Cool story. Also, FIRST!

I have a wonderful book (the title of which escapes me) about Mendeleev.

One Mendel describes genetic patterns, and another elemental.

Oh yeah, his name is fun to say.

Lots of schools are named after Meitner, which I think is a great legacy.

None for me please. I'm driving.

Has anyone read this bit of codswallop ?

Also, codswallop is a cool word.

There is so much that I have to discover
that I regret each moment lost to sleep,
each second given to that simple cheap

loss of the self; letting the mind hover
between the places where life is so steep.
There is so much that I have to discover:

What moment makes of me a lover,
allowing my small heart to make and keep
the very things that matter and are deep;
there is so much that I have to discover.

My HS Physics teacher had us all pick a scientist from history and do a report on his or her contributions. An interpretive report - we were supposed to submit a paper and then speak in character for five minutes about what we did. Meitner was mine. One of my friends beat me to Maria Goeppert-Mayer, dang it.

Lise Meitner was an impressive scientist.

Josh Jasper -- But how do you pronounce codswallop?? Cods_wallop or cod_swallop? I see it both ways, with an instinctive tendency toward the latter.

Re: the Forbes article. What are the odds that the article's writer has herself submitted the odd manuscript? Maybe I'm being catty, but lines like "For decades, the publishing industry has taken advantage of authors. Amazon: authors are counting on you to turn the table!" raise an eyebrow.

Fragano -- lovely poem. May your dreams all be creative chaos (the good kind).

Debbie #7: Thanks.

It's pronounced cod's wallop, btw. Curiously, the OED's earliest citation is only to 1959.

Has anyone told Tom Lehrer? How will he make it fit into the song?

Is it just me, or does everyone agree that it's even less acceptable to get "it's" and "its" incorrect on this site than it is generally, given the cheat bar right above the comment submission form? I noticed a post that was incorrect on an old thread just a minute ago, and wanted to point out how wrong that was, i.e. rant (without the personal attack part.)

A question for Fluorospherians with equestrian knowledge:

This past weekend I went to the desert. While following part of the Applegate trail, I saw a small herd of wild horses. One of them--no good picture, sadly--looked exactly like a brown horse that happened to be wearing a cow-skull mask*.

Would there be a horse-markings word for this pattern? "Baldface" doesn't seem to capture the skull-like pattern around the eyes.

----------
* Or white horse forehead armor, although narrower than armor towards its nose. That is, it had a wide white stripe down the top of its head (although thinner than the "baldface" marking), narrowing towards its nose, with a white band around its eyes and one flare between its eyes and nostrils.

Kathryn @ 11, the term is indeed: bald.

Were there other markings on the horse? Coloration?

Carl 9: It's already in there. "There are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard, and there may be many others but they haven't been discovered."

Surely you're not suggesting that he update the song, which perfectly captures a moment in time, just because another one has been discovered? Would you put sunglasses on the Mona Lisa?

Groucho Glasses. :)

Another question for the fluorosphere - I can't seem to come up with search terms good enough to find this on my own.

Quite a while ago I read a short story wherein a sociologist (or similar) designed rules for a club that led to it propagating beyond control. It may have had a name along the lines of "The Some-town-name Social Club," and had a golden age flavor like Henry Kuttner's work. To my best recollection, it never used the word "meme."

Please, someone identify this story. Thanks!

Premiering on July 29, the third season of Eureka.
Science!

Serge @ #16:
But not as we know it!

Jason @ #15:

I remember that story, too. I'm certain it was from the early 1960s at the latest, probably earlier. Sadly, I can't remember the author or the title - obvious searches using Kuttner, Tenn, Sheckley, and Leiber turned up dry.

Kathryn from Sunnyvale: The description is bald.

Josh Jasper: That feels like a fluff piece. There are a lot of rosy assumptions tossed off (amazon has a "wonderful user experience", will decide to forgo 30 percent of the return; so that it can pass the money along to the author, etc.).

Some of the turns off phrase are very reminiscent of the things said by the rep from whichever publishig house is trying to create a POD outlet for itself.

And her math is borked. She has the agent taking 15-20 percent of the gross.
Press release as news is my take.

Damn it, now I'm going nuts trying to remember this story. Nothing I have tried pans out. I think the club in question was a garden club, if that helps anyone. But I'm not sure.

Yep. It's been stuck in my head for months. Maybe we should start a club...

I know that story!
Katherine Maclean: The Snowball Effect. Printed in 1952, according to Locus.

I know that story!
Katherine Maclean: The Snowball Effect. Printed in 1952, according to Locus.

#23: Beat me by one minute ...

That story sounds familiar, but I remember it as a sewing circle.

I had thought it was Asimov, but a quick check shows I was thinking of his story Ignition Point which revolves around a sociologist coming up with a way of making speeches "ignite" crowds, which gets out of control.

Should have refreshed the thread! Sew it goes.

Oh right! Yay! It's "ask the internet a question" time! So, internet, I have a mechanical/hardware question which has baffled at least five learned people so far. Say you have two metal tubes that telescope, one inside the other, and each has a hole drilled through its diameter, and inside the innermost tube is a peg being driven to expand by a spring (the setup I saw was on a hang glider, I think, with the peg being cylindrical with a half-dome on either end), and when the tubes line up the peg springs through the holes and holds the tubes in that position until you press it in with your fingers and can slide the tubes again.

What's that peg called? I want to buy one, but various combinations of "spring pin peg lock telescoping" aren't getting me to the right doodad.

Tania @ 17... How many shows are there where it's not unusual to hear some say this?

"I hate to interrupt, but we have bigger issues at hand. Time is unraveling. The laws of physics are breaking down. Correct me if I'm wrong but that's the kind of thing that's not gonna stop at the city limits, is it?"

I also wonder if Deputy Jo will be having further erotic fantasies about Fargo.

We have a Dude!

Gareth was born on May 20th at 1:23 AM, 9 pounds, 14.6 ounces (that's 4.495 kg for you metric types) and 20 inches.

He will be with us at WorldCon, for anyone who's showing up.

Congratulations! May he abide.

And he was born on Eliza Doolittle Day. Most auspicious, unless you think having him grow up into a musical comedy queen is a bad outcome. :-)

Considering thst I've been singing Gilbert & Sullivan to him, I don't think that's a problem. :D

Congratulations!

B.Durbin @ 29... Welcome to the Dude!

B. Durbin --- You star! Con-Dude-ulations!!! Pics?

All hail the Dude, may he long abide!

Pics here. There actually aren't a whole lot post-discharge because there's only so many pics you can take of a sleeping baby— and when he's not sleeping, the pics would be NSFW.

Happy birth, Dude!

Madeline@27: Say you have two metal tubes that telescope, one inside the other

Hm, I just bought a painter's pole that had a push button extension thingy. They called it a "tab". But it was a button on the outside, not a thingy on the inside.

Oh, and just put up a lawn umbrella this weekend. That actually had the tube-in-a-tube setup, with the two holes and the spring loaded thingy. But I threw out the instructions already, so I can't help other than to say check out yard umbrellas and see if you can find what they call it. I think its a pretty common design for them to break into two pieces that way. smaller box.

I can't imagine a generic part that will join any two tubes, though. More like find the thing that gets joined and scavenge parts. I mean if you need something strong enough to hold a hang glider together, that's a bit different than the yard umbrella.

b. durbin,

congrats on your new dude!

B.Durbin @ 36... I especially like the 'baby burrito' photo.

Congratulations on the Dude!

Congratulations, B. Durbin! Love babies in hats :)

Duuuuude! Welcome to the world! Congratulations to the happy parents -- and get plenty of sleep now, before you need it. ;-)

@29,

Dude! Duuuude. & Dude? Dude.

(Congratulations. Cute.
Remember, when it seems like they're on a random sleep schedule, they're not. They're just on a 48 hour cycle for the first many weeks.)

#11 ::: Kathryn from Sunnyvale

Walleyed horse, is how I was told.

Love, C.

The Dude.

B. Durbin--that is definitely and undoubtedly a baby. Good work.

Profound wisdom from my mother--"If he's sleeping, let him!"

Congrats: Sleep when you can.

May he long abide.

Serge @ 16 -
Science!

I will do Science to it.

(from the really neato Dresden Codak)

b. durbin, Congratulations on your dude! Really cute pictures.

Congrats to the Dude! Many, many happy returns on this most auspicious birthday!

B. Durbin -- that is one exceedingly adorable baby. Well done.

B Durbin: Wow, congratulations!

Yay, a baby. Congratulations!

#15: I think the story is Silverberg. Give me a minute to come up with a title.

Oh, and for those of you appalled by the "taste of dead cabbage" remark in the last open thread, that literally disappeared right away. As in within the second meal post-labor. (The first I won't swear to as there were many other distracting things going on at the time.)

In fact, eight days post-partum, almost all of the pregnancy symptoms have resolved. That's really nice.

And how could I forget? Here's a pic I took on what turned out to be my last day of pregnancy. I'd been waiting months to set up that shot...

Madeline F @ 27 -
I believe that's called a "detent". If not, I've been using the wrong word for it for a while now.

Abide with us Dude, sweet baby boy
bringer of smiles, chuckles, and unfettered joy

Congratulations!

Let me add my congratulations! Yay for babies!
And yay for the end of dead cabbage!

Scott Taylor @ 49...

When she's dancing next to me
"blinding me with science - science!"
"Science!"
I can hear machinery
"blinding me with science - science!"
"Science!"
It's poetry in motion
and now she's making love to me
the spheres're in commotion
the elements in harmony
she blinded me with science
"she blinded me with science!"
and hit me with technology
"good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!"

coffeedryad: The detent is what the prong goes into.

I've been trying to find some sound advice about short stories, and figured I'd turn to the Fluorosphere for guidance, because you all just seem so swell.

There's a small stack of short stories that I've written that are more-or-less gathering dust on my desk (or harddrive). I keep promising myself I'll "send them out," but then I realize that I'm not even sure I know how to go about sending stories anywhere, where'd they go and so forth, and the whole thing gets daunting and then I just need to sit down.

So I've resolved to seek illumination, and so far the internet has mostly been confusing and untrustworthy.

In particular, I wanted to ask about simultaneous submissions. I get that it's mostly (if not universally) frowned upon with novel-length manuscripts, but I'm finding somewhat conflicting opinions when it comes to shorter forms. I've found a couple of people whose advice is "ignore sim sub guidelines," but my instinct (largely informed by Making Light) seems to say that simply ignoring guidelines is a bad, bad thing.

So I guess that's my question: should I be simultaneously submitting my short stories to a bunch of journals, or is that just going to be hurtful, in the long run?

And, I guess some additional questions: anyone have any advice on getting some short stories published? Places to look, at least? Journals/magazines that are simply screaming for submissions from a young, as-yet-unpublished writer?

(Also, to pack everything into one post, I'd be much obliged if you fine folk would take a look at a very (very) short story writing experiment I started with a friend called The Two Minutes Project. We'd appreciate any and all feedback.)

(And finally, congrats on your Dude, B. Durbin.)

Regarding the codswallop: I just got a card from an acquaintance who is publishing a book through amazon.

Sigh.

On the website it's explained that self-publishing is being done by so many authors because the present state of publishing makes it so hard to do it, "the other way."

It's also explained that the people who read books won't care if the book is well written. Which is true.

I really liked the option of getting an version, "unsigned on Amazon Kindle."

I have not much hope for the quality of the book, but doubt this will disuade the author from thinking it's the fault of the "industry".

That is a very cute baby. I like the name Gareth as well, but will not be indulging my bro-in-law by naming our dude after him. He (BiL) is entirely too proud of himself as it is. And I remain hopeful that I will manage to make it through the next 4 weeks with no icky cabbage taste, since I've yet to experience such unalloyed vileness. Congratulations on the lovely addition.

Congratulations to the healthy baby and mom!

From my understanding... do not ignore guidelines.

B. Durbin #29: Congratulations!

All: Since everyone else is doing it, I have a question for the fluorosphere in general.

Does anyone know of the existence of a book I could go to in order to get a basic knowledge of what it's like to fly a fighter jet? Specifically the kind of jet is a Messerschmitt Bf 110, and specifically the reason is that I'm currently in the research stage of writing a story about Rudolph Hess's wacky 1941 solo flight and I know about as much about the physical reality of flying any aircraft, let along a German WWII fighter jet, as I do about the physical reality of living on Gliese 581 c.

I know so little about it that I don't even know if this is a realistic question to be asking. Or if the question even makes sense.

The Bf-110 is a strange plane. I'd look, basically, at a normal book on flying a twin-engined aircraft.

Then I'd look at flying prop-fighters.

The thing to find is a reprint of a basic manual, then I'd read some memoirs.

B.Durbin: I woke up this morning, thinking "You know what the world needs? More Dudes." And then there you (and him) go!

Congratulations!

Terry Karney @ 19: "That feels like a fluff piece. There are a lot of rosy assumptions tossed off (amazon has a "wonderful user experience", will decide to forgo 30 percent of the return; so that it can pass the money along to the author, etc.)."

That was what I thought too. Amazon would split the savings with the author? Um, why?

And the Amazon recommendation is, I have to say, not the secret of their success. "Oh look! Other people who bought this book went on to buy another book by the very same author! I would never have thought of that!" Amazon does a lot of things very well, but recommendations is emphatically not one of them.

Let me clarify, it was a twin engined "fighter".

As a pure fighter it was useless, not fast enough, not manueverable enough. It couldn't attack bombers, because the fighter cover would chew it up.

But it had range (which is why Hess chose it). It carried a lot of firepower. It was a decent night-fighter (because it was large enough to carry the radar of the day, and a person to operate it).

For practical purposes (in light of Hess's flight) it's basically the same as any other twin-engined prop plane, of small size.

I thought, as readers & writers, people visiting here might be interested in reading an edited transcript of the closing address Junot Diaz gave recently (25 May, 2008) at the Sydney Writers' Festival: Literature opens the door to compassion in our brief lives.

And yay, Dude! There will be mud (, mud, glorious mud – by Flanders & Swann)

Madeleine F., #27, those are spring-loaded locking pins.

B. Durbin, #29 & #36, congrats! He looks like a baby!

ethan@67: get a basic knowledge of what it's like to fly a fighter jet? Specifically the kind of jet is a Messerschmitt Bf 110

well, what do you mean by "what it's like"? I recall a history channel thingy about the german jet engine program and one of the german pilots said it was "like being pushed by angels" or something to that effect.

Wait, the 110 is a twin prop job according to wikipedia, not a jet. I was thinking of the 262.

The basic controls will be the same. stick and pedals. The thing about twin engines is you can tweak the engine throttles to the individual engines so that you get exactly the same RPM. If they're off, you can get a pretty loud beat frequency. At least that'd be for piston powered twins. I don't know if it's present in twin jets or not.

Otherwise, its the basic pull back go up, push forward go down, and the pedals act like the old foot-steering mechanism on the old wooden sleds, turns you so your nose points into the wind.

Mostly you drive with the stick and use the pedals to keep the "slip" straight ahead. About the only time you use the pedals for something extreme is if you have full flaps and you're too damn high to land and you need to lose altitude fast, then you slip the plane, basically turn it so it's flying sideways a bit, and it'll drop fast and keep your airspeed up so you don't stall, then you right it, and fly down the centerline.

planes are pretty stable. the first time I flew, it sort of felt like driving a boat. you kind of bounce around, but the boat just naturally follows the waves and corrects a lot of stuff naturally. even if you let go of all the controls. (as opposed to helicopters which want to kill you) Actually, the training for small plane stalls at altitude was, if I remember right, apply power and let go of the controls. The plane will naturally correct by going nose down, gaining speed, and getting out of the stall. (if you let go of the controls on a helicopter, specifically the cyclic, you might kill yourself)

I can give you some basic stuff about flying. If you want specific 110 stuff, then that's out of my league.

ethan, I did a Google search for "world war 2 german fighter pilot" and got a lot of hits, one of which was Stackpole Books. It looks to have an awful lot of war diaries and histories from several conflicts, including WW2. A couple were akin to "Fighter Aces of the Luftwaffe," although they seemed to be flying 109s, not 110s. Nonetheless...

B. Durbin, well done with the dude!

heresiarch @ 69

One of my pet peeves about Amazon is that when I am logged into their site, so that they know all the stuff I've bought from them, they recommend books that I've already bought from them! It makes them look awfully clueless.

Ugh, the 110 is a tail dragger. I've never flown one of those, but my understanding is they're a bit harder on take off because you have to first get up enough speed that you can get enough lift to get your tail off the ground, then get enough speed to take off.

You won't be able to see over the nose until you get the tail up, and the center of gravity is screwy so that it's a bit easier to unintentially do a Rockford on the runway.

Landing is either 3-point, all three wheels simultaneously, or front 2 then slow till you lose lift and the tail lands. Not sure which way the 110 worked.

Most of the WW2 planes were tail draggers, so it wasn't like it was a big deal then, but it affects the experience.

Oh, when you're on the ground, the stick doesn't do anything. You steer by applying brakes to one wheel or the other, or by adjusting engine power to turn. The brakes, at least in modern aircraft, are on the tops of the rudder pedals.

And being inside a twin prop fighter cockpit would probably be extremely fricken I don't care what you play as long as you play it LOUD.

Greg: The WW2 types (not carrier based) were all 2 point landers.

And in high-performace planes (which the 110 was) have some other uses for the rudder, mostly in high-bank turns. The other problem with them (and I don't know if the 110 was counter-rotating, or not) is the torque (and the slipstream rotational pressure on the rudder) which required some rudder pressure to keep the plane straight on the runway.

In the tail draggers of the US and RAF (I don't know for the Germans) the rear wheel was connected to the rudder, which gave steerage on the ground.

B. Durbin -- congratulations to you and yours!! That is one cute Dude.

Guess you won't be needing us to provide distraction anymore, eh?

B. Durbin @29:
Hartelijk gefeliciteerd! Yay and hooray!

Looks like a very good dude indeed; I hope you're having fun with him.

ethan @ 67:

(Hmm... I remember building a plastic model of the Bf 110 when I was about 10 or 12.)

A little googling turns up this recommendation from some random forum:

May I recommend "Schnaufer, Ace of Diamonds" by Peter Hinchcliffe (Tempus, £19.99), the biography of Germany's top-scoring Night fighter of WWII? a superb read from start to finish, he was a 110 man - gives a great account of what it was like.

Here is an article by a German pilot who flew Bf 110s during the war -- including how he got confused by the controls and accidently raised the landing gear just before landing, and what it was like to bail out of a Bf 110.

Another letter by a former Bf 110 pilot is here; it includes some comparisons of different models (e.g., the Bf 110-E vs the 110-G. This suggests that if you want to be really authentic (probably far more than is necessary!), you should figure out what model of 110 Hess would have flown (some more googling suggests it was a brand-new 110-D). The accounts by night-fighter pilots (like the ones I've linked to) could be slightly misleading here and there, since they were flying later models of the basic design. But, again, that may be way too much authenticity for your purposes...

A quick check on Amazon shows half a dozen or more books on the Bf 110; these seem aimed at the military history and/or model-building crowds, and so may not contain much detail about the experience of flying one, but those are possible sources as well. (Some might even have photos or illustrations of the instrument panel and cockpit interior, which it occurs to me might be useful for you.)

Terry@63: "It's also explained that the people who read books won't care if the book is well written. Which is true."

The first four times I read that, it parsed for me as:

"people who read books won't care whether the book is well written", rather than:

"people who read books won't care as long as it's well written""

Funny word, "if". Now it makes much more sense :D

Hmm... From newborn babies to war planes... Yup, this is a Making Light thread.

Given the subject of the story, ethan probably doesn't need too much information about what landing a Bf 110 felt like...

31: Excellent. Though a Gilbert and Sullivan baby should really have been born on 29 February.

I look at publishing as a game. You get published, you win! Or something like that.

Changing the rules doesn't win the game. There are good reasons for print on demand— there's a family geneology, for instance, that is of almost no value to anyone outside of our family. So that one was self-published. Or there's a particular piece of historical fiction for which the target market is Oregon Trail museum bookstores. That's not precisely a NYT bestseller market. So that person went to POD and markets the book directly to the little museums.

But fiction? Unless the whole point is to get ONE copy of a book into a particular person's hands, you're better off playing the game.

P.S. #79: I don't need distraction any more, true. So I'll just have to come here 'cause it's fun.

Jon Carroll about Oakland's elections...

Mario Juarez, who's running for Oakland City Council, has been walking my block handing out tomato plants. It's not a campaign tactic I've heard of before, but now I have three official Juarez seedlings. I'm not sure what it means. Juarez is endorsed by all sorts of people who have reason to be mad at Ignacio De La Fuente, the incumbent in District Five. Juarez also endorsed by his seventh-grade teacher. (Really; it's featured in his campaign literature. If you're a hero to your seventh-grade teacher, you can pretty much get along with anyone.)

I don't know if my 7th grade teacher would endorse me, should I run for office, but my 10th grade's chemistry teacher remembered me fondly when we met a decade later.

Greg London @73 -

Stall training (for me, at any rate) handled stalls in two configurations. One was in the landing configuration: power to idle, full flaps, pulling back until you get a stall warning or you start to fall (all lift has ceased). Recovery was full power, lower the nose, flaps to 20 degrees, when positive rate was climb was established, flaps up and airspeed to cruise.

The other was a full power-on stall, much as you might encounter during take-off. Recovery was lowering the nose and reconfiguring for cruise. In both cases, using rudder is important to prevent a spin.

Needless to say, stalls were practiced at about 3000 ft, because it's really easy to lose altitude during a stall.

Another question on the open-thread-of-questions:

I am looking for a professional organizer willing to travel to Brooklyn. Has anyone here worked with one, or does anyone know one?

Also, congrats, B. Durbin! Hello Dude!

Terry@78: mostly in high-bank turns.

Yeah, you're tweaking the rudders as you fly, but it's more like a background process and the stick is foreground. Use the stick to turn where you want to go. idle time? OK, check the slip indicator. Oop. kick it left a bit.

The planes I flew all had slip indicator guages in the cockpit. But the best slip gauge was a piece of yarn attached to the outside of the cockpit glass. If the yarn was lying along the centerline, you were good, if it way lying to the left or right, you could see the airflow slipping sideways across your fuselage.

Don't know if the 110 had some sort of string/yarn based slip indicator or not. 400 mph might be too fast for WW2 yarn/string. But if it had one, it'd be right there in front of you, on your windsheild.

Comcast.net seems to be in the process of 'improving' its site.
"Oh crap", HellBoy would say.

Serge #90: Yeah, it's Comcastic.

In the republic no serf fears to speak
but the bright hero need not listen hard,
there are no weapons given to the weak.

These are not memories that we should seek
nor are there ways that should have been unbarred,
in the republic no serf fears to speak.

A short bright moment's given to the meek,
but all pay homage to the blonde retard;
there are no weapons given to the weak.

A golden statue's raised upon the peak
to honour those whom we call avant-garde;
in the republic no serf fears to speak

We claim the future never could be bleak
nor your bright visage ever could be marred;
there are no weapons given to the weak.

The whole endeavour's safe from all critique
we do not think that anyone's been scarred.
In the republic no serf fears to speak,
there are no weapons given to the weak

Bruce Cohen @ 76: Yep. Maybe their recommendation system was groundbreaking in 1998. But that's, like, a gazillion years in internet time.

#7 - Debbie :

It's pronounced (best I can tell) CODS-wall-op.

The history of the word is in the Wikipedia link : The more popular etymology places the word's origins in the brewing industry.[citation needed] In 1876, British soft drink maker Hiram Codd designed and patented a bottle designed specifically for fizzy drinks. Though his Codd-neck bottle was a success in the fizzy drink industry, alcohol drinkers disparaged Codd's invention, often saying it was only good for "wallop" (a slang term for beer in the late-19th century).[citation needed] The term soon became "Codd's Wallop" and was eventually used for anything of low-quality or rubbish.

