First? Guess I'm benefiting from being a night-owl and the time difference between here and the Netherlands.

Syd, somewhat disguised @944 on OT 169: YES YOU DO DESERVE HELP Go make those 'phone calls. If you can't find the energy/reason to do it for yourself, then do it for your cats! In particular, contact the woman the feline behaviourist told you about. NOW! I don't think living in a car, even if you can find a friend's driveway, is viable for your cats, never mind for you - and the shelter isn't sounding very good as an option if the shelter woman is suggesting sleeping in your car would be better...

Hilde and I watched DETECTIVE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM FLAME, an Asian action movie you might think was based on the Judge Dee stories by Robert van Gulik.

Ehh, no. Gulik's stories were inspired by an 18th-century Chinese novel he translated into THE CELEBRATED CASES OF JUDGE DEE and then went on to write his own original stories and novels about that character. That earlier Judge Dee novel was in it's own turn inspired by an actual historical figure in Chinese history, Di Renjie, a noted official back in the 7th-Century Tang Dynasty. The movie is based, kinda sorta, more on that historical figure than van Gulik's version.

Hilde pretty much nailed how close the movie is to the Judge Dee stories: "It's about as close as Stan Lee is to Agatha Christie."

But, having shattered any hopeful expectations of van Gulik fans, I have to say DETECTIVE DEE was a pretty fun movie, with a lot of wirework and other stunts and effects you see in "superhuman martial arts" movies.

If you watch it, though, either turn on the English dub or the English subtitles, not both. The spoken words and the subtitles sometimes are so widely/wildly apart that it's very distracting.

ObXkcd re: TNH's newest particle.

Which makes me wonder(a) if there's a reason these two appeared so close together, and (b) if the game could be used for the purpose Randy describes.

@Syd, somewhat disguised: Wishing you the best, and continuing to put out feelers on your behalf. These are really rough times, but know that you have people rooting for you, and that you are not to blame for your misfortunes.

(I scored 78%, if anyone is interested)

And on the subject of the original post: Desolation Island is my favorite of the Aubrey/Maturin books -- except for all the others (well, maybe not The Hundred Days). When I was first reading these books, it was one of the ones I found at the library, and I was eager to read it just based on the title, which is so evocative. I forced myself to read them in order, which meant buying either Post-Captain or HMS Surprise, I can't remember which (I've since bought the whole set), but getting to Desolation Island was totally worth it.

Wanna see people go crazy in a comment thread? Go into The Gunroom and call Diana Villiers a bitch. (Not that I would do such a thing.)

I actually went to Canada to look for Desolation Island and other Aubrey/Maturin books, back when they were not in print in the US. The US border guards in Detroit thought my reason for going to Canada implausible, and strip-searched me on my return.

My favorite Aubrey-Maturin book is H.M.S. Surprise. O'Brian's portrayal of India is rich and fascinating, and Maturin's relationship with Dil can bring me to tears even after a dozen readings.

Already buds are forming on each tree
visible through the february mist,
this sign of coming spring won't be dismissed;
life makes to us its yearly guarantee
that after darkness comes the jubilee
while all of nature's colours still persist
and will explode the roadsides will be kissed
with light again. All life yearns to be free.
In each heart hides a promissory note
from past to future, valid for all time,
worth all the stories that our folk have told;
to be redeemed, when we are called to vote
weighed in the balance and cleansed of all grime,
for a true substance worth far more than gold.

AKICIML Does anyone use the R programming language? If so, are there books, courses, websites, or development environments you recommend for someone getting started with it? At the moment I don't need deeply complex statistical analysis; what I need is a way to automate graphs and reports (text and tables) for comparing a subset of a data file against the whole.

I picked my way through the Hornblower books when I was out of Aubreyad, but hit a snag when the library didn't have all of them. And of course, it's been long enough that I don't know which I've read. I know I skipped one

My dad has read all but the incomplete Aubrey book-- I read the typed bits but couldn't get through the handwriting-- and, because he's that kind of guy, Lobscouse and Spotted Dog, cover to cover. We both tend to like details and wit.

Re: Bruce Cohen
The story is indeed by Algis Budrys: A Scraping at the Bones, published in Analog May, 1975...

Thanks so much! I found a copy of the magazine on ebay and glommed it.

There are many lines by Budrys that float up - "An dark. An cold." (sic?) Compelling writer.

AKICIML: The band on my beloved earmuffs, souvenir of my first trip to Montreal, just broke. Can I fix it?

I'm sufficiently a fan of the Aubrey-Maturin books that, when it came to a divorce, I suggested that my ex could keep all the Steven Brust if I could keep the Patrick O'Brian.

Which was made slightly weirder in that it was Steven Brust who introduced me to O'Brian's work, saying, "Do you like the Hornblower books?" "Well, sorta... I've read a couple." "Do you like Jane Austen?" "Of course!" "I promise, you'll love these." And then he quoted the immortal line, "Jack, you have debauched my sloth!"

I picked up Master and Commander not long after and I was thoroughly and completely hooked.

I tried the Hornblower books again recently, having become a huge fan of the miniseries with Ioan Gruffudd, and still found them sort of "meh." TV Horatio is sympathetic; beset by doubts, certainly, bound by such a strong notion of duty that he can't get out of his own way sometimes, certainly, but nevertheless sympathetic. Book Horatio is essentially Eeyore but without the underlying severe sense of humor, and reading his internal narrative is just no fun. (Also there is no Archie.)

I'm midway through another re-read of the O'Brian books. Right now I'm somewhere in the middle of The Thirteen-Gun Salute.

I could no more name my favorite than I could name the favorite of my internal organs, for all love.

Abi... Speaking of words that encapsulate a long-running story...

"Where would you estimate we belong, Miss Keeler?"
"You? At his side, as if you've always been there and always will."

Rikibeth @15:
And then he quoted the immortal line, "Jack, you have debauched my sloth!"

"The Debauched Sloth" is the name of my Kindle.

No, really, this is not a Scalzi joke. I named my Kindle "The Debauched Sloth". It goes with my laptop, which is "The Nutmeg of Consolation".

Rikibeth @ 15... I am rather fond of 1951's movie "Captain Horatio Hornblower". One of my favorite parts is when sailor Quist realizes that the Captain does know his name and that of each and every one of his people. My other favorite is at the very beginning.

"You know why I'm having Hummill flogged, Mr. Gerard?"
"I reported him for fighting, sir."
"I am not having him flogged for fighting, Mr. Gerard. I'm having him flogged because you said in front of the men that you'd flog him. This is a ship of war - as it's captain, I must uphold my lieutenants' authority."
"I understand, sir."
"Flogging only makes a bad man worse, Mr. Gerard... but it can break a good man's spirit. Is Hummill a bad man?"
"Aside from his temper, sir, he's a good sailor."
"A good sailor, ill-fed and thirsty. Watch the cat as it cuts his back to pieces, Mr. Gerard... and in the future, perhaps you'll think twice before you threaten anyone with a flogging. "

I may have bungled somewhat; I acquired copies of "Mr. Midshipman Hornblower" and the movie-tie-in cover edition of "The Far Side of the World." I started reading one, then partway through it became temporarily inaccessible, so I started reading the other. Then I trade chapters in them for a while, and now I'm knackered if I can remember which plot points belonged to what ...

I think I need to get a multi-book whack of one or the other series out of the library and spend some serious time in them.

Elliot@794 of previous:

I have altered the thesis. Pray I do not alter it further.

Doggerel #3

The worm cares naught for who he eats today;
From Rudyard Kipling’s cat he learned this ‘tude.
Then how shall I conceive to feed this worm?
My critic’s corpse would ample foodstuff make.
The body of critique of me is large;
On that a worm might feed for many months.
But who should be the representative,
The proxy, scapegoat, bearer of the sin?
What person has contributed the most
To nervous tics, anxieties, and grief
Incurred by this relentless monologue
Correcting every word, each act, each thought,
Till all my being aches with doubt unchecked
And only in a dream might I be free
To truly be the hero of my tale.
In some rare restful night I find success
A poignant counterpoint to daily strife,
A glimmer that this harlequin may yet
Discover how to quell that hated voice.
But whence its source, that timbre I despise?
Of course. I know it well; it is my own.
How can I still this part of who I am
And yet remain the one I know as me?
Who would I be if triumph of the night
Were mine to hold, to own, in light of day?
If I could kill my doubt, who would I be?
I can say only this: go ask a worm.

I'm going to confess that I've never read the Aubrey/Maturin books, and have no particular desire to, either. Or Hornblower, for that matter. I adored Dudley Pope's Ramage books when I was in high school and college, so I'm not sure why the others hold no interest for me. But there it is.

21
I like Ramage, too. I don't object to Hornblower - I've read all of those. (More than once.) But I'll admit to not being able to get into Aubrey/Maturin.

abi @ #17:

My laptop has somehow got by without a name, but my desktops since college have been Skaro, Mondas, Telos, Ares, and Sontar, and the palmtops were Tibet and London Underground.

The new palmtop doesn't have a name yet, because I've reached the end of the Top Five list I was using for inspiration, and I'm not sure where to go from here.

Paul A @ 23... Regarding the Naming of Things... I recently found that local SF writer Victor Milàn calls his clunker car "Serenity" although his mode of transportation isn't so bad as to lose parts whenever its starts or stops.

abi @17: that's MARVELOUS. All of my electronics are named on a theme of breadstuffs and their equipment, starting with the moment I unpacked my Mac Mini and my housemate stared at it in amazement (my previous computer having been an enormous G3 or G4 tower, sorely outdated) and said, "That's not a computer. That's a TOASTER." So it became the Brave Little Toaster, and my first iPod became PopTart, and the late Macbook was Panini, and my current iPod Touch is Gaufrette.

Serge @18: I could swear that there is a similar scene in one of the Aubrey/Maturin books. Possibly several. Jack is no friend to the cat.

Elliott Mason @19: I tend to think of both series as One Big Crossover, also encompassing Sharpe, Garrow's Law, and much of Jane Austen. Especially when I'm writing fanfic. Especially when I do the math and note that Stephen Maturin was aboard the Charwell en route from the West Indies in the months prior to the Peace of Amiens, and could easily have made a stop at Kingston in the necessary time frame to have saved one Archie Kennedy's life, or that there WAS no 95th Foot at the time of the Quiberon invasion, but there was indeed a 43rd Foot which is the regiment Major Edrington claims in the books, and that the 43rd Foot was later absorbed into the newly-formed 95th Light Infantry, which included Sharpe's 95th Rifles... it all hangs together SO entertainingly.

Mary Aileen @21: if they're not to your taste, they're not to your taste, but I will put in a good word for the Hornblower miniseries, which has, in addition to visually amazing tall ships and uniforms, both Ioan Gruffudd and Jamie Bamber very young and fresh out of drama school, Paul McGann doing excellent deadpan, one episode with Samuel West providing understated snark, Robert Lindsay filling up the screen with pure awesome, one episode with Denis Lawson being brash and sassy, two episodes with David Warner providing his usual blend of Evil and Crazy, and one episode with Cherie Lunghi stealing every scene she's in.

It's entirely possible that it's still Not Your Thing, but for me it's the Best Thing Ever.

MilesToGo @20: I had to read it a couple of times, but very nice.

P J Evans @22: I've noticed that the surest way to get someone into the Aubrey-Maturin books is to sit in the same room with them while you're reading them, and, every so often, succumb to a fit of snickering, and then read them the line that prompted it. Eventually, after such whimsical bits as the debauched sloth, and Jack chastising the wombat that's eating the gold lace on his best hat, and Pullings being so embarrassed when explaining WHY the Lascars are so enthusiastic about polishing the brass cannon, and the ill-conditioned ape that has had a can of ale at every pot-house along the way and has been offering itself to Babbington... well, after enough snippets of whimsy, they're likely to pick them up for themselves.

Well, it worked on my housemate, anyway. Her newly-acquired stuffed wombat (a World Wildlife Federation premium) is named Pullings in tribute.

Rikibeth @ 25... If I were in a scene with Cherie Lunghi, she wouldn't have to steal it. I'd give it to her.

The last time my wife and I watched "Captain Horatio Hornblower" on TCM, she said upon seeing Gregory Peck:

"His legs are almost skinny as yours!"

One of the many things I have with him, I guess.

Serge @28: I know what you mean. Her characters - and I'm most familiar with Shakespeare's Beatrice and Hornblower's Duchess of Wharfedale, not having watched Excalibur since I was a teenager - remind me POWERFULLY of my friend Catt, who possesses great force of character and an unwillingness to tolerate any nonsense, while also having a solid core of kindness. I'd be inclined to just stand back and admire.

Serge @29: I've been disinclined to watch the Gregory Peck Hornblower, but that aspect of it does sound amusing. My current champion for the Skinny Legs in Breeches division is Andrew Buchan of Garrow's Law. It would have been dreadfully unfashionable then, but to my modern-day eye it's adorable.

Bongo!

That is all.

Serge Broom @ 16

"Where would you estimate we belong, Miss Keeler?"
"You? At his side, as if you've always been there and always will."

Excellent. One of my favorite lines. The other is from the movies: "Jim. Your name is Jim."

[And the eternal suspicion that someday Spock is going to read the Eulogy Kirk gave him the first time he died, "Of all the souls I've met on my travels, his was the most... human," and get very insulted. At least until he remembers being insulted is an emotional reaction, and squelches it.]

abi @ 17 and others

"The Debauched Sloth" is the name of my Kindle.

Generally, I have never gotten into the habit of naming my tech (although I love the names of BrainPals in the Scalziverse, and of Nelly's children in Mike Shepherd's Longknife series), but I will confess, I have named my GPS "Dawnstar."

Niall McAuley @32: Awww.

In the western states mule deer are a common sight. Whenever I see pictures of eastern deer, I'm always bemused by their tiny little ears.

"The names of these pirates, the Doctor thought, were not dissimilar to those of pigeons; a panoply of blacks and shades of gray, colourful in adjectives rather than hues.

"As to the pirates as agents of political transformation, he had made some notes upon the subject, which indicated that their primary purpose was taking things from ships and trading them for rum and intimate favours, in places ranging from Tortuga to Whitehall. Some did affect views on individual freedom, though these would have rattled the brains of a Paine or a Wollstonecraft, and the notion that they were a seething mass of nautical Robespierres would not stand the light.

"It was good to have an enemy, he reflected, and it was good to have an enemy who believed odd things that were incompatible with one's own views. He had encountered sailors from English towns that were fiercely proud of having been sacked by ships scattered from the Armada. While the only evidence of such pillage was here a stack of cannonballs and there a public house named 'Ye Dead Spaniardo,' every man from those villages stood ready, centuries later, to take the battle back to Philip II, with his dreadful religion and his incomprehensible consonants.

"In Celebration of Talk Like Dr. Stephen Maturin Day" -- John M. Ford

OtterB @ 11: I don't use R myself, but in case you haven't already found it, perhaps this list of resources would be helpful?

I am currently re-listening to "The Wine-Dark Sea" which is my favorite audiobook of the Aubrey and Maturin series. Patrick Tull's awesomeness knows no bounds.

Alas, the library's CDs are beginning to skip occasionally, so I guess I'll have to pony up and buy my own (and possibly renew the library's, if I can afford to).

Debauched sloths are all very well, but it was the rhinoceros in "The Ionian Mission" that bowled me over completely. As rhinos are wont to do.

Doug @ 35: Have you read The Invisible Hook ? Has some great bits about pirate society, leans heavily on primay sources. I dig it, despite that it's openly imitative of Freakonomics (one of the Freakonomics guys is the author's mentor) and that it's distressingly prone to Chicago School twaddle.

Also, a perennial topic here - there's another expert being rebuffed rudely by Wikipedia schmucks. This one has the new-to-me wrinkle of someone extensively citing primary sources being rebuked for not citing secondary sources instead. I grow increasingly sour and reckon that while Wikipedia is a fantastic project, its participants should not believe their own hype.

Hey, I've done almost exactly what that passage is describing. Not on a boat, but. Am chuckling immaturely at "the poop above their heads".

pedantic peasant @ 33... I seem to remember reading that this line came up as a result of the show's producers consulting with Isaac Asimov. Nimoy had been frustated with his status, next to Shatner's, so the Good Doctor proposed something like the above. I think.

SFPD "It gets better."

BTW: wondering what opinions you folks have as to the Skiffy (or non-) nature of Charles Yu's "How to live safely in a science-fictional universe". I liked the book a lot (though the second half not so much as the first half), especially for a first novel; my SF-reading friend says it is not SF.

Last night in the parking lot at the grocery store I saw a truck with a campaign bumper sticker: Aubrey-Maturin 2012.

I was tempted to tell the driver I wasn't sure I could support a ticket where the lead man was a notorious debaucher of sloths, but I had to get back home and fix dinner.

Rikibeth (25): I am almost exclusively a printed-word person, rather than a moving-pictures person. But thanks for the recommendation.

Jacque re: SFPD

That is awesome. I was unsure at first what it was, but, hey, you recommended it. I've still got tears in my eyes.

Re: my post at OT169/944, after paying the cell phone bill (needed because it's also acting as my Internet access and I don't have the nerve to do anything needed a password (checking email, etc.) over the free Wi-fi at Satanbucks) I have...not enough money to get the cats their shots. Assuming I could talk the woman at the boarding facility into swapping boarding for gruntwork.

I just got off the phone with the receptionist at my cats' regular vet. I've been keeping them in the loop about the situation, or was until I stopped having to buy the special food for Damon and my poor Runyon; I called to see if the vet was in, planning to grovel and beg and see if there was any way I could board my cats with him until I could make other arrangements. (Like, maybe one of the rescue organizations that couldn't take 8 could manage to take one or two to foster pending my getting on my feet again.)

The receptionist spoke to the vet because he had to get right in to see another pet--but he said I can board them for 5 days. It gives me a little breathing room, anyway.

