Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and, till action, lust
Is perjured, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight;
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had,
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows, yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

The 129 strain of mice is a venerable figure in research.

(Also here.)

What's the number for Upsidaisium?

Unbennium's symbol would be Ube.

This reminds me of another ube, or purple yam. Ube ice cream was my favorite flavor as a kid. No, it does not stain your tongue purple. Yes, it is delicious.

Oh, and 129 is a happy number, and it seems to work because I'm happy I learned something new today.

Unbiennium should be right next to Deuxbiennium.

It may be a happy number, but maybe not for the 129 mice, who have a "high incidence of spontaneous testicular teratomas."

I'm sure that Dave Barry would point out that Spontaneous Testicular Teratomas would be a helluva good name for a rock band.

I've had a hectic week.

Tuesday afternoon, my wife Hilde and I sat by the hospital bedside of our friend and neighbor Anne Braude while Anne passed away.

(I'll have more to say about Anne later. She was a pretty extraordinary person.)

Wednesday morning, about 4:00 AM, I had to call an ambulance for Hilde, who was having stroke-like symptoms. This appears to have been a repeat of the incident in May, when a UTI infection went septic and produced similar symptoms.

So, not a stroke. After a few hours on IV antibiotics at the hospital, Hilde went from barely-aware, one-word vocabulary, with jerking arms and legs, to almost normal. Just like last time.

More-than-normal scary things about this time: She hadn't had any symptoms of a UTI, and it was only after the hospital ran tests that a high bacterial count was found. Also scary: She went from normal at 1:30, when we went to bed, to "Call 911!" at 4:00.

She's still in hospital, probably for a few more days, while they run loads of tests and MRI's on her. But she feels back to normal. ("More books! Bring me more books!")

I'm coming to really hate the phrase "Golden Years". Yeah, right. Your friends get old, they get sick, and they die. Your family gets old, they get sick, and they die. And finally, you get old, you get sick, and you die. "Golden Years", my rosy pink ass.

Steve C @ 6... a helluva good name for a rock band.

Its repertoire would include chansons de teste rather than chansons de geste, I presume.

Un-bien-nium? Clearly it will discovered by nogoodniks.

Cadbury.

Bruce Arthurs (7): My condolences on the loss of your friend.

I'm glad that Hilde seems to be all right, and I hope that they figure out what's causing the problem and can prevent future recurrences.

Unbiennium, not to be confused with Bennihillium (whose electrons are so excited that they chase one another about to the tune of "Yakety Sax") actually sits next to Jacbennium on the table (which is notoriously tight-shelled and hardly ever yields any electrons whatsoever).

What we're not naming the new element (possibly slightly NSFW).

Bruce Arthurs @ 7:

I'm sorry to hear all that, but I'm glad that Hilde has recovered so quickly. I hope that the doctors can figure out something to stop this from happening again. There are some kinds of excitement that I think we could all do without.

Bruce Arthurs: sending good thoughts your way. Going from totally asymptomatic to crashing is scary indeed.

And thoughts go out to police dog Bosco as well (carrying over from Open Thread 128), and to anyone else going through one of life's dips.

L. van Beethoven, Rondo à capriccio in G major, Op. 129.

Bruce Arthurs @ 7... ("More books! Bring me more books!")

Glad to hear she's back to clamoring for them.

Patrick, just read the interview you linked to on the sidebar. Good stuff.

Bruce Arthurs #7: Sorry to hear about the scare, glad it turned out OK.

Bruce, #7: Condolences on your loss, yikes!, glad to hear it, and hear! hear!, in that order.

Having just followed the link to that section of the Doctrine and Covenants, I'm left shaking my head at the idea of a Devil who gives the game away by being too stupid to just stand there and deliver the message (as the spirit of a just man apparently would). The Adversary doesn't know about social engineering?

Unbennium's symbol would be Ube.

Indeed! The scientific l33t have high hopes that this will be the most uber element yet.

Bruce Arthurs, my condolences on the loss of your friend, and I'm glad Hilde will be okay.

Something I thought of while reading the Kennedy post, but decided to ask here, instead:

Is there some sort of ML equivalent to Godwin's Law that states that the longer a ML comment thread goes on the likelihood that someone will start punning approaches certainty? Not that I think discussion should be over at that point, as I love good puns, and even bad puns, but I was just wondering.

Lotus

It endured for a thousand years.
Toes broken, arch bent,
tied with strips soaked in blood,
the young girls forced to walk on crippled limbs
to force the bindings ever tighter.
The death toll was unmarked, but high;
infection being most common in the young,
falls in the old.
The goal was a foot of three inches long.
Most women have ankles longer than that.

China had an Ash Girl,
one who saved a golden carp
and kept it, like a pet, in a secret pool.
Her jealous sisters killed and ate it;
she planted the bones,
which grew into a tree,
which granted wishes— does this sound familiar?
and gained her the love of a prince.

The dramatic necessity of the tiny shoe
is obvious; the unmistakeable signal
that the prince has found the correct partner.
The mother chopping off a heel or a toe
("a mother cannot love a daughter and her daughter's feet")
is a symbol of how ruthless one can be
when in pursuit of power.

And yet, one wonders how much travelled along the Silk Road,
if a Frenchman, perhaps, heard the tales of the tiny feet,
the grace of the Lotus Walk,
the delicately embroidered shoes,
and it sparked a tale of fortune's turn about,
the dispossessed coming back into her own.
He wouldn't have heard the details;
three-year-olds handed over to foot-binders
to break them for beauty.

We have a knack for finding those things beautiful
which are harmful in the end.
Arsenic complexions
belladonna eyes
compressed and corseted waists—
perhaps the only surprising thing is that it ended.
It endured for a thousand years.

The Laurell, meed of mightie Conquerours
And Poets sage, the Firre that weepeth still,
The Willow worne of forlorne Paramours,
The Eugh obedient to the benders will,
The Birch for shaftes, the Sallow for the mill,
The Mirrhe sweete bleeding in the bitter wound,
The warlike Beech, the Ash for nothing ill,
The fruitfull Oliue, and the Platane round,
The caruer Holme, the Maple seeldom inward sound.

first book, second canto, ninth stanza of the Faerie Qveene

Bruce, my condolences on your friend. I hope you can get a handle on Hilde's glitch. Please give her my regards and regrets on not seeing either of you in so long. Such a long, strange, trip, and now here we all are.

Have they discovered unobtanium yet? Once we have a supply of that, I have a number of projects to start....

Albatross @ 25 -

The only known supply is in the mountainous nation of Nonfindonia.

We should be OK unless the LHC starts outputting Administratium.

Cadbury.

Speaking of elements, Theo Gray is coming out with a book called The Elements based on his legendary element collection. There's a trailer, featuring an animated (and authorized!) version of Tom Lehrer's song.

Noting all the "electorns", are they something like hanging chads?

B. Durbin -- thank you. That's lovely.

Bruce, I'm sorry about your friend and I sympathize with your rant; it is indeed so, damn it. I'm glad Hilde is improving and I hope they figure out some kind of reasonable treatment for her recurrent UTIs. I assume the urologists are on the case.

As for the LDS doctrine, let me make sure I understand this. If someone claims to be from God, you should ask to shake his hand. If he shakes your hand and you feel his hand in yours, he's an angel, so believe what he says. If he refuses to shake, he's "a just man made perfect" (whatever the frack that is), so believe what he says. If he shakes your hand but you can't feel his fingers in yours -- woo -- he's a devil! Hit him over the head with your shoe, or something, and don't believe anything he tells you.

Uh, sure. Okay.

Madeline Ashby #11: Unbiennium is also not to be confused with Unobtanium.

Bruce Arthurs #7: My condolences on your loss.

B. Durbin, #22: Wow. Just... wow.

Great Lines department: Alex M., over on BB, who says, among other smart things,

The opposite of extremism is not the opposite extreme.

Bruce Arthurs @7: My condolences on your loss, and my best wishes for Hilde's continued recovery.

I'm getting sick of hospitals. After 2 of them since monday when our new baby got a fever, we're finally in that limbo state of having a well baby but waiting for One More Test which should come back today.

This one slow test non-result is responsible for at least night of inpatient care, and maybe two if the lab is slow while the little guy is just on an IV every 8 hours and getting checked to see that all is normal every 4.

This can't actually be a cost effective way to do this. While I have no idea yet as to the cost, I have my suspicions, and pre-insurance, it's probably in the 'nice new car' range.

I'm soooo done with this.

B. Durbin: frighteningly beautiful.

This does seem to be one of those methods that assumes that the devil hasn't read a book--and won't realize something is up after he's caught out by that trick once.

When I was an undergraduate the most advanced of Yale's three first-year English courses was English 129, the first semester of whicyh was affectionately (at least, usually affectionately) known as the book-of-the-week club, for the amount of reading it involved. That was the course that made me realize that yes, all the reading I had done in high school (when we also went through quite a few books in English class) had in fact taken time. As a freshman, I lived on campus, about three minutes' walk from the room where I had English class. In high school, I had an hour's commute each way by subway, which allowed for a lot of reading that I didn't consciously allocate time for, because the time was counting as travel time.

That was also the course where "Word" was a major theme in something we read, and the instructor asked the class about it, and after a minute I looked around at all my classmates, most of whom had been raised at least nominally Christian, and raised my hand, and recited the beginning of the gospel according to John so the instructor could go on. (Apparently, one of the Rules is that once you ask the class "Does anyone know what this means?" you're not allowed to tell them without waiting a really annoyingly long time.)

The founders of the university would not have been pleased.

RSA-129 was a factoring challenge that appeared in Martin Gardner's column in Scientific American. It was solved in 1994 by a volunteer team of over 600 people from around the world. The decrypted message read: "The Magic Words are Squeamish Ossifrage".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Words_are_Squeamish_Ossifrage

Bruce Arthurs:
I'm sorry to hear of the loss of your friend, and I hope that Hilde's problems are soon and permanently cured.

pat greene@21

Maybe we can call it Serge's law... :-)

The Hindenburg bore the number LZ-129.

Oh Fluorosphere, in which all knowledge is contained, I seek wisdom and possibly advice.

I'm looking for some online education courses in English and programming. Here's a little background.

I'm on the job hunt again, and find I'm missing a few key pieces in my education. Most notably, I'm a professional writer without an English or Communications degree, and a game designer who is severely lacking in direct programming skills. I do have a BS in Psychology, and I have about five years of experience in writing, development and customer service.

The obvious solution is to take some classes. Some of this stuff I can learn from books or online tutorials, but some things stick better for me with formal instruction. I figure more coursework will help my resume and my confidence, too. There are a few community and state colleges near where I live, but in the next few months I'm going to be out of town a lot - at conferences, workshops and at interviews. This doesn't mesh well with a standard or night school schedule. There's also the chance I'll get a new job even without extra training and move across the country before a standard semester would be over - given all that, I'm really hesitant to try to start normal schooling locally.

Overall, I'm wondering how I can tell if an online program is legitimate and likely to be helpful. There seems to be very little available online for English or creative writing, and I'd really prefer programs that offer some form of useful certification or college credit. I'd like to eventually get some sort of degree in a writing-related discipline, and if I don't get a good job in my field in the next six months I'll likely go back to school and work part time. I'm trying to figure out if I can make any noticeable progress online in the meantime. For programming I'm less focused on getting a degree. Very few jobs I'm looking at require anything beyond basic competency in one or two languages, so I'm mostly looking to just familiarize myself with python, lua, C++ or flash.

I'd be interested in hearing any other thoughts on my situation. Are online degrees generally looked down on? Are non-degree certificates considered worthwhile?

I've asked all my real life friends and googled my heart out, but I haven't been able to find any real answers. Can anyone here shed some light?

"bear escape" particle not readable.

Michael I @ 41... Humph. On the other hand, I can think of worse ways to achieve immortality.

If you mistake plain truth for silly word
your punishment shall not be very light,
shall not last merely one short day and night:
you'll be cut out forever from the herd,
rejected, scorned, listed with the absurd,
treated as source of all disease and blight.
You may think this is harsh, not just nor right,
but you're the loser now -- the hunted bird.
Honour was what we asked, and what we gave
to reach the place where only angels sleep
to find it empty and the treasure gone;
this world is conquered and become a grave
where even maggots nightly fear to creep
and we may wonder what it is we won.

Having problems trying to post my answer to Leah... checking if a short message will post.

Leah:
I can't be sure to what extent my own attitude or approach to hiring is typical, but in general I would give virtually no credence to certificates or coursework from an online course in some programming languages. That's the downside.

The positive side is that in my experience, for most programming languages, once you learn it you stick it on your resume and nobody asks much about how you learned it. You might get asked to demonstrate some basic competence or quizzed about what kinds of projects or software you've written in the language, but it's what you know and how well you know it that counts, not how or where you learned it. Of the languages you mention, C++ is pretty much the only one that you might formally learn or do significant coursework in as part of a degree program. Python and Lua are more in the "just pick it up" category, IMHO. At most you might get them for a week in a programming languages survey course, so if you buy a book, do some online tutorials, and teach yourself the language you're not far behind someone with academic credentials. ("Why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby" is reputedly how a lot of programmers get started in the Ruby language, for example.)

If you want credibility in a programming language, the best way is to really get to know it well and then do something real in that language. Obviously getting hired to write something commercial is a chicken-and-egg problem, but if you find an open source project that's interesting to you to work on and get to the point that you can contribute bug fixes or features, you can certainly list that on a resume, and I think it would weigh more with most managers than online coursework would. That doesn't have to be Linux; there are lots of open source Windows and Mac projects these days, and Python, for example, has reportedly gotten quite popular with Windows sysadmin types. That same approach could also give you the opportunity to pick up some writing credits, given that the typical documentation for most open source software is at around the "stab yourself in the eyes with a pencil" quality level.

A side point: the languages you list are at wildly different places on the spectrum. C++ is a very "big" language, with exceedingly intricate syntax and a lot to know about how to use it. Python and Lua have a much smaller and simpler core syntax. Learning C++ well enough to do complex programming in it is a very different undertaking, particularly if you're not already versed in C. If you want to learn a more commercially-oriented language also used in academia, Java might be a easier starting point. (OTOH if you really master C++, that will certainly open doors for you.)

Disclaimer - again this is all based on my personal biases as to what I would weigh when hiring someone. Others' biases may vary.

Leah, about all I can do is promise to look at any English programs you find and give you my opinion of their legitimacy. :-/ I suspect that most online courses will be a) not legit, or b) part of a brick-and-mortar school that requires registration as a real student, with all the rates and fees thereunto appertaining.

#44: "bear escape" particle not readable.

Works for me using Win Vista and Firefox. Be aware that it's photos.

Yesterday, the bear escape thing didn't work for me in Firefox; it loaded, then reloaded and stalled. Today, it seems to be working.

Bruce Arthurs: Sorry for your loss, and best wishes and good thoughts for finding out what's wrong with Hilde.

Leah, I really don't know enough about online programs in general to comment from that end, but I can think of one possible way to evaluate any program(s) that you are looking into: talk to someone at a local university or college and ask if the credits (any credits) from the online program will transfer. You seem to be thinking more in terms of picking up a course here and there rather than completing a degree, but in either case, finding out what more traditional institutions of higher education think of the various programs you are considering might give you some information about said programs.

There are also (as TexAnne points out) online courses available that are offered by traditional brick-and-mortar institutions. That would mean (again as TexAnne says) registering at those institutions in some fashion, but at least you wouldn't have to abandon the course if you wound up moving away from the area.

Eureka is a lot of fun, but it has the worst science of any science fiction show. "A stream of coherent phonons," indeed. Phonon: an abstract entity in Stratificational Linguistics, not a particle of sound.

Gods, I love/hate this show.

Edgar Allan Poe, flame warrior?

Once upon a midnight dreary
as I pondered, weak and weary
over many a weblog comment cov'ring topics quite obscure

presently I read a whinging
which somehow began impinging
upon the conversation, tinging
it with rudnenss, snark and bore

what strange troll, i asked, is straying
into all our threads and saying
all these sentiments betraying
attiudes of some mere boor

I will tell the moderator
who will then say "see you later"
block them by address locator
then they'll bug us nevermore

Xopher @ 54: Are you thinking of "phoneme"? A "phonon" is actually a quantized vibration in a crystal lattice. I don't know if they used the word appropriately in the TV show, but the phrase you quote doesn't seem completely wrong on the face of it.

Xopher @ 54: Actually, phonons are quanta of vibration in a crystal lattice. As well as linguistic objects.

Ah. So it's my ignorance of another use of the term showing.

But would a stream of coherent phonons destabilize organic matter on a subatomic level? That's what they said, and frankly I don't see how destabilization on a subatomic level can be dependent on the matter being organic.

Joel, in Stratificational Linguistics a phoneme is spelled out in phonons. For example, in English the phoneme /n/ is composed of the simultaneous phonons (Ap), (Ns). It doesn't need to be specified more than that because there's only one apical (articulated with the tip of the tongue) nasal (letting air come out the nose) in English. And (Vc) is never specified with (Ns) because in English all nasals are voiced. In a language with voiceless nasals you'd have to include (Vc) to specify /n/ fully.

Joel, Xopher, given that last week's macguffin was synthetic water which could be compressed for space travel... I expect that the Eureka writers thought they were inventing the word "phonon," but that might just be my horrible cynicism.

But, yeah, I love/hate that show, myself.