Ooh, a question thread. I gots one:

Can anyone recommend a book/resource that is, more or less, "The U.S. Military for Dummies"?

(Checking Amazon reveals that there is, in fact, a "U.S. Military History for Dummies", but that's not the same thing.)

I'm not interested in the history. What I need is kind of a broad-strokes primer on the current armed forces and how they're set up and how they operate; ranking systems, training methods, standard equipment, etc.

The kind of thing that would answer random questions like, "Are the Marines actually trained to use swords, or are they just part of the ceremonial dress uniform?"

Stupid question, right? Well, that's what I mean. I have very much a lack of clue here. I know there are tons of ways to get this info, but it would be nice if there were one or two 101 sources to get me started.

EClaire @ #64:

Letting brothers-in-law determine the name of the new baby can be a very bad idea.

Why, I heard of one woman who had twins, and was so exhausted afterward that she let her BIL fill out the paperwork; he put the girl's name down as "Denise"...

...and the boy's as "Denephew".

Ethan @67: I can't vouch for this, but have you thought about Flight Simulator?

http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads-file-746-details.html

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22bf+110%22+%22flight+simulator%22&btnG=Google+Search

ethan #67: ISTR that there was a flight simulator/fighter game called Yeager (after Chuck Yeager) that let you pretend to fly various German WW2 planes. I'm not sure whether that's at all useful to you ("Then, he his the space bar to fire the machine guns...."), but maybe there's some value.

Leigh Butler @ 95

Each of the US military services, Army, Air Force, Marines, and Navy has its own website. A large part of the content near the front page is intended to help recruiting, so thay have a lot of that sort of low-level information, sort of a huge FAQ. Air Force and Navy are trying to attract techies to run their complicated machines, so they have lists of airplane and ship types, with specs and such. And they describe micro and macro organization ("who runs the Army", "what's a regiment", "how many soldiers in a platoon"), rank and uniforms ("why a sergeant-major doesn't wear oak leaves"*), etc., etc. I go to them once in a while to see how things have changed since I wore the green.

* Honest cowboy, coming out of Basic, one of the less clueful guys in my company decided to impress his girlfriend when he went home. He figured he'd tell her he'd been promoted to Sergeant-Major (E-8 paygrade then), so he went to the tailor to have a sergeant E-5's stripes sewn on the sleeves of his dress uniform, and a major's gold oak leaves pinned on the collar. Then he put the uniform on and walked out on the streets of the base, where an MP immediately arrested him for being out of uniform and impersonating an officer.

#95: If you find one, we ought to send a copy or two to Hollywood. Every time a military movie comes out, the armed forces folk I know smack their foreheads at the dumb things that make it in. (Military advisors to films prevent this; most films don't budget them.)

I don't know about the swords* but I do know that the Army used to have weapons badges for all sorts of weird weaponry— things like the sling, or the atl atl. I know this because we had a friend whose stint in the Army included trying to get as many of those as he could. (He was five foot three and really enjoyed the confusion he'd engender by being "the weapons expert.") I think they got rid of most of the separate badges in the end.

*Except that they are nicely balanced. My cousin Fig** showed his off once.

**Last name of Newton. I don't know what his real first name is, actually.

James Dunnigan's "How to Make War" is pretty good on how wars work, but less so on the US military specifically. I had to write a short guide to the British Army last year for the benefit of my mother, who was busy transcribing my grandfather's letters home and wanted to know things like "how big is a brigade" and "what is a CCS", but I think you probably want more detail than that.

I love the fact that the US army had an atlatl proficiency course.

The British Army will still teach you not only to ride a horse, but also to use a lance from horseback - there are tent-pegging competitions. (where you have to spear a wooden peg at high speed and take it out of the ground; get it wrong and your lance goes into the ground and you pop out of the saddle like a pole vaulter)

7 (Parachute) Regiment, Royal Horse Artillery, however, have neither parachutes nor horses. Pity.

Delurking...

Debbie @ 7 and Josh Jasper @ 94 --

The OED says, re: codswallop etymology
"It is often suggested that this word is the genitive of the name of Hiram Codd (1838-87), British soft drinks manufacturer, who patented several designs for mineral water bottles in the 1870s + WALLOP n. (see sense 4c at that entry), and that it was originally used by beer drinkers as a derogatory term for soft drink. However, no evidence has been found for early use of the word in this sense, and derivation from the surname is not supported by early spellings."

The true origin is unknown.

I'm sure people can tell by the fact that I called it a "jet" that I really have no idea what I'm talking about. In my brain jet and plane are the same thing, just like bug and insect or boat and ship or even coat and jacket, no matter how much other parts of my brain might know otherwise. Thank you, Terry, Linkmeister, Greg, Peter, Steve, Jason, albatross--I knew I'd get a lot of responses around here!

Greg, what I meant by "what it's like" is pretty much exactly the stuff you guys have been saying--what it feels like in there, what you have to physically be doing while you're flying, that kind of thing.

So yeah, thanks everyone--between what you've said here, the books and articles you've pointed out, and the simulators (maybe, although for some reason that idea scares me), I'm sure I can work this stuff out...eventually. When I decided to write this story, I realized it would involve a lot of research, but the more I look into it the more I realize just how much water there really is over my head.

ajay #84: Ha! Good point.

ethan @ 103... In my brain jet and plane are the same thing

Today's kids... And this reminds me of Sid Caesar's skit where he plays a test pilot who freaks out when he realizes his plane has no prop.

Ethan @103: If you want a reminder as to the difference between a plane (prop) and a jet, the Air Traffic Control rules might help.

Under those, a balloon has right of way, that is the more agile (jet) has to make way for the least agile.

True story: 2 jets in formation just finishing a Veteran's Day fly-by suddenly realize they're sharing airspace with a blimp -- and split the formation to go around it. I saw it happen, and I wish I had had a radio that covered the ATC frequency. The subsequent conversation had to have been...interesting.

Sten @ #22:

Thanks for identifying the story! Now I can sleep at night.

Russ @82: Thank you for that re-parsing, as I was finding it impossible.

In my dialect

"people who read books won't care _if_ the book is well written."

Can only mean
"people who read books won't care _whether_ the book is well written"

I can only get the second reading if there's a pause before the 'if':

"people who read books won't care, _if_ the book is well written."

=

"people who read books won't care _as long as_ it's well written"

These two sentences seem to have very different structures (the scope of the if clause?).

Sten @ #22 - Thank you! I need to find more Katherine MacLean stories.

Can two words be deadly to keyboards? They will! And Fragano @91 will bring it to you!

Russ: Funny word if. The confusion is from my lack of a comma. Mea culpa.

Zvi @107: Thanks, I was thinking/reading the same way. The comma makes it much easier there for me to consider the "if" as conditional.

Way, way too long past my formal English grammar studies to be able to analytically describe why that's so, however.

Also, very much enjoy the aviation geeking out. I've only been in a taildragger once, Greg, and that was just before I met you and the rest of the VPX crowd. I was surprised at how much easier it was to land than I was expecting. Take-off, though, as you describe, was complex.

Eh, I'm new enough to this stuff that I'm still congratulating myself on getting over my "stage fright" enough to ask Denver Approach for Class B clearance this weekend. ("Dude! They vectored us through! We're flying in DIA's airspace! So Cool!" "Yes, dear. Very cool. Now please just fly the plane.") I'm new enough, in fact, to still have this stupid radio stage fright.

Anyway, it's really fun to hear the much more experienced pilots talking about planes I've never yet had the pleasure of flying.

--

Big-time congrats to B. Durbin and the Duuuude! Looking forward to seeing you both in August!

One point about Rudolph Hess: the story is that he was detained shortly after 11pm, by a ploughman with a pitchfork.

We're talking Scotland, so dusk would be quite late.

Now for the catch: 1941 was the first year in which an order was made for Double Summer Time, 2 hours in advance of GMT, starting on the day after the first Saturday of May. We don't need to know which day was the first saturday of May: it's impossible for it to be later than the 7th, so the change took place on or before the 8th. and Hess made his flight on the 10th. So his arrest at about 11pm was at about 9pm GMT

So he was flying in daylight.

But a good chunk of the flight was made over the North Sea, which meant navigation by clock and compass. And then some fairly hurried searching for visible landmarks on the coast. The obvious landmark ia the Firth of Forth, but there would have been a lot of heavy AA. I don't have a clear account of the route Hess flew, but it looks more sensible to cross the coast in Northumbria, with landmarks such as Holy Island.

The straightline course looks to come close to some fairly heavily defended parts of northern England, and the flight would be about 800 miles. Rather than changing course over the North Sea, it might have been that Hess would have set off on a compass course from some landmark on the Danish coast.

What time did Hess take off (and how was time being measured)? I don't have cruise speed figures for a Bf 110, but think four or five hours....

Leigh Butler: Shrort answer, I don't think the sort of detail you are asking about there is in a book (and no, they aren't trained to use the sword, though there are some ceremonial flourishes the guy who do Silent Drill Team learn).

On a more prosaic note, you can feel free to ask me questions, though some of my knowledge is obsolete (they've changed basic training a lot since I survived it).

Bruce Cohen: Any fool knows the Oak leaves go under the chevrons.

B.Durbin: Adivsors fix some, but rarely all. Then there are the strange myths (an officer's uniform has to have an error, or the actor will be arrested). I keep thinking I wish I knew how to get some of those gigs; because the little stuff drives me batty. The things most people won't notice; like having a film set in 1990 using the (slightly different) helmet of 2005 (when everyone got the parachutist helment).

re badges: One can still qualify in lots of things. One gets rungs to a ladder below the level of skill. There are limits to how many ladders (and one can only have two skill levels, of the three possible) For me I find it amusing the one which impresses people most is my expert pistol (easy to get, IMO) and least is Expert Grenade (far and away the hardest; at least of any I've had the chance to see the qualification tables for).

Serge: MY stepfather's dad was in WW2, he says he almost got killed in the middle of bridge as the lot of them were figuring out how much it could bear in the current (he was an engineer, of the strange sort the army makes). The were croggling at the plane which wasn't falling out of the sky; for lack of a prop, when the water 100 yards beyond them exploded.

He figures the pilot was brand new to them, and hadn't internalised the higher speed, leading to underestimated lead.

re that if: Looking at the original, that's the way it's phrased. Didn't giv me hiccups, but there you go. I think that may be part of why the book wasn't picked up, "the other way,"; if that's an example of the writing style.

I should better have phrased it, "if the book's well written, people won't care how it was published."

Nicole @ 112 -

Yeah, "mike fright" can be a bit unnerving, particularly if a controller chastises you for stepping on another transmission (which happened to me once). I learned to fly at a Class D airport near Houston, and protocol is much easier there, and I stay away from the Bravo airspace, though I've talked with Houston Approach from time to time.

I don't have any taildragger time, but I was tempted last week when I saw this new Cubcrafters Cub at my FBO. But they also had a new Cessna 400 that was being shown, and that's a sweet looking plane. Too bad I don't have $620,000.

My next step is to get a complex endorsement in the flight school's Piper Arrow.

World Wide Words' entry for "codswallop" has the Codd story, but notes that it's most likely a spook etymology, and that there's no other commonly-accepted explanation.

Terry Karney @ 114... he was an engineer, of the strange sort the army makes

Would that be the kind with a knack for improvisation and for risk-taking that would make the NCC-1701's engineer look like a timorous person?

Dave Bell #113: That's interesting. I'd been picturing the parachute-ploughman-pitchfork series of events happening well after dark. I'll have to look into that.

It almost sounds as though someone searched for an appropriate (beverage) name to legitimize the pronunciation already in use.

Not having grown up where it was actually used, it'll probably continue to be cod_swallop to me. The associations -- cod/strong fish/swill/swallow -- suggest a right mess of nonsense.

B. Durbin @85: But fiction? Unless the whole point is to get ONE copy of a book into a particular person's hands, you're better off playing the game.

This was precisely why I self published my first novel. It was written as a present for my wife and so long as she has her copy and likes it, I consider it a success.

Also, it's a Gothic Fairy Tale, which as a genre, has an audience you could fit in a medium sized living room. So I saw no point in pursuing the mainstream publishing route. I can publish the book on Lulu.com and have it in a little over a week or look for a publisher which could take, gee, like, two, maybe three weeks, at least. And that's assuming anyone would be willing to court the aforementioned totally massive and rabid fan base of maybe twenty (judging by the number I've sold so far, which is 19 times more than anticipated, making it a huge success by my admittedly minuscule expectations).

But yeah, the next novel is intended for a larger and more robust audience and will be making its way into the slush piles of publishers, forthwith.

Here's some good news from the MSM for a change.

#99 Bruce Cohen: I was hoping to find something on paper, honestly. I've been researching it via Wikipedia and similar, and after a while it makes your eyes cross. But you're right; nothing like going straight to the source.

#100 B. Durbin: That is actually fascinating, and startlingly relevant to why I'm doing this research in the first place. They got rid of the badges, but do they still do the training? If you have more sources on unconventional weapons in the Armed Forces I would dearly love to hear about it.

Also, congrats on the Dude!

#101 ajay: yeah, those are exactly the kinds of dumb questions I have about the U.S. military. I'll look into the Dunnigan book, though.

#114 Terry Karney: I would love to pick your brain, if you're willing. Can I email you?

I find this little story very alarming.

Fragano Ledgister @123:

That was... something else. Sort of speaks to why the term Jar head was invented. This Marine should have kept his coins in his jar.

Keith #124: I'm waiting for the outcry that he was just doing his duty as an Xtian.

Yesterday's news
Left dead in the past
Though consequences do not go away
Yesterday's news
Forgotten in the last,
Though the problems are still here with us today.

The world of bloggers
Posters on the Internet
And newsgroups
Epherma like flotsam on the seas
The messages that flow around
The spammers and the trojans
Are modern forms of robbers, tolls, and fees.

Yesterday's news
Goes trailing cruft in wakes,
The eddies leaving websites years behind
While someone once intended
To update and renew,
Nothing there that's current shall you find.

Yesterday's news
Today's gone by so fast,
And timebound, we are hopeless e'er to change,
Yesterday's news
We live part in the past,
As life goes on the world becomes more strange.
(c) 2008 Paula Lieberman

Fragano Ledgister @125: It's sad but such an outcry is all too likely, and from the usual sources.

Fragano, that sounds like just what the neocons and xtianists were planning - although I think they were hoping for either violence or mass conversions of the 'heathens', rather than complaints from the locals. Depending on their personal religious views, of course.

Leigh: If the training is still there (though for atl-atl and sling, I doubt it: though I saw guys working with them at Cp. Williams... so? and Javelin doesn't mean what you think it does) the badges still exist.

But one can only wear so many. What this guy had (and one can still get) is a huge list of qaulifications on one's personell file.

Feel free to e-mail me.

Serge: Yes. The sort who realised, a tad too late, that blowing the remnants of Remagen; without emptying the downstream Bailey Bridges was a bad idea,and got in his jeep and told his driver (he was an officer, with at least a comany; perhaps a Bn) to race down to them.

He says they managed to clear them.

Then they had to repair them.

The aggressive proselytyzing being done in Northern India - the Delhi region, the 'Hindustan' belt in the 1850's by evangelical missionaries played a large role in the bloody 1857 uprising. That region was mixed Muslim and Hindi, where religious tolerance had been part of the Mughal rule for a long time. They did not take to the aggressive determination that religions of both groups were to be wiped out and everyone was to become Christian.

Along with the other issues that provoked the uprising, these were the consequences of the later Company administrators and British military having pulled away from mixing with Indians at all, and thus believing in their own superiority, while becoming thoroughly ignorant of the people among whom they lived.

It sounds so much like the current situation in Iraq.

Love, C.

P J Evans #128: I would not want to be a public affairs officer in the occupation forces right about now.

Constance Ash #130: Now, that's an interesting parallel.

If they want to "do their duty" as Christians, they shouldn't sign up for something that conflicts with it. The Marines prohibit that sort of thing.

If they're so concerned about being "good Christians" that they will not follow the Marines' rules, then they should accept Dishonorable Discharges with serenity, and turn the other cheek, so we can kick their asses on that side too!

Terry@110 on the "if"

Ignosces tibi ;)

I thought twice about posting that in case it was just me (and possibly simple pedantry), so I'm glad it helped out a couple of people.

Star Trek composer Alexander Courage has died at 88.

Fly with the Great Bird of the Galaxy, Mr. Courage.

#135: They're dropping like flies!

Star Trek' director Joseph Pevney dies at 96

May 29th, 2008 | PALM DESERT, Calif. -- Joseph Pevney, who directed some of the best-loved episodes of the original "Star Trek" television series, has died. He was 96.

Pevney died May 18 at his home in Palm Desert, said his wife, Margo.

Pevney directed 14 episodes of the 1960s series, including "The City on the Edge of Forever," in which Capt. Kirk and Spock travel back in time to the Depression, and "The Trouble With Tribbles," in which the starship Enterprise is infested with cute, furry creatures.

Asimov's Mysteries -- I got an urge to reread the Wendell Urth stories and found them, with other classics, in this book. I enjoyed reading it, other than sneezing and sniffling. It's pretty dusty. Anybody want it for the price of postage?

Contents:

* A Loint of Paw • (1957) • shortfiction by Isaac Asimov
* The Singing Bell • [Wendell Urth] • (1955) • shortstory by Isaac Asimov
* The Key • [Wendell Urth] • (1966) • novelette by Isaac Asimov
* The Billiard Ball • (1967) • novelette by Isaac Asimov
* The Dying Night • [Wendell Urth] • (1956) • shortstory by Isaac Asimov
* I'm in Marsport Without Hilda • (1957) • shortstory by Isaac Asimov
* Marooned Off Vesta • [Brandon, Shea & Moore] • (1939) • shortstory by Isaac Asimov
* The Talking Stone • [Wendell Urth] • (1955) • shortstory by Isaac Asimov
* Pâté de Foie Gras • (1956) • shortstory by Isaac Asimov
* The Dust of Death • (1957) • shortstory by Isaac Asimov
* Anniversary • (1959) • shortstory by Isaac Asimov
* Obituary • (1959) • shortstory by Isaac Asimov
* Star Light • (1962) • shortstory by Isaac Asimov
* What's in a Name • (1956) • shortstory by Isaac Asimov
* Introduction (Asimov's Mysteries) • essay by Isaac Asimov

(thanks to ISFDB)

<mode lang="grammar geekery">
Found this sentence as the summary of a news story: "The Vatican says it will women priests and the bishops who try to ordain them with automatic excommunication"

Possibly means: "The Vatican says it will women priests and the bishops who try to ordain them automatically excommunicate"?

or maybe they couldn't bear to use the word "punish" before "women"?
</mode>

Teresa, Clay Shirky just gave you a shout-out in a talk here at BEA.

Marilee, I'd like them!

My email is the livejournal name in the link, at juno.com

Been wondering if B Durbin (& partner)'s 'Dude' could be inspired by the observation at the head of Open thread 86?

Just substitute "hamster" :)

And W00t!! for The Dude, too.

BTW, can someone with recent experience tell me (us) what that thing taped to his head in the early hospital photos is? I get nasty SF-type ideas w/o yer akchool facts. Do all new bebbies get those other attachments seen in the photos for a while to check all's in working order?

Fragano Ledgister @ 123

The end of the article is even scarier than the rest. Some of those idiots were using a copy of the Quran for target practice, and they didn't even have the brains to burn it so no one would find out. That's just asking to bring up all the stories from Abu Ghraib and Gitmo about flushing Qurans down toilets and such. Oh, why can't these morons learn not to insult the local population every chance they get?

#117 Serge--Military engineers are really good at Blowing Stuff Up. There are those who will say they're better at Blowing Stuff Up than they are at ordinary civil engineering, although they do some of that, too.

Mostly, it's blowing stuff up and putting up bridges.

My father, who was a chemistry professor at a technical university, spent many years in a Reserve Unit (mostly because having a Reserve unit on campus kept a lot of students out of the draft, because the Army preferred to have all these young engineering minds learning to do military engineering tasks rather than trying to turn them into infantry). Every summer they'd load up and make the short drive down to Ft. Wood and build things, mostly bridges, but sometimes other things. (He got to the point where building bridges across the Little Piney and the Gasconade was no longer entertaining pretty quickly.) After they built things they'd get to blow stuff up, for a treat.

#135, 136 et. al.
This is getting a bit crazy.
So, in recent days we've also lost Sydney Pollack, Harvey Korman, Dick Martin, and Robert Asprin.
May is feeling sadder and sadder...

Mez @141: That's an IV. He'd already managed to suck them out of both hands.

He had an IV because he had a temperature spike so they put him on a course of antibiotics, but his cultures came back negative and his temp stabilized where it should, so they discharged him only a day late.

JimR, #144: Yeah, and I just found out that a merchant we know from the Texas RenFaire died unexpectedly last week. That's probably going to shut down the business as well; they sold (among other things) period-style garb, and she did all the sewing.

This is NOT being a good month.

Madeline F @27:
the pin itself (which sometimes is a bearing instead of a pin) is referred to as a "button" in that context.

fidelio @ 143... Much as I enjoy watching the MythBusters do what they do(*), I'd have a hard time building things for the sole purpose of wrecking them. I love making things. Unmaking them? Not so much.

(*) "What happens to a concrete mixer if you load it with - and detonate - a few hundred pounds of modern explosive? Let's find out."

B. (145), thanks for the info. I couldn't see any remarks about it anywhere on your assorted sites. Good news he's doing well now. (Go Gareth!) Probably your milk & life in general will resupply healthy gut flora.

Back during earlier hospital stays, I've been hooked up to heavy-duty antibiotic IV drips for several days at a time. Because of previous surgery, they can only use my right arm. It wasn't just learning to watch all my almost involuntary movements, and trailing the equipment around whenever I moved out of bed, but also training myself to sleep without moving that arm. I can just imagine a baby or young child would have trouble with one indeed.

JimR @ 144... Harey Korman too?

Hedley Lamarr: Repeat after me: I...
Men: I...
Hedley Lamarr: ...your name...
Men: ...your name...
Hedley Lamarr: [to himself] Shmucks.
[continues aloud]
Hedley Lamarr: ... do pledge allegiance...
Men: ...do pledge allegiance...
Hedley Lamarr: ...to Hedley Lamarr...
Men: ...to Hedy Lamarr...
Hedley Lamarr: That's *Hedley*!
Men: That's Hedley.

It's really starting to feel like summertime here. Decent strawberries are to be had, and my grocery store has the first pickling cucumbers. The first batch of the year has just been transferred to jars in the frig, to make room for Batch #2, courtesy of the Open Jar Dill Pickle recipe in Anna Thomas' Vegetarian Epicure (Pt. 2). Heartily recommended!

One puzzle, though -- her recipe calls for including some grape leaves, but she doesn't explain why. I've done that before, with conventionally canned pickles as well, and it seems to have the effect of making them crunchy. Unfortunately I don't have a source of grape leaves anymore (although I suppose I could buy a vine for the terrace). So what I'd like to know is,

1) does anyone know if grape leaves in fact help make pickles crunchier? (How's that for an Open Thread question?)
2) is there a substitute, or alternative method/ingredient to achieve the same effect?

If we're mentioning people who've died recently, I'm going to bring up pioneering comics retailer Rory Root. The comics blogosphere has a ton of tributes to him...I knew him as the guy I bought comics from once a week for more than two decades. He was only 50. I'm going to miss him.

If they're so concerned about being "good Christians" that they will not follow the Marines' rules, then they should accept Dishonorable Discharges with serenity, and turn the other cheek, so we can kick their asses on that side too!

