Some open-threaded musical musings -- I saw that "Liza With A Z" was on one of the movie channels, and I was curious. I had heard it was good.

Wow - this was filmed back in 1972, and Bob Fosse directed, choreographed, and co-produced it. It's a great showcase of music and dancing, and it brought back a time when Ms. Minelli was a sensational entertainer.

I understand it's out on DVD -- it's worth watching.

That would have been an interesting convention.

What would, Dave?

Steve, I saw an imperfect and partial copy of Liza with a Z a very long time ago, but what I remember was well worth watching.

Higgledy piggledy
Justinian (Emperor),
what do you think of the Body of Christ?
Corruptibility's
impossibility!
So get down in front. Watch the races. Be nice.

After following the link through to that author's Q&A, I now desperately want to read more about Justinian. And/or Byzantium. I'm going to have to add yet another book to my ever-growing list of books I really mean to read Any Day Now. (Thank God for the local library, or these would be piling up in stacks; I'm out of bookshelf space as it is.)

It's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye. Which, for the Byzantines, was pretty often, what with people having their parents, children, or siblings blinded and locked in a monastery on the drop of a hat.

That quote reminds me of ML threads sometimes. (That is a compliment!)

Fade, if you're in the mood for alternate history with a bit of sci-fi flavor, check out Eric Flint and David Drake's Belisarius series, the first three books of which are available free online. (Here's the first one.) I'm only a layman, but I found the descriptions of Byzantine characters to seem reasonably authentic.

Has everyone heard the 12 Byzantine Rulers podcast? Steve Eley mentioned it on today's EscapePod but I'd just finished listening to it a few days ago. Lars Brownworth devotes three episodes to Justinian.

The entire series of podcasts is worth listening to. He speaks with such passion about the history of Byzantine Empire that the thousand years of history just fly by. It's also the most heartbreaking story ever. Just when someone competent has stabilized the empire, he dies, someone incompetent takes over and it all goes to pieces again. The final battle and the ultimate fall of Byzantium had me in tears. He ends with a fevered argument for a place for the Byzantine in world history.

In any case, it's inspired me to consider reading Sailing to Sarantium again. That's no mean feat.

(I bought Lord of Emperors years after reading Sailing to Sarantium. I haven't read it though because I don't remember what happened in Sailing to Sarantium. Now, normally, I love Guy Gavriel Gay. Tigana and Lions of al-Rassan are among my most favorite books ever. However, I just couldn't get myself to read Sailing to Sarantium again. It wasn't bad. I finished it the first time. I just felt like there was too much I wasn't getting.)

Open thread donation begging:

Alpha is a workshop for young writers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. I've been on staff for three years now. It's a great workshop not only because of the pro writers who teach-- this coming year, Mike Arzen, Holly Black, Tamora Pierce, and Timothy Zahn-- but because of the incredible talent of the students. Alphans have also taken over the Dell Award some; in the past two years, six of them have been runners-up or honorable mentions.

A lot of cross-pollination and inspiration happens at the workshop. In the past, we've had students whose primary social activity was critting each other's stories. I've seen students shocked and thrilled by the discovery that someone else spoke Chinese, knew kung fu, or had spent just as much time in the books they thought no one else had read. The students are amazing.

If you know a young genre writer, send her or him to the Alpha page. Spread the word, please.

And the begging? Well, Alpha is not cheap. We try to give scholarships as needed, but we've had students in the past few years who couldn't come because they, and we, just couldn't raise the money. Alpha's a nonprofit and a lot of volunteer effort goes into it. You can help support the workshop and a seriously talented group of writers.

(why yes, I do fangirl Alpha quite a bit. The two weeks of workshop and Confluence after are the highlight of my summer.)

With respect to Eric Flint & David Drake, I don't think anyone can argue with Harry Turtledove's status as the most prolific SFF author writing about Byzantium, both directly and in his "Videssos" name swaps.

The time for holiday songs has returned. I know I've recommended this before, but it's been five years, and it's good stuff, so I'm going to bring it up again.

Tris McCall's Christmas Abstract thoughtfully analyzed fifty popular Christmas (or Christmasish) songs. I enjoy rereading this piece year after year.

Tris is releasing an album today; as a result, he tells me, in the process of reorganization, his Web site dropped the Christmas essay, but it will return soon. Meanwhile, I have linked to the Internet Wayback Machine version.

John Chu #10:

The thing about the whole Sarantine Mosaic is that it's, well, a mosaic. You can't see up close what you can at a distance--i.e, after reading both parts. There are a lot of things that seem unimportant, or maybe extraneous, perhaps incomprehensible, that come back with a bang as you read the second half. In the first book, he lays out some tiles. In the second book, he puts in more tiles, and the picture changes, becomes impossibly deep and rich. It's not an Alexandria Quartet sort of production. Instead, time proceeds, narrative progresses; some events in the second book are reflections, via very oddly distorting mirrors, of ones in the first, and it's more a thing of many facts and events coalescing into a whole which cannot be totally perceived until you're done.

My time at Christian Forums and on a few atheist websites has certainly shown me that Christians and other religious and non-religious people still love a good debate. I guess the thing that surprises me the most about that vignette is that Justinian didn't have them executed for disagreeing with him.

Or perhaps he did. I'm not entirely up on my ancient Roman history.

If Bill can recommend an album, so can I. Mary Chapin Carpenter's Come Darkness Come Light, released in 2008, is beautiful. It's seasonal but mostly secular (if that's a big deal). 7 or 8 of the 12 tracks are new compositions. It's a very quiet album, mostly solo guitar or piano.

I had an interesting encounter with a door-to-door seller yesterday. He was flogging some magic cleaning substance. His kicker was: "It's chemical-free!"

I said, "Sounds like water to me!" and closed the door rapidly. That amount of laughter would have been rude.

Spherical Time #15, I had the same reaction, down to "perhaps he did." I like the idea of a dialog, complete with cheers for the accomplished debaters.

Sarah S #5 *applause*

John Chu #10 had an informative post recommending a podcast, but I snagged on misreading the title as "12 Byzantine Rules" and have been trying to puzzle out what those rules might be. It seems like Catch-22 must be among them, followed perhaps by some more arcane bits of tax or environmental regulations.

I said, "Sounds like water to me!" and closed the door rapidly.

Water? Sounds like vacuum to me, except there is no sound in vacuum!

Speaking of another Justin(ian), would Timberlake translate into Latin as Lignistagnum? Online Latin dictionaries pretty much suck if you basically don't know what you're doing. heh.

“Then those absolute ideas which are relative to one another have their own nature in relation to themselves, and not in relation to the likenesses, or whatever we choose to call them, which are amongst us, and from which we receive certain names as we participate in them. And these concrete things, which have the same names with the ideas, are likewise relative only to themselves, not to the ideas, and, belong to themselves, not to the like-named ideas.”

“What do you mean?” said Socrates.

“For instance,” said Parmenides, “if one of us is master or slave of anyone, he is not the slave of master in the abstract, nor is the master the master of slave in the abstract; each is a man and is master or slave of a man but mastership in the abstract is mastership of slavery in the abstract, and likewise slavery in the abstract is slavery to mastership in the abstract, but our slaves and masters are not relative to them, nor they to us; they, as I say, belong to themselves and are relative to themselves and likewise our slaves and masters are relative to themselves. You understand what I mean, do you not?”

Parmenides, 133c-134a. It's a puzzling dialogue that presents a challenge to the theory that Plato believed in a theory of Forms - Parmenides presents excellent arguments against the Forms ("ideas" in this translation), to which Socrates doesn't seem able to respond.

Ursula L #19:

I would have thought vacuum, too, had it not been for the spray bottle of clear liquid that he was brandishing. Maybe I should have said, "Looks like water!"

Joann @ 19 - But you gotta be careful around that dihydrogen monoxide.

Probably homeopathic detergent, which would of course be much more effective than a cleaning solution which actually contained more than merely a memory of chemical substances.

Steve C #23:

Yeah, I was tempted to remind him that water is a solvent of serious proportions.

@ #11 -- Diatryma: $995 dollars for the workshop?! Jesus. That's more than my monthly disability check! And that doesn't cover transportation to and from the conference, hotel rooms or food costs either.

I heart writers' conferences and workshops. I do.

I just wish that their costs fell within the range of my extremely limited income.

@ #11 -- Diatryma: $995 dollars for the workshop?! Jesus. That's more than my monthly disability check! And that doesn't cover transportation to and from the conference, hotel rooms or food costs either.

I heart writers' conferences and workshops. I do.

I just wish that their costs fell within the range of my extremely limited income.

#24: A few years back, and probably even now, various Alternative Whatever supply catalogs offered a mechanical gadget that supposedly replaced detergent in your washing machine. It was a float containing a crystal of some sort. How did it work? The ad copy mentioned "structured water."

Years later I learned that "structured water" is a homeopathic concept. As in, the water used to dilute the original ingredient somehow had its molecules rejiggered in a way that duplicated the original's powers.

I seem to recall reading an article about one of those "washer balls" which concluded that they didn't really do anything, but that the detergent in your washer didn't do much either; the largest part of the cleaning was just agitating the clothes in water.

I seem to recall reading an article about one of those "washer balls" which concluded that they didn't really do anything, but that the detergent in your washer didn't do much either; the largest part of the cleaning was just agitating the clothes in water.

Another thing is that the instructions on detergent tend to suggest using much more than is strictly needed, and more than is rinsed out in a typical wash cycle. So if you buy this sort of gizmo, you'll find that your wash lathers the first few uses just from the detergent left in the fabric from the previous wash.

It would be interesting to see if people who like the device initially continue to like it after they've washed their clothes without adding detergent several times, and no longer have any residual detergent in the wash.

@10: John, have you thought about reading the book while on a bicycle trip around, say, Istanbul?

@5: Brava, Sarah! Here's mine.

Higgledy piggledy,
Emp'ror Justinian
Set down a law that was
Better upset.
What shall we say to the
Passerbyzantium?
"Christ? Incorruptible.
Christans? Not yet."

Tracey at 26, I know. The hotel and food are both for the convention after the workshop, and not everyone goes to that. The annual goal is to have two full and two partial scholarships, a total of three thousand dollars, though of course we don't know how many people will need scholarships for another few months.

#29: I inadvertently tested that hypothesis myself.

No. Swirling water isn't enough to get your clothes clean. It certainly gets rid of surface grit, and maybe some sweat. But . . .

. . . no. If you don't believe me, try it yourself, with a load of socks, undershirts, and underpants.

Avocado@31: One of the side effects of listening to 12 Byzantine Rulers is that I really do want to visit. (Did I tell you at some point that I read Tigana while touring Italy? Sadly, I read The Lions of Al-Rassan in the United States.)

I think I noticed something today that said France is charging Google or has convicted Google of copyright infringement (as regard Google's book digitizing).

On the same page of Dear Author referred to in the Candace Sams trainwreck thread, there is a description of illegal, immoral, unethical robber baron behavior of the part of Harper Collins and the rest of the hydra publishing empire it is part of, with respects to electronic publication distribution.... it kept suing and kept losing the lawsuits regarding electronic rights, acting as though it were the owner of electronic distribution rights when it published books in print but which it had NOT included electronic publication in the contracts.... the epublisher it targeted with spates of nuisance lawsuits apparently has caved in and is paying the robber baron troll fees... seems to me that there should be a massive lawsuit against Harper Collins for interference in interstate commerce and predatory /monopolistic business practices and for copyright infringement and harassment....

Avocado, 31: That's brilliant. Please stick around!

From previous Open Thread (132)

Bruce #877

I will cheer when Sen. Lieberman (no relation that I'm aware of within the past 1000 or so years) depart the Senate. I too am in that COBRA situation....

#898 Debbie
Pheasants aren't North American natives. The ones I've seen, have been most likely been birds released by fish & wildlife departments as part of the programs which raise game animals (fish, pheasants, etc.) from the sales of fishing and hunting licenses, to catch/hunt. The departments stock lakes and ponds and rivers with fish (a misstep in releasing fish caused the extermination of an entire species of trout in New Hampshire, the species was not interfertile with the released fish, and attempted to interbreed... and that was the end of the golden-eyed trout, I think the species was.), and releasing pheasants for hunters to shoot.

The one which survive the people fishing and the hunting season, wander around where they will....

#8 ::: Debbie :::
That quote reminds me of ML threads sometimes. (That is a compliment!)

What did Justinian do with trolls?

John R & Andrew, thanks for the series suggestions; I have added both to my huge and ever-growing list of books I mean to read. (I've had mixed luck with Drake and Turtledove both, but "mixed" in the sense that I'm willing to keep giving them a try when recommended.)

Last year, two of my friends learned that pheasants were introduced to Iowa by a pheasant spill.

We are very silly people. The discussion eventually became a lament on people tapping the Trans-Iowa Pheasant Pipeline, the price of a barrel of sweet crude pheasant, pheasant refineries, and other memorable spills involving molasses or beer.

This is a good example of where Amazon reader reviews are really useful. The discussion of Justinian's Flea looked interesting, so I went to Amazon.com. The reader reviews persuaded me to skip it.

My favored author on Roman history is Adrian Goldsworthy, though he hasn't done much with the eastern half. I highly recommend "How Rome Fell".

Speaking of pheasants....

The Pheasant Plucking Song

Steve @42

Thank you for that link, it's going on the iPod next to St.George and the Dragnet.

> I think I noticed something today that said France is charging Google or has convicted Google of copyright infringement (as regard Google's book digitizing).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8420876.stm
"A Paris court has found Google guilty of copyright infringement in a ruling which could have ramifications for its plans to digitise the world's books.

The search giant must pay 300,000 euros (£266,000) in damages and interest to French publisher La Martiniere."

John@34: I remember you saying that that was the ideal way to read Tigana. Maybe there's a relationship between a book's Real Year (per a panel at Readercon) and its Real Place, or Ideal Place, to be read.

TxAnne@36: Thanks! Glad you liked it. (BTW, you and I have met IRL. 4th Street, I think.)

Avocado: Remind me of this come June, eh?

Answering my own question at 38: maybe he disemboweled them.

Paula @37, I'm located in Germany, so they've been around here for a long time. There's a very long history of pheasants being introduced, cultivated, and hunted, starting I guess with the Romans. They may be more common than I think, but I hardly ever see them, so this was a neat experience.

Erik @38 - made 'em recite passages from Corpus Juris Civilis without vowels? (Although this would only have been done with practicing trolls. Those who had renounced Trollism and converted to Orthodoxy were safe.)

Believe the voices falling down the rift
of fading memory, all lost to time;
recall the faces touched with soot and grime
in days so clear and calm they seemed to drift
through subtle air, and now all is too swift.
Hardly a moment between every chime.
The downslope now, but we were on the climb
and had not valued the taste of the gift.
So here the choice is made, and in the cold
dark of the rainy afternoon each deep
cutting word is truly cruel in its burn.
The message is expected: we turn old
and each day must bring reasons more to weep,
even this day at eve of sunreturn.

Gibbon's got a lot of stuff on the later Roman emperors, though being Gibbon he of course tends to look at everything after the removal of Romulus Augustulus in the West as a horrible process of byzantine corruption and confusion, but he's got some good stories in there.

The Byzantines are often their own best voices -- see if you can find Constantine Porphyrogenitus' treatise on Byzantine foreign relations, or Anna Comnena's history of her father (including some lovely looks at the First Crusade from the Byzantine POV). There's a lot more available than you might think.

Modern historical reading probably should start with John Julius Norwich's three-volume history, or the one-volume condensation.

And Byzantine mosaic art is just stunningly wonderful.

#906 ::: Jenny Islander, #906, from Open Thread 132:

Marilee #902: Argh, yes.

Is there a name for the persistent tendency to confuse nouns that contain similar sounds and are in the same general class? For me it's artichokes-asparagus-apricots, Judy Collins-Joan Baez, and apparently SSD and SSI.

I think I remember it because I have SSD and not SSI, but I do have some problems like that. I was writing a friend about NBC's Sing Off and couldn't remember the city one group came from and wrote "(something like Obama)" and she came up with the right answer: Omaha.

The Secret History is an entertaining book about Justinian, albeit an extremely biased and almost certainly inaccurate one. You get the sense that Procopius isn't the most reliable source. For instance, he confidently reports that Justinian's head was, at odd moments, in the habit of vanishing:

And some of those who were present with the Emperor, at very late hours of the night presumably, and held conference with him, obviously in the Palace, men whose souls were pure, seemed to see a sort of phantom spirit unfamiliar to them in place of him. For one of these asserted that he would rise suddenly from the imperial throne and walk up and down there (indeed he was never accustomed to remain seated for long), and the head of Justinian would disappear suddenly, but the rest of his body seemed to keep making these same long circuits, while he himself, as if thinking he must have something the matter with his eyesight, stood there for a very long time distressed and perplexed. Later, however, when the head had returned to the body, he thought, to his surprise, that he could fill out that which a moment before had been lacking. And another person said that he stood beside him when he sat and suddenly saw that his face had become like featureless flesh; for neither eyebrows nor eyes were in their proper place, nor did it shew any other means of identification whatsoever; after a time, however, he saw the features of his face return. These things I write although I did not see them myself, but I do so because I have heard the story from those who declare that they saw the occurrences at the time.

There's an online version here, although I like the current Penguin Classics version better.

Joann, might he have been trying to sell you electrolyzed water? There was a bit of hype propagating about it earlier this year.

Ursula L, #30, I don't use detergent in my washer most of the time, only when I have something that's really dirty.

This is just amazing.

Classical medley on harmonica.

More Byzantine goodness: Robert Silverberg's UP THE LINE, L. Sprague de Camp's LEST DARKNESS FALL (peripherally, anyhow). And as a straight historical novel, Robert Grave' COUNT BELISAURUS.

Siriosa... D Potter... I arrived in the Bay Area a couple of hours ago. It looks like the Gathering of Light at Oaskland's "Breads of India" tomorrow at 6pm will have a total of 8 people. See you then.

(cont'd from #57) Other gatherers of light should include Terry Karney and guests, and Kathryn from Sunnyvale and her Significant Other.

Lee, 55: Not bad; his Mozart borrows heavily from Raymond Scott's "In an 18th Century Drawing Room," which is based on the original K 545, but it's still great stuff.

Check this out - a Ukrainian virtuoso on the bayan (a Russian version of the button accordion) playing the Bach Passacaglia in C Minor. He's astounding.

Since this is an open thread, I'm going to insert a comment with no connection to Justinian, Byzantium, or the nuances of Christian doctrine.

While browsing in a local bookstore a few days go, I saw that Georgette Heyer's Regency romances (and her mysteries, too, I think) are being re-issued. I've never been a traditional Heyer fan, never been to a "tea" or a Regency dance, but my mother, bless her, owned damn near all of Heyer in hardcover. I read them in my teens, and kept reading them into adulthood with pleasure.

Just out of curiosity -- to see if it was still readable -- I bought one of her earlier books, These Old Shades. It was once a favorite of mine, though it's pretty much pure fluff, nowhere near as meaty as something like A Civil Contract or (for those who want real history with their romance) An Infamous Army.

I read it, and discovered 1) it holds up quite well, and 2) I know it well enough to identify two missing sentences on page 67 of this trade paperback edition. Before setting it down, I turned somewhat idly to the front matter to see if I could figure out which edition it had been reprinted from -- not the hardcover I knew, or those sentences would not have been missing -- and saw, to my thorough shock, that the book had been copyrighted in 1926. Zowie. It's eighty years old. It feels timeless.

Lee @55: Now *that's* what you call a mouth organ!

#60 Lizzy

I measure esp. Regency romances against Heyer.... most of the current production, fails the tests of plot/character/etc. measured against Heyer.

Meanwhile, there is a romance writer who's I think "Lizzie Lynn".... caused me a double take, it did.

#58: Serge, I'm going to be in Oakland tomorrow afternoon on an IT call and was thinking about stopping by, if there's still room.

Fairy Tale of New York performed by singers who can enunciate the lyrics.

Allan Beatty #64: Thank you for posting those. I'm currently posting links on Facebook to my Top 10 Most Depressing Christmas Songs. Fairytale of New York is one of the runners-up, which means there are at least 10 Christmas songs I think are more depressing. I just posted #3, Christmas in the Trenches.

The Dark of the Year

Light the match.
The only way out is through.

A scrape, a flare,
the flame blue with heat along the bottom edge,
golden near the top,
its heart dark.
'Lucifers' would seem miraculous to those
who had to struggle with flint and tinder
when the coals went out,
though to be sure, it might have been that steel
would be harder to come by than flint.

Hope is the province of adults.
Children only know the world as it is,
whether fair or restrictive. A child
beaten for things out of her control
would, perhaps, find it only natural.
How rare for such an one to have any
to whom she could account for love.

Fire consumes, and fire changes,
adds weight to what it does not burn,
adds weight to what is left behind.
Children, so light, might flare up completely
leaving behind only the scars in our souls.

Light the match.
In its dark heart, a fascination,
a vision of the happy past,
or perhaps the future.
Impossible to draw your eyes away.

Hope is the province of adults.
The only way out is through.

Wesley @52: Procopius's SECRET HISTORY is one of my favourite historical texts. It becomes clear quite early that Procopius was going insane at the time he wrote the book (well, either that or Justinian was a demon who would change shape when he thought nobody was looking). Once you accept that Procopius was mad, it relieves your reading of any responsibility to be accurate. And then you can just enjoy the story, which is like THE HIDDEN meets ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN in ancient Byzantium.

#13 Bill Higgins: Thank you for that. I can't stand the run of regular Christmas songs, and he articulates why very well. I used to have the text of a song I wrote* posted online, but I can't find it now.

*I really, really need to record that. It's a trite Christmas song about trite Christmas songs. It originally came about because of some song that I heard and thought, "That's got all the philosophical depth of the back of a cereal box."

Lenny Bailes @ 63... Do come by. We'll make sure to have room for you.

mike shupp @ 56... Didn't Turtledove write stories abut a spy working for an alternate-History Byzantium? The spy's name was Basileus, I think. Been a long time sine I read them.

On Sunday evening, I'll be going to San Francisco's Castro Theater, to see Hitchcock's The Man in Lincoln's Nose, aka North by Northwest.

Just got back from Avatar. Damn fine movie-making there. And a deep, deep green. I wonder what that's going to do to the national conversation?

#72: Obviously propaganda by the Big Climate industry that wants to keep raking in those lucrative research grants by scaaaaring us into giving up our freedoms to the U.N. Damn Hollywood!

I got this link via Lee: When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like Avatar. It's a well-written article, and combined with several articles of Kate Elliot's, I think it's a good look at basic cultural assumptions that [mainstream white American culture]* has.

*My cultural heritage is, more than anything, "American suburbanite." I think that most, if not all, of my friends fit into that category. IOW, I've got a lot of water around me, and I am a fish.

B. Durbin, #74: Was the entire original anime story lost, then? That's a shame.

Grinch warning, vexation reaction lyrics warning...

It might have been on Making Light that someone (Serge?) in an on-line forum asked me about the extemporaneous lyrics that occur to me during the annual onslaught of end of the year seasonal music inspired (?) by the Christian slant and commercial Xmasploitation in the USA....

The bad/good news is that such lyrics are ephemeral, not merely extemporaneous. They also tend to be rude and involve terminology which the FCC displays disapproval of by applying financial penalties to....

(However... I just remembered the general tenor of my reaction to Felice Navidad...

You have been warned!!!!

I hate this song
I hate this song
I hate this song
And I wish that it would go away.

I hate this song
I hate this song.
It hate this song
It's the worst piece of shit this time of year.

It is the worst piece of shit I'm hearing
It's the worst piece of shit I'm hearing
It is the worst piece of shit
And bores and it's repetitous too
It is the worst piece of shit I'm hearing
It is the worst piece of shit I'm hearing
It is the worst piece of shit I'm hearing
And I wish it would go away....

I hate this song....
I want to never hear it again...
[etc.]
========

Then there was the worst rendition of Ave Maria I've ever had the misfortune to hear, in a supermarket the other day. I actually like the tonality of it, and the words go along with the tonality harmoniously etc.... but not the particular recording blaring out in the supermarket. Ugh, ugh, ugh! And, it was followed next by a pop-ugh style of something already pop Xmaspoilation, that has a singer singing flatter than a pancack with the leavening and eggs left out of the batter....

B. Durbin@74: James Nicoll (I think) coined a phrase for that genre of story: it's a What These People Need is a Honky story.

@58 Serge Other gatherers of light should include Terry Karney and guests, and Kathryn from Sunnyvale and her Significant Other.

So it won't be ultralight after all. That's a respectable-sized gathering, that is.

Joel @24: on the other hand, if you're serious about committing suicide, you don't want to follow Alexa Ray Joel's example and overdose on homeopathic sleeping pills.

