No 116 connection, but there are some numbers here:

My body has changed shape enough that it seems that pants marketed as "men's" are more likely to fit me than pants marketed as "women's". What I know so far is that a tape measure says I have a 37-inch waist, 42-inch hips, and a 28-inch inseam; size 36/30 of Levi's 505s fits me except that I'll need to shorten them; and Levi's 501s have too short a rise, and thus are tight in the crotch.

Based on that, what else seems likely to fit? I expect to do a bunch of trying on, of course, but am trying to minimize the frustration and wasted time.

Broadly speaking, I'm looking for reasonably solid and not particularly flashy clothes that I can wear to an office whose idea of "business casual" sometimes includes jeans. I want at least one pair in basic black. I have almost no pants suited for winter, so that's a priority (also, it's already November, so I need to get warm pants before they vanish from stores).

Vicki, I'd say try the Cherokee brand of men's casual pants found at Target. Black, khaki, and navy, and my housemate of similar proportions (she's maybe one size down from you) finds them comfortable and well suited for her "business casual" call center job.

They're a year-round weight of twill, not especially warm for winter, but not horrible either.

I'm sitting at my desk, waiting for my partner to bring emergency pants. I carried a patient* from the ICU to the OR and got peed on, and the lab coat does what lab coats always do in such situations: totally ignore their job description and allow external forces to act upon my clothing. At least it wasn't blood or something less pleasant than urine.

Let me just say that these scrub pants don't fit me the way they used to, and that is not a good thing. This is another reason for the requested delivery. Also, I have been promised a delivery of dinner, which although unexpected, is entirely appreciated.

*Not doing well, which is why he remains in the OR on a ventilator. We may be here all night.

Abi, I'm always impressed by the detail and eloquence of your Open Thread posts. Especially since your audience would be off and running if you only wrote "Oh dear, I seemed to have dropped my hat".

John @ #4, for me it's even more than what you said. I'm always educated. I've never heard that tale or read that verse (despite two years in Japan I've never talked Buddhism with any practitioners).

Vicki - I've found that the Tommy Hilfigger clothing lines seem to be designed for women with minimal differences in their waist and hip measurements. I can't wear them at all - I'm very hourglass shaped, and it's ridiculous looking to have your pants stand out an inch and a half from your waist all the way around. But they may be perfectly cut for you.

Oh, good! An open thread!

Now if I can only remember what it was I wanted to say, earlier today. Darn.

Vicki, if men's sizes fit you well, for business casual try the men's Calvin Klein twill jeans; Costco carries them sometimes. I know, I know, Calvin Klein, but they're jeans-cut yet look like dress slacks, and are super-comfortable.

Vicki: These days, I can't even find a 28-inch inseam (in men's pants) in the stores. The closest I've seen were Dockers', at 29 inches. (And I'm not that short, dammit!)

I haven't checked out the manufacturer sites, though -- they may well have more range.

Ginger @ 3... these scrub pants don't fit me the way they used to

Amazingly, my pants still fit and haven't reached the 'snug' setting yet, in spite of my not going to the gym due to my wife's surgery, and in spite of my mom-in-law being here for over one week, thus causing me to ingest more and richer food than I'm used to.

I tend to buy my trousers at the better local used-clothing stores. Because with the variety of styles on the rack, and by searching through a range of nominal waist sizes within a few inches of my real measurement, I can usually find a couple of pairs that don't require more alteration than shortening the legs. Trying to buy trousers at a regular clothing store is usually merely an exercise in frustration, of which there is already too much in my life.

This article is about Tor books and libertarians, and quotes Patrick:

http://www.reason.com/news/show/129996.html

I saw it on Neil Gaiman's blog, and since no one has linked it here as far as I know, I mention in case anyone is interested.

One has to wonder how the brahmin of the story squandered his educational and caste advantages to become so extremely poor, and how he could rationalize indulging his charity addiction to the exclusion of properly caring for his family's needs.

re: the "Somebody send these guys a liturgical calendar" Particle, that really looks like a flaming cross to me, which I don't think is quite the message it's intended to send.

::sigh::

Earl, above, beat me to the punch - although I don't think educational and social class advantages always trump. If they did, I'd be a lot richer. In fact, I think it's quite interesting that ancient India evidently had downward mobility and/or some lack of overlap between social class and material wealth, to the extent, at least, that this story can just begin with "In Savatthi there lived a poor brahmin with his wife..." and not with the explication of how exactly a brahmin gets to be poor.

So Wyatt Mason of Harpers is "disturbingly attracted to" the first sentence of A Canticle for Leibowitz by "the purity of its awfulness... coupled with its naked, flailing whorish ambition to seduce."

The sentence is this: "Brother Francis Gerard of Utah might never have discovered the blessed documents, had it not been for the pilgrim with girded loins who appeared during that young novice’s Lenten fast in the desert."

Mason compares it unfavorably with the first sentence of Moll Flanders: "My true name is so well known in the records or registers at Newgate, and in the Old Bailey, and there are some things of such consequence still depending there, relating to my particular conduct, that it is not be expected I should set my name or the account of my family to this work; perhaps, after my death, it may be better known; at present it would not be proper, no not though a general pardon should be issued, even without exceptions and reserve of persons or crimes."

He prefers the flourishes of the latter to the "bald details" of the former, for reasons he doesn't think it necessary to give.

I like them both, myself. But then I like the actual opening sentence of The Dispossessed and Samuel Delaney's de-flourished version. I am baffled as to why Mason thinks the Canticle sentence is inarguably bad -- perhaps because A Canticle for Leibowitz is disreputable literature that hasn't aged the 250 years necessary to be appreciated by respectable folks? (Mason makes sure we know he didn't buy or borrow it, but found it on a gas pump as he was filling his tank. He doesn't tell us what effort, if any, he made to find the owner.)

Magenta Griffith at #12 writes:

> This article is about Tor books and libertarians, > and quotes Patrick:
>
> http://www.reason.com/news/show/129996.html

That's an interesting article, but one I'm not too comfortable with - it seems to be trying to grab a lot of things I wouldn't define as libertarian, and appropriate their virtues and reputation in the name of libertarianism.

It maybe that my definition of libertarianism doesn't match other people's, but I wouldn't take simple anti-authoritarianism as proof of libertarian sympathies.

Still, humans are a bad lot, and they're always trying this sort of trick.

People on all sides of politics try to affiliate the most basic of virtues with their party. Science fiction readers point to anything from Animal Farm to Lucien of Samosata to beef up the cred of SF. I remember doing something or other admirable back in my teens and having a christian friend say how christian of me that was - I took it,as intended, as a compliment, and it wasn't until much later that I thought how insulting it really was.

#12: Being vewy vewy quiet so as not to touch the Libertarian Flamewar Powder Keg, but I've never understood the supposed connection between SF and libertarianism. Certainly between SF and political belief - the tendency when imagining a future is to imagine a utopia or dystopia, and if you're telling people about either you're showing your political colours - and I understand that a lot of people's word-association with SF is "Heinlein", not without reason, but I don't think there's anything necessarily libertarian about the genre. Maybe it's what you're used to; my own associations with SF are Iain M. Banks and Alan Moore.

This is an excellent reminder to pause and refresh the mind, before going back to grading papers; it's not that english is a second language for the majority of the authors, it's that logic and clear thought appear to be dimly conceived of languages to most of them.

Earl@#13: The default state for brahmins has generally been poverty, at least until the rise of the industrial society increased the monetary value of education. If you're forbidden by your birth or avocation from being anything other than a priest or a teacher, and you don't happen to be lucky enough to teach or minister to a very rich man, great wealth is likely not in your future.

Perhaps there is a correlation to the verse. It seems rare these days (for me) that the quick thought is to anything good. Instead it seems that my quick thoughts are to sharpness, aggravation, and hurt. It is probably a sign of maturation that if I hold off and discuss the ideas with myself I find there is no positive outcome in the long term and I can do good (or at least no damage) by holding my tongue or giving a different response.

sara_k, I'm trying to find balance. For a long time I extolled the virtue of holding one's tongue and keeping one's peace, so as to keep the larger peace. I'm finding these days that doing it too much breeds resentment. Obviously the solution is not to indulge one's immediate impulse to say something nasty, but to find an assertive but polite way to express what one needs to express -- to be honest enough for self-respect, but also civil enough for self-respect and the respect of others.

This is not easy. For me, anyway.

My pants are too big, and since I am still a very large person, I'm having to try a lot of pants from different supersize stores. I think Decent Exposures will do best, but I'm having to ask for a larger size to fit my hips and then have them hemmed up four inches. Oh, and part of my problem is that I like colorful pants. I don't want to wear brown, blue, or black every day.

My complaint (and I don't really expect much sympathy) is that I am too small.

I have a 27 waist, and a 29-30 inseam.

When I can find them 501s in 28 are tolerable. Preshrunk let me find the smallest 28s in the store, because Levi's shrink in the wash, so some are smaller than others.

For shirts... forget it. A 15 neck a 35 chest, and a 32/33 sleeve means even fitted shirts are too large (that 27 waist again).

Thirft stores, and small men who go to tailors, are my friend. This is also why I want bespoke.

#18: "I don't think there's anything necessarily libertarian about the genre."

Ah, but perhaps there is something science fictional about libertarianism?

SF -- often being about the future, about wanting the future to be different from an often crappy present -- tends to be anti-authoritarian.

What passes for anti-authoritarian can vary from person to person and time to time. I can easily see authority = government regulation, suppression of creative ubermench, etnauseum.

I've taken to buying men's pants because women's pants have crap pockets, and I carry a lot in my pockets.

Lisa Padol, 26
I've taken to buying men's pants because women's pants have crap pockets, and I carry a lot in my pockets.

Why is that? It always bothered my sense of order as a child.

Don Delny: I think it's to avoid creating an, "unfeminine" line, when things are in the pockets.

Terry, sounds to me like the boys' department, or the "young men's," might be worth looking at.

#1 & #2 Vicki and Rikabeth:

I have some Cherokee pants and they fit reasonable well. They're generally relatively heavy cotton though, not e.g. woolen.

I don't know what their sizing is like in the larger women's sizes, I tend to get petites or "short" length miss sized pants. (And hate going clothes shopping.... hourglass figures haven't been what clothing was made for in my lifetime with an hourglass shape.... and the short part of it makes it worse.)

Steve @17
I posted the link since our host Patrick is quoted, and it's about Tor. I don't know that I agree with the article; for one thing, I don't think Heinlein identified himself as a libertarian. He was too independent-minded for that.

Rikibeth: The rise is wrong. Really wrong.

Which, quite apart from making the trousers uncomfortable, means the inseams are all wrong too.

Much more hassle than it's worth.

Shirts, similar problems. The vertical dimension (waist to shoulder) isn't the same.

Tailoring.

I shall add to the pants frustration, because I have been reminded that my good jeans, the ones that fit and are comfortable three days in a row, are showing just a tiny bit of wear at one point where they usually crease. They don't make this kind any more.
In the past week, I've retired two pairs of second-best jeans for unpatchable/disguisable holes.

I have a waist (meaning it is small) and I have hips (meaning that they are big). I am frustrated.

don delny @ 27 ...
Why is that? It always bothered my sense of order as a child.

I'm told that would be because a lady has a gentleman to carry things for her...

Terry Karney @ 24 ...
I don't know if there's a chinatown near you, but the physical characteristics should be about right for you to be able to find jeans that fit correctly.

David Harmon @ #9, I sympathize. I need a 28" inseam and can't find one. 34"x29" is the closest I can get these days (I'm 5'10", for reference). It's only really a pain with jeans, since I have to roll up the cuffs. Dress slacks seem to break at the shoe without dragging the hems behind.

Once I learned what libertarianism was, I came to the conclusion that Heinlein was pretty militant about it, at least up through Time Enough for Love or thereabouts. After that it seemed to me that he switched from political libertarianism to sexual libertarianism.

Paula @ 30, I was actually talking about the Cherokee men's pants -- since Vicki has been buying men's Levis, and since the men's pants are what my housemate wears.

Diatryma @33: I have a waist (meaning it is small) and I have hips (meaning that they are big).

For years I've been scanning eBay and local thrift stores for the Gap's "reverse fit" jeans, whose cut has a high rise that accommodates that sort of anatomy. Fashionistas have slagged that style for years as unthinkably hideous, perhaps because it's nearly the diametric opposite to the low-rise, narrow-hipped, flare-legged style that's been dominating the racks (the reverse fit style has slighty tapered legs), and I suppose it's true that the high waist does some weird things to the overall visual proportions, esp. for people like me whose calves are somewhat shorter than my thighs. But dammit, I don't like having my waistband gap outward whenever I bend over, which is what happens in straight-hipped styles regardless of rise height, and the visual proportions can be somewhat corrected by wearing untucked tops whose hems are farther down.

David, #9: You may have to go to online shopping. Land's End offers custom hemming on men's pants (and women's) at no extra charge, starting at a 27" inseam.

Kevin, #14: Yeah, that was my first thought as well. And I know at least one other person said the same thing on the last open thread. What were they thinking?

Stefan, #25: One thing I find very fictional (but not necessarily science-fictional) about Libertarianism is that it requires an author to make everything work the way it's supposed to.

When I am picky about pants, I veto them according to my fists: if I can put one fist atop the other and shove both down the back of the jeans, then I am not buying them.
When I am out of pants, as is becoming the case, I ignore that and try to deal.

Land's End has a custom jeans order form. I am tempted. They made my good jeans, though they stopped before I realized I wanted more of them. I have very little idea of my measurements-- last time I was measured anywhere near properly, I was fifteen-- but oh, tempted.

Diatryma: "I have a waist (meaning it is small) and I have hips (meaning that they are big). I am frustrated."

My jeans of choice are Eddie Bauer Loose Fit jeans; technically (meaning not post-maternity) I have something like a 30" waist and 44" hips. Yes, that's pretty extreme and yes, I usually have problems with the waist. I also have the crazy combination of a petite rise and tall legs, which has an upshot of making normal-rise pants looking like highwaters. I really like the fashion of having untucked shirts as that disguises the problem neatly. If they're tall-cut shirts.

I like Eddie Bauer. They actually acknowledge that women come in sizes other than Regular and Petite.

Right now (post-maternity of sorts; Gareth is six months old) the jeans are fitting better than they ever have because my waist still has a few inches to lose. This means no belt and no paperbagging. Yay! Anyway, they don't always have Loose Fit in the stores but it may be worth checking out.

Magenta Griffith at #31 writes:

> Steve @17
> I posted the link since our host Patrick is
> quoted, and it's about Tor.

And it was a good read - there's no doubt that libertarianism is always hiding somewhere in the background in SF - or at least in American SF.

Steve Taylor @17: That's an interesting article, but one I'm not too comfortable with - it seems to be trying to grab a lot of things I wouldn't define as libertarian, and appropriate their virtues and reputation in the name of libertarianism.

Kind of reminds me of the Prometheus Award winner lists.

xeger @ 34: Not unless she is actually proportioned like a Chinese woman, which appears to mean long waist, flat butt, and thin legs.

Disclaimer: My observations are based on Taiwan, both the women and the clothing for sale; I would assume that women's average proportions do vary some across a country the size of China.

I just did a metric crapload of shopping on a 1-week trip back to the US. Not a few people thought that was odd, to come back from Taiwan to the US to shop, especially as I am small, overall. But women's clothing here doesn't fit me well; even at a US size 4-6 and small-boned, my sholders, ribcage, arms and legs are all too big for clothes here to fit well.

I am *not* curvy by US standards; I'm short-waisted and so my waist is wide compared to my hips. Gap and J. Crew work well for me and Eddie Bauer petites aren't too bad. In Lands End, I can only wear their lowest-waisted cuts if I want to be able to both button the fly and breathe.

I can wear men's 501s (in a 30/30) but Vicki said somewhere that the rise on those is too small for her.

Oh, and I have a slight allergy to religious parables that extoll the virtues of imposing hardships on one's dependents to foster one's own spiritual gains.

The alternating discussion of pants and libertarianism is revealing. We all long to live our lives free of pants that reveal socks! drag at the hems! bind at the crotch! throttle the waist! gape - strain - crumple!
And just as libertarianism is an idealistic vision at odds with the reality of human nature, the attempt to mass produce pants that fit our myriad variations of form shall fail. Sigh.

I bought two pairs of Diesel jeans a few years ago. The 'Zathan' cut are mens jeans but they do not look like mens jeans when I have them on, and they are very comfortable (and have button flys, which I am personally very fond of). Reportedly the staff in the denim department at Diesel will ignore the intended gender of the garment in favor of a good fit. The two pairs I bought are still my favorite jeans and I should replace them soon but I have to admit that spending $150 - $230 on a single pair of jeans is difficult for me, even knowing that over time the per-wear cost would be in pennies. FWIW, the jeans are reportedly made in clean, modern Italian factories by well-paid unionized workers (but the t-shirts are not).

It seems a long time ago that I fixed the dates for the Google Earth coverage of northern Lincolnshire to late June of 2003, from a combination of specific farming knowledge, and the County Agricultural Show in progress.

While checking some local details, and measuring distances, I noticed that the coverage had been changed. At the moment, there's a definite change in overall colour, and the northern chunk has been updated. Based on the specific vehicles parked in a few locations, I'm certain that it is this year, early afternoon in Barnetby by the shadows, with the shadows switching to an early morning direction a mile or so south.

Move south of Market Rasen, and the predominantly green look shifts to a browner tone, the boundary passing through the old RAF Faldingworth. And the County Show is still running, by the A15 north of Lincoln.

Fields of oilseed rape are in flower, patches of bright yellow, not always the whole field. Trees are in blossom. I'd put this some time in May.

There are market stalls in Brigg Market Place, but not along Wrawby Street. Early morning on Thursday, setting up the stalls? Maybe Saturday. Scunthorpe is in the pictures with mid-afternoon, and that doesn't look busy enough for a Saturday, but it might not be the same day. The stall layout in Brigg just doesn't look right for the Thursday market.

Also, not a trace of Stennett's auction being set up.

My best guess is 26th April or 24th May: the stall layout does look like to the monthly Farmers' Market.

Too easy it is these days to be hip
but one can be a fool at any age:
just move towards the door at a fast clip.

You think that you are wise and not a dip,
yet all of us will boo you off the stage;
too easy it is these days to be hip.

So simple to load wisdom on a chip;
no effort then to read the weather-gauge,
just move towards the door at a fast clip.

It is no crime to give your elders lip,
you have to laugh at their most earnest rage;
too easy it is these days to be hip.

A normal matter to let anger rip
the walls of cities, and unbar the cage;
just move towards the door at a fast clip

until the moment you too lose your grip
and learn your story has a closing page.
Too easy is it these days to be hip,
just move towards the door at a fast clip.

janetl @ 44... We all long to live our lives free of pants

Donald Duck is a Libertarian?

I commend unto those of you with smallish waists and largish hips and shortish legs, the "stretch bootcut jeans" from L.L. Bean.

My mother, sister, and I can all wear them off the rack.

We still discuss this in hushed and solemn tones, as it is clearly a miracle.

Monday morning doggerel:

I’m wearing Libertarian jeans
Courtesy of free-market machines
Market forces make them rise
Market forces make them fall
Oh the market makes me wise
My pants are blessed by Ron Paul

dichroic @ 43 ...
xeger @ 34: Not unless she is actually proportioned like a Chinese woman, which appears to mean long waist, flat butt, and thin legs.

He seems to have proportions that might meet that general description, yes ;)

Beyond that, I've found that the proportions for "chinese" clothing vary according to the region, which isn't all that surprising.

Steve C @ 50... Market forces make them rise

"They'll ride up with wear."
(from Are You Being Served?)

Back when I was in high school, the musical costumer measured me at 31-23-41. Between that and my mother's unspoken rule, "Buy jeans at Kohl's no matter what," I have... well, I don't so much as go into Kohl's these days because I learned to hate almost every aspect of the store, but especially the juniors section jeans shelves.

It's probably going to be an heirloom resentment. My mother could never find shoes that fit except at one shoe store when she was a child, so she hates shoe shopping and passed that on to us when we were young. Any child I have the raising of will growl softly at the words 'low-rise flare'. It's like cutting off the ends of the roast, only with the possibility of actual bloodshed.

Dave Bell: I've noticed that Coventry was updated recently, too. It's definitely after I built my shed (which was in Jan 07) but before I sold the old Escort (which was in Feb 08). Looks like summer; the neighbour's kids had their trampoline out.

But then last year around the end of summer I saw people doing what, at the time, I assumed was a new batch of pictures. They had what appeared to be infra-red beacons they were placing by the side of the roads, presumably so that the resulting pictures could be easily placed into the appropriate mosaic.

John Houghton & Linkmeister:
Thank you; you're very kind.

I really enjoy doing these, actually. They remind me of the standard essay topic for my Latin reading courses at university ("Pick something from the class, research it to appropriate depth, and write about it to appropriate length.")

I always come back to the thought that we are lucky to live in such an interesting, richly detailed world that you can peer closely at any number and find some complex story behind it. Neat.

Linkmeister @5:
I've never heard that tale or read that verse (despite two years in Japan I've never talked Buddhism with any practitioners).

You probably won't hear much about the Dhammapada (part of the Pali Canon) in Japan; it's associated chiefly with the Theravada school, which is generally to be found in Sri Lanka, Burma, and southeast Asia. Japanese Buddhism more commonly follows the Mahayana school. It has its own sutras (thought to be composed later than the Pali canon). Mahayana Buddhism does have the Agama, which overlaps some of the Pali Canon, but not the Dhammapada.

I knew none of that before I started researching this post. (I didn't add any of these details about the history of Buddhism into the main post because I know just enough to get it really wrong. It's a complex area of religious history, sociology and theology, and I haven't put the time in to get it straight in my head.)

obTrousers:
Buying trousers is much easier now that I live in the Netherlands. My body shape comes from my ancestors in south Germany; in Britain I was a pear in an apple orchard.

I still have to take in the waists of pretty much everything I buy*, but at least I can get clothes where I can fit into the hips and only take 4 or 5 centimeters off the waist.