I give them a little more credit. The term "phonon" was invented as the sound analog of "photon" -- a quantum of physical vibration rather than of light. (Not a perfect analogy, but that's where it comes from.) The show picks that up in straightforward gonzo-science mode: if a powerful laser can set you on fire[*], then a powerful phonon emitter is a Really Loud Noise that can vibrate you to death.

It's goofytech but it's hung off of a real idea, which Eureka does pretty consistently.

[* And I have a friend who worked in a laser-physics lab who's been there. And can show you the hole burned in his lab coat.]

I gave up on Eureka due to the cute/bad science stuff.

Oddly enough, even worse science hasn't turned me off of Warehouse 13 . . . yet. Perhaps because it is a fantasy.

And speaking of utterly unbelievable science, did everyone catch this picture?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ibm_research_zurich/3852446773/in/set-72157622092395070/

http://www.zurich.ibm.com/news/09/pentacene.html

It's a molecule of pentacene (C22H14), imaged with an atomic force microscope. You can see the carbon rings. YOU CAN SEE THE CARBON RINGS.

I love the wolf cam!

Xopher #58: But would a stream of coherent phonons destabilize organic matter on a subatomic level?

Definitely not. They're essentially sound waves, so if you somehow packed enough energy into them, they could possibly damage tissue, but they're in the wrong regime to mess with the nucleus -- even ionization would be dubious. Also, AFAIK, phonons appear in restricted and slightly odd conditions -- in the "general world", they'd just decay into ordinary sound waves.

On the other hand, I could believe phonons building up inside some exotic gadget*, and perhaps damaging it (or at least forcing a shutdown).

*: drive matrix, blaster crystal, even a nanotech factory....

Xopher @ 58: But would a stream of coherent phonons destabilize organic matter on a subatomic level?

Not a chance. It would disrupt matter on an interatomic (i.e. chemical) level -- ending the possibility of energy transmission by vibrations, i.e., phonons -- long, long before anything could happen on a subatomic level. Organic is irrelevant.

I didn't know about the use of the term in linguistics. I suppose the two usages don't conflict often.

Andrew Plotkin @ 62:

Holy... You can see the carbon rings! Cool!

Stefan Jones @ 63:

I feel vaguely disoriented watching that, as I know I don't have a snout, but that's really fun.

Andrew Plotkin @ 60 --
I recall reading about someone vibrated to death by a very large experimental infrasonic levavasseur whistle. There's been a lot of sonic weapons research, but it tends to be for specialized uses.

A little while ago on one of the health care threads, I posted about a 6 year old losing his third bout with cancer. He finally passed on, quietly, at home, with some large amount of morphine that was never really enough. His memorial is tomorrow.

If Any of You are near a beach, maybe you'd participate, remotely, and in spirit at least.

Vasu hated long goodbyes, so in respect of this we have decided not to have a memorial with all the weeping and sad faces. Instead we are going to do what he would have liked to do. We are going to the beach. Vasu’s memorial will be held this Saturday at Double Bluff beach in Freeland. We will build the biggest sand castle that beach has ever seen. We begin building at 10 a.m. and don’t stop until it’s finished. Then we jump on it.

Does anyone here know how to dye fiber (of the wool and cotton varieties) with indigo in its powdered form? The only tutorials I see online are done from the freshly harvested leaves of indigo plants, and I haven't the resources to grow it myself. However, the apothecary next to my place of work has a jarful of powdered indigo with other powdered natural dyes for sale by the ounce--and unfortunately with no directions, ratios, or anything else I need to use it.

So, I turn to you. I know there are other handspinners here, and fiberarts mesh nicely with dye-arts. Can anyone help?

Carbon rings! I am... actually, I oscillate between crazy-wowed and sort of, "Yes, that is because science is awesome." Mostly crazy-wowed.

Eric at 68, I like the 'then we jump on it'. It avoids the tide metaphor nicely.

Avadaggio@69 This looks like what you want. http://www.earthguild.com/products/riff/rindigo.htm

I do know that if you're using real powdered indigo, these 'feel' right.

Just came back from my first evening at Bubonicon. Had a nice long chat with writer Ian Tregillis. Say, Patrick, why don't you post that sketch he had drawn as a proposal for the cover of his novel Bitter Seeds? Sure, he's getting a Palencar cover, but I rather like Ian's original idea of Cthulhu going nom-nom at the Earth.

eric @68:

I'm sorry to hear that. I'll stop by the beach (next to the lake, but sand + water) today.

Comfort to the family. Must be tough for you, coming hard on the heels of your baby's (thankfully finished, you say) illness.

Two TABC officers involved in June's raid on the Rainbow Lounge, Texas (discussed here) are fired.

Condolences, Bruce Arthurs, and good wishes- I hope something will help.

Best wishes, eric.

Bruce Arthurs @7:

I'm glad that your neighbor had you there for her.

Best wishes with finding a way to prevent any more frightening incidents with Hilde.

("Golden years?" That sounds awfully like "the best years of your life." I remember high school far too well to fall for that kind of description again.)

To all and some:

If you put a link in your post, and when you preview the post the link is greyed-out like this, your post will be held for moderation because of the broken link. And if I can't figure out what you meant to link to, I'm not going to release it.

The most common reason a link breaks is because you forgot to include the quote marks around the URL inside the tag. What MT does then is remove the entire URL so that I don't have a clue what was meant to be there, and the spam filters catch it because that kind of broken link is Really Really common in spam.

There's a reason for the mandatory preview.

In amusing number-tricks, 129 is the seventh binary number that is both palondromic and has exactly two 1-bits. They're all on the form 2^n+1. Not really exciting, but it's cool nonetheless.

pat greene @21: Length may not be a good criterion, though, since we are known to generate puns within the first 10 comments*.

I was thinking of something similar, but for riffs on the plums poem.

*Now I want to find a thread where the first comment contained a pun.

Pendrift @ 79... a thread where the first comment contained a pun

A thread guaranteed to clothe before it starts.

Pendrift @ 79: *hides*

I'm following AETV's "Hoarders" series with great interest -- they're done in much the same format/paradigm as "Intervention" and the subjects are given psychological counseling as well as professional organizers and physical labor to clear out dwellings, et cetera.

Conversely, the program is making me feel better about my clutter, in that I'm not in danger of losing sight of my floors.

Rings in your fingers
Rings in your toes
Rings in your eyeballs
And rings in your nose.

See carbon dancing
And sharing its pairs
Electrons in motion
Organic's all fares.

Rings to make lifeforms
And rings 'round the world
Rings hid in nanotubes
Balls, spirals furled.

Rings at the bottom
And rings at the top,
Rings in the middle
The rings do not stop.

Rings that are basic
To this world we know
Rings all of carbon
Go on with the show!

Paula, that needs to be set to music!

abi, #74: Interesting. The officers in question, and their superior, all seem to be willing to say, "I fucked up, and I take responsibility," now. What's bugging me about it is that I'm getting a feel of an unspoken, "But at least I got to have some fun," in there too. I think it's the lack of any language indicating actual regret for anything that happened, including the injury to Mr. Gibson.

Lee @85 (to abi @74's link) -- there's also the comment one of them made, "I hope I'm not being made the scapegoat for this," which both indicates no remorse and implies the existence of a pattern of this sort of thing being okay.

wrt indigo, @69/71: there're alternate sets of instructios here (doesn't specify fiber) and here (slightly different instrux for wool vs. everything else (cotton, linen, rayon, and silk)[*]).

[*: This grouping seems somewhat odd, since silk and wool are both animal protein fibers instead of plant cellulose bast, but what the hey. Also, all of the above recipes seem to call for the hydrosulfite process rather than the zinc-lime one; suppsedly the latter solution can be maintained for an arbitrary amount of time and creates darker blues while the former has to be used within a few days and results in paler colors, but I've never personally tried either so have no direct anecdotes.]

Silk is from an insect,and starts out I think as liquid shot out of the silkworm larval state of the moth species, rather than being fiber sprouted out of mammalian hide (sheep wool, alpaca fiber, mohair, etc.)

#69 and #87 - the traditional urine vat indigo method also works. My wife's done it ... my contributions were mostly to the volume. It takes remarkable little time - a weekend - to accumulate a gallon or so. We aged it three or four weeks at room temperature. After a while, it throws a precipitate, so that's the signal that it's stale enough. A glass jar is handy.

One source on that page says "preferably of those who drink strong drinks", but another says "boy-child gathered in the morning" is best. We avoided Vitamin B supplements for the time we were collecting.

Indigo dyebaths are fascinating - the soluble forms aren't blue, so the fibre comes out yellow-green, then turns blue as the indigo oxidizes. Wear good rubber gloves - indigo will dye your skin and fingernails quite effectively. One friend was careless, and said she had to wear dark brown nail polish for weeks. Blue nails weren't in fashion then :-)

Sodium hydrosulfite/dithoinite carries interesting warning labels - observe them.

Paula Lieberman @88 said: Silk is from an insect,and starts out I think as liquid shot out of the silkworm larval state of the moth species, rather than being fiber sprouted out of mammalian hide (sheep wool, alpaca fiber, mohair, etc.)

Yes, but silk is actually also a protein fiber of animal origin, as Julie L. @87 stated, and in the case of most dyes (for example, food coloring) acts pretty much like wool/alpaca/angora rabbit/etc, and very very different than the linen/cotton/other plant cellulosic fibers grouping.

Julie: That classification is correct - silk is essentially very pure cellulose, processed through the silkworm gut. (I found out the hard way once that it's like candy for termites.)

Wool is animal hair, which is a non-uniform structure consisting mostly of keratin.

Cotton and linen are cellulose fibre chains.

Silk is a two-protein (amino acid) fibre chain.

Rayon is a cellulose strand produced artificially using wood pulp as the feedstock. It's more absorbent than cotton.

I suspect that wool is much tougher to dye, given its different chemical makeup, and presumably silk is close to
viscose in characteristics (both produced using spinnerets) and have effectively the same response to dye as cotton/linen.

What do I know anyway, I'm a moose not a textile chemist!

Soren update: Last Saturday, we went to a reunion of staff and regulars from Rose's Turn, the piano bar we loved. When Soren got up to sing, he got a standing ovation from the room. He did a creditable version of "Political Science," slurring some of the syllables, but right on pitch, and got another standing ovation when he finished. And last night we took the subway together to another piano bar (where I sang a song from Passing Strange, and did quite well).

This weekend and next, we plan to turn the front room of the apartment into a music room, with a Mac with Garage Band, an electric keyboard, and too many wires, so that Soren can get his musical concepts out of his head. Wish us luck.

Leah Miller @ 43

In the UK, I'd go with the The Open University - widely recognised over here. Surely there must be some equivalent(s) in the USA, or reputable universities that offer online courses? I see that Stanford, for example, has writing courses and technical courses - including in C++ (see via their TechPort). Don't know what their online course costs are, or how their online courses are regarded - I did note there's a waiting list for the writing courses.

Skipping ahead to post this as a client is due any minute:

Avadaggio@69
#71 ::: sisuile

Yup, those processes work.

Gonzo science version of why indigo dyes cotton. The chunks of dye get stuck between the fibers rather than bonding to them. Prep involves softening and splitting the cotton strands so the dye will enbed better. This is why over many washings you can get the fabric back to almost its natural color. We had quite a discussion on this on a professional sewing list.

(first commenter)
Once the fabric is dry the indigo dye will "crock off" on anything it rubs
against. The way to prevent this is to paint the fabric with soy milk, then
let it dry for 3 to 6 months (one month at the least). Then wash it. Then
you won't have the blue crock off on you ever again. When I'm dying indigo
fabric, I usually dye it, dry it, paint it with soy milk, dry it, and then
just put it away for 3 or more months. I write on the calendar 3 months in
the future to remind me when to go get the fabric and wash it and do
something with it.

You don't have to buy expensive soy milk in cartons. Just buy dry soybeans,
soak then in water, grind them in a blender, and then strain the "milk"
through a strainer (pantyhose works great for this). You can even resoak
the ground soybeans for a second run through the strainer.

(me)
Animal milk contains casein, a natural polymer which forms a hard skin
when it dries. Soy milk has a comparable protein. In my theater days, we
used cheap water-based tempera for painting sets, but it would rub off
on the costumes. We'd dump sour milk in it. Fresh would have worked, but
there was usually some spoiled in the tech workshop refrigerator. Think
of how difficult it is to scrape up a puddle of dried milk. You've got
to chisel it off.

(another)
Shaker milk paint. We make it with skim milk, lime, etc., and use it to
stain/protect our deck. It keeps for a week in the fridge if you have large
project.

Oh, and discovery of the day? Spiced coffee, with black pepper, cardamom and cinnamon -- very nice. Spiced coffee sweetened with two teaspoons of salt instead of sugar -- not so nice.

Remember: I do the research, so you won't have to.

Velma @ #93

Hurrah! this is excellent news.

May things continue to improve, and good fortune to all.

Cadbury.

An observation: The young women coming to me for what we call "advisement" (a word I do not like) have nails painted in different colours. That is to say, the nails on each hand are in different colours. I ask them why this is, and they cannot explain it except to say that this is what the nail salon does. Have I fallen into a parallel universe or something?

Another observation: If the element unbiennium is discovered, presumably it would not occur every two years.

Fragano, #98: Fashion changes, and sometimes it changes weirdly.

That said, I am fond of painting my nails in non-uniform colors*, but I don't put all one color on one hand and all another color on the other. I generally use 3 colors**, and I have a specific pattern for their application. I think of this as making my nails into the equivalent of jewelry; I don't insist on all the beads in my necklace being the same color, so why should all my fingernails have to be the same color?

* When I bother to paint them at all, which is an entirely separate issue.

** Except when I'm doing a diversity rainbow. It would be nice to be Darkovan aristocracy and have 6 fingers on each hand, but I don't, so the color I usually leave off is orange.

Velma @ 93: Good luck and blessings to you both!

Velma@96, my local breakfast joint near the train station has coffee out by the counter so you can pour it yourself, pay, and run. It's especially nice if you want half-decaf to be able to just pour it yourself. Unless, of course, you accidentally get the pitcher of the house spiced tea instead of the decaf; mixing that with coffee was amazingly bad.

I have occasionally ripped open a teabag of Celestial Seasonings' Bengal Spice herbal tea and tossed it into the filter basket with the ground coffee when I'm starting a pot. Quite good, say my tastebuds.

Bill@102: Done that, too. Have also added orange, grapefruit, and orange-strawberry-banana juice to my coffee at different times. None of them work as well as milk products.

Velma, did you spice the coffee yourself? That sounds interesting indeed.

Bruce Arthurs, #7, I'm sorry to hear that Anne has died. And just as sorry to hear about Hilde being in the hospital. I hope she's out soon. Does she get fevers, at least?

eric, #36, I hope your baby gets checked out soon and that the cost is not too much.

Lee, #85, and those two officers are state officers. The city officers are still under investigation.

As to the M&M story in the sidebar, the arenas don't need to worry about taking out brown M&Ms anymore because you can buy M&Ms online in specific colors and just not buy brown.

eric, I'm sorry for your loss. I like the jump-on-it too.

abi, that there were firings is progress. Now I'm waiting for prosecutions. I'm also waiting for chocolate air.

Velma, that's terrific news! Good luck on the music room.

I just heard a Katrina survivor on the radio talk about the time he spent living in a "Kwanzaa hut."

Mary Frances @84, if you want to sing it, try using the tune from the Grateful Dead's "Scarlet Begonias." It scans!

Shouldn't a Kwanzaa hut be something like a Sukkot booth?

From what I remember of experiments in dyeing, some years ago, silk will take chemical dyes MUCH MORE VIBRANTLY than cotton, linen, or wool. Knock-your-eyes-out more vibrantly.

My experience with natural dyestuffs is less extensive. I can say that turmeric dyes polyester chiffon more strongly than you'd guess from the color of the dyebath.

...together with assorted notes on the use of ratzenfratzen cellophane in costuming...

Rikibeth @ 110: You wouldn't say that if you'd ever heard me sing. Honest. I'm a wonderful listener, not a singer. But I'll check out the Dead melody and try to hear Paula's words!

Where is that old thread of grammatical horrors? I can't find it.

Xopher (113): Did you mean this one?

Marilee @106: However, the contract calling for M&Ms, no brown, still works as a test of whether they read the contract--though at this point they might be well advised to change it, just because that specific clause is well known to go with that band, so people might get it right without reading the contract, and the candy isn't the point here.

Rikibeth @110: Sometimes the differences between silk and cotton are just odd: I put a silk shirt and a cotton sports bra/exercise top into the same dye bath a couple of months ago, working for a two-color effect. They both came out two-color. However, the silk shirt is a sort of olive green and bright purple, and the cotton bra is a leaf green and bright blue. (I was hoping for leaf green and purple.) If anyone is curious, I put photos up on Flickr; I'm rosvicl there, and they aren't very far back in my not-exactly-huge photostream.

Yes, Mary Aileen, and thank you!

Vicki, I like the orange fungus picture. It looks almost like a flower.

Xopher (116): You're welcome! It helped that I remembered the title of the post.

Serge, 80: *groan*

Michael, 41 -- I think Serge's Law works for me. It was a tossup as far as I was concerned between him and Xopher.

