shall doubtless come again with rejoicing

...after they ate Sir Robin's minstrel?

First past the first post!

Charlie @2:

With proportional comment representation, you could have contributed several words to Serge @1.

What would they have been?

"Where is my vote?"

I cried a lot at a lot of those links, but none more than the last one. There is hope for us, when compassion can endure even in the midst of such anger.

Sxiht psot!

Disproportionate post?

ate pots

had indigestion

abi, great links! But one made me do a little more googling. Peter Fechter was shot three days after Rudi Arnstadt was killed by West German guards. Things are rarely as simple as one side presents them.

That Wikipedia article is worth reading just for the story about what happened to Hans Plüschke, the man who killed Arnstadt.

will @10:
Things are rarely as simple as one side presents them.

In other news, the sun rises in the east.

I bought a stove today! (For $50!) Now "all" I have to do is finish cleaning the kitchen, and I'll have a working kitchen when the gas is turned on on Monday!

Which is a roundabout way of saying that I could now technically cook a pot pie, as Serge's post free-associated in my mind; all I'd have to do is carry the stove up the stairs from my van. I could probably get the neighbor to help.

Mm. Pot pie.

Will @10: While it doesn't mention Arnstadt specifically, the video does say that the East German guards didn't move to help Fechter because they were afraid of being shot.

abi @ 11... Didn't John Wayne's Green Berets show the sun to also set in the east? Near Vietnam anyway. Ambrose Bierce once said that war is God's way to teach Americans about geography, but it looks like the Duke wasn't listening to the teacher.

Suzanne @13, true. I didn't mean to imply the video was unfair. I was just surprised to learn about Arnstadt. Now I'm curious about the "deaths of another four East German border troops in quite a short time."

And Wikipedia is my friend once again: Deaths of GDR border guards.

Does "turn(ed) again" actually mean "turn(ed) against" in the main post?

Will @15: Ah, I see. Thank you for clarifying.

126 = 2 * 3 squared * 7; two less than a power of 2; one less than a Mersenne prime, so says my partner Martin.

And hello to all from 4th Street Fantasy.

Yay hypertext art! I wish there were more of that around.

126 is also the ASCII code for a tilde (~), the last printable character in the "original ASCII" range.

126 is slightly more personal to me: it was my security badge number for entrance to my jobsite at the Naval Communications Station in Japan back in 72-74. It was my personal "chop" on all messages for which I had to confirm my activity (proofreading, tapecutting, receipt, transmission).

The circular loop at the bottom of the 2 led in an unbroken line to the downstroke of the 6; it looked like a fancy cursive H.

Hmm.
I don't remember the details that an eyewitness told me... some idiot in the US military stationed in Germany back in the late 1960s/early 1970s decided to take a walk one day--across the demilitarized zone, all the way into East Germany, and back. He didn't blow up, he didn't get shot, and the people on the western side of the border wondered from that if there really were landmines there--because, again, the fellow walked there and back, and didn't get blown up.

On the lighter side: Do not use Twitter.

These noted imperfections of old light,
enough to drive a god of patience mad,
tell us that death is not the lord of night.

On days like this the chance of change is slight
we take the hoped-for good with the hard bad;
these noted imperfections of old light

provide no proper guide for damaged sight,
nor helpful hand; though willing lass and lad
tell us that death is not the lord of night

since other forces keep their moments bright
and not all changes lead us to be sad.
These noted imperfections of old light

are simple facts, not signs of hurt and blight.
The signs that fate will catch up to foul cad
tell us that death is not the lord of night.

Our choices do not always turn out right
but we are still entitled to be glad.
These noted imperfections of old light
tell us that death is not the lord of night

Earl @17:
Does "turn(ed) again" actually mean "turn(ed) against" in the main post?

It doesn't, it means that he turned it around, reversed it.

The New International Version renders it When the LORD brought back the captives to Zion, with an alternative text of When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion.

abi @ 11 ...
In other news, the sun rises in the east.

That explains so many things ...

abi #3: Are we talking list proportional comment representation or single transferable posting? And will you be using either the d'Hondt, the Sainte-Laguë, or the Hare quota?

Fragano @28:
I think in this instance I would incline toward a list system, mostly because I am interested to see what lists would develop.

National loyalties would compel me to d'Hondt at this point, though it can be a bit of a dog's breakfast to administer. (Another argument against STV is that one ends up with the Hare quota, looking like a complete Burke. But I suppose it's hard Knox all around.)

Glomming on to the open thread with a question.

I'm planning a program at the library, making LED Throwies, and I need about 25-50 leds and batteries. Radio Shack is expensive, and judging by the stock I saw today, it might be hard to come up with enough.

Before I chance ordering them over the internet, is there a good store in New York City that sells that sort of thing? Alternately, I'll take recommendations of places on the internet, but I'd prefer not to deal with shipping and time is getting tight.

abi @ 29... the Hare quota

I knew I should have toined left at Albuquoique.

Fragano Ledgister #25: Nice!

Jim McDonald, would you look at my most recent blog entry and tell me whether or not I'm out to lunch?

Jim Macdonald, would you look at my most recent blog entry and tell me whether or not I'm out to lunch?

abi #29: You're Belgian? This is what happens to American-Scots living in the Netherlands.

I incline towards STV because it provides proportionality while giving voters the ability to pick individual candidates. The Hare quota won't lead to close shaves, at least I d'Hondt think so.

David Harmon #32: Thank you.

No, John, you aren't out to lunch. In EMS we don't go for the most likely thing first, we go for the worst thing first -- the thing that'll kill the patient in the next five minutes. After we've either ruled it out or fixed it, we go on to the next one.

There was a similar case four years ago, almost to the day, in New Jersey. In that one the missing kids weren't found for two days, until they were located in the trunk of a car parked in the driveway next door.

In wilderness Search and Rescue, we start with the last known location, then search in a pattern out from there, covering the whole area, and physically looking in every place large enough to hold the person we're looking for.

Yes, there's a need to knock on doors, to find where everyone was standing at the time and see who saw what. But there's also a need to bring in algorithms from other specialties.

I expect a big part of it is everyone figuring "That's so obvious it must have already been checked." That's right up there with "Someone else must have called 9-1-1."

Everyone: Keep this in mind when you're looking. Maybe form three teams? One to knock on doors. One to sweep the area. One to check lift-threatening locations first before the sweep gets there, and before the door-knockers learn that was the last place someone was seen.

There have been some very sad cases.

Thanks, Jim. I doubt myself when I get that "up on the soapbox" urge.

The city of Bozeman, MT has rescinded a long-standing requirement that applicants for city positions provide their usernames and passwords on all social-networking sites.

What really boggles me about this is that they were apparently able to get away with this requirement for several years before anybody made enough noise for it to hit the media.

Hilary @30 - if you don't find a local source, Mouser Electronics is your best internet source. [Link is to the LED category page] My husband regularly orders from them for small to medium quantities, and if they receive an order before 8pm they will ship the next day.

Posting my own request for assistance: Does anybody know of a good document preservation/restoration service? Preferably in the Seattle or Portland area, but I'll take recommendations for good folks in other locations, too.

My mother has been going through old family photos and documents recently, and has several documents (approximately 100 years old, I believe all on parchment paper) that have been kept rolled up in a cylinder. They are all tightly curled, and one is cracked and torn in the middle. As she keeps pulling them out to show people, the rolling and unrolling is causing further damage. The others are in better shape, but since they all mean a lot to her I'd like to see about getting these properly preserved and mounted.

James D. Macdonald @#37: And a completely different nasty incident from Australia: A teenage hiker was lost in the wilderness -- he called the "equivalent of 911" for rescue, but was told they couldn't do anything without a street address. (Did I mention wilderness?) He called 7 times before he died of thirst....

Happy Solstice to all- which according to Spaceweather is about an hour away.

Kathryn from Sunnyvale @ 43... Thanks for the reminder. Speaking of dates, does anybody remember what July 20 is about? If you don't, go to Turner Classic Movies's site and notice what's on their schedule that day.

Serge@44: Nice touch.
http://twitter.com/ApolloPlus40 tweets the journey as it happened, although I don't think I'll be staying up to follow it on the day, or night, as it is.

Fragano @36:
The Dutch use d'Hondt, though the Belgians invented it.

The Belgians have strong cultural pressures to invent really good voting systems to deal with a deeply divided electorate. They're the go-to guys on the subject, the way the Dutch are for water engineering.

(Interesting trivia via Wikipedia: Sainte-Laguë was also the guy whose back of the envelope calculation on bumblebees became the stuff of meme.)

Saw an interesting looking wicker crate in the trash today. It was heavy. It turned out to contain enough tools to put a guy in a third-world sprawl city into the roadside motorcycle repair business.

I conclude that at least some of my neighbors are totally fucking stupid.

I guess I'll see if a friend or co-worker has an aspiring mechanic in the family.

oliviacw @40 Thanks. That does look like a good site. I only dabble in electronics and the sites I was looking at were confusing and seemed to only sell in larger quantities than I needed. If I haven't found a good local source, I shall place an order at work tomorrow.

abi #46: True, the Belgians do have a lot of pressure to have a good voting system. Doesn't seem to have helped much, though.

The Irish use the Droop quota for STV, even though it was invented by an Englishman, which says something.

Me, I was taught all this stuff by a Dutchman.

I prefer the less-redundant traditional Jewish reading of:

then said they among the heathen,
The LORD hath done great things for them.

The LORD hath done great things for us;
whereof we are glad.

as

"then it was said among the other nations,
'is God glorified in working with these [downtrodden, miserable Jews? really?]'

God is glorified in working with us,
and therefore we are happy.

Which is closer, I think, to the Hebrew.

Also, I should have noted that the psalm is written in an ambiguous tense that could also be future, not just past. So we tend to read it as a promise of the future final redemption, esp. since it was written allegedly by David c. 1000 BCE, over 400 years before the FIRST exile in 586 BCE, let alone the second in 70 CE.

#42 David

That's hitting the press now, although the incident happened in 2006, because the inquest is recent.

I was astounded by one headline: Nothing could be done for David: survival medicine expert

But, on reading the story, I discovered that wasn't what the expert had said. He said:

"I doubt that oral water given to him would have been sufficient," Dr Luckin said.

But in cases of severe dehydration, I don't give oral water. It's IV all the way.

Yes, the 000 (Australian equivalent of 911) operators did screw up big time. But so did the people who designed the computer system they were working with:

The court heard the computer system used by the ambulance service had to be overridden if a caller did not supply an address.

Changes to the protocols regarding calls from remote locations still did not provide call operators with a set of questions to ask the caller.

The system did not alert operators if a call had been made before by the same person, unless they had given a street address.

I can see how that would have happened: You can't reach the "Name" screen until you've filled in the "Address" screen. And I can even see why it would have been designed that way: to get help rolling first, while you're getting the rest of the information. But with no "Skip" button on the screen, and no one even thinking about "What happens if it's from the middle of a forest?" everyone was caught up in a set of circumstances where they had to think way outside of their day-to-day routine and make decisions based on experience that they probably flat didn't have.

There was, apparently, lots of blame to go around: School denies knowledge of fatal hike

Stefan Jones @ 47

I agree. People are stupid in what they'll throw away. We're several bookcases, filing cabinets, tables, chairs etc. richer for it (some actually rescued from skips; others were going free).

Hope you find someone who can make good use of the tools.

Has anyone ever tried the Etsy feature where you solicit bids on having something made to order? This might be the best way for me to get that laptop bag I want in something that's not felt or quilt, but I don't know how it works in practice...

Euntes Venientes Euntes

For people who are Googling on the Australian case above, the lad's name was David Iredale. I've also learned that he was found 200 meters off the trail. Which isn't that far, but in a wilderness situation can be just as bad as 200 miles.

Always carry a whistle in your pocket. Really.

The shows went well yesterday. I didn't mess anything up, and everyone danced very well indeed. The boy who played Puck definitely has a career in front of him if he wishes to take it, as do some of the young women.

I also landed smoke machine duty. Smoke machines are nasty things, but, when used judiciously, produce a good effect. This one performed its function, but also was a bit leaky. It was like having to deal with an incontinent dragon.

Sayeth Lee in the previous open thread: "GIF! GIF!"

I have jpeg of me from after the show. During was rather hard, as backstage isn't exactly the best place for photos.

Stefan, #47: I had my partner, who is mechanically inclined, take a look at your tool picture, and he concurs with your thinking. There was a chance that the tools had been abandoned because they were cheap crap, but the only thing he says is below-quality there is the vice grips. The wrenches, pliers, and screwdrivers are all of serviceable quality.

dcb, #53: It's not necessarily stupidity. We're in the process of serious decluttering, and have been freecycling a lot of stuff that's perfectly serviceable -- but not for us, for various reasons. And I have 3 small bookcases that I intend to replace eventually because the shelves are too small to hold anything but MMPBs; they're wood, and very nice, and I'll probably try to sell them on Craigslist first, but if they don't sell, they'll go to Freecycle too. And someone will probably say, "Why would anyone sane get rid of THOSE?"

And now that I'm actually awake:

Fragano Ledgister @ 25:

Very nicely done.

Hilary Hertzoff @ 30:

As oliviacw says at 40, Mouser is pretty good for mail order. My suggestion would be to ask some students studying electrical engineering at a local university. Some of them should know of good, local electronics stores, which, unfortunately, seem to be a dying breed.

Stefan Jones @ 47:

One of the things I absolutely hate about where I live is that I occasionally see perfectly good furniture tossed in the dumpster. Some people set some chairs next to the dumpster, which means that I now have chairs for my kitchen table. But finding something otherwise nice that's had a chance to soak up the lovely dumpster juices is maddening.

Stefan Jones @ #47, tomorrow is bulky pickup day here, and we put some old tired tubular aluminum deck chairs (vinyl straps broken but frames functional) by the side of the street yesterday afternoon. We're replacing them with high-backed solid plastic chairs which currently cost less than finding someone to restrap the existing chairs would.

I went out to get the papers this morning and all four of them were gone.

KeithS @59 That would be a lovely idea if I actually lived in NYC. I would have made a special trip in from Westchester County if someone had come up with a good source. I suspect I'll just end up going with Mouser.

Stefan Jones #47: It turned out to contain enough tools to put a guy in a third-world sprawl city into the roadside motorcycle repair business.

Perhaps the wicker basket was a casualty of a domestic dispute?

Lee@58: is a vice grip something you buy at Good Vibrations? If so, I can understand tossing a cheap one; the results of a tool failure could be ... unfortunate.

Hilary Hertzoff @ 61:

Now that I think about it a little more, you might also want to look at what American Science & Surplus has to offer. Again, mail order.

Q:Anyone able to verify undisclosed download limits for books bought for the Kindle?

#62, Domestic Dispute Theory: Could be!

Apartment complexes should be pushing Freecycle and Craig's List. Every time a tenant renews a lease, they get a "what do do with your junk" flyer.

It would cost them a few bucks in photocopying fees. They'd more than make up for that in reduced trash fees and work for the staff.

When my dad did throwies, he went with the places the Make article said, and had no problems. We do have quite a lot of LEDs still around, though-- it's handy for get-togethers when people get bored.
I have a huge soft spot for American Science and Surplus for no good reason, just that they exist. If you have a big university around, you might also see if they have an electrical engineering shop of their own. UIowa does, and it's not quite the cheapest batteries in town (that would be Biochem Stores across the river).

Lee @ 58
I don't object to e.g. Freecycle - it's a great idea, and we all have things which we no longer need, for whatever reason. It's the people who skip (dumpster) things without seeming to consider that they're whole and servicable and could be used by someone that irritates me.

James MacDonald@56

I've also learned that he was found 200 meters off the trail. Which isn't that far, but in a wilderness situation can be just as bad as 200 miles

It seems he was in the Blue Mountains, most of which is pretty open forest, so 200m really isn't very far.

I can testify that given the good visibility in open sclerophyll forest it is tempting to try to head in a straight line rather than along the paths. This can sometimes be a really bad idea, since the cliffs and gullies in places like the Blue Mountains are very steep and often have impenetrable spiky bushes in key locations.

The Blue Mountains are day-trip distance from Sydney, and are not very high at all -- the highest point is at about 3000ft and the ridge-to-valley height goes up to about 2000ft. It still took 15 or so years of repeated attempts for the early settlers to find a way through the mountains [they didn't try asking the locals], and parts of them are sufficiently inaccessible that the 'living fossil' Wollemia nobilis [a grove of quite large trees], escaped notice until 1994.

KeithS, #57: *wolf-whistle* Very piratical! That outfit would blend in perfectly well at a con.

CHip, #63: Obviously, a vice grip is something you use to keep your vices at arm's length.
*grumble* can't believe I missed that on preview *grumble*

Lee @ #70, wouldn't a vice grip be something you carry your vices in?

KeithS @64 and Diatryma @67 American Science and Surplus it is. They've got leds by the dozen in assorted colors which will be perfect.

The nearest universities are a few towns over, so electrical students are few and far between.

We're in a temporary location, so I don't want to have too many leftovers (though they'll be handy for future programs).

But I like to do this sort of program, so the sites will come in handy in the future.

Lee @ 70:

I didn't see anything wrong with that, but then I spell tyre-the-round-thing-what-goes-on-wheels with a 'y' and storey-the-level-of-the-building with an 'e', too. But color without a 'u'. I think I need help.