----
* Techniques, in order of preference, determined by pocket placement:
1. Dart the back
2. Dart the front
3. Take in the back seam

That story bothers me on several levels, starting with the fact that The Buddha didn't _need_ material gifts -- especially from poor people who needed such things themselves.
(Well... actually starting from the fact that, upon first hearing, I instantly Appreciated the remark "Never trust anyone whose first name is 'The'.")

It sometimes has seemed to me that King Pasenadi comes off best of all, by virtue of making gifts to reward the Brahmin's generosity (no matter how misguided) -- and that isn't saying much, considering that the King still had immense wealth after making these trivial (to him) gifts.

And now it's about time for the /K/i/n/g/ President of the United States to issue a Pardon to a symbolic turkey. Soon after which, I suppose, he'll tuck into a hearty turkey dinner, and perhaps draw up a list of other, figurative, turkeys to pardon.

Sarah S. @ 49, I will keep it in mind.

I have come to believe that most places really do make clothes for models, and simply scale them linearly upwards. I have a body shape and size that would best be described as "average," but apparently most pants are cut with an extremely narrow range of waist/hip ratio, and my hips are apparently too large for that range. I would have said up to now that people with waist and hip measurements closer to one another would be better off, but Vicki has enlightened me that no, this is not the case either. I wonder who in the world can actually fit into these pants off the rack. (I used to be able to wear juniors' jeans off the rack, but I was considerably thinner, definitely on the "thin" side of average then. So I am suspecting it is people with the proportions of fashion models. Not that I was a fashion model or anywhere near it, but I was closer to that body type then than I am now.)

I would buy pants immediately from a shop that sold them according to measurements: waist, hips, and inseam. It would have to be very boutiquey -- people to measure you and bring you pants -- but good heavens, to be able to buy pants that actually fit?

Vaguely remembered: a poem by Phyllis Mcginley about a woman who first gave away all her own stuff, then started in on her family's. The tag lines were something like:

...then who the saint[s] here?
St. [Agnes?]?
Or her near and dear?

Re the story and some of the discussion about acting quickly vs. holding back, with the risk of building resentment:

I was at a leadership conference over the summer (don't know why I go to these things all the time, but I do) and mirabile dictu, one of the presenters actually had something very useful to say. He pointed out that there is always a gap between stimulus and response, no matter how small, and the wise person will deliberately seek out and own this gap and use it -- to think, reflect, gather information, de-fuse, etc. The trick is finding the ideal length of time for this gap, as this story illustrates. Nasty email in the in-box? Ponder on it overnight before answering. Sudden charitable impulse? Don't over-think it, but don't react without spending a moment in the gap thinking about what you are doing.

57: My personal theory; the clothes are actually designed to look good on the hangers. Once you have gone as far as taking the clothes off the hangers and over to the dressing room to try them on, the battle (from the shop's point of view) is almost won - you are almost certainly going to end up buying something.

It's a bit like book cover art - the objective is to get you, the browser/impulse buyer, to pick up the book and take a look.

Therefore, clothes are designed, not to look good on customers, nor even to look good on models, but to look good on hangers. And, since the clothes also have to look good on models, models are selected to be shaped as much like coathangers as possible.

ms #20: The default state for brahmins has generally been poverty, at least until the rise of the industrial society increased the monetary value of education.

Poverty relative to the standards of Lexus-driving Americans, perhaps, but not relative to the more unfortunate situation of most of the other castes of the time period of the story. If retold today, the story might as well be about a penniless yuppie. I think perhaps the story was told about a brahmin for the same reason that advertising today uses supermodels to peddle laundry detergent.

I think the virtue in the story is in the act of giving rather than the benefit of the gift to the recipient. There is also (within the context of Buddhism) the detachment from material possessions.

To be honest, though, it was the verse that attracted me to this one; I found the rubric later and only included it out of a kind of painful intellectual honesty.

I find it too easy to see myself in his wife's situation, suffering the consequences of his generosity without getting any of the credit. It seems one of those deeply unfair stories, like the Prodigal Son or the rebuke to Martha over Mary. The steady, stable people who keep the world ticking over, feeding the guests, managing the farm for Dad, or staying at home while her husband sits at the feet of the Master... they seem to get a raw deal.

But I think that Janet Croft @59 has captured a lot of the heart of this sutra. I would only add that if we set things up so that we are more likely to do good things than bad, we fall into the habit of doing good, and it becomes easier and easier.

Abi @ 62... the rebuke to Martha over Mary

I personally prefer Mary Stuart Masterson to Martha Stewart.

Tying the threads together:

In Boston there lived a woman not shaped like a supermodel. She only had one pair of pants that fit, so she could only go out when they were clean...

The thing is that each store or brand has its own shape (or small collection of shapes; Lane Bryant recently started offering their pants in three shapes).

So the way to find pants that fit is not to go to one store and try many sizes; it is to try one or two sizes from many sources.

That is half the reason why thrift store pants shopping is so much more satisfying (the other half is low expectations; if you find one pair of pants that fit at the thrift store, you win. If you go to the entire Mall of America and only find one pair that fits, you lose.)

Touring around Manhattan (virtually from Boulder), Google Maps gives a wrong location for the Flatiron Building (unless there's more than one) on the south end of Central Park. However, if you search on Tor Books, up comes that rilly rilly skinny triangular building at the intersection of 5th Ave & Broadway. Which I assume is the correct location?

Hush, don't let on, Tom Docherty was down in the basement testing the Bergenholms.

Abi @ 64... And, since she doesn't have a washing machine, she never can get out - if this is a conundrum like the one about the country where there's only one barber, who apparently doesn't own a mirror.

Magenta @12: Oh, that's what www.reason.com is! I bought a t-shirt at a thrift store with that URL on it, and have been sort of vaguely wondering about it ever since. 'Course, I never actually see the URL to remind me to look it up when I'm sitting at a computer, because it's, like, on the back of the shirt.

I have similar pant issues. What makes it even more frustrating is that most of the brands that tend to hold up well (Eddie Bauer, Ann Taylor, LL Bean, etc.) don't fit me at all, while the brands where I can find things to fit (Target, H&M) last only a season, if that, before spontaneously turning themselves into dustcloths. Bah.

I found a pair of cords that fit at Old Navy yesterday, which is deeply weird; their pants have never fit me. And since the same size of the same model pant *didn't* fit in a different color, I've come to the conclusion that the pants that fit were unmarked irregulars, made to the wrong measurements.

They're comfortable, I just wish they'd screwed up the measurements for me in a color other than dark gray.

Diatryma @33: My solution to this problem was to take the favorite jeans (when they finally resolutely bit the dust), disassemble them, make a pattern, and make new from scratch. Works (mostly, aside from an odd bug in the waist-button which I've never been able to figure out) but is labor-intensive and a raging pain in the behind. Also, one must needs be a willing seamster. Feh. Just goes to show how much I passionately loath clothes shopping.

(Howard Davidson took a similar approach when he finally found a pair of painter's pants he really liked. One of the primary criteria: the thigh pockets were each big enough to hold a 1K-page sf paperback.)

Just goes to show how much I passionately loath clothes shopping.

I make a lot of my own clothes these days, and I'm going to start on a new round now that I have a sewing machine that works. Another winter wool skirt is definitely in the offing.

I use Vogue patterns mostly, because as far as I can tell their slopers (metapatterns) were fit to someone built exactly like me.

Carol Kimball, at 58: It was St. Bridget in Phyllis McGinley's poem "The Giveaway."

I have trouble finding work pants for John that blow out in the crotch.

Serge, don't go there!

He needs something durable with a gusset, as he climbs utility poles all day long, and he puts his clothes through quite a workout. Carhartt's are the worst. He has some older Eddie Bauer that have held up, but they don't make that style anymore. John's 6'3" and fairly lanky. He's kinda built like Serge - tall and lean.

Any ideas?

Tania @ 74... Serge, don't go there!

What's that you said about pants and a blowtorch?

My three most recent problems with pants were MEC electing to use organic cotton that is, indeed, lovely and organic and has a nap like a lint brush, the usual problem with what fits my waist not fitting my thighs, and the difficulty in not fainting dead away buying dress pants.

For dress pants, fit, pfft, not a problem. Kingsport (a Toronto large-and-tall shop) has gone upscale and now does fully bespoke, as well as the 'measure, measure, that pair or that pair, perhaps the other pair, sir' stuff. Reminding myself that this is like shoes and I don't get to be fussy about the price, now, that was a trick. But I did remember the right pair of shoes to have for marking the hem.

Regular pants I get at Mark's Work Warehouse, mostly; they want to sell to everybody from business casual through the guys working on oil rigs, but have a general emphasis on utility and durability.

Tania @ 74 ...
I have trouble finding work pants for John that blow out in the crotch.

I'm surely confused here... but wouldn't the goal be to find pants that -don't- routinely fail in the crotch area?!?

(more usefully: Verve's Belikos Pant is based on a paratrooper pant, and works fine for climbing)

Tania @74: I have never ordered from them so can't speak to their quality or service, but Duluth Trading Co carries jeans and workpants with crotch gussets that might be just what you are looking for. Also long shirts for preventing the dreaded Plumber's Butt. http://www.duluthtrading.com/home/home.aspx?src=G014009&admkt=

xeger @ 77 Oops! Thanks for the correction and the link. Work intruded while I was typing and revising. This is YET ANOTHER example of why one should:

1) never edit their own work!
2) actually read the preview instead of just clicking it so you remember to post in a timely manner!
3) not abuse the exclamation point, even if one does tend to think using them and/or ellipses.

Janet Croft @ 78 Thanks, I'll check that out. I was overwhelmingly domestic this weekend, and kept shaking my head at the torn seams in 6 pair of John's work pants. I don't like sewing on Carhartt's.

if this is a conundrum like the one about the country where there's only one barber, who apparently doesn't own a mirror.

Ah, yes.

"The barber in Athens shaves every man who does not shave himself. Who shaves the barber?"

Not a paradox: the answer is "no one shaves her".

Actually it's not a paradox even with a male barber, because it's not stated as an "all and only." The male barber could shave himself, because it doesn't say he DOESN'T shave ones who DO shave themselves, only that he shaves ALL the ones who DON'T.

Also, barbers could be boys, or eunuchs (hey, it's ancient times in that so-called paradox, right?).

Dave @67: Oh, and here I was speculating about spindizzies. Well, okay, maybe that would be ridiculously overpowered for the application.

To people looking for jeans and pants that fit -- I've read positive recommendations for zafu. The database seems pretty large, for many different body types and a wide price range. If nothing else, it might help make shopping a more focused experience -- I find it discouraging to face acres of clothing departments these days.

So whatever happened to that tech they were promising us back in the 70s-80s where you step into a booth, the stereolith lasers measure you, and some robotic factory somewhere spits out the style you chose in the fabric you picked? Huh? Huh? Whyzit tech never comes up with anything usefull?

Carol, 58: pat greene beat me to the ID, but here is the text of McGinley's poem "The Giveaway." McGinley is a bit underrated these days, I think.

Something to play with, and/or mock: This Gender Analyzer purports to deduce the gender of an author from the text of their webpage.

I think I might have finally solved my jeans fitting issue.

Every pair of jeans I tried on was to tight in the thighs, even when the hip and waist were fine. I kept going to Goodwill and trying on jeans. I finally was down to one pair that fit (a pair of irregular Levis of unknown size and style, so I couldn't just buy more of them).

I think the problem is that I prefer the look of low waisted flared jeans. And despite what size the waist is, the thighs are tiny. I'll just buy regular jeans and add gores to flare them.

ajay, #80: I love koans like that! They're great for illustrating unexpressed cultural assumptions. One which was common when I was in college, but probably wouldn't catch many people any more:

A boy and his father are victims of a bad auto wreck, and the boy is badly hurt. They are rushed to the hospital; the doctor on duty takes one look and says, "I can't operate on this boy, he's my son!" What has happened?

Of course, these days there are actually two possible answers...

That gender analyzer thinks my livejournal is written by a man. Except when I'm enthusing about a David Weber novel, then it knows I'm female.

It only claims to be right 53% of the time, however, which is hardly better than chance.

Lee @88

I can think of at least three solutions to that one.

Jaque, #84: I see the laser booths advertised regularly in _Threads_, which is aimed (mostly) at custom seamstresses and amateurs who would like to be that good. I think the problem is that the laser booths are A-OK, but the robot factories aren't up to it. Maybe even sweatshop factories aren't up to it; you can't change `just a few measurements' in most patterns, and sweatshops may need a couple (dozen) runs through a pattern before they work out the order of operations.

G Jules, I have heard that different colors of the same pattern often fit differently. Something to do with darker colors shrinking, maybe.

I have been meaning to embark on a grand sewing adventure, but this first means getting a machine or access to one. I like reading about sewing, certainly, but beyond a certain point none of it makes sense because I have no actual tools.

I mentioned this last time I was home visiting family, and Dad pulled out the sewing machine we inherited from some matriarch or other. Mom wanted the newish Brother? from, oh, 1970ish, probably, and Dad talked her into the old one.
1926 Singer. If I'm lucky, I get to play with it after Thanksgiving.

The gender analyzer thinks my blogspot blog is 90% likely to be written by a man, and my livejournal 75% likely (of course, that's public posts).

Previous incarnations of such things have pegged me as female, and I was always slightly disappointed without being able to analyze why. I think it was just wanting to be not so easily read.

Eric Raymond (on his webpage)has his opinions on how libertarianism is the natural direction for SF to move in and any movement in a different direction is a countermovement that is likely not to last.

clew @91: Ah, syntax. Without which, not. I made a toroidal purse for Worldcon (which was pleasingly successful: could carry a remarkable amount of crap in reasonable comfort). Getting the sequences right was ... well, let's just say this was the first time I had to do four drafts before the final.

Okay, for you topologist out there: what do you get when you cut a circular hole out of an innertube and then turn it inside out? I'm pretty good at visualizing 3-D shapes, but I had to actually try this one out.

Ron Paul is the true, honest hero,
while government is good for zero
say some whose addiction
(like mine's) science fiction;
but this novel's really 'bout Nero.

Accidentally discovered while clicking on something I had not intended to click on:

Become an undercover agent for the AARP, and eat free lunch too.

dichroic: I am the person to whom xeger made the reccomendation. I am male. Sadly the trousers I've tried don't have the right rise; or are short in the inseam, or something. The cut just doesn't flatter me (jeans I can deal with, it just means I wait until the pairs I have are past re-patching; and none are still fit for times I can't wear patched jeans, and then go poking about until I've amasssed 3-5 pair; repeat cycle in a couple of years).

Xeger: My butt is small, but I am told, not particularly flat. This has, I confess, come from people who might be biased to praise it.

Caroline @ 93...

"Captain, the gender analyzer cannae take it anymore!"
"Scotty, I need that gender analyzer now!"

I have had good luck buying pants at Chico's. You have to get a saleswoman (they're all women) who understands the different styles, however. I tried on a pair that I thought fit well enough (i.e., no worse than anything else I own), and the attendant helping me insisted that I try a different size of a different style, which fit perfectly.

They're pricy on normal days, but there are frequent sales, and also a pretty steady supply of "new with tags" items available on eBay.

Terry 98: My butt is small, but I am told, not particularly flat. This has, I confess, come from people who might be biased to praise it.

Elegantly phrased. I have to admit "small but not flat" does sound nice.

B. Durbin @40: I have something like a 30" waist and 44" hips.

why in the world is that such a problem??? that's how i'm built also, and commercial pants are just hopeless. i wore drawstring pants and elastic-waist skirts for a very long time. back in the dot-com bubble, i had a pair of pants made exactly for me, and i took the pattern. what with the economy and all, i've got a sewing machine again, and the local fabulous fabric store says they'll teach me all the tricky stuff (like zippers). i guess i'll make a pair in pajama flannel for around the house, for practice, and then some for out in the world.

next up: oxford shirts with two pockets. can't seem to find those any more either, in colors i like.

Rosa @ 65: Agreed.

I love thrift store shopping.

Among other things, it teaches one that sizes are changing all the time. I seem to wear a size smaller in this year's sizes than I do in last year's, despite having the same measurements. Who'd'a'thunk?

Lately I ran short of money and clothes at the same time, and my family sent me $200 to replace falling-apart bits of my wardrobe. I went across town to the better (as in best variety for prices, not posher) thrift store, and managed a haul of six pairs of pants, several shirts, a leather trenchcoat and a hat for just under $100.

The hat now goes with my Fourth Doctor scarf, and I can walk around the neighborhood looking Time Lord-y.

Indeed thrift stores are bounteous.

Terry,

You certainly have my sympathy, and additional sympathy that, because you're small, people tend not take your problems of having trouble finding things that fit seriously. (Alas, this will not get you clothes that fit.)

Tangentially, I wonder what, if any, size people do get sympathy from those who would dismiss your complaints because they don't consider "too small" a valid complaint. Fat people also get little respect in this regard, and while I haven't quite had people tell me it's my own fault and I should grow five inches rather than complain about the clothing industry, it sometimes feels as though they're thinking that.

I'm another thrift store junkie. I get nearly all my clothes from Goodwill, which is why I can afford to own my Vera Wang scarves and Banana Republic t-shirts.

Erik Nelson @94 re Eric Raymond: just read it, and it's interesting, but I think he's cherrypicking by attributing all the good stuff (his def) to the "essential nature" of SF. Sidelining the militarism and power-worship particularly seems overly selective.

Earl@61: I meant poor relative to, say, a shop-owner or the average farmer: "poor brahman" is as much a cliche in tales of the period as "poor soldier, home from the wars"; there are several communities of poor brahmans today, and I don't see that their situation is significantly changed from 2500 years back. (If anything, they're likely to be relatively better off now.)

Caste is one way people are segmented, and income level is another; one doesn't necessarily follow from the other.

Vicki: I don't know who gets sympathy, but I do know there are "full-figured" shops, and (for men), "big and tall".

What really bites is that some things (t-shirts, sweaters, etc.) aren't too bad, if they were carried in "small", but I'm lucky if I can find them in medium, but the selections are almost always all available in XXL.

One learns to cope. I do recall that when on prednisone, I had a small increase in my gut, thus making some of my close fitted clothing (esp. my renassaince faire garb) not fit (the garb had two buttons which would not stay shut).

I knew better than to complain in general. The few people I was comfortable enough to make passing reference to my difficulty were teasingly less than sympathetic, but the undertone was that I really had nothing to complain of (which was, in the grander sense, true, as it was a temporary problem).

#97 - "free lunch seminar" is a noun string that can be misconstrued in a few ways; including as a libertarian indoctrination event.

Rosa, #65, thrift stores never have sizes as large as I need. I can wear these pants in an F now, but notice the ugly colors (I have the spruce and black). So I spent some time debating whether I should try to dye the white pants or try getting pants elsewhere and decided on the latter.

Jacque, #84, they're using them in airports.

I actually already know how to sew and make patterns, but I'm too disabled to do it anymore.

Steve C. @ 50: If you really want to be radical, you can have your pants blessed by Ru Paul.

That gender analyzer, like many, considers me androgynous. I must be doing something right.

For what it's worth, there are a number of internet custom clothing shops which will instruct you in how to take your measurements. When you send them those measurements, perhaps with a photograph and comments to illustrate fitting problems, they'll produce pretty good clothes, delivered in a few weeks. The prices are not much above, and sometimes considerably below, what the shops charge for clothes that don't fit. The primary difficulty we've had is that fabric selection over the internet is tough, though you can order swatches. The exemplar we've used is: Ravis Tailor.

On another note, Brooks Brothers was offering the laser measurement thing at their main Manhattan store as of a year or so ago. I haven't tried it, though.

Not talking about pants, me.

I received in the mail today a notice from Citibank informing me that they are changing my Card Agreement. (I love their use of that word, agreement. Right. If you don't agree, they take away your card.) My purchase APR is going from 14.75 to 18.99%. Actually, the letter said it already had gone to 18.99%, as of September 17th, but they just got around to telling me today.

At the beginning of 2008 the rate was under 10%. It's been rising all year. As it happens, I never carry a balance on this card, I always pay it in full each month, so the rate has no practical significance. Oh, and in case you were wondering, I have never paid this or any other credit card bill late, nor failed to make a payment. 18.99%? Nuh-uh. I immediately paid the $30 owing on the card and stuck it in a drawer. I will not use it again.

Anyone else gotten a letter like this -- card rates zooming up? I'm sure it's not just me, but I'm curious; is it just Citibank, or are other card issuers doing the same thing?

Lizzy @114 Yes, I've heard several other mentions of this problem lately -- most recently on NPR this morning (Talk of the Nation, I think), someone talking about a sudden increase in his Citibank card's rate. But I've heard of other banks doing it too.

I also pay off my card every month, so I don't generally notice the interest rate. But I do always check the payment due date as soon as I get my statement, because I got caught once when they moved it up a week -- it had always been due on the 21st or 22nd of the month, and then one month without warning it changed to the 14th or 15th, which I didn't notice until too late to get my payment in on time. Grrr. I guess the card company got tired of my not racking up any interest....

"Card agreement," indeed.

Nobody's ever even offered me a credit card, not that I blame them. My one half-hearted attempt to get one was met with what seemed to me great suspicion from my bank, and I decided I didn't need one badly enough to sit down with some suit and fabricate a monthly budget. I've heard stories of credit card companies pushing their cards onto people, mailing pre-filled applications, taking advantage of the debt-prone - do I smell or something?

WANT

Serge @ 99

"Scotty, I need that gender analyzer now!"

"Damn it, Chekov, is the Captain hot for an Andorran again? Is he never going to fall for someone with external secondary sexual characteristics?"

Bruce Cohen: clearly you had some kind of bad experience on a skiing trip...

Erik Nelson @94, I think I've read that once. If I remember correctly, he basically claims that whenever some trend in SF that he doesn't like fades out (as trends inevitably do), this means that a non-libertarian rebellion against the inherent libertarianism of SF has failed, and whenever a more or less succesful libertarian-themed novel gets published, this means that yet another uprising against libertarianism in SF has failed. For instance, he seems to claim that cyberpunk was a (naturally doomed) non-libertarian rebellion, and then Snow Crash was published, and that meant that the rebellion had been put down.

