I had an open question for the powers that be here at Making Light. I've been thinking it might be both useful and fun to put together a writers index of the Making Light Archives. I did something similar with the Miss Snark Index over at the Wyrdsmiths blog. I wanted to make sure it would be all right with the folks here before I started the project.

I'll be more than happy to answer questions on what I'm thinking about doing, but I'm going to be away from the internet for most of today, so it'll be a bit before I get the chance.

I'm thinking specifically of the writing related posts here because that's what the Wyrdsmiths blog is aimed at. I should have another index, one of the Wyrdsmiths blog, up in a few days as a second example of the kind of thing I'm talking about. I'm not yet sure about how or if to note specific comments within threads because I haven't really looked at the details yet. Also, if I do this it's going to take at least several months and I'll probably post links to threads as I go over at Wyrdsmiths as I did in my best of Miss Snark series which began here.

So, what do you think?

Autumn now comes, and we must not recoil
from welcoming the changing of the year
and the sharp clarity of morning air
as mind and body cease at last to boil.
I take a moment from the weekend's toil
to think about the things for which I care,
a simple moment that I need to spare
a sort of lubrication with sweet oil.
None of the days to come will be pure joy
but I look forward to a working time
when all that happens has an upward trend;
time and experience do not humour cloy,
another bell will have a clearer chime
and every year comes down to a clean end.

“But what have machine-breakers to do with the Raven King?”

That never fails to sound like the riddle that the bartender asked Thursday Next. Or with which Schmendrick stumped Rukh.

One of these days I will actually read Jonathan Strange... and the world will surely become a brighter place.

Boston police panic again.

Walt Crowley has died.

Not a friend, so not going in my LJ, but a strong and informed influence on a generation of PNW activists.

Nicole @3, I dunno about the world-benefits of reading Jonathan Strange..., as I started reading it in the spring, and gave up about a third of the way through. And my world is definitely a brighter place for not continuing to slog through it.

The Boston cops' techno sense reeks,
in a town widely famed for its geeks,
their pulse rates go higher
when they see a loose wire,
they're much more at home with antiques.

Ursula K Le Guin admires Jeanette Winterson's new novel The Stone Gods in a review for the (UK) Guardian, but takes issue with Winterson's apparent reluctance to acknowledge that she's writing science fiction:

It's odd to find characters in a science-fiction novel repeatedly announcing that they hate science fiction. I can only suppose that Jeanette Winterson is trying to keep her credits as a "literary" writer even as she openly commits genre. Surely she's noticed that everybody is writing science fiction now? Formerly deep-dyed realists are producing novels so full of the tropes and fixtures and plotlines of science fiction that only the snarling tricephalic dogs who guard the Canon of Literature can tell the difference. I certainly can't. Why bother? I am bothered, though, by the curious ingratitude of authors who exploit a common fund of imagery while pretending to have nothing to do with the fellow-authors who created it and left it open to all who want to use it. A little return generosity would hardly come amiss.

JESR @ 5

I don't care if they broke the mold when they made Walt Crowley; send a team back to find all the pieces and we'll see if we can glue them together to make a few more like him.

Gag Hlafrunt @ 8... Yes, they now use our genre, but the taint is still there. As it used to be said, if it's SF, it can't be good, and if it's good, it can't be SF.

Besdies, 'they' may not realize that they ARE writing SF because, in their minds, SF is only about starships, blasters, weird aliens, that stuff. Would they consider A Canticle for Leibowitz to be SF?

Nicole @#3, oliviacw @#6: I got seriously bogged down in JS&MN about a third of the way into it, so I picked it up on audible.com and listened to it during my daily commute (for, like, a month). It's a loooong book, dry, and it seems filled with pointless wandering, but it's eminently worth taking the journey. I was torn between enjoyment and boredom for a lot of it, but by the last third I was completely entranced, and now I find that I love the whole thing...it's one of those books that stays in your head forever, and keeps you company.

That said, I know that Little, Big is a favorite of Patrick's and many others, and is in that same category of big, meandery book, filled with moving prose and so forth, and people say "just keep going, you'll be glad you finished it." I finished it, and YE GODS how I hate it. It's stuck in my head and I just hate it. Whereas for the first third or so, I really loved it. Sigh. So just because the right people (or the wrong ones, if you count me) tell you something is worth finishing doesn't you necessarily should.

Bruce Cohen @9- Walt Crowley (along with Stephanie Coontz and the Seattle 9) was my hero when I was a teenager; I used to take Greyhound to Seattle to buy The Helix, which didn't always make it as far as Olympia. For the last forty years he's been a voice for specificity, for knowing the details of history and the environmental data which lead to good social decision making.

Fragano, that was very nice, but is one allowed to recoil from autumn if one's baseball team has executed a collapse over the past week and fallen out of contention for a playoff spot? This after being picked to win its division in the spring?

No, East Coasters, I'm referring to the Dodgers, not the Sox.

Linkmeister, well, you could be talking about the Mariners.

Although since the preseason predictions had them last in the AL west I'm almost OK with the late August free-fall.

Linkmeister #13: Thanks. I have to say that I don't follow baseball (except what my local NPR station reports on the Braves), but autumn has other pleasures and rewards.

Kelly, a topical index is the sort of thing that we ought to be able to create automatically, if we (the various authors) had been making better use of Moveable Type's category and tag features. Sadly, we haven't. I'm not sure if anyone but me is using tags, and that feature probably didn't even exist when the blog was first set up.

I suppose, ideally, that there ought to be a way to take the index categories you create, and import that information back into the blog database, so we can use it when creating new posts.

Only, that would constrict us to a category system, when I'd much prefer a tagging system!

Y'all probably know about this already, but I thought this video of Benjamin Bagby reciting Beowulf to the accompaniment of a 6-string lyre was pretty cool:
http://www.bagbybeowulf.com/video/index.html

Again with the "hoax device,"? You'd think some court ruling about intent (because a hoax is a form of fraud, one has to be trying to fool people) would clarify that.

What I found interesting is the photo of the MP-5 machine pistol/submachine gun (I like the MP-5, it's probably, even with it's flaws the best of that class of weapon).

1: Yahoo did a poor job of IDing it. I'm pretty sure the HNK is an eggcorn of H&K (Heckler und Koch).

2: That's a suppressed version, so if the cop starts shooting people are going to be less clear on what's happening. Yeah, it might reduce panic elsewhere at Logan, but the people in the splash zone are going to be less likely to hit the deck.

3: He has a seoond clip attached, so he's loaded for bear.

Across the board it seems to be overkill. IMO, someone with a pistol is just as effective at stopping someone who has a visible bomb strapped to their chest; because hitting them half a dozen times isn't going to be that much more effective than hitting them twice.

And pointing anything at them is about as effective as pointing anything else.

If you just wanted to take them out, a scoped rifle, in moderate caliber (say 30-30) will to that better then either a pistol, or a submachine gun.

Doltish behavior, all around.

Definite overreaction to a 9volt battery and some LED's. The media is a bunch of suck ups for continuing to call it a "hoax device".

We've become afraid of exposed wire, basically.

I would wager that if someone walked into an airport talking on a cell phone with the cover taken off so that people can see exposed wire and a circuit board, you'd have yet another overreaction.

It has nothing to do with the size of the device. This was a 9 volt battery, some LED's (i.e. tiny), and an "electronic breadboard" which is a quarter inch thick, three inches wide, and maybe 7 inches wide. (A breadboard would be standard equipment for a freshman electrical engineer, but is common in high school science classes. On sale at Radio Shack.)

It has everything to do with our training from Hollywood about what bombs look like. Things with wires going all over the place. And if you cut the right one, you can disarm the thing. And if you cut the wrong one, it will instantly detonate. But that's the main component of our bomb silhouette training: wires.

Never mind that the shoe bomber guy had explosives and a fuse he was trying to light with a match. Never mind that the 9-11 guys didn't even HAVE a bomb. They had box cutters, there were several of them working as a team, and most importantly, they were on a PLANE, not at a fricken airport.

As a species, we've lost our damned minds.

As for the MP5, a shouldered weapon is going to be more accurate than any handgun, so there's that. Don't know why they have a suppressor on it. And I'm not a big fan of the double clip idea. Overall, thumbs down.

Courage Vow.

Looking at what happened.

The person at the counter over-reacted.

The cops reacted poorly. One cop, with back-up was all one probably needed. Observe her and then respond.

Examine the widget.

Let her go.

Because, from the cops' POV, they were told there was someone with a bomb. To not react to that, at all, would be irresponsible (after all, were I to spot something bomblike, I'd want it looked at).

When I was in college someone called in a possible bomb.

The campus cops called the LAPD bomb squad. The cordoned off that part of the parking lot, examined it while Al Reddick, the cop who was watching all this, and I joked about the idiot kids who got closer everytime the bomb squad went close to it. We put as much stuff between it, and us, when that happened).

They decided it wasn't a bomb, and took it away.

End of story.

What is your opinion of the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez?

A brilliant leader who represents the opressed and defies imperialism
An antidemocratic despot looking to take over Latin America
A populist leader who uses oil to fuel an unsustainable program
A sign of growing resistance to capitalism
He's just some guy
No opinion

"Revolution is the main trend in the world today ...."

Well, maybe not so much as some might think?

In another few hundreds of years, I suppose we will be hearing how Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln, and all come back to us in times of travail. Now might be a good time.

Greg:

I'm of a mixed mind on the MP-5. I like it. I appreciate that it's more accurate (it's damned accurate).

But I also appreciate that cops are not always the most rational of actors. I know they are lousy shots ((despite regular training).

I recall a case in Compton, 2 cops, each emptied the best part of 2 clips (14 rds per clip), at a distance of about 7 yards (the range they train for). They hit the guy something like 5 times, total; between them.

So giving a cop the option to go full-auto... color me nervous.

Greg @ 19... As a species, we've lost our damned minds.

I think something else is going on. When an incompetent - whether an individual or an organization - gets sloppy and really fucks up as a result, it tends to overcompensate. Makes life annoying for the rest of us, mind you.

Greg London @#20:

I prefer the Litany.

I just read that Chavez has ordered the time zone of Venezuela changed to a weird half-hour zone with very little advance notice; this has the worldwide timekeeping and software development communities up in arms because it messes up all the software that doesn't have that strange new zone as an option.

On another subject, a Wikipedia ArbCom case is now in progress about the whole silly "BADSITES" thing. This site is being mentioned among others.

Fragrano @ #2, boil? Dissolve, perhaps. (OK, so despite the Canadian television coverage most of the UK remained unflooded, but boyoboy was it wet: my garden was a rippling sheet of water from edge to edge more than once.)

Re: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell

I'm going to stick up for this novel here (no spoilers):

Yes the first third is slow-paced, and the focus character of that third is throughly unlikeable, but there were still some wonderous sights to see (scenery, worldbuild, turns of phrase: see Uncle Jim's extended quote, for example, although that particular passage occurs around the middle of the novel).

The pace of the novel picks up starting with the second third of the novel, and I finished the last third of the novel in a rush. I had read the first 2/3rds as my commute reading over 3 months or so, but by the start of the 3rd section of the novel, I really wanted to know what happened next ASAP, and finished the rest of it in an evening. I felt all that slogging (though I think it wasn't that much of a slog, YMMV) in the early going does get rewarded in the end.

Terry, I'm with you on the whole thing about the MP5, but I think there are semi-auto-only versions for Police use.

Full-auto would be plain stupid in any likely terrorist situation, but expecially when the targets are so outnumbered by the innocent.

Re: @29

Dammit, then I misspell the title and mis-attribute the host who opened the thread...

Norell -> Norrell

and

Uncle Jim -> Patrick

(sorry)

#19: I agree. Why aren't the media filing stories along the lines of "college student arrested for wearing a breadboard with a few LEDs"? It would, at least, make it clear that no one in power reactedly reasonably here.

Like Terry @21, I think if all the cops hear is "someone with a possible bomb," they have to investigate. However, like the last time TPTB in Boston over-reacted, it seems like they're distorting events all out of proportion to justify their over-reaction post hoc. I have to wonder what it is about Boston, specifically. (Logan is my closest airport so I'm not casting stones from afar.)

#25: People with a responsibility to protect the public are behaving as if they've just gotten a chain letter about people who have their kidneys stolen at parties. Yes, they're pretty certain the story is a total hoax, but what if it's true? They view the negative consequence of perpetuating a false story to be less than the negative consequence of not perpetuation a true story.

Apparently, Boston law enforcement would rather make unjust arrests and baseless charges than allow the possibility of letting any terrorist succeed. (I believe Cheney referred to something like this as the "1% Doctrine.") Never mind that they can prevent terrorism without making unjust arrests and baseless charges.

I mean, at the end of the day, we are not safer because they arrested an MIT student for wearing a breadboard. It just says shows that they are not competent to evaluate what is, or is not, a bomb.

The antedote for this, as we all know, is to refuse to be terrorized. Margaret Cho points this out in one of her concert CDs to great applause, so I figure it can't be that controversial an idea. OTOH, we, as a society, seem to be much more comfortable with the running scared thing. (I found the people commenting at BoingBoing suggesting that the fault lay with her for wearing a breadboard rather sad. We can argue over the wisdom of her action, but to decide how she was treated was some inevitable result really is blaming the victim.)

If I were in the mood to blame the Bush administration, I'd say that, to some extent, the leader of the country does set the tone. Imagine if Winston Churchill had behaved like George W. Bush.

[Note: I used to comment here as JC, but the email address I use here always had my name in it anyways. So, I've decided it's less confusing just to use my name, and not actually any less anonymous. OTOH, my name is so generic that I'm not sure it matters. At VPX, the first thing Cory said to me was that he knew a (non-genre) writer in Toronto named John Chu.]

#27: I think I've read that Chavez has seen sense and delayed his new time zone because people like the BIPM complained. But it really shouldn't be a big deal for the software industry. Countries change their time zones, or daylight saving, quite often (Sri Lanka changed from UTC+6 to UTC+5:30 last year) and any good software should be able to accommodate Venezuela's change easily. Microsoft already has a hotfix out, and so do some other vendors.

Oh, and Egypt changed its daylight saving time with only two weeks' notice, for this year only, to make life easier during Ramadan which started on September 13th. Nobody complained that I heard; hotfixes appeared in time.

John Chu @ 32... I'd say that, to some extent, the leader of the country does set the tone.

To say the least. Mind you, setting up a climate of fear served Chimpy quite well for a few years, thus helping him and his gang to get away with shit, but people are finally waking up. I hope.

On the bright side, at least the Boston police stopped to find out if she was really carrying a bomb before shooting her in the head, unlike London's finest.

Since the student in question was a former private school student out here on Maui, there's been quite a stir of interest, including quotations from former classmates and teachers, all along the lines of "she's brilliant and this is silly. Ok, she was dopey to wear that, but get over it!"

And yeah, the Boston cop or airport authority who said "it's a good thing she behaved or she might have ended up in the morgue" infuriated me.

John Stanning @#33:
The cost involved in changing DST here in the US was enormous.

"Windows has a hotfix" means "every machine at your company that runs windows has to be touched. Many have to be rebooted, causing outages for your users. Non-windows machines have to be corrected by hand. You have to write new software for that odd appliance under that VIP's desk. The time clocks that you depend on for trading will need to be hand-synchronized at 2 am by a 3rd party consultant here on-site. All of the apointments in your exchange calendars will have to be re-written using a risky process developed on-the-hot by microsoft. This change to the calendar is not compatible with the equivalent blackberry update, so there will be a three-week period where your Managing Directors, must avoid creating or accepting appointments on their blackberries. You get to explain this to them. Etc. etc etc."

At least, that's what it meant for me and my teammates....

Joining in with thinking this Logan incident is beyond the pale. Has the fascination with terror moved up to the level of Sturgeon's fable "Mr. Costello, Hero"? I fear it's true. How can we move past the Costellos?

Tom Whitmore...

Lou Costello?
"A-a-a-a-a-bbott!!!!"

OK, so who's on next?

A typical Friday night in our house:
------

(loud crashing sound from second floor)

Wife: "What is your daughter doing, she's supposed to be in bed?!"

Me: "Why do you seek knowledge that can only bring you terror, despair and doom?"

(another crash, with several thumps)

Wife: "Are you going up there or not?"

(sound of door opening upstairs)

Daughter yells: "Daddy, can I have your sword?"

Me: "No way am I going up there, who knows what she summoned this time..."

#36: I fear that if she had been nonwhite or Middle Eastern looking, they would not have waited.

Terry wrote: " IMO, someone with a pistol is just as effective at stopping someone who has a visible bomb strapped to their chest; because hitting them half a dozen times isn't going to be that much more effective than hitting them twice."

True, but there could be multiple perps, not just one, and they might have guns, not just a potential bomb. It wouldn't make much sense for the cops to wait for an exact threat description before leisurely selecting the ideal armament for a situation. At least they didn't break out a 5.56mm electric minigun.

Speaking as a guy with breadboards and LEDs in his possession, I'm willing to give the cops some slack on this case. She supposedly had putty or play-doh (color unknown) in hand, which makes it rather different from just wearing a breadboard with LEDs, or hanging cartoon character signs.

The PD get credit from me for not going nuts, shutting down the airport, filling it with a thousand extra cops, strip-searching everyone on the premises, and billing the student for the overtime. That's what I would have expected after the Mooninite incident.

Seems to me she's just a slightly odd, smart MIT student with exceptionally poor judgement.

What really disturbs me is the treatment of what was written on her shirt as something noteworthy or suspicious. "Course VI" (her major, I guess) and "socket to me" which strikes me as just some hardware hacker in-joke.

#43: Star Simpson does look non-white, but not Middle Eastern. Based on the way she looks and the fact that she's from Hawai'i, I assume that she's of (partly?) Native Hawai'ian or Japanese ancestry.

"I mean, at the end of the day, we are not safer because they arrested an MIT student for wearing a breadboard. It just says shows that they are not competent to evaluate what is, or is not, a bomb."

It's reported that she had putty with her. Are you saying our security guards should be able to do chemical analysis by sight alone?

That's a pretty high standard. Ridiculously high.

Also, the "wanted to stand out on career day" just seems lame, given the crap craftsmanship of the device. Any bright 6th grader could put her shirt thing together, with a few parts from Radio Shack and instructions from the internet. Soldering isn't even required.

It's about as impressive as if she'd brought a laptop to career day running
10 PRINT "YOU SMELL!"
20 GOTO 10

I'd frankly expect better from an MIT student, especially considering the wonderful workshop they have access to.

Apparently she can do far more interesting work, but that shirt's just crap.

"The cops reacted poorly. One cop, with back-up was all one probably needed. Observe her and then respond."

I'm sure if the cops and the person at the counter had your perspective from the future, they could make a cool, reasonable response like that.

Also, it's not like educated college girls have never engaged in terrorism - the Baader-Meinhof people, for example.

Thing is, she is lucky to be alive--but saying that shouldn't be a condemnation of her behavior. I, too, am lucky to be alive due to circumstances beyond my control. I'm fairly certain most of us can think of a time or two in our lives when other's mistakes brought us close to doom.

What I get furious about are the people who say of Star, "She's lucky to be alive," as though of a person who dosed up on alcohol and cocaine before driving 100 mph up Speer Ave, when they should be saying it as though of a person who was walking down the street minding her own business when some gangster shot at her because he thought she was wearing his rival's colors.

(And I'm just saying it because I feel better for saying it, is all. I know I'm preaching to the choir, and I'm not correcting anyone or accusing them of ambiguity. I'm just letting off steam in a particularly Type-A way.)

Everyone knows that all bombs have blinky-lights on them. Therefore anything wtih blinky-lights on it is a bomb.

They're that way in the movies and the movies never get it wrong.

I don't know if this has come across here, yet, but a friend sent me the link and I found this little "agent pitch" sketch hilarious:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo1XFz0kac0

It seems contradictory to say of Star's device that it was something that any 6th grader could construct, and yet a cop would have to have magic future vision to calmly assess its threat value before pulling a gun on her. It's both trivially accomplishable AND a clever bomb-resembling device that cops oughtn't to be blamed for overreacting to?

Or is your argument that cops ought to be expected to pull guns on 6th graders with Radio Shack projects? 'Cause I don't think I can agree with that.

Or, if creating a bomb-resembling device that can fool a well-trained cop into overreacting with lethal force is so simple as to be trivially accomplishable by any 6th grader with Radio Shack parts, then clearly the situation is not such that cops with lethal force is a good solution. Perhaps we should be shutting down Radio Shack. Or dismantling commercial air travel. Because false positives are inevitably prohibitively frequent. Because things that can reasonably be expected to fool cops into pulling a gun on someone are freakin' omnipresent.

Why *have* cops if all they can do is threaten and maybe kill any random 6th grader displaying blinking lights and/or exposed wires from Radio Shack? Unless we can train them to accurately assess threat levels, trust them not to overreact to someone's science project, they are making the situation worse even if there are terrorists in among the 6th grade science fair offerings. The police become the terrorists.

I prefer Terry Karney's way of thinking about this, personally. I prefer to think that competence in law enforcement is not impossible. I prefer holding cops responsible for grotesque overreactions than resigning myself to a world in which the dead person is held to blame if those overexciteable poor dears shoot someone for wearing DIY blinking-LED jewelry.

So the elementary school science teachers who (around 1980) taught us kids to make basic circuits with "C" batteries, tiny light bulbs, switches, and masses of brightly colored and infinitely tangled telephone wire (to keep costs down, materials were reused from former classes), attached with wads of masking tape inside shoeboxes, were actually teaching us how to make IEDs. The mind boggles.

Of course, it was a progressive elementary school.

Jon H @46: Are you saying our security guards should be able to do chemical analysis by sight alone?

No. But, after that chemical analysis comes back negative, and it turns out that she has a plausible explanation for wearing such a device, and her statement that she wears it regularly is supported by independent witnesses (as happened, according to another site I read about this on), then the charges against her should be dropped. Immediately. This hasn't happened yet.

Come to think of it, I did build a device with blinky LEDs and loose wires in sixth grade, and someone did tell me they thought it looked like a bomb. (It was actually an "electronic thumb" prop for a book report I did on The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.)

YASID request-- one of the pix at the "Challenging Nature" particle has half-reminded me of a story which may've been written by Ted Sturgeon and iirc was in an anthology edited by Judith Merrill (yeah, I know that really narrows things down):

A young man climbs over a wall into the grounds of a vast estate. Initially, he'd been led there by a friend who wanted to show him the mosaic-tiled pool, which they dubbed "the old swimming hole", but this time on his own, he nearly drowns. He's pulled out by the resident heiress (iirc her first name is Sylva?), who instantly falls in love with him. Shortly after their wedding, he's diagnosed with lethally advanced choriocarcinoma.

