w00t

"Quand le chat dort, les souris dansent."
(tr: "When the cat is asleep, the mice dance.")

I was wondering what was going down . . . y'all have even been missing on IM.

This was always one of my favorite Heinlein stories. I tried to create a chart of cycles in high school but got nowhere.

I am believing the rumor that Teresa is running for president.

Fiendish Writer @ 4... And here is an exclusive photo of her campaign's HQ.

I dunno. It's kind of shoddy to be falling down on your important duties of edifying and entertaining the ungrateful denizens of the internets just because, you know, you have families and responsibilities and lives to save and companies to run.

Not that I judge.

Serge @ 5, I gotta say that Jim MacDonald looks way too happy in that photo.

I am believing the rumor that Teresa is running for president.

hm. She is the "thing", though....

Evan Goer @ 7... Maybe he's contemplating the day when he becomes the Surgeon General.

Update as of 6:40 AM Pacific time: Some of your base are belong to them.

Teresa is way to honest to run for president...

11. Sht, I prtly dsmvwld mslf!

I meant to say:

Teresa is way too honest to run for President...

Teresa’s embroiled in some kind of project she’s not talking about.

Sounds spooky. Skunk works of fiction? Stealth SF? Under-the-radar editing?

2 ::: Serge mused:
"Quand le chat dort, les souris dansent."

Hmm... that might explain the mad chittering outside my window this morning - and the multiple sets of fascinated felines.

Personally I think Patrick's covering for Teresa while she builds a gingerbread house for Avram, in the woods, while Jim Macdonald keeps on dealing with the people 'accidentally' injured after stumbling over the build site...

Any other theories?

I want to visit HQ!

And really, I should not depend on one site to provide all my links and amusement through the workday and through classes at night. Really.

We'll wait and amuse ourselves until our hosts come back.

We’ve just stepped out to run a few errands.

Every time I call some outfit asking for some person of some repute and am told "I'm sorry, he/she has stepped away from his/her desk", I cannot help but picture that old R. Crumb cartoon "Keep on Truckin'". It's a curse, I chuckle inexplicably, imagining that person of some repute striding down the hall in that exceedingly silly manner...

Oh, here it is right here.

We miss all of you, but we do enjoy playing in the threads you leave open behind you.

#5 ::: Serge reminded me that I've been irrationally amused by the mangled line:

"John - the condition of your pants could not concern me more"

courtesy of a summer production of said play for years.

That's ok. I can entertain myself for a limited period of time. Now, I just wish I could find a readable version of the DC Madam's call list. That would be hours of fun.

Laurie @12: And that is yes the reason we are needing her for to run!

Greg @8: Indeed, Miss Teresa does make a most excellent Thing.

Serge @5: Hah! Thank you for the link.

Xeger #18: Among a certain segment on LJ, there's great concern for the condition of one's pants. Specifically, following the coining of the pseudo-acronym "bankrupt my pants" to represent "been away, not catching up on the flist, point me at it if there's anything you need me to see" (BANCUOTFPMAIITAYNMTS), some of us are indeed aware of each others' trousers' fiscal situation, and concerned therefore :-)

moe99 2 19

I pulled in the first two last night and magnified them. I got real estate and insurance agencies, mostly, when I googled the numbers. I think either she did 'business' on another line, or the interesting stuff isn't out there yet. (The numbers that are disconnected or not answering, those have possibilities.)

"Quand le chat dort, les souris dansent." (tr: "When the cat is asleep, the mice dance.")

Cf. early 14th-cent. Fr. ou chat na rat regne, where there is no cat the rat is king; [c 1470 Harley MS 3362 in Retrospective Review (1854) May 309] The mows lordchypythe [rules] ther a cat ys nawt; [1599 Shakespeare Henry V i. ii. 172] To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs, Playing the mouse in absence of the cat.

Mum; there's an old prouerbe, when the cats away, the mouse may play.
[1607 T. Heywood Woman killed with Kindness II. 135]

When the cat is away, the mice play.
[1670 J. Ray English Proverbs 68]

Mrs. Ashton, saying ‘that when the cat's away the mice will play’, had decided on remaining at home.
[1876 I. Banks Manchester Man III. xiv.]

It's a good job she has to be so often away, for when the cat's away, the mice can play!
[1925 S. O'casey Juno & Paycock i. 13]

‘When I'm having the time of my life, you'd not deprive me of the pleasure of thinking about all those poor sods back here working their fingers to the bone.’ ‘You don't really believe that, do you? When the cat's away‥’
[2001 R. Hill Dialogues of Dead xxx. 258]

I must admit, rather grouchily (it's too hot here too!) that the mice tend to squabble endlessly and the rats to run around and bite when the cat's away. If only we had a few web-savvy kittens to play with and cuddle ... but that metaphor is bound to unravel* if I try to take it any further.

*yes, like a ball of string in a kitten's paws; might as well say it myself before someone else does.

xeger (#14) - I saw Jim et famille this weekend, though they were moving fast enough to be blurry.

