That’s a Limburg dialect word for vase or pot (the Dutch is kruikje)

Hence the word "crock"? (What a way to start a new thread ...)

Whew. That old thread was getting big.

Oh look! An open thread!

This is just to say

I have made
cherry Jello with fruit in
for Whitsun

in honor of
our host and
her heritage

The story is
remembered
a salad, not
a dessert.

That message looks very much like a standard cross-stitch sampler message. So to me the inclusion of the whole alphabet could easily have been a passing of a test to indicate that he was now a journeyman able to inscribe the alphabet for other jobs. No magical explanation necessary.

At Maeshowe in the Orkneys there's a Stone Age tomb that was vandalized by Vikings in the 800s. They left graffiti on the walls, most of which is outstanding stuff like "Sigurd Carved These Runes", "Inga is the Most Beautiful Woman" and (my favorite) "The Person who Carved These Runes is the Best Carver of Runes in the Whole of the Western Ocean."

Remember me. I lived.

This is why I carve my name into the sidewalk every time I pass a square of wet cement. I want the archaeologists of 3000 AD to find it.

“kruuksjke”

In Irish "cruiskín" is a little jug -- as in Myles NaGopaleen's Cruiskeen Lawn.

Ntt shgr tht's drn-ttn' gd str, gd yrn, tl tld b n dt fll f fnd nd sry, sgnfctn' y mm.

rl.

Posted from 173.65.14.12

At No 8, from a first-time poster. Ok, probably not necessary to draw any attention to a freshly-opened open thread, but just in case.

#8 is spam, pure and simple.

It's spam.

Ibod Catooga seems to be a regular driveby commenter on the internet, usually with rude or scatalogical comments.

And here I am with the management console open. Despite the idea that he, too, is probably saying Remember me, I think we'll only remember some of him.

Teresa's OTP Particle was missing one, so I added it. (Országos Takarékos Pénztár, a bank - once the bank - in Hungary.)

Tim Burton may have produced a film that he sees fit to release on my birthday, a film about the end of life as we know it, but, as I get closer and closer to my 54th year on this Earth, I was reminded on Saturday that my body isn't planning to betray me any time soon. It had been 3 years since my last eye-exam, and the doctor said that my sight has changed so little that I don't need new glasses.

Tom Whitmore @4:
That message looks very much like a standard cross-stitch sampler message. So to me the inclusion of the whole alphabet could easily have been a passing of a test to indicate that he was now a journeyman able to inscribe the alphabet for other jobs. No magical explanation necessary.

Don't be silly. A *man* wrote it. It must be very, very significant, and nothing like the semi-literate jabber of women biding their time between housecleaning, cooking and having babies.

Back when I was studying the Etruscans, I remember hearing that writing the alphabet on things was pretty common. I'd heard that people just thought it was neat, much as Westerners are often fascinated by foreign writing systems. I could, however, buy that it might have magical significance.

The Etruscan alphabet, by the way, is fun, since almost all the letters are simply the Latin alphabet backwards, read right to left.

#16: Ah, so they were a backward people.

You know, that inscription almost sounds as if it's something a child who is first learning to write would do. Write the whole alphabet, and then some simple sentences. Maybe they were making a gift for someone, to show their prowess writing?

To follow-up on a food-related, earlier topic:

The story about the bakery in Colebrook, NH makes The New York Times. Remember, Jim beat the Times! Congrats to the bakery co-owner who finally got her visa straightened out (and to Jim and his friends who won't lose an interesting local business).

Like Ozymandias but smaller. Nothing beside remains.

I had dinner at the Sailor's Thai canteen in Sydney (Australia) last night. I have no idea what they put in the sauce of their chicken and cashew nut stir fry, apart from a really good chilli jam, but it was fantastic.

While I think getting their exact recipe might be a task too far for the commenters of this site (you guys know a lot, but unless there's a lurker here who works in their kitchen...), I was wondering what secret ingredients posters here use to make stir fries extra tasty?

More generally, what are your favourite food blogs? I really like the The Pioneer Woman Cooks

And is there much Thai food in America? in Sydney at least, there are cheap thai restaurants everywhere.

Turtle @6

This is why I carve my name into the sidewalk every time I pass a square of wet cement. I want the archaeologists of 3000 AD to find it.

Builders get really annoyed when people do this.

They'd rather you bury something personal in it instead, like they do.

Jules, yeah.

Back in 1974 my parents built a huge house out in the countryside, their dream home.

My childhood-to-teenage pet, a budgie, passed away during the construction. I wrapped her in a pretty piece of fabric and gave her to my dad, asking him to bury her at the farm because we were leaving the house we had lived in.

Much later, and with mom no where near us, he told me that they were laying the base for the marble fireplace in the study on the second floor. He had the mason make a small space and buried her in that base. When all was said and done she had a crypt of some very expensive Italian marble.

But then she was a much beloved pet, and despite his pshaws, he liked her too because she was so personable.

She still lives in my heart.

Kate #21: And is there much Thai food in America?

It's getting more visible, but still far less common than Chinese food, which is in America "cheap and everywhere". For example, here in Charlottesville, Virginia (university town, but not so big), I've seen a few Thai places here and there -- but there's a Chinese restaurant of some sort (mostly buffets) on every other corner Downtown, and pretty much every named shopping mall in the vicinity. I suspect some Thai cooks may be hiding behind the facade of "Asian Fusion" restaurants, which are also becoming more popular.

Unfortunately, I came here from New York City -- its Chinatowns (two of them, plus Little Korea) have thoroughly spoiled me as far as Asian food. ;-) Few places down here can compare.

Maybe it was his version of 'Lorem Ipsum'.

Or maybe it was a font sample. ;^)

Jules @ 22: A box with a singing frog, ferinstance?

All: To my considerable surprise and dismay, my job was made redundant today. If anyone knows of open positions in the Ottawa area, I'd appreciate contacts -- I'd consider moving if the Right Job came up, but I'm pretty well settled here. My main skills involve organometallic/inorganic chemistry (computational and lab) and other chem stuff (but not, alas, medicinal, biochem, or much analytical), software development in C, and technical/explanatory writing. I also build lots of kinds of stuff.

#21
Lots more Thai on the west coast, especially in cities.
There's one restaurant in the basement of a building in the jewelry district of Los Angeles. I think its real name is 'Rama', but where I work, it's called 'Bling'. The food is pretty good, and what I've had isn't especially spice-hot. (On the west side of Hill, south of 6th: past the alley, through the outside door, through the door to the right inside and down the stairs, then to the right, all the way to the back and the forced left turn, and it's on the right, in front of you.)

I recently read for the first time The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and I enjoyed the ending enough to do some googling to try to find out how it had been recieved when first published.

The wikipedia page for this book had a quote from a review in the Observer, on May 30, 1926. Part of it said:

"It is unfortunate that in two important points – the nature of the solution and the use of the telephone – Miss Christie has been anticipated by another recent novel: the truth is that this particular field is getting so well ploughed that it is hard to find a virgin patch anywhere."

Does anybody know which novel the Observer was referring to?

David #24 I would love to spend some time in New York, the food would be amazing. We do pretty ok for Asian food in Sydney, because we're pretty close, and we have a lot of Asian immigrants and folk descended from Asian immigrants. Thai and Indian are the most common I think, but Chinese is pretty easy to fin, as is Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese good. Out of the takeaway restuarants near my house, more than half are some kind of Asian cuisine.

I screwed up the link in the above post. If you remove the .com from the end, you'll find the correct wiki page.

turtle @6:

This is why I carve my name into the sidewalk every time I pass a square of wet cement. I want the archaeologists of 3000 AD to find it.

This is why some pissed-off contractor's employee has to babysit the new concrete until it hardens enough.

Me, I keep wanting to make a little decorative bronze plaque to embed in the concrete. This would require the participation of the concrete workers.

There were lots of jokes during the depression about Works Project Administration workers (In rural Maine: don't shoot it unless it moves, it might be a WPA worker). But there are really rugged concrete sidewalks in the Boston area that survive, complete with little bronze plaque. The plaques are disappearing due to the addition of ramps at pedestrian crossings, though.

The DC area has lots of Thai and Vietnamese restaurants, to go along with the hundreds of cheap Chinese places and sushi.

Kate, 21: As a current resident of New York, I can say that Thai food is seen sometimes in the outer boroughs as well as in Manhattan, but it's not so common as for there to be cheap hole-in-the-wall takeout places they way there is for Chinese food.

David Harmon, 24: How long ago did you move? We're up to three Chinatowns (Sunset Park in Brooklyn, in addition to Flushing and the Lower Manhattan original).

Chris @#32: Only a couple of years ago, but I was pretty close to Flushing Main Street, so that was where I went for my "dumpling fixes" etc. I might well have missed the new developments in Brooklyn.

Erik Nelson #20: Like Ozymandias but smaller. Nothing beside remains.

This is just to say

I have recycled
the statues
that were cluttering
your city

and which
you were probably
saving
for posterity

Forgive me
Ozymandias
mighty
king of kings

I've seen kits to make lettered stepping stones for the garden. If I am ever in charge of a sidewalk, I'll get one of those. I like the Iowa Literary Walk thing downtown-- lots of bronze plaques with art and words on them, nasty in ice but otherwise good-- and seeing animal and plant prints in concrete.

When we moved out of the first house I remember, Dad fixed the sidewalk. There was a square that had been cut in half and filled in with gravel, my rock garden, and he made it into a whole square. Then we put our hands in it and I think he wrote something. I wasn't very old at that point, and I was upset that I lost my rock garden.
I was not a child who embraced change, even change bearing handprints.

Kate, #28: Does anybody know which novel the Observer was referring to?

This can't be it, because there's no telephone (although, if my memory is better than that reviewer's, it was actually a dictaphone), but Ackroyd's big twist is anticipated by (ROT13) Gur Fubbgvat Cnegl, juvpu vf, bs nyy guvatf, n qrgrpgvir abiry ol Nagba Purxbi, and quite a good one. I took a look at the introduction to the Penguin Classics edition and apparently the first English translation was published in 1926...

The dictaphone has probably been used similarly in any number of mysteries. Arthur Conan Doyle used one in a non-homicidal context in a non-Holmes story called "The Japanned Box," and I recently saw a modern equivalent in an episode of Jonathan Creek.

kate @ 21:

I don't know about it being extra-tasty, but I keep a bottle of mirin (Japanese sweetened rice wine) on hand to add a couple of glugs if more liquid is needed (sometimes in addition to a glug of teriyaki sauce or glaze). I'm currently doing stir-frys practically every day with a plethora of home-grown vegetables and Asian greens, with the latter being new to me and many turning out to be rather nippy members of the mustard family, and I like the way a bit of sweetness balances this.

Yeah, come to the West Coast for Thai food. In my town on Puget Sound, there's a good chance Thai restaurants outnumber Chinese. Indian's getting big, too.

Surprisingly, in mid-central Canada, the Vietnamese and Thai restaurants outnumber the cheap Chinese ones, and they're usually quite decent. The downside is that few of them actually serve authentic Thai food. The really high-class establishments all serve Japanese cuisine.

What's more surprising is that those sorts of restaurants outnumber the pizza joints up here.

Thanks Wesley, I'll have to check that out. I love his short stories, but I didn't expect he would have written something like that.

Wesley # 36- Rot13

Gurer vf n qvpgncubar (juvpu jnf n terng gjvfg V nterr), ohg gurer'f nyfb n gryrcubar pnyy, znqr fubegyl nsgre gur zheqre, gb Qe Furccneq, checbegrqyl ol gur ohgyre, ohg npghnyyl sebz n genva fgngvba. Vg gheaf bhg Qe Furccneq nfxrq n fnvybe gb pnyy uvz, gb guebj gur cbyvpr bss gur fprag.

joann, #1: Actually, it immediately made me think of Officer Krupke from West Side Story.

Serge, #14: Be grateful for your good genetic structure. *grumble*

Kate, #21: I can think of half a dozen Thai restaurants in Houston offhand. I haven't eaten at all of them, but the ones I've tried have been pretty good.

At a tangent from this... I may have mentioned this before, but there's a Chinese buffet down in the Little India section of Houston that never fails to make me smile as I drive past. Its name is "Halal Wok".

Lee @ 42...Be grateful for your good genetic structure

Oh, I am, I very much am. My mom had both hip joints replaced a few yars ago and she recovered quickly, in spite of her being in her seventies. Meanwhile, my wife, who had one knee replaced last November is going to have the whole blasted thing reopened in late September because it still hurts and they can't figure out what's wrong.

Already late to the party, but I find the almost complete alphabet in the inscription curious.

It's missing the letter "I" (unless it's like the no-"L" joke), but it includes "K", which was supposed to only be used for words of Greek origin. Since it includes "K", it's odd that it's missing "Y" and "Z". Otherwise, the inscription looks like a sampler and dedication all in one.

Serge @ 43:

Knees are weird and tricky beasts. I hope they can do something for her.

My mom got a new knee a few years ago and says if she'd known it was going to help that much she would have done it way earlier.

I look forward to whole-skeleton replacement; after moving the entire household down three flights of stairs, I considered replacing my knees on the spot. With whittled wooden ones, if necessary. They're still giving me the occasional twinge, three weeks later. (When I opened the Truck 'o' Stuff after it finally arrived here, and realized I had to take all that stuff back out, it was somewhat daunting.)

Although I bought new shoes. Most of the pain was actually due to really ill-fitting shoes, turns out. I learned that in the 80's; why do we have to repeat these lessons so often?

KeithS @ 44... I hope so too.

Earl Cooley III @ 34: Nice!

Michael Roberts @ 45... if she'd known it was going to help that much she would have done it way earlier

That's what many people told my wife last year. I guess she got a lemon. She had arthroscopy a few weeks ago, hoping that'd do the trick, but it didn't.

As for total skeleton replacement.. Can I get the model with the adamantium claws? (When Joss Whedon was writing X-men, Wolverine's greater weight became a running gag, with his beer-guzzling being the usual explanation.)

Re Roger Ackroyd -- In terms of the nature of the solution and the unreliable narrator, one should at least mention Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone.

The skyscraped/mallified/big-box part of Anchorage, a quintessential soulless modern city, has one charming touch: some of the streets and (IIRC) sidewalks contain beach shells. Supposed to improve traction.

That is a completely appropriate message. Ave, Luci Fiiriini!

David Harmon @24:
As long as "Asian Fusion" is not "we've just added some sweet chilli sauce to it", but a genuine attempt at blending different culinary traditions, I could probably live with it*.

Lee @42:
Re:"Halal Wok".
In Malaysia, there are places that serve halal Chinese food. Gives the Muslim majority peace of mind, that that they are not accidentally violating dietary laws.

*I'm a culinary traditionalist at heart, where traditional = have had more than a century of history.

Kate @21:

Fish sauce! It adds a bit of tang to stir-fries that are hot and spicy. And we start our stir-fries with a base of ginger, garlic, scallions, and thai chilis. It's hard to go wrong from there.

John H @25

Hello mah baby, hello mah honey, hello mah ragtime gal...

15- a bit uncalled for, I think.

50: The skyscraped/mallified/big-box part of Anchorage, a quintessential soulless modern city, has one charming touch: some of the streets and (IIRC) sidewalks contain beach shells.

The 16th century Arctic explorer Martin Frobisher made three voyages to northern Canada, giving his name to Frobisher Bay; he failed to find the North West Passage but brought back 1400 tonnes of what he thought was orogenous rock. Extensive study revealed that it was, in fact, fool's gold, and it was used to make walls and roads in Kent. There's still some left, in a wall behind Dartford railway station.

Which is another way of saying: go and see the North-West Passage exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, if you're in the area.

Here in the Triangle area, NC, Thai food is reasonably popular, but tends to be sold at slightly nicer, more expensive restaurants than Chinese. The restaurants are also often combination Japanese/Thai.

Vietnamese food can be found at a couple of inexpensive, excellent little places. It is nowhere near as ubiquitous as Chinese, but it doesn't seem to have the middle-class cachet of Thai food, in terms of the price and style of the restaurants.

Korean is right out.

I have been trying to decide what food I most want to eat when I am over the flu. I think Vietnamese will win.

I have the real true flu. Had samples taken to detect whether it is H1N1 or not. Either way it has been awful and I would never like to repeat it. At present I am down to sinusitis, sore throat, and exhaustion. On Saturday Keith had to call the friendly neighborhood EMTs, because I was so dizzy from high fever and dehydration that I could not sit up, much less stand. It took the ER nurse what felt like eons to place an IV; the EMT could not do it at all, I assume because of dehydration making my veins invisible. I do not recommend this experience.

I have no idea where I was exposed, but it must have been through very casual contact, like shopping at the same supermarket. I have seen no one else who has been sick or knows anyone who has. Very strange.

My name is preserved in the front of a few Gutenberg ebooks prepared by Distributed Proofreaders. That should last a few hundred years, or until computers completely replace humans in digitizing projects. Longer? who knows.

We've got a number of Thai places in Pittsburgh, plus the one restaurant in Oakland that provides pretty much any kind of southeast Asian you like.

I tend to prefer Thai curry to Indian curry, myself. I like the coconut milk.

When my dad had one of his eyes fixed-- detached retina number four, which couldn't be repaired without taking care of the cataracts first-- it was absolutely textbook ad-for-the-doctor perfect. He immediately signed up for the next eye, which didn't go quite as well, but hey, he can drive again and he doesn't have to do any of the weird things he used to, like, um, binoculars to read the signs.
This is the man who drove a six-week family vacation across the country with double vision. Didn't mention it until later. That was detached retina number one.

Baby Sister got all the bad genes in the family. Had her tonsils pulled after one strep throat too many, lactose intolerant, knee that doesn't have anything officially wrong with it but hurts all the time and has atrophied muscle, migraines, wisdom teeth extraction made her look like a hamster with tennis balls in her mouth. I am glad to have dodged these many small bullets, though I'd take one or two if I could.

59: four detached retinas? Your father is Zaphod Beeblebrox?

("Yeah, and two strep throats, eight wisdom teeth and three cases of carpal tunnel syndrome...")

Dad's eyes are weird. I think it's been three detached retinas in one eye and one in the other. No reason, no family history of retinas going walkies, nothing. He does treat them more seriously now than in the past.

Caroline #56:

I guess it wasn't one of the common strains circulating? I think the test for those is done in 30-45 minutes, but if your strain is influenza and is not one of the known/expected strains, they have to send it to CDC. (Is that right?) I know when I took my son to the ER for an asthma attack[0], they tested him for influenza and said the test came back negative[1].

Have you ever eaten at Neo-China[2]? That was our favorite Chinese place, back when we lived in Durham. I miss that area, even though the economy for people doing my kind of work was a disaster.

[0] I had serious asthma as a kid, and still have it (but not so bad) now, so this was all fairly familiar to me. Ahh, the situation didn't look *too* scary, since they didn't rush him in immediately and give him an epinephrine shot. But it was serious, because they did do the low-staff version of inhalation therapy (fast-acting albuterol + water + oxygen, set up so you spend five minutes or so breathing the mixture) and put him on five days of prednisone.

[1] ISTM that the test is too slow to be one where they mix the sample with antibodies and see if the antibodies find any antigen (as with the quick strep test), and it wouldn't make sense for them to be looking for antibodies to influenza (you wouldn't have many for the first week or so of infection, IIRC). Anyone know how the test works?

[2] There's one in Durham and one in Cary, and the two are somewhat different, but both amazingly good. Sunday after-church Dim Sum...Mmmmmmmm!

Turner Classic Movies just ran the coming attraction for Roman Holidays:

The gayest spree a girl ever had!

Just a comment on the sideline about "The fact that I'm completely wrong....": I loved steve s's phrasing for that: rebunking.

The pattern is:

Bunk: Proctor and Gamble's logo is satanic.

Debunk: Nope, that's complete nonsense, and here's why.

Rebunk: Well, but they're the kind of evil bastards who would have a satanic logo. And the fact that it sounds plausible is proof that they're evil.

Plausibility of some evil claim tells you something about your belief system, but nothing at all about outside reality. Plenty of people are absolutely convinced that the US government is in league with the space aliens who are abducting people for a little interspecies sexual harassment. Others are sure that Obama is planning to grab all their guns and turn the US into a socialist country. Finding that they find some false stories plausible w.r.t. the US government, the space aliens, or Obama gives them no new information about whether or not any of those beliefs are true.

Found yesterday in Salon.com, regarding Manuel Miranda, former aide to Bill Frist, and his opposition to the nomination of Sotomayor to the Supreme Court:

"She has a temper," Miranda said this afternoon after a Heritage Foundation event. "She has an attitude. She could come across as hubristic in the hearings, as arrogant. And so she could Bork herself."

In downtown Ottawa you can't go more than a block or two without seeing a Thai restaurant. And, I read somewhere that we apparently have the most shawarma places, per capita, in Canada. Go figure.

Joel @26, I'm sorry to hear that. I'll keep my eyes peeled for Ottawa-based jobs.

albatross @ 62: They didn't do the sample until I returned to urgent care with new symptoms a day later. (I am not sure why the ER didn't do it; things seemed pretty chaotic there.) Apparently it isn't recommended to do the rapid flu test when the patient is no longer running a fever, or so claimed the doctor. By that time I wasn't running a fever anymore, so they sent it off. They told me that if it didn't come back in 3 days, it could take up to 2 weeks. If I had been feeling less like death at the time, I would have pressed for technical details.

Here's a page that goes through various types of flu tests. From the information they gave me combined with information on that page, it looks like they are doing some kind of viral culture to determine exactly what strain I have. The others can tell you if it is an influenza virus, and if it is influenza A or B, but don't tell you the precise strain. I guess if a rapid culture doesn't work, they will have to do a slower culture -- hence the "either 3 days or 2 weeks" statement.

I mean, if it is H1N1, I aten't dead. It was pretty severe, but then I haven't actually had flu since I was a child, so I can't really compare. And the respiratory symptoms have not been all that severe. Knock wood. (It's been unpredictable so far; I'm afraid it will decide to tour my lungs next.)

I have eaten at Neo-China! It's my favorite place to get Chinese.

Was Pho 9N9 in existence when you lived in Durham? It hides in a dead-looking strip mall over in RTP and serves great, cheap Vietnamese food. My real favorite Vietnamese place is the Dalat, though, over by NC State.

Lee, 42: If Halal Wok is in Little India, I wonder if it's an Indian Chinese restaurant, which serves Chinese food interpreted through an Indian culinary filter. I've eaten at one of these in NYC, and the food was quite good, familiar and yet different at the same time.