She arranges for all of his budding teratomas to be artificially gestated in case any of them turn out to be fully developmentally viable. Before he dies, she gets him to recount every single detail and memory of his life so his prospective clones (though I don't think the word "clone" was actually used) can have his entire upbringing replicated to duplicate his original personality as well. Once everything is in place, she has herself put into cold storage to be thawed back out when the clone is the right age; the very end of the story confronts the reader with the possibility of unknowingly being that clone.

I riffled through two Sturgeon anthos in the library this afternoon and didn't find it in either of those. Does anyone recognize this story and know the title?

Constance Ash #22: Hugo Chávez Frías seems to be the first and fourth.

Nix #28: I live in Atlanta, where, this summer, it has got very hot. Very hot. Last summer the rubber feet on my office phone melted. My office building now has working air-conditioning. 'Boil' is the word. Adding extra letters to my name, btw, may make me laugh.

Chavez: Dictator trying to make himself El Permanent Honcho by the salami method (one slice at a time.) Plus ungood.

As for the JS&MN category, who's read The Ladies of Grace Adieu?

That text about the machine-breakers reminds me of a library book about the popular perception of the Luddites (vs the reality) which I only had time to read the start of before I had to return it for someone, probably more interested than I, who'd requested it. Against technology : from the Luddites to Neo-Luddism by Steven E. Jones.

I struggled through the first large portion of JS&MN despite the fact that I couldn't find *anyone* to sympathise with, because it had lots of sparkly bits. I'd then just got to a part where I was consistently enjoying the story and, mid-sentence, discovered 16 or 32 pages were missing. Fortunately the store I'd bought it from, though I no longer had the receipt, were happy to exchange it for a copy which did have all its pages; and then I loved the rest of it (though I'm still pondering the ending - I think it'll feel better on a reread, knowing that it's coming like that).

To Fragano, from Down Under:

Spring is begun, and we must now uncoil
from the warm shelter of dark winter's lair
and blink in sunlight; take it as a dare
to greet anew the fern's unfolding foil.
Up work the seeds through the indifferent soil:
the flowers, the weeds alike are rooted there,
and I must sort among them for my share
of thyme's sweet scent and summer's juicy spoil.
There is no end to bindweed's subtle ploys,
or dandelions embedded deep in grime,
yet daffodils rise over all and grin;
I plant anew the shoots a frost destroys,
and gather bright camellias where they climb --
and with such hope shall each new year begin.

Dave @ #41:

What doth inhabit the secondary position.

Constance Ash #22: Hmmm, there doesn't seem to be enough of a variety of anti-Chavez options in your poll.

Fragano, are you on LJ? I've seen a couple of comments on LJ-posts by denizens of the fluorosphere by somebody using an accountname that could be a shortening of your name--initial+surname.

Tony Zbaraschuk @#60:

As for the JS&MN category, who's read The Ladies of Grace Adieu?

I've read the title story in the collection and liked it quite a lot, although it might not be as cool if you haven't read JS&MN. I'm working my way through the collection and so far it's precisely what I expected...lovely, elegant tales, no adrenaline. It's as if some of the footnotes in JS&MN had been spun out into proper stories.

Zeborah #61: That's wonderful! Thank you.

Dave Bell #64: That would be 'fledgist', and that would be me, yes.

Xopher...

You were right. What about? I just finished watching Doctor Who's episode blink and it is one of the best time-travel stories done as a TV show and/or movie.

Besides that, I was amused that the first commercial break start with a proud announcement that the episode was sponsored by the people of the United Methodist Church.

Nigerian scam letter of the week:

"Dear beloved, My name is Rahman Sarif, A Bahrain national,I have been diagnosed with Oesophageal cancer .It has defiled all forms of medical treatment..."

Starkle starkle little twink...

Fragano, #67, huh. I never thought that was you! I thought it was someone either with birds or arrows. And I suppose you may not know that I'm mjlayman.

(A new batch of house finch fledglings today! The third for the summer, which is rare. Usually we just get two.)

Julie L. @ 57: Oh jeez, I know the anthology and the story, but I can't remember the title. (Gur jbzna vf gur qrfpraqrag bs n fynire jub qrpvqrf gung jrnygu vf rivy orpnhfr bs gur rail vg vafcverf va bguref, naq fb vf qrgrezvarq gb uvqr uvf jrnygu?)

I think there's another story in the same collection about a Native-American who is part of the team that does the initial survey on a new world. He is convinced that the local herd species is sentient, though not verbal, and tries to convince the company that owns the planet of the fact. They ignore him, saying that he's just projecting, and proceed to to commit enviromental genocide. Does that sound familiar? The title of this story has something about "sun" in it.

from the Le Guin review of Stone Gods: "particularly when Spike succeeds, as I think no other detached head has, in having sex. "

Clearly, Le Guin has not been watching the new Doctor Who series.

Clearly, Le Guin has not been watching the new Doctor Who series.

Or Re-Animator.

Terry@24: Given a choice between semi-auto 9mm and semi-auto 30-30, I'd rather see the cops at airports carrying 9mm's since odds are they'll be firing near crowds of people. And I think a 30-30 has more penetration than a 9mm, although I'm a little rusty.

Cops certainly shouldn't have full auto weapons. The only time cops will run into needing full auto will be in a hollywood terrorist plot.

Every shot should be an aimed shot.

Serge@25: When an incompetent - whether an individual or an organization - gets sloppy

Except that I've been reading plenty of comments on other blogs about this where commenters are saying the cops did the right thing or didn't do enough. Someone commented that since it could have been a bomb, the cops should have shot her on sight.

So, it isn't just an organizational thing. There is a rather large swath of people who have lost their minds, enough, I think perhaps, to say it is a species thing.

Greg London @ 74... The only time cops will run into... the only Time Lord?

No, no, Serge, he meant Timecops.

Mary@26, the problem I have with the Litany is that the first line is "I must not fear", which is an impossible demand. Of course we fear. The thing is to still act rationally in the presence of fear. There have been times where I've been driving a car or flying a plane, or whatever, where I felt tremendous, ohmygodimgonnadie fear, and still kept at the controls.

I've had visions of fireballs playing through my mind as I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing to land in an emergency. Of course I will feel fear. The point is that if you freeze up because of it, you'll auger in and die. But really, I see little difference between that and someone succumbing to fear and letting their civil rights auger in and die too.

I don't want to tell folks that they must not feel fear. I think that would be impossible. But I would like to see people separate their fear from their decision making process. That at least has some slim chance of making it.

I don't know why, but I'm noticing a rather morbid subprocess going on in the brain that's trying to tally up all the close calls I've had in my lifetime. I can think of about a dozen incidents where death was a possibility.

Greg @ 74 and Terry @ 24:

A pistol is what you use to fight your way to a long gun.

We do not, of course, know what trigger module is in that MP5. It could be plain semi-auto. Most likely, it is selective-fire with a choice between semi-auto and 3-shot burst. It is *highly* unlikely to be full auto. And yes, 9 mm penetrates less than 30-30 (assuming conventional ammo), and yes, it is VASTLY more controllable than a pistol would be. Many studies indicate that for typical police shootings, much less than 50% of the rounds end up in the target. This means that much more than 50% of the rounds stop somewhere else. In this respect the MP-5 is a much safer weapon than a pistol. The suppressor allows the operator to not lose his or her hearing. Weapons fired indoors are LOUD. Although I dislike the police-state like aspect of having cops walking around with submachine guns, in purely rational terms the officer carrying (and trained for) the MP-5 is far less likely to cause collateral damage than the more typical officer who's carrying a .40 caliber Glock, if they face the same circumstances.

ethan @ 77... How could I forget that, not only did Timecop star the Muscles from Brussels, but it was also directed by Peter Hyams. Be still, my cinema-loving heart.

It strikes me that the only thing the Wicked Terrorists need to do in order to sneak a bomb onto an airplane is refrain from sticking blinky-lights on it.

Mary @26, Greg @78:
Then there's Martin's wonderfully concise Fear cuts deeper than swords.

About the fake bomb incident - I know it's going to sound a bit snarky, but did she have a minute of thought beforehand that someone might misintepret her toy? It doesn't excuse the overreaction of the cops, but still.

Serge @ 68

You'll be happy to know that the Torchwood episode that was on last night on BBC America (DirectTV) has an equally good take on acausal loops of a slightly different sort. Good stuff.

Hey all,
How would you write "I'll sue!" in Latin?
Thanks in advance.

Bruce Cohen @ 84... Alas, we get BBC America only occasionally here in Albuquerque, due to their having to accomodate all those religious channels where people tells their viewers that they must send money, which will give God the incentive to fix their bad hair. It's either that or creepy bishops.

Heresiarch @72: (Gur jbzna vf gur qrfpraqrag bs n fynire jub qrpvqrf gung jrnygu vf rivy orpnhfr bs gur rail vg vafcverf va bguref, naq fb vf qrgrezvarq gb uvqr uvf jrnygu?)

Yes, exactly! "Thou shalt not covet, nor cause other people to covet..."

Offhand, I don't recall the other story you mentioned, but it may've simply bounced off me at the time. Or it may've been a different antho. When I try to remember any more details, all I get is a sensory blur of a dark blue cover, a faint scent of mildew, and the very bitter taste my fingertips picked up from the paper. Between that detail and a childhood story from one of Lang's [Color] Fairy Books about a king who was poisoned by a pre-treated tome, that was the exact point at which I stopped licking my fingertips to turn pages.

"It strikes me that the only thing the Wicked Terrorists need to do in order to sneak a bomb onto an airplane is refrain from sticking blinky-lights on it."

On the other hand, if we decide that anything with blinky-lights is just good natured nerdy fun, then they just have to stick blinky-lights on it.

(In this case, though, I expect she would have attracted the same attention if they were unblinky capacitors and resistors displayed in the same fashion.)

"It seems contradictory to say of Star's device that it was something that any 6th grader could construct, and yet a cop would have to have magic future vision to calmly assess its threat value before pulling a gun on her. It's both trivially accomplishable AND a clever bomb-resembling device that cops oughtn't to be blamed for overreacting to?"

Er, yes.

If the goal is to have an impressive display for career day, and you go to MIT - that being the key to my point , then you don't want to have some messy bit of breadboard that a sixth grader could put together.

If you're a ham-handed terrorist, then you may be satisfied with something that will work, even if it looks like crap. You're not trying to impress anyone with the wire wrapping skills.

"Sloppy and easy" aren't synonymous with "harmless".

Also, just because the wires and lights are visible doesn't mean that there couldn't be hard-to-see wires running into holes in the shirt to concealed explosives. No, that wouldn't be logical, but logic isn't really the strong point of people who go around bombing things.

I think the canonical weird piece of actual bomb apparel would have to be the one from the pizza guy/bank robber in Pennsylvania - the one where the guy claimed to have a bomb under his shirt which was locked around his neck. All that was visible was a steel collar contraption and a lump under his shirt.

Turned out he wasn't lying, and before the cops could figure out what to do, it blew up and killed the guy.

Now, if someone shows up at the airport with a similar getup, i suppose the cops could just assume it's a steampunk art project or some kind of weird cosplay, but I think that would be a bad decision.

And exactly how many people are there going around bombing things in America, with or without blinky ights?

Here's the fact: If someone wanted to bomb anything at all, that person would succeed. The bomb might not work, but it would get to its intended target.

The entire TSA and Department of Homeland Security could be disbanded tomorrow with a net increase of actual terrorist acts in America of, oh, zero.

George Smiley @ 79

All very good points and true, but...

It is *highly* unlikely to be full auto

True if we assume the police officers' superiors to be competent and that those officers haven't disobeyed their orders. Remember that standing orders for the Ohio National Guard on that day in Kent was not to load live ammunition. The orders were disobeyed, and a squad of inexperienced classroom soldiers got rattled and opened fire. I'm expecting this to happen in an airport anytime now.

And if they're not full auto, why did that officer need a 30 round clip?

in purely rational terms the officer carrying (and trained for) the MP-5

My experience is that police officers are rarely properly trained for their normal tasks, let alone special tasks like stopping bomb-carrying terrorists in crowded airport terminals. Portland is not a very large city, and we get at least 3 or 4 incidents a year with the city police alone where inadequate training, or poor fire-discipline indicating bad training gets some civilian killed or seriously injured. And the incidents that I hear about from other cities, indicate similar problems. I simply do not believe it is necessary, for instance, for four New York City police officers to put more than 50 9mm rounds into 3 or 4 suspects, and I don't believe that that amount of fire meets their fire-discipline guidelines. One of those cops fired 31 times, going through 2 clips, and they were all shooting at a single car (whose occupants appear to have been unarmed, but that's a different can or worms).

Julie L. and #57:

I was pretty sure that story was in the collection The Golden Helix, but I've just been to the basement and fetched it. Doesn't seem like it matches any of the stories there.

A hunch set me to googling.

The story you want is "When You Care, When You Love." It's in the book Case and the Dreamer and it also appears in The Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction #25. It's the beginning of a novel Sturgeon never finished.

I wonder how likely it would be to have security hassles if one went to the airport with this chemical formula printed on a t-shirt.

I think I will leave that experiment to others.

Bruce Arthurs @ 94

Putting on my snark hat, I'd bet that it would be moderately likely to get you stopped and questioned, but probably less likely than if you were wearing a tee shirt with the differential form of Maxwell's Equation on it. "Pull this one aside, he's got arabic on his shirt."

The Sturgeon story people are looking for is called "When You Care, When You Love". Happy to be of service.

As for Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, I loved it from the very first page and wished it wouldn't end. This is a rare reaction to a book for me.

Shoot! Bill beat me by 10 minutes.

As well as the technical advantages of an MP-5, there's an intimidation element. A thirty-round clip makes you look ready to fight a battle and, for good or ill, that's the image of Hollywood terrorism (The most recent Tom Clancy novel I read had such a sequence in a shopping mall.)

It's not so reassuring to the people who are aware of the weaknesses in US Police forces.

As well as the technical advantages of an MP-5, there's an intimidation element. A thirty-round clip makes you look ready to fight a battle and, for good or ill, that's the image of Hollywood terrorism (The most recent Tom Clancy novel I read had such a sequence in a shopping mall.)

It's not so reassuring to the people who are aware of the weaknesses in US Police forces.

Out here in Western Australia, an mandatory enquiry is under way into the actions of a police officer who drew his pistol, shot and killed a man on an isolated country road. The cop was alone, and had pulled a motorist over after receiving a report that the car had driven away from a filling station without paying. Unknown to the cop, the motorist was wanted in Victoria for a double murder, and had already served time for armed robbery.

The bloke pulled over, knowing that the cop was a long way from back-up. He got out of the car, seemed co-operative enough, and waited until the cop turned to check his licence plate, then attacked him from behind, but bare-handed. The cop sustained concussion, two black eyes and a broken nose, and fell to the ground. He didn't have his pistol out, but he then drew it and fired twice. Both bullets struck his assailant in the torso, and the second one killed him. The weapon was the standard police issue .38.

Two points occur to me. One, if the bloke had had a gun, the cop would probably be dead. Two, the cop did very well indeed under the circumstances to hit him twice in two shots. Of course there had to be an enquiry. The results are not in yet.

Greg London @#78: I know that courage is different than lack of fear, and it's a quality I focus on a lot in life. Of course it's impossible to have no fear, but I like the litany for its bravado--in the book Paul uses it not as a criticism of himself for having fear, as a way of wrestling his fear into a manageable state when he needs to be brave. It's an incitement to courage.

I don't recite the whole thing to myself, but "fear is the mind-killer" has been a useful mantra for me on many occasions. Fear is a function of the animal self; courage is one of the blessings of reason.

Has Wikipedia always had a donation request at the top of the page? I see it rotates through various versions.

"Make a donation to Wikipedia and give the gift of knowledge!"

"Help us provide free content to the world by donating today!"

"Help us improve Wikipedia by supporting it financially."

Also, I notice that "Gom jabbar" has its very own article, with no challenges about notability or citation, and Dune is not one of its references. I guess it's ok to chronicle every detail of something as long as it's not a critical communication medium like usenet. Of course, some wanker editor will probably read this comment and go pounce on the thing.

Fragano @59, I have consistently misread your name for at least two years and only now note the absence of a second `r', sorry.

The power of the mind when it knows what it's looking at, even if it's not...

#72: ID request for a story that isn't "When You Care, When You Love" (as already identified) but was in the same collection....

That sounds like Robert Silverberg's "Sundance", so the collection is probably the Silverberg/Greenberg The Arbor House Treasury of Modern Science Fiction (1980, aka Great Science Fiction of the 20th Century 1987), which contains both.

It seems to me that the main issue here is the enormous rarity of terrorists. Since terrorists are apparently less than one person in a million traveling on airplanes, almost anything you do to detect them will find dozens or hundreds of "false positives" per terrorist. So you need a very careful, gentle procedure for handling possible terrorist incidents, knowing that nearly all of them will be false alarms.

Julie L., Bill Higgins: Aha! "WYC,WYL" was also published in Great Science Fiction of the 20th Century, which also contained "Sundance," by Robert Silverberg, which was the story that I was thinking of.

Jon H @ 89: "Also, just because the wires and lights are visible doesn't mean that there couldn't be hard-to-see wires running into holes in the shirt to concealed explosives. No, that wouldn't be logical, but logic isn't really the strong point of people who go around bombing things."

That's convenient, how we can assume that our enemies are just precisely the exact blend of dangerous and stupid that happens to justify cops treating anyone with unorthodox accessories as a terrorist.

Besides which, is anyone actually arguing that the correct response to this was total inaction? No. Mostly, I hear people saying that it might be nice if the Boston police were capable of some response level between sitting on their asses and throwing teenagers in jail under ridiculous pretenses.

Dave Langford @ 104: Oh, hey there. A lesson on the importance of refreshing the page before you post!

Suicide bommbers do not usually advertise their existence, so the rule of thumb on any openly worn piece of kit that might, if you squint, look like a bomb, is that it probably isn't a bomb.

Of course, from the point of view of the cops, overreaction is always better than not reacting, as one bomb attack can ruin your whole career while harassing innocent citizens has no influence whatsoever...

Marcel Marceau has died, and now the rest is silence.

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince:
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

On MP5s, the UK police unit for aviation security, SO18, has used MP5s modified to single-shot only for a while -- 2002 at least, and presumably before. There's a picture here. No suppressors, though.

Also, as I recall, the cops who shot de Menezes dead on the Underground used pistols. Of course, they were undercover, so concealable weapons were their only option.

On Star Simpson, the so-called "putty" was in fact paint on the hoody meant to be lit up by Simpson's improvised electronic device. If it had been explosive, there wouldn't have been enough there to blow her nipples off, let alone destroy a plane. Calling it "putty" is a clear case of managing the information flow, or as we ordinary peons call it, "lying".

Marcel Marceau has died, and now the rest is silence.

Am I alone in hoping he left some famous last words?

Marilee #71: I don't think I'm a fledgling or a fletcher. 'Fledgist' was the truncation of my name used as a handle by UCSD on my e-mail account when I was a graduate student. I rather liked it so I've been using it as a handle ever since.

You're in Etlanna, I think?

JESR@14:
It is an ancient mariner, and he stoppeth one of three.
"Well, the Mariners never were any good on defense."
(from a New York contest, quoted in their collection-of-contest-results Maybe He's Dead.)

#44: just a slightly odd, smart MIT student with exceptionally poor judgement
How many layers of tautology is that?

#57ff: I would swear I saw "WYC, WYL" in Sturgeon is Alive and Well -- but I also would have sworn I had a copy, and it's not on my shelves to check.

Dave@100: It's true there are cases when a cop is actually attacked; however, there are also a lot of cases where a cop uses a massive excess of firepower despite a lack (or severe shortage) of indicators suggesting it.

#22&ff: Chavez talks a line that appeals to the ~left; but considering that he previously tried a coup without the leftist speeches, I don't trust him to mean anything he says. I particularly don't trust the way he's leaning on broadcast media and now schools; you may call them tools of the establishment if you wish, but he already has a bully pulpit to shout them down from. And when even Putin is willing to surrender titular power, the idea that he alone must rule for another decade-plus strikes me the wrong way.
    The fact that the U.S. is behaving stupidly toward Chavez doesn't make him right; it just makes his worst demagoguery more swallowable locally. The fact that Huey P. Long did some good for many people doesn't mean he should be emulated.

Nix #103: It happens, alas.

#46:It's reported that she had putty with her. Are you saying our security guards should be able to do chemical analysis by sight alone?

Well, are you saying that once they determined it was play doh and that she had no intent of anything even remotely dangerous, they should arrest her and charge her for a so-called "hoax bomb" anyway? Exaggerating positions works both ways.

I note that you conveniently missed the section of my (admittedly long) comment where I said that the police were absolutely right to investigate.

Candle #111: 'Non'. (Quoting Marcel Marceau's one statement in Mel Brooks' Silent Movie, in which he had the only speaking role.)

A silent rhyme
For the late mime?

#106:Besides which, is anyone actually arguing that the correct response to this was total inaction? No. Mostly, I hear people saying that it might be nice if the Boston police were capable of some response level between sitting on their asses and throwing teenagers in jail under ridiculous pretenses.

Precisely. The reason why I hate having this discussion is that the position in your second sentence consistently gets misrepresented as the position in your first sentence. I realize that this is because it's much easier to knock down "the police should just sit by and do nothing with bomb threat reports" than "the police should learn what proportionate response means and not arrest the innocent, or clueless." This, however, doesn't make the misrepresentation any less annoying.

Moreover, the misrepresentation doesn't do a thing towards actually making us safer. Ultimately, I think some assurance of safety is what we all want.

Marcel Marceau:

Six pallbearers put forth their utmost efforts to walk against the relentless opposition of hurricane-force wind, burdened by the crushing weight of an imaginary coffin ...

Jim@81: to sneak a bomb onto an airplane ... refrain from sticking blinky-lights on it.

And hide any wires. Wire is the blackest magic to some people. What is the ring of power but a piece of really conductive gold wire made into a loop? And if you throw it in a fireplace, does it not blink red lettering at you?

The only thing I haven't figured out is how he replaced the 9 volt battery. Sauron must be using some really good energy storage technology. Oh, wait, maybe he's using microwave energy to transmit energy wirelessly to the ring. And a side effect on anyone wearing the ring while he's remotely powering it: heating of the ear canal causes the wearer to hear phantom voices.

I wonder if there's been any reaction from the gargoyle/wearable computing community to the insanity in Boston?

Tony #60, re Ladies of Grace Adieu: I've read it. Loved it. Want more.

Jim @ #81, not only that, the only thing they have to do to paralyze the entire transportation system is drop a few thousand at Radio Shack and hire some angry middle-school kids.

For those not familiar with electronics, the MIT student had a breadboard with LED's strapped to her back. A picture of a generic breadboard is here.