Please cross your fingers that I can find a better solution in 4 days. :)

A number of people have told me, in no uncertain terms, that I have to give up these last 4 cats in order to take care of myself first. And I can see their point. But I just can't see them as disposable, not even for myself. But I have a very short-term solution.

I have read 5 or 6 of the Aubrey-Maturin books and enjoyed them, but for some reason I stalled out and haven't read one in a couple of years. I plan to start up again sometime, but there's such a huge stack of books to be read^⚓ that I don't know when that will be.

As to naming tech, I've gotten out of the habit of naming my machines with literary references; when I was doing a lot of development work and often had 2 or 3 workstations in my office I used to like using esoteric character names. At one point I was naming them after characters from E. R. Eddison's books; my manager kept complaining that he couldn't get used to typing "barganax".

I did take advantage of the free engraving offer when I bought my iPod Touch; the back reads, "We are such stuff as dreams are made on."

⚓. Kate Griffin's latest in the Electric Angels series just came out, John Barnes is putting a hard-boiled detective novel on his website as he writes it, I'm in the middle of the first book of Joe Abercrombie's second trilogy, Paul McAuley's In the Mouth of the Whale has just been released (and I'm in the middle of his collection Tales From the Quiet War) and if I can't squeeze anything else in before summer amongst the technical reading I have to do, Charlie Stross' next Laundry novel comes out in July, and Hannu Rajaniemi's The Fractal Prince is due in September. Plus the re-read of the first two books of Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles that I was originally intending to do last fall. If you have any other really good books to recommend, please don't! I'm underwater already.

Syd, The day may, in fact, come when you have to give up the cats. But I'm with you in thinking it's important to keep the family together, if at all possible.

Good news for the open thread, via /.:
"The government of Bulgaria, which had already signed ACTA, yesterday reversed itself, and announced that it would not seek ratification of the treaty. This comes after similar moves by Poland, Germany and the Netherlands, and a weekend of massive protests against ACTA across the European continent."

ACTA, for those playing at home, is an international "intellectual property rights" treaty written by IP rentiers and negotiated in secret over the last few years. What I've seen of the leaked pieces of it indicate that it's intended to be an incredibly agressive Disneyfication of the ownership of creative works.

Too bad, so sad: Our Galtian Landlords may have to go without the next rent check.

My netbook is named Binky. Alas, Binky is a horse of too small brain and needs more memory, or to go out to pasture. My car is the Shuttlecraft Feynman. And that's enough whimsey for now.

Syd,

I think you're right to consider the cats' welfare at the same level as yours; it's the way I've always dealt with the health and welfare of my companions. When it comes down to it, trashing yourself won't help them, so you'll need to know when to step back; but before you reach that point I think you should help them as much as you can. Good luck to you and your cats.

Syd @46:

As for getting the cats their shots, that is one thing I was able to find when googling earlier, hoping to find information for you about temporary fostering (which was unsuccessful). Most of the organizations I found for low-cost veterinary care only do spay/neuter, but I did find the HOPE Veterinary Center in Los Angeles that will do free vaccinations. Their clinic days are apparently only once a month, but the next one is this coming Sunday.

Krinn @38: I haven't. Thanks for the tip!

lorax @ 52, thank you for that link! If my own vet doesn't "throw in" the vaccines (which I do not expect him to do, he's already done/is doing so much for me), and if I can reach the boarding facility woman and work out something with her, then hitting that clinic on Sunday may well solve a problem or two.

Now if I could just catch the cats to take them to their vet... ***sigh***

Syd at 54, I know it is humiliating and painful to ask for money, but have you considered asking friends if they would be willing to give the boarding facility some money, directly, on your behalf, so that the cats will at least have a safe short-term home while you hunt for another solution? I am reasonably sure the facility would not turn down such funds. You might even consider putting the boarding facility's name and contact info, phone number, etc. in a post here, and also include the cats' names, or your name -- some way so that the facility can identify to whom the funds should be credited. Folks on Making Light who wish to help you -- and there might be some, don'tcha think? -- can then contact the facility directly.

It couldn't hurt to try.

Dave Crisp @4: Actually that game has been around for a while now, and I'm surprised that nobody posted about it here earlier. (Unless of course someone did.)

It's possible that the xkcd strip and the Particle are related, if the strip inspired Teresa to go looking to see what was on the web about kerning and find that game.

Syd, riffing on what Lizzy L: If you're uncomfortable putting the boarding facility's name and contact info, phone number, etc. here, may I suggest you send it to abi, whom those of us who would help could then contact...?

Paul A @23: Computers I was primarily responsible for have been named, in the past: Joshua, Rolan (silver and blue case), Raven (because it was very much like a writing-desk; also, blackity black black). Currently the machines I'm using were named by my husband, who has rather different naming conventions than I do; I did get him to correct one's name from 'Dinomac' to 'paleomac', though, on the grounds that it was old, not truly terrible. :->

Our previous house was The Grey Havens, because to get to it we drove out to the Utter West … sort of. Also, grey siding. The new house hasn't told me what her name is yet, but she definitely feels to have a personality and a sense of her own rights; the poor Havens was so kicked and mistreated that I got the impression they viewed us as basically equivalent to that last owner at the end of Black Beauty.

My guitar (and indeed my previous guitar) also has a decided personality but has not yet deigned to share her name with me. Our car is not named or particularly personalitied, IMHO; a previous car had a titch in its door-closed sensor on the driver's side that led to things like the dome light suddenly going on while we drove on the highway, so we dubbed that tendency 'Dennis', though the car as a whole had no particular name.

(Personifiers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but Mr. Dignity)

Miles @20: Very, very nice. I am pleased as punch to have had a role in its nucleation.

It went interesting places from the seed-crystal that I didn't expect; kind of like how when a friend asked her LJ commenters for single images she might use to crystallize stuff.

I told her, "The playful yet eventually tragic dilemma of the snowman, born in joy to die too soon." She gave me a funny look and said she wasn't touching it, but it wouldn't leave me alone and I ended up writing most of a song sparked by it on the bus home that night.

Alas, I don't perform it much, because the way I've worked out to accompany it on guitar makes it sound in the first verse like humorous satire, and it isn't, and then the chorus' seriousness thuds on the audience and makes the whole thing flop.

Also, I think it has far too many words, but I'm not sure how to cut it down productively; diarrhea of the mouth is my primary poetic flaw. After all, if three jewellike perfect words would be ideal, why not a twenty-word run-on sentence! With parentheticals!

Sigh.

Mary Aileen, #21: You're not the only one. I just let these conversations slide past, secure in the knowledge that sooner or later one will come up about something I do read.

Various, re naming things: I used to name vehicles. All my bikes had names when I was a kid, and my first half-dozen cars did as well. Sometime in my mid-30s I fell out of that habit, I don't know why; and because I didn't get my first computer until after that, those have never had names. My partner names the computers on our household network out of Pratchett, though. And our cars do have use-names, though not real names -- the closest we get to that now is "the BHV" (for Big Honkin' Van). I've never named any of my domiciles, partly because I got a little spooked by what happened to the friends who called their house Castle Chaos. (One died, two went crazy, and the last one will never go near that state again, let alone the city or the house.)

Rikibeth, #27: I think my partner has been trying that tactic with me and Discworld. So far it has yet to work; I've absorbed enough information about the series by osmosis that I'm not totally lost in discussions of it, but I still have no strong desire to actually read any of it.

Niall, #32: That's a great picture!

Lee @60: My husband is in computer networking. His workplace has one general purpose 'the truck' for going from site to site to, for example, install new switches and whatnot. The coworker of his who is in charge of the VoIP (voice-over-IP phone system) stuff apparently always needs big tall ladders and other equipment that wouldn't fit into the usual truck, and so has 'his own' white panel van with ladder racks and various somewhat specialized equipment.

Whenever a largeish group of this department has to go somewhere en masse and fix something, this specialized van is what is used to transport them; they call it VoIPasaurus (pronounced VOYP-uh-sawr-us).

A Commuter's Game: "Fun With Your Local Humans"

Re kerning Particle: My average score was 89; individual scores ranged from 64 to (surprisingly!) several instances of 100. Now I want to get my partner to play with it, since he has micrometer-calibrated eyes.

abi@17: So when you buy an ebook from the Kindle store, and it asks you where you want it sent, you get to tell it, "The Debauched Sloth"? That is sooo much better than "elizabeth's kindle."

It occurs to me The Debauched Sloth would be a good name for a tavern, preferably near a marina.

pedantic peasant @33: I think the line from the original ST series that makes me the most emotional is a word. Not a great episode, but the greatest ending to one.

Kirk has, because of a chemical spell of sorts, fallen irrevocably in love with a woman he can't have. At the end of the show, McCoy and Spock are looking at him. McCoy tells Spock he's given him a light sedative, but that's all he can do for him, and he leaves. Spock looks at Kirk with no sign of emotion, then puts his hand on his head in a certain way, leans down close, and whispers.

"Forget."

(Don't know why, but it works on me every time.)

Snape: "It Gets Better."

Jacque #62: I just passed that on with the subject: "Traffic Jams: Be the change you want to see in the world...."

I don't name inanimate objects. Never have. I don't know why. I've never given a name to my house, my car, my computer, or my katana. Nor have I ever felt that my car or my computer posses human qualities, or indeed, a personality. (My katana is smarter than I am, however. I do know that.)

I don't object to other people doing it. I assume they have a reason, either intellectual or emotional. But I am curious -- can someone explain it to me?

Gaah. I just discovered that Gracie tore up my bed, most likely while I was off at work. (I hadn't looked since I came home and walked her.) I gather that's supposed to be an anxiety thing, but why now, after a month and a half?

Re. naming our machinery: my 1973 Chevrolet is Vlad the Impala. Sadly, during the 3 years it was out of service, someone else went and registered for the Idaho "VLAD" vanity plate, so I couldn't renew that when I resuscitated the car last winter. I'm still debating whether to get "VLADD" or some similar alternative.

OtterB #11:
Does anyone use the R programming language?

I'm one of the developers.

At the moment I don't need deeply complex statistical analysis; what I need is a way to automate graphs and reports (text and tables) for comparing a subset of a data file against the whole.

For the automation you probably want Sweave (based on LaTeX) or hwriter (based on HTML, and so convertable to MS Office).

For a development environment I use Emacs and the Emacs Speaks Statistics (ESS) mode, because I have to work on multiple operating systems. RStudio, JGR, and Tinn-R are also population (the gnomes will get me if link to them all, but Google can find them).

The best introductory books really depend on your background. There's a long list. I like Braun & Murdoch, and Maindonald & Braun.

If you want to email me with more details I'll try to get a more focused list. My email is ROT-13 as gyhzyrl@hj.rqh

Lizzy L #68:

Can't totally explain it, but for people who come out of the networking world of two or more decades ago, naming a computer both marks your territory and provides you with someplace to login, send/get files and monitor the thing that's not called "Biology Dept Vax #2" or near offer. (IOW, it probably makes more sense if you've got more than one computer that needs distinguished.)

In the early days it was common for large businesses or campuses to choose names out of namespaces, such as (AFAICR) wildflowers for at least some part of Stanford's research establishment, and geological formations for their geology department. UTexas had the usual stars for workstation names (hat tip to them all being Suns) except for the so-called "Disney cluster" used by individually funded students, named for the seven dwarfs.

When I worked at an Apollo-using facility, all the machines were single-user and named after their "owners". Another place, one of the development computers, the one with the not-yet-totally-debugged OEM hardware attached, was called "yoyo". Three guesses what it spent most of its time doing. My last startup, the main code repository was called "redwine". Working off that, I called my dual-boot machine that managed the repository "prosecco", because it was slightly fizzy and would sometimes just pop out of existence and boot the other system.

We sometimes name our house computers and sometimes not; it's gotten a little more urgent what with lots o'stuff on HouseNet. I have named all my Windows boxen either after Wodehouse servants (saving the butlers for Linux machines) or after windows-related architectural features--mullion, oriel, serlio. The printers are named after historical presses: caxton and aldine (guess clarendon is next?).

A quick question to the powers-that-be:
What happened to the search box that used to be on the left sidebar of the front page of Making Light?

(At least, it is no longer appearing when viewed on Firefox 9.0.1 on Mac OS X)

62, 67: This is recommended in the awesome book Traffic. There is good data showing that if as few as 20-30% of the cars in a given highway situation are using a new high-end doohickey called 'adaptive cruise control', concussive-braking traffic jams just simply stop happening.

Adaptive cruise control (coming just about now to a variety of 30K-and-up luxury cars near you, and probably trickling down to econoboxes in a decade or so) uses IR or radar to keep an eye on how close it is to the car in front of it. Then you tell it, as it were, "I prefer to go 68mpg, but no closer than 1.5 car lengths to the guy in front of me," and it makes it so, leaving you free to concentrate on steering and emergency car maneuvers.

BMW and other high-end German car makers tested it on Autobahns and were surprised to see the traffic waves disappear at such a low saturation point (they were, as it were, flashmobbing the highways specifically to get a lot of their cars on them at rush hour in specific several-kilometer segments to make sure the things would react well to being right behind ANOTHER car with the same system -- important safety test, there).

My home computers have names, strictly for networking purposes, like "slackwarelaptop" and "ubuntugame" and "windowsminitower." Descriptional, with no emotional investment.

There used to be an "aquatic theme" naming convention for the video servers at work. I got tired of names like starfish, octopus, and whale, and named my servers wiwaxia, anomalocaris, pikaia, opabinia and halluciagenia. I posted pictures of these creatures in my cubicle, in case co-workers wonder what the hell I'm going on about.

Lately, there's been too much turnover in servers, so they get generated names.

Lizzy L at 68:

I don't really think my laptop has a personality, except when I'm mad at it & accuse it of being difficult on purpose. We've always named computers in our house, at least partially so that the list of shared computers in our household isn't:
"The desktop in the loungeroom"
"Emilly's laptop"
"Danni's laptop"
"Emilly's phone" etc. Cause I think that's boring, although informative, I guess!

Plus, like etv13 at 64: it's just more fun if they have names.

My bicycle is "Panther." Because it is black, and came with off-road tires. (Between those, and the mountain-gear, it feels like you could climb trees with it.)

(Knock on wood) All of my macs have been so completely reliable and predictable that they have no discernable personality to speak of, and so have the names they came with: SE/30, iBook, MacBook.

I don't name my computers, but I name my cars and harps. Several of my cars have been named Simba (Up, Simba!). Harps include Ace, Sterling (because it's a mule), and Conan.

An old friend of mine, a herald, had a license plate reading GULES, heraldry-speak as well as French for red, which his car was. The car's name was actually something else. His therapist asked him about it, and upon receiving the heraldic explanation, declared "But people don't name their cars!". He changed therapists.

Fragano @10: *claps hands in delight* Now that is like the sun coming out. Thank you! (Also, it was so very good to see you last month.)

Re: Aubrey/Maturin, my small tribute, written for Mary Dell, is here. It contains a sloth reference. Sloths are compulsory. *grin*

Kip W @ 65 -

That episode was Requiem for Methuselah.

When I first saw that episode, I thought the ending was poignant and Spock was giving Kirk a lovely gift. Later, however, I thought that Spock was taking something from Kirk that he shouldn't have. Memories can be painful, but I don't think they should be removed without consent.

AKICIML: What the heck does AKICIML mean? TKS.

Brenda @77 AKICIML = All Knowledge Is Contained In Making Light

that is, a request for random information that someone around here probably knows

Lizzy, my first car was named for the person who gave him to me. My second needed a name because the first one had one. The next car will as well. No one in my family be me seems to have named their cars, though my boyfriend does too.

The first ipod was named "necessary," because it required a name, and I was trying to keep my organizing system and calendar on it, and it was necessary to carry it around. The second is named "joy," because it gives me that.

School computer was Jonas, home computer was Jonah. Again, I had to name them something to keep the computer node servers happy.

The only other things I name are stuffed animals.

Open threadiness:

Discussions of Kropotkin and references to a Gutenberg ebook in English made me curious enough to download and start reading Mutual Aid, which is so far quite interesting. (I think I want to go back after this and reread The Super-Organism.). Very early in the book, I ran across a very interesting quote:

Mutual aid is met with even amidst the lowest animals, and we must be prepared to learn some day, from the students of  micro scopical pond-life, facts of unconscious mutual support, even from the life of  micro -organisms

Now, as I'm reading this, I'm thinking about biofilms and quorum sensing. I think neither one was much known for several decades after he wrote the book.

On the recent Gnome Uprising:

As you recall, we have spam filters here of surprising depth and subtlety, constantly being tuned to take in the spammers' tricks.

The biggest wave of spam usually hits between 0400 and 0500 Eastern time, but there's a steady drum-roll all day.

The filters catch most of the spam, but occasionally some of it gets through, and I must tune the filters. Also occasionally, a real message gets caught, and I must tune the filters.

Some will have noticed that, from time to time, a huge wave of spam appears, seemingly all at once.

What I have noticed is this: For some reason, unknown to me, from time to time Movable Type's back end reverts the spam filter (a text file; a long list of PERL expressions) to some previous iteration.

This evening, just such a thing had happened. I have taken to putting a date/time group as a comment as the last thing I do before I save the current filter. Tonight -- it had reverted to the version from the morning of February the 6th. I'd lost 10 days of filtering tweaks.

But! This time, I'd saved a copy of the filter (from the 10th, so I still lost nearly a week), as a wordprocessing file. So, I pasted that file in. Added the patterns from today's crop of spam. Then I went to dinner.

Alas! What I did not notice was that the wordprocessor didn't save the Russian characters that I filter on (among many, many other things). Thus, the Gnomes were holding for review every post that contained a blank space.

When I noticed this, I hastened to release everything that was non-spam (some spam comments had come in too, in the midst of all this).

I think I have 'em all back and posted now.

Jim @85: Thank you for the explanation.

Open Threadiness documentary recommendation: The Black Power Mixtape (http://blackpowermixtape.com/)

I'm about halfway through because I keep having to go rewind so I can rewatch some bits. The film looks at the black power movement in the US between 1967 and 1975. I was alive then, but only really aware of what was going on in the last few years of that period.

