The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back.

Good. I always thought that actor Louis Jourdan was icky.

Posted September 25, 2008 12:44 PM by Serge

The absurd mental image of geographical features bouncing around really makes me wonder what the original text read. How amazing would it be if we could look at, side by side, every copy of the Old Testament wherein there were changes from the one previous to it, and see the transformation? Even if the core message, the 'real meaning', remained unchanged, it would be fascinating to see the words.

Of course, that would only work for scholars who could read Aramaic and Hebrew, then Greek and Coptic, Church Latin, etc... It would also be fascinating to me to see what was lost and gained in translation.

But wouldn't it be cool?

Posted September 25, 2008 12:49 PM by Avedaggio

Avedaggio, this is why textual criticism is fun. I'm no Bible scholar (my work tends to the medieval), but I love finding odd changes from text to text.

Once I took a class with a textual critic who was, at that time, editing the Satyricon of Petronius. He told us how he absolutely horrified the librarians at Paris's Bibliothèque Nationale by bursting out into loud laughter in the manuscripts room. Apparently, in a section where most manuscripts of the Satyricon read "with many pens" (or something like that), the BN manuscript read, "with his penis in his hands." (I wish I could remember the Latin, but I do remember that there were only one or two letters different between the one reading and the other.) The Satyricon being what it is, this was a peculiarly appropriate misreading.

Posted September 25, 2008 1:06 PM by Rymenhild

The elided verb in the first line threw me for a bit. It's a prozeugma.

Posted September 25, 2008 1:09 PM by Vance Maverick

Good heavens, I suddenly I heard my dad talking. Thankfully, this is neither impending brain damage nor a surprise visit from Pa [not that I wouldn't be glad to see him], but a flashback to the Passover seder, in which this psalm is read.*

Now I have the urge to go sell that hamburger bun in the fridge to the nearest goy, and do all the verses of Chad Gadya in one breath.

*Rabbi Nathan Goldberg, Passover Haggadah: A New English Translation and Instructions for the Seder (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1966), p. 25.

Posted September 25, 2008 1:20 PM by Tracey S. Rosenberg

Tracey, can you manage to do all the verses in one breath? That's more athleticism than I'm capable of after four cups of wine.

Posted September 25, 2008 1:25 PM by Rymenhild

Rymenhild @6 - I stick to grape juice, which I realize defeats the purpose.

Who Knows Thirteen? in one breath was my real party piece, but I do it in English which means I'm cutting out the singsong repetition of verse one, so it's much easier.

Posted September 25, 2008 1:34 PM by Tracey S. Rosenberg

Tracey @ 5: Thank you! I was wondering where I knew that verse from. I haven't been to seder in about 15 years, maybe more, but now I can hear my family reading it (we took turns).

Posted September 25, 2008 1:41 PM by Ginger

One of my professors in college said that the real reason the Sages prescribed four cups of wine on Passover is because you're spending the whole evening with your relatives.

Posted September 25, 2008 1:43 PM by Seth Gordon

In honor of Viable Paradise:

Dinosaur: Win!

Posted September 25, 2008 1:46 PM by Skwid

Avedaggio @2The absurd mental image of geographical features bouncing around really makes me wonder what the original text read

Sounds to me like an earthquake.

Posted September 25, 2008 1:52 PM by pericat

Skwid @ 10 - Wow, dinosaur sodomy has its own action figures now!

Posted September 25, 2008 1:53 PM by SylvieG

2: Sorry to disappoint, but this is one of the cases where the KJV isn't very far from the Hebrew text. I'd disagree a bit with the second and seventh line -- the second line should be something closer to "Judah has become his sanctuary, Israel his inheritance", and in the seventh, "tremble thou earth" simply isn't there -- it's just "Before the Lord of the sands of the Earth, before the God of Jacob."

But the landscape skipping and jumping is in the Hebrew, basically as the KJV has it. This isn't the first time that an archaic metaphor has tripped up a modern reader, of course, but it's really there.

Posted September 25, 2008 2:04 PM by Alter S. Reiss

I would just like to remind all readers of this blog that if the skipping of mountains like rams and hills like lambs is followed by a sudden retreat of the sea, it’s time to find some higher ground.

The Andaman Islanders seem to have understood this a few years ago. I reckon Pericat has it right: earthquake. Or Santorini going ker-blooey.

Posted September 25, 2008 2:09 PM by chris y

That's earthquake, then tsunami.

If you're at the shore, and you look out and think "Hmm, that's weird. The water's receding."

Run. Uphill. Possibly in a car. The earthquake may have been on the other side of the world.

There's a bay near us called Useless Bay, mainly because It looks great but it's maximum depth is 10 feet or so when the tide is out. Big, flat, and a nice gradual runup, so that tides go waaaaay out and in.

But that also enhances tsunamis. We keep that in mind in our earthquake enhanced side of the world.

Posted September 25, 2008 2:12 PM by eric

I'm not a bible expert by any means but there are some absolutely beautiful passages in there.

(How do you hide money from a Catholic? Hide it in a bible. - A Baptist joke I heard many times when I was in college)

I too would love to be able to see the different translations side by side. If that information was ever gathered together in one place, the fundies would poop their pants.

Posted September 25, 2008 2:47 PM by JJ Fozz

Oooh, time to go find my "Open Thread on Making Light" Post-its.

Is it bad that I have those? Every time google fails me on some subject*, I make a little note to ask the Fluorosphere the next time the opportunity presents itself. Usually it's in an open thread.

I brought this up in a thread that had mostly petered out, but I'm looking for books or audiobooks that have good representations of Northern English accents. I'm working on a project that requires dialect writing for a fantasy universe. I've got a general handle on a lot of the stuff, but I'm looking to give individual characters more variety within the dialects. One of the sample pieces I was looking at has "You know where you are with a good ____" as a line, and that immediately brought my mind to Pratchett. I was also given Fred Dibnah as a good starting reference, but I don't know where to go from there. I'm looking for something that reads like Pratchett's middle-to-low class, both Lancre and Ankh. I know he's riffing/modeling off of some real world dialect or set of speech patterns, but I don't know what. (If Pratchett's stuff isn't strictly North Country influenced but has other clear influences or you know of other writers with similar dialogue style, I'd like to hear about those too.) With the amount of British comedy I've watched in my lifetime, you'd think I'd have a better handle on regional accents, but alas, I am a babe in the woods.

The second question is a textiles one: does anyone know how to determine the composition of unlabeled fabric? I have a lot of fabric scraps and remainders and recyclable old clothes I've been meaning to do something with, but I'm often stymied because I don't know the composition of it - is this blue broadcloth 100% cotton, or 50-50, or 35-65? Is this red scrap even cotton poly at all, or is it linen or rayon? Is this old dress silk, or an artificial blend? Any method is fine, but I can't seem to find a good list of them. I've heard of burn tests before, but they seem pretty limited. If anyone knows a good reference, or at least a few simple tests, I'd be grateful.