That picture shows how breadboards normally look when they're being used. Stuff plugged into them. Wires hanging everywhere. The board acts as the physical support to hold everything together and as a convenient way to attach components to each other electrically without soldering. The main advantage to this is that when you screw up, you just unplug a wire, and plug it in the correct way, and you're up and running.

As it happens, that generic image of a breadboard looks a lot like the MIT student's breadboard here.

You can buy them at Radio Shack. here is one they sell for four dollars. You can buy 20 assorted LED's from Radio Shack for $3. You can get a bunch of precut, prestripped wires from them for $7. Throw in some resistors for a buck or two, and a 9 volt battery, and you've got everything you need to cause a government organization to piss itself.

The Chicken Little response I keep hearing is she should have known not to wear this to an airport. The reasoning is that since airports are known terrorist targets, she shouldn't wear anything that might worry the trigger happy cops with submachine guns. In fact, some argue that she should have been shot in case it had been a real bomb.

OK.

Except if you extend that logic, then you must take the list of all possible and potential terrorist targets, and then tell everyone that they shouldn't do anything to scare the trigger happy cops with submachine guns at any of those places either.

Anywhere on a public road. Any large skyscraper. Any government office building. And pretty soon, you've covered an area where 90% of the US population lives.

So, pretty much anyone doing anything that anyone else might not understand and could potentially fear is a bomb, can be justifiably shot on sight, because they're near a potential terrorist target location, and that thing just might be a bomb.

At which point, I think I have to return to my original assessment:

As a species, we have lost our damned minds.

Building on #60 and #113: I'd hope the last century or so of history should have given us enough reasons to especially beware the benevolent dictator.

It's easy enough to notice and protest the dictator that's doing things you don't like. But it seems all too many folks are willing to give them a pass or cheer them on when they're "doing what needs to be done", whether it's banishing capitalist oppression, restoring national greatness, rooting out communist subversion, or protecting our way of life from terrorism. Without significant popular support, most of those would-be dictators couldn't have established themselves. And things never seem to turn out particularly well once they have.

Close to home, I'm quite concerned that I haven't heard much from the major Democratic presidential candidates about what they would do to reverse the assumption of ever-broader powers by the chief executive. Not that the Republicans, with the notable exception of Ron Paul, have been any better. But, while I generally favor a Democrat getting the presidency in the upcoming election, if they don't seem inclined to disavow the recently claimed powers of the president, I want to make sure there are plenty of Republicans or other opposition party members in Congress as a check.

Oh, and I should add this:

Anything you wire up in a breadboard is notoriously fragile. A wire can come disconnected with a tug in the wrong direction. a lot of parts have long leads sticking up in the air, and it doesn't take much to push those parts together, and end up getting a bunch of stuff shorting out.

Anyone who uses a breadboard to control a bomb is an idiot. Never mind that you don't need complex circuits to make a bomb go off. But if for some reason you do want a James Bond Super Villian unbelievably complex firing mechanism, you'd be far better off using a piece of perfboard and soldering the parts together.

perfboard (perforated board) is a piece of insulating material with holes spaced like a breadboard, but with no electrical connections in the board. It's basically pegboard you see some mechanics use to hang their tools on the wall, except shrunken down to electronics size.

The veggie animals (particle) come from the Play With Your Food book series, in case anyone's looking for more. Fun stuff for the small fry.

Mary Dell @ 126... Fun stuff for the small fry. And what of the Laurie?

Serge @#127: A small Laurie.

Mary@102: Has Wikipedia always had a donation request at the top of the page?

Not always, but for a long time. I seem to recall the donation request stuff when I was working on wikipedia a couple years ago. But that may be an artificial memory.

#102: Of course, some wanker editor will probably read this comment and go pounce on the thing.

That's wanker.

#130: From the wikipedia article on "gom jabbar":

It is also possible that the phrase Gom Jabbar may cover other methods of death with a similar aim, as Paul Muad'Dib tells Reverend Mother Helen Gaius Moheim, "I remember your gom jabbar, you remember mine. I can kill you with a word."

Someone slept through the class unit on "metaphor" in high school English ...

#130: From the wikipedia article on "gom jabbar":

It is also possible that the phrase Gom Jabbar may cover other methods of death with a similar aim, as Paul Muad'Dib tells Reverend Mother Helen Gaius Moheim, "I remember your gom jabbar, you remember mine. I can kill you with a word."

Someone slept through the class unit on "metaphor" in high school English ...

Jon Meltzer @#131 (or #132): I didn't notice that...sheesh, how can anyone read a book with as many big words as Dune and not get that?

Anybody who wants to complain about Venezuela's timezone kerfuffle should probably review the histories of Australian and Israeli daylight savings time changes. Here's a page of fun fact-like information.

Until 2005 in Israel, the end of daylight savings was decided every year by the Ministry of the Interior. The decision was never announced with enough time to update software systems. Now, they have a more predictable DST regime, but the basic problem of computing conversions between UTC and local time, especially going backward very far in the historical record, is a huge pain the neck. In Australia, it's been slightly better, but still guaranteed to make any software developer want to scream. Sure, it's pretty dumb to order the clocks changed at short notice, but Venezuela's change isn't the worst example one can find.

I'd be willing to switch the entire globe over to the straight NTP timescale, no daylight savings, no timezones, not even leap seconds, but— alas— I fear the The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (I love the name of that organization) will probably never give up on UTC.

Damned astronomers and their insistence that a second is a second is a second, no matter where and when you measure it.

Bruce Cohen @95: "Pull this one aside, he's got arabic on his shirt."

I don't think they read the print on the T-shirts much. I've word this T-shirt on more than one international flight into or out of the United States and nobody has said "boo" about it. I find it hard to believe that they all know that the T-shirt is no longer technically a munition anymore.

"Veroboard" may be trademarked, but I recall it being a staple of hobby electronics in the UK. It's a piece of perfboard with parallel copper tracks on one side. The holes were smaller than the width of the tracks, so a 10x10 grid of holes would have 10 tracks, each with 10 holes, and a component lead through a hole could be soldered to a track. Add to the system a little tool that, using a hole as a guide, could be used to cut the track, and you have a solderable equivalent to breadboards.

The hole spacing was, if I recall right, compatible with the pin spacing on DIL chips.

I learnt enough about soldering to replace a couple of parts on computer motherboards. And the memory kit for a TRS-80 cost me more than a gigabyte of RAM would today.

Greg London @ 123

As a species, we have lost our damned minds.

On the evidence, we never had them.

So, is Captain Jack back as a regular onboard the TARDIS, or just for a few episodes? Either way, that should make Xopher happy.

Speaking of self publication and politics, Robert Altemeyer is now offering a self-published editions of The Authoritarians at lulu.com. Let's see how many libraries we can get it into.

Bruce@137: On the evidence, we never had them.

Oh, now you're just trying to depress me. But I already beat you to it.

;/

Tony, #60: "As for the JS&MN category, who's read The Ladies of Grace Adieu?"

Well, me, in 1995, when I bought the actual story of that name for Starlight 1--her first sale.

(Yes, this is well known, but sometimes you just can't resist the low-hanging fruit.)

j h @ 135

My cynicism is showing, but I have trouble believing that a lot of them know what "munition" means.

#60:

"As for the JS&MN category, who's read The Ladies of Grace Adieu?"

I admired it for all the reasons I admired JS&MN and disliked it for all the reasons I disliked JS&MN. The pleasures may have been smaller in scope, but so were the annoyances.

As far as Chavez goes, that's why it was a multiple choice poll. It worrisome to think of how he will behave when Fidel is no longer there to restrain his far too many far less than intelligent impulses. His hero-worship and desire to emulate Fidel holds him rather in check now.

But Chavez doesn't posses the scope of intellectual brilliance and the life-time of constant education in history and everything else that Fidel contains. Fidel has even demonstrated an ability to re-educate himself, something that to my knowledge no other life-time dictator has ever done. I might be wrong about that, not knowing everything, alas. Chavez also lacks the rigorous impulse control that Fidel has. Patience, Fidel has; Chavez not so much. Chavez's basic instincts are those of a thug, or at least a brute, or it seems to me.

I fear the Chavez experiment will end badly, as have so many progressive experiments.

But in the meantime, Fidel still refuses to acknowledge he's dead, to the great annoyance of many, who insist otherwise, and have regularly announced his death for decades now.

Dave Bell @ 136

Veroboard was available in the States in the 70s, and I recall the same things you do about it. I tended to use breadboard strips for prototyping, but I used perfboard for a one-off project where I needed a 4-channel, DC-coupled, but voltage-isolated, ultra-low error low-frequency amplifier for physiological instrumentation (very small strain gauges for pressure and force measurements and suchlike). The breadboard had too many paths for nanoampere leakage currents which would spoil the readings on high-impedance sources like skin resistance measurements.

Julie L. @87: Between that detail and a childhood story from one of Lang's [Color] Fairy Books about a king who was poisoned by a pre-treated tome...

I remember that story! It was the magically surviving severed head the the wizard's revenge, or something. Had to be the Green Fairy Book, unless there was a trip to the library I'm forgetting. That's the only one I owned.

Green Fairy also had the white snake in it, and the twelve dancing princesses. I think.

JDM @ 91: The entire TSA and Department of Homeland Security could be disbanded tomorrow with a net increase of actual terrorist acts in America of, oh, zero.

Precisely--and in fact, with a net decrease in the amount of actual terrorism. I insist that the fear that current TSA and DHS practices instill across the country should be considered terrorism.

Which is what bothers me so much about Jon H. @ 89: I agree that A) bombs are so simple to make that B) something that looks like a bomb shouldn't impress anyone as to your smarts; I disagree that therefore the police should pull out their guns and threaten the lives of everyone carrying something that looks like a nerdy school project. Police behavior of this sort adds to the fear culture without actually making us safer! The only thing that can possibly excuse adding to the fear is subtracting from the danger--and sometimes, as Ben "Those Who Would Sacrifice & etc." Franklin would tell you, not even that is sufficient justification.

So if we can't actually stop the terrorists with the bombs, then can we please stop excusing those who collude with the terrorists to, y'know, TERRORIZE the populace?

Greg @123: Exactly. Beyond a near line of reasonableness, I am not responsible for the stupidity that goes on in other people's heads. Nor was Star. If it didn't occur to her that TSA might mistake it for a bomb, that could be because it's not a mistake we should expect supposedly trained professionals with badges and guns to make.

Dave Luckett @100: If I understand your summary correctly, there were only two witnesses to the event: the police officer and the man he killed. That means we only have the police officer's word for it that he acted in self-defense. There absolutely needs to be an inquiry in such a situation. I would really, really hate to live in a society in which a badge and uniform makes your word so golden that no one questions you when you say, "That dead guy was asking for it." (I think that many black men in the Southern U.S. states in the 1960s had reason--still have reason today, considering the Jena situation--to share that fear. OH HAI, Racism is the new Nazi in re: Godwin!)

I am *not* saying that I automatically assume the cop in your story was lying. I am simply in favor of cautious suspicion where A) corroborating witnesses are absent and B) someone's dead.

Serge @138: Do you want an answer to that, or would that be classified as Spoiler?

Serge @ 138 (and Xopher)

Watch Torchwood if available from your video distributer, and if not, you can at least see some pictures on the BBC website.

Kelly (1), Avram (16): I would love to get ML indexed. Jim had done some work in that direction before one of his hard drive failures ate it all. A while back I was trying to compile a list of the most important posts, but I've always had one of those "everything is miscellaneous" mindsets, and the work slowed to a pace comparable to Illustrator 1.0 generating an outline of a complex fractal object.

Avram, Movable Type's category system was primitive when I first tried to use it. I became demoralized, and haven't played with it since. But that's not the real problem.

I'm no good at imposing categories. When I try to imagine an index of Making Light posts, it comes out sounding like Borges' list of the categories of animals:

1. Those posts which contain passages in archaic languages. 2. Those I thought would be shorter. 3. Recipes. 4. Those which devolve into bitter reflections on the Bush Administration. 5. Those in which Jim entreats readers to avoid life-threatening situations. 6. Saints. UFOs. 7. Those in which multiple URLs are linked from single words. 8. Short snappy posts in which Patrick says something clever. 9. Astroturf. 10. Those which mention dinosaurs, sodomy, Jesus Christ eating a roast guinea pig, disemvowelling, folk songs, Buffy, citrus, or yarn. 11. The Great War. 12. Those which give rise to comment threads full of poetry. 13. New York City. 14. Writing. Slush. How not to get published. 15. Those which anatomize scams. 16. Those which invoke multiple items in this list. 17. Those in which Mike or Avram is very clever indeed. 18. Those which set the record straight on some aspect of publishing practice that isn't rocket science, for pete's sake. 19. Ongoing natural disasters. 20. Those which consider how something is sold. 21. The iniquities of Congress considered separately from the misdeeds of the Bush Administration. 22. American history. 23. Fandom. 24. Amusing science. 25. Those which despair over the stupidities and institutional corruption of Wikipedia. 26. Those which make fun of visual images. 27. Those which consider clothing an interesting subject. 28. Those which observe that moderation isn't rocket science either. 29. Open threads ...

Teresa (147): When I try to imagine an index of Making Light posts, it comes out sounding like Borges' list of the categories of animals:

I'd *love* such an index!

Teresa... Shouldn't there be a category for knitting, and one for puns?

Bill Higgins @93 & David Goldfarb @96: thanks! So I was right about the Sturgeon authorship for "When You Care, When You Love", but wrong about the Merrill factor according to the bibliography here, which doesn't list her as the editor for any of the anthologies it's been in... the local library seems to have at least three of those books, though, so at least I'll be able to re-read that one story.

Greg London @120: Sauron must be using some really good energy storage technology.

Maybe the One Ring has a thermally-powered Stirling engine? The size-changing property seems to be specific to living (and thus biologically endothermic) fingers, in that if it were slipped over a drinking straw, I doubt it would shrink to fit that... hmmm, is Tom Bombadil's body temperature ever established? (Now I'm having brief visions of "Hey nonny, nonny oh, ring-a-ding-a-dilly BRAAAAIIIIINS.")

Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little @145: It was the magically surviving severed head the the wizard's revenge, or something. Had to be the Green Fairy Book, unless there was a trip to the library I'm forgetting. That's the only one I owned. Green Fairy also had the white snake in it, and the twelve dancing princesses. I think.

The white snake and the twelve dancing princesses also sound familiar, but the only two of Lang's [Color] books I remember owning are the Pink and Brown ones... there may've been another one that'd lost its cover, though, and I do remember trying to track more of the spectrum down at the library.

Every time I've tried to look for the Lang anthos at Borders etc. in recent years, none of the in-print Dover editions seem to've had color plates anymore, so all of those gorgeous Rackham illustrations have been flattened down to grayscale. I'll have to remember to look for older editions as used books.

Mary Aileen, it would rival the index to The Stuffed Owl, or the subject headings and overall organization of the first edition of Fowler's.

Serge, posts about knitting comes under "Those which explain how to do something, considered separately from recipes." I forgot to mention that one. (Hm. I left out food, too. I think there's a curse on sausage.) My post on Geek Knitting would fall under "Amusing science," right where anyone would think to look for it.

Puns are ambient.

A curse on thee, sausage!

Serge @ 149

Shouldn't there be a category for knitting, and one for puns?

Only if these are tags, not categories, and one thread can have many tags. Is there a thread on this list that doesn't have puns in it?

Teresa @ 151

Such an index might not be as straightforward to use as a more orthodox index, but it would be far more fun, and well worth having.

Teresa's hypothetical Borgean indexing system reminded me of when Neil Gaiman started adding tags to his blog. A very few of them are actually catagorizing aids, such as "Doctor Who" or "Stardust," but others are pure commentary delight, such as "Bathing Children - A Good Thing?" and "Pondering The Special Place In Hell Reserved For Those Who Dress Dogs Up And Take Funny Pictures Of Them."

These don't work so well if your software actually takes Every Single Tag You've Ever Used and lists them in the left column of the blog (one of my blogging gigs, Burnzpost.com, does this). There is a lesson that anyone in Web 2.0 blogging needs to learn about the difference between TAGS and CATEGORIES, but I am not precisely spoken enough to teach it. All I know is, tags are something you search for, while categories are something you choose out of a menu. Preferably.

Bruce @146: Would it be evil of me to point out The Great TiVO in the Sky? This is where I got my Torchwood fix, and relatively painlessly (non-fans of Torchwood will probably dispute the "painlessly" bit). As for everything else Torchwood, there's this well-connected fan blog which reports on cast appearances, spin-off novels, and magazines as well as when Season 2 will finally hit TV dammit. I'm not particularly fond of the fan collective noun "Woodies," but I don't think we can accurately blame the torchwoodtv.blog for originating it.

Bruce Cohen@153 [if] one thread can have many tags

One would think that the knitting could take care of that.

Bruce Cohen @ 153... Is there a thread on this list that doesn't have puns in it?

If I'm not mistaken, this thread has been remarkably bare of puns. I should probably do something to correct the situation, but that would cause ethan to protest and clamor or the moderators to step in.

Please read all applicable irony into my mention of "Web 2.0" in the previous post, kthxbye.

I think I have all of this in some semblance of order.

Jon H: ( #48)
["The cops reacted poorly. One cop, with back-up was all one probably needed. Observe her and then respond."] Terry Karney

I'm sure if the cops and the person at the counter had your perspective from the future, they could make a cool, reasonable response like that.

Nonsense, it’s not my wonderful 20/20 hindsight, its a function of knowing what a person with a visible bomb does (this is the form of profiling we can use, situational, not mechanistic).

Someone who has a bomb in hand is using it to gain an end (rob a bank, get away, etc.). It’s not the same as someone who is engaging in suicide bombing to make a political point.

Making cool, reasonable, responses like that is what we pay cops to do. It’s supposed to be part of all the money DHS has been shoveling at police departments to train them to do. Going six years and they still aren’t clued in.

She was on an island, outside the airport. That’s not a threat to life, limb or property. It’s not consistent with the visible bomber. So it doesn’t demand the overwhelming show of force and the idea that, had she not been perfectly behaved when she had no reason to expect a swarm of cops pointing machine guns at her she ought to be gunned down in defense of the public.

That sort of thinking bothers me more than the possibility that she, in an open space, with no crowd, might have actually set off a bomb. That’s part of the risks we pay cops to take as well.

Elsewhere you say there might be multiple targets. So what? A machine pistol is faster at reacquiring/picking up a new target, but not that much faster (unless one practices with it an awful lot, and the reports are that police departments are having ammo crunches, because it’s all going to the Army... so the level of practice they were getting before is as much as they are getting now).

The fact of the matter is that one cop can only shoot one person at a time, and using burst takes longer than firing single. It is faster to bring to bear, but I don’t think (absent a lot of training) that giving cops more powerful weapons which are easier to use, is actually a good thing.

Greg: (#74) I don’t think every cop in a crowded place ought to have a scoped 30-30 (or whatever low-power rifle of moderate punch you prefer). But I think that for situations such as this was portrayed (bomb wielding person, of unstable demeanor) a 30-30 is a better takedown weapon than a suppressed 9mm.

Body armor will stop +P pistol ammo. Suppressed weapons are not even as punchy as average velocity rds, which makes them less effective against the prepared opponent, which means (IMO) they are less likely to be useful against the targets they are being fielded to stop.

They also, because of range issues, and the problems of using the option to go automatic, are more likely to effect the explosion of a device by the dedicated bomber (and what good telling the suicide bomber to behave, or be killed?) because they have to be seen to be used.

But train the cops to play Kipling (If I had raised my bridle-hand, as I have held it low, The little jackals that flee so fast, were feasting all in a row: If I had bowed my head on my breast, as I have held it high, The kite that whistles above us now were gorged till she could not fly.) and a guy, at some remove (and out of sight, if only by distraction) can deal with the shooting issue, absent much risk to the bystanders.

George Smiley (#76). No. A pistol is what one uses at close (one might say intimate) range. It’s only something one uses to “fight one’s way to a long gun,” in a long-distance exchange of fire situation. That’s not what I expect to ever have be the case in an airport. Certainly the odds of it happening there don’t outweigh the risks that come of rifles, or auto-option. While I don’t know what the trigger module is, I am certain it’s selective; either to full-auto, or burst, I am am certain the department which springs for an MP-5 isn’t going to get it as a pistol-carbine.

I’m well aware of the noise factor, I've fired rifles, on burst; in concrete blockhouses, but as I said above, the issues aren’t the same. Where the range/accuracy comes into play, pistol ammo is a poor choice, and worse when the velocity (and accuracy) is reduced by the suppressor.

Bruce (STM) (#92): Not one 30 rd clip, but two, and in the, “super-speedy side-by-side configuration (which is actually sensible on the MP-5, it’s main drawback being the positive lock/unlock aspect of clip retention).

As for cops and fire discipline, two words: Amadou Diallo. As I recall at least one of the cops shooting at him (who were excused) reloaded. He was unarmed, at close range, and trapped in a doorway.

As far as Doctor Who-related TV lust objects go, I suppose I should mention that Sarah Jane Adventures starts on Monday. It would not surprise me if Elisabeth Sladen has a gold ring, or a picture in the attic; she seems remarkably well-preserved.

Dang it, now I want a bi-modal index. One side done using Teresa's indexing scheme, and one done by a professional indexer.

Then I want to see the monthly webstats on which one gets used more...

:-D

Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little #145: Ben Richard "Those Who Would Sacrifice & etc." Franklin Jackson

FTFY. heh.

Teresa (151): I assumed 'knitting' was included in 'yarn', which is on your list. Possibly this was an error.

Mary Aileen @ 163... I assumed 'knitting' was included in 'yarn'

Yarnever to make me admit I should have knitticed that.

#147 (TNH)

The categories currently set up at ML are:

Cooking
Faith
Folly
Fraud
Growing Luminous By Eating Light
Knitting
Language
..Publishing
..Reading
..Writing
Moderation and Community
Truth
..Medicine
..Reality

Dave Bell @ 160... The link isn't working. Just as well, as far as I'm concerned. That way, I don't have to feel frustrated since there's no BBC America around here.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell… I've been trying to give that book of several avid fantasy readers who had missed it, at my library, while I was still there. They all hated it, none of them finished. Meself, I sort of love it, dreamy-like. I feel only it was too short. That scene at (York?) cathedral, early on, where Mr. Norrell awakens all those voices, is incredible already. I also liked The Ladies.

Only at #32 in the thread but there are errand I should go out and run... so

1. The rest of the world is not MIT. MIT really does have its own state-certified police force, nicknamed "campus cops," who once upon a time had a sense of humor and appreciation for the pranks played by MIT students and alumni (one Kenneth R. Wadleigh, who eventually became a Dean, in his student days was one of a group of students who welded a subway car to the tracks). That was once a upon a time, before the [expletive deleted] turned the USA into an imperialistic police state. A few months ago students caught where they weren't supposed to be on campus, instead of given a lecture and chewed out, were charged with criminal trespass....

