The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Michelle K:

But how giant *is* a giant schnauzer?

Greg London: What aspect of the whole series do you like the most?

What impresses me most is that fact that as the characters in the book matured, so did the story and the writing. The first book is clearly written for younger children, and the reading levels progress as the series progresses, until you reach the final books which are written for teenagers/young adults.

As children continue to read the story, the level at which they must read increases. And the complexity of the story and the relationships increase. Things are much more black and white in the early books, but as the characters mature, they discover that the world holds much more gray, and that what they believe to be good and evil are not necessarily as clear cut as they thought. (Which is just another way of saying what everyone else has been saying, which is that I love how Snape was not that evil character everyone believed, but was instead a complex character who, even when doing what was right, didn't always do good.)

I find that steadily increasing level of complexity completely amazing.

As my mom (the elementary school teacher) said, that's something she's never seen a children's book author do before.

Ever.

And she spent years on the West Virginia Children's Book Award committee.

The thing I was most pleased about was that Snape wasn't bad for the sake of being evil--and that Harry (and the others) had to deal with that knowledge. Snape's task was probably in some ways harder than Harry's, because unlike Harry, Snape was only reviled for the work he did.

I also liked the fact that many of the characters--including Snape--had non-dramatic deaths, and I also appreciated that the body count was so high. They did something difficult and dangerous. It was WAR. And in war lots of people die, and not everyone gets to die a heroic, tragic death where everyone is gathered around. I thought that Lupin an Tonks deaths off-screen (so to speak) emphasized that. (Much of this book also emphasized that when you're doing something important, you often have to miss important events in the lives of your friends and loved ones.)

And sometimes deaths--like Snape's-- are meaningless. That's just the way things are.

In other words, I thought she did a very good idea of making sure we saw that war is an ugly, dangerous thing, not to be undertaken lightly, because there's no coming back from death, even if you have a Resurrection Stone.

I also liked the slogging through the woods. Sure it was a bit boring, but any work that's good and important requires lots of boring leg work. Things shouldn't be too easy, and should require lots of wandering around, lost.

And *I* think the reason they all waited so long to have kids was so they could pursue their chosen careers before Harry and Ron settled down to become house-husbands.

Regarding knives, if you are planning on using the knife as a knife, and have any klutz genes at all, I strongly recommend making sure you get a lock blade.

I almost cut a huge chunk out of my middle finger in girl scouts (cutting balsa wood of all things) because my girl scout knife was not a lock blade.

Remember that you'll be cutting with your dominant hand, and any damage you do will severely inconvenience you for quite awhile afterwards.

Thirty years later I still have the scar on my finger and nail--although in another thirty years the scar on my nail may be gone. (I almost certainly should have gotten stitches, but emergency room visits were expensive, so no stitches.)

You have my sympathy. My job is software support for my University, and by and far Office is the biggest troublemaker as far as people calling in a panic.

Things to check in screwed up documents.

1. Check the style of your problem text in the formatting toolbar--is the text formatted as a "Heading" or some more bizarre thing instead of "Normal"?

2. Check and see if Track Changes is turned on. If it is, accept all changes and then make sure track changes is turned off. (All done through the Track Changes toolbar.)

3. Paste special is the best friend you will ever have in Office. First try pasting a troublesome document as RTF (rich text format) then try pasting it as unformatted text. That will often solve a lot of problems. (Also, if you're using Office XP or 2003, when you do a normal paste, a little icon appears at the end of the text that allows you to choose between the formatting of the source document, or the formatting of the destination document.)

4. Page numbering in Word is just plain screwed up. If you have section breaks, look in your header/footer and check the status of the "same as previous" button. If you want something to be the same, make sure the button is selected. If you want it to be different, deselect it. (It's a lot more complicated than that, but since you solved your current problem, you probably don't want ten pages on general page numbering.)

And as to why help doesn't help--you have to use Microsoft's terms. If you know the correct term for whatever MS calls the thing you're having problems with, then help brings up the correct answer most of the time. Unfortunately, the correct term is hardly ever intuitive.

I don't love Word--in fact I regularly want to throw my computer off the roof because of some stupid thing Word is doing. But I've worked with it for long enough that I know how to solve different problems. So feel free to e-mail me if you run into something you can't solve.

Scott H said:
Every so often I run into someone who says, "Oh, yeah, I think I might have had food poisoning once,"--I chuckle politely and correct them. If there's any doubt in your mind, you didn't have it. I speak from experience. Picture a 10-hour workday in which you vomit every 5-10 minutes. Occasionally the festivities are punctuated by explosive diarrhea. I promise you, if it happens you'll know it for what it is.

This is, in fact, not true.

There are two main types of food poisoning, both caused by bacteria.

In one type (for example, botulism or Staph aureus), you ingest food that is contaminated by bacteria, which have excreted a toxin into the food you're eating. This toxin makes you sick quite quickly. (within hours)

In the second type of food poisoning, you ingest the bacteria which then grow in your digestive system and produce a toxin that makes you ill. These types of food poisoning tend to occur 3 to 10 days after eating the contaminated food--so it's far more difficult to get the cause right.