I think with that methodology, you could still claim that SF is inherently libertarian even if we would live in a world where only a tiny fraction of the published SF would be libertarian.

I guess that a lot of the bad guys in SF are initiating force, which is anti-Libertarian, and the inevitable defeat of bad guys must therefore be Libertarian.

I think there's an excluded middle somewhere.

And smashing the bad-guy's planet with pairs of dirigible planets having intrinsic velocities greater than c seems a trifle excessive a response to the use of force.

US government question for all the smart politically knowledgeable Americans here: Who, exactly, runs the departments and agencies of the US government from the inauguration of a new president to the time when the Senate is done with the confirmation hearings?

Raphael@122

Generally when a supervisory (whether high-level or several levels below) position is vacant, someone (for things that aren't cabinet-level or near cabinet-level it sometimes is a rotating group of someones) is temporarily chosen to be "acting" in that position until it can be permanently refilled.

#85 ::: Chris Quinones

Carol, 58: pat greene beat me to the ID, but here is the text of McGinley's poem "The Giveaway." McGinley is a bit underrated these days, I think.

Thanks, both of you!

#91 ::: clew ::: (view all by) ::: November 24, 2008, 03:44 PM:
Jaque, #84: I see the laser booths advertised regularly in _Threads_, which is aimed (mostly) at custom seamstresses and amateurs who would like to be that good. I think the problem is that the laser booths are A-OK, but the robot factories aren't up to it. Maybe even sweatshop factories aren't up to it; you can't change `just a few measurements' in most patterns, and sweatshops may need a couple (dozen) runs through a pattern before they work out the order of operations.

The problem is that efficient and therefore cost-effective cutting and assembly deals with substantial numbers of garments, which move step-by-step through the construction process (which is the same for each garment regardless of how the pattern pieces may have been resized). A custom-cut pair of jeans must be walked through by itself. You can't rely on "take fifty custom cuts and build them in order" due to the almost certainty of getting them scrambled.

This is the bottleneck in manufacturing them.

I'm much amused by this project on getacoder.com, noting especially the submitter and certain bids. It's got me thinking of an alphabet of notables, but unfortunately my inspiration is stuttering at:

A is for Ada, Lady and Language
B is for Babbage...

T is for Turing, halted forever

... so I'm hoping folk here have inspiration as well.

Dave Bell @ 121

I have a real problem calling a government that can field armadas of millions of ships, has hundreds of millions of entities "under arms" (tentacles?, pseudopods?) and has the remit for enforcing drug laws all over two galaxies, "libertarian".

OT: I find it interesting (for some values of interesting that others may not care about) that one of the linchpins of the background of the Lensman series was that 2 billion years ago our Galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy passed through each other. Latest information is that they are approaching each other, and will collide in a billion years or so. Does this mean we are the Arisians, who evolved before the collision? That somehow doesn't fit my visualization of the Cosmic All.

The teaching story Abi started us off with - is it, strictly speaking, a koan? - reminded me of the plot of Sense and Sensibility, which is set in motion by the eldest son's failure to act on his generous impulse toward his widowed stepmother and half-sisters immediately, so that his rich wife arrives in time to persuade him to keep his inheritance entirely for them. Then the Dashwood sisters and their mother have to move to Devonshire or where-ever, and wacky hijinks ensue.

Jane Austen, secret Buddhist?

Xeger -
A is for Ada, Lady and Language
B is for Babbage...

J is for Jobs, Apple of i

T is for Turing, halted forever

... so I'm hoping folk here have inspiration as well.

@ #115: Credit-card companies moving up their due dates: one of my card companies did that to me a few years back. I paid the card one day late as a result of their sleight-of-date and got smacked with a $29 late fee.

I called to complain and they took the late fee off. Fees are a major source of revenue for them, but they do back down in individual cases if they're afraid they'll lose your business. (They won't take fees off if you make late payments on a regular basis, of course.)

I also got my bank to refund two $5 monthly account maintenance fees they charged me because my savings account balance went below the arbitrary $500 limit (which didn't exist when I opened the account) for two days which just happened to be October 31 and November 1. It's worth making a call.

Scott Taylor @ 129 ...

Added to here, dreadful html and all.

GJules #130:

Yep. I've had the experience several times of legitimate businesses (with whom I've done business for many years) obviously trying to slip something in on me. You can call and get the charge taken off, but it takes time and hassle.

What I don't understand is when this became an acceptable part of doing business. I mean, there are some businesses that try to cheat their customers as a matter of course, but you usually do your best not to mess with them. (Up until recently, car dealerships were an exception, since you had to buy a car sometimes. Now, you can do no-haggle prices, or come in with enough online research not to get screwed over easily.) How is it that Citibank or Sprint finds it in their financial interests to announce to their customers that they're small-time crooks looking to do the equivalent of occasionally stealing a couple dollars you leave lying around?

Some companies I do business with don't seem to do this. Some do. Some whole industries (medical billing, for example) seem optimized for fraud. There must be a pattern there, but I don't see it.

One bit of credit card billing trivia is that the "amount due" number matters a lot: if you pay your bills at the same time each month, but the "amount due" on a card shows as $0 on their billing website, if you pay on that card, the money does not count towards meeting your minimum payment when (likely a few days later) their system gets around to telling you that, for example, $22 is due at a date later in the month. There's such a thing as paying too early then.

albatross @ 132
I'm wondering if the pattern is really two: bills you pay every month and so might not look at closely, and bills that you may be paying while under stress, and so not checking closely. (Remembering here the medical bill which showed up shortly after an uncle died, claiming to be for treatment from a doctor he'd never seen. If his widow hadn't been keeping track of everything, that might have been paid without question.)

Express has a line of pants they call Editor Pants.

Now, my idea of "Editor Pants" would include cargo pockets big enough to hold a paperback or tpb, a pen/pencil pocket, and a number of general purpose pockets as well. Basically, an office on your hips.

But somehow Express seems to conflate the idea of "Editor" with skinny, close-fitting, pocketless pants worn by underweight models. Huh?

For the programming alphabet:

H is for Hopper, COBOL from Grace

I knew there was a reason I never had a credit card.
I have often found that pants designed for someone of my circumference and leg length have the waist so high as to make me envision someone with same leg length and butt size but a foot taller than me--or with the waist right under the ampits (I'm having visualization problems.) And when I needed a bathrobe, I had to do some hunting before I could find one on which the belt wasn't partway up my ribs.
Continuing problem with the inner seams just under the crotch wearing thin. Being a cyclist doesn't help. Trying to envision some reinforcement that won't look lame. I thought of trying sarongs, but I don't think that'd work well on a bike. Someday, if I can afford a sewing machine...
Still, thrift stores rule. I just don't go to Salvation Army bec/ of their reported discrimination against gays.
Don't know enough about libertarianism to comment there.
A.J. Luxton, you mentioned manufacturers changing their sizes. I think I read that this is to make customers think they aren't gaining weight, which will cheer them up and put them in a mood to buy pants that seem to bring good news.

Thanks for #16, Yarrow. There are so many writers in the world, and so many good critics, that it is a relief to my weary bones to know that whoever "Wyatt Mason of Harpers" might be, I am unlikely to be missing anything.

Lizzy @114, I've had a similar credit card experience -- always pay my balance on time and in full, had a rate hike earlier this month. It's all tied up in the credit crunch; the market for consumer debt of all kinds has evaporated. The banks were doing the same slicing and dicing and re-selling with credit card debt that they were with mortgages; suddenly they have no buyers, so if they have to have the debt on their own books at least they want to make a lot of money on it.

xeger @126

K is for Knuth, who someday will finish.

... and since you didn't finish the Babbage line,
B is for Babbage, who saw quite a difference.

If you really get stuck, you can start throwing in every language designer you can think of:

M, John McCarthy, who wrote with a LISP
S is for Stroustroup, who added to C
etc.

Note: I am not a programmer, but I live with one.

Express has a line of pants they call Editor Pants.

I thought they existed merely as a figure of speech among dilatory authors.

"Yeah, I'm three months late with the manuscript, but I reckon..."

"Look out, dude! It's Patrick! And it looks like he's got his editor pants on!"

lorax at 139, I thought it was something like that. As for credit card companies making money: I've got no objection to a reasonable rate of return, but 19% is ugly and possibly immoral. My 2009 New Year's resolution is twofold: 1) pay off the outstanding balance on the two cards I currently use as quickly as I can manage to do so, and 2) stop using them. #2 is actually pretty easy, barring some serious emergency; #1 is going to take a little while, but it will be done.

Xeger incipit:

Xeger -
A is for Ada, Lady and Language
B is for Babbage...

A is for Ada, Lady and Tongue;
B is for Babbage, too long unsung.
C is for counter, most useful tool;
D is for Dunce, elementary fool.

L is for Latin, a speech of some worth,
M is for Microsoft, owner of Earth.
N is for number, a symbol a sign,
O stands for nothing, at least in this line.
P is for Pascal, now long forgotten,
Q is for query most misbegotten.
R is for Racter, a program most merry;
S...

I see editor pants as being in a style that matches David Hartwell's jackets.

#27 don delny: I was told it was because of the line of the clothing, or something like that. But, good pants with deep pockets don't mess up the clothing line. Clearly, women aren't supposed to be able to carry useful stuff in pockets.

@#132: that they're small-time crooks looking to do the equivalent of occasionally stealing a couple dollars you leave lying around?

No need to add the "equivalent" in that sentence, actually. Citigroup recently made a $18 million settlement in California for sweeping customers' positive account balances into their general fund. They reportedly took over $14 million, which puts them a few steps above small-time.

On buying cars: Remar Sutton's book Don't Get Taken Every Time was tremendously helpful when I bought a car earlier this year, and I highly recommend it.

Citibank did the same thing to me. I do carry a balance, and rather a large one, thanks to the expense of getting an instrument rating that we hadn't worked into the student loan. In any case, we'd applied for a 0% interest credit card the day before we got the notification so that we could transfer our balance off of that card, since it was already our highest interest balance. Serendipitous timing, and hopefully we can close the Citibank account soon. They've been the worst in my experience for lowering your rate if you call to ask, and then hiking it up again two months later when they think you've stopped paying attention.

And don't get me started on the way trousers fit. My body is too bootylicious for the standard cut, and I actually started sewing purely so I can eventually make my own trousers. Admittedly, I haven't made any yet, but it's early days. I also hate shirts that either strain across the bodice or are cut square - I am NOT an APPLE! Hourglass is supposed to be fashionable, right? Why don't they make any clothes that fit? So now we have small - nothing fits; large - nothing fits; have a waist - nothing fits; don't have a waist - nothing fits. I'm noticing a trend. Ooh! And tall and thin? Nothing fits. That's Graeme's problem. Try to find something long enough in the arms for a guy that's 6'4" and it swims around the chest. Big and Tall only works if you're Big AND Tall.

(Ack. Actual settlement size in CA was $3.5 million; potential total settlement size is $18 mill. Just to clarify.)

waitwaitwait... Citibank stole $14m from people, and then had to pay $3.5m back in a settlement? At that rate, I'd do it every month. Well, I would, if I were the CEO of Citibank, and an immoral bastard. (Yes, yes, "But I repeat myself..." Shut up, Zombie Mark Twain.)

$14M total. $3.5M paid back in California alone. Total may run to $18M.

At least that's how I read it.

Yes. The total amount reportedly taken was $14 million, of which $1.5 or 1.6 million was taken from California residents; California's settlement is $3.5 million, which is larger than the amount taken because it includes fines and penalties.

There's a clearer article at Consumer Affairs.

Lizzy @ 142:

Re 19% being ugly and immoral, I'm pretty sure it stops there only because more than that is barred by legal statute. So yes.

I couldn't find a reference though. Most loan shark references seem to be in reference to 'payday loan' places, where the caps are around 35% (see also excessive fees). I expect credit cards are regulated separately.

Terry Karney @108: Ah, Prednisone. You have my deepest sympathies. I was on it for a couple of years, and the resulting 30 lb weight gain made me feel like I was wearing a sand-filled parka. Gah!!! Once I finally got that weight off (compliments of the Hacker's Diet, recommended by someone on rasseff), I swore I would never ever EVER complain about neck wattle again.

Marilee @110: But not for anything useful (snipe snark). I stand by my complaint. ::pout::

Say, now there's a thought to make the whole airport security thing more appealing:

Get your free custom tailor measurements here!
Step right up! ABSOLUTLEY FREE!!

xeger @126: C is for Cray ...

H is for Hopper, Grace to us all ...

About finding clothes that fit... Earlier this month, my wife and I drove to Santa Fe where a museum was having an exhibit of movie costumes. There was one that had been made for Helena Bonham Carter, which made me realize how short and tiny she is. I was quite pleased to see that Alan Rickman's military unform from Sense and Sensibility would fit me - although it probably doen't fit Rickman anymore.

Raphael @ 122, Michael I @ 123:

Within a U.S. federal government department or agency, when one (or more) of the top slots is vacant, interim administrative responsibility is normally assigned to whoever holds the next senior non-vacant position.

For larger agencies, this seniority sequence may be specified by statutory law (U.S. Code), or by agency regulations having the force of law (Code of Federal Regulations). For smaller agencies, a standard "delegation order" or equivalent typically specifies the sequence of who gets stuck with the top job, pending designation and confirmation of the next political appointee to head that agency.

When the political appointee(s) heading an agency resign or get fired upon a change of administration, the individual who becomes acting agency head is typically whichever career civil service employee currently holds the highest non-political slot in that agency's T/O. (ObSF: Mr. Kiku in Heinlein's The Star Beast.)

# Alphabet v0.02 (pre-alpha)

A is for Ada, Lady and Tongue;
B is for Babbage, too long unsung.
C is for Cray, blinding of speed,
D is for ... da da da need?
E for Eliza,
F is for ...
G is for green bar, coolest of paper,
H is for
I is where I realize Fragano's legacy code has an off-by one error.
J is for ...
K is for Kernighan, co-builder of C.
L is for Latin, a speech of some worth,
M is for Microsoft, owner of Earth.
N is for number, a symbol a sign,
O stands for nothing, at least in this line.
P is for Pascal, now long forgotten,
Q is for query most misbegotten.
R is for Racter, a program most merry;
S...

R equals RPG II, of cycle most odd . . .

I'm really not as old as this makes me sound, but I think it should be:

A is in APL, legacy language...

[delurk]

H is for Hollerith, cards most holey

[relurk]

H is for Hopper, the first to debug!

I am as old as some of these make me sound ...

F is Fortran, with extensions through V

K is for Alan, who creates the future

M is for Minsky, Perceptron denier,

Q is for Quux, an original hacker

R is for regexp, with brain-bending syntax

S is for Stanford, West Coast of AI

T is for tuple, container for Linda

U is for Univac, child of Eckert and Mauchly

V is for Voronoi, diagrams for neighbors.

X is for X-windows, MIT's brainchild

Y is for Yourdon, selling snake-oil solutions

Z is for Zed, used to specify programs

... and on beyond Zebra in trochaic tetrameter.

xeger @126:

I live in Manchester, which is where Turing was "halted forever". To my knowledge, there are only three memorials to Turing in the whole city: Alan Turing Way, which links the city centre to City of Manchester Stadium, where the Commonwealth Games were staged in 2002; a bridge which carries that road; a 3/4 size bronze statue sat in a park between the university and our Gay Village.

The statue has it's nails done, typically in red, every year during Manchester Pride, but it's not really enough in my opinion. Take a peek if you're in Manchester.

Serge @ 156 -

Have worked with movie wardrobe before, I can tell you that most costumes tailored to actresses must be displayed on custom built mannequins; child sized mannequins are too big.

Speaking of programming:

A SQL query walks into a bar and walks up to two tables. He asks, "Can I join you?"

Another cooking question from me...

For Thanksgiving, I have decided to make grandma's roll recipe (like parkerhouse, except with massive amounts of butter) and a crock-pot potato soup as the roommate's not a big turkey & fixin's fan, and the apartment kitchen is pitifully small.

I'm finding lots of cream/potato/leek soup recipes, but I'd like to add a bit of garlic. Would this work better if I roasted a head of garlic and then added to the soup at the last minute, or should I add a few cloves at the beginning of the cooking process?

nerdycellist @167:

It depends on how "garlic-y" you want the soup to be. Raw garlic added at the beginning of the cooking process will give a harsher flavor. Roasted garlic will give a sweeter, smoother result (less garlic-y).

So which do you consider to be the most desirable result for the dish?

I'm flying elsewhere for Thanksgiving. My only contribution to the dinner: A box of See's chocolates.

The host has assured me that this is sufficient as well as necessary.

Let us know if you get them through the TSA theft-barrier successfully. Bright blessings for that!

Lori @ 168 -

I prefer the mellow roasted garlic flavor, but I'm not sure at which point it should go into the pot!

I'm looking for a rather stress-free mode of preparation, as we will be spending Thanksgiving watching the 4th season of Doctor Who. Everything going into the pot and doing it's thing until it's time to add the cream/roasted garlic would be ideal.

nerdycellist @ 165... I can well believe it. By the way, one of the costumes was for something that Elizabeth Taylor did in the mid-1997s, and she too was quite tiny.

Marilee @110, the lack of non-horrible clothing for larger women at thrift stores is a crying shame; I'm pretty sure that it's a matter of how generally difficult it is to find comfortable, well-fit and non-ugly clothing in any size above a 14 or so, and how women, therefore, hang on to what they have. There are some consignment shops that specialize in large women's sizes- the one in Seattle is called Two Big Blondes- but the clothing is often the same stuff I don't buy at Macy's, Lane Bryant or *shudder* Carol's: trendy, light weight, overly ornamented and not up to the wear my lifestyle subjects it to. If I were a bank teller or a teacher (and if acrylic didn't cut the skin on my elbows down to the bone) it'd be a good resource, I expect.

The best pants I've ever owned were a pair of men's bespoke suit pants from Goodwill, originally made for someone who apparently had the approximate build of a grizzly bear. Good tailored pants are constructed to have the waist adjusted, if you know where to rip the seam; I took ten inches in, and they fit wonderfully. Then someone other than me stuck them in a load of Dockers and washed them with hot water and bleach, but they'd lasted ten years by then, so I guess it was a good run.

Coder's Alphabet Collated with continued apologies for my html.

NaNoWriMo

Hit the target this evening.

Still writing.

Baked potato soup with garlic in: http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2008/01/12/hearty-baked-potato-soup-a-quick-and-frugal-recipe-for-january/

I keep meaning to make it, but I have not been into cooking lately. Maybe after Thanksgiving, when I've remembered what realfood tastes like.

Florida's ban on gay adoptions was ruled unconstitutional today.

You lose some, you win some.

xeger @ #174, V is for Vista, an OS quite blurry.

(I was given a copy of Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies for my birthday a few weeks back, or I would hesitate to try my luck at these.)

go dave go!

Lizzy #177:

Unfortunately, the victories seem to mostly be in court, while the defeats are at the ballot box. This is probably unsustainable.

The good news is demographic--attitudes toward gay rights/marriage/etc. are extremely age-dependent, and assuming the folks in the under-30 set don't change their views as they age, victories at the ballot box are likely in the future.

mjf/Xopher:

You know, if I stole a few million dollars from Citibank, I'd probably have to pay it back and still go to jail. Oddly, when Citibank does it, they may have to pay some of it back, and even pay a bit of a fine, but nobody will ever see the inside of a jail cell. It's almost like there's a different sort of justice system for really large companies than for normal people.

It's interesting to work out the incentives, here. Suppose each time you get caught in some scam like this, you have to pay twice as much as you made on the scam. As long as fewer than half of your scams get caught, you have an incentive to keep on carrying out scams. I'll bet a lot less than 1/2 of the scams get caught.

The right way to prevent this kind of crap is to make getting caught horribly painful. Not "we'll make you pay a little extra" painful, but "damn, your CEO looks funny in an orange jumpsuit" painful.

albatross @ 181

Painful? You want painful? I say we put the whole board of directors in prison, and not Club Fed, either. That might even break the "We're all just rich people together" attitude of the board towards the corporate officers. Let's put some accountability into "fiduciary responsibility".

xeger @ 164

Rats, I left out W.

W is for window, a porthole on programs

re: Citibank. That makes me... angry. I feel a soylent greenback rant coming on; I'll try to internalize it into a cold hard lump of class envy instead of letting it out, though. It's for the best really, since I am powerless to do anything (at least that won't get me jailed) to deal with the depredations of the executive class.

Leno's opening joke in his monologue last night (after a one-liner about bailing out Citi but not the car companies):

"I say they work together. The union guys can make cars, and the Wall Street guys can make the license plates."

Lizzy L, #114, I heard about credit card companies doing that on the news tonight.

EClaire, #147, Oh, arm length is something I've given up worrying about. I just don't buy things with cuffs. Under all this fat, I'm long-armed and long-legged. The pants aren't such a problem since people with my size butt are supposed to have much larger thighs and I get length that way. But I don't have any tops where the sleeves end at my wrist.

JESR, #173, I wear mine to the point where a thrift shop wouldn't take them, and I assume other large women do that, too. Then they go to the textile recycling the city does twice a year.

Re: Citibank -- not quite the same, but last night Jay Leno said something very close to this: "I think we need to get the car people and the Wall Street people together to work things out: The car people make cars; the Wall Street people make licenses."

Along these same lines, some of you may remember my long and complicated tale of phone service woe, in which it turned out that I, a dozen tech support and sales droids, and three multinational telecommunications companies simply could not cause phone service to be turned on at our house in less than a month. The most incompetent of the three companies, Verizon, has impressed us with its mix of evil and incompetence yet again--they not only demand to be paid for the time when they weren't providing us phone service, they've sent the bill to a collections agency. The two-digit-IQ tech-support/billing droids we managed to talk to seemed to all agree that there was simply nothing to be done but to pay the fraudulent bill. Lacking several more hours to fight it, they'll get the check, too.

