The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Robert Legault:

Show all comments by Robert Legault.

Posted on entry Bilbo Begins ::: February 03, 2008, 12:03 AM:
For a Few Rings More
Posted on entry Bilbo Begins ::: February 02, 2008, 11:57 PM:
For a Few Rings More
Posted on entry Bilbo Begins ::: February 02, 2008, 03:52 PM:
Gollum's Way: Rise to Power

Mordor by Numbers
Posted on entry We Give Thanks for Peace on the Border ::: December 30, 2007, 01:26 PM:
Well, the open border between the US and Canada ain’t broke. It’s worked fine since 1814, with no sign of wearing out.

Surely you're forgetting St. Albans, Vermont.
Posted on entry Elevator pitches ::: December 14, 2007, 01:01 AM:
robotrun, past geeks and madmens, from serf of tor to end of bluejay, brings us by a computerless Vista of recursivation back to John Kessel and Environs.

Sir Trystero, coboler d’MMPORGs, fr’over the short C-drive, had passingcoredump rearchived from North Galactica on this side the sploggy signal of Airport Wireless to copyfight his openisource war; nor had hollywoodlawyer’s rockstars by the streaming Oggvorbis exbloggerated themselse to Orange County’s googlejuice while they went doublin their bandwidth all the time…
Posted on entry Old Olympus' Towering Tops ::: December 11, 2007, 12:49 AM:
"On Old Olympus’ Towering Tops
A Fat-Ass German Vends Some Hops."


My father used to recite this mnemonic once in a while. He graduated from NYU Medical School ca. 1939. I wonder how far back these mnemonics go.

There are a number of sites that have free downloads of hundreds of medical mnemonics. I don't have that much room on my hard drive right now, so I'm going to wait on that, but I did sample a few. Some, which make reference e.g. to Bob Marley or Randy Travis, are obviously of recent origin. But I suspect there are quite a few that go back a long time.

Incidentally, "Bell's palsy" is itself a mnemonic for its own symptoms:

"BELL'S Palsy:
Blink reflex abnormal
Earache
Lacrimation [deficient, excess]
Loss of taste
Sudden onset
Palsy of VII nerve muscles
· All symptoms are unilateral."
Posted on entry The object produced through suggestion ::: December 04, 2007, 11:38 AM:
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the novel I, Libertine by Frederick R. Ewing (officially, I believe, listed as a collaboration between Jean Shepherd and Theodore Sturgeon). Shepherd had a late-night radio show, and he urged his listeners to go to bookstores and ask for such a title, even though such a book didn't exist. Ballantine ended up publishing a book under that title to fulfill the demand, after enlisting Sturgeon to write it under the Ewing pseudonym. It contained the immortal cover line "'Gadzooks,' quoth I, 'here's a saucy baud.'"
Posted on entry SFWA: The Suicide Note ::: December 03, 2007, 07:43 PM:
Pournelle also says:

Thus the future of the paperback market is of great interest to fiction writers, and particularly so to science fiction writers since our works are seldom kept in hardbound, but do tend to stay in print in paper long after Pulitzer Prize novels are forgotten. I don't know who won the Pulitzer for Literature in any year in the early 1960's, but I would bet most haven't been in print for 20 years; while the Hugo winners have probably been in print more or less continuously.

In fact, of the Pulitzer Prizes for fiction between 1960 and 1966,* all but one** are in print right now according to amazon.com, in either mass market or trade paperback. To Kill a Mockingbird is also available in hardcover.

*Advise and Consent, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Edge of Sadness (Edwin O'Connor), The Reivers, The Keepers of the House (Shirley Ann Grau), and Collected Stories (Katherine Anne Porter). There was no fiction award in 1964.

