Am I the only one here who's had close business relations with Russell Davis, prior to his arrival on the entire SFF.Net and then SFWA scene (which, god help me, I recommended to him in the first place before he knew much at all about fandom)? Just curious.
Sorry, I'm behind on reading ML, but wanted to add this:
The story is even better than most sites and news media portray it -- the Paulites went into a restaurant on Elm Street in Manchester and started chanting around the Fox News team as they sat at a table having dinner; the news people fled, followed by the Paulites, as they chased them out of the restaurant and down the street, where the Fox people took refuge by ducking into the Center of NH, where the news media had their major setups and camps (and security guards at the door).
We locals loved it.
All I know is, thank God the primary here is tomorrow.
At this point I want to take the phone off the hook (over two dozen polls, robocalls, and live calls today alone), and I feel as if there is a black hole forming to the west and slightly north of here about three miles (Manchester) that's sucking in all light and sound ... and I'm sitting on the event horizon.
I keep getting the Ron Paul robo-calls. They drive me nuts. What? They can't afford volunteers? Plus, what are they doing calling a phone number of a registered Democrat (came in on the line that is mine, rather than the one listed under Elric, who is registered Independent, so he gets calls from everyone -- yes, we pay attention to that in New Hampshire). Not impressive, Dr. Ron Paul.
O mi gawd. You have Ultraman. Woot! I must admit as a young girl I had a thing for Ultraman -- I think it was the air of mysterious origin. (And here I thought I came to fandom late -- and it was hovering over my childhood and I never realized it.)
That is the coolest Hugo I've ever seen. And you won it! Then again, you are the best editor I know.
An article from May in the Palm Beach Post has some interesting information about the use of the Taser as the officers at UCLA employed it: in the "drive-stun" mode --
In March, a study by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies said that Tasers can't be ruled out as a contributing cause of deaths that follow shocks.
"We strongly recommend that additional research be conducted at the organism, organ, tissue and cell levels," the report concluded. "The community needs to understand the specific effects of varying electrical wave forms... to include possible psychiatric and other nonlethal effects."
In the same month, forensic engineer James Ruggieri warned police departments that Taser shocks could damage the heart and cause delayed cardiac arrest. He advised that officers not be submitted to shocks during training.
Even the company that makes the stun gun, Taser International, urges caution about use of the weapon in the "drive-stun" mode and with repeated shocks ...
Officers also can remove the prong cartridge and discharge the weapon directly against a person's body in the "drive-stun" mode to subdue combative arrestees with a searing jolt of pain.
The Taser training manual advises that because it is not incapacitating, this mode can lead to "prolonged struggles" and that "it is in these types of scenarios that officers are often facing accusations of excessive force."
The technique also requires some care, according to Taser International, but the company's guidelines contain conflicting recommendations. The manual points out that the neck and groin "have proven highly sensitive to injury, such as crushing to the trachea or testicles if applied forcefully." The manual continues, "However, these areas have proven highly effective targets."
I worked for and with Jim for over 16 years, the last seven as his production manager for the entire book line. I'm sure I knew sides of Jim Baen few get to see, and didn't see sides others saw; he was indeed a complicated man. The man I started to work for in 1989 was not the man he was in the last few years, that's for sure: his health was not the best, and he knew damn well he wasn't taking care of himself, yet was too stubborn to do anything more about it; he despised doctors and hospitals. Yet a non-stubborn Jim Baen would not have been the brilliant publisher he was; stubbornness was a keystone to his character, both for good and ill. He stuck to his guns, fiercely protected and stood by those he considered his extended family and friends, and (at least, for most of the time I knew him) had a memory like the mythological elephant (for good or ill). He was a brilliant publisher who could see a niche or need from a mile off and knew how to fill that niche. I didn't always adore every title we published, but for the years I oversaw all production (and for the titles I handled before then), I tried to elevate the production quality of the line to its highest possibilities. I only hope I made a difference. Alas, I had to leave Baen last October; I still miss it.
If those who read this list know anyone who is going to the private farewell to Jim down in NC, please get in touch with me.
For reasons I cannot fathom, after re-emphasizing that I am "still part of the family," his editor has refused to take my phone calls in the last week and has only sent me very formal email, excluding me from the private good-byes. As of today, the office has apparently been ordered to refuse to speak to me regarding Jim and to tell me that there will be no farewell for him other than the fannish public party at some convention in July. I know his ashes are to be interred in the next week.
