Literary reference to problems with extensive drainage projects: Dorothy Sayers' The Nine Tailors

Posted April 27, 2008 4:34 PM by Tony Zbaraschuk

I'm reminded obliquely, as usual, that in my weekly chat (hosted on meebo) I can't mention Dick Van Dyke and have it show up as anything but **** Van ****. I wonder what meebo's more sexually adventurous chat rooms look like.

Posted April 27, 2008 5:02 PM by Kip W

@Kip: I'd imagine they've developed some weird euphemisms and dodges...full stops in the middle of words, in my experience. One forum I'm on you have to type d.ogs instead of dogs because some of the admins had a dog/cat war on the auto-censor settings on April Fools

Posted April 27, 2008 5:51 PM by Ame

A group of friends used to use one chatroom that had weird "switches" which made it somewhat amusing in that we are all aviation/aeronautics/aerospace/science fiction/convention fans.

it would change cockpit into roosterpit, then scold you with a private message saying if you swore any more you'd be booted by the system. And it was quite whimsical (another friend kept testing with all the bad or questionable words she knew and had to keep re-creating new identities).

Alas, it was hosted in the area afflicted by Katrina and we had to find another host. That isn't as picky.

Posted April 27, 2008 6:06 PM by Paula Helm Murray

On the train two days ago, I overheard a cool 71 y/o woman enthusing about Amsterdam to an 18 y/o boy with whom she had struck up a conversation. I was entertaining myself by listening in and the overall conversation was pretty cool, but I totally thought of Abi when she talked about how easy it was to get around the city.

Posted April 27, 2008 6:39 PM by Kayjayoh

There's a Dutch commercial that's been playing for the past few months which is illustrative in showcasing the attitude behind what Abi describes in her quote, our relationship with the sea and water in general. Like everything these days it's at Youtube.

Posted April 27, 2008 6:50 PM by Martin Wisse

Euphemisms and double-entendres?

Here's one from Some Like It Hot:

Sugar: [on the yacht Junior's pretending he owns] Which is the port and which is the starboard?

Junior: Well that depends. That depends on whether you're coming or going. I mean, *normally*, normally, the aft is on the other side of the stern. But - And that's the bridge, so you can get from one side of the boat to the other.

I wish I could have found the one they came up with for masturbation.

Posted April 27, 2008 7:33 PM by Serge

Wouldn't it be simpler to just run all supposedly objectionable words through a disemvoweler? At least the thought would be preserved.

Of course, when you get right down to it, auto-censoring words just because they are words, without considering context, is asinine at best and heinous, slippery-slope Big Brotherism at worst.

Posted April 27, 2008 8:06 PM by Edward Oleander

Fluorosphere author alert: I was wandering through a gently-used bookstore this afternoon and noticed a (in this instance, very tattered and worn) copy of Will Shetterley's Cats Have No Lord looking forlorn, so I bought it.

This was absolutely an "I recognize that name" purchase.

Posted April 27, 2008 8:14 PM by Linkmeister

I like Dutch street names, at least the names of streets in Paramaribo, like Rustenvredestraat (Rest and Peace Street, tricky for English-speakers who want to turn it into Rest in Peace Street) or Krommeellebogestraat (Bent Elbow Street, which is an exact description of the street -- it's a short, ell-shaped street in downtown Parbo), or Domineestraat (Preacher Street).

Posted April 27, 2008 8:28 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Re Sidelights, "What do you want--a No-Prize from the Almighty?":

It's amazing how much awesome writing TNH buries in comments. Thanks for the link to that. Might even be worth reposting on the ML main page...

Posted April 27, 2008 8:37 PM by Stephen Frug

Tangential: the drawdown of a dam-created lake is a major plot point in Sharyn McCrumb's Zombies of the Gene Pool. Unfortunately, her descriptions of that event are by far the best part of the book, which is otherwise so nasty and mean-spirited that I cannot in good conscience recommend it to anyone.

Posted April 27, 2008 10:43 PM by Lee

Request for help--if you know this, or know people who work on this, and can point to what you know is an authoritative answer*:

There was a fire in the house of someone I know.

The room that got "badly damaged" held some of their family's personal diaries, handwritten cookbooks and the like.

How would you recover information from books that could be anywhere from mildly water dampened to smoked to water-logged to charred?

It may be a few days (or longer) before the investigation is complete. But they could always ask the fire/police "can we take out that box because it has diaries that need to start [protection and/or data extraction process] now?" and perhaps the f/p will let them.

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

* Because it's people I know, I don't want to research it and potentially get sidetracked.

Posted April 27, 2008 11:46 PM by Kathryn from Sunnyvale

Stephen Frug: Yeah she has a really concise way of flaying a logical fallacy so one can see it's guts.

That's the exact issue I was going round about with Paul J. on in Darwin Fish, and she nailed it in one.

It won't work, of course, to presuade Evidence, but anyone who thinks he was at all worth paying attention to now knows him to be a fake.

Posted April 28, 2008 12:05 AM by Terry Karney

Water damage: Put into a really cold freezer. The water will, over time, sublime away.

Smoke, singeing, I don't know.

Posted April 28, 2008 12:11 AM by Terry Karney

(Continuing the discussion about bio-fuel and food riots from 105)

albatross @ 873: "The backlash that's building up against biofuels is not going to discriminate between sensible and silly ones, assuming there are sensible ones that may be developed. (You pretty much have to think of the plants used as low-cost one-season disposable solar collectors, whose production cost is paid out in terms of fertilizer and irrigation, instead of in terms of electricity and supplies and pollution from solar cell factories.) I don't know how likely it is that a sensible kind of biofuel could be developed, but we're likely to end up with a nuclear-power-style backlash/prejudice against any such fuel in the future, thanks to the current food inflation and the current boondoggles."

The difference between turning corn into fuel and turning grass (or algae) into fuel is pretty intuitive. One uses up the stuff you'd like to eat, and the other doesn't. Hopefully, it's intuitive enough that most people will be able to differentiate between them. If that's the case, the backlash might just be against food-based fuel crops, which would be really nice. A broad popular movement to reject corn-ethanol subsidies is just about the only thing I can see defeating Archer Daniel Midlands' lobbying.

The problem I see is that neither cellosic or algal ethanol production are quite there yet--they really need a couple more years and millions of dollars of research. And that, really, is exactly what the U.S. ought to be spending that subsidy money on--investing in opening up reliable, scalable, useful methods of biofuel production, not chasing a dead-end tech like corn ethanol. Yet, poor scientists and engineers don't have the same lobbying chops as ADM.

cajunfj40 @ 881: "Industrial processes are driven towards efficiency and predictability - therefore what goes in must be kept as constant as possible. Filtered WVO would vary considerably, and require more expensive constant tinkering of the processing, which is anathema to a large-scale plant."

I'm not sure that bio-fuel production ever will, or ought to be, a large-scale industry. One of the points people regularly make about fuel production is that transportation--from the source of the feedstock, and to the consumer--becomes a major cost. From that standpoint, difficulty in centralizing the process is just another reason to do the production on a much smaller, more localized scale.