I suppose it's unnecessary to point out that hell will freeze over before we become involved in any business whatsoever with these Verizon clowns in the future.

There's another band doing a charity gig for Soren tomorrow.

Bruce Cohen @ 183 ...
Rats, I left out W.

Wouldn't that be "Whoops I wibbled on W"? ;)

(and duely added, with much thanks!)

Marilee, my winter church suit (which makes me look like Edith Wilson) is eleven years old; on the other hand, I go through jeans like a buzz-saw. But, yeah- things get worn until they're pretty much unmendable, as much because my taste and the marketplace are almost always at odds as because I'm too broke to buy the really good stuff with any frequency.

Jacque @95: I think you get an inside-out inner tube with a hole in it. Let's see... Here's a not very clear animation, which is embedded in this page.

albatross, #187: Do you have documentation that service was not in fact being provided during the period for which they're trying to bill you? If so, I strongly suggest filing an official complaint of fraud with your state AG's office. This is one of the things government is supposed to do, to keep big companies from pulling that kind of shit on people who can't fight back.

nerdycellist: For mellow: Roast the garlic for a long time (in a slow-medium oven, for at least an hour. Take the whole head, slice the top off and roast as is. When the thing is done, squeeze the cloves and the garlic will mush out). Take some of the soup, add the garlic mash, whisk, and return to the pot, not less than ten minutes before serving, and not more than an hour.

jaqcue: re prednisone. Thankfully I wasn't on it more than 3 weeks (well, there were some response uses to brief flares, but at 5mg it wasn't big deal). What got me was how quickly I put those 10 lbs on; which was a lot, I was at 110, and the new pounds were in odd, for me, places).

We're writing them a written, polite nastygram with a CC to the FCC's slamming office (Verizon didn't provide service at our new house, but apparently did hold onto the number and try to refuse a transfer of service), as well as the Attorney General's office.

But the reason this kind of fraud works, financially, is that the bill is only about $50. It's honestly not worth two or three hours of my time to fight it out over $50. I assume that billing policies which make it a lot of hassle to get out of paying relatively small amounts are generally profitable in the short term. In the long term, probably not--I can't imagine doing business with these guys again. But a lot of managers' bonuses, stock prices, CEOs keeping their jobs, etc., are driven by short-term concerns.

I would love to see government make this kind of fraudulent behavior not pay, but its record on that is pretty mixed. A better solution, IMO, is to find ways to avoid being screwed around in this kind of way. I'm not sure how to do that in general, but I expect that the tanking economy will bring a lot of interesting forces to bear on the problem as:

a. More people who formerly had enough money to just ignore this stuff find themselves tight enough not to be willing to ignore it anymore.

b. More companies get into financial trouble, and have a history of getting a little extra money into the pot right now by running small-time fraud on the customers.

c. More voters (and thus politicians) having a very dim view of a lot of business, especially ones that act dishonestly to make a profit.

A few years ago my New Years resolution was not to pay any service or interest charges I could avoid (that is, nothing except the mortgage).

It was kind of a pain, but it made me *really* good about keeping cash on hand and paying *everything* on time. I made a whole 12 months of no ATM or service charges, and the good habits carried me through another year or two before I let my schedule get too tight for trips to the bank during daylight hours.

Open threadiness: The Man from Earth is a good movie. Not much to it - just watching people grapple with the impossible - but I feel better for having seen it.
I think it would be very successful as a play, even more so than as a film. Stylistically, the dialogue, staging, and lighting are very theatrical already; it would be a very easy adaptation.

My wife has found that there's someone on the island who has expensive taste in jeans, is exactly her size, and donates to the thrift store quite regularly. The best find was a $150 pair of 7 for all Mankind jeans bought in a $5 sack, but there have also been $100 Guess and a few others in there.

Myself, I could buy by the numbers, and have for a long while. (levis 560, 34x36) Though, I tend to the tall skinny end of the spectrum, and the last couple of times I've looked, I've wound up buying all three pairs that were the right size and style.

Bruce Cohen @ 127: The Second Galaxy was not Andromeda -- though you're not the only person I've seen make that mistake recently. It was Lundmark's Nebula.

xeger @174

Cool. Now to make it rhyme.

Meanwhile, may I suggest "L is for Linux, and open source penguins." (Matt insisted on the penguins.)

re credit card fraud- wow. I knew that there's a lot of fraud in financial matters, but I wouldn't have expected something as obvious as that from businesses that might have some kind of reputation to loose. Wow.

albatross @187 Along these same lines, some of you may remember my long and complicated tale of phone service woe, in which it turned out that I, a dozen tech support and sales droids, and three multinational telecommunications companies simply could not cause phone service to be turned on at our house in less than a month.

Something a bit like that was what made me finally get a cellphone years after it had become the norm for everyone else, allthough, as far as I can remember, I wasn't actually screwed over by being made to pay for services I didn't get. Oddly enough, the red tape involved in that was worse than anything I ever had to put up with from any government agency so far.

If the computer-related alphabet is nearing completion, how about a domestic/familial one?

Since the established response in this household, when one or other of the teenage sons balks at their allocated share of hoovering/washing-up/emptying bins/whatever, is to remind them that M is for Mother, not Maid.

Every so often I do have occasion to remind my husband that W is for Wife, not Waitress.

And when necessary, we are united vs the sons on the basis that P is for Parent, not Pushover.

(unless this has already been done somewhere, in which case I'm guessing someone here will know)

Michael I @ 123, Leroy F. Berven @ 157, thanks a lot. Does anyone have any estimates on how long the confirmation hearings are likely to take?

Libertarianism and SF share a demographic of clever, introverted teenagers.

xeger, you've attributed L through R to me when I just copied Fragano's list.

#175, Dave Bell -

And with five days to spare! Well done! I found it absolutely impossible the year I tried. I'm still trying to get up the nerve to make a second attempt, so I'm quite impressed.

Marilee @ 186, your city does textile recycling? That's fantastic. I always feel so guilty about throwing away worn-out clothes, even though they're so ragged and ratty and full of holes that they're truly unwearable and unmendable. I need to find out about textile recycling and see if I can get my city to do it.

Caroline:

Do textiles biodegrade in landfills? I'd assume natural fibers would and manmade fibers mostly wouldn't, but I really don't know.

I wonder if textile recycling pays off. ISTR from reading some articles a few years ago that many kinds of recycling (plastic, frex) actually didn't pay--it cost more money (and maybe energy) to recycle than to just throw the plastic away and make new plastic. (I'm not sure if that's inherent in the process, or specific to one particular city/situation.) On the other hand, I think aluminum and paper recycling pay off immediately. (Aluminum is basically stored energy, because it takes a lot of energy to get the aluminum from the ore. It's pretty-much nuts to throw aluminum cans away.)

The economics don't affect the desire to avoid filling up landfills, but then landfills are a political/economic problem, not anything inherent in the way the world works. It's hard to site a new landfill anywhere because nobody wants it close to their house, but it's not like there's some shortage of land into which holes can be dug and trash buried.

#205 R.M., sometimes it went surprisingly well. I'm not saying the fast bits were the good bits, but there were some big chunks where I hit just the right voice.

The MC is former Indian Army, and escaping a circusful of Ninja clowns with Lady Helen. I was tempted to have him hot-wire an elephant, but some other time, perhaps.

Not quite finished, yet.

Albatross @ 207 -

I used to work for a Major Waste Management company (in IT, but you can't help picking up a few things about the business). Landfills preserve almost anything that isn't attacked by anaerobic bacteria. They've pulled 40-year old newspapers out of landfills that are perfectly readable.

One thing odd about the waste business -- Nothing becomes a fixed asset. When a landfill is built, the airspace available for waste disposal is considered an asset, and the more garbage a landfill accumulates, the more valuable the remaining airspace becomes.

Albatross @207 - I've heard the same thing about some recycling, but I've always assumed that was because of lack of economies of scale, and initial startup costs which haven't been depreciated yet.

Not to mention that those statistics probably assume oil prices well south of our current and foreseeable prices.

I always figured that even if recycling of some things doesn't pay yet, eventually it has to -- and if we work out the technology now, we're going to congratulate ourselves later.

Plus there are some things (like iridium) which way pay off. Mined iridium was like $60 a pound in 2002, and over $2000 in 2006, because we already done mined it all. So recycling is all we've got, essentially. Oil will have to do the same thing.

Although I'll bet that our future plastic recycling process will be bacterial in nature -- digest the old plastic, biosynthesize new plastic. So probably everything we're doing now will be looked at as primitive stick-and-bone Dark Ages tech.

I buy pants -- almost exclusively jeans -- at the local thrift store, partly because I find things that fit more easily, partly because of cost. I also buy most of my shirts at this place. I do, very occasionally, order stuff from L. L. Bean. My jackets come from the men's dept at K-Mart.

I am very unhappy with the demise of Shoe Pavilion; I've been buying shoes there for years.

There's something I've been hearing on the news that I don't understand, and I'm hoping someone here can explain:

Today the Iraqi Parliment is supposed to vote on the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the US. IF they don't approve it the US forces will have to be out of Iraq on or before January 2nd.

My question is, "Can we get all of our troops out of Iraq by 1/2/2009 if the Iraqis don't approve the SOFA?"

Anybody need a paperback copy of John M. Ford's Star Trek novel The Final Reflection? Pretty good condition, a few bookstore stamps inside the front cover. Good reading!

Re TNH's Particles, five scams:

Hey, there's that free lunch again! (See comment #97.)

Re: textile recycling: I've read that Goodwill and other thrift shops send clothes that are too tattered for selling in the shops to "rag sorters" that re-use and recycle them in various ways. So I'd say, go ahead and take the ratty clothes to Goodwill if your community doesn't have textile recycling.

Lori Coulson #212: I have a slightly different question: Is the Iraqi cabinet called the 'Divan', and if so, will the Divan approve or disapprove the SOFA?

Rewoven cloth goes by many names, including "shoddy". These days, though, I think a lot of it winds up as stuffing and in things like car insulation, wiping cloth, etc. Waste Online page on textile recycling.

I've called around the thrift shops and recyclers around Ottawa. Most are willing to take clothing that's worn down to rags only if it's natural-fibre only. I seem to recall finding one place that would take all textiles, but it was a long way out of my way, so I've been bagging things until I had transportation. (I've also been converting a few old pairs of pants into shopping bags.)

204 ::: Michael Roberts @ 204...
xeger, you've attributed L through R to me when I just copied Fragano's list.

Whoops! Corrected!

Raphael @ 202:

For positions requiring Senate confirmation, the time periods from vacancy to appointment, and from appointment to confirmation, are both highly variable.

Since an incoming President has about two and a half months during which he can select his appointees, before actually being able to formally nominate them, most of the new administration's slots for political appointees tend to get filled within a very short period after Inauguration Day. When some of those slots open up again, due to resignations / deaths / promotions, the speed of replacement appointments tends to be a function of: (a) the perceived importance of "having our person in there to set policy the way we want it done" and (b) the number and severity of other distractions the President and his senior advisers are dealing with at the time.

Senate confirmation of non-controversial appointees typically happens fairly quickly (i.e., within weeks rather than months), but is still subject to delays from Congressional recess periods, displays of Senatorial peevishness toward the White House, territorial conflicts between individual senators or committees, and all the usual varieties of grit in the gears of the legislative process. More controversial appointments can be stalled indefinitely, or at least until one side or the other gives up. This often leads to interim appointments, extended vacancies in policy-level positions, or both.

Henry Troup @ 217 ...
These days, though, I think a lot of it winds up as stuffing and in things like car insulation, wiping cloth, etc. Waste Online page on textile recycling.

... which just drags us back to rags being used to plug chinks in walls to keep out the weather, and insulating with newspaper...

Some denim is recycled into home insulation that is (I've heard) quite pricy. Go figure.

I'd imagine nothing truly biodegrades in a landfill, since even newspapers don't.

Jen Roth @ 215, I feel a bit guilty causing Goodwill to have to pay to transport the stuff, but if I actually can't do it myself, then I guess it's not too bad.

I always think, "I could grind it up and make paper out of it!" but realistically, I am not going to do that. I also think I could make patchwork quilts, but this would require me to 1) buy a sewing machine; 2) buy other quilting supplies; 3) learn to quilt.

I used to not like thrift shopping for clothing because their habit of putting sort of alike (all women's blouses/shirts) together by color, not size or anything else that makes sense just upset me.

However, there is thrift store chain, Savers, that came to KC that makes shopping for clothing really easy. Things are sorted specifically (long-sleeved blouses, short-sleeved blouses, etc.) and SIZE. Dr-Paisley often finds outrageous shirts too.

They are nationwide.

Even in non-landfill conditions, some textiles persist for a very long time; archaeologically, very dry (cave and desert sites too numerous and well known to mention), very cold (permafrost, glaciers, high mountain caves) or entirely wet situations preserve both wool and cotton for a long time (not to mention cedar basketry: the Ozette site being the most famous of the new world wet sites where wood and baskets have been preserved). Even in sites which are bad for preservation, textiles persist for a long time; I've found the remains of dish rags that belonged to one of my female ancestors while planting shrubs here on my familial midden.

Fibers which break down quickly when exposed to normal environmental conditions just aren't very useful for clothing or containers.

Re the Five Scams particles:

Has anyone noticed that the Google Ads to the left of the linked article are advertising for various foreclosure rescue scams?

Just heard about the people killed in Mumbai. Don't know what to say, though.

(Unrelated: Thanks, Leroy F. Berven.)

Raphael, I just saw it too. I don't know what to say either. All I did say was "Oh, my God."

Justice for the criminals; healing for the survivors and the victims' families and friends.

I took the day off from work. Actually signed up for it months ago, before my travel plans had firmed up. Since I'm not heading off to Dinner Site until tomorrow morning, it's a catch-up day.

One thing I did was tackle the pile of charity-solicitation envelopes I've been making at one end of the couch. Except for disaster response stuff, I do all my giving and donating around this time of year.

A few minutes after returning from the mailbox, I got a call from a guy calling on behalf of the ACLU.

"I just today donated $100 by mail." I said.

"Oh." he said after of a moment of silence, "thanks." And hung up himself.

I'm almost hoping more folks call so I can blow them off like that.

What the HELL is up in Mumbai? Any clue as WHO would do this? They seem to be targeting western stuff. There are reports of British & American hostages being taken.

For those wondering what's being referred to, The Times of India article is probably one of the better sources for information about the multiple shootings/bombings/chaos in Mumbai (Bombay).

Our county does textile recycling, but in any case, whatever is flammable in the trash gets turned into KWHs.

janet,

Anybody need a paperback copy of John M. Ford's Star Trek novel The Final Reflection?

i'll take it! i haven't read any of his books yet, shamefully.

Clothing which doesn't sell at thrift stores, but isn't shabby enough to recycle, is often put into compressed bales shipped for sales in poor countries.

The bad part of this: Local textile industries just can't compete with shirts and pants sold for under a buck.

Some cheering bookish news: there's just been a $AU5,000 bid in the local ABC radio station's charity book auction! It's for a library of books assembled from the authors interviewed over the year – when they heard of the project, several donated sets of signed books. They're raising funds for the Indigenous Literacy Project.

In deeply non-cheering news, among other outrages, the historic (PDF) Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai (Bombay) was reportedly burnt. It is right now still under seige. (1300 555 13 Aussie DFAT info line) Two top anti-terrorist police officers have been killed. The group claiming responsibility for these attacks calls itself the Deccan Mujahideen.

Lori Drew, the subject of The Myspace Suicide thread, has been found guilty:

Lori Drew guilty over Megan Meier death (from news.com.au)

A 49-YEAR-old Missouri mother has been found guilty in a landmark "cyber-bullying" case stemming from the suicide of a teenager who killed herself after being sent taunting emails.

Lori Drew was convicted on three misdemeanour counts of illegally accessing computers without authorisation but jurors at federal court in Los Angeles could not reach a verdict on a more serious charge of conspiracy.

Prosecutors say Drew faces up to three years in prison and a $US300,000 ($459,000) fine although no sentencing date has yet been set.

… and the news from India distracted me from adding this amuse-bouche: 'Is your cat plotting to kill you?' (with quiz).

Fragano Ledgister @ 216:

Would they be descendants of the Ottoman Empire?

Sylvie G @ 238: I like how you couched that so delicately.

I recline to participate in this punfest.

Sylvie G #238: Indeed so, they are the successors or, as would be said in Nigeria, they are on seat.

Xopher #240: But I thought you would chair the discussion.

I move we table this discussion before someone commits settee.

Stop it now! Before somebody has to get dressered down. Although now, I bed it'll be me.

I expect that there will be a ruling from the throne on this matter. But I suspect that the issue might fall between two stools.

The pouf is in the pudding.

That's pudding it mildly. And also, it's not very sanitary. Upholstered furniture has no place in the kitchen.

I was going to chime in on the parable up there, with "Whose cloth?", but albatross in #207 made the top of my head fly off and mar the ceiling with this:

... it's not like there's some shortage of land into which holes can be dug and trash buried.

Holy crap, and I thought I was cynical. I've been places and et in hotels, but I have never in my life seen a piece of land that needed filling.

Dang. Lots of unroasted protein running around in kindergartens, too.

I'll assume that was addressing "political realities" but if we're actually talking about doing good vis-a-vis our leavings, then just keeping stuff out of "landfills" is quite enough all by itself.

Ron Sullivan @ #248, enough people thought Glen Canyon and Hetch Hetchy needed filling (or, at least, that they wouldn't be missed if they were filled) that we got Lake Powell in the first instance and the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in the second.

I wouldn't want to try to promote the idea and I'm not advocating it, but driving between Phoenix and Yuma, for example, one sees a lot of space which doesn't seem to have a lot of potential, is not ceded to Native American tribes, and thus could be used as a landfill. It probably wouldn't annoy as many people as Fresh Kills did, either.

linkmeister @ 249... we got Lake Powell

Ron:

There is a lot of land in the US which can be used for burying our trash in. In any conceivable future with us in it, some of that land will be so used. The question is, how much? The best answer to that can't really be "the least possible," unless you're willing to, say, double CO2 production to halve landfill use. Or halve life expectancy to do so.

So, we have to decide what to recycle and what to dump. Some stuff is really obvious--burying aluminum cans is like burning $100 bills in your fireplace to keep warm. Other stuff isn't--if recycling plastic soda bottles costs more than the recycled product is worth, that's less money for a city or county to do useful things with.

One more for the coder's alphabet:

D is for Dijkstra, who's ever so formal.

Is anyone up for some Marian iconography?

I've been annotating the stained glass windows in a local church (virtually, I mean!), and some of the imagery in the BVM window is pretty obscure. These windows are from the 1930s, pre-Vatican 2 Irish Catholicism in full swing.

A blue Unicorn? A crown over a sword dripping gold?

The index photo with notes and links to detail shots is here.

Blue is traditionally associated with the BVM; unicorns also, since they could only be trapped by a virgin.

As for your sybils:

11. The Sybils are here named Cumaa, Delphica, Samla, Libica, Tyburina and Persica.

Those aren't really their names, but their workplaces: the Delphic Sybil (aka the Oracle), the Cumaean Sybil, the Libyan Sybil, and so on. These were the prophetesses of classical mythology, who ended up in Christian mediaeval mythology as well, as in the Dies Irae:

Dies irae, dies illa
Solvet saecum in favilla
Teste David cum Sybilla.

The crown over the gold-dripping sword is a bit of a puzzler.

I wonder if your "Tower of Ivory" might refer to St Barbara? There are three windows very clearly marked in the top floor.
ObChesterton: http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/Ballad_of_St_Barbara.html

'Tower of Ivory' is one of the epithets of Mary in the Litany of Loretto (from which a lot of the symbolism here seems to come); it originally comes from the Song of Solomon, 'Your neck is like a tower of ivory'.

The crown over the sword may perhaps represent 'Queen of Martyrs', since the window seems to contain parallel titles like 'Queen of Confessors'. (I would guess the sword is actually dripping blood, but it is coloured gold because it is holy blood.)

Michael Roberts @ 247... If sanitation is a concern of yours, I suppose you won't be interested in some banc-mange.

The sybils are part of Christian symbolism because the "Sybbilline Oracles" of late Antiquity, accepted during the Middle Ages, were Christian pseudepigraphical works which made them predict the coming of Christ (along lines reminiscent of the Fourth Eclogue, but rather more circumstantial).

A couple of notes on terminology: the "bleeding heart" is normally referred to as the "Immaculate Heart of Mary", and the litany from which much of this comes is normally called the "Litany of Loretto". (The "golden house" could very well be the Holy House of Loretto.)

Serge #256: Banc-mange... so that's the source of the current crisis.

Re: Particle, "You want it when?"

I have always liked the sign one sometimes sees in certain stores: You can have it good, you can have it cheap, you can have it fast: pick two.

I've meditated on this aphorism a lot and it seems to me a brilliant summary of actual economic principles.
If it's good and fast, it won't be cheap.
If it's cheap and good, it won't be fast.
If it's fast and cheap, it won't be good.

Elegant and true, yes?
Happy Thanksgiving to all.

259: a little like the military maxim: "You can recover lost ground. You cannot recover lost time or lost men."

No W is for Woz...?

Bruce E. Durocher II @ 261 ... suggest a complete one and it'll be in there :)

Landfill, well, to quote a rather ranty young person overheard on the subway "you can't throw things away because there is no away".

We do not, and cannot, live in an open cycle ecology. (The energy inputs are open for the time frames of interest, but the water and live dirt parts aren't.)

Note that pricing is highly distorted in the case of recycling; it's hard to figure out what the heavy subsidies of the price of oil do to plastic prices, for example. Nor is it at all straightforward to get whole system life cycle costs.

Mountain Equipment Coop takes worn polyester garments and recycles them; some of the poly fiber stuff they sell has 70% recycled content. And while they really are a Co-Op they're very much not allowed to lose money, either, so I'm pretty sure there's an economical way to do it.

In general, we as a species need to recognize that cities have ecologies and we'd do very well to make them richer and as closed-loop as we can possibly manage.