Hosting Matters, which hosts my site and this one among thousands, calls its servers all manner of things. The most recent naming convention I noticed was this: wyeth, mondriaan, and magritte.

Tracie, 70: No, "gules" is English heraldic terminology. French heralds say "gueules" instead of "rouge."

This comment brought to you by AP*ICIML.

*pedantry

Marty in Boise @70: Does your state do 7 letters? How about VLADTHE?

Steve C @80: Kirk did not ask to be made to fall in love with her, and the memory was nothing but pain. I think Spock did the right thing.

It was quite a gnome festival there for a while. Thanks for fixing stuff, Jim!

Lizzy @68: I'm another non-namer. Don't know why, but it just doesn't seem important to me for objects. Animals, now -- that's different!

Our computer naming scheme is my husband's; his computer is katana, mine is naginata, and i think there's a shuriken and a kama in amongst the netbooks, laptops, and shuttlecase.
One day I felt a little OCD and named all our thumb drives after the Flash - Wally West, Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, Bart Allen.
My first ipod was a hand-me-down that always had to be force-restarted after waking from sleep mode. I named it malus fusca after the local crabapple species.

I've had two PowerBooks named dynamic, the first was a duo, and the second had a core duo processor. My first car was named Sniffer (79 rabbit), the second Horatio(civic wagon). Neither of them were my names, but they fit. This iPad is named YT, and my gen1 one is named Paddington. Also around the house, I have aieee (eeepc), adam(atom based Linux box), phantom (work linux, it's dark. It's heart is black).

Well, you have to name disks something. My PowerBook hard drive is Macheath. The red portable hard drive with half a gig is Alfred ('alf...), and the two terabye external drive is Tutti. There have been other names along the way. I used to name cars. In fact, I'm pretty sure I did name the Element, and when I can think of the name again, I'll write it down somewhere.

The earliest Williams car name I remember is a semi-legendary family car named Beeping Booty. This name broke me up when I was a kid.

Kip W @ 65... Steve C @ 80...

"I was born in that region of Earth later called Mesopotamia, in the year 3834 B.C., as the millennia are reckoned. I was Akharin, a soldier, a bully and a fool. I fell in battle, pierced to the heart - and did not die. "

One of the better episodes of the 3rd Season.

I have a dual boot Windows/Ubuntu machine. Its names are Cox and Box.

Before that I had a Mac named King Alfred.

My computers tend to have names. Ditto the cars I've owned.

My first car was a Betsy. The second was, I think, Sissy.

The current computer (a laptop) is called Junior (because at the time I named it, it was the newest of the suite). I had another laptop (an older model) which goes by the name of "Miss Bill", or Wilhemina. The last desktop I owned was called Charlie.

The next MP3 player I purchase (should my current one eventually reach the point of non-functionality) will probably be called either "Orac" or "Slave" - because the current one is a Creative Zen.

Kip, #65: Tangentially, that scene also contrasts nicely with the one in Wrath of Khan where Spock (in a rather different situation) says to McCoy, "Remember."

Lizzy, #68: It seems to me that at least part of the reason some people name some objects is anthropomorphization. If you think of your car, or your computer, as having a distinct personality, then giving it a name seems like a natural sort of thing to do. Irresistible puns are another common reason.

Jim, #85: Thanks for the explanation. I figured that something had gone spla* when the third comment in a row got gnomed, and decided to wait for it to be fixed.

shadowsong, #92: Oh, that's cute with the flash drives!

* Yes, spla. Not splat, not spare. It's a personal idiom. :-)

Jacque at 62:
but a uniform distribution in the traffic would mean there are no gaps in it, which would mean it would have no resiliency to a sudden change of pressure.

HLN: Local man wakes up with toothache, is told a root canal and crown would cost a thousand dollars, an extraction just $80, wonders why dental care is still not covered by medical insurance.

Pedantic Peasant @33: My brain has a hard time reminding itself not to envy you your possession of a GPS named "Dawnstar", since it won't really have her bod. And speaking of immaturity...

Modesto Kid @39: While reading to my son, his age then single-digit, he interrupted to confess that he still felt the urge to giggle when he heard the word "poopdeck". I had to admit that I did, too.

Albatross @84 re Kropotkin anticipating the discovery of co-operation among micro-organisms: I am reminded of my mother's observation that the genius of Hieronymus Bosch was not appreciated by most modern people, who had grown up seeing pictures of sea-bottom life, fossils and, for that matter, micro-organisms.

Most cars we own have names like "the Dodge", "the Volvo", &c., but I named the VW van I drove my kids around in "the Scarabaeus" because of its resemblance to the classic early minivan, the Scarab (now, we don't have that van, and the kids have all moved out). I named our current Ford Escort "Sputnik" because an error in its wiring causes it to beep incessantly whenever one of the doors is open.

@Lee: If you think of your car, or your computer, as having a distinct personality, then giving it a name seems like a natural sort of thing to do. Yeah, I get that. I guess I lack the particular sense of whimsy which would allow me to attribute a personality to my car or my computer. My sense of humor is sometimes dormant. Or perhaps I am humor-deficient.

Lizzy @101:

It's not really about whimsy, or sense of humor. It's (in my opinion) simply about where your line between "person" and "thing" is placed. Which is, I suspect, neurological in origin, where a broad variety of different behaviors are all within the bounds of normal.

Think of it this way. Our more complex devices—cars, computers, a few other things—have a wide range of interaction patterns with us. Over time, those devices, being complex, fall into various failure modes and patterns.

Depending on how the space between your ears is wired, those patterns of interaction and failure can cross the threshold into "person-like behavior". For people who do that, it's like the device acquiring, or revealing, a personality (note how many people talk about their named things "revealing" their names over time). Then the naming is just picking a name that, in their private universe of nomenclature, fits that personality.

It's not whimsy. Indeed, if you get a particularly failure-prone car, it can be like having a colleague you loathe, but can't afford to quit working with.

The only context in which I can see it mattering in the least, one way or the other, is if it turns out that aliens who arrive on Earth only ping some people's "these are people" (as opposed to "these are objects") meters. Then, I suspect, you'd see a genuine split between the car-namers and the not-car-namers.

(There are also those of us who name our devices because of tradition. My parents named their cars when I was a kid; therefore, car-naming is a thing that one does in my universe. I name my bikes because naming cars, for me, is naming transportation devices, and now I cycle more than I drive. We name our computers because that way it's easier to manage our network.)

In addition to, and somewhat in the stead of, anthropomorphization, there's also the desire to individualize mass-produced objects. So, my bicycle isn't just another one of that Canadian Tire style that happened to suit me; it's Marie. This is a bit like adding decals or skins to electronics. My bike doesn't have a personality, but she does have a history with me, and I reflect that by naming her.

Or, in the case of stuffed animals, it's usually flat rebellion against the company's attempt to impose a name, especially if I feel it clashes (I've accepted them if they fit). So my stuftie isn't another Ty beanie Colosso, it's Katie, my pygmy mammoth. (Colosso? What were they thinking?)

However, I personally also find myself afflicted with a hyperactive naming impulse. Because I need to use it so much to name characters, it persists in running in the unconscious when not called upon, meaning I usually have a name before I look for one. This resulted once in my speaking the sentence "The new computer doesn't seem to have a name actually it's Arthur." (wording approximate; punctuation, or lack thereof, accurate to how it was spoken.)

I had a similar incident with my current cat; the Humane Society people had named her Irene, which fit her badly. I knew I wanted to change it, but not what to, until I got her home to the then-apartment. I let her out of the carrier, said goodbye to the friend who'd helped drive her home, turned around to find her, and said, "Élise?"

(Someone pointed out later that had I pronounced it in German rather than French, I could have called her Fur Elise...)

Which segues nicely into the fact that, yes, the inability to resist puns and silly references also comes into play. Thus the Mechanical Orchestra (my MP3 player), the Angry Chicken (my mandolin -- an in joke between me and my teacher), and the Silly Goose (the octave mandolin, continuing the trend).

In addition to, and somewhat in the stead of, anthropomorphization, there's also the desire to individualize mass-produced objects. So, my bicycle isn't just another one of that Canadian Tire style that happened to suit me; it's Marie. This is a bit like adding decals or skins to electronics. My bike doesn't have a personality, but she does have a history with me, and I reflect that by naming her.

Or, in the case of stuffed animals, it's usually flat rebellion against the company's attempt to impose a name, especially if I feel it clashes (I've accepted them if they fit). So my stuftie isn't another Ty beanie Colosso (ugh), it's Katie, my pygmy mammoth.

However, I personally also find myself afflicted with a hyperactive naming impulse. Because I need to use it so much to name characters, it persists in running in the unconscious when not called upon, meaning I usually have a name before I look for one. This resulted once in my speaking the sentence "The new computer doesn't seem to have a name actually it's Arthur." (wording approximate; punctuation, or lack thereof, accurate to how it was spoken.)

I had a similar incident with my current cat; the Humane Society people had named her Irene, which fit her badly. I knew I wanted to change it, but not what to, until I got her home to the then-apartment. I let her out of the carrier, said goodbye to the friend who'd helped drive her home, turned around to find her, and said, "Élise?"

(Someone pointed out later that had I pronounced it in German rather than French, I could have called her Fur Elise...)

Which segues nicely into the fact that, yes, the inability to resist puns and silly references also comes into play. Thus the Mechanical Orchestra (my MP3 player), the Angry Chicken (my mandolin -- an in joke between me and my teacher), and the Silly Goose (the octave mandolin, continuing the trend).

RRGH.

The first of the near-double posts was meant to be a preview. The second is the comment as intended to be posted. This $&^%@# laptop (not my computer and not named) has a mouse button that sometimes triggers if you wave vaguely in its direction.

Some objects definitely deserve names. Some definitely have personalities.

My brother-in-law's old multi-disk CD player had favorite songs, and favorite CDs. It would only play those CDs and songs, no matter how you placed them.

I worked the computer lab in college as work study. The Lab Monitor Guy. I swear that some computers in that lab hated certain students and would refuse to function properly for them. As soon as that student left or moved to a different computer, it would suddenly start working properly again.

So I am definitely in the name them, camp.

Lenora @ 105 The first of the near-double posts was meant to be a preview. The second is the comment as intended to be posted. This $&^%@# laptop (not my computer and not named) has a mouse button that sometimes triggers if you wave vaguely in its direction.

Cross posted, but, see. Evidence for my point.
Don't make em mad.

I adored the Hornblower books as a teenager, and re-read them once or twice as a young adult. More recently, I thoroughly enjoyed the Aubrey-Maturin series, so it comes as no surprise that I gobbled up the Hornblower miniseries with Ioan Gruffudd. However, when watching it, I was reduced to apoplexy during some of the sea battles, crying out things like "NO! NO! Pound his hull!!!" I haven't been tempted to re-read the Hornblower books in some time, for I fear that the view of manly virtues circa 1937-1967 might jar me these days.

I've catalogued quite a few of my books on LibraryThing, and one of the features it offers is comparing the contents of your library with Legacy libraries. These are the libraries of various famous people that have been catalogued by enthusiastic volunteers. I was amused to find that Hemingway shared my love of Hornblower. The other authors that seem to show up in any 20th century library are Jane Austen, P.G. Wodehouse, and Stendhal. Jane Eyre is pretty ubiquitous, too. People who read it include Hemingway, Emily Dickinson and Susan B. Anthony. Wouldn't it be grand to get the three of them together to discuss it?

We don't name our possessions*, but we did name our late cat for our car--or, to be precise, for half of the license plate, which began EVA. (She was one of a litter abandoned in the garage, out of which I spent six months taming her and her brothers.) Did we get something backwards?

The Aubrey-Maturin books are too full of splendid sentences for me to pick any--though I have been known to burden my wife with a reading of a current favorite. And speaking of splendid writers, Reginald Hill died and I'm going to miss the Fat Man and the rest of them a lot. At least Martin Cruz Smith seems to be hanging on.

*I do refer to one of my guitars as "Mr. Froggy" (for the tree-frog decorating its headstock), mostly because my vision-impaired picking partner asks what guitar I've brought to a gig and I have two by the same builder and if I just say, "The Cloutier," he still wouldn't know which one. The other Cloutier I call "the other Cloutier" and he knows what I mean. Which reminds me, I'm told that when I was very young I thought the term for car was "sonofabitch" because the family vehicle right after the war (WW2--the big one) was an ancient, arthritic Pierce-Arrow and that's what Dad called it. That's not quite the same as giving it a name, though.

It has been A Day--much if it good, which I would not have anticipated at the time of my last post.

It only took me another hour to catch the 3 feral-borns (***sigh***), and then I was off. When I got to the vet's office, the receptionist mentioned that the cats weren't marked as being up to date on their shots. Which I agreed was the case, so she said she'd tell the tech who was putting them in their cages, so that if a contagious pet came in, that pet could be kept as far as possible from mine.

The tech came back and said the vet said the cats had to be vaccinated to stay--but he'd give me time to pay off the shots. All praises to my vet for being an awesome human being. :)

After leaving the office, I called one of my friends who had left a comment requesting same on an FB post I made this morning, of about the same tenor as the one I left here but without the good news about my vet's offering to board the cats. So. called her back, and almost the first thing she said was, "So would it help you if I paid for the cats' shots?" I explained the newest developments and said yes, so she asked for their name and phone number and said she'd call in the payment.

Went to Social Services afterward to get the replacement forms I needed (due to missing paperwork of last Friday). Because I didn't have an appointment, I again had to see a lobby caseworker--same guy as had taken my paperwork last Friday. He did say that he'd taken it upstairs per standard procedure, so he was at a loss to explain the...loss. (Heh.) He told me he couldn't give me a voucher for emergency housing at a motel--and made the same kind of comments about the selection of motels accepting county housing vouchers as the woman at the PATH shelter had made about the "winter" shelter.

General observation: Is it me, or does the fact that people within the "helping the homeless" field, whether government or private, are making generally negative comments about their available accommodations sound like there's room for improvement? I'm sure it all comes down to money, as in who's willing to house people for the likely pittance the county pays them, but damn.

The system, it seems muchly broken. Which is no surprise, really; I just never expected to have first-hand experience. Privilege in action, I guess.

Left Social Services with my replacement forms and a comment from my caseworker that if I arrived at the office before 10:00 AM, he would see me, so that's my goal: get all the catching-up stuff pulled together early, and get printing, etc., done by 8:30 or 9:00.

As to where I'm sleeping tonight, my friend E called while I was visiting Damon, so I called her back before returning to the apartment to finish packing. And when I told her the good news about the cats, she said that since she was out of town until Monday, I was more than welcome to stay at her place--all I had to do was pick up the spare key from her sister.

(The only reason she hasn't told me I could just move in with her, she confessed today, is her allergy to cats--which I completely understand, since she has enough breathing issues as it is. She also has a dog, and a doggie door, and while the dog himself might not be an issue--although my cats have never been around dogs and would likely find the experience...difficult--it's the chance they'd get out the doggie door and go on permanent walkabout that really concerns me.)

tl:dr: the cats are set for a few days, and so am I. And I am INCREDIBLY grateful for my friends--I have the distinct feeling that it will be due to their efforts, even more than my own, that I'll get out of this okay.

Now it's on to the work of finding a job.

I think I'll sleep well tonight. :)

He tinctured Catullus-and-water;
Diana he hunted, who fled him;
He, darker twin, never caught her,
And they that he bled ever bled him.
A polyglot phoenix musician;
Of bangles that murder, the buyer;
No surgeon: he was a physician,
Tormented by rack and by fire.
His catlin could kill, or could cure.
In pity he sailed; pity harboured -
Except for himself. Never sure
Of the odds between topside and larboard.
A paladin, subfusc and shabby,
As strange then as now. Equally
The friend of the mongrel and tabby,
A champion of liberty.
Perhaps he was dark; he had reason.
Perhaps in Jack's light he was shade.
But we must have the autumn - the season
To remember how summer was made.

joann @ 72:

One of the reasons that many of us who were involved with Unix computers in the 1970s and 80s named our computers is that the uucp unix-to-unix file transfer program used to send email required a complete machine-to-machine path (called a bangpath, because it was punctuated by exclamation marks: tinkers!evers!chance would send an email to host machine chance by way of tinkers and evers). So if you wanted to receive email on a particular computer, it had to have an externally-known name. Given that, and the nature of Unix hackers, whimsy necessarily followed.

James D. Macdonald @85: Ah, makes sense. Please accept my gratitude for the work that you and the other mods put into keeping Making Light humming along.

When my comments went walkies, I figured it was something Deep and Subtle; my apologies to abi for the back-channel panic.

Jacque @113:

You were not the only one to email me, but I was, in point of fact, asleep throughout the entire adventure.

Which adventure gives me the opportunity to point out how very awesome indeed our Mr Macdonald and His Marvelous Spam-Trapping Machine are. Because they really are.

Syd @110: really glad you're sorted for the next few days, at least. Good luck on the job hunt - I do realise it's all tied up: if you had a job, you'd have money for rent and could find somewhere to live... Is it worth asking your vet/vet's receptionist that you're looking for somewhere? They might know of an animal shelter somewhere looking for a live-in animal caretaker, for example, if you're willing to do that for the moment.

And, I think it's time for another {{{{{HUG}}}}}. Sorry our spare room is a continent and an ocean away from you.

Lenora Rose @104: my current cat; the Humane Society people had named her Irene, which fit her badly.

I avoid renaming guinea pigs when they come into my home, because they do know their names, and I figure they've got enough to cope with, learning to deal with a new human and all.

But then there was the first boar to come into my house. (A magnificient long-hair—at least when he was all combed out. In his natural state—well, one friend commented that he looked like a cheap toupée.) His previous humans had named him, for all love, "Puffy." So I named him after the kid who helped me carry his cage home: Logan. Which eventually (inevitably?) evolved to Mr. Fuzzy Logan. Which was fine, until I adopted Fuzzy from another friend.