Becky @ 53:

After Thai chilis it's hard to go wronger, yes (for those of us who don't do Hot.) Ginger, garlic, and scallions are fine, and thanks for the suggestion of fish sauce, which I'll try Real Soon Now. Oyster sauce and maybe black bean sauce are also possibilities -- not at the same time, probably, and not so much of anything that one can do more than just barely identify its presence, I suppose. I'm not a particularly adventurous cook, so my problem with stir-fry is that it tends to become same old same old on a twice-a-day basis.
(Well... that and the fact that with an abundance of the main ingredients (including lettuces that are starting to bolt & become a tad bitter) I always stupidly end up with at least twice as much as I can eat.)

Paula @ 23-- You reminded me of what we did when I was 9 and my little cockatiel died. We had a big vegetable garden in my parents' back yard, and we buried Diamond, with his favorite bell toy, where the tomatoes grew. We joked that the next summer we'd find tomatoes with yellow crests and orange cheek spots on them.

Re Thai restaurants-- One recently opened right next to Nicole's favorite coffee and wifi destination. The sign, though, had been up for months, right above the tantalizing (and after a few months, very frustrating) "Opening Soon!" sign. Now that it's open, we have to find time to go there!

If you have yet to hear this morning: We've lost David Eddings

Zora@57 writes "My name is preserved in the front of a few Gutenberg ebooks prepared by Distributed Proofreaders. That should last a few hundred years, or until computers completely replace humans in digitizing projects. Longer? who knows."

I hope so, and expressed a similar sentiment in a memorial post for a prolific Gutenberg volunteer who died recently.

Which I suppose one can contrast with Woody Allen's famous line: "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying."

Serge @ 65:

"She has an attitude. She could come across as hubristic in the hearings, as arrogant. And so she could Bork herself."

Ah, the Swedish Chef gambit.

KeithS@44: K was a primitive part of the Latin alphabet (which is why it comes in its historic position, unlike Y and Z, which were tacked on at the end). However, because it was, by classical times, sounded exactly the same as C and Q, it had largely dropped out of use, at least in the form of writing commonly used for literary works (except, sometimes, in the word 'Kalendae' and derivatives) - elsewhere, though, people might have followed different rules.

Certainly I is missing - which suggests that, if this is indeed a test, the maker failed it.

David Eddings was one of the pillars of my youthful library. I go back to the Belgariad every few years - it's pure comfort food. Sorry to hear of his passing.

Don Fitch @ 69:

Let me warn about fish sauce: It smells awful. If you open the bottle and sniff it, you'll go "Ugh, jeez, this is gross, this smells like feet, I am not eating this." But you put a tablespoon in with a Thai curry or a stir-fry, and somehow it gets totally transmogrified and tastes good. Savory, salty, and a little tangy, not like feet in any way. It is weird but true -- one of those things where sniffing it is not a guide to how it will taste in the dish.

Lots of Thai food here in Riverside on the west coast. Lots of nice sushi places. But just try to find a good Greek restaurant... there must be one somewhere short of downtown LA, but I haven't been able to find it. Sob. Sob.

Chris Quinones @ 68:

Indian Chinese? Eating food filtered through a different culture's lens is always interesting. I don't think I have one of those nearby, although there is a Thai place that I've been meaning to check out.

Andrew M @ 74:

Ah, thank you. I took classical Latin, so if that was mentioned about "K", I'd forgotten it entirely. I've forgotten most of it entirely, actually, but that's different.

Serge @ 43: For what it's worth . . . my aunt had two knee replacements, one a year after the other. The first went perfectly, no problem; the second--much like your wife's situation--hurt and hurt and hurt, until the doctors opened it up again. Turned out the appliance (I love that word) hadn't been properly sterile when they put it in, and she'd developed an infection. They cleaned it out, and everything was fine from then on.

May the problem with your wife's new knee be something as simple, fixable, and infuriating.

Caroline@76 -- and you would know how feet taste ... how?

Eddings had a nice first series (the Belgariad) but I draw the line when the characters start complaining that the second series is exactly the same as the first, as happened in the Malloreon. Pity to lose him anyway.

Tony @77. Try Burger Continental in Pasadena, on Lake near California. It has an American name, but the place is pure Mediterranean at heart. On Sundays, watch out for the belly-dancers.

It's an old-fashioned restaurant, where the waiters flirt with everyone, the tables spill onto the sidewalk on weekends, and the air conditioning consists of everyone talking really loudly. It's a gas!

Caroline @ 67:
Regarding the Flu Tests, it was explained to me by someone at the CDC that they tested locally for Influenza A. If it's A, depending on the facilities available, they culture it, and then they can identify the strain. If it's an identifiable strain, then it isn't H1N1. That test is done locally in large hospitals, but may be sent away to the CDC if they can't run the tests. If it isn't any identifiable strain, the CDC confirms H1N1, or they find a new strain (which is much scarier, since flu can recombine when there are multiple infections in the same host.)

This may be why there is a couple of days vs. 2 weeks difference. If it's identifiable, it's pretty quick. The H1N1 test may take longer, but I think the CDC was identifying the virus in a much shorter time frame than 2 weeks. Of course, they may have slowed down with the higher volume of cases recently.

Mary Frances @ 79...I think infection has been ruled out. Maybe there's too much cement in one place, or maybe not enough. Someone I know had problems too and it turned out they had put in the wrong knee-prosthesis size. Oops.

Possibly useful piece of information: I and J were not distinguished in Latin. The same is true of U and V; note that U is also missing.

(looks again) But wait, he has neither I nor J. U and V were considered the same letter, but the omission of I/J (especially since he uses I quite extensively in the rest of the inscription) would still appear to be an error.

Maybe he carved the alphabet later, to show he knew all the letters, and figured he had already adequately displayed his proficiency with I?

Good God! It's 51 degrees! The whole point of leaving Puerto Rico for this godforsaken continent in June instead of March was specifically to avoid this travesty you all call weather.

(One shudders to think how I'm going to adapt in November -- but the point was to postpone that horrible moment as long as possible, not confront it while still reeling from the move.)

Eddings was a writer whose books my wife loves. At least the first few series, the Belgariad, etc, and she's re-read them a number of times. The more recent works (The Elder Gods, etc) she dipped into, but didn't feel moved to continue.

Myself, I tried the first book of the Belgariad, and bounced out after about fifty pages. Not because it was a bad or boring story, but because the use of "However" and Meanwhile" was so frequent that it started knocking me out of the reading experience whenever I ran into its use again.

Where the hell was the copyeditor on that book?

I was also dismayed when I browsed thru The Riven Codex and found Eddings' checklist for story elements needed to generate a best-selling fantasy. Quite depressing.

Chris, #68: Wow, that sounds like a food style I'd love to try! The article says that it might be available in Houston; time for some local research.

I should point out that the area I describe as Little India here is the import/wholesalers' district, and actually has very mixed cultural influences. Yes, there's a lot of Indian -- it's where most of the sari shops are, and the biggest Indian groceries -- but also quite a bit of Middle Eastern and Chinese. I have a standing offer of a tour to any friends who visit, because there's a lot of Really Neat Stuff available there, much cheaper than you're likely to find it in other cities.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/03/bin-laden-obama-islam

The guy who has killed more than 4000 people overall is accusing President Obama of sowing "revenge and hatred." Now that's what I call chutzpah!

The Asian foodie situation in my immediate neighborhood is kind of grim.

There's a Sushi & Hot Pot place across the street, but neither of those is amenable to Take Out. Next to that there's a corporate-chain noodle restaurant that's actually pretty decent, but it's still a corporate-chain noodle restaurant.

Down the street a ways: Panda Express. Puh-leeze. Also a nice Pho place, but again not take-out friendly.

A couple of miles away east and west and south, somewhat intimidating sit-down Thai and Chinese restaurants. They do take-out, but they're kind of far away.

What I'd LOVE to have nearby are one of the storefront Chinese takeout places that you could find everywhere in New York and the Bay Area. They were often dismal, depressing looking places, but the food was good and cheap and most often you'd get take-out anyway, yah?

Serge, back when I was doing PT for my ankle, one of the other patients had had to have her knee replacement redone, as it was ever so slightly out of position--either because it wasn't put in quite straight, or because it moved just a tiny bit during healing--apparently, even a very small variation from the proper position can be horribly painful.

Hope whatever it is gets sorted this time.

PJ Evans @27, if you want spice-hot Thai in the LA area, the place to go is Jitlada in Hollywood; about a year ago, without any fuss, they introduced a very authentic and very, very spicy menu of Southern Thai specialties (which, last time I was there, was unobtrusively tucked away on the back page of an otherwise-standard menu.) The soft-shell crab with sator beans was the spiciest thing I've eaten, and that includes some pretty authentic Sichuan food. This was heat that scoffs at rice and laughs off Thai iced tea -- the dish of raw veggies on ice they brought out did a surprisingly good job, however.

Kate @21:

Since my stir-fries are mostly vegetarian, I find what I really need is an umami boost. Either a mushroom sauce (filling the niche of oyster sauce) or a hot bean paste, depending on whim and what else is going in.

fidelio @ 90... Maybe that is 'all' it is. Luckily things aren't so painful that it has to be dtaken care of now otherwise her summer would be shot, thanks to the recovery and the therapy after the surgery.

Kate: There is a fair quantity of Thai food to be had, in my necks of the woods (which is to say, in LA, and the parts of the West Coast I know: SLO, Santa Barbara, Monterey, San Francisco Bay, Seattle/Tacoma)

Serge @ 83 and 92: In any case, "ouch." Good wishes for her complete recovery.

For certain types of authentic, the Sunamaluang Cafe in Burbank (assuming it's still there, I've not been a few years) is great. Somtow Sucharitkul compared it to a really good roadside restaurant in Bangkok.

There are some dishes on the menu which I've not had (the pig's uterus soup, which I'm told has some of the most "interesting" textures a friend had ever eaten. I've also skipped the pork offal soup).

Spicing ranges from mild to popskull.

Sherman Way, a bit west of the 5, south side of the street; mid-block.

Oakland doesn't have very many Thai restaurants, but we have a few Thai-Lao places. (I've seen the difference between Thai food and Lao food described as "Lao food is like Thai food, but less sweet, and a lot funkier from the dried crab.") Our favorite is a hole-in-the-wall on International Boulevard called Green Papaya Deli. I've started keeping an annotated version of their menu, since their original version had nothing but the names of the dishes.

#78 ::: KeithS

Chris Quinones @ 68:
Indian Chinese? Eating food filtered through a different culture's lens is always interesting.

My mind was boggling, sitting here literally slack-jawed. I'd misread it as "Indian Cheese".

Stefan Jones @ 89:

Are you on the West Side? I can point you to a couple of places, though they won't be real close, by the sound of it.

Carol Kimball @ 97:

Indian cheese. Yum.

Serge @ #65, The source of that quote is ethically challenged at best and holds peculiar opinions about race.

Speaking of Thai and other restaurants, I've lived in deepest Oklahoma for eight years now and just finally ventured into the Asian District of downtown Oklahoma City. Pho restaurants every few feet, it seems, and a fantasticly huge Oriental supermarket with what looked like coast-worthy fresh fish out the wazoo. Interesting history on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia_District and their own website http://www.okcasiandistrict.com/index.php.

Serge @ #65: She has a temper," Miranda said this afternoon after a Heritage Foundation event. "She has an attitude...

In other words, she's just a little Latin spitfire. [disengage stereotype]

Caroline@67 -- "Aten't dead?" Nice slipping it in, there, Granny. (A reward for careful reading - thanks!)

Lauren Uroff @ 81:

Yummm. Burger Continental!

I don't know that I'd call it Greek food, though. It's kinda a confusiingly wonderful fusion of American (great burgers -- really!) and all sorts of Mediteranean with some Middle-East thrown in.

Tony Zbaraschuk @ 77:

If I haven't turned you away, check out their menu by Googling their name. It's a Pasadena standby -- and I go for the wonderful lamb.

Tracie @102:
a little Latin spitfire

And suddenly I find myself thinking about Romans making Spitfires, à la Archimedes and his death ray.

Just got back from a work team lunch. A very Mexican taco & enchilada place in downtown Hillsboro.

Man, that rocked. This was the real deal. Plus, telenovelas on HDTV.

#98: Orenco Station area.

There ARE good Chinese take-out places in Hillsboro and Beaverton. (Mostly the latter.) But they are not in the neighborhood.

abi @ 105... Archimedes and his death ray

The Mysthbusters tested that one and, if I remember correctly, the only way it'd have worked is if the Roman fleet had decided to cooperate and not move at all.

Serge @107:

I'm not wildly convinced that a Roman Spitfire would fly, either.

abi @105

That explains why the Romans kept invading the Celtic lands. They had to control the source of Merlins.

Get well, Caroline!

also Africa -> Camels

Lightning right-hand turns, and all that.

Lightning right-hand turns, and all that.

Could someone let me in on the reference?

Dave Bell @ 109... They had to control the source of Merlins

...so that they could swallow all lands?

abi @ 108... I'm not wildly convinced that a Roman Spitfire would fly

That sounds like a challenge to the abovementionned Mysthbusters who have tested various airborne devices such as planes made of concrete, ancient Chinese chairs with solid rockets under the seat, and, my favorite, whether or not a liquid-fuel missile could have been built using Civil War technology. (Doctor Miguelito Lovelès would have loved that one.)

rams@103 re Carolyn@67 - darn, I'm getting slow.

The Sopwith Camel was a fighter plane which was famous for turning right. Left, not so much. Easier to make three right turns.

See also: ack ack, Algy, Baron, Biggles, Bristol, cabbage crate, Circus, Ginger, Great War, gyroscopic forces, Hun, Richthofen, torque, Von etc.

Niall McAuley @ 116... What's that about Ginger and the Circus?

Michael@115 -- I can't be having with that. It's not like she referenced hedgehog impenetrability. Still, thanks -- if you haven't got respect, you haven't got anything.

AndrewM @74 wrote, Certainly I is missing - which suggests that, if this is indeed a test, the maker failed it.

It's a reference to an old Latin team-building proverb: "There's no 'I' in 'ABCDEFGHKLMNOPQRSTVX'."

Fuck me! Hardback copies of "Biggles of the Camel Squadron" are worth a hundred pounds!

Not mine, though, even if I still had it. "Clean and tight" would be, well, "incorrect" is only the start of it, after I read it a million times under my blankets.

As for dust-jackets, I hates them. They're like those bras for cars, or plastic mats over your carpets: keep everything nice for the next owner when you're DEAD! HA HA HA HAAAA!

No. Hardbacks, no dust-jackets. These books are mine to be read, not some creepy collector's. Mind you, Folio editions with slip-cases, those I like.

If only they had a Biggles collection...

Serge@114 -- "Mysthbusters"...

As opposed to Mystbusters, who test the practicality of giant rotating buildings with elevators which can only be unlocked by matching up constellation symbols from twelve clockwork boxes scattered around the island?

Andrew Plotkin @ 121... Curthes! Mythtyped again!

A whine: when is Jo Walton's "Half a Crown" going to be issued in MMP format?

It's because I've been rereading all the witches books while in bed.

Paging all Beatles enthusiasts, appreciators of quality animation, video-game types, and assorted lifeforms:

The cinematic intro for The Beatles: RockBand has been posted, and it's two minutes forty seconds of mindbending gorgeous awesomeness. Go see.

Bits of that Beatles animation are good, I like the blue elephant which is not a walrus, but why stick to the same little subset of songs? Most of the people buying stuff these days are younger than me, and don't remember the Beatles when they were #1 in the charts.

So why don't Beatles boosters use "Happy Birthday", or "I'm Only Sleeping", or "Drive my Car", or "Doctor Robert", or "Girl"? No, just the usual suspects.

The other day, I heard on the radio that Lennon got his inspiration for "Good Morning" from a Corn Flakes commercial. As for those animals we hear at the end, apparently each animal is followed by one it could eat. I'll have to pay more attention next time.

Some here might be interested in this cool music toy. I've been making Reichian (Steve, not Wilhelm) soundscapes with it. WARNING: it's addictive.

Xopher @ 128:

I'm going to be playing with that all night. Thanks, I think.

Misery loves company KeithS! Not that it's exactly misery...and I did warn you.

I want one implemented in hardware with fist-sized buttons, so I can perform with it live.

Xopher @ 130:

I only wish there were a way to save your nice examples to inflict on share with others.

The rules for it are pretty simple, so making a clone in software shouldn't be too hard. I don't have the hardware to make a physical device to hand, though. Sorry.

(And I just now notice that it has copy/paste facilities, therefore making my wish already granted. Oops.)

Definite fun. Sharing it.

Dammit, Xopher, I have a deadline to meet.

Here's a busy little tune:
16978,16384,65600,16384,16,66064,81922,16896,592,2,16,18,16912,65600,16962,0

Amazing proofreading job.

If I didn't have this deadline, I'd write a little script that would permute the matrix on a chord like my little tune there, and paste it repeatedly. Then, the tune played would mutate on each pass through, but always stay in that chord. The cycle would thus be eliminated; you'd end up with an endlessly changing busy little song.

But that's only what I'd do if I didn't have this deadline and dammit, Muse, I can hear you knocking on the damn door but I need the money cause poppa has a house to renovate.

Tony Zbaraschuk: Greek? The Great Greek in Studio City comes to mind. I am blanking on others, though I know of many (though not all in LA, Panos Kelftika in Seattle is ASTOUNDING, and Epsilon in Monterey is great, though different [Peter, the owner, is an eastern Greek (he refers to himself as, Byzantine) and the food has more turkish elements]).

Burger Continental isn't where I'd go for Greek, but the food is very good.

Carol Kimball: Why slack-jawed? There are several indian cheeses. (paneer is the one most commonly encountered).

Re Sopwith Camels: All the rotary engined planes were much tighter in turns to the right (the entire motor spun). For other reasons the Camel was more famous for this. Mostly it was that it was very nimble, because of how it was marginally stable. It had less than wonderful stall characteristics, which made it very tricky at low speed/altitudes.

Perhaps the potter left I out of his alphabet because he considered it to be the same letter as E.

Maybe he was chugging along, did the E by mistake, and said "D'oh, well, I can always leave I out instead."

ABCDEFGHKL
MNOPQRSTVX

Using Lvcivs's alphabet, here is his inscription in ROT-20(assuming he considers I to be equivalent to E):

XKOQKG MAMVM RQQOQH RQQFQQBQKG XQSCBMA
XKOQKG RQQFQQBQC P N QH D PQVC
XKOQKG PQVHKG AQQKZOKG QXQ RQQOQH QB CRQOQBM

Mmm. Greek.

Ethnic food that isn't comida criolla is something I've missed for the last year or two. I like comida criolla -- it's good. But Greek, I've missed. I don't think Richmond has a Greek restaurant. But honestly? Midwest is an ethnic food I've been catching up on. Terry, I've had sunny-side up eggs and hashbrowns at least five times since Tennessee, and loved them every time.

Now I'm on a bagel kick. Mm. I've missed bagels. I actually had a good recipe for bagels somewhere, but they're a lot of work. Really designed for somebody making them for a lot of people at once.

oops I mean ROT-10

Two of the standards of the original Biggles short stories are that a Camel can execute a lightning-quick right turn, and that a new chap can kill himself in a Camel before he learns just how twitchy it can be.

Damned nuisance. I say, wasn't that your cousin?

New Hampshire is number 6!!!!!

Kate: Thai is quite common in Boston -- in addition to the good places, I can point locally to a restaurant a couple of decades old in the local strip mall. But Boston is a coastal city, and heavily internationalized by a huge student population; I wouldn't expect to find Thai food easily in a random city. (Some cities are more random than others; in Madison last week I found there were \two/ Himalayan restaurants in a short stretch of State St., which runs half a mile from the capitol to the public university.) There's also a lot of pho (Vietnamese), in both joints and nice places; Indian has been around so long it's almost ho-hum. But my guess is that any ring around Boston that included even the near suburbs would have as many Chinese restaurants as the other three combined.

Ginger @ 145... I'll refrain from making the obvious Village joke and will instead utter a big "YAY!"

Serge @ 147 ...
"I am not a number... I am a free... mason!"

A friend just pointed me to the following which strikes me as something y'all will like: http://eco-comics.blogspot.com/

xeger @ 148...

"I wouldn't know a Free Mason from a cheap brick layer."
- yours truly when asking someone else about the supposed Masonic subtext of Mozart's Magic Flute.

Kate, #21, I live in a commuter city (I used to be able to say rural city) near DC and we're currently about 2:1 Chinese:Thai. However, the Chinese are mostly frequented for lunch buffets and the Thai for dinner.

Joel Polowin, #26, I'm so sorry. I'm not likely to hear of jobs up there, but I hope you find something soon.

Diatryma, #35, uneven sidewalks are very dangerous for disabled people.

Re: skeletal replacement, Dean Kamen's firm, Deka, has made a new artificial arm that grasps.

And re: the online glasses particle, I have four pairs of glasses from Zenni Optical and have been very pleased with them and their price.

Argh... Gilgamesh has been shot. Then he pulled a muscle when he tossed across the room the oversized exoskeleton of a teacher who became mad after having Agatha for a student. Agatha shows up and isn't happy that Zola is in the process of pampering Gilgamesh. How is this going to turn out? What's next? Well what else but a break from the main plot so that the Foglio Family can serve us Part Three of "Revenge of the Weasel Queen"?

Stefan Jones @ 108:

Oops, even farther west than I thought. Well, if you don't mind a bit of a drive, there's a really terrific dim sum and Chinese sea food place called China Town at Murray Blvd and Cornell Road, just across the street from the Nike Encampment. It's in a shabby-looking strip mall like place, that has clearly benefited from Time Lord technology; it can't possibly be that big inside without dimension warping. And they do takeout, but if you're going that far, I'd suggest sitting down and ordering off the dim sum carts.

During a heat wave such as that currently affecting Seattle, it seems appropriate to recall that the scope of opportunities for us to "Keep Cool with Coolidge" is most properly measured in degrees Calvin.

Xopher@130 all we really need is for that applet to have a finite automaton rule associated with it. Or to be able to specify which rule. Turing-complete music!

Hello again everyone...I'm back after driving the entire length of the Desert Southwest (and, almost equally difficult, getting broadband service from AT&T going). I did actually have net access most nights, but didn't have the time available to catch up on ML. Which of course means staying up too late *now* to do that thing. Lots of boxes still to unpack.

Saw the Caverns of Sonora, which were amazing. Had a big laugh on the last day of driving as we came into Houston from I-10 to the Farm to Market (FM) road 1093...and were directed by the GPS unit to exit on "Federation of Micronesia 1093".

European Parliament elections today in the UK. I shall head off to vote soon.

But it is all a bit confusing. You see, I've been reading up on the politics of the 1920s and 1930s, and all the wild and wacky stuff which appeared in the aftermath of The Great War. Britain is confusing enough, with the old Liberal/Conservative divide being disrupted by the Labour Party. There are also various brands of Fascist, not all of them as insane as the National Socialists in Germany.
And then there's a Depression.