They were hectic, but not b/u/r/y/i/n/g/ b/o/d/i/e/s/ doing anything around gingerbread.

Teresa’s embroiled in some kind of project she’s not talking about.

Probably off teaching the natives the rudiments of interstellar civilization and basic moderation. Oh, you didn't know she was the local Galactic Observer? Really now, what Terran knows that much about dinosaurs and sodomy?

Bruce Cohen (Speaker To Managers)#26: I hear the ghost of Robert Heinlein shouting 'Tellurian, not Terran!'

#9: Maybe he's contemplating the day when he becomes the Surgeon General

I can see the press conferences now.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the Surgeon General of the United States. Viewers are warned that they may find this broadcast disturbing, as it contains graphic language and images from the outset."

(Enter Surgeon General Macdonald, in full uniform)

"Good evening. Thank you all for attending. Tonight I would like to address the nation at length on the subject of chemical burns."

(hardened journalists and politicians begin to scream, gag and weep reflexively in anticipation)

"Or perhaps Congress would prefer me to give a short, non-visceral statement welcoming their decision to support this administration's health care plans?"

(gives meaningful look)

"I'm waiting..."

[snort] Under the radar? Civilized? Won't y'all be surprised when Teresa's p/l/a/n/ f/o/r/ g/a/l/a/c/t/i/c/ d/o/m/i/n/a/t/i/o/n/ treatment of laboratory "mice" goes public!

And I had to say "y'all" in honor of the almost-Southern venue for NASFic in a little over three weeks.

PS Those weren't bodies being buried, Ken (#25); they were zombie seeds for the fall crop. That's sort of like seed potatoes.

Serge (#9) / ajay (#28): "Today, the Surgeon General announced that he is sponsoring a snowmobile camp for the Republican Senate caucus."

Christopher Davis @ 30... a snowmobile camp for the Republican Senate caucus

In Yosemite Park. In August.

Bruce@21: I await with trepidation and trembling the inevitable meme mashup. I CAN HAS PANTZ, anyone?

Ah good, I was looking for an excuse to ask a question of the science fictional lobe of the Hive Mind:

I work at a library and a patron yesterday was trying to track down a book she had read years before but couldn't recall the title and/or author. The facts as she knew them:

1. The story involved a female astronomer working with radio telescopes

2. Aliens provide her with a universal translator

3. Said UT is swallowed by her cat

4. the author is female

5. the book was published in the mid to late seventies

Any clues would be much appreciated.

Speaking of tourists and getting into trouble: I spent part of my 4th of July on the top of the Sandia Mountains. As we were about halfway up to the crest (which is nearly 11,000 feet) we were passed by several police cars and two EMT vehicles, which all pulled off into one of the picnic areas/trail heads. We later learned that a woman was out hiking with her dog on the mountain (in the desert, in 95+ degree temps) and had not thought to bring any water for either herself or her dog and had "wandered off the trail looking for a spring" and become lost. Luckily for her, the top of the Sandias are a mess o' cellphone towers, so she was able to call for help. But it really made me wonder just how many people just don't think things through at *all*.

So anyhow, Jim, thinking of you and hoping this summer is as close to idiot-free as possible...

Fragano @ 27

Wasn't that Doc Smith? And, you know, if we really need to name ourselves after dirt, why not call ourselves Cthonians and be done with it? The devil is in the dirt, no?

Keith@33:
I don't know that one, but I'm glad that it exists out there somewhere.

Here's one I got last Friday at the bookstore. As the resident skiffy dweeb I'm called out from the back of the store to help a woman who's looking for the newest book in a fantasy series her brother is reading. The last one he read was pink and started with the letter O. I had no clue so I tried to distract her with Od Magic (the O), A Feast for Crows (pink in certain lights), and Name of the Wind (absolutely unrelated, but I ordered a few and need to move them), but she didn't bite. That's so frustrating.

Bruce (26): Michael Swanwick, of course.

Charlie (29), I have given up on my most recent plan for galactic domination. Unfortunately, it does not meet my present needs.

I love the idea of Jim as Surgeon General: "When we tell you to wear your seatbelts, we mean wear your friggin' seatbelts. Got that? Good. Now hit the lights so I can show you a couple of Irish safe driving ads..."

There's a Livejournal community, whatwasthatbook, that has another group of fairly well-read people. I try to drop in there daily to see if there's anything I recognize. It's amazing how many of the same books come up again and again. Or how often someone will ask for a book, end up with a long comment about a possible book, and reply, "No, but that book sounds awesome and I have to find a copy."

Keith @33:

Nae clue, but can I ask the librarian lobe of the Flououourosphere* a question?

Can you name me a common book with three (or more) authors, usually catalogued with all three rather than et alia? I need some test data for my library search software.

-----
* It's been a long† week and a half, living in a foreign country, away from my family, starting a new job. The right spelling is in there somewhere, and I know you all can pick the other letters out like unwelcome greens.

† But not, after the first few days' disorientation and insecurity, unpleasant.

Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)#35: I suppose Smith probably would, but it was Heinlein whom I recall writing about our planet being called 'Tellus' rather than 'Terra', though the point was the one about dirt.