And, er, thank you for the compliment. I don't think I'd wear near as much makeup for a con, though.

KeithS #59: Thank you.

Wow. So far the ABC Merlin series is really horrible. Unidentified kid just walks right into the castle, asking the guard where the Court Physician is. They point and let him walk right on by.

Poor Anthony Head. He's a fine and loathsome Uther Pendragon, but gods this is bad.

Xopher, I think that's how you can tell it's fantasy.

It's all just so heavyhanded. Arthur is a total thug, of course. Morgana tells Uther he shouldn't outlaw magic.

And, of course, it's nothing like the Arthurian canon. Merlin is younger than Arthur in this version.

Oh, and right now the two medieval guards are shooting craps with modern plastic dice.

Me 75: So far the NBC Merlin series is really horrible.

FTFM

AAARRRGGH. He called the King "your Highness" and Arthur "Sire"!!!!!!

I watched ABC for a while instead. Miniseries called Impact. Big meteor hits the Moon, then things get really bad for people on Earth.

This movie isn't just stupid, it's painfully stupid. No one with rudimentary knowledge of astronomy or physics was allowed to get anywhere near the screenplay.

The trailer will tell you all you need to know. Starting out, it looks like this will be a routine disaster movie. Then it gets weird. Brain cells die by the millions.

Very few movies or TV shows get the science perfect. Quite a number try, and fall short.

For this film, nobody even bothered.

"Tournament" duels with live steel. Death-blows never connect, but the loser of each fight gets knocked out. Every time. No blood.

Bill Higgins #80:

Here is a PublishAmerica author claiming that Impact infringes on their book.

BWAH-HAH-Hah-hah! Pitiful live TV viewers! I have hours and hours of DVRd stuff to work through. (Alas, not enough to last until Mad Men starts up again.)

But seriously, thanks for the heads-up on Merlin. The setup, as described in the TV listings, sounded way dumb but I was going to check out the first episode out curiosity.

Discussion of moderation in the OT at Orcinus.

Xopher, Emma watched all of the first season of Merlin, then showed me the "best of" starting with, I think, the fifth. The best ones have a goofy charm. Whether the show's been made even worse for ABC, I dunno.

Xopher— I particularly liked how Merlin's mother, from the small town, was writing a letter to the king's physician. As though writing were something anyone could do, of course...

Just finished a run of Ruddigore. We're lucky enough to have a rich patron who makes it possible for us to have a full orchestra. Gilbert & Sullivan is unfairly maligned, in my opinion, by too many years of inept tinkly piano backing.

Incidentally, this is the most fun I've had in a production in years. You might be able to guess why.

B. Durbin @ 86:

G&S are not unfairly maligned by me. My only complaint is that I haven't heard enough of it.

Those costumes look wonderful.

I caught part of an episode of Merlin when I was visiting England last fall. My expectations were low - I was assuming it would be Arthur by way of Xena - and yet I was still annoyed. First by just plain sloppiness (I'm with you Xopher - inappropriate Your Highnesses and Sires are the verbal equivalent of zippers on knitted chain mail) and then I found myself griping about the scrawny whiny emo-Arthur, much like my bitching about the latest Robin Hood. I had to turn the TV off before I got to the point where I might shake my cane and yell at those kids to get off my lawn.

I am old.

I have been enjoying True Blood though. And finally going back and watching all those episodes of ST:TOS - and not just the same 5 episodes that Sci Fi shows on ST marathons - has been enlightening.

nerdycellist @ #88, I've read all the books in the other series that Charlaine Harris has written (Aurora Teagarden, Harper Connelly, and Lily Bard) but haven't read any Sookie at all. I guess I should start if I want to be at all conversant with True Blood fans, since we don't pay for HBO. Not because we sneer at it, but because for years it had no movies we ever wanted to watch.

Bill (&c) @80, Ah Impact in the wild! Phil Plait & commenters at Bad Astronomy blog ripped many slimy gobbets of thick encrustations of stupid/wrong & ‘Huh? What!?’ off it here, just from trailers. Hope money not wasted bringing it out here.

Merlin has been on commercial free-to-air in Australia a month or more. Trailers looked Quite Silly. On actual viewing Very Silly Indeed. Maybe OK if brain turned off, or assuming AU Arthurian. Worrying that for some might replace actual Matter of Britain, & ‘true’ legends/folktales [cue discussion]. I've plenty other nice things to spend time with; less nice I need to. *zooms elseweb for work, guiltily*

Dear Designer:

I'm sure you think that your shiny new neat thing is the best thing since sliced bread, but quite frankly I'd rather have my sliced bread than this artistic concoction you've inflicted on me, and I can't digest.

Could you stop being shiny and start being useful again?

Thanks.

Impact: Never let the facts interfere with a good story Special Effect.

Bill Higgins @80: See here for an interview with the leader actor where he explains the "science" of the story:

"A brown dwarf is the remnant of a dead star," Elliott said. "When a star dies, it packs itself into very, very compressed matter, to steal a line from the film. What happens is this big hunk of dead star hits the moon, and it has the reverse polarity. So it knocks the moon off its axis and changes its polarity. So now it's on a more narrow axis, and it and the Earth are pulling each other closer and closer. We start getting anomalies with gravity lapsing when the moon passes closes to the Earth on its elongated orbit. Gravity ceases to be and people start floating, cars float, the tide change, like going from a 6-foot tide to a 45-foot tide. So there are all kinds of disasters happening."

Err. Yeah. Or something like that.

B. Durbin @86: Ruddigore = Best. G&S. Ever. Congratulations! [Walks away whistling "O happy the lily when kissed by the bee...."]

Jules (#93) "Err", indeed.
Fascinating how it approaches close to what we suspect may be reality-based, then — whoosh — veers off, rather in an epicyclic manner.

Mental scars from the recent Robin Hood series caused extreme wariness upon spotting Merlin trailers. Someone said "life is too short to stuff a mushroom"; this mushroom of a series is fairly stuffed, and I won't fill what life's left with it. This here Fluorosphere may be mushy OTOH, but comes stuffed to the gills with a sweet 'n' savoury goodness not altogether false. Though such shows can be of interest looking back later, to see what assumptions, blinkers, fashions of our time we put onto others. Like that 'Christmas in the Year 2000' print from 1900 linked round Yule last year.

I had a wonderful time watching the Skype Laughter Chain video.

The last woman in the original video, Nassima, was discovered during the live taping of a French talk show, when she had the entire panel weeping with mirth. She was in the front row and they overheard her. She has since brought much happiness to YouTube users everywhere.

KeithS @ 57... You know, that photo SHOULD be posted in "Making Light and Faces". Really, it should. I insist.

Linkmeister @#89 -

We got HBO for the Rome series and were about to cancel it when they announce True Blood. Now that they've started in on George RR Martin's epic, I may have to continue subscribing.

I love both the True Blood TV series and book series, but I've started seeing the TV show as visual fanfic. It's diverged somewhat from the book by adding and subtracting characters. Also, the books are first-person stories told from Sookie's POV. She's a much more fun and sympathetic character in the books.

The show is very dark - which I suppose the books are, too. But then, my imagination somehow elided over creepier stuff and I find myself occasionally somewhat squicked out by the show. Still awesome, but if you're going to Netflix the first season, don't watch while eating!

Mark @ #94: It's even more fun when one of the guys has to leave and the directors (who don't want to change the set design) ask if you'd be willing to play a ghost.

Oh. YES.

(Get to sing one of the best songs in G & S ever, AND get a portrait that will be Halloween décor for years to come? Britches, here I come!)

Serge @ 97:

If you do want to use that photo, please at least use this version, which has the red-eye removed. I look a little less evil that way.

I'm sure I could dig up a reasonably recent photo where I'd be recognizable on the street instead of on the stage if you want.

KeithS @ 100... Nothing wrong with looking EEEEEEEEEVILLLLLLLLLLL. That less EEEEEEEEEVILLLLLLLLLLL photo should be up in the gallery tonight. Under letter 'K'.

KeithS @ 100... You're now part of the Making Light criminal lineup, which begins here.

Serge @102: How lovely to be able to put faces to names!

I also realize that the Fluorospherians who pop up every now and then in my dreams look nothing like their real-life counterparts. Maybe the former are the Other Fluorospherians (although I didn't spot any button eyes.)

Pendrift @ 103... Oh, that's because the button eyes are usually photoshopped away by Mary Dell.

Serge @ 101 and 102:

I try to look not evil; it gives me a much easier time of actually being evil. Would it be possible to redo the preview thumbnail, though? It cuts me off at the chin. Although, given the quote at the bottom, it could be interpreted as a rather drastic red-eye removal method.

(Note to Livejournal: putting the previous/next links at the top of the page when people have to scroll down to see everything is really, really stupid.)

KeithS @ 105... I'll chop you off a bit at the legs, but I can do that only on my home computer, which is... not surprisingly... back home. I'll do the depedestration tonight.

Is it OK if I toot my own horn here?*
On Saturday, my parish choir had our annual fundraiser. This year's theme was Rogers & Hammerstein (ugh. hate). Here's a low-quality video of me singing "No Other Love Have I". I'm pretty proud of how it turned out, especially since I was worried I might have to lower the key one or two steps down just two nights before.

A word of warning - while the audio's not bad, the video itself is tragically boring; you can't see any of my expressions. Also, skip to the 1:20 point or so, unless you're interested in hearing ST:TNGs Lt. Cmdr Shelby introducing me.

* I was going to say "pimp myself", but that didn't sound right.

Parsing the sidebar multiblog ad as a run-on sentence:

John Keats, Sleep In Which In A Manner of Speaking I Just Want To Bleed Most Popular Amazon Purchases Q2 2009

nerdycellist @ 107:

This seems to be performance season. That sounded great.

Erik:
Not one of his more popular poems.

Calling for help for a friend. The owner of Pegasus Publishing is in the process of moving from Sherman to Trenton, TX. He has also just found out that he has a slightly-torn rotator cuff, which is going to severely limit his ability to do heavy lifting just when he needs to pack up his trailer. Anyone in the Dallas area who

1) would like to earn some money doing hard physical labor, or
2) knows anyone else who would be interested, or
3) knows where he can hire some day-labor people who speak at least broken English (he has no Spanish)

please contact him: info AT pegasuspublishing DOT com.

Good God, that Impact trailer hurt my brain. I usually like campy skiffy flicks, but there's a limit. (I've really gotten tired of it being night everywhere in the world at once.)

Looks like some pretty pictures, though.

In other news: hot water! I still can't move into the carriage house, because my dad helped me tear the wall out of the bathtub to fix the faucet, but ... getting closer!

Today I heard Garrison Keeler's Writer's Almanac.

It was a revelation: (for those who don't know it's a mon-friday feature. A featured writer, some other writers; with less detail, and a poem).

First, I usually dislike the poems. Even when he chooses one I like for content, his delivery irritates me. Today he managed to avoid both of those by, of all things, having a poem by an author I don't like (John Updike, on baseball).

The featured author was... Dan Brown. The explanation of how he started writing was illuminating: He was on vacation, devoured a Sheldon novel and decided he could do that too.

Next was Octavia Butler! With a better thumbnail of her career/self. Last was Erik Maria Remarque (who's birthday it would have been. If I'd not been lost in Squee about Octavia I'd be able to remember if today is her birthday too. If it is.. YAY! Happy Birthday. If it isn't, then save it up until it rolls around again on the guitar).

Strange moments in everyday life. Went out to supper with my dad, sisters, step-mother (they are divorced now, but family is strange), and some other people. One of the other people knocked my new OBEV (to me, rummage sale score; good condistion, $.25) off the counter.

She said, "I think I knocked something down," I said, "Oh, that was my book."

"Oh, you read," in tone much as one might comment that a dog spoke. It was bizarre.

Then she refused to believe I was my sister's brother (she insisted on thinking I was someone from UT, whom my sister was dating). When I said I was he brother I got a dismissive hand-wave, and, "Oh yes, I KNOW all the family."

Oi.

(I checked, it is her birthday. This is the link to the text: after 22 June you will have to go back to find it. If you want to hear it, there's a link but I don't know how long it lasts)

Baseball

It looks easy from a distance,
easy and lazy, even,
until you stand up to the plate
and see the fastball sailing inside,
an inch from your chin,
or circle in the outfield
straining to get a bead
on a small black dot
a city block or more high,
a dark star that could fall
on your head like a leaden meteor.

The grass, the dirt, the deadly hops
between your feet and overeager glove:
football can be learned,
and basketball finessed, but
there is no hiding from baseball
the fact that some are chosen
and some are not—those whose mitts
feel too left-handed,
who are scared at third base
of the pulled line drive,
and at first base are scared
of the shortstop's wild throw
that stretches you out like a gutted deer.

There is nowhere to hide when the ball's
spotlight swivels your way,
and the chatter around you falls still,
and the mothers on the sidelines,
your own among them, hold their breaths,
and you whiff on a terrible pitch
or in the infield achieve
something with the ball so
ridiculous you blush for years.
It's easy to do. Baseball was
invented in America, where beneath
the good cheer and sly jazz the chance
of failure is everybody's right,
beginning with baseball.

Speaking of theater: The local high school theater festival is kicking in, and the Oklahoma! production my son is in is being revived. BUT-- due to some tenuous-to-the-point-of-being-basically-nonexistent relationship the director supposedly has with the people putting on the festival, they aren't allowed to mount the show in their home school. So theoretically, as we speak, it's all being moved to another school, several miles away. Grrrr......

Terry, #113: Re baseball, I prefer Christine Lavin's take on it. Not to mention Peter, Paul, and Mary.

Speaking of theater: A friend has a problem.

Her niece has been recommended to a week-ling class in N. Hollywood. The family can afford the class, but rooming is a problem. They are hoping to find someplace near by with a spare room/couch.

She can make her own way (one way, or another) to/from the class.

Niece is 16, and said to be very level-headed. The friend I know well, and trust her judgement. If anyone here can help, contact me at my "firstname.lastname" at gmail.

Terry: I'm not a big Updike fan, but I like that poem, and it seems an ideal fit for Keillor's delivery. (Warning: Updike wrote a very fine poem about the death of a dog that I read once years ago, and wish with all my heart I hadn't.)

I very much hope that the book-sneering lady who won't believe your own account of who you are kin to is not attached in any lasting way to anyone you're going to be spending time with in the future.

KeithS @105: You should hang out with me. As far as I can tell, my aura shouts, "If anyone around here is up to no good, it's HER!" which makes me the perfect person to hang out with when you're plotting evil. It's one of my superpowers.

Velma @ 118... That doesn't sound like the aura of this Velma. Must be another Velma.

Said woman is not in my regular orbit of company.

I forgot (though the birthday wishes still apply) that Octavia, like Herr Remarque, is dead too.

Ave atque vale, and all that.

Was still squee to hear her talked about on the radio.

I don't think I seem evil, but I do tend to be the weird, brainy one in my physical friendset. I have been told I seem very prim and proper, to the point that people are shocked, SHOCKED! when I curse.

Which means, I think, that I am the perfect front for the evil overlord. I even bring brownies into work sometimes.

Diatryma @ 121... We'll have to take your word for it as there is no photo of you in the Gallery. Hint hint...

You've seen the "...and then Buffy staked Edward. The End" shirt. Now you can see the movie.

John @ 33: Emphasizing the quick search of the most dangerous areas is always a good idea. A lot of local and small scale search and rescue is based on that very idea.

There is a large nursing home near where I grew up on the edge of the Minnesota River valley. In the mid '70s there were no fences keeping some the residents from wandering into the (for them) very dangerous river valley woods.

When this happened, the police would gather up us kids from the nearby neighborhood to comb the woods. The oldest of the kids would form a flying squad with the police reservists to sprint ahead and check the places where the kids knew the worst pitfalls lurked. The rest of us followed in a more traditional line, beating the bushes... It worked well. They finally fenced the property about '78...

Major train crash in DC area; the fire chief just reported 50 green tagged, 12 yellow tagged, 2 red and 4 black tagged.

Lee @ #115, both Lavin and PPM imply that they were pretty bad players, so right field was the place for them.

I had a memory.

Following up to Ginger, first train was stopped, they don't know why, and the trailing train went under the last two cars of the first train. Firefighters are still looking through the trains for people.

glass art:
http://www.latimes.com/features/home/la-hm-0622-randyland-pictures,0,6420618.photogallery?1

Serge, just about the only picture of me that is online, just of me, and does not make me look like a mole is my Facebook profile (Catherine Krahe). Steal if you wish. I still look kind of mole-like.

Terry Karney @113: Re: Baseball. The poem exactly describes why I preferred soccer.

OMG, Lee @ 123, that is fantastic! My daughter's going to love that when she gets back to the States and online. (She and I are Twilight LOLfans - she's actually made it through the book; I made it through the Cliff Notes.)

Rob: I like soccer, I love baseball.

Soccer is a grind. I have the stamina, but the work is constant.

Baseball is more intense, but semi-episodic. Each pitch has you up on your toes, leaning to the direction the batter seems to be placing the ball.

Then it goes somewhere else; or it doesn't.

That's the spotlight Updike mentions. In those moments time stands still, and it's you, and the ball. Be it a moment at the plate; and the sweet feel of the the meat of the bat hitting the ball, or the floatig moment when the arc of the ball and the cup of the glove are about to come together.

Like swordplay, it's zen.

