The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Andrew Brown:

Show all comments by Andrew Brown.

Posted on entry Numinous collisions ::: July 10, 2009, 05:02 PM:
Ken, I'm sorrier than ever that we didn't get you onto the Calvin radio programme.

As for the Anglican schism: it has happened, and only the astonishingly loose structure of the Anglican "communion" has concealed this fact. I was at the Lambeth Conference 11 years ago, to which Greg Laden's post (referenced in #57) refers, and one moment I remember from there is two African, male bishops walking past two American, white, women priests and one saying in a voice designed to be overheard, "When I said there were no homosexuals in our country, I omitted to mention that this was because we had killed them all".
Posted on entry Trilchy wings ::: February 06, 2009, 02:27 AM:
#62 is Wbav Zvgpuryy; I can't remember the name of the song but it has gur cvnab vageb sebz Wvatyr oryyf. Evire?
Posted on entry Melanoma and narcissism ::: September 20, 2008, 05:17 PM:
So Teresa is arguing that the republicans, having spent sixteen years scaring themselves that Hillary Clinton is a figure of primodial feminine evil, are now about to elect someone who actually is.

I suppose it makes as much sense as anything in American politics today.
Posted on entry 574.8 km per hour ::: November 19, 2007, 02:54 AM:
Well, no one is going anywhere on a TGV this week, since there's a strike. I should have been typing this from Avignon, after an eight hour journey in first class from St Pancras but when we reached the station we were informed that the strikes had closed down all inter-provincial TGVs -- needed to get from Lille to Avignon -- and all public transport across Paris as well. Today's Independent says it took the Paris correspondent 90 minutes to drive 3km across the city on Friday.

And when I looked at last-minute alternatives, I realised that flying Ryanair is just so nasty that it cancels out the rest of the holiday. The worst thing is that they now play advertisements very loudly through most of the flight.
Posted on entry Tom ’n’ Me ::: November 18, 2007, 08:33 AM:
Mohammed is meant to be the most common boy's name in Sweden. This may not be a completely bogus statistic.
Posted on entry Flamer Bingo ::: July 21, 2007, 10:28 AM:
"sky pixie"
Posted on entry The fluorosphere bends back in upon itself ::: June 09, 2007, 04:04 AM:
There are forty people in this world.
Posted on entry The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction ::: May 02, 2007, 04:09 PM:
What is "the transcend", please?
Posted on entry The way the future was* ::: April 28, 2007, 02:27 AM:
I think you misunderstand the role of the moving sidewalk: it's not for brisk transportation -- what's wrong with a horse? It's for a passagiata. It's a slow-moving flirtway. The people on it are not commuting. They are socialising.

Don't look at it as a primitive device for mass transportation. I don't think there is any suggestion of a consumer society in these postcards. Think of it as something more like the Prater in Vienna. If and when the machinery does break down, there will be couples scampering into the bushes all along its length.
Posted on entry Open thread 82 ::: March 11, 2007, 04:44 AM:
Biggles, if you can get it. Perfect for boys who are not sure if they like to read. Biff! Zoom! Watch out for ejaculating natives!

Seriously, a couple of the early wartime short story Biggles books might be perfect. Biplanes on the Western Front would no doubt seem alternate universe to him, rather than historical fiction.
Posted on entry A seriousness that fails ::: March 04, 2007, 02:14 AM:
I think in hell they play that over and over to Leni Riefenstahl.
Posted on entry "So Muqtada al-Sadr, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and Ahmed Chalabi walk into a bar..." ::: February 26, 2007, 05:00 AM:
As a British pedant, might I point out that this was a Sunday Times article? It has an almost entirely different staff to the daily Times. Neither of them are very reliable papers. I do believe this story, sort of, though it mentions no names and no sources, because it fits in with everything else we know.

But it is a very great mistake to suppose that a story is likely to be true just because it has appeared in either of these Murdoch papers.
Posted on entry And at the other end of the galaxy, Second Conservapedia ::: February 23, 2007, 10:00 AM:
Fragano, that stuff is priceless—"Creation to 500 CE"! It has made my afternoon.
Posted on entry Dafydd ab Hugh moves on ::: February 16, 2007, 04:32 AM:
Teresa(41) Martha Soukup's clerihew? Tell more.
Posted on entry Unaccountable violence ::: February 13, 2007, 06:38 AM:
The subject of official versus unofficial violence deserves going into. The intelligent conservative view is that there will always be unofficial violence in society, and that it is better that the otherwise lawless should be on the receiving end than that they should be inflicting it.

I don't much like this argument, but I don't see how to refute it. You can't stamp out bullying except with superior force, and a force sufficient to frighten all bullies will be potentially the most frightening of all. But it's still better than the rule of people who strangle their enemies' children and dunk the bodies in acid.

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