Christmas time, misteltoe and wine...

Tastes disgusting, doesn't it.

Most of the people who care have probably already seen this but...

Dollhouse renewed!

I hadn't seen "Dollhouse renewed". Really? Woo-hoo! Everything I had seen said "probably not".

"Dollhouse renewed!"

In the words of my people: w00t!

The thing about Dollhouse, from a fannish perspective, is ... I saw a lot of people whose media tastes I trust panning it in the first several episodes, because it was [choose one: repetitive, shallow, unreflective, unchallenging, obvious]. After ep 5 or 6 (I forget precisely which, and can't be bothered to google a list right now), however -- when many Very Fannish People had given up on it -- it suddenly picked up and got a lot more [challenging, unobvious, feminist, disturbing, etc].

I'm pretty sure the network suits were just nervous that the Gossip Girl/90210 demographic Can't Handle subtler worldbuilding in-clueing than they let Joss get away with in eps 1-5ish. Similarly, the 'Previously On!' sections are, to fen, far too long and heavy-handed, but if you're coming in late to the series, they DO include all plot-relevant information for a given episode.

Which means for fen used to scrutinizing BSG/B5/Lost/etc for nuance, they telegraph what subplots an ep is going to cover from ninety miles away ...

I don't know if there's an acceptable compromise position, not hitting fen over the head with blunt hammers but still being newbie-friendly.

That said, the Dollhouse renew does show hopeful signs about the networks and their reliance on the Nielsens. Since only about 200K (I think?) families are hooked up with Nielsen boxes, that's a really, really small sample size for all of TV everywhere, especially now that more and more people, especially in the treasured 18-25 demographic, are watching TV time-delayed on DVRs or via internet connections (Hulu, network websites, and *cough* less legal options).

I like that photo of Jamie with the goggles. Makes him look like he should be on the cover of a Doc Savage-like pulp. As for who'd be his equivalent... I haven't heard enough of fandom's people speak to equate one of them with this guy who said in a flat voice "I'm getting all excited just looking at this."

Dollhouse
Lnl!

(Or are we done rot-13ing Dollhouse comment?)

As to the original question, given his thorough examination of the Betty & Barney Hill Abduction Story I know who I think is our best buster of myths. I don't know how Hynemanesque he is. Has he been known to enjoy blowing things up or building robots?

Given that John Scalzi is the Adam Savage of our community*, who is our Jamie Hyneman?

[rolls dice] Eyup... failed my "familiar with popular culture" roll again...

I can't be the only person that finds Walsingham a more familiar name than Savage...

Paul @7: Jim is more personable and a better raconteur than Jamie appears to be. (Though I haven't met the Hyneman, so I suppose I could be wrong.)

Never met him (or any of you people), but I always imagined Jim Macdonald Jamie-ish. I mean there's the safety obsession, the number of manly jobs in their respective pasts, the impressive beard... yeah. That's pretty much it. Also I guess they both like explosions, but that's just because EVERYONE IN THEIR RIGHT MINDS LIKES EXPLOSIONS.

And yay for Dollhouse!

Ahhhh! Mythbusters, okay!

[light dawns sluggishly, in a way suggesting of the borders of a black hole]

Oh, yes; Mcdonald = Hyneman even if there's no explosions.

Whoops! That was missing an "a".

Three cheers for Dollhouse!

Elliot Mason:

There out to be an equivalent of ROT13 for video, surely. Seriously, why not just tell people to go look at the program's official website? Everybody who watches that show must have a net connection (though admittedly you need a fast one to load those damn Flash frontends all the media companies insist on using). That might even break some of the linear/passive thinking that's the essence of traditional network television.

Jim FTW. You left out obsessive interest in details.

xeger at #8. Savage and Heyneman? Failed my roll as well. So did my wife. Walsingham got a woohoo! from her. (she has one of those cross time crushes)

Daniel @ 10: I have met Jim Macdonald. Given his sense of humor I'd have to spot him on the Adam Savage side of spectrum. If I had to pick a person I know who could be our Jamie Hyneman, I would pick David Drake. He's more deadpan the way Hyneman is.

I'll ask it here because people on Twitter/FB seemed to like it: why are there not fandom cruises?* You could have ST and SW on different floors with anime in between, a yaoi bar for women tired of being hit on, different gaming floors (console, PC, deadwood, LARP quests on the climbing wall), theme masquerades...depart from San Diego after ComicCon, and enjoy your purchases as you tour Mexico thereafter.

I like this idea if only because it increases the likelihood of an eventual "pirates vs. space pirate cosplayers" battle.

*I'm told there are in fact Trek cruises. I was thinking of a more catholic approach, though.

He may not be the right body type, but I'll vote for PNH as Jamie-alike.

The main problem is cost. Not enough fen could afford a sea cruise to make such a cruise break even. Especially with today's economic situation.

Now I have this vision of some friends sardine canning a state room....

I think a piece of why there aren't fandom cruises is simply that cruises are expensive, and a lot of fans would rather spend their vacation time and money either visiting places we find inherently interesting (whether that's Paris, a state park with camping, or an abandoned mine) or seeing friends. Not 1000 people semi-random, but a few friends at a time.

"Depart San Diego after ComicCon" means a lot of people are already going to be pretty fatigued, and not up for the gaming, masquerades, etc.

Also, any event that offers me "a yaoi bar for women who are tired of being hit on" is telling me that I should expect to be hit on, obnoxiously, during the other events and in the rest of the event spaces. That's not my idea of a good time.

A friend saying, politely, that they find me attractive, and would I like to go back to their room and [fill in the blank] is fine, though I'll probably say no; pushy strangers are not. The friend's approach isn't going to leave me feeling that I need to leave the room, much less that I need to take refuge among people I can count on not to be sexually attracted to me.

As a practical matter, how long does that work? How many people wanting to avoid pushy straight men can you put in one room and count on none of them being attracted to each other?

According to the Beeb, the Fox execs were comparing Dollhouse to Firefly in terms of ratings (i.e. pretty bad), but also took into account that Firefly sold a shedload of DVDs and turned into a movie (that I recall actually made an okay profit), and apparently predict a similar trajectory for Dollhouse. This is encouraging news, as it seems to imply the ability for TV executives to learn from mistakes and associate past outcomes with future possibilities, activity previously only observed in mammals.

Now that I think about it. There _was_ a few SF-themed cruises back in the 70's. At least one went from New York to Florida to see an Apollo launch.

SeanH @ 22:

So what you're saying is that they're going to cancel it at the end of next season, sell twice the number of DVD sets (one for each season), and have the possibility for a movie?

I don't know Drake (which I count as something of a loss, but that's in part because we share a trade).

But yes, deadpan is a large part of the Hynamen image. More part of it is the sense of unflappable.

Drat, Hyneman.

Just had breakfast with Michael Roberts. Very good time. I probably talked too much.

SeanH @ 22: You're right. I guess TV execs qualify as invertebrates; at least some of them are spineless. :D

There is a weight of darkness in each heart
we have been told, a legacy of rage
product of history that we assuage
but cannot deny; our only sacred art
is to record it, and to find its start
on the first ship, upon the oldest page
of the driest book fallen from ancient age.
To sum it up, recall it, and impart
weighty words that make it simply matter.
Entomb all thought until it is past dead
and will not rise again within our time.
What is most needed is the force to shatter,
bring out the secrets held within each head
restoring this whole world to the sublime.

Terry Karney @ 25... One time when Jamie was quite flappable was when he put on a rocket backpack. Downright gleeful, like a kid on Christmas morning.

This is in the news today:

http://www.comcast.net/news/badeaupov/21/quotwhiteafricanamericanquotsuesnjmedicalschool/

I watch Dollhouse on DVR by preference, often in chasing-playback mode. Sometimes I deliberately wait 15 minutes after it starts to begin watching.

That means that I absolutely, positively don't count as a "viewer" in terms of what the network can sell to advertisers, because I skip all the ads, every time.

OTOH I will almost certainly buy the series on DVD, which makes me a market unit for direct profits.

Has anyone else heard complaints about Eliza Dushku's acting ability? I just heard someone say that "many" complain of her, and that perhaps focusing less on Echo would be good for the series.

Personally I think she does an extraordinary job of playing a different role every week (at least). Or maybe I'm just a victim of fanfog and can't see it.

Re fannish cruises: In addition to the obvious problems already discussed, you're talking about a LOT of overhead cost. That money IMO could be much better spent on some combination of improving programming and lowering membership prices.

Terry (and Michael), #26: I don't know which of you I'm more envious of for meeting the other!

Fragano Legister at #30:
I think I also saw a story about a man from Spain who sued because they didn't include him in an affirmative action category designed to benefit Hispanics.

(If I recall correctly I read about it in a book Mike Davis wrote, and the people he wanted to be hired by were a California fire department.)

If Jim McDonald is our Jamie Hyneman I want to see clearer evidence that he's regularly restraining himself from slapping Scalzi skilly.

er, silly (sigh)

Madeline Ashby at #18:

Neil Rest had the same thought, about fannish cruises, and found himself chairman of a "Bermuda Triangle in '88" bid. From the invaluable fanzine Mimosa, Mike Resnick's account of its origin at the Los Angeles Worldcon in 1984:

That night I went out onto the lanai with John Guidry. After awhile we found a couple of empty chairs and sat down to visit with Neil Rest, who was busy fantasizing about making a Worldcon bid for a cruise ship. Before long he had attracted a hell of a crowd, and by daylight hundreds of people were urging him to make it a real bid. John walked away thinking if there was so little serious support for any Central Zone cities that people actually would support a cruise ship, maybe it was time to put together a New Orleans bid. So that evening saw the birth of two bids: Nolacon II, which won the 1988 Worldcon; and the Boat, which came in second in a field of four.

(Neil, if you know of links to more of this history, please chime in.)

Re: African American: I've read a couple of studies of racism which addrressed it. They tended to prefer the term, "Afro-American" as being more easily parted out from such background noise as white immigrants, N. Africans, etc..

And I think this guy is wrong.

Hey, thanks guys! It's neat to learn that the same's already been discussed/attempted in the past. I agree that overhead would be massive and evil, too. Plus I'm not sure how enjoyable it would be after a prolonged period -- the fatigue factor is considerable. But the Bermuda Triangle? That would have been awesome.

Dollhouse: Diminished focus on Echo would be nice. I want more about Boyd, Ballard, and Adelle. I also found myself more interested in the Sierra/Victor plotline, which is really saying something about the strength of the Echo plots.

Xopher, my love for Eliza Dushku will never falter, but she's not the actor with the greatest range on that show. I don't think the solution is to focus less on her. I think it's to let her become what it looked like she would be in the last episode. (Leaving that comment non-spoilery now.)

Terry, from The Black List: "A 2008 study released by Radio One Inc., the study’s sponsor, and Yankelovich, the Chapel Hill-based research firm, sampled the views of 30 million of the nation’s black people, the largest-ever study of black America, and the results were surprising when it comes to how black folks want to be labeled. While 44 percent prefer to be called black, 42 percent opt for African American and the remaining percent claimed to have no preference."

Will: I don't think the question is that cut and dried.

This is discussing terms of art.

I've known folks from other parts of Africa (Tunisia, South Africa, Lybia) who were bothered by the fact they couldn't really claim their heritage.

Black has problems because someone from Jamaica can be as black as someone from Kenya, and neither of them is precisely in the definitional equation of "people who were born in the United States and and had ancestors brought here to be slaves".

Which was the point the authors in those books (who were a mixed bag of blacks and whites) were trying to resolve, so they could address the various problems of all the groups which might fall into various metrics, if less designed terms were used.

Does it matter what a group wants to be called. Yes. But I don't see an overwhelming number opting for one or the other (Black or African American) and I do see confusions (and outright gamesmanship) arising from the terms we have now.

Me... I am lazy. My family (the part decended from people brought here to be slaves) says black, which tends to be my default.

But that's not what I was talking about. (I'm also curious about the "study", since that number [30 million] is really close to the US Census estimate of 36 million for the total population of ""Black persons" (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html). Unless they mean they did a survey which they claim is an accurate model of black americans' opinions).

Terry, agreed that it isn't cut and dried. I've been thinking about how "red" and "yellow" have fallen out of fashion as racial tags and wonder how long it'll be before "black" and "white" go.

I think the "white African American" should at least drop the "white" part. Lumping the three together puts a racial tag with what's either a racial or ethnic tag next to what's either an indicator of country or continent of birth or residence.

Huh. Which is to say, we know what we mean when we say it, but if we examine it, it makes no sense at all.

I'm not touching the terminology question with a ten-foot Polish-American bodyguard.

Trying to wrap up what we can today, including giving my brother a last taste of time off. We'll be heading up to Portland tonight, probably lateish and tired. Still not sure about meet-ups - my wife is expecting we'll be exhausted by the time we check in - and Charlie Stross's blog seems to have imploded today, so no word on possible Stross appearances. Ah well.

Fragano @ 30:

While I understand the emotions surrounding this issue, I'm damned if I can see how a court can do anything but pour gasoline on the fire. Bringing the issue into a public forum is a start; what's needed then is open discussion (which includes listening on all sides), not advocacy in an adversarial environment.

Xopher @ 32:

I've seen a few of those complaints; I think they're baseless. Dushku has shown an ability to handle a range of parts in Dollhouse; she may not have the range of an experienced character actor, but remember, she's not yet 30. I think she needs to work on facial control; but her physical acting in general is good, and she's got fairly good voice control. She just needs time to develop the skills.

Xopher @32: Everyone I know in real life who watches (or watched and abandoned) Dollhouse has criticized Eliza Dushku's acting ability. I've seen a lot of such comments online, as well. I'm not much of a fan either, I have to admit. Her performances in Dollhouse have had a kind of 'exercises in acting class' feel to them.

But then, I didn't like the show itself at all until the season finale, which may be coloring my opinion of the star.

why are there not fandom cruises?

There are gamer's (not gambler's) cruises. I know about them because I listen to the Fear the Boot podcast.
http://www.feartheboot.com/ftb/index.php/archives/942
http://www.gameradventures.com/

That's extremely cool news about Dollhouse.

On another subject, a while back I posted the following on a forum which has a fairly high percentage of conservative followers.

Which of the following do you agree with?:

A) Generally speaking, our country has made progress in the last half-century, and our descendants can rely on that progress to continue

B) Generally speaking, our country has declined, and we and our descendants will not live as well as our parents and grandparents

Out of the seven or eight reponses I had, the conservatives agreed with B, and the liberals (or progressives) agreed with A.

Based upon this totally unscientific poll, it seems clear that conservatives are a dour, pessimistic bunch in general.

Now, it might have been due to sour grapes (needless to say, they don't think much of our president), but I do think that conservatism in general is characterized by a "we're doomed" state of mind. Even during the Bush administration, I never got the feeling that everything was going downhill.

Maybe I have the cart before the horse. Maybe it starts with the mental mood, and then we grab the political philosophy that fits it.

will: When we use the terms black, afro-american, African American, the cultural consensus is we mean native born USians, who are descended from slaves.

It's not perfect, because there are people who will lump everyone who is dark enough (by their lights) into the category.

The guy from Mozambique (whom I inferr is European in ancestry, almost certainly; from his use of "portuguese" in his self-identification, as well as the "white" part), is playing fast and loose with that; and the assumptions made about how they are treated.

The people I was referring to, said they struggled with a good term. Black was a problem, because lots of people who suffer racism aren't dark. African-American was a problem, because there are immigrants from Africa.

Afro-American was chosen (for those works) because it let them keep a plain identification to point of origen, while keeping a localising distinction from those americans who were born in Africa.

On a side note... I'd really like to see the internals on that poll. How large the sample size (because I don't think they surveyed 30 million people, I think they are presenting it as what, "blacks" think). How many questions? What where they, and in what order (because that can shade answers).

Was it a multiple choice list? If so what were the choices. Looking at that response set, I'd bet the choices were, Black, African American, and no preference.

I wonder what the results would be if it were a longer list.

Bruce (StM): It depends on what/why he's doing this. What sort of discrimnation is he alleging? What was he doing with his claims of, "White African American". Because if he's trying to make a point about being an immigrant, it's one thing. If he's trying to say something about blacks being somehow preferred; or alleging some "PC Conspiracy" to keep him down because he somehow challenged the "status quo", I don't have any sympathy.

Terry @ 48:

Because if he's trying to make a point about being an immigrant, it's one thing. If he's trying to say something about blacks being somehow preferred; or alleging some "PC Conspiracy" to keep him down because he somehow challenged the "status quo", I don't have any sympathy.

I agree with the latter; I was working at UC Davis Med School in the early '70s when Bakke filed that "reverse racial discrimination" law suit. It was fairly bogus; he claimed that the school's affirmative action policies kept him from being admitted and was thus discrimination. In fact, IIRC, his academic record was less than stellar, and he really wasn't qualified.

If he's making a point about immigrants I agree that there's an issue to be addressed; I'm just not sure that the courts are the right place to address it. Though it's true that at times the law is the only available tool, using it to deal with social issues with polarized constituencies always has a cost.

Terry, do you know any black folks who still use Afro-American? I've seen Afri-American, but I only encounter black or African American these days. Wikipedia has an interesting article; I'd thought the word was coined in the '60, but it's much older.

Afro-American's a lot like Native American; it's just not the popular choice among the people it's supposed to refer to.

Weighing in briefly on the "African-American" debate: when we have an institution that uses this category (scholarships for African-Americans, African-American Student President, etc), its purpose is generally to act as a counterbalance for institutional discrimination. Given that intent, white people shouldn't be identifying as African-American for the purposes of these institutions, since they're not racially discriminated against in the USA. This is the heart of it as far as I can see.

Serge @ 29: There have been times when Jamie has been flappable, usually involving explosives.

I love Mythbusters.

Steve C @ #47, your unscientific poll seems to confirm what Buckley said was the mission statement for his magazine National Review:

It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.

http://www.newser.com/story/49042/niche-cruises-set-sail.html

Star Trek and Buffy themed cruises.

(I accidentally typoed "cruises" as "crises" but then I caught myself)

Also

http://home.comcast.net/~scificruise/09BonVoyage.html

doctor who themed cruise

Eliza Dushku hasn't knocked me over with her acting chops (like, say, John Malkovich did in Being John Malkovich) but I don't have any complaints about them either. I'm fine with a focus on Echo.

Linkmeister #53: It's always "Turn back the clock day" for conservatives.

I wouldn't mind turning back the clock to the Bartlet administration. heh.

Erik @#54: LARP?

Open Thread nerdiness: I just spent the day downgrading my main Linux system to Ubuntu 8.04. That fixed the font issue, which had been driving me buggy... but the unpleasant kicker is with the DVD-writer problems I'd been having.

It didn't fix those problems for the internal writer... but the external DVD-writer I'd brought in for the occasion works fine! It can write and verify both CDs and DVDs -- but the internal writer can't read the DVDs! Thankfully, it can still read CDs, and it did fine just now with a commercial DVD, but not with an older homemade DVD. (Which latter is playing fine on the external drive.)

Now I'm starting to wonder if the internal drives in two different machines, just happened to fail at roughly the same time in the same way.... (They are the same brand and from the same purchase.)

:-(

Erik Nelson @ 54, 55: If they docked at the same place, do you think there would be fights?

Xopher @32: I hadn't seen reason to complain about Eliza Dushku's acting; I'd felt she was doing a competent job.

OTOH, I see she is credited as an executive producer. I don't know what that involves, but it could possibly be distracting.

I recall reading a 1981 article about the production of Columbo by the producers* (by the magic of the internet, available here). At some point, Peter Falk was keen to direct.

We [..] were in a vengeful mood, so when we presented Falk with his script, it was fashioned, by design, to drive even the most experienced director out of his mind. The villain was an architect, and much of the picture would have to be filmed at a construction site. We had already picked the location, Century City, a massive new development of steel and glass. Scenes would be shot in a gigantic hole in the ground, swimming with dust, while an actual building was being erected. The excavation had the look of a crater on the moon.

To Falk's credit, he prepared diligently. He consulted with other directors and he spent his weekends at the construction site, lining up shots. But the filming of the picture was a nightmare for him. He picked up a cold and almost lost his voice. Concentration was impossible because of the perpetual din of pneumatic drills and rivet guns. And work on the building never stopped; nothing as insignificant as a television crew was going to halt the march of progress. Every time Falk would change his mind about a shot and try to reshoot it, he would discover the set was no longer there — a girder had gone up where his actors had stood moments before. We took to visiting the location and smiling down at him from the top of the hole. He'd shake his fist at us and plow on with the filming.

Interestingly, the picture that emerged was well directed. But Falk's performance was off. The adrenaline he needed to direct tended to interfere with his acting; he didn't calm himself sufficiently as he went from one side of the camera to the other, and so the usually low-key character of Columbo became, in this one instance, almost manic. But the construction site gave us fascinating production values, and we were very pleased with the film. It was the most expensive of the "Columbos," but the studio was too sheepish to complain about costs. As of this writing, Falk has never directed again.

David Harmon @ 58:

It's possible both drives are dead, but another possibility is that the cable to the internal drive is bad on the original machine. A bad cable might cause inability to burn DVDs that can be read on another drive, while allowing good CDs to be burned.

Terry, Bruce et al...

Ever since the term "African-American" started coming into use in the 1980s, it's been a problematic one. It has excluded, by its very nature, black people who are not Americans. It is ambiguous enough that cases like the one I linked to were liable to come up from time to time. Yet it is important in that it pointed to a heritage that substantial numbers of black Americans wanted to celebrate.

