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

Argentina = hunting down ex-Nazis?

The press conference is fairly touching.

I think that that is the bottom line of God's law, that it's not a moral, rigid list of do's and don'ts just for the heck of do's and don'ts. It is indeed to protect us from ourselves. And the biggest self of self is, indeed, self; that sin is, in fact, grounded in this notion of what is it that I want as opposed to somebody else?

I've arrived at WisCon and will try to swing by the Tor party this weekend in hopes of seeing fellow MLers.

You're welcome, Teresa.

One reason I Creative Commons-license my work, when I can? Is in the hopes that EVERYONE can make recontextualizations (mashups) as powerful as these opening credits, not just people with millions of Big Hollywood dollars behind them.

The sequence.

Gavin@#15: Found it! The official excerpt in the WaPo is here.

Just how desperate are they? I designed an experiment to find out. Now, I know some of you might call this experiment cruel. However, others might call it very cruel.

I did grand jury last year. Queens. Four weeks, M-F, all day. Smartphones and laptops were allowed in the hearing room but you'd have to provide your own net access via cell modem or the like, and of course turn off phones and close computers during hearings. Maybe Brooklyn's rules are different.

A substantial proportion of my grand jury were retirees, government employees, cops, or employees of law firms (receptionist, shipping clerk, & lawyer). The commonality: none of these suffer lost income from serving on a jury for weeks.

Good luck. Want advice at all? If so, my first piece: if you can, be foreman or a secretary. You'll feel more in control and be able to help your fellow jurors.

More online video goodness:

A well-done "Hey There Delilah" parody video, actually sort of touching.

I Picked A Girl, short and funny.

Mariachis! Viva Obama!

I, too, am learning to program, with the aid of the free How To Design Programs book from MIT.

I've never gotten beyond the threading stage with the sewing machine. I should seek an instructional video.

Yesterday I said to my husband that I could think of several prominent Republican women who would be more likely VP candidates than Palin: Snowe, Whitman, Dole, etc. He pointed out that they're mostly pro-choice. And that naming Dole would cause voter confusion.

I couldn't believe that Palin was the only pro-life Republican woman McCain could have plausibly picked. I have spent the last couple of hours looking up Republican women with more substantial national or international experience than Sarah Palin. I started off with senators, governors, and cabinet members.

Kay Orr: somewhat elderly, pro-choice
Elizabeth Dole: Bob Dole confusion, also she doesn't want her Senate seat to go to a Democrat
Kay Bailey Hutchison: pro-choice
Linda Lingle, Governor of Hawaii: pro-choice
Judy Martz of Montana: prolife but scandal-plagued?
M. Jodi Rell: pro-choice
Jane Swift: scandals, can't tell abortion stance
Olene Smith Walker of Utah: probably pro-life, somewhat elderly
Christine Todd Whitman: pro-choice
Susan Collins: pro-choice
Lisa Murkowski: pro-choice
Olympia Snowe: pro-choice
Nancy Hollister: was governor of Ohio for 2 weeks. Served in the house. Supports some abortion rights.
Jane Dee Hull, former Arizona governor: supports some abortion rights. Plus, McCain doesn't need help getting Arizona.

Then I moved on to prominent White House and administration officials:

Condi Rice: "mildly pro-choice" but mostly pro-life
Gale Norton: scandals, pro-choice
Ann Veneman: can't tell abortion stance
Elaine Chao: can't tell abortion stance
Margaret Spellings: can't tell abortion stance
Susan Schwab, US Trade Representative: can't tell abortion stance
Jo Anne B. Barnhart, head of Social Security for six years in the current Bush administration: can't tell abortion stance

We also have dozens of female ambassadors, such as Anne E. Derse (Ambassador to Azerbaijan) who's been at the Department of State for 27 years, and Karen B. Stewart (Ambassador to Belarus) who's been at State for 31 years.

I also found former administration officials such as Lynn Morley Martin, George H.W. Bush's Secretary of Labor and five-term Illinois Representative. But she's pro-choice. And I'm running out of time before brunch, but I'm guessing Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman are too.

There are a LOT of Republican women McCain could have chosen. But abortion policy is a big constraint.

