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September 11, 2008

I would just to like to say—
Posted by Patrick at 08:01 AM * 99 comments

—that it makes me inestimably happy that there is an RSS feed for hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com.

So you don’t have to keep reloading it, see.

Comments on I would just to like to say—:
#1 ::: Matt McIrvin ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 08:37 AM:

In the interest of accuracy I would like to note that, while they got protons around the ring, the actual colliding at design energy won't happen for some months yet. So even the lunatics who insist the LHC will destroy the world shouldn't have expected it to happen just yet.

#2 ::: Raphael ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 08:42 AM:

I guess that gives those lunatics the opportunity to say that the LHC will kill us all once they get around to the actual colliding.

#3 ::: Fragano Ledgister ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 08:50 AM:

Actually, the earth has been destroyed. It was immediately replaced by an exact copy. We have all died and been replaced by clones. This must be investigated at once.

#4 ::: Tau Wedel ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 09:08 AM:

Also, if you haven't looked at the source code for that webpage yet, you should do so. It is excellent.

#5 ::: Jon Meltzer ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 09:09 AM:

The sky is green, and the giant oak trees migrate south every winter. All is well.

#6 ::: ethan ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 09:14 AM:

Fragano #3: Correction: that happened to everyone except me. Everyone else is highly suspect now.

#7 ::: ajay ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 09:24 AM:

6: Capgras Syndrome: the belief that close friends or family members have been replaced by exact duplicates.

(This is a real psychiatric syndrome.)

#8 ::: Jon Meltzer ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 09:29 AM:

#6: Blame the Glaroon.

#9 ::: John Chu ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 09:34 AM:

Not that I want the world destroyed, but I keep thinking what a cool way this is to do it.

[I'm also a little sad that the Superconducting Super Collider never came to pass.]

#10 ::: fidelio ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 09:36 AM:

#4---Thank you so very much for that suggestion, Tau. I have now caused at least one person to damage her keyboard and monitor with a beverage, and she is doubtless spreading the link (and the train of damage) as I type this.

#11 ::: Emma ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 09:40 AM:

My mother saw fit to wake me at 2:00am the other day to inform me that the world would end on wednesday. I informed her this morning that it was thursday and all was well.

Of course, Fragano's theory states that I am a duplicate copy but do not know it. Yet. Will the duplicates begin to malfunction? And will the malfuction be of the Westworld kind?(yes, I'm dating myself to hell and gone)

#12 ::: John L ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 09:42 AM:

Well I'm glad there's a website that's keeping us up to date on this issue. Otherwise I might have missed it if it happened.

#13 ::: ajay ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 09:48 AM:

As I noted on another thread, the granddaddy of all of these is the International Earth Destruction Advisory Board, which has reported that the world has in fact been destroyed.
http://qntm.org/?board

#14 ::: Serge ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 10:00 AM:

Fragano @ 3... The world ended and it's all the fault of Bill Higgins's pajama party!

#15 ::: mjfgates ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 10:18 AM:

I keep looking all over the place, but nobody seems to want to say: where do they get all those large hadrons?

#16 ::: Beable ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 10:28 AM:

Even better, somebody has already added it to Livejournal for those of us who track the world through our friends page.

#17 ::: abi ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 10:32 AM:

The title of this thread itches. It's just too close to...

This is just to say

I have created
a feed
for the website
hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com

which
you were probably
reloading
repeatedly

Forgive me
it's more efficient
and leet
to be told.

#18 ::: Ginger ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 10:32 AM:

Emma@11: Dating yourself? Well, at least you know when you'll get lucky.

Fragano @3: I knew you were going to say that. See, I'm actually from another dimension -- I came here to warn you all not to run the LHC, but it was too late. Tonight I shall slip into my sturdy machine and slide back home. Farewell!

#19 ::: Erik Nelson ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 10:37 AM:

There is no way of testing whether that web page is reliable without actually destroying the world.