Lila @ 885: "Re biofuels, I'm sure they're helping drive up food prices (as is the cost of petroleum-based fertilizer and diesel to run farm machinery and to process and transport the food), but apparently commodities speculation is also playing a big part."

I've been reading Paul Krugman on the issue, and he is pretty convinced that it isn't speculation. If there was speculation, according to him, you'd be seeing stockpiles go up as producers hoarded their product.* Apparently, that isn't happening--stockpiles are at a near-record low. It seems that what's really been driving increased prices is decreased supply (biofuel production), increased demand (rising consumption in China and India) and increased costs of production (higher gas prices).

*A possibility that I haven't heard raised is that consumers might be hoarding, and affecting prices that way. I'm not sure how you could even measure that, though.

Posted April 28, 2008 12:51 AM by heresiarch

Weird biodiesel question: Does the use of biodiesel from fry oil have any effects on people with serious allergies to the stuff being fried/used to fry? My son has a serious peanut allergy, and I always wonder if peanut oil[1] being burned in an engine would be likely to carry enough of the antigens to him to make him sick. You'd think that the high temperatures inside an engine would destroy most of the proteins from the peanuts which, I think, are the antigen that he reacts to. But I'm not sure....

[1] I've read that most peanut oil, especially the cheap stuff, is processed in a way that's unlikely to leave any of the relevant proteins in the oil, so maybe this isn't as much of a concern with peanuts, but I'm not sure how this would work for other allergies, or if occasionally you'd get a tank of oil that was genuinely dangerous for passers by.

Posted April 28, 2008 1:07 AM by albatross

Because of a strike at the Grangemouth oil refinery (in Scotland), a third of the UK's oil refining capacity is shut down, with a coupld of days each side to start and stop the plant. It's also stopped the crude oil pipeling from the Forties oilfield in the North Sea.

The government has said "Don't Panic", with the usual results.

One of the more sensible comments being made on the situation concerns the resilience of the UK's fuel production system. If one refinery complex is a third of production that's a rather large basket of eggs. And how much storage is there in the system. They can bring in tankers of refined fuel, but it takes time.

Posted April 28, 2008 2:40 AM by Dave Bell

Kathryn from Sunnyvale @ 13

Your friends should check with their contents insurers (assuming they have insurance), because they should have contact details for specialist companies who deal with this sort of thing - the ones who came out when my place got flooded were pretty good and managed to save a number of books I thought I'd lost.

Posted April 28, 2008 4:04 AM by dcb

[in passing]

Influence of British comic book artist Frank Hampson (Dan Dare) on British second modernism. We are everywhere...

Posted April 28, 2008 9:06 AM by Randolph Fritz

Blaming biofuels for food shortages would be a great disinformatics strategy for the petrochemical lobby to combat the threat to their market share.

Posted April 28, 2008 9:22 AM by Earl Cooley III

@heresiarch #873: The difference between turning corn into fuel and turning grass (or algae) into fuel is pretty intuitive.

Unfortunately, even Minnesota Public Radio lumps all biofuel production together most of the time (based on what I hear during my commute), not differentiating between food-crop based and non-food-crop based, unless they are doing a more in-depth story. Anecdotally, what I hear in conversation is that "ethanol is a boondoggle", not "corn ethanol is a boondoggle". I hope there are enough clued-in people around to correct such misinformation, but the ratio of the clued to the unclued is depressingly low even among otherwise knowledgeable individuals I interact with.

I'm not sure that bio-fuel production ever will, or ought to be, a large-scale industry.

If it is going to compete with petro-fuel, it will likely have to be. At least until the algae-fuel systems get compact enough that they can be installed on the roof and pump-island-shade of your typical roadside fueling station and produce enough to keep up with traffic. "in the middle of nowhere on the interstate" fueling stations probably have access to enough cheap land around or near their sites to make all the fuel they need, and even lay pipe to the station to avoid much of the transport costs.

@albatross #17: Weird biodiesel question: Does the use of biodiesel from fry oil have any effects on people with serious allergies to the stuff being fried/used to fry?

I've heard no anecdotal or substantial reports either way, sorry. First time I've seen it come up, actually. The only thing I have even tangentially related is a bit from a story about some guy riding a motorcycle across "uncivilized" territory, crashing it, having the motor oil leak out, and having to refill it with the only thing available - mustard oil. Apparently this cycle had some oil burning issues, as the protagonist reported with some dismay that he appeared to be producing large quantities of "mustard gas" in his exhaust. Can't find the story, don't recall the name, sorry.

@Earl Cooley III #21: Blaming biofuels for food shortages would be a great disinformatics strategy for the petrochemical lobby to combat the threat to their market share.

I think that may already be happening, based on some anecdotal commentary of people I talk to.

Later,

-cajun

Posted April 28, 2008 10:24 AM by cajunfj40

Because of a strike at the Grangemouth oil refinery (in Scotland), a third of the UK's oil refining capacity is shut down, with a coupld of days each side to start and stop the plant. It's also stopped the crude oil pipeling from the Forties oilfield in the North Sea.

The government has said "Don't Panic", with the usual results.

An on-scene account from our local correspondent, Ajay's Dad:

"The government said 'don't panic' so I didn't panic; and then I noticed that the local petrol station had run out completely. So when the tanker came through and delivered some more, I decided to panic, and went down and filled up the car. (ruminative pause) I think in future it'll be safer to panic whenever the government starts saying 'don't panic'."

Indeed.

21: it would be, but that doesn't seem to be happening. A massive amount of the US corn crop is now used for biofuel - 31% - far more than in previous years. Makes sense that this would be affecting prices. Also supply and demand side shocks - meat-eating Chinese and Indians, and expensive fuel and fertiliser.

Posted April 28, 2008 10:53 AM by ajay

Randolph Fritz @ 20... Thanks for the link. By the way, what do you think of the revived Dan Dare? I never read the original (because I never had access to it), but I'm enjoying this one, in spite of its showing that te US and China blew each other to kingdom come, and in spite of its showing Great Britain's Prime Minister to be a weakling under an evil foreign influence.

Posted April 28, 2008 10:58 AM by Serge

Garth Ennis is writing Dan Dare? WANT!

20: Nice article, but I was puzzled by its insistence that Dan Dare and the Eagle had shut up shop in 1969; I read it as a child and I'm still a good few decades away from my free bus pass...

Posted April 28, 2008 11:24 AM by ajay

Kathryn: Have them check out the disaster recovery resources here and here--they're geared toward libraries, but at least some of the techniques should be possible for individuals as well.

Posted April 28, 2008 11:36 AM by Jennifer Barber

Golly, the internets are a small place! I followed Patrick's link to Teresa's dissection of a Creationist's pleading at BoingBoing and found that one of the posters had put in a link to a picture of one of my cats. (Yes, I can diagram this sentence.)

