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

Women are almost always right when they suspect their husbands of cheating, and men are almost always wrong? Not a big surprise.

*looks at smoking wreckage of 20 year marriage*

* non-notable: A subject you're not interested in.
* vandalism: An edit you didn't make.
* neutral point of view: Your point of view.
I'll add to that list:
* original research: anything you'd rather wasn't true and think there's no source for.

These are abuses of the terms, bar the first and the last. Those two are poorly defined later additions to the rules of WP. They beg the questions:
How is notability determined?
The answer seems to be "if someone has written of it". But a) anyone can do that b) other things are considered "not notable".
This suggests to me that it needs to be broken down into several criteria with different names.

What constitutes originality?

Frankly there's little new here. The death of Wikipedia has been predicted from the beginning. First it was impossible, then impractical, then overwhelmed by the overtly disruptive, then by biased editors and the covertly disruptive, then by excessive rules. Sounds like any institution to me. And like any public institution, it's as good as we make it. Give up on the notion of a collaboratively written encyclopedia, and you may as well give up on Democracy. Some have, of course, e.g. theocrats, Lippmanites, corporatists, WATB, anarchists and sundry others. But it's best not to, IMO.

If Wikipedia were displaced by a superior system, e.g. a distributed version where all participant's contributions are presented and somehow vie for selection, we should get closer to that goal, even if the project as it now exists became defunct.

I'd also note that educated people benefit from public ignorance in the short term. If you care only about you and yours (and your class), you should work hard against Wikipedia's objective. I'm sure many do.

Take a look at sourcewatch.org, too.

TexAnne, we had no white wine in the house, but I'll keep your combo in mind for the next cauliflower soup. (My final additions: 1/2 bottle non-Guinness, non-predatory beer, a squeeze of Dijon and a sprinkling of dill weed.)

Just testing to see how open the thread really is ...

I'm improvising my first soup of the fall and I need some advice on a complimentary flavour note. The ingredients so far are: sweated onions, chopped rutabaga, a pile of cauliflower florets, and a mix of chicken and beef broth. (This is also a clear-the-fridge soup, obviously). The onions and rutabaga have just started to simmer in the chimera broth, and I'll be adding the cauliflower when the rutabaga is nearly done (that is, deep russet and full of umami). Then I'll puree the whole thing and add a little cream.

I generally like to add some cheddar and dillweed to straight cauliflower soup, and our classic holiday mashed rutabaga is combined with butter, salt, pepper and maybe a little nutmeg. I'm trying to think of something assertive that could work with both vegetables and stand up to the strongly flavoured stock. A squirt of Dijon? Some red wine or beer? Or just go for the cheese and dill?

.. 12 MINUTES by my watch, 9 minutes by your server clock, that is.

*slinks away*

There may be some good reason for this open thread to be empty 12 hours after it was created, but I'm sure I'm too dim to recognize it.

I've always liked the elegance of Eric Costello's method, allowing the visitor to choose text size and font independently.

His JavaScript is here: http://glish.com/textResizer.js

Oh, thank God -- and thank Dave!

(Err -- Henry VIII, that is. I had the old Herman and the Hermits song running through my head when I wrote that. Blasted song.)

Good God. Are students also standing up in history classes to object? "Please, sir, don't teach us about Henry the VIII. He divorced some wives and executed others, and I personally find that highly objectionable."

Aha! I just checked emusic.com (where I've had an account for years) and you can get full version of "Heartbeat" by José Gonzalez (from the album "Veneer") there.

That was gorgeous. And I actually teared up a little over the frog leaping into view.

Did anyone else see Tony "Baldrick" Robinson's Channel 4 documentary "The Real DaVinci Code"? The History Channel in Canada broadcast it in the past year or so, but it may not have hit the States yet. He targeted both Brown and the Holy Blood, Holy Grail crew on their claims. Effin' brilliant.

Deep fried turkey lovers and fellow pyromaniacs -- you have seen this film by Underwriters Labs, right?