#20 ::: Serge ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 10:39 AM:

Ginger @ 18...On the way back, make sure you don't run into anti-Ginger.

#22 ::: Paul A. ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 10:51 AM:

ajay @ #7:

I remember a short story I read once (it was in either Orson Scott Card's Maps in a Mirror or Neil Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors, but I forget which). At one point in the story, the protagonist is a party and gets to chatting with a psychologist who tells him about a man who had Capgras Syndrome and believed his family had been replaced by identical duplicates. The protagonist, who is a bit drunk and possibly unconsciously genre-savvy, thinks about this for a moment, then asks, "And had they been?"

#23 ::: Eirin ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 10:54 AM:

The Large Hadron Collider.

Is there a little one?

#24 ::: Alex ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 10:55 AM:

@5: Heh! I laughed so hard I inked all over my keysphere.

#25 ::: ADM ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 10:59 AM:

I have to say I was thrilled when my 16-y-o nephew posted the "the collision won't happen till October and anyway it won't destroy the world, so I wish people would just stfu!" on his Facebook ...

#26 ::: Serge ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 11:03 AM:

By the way, isn't September 16th the 9th anniversary of the Moon leaving Earth's orbit?

#27 ::: Bob Oldendorf ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 11:09 AM:

Here's a link to Live Webcams at the LHC

They're worth watching for a while. It's pretty fu

#28 ::: Teresa Nielsen Hayden ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 11:26 AM:

That duplication thing? It happens every time you go to sleep. You're so used to it that the hadron duplication would have gone right past you if Fragano hadn't pointed it out.

#29 ::: Randolph ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 11:28 AM:

There's some sort of symbolism in the fact that the LHC started testing on 9/10. Bad writer, no cookie!

#30 ::: Patrick Nielsen Hayden ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 11:29 AM:

Regarding www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com, the alternate site linked to by cd in comment #21, I like the fact that their source code contains a long quote from a scientific paper co-authored by the great Sid Coleman. Fandom misses Sid.

#31 ::: Patrick Nielsen Hayden ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 11:31 AM:

What Bob Oldendorf said. It's a shame how people just glance at web content for a second and then click away. Some things reward longer contemplation.

#32 ::: Lee ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 11:38 AM:

Emma, #11: And did you do so at 2:00 AM her time? I would have.

#33 ::: Joel Polowin ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 11:42 AM:

By the way, isn't September 16th the 9th anniversary of the Moon leaving Earth's orbit?

Monday, September 13th, 1999.

#34 ::: Emma ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 11:54 AM:

Ginger: It occurred to me only after I had posted that maybe it had not been the most felicitous of expressions...

#35 ::: Nancy Lebovitz ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 12:08 PM:

#21 ::: cd:

Thanks. When I went to the link in the original post, I was wondering if the site had been replaced with a slightly different copy.

#36 ::: Beable ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 12:15 PM:

The RSS feed for the link CD posted in #21 also seems to be maintained more frequently than the other one - three updates versus one.

RSS feeds designed to appeal both to the folks who only want the bottom line and the worriers.


#37 ::: Serge ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 12:16 PM:

Joel Polowin @ 33... Indeed.

In 1999, Moonbase Alpha, nestled in the Lunar crater Plato, is a scientific research colony and watchdog over silos of atomic waste from Earth stored on the Moon's far side. On September 13, 1999, magnetic energy builds to cause an explosive chain-reaction of the waste, blasting the Moon out of Earth orbit and off the plane of the ecliptic, out of the Solar System. The inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha are unable to return to Earth and must survive on their wandering Moon as it is displaced further into unknown space by freak space warps.

Those cursed freak space warps!

#38 ::: Xopher ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 12:17 PM:

I always say "I know I'm dating myself, but it sure beats sitting home!"

#39 ::: David DeLaney ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 12:19 PM:

mjfgates @15:

Inflation.