Perhaps celebrate a bit too much. At one Martin Luther King Day event I attended some years back, I was surprised when a young lady praised "Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela and other great African Americans." I've heard stories about black American students in London calling black and mixed-race Londoners "African-Americans" and not understanding why this was met with hostility.

Afro-American seems to have vanished. Not even elided into "Afram" as John Brunner thought it might in Stand on Zanzibar. I haven't heard it in years. Curiously, "Negro" has become either a jocular term or one seen as pejorative (that last I find a bit surprising, since I'm just old enough to remember when it was the polite term).

Bruce Cohen #61: No, it's the (new) external drive that successfully burns and reads. The internal drive I've been using can't read either its own disks (including ones from before it started failing) or those from the external drive (though again, it can read commercial disks). (I have yet to do exhaustive tests with the other internal drive.) It occurs to me that the drives may well be able to write usable disks, but not to read them -- I'm not happy with that, because even before they started failing, I had enough failed burns that I need to do the verify.

Both internal drives are also having problems with the Lightscribe feature (which labels specially-coated disks with one of the drive lasers). In retrospect, the history does support drive failure more than I had considered -- but I'm pissed, because I just bought those drives in the last year, or less. (Admittedly, I was giving them a fair workout.)

C'mon, Graydon Sanders is our Jamie Hyneman.

C'mon, Graydon Sanders is our Jamie Hyneman.

The Borders bookstore chain must really be close to vanishing. It's bad enough that, over the the last months, I am so unlikely to find certain books there that I've switched more and more to their Competitor. Still, I felt I should give them some of my business so, when the latest book in a certain SF series came out and neither chain had the book on display, I called the nearby Borders store to order it yesterday. What they said was they don't carry the book and that I should order it thru the chain's site. That doesn't sound too good.

I have now seen The House, in intimate detail. I'm still wavering between "Holy schemoley what a cool house I bought" and "Holy God what have I done?"

I really suspect driving from Miami to The House in two days has colored my perceptions, and a good night's sleep will help.

The guy trying to sell me marijuana on the sidewalk out front kind of creeped me out, though. Because his social skills weren't really all that well-honed.

Also, the air quality is less than perfect, given the cat droppings scattered liberally throughout the carpeted areas. And the dead rat in the decorative pond lent a certain je ne sais quoi to the ambiance.

Seriously -- it isn't going to take superhuman effort to make this a really snazzy house, but ... I need a good night's sleep.

Fragano, #62: In Childhood's End, Clarke speculated that the N-word would eventually become a useful descriptor unburdened with emotional baggage. He was describing a time several centuries in the future, and well after the Overlords had apparently put such a forceful stop to all forms of prejudice that the habit had more or less disappeared from human civilization. Sadly, I suspect that this is exactly what would be required for that to happen.

Michael, #67: Sleep. It always feels better in the morning.

I would nominate Erik V. "Every state should have a volcano, if yours wasn't issued one, make your own!" Olson as our Jamie. For obvious reasons.

Michael:

At least, from your description, the house isn't filled with random bits of paper from the last 150 years. Seriously, on my mother's bedroom floor, intermixed with packing slips from QVC and paid or unpaid bills, we found a hand-written family journal dating back to 1859 (!) which might contain an account of going to see Abraham Lincoln's state funeral. There were some other amazing things there, but that tops the list for me.

I hadn't really realized how bad things had gotten there. I should have inferred more when she wouldn't invite us in any longer, back in January.

Michael,

I have been totally fascinated by your house-buying journey, and sincerely look forward to mare episodes, once you get some sleep.

curses. i would see the typo *after* I hit post. mare=more.

Michael Roberts @ 67:

Get a good night's sleep. It may still seem bad in the morning, but once you whip that stuff out and get it cleaned up, it'll be amazing.

Clifton Royston @ 70:

In cleaning out my late grandmother's house, I came to the conclusion that QVC were evil, and packing peanuts are demon spoor.

I don't think Eliza Dushku's performances have been bad but I'm not impressed either, especially compared to the performances of the other actors. I keep thinking that I'd like to see Ali Larter as Echo (but I stopped watching Heroes after season 2, so...). I'd also like to see Dollhouse becomes more of an ensemble show.

#47 ::: Steve C.:

I hadn't really thought about the question, but my feeling is that there are pulls in both directions, and the outcome is the result of decisions which haven't yet been made and knowledge which hasn't yet been acquired.

I'm a libertarian.

Clifton Royston @ 70 ...
I hadn't really realized how bad things had gotten there. I should have inferred more when she wouldn't invite us in any longer, back in January.

Hm. I should probably take (personal) warning from that...

SeanH @ 22: "This is encouraging news, as it seems to imply the ability for TV executives to learn from mistakes and associate past outcomes with future possibilities, activity previously only observed in mammals."

Now, now, you're being unfair. What about octupi?

Terry Karney @ 48: "It depends on what/why he's doing this. What sort of discrimnation is he alleging? What was he doing with his claims of, "White African American". Because if he's trying to make a point about being an immigrant, it's one thing. If he's trying to say something about blacks being somehow preferred; or alleging some "PC Conspiracy" to keep him down because he somehow challenged the "status quo", I don't have any sympathy."

It seems to me to be more like the former--what he's protesting is how he was treated after claiming the title "White African-American" for himself. Now, I'm guessing that more digging would probably reveal some less than stellar behavior on his part as well, but I don't think that ordering someone not to use a label they've chosen for themselves, as allegedly happened, is particularly good behavior on the teacher's part.

KeithS @ 73:

QVC is only the modern phase. Five years ago Eva spent 2 weeks cleaning our her parents house when they moved to an independent living community. I spent a week helping her, and our older son spent several days as well. We threw out over 11 dumpsters worth of stuff, shipped something like 12 cubic feet worth of stuff in boxes back to our house, and sent on what was somewhat useful and would fit to their new home. Note that much of what we found was merchandise that had been bought, often several of the same item, and never unwrapped or taken out of the box.

Then a couple of months ago Eva's brother shipped us 6 boxes of stuff taken out of her mother's apartment when she moved to assisted living. We found a lot of things that once belonged to Eva's grandfather, that had just been boxed without being looked at. Among them was a full set of dentures that no one seems to want.

All this was accumulated long before QVC.

Well, after the aforementioned night's sleep, I am no longer quite so dejected.

No, no QVC slips or other random bits of paper. The place is quite empty. Just really, really dirty.

The front yard has a lot of decorative plants. I'm going to ask the former owner how many of them he wants to transplant. Apparently, he had the hobby of going to e.g. Lowe's and buying the "dead" plants, then nursing them back to health. There are a lot of nice flowers, but the overall look is far too bushy for my taste, and it all hides the copious poison ivy. So it's going to have to go, most of it.

I've got three nice sycamores, though, and a great Japanese maple.

The place smells horrible. Not many of the windows open, so airing it out might already be a technical challenge. But mostly, it's just filthy. The toilets were used -- frequently -- after there was no water. I'm not sure how that happened, as that should have been post-foreclosure. Perhaps the bank didn't lock things effectively, I don't know.

Many of the lights work, which was nice to find out. There is a 120-year history of electrical fittings there -- actually, in terms of home infrastructure, I should probably open it as a museum.

The basement is a full basement, sort of a stone/brick wall, with what's left of the original plaster on it. It's humid, but despite the copious rain of the past weeks, dry. That's excellent news.

There are strange crawlspaces here and there. They smell really, really bad -- earth mixed with animal droppings.

There was a bat flying around the attic after it got dark, but it must have been trapped -- I didn't see any droppings anywhere. The dog enjoyed trying to chase it.

There were cats inside, but I can't see where they're getting in. Logic tells me it's got to be one of the crawlspaces, but so far I can't see where.

One of the cats, a long-haired tom, actually chased the dog. Very effectively, too. Then he paced mightily across the street, ignoring the traffic stopping to avoid crushing him. That is one confident cat. He's quite friendly -- if you're a hominid, anyway. I'm pretty sure he's the one that pushed that rat into the decorative pond.

Anyway, I'm going back over to try to make sense of the plumbing. I don't actually see any burst pipes, which is a bonus. If I can get some water working, I can start cleaning.

It's not QVC, and for all I know they have worse policies than others, but catalogue shopping in general which seems to be dangerous.

Mt mother has used a particular catalogue, here in UK. It has stuff she uses. But I think I'd have to class her as vulnerable now, when there isn't the human contact in the transaction.

"African American": I've seen uses of the term meet here some sort of semi-contemptuous almost-aggressivity quite often, once established the one using it never had any relationship whatsoever with Africa (ie: "You know nothing about Africa, you're not African American, you're black American").
I've always thought it misleading and ill-chosen myself, though I can understand why it was.

In my experience, "nègre" have mostly disappeared, pejorative uses excepted ("négro" has kept the jocular/ironicaly positive uses; I still have some fond memories of the whole "négro-parigot" fad of the 90's... my cousin would shout "Salut négro" to greet me, enjoying people's general embarrassment). One recent devellopement which get on my nerves is the use of the english "black" instead of "noir" by people feeling compeled to do the switch by some sense of political correctness. It really, really get on my nerves.

Given that intent, white people shouldn't be identifying as African-American for the purposes of these institutions, since they're not racially discriminated against in the USA.

I know it comes from me being an exception, but I can't help but wonder how much truth there is to that sentence. I've seen people's reaction change totally (either to my advantage or my detriment, it must be said) when linking my - clearly Western African - name to my person.
I'm pretty sure it played a role in me not getting one job.

Which make s me wonder: I'm as white as my Wallon-borne mother. I generally speak wolof and soninke with my black father, and french with my mulatto [yes, using it as an adjective, not sure I can] brother and sister. I have a Western African name. All in all, were I born and living in the US, would I be allowed to use the term African American ?

Eagerly awaiting on Michael Roberts's Astonishing Adventure in the New House's next episode. I hope everyting will go well.

Dr Paisley @69 : Nah, Erik doesn't do unflappable as well as Jamie. Then again, very few people do. I've met very few people who could be described as Jamie (having never met Jim MacDonald in the flesh), and Erik is far more on the Adam side of the spectrum. (Most of GT is, come to think of it, perhaps with a bit higher awareness of safety preparedness, as we are on our own.)

MD² #81: I get very different responses (and have all my adult life) to people seeing me in person, versus hearing me over the phone. Stereotypes 'r' not us.

"Mulatto" tends to be viewed with hostility in the US, though I -- as one myself -- have no particular objection to the term. I've no doubt someone will tell me that I ought to.

Were you living in the US today, you might be allowed to claim African-Americanness/blackness. There's the well-known case of Gregory Williams, and the historical case of Walter White.

Michael @ 67 & 79:
Sympathies. I can empathise with the "let-down" feeling - reminds me of moving into my first flat: 40 hours to scrub the cooker/oven clean was not fun (nor was the fight to get in and the wait for a locksmith because the key didn't work).

Sounds like the clean-up's going to be a lot of work, unfortunately. Just remind yourself what the end result should be... The pictures you've shared with us shows that house has real potential

I love hearing about the house. It is really tempting me. No! I do not need a house! I need a job, then we can look at more permanent things! And even then, a house isn't really the right choice. I feel like I need something extravagant to assert that I haven't wasted my life. I am having the perfectly stereotypical quarter-life crisis, assuming that it's the same as a midlife crisis.

I haven't read the article on terminology, but some time ago, I read one on educated Africans taken as slaves. A great many of them were described as Moors because that meant they could be educated, while Africans were savage and needed to be taken care of. Which ties into the "if good, then not SF" thread somewhat.

Michael, have you considered hiring a cleaning crew to help with that phase? That sounds like too big a job for one person.

Clifton at 70, I sympathize. While a friend of mine was dying, I took on the responsibility of getting his (rented) home cleared of possessions. His wife loaded PODs to be shipped off with what she wanted, but the house, garage, and back yard were still crammed with truckloads of Stuff, some of it valuable, like books, much of it not. (For example, my friend "collected" used computers; we removed three truckloads of used computer parts from the home's attic spaces.) It took two months and many people's generous efforts to empty the place. The experience left me with an extreme negative reaction to purchasing anything which will not be immediately consumed -- clothing, books, tchotchkes, Stuff of any nature. I'm frugal anyway; I've become even more so.

Diatryma, I'm right there with you. I got downsized and I've been looking, and looking, and looking. I've been pounding the pavement, and the keyboard, and my head against the wall.

Serge@66: The Borders bookstore chain must really be close to vanishing

Their downtown Seattle outpost seems to be ok, last I looked, even though Seattle has Real Bookstores to compete with.

<tinfoil hat>
Or perhaps *because* Seattle has Real Bookstores -- maybe they are only interested in siphoning off readers from the independents, not from the Competitor
</tinfoil hat>

While on the topic, what bookstores should I visit in DC this summer? I know about Kramerbooks in Dupont Circle, and the scientific and technical bookstore on K street (whose name I don't remember).

Michael @ #79, please don't just document this adventure in the comments here. Keep a blog/journal. You'll want it down the road a few years, or maybe your descendants will.

Oh, and maybe there's a book deal in it sometime, too. If "Cooking with Julia" gets a blogger a book deal and then movie rights, why not?

Thomas @ #89, I see Politics and Prose author talks on C-Span all the time. It's on Connecticut Ave. NW. I don't know how far out their speaker schedule goes, but it might be fun to see whose talk might coincide with your visit.

About Dushku's acting: Some of the other actors on the show are better. But the most common complaint I've heard -- that she's supposed to be a different person every week, and why does the same persona keep bleeding through? -- doesn't entirely make sense. That pattern is sort of the point of the show.

"The scientific and technical bookstore on K street" is Reiter’s Books.

For any of you in the area this coming Wednesday (May 20), it's "SciFi Night" at Reiter's. A whole bunch of SF authors (currently confirmed are Arlan Andrews, Catherine Asaro, Greg Bear, Charles E. Gannon, John G. Hemry, Yoji Kondo, Edward M. Lerner, Tom Ligon, Tom Purdom, Bud Sparhawk, and Michael Swanwick) will be signing books and discussing "Science Fiction Changes Everything?" Hosted by Reiter's and sponsored by the SIGMA Project (in conjunction with the 2009 Homeland Security S&T Stakeholders Conference - East) and the Washington Science Fiction Association.

Michael @ #79,

One recommendation for a cleaning situation like yours: melamine sponges (Target's 'Eraser' or similar).

They look like sponges but scrub like they have hidden microscopic belt sanders. For grime I haven't found anything that works better--takes off as much grime with far less arm-power than a scrubbing sponge would use.

I've used them for bathrooms, the kitchen, and all hard surfaces. They also remove scuffmarks on some types of paint (great for fingerprints around a doorknob). With paint you have to test and practice- the combination of damp sponge plus too much pressure can take paint off, but I've had good results using a very light touch. I wouldn't use it on easily-scratched materials like leather, finished wood, or soft plastic.

They warn it can scratch glass, but I couldn't get that to happen when I tried deliberately*.

They need to be damp to work, but that doesn't take much water. They dissolve as you use them (the melamine foam acting like sandpaper)--I'd expect to use about two for a moderately grimy bathtub, say. They don't work with scrubbing powders (gunks up the sponge) but work fine with cleaning sprays.

Always wear gloves when using them, because they can irritate skin (not toxic, but by having a sandpaper effect).

-----------
* would've been cool as a non-chemical glass etcher.

OK, the Eurovision Song Contest was on Saturday night.

The British entry came a respectable fifth.

The winner was Norway, a guy playing a fiddle. Quite enjoyable. But the video clip I saw today had me thinking of Peter Jackson's hobbits. Not in a silly way but, apart from the lack of hairy feet, you could imagine the guy playing his fiddle for Bilbo's party.

Finland with orcs, Norway with a hobbit: what will Sweden and Denmark do?

I'm about to hire another college student to help me clean out the storeroom. I did this six years ago and that helper is now employed, married, and a dad. But it'll just be a day and I'm hiring him because I can't do the lifting and carrying. Six years ago I kept all the board games I had, but they've never beeen played since. If they aren't moldy (which is possible since the storeroom is off the balcony), they'll go to the charity thrift shop. Otherwise, the dumpster. I have several other categories of things that haven't been used in long enough that I'd rather have the room in there.

Ahhh, the warm-hearted interest of the Internet crowd. You can't imagine how much it helps.

This morning, I went over to start the photodocumentation of the Before state. While I was there, taking pictures of the outside with my dog on the leash, the former owner came over and introduced himself. (Fortunately, he seems to harbor no ill will. I know I would.) I asked him where the water pipe comes in, and he took me down in the basement to show me -- then showed me where he'd taken out a heater, so I'll have to cap the pipe, and showed me where I'd need a heater, under the kitchen floor, to prevent pipes freezing. And more information of that nature. Incredibly valuable.

He also told me that the carriage house can't be vacant for more than six months, or it'll lose its grandfathered variance. Richmond city ordinance now prohibits apartments above garages. So that would really have sucked, not to know that.

Anyway, then I went to my Dad's farm for breakfast -- which I cooked myself, as my Dad is not terribly trustworthy in the kitchen, ha -- and let my dog run around with his. An hour of rocketing around at ninety miles an hour seems to have made up for the three days in the car, and she's smiling more now.

Then I went back to the house to spray Roundup on some of the poison ivy and start taking indoor pictures, and I quit when I started feeling overwhelmed again. I need to ease into this and stay in a zen state, or I'll never finish any of it.

Besides, the paying work awaits.

I had thought about a cleaning crew -- but frankly, I know I can do a better job. It's really not that bad a job cleaning an utterly empty house, even one this big and dirty. Moreover, if I do it myself, I'll have more time to get to know the details of the structure itself, where the odd holes are (and man are there a lot of odd holes!) and that kind of thing. And most especially, I'll know where there might be mold problems, and will be able to deal with them thoroughly.

Also, cleaning, to a certain extent, will have to include demolition of anything that needs it -- removal of cracked paint, which needs to be done in a lead-safe manner, removal of wallpaper and rotten plaster, and so on. A cleaning crew won't do that, but if I don't do the superficial cleaning, I won't notice everything.

This is probably why I can't ever finish software projects, either.

Linkmeister -- I've got plans to blog it all, yes. I've already been blogging some of it, plus a pretty active discussion on AskMetaFilter and the comments on the Flickr set. And that was before I'd ever seen it. So I intend to continue documenting thoroughly.

Oh, hey, Terry @ 26 (I'm just now reading this thread, you see, instead of just posting blind) -- nah, you didn't talk too much. I secretly wanted to hear more about the whole interrogation thing anyway. Plus you have a good way of telling a story. Also: Waffle House puts me in a good mood.

Madeline @39 - I lived in the Bermuda Triangle for years, given that Puerto Rico is one corner. It's a nice place to cruise, sure, but ... I think it's one of those things that sounds vaguely good when laughing about it, but wouldn't actually be that great. For fen, I mean.

My dream was always to start a cruise line for non-jerks. Consisting maybe of like one ship, because there aren't that many non-jerks. If you've ever cruised, you know what I mean (we cruise a lot; my wife loves it because she likes anything having to do with the sea or ships, and we find good prices). The people who tend to cruise are mostly shallow bourgeoisie from Jersey or Yorkshire or someplace, who think that drinking and floor shows and casinos are the height of entertainment, who like having a Third-World minion scrub their toilet every day, who complain about the pasta after their fourth heaping serving, who ... guh. Seriously -- I like cruise ship food, I like travel, and I love machines bigger than buildings, but having to cruise with all those people has made me really dislike the whole concept. I usually let my wife cruise while I, say, buy a house in Indiana and start renovating it.

But imagine a cruise line for Internet people, or home schoolers, or fen. That could really be excellent!

Plus for non-jerks, you don't have to feed their tender little egos, because their egos are already elephantine enough. So you wouldn't need a luxury ship. In fact, it would be cooler to have a converted freighter -- with nice fittings and staterooms, I don't mean grungy, just ... a working ship with some real history, that looked interesting. It would be far, far cheaper.

So. There's a business idea for you, gift wrapped. I'll bet it could be made to work.

Linkmeister, #90: Hell, just doing funny movie reviews got Cleolinda a book deal! I can well imagine that a lot of people would be very interested in reading about the process of restoring a lovely old house -- enough for it to sell as a book.

Michael, #99: You'd have to be careful about the home-schoolers; they come in several flavors, and a couple of those flavors are decidedly jerkish.

Michael @99: When were were removing the petrified grunge in the DIY House from Hell, we got good results from one of these shark steam cleaners. Ours is older and has a smaller water tank, but it worked great at loosening grime, crud and filth, especially if we didn't worry too much about gross condensation dripped on the floor. With these small home units, you do have to wipe/mop. You might also be able to rent an industrial/commercial steam cleaner with the capability to vacuum up that nasty water, or use a wet/dry vac (better if there are two people doing this.)

Good luck.

Michael, I wonder if you could persuade the This Old House guys and gals to come look at it.

Lots of nice tips at their site, it looks like.

Overheard at brunch: "She's a stereotypical dumb blonde. We don't speak any more because we're on different life paths."

(The speaker was a blonde woman.)

Train info / Dutch translation needed!

I'm travelling from London to Tilburg this Wednesday, returning Sunday 24th. I have my Eurostar tickets to/from Brussels.

I've just tried to check my journey plan Brussels to Tilburg, and the website I ended up using was http://www.ns.nl/.