I like the idea of 'Chthonian' or 'Chthonic', though. I must ptell Ptolemy about that.

Abi #39: I don't know if it's common, but try A Short History of the West Indies by J.H. Parry, Philip M. Sherlock, and Anthony Maingot.

Abi: Kahneman, Tversky, and Slovic's Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.

(Don't look at me funny. It's the first one that popped into my head.)

Fallen Angels, by Niven, Pournelle, and Michael Flynn.

Beowulf's Children, by Niven, Pournelle, and Steven Barnes.

Red Tape War, by Jack Chalker, George Alec Effinger, and Mike Resnick.

And Patrick points out:

The Whole Family: a Novel by Twelve Authors (1908), by William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jordan, John Kendrick Bangs, Henry James, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Edith Wyatt, Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews, Alice Brown, and Henry Van Dyke.

Fragano and Teresa,

Thank you. And thank Patrick...it's always good to see such vivid proof of a fellow edge-case obsessive.

(Don't look at me funny. It's the first one that popped into my head.)

definitely the thing.

abi--

The Scoop by Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Clemence Dane, and Hugh Walpole Sr.

The Floating Admiral by Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and G.K. Chesterton

I'm no longer a cataloger, but I believe the rule used to be that you used the first author's name with "et al." when there were three or more authors, back in the day when paper card catalogs were predominant. (It was a heckuva a job to type up all those cards, even with a good computer program -- someone still had to file the damn things. AND pull the whole set when a book was discarded. Or, unfortunately, when you found a typo.) With electronic catalogs, there's really no excuse to leave out any author of a multi-author work.

(But what I miss is analytics. They seem to be in decline. It's really handy to have a searchable field listing all the stories or essays in an anthology or collection...somethimes the only place to get that is Amazon's Search Inside the Book!)

Can you use short stories? Because there are at least four short stories written by Gardner Dozois, Jack Dann, and Michael Swanwick ("The Gods of War," "Touring," "The Golden Apples of the Sun,' and "Afternoon at Schrafft's"), and one, "Green Fire," that was written by Andy Duncan, Eileen Gunn, Pat Murphy, and Michael Swanwick.

Janet @ #45, I had a seemingly never-ending supply of catalog cards gone bad from my mother when she was the cataloger for Bishop Museum. They made decent bookmarks.

Diatryma @ #38, there's a similar group at LibraryThing called "name that book" or something similar.

abi:

The Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms, Aho, Hopcroft and Ullman.

(Dates me, doesn't it!)

Alpher, R. A., H. Bethe and G. Gamow. “The Origin of Chemical Elements,” Physical Review, 73 (1948), 803.

Keith @#33

That sounds like (title from alleged memory, so no guarantees here)...

the eleven million mile high dancer, by Carol Hill, but it's from the mid-eighties.

Abi: Gravitation, by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler[1]. The tome on relativity so big that you can do your own relativistic experiments with it. I once borrowed it from a friend and when I returned it, I discovered that I'd been aging at only half the rate he had been.

[1] Although I see Amazon is filing it only under Misner, in opposition to the library filings I've seen.

joann @ 48

oooh, the 'dragon book'!

(For those who've never met it: the cover illo is, by tradition, a dragon, with or without knight.)

abi,

i may have missed this in my semi-exiled state, but did you find a place to live?

miriam beetle @ 53... I've read on Salon.com that a strange American woman has been seen wandering around Amsterdam, muttering and carrying a sign that that says "will bind for bed"...

ohai i iz dorting. micez all dancey?

Apparently today is Clerihew Day

Fragano Ledgister
will always register
a verse that is a hit.
Why? Topicality and wit!

And let's not forget Hamilton, Madison, and Jay's _Federalist Papers_. Still topical (and commonly cataloged under all three authors).

I'm no longer a cataloger, but I believe the rule used to be that you used the first author's name with "et al." when there were three or more authors, back in the day when paper card catalogs were predominant.

Janet: We still do that, but now we add an Additional Author field for every other name listed. They're searched like standard author fields when doing an author name search. We could add all the names but mostly, it's an artifact from the card catalog days, like adding semicolons and periods after everything.

***

"the eleven million mile high dancer, by Carol Hill..."

Thanks, Mary, I'll check that title.

The Dragon Book is "Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools" by Aho, Ullman and Sethi (2nd edition adds Lam). Aho also contributed to "The AWK Programming Language" along with Weinberger and Kernighan, and "Data Structures and Algorithms" along with Ullman and Hopcraft.

And my guilty thought: "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln.

Todd

I sit corrected. (It's been in one of my Magic Boxes for a couple of years. Maybe I'll be able to get it out some year.)

Lodish, Baltimore, Berk, Zipursky, Matsudaira, & Darnell, Molecular Cell Biology

Wright, Miller, & Kane, Federal Civil Procedure (okay, it's not common, but at least it's common law)

Making Light comes through in spades! Wonderful - the various libraries we work with will probably have subsets of those titles.