"hack" below = practical joke and/or poking around...

http://alum.mit.edu/ne/whatmatters/200304/index.html

Nightwork: Hackito Ergo Sum
Hacking Ethics
The irreverent HowToGAMIT Guide (How to Get Around MIT) is the ultimate MIT handbook. This excerpt from HowToGAMIT sets forth the hackers’ code as it stands in the early twenty-first century.

1. Be safe. Your safety, the safety of your fellow hackers, and the safety of anyone you hack should never be compromised.

2. Be subtle. Leave no evidence that you were ever there.

3. Leave things as you found them (or better).

4. If you find something broken call F-IXIT (the local number for reporting problems with the buildings and grounds). Hackers often go places that Institute workers do not frequent regularly and may see problems before anyone else.

6. Do not steal anything.

7. Brute force is the last resort of the incompetent. (“One who breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of reason.”—Keshlam the Seer, Knight of the Random Order)

8. Do not hack while under the influence of alcohol/drugs/etc.

9. Do not drop things (off a building) without a ground crew.

10. Do not hack alone (just like swimming).

11. Above all, exercise common sense.

2. 19 year old MIT students are NOT generally Mature Individuals. That one is personal. Been there....

3. Social cluelessness is no rarity in MIT students. Been there, done that, got the degree....

4. Absentmindedness is not a rarity, regarding what one is wearing, etc.

5. The Logan terminal that the student went to, is one that 9/11 mass murderers used. Paranoia after the fact, is not unheard of amongst those who failed to prevent disaster in the past.

6. The rest of the world is not MIT, and MIT students' ideas regarding what's "reasonable" is often VERY far out of whack with "normal."

7. Ask me in person about the Third East ["Tetazo"] reunion a few weeks ago.

8. I had to visit both court building in Lowell, MA, this month. Both of them were designed for OPENNESS and accessibility for people able to climb stairs, with the courtrooms opening directly onto lobbies or vestibules or corridors with lots of doors and entry/exit to outside without going through Security. Today, though, it's Police State siege bunkered buildings. Both buildings have parts that go back decades, to a time when the idea was OPEN and HONEST and ACCESSIBLE government, not federal STASI and Official Secrets/Executive Orders and treating ordinary citizens as guilty with metal detectors and x-ray machine and "no camera" signs and long lines full of people spewing toxic fumes from their damned cigarettes waiting to get inside.

The MIT student was going on the basis of an entirely different set of values and frame of reference and worldview, the same one that causes so much trouble with the Internet--the Internet is an escaped lab experiment gone kudzu, never intended to be a commercial system in the design of the networking protocols and connectivity, never designed with any COMMUNICATIONS SECURITY or provisions for "hardening" it against slime/intruders/spammers/worm-trojan-other-malware distributors/exploiters/bandwidth-hogs/clueless-wonders.... the internal values of the mindset at MIT is that everyone else is CURIOUS, is interested in Neat Stuff, doesn't destroy things of value and doesn't want to destroy things of value--see Hacker Ethics above.

The idea that there are people out there being intentionally wantonly destructive, is contrary to the hacker ethic mindset, values, and thoughtprocess... and the possibility of her wearable art being taken as inimical and threatening, probably never occurred to the student. It was an alien concept that was outside the worldview.

And she was 13 when 9/11 happened and nearly halfway around the world from it.

On JS & Mr N.... I will generally be in favour of any book in which n Wnznvpna (be ng nal engr, n crefba bs Wnznvpna bevtva) trgf gb or Xvat bs gur Snvevrf. I loved the book from beginning to end. I agree it began slowly, but I found it gripping from the beginning, and in another year or so when a bit more of it has faded from my memory I will read it again. It looks like the kind of book that will be worthy on a second (and third, and fourth) reading.

Teresa @ 147

I don't know about a more general index, but I'm fairly certain I could manage a writing and publishing index, and I'd be willing to look as I go and see whether more is within my reach. I'm fairly decent at letting categories create themselves as appropriate and at not picking up all the pretty shiny even when I want to. If no one minds, I'll dig around starting at the back end of the archive and see what occurs. Once I've got a running start I'll check back in. Does that sound all right?

Nicole @145, further followup: there's a searchable index of (apparently) all of Lang's [Color] Fairy Tale books here, with full-text linkage!

I hadn't thought about it, but I suppose they must all be in the public domain by now; haven't yet found the story about the poisoned book, but it's got to be in there somewhere....

Nicole @#145, Julie @#87:

The Lang Fairy Books online.

I don't remember the poison book story, but I didn't read them cover-to-cover...I'd read my favorite stories over and over instead.

Looking at the Green one (I have a heap of Lang on my folk-and-fairy shelf) I don't see The 12 Dancing Princesses, but it has Heart of Ice, which I remember adoring. I guess I'll go read it again now!

Nicole @#145, Julie @#87:

A little more googling and I found this. It looks like the story you're remembering was from The Arabian Nights. This image is from Lang's version, so it's the same illustrator as the Fairy books.

Terry @ 159

Amadou Diallo. Right; I couldn't remember enough about that case for a reasonable search, but the one I was referring to was quite easy to find. Seems that killing an unarmed groom on his wedding day and putting two of his unarmed groomsmen in the hospital is news.

Well, now I'm addicted to Torchwood. Thanks everyone. The problem is I've only ever seen one Dr. Who episode - whatever BBCAmerica aired before the premiere. I was kind of underwhelmed, although I think that might be due to not knowing exactly what was going on.

Can someone give me a good jumping off place that will both a) introduce me to Captain Jack Harkness, and b) introduce me to the show? I'd like to re-order the netflix queue accordingly.

#32

It was the Massport cops, not the Boston cops, and the former, again, get the collateral damage blame for INS and FBI upper management and the carajous heading up the US Executive Branch being completely and utterly irresponsible/incompetent/unwilling to act responsibly, as regards preventing the kamikaze mass murder attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

The facts behind my claims above:
1. The Schmuck and his minions squelched all warnings and concerns by the outgoing Clinton administration regarding threats posed by Al Qaeda. Schmuck, Darth Cheney, and Rumstouch didn't wanna hear about it, and spent more than NINE MONTHS pushing off any and all attempts of anyone else--talk about Cassandra situations, even Cassandra didn't get gagged and barred from the door--her warnings fell on deaf ears, but nobody stopped her from TALKING about it!

2. Two geographically separate and FBI field agents independently expressed concern to the bosses--chain of command--running the offices they were in, that there were suspicious foreign nationals taking jumbo jet flying lessons, who weren't interested in learning how to land the planes. Futhermore, there were questions about where their funding for taking the flying lessons came from, why they they were traking them, and why were they interesting in learning how to fly the planes in the air, but not land them. The agents, independently and in different parts of the USA, smelled rats. But, when they requested support from their management for getting e.g. warrants for searches, and for further investigation, they were told to cease and desist from their investigating and denied support to get warrants for search....

Funny thing about that, today there is all this warrantless search and seizure fascist dictator activity, but that still would not have gotten anywhere, not without the express permission of the MANAGEMENT to do the searches....

I want to know who SQUELCHED the investigations the agents requested. I really, really REALLY want to know--and I want that person or persons, all the way up to and including POTUS, tried for high crimes and misdemeanors, for at a minimum criminally negiglient mass homicide.

3. There were those mistranslated and some not translated documents the CIA, was it, handed over to the FBI. There was an FBI translator who saw them later and said, "-the translations are wrong on the ones translated, and the ones stamped of no relevance, actually are relevant.-" Her boss told her to shut up and stop being a non-team player. She went higher with her complaints, with the same results. She went to Congress--and was fired. She sued--and the damned judge threw the case out claiming that going to trial would harm the national security, that the matter involved classified material.... Justice, raped--is what Ashcroft was trying to cover up on the statue of Justice, statutory rape?

4. Various of the 9/11 mass murderers were on the INS watch list. The INS wasn't complying with its own damned watch list and let them into the USA instead, and did nothing to trace their presence or deny them entry. Why? And why was there no castigation of the INS that did anything useful or identified any parties or actions responsible for the failure?

5. What the results were were the bloated incompetent offensive obnoxious Department of Homeland Security which signed death warrants for thousands in New Orleans thought its cronyism and incompetence and mismanagement, erosion of rights and freedom in the USA onthe order of police state scrutiny and spying on and intimidation of citizen and non-citizen alike, "rendition" aka disappearances in the night without warrants and without legal representation and without even information that someone had been "disappeared"/arrested....

6. The head of Massport Security got scapegoated.. he had scheduled a security exercise for Logan for August 2001, mindful that Logan had a reputation for poor security and wanting to demonstrate that it needed tightening up and identifying areas to improve and what to do to improve it. However, the airlines were so uncooperative he cancelled the exercise in frustration at their refusal to participate and accede to the exercise occurring. He got blamed from 9/11 as regards the failure to stop the hijackers at the gates in Logan.

==========

This is the climate, in which a light-hearted MIT student, raised the with concepts of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and better living and fun through technology, fell afoul of
the paranoia and fearmongering and fascism in force.

#44 Jon

Few MIT students of the age of 19 have much in the way of responsibility, for a whole bunch of reasons....

Course VI is the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, or something of that ilk. "Sock it to Me" was a saying of a character on Laugh-in 40+ years ago--Richard Milhous Nixon himself appeard on the show, saying, "Sock it to me," looking puzzled... the person who normally said it, would say that and then e.g. water would fly at her soaking her.. the vernacular of "being socked" meant being hit virtually or actually.

The "socket to me" is a pun involving I assume the old Laugh-in skits perhaps, plus the electrical socket of current flowing and the circuit completing and something electrical then happening....

Esoteric humor involving puns and obscure references is standard MIT humor....

Mary Dell @173: ooh, thanks! Looks like the specific section from Lang's version is on that site here.

Having ended up going to a different library branch today than I'd planned to, I wasn't able to pick up any of the anthos with that one Sturgeon story in it, but I did check out the three colors of Lang's Fairy Books that were there. The first one I'm paging through is a 1948 edition that replaced the original Victorian illos with contemporary stylized line drawings; it's very weird to look at princesses and ogres who look like they were drawn by James Thurber.

Linkmeister #37: "And yeah, the Boston cop or airport authority who said "it's a good thing she behaved or she might have ended up in the morgue" infuriated me."

Personally, I consider that statement a terroristic threat.

#175: You want "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances," a two-parter from the first season of the new series. Besides introducing Captain Jack, it was a Hugo award winner.

nerdycellist, #175: "Can someone give me a good jumping off place that will both a) introduce me to Captain Jack Harkness, and b) introduce me to the show?"

If you want to just get up to speed on Jack Harkness, start with the (Hugo-winning) two-parter from the first season of the revived Doctor Who, "The Empty Child" / "The Doctor Dances."

If you want to get up to speed on the revived Doctor Who, just Netflix yourself the whole first (revived, with Christopher Eccleston) season.

I never cared for the older show, but the new stuff is good fun, and occasionally amazingly brilliant.

#179 slipped in while I was typing #180.

#178:

Linkmeister #37: "And yeah, the Boston cop or airport authority who said "it's a good thing she behaved or she might have ended up in the morgue" infuriated me."

Personally, I consider that statement a terroristic threat.

He should be fired, so he can pursue his true calling delivering horses' heads to bedrooms.

According to "social contract" theory, civilization is founded on the principle that the people get together and collectively appoint a police force that is *better* than a random gang of thugs. What the hell happened to that idea? Or are recent events a definitive refutation of social contract theory and vindication for the rival "king, n.: a gangster with delusions of grandeur and a lucky streak" theory?

P.S. Why does a paragraph break end the <blockquote> tag? Doesn't that rather defeat its purpose?

Patrick @ 180... the new stuff is good fun, and occasionally amazingly brilliant

And it has a sense of wonder.

Earl @ 162: Thank you! As always, I get my best education by putting my foot in my mouth at Making Light. Recommend it to everyone!

(I don't get FTFY, but I assume it isn't far from HTH?)

Mary Dell and Julie, @ various: Thank you, you have now 1) convinced me I had an abridged version of the Green Fairy Book as a child, since it only had maybe 12 stories in it, but I recognize titles such as "Many-Furred Creature", "Snuff-Box", and "Little One-Eye" etc., and 2) given me far too much to procrastinate with on a night when I Cannot! Afford! To! Procrastinate!

(So what am I doing here now? Procrastinating, natch.)

Regarding the indexing of writing posts at Making Light: this post on Neil
Gaiman's blog might be a good starting point.

Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little: There were only the two of them present. There's a judicial inquiry, as I mentioned. This could result in a recommendation to charge the cop with a criminal offense or put him on a disciplinary charge. Nobody, least of all me, is saying that his unsupported account should be uncritically accepted. On the other hand, there's no doubt about his injuries, and it is difficult to imagine how they were inflicted, other than at the hands of the other before the shots were fired.

Terry@159: a 30-30 is a better takedown weapon than a suppressed 9mm.

agreed. I'd probably go with a .223 maybe in something like an HK53. I'd rather see something more like a sport/hunting rifle, semi auto only, no pistol grip, no rambo looking stuff, maybe a removable mag, no double-mag though. But that probably won't happen, we're fightin' tearrrrists now, ya know.

A little googling found this article by a police chief listing out the pros and cons of issuing rifles to police and the different options. the paper seems to settle on .223 as well. It seems to lean against full auto, although more for political reasons than for any potential misuse by an officer. No mention of silencers was made that I saw.

I think silencers generally mess up your accuracy, although that might only pertain to long range shots and won't matter inside an airport. But I'm not a fan of them either.

Making cool, reasonable, responses like that is what we pay cops to do.

That's what just ticks me off about this mess. That someone asked her what the thing on her back was doesn't bother me. That the cops declared it a "hoax device" and arrested her is just assinine.

Their job is to separate the real threats from the real innocents. And innocent includes the full spectrum of innocent, not just the Chicken Little afraid of everything version of what is innocent. Which means they're not doing their gawdamn job. Which would be fine if the department then corrected them and set them straight, but in an ever spiraling case of cover-your-ass, the department is backing their assinine decision to arrest with an even more assinine decision to prosecute.

And all I can think is, 'why are we paying these guys when terrified preschool children could do the same job a whole lot cheaper?'

These are the people whose job description requires them to overcome their fears on an operational level and work intelligently under dire circumstances, yet they're exhibiting behaviour that is indistinguishable from terrified children. And I just gotta ask, why am I paying taxes?

Serge@138:

So, is Captain Jack back as a regular onboard the TARDIS, or just for a few episodes?

Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little #184: (I don't get FTFY, but I assume it isn't far from HTH?)

Fixed That For You is usually a little snarkier than Hope That Helps, although I wasn't feeling particularly snarky at the time I posted that. If you're interested, here is some more information about the Richard Jackson quote.

I wonder whether the Boston incident would have happened had the young woman's friend come in on a late afternoon flight. Most MIT students I have known couldn't think straight much before 11 -- in her position I might well have done what she did simply because I was too groggy to think "Oh, yeah, I need to not wear *this* hoodie to the airport."

David Goldfarb... Thanks. About the Sarah Jane spinoff, what is its premise?

Anyone else see how they're probably going to shut down Arecibo if it can't come up with four million bucks on its own?

I saw it on Pharyngula, which linked to a very goofily-written article in the Washington Post.

I hate everything.

Teresa @ 147: It occurs to me that the biggest problem with trying to implement a tagging system* on Making Light is that you can't really tell which categories a post will fall into until people start commenting: too much of the interesting stuff happens down here. You never really know when people are going to start writing LOLcatz sonnets, do you?

*Though I'd pay good, if imaginary, money for an index of ML poetry.

Bruce Cohen @ 92: Using the Portland Police Bureau as an exemplar of how cops in general handle firearms is like using Dick Cheney as an exemplar of how hunters handle... well, firearms.

Me: [The officer's MP5] is *highly* unlikely to be full auto

Bruce Cohen @ 92: True if we assume the police officers' superiors to be competent and that those officers haven't disobeyed their orders.

Actually, my point is that these weapons are generally issued with a trigger module that cannot be used in full auto mode. To "disobey", the officer in question would have to obtain and install a different trigger module, committing a federal felony in the process.

Terry Karney @ 159: @ George Smiley (#76). No. A pistol is what one uses at close (one might say intimate) range. It’s only something one uses to “fight one’s way to a long gun,” in a long-distance exchange of fire situation. That’s not what I expect to ever have be the case in an airport.

There are plenty of situations at an airport where it might be necessary to make a 25 meter aimed shot. That is possible to do reliably, under stress, with a carbine or a weapon like the MP5. It might be possible with a match-grade .45 if the shooter is really, really good. But the police literature is replete with cases of cops being killed at point-blank or near point-blank range, after they fired and missed. In actual use, police issue pistols and revolvers are not very reliable weapons. This is an opinion, but it is an opinion backed by a lot of data.

Certainly the odds of it happening there don’t outweigh the risks that come of rifles,

What risks? Care to elaborate? The only major risks I can think of are overpenetration (which the 9 mm MP5 does not do) and the continuing metastasis of the authoritarian aesthetic (actually, I think, a pretty damned serious concern).

or auto-option. While I don’t know what the trigger module is, I am certain it’s selective; either to full-auto, or burst, I am am certain the department which springs for an MP-5 isn’t going to get it as a pistol-carbine.

I suspect, as I said, that it's burst. Pretty much the only people who are issued a full-auto MP5 are those whose job it is to be first into a room and to kill absolutely everyone. And I can understand the argument for the 3-shot burst. It's debatable, but in an airport setting, not overtly ridiculous.

George Smiley

194

Portland has been a very good place for me to live for several decades now*, and I'd take exception to your snarky remark if it weren't true. But Portland isn't the only, and not the worst police department I've seen in this country, in this and many other ways. LA and Philadelphia could give them cards and spades and still beat them on corruption, and New York has just about everybody beat on fire discipline, as the cases Terry Karney and I cited show.

195

I will bet that any police department with jurisdiction in a federally-recognized target area such as an international airport could get permission to use automatic weapons if they asked politely. Have you forgotten that we're at war and the enemy can strike anywhere?

* Of course if I were black or hispanic or American Indian I probably wouldn't make that statement, but thst's true in a lot of places in this country as well.

The big problem with any firearm, anywhere, is what happens to the bullets that miss. In police situations, there can be large numbers of non-permitted targets. It's no big deal to blow chips of brickwork off a wall, but you can kill the people you're supposed to protect.

And the evidence is that police firearms training doesn't even come close to special forces counter terror units such as the SAS.

So a lower-power inherently accurate weapon such as the MP-5 is a pretty good starting point. Body armour? Train the cops who carry them to hit their target in the head. I gather it needs some very specific shot placement to kill a suicide bomber without risking them setting the bomb off [1].

A lot of the training these specialised cops appear to need doesn't requre them to fire a shot. The only real cost is police time. There need to be enough police officers assigned to this work to do the job, and have the hours available for training and the inevitable paperwork and court appearances arising from any arrest.

Six years into the War on Terror, you'd think that problem would be fixed.

As for the statements of senior police officers, Lord Acton Applies [2}.

[1] And if it's a dead-man switch, all you can do is choose where to have the earth-shattering kaboom. I can think of several ways that some sort of press-release-bang mechanism could be used to play mind games.

[2] And probably Mandy Rice Davies too [3].

[3] It feels so good to be part of a culture which can get references like those.

Incidentally, the UK legal basis is that if the Police shoot anyone they have to justify their actions on the assumption that they were shooting to kill. In practice this means that some cases end up looking unduly whitewashed, and deserve a tag similar to the Scots "Not Proven" or the "Could do better" of school reports.

I think that's the territory this case falls into. It could have gone tragicly wrong, but nobody did anything stupid that could have kicked it over the edge.

But what happened in the "hot zone" is less disturbing that what is being done and said by the Police now. I can see a sensible messgae lurking in the background of some of it--tell those MIT students not to be so stupid--but thats far from all of the message.

(And I don't know the relevant laws, but I can imagine how an arrest-and-charge procedure could be difficult to avoid in that situation--you pretty clearly need to do a search, just as a start.)

Like the Lite-Brites[1], there seems to be a sea of fractal stupidity breaking Hokusai-like over the whole situation.

[1] I mean, MIT student wearing an electronic box of flashing LEDs--now where did she get that idea?

That reminds me of something Paul Gans wrote in soc.history.medieval a while ago, which seemed to elucidate a general theory of history: "England, of course, is different."

MAO

Paula Lieberman, may I re-post your comment #168 elsewhere?

James D. Macdonald @50:

Everyone knows that all bombs have blinky-lights on them. Therefore anything wtih blinky-lights on it is a bomb.

They're that way in the movies and the movies never get it wrong.

And of course, they would not have been able to unhook the battery before the countdown timer hit "1 sec", because they wouldn't be able to figure out which wire to cut.

MAO

Teresa Nielsen Hayden @#147:

I've started tagging ML writing posts at del.icio.us with "ML" as the first tag and then various other ones like "writing." Unfortunately their system doesn't seem to allow me to click into multiple tags, so I either get all ML posts or all writing bookmarks.

Anyway, maybe you could set up a link for your readers to tag things somehow - that way you don't have to come up with categories yourself.

I'm thinking now of the many grey-haired women I've seen with blinky-light Christmas shirts. That is how I would smuggle a bomb in someplace. (I mean, not me personally, but one of my minions.)

If she had a perky crocheted tam and a knitting bag with a ghastly afghan-in-progress on top, she would be essentially invisible, too.

MAO

Greg London @123: Except if you extend that logic, then you must take the list of all possible and potential terrorist targets, and then tell everyone that they shouldn't do anything to scare the trigger happy cops with submachine guns at any of those places either.

You should also, of course, enumerate everything you can that looks like it might be a bomb, and tell people they shouldn't carry such devices. Which, given that most terrorist bombs, I'm led to believe, look something like this, would cover a lot of very normal activities.

I'm a little late for this, but wanted to weigh in as one who loves both JS&MN and Ladies of Grace Adieu.

They strike me as what you'd get if Trollope had gotten around to writing fantasy. (Something that I'm sure was on his to-do list, right after inventing the pillar box, perfecting his fox-hunting, and charming that adorable young American....)

Random thought: In nearly all cases where the police are called for a serious crime *other* than bomb threat/terrorist type cases, a serious crime really has occurred, and serious bad guys really are hanging around or fleeing. If the cops show up in force because they've been told there's a shootout going on someplace, there's likely to have really been a shootout. If they show up for a bank robbery, or a murder, or a hostage situation, there probably really is an armed bad guy somewhere close by, identifiable victims, etc.

But these terrorist threats are different. Because terrorists are so amazingly rare, nearly all of police response to "terrorists" involve innocent people being misclassified as terrorists. And yet you still get the cops showing up in large numbers, adrenaline pumping, ready for some dangerous situation.