#253 Niall:

A bit more iconography:

That is indeed God the Father. The dove in that same picture is the Paraclete, God the Holy Spirit, descending on Mary. The triangle is the Trinity. God's right hand is raised in benediction. In His left hand He holds the orb of empire.

The crown over the sword dripping gold is Our Lady Queen of Martyrs.

I strongly suspect that the crown over the scroll-and-pen is Queen of Wisdom.

Dove over an altar.

That isn't just any dove. That's the Paraclete again.

Fast, good, cheap - pick two.

I've always felt that street food is the delightful exception to that rule.

On a related rhetorical note, I've heard 'smart, sexy, sane - pick any two' applied to potential girlfriends (and the variant 'smart, sexy, solvent' applied to men).

On a related rhetorical note, I've heard 'smart, sexy, sane - pick any two' applied to potential girlfriends

That's not enough information for a pick. In what way is the sanity lacking?

Final result for ABC 702 Sydney's 'library' auction (see #235) on behalf of the Indigenous Literacy Project. A literally last-minute bid brought the final total up from $5,500 to $8,000!

Latest update on DFAT (www.dfat.gov.au) contacts for Mumbai/Bombay concerns (& other problems)

Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade hotline for Australians with concerns for family or friends in Mumbai is 1800 002 214 (local call charge from anywhere in Australia).

Australians overseas requiring consular assistance should contact DFAT on +61 2 6261 3305

I hope we hear more about the main train station, where most were killed. Not hard to imagine the damage one nutter with an automatic weapon could do there.

We've heard interviews via mobile phone of people hiding in their hotel rooms while attackers hold hostages in the same building. A very strange feeling, hearing this across the far side of the Indian Ocean.

Raphael @ 268 ...
On a related rhetorical note, I've heard 'smart, sexy, sane - pick any two' applied to potential girlfriends

That's not enough information for a pick. In what way is the sanity lacking?

Oh dear. Er... if you have to ask, you've probably been lucky :)

xeger:

The question is, are we talking Faye-level crazy or Hannalore-level crazy?

albatross @ 271 ...
The question is, are we talking Faye-level crazy or Hannalore-level crazy?

We're talking "stories that get drinks bought for you for years ... presuming you survive the experience relatively intact" crazy.

Raphael (#268): That's not enough information for a pick. In what way is the sanity lacking?

Judging by the experiences of my friends who opted for the first two at the expense of the third, I'd have to say 'potentially, in any conceivable way.'

(this seems like a good time to point out that many of my friends are smart, sexy and sane or are dating women who are - I am in no way endorsing 'pick two' as a universal metric)

Thanks guys, for the pointers on iconography. The virgin/unicorn connection had occurred to me, but my initial googling didn't turn up anything. I also didn't think that unicorns were a particularly Catholic symbol, but ajay prompted me to search again. Here's a nice image: The Hunt of the Unicorn Annunciation, in which Gabriel as the hunter drives the Unicorn (Jesus) into the arms of Mary.

Thanks to Andrew and Jim for identifying the Queen of Martyrs and Queen of Wisdom (though it might also be Queen of Blog Commenters!). I searched for quite a while to try and figure out what God was doing with that green ball, and the term "orb of empire" unlocks a lot of references.

So, I think the only detail I'm still unsure about is the dove over altar image.

Jim, as the resident Paraclete-fancier, can you guess why the Spirit over an Altar is in this particular window? Nearly all those little details are from one of the Litanies of Mary. Spiritual Vessel, perhaps?

#274 [Holy] Spirit over an Altar

If I were guessing, I'd say that's the Immaculate Conception (Mary herself being born without sin, to become the Mother of God).

267: optimistic. My experience would be "pick up to one"...

"Well, I thought that since the Science Fair is open to everyone... I could submit my gingerbread steam engine... Or the hurdy-gurdy that grinds out sausages and political analysis..."

That's what you get when the Foglio Family takes on Cinderella. It starts here - with a Prologue the day before.

Because no one else has mentioned it, and because there might be someone else who doesn't watch TV on Thanksgiving: there was a surprise at the Macy's Parade.

Just in case some of you aren't convinced yet that parts of the American Right have lost contact with reality.

(Warning: Links goes to the National Review. Hat tip Thers at Eschaton.)

(To be fair, this modern thing where we occassionally have a crisis allthough there's nothing physically wrong is kind of weird when you think about it, and someone who seems to know more about Ancient Greece than about the present might really be unable to grasp it.)

Lee @278, nice, allthough perhaps whoever posted that to Youtube shouldn't have given it away in the title.

Hey! London tunnel for sale!

The tunnels were built in 1940 during the blitz, when Britain came under sustained air attacks from Nazi Germany. The government decided to create eight underground bomb shelters in London, as the city’s subway stations were not big enough to accommodate all those seeking refuge.

One for Abi, perhaps.

Book purchased yesterday, new, one remarkably screwed copy of Neal Asher's _The Engineer Reconditioned_, 320-page US 2006 paperback printing by Wildside Press. Good things first: the binding is as good as any cheap paperback can be expected to be, the cover illo is nicely surreal, the typesetting is reasonable, there aren't many typos, the page numbers are consecutive, and the stories are probably pretty good.

However, something has gone terribly wrong. Firstly, the table of contents doesn't entirely match: _Proctors_ isn't listed in the TOC but starts on p185, and most other entries are a page or two off. This is just a sign of the terrible mess to follow.

Most of the stories contain a... *discontinuity* at some point, at which the plot, characters, locale, and to some extent even the writing style change. There are no textual references across this gap, and are many dangling references to events you didn't read about. Each story is preceded by a blurb about it, and those blurbs frequency reference other works which have no entries in the TOC, but which from textual context match up with the latter side of those discontinuities. The discontinuities are *not* on page boundaries, but are always at paragraph breaks.

The book ends with the story 'Tiger Tiger', with the text:

"I will win", he said and he knew it to be true. So ma
people do
The sugar dog howled

which is obvious textual corruption (the only outright corruption of individual words I've spotted).

I suspect that, somewhere, there are a bunch of proof pages that got lost from this anthology (unthology?), following which the typesetters merrily set it and copies were printed and distributed with nobody noticing that the former half of most of the stories had been chopped out and glued to the latter half of completely different stories that were missing their front ends. (For all I know, some stories are missing completely.)

I think this book would have been better titled 'The Engineer, Deconditioned'.

I wonder if the whole print run is screwed? What about any other editions? Anyone know? (Anyone know what Neal thinks of this? One hopes he knows and that it doesn't remain forever a mystery to him why sales of this book are so low / high...)

Here's a picture of Charlemagne holding the Orb of Empire.

Nix @281:

I am not sure what I could do to help, of course, but I am strongly curious...can you determine on what pages the discontinuities occur? Page numbers?

Just wondering if there's a consistency to the spacing of the oddities.

(Funny it should be Neal Asher, of whom my husband has been a fan for some time, to the extent of arranging an online interview on his blog.)

Epacris #269, thanks for updating the charity auction, and such. I've not been able to get a lot done lately, and am behindhand in much. The final bid was a happy surprise indeed for everyone. The sort of good thing that helps balance out all the bad so prominent in the last couple of days' news.

Niall #274 and replies and updates: in my experience, the Paraclete is usually called the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit, and almost always shown as a dove. Another little unexpectedly obscure image is the orb. Perhaps because thru my childhood one of the common pictures of HM, QEII seen in many places around was in her Coronation outfit, holding sceptre & orb, its symbolism of power and authority seemed obvious.

Nix #281, fascinating, and frustrating.

And I'll spare us all my rave about clothes sizes and my problems with them. Except to add that pockets are a big bugbear for me. I once worked through a whole women's clothing floor of a department store looking for a blouse or top and couldn't find a single one in any size with any pocket at all. It's one reason I still wear a bra

I wasn't expecting help: I just thought you might be interested in a bizarre not-exactly-binding error, and maybe have some ideas about what on earth might have happened :)

It's quite hard to determine all the discontinuity locations, because I haven't read any of the stories before (it's a collection of mostly old and otherwise-unpublished stuff). Let's see... a minimum list, working largely by isolation of character naming shifts and thus capable of missing chunks chopped out of the middle of a story, is:

... p114, line 6 (before: Jain, _The Engineer_; after: hornets, possibly _Snairls_)
... p151, line 5 (before: the Skinner, _Spatterjay: after, Pallister, the Barrelman, Hinks, title unknown)
... p165, line 0 (a page break! I just spotted this one) (before: Pallister et al; after: Carmen Smith, Mark Christian, the Orbonnai)
... p319, textual corruption and abrupt ending of last story, _The Gurnard_, which is also missing its title page (but apparently only its title page) so I mistook it for a continuation of _Tiger Tiger_ in the post above. I suspect this is near the actual ending, so maybe this story lost its first and last page.

I somehow pity the story glimpsed between p151 and p165, an isolated middle without beginning or end. No story should have this done to it.

One thing this forced conflation of unrelated plots has done is to bring to light Asher's apparent obsession with names patterned after 'Jane'. In one half-book he has the Jain, Janer, Jan, Cheyne, and Jamie. I don't think any would share stories were it not for this, though.)

Sorry, I have to disagree with,"smart, sexy, sane" I have dated a number of smart and sane women. That combination usually ends up with sexy, because sexy isn't an innate aspect, but an attributed one.

Terry Karney @ 286 ...
I've always interpreted the sexy in that aphorism as meaning considered notably attractive according to the standards of their community rather than notably attractive to me.

Terry @286, xerger @287 --

There are also the -- often idiosyncratic -- precursors for sexy, which do not guarantee that someone will be found sexy but may well guarantee that they are not so regarded by a particular individual.

I was startled setting eyes on someone in FULL head to toe Islamic female modesty attire in a local store, black drape in the form of a cone forming a cone with the only break in the black fabric, being a horizontal band about an inch high and five inches wide, showing a pair of eyes and the bridge of a nose--no veil of fabric over the eyes,, but other than the eyes and nose bridge, COMPLETE coverage, forming, again, a cone of black fabric all around.

Terry, #286: I think "sexy" in that construction is supposed to refer to what I call "arm candy" -- someone whose presence in your company will cause other people to notice and envy you. This has very little to do with what you may actually find sexually attractive.

Merging both 'sexy' and 'full Muslim attire' - this cartoon by fuffer, aka Mitra Farmand, makes me laugh very hard.

Another "not in Kansas any more" moment today at my daughter's dance lesson.

The students are all little girls from the ages of about 4 to 10. They tend to wear tights and leotards. Obviously, for the younger students, going to the toilet is a logistical challenge.

There's not much of a parents' waiting area in the building where the lessons are held, so most parents go elsewhere for the duration of the lesson and come back at the end to pick the kids up. (I went to the grocery store, but came back early.)

The result, today, was three little girls who needed to pee, one after another, just before the end of class. The first one sought out her father, who was in the parents' area, and he took her to the toilet.

The first kid left the toilet to go back to the class, and the next little girl (not related to him, remember) just walked in. He helped all three girls in the toilet, getting their dance clothes off and on again. The toilet door was closed at the usual times in the process.

Nobody blinked an eye.

Abi @ 292... Does that say something about America, or about Holland?

Serge #293: Both, I'd say.

I can recall my cousin Aida, automatically heading towards the men's room in a restaurant in Spain in 1968 because her father normally took her to the bathroom in a public place. This was in a repressive Roman Catholic dictatorship forty years ago, when she was a little girl.

Fragano, is your cousin a coloratura?

Fragano @ 294... I expect that she was left feeling greatly embarassed, at best.

Raphael@268, Xeger@270: the definitive rant on 'smart, sexy, sane' (girlfriends), albeit slightly reframed, is in the lovely graphic novel "Why I Hate Saturn" by Kyle Baker. http://www.kylebaker.com/www/book/wihs.htm

Anne's friend has lost his GF, and says now he has to decide whether or not he wants his new GF to be stupid, ugly, or crazy. As she plies him for details, the rationale emerges. (Parenthetical aside to any linguistic razor feministas-- I am summarizing the author's ironic statements, not presenting my own views.)

a) If the girl (he says girl) is pretty, she learns in life that she doesn't need to develop her mind.

b) If she is not pretty, she develops her mind in order to compensate.

c) What about pretty girls with great minds? Ah, they have developed their minds to compensate for their neurotic beliefs, including the belief that they are not pretty. They are the crazies.

It's an... interesting... viewpoint. Not entirely without a few kernels of wheat amongst the chaff.

BTW, even tho I've previewed this vignette, the actual presentation thereof is much more entertaining, and the description of riding the bus in California is alone worth the book. At least, if one has ever come from a Northeastern city like Boston and attempted to use the buses outside SF. ;-)

Niall@274: The pigeon or turtle-dove was the burnt offering (for purity and obligation) that the poor could bring in lieu of the more expensive animals.

Niall, Ajay, Jim --

Paraclete, Trinity, yes on all points. When you've got an older guy, a triangle, and a bird in close proximity, it's the Holy Trinity.

Let us consider also that burning shrubbery under the feet of the central figure. If you look way up close at it, it's a fruit-bearing tree. Usually in iconography that's the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. However, it's also burning without being consumed, which is the property of the Burning Bush encountered by Moses.

(For a while I wondered whether there wasn't an implicit Tree of Jesse in it as well, since one of the figures in the group to the left of the tree is King David (note the harp); but on the other hand, he could just be there as a prophetic figure. On the other other hand, making him more prominent -- he does stand out -- could be seen as making a gesture in that direction without adding more complications to an already densely symbolic design.)

In the meantime, we definitely have a fruit-bearing tree (i.e., the Fall) combined with non-consuming fire (i.e., God's presence). My guess is that it signifies the traditional formulation, "Through woman came sin into the world; through woman came also the means of sin's redemption."

As I say, I'm guessing; but if I'm right about the significance, that combined image is an elegant encapsulation of it.

Moving on to the two towers in the emblems around the edges of the window, neither one of them looks to me like any of the traditional representations of St. Barbara's tower, and Barbara isn't a particularly Marian saint. Identifying the larger tower on the right side with Loreto seems like a good bet. The smaller, hazily-seen tower on the left side of the window is a minor puzzle. It might be an emblem of Mary as hortus conclusus, the walled garden that's an image of virginity, seen from outside the walls for simplicity of design.

It might mean something else -- this window is a dense pottage of Marian imagery -- but that would be my guess.

And one more question, brought on by staring at closeup shots of that burning tree: what is going on with those two cyan-blue figures flanking the tree? The one on the right is holding a lily -- very traditional -- but the top of its halo has a pointy extension the likes of which I've never seen before. The figure on the left is holding a sword in one hand, but has some kind of device in the other hand, and appears to be drawing a polyhedral figure around its head, which, if continued to form a closed figure, would have four points not three.

This isn't the square halo you see on people depicted during their lifetimes. For one thing, the figure already has a circular halo. For another, the polyhedron is rotated 45 degrees from the usual orientation of square haloes. For a third, whoever heard of someone drawing in their own halo?

Jim, any ideas? Could this be someone trying to sneak in a very discreet reference to the idea of Mary as Co-Redemptrix?

He Allah, Strata, c) describes me exactly. I am totally serious.

I knew, he said parenthetically, that I was smart to stay away from WalMart on Friday morning.

Sajia #295: Not so far as I know.

Serge #296: I don't think so. She was only a little girl -- about six or seven at the time.

We were, at that time, more entranced by the sight of her younger brother and my youngest brother nattering away to each other nine to the dozen -- even though neither spoke a word of the other's language.

Strata, #297: b) If she is not pretty, she develops her mind in order to compensate.

Why is this is a problem, exactly...?

I have a question about Montreal's worldcon... I went to their memberhip registration page today and it looks like they can be paid for by checks isued in the US, but I'm not quite sure. I'd register online, but they're not set up for that.

Serge, why are you asking about it here instead of contacting the convention directly?

From what I can see on their website, the only payment restriction is that if you're using Euros, British pounds or Australian Dollars, you need to contact the various convention agents for those currencies.

After you download and print out the registration form, you just fill it out and mail it in with your check.

They also have a contact email address for Paypal.

I'd expect doves anyway, as a reference to the Annunciation; there's any number of Renaissance pictures of that which have not only Gabriel, but also the dove, sometimes sending a ray of light (or is it divine essence, so we're seeing the impregnation?) right toward Mary.

Serge: I'll make an enquiry, ought to have an answer by Monday, latest, if you've not gotten one sooner.

Earl Cooley III @ 306... Oh, I did think of asking them directly, but I wasn't sure I'd hear back before the membership costs go up. As for PayPal, it seems like we can use that only if we print the membership form, fill it up manually, scan it and email the attachment to them. Wha the heck. I'll send them an email and ask. Qui ne risque rien n'a rien.

Terry Karney @ 308... I just wrote to them, but let me know if you hear back first.

Things discovered while channel-surfing department:

There is an episode of Route 66 which guest-stars Peter Lorre, Lon Chaney Jr., and Boris Karloff. Playing themselves.

Strata @ 297, I've tried to parse it but can't: What is a "linguistic razor feminista?"

I also think that quote says a lot more about gender roles and expectations of women than it does about women themselves -- and it continues to imply the impossible perfect woman, who exceeds every societal expectation without showing the slightest awareness of them or putting forth any apparent effort.

Saw the new Disney CGI movie BOLT yesterday, while visiting friends in the Bay Area. We watched the 3D version, which was interesting but I don't think is a necessity.

This is not a Pixar film, but John Lasseter did have a hand in it, and the main Disney studio has definitely learned or thing or two from their masterful subsidiary.

Bolt is a dog, a little white shepherd who is the star of a action-adventure TV series. Only, he doesn't know it. The studio carefully arranges shoots, sets, and props to make him think he actually has super powers and is actually defending his tweener mistress against a sinister mastermind.

After a particularly stressful shot, in which mistress Penny is kidnapped, Bolt bolts and get stuck in a crate bound for Manhattan. There he meets up with a stray cat who he bullies into helping him return to Hollywood.

In a word . . . sweet.

The characters -- visuals and voice -- are great. The plot moves along briskly and there are some truely hilarious slapstick bits.

Like the best Pixar movies, this is as enjoyable for grownups as kids.

When it was over my college buddy and I both wanted to go home and hug our dogs

Nix @285:
Sounds like someone dropped the deck to me....

#280, Linkmeister, London Tunnel For Sale

I have heard of someone who had a mushroom farm inside the Maginot line.

Erik @ #315, in furtherance of globalization, I hope the crop was Shiitake.

Strata @297 c) What about pretty girls with great minds? Ah, they have developed their minds to compensate for their neurotic beliefs, including the belief that they are not pretty. They are the crazies.

But how many pretty girls don't have a neurotic belief that they aren't pretty? The world messes young women (not to mention older ones) up a lot on those matters. As the Crib Notes for the Turing Test put it, "Males really like their own penises, but not anyone else's. Women don't like anything about their bodies. In neither case should you warmly agree." I once heard a long conversation between two pretty attractive teenage girls about how ugly they thought they were (no, they weren't calling each other ugly, they complained to each other about their own ugliness). Was quite an eye-opener.

IMO, reading that joke either literally or as a statement about gender roles is missing the point[1]. When you're in the dating market, you routinely run into people who seem to hit all of your "attractive" buttons except that they max out one or two negatives, too--the very pretty and nice and smart girl you start dating, only to discover the vast storehouse of crazy that is her inner life; the guy who seems really nice, looks great, seems to be quite solid, till you learn about his awful temper and his drinking problem. And so on. Think of the common complaint from single women that all the men they know are either unattractive, married, or gay. It's the same phenomenon.

[1] Unless the point is finding outrage in random comments by strangers.

Teresa: I don't think the two towers are particularly puzzling. The Litany of Loretto includes the epithets 'Tower of David' and 'Tower of Ivory', and that seems to me a sufficient explanation.

Regarding the two angels flanking the tree: I think they are Cherubim or Seraphim. These traditionally have six wings; the two they fly with, and also two to cover their face and two to cover their feet. So the pointy things over their heads are pairs of head-wings; and there are similar pointy things under their feet.

The one on the left may be the cherub with the fiery sword who guarded the way to the tree of life - though his fiery sword seems to have been divided into a straightforward sword in one hand and a torch in the other. The one on the right then holds a lily, the symbol of Mary, another reference to the idea that what is lost through Eve is restored through Mary.

albatross @ 318, if that was directed at me, I wasn't particularly "outraged," but saw stuff between the lines that I thought was interesting. The question about what a linguistic razor feminista was was an honest one. I really can't parse it.

And I don't exactly think it's the same as "unattractive, married, or gay" because there's not the commentary about how men learn to be one way or another. Unattractive men can't find anyone, attractive ones get snapped up by women, and what, the ones who are attractive but can't find a woman turn to men?

Like it or not, gender roles are involved in that joke. I don't find it particularly outrage-inducing, but they're there.

Regarding the two cyan angels, I do believe they are Michael and Gabriel. Here they are again in the Jesus window, with their sword and lily, flanking the angel Raphael and Tobiah with his fish. Here is Michael with his sword again, and Gabriel with his lily, both in the Joseph window.

I don't know what's with their halos in the Mary window.

Serge (#305): They cashed my US-drawn check (mailed in with a printed reg form), so I'd say the answer is most likely "yes".

Christopher Davis @ 322... Thanks!

I've come up with my own theory as to why all the attractive straight men are gone by the time straight women hit their late twenties. A lot of girls go for the Alpha Male types when they're in their late teens, early twenties, even though they don't have a chance with them. The smart ordinary girls pick up all the nice but shy guys who need a bit of "molding". So by the time women are in their late twenties, all the nice shy guys are taken, and all the Alpha Males are either taken or are revealed to be Alpha Arseholes.

"Girls flirt with the dangerous guy, they don't bring him home; they marry the good guy."
"I can be the good guy."
"Logan, the good guy sticks around."

For your holiday listening pleasure:

Linus and Lucifer

Andrew, Niall --

Of course you're right, it's Gabriel with a lily, as in Ecce Ancilla Domini. Jim did suggest to me in chat that the one with a sword might be Michael, but I balked at imagining Michael with his hair pulled up in a chignon. I was forgetting that angels are genderless, and that Michael's usual armor and mini-skirt are merely traditional.

