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

Julia, Dave L, Feòrag, et al, as Dan R said, when the UK joined the EU in 1973 after decades of havering, Australians (with other Commonwealth 'subjects') suddenly were shunted across into the queue at Customs for 'Aliens' - as well as losing a longstanding and important trade partnership. This, along with some fairly offhand treatment as 'colonials' while visiting, with or without visas, did rankle.

The grudge can be quite longstanding. My father had to stay in the UK for some months during the Suez crisis, unable to get back to his wife and new baby. He still harboured quite a dislike of 'Poms' themselves to his death over 40 years later, though he was fiercely proud of their traditions of civilization, law, etc. Perhaps this recent treatment is part of the old love-hate Oz/UK relationship.

And more recently, the FUD about 'illegals', possible terrorists from abroad, Australia being 'swamped by immigrants', etc, has been revived from the fetid depths of the national unconscious in one of the more despicable & disgusting manipulations of public sentiment used to gain or retain power of my lifetime.

First question is quite frightening now.

It was bad enough when I had just my own books, but I inherited my partner's collection (which included his parents') a couple of years ago, and now I've just had my parents' worldly goods passed on to me. Have three households of books, furniture, clothing, etc, now and can only live in one place - especially with Sydney real estate situation.

It's the sort of thing that conduces one towards the idea of bundling up the necessities in a backpack and heading for a bare room somewhere. At least for a month or two.

Hammer of Witches (can't spell Latin, more euphonious version) definitely helped cause a lot of havoc, but that's not 19th or 20th century.

Again: Dangerous Books?

More Dangerous Books: Barista, on January 03, 2004 -- paper/death/sound Connects last year's story about ""a man ... rescued after being trapped for two days under a mountain of reading material in his [New York] apartment" with the "strange death of Charles Valentin Alkan"

Another biographical link:

Charles-Valentin Alkan (November 30, 1813–March 29, 1888) was a French composer and one of the greatest virtuoso pianists of his day. His compositions for solo piano are among the most difficult ever written and are relatively rarely performed.

And a couple of more places where his music is discussed and played
All About Alkan (Fred Flaxman)-- also an alternative All About Alkan, with musical examples.

You say you've never heard of Charles Valentin Morhange? OK, I admit he was better known as Alkan. If that still draws a blank ... you would never pass the O.C.T.s -- the Obscure Composers Test.
Alkan had nothing to do with the proposed merger of Alaska and Kansas. Nor is Alkan the new name for the Aluminum Can Company, although it should be. No, Alkan was a French pianist and composer (1813-1888). He is known by musical scholars and CD maniacs alike for his highly original, kooky compositions, his sense of humor, and the way he died -- or didn't die -- depending on what you read.
and

Ten years after this recital was recorded, this is still some of the most hair-raising piano playing committed to disc and perhaps the best thing pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin has done to date.. Alkan was one of the certified wackos of classical music. A contemporary of Franz Liszt who could supposedly outplay him any day of the week, he became a recluse in Paris after a short but highly successful concert career, keeping a virtual menagerie of exotic pets in his apartment until his sudden death.

I share Steve Taylor's worry, but like most, will give it a go & be patient. The narrower central column may make it a bit easier to read most of the text, but it does wear for longer entries (hmmm ... deliberate to discourage waffling, she types loquaciously?) and as my eyesight get worse, the size and colour of body text may also prove a problem.

But note that the blank with link for ads/blank with ads only page takeover problem IS NO LONGER! It became very bad recently, so this is a Very Good Thing.

Also noting the hurled objects, Epacris spp are good at tucking themselves away in the undergrowth inconspicuously.

talking slate ... talking lead

Oh dear, this brings up vivid memories of Islay the Begging Dog in central Sydney. Since it is within 50 metres or so of a major SF & F bookstore, perhaps I should alert any possible visitors. It is actually part of an elaborate cover for an air outlet/inlet for the underground pedestrian walkway that joins the basement level of the Queen Victoria Building with the railway station underground at Sydney Town Hall.

