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

There's a road near here that has several switchbacks, each one named for one of the Pleiades. They even included Atlas and Pleione.

- but not Alcyone, apparently. Alcyone has a different sign from the rest, brown instead of green, and smaller. She's tucked up under some trees by the last curve in the road. It's not even a switchback really. I was wondering if that was intentional, leaving one Pleiad out like that.

Because the cluster is young, one of the stars could have gone supernova in recent history. I saw a few references to that on google. There doesn't seem to be much evidence for a supernova, though.

Does anybody know which Pleiad is supposed to be the missing one? (And can you back up your claim?) I'm getting a variety of answers off of google.

Before I get into more hot water, let's see if I can do a better job of articulating myself:

I think that if things were to remain as they are right now, America would eventually return to where it was before, maybe on 5-10 year time scales. Websites and blogs and media attention will eventually force the current government to revise its behavior - or be replaced by a government that will.

If, however, another WTC or equivalent event occurs, we are in this for the long haul. We will become everything we claim America is not, and we may not even bother with the veneer. We may actually just call it revenge, without trying to justify it to the rest of the world.

Right, since one of the defining characteristics of being Americans is that we have no moral agency.

Nah. More like... since one of the defining characteristics of large conglomerations of humans is that they have no moral agency. Together we are less than the sum of our parts. Tragically less.

Next: we explain how if those gays and Jews get too out of line, we can't be responsible for what might happen.

I think that's pretty much exactly what Osama and his fans were saying: you won't let us have nice shiny nukes, so we've been reduced to throwing stones. And airplanes.

Once again: not that giving bin Laden nuclear weapons would solve the problem.

Not that I believe violating the Geneva convention is a particularly effective antidote to that possibility...

...unfortunately, if some clever individual figures out how to fly another airliner into another skyscraper, then all this will come to nothing, and this is who we will continue to be. In perpetuity.

I actually liked Lucas' cheesy naming schemes. They added to the cheerful, pulp-y feel of the original movies.

(The intentional pulp also makes him somewhat impervious to Teresa's original complaint.)

I find I feel the same way about the "parsecs" comment: the blatant error added to the kitsch. The field of black holes is actually a very neat, very self-consistent explanation. Too neat, too self-consistent. Too bad.

Oh, I think it's far far too late to tell George Lucas anything about names

You certainly can't say he went downhill - he started right off the bat with "Princess Leia Organa."

I seem to remember hearing that "darth vader" is pretty close to "dark father" in Dutch. Let's see... the online dictionary confirms "vader" = "father", but "dark" is "donkel". It's "dunkel" in German... something else in Danish... nope, no "darths".

... wow. I haven't dusted off the neurons attached to that movie in a very, very long time.

almostinfamous: That's why I suspected Patrick's "Fish" was a hint. Except that there you've got the "and" and the "the" backwards.

What was the question anyway ?
Dude, it was the answer.

Did Patrick get it? I see an Everything in there. And, well, a Fish.

Life, the Universe, and Everything.

(I hate me.)

How about:

Philip A. Cooney, the White House, and decades of climate research right down the toilet? Whoosh!

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