Well, here we are, 2009, 70 years later, and I've been inundated with election propaganda which doesn't feel so different.

Except the modern Mosleyites seem to be limiting their incompetence to the Formula One Grand Prix motor-racing.

But we have the fascists and the isoloationist and the totalitarians, and that's just the [insert political party's name here]. Seriously, we have the political heirs of the British Union of Fascists, via the National Front, who managed to put a Spitfire on one of their leaflets which was in the markings of a Polish squadron of the RAF.

Repeat, please.

I think I might be turning into an anarchist. Maybe I shouldn't have read any Kropotkin, and merely complained about the illicit aquisition of infusions of the leaves of camellia sinensis.

(Go on, you lot can work out that one for youselves.)

Anyway, how many PATRIOT acts do you have? This country seems to have Terrorism Acts the way New Yorker's have cockroaches. Does it matter which gang you vote for?

Dave Bell #109: Strange, then, that the Romans didn't make it to the Antilles, where they would have found Hurricanes.

Regarding I being seen as the same as E: it's possible. Pre-revolutionary Russian had two letters which sounded the same - I, looking like a Roman I, and back-to-front-N, which derives from Greek Eta, which would normally be represented in English as an E. Modern Russian has amalgamated the two, and uses back-to-front-N all the time.

Ginger #145: The world is changing for the better, one state (or district) at a time. In a few years, there will be a large set of gay couples married under state law, and a bunch of case law in those states dealing with their marriages, divorces, deaths, inheritance, custody issues, etc. And it will be, IMO, politically impossible to reverse that. The Palin/Gingrich[1] administration may try, but it will have to push against all that inertia, all those millions of gay couples and neighbors/friends/relatives of those gay couples, all their kids who've grown up and now can vote, etc.

[1] Aka, the reason millions of Americans get passports for their whole families and convert some of their cash to gold in 2015, as the election outcome becomes clear.

Dave Bell @ 157... If British politics are a repeat of the 1920s, who is the modern Spode?

Heh. I've just re-read Good Omens and the immediate expectation I had of the translation was something like ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. Lucius made this jar for Amaka. Buggre all this for a Larke. I amme sick to mye Hart of potterye...

joXn @ 155:

You're trying to make me take on yet another project, aren't you. It's not going to happen. It's not!

Hmm... If I put a generalized game of life on that grid and... No!

Serge @162

Innocent Look

Dave Bell @ 164... So, one Spode made plates, while the other made pleats (for ladies's apparel and for his own brown shirts)?

Musicoid thingys: there is also the classic Triadex Muse, which is simulated hereat: http://www.trovar.com/muse/muse.html

Erik @ 166: Amusingly, it is a Windows95 app that "might work under NT". It works fine under Win7, although I'm not able to check if the MIDI output is functional.

Microsoft gets a bad reputation but I wonder if there are any Mac or Linux binaries from 1997 that will run unmodified on a current version of those OSes.

Marilee et al, after breaking the rather expensive frames of my progressive focus glasses (managed to drop them out of my lap and step on them in one smooth motion) I got them replaced at the optometrist and then ordered a cheap backup pair from Goggles4u.com, after looking through a number of site reviews at that "Cheap glasses" website. I am keeping them in the car so I'm never stuck driving home without glasses if I should break them again. For $40 I got single-focus expensive photochromic gray lenses and a frame style very like my expensive ones (gray, not gold, and a bit heavier). (In other words, not the simplest or cheapest of either lenses or frame. I think I could have gotten the simplest prescription glasses for $30 or less.) I've worn them enough to know that they're quite acceptable for me.

I am planning to try them out soon for computer/reading glasses also; the progressive focus is a nice idea but really doesn't work out for me for close-up and I end up just taking them off to read or work at the computer. Cheap glasses make it seem a lot more reasonable to try out some closer focus glasses and see if they work out for me.

joXn @ 167 ...
Microsoft gets a bad reputation but I wonder if there are any Mac or Linux binaries from 1997 that will run unmodified on a current version of those OSes.

A better question might be "Should the OS be designed around supporting the limitations of previous generations of operating systems ad nauseum" :P

(and the answer to that question is "yes, depending on the binary, and in some cases, the availability of an emulator").

Black shorts, serge.

Serge @152 - But you must remember, this is a world ruled by mad science!

Avedaggio @70 - Re Thai restaurants-- One recently opened right next to Nicole's favorite coffee and wifi destination. The sign, though, had been up for months, right above the tantalizing (and after a few months, very frustrating) "Opening Soon!" sign. Now that it's open, we have to find time to go there!

I have gone once. It's good. The decor is very very nice. I love the milk-carton-shaped chopstick holders on the tables. I have discovered that while there's a lot in Thai cuisine I don't like, I can't go far wrong with Pad Thai and Pad See You (or See Ew; pick your favorite transliteration).

(They have not been open that long, but they have already revised their menu. I noticed last time I came out of used-ta-been Joe's.

Boulder also has TWO Korean restaurants that I love to death. Korea House, hiding on 28th behind the Bookworm and the Sew/Vac place, where I order the Kimchi Chi Gae and it takes me like, an hour to get through all its Hot! Spicy! Goodness!; and our favorite Go-playing & Tea-sipping place, Healing Tea (nee Cup Of Peace), where I love me some chicken bibimbob.

Avedaggio, worldnamer may have mentioned that I am coming back to Boulder with oodles of Go material on my hard drive? The Go club in New Orleans is exceedingly happy to see new members. And loathe to see them leave town again.

Will ya'll cross your fingers for me and think good thoughts? Am sending an appeal in to my health insurance.

I am currently doing battle to try to get insurance coverage of a med -- preferably Provigil, but I'm open to other options. Insurance isn't willing to cover any of the options. Short version of the problem is that I have idiopathic hypersomnia, which is similar to, but not quite the same as, narcolepsy. Difference is no cataplexy, and my sleep cycles are apparently normal, but I seem to have many of the other symptoms.

I can't drive, safely cook (I've started a kitchen fire), cross the street, or generally function without medication. And as you can imagine, my job performance sucks without medication -- I've been in the same department since 1996, and used to joke I could do my job asleep, but it turns out, after testing this theory, that this is not actually true. (Google "microsleep" ... much is explained. Not much is solved, but much is explained.)

Anyway.

Insurance won't cover the meds. They're all prior approval and it's an off label use. They're approved for narcolepsy, and hypersomnia isn't listed. Though I have a large stack of medical research papers and pages printed from medical books referencing Provigil as a successful and/or suggested treatment. It's just not FDA approved.

Yet I clearly need to be treated, before I become road kill in a crosswalk or burn my house down.

This is me, beating my head against the wall. This is also why I've been largely absent from many of my usual haunts online, and why various projects online have been neglected lately ...

#138 ::: Terry Karney

Carol Kimball: Why slack-jawed? There are several indian cheeses. (paneer is the one most commonly encountered).

Yeah, I've even had paneer more than once. I should have made clear that I was enjoying some Stilton at the time, and my head was riffing on various pungent blues in various curry blends.

ML commenters make such lightning-fast leaps that I forget you're not telepathic.

The thread started with a reference to Limburg, after all!

#153: That Dim Sum place isn't too far from work, and groups of cow-orkers lunch there now and then.

Cygnet @172,

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.

Have you been to the forums at Dr Bob? If not, I'd recommend it as the medicine forum/website with the best discussions of psychiatry / brain function / situations like yours. The participants are informed and helpful. A quick search shows discussions of provigil+hypersomnia, and I'd assume the people with that could give advice on any insurance fights they fought.

Dave Bell, Serge:

Wottinhell is an amateur dictator?

joXn @ 167:

For all their faults, I'm impressed with the technical achievement of Microsoft retaining so much backward compatibility with Windows. Their marketing and lot of their other stuff, not so much. I've been reading The Old New Thing for a while, and it's amazing some of the things that software developers do that Microsoft has to continue to support.

The Mac and Linux attitude is basically that they'll keep changing stuff, because the new stuff is, of course, better (new is always better, right?), and the programmers will have to race to fix their software. And if the company that made your software ten years ago isn't around any more, oh well.

That said, modern Linux systems are capable of running ancient versions of Netscape Navigator, provided they have the right libraries installed.

Cygnet @ 172:

Best wishes for having your insurance company see the light. I hope you can get what you need.

NONONONONONONONO!!!

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Government-IT/McDowell-to-Stay-on-FCC-604897/

...President Obama nominates Republican Robert McDowell for another term [on the Federal Communications Commission] while he awaits Senate confirmation hearings on Julius Genachowski to serve as FCC chairman and Mignon L. Clyburn to fill the seat of the departing Jonathan Adelstein.

President Obama's FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is slowly—very slowly—taking shape. Obama June 2 nominated Republican Robert McDowell to serve another term on the FCC, leaving the normally five-person independent regulatory agency that is at the nexus of most Internet-related issues still shorthanded....

THROW 'EM ALL OUT!! OUT, OUT, OUT, OUT!!!!!!!!!
And purge every single military officer who did NOT object to the actions the past decade plus of the evangelizers such as Lt Gen Boykin, and the "leadership" at the Air Force Academy, the Pentagon, the US Military Academy, etc., who were forcefeeding evangelizing Christianity through the US military....

#160 albatross

Back before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Afghanistan had women who were university professors, judges, MDs... as opposed to the situaton today where girls under the age of TEN get sold into marriages, and Taliban resurgent blows up schools that have any female students.

Yeah, right, sure, "It can't happen here." Tell that to the women in Iraq, that the same things has happened to discourtesy of the USA particularly....

Cygnet @ 172

I went through a similar exercise a few months ago with an insurance company that insisted that an approved surgical procedure was "experimental". My advice is to find a lawyer who's experienced in dealing with health insurance issues. If having the lawyer do all the work is a financial burden (it cost me a lot to go through 2 appeals), you can at least get some advice and have them write a letter to the insurance company, so they know you mean business. My lawyer was also able to connect me with a marketing person at the company that made the prosthesis installed by the procedure, who gave me a stack of medical literature and clinical study papers.

Good Luck, Good Luck, Good Luck, Cygnet!

Thanks, Niall McAuley @116 &144.

Paula Lieberman @ 180

And if Afghanistan smacks too much of the third world to be a convincing example*, consider the case of Iran, which was before the Revolution, and to a large extent still is, an advanced, cosmopolitan nation. There was a period after the overthrow of Reza Pahlavi when women wearing "indecent" attire on the street were in danger of beating or even rape by vigilantes. AFICT those days are long gone, but Iran is an example that shows that reactionary treatment of women can occur in even tolerant societies when religious zealots attain power.

* I don't say that's true, but a lot of people in the US are convinced of it.

Xopher @ 128
I have it going in three different tabs right now, with overlapping music. I love this. I now have something to do today.

John Mark Ockerbloom @72- Impressive man.

The book review you link too is an ...interesting read, though.

Nicole J Leboeuf-Little @ 171... this is a world ruled by mad science!

Indeed. They even have robots who design attires for the up-and-coming mad("They laughed at me!")mad scientists. Unfortunately for the robot, and fortunately for fashion, everybody ignores their designs.

Bruce @177

Not during working hours.

(He was a lingerie designer.)

Dave Bell @ 170... Bruce Cohen @ 177... No self-respecting dictators should wear shorts. Or tights. As for the dictators who hate themselves...

Carry S. @ #58: I think I know that restaurant! It's really hard to get to (or seemed that way to me) with inadequate parking and as I recall it doesn't really even look like a restaurant. The food is great, though. I went a couple of times with my brother and his family while I lived near Pittsburgh, and we always ordered off the Korean menu. Mmm, bulgogi.

My brother and SIL adopted a boy from Korea as their third son (he's adorable and brilliant, just like my other two nephews). My SIL's cooking is heavily Korean now and it's excellent. I even like kim chi in small doses. :) I've moved back to Tennessee now and miss the Korean food--needless to say, it's hard to come by here. I really ought to get a good Korean cookbook and try some of the recipes.

Now I'm starving.

Cygnet @ 172... My best wishes.

Cygnet @ 172 -- You say that your insurance won't cover it. How many rounds have you gone? Is your insurance employer-provided, and if so, have you got your HR department to bang on the insurance company some?

You have my total sympathy; situations like this suck beyond belief. But it's my experience that sometimes supposedly ironclad policies retreat when they encounter certain kinds of pushback. Apologies in advance if you've already explored all those options.

Via Pharyngula, a cartoon: MythTickle.

David Goldfarb @156:
Congratulations on the move!

I look forward to hearing from you as you get your feet back under you. Having done a major move a couple of years ago, I certainly found the ML community gave me some much-needed social continuity in a new situation. I hope we can do the same for you.

Dave Bell @157:

Turns out that if you're an EU citizen you can choose whether to vote in the European Parliament elections in your country of citizenship or your country of residence. Since we've pretty well entirely pulled up roots from the UK, we both transferred our votes to the Netherlands.

Last night, the "kieskompas" site that I referred to at the time of the water board elections was crashing intermittently, but both of us managed to extract enough information to know how we wanted to vote in the election. (Our initial position was, "not the party of Geert Wilders," but we got more sophisticated from there.)

We went for GroenLinks (English Wiki article). They had a few important characteristics: they're pro-European integration, they are against sacrificing civil rights for security, and (of course) they're pro-environment. It's a redistributionist party, which wouldn't fly in the US, but makes sense within this society.

Serge @188

I can't help thinking that Wodehouse knew about this picture.

What does everyone here do when they begin to feel completely overwhelmed, near to mental paralysis, by events and/or circumstances in their life? Quite frankly, I'm about there. Oh, I know that "this too shall pass", at least intellectually, but that doesn't make the present any easier to deal with, nor lessen the stress. Not to mention that I'm more than a little concerned with what manner of things may occur between now and said passing.

If this were an LJ entry, I'd have tagged it "money, the economy, work, worry, help".

Cygnet @172:

I'm afraid I can't offer much more than tea (Dave Bell brought it into the thread, so I reckon I can hand it round) and sympathy. I think that both Bruce and PNH, who have experience, are right. Push back, and keep pushing.

And keep us posted.

Dave Bell @ 195... I rest my case, regarding the dictates of dictatorial and sartorial splendor.

Summer Storms @196:
What does everyone here do when they begin to feel completely overwhelmed, near to mental paralysis, by events and/or circumstances in their life?

That was much of my February, for no good reason.

What I do is to run a bath hot enough to turn me lobster-red and take a book in with me (usually Georgette Heyer, but YMMV). Then I go to bed early enough to get a good night's sleep, and reassure myself that I'll be more able to face things in the morning. I've learned over the years that I do have more courage the morning after a night's sleep than I do at the end of the day.

Then, on a sunny non-working morning after a good night's sleep, I sit down with the beverage of my choice and look at things methodically and rationally. I name my fears, or write them down. I discuss them with my better half, because we tend to peak and trough off-synch with one another. That's the time to make contingency plans, investigate options, and evaluate circumstances.

I don't know if the particulars there really help. But the key thing is that you will be more optimistic, braver and more calm if you're warm enough and well rested.

Good luck. It's tough times.

Dave Bell @157, Abi @194:

Belgium votes on Sunday (voting is mandatory here). The thought of electing the current choices to office is quite upsetting. I remember how flabbergasted I was to learn that there was no such thing as a federal party here, only regional ones - and we can only vote for parties in our region. (An Economist article discussing the north-south divide seems to have ignored this little detail.)

Kieskompas (known here as EU Profiler tells me that I'm closest ideologically to GroenLinks and a Slovenian party, and that the Belgian Green party is actually much (i.e. edge-of-chart) further to the left than my own leanings.

One moment in the run-up to the elections stands clearly in my mind, though. As I left the supermarket one day, two women asked me if I would mind signing a petition to allow the far-right National Front party to run. I almost asked them if they'd boot me out of the country once they took over*, but politely declined instead.

*I am often mistaken for Chinese.

Summer Storms @ 196...

What do I do, in situations like that? I come to ML and I read and I post, and I get joy out of that. Also, I focus on things over which I have some control and, even if they are small things, they alleviate the despair.

I hope things improve soon for you.

Summer Storms @ #196:

Thought is good. Thinking long and hard about your problems is good.

Worry is bad. I very much agree with abi that things look better after a warm night's sleep, and a corollary is that things feel much worse at 3 am, when you're lying awake in bed worrying, and trying not to disturb the other half. My own recipe is no news shows or other depressing fare before bed, stick to mind candy (like Stargate, in my case) and a few glasses of something Champagnoise.

No, it's not a permanent solution, but your problems will seem a lot less permanent if you get a peaceful nights sleep.

Abi,

That sounds heavenly. Unfortunately, only a small portion of it is really feasible for me. I'd need a larger bathtub, a partner who doesn't get even more stressed than I do when discussing stressful things (and then I wind up having to handle both his stress and my own), and the ability to sleep well when stressed...

I've already done the naming of my fears (legion, but centering mainly on simply not being able to get by financially for the current month), the evaluation of circumstances (not good), and the investigation of options (few if any). I can't even come up with a contingency plan I can be sure will work. In short, I'm worried.

It isn't as though there aren't any bright spots at all: I had a good job interview on Monday, and it looks like I have a good chance at being hired, but I won't know for sure until at least tomorrow and possibly not until sometime next week, nor do I have any idea how many hours per week I'm going to get and how much I'll make. It's a restaurant job, because that is virtually all that is available here at present. My husband actually is employed in the same industry, across the street from the place where I interviewed, and his job is good, if underpaid, and - we fervently hope - will remain stable throughout this current recession. I'd love a good full time office support position again, but there are very few advertised here of late, and probably several hundred applicants for each one that is, especially in light of so many other businesses closing or downsizing in Northeast Ohio.

So it's back to waiting tables I go. Okay, I can deal with that. But what worries me is being able to eke out the next three to five weeks between now and when I begin to hit my stride in terms of earnings. I've just looked at my bills, and my bank account, and there's a gap I'm not at all comfortable with.

That's the short term.

The long term is that I had really, really, wanted to be on a reasonable career path by now. I'm nearly 45, I've done general office work for years, along with some occasional retail or restaurant work, and none of this is what I want to do long-term. But given the current economy, and the fallout of some spectacularly bad decisions made in my earlier years - some solely my own doing, others made for me by family members or other loved ones who misguidedly thought they were doing the right thing but weren't - I don't even have an opportunity at the moment to begin making a change in the direction I'd like to go. And, of course, looking back at my own decisions, both long-ago and recent, I am beginning to feel that almost every one of them has been wrong. That whenever I am faced with a choice, I ought to choose the opposite of the one that feels right to me, because going with what feels right has so often in the past turned out to be wrong in the long run. Of course, the decision to begin going in the opposite direction from what I usually do might well be wrong in itself, so...

The result of all this is that I'm feeling very, very stuck. Trapped. As though the situation in which I currently find myself, or one similar to it, is likely to keep repeating itself throughout my future, because I can't get a handle on changing my life enough to make a difference.

That has happened a lot to me over the last three years. Sometimes I forgive myself and allow myself to be paralyzed.

At night I go to bed in the dark. I say to myself "Breathe in" and I do. I say "Breathe out" and I do. Any time my mind goes to worry, I steer it back to breathing.

I take control of little things I *can* control.

I try not to talk myself out of out-of-the-box ideas. I make good bread; maybe people will buy my bread; I can make it at home at night with my kids; it may not make enough to pay the mortgage but it could pay for food or gas.

I play mindless reaction games on the internet.

Sara

Actually some of that sounds very familiar. I thought last year I had myself together and then three school districts went into hiring freezes. I was offered a job for this Fall as an actual teacher but I haven't gotten the paperwork yet and I have to make it until school starts.

I've started calling my creditors - car, mortgage, electricity. I tell them I think things are going to get better but right now things are terrible. So far they have all been understanding. I'm probably the only one who judges myself a failure or if they do then they keep it themselves and treat me politely.

Sara

When my mind races over to the bucket of useless frets, I try to focus it on planning* the Great SF Novel Featuring My One Brilliant Idea**.

My mind doesn't seem to care about that, though, so I distract it by thinking about sex instead.

* not writing it, obviously, or I'd be a world famous novelist by now.

** not telling, don't ask. Said too much already.

Sara, et al:

The main bills owing are the ones that are hardest to get leeway on. Rent and utilities. We don't have a car payment, thanks be to all divinities.

I do a few things that *ought* to be worth some money, such as sewing and making beaded jewelry, but I worry about being able to sell enough of that sort of thing in the time frame in which I need to do it, which of course paralyzes my thinking all over again... ack.

I'd like to talk to the Complaint Department about this incarnation. It seems to be defective, and is not what I ordered in any case.

Summer Storms @ 207:

When I'm in a position like yours (and I don't think anyone on Earth gets to the fine age you have achieved without at least a few crises!), I do just what you've done here: I reach out to borrow a little hope from other people, knowing that if I can hold on to at least a little hope, things will sort themselves out.

Somehow.

Then I open myself to possibilities I would never have planned for myself. You say you like sewing and bead-making. Fine. If you can't sleep at night because you're worried about paying for utilities, use some while you can to do some sewing or bead-making. While you're focused on something you enjoy, you may find the serenity to think through your options with a fresh viewpoint. At the very least, you'll have something to wear at a job interview or some beads to sell or... maybe you'll just have a little more courage to see what the future holds.

Because if you have the courage to transform molten glass into a thing of beauty, you must have a lot of possibilities in you that will turn into something truly wonderful.

Do you have a copy of your paperwork with that order for this lifetime, Summer (@207)? Without the paperwork, we can't process your complaint.

LLA:

Actually, I don't make the beads, I just make jewelry from them. And I do have to sleep sometime, else I'm useless during the day for anything that needs to be done around here. So far I'm still managing to sleep a bit... but I'm worried all my waking hours.

Tom:

I know it's here somewhere. *dives into an enormous file cabinet and begins digging through papers*

Dave Bell @ 195

Eulalie's! (i.e. Black Shorts!)

Deep sigh of pleasure.

Summer Storms @ 210:

Even better! Start making something outrageous during waking hours. Try something different using free daylight.

Do something so crazy and irrational that it puts your worries to shame and makes you want to laugh and cry and helps you hold on to hope just a little longer.

Ways I make the worrying stop*:
Make something concrete. Pillow slip, if I'm sewing, cross-stitch thing if I'm not saturated because it takes so long, thing made out of yarn if what I want is a big thing made out of yarn. Something that takes up enough brain that I can't worry, but not so much I can't do it when I've been worrying.
Books. Lately, lots of romance. I blame the Smart Bitches and Nora Roberts. Nothing that gets me really revved up-- I didn't read the Bujold rereads on Tor.com because just thinking about them made me too emotional/excited/feelingthings-- but nothing bad, either. Books that are flawed in ways I can think about while I'm reading them, to some extent, or in fact any book that I can read and also be thinking about as a background process.
Sleep.