I do not know why after 16 years I am to be excluded from something so important and yet so innocent.
After almost half of my adult working life was spent working directly with Jim Baen, I only want to say good-bye and make my peace, nothing more. Do get in touch with me if you can be of help.
No more news of Jim as of yesterday evening; he seems to be resting well and is in no apparent pain, though is still in a coma. The office, particularly Marla and Hank, are sounding small, exhausted, and wrung out. We need to remember them in our prayers, too. The daily running of the company is falling on their shoulders, along with Toni.
J.Jill will, if you call them, give you all the pertinent (and some just plain handy, but not obvious) measurements for all sizes of all their clothing. This I found out quite by accident earlier this week, which truly made my day while shopping for a good black skirt and jacket to wear to my dad's military funeral. They even gave me the front and back fall measurements of the jacket, without my asking.
T -- Glad you did get the sleep/CPAP testing done. I'd heard what sounded like some apnea a couple of times you were here in the past; very similar sound to Elric's.
Elric has used the full-face mask as well as the nose-with-chin-strap, and I think he prefers the full-face model, though you should probably ask him. He has found that with constant use, the masks do indeed need replacement every few years, as the plastic starts to become brittle. Luckily, most places that supply the CPAPs send you a new face mask every year or so as part of the original payment or insurance coverage, at no extra cost. Don't do what he did and take an ailing mask with you to a con in a far-away city; odds are it will break on your first night, and then you'll be gasping all weekend. Murphy loves CPAPs.
You are welcome to bring your bear and hang out with us other can't-afford-to-go-to-Scotland (waaaa!) people in lovely New England. Scotch, a grill, deck chairs, commiserations about how we would all rather be in Scotland, and bug repellent. What more does one need? :-)
It looks like the gyro slabs that come from your way. For some reason the ones up here in the Greek sub shops are short, fat, and completely cylindrical (which led me to wonder if NYC was building a giant septic pipe set on end).
I found that Alton Brown had a lovely episode and recipe for creating gyro meat slabs either in a loaf pan or using a rotisserie grill. I keep meaning to try it, perhaps using my mother's 1950s-era electric rotisserie (infidel that I am).
The double dactyls, Virge, were brilliant. Made my evening!
The entire exercise of bad poetry puts me in mind of a teaching colleague during one summer I spent in Ireland as a student teacher of recalcitrant A-level students who needed summer school. This gentleman decided to write some Vogon poetry (Hitchhiker had just come out). He gave up after: "Oh green lump, why art thou? / How, green lump, how how how?" but would not stop rehearsing possible lines for the next two months. The rest of the teachers and I ended up forcing him to eat fresh head-cheese to shut him up.
1994 was a good year to start an ebook revolution. Let's not forget Philip Greenspun's Travels With Samantha, which he published on the Web in 1994, then was picked up and published as a printed book in 2000 (and is still in print, which ain't bad for a coffeetable book).
I may be misremembering, but the site gets something like 1,000 or more visitors a day still, and I believe Greenspun mentioned something along the lines of "they get to chapter 4 or 5" as an average exit point where many people click on a link to buy the printed book. (I ran across the statistic while consulting as a tech editor for his Morgan-Kaufmann edition of Database-Backed Website Publishing a while back, but my memory fades.)
We're readers, folks. We're book geeks. Face it. We read the back of cereal boxes not because it's great prose, but because we didn't pick up a magazine to bring to the table -- and we must read something.
If anyone here hasn't experienced the need to read, they're reading the wrong blog.
But selling ebooks to the geeks and uberreaders, and printed books to average readers, ain't a bad combination. It works. But this is where Baen* ended up taking a slightly different road: free books, free largish samples, and the "webscriptions" format, which sells books as, essentially, e-galleys -- books before they come out in printed format.
That's why I recommended (and still recommend) a different format than just selling an ebook version of a finished printed book at the same time printed books are in bookstores: you need something to hook the uberreaders, who were and still are the primary users of Palm-like (or Rocketbook-like) devices for reading, the focus audience, in marketing-speak.
(* The Webscriptions site isn't Baen; it's the guy who runs the Webscriptions stuff for Jim Baen as an independent contractor. His site doesn't have the free books or anything else that's non-Webscriptions. Easy to confuse, as the site doesn't disclose that it isn't run by Baen Books itself.)
