Premier?

The tech Gods of the site should be aware: http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/ takes you through a strange sort of time warp.

(This is clearly a lingering side effect of last month's tech crisis, of much lower importance than the other side effects; but it should be on The List. :))

You're welcome.

I'm still trying to figure out some bits of this, but I'm sure I'll get it when I'm less completely brain-dead than I am right now.

it is scrutinised and studied, almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the mathematical niceties of the creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

Darn tripods!

I'm still trying to figure out some bits of this,

You've already got it.

Do I really get post 110 on thread 110 on 110/110?

Well, amazon.com just vomited forth a web page claiming that my access to their site is punitively blocked because I'm a robot and not a human being. We'll see how long it takes for them to fix it, and if it happens again as soon as my ISP changes my dynamic IP address.

my access to their site is punitively blocked because I'm a robot and not a human being

Well, I for one welcome our new Earl Cooley III overlord.

Random comment: You know you're living in a globalized world when you spend a pleasant dinner reading a Spanish newspaper while eavesdropping on the Italians talking at the next table, at a Chinese restaurant, in The Netherlands.

Have I mentioned that I kinda like this world?

Out of curiosity, albatross, where in the Netherlands?

abi: Leiden. I was at a conference at the Lorentz center this week.

Well, amazon.com just vomited forth a web page claiming that my access to their site is punitively blocked because I'm a robot and not a human being. We'll see how long it takes for them to fix it, and if it happens again as soon as my ISP changes my dynamic IP address.

So, to sum up, you are not a number, you are a free man?

Earl #7:

Just what I'd expect a robot to say.

Lovely place, Leiden. A good college town. A couple of my colleagues live there.

Have fun!

#7 - it's not just you, it's nearly everyone:
http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=4532

abi #14:

It seems pretty nice, though I mostly saw the inside of the conference center and some restaurants near the university. I actually rented a bike, despite not having ridden since college, and managed not to end up in a canal. But I'm flying home tomorrow.

You're in Amsterdam, right?

RE: Amazon. https://www.amazon.com should work.

Old joke that only works in print — there are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary notation, and those who don't.

All hail the power and gloriousness of the New Open Thread! I beseech ye, observe and wonder! IOW "Gentlemen, BEHOLD!"

I have a link for you, to be filed under "The World: It's Small."

Purportedly it's an article about the JFK's assassination. Certainly the subject header says so, and its author, Greg Parker, has a website dedicated to the issue.

But I'm really not sure how this article fits in.

The reason I notice this article at all? It's about Weilbaechers - my mother's family. My cousin found via a random semi-vanity Google search (is it really a vanity search if it's not your name but your mother's maiden name?).

So, amused, I start reading... and then I'm going, "Hey! That's my grandfather! That really is!"

Although exactly what relation Dr. Maurice O. Weilbaecher (my grandfather) has to whatever case Parker's making about Joeseph O. Weilbaecher (relation unknown, at least to me) and this David Ferrie person upon which Parker seems to be casting aspersions, I do not know. It looks like he, too, just started Googling random contemporary Weilbaechers, and then trying to find out just about everything he could about them.

Not to mention there's a certain scent of Crackpot Conspiracy Theory about it all. A sort of "ooh, look, isn't this sinister too? And - ooh, look, another random fact I can make sound sinister! Oooh! Look!" Y'know. Fact finding to support the preexisting argument. Except I just am not sure what the argument is. Possibly it's connecting the assassination to research in eugenics and biological weaponry. And the Knights of Columbus. Who stand in for the Knights Templar, I'm sure. Not to mention we're playing the 6 Degrees of Separation From Jack Ruby game. Yay!

So I read along, all "What exactly is he saying about Grandpapa?", and then I get to this paragraph at the end:

A search of the web on Weilbaecher and some of the other doctors
shown above revealed a number of references to Jesuits. Another
shows the grand-daughter of Maurice got married in a Wiccan
ceremony to a grandson of one of grandpappy's partners. Yet another
shows a Dr David Weilbaecher as being involved in getting a medical
"miracle" recognised as such by the Catholic Church.

Only, who exactly is he alleging my husband's grandfather was? And what relevance does our handfasting have, again, to JFK and incidentally the price of rice in China? Dude?

I have emailed the author asking him these things, and expect no end of entertainment to follow.

Thank you, open thread; you are all powerful and full of sparkly shiny things.

Rob #18: Next we're going to get to the T-shirt question, right? ("How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?")

albatross,

I live (and am currently sitting) in a village just north of Amsterdam.

Good idea renting the bike. Dutch cities and Dutch culture are both intimately linked with biking. (I haven't fallen into a canal ever, but on one drastically homesick afternoon I did nearly crowd a friend into the river.)

Safe journey home.

Just an aviso. The odds of my showing up much between now and 23 Jun, are slim. The odds of my being an active participant in any interesting conversations is practically nil.

I'll be at beautiful Camp Bob, until then.

Take care. I'll write if I get work.

Earl #7: Are you sure you're not a cabbage or something?

abi #21: Thanks! The good news is, Swissair doesn't have a chance to mess up my flight this time. The bad news is, United does, and they're probably more likely to do it.

albatross 9: I made a similar comment to a friend when we were in a Spanish restaurant being waited on by a French waiter while listening to a Swedish Finn singing Brazilian songs in English.

And I should have known it was binary. It's been a long week.

What threw me is that it's also Open Thread One-Ten (OTOT); even though I knew that couldn't be it, my mind kept drifting to it.

The only US date that goes unquestioned in Europe is 9/11

On 9 November 2005 I caught a coach from Rotorua to Auckland*. Neither I nor any of the other passengers were able to convince the driver it wasn't the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

* Having just been been walking through the Land of Mordor (formerly known as Tongariro National park) I was referring to the city as "Orcland".

Working reservations in a hotel, whenever I get a reservations request from overseas in the 6/6/08 format, I always respond back to them with a confirmation in the format of June 6, 2008, which helps prevent mixups.

Although we do often list Japanese under their given rather than family name. Either they try to compensate for us or we for them or both, and we almost always seem to get it wrong.

Sometimes I worry that I too often use open threads to plumb the depths of the fluorosphere’s accumulated wisdom. This place just includes such a massive amount of knowledge, it often surpasses the power of a million googles. (Which is, by the way, a one with a hundred and six zeros behind it.) The lure to ask is irresistible!

I’m looking for a very specific kind of cookbook or cooking lesson thing. I’m not even sure if what I want would qualify as a cookbook. Here's the thing: I know how to follow a recipe, and I can cook many things perfectly well. I'm even pretty good at improvisational cooking, of the ‘put spices on meat/veggies, cook them together in a pan, eat’ variety.

What I don't know is a lot of the dead simple, 'duh' techniques, the kind that people usually say they learned from parents or other relatives, stuff you don't put in a cookbook because people just know them. This isn't to say my mother couldn't cook, it's just that when I lived with her I let her do the cooking. I paid some attention, but I was never there cooking while she watched. And some basic stuff about how to use knives or whatnot entirely escaped me, and I just pick up something sharp and try to cut things, heedless of if it's the right tool for the job.

I'm looking for a book that will go into detail on the fiddly bits, that will explain what knife and cutting board and pot to use in certain situations, and how exactly to sauté and how to slice, when to use a saucepan and when to use a skillet. I'd prefer a big shiny book, but other media (videos, etc) might be fine if they were particularly awesome.

I've thumbed through some 'beginner's cookbooks,' but they either started far too basic (this is how you preheat your oven! This is how you measure ingredients) or focused on recipes that didn’t include any advanced techniques.

At home I mostly use a Joy of Cooking and a Better Homes and Gardens, together with the internet. I'm not even sure if such a thing as I want exists. But I figured I might as well ask.

Dylan Meconis, she of Battlestar GalactiSimpsons, has also created a small, but amusing, Nerd Taxonomy.

An example of a very capable political phone message.

Leah Miller @ 29, How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman might be a place to look. It generally covers those things within recipes, though.

Well, my Amazon access is back. Odd thing was, the message I got depended on the browser I used. Firefox and Safari gave the get thee hence, foul robot page, and Internet Explorer and Opera gave me a more generic sorry about the problem page.

As for being an overlord, I've actually given that a fair amount of thought; I've come to the conclusion that I could only be a truly effective tyrant if the job includes perks of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. I am ready and willing to serve in that capacity, but, as you can see, I'm a bit picky about the signing conditions.

Leah Miller #29: Cook's Illustrated magazine often has sections like "Knifework 101" and "Sauteeing 101," with clearly-drawn illustrations. The "how-tos" section of their website (cooksillustrated.com) looks to contain most of the things I remember. They say they have a free 14-day trial; I don't know if it requires entering credit card information, but I've had a subscription in the past ($25/year) and found it to be very good value.

I'll be at beautiful Camp Bob, until then.

[muttering]Lucky schmuck[/muttering] I mean, Have fun! :-)

Dylan Meconis is also a fan of the classics, and she recently posted about finding a snippet of The Lost Books of the Odyssey posted to a telephone pole. The work appears to be similar to Borges' "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" (that is, the conceit is that the text was an archaeological discovery rather than written by a modern author).

She has two excerpts up, which I thought looked like something that the literati of the phosphorosphere might enjoy.

In the lassitude after love Odysseus asks Circe, "What is the way to the land of the dead?"

Circe answers, "You are muffled in folds of heavy fabric. You close your eyes against the rough cloth and though you struggle to free yourself you can barely move. With much thrashing and writhing, you manage to throw off a layer, but find that not only is there another one beyond it, but that the weight bearing you down has scarcely decreased. With dauntless spirit you continue to struggle.

"By infinitesimal degrees, the load becomes lighter and your confinement less. At last, you push away a piece of coarse, heavy cloth and, relieved, feel that it was the last one. As it falls away, you realize you have been fighting through years. You open your eyes."

The book itself is available as a free download (although also available for purchase in print if one so desires):

  http://the-lost-books.com/index.htm

Wow, that's lovely writing there, very dark. It seems to me very much in the flavor of Calvino.

Leah Miller #29:

Would Jacques Pepin's La Technique sound about right? (Fear not, it's in English.)

Leah, what you want is Egullet. Their forum has a large selection of cooking courses and demonstrations, often by professional chefs. This includes things like knife skills, choosing a knife, and how to sharpen a knife. (along with a whole lot more, including things you maybe didn't want to know, like how to make confit of duck *g*)

I find their material is more helpful than cookbooks as it starts with the very basics and takes you up to professional skills, all in one place and with one teacher. Since the basics build into the professional skills in a logical way, it's very useful. Often similar material is addressed by several people within a discussion, so if one explanation doesn't click, another may.

I would begin with the class on picking a knife I think. After you have identified a knife to work with, I'd check whether it's sharp. Then, once it's sharp, I'd start on the knife skills course. Potatoes for the win!

This is the master key to the great gate,
we hold it close and know it keeps desire
as far from us as we would modulate
our patient thoughts. So much is on the wire
that we would not expect you to enquire
about such matters we must deem absurd,
you would take after your departed sire;
we are the keepers of the truest word

We will erase and then rewrite the slate
as long as you sing gravely in the choir
in tones that cheer and do not sneer or grate,
you'll find that we are conqueror and buyer
and that our hand is over you entire.
All that you have we have indeed conferred,
your very heart we know is out for hire;
we are the keepers of the truest word

We are the masters of what you call fate
and will place you into the line of fire
for our good reasons and not out of hate.
Since all you have we easily acquire,
we see you as just one suit of attire --
or just another member of the herd.
Who cares how well you play on the lyre?
We are the keepers of the truest word.

Prince, on such matters you are no denier
but keep your eye upon the noble bird,
do not with any fools seek to conspire;
we are the keepers of the truest word.

Rob Rusick #18: My younger son is the proud possessor of a t-shirt bearing that message.

Interstate 110 in California, at least the part of it that was the Arroyo Seco Parkway, was the first freeway in California. For that reason, the number always brings to mind the theme of Unintended Consequences.

Fragano #40: Very nice. I think you wrote "on" for "upon" in the second to last line of the second to last stanza. At least, it seemed to miss a beat.

I’m looking for a very specific kind of cookbook or cooking lesson thing.

I think you might want the Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

Leah, #29, the closest I've come across is Good Housekeeping's Complete Cook's Book. This seems to be out of print; there may be a newer version under a different title (It's a bit late and I can't concentrate well enough to check but I will be browsing the food section of a bookshop or two tomorrow so may be able to give more information then). It's not exactly what you're describing but it does go into detail of what cooking techniques are suitable for which cuts of meat, types of vegetable etc. I describe it as the book that tells you everything you need to know before you start to follow a recipe.

I like Robert Rodriguez' advice with regards to cooking: You don't need to learn to cook everything well, just the stuff you like. His advice is to start with half a dozen dishes you love to eat and learn to cook those. Everything else is extra.

Alex #44, my Fannie Farmer at least (a 1990s paperback) doesn't have instructions on that basic a level, or if it does, they aren't easily accessible to the casual user. Joy of Cooking's slightly better in that regard, but I still think the Cook's Illustrated how-tos are more along the "basic kitchen technique" lines that Leah wants, since she's already got Joy of Cooking and it's not giving her what she wants.

Leah @ #29:

I second Alex Cohen's Fannie recommendation. I have a fondness for the edition published in 1968, but Marion Cunningham's 1994 revision is acceptable. I have both. I learned to cook working my way through the 1968 Fannie. My eight year-old self learned to cook because Grandma cooked, and she is awesome and my mother's cooking skills are seriously lacking. I was doing the household cooking by the time I was ten.

Julia Child's The Way To Cook has good information too. Arrgh. I wish I was at home, I could look through my shelves and see what looks like it would fit the bill.

Looking at that picture of my shelves, what about one of the Alton Brown books about technique for covering which pan to use, when, and why.

Earl Cooley III @7:
"Bot-like searching detected"?

Xopher @26:
It's a sign! (which will make sense only to those who know some Hebrew)

albatross #43: Thanks! It seems to work to my ear, but you're probably right.

Leah: I offer up Linda Hodges Gibson's The Off-Campus, On-Campus Cookbook which my Mom gave me upon going away to college. It may not be as thorough as you'd really like, but the things it does cover, it covers for an audience that is cooking for themselves for the first time.

"Over 225 Easy and Inexpensive Recipes"
"Guides for buying and storing meat, poultry, fruits, and vegetables"
"All About Eggs"
"Timetables"
"Sample Menus"

I use it constantly for substitutions and common measurement conversions. It may or may not still be in print. It may or may not be useful to you.

In my 8th-grade photography class, Vic Cooper had a 110 'spy' camera. I coveted that thing. Years later, I somehow ended up with a used one sort of like it that never ever worked. So much for that dream. They seem to be phasing out the film, so spies probably have to use digital cameras now.

In other news, another one of my notebook gags has showed up in a reputable venue. The way I had it, you can just see the tennies of the aliens, whose socks stand taller than our heads, and the humans are looking at a copy of To Serve Man and saying, "My god! It's a tennis book!" (You can see how the great Ruben Bolling handles it in this week's "Tom, the Dancing Bug.")

Apropos of it's Friday afternoon:
The human ear is not designed for 3 1/2 hours of conference calls. Even when you can switch headphones / earbuds.

Leah @29,
I'm thinking a combination of 2 things could help. riffing on stuff we've said in earlier discussions on cooking (which we do a lot, and is always fun to do. Food pron!)

1. A book like Shirley Corriher's CookWise: the Secrets of cooking revealed. She goes into the useful details of how recipes work & why the ingredients used are used--their chemistry and interactions with other ingredients.

It isn't a beginner's book per se, but then you're not a beginner--you just need updates on the basics you didn't get earlier. By teaching you the Why-it-works, it saves you a bunch of trial and error.

If you cook through the book (200 recipes- all the ones I've tried so far are tasty), then by the time you're done you'll have a good working knowledge of cooking & will know how to improvise*. I like her style/methods--there's also Alton Brown's books and similar**.

2. Something like Epicurious.com's recipes and instructional vids. (the website for Bon Appetit magazine). They have 20k recipes, with user rankings and comments.

The how-to videos help.

It isn't hard to find easy recipes for a particular ingredient which other users have ranked highly. So once you've learned one custard recipe, you can search for others to play with.

-------------------
* Nothing is too complicated, and it's not encyclopedic--just enough that when you're done, you'll know why "this flour instead of that," or "are eggs necessary here," or "why do they specify 150 degrees."

** I love my Bittman "how to cook everything" & my "Joy of Cooking,' but I don't recommend those for learning. Over 600 pages = too much. Ditto McGee. Cookwise is like a refresher for what you learned (or want to have learned) at home. The big tomes are like a refresher for culinary academy.

Debbie #930 in the previous Open Thread:

Yes, I've noticed it too. Posted comment is noted in "Recent Comments" on the "Front Page" but doesn't appear in the actual thread.

Further, I've had trouble with the whole threadful of comments loading with OT109. My browser normally only gets up to Julie L.'s comment #898. I'm also using Firefox (ver 2.0.0.14) on WIndows XP. I wonder if it's because of the threads being so long that the browser times out, before downloading the whole thread?

Re-loading the webpage will eventually fix it. First time I noticed it happening was yesterday.

#54
On dialup my browser times out at around 400 comments. (Ouch.) Best excuse I could find for going to DSL.

Leah, i have to beg off that I'm a cookbook freak. So I don't have a favorite. That said, I have keepers and stuff that I buy to see if it iinteresting to use (If I buy it and don't use it after 2 years, it gets resold). Most all of them are purchased at thrift stores, flea markets,1/2 Price Books and things like our Pembroke Day School Clothesline Sale so I'm never out big bucks.

