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

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Posted on entry Open thread 131 ::: October 28, 2009, 12:29 PM:
Sarah E @ #186: Don't miss out on Brown's murder mysteries, either. Night of the Jabberwock and The Screaming Mimi are particularly good.
Posted on entry Open thread 131 ::: October 26, 2009, 10:40 AM:
"It is said that upon listening to a performance of this quartet, Schubert remarked, "After this, what is left for us to write?"
Posted on entry Seasonal Poetry ::: October 20, 2009, 11:13 AM:
Winter is icumen in,
Lhude sing Goddamn.
Posted on entry $9,695 New Age sweat lodge session kills 2, injures 19 ::: October 16, 2009, 11:07 AM:
I'm sure that Dave will find a more congenial forum. Personally, I'm a lot more polite here than I am in some other fora, because civility is the mode here. That's fine with me. On PZ Myers's blog, I might be a bit tarter. On [Title Withheld] I'm positively acidulous. Avoiding smartassedness isn't always easy; I got punched out for it a lot when I was a kid, and it's a hard habit to break.
Posted on entry Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize ::: October 09, 2009, 11:32 AM:
FungiFromYuggoth @ #27: I think the word you were fishing for is "prospective".
Posted on entry The Tay Bridge Disaster ::: October 06, 2009, 04:51 PM:
xopher @ #20: Julia Moore is the Florence Foster Jenkins of poets. Except her stuff scans.
Posted on entry The Tay Bridge Disaster ::: October 06, 2009, 04:51 PM:
xopher @ #20: Julia Moore is the Florence Foster Jenkins of poets. Except her stuff scans.
Posted on entry The Tay Bridge Disaster ::: October 06, 2009, 01:54 PM:
The Great McGonagall wrote:
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.
'Twas about seven o'clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seemed to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem'd to say --
"I'll blow down the Bridge of Tay."
When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers' hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say --
"I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay."
But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.
So the train sped on with all its might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sight,
And the passengers' hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov'd most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.
So the train mov'd slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.
As soon as the catastrophe came to be known
The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown,
And the cry rang out all o'er the town,
Good heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down,
And a passenger train from Edinburgh,
Which fill'd all the people's hearts with sorrow,
And made them all for to turn pale,
Because none of the passengers were sav'd to tell the tale
How the disaster happen'd on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.
It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay.
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.
Posted on entry Open thread 130 ::: September 27, 2009, 09:19 PM:
Too bad van Vogt's printer couldn't do Unicode...
Posted on entry Open thread 130 ::: September 27, 2009, 09:16 PM:
Oh, here's Latin Capital A with macron (U+0100}: Ā.
Posted on entry Open thread 130 ::: September 27, 2009, 09:12 PM:
xopher @ #28: You should be able to use Unicode. The value for "lower-case a macron" is "U+0101". Convert the "0101" to from hexadecimal to decimal (that's 257) ; precede it with "�" and follow with ";" and you get "ā" appearing in HTML.
Posted on entry Rapture of the nerds ::: September 15, 2009, 11:04 AM:
Clifton Royston @ #54: I was indeed surprised when I first learned that SCSI was pronounced "scuzzy" rather than "sexy".
Posted on entry The Bully Pulpit ::: September 15, 2009, 10:56 AM:
Lizzy L @ #180: You've nailed it. I was a small, fat, totally unathletic smart kid who got beat up all the time. With the wisdom of more than a half century of hindsight I'm no longer completely sure who was doing the bullying, because what I got beat up for most of the time was being a smartass.

As I got older, taller and thinner (but still the same old me inside) I never acquired any physical aggressiveness, but it took a hell of a long time for me to stop beating people up intellectually, and I'm by no means out of the habit even now. I have to force myself to step back and shut up. This is not good for personal relationships.

Evan @ #180: Animals, yes. When I learned that the child George Bush enjoyed putting firecrackers in frogs and blowing them up, it explained a lot to me.
Posted on entry Making Lumiere: The Changelog ::: August 10, 2009, 10:26 AM:
If you held the Con at the Aleph Null, you could always make rooms available by moving all the guests to even-numbered rooms, freeing up the odd-numbered ones.
Posted on entry How to Cook the Perfect Steak ::: July 28, 2009, 01:27 PM:
The problem with this method is that it wastes the pan drippings. For God's sake, deglaze the pan with red wine, white wine, brandy, bourbon or stock, reduce and stir in softened butter to make a sauce.
Posted on entry Robert A. Heinlein, technological nostalgist ::: July 26, 2009, 07:40 PM:
Of course, this was written after Heinlein, but he accepts the mischief potential as normative.
Posted on entry Robert A. Heinlein, technological nostalgist ::: July 26, 2009, 07:38 PM:
@ #27: In Asimov's The Caves of Steel, the detective, Lije Bailey, loses a pursuer with L337 $K11L$ he learned as a teen running the slidewalks of New York.
Posted on entry Open thread 127 ::: July 14, 2009, 12:10 PM:
In ASCII, 127 is DEL. Pretty ultimate.

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