The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Andrew Plotkin:

I know (from other sites) that if a spam comment stays unedited, it will attract more of its ilk.

I suspect that the spammers pass around lists of URLs to try, and they're probably not systematic about it. A URL that they tried once, or where the message stayed live for a few hours, may keep getting tried just because it's on the list.

Re SF/romance: I am currently re-reading Ann Maxwell's _Timeshadow Rider_, an old-school space opera romance. (And the last of Maxwell's SF novels -- she did quite a number in the 70s and 80s, but then switched over to writing straight-up romance under a different name.)

I don't know if it's what you're looking for. It's emotionally and verbally florid -- a million-year-old dying civilization, psionic talents bonding across space and time but forbidden to touch, angst and more angst. Violet eyes.

However, if you read it as SF, you find that the author is writing *good* SF. Tropes like FTL travel and magical translation devices are used intelligently -- enough detail to imply a solid SF background, not so much as to turn the book into a series of tech lectures. There is a real sense of deep history. (More so if you also read the _Fire Dancer_ trilogy, which is set in the same milieu, but much much later.) It's got density.

The romance tropes are also used intelligently, for that matter. Lots of books have picked up the notion of "eternally linked soulmates". Fewer have dug into how that differs from falling in love. And the violet eyes aren't simple either.

Anyway, it's a suggestion.

I've seen that binding trick used for videogames. I have before me a compendium of two CRPGs (Planescape Torment and another one that nobody remembers) which has two front covers on the outside, and detailed descriptions of each game on the two insides.

If you rotate the trick 90 degrees, you get the basis of the Rubik's Magic toy/puzzle.

Michael Roberts#364 -- mm? In the middle, right below the large word "orcs", the yellow line jumps from Frodo up to Sam briefly. I checked that last night.

Tatterbots@117 -- yes, that sums it up nicely.

(No offense meant to all the fantastic settings of fantastic settings that have appeared in this thread already. I love 113, by the way.)

Mark@109 -- That's who performed the original song. The lyricist's name is as I noted in @106. (I didn't think of rot13ing the name because I didn't think anybody would recognize it -- and nobody's said they have.)

I just learned it in a charming rendition by Gordon Bok and Cindy Kallet.

(My contribution at @105 is filked off a rant by one Myles Rudge. A top-ten hit in 1962, or so Wikipedia tells me.)

"Right," said Bob, "Let's put a bunch of trees in,
Pound some mountains, fill a couple seas in."
We tried to wrap it, couldn't even map it,
We was getting nowhere.

And so
We
Had a cup of tea, and

"Right," said Bob, "Let's try and add a city,
Need a crowded city, to make the country go."
We tried some guards, some taverns and some bars,
A guild of thieves to rampage in the bustling bazaars --
But we was getting nowhere.

And so
We
Had a cup of tea, then

I went and tapped at the spaces on the map,
Said "Fill these gaps with a primitive or two."
Raiding tribesmen, camel-herding wise men,
Intemperate barbarians and hairy monasterians
Forest-dwelling hippies from the Age of the Aquarians
But none of them went nowhere.

And so
We
Had a cup of tea, and

"All right," Bob said, "Then how about religion --
Schism -- a smidge of inquisition over who
And how and why, and is it old-time, or new."
We dropped in scriptures, apostolic fractures,
Prophecies and heresies and books with dirty pictures,
Should have been a masterpiece of social manufacture
But did it get us anywhere?

Heck no.
We
Had another cuppa, then

"Look," I said, "What it's missing is the magic,
It's gotta have some rules," I added, "as you know."
So we mapped out a system, itemize and list 'em,
Principles and laws, with a price to make it tragic.
Tied it all together, tried to figure whether
Any of the consequences couldn't make it go.
"Right," said Bob, "Only now we need a story.
Does that fit in somewhere?"

"...No."

You can't make espresso with stone knives and bearskins, you know.

Not unless you want to drink espresso that tastes like wet bear.

I was inspired to determine whether Oliver Wendell Holmes's "Wonderful One-Hoss Shay" was written as a satire of this sort of engineering ode... odor... odery?

(Answer: no. "One-Hoss Shay" was 1858. Know, then, that when MacGonnagal wrote this thing, there was already an absurd engineering ode in print *that was funny*.)

Anyhow, there's this and then there's James McIntyre. Google "cheese ode". Then keep googling. There's more than one.