You will notice that two of these three activities take care of front-of-brain and back-of-brain, or maybe front-and-middle-of-brain. The internet, not so much. I can spend hours on the internet and feel only wasted at the end. My coping strategies are all about distraction and making it impossible for me to keep running the same circles.

*These are not long-term good coping strategies for me right now.. I am dealing with this lately. It's suboptimal to read a book a day in the week leading up to one's thesis defense, after all.

Diatryma @213:

*Cracks whip* -- Get back to work on that thesis defense. I'm waiting to hear about what you've sewn as soon as you've got that degree!

#1, #7: and "cruse" in (admittedly archaic) english: vide tom o' bedlam; i believe it's there a bowl, probably made of wood; but it seems it may also be used for cup, bottle or jug. and though "crucible" is listed as being derived from the latin, "crux"...

Soon Lee @ 52 said:
As long as "Asian Fusion" is not "we've just added some sweet chilli sauce to it", but a genuine attempt at blending different culinary traditions, I could probably live with it*.

Here in Chicago (and not counting high-end, $40+-per-person-for-dinner sorts of restaurants), 'Asian Fusion' usually means, "We're Owned By Koreans, and we serve Chinese cliches, maki rolls, and some Thai stuff."

Also Soon Lee @ 52:
Re:"Halal Wok".
In Malaysia, there are places that serve halal Chinese food. Gives the Muslim majority peace of mind, that that they are not accidentally violating dietary laws.

On Devon Street* here in Chicago, there's a not inconsiderable number of Chinese joints with signs in the window proclaiming "Kosher and Halal" in multiple languages. So the observant Muslims AND the local Hasidic community can both order take-out with a clear conscience.

* Pronounced duh-VONN, not DEVV-uhn like the place in Britain. NB.

LLA, defense was yesterday, DifEq final is tomorrow, and today looks like a three-book day.

There's a reason I'm not getting a PhD right now. This isn't it, but it's connected.

Still building up courage to actually cut things. At last week's Breakfast, though, one woman was wearing her skirt from the same pattern and had advice, mostly on which pieces to cut along a fold, and another had brought three cut-out-to-be-sewn-there ones.
This skirt, this fabric.

I don't suppose there is any archaeological indication as to whether Lucius succeeded in taking Amaka out with his infernal exploding oven?

Andrew M: The new orthography of post revolutionary Russia was several things. There were some uses which were pointless (the hard sign behind several prepositions, which are only ever hard, the hard/soft short "ee", etc.).

The combination of those two signs was one of taking a pair of close phonemes, and deciding they were the same. Ukrainian still has the "i" letter, and rarely uses the "reversed N".

There was a moderate amount of social engineering in the change.

Cygnet @172: You mentioned that your sleep cycles seem normal, but have you been specifically screened for sleep apnea? I was completely hammered by a similar hypersomnia issue several years ago-- sleeping 12+ hours/day, unable to stay awake more than a few hours at a time and barely functional even then. CPAP has been downright miraculous for me, even though I still have to take Provigil every morning.

PNH @ 191 -- I'm on round three, I think. It got rejected at mail order after they asked for a diagnosis code, and then the prior approval was denied. I'm at the "reconsideration" level of fighting this.

And yeah. I know most of the tactics. The prescription benefits manager in question? Is my employer.

That I'm an employee adds a certain extra flavor of fury to the whole thing. You are right about "certain kinds of pushback working" (though not for the reasons people generally think) but I honestly have no idea if it will work in this case or not. No clue.

The fact that I am an employee doesn't help me get it approved. There's tens of thousands of us -- and I'm just a peon. However, I do have the advantage of understanding the process in fairly good detail.

Julie -- no sleep apnea, at all. Nada. There's no reason for this that they can identify.

Serge @ 198:

The best-dressed dictator evah!

Diatryma @ 217:

Congratulations on surviving your thesis defense (I hear this is the hardest part of the path to a PhD)!

Good luck tomorrow. If you're strong enough to master differential calculus at the graduate school level (I wasn't), making the skirt should be a breeze. And may I say, I wish I had a bottom half that could survive such a cute, sassy skirt? Those Amy Butler prints are lovely. They remind me of a number of William Morris' prints, as they've been interpreted by Liberty -- very cool and pretty; both modern and timeless.

Troll killing by xkcd

Bruce Cohen @ 222... Oh goodnes, yes. By the way, pbafvqrevat gung gur jubyr nssnve gheaf bhg gb or n qernz gur xvq vf univat, jung qbrf vg fnl nobhg gur yvgyr thl gung uvf zbz'f pbhagrecneg trgf qerffrq va frkl bhgsvgf?

David, #156: Yay, you're here! And just in time for ApolloCon, too (June 26-28) -- that'll help you connect with like-minded people fairly quickly.

Bruce, #183: Unfortunately, to many of the people who most need to understand this, Iran won't serve as a valid example either. "It won't happen here" because we're a Christian country, and only Muslims do that. Or because all Muslim countries are third-world, and therefore not comparable to us in any way. (You'd be amazed how many supposedly-educated Americans automatically classify any non-white-majority nation as "third world", especially those in the Middle East.) The neon-bright similarities between Christianist and Islamist extremism are invisible to them.

Summer Storms, #156: Being there, doing that; I was venting about some of it to a friend just this evening. His advice was this: The worse things look, the more important it is to take some time to care for yourself, because doing that will revitalize your ability to take care of all the other stuff. Otherwise the constant drag just sucks all the energy out of you, to the point where you can't muster enough to take care of what has to be done.

And @203: Okay, now I have a concrete suggestion to offer. See if there is anything resembling public-health-based counseling in your area. If there is, it's likely to charge on an income-based sliding scale, and after reading what you wrote here, I believe that having a professionally-trained Reality Check might do you a lot of good, especially WRT to the bit about not trusting your own judgment any more.

Also, you're far from the only one to be not where you'd planned to be at this stage in your life, and I think you have to allow that some of the reason for that is that everybody in our social/income class has had their lives deliberately and thoroughly sabotaged by top-level policy decisions over which we had no control during the past 30 years. The American Dream has been turned from a realistic goal for a lot of the population into a carrot-on-a-stick with which to manipulate votes but never have to follow thru. IOW, it's NOT all your fault, or your family's either, though both of those things may have exacerbated the damage.

Summer Storms,

All the previous advice is very good, and it does help when it feels like you've just gone down the wrong road and screwed yourself completely. One thing that's hard, but very important: keep a daily routine, especially your sleep schedule. As a veteran of several depressions brought on by feeling boxed in by my own choices and the world's disdain for them, I can tell you that getting into sleeping longer than usual or at odd times can easily lead to physical distress to add to the mental and emotional.

Lee,

Actually, if I want to get counseling (and the though has been in the back of my mind for a couple of weeks) I do have coverage for that via the benefits package from D's employer. He doesn't get paid a lot, but the benefits for both of us are decent. I may well avail myself of that once I get things sorted enough that I know I can make and keep an appointment (read: once I know what my own schedule is looking like, and have also had time to look through the coverage to see who I am able to go and see.) Because I definitely do need to get some grounding on whether or not I can or should trust my own inner compass anymore, or whether it has come completely unstuck.

Summer Storms @ 228:

If I may be so bold as to be bold on your behalf, I think Lee is right. Put yourself first enough to make the appointment, if you have the ability to do so. You can always cancel it, but having a medical professional give you the advice of saying that it's okay to freak out when your life is out of control can be remarkably freeing.

And talking to someone face-to-face can give you confidence that they're not just shining you on (which I don't think is happening -- there's a reason the '30s were called The Great "Depression" -- and that I wish newspapers weren't calling this just a "recession").

Lee @ 226:

You're probably right. Certainly that's the sort of parochial view I see all too often here in the US, even from some educated people who ought to know better.

[vent]
Damn it, there are cultures that have survived wars, changes in technology, and even complete religious conversions, as major centers of civilization for far longer than the "American" culture, or even Western Europe as a whole. Persians built an empire that spanned most of the known world, and developed advanced ethical and moral systems more than 2,500 years ago, and much of that culture remains in Iran. China did something similar a little less than 2,000 years ago, and, again, much of that remains. Western Europe was a howling wilderness for several centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, and the culture we've inherited in the West inherits from Rome more in name than in fact. Ironically, much of our knowledge of the intellect of Rome and Greece was preserved by Islamic scholars when copyists in European monasteries were recycling (or burning) scrolls containing that knowledge.

[/vent]

Sorry, it just gets to me occasionally.

Bruce Cohen @ 230... Western Europe was a howling wilderness for several centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire

Thanks to the likes of Attila the Hun...

Summer Storms:

Minor accomplishments help a lot, I find. I'm a clutterer so when I'm really down, doing the dishes, putting away laundry or clearing the desk make me feel better right away. Georgette-Heyer-and-hot-bath* helps immensely when I'm just feeling under the weather, but when I get to the icky-panic stage, I get a crushing sense of guilt for being frivolous and wasting time and not taking problems seriously and *gasp* enjoying myself, even though I know I shouldn't. In that case, I need to do something that feels useful but not fun, like ironing or pulling weeds.

Anything that breaks down something huge and insurmountable to small, manageable pieces helps.

I also echo Bruce Cohen (STM)'s advice to keep a daily routine and stick to it. The thing that really dragged me out of a bout of depression and rebuilt confidence was showing up every day at my sister's shop to help her with small tasks like arranging the displays in the shop window and sorting the merchandise. It did more for me than any SSRI ever did.

*glad to know I'm not the only one! Bought a batch of old Pan editions like the ones I grew up with off eBay, and have been relishing them for the past week.

I do a few things that *ought* to be worth some money, such as sewing and making beaded jewelry, but I worry about being able to sell enough of that sort of thing

Do you know about Etsy? A place to sell stuff like that to a wider audience than you'd get at the local consignment shop.

Summer Storms: one tiny concrete suggestion from me.

If I were you, and if your new employer's dress code allows it, I would wear my own bead-creations to work every day. This will put your work in front of a lot of people who might want to buy one ("Where'd you get your necklace?" "I made it."), without costing you any extra time or money.

Good luck. As has been said above, a hell of a lot of us aren't where we wanted to be right now, so at the very least there are plenty of people in a position to sympathize.

Conmiserations, Summer Storms and sarah k.

Niall McAuley @202, Thought is good. Thinking long and hard about your problems is good.

Worry is bad.

Generally right, but what if thinking very, very hard about your problems leads you to the logical conclusion that you don't really have any options?

There are always options, Raphael. Sometimes there aren't any good options, but there are always options. And some of those options will be better (under appropriate definitions of better) than others.

Paula #180:

Fair enough. "Politically impossible" means something like "it would take huge and disruptive political changes for this to be done," not "this cannot happen." And it's fair to note that, had you asked me 15 years ago, I'd have said both widespread gay marriage and a black president were politically impossible, just as a sensible person 50 years ago would have said that about ending legally-sanctioned racial discrimination.

I am awed by the scale of social change this stuff represents. Obama's mother and father would have been taking a serious risk of violence by appearing together as a couple in many parts of the US, when they were together. (In many states where they would have risked arrest or mob violence, their son won the majority of the votes.) At the same time, most of the country was not safe for an openly gay couple to show affection in public. Now, several states recognize gay marriages, it's a divisive issue in many more, and openly gay public figures are commonplace. This was moonbat stuff even 20 years ago, now it's in the center of the debate.

At the same time, GM is in bankruptcy, AT&T and IBM are shadows of their former selves, and companies that didn't exist or were obscure small companies of no great importance 30 years ago, like Microsoft and Cisco and Google and Intel, are world-defining powerhouses. The exponential curve of social and political and economic and techological change continues upward, and the horizon of possible predictions grows shorter each year. Imagine a science fiction story written 50 years ago like

Joe sat at the cafe with Fred, in the middle of one of their endless marital spats. Joe busied himself downloading music onto his handheld computer/phone/camera/music player, not meeting his angry husband's eyes.

"Goddamnit Joe," Fred said in a low voice, "How could you have put half our goddamn retirement into the stock of a shitty company like GM? And the rest into bank stocks? Jesus, are you nuts? Now that our house is worth half what we paid for it, what are we going to do when it's time for you to retire in a few years?"

The waiter, a rather cute black college kid about 20 years old, came to take their order. Joe smiled despite himself at the huge button of the president on the kid's lapel--he and the president could almost have been brothers...if the kid had been about six inches taller, and a bit better looking. Joe ordered something absently for both of them, leaving Fred to his muttering about financial disaster.

After a long time, Joe pulled up the latest images from the moons of Saturn on his handheld computer, and showed them to Fred. Space-geekiness won out over middle-aged worry about retirement for the moment, and they spent the next half hour in companionable silence, looking at the breathtaking pictures and eating their lunch, letting the tension between them fade a bit. Somehow, though, Joe knew the topic would come up again soon. He just didn't know what to do about it.

Written 50 years ago, this would be radical left-wing speculation, right? As would a straight description of, say, an office party where I work. The research, management, and support staff a wild mix of different races and sexes? Female mathematicians and engineers and scientists doing lots of the research and work? Half the staff East or South Asian or Latin American, and a good fraction of the US-born staff black? C'Mon--that crap will never happen, that's like something out of science fiction.

Remember last week when Abi asked if we were in the process of making things. I just spent all of Sunday, and the evenings of Monday thru Wednesday, on such an act of making, from which the only bodily damage I incured was a pinched fingertip and the loss of some flesh off one knuckle.

"The Stairs My Destination"

Summer Storms: recently faced a similar situation, but of less magnitude from the sounds of it. First thing I do is cut my caffeine intake down to a cup a day at most, or entirely eliminate it if that doesn't help. If I'm still paralysed by panic, I renew my prescription for beta blockers - they work wonders at keeping my heartrate down and stopping me grinding my teeth to a paste. My problems, though, are very much tied up with this disorder...

Self-nitpick: Before wandering off into a tangent about the amazing speed of change, I was intending to agree with Paula and Bruce. My sense is that if politics and society continues in more-or-less its current form, the progress toward gay marriage will probably not be reversed, because the size of the constituency for it grows each year, and because the size of people freaked out by the thought of it goes down as more people know a gay couple or two. But much that was unthinkable has happened in the last 50 years, and more will. It's too damned easy to assume that the stuff you've grown up with is unchangeable, and that's a form of blindness. Let things go south far enough, and God knows what will happen in US politics.

On beads -- I have not had much luck selling high end beadwork. I sell a lot of child-sized bracelets for a couple of bucks each, a price which about covers the cost of the materials.(My pay is the grin on the kid's face.) And a lot of earrings for $1 with a profit margin of about $.75, made with plastic beads and surgical steel french wires ... but the more expensive stuff just isn't moving.

I've tried everything, including showing up at a farmer's market with trays of beads and custom making the necklaces on the spot to the buyer's specifications.

Most buyers underestimate the cost of materials or the labor involved. I may have $20 wholesale in materials in a necklace and the buyer only wants to pay $5 for the whole necklace -- I've quizzed a few people and there seems to be a perception that beads cost pennies each when we're talking about things like natural turquoise and amethyst, crystal, and hand blown glass. And they're not willing to pay a price that would cover my wholesale cost, much less my labor.

Summer Storms:

Call your utility companies -- often they will work out a budget plan with you, and some have programs to help pay the bills.

As for rent -- can you get your landlord to let you pay it bi-weekly?

If you are a member of an organized religion, talk to your pastor/priest/rabbi, they can be a major link to assistance. If not, try meditation classes. If there is a Buddhist center* in your area many of them teach basic meditation practice at no cost to the student.

I went through a very bad patch in the months after 9/11/2001. The meditation course at KTC pulled me out of it. (My sister later told me she was about ready to take me to a psychiatrist -- I hadn't even realized that I was depressed.)

And this old Pagan will put you on her prayer list...

*No Buddhist center? Try getting Pema Chodron's book or audiobook "Start Where You Are."

Summer Storms, the advice offered here is far better than anything I could give, so instead I present you: Jensen Ackles dancing to "Eye of the Tiger". It never fails to cheer me up.

Sorry to be so negative earlier re: the beadwork. (Am actually awake now ... *sigh* ... maybe I should just go awol from the internet completely.)

Summer, do try selling your beadwork AT work. Every little bit helps. If you already have beads, you can make up some necklaces, offer to make other designs -- and don't forget that if a premade necklace doesn't sell, you can always dismantle it and you'll only be out the cost of the bead wire. You can make something else that might sell with the same components.

I just spent last weekend breaking down a whole bunch of jewelry that hadn't sold all winter at the swap meets. This satisfied a primal urge to destroy something (my mood is pretty ... pissed off ... at the moment) and I then sorted out all the beads, figured out what I had, and made some other things in different styles. The creative work following the destruction helped my mood immensely. Maybe they'll sell better ...

I find I'm in the same boat as Summer Storms. If things don't change within the next month, I'll be broke and homeless. I've got signed up with an employment agency, but I haven't received a call to work yet.

albatross @ 237, 241:

Another factor in changes like the acceptance of gays is a paraphrase of the Max Planck aphorism: "Culture advances one funeral at a time." The objectors die off, and their children don't understand what the parents were complaining about.

Some other factors:

* Since the inheritance of culture is like a giant game of "telephone", things change along the way in manners wondrous to behold, and completely unexpected.

* The great debates of one generation are often not resolved by the next; they're forgotten in favor of new and different great debates.

Cygnet, #241: You're running up against the Wal-Mart problem here, and part of the reason is that you're in the wrong kind of events. People who go to farmers' markets and church bazaars are looking for bargains, not quality. And these are the same people who will look at a piece of jewelry with real stones and sterling silver and say, "I could get something just like that at Wal-Mart for half the price."

You have a couple of options here. First option: if you want to continue doing low-end markets, you need to focus on low-end materials but charge just a bit more for them. If $1 covers your cost of materials for a kiddie bracelet, sell it for $2 -- that's still a low enough price point that it's not likely to generate sales resistance, but it's a fairer deal for you.

Second option: investigate higher-level selling venues. Check out your local art-supply store and see if there's a publication that lists arts and crafts events in your area, or any kind of artists' association -- or a local bead society that you could join. Check out local shows and see if the people selling bead jewelry are charging the sort of prices you need to charge, and then apply to the ones where they are. And I second the idea of an online store, Etsy or otherwise.

My impression is that Etsy will get you customers who take you seriously, while people watching you make the jewelry won't. It's easy, you're sitting right there doing it, I could do that, it's just a hobby for her, it doesn't matter a bit, why pay for it?

The advantage of the farmer's market is that you can take commissions right then-- but don't make them right then. You have to make it look as hard as it is.

Carrie, 233: Yes, I know about Etsy, and have been in the process of setting up something there.

Meanwhile, it occurs to me that I can link to a photo of one representative sample of my work, should anyone here be interested: A jewelry set I call "Peacock Dream" for the colors involved.

Raphael, 235: And I'm afraid that's where my thinking has, indeed, led me. Remaining where we are for the moment in terms of residence is crucial; we haven't another place to go. But if we are short the money for this round of rent, that may not be feasible, and so I worry.

SeanH, 239: I generally only have one cup of coffee most days anyway. Less than that and I have problems with focus (suspicion of a touch of adult ADD), more and I run the risk of insomnia. Alas, I have no prescriptions of any sort that might alleviate the stress reactions - my only ongoing prescription drug is Allegra for my allergies, taken only on those occasions when I am sneezing my head off from mold or pollen.

Cygnet, 241: And that worries me, too. Though in reading on, I agree with what Lee @247 and Diatryma @ 248 have said.

Lori Coulson, 242: I've already set up such programs with the utilities. The problem is that, this month, I lack the funds to completely pay the plan amounts this month. I really, really wish that one of the job interviews I had last month had worked out. Living in the Rust Belt is annoying enough when job-seeking; doing so in the midst of a depression/recession is moreso by several orders of magnitude.

Bi-weekly rent? Hmmm... I can ask. No guarantees, but perhaps. And I am not a member of a local church - I'm a Unitarian/eclectic Pagan, though I don't attend the nearest UU church (from which we actually did recieve some help several years ago when both D and I were laid off; can't really go to that well again, by their own rules). The UU congregation for which I have the most affinity is in a suburb way on the other side of town, and I hardly ever get there.

Wyman Cooke, 245: Yep, I feel you. I'm signed up with at least seven different employment agencies at the moment. Not a one of them has any assignments available, save one who keeps offering to send me on a call-center gig a 45-minute drive distant for a wage just over the cost of gas and wear on our 15 year-old car, and requiring schedule availability me anytime between 8 AM and 10:30 PM, thus effectively leaving D and my dad with no vehicle available to them should an emergency arise during the evening while I was working. I said no repeatedly, then when I wavered and consulted D, he told me in no uncertain terms that "no" was indeed the correct answer, by his lights. (By contrast, the restaurant job I just interviewed for is downtown, just a short bus ride from home. We live within spitting distance of the Cleveland business district; you really would think these agencies could find me something there.)

ETA: while typing this, I did receive a phone call from one of my agencies regarding a possible opening in a nearby suburb, part-time. It pays less than I need and far less than I have been accustomed to making, though in these times, that really can't be allowed to matter (and boy, do employers around here seem to know it!). I'm following up, but I have no idea how soon they will actually start someone.

And you can tell where I was interrupted. "requiring schedule availability me anytime" should not have that "me" in there.

(Eeep. Looks like I'd make in one month at that part-time job roughly what I used to make in just over a week on my last full-time job. Well, it's something, anyway. But there really do need to be some full-time admin assistant jobs in Cleveland soon.)

Serge at #238:

The Stairs, My Destination sits on my bookshelf next to my copy of The Room Has A Hard Mattress.

Summer Storms: Have you considered a position with the Federal Government?

USAJobs

The Defense Department and possibly the VA have listings in your area.

I'm actually planning on trying Etsy in the near future.

I've tried both really upscale and low end markets, for what it's worth, and overall, done about the same. When I factor in the cost of a space, I come out ahead at the low end markets. There's a "farmer's market" near me that is basically a giant yard sale on the local rural convenience store's parking lot and my best days have often been there -- and it only costs $4 a weekend.

Plus at the upscale markets it seems as if there's always drama. I'm not sure why.

Erik Nelson @ 252... Next to Clifford Simak's Settee?

John has a long moustache.

Bruce@246 writes: "The great debates of one generation are often not resolved by the next; they're forgotten in favor of new and different great debates."

Which reminds me, how *did* we finally settle that burning controversy over whether it was moral to marry your deceased wife's sister?

Cool:

High Population Density Triggers Cultural Explosions

ScienceDaily (June 5, 2009) — Increasing population density, rather than boosts in human brain power, appears to have catalysed the emergence of modern human behaviour, according to a new study by UCL (University College London) scientists published in the journal Science.