**It's not clear to me whether Advise and Consent is in print or there are just secondhand copies available.
Posted on entry New York Times to science books: Drop dead ::: November 28, 2007, 07:29 AM:
This week's NY Times Magazine featured a long, respectful piece about Creationist geology. It's a legitimate subject for them to be covering, and the author did end up with a geology department at a Christian university that took a more conventional view, but I wish there were more real science featured.
Posted on entry Stealth Candidate Giuliani ::: November 08, 2007, 06:29 PM:
Obviously you aren't on Pat Robertson's email list.
Posted on entry Much too comfortable in heels ::: October 30, 2007, 02:10 PM:
Ann Rose #10: In fact, caricatures of Giuliani with Hitler's mustache + the nickname "Adolf Giuliani" have been around since well before 9/11, when he was still in office as mayor.
Posted on entry Much too comfortable in heels ::: October 30, 2007, 12:45 PM:
I've never liked Giuliani, and there are many reasons for that. But what really solidified it for me was his relentless bullying of taxi drivers soon after he became mayor. I was a New York taxi driver for about a year and a half in the early 1970s. At that time, the job was fairly well-paying. By the time Rudy came into office, it wasn't so well-paying, and many drivers were recent immigrants. But it was, and is, a difficult and at times dangerous job. Taxi drivers perform a valuable public service, and nearly every New Yorker takes a cab once in a while. Giuliani perceived cab drivers as easy victims to bully, and he never attended the funeral of any driver murdered in the line of duty. He's scum.
Posted on entry Exploding Cars and Machineguns ::: October 09, 2007, 09:27 PM:
SLIGHT SPOILERS

I just saw The Kingdom last night under similar circumstances (walk to 42nd and 8th Ave, see what's starting soon). I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it--the action sequences were often so fast-paced it was difficult to follow exactly what was going on. Jamie Foxx and Chris Cooper can usually be relied on for good performances, no exception here, and Garner, tight T-shirts and all, was decent enough. I really felt like a lot of it was kind of Iraq in drag (especially the instant classic bit: burnouse-clad militiaman fires RPG round at our heroes. It blows up a car next to them in a huge, fiery explosion. Saudi colonel: "This is a really bad neighborhood."). But yes, the insta-Saudi history at the beginning was good. I just wish they'd worked more of it into the movie.
Posted on entry Video links ::: October 02, 2007, 04:38 PM:
Well, Jamie Foxx is a really great actor, too, not least for channeling Ray Charles from beyond the grave.
Posted on entry Robert Jordan (James Oliver Rigney), 1948-2007 ::: September 17, 2007, 08:26 PM:
I never know Jim well, but working with Teresa on the first couple Wheel of Time books was an unforgettable experience that taught me a great deal.

Everywhere I go I meet fans of Jordan's books. Just this last week the fellow who waits on me at Starbucks had one of them.

My condolences to Harriet and his family and friends.
Posted on entry Open thread 91 ::: September 13, 2007, 06:30 PM:
Shellacking.

Another common exception: siccing (though sic can also be spelled sick [in that sense] according to Web. 11, so sicking is also acceptable--though I don't like it).
Posted on entry Hugo! ::: September 03, 2007, 01:32 AM:
Congratulations, Patrick. i knew it would happen sooner or later.

I'm also pleased to see my former roommate Gordon win, as well as my friend Julie Phillips.

Am I correct in saying that her Tiptree bio is the first work to win both the Hugo and the National Book Critics Circle Award?
Posted on entry Conversations at Boing Boing ::: August 28, 2007, 10:56 PM:
BTW, boingboing had your name misspelled in their announcement. I left a comment to that effect, then noticed it had been fixed a few hours later. So somebody's on the job...
Posted on entry Wedding apparel, never worn ::: August 20, 2007, 05:03 PM:
Teresa (and Naomi #27): There's also this site:

www.uglydress.com

which I learned about through an article in People magazine on the subject.
Posted on entry From correspondence: Top this! ::: August 13, 2007, 08:19 PM:
It's a quagmire.

And it interests me to know that since I did some work with Greenpeace back in the day, I am therefore a terrorist. Little did I realize the nefarious agenda hidden behind those nonviolence training sessions.

The wikiwienies strike again.

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