The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Scott Lynch:

this film tell us about what American audiences want to see about treatment of an enemy?

I'm not sure it can really tell us a single meaningful thing, especially since the director of the film is Dutch.

Conversely, why did critics of BOTH film and book fail to understand what Heinlein meant by a volunteer force, with volunteering being a prerequisite to citizenship?

You'll need to specify just how and what "they" failed to understand before I can give you any sort of answer, JVP.

Sorry to be snippy; I'm just a bit pressed for time right now. Gotta go jogging before another storm blows in.

Cheers,

SL

"Crazy rage" wasn't the result of interned Japanese-Americans

Gosh, possibly because Executive Order 9066 didn't mention anything about genital electrocution, naked human pyramids, guard-dog attacks, anal rape, or forced oral sex at gunpoint, now did it?

or Holocaust survivors

Meek and mild, those Holocaust survivors. Like the ones that founded Israel, and a little outfit called the Mossad. Like the ones that rose up in the Warsaw Ghetto. Like the ones that snatched Adolf Eichmann from his pleasant retirement and publicly hung the fucker.

You seem to have skipped one of the required steps in the use of history books; it's either "opening them" or "comprehending them," but I wouldn't presume as to which.

Those folks dealt with the horrors they experienced by moving on, living their lives and building something productive

So, that's what you'd tell the survivors of 9/11/01, and the family members of the dead and injured, right?

And if a bunch of foreign soldiers detained you on false premises, strapped electrical wires to your genitals, set attack dogs on you, etc., you'd move on and live your life and build something productive, right? Leading by example and all that? I mean, not that we doubt your manifest righteousness; perish the fucking thought.

See beyond the literal, mon frere. I believe the lady is suggesting that she is enchanted by the medium in which she works, or the tool with which that medium is brought to life, or perhaps both. When I was 12, I frequently confused God with model airplane parts.

Ah. Ahhhh.

Fascinating, just fascinating. I can't wrap my head around the possibilities or the consequences of this sort of thing. There's gonna be blog tennis over this sucker, no doubt.

And now I understand the frustration of wanting to talk about it, while wanting to keep it under wraps so nobody gets in trouble or gives away hot intel. My apologies for hitting the button for an electronic gerbil pellet, I'm... a gerbil.

I speak on the phone about once a month with my best friend from high school; he's a SAW gunner with one of the airborne divisions somewhere in Iraq (Lest it sound like I don't care about his situation, I do know his actual unit down to platoon and his position as of two weeks ago, but that info is not for the 'net).

The 'net access he had was subject to vetting, as was his mail and, to a certain degree, his phone calls. Which makes me wonder how much (or how little) of the same other servicemen and women face.

Is there a particular reason you want 500 needy Making Light readers refreshing your page every quarter of an hour to see if you've left more bread crumbs?

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Xoph, no one on this thread is actually discussing nuking anyone; they're just mentioning the fact that assorted right-wing nutmonkeys have no problem talking a HUGE line of militant shit in their own little echo chambers, and that their teeth-gnashing in response to the occasional "too hot for blogdom" comment by a lefty/centrist is comical hypocrisy.

I used to read InstaPundit on a daily basis, and I think Mary Kay has the situation cold: Glenn was, at one point, tolerably balanced, but a persistent lack of self-examination has set in, and nowadays the "indeeds" fly thick enough for self-parody.

Or, to paraphrase Kevin Drum: "Boy, I bet the self-correcting nature of the blogosphere will kick in, and you'll be retracting your factual errors any minute now, right Glenn? Any minute now... still waiting... any minute now..."

Anyhow, I'm not so sure that the topic of nukin' people is so untouchable that it should preclude us from even discussing people who like to talk about nukin' people. Especially when we verbally kick the shit out of them. Does that make sense?

This has nothing to do with anything posted so far; it's just so adorably bizarre I thought I'd point to it.

"The Exorcist in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies."

http://www.angryalien.com/

Hey, there are these underlined words that lead to the explanation I was seeking! Totally wild!

(Hangs head in shame as cheeks rapidly turn a nice shade of Hot Tamale)

What are funeral potatoes?

God bless the boys at Penny Arcade for expressing the frustration of internet stupidity using the higher language of mathematics:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3

Y'know, this Yngve pindick was over at SciFiWeekly just two weeks ago, with the same mix of insults, condescension, and obvious ignorance. I knew his name was familiar:

http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue359/letters.html#sftv

Can you give us some perspective on how often something as frankly batshit as the "In Defense of Yngve" letter darkens your inbox? Is this something you and Patrick get on a monthly basis? Weekly? (Gulp) Daily?

"I just wanted to say" has a 'net acronym?

I need to figure out a way to play with this soup so that both myself (the vegetarian who doesn't like bacon or chicken stock) and my girlfriend (the carnivore with a deadly allergy to egg whites) can try it.

My part's easy enough-- I can just prepare the bacon on the side and only slide it into hers (though I'll keep the shallots), and sub vegetable broth for chicken in my pot. But how could I thicken up her eggless portion, short of more gelatin? Would more cream do the trick? Too much cheese will also elicit an allergic reaction-- it's something she has a limited tolerance for, so I can't just go heavy on that.