High population density leads to greater exchange of ideas and skills and prevents the loss of new innovations. It is this skill maintenance, combined with a greater probability of useful innovations, that led to modern human behaviour appearing at different times in different parts of the world.

Dave Bell @ 256...

"Molasses tomorrow will bring forth cognac."

(Oh, and I didn't realize that comedian Bourvil was in The Longest Day.)

Bercent mon coeur d'une langueur monotone

@Leva Cygnet, #254: If I have to guess, it's a combination of people who are a bit nervous shopping at places that do not have the familiar grocery-chain ambience; people who are there to fulfill a lifestyle fantasy while buying, selling, or spectating, who get upset when something disturbs their daydream; and relative newbies who have a lot riding financially on their sales while not being used to the crowding and the need for everybody to just get along. Plus a sprinkling of people who do not understand that the people in the booths are not minimum wage slaves who have to stand there and take it or get the boss all down their necks.

"Downscale" farmers' markets tend to attract more people who go to garage sales to look for baby clothes. They feel less out of place. Also the sellers tend to have sunk less money into packaging and displaying their product.

I second (third? fourth?) the Etsy recommendation. Like someone upthread said, you get more serious customers, who understand handmade goods are special. The only thing I would suggest further, is to try and find an unusual spin on your products, or try to fill a niche that still has some elbow-room in it.

Etsy has a high Quirk Factor (Sock monkey robot! Hell yes, I want a sock monkey robot!) So maybe try to exploit that expectation with personal twist to your pieces?

The following appeared in an article about the winner of the $232 million Powerball jackpot:

Neal Wanless, 23, said he intends to buy himself more room to roam and repay the kindness other townspeople have shown his family.

"I want to thank the Lord for giving me this opportunity and blessing me with this great fortune. I will not squander it," he promised, wearing a big black cowboy hat and a huge grin.

Xopher @ 263...

"Hello, handsome, is that a ten-gallon hat or are you just enjoying the show?"

If I won a jackpot like that, I most certainly would squander it. My favorite charities would suffer a ruthless tsunami of my terrifying benevolence....

Earl...all would love you, and despair?

Dear diary,

Today, the brush over the hill from my apartment caught fire. The fire department got it under control, and it should pretty much be out by now.

Also, Up is a wonderful film.

The street in front of the Great American Music Hall in SF exploded this morning, possibly due to awesomeness overload from last night's Amy X. Neuburg and the Cello ChiXtet show.

X@263 - HAHAHA, I read it like that, too. That's hilarious!

So hey, I got my office set up in the carriage house today -- and nothing caught fire or exploded! So really, that was kind of a boring update, and I apologize to you all. But getting set up there allowed me to spend some quality time mopping the ceilings.

I've never actually had to mop ceilings before. This little apartment, while charming, is breaking new ground in my experience of dirt.

Can the all-knowing denizens of the fluorosphere point me to a list of supplies and instructions for electrochemical etching, please?

I need to etch steel, but don't want to pay for an Etch-O-matic AND the stencil maker, just to find out I could have done it better at home with a bottle of vinegar and the static I built up from scuffing my socks on the carpet. Well, VISA doesn't want to pay for it, and I work for VISA.

It has to be a really clean mark, and fairly intricate, in a small amount of space.

Summer Storms -

Have you been checking your local Craigslist for office work? I see that a lot of the listings there are part-time, but not all. Might be worth a shot.

I feel your pain very much; I got laid off in February and have been looking ever since. (My issue right now is that I'm neither an expert specialist nor entry-level, which are more fertile fields at present here in the Baltimore area.) I'm okay for the moment with unemployment, but sooner or later time will run out on that, and I'm trying not to feel too stressed about it. (And I'm in a better situation than many, simply because I have the kind of family connections that mean I'll never be homeless, but having to move away from the home we've made and love would still suck. A lot.)

J Austin @ 270 ...
the steampunk workshop has several links for electrochemical etching on site and off...

Summer Storms: I don't know if it would work for you, but if you're talking about a one-time stopgap measure, have you considered throwing a rent party?

Maybe a small cover charge for a marathon viewing of a dvd set, or an in-house audience participation Rocky Horror, or a best macaroni-and-cheese contest could end with a prize of a beaded piece that you've already made?

I think lots of people would like to help, but we don't want to ask, or offer, for fear of insult. Something like a rent party helps make it easier for everyone.

Also fourthing or fifthing Etsy - I'm not any kind of a power seller, but it bought the groceries this month. (Next month, who knows?)

Good luck!

Sharon, you know, that might be the ticket. I'd have to wait two weeks, because the majority of my whole crew of people who'd be invited will be busy with an SCA event next weekend (as many of them are this weekend. But if I can get enough leeway to get from now until then, I can probably pull that off, or at least try. It wouldn't garner me a lot - maybe fifty or sixty dollars, since I can't fit more than about a dozen people into this place to begin with, but it might help a little.

It's something to think about, anyway.

Xeger, you are absolutely my hero. You'll have to give me your address, so I can send you a prize. As in, you have to.

And as far as anyone offering to help, I'd never be insulted by that. Especially not when I'm making my problems public. (I'm reasonably sure most of my local friends know that, but I could be wrong.)

xeger @ 272... The Byronic Woman? Oh goodness.

[GROUSE] How is it that I've managed to break more things smashingly (crockery, glass, windows) in the past few weeks than I've broken in the rest of my life?!!!! This isn't the sort of smashingly good time I'd like to be having! It's loud, messy, annoying to clean up after, and annoying to fix!!! [/GROUSE]

Right :) That's much better now... or something ;)

#277 ::: Serge @ 277 ...
xeger @ 272... The Byronic Woman? Oh goodness.

It's absolutely something to Babbage on about...

xeger @ 279... It's absolutely something to Babbage on about...

Not even cog-ently?

Serge @ 280 ...
Well... it's hard to make a Difference...

If you do throw a rent party, try to get these guys to come. Rent parties is how they got started in music.

xeger @ 281... "Make a Difference, join the Vise Squad."

Serge @ 283 ... "Get a grip on yourself, man!"

xeger @ 284... Some would say THAT's definitely a case for the aforementionned Vise Squad.

#237 albatross

The US military leadership is full of Christian Dominionists who have no respect and no tolerance for freedom of religons and various other original US basic legal values. The scandals at the Air Force Academy regarding cashiering of a female Protestant chaplain who complained about religious zealot/bigot evangelizing chaplains and the leaders of the Air Force Academy promoting the proselytizing and discriminating based on religion and mistreating those objectinng to the situation, and of the abuse of female cadets (the Southern Baptist statements of belief make it very clear that female cadets at military academies aspiring to be military officers who are anythign other then administrative support and nurses and such, are Unnatural Beings" and are living erroneous offensive lives....) the husband and men in general are the lords and master, the wife and women in general are submissive and bound to male leadership and follwing the directions of the husband. There should be a loving relationship... but the place of women in that mindset is submissive and subordinate and not leading that includes being in charge of/commanding men.

And those appointed to leadership roles by the 2001-2008 junta and by the Republithug Congress even before then, got promoted in what seems to be a lot of cases on the basis of ideology/credo/religions and social bigotry

It fostered the atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere--there was at least one Afghan who allowed the US forces to "detain" in in good faith on HIS part that the error would be swiftly corrected--that he was not a terrorist and the USA would send him home none the worse for wear--who died being tortured by apparently a contractor of the CIA's who among other things was using techniques like waterboarding. There were rumors of at leats one mass murder of prisoners in Afghanistan, trucked to a site and machine-gunned.

There have been multiple rapes, and multiple murders, of women in the US military by male military members, and coverups done claiming that it was anything except pre-meditated rape and/or murder--and blame the victim policies were fully in place and on-going.

The state of the US military when I was an active duty officer, was a far different mindset--the Air Force Academy was NOT a de facto sectarian institution promoting evangelical Christianity and marginalizing/evangelizing those identified as failing to be sufficiently zealous as complying with evangelical Christian attitudes and values and faith. The Air Force Academy was MUCH more solicitous of the well-being of female cadets (who were new on the campus.... the Southern Male Chauvinist Protective Association Network was very much still in the military, but the US Congress was not in a tolerant mood regarding it--Congress had mandated opening the military academies to women, and was watchingwatching -- as opposed to the infestation of rightwing misogynist freedom-hating Republithugs which occurred later, and then that surpassing collection of human excrement that was in power 2001-2008 in the Executive Branch of US Government, as regards compliance with the basic ideals, values, and WORDS of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights....

James Dobson did NOT have free run of the US Executive Branch and his minions inserted deeply into the operations of the Air Force Academy, and the US Air Force Academy did NOT support and facilitate cadets being indoctrinated by religious bigots.... (there are military retirees who seem to have special perks for that sort of thing, I didn';t save the link of one such that I found--the fellow is an ardent proselytizer and intolerant bigot, and his house ought to be declared OFFLIMITS rather than his essentially hatemongering provocateur self be person grat at the Academy, and instead of him supported by senior Academy officials and policy....

The US Judicial Branch was not packed with the apparatchiks by Bush I and his vile offspring with the vile offspring's nominees picked on the basis of in large part Christian Dominionship values and dogma, and rubberstamped by a sectarian partisan bigot-promoting legislators. (Good RIDDANCE to such skuz as Rick Santorum, alas that the riddance hadn't occurred years earlier).

Clinton barely got an judicial nominee confirmed his last several years in office, and there were lots of empty judiciary seats--filled instead by the vile offspring [Purim celebration involves drowning on the name of a certain figure in noise with the children brandishing mechanical noisemakers with great glee, and the figure's sons are a challenge to the officiating person to recite, because the tradition is that all ten names must be recited in one breath--their not being WORTH more than on breath, collectively... vile offspring metaphorically raped the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, and took actions which caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and the displacement of millions] with the Christian Dominionist influence.... and there aren;t term limits on federal judge, and many of them were/are YOUNG....

xeger... Back to steampunk... I watched Captain Nemo and the Underwater City last night. I like the movie in spite of itself. It had the germ of a good idea, but the storytelling was a bit deficient. Also, just because Nemo is a scientific genius who found a way to extract gold particles out of sea water, does he have to use it everywhere in his aquatic utopia? I have some doubts about the floatability of a submarine that's gold-plated. One other thing: when one of the people you rescued from a shipwreck tells you he reallyreallyreally is agoraphobic, do pay attention before the rescuee tries to punch a hole in the city's dome.

Serge@287: That sounds like fun--is it one of SciFi channel's...um...offerings?

An account of how the BBC sents its first reporters to D-Day.

J Austin @ 288... Actually, no. It's a big-screen MGM production from 1969 starring Robert Ryan as Captain Nemo. You can read about it here. (And yes, I meant claustrophobia, not agoraphobia, in that earlier comment. My brain must have slipped a cog.)

Political hypcrisy:

Senator Sessions of Alabama's speech today, condemning Pres. Obama's comments about the experience and personal views of judge influencing their judicial decisions, versus Sessions' assertion of the value of "impartial views," is so utterly hypocritical and obnoxious.... Sessions had no such objections to the likes of Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, and Alito, who never let such impartial values such as freedom of religion and speech and equal treatment under the law prevent them from limiting medical procedures and freedom of action and redress allowed in the USA, based solely on the credo of their religion's directives about such things as "human life" and placing the value of "naturally fertilized" blastulas and non-viable fetuses as having absolute priority for occupying women's bodies regardless of threats and danger to the women in pregnancy, upon their personal views regarding corporations versus live physical citizens (favoring corporations), and having no mercy seasoning justice for cases such as pernicious long-term gross gender discrimination in pay and benefits underpaying women and denying benefites to them, where the women didn't have the proof available until very late of the
systematic lawbreaking--Alito, Scalia, Kennedy, and Roberts never had their pay and promotion and benefits shortchanged because they were women, their experience was all of white Christian males--social majority-given every benefit and advantage and networking boost culminating to their placement by people that included a surfeit of narrow-minded misogynistic corporatist religiously intolerant white male anti-diversity bigots on the Supreme Court, at ages generally far younger than reasonable for giving someone a life appointment to the Supreme Court.

Said the hypocrite from Alabama, "If a judge is allowed to inject his personal views.... does he not have a right to inject...." He didn't object to Alito and Scalia and Roberts and Kennedy inflicting Papal ukases where it suited Scalia and Robert and Kennedy as legal interpretation of the Law in the USA despite the Bill of Rights specifically banning state religion and imposition of rule of specific religion on the citizenry. He didn't object to Alito and Scalia and Roberts' favoring of corporations over live people, and their disdain for the quality of life of women generally, regarding unequal pay and promotion opportunity and legal redress. He didn't object to Alito and Scalia and Roberts however idiosyncratically, placing their religion's precepts above the words in the US Constitution, and Alito specifically saying that he does so and doesn't care what the words of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights say... even though the most recent several includng the current Pope condemn the death penalty, and he supports it.

Sessions is a massive offensive, Constitution and Bill of Rights-spiting noxious hypocrite, and so are Anton Scalia, Samuel Alito, John Roberts, andto a somewhat but only somewhat less degree, Judge Kennedy.

And what bothers me about the current nominee, include
1) her decision that the US Government be allowed to ban US funding UN health care programs on the basis purely of discriminatory sectarian-based criteria of objection to inclusion of birth control and medical procedures based again on
2) the plurality if not majority of the US population is non-Dominionist Protestant Christian. A majority already of members of the Supreme Court are Roman Catholics. The new nominee I think is another Catholic, and the Catholics already on the bench, have shown unambiguously that when it comes to subjects such as family planning and rights of homosexuals to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the views of their religion is what they impose on the entire USA. I fear that the new nominee would do the same or be strongly influenced to do so. I want a judge that will stay OUT of people's bodies and bedrooms and let "salvation" be individuals' free choices as to methods and even whether the individual believes in it and seeks it. I want a judge who will work for the COMMON wealth and well-being, and not play games regarding imposing their sectarian parochialism on others, not allow the few who bilk the many to continue bilking and keep the proceeds of their bilkings, not promote the agenda of Privilege over the well-being of the many.... I want a judge who will not impose their religious beliefs concerning salvation or lack thereof, sexual relations among consenting adults, control over one's own life including reproduction, and proselytizing as regards others not wanting it not being harassed by it, etc., upon others. (Timothy LaHaye and others regard it as their bound duty to Witness at anyone who is not of their specific faith, up to and including the Dalai Lama! I remain thankful to the current Pope and his predecessor, for saying explicitly that Roman Catholics should refrain from evangelizing Jews....)

Basically, I want judges who respect other people's rights to self-determination and lifestyles and religions and creed etc., and judge based on plurality and diversity and maximizing "win-win." Alito and Scalia and Roberts and Thomas and Kennedy seems to be almost Manichean as regards looking at society as a zero-sum game in which the winner, generally whitish Christian corporate male privilege, takes all and whatever scraps get left magnanimously behind get divided amongst those without the taste or gumption to be male Christians....

"We the People of the United States of America" have been perniciously insulted and marginalized by Clarence Thomas, Anton Scalia, John Roberts, and Samuel Alito, particularly the women of the United States of America. The four of them, plus usually Justice Kennedy also, have shoved aside the spirit and word of the Constitution and Bill of Rights regarding freedom of religon, freedom from government instrusion into personal life and liberty and from searches without warrants, and regarding emancipation of women as citizens with full rights no different than those of white males....

I don't fear that the nominee will suppress the rights of women, but I am concerned regarding imposition of the teachings of specific religions as US law.

About that most recent sidelight: 4B and 7A are definitely Foucault.

In 7A, he misspelled a word on his shirt, so apply s/or/uc/ for better results.

Serge@290:
Because I lived with my grandparents for a few years, I watched a lot of old movies (on top of an unreasoning fondness for truly bad movies--Ator the Fighting Eagle, anyone?)

I started in again with Errol Flynn's "Captain Blood" a couple weeks ago;)

Oh, speaking of classics of both good and bad, did you know Rutger Hauer has written a book?

Just an aside of thanks to James D -- I had occasion yesterday to convince a 90 year old woman (a friend's mother) that it was entirely appropriate for her to go to the emergency room with a serious (3x6") patch of skin pulled away from her shin. She didn't go until after a 12-hour plane trip from Florida to Seattle. She'd wrapped two Ace bandages on it, over a piece of tissue, and she thought that would be good enough. She let me take the Ace bandage off to clean it, and my immediate response on seeing it was "This is a job for professionals."

The emergency room folks were moderately busy, and it took an hour and a half for her to get seen; I was able to keep her and her daughter relatively calm throughout the whole thing. The nurse who prepped her thanked her for making his evening. She couldn't figure out why -- I pointed out that they don't see that many cases of relatively calm people with a problem that's worth them looking at, who can actually pay attention to what they say and treat them as professionals rather than miracle-workers.

James, your articles help me keep a grip on what's important, what's critical, and how to react to both of those. Getting this seen was important (she's going to get an appt with the Wound Clinic as soon as they open on Monday) and not immediately life-threatening (so I could explain to her quietly about the triage procedures and why it was taking them so long to see her on a Friday evening starting around 10 PM). Favorite relevant comment of the evening, from the Doctor: "That's adipose tissue -- see the shiny fat come out when I squeeze it a little?" Mother: "There's nothing wrong with that, is there?" Doctor: "Well, it's really not supposed to be visible. There should be skin over it. Other than that, no, there's nothing wrong."

The nurse had an amazing Gustav Klimt tattoo of the Tree of Life on his upper right arm. He commented to Mother that she was a very tough woman. He was right.

Anyway, James, thanks for helping me keep perspective and feel Really Good about calling in the professionals when I'm out of my depth.

J Austin @ 293... Was Ator the one with Miles O'Keefe? Just curious. I remember watching it, but not what was in it beyond its being really cheesy. This reminds me that I've never seen Krull since its original 1983 release. (I was tempted to use another cruder word, but found the strength to refrainf rom doing so.) Errol Flynn's Captain Blood definitely is many steps above those films in terms of quality.

As for Rutger's bio... I remember seeing that in bookstores last year. What is it like?

Seerge @ 287:

Agoraphobia is fear of open spaces. Galaxy editor Horace L. Gold suffered with it for more than a decade. What you were looking for is claustrophobia, or fear of closed spaces.

I would like to see a SCOTUS judge brave enough to break the back of immunity to prosecution for surveillance scofflaws and torture apologists. Legislation, judicial decisions and executive orders that keep them out of jail is unconstitutional.

Serge@295:

Oh yes, Captain Blood was so good--the part at the end where she's melodramatically pleading with the new Governor to spare her father was hilarious.

Yes, that was Mile O'Keefe, and I wanna say Jack Palance, but it's been awhile. I loved Krull so much as a kid--the little hint of a past romance between the spider-widow and the old man always made me sad.

Re the Rutger Hauer book: I have no idea. I found it last night looking for something else. There was a time when I watched everything he was in, just because he was in it---but, er, some of that stuff was real crap. I'm tempted, just because I bet he really has seen all sorts of things.

J Austin: I can say Rutger Hauer's a pretty nice guy. Aware of the moderate amount of fame he has, not self-conscious about it; he seemed pretty graceful in the encounters I've had with him.

A pleasant sense of humor and, what seemed to be a generous personality. If the writing's any good it's probably worth the time to read it.

Summer Storms:

One more suggestion for such moods, if you can manage it: exercise. "If you can manage it" because there can be problems with initiation energy, even if you already have/know a kind of exercise you find tolerable if not actively pleasant. But I find weight-lifting helps my moods. So do long walks outside. (Cardio at the gym doesn't, though I put up with some because it's supposed to be good for me and works as warm-up for the lifting.)

But those are my specific exercises. Swim. Go dancing. Find a friend whose garden you can dig in. Etc. And yes, it's a slow process: at first, you may be telling yourself "at least it's good for my heart" or "well, they'll enjoy the tomatoes, I hope."

J Austin... Terry Karney... Rutger Hauer does seem like a nice guy. I had glanced at his bio's photo section and was amused by one of him in a dance class with his buddy Jeroen Krabbe. And that photo of him as a kid looking very protective of his little sister was very cute.

Serge: I committed what may have been a minor crime with him once (statutory, non-malicious).

That's part of my estimation of his sense of humor.

Terry Karney @ 302... Dare we ask for details?

Todat is also Henry Allingham's birthday.

Todat is also Henry Allingham's birthday.

One of my favorite quotes from the movie "Blind Fury", which starred Rutger Hauer, is "Unreasonable men make life so difficult".

Terry Karney@299 & 302:

I'll probably buy it because, like Kirk Douglas, Hauer was one of the actors I always watched, no matter what the movie was. He seems like one of those guys that did a lot of movies just because he felt like it (how else do you explain Split Second? Saw that in the theater...)

And, I'd like to second the shameless fishing for more details. I always love small tales of marginally criminal activity--it reminds me of all my mom's stories from overseas.

Ok...

Back in my youth I was a studio projectionist. He was screening something he'd been in (the one with all the water). After the screening it was discovered one of the people (his publicist, agent, something) had been parked in.

The parker had not left his/her office in the window (as per lot policy). I tried to find them, but failed.

At this point the option was to have the car towed (not optimal... they were almost certainly a post-production client).

The car was unlocked, so he and I opened the door, shoved the car far enough back to clear the way for the person parked in, and returned the car to it's place.

At which point we smiled at each other... pushed the door lock and closed it up.

Which left a locked car, with an empty space in front of it.

It was an eye-opening job. I was involved in things I'd never have expected (distibutors would ask me if I'd seen any good films lately), saw movies I'd never have seen otherwise, passed the time of day with some famous people (not always to their credit) and found out some of those I liked on screen were at least as nice in person.

And some were asshats, of the first water (the television reviewer who spent most of one screening on the phone to his mechanic, and skipped out of one reel altogether [I offered to pause it for him, but he said no] fell even further in my estimation than his review of Return of the Jedi had done).

It was one of the best jobs, for all the stress, I've ever had.

Terry Karney @ 308... That's not so bad. I thought you were going to reveal something that'd belong in Real Genius.

One of my former cubicle neighbors had, in an earlier job, been working for a company that provided transportation for film crews. One film he got involved with was Walk the Line. He had nothing but good things to say about Joaquin Poenix. Some of the other actors, not so much.

Earl Cooley III @ 306... I should put Blind Fury on our NetFlix queue if it's available. I liked it when it came out but somehow never watched it again.

One of Rutger's lesser films, of which I forgot the title, had Donald Pleasance as an evil egg collector. Kathleen Turner was in it too, I think.

Ha. We didn't get any first-run films (more like 30-year-old ones) when I briefly was a projectionist for an outdoor theater on Kwajalein. I got really tired of the BxW version of Hamlet we had three nights in a row.