Good Housekeeping has a shorter all-purpose cookbook that shows techniques as well as lots of good basic recipes.

The coolest thing I found recently (at the Pembroke sale) is a book of food science, why things work the way they do and how different materials should be treated to get the best result.

Reader's Digest used to have a good basic all round skills cookbook part of their Complete Guide series for home crafts.
It did have a fantastic white vanilla cake recipe in it. I haven't read it since the early 80's so I don't know what is in the current editions.

Leah: Probably a bit beyond what you're looking for, but I've coveted the Culinary Institute of America's The Professional Chef for a while. (It's probably well beyond what I'm prepared to learn from too.)

Fragano, #50: FWIW, my ear stumbled at the same place that albatross' did. "Upon" just seems to flow more smoothly there.

Delia Smith is famous for taking people from the basics of cooking onwards in a number of her books. Being bestsellers, there'll probably be 2nd-hand copies around, tho' I'm not sure if they were adapted for the US market.

Nowadays she (or her multinational marketing conglomerate) have, naturally, a website. This includes online 'how-to's which could be handy for a quick perusal of particular problems.

Do you think this 'Non Sequitur' strip (3rd of June, another sleepy, dusty, Delta day) is a little sideways reference to NYC's recent crane collapses?

In addition to learning cooking techniques, I suggest spending time getting to know ingredients. For example, high temperatures call for oils with high flash points, such as peanut or grapeseed oils. Olive oil can be used with medium heat. Extra virgin olive oil shouldn't be cooked at all - reserve it for when the raw flavor matters, otherwise use something cheaper.

Another example is that cooking mellows the sharpness of onions and garlic. You can cook onions for a long time, and the flavor keeps getting more interesting. But garlic gets bitter when overcooked, so it should be added later than the onions. In some recipes, you want the bite of the raw onion/shallot/garlic.

One of my local Public TV stations recently showed the old Jacques Pépin series on technique. Check your local listings. He also has a DVD set, as well as the previously mentioned book.

For home-style Chinese cooking, I like "How To Cook and Eat in Chinese", by the woman who invented the term 'stir-fry'. Part 1 covers the materials, tools, preparation, and cooking techniques. Part 2 provides recipes.

I have adopted the date format that I expect someday (maybe when the US goes metric, so don't hold your breath) will become the standard:

2008.06.07

Aside from being logical, like the 7 June 2008 format, if you type a bunch of dates in the computer this way they can automatically be sorted. (I first discovered this when typing up a series of concert bootlegs.)

I have completely switched over to this now, even when writing checks. 95.06.07 was even easier, but 08.06.07 is problematical, so "2008" is necessary.

Joy of Cooking is kind of thin if you're learning how to do stuff, you have to know what you're doing before you use it.

I have mad bread skilz, once I got the stand mixer we gave away the bread machine because I hated the bread machine loaves and when you form the bread yourself, you can do a lot of different things.

And I've practiced lots and lots. My family likes just about anything that comes out, it's hard to keep still until the bread cools enough to slice safely. well... sometimes it just gets gutted and eaten on the spot.

Jeffrey Smith #63:
That's pretty much the date format we use for work computers used to capture analysis data, for the reason you mention. Except that we use e.g. '20080607' to name our folders. I avoid using dots and spaces in my folder/filenames ever since I got caught out when shifting from Windows XP to an OS that doesn't cope with spaces.

Jeffrey, you're almost using ISO8601

Jeffrey, #63: I think anyone who's ever had to do date-sorting with a computer uses that format. I adopted it for the same reasons.

Spherical Time @ 28: "Although we do often list Japanese under their given rather than family name. Either they try to compensate for us or we for them or both, and we almost always seem to get it wrong."

In academia this is dealt with by entirely capitalizing the family name, i.e. NAKAMURA Tetsuo, or WANG Xin. That way, it's clear which is which no matter how it is written. (Though I haven't yet seen a "John SMITH" anywhere, which would seem fair.)

OpenThreadiness: I vaguely remember someone mentioning a site that helps tie YouTube segments together into a single video for ease of watching, but I can't find it. Does anyone remember what I'm talking about? I found out that there's a documentary version of Guns, Germs, and Steel I want to watch.)

I find ISO8601 so useful that I find myself getting irrationally angry at the users who "need" their dates to be presented in some "more readable" form. Hrmph.

With regard to the remarkable Ned Sublette: I sort of worship him for his performance, alongside the fantastic Mark Manley, in Cory McAbee's The American Astronaut. You can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOJ8NmGyGbk. The American Astronaut is not a movie for everyone, but those who love it really love it. Also: Ned Sublette.

Most of what I know about cooking I learned from Joy of Cooking and Alton Brown.

A lot of episodes of Good Eats include some useful bit of technique, but it's a very random way to learn. There was an episode recently (American Slicer) that was about knives and cutting technique, and is probably worth watching.

His first cookbook (I'm Just Here For the Food) covers some of the basic stuff.

Open thread linkiness:

I recently encountered an interesting set of documentaries on the radio, in which a BBC investigative journalist reports on organised crime set-ups in various parts of the world (Brazil, South Africa, the Balkans, and... Canada), including interviews with some of the actual criminals.

Episodes are available on the BBC web site, beginning here.

T.W. from Open Thread 109 and anyone who's interested: You mentioned summer savory, and the fact that it's not always easy to find. It's readily available where I am. It's known as "Bohnenkraut", and if you buy some fresh green beans (yummmm!), you'll often be handed a hefty sprig to add to the cooking water. It goes very well with green beans, either warm or cold in salads. (And if you really can't find any, email me and we'll talk.)

Bob Rossney #69: With regard to the remarkable Ned Sublette

I was just noticing that he's in the credits of some of Glenn Branca's early works. Impressive career he's had himself there.

#69

My sister is very fond of that movie (and McAbey's work in general). I think it's a bit surreal, but interesting.

Name munged because I don't want to directly connect my real name with my somewhat more personal livejournal.

Apologies if anyone has done

this

before: I had to give it a go, regardless of whether fellow ML'ers have indeed addressed every possible parodical variant of William Carlos Williams.

Those of you who I've added in past: well, now you know it's me.

Oh, and I'm back in Portland now!

Yay!

Note that the even Global Unity Dates from April on (4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, 12/12) all fall on the same day of the week as each other in any given year. This coincidence handles a big chunk of the memorization required for John H. Conway's "Doomsday" technique for calculating the day of the week for any date.

heresiarch @ 68: Thanks, I'll try to keep that in mind.

#69 ::: Bob Rossney :::

PNH generously put the title of the remarkable Ned Sublette's latest book, The World That Made New Orleans, up in his "Particle" -- it's a link to a long interview with the equally, though younger, Jamaican writer-scholar, Garnette Cadogan, for Bomb Magzine. There are also videos of Ned performing, etc.

#73 ::: ethan :::

Ned tuned Branca's guitars (as he did Rhys Chattham's -- who will be doing a huge retro of his guitar things at Lincoln Center in August; Ned's one of the 'under conductors'). He tuned by ear, with tuning fork, and taught Branca a great deal about composition, since Branca was not, at least back then, a trained musician or composer.

That article on Bo Diddley that poured out of Ned last week, when hearing of the death of Bo Diddley, and that I mentioned on the previous Open Thread? He did place it, btw. With The Smithsonian Magazine.

Love,C.

Since we're talking about cookbooks, and someone mentioned a Chinese one, I'll take advantage of the opportunity. I once saw a book that went through the basic layout of a menu in a Chinese restaurant. It gave the characters for each dish, explained what they meant, what the cooking techniques and terms were, the history of the dishes and various types of Chinese cuisine, and tied it all in with the culture and language. It was fascinating, but I didn't have the money to buy it then, and now I can't find it, or anyone who's heard of it. It may have been British. Any ideas?

Owlmirror, #36

Circe was a dungeon master?

Actually...

heresiarch @68:
Once or twice I have seen the capitalization technique used with Western names; I think it was a Japanese academic workshop or seminar.

@zzatz #62: Doesn't that cookbook have a foreword by Pearl S. Buck?

Lee #60: That sounds like a consensus to me, and while I can't change it here, it will be changed else where. Thanks.

geekosaur @81, re heresiarch @ 68,
I get the last-name-capitalization a lot in emails from friends and business colleagues who don't have a lot of real experience with western styles.
It always makes me feel like YHWH when I get an email saying
"Can RION-san please help me with my presentation?"
(In Japanese, the third person is often used to refer both to oneself and one's interlocutor).

#82
Yes. IMO, needs reprinting. (Somewhere in one of the boxes ....)

A good few years ago I had the Good Housekeeping Step-by-step Cookbook recommended to me and has been the most useful cook book I have owned. It's not just all the recipes but that it has a lot of explanation of techniques, and being someone who has zero feel for cooking, it is the one I've turned to for a lot of the basics.

Constance Ash #78: Damn. Even more impressive.

A. J. @ 75

Welcome back. We hope you brought the sun with you; it seems to be hiding from us.

(pulling things over from OT 109)
@Epacris #983:

cajunfj40 @921 Stuff-onna-stick and deep-frying thereof was also discussed in Open thread 70, starting around here with coverage of the Minnesota State Fair of 2006.

Thanks Epacris, I'll have to check that out sometime.

@Epacris #983:
In other news, it appears Moon Pies are an USian equivalent of Wagon Wheels in Oz (& UK?). Here they've shrunk from about a 4" diameter to 3" or slightly less. US foods are thought to have swollen up in the same time. Any thoughts on Moon Pies? I wonder if the UK Wagon Wheels have minimized themselves similarly?

@Mary Aileen #986:

Epacris (983): Yes, Moon Pies are what I thought of when someone described Wagon Wheels. They're mainly a Southern US delicacy, and pretty big. Four inches sounds about right.

I've seen Moon Pies at many truck stops, both Northern and Southern. In my youth in the South, Moon Pies were a treat I'd go for whenever possible. I particularly liked the double-decker ones. Nowadays, it seems they've done something horrid to the recipe (or would that be formula?) and they've become rather dry and much less yummy than I remember. It's also harder to find all the variants I remember up North. There used to be single and double decker variants, Vanilla, Chocolate and later on I think Strawberry may have arrived. Up North, all I see are double-decker Vanilla and sometimes Chocolate. 4" does seem about right - and they were about that size when I was younger too, IIRC. I think they might have gotten a bit thinner, though, maybe less marshmallow-type filling? I wouldn't be surprised if they have shrunk recently, as it's been a number of months since I had one.

Never had a Wagon Wheel for comparison, sorry.

Later,
-cajun

Did anyone else here watch Our Man in Havana on Turner last night? I was completely blown away. The cast! (Alec Guiness, Ernie Kovax, Burl Ives, Noel Coward, Maureen OHara and more). The dialog! (Witty to the max.) The relevance! (Faked data on Cuban weapons installations -- not to mention all Alec's "00" operatives -- *and* a lot of humor from attempts at private conversations in the men's loo.) The darkness! (Moles, assassins, whores, strippers, police corruption etc. etc.) The newly slapped-on G rating!

It had been ages since I'd seen the thing, and these days I can savor it much more.

As you may have noticed from my recent writing, if I wwere bipolar you might assume I was in the manic phase. Stuff has been streaming off of my fingers and through the keyboard to the screen.

Including some stuff for a furry shared-world site.

Which led to this description of a story I was working on:

Me, I'm just writing. But it seems to involve Lady Helen, the late King of England, assorted nice Jewish boys, at least four Police officers, two American tourists, a theatrical performance, and a chorus of ricksha drivers.

Right now, it all makes perfect sense.

Geekosaur@81: I see last name in all caps used frequently in genealogical circles. The intent is apparently to make the surnames stand out for those skimming.

Said circles also prefer their dates in 6 Jun 2008 fashion.

Tlönista, 82
& zzatz #62, & P J Evans, 85

Are you thinking of Pearl S. Buck's Oriental Cookbook? (1972/74)

re: Juli Thompson, 79,
Since we're talking about cookbooks, and someone mentioned a Chinese one, I'll take advantage of the opportunity. I once saw a book that went through the basic layout of a menu in a Chinese restaurant. It gave the characters for each dish, explained what they meant, what the cooking techniques and terms were, the history of the dishes and various types of Chinese cuisine, and tied it all in with the culture and language. It was fascinating, but I didn't have the money to buy it then, and now I can't find it, or anyone who's heard of it. It may have been British. Any ideas?

No ideas here, but that sounds friggin awesome! Please post us a followup if you find it.

Meta:
I got the long thread refresh error too. I had to clear the cache (firefox) in order to see the last dozen or so comments.

Found via Whatever:
The Note at the Bottom of the Pond

Must-read.

OK, the Doctor Who two-parter is finished.

If that doesn't get a Hugo nomination there's going to be some really remarkable qualifying drama filling the lists

Me @45, Eddie Cochrane @86 - From browsing the Good Housekeeping Step-by-Step Cookbook, it looks like it contains much of the information of the out-of-print Good Housekeeping Cook's Book, but with more recipes integrated into it; in other words, even more like it sounds Leah wanted. I am willing to endorse it as much as possible, considering that I haven't actually read or used it.

There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand trinary, those who don't, and those who are reaching for a dictionary.

I've heard of a book that analyzes Chinese menus, but thought it was mentioned in the New Hacker's Dictionary, and a fast look doesn't turn it up.

Leah,
It's probably both more and less than you're looking for, but I love Good Eats. Alton Brown does a very good job, I think, in explaining not just the how but the why of things. And he's just so gosh darn cute, although I realize that's probably irrelevant. They're on video -- the only downside I can see is that he only deals with one issue an episode (beef itself takes two episodes, IIRC), so getting through them would take a while.

"Good Eats" is one of my kids' favorite Food Network shows, along with "Ace of Cakes."

don delny@93: No, How To Cook and Eat in Chinese is by Buwei Yang Chao, first published in 1945. I have the 1972 paperback, which is holding up surprisingly well. Unlike my copy of Joy of Cooking, which is shedding. I looked at a newer version of Joy, but didn't like it; I don't recall why.

Faren Miller @ 90... Drat. I'll have to make sure to catch Our Man in Havana next time TCM show sit. Right now, they're showing On The Beach, which they'd aired not long ago, so who knows? (I am looking forward to the day when someone at TCM decides to show, back to back, On The Beach, Dr.Strangelove, Failsafe and The Bedford Incident. Wheeee! Not.)

The Lost Books pdf has registration marks on every page, even though it's meant to be read on the screen. I find this to be a terrible waste of nonexistent ink.

Clifton @ #94, following the links, here's the text in more legible form (scroll down a tad).

We shoulda done that for our pool.

Erik Nelson @ 101: The better to impose them, my dear. And it's especially important to check colour registration printing in black ink like this!

What's more odd, the left and right pages seem to be switched.

There was a paperback book called The Eater's Guide to Chinese Characters by McCawley, which helps you read Chinese menus. It is absolutely not a cookbook. (Could also use being reprinted.)

zzatz, 99,
re: How To Cook and Eat in Chinese is by Buwei Yang Chao, first published in 1945.

Ah! Thank you for that. Triggered a nice little link-trance, that. (Among other things, the word stir-fry is attributed to the author(s).* See Language Log via Adam Sampson.

*bonus round:
“Hse” is the gender-neutral term for he/she coined by Professor Yuen Ren Chao, Dr. Chao’s husband, to make up for a third-person singular pronoun in English other than the rather formal and stiff sounding, “one.” via Tigers and StrawberriesTigers and Strawberries

heresiarch @68, et al.:

Fully capitalizing the family name, whether it comes first as in Japanese or Hungarian or last as in English, French, etc., is common practice in the Esperanto community.

Jim 106: There's an Esperanto community?

I have a question about the definition of sockpuppetry. It's obvious that when one person posts to the same thread on the same forum about the same subject under different names, trying to create an appearance of consensus for some position they hold, that's our prototypical sockpuppetry. On the other hand, if someone uses multiple online handles but never uses two of them on the same forum, or refers to anything said by one of their online persona when writing under another, that's not a use of sockpuppets. Where between those extremes would you draw the line? What if someone were to post to the same forum with different handles, but not to the same thread? Or to the same thread, but the different personas don't support one another; maybe they argue against each other (non-trollishly, let's say, for the sake of argument)?

I have a vague story idea about a guy whose multiple online handles are connected to him, & his anonymity lost with bad real-world consequences, as a result of some researchers running a stylistic analysis tool that shows when two extensive samples of text are probably written by the same person. The above questions may or may not be relevant to the story, depending on how and whether it develops.

The idea occurred to me a while ago after I was involved in a discussion on another forum, where someone emailed me offlist pointing out that several of the other posters were the same person, and the poll I had taken was invalid because most of the votes on one side were spurious. After the fact it seemed obvious, because they all wrote in the same pedantic style, but I hadn't noticed until this friend pointed it out in offlist mail.

Clifton, #94: Cute, but not at all the direction I thought it was going to go. After the first couple of sentences, I was expecting something more along the lines of this:

If you are reading this then I can only assume that you have removed the pond under which this note was buried.

Of course, as I am not around at the moment, I am not in a position to comment on why you may have chosen to remove the pond and, it is fair to say, that there could be any number of reasons for doing so. Still, I feel it only my duty to warn you that if you continue along this path, the results may be dire.

You see, this is no ordinary pond. This property was acquired by the Council of Watchers in 1978 specifically for the purpose of sealing an incipient Hellmouth at this location. The pond was installed to make sure that no one would be likely to disturb the seal in the course of future years.

I cannot stress strongly enough that breaking the seal would be a very bad idea. The things which would be likely to emerge would eat your sanity, if not your brain itself. By far the safest course of action would be for you to put the pond back as you found it. If you fail to do so, I cannot answer for the consequences.

