Clifton, right you are.
I was foolishly using the shortcut of searching for (e.g.) "#38" and of course many of the answers used the number, but not the hashmark. Sorry, intrepid solvers!
Just to keep track of the upthread puzzles,
Diatryma's at #38 hasn't been solved yet.
Nor Burce Cohen's at #47.
Nor Nathaniel's at #71.
Farther down, nor #80 nor #82 nor #99.
And I have the impression that heresiarch's at #30 is bevtvany.
Darn it! too slow.
It does sound a lot like the original author.
heresiarch's @ 60 is ng (be whfg orsber) gur ortvaavat bs Fabjpenfu. Uveb Cebgntbavfg gevrf gb qryvire gung cvmmn va gvzr gb cerirag n angvbany pbecbengr vapvqragt.
Another possible boy's name for Cat: I once slightly knew a guy named Slate.
It implies strength, solidity, reliability, and straightforwardness. And it's not an especially dense rock, so the "rock=dumb" idea is downplayed. (Also, it implies the eons of time it takes in forming and metamorphosing sedimentary rocks, but that part does not seem pertinent.) And it's easily spelled!
Related names like Chert or Flint or Gneiss just don't seem as good. Mica is too easily misunderstood as Micah, Feldspar is too odd, and of course things like Garnet or Onyx would be girl's names.
PJ at 104 (and everybody):
Actually, current earthquake advice is to get NEXT to something big and strong, and NOT under it. There are lots of void spaces in collapsed buildings, in predictable places.
Structural walls (away from windows) are the first choice of things to hunker down next to. If you can't get there FAST, hunker down next to whatever is very nearby and kinda strong. A bookcase, a table, the bedframe, whatever might partly hold up the rest of the building as it comes down around your ears.
Getting under those things is not as good an idea. If the bookcase collapses, under (or in front of it) is bad, but next to it there's a good chance there's still some void space. Under my partly collapsed bedframe will be filled with sharp splintery slats and smothery latex mattress. Next to it, though: probably some void space.
If you live in earthquakeland, you've already bolted the big, dangerous-when-falling-on-you objects to the wall, right? Of course you have. (And your water heater, too.)
So the old advice, to hide from "things" (besides the roof) that might fall on you, is not as sound as picking a spot that will stay uncrushed. Go for a likely void-space-to-be, curl up small, and cover up your neck with your arms.
Oh, and getting there fast? People apparently tend to break legs and ankles when running in an earthquake. The ground moves up and down, fast; each step you take that coincides with the ground moving upward becomes a MUCH harder slam. Ouch. So get to your void space as soon as you feel the first shock wave, before the shaking really starts.
(In the car, though, I think I'd stay in, and I'd stay belted in so I don't rattle around like a pebble in a rock-polishing tumbler.)
Ooops. Make that 402 posts,
and that Charlie Stross pointed it out way up at post #8, only nobody took him seriously. (I believe you, Charlie!)
OK, did I miss this by not reading all 396 posts?
Plenty of people keep whole colonies of dinosaurs in the attic, for comfort or fun or companionship or maybe winning those competitions about whose dinosaurs can fly back home fastest, and possibly for sending clandestine messages.
Birds are, to the best of our recently-vastly-expanded knowledge on the subject, direct descendants of dinosaurs. This means that birds *are* dinosaurs. We've all seen dinosaurs in the wild. Most of us have eaten dinosaurs. (Yep: tastes like chicken!) And some of us keep them in the attic.
I can't be the first to point this out on this thread, can I?
Oh, and the loathed Second Sock Problem?
Knit them both at once.
I'm knitting two fingerless mittens right now.
Much easier than fingerless gloves, but just as warm.
Some people mentioned the Narnia books for kids who need some temptingly delicious adventures in order to get into reading. I vote instead for Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials books.
Two kid protagonists, Lyra and Will. Lots of swashbuckling, the kind where the kids have to decide, and act, beyond what they think they can do. Fabulous supporting grown-ups, including a female physicist, a Texan balloonist/ aeronaut, and a sentient, speaking polar bear. With armor. From Spitsbergen. Powerful, really nasty villians, but rational and consequently both believable and banal in their evil. And, of course, Saving the World in every book.
Pullman has discussed and written about how misogynist and racist and, apropos Frank Miller, violence-loving the Narnia books are (completely aside from the heavy-handed Christian indoctrination): "Death is better than life; boys are better than girls; light-coloured people are better than dark-coloured people; and so on."
I *knew* there was something wrong with leaving Susan out at the end, even as a kid. And with the kid-kings being superior to the kid-queens. And with the badguys all being women: the snow queen, the underground green fairy, the Jezebel character.
Yuk. Read Pullman instead.
Julie L. (#262), what you're calling a "croissant" is more properly known as a
catloop.
And if the cat has looped up, but turned its head over so its chin is up and its ears don't show, it's a moebius catloop.
back to #357 et seqq.:
yeah. Wash.
Another vote for the inate hotness of the goofy-but-highly-skilled.
Please stop snarking at the poor defenseless target, everyone; all this sarcastic chuckling is giving me a severe pain in my Unique Artistic Vision.
Thanks, all, for the nudge.
I signed my organ donor /driver's licence long ago.
But now I've finally also sent my aging parents the forms for a Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care. Dad already emailed back, saying they would read and discuss. Hooray.
I was emergency temporary health care agent and amateur doctor for Dad, last year, with ventilator-requiring pneumonia in Budapest (where only Mom speaks the language). So I have some juice when I say they ought to discuss these issues.
"Archaeopteryx" and "helicopter" help the case for pronouncing the second 'p' in "apoptosis," since the second part of the compound word starts with a 'pt' in all of them. If the prefix weren't there, then you wouldn't pronounce the 'p' sound. But it is there. So there!
Whichever of you is saying "apo-tosis" also has to say "helico-ter" from now on.
I do hope they catch that driver soon. And not just for revenge; also to minimize future damage. I don't want someone who drives like that, driving around the same planet as I do.
When the live-action "101 Dalmatians" came out in the late '90s, I had to go see it with my vet-tech animal-lover sister. It was set, of course, in England. The animal antics prominently featured ostensibly wild raccoons. Grrrrrrrrr.
Essentially, a major - and intentional - continuity error.
It was like nails on a chalkboard; like toucans or prehensile-tailed monkeys in African jungle movies; like the noble, lonely scream of a red-tail hawk as the foley for a bald eagle. Like redwoods and Douglas-firs in an East Coast story.
Do they think we don't know this stuff???
(Bald eagles sound like overgown chickens. Not properly uplifting or dignified.)
PS to JESR: we have *razorbacks*? Am I safe, away to the south around Northgate? Wanna come over to my new yard and help pull ivy?
PPS to everyone in North America: please join my new trend for starling-feather capelets. Surely we must be able to trap *just* starlings somehow.
Nir, nobody said "staying home and doing nothing and raising the kids would be boring." I think most people here recognize that raising kids is far, far from "doing nothing" or "boring."
There isn't much offensive about "staying home, by myself, without any meaningful work would be boring," which is what people HAVE been saying.
What Procopius describes in ajay's post, geting back to our original theme, is a mullet.
The beard and 'stache don't prevent the rest of it from being a mullet. See, e.g., "Walker: Texas Ranger."
| Year | Number of comments posted |
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| 2008 | 1 |
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