Serge @290: It's a big-screen MGM production from 1969 starring Robert Ryan as Captain Nemo.

I thought you might have been talking about this silly movie which starred Jose Ferrer as Captain Nemo. Reading about it, it sounds like a bit of fun. Watching it when I did (5 in the morning, exhausted but not ready to sleep after coming down from some late night work) it seemed fascinatingly inane.

Rob Rusick @ 312... I saw that one. I remember that José Ferrer's Nemo comes out of suspended animation in the 20th Century and gets in trouble with Mel Ferrer. I think Mel's crew included some robots. Oh, and the whole forgotten mess was cooked up by Irwin Allen.

Serge @310, Rutger Hauer + Donald Pleasence + Kathleen Turner + eggs = A Breed Apart

Serge @313: One of the robots kept intoning "Aliens must die". As there were no beings from outer space in this movie (that couldn't have been too over the top for an Irwin Allen submarine movie), I assumed it meant outsiders of any stripe.

As a card-carrying alien myself, I took note of the phrase.

Rob Rusick @ 315... Great. Literally wingnut robots.

(By the way, were I as thorough as I pride myself of being, I would have watched that miniseries again as research for that stempunk-movie panel, but there are limits to even my dedication.)

Earl Cooley III @ 314... That was made in 1984? That was long ago, but even though I've fogotten most of it, I retain a vague feeling of weirdness in the behavior of most of the characters, and not just because of the grand omelette that Pleasance makes for himself at the end.

'84? That was Kathleen Turner in her post-Romancing the Stone, post-Body Heat career, too.

Serge @ 238: Project nicely done! And take that from a bona fide landscape contractor.

Xopher @ 263: And did you notice who his neighbor was?

Wanted to comment on this yesterday when I heard of it, but didn't get around- looks like Abi's host country has an odd lucky streak in batting-and-fielding sports this year; after their surprise upset in "honkball" earlier this year (which was briefly mentioned here), they're now continuing in the other main batting-and-fielding sport. What's going on?

The ruling that the Supreme Court nominee made in favor of the fascist theocracy blocking any US Government funding contribution to medical care in Africa/UN/international aid programs that provided ANY funding to ANY clininc performing ANY abortion for ANY reason, and any birth control methods that might prevent a fertilized egg cell from implanting, is not one that inspires approval in me....

Pres. Obama vacated that particular edict of the Schmuck, but the Supreme Court nominee's championing of the edict, I find, again, disturbing.

@Paula:

What ruling was this?

And without knowing the details of the case or having read the opinion, I strongly suspect this is a case of saying "The President has the power to make rules governing the behavior and spending of government agencies, as long as such executive orders don't violate the law or constitution." It just happens that in this case the order was one most liberals find repugnant.

Saying that an opinion upholding the right of a president to issue an executive order is the same as "championing" every single aspect of that order is the same (il)logic the right used to spin Kerry's no votes on omnibus defense budgets into "Kerry opposed the F-15 and wants our armed forces to go into battle with spit balls."

One of my favourite Rutger Hauer moments.

LMB MacAlister @ 319... Thanks!

re Cricket: I particularly liked this passage: Once again, Twenty20 had shown its capacity to produce the most incredible upsets. But this wasn't about the gap being narrowed, this victory was all about the superior skill level of Netherlands on the night. The intent with which they went about the chase was thrilling in its freedom and confidence.

Paula: If I have a major complaint with Sotomayor it's that she is overly techical in her reading of the law; sometimes at variance with, what seems to me, the intent (which is a comment some of her clerks have made). I suspect the case to which you are referring is a case of both, the precedent (executive orders are legal; though I think the power to them overbroad), and the specifics.

There are lots of principles, with which I agree; to the defend them to the death level, which lead to specifics I loathe (e.g. Skokie).

So, absent more context to her specific beliefs; and evidence she (as Scalia seems to do) bends the law to make it fit those beliefs, I am not sure it's a valid critique.

Does anybody know where I can buy a ninja's head piece? Or one of those full-head cowls with one wide hole for the eyes? No I'm not planning to go into crime-committing or into crime-fighting. It's more mundane than that although I'm not sure how mundane a con's masquerade really is.

Obscure language question:
Have you heard the usage of the word "taddy" in place of "thank you"? I've been hearing it from people over the age of 80, but I can't find any written instances of it.

Serge - for what it's worth, the traditional ninja's head-piece was actually two pieces - one covers the head and hair like a cowl, the other is a separate piece of black cloth which wraps across the lower face and ties at the back or side, but can be pulled down or taken off separately. Maybe that will give you some ideas about how to make whatever costume you're trying to do.

Clifton Royston @ 328... Thanks. I was also thinking of getting a stocking cap, and to cover most of my face with a scarf, Shadow-style.

@NinjaSerge - If you sew or can persuade someone else to do so, you can find a variety of costume patterns from the major pattern manufacturers (Simplicity, Butterick, McCalls) at your local fabric retailer (Jo-Ann Fabrics is the only one in my area other than EvilMart, but I hear tell other places still have independent fabric shops.) A hood isn't difficult to sew (usually two pieces with a seam over the crown of the head) and adding a lower-face covering scarf piece is fairly straightforward.

Thena @ 330... That's an idea. I could ask the lady who made my Time Traveller's outfit using existing patterns. (As for the TARDIS in the background, Mary Dell contributed that.)

Jack Siolo@327 -- sounds like a variant on the UK "Ta" for thank you (as in "Ta very much then", which I've seen in print a few times, more satirical than not -- combine "ta" with "veddy", and "taddy" would be a pretty easy leap to make). Not common IME, though.

ARGH. I thought I'd look up who my representative in Congress is: turns out it's Mike Pence. Ugh. I have to admit, it's nice (nominally) to have representation in Congress again, but ... he really doesn't represent me. (My senators, of course, are Evan Bayh and Dick Lugar. I rather like Lugar, from a personal standpoint, although I found him weak-spined when his mental inferior was in the White House.)

I sent him a nice email about health care, to wit:

Having just moved to Richmond, I thought I would examine who is representing me to Congress now. Having looked at your position on health care reform, I'm really hard put to see why you consider that reform.

Do you truly believe that the free market is equipped to deal with my own case? My son has kidney disease. What free market insurer would ever give him insurance? What is their motivation? You might as well advocate a free-market foreign policy; there are simply things that society MUST handle together, or fall separately. Health care is one of those things.

If the free market is your true and considered opinion, then I congratulate you for your incredible luck in never having suffered medical hardship. What's your secret?

I urge you to consider true health care reform. America needs it. Indiana damn well needs it. My family needs it. It would be nice if you could represent me on this issue.

Har. Like that'll have any effect. But you never know.

Tom #294--

Thanks. We do what we can. Sounds like a pretty good avulsion. May I ask about the mechanism of injury? And you did very well indeed. You would want something like that seen to before secondary infection could set in.

The immediate first aid (pressure dressing) was appropriate. With a laceration, once you've gone beyond about a six-hour window it isn't going to be sutured in any case.

With any kind of luck, given a specialized wound clinic, the course of recovery should be unremarkable. Preventing infection and promoting proper healing will probably be tedious, but no worse than that.

Niall McAuley @323:

Good. But I think my favourite Rutger Hauer moment has more style. :)

What's with the sudden de-linkification of about half the posters' names, probably just those that give email addrs instead of websites?

Rob Rusick #315: That sounds like the robot was salvaged from another movie. Are there any movies where an identical robot was chanting that? :-)

joann @336, apparently a part of the reorganisation of the Making Light software. The "view all by" pages look different, too. Perhaps whoever is doing the reorganizing wants to make the email addresses less visible?

joann @336, Hmmm, it might have started when we got the "most recent 20 comments" change to the "view all by" link.

Ao0:

I just went to Montpelier, and one of the items in the shop was tea bricks. Inspired by the discussion of same hereabouts, I bought one, and have just enjoyed my first cup of tea from the brick. Oh yeah, the place was cool too -- it's a reconstruction (and archaeological site) in progress, aiming for restoring the main building to its 1820s incarnation. They also have exhibits scattered through the house on the archaeology work itself. The grounds have several hands-on workshops (especially woodworking), demo areas, and (fenced-off) digs. Apparently, the building was originally sold by the widow Dolly Madison (after she was bankrupted by her dissolute son) and eventually came into the hands of the DuPont family, who willed it to the National Trust. The DuPonts have their own exhibit space at the Visitor's Center (unfortunately closed today), and a named garden.

Hmm... I tried to google up some links for the brick tea discussion, but for the first three results I tried, the link comes up with "no comment found for specified comment ID". The links I got from Google are actually not to specific comments -- they're to the commentlist-oneauthor pages, but clearly nonfunctional. Admins? The bad links look like this:

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/commentlist-oneauthor.php?author=ajay&email=triplanetary@Hotmail.com

Hah -- my PS at 340 is presumably linked to joann #336. And My name's de-linkified, too!

The site-level stuff will be explained by Patrick in very short order.

As to David Harmon's specific query, I did a Google search for "brick tea" on the site and found the link to the thread in question. Ajay did indeed comment on the matter, here.

I'm late coming to the discussion of the missing e-mail links, but am I the only one who came back from being away for the weekend to find about thirty spam e-mails in the account I pretty much save for commenting here (I use the account for other things, but they're non-web stuff, so the spam -- I hope -- could only have come people data mining the info from here?)?

LLA @343:

Was it all some sort of "welcome" message from either World Wide Web or Apache something or other? I got fifteen in the space of an hour last night, and then woke up to another twelve this morning.

LLa... J Austin... You too? It seems to have finally stopped, thankfully.

Serge: I'm glad it wasn't just me. Which sounds terrible upon preview, but there it is;)

I really don't comment anywhere else except one other forum, but that's tied to my business email, so I don't know if it has anything to do with ML or not. The other new thing is a Gmail account (again tied to my jewelry site) and Google Analytics.

LLA and J Austin: Yup. I received a similar number of those messages last night / this morning, shrugged, and deleted them. These struck me as further indication that the "do what I mean" instruction components of current software packages [1] are still a wee bit short of perfection . . .

[1] Any type of software, used for any purpose, by anyone.

Tom Whitmore, 332,
Thanks.
If I can get more information from the people using the term, I'll post it here.

Fuck
Fuck
Fuck

In the European Elections, the British electoral region I vote in has just elected an MEP from the British National Party.

One of my representatives in the European Parliament is a fucking racist fascist.

I got a bunch of those Apache spams in the email I use here, too. Yahoo's spam filter is good enough that I hadn't seen them until I investigated, though.

This is the email address that's on my website, too, so it's always collecting a lot of spam. (If you have occasion to write to me there, make sure the subject is something that's obviously from a real human being. For this address, if I don't recognize the sender's name and the subject line is generic, I don't even open it.)

I didn't really look at them -- I pretty much just deleted them.

All that data mining must be heck on Making Light's servers!

James D @334 (and why am I thinking of Tom Disch?) -- the wound happened when she sat on one end of a bench that had two supports near the middle, and the bench tipped over, dropping her onto a concrete doorstop (this is her description -- I can't imagine what the doorstop must have looked like). Yeah, we were at the point where panicking wouldn't do any good; and preventing secondary problems wasn't really going to wait until Monday when her regular doc has office hours. Her skin is dry and fragile enough that they probably couldn't have sutured it well anyway (glue might have worked). And she's on Plavix, so there are blood-clotting issues (that's a blood-thinner, for those of you who don't know).

Making this all more interesting was the fact that it was the first time I'd gotten to meet her, and there was some concern over how she'd react to my long hair and rather low-key approach to life. She seems to have decided to like me.

J Austin @ 346... Yes, it IS terrible of you to have thought that, but I forgive you. Heheheh...

Well, today is technology experiments day. I recently updated my copy of MacSpeech Dictate to the current version (and hope to finish a review of it and the Revolabs xTag microphone for an online magazine) as well as downloading and installing Chromium for the Mac. Since the cautionary notes for Chromium for the Mac at the Google download site are as warm and cuddly as a Miranda warning, I downloaded the version here, which is a more recent build than Google currently has up. I figure I'll use it primarily for Making Light tabs until the official release version of Chromium comes out, since I'm tired of Firefox going down in flames and taking all my tabs with it. With luck, Chromium will have a recover tabs process that's a little bit more robust than the one that Firefox uses. (It could hardly be worse.)

As far as MacSpeech Dictate goes, the improvements in this version are impressive. The manual has tripled in size and seems much better thought out, although considering the way the program occasionally takes the bit in its teeth and deletes everything back to the beginning of the document I would've put the command "undo last action" in much bigger letters on the front page of the manual. I have done the majority of this post without training any new words, although I'm going to start doing that very soon--we'll see how that works out.

Tom Whitmore: So what's not to like? Outside of your habit of finding books that I desperately need to own and can't afford right at that moment, you've always seemed to be a prince of a guy to me.

That reminds me: sometime in the late 70s or the early 80s, Analog Magazine ran a short story about a college student who went out on a beer run and ended up in a time war involving Neanderthals. I remember hearing that it was expanded into a novel, but when I asked Tom about it some years later he wasn't familiar with it. Does this ring a bell with anybody?

My favorite non-SF TV series of the summer are coming back this week. Tomorrow, TNT starts a new season of cop show The Closer. On Thursday it's Burn Notice, and it looks like it's back in top form, what with Fiona, the crazy girlfriend of the forcibly-retired-from-the-spy-business hero, acting as a cocktail waitress. Of course, being Fiona, her cocktails follow Comrade Molotov's recipe.

I'd be doing a happy dance, but such activity isn't recommended when you have in your lap a laptop that weighs as much as a small cinder block.

Yay!

Dave Bell @ 349:

My sympathies. I wonder about how the BNP still has a voice, and then I remember my sister's loser boyfriend talking about how all the immigrants are taking their jobs... My sister is an American living and working in England, but that doesn't seem to have occurred to him.

ObSpam:

I got a bunch of those. All of them wound up in my spam box, but, wow, how obnoxious. Since anti-spamming laws don't seem to be working for one reason or another, how about kneecapping the people who respond to spam?

Bruce@230: the idea that Europe was a howling wilderness for centuries after the fall of Rome is \also/ an approach taught more in the U.S.; the French, for instance, refer to the entire period 500-1500 as "Middle Ages" (rather than "Dark" + "Middle" -- and wasn't that a surprise to a 6th-grader on his first trip across the pond...). There's also the question of who did what with the Greek teachings you report being retrieved from Islamist cultures; it's arguable that our idea of democracy comes as much from the just-growed-and-worked Nordic and/or Germanic ~tribal cultures as from the Greeks, but my scanty knowledge of ~Middle-East history suggests the idea took longer to catch on there.

Bruce@246" "Culture advances one funeral at a time." Or sometimes even more abruptly; I talked at Wiscon to a young woman (mid 20s?) who said nobody her age considers it remarkable. Her view may be biased; she's an almost-PhD at the U-Wisconsin Madison campus, which is still on the left side of the spectrum, but IMO <grumble>if the same fraction of people her age voted as of the AARP crowd, Prop 8 (et al?) would never have passed.</grumble>

Dave@256: & "Macquereau aime la friture"?

John@257: Easy -- Strephon dealt with it before the bill on competitive examinations abolished the House of Peers.

Paula@291: I was also surprised to hear that Sotomayor would be the 6th Catholic in the upcoming SCOTUS -- but not that a Catholic would have views acceptable to Obama and detestable to the Repubs. See above discussion about the loud-voiced officials vs actual beliefs of those who still profess some sort of monotheism in the U.S., and be more careful about your wide brush.

Earl@297: No, first it takes enough money/energy/time to get a case plausible enough that four SCOTUS judges will vote for certiorari when the lower courts rule against. It's one thing for Townsend to say "Think of what good a single ethical lawyer at your company could do"; SCOTUS is harder to get to.

Storms, following Vicki@300: exercise was discovered some time ago to produce "endogenous morphine-like substances", aka endorphins -- aka a legal high. May be hard to start if you don't already have the habit (as I did before my last long spell of unemployment), but may well be worth it even if all you start with is a walk around the block.

Terry@308: unlocked was lucky. In college I did by-the-hour support for visiting productions in the mainstage; this once required picking up a sports car parked (with the wheel cranked hard over) in the clearance zone for the theater driveway and carrying it out of the way so an oversize trailer could get to the dock. (The full trailer of set meant that we had enough bodies on hand to pull it off.)

I also had a bunch of spam this weekend, but (a) they seemed a bit different from the above descriptions (~"someone has sent you a greeting!") and (b) my address here is lightly disguised against harvesters (which leads to the ominous possibility that somebody is building extra processing capacity into harvesters; unfortunately my try at another level of disguise did not pass ML's filter for a legal address).

I received 42 of those between 19:54 yesterday and 07:00 today. Nearly all were from servers in Russia and Ukraine. But I've received three more in the past hour. (All times CDT.) Thanks to Gmail's spam filter, I hadn't noticed until I read the posts above.

350/351
I got a bunch of those too - not a lot, but several. (Sent them off to the spam filter.)

Ah! So that's where that spamburst came from. "Take two Bayesian filters and call me in the morning."

LMB MacAlister 318: Oh GODS, no I hadn't!!! Thank you. That's just about perfect.

Today's most amusing spam e-mail was offering me a choice for ships for sale, out of Shanghai. (They were all freighters or tankers, so not suitable for conventions.)

CHip #357: No, first it takes enough money/energy/time to get a case plausible enough that four SCOTUS judges will vote for certiorari when the lower courts rule against. It's one thing for Townsend to say "Think of what good a single ethical lawyer at your company could do"; SCOTUS is harder to get to.

My favorite simplistic solution would be to bring a test case before the consideration of SCOTUS, then impeach all of the justices who voted incorrectly, for the crime of violating their oaths to defend the Constitution. Fill the vacancies thus created (with young progressive justices), then repeat as necessary, until they damned well get it right.

I don't thintk the apache spam is ML related, since my Lj is the link people get when the scrape here, and I've gotten the email at other accounts.

Bruce E. Durocher II @354: That reminds me: sometime in the late 70s or the early 80s, Analog Magazine ran a short story about a college student who went out on a beer run and ended up in a time war involving Neanderthals. I remember hearing that it was expanded into a novel, but when I asked Tom about it some years later he wasn't familiar with it. Does this ring a bell with anybody?

I vaguely recalled the stories, and with a little Googling I was able to find "Beer Run" by Michael McCollum, first printed in the July 1979 issue of Analog (I also see the story listed under Duncan McElroy, which I believe may have been a pen name the story was first printed under — or was it visa versa?). There was a later story titled "A Greater Infinity", and this also appears to have been the title for a book published by Del Rey in 1982.

I thought of those stories frequently while the series "Sliders" ran on TV.

There was another couple of stories in Analog roughly around the same time, where pressing a series of glyphs along a spiral path leading to the top of a plateau activated a 'star gate' on the plateau's surface.

Think that was the seed for the movie "Stargate"?

Serge @326: You were looking for a ninja headpiece; if you're looking for a fast-and-dirty version, there's a video that shows how to make one from a teeshirt, without destroying the shirt in question.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ifK9lqNPVA

Cally Soukup @ 366... That's perfect! Thanks!

The cookbook is not ready to buy. What it is ready for is for someone else to take a gander at it and make sure it looks all right.

Also, my graphic-design skills are kind of—what's the word?—crap, so if someone feels moved to make a cover for it, I'd be open to suggestions. Email me if you want a copy of the PDF rather than staring at Lulu's preview thingy.

Also, if someone could tell me what should go on the copyright page, as I just stitched together a bunch of recipes and made them presentable, I'd be obliged.

Xopher @ 361: Yer we'come. Some things just shouldn't be passed over.

There is a conspiracy afoot! The clocks in this hotel room are all off by an hour ... and not in the better direction, either!

1) I've just gone and looked in the spambin for the gmail address I use here and found around forty "You received a new greeting!! ", mostly from "User Apache", but a few from "World Wide Web Owner".

2) I voted on Thursday. I always vote; I spent my teenage years in Australia, where it's compulsory. Besides, if you don't vote, you shouldn't complain if someone you disapprove of gets in.

I normally vote *for* someone. I think this is the first time I have ever gone out to vote specifically *against* someone. Unfortunately, not enough people felt the same way, so I too now have an openly fascist Euro-MP. I find this... disappointing, in light of the coincidence with the anniversary of D-Day. Not least because I know how a certain Austrian got into power in the first place -- by being democratically elected.

Re: apache spam, I got those too and believe they harvested that address from ML, because I don't use it as is elsewhere in the wild wild web.

KeithS @368: so that's why you were railing at volume conversions! It looks very nice indeed. (I just spotted a layout error in an ingredients list on page 144.)

KeithS -- super! I hope to be able to take a closer look at it later today, and if I catch anything I'll let you know.

Don't know what you're considering as far as format, but may I put in a word for spiral binding?

Question here for the ML hive-mind:

What do I do about friends or acquaintances who support or at least act as apologists for the neo-Nazi BNP? Do I try to talk reason into them, or do I simply cut them out of my life?

Sadly this is not a hypothetical question.

Tim Hall @374 -- for friends I'd try to talk reason with them (it helps to start by asking them why they support such a party (and listen for the answer, not just talking points so you can convince them otherwise). For acquaintances, withdraw unless you really want to get into a conversation where they'll try to convert you.

It's really hard to change someone's mind unless one starts with understanding how s/he got there in the first place. And most "getting there" is not rational. Think about how you've actually changed your mind, and work from that understanding.

Pendrift @ 372:

I'll get it when I get home this evening. Thanks. (Page 144 by the Lulu preview, or page 144 by the number on the page?)

Debbie @ 373:

Spiral binding is the plan. I want it to be able to lie flat.

Tim Hall @ 374:

Sorry to hear that. I suppose it depends on how much you think they really buy into the BNP's ideas. If they're just hanging around the fringes, it's probably worth trying to reason with them and point out that, no, the immigrants are not taking all the jobs, and why is immigration so bad anyway? Or addressing whatever other ideas they may have picked up. People hear soundbites and think they're reasonable. If you have facts intrude on that, they may stop listening to the BNP altogether.

If you think they're in it deep and reasoning won't work, it's probably best to sever ties with them. If there's something in particular that the BNP would like to do to you since you're not a pure Aryan skinhead nutter, you might work that into your reason for parting ways. Something like, "I'm sorry, I can't remain friends with someone who supports killing me/putting people like me into concentration camps/kicking me out of the country, because I'm not the right race/I'm not the right religion/I didn't have the right parents."