I must note that this cat is more of a Hedonist than an Existentialist, pace the observations of another commenter.

The sight of Teresa in full dissection mode is every bit as totally awesome as the power of a fully-operational Mothership. If you haven't followed that link yet, or aren't following the thread at BoingBoing, do so.

Posted April 28, 2008 11:38 AM by fidelio

ajay @ 25... Yes, you most probably want.

The first issue shows Dare having called it quits until the Prime Minister, an incompetent who’s no Churchill and who has no sense of History, even of what the Battle of Britain was, comes begging for help. Dare of course accepts, much to the Prime Minister’s surprise.

”There’s just one thing that puzzles me, mister Dare…”

“What’s that?”

Well, not to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything, but you obviously want no part of what Britain is today – or you wouldn’t be living all the way out here, would you? So I simply don’t understand why you’re still so willing to fight for it.”

“No, Prime Minister, I don’t imagine you do.”

Posted April 28, 2008 11:43 AM by Serge

re oils and effects: I don't know about things like peanut oils, since I don't know enough about the antigens to hazard guesses on their breakdown, aeresol potential, &c.

The anectdotal evidence I can offer isn't more than that, anecdote.

In WW1 the engines of planes used castor oil (which is better than petro for lubricating, as it bears up under heat better, or so enthusiasts tell me). They also burned some of it, which the pilots breathed.

This had a purgative effect. Some of them used this as the excuse for carrying a flask of spirits; to counteract the castor oil fumes.

Posted April 28, 2008 11:52 AM by Terry Karney

Linkmeister @ #9: That was the first Shetterly book I ever read, solely because of the blurb that said he owned cats named Chaos and Brain Damage. (But it was by no means the last!)

albatross @ #17 I have never heard of any research on that point, but back in the early '80s the University of Ga. ran some of their busses on a mixture of diesel and peanut oil. They smelled like hot popcorn (therefore presumably there was some trace volatile component of peanuts still around) but I don't remember hearing of any problems, and peanut allergy's common enough that on a campus that size you'd expect to hear something.

Posted April 28, 2008 12:48 PM by Lila

Lila @ 30.. cats named Chaos and Brain Damage

Don't those names describe the two kinds of cats that live with humans?

Posted April 28, 2008 12:57 PM by Serge

Isn't it tonight that Tania will be on Jeopardy?

Posted April 28, 2008 1:17 PM by Serge

I'm hoping to leverage the fact that All Knowledge is contained in the Making Light comment threads, and especially All Knowledge about publishing.

For my website, I've taken a stab at creating a glossary of business terms related to publishing -- contract terms, production terms, etc. The kind of things it might behoove an author to know. But I know the list is incomplete both in its entries and in the definition thereof, so I thought I'd poke my head in here and say, if anybody has some time to spare, I'd be most grateful for additions, corrections, and clarifications. (F'rinstance, my current definition of "offset printing" is weak sauce incarnate.)

Posted April 28, 2008 1:37 PM by Marie Brennan

Damn it. I don't get to watch her play. I'll be babysitting with no way to get at it.

Dammn. :(

Posted April 28, 2008 1:48 PM by Terry Karney

Terry Karney @ 34... Well, I'm sure a few people will be taping Tabnia's nationwide appearance. (Yes, I still use a VCR. How quaint. How 20th Century.) By the way, did you know that Alex Trebec once appeared in an episode of X-files? As one of the Men in Black, of course.

Posted April 28, 2008 2:01 PM by Serge

There's another problem with ethanol fuel that is glossed over or just ignored by the farmer/biofuel lobby:

It's inefficient. Badly inefficient, when compared to non-biofueled gasoline. E10 is around 95% as efficient as gasoline without ethanol, which doesn't sound too bad until you realize that adds up over a year.

E85, however, is only 75% as efficient as gasoline, and since typically the price is the same for ethanol-fuel as it is gasoline, either one means you actually spend MORE for the ability to drive your vehicle.

If all ethanol is eliminated from gasoline production, though, experts estimate the price of fuel would go up about 15%, so we're screwed no matter what is done.

Throw in rising food costs, increased fuel use, fertilizer overuse and runoff, increased land use, etc, and foodcrop ethanol is a blind alley we should be backing out of ASAP.

Of course, now that the price of gas has already reached what it was predicted for summer, with Memorial Day still a month away, now the experts are warning that we may see $7-$10/gallon gas within 2-3 years. Apparently the sky's the limit!

Posted April 28, 2008 2:04 PM by John L

Lila @ #30, I just realized I misspelled his name in my original comment. Oh, the embarrassment!

I've read a few pages, but I swore I'd finish David Maraniss's Clemente before I picked up a new book. I've now done so, and its ending reminded me that this country has a genius for supporting tinpot corrupt dictators who do nothing for their people. In this case, Somoza of Nicaragua, whose diversion of aid after the 1972 earthquake in Managua so infuriated Clemente that he determined to deliver the next shipment himself. Then the plane he was on went down 8 minutes after takeoff from San Juan.

Posted April 28, 2008 2:12 PM by Linkmeister

So very don't want to get started on this, but please, can we remember (although the dinks who make "To The Point" don't seem to be able to do so) that the "Farmer/Biofuels Lobby" are a small, rich, and specialized cadre, disconnected from many if not most of the people growing food in the USA?

I'm not even drawing my usual bright line between agribusiness and small farmers struggling toward sustainable ag practices, here: the redirection of existing resources into the biofuel industry has distorted equipment, supply, feed, and seed price and availablity for everyone from egg growers to movie concession stands. There's a nationwide popcorn shortage predicted for 2008-2009, not because popcorn growers don't want to grow their usual crops, and sell them through their accustomed markets, but because corn seed growers didn't plant popcorn last year so the seed is hard to find and plant now.

Posted April 28, 2008 2:23 PM by JESR

@John L #36: There's another problem with ethanol fuel that is glossed over or just ignored by the farmer/biofuel lobby:

It's inefficient. Badly inefficient, when compared to non-biofueled gasoline.

Is that efficiency as in Miles Per Gallon (MPG) or efficiency as in Miles Per Energy Unit (MPEU for now)?

Up to about E10 or so, in a modern fuel-injected car, there's little or no penalty in terms of MPEU. A little less MPG, yes, but not much loss in actual thermal efficiency. Besides, it makes older carbureted engines emit a bit less CO and HC emissions.

E85 is a different beastie as I mentioned up-thread. So-called E85 Flex-Fuel vehicles are not optimized for E85, so they are dramatically less efficient both from a MPG and MPEU standpoint when operating on E85. Optimize the engine for E85 (Higher compression ratio to get the most out of the 105 octane, thus losing the ability to limp home on any form of readily available "plain gasoline" that maxes out at 92 octane) and your MPEU goes up, higher than it was for gasoline. MPG is still down a bit, but not nearly as bad as it was in the Flex-Fuel vehicle.