There is a type of "good Christian" psychology which finds the attraction of martyrdom irresistable. The leaders of the early church actually had to issue injunctions against deliberately seeking it. (I believe, though not sure, that Mohammed, pbuh, had to intervene similarly among his followers.) Of course, where "martyrdom" doesn't actually involve pain or death, merely some inconvenience like being thrown out of the Marines, it must seem even rosier.

Serge at 148,

Growing up with a forensics engineering relative, I learned that one or two instances of thoughtful unmaking could prevent many instances of unexpected unmaking*.

Although the Mythbusters'
a. quarter stick of dynamite
b. 1 stick of dynamite
c. several-hundred pounds of modern stuff
method isn't quite the same as forensics testing.

------
* that, and also that with sufficient application of stupidity, anything can be made to catch on fire.

Kathryn #154: Okay, but I still thought the exploding herbicide-soaked jeans were cool.

...with sufficient application of stupidity, anything can be made to catch on fire.

In high school, I once saw my brother burn water. I still don't know how he managed it but by golly, it was impressive. Of course, this is the kid who managed to destroy a pot or pan every time he tried to warm something up on the stove, so maybe it was inevitable. I don't think he ever groked what the little numbers on the dials meant and just cooked everything on high.

Kathryn from Sunnyvale @ 154

* that, and also that with sufficient application of stupidity, anything can be made to catch on fire.

"The stupid, it burns!"

Kathryn from Sunnyvale @ 154...

"Where's the Kaboom? There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom!"

Debbie: re grape leaves My guess is the oxalic acid in the leaves acts to bind up the fibers. You might try a test, with an equal weight of young leaves and older leaves. The younger ones have more acid, and so should (if my hypothesis is correct) make for a firmer pickle.

As an aside, young grape leaves, sliced thin, make a nice inclusion in an omelette.

chris y: re suffering and Christianity It's a built in theme (look at the letters of Paul, he points out that you can tell he's a good Christian because he is suffering for Christ). Even Christians we respect (Quakers) have the urge (see how many get arrested at protests). Oddly enough, refusing to persecute them can lead to greater stability (Mass. made them miserable, even killing some. Rhode Island let them be. At which point they travelled to Mass. to preach).

I've been holding off on this, but the recent "in memorium" posts make it seem an appropriate time to mention the disappearance and almost certain [see discussion on the Left/Right thread] death of my neighbor's beloved cat.

Odi (short for Odin) was very much an outdoor cat, though he spent a lot of time hanging around both his owner's condo unit and mine -- sprawled on porch railings, peering in at windows and screen doors, asking for attention in his peculiar raspy voice. When in, he wanted out, as her bent-out window screens could testify. And he roamed the streets, stairs, and gravel-plus-plants landscaping of our area happily for many months after his arrival here, stopping for a belly rub whenever anyone came by.

Part of his time outdoors was a couple of hours each night. Then, a few weeks ago, he didn't come home. (I didn't find out about this till last week.) There are no clues to what might have happened, and the Pound couldn't help, but coyotes do occasionally show up nearby and I consider them the prime suspects.

It's almost impossible not to brood on the loss, and his owner was really distraught -- still is, as are all who knew him. But the Fates intervened in their usual capricious fashion, and she came back from a weekend visit to a friend in her old town to the west with something unexpected. She invited me over to see: a pair of fluffy, part-Siamese kittens born to the friend's cat a couple of months ago. When she took them to my vet for a check-up, he said they were the cutest he'd ever seen, and it's true. She vows they'll be strictly *indoor* cats.

So here's to Odi, who lived as he wished and died relatively young, but also to Tiara and Gigi, who will help us heal after his loss.

(Apologies for the sentimentality, in a world where far worse things happen every day. I just needed this combo of venting, tribute, and tentative reasons for hope.)

Bruce Cohen (Speaker to Managers) #142: The sound you hear in the background is one Usama bin Ladin laughing.

I came here to make a shameless self-plug for some fiction I wrote yesterday, but the tales of unmaking are making me stay!

I got a good one. My daughter eats this honey-and-walnut concoction (specific carbohydrate diet for Crohn's) and, because she's 13, she has a tendency not to clean up the pan afterwards. So one night, seeing this solidified honey pan on the table with a wooden spoon in it, I put a little water in it to boil, to soften it up. But it being night, I was deeply embroiled in something online (actually, I think I was working) and so I forgot it entirely for about an hour.

All of a sudden, I smelled this lovely scent of incense, like cedar, or ... burning wood! (We live in a concrete building, so fortunately it didn't even occur to me it might be the house.) Remembering the pan, I ran into the kitchen -- the water had cooked off entirely, but the spoon hadn't caught fire. It simply ... charred down to a nub. It was the strangest thing I ever saw! I don't know if it was because it was soaked in water, or had something to do with the honey, but the entire bowl of the spoon was gone, converted to aromatic ash. It smelled really nice; we used to heat with wood, so woodsmoke brings back good memories for me.

So there you go: how not to clean a pan with honey in it.

Faren @160: My sympathies on your loss and I think the kittens are a wonderful tribute to Odi's memory.

We had to have our oldest cat, Alibi the Silver 'synnian, put to sleep last week. He had stopped eating and was losing the use of his hind legs. He spent his final morning soaking up sunshine.

Open threadedness:

http://www.hobby-lobby.com/fpv.htm

Video goggles with remote transmitter

I WANT!

I keep wondering, how does one process grape leaves to make them into food, as opposed to stringy mass of unswallowable fiber no matter how much one masticates? Dolma involves rice with grape leaf wrappers, but every grape leaf I have ever picked off a vine and tried eating, even attempting to cook first, the above happened to.... Perhaps I've always waited too late in the year to try, but....

#166
Google brings me this:
http://whatscookingamerica.net/Vegetables/StuffedGrapeLeaves.htm
which has a paragraph on handling fresh leaves.
(Dolmeh ... yum!)

Serge, #158: Speaking of which, today is the 100th birthday of Mel Blanc.

Chris Quinones @ 167... When I was a mere child, Saturday at 5pm was the Sacred Hour for me. That's when the Bugs Bunny Show was on, and that's where I put to practice what I'd learn that week in my school's English class.

Hail, Mel!

Re: preparing grape leaves

After a visit to the Greek Orthodox festival I dashed home and harvested some grape leaves to make my own dolmathes. Bleah! They did flavor the lamb/current/pine nuts/rice nicely. By the following spring the techniques had been sorted out.

Use only very young, tender leaves. You can steam or boil them as in P J Evans' link, or use a salt-vinegar brine, which is closer to what you get in the bottled Greek ones (I never did find a recipe*). The brined ones can be canned as you would any pickles. I suspect there's a correlation here. Which came first, the grape leaf or the cucumber?

You can freeze the raw leaves, but it's best to can if you're not using them right away.

If you can't find fresh leaves for your pickles, most Mediterranean groceries carry prepared ones.

Old recipes used alum for crisp pickles, but with aluminum salts showing up in autopsies of the brains of Parkinson's/Alzheimer's sufferers, and no one quite sure if it's absorption through cooking, antiperspirants, or actually eating the stuff, better not to go that route.

* but a nice woman wearing the name badge "Calliope" coached me. As Calliope is the name of my business, and my husband's family were circus people, here are pronunciations (sorry, I don't know the correct "real" way - help?):

The Muse, the hummingbird, the 22nd(?) asteroid discovered: cuh-LIGH-oh-pee.

The circus instrument: KALL-ee-oh

The Greek woman: Kahl-YO-peh

Google is our friend:
http://www.fatfree.com/archive/1997/aug/msg00222.html
for how to preserve grape leaves
(Yes, I'm going to save these. I have grapevines. And cookbooks.)

Faren and Lori: My condolences on your losses. Here's to the healing power of kittens, and warm memories of those gone on.

And a nice warm spot of sunlight dedicated to their memories.

#152: I've been to his store plenty of times, and probably bought comics from him.

Keef Knight did a nice tribute: The K Chronicles

Hmm, interesting links on the grape leaves and pickling. Thanks all. Maybe I really will get a grape vine...

Here's a slight tangent. When I was 19, I made a week-long trip to Russia. My Russian was (is) non-existent, and sounding out Cyrillic was arduous. Shopping for souvenirs in GUM, I found a packet of what I assumed was fruit tea, based on the pretty pictures of fruit. The white lump I found upon opening it turned out to be alum.

This one is interesting:
Are Grandmother's Pickle Recipes Safe? from Colorado State's extension service. They discuss vinegar, alum, and grape leaves, as well as processing the jars.

Ginger @171: Thanks.

I'm going to invoke AKICIML: Has anyone here had a knee replaced? My mother is getting it done at the end of August, and while we're going to a class about it, I thought someone here might have some recommendations for managing afterward.

She's going to be staying in a Rehab facility for about three weeks after she's released from the hospital.

The good news for the picklers is you can get pickling grade vinegar for home use. Allan's sells %9 in 4L jugs. Remember no iodine in the salt.
I was taught the pre mummify method of salt your cukes over ice the night before in the fridge before cooking in strong brine with honey and mustard. Tumeric and vinegar = glowing yellow stains forever.

P.J. Evans @174-- that was very interesting. My recipe belongs exactly in that generations-old, not "enough" vinegar category, but we've gotten away with it anyway. The recipe also calls for putting filled mason jars in a pot with cold water, then heating it just until it boils. The jars are left in until the lids pop down. It sounds unlikely, but it works well. I do NOT can anything else (pumpkin, plums) like that.

I pickled my daikon pickles in ½ tamari, ½ plain white vinegar. The plain ones were boring, but the garlic-pepper and habanero-rosemary were pretty good IMHO.

Lori Coulson @ 175... TexAnne's mom went thru that. My wife will too, in February. I had hope she'd get an adamantium knee with a repulsor beam in the cap (or maybe claws that go 'snikt!' when they come out), but all she'll get is a boring titanium thing without any extra feature.

Debbie @ 177

Sounds like your jars are sealing just fine. (I did pickles one time, just refrigerator-type, and used a boiling mixture of vinegar and brine on them. They tasted fine. Mixed veggies with dill. I've also done chutney.)

If you want to make a section of PVC pipe look like it's made of bronze, is it better to spray on something onto the plastic before spraying on the actual finish? Yes, I could ask the person in charge of paint at the nearby superduperhardware store, but I don't really expect them to know paint from a pint.

Lori @ #175: I have both my original knees (though not in mint condition), but I work with knee replacement patients regularly.

The two best pieces of general advice I can offer:

1. The stronger your legs are before the surgery, the faster your recovery will be.

2. DO NOT PUT A PILLOW UNDER YOUR KNEE after the surgery. (That is, when lying on your back or sitting with legs extended, do not put a pillow behind your knee in order to rest it in a bent position. Pillow between knees when lying on your side is fine.) It's difficult for many patients to recover full knee extension after surgery, even if they don't prop the knee up in a bent position. Because of the mechanics of the knee, if you can't fully extend it (lock it), gait becomes abnormal and both standing and walking require more energy than they should. This can also lead to hip and back problems in the fullness of time.

Both these issues should be addressed in the class, of course, but I just saw a patient yesterday who said nobody ever told him not to sleep with a pillow under his knee, and guess what? Now he has a knee flexion contracture.

Lori @ 175

My mother had one knee replaced successfully (her doctor was quite pleased).
It's really, really important to do the physical therapy afterward; skipping out on it means it takes longer to get the function to anything like what it should be (likewise, if they say beforehand to lose weight, they really mean it).
They'll probably start in the hospital, as soon after surgery as they can.

Crossover from another thread....

Concept for a Making Light game, with positive and negative points....

Getting disemvowelled--loss of points, for lack of wisdom....

Lori @175: My mother-in-law had a knee replacement about two years ago, and the key for her rehab was to do the passive exercise whatchamacallit. Start as soon as possible, and do it as often as you can; those will help rehab go better, more smoothly, and you'll regain function faster.

Also key is proper pain control, but most orthopods do address that.

Debbie: Grape vines are fun. If you can tend them, a half (or better yet, 3/4 barrel) is a good planter. You can keep them on concrete, and turn them; prune them, etc..

I have four. I'd commend ammending the soil in such a planter with (hard though it is to believe) with dryer lint. It's water retentive.

You'll need to drill a couple of holes in the bottom, and a strap to cooper the top closed (they tend to splay) is a good idea.

I have four of them (they have names, The Cutting Grape, the Birdshit Grape, the Not Chardonnay, and the Tokay... all but the Birdshit [which was a volunteer] bear fruit. The Cutting is so heavy this year I had to cut more than 60 bunches off of it; because it was overbearing).

I also keep other things in the planters (shallots, onions, tarragon, rue, poppies, dill carrots).

regarding the canning: Tomatoes (and other really acidic objects) can be canned with the same boil 'til done method.

re knees: Again my plaintive exhortation to get an Occupational Therapist. /soapbox.

My mom had a new knee put in a couple of years ago. I can't give you any tips better than others already have, but she does say that if she'd known it was going to help that much, she wouldn't have put it off. No buyer's remorse there!

Debbie: The "not enough vinegar" pickles are also referred to as, "fresh pickles". Japanese pickles are often in this category.

When I have friends coming over, and think of serving sake I will often make some. Little wine vingar, some sake vinegar, and maybe some spicing (ginger, tarragon, etc.) let them soak in the fridge for 12-96 hours.

Serge: PVC will take paint just fine. Be sure to wash it with a solvent, let it dry thoroughly (I'd to the washing on a support inside the tube, so you don't have to touch it after, otherwise use cotton gloves to handle it), and then spraypaint (to get an even finish).

Terry Karney @ 188... Thanks for the tip.

My mom had both her hip and her knee done while she was in her eighties. She went at the physical therapy like the trouper she is, and got a great result.

I've been waiting for an open thread to ask this; is it possible for the administrators to make the particles/sidelights open in new tabs? I mean, I know I can do it on my end, right-clicking and such, but I've always liked the {target="_blank"} links because they've made browsing so much easier . . .

Just thought I'd ask.

Serge: One caveat... make sure the solvent won't eat into the finish of the PVC. I'd use alcohol, just to be safe (unless you have various grades of aviation plastic, which are built to take things like acetone).

I don't know which solvents are the sort to eat into it. I pretty much only use it for supports (it makes a great way to hang backdrops, and with fitting a large, adaptable support, can be fit into a duffle bag), obstacles for horses to jump, and a means to transport water.

Xopher, #178
What, exactly, is the big deal with tamari? When my wife and I were in Italy, we stayed with a young man who was renting out a room. He kept raving about his tamari. My wife, being Japanese, was utterly confused. She had no idea what he was talking about, and on tasting it, said "it's just soy sauce."
Is it really special or something?

Terry Karney @ 192... Alcohol? Duly noted.

Faren, #160, I'm sorry about Odi, but glad about the new cuties.

Lori, #163, And I'm sorry about Alibi, too. It's so sad when our little companions die.

JimR, #193, tamari is stronger than shoyu (regular soy sauce) and doesn't use fermented ingredients (or wheat).

Serge @181: I've never done this, but I would suggest using some form of textured paint first, yes. Probably some of the paint for doing "spattered" paint jobs would work about right; you want something that will give it an approximation of a sand-cast finish. (And then the "bronze" paint will smooth that out a bit, so it looks about right for a bronze pipe.)

At least, I think that's about the right look.

Pickling is complete voodoo to me. I still don't understand food preservation. I found some really cheap single serving sized boxes of frozen spinach at the store and was really happy about the whole deal until I got home and looked at the label to discover it had 25% of the daily allowance for salt. Frozen and they still use salt? All the transport channels for food are salted apparently.

JimR 193: Tamari is the real thing (or one of them) of which soy sauce is the cheap Japanese American knock-off. Tamari is to soy sauce as Wicca is to New Age, as Shakespeare to Edgar Guest, as Marilyn Monroe to Sharon Stone.

Brooks Moses @ 196... Thanks. I'll probably wind up trying that and other suggestions with short pipe sections, not on the final results. (I know, what a brilliant concept.)

Marilee @195: tamari is stronger than shoyu (regular soy sauce) and doesn't use fermented ingredients (or wheat)

...? That runs somewhat counter to my understanding of the stuff; tamari/shoyu were traditionally made by natural fermentation, although most commercial products are now made by artificial hydrolysis. IIRC on my last trip to a local Asian supermarket, I spotted some naturally fermented stuff from Kikkoman labelled as a premium product, and accordingly priced at 2-3x their regular soy sauce.

Xopher @198: Which version of tamari are you using? The all-soy version of soy sauce (otherwise often made with additional grains such as wheat, rice, or barley), naturally fermented or otherwise? Or is there actually a commercial producer of tamari in the old farmstead sense of the liquid runoff from making miso paste?

(I've had an experimental batch of soy/rice miso fermenting away in my kitchen for ~6 months now, and sadly suspect that the minimum duration of "one hot summer" for full flavor is just never going to happen in this particular microclimate of the SF Bay Area-- whenever I poke at it for a sample, it's still sadly bland. However, the tamari floating off the top tastes amazing.)

Xopher #198: Say what? Soy sauce is just a cheap knockoff of a Japanese sauce? That news will, um, come as a huge surprise to a lot of Chinese cooks, who tend to think the Japanese barely grasp the concept of what soy sauce should taste like.

So, is it dark soy sauce you're knocking, or light soy sauce?

Serge: What is it you want it to look like (and for what purpose)?

Stefan Jones@172: Thanks for that link, I hadn't seen it before. (Rory's nose was nowhere near that big, though.)

Terry Karney @ 202... Well, a Victorian Time Traveller isn't one without a Victorian device of superscience. Mind you, I may wind up dropping the whole idea, but I thought I'd ask here, in case I decide to go ahead.

David Goldfarb @ 203... Rory's nose was nowhere near that big

My wife says that francophones, whether they be Gérard Depardieu or yours truly, tend to be endowed with large noses. I never noticed. Then again, maybe the plain truth was staring right at me. Like the nose in the middle of my face.

Several pieces of old, undeleted spam here.

#206 Interesting that that's the thread it's on.
(Die, spammers die is the title of the post)

I have a request for recommendations.

I've decided I need to branch out my blog-reading into topics that tend to make me happy. I'm a politics junkie, but it depresses me as often as it gives me a sense of righteous outrage or schadenfreude. Neither of those are particularly healthy emotions to subsist on anyway, and it's even more rare that I read genuinely good political news.

So, does anyone have recommendations for interesting blogs about gardening, cooking (particularly vegetarian or vegan -- I am neither, but enjoy veg*n food and cooking), environmentally-friendly living, and/or home renovations and improvement? Essentially, blogs about the favorite topics of Mother Earth News. So far I have dug up (ha) Garden Rant and Gardening While Intoxicated.

I mean, other than here, of course. *nods upwards at conversations about tamari, food preservation, and preparation of grape leaves*

Re #191: I would like to weigh in with an opposing viewpoint on target="_blank". People who want links to open in a new window/tab have the option to do so with normal links; people who *don't* want links to open in a new window/tab don't have an option if the links are set to target="_blank". (At least, not built into the browser; there are probably Firefox extensions that will fix that.)

I don't know if it would be possible to do this here, but some sites (for instance, Eschaton) allow the user to check a box to indicate whether they want links from that site to open in a new window or not. That seems like a great compromise to me.

Serge @#205:

Presumably that makes it easier to talk like Maurice Chevalier. (2:18 for the relevant bit)

And now I've just gotten sucked into the TV Tropes Wiki. Currently reading the Just a Stupid Accent page but I can tell I'll be spending the next hour reading other pages.

Mary Dell @ 210... I'm more a Charles Boyer kind of person myself, although Abi says I sound like Christophe Lambert.

"You talk funny Nash. Where you from?"
"Lots of different places."

OK, this morning I finished The Ghost Brigades and immediately started The Last Colony.

This afternoon I finished The Last Colony.

Wowie zowie, what great books. I shall burble more coherently later.

I give up. I've spent a good chunk of the day trying to figure out the current status of the democratic nomination process. And I'm stymied.

I just want to know if Clinton has a mathematical possibility of winning or not and what it would take for that to happen.

After reading the squabble about florida/michigan, it sounds like Clinton can't win the nomination, ao I can see no rhyme or reason for her to continue the fight, other than to try to further polarize her voters away from obama.

Maybe she thinks if she torpedo's Obama, he'll be forced to make Clinton her VP?

Also, Clinton's claim that she's won the "popular vote"? WTF? If the delegate numbers are wacked like the Electoral College numbers, then the populr vote doesn't matter, does it?

lastly, does Clinton seriously intend to run this completely into the ground? If she chose to withdraw, then she admits Obama is the better candidate and her supporters have reason to switch to Obama.

If Clinton rides this nightmare all the way to the end, and then claims something like the way the michagan votes were counted is why she lost the race against the big, mean Democratic Party machine, then those who were loyal to her are going to have to do a bit of work to reconcile how they can switch to Obama.

I mean, does she seriously think Obama shouldn't get any delegates from Michagan when he wasn't even on the ballot? Her people argue that Florida/Michagan should have a voice in the same breath that they propose the Michagan voices that would have voted for Obama had he been on the ballot should be thrown out?

I don't see any benefit at this point to dragging this out any further. I don't see any reasonable expectation that Hillary can win the nomination. I don't see any result from further infighting other than to further polarize the party. The math by itself just doesn't make sense to me.

With friends like this....

Am I missing something about the process?

I wanted to ask the Fluoreadosphere about how barbarian I might be.

As I blogged here, someone on the internetNYTimes* is thinking his readers might have read 1/3 of the "1001 Books You Should Read Before You Die" (P. Boxall editor, 2006) list, controversial and heavily biased to the 20th (70%) and 21st (7%) centuries that it is.

I am barbarian to that writer, or the authors, having read only 1/15th of these books, including just one of the 69 published in the last 8 years**. If these are such ovular works, I have a ways to go in understanding the novel.

Wise comment about expected shared cultural backgrounds notwithstanding*** (I don't think I've been missing a Houellebecqian subtext to the poetry here, but then how would I know?), is 7% low, including that mere 5% of the 20th century? How barbarian are you?

-------------
* he often writes obits and book/cultural reviews.
** Not that my bookshelves don't contain more than 69 21st century books. But, quoting Amazon's product description "Each work of literature featured here is a seminal work key to understanding and appreciating the written word."
*** & I know my numbers for pre-20th books are low, but I've been working my way backwards towards the 18th century.

B.Durbin @ 29: Belated Congratulations! (And cute kid!)

Mary Dell @#211: Oh yeah, that place is totally addictive! Have you reached the "Five Man Band" page yet, or Phlebotinum?

I wanted to ask the Fluoreadosphere about how barbarian I might be.

As I blogged here, someone on the internetNYTimes* is thinking his readers might have read 1/3 of the "1001 Books You Should Read Before You Die" (P. Boxall editor, 2006) list, controversial and heavily biased to the 20th (70%) and 21st (7%) centuries that it is.

I am barbarian to that writer, or the authors, having read only 1/15th of these books, including just one of the 69 published in the last 8 years**. If these are such ovular works, I have a ways to go in understanding the novel.

Wise comment about expected shared cultural backgrounds notwithstanding*** (I don't think I've been missing a Houellebecqian subtext to the poetry here, but then how would I know?), is 7% low, including that mere 5% of the 20th century? How barbarian are you?

-------------
* he often writes obits and book/cultural reviews.
** Not that my bookshelves don't contain more than 69 21st century books. But, quoting Amazon's product description "Each work of literature featured here is a seminal work key to understanding and appreciating the written word."
*** & I know my numbers for pre-20th books are low, but I've been working my way backwards towards the 18th century.

#215

That's about what I find, going through the list.
I don't think it's barbarian, I think it's a matter of what you like to read, as well as what came with school.