Dave "< sfx: *pop* VWEEEEeeEEEeEeeee.eee.e... bloop > " DeLaney

#40 ::: ajay ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 12:21 PM:

I have to say I was thrilled when my 16-y-o nephew posted the "the collision won't happen till October and anyway it won't destroy the world, so I wish people would just stfu!" on his Facebook ...

WHY WON'T EVERYONE JUST LEAVE CERN ALOOOOOONE!!!!! (sobs)

#41 ::: Xopher ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 12:38 PM:

ajay 40: Ohhhh, you're evoll. Now I'm thinking of a whole routine, mapping exactly onto the creepy guy's rant about Britney, and including such gems as "it just lost its friend the Superconducting Supercollider, and it's going through a hard time right now" and "all you people are acting like CERN is going to destroy the world, but you're just being mean."

Fortunately I don't think I can stomach watching his rant enough times to imitate it, or even transcribe the words.

#42 ::: Zed Lopez ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 01:02 PM:

John Cramer tried to warn us. But did we listen? Nooooooo...

#43 ::: arwel ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 01:06 PM:

The fact that they turned on the LHC on 10/09/08 (European format) has been commented upon. It looks like someone was running a countdown.

#44 ::: Ericket ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 01:35 PM:

Frangano - Earth destroyed? Earth recopied? So that's where all these white mice came from!

#45 ::: rea ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 01:43 PM:

Fragano's theory states that I am a duplicate copy but do not know it. Yet. Will the duplicates begin to malfunction? And will the malfuction be of the Westworld kind?(yes, I'm dating myself to hell and gone)

Trust me--if you're dating yourself, you're malfunctioning already. You're supposed to date someone else!

#46 ::: lightning ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 01:47 PM:

And here I thought all along it was the Large Hadrosaur Collider.

I wondered how they got all those dinosaurs into the little tube ...

#47 ::: Erik Nelson ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 01:52 PM:

#46

A while ago someone posted something about hadrons and hadrosaurs, and I momentarily misread the word "hadrons" and thought it was another "dinosaurs and sodomy" joke.

#48 ::: John L ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 01:52 PM:

Maybe we're on the Alternate Earth that orbits the Sun directly opposite the real one...

#49 ::: Joel Polowin ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 01:55 PM:

I wondered how they got all those dinosaurs into the little tube ...

You just have to spin them at relativistic speeds around an axis in the direction of motion. Dilation takes care of the rest. (This leaves you with a tensile-strength problem, of course.)

#50 ::: Eric ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 02:05 PM:

Zed@42:
Are Cramer's books actually any good? A couple quarters as a TA for the man gave me the impression that I would find his writing rather annoying, but I've never gotten around to actually finding any of it.

#51 ::: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 02:22 PM:

In #21, CD writes:

Also: hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com.

Ah, now, the source code of that page quotes a paper by Frank De Luccia and Sidney Coleman. Coleman was a prominent science fiction fan who became a very prominent theoretical physicist and teacher.

Science fiction interpenetrates the world. Fandom, doubly so.

#52 ::: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 02:25 PM:

Re #51:

Oops, I missed seeing PNH's remark at #30.

#53 ::: Tania ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 03:33 PM:

Bill Higgins - Yeah, but you used the word interpenetrates in a thread that mentions dinosaurs and sodomy.

*snort*

#54 ::: Michael Roberts ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 03:49 PM:

lightning @46 - that's why it's a Large Hadrosaur Collider. The Small Hadrosaur Collider didn't work well.

#55 ::: Neil Willcox ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 04:05 PM:

John L #48 - is that the one that's a mirror image or is it the Counter-Earth sometimes known as Gor or alternatively the Greek mythological one known as Antichthon?

I ask as it makes a difference to my plans for tomorrow.

#56 ::: -dsr- ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 04:08 PM:

Eric@50:
John Cramer wrote 2 SF books, Twistor and Einstein's Bridge. Twistor is, erm, a first novel that has a lot of first novel problems. It's slightly Crichton-ish, and the Big Idea has recently been rewritten by John Ringo. On the other hand, Robert Forward wrote a half-dozen novels that all had first novel problems.