As it is, around here in MN a co-worker finds (in his Flex-Fuel Dodge/Plymouth Caravan) that his breakeven point for E85 vs. regular varies with price, and a 50-50 mix can sometimes be cheaper than using either fuel straight. About a month ago, it was a few pennies per mile cheaper to run E85 over regular, but he hasn't repeated the experiment enough times to get a good data set to be able to tell from pump numbers which is his best price alternative.

...foodcrop ethanol is a blind alley we should be backing out of ASAP.

On this we agree quite strongly. I don't like burning food. Ethanol per se isn't bad - see Brazil - but most cars won't see best efficiency on it while retaining the ability to run on gasoline.

@biofuel thread in general:

OK, I think I've repeated myself several times now, I'll stop it.

Later,

-cajun

Posted April 28, 2008 2:48 PM by cajunfj40

Ode Upon This Perl Code I Have To Update

I've vacuumed every cat in sight, and three that can't be seen

I've read the blogs of friends of folks whose friend I've never been

I've beaten thirteen clicky games, checked twice if it will rain

Oh lord, here comes the parade of cats, to be vacuumed once again!

I've analyzed twelve flamewars and invented a brand new clock

And browsed the office iTunes shares for random indy rock

I'm just about halfway prepared to deal with Perl and pain

But lord, here comes that parade of cats, to be vacuumed once again!

Posted April 28, 2008 3:14 PM by Andrew Plotkin

John L @ 36 --

When supply in inelastic, and the supply limit is reached, you can get an essentially arbitrary increase in prices, yes. This is the expected result of peak oil, which probably happened in about 2006.

The trick is to stop burning gasoline at all. There's no particular necessity to do so; we might wind up with stirling engines, or turbines, or fuel cells, or steam engines instead of the IC engines, but that's a net win.

(Ethanol or methanol with air fuel cells are pretty straightforward; they have the usual problems with poisoning the source back across the membrane, but I don't think those are insoluble for automotive applications.)

There's a lot of methane in sewage; at that point, you need a catalytic conversion into methanol, or you need liquid methane storage (good for airliners), or you need a compressor (organic natural gas). There's a fellow in Germany doing a steam-process sewage-into-oil thing, too, for getting the lubricants part of petrol-oil-lubricants.

There's a lot of ethanol in cellulose; there's been a recent cyanobacteria ethanol production breakthrough, too.

Throw in high-efficiency solar (whether photovoltaic or thermal) and really, we all ought to be just fine.

It's when one looks at the pattern of obstruction and thinks about that inelastic supply price curve upon reaching supply limits, and the United States' current government's ties to the oil industry that one can really start to wonder.

The desire to extract maximum profit before switching is going to be strong; the tendency to estimate the point at which switching becomes imperative in terms of that desire for maximum profit is very likely to put the point of switching much too far into the future, and all the agriculture in North America is effectively utterly reliant on machine traction. It's likely to get very messy if the clue isn't applied with vigor.

Posted April 28, 2008 3:24 PM by Graydon

Andrew Plotkin @ 41... Is that set to Debussy's The Perl with the Flaxen Hair?

Posted April 28, 2008 3:27 PM by Serge

heresiarch #16: Yeah, if we really believe that CO2 emissions and foreign oil dependency are problems, then you'd think we'd spend a lot of money on research for stuff like this. But then, we'd also not bother at all funding corn ethanol, because it must have been possible to realize that it could never be a substitute for oil in any meaningful sense very quickly. Our spending shows a very different set of priorities: getting elected this year is important, while solving huge potential problems[1] in 20 or 30 or 50 years is just not that big a deal to the politicians who ultimately make these decisions. Future generations can offer you only posthumous gratitude, but ADM can write you a check today.

[1] CO2 emissions, long-term dependency on oil which appears to obligate us to get into wars and topple governments and bribe allies/enemies every few years, rising social security and medicare costs which will apparently (and predictably) swallow more and more discretionary spending over time, huge problems in our educational system whose full costs won't come due for many years, etc.

Posted April 28, 2008 3:54 PM by albatross

Cajun,

Here's a link to a source discussing the E85 problem; I've noticed it driving my office's E85 vehicles long distance. The MPG is definitely lower for them than for normal gas-fueled vehicles.

http://www.indyscribe.com/transportation/update_e85_in_indiana_and_the_ethanol_myth.html

Posted April 28, 2008 4:05 PM by John L

Kathryn from Sunnyvale: seconding the previous advice to contact the insurance company; chances are good that they work with a disaster recovery company. The large companies that work with libraries & archives throw the watery books into huge freezers to freeze-dry them. But it's complicated: what kinds of paper? what kinds of ink? Different materials require different types of handling.

If you are thrown on your own devices, the home freezer method could work, but most folks don't have a lot of freezer space handy, and it takes weeks or months. Note that it must be an anti-frost or "self-defrosting" type freezer. Otherwise, fresh air and light are your best options. Lay things out on plastic sheeting, in the sun if possible. Books may stand on their bottom or top edges, pages fanned. Papers may be laid out flat, singly, anchored with some sort of non-staining weights to hold them down. If there's no breeze, try an oscillating fan. You can try layering (unprinted) newsprint or paper toweling between the pages/papers and applying light pressure to help wick out the moisture. If you have to do this indoors, run a dehumidifier in the drying area. Besides the actual water/smoke damage, mold is your greatest enemy, and sun is the best weapon against mold. I recall one source that recommended wiping the outer surfaces of the books with a rag moistened in a mild bleach/water or Lysol/water solution, but you really have to approach that with caution to avoid doing more damage to the books. Nice library-oriented site here: http://matrix.msu.edu/~disaster/

Posted April 28, 2008 4:10 PM by harthad

Serge #32: Drat, and I have a class at that time.

Posted April 28, 2008 4:45 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Fragano @ 46... Like I told Terry Karney, I am planning to tape the whole thing. By the way, in her own blog, Tania gloats that she was the tallest contestant around. So much so that they had to dig a trench where she stood. OK, I made up that last part.

Posted April 28, 2008 4:50 PM by Serge

Serge #47: I saw. Also the part where she ate Alex Trebek, moustache and all.

Posted April 28, 2008 5:07 PM by Fragano Ledgister

So we should just give up on biofuel research and development ourselves and in the future be forced to rely on foreign, imported biofuel from an "OBEC" cartel lead by Brazil?

Ah, well, I suppose we could sell them scramjets instead of Saudi Arabia after OPEC goes broke. sigh.

Posted April 28, 2008 5:41 PM by Earl Cooley III

I wanted to say that I'm having fun at BB on the Ben Stein lizard thread. I mention it here, because the ways in which my online debate and forbearance have improved in the past six years, or so, can be largely attributed to hanging out here.

So thanks to one and all.

Posted April 28, 2008 5:51 PM by Terry Karney

@John L #44:

Thanks for the link. I know I said I'd quit it, but I think I've got that XKCD syndrome...

Here is a site that shows an engine optimized for E85 has nearly identical per-BTU efficiency to a gasoline engine. You won't go as far on a tank, but that is only because E85 has less BTU's per gallon. There is no efficiency loss for E85 in an optimized engine when talking about BTU's.