Vicki - if you use fiber-reactive dyes, you fix wool (or other animal hair) and silk with acid, and plant fibers with bases. Silk will dye in the same batch with plant fibers, but a similar but different spectrum, as your photos show. If you mix the same dye but use different Ph fixers, the colors will be much closer. I like to toss a length of silk in when I dye hemp, and then use it for bias binding or other trim. I've never had quite as much variation as you got, though. What kind of dye are you using?

Bruce Arthurs and eric, care and condolences for those losses. And a hug, if she'll have it, for Hilde. Scary indeed.

Velma (#93) Wonderful! (Update in another thread on my friend's aneurysm. Soren gives me hope; a path.)

Silk's vibrant colours with old natural dyes was a part of its lasting popularity and value.

Bruce Arthurs #103 &seq.... I've been known to spice my coffee too. Cinnamon is better added after brewing (the powder clogs the filter), but is supposed to be good for diabetics (adult-onset type, anyway). I've also added nutmeg, vanilla or almond extract, cardamom and occasionally turmeric. Anise and fenugreek were not to my taste.

Fibers in order of dye-vibrancy by home dyer (me)

Silk
Wool
Cotton
Rayon
Linen
Dinosaur

This is an unofficial list and comes from an experiment I did at one point. Protein fibers tend to take dye better than cellulose fibers, even when you use appropriate fixatives and types of dye for your type. Silk tends to do better than wool because of it's regularity, iirc, but I might not. I just know it works better.(experiment dyed in the cloth using Cushings dyes)

Tumeric is one of my favorite yellow dyes - It's cheap, easy, does animal fiber, plant fiber, and leather well, and I can buy it in bulk from the local international grocery/ middle eastern grocery. If only I could wear yellows!

pat greene @ 119... Thanks. Of course, if Xopher wishes for the Law to be named after him, I won't begrudge him that honor.

Velma @93:

That sounds like a fantastic evening under any circumstances, and doubly so now! Good idea about the music room, too.

Unexpected treat from my local public library: THE HOSPITAL FOR BAD POETS, short stories by J.C. Hallman (Milkweed Editions, 2009).

An excerpt from the title story:

(Setup: A young poet has collapsed onto the floor. An emergency crew, Bob and Mike, have responded.)

The boy ripped the page free to examine it. "Is this the last thing you were working on?" [...] His eyes rode the toppled column of my lines.

"This is awful," Mike said.

I groaned and my head hit the floor, perhaps for the second time.

"Watch that C-spine, Mike!" Bob said. "You can't be held liable for disliking the work of a bad poet, but you are responsible for insufficient care. Granted, we're not dealing with the penetrating trauma of a slam poet or gangsta rapper here, but even a standard verse emergency runs cicles around your typical diabetic episode. This is a poet! And poets can go south fast. Look the wrong way and even Wordsworth will take the big six-foot dirt nap. Poets have feelings up the ass."

[...]

"Ho there, cowboy!" Bob said, lunging forward to steady my shoulders. "Think about what you're doing. You could have writer's block. You might even have a clot. Stand up and you're talking ischemic stroke. You could have an aneurysm in your language center. It goes pop, you'll never even think verse again." He lodged his hands against his hips, decisively. "We've got to take you to the hospital for bad poets."

"No," I said. "God, no."

For some reason, in my mind I find myself casting Jim MacDonald and Fragano Ledgister as Bob and Mike.

Bruce Arthurs @ 126... "We've got to take you to the hospital for bad poets."

To the Rhymergency Room?

Pat @ 119 et seq.: We should call it Serge's law. Twill tie in nicely with the other major topic of the thread so far. (What's the worsted could happen?)

Leah @43: I see you've already had a little advice, but thought I'd add my own. I'll add the caveat that I've never worked professionally in game development, so I'm making assumptions about how that industry works that are possibly untrue.

The first thing to note is your suggested list of languages goes from one extreme of the spectrum to the other, Lua being a simple language with a very specific purpose, while C++ is an extremely complex language that is suited for almost all purposes. I'd aim for some middle ground, and given your background I'd suggest Python is probably the most useful of these languages; AIUI, most modern game engines are using Python as their story scripting language these days (LUA being used more for user interface scripting, C++ for back-end engine implementation). I'd suggest staying away from Flash as a beginner; you need an entirely different mindset to work with it that won't help with the others.

As to what kind of qualifications are accepted, my experience has been that most software development recruiters expect their candidates to be graduates, but don't care what the subject of the degree was. And those who know what they're doing consider certification irrelevant. The problem is that the certificates tend to concentrate on a subject (knowledge of the language and/or programming environment) that is almost completely orthoganal to what the recruiter is looking for (problem solving skill, essentially). Past experience is the only thing most are willing to consider.

The question of how to get this experience is problematic, but not overly so. There are, as I see it, two routes open:

* Computer science degree courses, with the caveat of avoiding online programs. A good CS course will include several group projects, and these can provide the kind of experience the recruiters are looking for. I believe there are even courses available that focus on game development skills, if you look in the right places.
* Getting involved in your own projects. Develop an indie-style game yourself, or get involved with an open-source game project.

The point is to get something that you can show to recruiters, tell them "I've done this, which is similar to the kind of thing you'll want me to do for you." This is much more important than any certificate you can show them.

Velma #96:

Once upon a time, I was helping my mother make my birthday cake, and I put in the specified quantity — of salt rather than sugar.

They were both kept in unmarked glass jars, though, if I recall correctly, in different places. (We added a label after that.)

I don't recall whether I ate my portion.

I have an objection to the concept explicated of the proposed Serge's Law, because sometimes the punning starts almost immediately in the thread.

(On a related issue, what about the poesy....]

Paula Lieberman @ 131... sometimes the punning starts almost immediately in the thread

Amd I'm not always to blame for it.

#132 Serge
Are you, however, the most likely person to start the punning?

On separate topics:
1) The Fairness Doctrine needs to come back NOW. The latest outrage--WBZ radio, part of the Infinitity/CBS, reporting, without any commentary from the calumnified, or questions, or any tone except APPROVAL, the Fux TV broadcast of person who was in the office of the Vice President of the USA from 2001-2008, condemning and excoriating the investigation and those authoring the investigation into the Department of Justice authorizing of "enhanced" interrogation methods in 2001-2008. The lying scum has the temerity to claim that the investigation is political skullduggery and indication that it would not be happening were there moral upstanding sensible people controlling the US Government, and stated that the enhanced interrogations gained information critical to protecting the USA....

2) Sen Kerry said that the public option for healthcare could be negotiated away. I think that Sen. Kerry for saying that should be replaced.... but NOT with a Repuke!!!

Paula Lieberman @ 133... I am indeed the usual suspect.

Email sent to Sen Kerry

1) I am completely disgusted with your willingness to dump the public health option. The USA needs single payer, and not greedy grasping unethical immoral so-called health insurance companies. They're parasites on the US public and taxpayers. Didn't you listen to all those intercessions by the Kennedy family descendants on Saturday about healthcare must be a right and not a privilege? The opposition are rabid weasel and mad dogs, negotiations with those with rabies, only makes one painfully infected and DEAD, and continues the rabies epidemic... which is a matter of public health....
2) I am completely disgusted with WBZ radio, reporting on Fux TV broadcasting an interview with the lying scheming out of office former Vice President (FVP). The FVP was condemning all who want the Department of Justice and CIA investigated for the "enhanced interrogation techniques" --mealy-mouthed terminology for torture up to and including rape and homicide- as politically motivated, and indicating that a sensible responsible government would not pursue any such investigations. He stated that the interrogations were important to national security....
In reality he's a Constitution-raping malevolent liar, intent on keeping his ass covered--despite the outing of Valerie Plame, despite massacres of prisoners in Afghanistan, despite rape at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, despite the callous murder of at least one Afghan who went into CIA custody in an attempt to make them see he was not a terrorist and not Taliban... THOSE type of abuse make implacable enemies out of reasonable people, Cheney -created- terrorists and Taliban sympathizers and anti-American Iraqis, out of people whose families and lives were gratuitous ly destroyed by the Unites States. And I am infuriated that Pres Obama has refused to completely repudiate the Cheney era policies, he and Nancy Pelosi refuse to allow a full investigaton of the former Executive Branch of 2001 - 2008 from the top down. As far as I'm concerned, the top people in that (mis)adminstration are guilty of starting a war under false pretext and mass murder by accessory (the Agfhan massacres, and the deaths of a million Iraqi from violence and disease during the mishandled occupation of Iraq--along with other war crimes (failure to protect libraries, schools, government offices, museums, archaoeological sites... from looters, arsonists, and robbers)
Getting back to WBZ-TV, for failing to provide ANY questions of Cheney's comments and failing to provide a speaker commenting on Cheney's comments exposing them for the lies that Cheney speaks and calumny he heaps, I want the license re-examined and either enforcment of a re-imposed Fairness Doctrine, or the license yanked and 50,000 watts of power which is NOT rightwing sympathizer and propaganda used for HONEST, fair reporting...

Re: one of Teresa's latest Particles... Ah, yes, good old Subservient Chicken. How I laughed when you snapped your garter belt! Hours of good clean fun.

The pictures are in Scott Edelman's blog.

Two pictures. A stack of books on a bedside table. An overflowing bookshelf. Science Fiction and Fantasy and Koontzian suspense predominate. If you didn't know the context you would think it looks like an ordinary fan's bookshelf. The books were on the shelves of Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was a captive of a convicted sex offender for eighteen years. These books were her escape during her captivity.

Re: the Kenelm Digby particle, around here he's known as the originator of the recipe for cheesecakes that are regularly served at SCA events.

#138
I like his recipe for 'egg tea'. 17th century 'instant breakfast'! (It works, too. Using chai black tea is very effective.)

So, I was mowing grass and listening to Richard Thompson's 1952 Vincent Black Lightning and I realized that it's essentially a cyberpunk story. (OK, Thompson says it's an outlaw ballad, but what does he know, he only wrote it.) After all, it has at least these tropes of cyberpunk:

• a machine as a McGuffin


• a dangerous man


• a red-headed girl


• black leather


• crime


• death

Patrick had provided me the DVD of it some time ago, but I couldn't pass the chance to see Nina Paley's "Sita Sings the Blues" at the local rep theater today. That is what should have won the Hugo for the best movie of 2008.

That B&N particle doesn't surprise me. They've started putting webmail-style ads on the book pages.

That B&N particle doesn't surprise me. They've started putting webmail-style ads on the book pages.

Um, not the pages of the dead trees. I mean the website pages for books they offer for sale.

Xopher @OT128 #701:
Hm, I think I assumed too much there; that most OT names are back-formations is generally accepted. (And situations like the story of Binyamin's naming are often seen as harmonizing competing back-stories.)

Meanwhile, I've been amusing myself imagining the Scriptures according to Rocky.

Serge @OT128 #729:
Just as long as a wardrobe malfunction doesn't result in their turning transparent....

Michael Mock @#19:
It seems to me like social engineering is one of ha-Satan's usual weapons in Jewish writing. On the other hand...

Vicki @#38:
...there is often a belief that contact with, or even hearing read, holy writings would cause physical damage to demonic forces, which would explain why they would think the Devil couldn't read their holy book and act upon it. (This doesn't play well in the Jewish model, as demons weren't so much evil as they were different (think D&D "lawful/chaotic" axis, except that neither "good" nor "evil" could apply to them; this differs from Faerie in that they had their own laws and notions of good/evil) and ha-Satan is explicitly and openly doing G-d's will.)

I see more detail has been gone into, but in the interest of more analogies/explanations:

re indigo: Indigo is a funny coloring agent because it's not really a dye (the things one learns reading about blue jeans) but more of a laquer. So it adheres to the surface. This is why jeans fade in the ways they do.

Where the material is more flexed, the indigo flakes off more readily.

Re the "antigravity garden" particle: there are of course downsides.

O.K. Ikea has changed their catalog font. The reaction has been pretty evenly split between "who cares" and "burn down the corporate offices." This is no suprise, but I never thought we'd see Godwin's Law come into play in a font comment thread.. (It's a "soft Godwin," namely Oh Noes--Nazi links--buy local, but it's a Godwin nonetheless. Strange...)

Henry @ #140

I guess that makes me a cyberpunk writer too.

Does a race between airliner flying-boats, riding the leading edge of a thunderstorm to the finishing line, count? It ought to be a song...

Yep, the machine's there.

And the man is very dangerous.

A red-headed girl? Well, I suppose a furry-style vixen counts.

Black leather flying jacket.

Crime and death? Definitely.

There's also Black Magic intended. And vengeance.

The weather balloon is just a weather balloon.

Two months to NaNoWriMo.

I suspect that wool is much tougher to dye, given its different chemical makeup, and presumably silk is close to
viscose in characteristics (both produced using spinnerets) and have effectively the same response to dye as cotton/linen.

Silk, wool and cotton are easy to dye, in about that order. Linen is really tough to dye, which is why the pattern in Europe for so long was "white linen underwear with colorful wool outer garments".

Silk and wool, being animal fibers, like acid dyes; in most commercial versions the acid is vinegar or the like.

Lee #100: True, fashions change. I'm curious, though, about the complete passivity of these young women regarding what is done to part of their bodies.

Fragano, I don't think they're necessarily passive about their ornamentations--it may be that they are just feeling terribly incapable of saying to a man who's old enough to be their father "I don't care if you think it look's weird; I like it that way" let alone "Who cares what you think? I think it's cool." The discomfort of youth when asked to justify something silly to an authority figure* is often overwhelming, and an answer equivalent to "I dunno" is often the result.

*Especially one likely to expect logical and coherent answers that don't sound stupid, which are almost impossible to provide when talking about something as trivial as fashion.

Fragano @150

Looking at your original account, I do get that disturbing sense of passivity. They're making it sound as if it's nothing to do with them. Now, saying it's a fashion might not be much better but it implies a choice.

I can't say that I follow fashion, but it's never seemed to be something which doesn't have room for personal choice.

re: The Sir Kenelm Digby particle.

I hope he used some wound salve on that cut to his leg.

Henry Troup @ 140... Those are tropes of cyberpunk? They can all found in Hitchcock's North by Northwest.

a machine as a McGuffin: the microfilms inside the antique
a dangerous man: lots of them, but especially James Mason
a red-headed girl: Eva Marie Saint is blond, but Cary Grant does ask her how a girl like her becomes a girl like her.
black leather: I think there's one leather-clad truck driver
crime: espionnage, murder, attempted murder, theft, assaulting a police officer
death: the list is quite long, but we can begin with the literal backstabbing at the United Nations.

By "his leg" I mean, of course, "his hand."

Oy.

fidelio #151: That might be the case. The resulting silliness is particularly weird.

Dave Bell #151: I'm just curious as to the reasons for that choice. Some fashions of the recent past have seemed particularly strange to me (thong underwear, for example, which seems very uncomfortable).

Fragano Ledgister @150: [..] fashions change.

Tattoos, not so much.

Jules at #146: Living walls having a downside.

The living wall gravity-defying gardens remind me of something I saw in M.C.Escher.

So sometimes it's hard to tell which is the up side and which is the down side.

Would stories in which the mcguffin is made of cloth be fiberpunk?

Open-Threadiness:

If anyone has read Dave Freer's books, or his blog,you might be aware that he's moving from South Africa to Australia. They are also trying to move their pets, but the monies budgeted have been overcome by currency problems, so they need more.

However, Dave doesn't want to beg for charity, so he's writing a story especially for his donation page, Save the Dragons. Donations are payable through Paypal (managed by Walt Boyes, a longtime friend and editor of an online magazine for engineers).

They are really desperate -- a writer doesn't make a lot of money, as we all know -- and they can't abandon their pets just to move to a better life themselves. They have to leave SA, against their better wishes. It's a very tough spot to be in: they can't stay and they can't go until they know they can pay for their dogs and cats to be safely quarantined.

If you can, please donate. If you can't, please spread the news as wide as you can -- Dave's a good man and I think he deserves to have some assistance in bringing his beloved pets with him.

I know it isn't a scam, because I've met him here in the US; I've known him since I was on Baen's Bar, for more than 12 years (and he's not a Mil-SF writer).

I'm posting a link to n article in today's Chicago Tribune, for those of you who are currently struggling to help someone you love who has suffered a stroke: Their Friendship Is Pure Poetry.

I know the situations aren't analagous, really, but I thought maybe you could use a reminder that what you are doing does make a difference.

Bless you all.

Rub Rusick #157: Weight gain/loss might have an effect.

Open threadiness:

Naked Capitalism has two really fascinating posts up right now, stuff ISTM you don't see discussed clearly much in the MSM.

This article describes some dishonest reporting w.r.t. the true cost of the bailout to the US, and the true value to its recipients.

And this article discusses one of the statistics being bounced around as evidence that the financial crisis is over and all is well--an improved savings rate. The funny thing is, it matters a great deal how you account for income inequality when discussing this....

Today I discovered that, when a city lists a phone nbr as an emergency one, they have a rather elastic definition of 'emergency'. A couple of hours ago, a neighbor called me at the office to say that the water meter's well in front of our house was filled with water, and that the sidewalk around had sunken a couple of inches. About 30 minutes ago, the city's people had not shown up yet so I called again. It turns out that they have 24 hours to respond to such emergencies. Maybe I should have lied and said that the situation was so severe that our home was about to fall into Hell's muddy pit.

Twits.