Serge: Then I'd go for a smooth finish, as of polished brass.

Caroline: I've been known to read a little about food, so here are some of my reads.

Food blogs (unlinked, to avoid moderation hell)

http://www.habeasbrulee.com/

ww.travelerslunchbox.com/journal/

http://corduroyorange.com/

I really like all of those (the first and last in particular).

http://mykoreankitchen.com/

http://breadchick.com/

http://www.dessertfirst.typepad.com/

http://myhusbandcooks.wordpress.com/

http://amandamc.blogspot.com/

http://whatholtandbarbarahadfordinner.blogspot.com/

Those are all fun.

I did discover (or was reminded, it's been a while since I stopped by) that the Wannabe Wino is misqouting, and misattributing her slug, which she has as, "A Day Without Wine is like a Day Without Sunshine."-Louis Pasteur.

The proper quotation is, Un repas sans vin c'est comme une journée sans soleil -- Brillat-Savarin

For a more idiosyncratic look at food.

Harold McGee has a blog: http://www.curiouscook.com/cook/home.php which is great fun and

Cooking for engineers (http://www.curiouscook.com/cook/home.php) has some interesting pieces, but it's not really a blog.

(try this again, MT hung on me. splitting in half)

Caroline @208:
Here's a partial list of my cooking-related blogroll.

Kitchen Wench, http://www.insanitytheory.net/kitchenwench

Tigers & Strawberries, http://www.tigersandstrawberries.com

Help! I Have A Fire In My Kitchen, http://fireinmykitchen.blogspot.com/

Gourmeted, http://gourmeted.com


(continued)

Continued from previous:

zesteasy, http://zesteasy.com
Le Petit Cochon, http://le-petit-cochon.blogspot.com/

Too Much Garlic, http://www.toomuchgarlic.com
Happy Love Strawberry, http://happylovestrawberry.blogspot.com/
Heeb'n'Vegan, http://heebnvegan.blogspot.com/

and a meta-blog to find new cooking/food blogs: http://www.foodblogblog.com/

Serge: With that as your goal... I'd go for the smooth finish, a la polished brass.

Caroline: I have a small laundry lost of links, which is lost in the halls of moderation (I thought the lack of active links would save it, so I failed to break it up).

They are all food blogs.

Kathryn (215/217): Sounds about right to me. I read 8% of them (okay, 7.9), about half of those for literature classes. Most of the rest I have absolutely no interest in, a few I deliberately skipped the classes I would have had to read them in.

It strikes me as a strange list, in a lot of ways. Why three Douglas Adams titles? For that matter, why *all* of Toni Morrison (to pick one name at semi-random)? Wouldn't it be better to read a wider range of authors?

From a quick glance down the 1001 list I get

97 I've read
3 I've read but they might have been abridged translations and it was some years ago so I'm not sure whether to count them or not
5 I've started and never finished*
25 in addition to the previous categories I've seen adaptions of on film, on TV, or on stage

So if you count the maybes and not-finished I get 1 in 10. I notice there's 20 or 30 or so that other people (espcially my brother) have reccomended to me, and so I have them in mind to read when I get the chance. There's only a couple that, if asked, I'd suggest people not read (Why read The Godfather? Honestly, watch the films instead)

Presumably this puts me in the ballpark of a barbarian (or possibly a Barbadian to cross threads) although I note no Shakespeare or Bible on there. Are we to assume, like Desert Island Discs, that we have them already?

* If you asked me earlier I'd only have named two books I've never finished**, so I've learnt something from this exercise
** plus two I'm actively reading at the moment

B.Durbin @ 29: Belated Congratulations! (And cute kid!)

Mary Dell @#211: Oh yeah, that place is totally addictive! Have you reached the "Five Man Band" page yet, or Phlebotinum?

Greg: Clinton can't win the needed number of voted in delegates. She is angling to show the superdelegates that she is more, "electable" and is (IMO) playing dirty pool to do it (and has been since the Michigan election).

Michigan was off the table. All the candidates agreed. Clinton, however, left her name on the ballot; and campaigned.

As a result she, "won". Now she wants to be given all the committed delegates she collected, and some portion of the people who, actively, didn't want her.

Thus she can go to the superdelagates and say, "look, I can deliver Michigan, and Florida; again. Obama can't, so if we don't want McCain to win, you HAVE, to vote for me."

It's realpolitik writ small, and bad for the system, bad for the country, and (I think) bad for Clinton, because the voters will think she can't win but for cheating (or at least dirty pool) and that calls her fitness for office into question; in a way the shenanigans of the Republicans haven't attached to McCain.

The, "scheming bitch" trope is already out there, and the Republicans will pick it up and pound her with it.

#224

Calvinball. Or fizzbin.
The committee meeting today didn't give her what she wanted, so she's going to take it to the credentials committee at the convention.

Damn. I don't know how I stood it, but I watched the whole damned day's coverage of the RBC.

It's over. It's time for Clinton supporters to decide if they want a Democrat or a Republican to be the next President.

Is the DNC before or after Worldcon?

(215/217) Kathryn from Sunnyvale

I am more barbarian than you. I think I've read 82 of those titles. 44% of the ones I've read were written in the 19th century. While many of those can be credited to attending a liberal arts college, the authors I've read include Wells, Verne, Doyle, Twain, Carroll, Alcott (Louisa May), Poe, Stoker and Shelley (Mary). I suspect I'd read a significant number of those in high school.

I made the mistake of majoring in English in college because I liked to read. As a result, I haven't read anything labelled "literature" since. These days I browse almost exclusively in the "genre" sections (mystery and SF/F).

Thank you geeksoaur and Terry Karney for the links (even if your list is still in moderation)! It is very much appreciated.

Although, re 224, may I request that we lay off the sexist language about Clinton? I think it's very possible to criticize her strategy re: delegates without giving more airtime to the sexist stereotype of "scheming bitch."

Caroline: All respect, no I am not going to talk around it. I didn't say she was such. I said it is something people (should she be nominated) will use this political manuvering to call her.

And being aware that it's coming is being ready to fight it. We don't do ourselves any favors in not looking at the wicked, base and stereotypical responses people are going to make.

Yeh, second half of list still in moderation. Splitting again, since my last message that went into moderation came out after that thread was dead :/

zesteasy, http://zesteasy.com

Le Petit Cochon, http://le-petit-cochon.blogspot.com/

Too Much Garlic, http://www.toomuchgarlic.com


(part 3 to come)

[happily smiling and pointing at the news]

ohhhh, shiny

Kathryn from Sunnyvale @ 242... Wow.

Well, what do you know? It looks like the American public will finally get to see Charlie Jade, starting Friday, on the SciFi Channel. What I had seen at Seattle's NASFiC in 2005 looked quite interesting. Now we'll get the whole thing.

geekosaur @#231: Zesteasy, like Tigers & Strawberries, gets a "page not found", and Down For Everyone, Or Just Me? says "doesn't look like a site on the interwho".

As a lifelong space nut, I have spent hours happily poring over imagery from varous probes. But I was never that good at geology, much less areology. (If that word exists.) I have friends who can pick up a rock and accurately classify it and identify its proper place in the story of the surrounding terrain.

All I will see is a rock.

There are pictures from the Spirit or Opportunity landers that come with with wonderful explanations of why one rock or another is surprising and significant. I have found that fascinating, even if I am unable to really see that significance myself.

But the possible discovery of an ice layer right under the Phoenix lander is different. It looks like a couple of patches of ice. It may prove to be something else, but even I can see this.

Claude Muncey @236

They do warn--in one caption on the Phoenix site--that the picture is overexposed. i.e. The the smooth stuff might have the same color as the shadowed foreground material.

Still, as Phoenix has twittered, the majority opinion is that it's ice.

And one of the drill instruments is a tile cutter, so that they should be able to get a sample and test it before it sublimates.

Hm. http://zesteasy.com and http://www.tigersandstrawberries.com both load fine here. zesteasy hasn't updated since early April, though. (T&.S updates almost daily.) I did forget to escape the ampersand in the title.

(having sent that, part 3 gets delayed even more — MT really doesn't like me tonight)

The DNC is after Worldcon, but still screws up the scheduling.

They had Boston in 2004, too. One wonders who in the DNC planning committee is trying for the SF connection. "I'm heading there a few weeks early, for... uh... planning." (Hides Spock ears.)

Okay, let's try part 3 now.

Happy Love Strawberry, http://happylovestrawberry.blogspot.com
Heeb'n'Vegan, http://heebnvegan.blogspot.com
The Food Blog Blog (a meta-blog which is a nice source of new food/cooking blogs), http://www.thefoodblogblog.com/
Missy's Recipes, http://recipesbymissy.wordpress.com/

That's it (for now)...

Marilee @ 195: "tamari is stronger than shoyu (regular soy sauce) and doesn't use fermented ingredients (or wheat)."

I'm confused. No fermented ingredients? Soy sauce is made by fermenting soy beans (and occasionally other stuff); how could you have a soy sauce without fermented ingredients? I checked Wikipedia, which was informative. It seems that tamari is unique because it is made without the addition of wheat, which Japanese soy sauces usually contains a fair amount of. In other words, it's pure soy, a lot like you average Chinese (original, if you're into that sort of thing) soy sauce.

Xopher @ 198: "Tamari is the real thing (or one of them) of which soy sauce is the cheap Japanese American knock-off."

Wh...what?

B Durbin, it could be worse.
In 1976 it was in St Louis, after the GOP convention. I understand the liquor dealers much preferred Worldcon, because the con people bought more stuff. I guess Republicans bring their own or buy at the hotels. (I'm not going into what they bring or buy ....)

Another future shock moment for Kathryn in Sunnyvale:

Yesterday I glanced through the mailer from my daughter's high school. This year, the AP Biology class has been splicing the bioluminescence gene from jellyfish into E. coli. I spent a moment after reading that going, "Wha? wha?" trying to think if I could be misreading somehow.

Xopher #198:
They are different products (ingredients-wise, soy sauce typically contains wheat, tamari normally doesn't), used for different dishes. I grant you that there is a quality & price difference between the sorts of 'soy sauce' produced by fermentation (which costs more but results in a more complex sauce) vs. by acid hydrolysis (which is cheaper but which I find perfectly acceptable for most things).

Mary Dell #211:
I've lost a bit of time there too. My current favourite entries: Large Ham which led to Brian Blessed and William Shatner.

I was engaging in hyperbole in order to praise tamari to the high heavens. In doing so I also riffed on the phrase 'cheap Japanese knockoff' which was ridiculously prevalent when I was growing up (the phrase, not the products).

The soy sauce I grew up on was La Choy, which is an abomination unto the palate.

Please don't take my florid statements about tamari any more seriously than that.

Kathryn # 215
The books on that list tend to be profoundly lacking in attraction for me--most of them are boring pretentious litcrit claptrap or just plain boring lacking otherwise in redeeming reading value to me.
(and of course most of then are by Dead or even Alive White Male Christian Anglophones...)

Xopher #245:

Got it.

That aside, I have had some really bad soy sauce made by local manufacturers. Makes me wonder if it's because I didn't grow up with the local version; some NZ-born Kiwis I know swear by them. An acquired taste?

It was certainly the case with tomato ketchup/sauce. I grew up with the 'Heinz' brand but the most common brand in New Zealand is 'Watties'. It took me a while to get used to it, they were so qualitatively different. Mind you, I suspect the same sort of flame-wardiscussion could be had between connoisseurs of Marmite vs. Vegemite.

Kathryn from Sunnyvale @215.... By my count, I've read 100 of the 1001, or 9.9%. Only two were from the 21st century, and I didn't care that much for them, either. As Mary Aileen noted, it seems like an odd list. Why that much John Updike, and not any Robertson Davies (who, while less celebrated, is much more compelling to me)?
Why Dorothy Sayer's "Nine Tailors" and "Murder Must Advertise", but not "Gaudy Night"?

I did benefit a lot from having multiple books by the same author on the list - Jane Austen and Charles Dickens contributed a good number of my hits, for instance.

Correction to my post @248: Dorothy Sayers, not Dorothy Sayer.

David Goldfarb,

Rory's nose was nowhere near that big.

yeah, keith knight's nose is actually rather petite, though, & you see how he draws it.

Kathryn from Sunnyvale @ 215

Bar-bar-bar. Me too. I've read 120 of those books, only 1 from the 21st, more than 2/3 of them were from the 20th, but mostly from the 1st half not the latter half, and most of the rest from the 19th.

Some of the books listed that I haven't read were by authors whose other books I've read; who decides which books are better? Others are books by authors whom I have sworn not ever to read for one prejudiced reason or another; also barbarism, I guess.

Writers and books have been included or left out seemingly at random. For instance, I take great issue that there are 4 books by Hammet, whose work I like, but none by Peter Dickinson, whose work I love greatly and whose skill and talent as a writer I admire greatly, much more than Hammet. "Tufugu", "Hindsight", and "Skeleton-in-Waiting" are amazing pieces of work, but they've been tarred by the brush of "genre", and for some reason "The Glass Key" and "The Big Sleep" haven't, thought they're mystery stories too. And so on.

My take is that this is an "approved" list, created by pundits for the sake of punditry; they approve of what they've heard of and disapprove all else. What bothers me is not so much what's on or not on the list as that someone has the gall to say that they can conclude what books we "should" read.

re #249: Correction to my post @248: Dorothy Sayers, not Dorothy Sayer.

I am given to understand that's Dorothy L Sayers, thankyouverymuch. (I probably read this in the "such a strange lady" bio, which istr others have said was ... less than perfect.)

re #249: Correction to my post @248: Dorothy Sayers, not Dorothy Sayer.

I am given to understand that's Dorothy L Sayers, thankyouverymuch. (I probably read this in the "such a strange lady" bio, which istr others have said was ... less than perfect.)

#252, 253, hedgehog

(fx:blush) Oops. Sorry. Gosh, it's surprisngly
easy to do that. Memo: clear browser before breakfast.

Xopher @ 245: Oh, okay. I was confused because Japanese-style wheat/soy sauce could, arguably, be called a knock-off of the old(er)-school Chinese soy sauce. But it would be a terrible, stupid argument, and one of a sort that would be very out of character for you.

(Nowadays popularly-imagined cheap knockoffs are Chinese, causing yet another level of cognitive dissonance.)

I hope you have your Tivo-in-the-sky pointed at the latest Doctor Who episode, first of a two-parter.

And it's written by Steven Moffat.

Keep out of the shadows.

And don't blink!

B.Durbin @ 239... Luckily, DNCon being held after the worldcon will break an unfortunate pattern.

1980... DNCon is held in Boston, later followed by the worldcon. Ronald Raygun becomes President.

2004... DNCon is held in Boston, later followed by the worldcon. Incurious George becomes President.

Or maybe that was just a Boston thing.

Whoever wrote that list has strange tastes in Graham Greene and William S. Burroughs. After figuring that out, I lost interest--though it was funny to see I hadn't read a single twenty-first century work.

Kathryn @ #217: I've read 81 of them (only one from the 21st century), and that includes several I count as a complete waste of time.

No Shakespeare, no Chaucer, and three Douglas Adams? Sheesh. (Oh. It just occurred to me that plays and poems don't count. Duh. But why not?)

I didn't count movies, though I suspect Kurosawa's Rashomon should count for something.

One of the questions in my head as I was scrolling the list was, "Which of these (if any) would I put on a 'must read' list for other people?" Answer: very few. Most of the books I try to get other people to read are nonfiction. Fiction is so seldom one-size-fits-all.

Serge @ 257

1976, St Louis, the GOP convention was before Worldcon. Carter became president.

I don't know whether it fits a pattern or not.

I just got intense chills thinking about ice on Mars. And no, not because of cold.

Kathryn, I've read about eighty-five of the books on that list (one of them actually being Houellebecq, just last week). It seems to me that it's essentially a list of every book that's ever gotten a lot of attention. Snoozy.

John A Arkansawyer @ 258:
Whoever wrote that list has strange tastes in Graham Greene and William S. Burroughs. After figuring that out, I lost interest--though it was funny to see I hadn't read a single twenty-first century work.

According to the NY Times article that Kathryn linked to, it's a compendium of suggestions from multiple people, not just one person's idiosyncratic list: "Peter Boxall, who teaches English at Sussex University, asked 105 critics, editors and academics — mostly obscure — to submit lists of great novels, from which he assembled his supposedly mandatory reading list of one thousand and one."

The fact that it was supposed to be "novels" explains why there's no Chaucer or Shakespeare, though the definition of "novel" clearly got stretched to include both short stories (e.g., Jorge Luis Borges, Edgar Allen Poe) and things that are harder to classify as even being "fiction" (Swift's "A Modest Proposal"). And I see Ovid's "Metamorphoses" at the bottom of the list, which violates the supposed stricture against poetry....

I did find it amusing that James Fenimore Cooper was on the list, for Last of the Mohicans. That sound you hear is Mark Twain (only one more book in the list than Cooper!) spinning in his grave.

Interesting to see that there are a couple of ancient Greek novels on the list; slightly dispiriting to see that no one mentioned Tale of Genji, or any classical Chinese novels.

(By my count, I've only read 57 books from the list, plus another 6 or so that I started but never finished -- which makes me The Most Barbaric So Far... Erk.)

One more person joining the Great Bird's extremely-post-production crew:
Bob Justman.
Interesting note: he was the one who wanted Patrick Stewart in TNG.

86 (with about half a dozen failure to completes not counted).

None in the present century (not really a surprise... they seem to be modern "literature" which leaves me pretty cold, though I have a copy of the history of pi, and someday will get to it).

I don't know how many I'll add. None of the Hemmingway, Steinbeck or Updike. Tried them, didn't like them.

And why so many of so many? Is there really that much which needs reading in Hemmingway, Updike, Morrison and Austen, that one needs to read so much of their work, just to be well rounded? I don't think so. A couple, sure, but not so many as that.

The Jungle? Please, there were better muckraking novels. Not as well known, but actually readable.

I was pleased to see a Fleming, amused to see Cryptonomicon (and not sure what to make of it, but I'm still of a mixed mind on Stephenson; though I've read all of his stuff; I think).

No Shakespeare, and Hound of the Baskervilles stands alone, but, "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" A collection of Strand Magazine freestanding stories, is one work? I'd have chosen "The Sign of the Four" or "A Study in Scarlet".

Then again, that doesn't let him have it in two centuries.

As usual, the list tells more of the composer, than it does of those who compare their reading history to it.

I'm not sure what it would say about someone who spent the next set of years trying to get through it.

Terry@224: She is angling to show the superdelegates that she is more, "electable"

so.... she doesn't have the delegate votes, which represent the votes from individuals during the primaries, so instead she's arguing that even though she doesn't have a majority of support from the democratic voters overall, she is arguing she has a majority of support from democratic voters in battleground states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and is therefore more "electable"? When Obama didn't campaign in Florida and wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan?

Is that really her argument? I ask because it seems to me to be obvious bullshit if that's really what she's tryign to push.

If so, it would seem that the superdelegates should be stepping in and telling Clinton to cut the shit and can it.

The only, and I mean only, possible problem with that would be the possibility that Hillary would respond to a massive superdelagate vote for Obama by telling her supporters to stay home on election day.

And given her behaviour so far, (it's 3 AM and a phone is ringing in the white house), I wouldn't put it past her to do that.

Greg: That's what she's arguing.

Me... I'm of a mixed mind on her continuing to campaign. On the one hand, I don't think she should be the Dem Candidate anymore. On the other... She is taking a lot of the attention from McCain and keeping it on the Dem Race, which means more of the issues are still being kept in play (though some of the issues, like Obama's pastor are the same old shit; that we didn't hear about McCain's religious advisors... well par for the course [and yes, I know we got him to divorce himself from Hagee, but it didn't get the days, and days of play... which means if it comes up again McCain will say he didn't need to have it shown all over the national news before he did it] and IOKIYAR, because they are "real people" and real people make mistakes).

I don't know why Clinton is pushing so hard... partly because I think she feels she's entitled to the office. She was annointed, and the presumptive candidate a long time ago (I recall the people saying she was going to run '04). I think she believes she would be good in the office.

I also think she has something to prove, and wants to poke a sharp stick in the eyes of all those who have been attacking her for so long (the, "Please let them run Hillary" crowd, the one's who wanted her to run because they hate her so much they can't imagine anyone with a brain voting for her).

I don't think she's the political animal Bill was, but I think she's good enough to do the job; but I also know she's going to have tough going if she gets it. There will be a lot of people angling to undermine her, and then say, "see, we told you she was no good" and using her to run in 2010.

I don't think she's willing to spite things by telling people to stay home, because I don't think her motives are that personal.

Does she want to win? Of course. No one gets that far, in that field, without a lot of ego, and a lot of drive. I don't know how long she's been planning/dreaming for this, but it's got to be hard to give up, esp. when one has been painted as a standard bearer.

Kathryn #215:

I've read 60 of them for sure, and I think I read a couple more in high school. Some of the books I'd read in high school, I could remember nothing about except that I had read them. (Or some vague thing like "Billy Budd....hmm, wasn't there something about an allegory with Jesus in there, and a ship?")

The list strikes me as pretty silly in the places I had read. Was _The Three Musketeers_ really great literature that nobody should miss? Or _Around the World in 80 Days_?!? Is _Player of Games_ really the Culture novel of Banks' that you ought not to miss? (It wasn't bad, but IMO _Remember Phlebas_ and _Use of Weapons_ were better.)

This leads to a natural question. Not "what should this list be," I'm not in school anymore, so I am only going to read stuff I think I'll enjoy and get something out of. But it's worth trying to work out what books those should be.

What non-SF[1] books am I likely to be missing, assuming they're boring or not to my taste, but if I made the investment in them, I'd really be happy? As an example, a few years back, I watched the _Sense and Sensibility_ movie with Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant. I loved it (my wife found it terribly boring), and I wound up reading all of Jane Austen's novels, and I reread them from time to time. If someone had told me "go read this Important Literature by Jane Austen," I'd probably have ignored them.

My two cents (as a barbarian, who is certainly less well-read than most people in this discussion) is that you can read and love Jane Austen's novels if you can read SF. Like a good SF novel, you have to put on a different worldview, culture, and technology base, in order to understand the characters. And you have to get used to the way the language works (no harder than reading _Terraformed_ or _Emergence_ or _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_), so you can get the full subtlety of what she could make that language do. (It's no insult to the authors of those other works to point out that they're not remotely in the same league with her in what she could do with language. The payoff for getting used to how her characters and narrator speak is *way* higher than working out the odd grammar in _Terraformed_.)

What are good introductory works for authors that really are worth reading? Like, if I wanted to try Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy, what are accessible works I might start on? FWIW, I found _Sense and Sensibility_ and _Pride and Prejudice_ both pretty nice for starting out with Jane Austen, and I suspect watching the movie of Sense and Sensibility first made it easier to get some feel for what the world looked like.

[1] I already read a ton of SF, so I can find my own stuff there. Though this is surely the place to find ideas for more fun SF to read!

I have to admit, on that list, I could get a decent head start without leaving the house. My parents were in one of the literary book clubs, and we had a lot of those 19th-century works on the shelves.
I can't say that as a teenager, you'll get much out of Madame Bovary or War and Peace, but at least you can say you've tried.

No O'Brian.

The comment about worldview reminded me. One of the things I love about O'Brian is he doesn't (overmuch) fall into the trap of just plunking moderns into other settings.

Maturin does some medical things (pyrnafvat uvf cngvragf jbhaqf jvgu qrangherq nypbuby) not beause he thinks as we do... but for purely personal reasons, in keeping with the times.

That was one of the things which bothered me about the film... Maturin would never have been blathering about evolution while in the Galapagos; he didn't have the frame of reference.