Her mistake was to take eight of them. She should have started with one, divided it in half eight times, and taken one of the remaining halves.

(Suicide isn't funny, I know. But can we have a moment of contemplation for suicide methods that are isomorphic with 'toon physics?)

Dies Natalis Solis Invicti

The muse departs the scene, the words don't come
So sentiments remained unwrit, unsaid
And I myself sat speechless, stricken dumb
While images stayed locked inside my head.

In times gone by the words had flowed like rain
A verbiage torrent just flooding past.
Then came the drought, and nothing would remain;
It seemed that inspiration couldn't last.

But Christmas-time brings hope that things can change,
As shrinking dark's outweighed by lengthened day;
(To most of you this must seem passing strange -
In northern climes it works the other way)

The solstice marks a time to make a start
When all seems lost, relax, unwind, take heart.

Yeah, this one's just a little bit autobiographical... Hopefully this time around I'll tarry awhile longer.

#75 ::: Randolph:

The present discussion is about James Cameron's recently-released film Avatar, which is an original story (for at least Hulke's Dictum values of "original") and not based on any anime.

I suspect you're thinking of M. Night Shyamalan's still-forthcoming film derived from Avatar: The Last Airbender -- which I gather will be titled only The Last Airbender, perhaps in an attempt to avoid this very confusion. (Strictly speaking that isn't based on an anime either, since Avatar: The Last Airbender is an American series, but you wouldn't be the first person to be misled by the art style.)

#74: So, it's "Lawrence of Avatarabia"?

Okay. I guess if the plot worked once ...

Yesterday afternoon, my development put salt on the sidewalks... they shouldn't have bothered. I just opened my door to find the snow drifted and rising. (But that's certainly a drift -- looking out my window at a parking lot, I can see most of the license plates.)

Siriosa @ 78... That's a respectable-sized gathering

Respectable? I've NEVER been so insulted.
("It' still early, Serge," Abi whispers.)

In the Dewey Decimal system, 133 is one of the main locations for works about various paranormal phenomena. There was a time when I was young that I used to haunt that section in our town library.

A friend of mine once recommended a title there on out-of-body experiences. It was checked out when I looked for it, so I asked the librarians there to hold it for me. When it came in, they telephoned home to tell me it was available. One of my parents got the message first, and was rather taken aback by the title. They then had a Concerned Discussion with me, and asked me to promise not to check the book out.

I kept my promise, narrowly speaking. I stopped by the library a few times over the next few weeks, and read it bit by bit there, without ever checking it out.

I lost interest in the whole genre eventually, for various reasons. But I was fascinated with it for a while. And one thing I learned from the experience that's stayed with me as a parent is that trying to outright forbid your child from reading something is generally counterproductive.

Well, leaving aside casting the movie into the What These People Need is a Honky trope (what these people clearly needed was a Marine who knew how to fight back, an outside consultant if you will, and that's what they got, and I had serious problems with the militarism inherent in that trope, but was enjoying the movie too much to worry all that much) - given that America's national debates are informed by emotions, and given that the visuals in this movie are breathtaking to the point of incipient asphyxia, I think it's going to change some minds.

Stefan @73 - but it would never have changed those minds anyway. It may well have an impact on their children.

Kids 16 and under in America are pretty green to start with. I think this is going to bolster them as they grow.

Now, on the trope casting into racism: What I wonder, Barb @ 74, is when people are going to wake up to the fact that colonialism doesn't just affect the non-white. It's not race, it's privilege. As long as we're restricted only to speaking of external appearance, we're missing the key insight.

(Which is hexapodia.)

No, wait, it's not hexapodia. It's the idea that some people are inherently of greater worth than others because they're richer, or more powerful, or golf at the same clubs. It's not race, it's power. And as long as the powerful can keep you thinking it's all about race, they still own you.

"When will white people stop making these films?" Make your own film. Add to the discussion instead of trying to suppress what others are saying. But if we persist in believing that rich white men should start saying what we want, because they have the megaphone, we're missing the fact that we now have the megaphone. You can make a blockbuster for a thousand bucks nowadays if you're sufficiently insane; people are doing it. So do it.

Also, a story about white privilege being pervasive in the film industry that actually mentions Will Smith kind of shoots itself in the foot. Unless you want to maintain that Will Smith is not sufficiently black. But if you do, then you underscore my point, which is that Will Smith is perfectly black, he's just not downtrodden. So it's not about melanin, it's about privilege.

I liked Paul Cornell's comment on Avatar:

The natives of Avatar needed, more than their western hero finding his place in nature, a good team of civil rights lawyers and a PR firm. They'd establish not that we could all learn from their mystical one-ness with the universe, but that as people much like us, they have mineral rights.

(I've heard people I respect say it's brilliant, and I've heard people I respect say it's old-fashioned tripe. This may be one of those movies I'm going to have to see right away while it's in theaters, so I can decide for myself.)

#82 Jon Meltzer: "So, it's "Lawrence of Avatarabia"?"

"Dancing With Smurfs." :D

(NB: I haven't seen the movie, I probably will enjoy it, but I'm really having fun with the snark.)

Steve C. way back at #1: I will have to look for "Liza with a Z"! Not only does it sound good to watch, I can certainly get behind the sentiment in the title. :-)

Michael@86: To say, "Hey, white people can identify with Will Smith, there is no race issue" is sort of like saying "Hey, Barack Obama is president, we have no race problem." One can recognize that white people, for whatever reason, put Will Smith into a category of his own (I believe the usual moniker is Transcends Race) without pulling out the "not sufficiently black" straw man. One can also point out that Annalee Newitz's point is that what applies to Will Smith does not apply to all black actors.

While I don't actually disagree with you, I don't see how the issue of privilege denies the part that race plays. There are all sorts of ways one group of people assert privilege over another group. Race is one of the ways we divide ourselves. Obviously, race privilege is not the entire issue, but it's part of it. "Make your own film" is a great idea, but it implies this symmetry in the culture that does not yet exist.

I'm reminded of the Obligatory Race Panel at Readercon 20. [I'm going by half year old memories. My apologies if I misrepresent anyone.] Tempest Bradford and Eileen Gunn were praising Nisi Shawl's collection, Filter House. One of the things they pointed out was that Nisi Shawl's work wasn't aimed at the mainstream audience. One (white, male) audience member reflected this back to them as Nisi Shawl writing works that white readers don't want to read. He was asking whether not aiming at a mainstream audience would create the segregation everyone says they seek to avoid.

What I found staggering was the implication that people didn't want to read works not aimed directly at them. If you're non-white, you read works not aimed directly at you all the time. I don't see this as an exceptional thing, but that audience member clearly did. It seems to me, if there is segregation, it's because he's not willing to read works not directly aimed at him, not because Nisi Shawl isn't writing directly for him.

I should point out here that he can read anything he wants. I'm not telling him what to read. It's really not my business. I'm just pointing out the cultural asymmetry that makes a statement like "Make your own movie" less interesting than it otherwise might be. In race-blind world, "make your own movie" is a fine solution. However, in race-blind world, we wouldn't be having this conversation at all. (i.e., Annalee Newitz would have written a completely different article about perhaps a completely different Avatar.)

Yes, this is absolutely an issue of privilege. That doesn't deny that race plays a part in the development and assertion of that privilege.

"All right, creep, Now before I untie you, I wanna tell you a couple of things, and I want you to listen, and listen carefully. This has been the biggest bummer of a trip I've ever been on; but if you let me down, or you hurt my friends, especially the broad, I got stuff planned for you that'll take twenty years to kill ya."
"...no pain..."
"...And you'll be screaming for mercy in the first five seconds."

What? Avatar isn't Cameron's remake of Bakshi's movie?

I credit Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz for avoiding the type of review that must surely have given other critics tennis elbow by now. There were some very key points at which Avatar could have been better, and they don't all have to do with race or privilege -- the worldbuilding itself could have used some nuance (as could the plot's romantic arc).

I'm not saying that I personally could have made a better film. Miyazaki already has, and it was called Princess Mononoke. Cameron's film buried its lead under allegory: it could have told a genuinely original story about the impact of collective intelligence on a global population, but instead it chose to tell us a story we've seen a thousand times before. It could have been a much more interesting story about sentience and emergent phenomena and the evolution of biological USB hookups, but no such luck.

It's not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination. And it's gorgeous to look at, and it's responsible for the birth of a bunch of new technologies. I just can't wait to see those technologies applied to a better script and a more interesting story.

John @90 - very true, and I know it's an ongoing discussion, and as a white man (though disappointingly unrich) I have no standing. It was a visually stunning film. I'm pretty sure it will have an effect on American culture. Its blue cat aliens are obvious Native Americans.

To me, it spoke of the struggle against corporatism. It did that relatively effectively - not that it broke new philosophical ground, but at least it covered the old philosophical ground with a great deal of competence.

Now comes Newitz and says, "Ho hum, it failed to address my problems, it is a waste of a movie." That upsets me, even though I know that Newitz's issues are important ones. I don't like sackcloth and ashes, I get enough of that from my wife (a classical Eurocommunist theoretical physicist).

It had people flying on dragons, for God's sake, the most believable portrayal I can even imagine, let alone have seen. It had well-thought-out weightlessness. The air shimmers when the two atmospheres mix. It had battle armor, walkers I mean, deployed plausibly. It was a well-told story. That it failed to address race in a better manner may be a failing, but it's a failing of society, not of the film.

I don't want to get into defending this. From a race standpoint, it's just same old, same old. That's not the dimension I was looking at, and again, as a white man, the only real thing I can add to a discussion of racism is to shut up.

Although, pace Madeline @ 92, vg ernyyl qvqa'g qb nalguvat jvgu gur pbyyrpgvir pbafpvbhfarff guna gbff vg bhg gurer nf n tvira, naq nyybj fnvq jbeyq pbafpvbhfarff gb evqr va nf gur pnyinel va fhccbeg bs gur juvgr ureb. BX, BX, ohg vg ybbxrq fb qnzarq tbbq. Sylvat ba qentbaf!!!1!

I am such a freaking idiot. That really should have been ROT-13'd. I'm so used to seeing things only after they're in the dollar cinemas. One of you mods, if you should see this, feel free to unspoilerize it. I mean, I probably still have the login to ML somewhere in my files if it hasn't been changed since the Great Crash, but it would take ages to sort through all that stuff.

Liza @ 89 -

Oh, definitely go for it.

Here's a taste.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7XH_ehsN6k
Son of a preacher man

Michael Roberts @ #93: as a white man, the only real thing I can add to a discussion of racism is to shut up.

As a white woman, I'd like to append ..."and listen."

'The C Programming Language'
by Brian W Kernighan & Dennis M Ritchie & HP Lovecraft

Michael Roberts, #93: Now comes Newitz and says, "Ho hum, it failed to address my problems, it is a waste of a movie."

I read Newitz's review as saying not that Avatar failed to address her problems, but that it failed to address problems inherent in the situation created by the film.

Michael @95:

Rotthirteenified.

The discourse of privilege annoys me; it frequently tends to be under-nuanced. Most discussions of it seem to be predicated on the assumption that if you are while and male you have the full package. Can we perhaps draw a Venn diagram, and reserve the "shut the F--- up and listen" darts for the members of the P7[*] lurking in the innermost circle?

(Like Conservative MP Philip Davies, who has distinguished himself in the past few days.)

[*] The P7 are the Pale Patriarchal Protestant Plutocratic Penis People of Power. (If anyone can come up with a synonym for "heterosexual" beginning with "P" I'd be very grateful.)

Charlie: Potentially procreative?

Scratch that.

No, seriously, scratch it -- "potentially procreative" is insensitive even for a joke, and I should have lingered longer on the preview screen. Having relatives who outed themselves post-progeny, I should have known better. I realized this as I was spooning out my much-needed lunch, and now consider myself the possible victim of a low blood sugar moment. Now I exit, to eat and re-consider my words.

The solution to "What These People Need is a Honky trope," is Postmambism.

You can see the logo here.

The principles of Postmambism were rolled out this week on Boing Boing here.

Postmambosim is serious, but if you want to laugh, that is acceptable!

Love, C.

Charlie: "poled per predominant predilection"?

Debbie: that's a little long. Mind you, let's relax the target criterion a little ... anyone got a one-word (beginning with "P") synonym for "male gaze"?

Charlie@101: Just in case, I didn't intend what I wrote @90 as a "Shut the F--- up" screed. It just struck me that @86 read like Michael was saying that there was no white privilege at play in Avatar (particularly in his last paragraph) while simultaneously admitting to the What These People Need Is A Honky trope. I just wanted to point out that it was possible to make his points about power without simultaneously denying the effect of race.

I totally agree that discussions of privilege tend to be under-nuanced. I'm definitely privileged in some ways, but not in others. That's something I try my best to take into account before I wade into this sort of stuff.

Charlie Stross @ 101... if you are while and male you have the full package

It takes a while, but eventually the package gets full.

John, no -- I wasn't accusing you of doing the "shut up" thing; just commenting, that it tends to come up sooner or later.

All it takes is one racist/general-purpose bigot, or one person of self-identified-non-privileged-class getting annoyed and reaching for the sledgehammer, to turn any discussion into a cess-pit. And there is no category of humanity so pure that all members are immune from temptation.

(Me, I am not tempted to go watch Avatar -- if only because (a) the trope is tired and wrinkly, (b) I am not partial to American founding-mythology hagiography, and (c) modern fashionable camerawork does not play well with my battered retinas.)

#86 Michael

The situation is somewhat more complicated--there's privilege, and then there are power, control, and keeping the power and control. The person most in control of the empire that use to be Viacom/Paramount, is Jewish and a Democrat--however the Empire has pandered to hardline hardline misogynist non-Jewish bigots, and booted out anything smacking of liberalism and progressivism in its infotainment... the goal was maximizing income, minimizing expenses, maximizing ad revenue, maximizing placating and pandering to advertisers, minimizing antagonizing or irritating advertisers, and maximizing the audiences advertisers regard as most worthwhile to them.... Audiences who are not "consumers" and/or not vociferous "newsworthy" groups, get excised from attention and consideration for attention.... Oh, that's another max/min--minimize the content that causes noticeable boycotts and bad press. Thus, all the coverage of Sarah Palin, because she appeals to a market segment which watchs TV, buys from advertizers and is important to advertisers, which makes enormous amounts of vicious and effective noise when it feels offended against/finds something offensive to it, and which when panders to spreads the word and gets the money to the panders who pander to it (and does so on an emotional basis),

I am not one of the people the advertisers regard as their prime targets.... I suspect that few of the regulars here are. That's the explanation for why TV is full of lies or at best misdirection and absent data, pandering to Palin an her equally or worse vile associates, why the hard issue considations and analyses of the 1960s and into the 1970s are entirely absented or disenfranchised otherwise (given the ha-ha-gotcha or Disneyfication or other methods of neutralizing an issue--make it something to snicker at, play up the worst hypocrites involved in it, pick examples of people on the other side who've been gratuitously harmed--last night CBS focused on three wronged biological US national fathers whose children are or were in orphanages (two in Italian orphanages) or in the homes and custody of non-biological relatives (foster father in Brazil who was married to the child's mother, the mother died in childbirth.... the fact that most of the cases of childnapping and such involve fathers, regardless of merit--sometimes there is merit, sometimes not, it depends on the country and state--in Islamic countries the father gets custody, in Texas the mother gets forced by the culture to demand custody and get it whether she internally wants to or not.... I heard a few stories from fathers when I was in the Air Force who either had or were trying to get custody, whose wives were not the fitter parent... they were the minority certainly, but I knew several men who'd been granted child custody--but those decisions were NOT in Texas courts....)

Note that the TV households with single parent formerly married parents with children, almost always involve fathers, and almost never wives--Bonanza, My Three Sons, etc. -- and when a woman is a single parent, she's someone who's had a child as a professional who's not and never had been married. Double standard, viciousness.... since generally the situation is a divorcee or widow with children, rarely a widower or divorced male--and the two latter categories usually get remarried eventually (my next door neighbor remarried years after his wife die, and has a third child now, a decade plus younger than the siblings).

Paul A., #81: "I suspect you're thinking of M. Night Shyamalan's still-forthcoming film derived from Avatar: The Last Airbender"

Duh. Yes, I was. Me dumb.

Paul A. @81:

(Strictly speaking that isn't based on an anime either, since Avatar: The Last Airbender is an American series, but you wouldn't be the first person to be misled by the art style.)

So does "anime" necessarily refer to national orgin as well as style? "Magic realism" (or "magical realism") used to refer to a certain subgenre of fantasy of South American origin by definition, but I've heard it used (and by fairly respectable literary critics) to refer to fantasy in the same or a similar style by American, British, and Eastern European authors as well. I'm not sure how I feel about genre or style categories that aren't orthogonal to nationality, race, language and so forth. I suppose it relates to the competing ideas of defining genres by their style and content, vs. defining them by the communities of authors and readers involved; both approaches are valid as long as you don't confuse them.

Re: Avatar: The Last Airbender, I enjoyed the few episodes of it that I watched with some friends, and I'm fairly annoyed with what I've heard so far about the film adaptation.

Wesley Osam @87, quoting Paul Cornell:

The natives of Avatar needed, more than their western hero finding his place in nature, a good team of civil rights lawyers and a PR firm.

This reminds me of Lloyd Biggle's Monument, a wonderful novel that's about the right length to make a good movie without the drastic cutting that most book-to-film adaptations suffer from; though there the natives were human, low-tech descendants of a long-lost colony who used the law to protect themselves from exploitation when they were rediscovered by Earth. Also of Uncharted Territory by Connie Willis, which is set in a similar situation, but later on, when the aliens have already learned how to game the Terran legal system for fun and profit.

mike shupp @56: It's been a while since I read Lest Darkness Fall but I think Procopius actually appears as a minor character.

John Chu @90:

Re: "make your own movie", it seems that with the costs of making and distributing movies and other media art forms going down, the assymetry in power of expression between rich and middle-class is decreasing. (Not between races per se, and not between rich and poor because strictly speaking poor people still can't afford to make movies or produce any media more expensive than text or perhaps comics, but that day is probably coming as well.) It's not likely to disappear, any time soon or ever, but I expect it to keep decreasing for a while.

Clifton Royston @98

Did you note the minor typo bug in the Cthulhu() function? Was it an intentional error* to prevent poor CS freshmen, naively typing in and compiling the example, unintentionally summoning some unspeakable evil?

Then again, further threats to body, mind, and soul await those CS majors who survive their freshman mistakes... (cf the exercises, also Stross, C., The Atrocity Archive et al.)

* Or was it for verisimilitude, for I seem to recall 1st edition K&R having similar minor typos in the sample code.

Am I the only one who thinks "airbender" would make a great euphemism for really, really powerful flatulence?

Serge @84 Respectable? I've NEVER been so insulted.

Is that a challenge, Serge? You've set the bar temptingly low, if so.

Open threadiness: the new Simon's Cat video.

Thanks for the heads up on Simon's cat, Pendrift. I just now put it up on my Facebook page.

siriosa @ 116... You've set the bar temptingly low

A bar like THIS?

Can I delurk to ask for some self-publishing advice, please? My dad's wife has written several ebooks on her acupuncture specialty and she and my dad are now trying to sell them. It seems like the kind of niche topic that could work with self-publishing, but they could do with some advice on marketing. Does anyone know of any decent resources I could point them towards? I started by looking for a book I could get them for Xmas, but they all sounded kind of scammy. Thanks!

Steve C. @ 97: Thanks!

Avocado of Death @ 45: Then I too may have met you at Fourth Street. Now I'm wondering who you are, and whether you're a Pinkwater fan. (If you'd named yourself "Baconburg Horror" I'd be sure of it.)

Bernard Yeh @114 oh, thank goodness, I thought it was just me.

Greg Egan has recently posted an article about his trip to Iran last year to his website.

Jim Henry #113: The idea that "magical realism" is a specifically South American genre, would require that Cuba be in South America, which it is not*, and that Alejo Carpentier, the Cuban novelist who coined the term "lo real maravilloso" somehow be South American. No disrespect is intended to Gabriel García Márquez or Jorge Amado, but I am pretty certain that Carpentier preceded them both.

*This would, among other things, have required moving Jamaica. I'm pretty sure I'd have noticed that.

Serge, #71, I'm reading a book that is part alt-hist and there's a place on the planet with eight heads carved into a mountain, two female.

John Chu, #90, I read a memoir recently by a black woman and someone helping her, and it was so massively badly-written that I went to look at the publisher and it was a line for only black women. I do think that implies that I wasn't supposed to read it.

We're up to 16" of snow, with an inch an hour expected until 7am. I just heard the snowblower machine and they did my ramp, curbcut, and zebra stripe, as well as the regular sidewalk! I don't know if they'll do it again when the snow stops, but this will make the new snow melt sooner.

I have a friend expected to die tomorrow. She had fast-moving cancer diagnosed two weeks ago and the chemo hasn't helped. She's been under enough morphine today that she hasn't been conscious and I'm glad for that, at least.

Marilee #126: I hope it goes easy for your friend. You have my sympathies.

Marilee and all others zotzed by the snowstorm: Stay safe!

I'm hoping New York will be dug out by the time I fly out Wednesday.

Charlie #101:

I'll admit I find the whole line of thought that says some people aren't entitled to an opinion or a voice, because of who they are, deeply stupid. I mean, straight guys aren't likely to have much experience with the day-to-day hassles of being gay, and there's a lot of value in reminding people of that sort of thing--just because you don't see X in the world doesn't mean there's no X, it might be that all the X gets dumped on the shoes of people who are different from you.

But the "shut up and listen" line seems to me like just one more in a whole big set of strategies for shutting the other side up in an argument without having to actually hear what they're saying. Like telling people they mustn't question the war if they're not veterans, or that they mustn't question it while it's going on, or that they mustn't advocate for war if they're not veterans, or....

Charlie, #107: What about "prurient"?

albatross@129: I don't think there are many people saying white guys should shut up because of who they are. It's usually directed at the sort of guy who wanders happily into discussions (usually about feminism) involving people who have been reading and thinking about the issues for decades, and starts sounding off, inevitably producing loads of old chestnuts which were dealt with back in the days of the Pankhursts. Guys who are just out of their depth, IOW, and who need to go and study/lurk extensively before they have a chance of playing any part in the discussion other than that of scratching post.

Jim #113
Earlier this week someone in an online chat was asking what the difference was between Magical Realism and e.g. Urban Fantasy, and what the difference was between Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance. I said that MR has a degree of allegory in it and involves Hispanic culture generally, while UF there is the willing suspension of disbelief the reader's being asked to treat the magic in the story as story-reality. PNR versus UF, sometime comes down to what imprint the book is, and/or marketing decision. Generally PNR the focus is more on the romance, and in UF, the setting has a major role in the story feel, can even take on in way the role of a character.... and UF doesnt; -have- to have a romantic focus. (On the other hand, there are a -few- multibook series in the romance section which doesn';t have a romance with a Happily Ever After ending in the book for usually a male-female couple who are the leads or most major leads, in the book)

#129 albatross
The white Christian males tend to grab for control and majority share of every conversation/discussion they're in, and get irate and claim to be being marginalized if they have less than the majority of the speaking time shares of the conversation time. Studies done of group dynamics, show that they perceive women as "talking too much" when the women aren't even near getting 50% of the speaking time.

So, "Shut up and listen" might sound rude, but the reality being that they generally hog the conversation, it's -appropriate- and no ruder than their wonted bahavior.... They've HAD their say, for generations. Time for them to find out what it's like to be -marginalized- for a change...

Serge @84 Respectable? I've NEVER been so insulted.

Serge is so respectable--
(How respectable is he?)
He's so respectable that his parents were married.

That's how respectable.

siriosa @ 134... I exude such respectability (and - dare I say it?) maturity that it must be why you thought I was older than I legaly am, eh? Good to see you tonight, Lenny Bailes too, Kathryn & Brad, and D Potter who, I realized as Lenny & I walked her past the rat, is actually taller than me.

I'm with El Strosso here.

I have seen far too many threads (not on this list) degenerate into a game of Entitlement Whist. Player 1 leads with an opinion. Player 2 plays an entitlement card ("you're white, so your opinion on this concept on racism should not be expressed"). Player 3 plays a higher entitlement card ("ah, but this particular opinion also has relevance to sexual discrimination, therefore your maleness trumps your race" aka "women, including black women, should vote for Hilary Clinton even if they think Obama is the better candidate"). Player 4 plays the Ace of Trumps ("I'm not sure which group should be offended by Player 1's opinion, but here is a list of those who might be offended and if I knock on enough doors I'm sure someone will agree to be offended...") and so Player 4 wins the trick.