On the nails/passivity thing: the last-but-one time I went to the dentist, she said they wanted to look at one tooth more closely and either seal it or fill it. I got an appointment the next day, whoo. The dentist-- different one this time-- drilled, filled, told me to bite down, the whole thing. When I was done, I asked, "When was it decided that I was getting a filling?" I should have asked, "When was it decided that instead of the filling my insurance covers, I was getting a pretty one?" He said that a lot of people don't like to know what's going on.

I don't know what's involved with 'getting my nails done.' I'm pretty sure that if I just went in, I wouldn't demand that the nail person justify her every move to me-- it would be rude. Once I knew something of it, I might ask, but I might have internalized the she-knows-what-she's-doing thing.

On the subject of the proposed law, I'm comfortable with calling it Serge's Law. I have something else in mind for Xopher's Law, but I haven't quite completed my observations yet.

Last week, I did a presentation on testing for our implementation and support team. I ornamented it with clip art of assorted insects. (The team, mostly native speakers of Dutch, took a while to catch on to the "bugs" theme.)

This morning, one of that team came into the office with a gift for me: a scarf with silhouettes of beetles on it! It now marks my chair.

I came home and told this story. Alex grinned appreciatively about the insect pictures, and then said, "You know, one day you might find a rabbit in the software. Then you can name it Bugs Bunny."

I'm so proud.

Xopher @ 166... Wouldn't you prefer Jude Law?

abi @ 167...

The abiveld extends to bad jokes, eh?
Say, do you know know why computer bugs are called 'bugs'?

Okay, here's a question uniquely suited to the Fluorosphere's talents:

Sticking plaster: I dimly recall seeing old movies and tv shows where a man cuts himself shaving, then applies a little dab of white stuff to staunch the blood. In some later occasions, I gather the substance is a little wad of toilet paper, but through some vague means, I've gathered that there is, in fact, a kind of plaster used for such purposes.

My Google-Fu fails me, and all I come up with is that "sticking plaster" is British for what Americans call "adhesive bandages" (frex Bandaids).

The context of the request is that I have a guinea pig with a chronic ulceration on the pad of his foot. It's difficult to treat because, as soon as I clean it off, it immediately fills up again with, um, stuff from the bottom of the cage. Bandaging his foot is approximately as practical as putting a Bandaid on a cat's nose (and, no, E-collars aren't an option). I'm thinking that sticking plaster (as in, actual plaster) might actually be an effective treatment.

I'm hoping that somewhere here a) has heard of this stuff and b) maybe can tell me where to buy it or how to make it.

Serge:  because one of the first errors in a computer - sometime in the 1940’s when computers used thermionic valves and open relays and were nice and warm for passing insects - was due to a moth that got itself caught in a relay.

Jacque:  the man who cut himself shaving may have been applying a styptic pencil to stop the bleeding, rather than a sticking plaster.  That may not help your guinea pig!  But there are people here who are experienced with hamsters, and the skills may transfer.

Me #171:  on second thoughts, probably not “one of the first errors in a computer “ – I dare say even Ada and Charles made mistakes – but the moth story is supposed to be why they’re called bugs.

John Stanning @ 171... That's what I thought I had read somewhere, but I wasn't sure. Thanks for the confirmation.

@171/173 -- the notation, however, implies that "bug" was already a term, and finding a real one was funny.

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/h96000/h96566k.jpg

Abi @ #167 Is that a rabbit in software development, or just pointy hare?

Jacque, for humans there's a substance called Nuskin Liquid Bandage. It brushes on, and dries to a form-fitting flexible barrier to keep a wound clean. It will wear off eventually, your guinea pig may gnaw it, and you have to keep it off the ground until it dries (less than a minute), but it might be a way to go.

I'd ask your vet about it, since I'm not one.

Serge 168: I thought Jude's Law was "no cause is hopeless." I'll have to ask Teresa.

Xopher @ 178... "no cause is hopeless"

The consequences, on the other hand...

Jacque @ 170: for a chronic ulcer, you want to do more than just prevent stuff from getting in; you also want to encourage the body to heal over. For this purpose, I recommend talking to your friendly doctor, nurse, EMT, or veterinarian and request some hydrocolloid dressing, which may be known by various trade names such as "BioDres". Once you have acquired your hydrocolloid dressing, you will begin by cutting a small square or oval to be used in the bandage. Next is cleaning off the area of the ulcer with a dilute betadine solution or other recommended cleaning solution (I prefer betadine as it is nice against all sorts of bacteria and not toxic to the body). Soak or flush the area, blot dry with a clean paper towel or gauze pad, apply antibiotic ointment or betadine ointment if you need it, and then take your pre-cut dressing and place it in situ. Use tape, self-adhesive bandaging material, or some combination to keep the dressing in place. I suggest leaving it alone for 48-72 hours; the longer you leave the dressing alone, the healthier the granulation tissue is, and that's what you're trying to grow under the dressing.

Your GP may not need any more than one or two dressing changes. If you don't see healthy pink tissue under the dressing, bring your GP back to your vet for treatment. Normally, the hydrocolloidal dressing generates nice pink granulation quickly, and it will grow to encompass the entire ulcer, which will shrink and then cover over with skin.

Works on humans too -- I used this technique on my son a few years ago. Well, on his leg, which was developing an ulcer after he kept getting kicked in the same spot during soccer camp.

Ginger @ 160:

Australia is very strict about quarantines and letting things into the country, and rightly so. You have to even declare wood-framed furniture. Good luck to him on the move.

abi @ 167:

Congratulations on raising such a good kid.

Andrew Plotkin @ 175:

The New Hacker's Dictionary has an entry for bug which states that the term is most certainly older than 1947 when the first 'real' bug was found. It also gives a pointer to a paper on the subject.

I do very much like the Admiral Hopper story, though.

Ginger @ 180:

For a moment I read GP as general practitioner and wondered why they couldn't take care of the bandaging themselves. Then context kicked in.

Keith @ #181, "For a moment I read GP as general practitioner and wondered why they couldn't take care of the bandaging themselves"

Because GPs don't get paid enough, so junior GPs go into specialty medicine.

(Image of small rodent in white coat w/ stethoscope optional)

Fragano, #156: You may or may not want to know that one of the slang terms for thong underwear is "butt floss".

Diatryma, #165: That seems very odd to me. My current dentist is in a 2-person office, and mostly I see one of them but sometimes the other. However, if I'm getting anything beyond a basic cleaning, they are always both very certain that we have agreed on what is being done before any work starts. I would be quite annoyed at a dentist who didn't at least double-check, especially if he hadn't seen me before.

KeithS, #181: When I was studying programming (back in the days of the dinosaurs), the Hopper story was told to me as the origin of the term "debugging", not of "bug" itself.

General open thread complaint:

I got my teeth cleaned today. I like my dentist's office (a big practice, with lots of individual dentists and hygenists) normally. Today, I got the hygenist with the persistent cough and occasional sniffles through the entire cleaning. She wore gloves and mask, and I washed my hands as soon as she was done, but I have zero doubt that I will be coming down with her cold in a few days, if I haven't already had it. Grmbl.

I should have just asked to be rescheduled to see someone who wasn't so obviously contagious, but I just didn't think it through until there seemed little point.

Ginger @180: hydrocolloid dressing

This sounds like a very interesting proposition, except for the "adhesive tape" part. Mr. Junior is a remarkably copasetic little soul. (How many guinea pigs have you encountered who can fall asleep at the vet's office?) But the notion of taping up his little hand leaves me dubious. Particularly since he has somewhat limited use of the back leg on that same side. (He's 7.5 years old, and still loves to chase his girls, though he has to kind of gun the engine to do so.)

Keith @ 181: Oh, Dave doesn't have any issue with the quarantine, just with the amount he'd budgeted that ended up being too little because of the currency declining. He waffled for months about asking for help, and whether he could find someone in SA to take them, and he's decided he has to bring them along. They're family, just as much as his wife and sons are.

Also: GP often makes me think of Guinea Pigs, until I grasp the context.

FWIW, there's an extant letter from Thomas Edison which seems to say that "bug" was a common term for minor flaws in new designs for electrical equipment back in 1878 --- so the term had been in circulation sixty years before Grace Hopper pulled that unfortunate moth from the relays of the Mark I and pasted it in the log book...

Ginger @ 186... What then do you think when you hear that a car has a GPS?

Clearly, the GP refers to its power source.

albatross @ 189... Gerbil Power?

[in passing]

Have decided that I would like "clusterfuck" to be a collective noun. As in "A clusterfuck of politicians."

I never was able to make the "insulation fetish" Particle work, and now it's scrolled off. But I wish to pass along a link I got from Amy Ranger: a wedding dress made from the wool of the bride's own sheep.

'As in "A clusterfuck of politicians." '

That's not the term already?

Speaking of little critters, when I took my Shiva's body to the vets today so they could send it to be cremated (he died very suddenly last night), there was a tiny terrier kind of dog. He was curled up on an 8.5x11" paper and they called him their "counter-hamster." He was the pet of one of the staff.

Marilee @ 194... My condolences.

Marilee, my condolences on your loss.

148, 154

I suspect that my internal model of cyberpunk follows from film noir - so the Maltese Falcon also has an overlap. I suppose though, that the lack of actual computation excludes Richard Thompson from a truly strict definition of "cyberpunk". Not that "console cowboys" seem to have much in common with the computer security people I used to work with.

Antonia, your story sounds like it would make a heck of a Hitchcock-style movie.

September 1st is Outer Alliance Pride Day. Outer Alliance.

From the About Us page:

"The Outer Alliance is a group of SF/F writers who have come together as allies for the advocacy of LGBT issues in literature. Made up of individuals of all walks of life, our goal is to educate, support, and celebrate LGBT contributions in the science-fiction and fantasy genres."

I am a member, and will be posting my Pride Day post tomorrow.

Marilee, I'm so sorry about Shiva. It's never good when they die.

Marilee@194: Oh, dear! This was very unexpected, wasn't it? I remember when he was just the noisy boy outside your apartment...I'm so sorry to hear it.

Xopher@34: in "Illuminati" (the game, not the books), extremism was the opposite of all other extremisms.

Joel@138: different places, different specialties; in Carolingia "Digby cakes" (his "excellent small cakes") are much sought after. Cookie size/shape, tending toward shortbread, and loaded with currants when properly done; the local from-across-the-pond vendor has a modern knockoff whose name I'm blanking on.

(reposting from way-behind at the previous OT):
Harvard professor gets grazing rights. Much likelier than the one about the student, the ale, and the sword.

Marilee@194:

I'm so sorry.

#194: Condolences. He looked like a very handsome cat.

Marilee, so sorry about Shiva. I've enjoyed your stories over the years....

I'm on a hastily planned trip to the Olympic Penninsula.

One of the excuses I made to myself for going (I'm in a workaholic rut) was that I'd bring this stereoscopic camera I made and make a travelogue of 3D pictures.

I discovered a few days ago that the little pen cameras I ganged together would not work with the Vista OS on my "work" laptop . . . so I got a netbook, which I'm typing on now. A hasty purchase, but one I would have made within a month or so.

I had mixed results with a trial run, but I wrote it up to battery problems in the Left camera.

Today, after taking 17 pictures of the trip down the gorge and on a ferry across the Columbia, the Left camera just totally busted. The trigger button fell down inside the case, and now it won't store anything.

So I'm stuck with a 2D holiday.

In a weird twist of fate, the motel I picked out of the AAA guide as a base for hiking turns out to be in a town known for . . . well, a picture is worth several dozen words:

http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones/forks_motel_lo.JPG

I throw myself upon the tender mercies of the Fluorosphere. It seems that my new principal is very much a fan of Who Moved My Cheese and we spent a good chunk of a staff meeting on the World of Cheese and Change.

Shudder. I've looked at summaries of the current parodies out there--but something more is needed.

Like, say, rewriting it from a Maoist perspective. Or a Trotskyist perspective. Or...at that point, I realized that you could rewrite the durn thing from almost any particular political philosophy and it would actually work better than the original.

Right now I am soothing my mind with what a Maoist Mouse would do. Or, say, what James T. Kirk would do if someone moved his cheese. Anything, anyone, other than those obnoxiously boring characters. Stephen Pastis's Pearls Before Swine version, say.

Does anyone know of the existence of such a thing?

Joice Reynolds-Ward @ 206:

You might like this review at the venerable Not My Desk, which was a part of the whole cheese week. He was not impressed with it either.

I'm not aware of any complete re-writes, sadly.

I'm surprised that thing is still around, though. Don't faddish management books like that tend to die off after a year or two?

I'm not sure that Who Moved My Cheese will, in itself, have any great endurance. Reading the Wikipedia description, there seem to be some missed chances, as a story. But the same source describes the morals that can be drawn from the tale, and it doesn't sound crazy.

On the other hand, it can be seen as part of an increasingly abusive business ethos, which is throwing away the virtues of stability. Blessed are the cheesemovers, for they will have cheese.

Yeah, right, and the rest of us suffer the stress of knowing that, when we do get the cheese, it's going to be taken away. Temporary jobs, for instance, with no time to socialise with the other employees: we're not evolved to be always among strangers.

Marilee #194: My condolences.

Sorry for your loss, Marilee.

CHip #201: A century ago the headmaster of the school which attended for sixth form had, among his perquisites, the right to graze cattle on the school grounds.

Lee #183: *snort*

Joyce Reynolds-Ward @206, I think I'd rather have Maoism and Trotskyism rewritten so that instead of all that Theory stuff and grating terminology, they end up being simply about the need to permanently Move the Cheese of the folks who think it's a good idea to make people read that book.

(And there's a nice indirect connection to Patrick's latest post recommending that Greenwald post- remember, people, we live in a meritocracy, with "merit" being partly defined as "being the kind of person who would like or be willing to pretend to like Who Moved My Cheese?".)

Marilee, my condolences too.  Our current cats are young, but we’ve buried our share of pets over the years, most recently our 19-year-old half-Siamese black cat whom English friends – whose pure Siamese had had an illicit liaison – brought to us in NL as a kitten;  after a few years we took her with us to Canada, and then back to her homeland.  [For cats and smaller, we prefer to bury them in the garden, and plant something above them in remembrance.  Is that illegal?  We don’t care.  But I did balk at digging a grave for a flat-coated retriever, so he was cremated.]

One of the things that I like about the ML community is that most of you seem to think of your pets as family members.  The idea that “they can’t abandon their pets just to move to a better life themselves” (#160) wouldn’t occur to some people, who do so without a thought.

Joyce Reynolds-Ward @ 206 et seq.: I had a week long training seminar for work in May whereat they pulled out the "Who Moved My Cheese?" tropes. I consider it an accomplishment that I got out of that session without acts of violence.

Jacque @185: You don't need adhesive tape if you have self-adhesive wrapping. It's marketed as "Co-Flex" or "Vet-Wrap". Now it comes in lovely colors like purple and pink. All it needs to do is hold the dressing against the ulcer long enough for good things to happen.

Serge @188: I think "recalculating", which is the most fun you can have with your GPS.

Keith S @207--thanks!

As for a complete rewrite--other than Who Cut My Cheese versions, there doesn't appear to be anything appropriate.

Heh. I may be building something.

Mark @215--actually, my first reaction was AnarchoSyndicalist Mouse, not Maoist Mouse. It's telling that the reactive metaphors on my part all seem to be political, instead of the reactions others had.

Rewriting the thing does appeal in a perverse manner. I may do it if I keep getting Cheese stuffed down my throat.

Cheesy Science Fiction

Interesting Open Threadiness:

This Pew Center poll is very informative. The discussion of party affiliation is fascinating, and the data doesn't actually fit the narrative into which the MSM is currently inclined to hammer reality. In particular:

a. A lot of folks who were identifying themselves as Republicans in 2006 are now identifying themselves as independents.

b. There's broad dissatisfaction with the party within the GOP, and that is consistent across conservative and moderate Republicans.

c. The GOP's ideological balance (in moderate vs conservative terms) hasn't shifted much at all--they've lost huge numbers of people from all parts of the ideological spectrum.

As I've said before, I think you can often learn a great deal more about the world reading polling results than newspaper stories. This is especially true in a world in which the powerful have become spookily good at controlling the press in various ways.

Eric Nelson @ 159... Would stories in which the mcguffin is made of cloth be fiberpunk?

Don't you know that, as fiberpunk's tenets have become a normal part of Society's fabric, it needed a new label?

Seampunk.

You've got me in stitches, Serger.

#221 Serge

Fiberpunk's the wrong genre for the seamy side of things.... Setting fire with lit punks to the bad side of town, now that....

Is seampunk anything like the New Weave of the 60s?

Steve C @ 224... the New Weave of the 60s?

Championned by Michael Velourcap's New Wool'd.

I don't cotton to your concepts, Serge, but I'm linen toward your point of view.

Twill be a long time before the mainseam is willing to take any chintzes on this new genre.

*considers pun about seersucker and precognition, thinks better of it and refrains*

Paula at 223: the bad side of town

In fiberpunk we call it the wrong side of town.

Can we selvage anything useful from this conversation, or is it so warped that it's beweft of any serious content?

'Twill be useful to see if there's anything left but the lunatic fringe, certainly.

I guess I'll skip talking about the Sliptrim literary movement.

On the other hand, must we apply lapels to every story?

Without them, we'll find ourselves hemming and hawing over definitions all the time.

This thread is following a familiar pattern.

It's familiar indeed. I find myself on pins and needles waiting for the next pun, as it's been a lawn while since I satin on a session like this.