Sadly, the very dour ex-Dublin statue of Queen Victoria nearby is facing away from her little terrier, rather like the way the twin statues of Victoria & Albert the Good at Queen's Square (formerly Chancery Square) between various historic sites, the Law Courts, St James' church and Hyde Park, appear to be sulking after a marital tiff; and Matthew Flinders' statue is separated from the one of his cat Trim, "The best and most illustrious of his Race", who stands on the Mitchell Library windowsill*. (Guide to Sydney's Green Plaques)

It's one of the city's busiest central spots, so, though I usually suceed in getting past without alerting it -- a talent sometimes honed on automatically-opening doors -- an unknowing, or curious, tourist ... or one of those locals (you know who you are) is forever setting it off on its spiel asking for donations in the wishing well. Perhaps the idea was inspired by the piece of Blarney Castle embedded in the same object.

*During recent building works, a special frame was made in the hoardings so Trim wasn't covered up.

By the way, does the Manx slate ever end its tale, or is it always truncated?

"And who is this Princess Mary person?"
Dear Larry, see Danish Royal Wedding: Crown Prince Fred of Denmark marries Australian real estate agent Mary Donaldson (May 14, 2004) with the comments May 14, 2004, 11:06 AM: and May 14, 2004, 11:38 AM on the Open thread 22, starting on May 08, 2004.

There has been more news recently because The Happy Couple came back to Oz on a visit a few months ago (sales of Fruit Tingles, a sweet she said she'd missed in Denmark, rocketed as bouquets of them were pressed upon her), and just recently it was announced she was enceinte -- the quick count-back revealing conception occurred at that time.

We all used to say "only in America". There was a story linked to the particle (April 14, 2005) involving a camel suit which an airport baggage-handler took out of a travellers' bag and wore out on the tarmac. (Tho' this didn't wear it out. <g>) This is the best summary, but I think you have to register/subscribe to see the full story: Too much baggage May 14, 2005 Neil McMahon

It was about a young woman in a group travelling from Australia to Bali in whose unlocked bulky sports bag a large bag of marijuana was found. This is a capital (firing squad) offence in Indonesia. She is claiming it was -- unknown to her -- put into her bag as part of an ongoing arrangment to smuggle goods between domestic airports, and that it had missed being taken out. There is at least one report of a man who phoned the consul in Bali having found a bag of grass in his luggage on arrival at his hotel and being advised to quickly dispose of it and not report it.

The whole thing has blown up into an incredible scene, rather along the lines of The Big Carnival (Ace in the Hole). Maybe it could be pitched as "OJ meets Elian on the Midnight Express"? It has ramified into some serious matters involving home affairs (like the extent of corruption in airport staff, with a cocaine smuggling ring just arrested and many passengers reporting they lost valuables from their cases in transit), international incidents (e.g., interfering in overseas criminal trials, death threats to Indonesian diplomats in Australia, groups at the court picketing in favour of the death sentence), websites, petitions, SMH polls, T-shirts, songs being written, etc, etc, while a rich businessman has taken up her cause. The judicial systems are fairly different so there's a lot of room for confusion, and also the rules about the kind of media coverage and the legality of commenting on sub judice cases seems closer to the US free-for-all than the more restrictive Australian rules. It just goes on ... (This is the latest Schapelle Corby update)

And for all the non-usians out there who get slightly irritated by references to obscure US personalities, here's 100 Aussie names you can throw around to confuse them (I've heard of nearly all of them, tho I don't know anything more than that about quite a few). Meanwhile usians & other non-Ozzies can make yourselves sound familiar with Oz affairs, if you so wish. Impress your friends! Break the ice at parties!! Readers' Digest Australian Trust Survey

Developments in Mariology

Official: Mary not a saviour by Linda Morris, May 17, 2005
After decades of bickering, an international ecumenical body of 18 bishops, clergy, religious and laypeople from 10 countries, the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, devoted to bridging the gulf between the Anglican and Catholic churches has reached an historic agreement about the role of Mary, Mother of Jesus ...
The report Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ, was issued in Seattle early today Sydney time ...