*Technically, I guess it's my Google-fu failing, not Google itself.

Posted September 25, 2008 3:08 PM by Leah Miller

Serge #1: On the contrary, the verse clearly was bad news for Chicago basketball fans.

Posted September 25, 2008 3:12 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Bible Gateway is my preferred website for biblical passage look-ups, primarily because it's got a whole lot of versions available. Including Hebrew, if that's of any use to you.

Biblecc.com offers the ability to see a single verse in multiple English translations all on the same page.

Posted September 25, 2008 3:12 PM by Avram

eric 15: And it doesn't have to be the ocean, either. My father told me of the seiche in Chicago in 1954, though I remembered him citing the death toll as rather higher than they say in that Wikipedia article. Lake Michigan is big enough to act like an ocean in some ways, yet small enough to act like a bathtub in others!

Posted September 25, 2008 3:14 PM by Xopher

So much to do, and so much more to fear,
words limit us and do not give us ease.
On this, and this alone, the world agrees
as day follows day, and year succeeds year,
the twists and turns of each normal career
seem but the leaps of ignoramus fleas
or else the palpitations of disease
and we are pushed to the far edge of care.
Those are the choices of an age of crime
when every speaker utters a new lie,
word after word oppressing human hearts
until we seem to have run out of time
and nothing's left beneath the hateful sky
that will respond to our remaining arts.

Posted September 25, 2008 3:18 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Leah Miller @ 17 ...
The second question is a textiles one: does anyone know how to determine the composition of unlabeled fabric? I have a lot of fabric scraps and remainders and recyclable old clothes I've been meaning to do something with, but I'm often stymied because I don't know the composition of it - is this blue broadcloth 100% cotton, or 50-50, or 35-65? Is this red scrap even cotton poly at all, or is it linen or rayon? Is this old dress silk, or an artificial blend? Any method is fine, but I can't seem to find a good list of them. I've heard of burn tests before, but they seem pretty limited. If anyone knows a good reference, or at least a few simple tests, I'd be grateful.

Hm. Unhelpfully, I usually use "my fingers know" first, followed by a burn test. Generally I do a rough split for fabrics of "artificial stuff melts", "animal stuff smells like burning hair" and "cotton & cellulose smells sweet".

There's some information here, here and here, fwiw.

Posted September 25, 2008 3:22 PM by xeger

Me too for the AKICIML Open Threadiness!

My father (who decided to visit me at Denvention...) is looking for a story he read as a kid.

Published prior to 1960
Family on Mars, and Mars has to be evacuated. Protagonists are a father and son. One of the moons of Mars is discovered to be an alien spaceship.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? Anyone at all?

Posted September 25, 2008 3:32 PM by Tania

Bible translations: possibly an apocryphal* story, but in the language debates in Congress, a member** taking the 'English only' side was supposed to have said: "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for me".

* Given the topic, an especially appropriate word.

** A representative, I hope. The senators are supposed to have more smarts.

Posted September 25, 2008 3:36 PM by Rob Rusick

Yes, Tania, I remember that.

"We're from the other moon," he spat. "Phobos!"

Posted September 25, 2008 3:37 PM by Xopher

Rob #24: apocryphal, traditionally attributed to Ma Ferguson.

Posted September 25, 2008 3:40 PM by Vance Maverick

chris, #14: This paragraph out of the linked article gave me an attack of the giggles:

Jirkatang police have had a love-hate relationship with the Jarawas. In 1997, a year after the tribe made its first-ever contact with government authorities, they stormed the Jirkatang police outpost and shot a guard dead with their arrows. Relations have since improved.

I had to look back to the top of the page to make sure it wasn't the BBC News!

JJ Fozz, #16: Well, for (some of) the Baptists, you'd only have to hide it in the New Testament...

Posted September 25, 2008 3:42 PM by Lee

Did somebody say Phobos. I wish somebody would write that story sketched by Mike Ford.

Obviously a novel by a dilettante, as Zeppelins of Phobos would by signification be an alternate-history novel, not sciencelike fictionism. Tech period would be somewhere between Victorian and Edwardian brasstech,* probably with pre-WWI imperial politics. Lowell grass** a distinct possibility. Plot must involve airship assault on something, somewhere, probably to include aero-infantry wearing personal gasbag/hang glider combinations, and of course leather helmets with goggles, armed with rapid-fire small arms (product of Vickers or Krupp, depending). No trenches; battle is fast-moving and fun for everybody who doesn’t die.

Names for Martian cities chosen for easy national identification: Tombstone, New Grinstead, Ploetzlich bei Stumpf, Novaya Ladoga.

Book concludes with Romantic Couple standing in cover-painting pose as moons hurtle like all get-out and full Earth hangs large enough in sky to create Roche limit problems, while discussing future of Mars (promise to rebuild Olympus City sealed with handholding).

Pulp is like Legos. You can build really swell things out of it. Or not.

*The shiny fittings and decorative plumbing of steam with the operating qualities of internal combustion, i.e., none of the cantakerous complexity of actual steam power.

** Plant, genetically engineered by Old Martians or Upstart Humans, intended to concentrate water and drip it on Martian soil, releasing bound oxygen, meaning that martiforming is in progress and people can do without helmets (impediments to kissing) in low-lying areas. Traditionally planted along lines of canali.

Posted September 25, 2008 3:44 PM by Serge

Fragano @ 18... I thought it might also have been a reference to Jill Hennessy's TV series Crossing Jordan.

Posted September 25, 2008 3:47 PM by Serge

#24, 26 -- And the joke was around before Ferguson (Language Log, of course, via Wikipedia).

Posted September 25, 2008 3:49 PM by Vance Maverick

Serge #29: You are clearly on a roll.

Posted September 25, 2008 3:56 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Wallace & Gromit

TV series such as The Last of the Summer Wine and Heartbeat are definitely Yorkshire accents. Fred Dibnah is from Lancashire: the accents on t'other side of the Pennines are more influenced by Norwegian vikings.

This side, it was the Danes.

For written Yorkshire accent/dialect, the magazine Dalesman is the obvious starting point.

Posted September 25, 2008 4:00 PM by Dave Bell

Fragano and Serge - you guys are swingin' low with your references.

Posted September 25, 2008 4:07 PM by Tania

Vance Maverick @30: Thanks for the follow-up!

Posted September 25, 2008 4:10 PM by Rob Rusick

I love "end of the world" fiction: my most recent read was Earth Abides. I enjoyed Swan Song and The Stand, even though one is a rip off of the other.

If anyone has any suggestions, fire away. I'm no stranger to science fiction, but it's been awhile.

Posted September 25, 2008 4:17 PM by JJ Fozz

JJ Fozz @ 35 Check out Wastelands, edited by John Joseph Adams. Not only does it have a kick-ass collection of post-apocalyptic short stories, it has a suggestions for further reading guide at the end. It's a fabulous book.