Oh, is that where all the novels about going down the other trouser-leg of time belong?

(Those stories always keep me pinned to my seat!)

I think that the punning has been baking for too long, it's turning into breading the needless.

As usual, puns are being made of whole cloth.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst(ed) of times."

Linkmeister @ 240... "A Shirt-tail of Two Cities"?

Joyce at 206:

It isn't a direct response, but I found DeMarco's Slack to be a partial antidote to Who Moved My Cheese. Among other things, DeMarco points out that change comes in different flavors, some good, some bad; he also points out that increasing efficiency leads to increasingly stressed out employees which leads to decreasing effectiveness.

Three, almost four now, years ago the new management in my company gave every employee a copy of Who Moved My Cheese. Within six months a lot of the more productive, effective, and fun to work with people were gone.

Hope that helps.

Serge @ #241

You're getting perilously close to invoking the underpants gnomes.

Cadbury.

Blogger told by Hearst Co. Lawyers to stop disemvowelling comments! Here, courtesy of the Consumerist. He gives a starchy reply!*
(Credit for the invention goes to guess who!)

*Ob on topic pun.

Marilee: I'm sorry for your loss! My Gremlin is some 13 years old and definitely showing her age. I'm not looking forward to her death.

Fragano Ledgister #98 et seq. When I was visiting my sister the other week, one day she painted her daughters' (7yo twins) nails. Not only multiple colors, but also polka-dots! No particular comment made,not even "looky my nails!" Regarding the girl's "passivity", she may simply trust her stylist to know what's fashionable at the moment.

Stefan Jones, 205,
Ooh! I like stereoscopic cameras! How did you make it? Most of the methods I'm familiar with involve using Stereo Data Maker on Canon powershots. (There's a yahoo group for that.)

Oh, and the "submissive chicken" can also "dance the macarena" (but not, oddly, "do the macarena").

Fragano Ledgister, 156,
Some fashions of the recent past have seemed particularly strange to me (thong underwear, for example, which seems very uncomfortable).

A reliable informant has let me know that the purpose if thong underwear is to prevent the dreaded VPL* without actually making one's...er...cleft more noticeable. And that it has a much higher than usual possibility of producing a tvey cnegf jrqtvr,** which is about as uncomfortable as you'd imagine.

*Visible Panty Line, not to be confused with the Dread Visible Pirate Line.
**I just can't bring myself to write that plainly.

If the thong is well engineered and fits your body type well, they are perfectly comfortable. But there are few of those, and they are very expensive. Not to mention the only way you can find out which lines ... are well made and work for you personally is by trial and error. That adds up to large monies, since thongs cost as much as any other style of lingerie for that part of the body.

I am speaking here from sad experience, a drawer full of money I'll never see again, and shall never wear.

Love, C.

Edgar @ #248

This moose still translates VPL as Vericolor Professional Long[1], which I suspect Kodak may have stopped manufacturing years ago.

Cadbury
[1] The long exposure colour film with Tungsten lighting balance, as opposed to VPS which was the short exposure daylight balanced version.

I've been wearing thongs for seven or eight years. I find them more comfortable than my previous underwear; I must have just struck it lucky on fit the first time. They're also more forgiving of weight gain and loss. I wear Marks and Spencer's basic ones, which are reasonably priced and well made.

I have never experienced the effect Edgar reports @248.

OK? Can we now move the conversation away from women's underwear? It's getting...prurient.

Let's talk about boxer shorts. How do guys cope with the feeling of them wrinkling against their thighs under their trousers?

I hadn't heard of Who Moved My Cheese? before this discussion. My immediate reaction to the title was that someone was riffing on Pratchett's Where's My Cow?. I'm still not convinced that's not the case.

abi, many don't, and therefore wear briefs.

Trivial, completely unrelated open threadiness: Since I had never watched it before and was curious about it, I looked for a clip of FDR's First Inaugural Address and found this one. So I watched it and was quite impressed, until a bit after 5:30 I suddenly thought "OMG why is there a giant alien head looking on in the background?".

albatross @ 220:

Thank you for linking to that poll. Definitely interesting reading.

abi @ 251:

I really, really miss M&S.

Also, no idea. Briefs.

abi @ 251 -

Let's talk about boxer shorts. How do guys cope with the feeling of them wrinkling against their thighs under their trousers?

I used to wear briefs until about 5 years ago, and then switched to boxers. Partly it's because boxers have a little more "give" in them for the expanding middle-age girth, and partly because briefs started to seem, oh, juvenile.

The wrinkling of the material around the thighs isn't noticeable because it's relatively light and loose. However, I have been annoyed at the tendency to ride up in back instead of firmly hugging the waist. For that reason, I've been thinking of checking out the boxer briefs.

This episode of True Underwear Confessions has been brought to you by Jockey(tm) and Fruit of the Loom(tm).

Thanks so much, folks. Yes, David (#200), he yelled at us from outdoors on Thanksgiving 2001. He became the fourth cat at that point and now there's one. I may get a pair of one- or two-year-old cats to cover the lower age range.

John Stanning, #214, I have a condo, so no burying allowed. I have little wooden boxes with the ashes of each cat that's died on shelves here in the dining room.

abi@#251:
How do guys cope with the feeling of them wrinkling against their thighs under their trousers?

Speaking for myself, I straighten the boxers and the trousers out when they get wrinkled enough to be constricting. It's generally only a problem when I'm seated. The easiest way is to just get up and walk somewhere. "Shake a leg" as it were. The "while seated" adjustment process is less pleasant - especially when belted into a motor vehicle - and looks odd to anyone paying too close attention. No complaints have been directed my way that I know of, though my wife has had a few laughs.

Better seating would probably help a lot, as would better local climate control - heat and odd seating positions hasten the constriction process. Also better fitting trousers - much trouser/boxer mismatch seems to be due to loose trousers. Off-the-rack doesn't give me as much choice as I'd like in that department, though, as too-tight is far more uncomfortable. Briefs are intolerable unless they are the "boxer-brief" variety, and then only for exercise where the protection provided by the additional support overrides the "too tight" objection.

In thongs, my main objection is that, unless you've gotten yourself a Brazilian bikini wax (itself a painful and undignified procedure), and CONTINUE getting them, your onpx chovp unve, should you have any, gets gnatyrq va gur fgevat va onpx naq lbh raq hc vanqiregragyl rcvynqlvat lbhefrys onpx gurer. Which is not comfortable.

Rot13'd for the fastidious or squeamish.

David Harmon #245: A perfectly valid point.

Constance #249: Wearing money, round these parts, is generally reserved for a young lady's 21st birthday. On that day her female friends pin dollar bills to her blouse.

Abi #251: I've oscillated over the years, but tended to prefer briefs over boxers.

I wonder if the proprietor of rot13.com keeps a log of the things people translate.

Allan @ 262

If you browse using Firefox, you may be interested in the Leetkey addon; one you've installed it, if you highlight text and hit the right mouse button, your context menu gives you a list of possible actions you can do to that text, including "Text Transformers", under which is Rot13. Click the Rot13, and it'll decrypt (or encrypt) the highlighted portion of the text for you, as if it had been typed in plaintext. I learned about it from a post here, and I gladly pass it along.

Raphael #253: a bit after 5:30 I suddenly thought "OMG why is there a giant alien head looking on in the background?".

No, that's an Orthodox adoration icon of the Great Pumpkin.

253, 264 giant alien head in the background at the inaugural?

It's Oz, the Great and Terrible. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

John Stanning @1: I once apparently gave a college classmate some mental scarring when he was trying to learn that sonnet; while he was rehearsing it, I said "You know that one's about jerking off, right?" He told me he was never able after to read it without hearing my voice in his head.

(And I know it isn't necessarily about that, but "jerking off, or possibly Teh Gay" didn't have quite the immediacy of impact I was going for.)

Erik Nelson @ 265... Not Zardoz?

Hey, Serge, isn't it your birthday? Happy Birthday!

Xopher @ 268... A bit early, but thanks. As for the exact date, it's the same as for this gent.

abi @ 251... Speedos.

Meh. Sorry.

As for the gent...I thought you were YEARS younger than him!

Xopher @ 271... Heck, don't be. As for your thinking I was years younger than him, well, I have this portrait...

I am suffering from an advanced case of extreme envy this evening.

My husband, a federal employee, had a business trip to NYC. He managed to snag one of the very few government rate rooms at the Waldorf-Astoria -- usually you can't get them but it's the week before Labor Day and not that many people are traveling on business.

He got there this evening and they upgraded him to a suite. At the Waldorf-Astoria. He sent me an email with pictures.

I'm at home with two teenagers, one of whom seems to be getting pretty sick, thus forcing me to forego the free tickets to August: Osage County for tomorrow night that I had been offered.

It's soooo not fair.

*pout*

Okay, end of whine.

Rereading what I wrote at @273, wow. I sound like a spoiled twit. *Looks sheepish*

Boxers v. briefs: my sons were all briefs until they hit middle school. At which point, peer pressure kicked in and they switched to boxers.

Serge: Serge's Law it is, then. And that portrait? Would it be in shades of gray?

pat greene @ 274... And that portrait? Would it be in shades of gray?

Painted by an a-dorian' artist.
(Not my best - or worst - pun, but I'm still waking up.)

Serge #269: Should we on the lookout for men named Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D'Artagnan?

Marilee, very sorry to hear about your loss.

Re: TexAnne's comment on the Lev Grossman thread, I clicked on the second link, saw it was performed by the Ensemble Gilles Binchois (also known as Gilles de Binche), and had a totally different image in my brain.

Fragano @ 276... And especially that Rochefort guy.

Clifton Royston #48: Incidentally, within the last couple of weeks, "_why the lucky stuff", of the "poignant guide to ruby", seems to have done a Salinger, including deleting most of his online presence. There's more discussion at some of the links there -- apparently, there was a bit of a scramble to rehome the various projects whose original sites have disappeared.

The "poignant guide" itself can still be gotten here, in PDF form. I'm reading it now... Pretty funky stuff.

I received my DVD of Dr. Horrible in the mail yesterday. Bwahahahahahah!

Serge @278; isn't that a bit cheesy?

Oh, you said Rochefort. Never mind.

On a related tangent, I've been trying home yoghurt making recently, and the results have been pretty good except for a large number of very small lumps that won't dissolve when I stir it. Does anyone have any idea what to do to prevent this?

Jules #281: small lumps that won't dissolve when I stir it. Does anyone have any idea what to do to prevent this?

Um... pass it through cheesecloth or a strainer?

Serge @275 -- They can't all be brilliant, especially early in the morning.

Fragano @276 -- Well, I always say Dumas de merrier.

Jules @ 281:

One of the things that I like about this place is that it gives me an excuse to do research into things I know absolutely nothing about.

I assume that this is occurring when you add your starter to your yoghurt to be, as that's the only step I can see where you're really mixing anything together. Unfortunately, I don't have any suggestions apart from adding the starter only a very little at a time, blending it thoroughly after each addition.

Pat #283 – a relation of Daphne du merrier?

KeithS #284 – Making Light links to Making Yogurt!

John Stanning @286:
So if we follow the link to the site, any yogurt we make using its instructions will instantly be the low-fat low-cal version.

KeithS @284: Thanks; your link does suggest that I might not be mixing the starter thoroughly enough. I'll give it a try and post results tomorrow.

Open threadiness.

Yog Sysop, White Courtesy Phone:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G3bY8KtbSI&feature=player_embedded

John, I think that pun is for the birds.

#274 pat
Not, not shades of gray or grey, it's got to be shades of purple-gray....(see The Flying Sorcerers by Niven and Gerrold....)

Pat Green #290: And that one, was trilbial. Bah. Homburg.

Open-threadiness. Knitting. Things for giggling about. And, thanks to Fragano Ledgister for the topical segue...a hat.

Marilee @ 256: if you were anywhere near Los Angeles County, I could help you in that goal, being possessed of five 11-month-old cats for whom I would love to find good homes. Unfortunately, if I've gathered correctly from your comments on other threads, we aren't near enough each other to make it work.

I'm sorry about Shiva, and I hope you find the right new cats.

Syd, #294, no, I'm in Northern Virginia, which is definitely too far away. Thanks so much for your condolences. I've found out that he's the one who kicked all that litter out of the box. I haven't had to sweep since Sunday.

Today is the 343rd anniversary of the Great Fire of London. Go read Samuel Pepys on the subject. (Pepys doesn't mention the Fifth Doctor, however.)

Edgar@248: how does a thong avoid VPL? The most noticeable part of both is the waistband....

abi@251: that's probably why the polls I've seen favor briefs ~9:1. Boxer wearers may find that the wrinkling is a reasonably tradeoff against the chafing-in-tight-spots that one can get from briefs.

Allan@262: do you think the text is actually transmitted? I would have guessed it was a locally-run bit of Java, but I don't know for certain.

Sarah S. @ 293:

That's certainly a rather stunning hat. More nice hats.

Allan @ 262 and CHip @ 297:

Rot13.org uses locally-run JavaScript. Other people's that use CGI (if there are any of those left for something as simple as rot-13) might leave traces in server logs.

Speaking of web pages, Mount Fuji in HTML source.

Chip @297, thongs avoid the line of the underwear's leg opening being visible through the seat of the pants.

There. Was that delicate enough? I did it without saying "buttcheek."

Oh my. Ice cream potstickers at Evil Mad Scientist.

Who Moved My Cheese? (WMMC) was published back in 1998. The author was one of those responsible for The One-Minute Manager (OMM), which inspired a book called The 59-Second Employee, subtitled "staying ahead of your one-minute manager". I've read both of the latter, (and WMMC).

The other half of the OMM team was Ken Blanchard, who still cranks out a lot of business management stuff. The list of titles on his Wikipedia article is substantial (and occasionally gorge-raising - Lead Like Jesus). He's a master, imo, of taking a very simple concept and making a 120 page book out of it. There's nothing wrong with the OMM guidelines - I use them. But they're not earthshattering or groundbreaking.

The "59-Second Employee" is on "managing up", a kind of judo for applying the flavour-of-the-month in reverse to get the formula manager to do the right thing.

I did a four-day management training course recently, and it was heavily Hersey-Blanchard "Situational Leadership", with Blanchard-trademarked materials. It has some stuff to offer.

Finished two night stay in Forks, WA. I used it as a home base for some hiking (http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones/kira_woods_lo.JPG), but as I clued yesterday the place has a new industry besides wilderness outfitting:

Twilight Tourism.

There are several storefronts that are nothing but Twilight. One is a tour operator; they have a branch in Port Angeles as well. When returning from the shore last night I passed the tour bus parked by the "Welcome to Forks" sign. A staffer was photographing a family.

Almost every other business -- hotels, restaurants, the supermarket, drug store -- has references to the book, e.g. "Bella Shops Here."

I send my nieces a specially postmarked postcard reading: "No Sign of Sparkly Vampires."

I hope they someday understand the irony.

Anyone else on ML out on the playa (Black Rock City / Burningman) this year?

All my art projects (including an art car) are lit with fluorescent bulbs, so I'm doing my part for the Fluorosphere.

Stefan -- Is it safe to hike with all the vampires running around?

Raphael (253)
Even more startling is at the 3:16 mark, where the newsreel cameraman is changing lenses, and the "face" is full-frame for that instant.

Open threadiness: studies of teddy bear skulls & fetal development. In felted wool. No. Really.

Found today on Salon.com...

Blogger and columnist Michelle Malkin claimed Obama's trying to create "junior lobbyists," and wrote that "parents have every right to worry about their children being used as Political Guinea Pigs for Change."

'Guinea Pigs for Change' sounds like a catchy name for a campaigning group. What about 'Hamsters for Humanity'?

#304: I hiked in the daylight, of course.

A convenience store on the boundary of a nearby Indian reservation had a sign:

TREATY BOUNDARY

NO VAMPIRES BEYOND THIS POINT

I wonder if they're playing along or sick of the whole deal.

Abi @ #251:

On a day-to-day basis, I have no distinct preference for either boxers or briefs (I do want one or the other, though). However, for long-distance hiking I have found, the painful way, that boxers are vastly superior.

Kathryn in BRC @ 303... I figured that's where you were going to be. Have the creators of 2007's Martian Brain Spider come up with something as awesome this year? (By the way, I sent you an email a few days ago about my being in the Bay Area the week of September 21.)

I hiked in the daylight, of course.

That doesn't help with Twilight vampires. The only reason they can't go out in the sun is because they're sparkly and it's obvious they're vampires.

I am not making this up.

Y'all will appreciate this (if it's not old news already): Where the Typos Og. Or at least, I'm assuming y'all will appreciate it; I haven't even read into it yet, but the first page is fun.

As an experiment, I posted a book over at Scribd titled Karmic Warrior. I'd hoped to see how well the payment system worked there but missed the button for setting a price. Consequently, it's set at free and I've decided to leave it there just to see how much traffic it gets.

This is not a request for anyone to go read it or rate it. Just thought I'd let you know that I'm tracking it to see how well it does as a free book on a site where it's sure to be completely buried. Eventually, I'll start reporting the statistics over at P&E. This you might want to pass along to others who might be interested in how some books fare.

By the way, it's been seen (presumably downloaded and read) by over 50 individuals and rated at 4.5 out of 5 stars. Not bad for absolutely no publicity or marketing up to now.

