So next year you'll be the number of states in the Union! Something to look forward to, at least.
You know the proof for there being no largest interesting number, don't you? I think I read it here.
Do the _NH's control what ads they get in the right-hand column? Because I saw one for the new book by Josh Henkin, "Matrimony". Haven't read it yet, but I went to school with Henkin's brother, and he & I used to belong to the same small synagogue.
So it's nice to see his book getting advtg on a literary blog.
I read his first book, "Swimming Across the Hudson", which was pretty good. It was clearly a first novel, since, knowing the family, I can see a lot of similarities between Henkin's family and the family described in the novel.
I'm 42, and my first big news event was the Moon landing. My parents woke me up to see it. Wiki says Armstrong stepped on the lunar surface at 2:56 UTC, which would have been about 11 PM New York time. So if that was July 1969, I was 3-3/4.
I have some distinct memories of the pictures they sent back (dark people against white background) which didn't make sense to me for years (isn't space black? aren't spacesuits white?) until I saw the films again, and realized it was the shadow side of spacesuited figures (dark) against the lunar surface (white).
Being a proto-SF-nerd, I watched the rest of the missions as well.
Watergate was "the dumb hearings" which preempted all the children's TV on Channel 13. I remember the end of military operations in Vietnam; heard it on the radio in 2nd grade while driving home from my grandparents. January '73? My parents also made sure we saw Nixon leave office and Ford's inauguration speech.
Then there was all the stuff on the radio about "indoor China" and "youth in Asia" throughout elementary school.
speaking of brain science...
bad news.
Todd @ 662:
I'm Jonathan J. Baker. For 4 months, about 18 years ago, there was a Jonathan C. Baker who was a product manager for one of our other major products. Aside from all our phone calls and mail being misdirected for those few months, for years afterwards I would get calls from the holder of his mortgage, telling me I was late on payments. I'd have to explain that I had no accounts with their bank. A few months later, another call, another explanation.
Tracie @ 671:
Hey, my mother taught me that one too! She still had a couple of Pogo collections around the house when we were small. I'm afraid my brother & I read them to shreds.
Then there's my fake Xmas filk - well, Adeste doesn't look too differet from Adele, and I had an Aunt Adele, so...
(TTTO Adeste Fidelis)
Adele Zemansky
Great-aunt in New Jersey
who grows orchids
winning prizes for them at fairs.
(no it doesn't go any farther)
(yes, her husband was Dr. Mark W. Zemansky)
Todd:
No. Should it? Wiki says it's a valley/river/town in Peru.
As for the last name, my father Anglicized it from Beckerman in 1939, so the only Bakers to which I'm related are my parents, brother, aunt and a cousin (surviving, not married and using husband's name).
When people find out my name is Baker and we're a musical family, they ask "Are you related to Julie Baker" (meaning long-time first flute in the Philharmonic Julius Baker). I respond "Why yes, she's my aunt in the Bronx" (Juliet Baker).
Or from Pogo
Good king Wenceslaus, LOOK OUT!
On your feets uneven
Re We three kings:
I learned it (from Southron friends, IIRC) as
...BAM!
We two kings of orientar
Smoking on a rubber cigar...
We one king...
BAM!
God rest ye merry gentlemen...
Kathryn in Sunnyvale @ 603:
It's not "southpark's dreidel song", it's "The dreidel song", which long predates Southpark. Making up new verses is an old tradition.
The song was originally written sometime around WW I by Samuel E. Goldfarb, a cantor in Brooklyn and later in Las Vegas and Seattle. He was my great-uncle's brother.
They were a big cantorial family. Samuel had a big effect on Reform liturgical music, his brother Israel taught Cantorial Music at the (Conservative) Jewish Theological Seminary for 50 years, and my great-uncle was a cantor in a small Orthodox synagogue (which still exists).
See here and here for more info.
(trying to reestablish identity under real name rather than silly-ish "thanbo")
John Stanning @ 25
Only if it's Tubby Tustard.
[defeatist position:]
Haven't we been here before? Like, about 8 years ago? It's just another Bush attempt to grub up a "legacy". All this Annapolis process hopes to do is to agree to talk about a "final status". We're back to, like Sharm al-Sheikh in 1999, trying to talk about when to talk about substance. And all the parties are not at the table.
So they'll blunder along, and not do anything.
[radical rightie position:]
Noting that "Valuethinker" accuses Israel of "ethnic cleansing" in 1949, perhaps Israel should actually do the ethnic cleansing they've been accused of, and make R' Kahane's dream of "transfer" a reality - complete the population transfer begun in 1949. Just like their peaceful neighbor Jordan did to deal with the "Palestinian problem".
(It'll never happen - Israel holds itself to a higher standard, as does the world. The Arabs can commit ethnic cleansing and the West doesn't bat an eye.)
Not a very good job of ethnic cleansing, is it, if there are still a million Arab citizens of Israel, and another 1.5-2M in Gaza and the West Bank. Maybe, just maybe, Israel *didn't* commit ethnic cleansing.
Many of the fear stories were spread by the Arab propagandists, not just by the Jewish propagandists. Morris went through records of hundreds of abandoned towns; far more were evacuated by either Arab encouragement (we'll return in force and retake it) or Arab fearmongering (get out before the Jews kill you) than to Jewish fearmongering. If there was ethnic cleansing going on, it was on the part of the party that wanted to sweep the Jews into the sea, doncha know.
Dena @ 21: there are rightist and leftist views of Israeli history. You evidently subscribe to a leftist (New Historians) view, Paula to a rightist (old national mythology) view. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere between, in the ground where Benny Morris has partially recanted the more extreme claims of the New Historians.
[sound of shoe dropping]
Commenter Susan 184, you are Susan deG., AICMFP.