At no point has the original opinion been supported or attacked by anything resembling an argument. Nor does anyone in the game recognise that taking a stand against racism, sexism, etc., is hardly helped by criticising an opinion solely on the race, sex, etc. of its holder.

Charlie #107 - surely priapic?

One of the things that's really been hammered home to me this year doing research for my pulp project is just how vast my own ignorance about a lot of other people's cultures is, and I started off with a head start in awareness of and respect for people in situations not my own. Frankly, "shut up and listen" is exactly the advice a lot of commentators need, and particularly white male ones. We are, most of us, way, way less qualified to expound than we think, lacking clues about both what the real problems facing others are and what they've already done to fix them and how it all worked. The more I sit tight and listen, the more I begin to understand what's been obvious all along to a lot of others, but was invisible to me. (And along the way, I've learned to see my own situation very differently than I used to, thanks in part to what others are saying that I didn't know I needed to hear.)

All these years commenting at Making Light, and I finally must confess: I've never read any Lois McMaster Bujold. Where is a good place to start?

#149 Allan

What sorts of things are your preferred reading? There are a few different entry point to the Nexus (SF) books -- Shards of Honor, which was her first book, which got reissued by Baen packaged up with Hugo-winning Barrayar as "Cordelia's Honor" I think. There is the Nebula Award winner Falling Free, written later but set centuries earlier, and and old-fashioned nuts and bolts Analog story about welding technology...

Both Shards of Honor and Falling Free have romances in them. Shards starts off with Cordelia Naismith, captain of an Betan exploration team, and Lord Aral Vorkosigan, relatively high up in the Barrayaran military, having to make common cause for survival despite being from planets which are not on friendly terms with one another, on a planet suitable for human colonization claimed by both planets. They survive, and then go back to their respective places in their societies, as the interstellar political situation degenerates massively....

Falling Free starts off on Earth. Genetic engineering has developed a stain of humans engineered for living in microgravity--just in time for the development of artificial gravity....

The prinicipal character in ,ost of the Nexus books is Lord Miles Vorkosigan. There are multiple books with him as the lead character and it's possible to use e.g. Miles, Microbes, [and something else] as an entry point, if not interested in a book with a strong romantic plot as entry point.... Miles first shows up in The Warrior's Apprentice, in his mid/late teens trying to get into the Barrayaran military academy despite having some major physical debilitation, in a society with a horror of physical deformity.... there is a lot of wry humor, and lot of "hidden woman in the physically debilitated young man" involved in that, the most of the later, books. It's got action-adventure, with events spiralling out of control for Miles, who find himself running an interstellar shell game and desperately trying to backfill....

There are other books which are unrelated -- Curse of Chalion is one of four books set in a fantasy universe. It's the first published book of the series, but The Hallowed Hunt is the first by internal series chronology.

The most recent books written by the author which are in print, are in a different fantasy universe, once based on the geography and climate and flora and fauna and to a degree attitude in the the central region of North America. It's a four book series, constituting "The Wide Green World" and a continuous series, in which the book should be read in order. There is a strong romance theme with the two leads pairbonding, and the books exploring them, from two quite different traditions and crossing the boundaries between their cultures, and the changes they are making/trying to make on their world.

There is one other book, which is a stand-alone, The Spirit Ring, which is a fantasy alternate univese in which a famed Italian goldmith had a daughter, in a world with magic. The daughter is the lead. There is a romance thread in the book.

As far as the developing discussion of oppression politics goes, have any of y'all (Charlie Stross @101 and 110, albatross @129, Adrian Smith @131, Paula Lieberman @133, Chris Lawson @136, maybe others I've missed) noticed that you're starting to work yourselves up into a lather over hypothetical and/or non-present cases? It's a pretty mild, dilute lather so far, but I don't want to see it getting any sudsier, y'get me?

I deliberately didn't include Bruce Baugh @138 in that list because of the clear sense of humility that comes through in that comment.

Jim Henry @113, Fragano @124, replace "South America" with "Latin America" and it works.

It aggravates me no end that the term "Urban Fantasy" has been redefined as fundamentally equivalent to "Paranormal Romance".

Imagine that books about sex with robots became a "thing" and began to sell really well--and that some bright soul in marketing decided to call this "Cyberpunk". Aargh! Excuse me, already means something, go find your own word....

Kate Y @143, "Urban Fantasy" has been a changing category. It originally meant stuff like Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar stories (about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser). Later on, it meant contemporary fantasy with a strong sense of real-world setting, like Emma Bull's War for the Oaks.

This happens. "Mannerpunk" aka "fantasy of manners" originally meant SF & fantasy with diverse influences and an emphasis on genre mixing, role-playing and the formation of character, and attention to language. (The term comes from an essay Donald Keller wrote for The New York Review of Science Fiction, and it's long been my suspicion that what Keller was actually noticing in the essay was a group of authors whose work was influenced by the playing of role-playing games, but that Keller couldn't tease out that connection because he wasn't an RPG gamer himself.) Anyway, the term has come to refer to fantasy about social structures, often strongly influenced by the work of some 19th century author.

Lee @130: "Prurient"

Wil @137: "Priapic"

Okay, I think we now have the working definition of the P9, our shadowy cabal of generic oppressors, and an anti-P9 slogan:

"Death to the pale plutocratic patriarchal prurient priapic protestant penis people of power who prey upon the life of the people!"

Or something like that.

(Unfortunately it doesn't sound quite as inhuman as "fascist insect"; more like Sylvio Berlusconi's masonic lodge, or an obscure model of German automatic pistol. Bah. Are there too many P's, yet?)

Avram @141: I hear ya.

Charlie, have you forgotten Pope Palpatine and his ilk? You should put in "papist" somewhere. (And if any of those perpetrators see the error of their ways, they shall have taken the P out of themselves.)

TexAnne @146:

Charlie already has Protestant in there; adding Papist makes it mutually exclusive. And Protestant is still the default power position; most Catholics that make it into the cabal are exceptions.

Allan Beatty @ 139

Re. Lois McMacter Bujold's books.

For the Vorkosigan/Barrayar books, I recommend starting with Shards of Honor (probably easiest now to get it together with Barrayar in Cordelia's Honor).

Then either continue and read Barrayar, or go on to The Warrior's Apprentice and continue from there, going back to Barrayar.

An alternative (if you think you'd be best hooked on Miles immediately) is to start with The Warrior's Apprentice, then go back and read Shards of Honor and Barrayar, then continue with the rest of the Miles Vorkosigan books. Leave Ethan of Athos and Falling Free until later. There's a chronology at http://www.dendarii.com/biblio.html#timeline

You can read the first 10 chapters of Shards of Honor (as part of Cordelia's Honor at Baen Books, ditto the first 10 chapters of The Warrior's Apprentice as the first part of Young Miles.

In her other series, I think the Chalion books (The Curse of Chalion is the first one) are fantastic. I'm also enjoying The Sharing Knife, but it's a bit more YA.

Urban Fantasy / Paranormal Romance

I've found it fairly easy to tell by a glance at the book cover whether it's an Urban Fantasy (quite possibly with some romance in it, but with a strong plot outwith that) or a Paranormal Romance: if the latter, the cover art is of a supposedly sexy-looking man, generally shirtless or with his shirt open to the waist. For the former, the woman on the cover looks capable and generally has a reasonable level of clothing...

#145: "Life" needs a p-synonym. Unfortunately my thesaurus isn't helping here.

#149: I notice on the "urban fantasy" covers that the woman does look capable, but she's showing a lot of cleavage and tattoos.

Marilee@125: *sputters* But I was talking about Filter House. It won the Tiptree. Publishers Weekly called it one of the Best Books of 2008. It, and a novella from it were nominated for the World Fantasy Awards in 2009. It was published by Aqueduct Press. (Yes, it publishes feminist science fiction but, AFAICT, it markets to a general audience.) I don't understand how you're making an apt comparison here.

The way you've constructed your sentence implies "it was a line for only black women" explains "massively badly-written." Did you intend that? I mean, it reads like you're saying if a book is marketed towards black women, then that it's poorly written suddenly makes sense to you. In any case, it's is the equivalent of someone picking up one badly written SF book then deciding she's not supposed to read anything at all in the genre. (Yes, I know. People do that, but is that a practice we condone?)

Obviously, I'm not defending the "massively badly-written" book you picked up, just as I hope you're not saying that book has anything to do with anyone's experience of Filter House. Of course, not all books are equally worth reading, and in any case, there isn't the time. I'm just pointing out how odd to me anyway the idea that because a story wasn't written just for someone, that person summarily dismiss the idea of reading it. The question at the Obligatory Race Panel referred to Nisi Shawl's writing, not Aqueduct Press's marketing.

If you want to talk about marketing though, I should point out that if we all read only books that were within our own target market, the Harry Potter would not have had nearly the success it has. (Scholastic, that huge publisher of adult, mainstream fiction.) It's one of the reasons why I found that question so odd. In other contexts, no one thinks twice about venturing outside their demographic.

abi @ 147... most Catholics that make it into the cabal

We're three caballeros
Three gay caballeros
They say we are birds of a feather
We're happy amigos
No matter where he goes
The one, two, and three goes
We're always together

Arvam @ 144... Let's not forget Bustlepunk.

dcb @ 149... What is now called 'Urban Fantasy' is also referred to as 'kick-ass chick' stories and no they're not about fowl kicking donkeys off the farm's premises.

Jon Meltzer @151, Serge @155

*grins* Not always on the cleavage and/or tattoos and/or bare midriff (after a quick check through the shelves), even when the lead character is female. And none of the above on the covers of The Dresden Files - which are urban fantasy but are not "kick ass chick" books, although they do contain at least one chick (apologies Murphy, one woman) who can kick ass physically with the best of them.

Seriously, the ones with the "kick ass chick" on the front do not [obviously!] have the female lead character falling in love with the gent on the cover at the drop of a hat, or fantasizing, in detail, in the first two pages, about hopping into bed with him, when all he's done is walk into the restaurant where they are serving.

On Bujold: I wouldn't start with the Sharing Knife books. Even bad Bujold is good, but I, at least, can be put off an author when I see people raving about books I liked, but not that much. I'd start with Warrior's Apprentice; she handles backstory really well.

dcb @ 156... all he's done is walk into the restaurant where they are serving

Well, the menu does look good.

#113 ::: Jim Henry: So does "anime" necessarily refer to national orgin as well as style?

I'm not in any sense an expert, but my understanding is that "anime" is defined entirely by national origin: Japanese animation is anime, and anime is Japanese animation. "Anime style" is a description of style elements common to works already defined as anime, not the prescription of elements a work should contain to qualify as anime.

I have seen the term "animesque" used for non-Japanese works that deliberately use style elements associated with anime, but I don't know how official or widespread it is.

Allan @ 139: If you were going to start reading LMB's books, would the characters' sexuality make a difference to what starting point you'd choose? Most of her characters are straight. The only exception I can think of in her better-known Vorkosigan series is in Ethan of Athos, where the main character is, well, he's a gay man but he's from a planet where only men exist, so he's not so much a well-rounded gay man as an exploration of what a society without women might be like. Still, he's a sympathetic character and I enjoy reading him.

That could sound like a condemnation of her books, but I actually really enjoy them, they just don't cover as much of the spectrum of human sexuality as I might best prefer. The Chalion books are a little better that way than the Vorkosigan ones, plus I really enjoy the religion/worldview in the Chalion books. My absolute favorite book of hers so far is the second Chalion book, Paladin of Souls--but don't read it before The Curse of Chalion, which gives background and depth to it.

Allan: I started with Cordelia's Honor (which is really two earlier books concatenated together)--I found it quite good. (I've only read three of her books so far, including the short story/novella collection in Miles, Mystery and Mayhem. All very much worth reading, though I think Bujold does better with longer stories.

Liza:

There's also a Betan hermaphrodite character on Miles' mercenary crew.

Is Barrayar extremely hostile toward gays? I think I've assumed that, because of the socially conservative society there. But I'm not sure it's ever been spelled out. (By contrast, if you're a mutie, you're fair game.)

dcb, etc.

There are covers in romance which have That Pose of female with gratuitous tit and other skin (midriff, for example) showing and generous ass and slit skirt/short skirt/skintight leather pants on them that is prevalent in SOME UF (UF when slotted in SF/F), and there are UF covers with males on them (the first three books by Mark del Franco--the lead is male, the Dresden books as someone else has noted, other series with a male lead (blanking on one that I stopped following annoyed with the emotional stupidity of the lead character).

Examples of romance novels with females in That Pose (frontal or 3/4 with torso swiveling for face to be visible in at least profile... example, Deovour by Melina Morel (Signet Eclipse), First Blood by multiple authors (Berkeley), Hunter's Need by Shiloh Walker, Through the Veil by Shiloh Walker, various Jennifer Estep books, Savannah Russe' novels, various Katie MacAlister (McAlister?) books..., the Undead and ... series by Mary Janice Davidson (the last two have rather chicklit-ish somewhat cartoony cover art)...

On cover art: Then you have Kim Harrison's "The Hollows" series, which has mostly rear views of a comely but slightly scary woman. I'm amused by her titles, paraphrasing Clint Eastwood movies ("The Good, the Bad and the Undead," "The Outlaw Josie Wails").

Yay, another chance to rave about Bujold!

I finally got my wife to try Bujold this year and she got hooked immediately. I suggested chronological order starting with the omnibus Cordelia volume, so beginning with 'Shards of Honor' and 'Barrayar', and that was clearly a good approach. She ended up buying all the ones needed to fill the gaps in what I owned. I also can't say enough good things about 'The Curse of Chalion' and 'Paladin of Souls', though I haven't read the 3rd in that setting.

'The Spirit Ring', a stand-alone in a Renaissance Italy-like setting, is also good.

albatross @ 162: It's explicitly spelled out in Barrayar, if you haven't read it. Fbzrobql gevrf gb ubeevsl Pbeqryvn ol gryyvat ure gung Neny vf ov, naq fur ercyvrf freraryl, "Jnf ov. Abj ur'f zbabtnzbhf." Naq gura vg gnxrf ure hagvy nsgre gur raq bs gur pbairefngvba gb ernyvmr jung gur thl gevrq gb qb.

Barrayar doesn't seem to openly persecute homosexuals, but they're socially held in distaste. There's a scene in I think Barrayar (it might be in Shards of Honor, but I think it's in Barrayar) where one of the political opponents of Aral Vorkosigan says either explicitly or indicatively that Aral had been in a homosexual relationship--the intent was to horrify and shock Cordelia. It backfired, Cordelia being from Beta and not subject to Barrayaran cultural taboos.

Lois McMaster Bujold's works do deal with gender issues but go much less into sex scenes and tend to dwell a lot less on angst about relationships than most contemporarily written books with relationships in them. (For me, the scenes with Ekaterin in the first two books she is in, Komarr ? and especially A Civil Campaign, are full of icky angsty mushy stuff, she's a woman in an unpleasant double bind situation for most of the first book she's in, and while I sympathize with her plight I don't want to participate in it, especially not as supposedly pleasure reading. I couldn't get though ACC, it had a dinner party from hell in it, a trainwreck that the reader sees has its genesis in misestimation and overconfidence, and that it is going to be embarrassing, it is going to massively go wrong... I don't tend to appreciate embarrassment humor, unless I am in a vicious mood and regard it as someone slimy getting their just rewards.... I stopped reading the book during that scene and have never gotten back to reading it for maybe more than a page or two.... )

Paula, dcb, Liza, Clifton— Thanks for the detailed recommendations. I'll start with Cordelia's Honor. With a writer as prolific as Bujold, I wasn't going to just assume that chronological or as-written order would be the best approach (knowing that neither of those orders would be satisfactory for reading, say, Marion Zimmer Bradley).

And Diatryma (sorry!). Much of my reading lately has been YA novels, so that in itself wouldn;t put me off The Sharing Knife.

I don't see Sharing Knife as YA at all-- or at least not more YA than any of her other books. I went back and forth on the books as I read them, with the third the weak point. They're still good, but I was and perhaps am sensitized to Twilight-esque relationships, so some of them made me uncomfortable. That's inherent in the worldbuilding, too.
Which meant, of course, that I spent more time being angry at the books for that badness than I do at worse books for the same.

(and the Civil Campaign dinner party? Painful. It's one thing to yell at Miles for completely stupid professional and military decisions and quite another to do so in social situations.)

#170 Diatryma

The Sharing Knife the author was apparently consciously trying for romance audience appeal, along with it being fantasy rather than SF. The combination apparently has considerably less attraction for a large chunk of her SF readership than her SF and the Curse of Chalion universe books.

The Sharing Knife is a relationship-focused series, rather than action-adventure plot-focused series....

YOICKS, IT'S FANTASY CHICKLIT!!!!!!

Clifton Royston @ 165: You could probably safely go on not reading the third book. It's not bad, really, but it just doesn't compare to the first two. (I like it much better when I manage to pretend it's a standalone instead of part of the series.)

Allan Beatty @ various: Come to think of it, I bet my parents would say hi if they knew I was commenting to you. If you're not sure who I am and thus who they are... hmm, first names are probably best as they'll tell you who I mean without telling anyone else anything in particular. Dad is Harold, Mom's name when you knew her was Betty, though she's changed her name since then. Anyway, as I say I'm sure they'd say hi!

Paula Lieberman @ 163

Thanks for the warning. Cover art is not my only criterion, but I am particularly wary when the cover has the semi-naked man posed on the front. The blurb/first few pages/recommendations from other readers I trust have to work extra hard to persuade me this isn't just a fangs-and-fucking novel with about as much likely appeal to me as a sex-and-shopping novel. I like books with a romantic element in them, but I want my lead characters (female, male or otherwise, depending on genre) to have brains and use them (Lord Peter Whimsy and Harriet Vane, for example), and I want my urban fantasy to have a plot other than the female lead becoming a bad-conduct prize for the male lead and/or hopping into bed with him for no reason (other than the fact that these two people who have never seen each other before will instantly have amazing, incredible sex and know at once that they are Destined For Each Other).

Does anyone have an example of a book with a semi-naked male on the cover which turns out to be Urban Fantasy rather than Paranormal Romance?

Clifton Royston @165
The Hallowed Hunt is excellent, in my opinion.

And yes, chronological starting with Shards of Honor is a good approach for the Vorkosigan books. As I recall, I found The Warrior's Apprentice first, went back the next day and bought Shards of Honour, then grabbed the rest as fast as I could find them, until I was forced to start waiting for her to write them!

Re. The Sharing Knife, if it was just the romantic entanglement going on, it wouldn't be so enjoyable. The wider problems associated with the culture clash, as well as the growth of both Dag and Fawn, add a lot.

Re. The Dinner Party, Yes, it's painful. I skipped it from the second time to about the fifth or sixth time I read the book. Paula, I'd recommend trying again with the rest of the book. That scene is supposed to be painful and some of us seem to find it excruciatingly so (as discussed in the bullying thread, if I recall correctly), but the rest of the book is IMO worth reading.

Re Bujold: I started with the Hugo-winning novella "The Mountains of Mourning" when it was published in Analog and then went back for the things that had already been published at that point. After that I had to wait for them. "The Mountains of Mourning" is available for free at the Baen library and I sometimes recommend that as a starting point to people.

I agree with dcb that the rest of ACC is well worth reading even if you skip the dinner party, at least in part for watching Ekaterin come fully into her own.

If I absolutely had to pick a favorite Bujold, it would be Paladin of Souls, but in a pack close behind would be the Wide Green World books, Memory, and The Curse of Chalion.

I find I have to pick my way carefully through book selection in the urban fantasy and paranormal romance realm. Though the pile for selection is greatly reduced by my knowing that (1) I do not, under any circumstances or by any author, like vampires as angsty heroes or heroines, (2)I can barely tolerate vampires as secondary characters, and (3) I don't like zombies either.

I realize conversation's moved on, but a practical example of what I've learned by shutting up and listening...

Black nationalism is the name given to a bunch of overlapping ideas about the necessity and desirability of African-Americans crafting their own communities - aiming to employ each other, sell to and buy from each other, be each others' tenants and landlords, and so on, detaching from surrounding white society as fully as possible.

In most of the histories I've read, the emphasis on black nationalism's rise and development is on its contrast with the assimilation-minded goals of people like W.E.B DuBois and the notion of the "Talented Tenth", the African-American natural elite who'd put their talents to work merging in with the surrounding society and transforming it for the good of their kind and the nation as a whole. The advocates of assimilation saw American society as open to change of the sorts that African-Americans would need to flourish as equals within it, while the nationalists were (and are) pessimistic about this, more inclined to judge down the white world around them. In short, black nationalism builds on a more radical criticism of actually existing America and goes on to propose more radical solutions.

But if you read about black nationalism in the works of [i]black[/i] writers, a whole different picture emerges. I first encountered it in side comments in log blog entries by Ta-Nahesi Coates, and then at more length in works he recommended.

There is a dimension in which the black nationalist approach is much less drastic and much more conservative than its rival, in terms of how it approaches African-American life. Nationalist advocates often show a much greater interest in both the strengths and weaknesses of real African-American life, past and present - what individuals, families, and communities have done badly, but also their strengths, what works and why it works and how it could be extended to heal more old hurts. And surely there are ways in which "do more of the best you already have" is less drastic than "aim to be lots more like those folks over there, the ones embedded in the society that set us all up in the first place".

And this is all stuff I know now because of being willing not to jump into discussions among African-Americans (and sometimes other minorities), but to listen about their own varying assessments of the situations they share and I don't.

So that's a big part of why I favor the "shut up and listen" approach.

Chiming in on the Bujold discussion.

The book Young Miles was the only Vorkosigan book that the bookstore had when I decided I was going to try them after hearing so many recommendations It's an omnibus edition containing The Warrior's Apprentice, The Mountains of Mourning, and The Vor Game. They worked well for me as a place to start. Wikipedia has a list of the books in the Vorkosigan series that are currently in print, many of which are omnibus editions.

I'm planning on picking up more of Bujold's work after I'm moved.

(Speaking of which, thanks again to the people who pointed me at good places to cadge free boxes from.)

Re the sidelight on "Why Can't Americans Make Things" and the related article linked from it on "Meet Ron Bloom: The Sclub Who Might Just Save American Industry."

I found these really interesting. I'm always interested in practical and effective management and am often frustrated by fictional or nonfictional takes on managers that portray them as solely Dilbert-boss types actively getting in the way of work, Trump-types who think themselves superior to the "little people" who work for them, bureaucratic parasites, paper-pushers out of touch with reality, or people who have had the soul sucked out of them by their corporate existence. I know all these stereotypes have a grain of reality - I've met most of them over the years - but I find it frustrating that there aren't many good managers depicted out there. They do exist, but it seems the hero is usually the maverick outsider.

Despite its many flaws - which I see more clearly now than when I first read it - "Atlas Shrugged" gets this one right. The enemy is not the workers or the managers, it is the people who want to have the appearance and the rewards of accomplishment without having to take the trouble of actually accomplishing something along the way.

An excellent book on the subject is "What Management Is" by Joan Magretta. It discusses how management, done right, adds value to an organization. "The stereotype of the manager obsessed with the bottom line blurs a crucially important distinction between an organization's purpose - what it uniquely exists to do - and the end results of achieving that purpose. Profits are a result, not a purpose." p 131

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Just ruminating, I suppose.

"The enemy is not the workers or the managers, it is the people who want to have the appearance and the rewards of accomplishment without having to take the trouble of actually accomplishing something along the way."

I think you have just defined, in a nutshell, every person I have ever disliked in my life.

Paula Lieberman at 171, my issue with the Sharing Knife books isn't that they're relationship-based romancey books-- in the last year, I've read much more romance than SFF, and I think relationships in general are pretty compelling. It's the power dynamic between Dag and Fawn. I read the first book pretty soon after Twilight, so I was really watching for anything similar.

A note on Bujold's Miles books for prospective readers: ignore the covers. Almost every cover is 'bad' with some 'interesting idea, ungreat execution' and some speechless horror (and one 'wait, where's the back end of the cat?'). It may be an extension of the whole Miles thing, that you cannot judge a book by its cover or a commander by his height.

John Chu, #152, no, I didn't mean it was badly-written because it came from a line for only black women, just that I wouldn't have looked up the publisher (which I didn't recognize) if the book had been better. I hadn't thought twice about reading books written by black women -- I have several on my shelves -- I was just surprised to find it was published by that line.

Open threadiness:

After being disappointed at not being able to find candied citron today, I was delighted to find fresh California-grown Seville oranges on sale. So I now have half-a-dozen bitter oranges. Any suggestions from the cooking experts and citrus enthusiasts as to their highest and best use?

#173 dcb
There are books in -romance- with the shirtless males which are readable as fantasy or even SF (some of Angela Knight's and Shiloh Walker's books (Through the Veil is like an Andre Norton cross-alternate-worlds novel, Knight's Time Hunter series is like Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series --but being contemporarily written books in the romance section, there are romance plots that have major on-scene time and explicit sex scenes) could equally be slotted in SF/F, a couple of Elizabeth Vaughn novels would fit well as fantasy in the SF/F section (Daggerstar particularly).