Einstein's Bridge is better -- sufficiently good that I would buy another novel by Cramer. It has been ten years, though, and I suspect he has lost interest.

Also, he's Kathryn Cramer's father.

#57 ::: Magenta Griffith ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 04:09 PM:

Bob @27
It's a bit disconcerting that the upper webcam seems to be a loop that ends with what looks like an expanding field of dark purple, then a black screen. When I clicked on the screen to reset, it happened again. One wonders if this is a radiation glitch, or is there a black hole at the LHC?

#58 ::: Clifton Royston ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 04:20 PM:

#57: Is joke, ha ha!

#59 ::: Christine Lorang ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 04:21 PM:

Someone needs to link the Large Hadron Rap, and it may as well be me. I hope it hasn't already appeared in a particle or sidelight.

#60 ::: Clifton Royston ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 04:23 PM:

To get this out of my system, what the title earwormed me with was not WCW, but:

"I would just like to say
That it is my conviction
That longer hair and other flamboyant affectations
Of appearance are nothing more
Than the ma-a-ale's emergence
From his drab camouflage
Into the gaudy plumage
Which is the birthright of his sex.

There is a peculiar notion
That elegant plumage
And fine feathers
Are not proper for the male
When aaaaaaaaaaaaactually
That is the way things are
In most species!"
- Hair

Let your freak flag fly.

#61 ::: Jules ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 04:36 PM:

I'm a little worried that their answer may be inaccurate.

You see, according to the International Earth-Destruction Advisory Board the world has, in fact, been destroyed.

#62 ::: Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 04:52 PM:

Large Hadrons are created by piling a lot of Small Leptons together, then invoking the magic of Grand Unification.

#63 ::: salty-horse ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 06:07 PM:

That's actually an *Atom* feed, not RSS :)

#64 ::: Linkmeister ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 06:11 PM:

Clifton @ #60,

You had to do that. Now I've got "Good Morning Starshine" in my head, along with memories of Greek Week 1970 and a bunch of drunken frat geeks singing it (badly, it should go without saying) on a tour of Sorority Row.

#65 ::: Jon Meltzer ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 06:33 PM:

#64: A group of drunken fratboys singing "Gliddy gloop gloopy, nibby nabby noopy, la la la lo lo".

Uh, okay. Bring on the hadrons.

#66 ::: Fragano Ledgister ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 07:40 PM:

At this point, Bryn Terfel appears, weepily singing 'Send in the Clones'.

#67 ::: albatross ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 08:57 PM:

Fragano #66:

Don't bother, they're here.

#68 ::: Ginger ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 09:58 PM:

Serge @ 20:

Uh-oh.

*BOOM*

#69 ::: Linkmeister ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 10:07 PM:

Jon Meltzer @ #65, Precisely.

#70 ::: Doctor Science ::: (view all by) ::: September 11, 2008, 10:18 PM:

I can't believe I'm the first one here to admit that I keep mis-reading (and mis-typing) "Hadron". A typo which, it appears, has already been committed to print by the New York Times. (BoingBoing link NSFW.)

#71 ::: G D Townshende ::: (view all by) ::: September 12, 2008, 01:32 AM:

I wanna know when they're going to start offering "Mini Black Holes" for sale as souvenirs.

#72 ::: tony ::: (view all by) ::: September 12, 2008, 01:49 AM:

Found this site while looking for "the sky was green, and the giant oaks migrated south" ,a line I remember from years ago in a sci-fi story. Would like to trace the original, a can anybody help ?

Thanks.

Tony

#73 ::: Dave Langford ::: (view all by) ::: September 12, 2008, 04:11 AM:

#72: Robert Sheckley, Mindswap (1966), final paragraphs. Paraphrase rather than direct quote ("He lay beneath Stanhope's familiar green sky ... did not the giant oak trees still migrate each year to the south?").