Is this algorithm for a stuffed or unstuffed bird? The books recommend, I think, 14 or 17 min/lb for stuffed, 10 min/lb unstuffed.
Speaking of the Matter of Britain, how about the recent cinematic adaptation of "The Dark is Rising"? I read the books because of a rather striking filk about it. Debbie read "Bridge of Birds" for the same reason.
Haven't seen the movie though; the trailer, which we saw before the last Harry Potter, didn't look promising.
BBC reviewer Paul Arendt hated it.
Paula @ 134:
Under Orthodox Jewish law, which of course goes back in its current form (development based on Socratic method) for a couple of millenia, it's a question. What did you expect?
On the one hand, you have the biblical rule that if two men are fighting, and in the course of it cause a woman to miscarry, they pay a fine to her family - which implies that abortion is not murder, but injury, which is compensated financially.
On the other hand, you have medieval commentators reading the Noahide anti-murder regulation, reparsing it from the standard way it's read in the Torah "one who kills a person, by person shall his blood be spilt" to "one who kills a person in a person his blood is spilt." What is a "man in a man" but a fetus? Christians have picked up on this reading as well.
On the third hand, we have the basic rule (Talmud Sanhedrin 74-77-ish - been a long time since I looked in there) that if party A is pursuing party B to kill party B, party C may do anything up to killing party A to stop him. This translates into, in our case, if the fetus is threatening the life of the mother, an abortion is not only permitted, but mandatory. This is because party A's life is forfeit in a Jewish court if caught and convicted.
On the fourth hand, we have the idea that until quickening (40 days), the fetus is "water", that is, basically nonexistent.
So what it boils down to, seemingly, is
1) abortion is murder, or at least forbidden.
2) there is an exception for life of the mother, where the mother is Jewish.
3) any abortion before 40 days, e.g. RU-486 or similar, is not really an abortion, hence OK.
One consequence of this is that Orthodox Jews are split as to where to put their sympathies on the American political scene. Some throw in their lot with the conservatives, on the grounds that "abortion is murder." Others, such as I, support the liberals, on the grounds that "we don't want the Christians telling us when we can & can't have an abortion, if Jewish law tells us it's necessary (life of the Jewish mother) or permitted (before 40 days)."
There are a lot more variations, and opinions, and ideas, than what I brought here, there are whole books on this - what is our stand on non-Jews having abortions? does the Noahide murder regulation in that form apply to non-Jews at all, since some read "person" in legal texts to mean "Jew"? what about mental health of the mother? what about multifetal pregnancy reduction? Et cetera.
In summary, then, it's complicated, every case is different, it may or may not apply to non-Jews, and opinions vary. Under Reform rules, things are different, that's why they call it Reform. Ask your rabbi.
and here I thought a strike plate was what WGA members eat on every 20 years or so. "Royalties are down, better find the strike plates, Marge, we might need to use them again."
Sarah @ 264:
As a Reconstructionist (Reform by default here in the West coast Jew-vacuum) with a goyishe sweetie, I'm as uncomfortable with the Orthodox options as they are with me...
I'm a bit surprised that the Orthodox mohalim would be uncomfortable with you. After all, even according to their standards, your offspring are Jews, and your sons would need milah (what a mohel does, I'm not going to use the C word for fear of attracting the anti-C zealots).
I've been a sandek (one who holds the child) at the bris of a fan-child, father non-practicing Catholic, mother non-practicing Jewish, Orthodox mohel. I've been a witness at another fan-child milah where the mother (and hence the child) were not Jewish, but the mohel was Orthodox, and he had no problem with it. The father's Reform parents apparently insisted on it. The mohel just use the blessings for a conversion, rather than for a native-birth, such that, if the boy wants to convert later in life, he has that part done.
You might be uncomfortable with them, but in my experience in NYC, mohalim generally try to make it a positive experience for the parents, as well as relatively painless for the child.
C.Wingate:
as a goy, I'll skip the part about the mohel
Non-Jews may need a mohel as well, what if they want to convert? Males have to have milah, or at least a tiny puncture if they are already circced, for which one needs a mohel. Actually, if an adult, they probably would want a urologist as well.
Noen:
at the risk of flogging a dead horse, this crowd can seem rather harsh on first contact. My first attempts to post to rec.arts.sf.fandom, a predecessor to this group, were greeted with a lot of negativity, mostly impatience at my less-than-fully-thought-out position, but I persevered and was accepted.
I've got an ethics-of-professional-writing question.
X is mostly a fanfic writer, but has also been paid for nonfiction articles in small-circulation magazines.
X has been asked by the editor of an anthology to write a review of the book, which may be posted on the book's website, if it's positive. The anthology is of original fiction, by writers who are being paid some small amount for their work, but since they don't expect a wide circulation, it's being published through Lulu.com.
The sole compensation to X will be the review copy of the book.
Is this proper, to not pay someone to write a review, that may be used to publicize the book?
I argue that X should be paid, it's work product, whatever use is made of it, and especially if it becomes advertising copy.
X argues that if sie is paid by the editor, it impinges on the credibility of the review - sie would feel impelled to write a positive review. It's not like a regular book review, which is paid for by the magazine in which it's published, but a review meant to advertise the book in question.
Sie asks, "would Rob Sawyer get paid for the positive reviews he might write on the back cover of someone else's paperback?" I argue he should be, it's ad copy. Sie argues he should not be, it would then just be ad copy. Neither of us knows how that really works, not being wildly successful authors ourselves.
Sie thinks of this more as peer review; I argue that academics aren't paid for their papers, in fact, they often have to pay "page charges", so it's a different publication model, more like a vanity press, but with peer review.
Should X be paid for hir review, or not?
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 2 |
| 2007 | 32 |
| 2006 | 22 |
| 2005 | 1 |
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