The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by jim:

I'd be interested in the way the contracts were structured. Was Keegan under contract to Hutchinson, who in turn contracted with Knopf? If so, it would have been a Hutchinson editor who accepted Keegan's manuscript. I would not expect a reasonably well-educated Englishman (or woman) to catch the items which serve as red flags to Americans brought up, as it were, on the American Civil War. We don't learn the Gettysburg Address by heart in the fourth grade. Keegan confuses rivers which are just names to Englishmen; he confuses Tenntucky and Kenessee, an easy enough error to make. It’s equally amazing that nobody at UK publisher Hutchinson remembered that Disraeli wasn’t actually Prime Minister yet in the years 1861-1865. No, it's not. I left school with the distinct impression that there had only been two Victorian Prime Ministers, Gladstone and Disraeli, who alternated.

If Knopf's contract was with Hutchinson, rather than directly with Keegan, they may have had only limited options with respect to the MS, once Hutchinson had accepted it.

When we lived in New York, we used to walk along beside Mr. Hudson's River. It was very soothing.

Just one quibble. 3 September 1609 is Old Style. So, though 400 3 Septembers have come and gone since Hudson entered New York Harbour, the Earth hasn't quite made 400 circuits of the Sun since then. In fact, Hudson left New York Harbour close to the equinox.

Interestingly, my property taxes don't cover either sewerage or garbage collection. Sewer charges are included in the water bill (I pay for it coming and going) and garbage collection is a flat fee levied on single family houses only since the city doesn't collect garbage from commercial buildings or apartment houses (they have to contract privately).

It is very difficult to make cross-jurisdictional comparisons.

Echo Pat Greene @23 on property taxes: mine are now a significant element of my budget, more than state income taxes and not much less than Federal.

a. 15.3%
b. 26.9%

This is for two people (joint return) 2008 in Virginia. Semiretired: pension (which doesn't attract FICA) plus both work part-time as adjuncts at a State University (one taught six courses over the year, one taught four). Fair amount of dental work which pushed up the out-of-pocket health costs.

Maybe it's a way of getting the right to vote for gun-control.

Step 1. Terrorists shouldn't be able to get guns (right agrees).
Step 2. Suspected terrorists are nearly as bad as terrorists (right agrees).
Step 3. Pass legislation banning people on the terrorist watch list from buying guns (with right wing votes: bipartisan, even).
Step 4. Put everyone on the terrorist watch list.

Chris W @ 32:

I'm not implying the producers are manufacturing the people. I am implying they're manufacturing the reaction.

This is not the slushpile. This is a heavily filtered slushpile. There have been numerous agents of the producers (in the UK they're called "researchers" for some reason) interviewing and auditioning would-be contestants.

I don't believe that the professionals on the show -- Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan -- are unaware of what the researchers have discovered. Their surprise, I would be willing to bet, is an act. Their role on the show is, at least in part, to model reaction for us, within the characters they've set up over the run of the show.

Remember: Once can be happenstance, twice, coincidence, but three times is enemy action.

Am I the only cynic who thinks it's happened a little too often in these shows? I really don't trust their producers.

ADM@149:

This is the first time I've voted in a battleground state, and I've lived here for near on 30 years.

Virginia hasn't voted for a Democratic Presidential candidate since Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. This year (touch all kinds of materials) Virginia will vote for a Black Democrat for President. You want symbolism? We don't have to go back to the Civil War.

No lines at my precinct in Alexandria VA just before noon. Four tables with three poll workers each to check ID and mark up the book (some elections there's just two tables with two workers each). Eleven machines (some elections there's just five or six). Twenty minutes to walk there, vote, and walk back.

But I talked to the sticker-giver-outer as I waited for Ellen to finish voting. He said the morning rush had been brutal. Some people had had a ninety minute wait. He was bracing for the 4PM to closing rush. Polls close in VA at 7PM. If the other precincts are like ours, I wouldn't expect them to have finished dealing with everyone in line and be prepared to report until 8 or so.

Actually it's not in Manassas. It's at the Prince William County Fairgrounds, which are well outside Manassas the other direction from the battlefield.

He wanted to hold a rally in Northern Va. and the Fairgrounds are about the only place large enough.

No symbols where none intended.

In the early '70s, when I lived on W. 76th St., the Harlem congressional district ran a finger down the upper west side. As a result, we got to vote for Charlie Rangel on the Democratic line, Charlie Rangel on the Liberal line, Charlie Rangel on the Republican line, or some otherwise unknown Conservative.

Here, the bands overlapped. You have lulls? Luxury! We'd've dreamed of lulls.

And Hanna is heading for Savannah. There's a song about that, I think.

Me, too. I've been reading Steve Gilliard since his netslaves days. He would take apart S-1s issued by dot-com IPOs. I'm ashamed to admit that I assumed him to be white in those days: who else would do close readings of financial documents? Fierce intelligence, tight prose; he will be missed.

Whatever happened to Outpost.com? They seem to have been forgotten.

The 03-09 War (on the model of the 14-18 War), if we're lucky.

I don't know if anyone's noticed it but Julie Philips's biography of Alice Sheldon (James Tiptree Jr.) has a 3/4 page review in the latest TLS. They're a bit late, but welcome to the party.

The problem is we don't stop flying. If large numbers of people refused to put up with this chickenshit, it would stop. We complain, we make fun, but we patiently line up and we fly.

By the way, Margaret, though they say they'll check ID to get on the train, I haven't ever seen them do it.

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