On the return journey (Tilburg - Brussels Midi, Sunday 24th to arrive about 13.30) it gave a warning about a delay - but the further information page was in Dutch: http://www.ns.nl/werktrajecten/index.form?todayOrTomorrow=false#werkzaamheden-2009_asd_brusz_21_24mei

If anyone can assist with translation and whether it's a minimum delay or one where I really need to add two hours to the estimated journey time, I'd be very grateful.

Kathryn from Sunnyvale @ 94, Michael @ #79 ...
One recommendation for a cleaning situation like yours: melamine sponges (Target's 'Eraser' or similar).

I can also strongly recommend spraying on a weak TSP solution to loosen up age old dirt and grime, followed a few minutes after by a scrubby sponge and rag (or a succession of scotchbrite scrub/sponge pads) to both clean off the TSP, and apply some other cleaner.

I've dealt with cat pee in the past by repeatedly flooding the area with vinegar, letting it sit, cleaning up, and repeating until the smell goes away (I'm told it's something to do with dissolving the uric acid crystals, but don't know. It's certainly not a fast process -- the last thing I had to deal with took several weeks).

Other folk suggest enzymatic cleaners, simply ripping out/tossing out all affected objects, and various combinations of things involving chlorine bleach or hydrogen peroxide.

My takeaway from all of the methods except "toss everything" boils down to "patience and time".

xeger @ 105:

Can't speak for cat pee, but for dog effluents of all sorts the enzymatic cleaners work very well*. One of our rescues has occasional "accidents"** and we've had ample opportunity to try out several kinds of cleaners. The enzymatics are intended to remove the scent completely so the animal doesn't have a marked place for further use.

* Except for Oxy, which works, sortof, but not as well as Biozyme or other products specifically made for pet use.

** Really, some sort of emotional trouble resulting from his abuse, as near as we can tell.

Xeger @105,

I agree with Bruce @106--those enzyme cleaners are better and faster than anything else.

When one of our cats developed a temporary fear of the litterbox while we were gone for two weeks, we bought a bacterial/enzyme cleaner online, and it worked very well. We used a needle to inject it into the undercarpet (a spray on top would not have been enough). For ordinary accidents Nature's Miracle seems to be enough.

Well, all carpets, of course, are destined for the dumpster, post haste. But some of the urine spots are on wood, so -- yeah. This advice may very well come in handy.

But honestly -- most of the stink is from the toilets. The former owner told me today that the house was actually occupied until February 11th, and apparently some of the pipes had already frozen at that point. But you know, people hadn't stopped using the toilets. So, well, you see. Or rather -- be thankful you don't see. Or smell. This is one aspect of the Before situation which I am not photodocumenting.

xeger, #105: On anything which won't be damaged by it, the best method for dealing with cat pee is a medium-strength bleach solution. Acid/base, watch it foam! Also, dried cat pee glows under UV light; a UV flashlight is good for locating problem areas.

OOOoooh, an excuse to buy a UV flashlight!

Scorpions also glow nicely in UV, so that flashlight will also come in handy for nocturnal desert rambles. Unless you run into a scorpion hanging out in a puddle of cat pee, of course.

Michael@99: I'd cruise on your cruise line.

I've been on two cruises, and the smaller, older ship from the first cruise was my favorite. Alas, it is now in (I believe) Southeast Asia with a different company.

I didn't much care for the floating Las Vegas hotel the second time, though I did come out a little bit ahead at the casino. There was no place to stand in the bow and watch the ship come into port the last morning. A ship should feel kike a ship.

#37 Bill
After the votes got tallied, Neil was walking around exclaiming, "We WON--we lost!"

He did NOT want The Boat to win, nonononono, and was very happy that it didn't win--he was getting worried that it would!

Tracie @101 - OK, so I see from your link that this thing is used to clean hard surfaces like hardwood or tile, but ... I don't understand why. How is steam better than scrubbing or something? I mean, besides ease of use.

Michael, make small, attainable goals and don't look much ahead. That way you won't get overwhelmed and go f-k it, I QUIT!

I'm helping a friend organize his third floor so a) he knows what is up there and b) some of it can be appraised. I'm keeping my small, attainable goals and it is working. (though there is nothing wrong with that attic that backing up a 40-cubic-yard dumpster up to and tossing shit out the window into it wouldn't help.)

I've already filled to contractor-sized trash bags with junk/destroyed-animal soiled stuff. And need to discuss tossing bags of records that are too old. I'm guessing he will say okay, when he went up and saw I had tried to organize the stripped books (his late wife worked at a bookstore and could not bear to see them go into the trash) he said, "stripped books? trash them."

Whoo, just had a bit of an earthquake here. I think it lasted about a minute, and some of my carefully-collected piles of stuff fell over. Waiting to see what the USGS has to say.

Just looked at the USGS report and as of right now it says it's a magnitude 5.0 close to LAX.

Shaking:
The did-you-feel-it page is apparently overloaded. It's stalling my browser when I try to get it. (Yes, I felt it. Vertigo is fun. Not.)

Paula @114 - yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to set up some kind of multilayer to-do list so I can focus only on the next thing without forgetting the rest of it. Currently, the next thing is getting water into the house without it coming out everywhere. Once I do that, the next thing is to clean. Once I've cleaned, I don't know what the next thing is. But by then I'll have figured it out.

I have to say, though, that having already loaded all our belongings into a truck, quitting is not a very viable option. Oh, sure, I could always just stack it all in the carriage house and rent something. But then I'd be renting something in Richmond, Indiana, when I was renting something in the Caribbean. That's ... not really a step forward.

KeithS, earthquakes always remind me of the lists of Richter-scale magnitudes above actually possible ones, e.g. here (scroll down towards the bottom). Richter 12, for instance, would roughly correspond to the Earth breaking in half, and would be 160 trillion tons of TNT -- or the amount of sunlight falling on the Earth in one day. Which is a powerful argument for solar energy, if anything is.

The USGS link to Google Earth is showing the epicenter on 105th between Doty and Yukon, south of Hollywood Park. I think everyone in that neighborhood is now wide awake.

Michael @114: Ease of use is the reason (and that Age of Steam feeling, of course). Instead of using noxious chemicals and elbow grease for everything, a lot of crud can be loosened with steam and wiped or mopped up (rather than scrubbed). In my experience, what was not dislodged with steam was more succeptible to subsequent cleaning products and scrubbing. We used steam on the kitchen cabinets, appliances (inside and out), bathrooms and laminate and linoleum floors. Mopping or wiping up the nasty condensation is a pain, but we did the steaming in smallish increments, as a break from stripping wallpaper, scraping, priming, painting, ripping up carpet, etc., etc. You might put out feelers to see if you can borrow one. Your mileage will most assuredly vary.

I'm a great believer in commercial enzyme deodorizer, bought at a janitorial supply company. The previous owner of the DIY House from Hell(tm) let the cats use a living room corner as a cat box. Nature's Miracle isn't the same formula it was years ago. It still works, but back then it was magic.

#66 Serge
What book/series?

Border's isn't dead yet--I read or heard recently that its financiers have extended credito to it through to sometimes in at least 2010.

============

Michael--would you rather it have been a live rat, or a dead parrot?

Michael: How habitable is the carriage house apartment? Getting that rented out sounds like job one.

FYI:

An episode of Pushing Daisies appeared on my PVR's menu; Saturday May 30th.

This is probably the first of the three as-yet-unaired episodes.

Stefan, #124: Or getting it fixed up to the point where they can live in it while working on the main house. It doesn't have to be rented specifically, just somebody has to be actually living there.

Analysis

There are three motivations in life: money, power, and love.
One can see the mother in the shadow she cast on her daughter:
Power-hungry, clever
raising her daughter to be intelligent
in a world that valued neither women nor intelligence.
Always pushing her daughter for more
but never thinking to offer praise.
The daughter, later, finding it impossible to fit in—
looking for sympathy and finding only accusation
(small wonder, though, considering the history with her neighbors).
She made the classic mistake,
thinking a child will be someone who loves you
when instead, a child is one to whom you give love.
And then, the real tragedy,
assuming that since her upbringing was so harsh and unloving
that the reverse would be ideal
and took matters to the other extreme,
stifling,
smothering with love,
so it is small wonder that the child, once grown,
was fair prey for the first heartless handsome wretch to come along.
And then life in the world being too much for one raised behind tower walls,
broke beneath the pressure of its demands.
One wonders if the giant's step came as a relief,
though that, in turn, broke the one who needed her,
craved the love of a daughter, a family,
any family.

Rapunzel sobs that her upbringing has insured
that she can never be happy.
A pause, then,
"I was only trying to be a good mother."
And we laugh, because, after all,
What would a witch know of love?

Michael Roberts #120: Richter 12, for instance, would roughly correspond to the Earth breaking in half, and would be 160 trillion tons of TNT -- or the amount of sunlight falling on the Earth in one day. Which is a powerful argument for solar energy, if anything is.

As in, "OMG, everybody panic! Solar energy will break the earth in half!! Use more oil!!! We need to make more animal species go extinct to ensure the oil supply for future generations!!1!!"

Right?

More like, "The Sun pours far more than enough energy on the earth in a day to power every human need and then some. It's clean, inexhaustible* and practically free**. So why are we still using fossil fuels?"

* For all intents and purposes. The Sun will continue to bathe the Earth in light for longer than the Earth will remain habitable by humans.

** Once the apparatus to capture and convert raw Sunlight to other types of energy has been set up, it will pay for itself in a relatively short time, after which the only ongoing costs are for basic maintenance. No need to continue purchasing fuel.

re Enzyme Cleaners: They work. They even break down skunk (and empiric testing says tomato juice is a decent reducing agent, but will not wipe it out). I would, however, recommend against the "Skunk" versions. All they seem to add is rubbing alcohol, and for the difference in cost, you can get your own, and therefore have more of the enzymes.

Michael: I'm glad to know I was interesting enough to make up for doing great wodges of the talking. I had a good time. It was the first non-family related outing I've had since I got here.

Probably WAY too late to the black/African American debate but:

I had a buddy in high school who embraced the term "black." I didn't know until we studied the Civil Rights movement in history how strongly he opposed the term African American.

It turned out (something he hadn't wanted to make public) that he was U.S. born of Australian Aboriginal descent. Not only did African American offend him because he was not born of the descendants of slaves, but he wasn't remotely African (in recent geologic terms).

Re: enzymatic cleaners:

It's a little-known fact (at least in my circles) that ordinary "Simple Green" is an enzymatic cleaner. It has other ingredients, so you have to test it in small, hidden areas, but it's cheap and it works!

I use an enzyme cleaner on my carpet when necessary, and it doesn't seem to work very well. It'll take out the catpukespot, but leaves a halo. I'm wondering if my carpet is dirty enough to act like chromatography, or if the enzyme cleaner will always leave a big spot.

Having the carpets cleaned when I moved out was a condition of me getting a cat, though, so I am not hugely annoyed.

Thomas @ 89... The Borders I go to here in Albuquoiquee (as Bugs Bunny pronounces it) looks like it's doing ok, but the absence of new titles (a recent development) was rather mysterious to me until I read a recent column by Malzberg & Resnick in the SFWA Bulletin(*). Maybe Seattle's Borders stores are doing better because New Mexico is what is considered one of the poorer states of the Union with an economy that is not particularly diversified.

(*) By the way, their recent issue, which lists the Nebula nominees, along with comments with the authors, had one entry where the writer thanks me for some bit of French translation.

Paula Lieberman @ 123... The 3rd volume in Sean Williams's Astropolis series. I'll probably see if I can order it thru the nearby Barnes & Noble, which did have one copy on their shelves, but it looked as if my wife had just finished reading it.

Datum: Pitt Street Mall Borders Store (major central/downtown Sydney main street shopping strip) closed this week. Usually seemed busy. Others in Sydney & other States remain open, they say.

OTOH, area is under major redevelopment with many places moving &/or closing while building work is on.

Stefan@124/Lee@126 - I think "occupied" is what they're after, not rental status. Visually, I think the carriage house apartment is better, and there are no cats there, but somehow -- probably because the building is smaller -- the air seems more oppressive.

It's a cute little house, though. I'm going to get its power turned on today. It shares water with the main house, but it's going to take some plumbing work to get the water over there. The plumbing really is in bad shape.

Mr. Roberts @ 79:

There was a bat flying around the attic after it got dark, but it must have been trapped -- I didn't see any droppings anywhere.

You will probably want an expert to come check out your attic nonetheless. Our last experiment in homeownership came with bats. They would squeeze in and out of the attic through a tiny gap around the chimney, but sleep in the walls, so the level of droppings in the attic was miniscule. Then, when the weather became hot enough, some of them would find their way out at the bottom at night, then follow air currents upward to our bedroom. Whee!

Anyway, the experts sealed most of the detectable attic gaps and installed a sort of one-way door on the largest one. In a little while, no more bats. (The experts also picked out a house with a Spanish tile roof nearby and noted that they would probably just relocate there, but that's life in a Randian utopia for you.)

Michael Roberts

It's vital that, if you haven't, you rent and watch "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House."

Paula@123 - I'd prefer a live parrot, assuming I have a choice. :-)

Michael Roberts @ 139...

"I wish to complain about this parrot what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique."
"Oh yes, the, uh, the Norwegian Blue... What's, uh... What's wrong with it?"
"I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. 'E's dead, that's what's wrong with it!"
"No, no, 'e's uh,...he's resting."

Maximum nerd-out: Real Live Astronauts are Watching ‘Star Trek’ in Outer Space - Right Now (well, at least they were on May 15th)

re 50 et al.: There is a distinct progression for "people of African/slave ancestry in the USA" that allows one to date major institutions pretty accurately.

Re various: We've found that Prestone's upholstery cleaner works really well on spot cleaning (see under "leaky diaper in rented car"). For the carpets as a whole we use a service which has done extremely well by us.

dcb #104: The NS website seems to be down, but looking at format of the url it looks like there are some repair works ongoing near Brussels.

The Belgian railway site seems to suggest getting a train from Tilburg at 10:37 and changing at Roosendaal for a train which gets into Brussels for 12:45.

If you can get the website to work, feel free to email me the message and I'll let you know what it says.

C. Wingate #141:
Did NASA pipe in the environmental sounds of people whispering behind them?

Mr. Houghton @ 144:

They didn't have to. Up in space, the whispering of the dead never entirely stops.

I have a Borders gift card with just over $100 left on it, and I plan to use it up real soon now before it disappears. I was at our local Borders last night and noticed that the computer system didn't show any "New and Notable" books from later than 2007. As usual, there was nothing new and notable in the f/sf section, which had been spread out so the aisles were more than twice as wide. I picked up an old Connie Willis book that I had somehow missed, though I think I gave my mother a copy a while back. Couldn't find any Pinkwater. Drat!

I was going to pass on something that my wife came across, regarding the Wingularity, but I see that Patrick has a Particle on that very subject.

mds @ 145

The whispering peaks in the microwave range, with a noise temperature of about 2.7°K.

Re 50, 142 et al.: The Library of Congress used to use "Afro-Americans" in its subject headings, and changed over to "African Americans" fairly recently; I think it was sometime between 2000 and 2003. They tend to be a trailing indicator for terminology usage. (They only switched from "Vietnamese Conflict" to "Vietnam War" a few years back.)

I don't know exactly when the change was. Their current subject authority file notes "Afro-Americans" was a former heading, but doesn't say when the change was made. I wish there was an easily accessible versioning system for subject headings, so one could get a birds-eye view of terminology change over time.

@ Tracie: some Borders gifts cards may be valid on Amazon...

MDS #145, Bruce Cohen #148:

"In space, no one can hear you scream"

It's drowned out by all that damned whispering of the damned, who are whispering that they are cold, damned cold.

But take Mr. Cohen's 2.7 K (degrees Kelvin? Scold, scold!), work out the relevant redshift, and it turns out the damned were once actually hot, damned hot. There's apparently just no pleasing the damned.

mds 152: There's apparently just no pleasing the damned.

Damn those damned damned.

This just in, from the LA Times:

"Reporting from Washington -- The Supreme Court rejected appeals today from two hold-out counties in Southern California that object to the state's 13-year-old medical marijuana law and claimed it should be struck down as violating the federal drug-control act.

"Without comment, the court turned down the pair of appeals.

"The action likely will clear the way for patients in San Diego and San Bernardino counties to seek county-issued identification cards that show they are eligible to possess and use marijuana.

"These identification cards have been required under state law since 2004, but the two counties have refused to issue them. Their lawyers had asserted the state's authorization for using medical marijuana conflicted with the zero-tolerance policy set by federal law."

I am amazed and pleased.

Cultural assumptions about parenting:

I was walking home from the library today, and passed a few friendly words with a rarely-seen neighbor on the subject of my daughter's physical precociousness (she's had good head control since her first week; currently 3 months of age, she's very close to having sitting up on her own figured out).

My neighbor volunteered cheerfully, "Well, she's just hurryin' up to get out of the way for a baby brother!"

I'm still boggled by this comment, on several different axes of becrogglement, and thought I'd share.

mds @ 152

*hangs head in shame; looks around for flogging-class wet noodle*
In all fairness most of my physical science training was more than 40 years; old habits are hard to break.

If ever the microwave background were to stop we will know that the damned damned have been dammed.

Elliot: "No, she's just eager to be able to stand up and smack rude people!" Nah, that's probably unneighborly.

How about "Actually she has her first soccer practice Monday!" That would make a point AND get a laugh.

Bruce & mds: why aren't Kelvin temperatures in degrees? I thought Kelvin was just Celsius minus 273 degrees. But then my physics is a manticore: ancient and largely made up.

Xopher @ 157:

The reason, as I think was explained to me a while back but don't actually remember, is that by saying degrees whatever you're saying it's not a measurement of absolute temperature. But I could be wrong.

KeithS: I sure hope that's not the reason, because that's about the silliest thing I've ever heard.

*thinks about things users say at work*

Well, no. But it's very, very silly.

But we do use degrees Rankine!

The explanation in the W*k*p*d** article on "Kelvin" is that "The omission of "degree" indicates that it is not relative to an arbitrary reference point such as the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales, but rather an absolute unit of measure which can be manipulated algebraically (e.g., multiplied by two to indicate twice the amount of "mean energy" available among elementary degrees of freedom of the system)."

It is a meaningful distinction, but it's probably of significance only to people who do thermodynamics calculations.

Elliott, #155: Yeah, that's a WTF moment all right! I'm not sure I could count all the unexpressed assumptions in that statement.

Nancy C. Mittens @ 160:

Only in heathen, non-metric-using countries. Checks location. Damn.

re 161: This is all very anachronistic since the resolution which established the Kevin scale defined the unit as the degree, not to mention that the unit of the Kelvin is (again) by definition the same as the Celsius degree. The SI redefinition is for the excessively fastidious.

*instinctively ducks as Joel's explanation flies overhead, even though the distance makes it completely unnecessary*

Seriously, thanks Joel. There's a hint of a glimmer of something that might potentially turn into understanding in my head. Perhaps I'll read the Wikipedia article later and see if I still feel really stooooopid.

I think of a degree as a distance on a scale. The scale ends, thud, right there at 0K, OK? Just as there was no time before the Big Bang, and there's nothing north of the North Pole (using 'north' in consistent senses). So any given temperature has a place associated with it on the scale, and there IS NO -1K or -274C, any more than there's a 91°N.

OK, my brain hurts now. It's like workout hurt though, so not to worry, but I have to rest now.

According to the documentation I have to hand (the manual to the SIunits LaTeX package):

Note: The 13th CGPM (1967, Resolution 3) also decided that the unit kelvin and its symbol K should be used to express both thermodynamic temperature and an interval or a dierence of temperature, instead of 'degree Kelvin' with symbol °K.

It doesn't state what the rationale was, though.

Well, I'm not excessively fastidious.

Well, yes I am, but not about that. So I'll forget it now. Unless, of course, someone else posts and argues with C., and is agreed to have won the day. Because I get all my opinions from Making Light the Fluorosphere knows all things.

See? See how someone gets in just as I'm deciding the previous person is probably right? I'm shutting off this damn computer.

@Michael Roberts: Thank you! I like that idea. A geek cruise would, I suspect, turn into a fen cruise by its very nature. And I like the idea of using an older boat, or a greener boat, so we could learn how the various systems worked. (A maker cruise would probably involve greening the boat -- repairing grey water systems and setting up solar panels, etc.)

Like everyone here, I'm enjoying the posts about this house of yours. And I admire both your attitude and that of the home's former owner -- I'm not familiar with the circumstances of the transfer, but he seems to have made peace with it.

Here's a song to help you get through the next spate of work. (Fleet Foxes, "White Winter Hymnal.")

Does anybody here watch Supernatural? Because hot damn that's a great show.

Bumper sticker seen on the back of the same vehicle today...

(1) Obama bin Lyin' - impeach now
(2) Don't be a pinhead
(3) Palin 2012

I'd have expected (2) and (3) to cause such cognitive dissonance as to make the driver's head explode, but there definitely was a skull under his baseball cap.

Serge,

But was there anything in it?

xeger@105: A long time ago, I was taught that worst part of the smell of cat piss comes from thioacetone, which is by weight the most odoriferous substance known. \Possibly/ the sulfur bond is weak enough that a weak acid like vinegar reacts with it without reacting with as much of the surroundings as a stronger acid would, or possibly anything non-neutral would do if used long enough.

Negative temperatures are possible under some special circumstances--but absolute zero is still the lowest possible temperature.