I'll bet if 99/100 of the time the cops got called out on an armed robbery, it was just a misunderstanding, we'd see a lot of people charged unjustly, hassled, killed when they were innocent, etc. And since the anthrax attacks, we've had no documented terrorist attacks in the US; I'll bet police have been called out thousands of times on "terrorist" threats that have turned out not to be since then. We're lucky we haven't seen even worse outcomes!

I rather like Captain Jack Harkness better as he was on Dr. Who, a charming rogue, than he is so far in Torchwood. The mysterious immortal being role doesn't suit him as well. But I've only seen the 1st three eps -- does he grow into the role?

I'm another JSMN fan -- whoever said it was too short is exactly right.

Dave Bell @ 198

Train the cops who carry them to hit their target in the head.

This is not going to happen soon, because it requires completely retraining them, turning their current training around 180°. Standard police firearms training emphasizes shooting at the trunk, because it's the largest part of the body, so the effects of both shooter and gun inaccuracies are reduced, and because it can't change movement and evade a bullet as quickly. Complete retraining will cost money and time that police departments won't be willing to spend, given that most of them view anti-terrorism as a very small part of their day-to-day operations.*

* Not NYPD, for obvious resaons. And I'm speaking here only of the US; I can't say how London stands on this.

Jules@205: You should also, of course, enumerate everything you can that looks like it might be a bomb

a half-full bottle of Pepsi: is it really Pepsi, or is is some binary chemical explosive waiting for the second part to arrive via what appears to be a container of half-eaten yogurt?

The safe thing to do, of course, is to shoot anyone with either container, just in case.

Which will immediately be followed by countless posts by folks saying the person should have known better and the police did the right thing because it might have been a bomb.

mayakda @ 208... Has it been established what kind of immortality Captain Jack has? If his head gets chopped off, does he glue it back on? Or does he grow a new one? Or do lots of sparks shoot out of his neck and Christophe Lambert sucks it all in before spawning a really bad sequel?

Serge @ 211

Sbe onq pnfrf, ur snyyf bire qrnq, fgnlf fgvyy sbe nobhg 20 frpbaqf, gura fhqqrayl vaunyrf vzcybfviryl naq gjvgpurf yvxr Tnyinav'f sebt, naq ur'f onpx. Ur jnf fubg qrnq pragre va gur sberurnq va gur svefg rc bs Gbepujbbq, naq whfg ybbxrq zvyqyl naablrq juvyr gur ubyr pybfrq hc.

Serge @ 211
I don't know ... but I just (re) watched Death Becomes Her recently, and I can just imagine Capt Jack with limbs apart and head rolling around a la Meryl Streep. Heh.

mayakda... And, even with his bits all over the place, Captain Jack would still try to make a pass at a being he finds cute?

("Hey, good-looking! Mind helping me put this bit back in there?")

Getting back here after a Sunday too busy for commenting -- my Mom's birthday....

I reviewed both the Susanna Clarke books favorably, and don't mind the pseudo-historical style. It seems to be in vogue lately (I'll discuss some more examples in a column later this year), and I think it works as long as style doesn't completely dominate substance. It's also one version of genre hybridizing, which can seem more lively than the straight stuff if the writer knows what (s)he is doing. Maybe my time in grad school familiarized me with older styles enough that they don't grate, but those long-ago classes didn't cover Trollope, and actual academic footnotes hold no charm at all!

Teresa #201

Sure.

Re #168: I think some of the problems with Wikipedia (that have come up on this site from time to time) are analogous to the ones you outline. Like old courthouses, Wikipedia has structures designed for openness and transparency, but a modern-day bunker mentality has taken hold among some of its leaders which causes some of the old stuff to seem like a quaint relic of a bygone age (which is all happening under Internet Time, so it's happened in just a few years, not decades). Also, like the Internet as a whole, Wikipedia is in a sense a "lab experiment run amuck like kudzu" and has run into types of attacks, criticisms, and enemies unanticipated in the original design, which in a classic "action / reaction" manner led in turn to the leaders feeling besieged and turning to ever increasing repudiations of the original free and open style that helped the site succeed in the first place.

Dan #217

One of the beauties of the US Constituton and Bill of Rights, is that the authors and signatories had the pragmatic view of the universe that slimeballs do exist, and the provisions of the documents, addressed dealing with slimeballs. They provide laws and rules and regulation and guidance for impeachment for e.g. high crimes and misdemeanors, state a basis for copyright and patent law that include rewarding promulgators and benefitting the general populace by distribution of information, specify various types of unacceptable behavior and allow for searches provided there are warrants....

Unfortunately, the framers of the Constitution did not forsee the malicious perverting of the provisions for impeachment being applied on a vicious partisan witch-hunting basis resulting in a backlash of absolute refusal to even consider using impeachment, against the next set of people in the Executive Branch of US Government, no matter how vile their offenses against the words and spirit of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

I just finished JS&MN last week, and I wouldn't have thought anyone who made it past the first page would dislike it. Maybe now is the time of my life for liking this kind of thing, but I was sucked in by the portrayal of the premiere magicians of the Wellington-era learning (or in Norrell's case, not learning) to navigate class pretenses and military bureaucracy, and you'll let me know I've been missing out if you tell me there's more like this out there. The impact of introducing Strange 200 pages in, by way of that story of how his father died, rang like a blow to an anvil. Clarke seemed to slip Lascalle (?sp) in without being clear about him, leaving him something a a hazy character until after Drawlight is caught in his scam, but that only stands out because the rest of the book was so finely attended to.

Serge, 211--Repeat after me: There is no second movie. There is no second movie. There is no second movie.

There. Doesn't that feel better?

TexAnne... I was wondering when someone would say that. Heheheh... Meanwhile, what did you think of the Skiffy Channel's latest Highlander movie? I didn't see much, but enough to keep thinking I'm right to miss the gleeful villainy of the Kurgen.

on jonathan strange,

i really love it. i think i have a good tolerance for long & rambly books anyhow, & this was probably helped by the fact that i had been reading (well, listening to on audiobook) a lot of jane austen & patrick o'brian before i got js&mn.

i was gonna say that having it on audiobook helped me in the not getting bored, but then i recalled that i had started the book in book form, at my aunt's house, & gotten as far as the resurrection scene (thus past the boringest parts) before i had to leave.

(the ending was nygbtrgure gbb fynful sbe zr, gubhtu. va gur frafr bs ernyyl cerggl vzcynhfvoyr, rira gubhtu abeeryy'f haerdhvgrq ybir sbe fgenatr jnf jryy rfgnoyvfurq.)

haven't read ladies of grace adieu yet. it's on my audiobook wishlist, but with my subscription service i prefer big honking long books if i can help it.

Mary Dell @ 203:

You mean like this?
http://del.icio.us/marydell/ml%2Bwriting

If you click on the + sign to the right of the tag you want to combine in the related tags box on the right it'll give you the tag overlap. Alternatively you can enter the two tags separated by a + sign in the box next to your name, or play with the url.

Bruce Cohen @209: my understanding is that British firearms police (who are all specialists -- ordinary police are armed with pepper spray and batons, but not firearms) are trained to shoot to disable. (They're called out in situations where firearms have been reported, or where public safety is at risk -- for example, hostage situations or loonies with swords.) In practice, "shooting to disable" usually means a couple of torso shots, or a head shot if it's not possible to aim for the torso; they're not trying to kill the target, but they're trying to drop the target without risk to other people.

The standard weapon used by most British armed police is, indeed, the MP5 -- usually with a 15 round magazine, and a trigger unit set for single shot or three round burst. They use it because they want an accurate carbine with limited penetration, to reduce the risk to bystanders.

Here's the rub: in the UK, the cops with the MP5s are specialists who're expected to practice on the range every other day. The level of training is very different from that of officers in those countries where cops are routinely armed with a pistol, and where the overheads of having all the police practice every day would be prohibitive.

Serge, my love for all things Methos required me to watch it. And here's my reaction:

DO NOT WANT.

TexAnne @ 225... I was wondering if that movie would be too much even for you.

About Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell:

First off, science and empirical knowledge notwithstanding, our experience of life is full of magic. Shafts of light really do spear down from the clouds at astonishingly apt moments, or at least so things often appear to our pattern-making perceptoria. With great economy, JS&MN gets at the half-magical nature of much of our perception. The difference between JS&MN and a lot of so-called "magic realism" is that, in the latter, the magic stops there, whereas JS&MN uses the credibility earned through these small miracles in order to make us believe in larger ones. It's the same trick, really, as Tolkien's. It's not so much naturalism, or being "rooted in nature," as it is a firm grounding in our emotional relationship to natural things.

Second, JS&MN is about differing emotional relationships to magic, not particularly about the inner workings of magic itself. Really, it's a novel about work, set at a point in history when everybody's relationship to work is being radically renegotiated. It is as much a political novel as the Dragaeran novels of Steven Brust, which is to say, quite a bit. The intermittent appearances of government ministers (as in the passage quoted above) are the least of what make it political.

Serge, 226: No, not once I'd finished rewriting it in my head! It makes much better sense now.

TexAnne @ 228... Now if only they could release your version on DVD... That's the kind of exercise I've done, for example with the 1980 version of Flash Gordon. My vision of it would have been much better.

Serge #191:

The Sarah Jane Adventures is a half-hour children's series set in present-day West London starring Elisabeth Sladen (as SJS) and Yasmin Paige, who plays her 13-year-old neighbour Maria.

According to a BBC press release, the two of them "form an unlikely alliance to fight evil alien forces at work in Britain".

SJS has a sonic lipstick and a talking computer. K9 appears in the pilot but not in the series.

Available right now on the Great TiVo in the Sky.

JS&MN has been languishing on my MUST READ NOW YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE pile for about a year. Maybe I should read it.

In other news, I just got Spook Country out of the library, and when I saw the giant picture of William Gibson on the back my first thought was "Whoa! What's Joel Grey's character from Buffy doing on the back of this book?" The resemblance is uncanny. I doubt Mr. Gibson has a tail, but otherwise...

mcz @ 230... Thanks.

#231: You're right, these days Bill does look a little like Joel Grey. The difference is that Bill is about seven feet tall. Okay, I don't know his exact height, but he's one of those people who's so tall and thin that he doesn't look quite human.

Charlie #224: Here's the rub: in the UK, the cops with the MP5s are specialists who're expected to practice on the range every other day. The level of training is very different from that of officers in those countries where cops are routinely armed with a pistol, and where the overheads of having all the police practice every day would be prohibitive.

And even when the police are supposed to practice at some considerably lower frequency, they skip it. A story in the Austin fishwrap yesterday was about how way too many of the local polizei are forgetting to take their annual proficiency exams--which leads me to suspect that they're slacking off in practice for it.

Patrick, 227: I haven't read JS&MN, though this discussion means I'll probably take another crack at it.

Generally speaking, I think magic has a lot to do with individual work. Afaik, magic is only used for mass production in comic fiction--and the point is to undercut its dignity.

The seven palantiri may be the limit for magic producing identical objects, and Tolkien only let one of them get onstage.

Just while I'm thinking about it, I recommend Jason Miller's Protection and Reversal Magic. I haven't used the techniques, but they cover a wide range of theory and method, some of which I haven't seen in fantasy. In particular, some of it is much more body-related than most fantasy magic, ranging from biting the end off a candle to using urine.

More free association: It took me a while to figure out why Tim Powers' novels don't feel like genre fantasy, and I think it's because (at least in most of what I've read), there's a general sense that magic is intrinsically bad for people.

One of the things I liked about JS&MN is that, among things, it is a novel about the pursuit of knowledge. The novel contrasts the desire to systematize magic with the desire to marvel in its weirdness; magical theorists who love their subject almost because of its lack of application with practical magicians who want to go out and invent. The central relationship in the novel is between a student and his teacher and they are prickly and frustrated with each other, yet dependent on and admiring of each other, in a way that feels right to me.

Almost everyone I know who likes reading fiction also likes learning, but I don't see a lot of fiction about the process of learning. (Yes, there are plenty of novels set in schools. But Harry Potter never made me care about how magic was taught.)

Jules @ #205, e.g. Centennial Olympic Park.

TexAnne #225, my friend basingstoke calls it "Shit with Peter Wingfield on top." (I assume by "rewriting" you mean "throwing away the entire script and starting over".)

Steve C., #83: At that hour of the morning? I can remember two things MAX outside my normal routine in the early morning -- and flight number + time of arrival would have been it. Plus, she's young and hasn't had time to develop my well-honed paranoid reflexes. Between that and the early hour, the notion that she just didn't think about it is perfectly plausible to me.

Greg, #123: Hear, hear! That attitude is the exact equivalent of "Women should never go anywhere or do anything because they might be raped," -- and its corollary, "So any time a woman is raped, there was SOMETHING she could have done to prevent it, so therefore it's her own fault and she only got what she deserved." Thank you for giving it the smackdown it merits.

John H. -- what the HELL is your problem, that you are so consistently arguing in favor of the police state/Chicken Little mentality? Why do you hate America so much that you're willing to see it destroyed in the name of "making us safer"?

Regarding Tim Powers: I'm pretty sure I've read interviews with him where he has said that, to the extent he believes in magic at all, he thinks it would be immoral and harmful to its users. I think he has even said that he would consider it dishonest to write a novel that didn't depict it that way. The best quote I can find right now is from this interview

Q: Out of curiosity, what scares you?
A: I suppose ghosts, spirits, anything like that. I'm also very skeptical. If anybody was to tell me "oh, my house is haunted" I'd think right, but I wouldn't spend the night at their house after they said that. And I would never have a ouija board in my house. I'm both totally skeptical and totally scared of them. In order to write Last Call I had to buy a deck of Tarot cards to study the pictures, but I never shuffled them.

Lee #238, responding to GregL:

The part that really fried me was in the "fortunate that she behaved" bit. Something about the word "behaved" says "she's a little girl" to me. I hated that word when it was used about me; I still hate it now when used without any modifier. Even "behaved herself" would have been far preferable: the former says "submitted" while the latter says "didn't gum up the works". Big difference.

George Smiley: (# 194 et seq)

I make my living dealing with things like this (military intel, trained in CT, and combat vet. Occasional liason to foreign militaries; to include Ukraine, Georgia, GB, Greece etc.).

What are the drawbacks of longarms?

Long arms are visible. They have an odd mix of effects. They cause the ill-informed to feel safer (because the “good guys” have weapons, and they are “better” than those of the “bad” guys).

But they cause those who plan attacks to prepare to deal with more powerful weapons. They make the cops more visible, and so easier to target/neutralise. They are good targets for those with pistols to plan on gaining (no need to take a heavier weapon to the airport, just bring a pistol, and shoot a cop in the head; since they mingle they are easy to get close to).

They increase the risk to those who aren’t actually doing anything (because they are more accurate, but harder to keep control of; in a situation where hundreds of people are panicking, because someone is using a longarm). They overpenetrate. If they don’t overpenetrate they can’t defeat body armor, at which point all of the above drawbacks are present, without any of the, putative, advantages of having a rifle caliber.

The LAPD has fully-automatic M16A1 rifles. They are in the Division HQ, but they are there. Burst is available in some, unspecified, number of sector cars, which have overwatch duties for the shift.

Greg: I don’t like .223 because it overpenetrates. 30-30 is easier to tailor to being strong enough to get through body armor, and no more. Still a bit punchy for just hitting flesh, but nothing is perfect. If/when the bi-metallic bullets are released to police departments, then you can use whatever you like, and I’d be in favor of .308 (because it holds up better than the .222 and a Model 700 is really handy at that caliber, but a .270 would be fine).

Dave Bell: Head shots are risky. Lots of room for error, being off four inches with a center-mass shot and the guy is still plugged. Aim at someone’s head and miss by that and there’s a piece of FMJ lead doing not less than just below the speed of sound; until it fetches up in something solid.

Most bomb vests aren’t that responsive to impact. If you hit the blasting caps, the it might go off, but hey, if someone gets around to dead man switches it won’t matter anyway (to date, for all that they seem rational to me no one seems to be using them).

Aquila @#223:

You mean like this?
http://del.icio.us/marydell/ml%2Bwriting

If you click on the + sign to the right of the tag you want to combine in the related tags box on the right it'll give you the tag overlap.

Oh, YAY! I kept clicking "writing" and then (ferinstance) "blog" and it just switched from writing ones to blog ones, instead of giving me the intersection. Of course the thing to do is click the plus sign itself...[annoyed grunt].

Anyway, this is cool. I propose that we start tagging ML posts on del.icio.us with whatever tags we want. Then our hosts can grab whichever tag sets they like, without anyone having to devise a comprehensive system.

This would be a good way to chronicle 2007 SF Fan writing by our hostess, for the purposes of mumble mumble mumble.

Terry Karney @#241:

What are the drawbacks of longarms?

Long arms are visible. They have an odd mix of effects. They cause the ill-informed to feel safer.

I have long arms, and they do make me safer. Long arms make it easier to reach critical medicines in the kitchen cabinet, hoist a poorly-placed fire extinguisher, install a potentially life-saving light bulb, or punch an unusually tall drunk.

Why, oh why, can't you people see that?

Mary Dell @ 243... Hello, fellow long-armed one!

Hey, look at these cool bracelets.

I just finished putting up my habanero-flavored daikon pickle for this year. With fresh rosemary.

I had some hobbies left over when I was done...so I put up another jar of nothing but hobbies and rosemary (in, of course, the same mixture of tamari and vinegar I used to pickle the daikon).

Even while I was putting them up, I was thinking "Why am I doing this? Who's going to eat pickled habaneros?"

Maybe I'll bring them to a convention for the guys to be macho about.

Xopher: I pickled some habañeros for a friend a few years ago.

I pt them up in champagne vinegar, for about six weeks. Then I moved them to simple wine vinegar. That made it a little milder, and reserved the champagne vinegar for myself.

At three weeks, it was flavorful, and I could swallow about a 1/2 teaspoon, straight. A teaspooon and a half was bearable, but warmed the gullet like Stroh Rum, and then it burned.

The friend loved them; eating them out of hand.

That vinegar, with the flavor, made a great base for hot-sauces.

This year I'm making them (the hot sauces; I didn't grow any habeñero) with white balsamic vinegar.

oldsma, #204, you've just described one of my neighbors. She goes shopping every day, too. Maybe she's really rich and bought the condo so she could shop all the time.

Patrick, the Krauss/Plant article is from last year. I already own the CD. It's really good.

Terry@241: I don’t like .223 because it overpenetrates.

Yeah, I had the vague memory that 30-30 was less punchy than .223. One of the reasons I said I'd prefer a hunting/sporting rifle was because I can't think of any military rifle that uses 30-30. there may be one out there, but nothing comes to my albeit rusty mind. Actually, when I think of 30-30, I think of an old lever action I got to shoot a few times way back on the farm. not being semi or full auto meant you were rewarded for aiming at the shoulder and punished for shooting from the hip.

But I can't imagine all these high-falutin anti-terrorist folks wantin to meet the terrorists at the OK Corral using a lever action anything.

There's a war on, ya know.

Sigh.

As for calibers in general, I've decided I'm too far out of the loop to know what's what anymore. HK was working on a .1... something... new assault rifle. There's a company that just built a .408 caliber sniper rifle which is supposed to be far better than a .50. I've seen some companies pushing a revamped Tommy gun because it uses .45 cal pistol rounds, which are supposed to be better than 9's but not as bad as a rifle. And I don't even know what a bi-metalic bullet is, which should tell you how long I've been out of the loop. So I'll defer to you.

;)

Personally, I think training is far more important than firepower, anyways. Although equipment makes a difference up to a point, the reaction this MIT student got is telling me we're buying high tech weapons and giving them to guys with no training. Not just weapon's training but discipline in general.

Xopher #246/ Terry #247

Do you guys have any good ideas for taking a Carolina red sauce for smoked meats (esp pork) to the next level? I've been experimenting with various store bought pepper vinegars combined with cider vinegar, but I'm probably at the point where I should just craft my own pepper vinegar base.

Serge #244 & Mary Dell #243: Somehow, I don't think either of you was meant by the expression 'the long arm of the law'.

Marilee, the Amazon page you link to says it's slated to be released October 23. If you've got an advance copy, cool!

Not everything with blinky lights provokes an insane reaction from local police departments. I am thinking of those wonderful kid's shoes with red and orange blinky lights on them. Some of them have wheels, too. Why can't I have shoes with wheels? I need wheels more than any six year old. Waaa...

Greg: I don't know if any one is making semi-auto 30-30. I don't care. I figure bolt action is fine for popping people who need to be popped. If you have so many targets that a manually re-loaded, magazine rifle, won't do the job, then the situation is bad enough that calling in the guys with the assault weapons is the way to go.

Bi-metallic ammo is wierd stuff. It punches through hard obects (like body armor, sheetrock, cars) but when it hits soft tissue, it breaks into pieces.

Think of a Glaser Safety Slug, with penetration.

The .45, IMO, is over-rated. It's potent, but lacks punch. The lightest of body armor stops it.

It's fun to shoot (I spent this morning at the range, giving some lessons, which included familiarisation on the 1911), but isn't the wonder-weapon it's fans seem to think.

Like any other tool it has it's applications, and modern combat isn't, if you ask me, one of them.

Lance: How hot do you want things to be? How aggressive do you want the heat to be (for a more "foodie" term, how forward do you want the heat?).

How much do you want it to linger?

How deep into the meat do you want it to go?

Fragano @ 251... 'the long arm of the law'

John Philip, or Jude?

#249: Wikipedia has a reasonable article on 30-30. The terminology can be a bit misleading; the slug's .30 inches. That's been a frequent military caliber - the famous .303 Lee-Enfield, the NATO 7.62, etc., but the 30-30 cartridge is typically a much lighter load, favored, as you say, in sporting circles.

Mary Dell #245: Hey, look at these cool bracelets.

My favorite bracelet is my P.O.W. bracelet; as a military brat during the Vietnam War, a lot of us wore them to show support for the P.O.W.'s. Mine is inscribed to "Maj. Robert Stirm 10-27-67". I kept it after he returned because the photo of him meeting his family won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography (photo by Slava Veder of Associated Press was titled "Burst of Joy"). I've worn it since then, and only had it off a few times for surgery over the years.

Teresa (147), yes, that's why I prefer tagging systems to categories. With tags, you can apply multiple tags to items, and you can make up new ones on the fly. Better tagging systems do auto-completion, to help you avoid accidentally creating a new tag with a typo, or even provide a list of suggested tags based on item content.

Henry Troup: Probably my fault, but I forget that the semi-arcane rules of cartridge nomenclature might not be so clear to all (though I think Greg knows enough to not be completely lost).

Calibers which have a #-# pattern are old.

The are, in fact, some early forms of explanatory/advertising. The first digit is dimension, as a fraction of an inch, and the second is the weight; in grains, of black powder used to propel it.

So one knows the, relative, oomph of the cartridge.