It seems that publishers think -male- readers have a worse case of allergy to perceptions of "girl cooties" than publisher thing female SF/F readers object to sexploitative-of-female covers.... the cover of one of Catherine Asaro's Tor books has a mostly naked male on it, the scene on the cover accurately reflects a situation in the book, where the male had been taken prisoner and was at the mercy of a powerful woman....

=======

My method for determining whether a book is truly interesting to me is to open it to a random page and read or try to read some paragraphs.

I get irritated at a lot of covers. The one that disgusted and revolted me the most in 2008, was it already? was the cover of the first Charlaine Harris Sookie Stackhouse novel, reprinted with a cover with a female head with to man an obscene look on her face with a drop of blood dripping salaciously from a corner of her mouth and her tongue out and curling above her lip.... it totally repulsed, revolted, and squicked me. Runners up were the current covers of Linnea Sinclair's SFR novels with covers supposedly being pitched to romance readers and the books reslotted by the publisher for being in romance rather than SF/F, and that style of to me softcore porn--nude or nudish soft-focus toros looking like they're about to have orgasms or about enter into coitus--outright X-rated stuff I find considerably -less- obscene, actually. E.g, Alicia Austin's unexpurgated "erotic art" art with threesomes, daisy chains, etc., didn't have effect the revulsion/disgust I feel seeing the cover on the Linnea Sinclair books....

At a SMOFCON a couple years ago I showed one of the redone covers that I find so repulsive to Larry Smith, he made a finger-down-the-throat0-barfing gesture to indicate his reaction to the cover, as someone who sells books for a living and looks at covers in terms of appeal to his customer base.....

As for the Mary Janice Davidson Undead books, I personally don't appreciate. They are IMO chicklit lacking in redeeming value to me--Betsy the lead is self-centered, thinks and acts like a bimbo, has a shoe fetish, and gushes worse than Cosmopolitan--and the book is in her subjective judgment gushy girlie voice. UGH!!!!

I mentioned them, though, because they are examples of a romance series with a particular cover art style and which don't have the nearly obligatory HEA (Happily Ever After) in one book, but rather, follow the same character throgh multiple books with a romance occuring with lumps and bumps and perhaps an eventual HEA to come--Susannah Russe's Darkwing series and the Guardi-something-other-other series by someone else, and the Katie Macalister Dragon books have the same sort of deal going on, exceptions to "must have a romance with HEA in each book of a series, and move on to a different M/F couple (or menage.... see e.g. books by Emma Holly, the Ellora's Cave books by Lora Leigh, Flame Seeker--which except for the level of sex scenes and perhaps the fact that it;s menage, could fit in fantasy--by apparent new writer Kay Danellan... also Kate Douglas' Chanku books and stories in such things as Wolf Tales)

dcb @ 173: Does anyone have an example of a book with a semi-naked male on the cover which turns out to be Urban Fantasy rather than Paranormal Romance?

Neveryóna by Samuel R. Delany, for older values of "urban fantasy" per Avram @ 144.

@ Bruce Baugh 175:

I think you're not correct with respect to W.E.B. Dubois and the article you referenced: The Talented Tenth, in that it is not an argument for assimilation but for the funding of "Negro public schools" and "Negro colleges."

It's not even an argument for witholding education from ninety percent of African Americans: it's an argument for making as much education available to as many people as possible, in their own communities as well as in schools in the North and elsewhere. The argument is that having as many well-educated members of the community as possible helps the community as a whole.

I believe that "tenth" is an ambitious percentage for the time. I'd be surprised if that many people were going to college in any community at that point.

It's kind of hard to call assimilationist the author of A Negro Nation Within a Nation.

RE "Why Americans Can't Make Anything":

A-fucking-men.

I got my Masters degree at Carnegie-Mellon. It was an interdisciplinary program designed to turn out manager-developers for the telecomm industry. So, we took classes in programming, networking, and business.

The business classes were offered by the wonkish and well regarded Graduate School for Industrial Administration. What a name!

GSIA had its own building. The facade had a concrete bas reliefs of gears, dams, power lines, fields of grain . . . muscular industry stuff. What a building!

The teachers were great. At least, the ones who taught the classes I took, in economics and technology management. Many of the profs were engineers who went management and then went into academia. Wonks.

Then there were the MBA students.

They wore suits, many of them. They prided themselves in their computer skills . . . you know, PowerPoint and Excel.

They loved buzzwords, because, you know, if you put buzzwords in your papers the professors could see your were With It. My friends and I made up a "my favorite Christmas present" story which included a whole raft of technology buzzwords which by these standards would get an A.

This was 1995, 1996. Advertisements were starting to include web addresses. It was pretty damn obvious that a tidal wave was building.

The MBA's favorite class?

Finance.

I got the feeling, from the guys I teamed up with for case study projects, that knowing about actually making stuff was beneath them. Not making stuff, but just having to dirty oneself with knowing about it. The money end of things was where they wanted to be.

I remember one twit, one of the young guys who wore a suit, answering the current-events question "What is Java?" with a dismissive "It's this language that lets web pages wiggle stuff around." Dismissively, not ignorantly.

At about the same time, my friends and I were writing a chat application in Java. One group implemented an entire video server in Java.

#173 ::: dcb

Does anyone have an example of a book with a semi-naked male on the cover which turns out to be Urban Fantasy rather than Paranormal Romance?

Naw, they're just Rambo and his posse -- Romance for those who like their's with a generous helping of boom and ammo. :)

Among the problems of the Sharing Knife is that Our Fawn, er Our Spark, er, well, Our Heroine becomes Mary Sue. She's so beloved by her creator that nothing remotely bad can happen to her -- or anyone she cares for -- by the 3rd book. That's one way of describing it anyway.

I recall Octavia Butler describing this happening to her with the protagonist of The Sower novel. She'd gotten her so comfortable by the end of the second volume it was nearly impossible to put her in peril again. Which made it impossible to write the third volume, because, well nothing happened.

Love, C.

The Hallowed Hunt takes place in a different location and generations earlier than Curse of Chalion.

The next book out is a Miles book, set in the Nexus.

Elves and AK-47's....

Stefan Jones #185: The MBAs probably liked finance because in economics, and much of finance, it's easy to bullshit your way through -- you don't have to deal with inconvenient ground truths, much less the "natural perversity of the inanimate".

As for that last twit you mention -- I'd say he was pretty ignorant, as that description is a better fit for Javascript than Java!

I think the next trend in F/SF will be Urbane Fantasy. You know, Nick & Nora Charles with magic, and Asta is a Familiar.

Serge, 190: If your wife writes it, I'll buy it.

TNH, "unfortunate artist" particle: My first thought was the cover of Dark Lord of Derkholm.

Thomas @ 181:

A few days ago, Andy brought home a fingered citron, a.k.a. Buddha's hand, which he first referred to as "zesty lemon Cthulhu."

Then he started looking for things to do with it. He didn't find much besides the suggestion to leave it out to give the room, or area, a lemon scent. So he invented something, and yesterday we had "Scallops with ginger and zesty lemon Cthulhu." It's a good thing. The sauce was pleasantly citrus-y, but the disks of citron didn't have much flavor left. (A good and self-indulgent thing: the fish people at the Greenmarket had bay scallops yesterday. Sea scallops are nice, but not as nice, and the previously-frozen tiny scallops shipped from China are overpriced at $4/pound.)

That didn't quite seem practical, given our cat's fondness for citrus, so

Please disregard the last half-sentence of my previous comment. I thought I'd deleted it. When previewing, I just read over what I meant to say, and then hit "post" without noticing there was more copy below the white space.

Sorry.

Hi Liza. Tell your parents and Katy Merry Christmas from me.

Allan, I will!

Linking old and new (view all by)--Old

And new!

Huh? No links, but I suspect inept spammery.

No, he'd talked about doing that on an earlier thread, when he realized he'd changed email addresses some time ago.

Lucy@184: You're right. My point wasn't really to expound on that anyway - which is not an excuse for bad information - but to explain how listening to black writers discussing and arguing with each other greatly changed my sense of what black nationalism means, because for them it's about how they may wish to live, rather than mostly or essentially about what others are up to. That's true even when I personally don't have clues worth speaking of on a particular evening. :)

Senate HCR passes first cloture test, 60-40.

Stefan Jones--yes, EClaire has it. I've been waiting some time for this open thread.

The Four Hands One Guitar clip is amusing. It's a gimmick, of course, but it's quite a fun one. Good fingerpicking.

TexAnne @ 191... Thanks. On the other hand, somebody must have already written that story, because this sounds like an obvious premise for a fantasy tale. On the other other hand, I seem to remember Patrick once posting how Naomi Novik's idea of combining Horatio Hornblower and dragons is an obvious idea - in retrospect.

Today is my wife's birthday. Happy Birthday, Sue, and don't forget to buy the Christmas presents I'm supposed to give you.

I have just been whacked over the head with the wonderfullness that is Joss Whedon: Rossum is the corporation that owns the Dollhouses.

You know, like Rosum's Universal Robots.

Not quite as good as the Atlas Shrugged joke in Blazing Saddles, but still.

Today I made my first ever snowman. His name is Phil, short for Drosophila, as he is unlikely to live long.

Phil's political and philosophical views are unpopular with the Evil Snoverlords, so they have declared him a loon and put him in a straitjacket.

Happy birthday, Phil and Sue @205!

Stefan Jones #198: yeah (at my suggestion, actually) but...

truth is life #196-197: Unfortunately, you didn't successfully put in the links -- the text suggests you tried to put in a link on one side, to a "view all by" address, but the link didn't come through.

Also, as Stefan's reaction suggests, you might want to be a little clearer about what you're doing, just for the benefit of bystanders. ;-)

Stefan #185:

I wonder how much of what you saw had to do with finance being a field that's famously a good area in which to make a pile of money. And how much is that it's truly universal, unlike so much management. (Which financial instruments/arrangements you're making will be different across industries, but the option pricing formula doesn't care whether it's being used in service of making cars or consumer electronics or providing consulting services.

As a weird aside, I was thinking before about the parallels between education and management. So much of both of these jobs is about handling people, and is very local and situational and probably hard to teach in school. And in both jobs, ISTM that we've seen an increasing drive for credentials and long education, without an obvious (to me, as an outsider non-expert) improvement in quality of the work done by the professions. Does that make sense? I've never studied management, and have avoided it in favor of staying on a technical track in my own career, so I could be all wet in my observation here.

This country we inhabit, which doesn't make anything anymore, somehow managed to manufacture $1.7 trillion worth of goods in 2007.

Stefan @185, albatross @209
I got an MBA in the early 80s, going part time for several years while working in software development. In my case, I realized that I'd come out of college with an excellent technical education but next to no understanding of business. I'd picked up the belief that real computer scientists worked on compilers and operating systems and only people who couldn't cut it technically worked in applications. Yet here I was, working in a regulated business, and finding that there were some smart people there, doing a pretty darned good job.

I learned a lot. Since my parents were a government lawyer and an elementary school teacher, I didn't even have any discussion of the ups and downs of business over the dinner table to go by. Just stereotypes. My daughter's high school education includes some basic economics, but mine didn't. I still remember being surprised, in my first accounting course, to find out that your debits and your credits were supposed to come out equal. All this time, I thought you wanted credits and you didn't want debits.

Anyway - there was, at the time, a noticeable difference between the full time MBA students, nearly all of whom had gone straight into business school from undergrad, and the part time MBA students, who were nearly all working full time in a variety of industries. I believed at the time, and still do, that the back-and-forth of theoretical discussion in class and practical experience in the workplace made the education more valuable. Students who didn't have that experience seemed to find it all more abstract. Perhaps it's a little like Ender's Game for them - you're playing the game and keeping score without understanding the reality behind the numbers.

Happy birthday, Sue!

(And to Phil the bondage snowman, too. I don't believe Pendrift's story about politics; I know it's really all about sex.)

Steve, #210: That's a scalar number, and doesn't mean much without points of comparison. A better question would be, what percentage of our GNP was derived from manufacturing in 2007, vs. 1997 or 1987? Because the answer to that will tell you whether or not we're actually manufacturing less than we used to.

Lee, the long term trend has been for fewer and fewer people to be employed in manufacturing because of technological advances and relentless pursuit of efficiencies.

What's happening in manufacturing is something of a replay of what happened in agriculture since the start of the 20th century.

185,209,210:

Following Steve C's point: American currently makes more stuff than any other country does. And until the current recession America was making more stuff than any country had ever made before.

On the other hand, I think there are real problems with the way management is taught. I don't think it's as purely local and situational as albatross does: there are known facts and transferable skills about handling people, as well as the natural aptitude and experience. Even so, there are many management positions that absolutely require technical knowledge as well. I worry about this because I am at high risk of becoming a head of department. Heads of academic departments, and other university management, are a notorious example of people trying to manage with no training or skills in that area, but are also a situation where it would not work to get people without the specialist knowledge.

An example of management skills that's close to home for us all is comment thread moderation. It's absolutely necessary once the number of people with access to the site gets large, and it requires someone to be in charge. There is more than one way to do it (Yog Sysop, back in the day, compared to, say, Abi) and some people are better at it than others. Nevertheless, there are things we know about moderation that transfer from site to site (Boing Boing is not like ML) and even between technologies (email vs usenet vs web). That's why it's useful for TNH to post and talk about how to do moderation.

Pendrift @ 207: I love Phil - and the origin of his name is wonderful. Here, we just had about an inch of snow fall over a period of an hour, which is amazing for London. I had to drive a couple of miles in it, which was less amazing. But I'm very pleased my husband had finished clearing the ice (remains of the last snowfall-part-thaw-freeze) from our driveway, so I only had fresh snow to deal with while backing the car into the garage.

And happy birthday Sue.

Paula Lieberman @ 187, how do you know where The Hallowed Hunt falls in the timeline relative to the other books? Because I didn't realise it was possible to tell.

I have bought Miles In Love (an omnibus of Komarr, A Civil Campaign and Winterfair Gifts) for my mother for Christmas. This is an experiment. She isn't an SF reader, and she'd never pick up Bujold on her own, but she has enjoyed some fantasy books, and she particularly likes the type of book A Civil Campaign is riffing off, so I think she'll like it if she can get into it. My own experience is that I picked up the Cordelia books while waiting for Paladin Of Souls, read more or less in internal chronological order, skipping the ones I couldn't find, but didn't fall in love with the series until I got to Borders Of Infinity. But I'm a different kind of reader from my mother.

I'm aware I could easily put her off by being too fannish. I'll just have to say, "I think you'll like this. Please ignore the cover" and then shut up, unless she has questions. She'll probably want to know how to pronounce all the names. In many cases I don't know, and I predict this will bother her more than it bothers me.

217
I think you can tell The Hallowed Hunt is earlier because of the technology - swords, not firearms, are the main weapons. It feels earlier, too, if that makes any sense. (The scenes with the ice bear are worth the price: it's a very different thread from the main story.)

Tatterbots @ 217

There's a pronunciation guide at http://www.dendarii.com/dictionary.html
This includes (scroll down a bit) pronunciation of names. Enjoy!

Re. fantasy vs. romance. I thought Lois McMaster Bujold was right with her musings (Denvention 3, Guest of Honor Speech, August 8, 2008) on the different expectations of SF readers versus romance readers. In summary, SF readers are most concerned that the political aspects (plot outwith any romantic elements) work out, while romance readers care most that the personal aspects work out well.

I think you can tell The Hallowed Hunt is earlier because of the technology - swords, not firearms, are the main weapons. It feels earlier, too, if that makes any sense.

I think you must have read a very different Chalion series than I did--the only projectile weapons in either of the first two books are bows and crossbows.

Another Christian advocates black magic.

Or, how would you describe the action of praying for someone else to die so that you can have your way?

Happy Birthday to Sue. Pendrift, I like the entomological allusion in Phil's name; I'd probably never have thought of such a name.

On management and credentials: at one point I concurrently worked with four guys who had MBAs, two from U of Hawaii, one from Columbia, and one from Harvard. The UH guys were far more practical and grounded in how to motivate, train and instruct the people they were trying to manage (I was a dept mgr at the time--they were VPs). To the Harvard guy, any previous experience we had had in attempting to do something was blown off as inconsequential. The Columbia guy listened to what we had to say before going off in a different direction.

Lee #221: Or, how would you describe the action of praying for someone else to die so that you can have your way?

The technical term is imprecatory prayer.

Thomas @ 181
Seville oranges are THE oranges for marmalade. In fact the story goes that marmalade was invented when a Scottish merchant named Tiptree received a shipment of the things and only then discovered that they were too bitter to eat. His wife tried candying them and came up with marmalade. It's still sold under that name, so this may be a commercial just-so story, but it sounds likely enough, given how easy it is to candy fruit.
As to candied citron, if you decide to buy one of those plastic containers labeled 'candied fruit' make sure you read the label. Some of them contain candied rutabaga, for heaven's sake. No wonder so many people hate fruitcake.

Carrie, The Hallowed Hunt doesn't seem to have crossbows either. (reading it again, but not far into it yet)

Exactly where are these statistics on manufacturing coming from?

Serge: I think the next trend in F/SF will be Urbane Fantasy. You know, Nick & Nora Charles with magic ... somebody must have already written that story, because this sounds like an obvious premise for a fantasy tale.

It was Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, the story is "A Night at the Opera", and it first appeared in the collection Murder by Magic. Not one of their best stories, though.

PJ: True, but not relevant; there are no firearms in any of the books. Chalion's world is definitely pre-gunpowder.

dcb, way back at #173: Yes, the Infamous Dinner Party scene is painful to read. However, for me at least, it avoids being "humiliation humor" by virtue of the fact that Miles sets himself up for every embarrassing bit of it. This is NOT something that was done to him by other people for the express purpose of watching him fail and laughing at him; in fact, everyone else at the party is distressed by what's happened, and most of them are at least roughly sympathetic. And Bujold then goes on and uses that as a lever to make Miles understand that he is not special WRT whether or not it's either smart or ethical to manipulate people for personal gain.

Personally, I think the best result of the party scene comes even a little later than that, when it suddenly dawns on Miles how much better a tactical decision it would have been to let matters take their natural course, and why. Knowing the character, I suspect that this realization may have driven the lesson home more sharply than anything else.

I like Moff's Law!

Bruce @ 200:

Yes, and what I should have said, and I don't know why it didn't occur to me sooner other than that I spent the time I would have spent thinking about it re-acquaintingmyself with Dubois' writing, is this: Dubois is actually an excellent example of what you were talking about, anyway: a kind of a nationalist, with some separatist ideas and also some integrationist ideas, completely definable in his own terms.

C. Wingate @226:

For recent year time trends, the Census Bureau's Manufacturing Trade, Inventories, and Sales
http://www.census.gov/mtis/

For international comparisons, the Bureau of Labor Statistics International Chartbook for 2009, http://www.bls.gov/fls/chartbook.htm, charts 3.7 and 5.9

Sorry about not giving citations earlier.

OtterB @211: The idea that graduate students with real-world experience have a different view than those who have just had continuous schooling is not limited to MBAs. My brother the rocket scientist (I never get tired of saying that) went on to graduate work after more than a year of working at Boeing. Not only did this make him more attractive to the graduate program, but he realized how much easier it was to tell exactly what was and what was not important.

At the graduate level, I think it's a good idea for students to understand the why of things, whether English or economics or engineering. I would even go so far as to recommend that students not go on to graduate school directly from college but to work in a job— any job— for at least a year afterwards, especially if they can do it on their own, not living at their parents' places. It will give them a different perspective.

Earl Cooly #223: There's imprecatory prayer, then there's this.

Linking two subthreads, I note that the morality and theology of imprecatory prayer is one of the themes of Bujold's Curse of Chalion.

Having worked my way up from typing pool to low level management, having dealt with small company management and corporate management, I think a summer spent as a temp in the mail room, or the typing pool, or on a construction site as the gopher, is a must take course for any who aspire to an MBA.

I have an acquaintance, a professor of Business Communications, that I challenged to a summer as a temp, taking no assignment longer than two weeks, and accepting every assignment he was offered. If he wanted to know what Business Communications was like, that was it. He turned me down, prefering to follow "the rules" as handed down from on high, which were wordy and obfuscatory, and more on focusing on the number of spaces there were between a bullet point and its bullet rather than on content.

Moff's Law: ohdearghods YES!

That is a keeper.

Fragano Ledgister #234: There's imprecatory prayer, then there's this.

That link seems to be having troubles at the moment, but the Google Cache of it is still there.

The bit about "Cursed is he that removeth his neighbour's landmark" means that the people who allegedly stole the Arbeit Macht Frei sign are just hosed.

Back in open thread 132 (comment 783) I posted of my mother's final illness. I'd like to thank everyone for your comments and thoughts. Sadly, my mother passed away in the evening of December 17th (last Thursday). The hospice was able to manage her pain, so I am grateful for that.

My mother, Carolyn, read voraciously her whole life. She was particularly fond of history and religious study, and would I think have loved the Making Light community if she had ever been interested in venturing online. She was an attorney who spent the last half of her career working in the legal process for civil involuntary commitment procedures in Washington State, trying to make the system function better for mentally ill people who needed to be hospitalized in the midst of crises. I am proud of the work she did and I am proud to be her daughter.

oliviacw #239: My condolences. Your mother sounds like a wonderful person.

Condolences, Olivia. Sounds like a life well spent.

* * *

Aside: I'm so glad that conservatives haven't managed to find something Evil about hospice care. I wouldn't put it past them.

olivecw, #239, I'm sorry for your loss, but glad for your memories.

The death goddess quiz Teresa has up gave me:

Miru - This Polynesian Goddess of Death dwells in the fiery underworld. There she holds a net to catch all the evil people that try to enter. Those she catches, she burns in her ovens. You strongly believe in good and will do anything for what you believe is right!

On MBAs -- One of the failings I've seen in many graduates of MBA programs is that they think that the same styles, techniques and motivations can be used in all management contexts and audiences.

This leads to disasters in the ranks, where organizational value and productivity takes a nosedive and the MBA holder gets raises and promotions.

When the organization the MBA "managed" falls apart they get to jump ship, and their resume shows the steps they took up the corporate ladder as credentials of "success."

oliviacw: My condolences.

My condolences, oliviacw @ 239.

Marilee @ 242: I am also Miru, apparently. What are the odds?

In the open-threadiness category, has Garrison Keillor always been this nasty and I've just managed not to hear about it? Or is it a recent development? (Found via Pharyngula.)

Thomas #215 there are known facts and transferable skills about handling people, as well as the natural aptitude and experience. Even so, there are many management positions that absolutely require technical knowledge as well.

and Craig R #243 One of the failings I've seen in many graduates of MBA programs is that they think that the same styles, techniques and motivations can be used in all management contexts and audiences.

I agree that there are generally applicable management skills having to do with communication, analysis, and leadership. Ideally, you have a mix of those plus the relevant technical knowledge. Somebody who doesn't have the technical knowledge, but who is willing to listen to those who do, can often manage better than someone who knows all the technical details but hasn't learned to delegate, run a meeting, set goals, etc. BUT this is dependent on the people who do have the technical knowledge being willing to offer it, and that in turn depends on their being listened to.

When it works well, it can work really well. When it breaks, it's hard to repair.

#219 dcb

Sherwood Smith has said that SF/F focuses on the personal, romance on the intimate. There is a thread weeks ago at http://sartorias.livejournal.com

Monetary value of manufactured goods can be misleaading--US labor compensation, at official exchange rates, is many times the compensation of what people in China, Vietnam, Estonia, Latvia, etc.... so the same object made in the USA has a "value" sometimes ten times as much as its exact counterpart in China, or other countries....

#245 Syd

I've never appreciated Prarie Home Companion and its to me fakesy-folksy style. I can't tell in that article if Keillor is being serious or not--it might be a dysfunctional attempt at humor, I can't tell.... either way, articlefail....

The Amazon oddities list:

After a few items about digestion and excretion, there's one about "passing the statue of liberty."

Passing the statue of liberty would be somewhat painful.

oliviacw @239 Sadly, my mother passed away in the evening of December 17th (last Thursday).

I am sorry for your loss, Olivia. Be kind to yourself in the coming weeks. Let people do things for you. Don't drive if you can help it. Keep current on your crying. Grief stinks on ice.

oliviacw @239: My condolences.

Death goddesses: I also got Miru. I suspect that she receives large swaths of the input space based on some few questions that get reflex responses from lots of us. It might be amusing to look at the percentages of various results from the general population, but I can't be arsed at this hour of night. (Off to bed RSN.)