Here are Diatryma and KeithS, both reasonably properly frame in "Making Light and Faces" although KeithS's feet had to be severed.

P J Evans @ 128: That glass sculpture is gorgeous. I somehow don't have quite as much faith in its wind and earthquake resistance as the artist.

"the deadly hops" in the second stanza refers to generic stadium "beer", right? heh.

Well, if you're soliciting photos, Serge, I suppose my profile pics should do, but the really interesting recent one (putting on dead Baronet makeup) is on my camera, which I appear to have left at my parents' place.

Or you could just use the second portrait in the Ruddigore album referenced above. I only changed my jawline a tiny bit to make it more masculine— it's rather square already.

On the theater note, those of you who perform, what do you think when you see a tape of yourself? Most of the people I know hate to watch themselves on stage. What I think is "My god, I really am the tallest woman on stage." (I'm only 5'9", with mandatory 2" heels on top of that, but for some reason everybody else we've cast for the last several years is 5'6" and below.)

B. Durbin -

Unlike 15 years ago (when I wasn't actually fat) I no longer watch video of myself and fret about being a lardass. I was struck by that last video not so much by my fatness as my Substantial-ness. I look pretty solid, and yet still not as much like a big dude in a dress as I had feared.

Otherwise, it's a bit tough. I had to learn stage presence; it did not come naturally. However, all video of me on stage I am performing for an audience and not a camera. I always freak out about how unconvincing I am. Mostly, I've tried not to watch before a performance, so as not to second-guess myself.

B. Durbin: I am astounded at how slim and insubtantial I seem.

I've never liked the sport of baseball. Slow and boring. Going to a baseball game is a lot like fishing: It's a good excuse to find a nice shady spot and read a book.

And yet the odd thing is... I like baseball fiction. Perhaps it's because a good writer is able to add a human element to the action/inaction on the field.

Serge, you can grab one of the pics here if you like.

B. Durbin, I don't even like seeing myself in pictures, let alone video. Our choir stages operas every two years, and I'm perfectly happy to be in the chorus. The dressing-up part is great fun, and I don't feel self-conscious when I'm on stage, but watching recordings makes me cringe.

The BBC's motoring programme. Top Gear, is not exactly respectable. It's very much in "toys for the boys" mode.

One of the common features is some sort of race or challenge involving the three presenters using different vehicles. Sometimes this can get rather silly.

Sunday night. it was London to Edinburgh using the technology of 1949.

The fastest production car in the world: the Jaguar XK120.

The fastest motorbike: the Vincent Black Shadow.

And, paradoxically, not the fastest railway locomotive of 1949, but the newest British locomotive of 2009: The Peppercorn class A1 Pacific Tornado.

Despite much manly coal shovelling on the part of Jeremy Clarkson, James May arrived first in the Jaguar. Richard Hammond, bow-legged and creaking, arrived much later.

Yes, it can seem a silly programme at times, but getting stuff like that is worth it.

I've added B Durbin and Pendrift to "Making Light and Faces". Hmmm... Yesterday's addition of Diatryma and KeithS had the theme of Evillllllll in common. Today's theme appears to be pirates.

The last time I was videoed on stage was high school, so it's been a while. I mostly remember noticing how long my hair is-- it doesn't seem very long most of the time, since it's all behind me-- and then paying attention to everything else onstage. I was in musicals and show choir, usually the chorus in the former, so I never got to see what was going on up front. Looking at pictures now, I am surprised at my smokin-hotness. I knew that would happen; I had a good cry in junior high that I was going to look back and see how beautiful I was, and hate myself for not taking advantage of it somehow.

Yeah, I was that kind of kid.

Diatryma @ 146... Something like a decade or two ago(*), I was cleaning up some old stuff and came across my high-school student-association cards and realized how much I had let the perceptions of others affect my judgment of my physical appearance. Sure, I was a nerd inside, but my skin looked better than Martin Landau's in the Outer Limits episode "The Man Who Was Never Born".

(*) What does it say about me that I can actually say that? No, don't say it.

Serge @#144 says: Something like a decade or two ago...What does it say about me that I can actually say that?

It says you have reached the age of reason.

Memory, maybe not so much, but reason, yes.

Niall McAuley @ 145... I don't know if I've reached the age of reason(*), but I have reached enough of it to know it's better not to tell teammates that their way of handling our current big project is stupid.

(*) Is that the one that comes before the age of raisin, when we start getting wrinkled?

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Today is the 15th anniversary of my saying that for the first time.

Did you keep a straight face?

Niall McAuley @ 148... Oh, very much so, even the part about the Nation in a dirigible.

Nations in Zeppelins!

I'd pledge allegiance to one of those, only there's been none for ages. I bet three will sail into view, just as soon as I give up waiting...

Damn, now I have to go and form a band called "Zeppelin Nation".

Niall McAuley @ 150... Nations in Zeppelins

...without ballooning deficits?

I thought it was "one nation invisible".

One nation inimitable.

Wanna whole lotta proportional representation,
Wanna whole lotta proportional representation,
Wanna whole lotta proportional representation,
Wanna whole lotta proportional representation,

You been representin', baby, I've been votin'
All the good times, baby baby, are not representative of how we might expect your economic policies to average out in the long term, baby,

I'm gonna give you my vote (at least, my number one)...

Well, Serge, in years past I would congratulate you on the anniversary of your citizenship...Oh, what the heck, congratulations. Even though US citizenship isn't such a great prize anymore, I hope it will be again someday.

And..."I pledge a legions* to the flag of the United Skates of America. And to the republic for Witchit Stans**, one naked individual with liberty and just as for all."
___
*Didn't make sense to me, but I was obedient.
**No one ever explained who this gentleman was, or why the whole republic was for him.

Niall, #154: *snork!*

Serge, #147: congratulations on the anniversary.

On other subjects: music reviewing & the internet.

"Crowdsourcing killed indie rock...you know why? Because crowds have awful taste. People have awful taste."..."It's not the music that's best; it's the music that the most people can stand."

I am occasionally surprised that decisions I made a decade ago matter to me now. They are part of the same person I am. When did I get to be an adult? It's weird.

...and to the Republic, for Richard Stans, one nation invisible...

(yes, I know it's "Under God", but when my parents said it in grade school, that phrase hadn't been invented/mandated yet.)

For more on Richard Stans and the Mondegreens...appearing occasionally in a Safire column near you.

Serge— that pic is actually from Pirates of Penzance, and Frederic has just insulted all the daughters with the implication that they're homely.

Serge @147:
Congratulations! Happy anniversary!

American citizenship is a shareholding in a dream. The Pledge of Allegiance is a good summary of it.

Some of us have, at various points, found that dream painful, because the reality does not match up to it. And far too often, there are people who seem to be actively working to make matters worse. But the bitter disappointment that that engenders is a sign of love, too.

Don't let the native-born despair grind down your convert's fervor. We need you to remind us that people choose this citizenship, because that dream does matter.

and @149:
Liar. I bet there was at least one tear in your eye.

Tee Hee. Even putting Top Gear into a sentence with ‛respectable’ amuses (Antonia @141).

Shadow is good, but fastest would be a Vincent Black Lightning (via Beesweb). Access to one: tricky.

Old photos which make one look better than perhaps ever again: Me, 1968. I'm on the right, gazing into the middle distance (or looking to see if the bus has arrived; it's unclear).

For some reason (remember, even the Beatles wore ties on the Ed Sullivan Show) the guys in my high school occasionally put on suits and ties for no apparent reason. This day was one of my concessions to the trend (I don't think I owned a suit at that point; the sweater had to do).

abi @ 161 and others... Thanks.

There's a movie I saw a long time ago that had a line about the Pledge. I couldn't find that line, but found another from that movie.

"I love you like the Pilgrim loves the Holy Land, like the wayfarer loves his wayward ways, like the immigrant that I am loves America, and the blind man the memory of his sighted days."
- Arthur Penn's 1981 Four Friends

B Durbin @ 160... Corrected. Let me know if you want the caption further changed.

Kangaroo Court.
John Roberts. Anton Scalia. Clarence Thomas. Mr Kennedy [I never remember his first name]. Samuel Alito. Fascists, bigots, misogynists, hypocrites, theocrats, and oathbreakers. They swore to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, but they are the champions of injustice, inequality, rampany cronyism, and protection and shielding of the likes of Cheney and Rove against lawsuits by their victims....

Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Plame's Lawsuit Against Cheney, Rove

The US Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a civil lawsuit filed by Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, against Bush administration officials who were responsible for leaking her covert CIA status to the media and attacking her husband for accusing the White House of twisting prewar Iraq intelligence....

One day after Obama was sworn in, as he was signing executive orders ushering in what he called a new era of government openness, the Justice Department quietly filed a motion in federal court to dismiss [the]lawsuit [attempting to] force the Bush administration to recover as many as 15 million missing White House emails, including some from Cheney's office that special counsel Fitzgerald had subpoenaed in connection with the leak of Plame's identity.
....

Last Thursday, CREW revealed in newly released documents that the emails from Cheney's office [had disapppeared conveniently for avoiding the grand jury subpoena that Mr Fitzgerald was supposed to be the investigator who gathered evidence for.... seems to me that Mr Fitzgerald wasn't doing much in the way of due diligence, looking back the whole thing looks like an orchestrated sham whitehousewash....]

#141 - spiffy. The one time I've travelled by "live steam" was on water, the R.M.S Segwun. There is a steam train near here, I've just never gotten the round tuit while it was running.

One of many interesting things is that they fire the boilers only once per season - in spring, they raise steam, then they keep the boilers hot until fall. I presume this involves banking the fires carefully for the night. Amusingly enough, the FAQ tells you that birthday candles are not allowed on board for fire risk reasons. Straining at gnats and swallowing camels, I think!

In my recent family trip to Dundee, I toured both Unicorn (1846 frigate, never rigged) and Discovery of south polar fame. Discovery no longer has engines, but when it did, they generated a mere 450 hp. Pictures from that will eventually be posted.

B. Durbin @ 136:

Mostly I'm surprised they let me on stage in the first place.

I'm not sure I could ever watch video of myself. I already know I'm screwing so much up.

Serge @ 147:

Happy anniversary.

Serge:

¡Buen quiceaños!

KeithS @ 168... I celebrated in the appropriately American manner tonight. Yes, that means I had a takeout turkey enchilada from a nearby Mexican restaurant of course.

janetl, I suspect that a good windstorm could turn it into something suitable for making mosaics, or terrazzo. All those glass objects banging into each other ....

Serge @ #170, that seems appropriate, since the ancestors of your town's inhabitants have been around a lot longer than the ancestors of most of the Anglos there. (Although I'm unclear about whether turkeys are indigenous to New Mexico.)

Linkmeister @ 172... I think of turkey enchiladas as being another grand American tradition - fusion cuisine in the melting pot.

#173 Linkmeister

I'm fairly certain that turkeys are indigenous to New Mexico. There are different species of them, I think, spread from Central America up through at least New England.

Airships with sails!
(Tales of the Brass Griffin, banner ad from the Girl Genius page, shows one. So did an old Boskone T shirt.)

That, I posit, is impossible. Sailing works because you can control the boat by playing off forces that can be made to go in different directions (wind in the sail and the directional stability caused by the streamlining of the hull)

(The solar sailing that the outer-space visionaries dream of also works because solar wind and gravity go in different directions and you can play one off against the other.)

But the wind in the airship's sails will go in the same direction as the wind against the rest of the airship, so it will go the same way no matter how you set the sail. So how can you make that work?

This is wrong! This is impossible!

It's past my bedtime, so I am being cranky about unimportant things, but this has always been a pet peeve of mine.

Paula Lieberman @ 174... I had forgotten, but there actually are wild turkeys in northern New Mexico. I also saw some on he north side of the Grand Canyon. Here is a flock of them, When we drove back, some time later, they had crossed to the other side.

This is a note to sisuile, and anyone else who read Open Thread 119 back in February and saw my assurances that perlite doesn't look bad in flower beds. I was wrong. Sorry! I plead bad memory, and 5 months or so since I'd actively gardened. I wrote: "a moderate amount of perlite, well dug in and watered, doesn't seem to me to change the color of the soil much. It's a tiny percentage of the soil, and it turns a muddy brown color promptly."

Looking at my garden soil today, I have to say that the perlite, while somewhat muddy, is noticeable. Mind you, it's also fabulous for opening up heavy clay soil. I dug it into the beds when I first built them, along with some organic material. I've added a bit more perlite and organic material whenever I fluffed up a seed bed or added some plants. After 10 years of this, the areas that get changed a lot are so loose that you can use your hands instead of a trowel. That's starting from rock-hard clay. I know from experience in a previous Portland garden that adding organic material alone doesn't do this. The long growing season, mild winters, and damp climate means that organic material breaks down very quickly, leaving you back at pure clay.

I suspect that the mining and processing that produces perlite is probably bad for the environment, too. Sigh.

Erik @175: There will of course be some directional stability provided by air resistance on the envelope. Nothing like as much proportionally as a boat in water, but the envelope will likely be substantially larger than most boats of equivalent weight. Therefore I can see a scheme working, although the sails will have to be substantially smaller proportionally.

Serge @ 176

Can I make use of that picture for my work? With a photocredit of course. I don't have one of wild turkeys yet (I have a page for them, but no picture). It would become part of an electronic encyclopaedia on wild animal health and management (Wildpro).

Re the cownose ray migration particle from Teresa...my first word on seeing it was "Escher".

abi @ 180

Agreed. Beautiful.

Erik #175: Well, there are also wing effects available, depending how things are arranged. And, of course, if you're taking about mystically airborne boat hulls, who knows how the true motive forces might interact with airflow?

175: as long as there's some component of your course that's downwind, airship sails would help, wouldn't they? Agreed that they wouldn't work on their own as a means of propulsion.

At least it's better than Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars", which has a pair of characters flying an electric-engined dirigible which gets pushed off course by high winds. They don't have enough power in their fuel cells to steer upwind, but fortunately they have a cargo of windmill generators - they hang those over the side, so they turn in the wind, and connect them up to the engines. And viola!* More power!

*As in, I think this is a bit of a fiddle.

For people who like theremins and/or people who like Super Mario Bros: Geek demos Theremin Super Mario game controller.

dcb @ 179... Sure. I might still have the original large-sized photo lying around on a chip if you want that.

ajay @ 183... this is a bit of a fiddle

Trying to cello a bill of goods again?

Serge @186: Isn't that a bass-less accusation?

#176 Serge
Two or three years ago, as I headed off to Thanksgiving Day dining with relatives, there was a hen turkey walking on the side of the road by a small river, which I drove past. It was quite ironic.....

Deb Geisler and Mike Benveniste used to have an entire flock of turkeys that roosted in her yard at night. There was a NESFA meeting at their house where at dusk, the turkeys took off from a running start downhill and then flew up, sometimes managing to land and stay on the tree branches they were aiming at to perch in for the night--half the time they went "thunk" and didn't quite catch hold well enough (if they actually managed to actually even grab onto the branch with their claws) and fell off, and had to try to again.... they were NOT graceful in those endeavors, they were very ungainly!

Paula Lieberman @ 188... I take it that the hen turkey was walking in the direction opposite to the one in which you were driving.

When I was living in the Bay Area, I once saw a peacock and his hens going down the street. Luckily they used the sidewalk.

Salon.com's Stephanie Zacharek about Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen...

Giant robots battle it out (and hump Megan Fox's leg) in this loud and clumsy summer spectacular

I thought the second Transformers movie was better than the first: less teenage "humour", more giant robot battles.

Still too much shakycam, though.

File under Wait, that's not what we meant!

SKY news are currently running a loop of some dude in Miami saying portentiously: "On the streets of Miami, an AK-47 is cheaper to buy than a Playstation".

My 8 year old son's reaction: "Hey! Cool!"

Keep your 8-year-old the frell out of Miami, Niall!

Not that you need telling, of course.

How the heck much do Playstations cost on the streets of Miami anyway?

(And why would you want to buy a Playstation on the streets anyway? You don't know where it's been....)

Serge @ 185

That would be great. I'll use it at low-res (about 50KB) but starting with the larger version would allow me to crop it to show the birds in more detail, as well as using the whole picture. Please could you e-mail it to dbourne (at) wildlifeinformation (dot) org (higher file size limit than my other e-mail) and indicate how you want your Photographer/Copyright to appear?

Re. peafowl, we used to have a flock which for a while would set off daily walking up the pavement (sidewalk) a few hundred yards, then turn, wander into a garden, and make their way back home down through all the gardens. Most people liked them, luckily; a few didn't and occasionally complained of flower damage.

dcb @ 195... I just wrote a note to remind myself to look up the photo tonight.

KeithS @ #184, I think that is the coolest thing I have ever seen. *dies of geekitude*

Ajay #183: Ouch! And I thought KSR was doing hard science fiction!

For those who haven't yet figured out the goof here -- there are problems with both the Third Law of Motion, and conservation of energy. Lacking an external counterforce, you can't draw enough power from a wind, to move against that same wind. (Boats tacking against the wind get the needed counterforce from the inertia of the water around them.)

dcb: Want me to look and see if any of my turkey shots are decent?

Any other birds you need pictures of?

dcb... I expect that Terry has more savage-poultry photos than I do, and they're easily likely to be much better.

Terry, how many Wild Turkey shots have you taken? Don't you have trouble steadying the camera?

