4 + 8 + 15 + 16 + 23 + 42 = 108

You're welcome.

Third!

This reminds me that I still want to read the 14th century Chinese epic The Water Margin, all about 108 reincarnated demon heroes called The Stars of Destiny. I wonder how an epic can effectively be about 108 people. I'm very fond of the bits of the story I know, and I enjoy the Suikoden games based roughly around the conceit.

I became aware of the number 108 during the Japanese New Year, when they ring the temple bells 108 times at midnight, enumerating either the sins of the world or the earthly desires, depending on who you ask and who is translating.

For so many things, we thank you Xopher.

(and I am getting strange error messages Got an error: Bad ObjectDriver config: Connection error: Too many connections)

I just find multiples of nine beautiful in their own right.

All thanks, too, to Xopher.

3^3 * 2^2 = 108. Nifty little number, that.

Somebody come up with interesting discourse that will run to 500 replies. The Dude is due any day now, and in practice that means lots of boredom. Espeically as he may well come late.

Though looking at the forecast, he may as well come in the next few days as we're supposed to have 100º temperatures, thank you very much. What's the good of avoiding being pregnant in the summer if the summer comes to you?

(This is what as known as "late pregnancy snarkiness." Tired, not sleeping well, weigh too bloody much, mouth tastes like cabbage crawled in and died, oh yes, this is the bit that's supposed to make us grateful for the pain that ends it.)

"And so my will was moved by that Love which moves the sun and the other stars."

How many of you got all the way to the end?

Anyone who has not been where B Durbin is right now: imagine having a Christmas turkey strapped to your front while you suffer the effects of a hangover. You are allowed to imagine taking painkillers for the headache, but you still have the dragging feeling all the time. And the huge extra weight and bulk.

Got that?

Great, now hold still while I kick you right in the small of the back to induce backache.

Now you know what she's feeling.

abi: Having a sympathetic flashback?

Terry: I suspect a number of us are. Hang in there, B. Durbin!

Terry @10:
Sympathetic in all senses of the word. It's a difficult time, physically.

And yes, I can almost see the jigsaw puzzle I was doing in January of 2004, of the Hagia Sofia in 1980's Istanbul.

Thirteenth!

Ooh, weirdness. SciFi is showing Fahrenheit 451, and they just showed the scene where the Book Lady is burned with her books. As the flamethrower is turned on her, she recites, "nine times eleven is ninety-nine, nine times twelve is one hundred and eight..."

B. Durbin, I don't know about interesting discourse, but I've been wondering
< lazyweb>
what would it be like, should the US (or world) slip into the Great Depression II? I mean, qualitatively like, what will it feel like? I've been poor before, but would it be like everyone being poor? Does it feel like the difference between rich and poor gets smaller, or does it feel bigger? Do many people freak out and commit suicide, or is that just newspaper-selling hype? Is making your own ketchup a hardship, or just a cognitive shock when you realize you can't afford it anymore?
</lazyweb>

I'm asking all this, because I know where to go to get doom and gloom financial scenarios, and stockpile rice and guns coping strategies, but you (plural) seem to be my best hope for insight on what people actually do, and how they actually think in chronic problem situations.

Should I skip describing the doom and gloom scenarios that make me want to ask the question?

don 15: Please skip them. We can find them if we need them. And we don't.

The dodecahedron was the basis of a Rubik's Cube-like puzzle, called the Megaminx. There is also a 4-dimensional analogue of the dodecahedron, called the "120-cell" -- and someone just released a program to let you play with the 4D Megaminx.

This reminds me that I still want to read the 14th century Chinese epic The Water Margin, all about 108 reincarnated demon heroes called The Stars of Destiny. I wonder how an epic can effectively be about 108 people. I'm very fond of the bits of the story I know, and I enjoy the Suikoden games based roughly around the conceit.

I've only read bits of The Water Margin myself, but based on other experience I'd venture to guess that a lot of those 108 heroes will show up for a few scenes, then leave, without necessarily having any subplots involving them wrapped up.

I share don@15's interest.

I know a few people who seem to be planning for a post-oil future of bucolic subsistence farms, which seems not entirely correct--cities have been economically useful before we started burning fossil fuels so I expect they'll continue to be useful after. But of course as a city-dweller with a brown thumb I have a vested interest in believing that.

Is there a macroeconomist in the house?

Nine is the number of my orisha = santo.

Important number in my life.

Love, C.

Dan @ 18

The (probably) full-length translations I was looking at earlier today run four volumes each - lots of space for that many characters. (It shows up as The Water Margin or as The Three Kingdoms.)

The Water Margin/Outlaws of the Marsh has a very interesting structure. The story will follow one character for a while until he intersects with another, then goes off following the second character until he meets another, and so on, eventually looping back around to meet up with the earlier ones. It's quite effective, although it does drag a bit toward the end of the book.

The last time I read it I found myself laughing uncontrollably at the "Flowery Monk" passages. This book also contains the episode from which the Golden Lotus/Jin Ping Mei is spun off, which is another topic entirely.

Another version: Outlaws of the Marsh

Are margin and marsh, indeed, the same word?

Just like verge is actually a strip of grass on the edge of something.

"It was there on the marge of Lake LaBarge,
I cremated Sam McGee"
says a poem by Robert W. Service

Dammit, Jim, I'm an English techer, not a mathematician! 10-8-6-4-2 is the best I can do ...

On the other hands, friends:

I held my tongue the last time, being from New England, even if I wouldn't know football from Martian gaen-gai, but does anyone else think Arlen Specter's obsession with the Patriot's video taping scandal is a little nuts?

I mean, c'mon, three questions:

1) Is the filming of team signals and possible subsequent destruction of these tapes really more important and more deserving than, say, I don't know, the filming of the waterboarding and "possible" torture of US "detainees" and subsequent destruction of those tapes?

2) He's going to open an independent investigation because this scandal is equivalent to steroid use? So he's saying ALL teams, or at least many, have been doing it, and he wants to catch and punish all of them?

3) What is the deal here? Does it seem to anyone else like he maybe bet heavy on his team and lost, and now wants to get even or something?

*waves* at Seth Gordon, 19, who asked,
Is there a macroeconomist in the house?

Now, this is Making Light, so I'm assuming that any minute someone will chime in with...

ahem
I am the very model of a modern macro-economist,
I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I know the sheiks of commerce, and I quote the shares historical
From Marathon to Standard Oil, in order categorical;
I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse!
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse!

B. Durbin - You're scaring me. I'm still 6 weeks out, and while I am already experiencing waking every time I need to roll over because somehow I can't do that in my sleep anymore, the mouth that tastes like dead cabbage is a symptom I've not heard of before. (Yes, this is my first, why do you ask?)

What would really suck about a Great Depression II is that in 2040 our grandkids would have to suffer through ten seasons of The Waltons: Generation Y.

EClaire @ 27... the mouth that tastes like dead cabbage

Ewwww...

abi @ 9 : Don't forget that the Thanksgiving turkey is also KICKING you at random intervals, sometimes hard enough to bruise ribs.

And there's a bocce ball resting on your bladder.

There is a reason I only have the one daughter.

pedantic peasant #25: What kind of, ahem, techer are you?

Fragano @ 31

One who just completed a graduate class whose major papers all coincided with the reporting dates for classroom grades at work.

A side effect of which is apparently poor typing and partial blindness.

Addressing what it would feel like if everyone around me were also poor... well. Isn't that what fiction is for?

Of course, I'm thinking of children's literature right now, and while some books managed to give a fairly vivid picture of what daily life was like in the Great Depression, I'm not sure that those sources are going to help. The people in those books have an almost unrecognizable outlook, even though they're the age of my eldest uncles, or my grandparents.

For one thing, so many of them are actively religious. Most of the people around me are NOT, and the ones who are don't reflect the uncritical acceptance of religious frameworks that the people in the books do. That's a HUGE change.

And of course the Net. Even if I'm no longer able to afford access at my house, there's the public library, and cafes with wifi where, if I can afford a cup of coffee, I can get online, as long as this laptop keeps working. It's not the same experience as everyone sitting around the radio.

Travel might get harder.

Food -- so far I haven't been as heavily affected by rising food prices as some people I know. Cooking mostly vegetarian has insulated me. And I know how to cook even more economically than I do now.

Backyard container gardens might happen. I'm not very good at them, but I could read up and try to do better.

The CSA membership is DEFINITELY happening next season.

I hope not to be significantly unemployed -- I'm a baker, and it's my guess that while people will cut BACK on their luxury foods, there are still going to be people who buy a morning scone, and people will still have weddings, even if they're smaller.

I don't know. I really don't.

Abi, I just bought a bunch of bookbinding supplies. I may make a mess of it, but you make it sound like so much fun.

Hmm - I can't relate that back to 108 in any way; I didn't spend quite that much. But I'm posting it anyway because I'm really excited!

RE Great Depression II, I'm getting the same whiff of Fear for Sale that I sensed leading up to Y2K, and a few years ago when a Bird Flu pandemic was just around the corner, and a few years before that when an Ebola breakout was bound to happen.

Yes, we could be in for tough times, but they're not a) inevitable, b) inevitably worst case, and almost certainly not c) best addressed by stocking up on rice and guns.

Me, I've been buying lots of nonperishable food lately, as coupons and sales allow . . . to bring to the food bank.

pedantic peasant #32: Happens to all of us at some time or other. I just had to deal with a bad case of 'I didn't plagiarise, I just turned in the wrong paper'* to which my only response was to hang up the phone (having explained that I'd turned in the paperwork on the case to the appropriate dean and there was nothing I could do to recall it) after saying for the third time that I resented being told blatant lies.

*Lifted straight off the Stanford Philosophy web page on Aristotle. Google is a technology unknown to those over thirty, it seems.

Rikibeth #33: I take it by CSA you do not mean the Caribbean Studies Association.

My parents lived through the Depression (my father was ten in 1929, my mother, one) and its aftermath (Spain in the 1940s, especially after World War II was even worse off than during the the Depression). Penny pinching was first nature to them, and the stories of hardship they told were heartrending (granted, the stories my father told were of growing up in a British colony in the West Indies, so they were about endemic poverty made even worse by the Great Depression).

Fragano @ 36

Yeah,

The English department in my school is having a debate over appropriateness and accessability of Cliff and related Notes.

In the middle of this I have three students in mid-level classes turn in what are supposed to be analytical research papers, using on-line Spark Notes as a critical source.

On the plus side (sort of) at least they did cite them correctly ....

I grew up in a world filled with people for whom the Depression was the most real thing still in their lives, no matter how old they were / are / became, no matter World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, etc.

I was brought up to live as though we were in the Depression. It never let my older relatives go, any more than my mother ever was able to let it go either, despite her being of another generation.

These are people who stayed where they were, in the communities they were in -- this was mostly rural -- and were still there. And yes, religion was a very large part of it.

This is why I never have fit in anywhere except Cuba. I was brought up in a culture and perspective that the rest of the nation had moved beyond even a generation or two before I was born.

Love, C.

pedantic peasant #38: Because copying is the same thing as thinking, of course... The worst case I've heard of was one at another institution where a student thought he'd be clever, and found what he thought was an obscure journal and copied almost a whole article for a term paper. He forgot to notice that the author of the article was the instructor of the course. What made it worse, said the instructor to me, was that he (the instructor that is) no longer took the position he had held when he wrote the article.

Fragano #37: Community Supported Agriculture. I've belonged to a CSA farm before, and I've enjoyed it -- I didn't sign up in time this year.

My parents were born in the Depression; my wife's parents grew up during the Depression. It hit them in different ways-- in my side of the family, the economic downturn did in the family business; in my wife's family, the big hit was the Dust Bowl drought on their farm, where literally no rain fell for years at a time.

It had a big influence on the way our families managed their affairs, and a fair bit of that ethic was passed on to us. So we both have a natural tendency to want to save for harder times, to avoid unnecessary debt (and to pay off any debt we do incur as fast as we can), to limit our consumption, and to invest heavily in education for our kids. There are certainly countervailing tendencies on both our parts, but we still tend to be on the frugal side of the median in most areas.

So far, in part thanks to those practices, and in part thanks to fairly stable employment situations, we haven't been hit hard directly by the current economic turmoil. Though if stagflation settles in, as we've been seeing signs for in the short term at least, that'll hurt us along with everyone else. We remember the 1970s too.

One thing that's a bit chilling to us is that we're also seeing a replay of the Depression-era climate in some regions. My wife's mom reports that since last July, they've had less than 1.5 inches of rain on their farm (in Saskatchewan, not in an irrigated area). I really hope we don't see a repeat of that part of the 1930s as well.

The (probably) full-length translations I was looking at earlier today run four volumes each - lots of space for that many characters. (It shows up as The Water Margin or as The Three Kingdoms.)

Translations of Romance of the Three Kingdoms run to four volumes as well, but it has the structure (or lack of it) that I described. The Water Margin probably does not follow history even as closely as Romance (which is not too closely), which would help give it more structure.

EClaire: I have a lot of friends who have had kids in the last two years, and only one other of them reports the strange taste syndrome. (I had been having difficulties with that the whole pregnancy, so if your mouth tastes fine, I wouldn't worry.)

Actually, I had one friend who couldn't brush her teeth for several months because the smell of toothpaste made her gag. Hmm.

And I hadn't realized until you pointed it out— I don't have a backache. Yay! (And I am laughing about the turkey idea, because it really does throw your balance off like that.)

On the whole "What would a Depression feel like?"— have you been poor? Or at least felt as though you're stuck in a situation? I would imagine a lot of people would feel that way, and have a low-level malaise.

However, if you have since managed to pull yourself out of that situation, and have developed better skills, I think you'd have a better mental outlook from the get-go. "I can fix this" is a better headspace than "I'm stuck." After all, I can look at my parents and realize that they both grew up in straitened circumstances, and that they did better by us kids, and if (for example) my mother could put up with oatmeal for breakfast day in and day out (and sometimes for other meals as well), I can bloody well figure out something to do.

(Yes, I've been poor, still getting out of the financial hole we dug at that point, BUT I was still in a better position than my parents. Worst came to worst, we could always count on them to feed us!)

Re: Great Depression II.

I don't believe in it; there's no evidence that there'll be a crash that huge. Remember that part of the problem in the US economy during the Greate Depression was that the rest of the world (well, large parts of Europe, anyway) had already fallen into the toilet.* The world economy isn't as monolithic now as the Western economy was then.

Not to say we aren't going to have a lovely little recession here in the US. All the spin doctors are busy telling us things aren't as bad as we all feared, but they're not admitting that there are a couple of other shoes yet to drop, including about 2 million home foreclosures this year.

I can answer one of the questions about the Depression: the gap between rich and poor became greater. I know this because I once lived in a cottage on the estate of the man who supplied concrete for the construction of the Empire State Building, which was completed during the Depression. That estate was built using the profits of the sale; it's a bunch of acres on a hill just outside of Peekskill, N.Y. There'a a large main house, a carriage house, and the cottage, as well as garages, gardening sheds, etc. For several years the owner employed an artist who lived onsite to decorate the place; the garages and sheds for instance have pastoral scenes made of carved lead sheets applied to the doors and walls.

This at a time when the workers who were building the Empire State Building were working frantically for low wages to keep from joining their friends in the bread lines.

* "Anybody want a wheelbarrow full of Reichmarks?"
"Nah, tissues are better for blowing your nose."

Indeed, one of my contingency plans if the economy really tanks is to go Into Service, because there will certainly still be people who could use a live-in cook-housekeeper, and could afford to pay one who's willing to work for room, board, and a nominal weekly stipend.

B. Durbin - oh good. Generally I think I've had it fairly easy throughout this whole experience, but that sounded so revolting that I was terrified that there were sneaky side effects waiting just around the corner. I'll stick to my 6 months of dizzy spells due to low blood pressure, thanks. Much easier to deal with.

In the introduction, Xopher said:
"108° is the interior measurement of the angles in a regular pentagon." My partner Martin would like to point out that 108 degrees is the interior measurement of *one* angle of a regular pentagon.

Also, Craig @ 17 said:
"There is also a 4-dimensional analogue of the dodecahedron, called the "120-cell"
This kind of depends on how you define "4-dimensional analogue". Martin says there are 6 regular hyper-solids; he wonders how many of them have pentagonal symmetry.

From me, on all this Depression talk. Don't worry, they'll just put a bunch of Prozac in the water and everyone will be just fine.

On a more serious note, my Dad grew up during the Depression, and he taught me a lot about surviving on meager resources. I suspect those of us who can remember such knowledge, either from personal experience or transmission from elders, will have a lot to contribute to the ongoing discussion. For example, there is a reason some of us stockpile; that's how people used to get through the year. You grew food in the summer and bartered in the fall, and it lasted until the following fall.

Can I just say, I finally ordered my copy of Gene Wolfe's (and Lisa Snellings-Clark's) Strange Birds, and I am all a-twitter waiting for it?

My father grew up on a farm (and later a dairy) during the Depression, and my mother's parents also had enough land for a small farm, although her father worked in the post office. One of my mother's aunts was the main source of income in her family; her husband lost his job and ended up a school janitor, but they had nearly an acre on which they raised vegetables and also ducks and chickens, selling the eggs (and maybe some of the birds) for additional money.

I suspect this had something to do with my father planting fruit trees everywhere we lived, and gardens in most of them.

There are 108 stitches in a baseball.

Re: Depression II: Already people in urban and suburban places are putting in what gardens they can for herbs & veg, raising chicken if zoning allows. Gas prices have already forced some small businesses in my hometown to close - furniture movers & a floral delivery business.

But I really think it would just encourage people to get creative, figure things out with their immediate community about how to share and barter.

Heck, maybe board games and Twister would come back as entertainment. Live music in the backyard.

I mean, Argentina went through a huge economic meltdown and - as an entire country - adopted a small-business barter system for an economy.

A garden in the backyard is one of the ways my parents managed to feed five kids. Salad all summer long. (I really LIKE salad.) The pity is that California decided about 30 years ago that a .15 acre lot is good, and they've been shrinking ever since. It's kind of hard to get a good garden going if you literally have no backyard because a previous owner decided they wanted a strip of patio.

This may deserve its own posting -- don't want to hijack this thread -- but Barbara Bauer's legal snitfit against Wikipedia is getting some publicity, as the Wikimedia Foundation has apparently recently filed a motion to dismiss. This, of course, has served to further publicize the claims she finds so libelous, which strikes me as somewhat self-defeating.

Magenta 48: I meant the interior measurement of EACH of the angles in a regular pentagon.

Rikibeth, #33, I was in Vienna (VA) yesterday* and stopped at a bakery where I usually love their stuff and there was one cinnamon roll and it didn't taste very good. They only had about half their regular items out, and instead of a display case, had made a series of chairs and tables for a "cafe."

Stefan, #35, our food bank was robbed! I just gave them money, they can buy directly from the manufacturers for less than I can buy from the store.

*Shiva has had trouble with his teeth for about a month and I was referred last week to a dental vet in Vienna and got an appointment yesterday. We were there seven hours (although I did go out to lunch and do a bit of shopping as long as I was that far in) and all his teeth are out. I have pain syringes to just squeeze into his mouth. He's drooling like crazy and is really mad at me. When Giorgio (RIP) got all his teeth out, he bounced right back. Shiva is moving slower.

#42: "It had a big influence on the way our families managed their affairs, and a fair bit of that ethic was passed on to us."

Same here. My parents, born in '34 and '36, weren't big spenders when I was growing up, and I'm not now.

#55: Robbed the food bank? Cripes!

I write checks for food bank / second harvest / heifer project at the end of the year, but I buy and donate food often because the bargain hunting is a sort of game. Sublimated compulsive shopping, maybe? A couple of weeks back I bought ten boxes of Cheerios for under $.50 each. They're in my car now, waiting for a chance to run by the donation center. I budget for it and it does good.

#51: "Heck, maybe board games and Twister would come back as entertainment. Live music in the backyard."

One of my publishers claimed to love recessions because sales went up for games.

Along similar lines, I have hopes that a recession won't hurt my employers' line of work, supplying technology to cable companies. People who have some money will swap pricey travel for at-home movies and web surfing.

Live music . . . that would be cool. My aunt and her husband host house concerts. Jazz, mostly. Guests bring $10 and some finger food.

Donations to food banks can also be a part of your emergency preparation kit.

This works well if you find it difficult to organize extra foods to rotate in and out of your own pantry. (Tracking how much you have, having to replace bits and pieces of the emergency kit every week or two.)

Instead, buy long-lasting foods for donation, wait a few months, and then drop them off. Buy a new set just before donating the earlier set. Doing this means you have emergency foods at all times, but only have to think about it two or three times a year.

I remember the Great Depression well, and I can tell you that activities such as movies we're less frequent indulgences, and they cost much less than they do now. A dime would get you in the door and you brought a piece of Fleer's Double Bubble gum (1 cent) with you. (If you were six or seven) You could buy popcorn for a nickel or dime, I can't remember because I never could afford it. You could get a hamburger and a malt for 25 cents. Pork chops were four for a dollar, and our total grocery bill for a week was about $4 for a family of eight. Many people in our town did truck farming, and in the summer you really lived on fresh vegetables. So learn to garden and to mend clothing. I know that everyone is stocking up on rice, but don't forget pinto beans and large quantities of wheat flour.

Rikibeth @ 33: "Travel might get harder."

It will definitely get harder, won't it? If there is a GDII, there won't be droves of Okies heading to California--they won't be able to afford the gas.

#60: They'll have to brew corn into ethanol along the way.

B. Durbin @7:
Why not? Endless summer would appear to be on the way; then again, for some of us it's been September for over two decades....

abi @9:
Well, exceprt the klick is coming from the other side. Often literally. (Why yes, my sister and various nieces have complained a fair bit about their pregancies; why do you ask?)

Seth Gordon @19:
In such a scenario, the cities will survive, perhaps a bit shrunken. The suburbs, on the other hand, are toast: they will revert to farmland. (I grew up in a suburb which was still making that jump.)

Rikibeth @33:
CSA will be happening this year unless I land a job offer in .nz first. (How serious I am about that depends on my mood.)

And, aside to Fragano: "community supported agriculture", often called "farmshare". I was headed that way anyway, as I'm gradually dropping all the preprocessed crap from my diet and making more stuff from scratch; veggies from the local supermarket are expensive in small quantities and don't last long. And aren't local, when shipping costs are likely to increase considerably.

My own concession to stocking up: edamame. Otherwise, I've decided stocking up is the wrong answer: being able to grow it myself, or to do something I can barter(*) for others' produce, is better. It'll take time for that to ramp up, but I don't think any expected collapse will happen that quickly (unless our dear Emperor and his handlers find new ways to continue their economic rape far beyond any sane limit. If so, the dollar will already be completely worthless in the international market by then, so we have a benchmark.)

(*) the question being what a sysadmin on the wrong side of 40 can come up with in that area. I may have to fall back on stamina and become a laborer.

re cities, farms and depressions: The city predates oil/fossile fuels. The present model (sprawly places, with large commuting distances) however, is less feasible. Contraction would be likely to occur.

I was pondering how to build a milpas and how to design it for maximal water efficiency (I live in Los Angeles). I think, with some bentonite, and a carefully designed cistern, I can recycle the water (which would otherwise just leach away), but it would be a lot of work.

On the other hand, with a good system like that, an acre can probably support four people; so long as one has the seed to get it going the first year.

Maia has inheirited traits from her mother; which are traits she got from her parents. They were in their early marriage in the Depression (one of the amusements is that Jake bought Lorraine a platinum ring, and she got pitying looks from people who assumed that Jake hadn't been able to afford gold, and bought silver).

That was with Jake not out of work (he was a machinist). To their dying days they were terribly tight with money; even though they had two pensions and lot of Chevron stock.

Sarah @34:
Abi, I just bought a bunch of bookbinding supplies. I may make a mess of it, but you make it sound like so much fun.

Oooh! What did you buy?

It is fun, though houseguests, Dutch studies, the Gooey Kablooey, work and getting our rented house ready to return to its owners* has kept me from binding for a month or so now.

I presume you've seen my instructional/confessional site, the Bookweb? It details, among other things, pretty much everything I did wrong in the first few years of binding (in the gallery section). So if you do make a mess, at least you know you're not alone!

Keep us posted how it goes, and feel free to email me if you have any questions.