45-70/45-90 were used to hunt buffalo/bison. They are adequate for elephant (though at those levels they kick like a mule).

But the 30-30 breaks the rule. It was Marlin, not wanting to use a rival's name, which used 30 grains of a smokless powder (working with the Union Metallic Cartridge Company to tweak it)

The funny thing is the round is descended from a military round (the 30-40, first of the US Army's smokeless powder cartridges)

Because smokeless powders are so variable that holdover system of naming went out of fashion, almost immediately (load 30 grains of Hornady Blue Dot, and you might have no problem, load the same with somethig else, and the weapon will blow itself apart. This can actually cause troubles as the powders are updated. Hornady Red dot is considerably more potent now than it was twenty years ago).

30-30 is a very nice round for thin-skinned game, at ranges up to 200 yards. It can be used on anything up to black bears (but you'd better have goos shot placement with them).

It's usually loaded with a round nosed/soft lead bullet, because people use it in weapons with a tubular magazine.

But there are target guns which use it, and any spitzer bullet can be used in loads for bolt/semi-auto rifles.

And with those loads it would do very well for the sorts of things I'm looking to use it for; scoped weapons, which handle easily, are of good accuracy, moderate punch and aren't likely to cause much collateral damage.

Heroes? Vaguely underwhelming?

Nancy Lebovitz @ 235

RAH used mass production magic mostly behind the scenes in "Magic, Inc." While there were some amusing moments in that story, it's not primarily comic; Heinlein understood the need to relieve tension and action with lightness at intervals.

Oh, another magic-in-mass-production story comes to mind: Swanwick's "The Iron Dragon's Daughter".

Xopher and Terry - Thanks for the ideas. I picked up some Hungarian Wax Peppers and green Cayenne Peppers at the Farmer's Market, and have been trying to decide what to do with them. I'm going to pickle some of the Wax Peppers, but I'm still trying to decide what to do with the remainder.

Charlie Stross @ 244

Setting up specialist teams to deal with extraordinary situations sounds like a) a good way to keep such situations from becoming ordinary, and b) a terrific way to make sure non-specialists aren't routinely expected to do things they have neither the training nor the temperament for. Expecting police officers to be jacks-of-all-law-enforcement-trades with little or no training even OJT for most of them seems like an especially bad idea, and yet it's quite common here in the States.

I'm not an education snob by any means, but I think the best police force I ever encountered was in Davis, California. That's a campus town; University of California, Davis used to make up 2/3 of its population*, and the town and university worked much harder than average to keep relations good between them. Among other things, police recruits were required to have Bachelor's degrees, preferably in Sociology, Psychology, or Criminology, and were preferably bi-lingual in English and Spanish (large migrant worker population in the surrounding farm towns). In other words, it was expected that their toolkits had more than just hammers in them.

* I hear that's changed drastically in the 3 decades since I lived there; it's now primarily a bedroom community for Sacramento, 10 miles away, and probably the police force has changed with it.

OK, I admit it, I'm a geek. I have to be, I just stayed up until after midnight to see Foglio's "Buck Godot, Zap Gun for Hire" comic roll over to the new page. Totally worth it to see a post-human potted plant explaining why a barfull of rambunctious sapients of several races who were just in the middle of a nasty brawl cum firefight were extremely lucky (and the rest of the planet too) that they weren't fiddling with the buttons on the Maguffin.

The current 21st Century Fox is worth a look.

(I'm not sure how you link to a particular page of that comic.)

#241: Long arms are visible. They have an odd mix of effects. They cause the ill-informed to feel safer

Which means that, if we assume that most targets won't actually come under attack, and most of the "audience" are ill-informed, long arms may in fact be a rational choice to carry.
(Or a mix of long arms carried by highly visible people in uniform and small arms carried by less visible people not in uniform (though that has obvious disadvantages telling the good guys from the bad guys if something does happen, even with proper briefing and training).)

> dead man switches ... they seem rational to me

Terrorists sometimes accidentally blow themselves up while transporting bombs even without dead man switches. If your aim is to stand there saying "meet my demands or I blow myself up", then making sure that you will blow up when shot (or at least that it looks as though you will) is probably worthwhile. But if you are counting on not being recognised until you get to your preferred target (or at least not being recognised by someone who can kill you before you get to your detonator), I can easily believe that it isn't.

Nancy Lebovitz @ 235:

I seem to recall that there were hints of "mass craftsmanship"[*] in Tolkien; for example, Gandalf was for a long time unsure what kind of ring Bilbo had, which implies that there were a number of "rings of invisibility" floating around. (In addition to the specific and accounted-for cases of the seven dwarven rings and the nine rings of the Nazgul.)

(On the other hand, even the palantiri weren't quite identical; I think some were larger and more powerful than others, and one was supposedly "locked" to a view of the Undying Lands to the West.)

[*] "mass production" being too industrial a word to use when talking about a confirmed anti-industrialist like Tolkien...

I was watching Waterworld(*) on TV the other night and I realized something... It has little if any CGI as far as I can tell. It's done the old-fashioned way, probably because CGI wasn't quite there in 1995. And when you see Kevin Costner grab a cable and zip up from his boat's deck to the top of the mast, it's really him.

-------------

(*) I can already hear Tania again making fun of my cinematic tastes. Grumblegrumblegrumble...

Serge @ 268

And that's precisely why it was the first movie to cost more than a quarter of a billion dollars (you could buy a small tropical country for that, without needing to invade and conquer), and why he came out of the experience smelling like ordure as far as Hollywood was concerned. If he had delayed postproduction for 3 years he could have gotten a lot of the footage done in CGI, or using computer-synced miniatures, for much less money and he would have been a hero. But no, he had to swing at the ball and be a goat.

Re: Waterworld -

There are a group of film actors currently doing well in movies moneywise, but just looking at them, you know they're going to wind up "retiring" to a TV series someday. Costner is one of them. Keanu Reeves is another.

Bruce Cohen... I don't know. No CGI would have been able to make up for Waterworld's stupid bad guys. I still like the movie, but I wince whenever its Disciples of Captain Joe Hazelwood show up. (One exception is the big blond guy who looks like something that Jack Kirby would have drawn.)

Steve C @ 270... Yeah... When Kevin Costner stars playing psycho killers, one senses that his career isn't doing well and he's trying to reinvent himself. Better that, I guess, than the time they let him near Robin Hood's bow.

#255 Serge -
Fragano @ 251... 'the long arm of the law'
John Philip, or Jude?

Warren Zevon, of course.

Free Speech? Not at Emmys

#246/247 re: pickles

I make pickled jalapenos every few years, and they turn out lovely, though not very hot, but I think I have to pass on the hobbies.

I did make Indian-style lemon pickle this year, with tons of dried chiles and fenugreek and sugar. It's a nice sweet-hot pickle, cooked in the sun.

Earl Cooley III #274: I'm no fan of censorship, and I think bleeping is at best ludicrous and counterproductive (and at worst far, far worse than that), but I'm really confused about that Tom Shales article. Why does he think this Sally Fields incident is different from any other?

Admittedly, I didn't see the broadcast, but from his description it sounds like they just bleeped the "God" out of "Goddamn," which the networks have been doing for at least six years (I think longer but I don't have a source), inconsistently, sure (the FCC and the networks' groveling before them are always inconsistent), but very, very often and in a wide array of contexts.

Sure--bleeping on network television is always just a millimeter away from government censorship, and should be fought, but no more so in this case than in any other. I'm sure that the fact that she was talking about the war is what brought the rant to Shales's mind, which is great, but by talking about this specific indident as explicit censorship of political speech, he seems to be accidentally obscuring the issue.

For those who are interested, that second index I mentioned is now up at http://wyrdsmiths.blogspot.com/ It's on the right at the top under Writers Resources.

Nancy Lebovitz #235: Nick O'Donohoe's The Gnomewrench in the Dwarfworks not only features magical mass production, some of the plot centers on it. While the book (and its sequel) have many comic moments, they're mostly pretty serious.

Another, though shakier, example, is the series of Wizard books by Rick Cook, also played as serious with significant comic relief. That's a bit trickier, as it also drags in the link between programming and magic. (Some of the books in the series might be called primarily comedy with dramatic relief, but the best of them are not.)

Dave Bell @ #265:

http://techfox.comicgenesis.com/d/20070924.html

(I clicked on the arrow to go back to the next-most-recent, looked at that one's address, and extrapolated.)

Alan Braggins:

[#241: Long arms are visible. They have an odd mix of effects. They cause the ill-informed to feel safer] T. Karney

Which means that, if we assume that most targets won't actually come under attack, and most of the "audience" are ill-informed, long arms may in fact be a rational choice to carry.

Granted, if what you want is an appearance of safety. For security theater, they are great.

Slightly more effective than limiting liquids to 4 oz. bottles and making them fit in a 1 qt. plastic baggie, but in the same category.

Better to actually train the cops, and educate the public.

ethan at 276 says:

Admittedly, I didn't see the broadcast, but from his description it sounds like they just bleeped the "God" out of "Goddamn," which, since I did watch the broadcast (I've got this thing about the clothing), I know is not what happened: they cut from her speech to a loop of a disco ball against empty seats and did not cut back until she'd stopped talking. Thing is, the awkward and intrusive loop was the same one that had been used for earlier censorship, and didn't last any longer, so the fact it blocked her entire conclusion may have been coincidental.

It was a bad piece of video editing, all around, and I guess was instituted because other techniques do not prevent lip-reading, or something.

JESR #281: Ah. Well, that's a horse of a different color.

It's always interesting to go to Japanese versions of American media theme parks. The movies represented are all entirely western, but there can be some unusual absences and additions.

In Japan there is a Who Framed Roger Rabbit ride, as well as a Rescue Rangers roller coaster. Both of these were strange, but very cool. However Universal Studios Japan has the most mind-bending attraction of all.

There is a Waterworld Stunt show. Populated exclusively by western actors and stunt-people, it involves a lot of splashes, boat jumps, sliding about on wires, and other fairly standard "live theme park stunt show" trickery.

Its existence provided no small amount of amusement to me and my companion. So apparently Japan liked Waterworld enough to make an expensive theme park attraction of it! It just goes to show how different international tastes can be... etc etc. And possibly... that Waterworld might be watchable with some changes in the script or someone else's voice standing in for Costner's.

Leah Miller @ 283... someone else's voice standing in for Costner's.

Whose voice would you dub him with? Even if the dubber is dead...

Re #283: When I went to the LA Universal Studios in 2000, they had the Waterworld stunt show there too. So it's not just a Japanese thing.

Carrie S #285
Re #283: When I went to the LA Universal Studios in 2000, they had the Waterworld stunt show there too. So it's not just a Japanese thing.

Japan, where stunt shows go to die?

(I just had this image of stunt shows slowly being shuffled off to smaller and smaller venues, then ending up in Japan, where they enjoy a last brief burst of popularity before leaving the memetic consciousness altogether, or something. Or maybe that's just the Szechuan stir fry talking...).

Carrie S @285
Ha! Doing some additional research, it seems that most of the things I noticed also exist/existed in the California parks, but are absent from the Florida ones. You learn something every day. The one exception being the "Meet the World" ride that was in place of the Carousel of Progress. Now I want to go back to all the parks... not that that is an unusual impulse for me.

Serge @284
Hmm. I'm afraid I never saw Waterworld straight through, so I can't put in a good voice. I mean... Harrison Ford would be pretty good. But that's just a generic replacement of someone who I think sounds more convincing as a cynical action hero.

Redubbing movies and television in my head is something I do fairly often. The first time I was consciously aware of keeping it up for an entire movie was Fever Pitch in 2005, when I mentally replaced all of Jimmy Fallon's dialogue with Mike Myers' voice.

Serge #255: Andrew Bonar.

#280: Granted, if what you want is an appearance of safety.

I think it's depressingly clear that's often all the people making the decisions do want - or all the people making the policy that the people making the local decisions have to fit in with want.
I don't think it's desirable that the audience can be assumed to be mostly ill-informed, but I don't think it's mistaken to assume it.

Leah Miller... Let's redub To Kill a Mockingbird so that they replace Gregory Peck's voice with Adam Sandler's. Barf.

Another example of security theatre:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/09/chlorine_and_ch.html

Insurgents in Iraq had laced some bombs with chlorine. The chlorine hadn't killed anyone, but we've made it harder to import it into Iraq. And now people are dying of cholera, because there's a shortage of chlorine to disinfect water with.

Alan Braggins: On guns, and their untility, I do think it safe to assume the audience ill-informed.

Yes, the States has a lot of people who own/use guns, but they also have a huge populations (in urban environments, esp.) who have no idea about guns save what they see in movies/on televsion.

With that as a basis; and the good guys hitting the targets, almost always, I think it safest (and have yet to see enough public commentary on guns to make me think it otherwise) to assume most people don't know what guns do/don't do.

Hell, getting shot in the shoulder is seen as a trivial thing, which the victim can shake off, and be doing something strenous in a day or so.

I've had people who use guns tell me all sorts of myths about them (like a .45 which hits one in the toe can/will kill you from hydrostatic shock).

So John Q. Public, told by his gov't that the only thing he has to fear is everything but his gov't, well I don't think he's going to be all that well informed.

Leah Miller... Let's redub To Kill a Mockingbird and replace Grgeory Peck's vocie with Adam Sandler's. Gack.

I have the feeling that, while we might not have the right answers, we're more likely to ask the right questions than are most politicians.

But is seems inevitable that democracy selects for people with answers/

Serge #290 & 293: I'm glad to see you decided the first time didn't have enough typos. And thank you for replacing that terrible b-word with the more acceptable "gack."

ethan... Oops. I thought the first posting hadn't gone thru. I shall bow my head in shame and shuffle off.

Did anyone watch Chuck last night before Heroes started? My computer geek husband and I were horrified at the bad tech stuff in it...bad enough that even I noticed it!

Aw, Serge, don't shuffle off! I hate to think what would happen if someone saw you shuffling with your bowed head and thought you were a zombie. And it would all be my fault!

Waterworld? Dub it into Japanese, then redub it back into English using people who don't have access to the original script. That ought to do justice to the material.

Serge, I don't really make fun of your cinematic tastes, as much as I celebrate the broad spectrum of cinematic quality that you joyously and enthusiastically embrace.

Waterworld...well, I've seen worse. Remember, the part that stuck with me is that the infamous Exxon Valdez has a supporting role, and by the time Waterworld was in production, it had been renamed Seariver Mediterranean. Good for a gag, but annoying on some levels.

Gravelworld aka The Postman, now that was a stinker.

@#264:

OK, I admit it, I'm a geek. I have to be, I just stayed up until after midnight to see Foglio's "Buck Godot, Zap Gun for Hire" comic roll over to the new page.

In point of fact, the whole thing is online. The future dates can be reached by manually manipulating the date embedded in the URL to the jpg file.

So if you're impatient or something, you do not actually have to wait for Godot. Ahem.

I note that there's a Buck Godot story that does not appear to be online, however, it would be rated R, or even NC-17 (hint: it mostly takes place in a brothel), if it were a film. I suspect that the Foglios decided that the potential problems were not worth the hassle.

Tania @ 300... I celebrate the broad spectrum of cinematic quality that you joyously and enthusiastically embrace

Hmmm... Even if I told you that I liked The Postman?

Earl @299:
Dub it into Japanese, then redub it back into English using people who don't have access to the original script.

Like Jimmy James' autobiography?

Jimmy has fancy plans... and pants to match!

I've seen the first two episodes of the latest Ken Burns opus "The War," and I've been amazed at the footage of aerial dogfights. I kept wondering how the filmmakers had found it, crossing my fingers that it wasn't just amazing CGI. I suppose it's feasible to add authentic-looking graininess to current digital media.

Linkmeister: I'd be willing to bet it was gun-camera footage. (I haven't seen "The War," but I did grow up with a father and brother who were obsessed with airplane movies.)

Linkmeister:

There are several applications to add grain to digital images.

I want a copy of "Grain Surgeon" which has the patterns for a slew of both film and paper stocks, so that one can have Tech-pan on Oriental Warm Tone, etc..

Having not seen it, I would guess it's gun camera footage.

Random shoutout to Dan and Elise and Harriet: nice to meet you all Saturday night at the Whisperado concert!

Serge @ several places
Are you actually comparing either Jimmy Fallon or Kevin Costner to Gregory Peck? Because... damn. I hope it's not Jimmy Fallon.

Fallon's performance in Fever Pitch made me think of the Simpsons Quote: "What are you kids laughing at? If you say Jimmy Fallon I'll know you're lying."

That would also mean you were comparing either Harrison Ford or Mike Myers to Adam Sandler. The second would make much more sense, I suppose, but anything's possible.

I'm a bit baffled, I have to say.

The 1990 Memphis Belle movie mostly used traditional model work, rather than CGI, where is didn't use real B-17s, but some postwork was done to add vibration, gain, and general crud to some of the shots.

There's quite a few documentaries made for TV which use CGI. A few seconds of a tank battle, for instance, in which the effect is let down by an explosion more like a video-game. You don't have to spend much to get a pretty decent, animatable, CGI model.

Video demo at Youtube

You don't get suspension movement on those models--that's hard--but most of them are pretty good. Avoid the Panzer IV, the turret is badly wrong.

Warren Jeffs found guilty.

Dave Bell #309

One of the more amazing CGI clips of WWII aircraft was this short one at Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNJ8rIEPLOo

I first thought it was real until someone pointed out that all the propellers were in sync.

Mary 310: Yay! Go down, you filthy swine!

Um, I meant Jeffs, not Mary Dell, who as far as I know is in no way a filthy swine.

Library Thing announces its Early Reviewers program is now free to publishers.

We planned on charging publishers to participate in the program. Publishers were eager to do it even so. Certainly its closest analogue, the Amazon Vine program is charging. (Our sources say "an arm and a leg."). Also, it takes work on our side.

Then we decided: What the heck? Pricing discussions took time and limited the reach somewhat. And we figured out how to automate the process better. When in doubt, we err on the side of openness. More publishers means more books, more books means more happy members, more reviews, and more fun.

Cool. I just got a copy of a book this way. It's by Pepe Escobar, an Asia Times reporter, published by NImble Books; it's titled "Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge."

Susan, 307: Likewise! It was a real pleasure getting a chance to meet some of the notable persons from hereabouts in the flesh. Sorry there wasn't more opportunity to hang out and chat; so it goes. Next time, maybe.

(And while we're at it, those of you who have a chance to see Whisperado should definitely take advantage. All fannish considerations aside, they're a solid act - three fine and complementary musicians very obviously having a grand time doing what they do. Though I should probably also admit to being a sucker for Richard Thompson covers and singer/bassists with a keen sense of showmanship. :)

Leah Miller @ 308... Sorry. Lame attempt at humor. I was trying to come up with one of the most repulsive and most grotesque and most ridiculous ideas as to who could possibly dub Grogery Peck. Let's put it this way. I dislike Adam Sandler. Also, if I could change something about myself (besides my eyesight), I'd ask to sound like Gregory Peck.

Serge #316: Pauly Shore would be a more annoying dubber for Gregory Peck, I think. Opinions vary, I suppose.

Susan, since you're around, or others who have knowledge: My set-in-1907 work needs some dance names. What would be possible alternatives to a waltz for a couple taking a whirl round a deserted ballroom sans orchestra? And what would be a good waltz for them actually to dance to? I was wondering if there was something less cliched than "Blue Danube" that an Englishman, in particular, could be expected to know and hum. And, final question, would it be long enough to do three circuits of a large ballroom, and if not how long would it last, and are there ways of putting in extensions?

Xopher @#313:

Um, I meant Jeffs, not Mary Dell, who as far as I know is in no way a filthy swine.

Indeed I am not, but I do go down, on occasion.

Patrick, #252, now I'm comparing the cover to what's on the Amazon page and it looks the same. I bought it from the local used book/CD store and it was still in plastic wrap. I wonder if it was an advance and the recipient sold it. I've seen reviews of it already, so people must have gotten advance copies. Good reviews, which is how I knew to buy it (well, cash in script from selling them CDs -- some of it came in script instead of cash).

Lizzy L, #253, I love the blinking lights on kids shoes! But most of the stores around here don't allow heelies inside because the kids keep knocking people and things over.

Sarah S, #297, I think all those bad tech things were supposed to happen, to be funny to the watchers. After all, you don't get geniuses in the Nerd Herd.

joann @ 318

The waltzes I've seen sheet music for have sections with repeats, so you could keep them going, by repeating the middle section(s) several times. I'm thinking in particular of 'The Skaters' which has one section which is very well known, but three or four more that are not so familiar, and all of them can be repeated individually or in groups.

I don't think I've seen the University of California Press' Dirt Cheap Online Sale mentioned yet, and I'd be remiss not to, because, well, Books. Books? Books!*

Looks like most of the sale prices are $10-- great for paperbacks, stunning for some of the hardbacks.

(Unfortunately the sale prices aren't for Europe, Africa, India or the Middle East. But we book people are a creative people and can figure something out for that, I'm sure.)

--------------
* pretend that I linked all those books to examples like
"Eating Right in the Renaissance" and
"Martino of Como's The Art of Cooking: The First Modern Cookery Book" and
"A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China's Medical History: 960-1665"

Serge @#302: I was baiting you with the reference to The Postman. heh. I have no room to talk, I have had a copy of Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter since it came out on DVD.

Last warning: miriam beetle (now Libicki) is going to be in Portland, OR this weekend, and we are planning to have dinner together Saturday night. Other fluorspheroids are welcome to come along; just send me an email and I'll let you know when we have a time and place.

Joann, #240: Which leads naturally to the question*, what if she'd panicked and jumped, and they'd shot her in cold blood? We'd doubtless then be hearing that it was justifiable because she "tried to run" and must therefore have been guilty of something. But I guess something (or, more likely, several somethings) like that is what it's going to take before sanity makes a comeback.

Mary Dell, #310: Yay! The wheels of justice grind slowly, but they do grind. Now I just wonder how long it will take for the rape apologists to say she must have been lying...

* Notice that I do know better than to say "begs the question" in this context, which makes me better-educated than 90% of TV pundits.

Kathryn @ 322

I wish I had enough money to buy all the ones I put on my list when it showed up in my mailbox last week. I think I can manage some of them, though. The Georgian Feast? Simple Foods for the Pack?

Tania @ 323... Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter

You made that up, didn't you? (Goes away to check on imdb.com) Oh, goodness...

Bruce Cohen @ 324... Other fluorspheroids are welcome to come along

Fluor?

"I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."

Bruce Cohen @ 324... Other fluorspheroids are welcome to come along

Fluor?

"I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."

Owlmirror @ 301

Thank you. You've just made my future Monday and Wednesday nights easier, at the cost of however long it takes me to read the whole thing. I did the same thing catching up with Girl Genius and got almost no sleep at all for a couple of days.