Ginger@187

Careful. You can get in treble for saying things like that...

Michael I @ 202... Are you saying that Ginger's words could cause some people to resort to violins?

What's the mortality rate from video gaming?

I've been incommunicado recently, as I am in the middle of my Summer of Much Travel and No Weekends (and, in fact, I'm only writing this because my flight to ORD was delayed two and a half hours).

However, this seems like an excellent place to say that, if you are not already subscribed to Michael Roberts's blog about his house, you should be. It's really fun to read how Michael approaches problems, deals with them, and thinks about what to do next. And this from someone who has zero interest in home remodeling.

[this has been an unsolicited endorsement]

James D. Macdonald #194:
(And why would you want to buy a Playstation on the streets anyway? You don't know where it's been....)

For that matter, you don't know where the AK-47 has been, either. That would be more of a worry, it might have been used in a crime. "Gee Officer, I didn't kill that guy, I just bought the gun from a stranger on the streets of Miami".

I doubt things would turn out well.

Oh, also - the ISS captured photos moments after a volcano exploded.

John Houghton writes: That would be more of a worry

Apparently not, if you're eight.

Xopher: You just put the cap on, and use the bottle in lieu of a monopod.

Just over a month to WorldCon, and I'm starting to get bouncy with...er...anticipation. (I started to say "excitement", but I couldn't resiste the other.)

How many of you good people might I encounter in Montreal?

kayjayoh @ 210... I'll be there, helping Kathryn from Sunnyvale with the Friday night "Making Light" gathering.

I, sadly, can't afford it. Sigh... I was planning on it, but this year has been quite different from expectations.

If I had a ride, I think I could manage it, so it's more a matter of logistics.

I won't be at Worldcon this year; I'm going to Alaska this summer instead (in July, not August, but I can't swing both).

Terry Karney @ 199

As opposed to indecent???

Seriously, I have a whole list - can I e-mail it to you? I know you take good pictures.

The only SF convention for me this year is probably going to be ArmadilloCon in mid-August.

I'll be at Anticipation, wondering shyly and hopefully whether mostly-lurkers can go to the Making Lumière party, too, and bask in the glow of y'all's brilliance.

SylvieG @ 216... Of course.

Just wanted to say Teresa's Particle on Buffy v. Edward is AWESOME. I must confess I'm not the least bit interested in the Twilight saga, and if the dialogue spouted by the Edward character is representative of the dreck, my lack of interest appears justified.

And debcha @ 207--thanks for the link to the volcano photos! Truly wonderful...

debcha--

Thanks for the reminder about that blog, which I'd meant to bookmark and forgot about.

It makes me feel much more sanguine about the home renovations I'm currently living through. (Though I will be delighted when there isn't a new toilet sitting in the dining room, waiting to be installed and an old toilet sitting--disassembled--in the kitchen.

debcha, #205: Seconded -- I've been enjoying it as well. And @207: AWESOME.

I will not be at Worldcon this year; much as I'd like to visit Montreal, we can't afford to do it as fans, and the Customs-related* risk for dealers is unacceptably high. Therefore, I will be attending the North American Discworld Convention in Phoenix**, and my partner will be running one of the Pegasus Publishing booths at DragonCon.

I have a few Fluorosphere buttons left, which will be turned over to our Gracious Hosts at FiestaCon. There will probably not be time for us to make more due to our schedule over the next couple of months.

* Not Canadian customs, but the American side. There have been several documented instances of dealers having large portions of their unsold stock summarily confiscated, with no reason given; "because we can" seems to be a not-universal-but-common attitude.

** At least, I hope so, given that we still haven't received any dealer information. They are going to have a table at FiestaCon, and I hope to be able to purchase my dealer tables there.

Well, I'll be at Mythcon at UCLA in mid-July. Anybody else? Pre-registration deadline is July 6, so there's still time. Good con -- small, fantasy-focused, good academic papers but lots of fun too. Golfimbul, anyone? http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/40/

Self-published author sues celebrity for plagiarism over diet book.

Author Susan Hassett filed the lawsuit Monday, saying she sent [Elizabeth] Hasselbeck a copy of her "Living With Celiac Disease" book as a courtesy after the TV celebrity disclosed she had the illness last year. The lawsuit says Hasselbeck's book reproduces lists of grains containing gluten along with scientific names of the grains. Hasselbeck's book "includes dozens of paraphrased as well as word for word regurgitations of phrases" from Hassett's book, the lawsuit claims, but it doesn't cite specific examples.

Be interesting to see how that plays out.

Earl #215:

Thanks for reminding me; I've been forgetting to sign up.

How many of you good people might I encounter in Montreal?

I'll be there; my first WorldCon, only my second con. And then a month after that, I've decided I'll probably drop by DragonCon. (It's local, or I'd never consider it. But...Lois McMaster Bujold! So I've bought a membership, and will probably use it at some point.)

So Governor Sanford simply had an affair. There goes my "intentionally tried to throw state government into disarray as his contribution to right-wing anti-government lunacy" theory.

If I may pick on the local luminous brains...

Is it safe to conclude that HG Wells appeared on the cover of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band because Paul McCartney was a fan of his? After all, Paul's group Wings got its name from Things to Come's flying fortress, Wings Over the World.

Or am I stuffed full of wild blueberry muffins?

dcb(*)... The turkey is ready to land. I found that photo you were interested in, plus another taken a few minutes later. They're each 1.3meg. Where shall I send them?

(*) I keep thinking 'data control block', which betrays my professional origins in the mainframe world.

Serge@203

Well there has been concern about sax and violins in the media...

Raphael #225: It's interesting that Faux News decided that he'd become a Democrat once he announced his affair.

Mark Sanford has admitted to an affair. With a woman in Argentina yet. It doesn't pay to antagonize your Lt. Governor. I didn't know adultery came with frequent flier miles.

So the whole Sanford's "Naked Hiking Day" thing was just a, so to speak, cover story? How disappointing. I expect a certain quality level of entertainment from our elected officials, after all.

On the other hand, you just can't make up this stuff; now that's entertainment....

Not only can I not afford Worldcon, but the US is the most accessible country in the world and I'm having trouble getting around here.

Wild turkeys are endemic to this area; I took this picture (and the surrounding ones) on the grounds of a high school while prepping for a photography session.

Lots of fun taking pics when you've got very little zoom, but it's not the closest I've gotten to wild turkeys. One just strolled through my apartment parking lot one day, eyeing nervously the cats who hopefully followed it...

Serge @ 226 ...
Far be it from us to tell you to get stuffed ;)

xeger @ 235... Far be it, but how far?

debcha @205: [..] this seems like an excellent place to say that, if you are not already subscribed to Michael Roberts's blog about his house, you should be.

debcha @207: Oh, also - the ISS captured photos moments after a volcano exploded.

Home repairs are much more dramatic than I would have expected.

I'll be at WorldCon. And at La Partie Pour Faire La Lumière. :-)

Alas, I will not be able to afford travel to WorldCon. Quite unexpectedly, I have some other things to pay for instead.

I do have a webcam and entertain the hopes that some form of visual connection may be possible.

B. Durbin @ @234

A former coworker took photos of them as they paraded across the end of her driveway in a fairly populated suburban neighborhood (Raytown). I speculated that they like it there because people can't hunt them there.

I'm most likely going to have to pass up DragonCon this year. I am not happy about it. I need to focus on getting a house; I will be following Michael's blog on the subject.

Earl @ 232: The monkey story is not all that surprising; they do have a propensity to do that. I guess it was the politician that made it newsworthy. We could probably do a sub-thread on which politicians would you want a monkey to pee/crap on, but then again lets not.

Ginger @ 239... You have a web cam? I'll see that Kathryn from Sunnyvale is made aware of this.

Xopher@79: how sure are you that's wrong? Having just played a handful of parts in Henry V, I can attest that poets (at least) were much looser about forms of address in Tudor times; Henry is addressed as "highness", "majesty", "grace", and "lord" in just my scattering of lines.

linkmeister: remember, even the Beatles wore ties on the Ed Sullivan Show
IIRC, the Beatles wore ties \everywhere/ in those days, possibly because it meant they were no longer a Hamburg bar band. I've heard Ringo quoted that he was told he'd have to wear a suit if he joined the Beatles. (He had two from his then-gig, but IIRC they were a little ... loud ....)

re turkeys, Paula neglects to mention the ones that went courting on Deb's handkerchief of a front lawn. Deb describes it as the toms going "heybabyheybabyheybaby"; I hadn't realized that they literally go blue in the face when they're at full spread. Makes one think of all the cartoons and snide comments about men trying to impress women by sucking their expanded guts up into their chests. (John D. MacDonald had a particularly lovely example in The Lonely Silver Rain.)

The Topiary Fox Hunt (in the Particle sidebar):

How fast are they running?

No WorldCon for me this year, but I'm attending Dragon*Con for my first time ever. I blame the friend who set the costume idea in motion.

I am worried a bit about the crowds (I prefer much smaller conventions), but I won't know how bad it really is until I get there, so I'm going to chance it and plan to hole up in my room if it gets too overwhelming.

Serge at #226:

I read the news today oh, boy
About some martians coming to invade
And though the field was rather wide
The ship was kind of cramped
When they got out they were amped
They blew some people up with rays
They didn't notice that the wind had changed
A crowd of people stood and stared
They'd not seen this before
Nobody was quite prepared for lots and lots of blood and gore

I saw the roads today oh, boy
The walking tripods blowing up the towns
A crowd of people jammed the way
But i just had to stay
I could not get away
I love to turn you on.

Woke up, got out of bed
Got my carriage from the shed
Met an artilleryman in the next town
Who had a plan for living under ground
Met a curate raving mad
Hiding in an abandoned flat
Found my way upstairs saw nothing but smoke
Somebody spoke and i went into a dream
Ah

I read the news today oh, boy
A million germs infecting all the war machines
And though the germs were rather small
They somehow killed them all
Now we can finally go outside to places like the albert hall
I'd love to turn you on

Erik Nelson @ 246... Ooooh. Mind if I post that on my blog?

CHip: If Uther is king, then Arthur cannot be Sire.

dcb: Send me the list. My name as her, with a dot between given and sur, at gmail.

Fox did the same thing to several people in the DeLay/Abramoff scandals.

Sure.

Serge: If you think I'm enough of a regular, feel free to use any recent short-haired photo here you like.

Marilee @ 233: I was shocked and dismayed to discover the sheer, WTF-worthy level of non-ADA compliance at a hotel my family stayed at (for one night) on a day-trip visit to the Aquarium in Monterey, CA.

Exactly three rooms per floor (above the ground floor) were reachable from the elevator without traversing at least one, and usually multiple, 8-step flights of stairs. The entire central courtyard is circled by zigzaggy up-and-down 'balconies' off which the rooms exit. Very quaint and picturesque (and somewhat Escher-resembling). NOT compliant, not in any fantastical imagining.

Luckily, we only had a bellcart full of luggage to get to a room two flights away from the elevator, and plenty of strong young bodies to hump the bags one at a time. It was still a shock to suddenly come across this at the end of a night drive through the Pacheco Pass, arriving about 10PM, and hoping for a trouble-free night's sleep.

In its defense, it's a quite-old hotel, probably built in the 50s and (going by decor) updated/reworked in the 70s, and not significantly touched since then except for things like paint, wifi, and newer beds.

It was the Holiday Inn Express, for those curious. Though I doubt its nearby (and similarly-aged) competitors do much better. The Intercontinental is much newer, probably fully accessible, and much closer to the Aquarium. Also more than twice the price per-night, so.

My (Toronto-born) husband reminds me that Canada's cities are likely more accessible, on average, than the US, due to their accessibility laws being older.

It looks as though someone has attacked http://niemanwatchdog.org/, because it's coming back as an attack site when I try to load it.

Interesting technical this-blog implementation nitpick: in this comment of mine, the odd character in the name of the second commenter quoted (KévinT) displays properly on the thread page, but improperly (KévinT) on my view-all-by page.

Erik Nelson @ 175: "That, I posit, is impossible. Sailing works because you can control the boat by playing off forces that can be made to go in different directions (wind in the sail and the directional stability caused by the streamlining of the hull)"

Hmmm...of course, not all levels of atmosphere move in the same direction at the same speed. If you dropped sails down off the bottom of the ship, into a layer of air moving a different direction, you might be able to steer by playing the two currents off of each other. You'd need a really tall ship, though.

Ooh! You could drop a long line down and run an electrical current through it, and tack against the planet's magnetic field! I have no idea if that would work.

It'd look cool though.

Serge @ 227
Please send to: dbourne (at) wildlifeinformation (dot) org

Don't forget to let me know how you want your name to appear for the "Copyright/Photographer:"

Thanks,

Debra

Serge #242: I, also, have a webcam.

Hilary Hertzoff #245: Look for me in the LitTrack.

Another technical this-blog implementation nitpick:

In post 192 on open thread 126 I used italics for a single phrase. On the view all by page, all the text in that post following that phrase is in italics.

Looking at the page source for each, I can see that the /i tag is in a different position in the "view all by" version.

This does not happen every time. I used italics in the following 4 posts, and they all look OK in the "view all by" page.

Sorry for a strange request, but this the only site I could think of where people a)knew bookstore distribution and b)cared.

A relative walked into a Borders yesterday for an NYT and found no newspapers at all. The clerk claimed that the distributor wouldn't supply them any more. Is this happening anywhere else, or is this simply a spectacular example of blame-shifting?

Niall @257: MT does some strange things to clean your HTML. AIUI, the guys who set up the "view all by" script were unable to work out how to use the same code to clean it for that use, so had to use their own cleaning code. It is bound to have some differences. Specifically, in this case, the MT HTML cleaner closes formatting tags that you've opened automatically at the end of each paragraph. I'd guess the one the VAB script uses does so at the end of the post only. Not knowing the code, I don't know how easy to fix this would be, but it shouldn't be _too_ hard.

Jules, OK, I can see how that could happen. This suggests that the reason post 192 looks different is that I didn't actually close that italics tag at all, and the two html cleaners are doing it differently, whereas in the other posts I closed that tag myself so they look the same in both versions.

And now, a test: I will close this tag myself

The next one, I will not close at all.

If this theory is correct, this text will be non-italic except when viewed at the "view all by" page.

Fragano @ 255... You too? I'm not quite sure what the tech setup will be for remote participants, but I'll make sure to let Kathryn know.

dcb @ 254... I emailed the 2 photos separately, about one hour ago.

Erik Nelson @ 249... Thanks. Here is a link.

The theory is indeed correct, and I have not discovered the bug which will destroy the internets.

Yet.

Elliott Mason @ 250... "Elliott, Beka and Boston"

Serge @ 262:

Just checked my e-mail and got them. Thanks again.

CHip @243: Since "Merlin" is obvious NOT set in 5th Century Britain, styles of address matter --

A King is "Your Majesty*" or "Sire."

A Prince or Princess is "Your Royal Highness" or "Highness."

A Duke is "Your Grace."

Any writer worth their salt could have looked this up in DeBrett's Peerage and deserves to get kicked in the butt for not doing so.

*This form was adopted in the reign of Henry VIII, prior to that the proper style of address had been "Your Grace."

Jesse # 258 -- The clerk is probably correct, if not complete. Distributors (of newspapers and other goods) are often reluctant to distribute to companies facing bankruptcy until after they have actually filed.

I got a nice Borders gift card for Christmas, which I made haste to use, since gift cards are often casualties of bankruptcy. I've been a long-time customer of Borders, and I hope they make it.

Terry Karney at 209: I suppose you put the cap on to prevent criticism of the resulting photography?

Tracie # 268 - Thanks! I'll warn the stepmonster; she's a long-time customer too, so she's bound to have gift cards lying around.

Crossing my fingers for Borders - I always enjoy stopping in those shops when I'm out of town.

Syd @218, If you enjoyed Buffy v Edward, try Cleolinda's Twilight in Fifteen Minutes at her LJ, Movies in Fifteen Minutes. Slayage of other Twilight series books also available nearb… *notes link; follows* ZOMG!!!1! There's a book! Ahem. You all just carry on here. Back soon. :)

A surprising consequence of cannibalism

I've also been following Michael Roberts' house journey with a combination of envy and "oh my god, I am so glad not to be the in midst of that right now" which is an amusing combination. I'm so glad that he's documenting the steps*.

*and the walls and the windows and the plumbing and...

Dave Bell @ #272: I have actually contributed to that h2g2 site, odd to see it linked here.

For some reason, pseudonyms seem to be the norm there, hence my secret identity.

Unconfirmed reports that Michael Jackson has died.

What an odd, sad fellow. Genuine talent overshadowed by freakish self-delusion and self-hatred.

Pretty clear that Jackson is in fact dead, on the same day as Farrah Fawcett. I'll take "objects of sexual obsession" for 1000.

Still reading about the death of Jerri FitzGerald, the doctor who was rescued from the South Pole ten years ago. I hadn't known that the cancer came back in 2005.

Amusingly, the BBC had a teaser "Michael Jackson 'dies'". Combined with the dancing-zombie clips from "Thriller", the quotes on "dies" gave an odd impression.

Also spotted at the BBC: Stoned wallabies make crop circles in Australia.

Elliott Mason, #250, a lot of hotels are like that. And even the ones that meet the US rules will usually not have a walk-in shower. You're supposed to be able to step over the tub edge.

