On second thought, I'll take that concession ftw.
Yes we did.
Pardon me if, after the past two elections, I believe it only when Obama takes the oath of office.
@40: I was thinking of the costs of implementation and access, but I'm not sure that could be correct. While it's possible to do it on the cheap, creating a quality e-book can require some specialty software for the lay-out/design (I'm thinking of Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, and Distiller) to ensure it doesn't look like rubbish. Each of those can run to several hundred dollars.
Access, too, in the sense that, like DVDs and CDs, e-books require secondary hardware for viewing. One can simply buy a book; $24 buys you a complete, basically DRM-free, whereas one needs a phone or an e-reader or a Kindle to purchase e-books that are often almost as expensive as their physical counterparts and which are often locked to the hardware they were purchased on.
Those are my guesses, anyway. They're probably more likely incorrect than correct.
***
I'm not sure if it's been mentioned in any threads' comment sections, but I haven't heard much about our gracious host's condition/recovery lately. I'm hoping no news is good news, and that you're recovering well, Teresa.
@Linkmeister: I was not. That's rad, in a way.
Woody Allen is a clarinetist, too, isn't he?
My favorite exhibit in the Metropolitan Museum of Art has always been Benny Goodman's clarinet. I wish I'd seen it with my grandfather.
@Terry: I was unaware of the 'ctrl' trick, but then again, I'm a lazy surfer. I understand if there's something in the coding/hosting that prevents it, but I remember when Neil Gaiman was finally able to default his site to open links in new tabs (he was happy enough about the development to mention it, in fact), and how it made things so much easier. I ask, in fact, more out of curiosity than anything else, and because, when I'm here on Making Light, I dislike navigating away from the page.
(also, there's a missing "a way" between 'there' and 'you' in the last P of my post)
Being a former clarinetist myself, I always love finding out who else played. Eddie Izzard was a clarinetist, and Spielberg apparently sat third or fourth chair under John Williams for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (as he told James Lipton).
I was in 8th grade when I soloed on "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." I think my favorite part of playing was seeing sheet music, and playing it, and hearing a familiar song come out. I think it came out most with Tchaikovsky and the theme from Sleeping Beauty (da-da-da-di-da-da-da-dum-de-dah-di-da-da-da-da).
I remember always wanting it to rock, though. I used to pick up sheet music to popular songs in the hope of playing them. I discovered early on one can't rock "November Rain" on the clarinet, though. That was a sad, sad day.
And final aside (just in case it's been buried and no one has seen the request): is there you contributors can set the particles/sidelights to open in new tabs by inserting the "blank" into the code, rather than having the reader right click? Would it just be a whole lot more work for you?
Wesley @ 25 ("I love horror movies but haven't rented many of the "Eight Films to Die For" series (which at this point seems to include at least 16 movies, the way the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy runs to five volumes"): That's because it's a yearly occurrence tied to Horrorfest, and began in 2006.
So they're actually up to 24.
Besides that, you're largely right about the content, it seems (link to Wikipedia article on the series).
Okay, seriously, all the Ike stuff on the frontpage is fine, but I really, really want to know that Teresa's okay.
Please be okay, Teresa.
You too, Patrick.
Happy birthday, Xopher.
Today is my former supervisor's wedding anniversary. I haven't seen her in a couple of years but I wish her all the best.
As for the rest: sorry, but grief is normal for me today. I'm not scared or angry so much, but one further happy thing is that I've come to accept it's okay to hurt. And it still does, and I still do.
Sorry to be a downer. Didn't mean to.
Really I stopped by because Making Light's thread that day was my lifeline (oddly, it won't show in the archives), and so I wanted to say thank you to all of you. What gave me comfort was that you were still here.
Raphael (215): No, no one here. That's the definition from dictionary.com. So somebody must think that's what 'decency' is.
@Abi: yeah, I get it, and I'm really not trying to be deliberately obtuse. Michael's a bit right about what I mean, concerning pulling punches, but there's also this element of "when you're done discarding the principles you're fighting for," which to me smacks of moral superiority, and that's something better left to the Right.
Albatross tells me I'm selling potassium cyanide, but he says "Right now some terrorism suspect is being tortured." And if McCain wins, that will not change.
