontestable." Please tell me why you object to including a collection of such statements in the volume you are editing. I think I know -- there are no incontestable statements about Greek myths -- but I am mightily curious...

To whom it may concern: eye-of-partridge sock heels in super-stripey handpainted yarn are made of awesome.

@#124: ? Title thingummy? What... oh, you mean the ... subtitle. Motto. Epigraph. Thing.

<a title="Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare þe ure maegen lytlað.">
<div class="description">Language, fraud, folly, truth, knitting, and growing luminous by eating light.</div></a>

You know, my HTML checker is unhappy with the above code. Among other things, <a> tags aren't supposed to cross <div> tags. That is, the "a" should be inside the "div" rather than outside.

There are similar issues with the boilerplate code.

Fragano:

Thinking about Frank Tipler later today, I was reminded of Fred Hoyle (astronomer, cosmologist, and SF author) and his "constant creation" or "steady state cosmology" theory which involved cosmological expansion through continuous slow creation of new space and particles. IIRC at the time he proposed it, there was no conclusive evidence in favor of the Big Bang, and his theory was an intriguing alternative. However, within a few years the evidence for the Big Bang started turning up in spades - microwave background radiation was recognized as red-shifted emissions from the Big Bang, different populations of stars when you looked back in time far enough, etc. I believe Hoyle never managed to retreat from his theory and say "Oh well, it sounded good at the time but I guess it was all wrong."

With the growing recent evidence for accelerating expansion of the cosmos, I think any theory which hinges on a final singularity, aka "Big Cruch", is now in the same shape.

Chip 74: Consonant pronunciation is anything but stable. In many languages 'th' spells an aspirate 't'.

TexAnne (#126): Picture! Picture!

It's been a good weekend for finishing knitting projects in the debcha household - I sewed the buttons on a sweater that was complete except for that (this is the sweater that prompted the question about how to pick up and knit over on Open Thread 87) and I finished everything on a second sweater except the buttons - I plan to drop by my Local Knitting Shop tomorrow and buy buttons to finish it, together with yarn for the next project.

Julia (13), thank you. It's a sad and scary story. I found myself feeling sorriest for Tavares.

Lisa (28): allas, no hope of it. New job, major deadline.

Ethan (37), I know the feeling. It's when you want to say "Guys, that's not an evil mind-controlling alien god from another dimension; that's Zoe Washburne, and you're in real trouble."

The one there's no help for is when you get your first look at Lethe's Bramble, shake your head, and say "No, Statice limonium."

Mary Dell (38), I've seen it recommended by some sex techies for removing nasty-tasting substances from prospective tasting areas, but they're careful to recommend the almond, not the peppermint, for use on sensitive tissues.

Tania (44), some of us do. Then we get looked at funny.

Lee (48), is there any way to get a fluorosphere button without going to the convention?

Owlmirror (50), where were you when the word was being invented? But yes: too late.

Scraps (56), that's beautiful, is what that is.

Adrian (72), you get a gold star pasted to your forehead.

Chip (74), vide JEGP, passim.

Faren (76), I gave up on expecting literature to match Arizona's climate when I started school and was told that leaves turn bright colors in the fall. Britain came as a surprise: it not only matched the literature, but the language.

Except in the Canterbury Tales, at least according to one of my instructors. He explained that Chaucer was picking up the weather sequence from Italian models, and that it wasn't correct for GC either.

I've been doing a practice run on one of Lucy Neatby's 'Fiesta Feet'. It's going to be a Christmas stocking, simply because I'm using worsted weight instead of fingering. (Variety of patterns (mostly textured) and I haven't done one from the top down, so there's new techniques involved also.) I'm down to the foot, having gotten around the heel corner.

re Depp: When I was looking that up, I also found a link to his doing a Sweeny Todd.

The heart rejoices.

Teresa notes:
The one there's no help for is when you get your first look at Lethe's Bramble, shake your head, and say "No, Statice limonium."
and I feel that old shock of recognition. I will add, in mitigation, that the next year they got Passiflora caeroleum right, at least. But it's that kind of small stupidity that kills a story dead, for me; which is why I have no business at all reading fanfic for The Sentinel, being an anthropologist and a mossback. A perfectly engaging story can be killed dead by an archaeology site with pottery or a venomous snake in the wrong environment. Of course canon in that verse is just as bad as the worst fanfic; the show is apparently based in the same part of Washington as "Here Come the Brides."

TNH #132, JESR #135: Maybe Lethe's Bramble just looks like Statice limonium. That's why Tara didn't recognize it! She was like, "Aww, how sweet, Willow left me some Statice limonium. Ha ha! Good thing it's not Lethe's Bramble, that'd be weird, right?"

That's what happened. I understand now!

Teaberry and wintergreen are the same plant. And wintergreen leaves are a traditional ingredient for a luck pillow for a child. If I called it Child's Luck, would you say "no, that's wintergreen"?

Perhaps Lethe's Bramble is just one of the names for statice limonium. Wouldn't be the first time magical practitioners called a plant by a different name.

But, Xopher, see, thing is, the names for herbal ingredients are consistent within themselves; Statice spp. aren't brambles- brambles are trailing thorny vines, usually roses or blackberries. I know why they chose to use Statice limonium: cut at the right time and properly dried, it's durable as iron and photographs well, is easy to burn, and a ten-stem bunch is about two bucks at the florist's supply places. Dried roses are not sturdy, and rose or blackberry cane dry enough to burn is utterly sucky to handle without gloves, what with the thorniness. That's the other thing about Statice- it looks convincingly thorny, but isn't a bother to handle.

Those are all valid production reasons to use that plant material for that series of shots, but when you've got a mind that runs to botanical Latin, the end result is a small rift in the third wall.