I'm Nebthet (#2 is Eriskegal). But I got a bit contrary with some of the answers (said "yes" when asked if I actively seek to destroy, for example -- I think I meant something different by that than the quiz did, but still).

Syd @ 245, every now and then he does something that shocks me, like the bizarrely anti-gay-parenting column that ran -- last year, two years ago? This is another one. As before, I can't decide if it's badly miscalculated humor, or calculated nastiness.

oliviacw @ 239, I am so sorry for your loss. Your mother sounds like a fantastic woman, a person I would have been honored to meet. I am glad hospice care was able to help your mother have less pain; they helped my grandfather, too, in his final days.

I wish I could say anything that would make it easier, but I can't. It might help to hear that grief can be weird and strange sometimes, but it's normal/okay to feel and experience all the parts of it, even if they're unexpected or don't seem like what you should be feeling.

Sleep when you can, eat when you're hungry, and drink water (or juice or herbal tea) even if you don't feel thirsty.

It's hard to show in this little box, but my thoughts are with you.

On the Death Goddess quiz, I'm split between Coatlicue ('twisted') and Proserpina ('pathetic'). I liked how the quiz was set up with sliders.

On grad schools and real-world experience... I have a Master's now and keep finding myself in the weird space of over- and under-qualified. Lots of education, no experience. It gets really disheartening, all the jobs I would like but for the experience requirement*.

I'm not sure about taking a couple years off before grad school. Looking at environmental engineering departments in general, having not experienced one, I would have said yes, go for it-- but that's assuming that the only reason anyone comes to environmental engineering is to run a wastewater treatment plant or something like that. I'm more on the science end of things. I think if I'd taken a year or two off, I would have found some job I liked, gotten used to adulthood with that salary, and possibly not have gone to grad school period-- or, if I did, I would have done it as an adult rather than the half-thing I still think I am, and thus been more successful.

*I apply anyway. I've heard over and over that men apply for jobs they aren't qualified for and women don't, and I'm not going to do that. Whenever I feel like I'm wasting HR's time, I remind myself that I am fighting for my sex/gender/pronoun! Grr! That makes it okay.

#253 Caroline

Syd @ 245, every now and then he does something that shocks me, like the bizarrely anti-gay-parenting column that ran -- last year, two years ago? This is another one. As before, I can't decide if it's badly miscalculated humor, or calculated nastiness.

I suspect that both apply. As above, I've never trusted Prairie Home Companion, it's always felt to me like there is some amount of dishonesty and false witness involved in it--that it's a mix of paean to a north central US "heartland" part of the USA, mixed with some utterly obnoxious self-congratulatory smug snide narcissistic intolerance and disdain for the rest of the US and other cultural traditions and attitudes and lifestyles. It's always rankled me, particularly the smarmy smug oily (as I perceive it) delivery.

oliviacw @ 239, I am so sorry for your loss. Your mother sounds like a fantastic woman, a person I would have been honored to meet. I am glad hospice care was able to help your mother have less pain

Echoing the above.

(I find it discomfortable trying to assemble words to give to people suffering losses and severe emotional distress from bereavement, progressive medical deterioration with poor prognoses, etc. -- the words sound trite, or the sentiments mechanical and scripted--and especially given my habit of pedomangy.... I fear the results of attempting to try to say word I want to try to provide comfort with, won't/don't.

(I want to give simple, elegant, and short response, expressing sorrow and regret and sympathy. The implementation, though, tends to fall short of the intent...)

I apply anyway. I've heard over and over that men apply for jobs they aren't qualified for and women don't, and I'm not going to do that.

As long as bullshitting's not beneath you.

Whenever I feel like I'm wasting HR's time,

They deserve it.

Paula Lieberman #255: pedomangy

Interesting. A bunch of different search engines haven't indexed that word yet. Typo or neologism?

Adrian, I don't see it like that; there are different shades of meaning for "qualified". They could interview and figure out that the candidate is such a great culture fit that it would be worth while to hire them and bring them up to speed on other qualifications. I've seen that in action; during one hiring action, we ended up grabbing the guy just out of college with the worst GPA of the whole lot; he was the only candidate to laugh or smile during the interviews. It turned out to be a great decision. Lack of on-paper qualifications doesn't always imply intent to defraud.

My condolences, oliviacw.

I never meant it was *always* thus, but there appears to be quite a lot of resume-massaging going on out there, and I imagine the men are doing it a bit more assiduously.

oliviacw @239:

I'm sorry to hear about your mother. It sounds like she was a wonderful woman, and she does seem to have raised good offspring.

Oliviacw, my condolences. Sending good thoughts your way and thanks for everything your mother has done for others.

Pendrift @ 207... Thanks! She had a grand time.

oliviacw... My condolences.

I'm not sure about taking a couple years off before grad school.

I think it's more valuable/necessary for business school than it is for technical fields, to have experienced business from the inside. As Diatryma says, people in technical fields tend to get out in the workplace and then not go back. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but can be frustrating if they hit a dead end later.

And re qualifications, yes, do what you're doing about applying anyway, because you never know. A job description never covers everything and you might turn out to be perfect on things they didn't mention. And it will depend in part on who the competition is, and you never know that either. Speaking as one who has screened resumes in an organization too small to have HR, you're not wasting their time until you send out badly-photocopied resumes with a generic one-sentence cover letter that clearly indicates that the job you are seeking has nothing whatsoever in common with the job that was advertised. (I advertised for someone with a degree in psychology or education to help with data management for a research study on career choices. I got more than one cover letter that must have keyed off the word "psychology" telling me how much they looked forward to providing therapy to my clients.)

#257 ::: Earl Cooley III:

My guess is it's a neologism, from the Latin ped-, the foot, and the French manger, to eat.

re: The Garrison Keillor article linked to in #245

Wow. I mean, just...wow. What does he think he's doing? Either he means it and is a bigoted sonuvawhatsit or he doesn't mean it and is so unaware of how many people *do* mean it that he's capable of thinking that kind of thing is funny.

Either way, as a hybrid Unitarian-Jew, I am horrified.

I'm also wondering why people are picking on the Unitarians this year. There was a recent, totally irrelevant slam at Slate and now with Keillor on board, I'm starting to feel as nervous as Jan Huss on a hot tin chalice.

I keep thinking Keillor is about one fit away from turning into a Upper-Middlewestern Andy Rooney, and I've felt that way for a couple-three years now.

olivicw, my sympathies--I remember when my father died, the sense of relief that he was no longer suffering from something that couldn't be fixed, and the sadness of parting from him.

Paula @255--"I've never trusted Prairie Home Companion, it's always felt to me like there is some amount of dishonesty and false witness involved in it--that it's a mix of paean to a north central US "heartland" part of the USA, mixed with some utterly obnoxious self-congratulatory smug snide narcissistic intolerance and disdain for the rest of the US and other cultural traditions and attitudes and lifestyles."

It's very difficult to manage to produce a loveletter to your native region without getting up people's noses because they suspect that you are, at the same time, sticking your finger in the eye of other regions of the country that are not the one you love and feel great nostalgia for. Most other regionalists, humorous or otherwise, have the same difficulty.

Also, please stop and consider this: You seem to prefer New England (especially Massachusetts) to most of the other places you have lived in the US. Please consider that it's possible that other people have the same feeling of attachment to their own favored regions, however inexplicable it may seem to you, and they are no more likely to be appreciative of the vituperation I have seen you dump on these other parts of the US than you are of people who want to slam your home as a bastion of immoral, godless, commie-loving weirdos. Loving where you happen to live, or where you grew up, is a blessing, and I don't think it's a good idea to slag people for having received that blessing.

Also, when you encounter some of the more outlandish put-downs of your native soil, you might consider this comment of Teresa's, and think about how it might apply to entire states and regions, rather than just neighborhoods. Because a lot of those remarks that can set your teeth on edge are exactly the sort of thing she describes, and deserve an eyeroll rather than a rant.

olivicw: my condolences on your loss.

Word definition (my friends use this): Woobah— means, in general, "Wow, that's really terrible, I am very sorry that happened, and I don't know what to say." I could wish that it sounded different from "woot" but it apparently pre-dates it by a number of years. Feel free to use as necessary.

In regards to Garrison Keillor, he's been getting pretty frothy in recent years. I don't know if that's a sign of increasing age, or if these are attitudes he used to mask better, but it truly appears that he's not trying to be humorous.

Can't cite specific examples off the top of my head, but I do recall at least one article where he expressed joy in the idea of large groups of people dying off because they held opinions he didn't like. I don't care how obnoxious people are; I don't wish death on people's heads.

oliviacw: my condolences

olivicw, my condolences.

WRT to Garrison Keillor, I wonder if the minor stroke he suffered a little while back might be impacting him emotionally.

Paula Lieberman@248

Monetary value of manufactured goods can be misleading (because of different wage rates).

Yes, but:

1: If you don't have some scale for comparing widgets to doohickeys, the statement that America can't make stuff isn't even wrong. Sales value works better for manufactured goods that for services, since they are more likely to be compared by actual buyers. Also, the intent of the original article seemed to be that everyone else was getting better at making more valuable stuff and the US wasn't, which is directly addressed by sales value.

2. The problem doesn't apply to the time trend data, since real wages of manufacturing workers have been pretty stagnant.

oliviacw: My condolences on your loss. It's never easy to lose someone you love, even when you know it was the best thing for them.

Steve, #273: Not just emotionally, from the sound of it. I didn't know he'd had a stroke; that explains a lot.

I've had a lot of friends who thought Prairie Home Companion was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I never got the appeal (for reasons similar to Paula's but with considerably less vitriol attached), but I thought it was just another aspect of my general distaste for Comedy. Now I'm rather glad of that, because it means I don't feel betrayed by something like this.

Garrison Keillor lost my respect years ago. I came to sympathize with him again after his recent health troubles, especially after he wrote a couple of compassionate opinion pieces on health care for the New York Times. (I'm happy that he's now in better health, and I hope he stays well.) With this new column, I am again disappointed.

My take on A Prairie Home Companion is close to Homer Simpson's: "Stupid [radio]! Be more funny!"

Garrison Keillor is a complicated fellow filled with conflicts of many kinds.

However, whatever his faults of whatever, of which he does have many, I will always keep his back for this:

When one and all fell over themselves racing away from the designation of Liberal and Democrat in politics with the Ascension of darthvader and the Criminal Family Syndicate, when everyone in every part of the broadcast media couldn't follow the ass ahead of them bending over to the Criminal Family Syndicate, Garrison Keillor, out there in the North Heartland, said on National Public Rhetoric that he was proud to be a Liberal and proud to be a Democrat and proud to be an English major. That battle re-invigorated his creativity and wit -- I'd stopped listening to PHC for quite a while before that. We started tuning in again BECAUSE it was the only place where we could find any reflection of our views.

Whatever anyone wants to say about GK, he's got a lot more balls than just about anyone in the Senate and the media, print, television, and radio.

Except George Clooney and Michael Moore.

Garrison Keillor and Michael Moore, fat guys from the northern midwest, they were the only ones with balls enough to call the bull we were ordered to suck up for what is.

He also had stroke or heart attack or something (the press release was rather vague) this fall, and had to be flown to the Rochester clinic. He was back on the radio in three weeks. The medications he's taking are surely affecting his tone.

Love, C.

oliviacw: My condolences on your loss. Please take care of yourself.

oliviacw @ 239 My condolences. I'm glad the hospice was able to manage her pain. She sounds like she was a wonderful person.

oliviacw: I'm very sorry for your loss.

As for Garrison Keillor, his asshole streak is getting wider by the month. With "liberals" like him, who needs conservatives?

re 232: Thanks. I poked around but wasn't finding quite what I was looking for. Any idea of where long-term (50 years or so) data might be found?

re GK: I personally lost interest in GK's writing because I really don't need to let another brittle, angry commentator into my life. That said, it's (depending on your temperament) a bit tedious or annoying or amusing to look around at the reaction to GK's Rooney-ish rant from the UU/secularist world, and to note the more-or-less-uniform resistance to the notion that Christians have as much right to their own traditions as, well, native Americans to theirs. For my part it's not the sort of thing to get that riled up over, but there is something immoral about (to take a different and commonly-encountered example) the Mormon Tabernacle Choir mutilating "Holy, Holy, Holy" because the Mormons aren't trinitarian. It's a sin that I laugh at, the same way I laugh at their bowdlerization of "Sleigh Ride", but on a serious level it plays into their misrepresentation of themselves as having much in common with orthodox, Nicene Christianity. Part of the reason the UUs come in for such contempt/ridicule is that they do have origins in what (from a more dogmatic viewpoint) is a bowdlerization of Protestant (and especially Congregationalist and Anglican) Christianity. there's a grain of truth inside all his puffed-up anger.

A holiday bauble, seen in the wild, shaped like an eggcorn:

"for a fractal of the price"

Tchem @ 282 -

I guess the price could be considered scholastically self-similar.

Or even stochastically.

#277 Constance
Phyisicians for Human Rights went on doing what they had been doing, minus the attention that they sometimes got before Ted Koppel got booted. (There had been segments on Nightline when he was there, which had footage from PHR MDs who had gone into Afghanistan, under quite adverse circumstances, with the begrudging allowance of the Taliban-controlled government in 1990s and gotten hold of videotape footage which Afghan women had taped at quite literally the risk of their lives from under their burkas, regarding how horrible life was for especially women there. PHR and Afghan women and even Eli Wiesel were pleading for international military intervention to get Taliban out of control and put people in charge who would allow girls to go to school, women to have jobs with income to avoid starving to death, and end the torture and murder of anyone, male or female, who dared openly object to Taliban rules....

It sounds like Keillor may be suffering from mental deterioration caused by e.g. a lack of oxygen to the brain... a friend who's medically disabled and who'd had open heart surgery, said that he suffered from "pumphead" after the operation--but was grateful to be alive, if not for the operation he wouldn't be.

So far as I can tell, most humorists are gloomy and depressive sorts, always only a couple of bad days away from mutating into angry curmudgeons. (As opposed, for example, to horror writers, who taken as a group seem to be remarkably cheery in their nonwriterly personae.)

FWIW, Keillor's brother dropped dead on him this year as well.

tPHC always ribbed Unitarians, but in a fairly mellow way, e.g., celebrating Christmas with a panel discussion on the aspects of Santa.

Olivicw @239: my condolences on your loss. I agree wtih Siriosa @251.

After my father died, I learned here is no timeline or pattern for grief except the one that becomes visible long-after when you look back. Also, in the weeks after, a small notebook or recorder is useful for when people tell you their memories of her (I found grief intensified the memory of having had conversations, but not always the content).

GK also makes fun of NoDaks of which I R 1 -- or was 1, once.

It's a humor that is idigenous to people who grow up in very difficult climate conditions, weather and emotional.

Paula L. -- What all that has to do with GK sailed right by my comprehension. Obviously I'm missing something.

Love, C.

Garrison Keillor now ranks with cheney, lou dobbs, o'reilly, limbaugh, etc.

Who knew?

Love, c.

oliviacw @ 239

With deepest sympathy for your loss.

((((( Olivia )))))

Remember all the good times, and take care of yourself.

Paula, before you make another response about GK, I suggest a little self-examination of your responses thus far, as to how well they fulfill the stereotype that Keillor paints of your fellow Cambridgians.

For my part it's not the sort of thing to get that riled up over, but there is something immoral about (to take a different and commonly-encountered example) the Mormon Tabernacle Choir mutilating "Holy, Holy, Holy" because the Mormons aren't trinitarian. It's a sin that I laugh at, the same way I laugh at their bowdlerization of "Sleigh Ride", but on a serious level it plays into their misrepresentation of themselves as having much in common with orthodox, Nicene Christianity.

C. Wingate at 281, thank you very much for this. I had never thought of it quite that way, but you have clarified for me one of the many reasons why I find the claims of the LDS to be Christians so irritating -- because as I understand the term, they aren't, they can't be, their Scripture and their theology don't permit it. (Not that there's anything wrong with that...) One doesn't challenge the claim, even if there were a forum in which it would be possible to do so, because to do so would be rude, and probably pointless. But the issue is still there, not going away.

This is rich. Michelle Bachmann, uber-conservative firebrand, has a family farm that received a quarter-million in agricultural subsidies.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/1209/Antisocialist_Bachmann_got_250k_in_federal_farm_subsidies.html#

Michelle Bachmann subsidy

Hey, at least she's not a socialist, right?

IIRC, GK some years back got thoroughly fed up with the same old, same old at PHC and walked away from it. Published a couple stories in the New Yorker, fumbled around a bit, found in order to make a living writing he was going to have to shoehorn himself back. It's a grind coming up with something fresh and new each week for a live broadcast, even if you have plenty of others with regular shticks. A friend who sang on the show numerous times said when he walked in, even at casual rehearsals, all attention went to Mr. PHC.

I find his folksiness tedious, and don't listen much, though admired his courage in the Dubya days. I don't envy him where his life has gone.

Lizzy L @293 said: C. Wingate at 281, thank you very much for this. I had never thought of it quite that way, but you have clarified for me one of the many reasons why I find the claims of the LDS to be Christians so irritating -- because as I understand the term, they aren't, they can't be, their Scripture and their theology don't permit it. (Not that there's anything wrong with that...)

DISCLAIMER: I am not LDS myself; all my knowledge of their theology comes from documentaries and moderately-extensive reading.

However, it is my understanding that they believe their holy book's description of history involves Jesus coming over and making a second (third? Fourth? N + 1, anyway) revelation to them, making their book additional to the OT and NT in the same way that the Muslims say the Qur'an is. However, one of the necessary (if not 'sufficient') attributes of a Christian faith is the admittance of the, well, divinity of Jesus, which Mormons do (and Muslims don't, to my knowledge). Unitarians don't, necessarily, making some Unitarians non-Christian, by their own admittance.

I mean, Muslims don't say they're Christian, but the Mormons do, and it's my own basic rule of politeness to use people's own descriptions of themselves, whether it's pronouncing their first names the way they do or calling Mormons and Messianic Jews Christian.

Erik@250 mentioned the Amazon Oddities List, and one thing in there along with the general Bigfoot UFO crankery was "A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates". Hey, now! That was a classic book back in its day, and I occasionally checked it out of the company library when I needed it. It was one of those things you'd keep around, like the Chemical Rubber Company handbook and Knuth (and since Charlie's here, the Necronomicon :-) It's surprising that it's still in print, because good computerized random number generation has been around for decades, though so has *bad* computerized random number generation.

Bill Stewart #297: Hmm, I saw that on the list, and wondered: what are "normal deviates" in this context? Are they digits biased to fall under a bell curve or some such?

As I understand it, random number generation is still pretty easy to screw up -- IIRC, even several attempts at cheap /dev/random hardware (thermal noise and such) have turned out to have drastic flaws.

"Holy, holy, holy" come out of Judaism, from before Christianity was around.... I can't remember exactly where in the services it it, but it's Hebrew... and now I'm being earwormed by "Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh" and the rest of it which I can't even remember well enough to try to transliterate... kadosh = holy.... normally written "kadesh" but the pronunciation is o not e... (as opposed kaddish, which is a different prayer....)

oliviacw... My condolences for your loss.

re 296: There are some contexts in which one has to acknowledge that the Mormons are Christians, but that context is "groups in which Jesus is a central figure." Other than that, they are about as closely related to the Nicene Orthodoxy that comprises 99.9% of 1st/2nd world Christianity (Africa throws the 3rd world off a lot) as Buddhism is to Hinduism. One of Jesus' most central questions is "who do you say that I am?" and the Mormon answer to that question is wildly divergent, even more so than the JWs or maybe even someone like Elizabeth Clare Prophet's answer.

However, if you go to the LDS website, they are rather shy about the vast differences in theology and cosmology between themselves and orthodox Christianity. Searching for "Kolob" on mormon.org produces no real result, for instance; a search for "Lamanite" doesn't produce a particularly revealing result either. Of course, one may consider this to be as important as arguing with Justinian at the races, but I suspect that the main reason why this stuff has to be researched elsewhere is that people tend to find it a bit ridiculous.

Well, to be picky, Paula, the thrice-holy was there before Adam. (It's Isaiah 6:3, BTW-- "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory" if you like NASB English, or transliterated from the Hebrew, "Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh, [hashem] tz'vaot m'lo kol haaretz k'vodo".) However, I speak not of the Sanctus but of the Protestant tune invariably sung to the tune "Nicea".

Open threadiness... I've been comparison shopping for a heating pad. Almost every local store I've checked sells essentially the same items made by Sunbeam, in some cases house brands labelled as "made by Sunbeam". There are a few other models around. Canadian Tire's website seems to show that they've switched to units made by a different company but haven't properly updated the site to reflect the changes.

Every model I've seen has instructions which specify that one should not sit on or against the heating pad, and that one should place the pad on and not under the "affected body part".

This is bizarre. It seems to be very close to "any plausible use of this device will void its warranty", since most of the pads are definitely not designed to be wrapped around the body nor can be conveniently attached to it. I've got back pain -- am I supposed to lie on my stomach and try to keep the pad positioned on my back? I've been to physiotherapy sessions and massage sessions in which I was lying on a heating pad -- were those "professional" units?

Hmm. I remember Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh Adonai, tsvaot mlo khol ha'aretz kvodo. Baruch haba b'shem Adonai, but that's a) from Bernstein's Mass and b) over 30 years ago now.

I think Paula saw 'PHC' and thought it was a reference to Physicians for Human Rights, rather than Prairie Home Companion.

C. Wingate, there's a traditional melody for that bit of Hebrew you transliterated, too, and now I'm earwormed as well. It's part of the regular service as I learned it -- first the Sh'ma, then the V'y'hafta, then... That Thing That Comes Next, which is mostly davened silently, but you always do the "kadosh, kadosh, kadosh" bit out loud, and you go up on your toes for each "kadosh." Paula, do you remember the name of it now?

And it's been decades since I went to such a service, but it sticks in my head.

Joel @303: One of the reasons I've heard for that is that they're worried about the pressure damaging the wires/heating elements within the pad, particularly if you laid the pad on a surface that wasn't smooth. Once you've damaged the wires, they could start poking through the pad & give you an unpleasant shock.

I remember a waterbed I had many years ago - the support under the mattress was three pieces of plywood, and the heating pad went between the mattress & the plywood. There were warnings on the heater to not lay it across the seam between the plywood pieces, because if they didn't line up exactly (and they usually didn't) the sharp edge of the wood would damage the pad.

303
I think it's so you don't fall asleep on one and get burned because you can't move off it without help - the worst-case scenario.

Constance:

Ted Koppel was someone who on Nightline was investigating things the hardliners (who today get called "moderate" by the infotaintment crowd claiming to produce "news" today) refuse to give any air time to... you were praising Keillor for standing essentially alone againt the tide... Koppel tried as best he could, and got removed for his efforts.

My point is that there is a tradition of that 3X repetition of "holy" as "Holy, holy, holy" in Judaism, long before Christian trinitarism was around. Unitarianism is a movement that arose out of Christianity which rejected the trinitarianism--but started off with people who mostly were using Protestant prayerbooks.... which arose out of protesting against mainline Roman Catholicism, and the prayer books of Protestantism, had the bases of Roman Catholic ones--which have a lot of basis in Judaic texts.

Also, the founders of Unitarianism were familiar with the Hebrew origins of a lot of the prayers used in Christianity, including trintarian Christianity.

#305 Rikibeth--the traditions of two and a half millennia or so have -staying power-.

P.J. Evans @ 307: I think it's so you don't fall asleep on one and get burned because you can't move off it without help - the worst-case scenario.

The instructions have separate warnings about those cases: don't fall asleep while using the device; don't use it if you can't operate the controls or remove it.

Likewise Jon Ault @ 302, the instructions warn to inspect the thing for wear/damage before each use. I suppose that it could somehow be damaged internally, with nothing showing on the outside, such that it could short out.

Keillor's new essay suggests that he's switched to a more smoothing grade of haemorrhoid ointment:

http://www.salon.com/life/christmas/index.html?story=/opinion/keillor/2009/12/22/christmas_baby

Joel Polowin @ 310: thread about heating pad warning labels: I always scoffed at the warnings, until a friend fell asleep on one, and ended up with a back covered with blisters. The heating pad had a timer to shut it off after 20 minutes, but that wasn't fast enough. I still use heating pads, but with more caution.

Paula, are you aware of exactly what the Mormons do to the hymn?

Coming back to the thread after my self-imposed hiatus (I was awfully close to flaming out there, and sorry, assuming anybody noticed, but I'm short on sleep this week as everybody in the world tries to get all their translation done before the holidays and I foolishly fail to say "No" enough) - but I have one Avatar-related question for the brain trust.