I have learned over the past week and a half that additional authors are catalogued in field 700 of the MARC format of bibliographic data*. In theory, therefore, three-author books should be searchable by all three authors, which is what I need to test.

Sadly, I cannot rely on short stories being indexed.

I note in passing that it is also useful to have a dataset that includes published authors whose surnames contain more than one word.

-----
* Honestly, it's like crack, all this information. And I get to test the search mechanism. And they're paying me to do it. Bats.

miriam beetle @53:
i may have missed this in my semi-exiled state, but did you find a place to live?

We did, but we're leery of appearing too sure of it till we sign the lease (tomorrow).

It's bigger than the other place, and more expensive. But I don't love it like I loved the other place.

Serge @54
I've read on Salon.com that a strange American woman has been seen wandering around Amsterdam, muttering and carrying a sign that that says "will bind for bed"...

Not as far wrong as all that, Serge. I have been giving bindings to the people whose flats I've been borrowing/renting. I've even managed to persuade a painter friend to do a nice wee watercolour for the guy whose flat I'm in for the bulk of the month.

Michael @ #16: in my kinesiology class, "Keep on Truckin'" is our mnemonic for the abnormal gait pattern associated with quadriceps weakness.

Re the "dragon book"--now I have to go dig out my copy of Tea with the Black Dragon and see if that's one of the books Mayland Long uses to educate himself about computers. [I checked. No, it isn't, unless MacAvoy misremembered the title as Principles of Complier Design. But it should have been.]

c/complier/compiler

Geez. Use the preview function, you idiot!

abi (39): This Rough Magic and The Shadow of the Lion, both by Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint, and Dave Freer.

Lila, "Principles of Compiler Design" is indeed also the dragon book -- it's an earlier version (1977), by just Aho and Ullman. If you need to be precise, it's the "Green Dragon book"; the Aho, Ullman & Sethi version is the "Red Dragon Book" (1986); the Aho, Ullman, Sethi & Lam version is the "Purple Dragon Book" (2006, supposedly, but I still haven't actually seen a copy).

abi @ 64... Meanwhile, I still have a few months to wait before my wife gives me that abi-bound copy of the Constitution for my birthday.

Abi: I can contribute. If a print would be in keeping of thank you prezzies, I can be induced to send you one.

Least I can do (though I've not gotten around to working on the rewrite... other projects which have the prospect of remuneration).

Todd Larason #59:

Still not it. For me, the "Dragon Book" is Principles of Compiler Design by just Aho and Ullman. No Hopcroft, no Sethi, no Lam, but a big green dragon bearing the label "complexity of compiler design", and a remarkably Don Quixote-looking St George type fixing to slay him with the spear of "syntax-directed translation".

abi,

A three-author: "The Art of the Metaobject Protocol" by Kiczales, des Revieres, Bobrow. Note that one name is actually 2 words.

A four-author: "Design Patterns" by Gamma, Helm, Johnson, Vlissides.

abi @39: Related to joann's recommendation @48: The AWK Programming Language by Alfred V. Aho, Brian W. Kernighan, and Peter J. Weinberger.

Although it should have been listed as Aho, Weinberger, and Kernighan (hence AWK).

Keith, #33, Gursky, #36, you can post to rec.arts.sf.written. Start the subject with YASID: (Yet Another Story ID).

Holy cats, Tania wasn't kidding in #56, it really is Clerihew Day. Quickly, before the day is out!

Abigail Sutherland
Moved to the Netherlands
Where even the evillest rooster can sit and sing
Dry in the shade of the Oosterscheldekering.

Todd @ 68

I haven't seen the third one. I have, however, seen both of the earlier ones. I'm not sure which one is in the box; I've actually had both of them, at one or another time.
(I've kept some of my textbooks, even though I'm not working in that field, except for the time I had to go by the school and look at meter numbers to identify which one was where. (The joke being that that's a field check.))

Michael Swanwick
Looking on, in sick
Apprehension at the state of modern science fiction,
Called for tales of dinosaurs and banned-in-Georgia friction.

C.E. Petit, #29: Don't let people from either St. Louis OR the South hear you say that! Either group would cheerfully tar and feather you for the perceived insult.

A friend of mine who is involved with the "reform wing" of the Libertarian Party is trying to collect political-opinion information here.

PART I: A series of third-party questions.

1. Do you have a political party affiliation? If so, what?

2. Would you ever consider voting for a third-party (NOT independent) candidate?

3. Would you ever consider joining a third party? If so, which?

4. What is your opinion, as a whole, of the Libertarian Party?

5. What is your opinion, as a whole, of the Green Party?

6. What is your opinion, as a whole, of the Constitution Party?

7. Do you think a third party can ever achieve parity with the Democratic or Republican Parties in the United States?

PART II: Questions about controversial political opinions.

8. Do you believe, for whatever reason, that the federal income tax is illegal?

9. Do you believe in a plan to create a North American Union?

10. Do you believe that George W. Bush and the federal government created the September 11, 2001 attacks in order to gain power?