I've only stayed in two hotels in Canada and they were both worse than the US hotels I've been in, but they're probably not enough to know in general.

In re Michael Jackson, I think the final word on the subject was said by Ookla the Mok in their album 'OH OK LA' in the song, "F People," [m3u link to sample] which begins:

Show a little compassion for Michael Jackson
When he turns up on the evening news
Don’t judge that man or make fun of his tan
Until you’ve walked a mile backwards in his sequinned shoes ...

The chorus continues:

Famous people are weird. They can't help it.
It just goes along with being a star ...

Elliott Mason #280:

Well, childhood stars especially do tend to have problems later. In Michael's case, he also got hit with a fair bit of family dysfunction all the way back to early days, notably a controlling father/manager.

The best epitaph for Jackson I've seen so far was over at Shakesville: "it was a shame his weird overshadowed his talent."

With Michael Jackson, my suspicion is that not only did he have a controlling/dysfunctional family, but all he ever knew was the crazy, insane world of being a star, basically from the time he should have been in kindergarten.

He was never, ever, in his entire life, been able to do anything normal -- your "average" star could put on a pair of sunglasses and go to the movies, or for a stroll down a beach, or go play a round of golf or go clubbing. Jackson's fans are abso-fricking-lutely INSANE. At the height of his fame, even when he looked fairly normal, can you imagine the reaction if he decided to go catch the premier of a movie with a girlfriend, or go dancing with friends? It would literally have been a riot.

So his entire life, he's been cloistered. Add to that what I suspect were probably managers and agents who weren't looking out for Jackson's best interest.

And ... how much education did he actually get? He obviously never went to college. He was likely taught by tutors ... how good were they? Did they teach him what he really needed to know -- money management and some law and general this-is-how-the-world-really-works? Or did his schooling consist of the bare minimum required by law, and assurance from his handlers that, "We'll take care of you."

I don't know the answer to that, but it's something I've always wondered about whenever he made a dumb move.

He always seemed out of touch with reality ... I think the truth was, the reality he knew -- all he EVER knew -- was not the same as our reality.

It's a shame his life was so screwed up. He truly had an astonishing talent and such an amazing voice.

Linkmeister, #282: Yes, that's good. Especially given the double meaning inherent in the term "weird" -- which I'm sure is why the writer chose it.

Lori Coulson #267: That's "Debrett's" not "DeBrett's".

Lori@243: Debrett's may have authority on their side; Shakespeare may reflect what was used. And how far out of its time does Merlin seem to be? (No, I'm not going to watch it to estimate -- not after the comments it has gotten here....)

Elliott Mason @ 252:

Ah, character encoding trouble. All of ML's comment pages after, um, 2006 or so? are encoded in UTF-8 and served up to your browser that way. The view all by page also serves up UTF-8-encoded text, however it seems to think that the comments are in Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1). This means that it looks at the individual bytes and converts them from what they would be in Latin-1 into their representation in UTF-8, giving you the effect you noted. This is, of course, annoying.

I've seen blogs that were in UTF-8 where all the old posts had that happen, because the upgrade script thought that of course all the old posts would be Latin-1 and ran amok.

Regarding Michael Jackson:

Michael Jackson's death was the subject of breaking news on CNN the entire time I was having dinner. (I assume that other things happened in the world too, right?)

I think that Cygnet at 283 has the meat of it; he never could have a normal life or even knew what one was, and then when he acted strangely he was made fun of for that too.

He was an amazing singer and dancer.

More open threadiness: 35,000+ year old flute found in Germany

#287 KeithS

I remember my father who was in his late 70s at the time, saying "That bastard can dance!" about Michael Jackson.

Am safely in Calif.

Have been travelling for 17 and a half hours on three hours of sleep, two cups of coffee, a danish some tunafish and some hummus.

Am getting food.

Will probably be on later, no promises.

Michael Jackson was an example of what the American Fame Game does to some. I think in some cases we manufacture the superstars, then we destroy them, and then if they're lucky enough to die, comes the resurrection and restoration, albeit posthumously.

Terry Karney @ 290... Me am glad you made it back.

I was reading a news story on Jackson's death, and came across what I think must be two of the dumbest sentences I have ever seen:

"Cardiac arrest is an abnormal heart rhythm that stops the heart from pumping blood to the body. It can occur after a heart attack or be caused by other heart problems."

The Stoopid! It burns! It burns!

In regards to Michael Jackson, I really wonder what will happen to his kids. By all accounts I've ever heard they've never gone to school, and have never had a normal life. Their lives are going to change dramatically now.

RE MJackson:

The range of reactions I've seen on blog entries in amazing.

On one hand . . . well, no real true-fan mourning, but much wistful appreciation.

On the other hand . . . no-holds-barred visceral contempt for a kiddie-diddler. Some so spiteful I wonder if the posters were once victims.

#294: That is a very good question. Jackson had the money and prestige-power to warp his own life. To what extent did his narcissism compel him to warp his own kids? I really hope they get help, and some breathing room and a chance to be normal.

Terry (#290), do you have half a tank of petrol, and were you wearing sunglasses?
Glad to hear you're home safe. Overnight we had a terrible example of 'just one of those goddammed things'. (Milperra is getting to be a bad placename.)

Is not "home", but rather visit. On Tues. I am back in Tenn.

But it is good to be here (in the hospitable domicile of TomB). I was last in Palo Alto a year ago. I have some places to visit for photos, and am going to be running my intro speech in my head.

Also buying a hat, and generally treating it as something of a vacation.

Bruce Arthurs @293: I can't decide if that's better or worse than "Cardiac arrest is a very serious life-threatening condition" which I heard on TV last night.

Re: Michael Jackson, I just listened to Childhood, the song he described in an interview as the most autobiographical one he'd ever written. Mawkish it may be, and far from his best work, but it had me bawling at the second line, to my surprise.

A talented, lonely man. I hope his kids will be ok.

Serge@217: Merci :-)

We’re sad to report that Andy Hughes, the acclaimed British DJ and producer, tragically passed away on June 12th due to what is being described as a “short illness.”The Middlesex native was 44-years-old. His passing was formally announced today in a press release issued by WME Entertainment, the U.S. agency that represents The Orb, a band Hughes was a member throughout the 1990s.

... and ... for content and straight lines DNA Lounge vs prohibitioners

Fragano @285: Thanks! I don't know why I always want to capitalize that "B."

CHip @286: By my estimate "Merlin" - IF we're just basing it on the buildings is 8 to 10 centuries later than the "historical" Uther/Arthur. Which is why I got frustrated with the mixing of styles.

The costuming is inconsistent, I can't decide what century they think this story is set in. It's a hell of a note when Kostner's "Robin Hood" looks more accurate...sigh.

My partner wanted to watch it...I spent the time willing myself not to throw something at the TV set.

Last, but not least, *Arthur* built Camelot, not Uther.

I am about to enter a longish period of mostly-away-from-the-computer. We have ApolloCon this weekend, after which I will be at FiestaCon, then on a 10-day vacation to some of the Western national parks, then traveling to the DC area for a weekend and back. I'll have a laptop with me, but time and connectivity may both be limited. See you in late July!

The comments about "Merlin" reminds me I should catch the miniseries where Sam Neill plays Merlin. He was the best thing in the whole affair. Martin Short wasn't.

"You've tricked me, Merlin."
"Come, come, Uther. I am a wizard, that's my business."

Openthreadily: Any reports from Fourth Street Fantasy Convention?

Epacris @305:
It was fabulous - my very first con, and I had a great time. Lots of chewy goodness (not the least of which was our hostess' mixed nut toffee, the best I've had in ages). Great panels, great venue, and a friendlier bunch of people (esp to n00b wallflowers) you'd have to go far to find.

My recent spate of double-posting may be down to a fault in my mouse, leading to spurious, and very fast, double-clicks. It's also associated with a very slow response from ML.

Epacris @ 305: This was the first Con I've been to that was focused on writing, and the first con of any kind I had been to in nearly 20 years.

The small size made it incredible. Everyone went to the same panels, and even though I'm not a writer, I gleaned huge insights into the process, and will be a better reader for the experience. Everyone was willing to take us newbies us their wing, so there was never a lack of conversation partners.

I can't even count the number of interesting people I met, including our hosts and several others from Making Light. The nightly sing-alongs were awesome fun. Patrick, Teresa, and Elise were a joy to watch together, and you missed a group rendition of "City of New Orleans" that will live forever...

I can't wait for next years' 4th Street...

Edward, Melody--curses, I had no idea you were there! Look me up next year...and Epacris, you need to come too.

Because misery (and Missouri) loves company, I thought I'd share with everyone that our house here in KC was broken into this morning, while I was up here in my office getting ready to go to work. Paula had gone over to our friend John's to continue her archaeological work at 9a, and when I came down at 10 to put on my shoes to go to work, I found the front doors open, the air conditioner in the living room window on the porch and the bucket of change on the side table missing.

I retreated upstairs and called the authorities, then Paula, who asked after her laptop. It was, of course, gone. I figure the burglar had grabbed it when they heard me moving upstairs and scrammed, thus missing the camera on the floor under the desk, and not getting a chance to go through Margene's office.

Everyone, including the felines, are fine, if shaken. Paula will be back posting here once we get her a computer. Getting real tired of this crap.

Dr Paisley @ 310 ...
I'm glad everybody's okay -- but having the house broken into just plain old sucks! I hope there were backups too...

In other questionable-neighborhood news (and not to downplay your stress, Dr Paisley) I have officially Moved In. First night in The House, tonight. I figured, what the heck, I have a kitchen, I have a working shower (if not a shower wall, mind you) -- this will motivate me. I have five days until the family arrives at JFK, so it has to be looking like a civilized residence by then. Doesn't have to be pretty or renovated, just clean and functional.

So. The dog and I are finally sleeping here tonight.

I grew up on a farm, so I'm pretty sure I would have found the noise here irritating back in the 80's. But after four years in Puerto Rico, I now find it nearly eerily silent.

Erik @ 175 (airships with sails) - it works esthetically, but not physically. I mean, Up. Which has a house on balloons, with sails and talking dogs.

Also, all up above there, thanks for the karma about my blog. It makes it all easier!

If you decide to fly your house around the neighborhood, please do take pictures. Getting the proper permits beforehand might be problematic, though.

I think the point of being able to fly around in your house is that local permits become superfluous.

I have to admit, the idea of flying this house around is in fact one of my favorite fantasies. The carriage house would be the shuttlecraft; the big house probably couldn't go dirtside very often. Also, the carriage house has the advantage of a very large cargo bay on the bottom.

It could work!

If any of the Fluorosphere construct a Castle Wulfenbach, I would really like to help out. I can't swear I'd be useful for anything, but I'm a trainable minion.

A friend of mine asked me for a list of stories with various characteristics. The one I couldn't come up with was "has no male speaking roles". I can't think of a one. "Female characters with no romantic attachments" were also thin on the ground.

Any suggestions?

TexAnne -- Dang it! I knew there were probably people I'd missed... I was the fat, mostly bald guy with the squeaky Frankenstein footwear and the peace sign jungle hat...

Even if flight was out of the question, you'd think a carriage house would be able to at least roll a bit.

Michael @ 312: What city is this house in again? I've been reading your house blog and wanting to see the Google street-level views. I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want to tell more than generally, but I'd love to see.

Diatryma @ 317 ...
I thought at least one of Sheri Tepper's books met the "no male speaking roles" criteria -- but I'm being rather too lazy to go dig and figure out which one.

re: #317, Diatryma

A friend of mine asked me for a list of stories with various characteristics. The one I couldn't come up with was "has no male speaking roles". I can't think of a one. "Female characters with no romantic attachments" were also thin on the ground.

"No romantic attachments": Telzey Amberdon. fx:brooding Ash?

"Has no male speaking parts": Sorry.

"Has no male speaking parts" ... I'd say Nicola Griffith's Ammonite, since that features a planet that HAS no males, but the intro bits getting our protagonist there probably have quite a few talking men.

Any fluorospherians that live in or are familiar with the dining scene in Madison? Despite it being only 5 hours away, I'm embarrassed to admit that I've never been. I'll be in Verona for training 2 weeks in July, luckily with a couple good friends that also enjoy adventurous eating, and anything to enliven the experience would be much appreciated. Please send to mdnims at gmail dot com. Thanks!

Edward, 318: I think we talked at the dead-dog party! Let's see...I was one of the knitters, and I wore a magnificent purple sweater on Saturday.

"No male speaking parts" is ideal; "male roles minimized the same way female roles often are" is also useful. I kind of burned out my sortingbrain putting together the rest of the list and I can't concentrate on it any more.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Wyman @320, my wife has a bit of Internet phobia and was horrified when I originally put the interior shots on Flickr. So the blog has no identifying information at all, not even regarding region. Not even the dog's name. But since the Fluorosphere is already contaminated with identifying information, I can tell you here that it is in Richmond, Indiana. And the dog's name is Jack. Although, post-naming, it turned out she was a Jackie.

Female characters with no romantic attachments: "A Thief in Korianth," by C.J. Cherryh.

Actually there are tons of them if you don't qualify it further into ADULT female characters; Gretel has no romantic attachments, and neither does the unnamed title character of "The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf."

Molly Millions doesn't have any romantic attachments during the present-day story in Neuromancer, but she tells of having had them.

Cherryh is rich turf for female characters with no romantic attachments, actually. Signy Mallory has sex occasionally, but she's never romantically attached in any of the books in which she appears (Downbelow Station, Merchanter's Luck, at least one more that I can't think of now). Raen a Sul hant Meth-Maren has an affair in Serpent's Reach, but it's more of a chess game than a romance, and she kills the guy by the end; her link with Jim is clearly not romantic at the beginning, and ambiguous by the end, but it looks more like a close friendship to me.

I've definitely read stories with no male speaking parts, but can't recall any titles now. Are they supposed to be in Our Beloved Genre, or do other kinds of fiction count?

#327: BWAH-Hah-hah! We've tricked it out of you, Michael. Your worst fears are manifest. You may as well leave the keys under the mat and prepare Jackie for a life of servitude as a Carney Dog.

She'd make a good carney dog, too. Terriers can jump!

My day's work:

Fireworks Stand Flickr Set

Oh, gawd, I spent $109.00 on fireworks today.

Most of them are intended as gifts.

Yes, I've become the Cool Eccentric Uncle who comes from out of state with a trunk full of eye candy.

Open threadiness: Can anyone point me towards an actual photograph of the Winslow? (Bill Higgins? Any suggestions?) I've got plenty of Foglioverse illustrations, and they're easy to find on-line, but photographs of the original, not so much. I remember getting to meet him (and Phil) at a Minicon, many years ago.

Yes, yes, nefarious porpoises, all that good stuff.

Thanks Michael. You're up in my friend Mad Mike's neck of the woods.

Stefan Jones #331: I'm also from New York -- when I moved down to Virginia, I was rather entertained to see fireworks sold in the supermarkets. Not that I've been buying -- I've still got all my fingers, and I'd like to keep them, thankyouverymuch. ;-) OK, I might get a few crackers and/or sparklers this year, but I'm not nearly as pyrophiliac as I once was.

Diatryma @317/326: Do short stories count? If so, Octavia Butler has one in her collection Bloodchild and Other Stories called "Speech Sounds" (I believe) where no adult male has a speaking part. Due to plot points, this does not mean that there are no major male characters, but none of them speak.

Another story in that collection (I don't remember the title, and my copy is four states away) fulfills your "minimized male roles."

Heck, for interesting short stories with non-standard gender roles, Bloodchild is a pretty good place to look.

Melody @324: I spend more time lurking than speaking here, but I do live in Madison (and work in Verona--are you coming to visit us?). What kind of food are you looking for, and what kind of prices? The Old Fashioned has great burgers, cheese curds, and sandwiches, and isn't super-expensive. El Dorado does interesting Mexican/Tex-Mex/Southwestern food, but costs a little more. The Weary Traveler does tasty hippy-bar-food, and has great atmosphere.

Also, if you're free on Wednesday evening, there is a free concert on the capital square downtown. It'll be packed, but is a great opportunity to see something interesting.

Diatryma #326:

Does Ted Chiang's "Exhalation" qualify? It's a short story told from a non-human/non-gendered PoV & is available for download. Scratching my head to come up with examples of "has no male speaking roles" in gendered settings.

David Harmon @ 334:

I saw some fireworks at the grocery store today. This being California, they never have any really exciting ones (for good reason). I was surprised to learn a couple years ago that they don't even sell real sparklers here.

Please do not buy anything from poorly-situated fireworks stands.

Finally back home briefly before Fiestacon. I was just in Regina for the week. The trip home was a little less fun than usual.

KeithS: Oh dear Ghu, the people at that stand are screaming for trouble, aren't they? Want to bet they also have no extinguishers (or not enough)?

P J Evans: In that context, I doubt a fire hose would be "enough"!

Every once in a while I get sad and nostalgic for my parent's farm (Sold in 2002) where we could shoot off fireworks to our hearts' content and not get busted (if it had been wet enough). There were a couple of years where we just sat on the patio and watched the cities to the north of the house shoot off their fireworks display.

Then I remember all the other stuff. Nowadays we usually visit a friend who lives next to where her city shoots off their fireworks.