Meanwhile, further evidence that the right-wing base has lost its mind. I'm going to complain about this one to YouTube.

TNH @327, is that second link right? It goes to an obvious parody news site, with videos hosted on Blip.tv, not YouTube.

Artist Craig Russell has taken on the task of adapting Neil Gaiman’s novella The Dream Hunters into a 4-issue comic book. To say the least, it is a pleasure to read and to look at.

Dr. Horrible is now available for pre-order at amazon.com. Not yet available at amazon.ca, amazon.co.uk, etc.

Printed on demand on recordable media, hmm. I prefer something that won't be damaged by light exposure.

Early college memory during Freshman Orientation week:

A male classmate was looking me. What's wrong with him, he's looking at me as if I were female!, I thought.

The treatment I'd gotten for all my previous alleged education by alleged peers was that of an It and not the Bel Thorne type, which grew in size to that of a cube that was five feet by five feet by five feet. I didn't have a female identity.... I wasn't girly, wasn't interested in girly stuff, was academically way too talented in stuff that only boys were supposed to be allowed to be and acknowledged to be interested and competent in (expect that a classmate transferred in in junior high or high school who was very sexually alluring and fast and somehow she was socially acceptable despite being talented in math and science, somehow she was all of desired and approved of and appreciately and socially values and academically allowed by the same classmates who treated me like shit to be talented and not abused and socially ostracized.... and somehow avoided being labeled "tramp."

It was definitely a double standard era... on second thought, she occupied a positon similar to that that the female lead character of that surpassing piece of hypocritical shit Saturday Night Fever occupied--in that movie there were two categories of females--"good girls" who became honored wives and mothers, and "whores" -- the exception being the female lead that the male lead was lusting after, and him sleeping with her somehow didn;t turn her into a whore, because he was In Love with her... but any OTHER non-virgin female was a "whore."

As for most of the males who were contemporaries of mine in public school -- they were far far FAR below "mercy fuck" level as regards worth.

There are reasons I've never gone to a high school reunion... at a minimum there are several people whom I regard castration with a dull rusty spoon as entirely too kind a fate for.... I would not maintain my civility unless someone paid me, and even then.... what they did to me, saints might cry at. No, there wasn't any rape involved, or knives used, but the constant verbal and physical abuse of insults, occasional innuendo, and what today would get charges of pernicious assault and battery....

Meanwhile... I think I'm one of the few unattached women whom Bob Asprin never made a pass at. Perhaps I intimidated him, thinking back. I never regarded myself as intimidating, but in retrospect....

I had brains and beauty, and wasn't able to intentionally exploit them/didn't regard exploiting people as fair....

I did notice that males tended to get attached before the age of 30, if they were worthwhile sorts.... around the age of 29 those who weren't married, suddenly started looking in earnest, even if they were lying to themselves about it. I saw a lot of hunting pack behavior in my Air Force days, and a lot of posing for the associates, and a lot of self-deluding. The Social Proper Behavior was that someone who was unmarried and unattached was supposed to be attachment-averse and not want to be attached, that they were supposed to be bachelors with roving eye and fancy-free and footloose etc. playing the field and not being tied down etc. egc. etc. -- and the reality was that most of them wanted an attachment, but that wasn't anything anyone was supposed to be allowed to admit. So they didn't, and they lied to themselves, and they gave off the worst damned sets of mixed signals, and were, again, busily lying to themselves about what they were doing and what they wanted. Graphic example "If you are not trying to get into my pants, then WHY is your hand down in my shirt?!" The fellow seemed GENUINELY surprised that his hand was down my shirt....

Socially, the culture DEMANDED maturity of girls that it demanded boys NOT have. "Boys will be boys" was merely one expression of it. "You are a Young Lady, Young Ladies Do Not..." was another.

Females who took too long to grow up/notice things/were socially clueless, were SOL regarding the premium males.... the culture inculculates values about what a good partner is, for both males, and females. Way back when girls were suppposed to play dumb and never show up boys, never have grades that were too good, never do anything to be accused of being a show off or be obviously better at things than the boys, and not be interested in things mathematical, engineering, scientific, mechanical... safe were being good in art and English and nurturing stuff, and to have ambition to be an artist, or teacher of public school, or nurse, or secretary, or run a boutique store, or be a future homemaker, all those were socially acceptable and approved choices.... oh, and girls were supposed to be socially gracious and graceful and socially ept.

Girls and boys were taught to value different things... girls were supposed to live vicariously through other people, and pick mates who would be good providers with good incomes and perhaps good manners. Boys were taught to aspire, and to want males who pandered to them and weren't competition intellectually.... the girls were to grow up to handle Social Stuff and the boys would be men in the work force with positions and earnings. It was okay for girls to aspire to positions in art, or work as teachers, or nurses, or fashion business workers, or bank tellers, things where there no threat to male aspirations or pretensions of supremacy relevant to those areas at those levels.

The concept of a partnership of equals.... wasn't there.

And I'm appalled at the infestation of paranormal romances with "traditional" values of ill-behaved Alpha Male tamed by falling in love. Ugh.

(Ironically, traditional shtetl values appear to have been the women working and earning income, and the men studying all day, as the ideal.... the American Nuclear Family is a nasty pernicious myth perpetrated by greedy capitalists and by the distortion of values where a non-working wife was a status symbol...)

PAH

Oh, continuing on with the rant, girls were supposed to be the keepers of the social side of things, always correctly dressed, always properly demure to other's faces for public perception.

Additional socially acceptable aspirations--hostess, fashionista (though that term wasn't around then), and ENJOYING girly stuff--baby focus (I was one of those people who was aghast at the baby-centricity/baby focus of "oh look at the cute baby!" stuff... helplessness has never been something appealing/a virtue in my view... the idea that because I was female my brain should turn to mush about babies... euwwww!), fashion, hairstyling, makeup, trendiness.... the idea that the only things that counted were appearances... particularly because the "Oh how CUTE!" little girl cute clothing was stuff I hated.... being scratched by nylon lace that abraded my skin the to the point of bleeding from it, clothing that impeded movement... these were things I hated.... the idea that clothing was for other people's pleasure for viewing and that my comfort was a total non-issue.... I have decades of hatred for the fashion industry and the mindset that appearance is paramount. It;s the whole "you exist for OTHER people's pleasure and convenience!/You are an APPLIANCE!" thing.

Paula

Ironically, traditional shtetl values appear to have been the women working and earning income, and the men studying all day, as the ideal.

OK, your rant got me going too. That traditional shtetl attitude (the man is too busy being Talmudic to do anything practical) always struck me as just another way for the men to take advantage of gender stereotypes to get out of doing an honest day's work. I think a lot of Jewish women feel the same way; I've met many Jewish women, including several female rabbis, and one female cantor married to a rabbi, who were very definite about not allowing those stereotypes to stand.

All of the gender stereotypes, male and female, depend on seeing one gender or the other as, well, Other, not us, less than human, don't feel things the way we do, etc. And in most societies, anyone who's even the least bit subhuman doesn't get to complain about being exploited. It's only "natural", after all, for values of natural containing large amounts of artifice.

debcha@304: good question! If I could lay hands on my copy of the book, I'd try to get some direct quotes.

Caroline@312: an adjective weapon noun tuple. :-) Srsly, didn't want to imply that the wording was being preserved from the original author to a point requiring dissection.

For an additional image of Mary as the burning bush -
http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=1851

And, does anyone know the date on this piece? Harry Clarke was a well-known Irish artist, but his studio continued after his death (c. 1931) until the early 1970s. I can't find this church in a list of glass he personally oversaw or worked on, so I'm curious as to the date. His studio did continue work in his style - but I'm betting this is a later piece, for no other reason than that the drawing isn't as tight as the pieces I'm familiar with.

The Life and Work of Harry Clarke, by Nicola Gordon Bowe, published by the Irish Academic Press in 1984 is a good biography of Clarke.

The guess (somewhere) that the item at the foot of the window is the Ark of the Covenant is correct - it answers the description of the Ark, and the Ark is a Marian symbol inasmuch as both contained the Word of God. That ties it in with the Burning Bush and the manger as well.

My best guess for the five bearded heads surmounted by a crown would be Queen of Prophets. That's a guess, based on considering the number five to be significant. If it is, there are five major Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Baruch, Ezekiel and Daniel and that's the only group of five that Mary is Queen of according to the Litany of Loretto. I also like this interpretation because they're in the same tier as the Sibyls and Prophets - although the repeating of the prophets theme is something I don't like about it.

The other picture on this tier, the dove over the altar is the Holy Ghost, the inspirer of prophecy, as I read it.

One of the things that bothers me somewhat is that I am having trouble deriving a strict reading of the Litany from this window. If I were working on this project, I would ask to see the Parish archives, especially documentation relating to the commissioning of the windows. Patrons have been known to dictate a work's schema, without close adherence to a particular theme or literary work.

Margaret, the church was completed in 1937, and these windows were not designed by Harry Clarke himself, they were designed by Richard King after Clarke's death. The windows were commissioned by Dean Crowe, the parish priest, who had very firm ideas about what he wanted to see in each window, which King was happy to execute.

The commissioning of the windows is described in the book by Murray I referenced, who goes into the personalities involved in rather more detail than he discusses the actual images in the windows.

I'm rather glad that the female lead in my NaNoWriMo book, while doing some of the cliched romantic stuff, leaves the guy, for most of the book, to train as a commercial pilot, and has to tell him how to sabotage a generator set.

Well, that's NaNoWriMo over and done wilh. Now I have to do an editing pass, flesh out character descriptions, add a few names, all sorts of stuff.

52,909 words, and I might have had a couple of hundred more if I hadn't fallen asleep. There's a plot hole needs patching, and I want to check over the timeline. But, on the whole, I consider it a readable tale.

I'm sure an editor would point at a lot of bad stuff. Point-of-view is a bit erratic at times. Some passages are so terse as to be laconic, some incredibly padded.

And, at the end of the day, it's not the hero or the super-professionals of the Army Union Landing Forces who deal with the bad guys: it's a bunch of the local militia with a Lewis gun and a few rifles.

They should have used thinner buttons.

Since it's not yet a sidelight or particle, I figure this hasn't been dropped here yet:

Dinosaur Sodomy on Ebay

via Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

For those with a clear southwest horizon, there will be a pretty triple conjunction this evening (Dec. 1) of the moon, Jupiter, and Venus.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/home/35217944.html

Triple conjuction

Paula, there is a *certain* amount of truth about 'ill-behaved Alpha Male tamed by falling in love', although it could more accurately be described as 'bachelor moves in with assertive human being of opposite sex and is forced to learn to keep the place clean, learn to cook non-disgusting crud, and generally think someone other than himself'. 'Domesticated' might be a better word, and it certainly doesn't just happen to Alpha Males. (It also doesn't require love, just cohabitation and the desire not to piss off your cohabitee. This is doubly important if your cohabitee is good at martial arts. ;} )

I'm somewhat amused by your age banding: my dad's the most courteous and charming fellow you could ever hope to meet, and he was 32 before he met anyone, largely because he couldn't read whatever signals they were sending him and because he was just too shy to dare ask anyone out. (He's still with her, 34 years later. I think he'd fall to pieces without her, and vice versa.)

(It is highly likely that the same will be true of me, although I can only dream of being as courteous as my dad.)

I too have never gone to a high-school reunion. I fairly often have nightmares about secondary school (roughly = US high school). Nothing bad happens in them, but the memory of the stew of horrible emotions I lived in 24 hours a day is more than enough to call the result a nightmare.

I venture to suggest that schools are bad for geeks and in general quietish people who might appear 'different'. (This was even true for me although I went to a school where academic achievement was prized: it wasn't prized by the nastier pupils, and it's them who made my life hell.)

Hey, you're a bit late to the party regarding the BT Kingsway exchange. I blogged it on the 26th of October, especially the fact there are NO RATS down there.

Re: sexy, smart and sane - statistical analysis has revealed that contrary to popular belief, physical beauty, intelligence and athleticism all positively correlate. No data on relative sanity.

It occurs to me that too many Westerners appear to think that Muslim women live lives similar to that of a Gorean slave. Whereas the lives of middle-class Muslim women, at least, are more likely to resemble Paula's; except it is the men's female relatives who choose the brides based on their conformity to femininity.

I think I shall take the safer course of slowly, carefully backing away from this thread, for now....

Steve @ 339: Big wow! I read the linked piece 45 mins ago, ran downstairs and spotted Jupiter/the moon straight off. (I'm in W France, so it was sunset at the time.) I checked again just now, and Venus is out from behind the moon, very bright, very impressive. Thanks!

Nix @340:
I venture to suggest that schools are bad for geeks and in general quietish people who might appear 'different'.

For my part, I would agree with that statement. I was bullied at school, because I was quiet and weird. It didn't get better till halfway through high school, and I only really became comfortable in a social group in college.

Now I'm worried about my son, who is quiet right now (his Dutch isn't quite up to supporting his usual level of talkativeness) and, as a foreigner, very weird. There have been little nastinesses for a while in his class—often his bike key goes missing for a day or two, meaning that we have to fetch the spare from home (inconvenient but not a disaster). The teacher has generally assumed these were just forgetfulness on his part, though it was getting a little over-frequent for that explanation to hold water.

On Friday it became unambiguous. The entire lanyard onto which his key clicks was removed from the loop on his backpack and put in the bin in the gym dressing room. I was upset, and we had a frank talk with his teacher. She asked his permission to use him as an example of the matter today.

Frankly, I didn't expect that it would come to much. Confronting bullies in my school certainly never did. But I am heartened.

Apparently she brought up the specific incident, naming no names, in front of the whole class. Afterward, the two miscreants came to her privately, confessed, and apologized; they had thought it a joke (and, probably, hadn't really recognized the degree to which the nastiness was part of the fun.)

Then, later on, in kring ("circle time", or classwide discussion), she read a poem written from the point of view of a bullied kid and solicited reactions from each of the children in the class. How did that make them feel? At the end, after everyone had spent some time thinking and talking it through, she asked my son if that was how it felt in real life.

I thought it was very subtly done, building empathy like that. The school sets a certain amount of class time aside for social development, so this fit right in. I don't expect that it will eliminate original sin from the denizens of Groep 4B, but I think it was a good way of building empathy and shaping the consensus of the class against the idea that bullying is cool.

I am also hopeful because the two kids who did it had the honesty to admit to it. The hardened bullies that put me through it when I was five years earlier than my son is now wouldn't have done so.

Caroline #320: Fair enough. My comment was snarkier than it should have been, and I apologize.

heresiarch #342: Also a bunch of other stuff, like life expectancy. I gather one theory for why it works out this way is that either genetic or environmental problems can sometimes affect development in all sorts of ways, from development of intelligence to health to appearance[1]. Though it also seems like it's the exceptions (brilliant but ugly, beautiful and dumb as a stick, pretty and smart but unhealthy and dying way too young, etc.) that stick in your mind.

[1] For an example of some of this connection, see The Wikipedia article on the 1944 Dutch Famine.

Andy Wilton @ 345 -

Way cool! Occultations are fascinating to see.

Random related link:

The Dutch Famine Study.

albatross @ 347, no apology necessary!

abi @ 346, that is truly awesome. Building empathy pretty much has to be subtly done.

A friend of mine pointed me to Don't Laugh at Me, an anti-bullying curriculum available in the U.S. (I can't currently find the sample lesson PDFs I looked at before -- maybe they took them down. If I do find them, I'll post the link.) I wanted so badly to like it, but reading over the sample lessons, I could all too easily imagine how it would be used as a springboard for further bullying. Many of the lessons ask for vulnerability -- non-anonymous discussion of how being bullied makes you feel, for example. Teachers are supposed to lay down "safe space" rules, but I know too well that those wouldn't be respected or enforced. It would be a joke to the "cool kids" and extra ammo against the bullying targets.

Unfortunately, I'm very pessimistic about the chances of stopping bullying by telling bullies that they shouldn't bully, or that their bullying hurts people. In my esperience, they'll simply build the stuff they were told along those lines into their mockery.

Sample PDFs are here.

Brava to your son's teacher, abi!

Abi @ 346... I was quiet and weird

"I'm still quiet and weird, BUT... I now have the abiveld!"

I'm glad that the teacher took care of matters for your son. It's very different from the culture we grew in, when the proper response was for us to tough it out and if we didn't, we were made to pay for it by the authorities, not the bullies.

Raphael @351:
Unfortunately, I'm very pessimistic about the chances of stopping bullying by telling bullies that they shouldn't bully, or that their bullying hurts people. In my experience, they'll simply build the stuff they were told along those lines into their mockery.

The way to stop bullying is to stop kids from becoming bullies, in my opinion. No one is marked from birth with the destiny to be a bully. The behavior comes from a particular combination of rewards (popularity, a feeling of superiority) that fill specific needs (insecurity, the hunger for certain kinds of power).

If you can either remove the reward (by creating a school culture where bullying is not cool, for instance) or meet those needs another way (create another means of establishing self-worth), then you can stop bullying.

It's hard to do. It's probably impossible to do perfectly enough that no one bullies anyone else. But punishment creates martyrs and rebels, which is less effective.

Certainly, reducing the problem is better than giving up and reckoning that, as they say, "boys will be boys"†

It helps that I am living in a strongly collective culture, and any behavior that threatens social cohesion and collaboration is frowned upon*. More than frowned upon: it's treated with disgust.

-----
† Not to downplay the particular ways that girls bully.
* There are ways that that's a bad thing, too. For instance, taking a walk alone at lunchtime is almost impossible to arrange. And the Dutch say it's harder to excel here than in the States.

abi--

I hope this solves the problem for your son.

As for me, I'd rather have left school forever than to have been made the focus of a discussion about bullying and how damaging it is. And as for telling my bullying classmates how it felt?!!

27 years after the bullying more or less stopped, I still feel ill at the thought of being asked to do this.

Serge @354:
"I'm still quiet and weird, BUT... I now have the abiveld!"

My revenge in middle and high school was to break the grade curve in any classes I shared with the bullies. The community was heavily academically oriented, and those B's and C's on their transcripts weighed heavily upon the miscreants.

Abi @ 357... "They laughed at me in high school, but I showed them! Bwahahah!!!"

Sarah S @356:

The way the teacher did it was to make the whole class enter into the experience of someone being bullied before bringing it down to specific people. Only after everyone had got their head into that space did she mention who it was who was currently in it in real life, and she didn't ask him to expand on it once he was visible.

This wasn't just aimed at the kids who had been misbehaving (they're not necessarily bullies; at 7 and 8 they're trying things out and seeing what gets rewards and what does not. Call them potential bullies. But they did come to the teacher and confess; don't write them off.). It was aimed at the other students, the ones who admire or despise and thus create the atmosphere that permits or smothers this behavior.

Those are the kids that need to identify with the victims, so they can act in solidarity.

And this is part of a wider program within the school, from what I understand, that also includes creating mediators within the peer group (it's a sought-after role and includes special training).

My son didn't feel put on the spot. He felt less isolated after the other students had spent some time in his mental space. And the other kids were surprised that he was unhappy, sorry to see it, and resolved to be more watchful to make sure he doesn't feel that way again.

abi

I'm really glad that it worked that way.

Memories of bullying makes me wish I had a time machine and a taser.

Or better yet, one of the bowel disruptors that Spider Jerusalem uses to great effect in Transmetropolitan.

abi @355, you're right, doing something is still better than doing nothing, and everything else I can think of that could be done would probably be even worse, and I'm glad that it seems to work out well for your son- it's just that I wish I could be more optimistic that anything can work at all. I hope I'm wrong.

Has anyone else seen this document linked to by The Agitator. The claim seems to be that intelligence and military agencies and technology were used in the surveillance of the RNC protesters (I assume including the ones who got pre-emptively arrested or got their heads busted).

My visceral response to Paula is that while the fashion industry may be crap (and it is!), looking "good" and well presented is not. I'm going to take a page from Misty Lackey here and state that well-fitted, clean, and fashionable clothing is like armor - people only truly notice and snipe when you don't have it and it protects you by giving you self-confidence when you do. All clothing makes a statement about the person. We have choices in materials, colors, patterns, styles, just as we have in word choice and phrasing. We can make our clothing or buy it. From what you've said, Paula, you don't like the "exist for others" mindset that seems to go along with this - but you usually choose your words with care, and I assume that is not only because you want to get your point across, but because you value the opinion of people in this forum of you and your wordsmithing cabibilities.

My job is a job based on appearances. I need to present as competent, professional, and successful while still being both "with it" in terms of fashion and an individual. If I fail on any of these points, in demeanor or in appearance, I lose customers. People do judge you by what you're wearing, and we all know it. They also judge you by your hobbies, your preferences, all of it. I'm a reader of sf and a geek, as are most of us in this forum. I'm an academic, a medievalist specializing in textiles and domestic material culture. And none of that matters to my customers, except in terms of how it lets me relate to them. I need to hit those subliminal cues that they can trust me with their largest investment and often the purchase that matters most emotionally. I need to be someone who understands all those domestic, feminine things to help them find a home for their family. I also need to be the hard, successful professional who is competent to advise them on how to spend that much money and will fight to get them the best price. I need to establish myself as both those things in 3 min. That's what they tell us we've got to convince a buyer or seller to trust us. If I look slovenly or ill-kept, I have to fight harder in that fleeting time frame. Appearances are everything.

As a dovetail from the discussion about uses of clothing and my comment of clothing as armor, one of the best things about properly chosen clothing is the subliminal category it puts me in. We've gotten enlightened men past responding with "Oh, that professional woman must need a man to provide for her!", but there is still a fine line between clothing that flatters and clothing that makes me attractive. I need clothing that flatters *without* making me hit the "attractive and available" buttons for these nice young men that I'm helping to buy their first home, or those same buttons that make me a threat to their girlfriends or wives. Demure and socially acceptable is good. Unthreatening is very good. I'll happily take that pigeonhole in my professional life because it means I am out of reach as anything more than a friend.

