Minnesota Supreme Court just said Franken wins. Unanimous decision. Pawlenty to certify.

I'm not sure that we know that Pawlenty will actual certify. He's consistently said that he would do what the Minnesota Supreme Court directed him to do, unless of course a federal court directed otherwise. And there's plenty of time for Coleman to file for a federal stay while Pawlenty carefully reads the Minnesota decision.

Because he wants to run for President in 2012, Pawlenty is trying very hard to appear reasonable to the country as a whole while maintaining his bonafides with the insane 25% of the electorate that determines who gets the Republican nomination. Bottom line: don't believe a thing he says, and after you shake hands with the dude, count your fingers.

Pawlenty of Nothing? The governor of my nightmares? Be reasonable? Pshaw. An alternate universe must be impinging.

not that you need or seek my approval, but i agree your item two is the best solution to the problem.

Pawlenty is unmitigated Evil... Very charming Evil when in person, but Pure Evil nonetheless... I shook his hand; I counted my fingers... They were all there... until next time.

Since the other thread is frozen, I'd like to apologize to Jim for not writing better, because I clearly sounded judgmental when I didn't mean to. I like knowing that a post has been deleted--then, if a later comment seems to reference something that's not in the record, I know that it's referencing something deleted, not something imaginary. It's useful in a discussion that more than two people are having.

But given the choice between never deleting something or deleting it without leaving a record, I prefer #2 now. I admire Jim's impulse completely. Sometimes choosing to be kind creates new problems, but the world could use more problems born from kindness.

it happens, even to the shimmering disembodied beings of pure dispassionate rationality that moderate Making Light

It was our dear, dear, Mr. P that just used his line-item veto power to cut nearly 5% from the operating revenue of Minnesota's largest health care system. That $88 million was the money they gave the system to defray the cost of serving those who cannot pay for their care, which they must do by law.

Availability of healthcare has always been one of the biggest dividers between upper and lower classes. Welcome back to pre-revolutionary France...

Isn't that four things? ;)

Serge @7:
Good link.

However, speaking for my shimmering and dispassionate self, I don't find "the mere presence of beings like yourselves" to be "intensely painful"*.

-----
* no, not even when you make puns

Amusing toy: cool beans! Thanks.

Now how many of the plots in the later incarnations were clearly incompatible with that scene?

Norm Coleman conceded! Franken wins!

Yes! Clearly I was being too pessimistic.

Raphael: Most of them.

That's pretty good news -- way late, of course, but good. I'm pretty sure Coleman finally realized he was making the GOP look even more putzier than usual by holding on.

Speaking of moderation, I'd like to resubmit the request that my comment #123 in the "Is this justice served?" thread (June 2007) be disemvoweled.

But if Coleman concedes, does Pawlenty have to certify it anyway? It might be an easy out for him.

Earl, if I disemvowel it, what am I going to say to people far less reasonable than yourself who demand that I disemvowel entire strings of comments they posted in some thread?

This actually happens.

Teresa #18 -- tell them to disemvowel themselves? (Give them the algorithm and tell them to go to it....)

Re: moderators zapping their own comments: I still like heresiarch's idea of self-disemvoweling. (sevvuku? ;-) ) Compared to deletion (even with placeholders), it would show the moderators holding themselves accountable in exactly the same way as other posters.

OK, Teresa posted #19 while I was editing. That's an issue, all right, but my inclination is to just say "the moderators decide what gets disemvoweled", whether it's their own or others' posts.

And Paula #20, the problem with letting "regular posters" disemvowel themselves is the same as with letting them edit or delete their own posts -- it would require an account system, which our hosts have so far managed to resist (at considerable inconvenience to themselves).

re: "enormous jets of water vapor and ice"

Hey! The image is a painting by Karl Kofed! Woo woo!

Patrick: Thank you for the comments and the suggestion.

Alas, from my experience, the saner and more reasonable you try to be, the higher and more unreasonable the standards people will try to hold you to. (Often those who are quite unreasonable themselves.) All you can do is keep on doing what seems right to you.

In my opinion, all the moderators are doing a damn good job.

Coleman & Co. succeeded in keeping Franken out for all these months. D.C.'s long Summer Vacation Recess is about on us -- it really does pretty much run from July 4th, rather than the official 5 weeks. An amigo who is a hitter in D.C. -- not a pol though -- already started his this last weekend. His work schedule is completely pinned to that of the House and Senate. He doesn't work very much, particularly not by the standards of freelancers who are always scrambling just to FIND work, and never more so than now, when that's all there is available -- when it is available.

A pox on their houses, all of 'em.

Love, C.

"shimmering disembodied beings of pure dispassionate rationality"

Hmm.... I'll try putting one in a slash fic and see if it can remain dispassionate.