#74 ::: Lis Riba ::: (view all by) ::: September 12, 2008, 07:28 AM:

That's cool, but got me thinking about Abe Vigoda

#75 ::: Serge ::: (view all by) ::: September 12, 2008, 08:49 AM:

Ginger @ 68...

Kirk: But you'll be trapped as well, forever, at each others' throat, forever through time.
Ginger: Is it such a large price to pay for the safety of two universes?

#76 ::: Ginger ::: (view all by) ::: September 12, 2008, 09:47 AM:

Serge @ 75: That was one of the lesser episodes, yet the final scenes always bring a tear to my eyes.

Of course, Star Trek is one of those things that transcends the interdimensional warps.

#77 ::: Caroline ::: (view all by) ::: September 12, 2008, 10:00 AM:

Doctor Science @ 70, you may be the first to mention it here, but you're not the only one! It has reached inside joke status in my household -- any time one of us mentions the LHC (which we do frequently these days), we stop to snicker.

#78 ::: Serge ::: (view all by) ::: September 12, 2008, 10:09 AM:

Ginger @ 76... Star Trek is one of those things that transcends the interdimensional warps

...and the special effects, which to be fair, were probably the best that a weekly TV show could afford in those days. By the way, when I read Herb Solow(*)'s book on the show, I found that the show's editor was a Frenchman who was always in a panick mode. Now, we don't want to make jokes about francophone stereotypes and of course I myself am never in the panick mode at work. Never? Well, hardly ever.

----------
(*) Who? Check the old show's ending credits. He was the producer, whose name appeared over that photo of Balok the dummy.

#79 ::: Jon Meltzer ::: (view all by) ::: September 12, 2008, 10:50 AM:

#78: Balok the dummy

Hmm. Was that Roddenberry taking a swipe at Paramount (like the Roman episode was a swipe at NBC)?

#80 ::: Serge ::: (view all by) ::: September 12, 2008, 10:55 AM:

Jon Meltzer @ 79... I think putting his name over Baolk the dummy was actually poking at him in fun. Which is why Mission: Impossible, which Solow was producing literally next door at the same time, had an Iron Curtain villain named Solowski.

#81 ::: JJ Fozz ::: (view all by) ::: September 12, 2008, 03:12 PM:

I read an article about this entire happening and I swear, half of my cerebellum fused into something smooth and shiny and cool to the touch . . .ye gods, the brain power that goes into these things is staggering to consider

#82 ::: CHip ::: (view all by) ::: September 12, 2008, 05:13 PM:

Serge@26: as Mark Chartrand (Hayden Planetarium honcho in the 1970's ff) put it: "Space: 1999 -- marked down from 2001."

Patrick@28: not just fandom. IMO, the \world/ misses anyone who could respond to being described as wearing a purple polyester suit with "\All/ my purple suits are wool."

Dave@73: and does your family still lay eggs and tend its herds of giant rats? I loved that ending almost as much as I loved the point in Dimension of Miracles where the lead refuses to acknowledge his own universe because it's like a Sheckley story....

#83 ::: Garrett ::: (view all by) ::: September 12, 2008, 06:01 PM:

I don't know whether I'm surprised or not that nobody mentioned xkcd, and their hard hitting interpretation of the issue.

I believe this approach merits further evaluation.

#84 ::: Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little ::: (view all by) ::: September 12, 2008, 10:50 PM:

Paul A @22: I remember a short story I read once (it was in either Orson Scott Card's Maps in a Mirror or Neil Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors, but I forget which). At one point in the story, the protagonist is a party and gets to chatting with a psychologist who tells him about a man who had Capgras Syndrome and believed his family had been replaced by identical duplicates. The protagonist, who is a bit drunk and possibly unconsciously genre-savvy, thinks about this for a moment, then asks, "And had they been?"

If this conversation also included the psychologist's lament that the worst thing about being a psychologist was how, once it came out that he was a psychologist, everyone around him would spend the rest of the evening trying to act normal (which the main character, after laughing sympathetically, spent the rest of the evening doing), then that would be Gaiman, yes. It sounds familiar.