The reality was a tad anticlimactic.

Xopher @107:

Yes, smaller than sf fandom but large enough. I'd guess somewhere between 100,000 and 2 million speakers -- the higher figure is more commonly quoted but I suspect the true figure is lower.

PNH: About the "Whitey" video...did I ever tell you I like you? I lied.

Re: Chinese food

Out of the mists of memory comes a college or university (Columbia?) that offered a language course in then-current Restaurant Chinese. As many of the local entrepreneurs of these establishments had fled China when it went Red, and the Mandarin (?) was highly stylized, ordinary Chinese/English English/Chinese dictionaries would get you nowhere.

For example: The Clouds of August
Was it a soup? A dessert? The presentation of part of a main course?

Vague recollections of Calvin Trillin mentioning it.

Elise is having another of her fabulous sales -- look at the necklace crowns!

Forgot the kicker:

The first taught, and most useful phrase, was
"Please bring me what those people are having."

Someone posted this insane video on a website I frequent, under the title "Would you do this?"

My answer was "If the word 'no' were written a thousand times on every subatomic particle in the universe, it could not express the noness of my no."

Xopher @115 - For many years my friends and I have suggested that the Earth's Defence System consists of a giant forked stick, a pair of elastic braces and my friend Stan*. It's good to see that this plan is being taken seriously.

* I note that to saturate this system aliens would only need to send 2 UFOs at once. I note in addition that on one occasion I contended that the moon was only a mile and a half up, and then calculated what mass it would be, assuming it was made entirely of cheese; this was part of the costing for upgrading the slingshot to a rocket-harpoon. I don't think that anyone was fooled**.

** Unlike the time I explained that stealth bombers travelled faster than the speed of sound to outrun radar waves; I was told off for misusing my scientific knowledge for that one.

Why you should never put your phone in the microwave...

Bob Rossney, #69, I didn't know that was Ned! That's a weird movie. I watched it twice and decided I was probably not the right audience and sent it back to Netflix.

Oft Known, etc., #75, back home, Yay!

Jim Henry, #108, you don't need a tool -- Teresa and I used to do this all the time on rasff.

American Astronaut is a damn weird movie, and I only ever saw half of it (at a friend's house.)

1. Patrick, you bastard.
2. Xopher @115, that has my son written all over it (but then he's nine.)
3. Squee moment of 2008: I've been BoingBoing'd for Paul Bunyan and the Spambot. (Also Sideshowed, which was pretty cool, too.)

Michael, #120: And well-deserved, too! You've really caught the flavor of the originals.

I always did love Paul Bunyan stories. I think maybe I got another of these in the pipeline, with Nikola Tesla. Still mulling it over. They're fun to write, though.

#119: The rocket nerd community has this schizo attitude toward The Astronaut Farmer.

On one hand . . . a guy building a rocket! In his barn! And he's defying authority to go into space!

On the other . . . so many technical flaws that the bad paint job on the Saturn V in Apollo 13 pales in comparison.

And it turns into a relationship picture. Which rocket nerds think is icky.

Let it be noted that the unity dates aren't the only unambiguous ones. In the European format, anything after 14 January or the 13th for any other month qualifies. In the U.S. format, anything after the 13th in October through December does.

People continue to be impressed with Little Brother:

Michael Swanwick's latest blog post has some nice things to say, and a story about spreading the word to a section of the population that one might not immediately think of as being part of the book's audience.

Jim Henry @ 106: "Fully capitalizing the family name, whether it comes first as in Japanese or Hungarian or last as in English, French, etc., is common practice in the Esperanto community."

Interesting. I wonder who did it first?

Lee @ 109 I like your version better. If I found your version, I'd fill the pond back up, half out of admiration and half out of caution.

Xopher @ 115: Wheeeee! I would do that nine times.

Calling upon the infinite wisdom (and collective memory) of the Fluorosphere:

While reading Charles DeLint's short story "Pixel Pixies," I was reminded of another short story about a man corresponding with an author friend about the author's belief that there's some kind of fairy-ish creature living in his typewriter, helping him write...and it's under attack by some other creature(s). If this sounds familiar to anyone, can you remind me of the author, title, and collection/anthology in which it appeared?

Many thanks!

PJ Evans @104:_The Eater's Guide to Chinese Characters_ by McCawley

Damn, you beat me to it. Multiple used copies can be found through AddAll.com at very affordable prices, though I feel compelled to say that I didn't find this book quite as useful as I might've hoped, even from the perspective of (at the time I acquired it) some minimal foreknowledge of the basic "critter" characters that tell you which animal is involved. Among other things, IIRC he failed to explain that the "meat" character (esp. when used as a radical within more complex characters) is often simplified to look like the "moon" character, which confused me no end. The format is also very dense and textbook-like; the second half of the book is a comprehensive dictionary of practically every term one might expect to see on a menu, but I suspect that its organization (radical-based character lookups may be too complex for complete neophytes, and its print too small for dim restaurant lighting.

There's also a vaguely similar book called Swallowing Clouds by A. Zee (yes, seriously) which is more rambling, conversational, and multidisciplinary-- the author hops back and forth among culinary detail, cultural history, personal anecdotes, and random linguistic quirks-- and thus (imho) far more enjoyable. Zee also supplies almost all of the Chinese words in basic handwritten form (as one would probably encounter them on a chalkboard of daily specials or a ballpoint-scrawled menu page) vs. McCawley mostly using rather small typographic fonts.

Marilee @118:

Yes, if someone is using sockpuppet handles in the same thread, and they post a fair amount of text and have a reasonably distinctive style, you don't need statistical stylistic analysis to say "all these handles are the same person". But if said handles are posting on multiple, unrelated forums... not so easy. If the same guy who was posting to the Kalusa comment forum under three or four handles were to show up, say, here at Making Light, I wouldn't be as confident about identifying him by his writing style alone as I was when I saw several posts by him under different names in the same thread about the same subject.

WRT the CBS forum Particle, I was struck by this:

no words that teenagers use a lot that some people think aren't swearing but we do

Mind-reading much? How is anybody else supposed to know what specific words they're talking about? Teenagers say a lot of things.

Ya know, we can complain about Wikipedia all we want, but I say thank heaven to it for left-out-nerds like myself who would never have understood what it meant to be "rickrolled" without the wiki.

This is in reference to the particled... er... does one give that sort of thing away? I'll shut up just in case... Please delete this comment if I have come too close to violating rr etiquette.

Will there come a day when weenies like I was in junior-high school will be able to stay hip? We may be living in that very age right now.

Is A. Zee, author of Swallowing Clouds also A. Zee, physicist and author of Fearful Symmetry, that most excellent book that I read and coveted nearly two decades ago? Amazon seems to suggest that it is so -- and now that the latter is available in paperback I'm going to have to snag myself a copy.

Thanks (and perhaps blame) to Julie L. *g*

Bridge of Birds: Wow. Just ... wow.

Attention Patrick: the link on your latest "Wired" particle is broken - it goes to Making Light.

(Thanks for fixing the HTML on the Wired article link.)

The "copyright vs culture..." link seems to me to be a lousy exemplar of out-of-control copyright law. The theme isn't an anonymous folk melody. It's a song written by a known composer, who is still alive. I gather from the article that the copyright is still owned by the composer (not sold outright to CBC), and that it's forty years old (not a Disnified 75-to-95). Contract disputes suck. Unsettled contract disputes suck for everybody. This sucks, but what's the larger issue in re "copyright vs culture"?

Similar situations where I *do* see a larger issue:

A work whose creator can't be found.
A work whose creator has died, leaving the rights to heirs who don't care and will never do anything with it.
A work whose ownership is spread out over a lot of contributors, so that it's impossible (impracticable) to get 100% agreement on doing anything with it.
A work which was released in ignorance of the law, so that there's no clear license which captures the intent of the creator.

I'm not saying these are situations where copyright law should be changed (or ignored). Only that they are varieties of "that sucks" which invite the discussion "is that really the way we want it?" This hockey thing... I don't see it.

(ObSF: Just finished re-reading Karl Schroeder's _Permanence_, in which the Rights Economy of human space is slowly being dragged down by the weight of billions of enforceable micropayments covering every single action anyone takes..)

Lee @#130: I thought that line was great, possibly because I married a man who, bizarrely, thinks "hell" and "damn" aren't real swear words, and thus has accidentally uttered them in front of my mother.

Anyway, I don't see that as requiring mind reading, I think it just means that "oh, c'mon, all the kids say 'sucks' nowadays" won't be accepted as an argument.

Syd #127, It's Stephen King, "The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet" - one of my favorites, although I can't remember offhand which collection it's in.

Jeremy Preacher @137, you beat me by seconds. "The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet" is in _Skeleton Crew_.

OK, 'hell' and 'damn' definitely seem extremely mild to me. And 'sucks' doesn't seem like swearing at all.

But then I live in the NYC area, where people say 'fucked up' right in business meetings and no one blinks an eye. Phone conferences with Memphis, not so much!

Jeremy @ 137 and Randall @ 138--THANK YOU! That was driving me bananas.

And I was about to say that my next task was to figure out how I could have read it in Skeleton Crew when I've never laid eyes on the book...but just checked to discover it also appeared in Secret Windows, which is right this moment sitting in a prominent place on my overstuffed bookshelves.

Thanks again, gents!

Fragano@40: Ooh, shiny! We don't get enough ballades around here. (Do you know Poul Anderson's "B of an Artificial Satellite"? (a personal favorite))

Jim Henry @ 110: A range of 1e5 - 2e6 \sounds/ high for SF fandom even if you include everyone who does something connecting to other people (i.e., beyond reading/viewing). Has anyone come up with a plausibly authoritative estimate? (I'd certainly believe over 1e5 worldwide, but I'm not sure how much over.)

Mary Dell, #136: Now, you see, *I* don't think "sucks" is a swear word. The worst that can be said about it is that it's vulgar. If they want to say "no vulgar language," they should just say that rather than being stupidly coy about it, like somebody saying "rhymes-with-witch" and thinking they're oh so cute and clever. NOT.

CHip #141: Unfortunately, I don't. I shall try to find it.

Oooh. Bridge of Birds -- without, as far as I can tell at a quick glance, Number Ten Ox! First person narrator is a young (and already outrageous) Li Kao!

The final draft was better. Splitting the roles was good. But this is a wonderful DVD extra.

(Toddles off happily to read.)

Wait -- Number Ten Ox is here, after all. Everything is the same, but different. I'm loving it.

Michael Weholt #131: Let's put it this way: that's the sort of thing that allowed me to explain it to my son the astrophysics grad student (currently interning on a project that he insists to his father the ignoramus is not about stars with BO and flatulence).

Your papers, please

Apropos of absolutely nothing on this thread, but a conversation with friends elsewhere. I just got my Technician License as a ham radio operator, call sign not yet assigned. How many others here are hams?

Erick Wujcik, game writer extraordinaire, has passed away, after a battle with cancer.

Erick was probably most prolific in his writings for Palladium Games - he wrote and/or developed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ninjas & Superspies, and many other titles for them, but was probably most influential to the larger gaming community - both players and developers/writers - for his work on the Amber: Diceless Role-Playing system, which was put out by Phage Press, and was as powerful an example of how gaming could be different from then-existing tabletop games as Vampire: The Masquerade from White Wolf was in its own way.

He was also, by all accounts, a genuinely nice guy, the only bad thing about whom I've ever heard said was that he didn't publish more stuff.

He will be missed, but his influence will always be felt.

Fair sailing, and clear weather, Erick.

Lin D, 148,
Apropos of absolutely nothing on this thread, but a conversation with friends elsewhere. I just got my Technician License as a ham radio operator, call sign not yet assigned. How many others here are hams?

Also a ham, though you'll never see my callsign connected to this name. Be smart, and don't associate your callsign with any of your online usernames: it makes it trivial for mall ninjas to look up your ICBM address.

don @150:
Wasn't going to, for that very reason, but thanks for the reminder. Email spam on the email address sufficient annoyance.*

The conversation was regarding how many sensible sf fans were hams as well, and I immediately thought of ML (being a group of level headed people, with or without sf). I'm just curious.

*The amusing spam being they can give my website, reference some post I wrote on ML months ago, higher listings in search engines.

mcz @132:Is A. Zee, author of _Swallowing Clouds_ also A. Zee, physicist and author of _Fearful Symmetry_[?]

I have no idea, although the biography on the back cover of Swallowing Clouds seems distinctive enough for verification: "Born in China, reared in Brazil, and educated at Princeton and Harvard"? His previous book was evidently titled An Old's Man's Way.

Scott Taylor #149: Erick Wujcik, game writer extraordinaire, has passed away, after a battle with cancer.

I played the Amber diceless RPG over on GEnie, back in the day; it is a very clever game system.

Scott Taylor #149: Thanks for bringing the news here. After carrying it to a couple other places myself, I was feeling too sad to want to do much more.

Paulina Borsook on geek sex is extremely funny, though not on purpose. Polyamory means having lots of girlfriends who aren't allowed to talk to each other, and geeks prefer BDSM because they have to have instructions on what to do next.

don delny @ 93: Nope, it's a much older cookbook by someone else, and Pearl S. Buck just wrote the foreword. IIRC it sheds light on the development of Chinese-American cuisine.

Syd @ 127: No leads, but at the London Sci-Fi Film Festival I saw two neat little shorts, The Phonekeeper and Watching the Watchman, that used the same premise of tiny people living in machines (an alarm clock and an answering machine, respectively).

Don Delny, @#150;
I knew ham radio operators were savvy critters, but really--entrusting them with the Button?
Not sure that's quite proper. ;)

More bad fannish news: Tom Smith, filker extraordinaire, tore his right quadricep this weekend while getting onstage for a performance. He's okay postsurgery, but this blows away his summer con schedule, including Duckon, Contata (where he was scheduled to be Toastmaster), and Anthrocon. Since he's a professional musician and a large chunk of his income rests on selling his CDs at his gigs, it's a big hit for him. (I don't know whether he's got medical coverage.)

Disclaimer: I'm on the Contata concom, and we're working to replace Tom (as much as that's possible) on two weeks notice. We're also working to assist him at the con as much as possible.

Is this the summer of losing con guests just prior to the event? (If so, I'm glad it was only a quad, for Tom.)

I know I'm going to regret this...

"I'm glad it was only a quad"

Better quad than sod.

Every once in a while, Turner Classic Movies runs some promo featurette for a studio's upcoming films. Last night was one from MGM in the early 1960s. Much fanfare for movies I had never even heard of. I was rather amused by the one showing Yvette Mimieux taking a shower in the men's changing room while Richard Chamberlain is a few stalls over and he casually mentions he's invited a bunch of guys to join them in the shower.

Serge (#160): I saw the promo thing too -- officially a studio anniversary celebration plus mention of things "in the works". A very weird combo indeed, mingling Serious Literary Adaptations with Elvis movies and all sorts of D-level stuff. Many of the future projects probably got nixed, though I know they adapted The Loved One.

Did you switch from Turner to the Discover Channel documentary on NASA (part one) afterward? Fascinating footage from the days of my youth, and a sorta tie-in to Turner's pair of SF flicks.

(Just see what I get up to when the allergies get too bad for lengthy night-time reading! But I still wish I had had the energy to go back to Turner at 11 pm and watch Kwaidan.)

Faren Miller @ 161... I thought about taking a look at Discovery's NASA documentary, but, considering how I felt after recently watching the mini-series From the Earth to the Moon, I didn't want to end the day feeling depressed. (Besides, I had just finished reading an article by Robert Metzger about Oil's impending exhaustion and that was enough to make me feel not cheerful at all.)

An actually insightful mainstream media look at Charlie Stross's writing and the role of science fiction in general, here (Guardian.)

So every time someone says something sexy at that Apple thingamie, Twitter goes kaboom.

And every time the Netherlands scores a goal in the football* game currently on, my whole village erupts in cheers.

And here I am pottering about in my bindery.

ZEITGEIST FAIL, that's me.

abi @ #164, "pottering about in my bindery"

You're making clay books?

linkmeister @ 165... You're making clay books

They probably are romans à clay.

abi @164 - sounds more like some serious multitasking.

Go Oranje! At least today ;) (I'm having a blast listening to the learned football commentary from my 13-yo son.)

Serge #166: I expect abi to be working on a flying saucer.

Fragano @ 168... Not book plates?

The Netherlands won (3-0 over Italy).

There goes productive work in the office tomorrow, or in the village. There aren't many people hooting and hollering in the streets, but the match has only just finished. I suspect that the mood will grow.

Fragano #168: Given her self-described talent to make complex systems crash, I hope they're test-flying it in a nice, remote place where it won't hurt anyone coming down.

I don't want to harry the punsters, but no one has made the obvious comment yet. Not that I'm one to hog wart's rightfully others' territory, of course. That would spell certain disaster.

(Actually, "potter" is just British for "putter", but don't let the facts get in the way of a good thread!)

Leah Miller waaay back @29 -- there are a lot of good suggestions up-thread of here. All of us are interpreting your question in slightly different ways, so let us know which suggestions seem most plausible.

I think that the category you're asking for is books on cooking technique, which I sort of collect. Pepin's La Technique has been mentioned, but you probably want Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques, which has both La Technique and La Methode in one volume. These cover stuff like knife cuts, trussing chickens, and so on. Ken Hom has a similar book for Chinese cooking, called Chinese Technique. Both of these can be obtained, used, very inexpensively (under five dollars delivered if you shop around). The CIA has a couple of textbooks that fall under this heading as well; if you're interested, I can provide more titles.

I also like the suggestion to look at eGullet. They have a number of worthwhile in-depth tutorials.

