PinkDreamPoppies: However, I don't recall any of those pagan European gods being sold in Barnes & Noble as Jesus...
One key difference here is that Buddha is a title, not a person. There are loads of Buddhas, the original Gautama Buddha being just one. So the fat guy in the restaurant is a Buddha, but not the Buddha. As opposed to Jesus Christ, of which there is only one.
JVP: Buddha as "that fat guy in the Chinese restaurants"? With his faithful companion, Kitty (google the term in the put-money-in sense). Not to be confused with Hello Kitty. Sometimes confused with the big fat dude at Bob's Big Boy (the one at Toluca Lake is one of the last extant in Southern California). This raises the question: does Hello Kitty have the Buddha Nature? Or is Hello Kitty a cult, or a religion?
Of course Hello Kitty has Buddha Nature. The maneki neko on the shelf has been around longer than Sanrio's cat, but my favorite is the surfer version with the Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses, flashing a shaka sign.
The fat guy in the restaurant may have started out as one of the Seven Lucky Gods, but I think he's been incorporated into Buddhism at least as a boddhisatva, the way a lot of the pagan European gods became Catholic saints.
Marilee, thanks. I'll tell my wife. I did think it was a little odd when the only official-sounding hits on neem that I could google up were EPA pesticide registration announcements. :-P She's been using it topically for itchy skin and she says it seems to help.
Apropos of nothing, I have an herbal question for this open thread. Where can I find an objective online reference for herbal or alternative medicines that isn't inflating its claims in order to get me to buy things? My wife is trying to learn about something called neem, and can only find sales pitches. (Or is that in itself a telling observation?)
"His eyes were cold. As cold as the bitter winter snow that was falling outside. Yes, cold and therefore difficult to chew."
Upon closer reading of the article, I realize that the study only accounted for relationships within the previous six months. So much for my idea that these kids' relative inexperience was a factor. There are a few kids in the network who have five or six relationship links in that six-month period. One boy has nine! Yipes!
Greg, the planar nature of the network may be related to the fact that most of the individuals represented have only one or two connections, because they're young and haven't gotten around that much yet. Give 'em ten more years of dating, and the topology will probably get more complicated.
Claude and Stefan, re the Hieronymous Bosch action figures, did you try the Contact link at the bottom of the page? There's a Florida address and email at the very end. Not sure about the phone number, as it seems to be missing a digit.
Hooray, all twelve of Clarence Lee's Chinese New Year postage stamps collected on one sheet!
Charlie Stross, I hate you. Iron Sunrise kept me up till 2:00am last night because I had to get through the embassy scene before putting it down for the night. Now I'm strung out on all the caffeine I needed to get going this morning.
There's a copy of "One does not simply walk into Mordor" here, as well as other places I'm sure.
Jeremy Osner: My linguistics professor, William Diver, who had been in the Navy during WWII, told us about when his ship was boarded by the Italian navy -- nobody in his crew spoke Italian and nobody in the other crew spoke English -- but he was able to negotiate with the Italian captain, in Latin.
Did the captain speak Latin? Or was it that modern Italian is close enough that Diver's Latin was intelligible to the man, and vice versa?
Why, Chloe? Err, because the press says so and, not having been to the East Coast in years, I tend to take what they say at face value? Perhaps you're the perceptive type who noticed it when it was barely a blip on the screen; well, now it's a big enough problem that everybody and his brother are talking about it. That's why.
Stefan, why gelcaps? Are they less amenable to having their active ingredients extracted?
Boy Teresa, you must be feeling better to be able to compose a response that long.
Pseudoephedrine can be used as an ingredient in the synthesis of crystal methamphetamine. The process is relatively inexpensive and not that hard to do if you don't care about health and safety precautions. As a result, illegal meth labs can be found almost anywhere: people's apartments, houses, warehouses, barns, etc. The solvent smells are a giveaway, so the cooks usually try to find out-of-the-way places where neighbors won't get suspicious and complain. (Remember what I said about ignoring safety? Lab fires are also a pretty common side-effect.)
In response, in some jurisdictions over-the-counter drugs such as Sudafed are kept on the back shelves and must be requested, rather than being freely available on the regular shelves. I've also seen stores place limits on the maximum number of packages you can purchase at once (usually 5). Crystal meth got its start in Asia in the 1990s, and has been working its way eastward through the USA ever since. Recently it's started showing up in East Coast states and even in the rural heartland. All I'm saying is that when it starts having a big enough effect on enough people, especially in the Red states, the feds will probably be moved to clamp down harder on it than ever before. Since the meth cooks need an FDA-regulated product (pseudoephedrine) as a key ingredient, it seems straightforward to expect that the feds will want to do something about that ingredient. I have heard that a non-pseudoephedrine decongestant formulation is available, but the pharmaceutical companies of course don't want to pull a lucrative product off the market, if they don't have to. It'll be a battle between the FDA and the DEA.
Pseudoephedrine may be effective, but don't expect it to be on the shelves much longer now that the crystal meth epidemic has finally reached the East Coast. The feds will probably ban the stuff soon.
Similar to Emma's sugar-and-bourbon is my dad's mix of whiskey, lemon juice, and honey, with a dash of hot water to thin it out. Adjust proportions to taste.
I found this today and was fascinated.
John Brockman of the Edge Foundation has asked 120 noted scientists, writers, and other thinkers the question, What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it? Their responses are varied and interesting.
Xopher, if you want to get A Composer's Christmas, it's here.
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