Long, long ago, I read either a short story or a book that basically included Cameron's entire world (biologically speaking): the trees on the world were intelligent (can't remember whether that was known beforehand or discovered during the story), their leaves were butterflies that the humanoid natives called something like the "thoughts of Gaia", the human protagonist falls in love with a female native, fights off ... somebody, presumably Earth military, realizes the trees literally are intelligent and that they themselves (the human and the native humanoids) are also thoughts of God - really, the entire biological point of interest about Avatar.

So of course somebody here will know what I'm talking about - who wrote this? Was it an entire book? Was it a short story in one of the magazines? It's utterly impossible that Cameron could have recapitulated this story so exactly, so I'm assuming that in addition to Dances with Fern Gully Wolves, this movie was also that story.

Oh, darn, I forgot: Oliviaw, my condolences as well. I've only lost grandparents and uncles; I can only imagine your loss.

Michael Roberts@314: That maybe sounds a little like Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Word for World is Forest", but it's been a long time since I read it so I can't say for sure. If not that, then I don't know it.

#314 ::: Michael Roberts:

It sounds like something by Phillip E. High.

#292 C. Wingate

"Cantabridgian" ... also, I was a student, not actually a Cambridge resident....

#313 C. Wingate
No. I don't koiw what LDS does to it... What I think of when I see "Christian hymn" and "holy, holy, holy" conflated includes "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty." I don't remember what Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh Adonai, tsvaot mlo khol ha'aretz kvodo translates to, or rather, I forget what tvaot is. Adonai ~ My Lord, mlo could be m'lo m = from, and lo = no or not; khol = all, ha'aretz = the land, and I forget what kvodo means.

My perpective is that the Christian hymns are excursions off of monotheism Judaism.... the look on the faces of nuns at an interfaith service at the synagogue my family belonged to, when I was a child, was very entertaining...they were almost stunned in some cases, looking at the translation text and comparing in their minds to the prayers they knew... (the silver adornments for the Torah scrolls also, made a considerable impression on them).

I suspect that the Judaic prayers go back much farther to being descended from traditions and conventions from earlier religions, for that matter.

(dredging from the deeps)

Charlie Stross @ 101: "The discourse of privilege annoys me; it frequently tends to be under-nuanced. Most discussions of it seem to be predicated on the assumption that if you are while and male you have the full package. Can we perhaps draw a Venn diagram, and reserve the "shut the F--- up and listen" darts for the members of the P7[*] lurking in the innermost circle?"

I don't think it's that there's a particular group of truly priveleged who're the ones who really need to be told to shut up and listen, and everyone else is fine. Rather, everyone needs to learn to shut up and listen when people who aren't like them are talking about experiences they aren't familiar with. White and male speakers tend to be reminded of this necessary habit more than others because not having to learn how to shut up is one of the particular privileges of being white and male. It's not all privileges that accrue to white males--just that one.

Joel Polowin @310: I don't know if this could work for what you need, but a good old-fashioned hot water bottle tucked under the small of the back does the trick for us around here. We also use them to warm up the bed in winter.

Open thread question where I don't know how to google it: A while ago, I read a blog post- I think it was on digby, but it might have been another blog- about one person who was kind of "central" to the Beltway insider crowd- media, lobbyists, think-tankers, staffers, consultants, politicians etc.- not so much because he or she- I think it was a he, but I'm not sure- is particularly powerful or well-known, but simply because that person had so many connections to the various circles and networks in the Beltway that you can almost measure someone's standing in that crowd by checking how many connections he or she has with that person.

So, does anyone remember that blog post (or perhaps it was an article; again, I'm not sure) and who that person is?

Seeing the highlighted sidebar particle on odd academic journals reminded me of something related that I ran across a few days ago.

Do academic publishers actually have any sort of quality control?

I ask because this guy here:
http://deepclimate.org/2009/12/17/wegman-report-ghostwriter-revealed/

demonstrates that one bloke who has recently had this:
http://www.springer.com/environment/global+change+-+climate+change/book/978-3-540-76586-8

published by Springer Praxis books, copies chuncks of the WEgman report on MBH '98, without attribution, and the book itself is nothing more than a junk science attack on the actual science behind our understanding of global warming. This is obvious from his references to the likes of Gerhlich and Tscheuschner, Jaworoski and MAcintyre. These ideologues get great play in the book, (to judge by the google book preview that is available) but their work is either irrelevant, (MAcintyre) or totally wrong in every way. (Gerhlich et al, Jaworovski)

So are academic publishers really so desperate for cash that they'll print any old rubbish?

[in passing]

Sean Paul Kelley (the Agonist) in defense of Avatar: "The archetype is a common foundational myth, pops up in many national literatures and historical writing for a reason."

On the other hand Ross Douthat is convinced it is pagan.

Still haven't seen it, though.

Open threadiness: Meet The Shaggs, by way of Octopus Pie and Google. (Warning to Jim: the article picks on New Hampshire towns. ;-) )

C. Wingate @281

Unitarian Universalism has its roots in a bowdlerization of Christianity? A bowdlerization that protests against the selling of religious offices, the use of the power of the church to make war, the selling of indulgences, and the withholding of communion in both kinds from the congregation?

Those are the Hussite roots, anyway.

Or do you mean a bowdlerization that believes in the possibility of revelation through reason as well as through faith? In the innate goodness of the human soul? That believes that "God's sovereignty is limitless; still man has rights."

Those are Channing's contributions to our roots.

Or do you mean the bowdlerization that led to the congregation that I grew up in to recently throw a party--hosted by the church--to celebrate the 40th wedding anniversary of three men whom I have known and loved for my whole life?

If that's a watered-down, edited, bowdlerized faith in action....I guess I'll take it.

guthrie:

Different journals and conferences have different editors and program committees and standards. And most of the heavy lifting in enforcing those comes from volunteer labor--people who agree to review papers they're experts in. If the reviewers don't notice plagarism, say, then the plagarized papers will be published[1]. If the reviewers don't notice that the underlying arguments are screwy or the data is questionable, then that also gets by. If there's some ideological or political split in the field, some journals and conferences will be on each side of that split, and what's publishable will depend on which journal you submit to.

Academic publishers probably can't be expected to distinguish good science from bad, as they're publishers, not (in general) scientists working in the relevant fields. And you wouldn't want publishers to exercise too strict a gatekeeper function on academic journals, as this would be a barrier to new and interesting areas of research. Worse, at least one publisher with a good reputation (Elsevier) has produced an astroturf journal which was effectively advertising for Merck.

Shorter me: The relevant thing that has a reputation is the journal or conference or series, and its editors, program committees, reviewers, and authors. The publisher probably exercises some quality control--I expect most academic publishers would rather not publish something obviously silly--but not all that much.

[1] This is not a good thing for the career prospects of the authors.

Raphael #322:

I have a feeling that in any well-connected group, there are always a few people who could fill that role pretty well, and one or more best ones. (I'm thinking of this as a graph theory sort of problem--some nodes are more "central" than others, and one or a small number have, say, the minimal sum of distances to all the other nodes.)

C. Wingate @313--
Why should she be? It's a Christian hymn, although, as she and Rikibeth note, the title is a clue that it has great big strong roots in Jewish religious traditions.

Here's an approximation of the original hymn what I learned as a wee tyke* among the Methodists**

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty
Early in the morning my song shall rise to Thee
Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty
God in three persons, blessed Trinity

Holy, holy, holy, all the saints adore Thee
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea
All the cherubim and seraphim are falling down before Thee
Which wert and art and evermore shalt be

Holy, holy, holy, though the darkness hide Thee
Though the eyes of sinful man Thy glory may not see
Lord, only Thou art holy and there is none beside Thee
Perfect in power, in love and purity

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty
All Thy works shall praise Thy name in earth and sky and sea
Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty
God in three persons, blessed Trinity.

Distinctly Trinitarian, although most of the rest of the text wouldn't cause King David to raise an eyebrow, unless he was wondering what had "inspired" the writer.

*When I was small, we had a minister who was singularly devoid of imagination when it came to picking hymns for the service--we started every single blessed Sunday service with this hymn. Every. Single. Blessed. Sunday. I thought it was a required part of the service, like the Lord's Prayer and the readings from scripture, and was singlualrly disoriented when his replacement decided to start out with another hymn. Part of this may have been the organist; she was a woman with definite ideas about How Things Should Be Done--as I recall, she used the same set of stops every time, and never considered altering them to better suit different pieces of music or parts of ceremonies.

**I wonder how much the Wesley brothers' love of music and hymn-singing improved the spread of the Methodist congregations in Wales, and how much the Welsh love of choral music caused the early Methodists to step it up in the hymn department.

heresiarch #320:

Yes, this is exactly right. There's this really useful insight that is easy to miss, especially when you're in the dominant/privileged group in a society: It's easy to become convinced that various things aren't problems or don't exist, because you simply never see them. This is an old problem--it's behind stuff like the stories of kings dressing up as commoners and walking around town, exposes that show the respectable citizens what the underside of their society looks like, "let them eat cake," respectable people being shocked to learn of the existence of prostitutes in their city, the impact the book "Black Like Me," the impact of books written by people who've lived in your society and seen a very different face of it than you do, etc.

Recognizing this is like getting glasses to correct a visual problem you didn't know you had. And becoming aware of this area in which you were formerly both ignorant and unaware of your ignorance does keep you from saying silly things in some discussions.

The pity is that this useful insight is often turned into a bludgeon to shut someone up, or into discussions about who has a right to a voice or an opinion in some conversation. I think that's what some of the commenters above were describing (at least, it's what I got) with phrases like "entitlement whist." In general, when the conversation shifts from the original question of facts or morality or ideas, to a meta-question of who is allowed to speak or hold certain opinions, it seems to almost never turn out well.

The mouse-over for today's XKCD is relevant to the Garrison Keillor thread. "Culfvpvfgf jub jnag gb cebgrpg genqvgvbany Puevfgznf ernyvmr gung gur bayl jnl gb xrrc sebz punatvat Puevfgznf vf abg gb bofreir vg."

#308 ::: Paula Lieberman

ooops. Guess eyes glazed over before that part, since there was no intro to that diatribe of names as to what it was in response to.

I still praise Keillor. He could have gotten fired too. He didn't. Because National Public Rhetoric still needed to respect his audience's wishes, because they still provide some of NPR's funding. Unlike the wholly owned corporate beings that vomited Koppel upon instruction. That his audience did not turn on him for what he said says volumes in response to your put down of the northern heartland doesn't it?

Love, C.

Fidelio@329: on Holy, Holy, Holy.

And the Eastern Christian Churches use the three-fold 'Holy', the 'Trisagion' in a way that isn't specifically trinitarian: Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us.

[Well, there's apparently some theological disagreement about whether it's really trinitarian]

guthrie@323:
So are academic publishers really so desperate for cash that they'll print any old rubbish?

I'm not sure that Praxis really qualifies as "academic publishers". If you look at their web page, they look a bit borderline. Springer is their "partner", with whom they "co-publish" books.

In the end, printing books doesn't make money, it costs money. Selling books makes money. The book you described doesn't sound as though it is intended to be make money by being sold to academic readers.

There are two issues

1. How much do they see it as their role to review for accuracy/quality rather than just saleability?

2. How well do they do the filtering?

There's more filtering for academic quality (and often less for saleability) from the purely academic university presses such as Cambridge University Press, more filtering for saleability (and often less for quality) from publishers such as Wiley or Springer.

In any case, a lot depends on the specific editor as well -- Springer Statistics is very good, for example, and their main US acquiring editor is very highly respected.

In statistics, mathematics, and public health, the publishers are looking for authors: there isn't much academic reward for writing books. They don't pay advances, but they do pay similar royalties to the commercial non-fiction world and they obey Yog's Law. Authors write an outline and sample chapter and these are circulated to reviewers who are asked who is likely to want to buy the book. The author usually suggests some reviewers; the publisher usually contacts others as well. This usually weeds out most of the real crap.

In the humanities, book publishing is an important part of 'publish or perish', and there are perfectly respectable books that are subsidized by the author (more precisely, by some body with money, via the author). Again, there's a review mechanism, probably a much stricter one since more people want to publish books.

I don't think Garrison Keillor has a whole lot to do with NPR. It's produced by a separate company (american public media) and carried by many stations that are NPR affiliates, but I think that's the extent of the relationship.

Sarah, #326: Oy. Your post convinced me to go back and re-read in detail the one to which you were responding, and I am 100% in agreement with you. Either my understanding of the definition of "bowdlerization" is completely wrong, or that's a clear-cut example of "I do not think that word means what you think it means."

re 324: No, Douthat says that it is pantheistic, which is entirely different.

re various: Well, it's probably just the way I tend to memorize music, but I've very alert to people changing lyrics. Anyway, the offensive line is, naturally, "God in three persons, blessed trinity." So they change that. I don't think this is the same as the way that Christianity repeats the texts of Judaism, though of course YMMV. I would have a problem with appropriating a familiar Jewish tune and text (if for instance someone decided to make a Christianized version of the dreidel song); I'm not really comfortable with a recent insertion of a conspicuously Jewish tune into the Hymnal 1982.

Sarah, no doubt you feel I've dissed what I gather is your religion. And I'm not sure what Jan Hus is doing in there anyway. But Channing fits into the pattern: the Arlington Street Church began as an orthodox (not Orthodox) Presbyterian congregation and ended up rejecting various offensive Christian doctrines along the way-- not morally offensive, but intellectually offensive. I don't need to get into a pissing contest about whose morality is more advanced-- after all, I'm C of E (well, Episcopalian). Anyway, in 1819 advances in sexual morality were not yet on the program, and personally I don't think of the French revolution as a moral advance over the American one-- or for that matter, remaining a Tory. Just my opinion there, of course. "Bowdlerize" is also my opinion, but the origins of Unitarianism within Christian churches through a process of doctrinal rejections is just the way it happened, for better or worse.

C.Wingate, #324: so tell me about these non-pagan pantheists.

"Trisagion" would be a great-sounding monster name. Trisagion the Terrible, Destroyer of Mercy.

I read that Douthat thing, and comparing the pantheism of Spinoza with The Force or The Lion King's Circle of Life is, IMO, laughable. A mouse isn't an elephant, even if they're both four-legged mammals.

They are both, however, luminous beings. A lightsaber cuts through Spinoza's verbal calisthenics any day of the week.

Randolph (# 324) --
It seems that Douthat is, as seems usual, chanelling directly from his rear end. (IMNSHO, YMMV) -- And yes, I have preconceived opionions about his views and writing, and it certainly does color how I read what he has written)

In order to keep his "cred" with the right-wing religious supporters I feel that he has to find *something*, at least once a month, to rail about How The /Y/o/u/n/g/ /A/r/e/ /S/p/o/i/l/i/n/g/ /E/v/e/r/y/t/h/i/n/g/ Liberals are misleading us all with some anti-xtian conspiracy

PHC is part of the PRI CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) network, but also carried by much larger number of NPR CPB affiliates, which receive many pledges during pledge drive when PHC is on. PHC, like all the CPB star programs, creates special pledge drive shows and / or pleas for the stations to run during pledge drives. As they are large fundraisers for the individual stations, NPR doesn't want to drop them.

Love, C.

C. Wingate @337--most of the various demoninations of Christianity have been formed through processes that include that you are pleased to call "a process of doctrinal rejections", including your own.

Given that the roots of Unitarianism* (as a concept, rather than a specific demoniation) go back all the way to the ante-Nicene period, it might be considered a courtesy to avoid trivializing this theological position with such terms as "bowdlerize", which I assume you intend in the second definition: "to modify by abridging, simplifying, or distorting in style or content", with, given the tone of your comments, the emphasis on "distort".

By the way, I was under the impression that the dreidel song was not a piece of liturgy, but a children's song. You might want to strive for a better example, unless the idea that you're on fairly weak ground when it comes to gerring cranky the general origins of Christian litrugical traditions has sunk in, in which case dropping the matter and addressing the rest of this community in a more seasonally appropriate manner might be a good idea.

I will add, in passing, that I think "Christmas" as a Christian holy festival in less endangered by the threat presented by Unitarians and Mormons (and others--there is, after all, the Unity Church and their ilk, and the Quakers, and all those Orthodox Churches who can't bow down and change the dates they celebrate the various feasts, plus the remains of the Monophysites, and anyone else I've overlooked) getting their grubby hands on Christmas traditions than it is by rampant merchantilism. Got any snark to spare for the cashbox version of Christmas, or is it more fun to gripe about the Unitarian Threat (after all, they have a jihad, with funny names)?

Also, Ross Douthat as any flavor of expert source on religion? Dude.

*Cliff-notes version available at Wikipedia, Unitarians and theologians will probably wish to address the inevitable shortcomings of that source.

This may be a bit too hand-wavy, but I've thought of the Unitarian Universalist church as a place where an agnostic could attend services and not expect to be tolchocked in the parking lot afterward.

Randolph @ 324: "Sean Paul Kelley (the Agonist) in defense of Avatar: "The archetype is a common foundational myth, pops up in many national literatures and historical writing for a reason.""

So national and historical literatures aren't political? Um, okay. Also, I'm pretty sure that the 12th century Turkish poem isn't about a technologically superior, capitalist enterprise stripmining the land of a primitive--yet spiritual!--native people. Just a guess, though.

"On the other hand Ross Douthat is convinced it is pagan."

OH NOES! WE IZ DISCOVERDED! RUN

More seriously, I think Douthat going a little batty when he writes "We stand half inside the natural world and half outside it. We’re beasts with self-consciousness, predators with ethics, mortal creatures who yearn for immortality." He persists with a conception of nature that cuts humans out of it, as though nature was possible to escape. That's a terrible mistake: humans are a part of nature, as is everything material. The disharmony emerges from that misunderstanding, not from an inherent disconnect.

So when he says "This is an agonized position, and if there’s no escape upward — or no God to take on flesh and come among us, as the Christmas story has it — a deeply tragic one," he's proposing theism as a solution to a problem he created for himself.

albatross @ 330: "The pity is that this useful insight is often turned into a bludgeon to shut someone up, or into discussions about who has a right to a voice or an opinion in some conversation. I think that's what some of the commenters above were describing (at least, it's what I got) with phrases like "entitlement whist." In general, when the conversation shifts from the original question of facts or morality or ideas, to a meta-question of who is allowed to speak or hold certain opinions, it seems to almost never turn out well."

I go with Oppression Olympics myself, but yes--obsessing over who gets to say what about which forms of oppression, and which oppression is the worst is a dangerous trap to sink into.

re: the Scientific Research Publishing sidelight - My guess, given that it seems to be sourced in China, is that it's a dummy journal to help graduates of Wuhan University get published in an English language journal. In China it's standard (I hear) to require English language publication in order to get a PhD, and very few science students have English good enough to pull it off. So there would be a big use for a dummy journal to help Chinese scientists get "published." That's my guess, anyway.

re: Crowdsourcing - from the article: "Crowdsourcing's power to compartmentalise and abstract away the true meaning of tasks turns human intelligence into a commodity. Zittrain's thought experiment shows how it could potentially entice people into participating in a project that they otherwise wouldn't support."

Shocking! Everyone knows you should PAY people if you're going to use human intelligence as a commodity in pursuit of goals they otherwise wouldn't support! What are we, communists!?!1?!

"I will add, in passing, that I think "Christmas" as a Christian holy festival in less endangered by the threat presented by Unitarians and Mormons getting their grubby hands on Christmas traditions than it is by rampant merchantilism."

Heh. Did you know that the church fathers finally got rid of Midnight Mass because people would be drinking and gambling in the back? Think Mardi Gras in New Orleans and you'd probably have it pretty close. Dickens popularized the idea of Christmas as a family holiday and one for charity, but Scrooge might have actually been closer to right about the purpose of Christmas in his day.

Also, in Catholic tradition, Christmas is not one of the two high holidays. In fact, there's a lot of discussion about why it shouldn't be (including various discussions of incarnation theology and whatnot.)

The mercantilism annoys me a bit, but mostly because of its ever-increasing lead time. I'll try to keep Christ in Christmas but I don't begrudge anyone else Gift-Giving Winterfest. Why not.

(Holiday evolution in general is fairly amusing, with Valentine's Day being one of the weirdest.)

"The church fathers several centuries ago."

Preview works only if you think about what you've written.

338: Of course "pagan" can be used to mean pretty much anything except for the Abrahamic religions, but it's boring to do that unless you're into casting aspersions.

344: Fidelio, if what you're saying is true, it is so through interpreting "doctrinal rejections" in a completely different sense than I intended. Historically the tendency in orthodox Nicene Christianity isn't to reject doctrine, but to adopt it, albeit often at the expense of established doctrine. Now doctrines tend to form in response to (perceived) error, so most doctrines take the form of rejection of this or that notion. So in that sense, yes, it's through "doctrinal rejections", that is, "doctrines that reject things". That's not what I meant, though: I specifically meant "rejection of doctrine".

I'm looking at Channing's Baltimore Sermon now, and I see that he was an Arian, if even so strong a doctrinal commitment could be attributed to him (not having read everything he wrote, it's possible he could have been an adoptionist). Again, I see in "A Letter on Creeds" a rejection of the notion of doctrine. I have lots of problems with his approach, beginning with his neglect of the already-extant theology addressing his positions and continuing on through philosophical rejection of his principled opposition to doctrine (because I don't agree with his philosophical principles). "Bowdlerize" represents my personal opinion as to the worth of this; as I said, YMMV, and I'm not going to mount a defense of that in the face of what would undoubtedly turn into a pile-on.

346: It's OK to use "nature" that way if you are willing to keep that difference obscured. In practice people don't (e.g., when they talk about ecology).

"[I'm] very alert to people changing lyrics. "

Then I'd imagine your alerts go off a lot whenever you go to church. The church hymnals I'm familiar with are *full* of changed lyrics, new lyrics written to old tunes, and all kinds of other alterations and folk processing, over the course of hundreds of years. I'm not just talking about recent "PC"-ish changes, but lots of older linguistic, doctrinal, and artistic adaptations as well. Or, to twist an old saying, the most prolific hymn-writer credited in the hymnbooks I pick up has nearly always been "Alt."

Certainly, some changes are more, or less, graceful than others. But I'm not aware of any time period since the dawn of print where hymn-writers haven't been swiping and re-working other people's songs left and right. Is your experience different?

Thomas @333: Interesting. That aired as the Three O'Clock Prayer on most TV and radio stations when I was growing up in the Philippines, a predominantly Roman Catholic country. It always concluded with Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, Have mercy on us and the whole world, repeated thrice.

B. Durbin at 347, Did you know that the church fathers finally got rid of Midnight Mass because people would be drinking and gambling in the back?

Huh? I don't know in what country the "church fathers" eliminated Midnight Mass, but it isn't this one. I'm planning to attend Midnight Mass at my parish, as I have for years. Can you clarify?

fidelio, I agree with you entirely that consumerism presents way more of a threat to the survival of Christmas as a holy day than the various doctrinal disagreements among Christians does.

Albatross and Thomas - thanks. That does rather confirm my impression of praxis publishing. It is rather hard to see what the market is though, because who wants to spend a lot of money on a small print run book which is less about science and more about politics? Unless the denialists are more subtle in their long term plans than we give them credit for, which is unlikely. I guess its just a case of someone trying to make a buck or two out of a political hobby horse of theirs.

Pendrift@351: In eastern churches it's used at (I think) every service; in the western Catholic church it's used very specifically on Good Friday (in Greek, as well as Latin or the vernacular). Its use as the three o'clock prayer presumably grew out of that.

Andrew M @354: Ah, thank you. I don't know if any other countries actually have national broadcasts of the 3 o'clock prayer, also known as the 3 o'clock habit. I misremembered the prayer, though - the first text here is the one that's actually read out.

In some places they also read out the Angelus over a loudspeaker at 6 o'clock. When this occurs in a shopping mall, people actually stop dead in their tracks until the prayer is over.

Darn, that's the first time I've ever seen a mention of an older science fiction story without three people here instantly knowing what story it was. I don't think it was LeGuin, but it could have been High. A quick perusal of his memorial Website tells me it doesn't appear to have been any of his books, but the short stories have no descriptions, so ... maybe.

Joel Polowin, #303, I have two of those and I sit against them -- between me and the recliner. The cats sit on them but I don't think they know I've turned the hot off.

Randolph, #324, the WashPost's black columnist, Courtland Milloy, who mostly writes about black things, thinks it's about blacks.

Lizzy L.: It was gotten rid of for some period several centuries ago, in a time period before Oliver Cromwell cancelled Christmas for similar reasons. It crept back over time, after everybody had forgotten about the traditions of wining and wenching. I wasn't very clear about that, sorry.

I love Midnight Mass. Unfortunately, most parishes these days have moved it to earlier in the evening, which misses the point. If my parents' parish, with its new resident priest, moves it back, I will be very happy to attend. My parish has "vigil" masses. Feh.