Mark Hurst on the pros and cons of writing a nonfiction book and having it published. Coming soon: a followup on self-publishing. Thoughts? Seems to me he doesn't think much of the distribution/gatekeeping role.

I am so happy for all of us! I've been keeping up with coverage at SFGate. Some heartwarming links:

Photos and profiles of newly married couples. I'm especially fond of the profile and photo of Dave Greenbaum and Mike Silverman, from Lawrence, Kansas.

Lisa Shapiro, left, and Beth Shapiro, both from Cleveland, Ohio, get married by Andrew Minko outside of the county clerk's office in Redwood City, Calif. Is that a canopy those be-suited folks are holding over the Shapiros?

My friend Seth's recollection of serving breakfast to folks in line at SF City Hall four years ago. Quote:

Because of all the interruptions, we were all the way to McAllister and Larkin before Heidi found out that I was straight. We had a few moments to chat before we reached the main entrance again and started our way through the line. By this time we had given out all the food Heidi and I had brought, but the cart was still full. Someone had supplied dozens of onion bagels. I hope newlyweds like onion bagels. How many people, if asked to predict what they would eat on their wedding days, would say "I guess some guy is going to hand me an onion bagel out of a pushcart and his friend is going to apply a little cream cheese?"

And Rivka's "Can't Put The Genie Back In The Bottle" from four years ago (scroll down):

Looking at pictures of the newly married, I feel certain that I'm in the presence of something sacred. I recognize the awed, holy, joyous look on their faces, because I've seen that expression in my own wedding pictures. The state may eventually force annulments, but these people are married. They're not going to go away, cowed and quiet, back to their rightful place as it's defined by the state. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.

David Goldfarb @ #18: Yes! I immediately thought of Irving as well.

Things I disliked:
* Denigration of other states
* Unnecessary invocation of religion
* Cornyn himself as a lawmaker, and thus bits of voiceover that reflected his stances
* "Big Bad" designation
* Words flashing on screen as narrator said them (always reminds me of bad Powerpoint)
* Length (pretty boring for 2:30)

Things I liked:
* Scenic Texas
* Use of chorus

Perhaps I am so unused to seeing TV ads for politicians that I find the use of cowboy imagery novel instead of corny, and am less sensitized to the markers that distinguish ordinary macho-cowboy posturing from camp.

This seems like a good place to inform you of a mondegreen montage video:

"The literary canon, nerd culture, politics, and heavy metal collide! Join Odysseus, Wesley Crusher, Aleister Crowley, and three Marx brothers (Harpo, Groucho, and Karl) on a romp through revisionist history, to the misheard lyrics of 'Wishmaster' by Nightwish."

It's great.

Sweet! The book's coming out just in time for me to graduate in May and have free time to read it!



Doctorow has just been getting better and better. I'm really interested in seeing how parenthood influences his work. Spoiler: I really liked "When Sysadmins Ruled The Earth", but a few friends of mine, parents of young children, wondered whether he could now write that plot as ruthlessly.

I was listening to Everclear as I came across this entry, and heard the lyrics from "Father of Mine":

Now I'm a grown man / With a child of my own / And I swear I'm not going to let her know / All the pain I have known

which is cried out in hope and anguish. It's a vow that we're not going to pass our screwups on to the next generation. How many stories end on that hopeful note, the protagonist hoping that the protagonist's kid will have a better life, with less injustice and pain?



"Little Brother" has a kid's POV. It sounds like "Little Brother" is about young people wresting justice and liberty from an irresponsible establishment of grownups. They have agency. But by writing it, Doctorow enriches and passes on our heritage of freedom. Like a good parent.

Here I am applauding the story before I've even read it. It seems I can't wait till mid-May after all...

Whoops! Van Buren is called a USED-up man, not a WASHED-up man, in "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too." I regret the error.

I am wholly surprised that no one here has yet mentioned "Get on a Raft with Taft."

Get on a raft with Taft, boys

Get on the winning boat

The man worthwhile

With a friendly smile

Will get the honest vote!

Interesting note I found while looking this up: the
LA Times reported in 2000 that we do not know exactly how much Taft
weighed because we didn't have precise enough scales for that weight
range. Is that true?