Posted September 25, 2008 4:23 PM by Tania

Thanks Tania - I bought that book two months ago and have only read the one short story by Cory Doctorow "When Sys Admins Ruled the World" - the kids have been taking up my time. I'll check out the recommendations.

Posted September 25, 2008 4:28 PM by JJ Fozz

JJ Fozz @ #35, well, there are the dated but amusing tales of the apocalypse "When Worlds Collide" and its sequel "After Worlds Collide," both written in the 1930s by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer.

Premise: Planet smashes Earth, but brave nucleus of American civilization escapes on rocketships, then discovers other countries managed to get off doomed planet too, and they have existential conflict on smaller fragment of colliding planet after landing there.

Posted September 25, 2008 4:29 PM by Linkmeister

Leah Miller @ 17

Um - I too do the "my fingers know" but besides the burning test there is the water test. The way in which a drop of water affects particular fabrics of similar weaves is fairly distinctive. I'll take a crack at describing it.

You dip your finger in water (well, really you spit on your finger, but you can't say that in public, except I am) and apply it to the back of the fabric. Poly and artificial blends the water doesn't come through the same way (or at all).

If you are trying to make a cotton/linen determinations the water distribution is fastest on linen.

Silk changes texture when you moisten it in a way most artificial fabrics don't.

They also taste different, but I can't begin to describe how.

Posted September 25, 2008 4:34 PM by Lynn C

Neither book nor audio book, but a tv show: Life on Mars, for a Manchester accent. My advice would be to keep to the first series, though. The second one was of somewhat spotty quality, and the ending was an insult. (Actually, the second series would have been okay - if the ending hadn't completely robbed it of any sense it could have made.)

I should perhaps mention that with that opinion I am part of a tiny minority; nearly everybody else absolutely loved the ending.

Posted September 25, 2008 4:35 PM by Hmpf

Pratchett's Ankh Morporkers speak a kind of cockney, not Northern, I reckon. Certainly that's true for C.M.O.T. Dibbler. The CMOT is very much part of the argot of a cockney market trader.

Posted September 25, 2008 4:47 PM by Praisegod barebones

Differentiation Tests
Fabrics made of cotton and linen do not have the full properties of pure linen. Doubtful material can sometimes be tested by dropping water on it and noting way the water spreads and the material dries. Moisture spreads rapidly on linen and soon dries but a drop of water will often lie some time on the cotton before being absorbed and the material will remain wet for some time afterward. Ink can also be used as a test. It must be remembered however when cotton and linen goods are heavily dressed with sizing water does not spread as easily. Glycerin is considered more successful test than water It causes linen to appear transparent but has not this effect on cotton.
Textiles A Handbook for the Student and the Consumer By Mary Schenck Woolman, Ellen Beers McGowan
http://books.google.com/books?id=ZM4oAAAAYAAJ

Posted September 25, 2008 4:51 PM by Lynn C

I sure could use an ecumenical dogma checklist spreadsheet, just to keep straight on what heresies I'm committing at any given time. Color coding by type of punishment would be nice, too, as well as a way to check for practices required by one religion and simultaneously punishable by death for others.

Posted September 25, 2008 5:00 PM by Earl Cooley III

Element 114 (Ununquadium, for the nonce) is smack in the middle of the Island of Stability.

Could use a little of that (stability, that is) right about now.

Posted September 25, 2008 5:15 PM by Theophylact

Tania @ 33... How about Jordan Collier, for an obscure reference?

Posted September 25, 2008 5:16 PM by Serge

There are several Psalms with some interesting alternate looks at the Exodus (e.g., YHWH fighting the great chaos monsters in the course of passing through the sea.)

It's probably a good thing Hollywood isn't aware of them, or the next Egypt movie would feature some really interesting CGI that unfortunately made no plot sense... oh, wait.

Posted September 25, 2008 5:29 PM by Tony Zbaraschuk

Earl Cooley III @ 43:

I am intrigued by your idea, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

(Why yes, I am aware of all internet traditions.)

Posted September 25, 2008 6:34 PM by Sharon M

One way to test for natural fiber versus polyester (or so I'm told) is the burn test. If you burn natural fiber, it turns into ashes. When you burn polyester, it forms little nodules of plastic.

Can't do this in a fabric store. Also, not sure if it would apply to fibers like Tencel.

Posted September 25, 2008 6:42 PM by Zora

I'm not nearly anonymous enough to actually publish a heresy checklist; I'd rather not get any death threats from fanatics with the will and resources to actually carry them out. Also, by discussing it in a place that is indexed by Google, I've blown my chance of establishing a strenuously anonymous way to do it; even if someone else does it, it is traceable back to me as instigator, and I may be punished for inspiring whoever actually does the work of making such a list. I can't win. Dooooommmmmed....

Posted September 25, 2008 7:38 PM by Earl Cooley III

My grandmother's favorite psalm. Not terribly religious, but brought up so, went to synagogue now & again to chat with her sister, but Grandpa would never join a synagogue. After he died, she had forgotten most of her Hebrew, so she joined a Reform place, which did services in English.

But she had big family meals on Rosh Hashanah (coming up next week), Thanksgiving, and full Seders on Passover.

That's part of the series of psalms (114-118) called Hallel, or Praise, which we say on holidays and New Moons.

End of Jewish Minutia for now.

Have a good and sweet year, y'all.

Posted September 25, 2008 7:43 PM by Jon Baker

I intend to write a book about an alien attack on Dave Langford, in which the tripods, moving towards that noble town in which stands his residence, are distracted by an ingenious deception scheme, involving a very large painting, that is kept in front of the artillery as they move to their firing positions.

Confused by the apparent movement of the city, they are then utterly destroyed when the guns open fire.

The book shall be entitled Advance, Reading Copy.

Posted September 25, 2008 7:43 PM by Dave Bell

Serge @ 4400 45 - Making obscure references around here is like carrying coals to Newcastle. ;)

Posted September 25, 2008 7:49 PM by Tania

Zora @48 ...
Can't do this in a fabric store. Also, not sure if it would apply to fibers like Tencel.

I have done this in a fabric store :) It's one of the reasons why I, a non-smoker, carry a lighter.

Tencel is functionally a 'natural' fabric, just highly processed in the process of becoming fabric. It burns to ash, and has a slight sweet smell, a bit like burning sugar (go figure, given what it's made of ;) )

Posted September 25, 2008 7:50 PM by xeger

Ooh, an open thread where I can tell you all what classes I'm taking this semester and it's on topic too! I've started my PhD work officially this Fall, and I'm taking 16th century British Lit, Old Irish (the language, but also the literature), and auditing a Latin class on Cicero and Caesar. (We're reading the Gallic Wars right now, and let me tell you how odd that is against the Old Irish.)

Anyway, one of our readings for 16th c Brit Lit this week was a side-by-side presentation of a few passages of the Bible: Tyndale's translation (which got him executed, of course), the KJV, the Geneva Bible and the Douay-Rheims Bible. Translation theory is one of my interests, and for these four, what was most interesting to me about them was how the later 3 all took their lead from Tyndale. Certain choices he made have persisted through most English translations. My favorite would be the word "firmament."