Finally, you should look seriously at Madeleine Kamman's The New Making of a Cook, especially if regular cookbooks seem too basic. Kamman starts with the assumption that the reader wishes to cook well and is willing to work at it. She cuts no corners and takes no prisoners -- but she covers technique, some food chemistry, food safety, and much more.

abi @ 172... no one has made the obvious comment

Its being obvious is why we didn't go for that pun. We do have some standards, after all.

Serge @174:
We do have some standards, after all.

Speak for yourself, mon ami.

Neil Willcox (116):
...Unlike the time I explained that stealth bombers traveled faster than the speed of sound to outrun radar waves...

Wait! Wait! Supersonic submarines ... they actually could outrun sonar, so no-one would know where they were, nope, not a trace. It should only take a little more power to go that fast underwater, right?

AFK while I get a patent, apply for government funding, and become filthy rich. Bwahahaha!

Victor @ 173: The CIA has a couple of textbooks that fall under this heading as well...

Delicious and Deadly: The Professional Chef's Guide to Neurotoxins

Knife Technique for Filets and Silent Assassination

Cooking at 500 Yards with the Barrett .50

Serge #169: That would be a mug's game.

#177: A friend of mine's wife is a Culinary Institute of America graduate. He says she's licensed to carry a knife for her country.

Lin D (148):
Congratulations, it is time to haunt the FCC ULS to see when your license gets granted. From that moment on you can transmit, no need to wait for the paper license. I assume that you passed the test this past weekend (based on not finding anyone with your last name and first initial (assuming the view-all-by email is somewhat indicative of your name)with a recent application). Give it about a week after the VEC gets the paperwork in (mine went in very quickly).

don delny was being silly. The callsign database is an open federal record, and will include your mailing address. From that I can drop a missile on your head, or just home in on your signal.

If you haven't guessed, I have a license (General, with code), KB1IYK.

In reference to the particle "At Last, The Long-Rumored Whitey Tape."

Duuuuuuuuuuuude. [ Sad shake of head ] I never would have expected this from you.

Well, *that* was disappointing. He wrote me back. It was all not-so-plausible deniability (how dare I insinuate that he's insinuating anything?), indignation about my post here, and cheap witch jokes.

Pleh. I want a better class of crackpot. Can I return this one for a refund?

That's a letdown, Nicole. Maybe keep pokin' at him? Although I guess that could potentially get ugly.

Nicole, you really don't want a better class of crackpot, believe me. It's a good thing all this one managed to do was splutter indignantly.

I've had a much "better class" of crackpot after me in the past, following me around on the 'net and trying to dredge up crap to post about me. (Not naming any names in case he gets a burr under his saddle to Google himself or something...) Again I say, ya don't want it, believe me, and if I'd thought about your earlier comment a little more, I would have advised you against even that much poking of kooks.

Interesting -

SecDef Gates appoints not-Zoomie to top Air Force post.

In the aftermath of last week's resignation of the top two positions in the USAF, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has nominated General Norton A. Schwartz, the current head of the USAF Transportation Command, as USAF Chief of Staff.

Schwartz is Transport through-and-through, and he's got a lot of Special Operations (and Joint Operations) hours under his belt as well. He's also the first non-fighter jock Chief of Staff in something like three decades, and almost the only non-fighter or bomber pilot ever to hold the post.

Furthermore, he appointed a bomber jockey, Lt. Gen William Fraser III, as vice-chief of staff, and Michael Donley who is currently the director of administration and management at the Pentagon, as Air Force secretary - and Donley is ex-Airborne (72-75), not a former Air Forcer.

Gates is basically completely bypassing the fighter mafia in the Air Force - not one of the top three positions will be an air superiority boyo, and one of them is a former ground-pounder to boot. This could be interesting developments in the Air Force - and may be a dark day for those who believe the F-22 is the be-all and end-all of Air Force budget requirements...

Nicole - second Clifton's comments @ 184. I made one smart-ass comment in a newsgroup ten years ago, and things spiraled from there. Some of the nuts are harmless and amusing, but some are really and truly obsessive-compulsive psychopaths, and it's not always easy to tell which you're dealing with until it's too late. Even now, a Google search on my name shows a lot of the resulting messiness, and I'm careful to stay away from the guy -- because he's still out there, causing as much grief as he can, because that's what he spends his time on.

Seen on a friend's livejournal, posted 10:01 PM EDT:

Rep. Kucinich is currently reading articles of impeachment against President Bush on the floor of Congress.

c-span.org is streaming his speech. At this moment there is *no* coverage anywhere else I can find online. Cnn.com, msnbc.com, npr.org are all blank on the subject. According to the friend who clued me in CNN isn't interrupting or putting a ticker on Larry king Live.

Kucinich is my new hero.

I seem to have missed it. Anyone have further details?

Breaking news that the Purchased Presses aren't reporting...

Bush Impeachment: Open, Live Blogging #2 by xerxes3 Mon Jun 09, 2008 at 05:32:47 PM PDT

Rep Kucinich is reading 35 Articles of Impeaching, INCLUDING ELECTION TAMPERING>

GO, GO, GO!!!

When in the course of human events....

...wow, I posted a political thing before Paula Lieberman.

But her post has actual useful links.

I love the Fluorosphere!

The stuff is damning, for anyone who isn't kin to the infamous New Jersey Congressman during the Nixon impeachment hearings who made the immortal statement, "Don't confuse me with the facts."

THIRTY FIVE>/b> articles of impeachment, thiry five, Rep Kucinich is reading.

Dennis Kucinich and Henry Waxman, I love you both.... and may the names of those who have interfered, blocked, colluded to block investigations, destroyed evidence, etc., over the past seven and a half years, carry forward their due culpability and infamy.

======

Still listening, and angry all over again about malfeasance after malfeasance after malfeasance....

A term I was foundering on above, "obstruction of justice."

I am proud to say I was a delegate for Kucinich in 2004, when he was so clearly the candidate for idealists who don't buy into the idea that you can't actually campaign on ideals. I would have voted for him had he made it to the primaries this time around too. He didn't, because, apparently, "God had a plan for him" [she said with tongue firmly in cheek].

And here he is, doing what ought to be done but what was politic not to do. Go Kucinich!

(My cynical husband is pointing out that strategically now is a "safe" time to do it. Whatever. What matters to me is, it's being done. Finally.)

--

Clifton et al - no worries, I'm not going to keep poking. I corrected him on some serious factual errors and explained a little bit about how when you stick lots of facts together under a heading the assumption is the facts are presented in order to support some argument to do with that heading, and I left it at that. Should anything go stupid, the phrase "You messin' with me? You messin' with the whole family!" comes to mind, as quite a few members of it have been laughing their asses off since my cousin found the article in the first place.

I suppose it was silly of me to post about it here at all, but coming across it left me wanting very badly to share the absurd bizarreness of it with friends. And the Making Light crew seemed the right batch of friends for this particular absurdity.

Ah, well. I expect the entertainment there is over with. More attention to spare for Kucinich and the impeachment!

RE Kucinich and his glory...
I hope this is important. I hope that it amounts to more than his previous efforts at Cheney, but Pelosi has already said it's a no-go. It would be one of our national highlights, impeaching this criminal, and it would, I think, help heal a lot of the damage done to our nation's reputation.

However, I fear 'tis but a tale of sound and fury...

Scott Taylor, #117, that looks just like my microwave, except it's clean and the glass platter goes around when you turn it on. Hmmm....

Lin D, #148, I was one when I was 13, but I'd been mostly interested in building the radio and didn't actually keep it up. My brother stayed on for a while.

Rikibeth @ 187

Boing Boing is on the case.

The camera reports another hue
what we can see astonishes the eye:
The Martian sunset is a shocking blue.

On the red planet we observe the new,
the stars are brighter in that darker sky;
the camera reports another hue.

We get to see this from the forward pew,
robotic vision can tell us no lie:
The Martian sunset is a shocking blue.

This is astonishing, this polar view,
we thought a Martian heaven dark and high;
the camera reports another hue.

A vision of this sort we had been due
in tales that Ares would soon dignify;
the Martian sunset is a shocking blue.

I urge the journey of a human crew
with all the skill that knowledge can supply.
The camera reports another hue:
The Martian sunset is a shocking blue

On Supersonic Submarines: Inspired by the line in The Hunt for Red October* that the Red October is the size of a WWII aircraft carrier, I've occasionally thought about submersible aircraft carriers**. Supersonic submerisble aircraft carriers though; now were're getting somewhere. One concern: speed of sound in seawater is about 1500 m/s (3300 mph).

On vulgar language: When I was at school, one guy got sent off for swearing during a rugby match. "But I only said 'bloody'" he complained, which didn't help at all. I'll note that a deaf ear was usually turned to brief involuntary exclamations at a moment of impact.

On Sockpuppets, I realise I have a larger number of internet identities than I thought. In places where I'm a real human being, I either go by my name or Neil W (these all link back to the same email and blog). In places where everyone has a nom d'internet I go with the crowd and pick a silly name. Usually it's either relevant to the forum, or it's one of november (usually book or film fansites) or monkfish (usually game sites). And in addition a friend and I have just started blogging about films under pseudonyms. Phew. Still, it's one identity per site, and in general the interests don't overlap.

* And possibly by UFO's Skydiver
** The concept is deeply flawed unless you use planes like in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Teresa really needs to see this article re: yarn work and math.

Someone has recreated a number of classic photos using Legos.

Some of these are pretty cool.

Chiming in about vulgar language -

My parents didn't curse much when we were kids, and my sister and I generally cursed less than most of our peers.* But she got detention one day in junior high for saying that she was "pissed off." Her reaction (and mine) was, "That's a bad word?" It is one my parents used fairly casually. I still can't see it as strong language. Super casual, yes, and vulgar rather like "screwed up" is vulgar, but I wouldn't hesitate to use it in front of a young kid and I wouldn't correct a young kid who used it. It just doesn't ping as cursing to me.

*I think. She might have been sticking to the clean language when I was around.

Neil Willcox @ 187... Let's not forget the Seaview's flying sub. That being said, I am amazed to realize that Gerry Anderson never came up with a submersible aircraft carrier. He came up with pretty much everything else, including an atomic-powered tractor used to move the Empire State Building - with the expected results. (One of my favorites among his inventions was the plane hangar that had the plane wind up outside by having the hangar move back instead of having the plane roll out.)

Several navies built submarines which could carry and launch small aircraft. Consider this as equivalent to the way that cruisers and battleships could carry and launch small aircraft.

Something like the Harrier would work well, and that would sort of fit with general Cold War craziness of invention. VTOL does get around some of the problems, and in a slightly earlier era there were the propellor-driven tail-sitters. Gerry Anderson might have gone for super-helicopters that folded their rotors away.

Oh, I can see some quite cinematic ways of doing this.

Two VTOL Tailsitters are are described on the Fiddler's Green site, where you can also buy the paper models to assemble.

Worth a look around.

Invoking openthreadedness: medieval polyphony explained to you. Possibly NSFW, though it was my boss who showed this to me. And we are in the music presenting and education business, so it is work related ...

Kristine Kathryn Rusch on the passing of Algis Budrys.

Fragano #196, that's lovely.

Scott Taylor #199, what does it say about me that I clicked and immediately started looking for "V-J Day, Times Square?"

Also, very amused that the daisy-and-rifles picture was staged with Imperial Stormtroopers.

Rikibeth @ 206 -
Scott Taylor #199, what does it say about me that I clicked and immediately started looking for "V-J Day, Times Square?"

That you have good taste in historical photos? :-)

(the Lego version of V-J day is currently acting as my background on my work machine - my home laptop has Tienanmen square as the background on the internal display - the external I try to keep uncluttered, as it's my primary workspace).

abi @ 175... At least you seem to be implying that yours truly has some standards. (Some mauvaise langue would say that my standards are so low that I frequently have to brush off all the fridge-underside fuzz that keeps sticking to them.)

Fragano Ledgister @#196: Ooo, nice one.

Nancy @97: That's "ternary", not "trinary". I might even know why if I knew Latin, but I don't.

Dan

Rikibeth and Mary Dell, thanks!

Scott Taylor @199. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I am sooo loving the idea of Cartier-Bresson rendered in Lego. And it's a Strobist shot to boot.

Serge @201: Gerry Anderson did do a submersible aircraft carrier of sorts, the SkyDiver from the series UFO. I say, "of sorts" since the design only carried one aircraft, which puts it on a par with the Surcouf, M2 and others.

Say, it looks like Usenet is about to get a knife through the heart.

Time Warner Cable said it will cease to offer customers access to any Usenet newsgroups, a decision that will affect customers nationwide. Sprint said it would no longer offer any of the tens of thousands of alt.* Usenet newsgroups. Verizon's plan is to eliminate some "fairly broad newsgroup areas."

Oh, and the reason they're doing it? Terrorists? Nope! "Eek! Kiddy porn exists! They're using this bunch of tubes! We will now solve the problem by shooting the messenger." So take care, folks, your bunch of tubes could be next.

Kip: This latest "agreement to fight child porn" serves the big carriers as a cover motivation to do what they've been wanting to do for years, namely kill Usenet because it's not a profit center. Unfortunately that's just a part of the problems Usenet is facing.

One of the really decent Usenet outsourcing services got sold out to its competition a couple months ago, and most of the staff got the knife (including at least one guy who has put in well over a decade as one of the more effective spam fighters on Usenet.) The replacement service from their purchaser sucks. (My ISP was using them, and the drop in posts and rise in spam and propagation delay was palpable.)

There are still some personal Usenet subscription services, at least.

I don't think it's a coincidence that Time-Warner is one of the companies that wants tiered service for the Internet, so you'd pay more for more bandwidth.
To some extent, I can see it - there are people who download very large files, and I can see that they could be a problem if they're all on at the same time - but these are the large, presumably able-to-afford-major-hardware-upgrade companies, not a local outfit with a few thousand customers. They're the ones who don't like net neutrality, either: captive audiences suit them fine.

Tracie, #204: Ye ghods, that's hysterical! It helps that I know just enough French to be amused by the subtitles -- reminds me of those old IBM subtitled commercials, one of which was in French.

Since dinosaurs and sodomy have not yet been mentioned in this thread, may I point the way to -

A Queer Dinosaur, Unusual Friends, DINOOPS!!
Dinoops is the name for unusual group of dinosaurs. They are friends of a queer individual character causing many troubles with awkward movement as tyrannosaur, but not favoring meets. Some events and troubles always happen everywhere Dinoops goes. And......a laugh follows with. A noisy, unorganized and unexpected behavior of Dinoops makes all friends happy eventually. Although sometimes very annoying....

-Barbara (fan of Korean consumer products)

NelC @ 213... True, there was the SkyDiver, but what I and presumably Neil Willcox were thinking of was something of the size and complexity of existing carriers, except that it could go underwater. Heck, Captain Scarlett's Colorful Band took off from a flying aircraft carrier.

My problem with ISPs, bandwidth restrictions, and other controls on traffic, is that they lie about what they're doing. They lie about what they're selling. And the rest of the time, they lie.

I'm not stupid. I know something about the way the Internet works. I've an idea of when the bullshit starts to flow. And did I mention they lie?

So when they tell me I can get a faster service for less money (and don't mention the price for the rest of the 12-month contract, after the introductory period), I'm firm in my scepticism.

Oh, and just so you know; ISPs lie.

Doctor Who: "The Curse of Fatal Death"

Before it disappears:

Looks like John McCain's site could use a good comment moderator. (found via Fark)

It appears they have realized unfiltered comments on a Political site are maybe not such a good thing. Much of what was there has been saved at the Fark thread. My favorite quote from the ensuing discussion, and something I've been telling my friends for a while: "People keep predicting that the Obama/McCain debates will be like the Kennedy/Nixon debates, where Nixon looked like the old dinosaur while JFK had figured out the power of the new medium of television. But they're wrong. It's happening NOW. Years from now, looking back, the true analogy will be between Kennedy/Nixon on TV vs. Obama/McCain on THE INTERNET, where Obama figured the game out a year ago while the other dinosaurs can't even UNDERSTAND IT, much less respect it and use it to their full advantage." from user shower_in_my_socks

Jen@224: from user shower_in_my_socks

Uh....

Er... never mind.

Jen@224: from user shower_in_my_socks

Uh....

Er... never mind.

damn it.

Jen B. @ 224... user shower_in_my_socks

"Does he always wear boots when he's taking a shower?"
"They don't call him Funtime Freddy for nothing."
(from Are You Being Served?)

Greg: The bad thing is that when I see almost any four word sentence that has "In" in it, I automatically append "and everyone's invited!" to it. I hope they are roomy socks...

I'm sorry to be too open thready, but...what the FRACK??!!?

Where was I for this? Holy crapsicles....How is Fox News still credible for ANYONE?

Saturday, June 14 is Worldwide Knit in Public Day

Celebrate!

To all the people who suggested cookery books and sites: Wow, thanks! It'll take me a while to scan through all those recommendations, as my project just hit crunch, but I've already surfed/thumbed through a few of them and I'm fairly sure I'll be able to find exactly what I want. The stuff I found on knives just while zipping around has already been educational. When I know what I end up using, I'll be sure to let you guys know.

In thanks, here is a link. It's... the website for an independent movie entitled "Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead." It's got Shakespeare, New York City, theatre people, and vampires. There's a synopsis, but what really caught me was the trailer.

I'm so intrigued. As a friend of mine pointed out, the title is one of those "Oh my god it's so obvious and perfect, how could I not have thought of this?" transformations.

Fragano @ 196... Belatedly, I take my metaphorical hat off before you, monsieur.