Serge @ 328 and 329

You didn't have to rub it in ... at least I didn't spell it flour.

Steve, #311, yes that CGI is pretty good.

Clickable link to the video

Apart from the prop-sync, there are moments when the way the planes reflect light seems a little wrong. There's several different models for reflections, such as Phong and Blinn, which approximate different sorts of material while reducing the calculation load, and those might need tweaking.

It looks like we have CGI composited with real background in some shots, and the image quality--grain effects and such--doesn't seem to match.

The soundscape is also a bit off. I've heard a Lancaster, two Spitfires, and a Hurricane making a low pass: there's a bit more of a rasp to the noise--no mufflers--and, like the prop-sync, the engines are at slightly different revs, giving a beat effect.

Even if the Lancaster flight engineer has taken the trouble to tweak the throttles on his four engines to tune out the beats.

Hmm, as you can maybe tell, while I've done CGI, and live a few tens of miles from the BBMF, I've not done CGI animation.

(And I didn't realise that BRIXMIS operated a Chipmunk over East Germany. Now I'm wondering what Charlie Stross could do with BRIXMIS as the pattern.)

Dave Bell @ 332

Computers are powerful enough these days that nobody uses those less precise reflectance models except for fast preview mode; the final rendering is usually done with some very sophisticated algorithms that do a heroic job of photorealism. The limiting factor is how much work you're willing to put into material and texture design, shaders, and lighting. That bit of film looked to me like either the lighting guy hadn't bothered with a directed light to simulate the sun, just using undirected ambient, or the camera never got into a position where it would get a reflection off from the sun off the metal of glass of the planes. Or possibly the material used for the planes' skin was left at something like paint instead of bare metal. Watching it a few more times would probably provide more clues, but it's way past my bedtime, and has been for a couple of days now. Maybe tomorrow.

Dave Bell @ 332 and Bruce Cohen @ 333:

My reaction to the video the second time through (in addition to "Wow, that is good!") was that the textures of the planes looked a bit plasticky. So I'd vote for texturing issues.

I don't think directed light from the Sun would be a huge rendering-time hit, so that's probably there; accurate ambient light shading might not be, though, so the illumination from the sky might be a little off.

The fake camera-shake is a nice touch; definitely adds to the verisimilitude.

joann @ 240: "The part that really fried me was in the "fortunate that she behaved" bit."

That angle of criticism always bugged me too. Yeah, she failed to properly anticipate how incredibly Kafka-esque the world has grown. Is that a problem with her, or with the world?

ethan @ 276: "Admittedly, I didn't see the broadcast, but from his description it sounds like they just bleeped the "God" out of "Goddamn,""

From this it sounds like you don't know that they bleeped out her entire speech beyond the "God-," including the "-damned wars in the first place." Which is not censoring foul language, but censoring political speech.

Heresiarch #335: Geez, did they really? That's inexcusable and scary if that's what they did. Am I dense or is that not at all clear from the Shales article?

Can anybody explain the observed phenomenon around these parts lately where the numbers on comments have apparently _increased_ after others have responded to them. Decreased I could understand -- I'd assume that some spam above them had been deleted -- but I'm at a loss to explain an increase. I've observed it on both open thread 91 (see, e.g., #946 which says "#942" in reference to what is now #945) and Alien Abduction (see comments 216 and 217, both of which make references to comments whose numbers have increased by two).

Marilee @320

Not *those* tech idiocies. The ones I mean are these two:

1. A person who graduated from college 5 years ago programmed on a TRS-80 while in college. Really? My husband and I spent 20 minutes trying to work out if this was supposed to be a retro-80s show or what...

2. A computer is dropped from a great height, shatters and "all the information is completely unretrievable." Uh-huh.

I don't think those were put in to make the techies laugh.

Dave@332: Apart from the prop-sync, there are moments when the way the planes reflect light seems a little wrong.

You guys are good. It seems so grainy to me that I can't tell the difference. I could see the props in sync after someone pointed them out, but I can't see any of the skin details that anyone's talking about. It's all blobby pixels to me.

Jules #337

Here's my WAG: comments which have been released from the moderation queue are slotted into their rightful sequence and the numbering on the already-visible posts gets incremented as a result. That is, the numbering is dynamic. I've seen the same sort of thing happen on BoingBoing.

On the other hand, I may be completely wrong and ought to be slapped with a dead fish.

Premiering tonight... Bionic Woman... I'm not sure if it'll suck, but it has Miguel Ferrer. And Katie Sackhoff plays the Bionic Bad Girl.

I was hoping someone here would have some advice on selling/trading used books online (I think I've seen it discussed peripherally here in the past).

I have decided to get rid of quite a bit of my collection and I figured MakingLight people might have some advice because the books I have are the kinds of books I suppose people here have familiarity with (whereas I am pretty much the only person I know who reads what I read so there's not much use asking those I know).

The large portion of the books are just paperbacks of no particular antiquarian value, covering a wide range of literary subjects.

There are 300+ hardbacks of higher quality and these I figure might be worth my while to find some way to sell.

The kind of stuff in that area would be things like Poetry, Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Scholarship (nothing rare, other than the relative level of rareness anything in that field has), Philosophy, Religious writings etc.

I figure the things that I am looking at that will be difficult for me in selling (or decrease the value of my doing so online) are:

being in Denmark
not wanting to devote a large amount of time to doing it.

In case people are wondering I am going to retain that portion of my books that for me I absolutely need to have in BOOK form, like Kathleen Raine's Blake book or graphically rich books, but I have decided that aside from these the greatest number of literary works I need function just as well if not better in Electronic format. So if there are any particular suggestions on what I should do, sell, barter, smart ways of donating in Europe or Denmark I am open to them (I am of course also considering just talking to an antiquarian)

joann @#318:
My set-in-1907 work needs some dance names. What would be possible alternatives to a waltz for a couple taking a whirl round a deserted ballroom sans orchestra?

A two-step would be the other overwhelmingly popular dance for that decade, and it's extremely whirly. I'm having a mild twitch about whether its popularity in the U.S. was shared in England, though; the dance cultures weren't quite the same. I will try to remember to check tonight at home if you want to pursue this.

And what would be a good waltz for them actually to dance to? I was wondering if there was something less cliched than "Blue Danube" that an Englishman, in particular, could be expected to know and hum.

The "Merry Widow Waltz" would be a timely choice. The operetta had its English-language premiere in London in 1907 (though I don't know the month) and was a huge hit.

And, final question, would it be long enough to do three circuits of a large ballroom, and if not how long would it last, and are there ways of putting in extensions?

As stated upthread, one could just keep playing/humming it. I can certainly waltz three times around a large ballroom in the typical duration of a waltz-as-played (which will include repeats). It would be especially easy in an empty one, since there wouldn't be the same traffic issues. Slightly easier in America than in England (where they were still a bit behind the times on waltz form), but doable given the just-keep-repeating thing.

I'm so happy when people ask these questions before they put stuff into print and provide me and my dance friends fodder for jokes.

bryan #342: Whatever you do, don't do it from home. Any time I or anyone I know has said, "Hey, world at large, come get books! Cheap!" two or three the most frighteningly obsessive, creepy people crawl out of the woodwork to make weird demands, steal, threaten to sue over bizarre fictional slights, stalk for the next few months, etc. I don't understand it. Maybe those people don't live in Denmark, but I wouldn't count on it.

Serge #341: I'm all stressed out because two very very very mega ultra different new shows I'm excited about this season are on Wednesdays at nine: Bionic Woman and Gossip Girl. The GG premier last week was a little lackluster but I'm still determined to give it a chance, so now I'm faced with deciding which one I'll watch online. My life is so hard!

ethan @ 344... My life is so hard!

Don't you just hate it when an embarassment of choices is put before you?

Bryan #342: I'm waiting (but not with 'bated breath) to read what people advise, as I, too, am thinning out my collection. Though it sounds like you might have some books I'm interested in buying.

Then there was last night's midnight frenzy at the University of California Press' Dirt Cheap Online Sale. Thanks, Kathryn!

Re #283: When I went to the LA Universal Studios in 2000, they had the Waterworld stunt show there too. So it's not just a Japanese thing.

My family just went this summer, and we loved the Waterworld show. Explosions, fire, awesomely-dressed villain (complete with a monocle!)--I didn't know it was based on a movie, though. So maybe Japan isn't a stuntshow ghetto.

Bryan, I have been getting rid of books on bookmooch for several months now, with new yummy books to read as a result.

Susan, PJEvans re dance:

Thanks! _Merry Widow_ would be all too appropriate given the circumstances (the heroine *is* a widow), and I should be able to posit that the Englishman who hums it (in Venice) had been at the Theater an der Wien in December of 1906, when it had its original premiere, assuming Wikipedia is correct.

I had decided on a waltz for the actual dance because I knew it had been around long enough for everyone to know it, and because you can hold your partner rather closely if desired. (I know nozzing, nozzing, about whether this is true of the two-step.)

joann:
you can hold your partner rather closely if desired. (I know nozzing, nozzing, about whether this is true of the two-step.)

It is, but it doesn't matter since the waltz stuff works out.

Old Business:

The Wikipedeia AfD for Elf Sternberg has been resolved as keep.

Bryan @ #342, I too have been using Bookmooch, as well as Bookins. There are other swap sites, but those are the two I'm familiar with. Bookmooch is a straight trade site: you create an inventory and it's matched up with other members' wishlists. The wishers get notified that a book they want has appeared in inventory and they should act quickly before it's mooched by someone else. Then the giver mails it at media mail rates to the moocher. Points redeemable for books are earned by adding books to inventory and by sending books off.

Bookins is slightly different. The wisher pays the cost of the mailing (charged to a credit card), which is incurred when the giver creates a postage-included mailing label on his/her printer.

Bruce, Peter, (#333 and #334), that plastic look is a definite weakness in how the reflections are being handled.

In the software I use, Poser, the various Phong and Blinn modes are available, but very poorly explained (On the level of "The Phong node implements the Phong algorithm.") People seem to be going for raytracing more often, but it is processor intensive, and for animation that can make a big difference. Poser isn't leading-edge software, but High Dynamic Range Images as light sources can be implemented with some trickery. That lets you use an image as a light source.

There are WW2 RAF aircraft. They didn't use bare metal. The BBMF page on their fighters has some good air-to-air photos. Even the Spitfire PR XIX doesn't have quite the same sort of shine as sometimes appears in the animation.

Greg, #339, it's like having an eye for a photograph. If you don't do this stuff, you don't notice some of the features of the images. Also, since I use Poser, I tend to think in terms of that program's options.

As it happens, there are some very good, and free, aircraft models floating around for Poser.

Spitfire XIV over Wasdale

(Background derived from Google Earth--it was a dry summer that year.)

Yesterday's entry in Linkmeister's blog reminds us that 50 years ago this week was the premiere of West Side Story.

ethan @ 344:

"She herself was a victim of that lust for books which rages in the breast like a demon, and which cannot be stilled save by the frequent and plentiful acquisition of books. This passion is more common, and more powerful, than most people suppose. Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command." — Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost

And while searching for that, I came across one of my favorite Davies bits (also from Tempest-Tost), which seems quite fitting for Making Light:

"...allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position."

Lexica, I think you've compelled me to take up Davies again. I loved the heck out of The Rebel Angels and The Lyre of Orpheus, but for some reason I set Murther and Walking Spirits down a third of the way through and never picked it back up. I suspect something shinier caught hold of the magpie brain and, well, I'm sure you know how it goes.

But obviously I need to read Tempest-Tost. (Although maybe it's for the best that I waited until after my own production of The Tempest a few years back.)

#348 & #352: I prefer paperbackswap.com which swaps more than just paperbacks and seems to have a better search feature than bookmooch.

Also, Powells will buy from you online. http://powells.com/sellonline

-S

Lexica, that sounds about right, though phrased a bit poetically for something so abjectly terrifying when one is faced with it personally. The weirdest thing about the people I've encountered is the books they tend to be interested--paperback editions of last year's self-help books, tattered cookbooks from the 40s, signed firsts of new hardcovers (which they invariably treat as the most worthless), joke books from the 70s, any mass market bestseller they can get their hands on. Most of this stuff is not rare, or hard to come across cheap (except for the signed firsts, but even those tend not to be that special, at least yet), but these people pursue them with a fury.

I love books. Obviously. I spend more money than I can afford on them, I always have a stack from the library that ensures that I either won't read them all, will incur giant fines, or both. But book people are scary.

Obscure dance joke which will make no sense to anyone here except possibly Power Twin but which makes me convulse with laughter:

"I'm in ur Viennese waltz clicking my heels."

This is the day to raise a toast to Stanislav Petrov.

On a lighter note, this video at Youtube is amazing. Rube Goldberg at its finest.

My library system has 26 copies of Robertson Davies' works, but not one of them is Tempest-Tost. After reading those two quotations, I really want to check it out, too.

Linkmeister, if your library has The Salterton Trilogy in one volume, Tempest-Tost is in there as well.

I adore the third book in the Salterton trilogy, A Mixture of Frailties. It's somewhat of a transitional work between the light-hearted humor of the first two in the trilogy, and his more psychoanalytical later work. It has some similarities to Rebel Angels in that a large part of the plot has to do with a young woman's coming of age and establishing her place in a non-domestic sphere.

I know one or two people here have mentioned the "Tivo in the sky" in relation to obscure British TV shows.

Don't bet on it working at the moment. Stuff has happened to several major tracker sites.

Dan @ #362, I figured that out and looked. Regrettably, it doesn't have that either.

The Hawai'i State Library is chronically under-funded (it's overseen by the State Department of Education, a behemoth which has about one administrator for every three teachers; said behemoth always has better ways to spend money than on actual books or personnel who actually interact with the citizens), and it's always been a little hit-or-miss in its acquisitions.

(one Kenneth R. Wadleigh, who eventually became a Dean, in his student days was one of a group of students who welded a subway car to the tracks).

The last I heard, the hardback history of hacks (published by the MIT Museum) said that was an urban myth. (I've usually heard it told of a streetcar, which would be easier to get at the wheels of but further from MIT.)

Linkmeister, do they do ILL with CONUS?

One of this year's Chesley winners is my local library system's graphic artist! Isn't that cool?

Marilee, here's a link to a gallery of Renee LeCompte's artwork.

Marilee @ #367, I don't think they do, for perfectly understandable reasons. I can haunt the two or three used bookstores and see if I can find it, though. It's annoying, but one of those things we get accustomed to. There's a stock sarcastic phrase when balked by something of this nature: "Lucky you live Hawai'i."

I just finished the full and edited transcripts of Ridley Scott's interview with Wired about this history of Blade Runner. He talks about his influences, why he couldn't read 'Do Androids Dream', and more: all quite good. Wired does ask the big question, and gur havpbea nssvezf bar'f ercyvpnagarff.

Any other Bones fans here? If so, what did you think of the season premiere? I think this season's Big Bad* has considerable promise.

Oh, and a grump. Season 2 is now out on DVD (much earlier than last year, when I think we had to wait until November for Season 1!) and the pulled episode is not in it. Because the show builds long plot arcs over multiple episodes, this means we're missing significant pieces of several ongoing arcs. Grrr.

* Borrowing terminology from Buffy/Angel because Bones is so similar in its structure -- I keep expecting to see Whedon's name show up in the credits! The Big Bad, for those unfamiliar, is the over-arching season plot, which in Buffy/Angel was usually a villain who took the entire season to be defeated. It's not always literally applicable in Bones; for example, last season's Big Bad was Brennan's search for (and eventual capture of) her father, who turns out to be the kind of bad guy that you can't just hate -- he's much too complex for that.

Oh, I enjoyed it. The gross humour is back -- and unfortunately, so is the bad CGI. Did the episode remind you of The Man In The Bear just a little?

The non-appearance of the dropped episode in the DVD set is a tad disappointing.

hmm, a propos the bookins site at first I was against it (I was thinking more of generalized barter), I want to keep from accruing more belongings, but then I realized that if I traded 6 books for one I really wanted that would be a benefit. I am however thinking that I would probably end up in a situation that the books I really really want are not going to come up on a trading site.

Another idea I had yesterday evening was donating to Books for Prisoners if that is still going, but I don't want to have to spend the money to send 5 big boxes of books from Denmark to the U.S with no return. Maybe I could get it taken off my taxes somehow.

Dave Bell #353: Nice model, but my geekiness (cannot... resist!) compels me to note that a Mk XIV should have a five rather than a four-bladed prop...

Jakob, looks like you're right. The CGI model is switchable between 4-blade and 5-blade. The F Mk XII had the 4-blade prop, but most of them were clipped-wing versions. The F Mk XIV had a more powerful engine, and started with the C-wing. There was also an E-wing variant, and then the teardrop canopy and cut-down rear fuselage with no change in designations.

Lee @ 372

I liked the season premiere of Bones. Of course, after last year it would take major screwing up to turn me off in one episode. I am, however, disappointed that they did nothing whatsoever* with that last glorious shot of last season, wherein Brennan and Booth look at each other in wild surmise on realizing that there'a a wedding going unused here. I wanted at least some sort of sly joke or bawdy misdirection, if not a whole subplot about "who put the caterer in the punch?"

* Unless they did it at the very beginning; I missed the first minute or so, and, since it was a channel flip, couldn't run the DVR back.

Susan @ 359... "I'm in ur Viennese waltz clicking my heels."

There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no...

Kathryn from Sunnyvale @#371:

Ooo, thanks for the links! I thought that was what it meant...off to read the transcripts now.

Serge @ 378

This is just a little scary. I wrote that comment about the Wicked Witch of the West in the "Well, Duh" thread before I read this comment. Is there a highly contagious Oz meme loose in the Fluorosphere?

Bruce Cohen @ 380... Well, pollution has damaged the Oz-one layer.

Serge @ 381

Auugggghhhhhhhh!

* spits orange juice to the 6 points of the gyrocompass rose and collapses, twitching, onto the ceiling *

Verizon determines acceptability of content for text messages.

Ewww.

If I had Verizon for anything I would not-have it realquick over this.

Susan @ 383... My irony subroutine just blew up. As I read that article, guess what popped up? An ad for, yes, Verizon. The only reason my cell phone is with Verizon is that my employer is paying for it. It's a crappy network full of holes even within different areas of our grocery store). And Verizon was a big contributor to Tom Delay's coffers. Now this...

Verizon is the devil. So, unfortunately, is everyone else. Sometimes I hate everything.

Terry Karney:

There's much worth thinking about in your posts. The disadvantages of long guns that you mention arise largely from how access to the weapons and rules of engagement are set up. I do not have great confidence that they are set up wisely, i.e. I fear that your concerns have a high probability of being valid. If I read you correctly, you would prefer that hardware issue should intrinsically set some of these limits.

I certainly agree that the cult of 1911/.45 engages in magical thinking. (I confess to shooting mainly .45 because I like the Glock 36). Not that this matters so much - .40 is becoming by far the dominant cop caliber in the U.S.

I agree that .30-.30 is suited to the applications you mention. But why a bolt action and not a lever gun? I'd say that in terms of public perception, the lever is the most benign-looking of all long guns (possibly why the procurers have avoided it), and it is among the most effective.

Finally, what of the new generation of miniaturized, accurized tommy guns, the so-called personal defense weapons? These certainly have no trouble worming through most body armor, with the advantages and disadvantages that implies...

ethan... Verizon is the devil. So, unfortunately, is everyone else. Sometimes I hate everything.

Cue in the Debussy's l'île joyeuse. Hopefully that'll cheer you up.

Verizon just reversed itself. Heh.

Salon.com has a very interesting article by Blumenthal. Dan Rather is going after CBS. If that works out, Blumenthal says, the truth about Bush and the National Guard is going to finally come out.

Bruce@380: Is there a highly contagious Oz meme loose in the Fluorosphere?

Ya think? (said with raised eyebrow and half-smile)

Serge@387:

Cue in the Debussy's "l'île joyeuse".

Oooooh yes. Love that piece; with the tendonitis and the neuropathy, I can no longer play it, alas.

glinda, who is not necessarily good @ 390... Oooooh yes. Love that piece

Glad to hear that.
Me? Anything on by Debussy takes me to Heaven.
(I'm sorry to hear you can't play him anymore.)

Serge #387: Thanks for the thought, but unfortunately I kind of can't stand the impressionists. I'm more likely to take solace in one of Bach's fugues, or what I'm listening to right now, which is Dengue Fever. They always restore at least a tiny bit of my faith in humanity.

In other news: For some reason I'm blanking right now. This is irony, right? Not local news anchor irony, but the real deal? If so, which kind?

The scene: I'm at work at the state Department of Health (health: remember that word) and the fire alarm goes off. Everyone files out of the building and waits about twenty minutes while whoever it is does whatever they do, and then we're free to go back inside. I'm about in the middle of the crowd of people eagerly returning to work, and when I get in there's already a huge, mobbed line waiting for the elevators, which are taking groups of like fifteen up at a time. Up, I might add, at most two stories. I understand that probably many of them had legitimate reasons for taking the elevator rather than the stairs, but I cannot believe that this was anywhere near the majority of them.

One of those situations where I couldn't help myself, and as I walked by them I said "Bunch of idiots!" out loud. I don't think any took notice.

George Smiley, I reckon there might be a problem with handling a lever action in the prone position.

ethan @ 392... No problem. I hope you'll feel better soon.

Serge@391:

Seconded on the Debussy=heaven. Also Bach and Mozart.

(On good, low-neuropathy-numbness days, I can still manage Reverie, the First Arabesque, Girl with Flaxen Hair, Engulfed Cathedral, most of the first and third movements of Suite Bergamasque. I've had the tendonitis for 35+ years now; it affects wrist lateral movement mostly, and stretches above 10 keys. Runs and arpeggios are from hell. Some of those 6 note chords in Engulfed Cathedral are... interesting.

Bought myself a celtic harp last year, and aside from the right hand movement being counterintuitive after *mumble* years of keyboards, it's surprisingly much easier on my wrists.)

Speaking of Oz... The SciFi Channel's Tin Man mini-series will be aired on December. It sounds interesting. It looks interesting. But... It's produced by Robert Halmi, whose track record has been uneven. To say the least. Yeah, he did Earthsea, but he also did his version of the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, which I liked. Anyway, here's what their site says:

"...A sometimes psychedelic, often twisted and always outrageous take on the book, SCI FI’s Tin Man follows DG on the adventure of a lifetime. Plunged headlong into another world, DG (Deschanel) must discover her true identity, battle evil winged-monkey-bats, and attempt to fulfill her destiny. Her perilous journey begins on the fabled Old Road that leads to a wizard known as the Mystic Man (Dreyfuss). Along the way, she is joined by a decidedly strange trio of companions: “Glitch,” (Cumming) an odd man missing
half his brain; “Raw,” a quietly powerful wolverine-like creature longing for inner courage, and “Cain,” a heroic former policeman (known in the O.Z. as Tin Men, for their tin badges) seeking vengeance for his scarred heart. Ultimately, DG’s destiny leads her to an emotional and terrifying showdown with the scintillatingly wicked sorceress Azkadellia, whose ties to DG are closer than anyone could have imagined. DG’s life, as well as the very future of the O.Z., hangs in the balance..."