Posted September 25, 2008 8:11 PM by kouredios

Tania at #23:

I think that's Wollheim's Secret of the Martian Moons

Posted September 25, 2008 8:11 PM by Bob Oldendorf

I've used the burn test before, but usually to determine if a given piece of fabric was silk or a high-quality synthetic blend (the most recent one was silk). Growing up around all kinds of fabrics*, I've gotten pretty good at determining fabrics by touch.

Does anyone know how rayon reacts to the burn test? I would assume it would produce a powdery ash like cotton, but I've never tested it.

*Mom's a quilter, mother-in-law is a quilter, grandmother made a lot of clothes for me.

Posted September 25, 2008 8:13 PM by Singing Wren

Bob @ #55 - Thanks! I'll see if I can find it, and send a copy on to pater.

Posted September 25, 2008 8:15 PM by Tania

Earl Cooley III at #43 etc: I sure could use an ecumenical dogma checklist spreadsheet...

I've had a similar idea - I've long wanted a flow chart that shows the history of Christianity as it schisms (is that the correct verb?) down through the years, and to note the theological landmarks.

IF (Nicene Creed) THEN (mainstream western?...)
.
.
.
IF (95 Theses) THEN (Lutheran)
.
.
etc.

Posted September 25, 2008 8:41 PM by Bob Oldendorf

I'm not sure how many Christian churches other than the Catholic enumerate their heresies, but here's an alphabetical list of heresies and heretical groups (by Catholic standards) that have articles in the 1910 New Catholic dictionary.

And here's a collection of online books about various heresies.

A few books of special note in that collection: Belloc's The Great Heresies has a readable overview of the concept and some of the major types (again, from a Catholic perspective). Hippolytus' Refutation of All Heresies lists a lot of heresies popular in the early days of the church, from the perspective of an early church writer.

There are also some books specifically on some of the better-known heresies further down the list.

Posted September 25, 2008 8:42 PM by John Mark Ockerbloom

kouredious:

How cool! I've noticed a tendency in engineering like this--the first person to tackle some problem sometimes establishes the baseline assumptions and approach to solving it, and many years can pass before anyone changes it. I wonder how similar this is.

It seems like there are a couple parallels, though I probably can't do them justice. First, on a simple level, once you've seen some Greek or Latin word translated to "firmament," it's easier to just stick with it. That was an acceptable choice, and even if there are other possibilities, they take work and aren't better. But on a more interesting level, reading a translation of the Bible that uses the word "firmament" in that place might be one of the only places you see "firmament" being used. It could change the meaning of the word over time, so that most everyone's definition of firmament is basically drawn from "the way it's used in the bible."

That seems parallel to the way the engineering/inventing thing works. Once someone has defined the problem of, say, building a steam engine in a certain way, most other people may start from that sort of definition. Their meaning of "steam engine" is "like the thing that guy over there built." It can take awhile before someone else realizes that the set of ways to build a steam engine is much larger than that. In my own field, public key cryptosystems, hash functions, and block ciphers all have this going on. A lot of hash functions designed in the last 10 years look like they were done by people whose internal definition of "hash function" was "something that looks like MD4, only wider and stronger."

(This is all making me wish I had more time to study translations and the history of technology....)

Posted September 25, 2008 9:20 PM by albatross

Fragano #21:

Man, you're capturing my mood today. (Too much weird and unsettling national news!)

I like the poem, but I can't make that fourth line scan. (I suspect this is a difference in accent or something, but I can't work out what.)

Posted September 25, 2008 9:23 PM by albatross

This was wandering around in my head today, with thoughts of people being both impoverished and annoyed by the bailout.

unwashed hands waving pitchforks
stinking mass of sweaty rage
the peasants are revolting!

Alternatively, watching the latest crazy of the McCain campaign:

toward the puppy farm
the burning piano falls
the puppies are us

Posted September 25, 2008 9:26 PM by albatross

John Scalzi called it:
We find ourselves living in
What-The-Fuckistan.

Posted September 25, 2008 9:52 PM by Lila

#56 ::: Singing Wren

Does anyone know how rayon reacts to the burn test? I would assume it would produce a powdery ash like cotton, but I've never tested it.

Rayon burns slowly, smells like rope, and the ash tends to retain the shape of the swatch.

Posted September 25, 2008 9:57 PM by Carol Kimball

Here's a comment from a librarian in another forum that would certainly be on-topic for an open thread at Making Light.

Overheard: "It's the publisher's way of saying, 'This book sucks so hard that we're not even going to put a synopsis here, and instead use the back cover to rave about completely unrelated books so you'll go read them and save yourself from this one.'"

Posted September 25, 2008 10:08 PM by Allan Beatty

MTania @ 52... Serge @ 4400

I figured you'd recognize that reference. Now, without peeking at imdb.com, do you know which SF movie he was the star of?

Posted September 25, 2008 10:09 PM by Serge

Albatross: Bravo! Though, if I recall the rules for predicate nominative correctly, the puppies are actually we, not us.

Posted September 25, 2008 10:22 PM by Michael Martin

Every so often, Innumeracy strikes.
Out of all Americans,
a lot suffer from it.
But we can win
the fight against Innumeracy
with your help.
All it takes is a few pennies a day.

Posted September 25, 2008 10:24 PM by Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey

Serge (#28) Was it synchronicity, coincidence or something more sorrowful sparking that thought on this day?

Posted September 25, 2008 10:34 PM by Epacris

Bob Oldendorf @ #58: I've long wanted a flow chart that shows the history of Christianity as it schisms (is that the correct verb?) down through the years, and to note the theological landmarks.

You mean something like this?

Posted September 25, 2008 10:45 PM by Paul A.

JJ Foss @ #35: "Malevil" by Robert Merle is another collapse of civilization novel. First published in French in 1972, and (not surprisingly) out of print. I liked it back when I read it as a teenager, which may not be much of a recommendation. It does have the virtue of being set in a small village in France, and therefore not the common All-American SF view of the world.

Posted September 25, 2008 10:56 PM by janetl

albatross: Indeed! And it's often the basis for interesting analysis of translations, to reevaluate how appropriate that first translation was, and what impact it had on later versions. I think my project for that class, actually, is going to be a close look at Jane Lumley's first translation of Iphegenia at Aulis into English in that same era. She was a Catholic in a dangerous time and made translation decisions that elevated the sacrifice of Iphegenia to saintly matryrdom.

Posted September 25, 2008 10:57 PM by kouredios

Singing Wren, #56: I remember when I was little, I used to be amazed at the way my mother could identify the fabric content of a piece of clothing just by touching it. Forty years down the road, it seems that I've developed the same ability -- and I don't even sew! I'm not sure whether to be pleased or terrified.

