The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by cmk:

Open thread rant: the Sac Bee this morning carried an article on projected health effects of global warming and quoted Inhofe, channeling Crichton, on how this was all politics and it would be more effective to bring back DDT to combat malaria. Inhofe is allowed to say that "DDT was banned worldwide thirty years ago because of its effect on wildlife."

I wrote a letter pointing out that this is untrue (all right, I called Inhofe a liar) and got this response from a party at the paper:

"Am I to take it that this Wikipedia entry about DDT is incorrect?

'DDT was subsequently banned for agricultural use worldwide, but its limited use in disease vector control continues to this day in certain parts of the world and remains controversial.' "

Anyone?

That's right, his source is Wiki-bloody-pedia. And no, the source does not say there is a "world wide ban" on all uses of DDT.

I think Rowling's comment is interesting and I can see grounds for it in the text. I don't really understand what the lit-crit-based fuss is about.

As to ungendered characters, I don't think anyone's mentioned the late Sarah Caudwell's amateur detective Professor Hilary Tamar. Hilary comments favorably on the physical charms of both male and female characters through a (too short) series of novels and remains definitely ambiguous to this day, unless I mean ambivalent.

Alex @ 634: cf. Cohen the Barbarian and the Silver Horde. Pratchett, Terry, various refs.

Since the question's in the air I've taken the occasion to re-Google myself.

Thanks to a commonplace first name and the proliferation of anti-Bowling for Columbine messages I've moved down from page 4, where I was for years, all the way to 17. The first source that turns up (and the only one for the couple more pages where I've looked) seems unlikely, but there it is.

Nancy #326: I suspect if you can't get into Excellent Women you may as well stop there. I re-read Pym regularly and that's probably my favorite.

I mean [from memory, not checking for precise wording], "love must be like having a large white rabbit suddenly thrust into your arms"? Who can resist it?

I agree, R. gallica was the first thing that came to my mind as well, until I looked again at "blood" red; it's usually described as "light" red, I think. I am nearly sure there are no strong reds among the Damasks, though.

What I did think of later was the modern Gallica hybrids such as 'Poinsettia' and 'James Mason.'

Deserts figure prominently in several Terry Pratchett books; Pyramids is the first that comes to mind.

'Altissimo' is a superb blood-red just-more-than-single rose crowned with golden stamens. I don't know how successful it'd be in a container, since it's a short-growing (in my experience) climber. No scent, though.

While I agree that the right (or possibly human nature) projects its own tactics onto its opponents, I think this is simpler: Damage to Robert Bork is just not the same as damage to "the 80-year-olds who aren’t wealthy lawyers with lots of powerful friends, or the 30-year-olds without medical insurance who are one bad day away from bankruptcy."

It's a lot more important.

[Dang. Not only first post, but I finally get to write something after biting my figurative tongue all day on the subject of Mormon underwear, and other aspects of that thread.]

Huh. I hadn't noticed generics were gone--but then it's been a while, even before I switched to the co-op, that I've pursued that "follow the outer wall of the market" principle.

I remember having read The Man Who Folded Himself, but next to nothing about it. Only comment I can make is that I do occasionally think I ought to look for it and read it again, so the experience must not have been entirely negative.

The thought of college students carrying firearms on campus gives me the willies.

I believe it would have been in 1968, by most standards a considerably kindler gentler era, that one of my suitemates took offense at another's habit of going out for the day while leaving his radio on. Party A found Party B's reaction amusing.

I was the only other resident in the suite the day Party B threw a chair out the (unopened) lounge window.

For some reason Fragano's comment made me picture that situation with a gun added. I wish it hadn't.

Shoo. There was meant to be a link in there.

But Google "California wine tasting Paris" and you'll see it wasn't Gallo plonk (which I'd certainly rather cook with than drink), it was genuine Napa Cab and Chard from Stag's Leap among others.

"Gallo red (Hearty Burgundy"

I don't think so.

# 800&ff: But the piece does include both the comment about "wine you wouldn't drink" and an acknowledgment that wine available in this country in a given price range has changed out of all knowing since Julia's day.

I thought the piece was pointless for that reason, since it pretty much includes its own rebuttal without even going into the cooking comparisons.

Not my brand of geekiness anymore, I guess.

Not actually what I think of when I hear the word "geek"--which goes to show something, I expect.

Twenty years ago, maybe.

Mmm. Well, I've been assigning names to foals by a horse called "Gevybtl" the last few years, which may have served as a refresher course.

Recognized it after a couple of readings.

The old unimproved H. sinensis would seed itself readily, it used to be an over-the-fence gift plant. Popular modern varieties may be triploids, which pretty much does away with that propensity.

Another "Rose of Sharon" which I didn't encounter until I moved to California is a common groundcover variety of Hypericum; the specific name escapes me but that one's a spreader and has definite under-the-fence tendencies.

Flowers are white-to-orchid, and yellow, respectively.

I don't think I've seen this point made anywhere, but re: Medicare Part D, the unlamented Richard Pombo was the only incumbent defeated in California--and his was the only campaign I noticed which made a point of the Congressman's achievement in supporting the "Medicare drug benefit."

Coincidence? You decide. (Yeah, there was a lot else against Pombo. "Unlamented" is my version of charitable.)

Also, more in line with the main subject, are my brother and I particularly unfortunate in our (non-overlapping, in this instance) e-mail acquaintance or is there a majorly offensive apples-and-oranges comparison of Katrina with the recent Colorado snowstorms going around, ending "the world doesn't owe you a living"?

Mine came with the subject heading "Westerners" but it may be going under other guises.

Ada, Countess of Lovelace, daughter of Byron the poet. Best remembered by some of us as the mother of Lady Anne Blunt.

#251: Well, my holly could be doing that too, if I had any.

I thought someone else might remember better than I do the physiological mechanism, but it's in the general realm of "energy levels in the plant at a time this year determine next year's crop." Heavy bearing in 2005 pulls energy out of the plant body and sets the crop low for 2006.

Re: holly (237 &ff). Good points about iron and soil pH, as well as (possibly) different response from different variety.

It's not out of the ordinary for fruit trees to bear more heavily in alternate years; just because the holly's berries are inedible doesn't mean the situation couldn't be analogous.

We had beautiful wild holly where I grew up in Maryland; I distinctly remember that there were heavy-berrying and light-berrying trees, and I don't think I'm making it up when I also remember year differences (I won't go so far as to claim alternate-bearing, at this distance in time).

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