Taking advantage of Open Thread to just throw in a current little note on the subject of electronic voting, which was discussed here in 2004: A few more questions thread from 14th June, 2004; Questions from 11th June, 2004; another comment

Paper gets thumbs up vote By Nathan Cochrane, May 10, 2005 ('Next')

The immediate future of a secure electronic voting system that people trust lies not with gee-whiz technologies but old-fashioned paper-backed systems, a Victorian Government inquiry has found ...
Report - www.parliament.vic.gov.au/sarc/E-Democracy/Final_Report/ToC.htm
It recommended that e-voting for local and general elections be restricted initially to a few machines running open-source software that has been hardened by "white hat" hackers who have tried to break their security.
That source code would be published on the Victorian Electoral Commission website ...
PCs should not be linked to the internet, and their voting records should be transported along at least two separate physical routes to a tally office, where they would be checked against each other at the close of polling ...
Subcommittee chair, Labor MP Michael Leighton, says the committee was impressed by the ACT's experience with e-voting, based on the open source eVACS polling stations supplied by Canberra consultancy Software Improvements.
The Californian e-voting debacle that centred around US technology provider Diebold made the committee wary of recommending proprietary systems ...
The Government has until November to table its response in Parliament, and Leighton hopes there will be some electronic polling booths at high-traffic stations by the next state election.
"Our system (unlike the US Florida count) isn't broke[n] and therefore we couldn't identify an overwhelming public need or benefit."

I thought that some of the points could be usefully discussed, though I agree that this thread is getting too long to load comfortably. My how we rabbit on :)

Just saw this today, and I wondered, relating to the discussion of sf/sci fi as well as films, if anyone had yet seen this one? Or heard if it's likely to be distributed near them?
Master of light and shades (Film director Wong Kar-wai)
by Sacha Molitorisz: Article; Film site and trailer

Interesting, as that's exactly what 2046 is about: the way we tend to look back at the past through rose-coloured glasses. 2046 revisits the love affair of In The Mood For Love between Mr Chow (Tony Leung) and Su Li Zhen (Maggie Cheung).

At the end of In The Mood For Love, Chow travelled to Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The year was 1967 and Chow's goal was to find an ancient hole into which he could whisper the secret of his doomed affair with Su Li Zhen. 2046 opens later, as Chow, a writer, moves into the Oriental Hotel. Burned by his affair, Chow has devolved into a voracious ladies' man, bedding one gorgeous conquest after another - until meeting his match with his neighbour in room 2046, hostess Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi). Convinced by the hotel owner's daughter, Jing Wen (Faye Wong), to write science fiction, Wong begins a novel called 2046, in which an android-filled train allows travellers to voyage to 2046 to recapture lost memories.

Odd, you say? Truth is, the 129-minute drama is much more complicated and curious than any synopsis can suggest.

Wong says the film was inspired by the Chinese government's promise that it would not meddle with Hong Kong for 50 years after taking over in 1997.

"2046 is not only the room number or a certain year - it's more about a state of mind, about all of us, that we always want to preserve something. We know it's going to change, but ideally we want to preserve it somewhere. It's like we have an antique shop in our mind."

Maybe this should go on the Open Thread 40 discussion, but when the threads get near to 300 or so comments, the "ads-only page" cuts in before the browser gets to display the comment entry box, even when I keep hitting the Back Button to re-display the comments. Very irritating.

Still wondering if a heirophant is someone who inherits from a hierophant, or perhaps just the heir of an elephant?

Pyschopomp, BTW, is a word that sounds silly, but the function is rather sombre & grand, if it is what I think it is.

It's been a long, long time, Mr Ford, and memory has been overlaid by much else, but your piece was, indeed, what I suspected. Thanks for the memory. I'd better get back to work now.

<ahem> Would that be likely to be a trilogy in four parts, or in five, do you think?

From that New York Times article : "science fiction has evolved since the days of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne".
I submit an overlooked section from page one of War of the Worlds , it begins with the well-known bit, but continues on to something quoted a lot less often:

With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same ...
[famous quote] Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us ... [/famous quote]
... The immediate pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts. And looking across space with instruments, and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of, they see ... a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas.

And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that, generation after generation, creeps upon them.
[non-famous quote]
And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?[/non-famous quote]

I wonder if that is referred to in the new film version ?

Spotted something both the science-based & other people here might find a good subject to discuss. (And priceless chances for name-dropping.)

www.spiked-online.com/sections/science/sciencesurvey/
Spiked's Survey "If you could teach the world just one thing"
2005 - announced as Einstein Year - marks the centenary of the publication of Albert Einstein's equation E = mc2. [Ahem; and some other stuff - Ep.] To mark this occasion, Sandy Starr at spiked and science communicator Alom Shaha have conducted a survey of over 250 renowned scientists, science communicators, and educators - including 11 Nobel laureates - asking what they would teach the world about science and why, if they could pick just one thing. Alom Shaha, who conceived the survey, has made four accompanying films in which interviewees talk through their responses.