Almost all people have had food poisoning at some point in their lives; upset stomaches and diarrhea are mostly likely due to a mild case of food poisoning rather than a misnamed "stomach flu".

See: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001652.htm
and
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/foodborneinfections_g.htm

I don't understand why a Jewish writer hasn't written one where the hero keeps having to sneak out of the ghetto to investigate something, or where he has to save his friend from lynching...

Caldecott winner: Golem by David Wisniewski.

Someone else mentioned Guy Gavriel Kay. I'm certain that aside from folklore, I've read a couple of other stories along those lines, but can't think of what they are off the top of my head.

Couple things about health care in the United States that I picked up from my policy class in public health (I apologize for lacking references, but these were from a class lecture.)

First, as far as private insurance being more efficient than a government program... The overhead for Medicare/Medicare is between two and three percent. The overhead for private insurance companies is around 20 to 30% or higher. So private insurance companies are NOT more efficient or cost effective than Medicare/Medicaid.

Second, I don't understand the opposition to government funded health care. We're ALREADY paying for health care in this country, so why not make the system equitable?

When we discussed it in class, the stat was that when you buy a car you pay more for employee benefits than you do for the steel in the price of the car.

Secondly, everyone who uses health care is already subsidizing health care for those who lack insurance. Hospitals can end up eating the costs of patients who are indigent and end up in the emergency room (since emergency rooms cannot turn people away). When the patients can't pay, the hosptial has to cover those costs themselves.

(Additionally, I remember hearing a news report a couple of years ago about emergency rooms in poverty stricken areas closing, because their their costs were out of control.)

Then consider the fact that if someone had primary care, they might make an office visit to take care of their blood pressure or diabetes or the flu. But they don't, so instead they end up in the emergency room and then the hospital for a stroke or heart attack or pneumonia or a diabetic coma.

If we're already paying these costs, doesn't it make more sense to pay for preventive care than for emergency care an an extended hospital stay?

And that doesn't consider reduced productivity and other problems associated with an unhealthy workforce.

I don't think there is a single phrase that is going to catch everyone. However, might not using phrases from one's favorite shows itself be a give-away?

I mean, I have different phrases I use with different friends: "Have fun storming the castle!" for friends who like "The Princess Bride", "Blue--no RED!" for "Monty Python" fans, and "Fully functional" for friends who liked "Star Trek TNG". (Only my husband gets phrases like, "QUAINT!" and "I like smackin' 'em" and "Well, that one's kind of horrific" because I don't see any Firefly fans on a regular basis.)

And then there's always "This one goes to 11!", just for fun.

I figure that just my interest trying to find phrases that my friends will recognize and laugh at is probably the biggest sign that I'm an incurable geek.

Doug,

That was both perfect and vicious.

I loved it.

Regarding greedy spambots harvesting e-mail addresses from weblog comments, if you want your hosts to see your e-mail address, and don't care if the other users can e-mail you or not, place a link in the URL line. Because most blogs show *either* your e-mail address OR your web address, so giving a web address "hides" your e-mail address.

If you don't have your own website, place the URL of the site you're commenting on in that spot.

Xopher,

It's hard to tell from just the flowers. Maybe a relative of campanula?

people concentrate on their conversations, and say the damndest things at high volume.

This week's winner was: "Fine! Then I'll just sell my twenty-seven inch TV! I'll just SELL my twenty-seven inch TV!"

Didjasee? Cloaking device!

Won't the Romulans be jealous!

pockets are indeed a good thing

Pockets are a very good thing. But it's ridiculously hard to find women's jackets with decent pockets. They're either these tiny little things that are hardly large enough to hold a wallet, no less a paperback book, or else there aren't enough of them.

My husband doesn't understand why I hoard jackets--it's because I have such a hard time finding decent ones.

Or try to stem the phloem of his difficulties?

Oooh nice!

Of course now I expect you to find one for xylem.

Then you can go on to auxim and gibberellin...

Melissa,

I've been reading "Runaways" (Brian K Vaughan) and that shouldn't be unacceptable for kids.

There's death (off screen I *think*, but in the third book there are some pretty big and upsetting deaths) and kissing, but nothing that struck me as too awful. You might want to glance through that to see if you think it's acceptable for your daughter, but I thought "Runaways" was fun.

I've read long and scholarly-seeming arguments on just how a Roman army could operate at the low level...

Jeesh! I can't believe how quickly a rant on breasts degenerated into a discussion on ancient history.

You people!

Regarding the $100 laptops, I heard a bit on NPR earlier about them. They're using them instead of books for school, and they're going to put internet access in the school, and then wirless cards in the computer to create a wireless netwrok that will allow the computers to access the internet through the network of computers. So person A will connect to person B will connetct to person C who pulls the interest from the school.

(See: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5289411)

Happy Birthday!

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