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

I'm in Ohio, and it asked me about Maine, Maryland, Tennessee, Montana, Kansas, Florida and Alaska. I think that was about all of them.

The fact that they claim that they're going to draw from the most accurate predictions, and then asked about probabilities. That was a huge red flag for me - after the election, is anyone really going to be able to say whether the chances of Obama winning Florida was closer to 50% or 90%? All we'll be able to tell is that he *did* (or *did not*) win it, surely?

I don't know if my answers were internally consistent, but between the impossibility of what they were asking for, and the same states repeatedly coming up, I think it only took a handful of questions for it to be obvious they were questions about statistics, rather than about politics.

Oh, and at the end, they asked something like "how familiar are you with the questions we asked?". Well, I'm 100% familiar with the fact that you just asked them, but until next Tuesday I'll be 0% familar with who wins which states... So I'll just go with the same thing I put at the beginning for how familiar I am with US politics...

Well, since The Eye of Argon has finally been published, I nominate this:

Eyeing a slender female crouched alone at a nearby bench, Grignr advanced wishing to wholesomely occupy his time. The flickering torches cast weird shafts of luminescence dancing over the half naked harlot of his choice, her stringy orchid twines of hair swaying gracefully over the lithe opaque nose, as she raised a half drained mug to her pale red lips.

Frankly, any random paragraph would do, but I love the fact that her nose's opacity needs to be pointed out...

Emily H:
Ninjas can't catch you if you're on fire. Which comes from here.

Lee #20:

Bruce, #16: Yes. There is a smallish group of folks (I'm one of them) who are trying to spread the meme that the name of John Lennon's murderer should never be spoken or written. He wanted "to be famous"; by letting his name wash away with the tide, we deny him that.
This seems like another case in which that treatment would be well-merited.

Because that worked so well for Herostratus, right?

I thought of a yellow jaguar from Djibouti.

It was honestly the first D country that occurred to me.

#47:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=PRyvsRAo8T8

In Britain, 911 will also connect you to the emergency services. When I was a child, that would take you to recorded cricket scores, but apparently that was confusing for American tourists.

#7:

Hrm. So, if the AP writes an article saying that Person X raped and murdered several 8-year-old girls, it would be against their terms and conditions to reprint that story?

What's the point of newspapers, again?

Annalee:

Ah, that makes more sense. Apologies for the misunderstanding.

I'm just so used to people completely misusing "literal" that I didn't stop to tease out an actual correct meaning for it. I'm literally burning with embarrassment ;)

#8 ::: annalee flower horne

There's no literal ocean between Iran and Russia. I suppose you could count the Caspian sea, but it's tiny, and doesn't pose any kind of barrier between the two nations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Caspianseamap.png

Did I make it? Was I in time?

*fingers crossed*

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