Here is a site showing fuel economy increases in a MPG sense when blending 10-30% ethanol with gasoline.

Dang, it took a long time to find those links... Nobody makes an E85 only car, so few people have bothered putting studies up on the web about it. Lots of SAE and ANL "Ethanol Challenge" trucks and such, but none with MPG results, just "increased efficiency" and no numbers. SAE articles on those are behind paywalls, too. Rather frustrating.

Time to head home.

Anyone wants to talk biofuel efficiency with me after this, please hit my e-mail. I check it not very often, though, so correspondence will be slow. If at least a few of you chime in on this thread (not in e-mail) that you want more biofuel discussion in-thread, I may join back in later. I need to back off and calm down. Going home and hugging my daughter ought to help. :-)

Later,

-cajun

Posted April 28, 2008 6:06 PM by cajunfj40

Serge, others:

No spoilers, please, on Tania's appearance; I was already seven episodes behind the Tivo curve before this afternoon, and I don't see getting caught up on all of them in any huge rush.

(Took last night off and watched "The Trouble with Harry" for the nth time. I'd never noticed before what a marvelous voice Gwenn had as the Captain.)

Posted April 28, 2008 7:12 PM by joann

joann @ 52... Does this mean you don't want to be told about the part where Tania burns her competitors to little piles of ashes using her heat vision?

Posted April 28, 2008 7:40 PM by Serge

1) O Great Minds here, can anyone point me to the thread(s) back a ways that dealt with writing stereotypes to avoid? I don't know if they were under the slush pile or a bulleted list (or both, or several of both).

2) Also, how do you link to a specific post rather than the whole list?

Posted April 28, 2008 9:31 PM by Carol

Well, that sucks. Jeopardy wasn't aired here. I hope somebody else recorded it.

Posted April 28, 2008 9:41 PM by Serge

Lee@12: I had your opinion of Bimbos of the Death Sun, but I thought Zombies was realistic rather than harsh; how much material about the first fans have you read? (In Memory Yet Green, The Way the Future Was, The Futurians, . . .) They \became/ giants, but they obviously weren't easy to get along with.

Terry@29: I've heard that also -- but castor oil itself is a purgative. AFAIK, the allergenic part of peanuts is the protein, so the cases aren't parallel

Posted April 28, 2008 10:01 PM by CHip

CHip, #56: See, I saw Bimbos as being a caricature; and, like most caricatures, it exaggerates the least-flattering features of the subject. But I went thru it saying to myself, "Yeah, I know people like that... yeah, I know people like that... OMG, when did she meet my ex-roommate?!!"

Zombies was nastier IMO because it was much more explicit about the subtext of "you'll never be a happy person unless you COMPLETELY abjure fandom and everything connected with it". Even the woman who discovered her favorite author alone and suffering from Alzheimer's, and stepped in to help because there was no one else (and where would you find much of THAT attitude outside of fandom, I ask you?) was mocked as a worthless loser -- in the narrative voice, not by the other characters -- with a strong implication at the end that, now that she was free of fandom, her life might actually start to MEAN something. I kept thinking, where in McCrumb's universe is there room for me? BTW, I don't read her books any more, even though she's a fairly good writer, because she's started letting her vendetta against fandom leak over into everything else she writes. I run up against that and it bounces me right out of the story.

I guess it's the difference between humor with a mean streak and being mean seriously and for real.

Posted April 28, 2008 10:25 PM by Lee

Carol @54:

the date/time in the comment header is a link to the comment itself.

Posted April 28, 2008 10:39 PM by geekosaur

Lee, #12, I think Zombies of the Gene Pool and Bimbos of the Death Sun divide fans into opposite ends of the "like" range. I don't think they're that bad, particularly on the heels of "fans are slans," although the plots are a little wobbly.

Serge, #32, Ack! I forgot!

JESR, #38, I only have six pounds, maybe I should stock up.

Andrew, #40, LOL Great!

Carol, #44, 2) right-click on the date in the post header and then click on Copy Link Location (or whatever the Mac version is).

Posted April 28, 2008 10:41 PM by Marilee

Serge: I didn't have to hie me to the wilds, and so I saw it. We don't have a way of recording it, so I can't return the favor you offered.

And I shan't spoil it.

Posted April 28, 2008 11:03 PM by Terry Karney

On Tycho Brahe's moose: no contradiction here. The beast Europeans call elk is Alces alces, now considered the same species as the North American moose. The North American elk is Cervus elephas, more properly known as the wapiti, the same species as the red deer of Europe.

Getting a moose drunk would be an impressive feat.

Posted April 29, 2008 12:00 AM by Joe Eaton

Carol @ 54

Did you mean this post? 14-point list under "context of rejection"? If not, maybe this Marion Zimmer Bradley essay would suffice.

Posted April 29, 2008 12:55 AM by Clan

Joe @ #61:

Would you say that getting a moose (A. alces) drunk was more or less difficult than getting the A. alces high?

Posted April 29, 2008 1:04 AM by Paul A.

Lee @ 57:

I also found some of the characters in Bimbos surprisingly familiar, almost in a "Has the author been to Oslo in Norway?" way. I also think you're right about the caricature aspect. I've seen similar complaints about a comic book about gamers that I read, Knights of the Dinner Table, but then, they are supposed to embody negative aspects of gaming.

I did sometimes feel that the author rather harped on the theme that the big name fans at the con were nobodies in the outside world, as I do know people who have been active in fandom who have made decent careers.

(There is, by the way, a scene in Bimbos in which the author seems to address such criticism. The English professor complains to her boyfriend, the author/engineer, about gifted people who fail their exams because they've been to busy roleplaying, etc. He then answers that "not everybody has a tenure-track mind", or something like that.)

Posted April 29, 2008 5:12 AM by Per Chr. J.

I definitely had the feeling, with both Bimbos and Zombies, that the characters were people I might meet (and sometimes hope not to) within a fannish environment.

But, after seeing a couple of her other books, I could see a pattern of mockery which went beyond caricatures and stereotypes. A convention, or a bunch of reenactors, or any other group with a connection beyond the usual conventions of suburban sitcom America, seems to be fair game. Structurally, for a murder mystery, there may be the purpose of setting up a closed group--an equivalent of the country-house party--but her pattern goes beyond that.

Posted April 29, 2008 7:31 AM by Dave Bell

A few of us, when I was living in Toronto, were amused by Bimbos having a fan from Canada named, of all things, Diefenbaker.

Posted April 29, 2008 7:44 AM by Serge

cajunfj40 @ 22: "Unfortunately, even Minnesota Public Radio lumps all biofuel production together most of the time (based on what I hear during my commute), not differentiating between food-crop based and non-food-crop based, unless they are doing a more in-depth story."

That's unfortunate. Well, we'll do what we can, I guess.

"If it is going to compete with petro-fuel, it will likely have to be [a large-scale industry]."