Hey, has anyone else seen "Man Versus Cartoon" on Tru TV? The Energetic Materials Testing guys in New Mexico are going through Wile E. Coyote's schemes to catch the Roadrunner, one by one. Tonight, we've had a stuntman swung by a cable over the road while holding a harpoon, and dropping a huge boulder on the running target. They already did rocket-shoes last week!

Man. Old house + Google = far too many geek moments (trying to date the razor blades in the wall). But at least I'm still having fun, a month into the project.

Second night here!

KeithS @ 377 ...
I felt dreadfully stodgy telling the kids to stop playing with fireworks -- but I'm not willing to put up with incendiaries in my tree canopy... or in the power lines.

KeithS @ 377 ...
I felt dreadfully stodgy telling the kids to stop playing with fireworks -- but I'm not willing to put up with incendiaries in my tree canopy... or in the power lines.

In fact, emphatically stodgy ;)

P J Evans @ 338:

If you look closely and find the fireworks stand's proprietor in the photo, you'll see something that might be a cigarette hanging out of his mouth too.

J Austin @ 341:

I have not heard of this at all. Let me know when they get to testing the instant tornado pellets.

Michael Roberts @ 342:

I've been quiet about it, but I'm enjoying reading your adventures as well.

xeger @ 343/344:

I'm all for having fun setting the right things on fire. The problem is that it's all too easy to set all the wrong things on fire, and much harder to put out.

Keith @ 346 ...
I suppose I shouldn't misread you, and argue that it's much easier for some folk to get put out than others?

California and Oregon fireworks are deliberately limited to the "don't shoot stuff into the air" variety. No rockets, mortars, or roman candles. Also nothing that explodes.

Everything is a shower of some sort or another, limited to a 10' altitude.

So, little chance of stuff that sets trees on fire.

But still darn cool.

The brilliantly animated intro to the new Beatles Rockband game will be of great interest to any fan of the Beatles, or of animation.

Diatryma @ 317: Huit Femmes has no male speaking roles, as long as you don't mind that it was quite deliberately constructed so.

TexAnne @ 325 -- Next year we have to make up some Making Light name tags with our handles on them...

In the meantime, DDB put up some FABULOUS pics of 4th Street HERE.

Let me know if you're in any of them! He caught me during a magical moment on Sunday when our ML hosts and Elise almost had me in (happy) tears...

O LEARNED MASSES.... I once again turn to your wisdom... seeking to identify an old short story.

The Premise was genetically engineered microscopic humans were seeded onto a planet of puddles and forgotten about. The humans set out to conquer "space" by designing a 2-inch-long "ship" that actually only gets them to another puddle a few feet away... They believe they have conquered "space", but one persons questioning closes the story...

Don't know the author, title, year or anthology it appeared in... any help from The Mighty Assembly? Thank you!

edward oleander @351: "Surface Tension" by James Blish, first pub. Galaxy Magazine Aug. 1952, according to the copyright info in front of the Asimov-edited anthology Where Do We Go From Here? (Fawcett 1971?).

Thank you Julie!!! I would have never thought of the title, much less the rest... Now I sleep in peace, and begin my quest in the morning...
:-)
:-)
:-)

re: #352, Julie, "Surface Tension"

Perhaps best appreciated with the other pantropy
stories, collected in eg this handy volume of "The Seedling Stars" (Arrow, 1972).

Joseph M. @335: You don't happen to work at a certain Intergalactic Headquarters, do you?? This is the first visit for most of us, so we're really up for anything. We have a reasonable per diem ($28 for dinner I believe), and so were going to look for a few nice ($30-$50) places for dinner, spend a bit of our own money, and have some fun. There is a small subgroup of us that enjoy adventurous dining. The other two have kids, so we're really looking for places they wouldn't normally go - i.e. adult food/bevs.

I was thinking maybe a good steakhouse one night, Asian another (can't be only sushi, as one of us doesn't care for it), Indian or French or South/Central American one day? Probably only dinner, as the timing will most likely prevent off-campus lunch. Happily, we've been told that there is some good food on site.

Is that free concert every Weds? I believe we have one evening set aside for Slightly Impaired Dominoes (a variant of Drunken Dominoes for people that need to be alert for classes in the morning), but would appreciate other activities. We'll be there the first and last weeks in July. Thanks for the tips - much appreciated!

Good Lord, heresiarch @349, that's fantastic! Especially the end.... chilling.

Open-thready question here: we're adopting an at-least-partly Norwegian Forest cat, and although her shelter name, Cali, presumably short for Calista, "most beautiful", is reasonably accurate, it doesn't reflect her heritage. Is there anything nice and euphonious that might come from the general Scandinavian tradition? She's dilute tortoise shell (apricot and medium grey instead of rust and grey-black) on the head, back and tail, and white on the underside, lower legs and lower face. Huge paws with giant toe fur tufts, and a fairly wide aspect generally.

Finally! A use for the Segway...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYykpRRuHQM

Caution, the music is by Philip Glass.

Cadbury.

Pbbbt! to you, Cadbury! I LIKE Philip Glass.

In other news, one of the most grating voices ever has been tragically stilled. He was the same age as Michael Jackson, oddly enough. There's some suspicion he may have taken a knock on the head during a rough plane landing.

Xopher @ #359, I'm a little ashamed of my first thought: that May died of excess verbiage expressed on behalf of dubious products.

joann @357: Are you sure that "Cali" isn't just short for "calico" in this case? The Valkyrie name "Kára" may sound reasonably similar to "Cali" if she already responds to that name, and may even have an apposite meaning if the possible "curly" meaning is interpreted as "floofy".

Or to move sideways from "Calista" as "most beautiful", maybe "Freya", semi-depending on whether she is in fact inclined to create frays (either on the upholstery or as general chaos).

Hey, Linkmeister, mine was that a lifetime of shouting finally popped his heart.

There are suggestions that Billy Mays died of a head injury. He got banged in the noggin during a rough landing the previous day.

I think Mr. Mays performed a valuable service. When you heard his voice you knew it was time to turn off the TV and go outside and play.

Paula Helm Murray, #340, I live about four very long blocks from where the city's fireworks are set off, so I sometimes just pull a chair out on the sidewalk in front of my condo for a while to watch.

President Obama wants your advice on how the government should keep its secrets.

Diatryma@317: I forget whether Brin's execrable Glory Season is the only one of the world-without-men stories to not have men intrude. There is also a short-short in which the punchline is that a lottery for places in a 30-seat starship came up with 29 women, but I'm blanking on the title.

<advt>Edward@351 et al: if a 1972 paperback can't be found on the book services, see Works of Art from NESFA. Unfortunately, I don't recall the names of the other pantropy stories or whether they were included; "Surface Tension" is the most famous, but it's also the last chronologically of a short sequence.</advt>

Melody: rule 1 for Madison is to go to the capitol square (preferably early enough to tour the capitol, which is ... impressive ...) and look around. I'll second the Old Fashioned if you're looking for modest prices; they also had a lot of interesting local-produce plates that didn't look to fit a single stomach. High-end is right next to them: L'Etoile and Harvest(?), which sound like they're out of your budget (can run over $100 for a full meal), but do visit Cafe Soleil in the morning for pastries. (If you're there Saturday ask for Spice Girl Wheels, which weren't selling well enough on weekdays.) If you're interested in beer (and also good modest-priced food) go out the corner opposite State St. to the Great Dane brewpub; they have outdoor seating, which isn't nearly as noisy as indoors. Going down State St. gives you a spectrum; the capitol end has several expense-account places (cf above), but the further half is what you'd expect to see running into a state university. There's a good Japanese place partway down, a tapas place near the capitol end (close to the restaurant in the movie-theater lobby, which has some good stuff, not all well-executed), and a non-Spanish tapas place "Al Fresco" after ~8 on top of the art museum. (Regular-dinner prices looked a bit high, but I had 2 $5 plates and a $5 desert and was content.) There are also \two/ Himalayan places surprisingly near the capitol. Sorry to not have more names -- I get there just for Wiscon and tend to wander rather than targeting. Big point is that if you're not looking for specific ethnicities, there are a \lot/ of places, at all price ranges, that do local produce, a lot of it wonderful -- the cheese is nothing like what is labeled "Wisconsin" in the supermarket.

Perhaps Mays' extensive body of work will one day provide test cases to force the FCC to reconsider regulating the offensive loudness of television commercials.

Marilee #364: President Obama wants your advice on how the government should keep its secrets.

Share escrow of all US government secrets between the EFF, the ACLU, and Amnesty International, giving them the right to declassify secrets by unanimous agreement.

Earl Cooley III @ #366, if local car dealers haven't forced that issue already, there's no hope.

I blame it on a cheap LA dealer in the 50s who began making his own ads rather than pay agencies.

... and a shout out to one of the MakingLight medbits on Tom Reynold's blog about dealing with heat[0] waves...

[0] Typo corrected from 'head waves', although ones head tends to wave in a heat wave...

Melody @355: Yeah, that's my base. It's a nice place.

About those restaurants: for steak, I'd recommend either the Chop House or the Tornado Club--both nice, but the Tornado is a bit more expensive. My favorite restaurant in town is Fresco, on top of the art museum. As CHip mentioned, they do good small plates, but I like their full menu--yes, it's a bit more than some places but significantly less than the really expensive places in town (which CHip also mentioned).

For ethnic, State Street has two Himalayan restaurants, a Turkish place, an Afghan restaurant, and most likely at least one more place that I've forgotten. I also haven't been to a bad Indian restaurant yet. If you want other Asian, Lao Laan Xang is well regarded (on the east side) and I really like the Imperial Garden on the far west side. State street also has at least one combo Japanese restaurant (sushi plus other menu items).

About the concert schedule: a quick google for the concerts on the square calendar tells me that there's one all Wednesdays in July. It looks like July 29 is the last one for this summer.

If you get a chance, take a look around downtown Madison. I really like the town.

CHip @365: I forget whether Brin's execrable Glory Season is the only one of the world-without-men stories to not have men intrude.

There ARE men in Glory Season, actually -- both native and starfaring It's a story that falls under the the What These People Need is a Terran trope (variant of '... is a Honky,' which I linked to).

Dammit, Eilliott Mason @ 371 ... you owe me a large pot of caffeinated beverage for the morning, thanks to that link following...

To xeger @ 372 I offer no apologies -- I'm a unionized Foul Tempter, I am; they'd revoke my card for any such action!

I should warn anyone else who hasn't clicked through yet that 'wikisafari' is far from a strong enough term for the sort of compulsive link-following that that site, TVTropes.org, tends to inspire in anyone even vaguely geeky.

Joseph M @ 370: Your list of interesting restaurants in Madison startled me, but then I remembered that it has been (mumble, mumble,..., wow!) about 25 years since I graduated and left. I recall a rather bleak restaurant selection back then.

Elliott Mason @ 373 ... I ask for no apologies ... just enough caffeinated beverage to get through the day :P

Speaking of awesomeness and link following, Neil Cameron's A-Z of Awesomeness is well worth the follow!

Melody,

Two weeks in Verona...I can guess where you'll be, as a good chunk of my friends either work for or have worked for a certain company. Are you or any of your friends knitters? If so, you must stop in at The Sow's Ear.

I can second most of Joseph's recommendations, including Concert on the Square (or Wino's on the Lawn, as my sister likes to call it...lots of picnics featuring a bottle or two of grape). I love the Old Fashioned and the Weary Traveler especially.

My favorite dining clusters are State St. & the Capital Square, Williamson (Willy) St., and Atwood.

The squash curry at Lao Laan Xang is a favorite of mine (my 2 y/o nephow loves it, too). They have two locations, both are good.

For fancy, other options if you are feeling posh: Harvest and L'Etoile (both on the Capital Square). Both do locally sourced, seasonal dishes. (Very Alice Waters.)

For Japanese downtown, I recommend Takara on State, but others prefer Wasabi (just off of state). I am completely in love with the chicken peanut stew on injera bread at Buraka, a west African place on lower state (a few doors down from the Afghani place).

Oh man, my mind is brimming over with "Oh! You've got to try this!" places, such as Monty's Blue Plate Diner (across the street from one of the Lao Laan Xang locations and yet another Himalaya place) or Restaurant Muramoto or...you get the picture.

(I am very much in love with my city, especially in the summer, and can rattle on about it for ages.)

Two good resources are http://www.thedailypage.com/ and http://www.madisonatoz.com/

If you are ever looking for something to do in the evenings, besides the Concerts on the Square is the Memorial Union Terrace, which is a total gem. And there are farmer's markets all over the place, including a big one every Saturday morning at the Capital Square.

Ok, I'm going to try to stop waxing enthusiastic, but feel free to email me with any questions. kayjayoh (at) gmail

Many thanks to Joseph M., CHip and Vicki for the recommendations! CHip, I know what you're talking about - Oleander and I found a dingy little cheese shop N of Eau Claire on one of our drives that sold the Emmentaler of the gods; damned if we've ever been able to find it again.

CHip @#365: No, there are men with speaking parts; one of the plot points is the protagonist meeting and befriending a man.

Kayjayoh @377: Thanks much! When does the farmer's market open on Sat, do you know? I adore our Mpls one, but the thought of trying to get Oleander up at 4am to go is muy chuckilicious.

CHip #365: local produce, a lot of it wonderful -- the cheese is nothing like what is labeled "Wisconsin" in the supermarket.

Sounds like you Wisconsinites keep the good stuff for yourselves....

Elliot #373: to follow up on "'wikisafari' is far from a strong enough term", they actually have a trope for that. :-)

Also, Re: Teresa's particle on Ferrofluids, you can buy the stuff here. (Scan down for "MagnaView Fluid".) Warning: Various comments found along the way, indicate that ferrofluid permanently stains clothing and such. I also found some pages on making it at home, but it seems that making even lesser-quality ferrofluid is a finicky business.

Carrie S @ 379... men with speaking parts

...become dicktion teachers?

The review of the new Transformers movie (see sidebar) calls it Transformers: ROTF

I know they mean "revenge of the fallen" but I can't help reading it as "Rolling On The Floor."

A bit late to the announcements table (or early, depending on if you count several Open Threads ago...), but I will most definitely be at Anticipation. Pictures of me abound, of course, particularly on Facebook, but I will also be wearing my Fluorosphere button more often than not, so.

Can't wait to see many of you again, or for the first time (where applicable)!

So...has everybody here got their votes in, yet?

I can't say that I'm completely ready, but here is my panel schedule at FiestaCon/WesterCon.

Skwid, 384: Hurray! I wish I had a Fluorosphere button. And no, I haven't voted yet--I'm still stewing about Best Novel. There's the one I liked, and then the one I admired. I think I'm going to vote for the one I liked, since I'm pretty sure the one I admired is going to win anyway.

Just a reminder: the deadline for Hugo voting is July 3^rd, 2009, 23:59 EST. It's already too late for snailmail votes.

Ah, so MagnaView is a ferrofluid. I didn't know that, although I've met it. It was being painted on an unwrapped dead floppy (8", IIRC), for purposes of seeing the magnetic domains.

#317 Diatryma

There are some books where the majority of the speaking characters are female such as A Brother's Price by Wen Spencer--the society is one where the gender ratio is many females, one male. The males are kept mostly sequestered...

In Legacy of Chanur the majority of speaking roles are female--the kif is male presumably (not really certain that, though...), Hallan Meras is male and outnumbered, the gods-be-rotten mahe pest Captain is male, the stsho are essentially hermaphroditic, and Hilfy, Chur, Fala, and the two other Chanur or Chanur-sept original crew of Chanur's Legacy, are all female.

The other Chanur books, Pyanfar Chanur and her original crew are all female--but the series has a number of ironic comments involved regarding geneder roles, and Py's husband winds up on the ship starting off as a mix of refugee/guest. The stsho as noted above, are not strictly gendered--the one that Py deals with is "neuter." The gendered ones tend to stay "in the nest" and aren't out in public especially aren't out dealing with members of other species. There are kif (see above), the mahedo'sat are in both genders, though Goldtooth nd the other most promindent of them are male--two ship captains. There is the second in commnd who's female to one of them. The t'ca, chi, knn, etc., "male' nd "female" don't immediately apply to.

There's one human, who doesn't do much talking.

Earl Cooley III @ 387 ...
Argh! Already?!?

OMG LOL@@@!!!!!

[no, not spam... but I'm spectacularly amused by this take on West Side Story... ]

389: The problem with _A Brother's Price_ is that it changes one thing about a world but doesn't change anything else. It's just an excuse to put a male character in the traditional Harlequin-romance heroine role, with a side of "what these people need is a MAN." And the multiple-wife thing doesn't seem right somehow (bearing in mind that I'm not poly myself, I just know poly people).

TexAnne @391 in re "What these people need is an X" - the original Tarzan series by Edgar Rice Burroughs is basically one long showpiece for that trope, as I'm sure you know (but it reminded me of it).

Even as a Hoosier boy growing up in the 70's in a lily-white community and reading these books in the 80's at an all-male college, it reeked for me when I hit the second or third book, with Amazons, where Tarzan rectifies the problem with their society by teaching the Amazon women to be properly deferential to their men (let alone all the racist stuff throughout the series, but one comes into Tarzan kind of expecting that).

Blew my mind, and it's never been quite the same since.

Things I've Made Recently.

Diatryma, #317: Female characters without romantic attachments -- Janet Kagan's HellSpark has several, including the viewpoint character.