Dammit, now you've also got me thinking about soy-bacon, something I swore I'd never touch with a fifteen-foot cavalry lance.

Sennoma wrote:

Mmmmmm, ranch sauce (oh man, I haven't had this since I quit eating meat, someone tell me it's vegan!).

It can be, or so says these two recipes:

*****
--1/2 Cup soy milk (regular flavor - not vanilla)
--1/2 Cup soy mayonaise (Nayonaise or Veganaise)
--1 tsp. garlic powder
--1 tsp. onion powder
--3 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
--1 Tbsp. dried parsely flakes (or finely chopped fresh parsley)
--salt
--pepper
*****

or

*****
--6 oz. Mori-Nu silken style tofu, firm or extra firm
--1/4 cup Soy Mayonnaise
--1/4 cup green onion, finely chopped
--3 T. water
--4 t. lemon juice
--1 T. freshly chopped parsley
--1 T. freshly chopped dill
--1 T. tamari, soy sauce, or Bragg Liquid Aminos
--1 1/2 t. garlic, minced
--salt and pepper, to taste
--dash of cayenne pepper
*****

If you have problems with the thickness of the first recipe (if it's too runny), adding a bit of plain tofu would probably give it more body and cling. Also, the first recipe seems to want at least a pinch of dill to recreate the taste I associate with ranch dressing, but YMMV.

Cheers!

SL

Yule Heibel wrote:

but it's because I'm pissed off that when a woman writes factually, she's *perceived* as reeking, old, and ...what else did you say? Oh, yeah: cranky!

If this isn't the single most fatuous and ignorant thing anyone's tried to pin on the guy since I've been hanging around these blogs, it's a shoo-in for first runner up, and it's competing for a special technical achievement award, too.

Honestly, it's like accusing him of being a potted cactus or a time-traveling Chinese spice merchant, which is to say it's left "merely fucking ridiculous" far, far behind (though both of those arguments are actually more defensible than yours).

Maybe, just maybe, you should consider reading a bit deeper into the blog-thoughts of someone "whom [you] also don't know from something in the ground" before you start conflating a simple statement of opinion with deep-rooted misogynism?

adamsj wrote:

While I may deplore Scott's choice of ketchup as a hamburger condiment (why put french fry sauce on a hamburger? Mustard on french fries, sure, but this!)

I'm not quite the heretic you think I am, Adam. Ordinarily, I don't let ketchup anywhere near my precious Boca Burgers. It's just that lately I've been craving that slight tanginess you get when you mix a small amount of ketchup with a lot of mustard (a 1:4 ratio, let's say) under all of the ingredients listed above.

Ketchup seems a decent complement to long, slender "fast food" style fries, but I'm not so keen on it for softer, more full-bodied fries. Oddly enough, what I've really come to love in the past year or two is ranch dressing. Mmmm. Particularly for dipping with cheese fries.

A plate of thick-cut fries covered in melted cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses, with buttermilk ranch dressing on the side... it's a culinary mount of Megiddo where your arteries and your taste buds will have their final battle.

adamsj wrote:

I, too, found veggie burgers rather tasty. It wasn't just hearing Michael Feldman (not on the air in Atlanta! Why?) push Boca. I smelled one cooking once and though, "What a tasty burger!"

Ahh, Boca Burgers. The staff of life. Just add sharp cheddar, Monterey Jack, and mozarella cheeses, lettuce, tomato, pickles, ketchup, mustard, and sliced white onions. Place it all on a hamburger bun and the religious service has begun. Positively sexalicious.

Cheers,

SL

Your "Chaucer read aloud by pros" link is a bit funky.

Cheers,

SL

Entitlement? If you run an online forum, blog, list, etc. that allows posting without registration, pre-approval, or other special procedures, anyone who comes along is by default entitled to leave their two cents. Whether they're being rude (or stupid) by doing so is a completely different argument, and the owner/moderator of the forum is quite entitled in turn to, say, disemvowel an egregiously useless and offensive post. Or throw a hissy fit like the PBZ list moderator did. Or delete it. Or replace it with links to Tolkien slash and pictures of kittens (now that makes one grateful for disemvoweling, eh?).

Is it generally wise for an author to hit out in such a fashion? Probably not. But they have just as much "right" to interject on an open board/list as they would if they were interrupting a nearby conversation in the real world. Nobody ever said it was nice or advisable, is all.

I see Wright's point, but it would have made more sense for him to argue that the technological capabilities of his imaginary civilizations, rather than the great span of years, renders our contemporary views of the issues moot (which he later does, both directly and by inference).

Dan L-K wrote:

The use of the word "spider-Zen" in the context of your story conjured an image of a tarantula taking on and dispatching a circle of crickets in the manner of David Carradine facing a ring of ninjas, if he also ate the ninjas as he went along. It was quite amusing, and made my morning.

Thank you, Dan. And you pretty much have it-- Neal simply couldn't abide the presence of free crickets in his terrarium. He would bite them all as fast as possible and press them into a large ball, which he would steady with his pedipalps and drain all at once, rolling it over and over as individual husks shrank to nothing.

My spider, the binge-eating martial artist. He would also bob his abdomen in response to heavy bass from a stereo placed nearby. All in all, a truly funky pet. I even thought he was cute and cuddly.

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