(Smoke and Mirrors is on my bookshelf; I regret that I am feeling too f'ing lazy to get up and check it. I'm allowed. I've been ill and am milking it for all the horizontal time I can get out of it. Thththbbbp.)

#85 ::: joel hanes ::: (view all by) ::: September 12, 2008, 11:03 PM:

Beable, @multiple

first Kibologist nym I've seen. kudos.

Does Parry still reply when the Name Kibo is invoked?

the Web is too mighty to kiboze,
I'd guess.

#86 ::: ethan ::: (view all by) ::: September 13, 2008, 10:31 AM:

CHip #82: Hayden Planetarium

Star of NBC's Heroes?

(Beat that, Serge.)

#87 ::: Ginger ::: (view all by) ::: September 13, 2008, 10:54 AM:

(Hands Serge a large Astronomy textbook)

Look, ethan: you're going to star in your own little pun fest, after Serge finishes beating you.

#88 ::: Serge ::: (view all by) ::: September 13, 2008, 03:18 PM:

ethan and Ginger... That one went way over my head, probably because sleep has been a rare commodity these last two weeks, and also maybe I never watched more than part of one episode of Heroes. I must say that Hayden Planetarium sounds like a good name for a steampunk scientist - one who'd be played by Sam Elliott in the movie version.

#89 ::: ethan ::: (view all by) ::: September 13, 2008, 06:41 PM:

Serge, Hayden Panetierre is one of the lead actresses on Heroes..."Hayden Planetarium" sounds like a terrible pun on her name, is all.

Ginger, I'm trying to think of something with "astronomy, astrono-you", and it just ain't comin'.

#90 ::: Michael Turyn ::: (view all by) ::: September 13, 2008, 07:30 PM:

With simple redirects, this will serve for sites for "Has the Revolution happened?", "Can I has Rapture?", "Has Meschiach come?", "Has the Hidden Mah'di revealed himself yet?", and of course, "Am I dead, blind, illiterate, or have no knowledge of colloquial English?"

#91 ::: Serge ::: (view all by) ::: September 13, 2008, 09:25 PM:

ethan... A punetary system? (Yes, that's lame, even by my standards. Downright disaster.)

#92 ::: Ginger ::: (view all by) ::: September 13, 2008, 11:48 PM:

ethan @ 89, Serge @ 91: Finding it all a bit too nebulous, eh? That's all right -- I think we've been eclipsed by other topics now.

#93 ::: Michael I ::: (view all by) ::: September 14, 2008, 07:29 AM:

Ginger@92

Serge and ethan may prefer Hugos to nebulous.

#94 ::: Serge ::: (view all by) ::: September 14, 2008, 07:49 AM:

Is the Nebulous a souped-up award, one on asteroids?

#95 ::: Ginger ::: (view all by) ::: September 14, 2008, 11:35 AM:

Serge @ 94: Be careful with those asteroids -- using them can make you look like Rocky.

#96 ::: Michael I ::: (view all by) ::: September 14, 2008, 05:47 PM:

Ginger@95

And then he'll have Boris and Natasha after him...

#97 ::: Gabrielle ::: (view all by) ::: January 07, 2009, 12:50 PM:

Well, if that's not a long link.

#98 ::: Clifton Royston sees spam ::: (view all by) ::: January 07, 2009, 01:25 PM:

There doesn't seem to be any payload to these Gabrielle postings, so at least they're not the usual type of spam. However they all seem to be brief content-free posts to mostly dead threads, and as the email address includes the word "bot", I think it's a safe guess that they're all automated probes of some kind. Please to terminate with prejudice.

#99 ::: Xopher doesn't think so ::: (view all by) ::: January 07, 2009, 01:48 PM:

Gabrielle has been a sporadic commenter with that email address. She began with a thread on seatbelts, by telling a weird-injury story.

I thought what you thought until I looked at her VAB.

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