Allan, #65: Now, that's an interesting hypothesis. I think I'm going to have to see how true it holds by personal experience.

Posted September 25, 2008 11:11 PM by Lee

Bill @68, A quick guess: mebbe they are confusing US-style billions (aka milliards) with UK billions?

Posted September 25, 2008 11:26 PM by Epacris

Serge @#28: Zeppelins of Phobos

Does Phobos or even Mars have an atmosphere dense enough to support bouyant aircraft? (indeed does Phobos have an atmosphere at all?)

Posted September 25, 2008 11:28 PM by Erik Nelson

#75 - Erik - Phobos is a very small rock. Fairly high-grade vaccuum is its atmosphere. You could just barely fly various things in the Martian atmosphere, according to some SF writers who're probably careful about these things.

Posted September 25, 2008 11:47 PM by Henry Troup

Rayon is almost all cellulose and burns to almost nothing-- fine ash. Although a lot of rayon is treated to reduce flamability. Smells like paper.

Posted September 25, 2008 11:55 PM by Lynn C

Let me tell you a story...

On the Events Surrounding My 21st Birthday

My university was a "dry campus." The joke ran that this meant "don't spill" but in practice this meant that there wasn't supposed to be any liquor on the premises.

There were notable exceptions. The Chancellor's Dinner was one; the champagne brunch following graduation was another. But what university can resist casually bending the rules it sets for its students? And truly, the rules were easily broken by the students as well, especially with the ambiguity involved as to whether a building were "on" or "off" campus. My apartment at the time was "off-campus", yet it was tied into the "on-campus" telephone system, and the patchwork of houses owned by the school were similarly ambiguous.

Such a house was that of the Honors Program. It was an actual house, though nobody lived there. The door was key-coded and everyone had a passkey. And often the attic floor— Olympus (nobody said we were modest)— was used for gatherings when the person hosting had no location to otherwise use.

That Friday was Passover, and Mike had decided to hold a Seder meal. The fish mostly fell through the grill, to the delight of the raccoons, so we ordered New York-style cheese pizza, as this Passover also was Good Friday and we were being good Catholics by going meatless. This is how I discovered that New York-style cheese pizza goes very well with White Zinfandel.

We were downstairs, washing up, when a knock came at the door. There was a security guard there, and his friend from the city police. We politely invited them inside, and asked what the issue was. Apparently, somebody had called and said there was a raging alcoholic party on the top floor. They looked very confused by the lack of said party, but took our names regardless and left, at which point we got angry.

We knew who was to blame. B— and J— were froshlings in Honors who were, to put it mildly, jerks. Apart they were fairly harmless but together they had managed to piss off most of the rest of the program, which is pretty talented. One of them had popped his head up into Olympus, had been invited to share the meal, and had declined. And apparently had gone off to invoke the dry campus statutes.

Something you should understand about me is this: I don't handle anger well. Not in me, and not around me. I find it actually painful to sustain it, and this is a classic example. I called the mentor of the Honors Program and left a message, saying that I wanted to speak with him, but I couldn't let it go.

This was a holiday weekend, and I was spending most of it in the editing room on the top floor of the Ad Building. Anyone in Broadcast Studies could sign out the keys at any hour that the room was not otherwise in use, and I was using the time to edit together the spring musical. Yes, analog post-production editing of a musical with no in-camera sync. And I wanted it done before Sunday because I wanted to show it at the cast party.

That's probably why I ended up on the phone with Mike at 2 in the morning when I just couldn't handle the anger. I knew his roommate was out of town, so hey, what the hell. He finally managed to calm me down, keep me from throwing things. I finished the tape.

(The production itself garnered very little attention, but when we got to the credits— where every actor had a face credit— they watched it, stopped it, rewound and called everybody else in. I got requests for copies of the credits for the next year. I've never forgotten how much actors love credits.)

My birthday was Easter Monday that year, so at midnight a couple of friends took me to a bar for my obligatory free drink. (I had hard cider. I don't much care for alcohol.) I went to bed knowing that I had a meeting with Fr. K—, the mentor of the Honors Program.

So I showed up bright and early on my 21st birthday to meet with Fr. K—, only to find that he'd brought along Fr. S—, who was the substance abuse counselor.

It was a horrible blow. First off, I'd wanted the meeting so Fr. K— would hear what really happened before hearing rumors. Secondly, I was still emotionally raw from being so angry over the weekend, and feeling that I'd already been judged was terrible. I can't stand being accused of dishonesty when I'm dealing fairly.

And mostly, it was a hell of a way to start off a birthday.

So they questioned me, and one of the questions that came up was how much alcohol was consumed. I honestly couldn't say— at that time, I didn't know what a fifth was even. (Told you I don't much care for alcohol.) So I went to the recycling bin and brought back a bottle, whereupon Fr. S— snorted and said that nobody would try to get drunk on Manischewitz.

So I won, but I had to go to a friend's place and fall apart all over her bed for a while.

I hated holiday weekends. Almost everybody left the campus, and extraverts hate being alone. So I moped for a while. It happens. I don't think I wrote any bad poetry that day.

And five guys took me to dinner. They showed up, gave me the front seat of the sedan (which meant four adult males in the backseat. Ah, college), and took me to the Old Spaghetti Factory, where we ordered the obligatory bottle of chianti and we all got carded. Then the birthday spumoni came and everybody sang.

The servers looked fairly astonished and said, we've never heard it sung that well before. I pointed, saying, "Choir, choir, musician, chorale, choir." Not everyone gets "Happy Birthday" sung in key, and this was the first time it happened to me.

The next time was with an orchestra, but that's another story.

Posted September 26, 2008 12:10 AM by B. Durbin

Point? There was no point! I said I was going to tell you a story... :D

Posted September 26, 2008 12:11 AM by B. Durbin

B. Durbin @ 79 ...
Point? There was no point! I said I was going to tell you a story... :D

What about the fat lady? The story can't be over yet!

Posted September 26, 2008 12:37 AM by xeger

marilee,

ready to talk about meeting some locals around the Small Press Expo in Bethesda 10/4 & 5?

what works for you?

Posted September 26, 2008 12:40 AM by miriam beetle

Epacris@74:

Bill @68, A quick guess: mebbe they are confusing US-style billions (aka milliards) with UK billions?

No, sorry, the author of the message spells out the zeroes explicitly.

Posted September 26, 2008 1:21 AM by Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey

B. Durbin, #78:
1) My sympathies on your 21st birthday being rendered unpleasant by a couple of jerks and an unwarranted assumption.

2) The Old Spaghetti Factory! There's one in Nashville which I remember fondly; it's in a restored warehouse on 2nd Avenue, and the decor is palatial in a 19th-century-wretched-excess sort of way. If you're ever there, I particularly recommend that you make a special trip to the ladies' room. I like the food, too; Spaghetti Warehouse is NOT even close, despite the similarity of names. Sadly, when I finally got to take my partner to the one in Seattle last year, his reaction was "I don't see the big deal." But I wish we had one in Houston.