Stefan Jones @ 61: "They'll have to brew corn into ethanol along the way."

Hard to do when you can't afford the corn either.

Now if they could make ethanol from cellulose--different picture. Suddenly kudzu by the roadside is your best friend.

"CSA membership is happening next year", "I spent time working on a CSA farm and quite enjoyed it" - such phrases cause brainshear for those of us who read CSA as "Confederate States of America". I doubt things will get quite that bad...

66: I know.

In the UK, it seems a lot more people have taken up allotments or are planting vegetables rather than flowers.

It is now possible to get CGI models of the Democratic Party fronr runners.

I reckon it's about time to be extra wary of press photographs.

Macroeconomics used to be a hobby of mine back in the '80s... Hey, SOMETHING had to balance out the excitement of D&D... Let's see how wrong I can get it...

Election year politics will keep the economy from tanking too bad no matter what oil prices do... Even if the Fed has to lop another 1/4 point off the Prime. At least until Christmas...

If the election doesn't bring some positive news about ending the war, consumer confidence will trash the Christmas glut-fest and in Spring '09 we'll see some significant rise in unemployment. When McCain wins in November (and Oh Dear God, Please Let Me Be MORE Wrong About Politics Than The Economy!!!), the war jitters will get really nasty, and the retail industry will give a loud fart, roll over and lapse into a coma that won't end until Summer...

Gas is NOT going down this year or next, so suck it up. There will be minor relief around election time when Bush cuts loose some of the Strategic Reserve to boost confidence (and steal votes), but the fall switch-over to home heating oil production will kill any price-drop... Expect $4.50 a gallon by this time next season, just before Memorial Day. The Chinese are willing to pay $175 a barrel for oil, so the moderate cutbacks we accomplish this year won't affect price enough to stop the price spiral...

If you still drive a Tahoe, invest in a case of Astroglide and bend over... Your safeword will be, "Fill 'Er Up!" although I submit that the choice may not be a wise one...

We still need several really Bad Things to happen to get so far as Great Depression II, and it will take a couple years for all the necessary shit to roll down hill, so it won't get that bad until at least 2010, and probably not then. I agree with the earlier comment that world-wide conditions are not bad enough to spark/sustain a true Depression... Don't look for significant growth until '11, minimum...

Now everyone, please kindly remember to forget I said all this unless it comes true, in which case you all have to send me a dollar...

More scariness on gender identity "cures" from Zucker and others, right down to how it's the mother's fault if her son is effeminate.

A German trend researcher, Horst Opaschowski, proposed "Ten Commandments for the 21st Century" (and here)*, among which were:

"-- Only buy things you really want. Make your personal well-being the main criterium for buying something.
-- Earn your quality of life. Support yourself -- both through work and good works. 'There is no good, except the good one does.'
-- Foster intensive family ties and encourage children to develop long-lasting relationships.
-- Weave yourself a reliable social network, so that you have friends and neighbors to stand by you all your life.
-- Help others, so that you can be in a position to obtain and accept help."

One could discuss the particulars of each item, and I kind of channel Marcus Aurelius reading this, but I was struck by the emphasis on encouraging people to live socially; i.e.,
with and for one another. With or without another Great Depression, it seems to me that a lot of issues that we already have can be ameliorated through people helping each other at a grass-roots level: elder care, education, saving energy, nutrition... and that the grass-roots networks could/should be promoted.

btw, I've been wondering, what's the state of food-coops in the US these days?

*My translation. Couldn't find another one.

Well, it appears at least one business is booming in this economy. Making Light spammers ...

Ajay #66: That was how I parsed it, too. Probably the result of too much Turtledove reading. Helpful hint: If a guy named Featherston wants to tell you the truth, it's time to get the hell out of the country. Trust me on this, especially if you're black.

About the state of the economy and how it could get worse...

Princess Leia: Put that thing away, you're gonna get us all killed!

Han Solo: Absolutely, Your Worship. Look, I had everything under control until you led us down here! Now it's not going to take them long to figure out what happened to us.

Princess Leia: It could be worse.

[Garbage creature growls]

Han Solo: It's worse.

Terry #63: Yeah, suburbs and exurbs seem like they're very dependent on cheap gas, just because they're built so that it's a massive pain in the a-- to walk anywhere. You don't know how grateful I am that we didn't buy a house 40+ miles away from my work a few years back, when the bubble made decent houses closer in very expensive. (Instead, we kept renting and wondered if I needed to look for a job someplace easier to live.)

Now, it's important to keep this in perspective. Gas prices have more than doubled since 2000, and this has caused some big problems. But it's not like either suburbs or exurbs have gone away. Instead, their inhabitants (esp. exurbs' inhabitants) just have a lot less disposable income to spend. Even if gas hits $10/gallon, it's not like the exurbs would instantly wither and die, though they might eventually do that. (More likely, the house prices will collapse, and over time, there will be a migration of people who can work remotely most of the time into these very nice, cheap houses 60 miles from the city, replacing people who are being clobbered by the gas prices to commute into work every day.)

By contrast, when the jobs go away, the neighborhoods really can die, but I'd expect exurbs to be rather less susceptible to this than most other neighborhoods, because all the people living there usually don't work for the same company or industry. (That's regional, of course.)

Over time, I expect that people with homes in the exurbs will adjust as best they can--buy a good efficient commuter car, carpool, flex their schedule or work from home if possible, find train or bus routes that get them some or all the way to work. Those all have costs, and not all are workable for everyone (if you're a pediatrician or a factory worker, you aren't going to be able to telecommute; if you live way out in the sticks, there's probably not a nearby bus route or train station), but there is some flexibility. From where I live, I could take a bus to work every day, at the cost of about an extra hour of my day.

Has anyone started doing a social networking kind of site for finding carpool partners? This would be really useful.

It's kind of hard to get a good garden going if you literally have no backyard because a previous owner decided they wanted a strip of patio.

My courtyard is about 8x10, which is large enough to get a respectable veggie patch in (with a few raised beds for the irises)...except it's a courtyard.

I guess I could rip up the concrete, though I'm a little wary of what might be in that dirt; my neighborhood used to be one of Pittsburgh's factory strips, and in fact there's a rather large one not four blocks away that's being torn down. Anyone know how you go about testing soil for bad chemicals?

PJ @ #21--

Um, you do realize that The Water Margin AKA The Outlaws of the Marsh and Romance of the Three Kingdoms are two different novels, about two entirely different things? Because your post doesn't suggest that.

Both novels have had bits of them made into movies, and the whole things have been made into Chinese television series*, which the determined can probably trace down for themselves without my help. I was intrigued to see that Amazon has a Water Margin mah jong set available.

*As has The Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the other great traditional Chinese novels. It must be a real pain to do an adaptation of such complex books that every single person watching knows something about. Consider what we are like about movies-from-books and multiply to get a billion or so, each person with an opinion of their own.

There are two movies based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms coming out this year, one of which (Red Cliff, directed by John Woo) is supposed to be out just in time for the Olympics.

Magenta@48: There is one convex regular 4D polytope built out of dodecahedra. It is the only one with pentagonal faces. There is another convex regular 4D polytope with the same symmetry group; just like the icosahedron has the same symmetry group as the dodecahedron.

The convex regular 4D polytopes are: the 5-cell (4-simplex, hyper-tetrahedron [snrk], self-dual), the 8-cell (tesseract, hypercube), the 16-cell (dual to the tesseract, tetrahedral cells), the 24-cell (sort of like a hyper-octahedron, octahedral cells, self-dual), the 120-cell above, and the 600-cell (sort of like a hyper-icosahedron, tetrahedral cells, dual to the 120-cell).

What's even more interesting are the non-convex regular 4D polytopes -- like star polygons in 2D, and stellated polyhedra in 3D. There are a bunch of them with the same symmetry group as the 120-cell, and some have dodecahedral cells.

Is a manual food processor worth the 25 bucks I'd pay for it? Or should I hold out for a food mill, because I'm trying to cook more soups? I can't find the latter in any of the neighbourhood stores I've tried (I've avoided Walmart). I figure that manual appliances are a better investment than electric ones, although they can be murder on the upper extremities.

fidelio: thanks, I was wondering - that's one thing that is absolutely not clear on the bookstore sites.

Looks like I might want both ....

Sajia, try second-hand stores and such--I have a decent food mill I picked up for about five dollars at one several years ago--simple construction, breaks down easily for cleaning. It's just like the one my mother had for years and years and years, which, now that I look about online a bit, seems to be a Foley.

If a slow search through second-hand stores seems tedious, Google shows several online sources, including Target and Lehman's. OXO makes one; so does Sunbeam. Prices run from about $20 on up.

Beware of Williams-Sonoma; it will look lovely, and when you compare prices your self-respect will suffer if you paid theirs.

I Sajia, try second-hand stores and such--I have a decent food mill I picked up for about five dollars at one several years ago--simple construction, breaks down easily for cleaning. It's just like the one my mother had for years and years and years, which, now that I look about online a bit, seems to be a Foley.

If a slow search through second-hand stores seems tedious, Google shows several online sources, including Target and Lehman's. OXO makes one; so does Sunbeam. Prices run from about $20 on up.

Beware of Williams-Sonoma; it will look lovely, and when you compare prices your self-respect will suffer if you paid theirs.

I

Oops.

That was supposed to end up

I love my food mill. It deals with things blenders and food processors can't do anything about, like seeds and peelings and stringy fibers. It runs entirely on renewable power sources, too, but if you're making a really large batch of applesauce or jam or tomato sauce, you'll want rest breaks.

Oh, you do, PJ, you do.

Depends on the mill. I have one, Maia's mother doesn't (but has a cereal mill) and we have a fruit juicer in the house (what it does for tomatoes... juices lbs in minutes, seeds and skins left behind).

PJ @ #80:

My standard warning here: don't get the Brewitt-Taylor translation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I haven't read the other one that is readily available, but I have to assume the translator has a better ear for English prose than Brewitt-Taylor. (About accuracy I can say nothing, as I don't read Chinese.)

I've seen juicers like that, Terry, and they are amazing. The typical general food processor or blender, though, while good and useful tools, have some limits, which a pan-style food mill (as opposed to the sausage grinder sort) compensates for wonderfully.

Of course, a pan-style food mill has limits as well--it won't chop, slice, mix or knead, and as the last Good Bits are forced through, it can be very hard to turn the crank.

susan @70 -- the shade of Bruno Bettelheim rears its ugly head. When I was an undergraduate, his theory of the origins of autism -- Mom's fault! -- was widely accepted. Now of course, we know that autism is a very complex biochemical and/or neurostructural disorder. The same is true of schizophrenia. And new information is coming out All. The. Time! on possible biological bases of "behavioral" disorders such as OCD. That's why I find Zucker's quote from the recent NPR interview particularly disturbing:

The therapists supporting a child's transition early, I have characterized them in a half serious way as liberal essentialists. On the surface, the approach comes across as very humanistic, liberal, accepting, tolerant of diversity. But I think the hidden assumption is that they believe the child's cross-gender identity is entirely caused by biological factors. That's why I call them essentialists. Liberals have always been critical of biological reductionism, but here they embrace it. I think that conceptual approach is astonishingly naive and simplistic, and I think it's wrong.

Dan @ 85

Some of the reviewers were recommending the Moss translation. (One of the other versions is by Shapiro. I believe that's Outlaws.)
See, that's one reason why I love this place: other people know more about obscure stuff than I do.

(What had me looking at this yesterday was a catalog from a (remainder?) bookseller. So I went looking to learn more about it and here we are ....)

From a quick glance at the first pages of the Moss Roberts translation, it looks to be more readable than the Brewitt-Taylor translation.

Brewitt-Taylor went for a sort of faux-archaic feel, with stilted dialogue. (This may partly be due to the fact that he did this in the 1920s, as I recall.) While it might read better than Roberts' more prosaic translation for a bit, I found it rather wearying at length. Not to mention that his ear is not the best. Probably not everyone would find it jarring to have Cao Cao use the phrase "gang aft agley," but I do.

Carrie S. @76: Don't rip up the pavement -- container gardening would be the way to go.

There are several lovely container garden systems available, I can personally recommend Earthbox (I'm growing alpine strawberries in one). We've got a new planter for tomatos -- the tomato plant goes in upside down, and you can plant other plants in the top (Plow & Hearth or Gardener's Supply catalogs). I'll report back on how well it works.

Rikibeth @33: We bought a half share in a local produce farm, and they had an open house last week. They've planted peas, beans, tomatos, strawberry, bok choy, and cabbage so far. They'll be delivering to our local farm market every Saturday starting May 24th.

I think people should be free to choose the gender they wish to live, or the gender they wish to engage in affectionate and sexual relations with, regardless of what is in their genes. It's like with the race thing; I don't care whether or not I share common ancestry with Ann Coulter, she still has an obligation either way to treat me with respect, just as I have an obligation as a moral being to refrain from giving her the punch in the face she thoroughly deserves.
I mean, we're sf/fantasy/horror fans, we're used in fiction to the idea of having sex and friendship with beings who by no stretch of science can be said to have common ancestry with us or fit into human patriarchal gender roles.
We treat others decently because we are capable of moral decisions, not because science, scholarship or religion decreed so.

One of the local gardening experts who loves to container garden has also grown veggies in straw bales. I'll see if I can find more info on it...

Re: GDII - For years I've been stockpiling cross-stitch charts and kitting up some of them. I was doing it for my retirement, and because the cost of supplies has constantly increased. I store them in one of the cedar chests.

Between my embroidery, books, and DVDs, I should be able to keep myself entertained...

#88--PJ, which bookseller/catalog was this? Inquiring minds need to know because they suffer from the pleasant delusion they need more books...

Sajia --

Much as it would be preferable otherwise, we're all stuck having common ancestry with Ann Coulter.

On the general issue of depressions --

Depressions are a side effect of running the economy as a machine for concentrating and preserving wealth. They're noticeable since 1850 mostly because there was this brief period of running the economy to promote the general welfare for the depression to contrast against.

My suspicion is that the US economy is not so much going to tank as fatally unravel; there will almost certainly be a new one, after, but predicting which one that will be strikes me as impossible. (Many forces attempting to remove the government's ability to regulate and to maximize immediate profit, few forces attempting to assert the value of regulation and to assure reliable profit over future time; that makes it likely that the economy in question won't survive.)

The two things I think are missing from the prior list of suggestions are tools and political action.

Critical tools should have backups and backups of the backups; if this isn't possible (the critical tool is a major capital investment like a milling machine, say) make sure you've got an on-hand stock of spares for anything you would expect to replace. For a writer, this means a couple years of printer ink or toner are a good thing to have on hand; for a home canner, that means having lots of little rubber sealing rings, and so on.

Tools for things you might need to start doing are another good candidate here; I got a 'every bike tool you'll need' pre-packaged toolbox from MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-Op) and while I don't by any means know how to use all of them I at least have all of them, and I might be very pleased at that in the future.

Anything that eases muscle powered transport—wheelbarrows, carts, bike paniers or trailers—is probably a good idea to have around, and to practise with now, while alternatives might be obtained. I don't expect the Toronto transit system to die unless things get very bad indeed, but I do expect (since I do this already) to have to use it to carry heavy and awkward things.

Political action, well, the primary question in a depression is the survival of government on the basis of the consent of the governed. That's doing really quite badly at the moment, and unless it is doing well, things do not improve for the the majority of the population. So insisting on the consent of the governed part and the general welfare part and the mechanism to secure general prosperity part in whatever way you can—there is no optimal way to do this; the essential things are the community with everyone else so insisting and insisting—is proably the best single thing anyone can do to respond to a depression.

Debbie #87: Yeah, I remember my mom (who was a special ed teacher) commenting that the theories she got in school on causes of various mental illnesses implied that a lot of major problems (schizophrenia in particular, I think) were the result of horrible, cruel parenting. And that she and all her colleagues pretty much believed that, and thought very badly of people with schizophrenic kids for many years, all based on what she later came to see was BS.

One really important lesson from this kind of thing is how important it is for scientists to make it clear how certain they really are about stuff. Though it seems like there's a strong tendency to speak in maximally authoritative tones to justify research funding and policy prescriptions, and to strengthen the case against academic rivals/alternative schools of thought/etc.

One of my favorite unintentionally funny examples of this was Steve Pinker's pretty good book The Blank Slate. He spends a fair bit of that book pointing out places where psychologists in the past made blanket authoritative statements that were full of sh-t about all kinds of things, based on their models and ideology. He then spends a fair bit of the last quarter of the book making blanket authoritative statements about all kinds of things, based on his models and ideology. There appear to be no recognition of the irony there....

Here's info on straw bale gardening, and it has additional links as well:

Straw Bale Gardening

I thought the Earthbox mentioned by Lori Coulson at 90 looked interesting. The 40.00+ price tag was less interesting. I would love to try container gardening, but know myself well enough to know that I might not follow through after obtaining the materials. I have now found instructions to make a similar container oneself. Very tempting...

fidelio @ 93

The book was from UC Press; they have a two-volume (full) and a one-volume (abridged) version (both translated by Roberts).
The reviews were at Amazon (although I also looked at Powell's). (Amazon is selling Outlaws of the Marsh (5 vol) with the Roberts translation (4 vol) as a package deal. Um, $108.90 ... there's that number again.)
The catalog was Labyrinth, whose books are mostly from university presses.

I first ran across this in an anthology called Hero Tales from Many Lands (Alice Hazeltine), where it was the story called 'The Empty City'. (I recommend this anthology. The title is not an exaggeration.)

#98--Thanks! Because I need more sources for mine own particular kind of crack.

The best translator of Romance of the Three Kingdoms that I've run into is Moss Roberts. He has both a full translation out, and a very readable one-volume condensed version that covers the major subplots.

Ear for English? Oh yes, he has that. My husband says he also preserves nuances from the Chinese original text very well. I'd quote -- but my copies are still stashed in a moving carton.

I was out working at my CSA yesterday, putting plants in the ground (we can work off part of our share). I also picked up a few veggies to go in the garden that the other half is working on - he gets to be in charge of growing foodstuffs while I do the herb garden. I'm doing a 'raised' bed psedo-medieval herb garden and concentrating on putting in herbs that I use constantly or ones that I use in cooking research*. While he and I are not self-sufficient, we are seriously working on cutting down on the amount we have to buy by canning, cooking, and bartering. It's a challenge, certainly, and I find myself calling one grandmother frequently and wishing the other still was capable of helping (my father's mother taught food preservation at CUNY in the 40s. I should pull out the recipe boxes when I'm home next...I could use some of them, I think.)

However, the USPS is our aid in barter. I have 12 bottles of sekanjabin (mint, raspberry, and blueberry) sitting in my basement, much more mint in the ground, some carboys of mead started, and a website full of jewelry. Shall we start the trading? ;)

*speaking of which, I've got fennel in this year. Suggestions of what to use it in/with would be appreciated.

Edward Oleander at #69
Macroeconomics used to be a hobby of mine back in the '80s... Hey, SOMETHING had to balance out the excitement of D&D...

well, aren't they sort of the same thing at times? You are pretending that obscure mathematical things in books are a realistic model of things, and often you are doing it for a bunch of people who feel they are entitled to have everything.

This just in .... the CA state supreme court has ruled that statutes banning same-sex marriage are unconstitutional!

Erik, you could DEFINITELY be on to something there! Lucky I wasn't drinking anything as I read that... Thanks!
:-)

Lori Coulson @90 -- We've got a new planter for tomatos -- the tomato plant goes in upside down, and you can plant other plants in the top.

I bet that will work pretty well. I've had good results growing cherry tomatoes as hanging plants, and had wanted to mention it earlier as a space-saving idea for balcony gardeners. Tomatoes are actually vines and want to creep, not stand up anyway.

albatross @95 -- I so agree about the humility. And that particularly impressed me about Diane Ehrensenf, the other interviewee in the NPR piece. She specifically addressed the need to be humble and careful about gender diagnoses.

As a therapist, at some point you have to make decisions and take actions, and there are pressures from many sides. But when and why is important. One of my practicum supervisors drove us all nuts with his 'hypothesis testing model.' We had to brainstorm EVERY POSSIBLE cause of the presenting problem (child/family clinic), then test those hypotheses and rule things out. We wanted to TREAT, the parents put a lot of pressure on us to DO SOMETHING, but Dr. W. stuck to his guns. Learned a heck of a lot from him. (Re: Pinker -- Heh. Why be humble when you're sure you're RIGHT??)

Sisuile @ 101 -- fennel seeds or bulbs? I've got a great recipe for Fennel Paysanne, which is probably actually reasonably old.

I've seen juicers like that, Terry, and they are amazing. The typical general food processor or blender, though, while good and useful tools, have some limits, which a pan-style food mill (as opposed to the sausage grinder sort) compensates for wonderfully.

If I had to have one and one only, it'd be a blender. But I am very fond of soup and doing pureed soup in a blender is the easiest way to do it.

A food mill is next on the essential list, since it makes a *whole* bunch of things (like pumpkin pie) doable. I don't even want to *think* about what fun processing pumpkin pie filling from scratch would be without a food mill. Also, it makes good baby food.

A food processor is best at things I'm already very good at doing manually, and it isn't much faster than I am for my usual batch sizes. But... I've put in a good 15 years learning to chop quickly and efficiently, mix bread dough and the like. For someone who doesn't have the time or inclination to learn the physical skills, a food processor is a godsend. And for large batch cooking (more than 6 adults), the food processor outpaces me and the cleaning tax is no longer more trouble than it's worth.

Tools for things you might need to start doing are another good candidate here; I got a 'every bike tool you'll need' pre-packaged toolbox from MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-Op) and while I don't by any means know how to use all of them I at least have all of them, and I might be very pleased at that in the future.

Tools and instructions on how to use them are always a good idea. A bike repair book is less necessary these days since many bike mechanics have put up instructions for all sorts of tasks... but a hard copy backup is often useful.

"The Water Margin" got onto TV in the UK, in the late 70's. Many of the cast names, and some of the locations, look Japanese to me, but IMDB has it down as a Chinese production.

I push the button every 108 minutes....

Debbie @105: I've mentally christened the planter "Babylon" -- You fill the base with sand or water, put the support pillars in and place the planter box on top of the pillars.

Then you take your tomato plants and place them in the holes in the bottom of the box, so they're hanging upside down and add soil. We're planting bell peppers, herbs and marigolds in the top...

We'll be putting that together next weekend -- we just reached our frost-free date, and past experience has taught us not to set out tomato plants before Memorial Day. (Our CSA farm has set some of their tomatos out, but they've got them under row covers.)

Thoughts on the last few weeks of pregnancy. My favourite memories are of losing my balance at a farmers market and starting to run forward. Unfortunately, my belly threw me way off balance and I started to charge a sweater stand. I just couldn't pull myself upright and stop. The guy at the sweater stand looked terrified and my husband was standing behind me open mouthed. I remember thinking something along the lines of: "I'm carrying a carton of eggs right now, I have to stop." I pulled myself upright at the last minute. I don't know who was more relieved.

Regarding the Great Depression II. I grew up rural and poor and my Mother grew up on the proverbial dirt farm. I canned, made jam, baked bread and helped my Mother with the garden from as early as I can remember. She supported four kids on her own after my father left, with two jobs. But that huge garden made a big difference.

I think what people would experience in this case is mainly much more work, of all types. But I don't honestly think we would replicate the 1930's. If a depression did occur I think it would have a very different feel and flavour. It might be better to look at a city like Mexico city to see what we would encounter.

#107 Dave Bell--IIRC, the 1970s was a joint Japanese-Chinese project; the Chinese did another television series based on The Water Margin in the late 1990s.

P J Evans (103):
This just in .... the CA state supreme court has ruled that statutes banning same-sex marriage are unconstitutional!
You beat by two minutes for the announcement, so I went and looked at the decision, it is remanded back to the appellate court for the actual action, I'm not sure how long that takes.

48 States to go*!

*Plus other US entities with self rule.

Speaking of herbs, we have a huge clump of tarragon growing in a pot; it's doing far better than we thought it would (it's almost as happy as the rosemary in the front yard), and we just don't know what to do with so much of it. Are there recipes that use a lot of tarragon, or that we might like so much we'll make them all the time?