I'm allergic to the writing of most of the names of people I recognize on that list... started books by them and was, again, was for the most part profoundly uninterested in continuing to read. (One of more of "These are not people I am interested in/find worthwhile-and-or-rewarding to read about," "The writing style is tedious," "The story location/setting is one I am not interesting in reading of," "The plot is not anything to keep me reading," "The viewpoint character(s) is/are people I object to being put into the heads of/don't want to spend time with," etc., apply )

Old, undeleted dog-training spam here.

#266 ::: Terry Karney --

[ I don't know why Clinton is pushing so hard... ]

I know no more than anyone else, but a long time ago, while her husband was still in the Oval Office it seemed to me that Clinton was going to try very hard to do something that, when looked up in the history books, databases and google, the first thing that came up for her name would not be the colossal public humiliations she was put through by everyone, most of all, her husband the POTUS.

The best revenge is living well. How satisfying then, when the histories and biographies are written about her, that they are written because she was a senator from NY state -- that she was POTUS herself, and the first women to be POTUS.

By the time of her vote on the Iraq invasion though, I think she'd already gotten twisted out of that very understandable and -- you know, it could have been -- laudable goal and objective. It became power for the sake of power and instead of canceling out her humiliations, it became about how she was entitled to the power, even so perhaps, because she'd been so humiliated.

That's a theory only, and mine own, and humbly submitted. Recall, I do write fiction.

Love, C.

More dog spam

I count 193, plus 22 writers whom I've read, but only their non-list works. So I may yet be civilized before I die.

even more old dog-spam

(Sorry to spam this thread with so much, but there seems to be a lot lingering in December 2004's threads.)

Tm Walters: I have several writers whom I've read, but not the works on this list.

So I too might be civilised, and even educated, before I shuffle off.

I realise there's probably an obvious reason why the answer to the following question is "No", but as it's not obvious to me I'll ask anyway:

Supposing that Obama gets the Democratic nomination, is there any chance that Clinton will run anyway, as an independent or third-party candidate?

Albatross, Terry, et al.,

The 1001 book has short essays for each novel listed that explain why it's on the list. I'll have to check out those essays. As the NYTimes article says, they were aware / expecting / designing the list to be controversial.

And of course while I have a reaction of "how do they even know what's worthy in the 21st century?" it's immediately countered by that I have thoughts on which recent SF novels are likely classics*.

I do feel I need to catch up on my 18th-19th century novels--in part because they often are the foundations for modern novels, SF and mainstream.

But the 770 20th-21st century novels? I'll have to see their arguments.

---------------
* Peter Watts' Blindsight, for example. [Assume a full set of arguments]...that's why it's the distilled and dangerous essence of sensawunda, the thing that if I needed to define SF to a non-SF-reader, I'd just point to it and say "That" (even knowing that it isn't a book for SF beginners).

Paul A: Her argument is that she should be the nominee because she, and not Obama, can beat McCain in the fall. (I originally typed that as "fail", which, well.) She's smart enough to know that would be handing the race to McCain if she ran as an independent and split the left-of-center vote with Obama, so there goes her only rationale. Also, she'd be dealing her career a fatal blow in the process. If she doesn't get the nomination, she will probably immediately start gearing up for 2012.

One thing that occurs to me as I scan these book lists (and recently there has been another with 100 that's been making the rounds) is that it's been a heck of a long time since I've read my subset. It would probably be an interesting exercise to go back and re-read them. The person I am now would surely get different things out of "The Grapes of Wrath", to pick one at random, than the 11th grader who read it the first time.

Maybe I'd be bored stiff, maybe I'd find unexpected treasures.

Suggested addition to the mini spelling reference: "Hemingway". (I should be less sensitive to misspellings....)

105 books off of the list.

And some entries are almost trivial, like the bunch of Poe short fiction that's named which I read in a slim "best of" collection.

And I'm not sure that Quo Vadis and Ben Hur were all that great as novels.

Paul in 277, a great deal of Hillary Clinton's political power comes from her ability to use the Democratic Party power structure to her advantage. (It was John Edwards and Barack Obama who made a point of drawing support from outside the party, creating entirely new activists.) If she runs as an independent, she would not only abandon most of the base of her support; she would alienate them enough to make herself less effective as a senator, as a future presidential candidate, or fundraising/advocating for political allies.

Terry, #266: She was anointed, and the presumptive candidate a long time ago

I can't possibly be the only one who's noticed that most of the people doing the "anointing" were Republican pundits. She's been the right-wing's wet-dream candidate ever since 2000, and it's their pushing that shaped the discourse, not anything the Democratic Party did or said. And y'know, I'm getting damn sick and tired of the Republicans picking both candidates for every Presidential election.

Re the "1001 books" list... sorry, way too many fluff best-sellers on there, and older books which are now of primarily historical interest. I'd be more likely to consider people who have read more than half of them barbarians, in the sense of "people who allow their tastes to be shaped by whatever is the latest Hot Thing".

"Dog spam" sounds like the Maguffin of next week's Chinese import horror story.

Dave Bell @ 282... I'm not sure that Quo Vadis and Ben Hur were all that great as novels.

Stories that were made into famous movies seem to acquire an advantage over others, especially if we get Peter Ustinov as Nero.

Hmmm, it should be fairly simple to start a political double dactyl with "POTUSy-SCOTUSy" and a core word "impeachability". heh.

Lee: While the Republican nabobs wanted her to run (expecting her to be handily crushed in a general election), there was also a strong contingent of other people who thought she was a good shot.

They are the Democratic National Party apparatchiki she's been playing to with the, "electability" scheme. Those people (on the levers) are the same ones who have been listening to the pundit class (to include the Carvilles and MoDos, the Saletan's and Kleins); they all drank the kool-aid (the stuff which says progressive, liberal, ideas are sudden death, and actually taxing based on expeneses, etc. are a sure ticket to losing at the polls).

Regardless of where she got the idea, it sure looks as though she thought the nomination was hers for the asking.

Harlan on public radio's "Studio 360," speaking of his career in SF and the new doco movie of his life.

Love, C.

I've read 136 of that list (including such items as Selvon's The Lonely Londoners which definitely deserve a wider audience than 'West Indian literature' or 'post-colonial literature').

My credulity fails at the point where I calculate that I would have to have read two of these a month since I learned to read, to keep up.

albatross @ #267, if you haven't read the Aubrey & Maturin books, try one. There seems to be consensus that the third book is where O'Brian really hits his stride. (I liked them all.)

If you either haven't read any Steinbeck, or you've read some and disliked it ("The Pearl" or "The Red Pony", for example), try Travels with Charley; it's a nonfiction account of a cross-country trip he made in a camper truck with his dog. For extra fun, compare/contrast with I See by my Outfit, Peter S. Beagle's account of a cross-country roadtrip he and his artist buddy made on scooters.

albatross @ 267: What non-SF[1] books am I likely to be missing, assuming they're boring or not to my taste, but if I made the investment in them, I'd really be happy?

Here are some books from the list that I really liked and that feel like near-neighbors of the best SF to me for one reason or another--usually a vivid setting that gives a similar frisson to that of "world-building":

A.S. Byatt: Possession
John Fowles: A Maggot; The Magus
Graham Swift: Waterland
John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy Of Dunces
Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart
Robert Louis Stevenson: Kidnapped, Treasure Island
Wilkie Collins: The Moonstone
Tove Jansson: The Summer Book
Kingsley Amis: The Green Man, Lucky Jim
these next few might be considered difficult
Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy
Herman Melville: Moby-Dick
Donald Barthelme: The Dead Father
Thomas Pynchon: Gravity's Rainbow
Alasdair Gray: Lanark
William Faulkner: Absalom, Absalom!

Kathryn from Sunnyvale @215--

OK, I'm changing my name to Apame, or possibly Zenobia, because I am clearly a barbarian.

Not only have I not read a good many of these, I have Serious Quibbles.

None of the Poe listed is a novel. They're all short stories; he only wrote one novel. Not that I object to seeing all of them on the list; Poe was an immensely influential writer and he can still raise the hair on your neck. But: short-stories, not novels. Among the selections from Dickens, I believe "A Christmas Carol" is technically a novella, so maybe I should let that pass. YMMV when it's novel vs. novella. It's certainly had legs.

While Apuleius's Golden Ass is a novel, Ovid's Metamorphoses is not. It's a long poem, and while it is narrative, it's not constructed like a novel, but is a series of vignettes involving different characters who have one thing in common: their forms were changed, usually as the result of a god's intervention.

No Tale of Genji? Hnunmph! Because if "changing literature by its existence" or even just "rilly rilly influential" is one of the reasons these books make the list...well.

Michael Arlen's The Green Hat? Oh please, did the compiler just go through the best seller lists for stuff written in the ealier 20th century and toss out the sentimental trash, as opposed to the sensational trash?

Much of the entries post-1970 or so simply look as if they are either the more respectable survivors of the best-seller lists, or else spring from some Sekrit List of The KoolKidz. Ther's a lot of repetition there, but at least it's not all white, male, European/North American and mostly anglophone. Still, the more recent works are not as well-winnowed as the older entries.

I am impressed by the amount of science fiction, fantasy, and murder mystery/crime fiction that makes it into the list. I don't know if I agree with all their choices, but that some things from these genres made the list at all is impressive.

Also, Matthew Lewis is laughing until the tears roll down his cheeks at the thought of The Monk making this list. Maybe even until he starts snorting for air.

I agree--where's Robertson Davies?

Stefan Jones @285: "Dog spam" sounds like the Maguffin of next week's Chinese import horror story.

Soylent Red: It's made of dogs.

Maybe the "1001 books before you die" is an oblique strategy towards achieving immortality, like the character in Thursday Next who is unable to die until she has read the 10 most boring books in existence.

Jen Roth @#279: If she doesn't get the nomination, she will probably immediately start gearing up for 2012.

Umm, she'd be running against an incumbent of her own party! Unless Obama screws up big-time, that would still be splitting the party against the Rethuglicans.

Just finished watching Julie Taymor's Across the Universe. I enjoyed it, overall. My favorite line?

"Learn French or die."

I really don't think I've read 145 of those books, but that's the count I came up with.

If some of those titles are novels, then I say Whitman's Specimen Days should make the list.

If I were to recommend on of those books to someone here, it'd be Sometimes A Great Notion.

David, she seems to be utterly convinced that Obama will lose to McCain.

Apropos of nothing much

NY Times opinion link Editorial: Mr. Rove Talks, but Doesn’t Answer is 'article not found'

So much for news. I've reported the 'broken link.' I suspect it was deliberately removed.

#284 ::: Lee
a) Whatever happened to the candidates getting chosen at the convention?

I have major objections to the way the candidates have been determined relatively early-on in the primaries and caucauses contests, with the convention rubber stamps of "already determined."

Women are more than half the population of the USA, yet....

Sen Clinton paid her dues, has Sen Obama? It feels like the late 1800s and the women's rights movement... "You want emanicipation and status as voting citizens and self-determination? Get back in the kitchen and laundry room that you belong in and shut up about Men's Business, you bitch!"

Re the "1001 books" list... sorry, way too many fluff best-sellers on there, and older books which are now of primarily historical interest. I'd be more likely to consider people who have read more than half of them barbarians, in the sense of "people who allow their tastes to be shaped by whatever is the latest Hot Thing".

Greg Benford years ago said that he looks at books with the perspective that he has a limited amount of reading time/number of books he can read in what whatever time he statistically has left in his life. "Is this book worth being one of those limited number of books?"

Most of the stuff on that list flunks that test for me!

I had a lot more patience reading books when I was 16 than I do today.

John A Arkansawyer @ 299: If I were to recommend on of those books to someone here, it'd be Sometimes A Great Notion.

I second that Notion.

Terry Karney @ 266: "Me... I'm of a mixed mind on her continuing to campaign. On the one hand, I don't think she should be the Dem Candidate anymore. On the other... She is taking a lot of the attention from McCain and keeping it on the Dem Race, which means more of the issues are still being kept in play"

I'm really frustrated with all the calls for Hillary to drop out. It's just silly--you don't call for the team down three goals with ten minutes on the clock to give up in soccer, and this race is a lot closer than that. She's still winning primaries, for goodness' sake. There's no reason for her to drop out. Let her cross the finish line with dignity. And, as you say, she can do a fair amount of good from where she is.

The problem is, she isn't doing that much good. Rather, she's indulging in all sorts of weird, divisive rhetoric designed to drag Obama down. She hopes to win by convincing everyone that Obama is unelectable (and threatening to make it true by taking her supporters with her), and while it's very doubtful she'll succeed well enough to win the nomination, the damage she inflicts on Obama will last past the convention and into the race against McCain. The strategies she's pursuing are helping her at the expense of the party. That, I do not approve of.

(I'm starting to develop a weird theory about Clinton's decision to remain on the ballot in Michigan and to campaign in Florida. Was this her back-up strategy from the beginning? Disenfranchise the states to keep the other candidates from campaigning there, then push to seat them if she needed the extra edge? It's the only explanation that fits her campaign's earlier insistence on barring them, and then going on to campaign there.)

Clifton Royston #296:

Or it just feels like forever.

Another barbarian here, having read only 59 from the list. 1001 is a lot of books. A number on that list just don't interest me. Life is too short & my time is better spent doing other stuff. Besides, I would have to be some sort of speed-reader to be able to complete the list. It'll be a chore. I read for enjoyment.

Debbie #280:
Something's got to give. There are some books I re-read because I *know* they stand up to repeated reads, but the trade-off is a reduction in the number of new books read.

For those of you who haven't gone down the list, here's a spreadsheet tool that'll calculate it for you. I'm somewhere around an embarrassing seven percent.
It's not easy being a genre reader, having to split your time.

I went through the list just now (found that same spreadsheet, which was quicker than making my own.)

I found to my surprise that I've read 151 of the books on the list, which is a lot more than I expected. Some I barely remember; for example, I'm sure I read Billy Bathgate as well as Ragtime, but virtually nothing stuck with me from either. I suspect that's an indicator they do not really merit inclusion on such a list. I notice I've also started but never finished a lot of other big name books on the list. For instance, I have always bogged down in Moby Dick as well as Ulysses, and more recently Stendhal's Red and Black. I don't beat myself up over that any more, though.

heresiarch: I'm not calling for her to quit. I wish she wasn't playing the procedural games she is (and that it didn't look as though she played to be able to use Michigan in the way she has, where she had all the advantages, and then asked for 50 percent of the people who voted against her).

Since she doesn't really have a decent chance at getting the needed delegates, there is something which seems less than beneficial to her when I see the continuation.

I don't think the primaries she's winning mean much. She's winning them by narrow margins, and they aren't (unlike the Republican system) winner take all, so she isn't really closing the gap (which is why her campaign is do hot to trot for rewriting the Michigan straw poll [and it feels to me that she planned to use the lack of Obama/Edwards to campaign in Michigan. She was the beneficiary of the press trumpeting her, "win", and tried to use that to gain ground in the subsequent primaries. I think that was deliberate. I am not sure I think her Byzantine enough to have planned the rest; though I do think the Florida Republicans were that conniving, to make it something they could beat the Dems up about, and in a way to pitch it toward the candidate they most wanted to run against).

But I think it good for the nation, and the party, that the race is going on. That's the mixe mind.

Paula Leiberman: Obama's paid his dues. Arguably he has more real political experience (from his time in the Illinois State Senate, where he learned to make the sorts of compromises which got his staunched opponents on bills to sign onto his ideas; e.g. the videotaping of all interviews in murder cases])

He was running a senate campaign which was uphill, in all likelihood, had Ryan not self-destructed, we'd not see him in this race (his speech at the convention notwithstaning).

He wasn't asked to speak at the 2004 convention because he was a lightweight, with no credentials. He came up through the ranks, and I'm tired of seeing people forget everything he did before he got to National Office.

Gursky: I am around 9 percent, which explains why I am so ill-informed, and unable to make literary allusions, nor able to understand them. I am plainly a heathen. :)

Clifton Royston @ 307: for example, I'm sure I read Billy Bathgate as well as Ragtime, but virtually nothing stuck with me from either. I suspect that's an indicator they do not really merit inclusion on such a list.

The problem with this theory is that everyone will find different books memorable. I remember Ragtime pretty well despite (or possibly because of) having read it some thirty years ago. (That said, I'm not sure I would put it on the list either.)

I've read (or think I've read) 79 of those books. I think I qualify as one of those people Cavafy wrote about.

I've only read about 64 of them, I'm definitely a barbarian.

Funnily enough I have read the very first book on the list, which is science fiction, though I didn't know that when I picked it up.

Ursula Le Guin is not on the list. Enough said.

I've read 114 of the books on the list -- mostly Rushdie, Austen, Calvino, and Borges. I haven't read a single one of the 21st-century list.

Paula, #302: How exactly is telling me that I must vote for Clinton because she's a woman any different from telling me that I can't vote for Clinton because she's a woman? Don't play the gender-politics card with me if you want my respect. And don't play the Republican-talking-point "Obama's lack of experience" card either, because that's just a flat-out lie.

Terry, #308: Thank you. One of the main reasons I'm supporting Obama is precisely that he has a record of putting authority under control of law. That's exactly what we need at this juncture.

I don't know where the "barbarian" cutoff is supposed to be, but I recall having finished 94 of the books on the list (and only 1 of the 21st-century titles). There are a fair number that I've started at one time or another but not finished (more than my usual proportion), and some where I know I finished it but don't remember much from it.

It's an odd list, in a number of ways. Even though I've heard it claimed that some of the omissions are due to the focus on novels, there are a number of books on it that aren't novels, but collections of short stories. (Borges' _Ficciones_ and _Labyrinths_, for example; I was actually surprised to find both on the list since they have overlapping selections to a significant degree.)

Is there a list of the selectors available somewhere? That might be interesting to see, to give some insight into the selection process. (I'd be curious to know how many of the selectors were women.)

There are at least a few books on the list that I suspect wouldn't be on it if it weren't for the movies made from them (which in some cases are more noteworthy than the books).

I note that the two Lord Peter books chosen are ones where Harriet Vane is absent, which suggests to me that these are were picked by a fan with a particular kind of taste for Sayers. (The Harriet and non-Harriet books have rather different feels; I like them both.)

I only read 38 on the list, which probably explains why I have voted for Republicans from time to time.

Paula @302:
That was pointless and incendiary. No one here is calling anyone else a bitch*. Can you please presume a bit less bad faith on the part of the community?

Presuming that everyone who does not support Clinton wants you and me barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen is not helpful to either the greater good of the nation or the cause of feminism.

-----
* if they are, my justice will be swift, sure, and very very messy.

Terry Karney @ 308: "I'm not calling for her to quit. I wish she wasn't playing the procedural games she is"

Oh, I didn't think you were! My post was meant as agreement, in that I'm also of a mixed mind on the issue. I have problems with the same procedural tricks she's playing as you do, while still respecting her desire to stay in it until the convention.

On her winning primaries, it's true--she's not winning them by nearly enough to catch up. That's not really the point, though: people don't usually give up even after their loss is obvious. They play the game out. So yeah, mixed mind.

On dues paying: More relevant than whether Obama has paid his dues, or if Clinton has paid hers, is that I simply don't care one way or the other. Respecting the seniority of those who have "paid their dues" is what got us here in the first place. It's what convinced Gore to sacrifice his soul in '92, it's what got us Kerry in '04. It's why the entire system is saturated in a don't-rock-the-boat, don't-offend-the-power-brokers mentality that makes it next to impossible to ever change anything.

I don't think these lists should be taken too seriously. The value of them* is in sparking debate.

I've been thinking about some of them - The Godfather, Ben Hur, Quo Vadis - bestsellers at the time, known now for their films. If we believe Wikipedia The Godfather introduced mafia jargon into the mainstream. Ben Hur was the bestselling novel in America until Gone With The Wind**. Good or not in themselves they were tremendously influential. On the other hand, if influence and bestselling is sufficent, then Harry Potter, The Hunt for Red October and The Da Vinci Code should probably be on there.

Perhaps in this category is The Three Muskateers and The Count of Monte Cristo. These are tremendously influential books, rarely read. (If you were going to pick one, to read, make it Monte Cristo - adaptions tend to leave out bits like two women eloping together and the Count taking enormous amounts of Hashish)

I feel slightly embarassed to have 5 from the current century.

* other than to sell newspapers/magazines or books, obviously
** another film adapation!

abi @ 316: I got my first fiancee pregnant while she was barefoot and in the kitchen. Does that count?

The dates might mess this up, if I bothered to look, but Ben Hur and Quo Vadis are prototypes for the Christian historical epic: Scott mixed the Victorian Christian Message. And I think that does justify their place on the list. To be honest, I'd put Ben Hur a little above Quo Vadis: it wouldn't be the same story without the presence and influence of Christ, but the story doesn't depend on it. If anything, I'd point at The Count of Monte Cristo and Les Miserables rather than the Bible.

I think multiple books from the same author needs some extra justification. They've got to be different in some significant way When you look at Dorothy L. Sayers, I do have to wonder what a reader would miss through reading only one of The Nine Tailors and Murder Must Advertise. Why not Gaudy Night? I'd certainly put it ahead of Murder Must Advertise. What I see in T9T is a mystery which also deals with the aftermath of the Great War, and much more so than as part of the puzzle structure of The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club.

I have read Tono Bungay. I don't really remember it. Big business?

It's interesting that we get Hawksmoor. When I read it, much-lauded at the time, the claimed originality seemed hollow. The mechanism which drives the plot is straight out of the lovecraft/Derleth genre of reawakened New England horror. It might as well have been The Mummy.

Which raises a question: is the influence of literature over-rated in this modern age. If this list can include, as it does, Watchmen, why not Star Trek or Doctor Who?

Dave Bell @ 321: I wondered at the inclusion of Watchmen but not Maus or anything by Franz Masereel--especially Masereel, whose work is wonderful and cast a long shadow.

John A Arkansawyer @319:

Were you wearing shoes yourself, or were you also barefoot?

Abi @ 316... my justice will be swift, sure, and very very messy

Combining a Flaming Sword (or Strombringer) with a Disemvoweller?

John A Arkansawyer @ 319... This reminds me of a joke that Groucho Marx once made to a contestant in This Is Your Life. No, that joke didn't make it into the actual broadcast.

Serge @323:
Combining a Flaming Sword (or Strombringer) with a Disemvoweller?

I will use a spoon. Because it hurts more that way.

Abi @ 325... Oh, the pain! The pain!

abi @ 322: Pig that I am, I'm pretty sure I had my shoes on, even though we were in Arkansaw.

Serge @ 324: Sometimes a cigar is just a pretext. Or a straight line.

325: "I'm sure you've discovered my deep and abiding interest in pain. I'm actually writing the definitive work on the subject. So I want you to be totally honest with me on how this makes you feel." I suppose a disemvowelled scream is just "hhhhhh!!!!"

OT, but can anyone suggest items for a list headed "Entertaining Things To Do in and around Ho Chi Minh City"?

Tim @ #293: a hearty second for The Moonstone; what a fun book that is.

ajay @328:
I suppose a disemvowelled scream is just "hhhhhh!!!!"

Or RRRGH!

Tim and Lila:
The Moonstone: thirded.

Abi @ 330... Or RRRGH!

Isn't that where the Holy Grail is supposed to be?

Dave Bell @320 -- I think multiple books from the same author needs some extra justification.. I, too wondered about that. There were a few authors (Kingsolver, Atwood) who wrote things I have read but which weren't on the list. All in all I got 145, but there's a fair margin of error depending upon how it's compiled.

Why were so many of Paul Auster's and Georges Perec's included (and should I read them)? There were some prize-winners -- Nobel, Man Booker -- but by no means all of them. Odd when you think that the winner of the Nobel Prize in particular is selected not only on the basis of skill but also influence.