A pretty good article on China by Christopher Hayes.

MMichael Roberts #314/ 356 - I have "The wordfor world is forest" somewhere in my library but can't find it and can't quite recall enough detail of the story. So I'm no use I am afraid.

C. Wingate, #349: "[...] unless you're into casting aspersions."

Isn't that exactly what Douthat is doing? I can't imagine a conservative Catholic like Douthat making much of a distinction between pantheism and paganism. For him it is at most a technicality. If he recognizes Christian pantheism, he probably regards it as something even worse than pagan--as heretical.

heresiarch, #346: what is odd is that most actual pantheism has a transcendental element. Rather than denying human spirituality, it extends spirituality to the rest of living world, sometimes all of the physical world. Douthat, not thinking clearly, is arguing just the opposite. Oh, well, not my problem.

C. Wingate @337: Appropriate the dreidel song ALL YOU LIKE, as long as you don't sing it around me! I am fed to the TEETH with that one, since it got put in holiday concerts EVERY YEAR in the spirit of inclusiveness, and there was no alternative. Even in Hebrew school, there were only two alternatives: Ma'oz Tzur (Rock of Ages) and some trifle that went "Oy Chanukah, oy Chanukah, let's light the menorah," which wasn't any more appealing.

Now I'm curious as to what obviously Jewish melody got included in the 1982 hymnal.

"If it's something I used when I was younger, it doesn't belong in a museum."

That's pretty much what Siriosa said during Saturday's Gathering of Light. I had mentionned that card punchers, which we both used in olden days, were never seen by a younger co-worker of mine outside of a technology museum.

Are you looking for Love?
If so, on my way to the office yesterday, I saw a billboard you might be interested in.

"Sofa and Love - $400."

I'm pretty sure the Dreidel Song has been Chipmunked, but... I hesitate to confirm it. I typed the words into the search engine, but could not bring myself to.... No, it's too painful.

The truth is out there... including chipmunks.

Be _very_ afraid.

A very different take on the Dreidel song.

Put down your drink and get the cat off your lap before you click.

B. Durbin @ #358: Ah, thank you. And sorry to hear that your parish has no Christmas Midnight Mass. It's not always easy for me to stay up late, I confess -- but I love the liturgy for that Mass, and the church is always packed.

And to all who frequent Making Light: Merry Christmas! Joy and comfort to you and yours.

The Pocket Elvis iPhone app rocks. Thank ya, thank ya verra much.

When my older son, now in his mid-20s, was small, I took him to a pre-school at the local YM/YWHA. As a result, one of the first songs he learned was The Dreidl Song. It embarrassed his mother when he asked her to sing it, and she couldn't.

#332 Constance

Minnesota had elected Paul Wellstone to a Senate seat, and to the governorship an Independent who had been an entertainment industry wrestling media personality; those indicate a certain level of beliefs and values and attitudes that are emphatically not hardliner repressionist intolerance/intolerants! I doubt that Prarie Home Companion encapsulates the totality of the culture/cultural values--it appears to have some/sufficient celebration of some of them and sufficiency of congruence to have that area as part of its (gag for the hackneyed phrase) "core constituency."

Trying to translating into less formulistic language:

Prarie Home Companion's offering are like a meal with comfort food. It includes stuff which people grew up with and are used to. It may or may not be their consciously chosen restaurant meals and acquired taste, but it has a big heap, for some of the midwestern homeland, of home cooking to it. That includes stuff that might or might not bear close critical examination....

Close critical examination of what one grew up with and didn't question, can get extremely painful. The path of least resistance and greatest convenience and least upset, is to take it on surface appearance and accept it and not poke at it--sort of like reading certain types of literature, start doing in-depth critical examination rather than enjoying it for the flow, and it becomes a lot less satisfying and worthwhile.

I don't have the native culture resonance to Prarie Home Companion, I didn't grow up in a society which nurtured me in the childhood cohort.... that almost automatically, therefore, sets up a negative automatic response to assumptions that Prarie Home Companion rests on.

From where I'm looking, PHC has as one of its basic assumptions, that the listeners grew up in a culture which didn't beat kids up for being "above average." The show explicitly states that all the children of the culture it celebrates are above average. So, from the get-go, PHC sets up a negative response in from that particular claim, because its bases, and my growing up experiences, have massive impedance mismatches. It's on a very different set of frequencies transmitting, that my inculcated-in-childhood receptors, accept without critical analysis, input on...

PHC's comforting to-those-who-grew-up-in-the -culture-it-celebrates platitudes and affectionate self-deprecation, don't work for me because to me it celebrates a mostly alien culture. It depends on/assumes not only familiarity but comfort from that culture. I could accept it better if I didn't have automatic distrust of the assumptions about the comfort level assumed for the audience and the self-deprecation based on it.

Since the culture is not one I'm a native of, and since my tendency is to not accept real world culture I don't know at face value--I'm an NTP on Myers-Briggs-- PHC grates on me. It's not the PHC is "wrong," it's that PHC has a tuning that's a scale that to me is way out of key, my experience/training is with tunings that the PHC tuning sounds -wrong- for....

Bottom line

Bottom line: PHC is like an instrument tuned to a scale which is native to a lot of people, positively resonant with others, but which for me is off-key. Its assumptions and style are unpleasurably out of congruence with my childhood in both implicit and explicit training and familiarity, and interpretation... ( There are things in my past, which the exact same trait, got me in trouble with some types of people, and got me accolades and regarded as heroic by others... same traits, different culture/values and regard for...)

There is a scene in Sharon Lee and Steve Miller's most recently published novel, Fledgling/i>, where Theo Waitley, the protagonist, relatively late in the book, is in a classroom and the instructor describes a situation.... Theo discovers that her training/assumptions give rise to her view of what results from the situation and how the story should end and who the villian(s) and hero(es) in the story are , being very different from than her classmates' views. The cause of the differences primarily are what cultural values the students in the class grew up with, which directed their perceptions, expectations, and their very definition of desirable, appropriate behavior and action and aspiration. The cultural values and the characteristics and character traits her birth culture valued and celebrated, and her classmates' native cultural values, are for many things contradictory....

That stuff all comes into play when listening to something like Prarie Home Companion--but those things are not generally what people think about as influences on whether someone "likes" or dislikes something. Unexamined assumptions of values sit at the base, and the consequences mutiply.

#363 Serge

I have very little in the way of fond memories of card punches, and have essentially negative nostaglia for them. The clunk-clunk noises they made amused me a bit (but then, I like the feel and sound of snow crunching under my booted feet in the winter....) (pedant note--when there is crunchable snow, it requires snow of certain characteristics including the snowmass having a certain crustry consistency which facilitates crunching when walked upon--but not too crusty or it becomes icy, or instead of compacting satisfyingly when stepped on has to be stomped on to avoid being put off balance... ), but having to use them for loading date and instructions into a computer, ugh, ugh, ugh. There were/are even more unpleasant/excrutiating loading mechanisms, such as toggling instructions and data into a machine by using toggle switches... but that does NOT make keypunches things I appreciate or ever wanted to, much less still would want to, use, in computing operations....

My preferred usage of cardpunches, was for, in conjunction with timing device, determining building height. That is, drop the cardpunch off the building, time its descent, and convert the descent time into distance... this is indicative of the appreciation I held for cardpunchs as data input tools....

I greatly appreciate modern technology for data input (if not the -way- that GUIs have been implemented. What Jobs didn't steal from Xerox, is the type of GUI I want--not the icons and mice and pointers, but the relational constructs that the Xerox Star had...)

Midnight mass discontinuance?! That's heretical! (And I'm not even Christian, let alone Anglican/Episcopalian or Roman Catholic!)

(Note, I was part of the choir for the Roman Catholic services up in Thule, Greenland....)

This is for all the people that call the "Twilight" books a saga. I know that four books add up to, in Merriam-Webster's definition, "a long detailed account" but I also expect something better than Sparkles in Forks.

Michael Roberts @ 314: Your story seemed naggingly familiar, but the closest thing I could track down was "The Winged Dreamers" in Star Trek: The New Voyages, which featured butterflies with a collective intelligence. So I asked on rec.arts.sf.written, and got a reply: "Hunter Come Home" by Richard McKenna. A follow-up message lists collections which include the story.

Serge and Paula: I have a mechanical hand-operated 1-card punch in the basement. I didn't use it, myself (my high school had electric keypunch machines); it was a gift from my B.Sc. project supervisor, who found it while he was cleaning up his office and knew that I appreciated "classic" technology.

On Midnight Mass:

The Catholic Church (English-speaking subset, at least) specifies a distinct set of readings, prayers, etc, specifically for "Mass during the night" on Christmas Eve. This is what used to be the Midnight Mass.

The decline of mass at midnight is a combination of aging congregations and shortage of priests. If the same priest who presided at the evening mass and the midnight mass is going to be up bright and early for the morning mass on Christmas Day, and the attendance at midnight keeps decreasing, it's easy to see why 9pm looks attractive.

Cathedrals and parishes with large congregations or enthusiastic musicians still do tend to go for midnight.

Serge @363 -- Imagine my surprise the first time I saw a piece of artwork (an original print by John Taylor Arms, "Loop the Loop") that I had at home in a museum's proud "New Acquisitions" display.... Almost as great as when at 16 I saw a book I'd been reading at home on a rare book dealer's table (The Opener of the Way by Robert Bloch in the original Arkham House edition).

Our twin parishes aren't very big, but we are doing Midnight Mass as usual (and at midnight, thank you very much). I'm singing with our choir at both that one, and the 8pm vigil mass beforehand. There are, as Thomas noted, distinctive readings for both Masses, different from what you get during the day on Christmas.

Given that our kids are likely to wake us up as soon as they can the next morning, I hope to get caught up on sleep on Christmas itself or the days that follow.

And last I checked, Christmas was still the second-most prominent focus of the year in the Catholic calendar. (First, of course, is Easter.) Christmas and Easter both are distinct in having special seasons of preparation (Advent and Lent, respectively) that are very noticeable in the liturgy. There are a number of other important holidays, but a lot of them tend to orbit around these two. (I'm including Pentecost in Easter's orbit here, though it's some distance out, and in some ways marks a transition into the rest of the year.)

Paula L. -- What are you expecting I shall take away from your lecture to me on the matters of PHC?

Love, C.

PL -- Additionally: PHC is like an instrument tuned to a scale which is native to a lot of people, positively resonant with others, but which for me is off-key.

This is gobblygook to the ears and eyes of musicians. You cannot "tune" a scale "offkey."

And, may I presume to add, Unexamined assumptions of values sit at the base, and the consequences mutiply.

Love, C.

There are four (4) "Hebrew melodies" in the 1982 Hymnal. The first is the well-known Maoz Tzur, disconnected from any Hannukah text at #393. Dozens of versions.

The second (which I suspect C. Wingate doesn't like) is called Torah Song [Yisrael V'oraita], #536. An arrangement for children's choir.

The third, Leoni aka Yigdel, appears twice at #372 and #401 - it is a wonderful vigorous tune in F minor. This guy does a terrific job of conflating it with any number of other rousing minor marches - well worth a listen.

And the fourth is the round Shalom chaverim at #714.

A very Merry Christmas to all!

Bruce, #374: Heh.
Q: "You HIT me! Picard never hit me!"
Sisko: "I'm not Picard."

Mark, #381: That third one, Yigdel, I immediately recognized as the melody called "March of the Kings" on one of my Christmas albums.

Hi Lee - actually, that's his "introduction" march - Leoni appears about a minute in, soloed out on the Tuba.

The Bach/Vivaldi A minor concerto also shows up later. In F minor. Hijinks ensue.

#378 & #379 Constance

Not a lecture, musings....

As for the tuned to a scale--consider a harp. There are LOTS of different scales apparently that harps can be tuned to (or perhaps, I am using the term "scale" incorrectly here.... no I am not being sarcastic or ironic. I may be using the term inappropriately, or not.... not sure which--perhaps I should be using the term key? Um. ) Some of them can sound -wrong- to people not used to them.

Somewhere around here is a book which objects to "equal temperament" tunings. Standard pianos don't have e.g. a difference between A-flat and G-sharp. In equal temperament they are the same. On some other tuning types, they are -not-....

My point is that someone used to hearing the one, is likely to regard the other as to some degree off-key, because it sounds -wrong-. Different people will find it differing levels of offkey sounding--some won't notice, some will find the difference excrutiating.

One of my friends made the observation than most people going offkey tend to be -flat-, but that I tend to go -sharp-... I mention this because, again, different people really do -hear- and perceive and respond in not the same ways, to the exact same stimuli.

And this is a very longwinded way of attempting to explain what I was trying to say.... that "sounds wrong" can be a very individualistic experience, for reasons that including all of training, experience, and even organic internal hardware and processing modes....

And while I'm being (as often I am... ) longwinded--

John Oliver when he was conducting the MIT Choral Society and and when I was in it, was tellling an anecdote of a famous singer, who kept starting at part at a recording or practice session, and kept being told to stop because she was offkey. FINALLY, what came out, was that she was singing in European concert A, and not in the concert A ued in the USA 00 a difference between I think it is 440 cycles per second, and 444 cycles per secon -- one part in a hundred, but sufficient for trained classical musician ears to hear it as unacceptably offkey.

Again, that is what I was trying to communicate about PHC, that it is in a wrong key for -me-

Various:

There are some very unclear issues with the tunes of Jewish liturgical music.... 2500 years of wandering around a significant percentage of the world's geography and cultures, brings in all sorts of syncretic stuff, including musical traditions. The same tune that the Israeli national anthem has, Moldau used for Ma Vlast, for example.....

There are specific tunes for singing Torah and Haftorah portions and I-cannot-remember-the-general-term-involved with actual marks indicating the tune segments, for teaching people who are learning to sing the portions.... (the musical transcription stuff appears as markings in printed text versions, they're not on actual Torah scrolls.... I strongly suspect that some of it, is that -tune- forms one type of memory aid, just as in verses, rhyme helps as memory aid....)

(De facto I seem to have one or more of the musical-math genes, and it's/they'/re also tied into what makes it so easy for me to versify in here... on the downside it probably also ties into the longwinded perambulating posts. It also makes the "music" on airplanes stuck on gatehold, drive me into almost violent irritation, and be the impetus for making up scurrilous lyrics when assaulted with Christmas season music in stores....)

And, digging myself in deeper --
What bothers me the most about PHC is the actual sound quality/tonality of Garrison Keillor's narrational voice. To me kinaeshetically it's the vocal equivalent of Muzak--what it feels like/sounds like to me is homogeneously predigested no-dynamic-range verveless monotonic degerminated pablum... and however ironic it may sound, what I suppose is supposed to be soothing to most people, has the exact opposite result, eliciting which is considerable irritation, in me!

So, anyway, that all boils down to, "Prarie Home Companion, quite literally, sounds wrong to me--literally."

Leoni aka Yigdal is in the 1935 Methodist Hymnal (#5, 'The God of Abraham praise'). #1 is Nicaea ('Holy, Holy, Holy').

Paula Lieberman, #372: now me, I remember paper tape not-fondly. And Teletypes, bang, bang, bang.

I learned long ago not to eat/drink while actively reading ML. However, munching my way thru "lastest comments" sucked me in to the comments on comments on comments thread. And caused me to put face cream on my newly washed hair.

Paula @384: There are LOTS of different scales apparently that harps can be tuned to (or perhaps, I am using the term "scale" incorrectly here.... no I am not being sarcastic or ironic. I may be using the term inappropriately, or not.... not sure which--perhaps I should be using the term key? Um. ) Some of them can sound -wrong- to people not used to them.

Diatonic scales? (a.k.a. "musical modes")

Humor for the season:
The HR department where I work thinks my contract expires at the end of June, and the paperwork I have (of which they should have a copy) says New Year's. Not that they didn't wait till the last minute last year, also.

Randolph @ #388, Hey, now. I loved paper tape. Being able to read those holes fast was like being a member of a small secret society. You weren't quite Mensa-eligible, but you were smarter than the average swabbie.

Linkmeister #392: I envied people who could read telex tape. That was an arcane skill.

Fragano @ #393, samples (from a blog post I wrote thinking back on Navy days).

Some things I've used in my career should be in museums (at least it keeps them out of the landfill). When I first entered Powell's Technical Book Store, sometime in the early '90s IIRC, there was a display of old computing devices lined up along one long wall. One of them was an IMSAI 8800, a model that I worked on as a technician at the IMSAI factory for 6 months. The primary entry device was in fact a set of toggle switches. If you have a handy dimensional portal I'd suggest pitching the 8800 through that as alternative to display in a museum.

It's not even my worst memory. I'm reserving that title for the IC test computer I used for awhile at Intel. You toggled the bootstrap tape loader into the switches on the front panel, that ran the paper(!) tape reader which loaded the OS, then you plugged a teletype into the serial port and typed commands into that. Did that every morning when I came into work for several weeks; alas, no portal available.

Way back when, in a prior millenium, I once stood in front of a card reader and ran a million cards through there, dumping them to tape. This was for an insurance company, a client of the service bureau I worked at as a computer operator.

360/30, 32K of memory, three waist-high disk drives that held 7 megabytes of data. Lotsa pretty blinking lights.

The card reader would read 1000 cards per minute. There were 2000 cards in a box, and 5 boxes to a case. There were 100 cases. Such was the glamorous world of IT in 1977. That poor card reader wasn't quite the same after that weekend.

Bruce Cohen, #395: "You toggled the bootstrap tape loader into the switches on the front panel, that ran the paper(!) tape reader which loaded the OS, then you plugged a teletype into the serial port and typed commands into that."

Hee. We found a high-speed optical read & had to pull the tape through, but then we had a cable run from our development system (a PDP-11/45). Wasn't so bad.

Best thing about Avatar... The coming attraction for Clash of the Titans... 'nuff said.

Fragano @ 393:

Maybe an arcane skill, but not one that was much respected in the comm centers where I worked in the '60s (when 5-bit code teletypes were all the rage). All the RF, facilities control, crypto, and other more technical people called the tape handlers "tape apes". Mostly snobbery based on the amount of training required, I think.

But they took it well. One time one of the tape shift chiefs brought a monkey in to work and put it up on a perch with a banana and a sign saying "tape ape".

Open-threadiness -- Oklahoma City area is getting SLAMMED with winter. Ice, snow drifts, huge winds. Everything's shut down. What did we ever do in the days before our friends could update their Facebook status from their smart phone en route, with pictures? Worry ourselves to even worse frazzles, I guess.

Paula #384: One of my friends made the observation than most people going offkey tend to be -flat-, but that I tend to go -sharp-...

Somehow, I am not surprised. :-)

Steve C @ #396, when I was in the Navy, every day at 0000Z we ran a 500-card deck through an IBM 360/20 to change the date. Heaven forbid you drop the damned box which held the cards.

Paula @385: Is the term you're looking for "cantillation?" I remember that the only way I learned the marks properly for my Haftorah portion was to see the phrase for each mark written out in standard musical notation, play it on my flute (or I might have used my recorder, not sure) and get it into my memory THAT way.

And, just to make it even MORE special, there are two separate cantillation schemes, one for Torah and one for Haftorah portions. This was a major factor in my decision NOT to do the Torah portion as well as the required Haftorah portion at my bat mitzvah. I didn't think I had the brainspace. Just to show that I wasn't a complete slacker, I chose to lead the "additional service" as well. Primarily so I could guarantee we'd use my favorite tune for "Adon Olam." No, I did not use any of the myriad popular-secular tunes it can so easily be sung to, either. My grandparents would not have been amused to hear me sing it to "Suicide Is Painless," and I was going through the whole charade for the grandparents in any case.

#403 Rikibeth
ROFLMAO!

#401 David
Snicker!

#389 Lin
Snark/snerk!

Various:
Paper tape and Teletypes rank higher on the respect list for me than cardpunches and toggle switches. Teletypes had rubout keys. Cardpunch one had to start a new damn card in the damn cardpunch for any wrong keystroke (who, me accurately typing? ha, ha, ha, ha...). And if messing up with the damn toggle switches, start all over again! Bah! Papertape once punched could be used again and again...

Of course, the discussion in here has been bringing back memories of booting a PDP-11 with toggles and then papertape and then a Teletype and then the highcost Tektronics graphics display terminal, which system was controlling something or other on Alcator and doing data collection....

#403 Rikibeth
ROFLMAO!

#401 David
Snicker!

#389 Lin
Snark/snerk!

Various:
Paper tape and Teletypes rank higher on the respect list for me than cardpunches and toggle switches. Teletypes had rubout keys. Cardpunch one had to start a new damn card in the damn cardpunch for any wrong keystroke (who, me accurately typing? ha, ha, ha, ha...). And if messing up with the damn toggle switches, start all over again! Bah! Papertape once punched could be used again and again...

Of course, the discussion in here has been bringing back memories of booting a PDP-11 with toggles and then papertape and then a Teletype and then the highcost Tektronics graphics display terminal, which system was controlling something or other on Alcator and doing data collection....

I played a Star Trek game unto the rank of Admiral (the FORTRAN version) on a Teletype before it was renamed "Super Star Trek", and updated it to use assembly language for I/O for our local copy of the game.

I have played music on a PDP-11 by holding a transistor radio near the blinkenlights. I have witnessed that very same machine creep across the floor due to drive thrashing. I have affectionately caressed the toggles of a PDP-8, which did deign to present prime numbers to me, by way of thanks.

I have touched, with these, my bare hands, the paper tape of a Mergenthaler VIP phototypesetter.

These things I have seen and done may not be as stellar as some, but they are special to me.

I just saw Avatar with my mom. I loved it.

Yes, it's a "Mighty Whitey" story, and that's kinda icky. But the characters are real and act like people, and the scenery is AMAZING. I'd love to see another story set in that world, if it didn't mean a [shudder] sequel.

406
I remember watching someone playing Trek on an IBM portable terminal (1976 - it used cassette tapes).

Frisbie has - or had - an Imlac with a diode-matrix boot ROM and ferrite-core memory. And a simple version of Spacewar, loaded from paper tape.

Paula @386:

There was a course I didn't take in college because the teacher's voice bothered me enough that I knew I couldn't tolerate a semester of it. This was not the main reason Yale had the policy whereby, for the most part*, you handed in your course schedule two weeks into the semester--that was more about making sure you were in the right level physics class, and whether you could get from the 10:30 Spanish class to the 11:30 biology on the other side of campus in the 10 minutes alloted, and which 4 or 5 of the nine things that looked good from one-paragraph descriptions in the course catalog you liked best in practice--but it did mean I could leave quietly, and take a different course instead.

The thing is, this is something about me, not about her. As far as I know, other students didn't have this problem, and took that class, or not, based on the syllabus, assigned reading, and other factors mentioned above. Even if I remembered the instructor's name, I wouldn't post it here, because I don't consider it a flaw in her, much less a major one, that her voice happened to grate on me. I have no idea if she teaches well on any other axis, such as clarity, completeness, or accuracy.

If she was a radio presenter, I wouldn't listen to her program (not that I listen to much radio these days), but I would realize quickly that I wasn't going to keep listening, and not have an opinion beyond that.

* Exceptions were classes that had officially limited enrollment, for which people had to sign up and in some cases compete for room (all art classes, some writing classes, at least some music, probably other things) or be assigned to a section in advance (such as calculus or the first-year English classes). Even then, you could drop without penalty until well into the semester.

I'm singing at our parish's midnight mass and then at the morning one tomorrow. I would be less cranky if a.) the midnight started at 10:30 rather than 11 pm, b.) the Xmas morning would be scootched back just a tad to 11 am rather than 10:30 am. As it stands, call is 9:30 tonight, I expect to be home somewhere between 1 am and 2 am, and call time for tomorrow morning is 9:15 am. Not as bad as Holy Week, but getting really annoying.

Next year I'm asking Santa for a professional alto soloist so I'm not the one mangling the St. Nicholas Mass bright and early Christmas morning.

Vicki @409 said to Paula @386: There was a course I didn't take in college because the teacher's voice bothered me enough that I knew I couldn't tolerate a semester of it. [...] The thing is, this is something about me, not about her.

There are several graphic novels of great reputed merit that I cannot stand to read, because I find the art repulsive. Several parts of Sandman actually fell under this, but I squinted and forced my way through because I was already committed. I should probably note that one of the artists that squicks me is Dave McKean, so I've had to put all my Sandman collections in plain brown wrappers so I don't have to look at his reissue covers.

I have many friends that love the stories I cannot read (which include, inter multi alia, Transmetropolitan), but I will never know if I like them or not, alas.

Paula Lieberman #386 & Vicki #409:

The BBC has an interesting report on "the perfect voice" (using British samples) with examples: "It found the best female voice to be a mixture of Mariella Frostrup, Dame Judi Dench and Honor Blackman. Alan Rickman and Jeremy Irons did best for the men."