I just bristle at the idea of "we're better than this," because I don't feel that way at all. I feel weak and powerless and flawed, because those in power have so outright abused it, and I want someone who's going to speak plainly and expose the evil. I'm not saying that I want Obama to attack Palin's family; I want him to note that the moral attacks on his character are ironic, given their sources. I want him and Biden to quickly, methodically, deliberately, and conclusively destroy the opposing ticket. I want him to note first that there are terrorism suspects who are being tortured, that this will continue if McCain is elected because McCain has come out in support of it, and then to boldly and emphatically state that given the definition of terrorism as using fear to control and hold power, the GOP is, at this point, a party of terrorism.
To address Michael's response, no, I don't think Obama should sling the stinkiest mud possible. I don't think he needs to. I think he should look Palin dead in her eye and say, "You were president of one of the least populous states in the union. Some student council presidents have more political experience than you. I was the senator of Illinois. That's the one with Chicago in it, in case you were too busy studying your Bible to get to geography."
So I think maybe Michael's also right that we're talking about different things in a way? Sorry I misunderstood you. I'm just way less concerned about winning people's hearts and minds than I am about winning their votes.
@Abi (141): So what country do you live in? I live in America (first Jersey, then LA, now Colorado), and ours is a country founded on strife that has, in its two-and-a-half hundred year history, rarely known much else. Not just with other countries, but also in our own. The Civil War: strife. Two World Wars: strife. Korea and Vietname: strife. And it's not just the wars; the civil rights movement: strife.
It's all strife, beginning to end, and I can't remember the last time in recent memory standing back and letting the issues decide the cause has actually worked.
I won't claim our nation was founded on racism and sexism because it was a product of another era. But I will say it took hundreds of years to recognize it and fix it, and that doing so was rarely accomplished by claiming decency. It was accomplished through strife.
Because the oppression? The oppression of rights to blacks and women and gays? The claim of pro-life? The claim of "family values"? Those are perpetrated by people in the name of decency. If decency is conformity to a recognized standard of propriety, good taste, and modesty, I say forget it. I say leave it to those who claim the moral high ground.
I don't. I don't mind being indecent at times. No one's ever called me modest, and people question my taste all the time. And I think, this time around, we need to win a decisive victory. It's not enough to try to let the Right's attack machine run itself into the ground, because that hasn't worked in nearly a decade. My biggest fear is that the election will be as close as it has the past two times. Because if it is, you can guarantee that the Right will not sit quietly by to let it occur, as they so radically proved in Florida in 2000. And yes, I'll admit, it is a fear; I'm quite literally terrified of the idea of four more years of the same old thing.
"God damn it, people, we're better than this."
Right. Because being better helped us out so much in the past two elections. Two of our best and most respected candidates couldn't beat their worst, and the guy now running Right isn't even that bad (like any sequel, he's simply a regurgitation of the original, only weaker [obvious exception to The Empire Strikes Back]).
@Sten (119): I don't know; it still seems likely that McCain chose Palin solely because she wears skirts, and not for any of her policies. He's know for saying he makes decisions faster than the other guy, so it's not as if he's claiming he chose her for the subtle nuances of her execution of policy. When's he's claiming she has foreign policy experience because Alaska is, like, close to Russia? Seems absurd to me.
I've been waiting for an open thread to ask this; is it possible for the administrators to make the particles/sidelights open in new tabs? I mean, I know I can do it on my end, right-clicking and such, but I've always liked the {target="_blank"} links because they've made browsing so much easier . . .
Just thought I'd ask.
How many different ways are there to be "in," because I'm totally all of them.
Fucking. Rad.
Oh, and hey, on a sidenote, being that this is an open thread: what online news sources do most readers here prefer? I always used MSNBC.com as my homepage, but lately the 1) typos and 2) seemingly blatant political biases have been making me want to switch, but I don't know where to go. My favorite newspaper ever is the Philadelphia Inquirer, not least because it's basically my hometown; I never liked the New York Times because they don't have a comics section, which seems to me to say they take themselves too seriously (but probably seems only to me). I tried ABCnews.com and a few others, but they all seem too MSNBC-ish, and I'd like to get away from that.
So any suggestions?
@ Lindra: as Chris' post alludes, I think blood "pudding" and "sausage" are the same thing. I remember it was fried, and the only reason it was vaguely sausage-y was that it had a sort of membrane we removed to eat it.