Combine these things and it means tall boots, ankle-length skirts, short jackets and blazers, high-necked blouses, and my hair in a braid or bun. My clothing tells a story about me and who I am, what I do. I need to be happy with that story before I set out in the morning, otherwise the goals of my day just became a lot harder, both in terms of my self-confidence, and in the perception of my customer base who must have confidence in me.

Raphael, #351: Unfortunately, that is all too true. Part of the reason for this is that acceptance of bullying is heavily loaded into our culture; we pay lip service to the notion that it's bad, but there are rarely if ever any real-life consequences. And on the rare occasions when a group of children does start to ostracize a bully for bullying, the most common response for adults in positions of authority to insist that they stop!

In adult society, bullies are frequently very successful; their behavior is framed in positive words like "go-getter" and "hard-hitting". They achieve that success by virtue of being willing to run over anything and anyone who gets in their way.

Changing this paradigm is going to be a long, hard slog. And it's not enough to discourage bullying in general (though that desperately needs to be done); children also need to be taught active, effective defenses against it -- not the conventional wisdom of "they're just jealous" and "ignore them and they'll stop", but things that ACTUALLY WORK. John Barnes' Orbital Resonance includes a chilling illustration of what happens when someone from a bullying culture is introduced into a bunch of kids who have been taught not to be bullies but have never been taught any defenses.

Part of the problem is that we don't really know what actually works, because not enough study has been done, and it's hard to get the studies done because most people don't think it's that big a deal. These things all feed into each other.

Serge, I must know....

Have you put up your holiday decorations yet? I'm not seeing anything on your LJ...

Paula, #331: Unfortunately, you exist in a world filled with other people. The connection that you don't seem to have made is that there's a difference between "dressing for other people's pleasure" and "dressing in a way that will not bring you into negative focus". By conflating the two, you bring yourself a lot of unnecessary misery.

sisuile, #364: You seem to be doing just a little of that yourself when you say that well-fitted, clean, and fashionable clothing is like armor. What I'm seeing here is that both of you are using a binary mode when a trinary would be more suitable. There is "fashionable", there is "dowdy", and then there is the wide range in between, which is where I try to fit.

I don't follow fashion trends, because I have no interest in replacing my entire wardrobe every 2 years. I find well-made clothes in a cut and style that's not going to be "SO last season" a year from now, and which suit my build and coloring, and then I wear the hell out of them. Yes, that makes buying clothes (even underwear, which is my own business and no one else's!) more of a challenge, and I do my share of grumping about it. Sometimes I can't buy a specific item because the current style is severely wrong in one way or another. (I'm thinking about the time I was looking for boots and could only find them with a style of heel that I knew was going to be outdated in 6 months; I just waited out the trend.) In a pinch, I shop in thrift stores, where I may be able to find an item that's not currently in style but is exactly what I want.

In the long run, I dress for ME, not for anyone else -- but I also have to live in the world, and the world is full of other people. My goal is for their reaction to me to be effectively neutral, neither "Wow, she's fashion-forward!" nor "Eew, she looks like something the dog dragged in." And it is possible to hit that sweet spot with reasonable consistency, once you realize what you're looking for.

Ah, here's my favorite news story of the day. The Beeb have apologized for John Barrowman exposing himself - during a radio interview.

Terry Karney...

I just received an email from Montreal's worldcon about memberships:

We're working on getting an interactive version of the form up on the website in the next week or so. That way, you wouldn't have to download or scan the form -- if you want to wait a few more days, that may be easier for you.

Tania @ 366...

Did I decorate our home as soon as Turkey Day was over? I didn't. I did it two weeks before. Here are the results. I had decided this was the best time because my wife was still in the hospital, recovering from her knee-replacement surgery, and filled with happy juice, so there was no way she could object. Bwahahahah!!!

Serge @370 - My apologies! My RSS feeds are have piled up, and I've been working backwards, but keeping an eye out for your decorations. I'm back to "Something the Lord made" for you.

Thanks for sharing the Montreal information. John and I are trying to decide if we should go. I'm voting yes, of course...

Tania @ 371... I highly recommend that movie, and your going to the worldcon. Maybe you should lie to your hubby and tell him that next year's worlcon, just like this year, will share its location with a tractor con.

Am I the only one who finds it distressing that when kids are bullied for so long that they finally go nuts and start shooting, everyone acts as if their behavior was just one of those inexplicable acts of madness? The Columbine shooters asked the "jocks" to stand up, remember? I'm not trying to excuse them (or any other suicide terrorist), but bullying leads (in some cases) to mental illness, and mental illness (in a few cases) leads to school shootings.

I readily admit that when I was in high school, there were certain other kids without whom I thought the world would be a better place. The most I ever did, though, was plunge a three-inch thorn into the calf of one of my tormentors as he stood over me amid my scattered books. I feel absolutely no shame for having done so—but what if I'd had access to a gun?

Am I the only one who thinks it might be worthwhile to impress upon bullies that they shouldn't bully, not only because "it's wrong" but because "someone might fucking shoot your loser ass"?

Patrick... Thanks for the Particle that links to Frank M Robinson's post about being in Milk. I'm looking forward to seeing the movie.

Sidelight, Serge.

I stand corrected, Xopher.

Conjunction my hole, that was an occultation!

Xopher, I don't think that telling bullies that their victims might turn on them will work, because they are usually good at picking on people who won't. Bullies who aren't good at that get the snot beaten out of them.

I agree with abi that it has to be a social thing: it has to be "not ok" to be a bully. Most kids aren't bullies, and bullies only thrive where most kids look the other way.

The boys schools I attended were all places where bullying and even fighting were not OK, despite a certain amount of "Rugby Player = Not as Uncool As His IQ Would Suggest" attitude from the authorities.

I have a feeling, based on my childhood experiences and those of my kids, that a lot of schoolyard bullies end up as school counselors and administrators. At least, the counselors and administrators I've had to deal with all sided with the bullies, no matter what the school's written policy was.

Lila, habitual bullies are like habitual criminals: they've dealt with the system for so long that they know well what they can get away with.

This doesn't mean that the schools or indeed the police are all sympathetic ex-bullies and criminals, it just means it's harder for decent people to deal with them.

abi, that's wonderful news about your son's teacher. I wish I'd had teachers like that when I was being seriously bullied (in comparison to the many years when I was not seriously bullied, just ostracized).

When I was in the 7th grade (and I was 10 going on 11, when my classmates were mostly 11 and 12 years old), I was assigned to two classes with someone who hated me, and those two periods were gym and lunch, perfect times to attack. My mother figured out something was wrong, and called the principal. He came down and talked to me in public, during gym class. You perceive the problem, I'm sure.

In the long run, my stoicism lent me some strength, and all of the girls who joined my attacker ended up being suspended/expelled from the public school. They were doing other things that helped the administration do this, like smoking (against the rules for middle schoolers), and so on. I suppose the school had a weak anti-bullying culture, of sorts, that helped minimize the problems. Certainly my attackers felt the need to be mostly sneaky, and I learned not to go out of sight of teachers.

I don't know how I'd react if I ever saw her again. Considering that I carried scars on the back of my hand for many years, from her fingernails digging in, I just might react physically. Then again, studying martial arts left me with some skills that I might not want to waste on such garbage. With that thought in mind, I might just smile at her.

Anyway, I digress. Bullying is a serious social issue, and it takes socialization to reduce it. My son's middle school is doing some intensive socialization to reduce and prevent bullying, although you have to wonder if they're also preventing some normal boy-v-boy behaviors (depending on the teacher). Still, I support their efforts, because it's about time a school system took this seriously and worked hard before the problem became entrenched in the student population.

albatross @ 347: "Though it also seems like it's the exceptions (brilliant but ugly, beautiful and dumb as a stick, pretty and smart but unhealthy and dying way too young, etc.) that stick in your mind."

I think it's also self-(mis)representation that causes our skewed perceptions--someone who is crap at everything but math will work a lot harder at it and value that skill a lot more than someone just as smart but who is also a great athlete and has to fight off eager paramours with a stick.

Lee @ 365: "In adult society, bullies are frequently very successful; their behavior is framed in positive words like "go-getter" and "hard-hitting". They achieve that success by virtue of being willing to run over anything and anyone who gets in their way."

I would like to draw a distinction between people who are willing to run over anyone who gets in their way and actual bullies: for a bully, running over other people is how they succeed, not a side effect. I agree that the two types of people are often deliberately confused, but I think it gives bullies a false sheen of utilitarian purpose to credit them with dedication to any goal but making themselves feel better. In truth, bullies are worse than useless; insensitive jerks who just don't give damn are at least occasionally useful.

Xopher @ 373: "Am I the only one who finds it distressing that when kids are bullied for so long that they finally go nuts and start shooting, everyone acts as if their behavior was just one of those inexplicable acts of madness?"

No, you aren't. But that would require coming to grips with the ways that America is a bully nation and fetishizes power and humiliation. In the current American psychology, admitting to any mistake or making any changes in response to an attack is a sign of weakness. It just invites further attacks.

Paula @ 331:

traditional shtetl values appear to have been the women working and earning income, and the men studying all day, as the ideal.

So that's why Yentl wanted to pose as a boy.

The triple conjunction was beautiful, and I had perfect conditions in which to image it.

Jupiter-Moon-Venus

heresiarch #381:

Yeah, I think there's been quite a bit of research showing that bullies in an office (think toxic boss) do horrible things for productivity. The bullying goes on because it's fun, intrinsically rewarding. Any successful motivation through fear is a bonus. And those folks often keep some level of power for years, despite the fact that they're pure poison for their organizations.

I suspect a lot of the world is run on similar kinds of doing systemically dumb things to get a personal reward. For example, in the US, we've seen this huge, scary increase in SWAT teams and basically militarized police forces, even in small towns. I suspect a lot of the drive for this is that the policemen involved get to play with some really cool toys, and get to dress up is some badass-looking outfits. (If we passed a law requiring all SWAT teams to be outfitted in hot pink with white polka dots, I wonder if we'd see a reversal of that trend.)

Dave Bell, re Mauldin: Been there, thought that.

Ginger @ 380... I don't know how I'd react if I ever saw her again

I've asked myself that question. I'd probably do nothing because I'd find that those who had power over me wound up living a life of failure and/or I'd find they had completely forgotten about me and they'd consider me a loser because I still remember.

There are some people I would like to meet again if only to thank them because they were the few bright spots in my high-school life.

Steve C., #339, I saw that coming home with the groceries in the dusk. It was wonderful!

Huh. Triple conjunction - that's what I saw tonight? I had no idea. About a week ago, I noticed "those two very bright, non-twinkly lights forming a line at a slant towards the horizon--don't remember seeing that before--what are they?--ok, they're not moving, so, not airplanes..." and then tonight I noticed them very close to the moon in a striking display. Probably too late to go out and look at them again, now that I know what they are. But very cool!

God's own light show -- saw it last night. Tonight it's too cloudy to see anything.

heresiarch @ 381

the ways that America is a bully nation and fetishizes power and humiliation

America is a conqueror culture that tries to believe that it isn't; the conflict between the reality and the belief causes the normal lessons of conqueror "morality"* to become fetishized and fantasizied. In straight conquest, power and humiliation are tools to be used to bring the conquered low. When fetishized, they become ends in themselves. The teachers and counselors whose job it would be in a "healthy" conqueror culture to infuse the notions of power and conquest into the young try to do the same with the notions of bullying using the rationalizations we've all heard: "all children do it", "they're only establishing a pecking order", "we shouldn't get involved in it, it will work itself out", and that old standby, "children need to face their fears and overcome them".

* Stomp on them hard and they'll bow down to you; if they try to resist kick them even harder; a conqueror who isn't prepared to do anything, no matter how immoral, for conquest, is called "conquered".

albatross @ 384

Though I've not known any SWAT officers well enough to ask them about it, I get the impression that many such suffer from a fetishism of the tools of the trade, especially the BDUs with the armor vests, and the scope-mounted rifles with laser designators. Being so fascinated by their equipment would surely make them far less effective than if they had used it for enough time that the sheen had worn off, and they became really just tools and not objects of desire.

Re the Schneier Sidelight -- reading the comments was a lot like re-reading the Keep Your Head Down thread, only with more Ramboland wingnuts and fewer people offering counter-evidence. Someone even hauled out Lott again, as if he hadn't been debunked a dozen times already.

I've been watching Venus and Jupiter move towards each other for a couple of months now. I didn't know there was going to be an occultation...very cool. Like Lizzy L (not, of course, coincidentally) I couldn't see anything tonight for the clouds.

albatross @ 384: "The bullying goes on because it's fun, intrinsically rewarding."

That's part of it, but I think it does have some practical function: if you make everyone else around you dysfunctional and miserable, you will look much better by comparison. It's work played as a negative-sum game.

Also, the same manipulative skills that make for an effective bully also make for an effective yes-man--if you can figure out how to make someone utterly miserable, doing just the opposite to suck up to your boss is pretty easy.

Bruce Cohen @ 390: "Stomp on them hard and they'll bow down to you; if they try to resist kick them even harder; a conqueror who isn't prepared to do anything, no matter how immoral, for conquest, is called "conquered"."

It's an interesting view of the universe: strike at us and we'll only attack back twice as hard, but when we kick you around a little bit, you'll surrender right away. That they are some Other, fundamentally unlike us, is built into their worldview at a very basic level.

An addition to ”making light and faces”.

Awesome picture, Lizzy. Ganbatte!

Re bullies at work -- "The No Asshole Rule" by Robert I. Sutton is an excelent book on identifying, surviving, and preventing workplaces ruled by bullies. I recommend it highly, and it looks like it will be out in paperback soon. One of the most enlightening things about it is the self-test to see if YOU are being an asshole at work.

Re bullies at work -- "The No Asshole Rule" by Robert I. Sutton is an excelent book on identifying, surviving, and preventing workplaces ruled by bullies. I recommend it highly, and it looks like it will be out in paperback soon. One of the most enlightening things about it is the self-test to see if YOU are being an asshole at work.

re 339: I stepped out the office door and looked straight at it, then dashed back inside to call home and have my wife push the kids outside so they could see it. Very cool. I'm a little disappointed that it isn't today's APOD.

The triplet I usually is sexy, sane and single; sexy is presumed to include smart in my set. But the really desirable people are already snapped up by someone more assertive than the speaker. I think this works rearsonably well for geeky complainers of any sex, gender or orientation.

A slightly less frequent one is "smart, sensible, sane", but I don't think that's about dateability, it's more about the prevalence of people who are highly intelligent but lack any practical common sense (myself included). Or who have major social difficulties and self-esteem problems, probably as a result of intelligent people getting bullied so much in our culture. I've met just a few people who have deliberately picked partners less intelligent than themselves because they manage both sensible and sane at the same time.

Okay, surely someone in the fluorosphere wants to get in on this: Tan Dun, Michael Tilson Thomas, Carnegie Hall and YouTube collaborate to assemble the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. Winners participate in a 3-day workshop with Thomas and perform at Carnegie Hall.

I had a really nice view of the conjunction on the way out of the train station, then got out the camera when I got home.

Albatross @384, (If we passed a law requiring all SWAT teams to be outfitted in hot pink with white polka dots, I wonder if we'd see a reversal of that trend.)

Does the fact that torero costumes tend to look, err, not all that macho, stop people from becoming toreros?

Bruce Cohen @390,
heresiarch @ 381

the ways that America is a bully nation and fetishizes power and humiliation

America is a conqueror culture that tries to believe that it isn't; the conflict between the reality and the belief causes the normal lessons of conqueror "morality"* to become fetishized and fantasizied. In straight conquest, power and humiliation are tools to be used to bring the conquered low. When fetishized, they become ends in themselves. The teachers and counselors whose job it would be in a "healthy" conqueror culture to infuse the notions of power and conquest into the young try to do the same with the notions of bullying using the rationalizations we've all heard: "all children do it", "they're only establishing a pecking order", "we shouldn't get involved in it, it will work itself out", and that old standby, "children need to face their fears and overcome them".

I don't see what's particularly American about that. Those rationalisations are common pretty much everywhere, and so are jerks who like humiliating others.

albatross 384: If we passed a law requiring all SWAT teams to be outfitted in hot pink with white polka dots, I wonder if we'd see a reversal of that trend.

That would make them too visible for their tactics.

Make them wear camoflage tights and tutus.

Raphael-

Torero costumes not macho?

Really?

I just googled a few images and now I need a nice cool drink and a quiet lie down.

Yeah, torero costumes are sexy as all get-out. Not to mention that even if they'd worn granny dresses starting 100 years ago, granny dresses would be considered macho by association with toreros today.

Which probably means you'd have to keep femming up the SWAT uniforms every few years for the albatross effect to keep working.

Lila @ 395... It is indeed.

Apropos of nothing in particular, my first glance at the title of what is at present the first on the list of Teresa's Particles made me wonder...

"50 worst cats of all time? I bet they forgot the pair hissing and spitting at each other in my living room right now!"

(Not cats. Cars.)

Oh. Never mind...

The "50 worst cars of all time" particle is very silly.

The Model T, Airflow, Trabant, EV1, Multipla and BMW 7 series would probably make my Best 50 Cars Ever list.

The author condemns the Ford Excession for being wasteful in order to appeal to consumers, and then condemns the EV1 for being small and light, which consumers don't like. The Airflow is attacked for being 10 years ahead of its time. What? The Prowler is condemned for being an ordinary car beautifully styled, while the Multipla gets it for being an extraordinary car which looks it.

Very, very silly.

Lee @ 367

In my view, "Fashionable" is not the same as "fashion-forward". Most of my clothing is on very classic lines and so is never out of fashion - the problem with not including fashionable as a criterion, as I see it, is that you can have clean, well-fitting clothing that is so out of style that it becomes as much of an issue as ill-fitting clothing. I have an issue with this because I tend towards victorian aesthetics even in my modern clothing, but I have to be careful not to take it over the top. Classic is good, quirky individualism perfectly acceptable, but dated clothing or costuming off the rack isn't good for professional wear.

I found the phrase 'Victorian aesthetics' oxymoronic at first, then went "Wait: clothing." Victorian clothing wasn't so bad, except that there was way too much of it.

I like the styling of their machines, too (FGRNZCHAX!). Other things...not so much.

WRT fashion, a few months ago I browsed through a book written in the (iirc) early 1980s called "How to Dress Rich"; the two routes it suggested were a.) aggressively keeping up with current fashions or b.) maintaining a neutrally "classic" look. The pictures for the former now looked very, very dated, but the pictures for the latter really did seem like outfits that would still look reasonable today, even if their hair was sometimes a bit odd.

Serge @394: Oh, kewl! Faces to go with the names!! Hi, everybody! Please to meet you! ::wave, wave::

The best bit of the Science Museum in London is the first hall, full of steam engines. And the fact that in the third hall, the exhibit about Stephenson's Rocket consists of Stephenson's actual Rocket with a sign that says "Stephenson's Rocket".

The Difference Engine is very cool.

The hall of rockets (which are not early steam locomotives), while cool, is not as good as the one in the Smithsonian.

But in the basement they have a working Pong machine hooked up to a black and white TV, and you can relive your misspent youth, if you are of a certain age. Only takes about five seconds.

Wait, I forgot the actual Foucault's pendulum in the stairwell!

I see Jacque has found Serge's photo album. I would say something nerdy and geological to go with my mugshot, but I've spoilt it by being a big nerdy engineer before I saw Jacque's comment.

Oh well, erm, Namuria!

abi@#346: wow, that school is a gem. They only got so far as discussing the bullying that happened around me when two of the alpha males decided that punching me in the eye and throwing a beaker of sulphuric acid at me in quick succession would be a fun thing to do. (This was punishment for not giving them the contents of my bag for them to tip the acid over.)

And they did it with the teacher in the room.

*That* got a response (and not a discussion, either: things had gone too far. An on-the-spot pair of suspensions. Yep, instilling some nice fear is much better than a reasoned discussion). Nothing smaller triggered a response, ever, except to castigate me for being insufficiently stiff-upper-lippy about this 'minor' problem which led to me coming home with new bruises more often than not.

The bullying finally stopped about five years in when my mother initiated legal action against the school. Then they moved *fast* and the bullying cut off dead. In the next assembly after the legal action started, not naming names *of course* or mentioning the legal action, the headmaster gave a new rule: 'bully anyone, ever, and get expelled immediately'. (It would have been nice if they'd said something like that earlier, instead of just having pro forma largely unenforced please-don't-be-nasty platitudes that the student body completely ignored.)

This too was not ideal because it was unjust in the other direction: being a panic response little things like appeal procedures were, um, forgotten about. Still, I suspect the stratospheric fees would have caused parents to complain if unjust expulsions were triggered.

(But of course this was in the distant savage past when British schools were *quite different*, i.e. 1991.)

(Amazingly, no permanent damage from the acid incident, but there were visible burns for months.)

The teachers didn't like me, either, because e.g. my handwriting was awful which must be 'laziness'. We thought about switching schools more than once, but it really was academically excellent.

Jacque... Glad you enjoyed it. The gallery is always open for new entries, updated ones and, yes, Niall, that does include captions that say something nerdy and geological.

I just went rooting in the archives, looking for what some ingrate said when Serge first put my Namurian mugshot up, but I found this from 2003 instead, by John M. Ford:

And besides, a gallon bucket of double cream would be like, oh, four hundred pounds of Thermite: a whole lot of fun while it lasted but a heck of an aftershock.

Wherever you walk, Mike, may the road rise with you.

Niall @ 418... You've been updated.

I'm honoured.

"Namuria," Gracie? Isn't that one of those lost civilizations that sank in teh oceans?

No? C.S. Lewis, perhaps? Oh. Um...well...

Generally, I am of the opinion that being nerdy and geological requires no excuse....

Interested in making light in the Bay Area?

There’ll be a gathering of Fluorospherians and other bloggers in Oakland on Saturday, December 20, starting at 5pm. So far, the group includes Lizzy L, Kathryn from Sunnyvale, David Goldfarb, Tim Walters and yours truly. Alas Dawno would have liked to come, but her son will be back from Iraq at about that time. (My best wishes to you and your family, Dawno!)