Stefan Jones, having been in Forks when it was at the bottom of its economic arc, I find the Twilight stuff amusing; unfortunately I fear it will peter out as thoroughly as the lumber industry did, and leave the place back in the slough of despond.

I'm et up with envy at your travels to the Peninsula; we used to stay in Amanda Park and travel out to Kalaloch every year at this time, but trying to organize a trip involving three adults with conflicting work schedules is a trick. The last time we made it, there was what was left of a juvenile finback whale being scavenged on the beach; the extra imput to thefood chain meant that there was more of everything from sandfleas to bears fora mile along the beach south of Kalaloch lodge.

Back when I was young and unencumbered I dated a guy whose idea of a good time was to drive up to the crumbling ends of old logging roads and car camp. I've seen huge herds of elk running across a clear cut section (square mile), silent except for the clicking of foot tendons over bone, and awakened after sleeping in a doorless pick-up canopy to find cougar prints in the dust on the roof.

note that the last link (et. seq.) on the Indian wannabee particle prompts you to download and install software, according to firefox - but not every time it loads. Possibly they have a compromised ad server?

Edgar lo Siento

JESR @314: kalaloch was one of our traditional family vacations, too, with occasional side trips to ruby beach.

Sue Mason, Hugo Award winning fan artist, spent an hour on the Trafalgar Square plinth today, telling stories.

Here's the video of Sue. Looks like you need a decent broadband connection to watch.

Oh, man. Ice Cream gyoza! I love the original variety, but what an improvement!

P J Evans, #300 and deep-fried butter at the Texas State Fair.

JESR, #314 & shadowsong, #316, I've always thought of Kalaloch as having at least another "c." Probably because I don't remember seeing it before, just hearing it. For many years, I thought the town was O'Karbor.

Serge @307: 'Guinea Pigs for Change' sounds like a catchy name for a campaigning group. What about 'Hamsters for Humanity'?

Rats for Reform?
Squirrels for the Future?

Rodents for Recompense?

Gerbils for Justice?

Muad'Dib for Messianicism?

About Kalaloch:

I always thought it was "Claylock" when I was little; it was a mythical place for most of my beach-going life, because it was so many hours beyond Oyehut and Moclips, our usual goals. The same boyfriend who thought heading out into the Olympic Mountains on old logging roads (in a 1962 Chevy step bed with a broken gas gauge) was the epitome of fun thought going to Kalaloch on a February weekend a very good idea (he was right).

It's a good thing that the water there is so cold, and it's so far from everywhere, because otherwise that gorgeous seven mile stretch of roadside beaches from South Beach to Ruby Beach would be less wonderfully empty. The Olympic National Park beaches only accessible by hikers are even more spectacular, of course (I'm most fond of Cape Alava) but they are, well, only accessibly by hiking, and I don't think my utterly screwed-up knees are going to make the two miles and change, most of it on bouncy board walks, out to Cape Alava from Lake Ozette again.

stefan,

I wonder if they're playing along or sick of the whole deal.

playing along (i heard a cbc program on the whole phenomenon). cause in the book, all the werewolves, the immortal enemies of vampires, are from the nearby native american tribe.

yes, in twilight, the nonwhites are half-animals. how very coincidental.

Chip & Keith: I viewed source and rot13.com has no scripts on the page. The translation is done serverside.

Allan Beatty @ 324:

Ah, my mistake. I went to rot13.org instead.

Soon Lee at #306:
Teddy bear fetal development and skull anatomy post.
I'll see you and I'll raise you.
Cartoon character skeletons.

boingboing.net/2004/12/06/cartoon-character-sk.html

www.boingboing.net/2006/08/31/artificial-cartoonch.html

AKICIML - I should know this, but IANAAstronomer, so: what was that extremely bright Thing visible in the NYC skies on Wednesday night, near the almost-full Moon? It was at about maybe 4 or 5 o'clock with the moon at the center of the dial? Didn't seem to be moving relative to the moon...

Harriet, this site says Jupiter: 'below and to the right of the Moon'.

While we're asking questions, would someone who owns (or has access to) a (standard) Fluxx deck inform me of the dimensions of said deck?

#246 RE Stereoscopic Cameras: I bought two cheap (as it turns out, too cheap) digital cameras and bolted their webcam mounting sleeves to a piece of wood.

Initially, the two cheap cameras had their shutter buttons wired together. But one of those pair had a damaged LCD (perhaps toasted by the soldering iron) and produced crappy photos.

So I used another pair of cheap cameras and simply pressed the shutter buttons simultaneously.

That is what I'll do when I have enough scratch to buy two RELIABLE cameras. (The cheap ones were $10 pencams from Aiptec.)

Once you have two cameras full of pictures, download them to RIGHT and LEFT folders, and use Photoshop or Gimp to set them side by side. Then either print out or view on screen and cross your eyes to view. Or use a stereoscope.

Here:

3ddigitalphoto.com

There are tools for editing 3d photos.

RE Olympic Peninsula Beaches:

I walked on Rialto beach on both of my visits up there. Last time Kira found something to snack on:

http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones/dead_ray.jpg

This time she gnawed at this mass of what looked like Ramen noodles embedded in a pile of those tentacle & blob seaweed things. I haven't uploaded the picture yet.

#328 ::: P J Evans

Thanks! Jupiter was high on the list of possibilities for the small group that was observing and wondering, but I wasn't sure.

Cally Soukup @ 329:
Fluxx deck: 5.6 x 8.7 x 2.5 cm
Fluxx box for deck: 5.9 x 8.9 x 2.8 cm

But why do you ask?

320/321

Moles for Medical Reform
Shrews for Social Justice

Plus the inevitable:

Voles for Vendetta

Cadbury

Random silliness at work after the Disney/Marvel announcement:

a High School Musical X-Men crossover with Warren Worthington III as the Angel Gabriel in the Christmas pageant.

We also speculated that the lawsuits over rights already sold by Marvel could get pretty baroque, given the vast number of alternate histories and versions on some characters.

"Beavers for Basswood", a group of lazy Canadian rodents looking for something softer than maple to chew on.

Trouts for Truth

Salmon for Salvation
Pike for Purity

Disney/Marvel: a friend of mine pointed out that now we can have the X-Men done as Muppets. I'd go see that.

Snails for Speed
Shrews for Silence

Cally Soukup #329:
While we're asking questions, would someone who owns (or has access to) a (standard) Fluxx deck inform me of the dimensions of said deck?

3 standard physical dimensions
1 standard temporal dimension
2 non-standard physical dimensions
1 cross-temporal non-linear dimension

But I thought everyone knew that...

Remoras for Republicans.

Dugongs for Democrats
Lizards for Libertarians
Newts for the NDP (Canadian New Democratic Party)
Silverfish for Socialism
Ants for Anarchy (a very small movement!)

Got an openthready question:

Having been reminded of Solitaire, I went and looked at it again, and noticed a mention of the possibility of using a computer for one end of the encryption. The page includes programs for doing so...or at least the code for them; has anyone made an actual widget that those of us who lack compilers can use?

I'm playing around at the Discworld convention in Tempe AZ (ah, sweet memories of the organization of other AZ conventions...) -- and I've run into one fluorospherian. Any others? Come say hi. I'm on too many panels, and I'll be spending some time at the Other Change of Hobbit table in the dealer's room.

Nematodes for the National Front
Crows for Conservatives
Nuthatches for the Natural Law Party
Sparrows for Socialism
Loons for the Labour Party

(I need another L for the Liberal Democrats, here.)

Moose for the Monarchy

Cadbury.

Mole Rats for the Monster Raving Loony Party

I'd say "Ravens for Republicans", but ravens are too smart for that.

(Insert rimshot here)

Seacows for Sanity!

Meanwhile, in the counter-sane world, we have:

Schoolchildren across the nation "will be forced to watch the president justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other president."

Republican Party of Florida on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 in a press release

That garnered a "Pants On Fire" rating from PolitiFact.com.

Wasn't it under a year ago that any criticism whatever of the President was prima facie evidence of treason?

Carrie S. @ 348: How so? The Republicans have worked diligently to increase the availability of raven chow, at home and abroad.

#349 James D.

And what about the reading of "My Pet Goat" eight years ago.... No criticism would the Repukes accept regarding that....

Mad dogs, rabid weasels, rabid foxes, and foaming at the mouth insane skunks, out spreading their vicious infections insane diseases.

Cadbury @ 346:

Lynx for the Liberal Democrats.

Joel @#350: Good point. I was thinking more that ravens are too smart to hold Republican views in general. But I guess it's all in how you look at it--Repubs do tend to fit a number of fine old Norse kennings, and "raven-feeder" is certainly an example.

#349: You're expecting consistency from Republicans?

They'll say whatever need to be said to keep the proles in a constant state of fear and indignation. And the proles are stupid enough to uncritically swallow it all, day after day.

The Oregonian devoted a fair chunk of page two of today's edition to reprinting the FactCheck article. Good for them.

Interesting article here that illustrates the need for an emergency go bag and planning:

http://www.paysonroundup.com/news/2009/sep/02/evacuees_grab_pets_bibles_and_flee/

(And also, I am amazed they didn't lose any homes. A lot of those houses have -- or had -- dense vegetation around them.)

Narwhals for the NDP?

What about the mythical animals?

Hippogriffs for Humphrey
Unicorns for Udall
Mermaids for Mondale
Catweazles for Carter

(I don't know, these all seem like presidential lobby groups this time.)

Mary Aileen @ 339:

"Tell him what you do, Wolverine."

"EAT DRUMS! EAT DRUMS!"

"No! No, Wolverine! Beat drums!"

Tom,

Hilde and I will be there at the Discworld convention briefly this afternoon, and hopefully a bit longer Saturday and Sunday. The leave time I applied for from work several months ago fell down the rabbit hole, so I end up having to work graveyard shifts this weekend after all.

(The "rabbit hole" involved, about a month ago, the sudden -- "Here's a box for any personal items you want to take with you. By the way, you're not director anymore." -- replacement of the site's security director, creating considerable disarray and unhappiness. Of the ten employees then at the site, I and one other guy are the only ones left, everyone else having quit, been fired, or transferred to another property and been replaced by new hires.) (Dare I say that I am being reminded in some ways of a Convention That Shall Go Unnamed Here?)

Ibis for the Illuminati.

Loons for LaRoche (take it either way).

BEMs inside the Beltway.

Satyrs for Solipsism.

@349 "Seacows for Sanity!" – affiliated with

Manatees for Moderation – but not

Dugongs for Democracy! – activist breakaway, in huge snitfight with Dugongs for Democrats! (Splitters!), vide supra, @346.

Walruses for Wilkie?
Heffalumps for Huckabee?
Platypi for Pawlenty?

Badgers for Balanced Budgets

Parrots for the PATRIOT Act

Horses for Healthcare
Mules for Moderation

A sudden evil thought prompts me to suggest:

Labradors for the Liberal Party

(/tasteless)

Chris

Actually labradors would be for the Labor party.

Rikibeth@299: Ah, I wasn't thinking about \2/ VPLs -- although, as today's weather has reminded me, the one I was thinking of is on a concavity instead of a convexity, so it's likely to be less visible.

janetl @ 333

Thanks for the Fluxx deck dimensions. I asked because I saw a plastic (soap?) box at my local American Science and Surplus that looked like it might be fat enough to hold a deck of Fluxx cards, and I know some people whose deck's box is falling apart, that I'd like to surprise with a box-holder if it's the right size (or a bit bigger). Now I've got the dimensions, the next time I'm there I'll know whether I should buy one or not.

I love my American Science and Surplus. It's a very strange place.

I forgot to mention that I'm grateful that you gave me the dimensions of the box as well as the cards! I hadn't thought to ask for that.

John Houghton @ 341

Mustn't forget the cross-temporal non-linear dimension, yes.

"Huh. I expected a bit more kaboom."

Thanks for all the advice on getting the house PC back in order. Once we got the chip in and found the CD, it booted right off, and it only took two tries to get XP reactivated.

Every cat for himself, naturally.

CarrieS@344:

Are you on Windows or Mac? I just grabbed the C# and Erlang ports of Solitaire, and would be happy to compile a Windows version for you.

Although I think what you actually want might be a deck-of-cards simulator so you can watch the magic work as it happens. That would be a fun project, but I can promise no firm delivery dates. Maybe there's something already out there.

Echidnas for Environmental protection
Macaws for Manned Space Flight
Hyrax for Health Care Reform
Ibex for Immigration
Beavers for Balanced Budgets

Erik @ #367

No, definitely the Liberal Party.

(But it was a Great Dane called Rinka, not a Labrador - my forgettery is playing up again.)

Make that "Great Danes for the Liberal Party" instead.

Chris

Andy called me yesterday to tell me about magnetic monopoles. Someone in the Scientific American write-up says these aren't the real thing and of fundamental physics importance, though interesting for people concerned with condensed-matter physics, but it looks cool, even if it's not a ticket to Stockholm. (The paucity of hits at Google news leads me to think that people agree with him, but the article is in Science, and I'll see how much I can get out of it when the next issue arrives.)

Pythons for Palin.
Mackerels for McCain.
Rodents for Rove.
Chum for Cheney.
Budgies for Bush.

Vicki @ 377: This article (nabbed from a commenter at James Nicoll's LJ) explains the real situation. Apparently the researchers found a way of creating very long thin magnets at cryonic temperatures, under conditions such that each end of the "string" behaves like a virtual magnetic monopole.

The abstract of the Science article refers to "emergent quasiparticles resembling monopoles. [...] Where these tubes end, the resulting defect looks like a magnetic monopole."

Patrick @#374: Windows, but not Vista (if that matters).

It'd be lovely to be able to see the cards move, but really I want to play with the output more.

Can the user set the deck's order, I hope?

Piranha for Palin
Carajou for Cheney
Cucaracha for Cheney

The good news--those arrested under warrantless arrests by the US Government and detained 16 or more days can sue Ashcroft, the US Appeals Court decided, and apparently used some highly unappreciative language regarding the legality and appropriateness of the warrantless detainments.

The bad news--statute of limitations ran out....

#381
I'd expect las cucarachas to have better taste.

More open threadiness:

I hope most people here with an interest in politics are following Glen Greenwald's blog. It's more depressing than I can say that:

a. Obama in power turns out to be much more comfortable with scary police-state powers available to the executive branch than he ever did as a candidate.

b. Some revoltingly high fraction of Democrats seem very comfortable with all this, basically reassuring the cynical among us that their opposition to Bush's power grabs (such opposition as they provided, which mostly wasn't anything to brag about) was entirely a matter of who was going to have those powers.

c. The American people as a whole are mostly pretty comfortable with our continued movement toward a police state. Eavesdrop on every phone in the country, no problem. Disappear people off the streets of US and foreign cities, fine. Extract confessions with torture--maybe we'll make you tone it down a bit, or ship them off to Yemen or Saudi Arabia to do the dirty work, but still basically okay. But f--k around with Medicare? What're you, some kinda Socialist?

The whole idea that the Obama administration is proposing formal preventative detention powers is breathtaking. Yeah, far-left liberal Democrat. Right. We're now in line to have a massive surveillance regime and a policy of disappearing citizens and foreigners who are inconvenient scary to the administration, and it will have been the party of civil liberties who gave it to us. Just like the party of smaller government gave us eight years of the Bush administration.

miriam beetle, #323: yes, in twilight, the nonwhites are half-animals. how very coincidental.

Nice. As if I needed another reason not to read the books.

I was in Forks earlier this year, during a roadtrip on the Olympic Peninsula and Vancouver Island - photos (with commentary) here, here and here.

Mail came in early today, and it contained my Sita pin, and the one of Laxmi's Peacock Phonograph. Yay.

Teresa (and Jim) your latest metadata particle nearly made me spray my coffee when I went over and read it.

It certainly points out the defects of meta-data. Jul, nal sbby xabj gung gur orfg jnl gb gerng n Wrj vf gb bssre gurz n tbbq ontry, znlor jvgu n avpr fpuzrne, fbzr ybk, n yvggyr gbzngb naq bavba...

When somebody mentioned that this new system linked AIDS to the Spanish Civil War, I found large numbers of Google results on the two terms. A lot of places are rushing to digitise material from the period, as research aids.

This suggests a pretty fundamental design flaw.

Open threadiness: Does anyone know why ONLY cinnamon gum is ever made without aspartame?

That is: Aspartame gives me a headache, and I want to chew sugarless gum. Why is it that, while some brands put aspartame in all flavors including cinnamon, if there's one aspartame-free flavor, it's always the cinnamon?

I like cinnamon gum, but I'd love some variation. All the other flavors of sugarless gum have aspartame in them, across all brands (anyway, all the brands they sell around here).

Xopher (389): No help here, but a similar quest: I've never seen (and would like) cinnamon-flavored sugarless gum that has xylitol. Why cinnamon should be the only non-aspartame flavor but not come in xylitol-sweetened versions is beyond me.

It occurs to me that it's been a long time since JESR told us about her roses. Also, considering how much she loves growing them, does this make her a stempunk?

Xopher, #389, you'd have to try these from online, but they have several flavors in Xylitol.

#387, 388: Oh, God.

Those guys are trying to sell a medical records search engine, so they do a dumb string search. On Wikipedia.

And they didn't even bother to test it for meaningless results.

I'm going to guess that the management (who seem to be all MBAs) bought the technology from someone else, because there's a definite "magic computer is always right" feeling I get.

