The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Teresa Nielsen Hayden:

La peste rogue?

Patrick points out that I've got my dates wrong, and that by the time that photo of Kathryn's was taken, he and Scraps and I had left Chelsea House and were working at Tor.

Hey Lucy, Rob, Mad. Just woke up. Good to see you.

Helen, was that "contributed" supposed to be "attributed"?

Thank you, Helen. I'll re-post that to the front page.

For those who don't know Scraps de Selby and Velma Bowen, and those who do:

deSelbyBowen.com.

Susan Palwick, Kathryn Cramer, Scraps, TNH, PNH, in 1988. This would have been when Scraps and Patrick and I shared an office at the publishing house where we worked as literary criticism reference series editors. The three of us are having our usual reaction to having our pictures taken without warning.

Scraps and Velma, this past July, at a KGB reading. The photo's by Ellen Datlow.

Another photo of Scraps from the same occasion. Even without the cane, I'd know this was a post-stroke photo -- there aren't enough quirks and crotchets in his facial muscles.

Photos from a happier occasion: Kat and Jamie's wedding.

Piano bar photos. Scraps and Velma love the piano bar scene. (They aren't the only ones. Photo #3, the one labeled "Andrew," is Andrew Willett.)

One of Soren's earliest daytrips after the stroke. Helen, in the black and silver sweater, is up at the hospital with Velma right now.

Being angry and unreasonable can also be a sign of head injury, but the low blood pressure is good news.

Of course, it could just be that he's back in New York Methodist Hospital. I'd grouse too.

This is the thing Scraps most fears. Whatever else is happening right now, he's scared.

We just went grocery shopping with him last night. They're supposed to be coming over for Thanksgiving. He and Velma were over last weekend for dinner and hanging out.

You know, some Palin fans are bound to pick up Going Rouge by mistake. It's a pity they'll figure it out before posting their impressions of the book.

Today, while researching something else entirely (as usual), I was reminded that back in fall, 2001, I quoted a howler that John Keegan wrote three days after 9/11:

The World Trade Centre outrage was co-ordinated on the internet, without question. If Washington is serious in its determination to eliminate terrorism, it will have to forbid internet providers to allow the transmission of encrypted messages - now encoded by public key ciphers that are unbreakable even by the National Security Agency’s computers - and close down any provider that refuses to comply.

Uncompliant providers on foreign territory should expect their buildings to be destroyed by cruise missiles. Once the internet is implicated in the killing of Americans, its high-rolling days may be reckoned to be over.

Using cruise missiles to take down ISPs in countries with which we weren't at war would certainly have been colorful, but ... really, not a good idea.

Allan @121, I'm glad to have amused you. I've actually seen that done, though not in professionally published work.

I have just had a brisk exchange of correspondence with CNBC about the infelicities of their site, their registration process, and their corporate policies. I may or may not post it on Making Light.

Want to take that back? Now?

Craig Ranapia @75:

And does that apply to Democratic staffers who used to work as lobbyists for trade unions or civil right groups or gay rights advocates or environmental groups?

That would depend on what they did for them.

any politician ... who is going to attack any uppity woman --

That's where I have to disagree with you. He wasn't attacking them for being uppity. He was decrying their political doings.

Women have moral agency just like men.

Craig Ranapia, do I understand then that we're only allowed to refer to K-Street lobbyists as whores if they're male? This seems inconsistent. Is it intentional?

I have long perceived Ann Coulter's public gig as a variety of whoredom, and I don't think it's sexist or a species of misogynistic abuse for me to say so. I think I'm saying something true about the nature of the transaction.

If you think that Alan Grayson's statements put him in the same sewer as longterm GOP operatives, I can only conclude that you aren't all that familiar with their habitual language and style. Grayson's well within the historic norms for parliamentary speech. If you can't see the difference, try this: while you may dislike Grayson's choice of adjectives, it is nevertheless the case that the things he says have a perceptible connection to fact, and that he says them in order to make specific and relevant points about genuine political issues. They also have the property of being comprehensible as they stand, rather than being encoded references to less admissible assertions and sentiments. (See also: Fidelio @34.)

Am I the only person who thinks that if you've got to say "Glenn Beck and the tea-baggers are worse" to defend yourself, you've lowered the bar to the bottom of the Marianas Trench?

Probably not; but it's still hyperbole.

Albatross @46:

But the good reason to fear something like that is that we haven't done too well at cost control so far, and you can imagine this having a big impact on the deficit over time.

If you look at it in terms of total healthcare spending, we've done next to nothing about cost control, it's a major problem, and it's going to get bigger. One of the arguments I find persuasive is that a national health care system is our best option for getting costs under control. There's a terrific article by Atul Gawande in the New Yorker, The Cost Conundrum, that's pretty much the only piece of writing on this subject I'd describe as a must-read. I know Obama required everyone at the White House to read it.

(I don't know how consistent they are about this--a dismaying number of people who worry about the deficit when talking about health care are pretty calm about it when talking about occupying Afghanistan for the next twenty years, invading Iran to keep them from getting the bomb, etc.)

Yup. They were also calm when Bush's tax cuts for the well-to-do generated a budget deficit that makes entitlement programs look puny.

Patrick keeps telling me that their real objection is that they know national health care would be as dear to the voters' hearts as Social Security was to previous generations, and they don't want the Democrats to get credit for doing something that good for the voters. If he's right, I'll have to conclude that the Republicans have completely lost track of "consent of the governed," "will of the people," and "public servant."

Fragano @36: Thank you.

SeanH @38, have you thought about the implications of believing that "whore" is that much worse than "shit-eating scumfuck"? Sex workers are human beings. (See also: Dave Bell @42.)

Throwmearope @43, thank you for clarifying the issues. I sure don't envy you your experience.