Singing at restaurants reminds me of my junior year Concert Choir tour at Vandy. We went to DC and Williamsburg, and ended up having a lovely dinner one night at a restaurant whose name I can no longer recall. It so happens that we were doing a lot of arrangements of spirituals that year, and somehow we got started singing a cappella in the restaurant... and the waitstaff loved it. We ran thru every spiritual in our repertoire (I think the upperclassmen even did one from the previous year), and the staff had us all autograph a menu for them. It was a really nice impromptu moment, and a memory I still enjoy.

Posted September 26, 2008 1:46 AM by Lee

Earl Cooley @ 43

Maybe you could use Microsoft InExcelsis?

Posted September 26, 2008 2:08 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Serge @ 66 - Make it difficult, after all, I did work in a comic shop.

Rocketeer with the young and lovely Jennifer Connelly.

Also, he was the obnoxious American in one of the Dracula films. The one with Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins.

Posted September 26, 2008 3:04 AM by Tania

Leah Miller @17(a) -- Would old episodes of "All Creatures Great and Small" work? That was distinctly northern England.

I also heard (somewhere once, a very long time ago), that British stage actors use Devonshire accents deliberately as a sort of indication of, um, the opposite of urbanity.

(Dang, it's hard to keep up with ML these days. Sooo much good stuff, too little time.)

Posted September 26, 2008 4:37 AM by Debbie

The first two verses here are those chosen by Dante to illustrate the many forms of allegory, in his letter to his patron Cangrande della Scala, as a guide to the interpretation of the Divine Comedy.

He writes:

"You must know that the sense of this work is not simple, rather it may be called polysemantic, that is, of many senses; the first sense is that which comes from the letter, the second is that of that which is signified by the letter. And the first is called the literal, the second allegorical or moral or anagogical. Which method of treatment, that it may be clearer, can be considered through these words: 'When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a barbarous people, Judea was made his sanctuary, Israel his dominion'. If we look at it from the letter alone it means to us the exit of the Children of Israel from Egypt at the time of Moses; if from allegory, it means for us our redemption done by Christ; if from the moral sense, it means to us the conversion of the soul from the struggle and misery of sin to the status of grace; if from the anagogical, it means the leave-taking of the blessed soul from the slavery of this corruption to the freedom of eternal glory. And though these mystical senses are called by various names, in general all can be called allegorical, because they are different from the literal or the historical. Now, allegory comes from Greek alleon, which in Latin means 'other' or 'different'.

Now that we have seen this, it is obvious that the subject around which the two senses turn must be twofold. And therefore it is to be determined about the subject of this work when it is taken literally, then about the subject when it is understood allegorically. The subject of the whole work, taken only from a literal standpoint, is simply the status of the soul after death, taken simply. The movement of the whole work turns from it and around it. If the work is taken allegorically, however, the subject is man, either gaining or losing merit through his freedom of will, subject to the justice of being rewarded or punished."

Posted September 26, 2008 5:35 AM by Alex G

Earl Cooley III, Bob O., etc.: my partner, who's a canon law aficionado, has a decision-making flowchart for when, in the Middle Ages, it was permissible to have sex.

"Are you married?" --[yes]--> "To each other?"...

It's online somewhere, if only I could find it.

Posted September 26, 2008 5:50 AM by Tlönista

Tania @ 85... And Billy Campbell (not to be confused with Willian Campbell, who played a Klingon as if he were Liberace) was Mouse's lover in Tales of the City.

Posted September 26, 2008 6:02 AM by Serge

Hello everyone,

This is my first comment here so let me introduce myself.
I'm a long time reader of Making Light from France, areas of interest: politics, sf/f, computer science, RPGs. Yes, I'm a geek.

I started reading blogs in the fall of 2003, to try to get an understanding of what the f**k was happening with US politics. Let me say it's been quite an education! I'm so glad I live in such a secular country as France, even though we have our own issues (Must...not...rant...about...Sarkozy).
ML is now on my daily reading list. I stayed, as they say, for the jurassic buggery.

Anyway, I'm de-lurking because I'm looking for intelligent conversations about sf/f books and authors but I've noticed that TOR authors are not (often) discussed here. It might be an official ML policy, for understandable professional reasons, but I have not been able to find it on the front page. Do you have any recommendations for sites where such conversations can be had?

And, Teresa, take good care of yourself. Some people you don't even know felt very concerned by the news about your health trouble.

Posted September 26, 2008 6:19 AM by Kévin

Greetings Kévin! Jurassic buggery, what a great description!

I'd recommend Tor.com for discussion of Tor authors and books, as a great place to start. The conversations section might be just what you're looking for.

Good luck, and congratulations on de-lurking. It's a rather stressful act, isn't it?

Posted September 26, 2008 6:52 AM by Tania

albatross #61: Thanks. I see what you mean about the fourth line. It's a matter of accent, I think.

Posted September 26, 2008 7:09 AM by Fragano Ledgister

Leah Miller @17
Reginald Hill's Dalzeil and Pascoe novels are set in Yorkshire, and Andy Dalzeil has a lot of characteristic speech patterns. And Hill writes really great dialogue.

Tamsin, by Peter S. Beagle is set in Devon and some of the night people have strong Devon accents.

And then, of course, it's old and I don't know how accurate it is, but the Yorkshire "dialect" is a major component of the the Secret Garden.

Posted September 26, 2008 8:01 AM by dido

"I didn't know I was going to be the referee for the internal civil war of the Republican Party" --Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts (there are so many ironies....)

Posted September 26, 2008 8:03 AM by Paula Lieberman

JJ Fozz @#35: You might try Dies the Fire et seq. by S.M. Stirling.

But get them from the library, because Steve's turned into a bit of a whackjob lately.

Posted September 26, 2008 8:19 AM by Carrie S.

So I've just received the third in a series of notes left on our door informing me that our being up and about and generally inhabiting our apartment between 11 at night and 8 in the morning produces an unacceptable amount of noise for my neighbors downstairs.

Since the receipt of the first two notes, we've already stopped wearing shoes in the apartment, and structured our clothes storage to minimize the opening and closing of drawers in the morning and evening.

I at least take comfort that Miss Manners is firmly on our side, saying iirc "It is reasonable to ask your neighbors to remove their shoes at home, but not their feet." And it is only the thought of the disapproving looks that would be cast at us from that quarter that has put the kibosh on our plans to engage an Irish step-dancing troupe for nightly command performances.

So, does anyone have good advice for dealing with passive aggressive neighbors with unreasonable demands? Or just good stories to make our situation not seem so frustrating by comparison?

Posted September 26, 2008 8:43 AM by Chris W.

Thanks for all of the reccomendations - I see many purchases in my future.