Go to TechCrunch, whose commenters broke the story, and read the marketing guy's response. It's beyond me to paraphrase it.

Serge, it's been a tough year for roses; winter went far into spring, with some measurable snowfall every month until April and hard freezes well into May. Then there was no rainfall at all for two and a half months, and a record string of +90F days, including 104F two days in a row. Flowers opened and faded while I huddled inside with the fans roaring, and when I did go outside with camera in hand it was to figure out more about which buttons did what.

As for "stempunk:" my yard decor includes a two-foot box end wrench, several large gears, a 1920s vintage road grader blade, and chunks of a cast-iron cook-stove which disintegrated after a chimney fire (not so much acquired as uncovered, with the stove bits eroding out of my driveway). Oh, and the metal parts of half a buggy, hanging up on one of my outbuildings; the other half was sticking out of the blackberries and went in a WW2 scrap drive. A next-door relative is growing one of my climbing roses up over an abandoned Pinto, the title for which we've been unable to clear so it could be legally hauled away.

Marilee (392): And they have cinnamon, too! Thanks.

Albatross @ 384: Obama in power.... Some revoltingly high fraction of Democrats.... The American people as a whole....

Are you surprised?

I liked 2003's movie Riverworld, in spite of the liberties it took with Farmer's stories, but THIS looks very unpromising.

The new TV series will star Pinikett (of Battlestar Galactica and Dollhouse) as war journalist Matt Ellman, who dies while on his honeymoon with his wife Jessie (Smallville and the new V’s Laura Vandervoort) and wakes up in the titular Riverworld, a mysterious planet where every person who has ever lived on Earth is brought after their death. The premise of the show will have Matt trying to find Jessie, while at the same time uncovering the truth behind Riverworld. Check out the first promo images from the show below, plus a behind-the-scenes video with co-star Alan Cumming as he transforms into one of the blue-skinned guardians that watches over Riverworld.

JESR @ 394... I was going to ask if we should sing about never being promised a rose garden, then I came across the part of your post about a "...next-door relative is growing one of my climbing roses up over an abandoned Pinto..." Now THAT is stempunk poetry.

JESR @ 394... I was going to ask if we should sing about never being promised a rose garden, then I came across the part of your post about a "...next-door relative is growing one of my climbing roses up over an abandoned Pinto..." Now THAT is stempunk poetry.

I just saw a paint commercial, and the narration said "...whether it's a picket fence..." and the people onscreen are painting a rail fence.

Sigh. Why would anyone paint a rail fence, anyway?

I's like to say that this sort of problem became inevitable when the BNP managed to get elected to the European Parliament.

And, in a real democracy, I don't see how the media can do other than the BBC is doing.

My personal hope is that he gets his chance, and comprehensively shoots himself in the foot. It maybe needs to be one of those political rough and tumbles where nobody else quite gets out of control, and nobody is given a free ride.

Dave Bell @ 401: If the BNP leader shows as much charm in his TV appearance as he does in that photo, then your wish will be fulfilled.

Serge @397... yeah. The only Riverworld book I read was the second in the series (I hadn't realised it was a series at the time...) and even just from that limited perspective I can see what's wrong with that announcement.

Didn't know there was a film, though. Might have to look that up.

Jules @ 403... The 2003 movie should be available on NetFlix. It made many changes, but, compared to the announcement for the new movie, 2003's now looks slavishly faithful.

On the subject of the metadata particle: did *anyone* test that system before putting it live, or did they think it was acceptable that it comes up with totally spurious results?

I mean, even putting the most obvious things in the search box turns up totally bizarre results. It wants a disease, symptom or treatment... OK, by far the most common symptom of any disease is fever. They *must* have tried that while testing it.

The drug & medication section at least looks reasonable, although I'm not quite sure what "vaccine" is doing on the list as it is neither a specific drug or medication nor useful for treating fever as far as I'm aware. Nor, AFAICT, does "CNS depressant" belong on that list. The other three hits sound sensible, though.

The treatments section is where it starts getting truly bizarre. Antibiotics sounds reasonable, but then we get to "bark". Which, drilling down into the results, seems to be primarily due to the fact that aspirin was first isolated from willow bark. Then we have "hyperthermia therepy", which AFAICT is totally unrelated, "song" (!), and "antibiotic therapy" which is just the first result repeated.

Food and plants? I'm not even sure what the section is doing here, but the only result even approximately relevant is "water". But its suggested subcategory of interest, "holy water", is frankly bizarre.

But, at least the page does have some purpose... it contains a link to "pros and cons of song", which has really got me thinking. Song will, apparently, help me choose a mate, achieve [a] higher position, achieve painting [?!], and activate [my] GABAergic neuron. But, unfortunately, it is costly, unimaginitive, and "sin, sin, sin". I'm not actually convinced that "already charming subversion" is actually a con, though, despite being listed as one.

Even their example searches contain totally spurious results. I clicked on the "treatments for asthma" link. Apparently "SAG 4218 LENORE LANE" is such a treatment. And pharmacists, too. And "rhizome" is a good plant for treating it.

Their diabetes link contains both "transplantation" and "transplant" as possible treatments. Along with "mouse". Causes of diabetes include "injection" and "insulin resistance" (the latter, as I understand it, being like saying that ceasing to live is a cause of death).

#405: One of the commenters on TechCrunch says:

"In a way, this search engine is equivalent to me putting bursitis in google and looking through the top 50 results."

And that makes me wonder if they even have a search engine at all.

Stupid question: What are these tweets that consist of a lot of Twitter handles and the letters "ff" that sometimes appear on Twitter about?

Raphael @408:

Follow Friday: people recommend interesting Twitter streams.

Dave #401:

Yeah, it seems inevitable. If your journalists get to decide whose views are too creepy or weird to allow the public to hear them, why would you expect them to be right most of the time? In the US MSM, we get plenty of that--they'll be careful not to let crazy folks be taken seriously, so the public won't be misled. You know, crazy blame-America-first types who thought we shouldn't invade Iraq, crazy civil liberties extremists who think someone above the rank of corporal should see the inside of a prison for torturing prisoners to death, wackos who imagine we might one day want to stop being the country most prone to invading other countries on the planet. We're well protected from such confusing ideas here. But I'm not sure that has necessarily worked out all that well.

From the profanity-sought thread, Kevin Marks @106 said: [T]he interesting thing linguistically about MILF is the intentionality embedded in it. I suspect there's a madonna/whore split in MILF vs Cougar.

Speaking of cougars, there's an upcoming new ABC show, Cougar Town, starring Courteney Cox. (link to promotional picture of how she will look in the show) I'd been mildly insulted by the concept of 'a cougar,' because it seemed to mean a dissipated older woman, often of low socioeconomic class, who is mocked for repeatedly and ridiculously going after much-younger men.

Since WHEN is COURTENEY COX a cougar?!? The woman's only 45, and a very-well-preserved (and gorgeously made-up) 45, at that. Does she pursue paperboys? Because if she's just dating college boys, man is that a watered-down version of 'Cougar'.

Mind you, there's no way any major network would star someone who looks like the usual insult implies they look, period, but STILL.

Elliott, it's not my world, but I understood 'cougar' as referring to an older woman who goes after 20-somethings. And 40s is plenty old to count. I also have the impression that cougars are going after one-nighters with boytoys, not looking for serious relationships. The boytoys are generally fine with this.

In the places I've heard the term there didn't seem to be any class implication at all, unless a slight one indicating wealth (because the boytoys don't want to pay).

Jules at 406, "insulin resistance" is generally assumed to be a symptom of Type 2 diabetes; my life experience suggests it's a primary and lifelong cause of that disorder. The current medical mindset is heavily invested in describing Type 2 as a punishment for being fat and lazy, rather than the end-state of a disorder which causes the body to store fat at lower caloric intake and experience extreme fatigue at lower activity levels than is typical of the population as a whole.

(Cranky. It's been a bad summer in many ways).

Xopher @412 said: Elliott, it's not my world, but I understood 'cougar' as referring to an older woman who goes after 20-somethings. And 40s is plenty old to count. I also have the impression that cougars are going after one-nighters with boytoys, not looking for serious relationships. The boytoys are generally fine with this.

In the places I've heard the term there didn't seem to be any class implication at all, unless a slight one indicating wealth (because the boytoys don't want to pay).

Huh. My first exposure was via a (now no longer apparently extant) YouTube video called Cougar Barbie, where her hair was all messed up and she was dressed like a skank, and lived in a trailer park, so I guess I presumed they were all like that.

Jon Meltzer @ 407:
It's much worse than you imply from that. If you put in the name of an illness in Google and look through the top 25 result pages, you'll usually get a preponderance of useful and reasonable results. (I'm hunting for a rheumatologist now, as my arthritis has flared up, so I'm doing some similar things.) I rarely need to go as far down as 50 pages.

The results of this software seem more like putting in the name of an illness, selecting one phrase where the word appears off of each of the top 50 pages, and putting them together as the answer.

It's not just a "dumb search engine", it's a dumb dumb search engine.

Elliott: What Xopher said at 412 is also my impression of the usual meaning. I haven't seen any sign of class distinctions in its usage except perhaps implicitly in the reverse direction. (Not that I'd really know; I'm a homebody.)

I speculate that the porn industry may have further popularized it for marketing reasons. In their strange viewscreen on the world, the "typical" age for women is early 20s, so they need to be able to label product suitable for men who are attracted to women in their 40s, which of course lots of men are. As the original quote said, here's an interesting intentionality implicit in MILF, and more so when you consider the MILF/cougar distinction.

#415: That would mean someone actually did write the engine.

Yes, that's worse. Having it revealed as a shell around Google would indeed be less embarrassing.

Jon Meltzer @ 417:
That would mean someone actually did write the engine.

As a friend of mine used to say, "I could sh*t a better search engine!"

For Robert Jordan fans:

Paul Biba at Teleread reports that the entire WoT series will be made available in e-book format. He quotes from the Macmillan press release:

The Wheel of Time series is one of the most highly requested series on Kindle, and they are finally becoming available to fans as ebooks. Beginning on October 27th, Macmillan will release one ebook per month, beginning with The Eye of the World. The full text of the books has been retypeset to better accommodate the ebook format and all original illustrations and maps will be retained in these new releases. We’ve also commissioned new cover art for each book, and I can announce the first four artists now: David Grove, Kekai Kotaki, Donato Giancola, and Sam Weber.

I was digusted and surprised to find* the only two Darkover novels on Kindle are The Sword of Aldones and The Fall of Neskaya -- and that neither has the word 'Darkover' anywhere in its Kindle-edition text, or any sign it's a series ...

So books can be requested?

* I was recommending books to a friend who's just bought a Kindle.

Elliott Mason (#401), quoting Kevin Marks: the interesting thing linguistically about MILF is the intentionality embedded in it. I suspect there's a madonna/whore split in MILF vs Cougar.

I think there is an important question of whose intentionality. My understanding of the 'cougar' vs 'MILF' distinction is this:

If an older woman wants to have sex with a younger man, it's 'cougar', and an insult.

If a younger man wants to have sex with an older woman, it's 'MILF,' and, at least nominally a compliment.

Note that both of these are from the male perspective. In other words: same old, same old.

Today is the first time I've seen a snake eating a bird while in a bush. The reptile and the avian were in the bush, not I.

Serge @ 422 ...
Today is the first time I've seen a snake eating a bird while in a bush.

I'm relieved to see that was literal rather than figurative -- my brain is already reeling from the unfortunate junction between an images search for the ostensibly innocuous and rule 34.

Linkmeister @240:
Not "The bast(ed) of times, the worst(ed) of times"?

xeger @ 423... Got your mind in the gutter again? That being said, I'm shocked that there's no porn set atop storm-chasing vans.

An addendum to my @420: the reason for 'disgusted' was that it occurs to me that a Killer App for Kindles is reading long involved series of 15+ novels, especially (and WoT comes in here) if they are comprised of bricks, or (Darkover) if the individual volumes can be hard to find and collect together in one place in the order one wishes to read them.

Doing it on a Kindle means (a) not storing those heaps of paper, and also (b) being able to go right on to the next in the series when you finish the one you're on, without a midnight bookstore run being necessary.

Thanks, abi.

Well, no one else has done it yet. (You probably all have better things to do.) So I will.

Re: PNH's sidelight on "Lost worlds of the North Sea," and the sad history of the exemplar city:

Talk about a Dunwich horror...

Jules @ 405 et seq.: The takeaway for me from that fiasco is remarkably simple. Wikipedia is not to be touted as an "authoritative source."

According to healthbase, one of the complications of my boss is nuclear attack†. Meanwhile, one of my colleagues infects nude mice‡. I merely attack Lauren, whoever she is.

It may not be much of a reference source, but as a boundless source of drams and dances*, it's not bad.

-----
† He's not that bad, honest!
‡ He's not that bad either, really.
* whisky, tango, foxtrot

debcha #421: I'm not sure I'd consider "cougar" an insult as such. Cougars are gorgeous, powerful, and charismatic.

Whoops, muffed the link on "gorgeous". Here, kittycams, including a cougar.

Mark #429: Word, and that's not their only mistake here. My suspicion is that some PHB read read an article in a magazine, and told his IT crew "do it or else. You've got till Friday, this stuff's supposed to be easy."

Headline of the Day: Cougar will send text messages.

abi @ 430... What do you have (and have not) against Lauren?

Cat o'nine tales: The youngest cat just trotted home with a rat in its jaws. I don't know if the appropriate reaction is awe, horror or pride.

We managed to get her to drop the rat in the lawn, then brought her back inside. I went out a few minutes later to check out the beast. A cursory inspection didn't reveal any bite marks, but fresh bleeding from the nose, mouth and ears, leads me to suspect it just died from ingesting rat poison, and not from feline rodenticide. I hope the cat didn't eat any of it.

Pendrift @ 436... Will I tell you of the morning last week when I found a dead mouse in our living-room? As far as I could tell, its skull was crushed in. Agatha the Cat Genius definitely is a killer.

abi @ 430,

After checking out the "nuclear attack" result, I have to say it's reassuring to know your medical treatment may be decided by Mobile Suit Gundam.

Serge @437: Elder cat has already brought home several mice, moles, birds (ack!) and a bat*. She's taken on the youngest cat as an apprentice, but at this rate, the pupil will be outhunting the master very soon.

*It was none the worse for wear; I brought it to a shelter and they fed it and released it the next day.

In the Particle about the Smithsonian, there's one myth about the Archives. You can take tours there; I did when I was well. A lot of the big stuff is just out on the floor (with lines so you can't touch it) and the guide will pull out some drawers so you can see what's in them, but I thought the best part was seeing how they stored and cataloged things.

debcha, #421, yesterday's WashPost Magazine had an article ranking the new TV shows and they have a picture of her as a cougar.

I have two new cats in quarantine. They haven't seen a doctor since their birth in 2005, but have had rabies shots. They're both overweight, and one has massively matted fur. I left a message for my vet, who comes to my house, and she and her assistant will be here Thursday to check them out and cut the mats. They've been very nice cats even stuck in the guest bathroom, and I hope they will get along well with Spirit.

David Harmon, #431: I'm not sure I'd consider "cougar" an insult as such. Cougars are gorgeous, powerful, and charismatic.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I think that you're being disingenuous. Millions of Americans love their female dogs, but 'bitch' is still an insult.

But I do agree that it's primarily, but not unambiguously, pejorative - see the range of Urban Dictionary definitions.

debcha, I don't disagree, but I'd like to point out that 'boytoy' is also an insult, and older men who go after younger women (or younger men, for that matter) are not highly regarded either.

Xopher, your point is well-taken.

I'm always interested in what the lacunae in our language says about our culture. Older women who go after younger men are cougars - what are younger men who go for older women called? What do you call someone who has a sugar daddy? Why is there no feminine form of 'cuckold'? There are many more examples, I'm sure.

JESR@394: my yard decor includes a two-foot box end wrench

So you're the one who ended up with the MITSFS gavel!

debcha@443: What do you call someone who has a sugar daddy?

There may be hundreds of possible terms; "homewrecker" is traditional, "arm candy" is modern (although neither is really specific); the one I'd call closest is "jennifer". (I have no idea where that specific name came from -- possible its frequency in a certain age group?). Another classic question for your list: what is the male equivalent of nymphomania? (Yes, I know everybody here will know it, but in the general population it's said to be much less known.)

Vauban's fortifications: How many different sides was he on?

I'd call someone who had a sugar daddy a 'kept woman'. Assuming she was female, of course.

#445
At least the inside and the outside!

Stem punk?

Iron and Roses

Xopher @442 and prev,

Interesting point of language variation here. In these here parts (New Zealand), the word is "toyboy", not "boytoy". A "boytoy" sounds to me like a young woman whose social (and perhaps other) life is defined largely in terms of the young men she has sex with.

JHomes

Erik @445

Vauban was only fighting for the French, though his earliest experience was in the civil war of the fronde.

Modern borders have shifted.

Vauban's style of fortification was a series of developments of what had gone before, and the idea of the star-shaped trace, made by triangular bastions, which was already well-established.

It's possible that his innovations as a fortification builder arose from his own successes at taking a fortress. He developed the system of attack to a peak, making a siege almost a predictable formality. In at least one case, he introduced into his fortification building a feature which had given him problems as an attacker.