Serge @ 222 -

That's hilarious - I'm forwarding that on.

Was that Jonathan Pryce as the Master?

Maybe I'm uninformed, but I don't get the biofuel deathwatch list particle. What am I looking at?

Steve C @ 234... It is indeed Jonathan Pryce. I've been told that Part Three, which is not YouTubed, has the Doctor go thru regeneration after regeneration until he becomes Absolutely Fabulous Joanna Lumley.

Speaking of knitting, another response to the Open Source Boob Project, arguably more tasteful than mine.

Serge #233: Merci.

Serge: According to wikipedia, Curse of the Fatal Death has four parts. A friend showed me the episode last year, and the whole thing is definitely worth tracking down.

Jen B @ 239... There are, not three, but four parts? Oh my goodness. I must find its DVD, if there is one. It'll go nicely, next to the Blackadder Christmas Carol.

Serge @240: "The Curse of Fatal Death" was released on VHS, but there doesn't seem to be a DVD edition (which would probably be inconveniently region-coded anyway).

eBay currently has one lightly used VHS of "Fatal Death", but beware bidding wars. (I am not involved with either side of the auction.)

Further down on the link Joel posted in #237, I found:

I have created Viola’s Bookshelf, a new blog dedicated to making available gender swapped versions of copyright available fiction.

I love the internet.

Julie L @ 241... Thanks. Hopefully it'll be released on DVD. As for the region issue, I've been hinting to my wife that, for my birthday, I'd very much like to get a DVD player recommended here which can be made to play anything from any region. (That'd allow me to finally watch the remaining episodes of The Champions as the first American-released set apparently didn't do well enough for them to do the rest.)

Serge: There is always BitTorrent. Which I recommend as someone who BitTorrents things I otherwise cannot legitimately obtain from the original source. One can always then buy from the source if it becomes available again (with, perhaps, written encouragement to do so sent to said source). I did this sort of thing with Neal Stephenson's "The Big U". I couldn't afford it used, it had been out of print forever, and a friend photocopied the entire book for me. As soon as it was back in print, I bought it.

Openthreaditude: I recorded my first filk last night. It's a setting of William Allingham's "The Fairies" (the one that begins Up the airy mountain/down the rushy glen/we daren't go a-hunting/for fear of little men).

NelC @213, Serge @219 - The Skydiver suffers from the same problem as all of SHADO's equipment - they've built the bare minimum for the mission for the lowest possible cost, and the top priority is keeping it secret. Presumably that's why they wear string vests on board.

The problem with a submersible aircraft carrier is that (to simplify greatly) an aircraft carrier is all about control of air- and sea-space, and a submarine is all about hiding and never being seen. If your reaction to being attacked is to submerge, then any planes you've launched are left in the lurch, and any signal to them as to where and when to come and land is likely to be a signal to the enemy too.

Nevertheless, thinking about Dave Bell's note @202, I can imagine some sort of special forces submarine with a helicopter hanger appearing in an unrealistic technothriller. Or we could go full-on Dieselpunk - an entire submersible fleet, including aircraft carriers, troopships, destroyers, frigates, supply ships, minesweepers and so on, cruising the world undetected, appearing out of no where to attack then disappear back below the sea.

Since steampunk seems to have reached the mainstream, or at least the restaurant column of the LA Times (as I note here), clearly a rash of dieselpunk stuff can't be far behind.

#230: "How is Fox News still credible for ANYONE?"

Have you met Anyone recently? He just hasn't been the same since he lost his house . . . keeps blaming it on Clinton for some reason.

Jen B @ 244... Ah yes, BitTorrent... Someone recently showed me how to use it, as I've missed this season's first 4 or 5 episodes of Doctor Who. Eventually I'll find out why the Titanic was zipping around in space.

Neil Willcox @ 246... I can imagine some sort of special forces submarine with a helicopter hanger appearing in an unrealistic technothriller

...and so could Gerry Anderson, and he wouldn't let the issue of realism stand in his way.

For once, I'm glad I live in Boston.

The Hartford, CT bomb squad blows up a chicken .

Serge @ 249... he wouldn't let the issue of realism stand in his way

After all, this is the man who came up with the idea of a dept store delivering the Xmas toys by way of a rocket that then parachuted its load down to its destination. I won't even go into Thunderbirds's handling of radioactivity disposal.

Clearly, this was preparation for a biological attack, using a pipe bomb to spread the bird flu. Quick, someone, get a million dollar grant to study ways to neutralize bird flu pipe bombing terrorists! Bonus points if the proposed solution adds a few thousand names to the do-not-fly list, increases domestic surveillance, and justifies invading at least one third-world country with a small army and no nukes.

Stefan #247: Yeah, Everyone has been talking about that lately. And I heard Someone mention Anyone's problems the other day--poor guy had to sell his SUV, and now his yellow ribbon magnet's stuck to the For Sale sign in front of what used to be his house.

albatross @253:

Nobody told me about it.

Abi @ 251... That's because you're not just Anyone.

Whoever doesn't know either.

Somebody needs to do Something.

Fragano @257:
Somebody needs to do Something.

For certain values of "do", that's illegal in many jurisdictions.

And, if nobody told Abi, and assuming that Abi doesn't speak to herself, that means she's not nobody, and that in fact she is somebody.

"I could have been a contender. I could have been somebody."

Somebody needs to do Something!

Not Me!

Ah, but in order to figure out who should do what -- (YouTube) Who's on First?

Is anybody there?
Nobody is here.
Everybody is elsewhere.

But one thing's sure. Inspector Clay is dead, murdered, and someone's responsible.

“Nobody has hurt me,” wailed the Cyclops. “Nobody came into my cave and did this to me.”

Anyone can see
that Someone (but not me)
must do Something, and fast
or Everyone, at last
will pay for Someone's deeds
as Something, hungry, feeds.

Won't Anyone just try
to make Everyone fly?
No, Someone fears to speak
as Something snaps its beak
and Everyone falls dead
with Something on his head.

Nobody sees the trial,
hears Anyone's denial,
sees Someone lose his head,
for Everyone is dead.
Still Something longs for meat
but No One's left to eat.

Fux Noose....

Full o' bottle blonde female boobbrains and other loud obnxious yelling mouths. The cosmetically "enhanced" appearance of the pseudogeek male boobbrains, for example, seems intended to make them parageeks--media interpretation of providing an appearance of true(male)nerds.

They're quite appalling ersatz copies....

(As for me labelling that *@#@*@$ who occupied the White House, there are magickal etc. issues involved there, regarding invocation (not wanting to invoke) and respect (lack thereof, on an enormous scale) issues regarding I do not consider the regime in power to be legitimate, I do not regard it as due anything but disrespect and excoriation. I can't think of even five things that have been effected in the past seven and a half years which I consider meritorious--the removal of the dam which had diverted the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates drying up the marshes had merit, and there have been two or MAYBE three other things that I approved of done by *#@^@#$#$ . Other than that, I have been appalled and regard the "initiatives" and appointments and agenda and actions implemented with mostly revulsion, dismay, anger, fury, objection, sometimes even near-disbelief at the level of banality, offensiveness, greed, corruption, hubris, intentional inconsiderateness, ruthlessness, incompetence, cronyism, vituperativeness, bullying, abusiveness, vanity, hypocrisy, sectarian partisanship and promotion, intolerance and bigotry, and dozens of other types of vileness, endemic in everything touched by the Executive Branch of US Government the past seven and a half years.

The short version is that I consider the current regime vile, loathsome, appalling, and an abomination, demonstrated again and again and again, and feel that the 35 articles of impeachment, are only a start of earned charges of criminality, malfeasance, misrespresentation, sacrilege, abomination, hypocrisy, and abuse.

Why haven't even the allegations of cocaine use, given words by the person occupying the office of President of the United States of America, caused an investigation?
Why is it that Newt Gingrich could get Congress to witchhunt Mr Clinton pursuing investigations to first try to find something that could be used as excuse for persecution and impeachment and spend large sums of taxpayer money while Gingrich was busily being an oathbreaker to his wedding vows (I assume that his wedding vows involved exclusivity, or certainly he was very loudmouthed about the "sanctity" of marriage....) with a woman he later married after terminating the marriage he was in; but the Democratic majority of Congress is refusing to allow impeachment articles to even be given a full hearing in Congress, or even the charges investigated without formal impeachment hearings proceeding? The charges are serious and grave ones, and they've been buried.

Talk about elephants in the livingroom, there are HERDS of them....

At least my "nautical flag initials" would make sense: My vessel is stopped. I am on fire and have dangerous cargo. You should stop your vessel right now.

Positive achievements of the current misadministration? Well, let's see... the World War Two Memorial finally opened while some of the veterans are still around to see it.

Marilee,

My initials indicate that I am in distress and need immediate assistance.

Lin D @148:
Greetings from KF8NH!

abi @164:
...whereas I was watching it.

Linkmeister @165:
Spelling, surely?

Paula Lieberman @266:
Don't get me started on Faux News.

Marilee, my 'nautical initials' tell the crew to get aboard, we have fire or dangerous cargo aboard, and we're passing to starboard.

I guess that translates to 'getting out of town before everything goes to hell'.

My initials interpreted using the nautical flag code? "Affirmative; I wish to communicate with you; keep clear as I am maneuvering with difficulty." Y'know, that does seem apropos at times.

PJ@271: we're passing to starboard

Ah, so you're a right winger then, eh???

Hm, my initials are
want a pilot
engines going astern
stop immediately

I wonder if the "pilot" is for seaplanes or helicopters...

Bill Higgins @ 205

Oh, damn, damn, damn. I know he was sick for quite awhile, but in the back of my mind I was expecting him to get well and start writing again. I loved his work; I still remember in detail some of his stories I read 40 years ago and more. And I'm still amazed at how he predicted the narrative effect of video games in 1961, in "Rogue Moon". We'll not see his like again.

Greg @ 273: That's the older usage of pilot, viz "a person licensed to direct ships into or out of a harbour or through difficult waters" (and even older still, it meant the same as "helmsman", which might be where the aerial version comes from).

Neil Wilcox @ 246

In the mid 1950's Fred Pohl wrote a novel called "Slave Ship" depicting a near-future US that had been completely militarized (universal draft, all college students in ROTC, all manufacturing prioritized to produce war materiel) to fight a war with Vietnam (!), which has occupied most of the Eastern Hemisphere. The navy has been converted completely to submarines, mostly nuclear, including aircraft carriers. The carriers are about the size of the nuclear carrier Enterprise (CVN-65), that is to say, big.

IIRC, the planes launch and retrieve with the carrier submerged, so the carriers get to hide and the planes don't get stranded. Pohl, having done hie homework, was aware that a well-designed streamline hull can allow a sub to travel faster fully-submerged than on the surface.

Keep clear of me, I am manouvering with difficulty.

I require a pilot.

I am taking on or discharging explosives.

It's Britfans returning from Balti houses, innit.

My flagged initials:

I am maneuvering with difficulty; keep clear. My vessel is stopped; making no way. I have a pilot on board.

Ouch.

Meanwhile, across the pond, a civil liberties fail.

I'm pretty disgusted with what has happened.

Remember, Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer: he was part of everything Blair did, because he controlled the money, and so he has to be as much a liar or as much a dupe as Blair.

But he wants us to trust him.

It does look as though one reason this all takes time is the search for a nugget of incriminating gold in a huge mass of computer data. Did one proponent of the extension talk about over 30,000 CDs? Do they really have any evidence before the arrest, or are they just fishing?

But he wants us to trust him.

It's even possible that the accumulated law and custom on arrest, and detention, and formal charges, and investigation, needs to be changed in some fundamental way. When you need so much time, what would be wrong with bringing in some judicial supervision of the process? Why don't the Police want an audience?

But he wants us to trust him.

He chooses to fight terrorists by diminishing the checks and balances on the excesses of power, in ways which seem likely to provoke young muslims in Britain, who seem to be the potential terrorist. He seems to be setting up a return to the days of Breathing while Black, fuelling the very threat he claims to be defending us against.

But he wants us to trust him.

Personally, I reckon he's looking a bit tired.

It makes me sick at heart.

No doubt this is because I'm new at this Britain thing, but how did this seem like a good idea to so many MPs? Yes, I know about the last-ditch offers to get swing votes; I mean about the rest. How could this do anything but harm Brown's already shaky reputation?

Has everyone always been this eager for a police state and I just didn't notice? (Entirely possible. I didn't care about politics till I was 15 -- that'd be 2001.)

Tlonista #281- yes, lots of people want a police state. They figure that it will enforce their normality and mean they have a better time of it.
What they don't realise is that the gvt is out to enforce the normality of whomever is paying it enough, or whatever diseased idea is floating through peoples heads.

You'll have noticed that they have denied permission for the stop the war coalition to march through London on Sunday against George Bush. So they'll march anyway, there will probably be arrests.

guthrie:

It's a fairly rare person who strongly opposes police state measures, when they're targeted at folks he doesn't like, and appear very unlikely to be applied to anyone he cares about. This is especially true when he's scared--a depressing number of people were sufficiently scared post 9/11 to back all kinds of un-American, nasty, scary police state measures, up to and including letting the president authorize both torture and the disappearing of US citizens off US soil on the president's say so.

The worst part is, people are really awful at assessing risk, so they often support police state measures to protect themselves from made-up fears. I don't have any proof, but I'm pretty sure we'd have done many times more good by spending 90% of the post 9/11 homeland security budget on boring stuff like low-cost screenings for cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, or by spending it funding extra local police coverage in areas with a lot of street crime. (But how is some well-connected person going to get rich quick doing *that* crap?)

That is correct, Albatross. People here in the UK are not much different from the USA.

Stick This in your pipes and smoke it you fascist bastards!

Foreign suspects held in Guantanamo Bay have the right to challenge their detention in US civilian courts, the US Supreme Court has ruled. --BBC online

I can't find the comment where the "initial flag" (or whatever) things are first mentioned. I'd like to do mine, but I don't know where you're getting them.

Xopher, I googled 'signal flags' and took one of the first ones that came up.

#286, Xopher -

The concept is coming from the link under the last word of the "Bad Campaign Merchandising" particle.

I am going to send a message by semaphore, to be used to address or call shore stations.

Honest, that's how it came out. Seems rather recursive to me.

My initials:
Stop instantly.
Disabled.
(no meaning)

From a different site's explanation of the code:
You should stop, I have something important to communicate.
I am disabled, communicate with me.
The way is off my ship. You may feel your way past me. (!)

I kind of like the latter set; it has a sort of "ships that pass in the night" vibe.

My initials: Yes; on fire, keep clear; pilot on board.

My ML name spelled out:

Stop your intention.
Man overboard.
About to sail.
Pilot on board.
Altering course to starboard.
Romeo.

On fire keep clear
Stop instantly
Dangerous cargo

Hmmmm. I have been much more no-nonsense than usual on the phone today. Okay, assertive. All right, downright rude. (But only to the creditors who keep calling in an attempt to hassle someone who hasn't worked here in 5 years: who had a similar name to me. Aargh.)

I have been making Doctor Who themed iron-ons for onesies for a new cousin and wish to make one with some cute little line drawing Adipose (current season for those who wish to avoid spoilers). The TARDIS was fairly easy to draw, being composed of straight lines. It was also easy to find a Dalek stencil (I used the one this user decorated her underwear with). However, I can't seem to find a good Adipose stencil, and whenever I try to draw curves things go very wrong. Can anyone point me to a good Adipose stencil or magically whip one up? Bonus points for pointing me to a Cutsie & Simplistic K-9 stencil.

Yes; diver down, keep clear; engines going astern.

Doesn't make a good sentence, unfortunately.

My vessal is stopped; diver down, keep well clear; taking on, discharging, or carrying dangerous cargo.

I'm stopped to pick up nuclear weapons from a shipwreck? Cool!

My son, having seen a show yesterday about the Phoenix landing, came to me just now and showed me an idea he's working on, consisting of launching a small rocket with a camera on it and containing a Lego-guy pilot, into Earth orbit.

By throwing out grenades under it.

Which wouldn't be half so flabbergasting if his name weren't Orion....

For the childishly naughty-minded among us:
When candy design goes terribly, hilariously, wrong.

Open thread question: Does anyone else remember a 1-season TV show from the early 80s (IIRC) called "Lojac", or some variation of that? The main character was a werewolf, and his eyes would glow red when he was about to shift. I have hunted thru both Google and IMDB without success, including alternative spellings.

Lee @ 298... It doesn't ring a bell, and goodness knows that my brain is cluttered with nearly useless crap. Do you remember anything about the actors? Was the premise like a hairy Fugitive? Was it British?

I don't remember anything called Lojac, but there was a TV series called Werewolf in 1987.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=VEAGEewAdlQ
Werewolf

Lee at 298: I remember something like that, but YouTube seems to think the series was just called Werewolf, but I haven't found a clip of the transformation so I may be confusing it with another series..

There was a 1970's series called Kolchack that apparently had a werewolf episode.

I thought of Werewolf when Lee first mentionned it, but it lasted more than one season. Chuck Connors was the Bad Wolf in the first season only.

"You happen to have a silver bullet handy?"
Holds up her giant Ankh necklace
"Something much better: faith."

Serious electric guitars

"You're not a man who turns into a wolf. You're a wolf masquerading as a man!"

Heee!

Clifton @ 297: The "Accordion Guy" was a well-known guy on campus in my later years at university -- a DJ, and major contributor of articles and cartoons to the student newspaper.

Also: When toy design goes terribly, hilariously wrong.

Story title on the New York Times web page:

"More Top Yahoos Heading for the Exits"

Presumably to write best-selling exposes about their time in the White House.