Sorry, I think I was being unclear. By "a large-scale industry" I mean a centralized, highly unified industry, dominated by a small number of large producers. I think that bio-fuel can compete with petro-fuel in terms of raw production without adopting a similarly rigid model. I see a number of very small, very local enterprises in the place of a few huge refineries run by equally huge companies. With petro-fuel there are a number of factors that make high degrees of centralization more efficient: transporation, refining, huge inital costs in machinery and surveying, etc. With bio-fuel, the incentives are in favor of smaller, more local and more agile enterprises.

Graydon @ 41: "The desire to extract maximum profit before switching is going to be strong; the tendency to estimate the point at which switching becomes imperative in terms of that desire for maximum profit is very likely to put the point of switching much too far into the future,"

That's exactly what I was saying to a friend not five hours ago. The gas crunch is going to be incredibly profitable for oil companies. The incentive to delay for as long as possible, and squeeze out every last penny of profit is going to place them in direction opposition to efforts to diversify our fuel sources.

Posted April 29, 2008 8:25 AM by heresiarch

We know that some biofuel processes--fermentation and distilling, for instance--can be done at a local level. But an internal combustion engine doesn't care what the fuel tastes like.

Posted April 29, 2008 8:46 AM by Dave Bell

I liked Bimbos and found Zombies too sad and bitter. A lot of the characters in the former were very much like people I knew in the SCA. I also liked McCrumb when I saw her at a reading; she pretty much abjured both books in an "I don't like to talk about that primitive phase of my career" kind of way.

I read one of her murder mysteries, and although it was well crafted none of the characters grabbed me (a problem I have with nearly all mysteries).

Posted April 29, 2008 9:08 AM by Lila

Thanks for the links on good writing (or not!) and the clear instructions on how to link to specific posts.

Posted April 29, 2008 9:27 AM by Carol

#63 ::: Paul A.

Joe @ #61:

Would you say that getting a moose (A. alces) drunk was more or less difficult than getting the A. alces high?

Hot air balloon? Zeppelin? Getting it drunk definitely sounds easier.

As I now have a grasp of deer/red deer/elk/moose, may we now clear up the difference between caribou and reindeer? I don't care what Wiki says unless someone here vets it...

Posted April 29, 2008 9:32 AM by Carol

heresiarch #67: Given the realities of government, though, that probably means we need to either get biofuels that aren't subsidized, or ones whose subsidy program/research grant/etc. is very simple and uniformly available to everyone. Because if there are ten $10M grants available for doing it, your mom-and-pop producers will definitely not be getting those, but ADM and major universities will.

IM(rather uninformed)O, one of the best subsidies possible is to waive the road taxes on biofuels while they're still a small fraction of the market. This gives them a noticeable price advantage that can support growth of a bigger biofuels industry in whatever form makes sense, without requiring Washington contacts and a large legal department to get the benefits of the program. Even better, it's self-limiting--if the biofuel programs simply can't come close to competing on cost/efficiency with fossil fuels, the small benefit won't help. (Now, to convince John McCain that he should propose this instead of just waiving all the gas taxes. Though I don't suppose waiving gas taxes for the summer is much stupider or more obvious pandering than just sending everyone a check for economic stimulus purposes, in a way that just happens to arrive a few months before a hotly contested election.)

That won't work with stuff that's still way off in research land, and I doubt we can do enormously better than standard research grants for that. We can and should also offer prizes for well-defined successes--that always seems like a low-cost clever way to get people doing research--but I doubt that can ever really be a substitute for research grants that, for all their messiness and waste, actually do fund real, live researchers (grad students, postdocs, academics) who spend time on the desired problem because success will lead them to graduate, get a good job, get tenure, rise in the hierarchy of their field, etc.

Posted April 29, 2008 9:50 AM by albatross

I don't think the Mekon has ever heard of HMS Jervis Bay

Posted April 29, 2008 10:29 AM by Dave Bell

I'm with Marilee (59) on the Bimbos/Zombies issue. Bimbos of the Death Sun always struck me as a wryly affectionate look at fandom and its excesses. (If you think Bimbos is mean about fandom, I can tell you that there are other mysteries out there that are *much* worse.) YMMobviouslyV.

Posted April 29, 2008 10:33 AM by Mary Aileen

Marilee @ 59... Mary Aileen @ 74... I feel pretty much the same way about the two books. In the outsiders-looking-in-and-seeing-only-weirdness dept, my strangest example would be the episode of Wonder Woman where she winds up at an SF convention, with everybody in costume. One thing that's strange is that WonderWoman herself looks at the costumes as being weird. One really strange thing is that nobody at the con notices her.

Posted April 29, 2008 10:51 AM by Serge

In a more indirect tie to the sidelights, related to the evolving lizards, there was an article in yesterday's Boston Globe about a scientist at Brown University, Casey Dunn, who is using comparative DNA of the entire genome to get a more accurate picture of who and what came first, evolutionarily speaking.

It's called the The Tree of Life Project, and it's got some pretty neat stuff

Posted April 29, 2008 10:52 AM by Pedantic Peasant

Eliminating summer gas taxes is an incredibly stupid idea; not only does it only reduce the cost of a gallon of gas by about $0.20, it cripples the ability of states to continue needed highway construction projects. That Federal gas tax funds anywhere from 50% to 90% of highway construction, and the summer months would represent over a quarter of the annual revenue the states would get for that purpose.

Unfortunately, stupidity appears to be contagious. Not only is McCain's proposal appearing to get traction in Congress, now my state's legislators are thinking it is a good idea to eliminate the state gas tax too this summer. As if dropping about 30% of Federal highway money from the budget isn't enough, now they want to eliminate that much again from the state funds too?

Posted April 29, 2008 10:57 AM by John L

Serge #53, #55:

Right, that was the part about which I did not want to hear, which anyway may or may not be apocryphal given that you didn't actually see it.

I'll let you know what happened in a week or so, when I get round to that episode, assuming that certain issues between the Tivo, the second cable box, and the main HD cable box, seemingly involving a repeater repeating that which it should not, remain resolved.

Posted April 29, 2008 12:14 PM by joann

joann @ 78... may or may not be apocryphal given that you didn't actually see it

Considering Tania's relationship with the Green Lantern Corps, her incineration of the competition IS a distinct possibility. Still, had that happened, I suppose that it'd have made it on Fox News as proof that Liberals are evil. Meanwhile, I'm still mad at myself for foolishly trusting the TV Guide over the show's broadcast times.

Posted April 29, 2008 12:28 PM by Serge

I used my DVR to record Tania's Jeopardy appearance, but I'm not sure if I have the ability to record that recording onto a sharable medium. It's new tech for me. Any ideas?

Posted April 29, 2008 12:41 PM by kouredios

kouredios @ 80... I do hope someone can help you figure this out.

Posted April 29, 2008 1:15 PM by Serge

kouredios #80:

It can be done, but it's multi-step and requires some home networking, although I think you should already have it.