Michael Roberts @ #393, I somehow missed the Tarzan books when I was a teenager, but I did try some of the Gor ones. I think I read two or three (not in order, so maybe one of them was Slave Girl of Gor or similar) before deciding that I had more respect for the other half of the species than Norman did, so I didn't need to read any more of them.

Or maybe I didn't like Gor enough to continue.

Elvish Light

OK, not really Elvish.

There's a lot that feels slightly wrong about that self-publishing story.

But I can't avoid the feeling that PoD could satisfy many of the people who fall for self-publishing scams. They have their printed book, it can even be 'on sale', and how is that different from pubbing a fanzine?

Well, maybe lots of ways, but I've done enough in the world of fanzines that I suppose I could call myself a self-published author. Back in the eighties, I was writing fiction going into fanzines, and PoD tech instead of a half-inch wad of Gestetner paper looks quite possible.

The scams will be scams whatever the printing tech used. But I have a novel written, and I'm not sure how a PoD copy would be any more a breach of Yog's Law than paying to print a stack of paper with a double-spaced manuscript to post to a publisher's slush-pile.

Re: "female-oriented" stories: What about Joan D. Vinge?

Sherri Tepper's magnificent Grass.

Love, C.

There are a few books out there about Tesla. Is there one in particular that people would recommend?

Dave Bell @ 397:

Leaning on comments made at ML over the years as well as my own feelings, I don't think that printing would satisfy that urge. Just going to a printer, whether it's one that does PoD or small runs at a time, doesn't have that same cachet as being a Published Author whose books you can buy at a bookstore. (We know that neither is necessarily true in any meaningful sense, but they don't because they've been had.)

For you, writing for the joy of writing seems to be its own reward. For some others, writing is enjoyable as well or they feel that they have a story they need to tell, but they also want that additional step of being recognized. Not that you don't get recognition from a fanzine, of course, but it's not necessarily perceived as being quite the same.

This is weird. I tried to post something about Nikola Tesla and it got sent to limbo. Let's see if the same thing happens again.

In case people are interested... Not only does Eureka's new season premiere on July 10, but Leverage's is on July 15.

I'm very upset that the Stonewall 40 thread had to be closed, and I think there are several people with cause to be ashamed.

I will say no more on the topic.

No comments for nearly two hours. Is everything being held for moderation now?

Re restaurants in Madison:

The two Himalayan restaurants on State St. that others have mentioned are:

Himal Chuli -- traditional Nepali and Tibetan food

Chautara -- experimental variations on Nepali and Indian food, run by the son of the couple who run Himal Chuli. Hands down my favorite restaurant in Madison at the time I left (2000), and it seemed to be just as good when I visited four weeks ago...

Also on State Street:
Buraka -- mentioned by Kayjayoh @ 377; it's actually an East African restaurant (primarily Ethiopian and Somali cuisine; the owner is Ethiopian, I think). The actual restaurant is downstairs, below street level, but I think they have tables outside on the sidewalk as well.

Kabul -- the Afghan restaurant (almost?) next door to Buraka.

Sunprint -- down at the University end of the street (State St. runs between the University campus and Capitol Square); good for breakfast/brunch.

I have good memories of El Dorado (not on State St.), as well.

#401: "There are a few books out there about Tesla."

A FEW books about Tesla?

"Is there one in particular that people would recommend?"

That's a tricky request.

To put it bluntly . . . Tesla tends to attract weirdos. A fair amount of what is written about him appeals to conspiracy fans and/or uncritical wonder-seekers. Even ignoring the stuff published on mimeograph, you have to be selective.

That said, I'm pretty sure that this:

http://www.amazon.com/Tesla-Man-Time-Margaret-Cheney/dp/0743215362

(The "people who bought this also bought" list for this is . . . instructive.)

Is the pretty-good book about Tesla I read a few years back. While giving him full cred for his genius and contributions, it doesn't gush, or gloss, or buy into the conspiracies.

Stefan Jones @ 408... Thanks. I've become more curious about Tesla as a result of research for that steampunk-movie talk. Did you know that there is a comic-book called "Five Fists of Science", in which Tesla and Mark Twain are in a battle against the evil forces of Edison and Marconi, who are building a mysterious tower in a town called Innsmouth? I haven't read it yet, but the premise souns like fun.

As for Tesla attracting the fringe & conspiracy people...

Did you notice that the device shown on the linked book's cover looks like a Dalek?
Coincidence?
Conspiracy?
You be the judge.

#400 Constance
Grass squicked me--not as much as North Shore/South Shore did, but squicked me nonetheless. Ick things and worse happened to characters I cared about and the survivors and their values and goals and such weren't the ones that I was that keen on. (I don't remember much in the way of details, and don't -want- to!)

Of course, mileage various a LOT among readers--different experiences, different innate and different trained perceptions and expectations and interests and perspectives, etc.

KeithS @402

There's a buzz in somebody else deciding that your work is worth the effort of getting out there, whether it's a fanzine or a website.

But having to pay them?

My first publications were outside the fannish mainstream—Blake's Seven fanzines and some stuff for the Tolkien Society—and so I tend not to include the fannish usual as a part of the core definition of a fanzine.

I remember being actually edited. Somebody was going to have to copy-type my text. Now, either I'm incredibly better as a writer, or the text just gets a cut-and-paste from one file-format to another (some headers and footers are added).

Dave Bell #398: I'm not sure how a PoD copy would be any more a breach of Yog's Law

It's not, of course -- in fact, I remember someone around here amending Yog's Law with "In vanity publishing, books flow toward the author". The scam is in conflating vanity and commercial publishing -- promising actual distribution through the general publishing system, when (at best) the scammer can provide only the books.

Musical open threadiness: Comparative Videos 101. Mission: find Kingston Trio performances on YouTube and match them with performances of the same songs by other artists. See what develops.

For example: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. Roberta Flack may have created the standard, but that was ten years after it was first performed (by the woman who inspired the song, no less: Peggy Seeger, Pete's half-sister).

I think it says something is wrong with me that, when I saw a Michael Jackson news item titled "What Was Michael Worth?", I immediately thought of Mary Worth.

Dave Bell @ 411:

Most printers don't tell you that you and your book are special; there's no third party giving you validation. The scammers do that, and they misrepresent all their fees as the natural state of things.

I think that most people are basically trusting and trustworthy. Scammers prey on this by saying things that seem reasonable to people who don't know how things work.

it's actually an East African restaurant

D'oh! I knew that. It's kind of like my other left...I am wretched with directionals.

I don't remember when the Farmer's Market opens, because I'm never up that early, but I know it goes until 2. I like going near the end, because you can get good deals on stuff that people don't want to have to pack up and take home. And while you are at the market, you can also stop it at Fromagination (cheese store) and Candinas (chocolate shop----if you are into chocolate, the Madison area have at least 7 fine chocolatiers. Markus Candinas' main shop is in Verona, near where you will be.)
There is also and *actual* west African restaurant open now on Atwood. Africana. I haven't been there yet, but I've heard decent reviews.

Diatryma @317, 326

If short stories will do, look up When It Changed, by Joanna Russ. I think from memory it meets the #317 condition, it certainly meets the weaker #326 condition.

JHomes.

Kayjayoh, when it is so stinkin' hot here, going to the farmer's market early is necessary. (we've had a streak of 95 degree+ days).

We had guests for dinner Saturday, and when I managed to oversleep, I went to the next best thing. We have a (fairly) nearby supermarket that has the best produce section in town. It's priced fairly, and it's in air conditioning.

On the Fourth of July, I may cruise down there early to try and snag some treats for dinner. They're having a tomato festival. And our temperatures have moderated to 'normal' summer temps rather than extreme ones.

It’s official.

There will be a gathering of Fluorospherians at Fiestacon/Westercon, on the evening of the Fourth of July, after the fireworks. Lurker Nadia is organizing it. There’ll be cheese and crackers, dip, soft drinks, plus wine and/or tea.

The location will be someone’s hotel room, to be announced early that day. Look for a drawing of a cartoon lightbulb in the various message areas.

Due to the occasion, “1776” may be playing in the background, or your favorite scenes anyway. Of course, you mustn't assume, because I'm the one writing about this, that Nadia fears that, if she were the one to do it, people'd run their quill pens through it.

It’s official.

There will be a gathering of Fluorospherians at Fiestacon/Westercon, on the evening of the Fourth of July, after the fireworks. Lurker Nadia is organizing it. There’ll be cheese and crackers, dip, soft drinks, plus wine and/or tea.

The location will be someone’s hotel room, to be announced early that day. Look for a drawing of a cartoon lightbulb in the various message areas.

Due to the occasion, “1776” may be playing in the background, or your favorite scenes anyway. Of course, you mustn't assume, because I'm the one writing about this, that Nadia fears that, if she were the one to do it, people'd run their quill pens through it.

JHomes at 417, I thought about "When It Changed" and mentioned it to her, but I don't think it counts-- the men are the plot. They show up, they react, they make the narrator feel small (oh how I love it) and they get their manly manhood all over the story.

Obviously, the list has a Point to it; it's hard to find stories that just happen to be all- or even mostly-female the same way so many are all- or mostly-male. I'm interested to see what she does with it.

Diatryma @ 421... they get their manly manhood all over the story

The penis mightier than the word?

Serge @ #422: OUCH! (How long have you been waiting to use that one?)

Lila @ 423...

How long?
(I'm whistling to keep myself from making the obvious and salacious joke.)

I just came back from running errands, during which I found myself behind a vehicle with bumper sticker that left me wondering.

Dagon surf shop

I tell you, Annette & Frankie's beach movies are getting weirder and weirder.

Serge @419 (&420):

Hooray! And three cheers for Nadia, who should consider commenting as well as lurking*!

-----
* But only if you want to, Nadia.

#422 Serge

The elephant penis [or blue whale penis...] in the livingroom?!

Hmm, I wonder....
Back in the lesbian feminist literature spree of the 1970s and early 1980s, were there any exclusively female SF/F stories/books published?

Or what about Circlet Press lesbian stories?

Mighty Good Road by Melissa Scott which was the last novel that Baen published which she wrote (she changed publishers to Tor), had a lesbian couple as the lead characters, but there were lots of male characters with large roles and speaking parts.

Uh-oh, the Verse Daemon is roused.... first drafting....

The penis in the livingroom
Of "women's" literature
The smug and privileged knowing smirks
On they whose wills concur.

Of women it is not about
The Subject always males,
Central focused smug and vain
Aught else one sees derails.

The penis in the livingroom
The point of worshipped creed
And Patriarchy's grips stays tight
Behold the sacred seed.

A generation past that fought
To change that ancient war
To battle came Diana's bow
That Woman not be whore.

A generation past and gone,
And what now do we see?
Alito, Roberts, Thomas, No!
Scalia, Kennedy.

Injustices who times reverse
Removing hard-fought change,
With feminism murdered cold
And buried not to range.

The penis in the livingroom
Male privilege rampants fill,
It grabbed and still holds central stage,
And women chattel still.

Peter Erwin @407 and Kayjayoh @416:

Thank you once again! My friends were flabbergasted by all of the wonderful info. I didn't even consider some chocolatier visits - they'll be thrilled. We used to visit Chocolat Celeste, a rather nice little shop here in Mpls, but that has fallen by the wayside lately with ROWE.

abi @ 426... Nadia, who should consider commenting as well as lurking

I was thinking the very same thing.

Paula Lieberman @ 427... What's a blue-whale penis doing in your living-room?

I once read a review of a book about sex, which had a chart in it illustrating the actual sizes of the various malehoods hanging around the Earth. Yes, the blue-whale penis meant it had to be a foldout map. That'd probably make some gents feel insignificant. On the other hand, I think the review pointed out that human malehood is among the largest in proportion to the body that carries it around.

#431 Serge
There was an NPR program about blue whales, and it showed blue whale sex-it takes three whales to accomplish, #3 provides assistance. One of the scientists said that he was impotent for days after watching the whales....

Oh, BAH!
That should have been PBS, not NPR, in the previous post!
Bah!

How do you know it when a lurker who doesn't post organizes a gathering?

Raphael @434:
How do you *know* it when a lurker who doesn't post organizes a gathering?

As opposed to an uninvolved stranger with a mad passion for throwing parties?

You walk up to them and say, "Quick! Word association test! What's the first thing that comes to mind when I say 'dinosaur'?"

Abi... Cetacean sodomy?

Paula Lieberman @ 432... It takes three whales? Hmmm... That might explain a few things about what the aliens wanted in Star Trek: The Voyage Home.

#432 ::: Paula Lieberman :::
"There was an NPR program about blue whales, and it showed blue whale sex-it takes three whales to accomplish, #3 provides assistance. One of the scientists said that he was impotent for days after watching the whales...."

He couldn't get one of the whales to help him with that?

Coming soon on the Discovery Channel... "Orked by Orcas"?

Paula Lieberman: #432:

I heard a similar story about the special-effects guys for the Dune movie. Apparently, it was pretty hard to tone down the phallicism of those sandworms.

Paula Lieberman #432: So, if three people get actively involved with each other they can honestly say they had a whale of a good time?

#441
Wailing at Fragano....
On second thought, send him waling over the side....

So this is mainly for Abi but also our hosts and anyone who desires to chime in--

My daughter is going to Oxford for a three-week program and bought a plane ticket for a side excursion to Amsterdam on a whim, without devoting much time to researching it, and is now getting slightly cold feet. How difficult is it for the first-time visitor who's never even been overseas before and doesn't speak any European languages (but has a few years of Japanese)? Are the hostels reasonably safe? Are there places an American traveller can go for help and places to avoid? I'll point her to the thread on living in the Netherlands, but if I recall, that was more about living there than visiting. She's also planning on Paris for Bastille Day weekend, shudder. Her fellow students in this program seem, from her descriptions, to be cookie-cutter Greek-life types, not the type she usually hangs out with, so she was planning to go alone, yikes.

For those of you who are considering an upgrade to version 3.5 of the Firefox web browser, be aware that the Leet Key addon has not yet been updated for compatibility with that version.

ROFLRazzi, on the late Billy Mays.

And now, on a completely different subject, here's a question:

What accounts for the difference between the military and police phonetic alphabets?

Janet Croft @443:
My daughter is going to Oxford for a three-week program...

Dangerous, but not in the way you're thinking. I went to St Andrews for a year, and haven't spent more than two of the years since then in North America.

...and bought a plane ticket for a side excursion to Amsterdam on a whim, without devoting much time to researching it, and is now getting slightly cold feet.

Perfectly understandable, but entirely unnecessary. Amsterdam is a great place to visit. It's very friendly, easily navigated, and the Dutch are kindly and helpful*.

How difficult is it for the first-time visitor who's never even been overseas before and doesn't speak any European languages (but has a few years of Japanese)?

The vast majority of Dutch people speak beautiful English, and are quite happy to do so. English is all but the second language here - even the Amsterdam city council has adopted it.

Living here, of course I am learning Dutch. But visitors can get along perfectly well without any. It's useful to be able to say a few things like please and thank you, but there are plenty of websites with audio files for those.

Are the hostels reasonably safe?

That I don't know much about, but I think I would have heard if they weren't.

Are there places an American traveller can go for help and places to avoid?

The tourist office, which is called the VVV, sits just outside of Centraal station in Amsterdam. They're a good place to go for assistance and suggestions. She can take the train from the airport to Centraal.

I don't think there are any places in central Amsterdam that should be avoided. Even the red light district at night is more racy than rough.

One thing she should seriously consider is renting a bike. There's a company called Mac Bikes in one of the wings of the train station, as well as many others around town. Biking in Amsterdam is one of the great pleasures of travel, in my opinion.

When is she coming, by the way?

I'll point her to the thread on living in the Netherlands, but if I recall, that was more about living there than visiting.

Pretty much. She won't need to arrange child benefit or deal with the tax authorities, the lucky so and so...

Please feel free to have her email me at abi at sunpig dot com. I'm sure I can suggest a number of interesting and useful things, and as long as she isn't coming when I'm on vacation, I can be an emergency backstop.

-----
* I have never been in need of assistance here and not had it offered.

Jaques, the assorting phontic alphabets seem to have emerged in two forms.

First, there were the various telephonic alphabets, apparently put forward by telephoine companies, which usually were lists of either forenames or placenames. The military alphabets may have been more designed.

This is a remarkably complete list.

What you Police Scanning page puts forward as a fire/EMS code looks like the standard International Code, used by aviators and NATO. Remember, the idea is to make sure everyone understands the code: it's not to hide information.

The Police codes in the USA seem to go back to the ARRL and Western Union codes.

The NATO/ICAO code has a few words from earlier English-based military codes, but looks clearer for non-English-speaking users.

The earliest British military codes seem to have just given words for a few letters. Hence the Toc H organisation.

It's all as easy as Ack, Beer, Charlie.

Anyone going to CONvergence?

Thank you, Abi -- I hadn't even thought about a bike, and she bikes here all the time. Not sure which weekend is Amsterdam -- I intend to winkle all that info out of her after her final tomorrow -- but it's either the 10th or 17th of July. Whichever weekend the Lady Gaga concert is...

Janet @450:
If the choice is between the 10th and the 17th, then unfortunately, I won't be able to be backstop. We're on vacation then.

Lady Gaga is apparently playing two dates in Amsterdam, on Monday July 20 and Saturday July 25. (Thank you, Google...) If it turns out she's going to the one on the 25th I'll not just be around, but actually in Amsterdam proper (on my bike, natch), and would be delighted to buy her lunch if she's interested.