Stefan #305: I kinda hope they get more creative, as the market gets filled up. How many books can get published along the lines of "Well, yeah, I took part in a campaign of smears, lies, and media manipulation on the part of the President, but hey, I was young and idealistic. Besides, I'm real sorry now that I didn't get a pardon have had time to think about the evil I've done."?

Stefan #305:

The article is actually about top Yahoo executives departing, presumably in advance of mongrel microsoft hordes.

"Wolverine" on the beach in Normandy?

Serge, Steve, Ralph: No, Werewolf definitely is not it. ISTR that the werewolf character was the good guy, and might have been part Native American. And now my hindbrain is suggesting that it was Lujac, or Lu-something-else, but that's not getting me any the further with IMDB or Google.

Aha, found it! Lucan, apparently a made-for-TV movie that became a series for one season. The main character wasn't a werewolf, but a feral child raised by wolves (literally!); what I may be remembering was that he had some "wolf senses" that were indicated by the red-eyes thing.

It's good to know I'm not completely insane.

And in other movie-related news, Johnny Depp will be playing Barnabas Collins in a movie adaptation of Dark Shadows, with Tim Burton rumored as the director. That should be choice!

Concerning signal flags for initials, you can move beyond the simple list of 26 flags. The International Code of Signals is based on two or more letters which can be used with flags or other means of communications. It covers just about anything:

• AD - I am abandoning my vessel which has suffered a nuclear accident and is a possible source of
  radiation danger.
• ND - Tsunami (phenomenal wave) is expected. You should take appropriate precautions.
• OY 1 - Fairway is mined. (great for golfers)
• SN - You should stop immediately. Do not scuttle. Do not lower boats. Do not use the wireless. If
  you disobey I shall open fire on you.

#305: Oh, I know. But the title is funny out of context.

My initials in flag code:

Disabled;Engines Going Astern; On Fire, Keep Clear; Stop Instantly.

Most people who know me would probably say that's about right.

Lee #311

Drool slobber slobber drool....

Re: the flying dog particle, I'm inclined to think that the cover of Animal Happiness is also worth seeing.

Huh. My initials actually make a decent imperative.

Engines Going Astern, Stop Instantly, Keep Clear.

Michael Roberts @296;
Holy crap, that's awesome...
So, the question is, did you do this to him by naming him, or was his name written in the stars?

I was quite disappointed not to find XXXV QVVX in the signaling code. This, we're reliably informed by Pratchett and Gaiman, means "Have found Lost Continent of Atlantis. High priest has just won quoits contest".
Maybe that's in the section that everyone promises NOT to talk about to non-sailors.

Ambar @#316: apropos of nothing, are you the Ambar i knew from late-1980's MIT? (Odd name, and I remember she was into horses.)

re: The Army gets partisan particle.

The praetorian guard is starting to select the incoming emporer. I wonder what they'll do when Obama wins.

Claude Muncey @ 312

OY 1 - Fairway is mined. (great for golfers)

Oy?

Does the number of mines armed depend on the golfer's handicap? And do we want to kill off the good players ("Harrison Bergeron rules") or the bad ones ("George Bush Rules")?

Anyone who is surprised by the "Army shows its colors" sidelight wasn't paying attention when the Marines showed up in uniform to rally for Marilyn Musgrave.

Jen B. @ #239: According to wikipedia, Curse of the Fatal Death has four parts.

It was first broadcast in four parts, but the official video release is in three. (If I recall correctly, it was made in three parts, then the first episode was split into two for the first broadcast for scheduling reasons.)

On rereading old threads, I see I occasionally used a different email address. Here's my other view-all-by thread, in case anyone ever cares.

In Strokes by John Clute (1988) I found a particularly thought-provoking but puzzling passage:

In Beyond Genre (1972), Paul Hernadi takes on and presents for contemporary readers Ramon Fernandez's 1926 proposal to divide prose fiction into two broad tonalities or aspects. At one pole, the roman concerns itself with "the representation of events as they emerge and develop in time." Its "intuitive," "synthetic," "vital tonality evokes a 'psychogical present (which has nothing to do with the grammatical tense of a text)." This idiom, the idiom of the roman, is clearly instinct with and generates mimesis. At the other pole, the recit concerns itself with "the presentation of past events by a narrator in accordance with the principles of logic and rhetoric." Its "logical" and "analytical" tonality reports a "conceptualized temps," which has nothing to do with grammatical tense either, but which gives off a sense of distanced, disjunct pastness. This idiom, the idiom of the recit, is just as clearly instinct with and generates exemplification.

That made sense to me when I first read it, or I thought it did; I thought of Laurence Sterne, Gene Wolfe and John Crowley as authors whose works are mostly recit, as opposed to most other authors writing roman. But further reading in the same essay ("Scholia, Seasoned with Crabs, Blish Is") showed me that I probably didn't understand it as well as I thought. Because Clute goes on to identify James Blish as a primarily recit author; and I can't figure out what he has in common with the authors I thought of when reading the quoted passage, or the other authors Clute mentions later on. I wrote more about this on my weblog (linked from my name above). Does anyone else have a better idea what he means here? Has anyone read Hernadi or Fernandez?

#312 OY-1 fairway is mined.

Mined if I play through?

News anchor Tim Russert dead of a heart attack @ 58 years.

It's been confirmed that Russert has died of a heart attack in the NBC bureau in Washington.

Old spam. Flagged by abi the first time, ironically.

I come home from work and turn on the news, hoping for an update on the flooding, perhaps something on the earthquake.

It's all-Tim Russert, all the time. How ever did I miss that he was the heir to Edward R. Murrow, Eric Sevareid, Huntley and Brinkley, and all the rest?

Have you seen the tale of Bruce Schneier and the King of the Crabs?

don, that's very funny!

Requesting the help of the interweb! A friend was recently trying to remember the name of a short story she read when she was a child about 20 years ago. It featured a boy who was a moth collector. One night a swarm of moths breaks through his window and surrounds him, lifting him up and carrying him across the fields and into a forest. The swarm has moths of all sizes, including huge ones. Eventually, once deep in the forest, he feels a sharp pain and the swarm dissipates, he can see he's in a clearing and there are the remains of other little boys pinned to the trees surrounding the clearing. Looking down he sees he's also pinned to a tree. Creepy!

I have never read this story, but now I'd kind of like to and my google-fu is not turning anything up. Does this ring a bell with any of you?

Lindsay Beyerstein: What is the Family?

Jeff Sharlet: It's an international network of evangelical activists in government, military and business. The Family is dedicated to this idea that Christianity has gotten it all wrong for two thousand years by focusing on the poor, the suffering and the weak.

Lindsay Beyerstein: In "The Family," a lot of subjects explicitly state their admiration for Hitler and other authoritarian political figures. How much of that is admiring their style, and how much is admiring their substance?

Jeff Sharlet: I'd argue that there isn't a hell of a lot of difference. I spent a lot of time living with these guys, and I remember at one point asking them, "What's the deal with all this Hitler talk?" And they'd say, "Oh, it's not the ends, it's the means." But to most of us, the means seem pretty bad, too. The means are authoritarianism.

Lindsay Beyerstein: Is [Hillary Clinton] still getting counseling from him?

Jeff Sharlet: This was in 2005, and she refused to say anything about this. When NBC questioned her about this, her only answer was that (she's) not a member and (she) has never given Doug Coe money -- which was a strangely parsed kind of answer.

Scary stuff.

B. Loppe: I think that's a Roald Dahl story, but I am not quite sure.

Late to the nautical signals game:
Affirmative, Require Medical Assistance, [no meaning]/Preparing to Replenish.
Hmmm, can't quite get a narrative out of that.

Michael Swanwick reports that Howard Waldrop has been hospitalized, and will undergo bypass surgery on Monday. I wish him luck and a speedy recovery.

This just hasn't been a good week for our comnunity.

What do y'all know about the Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008? Some of the commentary I've read on it is strongly unfavorable -- supposedly it would de facto reinstate the currently obsolete (since 1976, IIRC) requirement to register works in order to have copyright protection, and make it too easy for people to claim they've searched for a work's creator diligently before using it when they really haven't tried very hard. Lawrence Lessig is against it, which considering his general views on copyright suggests it's a bad thing. I read the House version of the bill (apparently there are disparate House and Senate versions that haven't been reconciled yet), and don't see major problems with it, but as a non-lawyer I'm not confident that I've understood it well enough to know whether it's a good or a bad thing.

It seems to be mostly visual artists rather than authors who are mad about it; the bill has a provision for the Copyright Office certifying private databases of pictorial and sculptural works, but not of sonic or textual works, if I understand correctly.

The Copyright office's page on the bill

I hope Waldrop will be okay. I saw him for the first time at Boskone, and had a great time talking about the drive between Colorado and Texas with him.

I eventually figured out who he was. We talked about roadside eateries, drive-in movies, fishing and taxidermy (much of the burden of these last two was borne by another friend who was there).

Best of luck to him. I hope to see him again.

B. Loppe - I read a story with superficial similarities to that, only it was about a boy whose father was an explorer, and he tried to live up to it by pinning moths. Something happens, but it's not what's described. It was probably in one of those Hitchcock paperbacks. It made a strong impression on me, but after all these years I don't remember enough to be helpful. Sorry.

Come to think, "big-game hunter" would have been more accurate than "explorer." Slightly different pith helmet.

Bruce Cohen #338: Howard Waldrop has been hospitalized, and will undergo bypass surgery on Monday.

He's at the same hospital where I received my quadruple bypass operation. They do good work there. I guess my main advice for that situation is "don't skimp on the rehab".

Kip W #342: I believe you are taking the pith.

Fragano @ 344: Perhaps it was simply a knee-jerk reaction?

I'll just pith off now.

Ginger #345: Not before you pat Ella. I don't think of you as the pithy sort.

Far better to pith than to be pithed, certainly. (And no, this is not a reference to LBJ and the tent analogy.)

Somehow these puns have lost their zest.

They're not very appeeling, are they? Downright seedy in fact. But it all stems from the same thing...I'd as leaf we'd never begun.

Fragano @ 346: That's because I'm spinelessly unable to resist..and I shall pause a moment to genuflect upon this, before I get a head of myself.

Clifton, Kip, thanks very much. I am emailing my friend with these details to see if they ring any more bells. Also, that's a few more items to add to my search string.

A recommendation: local-to-me avant-prog band Sleepytime Gorilla Museum has three fantastic* videos up on their site. All are quite different from each other, and from most things. The live set is very impressive as well.

*In both senses of the word.

I finished watching Friday's episode of Battlestar Galactica a little bit ago.

Apparently, we have to wait until next year to find out more.

@$^#$%^$#

So. I'm not in the mood for more heaviness, and I'm too tired to enjoy a Doctor Who so I turn off the TiFaux. I see that an episode of the digitally-enhanced Original Star Trek is showing. Hey, why not?

Only instead the channel was running an infomercial. For some kind of colonic irrigation product. I just checked back and now there's a Wealth Expert telling people they can get rich buying up foreclosed properties and renting them out.

I think Television is telling me to read something.

Ginger #350: You seem rather kneedy, perhaps a joint approach to the problem would be useful?

Fragano @ 354: Ah, you're hip to my ways! Atlas someone who understands, and believe me, that comes in handy. I find it rather humerus that even in this digital age we still rely on human connections.

Ginger #355: I was afraid I might have stuck my foot in it, but who am I to carpal about such matters?

Fragano @356 -- we know you don't have tunnel vision. Farsighted but not long-winded.

Fragano @ 356: I toe-tally understand, and there's no need for anyone to be so sternum about it. We rib each other all the time, and that's the tooth.

Someone who complains about another's complaint is only meta-carpal-ing.

Debbie #357: I might be struck by an oncoming train if I see the light.

Ginger #358: I worry about such things, it's one of my many phalanges.

An interesting article on the copyright claimants for that "Footprints in the Sand" poem.

Much as I hesitate to come within the radius of this punfest, I'd ulna be prolonging the agony of de feet if I stayed out. (Actually I'm lying: I think puns are fibulous.)

All those puns... I hope the kids soon go back to skull.

Susan goes to a dance scholar's conference, where she hears about how to mediate the intermediality and about the intersectionality of the intersection, before going on a ride on Mister Dark's Carousel.

I will be out of contact most of the time until the end of the week; my computer is in the shop. Seems that in order to fix the cover latch you have to replace the entire bottom of the case.

Please resume punning.

Bruce Cohen @ 365... May your electronic brain get its case back soon.

More dog-spam.

That was a good thread.

Abi,

your website is cited here as a good bookbinding site! (I found that page through craft: magazine's blog.)

Nancy @386:

Cool. The site is hopelessly out of date with what I've been doing lately, but I built it as I learned the basics, and as I made my own tools.

I'm glad other people find it useful.

Open thread continuity:

I saw the singer again today; rode behind her for a few blocks. She sang, as usual. Modern music, this time, late 20th Century pop in English.

Not every day can be medieval.

#365
I see that Bruce has bottomed out here, next stop, long furry ears and Shakespearian language.

Still more old dog-spam

I stopped by the main page just now, and saw three new posts with thirteen comments each. It's probably significant somehow; maybe I should buy a lottery ticket. Or maybe I shouldn't buy a lottery ticket.

Just saw this: special effects wizard Stan Winston has died.

He produced some spectacular movie magic. A real shame to leave at only age 62.

Stan Winston

Sarah, that would have been even spookier if it happened last Friday, the thirteenth <cue eerie music>

Checking the Stan Winston link, I noticed in the sidebar there's a case going on about the 'Myspace suicide' discussed hereabouts late last year.

Because a lot of people here are either con-goers themselves or know people who are:

This past weekend, there was a start-up media-con in Dallas which called itself FedConUSA. It imploded in fairly spectacular fashion, and there are going to be some legal issues.

There is a fan-run con in Dallas (this fall will be its 5th year) called FenCon, with an N. FenCon is not connected in any way to FedConUSA.

This is particularly important to note because, in addition to the similarity of names and location, both the coordinator of the failed FedCon and one of the Executive Committee of the successful FenCon are named Tim! You perceive the possibility of confusion between the two events. FenCon Tim has already received a few e-mails asking him why the con was being canceled.

FenCon is a terrific regional con; I've attended it every year and had a wonderful time. They don't need the grief of being confused with something that seems to have been run under very questionable circumstances. If you hear any scuttlebutt about this, please help the good guys and make sure people are aware of the difference.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Open Thread.

"What do people do on Sunday night in Albuquerque?"
- Chris Noth in the latest episode of Criminal Intent

abi @370--Not every day can be medieval.

I'm rather fond of the baroque ones, myself.

Debbi @ 379... To quote Cat Stevens...

"Morning has baroquen."

Just read the "American Nerd" Sidelight, and it certainly made me curious about the book. Particularly, I hope as a "cultural study" it's a bit more comprehensive than the interview implies.

I certainly found the proposal that nerds are "hyperwhite" to be an interesting idea. I wonder what he would make of Nerdcore Hip-hop? The Nerdcore Rising movie also brought up racial issues I'd never thought of...Prince Paul commented on how difficult it would be to be a black nerd in particular; but even then the jump to "being a nerd is like being white but more so" was not explicitly raised. I find it troubling, but also hard to explicitly deny. I mean, thinking of black nerds in popular media, at least, one certainly could come away with that impression as well. Urkel is the sort of canonical example, and he was basically an old white man in a black teen's body. Hackers is one of the few representations I can think of that break that mold, but it was breaking a lot of "these people aren't cool" molds.

There's been gobs of discussion about race issues in fandom, of course, but as fandom is seen by many as a subset of nerd-dom...it's an interesting wrinkle.

More Turner-ings: After revelling in the fully restored My Fair Lady, we decided to stay with the guest host's next choice, The Oscar. Omigod! Android acting, sleazeball story, and 1966 decor that all too accurately presaged the horrors of the Seventies -- plus a screenplay co-written by Harlan Ellison! (If only *he* could have played the title role....)

Correction to post: not "title" role, *lead* role.

Faren 383: He could have played the title role. All he'd need would be gold makeup and enough ADHD meds to hold still for the takes.

Faren @ 382... Oh goodness. I remember that movie. I much prefer Bill Maher's other programing choice, Where the Boys Are. Heck, it has Paula Prentiss and Frank Gorshin.

Serge @ 385: Frank Gorshin? Of television Batman fame? (He was the Riddler, IIRC).

Phew. I just can't imagine him in any other role.

#378: Turn right?

Ginger @ 386... Yes, that very same Frank Gorshin, who, by the way, also was in Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, where he plays the director of the insane asylum.

I've known black nerds or at least some somewhat nerdly blacks...

From

http://web.mit.edu/tetazoo/www/faq.shtml

"Who/What/Where/Why/Where is Dwight?"

also

http://community.livejournal.com/tetazoo/profile

The fact that most of what's on those two webpages isn't likely to make much sense to most people (except the LJ one does explicity have "nerd" on it...), is a Clue that yes, indeed, there are nerds involved, and Dwight was/is something of an archetypal in some ways nerd (alas, he's fallen on hard times, I was quite shocked to find out that in the years since I'd last seen him, he'd gone blind).

Ginger @ 386: Gorshin also played Bele in Classic Trek's "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield". It was very weird to see him there after I identified him with the Riddler.

Open threadiness:

There's a particularly poorly-chosen ad currently displaying in the "The last thing Iowa needs" Particle; an ad for Iowa fishing licenses showing a wide expanse of water. Oops.

Regarding "Shizgara:" one doesn't need to understand Russian in order to paste "Шизгара" into a Youtube search box. I liked this enthusiastic, balalaika-laden performance. You might call it Shocking Red.

(Some may prefer a cello.)