When a new name is required, I've learned to come up with something promptly, or they wind up with names like Brown Pig and Little Pig. Brown Pig eventually became Walnut, but Little Pig lived out her days with that designation. Strangely, it actually suited her, even after she outgrew it.

(When I first brought her home, I could tuck her into a shirt pocket. That winter, she became accustomed, when it was her turn to snuggle, to stretching out along my shoulder under my sweater. Spring, then summer, then fall came and went, and when it was time to get out the sweater again—WTF!? What happened to Mommy's shoulder!? It shrank! Now she had to sprawl across my shoulder and all the way down to my elbow.)

My current crew includes, as has been mentioned here before, Gustav. She got this name because (a) it's impossible to sex guinea pigs until they're about two weeks old and (b) that was the name of the hurricane that was in the news when she was born. I figured it was apt, since, being an emergency C-section, she had a similar effect on my finances.

It's fascinating how bothered people get by a female guinea pig named Gustav. I've gotten so used to it that the name doesn't have any gender to me anymore.

I could have called her Fur Elise...

Ow.

debio @107 I swear that some computers in that lab hated certain students and would refuse to function properly for them.

I am minded of the ancient and decrepit copier in the CU Physics Department, the summer I temped there a few years ago. Some days, it was obviously feeling terrible, and would only function when offered kind words and copious encouragement. One of the TAs (a young Chinese woman) came in to copy a quiz. I told her this. She looked at me like she thought I was crazy. But sure enough, the minute I'd leave the room, the copier would jam. I'd come in, clear the jam, pat it on the casing, tell it that it was a good copier, that it could do it, and it would be off rolling again. Until I left the room.

Don't make em mad.

They have stress sensors, you know. Copiers do, too.

Russell Letson @109: I'm told that when I was very young I thought the term for car was "sonofabitch"

Susan Crites says that when she was young, she had a horse who, she was convinced, thought his name was "Whoa Bill Dammit."

Syd: I'm so happy y'all have a bit of a respite. Yeah, the safety net in this country is, shall we say, a bit tattered. Scary shit, frankly. I've been through a couple of rounds, and things are better than average where I am. But, I'm grateful not to have had to test out the local accomodations. Sleep well and long!

abi @114: I was, in point of fact, asleep throughout the entire adventure.

Exceedingly sensible, I must say.

BTW, I presume it's been pondered that The Sun Never Sets on Making Light, yes?

Mr Macdonald and His Marvelous Spam-Trapping Machine

I'm envisioning something like a lint-trap, only with gears, levers, antennae, and dasblinkenlights.

Syd, somewhat disguised @ #110:

Hurrah for good news! May there be more of the same in days and weeks to come.

Steve C. @ #80: I thought that Spock was taking something from Kirk that he shouldn't have. Memories can be painful, but I don't think they should be removed without consent.

What's more, if memory serves there's a later episode in which Kirk is offered a similar service by somebody who does ask for his consent first - and he says No.

"Pain and guilt can't be taken away with the wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves."

On the naming of things:

I'm not one to anthropomorphize, generally; I only name my computers, and like several people who have answered already that's mostly about identifying them on networks. Which is one reason why they're named after places, not people... and also a reason why they're named after the places they are: The first one came down to a choice between "Gallifrey" and "Skaro", and I decided that Skaro was easier to type and harder to misspell, and everything since has followed from that.

Syd @110, glad you've got things stable for the moment. Best wishes for continued improvement in the situation.

janetl @ 108... I thought the sea battle in the 1951 movie was pretty neat.

Last night I took the kindergardener to his sister's 6th grade orchestral concert. He got really into the music, humming to himself and beating time. I was quite annoyed with him, and resolved to speak severely to him afterwards, when suddenly I realized why the whole thing seemed strangely familiar . . .

abi #102: Well put. I'll note also that humans in general are wired to seek personalities around them, it's just the sensitivity that varies among individuals. Just so were born the ancient gods of river and ocean, mountain and forest, storm and sun.

My PCs tend to have somewhat arbitrary names, though for a while I had a run of furry critters. I've never renamed a pet that had a name -- it just seemed presumptuous.

Syd #110: Also, both "human shelters" are themselves likely overloaded and underfunded. Their respective representatives almost surely have standing orders to discourage new "customers", and talking the place scary is easy.

My first car was called "Buddy", because that's what I called it when I needed to get it out of a snowdrift. It was a teeny little Toyota, and I sometmes referred to it as "my familiar". None of my cars since have been named. At the moment we have "the Cavalier" and "the Aveo". (If I give in to impulse and buy an Impala, I'm going to name it Dean. Because I'm a geek that way.)

I name my computers for networking purposes. The Vaio was "FoxDen"; my current Alienware monster is "GamerGurl".

I would name things more often if I were good at coming up with awesome names, but in fact I suck at that.

Syd at 110, this is good news, that the cats have a place to stay, and that you do, even though it's very short term.

I'm re-posting a suggestion I made earlier. You might consider putting the boarding facility's name and contact info, phone number, etc. in a post here. Include the cats' names, or your name -- some way so that the facility can identify to whom the funds should be credited. Folks on Making Light who wish to help you -- and there might be some, don'tcha think? -- can then contact the facility directly.

AKICIML: When I was at CMU, in the mid-90s, there was a game on the server called "Antitris". It was, as the name implies, a Tetris variant, which used the standard Tetris pieces but in one of the six "rainbow" colors. To make squares go away, you had to make them contain all three primaries (red, yellow, blue), at which point the squares would turn white and vanish and everything above them would fall down. No color could go through itself; thus, a green piece could not fall through a square that already contained blue, yellow, purple, orange, or green, but it could fall through red.

Since I left CMU, I have been on a quest to discover a version of that game again. Anyone got a hint?

This little Popean fragment just slipped out this morning....

Attend, O public, to my supple song
It is of moment but it won't last long,
Think how the world, in these dank, cheerless days
Could be improved by Satire's fiery blaze.
But no lampooning could produce the pain
Of list'ning to a speech from Herman Cain;
Of knowledge of the world he gave no sign
But like a dullard uttered 'nine-nine-nine'.
'Twas not that did him in, I shall be clear,
But an excessive liking for the fair.
Rick Perry strode so handsome on the stage,
Proclaimed himself the Hero of our Age
And truest Guardian of good Christian Rage.
Alas for him, this Spokesman of the South
Could not connect his mind unto his mouth.
The fist was small, the latter seemed so large
But could not function even at full charge.
The lady Bachmann said that she was sent
By God's command; she lost and so she went
Right back to Minnesota where she rants
Ignored by all except the Flies and Ants.
But now, as we survey the meeting hall
Behold the earnest visage of Ron Paul.
He wants the government to do fuck-all
Yet thousands think he's Jefferson return'd,
The brilliant leader for whom they've yearn'd.
Onward he leads his happy, crazy band
With a mad mix of Jesusand Ayn Rand.
And who is this who comes into our forum?
The sweater-vested, frothy Rick Santorum.
The problems of the poor do not him vex,
Instead he worries about man-dog Sex.
The great crusade that he has in his sights
Is that of cutting back on Women's rights,
On those of Fays, Latinos, and of Blacks,
Because that way the rich will pay less tax.
Now Doctor Gingrich makes the ladies swoon
With talk of bases on Mars and the Moon,
He's go to any length, will lack all ruth,
But damn it all, will never tell the truth.
He has a plan to get us out of debt
By staking all on an enormous bet
That wealthy folk are selfless. That's a bitch
Leaving the poor at mercy of the rich.
Willard declares that he's truly the One,
Ordained by Heaven, the true, blessèd son
Who has come to save us, to take us higher,
And we should rejoice for he loves to fire.
Romney's the Savior, worthy of each vote,
Even from those who can't stay afloat;
He sympathises, he'll write them a note
Explaining why each poor person's to blame
For outsourcing. Isn't that such a huge shame?
Barack Obama looks, and shakes his head
At this assemblage of the living dead.
For, like the rest of us, he's of the part
That manages to have both brain and heart.

elise #79: Thank you! It was great seeing you last month also.

Lee @98: Huh. That never, in all these years, occurred to me, but you're right. Cool.

Lenora Rose @103: For a while, we had a '66 VW Beetle that we called Alexander. I bet nobody else ever thought of that one. Years later, I got a rather large and very detailed metal replica for a stunningly cheap price, with the exact same paint color. It still pleases me when I notice it.

Russell Letson @109: Froggy is your magic twanger? Me confusedly!

Syd: echoing others' good wishes.

Re: renaming of pets:

My first roommate had a black-and-white cat with a long name that suited her not at all and which she ignored. My roommate's mother had named her. When she and my roommate and I began to live together, my roommate announced that she (the human) had been trying to rename the cat, who was then around 5, with no success.

I looked at the cat and said, "her name is Spot."

And it was.

She answered to it right away and remained Spot to the end of her days, some years later.

abi @ 102: if you get a particularly failure-prone car, it can be like having a colleague you loathe, but can't afford to quit working with

Oh, yes--My first named car was an oil-leaking Datsun 510, The Nissan Valdez.

KipW @ 89: Oh, golly...according to the Idaho DOT widget, "VLADTHE" is actually available. Now If I could just nudge the kerning a bit so it looks like there's a space...

Jacque @116, in re renaming pets …

My current pair of beagles are both renamed, because they didn't answer to their 'old names' when I got them, and said names were STUPID and did not seem to fit. My older beagle, the utterly broken one, was initially 'Buttons'. I swore I would NOT name 'Cujo' because I told him repeatedly during his early civilization process that I was utterly DETERMINED that he should change sufficiently that people would ever after ask me why such a sweet pup was named Cujo. So he's Ajax now. The younger was 'Dino' when we got him, but didn't even vaguely answer to it. John wanted naming rights, so he sorted through the history of American naval vessels to find all the USS Ajaxes and looked up ships interacting with them to find a name for our second beagle, whose name is now Boston.

I had suggested as guidelines that if it started with B that could become a trend for us, and reserved veto rights over names with consonants dogs find it hard to distinguish. An early favorite was 'Bellerophon,' continuing both the ship and classical-reference threads, but you can't tell me we wouldn't shorten it over time, making him either "Bellie" (and we have friends with a dog whose name is Belle already) or "Fonnie," both of which felt wrong for him.

In re personifying machines … Graham Leathers does a very cromulent* song on this subject. It is entitled "Don't Swear at Machinery"; in the chorus that line is followed by the statement, "Cause it never listens to you!"

* Note: not a 'corpulent' song, which is what Firefox autocorrected it to, twice ...

Melissa Singer @ 130... I looked at the cat and said, "her name is Spot."

Your middle name wouldn't happen to be Data, would it?

For reasons I know not.

Way back when, my family had an open-reel tape recorder which I called Cerberus, because it had 3 heads. When the left channel went out, a friend remarked that now it wasn't even a Janus.
Otherwise not much into naming objects, though I have been very attached to many. Often I have only one of something so don't need to tell several apart. One of the hallmarks of being a "thing-oriented" person is that however much individuality or "personality" some objects and structures have, there isn't the urge to give them human-like attributes or talk about them that way. As for humanoid genders applied to any inanimates, that always creeped me out bigtime, even before I learned the "facts of life". That's one of the reasons I don't hang out with the Objectum-Sexual community much any more--the other being that for me it wasn't sexual.
Sometimes I feel like the English language is missing a few noun classes and pronouns to match.
Syd--wishing best of luck for you and furry friends.

Jacque, #116: Reminds me of my friends who swore that their cats' real names were "Anubis Jesus!", "Aradia Forghodsake!", and "Neko Quit!"

David H., #123: Our dog Sweetie came to us named that, and my mother refused to change it, but at least the name suited her. My first cat, OTOH, had been obnoxiously named by her former owners (she was missing a leg*, and they were calling her Peggy for "peg-leg"); I said the hell with that, and renamed her Genevieve. As she was still just a baby at the time, she had no trouble adjusting.

* Lost at birth, just above the hock -- the umbilical cord was wrapped around it, and when the mother cat went to separate the cord she got the leg with it. Being an indoor cat, this was never a great hardship; she got around just fine, and as a youngster loved running up and down the stairs!

I'm not one for naming inanimate objects either. My computers only get names for networking purposes. I never name cars - and I'm a total car nut.

Re Spot -- My black cat was quite unimaginatively named Ebony at the pound. Who knows what she was named before that, but as soon as I saw the picture on their website, I thought she was the one and I'd call her Esme if she liked me. I flirted with a few other cats when I got there, just to be sure, but it was Esme I wanted. (She's recovering from having a broken tooth pulled and is happy to be home.)

JanetL @108: If they pound the enemy's hull, it's "sink, burn, or destroy," and I suspect they were hoping to go for "take," prize-money being a thing not to be disdained, especially for a young man who can only afford pinchbeck buckles to his shoes!

Have you watched To the Ends of the Earth? It's become very popular among my online circle, due to the presence of Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hiddleston, neither of whom appeal to me in the same way as Ioan Gruffudd and Jamie Bamber, but my housemate and I watched it anyway, what with the convenience of Netflix Instant and the appeal of ships and period costumes. We discovered that we'd picked up more about the operation of a tall ship than we'd realized, because we were forever yelling at Benedict Cumberbatch to GO BELOW and GET OUT OF THE WAY, as the crew was trying to WORK, you idiot!

AKICIML: can anyone tell my why a ship bound for Australia would have carried a complement of green-coated riflemen instead of the usual red-coated Marines? Not that I objected to seeing the pretty Sharpe uniforms, but I haven't yet found the answer in online historical sources.

Dave Luckett @111 - just wonderful.

On the Naming of Cars:

It occurs to me that there are two emergent patterns in my naming of vehicles: I have only named vehicles that I bought new, and my named vehicles have had personalized plates totally unrelated to their names. The Tercel was named "Tiercel" (although I don't know that I ever really used the name functionally) but had a plate with a condensed form of my (then) SCA name. The Element is named "Viridium" (because it's a green element) but has a plate originally designed by my parents which came to me attached to a different car when I got it second-hand. (Long complicated story that makes perfect sense if you're a Jones.) That one's in Czech: "s'laskou" (except without the apostrophe on the plate). Every once in a while random strangers correctly identify the meaning. But about the only place I actually use the name Viridium is as the file name in my auto data iPhone app.

But then, when talking about my named possessions to the world, I rarely find that using their proper names enhances clear communication. So it's "the car", and "the house" (my houses have all had names), and even simply "the cat" ... because it seems pretentious to expect people to remember what my cat's name is when all that is relevant is that I'm talking about my cat.

The computers and external drives have all had names, of course, but that's because they need quick visual identification.

Per Lizzy L's suggestion, the pertinent info re: the vet's office where my kittehs currently abide has been forwarded to the wonderful abi for transmission to any interested parties.

Thank you all for your supportive words and kind thoughts...and any other assistance on behalf of the cats and me. It all helps more than you know. :)

Syd @ 110: The system, it seems muchly broken.

The truly awful thing is that this is increasingly a feature, not a bug. In election years, in some areas, it feels like candidates are almost competing to find ever more creative ways to humiliate people who need any social services--drug tests for unemployment and food stamps, and so on, because someone, somewhere, said they saw somebody buying a top sirloin with food stamps, or parking a Cadillac in front of public housing. See also Fox News's recent trumpeting of a Heritage Foundation report that revealed that many poor people own "luxury items" like refrigerators and "color TVs" (as if any other kind are still being sold?), or Rick Santorum's notion that nobody would have any trouble paying for medical care or prescriptions if they'd simply get rid of their iPhones and cable TV subscriptions.

Rikibeth @ 138... It's become very popular among my online circle, due to the presence of Benedict Cumberbatch

...who also was in "Amazing Grace" with Ioan Gruffud, and with Paul Bettany in "Creation".

Marty (142): Never mind color TVs, in what universe is a refrigerator a luxury item?? Without one, you almost have to eat out, which gets a lot more expensive. Or you can't buy milk for your kids without most of it going bad. Or, or, or...!

The naming of cars is a difficult matter.

I wonder if "My Mother The Car" is on NetFlix.

For the strong of stomach, that July 2011 Heritage Foundation report is here. Refudiated by any number of blogs, mostly invoking variations of "At long last, sir, have you no sense of shame?"

Which of course, they do not.

Serge @146 -- or Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang, or The Love Bug...

I had a black and white cat named Spot. He adopted us during a period where dad was in and out of the hospital to knee surgery, subsequent infection and then gall bladder removal. The kids got out an old roll of blueprint (dad was an architect - unlimited blueprint paper and random templates [toilets!!] were a side benefit to us kids.) and crayons and made him a banner. We helpfully labelled the drawing of the new kitty as "New Cat". After looking at the banner, dad said the New Kitty was surely named Spot. The name stuck, but due to Dad's absence during those first couple of months, Spot never really warmed to him, only consenting to sit in dad's lap around year 17.

I tried to name my cello but nothing really fit. Maybe when I can afford to upgrade the new instrument will speak to me. I will be naming my new car (cross fingers, hopefully tomorrow) which will also technically be my first car. It may or may not be related to the plates I intend to get for it. In the spirit of Fat Tuesday, I was thinking of going with 2PACZKI, which I suppose would mean my car was named Paczek. I had considered CZRNBOG if it's a black car (after the Slavic god Czernobog) or maybe TRLOBYT (because the Honda Fits remind me of Trilobites) but I'm tempted to submit DUPEK1 and see if it gets flagged; I'm not sure there are enough people of Polish extraction at the CA DMV to recognize the word for "asshole".

Marty, #142: It's even worse than that. The fact that the system is broken is used as support for the idea that government is broken and needs to be abolished. To that end, there's an incentive to break things even further.

Someone here once said that when you believe as an article of faith that government can't do anything right, you have no motivation to govern well. I see nothing in the current Republican Party to make me think that they were wrong.

On the subject of renaming pets: I make a deliberate habit of it if said pet has been abused in his/her previous home. I don't want my dogs cringing when I call them. (Currently we have 4 dogs: 2 adopted from pounds, of which one had a name we kept and the other was a nameless stray; and two rescues from horrific situations, one of whom was renamed by the intake rescuer and the other by me.)