Temperature on the Kelvin scale is a unit of energy, and can be translated into energy units by multiplying by a constant factor (Boltzmann's constant). However, the coefficient that actually appears in the partition function, which determines how a particular temperature affects the states of a system, is the negative reciprocal of the temperature, -1/T.

Absolute zero on the Kelvin scale corresponds to negative infinity when expressed in terms of -1/T. This is the lower bound for temperature states. Positive infinity on the Kelvin scale corresponds to 0 when expressed in terms of -1/T, and for most ordinary systems this is the upper bound for temperature states.

For certain finite systems, however, -1/T can be raised above 0, leading to states with negative temperatures; these lie above all positive-temperature states, because -1/T is greater. The upper bound here is where the temperature approaches 0 from below, and -1/T tends toward positive infinity.

So there can sometimes be negative temperatures, but they are always hotter than positive ones. Isn't physics fun?

CHip @ 172 ...

In the process of digging around for more information about thioacetone, I've found a few entertaining links... (but none that suggest that feline urine contains thioacetone).

Academic references ...
Colour is not the only characteristic by which we recognize compounds. All too often it is their odour that lets us know they are around. There are some quite foul organic compounds too; the smell of the skunk is a mixture of two thiols—sulfur compounds containing SH groups.

But perhaps the worst aroma was that which caused the evacuation of the city of Freiburg in 1889. Attempts to make thioacetone by the cracking of trithioacetone gave rise to ‘an offensive smell which spread rapidly over a great area of the town causing fainting, vomiting and a panic evacuationºthe
laboratory work was abandoned’.

It was perhaps foolhardy for workers at an Esso research station to repeat the experiment of cracking trithioacetone south of Oxford in 1967. Let them take up the story. ‘Recentlyºwe found ourselves with an odour problem beyond our worst expectations. During early experiments, a stopper jumped from a bottle of residues, and, although replaced at once, resulted in an immediate complaint of nausea and sickness from colleagues working in a building two hundred yards away. Two of our chemists who had done no more than investigate the cracking of minute amounts of trithioacetone found themselves the object of hostile stares in a restaurant and suffered the humiliation of
having a waitress spray the area around them with a deodorantº. The odours defied the expected effects of dilution since workers in the laboratory did not find the odours intolerable ... and genuinely denied responsibility since they were working in closed systems. To convince them otherwise, they were dispersed with other observers around the laboratory, at distances up to a quarter of a mile, and one drop of either acetone gem-dithiol or the mother liquors from crude trithioacetone crystallisations were placed on a watch glass in a fume cupboard. The odour was detected downwind in seconds.’

There are two candidates for this dreadful smell—propane dithiol (called acetone gem-dithiol above) or 4-methyl-4-sulfanylpentan-2-one. It is unlikely that anyone else will be brave enough to resolve the controversy.

Stinky weapons, bored chemists, a rather distressing[0] paper entitled "Feline Reference Values for Urine Composition".

Wikipedia's info on cat urine suggests:

Cat urine, especially that of male cats, contains the putative cat pheromone 3-mercapto-3-methylbutan-1-ol (MMB), a compound that gives cat urine its typical odor. The MMB precursor felinine is synthesized in the urine from 3-methylbutanol-cysteinylglycine (3-MBCG) by the excreted peptidase cauxin. Felinine then slowly degrades into the volatile MMB.[3]

[0] For the experimental methodology. Don't search for it if you squick easily about animal experimentation.

I can't confirm the chemical details of cat urine odor, but I do know that, left to itself, the smell endures until the very protons decay.

Thiols - or some of their cousins - are used as odorants in natural gas. (They used to be called mercaptans.)

Summer Storms @ 171... He didn't seem like the kind of person who'd let me knock on his head for echos so I thought it wiser not to inquire any further.

P J Evans @ 176:

They still are called mercaptans if you're stuck in the engineering world. Either the engineers don't know that the chemists have come up with a better naming scheme, or they don't care.

For extra impact, use pyridine as the solvent for your mixture. (I used to use the stuff as a solvent for gas chromatography work in a biochemistry research lab, back when I was in college. "Essence of long-dead sardines, concentrated" was my usual description.)

All this talk of stench is reminding me of a scene in Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos in which Our Hero breaks up a political protest that's threatening to turn violent by setting off the equivalent of a Super Stink Bomb.

y (#173) It's an overcast day here in sometimes-sunny Sydney, so your explanation is cut off from my view by the cloud layer. But I hope by some application to gain a portion of enlightenment anent it.

Madeline Ashby @ 169

I like Supernatural too, especially this last season. One of things that kept me interested from the beginning was the running gags, like the fake names Sam and Dave use, or the increasingly ugly and bizarre decor of the motels they stay in. And I am really looking forward to seeing how they handle this impossible situation they've set up in the last episode.

KeithS @ 178

New naming schemes are not an engineer's friend if they make it difficult to find the precursor chemical or electronic component they've been buying under the old name all these years.

By the way, mathematicians do the same thing to physicists all the time with new notation, and physicists pass the love on to engineers, often by inverting signs from the logical convention, or by changing the names of units. Pity the engineers have nobody to pass it on to.

Bruce @ 182: We got into the series late (last year) but haven't looked back since. I think I knew it was love when Jensen Ackles did his Eye of the Tiger routine.

My husband thinks Basement Cat will suffer a weakening injury that will require slinking off and wound-licking throughout Season Five, thus stretching the drama as it re-gathers its forces. What causes that injury, I don't know. I'm hoping for a show of force from the rebel faction, as it were.

Alternatively, Basement Cat could just show up and say: "Lol prophecies; I R HERE 2 PARTY" and shove off, leaving a crowd of befuddled Hunters in its wake.

Speaking of the damned, I just finished the portraits for Ruddigore (details here.)

They're displayed in the order they'll be on stage, so Sir Roderic is the one in the center. He is, as advertised, rather poor as a work of art. I'm most pleased with Jerry, the knight. That one was fun.

It would have been nice to paint them by hand but with Gareth as a clingy toddler that wasn't going to happen. So they're all some variant of Photoshoppery. And I've got a bunch of red LEDs and the hopes we'll have time to put in glowing red eyes (what with moving and all... there's quite a saga that starts with "We got a house," and most recently is "... and they haven't given us the keys yet." Not nearly the deal that MR got, but hey...)

(... aaaaaand there was the digression.)

Anyway, if any of you are in the Sacramento region for the first two weekends in June, we'd be ecstatic to have you come by. Especially the first weekend; word of mouth insures good houses later but we'd prefer a bit of balance, especially as we only have a two-week run this year.

Bruce Cohen #183: Pity the engineers have nobody to pass it on to.

They pass it on to long-suffering parents who struggle to assemble marvelous toys with byzantine instructions in an unintelligible language that could have been written by no human hand at 2am before their gift-giving celebration of choice. (May Tom Paxton have mercy on their souls).

p.s.: It is my theory that The Marvelous Toy is, in fact, a partially unlocked Lemarchand Box disguised with bright, colorful lead paint.

Some of us are old enough to remember the original G.I. Joe (or, in my case, the UK licensed version, Action Man). Started out as a 12-inch tall articulated male dress-up doll, with guns. Started out with the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force, roughly Korean War era weapons and uniforms.

These days, all that's gone. There are expensive figures of the same type, pitched at the collectable doll market. G.I. Joe has become a sort of fantasized Special Forces guy.

Never mind, at least we Brits still have a proper posable plastic Army.

It's backed by the Ministry of Defence, with aims of publicity and recruiting, and they've gone into the toy business. Which feels a little creepy.

Look for yourself.

If you have objections to that general sort of toy, whether it's dress-up dolls or kid-sized uniforms, I don't know that it makes any difference that the government is involved. The kids going for these toys aren't going to be on the recruiter's radar for another decade.

But they are a very nice model. And they do look like real soldiers.

And now you can do the hamster-scale version of Dog Soldiers

(There's a reference to a Koyabashi Maru test in the film.)

186: "Pickman, this toy requires batteries of no earthly size".

ajay, I used vacuum-tube hardware on the farm, and the batteries were exotic. Though at least you could rig an HT pack from 9v consumer stuff. But the critical component of that moisture-meter was a 1.5v cell that was a bit bigger than a beer can.

You put the ground grain sample in a compression cell, put the current through from that whopper of a 1.5v battery, and I think the vacuum tube was for a high-impedance driver for the meter.

Those old Marconi meters were reliable enough that they were still being used, by farmers and grain merchants, in the 21st century. And, since it used a sliding plate--there was a temperature correction--to translate the resistance to the moisture content, all you needed when they changed the oven-test standard was a new plate calibrated to the new test.

Sorry, I'm feeling ancient again.

In re great logos, I have to offer the following:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1901656/OGC-unveils-new-logo-to-red-faces.html

Still makes me laugh, several years later.

Make that a year later. Seemed longer, somehow....

Rob Hansen @191: The ones here aren't (or rather, are!) bad.

I like intentionally hidden stuff in logos, though. The hidden arrow in FedEx, the C in Carrefour, and the bear in the Toblerone logo had to be pointed out to me. That made me feel delighted and awfully unobservant at the same time.

Here are the panels I'll be on at FiestaCon in Tempe, Arizona, during the July Fourth weekend. Eek.

Earl Cooley III @ 186:

Please don't blame engineers for crappy instruction manuals translated from Chinese to English via English as She Is Spoke and a Japanese VCR manual. As you rightly point out, they're made by some Lovecraftian horror instead.

Dave Bell @ 188:

I think the people who are responsible for the GI Joe film are hoping for money from the people who fondly remember watching the cartoon show from the '80s. I'm not sure this is a good plan. Have they retitled the film Action Man in the UK, or do they not seem to care?

<Comments about beefing up of male dolls action figures over the years deleted.>

Dog Soldiers was fun right up until the Matrix reference that completely blew my suspension of disbelief. Oh well.

I'm not sure Dog Soldiers ever suspended my disbelief, but it is one of my favourite horror films ever. How can you not love a film that has your werewolf-hounded squaddies barricade themselves into the abandoned farmhouse and then utter the immortal line: "Put the kettle on - we could all do with a brew" ?

An amusing review of Stephen Wolfram's latest venture: Wolfram Alpha - a new kind of Fail.

I think the people who are responsible for the GI Joe film are hoping for money from the people who fondly remember watching the cartoon show from the '80s.

"Hail Cobra Commander, the great snake rules forever."

I don't remember any of the characters except for the token GI Jane aka Agent Scarlett. I wanted to be Scarlett when I grew up. Thank goodness we do not always realize our childhood dreams.
I also wanted to be He-Man, but She-Ra held absolutely no appeal.

Those cartoons have aged really badly, though - I watched a couple of episodes recently and was struck by how shoddy the animation looks now.

Serge, #194: Hey, I won't be stuck behind the table this time! Maybe we can actually have that hot chocolate (or, given the weather, iced chai).

KeithS, #197: I can't be the only person who looks at that name and thinks "Wolfram & Hart", can I?

Pendrift & 198... I also wanted to be He-Man, but She-Ra held absolutely no appeal

When my wife was working at the California State Banking Dept, she and her homosexual co-worker came up with the Adventures of She-man.

Lee @ 199... I didn't know you were going to FiestaCon too. Good, very good. Chocolate or iced chai? Well, considering that it rained cats and dogs and hallberds half the time when that Tempe hotel was the site of 2004's fantasy worldcon, we may wind up drinking both.

re 166: La Dixième Conférence générale des poids et mesures décide de définir l'échelle thermodynamique de température au moyen du point triple de l'eau comme point fixe fondamental, en lui attribuant la température 273,16 degrés Kelvin, exactement.*

Presumably they renamed the unit in 1967 to avoid confusion with that Germano-Dutch/Scottish system, or because foolish consistency is the natural result of holding scientific meetings in Paris.**

*"The reader should note that the official version of this Resolution is the French text."

**Not to mention official texts in French.

How can you not love a film that has your werewolf-hounded squaddies barricade themselves into the abandoned farmhouse and then utter the immortal line: "Put the kettle on - we could all do with a brew"?

That is about the only bit, I would say, in which I did not have difficulty suspending my disbelief. If you put a British squaddie on the deep-frozen, toxic surface of Titan, he would not make a brew, but only because he wouldn't be able to get his stove to light in a predominantly methane atmosphere.

Mez @ 181: Suppose you have a physical system with a variety of possible energy states... for example, a bunch of molecules. They can move around, rotate, vibrate internally. At a given temperature, the statistical average of the proportions of the system in each possible energy state can be calculated -- at absolute zero, everything in the system will be at the lowest possible energy state; as the temperature goes up, things move around more, and statistically, some of the things in the system will spend some time in higher energy states.

The calculation can be done the other way. If you have a system, and you know the statistical proportions of it in various energy states and what those relative energy levels are, you can calculate a temperature. But the calculation assumes that the distribution is normal for the model. If you manage to put the system into a state with a distribution that doesn't fit the model, the calculated temperature can come out as something strange.

One example is a laser crystal which has been pumped full of energy, before the laser emission is triggered. There's a so-called "population inversion" -- the high energy states have much higher populations than they would with a normal distribution for the actual temperature. If one were to calculate the temperature of the system based on the energy states, it would come out negative.

Or at least that's how I remember things from my thermo courses, all those years ago.

I recall some of the teaser trails for Dog Soldiers. They were pretty close to some of the real British Army recruiting adverts of the then-recent past.

Which weapon would you use? [YouTube}

You educators and proofreaders and copy-editors have too much fun.

Lately I've been helping a friend, who occasionally writes articles for one of the big online blogs but can't spell worth a ****, by giving the posts a superficial cleanup of egregious spelling errors and misplaced commas and apostrophes and such.

Today's gem: "[A person] confessed how never before that day had she ever experienced an organism."

Harriet
who just realized that "big online blog"
is probably one of those thingies, whatever they're called, the opposite of an oxymoron.

Went to my little sister's school choral performance. Apart from the singing it wasn't too bad; though the repeated use of the line, "There were many children who lived by many, various, rivers," was a bit painful.

Open threadiness (Ta-Nehisi commented on this):

Republicans losing essentially everyone. This is f--king amazing. The Bush/Cheney administration has done for the GOP what they did for Iraq[1].

At one level, this is very good news--it demonstrates that all the horrible, stupid, destructive crap the Republicans did over the last eight years caught up with them eventually. It may serve as a lesson to powerful politicians to think carefully about how they govern when they have power.

But at another level, it's deeply disturbing, because I think it's partly the result of a kind of feedback loop going on within the Republican party. As the party shrinks, more extreme views become the path to power within the party, and still more moderates or just plain sensible people are pushed out. They're kind-of on their way to being just the party of torture and hating gays. But nobody can know what the next few years will bring. There is plenty of opportunity out there for a disaster that will destroy Obama's presidency and bring the Republicans back into the white house and Congress in the next few years--think about what happens if the economy re-tanks, and by 2011, we're looking at 20% unemployment. Those guys can end up back in power, with a party leadership that has been selected almost entirely for being wild-eyed zealots.

[1] I am convinced that there is more to the story of how Bush, Rove, and Cheney exercised such amazing power over the Republican party than we've yet heard. I hope to hear that story someday. I suspect that Cheney's role as the head of the VP search committee is a key part of this--he may have gotten some amazing blackmail information from getting all kinds of high-level Republicans to spill all their embarrassing secrets to him. (If so, this may explain part of why the McCain campaign didn't do a very good job on checking the background of their VP choice.) I also suspect very strongly that, at least once they were in the white house, some very seriously illegal use of wiretaps and other domestic spying was involved, though I'll admit I have only hints in news stories to support that.

albatross @ 208... There is plenty of opportunity out there for a disaster that will destroy Obama's presidency and bring the Republicans back into the white house and Congress

Plenty of opportunity, plus the People having no memory.

#198: I am more familiar with the 70's GI Joe Adventure Team: Five Rugged Men with Lifelike Hair! And they take their orders from this man: The Adventure Team Talking Commander!

All right, folks, you asked for it. Here is the early 1960s ad for GI Joe, which I'm old enough to remember. I'm also old enough to remember when there were new Beatles songsd on the radio, but I digress.

Serge #209:

Memory or no, let the current clstrfck in Afghanistan and Pakistan go badly enough, combined with 20% unemployment and another wave of bank collapses, and the Democrats will be looking at very bleak prospects for 2012. So will the country, if the kind of people who can get power in the current Republican party are still in leadership positions.

#198: Cartoon Network (Adult Swim dept.) ran "G.I. Joe: Resolute" a few weeks back. Script by Warren Ellis. I never saw more than five minutes of the old cartoon, but I like this one.

albtatross @ 122... Agreed. My point was that, if the situation in Afghanistan gets even worse under a Democrat, the People have such a lousy memory that they'll throw the Democrat out and vote in the same political party - and possibly the same incompetents - that badly handled things from the word go. I'll be quite happy to be proven wrong.

Well, I have my first carpet torn out. And I have a water meter! The ex-carpet's absence is already improving air quality.

Only four to go.

Serge @211. thanks.

Apart from changing the name, that's exactly how the initial release of Action Man looked.

I don't recall any TV adverts, here in England.

Open thready linguistics: I just opened my door to find a guy painting it. In the ensuing conversation, he twice used the phrase "touch [the door] in", by context meaning the same as the phrase I learned as "touch [it] up". Has anyone else heard this variation of this phrase?

Dave @80 --
It's not that there's no human contact in the transaction; it's that there's too much, and too little non-mercantile contact outside the screen.

QVC has a spectacular Christmas special that is nothing but the hucksters sitting posed by the fire, opening sumptuously-wrapped packages, embracing their supposed loved ones, and pulling the audience into their circle of intimacy. they explicitly cast their legion of salespeople as a family, just waiting for the audience's sled to come over the hill and pull into the mansion driveway for a visit.

For lonely people it was like holiday crack, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised that their sales exploded the next day. Those cable stores know who they're selling to, what those buyers need emotionally, and just how vulnerable they are to a friendly spokesperson and trained customer service agents. Bet they're so plush they don't even outsource internationally....

What better place to talk about my dream last night than an open thread, particularly since one of the people here was in it?

I was with my mother in Amsterdam Noord, looking for something amusing and touristy to do, when Serge turned up as captain and sole sailor on a (very small) ship. It was square-sailed and about the size of Vizzini's vessel in the Princess Bride, but three-decked (poop, forecastle and main).

So we got on board, and sailed up onto an aquaeduct that soared above the water, up toward a rocky promontory that lay to the west of the city. Then Serge had the tricky task of steering us down the narrow, winding channel (rather like a large flume) that led down from our aquaeduct to the city built on the rock.

Then the dream moved on, but that was the neat part.

abi @ 219... Wow.

Sherlock Holmes, Steampunk Action Hero!

Hooboy. I think it looks like fun -- but it's going to make the arguments about the new Star Trek look like one big happy family. If you think Trekkies are fanatical, you've never met the Baker Street Irregulars!

And for some reason, that soundtrack music keeps mutating into Eroica in my head...

Lee @221:
it's going to make the arguments about the new Star Trek look like one big happy family.

If it turns out to be as much of Withnail and Watson as it looks from the trailer, yes indeed it will be controversial.

David Harmon @217 -- The painters I know use the phrase "cut [whatever] in" to mean painting around the edges and corners in detail mode, so that the main expanses can be painted quickly with rollers or spray or similar.

My experience is that cutting in all the parts of even a simple room take longer than painting all the flat surfaces.

Lee...

"Holmes! Does your depravity know no bounds?!"
"No."

eric @#223: Ah, thanks! Given my hearing-loss, It's not surprising I interpolated "touch" for "cut".* And yes, he was gesturing at the edges and the (as-yet unpainted) area around the brass numbers.

*: My hearing loss is the majority type, affecting mostly the higher frequencies. Half-heard words get reduced to vowels, those being lower pitched than consonants.

Serge @ 194:

I've finally had a chance to look at your journal. I'll probably have to stop by at least the pun panel.

So I've started a house blog, where I hope to regale the Internet with pictures and stories about The House. And yeah, for once I decided just to go with somebody else's solution. Whittling things yourself from a block of Perl is fun, but at the moment, I have enough stuff to do.

Serge@202: rain in Tempe during \which/ "2004's fantasy worldcon"? I don't remember any rain during the WFC in 2004 (Halloween) -- and I would have had good cause to, as I was the one who suggested holding the mass autographing in the courtyard due to lack of space indoors (, and walking to dinner every night, and walking up the lump of rock behind ASU, ...).

All: it's possible that I misremembered the distinction between the discoverer of thioacetone describing it as "essence of catpiss" and its actual presence. However, the stories bear out my recollection that it is the smelliest known chemical; fascinating to hear how many people had to prove this separately.

And a repeat of an unanswered query from another thread: can anyone say, in rot13 if they think it's a spoiler, just what about the last chapter of Anathem inverts the whole sense of the book? I'm looking at this year's Hugo nominees and not being blown away by any of them, so comments about what I'm missing would be appreciated. (My take was that Stephenson let the infodumps take over the asylum -- he's come close before, but usually herds them better than here.)

CHip @ 228 ...
However, the stories bear out my recollection that it is the smelliest known chemical; fascinating to hear how many people had to prove this separately.

Well, of course -- you've got a large assembly of literate, obsessive, communicative (and commutative?) geeks of one sort or another :D

albatross #208: Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs.