"Free amusing toy...." Nothing like that ever turned up in a box of rice candy that I ever bought.

Would that be the same free amusing toy mentioned here? Why yes, I believe it would. Cool, isn't it?

abi @ #10:

Please stop. You're making my eyes hurt.

Does this mean that Minnesota has become less of a congealed Florida?

Teresa Nielsen Hayden @ 19: "I'm pretty sure Coleman finally realized he was making the GOP look even more putzier than usual by holding on."

I think there's a pretty bright line between asking to have your own post disemvoweled and demanding that other people's posts get the same treatment. While I don't have any more of a legal right to my posts than I do to anyone else's, I do feel that I havesomething of a moral right--after all, they are my words, and they are what others will judge me by. If I regret saying something enough that I want to ask for it to be removed--well, I'm not sure it counts for enough, but it does count for something.

The bigger issue for me is that ML's "no takebacks" policy really affects how I comment. Fear of being stuck with a really dumb comment forces me to think about what I'm saying, proofread way more, and basically makes me a better commenter. I think it has the same affect on most people, and having a back way out might diminish the self-discipline encouraged by knowing that your posts are forever.

Um. Yes, speaking of the danger of having a stupid mistake recorded for all of eternity...

"Earl, if I disemvowel it, what am I going to say to people far less reasonable than yourself who demand that I disemvowel entire strings of comments they posted in some thread?"

That was what I meant to quote.

Forever is right; this is one of the cases where I regret having such a noticeable Internet footprint.

To comment on the actual topic:

Who among us hasn't wished for that wonderful email get-back button? Up until today, the mods on Making Light had it. I vote we give it back to them.

The moderators here have been chosen (from on high) because of their individual ability to, among other things, think about the effects of their statements on both the individual responded to and the fluorosphere as a whole. Occasionally that insight, like a fine Scotch whisky, takes awhile to come to its fullness. To claim some sort of a moral authority over Those Shimmering Brilliances is, in effect, telling our hosts, "thanks for inviting me into your living room, but I suggest, nay, insist that you recover the couch and change out those tables and the rug."

I trust our hosts and the other moderators to second guess themselves when it will maintain and improve the cohesiveness of the community, and to insist that we, who make up the rest of the fluorosphere, think twice before we post, or keep our public retraction chops polished. After all, for some of us, taking back our already-written words is the ultimate apology.

LMB MacAlister @ 34: "To claim some sort of a moral authority over Those Shimmering Brilliances is, in effect, telling our hosts, "thanks for inviting me into your living room, but I suggest, nay, insist that you recover the couch and change out those tables and the rug.""

Except it's really not at all like that. Having different rules for commentors and moderators isn't cosmetic, it's functional. You can argue whether it's a good idea, but it's not equivalent to couch color. Furthermore, there was no insisting, no coercion. If our hosts thought the suggestion was bunk, nothing stopped them from ignoring it entirely. That they have the final word in how ML is run is well established at this point, but that is not the same thing as having the only word.

I suggest you reread Patrick's line on those "shimmering brilliances" again. Wise as they are, they are still human and benefit from the same constructive criticism and advice as everyone else. More to the point, the site could be run by Jesus, Ghandi and the Buddha themselves and I'd still think their moderation should be as transparent as possible.

Freezing water shooting out of Enceladus? Yuck. Send them back--you should only accept them if cheese shoots out.

I think leaving some sort of deleted message indicator, as you've decided to do, is a good choice.

A point I haven't seen mentioned yet -- an unfortunate comment from a moderator is in many social / political ways (impact on the community) more serious than one from somebody without official local authority.

Having looked over the thread with the deleted posts, I have to say that I'd prefer that the mods disemvowel themselves, rather than delete, simply because most of the mods are good enough writers that I'm curious, on a literary level, about how they'd go about writing something bad enough to deserve deleting/disemvoweling.

Ursula @38:
Speaking purely for myself, if I write something that is both literate and inappropriate, I promise to disemvowel it rather than remove it entire.

Disemvoweling has a different impact than deletion. Its intention is to slow the reader down, so that the immediate emotional impact of an inflammatory comment is lessened. Reading it requires the head as well as the gut, but it's still comprehensible content.

But sometimes deletion is the best choice. As David Dyer-Bennet @37 points out, what we as mods say has a disproportionate influence on the conversation. If that influence is going to send the conversation down the toilet, in a way that no peer-level fury could, then the comment might be better entirely removed.

I know mysteries are maddening. But a conversation gone bad is worse.

The "Free amusing toy" seems to have permanently killed my sound card.

Abi #39: Fair enough.

Hary Payne #40: I suspect an unfortunate coincidence -- the output from the toy is presumably funneled through the same plugins and drivers as any other audio from your web browser.

