Oh dear, one was hoping that no news on that side was good news.
At least with your connexions around the globe, you can be sure of positive, hopeful thoughts arriving from all directions at all hours, like a happy sort of cocoon being woven. (I'm reminded of the faeries setting up Titania's bed for the evening.)
I believe that several outside scenes in Blake's 7 (DVDs of first 2 seasons now available) were filmed around a rather notorious nuclear power plant formerly known as Windscale. So they were using nuclear power plant equipment mostly to be various [evil] Federation space bases & communication plants. Not sure if that quite counts.
I've also heard that in a Star Wars scene where CP-3IO is threatened with dismemberment & electro-torture one of the sinister instruments is recognised by some as gynaecological equipment.
And I thought this might provide some gristle to gnaw for the fans here: The anal-retentive apostrophe Test - "a series of questions where you will have to pick one of the answers, to reveal if you know your it's from your its and your her's from your hers."
... and once you HAVE got them, you wonder how you never did before, it seems so clear and obvious.
I think some people don't get their full thanks for doing something like that (tho' thanks may also be concentrated all onto one Great Man, instead of a whole lead-up, lead-out group), because people forget just how un-knowing we were before.
"Shoes of the Fisherman" (Morris West) was made into a film with Anthony Quinn in 1968 so perhaps some of that is seeping through & merging with other stories with a similar idea.
I suspect part of the urge to narrative is part of the function of memory. We remember what makes sense, even if we have to twist it around to make sense out of it.
(Summary includes: "Kiril Lakota, a cardinal who reluctantly steps out from behind the Iron Curtain", so that's not at all anything like Karol Wojtyla (Jr), from Iron Curtain Poland)
Thought you might like to know. Testing the new Google Maps service with some locations in Noo Yawk, I got the following response: "We could not understand the location Times Square." (I saved this as an image file too, just to show people.)
Just read that theres a The Gates blog at
http://nycgates.blogspot.com
It includes some photos as well as comments and links. You can add your own photos. It was apparently mentioned recently in the NY Times and Wired, so might have some heavy usage now.
Following the craft thread: During our Centenary of Federation celebrations back in 2001, amongst a number of community & artistic events there was a travelling exhibition of portraits, by a single man, of all our 25 Prime Ministers. Apart from the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, it travelled to Sydney and many regional centres. A common heading was "our leaders as you’ve never seen them before" (aka Our Prime Ministers as you Have Never Seen Them Before [check caps?] ) and "Fuzzy Prime Ministers" - they were woollen hooked rugs.
I just got the teatowel, myself - on a bad political day it can help to wipe your dirty teacups on your least favourite leader's face [hehehe]
pericat:
This was noted by my own humble self on November 07, 2004, 04:12 AM:, starting: "Aaaiiiieee!!! [quails] Has anyone else tried the search function on Making Light recently?" and Michelle called them BIG GIANT SCARY LETTERS, and wondered if they'd been eating comment spam and had grown uncontrollably as a result, thereupon earning the epithet Comment Spam of the Gods. On December 01, 2004, 05:37 AM:, they had seemed to be back to normal size, but checking after your note, "they're baaack".
Interesting suggestion about the Movable Type system, tho' I don't have any knowledge of it at all, so you can just ignore this sentence.
Stefan suggests "vacuum covers that look like giant robots, or Pokemon, or famous movie monsters?"
How about, for fandom, the Cthulu, Dagon, Cave Troll, Sand Worm, etc. vacuum covers (I particularly like the idea of the Santa Sand Worm, or Elvis Cthulu version). Following other earlier strands in the thread, some of the household guardians (Lares, Hestia, Hathor, brownies, perhaps?) could be suitable.
Perhaps some of the knitted or crocheted toilet-paper-roll cover patterns could also be adapted? Probably best in easy-wash yarns -- there was a lady from Tasmania who collected plastic supermarket shopping bags, cut them in strips and crocheted them into mats & other wet-area objects, among other frugal habits. Those have a limited colour-range, however.
[wicked grin] The M&Ms matter reminds me of a Christmas jape a friend played on a child of some of his friends. She'd asked for an Eminem CD, so he bought & carefully wrapped a large bag of M & Ms, handing it to her with a well-practised innocence. I don't know if he'd alerted her parents beforehand.
Apparently her expression was a classic.
Naturally he swiftly followed up with the actual CD. But I do wonder if he might be expecting something similar in return, say for his birthday this Wednesday. (I've noted that there is a new type of sweet thing called "Pods", in case people want iPods.)
