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

Show all comments by Jean.

Posted on entry The Myth of the Likely Voter ::: October 23, 2008, 11:44 AM:
I don't know the pros and cons in general of polling the 'likely voters'. But if you have a candidate who is perceived as something new, who appeals to people who are not regular voters, polling 'likely voters' will surely understate their support?
Posted on entry Brown Bagging Your Pie ::: October 04, 2008, 06:09 AM:
...serve with ice cream and/or cheddar cheese.

Wensleydale!
Posted on entry Geek test ::: February 24, 2007, 06:05 AM:
Recognised the source straight off, did a double take and realised that no, I'm not obsessing, yes, it really is that.

Still don't know what's been done to it, alas, as the link to the answer appears to be broken...
Posted on entry The War is Over! ::: November 05, 2006, 02:11 PM:
So do your duty, boys, and join with pride
Serve your country in her suicide
Find the flags so you can wave goodbye
But just before the end even treason might be worth a try
This country is to young to die

I declare the war is over
It's over, it's over...

Phil Ochs, War is Over.
Posted on entry Woke up, it was a Hormel morning ::: June 16, 2006, 09:26 AM:
It's almost certainly nothing personal: I'm currently receiving a steady trickle of returned mail in all languages and character sets, because someone has taken it into their heads to spam as if from a variety of alphabet soup ids at a domain I look after.

I don't think they are doing this to fool the unwary that they really exist - a) because they aren't using real names and b) because anyone who checked that domain would see that it has no relevance to what they are selling. Does it spoof automated filters (i.e. do any of them check that mail bears the address of a real domain?).

What I'd like to know is, how can any company be gullible enough to pay someone for distributing their advertising, labelled SPAM in large friendly letters, to all these nonexistent addresses?
Posted on entry Happy birthday ::: March 21, 2006, 02:33 PM:
Many happies, from another of the older-than-thou brigade. Let there be parties!
Posted on entry The perfect uselessness of Warren Whitlock ::: March 15, 2006, 12:22 PM:
The world today demands better mousetraps.. and expects you to fight through the cacophony of marketing messages to get the word out. It's getting harder and more expensive to create the stampede that will beat a path to your door!

This is the bit that winds me up: it admits that his activities, and those of his fellow spammers, don't in fact sell good products to people who are crying out for them, they erect a barrier between the producer and the market.

Well, yes, we knew this: but I wasn't expecting him to boast about it...
Posted on entry Life imitates high school (chapter 5,271,009) ::: December 11, 2005, 10:49 AM:
If someone with Flash would like to cast my vote for me, feel free!
Posted on entry Life as Art ::: November 13, 2005, 11:52 AM:
My home, of course, is a museum of Me, and is open to that select fragment of the public who know where to find it.

No? Then I'm sure I can find a comfortable corner at Beamish - with maybe a London pied-à-terre at the Geffrye.
Posted on entry Open thread 49 ::: September 15, 2005, 09:22 AM:
See the boys out walking
The boys who look so fine
Dressed up in green velvet
Their silver buckles shine...
Posted on entry Discover America! It's 2700 smiles wide ::: September 05, 2005, 06:13 AM:
For what it's worth, reporting in the UK has been exceptional in that usually, any disaster that happens, the news will tell you how many Britons were involved and how they are doing. I'm not proud of this, but evidently that's what we are assumed to want to know, to the extent that you hear appalling tales of death and destruction, followed by "it is not known if any Britons were involved". That's what matters.

Not this time. I was actually saying, last week, how odd it was to have a disaster in which it seemed that no Britons had been affected. Today is the first time that's been contradicted.
Posted on entry Yo, Wocky Jivvy, Wergle Flomp-- ::: June 30, 2005, 05:23 AM:
Oh bliss! Oh, joy!
Posted on entry Slush: noted in passing ::: June 10, 2005, 01:19 PM:
Eleanor - not quite. MR2 is closer to "emmerdeur" - a bore.

I heard a similar story about Rolls Royce having to rename a car they'd planned to call the "Silver Mist" because it doesn't play well in Germany. Don't know if it's true.
Posted on entry Habemus papam ::: April 19, 2005, 02:43 PM:
Meet the new pope; same as the old pope...?
Posted on entry Misprescribed ::: February 14, 2005, 03:49 PM:
What they said.
Very much sympathy, panic at reading post turning to relief (mostly) to know that medication can sort this, proportion of that huge wave of outsourced anger, sheer amazement that even when not firing on all cylinders you have been posting the stuff you have (well, yeah, ok, the fall-off in quantity I'd noticed. But never mind the width, feel the quality!).
Me too.
Posted on entry Grind ::: July 07, 2004, 11:48 AM:
Larry Brennan says:

"I've always found the British "removal" and "removal van" a bit ominous and involuntary sounding."

There was a hippy removal company that you probably won't find reassuring: used to advertise in Private Eye under the name "Head Removals (gently)"
Posted on entry Grind ::: July 01, 2004, 06:02 AM:
I'm never moving again; it's like E.M. Forster says:

"The Age of Property holds bitter moments even for a proprietor. When a move is imminent, furniture becomes ridiculous, and Margaret now lay awake at nights wondering where, where on earth they and all their belongings would be deposited in September next. Chairs, tables, pictures, books, that had rumbled down to them through the generations, must rumble forward again like a slide of rubbish to which she longed to give the final push, and send toppling into the sea. But there were all their father's books--they never read them, but they were their father's, and must be kept. There was the marble-topped chiffonier--their mother had set store by it, they could not remember why. Round every knob and cushion in the house gathered a sentiment that was at times personal, but more often a faint piety to the dead, a prolongation of rites that might have ended at the grave.

It was absurd, if you came to think of it; Helen and Tibby came to think of it; Margaret was too busy with the house-agents. The feudal ownership of land did bring dignity, whereas the modern ownership of movables is reducing us again to a nomadic horde. We are reverting to the civilisation of luggage, and historians of the future will note how the middle classes accreted possessions without taking root in the earth, and may find in this the secret of their imaginative poverty."

The good news is that there is a single malt that actually tastes of chocolate - it's Scapa (and it's my favourite, and personally I wouldn't dream of cooking with it. But your dreams may be more expansive than mine...).

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