The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by David B.:

Did anyone else notice that Limbaugh was returning from the Dominican Republican when he was caught?

Whatever could he have been doing in the Domincan Republic with a bottle full of Viagra prescribed in someone else's name for anonymity? Who can say? Certainly not me.

As I posted earlier on RASFW, I've often been quite vocal about some of Baen Books' editorial choices, but right now I simply wish Jim Baen the best and hope for as complete a recovery as possible, full stop.

Randy: I'm glad I'm not the only one who has made the mistake of cutting habaneros without gloves and then using the bathroom. Perhaps we should start a club. There must be more idiots like us out there.

Everyone, don't try this at home.

My pet analysis of the First Chronicles is that the Land is indeed Covenant's delusion. Lord Foul is his own leprosy anthropomorphosized. The reason the prose is so pulpy and over the top is because, as you may or may not recall, Covenant's profession was pulp fantasy novelist. So the Land's narrative, being a figment of Covenant's psychosis, reflects that.

It also seems to me that the rape scene is frequently misunderstood. It certainly isn't something to be proud of but given the circumstances and the fact that Covenant believed - rightly in my opinion - that he was dreaming, I don't think his moral culpability is what it might otherwise be. How many people have done stuff in dreams that we wouldn't do in waking life? Many of us, I wager. Even so, Covenant spends the rest of the Chronicle trying to atone for what he believes is a crime committed solely inside his own mind.

Donaldson made a colossal blunder when he introduced POVs inside the head of other "real world" characters in the second Chronicles. I ignore that.

A link to an N.O. police scanner internet feed has been floating around in some circles. There was a fire in the Superdome and the firemen trying to get to it came under fire. They received an escort and came under even more fire and a soldier was hit in the leg. Things are bad and everyone is asking for reinforcements.

The police are taking lots of fire from looters and have been requesting permission to use force to repel people at barriers. Some of the helicopters being used for relief efforts have been taking fire. It's not good.

Oh, if anybody has actual web skills and can make a better script, it's pretty easy to do the photo matching once you know the locations. I could make a page with a bunch of them.

For an idea of the level of damage, I took one of the photos from Bay St Louis, matched it to a Google Maps satellite image, and made a rollover to show a before/after. The hotel-looking thing in this photo is, unless I am badly mistaken, the "Village at Henderson Beach" which appears to be a very large condominium resort complex. It has a website at http://www.villageonthebeach.com .

So here is a terrible javascript rollover before/after of the complex:

http://home.comcast.net/~dtbilek/

Sorry for my sucky 1996-ish javascript. I have no skills anymore. Firefox runs it pretty slowly, probably because it chokes on how awful the script is.

Mayor Nagin said on the air that engineers are telling him that the point of no return may have been passed and that he expected water to "fill the bowl" now. It's been dark for a couple hours. I'm not sure I want to see what it looks like in the morning.

I've never been to N.O. A friend tried to get me to take a trip there about 2 months ago. But I've had too much on my mind to do it. I think I'm going to regret not going.

If the breach at the 17th street canal is flooding all the way to St. Charles... I don't know what to say. That's awful.

It sure seems to me like a lot people saw the little bit of positive news reporting immediately after the eye passed inland and decided that things weren't as bad as they feared. Even the news networks seemed to be playing the damage way down for about 24 hours. Maybe I'm too plugged in via blogs, websites, and first hand accounts but nobody else around here ("here" being where I live, not Making Light) seems to recognize how bad things really are down on the Gulf Coast. Denial maybe?

Just saw that. FWIW the picture I posted a link to in an earlier thread is I believe of the breach referred to in Rose's post. 17th Street Canal about 700 feet south of the Hammond Highway Bridge. You can see what used to be the bridge in the center of the pic.

There are clearly multiple breaches at this point.

This is purportedly a photograph of the levee breach, taken from over the lake:

http://www.hunt101.com/img/319526.JPG

Yes, while the city of New Orleans wasn't instantly obliterated like some feared, I think some people are overreacting in the other direction. Biloxi is under water. A large section of levee has collapsed in New Orleans and, according to the mayor, as much as 80% of the city is under as much as 20 feet of water.

I'll say it again; while the news reports are sketchy right now, as far as I can tell much of New Orleans is, in fact, now under Lake Pontchartrain. We'll probably have to wait until morning to get the full details and confirmation.

Could it have been worse? Absolutely. But things are very, very bad. Worse, I think, than the initial impression given by TV coverage immediately after the storm.

Don't look at the world's ugliest dog pic that Stefan Jones provided. I've seen that demonspawn before. Before looking at it I thought, "How ugly could a doggie be, really?". Now I've stared the Lovecraftian horror in the face and things will never be the same. I am no longer an atheist; clearly there exists an angry, malevolent god.

Oh yes, and the "buying virtual stuff for money" that goes on today is nothin'. The largest transaction I heard rumor of was for something on the order of $25,000 for a single character. I can't personally attest to the truth of that, but it makes sense if you know the backstory.

The Sims bordello story is, so far as I am aware, quite true. I'm not sure about the "12 years old" part, but the girl in question was certainly underage.

It didn't surprise me at all. I've been involved with MMORPGs and other online games (on both sides of the player/GM line) for almost 15 years now. Which is, scarily, half my life. The early MMORPGs I am familiar with looked rather wholesome on the surface, with heroes and heroines heroically smiting evil monsters for glory and gold. Under the surface they were sleazy, lurid, fetishy sex fests. Both online and offline.

I've never seen this side of the equation portrayed correctly in fiction. Oh, the egyption god worshipping culty folks were kind of odd too. No, I'm not kidding.

Intellectually I know that an "anthology" contains works by more than one author, but I can never seem to get my fingers to believe it.

A little late to the party, but I think Greg Egan's _Axiomatic_ is possibly the finest non-"best of" short story anthology the field has produced. I know Egan sounds like an eccentric choice next to Tiptree, Cordwainer Smith, Sturgeon, etc, but I think it is deserved.

_Axiomatic_ was stunning and held up perfectly well along side Tiptree's _Her Smoke Rose Up Forever_ and Smith's _The Rediscovery of Man_. I say this as less than a fan of Egan's novels.

I thought the whole faux-"wild west" accents and such fell quite flat, and I'm not wild about the morality of the worldbuilding, either.

But then, I didn't like _Bridge of Birds_ and everybody else loves that, too.

Kimberly: Yeah, this is going to go beyond the scope of this thread so I'll leave it at this: a position like yours strikes me as playing into the arch-conservatives hands. You're making *exactly* the argument that the reactionaries are making and simply placing homosexuality on the other side of the natural/unnatural line. Sexuality you're okay with (homosexuality) is "natural" and "from God" and sexuality you're not okay with is "a choice". That's what the anti-gay people say! They just put "gay" in the "not okay" category.

If you get a livejournal and think about it more, I'll read it. This is a topic I'm interested in.
Difficulty with arbitrary distinctions such as this is one reason I'm a very lapsed Catholic.

Kimberly: Obviously I agree with your main thrust. I don't believe the Church's stand on homosexuality is compatible with modern egalitarian society. I've been pretty vocal about that. But on a purely logical note, I don't think "God can't think homosexuality is wrong or else there wouldn't be any homosexuals" follows. Lots of things exist which a benevolent God clearly must disapprove of. For example... "God can't think pedophilia is wrong or there wouldn't be any pedophiles". Clearly a non starter.

Which brings me to another bit about Pope Palpatine: He called the Church pedophilia scandal in the USA an event manufactured by enemies of the Church.

Yep.

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