I never baste my turkey, and have not yet brined it (although I plan to do that next time). Instead of slipping butter into the pocket formed by loosening the breast skin from breast meat, gently push in some of the stuffing to form a padded bra effect about 1/2 inch thick. If you use a rich, moist stuffing, this shields the breast meat, adds flavour, and preserves moisture. Plus you get chunks of roasted stuffing clinging to the breast skin when you finish.

You know, I enjoyed this much more in the original video. These two and their hollaback boys and girls? Not so much.

Teresa and Patrick, you have my sympathies on the grisly discovery and aftershock. My usual addition to hot chocolate is either Amaretto or a shot of peppermint extract.

Wow -- that *was* a great beer ad PNH linked in Particles. But now I'm trying to figure out the connection between that British brand and Rickard's (Molson) here in Canada as they've been filking Orff as well using a choir in burgundy robes. Much smaller scale than the Brit ad, of course, but there's an alarming family resemblance.

I can't find a copy of it online, but there's an interesting blog post about it here.

Two updates from MetaFilter member ColdChef, who left NO yesterday for a town near Baton Rouge.

First update:

Hi, everyone. Checking in.

I got to my parent's house at about 7 tonight. I walked in the doors and my brother grabbed my arms and said, "Let's go." The local nursing home was taking elderly refugees from New Orleans and they needed help unloading them when they got there. We had no idea what we were in for.

Five large tourbuses from New Orleans showed up with at least fifty patients on each. For the next four hours we carried these old folks off the buses, put them into wheelchairs and brought them inside.

When we first got there, there were only about fifteen men there. Then, about two dozen volunteers from the police and fire department showed up.

And then came two vans carrying most of the local high school football team. Though it was raining when we got there, it completely quit as we were unloading them.

Wearing gloves and using sheets to wrap them up as we moved them, we physically had to carry these people down the aisle of the bus, to waiting wheelchairs and then into the building, where we would lay them down on one of the 400 inflatable mattresses they brought with them. Picture the soldier scene from "Gone With the Wind" and you have some kind of idea what it looked like in there.

Most of them had soiled themselves on the four hour ride from New Orleans, so we had to be careful moving them. We filled the cafeteria with mattresses and then lined them in the hallways. Many of them had Alzheimer's, and were angry and confused, so it was hard to move them. A few refused to get off the bus and we had to physically bind them in sheets to move them.

It was awful. But we got them all inside. And a few of them who had an idea of what was going on were very thankful and tearful and…it was hard knowing that most of them would never return home. Two people died on the bus ride up there, so we'll be taking care of them later this evening. From the looks of some of the others, death won't be far away. I don't know. It's too much to think about right now.

The rain held off until the last people were unloaded, and as soon as we got them inside, it started pouring down raining.

By the sound of the wind and the rain outside, I don't think our powerlines will be intact for long, so I'll post this while I still can.

Thanks for keeping us in your thoughts.

Second update:

I don't know if you got my last email, but just another quick update.

The sun's coming up and the storm is really starting to whip around out there. The lights are still on amazingly enough, so my mom and I are making breakfast for all the people staying with us. No one really slept well last night except for my one-year-old girl.

Everyone was kind of crashed in front of our tv, flipping back and forth between local coverage, CNN, and the Weather Channel.

My dad was working up front in the funeral home, so I laid down with my mom in her bed and watched the news with her and told her all the funny things that happened at the nursing home with all the refugees. (Like the woman whose response to every question was, "Fuck you.")

I fell asleep and woke up between my mom and dad. Felt safer than it should have, I guess.

It's getting worse out there now and the lights are starting to flicker. I've had to restart my computer several times this morning.

For some reason, I can't post to MetaFilter or MetaChat or anything like that, so I'll try to keep up the emails.

People on the tv at the gulf coast keep saying awful things like, "This is worse than we expected." Makes the coffee and biscuits not taste so good.

*whines* I wanna garden! I wanna garden! But our wee new Toronto townhouse under construction has a backyard that's about 10' x 13', at best. The house will block much of the morning light and the detached garage will block much of the afternoon light. Is there a hope in hell that I can raise a few tomatoes in a planter box hung off the back porch?

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