I don't come here as often as I used to. Primarily, people who pay me money to do things want me to do them, not find me sitting on Teresa and Patrick's e-patio, sipping Teresa's Scurvy Cure. (Denver holds many dear memories, including having my head blown off by SC!)
However, the occasional bit comes to my attention, and I must share. If you have not yet found this, do go visit.
http://smellofbooks.com/

Tim Hall @ 374:

I live in a conservative, even for this state, part of North Texas, and have a number of friends with whom there's a tacit agreement (bi-lateral) not to discuss politics. I've been amused to see their reactions in the past two years as they've found out that having what they were influenced to so fervently wish for, a strong conservative Republican majority in all parts of their state and federal governments, didn't work out well at all, and that all those theories they'd bought into turned out to be self-serving hogwash. They know I'm an unapologetic liberal, and we prefer not to argue. But it was beyond painful for me to see friends who are also contemporaries and who were raised on the horror and outrage of our waging of war in Viet Nam support Viet Nam II in the Middle East. Denial is a powerful force, and acts not just to preserve the ego, but also to reinforce laziness and "justified" fear on the part of the status quo. And some people simply refuse to acknowledge the darker side of certain selfish or pathological people around them.

I still miss a couple of previously close friends with whom I felt forced to cut ties. In both cases, we had shared liberal principles and talked about our ideas freely, but I got tired of their criticism and smug superiority as they became enamored of and began to quote such asshats as Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, and I couldn't see how such demagogues could inspire interest, much less respect, in people I thought much better of. In those cases, the discomfort of the altered relationship overcame the comfort of the familiarity we once had, and which I felt had become lost.

LMB MacAlister #378, KeithS #376, Tom Whitmore #375

Thanks for the advice

Said individual is definitely at the level of an casual acquaintance rather than a friend. He responded to a strongly worded online comment of mine that said those who voted BNP insulted the memory of the dead of D-day by posting a boilerplate anti-immigrant rant in response.

He's vehemently denying that he's a BNP supporter or apologist, but he's defriended me on a certain well-known social networking site.

I don't think he's a hardcore nazi skinhead. If he was I would never have had anything to do with him in the first place. But I've found out something about him I would really not have known.

In other news, apparently J.D. Salinger is a huge Terminator fan. Who knew?

(OK, so it's a story from The Onion, but still ...)

KeithS, #368: That's looking good, as far as I checked -- I haven't the time to go thru the whole thing page-by-page at the moment. Are you just doing top-posted recipes? And can I arrange for delivery of my copy at Fiestacon?

LMB MacAlister, #378: Just out of curiosity, have any of your conservative Texas friends actually changed any of their political opinions after having seen things Not Work in such a spectacular fashion?

And off on a tangent... you more-or-less disappeared from ML shortly after our failed attempt to meet up at a Dallas con. Would you be interested in trying again at this year's FenCon?

Tim, #379: I've made that sort of unpleasant discovery about a few people I've known, too. Fortunately (from my POV), the worst such instance was finding a forum comment while link-surfing, and it was someone I hadn't seen in several years and am unlikely ever to see again. (Said person has such an uncommon name as to be effectively unique -- I'm sure it was the same person I knew.) So you definitely have my sympathies.

Lee @ 381:

I've tried to pluck the recipes that I could out of all the posts and comment threads that I could find (while leaving out the ones that are obviously straight from someone else's cookbook with no added commentary). I have invariably missed many, but it would be difficult to add more right now. There will be more recipes posted. There's always room for sequels.

If all goes well, I hope to have it ready by the end of next week, so I'll try to have one for you at Fiestacon.

I hope that our kind hosts don't mind me using the title Making Food. Actually, I hope that our kind hosts don't mind me putting this together in the first place....

If someone like abi would like to look over my list of American/British English food names and suggest things that I've missed, I'd appreciate it. I was largely going by memory and a couple web pages. I am not going to go into the biscuit/cookie issue because that would take an entire essay to answer.

#380:

If you really want to hear about it, what my lousy childhood was like and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, I'll begin with the time I was chased out of my house by a crazy robot from the future, before they sent me here to think about things for a while.

===

So I was walking down the street that day, and each time I came to a crosswalk, I know it sounds crazy, but I would pray to the ghost of my kid brother to get me safely across, and then, like, thanking him whenever I did. I really was. And then I looked up, and it wasn't my kid brother, it was this crazy robot on a motorcycle who was stopping traffic for me so I wouldn't get hit. He really was.

KeithS @ 382... I'll try to have one for you at Fiestacon...

Hopefully our paths will cross at FiestaCon, with or without recipes.
("With you, it's probably one for disaster.")
Humph.

KeithS: Very nifty! On a quick browse of the ToC, I noticed my Feta and Bitter Greens recipe ended up in salads - it's a pasta sauce and so should be under entrees IMHO or perhaps sauces, but not salads. I also noticed that you missed the Honey-glazed Onions recipe I've posted here; I can forward that to you. Wouldn't want to miss that.

Dave Bell @ 349

Sympathies. I've managed to avoid that - one UKIP, but no BNP (being grateful for small mercies). Actually it surprises (and pleases) me that London did -not- elect any BNP candidates. Saddens me that the North West - where I originate - (and Yorkshire/Humber) did.

I'm pleased I managed to sort out and send off my postal vote (since I was awy from home the day of the elections).

Oh, hang on... I see that you mentioned skipping those which came directly from a cookbook, and it's true that recipe comes essentially unmodified from The Mystic Seaport Cookbook. Ah well.

KeithS, looks great! Do you want corrections to minor typos? I noticed one in one of my recipes, but would have to go back and find it again.

Got a cover yet?

Serge @ 384:

I'd hardly call meeting up a recipe for disaster. I hope to see you there.

Clifton Royston @ 385 and 387:

I'll fix where it's located when I get home tonight. Sticking it in the ingredients section with the other sauces should work? (I had nowhere in particular to stick Teresa's instructions for marmalade, and I didn't want to create a section just for it, so it wound up there too.)

I'm sure I've included recipes that are essentially straight from other cookbooks because they weren't flagged, but I'm not too worried about it. Recipes are part folk process and part owned by whoever made them, which is why I'm a little leery of including ones that are obviously from another cookbook. If you feel like you've made enough changes or added enough commentary, I can probably squeeze it in somewhere.

This is also why I want to know what to put on the copyright page, or if I should just give up on that entirely. I mean, the recipes aren't mine, I'm just giving them a paper home.

Janet Croft @ 388:

Yes, typo corrections are welcome. Any and all corrections are welcome. I have normalized some spelling but not all, so the people who write with an excess of 'u's keep theirs and people who write with a deficiency of them don't. So long as it is a valid spelling, it stays.

(Aside: since email addresses aren't shown here any more, mine is kesutt at gmail dot com, in case you want to send them to me directly or ask for a PDF or what have you.)

I don't have a cover yet. If nothing else came up, I was just going to use the title page again and have a blank back cover, probably on beige stock.

Was just looking at the cookbook...hadn't realised we'd had a recipe for sugarcake posted! Will have to try that; my aunt keeps promising me hers, but never sending it, and I can't quite bring myself to order it from Dewey's. Mostly because I don't ever want it quite badly enough to pay shipping.

Anyone know how much "a cake of yeast" is? Grams preferred, but teaspoons/tablespoons fine, too. (Must. Not. Bake. Before. The move.)

Perhaps before the next book I'll post my pomegranate-raspberry sorbet recipe. (For that matter, perhaps before there's a next book I'll have gotten around to figuring out a pomegranate ice cream recipe....)

Who are these guys Everything2 that Abi is posting articles on?

If you read the site long enough, your're tripping without drugs.

(Not my intent to belittle Abi's article; just saying that if you keep on reading everything in the site you are sucked into a weird frame of mind/lack thereof.)

Jennifer Barber @ 390:

If you have some other cookbooks lying around they might be able to help. Alternatively, this webpage seems pretty comprehensive.

And pomegranate-raspberry sorbet? Oh, wow. That sounds delicious.

Unfortunately, pretty much the only cookbook I have is Alton Brown's baking book, and while I love it to pieces, I don't think it's got anything about cake yeast. I'll check out that link, though!

And yeah, the pomegranate-raspberry sorbet turned out pretty well, I have to admit. Perhaps when I'm putting off packing for my upcoming move tonight I'll see if I can find the details, and post it here.

Rather than wake up (and subvert) the "Bright Eyes" thread again, I'll put this here: A "literal video" for Meatloaf's "I'll Do Anything For Love". Not quite as hyper as the "Total Eclipse" video, but pretty funny.

Erik @391:
E2 was once a contender in the niche that Wikipedia now owns. I bumped into it when Slashdot was linking to it for definitions.

Even by the time I left, about five years ago, it was more of a relatively quirky online writing community. It has a steep learning curve to join, and, as you say, much of it seems to be from a strange frame of reference. For a while, a year or two back, it looked like it would wither away completely, but I think they're making it easier to join.

It's basically a walled garden on the web, which makes it both a safe space for its members and a bit of a clannish enclave for outsiders. For a time, it was a real community to me, and I still bump into usernames I recognize from my time there.

I left for a number of reasons (including the fact that they banned my mom...long story there). For a long time afterward, I foreswore online communities, because the intensity of E2 really backfired on me.

I guess that resolution didn't stick, did it?

dcb, Dave and Tim:

For what it's worth, it could be worse.

Estimated population of the UK: 60,943,912 (July 08)

Estimated number of registered voters: 51,000,000 (My extrapolation based on 2001 and 2007 numbers)

Turnout for this election: 34% or 17,340,000

BNP vote: 6% or 1,040,400 knuckle-dragging, arse-licking, rhymes-with-National-Fronts: 1,040,400, or 1.7% of total population.

Jennifer Barber @390

According to TheFreshLoaf.com a cake of yeast is .6 of an ounce of compressed fresh yeast; or about 17 grams. Which is equal to 1½ to 2 tsp. instant yeast or 2 to 2¼ tsp. active dry yeast.

KeithS #368:

Looks yummy -- but one group of recipes I looked for (but couldn't find) was the "coffee-mug cakes" (microwaved) that went around at one point. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find them by search, either.

David Harmon @ 398:

Marilee linked to the chocolate one here and geekosaur linked to a honey cake here.

Pendrift @ 372: Fixed.

Clifton Royston @ 385: Moved to entrées section.

Janet Croft @ 388: Replaced "them remove" with "then remove" in your broiled zucchini recipe.

KeithS @#399: Ah, they weren't included because they weren't "ours". Thanks!

Abi, I read quite a bit of Everything2 a few years ago (like, um, seven? Was freshman year that long ago? Goodness) and it was definitely a thing. Very easy to spend a lot of time clicking and reading.

Earl@363: Yep, that's simplistic, all right; won't happen even if the courts do their duty and acknowledge that Franken won Minnesota, considering the number of centrist Democrats in the Senate (and, IIRC, the requirement for a 2/3 majority to impeach judges, not just Presidents).

LMBMcA@378: But it was beyond painful for me to see friends who are also contemporaries and who were raised on the horror and outrage of our waging of war in Viet Nam support Viet Nam II in the Middle East.

I don't run into that much, being in the only state that didn't pick Nixon over McGovern; but for the occasions, I recall a Clemenceau quote to the effect that the young conservative has no heart and the old liberal no brains. Too many people get more and more fearful of losing a future that they have less and less left of.

#357 CHip

I didn't say that I expected Sotomayor to side with Alito and Scalia etc. generally. There are several issues:
1) Church versus state--long ago when I was a college student, the Representative for the part of Massachusetts I was from was one Fr Robert Drinan, SJ. His voting record and statements regarding family planning and abortion seemed to have been the stimuli which caused the Pope at the time to order Roman Catholic priests out of holding elected political office. (Rep Drinan said that while he personally was opposed to abortion, he was not going to impose his personal belief on a secular pluralistic society which included people who had different religious beliefs on the topic. That's very much a paraphrase affected by time and memory, but he did come out strongly in statements of supporting individual choice as a national social policy, as opposed to dictating the views of his religion onto those not of that religion and that religion's rules.)

There apparently is no track record for Sotomayor regarding reproductive rights issues other than squelching the lawsuit against the Schmuck's gag order=type actions about abortion and refusing to funding any healthcare internationally that was associated in any way, shape, or form, with providing abortion serives.

Being female is not a guarantee of behavior--Sarah Palin reproduced, de facto meaning Palin i a she.

My concerns about adding another Catholic to the Supreme Court as in the nature of distortion from the same sort of thing as e.g. trying to calculate an orbit when all the data acquisition is not spread around the orbit, but all taken from the same five-minute window with the same sensor. It creates an inherent biasing of the data of limited the data acquisition to that narrow sampling area.

Alito and Scala and Roberts have amplied demonstrated their disdain for the individual members of We the People and put their ideological partisanship ahead of the letter and spirit of the Constution and Bill of fights -- repeatedly.

Sotomayor's public housing project-to-Federal Court Judge story is an Inspiration Story--but I am not the most appreciate sort around for Inspirational Stories--for one thing, it remindes of Christian fiction, which I mostly find lacking in my views of literary merit--it's aimed at a very different audience than I am from, and contains encodings that are a combination of allegorical references and style which even if I am aware of provide no positive contribution to the story for me, and of promotion of a mindset/outlook on the universe that is alien and not pleasant for me.

I value diversity, and decreasing the diversity on the Supreme Court as regards creed, particularly given the demagogues appointed by Republican, disturbs me.

I'd feel the same way about the prospect of having a majority on the Court of Baptists, Southern Baptist, Mormons, Jews, Muslims, Wiccans, Buddists, Episcopalians, or Pastafarians, etc.

I really don't like the way judicial candidates are usually coy about their positions; it seems disingenuous to me. I want a damned checklist, and I want them to choose their answers to my (progressive) satisfaction before they're allowed to be confirmed. I don't want a confirmation mistake that will haunt us for decades.

I really hate the fact that Roberts is named Roberts.

I saw something tonight that completely boggled my mind. In an empty lot, someone was selling various banners and flags - U.S., state, local universities. One was a confederate flag, but to the side of it (part of the same fabric) was the Obama "hope" campaign picture. It was a very strange juxtaposition. I can't imagine what the message is supposed to be.

Earl Cooley III @363, can you give us a list of 67 senators who'd vote for impeachment of the judges in that scenario?

Clifton @ #403: "Clemenceau quote to the effect that the young conservative has no heart and the old liberal no brains."

Someday I'm gonna list all the pols I've seen that attributed to. Bismarck, Disraeli, Churchill. . .

Ha. Someone's already done that. Jeepers, somebody thought William Casey said it! Casey? Reagan's CIA Director?

Boggle.

I first heard it attributed to a frenchman (De Gaulle, I believe) as, "My son is 20, if he were not a comminist I should disown him. If he is still one at 40, I shall do it then."

The way I heard it was "anyone not a Liberal at 20 has no heart; anyone not a Tory at 40 has no brains."

Raphael #408: can you give us a list of 67 senators who'd vote for impeachment of the judges in that scenario?

Nope, but if they didn't vote to impeach the judges in that scenario, they would be guilty of the same crime, and subject to impeachment themselves. All I would really need is the vote of one senator and one congressman, with all the other accused legislators ineligible to vote for themselves. Or, if all of the senators defy my will, then I'd just need one governor to appoint a single senator to vote unanimous impeachments at my direction. I'm not sure what the procedure is to replace unruly Congressmen unwilling to pass articles of impeachment, though. However, at that point, I'm acting as a benevolent despot and the impeachments, justified as they are, would essentially be show trials. "Have a nice day, citizen."

J Austin:@344 "Was it all some sort of "welcome" message from either World Wide Web or Apache something or other? I got fifteen in the space of an hour last night, and then woke up to another twelve this morning."

I just got another one a few minutes ago. Only the third that was delivered to my mailbox, but our spam catcher caught 66 of them for me! Mostly ij the early hours of the 7th June, but there have bee 11 of them since then.

"My concerns about adding another Catholic to the Supreme Court as in the nature of distortion from the same sort of thing as e.g. trying to calculate an orbit when all the data acquisition is not spread around the orbit, but all taken from the same five-minute window with the same sensor. It creates an inherent biasing of the data..."

I *know* its a cheap shot, but if someone said that about Jews in US courts or government - or in the British government where they have been hugely statistically overrepresented for decades - we would all rightly leap on them from a great height.

Is the Supreme Court even supposed to be representative of the American people? I thought that was what the House of Representatives was for. Or am I falling for the etymological fallacy?

Not that I have been counting, but I strongly suspect that Episcopalians and Presbyterians have been vastly over-represented in the Supreme Court in the past, as well as in the Presidency, and probably in all other branches of the USA government. Why isn't that even worse than Roman Catholics?

Anyway, is it that unrepresentative? If you live in a country where nearly 90% of the population are associated with one Christian denomination or another (and nearly half of them actually got to church more than once a year), is it that unlikely that a random sample of nine would have a majority of members willing to be described as Roman Catholics, members of by far the largest religious body in the United States?

No-one ever asks these questions over here in the UK - well, not in the south of England anyway. But then only about one in twenty of us goes to church.

414: Ken, as you no doubt know, the issue is not that people in the US are terrified of another Papist Plot, but that they rely on the Supreme Court to continue to ensure their brtn rights, and if a majority of justices belong to an organisation that enjoins its members to believe that brtn is illegal, that does rather cause concern. If there were a large and vocal let's-ban-bacon political movement in the UK, then I imagine that the number of Jews in the cabinet might become an issue.

Off the current topic of Cathodics on the Supreme Court...

I was amused last week when I saw the name of the scriptwriter for Disney's 1973 movie The Island at the Top of the World.

John Whedon.

Yes.
Joss's grandpapa.

Off the current topic of Cathodics on the Supreme Court...

I was amused last week when I saw the name of the scriptwriter for Disney's 1973 movie The Island at the Top of the World.

John Whedon.

Yes.
Joss's grandpapa.

Ajay@115: Anti-Catholicism in America has been around for considerably longer than the brtn wars. Historically, it was associated with nativism of the Know-Nothing variety, something that makes it an unfortunate issue to raise in Sotomayor's case.

Rainflame @407 -- the message is, "I'll sell anything that sells, and don't expect me to believe in what I'm selling."

Ack! typo! That should have been Ajay@415.

(Why do I never see these things when I look at the preview, but only when I look at the post? It's an injustice, is what it is.)

Serge #416/417 Cathodics? I thought they'd gone to flat screens.

Off the current topic of Cathodics on the Supreme Court

Being anti-Cathodic = positive discrimination.

Wikipedia bans loony religious group from editing.

Self-serving edits were "threatening Wikipedia's reputation for neutrality". I'm not sure whether to consider this a step forward, or beyond irony.

Serge @416: Interesting about John Whedon. I'd noticed Joss Whedon's name in the opening credits of the first Toy Story movie (back when Pixar was working for Disney). I mentioned it to a friend who was a big Joss Whedon fan, and he said that Whedon had a reputation as a good script doctor. Interesting to hear that there had been a family connection with Disney.

ajay @ 422:

Being anti-Cathodic = positive discrimination.

subsumed under the rubric of "Anodic". Since this also means "no node", such a group is necessarily anti-internet.

168.192.0.1 rules!

Re that quote discussed by CHip @403, Linkmeister @409, and Terry Karney @410, I find it particularly funny when it's attributed to Winston Churchill, and "Liberal" is used as a stand-in for "leftist", and 40 is used as the older age.

Looks like some typical quote for the kind of people who usually belonged to the most annoying kind of campus cafe fringe types, then, after a long time, suddenly discovered that lot of things connected with that are rather silly (Oh really?), and then started to tell everyone who could be bothered that anyone who disagrees with their new right wing selves obviously must share the sillyness of their old selves. My favorite subset consists of the people who used to support the Soviet Union, then switched to supporting Donald Rumsfeld, and now, after they've *twice* seen grand-scale attempts to completely remodel the World that were supported by them fail, still feel the need to lecture me about why my politics are completely wrong.

(Then again, I am still relatively young, so sometimes I wonder wether the folks who claim I'm just naive and unexperienced might have a point, and wether more life experience might really turn me into some kind of Reagan fan. Then, I read stuff like the second half of this comment (No. 99), and I think, no, not likely to happen.)

Off the current topic of Cathodics on the Supreme Court...

In front of an Anglican church a few blocks from my home is a metal utility box labelled "Cathodic Protection Rectifier". Every time I see it, I'm tempted to commit minor vandalism and scrape the loop off the 'd'.

Raphael #426:

Following Serge's interest in Cathodics, I feel obliged to point out that "wether" means, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "A male sheep, a ram; esp. a castrated ram." I've used the word to mean a castrated billy-goat as well.

Just testing my (vab) with the new functionality. Nothing to see.

Checking again with the old e-mail address. Functionality is fine so far. Feel free to delete these

Raphael @ 425:

sometimes I wonder wether the folks who claim I'm just naive and unexperienced might have a point, and wether more life experience might really turn me into some kind of Reagan fan.

Not necessarily. IMnsHO people who repeat that aphorism about youth and liberalism versus old age and conservatism are people who have no real opinions or philosophy of their own, but take whatever is considered appropriate by their peer-group. Or their philosophy is "I'm for whatever I want right now", and as they get older their wants drift from fixing the world to profiting from it. The latter group are the ones who set the peer-group standards for the former.

There are a lot of counter-examples to the aphorism, from Supreme Court Justices like Oliver Wendell Holmes to activists like Eugene V. Debs. I consider myself a counter-example. I was a firebrand progressive in high school and college, a member of SDS. My first peace march was at the age of 13, and I was standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial when Martin Luther King spoke about having a dream. But I haven't converted into any sort of conservative, Reagonoid or otherwise. I still believe in progressive political change for this country and the world in general; I believe that the US has shifted drastically to the right in my lifetime making the economic and social class inequities even greater than they were; and I still believe that this country has serious racial, gender, sexual orientation, religious, and ethnic intolerance problems that must be addressed.

Raphael @ 426: just for balance, when I was 18 I was a Liberal[1].

I am now 39 and can occasionally be heard muttering about how the New Democratic Party (of which I am now a member) is becoming dangerously conservative in some ways.

If the present curve holds and my health does as well, by the time I am 100 I shall be writing long, crabby letters to the editor deploring the right-wing tendencies of the IWW.

( I admit, the world veering ferociously to the right in the same period has probably made my curve look even steeper than it actually is.)

So you will not necessarily get more conservative with age, no.

[1] A member of the Liberal Party of Canada, not any of those other funny meanings of Liberal. In Canadian terms, I was a gently left-leaning centrist.

Or their philosophy is "I'm for whatever I want right now", and as they get older their wants drift from fixing the world to profiting from it. The latter group are the ones who set the peer-group standards for the former.

Yes. When my brother quoted that to me last year (from a client of his) I told him it sounded to me like nothing more than a version of "I'm all right, Jack." (Which I then had to explain to him.)

While we're accumulating anecdata, I've shifted to the left in my old age, if anything.