CHip @228,

My take on Anathem's book-changing reveal:

V'q zragvbarq va nabgure guernq gung V'q orra gbyq (Fgrjneg Oenaq vagebqhpvat Arny ng gur YbatAbj Nangurz gnyx) gung "gur ynfg puncgre pbagnvaf fbzrguvat ovt, punatvat gur ragver zrnavat bs gur obbx jura lbh ernq vg gur frpbaq gvzr, juvpu lbh'yy vzzrqvngryl jnag gb qb."

Tvira gung nqivpr, guebhtubhg zl svefg ernqvat V gevrq gb fhff bhg gur ovt zlfgrel, naq qvqa'g frr vg hagvy gur ynfg puncgref. Gung gur pbapragf jrer fgnegrq nf cevfbaf naq gung gur ynpx bs grpuabybtl jnf vzcbfrq sebz gur bhgfvqr va nggrzcgf gb fgbc gur npghnyyl-onq-riragf eryngrq gb gur svefg guebhtu guveq fnpxf: gubfr qvq punatr gur zrnavat qhevat gur 2aq ernq. (Gur pybfrfg V pnzr gb svthevat bhg gur zlfgrel jnf jbaqrevat jul gur gubhfnaqref jrer xrrcvat ahpyrne jnfgr, ohg rira gurer V qvqa'g nffbpvngr gur ahpyrne jnfgr jvgu jul gurfr guerr pbapragf fheivirq gur guveq fnpx.)

KeithS @ 226... Do drop by. I'm not sure what approach the punference will take. For example, will we have one of us come up with a starting point and see everything go downhill from there? I have to get in touch with the other punelist.

CHip @ 228... If I remember correctly, it rained the first day of the 2004 fantasy worldcon. The con's start was still a few hours away, which is probably why our recollections our different. What I remember was my unloading stuff from our minivan while getting soaked. That being said, will you be at Fiestacon/Westercon?

Oops... The above should read "...why our recollections are different..."

Serge @ 232:

Downhill, uphill, I'm not sure it matters. I do know It'll be a bit rocky for me, as most of the ones that I can come up with on short notice are rather morainic and sillty.

albatross @ 208: "Those guys can end up back in power, with a party leadership that has been selected almost entirely for being wild-eyed zealots."

I don't think this is as big a danger as you suggest--the only way Republicans could return to power is by reabsorbing the moderates who are currently fleeing the party. They'd never support the crazies: the crazies are why they're leaving. They would only support a Republican candidate who made a convincing pretense of having learned from Bushco's mistakes, and ran on a healthily moderate platform. Romney, say. At the same time, there's no way a moderate could capture the Republican nomination, because the crazies are currently so powerful. Catch-22.

Even in the face of an utter Democratic collapse I can't see people turning back to the GOP in large numbers. It took people a long time to realize how bad the Republicans are, and I don't think they'll forget any quicker.* I'd guess a Democratic collapse will function as Nader's argument from 2000 writ large: Democrats are failures, and the Republicans are overtly evil. At that point, I'd be guessing that an Independent (or Progressive Party, or Libertarian Party) candidate would be more likely to win than a Republican.

*My guess is the current cohort of 18-29 year olds are going to be solidly anti-Republican (as opposed to solidly Democratic) their whole lives.

Two things for future Republicanism: first, the mass media seem to control more of perceptions that is comfortable. Look at how many people blame Clinton for the ills which a Republican-controlled Congress missed.

Second, a lack of impeachment may blur some of the distinctions. Some people already wonder what the Dem-leadership knew, and why they appear scared of acting. I think we're still at the stage where silent preparation is a sound strategy, and the issue is being kept alive, but something has to happen eventually.

It's the mid-terms which are going to matter.

221, 222: as I may have ranted elsewhere, every Sherlock Holmes film so far has got Holmes and Watson wrong by making them far too old. Watson makes it very clear at the start of "Study in Scarlet" how old he is: he qualified as a doctor, went straight into the army, then to Afghan the next year, and then back to London with a jezail bullet in his leg and a serious case of PTSD the year after that. Watson is, at most, 26. And also tough as old boots, a complete gun nut (Eley's No. 2 service revolver), and a notable hit with the ladies. Having him played as some sort of grey-moustached buffer is like having Prince Hal played by a fifty-year-old.
Holmes is a similar age: Watson never remarks on him being significantly older, and he's studying at the university (with no previous employment mentioned). He's a permanent postgraduate student. Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law are just right for the roles - if anything they're too old.

IN the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army.

That's the opening of A Study in Scarlet and nails down Watson pretty well.

His Last Bow apparently suggests Holmes is born in 1854. Which might make him a year or two older than Watson, but no more.

It doesn't strike me as silly to look at Conan Doyle's medical education to judge Watson's timing. Conan Doyle was born in 1859, and graduated from Edinburgh University in 1881.

Watson's 1878 graduation suggests a birth year of 1856, which would mean he is younger than Holmes.

I trust we shall all take a moment on Friday to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of Conan Doyle's birth.

KeithS, #195: I think the people who are responsible for the GI Joe film are hoping for money from the people who fondly remember watching the cartoon show from the '80s. I'm not sure this is a good plan.

I fondly remember watching the cartoon show from the '80s--it was my favorite show when I was eight or nine years old--and I'm not interested in the movie at all. Dammit, G.I. Joe ought to be made of Village People, not Starship Troopers. And it's not the same without a guy who precisely resembles Jack Nicholson from The Last Detail with a talking parrot sidekick.

Last week I came across a description on a blog that explained why this was my favorite show when I was eight:

And the cartoon had, among other things: a talking parrot, approximately forty billion laser beams color-coded by side, a tribe of shapechangers, an alien race living beneath the earth, an army of robots that would make Cylons jealous, a vampire youth machine, Atlanteans, a giant blob which the Joes killed by throwing apples at it, a trip to a parallel universe where some of the team found their own bodies, sea serpents, Cobra trying to steal Alaska because of some technicality regarding a seal, giant energy-sucking cubes of dark matter, a bio-dome in the Antarctic, a device that vaporized all of the world’s money, ghost warriors, a magic conch shell that hypnotized men but not women, time-traveling to ancient Greece, the Baroness disguising herself as a chunky fat guy not once but four separate times, Destro attempting to take over the world with giant vegetables, Cobra shrinking its entire army to miniscule size and hiding in toys given away to needy children, the Egyptian god Set, Cobra setting up its own television channel and trying to take over the world with propaganda, dinosaur stampedes, an evil clone of the talking parrot, subliminal messages in rock songs, a crime telethon, and Sgt. Slaughter.

I think, even today, I'd still want to see a movie like that.

And, continuing the medical theme...

In Australia, a surgeon has carried out an emergency operation with a household electric drill.

BBC report here.

I reckon a lot of things went right, but note how the doctor could be in contact with a neurosurgeon.

A long time ago, I recall a TV series about ambulances with what seened to be incredible amounts of medical telemetry gear, so that, as the patient was rushed to hospital, doctors could ghuide the ambulance crew to the correct emergency treatment.

Good EMT training is likely more effective, but we're all a lot less alone that we used to be.

KeithS @ 235... most of the ones that I can come up with on short notice are rather morainic and sillty

Mine will probably be igneouble.

Dave Bell @ 242 ...
"He needed it like a hole in his head" takes on a whole new meaning...

Regarding Doyle(*)'s famous literary creation... I'll confess that, while it's not canon, I like Young Sherlock Holmes.

(*) Conan, not Debra

Dave Bell @ 242

Jim Macdonald can probably tell us more, but I do know that there were 3 emergency appendectomies performed aboard US submarines during WWII, all by Pharmacists Mates (what were later called corpsmen), all successful.

246: I still remember the hair-raising LRRPS lecture on "Primitive Medicine"... complete with examples from the Korean War and WW2 of razor-blade surgery, human-hair sutures, and downed pilots improvising braces for their broken backs from debris and then crawling forty miles to friendly lines.

243: now, now, Serge. Play gneiss with the other kids.

ajay @ 248... Humph. I feel unappreciated, taken for granite.

Serge @245, with a name like "Conan Doyle" you have to wonder if the other writer has the initials REH.

"Watson, we may have identified the miscreant, but I hardly think this investigation was a success."

"I say, Holmes, how do you define a successful investigation?"

"Why, it is when you crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women."

Holmes had a strange look in his eyes which, combined with his words, signalled to me that something was very wrong. No doubt, he would soon resort to quaffing. I made mental note of the position on the unbrella stand.

[From: The Mystery of the Barbarian Swordsman]

Serge @249: Take hard and be tuff. I'm sure you'll slate them with your volcanic wit and their stony faces will metamorphose.

Dave Bell @ 250... "When you eliminate the impossible with a sword, then whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

Puns are back on the slate. What a surprise! We seem to have an endless ability to cobble together puns on the smallest pretext. Prepare to be basalted by puns for the next few rounds. All I esker of you is to try to head off in new directions, there is fertile soil to till — so stop sitting on your duff.

Pendrift @ 251... Or Ill become quarry and be schist out of the con.

As a treat after an afternoon of car-dealing (GMAC's gummint deal has not imporved its interest rates, despite what you may have heard on TV, and if you, like my housemate, have made the mistake of not having credit cards and paying for most things smaller than a car as you go, you will be treated as a deadbeat with a sucktastic credit score), we went and saw Angels and Demons.
A notice in the credits, rather like the Humane Society notice that no animals were injured during the course of the film, to the effect that no actual priceless and irreplaceable works of art or architecture were damaged or destroyed during the course of the film might have been in order.

Make sure your Suspension of Disbelief™ has been taking its vitamins and is wearing its comfy shoes, because it'll get a workout, like that was news to anyone here. Ewan McGregor and Stellan Skarsgård are good, though, and Ayelet Zurer is not hopeless.

Michael Roberts @ 227:

Glad to see you're blogging the house experience. I'm definitely interested in how it's going to come out.

Wesley @ 241:

That's a film I could get behind watching.

Serge @ 254:

You're not that erratic.

Speaking of credit cards, a bunch of companies are jacking up their rates and fees to get in under the wire before credit reform legislation is signed into law. Too bad they probably won't make the law retroactive to, say, a decade or so.

252: well, the basic plot of "The Speckled Band" would still work, just with a ...slightly larger snake.

"...thither came Holmes, consulting detective, amateur violinist, with gigantic melancholy and a serious cocaine habit, to crush the thrones of the world beneath the wheels of his hansom cab."

254: don't worry, I'm sure they'll decide to be magmanimous.

Wesley @ 241... a magic conch shell that hypnotized men but not women

There's got to be a dirty joke in there.

As for the rest, I agree with KeithS. I'd pay to watch a movie like that. Come to think of it, that's pretty close to what a Girl Genius movie would feel like if the adaptation were very faithful to the source material. Except for the parrot's evil clone. There is no parrot's evil clone in Girl Genius.

ajay@259

I'm sure they'll be lavaing it...

Serge @ 260: Well, Gil was supposed to be apprenticed to a pirate king. Alas, Von Pinn was slightly hard of hearing, and mistakenly took him off into the jungle for an entirely different apprenticeship. Squawwwwk!

Joel Polowin @ 262... A description of Girl Genius would sound crackpot even without the Weasel Queen, or Krosp the Cat, or Paul McCartney in the sewers, or the Phantom of the Opera who tried to abduct Zola the dancing girl in Paris. Or the jaegers. Or the hats. Or the organ-house on legs.

Did anyone here watch "Nova" on PBS last night? Very cool show where the indie rock musician (and math ignoramus) son of the guy who invented the many/parallel worlds theory explored his late father's life, throwing in some music along the way. Well, I liked it, at any rate.

Photo essay in lieu of actual participation: Charging Forward by Jay Labor.

Abi @ 219:

Can I borrow your dream tonight?

"The Princess Bride," as either book or movie,* is one of my favorite doses of happy humor.

*Yes, they're different, but the differences are in good ways!

Thanks folks for the condolences -- Mom and I have been playing, "If we'd only done ______, we might have saved her" a zero sum game if ever there was one.

Mom wrote a thank you note and made a batch of brownies for the staff at the vet clinic. Jan dropped it off this morning. Jan spent some time talking to the techs...

Seems like this is a rough Spring all around, one tech's mother has been diagnosed with lung cancer (smoker), the prognosis is poor, and the lady has 2 Yorkies. The tech asked Jan if she thought Mom would be interested, should they have to find homes for the little ones...so maybe when the Gods closed the door they opened a window.

I'm so glad all of you are here...

heresiarch @ 236:

I wish I thought you were right, but I just got the long-expected e-mail complaining about Obama's Speech in Turkey.

Here's the substance:

"President Barack Obama said in Turkey : "We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values."
I found this very interesting."

It went on to list all of the preambles to all the states in the nation, which all give some formulation of a "Supreme Deity" as the invocation to the constitutions.

Mind you, this was sent to me by a middle-aged person who is incredibly inclusive of all faiths and national origins, but listens to too much talk radio and is too likely to forward e-mails.

When I asked to be left off the mailing lists to such e-mails, pointing out the probable political reasons he made that speech in Turkey, the fact that they tend to implicitly stigmatize people who aren't Christian, and that, besides, the 1st Amendment renders them legally moot, this person responded that the preambles were inclusive -- they didn't mention the Christian God.

To end the conversation, I had to list all the groups of polytheists and anamists (not to mention atheists) the preambles do exclude, along with a brief recap of the history of the Establishment/Religious Liberty clauses of the Bill of Rights.

I only mention this because this person is 1) the holder of a Master's Degree, and 2) of a demographic that votes in every election.

As long as the Republicans can continue to undermine *people who should be on our side because they share "our" values this way,* don't count them out of the running.

Could we not just tell Serge he rocks and have done with?

ajay: I take your point (re age), but also, I disagree. Putting aside, for the moment, the amazing breadth of Holmes knowledge, we have the secondary problem the stories are, apart from the first two, rarely possessed of any specific place in time.

The last of them takes place some 30 years (or more) after the first (with Holmes in a motor car, stopping something in the time frame of WW1. Some of the Mycroft stories are plainly later in the century (The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans: His Last Bow).

So one has to balance that question against the issues of continuity (if one is planning to make more than one film/show).

Which brings us back to the question of Holmes amazing breadth of knowlege. In a man of early middle-age it's amazing, and credible.

Give it to a young man of 25, and it quickly takes over. One doesn't have a brilliant detective, one has a precocious genius. The sense of wonder is very differently engaged. When reading the stories the lack of real identifiers for Holmes' (or Watson's) actual age; combined with them being recollections) means the reader may ascribe any age they like; which is how the question of Holmes being such a prodigy never obtrudes.

This isn't possible on the stage. To be honest, the Jeremy Brett series probably did it about as well as could be done. Yes, Watson was too old, but we've become accustomed to that sort of, "country doctor (even though he has a City practice) look to Watson. Holmes was a semi-ageless man of indeterminate adulthood. Maybe 35, maybe 45, all in keeping with the "chapter not a page" needs of a series based on a series.

If this accretion of geologic puns doesn't become metamorphic to another topic we're going to get some flinty-stares. It seems elementary to me the only way to avoid that is to achieve a gold standard, lest we be undercut and the erosion of faith in our ability to keep a good sequence of wordplay.

Regarding the emergency trepanning: What I got from that is, 1: I love technology (because it made it easier for the doctor to do the job; though one likes to think he could have done it anyway).

2: Wear a helmet when riding a bike, etc.

3: Monitor head injuries.

Lori Coulson #267: Mom and I have been playing, "If we'd only done ______, we might have saved her" a zero sum game if ever there was one.

No kidding... and I wouldn't bet that anything could have saved her -- I suspect that teacup breeds are intrinsically fragile.

Dave Bell @ 237:

Look at how many people blame Clinton for the ills which a Republican-controlled Congress missed.

You misspelled "Pelosi."

See also: Obama recession.

As for yet another Transformers-style summer blockbuster abomination based on not-particularly-deep source material: Well, at least this "G.I. Joe" one helps Christopher Eccleston keep body and soul together. (Though I'm slightly disappointed that he isn't wearing Destro's metal mask. Yet.)

Serge @ 260: There is no parrot's evil clone in Girl Genius.

Yet.

Systematic child abusers in religious institutions will escape punishment.
The findings will not be used for criminal prosecutions - in part because the Christian Brothers successfully sued the commission in 2004 to keep the identities of all of its members, dead or alive, unnamed in the report. No real names, whether of victims or perpetrators, appear in the final document.

Police were called to the commission's news conference amid angry scenes as victims were prevented from attending. One of the many victims, John Walsh of Irish Survivors of Child Abuse, said the absence of prosecutions had left him feeling "cheated and deceived".

"I would have never opened my wounds if I'd known this was going to be the end result," he said. "It has devastated me and will devastate most victims because there are no criminal proceedings and no accountability whatsoever."

... I have no words.

KeithS @ 275... The problem is that you can't have a parrot's evil clone show up in a story before the parrot has. Can you?

I'm trying to find, preferably online, something that will help me renew my knowledge of French. I studied it for years in high school, but most of it has fallen out of my head since then. Languages being what they are, I imagine I'll pick it up again quickly, but everything I can find is Rosetta-Stone-like in that it will teach me phrases rather than the stuff I really need. I want something that's going to give me quizzes on the difference between past-perfect and passé composé, but what I keep finding is how to count money and tell a Parisian taxi-driver that I want to go to the Louvre...

Lee @ 276:

That's disgusting and sad. I wish I could say I was surprised, but I'm not.

Serge @ 277:

I don't see why not, unless the evil clone shows up before the original is born and the story doesn't involve time travel.

Think you're all tuff? I'm gonna pumice you good.

#276:

There are the seeds of a diabolical revenge story in there. Protagonist, a detective. Victims, the former victimizers.

KeithS@279

And, of course, time travel DOES exist in the Girl Genius comicverse.

Carrie S. @ 278:

The way that I, personally, would go about doing it is to sit down with something you want to read, such as a Tintin collection, and a dictionary. It won't necessarily teach you the finer points of grammar, but you'll be able to read. A good English/French dictionary will have a bit of a grammar reference in the front or the back.

Then again, there's always this phrasebook.

Carrie S. @ 278, what about a plain old textbook? ClassZone offers online resources (such as quizzes), sorted by the textbooks used in your state (although obviously you need not stick to your own state).

I also found a full online college-level French course from University of Texas -- lessons, quizzes, etc. This might be more what you are looking for. (In fact, I'm bookmarking that for myself. I miss French.)

I recommend googling something like "online french textbook."

KeithS @ 283, I have a Lonely Planet French phrasebook in which one chapter starts out on a date, progresses to the bedroom, and then ends with how to conduct an argument about condom usage and how to kick someone out when they won't use one.

(It's amusing to read aloud, but in reality, it's a very useful chapter. If you need to tell someone you won't do it without a condom, you really need to be able to tell them that.)

Today is Gareth's first birthday! Happy Eliza Dolittle Day!

Oh, and the puns are quite gneiss.

KeithS @#283: I am familiar with Zompist, and remember enough of my French to be aware of what those phrases really say. :)

Caroline @#284: Textbook! What a great idea. I hadn't even thought of it. A college-level course is probably more than I'm looking for; I don't recall enough to jump in with both feet quite yet.

Laurie King's Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes books seem to make Holmes ~50 during or immediately after WW I (as I recall; somebody correct me if I'm misremembering). Since Russell was about 14 when she met him, that was initially off-putting for me, but after the second book I forgot about the age differential.

Lee: when an institution has any kind of power, it will be corrupt eventually. The Roman Catholic Church has been corrupt for a long, long time, and will never cleanse itself because the people who make the decisions are the beneficiaries of the corruption.

This is why the founders of OUR nation found it so critical to maintain separation of church and state. The influence of the Church in Ireland is clearly pernicious, but how could it be otherwise? A poisoned tree bears only poisoned fruit.

I suggest that if the Christian Brothers refuse to bring their criminal members up to face justice, and the government is cooperating in their obstruction, then a) all the Christian Brothers should be considered equally blameworthy (any with a shred of ethics would renounce the order after such an outrage) and therefore b) any Christian Brother you meet should be treated as if you KNEW he was a child molester, and c) the government that allowed this travesty should be brought down as soon as possible.

Of course, that's for the people of Ireland to decide. I hope they deal harshly with the government, and treat all Christian Brothers as pariahs.

Since the CBs won't name names, the victims should. Of course, many of the worst perps are probably already in hell (wish I believed in it).

Carrie S. @278: One of the most effective ways is to chat or swap emails in French. My French improved considerably over a few months this way - I'd send a friend emails in French, and he'd correct the grammar and the expressions in brackets. Meanwhile, he'd send me messages in English and I'd do the same thing. I also practiced on French-language chatrooms for a while, and that helped a lot too.

Back in the 90s, the hardest part was finding people who chatted in proper French, and I don't know if it's improved since. The use of text message shorthand on French forums and sites is much more prevalent than it is in English.

Sites like My Language Exchange can help you hook up with people who want to do language swaps, although I haven't used it in years.

I used to teach French as a foreign language, feel free to drop me a line!

B Durbin @ 286... the puns are quite gneiss

Asbestos we can make them.

Congrats to Garth!

Let's write our own French phrasebook:

Au bon pain.      It hurts so good.

Coq au vin.      A truck that delivers chocolate.

Jejune.      "I am Spring."

Xopher @292: Reminds me of the French speaker's guide to English.

Carrie S. @ 287, it looks like by college-level they mean French 101, so it would probably work out for someone like you, who has studied French before but is rusty.

Xopher @ 292:

English: Do you have any matches?
French: Mon aéroglisseur est plein des anguilles.