11. Do you believe, regardless of their moral justification, that the states forming the Confederacy had an inalienable legal right to secede in 1861?

12. In your opinion, does global warming or climate change exist? If yes, is it caused by natural effects or man-made conditions?

PART III: Questions about the five most urgent political issues in Amercians' minds.

13. What is your position on the war in Iraq?

14. What do you think should be done to reform immigration policy?

15. What do you think needs to change about America's health-care system?

16. In what way do you think our tax system should be reformed, cut, or expanded?

17. Have the actions of the federal government over the past six years served to protect or destroy freedom?

PART IV: Questions about impeachment.

18. Should George W. Bush be impeached, and why?

19. Should Richard "Dick" Cheney be impeached, and why?

20. Will the Democratic-controlled Congress impeach either Bush or Cheney? Why?

PART V: Final Question

21. What one thing annoys you the most about the United States' current political system?

If you choose to participate, please either comment with your answers at the link provided above, or post the quiz and your responses in your own blog and comment with the URL.

Yes, we are both well aware of the problems with self-selecting populations. But when you're fighting a bunch of intransigent hardheads, some data is better than no data!

Lee @ 79... "Do you believe in a plan to create a North American Union?"

Of course. And Ottawa will be its capital. Bwahahahah!!!

The North American Union appears to be a right-wing conspiracy theory about a 'mega-state' in which the US will be subjected to the tyrannical whims of Canada and Mexico. Not, you understand, the other way around.

The horror story batting around the red states and right-wing radio is that Bush has secretly negotiated the creation of the North American Union, a mega-state created by erasing the borders between the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

This huge globalist conglomerate would terminate U.S. sovereignty; make us beholden to the socialists to the North, and the Third World mother-raping beggar/bandits to the South.

The Yankee dollar would be worthless, and we'll be forced to spend (if we could get any) the "Amero," modeled after the Euro and just as godless.

What's more, a 17-lane "Monster Highway," road to hell, is being built by the Master Planners from Mexico to Canada up through the middle of the U.S. (Actually, they're talking about a real highway in the planning stages: the Ports-to-Plains Trade Corridor, an I-5-like North/South highway stretching from Texas Gulf ports to Canada.

Feckless Beck told listeners, "Let's just face it: this is the plan, this is the real reason [Congress and Bush] want to cram this thing down our throats! What else could it be?"

Gag @81: I take it these guys also imagine that Mexico (pop: 120 million) and Canada (pop: 40 million) will gerrymander things so they can out-vote the inhabitants of the USA (pop: 300 million)?

Pass the pop-corn, this should be fun.

82: of course. The Supreme Executive Senatorial Triumvirate of the North American Union will have a Canadian member, a US member and a Mexican member. Outnumbered! Undemocratic! Unrepresentative! (Just like the real US senate!)

#82 ::: Charlie Stross mused:
Gag @81: I take it these guys also imagine that Mexico (pop: 120 million) and Canada (pop: 40 million) will gerrymander things so they can out-vote the inhabitants of the USA (pop: 300 million)?

They've discovered that Canada's been infiltrating the USA for years, weakening the US moral fibre with the likes of Shatner and Celine Dion...

#62 abi:

One example that comes to mind, and is reasonably well known, is:

_The Handbook of Applied Cryptography_ by Menezes, van Oorschot, and Vanstone.

The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer is the correct title she was looking for. The Hive Mind does it again! Take that, Michael Gorman!

A Pan American union could be a huge benefit, especially if we get Canada's health care and Mexico's cuisine.

(And judging by the eating habits of my fellow Southerners, if we had the latter we'd need the former, especially their prescription strength ant acids.)

xeger @ 84... They've discovered that Canada's been infiltrating the USA for years, weakening the US moral fibre with the likes of Shatner and Celine Dion...

...and Lorne Greene, Donald & Kiefer Sutherland, Jill Hennessy, Raymond Burr, Raymond Massey, and many others. We can't be stopped. It's too late, fools!

Serge @ 88

Judging by the number of former and current residents of Canada at various locations on my family tree (not all my ancestors), it's already happened.

Bwahahahaha!

Lee #79:

Redneck is pushing for reformed libertarianism? Wow, that seems like quite a change from the alt.callahans days!

Keith (#87): prescription strength ant acids.... From specially raised bugs? Formic acid -- or whatever it is they produce -- doesn't sound easy on the tummy.

(Sorry. I couldn't resist.)

The true horror of the Canadian infiltration is that there is no reliable method of detection. They can be your co-workers, neighbors, or even friends and loved ones, and you would never know until one day when they say 'zed' instead of 'zee'. By then it is, sadly, much too late. You have Canadianized.

Resistance is futile, eh?

Faren Miller @ 91... From specially raised bugs?

From Atom Ant. And from Adam Ant.

Resistance is futile, eh?

I have no idea who originally came up with it, but I remember seeing an animated icon on a LiveJournal site which cycled through the following text (superimposed on top of a Borg Cube):

We are the Canadian Borg.
Resistance would be impolite.
Please wait to be assimilated.
Pour l'assimilation en francais, veuillez appuyer le "2".