In any and all cases, she should feel free to email me.

BTW, someone was wondering about a hardware version of the "audio grid" toy. One of the comments there called it a software version of a Tenori-On. A tad beyond my budget, but....

Dave Bell @ #448

This moose has a "Home Office Wireless Instructions for Radio-Telephony Schemes" pamphlet in front of him, dated July 1950.

It was for the .uk emergency services, and has a modified "Telecom B" phonetic alphabet in it. This must have _really_ confused people transferring in from the military.

The other oddity is the three "Transposition Codes" for sending names, etc over the radio: Code No.2 is ROT13

ObSheesh: Furrfu!

Cadbury.

Can't find whale threesome articles on web; wondering if it was just a tease.

From "Picture is Unrelated", some seriously NSFW knitting. (Or perhaps, crotchet? ;-))

Janet Croft #443:
I traveled through the Netherlands on a bike many years ago, and went far off the normal American tourist paths. The Dutch went out of their way to be helpful, and the only time I had language issues was when I tried to talk with farmers.
I recommend Hostels associated with Hosteling International (formerly International Youth Hostels), and I believe that these are state sponsored there. I found a better experience in the smaller Hostels away from the cities, but that's me. The city Hostels should be booked in advance, especially during the summer, and this can be done online via the web site. Bring a small padlock for the lockers, the bog-standard American school locker padlocks are too big.
Another rooming option are the tiny pensions that are everywhere, and can be booked from the tourist information office.
I can't speak to women's safety issues, but Amsterdam felt the safest of the European cities I've visited. Joining up at the Hostel with other women (non-American) would be my recommendation.

Standard European train warning: Always be in your own train car when the train comes to a stop. The trains split and rejoin like cellular automata, and your car may be the only one going to your destination. Ok, she's going by plane, it is still useful to know for future trips.

Broodje haring is great, but isn't a breakfast food. Trust me.

janetl@374: over the Wiscons I've been to, I've seen several pictures suggesting that downtown Madison in general was "rather bleak" 25 years ago.

Janet -- in case you think abi is more acclimated than your daughter, I'll note I had no problems touring the Hague, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Leiden when I was over for ConFiction (1990 Worldcon). Amsterdam in mid-August was sometimes crowded with tourists, but nobody seemed to be stressing from the heat. The weirdest thing (to a USian) that I remember is the trolley fares being on the honor system.

Jacque, seconding Dave: IIRC the ICAO code was designed to be understandable when spoken and heard by people whose native language was not English; personal names are OK if you're sticking to native speakers, but that doesn't work for air traffic control. Dave wasn't kidding when he called his link remarkably complete -- it even has the RAF alphabet that I remember seeing pieces of in Clarke's Glide Slope

Janet Croft @ #443: I spent nearly two months in the Netherlands, specifically Amsterdam and The Hague, when I was 19. I thought I'd pick up some Dutch while I was there, but I think the only word I learned was bier. In fact, many of the locals insisted on speaking English with me. This was 39 years ago, but I'm sure the multilingualism has only increased.

LMB #458:

What other words do you need?

Apropos of nothing whatsoever:

Anyone who thinks American culture is homogeneous should read this front page.

(Alas, only the front page is available in PDF, but this is today's paper so you can go to the journal's main page to read the rest.)

John, at that time, none.

Lila, are you sure that's the right URL? The PDF your link goes to seems to be for June 18, not July 1, and I couldn't see anything particularly multicultural about it.

OK, I'm just going to ask outright: could the Stonewall thread be reopened? I think it's the right place to discuss the outrage in Fort Worth, which keeps getting worse. I'm starting to draw parallels between the Fort Worth police chief and Ayatollah Khamenei, in both credibility and commitment to human rights.

In case you don't know what I'm talking about.

Police Chief Jeff Halstead is the fracking scum of the frelling Earth.

Paula at 427: Try Joanna Russ's The Female Man. Great SF. Published 1975.

Xopher, while I agree with you that the Stonewall thread seems the ideal place to discuss the Fort Worth Police Department Sponsors the Stonewall Anniversary Celebration, as the thread is still closed, this OT is the place we have.

I can't agree with Savage telling us what Halstead's words "really meant," but Halstead's own words and behavior say a lot. He seems to have become adept at stereophonic speech--he says the words quoted in Savage's article in one speech, but then, in an appearance at a church in East Fort Worth, claims Gibson wasn't even in the custody of "my [FWPD] employees" when the injury occurred. NOTE: That article has been updated since I originally read it; the first half, above the subhead, "'We've got to talk.'," was added this afternoon. The second half was what I was interested in last night, as it indicated he was really trying to straighten the situation out--to those who hadn't heard his hearty endorsement of his officers' fantastic story of their homoerotic irresistability.

However, since the TABC (Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission) has now admitted that Gibson was in their custody when he had the holy shit knocked out of him, it makes the story even more interesting. TABC officers, who are actually the instigators of these bar "inspections," as well as sting operations on retail operations, mostly stores that sell beer, to enforce laws against sales to minors, have pretty bad reputation. They've recently had an officer arrested for the sexual assault of one of the young female volunteers he used for sting operations. There are other accusations of entrapment and other questionable behavior from 2007-2008 in an ongoing lawsuit. Those are the ones that come immediately to mind; I'm sure further googling will get you more.

I haven't seen much about this in the Dallas Morning News, but the Fort Worth paper, known to be considerably more liberal-leaning, has had ongoing coverage every day, including articles about the national notoriety. One good overview of the general situation, with background info about TABC inspections and some unbiased (IMO) opinions about what happened that night, is a commentary by local columnist, Bud Kennedy. It might give someone from a very different urban culture a bit more idea of how we really are down here, i.e., not necessarily like Dan Savage's stereotype.

Paula Lieberman @432: There was an [PBS] program about blue whales, and it showed blue whale sex-it takes three whales to accomplish [..]

Along the same theme, I saw a bit of a documentary (PBS?) showing the preliminaries of a mating of a pair of very expensive thoroughbred horses. Because there was a possibility that the male might break a leg, his rear legs were tied off onto two-by-fours, and a pair of human assistants (one for each leg) were assisting in the docking maneuvers.

And my thought was that if this was what it had been like with Prince Charles, it was no wonder that royal life lost it appeal for Diana.

A different sort of abusive behavior, via MediaMatters: Beck guest Scheuer: "The only chance we have as a country right now is" for bin Laden to "detonate a major weapon" in U.S.

re 448: One of the things I discovered in writing the Wikipedia article about an early Japanese diplomatic cipher was that it was designed to save money on TELEX by generating text that looked like phonetic codes. Apparently there was a premium on transmitting text that was unpronounceable. Unfortunately the way it did this made the code very weak, and it was easily broken once the western cryptographers got around to it.

Thanks all. Now I wish _I_ was the one going to Amsterdam. Putting it on my list of places to go when I win the lottery, right up there with Iceland... Bier, good word to know! :)

Anyone catch the PBS American Masters show about Garrison Keillor last night? I watched it and loved it. Even though it didn't reveal very much about someone who is at heart a private person, it was an engaging portrait of someone who excels at his craft.

Toward the end of the show, he used a sentence that I really enjoyed:

"This is a great country, and it wasn't made so by angry people."

Clifton @ #462, correct URL, I just read the date wrong. What I was referring to was the tornado/mudbogging story. Sure, I grew up with just that sort of thing, but that story would need footnotes in some parts of the country.

Incidentally, that's the hometown paper of the place where I start a 13-week travel assignment this month.

More open-threadiness: Carnivorous robotic furniture.

Apparently at least one design could eat mice, which might be bad news for hamster and gerbil owners....

LMB 466: how we really are down here

I read those words with alarm. I know better than to lump all Texans, or even all Fort Worth residents, in with that scumbag police chief or those slimeball and possibly murderous TABC officers. Fort Worth has an openly-gay City Councilman, for gods' sake. And I will have you know that I stopped trusting Dan Savage's objectivity a long time ago.

What part of his article are you objecting to? I think his accent-transcription is offensive, especially since he probably didn't hear Jeff Scumbag Halstead talking at all...but his translation seems otherwise accurate. It's OK in Halstead's mind to beat faggots without regard for their survival if one of them touches you in an offensive way, and he supported their statements that such a thing occurred without any corroborating evidence. He's "happy with the restraint that was used," when someone ended up in a coma and may die; that by itself makes him a homophobic shithead who has no business having a badge.

I note that it appears that Chief Scumbag was telling the truth about Gibson's custody; he was assaulted by TABC officers, not FWPD officers, according to the TABC's own admission. Of course, he may have been trying to get people to believe that Gibson wasn't in custody at all, in which case he's still a lying sack of shit even if his words are technically true.

Kennedy's piece doesn't contradict my reading of the situation at all, though I disagree with him when he says that "If neither [the city nor the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission] wants to say that it originated the inspection, that must mean neither agency is proud of the outcome." It doesn't mean anything of the kind. It means neither of them wants to be held accountable, that is, punished, for the crimes that were committed during this savage pogrom. Lying (and one of them must be) to avoid punishment isn't QUITE the same thing as remorse, now is it? In fact if anything it shows a lack of that quality.

Kennedy's account also fails to mention (perhaps to notice) that the raid took place on the 40th anniversary of Stonewall. I don't think it's plausible that that was a coincidence. I think the officers involved (who may not have gotten instructions from any higher authority) decided to show what would have happened had Stonewall taken place on their watch. I want them kicked off the TABC and (where applicable and if they're convicted) put in prison. If Chad Gibson dies I want whoever did it to never again enjoy freedom. My rage is redoubled by knowing that this is vanishingly unlikely to occur, since most jurors believe cops won't lie on the witness stand, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

One other thing Kennedy's account does make clear: it IS, in a sense, a statewide issue: Rick Perry ordered, or appointed the people who ordered, arrests for being drunk in a bar. I guess that's illegal under Texas law, but the arrests started up, according to Kennedy, under Perry's regime. Perry is a known scumbag too, so I guess it's not surprising that he has policies that lead to this kind of grotesque abuse.

And, of course, now the Stonewall thread is open again. Continue there.

Regarding Serge's announcement of a Making Light party at Westercon, on Saturday night after the fireworks--Teresa and I will certainly be there.

Have you guys heard of "earth-style" cooking? It means you don't seed or peel things you cook. I can see not seeding or peeling zucchini and such, but onions? And when this cookbook says "micro-roasting," they just mean zapping on high. Here's a Green Quiche recipe.

Dana Milbank uses his column to compare a new right-wing group to Star Trek, including noting that the American Family Association is boycotting Pepsi because they support homosexuals. I wonder how much Pepsi we have to buy to win. And if they'll girlcott Snapple.

And boy, has the WashPost stumbled because their new media division sent out flyers saying companies and lobbyists could buy reporting.

C. Wingate #469: It should be possible to create an encryption system which does not have that problem. What you need to do is encrypt the message using an ordinary encryption algorithm, then put the output through a procedure that can turn an arbitrary bitstream into "looked like phonetic codes", which shouldn't be too hard if they accepted arbitrary text with merely language-like vowel/consonant/whitespace mix.

re whales: When I was in high school we got a film (in biology), about Calif. Gray Whales. As with the report on Blue Whales the mechanics of it requires a second male to support the female.

So they have a few thousand miles of courtship, she makes her choice and the failed suitor helps out.

The amusing thing was the actual mechanics of the coitus. The male's penis bends, and it manages to find the vaginal opening while flopped over.

There has been at least one phonetic letter spell out code which had both strong encryption and error detection/correction.

Open Threadiness and of possible interest to the EMTs: Dr. Sheldon Jacobson died on Tuesday of pancreatic cancer. He was instrumental in developing emergency medicine at Mount Sinai, and in creating "paramedics" in NY State. He was also a long-time friend of my parents.

Evidence of life's little jokes: "Royal Pains" just mentioned Mount Sinai as a destination for an emergency transport.

Hello, everybody. I'm at Fiestacon/Westercon. I just came back from a nice chat with Teresa & Patrick. Earlier today, I was on a panel about good & bad SF movies. I think it showed I've never been on a panel until today. I ran off at the mouth, an assertion that may surprise those of you who've met me. At least, I didn't speak thru my metaphorical hat.

Serge: I'm sure you did fine. I had a church lady give me the cut sign, because I was going long.

I also, apparently, said, "fuck" several times in same church.

Which is to say, I did the conference. It was a good time. On a couple of levels it may have been life changing. Certainly it caused me to rethink a few things, gave me some different perspectives on the subject and was; again on several levels, soul restoring.

It's also something I couldn't have done without the support, real and tacit, of the folks here.

So, such victory it might be, is shared with the lot of you. My most heartfelt thanks to one and all.

Marilee, in what way does Pepsi support homosexuals? I haven't drunk any for years. Should I start drinking it again, and will it help me walk better? Better than real ale or cider, I'm sure, but what does Dr Pepper think?

Terry Karney @ 483... I'm glad to hear that the conference helped your soul. As for ML's support, I know what you mean.

I ran into KeithS tonight. Rather, he did. It took me a moment to recognize him because, unlike his photo, he doesn't look eeevvvvilllllllll. Not even a mephistophelian whiff about him. He told me that Lee IS around. I was wondering about that, since I didn't see her working in the dealer room. That's because she's not working in the dealer's room.

The latest wave of spam (spoofing MSNBC.com) has some really creative subject hooks.

tykewriter @484: see here.

Lila (460), when I read that page of the Tattnall Journal, I noticed the happy family that little rural community paper featured on their front page for Fathers' Day. We've come so far in accepting divorce and unmarried couples that you might not have noticed it. This is clearly a conservative rural community, honoring a single father who is not even a respectable widower. It's not that family situations don't happen in rural communities, or didn't happen a generation ago...it's that the divisive idea of "traditional rural values are so different the liberal big cities on the coast" kept people from talking about them.

Thanks, Jules! Although I think tykewriter may have been making ze pun. I have to say that if it made me walk better, I'd start drinking it again, too!

Marilee, #477, re "earth-cooking"

I can see roasting unpeeled onions. Roast them like corn in the husk, until the interior is cooked and tender, then peel the outer skin off and enjoy the rest.

If the "earth-cooking" advocates were suggesting the papery outer skin should be eaten too... ehhhh, I don't think so. (Wouldn't that turn your tongue yellow?)

Yes, it was a pune or play on words, but I really didn't know that Pepsi sponsored Gay Pride events. Good for them!
(Still won't drink the stuff though.)

re onion skins. When making stocks, I keep the peels on. They give a slightly nuttier flavor to the onion notes. When browning bones they are fine too, because the heat will dry the outer "leaves" of the bulb.

But other than that... no.

Janet (#443): Amsterdam was the first European city I ever visited, lo these many years ago. Young, female, and traveling alone.

I was there again a few days ago (and abi was kind enough to meet me for lunch).

I'm happy to confirm that in both cases I found the city to be safe, easy to navigate, and very English-friendly.

A few minor warnings:

The ticketing machines in Schiphol don't seem to like American credit or debit cards, so she should be prepared to go to the counter and pay cash (at a slight premium).

If she's easily shocked, you might want to warn her ahead of time that the wake'n'bake is popular in Amsterdam - I definitely caught whiffs of pot smoke as I arrived in the city at eight am on a Monday. Conversely, if she's adventurous, I've been told that Amsterdam weed is much stronger than what most people are used to. If she's traveling by herself, indulging might not be the smartest move.

And a final warning: once she tries French fries with mayo and ketchup, she may always prefer them to straight ketchup, and then all her American friends will make fun of her (seriously - tried them on my first visit and now that's how I always eat fries).

Are all cafes places where one can smoke weed or is it in select ones?

Not planning on travel any time soon, but inquiring (and radically allergic) minds want to know.

debcha @493:
Yes, forgot to warn you about the ticketing machines. There are one or two that take cash, and the counter staff can take American credit cards (with surcharge), but the combination of a US cc and those machines is chancy.

Lunch was a pleasure, though, alas, too brief. But it was a busy week at work. The best I can say is that half a loaf is better than none.

Paula @494:
Are all cafes places where one can smoke weed or is it in select ones?

And here we must introduce the difference between a café, where one gets coffee, and a coffeeshop, where one gets weed.

Coffeeshops are distinguished by a sign in the window, argent, per bend sinister vert*, with the words "COFFEE SHOP"on it in black.

There is occasionally a miasma of marajuana in the air in Amsterdam, particularly in the red light district†. But it's rarely severe.

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* Heraldry is not my specialty. Corrections are welcome.

† Note that the red light district does not have prostitutes on the street corners. Everything takes place in windows or indoors. Walking down the street in the red light district is not going to get one mistaken for a sex worker, assaulted, or otherwise bothered.

When I went to Confiction (first trip out of the UK, organised at the last minute--harvest was early) I wasted too much time at the convention to have any fun of any salacious sort.

There was, for instance, a sex-toy shop on the tram route from the conference centre into Scheveningen, not far from the Bad Hotel. Though I doubt I would have gone in even if it had been open when I passed. Today, I passed on in Scunthorpe--times have changed a lot.

But traveling around the Netherlands, not speaking a word of Dutch: no problem.

And once you're in the Euro zone, it's all the same currency. One or two people from further south in the UK, who travelled by way of Belgium, had a few little problems with having to handle another currency.