See, easy.

Xopher: I suggest that if the Christian Brothers refuse to bring their criminal members up to face justice, and the government is cooperating in their obstruction, then a) all the Christian Brothers should be considered equally blameworthy (any with a shred of ethics would renounce the order after such an outrage) and therefore b) any Christian Brother you meet should be treated as if you KNEW he was a child molester

Seems entirely reasonable. This reminds me that 15 or so years ago some friends of ours, who were heavily tatooed and pierced, had drummed it into their young daughter that if ever she got lost she should seek out someone who looked like them to help her. Probably good advice, in retrospect. If I had kids I'd tell them to keep well away from 'men of the cloth'. Like it or not, events have shown there are more child molesters among their number than there appear to be in the general population.

KeithS: Моё судно на воздушной подушке полно угрей.

Also, A légpárnás hajóm tele van angolnákkal.

Not to mention: Tá m'árthach foluaineach lán d'eascainn.

Lee #276: You expect the Church in Ireland to be punished? Even after years of revelations of malfeasance, torture, rape, and child abuse? That would require a massive reassessment and reordering of the national identity first.

Xopher @ 282...

Au bon pain. - It hurts so good.
Hein?
I think your Universal Translator needs to be rebooted.

"I am become Dirt, coverer of worlds."

Oy, Serge, and of my definition of coq au vin you say nothing? You wound me, sir!

Malice aforethought indeed.

Xopher @ 303... Lest you be further wounded, to the quick or to the slow... I can't figure out how the Universal Translator managed to turn 'coq au vin' into 'truck that delivers chocolate'.

Oh, man, you beat me to Hungarian. Cad.

I'm discovering so far that blogging about The House is so easy it's a question of stopping. First time I ever ran into that problem. Of course, this is only day 2.

Joel Polowin

I thought Gil ended up apprenticed to a pilot, which explains why he's so good at flying an airship.

Wait, didn't Bangladesh Dupree have a parrot?

Xopher @ a whole bunch of places:

I keep meaning to learn to at least read Russian. I can read about half the alphabet, which doesn't actually help with about 3/4 of the words. I was thinking about asking my boss how to say it in Hungarian, but it looks like you beat me to that as well.

Serge @305: vin = van. I guess.

Et qui rit des Curies d'Oc?

You've all seen what happens when you feed Babefish's output back into itself, right?

Fragano, #300: Not the Church itself (though by sheltering the perpetrators it becomes equally culpable), but the people who actively partook in the actions of rape and abuse. What boggles me is the bit about "successfully sued to have their identities concealed"! I think at this point the victims have every right to name their abusers and demand that they be prosecuted.

Terry Karney, #270: Which brings us back to the question of Holmes amazing breadth of knowlege. In a man of early middle-age it's amazing, and credible.

Give it to a young man of 25, and it quickly takes over.

According to Conan Doyle, he already had it by then. "The 'Gloria Scott'" is Holmes's narrative of his "first case," taken to him by a fellow student. Calling it a "case" is a stretch--Holmes doesn't actually solve anything so much as read some documents his friend finds in a cabinet--but earlier he has the chance to demonstrate his "I know everything about you" parlor trick and he's already scarily good at it.

Serge, pronounce 'coq au vin' in French. Listen to it in English. Vg pbzrf bhg fbhaqvat yvxr "pbpbn ina."

Michael Roberts @ 309... Xopher @ 313...

'vin' --> 'van'?
Bon sang, mais c'est bien sûr!
('Doh!' in English.)

KeithS @ 310...

'I like my friends' became 'master to the friend with me'.
I knew I shouldn't have bought that translator from Harry Mudd.

This reminds me of something that I think Fred Pohl wrote some years ago, where he had someone translate one of his stories from Chinese back into English and published both versions in a collection of his. It's my understanding that the differences were interesting.

Serge @277,KeithS @279: I don't get the negativity; we never hear about the good clones.

Rob Rusick @ 316:

Of course we do, they're just not called out as clones. There's so much of a stigma attached to cloning, you see, that the good clones don't really like to admit it. If someone does notice, the good clone will inevitably try to cover with the good twin/evil twin angle instead. It's not perfect, but what else can you do?

Now, there have been a few exceptions to this. Dolly the sheep was, by all accounts, a good clone and quite the pride of her research center. They did get lucky with Dolly, but despite media reports, she wasn't the first. In order to not be tainted by cloning hysteria, they destroyed all the records of their previous cloned sheep, Daisy. There's really nothing worse than a cloned sheep gone baaaad.

#288
King is pretty clear on the point that Holmes was still quite young when he began his career as an investigator. I don't recall offhand what her timeline is, but it's pretty much on Conan Doyle's schedule, IIRC.

It's probably a really bad idea to feed bits of the Necronomicon into the Babelizer, isn't it? Nonetheless:

The great holes excavate, where pori of the track must sufficiently be and the well-educated things, like which go, that must crawl.

Wesley: I know Doyle gives it to him in his early years. He can, Holmes is a fictive person, Doyle needs him to be that clever/educated/syncretic for the stories to work.

But for the audience, Holmes age is best left in the misty realms of, "adult". The recollective aspects are just that... "this is what I was like," but they don't have the visceral power that seeing a callow youth be that brilliant will have.

I note that Doyle said he based Holmes on a professor of his, who did the "Afghanistan I presume" trick on Doyle when they met, analysing his habits from his shirt cuffs and his watch.

Xopher: I see it now, but in my mind I don't think of "cocoa" as "chocolate".

Let's play "guess the original." Here's an easy one to start:

Where they disappear it, it does not have anything. I only remain.

1. In a hole in the track main a bit of the title lived here.
2. E-I polished to the process in the great entrance of main information to the end.
3. Much stay, to the time does far in a galaxy, far.
4. Also because you' Straight its pagination doesn' It cuts T-they' of the piece in addition; Straight its pagination.
5. Known like, what you would mean. Witnesses. Reiterieren.

Xopher @ 321:

Whee, I can actually get this one. Gur Yvgnal ntnvafg srne sebz Qhar.

KeithS: Correct!

3: N ybat gvzr ntb, va n tnynkl sne, sne njnl

Xopher: Ah, I see I misunderstood the game.

No, that's what I intended. But identifying the source will do too.

I really sort of couldn't believe #4. I would never get the answer to that one if I didn't already know it.

#1 looks like "Va n ubyr va gur tebhaq gurer yvirq n uboovg." #5: "Fnl jung lbh zrna. Orne jvgarff. Vgrengr."

Oh, "bit of the title" wasn't translated! I see.

Joel, right and right. The "a bit of the title" part doesn't make any sense, unless you read the whole progression. Even then it doesn't make MUCH sense.

Say, isn't anyone else going to play on the production side? And on the guessing side, I don't expect anyone to get #4, but #2 should at least be possible.

Hint on #4: the original is not about pagination, nor does it mention it in any way.

Diatryma, what do you mean?

6. Eighteen resources are dezessete; I' preoccupation of ll in you.
7. All have seemed until now my problems yesterday to the left.
8. If hailstorms Maria, those with the beauty, the horseman is full, thee is with that one.
9. One night bewitched determined, you can see a foreigner of a hard space.
10. Much that it demands, a space any relation of processing is distant, of the fresh air the night.

I was thinking, "Hole, road, lived, so something live in a hole in the road, but title! King, name, job title, what?"

Surely, in any conversation about translation problems, the possibility of this being referred to approaches one? (Possibly it's already happened, sub rosa: Mea navis aëricumbens anguillis abundat.)

These were run through my personal preference online translator, through Russian.

11: The pier worked very difficultly, all the morning long, Spring, clearing - few of it home.

12: In a year 1878 I have received a degree from the Doctor of Medicine of University of London, and have continued to Netley to pass a rate ordered for surgeons in army.

13:In the beginning there was a word, and the word was good luck, and the word was the God.

Elsewhere: Art imitates Life imitates Art?

A New Zealand couple [from Roturua] are reportedly on the run after $NZ10 million - instead of $NZ10,000 - was mistakenly deposited in their [Westpac] bank account.

It's a pretty good translator:

It should tell only

I have eaten
Plums
It was in
Refrigerator

And which
You were possibly
Economy
For a breakfast.

Forgive to me
They were delightful
So sweet
And so cold.

Which isn't too bad for a back and forth.

1. My job, sees moreover, in order to impress you and from the desperations.
2. Perhaps even with something perhaps it is heard, perhaps, if in, if as for me the thing importance which with something is permitted because of the thing, you ask, perhaps without doing me you do not worry that I say, and or so is not, whether the permission is needed, either one does, or.
3. That, regrettable I could not travel 2 these roads both with the yellow tree

Xopher @ 322: If I had to make a wild guess, which I, er, don't but will anyway, I'd guess gur rnejbez sebz Gur Qrzbyvfurq Zna: 'Grafre', fnvq gur Grafbe; 'grafvba, nccerurafvba, naq qvffrafvba unir ortha.'

Also, there might be something rotten about 'Ida,' the pre-anthropoid Google has recently been featuring in its logo. Not that she's not an amazing find and an authentic fossil, but that those behind her discovery seem to be pushing a bit of an agenda.

In the beginning there was a word, and the word was good luck

This I like.

Terry's #12 is "N Fghql va Fpneyrg", and #13 is gur Ovoyr. Bruce Cohen's #3 is Sebfg'f "Gur Ebnq Yrff Geniryrq".

17. As for that the single person who owns the truth good fortune which is recognized generally the wife being necessary, that it becomes it is. (Japanese)
18. Goes out and in order to live worried is in case, to die. (Korean)
19. Air, without n' import which agitation, the stars left. (French)

Serge writes at #1315:

This reminds me of something that I think Fred Pohl wrote some years ago, where he had someone translate one of his stories from Chinese back into English and published both versions in a collection of his. It's my understanding that the differences were interesting.

F. Gwynplaine Macintyre translated "The Wizard of Pung's Corner" back from Chinese, and it became "The Wizard-Masters of Peng-Shi Angle," which is fairly amusing. It appears in Pohlstars (1984).

God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Nighthawk.

Carrie S.'s #17 is Cevqr naq Cerwhqvpr

Using Multibabel, I found a sentence that is invariant:

"Broccolo is a vegetable."
(The original was "Broccoli", but the first run through mutated it. Then running that back through was stable.) Some other experiments have yielded stable gibberish "here settembri the week."

"No peace without justice." is also stable.

The order in which the languages in multibabel are applied would make a vast difference to the stable final forms.

I conjecture that declarative statements about abstract ideas are a) the easiest to translate and b) the least useful.

#19 is from Gur Avar Ovyyvba Anzrf bs Tbq ol Neguhe Pynexr.

#20 Portone increased

Bill Higgins @ 342... So I didn't imagine reading about this. That's a relief. Speaking of the perils of translation... Whenever I watch a French movie that somehow made it to the USA, it's interesting to compare what the characters say in French and what the subtitles say that the characters say.

"Traduire, c'est trahir."
"To translate is to betray."

#332 Xopher

7 is Lrfgreqnl
8 is Nir Znevn

I once babelfished Poe's Raven (in and out of German, if I remember right), and it turned a volume of forgotten lore into a forgotten truck-pond.

Erik Nelson @ 349:

Is that a place where trucks swim, complete with happy children feeding them drops of gasoline and motor oil?

Kevin Reid @230: Damn. That Eli is getting more interesting by the day...

As I type, Obama's on TV saying he's going to charge people over the torture programme. I believe this calls for a HELL YEAH!

Bill Higgins @342: And who can forget the wonderful Backstroke of the West?

I may have been overly hasty - it seems to have disappeared from the Beeb's news ticker. Damnnit.

heresiarch 339: No, never heard of that one.

Henry 348: Both correct.

xopher 322:

1:
Va n ubyr va gur tebhaq gurer yvirq n uboovg.
2:
V fuvar zl yvtug orfvqr gur tbyqra qbbe
5:
fnl jung lbh zrna, orne jvgarff, vgrengr

Carrie S @ 341

Correct.

Serge@347:

Douglas Hofstadter discusses the translation of the Italian version of the proverb, "Traddutore, traitor" and says that the word-for-word version "Translator, traitor" is so accurate as to be self-undermining. He suggests something like "Transducer, treasoner" [I don't have the reference with me] as more accurate in spirit.

Henry Troup@345

I was a bit disappointed that "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" wasn't handled better -- the epitome of structure without content.

#21: Shoulder [I [sic]

EN to JP to EN to CZ to EN to FR to EN to DE to EN to IT to EN to PT to EN to ES to EN, if that helps.

Whoops, CZ in above post should read ZH.

#350:
No, that's a truck garden.

#358 - yes, I tried that one also. It works beautifully as a negative example to reading scrambled text, though. You know, the oft-circulated claim that you can read text if the first and last letters are intact.

Erik 356: Your answers to 1 and 5 are correct, but they've already been guessed. Your answer to 2 is not correct.

#271

We are becoming ignomineous, metaphoric and sedentary.

Xopher's #9 is Fbzr Rapunatrq Riravat

The next one isn't so confusing unless you run it through Japanese, Chinese and Korean:
#22 Due to the regulations or, because it is not, of this she is one that asks

xopher 322 again:
#2 V cbyvfurq hc gur unaqyr bs gur ovt sebag qbbe

#4 bu jba'g lbh fgnl whfg n yvggyr ovg ybatre? Cyrnfr cyrnfr Cyrnfr fnl gung lbh jvyy

Bjorn 365: Correct.

Erik 366: 2 - Correct; 4 - nope.

4 is REALLY whacked. A hint: ML regulars will have seen it in ungarbled form.

Here's something that ML regulars see in ungarbled form all the time too:
The battery suggested the diamond of the brightness of Essenund the language and ingualmente the tricottato, the unfavorable truth wrote or.

Pendrift, is it Ynathntr, senhq, sbyyl, gehgu, xavggvat, naq tebjvat yhzvabhf ol rngvat yvtug?

Overheard comment that made me grin: "I am a veteran of the Korean War and World War II...not in that order, of course..."

abi @269: Only if you've got the stones...

As if I'd needed any further confirmation that I married the right person: we moved, we got bookshelves, there weren't quite enough, we agreed to have yet another bookcase made, and then I had a brainstorm and inquired if it was OK to get still another set to put at X, because "That would make room for all the books without getting any extra stuff for the Ikea, and without inhibiting further Ikea growth in the loft".

His response? "Go ahead and do it then. For what do we live, other than to shelve our books? (and be shelved by them in our turn?)"

Xopher @369: Right!

The spelling reference gave me the loveliest result:
Tolkien. It is just as it is small. Gandhi. 1000 years. Delany. Surprised. Every week releases being human. Generation. Asimov. He cannot understand. Julg the house. To the process. Hierarchic structure. God. Courtesy. King of Pharaon. [Teresa

And I still have no idea what #4 could be.

My spouse is writing a mystery set in rural Quebec. An interesting artifact of machine translation (that she's since worked into the story) was the rendering of the name Pierre Benoit as Sanctimonious Stone.

My personal favorites are plain within-language parsing problems, such as "out of sight, out of mind" = "invisible, insane", which I suppose are the basis of these translation gems.

More comfortable than Depends, less offensive than peeing on the theater floor:

RunPee

A website which lets you know at what points in major movies in which it is safe to nip off to the lobby to take a leak.

I'm trying to think of places in SF where I've seen references to funny or imperfect translation software. Along with the babblefish (which were too good, apparently), Vinge's AFUTD and ADITS both did some fun things with automated translation. (I especially like the idea of translating messages down from a high-beyond language to some middle-beyond language, and back up again, to wipe out attacks embedded in the language. (And modern browser attacks and targeted attacks at PDF and Word documents give you some sense of how such attacks might work.) Ian Bank's _Matter_ had some passing reference to this (the Oct's translation software was obviously about one hop beyond Babblefish). One of L Neil Smith's books involving the sentient Molluscs had both a reference to automated noise-removal software that effortlessly stripped off encryption, and also to a character not quite trusting the software translating between his form of speech and some sentient plant's pheremone-based language. Are there a lot of others I'm not thinking of?

"They laughed at me at the university, but I will show them!"
--> babelfish -->
"The irrisión to the university, but the video returned to me finally!"

Bruce @ 246

there were 3 emergency appendectomies performed aboard US submarines during WWII, all by Pharmacists Mates (what were later called corpsmen), all successful.

Alas, none of them was performed on my uncle, who died of his appendicitis while on shipboard in the Pacific during WWII. Not on a submarine, though. And the family story as I heard it was that the ship was under radio silence at the time, so no opportunity for a corpsman to be talked through the procedure. (That is, I don't recall whether family lore indicates that an appendectomy was performed, but there wouldn't have been outside advice if it had been.)

Pendrift 372: It's a commonplace thing to see on Making Light.

#375 ::: albatross : P. K. Dick's The Galactic Pot Healer has a game of machine translation early on in it.

Xopher:

Whfg orpnhfr lbh’er ba gurve fvqr qbrfa’g zrna gurl’er ba lbhe fvqr?

abi 380: Yep! Isn't that unbelievable? "Ba gurve fvqr" naq "ba lbhe fvqr" orpbzr ersreraprf gb cntvangvba, zrguvaxf. Fgvyy seryyvat jrveq gubhtu.

Xopher @381:
Yes, bapr V tbg sebz "cntr" gb "fvqr" (urycrq ol Qhgpu, jurer gur jbeq sbe cntr vf oynqmvwqr), gura gur "qbrfa'g" tbg zr gur erfg bs gur jnl.

What language did you pass it through?

Stefan Jones @ 374: A website which lets you know at what points in major movies in which it is safe to nip off to the lobby to take a leak.

My wife refers to this as an "Arwen break."

Serge, #315: This reminds me of something that I think Fred Pohl wrote some years ago, where he had someone translate one of his stories from Chinese back into English and published both versions in a collection of his.

Mark Twain once re-translated a French translation of "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Being Mark Twain, rather than re-translate it properly he Babelfished the thing.

The individual re-took the box, it examined of new longly, and it rendered to Smiley in saying with an air deliberate:

"Eh bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each frog."

abi @ 382: Linky.

This one's probably an easy one: "Modern a general general is also the model."

I like hearing proverbs of other languages. Sometimes they're similar, often not-- the way that English puts things in repetition and rhyme limits the word choices.

I once had a great deal of fun writing double-ended proverbs for worldbuilding.

abi 382: I ran it through the language set here, without checking the box.

Oh sure, while I'm getting a toilet and a hose tap working, you people have fun with translation.

Fine. I'll just be over here in the corner. Also, you neophytes, I invented multibabelfishing on March 2, 2001: I did it with "All your base are belong to us", between German and English, again and again and again.

A classic (apocryphal?) story of machine translation (I first read of it in the mid 60s in The Real Book of Computers — one of a series of 'Real Books' on sciences and geography for children) had it that the Pentagon developed a computer to help with the mass of Russian translations they needed to do. They tested it by translating an English phrase into Russian, and back again into English. From "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak", they got "the vodka is excellent, but the meat has spoiled".

Okay, here's a few more semi-famous (locally, anyway) Babelizations. (The numbering above seemed to go wandering a bit, so I'm reverting to Roman here.)

I. "This morning continues the died head of cattle of the way, end of the rubber to the stomach that it lucentezza cuts it. This city is the scared before me. I saw truth the front part being."

II. "Fiabe de Lasci in winter' that will be begun; Tomorrow of S then if the reductions with in ene of ivory of the snow are still-pleasant blood: such ignition in the rectangle that robs defines, red as only the place of the wine of the red in the Stulpe that it indicated."

III. "It seriously approximately said everything to the magician and when it was as a lesson of history did and to that it could use, the end to feel ignition."

In other open-threadiness, is anyone else going to Balticon this weekend? I'd love to hook up with other Fluorospherans, if any are around (uh, aside from the GOH, that is).

(Not that I've been often out of lurker mode around here myself for a while, mercurial neurotic that I am. Nonetheless, feel free to drop me a line at the email in my VAB link if you'd rather not reply in the thread.)

Rob @ 389: Some commentary from Snopes on that very story (and others suspiciously like it).

In other news, I'll be speaking at Torture Is A Moral Issue: Panel & Conference for People of Faith in Santa Clara, Calif. at the end of June (27,28).

I am chuffed.

Terry Karney @ 393:

That looks like it'll be very interesting. You'll add much to their understanding, I'm sure.

The Swited take "missing link": is well worth reading. (it's linked at the bottom, Though I read it first).

Then again, I too thought it was blazoned on a piece of toast, speaking of which, I think I shall makes some now.

Carrie S.@341 #18: Fvyireybpx?

Dan Layman-Kennedy@390 I: "Qrnq qbt va nyyrljnl guvf zbeavat..." sebz Jngpuzra

I've arrived at WisCon and will try to swing by the Tor party this weekend in hopes of seeing fellow MLers.

Wesley @ 384... Ouch. Why am I not shocked, shocked to hear that Mark Twain thought that up?

David Goldfarb: Yes!

Xopher's puzzle # 4:
what language did it mangle in and out of?

V erpbtavmrq gur znatyrq ncbfgebcur va lbh'er be lbh'ir, naq znlor vg znatyrq gb na rfpncr pbqr yvxr nzcrefnaq-ncbf, va juvpu pnfr gung pbhyq pbzovar jvgu "ba lbhe fvqr" gb orpbzr gur cntvangvba ersrerapr. Fb V sryg irel pyrire guvaxvat bs "Bu fnl lbh'yy fgnl whfg n yvggyr ovg ybatre." orpnhfr gung unq n "lbh'yy" naq na vaperzrag. Arkg V jnf tbvat gb thrff "lbh'er tbvat gb ybfr gung tvey" naq bgure jrveq fghss.