Todd @ #68, thank you! My faith in The Fitness of Things is restored.

Re: North American Union, I think the Mexi-Canadian Overpass is more likely.

Would being taken over by Canada and Mexico mean that CBC would come in over the rabbit ears in my house (I am on the border, after all.)? Please? Hockey Night in Canada the U.S. over! Please?

Terry @70:
Abi: I can contribute. If a print would be in keeping of thank you prezzies, I can be induced to send you one.

Only if you don't expect me to give it away. I'll trade you one of the exemplar bindings I'm doing to work out a new structure for one of your prints, though...

(It's how I get good art. I trade for it.)

Patrick @75:
Thank you. I feel all immortalised and everything.

Faren 91: Yes, formic acid. Family Formicidae, doncha know.

Getting assimilated by Canada actually requires ridiculous amounts of paperwork, according to my cousin the redheaded landscaper who's been trying to get landed immigrant status for two years now.

Peter # 94

Heeheeheehee...(chortle)...(snort)

Patrick #77:

Teresa Nielsen Hayden
on the net abidin'
correcting flamers' fouls
by dprvng thm f vwls

this sunday i will be one step closer to getting assimilated by canada. & my fella will be one step closer to getting assimilated by the world jewish conspiracy. that is to say, we're getting married. & my parents & sisters are coming in this afternoon & the bedrooms are not clean, which is why i'm not supposed to be reading/posting.....

but jesr, yes, paperwork, ridiculous. i hear it can take a year these days, even for married/sponsored by partner people.

Gag, #81: OMG. I thought that was a hypothetical question; I had no idea that there were people who actually believed something like that!

Albatross, #90: Redneck is a perfect example of my "loon until proven otherwise" opinion. Unlike many in the Libertarian Party, he is capable of changing his opinion to fit observed reality... in this case, the reality that the Libertarians are a lost cause unless they back down on some of the extremist ideology.

And if the Libertarians ever actually caught something resembling a clue, they might be worth supporting -- so I'm willing to help him. (Note: I'm not holding my breath.)

sponsored by canadian partner, i mean, obviously.

So clerhiews don't have to scan? Hmmm....

Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Has for many years now stayed in
Tor
And, due to his editorial and other personal gifts, that is something to be profoundly, deeply and effusively grateful for.

No?

#104 Lee:

Conspiracy theories fit into the human mind in some weird way, so that even pretty functional and reasonably bright people fall for them sometimes. I don't know why. Remember when the UN was going to take over the US and (inevitably) steal all our guns?

#106 abi:

How weird. Mine scanned, but I wasn't trying to do that.

How about

Anonymous astroturfer
impersonating a random web surfer
posting with ungrammatical power
at just three bucks an hour

albatross 107: Don't forget the black helicopters. They were my favorite part.

albatross @ 107

Some days it feels like that would be an improvement over what we actually have.

Xopher @ 109... Canadian black helicopters? Those probably didn't fly very far from their home base, considering how expensive gas is up there.

Serge 111: No, the UN ones. You have to look back at 107 (or I guess I could call it *109, or **111).

#112:

This explains why the black helicopters were so silent. Canadians are just too polite to disturb people with loud helicopter noises while invading them.

Xopher... Still, what about Canada? Doesn't it need those choppers if it's going to take over America?

It will get them from the UN, along with a mandate to invade us as UN Peacekeepers, to remove our corrupt government and stop the senseless genocide in New Orleans.

What? Two years too late? Well, that's the UN for you!

albatross @ 107

Conspiracy theories fit into the human mind in some weird way

It's all about pattern recognition. We've evolved to be the grand masters at recognizing patterns in amongst the noise; most of the sensory side of our brains do some kind of pattern recognition. We're so good at finding patterns that we find them even when they're not there, just because our sensory systems will bring some potential pattern to our attention.

For instance, we're hard-wired* to recognize human faces and voices, so look at any sort of image that has similar features like clouds or ink blots, and we see faces. Listen to a pink-noise source with the right statistics and you'll hear muurmuring voices (while noise may sound like whispers).

* Okay, firm-wired; the synapses aren't built in at birth, but they form by a process of evolution during the first year or so of life.

albatross les ailes pliées,
Par les marins les pattes lièes,
Pourtant tu voles
Artistiquement sur un air fol.

(Baudelaire, be gone.)

Xopher aux lèvres deux prières a:
Celle du haut prie Ceux Du Bas,
Celle du bas prie Ceux du Oh!
Autant le dire, ce n'est pas trop.

RE: Albatros @ 107 & Bruce @ 116

That's why soldiers wear camouflage and paint their faces. It's not so much to be invisible, but to break up the pattern enough that they are not immediately recognized. It's throws up the little hourglass in our minds that says 'please wait' while it tries to assemble the sensory input into a familiar pattern. However, if I told you the soldier was right there you would see him, plain as day. (Our armed forces are working on ways around that too, but that's a different subject.)