Harry Payne @ 40:

My computer has, on a couple of occasions (although never playing with this particular fun toy), emitted a loud POP! and thereafter only produced rather ugly noises. Rebooting fixed the problem both times. If you've alredy tried rebooting, I'm afraid I can't offer much help.

abi @39:

Lovely!

I'm sure not all are worth saving - but I've seen some of the folks here do an absolutely lovely job of linguistic assault. But that, of course, is subordinate to the overall need for quality conversation.

And while a mod might have an extraordinary ability to lower the level of conversation, the fact that the mods are all well-known to the regulars seems to serve as a break on this.

Certainly regarding the deleted posts, the response seemed to be that the mod in question was upset and out of character, and the people who posted in response did so in a manner calculated to calm the upset mod and point out that they were acting out-of-character.

As long as the general quality of 99% of the mods' posts remains where it is 99% of the time, for the remaining 1%, the response will probably remain "Poor mod, feel better soon!" rather than "Yay! Mods gone mad, free-for-all at Making Light!"

While Teresa's declared 24-hour cooling-off period has expired, the Stonewall thread remains closed. I mention this in case it's not intentional.

Ursula, Mods Gone Mad sounds like a horror movie to me:

See! Vicious pile-ons on polite, friendly newcomers!
See! Egregious drive-by trolls keep their vowels!
See! Vox Dei praised as sane and fair-minded!
See! Phlp Shrpshr return in triumph!
All that and more awaits as the insanity of all the mods unleashes a freeforall at Making Light in...Mods Gone Mad!

Xopher, I really fear a cowardly policy of appeasement will only serve to emvowelenate the trollery.

Is a-p's-ment when we let the trolls keep their p's?

Re: Amusing toy

I believe that's a Flash implementation of a physical instrument called a Tenori-on, from Yamaha.

There's a British performer who goes by the name of "Little Boots" who uses one. There are performance videos of her where at the start of the song, she uses a stylus to draw a pattern on the Tenori-on, starts it on a beat, and then starts playing piano along with it

DavidS, yeah, but disem-p-ing a troll would result in disgust for all.

Copying the link from my comment in OT 126: The Tenori-on. The linked site only sells within Britain, but some of the listed dealers might be willing to ship overseas.

My only source for the equivalence was a comment on the toy's site. Has anyone here actually played with one?

Aha -- according to the author, ToneMatrix isn't an exact copy of the tenori-on, but it was inspired by playing with it.

47, 49 speak now or forever hold your p's.

"In other news, there are enormous jets of water vapor and ice shooting out of Saturn’s moon Enceladus."

That's not as bad as enormous jets of water vapor shooting out of Uranus.

P-shaw.

#53 - Erik -- It's even worse yet if the jets of water coming out Uranus miss all the Klingons.

SOMEBODY was bound to say it; just think of it as me taking one for the thread.

#51: the US site, with store, is http://www.tenori-onusa.com/

The device seems to be somewhat more featureful and thus a bit less simple. But then, you'd expect a bit more for $999.

#56: And in the mean time, the guy behind the software toy has folded it into AudioToolthe general Flash music-studio he's working on , and releasing in 0.xxx betas. Apparently, for free....

David Harmon @ 50: I've performed with Nick Rothwell, who uses a monome, which is sort of a "pro" version of the Tenori-on (although I believe it predates it). It's nifty.

Tim #58: Interesting! Your link indicates that the monome is just the grid of backlit keys plus a computer link -- that is, it's just an I/O device for the computer. (They also have some software, though not for Linux yet.)

Oddly, the 16x16 version (their largest) is even more expensive than the tenori-on, but they apparently can't keep in stock of any of their models. Admittedly, they're only producing them in small batches... maybe somebody should hook them up with a venture capitalist and a full-scale manufacturer.

Tim @58: "who uses a monome, which is sort of a "pro" version of the Tenori-on (although I believe it predates it). It's nifty."

I dunno, the Yamaha looks pretty 'pro', and is priced accordingly. It's more of a self-contained appliance, like any drum machine or effect box.

As noted above the monome is pretty much just a user interface device, that is controlled by the attached computer.

#55, if the enormous jets of water shooting out of Uranus miss the Klingons, they end up in the sewers, like this:

http://www.sciencebuzz.org/blog/puking-noon-alien-worm-ball-edition

(SFW, but possibly not safe for lunch.)

(Also, my personal jury is out on whether this is actually a scientific phenomenon, or a viral marketing video of some kind.)

Caroline #61: A later commenter there ID'ed them as clumps of annelid worms. Normally soil dwellers, they're clumping together because the sewer doesn't have any soil for them to live in.