Eric #102: So, we seem to have missed our saving throw against cost-push inflation, but made the save against financial system collapse, at least for the time being. Though I have to say, I'm not too crazy about the addition of the Oil Dictator NPCs, even though it probably is good for game balance.

General Question: Does anyone have a good link for how much people can adjust their lives based on energy prices at fairly low cost? I'm sure there will be diminishing returns at some point, but it sure seems like a family with two SUVs in the garage and an 120 mile round trip, 5-day-a-week commute has a lot of savings available. Frex, if you changed cars and went from 20 MPG to 30 MPG, you'd save 10 gallons per week[1][2]. If you carpooled or flexed out your schedule so you were only driving in half the days, you'd save another 10 gallons per week.

Similarly, stuff like planning trips to the store a bit can decrease your gasoline usage some, though I'm not sure how much. Insulation, lowering the thermostat, turning off lights, all that stuff surely helps, but I'm curious how much of the slack it can take up?

I think it's a mistake to assume that a big recession is going to be uniform. Some industries and some regions are likely to take a bigger hit than others, because all the specific parts going into the recession hit different places differently. For example, a lot of homeowners in bubble-affected places like Montgomery County, Maryland got clobbered by the fall of their house prices, often after they'd taken out second mortgages for good or bad reasons. There are a lot of bank-owned properties around here. This didn't hit mid-Missouri nearly so hard, because they didn't have the massive rise in housing prices that led to people taking out huge mortgages on them. On the other hand, a meltdown of farming will affect mid-Missouri in ways that the DC area will barely notice. And all kinds of stuff works like this--a nationwide crackdown on illegal immigration, a tradewar with China, or a major shift in government spending on social programs[3] will have radically different effects in mid-Missouri, the DC area, and the Pacific Northwest.

I think something similarly non-uniform is happening with respect to inflation right now. Around here, housing prices have dropped, but fuel has gotten more expensive. One effect of this is that the tradeoff between bigger houses far away and smaller houses nearer to work has shifted, in a way you'd never expect by just thinking in terms of inflation.

[1] This is the kind of change you could make while saving money, as you switch from an Odyssey to a Civic. (You can get another 10 MPG or so switching to a more expensive and complicated hybrid, and probably another 10-15 MPG by switching to an efficient motorcycle. But you're getting into the more serious/painful tradeoffs there.)

[2] At $4/gallon, that's about $2000 per year.

[3] Any or all of these would be unsurprising results of a major recession.

If my canario would work out to multiples of 12 (like, say, 108) life would be much better. I just sent my non-12 version off to my musician and he sent it back telling me I have to be making major errors and to restart from scratch. What I sent him was the fourth time I had restarted from scratch. Sigh.

Here's my favorite recipe using tarragon, and it ties in nicely with the discussion of depression-era technologies, while being good and quick for two-career lifestyles.

Chicken Breasts Tarragon

4 skinless boneless chicken breast halves
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt, pepper, paprika
1 teaspoon dried tarragon
1/4 cup celery -- sliced
1/4 cup carrot -- sliced
1/4 cup onion -- sliced
1/4 cup white Worcestershire sauce*
1/2 cup white wine
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/4 cup cold water

Heat 4 qt pressure cooker, add oil, and brown chicken on both sides. Season with salt, pepper, and paprika. Add tarragon, vegetables, Worchestershire sauce, and wine. Close cover securely. Place regulator on vent pipe and cook 3 minutes with regulator rocking slowly. Cool cooker at once (run water over it in the sink). Remove chicken and keep warm. Combine cornstarch and water and stir into sauce; heat till thickened, stirring constantly. Serve over steamed riced cauliflower to keep the carb count low, or over rice if you aren't a low-carber.

*Plain old Worchestershire works fine -- just doesn't look as pretty.

#114 albatross--switching to a vehicle with better mileage has its risks--dealers are starting to refuse to take SUVs as trade-ins because they can't get rid of them. Switching houses, if you own the property, may have some of the same problems.

Currently, because of parking problems, Tennessee state employess in the Nashville area get free buses passes (good only for going to and from work) from the state. Despite the incentive offered by this, many people who could conveniently take the bus continue to do drive--some because they haven't ever imagined themselves as using public transportation; others because they feel that their lives "require" that they have a car handy in case of emergencies*. Still others are having trouble trading off, in their minds, the money saved versus the extra time a public transportation commute often takes. I see some who ride some days and drive others. As the cost of gas gets higher and higher, though, I can see more converts.

*Sometimes they do. Sometimes it's just because they cannot envision other options, because they've never had to.

There's always the recipe my mother dubbed "Carrie's Favorite Chicken", which went:

Take 4 chicken breasts (I prefer the skinless boneless kind, YMMV) and brown them by whatever method you prefer. Remove them from the pan but do not drain it! In the pan, make a gravy with 1 cup chicken broth, a "glop" or two of spicy brown mustard, the juice of a lemon, 2 tablespoons of tarragon, and enough flour to thicken. Put the chicken back in, cover, and simmer for 45 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through, turning the chicken occasionally.

It's very nice over rice.

#45 -- Bruce Cohen

[ I know this because I once lived in a cottage on the estate of the man who supplied concrete for the construction of the Empire State Building, which was completed during the Depression. That estate was built using the profits of the sale; it's a bunch of acres on a hill just outside of Peekskill, N.Y. ]

This fits perfectly as one way to answer the question someone in this asked, "What does a Depression feel like?"

Marion C Cooper, write the script for King Kong in an office from where he could see the Empire State Building going up.

The scenes that first introduce us to the character of Ann Darrow in King Kong are a sequence of what it was like in the cities, at least (the Depression played out differently in the rural areas). People were HUNGRY. Lots of people were HUNGRY. All the time.

The Depression is the ambience of King Kong. It would have been a very different film if it wasn't that era.

Love, C.

Carrie @118, that's a lot like a pork chop recipe I used to make a lot -- brown the pork chops on one side, then turn over, cover, and cook about 7 minutes till done. Remove, then add a bit of mustard, some tarragon, salt and pepper, and about a half cup of yogurt to the pan juices to make a sauce to pour over them.

My mind is not on work today...

Janet: Interesting; I wouldn't have thought to use yogurt for the sour. My thoughts there tend to go for citrus or vinegar.

Re trying out transportation alternatives, it's worth mentioning that tomorrow, May 16, has been designated Bike to Work Day by the League of American Bicylists. (A San Francisco group is observing it today).

I'm a bit far out from work, and usually take the train, but if the weather's nice I might try the two-wheel commute tomorrow. I wonder how many other cyclists I'll see en route.

Fennel goes very well with chicken. Sometimes it's listed in the recipes as anise. (Drove me nuts the first time I looked for it in the store.)

My primary job went and moved to a location about 40 miles from my apartment. They offered me discounts on public transit until I showed them how it would take more than three hours going each way. I'm sorry, six hours getting to and from work is not a good tradeoff.

The good news is that with my pregnancy, they actually figured out a way for me to telecommute. I think they would have put it off forever otherwise. (I'll still have to go in once a week, but that would be the day for the Dude to be with his grandparents, who literally live just off the route I'd take.)

We don't live too far from Evil Rob's work but there isn't a safe way for him to bike there. (Multi-lane freeway ramps and pre-dawn darkness are not a good combo, especially given driver behavior around here.) If we were able to rent a place on the other side of the freeway that would be an option. After summer, unfortunately, because his Nordic heritage really shines through sometimes and heatstroke isn't a good way to save money. ;D

PJ @ #98:

Be careful with that UC unabridged edition - I'm pretty sure last time it was discussed (on one of Kate Nepveu's sites) it was determined that it was actually a THREE-volume set, of which they were only selling the first two.

Dan, that one is the translation I was warned against getting.

Well, then I'm confused, because I thought everyone had recommended the Moss Roberts translation, and the UC two-volume set is by him.

I found the discussion I was thinking of - it was planned as a three-volume set, but they never published the third volume.

Re Depression, energy savings, etc.

My parents married in 1937. They knew all about frugality. Eat lower on the food chain (beans & rice vs. meat); reuse stuff; buy large sizes of nonperishable things; cook double batches of things to save time and energy (especially things baked in the oven); do things for yourself rather than pay someone else to do them; etc., etc.

One of the biggest things you can do to save energy is line-dry some of your clothes, especially heavy stuff like jeans and towels. Even if you can only get one of those over-the-bathtub clotheslines and partially dry things that way, you will save a noticeable amount of electricity. Similarly, most washing machines will now do a good job on most clothes with cold water; I almost never resort to warm or hot water wash, and I always rinse everything in cold.

OOH! Forgot to mention that many electrical utility companies will do a free energy audit of your house, meaning someone comes out and gives you specific advice (caulk this crack, replace that appliance) to increase energy-efficiency. Here in Georgia, the Forestry Commission will come to your house for free to assess the health of your trees; the county extension service is a huge free resource on all kinds of consumer issues like food prep and gardening. Take advantage of stuff like this!

Well, well, well ... This just in:

Lori Drew (remember her?) has been indicted on federal charges of conspiracy and accessing protected computers without permission for her part in the suicide of Megan Meier.

Tracie @ 129:
I have mixed feelings about this. It looks to me like they are doing it on the basis of the interstate commerce clause, which I think is a real can of worms when applied to things internet. The argument seems to be that since MySpace is based in California, using it from another state is in act of interstate commerce, and using an alias on it makes one vulnerable to federal charges. I don't much care for the implications of that with regard to net-anonymity and aliases.

On the other hand, Lori Drew is pond scum.

Charlie the coyote meets Roomba.

abi, #9: I have a very good imagination. That's one of the reasons I don't have kids.

y, #22: Ghod(dess) help me, I'm now seeing everything in terms of art cars! I'll bet there could be a very good one based on The Water Margins.

John Mark, #42: My parents were both Depression-era children as well (both born in 1920), and as you and Constance say, it leaves a mark that never fades. I'm different; I understand frugality and "saving for a rainy day," but without the obsessive-compulsive nature about it that they had. One of the ways it manifested regularly was that after I had moved out on my own, no matter what I spent my money on, it was always the wrong thing.

ajay, #66: Yeah. That caused a momentary *blink* reaction!

Carrie, #76: Sounds like container gardening would be the best way for you to go. No need to tear up the concrete, and no worries about soil quality.

Sajia, #91: We treat others decently because we are capable of moral decisions, not because science, scholarship or religion decreed so.

Those are words which deserve to be carved into marble and inlaid with gold.

albatross, #114: One alternative I've been seriously thinking about is getting a small motor-scooter for local errand-running. Save the car for when I have to go across town, and I could go further and carry more with a scooter than I can with the bike.

fidelio, #117: When I lived in Nashville and worked downtown, you'd better believe I took the bus back and forth! No parking hassles, and someone else got to deal with the rush-hour traffic, while I got a chance to read or unwind. I only drove on days when I was heading out somewhere directly after work. The problem with Nashville's public transportation system, though, is that it only works well for people who work standard business hours downtown. For anyone else, taking the bus either adds hours to your commute time or is not even an option. At my last downtown job, I had to tell them that I needed a day's notice (or a ride home) if they wanted me to stay late, because the last bus that went closer than 3 miles to my house left downtown at 5:15.

When talking about miles per gallon, I always have to remember that the USA'ian gallon is smaller than the UK one. Here, my car does about 46mpg(1), which corresponds to 38.3 USA'ian gallons.
Suddenly the SUV comparisons don't look quite so wonderful as they did a few minutes ago.

As for depressions, if we did get one in the UK, there would be millions out of work, and some malnourishment and starvation. The dole would help somewhat, but few people have access to the kind of land that can be used to grow food. But then we went through our own kind of depression in the 80's...

Apparently my grandfather and his brother started working for the bank back in the 1930's partly because you got a pension! and they still had the example of their grandparents who had lived out their short retirement in poverty in a small hovel in Musselburgh I think.

(1) its a diesel ford mondeo estate, 2 litre engine. My previous car was a 1.8 litre Vauxhall cavalier, which did maybe 36mpg imperial mpg.

Bruce @ 113

We really like this one for pork chops in a creamy champagne sauce: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_105234,00.html

Careful, though, because the cream curdles easily if you aren't really, really careful.

#133
Maybe all the comparisons should be in km/liter?

Lee @ #132--service to the peripheries has improved somewhat--and the idea of a bus service that goes around, for places like Old Hickory Boulevard, rather than strictly in and out, has begun to creep into the general consciousness of the MTA. There's even commuter service out towards parts of Rutherford County and (deeply contested by some) to Williamson County, and light rail that goes off toward Wilson County. They have bus racks on the fronts of buses, even.

But a lot of people haven't managed to make the mental transition yet, which is the hard part. As a society, we're trained to love our cars, and to depend on them first, and other forms of transportation as a second best.

In the last month or two, a lot more people have been riding the trains around LA. As in: suddenly we're close to SRO, instead of having empty seats.

Tarragon, mustard powder and lemongrass powder are among my most used flavorings -- with the variety of onions and shallots and garlic, of course. And wine or lemon and lime juice. Plus a variety of chilis and molidos and hot sauces. Curry mixture. Etc.

The things one does when on a non-sodium or low sodium diet!

I'm getting ready to think about making dinner ....

Love, C

Our city has decided that a "hub" system is the way to go— for "convenience", of course. This means that all major bus routes go in towards the center, instead of along the major thoroughfares.

In practice, this means that the eight miles in between our apartment and Evil Rob's workplace are not serviced by one route that goes along the major thoroughfare. Instead, it it served by a route that goes most of the way, turns north, goes just as far to the community college, and then another route heads south and finally crosses the freeway. Instead of a reasonable 20 to 40 minute route, Evil Rob would be looking at close to two hours, because it's more "convenient."

Convenient for whom, I wonder.

(It's also a little frustrating to know that because the city has incorporated recently, plans to extend the light rail further south were put on hold. It would be REALLY nice to have a light rail line that went from this city center to the larger city center, becasue there's a lot of nice things there that I'd visit if I didn't have to deal with parking.)

P J Evans #135- yes, that would be easiest, its just my car trip counter thingy is set at mpg and I need to do the calculations.

guthrie at 140

Did someone say calculations?

I don't see mpg/ litre per 100km there.
I did however pick up a small program from work called "COnvert" made by Joshua F Madison. It does just about everything you need, from temperature through to torque, volume, computer stuff, pressure etc.
I'm sure it must be out there on the internet somewhere.

The illustrated ACME catalog. It's just what you need when in futile pursuit of a roadrunner (fastus birdus).

fidelio, #136: Not to mention the perception of taking buses as "something only poor black people do". I still remember being told the "unofficial" expansion of MARTA, the bus system in Atlanta. No, I'm not going to repeat it here; I have more class than the person who told it to me.

#139

A grid system for bus lines isn't much better. You end up having to changes buses a lot more than you want. LA has the worst of both: a grid system with downtown as the main hub, and outlying subsidiary ones that you probably need to change buses to access. The trains I ride are straight-up spoke-and-hub, with one line that's outlying-to-outlying (on a major traffic path, so it makes sense).

Lee #144: I've heard it. MARTA is also a rail system, by the way.

tarragon vinegar.

2 cups of leaves and stalks washed.
3 cups of boiling white vinegar
1 quart canning jar with lid
1 vinegar bottle (or any tall, narrow container with a cork.
1 funnel
1 strainer

Put the tarragon in the canning jar and cover with the boiling vinegar. Cover tightly and put on a shelf for 30 days. Remove the tarragon, using a strainer for the small bits.

Optional: place fresh, whole stalks in the vinegar bottle. Reheat the vinegar and pour over fresh leaves. Let sit 1 week before using.

Good with salads, rice, and random vegetables.

The magic of music:

In my job I'm blessed with a door I can shut when the environment gets too distracting, but today the distraction was all me--I'd been in a rage since yesterday because of irritating situations in the office, and I wasn't able to concentrate.

Half an hour of listening to uppity music* on my Ipod while I work has cleared that right up--I love my job again, consolodating 1200 rows of data into 800 rows is nifty and fun instead of maddening, and my co-workers are menschen instead of morons. Also it made my incipient migraine go away. I'd forgotten how quickly and thoroughly music can center me and remind me of who I really am.

*mainly a mix of Nine Inch Nails, Eminem, Smashing Pumpkins, and (blush) Tom Jones

"There is no persuasive basis for applying to statutes that classify persons on the basis of the suspect classification of sexual orientation a standard less rigorous than that applied to statutes that classify on the basis of the suspect classifications of gender, race, or religion. Because sexual orientation, like gender, race, or religion, is a characteristic that frequently has been the basis for biased and improperly stereotypical treatment and that generally bears no relation to an individual’s ability to perform or contribute to society, it is appropriate for courts to evaluate with great care and with considerable skepticism any statute that embodies such a classification."

From the California Supreme Court decision striking down the ban on same-sex marriage.

Yes!

/Lizzy does the happy dance, metaphorically, anyway. It's way too hot out here to dance.../

Mary Dell @ #148, "(blush) Tom Jones"

No underwear was thrown in the writing of this post.

#150: That's unusual.

Whoa, whoa, whoa . . .

guthrie: Google can do it.

35 miles per imperial gallon in km per liter

Jon Meltzer #151: Why? Why? Why?

Fragano @ 146: And a darn good one, too--maybe not as good as BART or the DC Metro, but good.

I think the reason racists focused on the bus system is because those buses could go anywhere--DOWN YOUR STREET, WHERE ANYONE COULD PULL THE CORD AND JUMP OFF--while the trains stay on the tracks (we hope).

As for myself, I would've been happier not to walk that block, block and a half to the bus stop, and downright thrilled not to have to walk up to Dresden on Sundays and holidays.

#154: It's new?

John A. Arkansawyer #155: And then stand at the bus stop waiting for the next bus with your television in hand?

Lee @144:
The bus route serving my part of town has for several years gotten its greatest usage from a white, upper middle class Republican enclave. Go figure.

Mary Dell @148:
You too, huh? NIN, Rage Against The Machine, Korn, Saul Williams, Rammstein, MDFMK, The Offspring, and recently added Apocalyptica. Rather than be angry, I let my music be angry for me.

Fragano @ 157: At least having bus service kept me from having to steal a car, too.

PJ @ #145: We lived in Denver for a number of years and were happy with the transit there. In fact, it tends to be rated very highly in the country in terms of just plain getting you there. "Spoke and hub" is a good description— AND they hadn't gotten the light rail down 25 and 225 at that point, so I bet it's even better now.

The only problem they had from our perspective was a lack of buses to Park Meadows— a bus driver told me that Highlands Ranch had lobbied against it. Well, it was back in place by the time we left.

A lot of people don't like light rail, and I understand why. Denver's had a few features that really worked, including the fact that it went to all of their stadiums. Now that's a good idea. Park out at the edge of the city, take the train in... and of course, there's always plenty of late trains on game night.

I guess the only real way to design transit logically is to see where people live and where they go and build it like that. Major thoroughfares are there for a reason, so use them. But if everybody works in one area, get the buses there.

The US Attorney's office in Los Angeles has just announced (today) in the MySpace bullying case. I haven't got any details, but one piece of the indictment was "conspiracy". I think they are using stalking laws to get a charge.

The bus that goes past my house, which I usually use to get home, is having the oddest schedule change next week: instead of leaving the downtown hub at 5:15, it's going to start leaving at 5:00. Exactly when everyone gets off work, leaving no time to get to the stop. And the next bus on that route doesn't come until 6:00. I suspect some transit planners will be scratching their heads over how empty it is, all of a sudden.

Luckily I live in an unsprawling college town, so there are a couple of routes that will let me off within four or five blocks of where I need to be.

geekosaur @#158: my faves are mellower (Peter Gabriel, Dave Matthews, Tori Amos...yeah, I'm old), but that's the beauty of an MP3 player--any mood I want to invoke is literally at my fingertip. And I like a little bit of everything...even Opera, if you count Gilbert & Sullivan.

In England they calculate mileage in miles per liter.

There was an article in the sports section that said how many stone Mike Tyson weighed and then converted that directly into metric.

Lizzy L #149: Wow. Is that as big a deal as it looks like? Won't this end up with about 15% of the US population living in states where same-sex marriage is recognized?

It seems to me that this is likely to become a major political issue, since gay marriage is explicitly forbidden by many states' laws, and yet there will be two large states issuing marriage certificates. I'm having a hard time seeing imported gay couples getting official recognition in Utah or even Missouri without a big political battle.

Wow.

Rage Against The Machine. Anger, Yay!

Also, WhiteZombie, AstroCreep 2000.

On a totally different musical take, may I recommend the somewhat "new" band called the "Black Keys"? They're a garage/classic rock band. THeir songs tend to be either driving-energy or sort of a creepy/spooky.

Also, saw "Iron Man" finally. I give it a 7.5 out of 10. Just enough to make the "full evening price" grade, i.e. if you pay full evening price, you'd probably feel like you got your money's worth.

Greg London's totally capitalistic movie grading system:
arbitrary numeric scale of 1 to 10 -> how much money is it worth paying to see
7.5-10 -> Evening price
5.0-7.5 -> matinee
2.5-5.0 -> rental
0-2.5 -> Free on cable.

If it isn't worth free on cable, it isn't worth watching at all.

Fidelio: I am old, and set in my ways. I am barely cognizant that we have a food processor. I use the mill (rotary), and the knives, and the blender.

Sisuile: It's a great soup ingredient (as a base, extender, or grace note: The first two are with the stalks/base, the last with the filigree, and added at the last minute). The seeds are a critical ingredient in the making of "italian" sausage.

If you want recipes... well the trick with the base is to chop it, boil it in the stock, puree it (food mill/processor) and blend it back in. It's very tasty in a potato-leek soup (with either a vegetable, or a chicken stock).

By itself, it makes a great cream soup (any place celeriac is used, fennel may be), finished with a twist of black pepper and a drizzle of truffle oil.

P J: I heard that as I got to my social event. I was tickled pink.

Bruce Cohen (StM) Tarragon: I make baked/roasted chicken with tarragon.

The best way to get the skin is to put it into a dutch oven (in the oven, or with coals/fire). If you do that, line the bottom with foil, and put the bird onto a round cooling rack; above a pie tin. This will catch the drippings.

Chop a goodly quantity of tarragon, and some onions/shallots (use as much of the greens as you like; should you have them).

Stuff the mix into the cavity and, with a little butter, into the space between the flesh and skin (this will render more of the fat, and crisp the skin better; it's part of the secret to peking duck).Toss in a healthy splash of a dry white wine (I like a sauvignon blanc).

Roast in a high oven (425), until done (if you use the oven in the oven; get the oven to max, and soak the cast-iron for at least 30 minutes).

The skin will be crisp, the meat moist, and the drippings are practically a sauce in their own right

The tarragon, BTW is a recurrent perrenial. It will die back to the root in the winter. Break the twigs at ground level and they won't be in the way when the plant returns. Once established it will survive for 10-15 years.

B. Durbin: Anise is different, but the seeds are often subsituted, one for the other. Anise is more licoricy.

Maia and I, and her family; are screwed come a depression. We were in grave risk of having to pay a penalty in the
energy piracy. There was talk of penalizing houses which didn't cut energy use by 10 percent.

We didn't have it to cut. No AC, lights off when not in use, clothes on the line, gas and solar water heater. Apart from swapping out the electric range for gas (we used a wood stove to heat the house in the winter, and a fire in the living room; though it has a fan driven heat exchanger), we there was no way we could kill off ten percent (though I suppose we could have traded in losing the chickens to the varmints by turning off the electric fence to the hen-house entrance).

I forgot: Maia is having a bash; to celebrate her graduation, and as a farewell (prior to her 3 month internship).

Anyone who wants to come (3 p.m. Saturday, to sometime Sunday morning) is welcome.

Drop me a line (hit the view all button) and I'll send details. (those outside the L.A. area will have to do more planning, crash space is available; your own bedroll is probably a good idea).

Food, drink, games, talk, horses, and other amusements will be provided; spontaneous music may break out.

albatross, it's not done yet. The fundies (and among them some of my fellow Catholics, sigh...) are trying to pass a Constitutional amendment which would essentially allow discrimination in case of marriage law. If it doesn't pass, and keeps on not passing every time they bring it up until they give up, then yeah, this is a very big deal. By the way, Ahnold our governor has stated that he does not and will not support such an amendment.

