The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Phil Palmer:

I'm guessing that this melting point tester needs to be of clinical accuracy and sorry, I haven't got one.

I don't suppose there is any archaeological indication as to whether Lucius succeeded in taking Amaka out with his infernal exploding oven?

My Spanish uncle used to make Sangria for us in the sixties and seventies. Choosing the lemonade was as important as choosing the wine.

The President is a... ker-lang!
The President! He's a... ker-lang!!
etc.

Dit dit dah dit
Dit dit dah
Dah dit dah dit
Dah dit dah.

shirtlifter, turdburgler, brownhatter?

But please don't think me ginger (beer)
If I give you a zinger here;
You'll never stop a Cockney rhyme
Whose basis varies over time.

If God can make a rock bigger than he can lift, then ontologically speaking, he must have made one or else he wouldn't know whether he could make one or not, and so he wouldn't be omniscient either. Where can it be? Whose head can he have put it in?

I was taught by my chemistry teacher that the reaction feared by the Manhattan project was the chemical oxidation of nitrogen one, the same as the one which happens during lightning strikes. He cited it as an example of a reaction that has a high activation energy requirement but which then generates enough heat to continue. Or rather, doesn't seem to in this case.

He may have been talking nonsense on purpose; I am now wise to the pedagogical trick of using hyperbole to nail an idea into the recipient's skull. Apparently it's more effective than just saying you need to heat things to cook them.

Quite a foot-tapper.

#586 Patrick, #588 Owlmirror

Thanks for the suggestions. It seems to be affecting all of tribe.net sites, so the free trade agreement is probably not to blame! Paranoia dispelled!

abi #583

That's disturbing. I'm in NZ which is currently signing a free trade agreement with China. I'll have a look round here to see if anyone else has noticed.

Hi. Does anyone else have difficulty accessing Teresa's "Protest Beijing 2008" particle? I'm finding it blocked and the site removed from Google's cache.

A little Open Thread item here:

Is it just me or do all the big bank failures have names that should have been a clue? Bear Stearns has initials BS. Barings might be said to have lost their bearings. Northern Rock puns much too easily to Northern Crock. And in the 80s the UK Midland Bank bought a Californian outfit called Crocker, which was.

Superdelegates-

I have been reading that in California, which is probably typical in this regard, proportional representation in the primaries means that it applies at the congressional district level, where the number of delegates depends on the number of registered Democrats in that district.

Bear with me.

In a large number of districts, that number of delegates is four. There are only five ways that four delegates can be divided between two candidates, these being 0-4, 1-3, 2-2, 3-1, 4-0. I assume that proportionality means these splits are evenly divided over the voting range. Thus for any outcome between 40% and 60% a candidate is going to get half the delegates from all these congressional districts.

So for any lead of less than 20% the superdelegates are going to be rather in control, innit?

Patrick-

I can't help but feel that I'm stuck at your "Barack Obama can kiss my ass" moment. I don't subscribe to the Obama=Blair view, but neither is he Dennis Haysbert or D B Woodside. And I have experienced far too many corporate restructures to believe that "unity" and "change" count for any more than "do as I say and be grateful that I'm even talking to you". What's left is a candidate who showed judgement - yes - but leadership - no - in opposing the war, and who has a tailored bargaining set of positions on issues that shouldn't be issues (like Net neutrality). I won't particularly mind if he becomes president, but my perception that America is in a steep and calamitous decline, whose fall will continue to shake the nations of the earth, won't be changed. (I think we are now only one metaphorical rifleshot to an Iranian border guard away from a major date in history.) I don't hate Oprah Winfrey by any means; but her endorsement of Obama has convinced me for Hillary. And I remember Teresa saying once, mockingly and ringingly, "You mean, it's easier to move than clean house?".

James, #9:
>> Why would anyone bother holding an off-camera shotgun on the defendant?

Or watering-can, or whatever. I don't know why and it shouldn't be my obligation to guess. The obligation is on the process to ensure openness. Video closes it off.

>>The arraignment is when the judge reads the defendant the charges against him and tells him when the trial date is.

It's not just there to be a bureaucratic hassle for the judge. One principle of habeas corpus is that the accused is presented in court and is shown not to have been "disappeared".

>>The defendant should have contact with lawyers immediately from the moment of his arrest, as in "I want to call my lawyer."

All sorts of things "should" happen. Usually they do. But your argument, taken ad absurdum, would imply that the criminal justice system be abolished because there are redundancies in it. Few safeguards are effective by themselves; a stream of executions in Texas should be enough to shake your confidence in sober and competent lawyers.

Isn't the problem with video arraignment that you can't see that the prisoner hasn't been bashed? (Extra negatives added for courtesy.) Though I suppose if you don't have habeas corpus any more that isn't an issue.

@73 Michael Weholt

You're right, "I find it fascinating that.." is a cliche and I resort to cliches far too often in blog posting.

But you seem to have a low opinion of comedies of manners. It is regrettable (another cliche, tsk) that the mannerisms in an election cycle consist of pretending not to have any rather than of carrying on like Jack Vance characters. Some would say (I haven't used that one lately) that the trick in a performance is not to allow the audience to spot the artifice, but without the perception of artifice there is no perception of authority, and no expression of meaning. And for Hillary, who wants to straddle the twin coracles of Resolve and Triangulation, it's fatal.

Ah, the American comedy of manners is at it again.

I was never quite sure why WJC, who was never going to be called a slut, should have been expected to tell the truth and remove the last shred of dignity from Monica, who was. But there you go.

Now Hillary, who remained dry-eyed while a Democratic congress dropped her health care plan all over the floor, while gossip accused her of the murder of Vince Foster, and while baying Republicans accosted her at every turn with the news that her husband had so far forgotten himself as to shag the help, may be considered to have acquired a reputation for resolve by so doing. One that calculation tells us would reside in the public mind more firmly than her triangulations inside the Beltway.

Yet the resolve was not much in evidence when it came to opposing George Bush, whether it was on the fraudulence of the 2000 election, the fraudulence of Enron, the fraudulence of the war of Saddam's WMDs, or the miserable callousness of the credit card bankruptcy bill or the even more reptilian pouting of the Katrina response. To mention but a few of the possible opportunities recently presented in which to show resolve. Though it may be that Edwards has chosen the wrong theme and the question to hang in the air is not resolve but the ability to do a job.

I'm not American. I just watch. I don't even believe America is going to survive, because nobody survives having a financial crisis and an army mutiny on the same day. But I find it fascinating that Edwards raises a question illuminating the whole shoddy irresolute business of Hillary's post-White House political career and it is instead principally construed within some tacit framework of gender stereotypes, ones which everyone in a heterogenous nation of 300 million is supposed to instantly recognise. As a comedy of manners it is awesome in its scope.

And foolish.

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