Serge @143: I have a recently-purchased copy of "Amazing Grace" sitting on top of the computer right now, having muchly enjoyed it from Netflix - and, incidentally, said movie helped to confirm my opinion that Benedict Cumberbatch is sort of weird-looking in any role other than Sherlock Holmes.

I will have to look into "Creation." Paul Bettany is definitely a draw.

WRT "My Mother the Car" it would appear to be viewable on Hulu.

I got a little Manx kitten from a shelter. His obnoxious name was Stumpy. I renamed him Tavy (from Octavius as we got him on the eighth of the eighth oh eight).

When we got our last cat from the shelter, they were calling her "Patches". It seemed like a rather abject name for a calico with such a glorious range of colors including true rust, so we waited a week or so, and watched. After she spent enough time curled up on the sofa, it was easy to call her "Sophie".

Current Kitty was named "Cali" at the shelter, and that just didn't seem right either. As she's a Norwegian Forest mix, I put in some time looking out famous Norwegian females, but the only thing that seemed apropos was the only Miss World from Norway, whose first name was Mona. She's got this habit of sitting in Mona Lisa pose, so it really suits. (But then, I realized much later, so did Cali, if you change the spelling. Quite the little destroyer and muncher of toes.)

nerdycellist @ 149: You might get away with it if you live in a not-very-Polish town. I knew a guy who tried to get SFACHIM as a vanity plate -- but he tried it in Huntington, NY, where there are lots of Italian people, some of whom work at the DMV.

Naming: Our cars are named Tiffany Aching and Ponder Stibbons according to me, or Tiffany and Stibbons according to Keith. We mostly just call them "the Prius" and "the Corolla," though.

All of the cats my parents have had were un-named to start with -- they were all kittens found abandoned. So they've gotten to name all their cats from scratch (sorry).

Their current cats got multisyllabic names -- Cassandra Jolie and Calypso Cherie. They were immediately shortened to Cassie and Callie, sometimes Cassie Jo and Calypso Callie Cat.

But the long-form names get used when the cats are in trouble -- just like with kids. "Cassandra Jolie! You are a little bad cat! You ate my headphones!" Handy to have long-form cat names for that purpose. "Cassandra Jolie!" is much better for expressing frustration than just "Fluffy!"

Our cats came named by their foster mom -- Ada from "Cold Mountain" and Joon from "Benny & Joon." We kept their names, but re-spelled June's, mostly because the reference wasn't explained to us at first, so we'd already started spelling it June.

However, if someone's name is what they respond to, then Ada's name is *snaps fingers* and June's name is *tut-tut clucking sound*. Keith taught them to come when called, but they learned to respond to the noises he made to get their attention, rather than to their spoken names.

When called from another room, they come enthusiastically trotting, tail held high, saying "Whrrr -- whrrr -- whrrrr?" and then usually headbutt you. If you call them from a few feet away, though, they'll usually just look at you like "Dude, I'm already here."

Meanwhile, an article about kerning Japanese.

Caroline @156: thanks for the lols "Dude, I'm already here" is a common experience in our household.

I've named 2 of the 4 cats I've lived with (not counting Spot).

The first was Thalia--the muse of comedy, for a cheerful beast who came to me when she was 8 weeks old and kept me laughing for 16 years. (half tabby, half Abby; she had a ringed tail, a fluffy coat, and a musical voice)

The second was Minerva, also 8 weeks old. I admit, I was hoping for wisdom, but she was dumb. Pretty, but dumb. (half goodness knows, half Russian blue; she had teddy bear fur in soft grey and no voice at all)

Alexis came to me already named and happily so. (brown-and-black tabby)

And Alex (brown-and-black tabby) was named by my daughter, who was then 9ish. I have now, btw, heard of at least two more black-and-brown tabbies named Alex, Alexis, or something similar, so clearly my kid snagged a free-floating meme.

Thalia and Alexis both came to their names. Minerva only came for food. Alex knows his name but only comes if he wants to.

Syd: Continued well-wishes. Glad to hear there's a little breathing room for the cats.

It is possible they're exaggerating the state of the shelters to discourage you. I can see that as a viable technique. I wish I could be sure of that, though, and not just hopeful.

debio @ 107: Actually, I usually do get along with computers. Can't fix them, any more than an oft-considered congenial and trustworthy human will necessarily be a doctor. But this laptop is Not Mine, and I don't quite have the presumption to try and name a machine I don't own. (If I were to adopt it more permanently, I think I'd first get my trackball. And some kind of a word processing program; all I have here is Wordpad. But I've refused to move any of my files over from Arthur or the external hard drive on the network because this is Temporary. It's several months' temporary, not a few days, but even so.)

Jacque @ 116: I avoid renaming guinea pigs when they come into my home, because they do know their names, and I figure they've got enough to cope with, learning to deal with a new human and all.

Oh, I'd often agree. Had she the name from a previous owner of any length, I'd have kept it regardless of qualms (One of my friends ended up with a cat unfortunately named Treasure for that reason). But the Humane Society history made it clear she was a rescue from the street, so the name wasn't one she was attached to. (Not a feral, she's fairly social.) Similarly, the other cat, when adopted by my brother, was named Capone, but had only been saddled with the name for a couple of months, and was gladly renamed Irina. (Which name choice did make me laugh, as Jeff had completely forgotten Élise had been Irene.)

Rea @ 120: heh. This thread has been reminding me to read more than the first Aubrey/Maturin book (Though my to-read list is terribly long, so it may be years before the effects are seen)

Marty in Boise @ 142/147: Sputter choke froth. A refrigerator is a luxury item? In certain perspectives, maybe, but those perspectives don't include most places in the United States.

Caroline @ 156: Handy to have long-form cat names for that purpose. "Cassandra Jolie!" is much better for expressing frustration than just "Fluffy!"

Reminiscent of the comment that the reason kids have middle names is so they know when they're in trouble.

Julie @ 157

Oh, thanks...I needed THAT song going through my head today :)

nerdycellist, you could name it TWLLDDU.

Abi @102: Your describing the origin of the urge to name objects as "neurological" reminds me of the SF story in which it is discovered that certain people lack the circuit which lets others distinguish between men and women, but learn to use the circuit others use to distinguish species of animals -- one result of which is that some of them can distinguish between fertile and post-menopausal women on sight.

Russell Letson @109: Using "sonofabitch" as a term for automobile reminds me of the old joke about a kid who reported after a Sunday drive that Daddy had spotted an Aston-Martin, and Austin-Healey and a Stupid-Bastard.

Further thoughts on giving names to objects and/or anthropomorphizing: It was pointed out to me once that if you treat an object as though it had feelings to hurt, you were liable to treat it better, and thus get better performance out of it. This is essentially what people lacking in natural empathy learn to do with their fellow humans in order to function successfully.

HLN: Local man's wife asks him if he has ever mentioned on ML that his stories can be found at @mazon by searching "John M. Burt". Local man fears that the correct answer may be, "Often enough to count as spam".

At Abebooks, Beth Carswell comments on the covers of romance novels, classifying them into six major categories: One Or More Giant, Disembodied Floating Heads; Uncomfortable Embraces; Three's a Crowd; Woman in Foreground, Looking Playfully At Man Over Shoulder; Woman in Foreground, Looking Dead Ahead and Ignoring Man Over Shoulder; and, of course, Nurses.

nerdycellist @ #149, "because the Honda Fits remind me of Trilobites"

I've been looking at one of those to replace my 15-year-old Geo, but I hadn't thought of trilobites. Here's a pic at my place, for those wondering.

Syd @141:
Information received.

everyone:
Mail me at abi at the domain wherein we all are at the moment for details, if you can help.

John M Burt @162:

I describe it as neurological because I'm borderline Aspie from a family including some very-much-not-borderline Aspies. Asperger Syndrome is a neurological profile, and it often includes a habit of insufficiently distinguishing between people and things (both ways—sometimes people get put in the "thing" box, and sometimes things end up in the "people" box.)

But this kind of category leakage, or mapping of characteristics from one category onto members of another, is not exclusive to people on the spectrum. I know plenty of (probably) neurotypical people who do bits of it as well. I think it's a useful option (one of several) for dealing with tools so complex that they're sometimes better treated as entities than objects.

I laughed when I read this, so I thought I'd share it here.

Abi @ 102

Well, it may not be about whimsy or sense of humor for everyone. But while my bike is affectionately named Baby, my reasons for naming my computer (Obso 1337) and my memory book and cellphone (Boris and Natasha, respectively -- need I mention both are red?) were far less pure...

Ah, cross-post. Sorry, abi, I wasn't ignoring your post @ 166.

Ginger, that's hilarious. Whoever wrote that had to write all of it for the joke to work, but you don't have to READ all of it to get the joke, and thank goodness.

That would be why I don't read David Weber any more. One reason, anyway.

My first ever and still-current dog came with the name Kira, which struck me as easy to remember and suitable.*

But the first few days of dog ownership were so exhausting that I KEPT FORGETTING that two-syllable, four-letter name. For a while my cubicle had a Post-It note with her name and breed (Gronendal) written on it, as a reminder.

* I tried to adopt, but didn't act fast enough to claim, a lovely Dutch shepherd named Sweetheart. I'd probably would have changed that. Too long, a little too sappy.

On the naming of computers: My mother owns a business for which my father handles the networking. After going on safari, they began naming all the computers after animals in Swahili: Simba for the server (king of the electronic jungle), Tembo for my mother's desktop (she collects elephants), and so on. Whenever a new employee joins the company, a new animal joins the menagerie. My laptop, set up by my father for remote access, is thus Bata (Duck, my family nickname).

Our iPad is Rowsdower, which I typed in as a joke and which doesn't fit at all, but I challenged my husband to rename it, and after five months, he hasn't yet.

Next Aardman movie: http://tinyurl.com/7w8vsjv

The current desktop is named Goldberry, though she is black and silver. Her predecessor was Brigid, named for Stephen's daughter, and the one before that was The Nutmeg of Consolation.

The current pink Acer netbook is named Laetificat.

Xopher @ 170: I recommend reading the comments under that post as well.

@Ginger 167, Xopher 171: I've never read any David Weber, and I still thought it was funny.

Our black cat was named Inky by the rescue people; we re-named him Lincoln, for reasons I leave to the reader to determine. Our black-and-white cat is named Penguin.

The only inanimate object we've named is the counter on the linen cabinets at the top of the stairs. It's name is Steve. This leads to such exchanges as the following:

Me: Where did you put my clean underwear?
Spouse: It's on Steve.

Marty in Boise @131: Go for it! If you can put the space in when you request it, they may get the message and sort of fudge a little for you. Sometimes I get the idea that the guys at the stamper may have a little leeway there, and sometimes they get it and do the right thing.

Serge Broom @146: How long, I wonder, before they remake "My Mother the Car" as a movie with Betty White as the voice of the car. And, I dunno, Adam Sandler or Jim Carrey or Will Smith as the schlub.

etv13 @175: Our cat Frances had been named Princess before we got her. We took immediate action on that.

Ginger @167: There was a piece by Ed Subitzky in National Lampoon once, called "An Evening in 1973," which affected to have been written fifty years before that, with Bill Smithers and a friend with a similarly whitebread name talking at length about each and every object they touched. "Quite a device, this pen," said John Jones. "Truly a marvel of 1973!" He goes on and on about how it contains a reservoir of hardened plastic which is melted from a pressure signal at the pen's tip, and then dispenses just enough liquefied plastic to write perfectly. "Why, I remember a long time ago when pens used to jam and leak all the time!" said John Jones.

"Things sure are different in 1973!" said Bill Smithers, grinning.

When I find the box of Lampoons, I'll probably scan that out, along with the version of "Vespers" that starts off:

"Yvggyr obl xarryf ng gur sbbg bs gur orq
Yvggyr oyhr rlrf va n yvggyr tbyq urnq
Uhfu! Uhfu! Qba'g fnl n jbeq!
Puevfgbcure Ebova vf onfuvat uvf oveq!"

And proceeds in appropriate fashion to the last verse:

"Yvggyr obl xarryf ng gur raq bs uvf anc
Yvggyr unaqf ohfl va qrne yvggyr ync
Uhfu! Uhfu! Xrrc vg qvfperrg!
Puevfgbcure Ebova vf orngvat uvf zrng!"

(Rotted for the sake of NSFW sensitivities.)

Rikibeth @ 152... Paul Bettany is definitely a draw

So I've heard.
:-)

I would add to the list of reasons that people name things that many blogs include interesting pseudonyms for people. I started calling Baby Sister that after my sophomore year of college, when I needed a Livejournal name for her. I've not been moved to reallly name a computer-- mine has the name of a character from a short-lived letter game, loosely inspired by my research at the time-- but my car was either going to be Little Miss Park Avenue or Milady Buick. She's a proper dowager of a car, stately and imposing, as so Milady Buick it is. The Catina, on the other hand, is Patina... spelled from the shelter, pronounced from me.

I also live in Buttercup House (Buttercup Period House 2.0), and have lived in the Little Slanty Apartment; the previous tenants of Buttercup now live down the bike path at Grassfield Manor. My roommate gave away her car Lucy and got a new one, Mr Mark Darcy.

After a while, it becomes self-sustaining.

My mother says that Betsy is the default name* for cars. Sounds right to me. But my current one, a Scion xA, is Christa (Xopher knows why). The other possibility was Xena, but she's a lady, not a warrior princess.

*for the purposes of addressing the car when appropriate**, not for referring to it in conversation

**"Come on, Betsy, you can make it up this hill."

Long ago a cow-orker of mine owned a ten-year-old Datsun sedan (that would have made it about the 1970 model year) which she despised. She called it "the yellow mustard s***-box." Not just when stressed. Always.

The naming of cars.....

When I was a kid, at one point the family car was a slate blue Buick sedan, probably a Century, circa 1985. My younger brother had trouble pronouncing "Buick" so that vehicle became the "Bluick."

It was succeeded by a golden-tan 1989 Olds Cutlass Ciera that was promptly christened the Goldsmobile and retained that name when I drove in college and through two-transcontinental moves (Gulf coast to PNW to New England). The vehicle is in fact still on the road with close to 200K on it (handed down to a member of my husband's family), but has been renamed the Frankengoldsmobile after an unfortunate incident in a snowstorm that resulted in a mismatched front bumper.

I currently drive a dark red Taurus SE that tends to get called the Little Red Wagon when it's not That Damn Car. It hasn't got as much personality as the Goldsmobile has, somehow. Possibly because it hasn't had as long to get broken - although it's older than the Goldy was when I drove it to Oregon.

My husband's previous car was a dark green Buick Park Ave that he named the Stealth Lemon (it looked like a good deal when he got it, but was very expensive to repair and needed constant fixing.) His current car doesn't have a name. Yet.

My daughter's girlfriend's previous car was named SPOC (stupid piece of crap). One of my college friends had a Chevy Nova named Hortense Gertrude Supernova.

Our neighbor's earnest, charming and clueless juvenile labrador is named Remy but we refer to him as Floppy Dog.

In grad school, my best friend had an old, orangey-red Toyota named Portia but nicknamed The Tin Tomato. Her current vehicle is a gray pickup named Gandalf.

abi (166) My daughter said of her father (my ex-husband): "He treats people like furniture." He's an extreme case; the rest of the family tend to err toward treating furniture like people. We tend to apologize to it if we knock it over, etc. And of course we treat our cars like people, having grown up with old VW's and the Idiot's Guide ("Be on good terms with your ass, for it bears you.")

When my parents moved to Texas, there was an old building ion the land with the word 'Arthur' spray-painted on the side. The building was 'Arthur' from that day on. ('Where's Dad?' 'He's in Arthur.')

AKICIML:

Have any SF media productions included the design of a new accent From the Future? Granted, most time-travelers are trying to blend in, and I've seen hypotheses that globalization will slow language shifts.

However, the recent vowel migrations of the Northern Cities suggests new accents will continue to pop up. Have any new accents been made up?

Janet @50: SRSLY??????? My iPad is named Binky!

My partner once let me set up an iDevice for her. "What name you want?" I asked. "I don't care, whatever the default is." I don't understand people like that. So I named it 'Flapdoodle'.

She didn't let me set up any after that.

Several cats in a row came from people who were moving or changing their life situations and couldn't keep them anymore. My other half and I didn't change their names. So last year when we took in a stray kitten, we were all out of practice at discerning names for cats. We just called him Baby for a few months. Finally we realized that he was trying to tell us his name is Speedy. But he still has a Walgreens prescription plan membership card in the name of Baby Cat Beatty.

Yet the most reliable way to summon him is to turn on a faucet or clean his litterbox.

My dad got to name one of the cats I grew up with. The cat was a mutt but looked exactly like a Turkish Van - white body, orange spots, light/dark orange striped tail.
The cat's name was Spot, but my dad always insisted that was just a nickname - his real name was Spot spot spot stripe stripe stripestripestripe.

I think you guys would like my dad. :)

My current cat is named Nazoko after the japanese word for enigma or mystery, because god only knows what's going on in her head. However, I rarely call her that, and she has learned to answer to "dammit cat" and "kitty!" (accompanied by excited arm waving).

Kathryn from Sunnyvale @187 said: Have any SF media productions included the design of a new accent From the Future? Granted, most time-travelers are trying to blend in, and I've seen hypotheses that globalization will slow language shifts. However, the recent vowel migrations of the Northern Cities suggests new accents will continue to pop up. Have any new accents been made up?

I don't know if this is what you were looking for, but in the TV show Dark Angel (set significantly in the future at the time, but 'near future') there was a character, Original Cindy, who at the time of first airing had a nigh-incomprehensible argot (but you got used to it with exposure). She spoke differently than anyone else on the show, such that when eventually a character showed up who talked just like her, it was extremely notable, or when the other characters were copying her in gentle mockery, it was obvious.