Lori Coulson @ 90: I just waited too long to buy a half share in my local CSA for this year. They were sold out by the time I remembered to look. They are awesome -- they have even supplied edamame in the past. And the garlic scapes early in the season are SO good.

So, farmer's market this year, pony up early for share next year.

Mary Dell @163:
Oh, that's just my "angry" set. I have a bit of just about everything, and playlists by style and by mood, plus a "balanced" playlist to compensate for the fact that I have more classical than everything else combined; it picks stuff randomly to create a playlist balanced between all the genres.

Greg London @166:
The Black Keys' "Strange Times" gets a lot of airplay, but I have yet to hear anything else from them so I'm withholding judgement as yet.

I'm also not generally inclined to add too much stuff to my collection any more unless it's really good or I can get it by paying the artist directly; I refuse to rip off the artists, and prefer not to feed the RIAA. (Radiohead got a rather hefty "tip" from me last year....)

Lizzy L @169: The thing that I find very deeply bewildering about the process of amending the California constitution is that it requires merely a simple majority of voters, once it's on the ballot.

How is it possible that an enlightened modern democratic government can amend its constitution, for crying out loud, with just barely more than half of the voters voting for the amendment? This goes in the face of everything that I understood about how constitutions are supposed to work!

(Well, okay, I suppose I can make up reasonable arguments for it, but still -- it just feels entirely wrong.)

albatross, #75, this is the carpool page for the DC area.

Terry @ #168 - Congrats to Maia! I graduated on Sunday, and I am so relieved to be done with grad school.

I made my own schmaltz a few weeks back. That was interesting and fun.

I'm glad to be back. I've missed y'all while focusing on finishing up with school.

Mary Dell #148: To each his or her own, but the one you blushed about is, to me, the least embarrassing.

For angry music, recently I've been turning to This Heat's Deceit, 50FOOTWAVE (Kristin Hersh's current band), Theoretical Girls, Iggy & the Stooges (always), and, for individual songs on repeat, Yoko Ono's "Why" and Björk's "Declare Independence".

Lizzy: And this is an election year ploy.

Prop 22 was four years ago...

The happy thing is a consitutional ammendment take 66 percent, and just maybe the youth vote Obama has been collecting will turn out to oppose the idea of legalising discrimination.

For some more happy thoughts, read the opinion of the case appealed to cause this ruling. It was written by a conservative justice.

I wrote it up, I'll see if I can google the post.

Brooks Moses: 50 +1? Crap. I thought it was 2/3rds.

Christ, harder to raise a tax than amend the constitution, as you say, that's nuts.

And now I'm worried. Prop 22 (the law just struck down, and reversed; in spades) passed something like 55-45.

Mary Dell, #163: Tori Amos...yeah, I'm old

Tori Amos wasn't born when I was acquiring my favorites! In fact, I don't think I know anything by her at all; I more or less stopped listening to current pop sometime in the 80s. The artists I like who postdate that were picked up from other sources, usually friends.

Mary Dell, geekosaur, ethan, et al.

Don't forget Nazareth's classic Hair of the Dog.

Here's something odd but cool: Muto, an ambiguous animation painted on public walls

Terry @177: Everything I can find online implies (rather clearly, in some cases, but still implication) that it's a simple majority. I'd be glad if it turned out I was reading things wrong; I don't think so, but independent definitive verification would be nice regardless....

One of the pages I found was a note about one of the potential reasons that the court might vote the other way (it was posted pre-decision), noting that there was a lot of strength to the argument that the vote on Prop. 22 would likely have been the same had it been for a constitutional amendment rather than simply to create legislation, and so the court should treat it as if it had been to amend the constitution. Thankfully, the court rejected that argument!

I hope that the intervening eight years (Prop. 22 was in 2000, not 2004) have been sufficient to change the minds of at least 5% of California voters. I wouldn't be surprised; for one thing, at least 5% of California voters were too young to vote eight years ago, just to start with.

Greg @166:
I like that system. The Hub's movie grading scale is not money-based, but I would still commend to you the use of 0 as "Give me those two hours of my life back, you bastard!" Sometimes even free isn't cheap enough.

Terry @168:
Sounds like a fantastic party. Raise a glass to absent friends, will you? There's a lot of us here that would love to be able to come.

And congratulations to Maia!

Music
We all have MP3 players or plug into our computers, because we're open plan. It's been Zoe Keating and Barenaked Ladies in alternation for a week now, punctuated by "Skullcrusher Mountain" by Jonathan Coulton (for no reason in particular). Last week it was Baroque music by the St Petersburg (Russia) Brass Quintet.

The colleague across from me is a skinhead and a nodder/occasional snarler to his heavy metal. It's funny when the rhythm of my music matches his.

Marilee @173 re Albatross @75 re: gas prices

One thing that heartens me is what could be coming up in carpooling tools.

I went to a transit camp recently*, and saw presentations on carpooling software. While the particular one I saw in detail is set up for carpooling within individual companies**, many of the ideas scale***.

----------------
* an unconference (attendees create sessions) on all things transit.

** people accumulate points for each 'individual car ride' avoided, and points = tickets for prizes.

*** but since I can't find an immediate link, I'll have to write more later.

So, who'll be at Denvention?

I ask because I've been able to get a room in the party hotel. Not a suite, but we can have people by*.

We should and will have a Making Light gathering at Denvention, and I'll volunteer the room as a gathering space during one of the party nights (not Hugo night).

---------
* Not necessarily the whole 400 we had at LACon, but some. (If you do have a suite and need a co-host...email me.)

Debbie @ 87: "[quoting Zucker]The therapists supporting a child's transition early, I have characterized them in a half serious way as liberal essentialists. On the surface, the approach comes across as very humanistic, liberal, accepting, tolerant of diversity. But I think the hidden assumption is that they believe the child's cross-gender identity is entirely caused by biological factors. That's why I call them essentialists. Liberals have always been critical of biological reductionism, but here they embrace it. I think that conceptual approach is astonishingly naive and simplistic, and I think it's wrong."

He is wrong, but in an interesting way. He's quite right about the essentialism--one of the more interesting posts I've ever read on Mixing Memory was on the subject of attitudes towards homosexuality: the research showed pretty definitively that people who support gay rights tend to view homosexuality as involuntary, and those who oppose them generally see it as a choice.* But he's wrong to characterize that understanding as reliant on biological factors. For example, I see people's favorite color as being involuntary, in that you can't choose not to like green more than red--it's just the way you are. However, I don't think color preference in determined by genetics.

I think the liberal position really at stake here is the one about trusting people to make the best decisions about their own happiness.

*Thus their fears of gay "recruitment," I suppose.

albatross @ 114: "General Question: Does anyone have a good link for how much people can adjust their lives based on energy prices at fairly low cost?"

A real-world case study happened just recently in Juneau--an avalanche knocked out the city's hydroelectric power plant, and the city was forced to switch to diesel power. Consequently, power prices increased by 400-500%, and consumption was cut back by almost a third. Which is pretty amazing, really.

Links:
http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2008/04/powering-down.html
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/385250.html

ERik #164- miles per litre? Not that I've ever come across. Is this a joke?
All that I remember seeing in adverts is litres per 100km and miles per gallon

Greg London's totally capitalistic movie grading system:
arbitrary numeric scale of 1 to 10 -> how much money is it worth paying to see
7.5-10 -> Evening price
5.0-7.5 -> matinee
2.5-5.0 -> rental
0-2.5 -> Free on cable.

I'd add on another level at the bottom: 0-1 -> watch on aircraft. If you're at home, you have more options - go out, read a good book, listen to music, whatever. If you're trapped in a big metal pipe, with six hours still to go before you reach LAX, and you've read your book already, and your neighbour can't speak any recognisable Indo-European tongue... then your standards drop a little, and you end up watching (blush) "Alien v. Predator".

The recent record that's obsessing me is "Separation Sunday" by The Hold Steady. It is a brilliant seventies rock album that functions as a critique of the early Springsteen "teenage nation" songs.

I wrote a friend and said, "I've gone from 'Exile on Main Street' to 'Life's Rich Pageant' and I badly need something else." This and The Drive-By Truckers (also brilliant) were what he recommended.

Kathryn from Sunnyvale @ 184...

I will be at Denvention.
Want some help?

Tania @ 174... I've missed y'all while focusing on finishing up with school

Some people have no sense of the right priorities.

"Mess with me, and your shoes are MINE."

I will be at Denvention, and have a room somewhere or other.

This reminds me that if I carry through my masquerade plan I will need about fifteen more people to go on stage with. Serge, foolish man, has already volunteered. Anyone else want to play? Most people would only need to wear black and stroll slowly across the stage carrying a sign.

I've been alternating listening to sevillanas for dancing, melancholy songs for depression, survival songs (S.J. Tucker, Stan Rogers), and reconciliation songs which are depressing in their own right ("You Can't Stop the Beat" from the Hairspray stage soundtrack.)

Hairspray has been so stuck in my head that I have been sleepily working my way through the movie versions all week and with luck will see the stage version again tonight (important, to clear my head from the wreck they made of the recent movie). There's a certain temptation to write a comparative essay.

ajay @187 -- now, now. No need to blush or be embarrassed. The first thing I grab in a doctor's waiting room is the glitziest papparazzi rag I can find.

geekosaur@171: The Black Keys' "Strange Times" gets a lot of airplay, but I have yet to hear anything else from them

Oh, cool. Glad to hear they're getting airplay. I haven't listened to a radio for more than a few minutes here and there for many years now. I subscribe to rhapsody, which lets me listen to pretty much anything I want for 8 bucks a month. Rhapsody pretty much has everything except for a couple major artists (led zeppelin, ac/dc, beatles), and you'll run into a song that is listed as "30 second sample". But otherwise, you can listen to just about any song you want for a flat fee of around 8/month.

I've listend to a couple of Black Keys albums, and they're all good. Good enough that I bought tickets to see them live, in concert.

The "Attack and Release" album is pretty much all good. About half the songs qualify as my "favorites", including "Strange Times", "I Got Mine", "So He Won't Break", "Oceans and Streams", "Psychotic Girl".

That album has two songs that have completely different feels to them (one slow and dreamy, the other kickin butt high energy) that have the exact same lyrics. ("Remember When", side A and B) And they're both "right". When I noticed that, they pretty much had me on technical skill alone. Not to mention each song evokes a strong emotion. And they're lyrics are good.

I wonder if I can make the argument that if a school's webpage is still showing the "current" class taught as 1998 I can make the argument that they should give a day of grace on their deadline for abstracts for a conference, since I was too tired to pull together anything coherent last night.

Susan @ 192... if I carry through my masquerade plan I will need about fifteen more people to go on stage with. Serge, foolish man, has already volunteered

That's me, Serge, fou et volontaire.

abi@182: 0 as "Give me those two hours of my life back, you bastard!"

0 would probably be "give me my two hours back".
-2.5 would add "you bastard".

aja@187: 0-1 -> watch on aircraft.

0-2.5 would mean that the time watching the movie is, to varying degrees, worth what entertainment you got out of the movie. This assumes that you have other alternatives on how to spend your time and can freely choose one over the other.

Aircraft are more like game theory strategic moves where they enforce certain chunks of lost time and limited selections of viewing material. And like any strategic move, it changes your answers. i.e. face a firing squad, or, watch "Gigli"?

The Hold Steady.

They're from Brooklyn. They've got a free gig there June 29th, Patrick and Teresa. They covered "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window" as though they were Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. They...

I am a recovering music reviewer. I will stop now.

Aircraft are more like game theory strategic moves where they enforce certain chunks of lost time and limited selections of viewing material. And like any strategic move, it changes your answers. i.e. face a firing squad, or, watch "Gigli"?

My answer to that choice will depend on whether or not I am offered a blindfold.

What rating would you give to the Bourne-out-of-my-skull movies? Whoever made those movies never heard of the difference between action and movement.

Re: bus service -

I just recently discovered that taking the bus to work might be feasible for me. The last time I looked at the online route maps, it looked like I'd have to take two separate buses and about forty-five minutes to get to a stop half a mile or so from my destination. One of those two buses ran once an hour, so if I missed that bus, it would be faster to walk the two miles from the connection to my destination. This is for a five-mile commute.

When I quit laughing hysterically, I decided it wasn't worth it.

Now the routes have changed and one bus will drop me practically on the doorstep at work without any connections. I'm still looking into it. As short as my commute is, I think it is unlikely that the bus will save me money, and exceedingly unlikely that it will save me time. I'd be riding the bus for the sole purpose of conservation. That's an excellent reason, and I think I'm willing, but I'm having just enough trouble figuring out the details that I'm still reluctant. I haven't, for example, discovered how much a bus trip costs. I don't know if the buses take cash or if I must buy a transit card. I'm also not sure which direction the bus needs to be going when I get on it.

I need to take some time and poke the website some more, I guess.

Terry @167/168-we have a food processor. There's a lot of dust on it for some reason.

And three cheers for Maia! I hope the internship goes well, and the time passes quickly.

I suspect in terms of energy use reduction, you all would need to look into solar roofing or a family windmill, assuming codes would permit the latter.

Serge @ 201: I enjoyed watching the second Bourne movie on an airplane. Not having headphones helped.

John A Arkansawyer @ 204... No earphones? That means you missed the wonderful soundtrack.

Pregnant women: eat dark chocolate.

202: I'd be inclined to cycle a five-mile commute, unless topography, meteorology or physiology make it impractical... certainly faster than a bus, and possibly, depending on traffic, faster than a car as well.

John A. Arkansawyer #159: Only hybrids, of course.

Kathryn from Sunnyvale (184): I'll be there! I'm looking forward to meeting some fellow Fluorospherians.

Susan (192): I'm in.

Autographed works of the immortal poet of the Silvery Tay are being auctioned.

Fragano, I believe you mean here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/7402920.stm

Compared to modern poetry, I don't see whats so bad about him, although some of the sentence endings clunk a bit.
(You can tell I don't read poetry)

Buses? Prescott AZ (and "the tri-city area") ain't got no stinkin' buses! Makes me glad I work from home -- and my G.P. doctor, a grocery store, plus a mailing place and bank are all within a half-hour's walk, even at *my* trudge. With all that plus wildlife and scenery, I'll try not to complain (much).

As for music, I'm another old fart. Just online-ordered the latest CDs by Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello.

You know how people say "Life stinks* and then you die"?

I've decided they're optimists. Life stinks, and then you somehow manage to not die, because your $#%&@% evolutionary programming (and in my case, my oath) keep you scrabbling to survive, even though you have no chance of ever reproducing or doing anything that might possibly be worth the downside, and life keeps on stinking, and besides that, you age.

Translation: I'm having a bad day, at the end of a string of bad days which were punctuated only by having dinner with some old friends I don't see nearly often enough, and by the good news about Little Brother. It's the boyfriend thing again. Ignore this please, I just needed to rant and not have someone tell me it serves me right or that I should have known.

Xopher:
It does not serve you right. And while maybe you "should have known", if your trust/belief was misplaced that's more the fault of the one you trusted than of your willingness to trust.

Mary Aileen:
Cool! Thirteen people to go. Is the email address on your linked webpage the best way to reach you?

#207, ajay -

I'd be inclined to cycle a five-mile commute also, but I'm terrified of the traffic. People cycle on my commute routinely, but I don't have the cajones for it. (Is that physiology stopping me? *grin*)

It's disappointing, because I know that I'd really enjoy a cycling commute, and you're right, it would be much faster than the bus.

#213, Xopher -

*hugs* Hope your day improves.

Xopher @ 213... What Susan said to you.

R. M. Koske @ 202: In North America, if you (a) own a car and (b) don't work/live somewhere parking is actually expensive, then taking the bus is rarely cheaper and only faster if there are bus lanes. Most fare systems seems to break even at 5-7 round trips a week.

Not that you shouldn't do it, but that's a large part of why "buses are for poor people" here. Or, you know, the other way around.

Greg @ 198: "face a firing squad, or, watch "Gigli"?"

This is where volume control* comes in handy, and an active imagination. Why watch a crappy movie when you can make up your own story?

When I started downloading books to my PDA I realized that I never had to worry again about being trapped with nothing to do.

*Volume control, also known as "hearing aids", are very useful for certain types of situations. Like people you really don't want to listen to, and movies you really don't want to watch, and for sleeping through thunderstorms ("again?"). ;-)

Xopher--see 214, 216 and 217--yeah, really. What part of your brain did this idea that you deserve to have suckiness get stuck into, and can we get it out without resoting to surgery?

There are situations and people that stink, and they don't always come with labels on them. Sometimes when they do have labels, the labels are misleading.

Okay, open thread question: Does anyone have suggestions for managing lots of books and a dust allergy?

I've just been re-tested again for allergies, and once again, what I'm allergic to has shifted. The doctors tell me it looks like I've got a mild dust mite allergy, and upon reflection, that jives with my experiences. Unfortunately, I'm terrible at keeping things dusted -- really, I'm horrible -- and I have four massive bookcases. I'm not willing to live without my books.

Does anyone have suggestions for keeping them minimally dusty? My normal dust-removal procedure is dusting with a damp rag, which won't work at all, or dusting with a yellow rag*, which works cosmetically but doesn't seem like it's going to work as a remove-all-dust solution. And feather dusters just move more dust into the air. Would running a lambswool duster over the tops of the books every week help, or is there some other option?

*Treated rag. Works great on wood surfaces, but not so much on paper.

Xopher(213): What Susan said.

Susan (214): Yes, that address is fine. (I don't put my main address anywhere publically accessible, to minimize spam. So far, it seems to be working.)

guthrie @ 211: Wrong comparison. Put him up against Byron and you'll see the problem.

I'm getting a bicycle. It's been at least 4 decades since I've been on a bike, but I just can't justify the 1 mile car ride, all on level ground and in good weather, to the bank, the post office, church, the library, etc. A rack will allow me to carry stuff. A friend has offered a loaner -- a 20 year old folding bike in good condition -- and if it feels like I can ride it, I'll take it. I've investigated new bikes but at my budget they cost too much. However, there's a good used bicycle store in Berkeley (natch) and when the temperature drops below 90, I'm driving (insert ironical grin here) to it, to see what they have.

Our local water district has just instituted water rationing. It's good.

#164, #186: litres per 100km and miles per (UK) gallon are the usually quoted figures, but with petrol being sold by the litre and road distances still measured in miles, miles per litre makes a certain amount of sense.
I've actually never seen or heard it used though.

Xopher @213:

I'm sorry it's been a sucky time for you. I wish there were anything anyone could say during these dark times, but sometimes what you need is not words but silence.

Not to get to personal, but how's your spiritual life? Maybe some time adoring the universe would set whatever inside you that's wrong back into the right pattern, so that you can live with everything around you better.

It's not about life sucking; life sucks for everyone from time to time. It's about how you can cope with life sucking. You sound like you need to renew your soul.

(*hugs*)

I just got back from my after-lunch walk, and I have to share the two cool things I saw:

A blue damselfly of some kind. What's that bug? says that damselflies light with their wings closed, dragonflies with their wings open. Therefore this was a damselfly, but I can't identify it any more positively than that.

It looked a lot like this one,this one, but with more blue on the thorax and the tip of the tail, and less on the bits in between. And the blue was much more intense, like this.

Very cool, and worth mentioning to acquaintances if not post-worthy. But five steps later I saw the snake.

I don't have any visuals on this one, because it was just a plain little green snake of some kind. What was mention-worthy was where it was resting. It had threaded itself through the links of the chainlink fence, and was woven in it about ten inches off the ground, resting there. It had about eight inches of the body and head free, and was waving its head slightly as it scented the air. It was the motion that caught my eye.

I may have to start taking my camera on my walks.

I just read Patrick's "Ten Best Beer Names Ever" sidelight. Not only do the names rock, but I've had one or two of the beers and can say with certainty that they also rock. In fact, I think I've got a bottle of Unibroue's La Fin Du Monde in my fridge right now. Come on, beer-thirty! ;-)

Re Devention:

I will not be there, unsurprisingly. But if there is a party, and anyone has a laptop with Skype and a webcam, and the time zones work out*, we could make it a partly virtual party...

We'll see.

-----
* And dates, because staying up late or getting up early means I can't be going to work the next day.

One of my fondest memories of student film-society days was a well-attended screening late one night where the sound died and the movie kept rolling. It was near the end, where you had multiple groups of people trying to find/chase/get away from something or somebody.

The audience was silent for about 10 seconds, then some murmuring started, and then someone called out "screech!" as a car rounded a corner on-screen. A little while later, someone else called out some silly-and-barely-plausible line for a character that appeared on the screen. There followed a wonderful few minutes of the audience collaboratively making up and performing their own soundtrack, to increasingly loud giggles.

(The movie's plot was one of those implausible-if-you-stop-to-think rides anyway, so part of the fun was just making it even more out-there.)

Eventually the projectionist stopped the film to try to fix the sound, to widespread boos.

I now don't remember what the actual film was, or how it turned out, but I fondly recall those few minutes.

#218, Ralph Giles -

Yup, that's what I'm thinking is going to be the case here. My route is what Atlanta traffic reporters call "surface streets" (non-interstate roads) and there are no bus lanes on those, so I definitely don't expect it to be faster or even as fast. I still haven't discovered the price of a one-way fare*, but I'm not planning on doing the math for cost. I'd get to read on the way to work (but the trip will take longer) and that's about the only advantage to me.

*I've found prices for month-long passes and such, but not single trips.

Xopher #213: I hope you have some better days soon.

Kathryn, #184: It looks like we're going to be there after all. There was a point when it was uncertain, but concom disorganization seems to have worked in our favor for once. I'll bring the buttons!

Debbie, #194: My preferred waiting room material is moderately interesting brain-dead stuff that I can put down immediately and not miss. People, Cosmo, GQ, US, anything along those lines. I call it "brain candy".

R.M. Koske, #202: For a commute of only 5 miles, I'd be sorely tempted to see if biking it was a feasible solution. (Sometimes it's not, for reasons unrelated to distance.) And, after seeing your response -- is there any alternate route that would take you over less-traveled streets? Sometimes it's worth going a bit out of your way to be riding mostly in residential areas.

Xopher, #213: Sympathies. And virtual hugs, if that would help. And no, it emphatically do NOT serve you right! Honestly, some people's children.

And some open-thread rejoicing: Alan Ralsky has been indicted!

Who's Alan Ralsky, you ask? He's the creep responsible for something like 90% of the non-Nigerian spam in your inbox. He's been running a huge spam-and-hacker operation for at least a decade, has openly bragged about it (in a major metropolitan newspaper, no less!), and has generally been an outstanding exemplar of the "laws are for the little people" mentality for a very long time. And it looks as though he may rat out his entire script-kiddie network to save his sleazy ass from some jail time. Hallelujah!

#233, Lee -

The problem that I have is leaving my apartment complex. If I turn left, I'm on a "residential" street that I'm afraid to bike on. That whole road is a shoulderless, curvy no passing zone, but that didn't stop someone from passing me on it on Tuesday*. We had a discussion about it a few open threads ago (and I really don't mean to keep harping on it, sorry!) and someone said that if I'm afraid to walk on the road, I shouldn't bike it. I'm afraid to walk that road. This is doubly annoying because my grocery store is a mile away if I take that road, but I drive there anyway.

If I turn right, I'm almost immediately on a five-lane road right at the intersection with an Interstate highway. I've thought about going that way anyway, because although it is the long way around, I might be able to find a route that will get me to work by staying on the sidewalks.

Oh, hey. There used to be a gap in the fence around the complex at the back that let out onto a different road. It's not passible by car, but it might be bicycle-worthy if they didn't close it up when they built the latest batch of condos. Hm.

*I was doing thirty miles an hour, five under the limit. Obviously that's unacceptable and passing is allowed in cases of "the driver slowing you down is a moron."

R.M. Koske #231: For information on bus service go to www.itsmarta.com (for services other than MARTA: http://www.itsmarta.com/howto/othertrans.htm). MARTA's one-way fare (now a disposable card) is $1.75.

RMK @231: Are you using MARTA? According to

http://www.itsmarta.com/howto/fares.htm

the fare for a single ride is $1.75 cash. Transfers seem to require either paying a new fare, or using a "BreezeCard" or "BreezeTicket" that lets you keep riding on connecting lines for up to 3 hours on the initial fare.