Widely-flaunted offendedness aside, we *do* take it for granted that copyright issues on blog comments won't be pressed. It's the same tacit assumption that goes back to Usenet, mailing lists, and zines: that submitting a message gives the receipient a license to copy, distribute, and publish it according to the accepted conventions of the forum.

(The same assumption that big companies make *non*-tacit when they say "All submissions become property of GalaxiCorp." Although of course there's room between "we own your comments" and "we have the right to display your comments".)

It may be worth adding a line to the Dire Legal Notice. Or the equivalent on boingboing. Slashdot has one, I see (in their considerably longer terms-of-service page). It's a matter that sites have to consider as they grow larger, I guess.

Amusing myself with web toys!

The cloverleaf trip I mentioned at #45 is now plotted on Google Maps: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=101129065083838639269.000474a7a931ff8796468&z=16

The one Stefan started at #51 is: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=101129065083838639269.000474a4b422a3f57a3b6&z=15

Re John Mark Ockerbloom@33 and Pittsburgh: there are locations downtown for which the appropriate driving instructions are "Take the Parkway west three exits and then take a down."

I've also found locations (in Squirrel Hill) where the traditional "go around the block" methodology -- turn right at every intersection until you return to your starting point -- produces startling results. Such as a multi-mile cloverleaf pattern that crosses over the highway twice, crosses under and over itself, and halfway through the "block" you pass your starting point on the other side of the street.

Dan@40 -- Google's fault, not tinyurl. I tried doing the search directly on Google's site; it gave me the same URL, and the same error at the end of it.

@171/173 -- the notation, however, implies that "bug" was already a term, and finding a real one was funny.

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/h96000/h96566k.jpg

And speaking of utterly unbelievable science, did everyone catch this picture?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ibm_research_zurich/3852446773/in/set-72157622092395070/

http://www.zurich.ibm.com/news/09/pentacene.html

It's a molecule of pentacene (C22H14), imaged with an atomic force microscope. You can see the carbon rings. YOU CAN SEE THE CARBON RINGS.

I give them a little more credit. The term "phonon" was invented as the sound analog of "photon" -- a quantum of physical vibration rather than of light. (Not a perfect analogy, but that's where it comes from.) The show picks that up in straightforward gonzo-science mode: if a powerful laser can set you on fire[*], then a powerful phonon emitter is a Really Loud Noise that can vibrate you to death.

It's goofytech but it's hung off of a real idea, which Eureka does pretty consistently.

[* And I have a friend who worked in a laser-physics lab who's been there. And can show you the hole burned in his lab coat.]

Erik Nelson@2: I linked to this quote last week, but to repeat:

"Rolling a great big woo-katamari up the hill." -- Margaret Ronald

Peter Watts is just a sharp and quotable person, even for an SF con panelist. (I think Avram covers this topic in sketch 05. :)

Avram@0: You managed to misspell Neil Gaiman's first name, and then adapt his anagrammatic psuedonum (Ilen the Magian) to match. Good job.

What the dragons were cooking up? That would be the "Cooking On The Go" panel, on the importance of keeping a varied and interesting diet even while fighting for your life.

Taveth
Vlad Taltos
Temeraire
*Sixth Degree Hosteler Tu
Galactus

A collection of photos from my Montreal trip. I threw in some con quotes and comments that struck me, but the pictures themselves are fannish only in some ineffable sense of fannishness.

http://eblong.com/zarf/thod/32.html

By the way, did anybody here try to voodoo-message me on Monday morning? Or maybe Sunday night. I got a red thumbtack but no note. Please re-send next year, or comment here if you want to be timelier than that.

(Not Serge's message on Friday about the ML party -- I got that, thanks.)

My trip back to Boston was uncannily free of disasters. Worst thing that happened to me was not enough ice in my orange juice.

(I ran into Xopher at the airport, and saw him board his plane. Didn't find out about the fuel thing until I got home, though.)

Apparently if I'd wanted the 6:30 flight to Boston, I would have been totally horked -- it was cancelled with little notice. (The thunderstorm, I guess.) But I'd asked for the 8:00 flight and that just left twenty minutes late. Full, mind you -- the 6:30 people had no luck trying to transfer onto it.

A woman sitting behind me said that she'd been on a 3:30 flight which reached Boston, circled above the fog for a while *and then flew back to Montreal*. I thanked her for using up all the bad luck.

More conreport tomorrow night.

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