I thought the pre-1700 selections were so nearly random as to be useless. Why 1001 Nights? Why NOT Dante, the Decameron, Chaucer, Beowulf?

The inclusion of Watchmen on the 1001 Books list was odd. If the compilers wanted to recommend comics, there are any number of comics that should have had higher priority. If they didn't intend to branch out and mention Love and Rockets, Frank, Jimmy Corrigan et al., they shouldn't have bothered including that single token graphic novel. I suspect the compilers are vaguely aware of comics but haven't read any, and just slotted in the one that always turns up in the "hey, comics aren't just for kids anymore!" articles.

It's also odd that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is on the list, but not The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. They're pretty much two halves of a single novel.

Jen Roth @#300:

David, she seems to be utterly convinced that Obama will lose to McCain.

And as Terry has been noting, she's also in a decent position to make sure of it. :-(

Debbie #332: Why were so many of Paul Auster's and Georges Perec's included (and should I read them)?

You were probably being rhetorical, but if you want my opinion on Paul Auster, there's definitely no need for more than one of his works to be on a list like that. And that one should probably be The New York Trilogy (so, OK, it's three, but whatever).

Combining a Flaming Sword (or Strombringer) with a Disemvoweller?

Serge: I definitely want no part of a sword that brings Strom Thurmond (either in the transformative, channeling, summoning, or necromantic senses). That would make it a pretty effective intimidation technique, but I'm worried about the potential Lovecraftian impact on the local environment.

Now Zap Brannigan's ancestral sword "Sexcalibur" might be a different story...

ajay (328): I was going to point out that nothing could be off-topic in an open thread, then realized that 'OT' could mean either. heh

Lee #313

Most of the ranting against Sen Clinton to me looks like misogyny--not all, but most. I wasn't saying that anyone should support her due to her gender, but kicking at her -because- of gender, is quite another issue, and that's the one that's got me irate. If she were a he, would there be all that vituperation involved? There would be some, yes, but I expect nowhere near as much at a male candidate....

Things which bother me about Sen Obama include the Evangelical factor, I have a very large distaste/distrust for people with a long history of membership in charismatic Christianity branches in political office/supposedly secular authority. Yes, I realize that Sen Obama has resigned his membership in the particular church, but to me that looks like a forced move politically, as opposed to e.g. former President Carter along with the majority of the congregation he belonged to quitting en masse the Southern Baptist Convention and changing their affiliation to the United Church of Christ in rebuke and repudiation of the "what we believe" planks of the Southern Baptist Convention.

I remain grateful to the current Pope and his predecessor for the decree regarding leave Jews unproselytized.... (Credo-complying Southern Baptists do -not-.)

ethan @335, I wasn't being entirely rhetorical, and I appreciate the input.

One omission on the list I can't believe: "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."

FungiFromYuggoth @ 336... Me neither. The idea of Abi (or Elric) bringing Strom Thurmond back from the dead one more time is enough to turn my blood to ice. By Crom!

#334 David

And as Terry has been noting, she's also in a decent position to make sure [that Sen Obama loses to McCain]. :-(

Oh? How is this primary so much more unusual in generalities that the previous ones, regarding "Democratic candidates make war on one another during the race" and that THEN, with a candidate picked, close ranks and those who may have looked like bitter enemies become buddy-buddy working for who the selected candidate is.

I fully expect that whoever gets the nomination will get the full support from the non-nominated candidates and that the non-nominated candidates will urge everyone who supposed the non-nominated candidates, to support the nominee.

All this "Hilary Clinton is splitting the party" assertion stuff, to me is ignoring typical Democratic Party precendent, and is in some ways hatemongering....

My comment "bitch" earlier was with respect to the attitudes of misogynists, and the likes of Mr McCain who called his wife a worse term in public....

I was not ascribing that sort of attitude toward Sen Obama. Some of the folks who are excoriating Sen Clinton saying how abominable it is that she not dropped out of the race (by the way, there's at leason one Republican candidate who hasn't dropped out and nobody's screeching loudly in the mainstream media claiming that he's splitting the Republican Party...) and asserting that she is harming the Democratic Party and its chances for putting a Democrat into the Oval Office, etc., however, seem to have that sort of attitude... they just don't necessarily -say- it that explicitly in public.

The attacks on Hilary Rodham/Hilary Rodham Clinton when her husband was President, were of mostly the sort that looked deeply rooted in misogyny... and the public level of misogyny in some ways has -grown- in the past eight years, with the open season declared by the Executive Branch and its Congressional catamites on human rights, including rights of women and minorities, for equal pay for equal work; on the health and wellbeing of the general public--the crusades against family planning and -effective- prevention of transmission of sexually transmitted disease and -effective- prevention of unwanted/inconvenient/health-endangering pregnancies; on collection of data that over time in the past had substantiated claims of wage and promotion discrimination; on redress for protion and pay discrimation against women (that judgment by those Supreme Court "judges" that the woman waited too long to file a discrimination claim, even though she didn't HAVE the evidence she needed for asserting the claim with proof of the discrimination!) to me is a mark that the Supreme Court justices are in dire need of impeachment and removal for malfeasance.... -male- judges, every one of them of course, it's not THEIR pay and pay grade affected....)

Sen Clinton is NOT my ideal of who should be President.... but the attacks on her hit very close to me in some very sore parts of my psyche. I see Clarence Thomas and Anton Scalia and Samuel Alito and Judge Kennedy and Judge Roberts in their abasement of women on the Supreme Court and I don't want any more of their ilk, I want them -gone-, -gone-, -gone-!!! And I do NOT trust Sen Obama to not put another MALE on the Supreme Court.

#330 ::: abi :::
I suppose a disemvowelled scream is just "hhhhhh!!!!"

Do you hear anguished cries of "aaaiiieeee" coming from the disemvoweller?

Serge @ 340: Death had a hard enough time getting its hands on Strom to begin with*, so I'm quite certain that it won't be letting anyone raise him up. Not any time soon.

I am assuming that Death did finally win that battle. If I'm wrong, and Strom's still un-dead, then we all have a serious problem.

Ginger @ 343... Let's hope so. Then again, at the end of the first Prophecy movie, Christopher Walken's Gabriel was sent to Hell by Viggo Mortensen's Lucifer. By the beginning of the 2nd movie, the ground opened up on Earth (in Los Angeles, I think) and Hell spat Gabriel back because he was such a pain in the you-know-what.

Paula Lieberman @ 341... All this "Hilary Clinton is splitting the party" assertion stuff

...reminds me of something that Mark Twain once wrote, to the effect that it's in the nature of Democratic Party members not to agree on anything.

Plus ca change, plus c'est pareil.

Paula @341: I don't recall previous Democratic primary contestants saying that the Republican nominee was more qualified than the person who was very likely to be the Democratic nominee.

I don't see how she's in a position to close ranks and support Obama after this: "I think that I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002."

Squamous goodness, or At the Searches of Madness?

"New Tech Money: Antarctica
Photo by Photo by Maria Stenzel/National Geographic
A great place to cool one’s heels after an investor road show? Young Silicon Valley billionaires are packing their Leica digital cameras to snap glaciers and penguins. Patagonia, which straddles the Andes mountain range in Argentina, is also hot right now with the tech set. According to Googleplex insiders, both destinations are favored by the guys in the C-suite."

It's the third slide in the set. All the really good stuff is just behind the mountains in the background.

(OT, but where else can I post a thought like this?)

Paula: You may not have meant it, but it sure felt that you were rebuking people here in general, and me in particular.

Since I can't think of anyone who said she was an uppity bitch (though I did say there were those who would try to tar her with being a scheming one), the rant you posted came out of left field.

The reason no one is screaming about the Republican is because he is irrelevant to the nomination. Barring McCain dropping dead it's been a done deal for month's gone. The Dem race has actually been a hindrance to the noise machine (even if it does spare Mccain some time to raise funds).

David Harmon(334) I don't know that I've been noting she is in a position to make sure Obama loses to McCain. I don't think that (because I don't see the various bits of vicious desire to win at any cost; just a desire to win with any reasonable tool to hand; and Michigan and Florida handed out some nice tools).

I figure that most of the people supporting her will (even if they are holding their metaphoric noses) and rally round the flag in the hope of preventing McSame from taking over.

I further suspect those who don't, wouldn't have done so regardless. Those were/are the people who are holding their nose to vote for her (and some in the Obama camp are the same way). They would see anyone who isn't their compromise candidate (save perhaps Kucinich) as being too far to the "wrong" side (for whatever reason), and vote green, or reform, or whatever stripe of purity is their passion.

The Federal building in Dayton, OH is now scanning Driver's Licenses at the metal detectors in order to check for outstanding warrants. I saw several people pulled aside in the Social Security waiting room. Everyone was allowed to finish their business before going away with The Men In Suits, so I can't believe that the warrants were for anything major (I've seen people immediately escorted out for speaking too loudly to the staff.) It has really annoyed me as now people who need assistance are going to stay away. It also worries me that if TPTB decide that, "this works really well" that they might get the bright idea to try and extend this to polling places. Argh.

Neil Wilcox @ 318: I don't think these lists should be taken too seriously. The value of them* is in sparking debate.

I think it also has value as a (non-exhaustive) list of things to consider reading. Most of what I've read from it has been quite good, and many of the books I haven't read (e.g. The Master and Margarita, The Man Without Qualities) are ones that have already piqued my interest at some point, so I'm inclined to check out the ones I haven't heard of, even though as a normative canon the list would be rather silly.

Perhaps in this category is The Three Muskateers and The Count of Monte Cristo. These are tremendously influential books, rarely read.

I read TMM as a kid, re-read it a couple of months ago, and enjoyed it thoroughly both times. Given that plus its influence, its presence on a list that people "should" read makes sense to me.

Debbie @ 332: Why were so many of Paul Auster's and Georges Perec's included (and should I read them)?

Auster: I loved The New York Trilogy and In The Country of Last Things (the latter fringe SF), but disliked Moon Palace and its cod-Victorianism fairly intensely. This was all about twenty years ago, so salt to taste.

Perec: A Void is the famous e-less novel. I liked it a lot, but I probably have a higher tolerance for Oulipo stunts than most people. That said, there's more to it than the stunt.

As far as why so many: my assumption is that authors with lots of titles were ones that were liked by lots of panelists, but without a clear favorite individual title. With 105 voters and a naive ranking algorithm it's easy to imagine this outcome. J.M. Coetzee seems to be the winner; The Life and Times of Michael K. is certainly worth reading, but giving ten slots to one author on a list like this is nuts.

Ob on-topic: I'm clocking in at 119 books from the 1001 list, plus a fair number of authors read but not the specific works cited.

Btw, Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (Peter Handke) is a bucketful of suck; it'd be pretty high on my list of books not to read before you die.

Also on-current-topic: If it's Sienkiewicz, it shouldn't be Quo Vadis but instead With Fire and Sword. (Plus sequels The Deluge and Fire in the Steppe.) Not only would I recommend it without reservation for F&SF types, I think that with proper marketing the modern translation (Kuniczak) would make a mint for an F&SF publishing house.

Terry 308: I am around 9 percent, which explains why I am so ill-informed, and unable to make literary allusions, nor able to understand them. I am plainly a heathen.

Just what are you incineratin' 'bout us heathens?

I read Ben-Hur repeatedly as a child and high school student. I loved it, as a book of historical and geographical marvels with a great story -- and I didn't mean the story that is the subtitle of the novel: Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.

I did Quo Vadis, once, in high school, because it was on a list of the books you should have read by the time you went to college. But never again. That one really was about religion as opposed to Arabs and Arabian horses, and sexy Egyptian priestess-princesses, naval battles, etc.

Love, C.

Hillary Clinton's religious affiliation -- the Fellowship Prayer Circle -- is truly scary and worrisome. At least I find it so, since it is secret and affiliated with some of the scariest people in the country.

Whereas, because of whatever, Obama's stuff bothers me not at all, because I do not believe that is him, though it is some of the people with whom he associates. It's really different than what that Fellowship stuff is about.

Love, C.

Maybe we should do a Making Light recommended list--"1001 Glimmers in the Fluorosphere", or something.

Paula @#341: What Terry said, at #348. Also, !?!?!?

Terry: Hmm. I may have been reading too much into your comments, but given the current situation, I'm not willing to give her too much slack for "oh, this is just until the nomination". "Scorched earth" attacks can weaken Obama against not just Hillary, but McCain, and I'm not happy to see Hillary using them.

It wouldn't be the first time that Democratic infighting left their surviving candidate crippled in November... and of course, the Rethuglicans are masters at provoking and exploiting such infighting!

Of that list of 1001 books I've read two of the pre-1700s works, nine from the 1700s, 49 from the 1800s. I don't feel like going through the other 785 works carefully enough to count the ones I've read, but a quick glance at the 69 books from the 21st century shows I've only read one of them (Cloud Atlas; quite good). There are also a fair number of novels on the list I've started and bounced off of, or collections of stories I've read part but not all of.

It's a weird list, mostly novels but a few short stories, novellas, short story collections and epic poems. If there's that much variety in forms, why not include plays as well? If one includes the Metamorphoses, why not other better and more novel-like epic poems? And why such a heavy bias toward recent stuff?

David Harmon: I think a lot of the allegations of infighting hurting the Dems is a combination of losing, and the Repubs telling us why the Dems lost.

Was it the floor fight of Kennedy which cost Mondale the election?

What about the Dem primaries was so effective at costing Dukakis the win?

Gore....

Kerry?

I see a lot of things, most of them outside the control of the players (though Dukakis looked stupid in the tank... but how can one pass up such a chance, and it might have worked... look at the, "manly package" praise Bush got for screwing over the sailors on the Lincoln)

Maybe some of those voters in Mondale and Dukakis were persuaded by the infighting, but I doubt it. I think the infighting happened because the Dems felt vulnerable, and were casting about for a way to win.

Which, I think is not the case here. The DNC, and its allies, feel vulnerable, and they are afraid of losing place and power, so they are resisting (as they did in 2006 cf. Lamont and the lackluster support they gave him. All they needed to do was tell Conneticut that Lieberman wasn't going to be seated with the Dems, and the race would have gone a lot differently. I think the campaingning by Dems, for Lieberman, in the primamry, was more hurtful to the party than pretty much anything else, because it made the support they then gave Lamont look contrived, shallow and purely partisan. Lamont in the senate would have changed some of the balance of power; and the DNC, and sitting senators didn't take the long view, but I digress).

That resistance is part of the problem. The people who came up when Bill was president are trying to recreate the glory days, and are afraid the broader interest the party is getting (with the Edwards, and Obama campaigns, behind things like Lamont) will marginalize them.

They don't know how to adjust, and so want to chase the kids off their lawn.

I think that is a large part of it. Those people are telling Clinton she can win the election (these are the same people who think the party is too far left as is), and they think if she does win, they get to stay.

If she loses, they get to stay; because obviously the party went, "too far left".

The only thing they don't want, is an Obama (or Edwards, or Dodd, or Kucinich) to win.

God, I feel cynical.

What I found was interesting about the list was not how many I had read (114, notthati'mcountingoranything) but the pattern they fell in. If I'd graphed it, the peak would definitely have fallen around the 1860 mark, with very little in the 21st century and not many in the late 20th. Was this the case for anyone else?

And, yes. No love for Dante?

My list got denser as the books got older.

Jim Henry @ 358: And why such a heavy bias toward recent stuff?

I can't find stats on this, but I believe that vastly more novels were written in the 20th century than in previous centuries, and I can't think of any reason to expect the percentage of good ones to vary much. So conventional lists that weight each century equally are actually biased in favor of older works.

Did anyone else notice that Bahrain has named a Jewish woman to be its new ambassador to the United States?

Apparently she's one of about 50 (!) Jews in the country.

Bahrain has one of the world's oldest and smallest Jewish communities. It was, at one time, home to as many as 1,500 Jews. Today the community has a synagogue and numbers around 50 people.

She's been a legislator for a few years.

I've read 71 on that list— 30 of them from the 1800s, which is a much higher proportion than I expected. But then, I like Austen, and Hugo, and others of that ilk.

My question is why is it important to read these specific books before you die? Do they have insight into the human condition that you won't find elsewhere? Or is it just to have another list to check off and say, yup, I did that. Null value for the latter in my opinion. Now if the list is more like, read this, you'll love it, I can appreciate that... but I'll confine taking recommendations from people who know me.

abi @ 319: Barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen? Perish the thought.

I am an ill-red 129, but any list that doesn't include the Odyssey and the Aeneid can be summarily ignored.

And what was with the Jack London selections? Martin Eden and The Iron Heel. I'm going to set Buck and White Fang on whoever thought that up.

Hmph.

Xopher: You, my friend are no heathen, being a classic example of Homo sapiens urbanis.

Another shameless self-plug for more fiction I done writ. A few people linked to the last one, which is why I dare to do it again.

Is there a reason why the HTML Acronym tag is stripped out of comments? If allowed, it could be used for inline "tooltip" annotations of comments.

Terry Karney @#359:

Well, I do hope you're right about the infighting "coming out in the wash". I just get worried that the Dems will yet again manage to blow it in the clutch. (And your last few sentences suggest why "we the people" would much rather have Obama than Hillary!)

God, I feel cynical.

Hmmph, a cynic is just a frustrated idealist. ;-) Personally, I tend toward free-floating anxiety and occasional pseudo-paranoia. (It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you!)

Been mulling over that list of 1001 books. I won't read them all in my lifetime. And some of the ones I've read aren't ones that I would have included in such a list, so I'm wondering if the other books are really worth the effort. YMMV. Obviously.

Reading for fun is in decline; there are many more entertainment options, ones that don't demand as much brainpower. Reading is a solitary activity. I would also like to spend my time doing other stuff - hanging out with friends & family, not to mention the necessary time spent keeping a household going.

I love reading so I make time for it. But time is precious, and I would rather not be obliged to read certain books just because some experts think I should. tl;dr

No Pat Cadigan, K.W. Jeter, Patrick O'Brian, James A. Michener, Martin Cruz Smith, Bruce Sterling, Howard Waldrop? No Star Wars novels??

Sadly, that 1001 list is not relevant to my interests.

No one in the world will ever force me to read Paul Auster, Jonathan Franzen, or yet another Chuck Palahniuk or William Trevor or Joyce Carol Oates.

Where is Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games?

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters and The Red Queen by Drabble were excellent.

But by and large what is on the 21c list leaves me cold, just as there are such strange choices on the 20c list. Atwood, yes, but why the lesser work of Alias Grace and not the brilliant Robber Bride, for instance? And never shall I read anything by David Foster Wallace.

The farther back the list goes, though, the increasing number of the titles I have read.

I didn't keep track but I've probably read at least half the list. Some of the titles I've read multiple times, and others once and that was more than enough.

Love, C.

Part of the "problem" of the, "dems are hurting themselves with the infighting" trope, is I don't hear people spouting it about the Republicans.

Who brings up Reagan making a floor-fight in '76? Nope, He lost because of the hangover from Nixon...

Bush saying McCain was all sorts of bad... not a problem.

Jackson running... bad for dems.

It's like all the other stuff the pundits do, one set of rules for the Dems, another for the Repubs.

My paranoias.... are legit.

:]

Constance: Look again, Robber Bride is on there, as is The Blind Assassin; those were two I counted.

I've only read one Kazuo Ishiguro so far, but it makes me think the heavy dose of his books on the 20th/21st century list might be justified. Very strange and interesting stuff. (But why no John Crowley?!) Also, I'll add a big big shout-out for A.S. Byatt's Possession, for anybody who didn't read it yet. It's one of those books that made me almost giddily happy to read, because it is so intensely in love with reading and literature itself.

I read a comment on one of the sites Kathryn linked that the French edition of the book has a very different selection, including novels from a much broader range of international authors. Has anyone seen that list online yet?

Terry #373:

I think most media pundit analyses of why X won or Y lost the election have the same validity as those "explanations" people always put on stock market results. ("Stocks fell sharply today on profit-taking and oil prices hitting $Z/barrel.")

I mean, there are in-depth analyses, but you're mostly not going to get them from the talking heads, who aren't very bright and don't have any time for analysis that doesn't make a good, easy-to-understand story.

re: N books about books you should read

I've now requested it from my local library system--it has 11 copies, all checked out.

I've read 102 of these books, which surprised me. Most of the comments others have made about the choices occurred to me as well. I did wonder however - Wild Swans? Surely that was autobiography/memoir?

#374 ::: Clifton Royston ::: (view all by) ::: June 02, 2008, 06:15 PM:

Constance: Look again, Robber Bride is on there, as is The Blind Assassin; those were two I counte.

Great! I'm glad. I just saw Alias Grace and Cats Eye.

Love, C.

Surfacing and The Handmaid's Tale (the two I've read) are on the list as well.

Paula @ #338: Your identifications of various religious groups are off. Obama's church, Trinity UCC, is not charismatic, and he did not leave it. Carter's church affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, not the UCC. And from their (the CBF members) point of view, they are about where they have always been; they would say the Southern Baptist Convention moved away from what they believed in. So none of these people have changed as much as you say, whether out of conviction or from political expediency.

Gursky, #306, what do you mean, split your time. I'm an SF reader! (Okay, I'm currently reading Alma Alexander's YA fantasy series because she asked me to. Well, I started them because she asked me to. But they turn out to be quite good.)

Paula@338: Most of the ranting against Sen Clinton to me looks like misogyny--not all, but most.

When discussing the cost of the Iraq war, some hawk came onto the thread and said "Some people seem to find the prospect of an American success in Iraq unpleasant". The red-flag word is "some". It is an attempt to legitimize a strawman attack by speaking not about anyone here in the conversation, but "some" hypothetical people, somewhere else, out there.

The thing is, no one here that I know of thinks Hilary should step down because she is a woman. My reasoning is that she should step down because she can't win at this point, and her tactics to sway superdelagates can do nothing but harm Obama's campaign.

So, the conversation was about the benefit of Hilary remaining in the campaign, versus the cost. And you turn it into a misogynist attack that she should drop out because she's a woman?

How about we look at her behaviour, rather than her gender? She has attacked Obama's credentials repeatedly, questioned his experience, dismissed the fact that he is a senator, and invoked fear mongering with her 3AM call commercial. She over-inflated her war experience by saying she came under "sniper fire". Had a Republican ran an ad like "3AM" against Obama, one would rightly interpret it as sayign "A vote for Obama is a vote for terrorists".

I recently read that Obama might be considering a female Vice President for his ticket. Rumor was he was considering a couple of different women governors. If anyone is to blame for Obama not picking Hilary as his VP, it is Hilary. Not because she's a woman, but because she repeatedly inflicted damage on his campaign.

And the cost, versus the benefit, was what I was origianlly asking about. And you turn it into a conversation about how "most" people attacking Hilary are misogynists, changing the subject from the cost of Hilary staying in the race to lumping most criticism of Hilary as being misogynist.

It's like trying to get a grip on how much cost the Iraq war is (3 trillion dollars) and having someone change the subject to "You want us to lose the war!".

Can we discuss Hilary's mistakes and criticize her campaign without being accused of misogyinists or not?

Or can we only discuss whether or not Obama will put another MALE on the supreme court?

Paula@348: I do NOT trust Sen Obama to not put another MALE on the Supreme Court.

I will just note that during this entire conversation about Hilary et al, it was you who put the emphasis on the person's GENDER as being their primary qualification.

Greg, #382: My gender* and I thank you.

* Personal, not collective.

Greg: I don't think Clinton not getting selected for Veep is because she's run a nasty campaign, but because she doesn't really bring anything to the ticket.

If we believe the Veep's real contribution is to bring in the state they reside in (and perhaps some votes from the region) she's not worth much in that department... New York isn't going to go for the Republicans, and the people who aren't happy with the Republicans, but hate Clinton (I know a couple) won't vote for him if she's on the ticket.