The Breezethingys cost money to buy, and from the description, it sounds like they use RFIDs. Fans of M1k3y may find it advisable to pay cash for the 50-cent arphid tickets, instead of the $5 arphid cards, and dispose of them regularly. (I suspect that killing the arphid outright, as described in _Little Brother_, would just zero out the value of the card/ticket.) For those who don't mind being tracked over multiple trips, the Breeze*s can be reloaded with more money for future fares, though there are limitations on the reloadability of the tickets that don't apply to the cards.

Thanks everyone; the encouraging words and virtual hugs are appreciated. I should clarify, though, that the "you should have known" attitude (no one's been so rude as to actually say it) is not about how I trusted where I shouldn't have (though I may have done that), but that I should have known that a relationship with someone like him (quite a bit younger; troubled past (victim, not perp); variety of physical and mental health problems arising from same) could not possibly work out.

You know, like making your book available for free download absolutely guarantees it won't ever be a bestseller, right?

I took a chance, to be sure. I was gambling for a HUGE prize though, and I still think he's a true treasure—just not one I can have. And it wasn't for any of the above reasons: people on his side opposed our relationship, for some of those reasons, and for homophobic and/or sexist prejudice (for example, they told him that if he wanted to date a woman my age they'd have no problem with that); they may actually have gone so far as to threaten to do violence against me if he didn't dump me (it's not clear, because he won't tell me the details).

Maybe I'll go back to writing that story about the kid who, though surrounded by aggressively carnivorous monsters, has a less horrific life than he had when surrounded by humans. Even misery has to be good for something, right?

#235, Fragano and #236, John Mark Ockerbloom -

I've been looking at the CCT (Cobb County) website. Some of my questions are going to take sitting down with the route map, timetable, and google maps and aligning what I know with their reference points, which are non-road things I don't recognize.* I'm beginning to suspect the single-trip cost just isn't on the website, but I haven't combed through it well enough to be sure. The buses do take one dollar bills but don't make change, so I'm guessing it is in the same price range as MARTA. I'm comfortable with that uncertainty. It's the route mysteries that are bugging me now, and I feel like they're fairly solvable, if I take the time.

*"East-West Connector and Brookwood" is a stop on the timetable. But there isn't a road called Brookwood. "Cumberland and Cobb Drive" is another stop, but there are multiple Cumberland roads and a Cumberland mall. To my knowledge, none of them intersect with Cobb Drive on the route the map shows. One of the timetable stops is "Kroger Plaza" but I don't know what road it is on. To increase the difficulty of the puzzle, the landmarks on the route map are completely different.

abi @ 229... I will not be there, unsurprisingly.

Bah humbug.

Wait, one mystery down! There is a Brookwood Drive, and it meets the East-West Connector. Google maps just can't find it in the "search for an intersection" format. Progress!

G.Jules #221:

Best long-term solution is to put well-fitting glass doors on the fronts of the bookcases. After a one-time thorough dusting right afterwards, you should be set. (The books stored in the glass-fronted cases flanking the faux fireplace of my last house were *much* less dusty than the vast majority that lived elsewhere in the World's Second-Dustiest House.)

#221--G. Jules--I have had good results using the Swiffer dusters; they do trap the dust as they work, instead of spreading it around. Upgrading your air filters, if you haven't already, is worth a shot, too, and I have friends who swear by air purifiers for cutting down the amount of dust, along with everything else.

Good luck with the War on Dust--I've had good results with allergy shots, but even if you have some benefit from them, cutting down on the allergens in your environemnt is always good.

RMK @ 238: According to http://dot.cobbcountyga.gov/cct/cct-fares.htm , the CCT fare is $1.50 for local bus lines, and $3 for express; transfers free (except for local-to-express), and you can also transfer to and from MARTA without paying extra.

The local ("fixed") and express lines are listed at

http://dot.cobbcountyga.gov/cct.htm

(Note: I am nowhere near Atlanta, and have not ridden the system there, though I'm a frequent rider of transit at home and on trips. Take the word of a local rider over mine.)

#243 - John Mark Ockerbloom -

*wipes egg off face* Thanks!

I have no idea why I couldn't find that. It could be more obvious, but I think it might take flashing lights and sound effects to do it.

(Thanks, too, for not adding, "you idiot" to your post. I know you were tempted!)

G. Jules @ 221: If you don't want to do the door thing, I've found size-segregating books and adjusting the shelves so there's only a fingerwidth of space between the books and the next shelf helps confine the dust to just the bit of shelf in front of the spines. That's much easier to dust or vacuum and/or minimizes the build-up one is ignoring.

Of course, you have to have a good fraction of segregable books, and be willing to use them. We do that for packing efficiency anyway, but it does make finding things a challenge sometimes...

On the 10 Best Beer Names link in the Sidelights:

Descendents of the original family have revived the Griesedieck Brothers brewing company of St. Louis. Say the name slowly and listen. Yes, there's a reason they changed the name to Falstaff.

While you're cleaning up the new infestation, here's a bit of old spam that never got deleted.

#202, RE convoluted bus routes:

That's my situation almost exactly, but my commute is only 3.5 miles. Probably very bikeable.

RE dust and allergies: I'm suffering terribly from the pollen this year. I just bought a air purifier. I run it full blast in my bedroom starting in the early evening, then turn it down to low until I hit the hay. It seems to be helping.

I'm also vacuuming every nook and cranny and corner I can. I figure whatever dust escapes from the Hoover bag will be taken care of by the air purifier.

Another technique: I dust off CD cases, books, & etc. by wiping them off on the carpet. Then I vacuum the carpet.

I'm amused by how the spammers perform an inadvertant public service - I'd not seen the post in #247, and now I have more good fiction to read.

#237 -- Xopher, it's no hyperbole to say that you're one of the most interesting people Mel and I have run across in the Fluorosphere. That this should have not worked out for the two of you because of pressure from his family and "friends" is just too close to Shakespearian for words... In a way, I feel as bad for the Puppy as for you, since he will not likely find a partner like you again... Don't EVER beat yourself up for taking the gamble... It was one you both deserved to win...

{{{{hug!}}}}

...and doubled from Mel...

Kathryn and Susan - I'll be at Denvention, and would love to meet up, visit, and help out. A masquerade - how fun!

Edward 250: Thanks. Huge massive thanks, and the same to Mel. Thank you.

I'll be at Denvention, and I look good in black.

I'm looking for people to share a room with, so anyone in the same situation, please drop me a line (walters @ my domain)...

Xopher, I keep trying to come with something that isn't trite or sounds like a song lyric that an adolescent would pen. So imagine I said something thoughtful and full of insight lauding your bravery to take chances on relationships, reminding you of the way you enrich everyone you interact with because you are you, and offering you hugs.

For verisimilitude, imagine me also saying "Wasabi Frosting? For real?"

Tania, I don't have to imagine you saying it, because you did.

The wasabi buttercream was a failure, but in a non-obvious way. For some reason it was too SWEET, which was not at all what I was expecting.

I meant to say "...you did, and thanks."

Kathryn, Serge, everyone else:

I'll be at Denvention. Hubby and I are staying at the Grand Hyatt rather than commuting every day between Boulder and Denver. I offer my time, my hands, and our car to any party-making endeavors that need them.

(I made the same offer when the possibility of a VPX reunion raised its head. I suspect anything Viable Paradise related will end up dovetailing with anything Making Light related.)

Looking forward to meeting everyone, and to introducing my local, meat-space friends to my favorite online crowd!

Bicycles are wonderful.

I loved riding bicycle, and did until the vertebrae in my neck and lumbar-sacral region were damaged, and I have periods when I can't get around at all. I don't dare take the chance of another bike accident. Dayem!

Fortunately we live in Manhattan and I can take the subway and / or walk.

Though walking is very dangerous since everybody rides their bicycles on the sidewalks and I've nearly been knocked over many times by one. It's going to happen, inevitably, and I'll probably never be able to walk again after that.

Gloom.

Love, C.

Xopher, adding my well-wishes to the others here. Looking forward to seeing you, too, at WorldCon (I will remember to bring my pitch pipe!)

#221 - G. Jules - I was told I had a mild allergy to dust mites when what I actually had was dermagraphism - basically, my histamines were going nuts, and whenever I scratched myself, or even rubbed skin too hard (like after a shower) I would get big red welts. It's called dermagraphism because you can basically write on yourself in welts. Anyway, the result of this was that when I got tested for allergies, I came up as allergic to whatever they had scratched the hardest when applying the allergens. I don't suppose it particularly changed the treatment much - I still had to take antihistamines, but at least I didn't wear myself out trying to eliminate dust in a house that leaks like a sieve.

None of this may apply to you at all (it sounds like your allergist has a better idea of what's going on than mine did), but I thought I would throw it out there in case it rang any bells for anyone else.

G. Jules : If you have the means to upgrade your heating & air conditioning, I'd look into local companies. Unfortunately, the only one I know of that does allergy-reduction services is local to the Sacramento area, but now I know they exist.

It works like this: A representative comes out and does an inspection of your system and asks you about your allergies. Then they clean and seal your ductwork and install their products (the local folk use an electronic filtration system— no filters to change out). The end result is that you not only get something that is more efficient but that is tailored to your allergy profile.

Of course, even just getting your system inspected, cleaned, and re-sealed is apt to do you good. And I agree about the cabinet doors. Do you have an Ikea nearby?

Denvention: I will be there, with Evil Rob and the Dude. And— just so you know— we did time this pregnancy very specifically with an eye to attending WorldCon.

Because we're big geeks.

Xopher: It's hard to admit that sometimes, you can't help the ones that need helping. Good luck to both of you on your paths, separate or together.

Xopher, your post at 237 makes me want to grab a baseball bat, get myself to NYC, and beat people for you. I won't because a) you wouldn't approve, b)I wouldn't do something like that, c)considering my height, weight, & strength, this is a laughable thought.

I detest stupid people, and homophobes are being stupid.

Also, what Edward Oleander said in 250.

Nicole @ 257... Be seeing you then. I'm at the Hyatt Regency. It's the one that's supposed to be connected to the con center.

B.Durbin @ 261... we did time this pregnancy very specifically with an eye to attending WorldCon

You know, it just occurred to me that my parents must have conceived me right after the Three Wise Men came and went. In 1955. Not in the Year Zero.

Serge @ 265... I goofed. I'd really have been conceived at about the time of the 13th anniversary of the Day of Infamy.

Thanks, all -- excellent advice. I'm not looking forward to the cleaning, but it's good to have a plan of action.

The nice thing is that the allergy doesn't seem all that severe, which means I don't feel like I need to turn my apartment into BubbleWorld. Thank goodness. (Honestly, at this point, just getting my act together and dusting regularly will be a 1000% improvement.)

EClaire @ 260: That's really interesting. I don't think that's the case here -- I didn't react at all on the scratch test to anything but the histamine. The dust mite reaction was on the intradermal (I think? The one with needles, anyway). Moreover, a mild dust allergy makes sense given my symptoms. But it's definitely interesting.

Thus far I'm feeling really good about this allergist. She's checking on a few things my regular doctor never mentioned, and she's shifted me from the don't-work-for-me steroid nasal sprays to Astelin. Fingers crossed.

B. Durbin @261: I'm in pretty good shape apartment-wise -- I've got radiators, not forced hot air, and hard wood floors rather than carpets. (I chose the apartment with allergies in mind.) The radiators could stand to be washed, though.

Tania: come join my masquerade krewe! We will be, um, astronomical!

Tim: if you look so good in black (like my Macbook!) that you want to wear it on stage in front of a couple thousand people, I still need another twelve or so for the masquerade entry...

(Anyone who wants to be in my masquerade mob: do me a favor, and email me at the linked address. I don't want to miss anyone!)

G.Jules,

Hardwood can be worse for dust mite allergy. Carpet traps allergens in it's fibers which means they are not drifting around the room like tumbleweeds. It's a toss up depending on what you use the room for and how often. I focus on keeping one critical room super clean and the rest meh, and that for me is the bedroom since I spend a good chunk of time in there trying to sleep with congestion. Bedding is also the dust mite nesting ground.

My general approach to dust is not to disturb it. It doesn't seem to cause me any problems just lying there. (Yes, I'm allergic.) Cleaning stirs it all up and makes me stuffy and sneezy.

I got a ticket for Hairspray tonight to complete my trifecta, whee! I'll be so high in the balcony I'll practically be dangling from the lighting truss.

Xopher, I'm so sorry.

I have to believe, for myself, that it's never wrong to hope, to dare, or to love--even when it doesn't go well it doesn't mean it was the wrong thing to do. But it's important too, to forgive ourselves for the ones we cannot save.

Susan @ 270... I'll be so high in the balcony I'll practically be dangling from the lighting truss.

Greg London @:
Satellite radio, actually; I stopped listening to broadcast radio some years back due to (1) more commercials than music (2) "let's see, Clear Channel owns how many of our stations?". And streaming Internet radio doesn't work so well when you're in transit. (My earlier-mentioned lack of desire to feed the RIAA means my music player is relatively anemic; variety is a good thing.)

Sometime ago, there was a discussion in here of Chris Matthews of MSNBC's "Hardball" fame. He was justifiably ripped a new one for some stupid misogynist remark or something. I stood up for him a little bit, got a little baked for it, not too bad, nothing I couldn't take, but my general point was despite his many, many flaws, Matthews is a guy in the media that could do the Demos a lot of good. Despite his many flaws, he paints a picture of himself as a genuine "regular guy", as opposed to bone-head phony "regular guys" like Limbaugh and O'Reilly, and he's basically sick to god-damned death of the Republicans and what they've been doing to this country and what they're trying to do to the Demo nominees (Obama, in particular, I admit).

In support of my earlier argument, I recommend watching a remarkable exchange I witnessed while watching "Hardball" last night. If you want to see a right-wing radio host finally get creamed by an MSM guy for knowing the talking points but not the facts, cruise over to Crooks & Liars and have a look at this amazing clip.

It would be hilarious if it wasn't so effing sick. But this is precisely the thing I was talking about. This is precisely what we need more of from the MSM. Guys like Matthews, at least in this context, need to be encouraged.

I'm torn between laughter and tears...a troll popped up at the Dress a Day blog and has since worked hirself into the full belief that all of the commenters on the blog are paid shills supporting the main purpose of the blog, which is "clearly is the sale of fabric, patterns, magazines, sewing machines, and other items related to sewing."

Zhe apparently believes that there is a sewing cabal out there that controls all of the information about sewing on the internet.

I'm laughing because, dear heaven. A vast sewing conspiracy. (And most of the people modeling clothes on the sewing sites are actually men in drag, in case you hadn't noticed.)

On the other hand, someone really, really needs to get some help.

R.M.Koske @ 275... I'm torn between laughter and tears...

...but not in stitches?

It ripped me right up.

Darn, now our eeeevil plan will unravel.

G. Jules @ #221

My understanding of dust mites was that they lived on skin flakes and the like, so they're more likely to be found in bedding and carpets, not on the dust on books -- but I've been wrong before.

I really love the Swiffer dusters, because they grab the dust and it doesn't float around. There are the flat ones, which are really meant to be used on the floor, but are great for smooth surfaces. And then there are the fluffy ones that are sold as dusters. I think some of the microfiber cloths are supposed to do the same thing, but I haven't tried them yet.

Michael at 274: I saw it and you are right, it was terrific. Good for Matthews. More, please.

However, it doesn't make up for the last 7 years groveling to the Republicans, nor does it balance out his remarks about Hillary Clinton.

But I did enjoy watching it.

A consipiracy, cut from whole cloth? Sheer folly. But I'm am biased.

You people are warped.

Michael at 274:

I saw it as well, and have passed it around.

The Congressman Robert Wexler with Spiegelman on MSNBC is worth watching too.

And Conyers says that if Rove doesn't comply with his supoena, he will have him arrested.

And Biden called that speaking appearance in the Israel Parliment 'bullshit,' publicly.

Tipping point?

Love, C.

Heh. It seems the onset of the Northern Spring gets the fauna feelin' frisky — SFW. [/open thread]

Xopher, #213, I hope your days get better.

G. Jules, #221, hire a book duster.

Xopher, add my well-wishes and hugs to the bunch you've already gotten. I have nothing insightful to say; just remember we're here to listen and sympathize when/if you want it.

Thanks again everyone. It's helping to know that you...are thinking good thoughts for me. Thank you all.

Serge@201: What rating would you give to the Bourne-out-of-my-skull movies? Whoever made those movies never heard of the difference between action and movement.

I haven't watched any of them. The previews didn't appeal to me.

"FantasticFour, Rise of the Silver Surfer", is probably around a "1 out of 10". I recently watched it for free on cable (for the first time) and was slightly embarrased to have lost that time. And I kept apologizing to my wife afterwards for having talked her into us watching it together.

From the annals of corrupting the elderly:

My mother called to enthuse about the Phillip Pullman books (Lyra's Oxford, Once Upon a Time in the North) I sent as a birthday present. Bwah-hah-hah!

I'm hoping she can get my rather mundane older sister to read the Dark Materials trilogy.

Speaking of music, for those interested, you can get some Creative Commons licensed music at Magnatune.com. You can listen to stuff for free and buy what you like if you like.

I've been poking around there now for a couple years, and have a few favorites:

Processor is some angry electronica.

Hands upon black earth is earthy goodness.

Lizzy has a great voice and good music.

Cargo Cult is good electronica.

Artemis has spooky good vocals.

jag is old school blues.

The Bots is... weird and funny.

Speaking of music, for those interested, you can get some Creative Commons licensed music at Magnatune.com. You can listen to stuff for free and buy what you like if you like.

I've been poking around there now for a couple years, and have a few favorites:

Processor is some angry electronica.

Hands upon black earth is earthy goodness.

Lizzy has a great voice and good music.

Cargo Cult is good electronica.

Artemis has spooky good vocals.

jag is old school blues.

(trying with six this time)

Comments containing more than seven URLs will be held for approval.

Lies! I just sent in a post with exactly 7 links and it got held for review. So I tried 6 links and no dice.

Can someone flush the queue?

Xopher@237: I should have known that a relationship with someone like him ... could not possibly work out.

Xopher, I'm so sorry you've been going through all this. And of course you couldn't know. That's the problem with relationships: you can't control the other half of the equation. All you can really do is bring your personal committment to a relationship and have faith. No one can "know" if their particular relationship is going to work out, if their particular marriage is going to last till death do us part, because no one who is single has any idea what it takes to make a relationship last a lifetime. My wife and I have been going for a few years now, and I still don't know what I'm doing a lot of the time. All anyone can do is bring their committment to the relationship and bring their hope that it works out. No one ever really "knows". Every relationship I've ever been in, except for my current one, has failed. THat's pretty much true for everyone on the planet. So, what does anyone know, really?

So, please don't beat yourself up for not knowing. You don't deserve it. You brought yourself to a relationship, you brought your committment, and you brought your faith that it could work. That's all anyone can hope to do.

A virtual fan lounge worked very well at Corflu Silver recently.

Xopher #213 & others; Just joining in with the different supportive posts.

Also, I've had quite a few times of feeling very much that way since things in my life started to go seriously awry (well, if you can say that of a life), either from 1999 or the very big 'watch that step, it's a doozy' of 2002. It's taken a lot of help from society & people close to me to merely survive, and even find some good times.

A line our much-missed Mike included in '110 stories' is one of the pieces of writing that's helped too: “You live, is how you learn that you can cope.”

RM Koske #202, re bus journeying. I've been a lifelong public transport person on trains, buses, and ferries (I miss using those, it was often very lovely indeed, and I treasure memories from it).

Advantages include, for those who like it, peoplewatching; where possible reading, writing or doing craftwork; alternatively paying proper attention to music or audiobooks on some kind of portable private personal player, even including kinds of meditation (when driving or riding you need to keep alert elsewhere); watching the outside world (usually my favourite).

Greg #290, yup, the limit at the moment is around 4 links. It's been that way for me for some months now.

Re the Depression generation: my parents were born pre-1920s and were seriously affected by both The Depression and World War II. This included developing (enabling?) a propensity to hoard, which was unfortunately passed on to me (see several discussions on the syndrome previously in ML). I'm struggling to free myself from the disabling burden of 'stuff', while still feeling that we'll go back to times when such collections will be useful again.

Well, I posted something about free (CC licensed) music over at magnatune dot com. After going there regularly, over the last couple of years, I found a number of albums that I really like.

Processor angry techno music.

Hands Upon Black Earth is some earthy goodness.

Falling You has some spooky good female vocals.

Lizzy is all around good.

Cargo cult is good.

Burning Babylon is funky, technoid, sampling stuff.

Artemis is another good one.

And The Bots is what Weird Al Yankovick might sound like if he'd been born 20? years later.

Anyway, it's hard to beat the price (free). And while magnatune has a bunch of music, you have to wade through a lot to get to the good stuff. Of course, folks might not agree with my tastes, so there's that problem. But I wanted to point out some of my favorites.

I was also curious as to how many people had already heard of magnatune, and for how many people this is new information. Has everyone heard of this already?

My PVR just finished recording this week's episode of Battlestar Galactica.

The show has gotten rather intense lately.

Do I watch it on a bright, sunny day, or a gloomy crappy one?

Either way, I've reserved an episode of Doctor Who to watch afterwards.

Xopher: When you first announced the breakup, you seemed to say that the precipitating factor was your boyfriend coming down with cancer.

That's not a thing "you should have known". That's not him being the wrong person, it's just a notoriously unpredictable misfortune, which has burdened other relationships past breaking-point.

If you could have known, you should be making a fortune as a diagnostician.

fidelio: Actually, her folks have solar on the roofs now; the meter runs backwards, pretty much all the time.

R.M. Koske: Where do you live (that makes a difference in my guessing at the snake)

Summer Storms re beer: I've had 1, and 10. 10 was ok, nothing to write home about, but I did bring back a six-pack, because I neededd to share.

Xopher: As Lee said, urges to travel long distances and perform (apparently) random acts of extreme violence, came to mind. There's nothing I can say which hasn't been said, so assume I repeated it all (but with better turns of phrase).

I'll not be at Denvention (though I am really hoping to make it to Anticipation next year). However, will any other Fluorospherians be at WisCon next week?

I poke my head up from the river of end-of-term work...

Xopher, #213, sympathies.

...and the river rolls on, or is that rushes...

Top Ten Beer Names: I surprised they missed Arrogant Bastard Ale. It's the most fun I've ever had reading a beer bottle.

Re the beer names sidelight... last night I was drinking Vicar's Ruin, which I think ought to qualify. :)

#298 Stefan Jones: My PVR just finished recording this week's episode of Battlestar Galactica.... Do I watch it on a bright, sunny day, or a gloomy crappy one?

Quite a bit of plot advancement, this episode. I've found the story a bit in need of that lately.

Plus, there is one of the great episode ending moments in a series full of great episode ending moments.

I find story advancement invigorating, so I would say watch it whenever you feel like it. It's not undark, though.

Greg London @88... I kept apologizing to my wife afterwards for having talked her into us watching it together.

Did she actually forgive you?

I'm not sure what I hated the most about Rise of the Silver Smurfer - that the Fantastic Four are supposed to be Earth's mightiest heroes even though they never actually save the Earth, as that's done by someone else, or that the movie never showed Galactus.

I think that, after what happened on her recent flight back home, Susan has come to realize that air travel has less to do with the way Hugo Gernsback envisionned it and more with the Airplane movies.

4:50 p.m.: One of my fellow passengers points out that the departure board says the next flight to Hartford is at B3, not B7. (...) 5:20 p.m.: Back at gate B7, which feels sort of like home at this point. (...) 6:15 p.m.: I find an actual seat at B7 (...) 9:05 p.m.: They announce that we must all move to gate B8. The entire crowd, now including over one hundred hopeful standby passengers, relocates. (...) 9:15 p.m.: They announce that we must move from gate B8 to gate B9. We all pile into B9 with a giant crowd of people trying to go to LaGuardia. They announce that the LaGuardia flight will now be leaving from B7.

In the middle of all this, Susan apparently gave an Oscar-winning performance as a crying, helpless, extremely lovable kitten and tried to project the aura of some sort of New England naif overwhelmed by the pressure of the big city airport.

#295, 296, 297, Greg London -

Ooh, music recommendations! Yay! A little warning about the autoplay would have been nice, but the first track of Falling You works startlingly well against the first track of Hands Upon Black Earth. *grins*

#300, Terry Karney -
I'm in Georgia, slightly northwest of Atlanta.