Back in a bit -- I have to go vote.

I don't think it's sexism on Digby's part; I think it's observation. The wingers have a long-established habit of enlisting women as attack bimbos, because it's nearly impossible to beat down their arguments face-to-face without looking like a cad.

May I speak for a moment here as someone who once, long ago, was a right-wing activist? Here's one datum: Digby's one of the best writers and thinkers on the leftward side of the blogosphere. Here's another: over the past twenty years, the language and content the far right allows itself to use has turned vile.

So: you want to know why lefties tend to lose? A big part of it is that there are people on the far right who have publicly, repeatedly, explicitly advocated killing you, or imprisoning you without trial; yet what you're doing is fretting about the spiritual impurity of Alan Grayson, and the possible presence of wispy, hair-fine traces of sexism in that screed of Digby's.

Coarse vs. refined speech is a false dichotomy. What we need is effective speech.

Kid Bitzer @5, you can't understand the Civil War without understanding the geography, and I'll argue that you can't understand American history in general if you don't get the importance of rivers. Keegan's not the first European writer I've seen miss that point.

I'll also argue that we're splitting hairs, because even if we ignore geography, that book's still got enough facts-what-ain't to warrant condemning it. (Disraeli. Jeez. Even *I* knew off the top of my head that it was Palmerston.)

Want to see an awful passage? Jim Macdonald was discussing it with me earlier today. Afterward, when I used Amazon’s “search inside this book†feature and randomly searched on “Brooklyn,†I found myself reading the same passage he'd been describing. The subject here is the Confederate navy:

“Their hope of achieving naval supremacy was invested in a U.S. Navy steam frigate, Merrimack, which had been scuttled on secession but raised and repaired. To transform her, the Confederate Navy Department commandeered the output of the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond so as to cover her in iron plate, enough to protect her 172 feet, but that, of course, robbed her of freeboard. She lay so low in the water that she resembled a raft...â€

I've read The Face of Battle several times, and will no doubt read it again; but that paragraph I just quoted was painful. Let's review it:

“Their hope of achieving naval supremacy

Was nil. At best, they kept the Union blockade semi-permeable.

was invested in a U.S. Navy steam frigate, Merrimack,

Wrong name. The Merrimack burned to the waterline and sank in the Elizabeth river, from which the remains were subsequently raised. The engines and the lower part of the hull were reused as part of an ironclad vessel, which was commissioned as the CSS Virginia.

which had been scuttled

The Merrimack wasn't scuttled. She caught fire when the ship outboard of her position was burned.

on secession

Nearly a year after secession, when the Gosport Navy Yards were threatened with imminent takeover.

but raised and repaired.

Raised, yes; but it's not "repair" when you recycle salvaged parts to build a new and very different ship.

To transform her, the Confederate Navy Department commandeered the output of the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond,

Yaaaaay! He got that right! The Tredegar Iron works are, in fact, in Richmond!

so as to cover her in iron plate, enough to protect her 172 feet,

Uh-oh. The CSS Virginia was 275 feet long, and that's a worse error than you think, because the Monitor was 172 feet long. Can Keegan have mixed up the CSS Virginia and the USS Monitor?

but that, of course, robbed her of freeboard.

Yup! He's lost track of which ship was which. The Monitor was the one with the freeboard problem.

She lay so low in the water that she resembled a raft...â€

That confirms it. People compared the Virginia to a turtle, or to the peaked roof of a house, but they never called her a raft. That term has always been used to describe the Monitor. The classic line is that she looked like a cheesebox on a raft.

That's bad. It's like mixing up Albert Sidney Johnston and Joseph Johnston, or Cemetery and Seminary Ridge, or J.E.B. Stuart and Jeb Stuart Magruder. A Civil War history that can't tell the Monitor from the Virginia ought not go into print.

I wonder how much tech and organization it would take to set up an ad-hoc Making Light house band? (See: copious spare time.)

Andrew, you are just ridiculously talented.

Mark, that's you on the bodhran?

Anna, Iain, you may not be the most frequent commenters here, but we value your presence. *I* value your presence.

Dave didn't get zapped for being an atheist. Lots of people here are outright atheists, including Avram, and lots more are some finely-graded variety of doubter, disbeliever, denier, or "I'm sorry, my brain can't even process that as information." The shades and gradations of belief are just as various. We respect them all.

Orthodoxy at Making Light has always consisted of making good conversation. The sole exception I can think of was a period lasting a few days when we avoided a certain topic until the urge to shed blood had passed, and that was practical, not political.

Back to Dave. Abi's comment to him was very precise. He got zapped for being a sneering, unpleasant, non-interactive jerk. It's a bog-standard trollish interaction: he thinks we can't handle his opinions (which in fact are unremarkable), when it's his manners that are the problem.

Abi was easier on him than I would have been. I was just about to partially disemvowel his posts -- literally, I was just opening them in separate tabs -- when I noticed your comments, and wrote this reply instead.

John Houghton @29 is still making me laugh out loud when I re-read him this morning:

There is no way you can monitor 68 people in the dark in close quarters, unless, at a minimum, you have a UTB thermometer in each of them, and having a thermometer up the butt doesn't lend itself to spiritual enlightenment (68 people squirming from rectal thermometers has a peculiar entertainment value, but I digress).

I know this is going to sound weird, but this story reminds me of reading bad slush: when you look at the people behind it, it's pitiable and sometimes tragic, but when you look at what they do, it's funny.

John Houghton, you're right. Thing is, I'm distressed by fraud and folly, so I try to force them to make sense by writing about them.

Everyone -- I've finished writing the entry, except for a couple of bits of endmatter I'll add tomorrow. Read it if you've got the wakefulness, but I'm going to sleep.

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