I went back to rewatch recently, and was amazed; Original Cindy's argot has merged into modern sub-25 hipster-speak. I'm guessing some writer was hooked into an LA subculture that was inventing it at the time of shooting, and since then it's gone national for some reason.

It's a shame, because it makes some of the show make less sense; you don't notice her 'accent' nearly as much anymore, because it's no longer outlandish.

Similarly, Joss Whedon has changed how an entire generation speaks; we're all Buffy-talkers now.

Marty In Boise @70: my1973 Chevrolet

To romp off in a completely orthogonal direction, I had a weird thing happen to me yesterday.

I've been watching, and very much enjoying, Burn Notice. As fans of the show know, the main character drives a vintage black '73 Dodge Charger. (Black? In Miami? In the summer!? Are you mad?!?)

Now, it could be charitably understated to say that I'm not a fan of cars. I particularly loathe (big, noisy, gas-guzzling) muscle cars. But during one ep yesterday, I noticed that, while the upholstery in the car is in good condition, the steering wheel and roof are kind of chipped and shabby. Suddenly, my character Cassiopeia woke up. (I haven't heard from him in a couple of years.) He's the family tinkerer, and has spent a couple of decades fiddling with and enhancing the family space-yacht. (All of this has gone on entirely without my knowledge or consent, mind you.) He blinked, stared at that car, and was struck with what can only be described as lust at first sight.

I found myself suddenly possessed of a fanfic: Cas, showing up at Michael Westen's loft, pleading to be allowed to work on that car. And, after finally succumbing to the pressure (having Cas following you around, shuffling along on his knees, hands clutched before him in supplication, and giving you the big Doe Eyes—for a couple of days) discovering that his car has acquired some unanticipated and very stfnal features—

Well. This is the closest I'll probably ever get to writing it. I haven't done any fiction for a long time, and will probably never do anything that would be publishable. But it's always disconcerting when you find someone you made up making decisions you didn't have any hand in.

I don't have a consistent name for my car, but when I do address it, it's the Shadowcar. Or more precisely, "Hello Shadowcar, don't bite me please."

This is because it's grey, like my cat Shadow a.k.a. the Shadowcat. The Shadowcat responds to extended petting by trying to bite the hand that scritches him, even while he continues to purr. And a few months after we got the Shadowcar, I accidentally closed the door on my own fingertip (didn't let go in time), which broke.

So now I tend to respectfully greet the Shadowcar when I approach it. It also made a good go at eating two of my mom's fingers a while later, so I guess it thinks our bloodline is tasty :O

Huh. Synchronicity strikes:

A couple of weeks ago, I watched The Man from Earth on Netflix. Very nicely done little skiffy story, in the best tradition of Theatre of the Mind; it all takes place amongst a group of friends visiting for a weekend at a cabin. The closest it gets to special effects is when they go outside to their cars. Very compelling story (though I quibble with the climactic conflict. Seems like the story would have worked better for my taste if the writer hadn't taken it there, but maybe that's just me.)

Anyway, reading the Wikipedia page Steve C. @80 points to, turns out this movie is a direct descendant of that ST ep.

It's an interesting premise. Spoiler: Jbhyq n crefba, jub unq yvirq guebhtu onfvpnyyl *nyy* bs uhzna uvfgbel, unir n crefcrpgvir gung pbhyq rira or qvzyl pbzceruraqrq ol n zrer zbegny uhzna orvat? Frrzf gb zr gung fhpu n crefba jbhyq or beqref bs zntavghgr zber zlfgrevbhf naq vapbzcerurafvoyr guna na byq crefba vf gb n gbqqyre.

Erik Nelson @99: but a uniform distribution in the traffic would mean there are no gaps in it, which would mean it would have no resiliency to a sudden change of pressure.

Except that the spacing between cars actually becomes significantly greater, leading to increased compressibility.

abi @102: It's not really about whimsy, or sense of humor. It's (in my opinion) simply about where your line between "person" and "thing" is placed.

Also, as a matter of practicality, it's much easier to swear at something if it has a name.

Janet Brennan Croft @137: My black cat was quite unimaginatively named Ebony at the pound.

I have way too much fun naming my guinea pigs: I brought Shadow home from a pet store that kept all the guinea pigs in one pen, irrespective of gender, with predicatable results. Approximately six weeks later, she was delivered of three adorable little black boys who were completely indistinguishable. After a few days, I hit on the idea of marking them by cutting a notch in their fur, one on the head, one on the back, and one on the butt, and named them, correspondingly, Ebony, India (for "ink"), and Onyx. Immediately upon making them differentiable, their separate personalities emerged. India was the shy, sweet runt. Onyx was the quiet middle child. And Ebony was the sassy domininant one (who never let mum out of his sight because, well, that's where the food was).

Sassy—a burly, brown, rex,*— was named by the pound but she had this silly, raspy little voice, so her name quickly evolved to Sass Skwatch. When her first son was born (at three times Gustav's birth-weight), it was perhaps inevitable that his name would be Yeti.

You remember at the end, in Lady and the Tramp, half the puppies looked like Lady, and half like Tramp? When Gustav's boys were born, one looked just like her, and the other like their dad, Junior. The latter was obviously J.J., as in "Junior, Jr."

--

Oh, ghod. While searching for that picture, I stumbled across this intollerable cutitude.

Crikey. Again.

194, 195: I love that movie. It tapdances on the very line that the best Hamlet productions do: Is he mad, or is he, incomprehensibly, telling the TRUTH?

Kathryn from Sunnyvale @ #187: Have any SF media productions included the design of a new accent From the Future?

In the 1979 Doctor Who story "Nightmare of Eden", there is one character who has a truly remarkable accent; reportedly, his actor decided that since the character wasn't from Earth he shouldn't have an accent that sounded like anything on Earth. Mostly it just makes him sound weird, particularly since he's the only person doing it. (There's a story that Tom Baker put him up to it for a laugh; I wouldn't be surprised.)

Kip W @ #177:

Randall Garrett and Lin Carter did a similar thing, some years earlier, with "Masters of the Metropolis".

Threading his way through the crowds which thronged the vaulted interior of the terminal, he came to a turnstile, an artifact not unlike a rimless wheel, whose spokes revolved to allow his passage. He placed a coin in the mechanism, and the marvelous machine—but one of the many mechanical marvels of the age—recorded his passage on a small dial and automatically added the value of his coin to the total theretofore accumulated. All this, mind, without a single human hand at the controls!

Jacque #194: It's an interesting premise. Spoiler: Would a person, who had lived through basically *all* of human history, have a perspective that could even be dimly comprehended by a mere mortal human being? Seems to me that such a person would be orders of magnitute more mysterious and incomprehensible than an old person is to a toddler.

I don't buy your conclusion... for starters, normal people are not toddlers! A human infant is explicitly deeply ignorant about the world. Once we get that basic understanding of the world, the stuff that's truly "incomprehensible" gets a good deal rarer, and old people aren't so much. Even by the time we reach adolescence, if an old person doesn't make any sense, we chalk it up to senility -- that is, their "lengthy experience" doesn't excuse them from making themselves clear. Certainly, an older person's motivations may be mysterious, but that applies to a fair number of our fellow humans regardless of age!

But of course, that raises the question of what happens to a person who lives that long -- how much of what they've experienced to they remember in detail -- and how does that experience reflect their basic worldview? Based on what I've seen of more ordinary humans, I'd guess at at least the following: (1) Early memories get foggy, with many incidents being reduced to the responses they taught. (2) More reliance on experience over creativity, with possible inflexibility resulting. (3) True mental modeling of younger folks may be displaced by "knowing how they think at that age". (4) Long experience with their own bodies will affect their management of same; they will have learned whatever level of maintenance is needed, and they will move more efficiently, with a much better idea of their physical limits and tradeoffs. (5) Much the same will

Of course, the real question is how their extended lifetime works. Do they still have normal human needs? Is disease or injury still a threat? And for that matter, what about those memories? How well can they continue to learn from experience? And then there's the question of hormones, which have such drastic influence on human behavior and motivations. (Fertility?)

Sorry, that last bit got cut off. "Much of the same may apply to their social abilities -- they'll have learned how to get what they want from, or at least co-exist with, all sorts of people."

I'll sidestep reminiscences about the names my sister used to give her pets. The family we got one or two of our cats from, though, used to always give them names like "Drooly" and "Creepy." (Chauncey was originally named Queasy.) One of their cats was a flat-headed Siamese who liked to crawl into the engine compartment of their car for the warmth.

I forget what his name was before the day Mrs. E. turned on the ignition and saw fur come out, but after that they renamed him "Stupid." Strange, sideways gait and all, Stupid was the fastest thing on three legs that I ever saw.

Paul A. @201: Now I'm reminded of the National Lampoon version of the Hardy Boys, "Chums in the Dark," with phrases like "The telephone, a squat, black instrument, buzzed ominously!"

On the Stealth Lemon: I used to joke that Milady Buick was actually named Malady Buick. She's a wonderful car, my parents got a great deal, but there's some stuff that ages whether you drive the car or not. I would love to get her to 200k, but it's pretty unlikely given how little I drive.

Ginger #167: I've struggled through David Weber (and met the man), and I found it hilarious.

My father would name his cars. I've never had that urge, nor have I had the urge to give a name to a computer (having owned a few). My hard drives have very prosaic names, just derivatives of mine.

Our feline mistress, on the other hand, is named Marjorie.

#202 ::: David Harmon

Rebecca Ore's Time and Robbery has a reasonable version of the effects of great longevity-- her main character, Vel, is 14,000 years old as the result of a rare mutation which causes slower but more complete healing than most people have, and occasional reversions to puberty.

Anyway, he's smarter and more practical than most people, but still well within the human range.

He's also a time traveler (different mutation)-- I suspect Ore was having fun piling things on, since this book, unlike the prequel, Centuries Ago, and Very Fast, also has telepaths.

I recommend the books-- intelligent, good prose, vivid moments, not to mention Golden Age pacing. A remarkable amount happens in 175 pages. Time and Robbery is on sale till March 1.

David Harmon@202: surely to such an oldster, human history would appear to be a very long dose of Nothing Much Ever Happens On The Farm (or in the steppe, or in the jungle), followed by... what probably feels like living through the singularity. The crummiest market town in Dark Ages England might have irreperably blown the mind of someone who'd lived since, say, the start of Bronze Age.

There was an interesting thread on Language Log about the odds that we're all, every one of us alive today, descended from Confucius. I suspect that a super-long-lived man or woman who continued to produce offspring at the local culturally-normal rate for thousands of years would leave solid evidence of his or her existence in the genetic record that would be easy to spot if we took the trouble to look for it.

Julie @158: so am I the only one who _immediately_ heard "i think i'm kerning Japanese, i really THINK so!" in my head on reading that?

--Dave, maybe if someone else does I can get rid of it

Ah, I see Marty did only a few comments later, without the word I was searching for; apologies if I've restarted it for anyone.

--Dave

Steve with a book #210 - that would make a nice start to a story. Confused analytical personnel work out that the only way this distribution could have occured is if someone with a very long lifespan is moving from country to country over centuries. Then the hunt begins...

Dave @ 212 Oh, suuuure, the old "I missed the earlier reference to an earworm (so I could reactivate the earworm)" ploy, eh?

Well played, sir.

Longest-duration earworm I can recall: at least a solid week, maybe two, of "I am the Walrus" going through my head while working at a supermarket one summer during high school. At least it wasn't the worst song I've ever been stuck with (nor is the one under current discussion).

All this has reminded me for the first time in years of The Grotto Of The Dancing Deer by Clifford D. Simak, which was the first place I came across the caveman-lives-into-the-present idea. Must read it again sometime.

Steve with a book @210 -- that assumes that point mutations aren't happening in the long-lived person's reproductive cells at the same rate that they occur in the general population. Which is not at all a safe assumption.... That's dealing with a male long-lifer. Female has other difficulties: if all the egg-cells are set out at birth, she's going to run out before too long, and if they aren't the same problems apply.

There's already been a lot of work on mitochondrial DNA which shows several long maternal lineages (since mitochodria are passed along through the egg, not the sperm).

Tom Whitmore #216 that assumes that point mutations aren't happening in the long-lived person's reproductive cells at the same rate that they occur in the general population. Which is not at all a safe assumption..

Yep. The majority of point mutations in humans occur in sperm production. In fact, you'd tend to get more, rather than fewer, point mutations from a long-lived male, since (especially in pre-industrial times) normal short-life males spend a fair fraction of their lives not producing sperm.

What you would get less of is recombinations. That would be detectable with modern genetics -- we know, because inversions of chunks of chromosome also cause lack of recombination, and these are detected with SNPchip data. If someone found a long shared haplotype that wasn't on the Y chromosome and then examined it further and found that it wasn't an inversion or anything else readily explicable, you might be on to something. Hasn't happened so far.

thomas @317: That's a combinatorially difficult problem to mechanize, though.

On a completely different front: A professional cat-catcher in NYC. (NYTimes website: I got there free, but I have no idea whether there's a max number of NYT pieces one can view for free. The video is definitely worth the two minutes to watch, IMO.)

Tom Whitmore #218: That's a combinatorially difficult problem to mechanize, though.

But people are doing it. There are two approaches that reduce the combinatorial complexity while still keeping a reasonable amount of information. The first is looking at principal components of genetic variation, which is how some long inversions were found in genome-wide studies. This only works for reasonably common haplotypes, but the computation is a byproduct of stuff you have to do anyway, so it's essentially free.

The second is to look within individuals at "homozygosity by descent": if there are common haplotypes out there, then some individuals will get two copies of them, and this is relatively easy to detect. There's still a lot of computation, but people want to do this because another reason for homozygosity by descent is strong selective pressure in that region. for example

My 1980 Chevrolet Citation's secret name was Oedipus. Man, I hated that car.

Older @187:
And of course we treat our cars like people, having grown up with old VW's and the Idiot's Guide ("Be on good terms with your ass, for it bears you.")

My parents' named cars were Idiot's Guide-maintained microbuses: Sybil, Corinna, Cleopatra*, Mabel, Greg†. I spent a reasonable amount of my childhood with my shoulder against one or another of them.

-----
* Cleo was painted with house paint: brown background, green snake wrapped around her, head on a driver's door, shooting yellow flames onto the front of the vehicle. Never did lose her in a parking lot.
† Greg was my high school car. '66 microbus (older than me) with a plethora of mechanical quirks that made maintaining him...interesting.

David D., #211: No, you're not the only one. Fortunately, I have a dance to go back to, so I'll only be stuck with the earworm for a couple of hours.

Marty, #214: I once had a temp job in an office where the internal phone system rang on an ascending fifth. I had Dukas' "Sorcerer's Apprentice" stuck in my head for the entire duration of that job and several weeks afterwards.

The earworm I've been stuck with for at least a month now is just a pattern of stresses. No idea what it is or where it came from. If I could identify it, maybe I could get rid of it. But that's tough with no tune attached.

DUH-dit-DUH-dit-DUH-dit-duhditdit and repeat. Endlessly.

Oh, Jacque . . .

I met my brother's pig today! Boo-boo is about 2 months old now and very sweet-tempered. They cuddle and play with her every day and she loves to ride around on your arm (or, in my case, on my bosom, since I'm well-endowed). Her fur is silky smooth. She's definitely a talker, too, purrs, chirps, chatters away.

About the only problem they're having is that she doesn't like floor time--she'd much rather be carried--and complains when they put her down.

I've had a nasty earworm for the last couple of days. It's bad because it's too short for me to identify, and it won't go away until I do. It could be from the last bar of an old R&B song; I hear it as a male quartet singing "bumpty-bumpty-bump" in an ascending triad. If anyone can identify it from that you will have my admiration and my undying gratitude (good for one lifetime or 14,000 years, whichever is longer).

Mary Aileen @224: Maybe "On the Trail" from the Grand Canyon Suite?

Mary Aileen @ 224

That's awkward, because it's such a short bit that it could be anything. I mean, I can make arguments for the Ghostbuster's theme, or the Pink Panther theme, or the theme from Noir (which is, not coincidentally, playing in the other room), except that they're all missing bits off the end. And that's without doing something like pulling up youtube and matching it up against random songs.

Kip W (227): Unlikely.

KayTei (228): Hmmmmm. I heard the Ghostbusters theme not too long ago, so that could be a possibility, I suppose. I'm not familiar with the theme from Noir (or with Noir at all), at least by that name, so that's probably not it.

I should try playing a variety of loud, bouncy music in the hopes of overwriting it. Even a replacement earworm would be a step in the right direction at this point.

Mary Aileen @ #229, "I should try playing a variety of loud, bouncy music in the hopes of overwriting it."

Try some Neil Diamond or Barry Manilow. Those songs were so ubiquitous when new they're guaranteed to earworm.

Speaker to Managers:

Bruce, I tried to send this to you privately via your website, but after typing into the comment box had no way to send it.

Thanks for running down Budrys' "A Scraping at the Bones" in the old Analog - today I received a copy and it IS the story. I would never have found it, and it would have haunted me who knows how long? This way, it'll still haunt me, but in a more satisfying fashion.

Gnomed. Busy, busy spammers.

Bruce Cohen @ 226:

I'm betting your earworm is "Down To The Nightclub" by Tower of Power. Oddly, I recognized it because the "bumpty-bumpty-bump" part becomes an earworm for the Trashcan Man, a character in Stephen King's The Stand. Is this it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSRjeSLCBLs

Mary Aileen @ 224:

The only thing I can think of for your earworm is John Williams' scare-theme from Jaws.

Lee @ 223:

A very popular brand of digital kitchen timer has four separate channels that use one, two, three, or four beeps to signal when they're done. The two-beep setting beeps in the exact cadence of the intro to "Pure" by the Lightning Seeds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6myNbk15sMs

which, from the very first time I heard it, reminded me in the main melody of New Order's "Love Vigilantes:"

http://youtu.be/l36eO6BwPq8

so, in the kitchens where they used that brand of timer, I was constantly getting earwormed with "Love Vigilantes." Such is the power of association.