R.M.@308: A little warning about the autoplay would have been nice,

Oh, sorry. It's one of the annoying things about the website. I haven't figured out a way to have it not autoplay like that. The other annoying thing is they rearrange chunks of the website every year or so. The autoplay was something they added maybe two years ago. I guess you just get used to it after a while.

Kayjahoh at 301:

I came here to post that very question! I will be at WisCon, and would be interested in saying hi. We'll be arriving Wed. night and leaving Tues. morning.

Xopher:

My sympathies as well.

Serge@306: Did she actually forgive you?

I think she said something about me going to see "Sex and the City" with her as pennance.

#274: I saw that video after it was recommended on a couple of blogs and was deeply depressed. It's not that I'm incapable of feeling joy at the exposure of a public idiot, but... Jesus. I don't get cable, my reception is bad, and I think of my TV as a viewscreen hooked up to my DVD player, so I've seen hardly any television news or commentary in the last decade. Is this what passes for debate now? Incoherent boobs shouting over each other? They sounded like a pair of very drunk students in a shoving match outside a bar at 2:00 AM. They didn't talk; they spat words, fast and loud with no regard for tone or sense... like they thought someone was coming to shut them up, and they wouldn't get another chance to speak ever again. Just like the crazy people in apocalyptic and/or dystopian SF movies who shout out warnings and get bundled off by security. The thought that this was one of the better moments in TV discourse makes me want to lie down and cry.

The only real difference between Matthews and the idiot--and the reason the idiot got smacked down--was that the idiot didn't even seem to care whether he was coherent. He used words for emotional impact with no interest in their meaning. He talked like the aliens in the Star Trek episode "Darmok," who spoke entirely in allusions to folktales. (And has anyone else made this point before, anywhere? It suddenly sounds familiar to me.) That episode didn't make much sense to me for a variety of reasons. One of the biggest was that I never understood how they made it into space. Their language communicated broad metaphorical situations but no real information. Sometimes it seems like that's where political discourse is going: collections of emotional keywords chosen to make the listener feel happy, or proud, or angry, or frightened, arranged in batches that only look like sentences.

Re beer names:

The best one I came across recently (in a restaurant in Washington, D.C., about a year ago) was Rogue Dead Guy Ale.[*]

Some of the other beers listed at www.rogue.com have good names as well -- e.g., Old Crustacean, Hoppy Froggy IPA, and Jittery Frog (made with coffee beans).

[*] Which, alas, is properly parsed as "Dead Guy Ale, from the Rogue brewery", rather than my initial interpretation: "Ale from a Rogue Dead Guy". I liked the idea that there were a few rogue dead people out there, busy making ale instead of decomposing quietly.

Michael@274, nice clip. "What did Chamberlain do in 1938?" is a good question to pose hawks who call anything short of invasion to be "appeasement".

Sort of like "What is the second law of thermodynamics?" is a good question to pose to Intelligent Design folks who think life is too complex to be based on natural chemistry.

Wesley: Sadly, yes. Maia and I were listening to one of the better pieces of that family o f show (left, right and center) on the radio.

I kept getting pissed off at the republican (sorry, Conservative) shill (see, there I go doing some of it) as he tried to place memes (re marriage, we can't have someone married in one sate, and then unmarried, and then married again as they drive down I-95, we need a federal solution: to which I said, "we have one (insert profane comments on his nature and ancestry), it's called "full faith and fucking credit you moron. If it weren't for DOMA this aspect of the issue wouldn't be a question."

Then he lied about "appeasement" and did some more injecting of vicious little barbs (Obama's feelings are easy to hurt, etc.).

I knew it was going to be like that, as soon as they announced David Frum (who is selling the idea the Republicans need to spiff up the sales pitch to be a bit more elecatble: it's not that they've screwed the pooch for seven years (and grown really corrupt in the longer period they held power) it's that they are misunderstood; or something.

The keynote speaker at Maia's graduation (the "satellite" one, fot the School of Occupational Science; not the one for everyone, which had Norman Lear, and some guy from Disney (the former decent; and brief, the latter long winded and banal; both of whom followed the worst piece of public speaking I've heard in years, maudlin, trite, clichéd bathetic and filled with every piece of cheap, clapbook, rhetorical device from "effective public speaking" you can imagine ["let me tell you a story about a child, I'll call him Timmy, from which I learned...] including a pointless insertion of USC cheerleading. It was awful. One of Maia's instructors had to sit through it, and she hated it too; so it wasn't just that I wanted Cicero and and got Ian Grant, but I'm on a ranting digression; back to the story) said one of the things he wanted to see was more people getting involved.

This was a common enough sort of theme (though he was somewhat more specific; he wanted them to get involved in OT, and in the political aspects of it; which is something I've been telling Maia's class they need to do, because I can see some changes coming, which are going to be less than ideal, but I digress again).

He started with a reference to the decision on marriage (I think he's gay, certainly his references to his partner implied that, I don't know many women named Clayton; and he's in his eighties), praising it and made a related point later that only 16 percent of college students voted in the 2004 election.

He also poointed out 95 percent of the NRA voted (which two numbers were about equal).

I may start working on getting younger vtoters registered; even with Arni saying he's against a costitutional amendment, it's going to be a rough campaign to defeat it (the last vote was 59-41).

Which, as I look at the California Constitution, is a simple majority of the electors to change.

What were they thinking?

Xopher, my sympathies as well. "Better to have loved and lost" is not just a trite saying. You had the courage to risk failure, and without that, you can't have success. This wasn't it, unfortunately, and it sucks. IMHO, the general pervasive anti-gay attitude of our culture makes it so much harder on relationships. Most of my het friends are paired off, far fewer of my GLBT ones are in long-term relationships. It's a shame.

Kayjayoh @301 and Juli Thompson @310

I will be at Wiscon as well. Maybe we need a ML get-together. I think at least one or two others who post here will be in attendance.

No Wiscon for me, but Balticon. Anyone else?

This summer: possibly Readercon, definitely Denvention, possibly Farthingcon.

Greg London @290:
My mega-comment from the last Open Thread is still in limbo. At least I've learned to break them up. (And, it's passing odd that links to the current document count. Mrrr? Way to make threading more difficult.)
...and @297:
It sounds vaguely familiar, but I'm pretty sure I have never visited it. I may have assumed it was like allofmp3.com instead of CC-licensed.

Wesley @312:
I'm afraid the level of political discourse has been in a tailspin pretty much since politicians realized the import of television. (Usually considered to be the 1960 general election, because Nixon clips from the time show little cognizance of "how to look good on TV". One could argue the wrong lesson got internalized....)

open thread tangent, the Wall Street Journal spotlights angryrenter.com as being AstroTurf.

And I kept imagining Teresa putting down her WSJ, peering over her spectacles, and saying something like "I was dissing AstroTurf before dissing AstroTurf was cool".

Xopher: my sympathies. I wish I had something more insightful to say. I wish it could have worked out for you, and for the boy.

G. Jules: if you want to try washable reusable microfiber dusting cloths instead of disposable Swiffers, Target carries them, and I highly recommend buying them in the automotive section, instead of the kitchen goods section. They are much cheaper there (a package of five for the cost of a single kitchen cloth) and work just as well.

I have also had very good results from a homeopathic allergy preparation called BioAllers Mold/Yeast/Dust Formula. I used to work in a fairly moldy basement area, and in damp weather the mold count would go up and I'd get into work and start sneezing. I'd take a dose of this stuff, the sneezing would stop, and I could work my full shift without trouble. The product may be inert and the placebo effect responsible for whatever I experienced, but it's also only about $10 for a bottle of the stuff, which for me is a worthwhile amount of money to spend on a functioning placebo. The Tree Pollen formula works better for me than any of the antihistamines that followed Seldane's withdrawal.

One of the advantages to having a kid is getting the cartoons running on Sunday morning. So, is the new Spiderman cartoon as good as it seemed this morning? (Origin of the Lizard, then Spidey's new suit.)

#312 Wesley: (view all by): I don't get cable, my reception is bad, and I think of my TV as a viewscreen hooked up to my DVD player, so I've seen hardly any television news or commentary in the last decade. Is this what passes for debate now?

That guy was particularly loud and oppressive which, of course, made his exposure as historically ignorant all the sweeter, but beyond that... I have to wonder what Golden Age of Political Debate we're harking back to here. I've been politically active and aware all of my adult life and I don't recall any such age. Oh, sure, there are certain programs you can tune into that nobody watches that have reasonable people talking in reasonable tones of voice. But by and large the vast majority of political debate in this country, probably elsewhere, now and in the past, has been brimful of people urgently pressing their prejudices and stupidities and ignorances on each other.

They did okay with the Federalist Papers. After that, it's been pretty much downhill.

I don't approve of this revoltin' state of affairs of course. It's just that I don't recall any Golden Age of Debate -- bathing the political landscape in the warming sunshine of enlightenment -- for which I might pine.

Michael Weholt #322: What about this? Similar kind of gasbag destruction, done much more watchably, about far more substantial things.

OK, I have another problem, and this one just needs an answer. It's kind of a Google-fu challenge.

My candy book, which I do NOT recommend to anyone taking up chocolate-making as a hobby, requires some equipment that's just too expensive, like sugar refractometers. Fortunately you can substitute for that and measure another (less accurate but close enough for candy) way. I may spring for a guitar cutter at some point...but please note that that price is just for the base. The cutting frames (the part with the actual wires on them) cost extra.

However, when this bozo requires equipment that doesn't EXIST, that's a whole other level of bad. Several of his recipes call for a 12"X12"X½" or a 12"X12"X¼" confectionery frame. The trouble is, all the ones I can find (one example, and not even the right kind) are closer to 14X14, which means his recipes won't fill them correctly (making chocolates that are too flat, and since for some recipes (like the two-layered candies with mango on the bottom and habanero (yes, habanero ganache) on the top) they're supposed to stack, that also won't work). I don't really want to adjust the recipe, because his batches are quite big enough already!

I can't just use a pan, because the slab is supposed to be square when you take away the frame (which comes apart in four separate bars of metal), and because frex ganache is supposed to cool on a stone slab, and crystallize overnight.

Can anyone find me a place to buy such things? The kind of confectionery frames that are solid metal bars, heavy enough not to get shoved aside when pouring heavy viscous liquid right next to them, food-grade stainless or something, in the right size, or close to the right size?

I'm hoping that it's just my inadequate Google-fu, and not that they really don't exist.

If the frame comes as four separate 14-inch bars, you can place them on the slab to form any square or rectangle smaller than that. (Each one sticks out on one side, forming... not a swastika, but that's the closest shape that has a one-word name. Maybe this won't be broken by formatting:)

. |___
. | |
. ___|
. |

Unless the bars are supposed to lock together at the ends, in which case I don't know.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any that come as separate bars, either. I do know what you mean, though.

I had the impression they were supposed to fasten together at the ends, but the pictures in the book don't actually show that. Maybe all I need is four metal bars.

Juli Thompson @310 and Magenta Griffith @216

Excellent. (I live in town, so I'll be there the whole weekend and then some.)

As I mentioned to some other folk, definitely take a bit of time on Saturday morning to leave the hotel and head about one block south, as the Dane County Farmers Market will be in full swing until 2.

#323 ethan: Michael Weholt #322: What about this? Similar kind of gasbag destruction, done much more watchably, about far more substantial things.

Ah, "Firing Line"...

And also in that YouTube batch is the famous clip from the 1968 convention coverage of Gore Vidal calling Buckley a crypto-Nazi and Buckley calling Vidal a queer and threatening to smash him in the face.

(wistfully) Those were the days...

heresiarch @ 303

My son gave me an Arrogant Bastard beer glass a few years back; I can't take it out without repeating the slogan, "You're not worthy". Not sure who I'm talking to when I say that; maybe it's all the fans of watery megabrand beer. Or the horses who produce Millers.

Whether Hair of the Dog is worth a few hundred dollars a bottle is debatable, but that bottle of their brew Fred was certainly worth the $5 or $6 I paid for it last time I bought one. It's not something you can drink often, way too complex to take lightly, so it's well worth it.

Breaking: Senator Edward Kennedy appears to have had a stroke. Details on your news service of choice.

When did the Saturday morning cartoons get good again?

The new Tom and Jerry cartoons are really funny, and the one that was just over about the kid and his twin redheaded genius sisters* was pretty good, too, as was the Quest one.

Mostly I've seen the "battle" comics, which leave me cold, but the new funny stuff is funny!

*more royalties for the Heinlein Trust?

@326 Xopher - From what I can find, the ones that come as separate bars are called caramel rulers: Like these

I now know way more about candy making than I did 15 minutes ago - thanks!

I for one welcome our new caramel overlords

Xopher #324: My candy book

Can you contact the author or publisher of your candy book for technical support? Could we get the name of the book and the author, or would that be too big of a google-fu hint? It may be possible, if they can't be contacted, to make a reasonable attempt at researching the author's sources.

I just finished watching Martian Child. I wouldn't say that I loved it, but I liked it. I wonder what David Gerrold thought of it.

CARAMEL RULERS!!!! He keeps calling them "confectionery frames," which are actually little thin things you use for petit-fours, or however you spell that. THANK YOU, JCarson. Googling for the right thing got me to a place in Manhattan I can walk into and buy them! (They don't appear to have a website, but there was an article in the Times.

Earl 334:

Greweling, Peter P. Chocolates and Confections (Formula, Theory, and Technique for the Artisan Confectioner), Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2007.

By the way, the recipes are seriously delicious, and if you want to know exactly what makes chocolate tempered or not, and how Maillard browning works, it's great. It's also copiously illustrated with beautiful pictures of chocolates, though somewhat skimpy on the side of actually showing what you're supposed to do. And the pictures have nothing to give them scale, so if you don't know what a "No. 7" tip is, you can't figure out which of the things you actually have to use.

Like I said, not a book for amateurs at all. I bought it foolishly, and I've made SOME of the recipes.

*No, the Culinary Institute of America. Too bad, otherwise it would explain the coded language he uses.

Michael Weholt: I don't know that the Federalist Papers were the last gasp of serious public political conversation; I seem to recall that a couple of fellows named Lincoln and Douglas kept crowds spellbound for hours of debate, in the out of doors.

I know (because I studied mass-com, and it was course material) the networks used to let candidates talk for three-five minutes in the evening broadcast of clips. That started getting shortened, and the messages started getting really weak, to the point that some are now all slogan, no substance (the change you deserve).

Teresa @ another thread: The fictional family that haunts my imagination is Hansel and Gretel. It doesn't really matter whether it's their mother or stepmother who pressures the father to abandon them, or whether their (step)mother dies or repents when the children return. What I wonder about is the awkward conversation as they sit around their fireside afterward, and in the years to come. How do you talk your way past issues like "You took us into the wilderness, intending that we should die"?

There's another fairy tale, called "The Two Brothers", which also has a father persuaded by an unpleasant relative to abandon his children in the wilderness. In this story, however, instead of finding their way back to the man who abandoned them, they are found by another man who becomes a much better father to them. The first time I heard the story, I expected the original father and the unpleasant relative to reappear, but they're not so much as mentioned again; which is, perhaps, the least they deserve.

Paul 338: May it be ever thus with abusive* and neglectful* parents.

*to that extreme degree

A while back at church, the director of religious education was talking to the kids at the front of the church, and was telling the story of Hansel and Gretel.

There was a point he wanted to make, and he asked, "So what's the moral of this story?"

From out in the sanctuary, one of my neighbors said, "Don't trust your stepmother!"

I'm pretty sure that's not the point he intended.

Randall Munroe disses Ubuntu in passing. Ouch! That's got to hurt!

#337 Terry Karney: I don't know that the Federalist Papers were the last gasp of serious public political conversation; I seem to recall that a couple of fellows named Lincoln and Douglas kept crowds spellbound for hours of debate, in the out of doors.

Sure there are great moments in American Political Debate. I certainly don't deny that. But I'm talking about a Golden Age of Debate. I don't think there was one. There were the L/D Debates, the Chautauquas, the Federalist Papers, and more, but those don't mark an age.

From the beginning, political rags have been spreading the worst sort of calumny, mongering fears and prejudices, proponents of one viewpoint have been slandering their opponents.

I'm just saying I don't recall and age when we were Above All That. I think for the most part, most people have always had to survive under a Leaden rather than a Golden Age.

I don't like it. I think we should struggle against it. But I don't think things are any worse today than they've ever been. In fact, in some ways we're better off.

Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) @341: Wrong link?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt motivated and inspired, as well as mobilized, the nation, to deep with the economic catastrophe of the Depression, and then get into and fight World War II.

He's generally been considered a good speaker. As is his wife.

Love, C.

Bruce @343: Yeah; I'm thinking the right link is this one: http://www.xkcd.com/424/.

John, #340: There's a similar exchange in a DS9 episode. Bashir tells Garak the story of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," and says that the point is not to lie. Garak says that to him, the point is obviously, "Never tell the same lie twice."

To me, this brings up a related point: be careful in your choice of illustrative metaphors, lest your target take away a lesson you didn't intend!

Er, geekosaur @343, I mean, and associatively Bruce @341....

The context, for those not following the latest in computer security news, is that Debian -- the Linux distribution favored by most of my sysadmin acquaintances, and generally considered Quite Good Indeed -- did something really boneheaded in the version of OpenSSL (a security library at the base of SSH and a number of other things) that they ship in their distribution. They commented out a line of code that was causing problems with their diagnostic tool -- and apparently, for good measure, commented out an identical line slightly later in the code as well.

It turns out that the slightly later line (a) was critical for making security keys properly random, and (b) would not cause any problems with the diagnostic tool anyway.

This is exactly like what it sounds like, if you imagine physical keys. It's like one of the major lockmakers for the world messed up the randomness-generator for their key-cutters, and instead of producing completely unique keys, started producing ones that fit one of a small number of patterns. With the OpenSSL keys, that was a few tens of thousands -- but, with a computer, you can try all those pretty quickly.

This went unnoticed for two years.

And now there is rather a flurry of stuff going around as people discover that their keys aren't actually secure, and in some cases a fair bit of financial cost for replacing them.

There is also a quite predictable flurry of blog storm-and-noise going on about it, especially in comment threads, as people attempt proof-by-being-louder-than-everything-else that the group they feel partisan to is completely blameless in this fiasco....

Anyhow, what I thought was a good commentary on some of the lessons to be learned from the situation is this blog post, from one of the OpenSSL authors. Avoid the comment threads, though, unless you're into the "everything louder than everything else" scene.

Xopher, I was in the supermarket this morning, calculator in hand, figuring out which jelly-roll pan was the area-equivalent of 12x16". (Yes, I could use three 8" square pans.) Turns out that the 11x17" is the same area. When did they change all the standard sizes for something else?

(Chocolate crispies: 2 squares of unsweetened chocolate, 1/2 cup each of butter, sifted flour, and chopped nuts, 1 cup sugar, 2 beaten eggs, 1/2 tsp vanilla. Melt the choc, add everything else and beat well, spread in the pan(s), bake at 400F for 15 minutes. Mark while warm, break apart when cool.)

#322: It wasn't so much the content that alarmed me--I recently read Nancy Isenberg's biography of Aaron Burr, and the mudslinging she dug up was positively Rovian. (She makes a pretty good case that, although Burr was no angel and made a lot of mistakes, his bad reputation is as much as anything the result of character assassination.) But at least they were coherent. What bothered me was the tone, which like I said sounded more like an altercation between two severely alcohol-impaired binge drinkers.

It occurs to me now that the sneering, abusive tone reminded me of the bullying I went through back in my teens. That's why my reaction was as much primal revulsion as distaste--I was having a subconscious flashback to high school!

#338: For appalling dysfunctional fairy tale families, you can't beat "The Juniper Tree". It's sort of the Grimm version of a Coen Brothers movie--I'm thinking, here, of the mothers childishly incompetent yet temporarily successful plan to cover up her impulsive murder--and has always amazed and appalled me.

Xopher - glad to help, and being able to actually go physically buy them is definitely better than waiting on shipping (and you're sure to get the right things...).

Re: the debate/soundbite conversation - I'm actually really interested in how youtube has changed my information during this election. Even four years ago, I was just getting the soundbites that the evening news or CNN picked out to talk about - now, if I hear something out of context and wonder what the rest of the speech was, I can often go to youtube and get the full twenty minutes (or five, or whatever). It's making for some real conversations at work, rather than all of us knowing the same 5-second clip. One person brings up the soundbite of the moment, and others of us can counter with the full context and something closer to firsthand knowledge.

Wesley @#349: "The Juniper Tree" has the smell of damaged mythology about it. I know it's Germanic, but it makes me think of some of the odder Welsh and Irish tales.

219, 230 re "build your own" movie soundtracks.

If you can find it, watch the movie Hercules Returns, which is based on exactly that premise. Severely taste-challenged (and Australian, which makes it worse), but very funny (for "I liked Clerks" values of funny).

David 351,

I recall reading a version about a daughter reborn as a swallow and there was a second verse to the song after the revenge. Father choked on the chain and mother crushed at the door by the mill stone dropped form the roof and brother set free.

#351: The site I linked to has other versions of the story from Austria, England, Scotland, and Romania. I think the Scottish version was the first one I encountered, but I remember the Grimm version best because of the mother's particularly bizarre behavior.

geekosaur and Brooks Moses

Yes, thanks, that was the wrong link; my copying and my pasting must have gotten out of sync. But I wasn't commenting on the security issues (though I will be sure to flatter the next Gentoo installation I come across); I just thought the remark about Ubuntu being the same as Windows Vista was rather cutting.

Susan @ 317: Balticon is a possibility, as I am not on call that weekend. My partner and son will be camping with the Scouts, so I will be looking for Things To Do. The only issue I'll have is a need to be home at certain times to give my diabetic cat his insulin. We can try to work something out.

Hey, Greg... let me know when you find that reset button, ok? I just got a call that my dad was involved in a "fender bender" that managed to do a number on the transmission of his Chevy Silverado (motto: Bigger. Not always better, sometimes just less fuel efficient.) Anyway, although I remain struck by the absurdity of it all, I could really use a shot at rebooting that random event generator.

Peter Erwin @ 313: "The best one I came across recently (in a restaurant in Washington, D.C., about a year ago) was Rogue Dead Guy Ale."

Word is that the Dead Guy Ale label glows in the dark.

John A. Arkansawyer @ 331: "and the one that was just over about the kid and his twin redheaded genius sisters* was pretty good, too (*more royalties for the Heinlein Trust?)"

Ugh. The idea of Heinleinian genius twin sisters as a kid's show seems just a tad inappropriate, doesn't it?

Michael Weholt @ 342: "I don't like it. I think we should struggle against it. But I don't think things are any worse today than they've ever been. In fact, in some ways we're better off."

So what you're trying to say is that you think we should look forward towards a better era, instead of back towards some Edenic Golden Age? What, are you some kind of crazy sci-fi utopianist? Next you're going to try telling me that vaccines have improved the quality of our lives or something crazy like that!

#351: Oral transmission is surprisingly efficient sometimes. By the time the Grimm brothers got around, there'd been what? four centuries since the Black Death and the subsequent opening up of travel? So you get Rapunzel, which seems to have been originally Italian, Sleeping Beauty, which was written for the French court (I think), and Cinderella, which everybody claims (there's even versions out of China.)

I recently acquired a Complete Grimm's (with some pretty hokey illustrations from the mid 20th century), and you know what struck me? Lousing. Everybody, from princes to the Devil himself, spends some time with his head in somebody's lap, getting (de)loused.

For some reason, that hasn't made it into any retellings I've seen...

Wesley #312 and many others:

I only made it through about 3 minutes of the screaming heads video linked above. The stupid, it burns. But pretending that putting clowns like the screaming guy on TV has anything to do with serious discussion of issues is as crazy as treating your cancer with a magic potion you ordered off some website.

I think the problem is, most of us have full, complicated lives. Kids, bills, personal crises and tragedies, health issues, time constraints, that sort of thing. And honestly understanding what to do in any serious policy arena is really hard work. A lot of it is boring, and a lot is seriously time-consuming. Arguments that are honestly going to have much value in making good decisions are going to be hard for anyone who's not either an expert or at least a seriously informed amateur to follow.