Joel @ 390: Oh, yes, I remember -- it was so unlike him, I could hardly recognize him.

Serge @388: I totally missed him in 12 Monkeys. Now I have to put that one on my Netflix queueueue.

Ginger @ 393... Please do put 12 monkeys on your queue. Gorshin is but one reason to watch it again. Not only is Madeleine Stowe in this movie, but it is an excellent time-travel story. (And you get to see Bruce Willis drool abundantly, and Brad Pitt going crazy. And, hey, that Special Victim Unit's Chris Meloni as a cop!)

Gorshin was a Las Vegas regular as well. He did impersonations. I remember seeing his name associated with a third-rate casino circa the early 90s.

Open threadiness:
Are these photos of planets or...

Regarding race and nerdiness: oy, what a kettle of fish. A few first thoughts:

1) The anime/manga/manhwa/videogame juggernaut significantly complicates the whole thing by adding a heaping dose of Orientalism to the mix. See: North American nerds reclaiming "otaku". If what's-her-face were paying attention to the current state of geekdom, she'd be analysing nerdiness as hyper-Asianness.

2) Chicken-and-egg: surely perceptions of nerdiness as largely a White enterprise come from the racism endemic to nerdy industries like comics and SF? (No, I'm not calling You Personally racist. I mean that systemic racism in society as a whole is reflected in SF and comics.)

2.5) I met most of my current nerd friends in a university seminar on The Lord of the Rings, you know, that cornerstone of modern fantasy. Looking at it as a nerd: it changed my life. Looking at it as a biracial person: its racial politics make me queasy. Have not yet managed to reconcile the two perspectives.

3) I don't find that nerds-of-colour are rare, but I come from a wildly diverse city.

Tlönista 397: Lord of the Rings is appallingly racist. This bothered me by about the fourth time I read it (I started reading it when I was 12, and I didn't notice the undercurrent of racism in it). Remember that it was written during WWII, when nasty harsh-tongued furriners from the east were causing no END of trouble, and when the Japanese were the Scary Not Quite Really Human Enemy.

Not an excuse: an explanation. The racism of the time was aggressive and drenching; Tolkien did not successfully resist it, and TLOTR is soaked in it.

Cyd Charisse passed away today. She was 87. Her heart, I think.

A.O.N: About halfway through my bottle of Dr. McGillicuddy's Cherry "schnapps", I noticed it said 'serve chilled", so I tried putting it in the refrigerator. That improved it some, but it wasn't all that cold, so I tried putting it in the fridge.

It froze. Whoops, seems the stuff's only 15% alcohol... schnapps, my apss! That barely qualifies as a cordial!

So, back to the whiskey for tonight... I've been finding some pretty good middle-range whiskeys this year. I'm currently sipping Lismore, a Speyside single malt Scotch.

Virginia Gentleman bourbon is also pretty good, despite its odd labeling: Distilled in Kentucky (there's also a Kentucky Gentleman brand) then "re-distilled" in Virginia.

I'm thinking about trying corn whiskey next -- it seems a couple of "legit" local brands have appeared over the past few years.

396

Oh my .... and he got the speckled stage, too.

Department of Unintentionally Humorous Headlines:

Rush to wed as California legalises gay marriage

Tlönista @#397: Well, sort of... the Japanese side, at least of "Orientalism" could well be considered "whiter than white".

Personally, I note that the nerd stereotype does have a lot to do with Asperger's and the autistic spectrum in general. Someone already mentioned Steve Urkel (There's an Aspie fantasy for you!) but there are certainly black Aspies in reality. (No, I haven't read "Nerds...My people" yet, I'll get it from the library at some point.)

And a random wandering review:

Brandon Sanderson's Well of Ascension kicks ass! The heroes are determined, smart, tricky, and creative... unfortunately for them, so are the villains. (Nobody's plans go quite as intended!) Plus there's an entirely different fight between hidden powers, going on in the background, and building to... the next volume, due in October.

Belated correction to #400: My cherry "cordial" froze in the freezer. And now I shall take the hint and go to bed. Zzzz....

Marilee @361: Back in, maybe, the early 90s, I used to see a music paper called Catharsis at selected venues in Hampton Roads. I now suspect it wasn't strictly local to the area. Anyway, their cartoonist, Pat McGeehan (sic?) did a "Catharsis Joe" adventure where Catharsis Joe (who looked like the bubblegum comic character Bazooka Joe, including the eye patch) was chatting with Jesus about how their footprints in the sand show them walking together.

But, hey!, says Joe, when I was having the real tough times, there's just one set of footprints! Like when I lost my eye! ("A glass eye costs how much? Oh, never mind, just give me a patch.") Why did you leave me alone, Jesus?

Why, my son, says JC, those were the times when you were too weary to walk, and so I carried you.

Well, persists Joe, how about where there's just one set of prints and a wavy line between them?

That's when you were too heavy to carry, my son, so I used a wheelbarrow.

Joe points again. How about here, where it's just a bunch of big dots in the sand?

Jesus explains: Pogo stick.

Paula (#389): Dwight still comes by Walker sometimes for the Friday night SGS boardgaming sessions, though I haven't seen him much of late.

He does have some remaining sight AFAIK, but it's not a whole lot. One advantage of several of the Eurogames is that there's little or no text and/or minimal hidden information, making them easier for him to play (since he can ask "which piece is that?" if they're all open).

Is it very wrong of me to treasure having been called a "psychopathic baby killing bitch" by an anti-choice loony toon on Boing Boing, even though both his comment and the comment of mine to which it was responding have both been (justly) deleted?

I do treasure it though. Perhaps I'm going to hell.

No, you don't. That second 'both' is an afterimage; it's not really there. Otherwise I would be guilty of redundancy, unnecessary repetition, and redundancy.

Xopher @ 409... I would be guilty of redundancy, unnecessary repetition, and redundancy.

Say that again?

I'm back early; turns out the computer surgery wasn't as complicated as they thought it would be. It means I'm in time to post part of an email I just got from Peter Beagle's list (I hope Patrick and Teresa won't mind that I'm copying a lot of it in here. It's not posted on any of his sites as far as I could see, and it's time critical for people in the NYC area).

SPECIAL LIVE MUSIC SHOW FOR TWO NIGHTS ONLY!

On July 18th & 19th, PETER S. BEAGLE and PHIL SIGUNICK will be performing together in public for the first time in 44 years.

(That's right — more than four decades. Their last gig as a duo was all the way back in 1964, when they opened for Tom Paxton at a club in Berkeley, California.)

These two special shows will take place at the Red Eft Gallery in Wurtsboro, New York, just 75 miles northwest of New York City...

...and there are only 83 seats available for each night.

Tickets are $20, and with so few seats they should go fast. If you want to be there for this rare musical treat, make sure you get your reservation in ASAP by either (1) emailing contact@conlanpress.com or (2) calling us at 415-731-2267. And please make sure you tell us which night you prefer!

There will be wine and cheese and what-nots before each show, and a chance to get books signed and hang around with Peter and Phil for a good while afterward.

Fans of Peter's classic travel memoir, I SEE BY MY OUTFIT, will absolutely not want to miss this chance to be there when Phil and Peter pick up their guitars and recapture the magic that helped make their long-ago cross-country journey so extraordinary.

Tlönista @397 and Xopher @398:
At least one edition of The Lord of the Rings includes a foreword (or possibly an afterword) where JRRT essentially says "mea culpa" and explains that, as what we would today call an "embedded reporter", he was quite surrounded by jingoism.

Okay, here's an open-thready type question.

My 2-year contract with Sprint is expiring soon. I'm contemplating discontinuing their service and getting a pay-as-you-go kind of thing where I just buy topup cards from time to time. (I don't use my Treo 755p as a phone very much, it's mostly a PDA.) Today I had a look in my local drugstore and there seem to be a number of people providing that sort of thing. I'm curious whether people here have had any good or bad experiences with any such phone service providers that they can share with me.

(Feel free to email.)

David Goldfarb @ #413, I use Tracfone and have for the past two years. After the initial phone expense it's cheap and easy, with good coverage. Safeway and Office Depot (next door stores in the strip mall I go to regularly) both sell cards in 60 minute, 120 minute or longer values. You also get about a 3-month time frame in which to use your minutes. You can also buy minutes online with a credit card.

They offer specials frequently, if you discover you need more minutes than I do (I got the phone primarily for auto emergencies, which I haven't had since I bought it [knock wood]).

They offer a reasonable variety of phones, although last I looked none included cameras, if you want that kind of bell and whistle. POTS is what they offer, really.

geekosaur @412: Huh. That faintly impresses me.

A software question...

My wife has finally given in, and is going to switch from WordPerfect to MS Word. Unfortunately, that software doesn't appear to be sold separately, but is part of, for example, package MS Office Home and Student 2007. Since it also contains Excel, that's ok, but... There is always a but with MS. It also contains MS Mail. Assuming that the install has to be for the whole package, will the Outlook that my wife already uses for her email also be affected? (That sounds better than asking if it'll be effed up.)

Serge at 416,
at the risk of sounding too evangelical, can I ask why she's switching to Word and not OpenOffice.Org? It's all kinds of compatible, and it's freer than beer. Plus, you don't have to worry about the twitchy extras that come with MS packages.

Otherwise, I had the MS Office suite on my computer before this one, and you could choose not to install certain components; but that was a good 4 years ago, so caveat installor.

JimR @ 416... The place that looked at my wife's laptop actually installed OpenOffice. She could use that (and I could use that free beer you mentionned), yes, but can a Word user read an OpenOffice document, and can that be done without its layout being thrown out the.. ah.. Window?

Open Office can save in Word format (maybe not the absolute latest version). I've had to do this, and not had any problems.

Dave Bell @ 419... Thanks.

Bumper sticker sighted yesterday:

Librarians for Obama

geekosaur@412: a foreword (or possibly an afterword) where JRRT essentially says "mea culpa"

There wouldn't be a copy of that online somewhere, would there? I'd love to read it.

Greg London, 422, sez,

geekosaur@412: a foreword (or possibly an afterword) where JRRT essentially says "mea culpa"
There wouldn't be a copy of that online somewhere, would there? I'd love to read it.

Yes, ditto please!

Further on nerds and hyperwhite. I think that conflating nerdiness with whiteness and with race makes my head hurt. Somehow I can't get clarity on this in my head. Somebody help!

"Acting white" is a slur specific to the African-American community for people who act nerdy in order to knuckle under to theMan. Is that a reflection of how 'white' nerds are positioned as betas to Jock-type alphas?

I'm reminded of Paul Graham's awful* essay Lies We Tell Kids, where he comes up with this dubious insight:

there are certain qualities that some groups in America consider "acting white." In fact most of them could as accurately be called "acting Japanese." There's nothing specifically white about such customs. They're common to all cultures with long traditions of living in cities.

*there are some deeply, subtly wrong things in that essay. Which is disappointing, because he's smart, and so I can't just dismiss the whole thing out of hand. I hate having to go back and check someone's work.

David Goldfarb (413): I use T-Mobile's pay-as-you-go phone service. I've only had it since March, but I quite like it. I chose T-Mobile because I almost never use the phone (emergencies, and occasionally when traveling). Their minutes are good for 90 days (vs 30 from most other providers), and I only have to spend $10 at a time. If you actually use your phone on a regular basis, you will have other criteria, but those were mine.

Serge @418,
I think that unless the formatting gets really wonky, it will be ok. OO.O always has this message about "Unless you save in ODT format, your formatting might not be saved" but I've really only had formatting trouble saving in basic formats like RTF or TXT.
OO.O allows you to save in DOC, and I've never had any weird issues with that--my work PC only has MSWord, so any documents I create at home have to be compatible. Again, your results may vary--but, if you do have trouble, OOO has a very active support community (emphasis on the community) and they usually have a way to deal with conversion issues.

When I made the switch, I found that there was a bit of a learning curve, but I can't imagine it's any steeper than WordPerfect to Word. Basic functions are all intuitive, and more advanced users will find all kinds of support tutorials and FAQ's on the webpage.

Anyway, your wife could give it a try and always move on to Word if it's not up to snuff. Cain't hurt none to try, I reckon.

(I swear, they aren't paying me. It's just a quality software suite, and dammit, they offer a viable, free alternative to MS.)

Serge (416): I second the suggestion to use OpenOffice.org. Especially if the alternative is Word 2007* and not one of the earlier versions.

*In which Microsoft decided to completely change all the things hundreds of thousands of users had spent millions of person-hours learning.

I have StarOffice 8, which is OpenOffice more-or-less. It's pretty good for a lot of things, although it won't do everything Word does (you can't do find/replace on special characters, for one).
It will, however, open and sort really large files, and it can write PDF files.

#339, Jim Henry -

I put what I know (which isn't much) about that Orphan Works Act in a post here.

There was also an opinion by Dave Bell in between the original question and my response.

Tloenista @ 397,
See: North American nerds reclaiming "otaku".
I really, really hate that.
I don't know why, but American "Otaku" rub me the wrongest of ways. I think part of it might be that me being a American male in Japan, I almost always get labeled that way by other North Americans (the other common label is far more infuriating--I'll let you figure that one out on your own.)
It might also be that Otaku tend to think they are not only experts on what kind of underwear the Sailor Moon girls wear, but on Japan and Japanese culture in general.
Because they watch cartoons, you see.
(Insert Homeresque groan of disgust here.)
/rant.

Serge @418 -- I too use Open Office most of the time. I've had reasonable luck figuring out formating problems etc. with the available online forums. Fora. Forae. Discussion groups.

Up till now MS was pretty pissy about reading other formats -- i.e. files saved with the .odt extension. I understand that's due to change, but to be on the safe side, you should make sure documents are also saved as .doc or .xls (not just "in Word format") if other readers with MS-Office are going to need to read them.

P J @ 427... Debbie @ 430... Thanks for the tips.

P J Evans @ #427: It's pretty good for a lot of things, although it won't do everything Word does (you can't do find/replace on special characters, for one).

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "special characters", the version of OpenOffice I have does have that ability. (The instructions are in the help index under "regular expressions".)

Open Threadiness: A new online SF magazine (forwarded to me by a good friend): Darwin's Evolutions.

Some of the folks involved are Baen authors, and some of the others hang out at Baen's Bar. I used to hang out there, which is how I know them. I am not affiliated with this magazine, and no one pays me to do anything for this magazine.

I like the story about pet rocks. I used to breed them, so I found it cute. ;-)

Paul A @ 432... I take it that special characters are things like the umlaut and all those pesky accents that French has.

Ginger @ 433... pet rocks. I used to breed them

What do you call their offspring?
Kid-ney stones?

geekosaur 412: I hadn't heard that! Thank you, it makes me feel much better about the man...though of course the BOOK is still racist, just acknowledged to be so by its author. Still, the healing can begin, and I have you to thank for it. And I, too, would like to read it.

JimR 429: What the heck does 'Otaku' mean? And is the word you're referring to 'gaijin'?

#432
I had in mind paragraph marks and tabs. I do a lot of that kind of editing.

(It may be buried in the manual, but they may want to make it a little easier to find.)

David Goldfarb @413: I use Virgin Mobile USA. No contract, top up every 90 days, and you can get the phone for less than $30.

Charges are $.25 per minute for the first 10 minutes of the day, $.10 per minute thereafter. Text message $.10 apiece.

The only places I have lost signal was in the tunnels below our Regional Office in Chicago, and in elevators.

PJ Evans --

I suspect you're going about it the wrong way, at least the wrong way for OpenOffice.

Because OpenOffice is using an XML file representation, there isn't an actual paragraph mark in the file, as there might be with an application that doesn't have an hierarchical data representation.

So probably there's a better way to do what you're doing using the styles in the context of Open Office.

That said, both tab and end-of-paragraph are easy searches using regular expressions: \t and $ respectively. There's no magic in the paragraph markers the way there is in Word, though.

Xopher, #436: As a first approximation, "otaku" = "anime-niac". People with more nuanced knowledge can probably flesh that out a bit.

Xopher @326: IIRC, o-taku technically means "honorable house" and was once used as a very respectful second-person pronoun[*]. Several decades ago in Japan, fans of samurai-era movies started to address one another that way in a general vein of speaking forsoothly. From there, its meaning started to spill over into referring to any oversaturated fan of anything, and now tends to have a somewhat sinister connotation of "complete dork who lives in parents' basement, red-eyed and loopy with solvent fumes from painting resin model kits of naked schoolgirls wreathed with tentacles".

Outside Japan, the meaning of "otaku" has been stripped down to "avid fan" (usually of anime/manga), and indeed tends to be borne with pride partly engendered from even knowing the word "otaku" in the first place, though not always its entire history.

[*: at least to the extent that Japanese *has* pronouns; I've seen it argued by some linguists that the words generally labelled as such (e.g., the sundry "first-person pronouns" boku, ore, atashi, etc.) really aren't, since they can be used in ways that aren't strictly pronominal-- if a little old lady says to a small boy, "boku wa ringo daisuki ne?", the meaning is generally *not* "I love apples, right?" but rather "You love apples, right?" because of the age/gender specificity of boku.]

Kip W @ 406 -

Oh, I like that a lot!

Bother.

It turns out that if you use proper botanical form for describing plants and their habitats wikipedia will accuse you of plagiarism.

I really should stay away from the back stage area there, it's bad for my faith, hope, and charity.

Graydon
That will be very helpful. The first thing is finding out how they're representing them. (I did know about the XML files: it used to be more obvious than it now is).

See, I'm one of those people who will turn spaces into tabs, to create columns in a really big report, where there's no other way to do it (replacing commas wouldn't do it). Wholesale search-and-replace is really useful in doing something like that, if you can figure out how to tell it what you're trying to do.