Previous comment gnomed, probably because it has three links.

Car buying 70% achieved. The roommate got her car, and I did as much paperwork as possible for mine without the credit approval from Honda; Credit Union is just fine giving me a big old loan at a mediocre APR, but Honda feels my credit is too poor, mainly due to only having two lines of credit - the Amex charge and the Care Credit. So they've got my car on the lot with a sold tag in the window waiting for me to get the info to the credit union on Tuesday so they can cut a check and I can go back to the dealer to pick up the damn car.

Annoyingly,the manager was somewhat incredulous that anyone would give me credit with only two lines of credit open. I assured him I had spoken with the CU only days before, to confirm that the pre-approval postcard they sent me wasn't pro-forma spam as he assumed (which I had deduced when my roommate got a similar card with a different rate and spending limit). Now of course I go into money panic mode, where I spend the next two and a half days worrying that the Credit Union had totally lied to me. Such are the general anxieties of someone who grew up poor, even at nearly 40 years of age.

I guess the "wise" thing to do would be to stop shredding those credit card offers that arrive weekly and charge a bunch of stuff to them just to establish more credit. This strikes me as stupid. Guess I'll wait for the Credit Union.

Trying again without links: Bruce Cohen @226, I'd bet money that it's "Down to the Nightclub" by Tower of Power.

Heh. I put on Sandra Boynton's Philadelphia Chickens. Half the songs on that CD fit the beat. Now I have "Philadelphia Chickens", "Be Like a Duck", "Snuggle Puppy", "Fifteen Animals", and "BusyBusyBusy" fighting it out for headspace.

Oh, the humanity! (Not to mention the aardvarks.)

Oops! I think I talked too much about money on my previously begnomed comment! Not trying to spam - just describing a mildly frustrating car purchase experience.

[Nope. It was not putting a space after a comma, which is usually a sign of one of the mad-lib style automatically-constructed-from-individual-phrases spam comments. -- JDM]

Nerdycellist, keep on sheddin' those credit card offers. Consumer credit for anything except cars and homes (and maybe the cars actually) is evil.

it is always good to keep one card that one can reserve a hotel room or rent a car with, but pay the f-king thing off right away!

And the Credit Union is your friend.

My 2¢, we're still trying to finish getting out of consumer credit/high-interest debt before one of us can retire.

And in honor of open threadiness, "Old Ideas", the newest album by Leonard Cohen is awesomeness. We listened to it on the way up to our monthly luncheon in l.awrence, KS.

Tom Whitmore @ 219, all I could think of while watching the cat catcher video was Boris, Mrs. Bond's malevolent kitty in All Creatures Great and Small. Found a couple of clips on YouTube and was mildly surprised that my memory was wrong--there actually was a cat in those scenes, not simply a snarly wicker basket.

Just a quick drive-by delurk to say two things - long time listener, first time caller: firstly and mainly to share a quote that I think has a similar spirit to Abi's opening quote:

"Pentecost would never permit a day to pass in which he had not changed the water in the vases and refilled them again with taste and artistry, for he had been born in the mud huts and had in his marrow the love and understanding of colour that was the hallmark of the Bright Carvers." - Mervyn Peake

Secondly to announce that one of my guitars is called Danno, and (obligatory cat reference) - my first cat as a child was Gandalf The Grey. You can probably guess the colouring and name of my second cat.

Given that I discovered this blog about five years ago, expect another trivial post from me in 2017. I love this place too much to clutter it up with my own witterings.

Keep changing the water in the vases, keep navigating between the notes.

kthxbai

Melissa Singer @225: I met my brother's pig today! Boo-boo is about 2 months old now and very sweet-tempered.

Pix! Pix!

she loves to ride around on your arm (or, in my case, on my bosom, since I'm well-endowed)

Only earthly use I've ever found for big boobs. Donkey complains when I try to snuggle him when I'm not wearing my bra. I'm just not the right shape. Does she do the thing where she smushes her face up under your chin? (Apparently, human chins feel a lot like mommy's tummy. (JJ, when he was little, would prospect around my neck, trying to find a nipple. I'd occassionally go to work the next day with little tiny hickies.)

she doesn't like floor time--she'd much rather be carried--and complains when they put her down.

Her humans need to learn The Table Game: Human gets down on the floor, standing on elbows and knees, head clasped between the hands, knees one guinea-pig-width apart. Drape a towel or blanket over the human to make a nice hidey-cave underneath. Turn guinea pig loose. Hours of fun to be had—well, for the guinea pig, anyway.

Does she have them trained yet to bring snacks and cuddles on demand?

nerdycellist @235: I'm right there with Paula Helm Murray; I used to regard consumer credit as being slightly less dangerous than heroin. I dug myself into a hole back in '07 while I was looking for work, and have since revised my opinion, ahem, downwards.

I not only shred credit card ads, I use any return envelopes I find to send the letter back with a demand written on it in red ink that they take my address OFF their mailing list, and don't be selling or renting my info to anybody else.

UFYH gives links to opt-out of credit card offers, too. I haven't signed up, because they ask for SSNs, which always makes me nervous.

I've never done the car-buying thing, but my vague understanding is that one of the profit centers for the dealerships is the loans they make on the cars they sell; it would make sense for them to be unhappy that you're going through your credit union. But that may just be me being cynical and uncharitable.

Phil Knight @242: Welcome, and please: witter away! I mean, srsly: is it fair for us to clutter up the place with our witterings for you to read, if you don't witter for us to read? Huh? Huh?? (Note that you've been reading ML longer than I have.)

Oh, and: ob-abi, do you write poetry? (Note that not all of us do; I, frex, don't seem to have that gene.)

So what do you do with yourself when you're not reading ML and naming guitars and cats?

@Jacque #245: I spend my time reading, strumming, walking in the little hills we Brits laughably call "mountains", trying to get a band together and hanging around with my slacker mates. I left my job as a telecoms engineer and I do some work on the fringes of the music business. I used to be fairly technical but I'm trying to put all that behind me. If I'd spent as much time with a guitar as I have with a computer, I think I'd be a happier chap.

I write poetry now and then but I don't know the first thing about it, and I don't spread it around.

Oh, okay, but just because you asked. I wrote it, but I don't think much of it:

Head With A Veteran Wound: Adding Drivers To The Kernel - for nick macro from alt.darkside (rip)

It's hard enough just to get out the foxhole in the rain
to face the queues and the questions
dole clerk doctor dealers dolls dim drunks desperadoes
the deadly detritus of the daily drudge recompiled with dependencies
without any hope at all you start your run
and you know it's not going to work before you try

It's a long war we were signed up for
More were killed in this long march than ever saw the Somme
And all those mean Swiss sax players on Omaha Beach in cactus shoes they found on the wire
i don't know everyone but I do know you
and I know it's a shame - Grandad, what did you do in the War On Drugs
Did you get any Germans high?

- the world owes you a million dollars just for that
'Hey look Jay, a sonnet. But I think it's upside down.'

Nice poem, Phil! I think you're going to fit in well around here.... Looking forward to more from you.

244
The deal I got from my CU 10 years ago when I bought my car was actually the same rate as the dealer offered. (I took the CU's deal - it had ATMs available. And refinanced it later when the rates had dropped.) I may take the offer this year, depending on whether I really like the model that's supposed to be coming out.

Jacque @ 243, your JJ sounds rather like my cat Scooter, whom I found hiding out in the undercarriage of a parked car.

She ate kitty crunchies readily enough, but I decided she hadn't been quite ready to be weaned when she and her momma got separated: one of her first actions after filling her little belly was to find a spot on my person where she might nurse. The back of my hand was deemed unacceptable, as was the palm (although slightly less so). The outside of my arm was spurned; the soft bit near the inside elbow was almost suitable, but she kept nosing her way up until she found the right side of my neck.

At which point she proceeded to give me a kitten hickie. :) Even as an adult, she was prone to snuggling into the crook of my right arm and nuzzling my neck for old times' sake.

I miss that little girl. I hope her new people appreciate her.

Mary Aileen #224: It could be "The Grand Canyon", as Kip W suggests. With a more driving beat, it might be "Pink Elephants on Parade" from "Dumbo".

I'm not suggesting you watch it, mind. I did, when I was eight or so, and it didn't bother me. I did again last year, and it scared the bejasus out of me.

The superpowered-teen movie Chronicle is great wads of fun, with some surprising psychological depth.

Aw, you guys are making me want guinea pigs - they're like the ideal portable pet.

I've just been second-guessing the credit union's offer, but I can't imagine that they would have given me such a specific APR without running my credit. Besides, they have access to my paycheck via direct deposit every week. I'll be much calmer on Tuesday. As for another credit card, I may get a traditional revolving one at the end of the year, just for car and dog emergencies. I can pay my utilities on it. Right now I have an Amex Zync, which is their charge card with training wheels, specifically for people who are repairing their credit. Cashiers are always impressed because it's a sparkly pearl color and they think it's rare. Ha!

Otherwise, I'm not really that concerned about my credit score. Living in Los Angeles, I don't see any hope of ever buying a home - and the very idea that I'd have to essentially game the system to qualify for financing is offensive to me. Keeping my eyes open for refinancing after a couple of years seems like a really good idea.

Nerdycellist @ 235: Another one to say, keep shredding those credit card offers. If you really did want a credit card, as I understand it, the best thing is to go an apply for one at a bank or CU or appropriate store; you'll virtually always get a batter deal than the spam-snail-mail (And doesn't that conjure an image) things will ever offer.

Ginger @ 167: An apt reminder why I only read one Honor Harrington book and plan to keep it that way (The first sentence made me want to break out a red pen, Because I could literally get the same jist in half the words. And I am not noted for brevity.)

Relatedly, I really have a hard time spelling Honour that way...
__________

Apropos the naming conversation, it just happened again. We just got Joseph a stuffed owl toy (actually a seonsory toy with all the baby doodads)> The packaging said Olivia the Owl (Because god forbid a stuffed animal ever come with a name that doesn't start with the same letter). By the time I gave it to Joseph I knew it was Sophie. (Almost as inane an association, I realised when I thought about it, but more disconcerting because Sophie already has very not-baby-toy associations with me from an old RPG, where Sophie was a lesbian Starship mechanic.)

_______

And re: the earworm conversation, I have a bone to pick with ya'll regarding the vocabulary thread under "When we were young, we talked about ideas..." in that I've been earwormed several times with "When Adam delved, etc."

It's the second worst spokenword earworm I've been attacked by. (I'm earwormed with music close to 24 hours a day every day. I only mind *that* if it's something I really dislike or one song recurs for weeks.)

The worst was when we left for a two week holiday and the housemate who stayed completely failed to notice a banana going beyond black on the kitchen counter. When we got back, he remarked, "We've been getting a bunch of fruitflies. I don't know where they came from." For weeks afterward, whenever I ate a banana (and that's many's the morning), I heard a Groucho Marx voice`saying "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

More on naming:

When I worked for BT I discovered they still have a computer at Bletchley, which of course is called "Colossus". My own machines - for they are silicon based - are called slab, burin, monolith, dolmen, etc.

Farmers working with pairs of horses or dogs often give one of them a one syllable name, and the other a two syllable name, so they don't get confused.

My old guinea pig was called Solomon Grundy because of the expected lifespan - but he did very well for a little pig.

I don't have a pet at the moment, but the next cat I get will be called Catesby, the next dog Lovel ("The Cat, The Rat, and Lovel The Dog, Ruled all England under a Hog" - Colyngbourne) - providing the animals don't mind the names. Having once had a rat with an evil temper (called Withnail) I don't feel the need to get another.

@Tom Whitmore #247 - Thanks!

@Bruce Cohen - need a new ear worm? How about (ROT13 in case you don't want) "Hu bu, jr'er va gebhoyr, fbzrguvat'f pbzr nybat naq vg'f ohfg bhe ohooyr" (Gebhoyr ol Funzcbb)

Syd @249: kitten hickie

Yeah, I hope her new people clue in and let her nuzzle properly. :-)

I'm 'minded of Susan Crites's cat Mafm. He was weaned too early, too. His manner of compensation—well, let's just say, was "self-contained." Something a female wouldn't be equipped for. Apparently his particular means of compensation was, um, very satisfying.

Wouldn't have been so bad, I guess, except that he tended to suck rather noisily, and had a preference for doing so in the middle of the night.

Phil Knight @246: walking in the little hills we Brits laughably call "mountains"

*snark!* I'm from Colorado. Geographical chauvinism wrt mountains, I totally get. :-)

If I'd spent as much time with a guitar as I have with a computer, I think I'd be a happier chap.

Heh. A pretty insightful observation, true of far more people than commonly acknowledged, I think.

Head With A Veteran Wound

Heh. Sounds like something Spider Robinson would come up with!

nerdycellist @252: Aw, you guys are making me want guinea pigs - they're like the ideal portable pet.

Mwa-ha-hah. Although I'm not so sure about the "portable" part. Most of my guys are very conservative; they'd really prefer never to leave the house. Although I've had a few that were good companion pigs for going Out and About.

Get one that's gone over to the Snuggly Side of the Force, though ... I spent a good half hour this evening with Donkey tucked up under my chin. Discovered that if I scritch his ear just so, it makes him curl his little fingers and squirm closer. Awwwwwwwwwww!

I actually find it a little odd that guinea pigs are so universally regarded as pets only for children. They do take a certain skill in caring for, and they're a great apartment pet, as they don't require as much room even as a cat. And once you convince them you're not planning on eating them, they have loads of personality.

Also, they have the singular advantage of being herbivores; if one's finances go south, one can still feed them quite well on lawn-clippings and expired produce from the grocery store. (Which reminds me; we're rolling up on dandilion season....)

Phil Knight @242: is Danno a Dano?

On the naming of things: I used to pass on my way to work a Volkswagen car with the registration number VWB numbernumbernumberletter. The rear plate was square and had the first 3 letters on the top line, next to which her owner had written, or had had written, in neat letters , "eetle".
Still makes me laugh, although I am easily amused, and have a cheese plant called Dennis.

Happy Birthday, Rikibeth!!!

In re earworms, the very best earworm-slayer I've ever encountered is the theme music to the videogame Katamari Damacy, especially the spare acapella version that plays when you first turn the machine on. The best version I've found on the net is this video of the full (trippy!) opening credits sequence; the part of the theme I use to slay earworms starts when the rainbow fills your screen at about 0:30. The lyrics are all 'na na nas', making it very easy to remember. :->

It may only work if you've played the game a few times to get it into your brainstem, because although it is VERY good at kicking out other 'worms, it doesn't appear to settle in itself (at least not on me).

Phil Knight... A belated welcome!

On car-buying and credit:

The next car I buy will be financed through my credit union. I haven't had any trouble getting dealer credit, and it's a simpler process, but they've screwed me over Every. Single. Time.

Different dealerships, different varieties of screwing-over. I'm done with that crap.

Credit subthread:

My bank, in association with one of the popular credit card companies, offers a card that presents itself to the merchant as an ordinary credit card, but deducts the money directly from a nominated bank account. Just the thing for hotel bookings and other credit-card-required transactions, if one prefers only to spend money one actually has. I assume my bank isn't the only one in the world to offer such a thing.

In the finest tradition of "me too" posts: happy birthday, Rikibeth, and welcome, Phil Knight!

Syd @249: Beulah was a little calico (with traces of tortie) who had been living outside near the home of a friend who was feeding her. She utterly loved people. Her mom had been taken away when she was very young, and after we brought her to our home, she wanted to climb up our necks and suck our earlobes. We stopped letting her do that, so she learned to suck one of her back toes instead. She was one of the two sweetest little cats ever, in my circle.

Thank you for the birthday wishes!

Happy natal anniversary, Rikibeth!

Meanwhile, the cuteness, it is exploding.

Paul, #262: That sounds like a debit card, sometimes called a "check card". Mine can also be run as if it were a credit card, but some of the newer ones can't be.

Be aware that there are some gotchas with these. Many car-rental places won't take them at all, and some hotels have the obnoxious habit of putting a hold of considerably more than the expected total on your bank account; this is released after you've checked out, but sometimes the release can take up to 5 business days to be processed, and in the meantime you can't access your own money. This (plus insurance against emergencies) is why I have one honest-to-ghod credit card as well as my debit card.

Kip, #264: My Mina got her name because when she was just a baby she liked to nurse on my neck. (Or, once, my eyelid -- that felt bizarre, and I didn't let her do it again.) So obviously she was either Mina or Angelique, and she didn't look like an Angelique.

Re: Credit/cars/Credit Unions --

I am almost out of the credit card hellhole. Using some of my retirement money, I sent the final payments on my cards this week. I am waiting for next month's zero balance statements to officially celebrate.*

I now have one credit card (from my CU) which I am paying the balance off EVERY month. When I decide to get a car, there is no way I'll use the dealership financing, BMIFCU will take care of that as well.

Lesson learned -- Do not put medical expenses on a credit card. And do not buy what you cannot pay for in 30 days time...

Re: the naming of objects. The Kindle Fire now has a real name -- Marian. The Ipod hasn't deigned to reveal its I-dentity, yet.

Nota bene: If you are a Federal employee, plan on having money amounting to a year's expenses on hand when you retire. It is taking 8 to 10 months to finalize pension payments -- and OPM's interim monthly payments can be as little as 35% of the HR estimate.

*I.E. dicing said credit cards...maybe even a banishing ritual.

I think of credit cards kind of like alcoholic beverages: They can be useful/pleasant if used carefully, but it can be easy to get hooked in a bad way, and some people should avoid them altogether.

The kind of card Paul A. describes is a debit card, and most banks offer one nowadays. (At many banks nowadays, you have to go out of your way to get an ATM card that *isn't* a debit card.) I actually prefer credit cards to debit cards, because it's *not* directly tied to my checking account. So if there's ever a fraudulent or disputed charge, the money in question isn't gone from my account. (Debit card issuers typically ay they'll put it back if there's a problem, but I'd prefer it not to be taken away in the first place.) Also, as noted above, some uses of a debit card, such as car rentals and hotel stays, can put a hold on a large chunk of your bank balance for a while.