B Durbin - that's a bummer of a story. One way to get back at those two jerks, without being really mean, is to shove pennies in between the door and the doorframe of their room. They can't get out until you let them

Posted September 26, 2008 8:52 AM by JJ Fozz

Chris W @#96: You might try going full-out passive aggressive in return. Like, keep asking them if they've called the landlord to insist that the relevant floor/ceiling be inspected as it is obviously unstable. Every morning, stop in and ask (or leave a note asking) if you were too loud last night. If you have a little extra money, buy thick carpets and make sure they see you carrying them in. Etc.

Posted September 26, 2008 8:59 AM by Carrie S.

I've been foisting myself on various discussions lately so I thought I'd do the polite thing and introduce myself, too.

My name is Sylvie, I live in Ottawa and I'm a French/English writer/editor for the federal gov't up here in Canuckistan. Though I also have aspirations to someday turn the jumble of words in my head into a novel or two.

I've been lurking here for ages trying to get up the nerve to dip my toes in; I've been known to pun, but my poetry is deplorable (I'll spare you the details of the poem I wrote with a friend in grade 7 in which we re-told the plot of the fourth Star Trek movie in rhyming couplets. cough.)

I'm far more interested in your upcoming election than in our own (I'm afraid the Conservatives will get in, here, but I'm terrified the Democrats won't, there). Though whenever I see Palin's name mentioned I keep expecting her to break into a rendition of the Lumberjack Song...

Posted September 26, 2008 9:00 AM by SylvieG

Dave Bell @ 32 - Last of the Summer Wine is West Yorkshire, Hearbeat is North Yorshire. A character from each would need a babelfish to be understood in t'other. Yorkshire is a big country.

Now I'm off to have a surgical procedure to remove my tongue from my cheek.

Posted September 26, 2008 9:00 AM by martyn

Kévin and SylvieG... Vous êtes la bienvenue!

Posted September 26, 2008 9:11 AM by Serge

Chris W

I lived in an apartment for many years, and the people who lived above me were a mother and her son. The son was the creepiest dude I have ever seen, and I'm not being mean. He had the look of your average mass murderer. He was also a night owl and his bedroom was right above mine.

So I wake up night, around 3 am and I'm laying there, listening. And I say out loud, to no one, "I know what a power saw sounds like. That's a power saw running. At 3 in the morning." I think he was slicing up his latest victim.

Sad to say, he freaked out one day and tried to kill himself and was committed.

A second story: freshman year in college, I didn't have class until noon and would sleep in. Every Tuesday, like clockwork, I would wake up to this clicking sound above my head. I could not figure what it was. About a month later, I'm walking out of my dorm and this slim, Gregory Hines looking dude walks past me, wearing TAP SHOES, and I yelled out, "That's what the fuck it is!"

I scared him pretty bad, and then explained myself. He apologized, but I was basically at fault for laying in bed until 11 every Tuesday.

Posted September 26, 2008 9:17 AM by JJ Fozz

Serge @ 101 - Merci!

Posted September 26, 2008 9:41 AM by SylvieG

martyn #100: Surely you mean 'Yorkshire is a broad country', do you not?

Posted September 26, 2008 9:55 AM by Fragano Ledgister

SylvieG @ 99: Another Ottawa person here. And I feel much as you do: for the Conservatives to win a majority here would be very bad; for McCain and Palin to win the U.S. election would be catastrophic -- probably literally.

Posted September 26, 2008 10:12 AM by Joel Polowin

104: You mean Yorkshire is famous for wisecracking, gumchewing women of a forward disposition?

Posted September 26, 2008 10:24 AM by Sajia Kabir

Tania @91
Stressful? You got that right!
Especially as English is not my mother tongue and some people here make a living with their mastery of that language.
I am hopeless at poetry in French already, so forget about English.

Serge @101
Merci mon ami!

If I may presume to correct you, you mean "Vous êtes les bienvenus!" (plural masculine form).
The wonders of sexist language: in French, when addressing one thousand women and one man, you have to use the masculine form...

Posted September 26, 2008 10:25 AM by Kévin

Sajia Kabir #106: Not that kind of broad.

Posted September 26, 2008 10:31 AM by Fragano Ledgister

Kévin @ 107: Serge is from French-speaking Canada, and there may be some subtle language differences between your country and Québec patois.

Posted September 26, 2008 10:32 AM by Ginger

#96, 102
I had an upstairs neighbor who decided to vacuum its apartment. At 11pm, on a weeknight. (I don't know about the rental agreement it signed, but mine clearly stated that it was Not At All Okay between 10pm and 7am.) And it couldn't hear me knocking on the door to tell them to turn it off, either. (I left a note on the door, at that point, but I don't know if it could read.) The management had changed the previous summer, and the new people didn't care about anyone who was already there.

Posted September 26, 2008 10:41 AM by P J Evans

B. Durbin @ 78:

My campus was not technically a dry one. It was a public one, meaning that no alcohol could be served at public events or in public spaces, so any drinking had to be done either off-campus, or in one's room. However, you were not allowed to store alcohol in your room, and you were not allowed to drink it in the presence of anyone under 21. (Most people who lived on campus were under 21. Seniors tended to move to apartments.) This meant you had to drink everything you had purchased, alone in your room. Very healthy.

RAs tended to look the other way at people coming back drunk, as long as they didn't create a disturbance. But they would bust you for underage possession. One day, I was coming back from a communal grocery trip (as all of them were -- I lived in the kind of dorm where you would go out in the hall, yell "I'm going to Walmart, who wants to come?" and leave with a carful of people). All of us were freshmen or sophomores, 18 and 19 (maybe 20). One of my friends was carrying a six-pack of rootbeer in glass bottles, and a very large glass bottle of cream soda.

We passed our RA in the hallway, greeted him cheerfully, and tried to continue to our rooms. He whipped around and, pointing at the cream soda, said "WHAT ARE YOU BRINGING INTO MY DORM?"

Eventually we were able to show him the markings on the bottles and prove that it was cream soda and root beer, not Miller High Life and brown ale.

However, I think that even he would have turned a blind eye to a bottle of Manischewitz at a Passover seder. It's practically grape jam.

Posted September 26, 2008 10:50 AM by Caroline

No one must see where tired phrases go
what truly matters is the broadcast lie,
our motives are as pure as day-old snow.

Nobody cares what stubborn breezes blow,
nor what the colour of the morning sky;
no one must see where tired phrases go.

Tomorrow comes the radioactive glow,
for now we punish those who dare to pry;
our motives are as pure as day-old snow.

We gave our bank accounts a chance to grow
and watched as all the numbers mounted high,
no one must see where tired phrases go.

We do not care if you hatred bestow
upon our heads, we have the time to fly;
our motives are as pure as day-old snow.

This is the hour that you will come to know
when all our assets have to go bye-bye;
no one must see where tired phrases go,
our motives are as pure as day-old snow.

Posted September 26, 2008 10:51 AM by Fragano Ledgister

Ginger @ 109... Either that or I'm more rusty than I thought. Where did I put that darn oil can. Scarecrow? Dorothy!