Posted April 29, 2008 1:35 PM by joann

Marilee, the ones who should really worry about popcorn price and availability are the big movie-makers. The sad truth of the multiplex is that ticket prices barely cover the rental cost of films. The money to pay the young people in the maroon polyester polo shirts who point to the theater doors and clean the bathrooms, land rental, electricity to run the projectors, and so on, comes from the obscene prices at the concession stand- and people smuggle in candy and drinks all the time, leaving popcorn as the critical commodity for the movie-house's profitability. The movie distribution companies may well find themselves with a shrinking pool of places to distribute films, with marginal theaters driven out of business by having nothing to sell to keep the doors open.

Serge and others, re Tania's appearance on Jeopardy: she has balanced out My Cousin The Berkeley Professor, who needed two boxes to get up to camera height.

Posted April 29, 2008 4:01 PM by JESR

joann @82. Hrm. It's not a Tivo, but a generic DVR provided by the cable company. So the Tivo software won't work, methinks. I might be able to experiment tonight and figure it out somehow, though. I haven't yet really explored all the ports in the box.

Posted April 29, 2008 4:08 PM by kouredios

#83: I once read that a movie theater, to the owners, is a snack stand with a large, dark seating area.

Posted April 29, 2008 4:10 PM by Stefan Jones

Stefan Jones, that's pretty much what my son's multiplex employee training amounted to- the necessity of selling the popcorn, keeping the popcorn available, never letting the concession stand run out of popcorn, and so on, was emphasized more than, say, making sure unaccompanied young 'uns didn't sneak into R rated movies.

Posted April 29, 2008 4:18 PM by JESR

JESR @ 86... That might explain the time my wife and I went to see del Toro's The Orphanage. The row ahead of us had two young women with two very young kids. Unsurprisingly, they didn't stay thru the whole movie.

Posted April 29, 2008 4:29 PM by Serge

#87: But did they finish their popcorn?

Movie popcorn in particular is horribly, horribly expensive.

Posted April 29, 2008 4:37 PM by Stefan Jones

My mother remembers in the 1950s when they drew down the Croton Reservoir, to repair the dam.

Seeing the trees and houses reemerge from the lake bed was rather creepy.

Posted April 29, 2008 4:43 PM by Jon Baker

Stefan Jones @ 88... If they finished the popcorn, they must have done it fast because it didn't take them long to realize this wasn't going to be Little Orphan Annie.

Posted April 29, 2008 4:48 PM by Serge

There's a theater (for lack of a better term) here in Atlanta that is essentially a restaurant with movie screens. I haven't been there yet, and can't recall the name, so I don't know how well it actually works, but it strikes me as a fairly good model for them to move to if the kinks can be worked out.

Posted April 29, 2008 5:13 PM by R. M. Koske

R.M.Koske #91:

At a guess, that would be the Alamo Draft House, which started here in Austin any number of years back and has recently gone all chain-franchise-splodey. It seems to work good enough, with some highly creative movie/food pairings, although I'm somewhat stonkered by the announcement that the downtown one (recently moved to the Sixth Street college drunk district) is getting a mixed drinks license.

Posted April 29, 2008 5:22 PM by joann

kouredios #84:

Does your DVR's manufacurer have a website?

Posted April 29, 2008 5:24 PM by joann

Please, oh gracious hosts, can the preview software have a 10-second timeout before we're even allowed to punch the "post" button? Honestly, I do know how to spell "manufacturer", but I didn't notice what I'd done to it until just after I'd hit "post".

Posted April 29, 2008 5:26 PM by joann

John..

Don't get me started, McCain is invading my work place on Friday...no one knows what to do between threats and news fiasco's (they're reporting that this is an open un-ticketed event, or that there is tickets or that you need to call some one to rsvp but you don't need confirmation or that the event starts at 10 (it does) lasts all day (ah no) and everyone should be here by 8 (eek).

And why? Because wants the Jewish vote and because he has a bad health care plan.

Posted April 29, 2008 5:41 PM by Michelle

About portrayals in mystery stories...

I remember a friend who complained about all kinds of subgroups getting such a negative treatment in thrillers and mysteries. Then he thought about it agian, realising that after all the point in thrillers is that all kinds of environments turn out to be havens for evildoers.

Some of the most negative portrayals of fans I've read are part of the novel He Walked Among Us by Norman Spinrad (only available as a download from the author's web page, but published in book form in German translation, as Die Transformation). But again, I recognise some of the negative fannish traits that the caricatures are based on.

Posted April 29, 2008 6:06 PM by Per Chr. J.

Dave Bell @73 said (in total)

“I don't think the Mekon has ever heard of HMS Jervis Bay”

Jon @89, reminds me of stories about Adaminaby re-emerging from Lake Eucumbene with the drought.

Posted April 29, 2008 6:54 PM by Epacris

Epacris @ 97... That's a reference to the Dan Dare comic-book revival.

Posted April 29, 2008 7:03 PM by Serge

Oops, forgot to ask Lila (@69), who has a problem with mystery stories, if she's looked at Jo Walton's Farthing?

Posted April 29, 2008 7:17 PM by Epacris

Dr Albert Hoffman, the discoverer/inventor of LSD-25 has gone on the ultimate trip at the age of 102.

Posted April 29, 2008 7:36 PM by Fragano Ledgister

old spam on an old thread

Posted April 29, 2008 8:42 PM by Mary Aileen points to old, undeleted spam

joann @93:

It's this one. I've been poking around, and it sounds like it's relatively easy to plug a VCR into it. Of course, our only VCR is built into a TV on another floor. Maybe I should just film the TV and upload it. :D

Posted April 29, 2008 9:21 PM by kouredios

Thanks, Serge, that at least gives a bit of a clue. Sorry I missed your reply in my hurry.

Posted April 29, 2008 9:23 PM by Epacris

Fragano @100, thanks for the pointer, but something odd happened to the link. Try this version, which I hope works better.

And I'm leaving RSN, honest. I see sunlight, if not warmth, out there. It's not going to last that long into winter, which is wrapping its long, chilling fingers around us early this year.

Posted April 29, 2008 9:36 PM by Epacris

Lila@69: Interesting. Certainly her mysteries from that time are more like accumulated bitchery than interesting stories; maybe some people have bad stories (or moods) to get out of their system, not just bad prose. The more recent work, especially the folk-song series (mysteries well into the Appalachians, all titled by traditional songs) has more heart and substance. And there's one not-just-mystery about stock car fans that actually made it sound interesting.

JESR@83: Perhaps that balance of income is why theaters are becoming larger (more seats \and/ more screens), which in turn supports more extensive food; IIRC, both of the megaplexes inside Boston city limits offer individual pizza cooked to order (pretty good if you don't mind almost--deep-dish), hot dogs, ice cream sundaes, and other foods that don't travel well. And the "juke box" (you have to see the facade) in the suburbs has an actual restaurant almost at one end, next to the luxury theater (big seats, free snacks, I forget how much more it costs).