Ozland, and Sydney in particular, being both very multicultural and food-obsessed, I was fairly sure there'd be a source somewhere. Here are two I've found online.
Herbalistics (They say they are "a new medicinal plant nursery located in Northern NSW. We are specialised in sourcing and growing rare, unusual and hard to propagate plants, both native and exotic.")
Dried Herbs » Chipotle (Smoked Jalapeno Chilli): These are Jalapeno chillis that have been smoked in fruit tree wood and then sun dried ... Sweet, smoky, bitey, hot.
Herbie's spices "We stock the largest range of culinary Herbs & Spices in the Southern Hemisphere" (In Rozelle/Balmain. Run by the son of John and Rosemary Hemphill, Australian pioneers of the herb and spice scene in the 1950s.)
Chilli Chipotle Powder 30g: A delicious smoked, dried jalapeno. Use in soups, stews and casseroles. Vegetarians find them an excellent substitute for ham in vegetable soup. Heat level – 5/10.
There used to be a lovely grocery store in Crows Nest that for many years had a whole large section of special American food that was otherwise hard to get here (expats visited from afar), but I've heard it closed down - possibly bought out by a large new organic/health food store that's opening new branches.
Not that far away, in Neutral Bay (US connexion there) a good Mexican/American place called "Rattlesnake Grill" almost closed down too, but seems to have come back.
Re Shoe Meme :) I wonder if the respective authors had both been to a Barry Kosky production - I think it was Verdi's Nabucco - where a long scene was played out on a stage littered with discarded shoes? He may have got the idea from European productions.
I think that was meant to be a reference to the piles of shoes (etc) gathered from Jews as they reached the Nazi camps. They, and others' memories, were often the only identifiable thing left of their former owners.
Here, with a growing population from Islamic & Eastern cultures, you do more often see neat little sets of shoes lined up outside houses, but this image seems different.
Pseudoephedrine definitely does have some sort of effect on me. Once I accidentally overdosed on a cough syrup I was using to try and "soldier on" at work. It left me feeling very strange and light-headed, which probably didn't help the work either.
But that was probably a cold or like lesser viral infection that doesn't lay you out like the "proper" 'flu does.
Best wishes to T & P for speedy & happy recoveries (and anyone else here affected, just to not make them feel even worse by being left out).
The link below is to an image of a map showing the most recent available figures for government (?) assistance promised to areas damaged by the Indian Ocean tsunami. To get a good comparison between them, you'd need to factor in things like the GNP and population of the different countries - a point more clearly made by the parable of "the widow's mite".
( world-responds.jpg )
A local news article
Australia had learnt valuable lessons from the 1998 tsunami in Papua New Guinea, the Sydney Olympics and the Bali bombings. Bonds had been established across departments, between state and federal bureaucracies, and with counterparts in Asia ... AusAid's country director for Indonesia ... sent a staff member to Aceh on Tuesday, after it had become clear that local and international aid agencies had pretty much been wiped out themselves with the disaster.
The words of the employee when he reached Aceh ... were: "This is Hiroshima."
Indeed, the way things had been wiped out right down to the foundations, leaving a sort of ghostly map, have been reminding me of pictures of Nagasaki & Hiroshima, but here there is this immense drift of everything just smashed apart and mashed up together, whereas vast quantities of the bombed people and cities were completely burnt away.
Lois, unlike me, is certainly not on the short list for her country's Olympic Procrastination Team. That 'Non Sequitur' just completely correlated to several discussions I've read here.
Checkitout soonish, 'cos I think they go into archives after 2 weeks, when they become visible only to paid-up registered members who can store their favourites. This one may very well go into 'cult classic' mode, like Calvin & Hobbes' "Big Picture" strip.
What fidelio said. It's how everyone responds to this kind of thing that shows the world what their rhetoric & professed values are actually worth. And if it can be sustained, not just have a wave (erm...) of warm fuzzy feeling, followed by forgetting as the next thing comes up - as pointed out by Maines in the NY Times about last year's Iranian earthquake.
Anyway, something self-referential:
Web users pitch in to global relief effort
by Jesse Hogan, The Age Online, December 30, 2004
As distressed Australian relatives trawl the hospitals of tsunami-affected countries, the internet is proving an unlikely tool in their quest to find friends and relatives.
With telephone hotlines often engaged and the language barrier making information-gathering even harder, many of the most valuable volunteers helping reunite people have not even had to leave home to do so.