The gathering will be held at the Pacific Coast Brewing Company, which was the site of a similar encounter year. As you can see from the directions, it’s a short walk from BART. (Possibly a longer one back to BART, if libations wind up being too liberal.)

Should you be interested, just drop a note HERE (or write directly to me). Let us know whether or not you'll be accompanied - by an orchestra or otherwise. If you can’t make it until after dinner, that’s OK. We’ll probably stay until they throw us out.

re 381: I don't think America is a bully nation in that sense. The USA is more like Mr. Incredible at the beginning of the movie: proud about having the strength to clean up the world, but really frustrated that it doesn't stay cleaned up.

The rocks in the cliffs behind my mugshot are Namurian sandstone, which is obviously named after the Magic Kingdom of Namuria, rather than Namur, seat of the Rather Interesting Walloon Parliament in Belgium, Europe's most Exciting Member State.

Similarly the whole Devonian period is named after Devonia, the Mermaid Queendom, not county Devon, and the Carboniferous period is named after the time those supposedly smart Velociraptors released all that CO2 into the atmosphere, and not after the Yorkshire town of Carbon Ifer, which isn't really that interesting, apart from its odd name and its Johnny Cash Museum.

I like the Lizzy Picture, someone about to fall down and go "Thump"

Terry Karney @ 424...

Dare I say that Lizzy is a sensei sans pareil?
(Thump!)
I guess not.

Niall McAuley @ 377 ...
Xopher, I don't think that telling bullies that their victims might turn on them will work, because they are usually good at picking on people who won't. Bullies who aren't good at that get the snot beaten out of them.

I disagree. Bullies can be 'fine' picking on people that do react, but react by shouting or crying or running away, rather than trying to fight. What bullies need to learn (IMNSHO) is two things:

(1) There's always somebody bigger/meaner/in a better position than you are, that can do the same nasty things to you.
(2) If you leave somebody with no other options (perceived or real), the odds that they will fight, and will do so with disproportionate intent are high[0].

In an ideal world, we'd catch bullies before they form, and are set in their ways, of course -- but modulo that, some tactics do appear to be effective.

[0] If you prefer, you could consider this to be an aspect of "crazier than me, and hence dangerous".

sisuile, #409: By my definitions, you're stretching "fashionable" to cover "not dowdy", which IMO is not quite the same thing. But this isn't the sort of issue where there's a Right and a Wrong; as long as I remember how you use the term and you remember how I use it, we can still communicate.

C. Wingate, #422: I disagree. During the first half of the 20th century alone we mounted some ungodly number of military interventions in Central and South America for the specific purpose of making sure that no government, whether democratically elected or not, would interfere with the business interests of Dole and other US companies. We overthrew elected governments and installed our own tyrant puppets in aid of this. If that's not a bully nation, I'd hate to see what it would actually take to get that description from you.

xeger, #426: People who reach that point frequently believe that they are literally fighting for their lives; therefore they fight much more desperately than the bully who is only out for a little fun.

Patrick... Thanks for taking my post @ 422 out of limbo.

Ladies and gents who might be around the Bay Area on December 20, might you be interested?

Hmm... I've no idea what my travel schedule will be yet, but if I was hypothetically to detour through either SFO or OAK at the appropriate time, is there any chance I'd be able to arrange a lift thatta way?

On bullying, and class reunions...

I thought about posting some of my own experiences here, but on further reflection, I'm still not comfortable posting them in a public forum. No one is completely anonymous, after all.

Let it be said instead that I'm unlikely to go to any class reunions for a long time. I have doubts of my own ability to face some of my former tormentors, and still behave like a mature and reasonable adult.

I embarassed myself once at a con, when my response to an old schoolmate* who asked if I knew his brother** was "Oh, that a******". His brother had been one of those who habitually picked on me from about fifth through tenth grades. Before fifth grade, we'd gone to different schools. After tenth grade, we had no classes together. These days, see the above mentioned doubts on maturity and reasonableness.

Schoolmate was understanding once I explained his brother's behavior toward me, but still, not the best re-introduction to someone you haven't seen in years, and secretly wished you'd known better back when you were in school together.

*He was two grades above me, so not a classmate.
**His younger brother was in my grade

xeger @ 430... Write to me and we'll see what we could work out. I will be driving my trusty minivan - pay no attention to the bumper dents. There is also a BART station near the Oakland Airport.

Nix #416: academically excellent British private school with a laissez-faire, social-Darwinism attitude toward bullying and nasty and violent alpha male types... reading your comment, I was wondering if I went to the same school as you, until I got to the part where an actual anti-bullying policy was instituted. Bancroft's School had yet to do so when I left it in 2003.

And since on other ML threads we're discussing parliamentary systems and constitutional matters, there's a bit of a barney going on in the UK, though less interesting than the one in Canada: MP Damian Green has been arrested in connection with leaks of confidential information from the Home Office. This is unprecedented in recent memory; not only is it almost unheard of for anybody to be arrested in connection with leaks[1], but for an MP to be arrested, and for police to enter Parliament in connection with this matter and to search his office and seize his computer, is quite shocking.

Conservatives in Parliament are waiting for the Speaker to explain himself after the Queen's Speech today, and are considering a protest, and possibly a vote of no confidence in him, over his permitting the police to enter Parliament. By convention he probably should have kept them out, although for them to attempt it anyway is very unusual.

[1]of information which embarasses the government, but does not threaten security

Niall, #418, I traded a custom necklace for a friend hauling books back and forth so I can catalog them, and tonight I got to Mike. She's gonna borrow How Much for Just the Planet? when she gives me Dreamweaver's Dilemma back.

For those of us old enough to have lived during the civil rights marches of the 1960s, here's some sad news: Odetta has died of heart disease at 77.

Half the folk singers who performed at Newport in those years sang her songs; the other half didn't think they could do justice to them.

I've been trying to figure out a Greek translation of the phrase "first among equals", and what I've come up with so far (from diving into some online dictionaries) is "prota agametaxy omotimi".

Am I close?

SeanH at #434: The thing I find interesting about Green's arrest is that it involved something like 20 counterterrorism police.

Granted, our sockpuppet Speaker (seriously - you can practically see the seams) has been spectacularly useless.

He's got a plausible public-interest defense, I think, unless they shout "national security!" loudly enough. Unity writes about the issue in his usual style.

Serge@432: Actually, SFO is much more convenient to BART nowadays.

Earl Cooley III@437: Νο, I'm afraid not. "Prota" is a neuter form, which doesn't sound like it's what you want. The preposition should probably be "en" or "meta"; I have no idea what "agametaxy" is. (Can you give a dictionary reference for that one? I'm curious.) "Homotimos" means specifically "equal in esteem"; the dictionaries I've looked at seem to suggest that "equal in rank" takes the simpler "isos". So something like "protos meta isous".

...Er, that's assuming you want Classical Greek. If you're looking for a translation into the modern language, then never mind, and I fear I can't help you.

# 437, 439

'Protos metaxy ison' (πρώτος μεταξύ ίσων) seems to be the common expression in Modern Greek; however it appears to be a set expression using Ancient Greek syntax.

David Goldfarb @ 439... You're right. San Francisco now has a BART station right there, but I wasn't sure how frequently trains show up. It'd actually be easier for xeger because the pub is only a few block from a BART station.

I love TV show Fringe. There aren't many shows where a bona fide mad scientist (played by LoTR's Denethor) can tell his son that he once built a time machine, and his son, who has seen plenty of weirdness, only responds:

"Did it work?"

Linkmeister @ 436

Odetta was not only a great singer, she was a great person. She had a presence and gravitas that she gave freely to the Civil Rights movement; when she spoke it was clear that she was talking about issues of great moment and urgency. I'm very saddened by this news.

Raphael @ 402

I'm not saying this is a particularly American trait, I'm saying it's an accepted part of American culture because of the legacy of the conqueror culture here. Yes, it's quite common in some other parts of the world; Britain and Russia come to mind, both of them conquerors in the not too distant past, one of them attempting a resurgence. And no, it's not as common or accepted in some other places. Consider what the treatment of abi's son says about how such behavior is accepted in the Netherlands, which got out of the conqueror business a few hundred years ago, and was never as deep into it as many other colonial powers.

Sarah S @404, Xopher @ 405, I was more thinking about wether they look "tough" in the eyes of men who are constantly worried their penises might fall off if they don't point out that they have them all the time, not about wether they make their wearer look sexy.

Not to mention that even if they'd worn granny dresses starting 100 years ago, granny dresses would be considered macho by association with toreros today.

Which probably means you'd have to keep femming up the SWAT uniforms every few years for the albatross effect to keep working.

That was basically my point in response to albatross- even something that IMO doesn't look all that "tough" and "manly" on its own, like a torero costume, can easily get seen as that by association.

Bruce Cohen @444, point taken.

On bullying: I was really scrawny in secondary school and was bullied (physically) often. On one occasion when I returned home with a bloody nose my father asked if I was OK, sat me down, and said "Next time, single out the leader, then hit him as hard as you can." Needless to say I was shocked. However, I took his advise and got the biggest beating of my life. It did stop the bullying though. In my case the bullies moved on to kids that didn't fight back, but I know that is not always the case. At the time I felt I had nothing to lose, but with hindsight I'm not sure I would make the same suggestion to my own son.

I commend abi's son's teacher on their subtle intervention and wish that all teachers, administrators, and counselors took the time and effort to address bullying in such a thoughtful way.

Serge @442: It's on network TV too! I thought FOX was taking a huge leap of faith, but it seems to be paying off.

Stevey-Boy @ 446... It did indeed pay off. Alas, yesterday night was 2008's last episode and we'll have to wait until some time in January for the story to resume. Will Agent Dunham get her dead boyfriend out of her head? Will we find what Blair Brown is up to? Will the cow finally leave the lab?

And what about Naomi?

re 428: On reflection, I'll somewhat concede the point. But then again I'm not sure I'd characterize our banana republic period as bullying, exactly. High-handed, crass, and politically dubious, yes; but sending in the Marines to protect the interests of the United Fruit Company isn't quite analogous to hurting other children for the thrill of it. It's not that UFC's influence wasn't in the end malevolent (and I must say "in the end" because in the beginning the interaction was more mutually beneficial), but that even when a corporation is doing wrong, it is nonetheless natural for it to react strongly to threats like expropriation. UFC's actions all led back to its need to make money selling bananas, after all.

Niall McAuley @424: Thanks for the (Shakes head. Hears rattle. Works loose piece out of left ear.) explanation.

#448: You know you're getting old when you use that line with co-workers and every stares at you dumbfounded.

Xopher and Stefan... I must not be as old as I think because that one went over my head. (Meanwhile, today, a clerk at the grocery store, probably hoping to allow me some discount, asked if I was 55. Imagine my disappointment that I look older than my actual 53.)

Serge, it refers to this.

(Wow, I didn't know she was Jake Gyllenhaal's mom!)

Getting old?

Q: What's Whitesnake?
A: That's the music mommies and daddies listen to.

#453, Xopher -

I had to go look it up, too. Oddly, I remember the "...and other questions" bit, but nothing else from the sketch.

I can't tell from Wikipedia - which came first, the Burnett sketch, or the Electric Company sketch? It seems likely that Burnett would have been first, but then what about Naomi?

Got it, Xopher. There was also the Muppet Show's kit about Doctor Bob, which, after terrible puns that make me blanche, would end with the narrator asking silly questions.

Earl, getting old is realizing that, when I was young, the radio would play new songs by the Beatles. Getting old is realizing that Abi was born during my second year of high-school. Getting old is realizing that I'm older now than my parents-in-law were when I first met my wife-to-be.

Splurging for knitters, hand-machined needles, with a tree-ornament version.

Serge @ 452 I was asked by someone known for her complete lack of social skills if I'd noticed I was slowing down since I'd hit 50.

I'm 36. I laughed. It was a consider the source moment.

I agreed to help out with my 20 year HS reunion for a school I only went to for 2 years, where I socialized with the drama and science geeks. But, they need the help and they asked, so I'm going to do it. I have no idea who most of my "classmates" are, but I recognize names from the police blotter. Sigh.

Getting old is knowing that I'm older than Serge. And anyone older than me is probably fossilized in the Burgess shale.

SeanH@#433, hah, no, not that school. 'Largely London Jewish intake, segregated, goes on about its age but fails to note that until the 20th century it was a guild-backed home for indigents and not any kind of school at all' is sufficient to isolate mine unambiguously while being Google-proof, I think.

But I suspect most UK private schools are pretty much of a piece in this area: the only thing that's likely to have changed is that they probably now insist on homework being wordprocessed rather than fighting tooth and nail against it. I was just lucky enough to have an iron-willed mother who you do *not* cross and who was (and still is) substantially more rational, forceful, and capable than the senior staff. Most people don't have Miriam to fight their corner (and don't go saying other mothers are as good, this one's special because she's *mine*, so there).

(Perhaps they've got better, but some of the older teachers when I was there joined during or even before the 1960s and apparently became teachers because they hated children, and acted like it. The student body of course was acting like adolescent boys always do, dammit.)

Tania @ 458... He thought you were 50? I agree that this implies quite a lack of social skills. When we met at Denvention, I was sure you were 49 at most.

Zzzippppppp!

Whoa. That frying pan almost hit me.

Tania @ 458... I agreed to help out with my 20 year HS reunion for a school I only went to for 2 years(..)I recognize names from the police blotter

They let you out of Reform School after 2 years? For good behavior?

Bruce Cohen @ 459...

Humph.

anyone older than me is probably fossilized in the Burgess shale

Or the Burgess Meredith?

Bruce @ 459:

I may be one of those fossils (born in 1950).

The retrospectives on the Kennedy assassination made me realize that many of my friends weren't even born when JFK was shot.

Serge 461 snort

And a pretty frisky 49 at that, eh?

Having been bumped a grade I was always younger than my classmates. When I turned 30 I proudly announced that I was now older than lots of people, and would no longer have to deal with being the youngest person in the room/office/group/etc. Getting older is better than the alternative option.

Tania @ 465... Getting older is better than the alternative option.

"I'm too old for this sort of thing. Just wake me up when the planet's destroyed."
- Avatar the wizard

Raphael, #445: men who are constantly worried their penises might fall off if they don't point out that they have them all the time

What a perfect description of the "manly-man" type!

C. Wingate, #449: That's if you look at it from our POV. From the POV of the nations we kept invading, I'm not sure the difference would be noticeable. And bullies almost always have some plausible rationalization for what they do.

Serge @ 462: I didn't realize Tania was Jewish. Or was it just her school?

(Carefully avoids comparisons with Nix's mom)

Ginger #468: Serge, on the other hand, had a thoroughly orthodox education.

Fragano @ 469...I protest. I have catholic tastes.

Ginger @ 468... I didn't realize Tania was Jewish

And since she lives in the North Pole, that would explain the menorah on top of Santa's home, as was shown in Olive the Other Reindeer. (Hey, that's Ed Asner as Santa.)

glinda @ 464

No fossil you; good or not, you're still younger than I am (b. 1946).

One thing I would point out is that most of the comparison here has been between a Dutch school within the last year and our own experiences forty or even more years ago. I wouldn't say my son's experience of a couple of years back was ideal, but his public middle school did make efforts to deal with what was a pretty bad situation.

re 444: To put my "Mr. Incredible" remark in perhaps better terms: there is a strong paternalistic note in American foreign policy, which has been reinforced by both world wars.

re 467: What's this "our"? In the countries we kept invading, one of the big problems there was a huge disparity in points-of-view. UFC's dominance of Honduras, for instance, was in no small part due to the way the country sold itself to the company early on in order to get railways built. The degree to which any of these governments-- including our own-- can be said to represent those of the populace is quite questionable. Also, I don't think reaction to the threat of confiscation is a rationalization, particularly since such programs have a history of getting out of hand. When righting past wrongs is to be solved by a sort of lawlessness, defensiveness is entirely reasonable, even for the "guilty". I'm not trying to defend UFC's position as a whole, but merely to understand and explain a part of it.

I think part of my problem here is that this is tending to come down to the depiction of any use of superior power as bullying. Was it bullying, for example, for the Brits to take back the Falklands?

C. Wingate @ 473

There are large number of examples other than Nicaragua. How about the US fostering of the coup that put the late Shah of Iran on the throne? Or the deposing of the Allende government in Argentina, replacing it with a very brutal military dictatorship? Or, going back a little further, the US intervention in the civil war against the Huks in the Phillipines early in the 20th century?

Much of the US foreign policy in the second half of the 20th century was about starting or reacting to proxy wars, many of them civil wars, with the Soviet Union; in very few cases did this have anything to do with the welfare of the proxies. Sounds like bullying to me.

even when a corporation is doing wrong, it is nonetheless natural for it to react strongly to threats like expropriation

I wonder if Antebellum slaveowners felt similarly about having their human property taken away from them.

weighting with baited breath to hear about today's shakeout in the publishing world...

Serge #470: Protestant and catholic at the same time? That's mighty suspicious. Next you'll be telling me all about the judicious hooker in your neighbourhood.

Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) #474: That's the Allende government in Chile (not Argentina), on 11 September, 1973.

Also, er, the Falklands was a case of Argentine aggression, and the people who lived in the Falklands wanted to stay British (roughly).

When righting past wrongs is to be solved by a sort of lawlessness, defensiveness is entirely reasonable, even for the "guilty"

This is offensive nonsense. `a sort of lawlessness' is a value judgement you have no standing to make. It is arguably incorrect, and, further, even if it were correct, it isn't any of your business, especially if the people of the country involved disagree with you, further provided there aren't any crimes against humanity occurring, and even then still.

That is one reason why the US is seen as bullying -- the intervention in other countries' internal affairs purely because you can. The rights and wrongs don't really come into it. Rather, it is the utter disregard for self-governance of other countries.

It is the use of force to make other countries obey that stinks to high heaven, and it certainly seems like bullying to me.

C. Wingate @ 463 What's this "our"? In the countries we kept invading

What's this past tense? You are still invading and occupying countries today.

Tania @465:

To quote a well-known mathematician: "After all, when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years."

(I'm somewhat older than that, but fond of that quote; the mathematician in question made the comparison a few decades ago.)

In posting the previous, I happened to look up at the location bar in the browser at just the right time to notice that the comment-posting script is spqr.cgi.

It's the little things you do…

(having earwormed myself with Sondheim, I will exit, backstage right)

SFO is more convenient to BART than OAK is, but I would bet that OAK is more convenient to the Oakland, 12th St. Station. That ride through SF and under the bay is long.

Fragano @ 477... you'll be telling me all about the judicious hooker in your neighbourhood

Only if I'm priest to admit it. Besides, I enjoyed the experience purely vicariously.

Serge, Fragano: Be careful, or folks will think we're rabbi punsters, when we're just serious in our methodists.

C. Wingate @ 449: "But then again I'm not sure I'd characterize our banana republic period as bullying, exactly."

It was based on the idea that, if you hurt someone bad enough, they will do what you want. Shock and Awe and all that. It's true it wasn't entirely done just to make American imperialists feel all tingly and powerful, but bullying to reach a goal is still bullying.

"...even when a corporation is doing wrong, it is nonetheless natural for it to react strongly to threats like expropriation. UFC's actions all led back to its need to make money selling bananas, after all."

It's weird, but I get the sense you find this somehow exculpatory. Me, I think it's a pretty good argument against having corporations at all.

@ 473: "One thing I would point out is that most of the comparison here has been between a Dutch school within the last year and our own experiences forty or even more years ago."

Correction: You have been talking about experiences of forty years ago. Mine, and others', happened quite a bit more recently.

"I think part of my problem here is that this is tending to come down to the depiction of any use of superior power as bullying."

Bullying is using fear and intimidation to get what one wants. Superior power often figures into that.

to various, but especially to Keir in 479: This is rapidly devolving into a stake upon a claim of objective morality which I for one have plenty of standing to object to. I reject the claim that corporate sins justify confiscation-- not because I think that property rights are absolute, but because (a) I don't accept that inequity is a strong enough justification, and (b) because transfer from the corporation to the government is transfer from one group of privilege and power to another. I am also enough of a cynic to believe that such confiscations only benefit the new elite, in the end.

That's all rather beside the point. What bothers me is that I am still not seeing the analogy with playground dynamics. I don't think the USA is using its military power, however illegitimate you may feel that use is (and I'm largely for the view that it was all too often illegitimate), to hurt other nations for the pleasure of doing so.

And while we're in Chile: once again, we come to expropriation. Before the 1970 election, there was already a program towards the nationalization of the Anaconda and Kennecott copper holdings, based on a set of negotiated agreements with the two companies. But this was politically unpopular, and Allende went ahead with a substitute plan of simple confiscation. We sent the CIA instead of the marines, maybe or maybe not at the instigation of the copper barons; I tend to think not since, after all, Pinochet kept the mines. None of this goes towards justifying the coup or what Pinochet did once in power; but I have to think that the CEO of Anaconda surely must have felt at least a twinge of righteous indignation at Allende's reneging on the agreements which had just been made. And I think US intervention could be more accurately condemned as paternalistic meddling than as bullying.

Jon, #476, I read about it on Andy Wheeler's blog.

Ginger @ 485... Be careful, or folks will think we're...

Naves?

I reject the claim that corporate sins justify confiscation-

But the people of Chile in their full sovereignty as a nation, in their full right to self-determination, disagreed with you, and you (or more exactly, the US) have no standing to object.

That's the point; all this talk about the decision made is pointless. The fact is the decision was made, and the US didn't like it, so the US used physical force as a substitute for legitimacy. That seems close enough to bullying to me; if you disagree, then we can say that the US merely engaged in colonialism.

C. Wingate, #487: You would be hard-pressed to find a playground bully who would say that they hurt other kids just for fun. It's always because "he didn't respect me" or "he's a sissy" or "she was asking for it" -- in the mind of the bully, there's something that provides justification. I submit that "protecting our economic interests" is, at root, exactly the same kind of rationalization when we go in with military force instead of diplomacy. Or, to be more explicit about it, both types of bullying have a strong "because I can, and who's going to stop me?" component.