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

"When you see a statue of a saint with three children in a tub at his feet, that’s St. Nicholas."

Funny that nobody mentioned that the guys in the tub are
a) only recently re-integrated after being
b) slaughtered, hacked to pieces and salted by an evil butcher and
c) are wandering students in at east one version and have been
d) brought back to life by St. Nicholas, which explains
e) St. Nicholas being the patron saint of students

I just love saintly legends. Modern Splatter has nothing on these tales.

Why should we not talk about St. Nicholas's Helpers? They who are more fun and earthier than the holy man.

And of course, they are sometimes really scary.

Of course, if you read the stories of St. Nicholas, those are really scary too. Dismembering students and salting them doesn't make for a family-friendly homily. (Also not school-friendly. I was quietly and friendlywise not invited again to play St. Nicholas in an elementary school after I read the original legends. And I did try to make them a little more harmless.)

Ball drops? Flags? Don't you have church bells on your side of the water? Her (at least in .de and .at) the church bell will sound the full count of the hour every daylight hour and one to four strikes of a different bell for every quarter of an hour.

And more exact than the quarter of an hour no human needs to know the time. All those minutes and seconds are just overexactitude which hinders rather than helps.

(And thanks for reminding me that I need a sundial on the house.)

I think the point of disemvowelling is to humiliate idiots so they don't come back. For that, nobody needs the emvowelled comment.

But I might be wrong. I often am.

Teresa, thanks for the correction.

I just wonder how you arrived at that specific name. Scorpio of Eccentricity links to me, but that's just about all of a connection.

Oh and ketsugi, the CSS method is ingenious, but it adds a lot of bytes, which in a heated thread may really eat bandwidth. (And of course, I want to keep the offending comment intact for reference, but don't want it easily reconstructable by clicking on a link.)

Oh, and I didn't want to sound pissy on the name thing. Sometimes I miss nuances in english.

It's TH (Thomas Hassan), not anything else. Brad's plugin lets you add arbitrary values that are not shown, and I use that by adding a line "depp=true" (idiot=true) at the beginning of a comment to be disemvowelled. That triggers the disemvowelment filter for that comment, while still retaining the original comment in the backend. (Which could be useful to have sometimes)

Glad you like it as an option. Nice finish to a day that started by getting fired...

A few weeks back I spent an hour in the emergency room with a few of these symptoms. It was just a panic attack, but I was definitely encouraged to drop in any time I feel that way, and I'd recommend it to anyone. Even in countries where it's a matter of being able to afford it. lie, cheat and steal to pay for it, but go.

It's a very strange feeling when you hand over the car to someone else because it's better that *if* you keel over, at least it's only you, and not you, wife, child and friend.

Jim, this is a serious question:

»There's one thing I don't get.
If you declare a mandatory evacuation of a city, isn’t it standard operating procedure to provide transport and shelter for the evacuees? I’d even say you try to keep individual evacuation traffic down to get everybody out in the fastest and most efficient way. Wouldn’t you?

So what the hell went wrong in New Orleans? Or is USanian reality and rationality really so different?«

(I asked this on my blog, but not too many USanians come there)


I'm serious. We have a lot of nature striking, not hurricanes, but floods and avalanches and so on. Nature hits, levees break, it's in their nature to do that. Dams break and rivers to like to promenade and go see the sights of the cities in their path.

Most of the time, you can see it coming, you can prepare, maybe not perfectly, but as much as possible. Loss of material goods is normal, it may be catastrophic, but ultimately it's irrelevant. Loss of life and civilization can be prevented. And I don't believe that people are so different on the other side of the water.

So what the hell went wrong?

Here's the link again, this time in english:

http://www.lautgeben.de/2005/09/02/english-translation-who-cares-about-the-flut-opfers/

I won't discuss the rest here, as this is german politics. I do agree with ro though.

By the way, if you read the Spiegel, and come across an article about insensitive comments by the german secretary(minister) for the environment, don't believe it. It's a fabrication, or rather a deliberate distortion.

The comments were made before the disaster and the german government has offered all aid that is possible and requested.

The Spiegel is on a quest to oust the current left german government. Why, I don't know, but it is intensely hostile currently.

Oh, and if you read german, read on that fabrication here: lautgeben.de/2005/09/01/who-cares-about-the-flut-opfers/

Well the "leftwing" part of the Spiegel has been fading fast the last few years, I'm unhappy to say.

And being linked from Particles gives about the same number of hits as being linked from the Spiegel in a normal story. Had both last month, have the numbers, need to make up the t-shirt.

Just don't know what to say on it...

You're mean.

I thought I had passed my recent seventies music binge, and now I need to listen to "Nursery Cryme". And I can't find it.

I'm suffering.

because it's an open thread: When you linked to M. Bérubé's retcon, I remmebered this cute retcon:

My Porridge was Cold this Morning

And of course metamorphosism is worth reading anyway.

So how long does it take until the mere mortals get their fix?

(WANT!)

Funny. The guy they just buried went into the papacy as young and liberal and came out as mary-deluded conservative. And it could have been predicted, if one had looked at his writings.

Ratzinger is an intellectual. He was one of the young wild theologians during the second Vaticanum and he was very much liked as Bishop in Bavaria.

He may revert to his older positions or he may carve new ones, he may be liberal or conservative, but he's going to be an honest and smart pope, whatever else he'll be.

But I don't think that'll be seen in USAnia as theology is not a matter of soundbites.

A Drive-By URLing:

A not so benevolent analysis of Poul Anderson's writing at Halfway down the Danube.

Worth a read. It even includes the customary "LoTR written by xxx"

For papal election fun, have a look at this series (part 7) at "halfway down the danube". (parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.)

Fascinating stuff about the papal election of 1458. Here's the start:

The story so far: Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, humanist and erotic poet turned apostolic secretary, is on the fast track in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, having been made bishop of Trieste in 1447, bishop of his hometown Siena in 1451, and cardinal of Santa Sabina in 1456. At this point in time, he is fifty-two years old, half-lame from gout, but intellectually still vigorous. The Pope who appointed him cardinal, Calixtus III, has allowed him to take the baths in Viterbo: [read on]

Too true. But still. Even if the party currently in power has devised a way to stay there regardless of the vote, still there are far too many USians to vote for those guys.

And there is no one in the position to and interested in prosecuting any of the malfeasance.

I'm terribly sorry, but for now, the only thing I hope is that your madness won't rub off too much on us here on the other side of the ocean.

Don't blame the "Comic Writer" for linking, Digby had it yesterday.

And yes, it's fascinating reading. I hope she doesn't get shut down.

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