Joel Polowin @42:
My recollection is that the Fry and Laurie "Bertie Wooster" series (from BBC?) had at least one episode where they appeared in blackface. All the episodes were purchased sight unseen by WGBH in the US for PBS and there was a minor financial scandal when it was realized they couldn't broadcast them all here.
That was much more recent than Reginald Perrin (of fond memory). I think that PBS showed the Sikh episodes uncut back in the day, but my aging memory may be playing tricks on me.
I've always felt that what Heinlein predicted wasn't really "moving sidewalks" but the Interstate Highway System and its consequent sprawl, fast-food places, etc.
J. K. Rowling has won her suit against the author of "The Harry Potter Lexicon."
Since I can't find the actual ruling I can't tell if this is a glorious victory for authors against plagiarists or if instead, fair use is dead.
Anyone know more?
Raining hard but not constantly outside Boston. I took the reluctant precaution of cleaning our gutters Friday evening; they are, like your LSD (hmm!), magnets for leaves and debris. One in the front cascades down our bedroom window when it clogs, one in the back cascades down the family room slider.
Only the front one leaks, and when it does we know it's a true downpour.
In fact the rain is picking up as I type this, but honestly, so far it's no worse than any big rainstorm: humidity, rain, early darkness.
Good luck to all.
#11 Kathryn Cramer got it right early in the thread. I would guess that to more people than Republicans "community organizer" = "radical." A raft of quotes where left of center bloggers talk about how awesome community organizers are would only amplify the impression.
More and more, this election looks not to be about Iraq, nor about the economy, but about the culture wars. /*sigh*/
#367 Terry Karney: Re Vice Presidents: The Pres doesn't have to appoint one. T. Roosevelt didn't.
I don't think there was a mechanism in place back then. The office remained vacant. The 25th Amendment, which sets up the current succession mechanism, only dates from 1967.
On the "abuse of power" thing, Mike Wooten (the person she allegedly wanted fired) was her ex-brother-in-law, who had apparently threatened to kill her father. (According to "reliable" Wikipedia). Assuming this is accurate for the moment...
She either did try to get him fired, or didn't. If she didn't, no issue.
If she did, I don't think the Democrats want to go there on how she should have gone about it with more bureaucratic punctilio. That way lies Mike Dukakis's response to what he'd do if his wife was raped.
All she would have to do is say "That moron threatened to kill my father so I wanted his ass fired," and 90% of America would nod in agreement.
#336 on "vultch": We use it my family, too. I think my wife's family originated it. It usually refers scavenging among the leftovers in the fridge, but sometimes to lurking near the proto-leftovers on the table, waiting to snatch them up.
#311 Serge: I'd say that in the movies Gollum, both visually and the way he was played by Andy Serkis, owed a lot to Peter Lorre. Some bits could be almost frame-by-frame from "The Maltese Falcon" or "Arsenic and Old Lace."
#285 Graydon: That was excellent, truly excellent.
That scene in both the book and the movie always makes me tear up. As has been written many times before, one of the things LotR is about is "fading," the "long defeat" of magic and the elder days.
Galadriel is the most important representative of those elder days that we see in the book, and as you write, she saw it all, she remembers it the way we remember our childhoods or our college days (probably better). She knows the fate of the elves, and here, out of the north, unbidden, comes the chance to change it all, to become a goddess (and as you point out, she has known some herself). She turns it down.
For me, the only moment that packs as much emotion (and in a very understated way) is in the appendices, where it describes how the tradition is that Sam was allowed to go into the West as the "last of the ring-bearers," and when he left that was the end of fellowship. That's the ultimate fading, the final line between the world of magic, elves, dragons and rings, and our mundane "Fourth Age."
#233 Magenta Griffith: Gifford's was NOT junk food; it was some of the best ice cream I have ever had.
I agree; I used "junk food" in the appreciative sense, not the pejorative. The hot fudge was what kept my family coming back there for decades. My dad used to stop there on his way home from work and bring home a quart and a vat of the sauce. I was in DC not long ago and my brother took me to the current Gifford's (in Bethesda); it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great. I think the name has passed through at least two post-origin hands now.
Do you remember "Hot Shoppes, Jr.?" It was in the DC area (Rockville, anyway, across the Pike from the "real" Hot Shoppes) before McDonald's. You could get a fast-food Mighty Mo: not bad at all.
I loved the half-smoke article. I grew up near Washington and we always bought Briggs hotdogs and sausages (that's what we called half-smokes, unimaginative types that we were).
That was also back in the days of Hot Shoppes and Gifford's, both signature DC-area junk food emporia.
Then of course there was National Bohemian Beer (aka "Natty Bo"), which sponsored the Senators.
/yum
Natty Bo and Gifford's still hang on, zombie-like. Glad to hear there are still half-smokes, more-or-less. Hot Shoppes became Marriott (though the last Hot Shoppes closed in 1999, Google links to various purported recipes for the awesome Mighty Mo).
Two atomic holocaust novels that really affected me were Philip Wylie's "Triumph" and Mordecai Roshwald's "Level 7."
"Level 7" depicted the progressive advance of radiation sickness in a command shelter(?) that memory has made non-unlike the ones that were described in "Dr. Strangelove."
At the end of "Triumph," the last twelve Americans (possibly the only survivors in the entire Northern Hemisphere) are rescued by an Australian expedition. The book ends: "And when they were gone, the place had no name." /chill
I read a lot of novels in that vein back then (a lot were published, and I read anything that seemed even remotely in-genre). In retrospect they were definitely a bit Lovecraftian. Charlie Stross has explored this connection to excellent effect.
#11 Josh: Wow. I saw the post here, looked at the MF link page, found no posts by Anil Dash, etc. Now, prompted by you I went back and the thread is ten times longer than it was when I went there the first time, including posts by Dash, Scalzi, etc. Weirdness.
Forgive my ignorance, but where does Anil Dash fit into the MF link? Does he have a pen name I don't know but everyone else does? Firefox findeth not his name on that page...
I find myself mystified by the whole BB/VB/TNH kerfluffle. I don't know what is going on or why, but it seems many people are in a high state of outrage/excitement over it.
I will admit to rarely if ever reading the comments on BB.
What the previous posters said. I remember dealing with RN business-to-business about ten years ago, and I would rather wrestle a shark. At least when a shark smiles you can tell what you're in for.
One of the many foci of corporate evil in the digital world.
I am reminded of Borges' "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote." Either Iva is Cervantes, or Iva is Pierre Menard; it's a quixotic achievement regardless.
In any case, I've met (mostly in the internet sense) a number of people easily as wacko on the subject of evolution as Iva Biggrudge. I don't think (from evidence of other beliefs they express) that they are parodists.
The Boston Globe picked up the "My Beautiful Mommy" story today without a single word of skepticism, and gave it a half page of publicity.
Newsweek is the least offensive of the three major US news weeklies, which is a sad thing to say. For all its faults and for all that it's been regularly trashed here, I much prefer The Economist to any of them.
One could write a fairly comprehensive textbook on logical fallacies using the material the anti-dancer/pro-cop side of the argument has provided over there.
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