Erik, see my response at 387. And I'm astonished at your analytical ingenuity; note that while I've submitted several of these (the easy part) I have solved not a single one.

Oh wait, yes I did. Well, that one was easy.

David Goldfarb @ 396: That's it.

I've started collecting some of the recipes posted on ML for my own personal use. Would anyone be interested in an actual, physical cookbook of recipes that have appeared here?

I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that with the renewal of Dollhouse and the cancellation of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Joss Whedon should see if he can bring on Summer Glau.

But as what? As a Doll? As a person investigating the Dollhouse? As a mysterious and possibly-evil higher-up in the organization?

Maybe one of Echo's friends from her previous life. THAT would be cool.

C'mon Joss, see if she's available! It's not "getting the band back together" (though I hear Jewel Staite might be available too), it's just hiring an actress who's done truly excellent work for you in the past.

Xopher @ 405... I want Summer Glau as Agatha Heterodyne, and Christopher Walken as Klaus Wulfenbach.

Re: Dollhouse (spoiler for next season picked up elsewhere in the blogosphere) - V'ir urneq gung Nzl Npxre'f cvybg unf orra cvpxrq hc, fb gurl znl arrq n arj Fnhaqref...

Oh man, Serge, that would be fantastic...

Michael Roberts @ 408... When I met Phil Foglio at 2006's worldcon, I asked him who he'd cast. Walken is one name he came up with for Klaus, and also Arnie Schwarzenegger. And Alicia Silverstone as Agatha. Me, I'd prefer Summer Glau, or Lake Bell.

Summer Glau is lovely. Too lovely, I think, too conventionally attractive to play Agatha, who is certainly attractive but in an offbeat sort of way.

How about Claire Danes?

And nerdycellist: NnnnnnnGGGGGG! Must. Not. Decode! Argh. A whole SEASON ahead?!

You are crool and evoll. Next time you say you're opposed to torture, I will cite this post in attacking you!

Seriously, it'll probably be spoiled for me by less thoughtful people anyway, and thanks for ROT-13ing.

Xopher @ 410... Claire Danes as Agatha? I could see that. If you want relly offbeat beauty, my vote definitely is for the aforementionned Lake Bell. You may have seen her in "Prop 8 - the Musical".

406, 409-411

I rather like the idea of Alyson Hannigan as Agatha.

Or perhaps Amy Acker.

(I also rather like the idea of a Girl Genius/Buffy crossover. It would be fun to watch Agatha interact with Willow.)

(Agatha and Fred would be fun also.)

nerdycellist @407: Jryy, pbafvqrevat gung Ivpgbe'f tbg fpnef nyy bire uvf snpr, naq gurersber znl ab ybatre or hfrshy nf n erthyne-vffhr Qbyy ... naq gurl'ir whfg tbg gung zrzbelcevag YLVAT nebhaq ... :->

Digression: Anyone come across Hobnox?

Warning: potential Timesink of Great Evil for the musically inclined.

Can you recognize this babelmangle?:

nobody is the color of the television of the narrow channel, of that for the adaptation.

Dan Layman-Kennedy @390 II: that's the opening of Fjbeqfcbvag, isn't it?

Actually, gur svefg fragrapr bs gur frpbaq cnentencu. "Yrg gur snvel gnyr ortva ba n jvagre'f zbeavat, gura, jvgu bar qebc bs oybbq arj-snyyra ba gur vibel fabj: n qebc nf oevtug nf n pyrne-phg ehol, erq nf gur fvatyr fcbg bs pynerg ba gur ynpr phss."

Re: Summer Glau, Alyson Hannigan, or Amy Acker as Agatha Heterodyne - No no no! Don't get me wrong, they are all beautiful women, but terribly, terribly skinny. Agatha is undeniably and wonderfully voluptuous, and it would be a shame to lose her cinematic incarnation to the vast mass of borderline-anorexic/differently-metabolized actresses. Thus, my vote is for Miracle Laurie, aka Mellie from Dollhouse.

Erik Nelson @ 415 ...

There's only one book that could possibly be :P

Agatha Heterodyne has to be physically powerful-- and not in a cinematic kung-fu way-- and not cute while sparking. I don't know many actresses these days, but I can't think of any that could pull it off.

Rikibeth: Just so.

(And a great relief that it was indeed guessable; I was sort of afraid I'd wound up picking something just slightly too obscure in both source and execution, like when I tried to do Havamal on the LOLcat poetry thread.)

Diatryma #419: Agatha Heterodyne has to be physically powerful-- and not in a cinematic kung-fu way

Then you'd probably have to recruit from among professional wrestling "divas" or alumni from the various Gladiator TV show incarnations.

My First Fanfic!

On the way home from her dance lesson, my daughter told me a story called "Galadriel in the Mountains", about Galadriel meeting Bilbo and their subsequent journey to track down some of the ill effects of the Dark Lord.

She also clearly identified the elements of her story that were not canon.

Pretty good for five.

Adorable.

Re Agatha Heterodyne: I have no idea whether she can act or not, but distance swimmer Lynne Cox is lovely, zaftig, and formidable (Swimming to Antarctica is an amazing book).

(Clarification: yes, I know she's too old; that was more along the lines of "you might want to look at distance swimmers along with the rasslers.")

Tech help needed here...

I updated to the current version of Firefox for the Mac recently and now if I click on a link to open it in a tab and it ends up being a PDF the tab just sits there: no download, nothing from PDF Download, nothing. Anyone else seeing this? I hate having to open Safari just to view PDF files...

For casting Girl Genius it might be easier to look away from Hollywood. Lucy Lawless is an example of the possibilities, though a bit old now.

There's a certain implausibility in American film and TV casting, these days. If Agatha Heterodyne were to walk into the Rover's Return, she wouldn't look as if she were slumming it.

Abi @ 422... Pretty good for five

...but not that surprising, considering her parents.

Bruce, I can't think of anything specific, but it may be worth upgrading your PDF reader, and letting the installer sort it out. There was a big security bug in Adobe Reader that got revealed a few months back, and some of the alternatives had the same problem.

Check Tools|Options for a list of document types and how they're handled.

When casting Girl Genius, our own Miss Teresa would be the perfect Agatha Heterodyne.

Dan @420, that's my favorite book in the world, the one I'd choose to memorize if we lived in Fahrenheit 451. It'd take a far more mangled translation for me not to recognize it!

Oh, and Erik @415, since xeger didn't say it directly, that's the opening line of Arhebznapre, of course.

Jim Macdonald @ 430... There apparently is a Girl Genius character that yours truly could play.

Malicioius Crusading Moronicity....

I heard the Republicrap Officious Bilge Blather this morning (the every Saturday Morning there is an Official Promo Piece by the President, and there is the Equal Time given to the Opposition... originally it was rebuttal time, but that mutated into: official political message from President, official political message from the other party. I don't remember when it started--it's been going on for years.

The Officious Bilge this morning was moronicity about how the USA has a hundred years' supply of offshore oil and lots of coal and let's pump/dig/burn it! It's cheaper than wild-eyed claims for wind and solar power production--again, this is the BilgeParty view of the universe....

As to why this is offense moronicity:

I. There is no discusion, no mention, no acknowledgment, of the FULL costs of fossil fuel mining/pumping.

A. There are permanent fires (!) in old coal mines, that have been burning for years!
B. Mining is dangerous (particularly when Republicraps don't believe in regulating and inspecting mines and ensuring that there is usable lifesuppport equipment and proper shoring-up in mines)and causes all sorts of health problems and expensive (black lung disease, environmental pollution and illnesses from it, and even dirty laundry from grit....)
C. Pumping oil can be hazardous to the environment--not only despoiling sea life and sea and land habitat and having oil spills contaminating the food chains, but causing loss of property and loss of jobs to people (sink holes happen at least when pumping ground water, and if oil pools being drained has similar habits...,; contamination of water causes fish to if not die off directly, perhaps become inedible, meaning loss of income and jobs to fishermen and the businesses which depend on their catch, and which they buy services and products from); contamination of beaches causes the beaches to close down and clam beds to be closed down--again, this destroys jobs and sales of products and services which destroys more jobs

II There is no acknowledgment and no mention of the full costs of burning fossil fuels
A. Air pollution--cost of treating asthma, lost productivity from asthma caused by polluted air, lake eutrophication, water pollution from the air pollution ("acid rain"), expenses of trying to fix deteriorating bridges and buildings corroded by acid rain -- particulate air pollution, and greenhouse gases air pollution, and water-acidifying air pollution. These expenses are NOT trivial--but the POLLUTERS don't get assessed to pay the remediation and repair and mitigation and compensation costs, for the loss of crops (including trees), damage and destruction to trees, medical costs for lung impairments, building repair, cemetery headstones repair, cost of operating dryers instead of line-drying laundry, etc.
B. Those giant smokestacks send the air pollution downwind of the polluters, meaning the plumes of noxiousness don't contaminate the polluters' homes and noses and yards and lakes.... they dump their shit on those downwind and those downwind get the full detrimental effects and no compensation, the polluters have all the power in the situation and the revenue....
C. Global warming-- Republicraps obviously don't consider it an issue of any sort....

III All sorts of fallacies.
A. "Wind and solar power going up by X percent is miniscule..." -- anything just getting started tends to start off small, and then have a STEEP curve as the adoption increases. Static percentages is essentially lying -- the percentage rates INCREASE, dramatically, as "installed base" expands. There are reasons for using the term "compound annual growth rate" which include that it is a rate of -increase-, as opposed to the percentage increase. That the Republicraps are math-anti-literates is quite clear there, they demonstrating an arrantly arrogant anti-technical-analytical outlook and basic orientation. The compound annual growth rate for solar and wind power are very much higher than the percentage of installed base, and the percentage of installed base COULD grow very rapidly, provided the asshole Republicrap fossil fuel oil patch lying thieving abusive bullying Constitution-raping zealots get their just due shutting down....
B. They mealymouth sanctimonious sarcasm about conservation "of course we should conserve..." I have nothing polite to say....
C. "Wind and solar don't run day-round and we need 24 hour power production." MORE offensive shithead misguidance/misleading lies there.... there are energy storage systems, there always HAVE been... consider windup mechanical clocks and toys and equipment, guess what, the windup mechanism STORES ENERGY! Batteries STORE ENERGY! Dynamos and flywheels STORE ENERGY! The electric power grid transmission system, had energy storage systems in it. For that matter, most of the -demand- for energy is during DAYLIGHT hours, when people are are work in offices and factories--most businesses are NOT operating on multiple shifts! The unbalanced load is reality, and the power companies have rate structures for large users that reflect that!

Yes, there would need to be more energy storage capacity ADDED, but there are already energy storage systems in use.

As for transmission lines (the Republicrap from o/i/l/s/l/e/a/z/e/v/i/l/l/e Wyoming left that particular Balking Point off), what's more mileage of wires? There are high voltages wires that extend from Hydro Quebec in CANADA, through to most of the US Northeast, and high voltage transmission lines otherwise run through much of the USA ALREADY! What, more might have to be added?! That is NOT new, unproven technology.

And, goshwowgeewhizgollyohboyohboy, production of transmission line systems, might actually provide JOBS for US workers in the USA, mining the iron for the steel for the towers and the copper for the transmission power cables, and erecting the towers and stringing the cable!!!

IV. Fossil fuels of pumped oil and coal do NOT renew in less than geological time. Growing kudzu and and converting it to fuel might help, but stripmining and oil-pumping, deplete energy stores that took millennia if not millions of years, to generate.

V. The solar and wind potential of just Utah, Texas, and one other state (proponent for solar and wind on NPR Science Friday yesterday) would meet the current consumption level of power in the USA....

Bottom line--obstructionist recidivist roadblock/roadwrecker Republicans, who make saboteurs look supportive, who spiritually make the Taliban look socially responsible....

I used to be Agatha-shaped, and once vocally overpowered (outshouted) someone who was using a bullhorn who was across the street on a corner....

I assume everyone's seen this story about science fiction writers (no, not Jerry Pournelle) advising Homeland Security on future technologies.

Bruce E. Durocher @

Rather than try to fix Adobe Reader working with Firefox, you might be better off using a different application instead.

Bring up the Preferences dialog (from the Firefox menu), and select the Applications tag. Scroll down to "Portable Document Format" and select that line. The right side of the line becomes a pulldown menu; "Preview" and "User PDF Browser Plugin" work for me. I usually use Preview.

* Some neologisms are useful and not too ugly, and it's too early in the morning and I haven't had enough caffeine yet to bother with a circumlocution.

Bruce E. Durocher II @426: I had been having a similar problem with Firefox and PDFs. Googling around, I found it's a common problem. I've forgotten details: there was a fix suggested on one of the Mozilla pages, but it didn't work for me. What I ended up doing (and forgive me, I don't remember what sub menu you need to find to set this up) was change the behavior when I click on a PDF link, so instead to trying to open it in Firefox, it would offer to save it. Then if I really wanted to read it, I would save it and open it with Acrobat.

Further reporting: I never use Adobe Reader since a terrible upgrade hassle some years ago. (I make sure I have the current version, but I don't use the thing.) Mostly use Preview. I installed PDF Download awhile ago, which purports to improve the PDF experience in Mozilla, and can officially rate it as "eh." Good suggestions on checking the preferences settings, but the blasted program is stuck on loading a page from www.news-record.com, and has been so for the past hour. I don't want to shut it down because I'll lose all the tabs (whoever set up the "restore tabs" function in Firefox in case of a crash was a vicious prankster), so I'm hoping the program will eventually surrender and quit trying to load the page. Meanwhile, my Mac has slowed to a crawl. I doubt that Chrome will be the best thing since sliced bananas, but I'll be willing to give it a shot when it comes out just because of the crashes/tabs thing: I tried Chromium, but it just wouldn't install and run for me.

Oh, and if you want to see an amazing example of a company screwing up a software release I recommend you look at the user forums over at MacSpeech. Their newest program, Dictate, sells for around $199, and while it's based on the Dragon engine the methods for adding vocabulary and correcting errors are at best less than intuitive and are hardly robust. (This is Bruce trying to politely say the corrections interface makes putting your privates against a tool grinding wheel in operation sound like a pleasurable option, and it doesn't work well on top of that.) They did a series of free upgrades to 1.3, killing various bugs, then two months after 1.3 came out announced a new version. Unfortunately, the press release didn't make it clear that it was a total rewrite of the software and that the reason it wasn't downloadable is because it's well over a gig. Instead they released it as version 1.5 and are asking $55.00 plus shipping for the updated disks. On top of that, the shipping fees outside of the USA are so high the Canadians (!) are about to cross the boarder with fire and sword, and if you think they're pissed you should read the opinions from Oz. Oh, and Apple released an update two days later that breaks 1.5 unless you toggle a setting in OS X. And to cap it off, the next day/two day shipments have been delayed over a week.

This is being handled in such a way that it makes Amazon's response to the vanishing book listings seem like an Apple product release with Steve cranking the Reality Distortion Field to 11. It's an O.K. package for me: I can use it to churn out a lot of text fast (when Firefox isn't grinding away endlessly and using all my CPU cycles), but if I couldn't do revisions with a keyboard I'd probably be as furious as any of the users that depend on the package.

(Compare and contrast: I bought a $250.00 Revolabs xTag microphone for $40.00 with shipping through Craigslist last month. It was missing the lanyard and the foam cover for the earpiece was torn. Sent an e-mail to the company on a Saturday (when it arrived) to ask where I might buy a replacement lanyard and foam cover. I got a reply THAT DAY from them saying they'd forwarded the e-mail to someone that should be able to help, and by Monday I got confirmation that they would send me both the lanyard AND a NEW earpiece FREE from the head of sales and a separate note and tracking number from the shipping department. Now THAT is customer service.)

abi @ 422:

That's very good for five. I hope she keeps up the storytelling.

What kind of dance lessons is she taking?

Bruce E. Durocher II @ 439:

If you haven't done it already, you might want to uninstall PDF Download if it's not doing that much for you. Then you can go to the download options and make sure that it's set up to do whatever you want it to do.

If you're looking for a new browser, you could always try Opera, which I've been happily using for years.

Re: Teresa's 'Spectacular frozen desserts' particle:

My very-local farmer's market returned this week, and so I went and bought a bunch of produce, including a pound or two of organic rhubarb.

I thought I'd make a compote: stringed, diced rhubarb, the zest and juice from an orange, and some water in a saucepan, brought to a boil, set to simmer.

Ten minutes later I realized that I had what I will charitably call a sauce. It was kind of an insipid colour, so I dumped in a punnet of raspberries, smooshed them in, added sugar, and then put it away in the fridge.

Next day: Yup, still sauce. I warmed it in the microwave, stirred in more sugar until it was just too sweet for my taste, and then put it in the freezer.

Today: Raspberry-rhubarb-orange granita. Yum.

Okay, maybe it's less in the 'spectacular' and more in the 'good save!' category.

I do normally make ice cream with liquid nitrogen, to which I have easier access than an ice cream maker.

Although, now that I think of it, that might be better described as 'spectacular freezing of desserts.'

Keith @440:
I hope she keeps up the storytelling.

I hope so, too. If she doesn't, it won't be for lack of attentive listeners.

What kind of dance lessons is she taking?

It's basic modern dance, kind of pre-ballet. At her age, they're trying to get them to move and to learn basic choreography. Later on they'll get to steps and stuff.

Paula Lieberman @ 435... Not long ago, Kaja Foglio, who was the inspiration for Agatha, mentionned on her blog how, in 1997, she was having trouble with her hair as she was going to tie the knot and complained that it made her look like Dixie Cousins. When she recently started watching Brisco County Jr again, on DVD, she exclaimed that she wished she could look like Dixie Cousins, who is definitely Foglioesque.

Here is a clip from Brisco where Dixie dukes it out with another lady, whose glasses and maniacal grin belong in Girl Genius. (And yes, that other lady indeed is Pretender's Miss Parker.)

abi, I'm certainly glad to read your comments, particularly after reading this from Avedon: "I just got back from Abi's funeral. . ."

Gave me quite a turn, that did.

debcha @ 442:

Any good save is spectacular, but you're supposed to pretend you did it intentionally.

abi @ 443:

That's good. I started dancing late (about this time last year), so it's a bit of an uphill battle, but I find it's definitely worth doing.

They keep threatening me with Nutcracker in another year or two.

Linkmeister @445:

You're the second person to mention this. Having an unusual spelling of an unusual name is all very well until you run up against another one (in this case, the late Abigail Frost, a mainstay of British fandom).

I know of five people named Abigail who shorten it to Abi. Since one is a celebrity in the UK, I presume that there is a whole crop of them coming through the primary schools now. The idea that my name, and my spelling of it, may become common boggles me.

But no, I ATEN'T DEAD.

Bruce E. Durocher II @439: I second the suggestion to uninstall PDF Download (neither Mac nor PC versions have worked well on my machines) and to change the settings for PDF files. (It's in Firefox > Preferences > Applications, mine is set to "Always Ask".)

Abi @ 447... Glad to hear.

abi 447: But no, I ATEN'T DEAD.

It would be more than a little shocking to hear otherwise...especially from you.

abi #447: Just looking in here, and now I understand your tweet of earlier today. I too am glad you aten't dood, doodette.

Speaking of Abis. I know an Abi who shortens her name from Abiodun.

Dan Layman-Kennedy, #390, Susan de Guardiola, who posts here, has her Balticon schedule up.

Terry Karney, #393, you'll have to bring us your talk!

Annals of Dumpster Diving:

Last weekend:

Cheap but nice-looking mini-tower computer. Motherboard capacitors blown. Power supply, cheap and undersized. Drives, old but serviceable.

This weekend:

Computer motherboard, Intel, nicely featured, with somewhat dated but still respectable Pentium 5 2.66 GHz processor; 1 Gb memory.

Power supply, apparently unused, more than adequate for the job.

Fuckin'-A.

hi all. Um, I found this:

On prejudice against otherkin:
"...a somewhat disconcerting and ironic contradiction in an alternative community that accepts everything from therianthropes to extraterrestrial fae."

Thought the fluorosphere might like it.

Pendrift: uninstalled PDF Download. PDF's were already on Always Ask, so I chose the option to allow Preview to open them when needed.

I would just like to know
who has had the brass
to hide the brass
I was saving
to etch.

THIS IS JUST TO SAY

I have eaten
the brass
that was in
your workshop

and that
you were probably
saving
to etch

Forgive me
it was delicious
so metallic
and so cold

C'mon, it's not like it's hard! The poem I mean; the brass is pretty hard.

Linkmeister @445 - yeah, I had the same shock from that, and I had even seen Avedon's earlier post on the other Abi. But I still came over to Making Light and checked that our Abi had posted recently, just to be sure.

Xopher @ 450: "It would be more than a little shocking to hear otherwise...especially from you."

Given the (accursed?) regularity with which zombies pop up on Making Light, it doesn't seem that unlikely. Which reminds me...

Prof. JEREMIAH NONEMORE BLACKE's Patented Test for Determinin' Whether You Might Be One of the LIVING DEAD, and Not Even Know'd It.