If we assume the Veep is really limited when it comes to policy, and a Republican can be found who won't screw things up when the president in out of the country (or when there are splits in the Senate), then selecting a moderate Republican would be a canny move; if one can be found who really qualifies.

Hell, that might help to actually shift the Republicans, by rewarding leftward movement.

Bo Diddley died. :(

"I don't think Clinton not getting selected for Veep is because she's run a nasty campaign, but because she doesn't really bring anything to the ticket."

Terry, she's the candidate of tens of millions of women and working-class men. WtF?

One theory on why Clinton is pursuing scorched-earth politics against Obama:

The Clinton team doesn't worry about hurting Obama's prospects of winning in the fall, because they assess those prospects at zero. Always have. Obama might not win if he leads a bitterly divided party, but (in this view) he was never going to win. Not a chance. He would be smashed like an armadillo in the road* by the Republican campaign machine, and he would be just about as ready as the armadillo for what was coming.

Randolph: And (to get very horse-racy here), those people are, by and large, not going to vote for McCain.

The Veep's most important job (according to the handicappers) is to bring people to the candidate who wouldn't be voting that way.

LBJ was to bring the west; counterbalancing Kennedy's Northeastern strength.

Lieberman was supposed to bring the "conservative" middle to the table.

Bush was supposed to bring the Northeast, and the people who valued, "experience".

And so on.

I don't see Clinton being that sort of, "balance" to the ticket. I see the Veep slot as a place where her negatives are strong, and her positives are weak.

Putting her in the VP spot tells the pundits, and the wafflers, that the Dems can't get behind their candidate.

Worse... I don't think she'll take it.

I think she believes that she is the only person who can beat the Republicans. That the politcal savvy she and Bill put together is the only thing which has been able to beat them, and the only thing which will be able to beat them.

That her actions might (I don't think so, but arguendo) have caused that isn't something she considers She's not trying to destroy Obabma's chances... she doesn't think he has any chance to start with, so hurting him isn't material.

Which means taking a place on the ticket (which is pretty much a political dead end), is to hitch her star to a loser. Better to stand aside and run again in four years... when she can say, "you should have listened to me last time."

And if he asks her and she refuses it will get out... which would hurt him. So he's not likely to ask.

I highly recommend the biography of Meitner by Ruth Lewin Sime (the link is to my review).

Tired.... that her actions in this campaign might contribute to a loss for Obama (God forbid), isn't something she entertains. As hersiarch's link points argues (and, as evidenced, I think much the same way), her actions are based on her being the only good candidate.

If Obama picked a moderate Republican for VP he'd be hard pressed to explain it to the hard-core supporters he's got, and even harder-pressed to explain it to the 17 million people who voted for Hillary.

Or so I think, anyway.

Terry Karney @ 388

Which is why a lot of people are talking about Edwards as a likely running mate for Obama. He brings the Southern white vote, and Obama brings the Southern blacks, which could put a big dent in the New Dixiecrat scam the Repugs have been running the last few years. Clinton represents the Liberal Northeast, which has been one of the main recipients of Bush' malign neglect policies; the West (especially Oregon and Washington, those centers of communism and homosexual depravity) has been on his fecal roster since the beginning of his reign, and McCain's Arizona address can't clear all that up. So a Veep from the South or the Midwest (Ohio would be just scrumptious) makes the most sense.

I've seen the Edwards idea floated on blogs, and I can't see it. Why would Edwards want to run for the second-place office again? Perhaps more importantly, Elizabeth Edwards is sick; would she and her husband want to devote their time to campaigning for the second spot while she's coping with her cancer?

I don't see Edwards being offered the slot.

He was on a losing ticket, and he lost on his own. I'd love to see him in the cabinet (AG would be a good spot), but I don't see him on the marquee.

For a whole lot of reasons I don't see a Republican (not least because I can't see one who has any weight) who could be trusted to carry the ball when needed. In a more perfect world that would be possible.

Of course, in a more perfect world we wouldn't need to have this discussion and I'd have the D3 I want, and a pony.

Edward Norton being offered the veep slot? That's wonderful.
"It's John Edwards, Serge, not Edward Norton.")
Oh.
Nevermind.
Drat.

Joshua Norton for VP? Do you think he would accept, being both dead and an emperor?

I score 8% civilized, 92% barbarian.

I score 100% barbarian for 21st century stuff, and lots of my 80 hits are for action/mystery/SF novels further back.

Terry Karney @ 394

Your remark about the D3 brought on a wave of gadget lust*, and a thought about politics. I like to remind my colleagues that engineering is the art of tradeoffs: balancing the characteristics of the component materials and parts of a design to bring the final assembly as close as possible to some set of desired properties. In an imperfect world, we use the strengths of one ingredient to counterbalance the weaknesses of another, or the arrangement of parts to achieve some level of strength or rigidity that an individual piece can't. For instance, because trees evolved for their own fitness, and not to make their wood suited to building houses, we've learned how to engineer structured beama that are stronger and more uniform in characteristics than balks of wood of the same size cut from the tree.

In politics the "materials" we have to work with are the people who seek office, and the laws and rules we've developed to govern their actions. It may be that some the governments established in the wake of the Enlightenment like the US, are the first real attempts at engineering political systems to be more reliable than ones that evolved instead of being constructed. In particular, the notion of checks and balances is an elegant engineering solution to the problem of the highly variable quality and occasional outright rottenness of the political materials.

The current breakdown of those systems in the US and UK (and other) governments seems to me to be partially a consequence of running an old design with low-quality materials in a regime it hasn't had to cope with before, so some of its operations are out of spec. When the design of your car is found to have a high level of air pollution, the correct solution is not to build bigger engines so you can get away from the fumes faster. It's to find a new design that includes some achievable level of reduction of the emissions. But politicians are not usually motivated to look for engineering solutions to problems, especially problems that they themselves have caused and often benefited from.

Back in the 20th century** mundane politicians used to give SF writers and fans a lot grief for believing that engineers and scientists and others who are trained to use reason and the notion of tradeoffs in solving problems could understand the complexities of politics. I'm thinking now that the last seven years are evidence they were wrong, and that maybe it's time to send in the geek squad to clean up the mess.

* Hey wait a minute. Don't you already have a pony?
** "In those dark days."

Abi @ 396... Do you think he would accept, being both dead and an emperor?

Better a dead emperor than our current dumb imperator.

I have a question for the disemvowelling experts:

What word would cghtt be?

(Unfortunately, there's no context to help. And that second t might represent a second word. ARGH!)

"caught it"?

Cat Meadors @400: Here is a link to an online re-emvoweler someone (sorry, forgotten who) posted on an earlier thread.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work at all with your example 'cghtt', by itself. I think it would work better with some context, so if that is a single word out of a disemvoweled sentence, you may have better luck with the whole sentence.

Sorry, you said there was no context...

heresiarch@387: Clinton team doesn't worry about hurting Obama's prospects of winning in the fall, because they assess those prospects at zero.

Yeah, and one could attempt to justify Bush's invasion of Iraq in a similar manner. Emotional certainty versus objective reality and all that.

What damage she inflicted is what counts. Whether she thought Obama could never win in teh first place, or whether she didn't care about Obama and simply wanted the presidency to herself no matter the cost, doesn't matter. What matters is the damage done.

At the start of the race, I would have voted with equal enthusiasm for Clinton or Obama, whoever got the nomination. At this point, seeing Clinton either oblivious to or indifferent to the damage she repeatedly inflicted on her own party has gotten me to the point where I'd oppose her nomination.

Is it just me, or does nobody ever tell Republican candidates that they should pick Democratic running mates?

AKICIF request:

the peculiar speech pattern in Nancy Kress' "Beggars" series, which according to Debbie also shows up in some Fiona Patton books, where the speaker adds an extra pronoun at the end of each sentence - is that a natural part of speech somewhere, perhaps Wales?

E.g. I'm going there, me.
or He's going there, him.

Cat Meadors #400: What word would cghtt be?

It is also an acronym for Country Gingham Hanging Tea Towel. I agree, though, the best candidate is "caught" followed by a second word like "it"; a typo in the cleartext could easily lead to that.

By the way, Google dispassionately indexes disemvoweled words just as if it were another language.

#191, Will Entrekin -

I think this Firefox setting (for 2.x or later) makes that browser do what you want. There are also extensions that make it easier, and keyboard shortcuts (those exist for more than just Firefox). I always open things in new tabs and I never right-click to do it - my mousing is clumsy enough it is too slow. I don't like things that use target="_blank" because they break the way I normally do things in unpredictable ways, especially if I'm away from home and using a browser not set up to my preferences.

Jen Roth #405: does nobody ever tell Republican candidates that they should pick Democratic running mates?

MSNBC asks, Does a McCain-Lieberman ticket make sense?

#406

Sort of, for Welsh and some other languages (in Welsh it's part of the verb, not really a pronoun as such, if I understand the grammar correctly).

English is more likely to stick the pronoun at the beginning of the sentence. Me, I think that works fine.

#400, Cat Meadors -

You've got me curious - where did you run into a single disemvoweled word with no context at all? Was it a single-word comment somewhere?

#385 ::: Terry Karney :::

Bo Diddley died. :(

The Spouse did an a retrospective Bo Diddley Assisted Listening this a.m. for the NPR show, Bryant Park Project.

You can find it here.

Click on "Listen to Today's Show" and the NPR media player comes up with today's selections.

Click on "Bo Diddley Assisted Listen" and there you are.

If your speakers are on. :)

He was so on fire about Bo Diddley last night that he wrote an article about his musical and cultural significance and influence, though nobody's asked him for one. Now he's got to find a place to publish it.

Love, C.

Jen Roth: No, of course no one tells the Republicans to reach out. "Real People" want to elect republicans, so the Democrats have to make concessions.

It's a nasty little meme, which has far too much traction (and the sub-memes, that Dems would lose if it weren't for the welfare cheats, black people and Indians are worse).

We can only hope this year effects a bit of change, but the history of the past few cycles makes it easier for this to carry on; what with the dominance of the Republican Party in all three elected roles.

Greg: There are two questions, and they aren't as cut an dried. What she thinks is important to assessing her motives, and those do matter.

If she was out to screw him over because she wanted to win; and if she can't have it no one can, that's one thing, and speaks to her judgement. In that case I'd have to use a clothespin on my nose and wash my hands after I voted

But if she's doing it because she has a reasoned (even if unreasonable) belief, that's different. It shows a different problem in judgement, but I might not need to wash my hands, and it's more likely to be something solid advisors can modify.

Motive, and intent do matter. It's why we have grades of homicide, from negligent, to premeditated; and a range of responses.

We could say it's all the same, someone got dead and it wasn't justified... you get the kewpie. We don't, and there's no reason to be less rational when looking at other behaviors.

It occurs to me that my post at #411 might be a bit rude. Cat didn't tell us, and I don't want her to feel that she must tell us any more than she has, but I can't imagine a single contextless word. I am (probably to Cat's great frustration) looking for some context for the lack of context. It doesn't feel like prying, but you can't feel the motivation behind the question so what I feel is a bit irrelevant. If I am prying, I apologize.

On a different topic, geekosaur's link to Food Blog Blog (post #240) has a really neat thing called the "Blog hop," which randomly pulls up one of the blogs on their list. It works great on Firefox on the mac, but chokes in my (older) version of Safari. Fun when it works, though.

Constance: I don't know about on fire, and I don't know enough to merit writing an article but of all the notable people who've recently died, he was the only one I blogged.

I hope it sells.

Jon Baker @#406--
That pattern is also seen sometimes in the French-influenced Louisiana dialects of English, although they may also put the same emphatic pronoun at the start of the sentence instead. I don't know that's as a common as it was when there were more people there for whom French was the cradle language.

Which placement is chosen may depend on the rhythm of the sentence; I'm not sure if there are other rules that affect that or not.

re: cghtt - Sorry, it's part of a puzzle (which is then part of a riddle), so I didn't have anything else to go on when I first asked. After working on it some more, I think the next words could be "down of the dark one" but does that make sense preceeded by anything?

AND I just now realized that something I was translating as a letter isn't necessarily. Tricky.

But I do appreciate the help - that reemvoweler is a handy thing to know about.

(If anyone else wants to play, you can find the puzzle here - you'll need the track listing from the CD, and this image would also be helpful. I don't care about winning, since I already have the grand prize, but at this point it's driven me just crazy enough to NEED to solve it.)

Linkmeister #393:

John and Elizabeth Edwards did campaign for a nomination while she was sick with cancer, so campaigning for an actual office, even if a number two slot, wouldn't seem off the table from that angle. At least to me.

Jon Baker @ 406 and fidelio @ 416...

Oh goodness.

You two just made me realize that this is the way I used to speak French. Mind you, that sentence structure's way of emphasizing, wasn't favored by educated people.

I never really warmed to The Moonstone, although bits of it were fun. It's not a good book for the kind of reader who asks questions like "If the batrachian monstrosities are right outside the door, why is he stopping to write about it in his journal?"

(There aren't batrachian monstrosities in The Moonstone. But there's a fundamental disconnect, not to say contradiction, between the narrative's in-story justification and its actual status that had me terribly confused until I realised what was going on - and frequently irritated thereafter.)

Earl @409: You know, I almost added "except for Joe Lieberman", but he's not even a Democrat anymore.

Earl Cooley III @ 409... A McCain-Lieberman ticket? My. I'd like to see Susan's reaction if that were to happen.

Randolph, #386: And those numbers are shrinking every day, as she keeps shooting herself in the foot over and over again. I know plenty of people who started out either supporting her, or thinking that she was an acceptable alternative, who are now saying that they might not vote if she's the candidate. Obama doesn't need that.

Not to mention, I don't think she'd accept. Her language indicates that she wants the whole ball of wax or nothing.

Jen, #405: It's not just you. And Earl, you can't really count Lieberman for this purpose; he's a Democrat only when it's to his advantage.

For what it's worth, Paula, I read your italicized "back in the kitchen, bitch" comment as a description of commentary you're seeing in the world at large, not here in particular, so I didn't feel attacked. And I'm seeing it in the world at large, too, and it hurts my heart. I'm running into random conversations in public where men toss out gendered insults about Clinton, like "I hope he beats that tart." I'm also remembering how during the civil rights movement of last century, feminists saw equal rights for blacks as being part of the same piece of the puzzle as equal rights for women, but black women were specifically told by leaders in the movement "Your turn will come, but for now, your proper role is to support your men." These things make me feel slightly, irrationally guilty for preferring Obama's candidacy; but in the end I cannot hold Obama responsible for others' misogyny on the basis of his sex. Nor can I overlook Clinton's less desirable traits as a candidate (my opinion there) simply because she's a woman.

Serge @ #419--

From what I've seen (which isn't all that much), it was more a country and urban working class thing. I don't know how common it is anymore. Of course, with dialects, there are sometimes people who make a conscious effort to keep them alive these days, rather than moving to a more mainstream language, so there may be some among les gens acadiennes who do it on purpose. I suspect it's more common there than among the white Creoles. It may have some stating power among the African-American Creoles as well, but that's well into my range of ignorance, so all I can say is "could be so".

Huh. I wasn't nearly as caught up on this thread as I thought I was when I posted that. Sorry for the time-shift.

As long as I'm commenting on stale posts: Dave, I didn't figure I could be the only one who heard "Stay out of the shadows" and immediately crowed, "And don't blink!" We've watched Ep 8, enjoyed the heck out of it, and I think I need to watch it a second time, actually. I was multitasking too much the first time.

(Weirdly, I had a Doctor Who dream this morning. He brought me a globe that wasn't just a representation of the Earth - it was the Earth. I hugged it and cried my eyes out, it was so beautiful. It was like getting that big hug from the Goddess that part of my soul has been yearning for forever. I woke up feeling very out of synch with waking life.)

Off to catch up on the thread now.

It's been bandied (the McCain Lieberman). I've heard explanations that it shows his "maverick" status that he can reach across the aisle and take someone so liberal (after all he was going to be Gore's VP).

The mind reels; but I've gotten better at keeping my jaw from actually falling open.

Louisiana is complicated, complex and fluid. Always was, still is.

Re French as she is spoke in that state -- spoken in more than one dialect.

Recall there was a collision among more than one French dialect.

First, the Cajun French, which never even began up in Canada as French-French as spoken by the French elite.

Then the French dialect as spoken by the two-diaspora San Domingue refugees from the slave revolution of what became Haiti, going first to Cuba -- which essentially governed Louisiana and New Orleans during its formative decades so there's that collision of French + Spanish. Plus you have the San Domingue Kreyole French. Both of these were then brought to New Orleans in 1809, doubling the population of NO, which was already majority African descent -- who also had their own dialects that were in turn influenced by then, Spanish and English.

For more on this fascinating subject, see Dr. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall's works:

Social Control in Slave Plantation Societies: A Comparison of St. Domingue and Cuba (1971) [paperback 1996]; Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro- Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (1992) [paperback 1995]; Africans in the Americas: Continuites of Ethnicities and Regions (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), and Ethnicity and Race: Slavery and Freedom in French, Spanish, and Early American Louisiana, 1720-1820 (in preparation).

Love, C.

Cat: cghtt could also be "cough" + something; "cough at it" works?

Cat @400: "caught out"?

That pattern is also seen sometimes in the French-influenced Louisiana dialects of English, although they may also put the same emphatic pronoun at the start of the sentence instead. I don't know that's as a common as it was when there were more people there for whom French was the cradle language.

Indeed, I first came across it via Justin Wilson's book of Cajun humor. In addition to observing the emphatic extra pronoun at the end of sentences ("I'm going down to the store, me"), he also pointed out a tendency to put an extra affirmative or negative on the end ("Don't you do that, no!" or "I like me some okra, yeah!").

Caveat: My memories of this, and of hearing actual Cajun speech patterns, are rather dim, and I never could do a credible Justin Wilson imitation.

Terry Karney @ 427... he can reach across the aisle

When I was in high-school, people never reached across the aisle except to try and bully me, not to pass on some note from that girl I had a crush on.

Paul @420: I get that reaction when I re-read Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun tetralogy, wherein the narrator, Severian, claims that he's writing out his memoir the night before he voyages to meet his fate. Granted that Severian has an eidetic memory and doesn't have to make it all up like Gene Wolfe does, I'm just boggled by the idea that anyone could physically write, what, half a million words in a single night? That would be something like a thousand words a minute. Even if he'd written it out in his head beforehand....

Latro, from Soldier in the Mist and so on, is similarly blessed, in that he has time to write a chapter every night before he forgets it all. And have that day's adventure, and read the rest of his diary, which gets more improbable as he fills in more of his scroll.

Good books, all, but with familiarity the necessary conceit gets a little harder to accept.

The politics of disenfranchisement....

Not LOSING voters is important. The people who voted for Sen Clinton in primaries, are people who were voting for someone who was female. Are those people going to go out of their way to vote for a ticket with two males on it? Who would Sen Obama pick for candidate to the Supreme Court? Has he personally ever been in the position of being pregnant without wanting to be pregnant, or of being asked obnoxious questions about being pregnant when trying to get medical treatment

(was it here or someone on LiveJournal, where someone was reporting an instance where someone was trying to get medical treatment, was dazed, in shock, and the medical "professionals" futzed around asking pregnancy questions instead of treating the condition the person came in for....it was on LiveJournal. And other people responded with their own appalling experiences of similar handling, where walking-womb-for-baby-production-on-feet seemed to be more the view of them than of them as people...)

or of being shoved aside for consideration due to being female--yes, there is discrimination on the basis of skin color, and all sorts of noxiousness that is corollary to that, and the Repukes have been enjoying the spectacle of and contributing to promotion of vicious competition regarding who's gotten the shorter end of the stick and had had the most outrage perpetrated agains the, BUT, in the case of discrimination against women, it can get very lethal very quickly. Toxemic pregnancies only happen to women, and nobody ever killed a male for being pregnant as a "disgrace to the family" or force a male who was raped to bear to delivery a fetus conceived by a rapist, and then punish the bearer for child abuse....

Much of the issue is emotional and not "logical," particular when the people doing looking at the situation don't have the particular -personal- attunement.... There are enormous feelings of betrayal involved--women feeling betrayed that someone who's a minority candidate jumped in to try to push out a female candidate, when women are the majority in the country and are the victims of so much complete and utter shit from the current regime's agenda to remove all rights and progress that women have made in the past 50 years for self-determination financially and emotionally, for healthcare, for self-determination as regards reproduction, for promotion and position in public life, and to roll back the clock to the day that women got pushed out of the jobs they had had when WWII was over and the troops came back.

I am NOT saying that minority males have had an easy time of it... on the other hand, Thurgood Marshall was a Supreme Court Justice long before Sandra Day O'Connor got on the Supreme Court. Women are more than 50% of population, but one-ninth of the Supreme Court, down from two-ninths. Note that the Democrats in the Senate didn't even attempt to filibuster the appointments of Samuel Alito and Anton Scalia and Clarence Thomas and Mr Roberts to the Supreme Court.... women's right repressors generally, who don't have an iota of reluctance in their minds to damning women to die from toxemic pregnancies and pregnancies with non-viable fetuses, who spite women who sue for discrimination in pay and promotion because "you waited too long to file a claim" when the evidence wasn't even available to file a credible claim with, in the period allowed by the Bush regime.

The Repukes have taken the divide and conquer approach... but as someone who was angry at the age of four at being female because what I wanted weren't aspirations girls were ALLOWED though boys were ENCOURAGED to pursue, and who has seen SOME change in the world (women in the astronaut corps--they were banned from it when I was four, and that was a contributor to my anger, and yes, I was precocious....--, women flying military planes in the service, one woman on the Supreme Court, women graduating from Harvard and Caltech and Princeton and Dartmouth, female presidents at Harvard and MIT as opposed to maybe a couple percent of the tenured faculty being female when I was a college student--but there has also been change such the the women of Afghanistan and Iraq who had public lives and weren't shrouded when I was a child, were been driven into seclusion and anonymity and powerlessness) but seen much of that change in the process of being eradication (the availability of legal pregancy termination in the the USA is very limited, something extremely high figure, I think I've seen 86%, of US countries it is unavailable these days and under extreme pressure from organized religious groups and their associated political apparatus to eradicate in the entire country, the misadministration abolished collection of statistical data which had been used as evidence in labor discrimination lawsuits particularly class action ones involving discrimination in pay and promotion and benefits against women.... ).

Sen. Obama has never been pregnant. Sen Obama has never had a "pregnancy scare" that he might be pregnant with an unwanted fetus. Sen Obama has never had the threat of being pregnany with a severely malformed, "non-viable" fetus and the heartbreaking decision regarding abortion because that's a life-threatening condition to the woman carrying the non-viable fetus (it dying inside her and putrefying is life-threatening);.

No President of the United States has ever had such things be up close and -personally- threatening. Sen Obama is a member of a class that there is discrimination again, yes. But is Sen Obama someone who the women of the USA whose rights have been systematically eroded and shat all over by the Republicans, can depend on to redress the vilenesses perpetrated on women by the Repukes? Or will he make deals with them closing the ranks of the men's clubs... a lot of women seem to have the view that skin color is irrelevant regarding such things, it's not HIS body and his experiences that relate to the concerns of shoved-aside women.

Sen Clinton's not a hardscrabble case, but she is female, she HAS been pregnant and delivered, had the experience that McCain, Sen Obama, the Chief Thief, Karl Rove, etc. never had and never will at least in this lifetime have, of all the hopes and fears regarding pregnancy and the personal impact and the hormonal stews and the -attacks- for being female for DARING to say that women shouldn't be restricted to the domestic side and life, and the temerity to be in public life as a woman.

There is a HUGE emotional issue there, and I think that a large percentage of the males particularly here, Do. No. Get. It.