Posted April 29, 2008 9:50 PM by CHip

Epacris @ 103... No problem at all.

Speaking of the revival/reimagining of older stories, some people took notice of what was done with Doctor Who and Galactica and is working on Blake's 7.

Posted April 29, 2008 10:11 PM by Serge

There's a mystery author I've read whose name doesn't spring to mind offhand* who is rather entertaining because of the unconscious subtext of her novels. She's very overt in her politics, saying that, for example, this particular group of rural types is benighted because they believe in certain things, those poor ignorant souls. Yet her apparently enlightened protagonists have pretty terrible lives— aside from the shocking events that happen in the novels, they're just not happy. That's stated explicitly and implied through their thoughts and actions.

It's pretty hilarious, since the author seems to be completely unconscious of the fact that the lifestyle and thought processes she's arguing for are also being strongly discouraged in her own text.

*Most mystery novels are, in my mind, "popcorn." Fun and not too filling.

One more thought: the topic of cellulose ethanol came up the other day, and my mom had one word: "Kudzu."

Posted April 29, 2008 10:24 PM by B. Durbin

Would someone in the Fluorosphere be able to explain this catchphrase which has always baffled me: "A cauliflower is just a cabbage with a college education."

Posted April 29, 2008 11:18 PM by Allan Beatty

Michelle @ 95:

Speaking of a bad health care plan ...

I found this disturbing.

http://www.groupnewsblog.net/2008/04/sci-fi-author-larry-niven-wants-to-kill.html

The comment thread reflects my reaction: "Larry Niven? WTF?"

Posted April 30, 2008 1:03 AM by cherish

CHip, #105: It was finding the anti-fandom vendetta in one of the Appalachian mysteries (The Ballad of Frankie Something-or-other) that made me take her off my list altogether.

Posted April 30, 2008 1:16 AM by Lee

heresiarch @ 57

That's exactly what I was saying to a friend not five hours ago. The gas crunch is going to be incredibly profitable for oil companies. The incentive to delay for as long as possible, and squeeze out every last penny of profit is going to place them in direction opposition to efforts to diversify our fuel sources.

I'd say the peptalk our Petro-President gave this morning was undead proof of that. He was pushing increasing oil production (open up ANWR, which of course can't start producing for 5 to 10 years) and building more refining capacity (despite that we're using less capacity than at this time last year). And, of course, we're not in a recession, so run right out and drive as much as you can.

Will no one rid me of this turbulent president?

Posted April 30, 2008 2:03 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

John L @ 77

Unfortunately, stupidity appears to be contagious. Not only is McCain's proposal appearing to get traction in Congress, now my state's legislators are thinking it is a good idea to eliminate the state gas tax too this summer. As if dropping about 30% of Federal highway money from the budget isn't enough, now they want to eliminate that much again from the state funds too?

And every economist and his pet pig are on the air these days talking about how limits on supply will just cause the price to go right back up, so instead of subsidizing infrastructure maintenance, we'll be subsidizing the oil company profits. I'm not sure that prices are that inelastic, but I suspect the oil companies are eager to prove the economists right. The pigs have not yet sung.

I've now heard two oil industry analysts who say that the current spike in prices has nothing to with either supply or demand; it's the result of an influx of $250 Billion into the oil futures market. Guess which way they're betting on the price going?

Posted April 30, 2008 2:13 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

As Dubjay suggests, I've just poured a glass of wine in celebration of Jack Williamson's 100th birthday. Please join me in a toast to the man who had a huge sense of wonder, and kept it shining bright for longer than just about anyone else.

Posted April 30, 2008 2:18 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Lila, #69, I like McCrumb's Appalachian Ballad mysteries, at least partly because I live close to that area and like it.

Allan, #108, a cauliflower is a cabbage, so by giving it a special name, instead of cabbage, you're elevating it. (Of course, all cabbages have special names, so the saying is kind of silly.)

Posted April 30, 2008 2:41 AM by Marilee

Hm, so Jack Williamson was born 60 years and one day before I was? I never knew that.

Posted April 30, 2008 2:55 AM by David Goldfarb

Would someone in the Fluorosphere be able to explain this catchphrase which has always baffled me: "A cauliflower is just a cabbage with a college education."

I would assume it's one or both of:

a) a cauliflower looks basically like a cabbage with its heart replaced by a large brain, implying it's more intelligent

b) a cauli is just a fancy form of cabbage

Posted April 30, 2008 5:03 AM by ajay

David @115,

I can say you don't look a day over 40.

And Happy Birthday

Posted April 30, 2008 5:21 AM by Kathryn from Sunnyvale

David Goldfarb #115: Felicitous natal anniversary to you.

Posted April 30, 2008 6:26 AM by Fragano Ledgister

On an Internet road newsgroup I participate in, I posted an article several weeks ago with gas experts predicting $4/gallon gas before summer got here. I was roundly derided for posting "chicken little" news stories, no way would the prices rise that fast, etc.

California currently has $4/gallon gas.

A week or so ago I posted another article with fuel pricing experts predicting that gas may max out over $5/gallon within 2 years. More derision, etc, etc.

Now there are fuel experts claiming that's too low, we could be seeing $7-$10/gallon gas within 2 years. Personally, if gas hits those heights, I'll be riding a mo-ped to work (6 miles away), and my wife will quit working altogether (45 mile commute) or telecommute full time. I don't think it will go that high, actually; I think the economy will fall apart way before we get to $7/gallon gas...

Posted April 30, 2008 7:14 AM by John L

Woowoo. The Patrick Stewart Macbeth has transferred to Broadway and there are still good seats available! For Saturday night! Now I have two of them. And any other theater nuts in the NYC area (are there any on ML?) ought to get some of the others and we could all meet in the lobby at intermission. 'Cause it's a really good production.

Posted April 30, 2008 7:15 AM by Susan

Bruce Cohen (Speaker to Managers) #111: The resident of the White House's press conference yesterday is one more bit of evidence that nobody in the Republican Party has the least understanding of the science of political economy.* The rumbling you are feeling is the collective turning over in the grave of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Maynard Keynes, and John Stuart Mill. Karl Marx can be heard snorting in the background.

*Hillary Clinton's eagerness to join in the stupidity is disheartening.

Posted April 30, 2008 7:27 AM by Fragano Ledgister

Way back at comment 22, Cajunfj40 wrote "even Minnesota public radio lumps all biofuel production together," not distinguishing between problematic food-based kinds and less problematic kinds from waste materials. That suggests some expectation that public radio would be more discerning than commercially subsidized news or commentary. My local public radio station has Arthur Daniels Midland as a major underwriter, so I suspect they have a strong incentive to lump "biofuels from corn" with "biofuels from other materials," and even to call corn-based biofuels by vaguely friendly terms like "alternative energy sources."

Posted April 30, 2008 7:42 AM by Adrian

ADM has recently gone on the offensive to defend grain ethanol production, claiming they aren't the reason why food prices are skyrocketing, and that i