P J Evans --

If I am understanding the task correctly, you want to turn space-separated fields into columnar data?

You might want to take a look at Table->Convert->Text to Table; you have to highlight the text first. It will do tabs or single spaces as separators quite happily.

If you're actually trying to set up multi-column pages, that's relatively easy to do with page styles.

Serge @ 435: That, or chips. When they go bad, they're riprap. How do I know when young stones go bad? They're on the wrong side of agate.

don #423:

I've known a few black nerds (in the sense of people who e-mail you chemistry jokes, read SF, and get the punchline of the average XKCD strip), but they sure seemed much more rare in the CS/math classes, high-tech startup jobs, crypto conferences, etc., than whites and Asians. I wouldn't be surprised if this while pattern of interests and behaviors was just more rare among blacks--that wouldn't seem any weirder than blacks and whites having different patterns of voting, favorite television shows, naming choices for their kids, etc. OTOH, maybe there are vast reservoirs of black nerdiness to which I've simply never been introduced.

don #423: I felt much the same way about the essay. Like there were some true things being said, but distorted and tangled up with nonsense in various places. I kept thinking I'd like to see what the author thinks of his own essay in ten years.

Xopher and Julie L. @441: When I think of self-identified North American otaku I think of white boys wielding katanas they bought from the mall whilst wishing for an Asian girlfriend of their very own and playing lots of Final Fantasy. Though the more accurate term for this slightly stereotypical mindset is "Glorious Nippon!".

Admittedly I know quite a few nerds myself who wouldn't be caught dead watching the American dub.* God help me, sometimes I'm one of them.

_____________
*If you know what I mean, you're a nerd.**
**If you prefer the subtitles, you're super nerdy.***
***If you never relax this principle even for high-quality productions like the Studio Ghibli stuff, you're definitely an otaku.

More or less related to #449
I saw my first ASUS eee the other day.
It was being used by a young man who was apparently translating a Japanese graphic novel. (Type on computer, read book, type on computer, check electronic dictionary, type on computer, read book ....)

Lori #438:

I've got Virgin Mobile USA too (sorry, Charlie Stross) but the pricing is a touch different; mine is 18 cents/minute regardless. (Texts are still ten cents.) I've never had it drop out on me while I was actually using it, but my phone (Snapper) is all too good about chirping when it thinks it's out of range/signal--like every time I go into an elevator. VM use a cheap tier of Sprint service, and it sometimes shows; last month my mother and I got to the lodge at Natural Bridge in eastern Kentucky (mountains and no large towns), and decided to call our respective people. Her regular Sprint phone worked fine; mine refused to find any signal whatsoever.

Ginger @ 446... They're on the wrong side of agate

And you ruby't in, every chance you get.

albatross, 448,
don #423: I felt much the same way about the essay. Like there were some true things being said, but distorted and tangled up with nonsense in various places. I kept thinking I'd like to see what the author thinks of his own essay in ten years.

Right. I'm glad I'm not alone on that one. Have you read his other stuff? He's concerned about not being wrong about things, about not holding prejudiced beliefs that will be judged harshly by the people of the future. I also wonder what he will think of what he wrote.

OTOH, maybe there are vast reservoirs of black nerdiness to which I've simply never been introduced.
That's a really really interesting thought. Does nerdiness have color? (Or ethnicity?) I'm about as ignorant as one would expect a privileged white male to be on this.

Serge @452: Garnet! You tourmaline around.

on otaku-ness and nerdiness:

Two other bits that play into the definition: otaku can be used as an adjective; properly speaking, anime nerds are anime otaku, railfans are densha otaku, etc etc. (I think the popular book/manga/movie series Densha Otoko is a pun on that - and is an example of the more recent positive attitude towards otaku.)

The term otaku has a really negative connotation due to a serial child molester murderer, Tsutomu Miyazaki, who was a kind of anime otaku and became seen as representative of the tribe to normal people. Incidentally, he was executed yesterday, though his crimes were committed in 1988-89.

From the above linked Telegraph article:

Police who searched Miyazaki's small flat found 5,763 videos, including violent anime manga that quickly earned him the title the "Otaku murderer". Despite mainly harmless associations with Japanese cartoons and films, the public fear of the "Otaku" cult has never really abated since Miyazaki's crimes

More old dog-spam here.

Is anyone cleaning these up? Should I keep reporting them?

Noooooooooooo!
I forgot to link to the Densha Otoko entry! It's perfect for Making Light, it's got nerds, it's got romance, it's even got message board communities!!!

Here's a summary from a review of one of the manga versions:

The book begins by following the nameless hero as he wanders around Tokyo, mulling over his paralyzing shyness and generally getting taken advantage of. Once that’s established, we see his brief moment of heroism, when he shakes off his inhibitions to stop a drunk from harassing a girl on the train. When the girl sends him a set of Hermes teacups as a thank-you, he dares to dream: maybe he can talk to a girl after all. Unsure what to do—he has no friends or, apparently, family—he posts his story on an online channel for “poison men,” men who have no girlfriends. The anonymous posters offer advice and moral support, and he quickly becomes a phenomenon on the message board, more addictive than any game.

tlonista,

who wouldn't be caught dead watching the American dub.*

i'm not much of an anime fan, but a lot of the stuff i have watched, i've watched (& preferred) subtitled. cause i figure i'm getting the original director's choice of voice actor, & reading subtitles doesn't bother me. just like i'd rather watch any foreign film subtitled rather than dubbed.

the kind of foundational (my foundations as an anime-appreciator) anime i saw this way (akira, cowboy bebop), were shown me by a boyfriend-at-the-time who also strongly preferred subtitles. & he's not an otaku by any stretch, certainly not in the horrible way you describe such northamericans above. but he does have the trait of all-around snobbism, like i have, where if you're experiencing something new you want to do it in the "most correct" & "authentic" way.

even if that makes us terrible poseurs & orientalists, i guess.

studio ghibli, yeah, that stuff i watched in english. because that's how it came out in theatres, & also because it's so popular & acclaimed, which caused so much of the best english-speaking talent to come on board with the dubbed version (like neil gaiman working on the script!), which meant that i felt i was seeing a work of art in its own right, not a work of art with other voices tacked on.

I don't have a cite handy, but I've read the "acting white" phenomenon all derives from one anecdotal report, given in an academic context, and that the rest has followed the way poisonous memes often do.

For what it's worth, the article on steampunk fashion in the NYT which I put a link up to, oh, about fifty thousand comments ago, had a picture of a black guy in some very nifty clothing.

Don Delney, #455,
This: ...the public fear of the "Otaku" cult has never really abated since Miyazaki's crimes is utterly ridiculous. Otaku cult? the very definition of Media sensationalism. There is no such thing, and I have neither seen nor heard any kind of public fear of Otaku. They're considered fairly benign, and since Densha Otoko, they've gotten kind of cool--TV personalities here routinely self-label themselves as Otaku, and Akihabara, the Otaku mecca in Tokyo, is certainly not a fearful place (well, apart form the recent stabbing rampage there, but that guy wasn't any kind of Otaku, as far as I know).

Xopher--The other label is not "Gaijin," which is fairly bland in most instances. The one that really gets me going is "yellow fever," as in "Hey, your wife is Japanese, you got a bad case of the yellow fever." which is often linked to the kind of person Tloenista describes in 449. It's a hateful term that too many people repeat without thought.

In my previous post, I'd intended to draw parallels between the terms "otaku" and "goth" wrt in-group usage as benign self-description of "interestingly weird people like us" vs. out-group pejorative labelling (esp. by overblown media panic) as dangerous psychopaths, but I forgot to at the time.

(Also cf. the general public perception of D&D in the 1980s; I still remember Tom Hanks as the lunatic RPGer in the tv adaptation of Rona Jaffe's novel "Mazes and Monsters"-- which by coincidence was one of the few books in English that we found in our hotel when visiting Japan a few months ago.)

Mary Aileen @456:

I do periodic sweep-ups, going through the Open Threads looking for the word "spam" and chasing it down. It's gardening-type work, quiet and meditative.

Unfortunately, right at the minute I'm under some pressure at work and trying to get three bookbinding projects out the door before I move house in 9 days. This has not given me a lot of gardening time.

I appreciate the effort, and will be going through and sweeping up in due course.

miriam beetle @458: My introduction to anime was actually pretty much the same as yours -- except the boyfriend might be considered an otaku, as he and a small circle of friends run a manga and anime review site. Therefore, I am a subtitles-watching snob.

There's a lot to love about anime and manga. And it's perfectly possible to be a huge "otaku" without fetishizing or stereotyping Japan, but unfortunately it really does exist in fandom.

JimR @460: The bf and I joke about him having "yellow fever"...but in the wrong context? Yeah, offensive.

JimR and Tlönista: Yeah, two scourges of Asian expat communities are accusations of yellow fever, and on the flipside, vigorous denials of it. It's interesting how they both manage to be equally offensive.

On an Open-Thready note: Commentors who were interested in the Curating conversations (a meditation in the sunlight) thread might find this an interesting development.

I thank those who've responded to my question. One point I probably didn't make sufficiently clear: I'm looking for a service I can use with the Treo I already have. Having to buy a new phone (even cheaply) is a dealbreaker.

Is anyone cleaning these up? Should I keep reporting them?

I'm cleaning them up.

Yes, please keep reporting them.

Thanks, Jim.

abi @ 462... I move house in 9 days

Faster than a spamming bullet!
Able to move a house while binding a book!

miriam beetle @ 458... My wife got Paprika on NetFlix so we watched it last night. It was subtitled, which I prefer to dubbing too. The only time I don't like subtitles is when the movie is in French because, in spite of French being my native language, I a am drawn to words like a moth to the flame.

This is your brain on hope.

Mary Dell @ 470... God! It feels so weird to have hope in one's heart.

Open Thread-a-licious
Apart from the terrifying headline,
RBS issues global stock and credit crash alert, this article has the best. comments. ever.
Conspiracy theories, anti-government rants, insane speculations abound.

Anyway, I'm curious--do any of the more financially astute among us have some ideas about where the next year or two might take us? Is there a possibility of a major crash? Can we expect food shortages and gasoline prices to cause riots?
Or will everything just keep on trucking along?

I am not optimistic, but I am largely ignorant.

A Knitted Tardis was mentioned somewhere on one of the comment threads, but I can't find the post now. Need bed soon. Here is what I've found (don't let the BBC near, tho'): TARDIS Knit Plush Pattern Instructions, and Pattern Graph; Knitted Tardis Flickr set; and Instructables page: The Tardis - knitted. I would love someone to bring one along to the annual ABC Knit-In for the Wrap With Love charity (the Big Day is !st August this year), 'cos our ABC is & has been the Dr Who purveyor in Australia since the show's beginning.

And, avoiding link-moderation purgatory (now limbo is disallowed), here's the Sixth Annual 702 ABC Sydney Knit In page. Too tired to hunt for the pages showing earlier ones.

#473, Epacris -

How sweet of you to dig out all those patterns! I was the one who mentioned it, but really it wasn't the pattern I couldn't find, just a particular blog post about one that suggested it was the "wrong color." I guess they thought it was a phone booth and thus should have been red.

abi (462), James (466): Good! Thanks. I just didn't want to be wasting my time and annoying everyone to no purpose.

By the way, I'm pretty sure I reported old spam in March/April that probably came back when ML went kaflooey* in May. It should be in my view-all-by.

*to use the technical term

Once in a while I glance at my AOL account's bulging spam folder to be sure nothing important got caught there.

Today one of the actual spams caught me eye. They're selling art. It's oddly charming, and even instructional:

"We offer one of pre-eminent product of we are in the form of an skin engraving made of good qualified original cow skin is in the form of puppets are called wayang. Wayang is figure doll in the theatre of drama traditional which very is popular in Indonesia especially Java and Bali islands. Wayang act usually based on story taken away from by epic Ramayana and Mahabharata. This skin engraving is in the form of a wayang figure in story Ramayana. He is Anoman, a white monkey assisting Rama to free his wife, Shinta, from bad giant king clutch so called Rahwana."

An otaku is not to be confused with an o-tako (with a macron I can't type over the o) which would be a giant octopus

Erik 478: Obviously you've never been on a date with one! *rimshot*

Just came from a meeting about the computer upgrades my department will be getting soon. Quoth systems, "You will crash. Expect to crash between 2-10 times a day."

This is gonna be interesting.

don delny @423:

I had read that essay (and several of his others on the same site) a few years ago, and just re-read it. I don't have the knowledge or experience to comment on the "acting white" issue; but as for the rest of it, it seems more true than not, except in a few places where it's derailed by an anti-religious bias. (He seems to side to some degree with the "Brights" who consider raising children in their parents' religion as a form of child abuse.) He fails to distinguish between parents actually lying about things they know the truth about, passing on (in good faith) non-facts that they believe because they trusted the people who told them, and passing on more or less non-verifiable beliefs that Mr. Graham thinks are false.

Has anyone here linked to these yet? It's a short sequential-art series (the word "comics" seems singularly inappropriate for most of them) about personal/human-interest stories from the Sichuan earthquake. Each entry is self-contained, but there's an text introduction to the series at the bottom of the linked page; there's also another page of more recent material.

Erik @478: An otaku is not to be confused with an o-tako (with a macron I can't type over the o) which would be a giant octopus

Xopher @479: Obviously you've never been on a date with one! *rimshot*

Obligatory (and NSFW) link to naughty Hokusai.

#482, Julie -

Wow. Thanks for the pointer.

Stefan Jones @ 477

There is, or was as of a couple of years ago, last time I went looking, a flourishing market in wayang puppets and videos of performances on Ebay. The more traditional puppets are made of leather or cured skin on wood skeletons, some later pieces are made of metal. Aside from tradition, the big issue with the puppets is that they have to stand up to a lot of use (and abuse), what with nightly performances that last for hours. The surface look isn't terribly important, since the audience sees only the shadows of the puppets on a screen, except when the puppeteers come out to take a bow.

If you have a chance to see a live show, take it, it's really fascinating stuff. I think there's a wayang company that started up in the DC area, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were one or two in the Netherlands. Other than that you'll likely have to go to Indonesia.

</puppet-geek-mode>

R. M. Koske (480):
I take it the upgrade is happening because your current systems aren't crashing often enough?

So... I wish I had time to look into the AP stuff more, but I don't.

AT has been fun... I am now allowed to give IV fluids, and set catheters on army personell. It was much easier than I was afraid it would be (I am all kinds of calm with various amounts of gore... in the heat of the moment; but inflicting pain (or even discomfort) in cold blood is sort of squicky.

But it was easy, and I seem to be have talent for it (though I am a hard stick for the inexperienced... no body fat = rolling veins... I was a pincusion... with lots of actuall muscle getting stabbed).

We also saw a controlled burn, and I ended up writing some haiku.

If you want to see the thoughts I had on haiku and photography... I wrote it up

Some of the non-included efforts.

Yellow beaked magpie
on my roof
calls good morning

Good Morning
says the magpie on my rooftop

Impassively they stand
amidst the burning grass
enduring oaks

Past the ground squirrels
and the rabbits
He goes in search of coffee

Czech President Václav Klaus, about his book being included in a "goodie bag":

"Because you got it free this evening, some of you probably may even read it. We were told by Milton Friedman there are no free lunches. To distribute books free of charge is a mistake and a devaluation of the book."

He's no Vaclav Havel.

Some of our putative "allies" on the Democratic side of things have concluded that telecomm immunity and wiretapping at the whim of the President and AG are good for us.

Some of us think otherwise.

In response to Joann@451, it seems that Virgin Mobile changes the plans it offers on a fairly frequent basis. I notice the 18c/minute plan (the one we're on as well) is no longer on the main page of plans (though you can find it if you drill down into the site); I'm wondering if they are going to discontinue it soon for new phones, or have already done so. (They seem to honor old plans on existing phones, at least for a while. For instance, when I got the phone they mentioned they were still honoring the plan Lori Coulson describes in #438, but they weren't taking new signups for it.)

If you don't use the phone much, it's worth figuring out your minimum monthly cost as well. The plan I'm on has a "$20 every 90 days" feature, so the minimum monthly cost is about $7 (and the unused minutes roll over, which is nice). If you go with automatic credit card top-up, you can drop the minimum down to $5/month ($15 per 90 days), but we use about $7 worth of minutes anyway in an average month, so we haven't bothered. It's still way better than the usual "$39.99+ plus surcharges/month" contract plan if you're an infrequent cell user.

If you want two phones, they also offered a "20c/10c plan" (10c/minute when talking to a Virgin Mobile phone, 20c when talking to another phone, so in effect you can call your partner's phone and pay 20c/min. minute total instead of 36c/min.). I'm not sure if you can still get that one, but we're tempted to go for it since we've had occasions where it'd be useful for one of us to call the other when we're both mobile. Of course, then you have to double the minimum monthly payment as well.

Tomorrow the House is going to bring a FISA bill to the floor that gives full and unconditional retroactive immunity to AT&T et al.

It stops the EFF's lawsuit simply on the president's say-so, and the judge is forbidden from ever describing the evidence that he'll be given of what, exactly, the president's say-so was.

Now I know that the Democratic party is in the minority in the House and Senate, and are at risk of losing many more seats in November, so they have no choice but to vote on this bill with less than 24 hours review. But that's fine, because the telecom lobby and the GOP got to review it, and since they're slightly less than entirely ecstatically happy with it, it must be the product of compromise. And it's not like anyone would ever want to check into these activities starting, say, next year.
Yes, I know, what the president says is legal, is legal.
Yes, I know, it is just a g-d piece of paper, and warrants are hard.

But consider calling your reps tomorrow morning anyways.