Posted September 26, 2008 11:00 AM by Serge

Oh hey, all fellow Canadians. I just sent in my form to register to vote from abroad. Cutting it close to the deadline, because the Canadian election is so low-key compared to The Election, and I read so little about Canadian politics, that it was easy to miss.

Noted cartoonist Chester Brown (Louis Riel, etc.) is running in my riding. For the Libertarian Party -- oh, well. Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics lives in the same riding, as far as I know -- maybe next time he could run as a Neo-Rhino.

Is there really a chance that Harper could get a majority? McCain + Palin = fail, but McCain + Palin + Harper = EPIC FAIL.

[/politics]

Posted September 26, 2008 11:31 AM by Tlönista

I've got a random question for everyone: Panini, my MacBook, appears to have developed a hangnail. That is, a minor crack in the case, at the very bottom edge of the flat open surface, on the right-hand side, extending from the I'm-awake light back towards the center about 2 inches.

It doesn't affect the functioning at all. But, like a hangnail, it's driving me buggy.

Any suggestions on how to repair it? Type of adhesive? Methods for clamping?

Or should I just cultivate an ability to ignore it?

Posted September 26, 2008 11:36 AM by Rikibeth

#41 Pratchett's Ankh Morporkers speak a kind of cockney ... CMOT is very much part of the argot of a cockney market trader.

Yes, definitely London. But Ankh-Morpork IS London. It didn't used to be - it started out as Lankhmar (even if Terry claims not to have noticed) - but by about less than nine books in it had become early modern London with overtones of Tuscany.

Of course though Ankh-Morpork was once an affectionate parody of Lankhmar, Lankhmar is itself an affectionate parody of Shadizar, which itself harks back to the Samarkand of story and the Baghdad of Harun al Rashid (and the Golden Road between them). And that version of Baghdad itself referenced (I suspect consciously - in that both the Caliphs and the storytellers played up to it) both Constantinople and Babylon, the grand-daddy of them all.

London - in story - isn't quite that kind of city. We don't do God-Kings and we've been telling people that our streets are NOT paved with gold for six hundred years. (Most cities never feel that need) We are, though, the Heart of Darkness. Not so much topless towers as mud and mist and the metropolitan line. We do have William Blake though :-)

A few months ago I overheard a man on a train in London using "CMOT" as a verb. Pronounced "see-mot". Context in this link

Posted September 26, 2008 11:38 AM by Ken Brown

114

Is there really a chance that Harper could get a majority? McCain + Palin = fail, but McCain + Palin + Harper = EPIC FAIL.

And here I was just thinking about who their third stooge might be. Harper fits the bill nicely.

Sadly, it looks like that majority might be in the cards (gods help us all) depending on what the Bloc does or doesn't get up to in Quebec.

Posted September 26, 2008 11:39 AM by SylvieG

Oh, now I've gone and done it.
I outed myself as a French grammar nazi in my first post ever (well, second) on ML.

Serge, you live in Quebec? Whereabouts?
I visited the area a few years ago and I had a great time. Even with the snowstorms and the freezing cold.

Posted September 26, 2008 11:52 AM by Kévin

re 54/60: the reason why those three are so similar to Tyndale is because they all are revisions of Tyndale, to some greater or lesser degree, with different theological intent. If you look at at one of the non-KJV modern translations, in many cases you'll see the opposite: that the translators almost consciously avoid the Tyndale language and wording. It's part of the intellectual self-justification for re-translating: that there's something to fix. There's even some of that in the NRSV. I suspect, however, in the case of this psalm there's not a lot of variation. (There isn't in the NIV, for example.)

re 13: I don't have a bible with textual apparatus at hand, but I'm guessing that v. 7 may vary in the MT from older translations (and maybe the DSS). My Greek isn't good enough, but there seems to be something in the LXX corresponding to the missing bit; it's certainly there in the Vulgate.

re 19: Another good bible lookup is the Unbound Bible, which has a particularly good selection of ancient versions. Then there's the Hexapla and the English Hexapla.

Posted September 26, 2008 11:59 AM by C. Wingate

Chris W. @ 96 ...So, does anyone have good advice for dealing with passive aggressive neighbors with unreasonable demands? Or just good stories to make our situation not seem so frustrating by comparison?

I'd be very tempted to be horribly sympathetic -- "Ohhhh. You must have just moved in, poor people. We're doing our best to be quiet for you, but it's the building, you know. We hear other people too, but we understand that's what happens with shared buildings, and all you can do is be generous and forgiving. Have you tried talking to the landlord? Maybe he can help..."

Overall though -- if they're going to be passive-aggressive and difficult, there's not much that's going to help. I'd stick with being polite and reasonable (where reasonable doesn't include making lifestyle changes beyond taking your shoes off, and not rehearsing riverdance at 2am) -- and squashing the temptation to respond in kind.

Posted September 26, 2008 11:59 AM by xeger

Kévin...

I grew up in Québec City's suburb for the first 30 years of my life, until they finally threw me out. I mean, until I married a California Girl in January 1986. By the way, this coming Sunday will be the 23rd anniversary of our being together, and of my buying Roger Dean's Magnetic Storm.

Posted September 26, 2008 12:03 PM by Serge

Chris 96: Suggested note to your icky neighbors:

In our attempts to be accommodating and neighborly, we have already stopped wearing shoes in the apartment, and structured our clothes storage to minimize the opening and closing of drawers in the morning and evening. We cannot see what more we can reasonably do to make things quieter for you.

Please note the use of the word 'reasonably' in the paragraph above. To make things quieter we would have to cease all movement in our apartment between the hours of 11 PM and 8 AM; any reasonable person would agree that this is too much to ask.

If, despite our efforts, the noise level is still unacceptable to you, we suggest that you look into soundproofing your ceiling, as no further changes will be made to our floor, or above it.

Sincerely,

Posted September 26, 2008 12:43 PM by Xopher

Dave Bell, way back upthread at #51: Well, your joke made this book reviewer laugh!

Posted September 26, 2008 1:14 PM by Faren Miller

I would use Xopher's first paragraph, and maybe a little bit of "I can hear other people too, it's the building" but not escalate anything.

It can sound like elephants from downstairs when it sounds like kittens upstairs - in fact, my cats manage to sound a lot like elephants. Especially in an old building without good soundproofing.

JJ, i've been picking up random post-apocalyptic novels from the kids section at the library - I recently read a pair of YA books, one of the is called Dead and Gone, one is called Life As We Knew it, that were really good. And I picked up a YA post-apocalyptic book called The Sky Outside that was really well done as audiobook.

Sharon Astyk has been running a post-apocalyptic reading group on her web site, but the readers are mostly not wide SF readers. They just finished Dies the Fire, but I hadn't gotten through it yet so I didn't participate (I'm reading it now. Or, I will be as soon as I get through these Elizabeth Moon books that were near it on the shelf...) The reading list sprang from a discussion of how much we hated Kunstler's World Made By Hand.

I fi