Glinda @ 395... Did you know that Debussy's Clair de Lune was originally going to be used for one of Fantasia's segments. Some animation was done, but it was never completed.

glinda #395: and stretches above 10 keys

*Some* of us can't stretch more than an octave on a good day with a trailing wind. Alas, it's genetic: tiny hands. That said, I hate it when my body betrays me, and sympathize.

ethan # 392

Well, we take the elevators back, but then we do a five-floor-down fire drill (just finished one, in fact, within the last few minutes). We're on the tenth floor, and then it's about two more to the street from the lobby ('about' because the east side is two flights of stairs lower than the west side).

ethan #392, PJEvans #399:

I spent a year working on the 22nd floor. The only times I saw the stairs were for the fire drills. The first one we had while I was there, I couldn't walk for several days after because of all the weird calf muscle stuff from descending all those stairs. (I'm over fifty, and things just don't always flex like they used to.) The fire drills had a habit of coming pre-announced (at least by our head secretary), so after that I made sure I was downstairs running some personal errand--taking the elevator down. And even with six elevators, it takes a while to get everyone back upstairs. (No, for some weird reason, taking the stairs back up didn't seem to be an option.)

Oh, absolutely, for taller buildings it makes sense. The building I work in (again, the Department of Health) has three stories. Dat's it. And when I say the elevators were mobbed, I mean mobbed.

"Bones" season premiere:

It was not disappointing. I tend to get distracted by marveling at David Boreanaz' growth as an actor if I've been watching early-season Buffy, as I have of late. And Angela did make referance to the altar scene.

"Tin Man:" looking forward to it on the strength of the cast alone.

I made and froze a gallon of salsa verde last night, and wish, at the moment, for someone else to do prep for the next project: pickled jalapenos. Does anone have a trusted recipe for those, by the way?

There was a frightening revelation at my house last night: my husband brought home the latest issue of Asimov's, and admitted that it was because he's finally determined that it is the moment to read "Nightfall" for the first time. Twenty-five years of marriage, and now he admits to having never read one of the central SF stories ever (and this is a man whose read all the Foundation books!).

I just don't know what to think!

JESR... Same here, about the cast. By the way, did you ever notice that Neal McDonough, who plays the Tin Man, had a small part in Star Trek - First Contact?

ethan #392, #401: One contributing factor is that if there is one person who needs to take the elevator (for whatever reason) in a conversational group of five or ten, the conversation doesn't stop as people head back to work, so the whole group will usually wait for the elevator.

Then too, after a fire drill, how many people want to hurry back to their desks? In such a frame of mind the long wait is a feature, not a bug.

JESR #402 -

Wasn't Asimov a bit chagrined that so many people considered "Nightfall" the very best thing he wrote? It's a classic story, to be sure.

The premise of a society going mad on seeing the night sky for the first time has always seemed plausible to me. After seeing a couple of total solar eclipses (last one in Libya 2006), there's something very primal about that darkness sweeping over the land. We clap and cheer and holler and sure enough, the sun does come back.

Diamond Ring

George Smiley: Bolt over lever beacuse the actions are stronger; so loads can be better tailored (no pointed ammo in a lever, unless you are using some of the new elastomer tips, but I don't trust them against armor. Those rounds are meant to mushroom, and that means they lose some of their punch.

Second, levers have a separate fore-end, which reduces accuracy.

Third, I don't want them in public.

My ROE would have long guns brought out only when the target has been confirmed.

They do have the advantage that a practiced shot doesn't need to remove them from the shoulder; and cycling the action isn't as likely to cause a lack of acquisition. This is offset by most people not being practiced in them.

With a 30-30 that's not reall a problem in a bolt action, because the recoil is mild, esp. for the amount of energy in the round (30-30 is much underated).

I like 30-30 because it's strong enough to get in, but not likely to go flying through and so reduces the risk to bystanders.

I think the PDW has the worst of both worlds. They aren't as accurate as long-guns, rely on firing mulitple rds, and have way too much penetration; when those are taken into account.

Back to my ROE: In crowd settings (which is the mostly likely scenario for this sort of shooting), shot placement is paramount.

Cultural insensitivity award for today goes to me for attempting to arrange for a Muslim doctor to take a Muslim candidate out to lunch during Ramadan.

Gah.

Fortunately the doctor pointed out that this was idiotic before the candidate got here.

Which is best?

He felt suddenly exhausted.
Suddenly, he felt exhausted.
He felt exhausted suddenly.

JESR: I tend to just get a good vinegar, and then submerge the peppers.

You'll want more vinegar because the hollows of the peppers will fill, and if they get into the air they will discolor, and go off.

Philip: I like the second one. The other two seem to be modifying the exhaustion, not him.

Soddenly, he felt drunk.

Susan #407:

How did you end up finessing the lunch issue? Just schedule it as another interview hour, and pay the interviewer for that hour under the table for lunch later?

Steve #411:

No, no, that's "Soddenly, he *fell* drunk."

Terry #410:

Thanks - I agree. I was in the midst of revising something and paused, fingers hovering above the keyboard, suddenly unsure. Back to it!

Though I am now tempted to exchange my line for Steve C.'s...

Dan Rather sues CBS

Would:

   He suddenly felt exhausted.

provide a better fit?

I agree with mcz (this is me, resisting the temptation to do the whole comment in rhyme). 'Suddenly' is not modifying him or 'exhausted'; it's modifying 'felt'. While I could make arguments for the last two versions in Philip's original query, depending on context, character voice, etc., for ordinary purposes mcz's version at 416 is best.

Philip @408 --

It doesn't scan as a haiku, and it's a little short for a limerick. And it lacks dinosaurs.

eric 418: I note you don't point out the lack of sodomy, presumably because you think he's exhausted from that very activity. But couldn't he equally be exhausted from running from dinosaurs? Answer me that, if you please!

Joann #413

Soitenly :)

mcz #416:

I think you're right, and Xopher's explanation perfectly elucidates why. Thank you.

eric #418:

Hmm. You're right. I think more dramatic editing than I had thought is in order. Perhaps:

Tyrannosaurus?
He felt a sudden feeling -
Sudden exhaustion.

Dinosaur sodomy,
Viewed anatomic'lly
Conjures up images
Based on a lie.

No sign of a penis
In all of the fossil stone;
Close cloacal contacts
Are what they must try.

Suddenly is an adverbly, thus modifying the verb felt.

(Posted mainly because I remember the English class which tried to teach me how to distinguish adjectives from adverbs; if it ended in -ly it was an adverb.)*

*Yes, yes, there are exceptions. My English teacher was trying to make a general point.

There was a dino named T-Rex
Engaged in some Cretaceous sex
A Bradbury came by
Stomped on a butterfly
Now our world is under a hex.

Probable-possible, my T-Rex
Proudly engages in cloacal sex.
When that fool from the future stepped off the path,
He quickly incurred my Probable's wrath.

Dave 422: It occurs to me that the complete lack of dinosaurian penes* means that it's nearly impossible to be sodomized by a dinosaur. Note, however, that a dinosaur could still be a victim of sodomy performed by someone who is, however undeservedly**, in possession of a penis.

*crisis:crises :: penis:penes
**Why yes, I am saying that anyone who sodomizes a dinosaur*** should have his dick cut off. Why do you ask?
***Using this term in its colloquial sense, of course.

Xopher: We have no evidence, either way, for penes in dinosaurs.

Snakes, for example (at least the ones we keep) have no penile bone, and are possessed of hemi-penes.

ethan #392:

After reading your comments about the stairs, I had to go to a doctor's appointment. The office, it turns out, is on the second floor of a very beautiful, tasteful building that only has two floors.

The stairs were beautiful and tasteful, just like the rest of the office. They were also slightly hidden (as opposed to the elevator lobby which is huge and the first thing you encounter) and DARK. Two bulbs that seemed to be less than 75 watts each in a fixture at each landing. I've been in less inviting stairwells, but they were all in parking garages.

The part that stuns me is that this is a doctor's office, in a building that is exclusively doctors' offices*. The building was pretty clearly built for medical offices - it is on the outparcel of a hospital. Don't they realize that for those who are able, stairs are an infinitely better choice than the elevator? They certainly don't seem to know that people will do the most appealing thing, given a choice.

*Is that the right version of that? Or do I mean multiple offices for single doctors? It is especially confusing since the doctor's office I visited was really a doctors' office, belonging to a medical group, not a single physician.

RM Koske @ #428, there was a conference here yesterday which brought together health professionals to exhort them to take care of their own health as well* as they did their patients. Stair-climbing wasn't specifically mentioned in the clip I saw, but it should have been.

*Well meaning "issue orders to change lifestyles before that lifestlye kills you."

RM Koske @ 428

The doctor I go to is on the second floor of a three-story building. The stairs, while not entirely obvious (there's a door marked 'stairs', facing the building entrance on one side of the lobby), are well lit and carpeted to match the halls outside. The last time I was there, to ask them a question - I was across the street on business - I met my doctor on the stairs.

Great... Now 'stairs' will have to be added to ML's list of topics to index.

R.M. Koske #428: Eek! Dark stairs are scary!

Serge #431: ...do I win, then? (Win what? you may ask. Don't ask.)

ethan @ 432... Win what? you may ask. Don't ask.

Telling not to ask, unless you can turn on the Librarian Stare, is bound to steer me exactly to the stairs. (No, I won't make a Bester joke about what my destination is.)

R. M. 428: I don't think English has any easy way to distinguish between multiple offices each for an individual doctor, and multiple offices each for multiple doctors. "Doctor's offices" means multiple offices for one doctor (who is the doctor of all the offices). I daresay that in the building in question there were both single- and multiple-physician practices, making it even more awkward to distinguish.

In any case, you did it right.

I wonder if Uncle Jim Macdonald has anecdotes to regale us regarding Stupid Things Not To Do in stairways.

Serge: I don't know about Jim, but vaulting across the rails on anything more than the bottom is bad.

Speaking of stairways and doctors, I read about one HMO that enrolled Medicare patients on the second floor of a building without an elevator. Their reasoning being if that they couldn't manange one flight of stairs, then they didn't want to insure them.

Serge, not having yet* attended library school, I am not licensed to use the Librarian Stare.

The Stairs My Destination would have been a very short book.

*Not having yet? Sheesh.

Hmmmmmm.

Big Ethan's my name,
libraries are my station,
Boston is my dwelling place,
the stairs my destination.

Susan (#407): Shades of the Evite message that went out listing "reasons to party"...including Yom Kippur. (They did apologize.)

ethan... "One Step Beyond!"

joann @ #412:
We don't pay them to interview people; recruitment is a collective effort here. The luncheon turned into informal conversational time. And I have added Ramadan to my list of holidays to keep track of. (I was all on top of Sukkot, but Ramadan floats around so much I've never managed to track it.)

mcz, #373: Only insofar as I was thinking, "Oh, cannibalism again?" But the handling of it in this one was significantly different.

Bruce, #377: No, the only reference to it was in a brief conversation between Brennan and Angela. I'm thinking of this as the equivalent of, "Yes, they are Klingons... and we do NOT discuss it with outsiders."

Um... if anyone hasn't seen it and wants spoilers ROT13'd, please speak up now before the discussion gets any more specific!

Steve, #405: It's a wonderful story, but there's always been one thing about it that bugged me: the assertion that until the sun has completely disappeared, they can't see any stars at all. That's not how it works even here on Earth, let alone on a planet set in the middle of a globular cluster! Some of the brighter stars should be visible fairly early on, with more and more showing up as the twilight gets dimmer and dimmer. I shrugged it off as artistic license, but it still twitches at me sometimes.

Steve, #437: I hope that's an urban legend. It sounds like one, but at the same time it's frighteningly plausible.

Terry@360: On a lighter note, this video at Youtube is amazing. Rube Goldberg at its finest.

Nice. After being fooled by the WW2 fighter footage, I couldn't help but wonder if it was CGI.

The walking windshield wiper assembly was just freaky.

Lee @ 443... About Nightfall, I look at it the way I do at a lot of Bradbury's SF: neat ideas, but don't examine too closely.

Bruce Arthurs, #369, thanks! They don't look anything like the posters she makes for the library!

Shortly after the bathroom renovation started, and the whole house was buried in a not-so-fine layer of demolition dust, I posted The Stairs Like Dust to my blog.

And this traffic report: on the way back from Costco this evening I passed a large reader board by the freeway entrance with the warning "Traffic Revision Ahead." This quite naturally inspired a mental image of a giant Nielsen Hayden (your choice which one) wielding a huge blue pencil and leaving cabalistic symbols all over the tops of cars.

Re spoilers (Lee, #443, & others): 'Bones' of any series has yet to be released here in Australia, AFAIK. Perhaps if you prominently put the name right at the start of the post (with or without **SPOILER** alert, depending on the discussion), and try to put any 'comment drift' onto other topics in a separate post, we'll be able to skip over any problematic parts.

OTOH, it might be easier for writers and readers to rot13, so I leave that up to you. Just lettin' you know the situation. (I notice the 'Thoroughy spoiled Harry Potter' thread has tapered off. Suspect that Bones may not be big enough for a special spot.)

Fragano #439: Ha! I appreciate it...unfortunately, my dwelling place is Providence, not Boston. Too many syllables! Well, if you're willing to wait eight months or so (hopefully), you can change it to "New York." That works.

Serge #441: That's one of my all-time favorites!

Open question to anyone who knows anything about neuroscience: is it remotely plausible (i.e., in the context of a gory-but-serious horror movie, would the implausibility distract you) that theoretical controlled manipulation of the amygdalae could arouse a fear reaction? Or would that have to be some other part of the brain? I know the amygdalae are related to storing emotional responses, but is it in the realm of wild possibility that manipulating them could create a new emotional response?

Also, does anyone recall reading an article...crap, I can't remember where, I want to say somewhere like the New Yorker...about a rare disorder of the amygdalae that causes children to be violently self-destructive, to the point of massive injury and often death? Very, very upsetting article.

Don't worry, the hypothetical movie isn't about children destroying themselves. It's about adults destroying themselves, and I'd like it to be at least vaguely plausible.

Mez #449: Not only have the first two seasons of Bones been shown free-to-air in Australia (in Melbourne, at least), but season one is available on DVD. So, yes, spoiler alerts, please.

Interesting note: Programs have traditionally been shown on Australian TV anything from months to years after their release overseas. However, in the last few weeks, several upcoming shows have been advertised as "Streamed direct from the US". I think someone has finally noticed the Interwebs.

ethan @ 451... is it remotely plausible (...) that theoretical controlled manipulation of the amygdalae could arouse a fear reaction?

Princess Amidala and her sisters? Yeah, they do have that effect on me.

After the discuiion of CGI, and how it can look wrong, I've realised that I've been missing some key elements of how render engines can fake the look of materials.

I've been seduced by processor speed and raytracing.

Of course, the program manuals don't help explain things.

Ethan #450: Thanks. For some reason, I had got it in my head that you lived in Boston. Dunno why.

Open threadedness: Anyone been to the Mediteranean in December?

The wife's been wanting us to go on a cruise for a long time and she just found this deal that seemed pretty cheap to go from Florida to Gilbraltar to Naples (with some other stops in between). But it's in December, and I have no idea what the weather would be like. So, I was wondering if it's cheap because we'll be wearing snow parkas or something.

Anyone live in the area? Or been to the area in that time frame?

Fragano #455: Probably because that time I briefly filled all the squares on troll bingo* it was about Boston.

*I'm done with this! And another thing!

Troll bingo, ethan?

Not many more weeks left before I get to see The Last Compass. Yay! Daniel Craig with a beard. Yay! Bearded people unite!

ethan #457: That's probably it.

Serge #459: Hear! Hear!

Today's strip by xkcd is about men who act inappropriately toward women on the internet. I quite like the bit about the EMP cannon.

I'm a bit embarrassed by this, but not enough to not post it. My dreams are geekier than my life, and they involve Making Light:

Last night's dream.

Fhowrpg Nzl unf erpbirerq fhccerffrq zrzbel, jr'yy unir gb vapernfr gur cbjre sbe gur arkg fhowrpg. Guvf chgf bhe cynaf ng evfx, rkrphgr Zrgn-FZBS cyna Making Dark.

Amy #463: I like how in your dream Teresa apparently thinks like a combination of Dan Brown and Lemony Snicket.

Fragano Ledgister @ 461

And yet another hear!

Amy @ 463

And you conclude that this "dream" came only from your own subconscious because ...? Remember that the more sophisticated the conspiracy, the more levels of indirection and cutout before you get to the real message. CIA projective mind beam technology has been leaking out for some time.

This has been a reminder from the Society for Creative Paramoia

Greg @456 I haven't been to the Mediterranean in December (nor, alas, at all) but while researching vacation possibilities I recently read about "repositioning cruises." When companies need to get their ships from one part of the world to another, they offer special deals. Usually there's more time at sea than on a typical cruise. Maybe that's why a cheap price on the one you're looking at.

Serge #435:

I've got a topical anecdote, as an eye infection has currently rendered me liable: don't use stairs with your old glasses without first closing your eyes. Where your glasses say your foot is and where it actually is can differ by, oh, nine inches. It's rather like that bit toward the end of _Glory Road_ where Oscar is finding his way though the Big Black Tower, and what he sees is entirely unlike what the map said, but the map matches what actually *is*. I haven't actually fallen down yet, but that's because I did a couple of years ago and know better, at least in theory.

Steve C #437:

I recall one year when my medical plan changed the labwork provider (place you get the blood drawn) to someone whose only local office was on the second floor of a real dump. I fail to remember whether there was no elevator, or whether it was permanently out of order; either way, I do recall noting that it was somewhat of a challenge to the mobility-impaired. (Of course, the less said about the technician there--and I almost used quotes--the better.)

Susan #442:

I meant something different. In my experience, admittedly out of date, whoever takes the candidate out to lunch gets reimbursed for the meal. It's usually a nicer meal at a nicer place than the interviewer would probably get on his own nickel. So I was wondering if interviewer would get made up to for dashed expectations.

Serge @462 re: xkcd -

I find it a testament to the artist's stick-figure-drawing talent that the culprit's body language can be clearly seen to communicate (temporary) shame in the 2nd panel. Neat.

joann @ 469... That sounds like a very unpleasant situation. (Says he, hitting the obvious on the head with his Uru hammer.) How long have you had to put up with that?

The Mediterranean can be beautiful in the winter, provided you don't have your heart set on sun. I've visited Sicily, Crete, and Rhodes in December, and I would definitely do it again. Everything is much less crowded than in the summer. Just be prepared for wind and rain, including cold rain. I can't speak to the cruise aspect of it, though; I stayed on dry land.

Serge #473:

This is day three. I get evaluated on Monday. I'm getting better for ordinary work (could hardly read at all on Wednesday--catching up with ML was literally a pain) but don't *quite* trust myself to drive. And I'm putting in antibiotic eye drops at the astounding rate of every two hours--every four at night. I've worn hard contacts for 37 years (gas-permeable for the last 18), and this is the first real problem I've had.

joann @ 475... My best wishes to you for a prompt recovery. Not just because we don't want the ML experience to be a pain, of course.

Serge #476:

Thanks. Actually, it shows how I feel about ML that I was willing to try and read it under those conditions. Fortunately the glasses are kicking in, and the headaches are mostly gone, but now I'm worried about having to get re-used to the contacts, and any auxiliary brain re-wiring. Oh, well, sufficient unto the day and all that. Not to mention don't borrow trouble--the interest rate is too high.

joann @ #471 -

Oh, I see. We give them the department credit card to charge lunch. No under the table payments for fasting persons allowed. But we interview candidates at such a pace that we keep our doctors well fed. He'll have other chances.

Amy 463: That would make a good novel, except for the part where the alarm went off.

Or a really schlocky, mega-popular novel, but only if you throw in Opus Dei and a dinosaur.

ethan @451: Did you mean this article from the New Yorker (Aug. 2007)? The link only has the abstract; I'm not sure what the lag time is for the full text to be loaded into the archives.

Cleaning up the results of me being typing impaired for a couple of days:

Serge mentions, at #403, that Neal McDonough was in ST: First Contact. Indeed he was, and that may be sufficient reason to dig out the famiy copy of that movie, or buy one if we don't have it, before the mini series. It might be sufficiently shiny to distract my husband from his current viewing patterns, which consist of CSpan, TV-W (the Washington State equivalent of C-Span) and TV Land.

Steve C. @ 405 and others later, about "Nightfall:" I guess the point is less that it's Asimov's best or not-best story (I tend to prefer The Gods Themselves and Caves of Steel but that my husband, of all people, who diligently read the entire Foundation cycle, hadn't read it.

Terry Karney @409, how would you define a good vinegar, for this purpose? . I keep putting the taste of Jalapenos and various vinegars together in my mind, and finding them at odds- strangely enough, malt keeps winning over wine or cider, which goes with my preference for beer with Mexican food.

And @ 427 garter snakes also have hemipenes, as I was reminded last spring when, in the process of doing clean-up around the base of the Clematis tanguitica, I stood up and found this going on about six inches in front of me.

I'm still amazed they managed to get disentangled.

So, anyway: I managed, earlier this week, to get a blackberry thorn in the very tip of my left index finger and, about ten minutes later, a rose thorn in the corresponding position on the right. The first one was encountered when I leaned over to grab the root of a seedling blackberry plant and discovered that there was a six-inch European Brown slug wrapped around its base; my avoidance move was less than smooth. I moved on to work on training one of the rambler roses up onto the top of the pergola, and was reminded that its sparse prickles are distributed so that the ones back round the other side of the cane are placed precisely where one's fingers go to avoid the ones in front.

So, yes, it's taken me twenty minutes to type this, using my middle fingers only. Life is hard.

Julie L. #480: Yes! That's it! Thank you so much! At least now I have the name of the disorder to start poking around elsewhere.

JESR #481: Yowch!

Naples in winter is like early spring in most other places. The reason for it to be so cheap is that naples has a big garbage problem, it is not nice for tourists (sure there are things you can do but it is not like they have really given a thought to the needs of tourists), it has a pretty bad crime situation (although no worse than lots of places and I've never had a problem) as long as you are smart and don't try to fight with a thief then you'd be fine. Don't have a rolex.

It is very close to Capri, that's a tourist trap and anyway at that time of year the water is too cold to swim (although certainly not polar bear club cold), there are other less touristy islands. Ischia has a good tourist trade mainly catering to Germans - not that time of year though so I suppose things would be cheap.

That said I think it is pretty nice. My wife is Napolitan and I go some times every year.