That stuff is too hard, too time consuming, too depressing. But ideologically-driven screaming matches, those are entertaining. They make you feel like you're seeing important issues debated. It's the same phenomenon as 24 hour headline news--the goal is to make you feel like you're being informed. But this stuff is like junk food that's been relabeled as "fat free"--you can con yourself for a bit, but it's still junk food.

You wouldn't decide what to do about your leaking roof using the kind of techniques we use to decide issues of national importance. (Gee, let's get three clowns with no idea what a roof even is together and have them yell at each other.)

Xopher and Greg: What the other gazillion people said, in two successive inverse pile-ons. I'm sorry things suck today, and hope they suck less tomorrow[1].

[1] This might also make a fine political slogan.

Thanks to Lori Coulson and Jen B., I now have two home-made self-contained gardening bins on the balcony/porch of my 3rd-floor apartment unit. Actually, the process was more like this: First the thread here got me thinking, "It's really about time I did the balcony garden thing," and then a trip to the farmer's market today had me going, "I've just bought seeds and Colorado's gardening season is short short short I must plant NAO!"

So I immediately went into Taurus-cusp-of-Aries mode. As in, "I have just suffered an Attack Of Whim, and I will now follow through methodically from start to finish Right Now This Second." The rest of the afternoon involved several bike trips to and from local hardware stores, some of which I actually visited twice before giving up on finding a pond bucket; a stop at the local Asian market for two cans of Cafe Du Monde coffee (because New Orleans chicory coffee counts as international?) which would immediately go into freezer bags as the cans were repurposed; and several hours spent with hand saw and electric drill (boy that gets heavy after awhile).

Et voila. Two bins waiting to be sown with Stuff in the morning.

(And now I am soaking in the tub and drinking a scotch and going ahhhhhh.)

Apparently my next-door neighbor's mother is a master gardener. And she's visiting right now. She saw me lugging my Rubbermaids and potting mix bags inside and said, "Did you know you can make a great self-watering container out of those?" and I said "OMG yes that's EXACTLY what I'm doing can I pick your brains now? BRAAAAINS!"

So. I left the tarp/lid out of the equation, since we're past "last frost" as of May 15. I saved the cut-off bits of bin for emergency frost protection as suggested at the end of page (the link Jen provides). And I stuck a bendy straw through the overflow hole to make sure water could get out even if soil seeped between the reservoir cover and the outer bin.

There will be corn and squash and beans and cucumber and bell peppers and okra. If Mother Nature is kind and I don't manage to kill everything through overcrowding. I know you can push it a little, but I have a tendency to try to grow five different things in a 5-gallon bucket. Perhaps a little restraint is needed.

(The 5-gallon buckets are full of gifted herb starts that I'm hoping not to kill this year. The cats rilly rilly like grazing on the catnip. They have an inexplicable tendency to get bored with the catnip and move on to the chives. Dammit.)

Rereading Lori's posts, I am now having thoughts of hanging planters with tomatoes vining out the bottom and strawberries coursing out the top.

This thread also got me thinking Community Supported Agriculture. The booth I bought the seeds at was Abbondanza Organic Seed and Produce, which apparently still has some half-shares waiting to be claimed for this season. My husband and I will be discussing whether we can consume a half-share. I expect I'll convince us that we can.

...Because, y'know, everyone really needed to know how I spent my day. Right? :-P

More on beers: I keep seeing Monty Python's Holy Grail at the local supermarket, and failing to pick it up. (My beer consumption is way down -- to several per year -- since being diagnosed Type II diabetic.) The label is awesome, however, so I am now resolved to get some to try.

#360 albatross: But pretending that putting clowns like the screaming guy on TV has anything to do with serious discussion of issues is as crazy as treating your cancer with a magic potion you ordered off some website.

Anybody in here doing that? Show of hands? Nope, guess not.

I think everybody in here agrees that particular clip is not a high point in the History of Rhetoric. However, we have to ask ourselves... if any of those hard-working people with full lives you describe happened to see that exchange, would they be more likely or less likely to fall for the Bush-McCain "appeasement" talking point?

It may be shameful that we are reduced to a consideration like that in our political history, but it has to be said that if more people in the media had made the effort to press for even that much clarification from the Bush Administration and its mouthpieces of a factual point, we might not be in that crap-hole war in Iraq at the moment.

I think everybody in here would like to see a higher level of political debate on T.V. Short of that pipe dream, I, personally, will take what we can get as long as it knocks down the trumped up talking points that nudge hard-working people with full lives toward supporting idiots who get us into useless wars.

Well, it's happened (I was expecting it) the comment spammers have figured out that people like me prevent anon comments from automatically posting.

So I've been getting tests (much like the weird spam of late (nonsense name, pointless comments). So far no links, but the "accounts" they come from are junk.

Damn, I think I need sleep. I meant to say that the spamming was on Lj.

Xopher: Making Light needs to have a "buy them a drink" comment click function. Somewhere in Internet 3.141592etcetcetc, perhaps...

Bruce Adelsohn @ 363: Perhaps you could buy the assorted beers you've been wanting to try and get some friends over to drink them, bring a little paper sampling cup and let people pour you tastes. This is roughly what one of my partners does when she wants to try desserts (not diabetic, but has a form of hypoglycemia with fairly alarming reactions to sugar in quantity) -- rather, it's habit enough that when she mentions being interested in a dessert, the general reaction in our family/social circle is for one of us to buy it and give her a fragment...

(I shouldn't really be on the internet now and am still technically in a few weeks' wrist break, but this is self-limiting as I'm going to be on a train in two hours.

#362, Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little -

I may not need to know how you spent your day, but hearing that you were active and creative and happy with more of the same (plus fresh veggies!) to come definitely improved my morning.

hereisarch @ 358:

Ugh. The idea of Heinleinian genius twin sisters as a kid's show seems just a tad inappropriate, doesn't it?

I'm pretty sure I'm the one who made the connection, not the people who created the cartoon. (For some reason, I've also had the Fugs' "Dirty Old Man" in my head this week. Thank goodness I don't have a copy, as I don't think I could resist having it on at the workplace. Inflicting those early Springsteen tracks and late Miles Davis jams on people is bad enough.)

B. Durbin @#359: True! I'd forgotten how late the Grimm work was, compared to ongoing developments. I usually think of their work as "German corpus", but indeed, by their time the area had played crossroads-of-Europe a couple times already.

Now I'm wondering which (Celtic and/or Germanic) god/dess was encoded by the central tree. Looking at the different versions, the tree species varies freely, in one case becoming "a large stone by the door" (which I'd bet is the textual relic of an house altar).

And that central theme of jealousy, murder, cannibalism, and rebirth as a bird -- that just shrieks of a lost myth, (and likely a seasonal sacrifice). Pity I don't have the depth of knowledge to ID the connections offhand.

Also, I suspect most of a prologue story has been elided, where the first mother and her already-magical firstborn got properly introduced.

You might already know this, but catnip is also useful for insomnia, although the website I just checked out recommends against its use by pregnant and lactating women.
I'd like to build one of those container gardens, but unfortunately I don't have a saw or drill, and I don't do enough handy work to make the purchase worth it. I do have the knife from my toolbox, but from Lori's description it sounds it might not be sharp enough. Any tips?

Sajia -- you could borrow or rent tools, if you already know how to use them. Saving that, you might barter something for a handy friend's time and expertise.

B. Durbin @ 359 - Delousing was disguised / translated as 'combing' in many later retellings of the fairytales. (I'm working on a retelling of a Grimm tale, and got all excited when I was able to work in a sleep by delousing scene).

Oh, and to a previous thread on squirrels - there's a 1946 children's book by Richard Church, A Squirrel Called Rufus, a story about the war between native red squirrels and invasive greys in an English forest.

Mez @ #284:

That's wonderful.

Just to note: Sister Rosetta Tharpe is Sidelighted twice in a row. I'm guessing a posting hiccup.

John A Arkansawyer @ #340:

A famous French writer declared (tongue, I am convinced, firmly in cheek) that the moral of "Cinderella" was, obviously, that no matter how beautiful, intelligent, or otherwise well-endowed a young woman might be, she could get nowhere in society without the right godparents.

Terry, #366: Are these spams coming in on recent posts, or on old ones? I currently have my account set not to notify me by e-mail when someone comments to a post, but I might need to change that if spammers are hitting old posts. OTOH, I also have my account set not to be seen by search-bots, which might counteract that...

Serge @ #335: I wonder what David Gerrold thought of it.

According to his blog, he liked it a lot. (I'd link to the entry, but apparently something just ate his web site.)

Sajia Kabir #371:

What, exactly, am I supposed to do with the catnip? Snuggle up with Sophie's favorite KittyHooch mouse? I can't smell catnip at all, except as something that dried up in the spice cabinet about three generations ago.

Lee: It's been mixed. Usually when spammers hit me it's to older posts (that's the style of comment spammers,they hope the ancient comments will be left alone, "who reads old threads?").

Some posts get hit more then others, mostly as a function of topic (the piece I did on a poker game is the most spammed of my posts), but I don't want to turn of noticfication (not least because I have built a way of work around not having to go an look at my blog to keep up with it, and because sometimes people who have freshly found it go back and write interesting things in long dormant threads).

But I could ignore the spam; because it was screened. Now some of it gets through, and I have to delete it.

#373 ::: Barbara Gordon
"Delousing was disguised / translated as 'combing' in many later retellings of the fairytales."

Oooh! So in the older versions of Snow White, where the evil mother/stepmother figure comes by three times, she offers to comb Snow White's hair...

Nice fine comb with poison...

Well, I have a catnip plant, although strangely enough, no cats, so I steep a few leaves in steaming water for a few minutes. The friend who gave me the plant and the tip about its sedative effects told me it works even better in conjunction with some chamomile.

Oops. Meant to add, you drink the catnip-infused water as a herbal tisane, which is how it does its work.
While googling I saw that it was used in early modern times to "induce menstruation". Is that an euphemism for abortion, or is it simply a remedy for irregular menstruation (which can be annoying even if you're not sexually active)?

Paul@338, quoting Teresa @ another thread: How do you talk your way past issues like "You took us into the wilderness, intending that we should die"?

Here's a copy of my card.

Oh, did I mention after announcing possession of a paperclip and my hunt for the reset button, that my brakes went from working fine on Wednesday, to vibrating a bit and should fix it before I ruin to rotors on Thursday, to good god what's that grinding noise coming from my car even when I'm not braking on Friday?

The mechanic informed me I needed new pads, rotors, and calipers in the front and new back brakes as well. a thousand bucks. I needed the car the next day, so I told him to fix it, and just charged up my credit card debt to pay for it.

After I hung up, I realized that Hal was onto my plan to reboot him and he wasn't going to go without a fight.

The little weasel.

Sajia #383:

I was afraid of that. I don't generally do well with herbal teas, and certainly not just before I go to bed; it's a guarantee that I'll be up at 4:30, rather than a 50/50 chance otherwise, which would just restart the not sleeping all over again.

Greg London @ 385
After I hung up, I realized that Hal was onto my plan to reboot him and he wasn't going to go without a fight.

The little weasel.

You shouldn't anthropomorphize computers.

They hate that.

Greg 385,

We went through that not long ago when some one, cough -husband-cough, assumed the noise was gravel trapped under the brakes and not the squeal tabs and hey the noise did end so that means the gravel got flung loose after a couple of weeks, right. Only of course to find ourselves coming down from a ski hill with no brakes and taking hairpin turns at 80km/hr. Never want to do that again. The sound of metal calipers grinding against the wheel drum with the smell of burning hydraulics is memorable. But we not only lived we stayed in our lane. Amazing what you can do with power steering good reflexes and not being too attached to your transmission.
Expensive repairs.

I just watched a CNN video "news" clip billed as "Grizzly victim: he's eating my brain!"

The shame.

Sajia Kabir #371 --

Catnip is also soothing to the bladder that is irritated or sore from a urinary infection.

Love, C.

Administered via brewing catnip tea and drinking it, I should have added, just in case.

I went through a period some years ago of an endless urinary infection that baffled the doctors.

I turned to 'folk' remedies, which worked.

The cats that lived with me at the time got very interested in my tea brewing.

Love, C.

Scott Taylor @ 387

You shouldn't anthropomorphize computers.

They hate that.

Well, to be fair, they would never do it to us.

Terry, #380: Damn. Looks like I'm going to have to change my settings at least for a while, to figure out if they're hitting my older posts. I don't allow anonymous comments, which is just a harder form of your "screen anonymous" -- but if they're now making throwaway accounts, that won't work any more.

Greg, #385: Ouch. I had that happen to a car once, and you're right -- it happens fast, in my case from one stoplight to the next. I'm amazed that you didn't hear the warning rumble, though; I thought most brakes these days had the squeal tabs. (My incident was some 30 years ago, and either my brakes didn't have them or I didn't have enough knowledge to recognize the warning.)

Insert explitive here.

Fifty-eight years ago, at the outbreak of the Korean War, South Korean authorities secretively executed, usually without legal process, tens of thousands of southern leftists and others rightly or wrongly identified as sympathizers.

B Durbin @ 381 - you bet! And the Giant with the Three Golden Hairs, whose grandmother pulls out the hairs while she's 'combing' him, too.

In the book on Montaillou by Leroi-Ladurie (sp?) there's a mention of professional 'lousing women' in the 1200s who went from house to house, kind of like Avon Ladies or manicurists. If I ever need a new SCA persona ...

Okay, I better get back to revising said retelling.
-Barbara

Elsewhere, I have been a very bad boy. You'll need to read toward the bottom of the comments to see how.

R. M. Koske: Aw! Glad to have been of service. I always feel like I should report back after haring off and doing whatever it is the Making Light gave me the inspiration to do.

Sajia: I discovered last night that just a plain old pocket-knife with a stab-and-withdraw-downwards motion saws through Rubbermaid bins like butter. These are the classic blue "roughnecks", not the clear "revelations," now. Since I had a hand saw and not a jigsaw, I had to do quite a bit of cutting with the pocket-knife. The holes for the watering tube and the soil-wick were made that way. Also the middles of the sides after my hand saw got as far down the corner as it could.

Also, I've seen smaller-scale recommendations for making similar containers out of 5-gallon buckets, which involves turning the lid, once reduced somewhat in diameter, into the reservoir cover, and sticking old panty-hose through the drainage holes for a wick. This would most certainly require saw and drill, though, as the buckets are made of a hardier plastic.

On catnip: I've also heard the tisane is good for indigestion.

Xopher, #336, Wiley is where former SFBC editor (and occasional ML commenter) Andy Wheeler works now.

Paul A., #338, we just didn't go back. I became emancipated and then my brother's guardian. We managed fine without them.

joann, #386, I don't know if this will work for you, but a bit of cheese always helps me go to sleep (have to share with the cats).

Google and ye shall receive:

On making a self-contained 5-gallon bucket garden

Instead of cutting the rim off the lid, one puts one bucket inside the other and makes holes for drainage and aeration in a similar fashion. These instructions' $11 cost is a lot more plausible than the $10 estimate on the 18-gallon Rubbermaid version, too.

Paul A @ 378... Thanks for letting me know. The movie sometimes felt choppy, but it also seemed quite heartfelt.

In Sunday's Chicago Tribune, Julia Keller's "Devil in a Pantsuit, or the Demonization of Hillary Clinton" offers a literary look at political language:

Revealed in the coverage of Clinton's campaign is the persistence of an ancient and distasteful cultural theme: the powerful, ambitious woman as cackling fiend, as fantastically terrifying ghoul threatening civilization. And because this creature (or "she-devil," as MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews called Clinton) is not human, the only solution is to kill it. Not just derail its career—obliterate it. Smash it to smithereens. Vaporize it. Leave not a trace of the foul beast behind.



Hence the appalling preponderance of violent, death-infused imagery in conversations about Clinton, smuggled into otherwise ordinary political discourse like a knife taped on the bottom of a cake plate: On CNN, pundit Alex Castellanos said democrats must realize that "it's time to take the family dog to the vet." Matthews' MSNBC colleague Keith Olbermann expressed the hope that "somebody will take her into a room—and only he comes out." CNN's Jack Cafferty gleefully floated the specter of Clinton being run over by a flatbed truck. A recent Tribune editorial compared Clinton to a euthanized Kentucky Derby contender.[...]

Meanwhile, analogies between Clinton and that flat-eyed, metallic, multimovie franchise character "Terminator" are copious to the point of cliche. You may or may not like Clinton—or any other female candidate. You may or may not agree with their policies. But is it really necessary to order a hit? Isn't it enough just to vote for somebody else?

This is not simply sexism or racism. Those prejudices are familiar, if still repugnant, and leaders as strong as Clinton and her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, have faced them many times. This, though, is something different and more sinister, because it is not just a commentator's opinion about a person's fitness or unfitness for public office. It is not about using colorful, vivid language in order to wish that a person might or might not continue a campaign. It is an unprecedented public call—albeit metaphorically, but still violently and persistently—for a person's death.

In their landmark book of literary criticism "The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination" (1979), Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar were among the first to spotlight this noxious theme, this isolation and ridicule of powerful women by labeling them crazy, hysterical, perverse, monstrous. To challenge male domination—of the world, or just of oneself—was to be risk being marginalized, ostracized, locked away like Rochester's wife in "Jane Eyre" (1847), the fate that gave the book its title. In real life, behavior that strayed from the polite, demure norm expected of women in the 19th Century was rewarded with psychiatric evaluations and often, imprisonment and death.

Scott Taylor @ 387... You shouldn't anthropomorphize computers.

When you do, they decide they want to wear sexy outfits.

Michael #364: Fair enough. ISTM that an awful lot of what passes for serious political debate in the US is little better than this crap--like the embarrassing Obama/Clinton debate where the questioners spent half the debate asking stuff that would have made for a good SNL skit, or the common pattern of having a "serious news show" in which you invite deeply ignorant screaming heads to pretend to have a debate about something. This is poison being offered as antidote, to quote Auntie Ayn.

I understand that it matters. Indeed, as far as I can tell, goofy crap like how you dress and how your hair looks has a bigger impact on getting elected than your ideas or background, and when most people consider your ideas, they're really considering your slogans and image, not anything you have really thought through in depth. So I hope the good guys[1] do all that stuff effectively enough to get elected.

And I'm glad this particular screaming idiot on the side of the crazies got slapped down. But this kind of debate has nothing to do with discussing real issues. Tomorrow, a thoughtful and intelligent person making good points will be slapped down just as efficiently[2], because this format of show rewards something other than careful thought and deep understanding.

[1] In this case, that means the smarmy but not batsh-t nuts guys.

[2] Think of the classic evolution vs. creation debates, in which a scientist with all the facts behind him debates a preacher with great rhetorical skills. Cases where the scientist wins are a win for the good guys, but they don't tell you much--a skilled debater whose points about evolution are all wrong can win just as well as a Dawkins, because winning that kind of debate isn't really very strongly related to being right.

and from way back up there:

If I have all the numbers crunched correctly, 40 miles per US gallon is equivalent to 5.9 liters/100km. YMMV.

Bill, #401: I don't disagree with the writer's point -- but realistically, it's only one short step beyond what's been aimed at both Clintons since 1992. It's been painfully obvious for years that the anti-Clinton brigade wouldn't be happy with Bill just out of office; they wanted him destroyed -- financially and personally. They wanted to gloat as he died in misery and grinding poverty, alone and unremarked save for their everlasting hatred. The only difference between that and what's going on here is that the imagery has gotten more overt.

Also, note the recurring use of the passive voice in the calls for her death. Never mind that if she's killed, somebody has to kill her; we'll just talk about the victim, not the perp, and no one will remember that there's an ACTION involved here.

Saija at 383,

The phrase is probably both.

OK, sorry, not caught up, not going to get caught up: the weeds are after me, and they've brought reinforcements.

However, after carefully checking the Sidelights, I'd like to draw your attention to this morning's "In Character" on NPR, wherein Jamie Tarabey talks about how the Slayer saved her soul in Baghdad.

Apologies to Saija for implying she is spam.

Nancy 408: "Spam is made out of peopllllllle!!!!"

Woo, woo! Got my worldcon airline tickets. NOT through O'Hare. In Tuesday night (late), out Sunday afternoon.

Man, this thread got good while I wasn't looking.

Xopher - please accept my condolences.

Wesley @312 - I made that point, once, but that's OK, it's a good point and you go ahead and make it again.

G. Jules @221 - dust mites eat skin. Wash your bedding every night, if possible, or hang it in the sunlight, if possible (UV kills the little bastards, too.) You're not actually allergic to the mites, by the way, but their droppings -- if they're dead, no more droppings.

If at all possible, remove carpeting from your bedroom and bathroom. Wash towels frequently. If you live in a humid climate, try dehumidifying; they die at about 40% humidity. Also, filters work wonders; clean them often.

Swiffers are good for hardwood or tile floors and if you keep everything off the floor, Swiffering only takes a couple of minutes. There's a lot of hair down there; hair has skin on it; skin has mites on it.

The dust on your books is probably not a problem, but to a certain extent, *all* indoor dust where humans live contains hair and skin, so get as much off the books as you can, and be sure the books are well-aired so there's no chance of mold.

Air your house out periodically. I don't know of any scientific basis for that, but it always seems to help our son (he's the allergic one in the family.)

Move to Puerto Rico's south coast, if possible. Oh -- sorry, you probably only wanted advice that normal people can follow. Sorry.

John A. Arkansawyer @331: Johnny Test. My son loves it. We didn't have cable for a year, but since we can't afford to travel this summer, we're splurging (I'm sure we'll regret it.) But the toons are good these days, some of them. The new Transformers, for instance -- my kids and I saw one episode, and we all looked at each other and goggled that they'd apparently hired some writers who can write. Go figure!

Here's an ethical question for the Making Light Brain Trust (tm): We all know that there is a great deal of forum spam out there on neglected forums. Some of these forums are hacked, even. I've had a very little luck in contacting the occasional forum owner with an offer of free help cleaning up and moderating -- but usually, if the forum is abandoned, I get no answer.

Here's the ethical conundrum: if I get no answer in such a case, how ethical is it to hack that forum in order to start moderating it? How ethical is it not to do so? (This is something which just occurred to me today, actually -- the sum total of my "hacking experience" is fighting off hacking attempts and cleaning up the results of same, on, oh, four separate occasions over the last fifteen years.)

Anyone?

JESR: I know a number of people who got caught up in Buffy while they were in Iraq.

Lets just say that some escapism (esp. stuff where the bad is obvious, and the complexities resolvable) is a needful thing.

Terry Karney, you know what happened when I read your post? I remembered that one of the actions the Save Farscape people took was to send DVD sets to Morale Centers in Iraq and Afganistan, and then it hit me how very long ago that was: that fan campaign won, and the miniseries produced, and aired, and passed into memory, and we're still sending people into those countries.

The Browncoats still send "Firefly" and "Serenity;" I hear the latest fan campaign is donating the direct-to-dvd SG-1 miniseries (hoping to build demand for a third and fourth dvd series). I just hope "Dollhouse" runs long enough for it to be another in that too-numerous line.

#407 ::: JESR

Ginmar wrote extensively of how important Buffy was to her over there, and how she introduced Buffy to a lot of her (male) officers, and they too were taken.

Love, C.

Michael Roberts @411:
I'm pretty firmly of the opinion that an unethical action performed for a "good" reason tends to rebound against the do-er and/or whoever is supposed to benefit. (You can call this karma, or how G-d created the universe, or whatever.) In any case, I recommend against.

Open thread sort of comment, because it struck me as funny...

An article in the newspaper giving conservation tips suggested not printing out ATM receipts to save paper.

Let me repeat that: the newspaper said I should conserve paper by not printing out ATM receipts.

JESR: May your series be long enough, and none there to receive it.

I liked this: Peter Alway dissects an entry in one of his well-regarded books of historical rockets intended for scale modelers. These titles were classic examples of self-publishing for a niche audience.

Some time back, oh, let's say 50 years ago, some governent agency made a rocket. Being a rocket, it looked zoomy. And so it appeals to rocket geeks. I was keeping an eye out for drawings and photos of obscure rockets from the mid-80's until, oh, say, four years ago. Essentially I was working on multiple simultaneous scavenger hunts.

(That last sentence is a lovely summary of scholarly endeavor, if you ask me.)