Miriam Beetle, he's sponsored by his duel-citizenship wife of twenty-odd years, but they had to leave BC when their daughter was being treated for a brain tumor, so everything got reset to zero; then his mother had a masectomy... all very melodramatic, I fear. It has cured me of my off-and-on fantasy of selling out here and emigrating to Salt Spring Island to retire.

miriam beetle @ 103

Mazel tov, miriam.

bruce,

thanks!

The combination of 119 and 120 reminded me of this old Jewish joke:

A Jewish man goes into the cooperative savings club [normally used to save for burial expenses] and says: "I need to withdraw some money to pay for my wife's funeral."
The guy behind the counter says: "But, Abe, that's not right. Surely your wife died two years ago?"
"Ah, no," says Abe, "that was Sarah, my first wife. She died of a stroke two years ago in May. Last year I married Rachel, and yesterday Rachel was in a traffic accident and, well, she died last night."
"So, you got married?" says the guy behind the counter. "Mazel tov!"

miriam beetle, felicitations and blessings.

miriam @ 103... Congrats. As for paperwork... The first 3 years Sue and I were together, she moved to Canada with me and, judging from all the forms that had to be filled, one might have thought that the land of my birth, aka the Great White North, was afraid of a massive invasion from the San Francisco Bay Area.

Congratulations miriam!

As someone who has recently jumped through the hoops for spousal sponsorship to both the US and Canada (first I was going to move to the US, but life events changed the plan to my husband coming here), I found Canadian immigration to be much easier. It took less than six months from the time we submitted the paperwork to the granting of his permanent resident visa. We didn't even get interviewed! It had been 14 months and counting when we stopped the US process. I think the US wanted more paperwork as well, but there's a lot either way.

miriam beetle — congratulations and best wishes to you both!

Catching up after a couple of hectic days...

abi, if it's not too late and you want another topic: Textbook of Veterinary Anatomy, by Dyce, Sack & Wensing.

miriam beetle @ 103 - Mazel tov!

miriam - Congratulations!

abi: Drop me a line, and we'll figure out what you want.

If you promise to show it at work, I might send you two (loss leader... someone might want to buy one).

I got to do my first disemvowelling today.

Not in my LJ (where it's not really possible, but at Majikthise, where I've been guesting.

My thanks to Teresa.

So, Terry, is this a rd ltr d? (Assuming "y" as occasional vowel.)

Is it just me that could see some story ideas in the concept of a "duel-citizenship wife"? (#119)

Not that I'll ever get around to writing them ...

Actually, if you knew his wife, you'd know it was a Freudian slip and not a misspelling at all.

(Yeah, right)

Linkmeister: It had a certain stsfctn.

On Lj I can't do it, which limits my ability to deal with trolls/really rude bastards.

And I think it an elegant solution, so being able to do it was pleasant; perhaps in part because it was personally offensive, as well as being trollish, rude, and a "you people" attacks.

Oh yeah, and wrong.

Fragano++, #27 & 35: I too recall first seeing "Tellurian" in Doc Smith, after I'd gone through most of the RAH juveniles and at least one definitely-not-juvenile. RAH did at least say "Venerians" instead of "Venusians" (unlike my Linguistics section leader, who should have known better). wrt #40, can you cite? Maybe this was after his mind went "Spung!"?

#45: that's debatable; there were many more authors involved. (My copy mentions only Christie on the cover; your cite may come from all the other parties being so forgettable they don't even merit "et al.". Sometimes paperback publishers get careless.)

abi@106: the clerihews I've seen all have paired rather than triple rhymes. Good luck starting a trend; we could use some new ones.

Serge@124: That's especially ironic considering that one of the last songs Stan Rogers recorded was a complaint about all his friends moving to California.

We saw Harry Potter #5 today (in a matinee -- tolerable seating \and/ A/C) preceded by an assortment of trailers: Bourne #3 was the surprise amid an assortment of YA fantasy novels filmed (The Golden Compass looks interesting, but I wonder how much they'll gut #3) -- but did anyone here mention that The Dark Is Rising is being transplanted to the U.S.? I'll have to go, if only to see how they make the legendry and time travel work, but it doesn't look promising.

CHip @135:
It does have paired rhymes:

Hayden/stayed in
Tor/for

What it doesn't have is equal line length within the pairs.

PNH #77: Sodomy was unbanned in Georgia in 1998 (coincidentally, the year I moved here). Fornication, however, only became legal in 2006.

CosmicDog #97: I live in the US. I say 'zed' and not 'zee'. I am not Canadian.

miriam beetle #103: Congratulations, felicitations, and mazel tov.

Fragano @ 139

That means that the Canadian assimilation is working.

CHip @136: The Dark is Rising hasn't actually been transplanted to the US, though it might as well have been. Amid her own posts on the subject, occasional Fluorospherian bellatrys has recently posted a link to a lengthy chart elseweb of discrepancies between the book and the movie.

CosmicDog #141: It is, eh?

The Fluorospherians will enjoy this set photo from The Dark is Rising, of a village post office/shop that sells 'stationary'. And more photos of a Romanian village made to look like an English village, including a mock-Tudor tandoori restaurant with a plastic Santa Claus on the wall.