Keep in mind, they always called it kasjanka, and only used any other term to tell me what it was.
And yes, as I remember, the mustard did become the predominant taste, but that was the point, for me; I have an almost overwhelming reaction to texture and not a bit of a sweet tooth, which made the kasjanka unpalatable.
But it was impolite not to eat it, nearly an insult, and it was brunch with my then-fiance's parents and grandmother, so.
@13 (Steve) and 43 (Mary): neither of which mentions Southern New Jersey, which is where I'm from (across the way from Philly), which is an entirely other beast yet.
I love that I now know dietary zombie information, and that brains are not Atkins compatible.
What do they call brains on a menu? Sweetbreads, is it? Or is that a lymph gland? I had it at one of the trendier restaurants here in LA a long while back.
I rather enjoyed it. Crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside.
@Magenta: I've had tongue, too. I was once engaged to a Polish girl whose family introduced me to all manner exotic foods. That was the big one, but there was kasjanka, too. I might be spelling that wrong. It was blood pudding, which actually more closely resembled sausage. But it was softer. It required some mustard for my palate.
Heh. Meanwhile, my peeve is the Martini bar, because, seriously, just serving it in that glass doesn't make the damned thing a martini.
Gin. Vermouth. An olive.
Putting vodka in that glass doesn't make it a vodka martini. It makes it a kangaroo. Even my mother knows that (but, then, she's a bartender, sometimes).
I once drank martinis in the Algonquin with my former English advisor. Still the best I've had (though the ones at the Hollywood Roosevelt run close).
Midori @ 255: my first question as a copy editor would've been "What's Web 2.0? So far as I know, the Internet isn't software, and can't come with a latest version. Was there a beta, and can we expect a version 2.1, or perhaps Web 2.0 SP1? If not, please use more specific terminology."
But then again, I was copy editor for a psychiatric nursing journal, which just goes to further show what do I know, anyway?
Teresa @ 268: can I speak for lots of people to say "'Course not"?
221: to take that article on online censorship as an 'irony' when viewed in the light of this thread is a bit absurd, I think. That article referred to artists and their work, which is quite pointedly not what is occurring here (although never-whatever's sock-puppetry and most of the posts in this thread do seem to nearly elevate trolling to an art [for varying defintions of 'art'. Seems it's really like that Virgin Mary painted with dung fiasco a few years back; you can call it art if you like, but it still doesn't make it any good]).
I've reread the BoingBoing post several times, and I can't for the life of me think of it as self-congratulatory nor self-aggrandizing. I'm not familiar with Cory's work save Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, but characterizing him as an 'enthusiast' seems terrifically appropriate. The tone I got from the post was nothing so much as "Hey, this neat-o story I wrote just got translated! How rad is that?"
To which I say: rock on. Rock on indeed.
But there's something else: given the sock-puppetry, I wonder if this is all the work of one troll named Scott who posted first as "FlyingSquid" and who also frequents the Slacktivist. It seems that much of the argument in the comments section of the original BoingBoing post cites "honest" or "balanced" criticism, as if calling someone "self-aggrandizing" is actually either. I know the IP addresses mightn't match, but given the comments made here by never-whoever, I'm not sure it matters.
Jim @ 232:
Posts like that are precisely the reason I've convinced at least half of the USC writing program to read Making Light. The other half; well, I think our program is unique in that the work is so divided and just about anyone can find a home. Sure, there are the smaller, more "literary" stories one might find in MFA programs, but me, I've been writing about time machines and vampires and things that go boom in the night as long as I've been there.
Jack @ 241:
I understand the sentiment, but one guest to another, I wouldn't worry about it. I'm often intimidated by the sheer number of distinctly intelligent people who frequent this site (to be honest, I sometimes feel like the kid who scored a place at the adult table), but rarely do I feel unwelcome to contribute (and heck, even the moments I lodge my foot in my mouth [which doesn't happen often only because I don't post often], people are generally pretty understanding). I think it's at least partially because the one thing that gets singled out is not ignorance but rather rudeness. Everyone's ignorant about something, but not everybody feels the need to be an asshole about it.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 1 |
| 2008 | 16 |
| 2007 | 32 |
| 2006 | 11 |
| 2005 | 56 |
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