Spiked's Survey Responses - Index list by name (a v quick scan shows they are mostly UK & USA )

A summary of the responses

[OT][whinge]
Piscusfiche. Yeah: moving. Boxes, piles, sorting, throwing (pain), saving .... (See also Moving House, June 24, 2004 ; Grind, June 29, 2004)

My own home is 12-foot-wide inner-city terrace, already has nearly 3 housefuls of stuff in it (bought it with contents from the deceased estate of a relative, so it included much family history).

For around 5 years I've been staying with my frail mother in the flat where I grew up, in which we lived from 1958, caring for her. She's now past that stage, will have to go into full-time care and we will need to rent out the flat to help pay for her care. (Prices have gone crazy, I'd never be able to buy anything like it, so hope to keep it for my 'social security'.) Almost 50 years of two hoarders lives, including all the family stuff that isn't in my house needs to be sorted, thrown, moved (where!?), etc.

My partner's house was in a hideous mess (Do hoarders attract hoarders?) when he died & I fell ill simultaneously. After 2-3 years work it's much better - down to "normal" household situation, but badly needs repair. Have to decide if can afford to repair. If can rent, use for storage, whatever.

My good friend who did most of that work was retrenched, can't live on his savings, has decided to move to Singapore where it's cheaper to live [any comments, anyone?]. He plans to rent his flat out for a while, decide if to sell it later; therefore needs to clear it out, decide what to do with the hundreds (thousands?) of books and further hundreds of DVDs, dozens of dragons he's collected or been given, and the rest of his stuff. Harder to go & blob on his couch with a cuppa when it's ~4,000k North West.

I get to work this week and find they're going to tear up the carpet & put in a new one, so everyone has to pack up all their things & throw out what's unwanted. I think you've seen what sort of things accumulate around publishing/editing type desks (well, cubical farms). Sigh. There's no escape.

Trying to think positive. Have home(s), mother (a bit), friends, job; city & infrastructure more or less in working order; will have contact with friends. Facing same age birthday as Glenn Gould died (and Douglas Adams?). Kinda big life landmark - think this could be characterised as "mid-life crisis" developing on the base of all the illness and death recently, with this disruption putting the icing on top.

Reading here about other peoples difficulties has also been fortifying. Is good because it's not a dedicated self-help or support group, but a community of interest in several things of interest that can "take you out of yourself", but with other positive effects too.
[/whinge][/OT]

<sigh> work machine has broadband, sound, no quicktime; home machine has v dodgey dialup line, no sound (has card & speakers, zilch noise after a rebuild some while back), but possesses quicktime. Bound to be round eventually.

Alas, my four free film tickets that we got as our Christmas bonus at work expire at the end of June.

Tom - just checked a listing for the picture-book version of "Gonna Roll The Bones"; apparently Fritz Leiber's original story has been substantially cut to adapt it to the form (like plays adapted to opera).
But the name given as the illustrator is David Wiesner. Is one a nom de pencil, or is there confusion?

Keith wrote "I also thought that the Scopes trial settled the creationism vs. evolution debate"
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution, and the law stayed on the books. Is that what you are referring to, or that he was cleared on a technicality on appeal?

From a transcript of a PBS show on the "Monkey Trial":
www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/monkeytrial/filmmore/pt.html

Narrator: Judge Raulston charged the jury with deciding whether John Scopes had indeed violated the law -- had he taught evolution in a Tennessee classroom?
After just nine minutes of deliberation the jury declared that he had. Then the defendant himself spoke for the first time.
"Your honor," Scopes said. "I feel that I have been convicted of violating an unjust statute. I will continue in the future, as I have in the past, to oppose this law in any way I can."
...
Two years after the Monkey trial Clarence Darrow and the ACLU challenged the anti-evolution law before the Tennessee Supreme Court. For Darrow it was a mixed victory. The court overturned John Scopes' conviction on a technicality, but it allowed the Butler Law to remain on the books.

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