I've always heard it as "Anyone who isn't a liberal at 20 has no heart, and almost no one over 40 has one, so they're all conservatives." :-)

Seriously, all these assholes think I have no brain? (No, I know that none of these guys ever actually said it.)

As for Cathodics...there are, actually, gay men with a fetish for Roman Catholic men.* (See why I think Furryism is a tame kind of fetish?) Guess what they like to say they want? Hint: Fill in the blank in "I have a craving for some _________." One of them once explained to me why he thinks RC men are different, and what he likes about them, but even the explanation was kind of creepy.
___
*As distinct from gay RC men who only date inside their religion, which is quite a different thing.

Rob Rusck @ 424... You might be right. I remember reading an interview with Joss Whedon where he talked about Toy Story. Apparently the original script was in big trouble, and he apparently rescued the whole affair. As for the idea of his being a doctor, of scripts if not of the human flesh, that sounds as disquieting as Gene Wilder as the Modern Prometheus.

Joel @ #427, someone in Decatur already did exactly that. I have a photo of it on my cell phone.

Fragano @ #428, yes, that's why I flinch every time I see my husband's Bellwether brand cycling shorts.

I think (and I have some supporting writings to point to in this regard), I have drifted a little left.

Which means I am now a flaming "liberal" where once I was slightly left of center (when taken in the round). But hey, I'm just 42, so perhaps my epiphany is yet to come.

Bruce, #431: Hear, hear! You speak for me as well, although I wasn't as politically active as you in my younger days. But I still believe that the nation as a whole will be better off when no one is homeless, or hungry, or functionally illiterate, or unable to receive basic medical care -- and I believe that the government has responsibilities toward those it governs, not just the other way around. I get very sick of hearing arguments that boil down to, "Oh, it's okay, the leak isn't on OUR end of the lifeboat!"

I'm certain that on a number of matters I've gone leftward over the 20 years or so of my adulthood. By stereotype, someone like me -- (nominal) Catholic, business school graduate, baseball fan and lover of traditional culture (Austen, Beethoven, Catullus, Dürer, I can come up with the rest of the alphabet given enough time) -- I should love conservatism, but among each of these interest groups, the stupid is just so thick.

I'm also overeducated (in the NYC specialized public high school sense) and that trumps all else, I guess!

Fragano @428: ewe would mention that, wouldn't ewe?

Lila #436: You, too, spent a chunk of your life on a farm?

Chris Quinones @ #439, While liberal in nearly everything else, I'm conservative when it comes to baseball. The designated hitter should be sent back to the oblivion from whence it came, the All-Star Game should not be used to determine home-field for the World Series, and corporate naming rights to stadia should be outlawed.

At 54, I think I'm just as liberal as I was when I was 13. I'm just not as mobile.

I saw a bumper sticker today with:

[hammer & sickle]BAMA

Hey, I'm going to DC! My partner's schedule and my desire to see one of the current Big Exhibits have meshed favorably, and I'm going to be visiting with a friend in DC while he's at Otakon in Baltimore.

This will be the weekend of July 17-19. If anybody would like to have a FTF meeting while I'm in the area, drop me an e-mail at the mailto attached to my name (that doesn't work any more) stardreamer AT mindspring DOT com, and I'll add you to the "Okay, how are people's schedules going to coordinate?" e-mail that I'm getting ready to send out.

Fragano: no, but I grew up in a rural area and I read a lot.

[Hammer-and-sickle]BAMA sounds cool enough that I want one, too! I think everybody should have one! But then I've always been a fan of Soviet chic.

Nice things:

The boy (7) started reading A Wrinkle In Time last night. This morning we had a hard time gently prying him out of the book so we could get him to take his vitamins, get his things, and get off to summer school. He read Coraline in one day a few weeks back while visiting his cousin, who insisted he must read it at once. Soon he will be One of Us!

The girl (23) moved into a new apartment two weeks ago with her boyfriend. She sounds incredibly happy; I think this guy is a winner. Her job is going well; she can work at home a lot, and the operations group wants to take her out of support work and start training her as a junior system administrator, so she's mulling over if she wants to ask for that move. And in the new apartment she can have a cat, so they went out and got a little black fluffball from the Humane Society.

And the other girl (19) passed her community college classes this spring and finally passed her drivers license test last week. More significant, she seems to finally feel integrated into the family; she does little things like volunteer to do the dishes or vacuum, or play with the boy. She's reading for pleasure, too. (It's the Twilight books, so meh, but it's reading.)

Terry @ 437: stick with me, darlin', I can fix you RIGHT[1] up.

Michael Roberts: For a very very long beat I was parsing that as a complaint about Birmingham swinging to the Left.

[1] By which I mean left, of course.

Linkmeister, 439: From the land of "Hitler, Stalin, Walter O'Malley," I concur. Do you disapprove of interleague play like I do as well?

Furthermore, I don't expect you to have an opinion on the Mets' uniforms, but Dodger blue and Giant orange will always be the right combination to me. Black is for funerals.

Chris Quinones: I am all for Walter O'Malley and Dodger Blue. I have to make certain, however, my sister only wear Volunteer Orange, that color from SF is anathema.

As for Interleague Play, as with Astroturf and the Designated Hitter, it's an abomination in the sight of God and all right thinking men.

I won't do Dodger Blue, having been raised on Giants Orange, but I'll go along with the view on interleague play, etc. Also they've made the assorted playoffs way too long, and if they want to have football-style playoffs, they need to shorten the season. (154 games would be a good start.)

Why did they have to break something that actually worked?

P J @ #451, "Why did they have to break something that actually worked?"

Oh, c'mon. Greed.

I forgot interleague play on my list of horribles.

We moved to LA in 1959, just as the Dodgers won their first World Series there. I grew up on Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett on KFI while living in San Pedro and Westwood. Fortunately for me, FSN Prime Ticket shows the majority of Dodgers games out here, and Vin is still broadcasting all of them west of the Rockies.

Terry @450 - I initially read that as "Designated Hitler," which sounds like a really good seed idea for a Goats storyline.

In re One of Us, I'm nearly finished with _Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell_, which I've dithered about buying for over a year now. And it's absolutely charming. Truly excellent.

I just noticed this is a cubical Open Thread. And it's a long time until the next one.

Lee @438: I get very sick of hearing arguments that boil down to, "Oh, it's okay, the leak isn't on OUR end of the lifeboat!"

And insisting all that is needed to drain the lifeboat is to drill a few more holes.

Rob Rusick @ 455:

Is that what's known as trickle-drown economics?

Clifton @ 447:

Good on your kids, sounds like they're going to be really good people. As for "Twilight", well, Harry Potter turned out to be a pretty effective gateway drug, so who knows?

Michael Roberts @ 453:

Yeah, I read it the same way. Adjacent posts can have odd effects on each other.

KeithS @ 456:

It's proof that a rising tide does not raise all boats; all the ones with conservatives in them have holes.

I'm surprised it took this long, but Foglio finally stooped down to dressing Agatha as a Bunny. I also like Krosp's tummy clock.

To revert back to baseball talk for a brief moment, with their win tonight the Dodgers became the 3rd team in history to win 10,000 games. That's the good news. The bad news is the team with the most wins is -- the hated Giants (mostly due to their successes when they were still the NY Giants).

Where are the Yankees? 8th, with 9,506 wins. That's pretty impressive considering the American League wasn't established until 1901. They do have the best winning percentage, though, at .567 (Giants 2nd, Dodgers 3rd).

The correct Churchill aphorism comes from 1906, when he was standing as a Liberal candidate, having recently switched from the Conservatives. His opponent tried to embarrass him by circulating a list of all the rude things he'd said (as a Conservative) about Liberals, and he replied "When I was a Conservative I said a lot of very stupid things. And I became a Liberal so that I would not have to go on saying very stupid things."

Pass that one on to your local wingnut...

Marilee @ 443: "I saw a bumper sticker today with: [hammer & sickle]BAMA"

I'd be willing to wager that that person put the bumpersticker on their car in the same spirit that I would put a "BUllSHit" sticker on mine.

I still want it, though.

Michael Roberts @ 446: "But then I've always been a fan of Soviet chic."

Have you seen this shirt? Yeah, not to brag or anything, but *buffs fingernails* I own it.

Re: young liberal/old conservative - this just seems backwards to me. The older you get, the more life drives home how much you need other people: you're relying on social services like SS, Medicare and Medicaid more and more. A young 'un with delusions of immortality and invulnerability seems far more likely to be a conservative. I'm guessing the young liberal/old conservative meme is driven by the march of liberalization--there are a lot of political stances that were liberal in the 1950s and are moderately conservative now.

Serge, I wondered how long it would take for you to post about Girl Genius. It was less than ten seconds between me reading the third panel and me emailing a friend of mine because HE HAS A CLOCK IN HIS TUMMY.
I have no idea why this sentence makes me giggle so much. My expression mirrored Zeetha's, though with blonder hair and not so much fang.

Linkmeister, 460: True, the NY Giants were very good in the first third or so of the 20th century, when the Dodgers (and Robins and Superbas) were very bad indeed, including a few years when Casey Stengel managed them before he was a genius.

And I would not have expected the third team to win 10K games to be the Cubs! But of course we forget they won their league back in 1876. It's all been downhill from there...

Diatryma @ 463... My expression mirrored Zeetha's, though with blonder hair and not so much fang.

I certainly hope not.

Heresiarch @ 422:

Communist Party tee:
WANT! How did my Party cell leader not tell me about that?

So, I'm not what you'd call an early adopter of anything, except maybe the newest titles from my favorite authors, and I just realized that I never got my government coupoon for the Digital TV Converter Thingie -- I ordered one back in November or December, and they said it would be mailed on February 12 or some such date, and then I heard that the program had run out of money and then They extended the deadline until June 12 and I stopped watching the mailbox and just...forgot about it.

This morning I woke up and said, "Ouch! June 12 is Friday!" and checked with the proper website, which told me that my original coupon had expired and been invalidated, but that coupons were still available and I could re-apply -- Click Here.

So, they're supposed to be mailing my converter-box coupon on June 16 "by First Class Mail". On past performance I won't even notice for the week or so between the Conversion Deadline and the time I've received the coupon and managed to redeem it and install the box -- for one thing, I'll be at 4th Street Fantasy Con for several of those days -- but I want to be ready for the next Major World Event that needs to be watched in real time.

AKICIML: What do I do with the coupon when I get it? i.e., anybody have horror stories about which stores to NOT try to use it in, or which brands of converter work the best? Because of the deadline extension, I guess no one would have actual experience of them yet, unless you live in a part of the country where the TV stations went ahead and converted on the original schedule.

(Also, anyone else like me who doesn't have cable because I'd rather buy books with the same money, and watches as little TV as I do, may also be surprised to realize that The Time Has Come :-)

Hey, Harriet -- see you at Fourth Street! No converter story from me because I don't own a TV.

Digital TV has been available right alongside the analog stuff since long before the original 'deadline', so I've been using my converter box since I first ordered the coupon yonks ago.

Go to Target, not Best Buy or anywhere else that would rather sell you a digital-ready TV (the prices are better). As far as I can tell, there's basically no reason to choose any of the availables over any other; they don't let you try out the menu interface, and that's really the only thing that's different.

You may VERY well need a new antenna, though, especially if (like me) you don't have a roof-mounted one right now. They sell 'digital antennas' which aren't any such thing, but are certainly more powerful/directed than standard rabbit ears (which is what you need). Also, with a very few exceptions*, all the new digital channels are up in UHF, so you won't be using VHF at all any more.

One objection I have is that somewhat-broken-up digital TV is utterly unwatchable; far greater amounts of interference with the old kind was painful, but still followable through the snow and hiss. Digital signal, however, breaks into squares at about 95%, and at 90% or so the audio track totally drops out, so, yes, well.

Get the box, set your rabbit ears for best UHF reception, and tell it to scan. See how many channels you get. If it's few, or if they come in blotchy/badly when they do come in, you might need to upgrade your antenna.

And if you live in a mountain valley, you're SOL anyhow, just get cable: the technology they decided on for the standard is utterly useless if you don't have good clear close line-of-sight from the transmitter ...

* CBS Channel 2 in Chicago is one.

Bruce, #458: I like to point out that there's one huge problem with the "rising tide lifts all boats" analogy: it assumes that all the boats are floating freely. But boats that are moored... well, they get swamped. That's what people on fixed incomes, or on disability, have to deal with.

ajay, #461: That's priceless!

heresiarch, #462: That would seem to be logical, but it doesn't appear to work that way. What I see is that many young people have an idealistic passion for social justice, which translates into liberal views. As they age, some (though not all) of them hit either "tax shock", rugged-individualist Libertarianism, or both, and turn into the "I've got mine, Jack, fuck you" variety of conservative, and others get religion and turn into the neocon variety.

I saw a weird t-shirt at the gym this morning. It displayed a fighter plane with the following caption:

"Don't worry, America. Israel is right behind you."

Maybe I'm overanalyzing, but I can't figure out which country it's making fun of.

Lee @ 470:

Not to mention the people running around the harbor, gleefully chucking rocks through the bottoms of the moored boats.

In my misspent youth I did have a brief bout of infatuation with libertarian ideas. Then I moved back to the US, got a job, had to deal with the real world, went to university, looked around me, and realized how stupid I had been after seeing just how much good government can do.

These days I'm more inclined to think that the liberal (US meaning of the word?) at 20, conservative at 40 thing gets passed around because it's fun to say even if it isn't true. However it sticks and can as an excuse for the powerful (and typically older) to run roughshod over the rest of us because "that's just human nature"; an aphorism said by someone famous says so, so it must be true.

Serge @ 471:

You assume it's meant to make fun of someone. I can imagine that shirt being very earnest indeed.

Just a quick knitterly drive-by: Knitty's summer issue has a trilobite hat.

re 470: It's more complex than that, because a lot of young people are idealists of the "theory which solves everything" variety, which tends to place some of them as Marxists and some as Libertarians, et cetera. A lot of them are still rebelling against their parents.* Thirty years of living later, a large proportion get shaken loose and assume more "compromised" positions as a result of having to deal with their real problems instead of someone else's theoretical ones. Others get entrenched and play out the scripts of their youth to the end of their days, often becoming embittered about how the refusal of the world to adopt their theory.

The "youth liberal/old conservative" notion is part of the progressivist meme, but by the time I reached college it wasn't really true among the people I knew.

*Not that everyone gets over that.

Some fighter pilots are more reassuring than others.

ajay 461: ...he replied "When I was a Conservative I said a lot of very stupid things. And I became a Liberal so that I would not have to go on saying very stupid things."

Am I the only one who thought that second sentence was going to be "But when I became a Liberal, I put aside childish things"?

Bruce @ 458, Lee @ 470, are you aware of the webcomic Cat and Girl?

TexAnne @ 473:

Darn it, I don't have enough time to learn knitting too.

Breaking News:

Two shot at Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.

One of the two was a security guard, and one the initial shooter.

Clifton @ 477:

Yep, that's another "corner case" for the boat analogy (now why did I stop reading "Cat and Girl"? Oh, right, comic overload when I was trying not to miss any "Girl Genius" and waiting for "Buck Godot". Time for a policy change.). Another one is when the "tide" is actually a tsunami or a bore tide (feels like that right about now).

I ordered a FCC discount card and bought a converter box last year out of sheer curiosity. I have cable, but if Comcast pisses me off sufficiently I'll be prepared to go broadcast.

I bought the box at Best Buy. It was in an aisle analogous to the one in supermarkets where motor oil, fireplace logs, and adult diapers are kept; low traffic, low glamour. There were maybe three models on sale. I picked up the basic model; it had a really bland brand name like "Premiere" or "Plexia".

It was pretty painless to set up and scan. My power-amplified indoor antenna picked up about 20 digital channels. At first. Later, it found fewer. For all I know certain flocks of birds need to be aloft and certain cars parked on the west hills for maximum reception to occur.

The digital TV experience via the box was neat without being distracting or slick. You get information on what's on (EIT).

However, I prefer dealing with TV via my DVR.

More info -- shooter was 89 year old white supremacist and Holocaust denier.

Museum has been evacuated, swept by Park Police SWAT team, and the building has been closed for the day.

Apparently the guy walked into the building and shot the guard, who returned fire. I'm also hearing that other security guards fired on shooter.

Both shooter and guard are in the hospital in "critical" condition. Hope the shooter survives to be tried...

"Good news, everyone!"

Futurama is coming back!

http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/06/10/1331258

Futurama

#483:

The dictionary entry for "dumbphuq" should be illustrated with a picture of that guy.

Needless to say, the white supremacist groups will be stumbling over each other in their haste to deny he was one of theirs, claim that all the trigger-happy revolution talk on their websites was just guys joking around, and suggest that Obama or maybe Nancy Pelosi put the guy up to it to give the government an excuse for a crackdown.

Remind me to double my contribution to the SPLC this fall.

Lori, #483: Now, would this qualify as terrorism, or should it just be considered another example of the general lawless tendencies of wingnuts?

Lee, AFAIC this is terrorism. I'm wondering if I should call my Senators and Rep and ask what they intend to do about this...

I have this sick feeling that these incidents are going to escalate. (Ghods above, I hope I'm wrong.)

KeithS @#478: I knit, and for very reasonable fees, too. :)

KeithS @ 400, that was the one I spotted. Thanks!

While we're on recipes, I came up with a new one last night. I wanted something high-potassium, to help with leg cramps I've been having, but low-carb; hence the avocado and black soybeans. Still could be tinkered with a bit, but yummy and good for hot days because hey, no heating up anything.

Smoked Salmon Salad (for one)

1-2 oz smoked salmon (lox)
2-3 T canned black soybeans, drained
1/2 small avocado, diced
about 2 cups torn romaine or mixed greens

Dressing:
2 tablespoons tahini (sesame seed paste)
2 tablespoons lime juice (maybe a little less?)
1/4 teaspoon soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon minced garlic

Arrange or toss the salad ingredients as preferred. Shake up the dressing ingredients together and pour over. If you like a little more crunch to your salad, add some salted peanuts.

(Dressing's based on one from the Tassajara Recipe Book, but they used orange juice and I think the avocado needed something with a bit more tang.)

Lee and Lori @ 486, 487 -- there are different (reasonable) definitions of terrorism which would place this within or without the definition. In particular, who was he trying to terrify? Was he serving the ends of an organization, or working alone? It's not as if there's only one completely cut and dried definition of terrorism out there, particularly after the Bush years of trying to use it to refer to "whatever we don't like that other people are doing".

Lori Coulson @ 487:

Whether you call this act terrorism or not, I'm afraid that it's just the second in a long line of violent acts subsequent to President Obama's election (I've said this before here). I would rather be wrong about this.

@ 483:

I hope the guard survives. I don't give a damn about the shooter; he's already done his damage, and he won't be terribly useful as a martyr because everyone who wants one will be madly backing away from him in public. What they do in their own private rituals is irrelevant to the rest of us.

Stefan Jones:

I don't get a choice: it's either cable or satellite for me, because I'm right beneath one the transmitters. I have a direct line of sight to that one, which is great for multipathing and overriding any other signal around. And if I point the antenna at that tower, I get about 1/2 of another channel. If I point it anywhere else, I get crappy signals on all of them.

Cable won't work because I refuse to deal with Comcast after the last time I had cable and suffered their support, and especially because of the fact that they've hijacked DNS on their internet connections. That's the act of a company dead set on building a monopoly. So I've got a sat dish.

Some better news: RI Senate legalizes marijuana store (for medical users). Sanity, one step at a time.

The comment about steampunk reminded me of seeing various of the works nominated for Best Dramatic Presention Hugoes.... Sigh.

Hellboy II has scenes with giant gears and cogs, which don't make any sense as to why the giant gears and cogs and such should exist--not even the level of sense of anime.... other than perhaps the intent was at least partially spoof that requires too much external referential knowledge to be any sort of worthwhile spoof (that is, if one MUST know what's being referred to, the spoof fails as anything other than gloss [in the commentary sense] minus any context that makes the gloss at all meaningful.

Watching a few minutes of the Lost episode provided me with no admiration, watching the Battlestar Galactica episode left me with feelings of, "This provided a payoff to those who were devotees of the series perhaps. It's not even going below No Award on my Hugo ballot--it lacked merit to bother listing it at all, for me!' And I've seen ten year olds with more maturity that most of the characters showed who were supposed to be mature adults in responsible positions.

Iron Man -- B- / C+ Parts of it were amusing, and it was encouraging to see "things don't necessarily work as intended the first time!" It was interesting to see how the film industry brought so much of the tradition of the comic book in, regarding the evolution of the Iron Man armor, and what story changes got made.

Seeing what I think was an anti-aircraft battery called ground-to-ground munitions however annoyed me majorly.... The scenes of Iron Man flying around provided some thrills, but alas the rest of the film didn't have anywhere near that degree of Sensawonder.

Paula Lieberman @ 493... I wouldn't call HellBoy II steampunk. It takes more than cogs and flywheels and levers and toot-toot steam to make something into steampunk. For me anyway.

Now, if I could just find a large-size JPG of Captain Nemo loking out the porthole of Disney's Nautilus...

(NOTE: I'm deliberately not mentioning the jackass's name. I don't want any search trolls ending up here.)

Right-wing racist nut job shooter was not a lonely silent nut; he was apparently a vocal and widely published hero of the right-wing racist nut job movement.

So there's no way that the right-wing racist nut jobs can dismiss him or disown him as a marginal crazy who misunderstood things.

It's definitely terrorism. What point could there be else? Pointless attack, symbolic target, and even willingness to die in the process (not a universal feature of terrorist acts, but too common recently).

The only odd note is that he was shooting at a guard. I don't know the layout, but I'd've expected him to shoot at the museum patrons. Maybe he couldn't get the gun in that far? Maybe he thought he was going to movie-shoot (you know, where the "hero" always hits and the "bad guys" always miss) the guards and thus get into the museum and start killing schoolkids?

At any rate, in the absense of another motive, preponderance of the evidence (at least the evidence I've seen, and it's early days yet) would tend to give a verdict of terrorism.

So I'll start calling him a terrorist¹ scumbag² and change if I hear different.
___
¹which it seems likely he is
²which he is incontrovertibly

TPM has a profile of this guy. He spent 6 1/2 years in jail in the 1980s for walking into the Fed bldg in DC with a shotgun and claiming he'd planted a bomb.

Terrorist label confirmed.

David Harmon @492 -- what happens when federal marshals come into those stores to enforce the federal tax laws on marijuana? Seriously -- the Feds have gotten involved in previous situations when marijuana was legalized within a state or city.

Xopher @496: I call it "the work of a whackjob scumbag" rather than "terrorism" because I think terrorism per se requires more than one person. And while this fellow had hangers-on and such, this action appears to have been self-initiated. You, of course, may pay the word to mean whatever you wish.