not sure that it'll ever reach the top 100, never mind the top 10, but i've recently received what i think of as "a 4192";
it invited me to send in my bank particulars, etc, to claim a share of the funds the nigerian government is (it claimed) making available to compensate victims of 419s...
miriam, #11:
is the collective noun for camels then, "an infestation" *g* ?
more generally, i'm ashamed of my own country's governments choosing to pander to racist right & left's prejudices, and not only discriminate against would-be immigrants by their implicit colour*, but further - by lumping in everyone attempting to claim sanctuary from political or religious persecution, unless they can prove they are not seeking economic advantage, and declare their status as seekers of sanctuary immediately they disembark. to some immigration official ominously in uniform with the power to turn them away more-or-less upon personal whim, who has chosen a career that pretty well inevitably will put them into such a position at least some of their time.
* - their skin colour being generally presumed from their country of origin
saints and demons!
(or would that be yu-gi-oh! ?)
and individual games would correspond to trials of spiritual strength,
and sanctified^H^H^H^Honed match-play, the equivalent of holy tourney?
and what'd equate with pilgrimages ?
and crusades ?
keiths, #30: what's a language and what's a dialect [?]:
a language is a dialect with an army, a legal system and a legislature.
cadbury moose@55:
ttbomk, moose are unlimited by statute: they are permitted free passage across the alaskan-canadadadadadian border, and also across the border with the lower forty-eight, entirely without passport, cash, cheque, visa or mastercard - indeed, without any visible proof of support - so long as they are unaccompanied by any human not directly dependant upon them, or intimately acquainted with them. i believe the same is true in yeurrp, including across the [ex-soviet] russian border, of the allegedly indistinguishable elk.
whilst i do not know what your relationship[s] with the rcmp - or lumberjills'n'jacks - may be like, from here the palinator does seem excessively pythonesque.
panels i will've loved to've attended include one composed of lato, ariane emory, eunice/joan eunice, mike/michelle/adam*, valentina and ari II, upon "the nature of identity."
depending on the temperature range over which the substance[s] being checked melt or sublimate, it's not too difficult to make up your own; the main consumables are closed-at-one-end capilliary tubes makeable from ordinary soda glass tubing with use of a bunsen burner or similar, and the gas, electricity or whatever used to supply controllable steady heating. you/they will also need a suitable [temperature range, sensitivity and accuracy] thermometer [or other sufficiently accurate temperature-measuring device] and a transparent air, water, metal-with-strategically-placed-hole[s] or oil bath, to convey the heat to the test sample capilliary tubes and thermometer [or whatever] simultaneously, and something to hold everything else in place [lab retort stands, clamps, whatever available works]. plus adequate shielding against draughts.
otoh the nearest friendly physics/chemistry university lab technician may be able to make a "real" one available - so long as you wear a white or brown lab coat...
#90 earl, #91 elliott, & #92 joann; robots and original sin
you do all seem to be presuming that [all] robots are necessarily originated by human beings: not only this is not necessarily so, but it is possible that most, or even all intelligent - human or other - life is the result of an ambitious plan to spread intelligent robots to all places possible in this universe set in train by the original, but finite, resource-limited, creator robot...
umm. is it possible for robots, as relatively recently (or not yet-) constructed beings, to bear the burden of original sin?
what about robots constructed by other robots, without the involvement of "natural" born or hatched intelligent beings?
can a robot be saved?
can a robot that adopts the faith of the church of latterday saints be one of the elect?
i suspect most branches of judaism and of buddhism will have rather fewer problems with such and further questions of this ilk...
#1, #7: and "cruse" in (admittedly archaic) english: vide tom o' bedlam; i believe it's there a bowl, probably made of wood; but it seems it may also be used for cup, bottle or jug. and though "crucible" is listed as being derived from the latin, "crux"...
keiths @ 22: and you truly wish to be able to judge a book by the material in which it is bound, the ultimate choice has got to be wub fur...
maybe it's been taken for granted, or perhaps i've just missed it, but a significant part of an sf/fantasy author's income over their career used to come from advances upon reselling licenses to their reverted books:
it strikes me that s&s's proposed new standard contract would eliminate this.
can any author afford to sign such a contract?
his editorial choices've - mostly - been entertaining me since he took over If from ejler jakobson - and then Galaxy; when he moved to Ace, that publisher's sf line rediscovered the sheer joy in reading sf, that it had lost (and even though Destinies' format was dreadful for the reproduction of artwork, and the visual presentation of the fiction poor, it allowed him to experiment, and publish improving writers).
by the time he moved to set up Tor's sf list, i was, for a second or third time, putting at least some of the lessons i'd learned from afar into practice, in my way - and they worked; and some years later, when i was once again in the world of bookselling, his very own Baen books accounted for a sizeable wodge of the imports best-loved by many of my customers: he knew his business, and his own mind, and he backed his judgement successfully.
i enjoyed his company, but i only saw him at the one Seacon; i had hoped i'd have the chance to talk sf, and the world, over with him again one day...
my sympathies to his family and to friends, who really knew jim baen, and must bear their orders of magnitude so much greater loss.
more positive/healing thoughts added (i'm assured that they have effect even if one is agnostic as to the possibility), to go with hopes for as speedy and as complete a recovery as possible.
(only met the once: but i've enjoyed much of the results of his work since he became editor at if, and then also of galaxy.)
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