As far as building fortresses is concerned, he has the advantage of being French at the time of Louis XIV. This, perhaps, is why he is more famous than Coehoorn.

But have a look at Naarden, some twelve miles from Amsterdam. Most of the works are obscured by trees, but you still have a lot of visible detail from Google Earth.

In this instance, the ditches are full of water, which changes some of the details of how the defences work, but the key is how much unpleasantness can be hurled in your general direction by the cannon in those well-shielded batteries in the sides of the bastions.

JHomes @449: Interesting. My only recollection of toy boy is from a late '80s hit by American pop singer Sinitta.

I have just learned that one week this month will have two Thursdays. That is all.

Not two Mondays?

JESR @ 448...

"...dig down anywhere here and there's iron in the soil. Fairies would have a bad time of it on this hillside..."

Your place sounds like the setting for a Realms of Fantasy story, especially the part about Aunt Emily's crib, which she bent to bits while "just playin'".

Fragano @ 452... I'll start worrying when we get a week with four Thursdays.

I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

Debcha #441: The thing is, any term for a female can be used pejoratively(*), and most seem to drift in that direction over time. In this case, there is the clear association of female sexuality with danger (as in your UD link), but not the unambiguous denigration of "bitch"(**).

* This actually applies to any target of stigma, but it's particularly obvious with women.

** Calling someone any variation of a dog, has been an insult since well before English, and not limited to Western cultures. Modern Westerners see dogs almost exclusively as pets -- but for most of our shared history, they've walked a precarious balance among "slave", "vermin", and "emergency meat".

*** What happened to super- & subscripts? :-(

OtterB, #453: I have a week with two Mondays this month (and another one next month).

More open threadiness, in lieu of actually doing useful work today: This Pew Center Report (discussed when it came out by Digby) is one thing that helps me to understand that our more recent penchant for eavesdropping and preventative detention and kidnapping and torture wasn't entirely without warning signs. From the report, based on (I think) 2007 numbers:

A close examination of the most recent U.S. Department of Justice data (2006) found that while one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, the figure is one in nine for black males in that age group

The total is about 1% of our adult population behind bars at any given time. One percent. (For men between 20-34, it's about 3%. For black men 20-34, it's about 11%.) It wasn't always this way in the US. This table from the BJS[1] shows the amazing increase in people in prison or jail (the chart includes everyone under parole or probation, too, but the numbers let you extract more information). In 1980, there were about 500,000 people behind bars. In 2007, there were about 2.3 million people behind bars[0].

Combine this with the increasing militarization of the police forces across the country, with the ongoing acceptance of prison rape and other abuse (and remember where the Abu Girab guards had learned their trade), and the increasing use of surveillance against US citizens (with a huge push for this during the first Bush administration and during the Clinton administration). Add in the nationwide fear-based security theater we're treated to everywhere--metal detectors to get on a plane, go into a courtroom, the Smithsonian museums, many government buildings, even some schools. A lot of that started in the Clinton administration, as a response to some school shootings and the loss of TWA 800[2].

The Bush administration's abuses and scary steps toward a police state weren't some inexplicable one-off. They were continuations of a long trend. They are reflections of the kind of people we are, now. We can change that, but not without recognizing it.

[0] I suspect much of this growth comes out of the lobbying of private prison companies and prison guards' unions, both consistent advocates for harsher mandatory sentencing laws. It's also worth noting that this is a long-running thing, and oddly, didn't take place solely under Republicans.

[1] This is an irresponsible, untrustworthy internet site that gives people unfiltered access to ugly, inconvenient facts. Right-thinking folk should certainly shun it, and trust journalists and political activists to decide which facts are fit for them to see.

[2] When it was believed this was a terrorist attack, that was justification for requiring government-issued ID to fly. When later investigation determined that it was probably an accident, of course, the ID requirement (which coincidentally solved an annoying business problem for the airlines) remained.

Monday Monday, so good to me,
Monday Monday, it was all I hoped it would be
Oh Monday morning, Monday morning couldn't guarantee
That Monday evening you would still be here with me.

debcha @ 443: At least in the time period when the term 'cuckold' was in vogue, the commonly accepted feminine equivalent term was 'wife.'

Tom Whitmore @ waaaay back at 345: I'm playing around at the Discworld convention in Tempe AZ

Eep! I met you in the dealers' room at the Discworld con yesterday and chatted with you briefly. After that I kept thinking, "Tom Whitmore, Tom Whitmore... that name sounds really familiar." So, um, hi! Sorry about that.

Fragano Ledgister @ 452: I have just learned that one week this month will have two Thursdays.

Going on a long trip? If so, have fun.

KeithS #462: No, I received a memo detailing a series of meetings, in which a Friday got turned into a Thursday.

This was not as interesting as the memo once sent out by our IT department which announced a number of changes which would take place at set dates in the past. I emailed the vice president of IT asking for the loan of his time machine.

Hilde and I also made it to the Discworld convention, but just barely, a few hours on Saturday and a few more on Sunday. Did meet Lee and Keith there, and Tom Whitmore in passing.

(Thank you for sharing those fries, Lee. I was running on very little sleep at that moment, and the carbs helped.)

Wish we'd been able to attend more. Conventions tend to have a "vibe", and this one seemed to have a very positive one.

Some of my Thursdays are Fridays..

Ginger #465:

and far too many of my Wednesdays and Thursdays feel like Mondays. %$@#!

Fragano Ledgister @ 463:

Ah, yes, I've had that (days being turned into other days, not time-travelling upgrades). Did you ever get to borrow the time machine, or is that one of those executive perks?

Ginger @ 465 and albatross @ 466:

I'd like to be able to batch up a bunch of my Mondays so that I can get them out of the way.

Bruce Arthurs @ 464:

Lee says you're welcome.

(She also wanted me to say that she'll be away for a few more days, for driving home and prep for another event.)

Yesterday ended up feeling like a Monday*, even though it was technically a second Sunday for me. Today also feels like a Monday even though it's not. At least this Thursday will definitely be a Friday for me.

*I once had a job where Monday was my Sunday, and Tuesday was Monday.

Ginger #468:

As compared to the job I once had where Sunday was Monday, and sometimes it was Tuesday that was my Friday, and sometimes it was Wednesday?

A liberal acquaintance of mine has a number of conservative friends who he seems to enjoy arguing with, and recently he received the following e-mail forward, which he has asked me to run up the fluorospheric flagpole in the hope of eliciting some succinct refutations of its allegations. I don't know if any of the viral e-mail watchers have seen this one, but it's pretty illuminating:

A Quick History Lesson

The U.S. Post Service was established in 1775. So they've had 234 years to make it work. It is broke.

Social Security was established in 1935. They've had 74 years to make it work. It is broke.

Fannie Mae was established in 1938. They've had 71 years to make it work. It is broke.

Freddie Mac was established in 1970. They've had 39 years to make it work. It is broke.

The War on Poverty started in 1964. They've had 45 years to make it work. About $1 trillion of taxpayer money is confiscated each year and transferred to “the poor.” It hasn't worked.

Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. They've had 44 years to make it work. They are both broke.

AMTRAK was established in 1970. They've had 39 years to make it work. Last year it had to be bailed out and today continues running at a loss.

$700 billion bailout of 2008. It has yet to create a single new private-sector job.

Cash for Clunkers in 2009 went broke after 80% of the cars purchased turned out to be produced by foreign companies.

The U.S. government has a 100% failure rate.

My acquaintance says, "I would love to have a pithy set of answers to show that almost all of this happened under Republican control.... [I'm not sure about this, actually. - CQ] I would really love to frame an answer that was factual, and not full of emotion. I would also like to have examples of all the great corporations that are “broke” like AIG, GM, Merrill, etc."

Social Security and the Post Office are fairly easy to debunk, but the others I admit I don't have info handy on. So please, have at it! I'd love to know what you can come up with!

Thanks.

David H @457: Testing¹ Testing², Testing³

Using ¹, ² & ³ for superscripts – numbers beyond 3 and &sub1;, etc, for subscripts don't seem to work. Trying₁ number₂ versions₃. Seems to work. Other⁺ numberⁿ entities₍ mightⁱ also₊ work⁾. [My browser shows nine in this par. YBMV.]

One of many HTML entity lists online.

Right, it's the 9th of September where I am, so:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SERGE!

The rest of y'all can catch up in your own time.

Re. my yoghurt making experiments.

I'm pleased to say the latest was a success; no more lumps, so I guess an inadequately mixed starter culture was the problem. I also had one batch that completely failed to anything at all, so I'm thinking of switching from my current starter to something that'll hopefully be more reliable.

Writers' Alert: Today here, possibly tomorrow wherever you are now, is 09/09/09.

Writing project related to that: A Day On The Planet (English version explanation, 7 more languages: اللغه العربيه - 中文 - Français - Deutsch - 日本語 - Español - Русский). About 400 words/1 page on your 9th September. Many stories to be put online, 500(?) published. Charity support to be decided.

Chris Quinones @ 470:

This may be useful to you on the subject of welfare. It hasn't been updated in the last few years, but it's still a good summary.

Also:

Cash for Clunkers in 2009 went broke after 80% of the cars purchased turned out to be produced by foreign companies.

Er... Unless there's something I don't understand about how this thing was supposed to work, isn't that a complete non-sequiter? The program was an attempt to get old cars off the road and to try to get money flowing in the economy, right? That's something that you don't necessarily do on a continuing basis, so you can hardly say that it went broke. Besides, I'm sure that the government wouldn't have let all those nasty foreign car companies into the program if it were being funded somehow by kickbacks from the glorious American ones.

Still, I'd also attack this by denying the entire conclusion. Even if all of its supposed premises were true, which they aren't, those are hardly 100% of all government programs. Besides, are they trying to argue that the military is broken? Or the interstate highways? The FDA? NIST?

Epacris @ 471:

For a little while, the <sup> and <sub> tags were working. ^{They still} _{seem to}.

Jules @ 473:

Glad you got your yoghurt sorted.

abi @ 472... Thanks, Abi. Due to the further marvels of time travel, I already know what I'll be getting for my birthday. (OK, I confess that chronic displacement has less to do with this advance knowledge than with my leaving very hints about what I'd like to get.)

Epacris #471: Hmm, looking at the source of your comment, only the &sup{1,2,3} were retained as HTML constructs, the others were embedded as Unicode characters.

KeithS #475: Aarggh! I was trying to use <super> -- I could have sworn that actually worked just the other week, but apparently it was just me ^brain_faulting. Thanks!

Chris Quinones, #470: Conservatives work very hard to make government programs broke, by underfunding them whenever possible and funneling the resulting cash into something that redistributes wealth upward--tax cuts for the very wealthy, say.

Then they turn around and point to the programs' lack of funding as proof that government programs do not work.

Eep! _{Je suis désolé!}

Serge: Félicitations! Joyeux anniversaire!!

Je te souhaite un très agréable jour. Bonne fête!

Hmm. Those <sup>/<sub> tags didn't work at first.

Epacris @ 479... Merci beaucoup!

happy birthday serge!

I'm very glad I put my internet router and wireless base station on the battery backup along with the upstairs phone. About 2 hours ago ³/₄'s of the electrical circuits in the house stopped working mysteriously. Circuit breakers all good, kitchen circuits still good (so refrigerator, but not stove), upstairs bathroom working, everything else except the light in the family room downstairs went dark¹. But I could still connect to Angie's List, pick an electrician, and call to schedule a visit tomorrow. Of course everything came back 5 minutes after I finished the call to the electrician². We still need to have this looked at; I have the horrible feeling we're facing several thousand dollars of work rewiring the house to make the electricity reliable again.

1. Go figure³
2. That this should happen is known as the Perversity of Inanimate Matter; it is a fundamental law of nature.
3. Sub and superscripts are working nicely now.

Bruce Cohen @ #482, okay, now I've been reminded of Firesign Theatre.

#470
It hasn't helped that the Rs hate unions and anything government-run. InN no particular order:

The post office ran fine (civil service) until the government decided to make it a semi-private corporation, and then started expecting it to make a profit (generally at the expense of the carriers, who work ten to twelve hour days at times).

Amtrak was started to keep passenger rail running, when corporate rail was trying to kill it off (freight is more profitable and doesn't complain about being hours late). It's a semi-government corporation and expected to make a profit on minimal funding. Which is why fares are several times higher than airlines on the same route, and travel a lot slower than by car.

Social Security isn't broke, but it will be in about forty years, if the income ceilings aren't indexed to inflation. It doesn't help that the trust fund that FICA deductions go into is used as a piggy bank for budget-balancing by both parties.

Medicare is closer to going broke, but again there's no indexing to inflation, and the government is also forbidden to bargain for better prices on drugs. That's the Republican contribution to making sure old people die earlier than they need to, along with that @#$%^&* Part D. Medicare's kept a lot of people from dying of poverty, and apparently that's a bad idea.

Medicaid works, but barely: you have to be impoverished to use it, and that's hard on people: to see that your spouse is taken care of, you have to give up your home.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are semi-private corporations. They were allowed to play in mortgage-backed securities. The guys doing that were, I think, appointed or hired by Rs, and Congress certainly did no oversight on those deals (although I suspect they'd have allowed it anyway: greed is bipartisan).

The 'War on Poverty' may or may not have been hopeless, but it doesn't work very well when Congress cuts funding for projects that actually work (Head Start, Vista, AFDC, WIC) and expects people who are making minimum wage to immediately be able to survive on their own. It also doesn't help when elected officials start talking about 'welfare queens' as if everyone getting help is out there living it up on the minimal money they're getting.

The bailout has, in fact, created jobs. Not as many as it should have, but the Republicans and the Blue Dogs were doing their best to make it a program that didn't help anyone but corporations (including, most particularly, the banks that caused it).

Cash for Clunkers - that program was so successful, it had to be re-funded a week after it started, and it sold more than 700,000 vehicles in two months, at a time when nobody was buying otherwise. That's car dealership jobs that would have gone away, too.

If government doesn't work well, it's because some people don't want it to work at all.

Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) @482: YMMV, but I once had startlingly non-intuitive electric effects (shutting off one circuit and having lights on another circuit flickering out) which appear to have been the result of the building electrics not being properly grounded. There had been a ground spike which had become corroded. When the building was grounded to the plumbing, this particular bit of electrical weirdness was cleared up.

Hey Serge! H^ap_py Bⁱr_th^da_y!^!!

I'm such a meanie. A friend posted a bunch of pics of Jake Gyllenhaal strolling...he meant to say "shirtless"...down the beach. He left out the 'r'.

I couldn't help myself. I said

It does appear that there is no shit on him. Perhaps I speak only for myself, but I think that fact enhances his attractiveness!

abi @ 472 ...
Right, it's the 9th of September where I am, so:

My clocks all tell different times (and days!) ... so...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SERGE!!!!!

Sisuile @ 481... Xopher @ 486... xeger @ 488... Thanks, all! Did you know that September 9 also marks the birthday of this gent, although he's one year older than me?

Re: "Roadrunner vs. mirror" particle: Broken link?

Serge: Hippo birdie two ewe!

So, having found I have the sped-up Jung-Hwa Ban Jum in my iTunes (No, I don't know where it came from, and I am not giving a link--you can find it if you want. It's the speeded up soundtrack the Korean kids used for Karaoke, which is infinitely better than the original. Fortunately they're not in it. Unfortunately the cute Asian girl who was in the original video isn't either.) when I was trying to find out how I ended up with duplicates of some of my purchases (I *think* that when I told iTunes to update to non-DRM versions something went wrong) I figured I'd do my bit with my $3.14 at the iTunes store and buy a copy of the original Fat Les version of Vindaloo. Much to my surprise, it's not there--and it's not at Amazon either. Re-recordings, sure, but not the original...

Oh, does anyone else think that March of the Sinister Ducks (hooray for Neil Gaiman for posting the link, and hooray for Alan Moore for doing the quacks) is a natural pairing with the video Sex with Ducks by Garfunkel and Oates?

Of course, the email isn't intended to be taken as a serious, literal statement. Conservatives demand all sorts of stuff from government. So doing a point by point argument of it is a losing battle. If you wanted to respond with a bit of bite, along the same lines, I think you could agree, listing several prominent Bush administration failures. The search for WMD, the search for Osama Bin Laden, preventing North Korea from developing nukes, disaster relief after Katrina, NCLB, federal regulation of investment companies. Say, you're right. Under some management, government has a pretty uniform record of failure.

David Harmon @ 490... Thanks!

Happy birthday, Serge!

The roadrunner versus mirror particle is wonderful. It reminds me of one of our cats looking in the mirror. On looking in the mirror: hey, another cat! On looking behind the mirror: huh, no cat. Repeat until cat gets bored or is shooed away.

albatross @ 492:

Now that you put it that way, that email looks suspiciously like a Gish Gallop—throw out so many wrong ideas at once that your opponent will get bogged down just refuting one or two of them, which makes your opponent look slow, bad and defensive while you look knowledgeable and confident.

Serge: Go maire tú do lá breithe! For good measure, גליקליכן געבורטסטאָג

KeithS @ 494... Ginger @ 495... Thanks. By th way, my wife feels that Moloch von Zinzer looks like me when she first met me. Now I look like Tarvek's dad. It's rather eerie that two Girl Genius characters bear a strong resemblance to me at various stages of my life. At least nobody has compared me to a jaeger. (For one thing, I don't wear hat. Unless I'm gardening. Jaegers don't garden.)