David Harmon @ 59, Jon H @ 60: The Tenori-on doesn't interface with your computer or other synthesizers--you're limited to the built-in sounds. That's why I wouldn't consider it "pro" (well, that and the fact that it's probably quite a bit flimsier than the monome, being built out of plastic rather than wood). It's analogous to a Casio keyboard.*

That's not a hard and fast rule, of course, and it's not a value judgment--making things easier for beginners at the cost of making them less versatile for experienced users is a perfectly valid design choice. Some instruments that make that choice even sneak into pro status eventually (e.g. the autoharp and both kinds of dulcimer). And people have made good music with Casios.

*To confuse matters, Casio has also made a few pro-ish keyboards, e.g. the CZ-1000.

Ah, Tubifex worms. I used to feed live ones to my goldfish and tropical fish many years ago, but then the worms eventually colonized the gravel and fouled the water, necessitating more frequent changes.

There was also a concern among aquarium enthusiasts that given the locations that these things were collected from, we might be introducing all sorts of nasty microorganisms into our tanks.

I eventually switched to Daphnia and mosquito larvae.

mcz #64: I take it they outbred the appetites of your fish?

I go away to talk about torture for a couple of days and miss all the fun. :)

I figure that pulling posts is the perogative of the hosts; they get some benefits from it, in exchange for the sense they have to be more careful in response.

David Harmon: The worms didn't seem to breed very quickly, but they lived in the gravel and were mostly inaccessible to the fish.

Tim Walters #63: You can also load samples onto the Tenori-on. Synth programmer Damian Taylor describes how he used the machine during Björk's 2007/2008 world tour on the Yamaha site.

David Harmon @ 62, I saw that identification, but was still unconvinced -- mainly because I didn't know who had shot the video, why, or how. I thought the worms were plausible, but still wasn't entirely sure. The local paper reported, which I saw after I posted here, with at least a semi-reliable identification for who shot it, and quoted biologists identifying the animals as bryozoans. It also cited other cases of bryozoans living in sewers.

Hmm. IANABiologist, and I'm not about to take the time for an exhaustive search, but a bit of googling suggests that Bryozoan colonies would have a "mossy" appearance, and more so in close-up (the individuals have feeding tentacles). Also, the colonies have calciferous skeletons -- the few pictures I could find of the colonies had well-defined shapes, though I couldn't find any video of a colony in motion.

Looking back at the video, these blobs had a grossly smooth appearance*, with striations or tangled lines visible on the surface, and sometimes portions of the mass stretching out to splay across the substrate. (See especially 1:42-2:00, where splayed bits are withdrawing into the central mass) Also, they were pulsing in a manner that suggests bits of the surface moving around semi-independently, rather than attachment to an underlying framework.

While I wouldn't speak to particular species, they certainly look more like agglomerations of linear creatures, than colonies built around a central structure. (Also, the annelid ID was attributed to DeepSeaNews, which presumably has its own biologists.)

* emphasis on the gross ;-)

And now it's definitely time for me to go to bed... perhaps there will be more information available tomorrow.

OK, one more post: Gizmodo has updated their story in response to the bryozoa statement.

The money quote:

The crew at DeepSeaNews.com sent the video over to Dr. Timothy S. Wood, an expert on freshwater bryozoa and an officer with the International Bryozoology Association ... and he had this to say about it: "Thanks .... No, these are not bryozoans! They are clumps of annelid worms, almost certainly tubificids"

mcz @ 67: That's what I get for relying on memory. Thanks for the correction. I see that it also has MIDI output (although apparently you can't sync to MIDI in). So: my bad. The Tenori-on is pro, or pro enough.

Tim Walters @63: " (well, that and the fact that it's probably quite a bit flimsier than the monome, being built out of plastic rather than wood)"

Actually, the Tenori-on frame is apparently made out of magnesium, so it ought to be pretty sturdy.

re: #72, Jon H

Actually, the Tenori-on frame is apparently made out of magnesium, so it ought to be pretty sturdy.

Good for hot music, then.

David Harmon, Caroline:

Back in the day, live Tubifex was displayed in a large shallow dish or metal plate filled with water at the aquarium supplies store. The worms clumped and moved exactly as shown in the video.

If you teased the wormy mass apart with a stick or similar object (I must admit I used to play with my fish food), the clump would re-form fairly quickly.

Tubifex are beloved of fish. I never tended frozen/freeze-dried, because a couple would always get to to the bottom and gunk up the works (even worse when I moved to undergravel filters. Goldfish are inveterate rock movers, and could keep up with the escapees, more or less, until I did a water change).

But seeing the roiling mass at the fish shop was always fascinating.

Did they have a membrane as shown in the video? I'm now curious about the slimy membrane covering the clump of worms. (They certainly do look wormy, on closer examination of the video.)

But what's his Angle?