There are also examples of simulated perfect male & female voices. YMMV. I thought that they were pleasant, but I have no idea what my perfect voice would be.

Paula Lieberman @ 372... I have no fond memories of punched cards either. Presumably neither does Siriosa. What we were commenting on is that we don't need to be reminded that we've been part of this Earth long enough that some of the tools of our youth now can be found in a museum. Now, where did I put my cane?

#413 Serge

I think in this case you and I have somewhat different views of museums, perhaps.... E.g., Intel produced a very elaborate museum exhibit of one of its at -the-time in production microprocessors, as edutainment/infortainment/marketing. It was a brilliant move on Intel's part, a synthesis of entertainment, education, technology promotion, sense of wonder provocation, inveigling people into being interested in technology for the sake of curiosity and for the applications and uses to put tech to, AND it promote Intel Inside, too. Intel was promoting its latest and greatest and working to get people understanding the technology, understanding what it was important for/useful to, and using the exhibit to try to sell people on buying products with microprocessors in general and Intel Inside particularly....

This was/is NOT dead civilization and obsolete endeavors stuff, this was state of the art reality, buy products with in in stores and understand what's inside!!!! stuff.... That's one of the streams of museum philosphy in the area (Musuem of Science, Children's Museum, Discovery Museum).

The Dead Artists and Civilizations museum meme is also around, I admit, with e.g. the Museum of Fine Arts a particularly cogent example of that (ancient Egyption relics, dead artists, classical Greek artifacts....).

This is an areas with a lot of tech focus, though, and tech types like the latest and greatest stuff to play around with and show off--and that thread, again, runs through various of the museums, and the displays that some universities have.

Linkmeister @ 402:

Which causes me to give thanks to the gods of computing that by the time Y2K raised its ugly head we didn't have to deal with decks of cards anymore. Just imagine ...

JMO: "And last I checked, Christmas was still the second-most prominent focus of the year in the Catholic calendar."

Focus does not necessarily indicate the thrust of the official teachings— I'm sure that priests will focus on days that get the congregations in the pews (C & E Catholics, we used to call them.) Easter is a high holiday; Christmas is not. I'm pretty sure the other high holiday is Pentecost.

For that matter, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (not of Jesus) may be more important in the eyes of the church. I don't know; I didn't study for a religious vocation, I only had friends who did. (Fascinating discussion topics, really.)

Open-threadiness: just finished Brust & Bull's Freedom and Necessity, and while TNH may have been the ideal reader for that book, I appear to have come pretty close to that Platonic ideal. I was thoroughly charmed.

Bruce @ #415, Imagine, indeed. Yikes.

Bruce Cohen, #415: steampunk Y2K?

Dammit, another trifecta. Three people I know have died in the last 3 days. One (a local contradancer) was elderly, and died of a massive stroke/heart attack. The second (a fannish acquaintance from my Nashville days) was a little older than me, and died of cancer. The third (the father of a friend's fiancé) was again around my age, healthy and vigorous, and died unexpectedly in his sleep.

None of these were close friends, but still... not feeling so much in tune with the Christmas spirit at the moment.

Lee, I'm so sorry.

Oh! Joel Polowin @375, you may be my hero! I've ordered one of the collections containing McKenna's story just to make sure (and because the entire collection looks great), but timing-wise it looks like a winner; I would have read it from the library in the late 70's.

Won't get to read it for a couple of weeks, though - we're leaving for Puerto Rico tomorrow to visit friends, obtain a replacement title for the van, and see our son's nephrologist.

Serge @413 I have no fond memories of punched cards either. Presumably neither does Siriosa.

Oh, I have fond memories of punched cards. The ones that arranged the schedule for my senior year in high school gave me 6 home rooms and yearbook committee. After a couple of days I asked the guidance counselor if I could actually graduate with this schedule, and it got fixed.

I knew then that as long as there were computers, there would be work for the people who clean up after them.

Michael Roberts @ #417, I may not be the ideal reader, but I sure did fall in love with James in a hurry.

Lee @ #420, my condolences. Meanwhile, in yet another blow to the Athens music scene (2009 has been a terrible year), Vic Chesnutt died today.

Lee @420 Dammit, another trifecta.

It's like hearing bullets whiz past. When I think about it, I'm glad they missed me, but the closeness of it, the breeze on the skin: that's hard to feel serene about.

Sorry sorry. I hope the next trifecta isn't for another decade, at least.

Lee @ #420: My condolences!

I think the last time I actually used a card punch was about 1981, when I had to run a program at school on a computer that didn't understand anything else yet. I was happy not to have to use them for the rest of my stuff.

"Focus does not necessarily indicate the thrust of the official teachings— I'm sure that priests will focus on days that get the congregations in the pews (C & E Catholics, we used to call them.) Easter is a high holiday; Christmas is not. I'm pretty sure the other high holiday is Pentecost."

Pentecost is definitely up there; personally I'd rank it third, but I can understand arguments for ranking it higher. I'm not aware of an official designation of "high holy days" in Catholicism that includes only a handful of days, though there is a longer official list of Holy Days of Obligation. If you look at the Vatican web site's own Liturgical Year index, though, the three holidays specifically shown in the high-level view are Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost.

The early 20th century Catholic Encyclopedia's article on feasts includes some notes on historical precedence, noting Easter and Pentecost as the first universal feasts, followed in the fourth century by Christmas and the Epiphany, with various others following later on.

Christmas is, as you note, very popular even among folks who don't ordinarily go to church. But it's also very theologically important in current Catholic understanding. The notion of the Incarnation, the Word made flesh, and God "humbl[ing] himself to share in our humanity", is central to our whole sacramental philosophy of worship, where we commune with God through very tangible media: water, wheat, oil, wine, and various kinds of ministers, including both priests and spouses. All of these rely on imperfect and human elements, and can be seen as extensions of God's own reaching out to us as a human Himself.

So Christmas, in Catholic tradition, is nothing to be disdained (as it sometimes has been in some more puritan traditions). I've quite enjoyed celebrating Christmas today with my family and my parish, and wish a blessed Christmas today as well to all here who celebrate it.

Michael Roberts @ 422: Glad to help! The story sounded kind of familiar from your description, but as it happens, I have a copy of the original F&SF publication right at hand (donated to the Ottawa SF Society about a year ago) and read it yesterday. I'm quite sure I haven't read it before. It was quite good.

It's a pretty close match for your description. The viewpoint character is from a militaristic planet; they're trying to colonize the world in question to have a place to raise the dinosaur-like creatures whose ritual killing is his culture's rite of manhood. The character is a "blankie", lacking the forehead tattoo which goes with completing the killing, and sneered at by his colleagues because he is, by their culture's standards, not a man. The female character he falls in love with isn't a native, but part of a research team from another planet, there to study the native life.

Lee, my condolences as well.

Joel @429 - well, we shall see how well I remember it all. I sure don't remember the dinosaur creatures, but it's been a long time. All I really remember is those butterfly leaves and the fact that Boy and Girl end up taken into the great circle of life on the planet, but ... the mind is a malleable thing given enough time.

The collection I ordered, incidentally, was Worldmakers: SF Adventures in Terraforming (Gardner Dozois, like about 90% of collections, it seems). It should be pretty cool.

Lee, I'm sorry for your losses.

Lee, I'm so sorry.

Open thread query:

Mom was given an ASUS eee netbook, Windows 7 for Christmas. I'm trying to get it to connect to my pre-existing network (Ethernet, DSL, DYNEX Wireless-G router). It gets as far as locating the network, but then when I select it and click "connect" it asks me for a PIN from the router display screen. This router has no display screen. It offers me an alternative: "enter security key." I don't think I set up a password for the router, so what could it want here?

Any ideas?

The state of the me

My condolences, Lee.

Linkmeister, #433: does the router perhaps have a default password which you have forgotten?

Linkmeister at 433: My router came with a pre-set security key that was included in the setup booklet. It may also be on a label on the back of the router. I've had to type the long key in a couple of times when other people wanted to use my connection.

Linkmeister @ 433 ...

Are you sure that you're setting up WIFI rather than bluetooth?

Lee: My condolences.

In the year 3020 of the Third Age, all of Middle-earth had been overrun and occupied by the forces of Sauron.

... No, not all. One Shire of indomitable Hobbits remained free, and held out against Sauron's orcs. Asterix the Hobbit, and his friend Obelix (who fell into a cauldron of Ent-draught when he was a baby) and the druid Mithrandir, fought valiantly to free their land from Sauron's legionnaires...

Randolph @ #436 and Janet @ 437 have it right. When I set up the router I created a password which I promptly forgot, since I've never had to use it again. I had to go into the network map to get access to the router's security settings, but once I did I saw that password, entered it into the netbook at the correct prompt, and Bob's your uncle.

I'm sure there will be disadvantages to this little machine, but the major reason for getting it was its weight: under 3 lbs. When the end user is stuck in bed 24/7, the 6 or 7 lbs of a normal laptop was just too much. We tried that.

Lee @420 -- condolences from here as well.

On a different thread, not yet started, the article on Corporations and Octopodes got me thinking about the evolutionary biology of corporations. The hiring away of people from other corporations is like genetic reassortment (and attempting to use the other group's "fitness" to improve one's own); there's a parallel with island biogeography as new markets open up, both in physical space and in mental space; and though there's one primary selection pressure now (economic growth) I think we're seeing a need for recognizing different selection pressures. Hmm ... since Darwinism grew out of an economic theory anyway, perhaps it's time for another spin around the helix on applications.

The whole thing about new behaviors appearing that are unexpected is, of course, one of the reasons that I think the Internet is already sentient in ways we can't comprehend (just as one of my cells couldn't comprehend the functioning of my whole body, and the communications potential of hormones released for one local problem [e.g. histamines] ends up having global body effects that are unexpected in some cases, or even fatal [anaphylactic reactions]).

But that's another essay.

I'm reminded of a song from Hebrew school: [invented transliteration]Ayai M'kom K'vodo (the whole earth is full of His glory). It's a round in a major key, and I can't find anything resembling it online.

As for the McKenna story, it's from a category of science fiction that I don't think is written any more-- you find out that the world is deeply better than you thought.

David Duncan wrote those (this isn't Dave Duncan, the fantasy writer). So did Philip High. Arguably, Heinlein's "Lost Legacy" is an example. "Darwin's Radio" was in the sub-genre, but the science was so awful it didn't work for me.

Any others?

Hm, seems to be "respond to Paula Lieberman" day:

299, 319: It's the Kedusha (or Q'dushah depending on how you transliterate). And "qadosh qadosh qadosh Ad-nai tz'va`ot m'lo ha-aretz k'vodo" is roughly "holy, holy, holy: the glory of L-rd of Hosts fills the world". ("m'lo" is not the combination of the particle "m'-" with "no", it's the verb root מלא!)

Then at 385: the markings are cantillation/trope, the musical style is nusach.

(And Rikibeth at 305: v'ahavta.)

And then we have 384, and I go all music/physics-geeky: "1 in 100" is a rather poor characterization of the difference between 440 Hz and 444 Hz, because the scale is exponential. I get a 16% difference, which is not inconsequential.

Lee, #420, I'm sorry, but if things come in threes, maybe there won't be more deaths near you for a while.

Lila, #424, Vic Chesnutt died? I have a lot of his CDs; I'll have to have a listening day.

Nancy Lebovitz @443:
"Ayeh maqom k'vodo" ("Where is the Place of His glory?").

My condolences, Lee.

I see that in the wake of the most recent airline incident, some airlines are saying that you must stay in your seat in the final hour before landing, and can't have anything in your lap during that time.

More security theater

Lee - my condolences. Looking back, it's been not that great a year, and not that great a DECADE.

To the Fluorosphere - there was a link to a story months back which was an elegant and startling take on the Santa/Krampus meme: a man gets a surprise package from a distant relative and discovers he's next in line....

Can anyone point us to it? It was a knockout, but I didn't bookmark it and would really like to re-read it this season.

Thanks in advance.

Steve @ 447

While I probably shouldn't find it so amusing, the recent terrorist plot involving
explosive underwear reminds me of the Goon Show episode "Tales of Mens Shirts".

From now on, due to the recent air flight security incident, foreign passengers on US flights will just have to urinate on themselves if they need to get up and use the restroom during the last hour of the flight.

"Thank you for observing all safety precautions."

the measures "are designed to be unpredictable, so passengers should not expect to see the same thing everywhere."

Which reminds me of some part of the conversation over on the Peter Watts thread. #415
In Romania, there seemed to be no fixed rules...

Earl Cooley @ 450 -

foreign passengers on US flights will just have to urinate on themselves if they need to get up and use the restroom

It's all good, right? That'll just contribute to short-circuiting the detonators on the underwear bombs.

It's going to help the airlines so much. /s

One more reason to drive or take a train ....

#444 Geekosaur

It's 4 cycles in 440 or 444.... that's one percent. Hz = cycle per second. I wasn't analyzing in it terms of e.g. energy or power density and such....

Peudo-Serge alert...

The conversation that hurts....

Paula Lieberman @ 454...

"I'm not sure, but I think we've been insulted."
"I'm sure."

I won't be able to read a book during the last hour of my flight? WTF?! How is this going to make things more secure? As long as they're implementing arbitrary and nonsensical security measures, how about they let all of us with no testicles to hide powder behind to read, text, grab carry-ons, etc. at any point of the flight? Not looking forward to my next flight at all.

444 Hz is about 15.7 cents sharper than 440. In most musical contexts, that's going to be noticeable even to untrained ears.

FWIW, A=415 is about a half-tone below A=440. It makes a huge difference, esp. in the countertenor/alto/mezzo range. I shudder to think what 444 would feel like.

#456 and above:

What bright boy thought this one up?

So now the terrorists just set the bomb off 1.5 hours from landing. Or in the middle of the flight. Or 30 minutes after takeoff. Or do it by kicking the bag under the seat in front of them.

This is about as pointless a piece of security theater as I've ever heard of.

(My favorite was the TSA person who looked at my ticket & my passport and missed the completely different last names. Isn't that what they're supposed to be looking for?)

Lee, I add my condolences.

Re flying: sounds I'm not going to be able to a)go to the bathroom, or b) read during the last hour of flight Are the flight attendants going to come through the aisles and collect the seat pocket magazines? Are they going to eliminate them? Will we be forbidden to bring books on board for flights that are under than two hours flying time? That howl you hear is the collective wail from the airline executives who have to try to make a profit while TSA goes all loony tunes.

When were these new regs proposed, written, voted upon and put into place and by whom?

What about my baby?

We're just told in the NY Times and yahoo etc. that this new layer of regs has been laid upon airflight passengers via homeland security.

Love, c.

Well, you could read a book held in front of your face or placed on the tray table. Presumably you'd be less likely to make mischief if your hands were in site.

I'm flying back to Oregon next Saturday. I plan on spending my time making sketches of an automated wedgie machine for the jackass who made this security hobgoblinerry necessary. Eight hours a day for life sounds about right. Testing of the device would be performed on the TSA officials who made up the actual rules. Periodic calibration, too.

#450: The picture on that link shows a TSA guy in blue gloves (one assumes latex/nitrile). But my first thought was Firefly/Serenity, and the frightening guys in blue gloves River was afraid of.

uh...

My favorite quote regarding the failed hijacking thus far:

"Weenie roast in first class."

Paula Lieberman @454:
I'm not talking about power or etc. You don't add a value to a note frequency to get the next note; you multiply. The correct comparison by percentage is done on a logarithmic scale¹, which gives you about 15.7% (as noted by Tim Walters above).

(feel free to skip the footnote unless you're a physics geek or a pedant...)
¹ It's log-12 because the tempered chromatic scale is based on dividing the octave into 12 equally-sized notes, but that "equally sized" is on an exponential scale. As a result, to get from a note to the next half-note up, you multiply by 2^1/12. Conversely, to figure a percentage difference, it must be done on a logarithmic scale, and with the tempered chromatic scale this means a base-12 logarithm. To wit:

(logBase 12 444 - logBase 12 440) * 100 / (logBase 12 466 - logBase 12 440)
15.763268617736921

Or, according to the note I have in my Handbook of Chemistrty, marking the page with the scales (three tunings, A=440, A=435 and C=256), the nth semitone above a note of frequency f is f*(e^((n/12)*ln 2))

And an octave doubles the frequency.

I should probably add that the "2" in the preceding gobbledygook is the reason why the scale is exponential: the note an octave above any given note has precisely twice the frequency. So, using our example: we are comparing 444 to 440, but if you step both up an octave it is now 888 (not 884) to 880. This is why linear comparisons don't work.

geekosaur @ 465: The correct comparison by percentage is done on a logarithmic scale1, which gives you about 15.7% (as noted by Tim Walters above). ... As I said earlier, nearly 16% is nothing to sneeze at, and is easily audible.

That's 15.7% of a semitone, though, which is an arbitrary unit, so you can't really tell anything from the raw number.

I should like to hear some classical music (pre-Bach) done with chromatic tuning. Are there any groups out there doing that? These days, we don't have the same differences between, say, B-flat major and A major that chromatic tuning did.

Equal tempering is what we're all accustomed to, so I'd expect the music to sound strange and out-of-tune, but wonderful nonetheless.

—For you non-music geeks, there didn't use to be an equal distance between notes, because there was no way to measure it reliably. People tuned to resonant frequencies— a fifth was really a fifth, a fourth really a fourth, and so on. I actually have a chart somewhere where I did the mathematical "errors" between an equal tempering and the old-fashioned tuning. A fifth is pretty much the same, but fourths and seconds are fairly different, and minor keys became seriously strange to modern ears.

Bach is not the exact divergence point, but the invention of the pianoforte is a pretty good measure of when tuning started to change, and Bach has a famous piece entitled "The Well-Tempered Clavier," which basically means The Piano That Uses Modern Tuning.

[...] we should all be glad that Richard Reid wasn't the "underwear bomber." ***

Sigh.

Oh dear. My condolences, Lee.

B. Durbin @ 469: There is actually a bewildering variety of pre- (and post-) ET tunings. The Well-Tempered Clavier was written for "well temperament" (of which, to add to the confusion, there is more than one flavor). It's close to ET but not quite there.

Wikipedia has a pretty good brief history of intonation.

The Just Intonation Network has some MP3 examples of the difference between just intonation and equal temperament.

Tim Walters @468:
It was "arbitrary" back when the tempered chromatic scale was introduced, and is "arbitrary" to the extent that the singer in question was obviously trained in a different chromatic scale. I suspect that the comparison between standard 440 Hz A, the "off-key" A, and standard A# is "natural" for most people here, though.

(Bonus trivia: the standard US dial tone is based on the 440 Hz A, which is the official standard calibration frequency for the standard tempered chromatic scale.)

Here's a (somewhat slanted) discussion of the 440 Hz vs. 444 Hz A issue. This is the sanest one I found on a quick check; the others liked to focus on the fact that the C above middle A is 528 Hz instead of 523 Hz in the 444 Hz-A system, and how this number has some mystical resonance or other. Nobody talking about how natural middle-C-plus-an-octave is 512 Hz, though. *eyeroll*

I meant arbitary in the sense that it would be just as reasonable to base cents on (say) whole tones instead of semitones, in which case the difference would be 7.83 "cents". Whereas the actual frequency ratio (1.00909...) is unitless.

For those looking for more detailed info on historical intonation than the Wikipedia article provides, Kyle Gann's got it (with plenty of opinions as well).

On reflection, I see what you're saying: that 444 is 15.7% of the way to (440-based) B-flat. So: "arbitrary" isn't quite right.

God save me from people with perfect pitch.* If I were tuned to A444 and the other 40 people in the orchestra/choir were tuned to A440, I would be out of tune and it would be incumbent upon me to match the ensemble. Assuming pitch isn't varying widely at more than a whole step, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg for me to shift just a bit. Well, I suppose it might break my A string, but I doubt the difference between 440 and 444 is going to do that.

And to tie it in with the shiny new TSA regs, if I can't futz around with reading material for the last hour of my flight back from Poland, perhaps I should lead the coach section in some rousing drinking songs. Or maybe some Lieder or sea shanties.

*OK, so that's a little sour-grapey.

Nerdycellist @ 447:

You could sing the TSA drinking song:
"One hundred IEDs on the wall,
One hundred IEDs,
If one IED should happen to fall
( ( ( { { { BOOM! } } } ) ) ) "

Three people from my household are going to be flying to the US from Schiphol in the next fortnight. The first of us is my dad, flying the same route as the leg guy*.

Not looking forward to this at all. Even less forward-looking is going on than before, when the only barriers were jet lag, sitting in the tiny loud place for hours, and US border security.

-----
* Must learn his name now that news sources have probably settled on one. We compared notes across four online sources in two languages and got six different names.

By the way, Bruce Schneier wins at least one internet with this:

"I wish that, just once, some terrorist would try something that you can only foil by upgrading the passengers to first class and giving them free drinks."

#469 B.

I think that the Boston Early Music Consortium uses period tonalities. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston sometimes has concerts with people playing actual period instruments, and therefore, also, the tonalities are the period tonalities for the instruments....

And when one hears music played with e.g. sackbutts and krumhorns....

As for the all "It HERTZ!" discussion (some audio is painful, too....), I again point out I was pointing at it in terms of frequency comparisons of the type used in e.g. communications, where typically the information rate is around 10% of the carrier frequency if I remember that stuff correctly.... so if the carrier is 440 Hz, there's approproximately 44 bits of data per second transmissable... or maybe it's 22... on second thought....

Oops, that's irrelevant. (Irrevelant red herring discussion left below... irrelevant because digital audio discussion musings excursion I went on is irrelevant to analog audio discussion about off-pitched-ness....).

I was not comparing an concert A US or concert A European to a B-flat, I was comparing the two A tones in terms of cycles per second off from one another--that is, relative pitch of A to A, not what percentage of a step to a B-flat!

http://www.violinist.com/discussion/response.cfm?ID=11273

440 or 442?
Orchestra: Which does your orchestra tune to?

[Sample excerpts:]

From Nate Robinson
Posted on May 11, 2007 at 07:08 AM
Lots of orchestras tune to 442. According to a well known orchestral violinist I know, Boston Symphony Orchestra tunes to 444, NY Phil tunes to 443, and Berlin Phil tunes to 445. I personally really don't like 440 - I tune usually to 443 or 444 when I practice.

From Ben Clapton
Posted on May 11, 2007 at 01:38 PM

....Good fun for the oboists is to tune the winds to A=440, the brass to A=441 and the strings to A=442 to see if anyone notices

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

Music gore:

http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/harmony/pyth.html#intro1

Thinking back to digital audio stuff, standard old CD 44.1 kilosamples per second of two channels of 16 bit data had 96 dB dynamic range, with 6 dB of dynamic range per bit.

The 44.1 ksamples/sec corresponded to sampling at 44.1 kHz, and could reproduces sounds to about 20 kHz...

Joel Polowin @440 - With Legolas living in a nearby tree and singing badly?

I wish that, just once, some terrorist would try something that you can only foil by upgrading the passengers to first glass (sic) and giving them free drinks.

In a better world, trying to make this happen would be the premise of a screwball comedy. A real terrorist plot would be foiled in the process.

Nancy Lebovitz @443: As for the McKenna story, it's from a category of science fiction that I don't think is written any more-- you find out that the world is deeply better than you thought [..] Any others?

John Brunner's The Stone That Never Came Down comes to mind. I recall an interview where he said he been writing novels which all came to unhappy conclusions, and set himself to writing one with an optimistic ending.

geekosaur @ #474

"Nobody talking about how natural middle-C-plus-an-octave is 512 Hz, though. *eyeroll*"

That's probably because Middle C of 256Hz was/is the scientific one used for teaching Physics in schools.

Somewhere I have a 256Hz tuning fork....

Cadbury Moose @ 485... I have a 256Hz tuning fork

Me, I got two sonic screwdrivers on Christmas.

abi @ 480: I wish that, just once, some terrorist would try something that you can only foil by upgrading the passengers to first class and giving them free drinks.

I was just thinking that a logical ultimate step would be to incapacitate all the passengers, either by sedation or booze. Clothing can be fabricated from nitrocellulose -- that was one of the earliest uses of the material; see "mother-in-law silk" -- and there are many ways to create a spark.

O dear Lord, and here I am, flying tomorrow. I'm going to bust a gasket. I'm going to read a book the whole time, and will report on my experiences here.

I hate morons. (By which I don't mean the one that tried to set off fireworks in a plane.)

Well, I think it's up to the individual airlines on how silly they're going to be, honestly. Some of them have a modicum of good sense.

It appears that the new regulations apply only to international flights. For now.

I can hardly wait for this summer, then (trip to Hungary). Also we'll see tomorrow whether or not they consider Puerto Rico international. (Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.)