A dedicated band of internet bloggers and website creators are providing people around the world with phone numbers for hospitals and embassies in tsunami-affected countries, and a database of missing people ...
Locally, some news websites have urged overseas readers to submit stories and pictures of the tsunami, with ABC Online providing a collection of eyewitness accounts. The Age Online has done likewise, and has created a bulletin board for people trying to contact relatives overseas ...
and has a listing of " Disaster blogspots"
More information and updated advice from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade at www.smarttraveller.gov.au
Sending donations from Australia
Some banks are also allowing donations to be made to various charities at their branches.
This is truly looking like an absolutely horrific disaster, spread over so many places, even to deaths on the East African coast. There were even people washed out (and recovered safely) in Busselton (near the south-western tip of Western Australia) and very weird tidal surges in Tasmania, on the south-eastern side of the continent! Check maps to see the distances involved.
It's probable parts of our north-west coast were hit, but it's very sparsely inhabited; see dcubed.blogspot.com for some discussion on how the consequences of natural disasters are amplified by human circumstances.
What fidelio said. It's how everyone responds to this kind of thing that shows the world what their rhetoric & professed values are actually worth. And if it can be sustained, not just have a wave (erm...) of warm fuzzy feeling, followed by forgetting as the next thing comes up - as pointed out by Maines in the NY Times about last year's Iranian earthquake.
Anyway, something self-referential:
Web users pitch in to global relief effort
by Jesse Hogan, The Age Online, December 30, 2004
As distressed Australian relatives trawl the hospitals of tsunami-affected countries, the internet is proving an unlikely tool in their quest to find friends and relatives.
With telephone hotlines often engaged and the language barrier making information-gathering even harder, many of the most valuable volunteers helping reunite people have not even had to leave home to do so.
A dedicated band of internet bloggers and website creators are providing people around the world with phone numbers for hospitals and embassies in tsunami-affected countries, and a database of missing people ...
Locally, some news websites have urged overseas readers to submit stories and pictures of the tsunami, with ABC Online providing a collection of eyewitness accounts. The Age Online has done likewise, and has created a bulletin board for people trying to contact relatives overseas ...
and has a listing of " Disaster blogspots":
tsunamihelp.blogspot.com - A detailed blog that offers list of aid agen cies responding to the disaster, how to donate, and a list of contact numbers for emergency services in each country.
www.lankapage.com - A site for Sri Lankan expats that details the situation in Sri Lanka.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4130565.stm - Many postings from people looking for loved ones.
www.disaster.go.th - Mostly in Thai, but has English link to a regularly updated list of hospital patients.
www.p-h-u-k-e-t.com/forum - Mostly messages from Scandinavians looking for relatives, plus a section for other nationalities.
2bangkok.com/quakes.shtml - Regularly updated mix of local news reports and Thai Government information.
More information and updated advice from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade at www.smarttraveller.gov.au
Sending donations from Australia
PLAN: Vist www.plan.org.au or call 1800 038 100.
CARE Australia: 1800 020 046 or www.careaustralia.org.au
Australian Red Cross: Call 1800 811 700, visit www.redcross.org.au or post a cheque to GPO Box 9949 in capital cities.
Oxfam: 1800 034 034 or www.oxfam.org.au
Medecins Sans Frontieres www.msf.org.au
UNICEF: 1300 884 233, 1300 732 240 or www.unicef.org.au
World Vision: 13 32 40 or www.worldvision.com.au
Baptist World Aid Australia: Call 1300 789 991, by mail to Baptist World Aid Australia, Locked Bag 122, Frenchs Forest NSW 2086, or www.shareanopportunity.org
Caritas Australia: 1800 024 413 or www.caritas.org.au
Some banks are also allowing donations to be made to various charities at their branches.
This is truly looking like an absolutely horrific disaster, spread over so many places, even to deaths on the East African coast. There were even people washed out (and recovered safely) in Busselton (near the south-western tip of Western Australia) and very weird tidal surges in Tasmania, on the south-eastern side of the continent! Check maps to see the distances involved.
It's probable parts of our north-west coast were hit, but it's very sparsely inhabited, and perhaps oil-drilling platforms at sea just get a milder surge in the deep water. I've seen no reports about it.
Bother. My connexion has been very slow indeed over the last week. Didn't see that reply until it (eventually) refreshed after my post.
Fenris the Wolf? I'd only heard of the great serpent which encircles the world, swallowing its own tail, but my knowledge is far lesser than some, who have made deeper studies, including one who is a great Pratchett fan. Shall see if there's any more info from that area.
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