Check out the long chewy comment posted there by “pro typesetter” for a saner and far more knowledgeable take on the subject.
Ah, shucks, ma'am. I'd've thought you'd have outed me by now, knowing how you know me and my writing style.
I couldn't resist when I saw the article (found it via Billmon's link last night). I was ... restrained. Conservative. Factual. I'm rather proud of myself for not writing what was going through my mind, which ran something along these lines:
"What the...? WHAT THE...? Decadent WHAT??!! Christ on a crutch, just kill me now. Idiots. They're all idiots..." (then mutterings about machine guns ensued)
My favorite past-ABA moment was, after two full days working the floor for a publisher that was located on the boundary of the children's book area, watching three neighborhood booth workers surround the big purple plush dinosaur-who-shall-not-be-named and engaging in a lively session to bribe the wearer to turn off the incredibly loud tape recorder inside the head, which blared "I love you! You love me!" for hours on end each day. I think when they reached $50, the dinosaur succumbed to temptation, as I later aw the poor schlub taking unusually long (and multiple) breaks that day, much to the dismay of the publicist of said dinosaur books, who kept coming around to our area to see if she could find her human-sized plushie.
If only I'd known, I think we would have contributed to the bribe. It was a public service.
(TNH -- I treasure my "I-look-awfully-short-standing-next-to-Fabio" Polaroid from that same ABA. I kept making him try to stand further away from me, though, because the publisher had a live backdrop of a simply gorgeous bright red Indian motorcycle. I wanted a photo of the cycle, and Fabio was in the way. Poor guy didn't understand why I kept asking him to scoot over and not put an arm around me!)
I would dearly love a bit, T. It's been hell here lately, what with wrist surgery and that other stuff you already knew about. Part of the building would make me smile.
As tit for tat, I could save out more of that large basalt boulder we found while excavating here; part of the Massabessic Gneiss Complex.
Rivka, why does Xopher have to wait for carbs (or, I should say, "high carbs")? My favorite-of-all-time, to-die-for, chocolate cake is the Sacher Torte made as a real torte: with nut-flour instead of wheat flour. It spoiled me for "regular" chocolate cake for life -- it was my birthday cake throughout my teen years, made by my stepfather who had attended the Boston Cooking School specifically for pastry classes (long story there involving MIT and housemates and assignation of house duties; let's put it this way: he always won the duty of being cook for the house, which absolved him of all other duties, including cleaning the kitchen).
Mary, way upstream, wrote: "For several years I worked with a physicist who, when his kids were babies, gave them beer so they'd sleep during long car rides."
So that's why my dad used to give me sips of beer and whiskey (not at the same time) as a young child! That and to cultivate a taste for fine single-malts -- or that was his excuse at the time.
I feel compelled to confess: I have committed a drive-by while in a movie theater.
Screaming, shouting child. No one heard even a line of the movie for half an hour. Everyone moved as far from the mother and child as physically possible. More than half the theater gave up and left entirely. All shushing from others provoked shouting swearing from the mother. Finally I knelt by her chair and asked if perhaps I could help. She swore at me like a sailor, then a few minutes later left the theater, dragging her child while shouting to everyone (and directed at me): "You bitch! He has Tourette's! You've fucking traumatized him, you bitch!"
Was I really a heartless bitch for volunteering to help, even before I knew it was a physical handicap that had him shouting nonstop? Moreover, is it wise to take a shouting Tourette's child to a movie that triggered the piercingly loud screams for more than half an hour, and then refuse to leave the theater and swear at people?
And no, the mother didn't have Tourette's. She just plain swore like a sailor.
I still feel somewhat guilty, but ... should I?
An aside: I get drive-by "why don't you have children?" by strangers all the time. I have given up on intelligent responses, as it only provokes arguments. Being told I'm "not a real woman" because I don't have a child isn't an intelligent argument, so I won't even bother responding to it anymore. The fact that my in-laws are selling off the family silver rather than leave it to a "childless couple" (us) was just broadcast to us today by my father-in-law. Don't even get me started.
My best to you, T. And you, Patrick. We won't be at Boskone, either, even though it's just down the road from us.
Provigil isn't doing what it should do, as I'm on painkillers until my wrist is fixed via surgery next month -- no Provigilly goodness makes for a slow loris. Yes. Perfect description. Elric keeps looking terribly concerned. I hate making people concerned.
Thinking of you. Slow to slow. :-)
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