I've been in too many situations where I was the ONLY woman present... and got very tired of being iconic for it. It didn;t matter WHAT I said or did, the ONLY woman in a roomful of men, gets noticed for being Other. Automatically. Relentlessly.

There is a perception of brotherhood, which as long as someone is regarded as human, skin color, race, creed, ethnic origin, etc., don't matter to the perceptors, "we are all MALE animals and we are a brotherhood." They don't extend that to women. The fact that military bonds can and have and DO extend across gender, is something that certain people don't recognize, until and unless it's in their face, MAYBE. But to those with "you are a womb-carrier, I am a sperm-bearer, we are organically DIFFERENT" there is a chasm that absolute...

It's that perception and the consequences and mindset of it, that forms part of the anger at Sen Obama, that he seems to not be giving any consideration to the feelings and experience of women who feel disenfranchised and are feeling more and more disenfranchised and dismissed as invisible and dispensable over the past decade plus. The same women who have over history in the USA done the basic scut work and grass roots organizing, getting dissed again and again and again, and not reached out to, not appreciated, not recognized, but rather pissed on and suppressed by the Bushies, and dismissed apparently by Sen. Obama's campaign, pushed aside rather than any attempt made to be brought in and valued and courted for votes and support...

And then the talk of White Male for ticket... yeah, sure, that really is going to make women, who vote in rather large numbers, come out and vote for Sen Obama, as opposed to vote for McCain, or stay home and boycott what might look farcial...

a lot of women seem to have the view that skin color is irrelevant regarding such things

A lot of white women do. I have not noticed that to be the case among women of color, many of whom have expressed great exasperation at white feminists who wonder (at best, and cast aspersions at worst) how they could possibly support Obama over Clinton.

Nicole @ #431, that additional affirmative can also be found in the pidgin spoken out here in Hawai'i. Naturally I can't think of a sensible example at the moment, but it's common.

Paula: This is where I have the problem:

The people who voted for Sen Clinton in primaries, are people who were voting for someone who was female.

Yes, they were, and the people who voted for Obama voted for someone who was black.

He was also male, she is also white.

Those are what they voted for, what we don't know is, why they voted. It might be they liked her stand on health care. It might be they didn't like his, "inexperience". It might be they went to a rally and had, "a moment."

There are some other, painful, assumptions in the rest of your post. Whom the next president chooses for the court matters. I want the best jurist. If that's a Transgendered filipino immigrant... good.

If it's a straight white guy... that's fine too. Just belonging to a group doesn't mean much (Clarence Thomas, Harriet Myers).

The judges who wrote Brown v Board of Education were white.

The judges who wrote Roe v Wade were men.

And why do you think Clinton is more likely to appoint female justices?

women feeling betrayed that someone who's a minority candidate jumped in to try to push out a female candidate, when women are the majority in the country and are the victims of so much complete and utter shit from the current regime's agenda to remove all rights and progress that women have made in the past 50 years for self-determination financially and emotionally

Rot. "jumped in to try to push out... thats you taking the "she's entitled to it idea and applying it to her; and worse, not that Clinton deserves it on her merits, but just because she's a woman.

It sounds dangerously close to you saying Obama thought she was entitled to it as well, and is trying to, intentionally rob her (and if she is such the overwhelming women's candidate, how it is, with that majority, and the men who have also been voting for her, that she's not winning; handily?)

I don't know why he might think this, but it's an accusation of sexism, and I don't know it can be supported.

I've never been pregnant. But I've never been black either (and this adminstration has been shitting on them too...)

I think, all in all, there are women whom you would far rather less have in robes than you would have me (who do you want on the bench, Schlafely, or me?). The idea of "sisterhood" only goes so far. People are people, and what they do matters as much (probably more) then their plumbing.

Hell, just look at the people (like Lieberman) whom NARAL have endorsed. Sisterhood seems to make some pretty strange political bedfellows.

And honestly... divorcing emotion from the equation... would you vote for McCain/anyone before you'd vote for Obama/Gore:Edwards:Richardson,. etc.?

Because that's what you are implying if Obama gets the nomination (usurping it from the woman who, "deserves" it, and refuses to put a woman in the number two spot on his ticket... those women (who care so much about those women's issues) are going to either refuse to vote for him, or go so far as to vote against him.

Which would be a stupid thing for them to do, and I don't think they are stupid.

joann @ #418, I guess I meant in my #393 that I couldn't see the Edwards family expending all that effort for the #2 slot again when they're encumbered with her illness. As you say, when the Presidential slot was a possibility the effort was judged to be worth the candle, but for VP? I have my doubts.

Crap: Some of my edits in preview got lost.

It's applying the idea that she's entitled to it to women, not to Clinton.

I also wonder if you really think the differences between Obama and McCain are so trvial (even on "women's issues") as to make a choice between them truly farcial.

I think I might want to re-preview when making edits.

Paula @434--
Not LOSING voters is important. The people who voted for Sen Clinton in primaries, are people who were voting for someone who was female.

For some, that may have been the main reason. But suggesting that that was the only reason for all of HRC's voters does both her and them a disservice.

and not reached out to, not appreciated, ... and dismissed apparently by Sen. Obama's campaign, pushed aside rather than any attempt made to be brought in and valued and courted for votes and support...

That hasn't been on my radar yet. Can you point me to some instances where Obama, and/or his campaign, have pushed women aside?

Terry #437

I'm not a Manichean.

What I was trying to do was explain what some of the emotional basis involved is. It's emotion and has its own types of logic, which isn't Aristotelian and isn't linear and isn't bounded input/bounded output.

I've started poking around the www.barackobama.com on the data hunt. It is NOT a particualarly friendly site on entry, the first thing it has is a splash page looking for financial and bandwagon support.

I see "technology" as an issue, but not "science and technology," and it look like its mostly concerned with privacy issues and with educating kids... not with anything about science policy and innovation. This is a huge negative to me--no space policy stuff, no R&D support stuff, no innovation other than as part of applied development for e.g. energy policy and education.... looking a bit more closely I see something about "support for basic research" way down under technology.

There is a disconnect for me here--technology is the application and outcome of stuff, it's engineering, which is an end result--that's not policy level and direction and goals, that's focusing on, it's 1910, and the Army puts in a spec for a better mule, instead of asking what its actual need is, which is for a better form of tranporting people and equipment and materiel.... for which the answer is the development of the truck and replacing the mules with trucks, which have greater endurance and carrying capacity, and don't bite and kick....

Eisenhower had science policy, Kennedy has science policy, even Tricky Dicky had science policy... technology is not direction.

That "see" above refers to, there is a menu item for "Technology" but not one for science. There is not menu item for "defense" -- I see nothing about defense policy and orientation for what the military should be used for, if anything. Under "foreign policy" there is a limited amount of material saying the military services should have their number of people included and that the Guard and Reserve should be strengthened. I don;t see anything about mission statements or policy, which is not encouraging to me.

"A Record of Results: The gravest danger to the American people is the threat of a terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon and the spread of nuclear weapons to dangerous regimes. Obama has taken bipartisan action to secure nuclear weapons and materials:"

That's BS. I have a lot more fear, actually, of a CBW attacks and its their effects, than a terrorist detonating a nuke, and even MORE fear of the mindsets and memes of cultures and existences which instigate mass murder and perpetrate mass atrocities and advocate them, and/or use the -threat- of weapons of mass destruction and of mass atrocities as reasons to suppress Bill of Rights rights, as threats to the American people and the rest of the population of the planet and their wellbeing....

I do not know the answer to which attack caused the greatest amount of death and devastation -- the detonation attack on Hiroshima, the detonation attack on Nagasaki, or the firebombing of Dresden--but the type of attack I personally fear the most, is mass attack with biological weapons, and no, I am NOT going to provide my bases for assertion of that. But even more than apprehension about biological warfare, it's the mindset what would apply them for mass attack, that is the greatest threat.... intent is the thing that generally proves to be the deadlist component in an attack.

While there have been enormously deadly accidents, including the Coconut Grove fire in Boston, the explosion in Halifax harbor, ertc., , generally deadly attacks in warfare have been the most deadly directly human-caused events.

Apropos of the latest Particle:

I once stayed home from a Bo Diddley concert.

Yes, I had the flu, but still: Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

Since All Knowledge is Contained on Making Light:

A friend is dealing with the (incredibly complicated) estate of a parent who had a hoarding disorder. Any and all suggestions are welcome.

Said disorder was aided and abetted by QVC. Why oh why do they get away with this?

www.hilaryclinton.com

Opens on splash page looking for money and support.

Has issues page
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/

First listed issue is strengthening the middle class. Second is providind affordable and accessible healthcare

.... restoring Amercia's Standing in the world (a few issues down) opening the page http://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/security/

Material on that page indicates a policy of holding meetings with leader of other countries and supporting worldwide education as means to promote security and suppress terrorism.

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/feature/innovation/
innovation agenda:

has more specific prescriptions in it that Sen Obama's plank. Has specific language for increasing NSF fellowships and for requiring that federal grants come with strings demanding projects that have federal funds address "diversity" and increase the percentage of women and minorities in science and engineering R&D.

No space policy stuff, but there is more policy orientation on Sen Clinton's issue here than on Sen Obama.

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/women/
Sen. Clinton's page on this material get to more specific items with specific examples of legislation Sen Clinton has been involved in and specific programs she's advocated (microloans for women to start businesses with) than Sen Obama's material does. Neither addresses the situation that so few women are in corporate board rooms of large companies, however. Both note as issue inequality of income for women versus men issue.

NelC @ 433: the narrator, Severian, claims that he's writing out his memoir the night before he voyages to meet his fate.

I think this is a clue that you shouldn't believe everything Severian says.

Latro, from Soldier in the Mist and so on, is similarly blessed, in that he has time to write a chapter every night before he forgets it all.

In fact there are many times when he fails to do this (sometimes for weeks at a time).

And have that day's adventure, and read the rest of his diary, which gets more improbable as he fills in more of his scroll.

Wolfe is quite good about making Latro's self-knowledge vary depending on circumstances. When Latro is travelling with someone that can explain his situation, or when he has enough leisure to read, it's relatively solid; when not, it's fragmentary. Occasionally he'll specifically mention that all he read was the first page or so.

Apropos of nothing prior:

I have just found occasion to use a hammer on a screw. In fact, on 20 or so screws.

OK, ok, I'll explain: I'm attaching the cardboard backboard to a particleboard (sorry, "engineered wood" ;-) ) cabinet I'm assembling. The packet that was meant to hold "back panel nails" contains what are indisputably screws, but are pretty thin in the shaft. There is no way those are going to screw into undrilled particleboard, but on examination, I decided they would serve as serrated nails.

Paula:

Democrats have not been generally pro-space since Johnson. Once we got past the Reagan years and the Cold War, the science money has mostly dried up, unless there are obvious practical results. My brother just got a nice gov't grant for entomology (he teaches at Queens College), but that's pesticides, which means agriculture (specifically potatoes).

But space? Who needs to throw billions of dollars into the sky, just to collect some more rocks. We got plenty of rocks here on Earth, why go to Mars to get more?

And energy policy has not translated into science funding, the way it did in the Carter era. 25 years ago, the Princeton Plasma Physics people said they were 50 years from "scientific breakeven" - getting as much energy out of a controlled fusion reaction as was used to create it. Now, with the energy money gone, they're still way out.

And the old dog-spam continues....

Ronit @444: Does this mean there are unpaid bills? (And possibly not enough money to pay them?)

Or are they looking for a way to get rid of all the stuff?

I recommend getting an auctioneer and sell the stuff the heir doesn't want to keep.

Ronit: Cleaning service? My late uncle didn't throw much away, and like us, keeps gathering books. We found piles of 15-year-old newspapers (my aunt had died about then) still waiting to be rolled up and tied for firewood for the Franklin stove. The book heaps had gotten huge in the second story, so he put shelves up in the attic along the end-walls. We were looking for his set of the Anchor Bible, and finally found them on a plank, set up as a shelf, across the crosspieces of the roof joists. Well, I just happened to look *up* in the attic, and there it was.

Also, if you can find a library that is willing to take their books, they can do a lot of that work. My uncle's college library took care of that, after my brother & I pulled out a few boxes each.

Ronit:

No suggestions, but sympathies.

I and my siblings are dreading this with my mother's estate when the time comes. She's had mild OCD tendencies and hoarding troubles for years, which have gotten worse as she got older and a bit worse still after her stroke. Before her late 60s, her tendencies were channeled into collections of specific stuff, including some very high-quality antiques, silver, and art, and a vast book collection. At some point that expanded into teddybears and children's toys, and then into any random weird kitsch that caught her eye.

And yes, QVC has been a big part of the recent problems. After the stroke she went from ordering lots of QVC junk, to ordering things from QVC which she'd already ordered, and not even opening the boxes as they arrived.

We have not wanted her to start using the Internet because once we realized she had a hoarding problem, we realized eBay would be a catastrophe for her. Fortunately she's decided she doesn't want to deal with learning how to use the 'net.

In our case, because she does have some valuable collections, we have talked about presorting stuff into categories (junk, collectable categories, antique) and then getting in some auction house, preferably one that works with eBay, to put up auctions of the material with actual collector interest. It's going to be a huge slog to sort through a whole house of stuff, though. And it feels weird to try to plan it; I hope her health continues well enough that we don't need to do it for a long time.

#448 Jon
They wouldn't have any of those digital cameras, no microprocessors, no no-stick frying pans (just to find one that's all metal that's not an expensive Gourmet Cookware pan...), a lot fewer cable TV stations, no storm warnings and a lot more inaccurate weather prediction, none of those devices which people have in their cars that tell them where they are located and the route to take to somewhere... loss of weather satellites is a dire emergency, and people are getting more and more dependent upon satellite receivers for directions....

Look, you don't have to sell *me* on the value of the space program. Why, just last Sunday I was sitting in the coffee shop at Balticon as two different views of the Phoenix landing were being watched, on MSNBC on the coffee-shop TV, and someone's laptop hooked into NASA TV.

On the candidates policies--

Back in December, Popular Mechanics put together their "Geek the Vote" guide to candidates' science and technology ideas.

While the guide is limited by what PopM found then, it shows that both Clinton and Obama were on the record with ideas and specifics in various areas, and McCain wasn't.

i.e. that Clinton will restart the Office of Technology Assessment, or that Obama will stop the FFC from defining 200kbps as 'broadband'. Clinton had a 'Ending the War On Science' paper, and Obama had a Plan for American Leadership in Space. They both had detailed auto plans within their detailed energy plans, back at the end of 2007.

They've both got geek cred, in my view*. They're both lightyears ahead of McCain. I'd expect that either of them could define a lightyear, and would be surprised if McCain could.

On the Supreme Court--neither Clinton nor Obama voted for Roberts and Alito, and neither would put another one like that up for nomination. McCain did, and will.

If there are people who'll punish the Dems (party and voters) for taking away their candidate of choice by putting in a president who'll nail the SCOTUS to the far right for the next decades...I don't think those punishers are all that empathetic to women, whatever their sex.

The 2009-2013 SCOTUS nominee may still be on the Supreme Court when today's babies are old enough to run for president in 2044**, tipping 5-4s to 4-5s for everything from wage discrimination to voting rights to rule of law, and, of course, on abortion. If someone wants more Ledbetters in order to punish the Dems...I don't see the empathy with women, whatever their sex.
---------------
* Obama had a larger count than Clinton did wrt specific points then, but PopM finding 13 of this from one vs. 10 of that from the other isn't nearly as important as that McCain had 1 or 2 ideas for each of their much larger numbers.

**2044--gosh, didn't that used to be a sfnal year?

Paula Lieberman... I recently watched the miniseries From the Earth to the Moon. Most of it anyway because it became too depressing to watch the post-Apollo 11 episodes. My favorite episode was "1968" because it showed the best and the worst about our species.

I wish for "life changing experiences" to happen to Mssrs Alito, Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas, preferable ones to made them decide to vacate their judgeships.

As for Mr McCain, may some of those disgruntled veterans of the current misadministration had large amounts of muck on him that gets aired very publically and very loudly.

Keating 5 I doubt was isolated.

Thanks, guys.

Lori @ 444: Yes, no and yes.

An auctioneer? That's a useful suggestion; thank you. Is it worth getting stuff appraised first?

Jon @451: Unfortunately, a cleaning service wouldn't work for them: the family doesn't want strangers going through their stuff, and frankly, wouldn't trust them.

The college library came and foraged for books? Wow. Good to know.

Clifton @452: Thank you for your sympathies. The preparations may be weird, but you'll be glad you made them when the time comes.

In this case, after untold years of profiting off a hoarding elder to the tune of 5 figures worth of sales, if not more, QVC sold a 3 figure unpaid bill to a collection agency within weeks of the death. I'd compare them to vultures, but why insult honest carrion eaters?

Lessons I've learned: if you think you need to take control of your parents' finances, you almost definitely need to, probably should have done so a few years ago, and you'll find that there are some nasty surprises in store for you once you do so.

David Harmon #447:

Wasn't it J. Baldwin who said that if you didn't know at least two ways to abuse a tool, then you didn't know how to use it? (or WTTE)

Paula, #434: The people who voted for Sen Clinton in primaries, are people who were voting for someone who was female.
This is a severely flawed argument for two reasons:

First: voting for someone who is female !=> voting for someone because they are female. You can't automatically assume that these people will vote against a man.

Second: How many of those people were voting for Clinton (1) because she's white and the other candidate wasn't, or (2) because they were crossover Republicans voting for the candidate they thought McCain has the best chance of beating? There's plenty of both of those factors going on. Your ascription of motivations is far too narrow and simplistic.

I will say it again: STOP PLAYING THE GODDAMN GENDER POLITICS CARD. It's not helping your cause one little bitty bit. Yes, I get that you're mad about all the discrimination women have to face. Guess what? I have to face it too, and I still think you're full of it. You, and other women in the tiny minority who talk and act like you, are part of my problem, and you get no sympathy from me for making MY life harder.

Paula@434: There are enormous feelings of betrayal involved--women feeling betrayed that someone who's a minority candidate jumped in to try to push out a female candidate

Paula, there really isn't much room to have a conversation with that statement. I mean, we could take a step back and try and figure out if all women feel betrayed because Obama tried to "push out" Clinton, but I get the impression that isn't going to go anywhere.

I would instead try to make a metastatement about your post at #434, plus or minus a few posts. You employ dissassociative language in most of your post. You allude to some things that happened to you personally, but any time you talk about the actual pain around something, any emotional cost, you resort to the collective "we", or the collective "women", or you resort to using passive voice such that there is emotion or pain, but there is no subject in the sentence to feel the pain.

"there are feelings of betrayal"
"women feel betrayed"
"Much of the issue is emotional"

And part of the disassociative language is that you use "formal" language. You talk about the issues around pregnancy as if it were a purely statistical issue, listing all the different ways in which a pregnancy could be a danger to the woman, etc.

The thing about disassociative language and formal language is it disassociates the speaker from the emotions of what they're saying and it disassociates teh speaker from the listener. It makes it difficult for me to have a conversation with you. It's more like I'm having a conversation with all women, and all those women, apparently, feel betrayed. It's hard to engage in a conversation with a list of the dangers of pregnancy.

And a couple weeks or so ago, I had a conversation over on BoingBoing about how formal language can be a fallback position for when a person is hurt, that the person may turn to formal language when they're too angry to write anything personal, so they resort to formal language, language that can allow them to remain in the conversation, without dealing with the fact that they were hurt. And then if things cool down, the person can re-engage in teh conversation on a personal level. If they are able to gain some personal insight into their reaction, after they've cooled down, they might even be able to say something like "That hurt me".

So, I mean, we could go into a discussion about whether or not Obama is trying to "push out" Clinton because she's a woman, whether or not all of Obama's supporters are misogynists, whether or not "all women" feel betrayed, or whether or not Obama will treat the presidency as part of the "mens club". But that just reinforces a disassociative conversation. And then we (you and I) are not talking with each other at all.

Terrible things have happened to you, things which hurt you, things you have every right to feel angry about.

But that doesn't mean disassociating from the hurt by talking in the collective "we" or collective "women" or the collective "males" is going to forward the conversation in any way.

"There is a HUGE emotional issue there, and I think that a large percentage of the males particularly here Do. No. Get. It."

That doesn't mean dissassociating from the source of the emotional issue and assuming MALES don't "get it", is something that qualifies as 'engaging in conversation'.

If you want to engage in conversation with me, start talking about what's true for you, stop presenting it as somethign that is true for all women. If you want to engage in a conversation with me, start responding to what I specifically said, stop taking conversations from the ether, bringing them here, and responding to them as if someone here posted it.

If you want to engage in conversation with me then stop saying things that include phrases like "large percentages of males particularly here".

If you want to talk about the emotional issue you keep referring to, talk about the emotions that you feel. Stop referring to it in passive voice, stop referring to it as something that all women feel.

Talking in collective terms is a way to disassociate from yourself and from nearby individuals.

If you were to actually engage an individual on this thread, even some specific MALES on this thread, for example, me, you would find I'm adamantly pro-choice. Talking about pregnancy statistics and saying MALES "Do. Not. Get. It." is telling me you don't want to actually have a conversation with me. You want me to shut up and simply nod in agreement with whatever you're saying.

And to that, I. Am. Not. Interested.

I'm actually trying to have a conversation with you specifically. Not with "women". Not as seven of ten, some part of a borg-like hive mind of "males". But you and me. And it's clear to me that you've got some hurt around this issue that has caused some of this formal language you've adopted around the topic. If you want to talk about you, or if you want to talk about me, or if you want to talk about some specific person like Obama or Hilary and how you feel about them, then you and I could actually have a conversation.

But if you want to stick with making statements about "women" as a collective whole, if you want to continue to make your pronouncements about "males" as a whole, then you really aren't engaging with me in any way. And if you and I aren't really having a conversation, then I should probably stop talking.

How have I made your life harder?!

Have I stood around telling you "you;'re a woman, women can't be pilots?" or "You can't be a pilot, your tits are too big," or written specifications otherwise that put you outside the physiological range allowed for pilots based on the fifth to ninety fifth percentile of male height?

Have I built bank and rental agency counters and mounted credit card swipe units on supermarket checkout counters at heights comfortable for a 5' 10" male but at the height of MY nose so that every time I do any sort of transaction it is a LITERAL pain in the neck and I literally can't SEE some of the information sometimes!?!

Have I built airplane seats that have the head/neck rest situation so that it protrudes into the back of MY head making me want to vandalize entire airplanes full of seats because of the discomfort and pain sitting in the damned things?!

Have I forced you to have to sit on briefcases, cushions, phone books, etc., when trying to fly an airplane because one again the stinking damned designers were tall males designing for their own damned comfort and leaving out a large percentage of women in their design considerations as regards size of people who fly? Or US car designers? There are reasons I have a Hyundai and they include that I can see over the damn dashboard!

Additional note--I -have- when designing things, gone out of my way to try to include human factors considerations such as "can someone had color vision impairment see these controls?"

And at Noreascon II there was someone on staff of whom it was said that he ignored women... the actual situation is that he was quite tall, and didn't -see- short people--who mostly were female... I had little difficulty getting his attention, my solution was that I stuck my arm straight up to get his attention, raising my hand high enough to get into his field of view.... His non=-noticing of people below a certain height was quite annoying, but I did find a work around.

(Additional note--I HATE being short. I have ALWAYS hated being short... and the consequences regards things being out of my reach. There are times I've felt VERY tempted to knonck things in stores from high shelves off, deliberately, as opposed to falling as a consquence of the powers that be having no consideration/respect whatsoever for people who are not tall....)

NFW Greg. NFW.
The dissociative language was deliberate, because there is a LOT of fury involved. A LOT of it.