Benjamin Harrison's "He's All Right" has a defensive-sounding refrain:

What's the matter with Harrison?

He's all right!

There can be no comparison;

He's all right!

and goes on to bash Cleveland:

Ben's a man who bravely went

For his native land to shoot

Whereas Grover Cleveland skulked

Behind the nearest substitute!

And I look forward to fan-written songs mentioning the vice-presidential candidates as well. Do you remember the name of Buchanan's VP?

For there is balm in Gilead,

We hear the people say;

Buchanan and John Breckenridge

Will surely win the day!

I highly recommend Oscar Brand's CD of Presidential campaign songs from Smithsonian Folkways.
Includes threats that slavery and knavery would be comin' if John
Quincy weren't comin', a third-party advocacy piece urging us to get
off "the same old merry-go-round," two or three songs slagging "little
Matty Van" or "little Van...a washed-up man," and Carter's emo "Why Not
The Best?" My partner and I own it and bring it to parties.

I wonder how good "Winners and Losers: Campaign Songs from the Critical Elections in American History, Vol. 1" is.

Yes, it bothers me that we tend to refer to women in public life by their first names and men by their last names. I first noticed this while discussing Star Trek. Picard, Riker, Deanna, Beverly, Tasha, O'Brien, Kirk.... And therefore I kinda wish Hillary Rodham Clinton had stayed Hillary Rodham, to reduce the excuse of confusing her with her husband.

I chose to keep my name rather than turn into Sumana Richardson when I got married. I fully expect that, should I get into public life, I'll be known mostly by my first name or by some nickname, because both my first and last names are highly unusual in the US, but my last name's a terrible burden on a USian's tongue. Then again: Deukmejian, Rohrabacher, Issa, Inouye, Ros-Lehtinen....

Referring to Condoleezza Rice by her first name I don't mind as much because her first name is so infernokrusher awesome. Nancy Pelosi I mostly hear of as "Pelosi," though.

As A. Braggins mentioned above:

The Wikimedia foundation didn't do a background check before promoting a felon from bookkeeper to Chief Operating Officer. Her record: Hit-and-run, DUI, shooting her boyfriend, and THEFT and WRITING BAD CHECKS. And they put her in charge of financial management.

The foundation said it had no indication Doran did anything improper with donors' money. However, the organization's most recent audit is incomplete, despite a goal of completing it months ago.

Hoo boy. And the Greenspun quote dismayed me:

Philip Greenspun, a computer scientist who recently gave the foundation $20,000, said he wasn't surprised the foundation would stumble on a background check, something that "isn't core to their mission."

"I would be more dismayed," he said, "by a lengthy server outage."

For future reference, Donati's tutorial moved with her blog to:

Intro. :: Part One: Humor. :: Part Two: Lyricism. :: Part Three: Stream of Consciousness. :: Part Four: NC-17. :: Part Five: Where Things Go Wrong. :: Part Six: Where Things Go Wrong(er). :: Part Seven: Good Bad-Sex. :: Part Eight: More Good Bad-Sex. :: Part Nine: Falling in Love. :: Part Ten: Less or More.

I borrowed liberally from Ms. Nielsen Hayden's contextualization of fanfic when I explained it to someone last night. Thanks.

And the other day, when I asked myself why I kept dreaming that Stephen Colbert was a teacher, I turned to The Colbert Report fanfic to help me understand the themes in TCR that are getting at me. One unexpected theme that resonates: attention-seeking and approval-seeking. The real Colbert is the youngest of eleven children and lost his dad and two brothers when he was a child. He freely admits a huge attention-seeking drive, but he'll act silly on stage without fear of embarrassment. The Colbert persona is a tremendous narcissist and that may be the only urge of his that he isn't in denial about.

There is some GREAT Colbert fanfic; if you enjoy Pratchett, you'll like Erin Ptah's "The Thing With Feathers."

Just so you know, this entry didn't show up in my RSS feed, or at least in NetNewsWire, my RSS aggregator, until just now. I see "Go Bags" and "Index to the Light" before "Much too comfortable in heels," even though "Index to the Light" got posted an hour after "Much too comfortable in heels." I haven't seen Making Light do that before, but I'll keep an eye out.

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