Rick:
"The media has always reported these incidents."
Sure, they'd have had a hard time not reporting that somebody got stomped to death. That's not what I said though. I referred to "journalism"; to my mind that means a wee bit of investigation and reporting should be involved.
Did the media seriously investigate or discuss any corporate responsibility or culpability for the incident? Advance knowledge of the likelihood of injuries? I sure didn't notice any of that last year - just the "tragic accident" line when discussing Walmart's role. The anathemas were reserved for discussing the crowd's behavior in isolation, as if a crowd had magically appeared there for no discernible reason.
Next time you see newspapers asking "Who will do all our hard-hitting journalism when we're gone? A bunch of bloggers?" ask them which newspaper is doing this kind of hard-hitting journalism on their big advertisers.
Meanwhile, I am arranging that - if possible - we don't even have to do any food shopping this weekend, so we can all stay far far away from stores, let alone big box stores. Friday we're thinking about taking the whole family hiking up to the Makapu'u lighthouse.
Juli:
I agree with what Mark said too. I've recently taken to roasting a number of vegetables I would not have previously thought to (cauliflower florets pick up a really nice subtle taste) and carrots sound like a nice addition to that list.
Caramelized onions are wonderful in all kinds of things, and of course are also the basis for French onion soup. Because they cook down so much, you really need a lot of onions to make a good-sized batch of caramelized onions, so if you've got the patience that's perfect for your situation.
Juli Thompson:
Soup. There's hardly any hearty winter soup that doesn't rely on (or do better with) plenty of carrot and onion. Split pea soup, lentil soup, just plain vegetable soup, beef and barley, chicken soup with rice, you name it.
Carol:
The Carrot and the Parrot one may easily confound;
They're very much alike in looks and similar in sound.
We recognize the Parrot by his clear articulation,
For Carrots are unable to engage in conversation.
I hunted down a copy a few years back because I had a rush of nostalgia for it. I think the author of this book might have been a relative of the Woods on my mother's side of the family. That's what I recall my grandmother saying, anyway. (Sorry, Linkmeister.)
I think somewhere between Paula and Alan's list we could put together the ideal list in response:
- Being There
- Dr. Strangelove
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
- The Russians Are Coming!
- ...
Tim Walters: Neat! I just sent the URLs to my daughter; I think she's done some composition with Supercollider.
oh gosh, oh gosh. sending them both good white light.
Lila: Nice links; I notice the first one contains a primordial lolcat. (Eclectric Oil? Now there's an unusual portmanteau if I ever heard one.)
Angiportus @ #495: Xeger, Bruce, TexAnne et al: I'm still trying to visualize the look on the meter-person's face--and hope they will be too busy wondering what that thing is, to inflict a ticket.
It was unfortunate* that you posted this comment directly after the introduction of dragon/car slash to the thread.
In that context, it took me quite a while to recall the trebuchet parking discussion.
[*] Or a stroke of luck. So to speak.
Definitely generic comment spam.
I understand what Jo's getting at, though I'm not a writer and not sure I could put it into words if I were.
To have a different stab at it, if the world in the book isn't a real world and if the people in it aren't real people doing real things and if the story that's happening in it isn't the real story - then it turns into by-the-numbers allegory not rich metaphor. (That doesn't preclude people liking it, of course.) It has to be living and rich on its own before it can stand in for anything in the real world.
That's the thing that saves Narnia from being an unsubtle and now-forgotten allegory - C. S. Lewis couldn't help writing the characters in it as real people with their real worries and quirks, and the world of Narnia as real on its own, not just a symbol, and the stories themselves matter. That breathes life into it.
Going back to Orwell, nobody's mentioned that 1984 was specifically intended as 1948? He mentioned somewhere that he just swapped the digits of the year.
Another UK metal-detector find of 4 gold torcs in Scotland - nowhere near as big as the Staffordshire find discussed here, but the piece pictured is stunning:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/tayside_and_central/8342501.stm
Seen elsewhere, in re the flu vaccine:
"It's a giant conspiracy by the medical industry to keep you alive for as long as possible so they can make money treating you. Dead people don't get sick." (Seebs)
ajay:
I had to look at it twice. In the video, they're demoing each of their 4 models, with very brief cuts in between; each one book has 2 covers, not 3 or 4, or an infinite number of covers.
The infinite number of covers will be available in their Borges model, out next year. (However, all the pages will have only a single side, making it impossible to read back-to-front or turn back to an already read page, much like life.)
Summer Storms: Oh, that! I should have thought to mention that. That is the main annoyance with Vista. You can't even run much of Microsoft's own development software, like Visual Studio, without having to run it as administrator every time. (And you still can't, after it's been out a couple years. Pretty amazing.) If something important won't run on Vista, especially something "techie", then Run as administrator is one of the next things I try.
Diatryma:
That used to be easier in those bygone days when everybody connected to the 'net via dial-up modem, because fax was a subset of the standard modem capabilities, and of course you had a modem. Eventually Windows got around to supporting fax via your modem as a sort of pseudo-printer device. However, that does little good for those on the 'net via Ethernet, cable, DSL, or the neighbor's or coffee-shop wifi. There are some services which let you send faxes via the 'net; however, the simplest course might be just to buy a modem for your computer.
The boy decided to be an alien this year; mom, with very slight assistance from me, worked out how he could turn into a four-armed orange alien. (Second long-sleeved shirt with arms and gloves stuffed with rags, and with holes cut for his arms to come out underneath.) He is thrilled and looking forward to trick-or-treating. We'll be doing the mall trick-or-treating thing because nobody ever goes around our neighborhood.
In the meantime he's offered to teach us both alien language and alien writing. He invented a Martian alphabet earlier this year; not sure if this will be the same or different.
B. Durbin: The Kaiser healthcare system in Hawaii (and California, I think) works pretty much exactly like that. Some like it, some don't.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 424 |
| 2008 | 578 |
| 2007 | 446 |
| 2006 | 322 |
| 2005 | 22 |
Total: 1792 comments. View all these comments on a single page. (May take quite a while to load.)
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Clifton Royston:
Show all comments by Clifton Royston.