***
Have you ever felt as though you were NOT QUITE RIGHT? As though you didn't quite FIT IN with the rest of humanity? Did you ever find yourself pursuin' a primarily NOCTURNAL lifestyle, even to the compleat EXCLUSION of socializin'? Why then you just might be ONE A THE LIVING DEAD! Follow Prof. BLACKE's Patented Test to FIND OUT for yerself!
***

Step One: Attempt to Eat Regular Food
1.a. Mmm-mm good! You're as healthy as a horsefly, though perhaps sufferin' from an unnatural pallor.
1.b. How entirely NAUSEATIN'! Proceed to step Two.

Step Two: Examine your Reflection.
2.a. There y'are! Proceed to step Three.
2.b. Nothing there! Uh-oh! 'Fraid to say, looks as though you might have become one o' the DREAD LORDS OF THE NIGHT, the Vampire! Beware of short blonde females bearing stakes.

Step Three: Pinch Yourself.
3.a. You wake up. Thank the LORD, it was Just A Dream!
3.b. Ow! Like as not, you simply have an upset stomach.
3.c. Skin comes off. Proceed to Step Four!

Step Four: Attempt to Eat a Human Bein'
4.a. Well, that was quite awkward! Very Christian of them though, forgivin' your eccentricities so quickly. 'Specially since you're almost certainly a LEPER, spreading disease where ever you go and to whomever you touch or, as the case may be, bite.
4.b. My GOODNESS, had you known Mama was so delicious, you would Never have contented yourself with her meatloaf for so many years! Seems y'are a ZOMBIE, ravenous and insatiable consumer of LIVING FLESH.

Xopher @ 457 ...
C'mon, it's not like it's hard! The poem I mean; the brass is pretty hard.

The brass is pretty soft, actually -- the poem, when I've spent enough of the day doing various bits of physical work (including trying to find my brass), is quite problematic ;)

(and I'm now thinking I should clarify that the brass is -sheet- brass, not brass balls... )

KeithS, #446: Any good save is spectacular, but you're supposed to pretend you did it intentionally.

Hmmm...in increasing order of pride in my leet kitchen skillz: following a recipe, improvising something cool, creatively salvaging something.

Speaking of zombies, I'm relieved to hear that the Boston Police Department plan to let us know if zombies are on the rampage in Boston.

heresiarch #459: Step One: Attempt to Eat Regular Food

Does microwaved Dinty Moore Beef Stew dumped over steamed rice, heavily seasoned with black pepper, garlic powder and store brand Cajun spices count as "regular food"?

Xopher @ 457

Nah, the brass isn't terribly hard. A soldier's life, now ... Oh, look, they're changing the guard!

heresiarch @ 459:

I passed the test handily at 1a, which is good. This test does not, unfortunately, seem to be able to discern ill people who can not currently keep food down, or p-zombies. Is the good professor open to suggestions?

debcha @ 461:

(I just realized that my tone may not have come through properly. Salt my original post with smileys to taste.)

Sometimes the save is even better than what you were going for in the first place. I've had that happen sometimes.

A movie question.
Or two.

1977's Island of Doctor Moreau, which starred Burt Lancaster, Michael York and Barbara Carreras, was set in the late 19th century, same as HG Wells's story, wasn't it? I don't know for sure because it's been 32 years since I saw it and one of the few things I remember was Lancaster trying to make York eat a rat. I think.

What about 1932's Island of Lost Souls? Was it set in what was then the present?

Serge, #465: What about 1932's Island of Lost Souls? Was it set in what was then the present?

It's been quite a while since I saw it--this is a movie that's way, way overdue for a DVD release. Almost the entire movie is set on the island, which is something of a world unto itself, so the exact era doesn't make much difference. However, I seem to recall it looking very 1932-ish.

This would be consistent with Universal's other early horror movies, which were set in a slightly alternate universe resembling the 1930s but with a little 19th century mixed in. In retrospect some of these movies occasionally look a bit steampunk.

Earl Cooley III @ 462: Does microwaved Dinty Moore Beef Stew dumped over steamed rice, heavily seasoned with black pepper, garlic powder and store brand Cajun spices count as "regular food"?

Hmm. Last time I recall actually seeing anyone eat Dinty Moore stew was college. I believe it was washed down by a generic BEER. (Yes, children, there was once generic food packaged in plain white, with catchy names like BEER, and BROWNIE MIX.)

I think Dinty Moore stew definitely does not count as food if you just open the can, and might not count if you just put it on a plate and warm it up. Actually cooking rice, and adding seasoning, probably brings it up to the food level. After all, I've never seen the undead steam rice.

Wesley @ 466... In retrospect some of these movies occasionally look a bit steampunk

Thanks. That's what I needed to know. As far as I know, there is a DVD of Island of Lost Souls, but it's a Bela Lugosi doublebill. When I looked the movie up on NetFlix, it wasn't listed at all. It shows up on Turner Classic Movies every once in a while, and I've caught bits and pieces of it, but never the whole thing from beginning to end. I had read the novel back in high school so I was able to fill in the blanks. Well, let's hope TCM shows it before the July 4th weekend otherwise I'll have to shell out $6 for that Bela Lugosi DVD.

Can't be as bad as Maconochie's stew.

For the Portlanders in the audience: The foul-mouthed* artist in the particle "America: f*cked by Blippo Bold" lives in Portland, despite his very midwestern vibe, and has a show that just opened on NE Alberta.

*I don't mean that in a bad way. If one of the splendid old neon signs in my neighborhood vanished to be replaced by a monstrosity such as the one he described, I'd be cranky, too.

Looking at the particle about the Blippo Bold motel sign, there's a Google Streetview link in the comments thread in the particle, which shows the expensive new sign.

The new sign fails.

It doesn't draw the eye. It's low-contrast, words to background, and is plain difficult to read.

It doesn't work as a sign, at the most fundamental level, and fails at what even an ugly sign can manage to do.

Open thread making boasting:

I've spent the better part of the last four days sewing.

Fiona wanted a set of mother/daughter/doll dresses. Her first impulse was to ask for pink dresses, but she knows I am not a pink person. We went looking for the only pink I will wear (dusty rose, very grey), but didn't find any. So we settled on white fabric with pink roses. The dresses do have pink sashes that tie in big bows at the back. (Pictures to follow.)

We're going to wear them tomorrow, since they're sleeveless and it's forecast to be pleasantly warm. I expect that my colleagues will be quite astonished at the sight; they reacted with some surprise at a black floral dress I wore the other week.

But there's a problem. My office is in the throes of the Airco Wars. Some of my colleagues are too hot; others (including me) are too cold. I've been looking for some kind of casual shrug (a cross between a bolero and a cardigan) to throw on and keep the gooseflesh down, but haven't found any.

So I went looking on the net, and found instructions for making a T-shirt into a shrug I rather liked. I made two (a white one and a black one), replacing the ribbon in the original with elastic and a button.

Anyone else making stuff at the moment?

Anyone else making stuff at the moment?

Giant squid. The little ones take a couple of hours or so each. The big one was several days. I'll make another big one eventually, since it was very little extra work to cut duplicate pieces for the sucker parts of the tentacles.

Abi @ 472... Anyone else making stuff at the moment?

Not yet, but I'll be making stairs to replace these next week, probably starting on Saturday.

Dave Bell @ 471:

The brief photo of the sign that appeared in the video was a little better, but if it can't be read very well on Google street view, then in probably can't be read very well by most passing motorists. The sign does have the motel nature, but contrast to make it readable would be nice.

abi @ 472:

My sympathies on the aircon wars. That can be frustrating, especially if the aircon in one's office is broken to where the temperature ranges from sub-arctic to merely meatlocker.

That shrug looks nice, and, even better, very simple to make. The dresses sound quite lovely; I'm looking forward to seeing pictures.

I think I got carried away clipping recipes from ML. It looks like I might have a cookbook on my hands.

I seem to recall from previous threads that making a better you comes under the category of making stuff. I'm busy practicing for Midsummer Night's Dream next month. It's a small part, but it should be fun.

Joel Polowin @ 473:

Oooh, nice giant squid.

Joel @473:
Oh, those are fantastic.

Depending on my ambition, I may make a skirt. I have never done this before. I bought fabric yesterday, with much advice and reassurance from other people. I have kind of figured out how to sew straight. I will finally finish the filet piece-- need to sew it onto a black background-- and then, skirt.

At Knitter's Breakfast yesterday, I had nothing to do-- I was there for delicious coffeecake and talking, mostly-- and one of the women handed me a sock. Two socks. Toe-up two-at-once Magic Loop socks.
I had not attempted knitting since fifth grade, and that didn't meet with any success whatsoever.
Still had tension issues. There will always be tension issues. But I did... rows! And none of the things I did wrong are unsalvageably so.

Re: Airco Wars

When I worked at a hotel, there was evidence of what consultants call "Green Sweater Syndrome." This was the unfortunate event resulting from air conditioning being set so low that front-office personnel would cover up the expensive and beautiful uniforms they were wearing with personal clothing brought from home without much regard to color-matching or style. Warmth is deemed more important.

Ack. Correct verb tenses in #478 as you deem necessary.

Abi @ 472:

You're making me drool with the fun you must be having!

I'm making scrubs for my nurse mom, which is fulfilling in that she gets to wear clothes that express her personality, but not as fun as mother/daughter dresses.

When I'm caught in the middle of air-conditioning wars (or in the winter when the heat isn't high enough for my taste) I often find that something that covers my shoulders (like your shrug) or a bit around the neck (like a chiffon scarf, jauntily tied) makes all the difference in my comfort level.

Your mileage (and circulatory system) may vary!

Diatryma @ 477:

Skirts are the perfect first project!

Can I make one small suggestion? (You may already know what I'm about to say, but some people don't, so...).

Over the past decades, ready-to-wear clothes have grown/their sizes have shrunk so much that there's no longer any real correspondence between pattern sizes and ready-to-wear sizes. The key is to take careful measurements of your body (waist, high hip, hip at its largest point, and hip at upper thigh). The pattern will only specify measurements for waist and hip (which translates as hip at its largest point), but once you've bought a pattern that matches these measurements, you can take further measurements of the pattern itself.

A well-fitting slim skirt should have approximately one inch of ease at each of these points to skim over the body without being either too tight or too loose.

When you measure the pattern, remember to subtract 5/8" from each seamline (unless the pattern specifies a narrower or deeper seam) to arrive at the final measurements.

If you have a favorite skirt that fits just right and you would like to duplicate approximately the same fit, put it on and measure it as well at all of the points I mentioned above, placing a pin at the points where you held the tape measure. Then take the skirt off and measure the distance down from the waist of each of these circumferences. Transfer the resulting grid to your pattern to see if it matches what truly fits (and alter either at the side seam or in the darts, as seems appropriate) and you'll have a pattern that is likely to be your favorite pattern for a long time to come!

Joel Polowin (473): Love the giant squid! The biggest animal I've made so far was a three-foot-long octopus (scaled down from a four-foot pattern because I didn't want to do quite that much sewing).

abi (472): I just cut out the pattern pieces for another cat (smaller than that one, but the same basic pattern).

LLA (480): There's a book, Patterns from Finished Clothes, on recreating patterns from clothes you love, but I think you have to take the garment apart to copy it. I've never tried it, but I have a skirt that I want to copy when it gets too old to wear.

Steampunk Enthusiasts Alert – Zeppelin Seen Over Long Beach, CA

There is a zeppelin . . . well, a rigid airship, at any rate . . . flying out of Long Beach, CA, this weekend.

http://airshipventures.blogspot.com/2009/05/good-morning-long-beach.html

Its home base is San Francisco. We live along the approach path for blimps, lightships and port helicopter traffic, so she has flown over us several times in the last three days.

Compared to the blimps, she is fast! Rides are a bit pricey, over $300, but they've sold out for the weekend and will be back for Fourth of July.

Only thing that could be cooler would be if she were bicycle-powered.

Jack Siolo @454, in re otherkin: I have baffled non-fannish transsexual friends of mine by pointing out that we* actually have it easy, compared to an otherkin friend of mine. My 'internal compass of identity' points firmly at 'male,' which is deucedly inconvenient in modern society, but at least I have some path to normalization and can someday hope society at large will just accept me as such. My friend's internal compass, however, points firmly at 'dragon,' and zie's just screwed when it comes to being able to ever come 'out' in the real world and be taken seriously by, say, employers. Well, most employers.

In re making things: I have currently in serious progress***:
-- a purple lapghan knitted sampler (I knit in a texture/pattern-stitch for a few inches or until I get sick of it, then do several rows of garter and do another one; plus a couple of patterns worked as borders up the sides to keep it consistent)
-- A Quilt Of Fearsome Purpleness for my littlest sister (who is currently in high school); its purpleness is fearful not just because of its vehemence of hue but because two of the fabrics involved are very busy Hello Kitty prints. Fear it. An example block, just to build your fear: There are 20 blocks like that, plus a white lattice to calm it a little, dark purple around the edges, and a backing fabric that's zebra print ... only in dark purple and lavender. Really.
-- An array of custom-sized cardboard boxes (the blanks mostly cut from discarded diaper cartons) to organize, stack, and contain bags of frozen breastmilk in moderately-long-term storage in the chest freezer in our basement.

* I'm FTM**, not that that's usually relevant to anything I post here.
** FTM twice, actually, as I've learned that on mommyboards, 'FTM' stands for 'First-Time Mom.' I'm usually much more likely to see it used to mean 'Female-to-Male (transsexual).'
*** as opposed to 'started and tossed in a box somewhere to be worked on again sometime.'

Mary Eileen @ 481:

I love your cat! If I didn't have one that mews (and would probably want to fight with your cat), I'd have to ask for the pattern to try to make one that cute for... myself!

As for making patterns out of favorite clothes, Threads magazine ran an article (oh, about 15 years ago -- I subscribed for the first ten years, then the sheer weight on my bookshelves forced me to be an "only if you intend to make something in this copy" purchaser) on duplicating your favorite pants pattern (yes, something as complicated as pants!) without cutting them apart. I think they duplicated the article in one of their books still in print, but I'd have to do a lot of remembering to figure out which one (but you might be able to e-mail?)

If you want to do something with even more seamlines or much more complexity, you probably do need to cut the garment apart.

The essence of the technique is this: You get a big, long roll of tracing paper from the arts supply store. You thread baste the grain (long and cross) on all of the major pattern pieces, then you carefully pin the garment to the tracing paper. Next, you trace the garment at each of the seamlines for that particular pattern piece, cut the tracing paper from the roll, turn the sandwich over so the garment is on the bottom, then mark the grainlines and any pleats or darts on the tracing paper.

When you've done these steps, you carefully cut out your tracing, slicing into the tracing paper at the darts or pleats, spreading the tracing paper as far as necessary to equal the dart or pleat on your favorite garment, then taping those sections to another piece of tissue paper.

The final step is to take another long sheet of tracing paper, lay it over the first tracing, then trace again, incorporating the darts/pleats, grainlines and adding a 5/8" seam allowance all the way around. Place a single notch marking at the front seamline, a double notch marking at the back seamline (in the curves if making pants), and a marking for where the end of the zipper/placket should go (as well as any other details like pockets).

Voila! An approximation of your favorite garment (that you can improve on future iterations, if necessary) without any painful loss of something you love that still has life in it.

Tom Barclay @ 482... Oh my. I love this. Pricey, but it'd be worth every penny.

LLA (484): The skirt I want to reproduce is simple enough that I could probably draft an adequate pattern just by taking careful measurements. More complicated than that will probably not happen. :)
The cat is this pattern.

Elliott Mason (483): 'started and tossed in a box somewhere to be worked on again sometime.'
In quilting circles, those are known as 'UFOs' (UnFinished Objects).

Myself (481): On second thought, the biggest stuffed animal I ever made is probably the bearskin rug I just finished.

Abi, #472, I'm making a new cat blankie for the bed. The current one was a scrap afghan that I had to get out one winter night years ago to be warm enough and when I put it back in the closet, the cats got it off the shelf by themselves. I put it on the bottom of the bed for them, and since they're on it at night, started washing it every week. It turns out that three rows are not acrylic and I felted them enough in hot water that the rows next to them are coming apart. So I'm making a new cat blankie with new yarn all in acrylic in colors that match my bedroom.

Mary Aileen @ 486: Calling mine 'unfinished' seems to dignify them with too much planning -- and too much intention to finish someday. :-> The problem with many of them lies in a sort of failure of ambition, in that I get all excited about some medium or project, then do a few successful projects, and launch myself headlong into a new one with far too little pre-planning, improvising my way out of multiple snags, until I hit one I don't know how to get around, or get sick of it, or find that I've backed myself into a technique corner that's too tedious or too difficult/intimidating to do "right now." And so it gets abandoned.

Then I end up avoiding the box it's in for years through embarrassment, and a feeling I have to describe as being too sheepish to face the project I have 'disappointed' by not fully realizing its utter imagined initial coolness. Sometimes, after coming across it repeatedly, I do either finish it or take it apart for its constitutent pieces, to re-use.

The Quilt of Fearful Purpleness, for example, was started at least three years ago. It went from 'I just bought fabric' to 'Ooh, blocks!' fairly quickly, and then paused while I figured out how I wanted to fit it together with rails; then it hung at THAT phase for over a year while I avoided it, before buying the fabric needed to (a) back it and (b) put rails on the sides to achieve a rational blanket-size for the bed it's intended to cover. Just today, I hauled it out from under the couch again to finish sewing on (b) and think through the problems encountered in that phase; now it's a finished quilt-top and a finished, pieced quilt-back, but I need to buy an appropriate (as opposed to the currently-owned inapropriate) amount of thin polarfleece to use with the batting to make it as warm as intended. Probably there are three more 'phases' of activity on it before it'll be done: fitting together the sandwich, whatever quilting/tufting I'm going to do, and finishing the edges. We'll see how long it takes me to do those phases. :->

Mary Aileen @ 486:

I'm a non-standard enough figure that I've had better luck altering patterns than in finding "that perfect ready-to-wear garment" myself, so I've never used the full technique. (I forgot to mention that a garment with pleats should be tried on before the whole process starts and the pleats should be pinned down as though they were darts!). I do, however, regularly steal "details" from ready-to-wear in a similar fashion, by measuring and marking the details from given reference points (waist, back of neck, etc.), then trace off a pattern I've made fit me, slashing and re-drafting to accommodate the details I want to steal (doesn't everyone carry a measuring tape in their purse?).

By the way, when you try your first duplication of the favorite skirt, you might want to duplicate the fabric as closely as possible first. I've found that sometimes the thing I fall in love with is the combination of the fit and the fabric. Plus, some fabrics just "grow" while you're making them (most linens and all crepes fall under this category since even "flat" fabric is really 3-D).

Elliott Mason @ 488:

It sounds like we share the same approach to projects -- the fun is in the planning and execution (sometimes), but not necessarily in the product.

I've started legions of things that, for one reason or another, will never be finished. I used to feel shame in the waste of time, then I realized that time spent playing with ideas is never wasted.

So I got rid of the things I was never going to finish (either in the trash or to a charity if the promise was still there but the promise would never fit my needs), changed my vision of the things that had gone awry but still had possibilities, and see the pile of things not yet done as the promise of more fun in the future!

Hey! One of my comments in an old discussion over at BoingBoing got bounced to the front! They left out the II, but it's me--too bad I never knew about it.

On sewing, does anyone know where I can have one of these made? I bought some scrap neoprene but it's the wrong size and shape for my Macbook Pro and the sewing person that I'd normally take a job like this to doesn't do neoprene. If I were wealthy I could consider a leather version, I suppose, but the only other version I've seen was a quilt-type material which looked pretty awful to me...

LLA (489): The fabric* is part of what makes it a favorite skirt, so yes, I'll try to reproduce that as exactly as possible. I bought it mail order (pre-Web**). A year or so later, I tried to buy another one in a different color. The catalog description was identical, but the fabric turned out to be completely different. I stopped buying from that company.

*the weight/drape more than the color, although it's a very nice color
**I've had the skirt a very long time.

OK, it's not necessarily crazy to have an interior identity that doesn't match your body. I think transsexuals are not crazy (duh).

It's not crazy to believe in reincarnation, either (lots of people do, including people who are nominally Christian, even though it's totally incompatible with any Christian theology I've ever heard of).

It is crazy to believe you're the reincarnation of Cleopatra—I believe a maximum of one person could possibly be such a reincarnation (since, sorry, I don't believe in time travel), and considering how unlikely it is for any given person to be the one, it's crazy to think you are.

Here's the question: am I a bad person because I think someone who thinks s/he is the reincarnation of a dragon is closer to the Cleopatra end than to the transsexual end? In fact, I think being "otherkin" is a bit crazier than being "the reincarnation of Cleopatra," since there really was a Cleopatra (actually there were several of them, but the one they generally mean was Cleopatra VII), but there's no evidence that there were dragons or whatever.

So make it a religious belief, and they're no crazier than [names of specific religions omitted to avoid giving offense].

Does that make me one of the evil oppressors of the poor Otherkin? Am I an oppressor of the Vampire people because I don't believe in vampires? OTOH, I've met people who don't believe in Witches, and they just need to be educated.

If someone told me they were descended from Tsarevich Nicholas, I wouldn't believe them. Does that make me disrespectful of Russian people, or even of the Russian royal family?

Transsexuals DO have a disorder. It's called gender dysphoria, and the treatment (when applicable and they so choose) is to fix the body so it matches the gender identity. People who believe they are the reincarnation of Cleopatra have a disorder too: they're delusional, and the treatment is psychological therapy.

I think the Otherkin need therapy, not "draconoplasty" or whatever. Does that make me a bad person?