Zee vs. zed: I can remember some alphabet drill when I was three, living in Winnipeg, Manitoba. What my dad called 'zed', I insisted was 'zee'. Don't know where I got that from; it might have been how my mom was teaching the alphabet (but both parents grew up within 300 miles of each other in Saskatchewan). I would still go with 'zee'.

My tell is 'been' (as in 'I have been to the store'). I pronounce it 'bean'; the average American pronunciation is 'ben'. I never noticed; my 6th grade teacher pointed it out to me (not criticising, just noting).

And I never picked up 'eh?'

Rob #145:

In the parts where I grew up (Central Kentucky), the "ben" pronunciation is over-formal. It's generally "bin".

I say 'bin'. 'Bean' sounds Canadian to me; not sure I've ever heard 'ben'.

Julie @ #142: ugh. Thanks for the link; I won't bother with the movie. Will probably re-read the books to help me over the withdrawal period after Deathly Hallows

Gag 144: No, no, it's the stationary post office! The town also has a mobile post office, you see.

It all makes sense if you bang your head on the wall enough.

Regarding the North American Union thing, it appears to come from a book called The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger With Mexico and Canada by Jerome Corsi of Swift Boat Veterans fame. Corsi says that corporations are conspiring to engineer a union with Canada and Mexico as a way to destroy the US's sovereignty and God-given democracy.

In his new book, "The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger With Mexico and Canada," Corsi weaves a sprawling theory in which multinational companies, the Bush administration, the Council on Foreign Relations, Democratic-leaning college professors and the governments of Mexico and Canada, among others, are all working -- not necessarily together, but in harmony -- to create a "North American Union." This NAU, Corsi says, will be similar to the European Union, breaking down national boundaries, establishing a single North American currency and potentially even leading to a rewriting of the Bill of Rights.

Re: The Dark Is Rising, I tend not to care if a movie is faithful to its source material for the sake of being faithful; what matters more to me is whether or not the movie works as a movie.

That said...

It's not going to be Arthurian?!? Why bother paying the film rights? Why not just make some other movie?

I am new, so forgive me my sins.

Tolkien's influence Minuscule? No, but not Gandhi, either.
Instead a signpost for the new Millennium.
Delany an Embarrassment on the cover of Publishers weekly?
A strange Occurrence, and Asimov a Weird Connoisseur, more
fit to Accommodate the Hierarchies of Deities or the Etiquette of Pharaohs.
Teresa, her verse compelling, Its comparable to Macdonald.
A non-sequitor post to Nielsen Hayden's website,
and a tribute to It's Spelling reference.

::applause::

Daniel, that's the best First Post I think I've ever seen.

Yes, Daniel, very good. But you swapped its and it's, as many do.

Xopher--I assumed he did it on purpose.

i went away to... uh, get married.... & i missed all the congratulations!

well, thanks, guys! we had a great time. i've started up an album on my flickr, though so far it only has nine pictures on (i should be getting the official pictures tonight): wedding!

miriam, you're lovely, and the groom's no slouch either.

Seeing Renita's picture in thumbnail size made me think someone was sitting at a drum kit; I couldn't figure out why that would be done at a wedding.

miriam, I like the look on your face as you're cutting the cake. I think I neglected to say it before, so belated mazel tovs and congrats go your way.

miriam - What lovely pictures, it looks like a wonderful time.

Congratulations!

miriam,

Delightful pictures. You are a lovely bride, Mike is a very handsome (and lucky!) groom, and clearly everyone, but most especially the bride and groom, had a wonderful time. You can't ask for more in a wedding. Congratulations!

And thanks for saving us a picture of the cake.

Congratulations Miriam & Mike!

bruce,

And thanks for saving us a picture of the cake.

i managed to find a decent picture of the cake before cutting, up now. i'm rather proud of it: designed by me, made by my friend renita. inspired by my in-laws' backyard koi pond.

(the wedding album is holding at forty pictures. i'll stop now.)

Tania 153 and TexAnne 154 : thank you.

Xopher 155 and TexAnne 156:

Yah... I did it on purpose. Really. *cough cough*.

Actually, its one of my hobgoblins... I've been working on it, but I'm not perfect yet.

Congratulations, Miriam and Mike. Beautiful wedding and beautiful cake.

CHip #135: I can't cite. It was in an essay, though.

Harry Harrison and Brian Aldiss in Farewell, Fantastic Venus, if I recall correctly, coined the word 'Cytherean' to refer to things/persons having to do with Venus.

Fragano: my compact OED says that usage goes back to 1866.

miriam: Mazel Tov!

Daniel 164: Pretend all "it" things are "he" things. You probably don't mix up "he's" and "his". The apostrophes work exactly the same way for "it's" and "its".

Apologies if you already know this and you still get confused.

Xopher 167: Good tip, thanks.

CHip #166: So it does, though a check of the OED reveals an older usage: 'temple prostitute'.

Congratulations, miriam & Mike!

It looks like it was a lovely day.