The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Jon Sobel:

Show all comments by Jon Sobel.

Posted on entry The phony middle, and why we fall for it ::: April 04, 2007, 04:09 PM:
Cheney can't be Ben Grimm. Ben Grimm is Jewish.
Posted on entry In which culture moves from a traditional base in a consensual collective endeavour to forms which are rationalised by commodification and led by individuals with interests which are separated from the purposes of the population as a whole ::: January 26, 2006, 12:06 PM:
I am opposed to paying for lossy music files in the first place. One of my favorite places to buy music downloads is Magnatune because, in addition to selling a lot of excellent early/baroque music, they offer uncompressed downloads. I want to buy what the musicians and producers came out of the studio intending for me to hear.

Whisperado's tracks, will, however, be available for download at iTunes and elsewhere. We're not dumb...
Posted on entry Two Thousand Years and it's Still True ::: September 19, 2005, 11:08 AM:
Wow, so fuzzy math's been around for that long...
Posted on entry We Get Letters ::: August 23, 2005, 11:34 AM:
Some months ago I got a call from a New York State congressman's office inviting me to a Bush fundraising event. I blogged about it here. The other day they called again. Somehow my "business" phone number got on their list awhile back, and presumably will be on it forever. These things happen all the time...
Posted on entry Better bad sentences ::: August 05, 2005, 09:58 PM:
Last night I dreamt I was a testicle again.
Posted on entry Attack of the Giant Hogweed ::: July 20, 2005, 12:42 PM:
It's true, you can't scare a plant, but (except in Harry Potter stories) you can safely walk around it. Walking around a rattlesnake that's blocking your trail is scary business, though.
Posted on entry Attack of the Giant Hogweed ::: July 20, 2005, 11:23 AM:
For years I thought the Giant Hogweed was a fictional plant made up for the Genesis song. Then awhile back I read something about it in the news. And now it's on Making Light. I do a lot of hiking in New York and New Jersey - now I'll have to look out for Giant Hogweed in addition to bears (one encounter so far) and rattlesnakes (three encounters). (If you're curious, rattlesnakes are scarier.)
Posted on entry A seedweight of strong old speech ::: April 15, 2005, 02:38 PM:
The issue of when to use Anglo-Saxon vs. Latinate words is critical in writing song lyrics (and English poetry, of course). Lyrics on common topics like love (or angst) tend to be almost entirely Anglo-Saxon. I don't think there's a single Latinate word in "Nowhere Man," and I believe there's only one in "Blackbird," to name a couple. Too many Latinate words tends to make a lyric seem intellectual, although contrasting them with Anglo-Saxon words can contribute to humor, as in John Hiatt's "Perfectly Good Guitar":

Oh it breaks my heart to see those stars
Smashing a perfectly good guitar
I don’t know who they think they are
Smashing a perfectly good guitar

"Guitar" aside (the subject of the verse doesn't count), "perfectly" is the only Latinate word. The cliched phrase "perfectly good" itself is a Latin-Anglo construct that uses a "sophisticated" sort of word to shade the meaning of a blunt one.
Posted on entry Neurological update ::: April 11, 2005, 10:32 AM:
Glad to read the good news, if a few days late. Neurologists do seem to be an iffy bunch. My wife recently was referred to one who didn't even want to talk to or examine her, just wanted to immediately hook her up to some painful electric-shock testing device. She walked right out on him. I still like my family doctor's attitude when I come to see him. Knowing full well that I'm essentially healthy, he says, "What the fuck do you want?" Puts things in perspective.
Posted on entry Open thread 38 ::: March 23, 2005, 06:26 PM:
My grandfather coined sort of an opposite for hubris: downmanship. Didn't catch on, though.
Posted on entry Misprescribed ::: February 18, 2005, 04:35 PM:
Just dropped in after seeing you and Patrick last night - I trust the fact that you looked well means that you're on your way back from wrong-dose hell! My full sympathies.

The whole things sounds suspicious to me. I'll bet it was a nefarious plot by some acquaintance who, cursed with merely-average intelligence, got frustrated trying to Keep Up With The Nielsen Haydens.
Posted on entry Grieving process ::: November 08, 2004, 05:44 PM:
My grieving process is over. I'm calling for a general strike.
Posted on entry Grieving process ::: November 08, 2004, 01:07 PM:
"Reality-based language, fraud, folly, truth, history, and knitting"

Where's the knitting?
More knitting, please.
Posted on entry Why, yes, that is odd ::: November 04, 2004, 04:35 PM:
Blackboxvoting.org is filing huge Freedom of Information Act requests for voting machine records, right down to the Windows Event Viewer logs. Retroactive adjustments of exit polls add more fuel to the conspiracy theory fire. This confirmed skeptic is starting to wonder if this election might really have been stolen.

Comment statistics for Jon Sobel on the Making Light blog

YearNumber of comments posted
20071
20061
20059
20043

Total: 14 comments. View all these comments on a single page.