Later:

At the end of 1955, Atlantic Research persuaded the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and the Bureau of Ordnance to fund the Arcon sounding rocket, along with a larger version called the Iris.

(Why does anyone care? Because all the hardcore rocketeers know the Iris rocket. Why? Because G Harry Stine (also known as Lee Correy to you SF buffs) published scale plans for the Iris when he was starting the hobby of model rocketry. It had a pretty checkerboard paint job. It was apparently totally useless as a research rocket, but everyone in the subculture knows it, if not from its inglorious history, from models of it.)

Read the rest for interesting insights into the problems of researching, drawing, and describing obscure vehicles for an audience of nitpickers.

More background on Peter's literary career here.

Michael Roberts @#411: I'm with geekosaur on this one... even well-intentioned hacking of other people's systems is dubious.

Check out Bruce Schneier's takedowns of a similar but even more ambitious idea -- benevolent worms to defend against botnet worms, and/or spread patches.

#411: Often when I have a potentially interesting thought, a little voice in the back of my head tries to tell me it can't be my thought, but must be some smarter person's thought that I heard somewhere and that has floated back to the surface.

It's sort of comforting that it's actually happened. It means I'm not entirely crazy.

Michael Roberts @ 411:

Thanks for the 411 on Johnny Test! What else is really good?

As for the fora, it may be ethical but I think it's unwise. Consider the example made of...well, his web page no longer notes it, so I won't mention it here. But I gave to his defense fund. 'Nuff said.

Well, as it happens, I agree. I'm just not 100% sure why.

If my neighbor has a bunch of old tires in his yard, spawning dengüe mosquitoes (or West Nile, for a less lethal example, or malaria if you want to get nasty), and he refuses to do anything about it ...

No, wait, if the abandoned property next door fits that bill, then is it ethical to break the lock and remove the stagnant water? Or is it ethical to throw up your hands, and say, whelp, property rights make that illegal?

(Yes, I know, you get in touch with the county trustee, or the city, or whoever, but ... you see my point.)

Seems to me that the difference on the Internet is (1) you can't die from spam, (2) there's no county trustee, and (3) everybody thinks hackers are worse than terrorists for some reason beyond me.

I've decided to get more serious about tracking down delinquent owners. This is akin to closing all the open relays back in the 90's, I suppose. Not that that effort stopped spam, of course. Not even close. But it was a pleasantly quixotic venture at the time.

Maybe it's because you have a sense of proportion, maybe it's because you respect the rule of law, maybe it's because you don't want to risk trying usufruct (usufruction? usufrucation?) in reverse.

Gah, I hate it when I think of things to say after I've already posted.

David @419: as I recall, the concept of the worm (or virus) was originally in the context of patch distribution. A cool idea. Dangerous in implementation.

John @421: damfino, we've only had TV again for about two weeks, and the kids mostly hang on the shows they already know. Ed, Edd, and Eddie is one I'm particularly partial to, except Cartoon Network way overplays it. (My favorite episode was one in which the characters realized they had hard lines on their edges, unraveled them, and ended up disrupting the fabric of spacetime itself. Fantastic!)

I've always had a soft spot for Spongebob, but (1) he's not new and (2) apparently he's about as hip now as Captain Kangaroo. Jimmy Neutron never fails to make me laugh, but again: not new.

Teen Titans was a fave, three years ago, but is now dead. (My daughter, then 10, actually sewed and wore a Raven cloak for about three months.) Johnny Phantom is good. But Johnny Test is the only new one I can really say I like. Most of the rest is pretty stupid.

I really want to like Nickelodeon's Barnyard Whatevers -- wanted to like the movie, too -- mostly because the cows look like Far Side cows. But unfortunately, it remains largely unfunny, as far as the one-and-a-half eps I've seen indicate. The TV version seems marginally better than the movie, but still generally falls flat if you ask me.

The best thing on TV is still either Most Extreme or Mythbusters. Or possibly How It's Made.

It's the spammers who are usufructating. I would be disusufructuating them. That would make me a disusufructuationist.

I can keep this up all night.

how ethical is it to hack that forum in order to start moderating it?

Yeah, that "use a virus to install anti virus software" idea doesn't work well in reality. Unintended consequences and all that.

the characters realized they had hard lines on their edges, unraveled them, and ended up disrupting the fabric of spacetime itself.

Wow. That's a lot more advanced than I got from any of their previews and advertisements. I might have to see if I can catch an episode of theirs.

But then, I like spongebob just because I don't have to think. I didn't say my reasoning made sense.

Jimmy Neutron can be funny sometimes.

I like Johnny Bravo about half the time. And the other half, he annoys the hell out of me.

Oh, and Robot Chicken and Harvey Birdman Attorney at Law, but those are not for kids.

#418: Peter is a great guy and friend of the hobby.

A model of the IRIS in a 1967 model rocket catalog. Yes, it does look quite zoomy.

On the topic of self-published wonders, Jack Hagerty's Spaceship Handbook does for imaginary spaceships what Peter's Rockets of the World does for the real ones.

@351 and thereabouts -- re the Juniper tree (sorry, I read these long threads slowly, if at all) -- that story's weird enough to be Hungarian. We've got a couple of CDs of Hungarian folktales (my wife is Hungarian, and we strive for biculturalism, or, er, triculturalism now that we live in Puerto Rico) and I kid you not, those things are the weirdest things you'll ever see outside of Mayan mythology. They're full of people getting killed and possessing things in the environment and turning into birds and deer and stuff, and revenge, and devils, and Turks. The kids love'em.

There was one where the little princess goes out hunting berries with her older sisters (maybe stepsisters), but finds more than they do, so they kill her and stuff the body into a hollow tree. Then a poor guy comes along and finds a violin in the tree, and wouldn't you know it, the girl's spirit is haunting the violin. When he plays it, the spirit comes out and everybody's bowled over by its beauty.

So of course he goes on the road and makes a lot of money playing the violin, and finally comes to the princess's kingdom, where the king and queen are still mourning. (He pulls up to the gate in a wagon full of gold, violin in hand, but still has no shoes. Because it's a cartoon.)

He plays for the king and queen, who realize that the violin is haunted by their daughter, and they banish the older sisters (and brick them up in a room, mwuhaha, as I recall, or that might be another story on the same CD -- at any rate, it's clear that Hungarian children are not the tender snowflakes that American children are considered nowadays.) And then the little princess returns to life, and they live happily ever after!

Except for the bricked-up sisters, anyway.

Watching those for the first time is mind-expanding. They're on YouTube, mostly -- search on "Magyar népmesék". You don't need the dialog to grok most of them, and the animation is truly beautiful. Oh, hey, for instance, here's the very one I was talking about. I love this century.

Oh, I see my memory already cleaned this one up a bit. They stuff the body into the violin of an old blind man, and throw the violin into the hollow tree. Of course! The narrative is so much clearer now!

Greg @426 - I don't actually like the virus parallel, as it's not the same thing. A virus is automated and you can't control it once it's out of the box. Sorceror's Broom and all that -- which is not the same thing as hacking a forum to clean it up. I'm not saying the latter is ethical, and definitely not saying vigilanteism is smart even if you can make an ethical case for it -- but it's not the same thing.

In re Ed, Edd, and Eddie -- they don't advertise what you and I consider the best features, because we're not their target audience. But I find their writing truly awesome. I could name half a dozen things like that; I highly recommend watching some of it. My son eats it up, but I think he's more attracted to the goofy characters and hitting each other with fish than the more abstract humor that has me agog. My wife just considers it stupid and violent, but after the Magyar népmesék I don't listen to her on that, ha.

I love Rolf, the token foreigner, for instance. In one double-length episode, there is an outbreak of cupids, and Rolf's culture has traditional ways of combating them, thus allowing normalcy to be restored before the end of the episode. (Rolf is also the only person on the show who works; he keeps livestock in the backyard and is always doing vaguely agricultural tasks like digging trenches and fermenting things.) And it's all like that. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's my favorite toon on the tube, but it's right up there.

Johnny Bravo -- I love that guy, but I don't actually see much of that show (it's not really played much any more, is it? Not on our CN, anyway.) Cow and Chicken was an older one I loved for a while, but it didn't survive long. This was kind of the first Cartoon Network year, as I recall; we were in Hungary and the satellite service had Cartoon Network. I watched it incessantly while working. Or "working", as the case may have been. This would have been the summer of 1995, perhaps. So -- hardly new stuff.

I didn't know they were making new Tom and Jerry -- and sure didn't know it was any good, so maybe I'll have to check a TV Guide or something. Assuming they still have those.

Micheal 428,

The Bonny Swans is in the same theme vein.
Sister drowns her,over a guy, and she comes back as a swan that a passing bard turns into a harp then she plays in the great hall to accuse her sister before the court and family.

More YouTube!

The reason my wife thinks Ed, Edd, and Eddie is violent is that this stuff is actually what she grew up on. I love these!

Holy crap... ever see the documentary film Deliver Us From Evil? It was on Sundance Channel tonight.

It's wrenching.

And meanwhile, I see from the Catholic News Agency that Cardinal Roger Mahony -- a primary villain in the aforementioned documentary and one of the many villains in the Catholic Church relating to the sexual abuse of children by the clergy -- has barred a retired Australian auxiliary bishop from speaking in the diocese of Los Angeles:

In 2007 Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, the retired auxiliary bishop of Sydney, published a book titled “Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus.” Bishop Robinson argued in his book that because the Church refuses to reexamine Catholic teachings on extramarital sex, women priests, homosexuality, and papal power, the Church is not serious about responding to clerical sexual abuse but is only “managing” it.

If the Catholic Church had any spiritual balls left, it would've made Father Tom the Pope instead of Ratslinger.

Lee @ 405: "I don't disagree with the writer's point -- but realistically, it's only one short step beyond what's been aimed at both Clintons since 1992. It's been painfully obvious for years that the anti-Clinton brigade wouldn't be happy with Bill just out of office; they wanted him destroyed -- financially and personally."

But not dead, right? They wanted him alive, to suffer. The man must be unmanned, his might broken and his works ruined, and he must live to know the shame of it. Different archetype, I guess.

Whenever I read about the weird obsessions of the media class, I always wonder--why do they fall into these weird, Jungian analyses so easily? I guess it's because making the news into Stories is their job: rendering the messy, complicated reality into a form intuitively obvious to anyone at a moment's glance is their life's work. Nevermind if it accurate, nevermind if doing so is good for our country, nevermind if that is actually what people want, because that is what they think people want. That is what they think sells, and so that is what they aim for. Ironic, isn't it? In their attempts to pander to the lowest common denominator, they become it.

Michael Roberts @ 424

as I recall, the concept of the worm (or virus) was originally in the context of patch distribution. A cool idea. Dangerous in implementation.

Unless I'm mistaken, the original worm was let loose on the herd of Altos and Dorados at Xerox Parc. It ran memory tests (and maybe other diagnostics) on the computers in their idle cycles. Given that there was no such thing as the internet, and the LAN they were running was the only Ethernet in the world at the time, it was probably safe. Given that the kernel of the network code was downloaded microcode, it was probably unsafe in a very short time.

Bruce, I was just browsing through Zittrains book "The future of the internet" and it says:

"The software—now commonly thought of as the first Internet worm—was
traced to a twenty-three-year-old Cornell University graduate student named
Robert Tappan Morris, Jr. He had launched it by infecting a machine at MIT
from his terminal in Ithaca, New York.4 The worm identified other nearby
computers on the Internet by rifling through various electronic address books
found on the MIT machine.5 Its purpose was simple: to transmit a copy of itself
to the machines, where it would there run alongside existing software—
and repeat the cycle.6"

in 1988.

Michael Roberts @ 425: Oh, look. Johnnie learned a new word, and now Michael is showing him how to use it properly. How nice.

and @ 424: I was adapted to the idea that the Cartoon Network ran good stuff--I dig Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends--but what shocked me was finding good cartoons on Saturday morning.

On YouTube, violence in cartoons...

guthrie @ 435

The PARC worms were runnimg sometime in the mid to late '70s, I think. The paper that described the PARC worm research (I"d forgotten about the graphic worm, and some of the others) was published in 1982. It's one of my favorite technical papers because it begins with a quote from John Brunner's "The Shockwave Riders", and cites that and the Blob as inspirations for their work.

John, you should be very care-having in assumptuizing the propercacity of any of my usufructuative verbilogisms.

Also: shyeeah, I forgot Foster's Home. That one is basically my favorite cartoon, but we haven't had TV again long enough for me to get re-hooked.

guthrie #435: Yep. The Morris worm was a big deal, but it wasn't remotely the first self-propogating badness anyone invented. Frex, the Brain virus was a pretty big deal (at least if you worked in a computer lab on campus at the time!), and that was (according to Wikipedia the infallible) in 1986. I know there were earlier viruses, worms, and trojans.

I am pretty sure the Morris worm was part of the inspiration for the Blight in _A Fire Upon the Deep_ and the related usenet responses ("We recognize that this will entail the destruction of whole solar systems...."), though it would be fun to ask Vernor Vinge.

As an odd sideline, Morris' dad was a fairly well-known NSA computer security expert, one who definitely breaks the mold of NSA guys in public speaking. (Though it's been several years since I saw him speak, and I don't even know if he's still alive.)

Ha! I wasn't sure of the relative timing, but according to Wikipedia, the Christmas Tree trojan/worm thingy hit before the Morris worm. That was pretty crude (you had to receive the file and then type the program name to run it, and then it drew a Christmas tree and mailed itself to everyone in your names file), but it caused a fair bit of pain and suffering in computer centers.

Michael@429: Johnny Bravo -- I love that guy, but I don't actually see much of that show (it's not really played much any more, is it?

Not sure. I do see it on the TV once in a while when I'm flipping channels.

Oh mama.

Found on the LJ of Kathryn from Sunnyvale...
George Takei is finally allowed to get married.

When you say "Morris worm" I can't help but picture dancers. I blame Terry Pratchett.

Michael:

And isn't it amazing how they do all the steps despite having no arms or legs?

Bruce- Ha! Guess you can tell I don't know much about this. The old timers should get as much of the reality of the history of the computer revolution nailed down as possible, before it all becomes 2nd and 3rd and fourth hand and fades comlpetely into myth.

This afternoon was spent filling in a hole left from digging out a tree root. The space was about two and a half feet deep by 5 feet wide. Not for the first time, I was struck by the sense that the number of wheelbarrows of dirt needed to fill up a hole increases, the closer the hole (apparently) comes to being filled. For now, I'm calling this Farmat's Morast Theorem.

I'm definitely late to this party, but I thought Susan @70, Debbie @87 and heresiarch @185 (and our gracious hostess as well) might find this post about Zucker and Blanchard interesting.

D'oh! That'd be our gracious host, not hostess...

protected static -- excellent article, thanks for the link.

Debbie -- my pleasure. Glad you enjoyed it.

#429: Wait, Cow and Chicken was real?

Thank you. I was beginning to wonder if I'd just imagined it all.

Me, I'm waiting for the new season of The Venture Brothers.

I've just stumbled on the perfect Tor theme song. Somehow in my love for all things Jazz Butcher, I'd never picked up his/their "cult of the basement" album. And thus, I'd never stumbled on the glorious song 'My Zeppelin', which is the ideal mad scientist/alt-universe sing-along:

Have you ever really wanted something?
Ever really wanted it so bad?
Well, I have always really wanted something..
I wanted a zeppelin!

Now I've got one and I'm in it
Up above the U.S.A.
Where the food is all so cheap
But now I reckon they can keep it
When I start those engines up and float away

I'm riding in my zeppelin
Over Germany...
It's the only talk in town
Since that bloody wall came down
And there's not a single trace of irony

Now I'm riding in my zeppelin
Over Mexico...
Where Tequila's not expensive
And the weapons are extensive
And you can buy yourself a gun to-go

Steffi Graf Zeppelin dream - Now we're so distant
Steffi Graf Zeppelin dream - Now we're not there
Steffi Graf Zeppelin team - Now we're so distant
Steffi Graf Zeppelin bream - Now we're not there

(And then we crashed.)

If we should measure just how far to glide
through the soft air and where to come right down
upon the soft warm surface, you'd not drown
any of your fears in the long slow tide
nor let us wait for motions to collide.
We'd have to find our own ways to renown,
of that there is no doubt; and yet the crown
of all our seeking here is joy not pride.
So much of time is found within the place
where each of us holds back the force and sense
that we have stored up since our time of birth.
Not one plain mark should show up on each face
nor are we able to make vain pretence.

Serge @ 444: Yay!

And I continue my streak of being in places when same-sex marriage is made legal. Well, "streak" meaning that I was in Boston both the day the vote was taken, and the day same-sex marriages started being performed (I got uncharacteristically teary upon hearing an account of one couple who eloped from New York via Chinatown bus). And I was in California last week, too.

Now if only my presence would lead to the same effect in my home state. Looks like not. *sigh*

I have to say I am pleased with my state (as I was when Newsom made the move which led to this, and when the Calif. court made the ruling this was appealing).

Not perfectly (or the question of an amendment wouldn't have been present already) pleased, but hey, one step at a time.

Caroline @ 456... Already I hear the sound of heterosexual marriages crashing and collapsing as George's kind is allowed to marry too. Eeeek.

I was thrilled at worldcon in Japan last year to have a chance to thank George Takei for his wonderful anti-homophobic-jerk ad.

Michael Roberts @422:
One of the things I'm worried about is if someone does take offense, you could find yourself on the wrong end of a precedent-setting ruling which will (if past experience is any indication) make a great many obviously acceptable actions illegal or at least gray areas.

(Judges often seem to lose common sense in the face of computer stuff; I can well imagine, for example, a ruling which means that if you give someone you trust an administrative password and they use it, they could be arrested. Or worse, someone in our "can't trust those commoners" government figures an "anti-terrorism" angle to the ruling.)

I was reading Perez v Sharp, the California Supreme Court case in 1948 that stopped the state's ban on interracial marriages.

It isn't too long, and is worth reading...60 years ago and another country altogether. (The dissent alone. oy.)

In their world, "Separate but Equal" *is* the permissible law of the land. It is fine for a state to create a law school just for blacks (to keep them out of the established school), or for a train company to substitute one train car (for blacks) for another (whites only).

And yet they found...

"A holding that such segregation does not impair the right of an individual to ride on trains or to enjoy a legal education is clearly inapplicable to the right of an individual to marry. Since the essence of the right to marry is freedom to join in marriage with the person of one's choice, a segregation statute for marriage necessarily impairs the right to marry."

"A member of any of these races may find himself barred by law from marrying the person of his choice and that person to him may be irreplaceable. Human beings are bereft of worth and dignity by a doctrine that would make them as interchangeable as trains."

1948.
At Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco, the Rev. Cecil Williams has been officiating at same-sex weddings for 40 years, although the state didn't accept these church weddings*. George Takai and his Brad have been together 21 years.

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*So if the state were to get out of the "marriage" business, reserving "marriage" for churches (as I've seen in pro-DOMA arguments) then aren't they married?

In any argument about same-sex marriages, it's good to remember that
1. Thousands of same-sex married couples already exist in the US (although they're trapped in MA because their marriages are annulled/ dissolved/ stripped away if they move out to a DOMA state).
2. Those thousands of married couples have children. Those children's families are legally annulled/ dissolved/ stripped away if the family moves out of MA to DOMA states. That's. just. vicious.
3. If church weddings are what makes a marriage, thousands+ of additional same-sex married couples exist in the US outside of MA.

Kathryn @451: Those aren't real churches!

B. Durbin waaay back at #139:

Auckland (New Zealand) where I live has a similar system. AFAIK, historically, it (the 'hub') was to funnel suburban dwellers into the CBD where a majority worked. These days, while a goodly chunk of people still work in town, the city is large & spread over a wide enough area that people now work all over.

If you want to get into the town-centre, public transport works relatively well but cross-town travel is painful. In recent years, cross-town bus routes have been introduced. But the historical lack of cross-town options have propelled people toward driving their cars to get around town and trying to get people to change their habits is *hard*. Although the increasing price of oil has had the side benefit of making public transport more attractive.

And don't get me started about *our* light rail.

The Australian Capital Territory, which tried before & was batted back by the Federal Govt, has apparently succeeded under the new government – ACT recognises same sex couples. Unfortunately they were pressured into including a residential requirement, so couples can't simply travel there to 'get legal'.

Here's an edited part of my earlier comment from an previous thread discussing the issue:

I've said for some while that the 'civil' and 'spiritual' sides of marriage should be quite specifically and clearly separated, with the civil part engaging all the legal superstructure and available to all humans (pace First Contact), and the religious — Hindu, Hippy, Holy Roller, whichever — being an optional extra which may have deep personal & community meaning to those involved, but doesn't affect citizenship, superannuation, tax status, welfare rights, hospital visiting, etc.

So far, all [weddings] I've been to have [hidden away,] blurred and passed over the civil, legal section. There should be a standard short, simple, obligatorally (sp?) public part which has to be done as part of the larger ceremony and which 'seals' the legal obligations and responsibilities of the couple and the government.

Re: the worst recipe ever particle:

Am I to understand that shark have uremic acid and cyanic acid for blood? A double, extendable jaw? And a life cycle that starts with an egg, a larvae that attaches itself to a human's face and inserts another egg in the human's stomach, that egg develops into a tadpole that shoots out the host's chest cavity (Oh no, not again), then scurries about on dry land until it nearly instantly transforms into its final stage of roving killing machine?

Also, the recipe says it is for "rotten" shark. If it calls for burying the meat in the ground for 3 months, I don't think the word rotten deserves to be in quotes.

Wasn't there another particle a long time ago about someone who collected instances of useless quotes? Should send them a note.

The black cloud of bees looks ominous, but they are "harmless" at this time because they're so focused on finding a home, Fischer said.

Harmless, that is, unless you manage to drive into a swarm at freeway speeds, which I've managed to do twice. Not only do instantly render your windshield near-opaque, but when you pull over to clean it, there are plenty of live bees left to add excitement to the proceedings.

On that shark particle:

I know I'd read about that before...here it is. I recommend Fierce Food: The Intrepid Diner's Guide to the Unusual, Exotic, and Downright Bizarre. She covers 70 odd foods from around the world, each one getting about 3 pages of detailed descriptions, history, preparation, taste.

She has description keys/glyphs by each one (Spiny, Revolting, Messy, 'Eating may cause pain/disease/death', requires special equipment, requires special technique, incredibly smelly, has eyes, aphrodisiac, 'tastes like chicken').

The foods include Armadillo, 'Big ass ant,' 'Giant Waterbug,' Ortolan, san-nakji,and Surstromming (go ahead. Look those latter two up. mmmm.)

hákarl- the shark- is merely Revolting.

I've had about 15 of these foods, and am not likely to increase the number much. Although the new death-free fugu is tempting. Pointlessly tempting.

I've had shark many times--the butcher shop near my old place carried it. It's a bit like swordfish, certainly not revolting at all (if you don't bury it in the ground for three months, that is).

I remember watching a TV interview in which Björk claimed that the preparation of hákarl involved pissing onto the shark pieces before covering the hole.

Kathryn:

As you know, Bob, people in much of the world eat fresh shark meat just fine. In fact, the shark population worldwide is under serious pressure due to overfishing.

I wrote most of a long response about how weird it was that the hakarl articles stated that shark meat contains uremic acid - I think there's no such thing; perhaps they mean uric acid? - and/or cyanide and is deadly poisonous unless given this treatment. The article Teresa linked says "Fresh shark meat is said to have caused people to vomit blood" which seems nonsensical.

Then I noticed that there's a specific type of shark referenced in hakarl, the Greenland shark, about which Wikipedia (for what it's worth) states: "The flesh of a Greenland shark is poisonous when fresh. This is due to the presence of the toxin trimethylamine oxide, which, upon digestion, breaks down into trimethylamine, producing effects similar to extreme drunkenness. Occasionally, sled dogs that end up eating the flesh are unable to stand up due to the neurotoxins." Huh. Whaddya know.

Clifton @470, Tim @468 re: me@467,

I've had shark too, although it's been off my list for conservation and mercury reasons.

Change my phrase to:
hákarl- the shark recipe of the Particle- is merely Revolting.

As compared to san-nakji, which is both revolting and can kill you (Although a very quick search doesn't immediately find examples of death from san-nakji).