But yes, if you have a credit card, only use it for things you can pay off in full when the bill comes. (I use online bill-pay to ensure payment isn't lost in the mail.) Some folks who keep a running check register put their credit card charges down in the register as if they've written them as a check; that way, as long as they watch their register they're not tempted to pay with money they don't already have. Some other folks keep their cards in a drawer or even in a freezer ice block instead of their wallet, so they only take it out to use when really necessary.

If possible, it can be useful to get a second credit card (assuming it has no annual fee) as a backup, so you can use it if there's ever any problem or billing dispute with the first card. Most decent credit cards don't charge any interest as long as you pay off the full balance every month, but if you're carrying a balance, either due to an emergency or due to a disputed charge, any new charges start accruing interest right away. But if you switch over to the second card for new charges, you can still use its grace period while you work out the issues with the first card.

Hope that's helpful rather than hlepy.

Jacque @243:

No pix, sorry! We were too busy visiting with the piggie and my niece, who is 7.5. (plus I have never figured out how to upload photos from my current phone. this is something I have decided I must learn to do when I get my next phone, in a few months.) I'll try to get pix next time, or pester my bro to take some more.

She does not do the smush-self-under-chin thing, or at least not with people she does not know well (though she was happy enough to be carried and stroked by relative strangers).

I suspect my niece will enjoy the Table Game, which I will mention to her. They have a playpen for Boo-boo, which they say she enjoys.

She has them about half-trained to provide food and cuddles on command--the humans have begun to match specific sounds with specific desires. So they're getting here.

Apparently they have tried a few different foods and made a small mistake by buying some that contained small bits of dried fruit--poor Boo-boo went batshit from the sugar. Now they read ingredients obsessively.

Felicitations upon sharing your natal anniversary with my younger son, Rikibeth!

Happy Birthday, Rikibeth!

Happy birthday, Rikibeth, and many very happy returns of the day.

Phil Knight: Nice work. We like your kind.

Also: walking in the little hills we Brits laughably call "mountains".

I once twitted a hill-walking colleague in Edinburgh by saying, in a meeting, that someone was making a mountain out of a Munro.

All of this credit discussion is actually very helpful to me. Right now I really enjoy my Amex because I have to pay it off every month. It's been a boon to my budgeting skills, has not caused me to overextend myself and allowed me to get money added to my transit card or some emergency food when rent week comes up. I have converted all my "points" to B&N gift cards to add to my Nook library.

I'm definitely keeping my eyes open for a CU credit card. My roommate, who has a stellar credit rating, is currently trying to get out from under her three accounts. The joke is that I can afford a new car much better than she can, but I'm the one with the craptastic credit.

Lori Coulson @ #268, BMIFCU?

Body Mass Index Federal Credit Union?

Hau`oli Lā Hānau, Rikibeth!

HLN: Area woman discovers that NONE of her trousers fit, debates the (f)utility of clothes shopping versus the probability of disaster if she refuses to leave the house due to having nothing fit to wear except pajamas.

Area woman notes that the pajama pants don't really fit, either.

One of the differences between credit cards and debit cards is that there are more protections for the consumer on credit cards (ironic, really). If someone steals your credit card and runs amok, the bank takes the hit, not you. The same protections don't apply for a debit card.

I second Lori Coulson's point at 268 about not paying medical bills with a credit card -- unless it's a small charge that you can pay off promptly. If you are uninsured and get hit with a big medical bill, and you pay the bill with your credit card, the negotiation is over. You owe money to the credit card company, and they aren't interested in how or why you ran up that bill. If you don't pay the hospital, and then open negotiations, they may agree to a smaller bill.

I will not go so far as to say credit cards are evil. What I will say is that I am apparently not one of the people for whom they are a good idea. I do not know that I ever will be, although at some point I may well join a credit union and see if they have a card with credit-rebuilding training wheels.

And the gotchas: hi, if your payment is late, we'll charge you a late fee (makes perfect sense to me, actually--maybe the penalty will be painful enough to help you remember to pay on time). Then if it's late again, we'll boost your interest rate. And we'll do the same thing again if you're late, and if you wind up with a rate nearing 30%, don't come crying to us to lower it if you manage to pay on time for the next 6 months or so, because we won't do it.

The fact that this will make it progressively more difficult for the client to make their payments, because so much of each payment goes to interest rather than principal reduction, seems to be a feature to the credit card issuers rather than a bug--either they'll get more money via the interest boost, or they get to write it off as a business loss if the person files bankruptcy or the debt becomes otherwise uncollectible.

And the hell of it is, I NEVER realized I was in trouble while I was working. The fact that I would refi the house for a lower payment--and pull money out to pay off credit card debt--for some reason never raised any red flags for me. Oh, I'd go through the motions, taking one card out of my wallet completely and taping several layers of notepaper around the other to discourage use...but sooner or later, off would come the paper, and I'd be charging away as if I was always going to have the money to bay the bill.

And at the time, I didn't have a financial advisor, which if I'd had one, s/he might have been able to point out that the light at the end of the tunnel actually had a very large train called Bankruptcy behind it.

I do try not to wonder where I'd be now if I'd learned that lesson, since I know it doesn't help. But I strongly encourage all parents who are not already teaching their kids how to rationally handle their money, to do so. And if you have doubts about your own skills in that area, find an independent financial advisor, possibly a CFA, who can teach the whole family. It can be very hard to notice what you've never been trained to see in the first place.

@James E, #256. Yep, it's a slightly modified Danelectro 1959 Double Cut in black with a white scratchplate and side tape, with a modern bridge, and strung left handed. A cheap guitar but a good one.

random thought: Would LOTR be better or worse if it ended

"And The Witch king of Angmar drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Gollum upon his lap. He drew a deep breath. 'Well, I'm back,' Sauron said."

Mary Aileen @224: what I get from that is "Do the Hustle."

nerdycellist @235 (and Syd @ 278): a credit card should be used only as a debit card with a one-month delay, to pay for something for which you already have the funds, and should be paid off in full, monthly. If you can't trust yourself to do that/that's not possible in the USA (surely should be possible to set it up automated - it's what I do), then you don't want a credit card.

Happy birthday to Rikibeth.

HLN: Are woman finishes first 50 K running race - although it was actually 32 rather than 31 miles, according to my Garmin - in 5 hrs 5 mins including stops to e.g. get across busy road. Quite pleased. Has now officially entered 50 miles event for early August.

Credit cards are evil by design.

Dave Luckett (250): Arguing against The Grand Canyon Suite is that I'm not really familiar with it (except by name) and don't think I would have heard it in the background any time recently.

HelenS (280): I don't think I know that one, either.

But thank you both.

Happy Birthday Rikibeth!

In other news, the prophesied winter is upon us the predicted winter storm for this weekend has arrived in C-ville. We had a littler snow/ice storm a few weeks ago, but this is big fat flakes and serious accumulation on the ground.

Prob'ly gonna be one of those evenings when I'll wish I could have taken the dog out for all three walks up front in the morning. ;-) Maybe she'll be impressed enough to go quickly and retreat to cover.

Mary Aileen @283: So it's even less likely to be "The Sorceror's Apprentice" or a little piece by Alec Templeton called "Springtime in the Village," I'm guessing.

Kip W (285): Possibly The Sorcerer's Apprentice (but I doubt it); I'm not familiar with the other one.

I'm not sure the source is knowable. It may not even *have* an explicit source. But if I sing something else every time it starts up, maybe it will eventually go away.

I hope.

Well, with all the talk about guinea pigs here, I thought I'd sound out the household about the idea of having one. That's right; I asked the cats!:

Me: "Hey, cats, how would you feel about having a guinea pig in the house?"

Sethra (long-haired prima donna): "No. And get rid of all the other cats, too. And feed me tuna. Only tuna."

Aliera (pre-confused shorthair): "Huh? What?" [long gaze into space] "I'm sorry, did you say something?"

Bastet (stodgy old overweight black cat): "Would its food be something I'd enjoy stealing?"

Cassie (professional lapcat): "Only one fluffy, adorable, sweet-tempered animal at a time, please."

Tyr (the new 6-month old Siamese): "A smaller fluffy animal that runs around on its own, without batteries? Wow! Great! Yeah! YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH!!! GUINEA PIG! GET ME A GUINEA PIG, NOW-W-W-W-W-W!!!!"

Me: "That settles it. No guinea pigs."

@Mary Aileen #224: Is it the Dogtanian theme tune?(It's on youtube.) That's certainly an earworm, now I've got to go and wash my mind out with some Edwin Starr.

This is odd: I have Mobipocket reader on my laptop and was revisiting "A Study in Scarlet". At some point I randomly moved the mouse over the large A that deals with fonts, etc., I assumed of the text one was reading. I do not recall clicking on it, only of moving the cursor over it. And yet I suddenly noticed that the font size was smaller--not of the text I was reading, but of everything in the frame surrounding the text. When I clicked over to Firefox (v. 3.6.26), all the text on the various tabs was also noticeably smaller.

I have no idea what I did, but I would like to put things back to normal. My eyesight is good, but even for me, the print is a little squinty. Since AKICIML, does anyone have any ideas as to what I did, and how I might undo it?

Paul A. @262: Just the thing for hotel bookings

Yeah, well, except. The Denvention Hyatt pulled a stunt I'd never seen before. First day I check in, they make a charge to cover the day. So far, so good. Second day, they make a charge covering two days. Without releasing the (now redundant) charge for the first day. Third day, etc. Fourth day, I get a call that my card has been declined. WTF? sez I. Given that my starting balance was more than enough to cover the whole weekend (though only once), I wound up having words with their bookkeeping department. They presume the unused "pending" charges will just automatically be released in the fullness of time—say, a week or so later. Evidently, it doesn't occur to them that the customer might have, shall we say, other uses for that money during that time...? Still makes me fume.

Oh, I see that Lee @267 already covered that. Heh. Occurs to me that it might be worth calling the police in that circumstance, since they're debiting rather more money than they are owed, even if they don't plan to keep it. Have the nice officer speak to the nice accounting manager. In the lobby, preferably. (Hey! Two can play at this game!)

Melissa Singer @270: Oh yeah: WARNING! Do not feed apples to the guinea pig. Or at least, make damn sure you core them first. Turns out some apple seeds have enough (cyanide? arsenic?) to kill a guinea pig. I found this out the hard way. :-(

Dried fruit is dis-recommended, btw. If a commercial guinea pig food has anything but pellets in it, don't waste your money/guinea's health. Here's a good source on guinea pig diet. If you really wanna become your guinea pig's Best Friend EVAR, introduce them to wheat grass. Can be bought at most health food stores and Jamba Juice outlets. Can be grown at home for a fraction of the cost. (Of all the pigs I've had, I've only encountered one that didn't like wheat grass.)

A resounding second to what Syd @278 says about teaching your kids about credit. I didn't get much formal training from my parents, but it was enough for me to be on the alert. Even so, I managed to righteously screw myself into the ground once, and I'm still carrying that balance on my mortgage. When I got my new credit card after paying off the old one, I made them pin the limit at $2500. None of this "automatic limit increase because you've been a good customer" crap for me.

Bruce Arthurs @287: Who knows, they might surprise you. ('Course, I suppose the surprise could go the other way, too.)

What? <sulk>

Phil Knight @279: marvellous. I've got a Dano DC myself (spangly purple), and yeah, they might be cheap but they're an immense amount of fun. And so irresistible to play...

Phil Knight (288): The which what?

::clicks over to Youtube::

Um, no, but I certainly see why you suggested it.

Phil Knight @279, in re cheap-but-good guitars … at my first guitar lesson, years ago, the teachers spent some time taking whatever guitar the students had brought to the class and tuning it up (or giving feedback on why it was unplayable and instructing them to get a loaner from the school store).

One of my classmates brought an old Sears Silvertone; the teacher offered, in passing while tuning, that nowadays you only ever see really, really good Silvertones. In his opinion, they were about 50/50 crappy and awesome when constructed (really bad manufacturing controls). However, over the 50-70 years that have now elapsed since they were made, all the bad ones have been tossed or destroyed, and only the really good ones survive. :->

The first guitar I tried to play (not at that lesson; independently) was my dad's old 12-string, which had unfortunately just spent 7 years in a closet without being detuned; the neck was badly warped. The guitar I brought to class and played for several months while learning was my mom's spare; it was originally made as the smallest guitar in a mariachi set, handmade in Mexico, and was good for my short stubby fingers.

Once I was sure I really did want to learn to play, I went to the school's used wall and bought a plywood Yamaha with lovely tone and an amazing volume trick: when strummed hard it wasn't too loud for a small room, but when strummed gently it was approximately the same volume if sitting 1" in front of it or sitting 15" in front of it. VERY useful for filkcircles.

Unfortunately, it was not possible to set it up with both (a) a low enough action to make barre chords feasible and (b) no buzzing. It was an amazing beginner guitar, but eventually I had to trade up; luckily, a friend of mine was getting rid of one of her 8+ guitars (she rebuilds/builds-from-scratch electrics, and she needed to destash ahead of a house-move), and it liked me. So I sold my Yamaha back to the same school store I got it from. Hopefully it found another beginner to hook on the instrument (only now with an actually-fits-its-odd-shape case I'd ordered from Yamaha in the several years I owned and played it).

Re naming of pets--

We had a pet parakeet that didn't utter a sound for the first three months or so that we had him. Not a peep.

Finally, one day when I was listening to my favorite John Renbourn album, the bird started singing his little heart out. So we changed his name to Renbourn.

The day after that he sang his heart out to the garbage disposal and the vacuum too. But we left his name as Renbourn, a bit out of spite for his disliking our taste in music.

HLN: Local man's messiness causes his daughter to accidentally break two salad bowls. Local man's intense attachment to the set has him bummed out and seeking advice on how to replace them.

Jacque: some apple seeds have enough (cyanide? arsenic?) to kill a guinea pig

Cyanide. (or, more precisely, amygdalin, but it breaks down to release cyanide). It's the same toxin as in bitter almonds and plum/apricot kernels, which are much more likely to cause poisoning in humans. It's also the same as the famous cancer non-cure laetrile.

There are websites urging you to panic and go to hospital if a child eats an apple core, because of the cyanide content, but that's insanely over the top - no plausible dose of apples would come close to producing a dangerous dose of cyanide for a human.

Open Threadiness - is there an "SF Tropes" with history of common stfnal ideas? The particular original topic of interest was "Head in a Jar", which is covered by TV Tropes. They make it original with Donovan's Brain in 1942, with C.S. Lewis borrowing it or reinventing it in 1945 for That Hideous Strength.

#298: There was a most-creepy Lovecraft story that was essentially about a brain in a jar. A scholar who was "onto" the secret of alien invaders got his brain plucked and put in a cylinder. His body was used as a puppet by the aliens to put the protagonist of the story at ease.

And then there's Bernal's "The World, The Flesh, and the Devil"

http://www.marxists.org/archive/bernal/works/1920s/soul/ch03.htm

Published in 1929.

Stefan Jones @ 299: And then Fritz Leiber did Lovecraft that same favor in "To Arkham and the Stars". What goes around, comes around, especially when it's in a flying can.

syd @289: don't know much about mobipocket, but have you tried checking the view menu in firefox? there's both a zoom option and a page style option you could try.

if that doesn't work, you might have changed something at the OS level - in win7 there's a display option that will let you change font size. the address bar says it's in control panel > appearance and personalization > display, but i found it by searching for "font size" and clicking the link for "make text and other items larger or smaller".

Re: heads in a jar

You all remember the scene in The Order of the Phoenix when Harry and friends enter the Department of Mysteries straight into the Brain Room, right?

I picked up a cheap electric guitar a few months ago, a Telecaster clone, and spent a few days googling on technical data and getting it set up right. As supplied, the tremolo system didn't work, all the screws too tight. One thing you might need to get is a spring, dropped into the bottom of the hole, to hold the tremolo bar in place.

The small adjustments to the bridge and intonation are a bit further than I was used to, but the tension on the tremolo springs was definitely wrong, and that was a bit "am I going to break something".

Instead of an Amp, I use a guitar-to-USB lead with software to emulate effects, amplifier, and speaker responses. It's maybe too much fun just fiddling with the possible sounds.

Henry Troup #298: Well, "brain in a jar" itself would be limited by the concept of preservation/reanimation, so roughly Mary Wollstonecraft's period. C.S. Lewis suggests that the "Literal Head In Charge" idea is a theme of evil in general, and links it to automatons such as Bacon's Head. (But that may be world-rules rather than commentary.)

And yeah, Lovecraft played with it too, so that probably pushes it back to at least the 30s or 20s.

You can pick up some really good telecasters cheaply if you don't insist on them having Fender written on the headstock - I've got a very solid Japanese Fenix, and a Stagg with a Bigsby that cost less than £100 - the Fenix is as good as any 80's Fender I've played, and the Stagg isn't bad.

@Elliott Mason - I've seen Silvertones going for ridiculous prices, possibly cheaper to build one from scratch. The cases with a built-in amp are quite expensive now.

@Throwmearope #295 - That's lovely! I don't know John but I do see him every once in a blue moon, I'll mention that, I'm sure it'll amuse him. I don't suppose the tune was "The Hermit"? A lot of the trills sound like a songbird to me.

I once asked John Renbourn what he thought of electric guitars, he answered that he had a couple, thought they were marvellous toys, but "they aren't really instruments" - all said with a smile.

If you ever get the chance to attend a guitar workshop hosted by him, it's really worth it, he's kind and patient and funny. Although he does expect a certain technical level in his students - his opening line was "Of course, you all know how to play Goodbye Pork Pie Hat"..

re:head in a jar - it's not in a jar, but the talking John The Baptist head myth is very old. I know that doesn't count, I'm just footnoting.

Also, follow up on last night. The air actually cleared before the after-dinner walk, and it wasn't even that frigid. Not only does Gracie like the snow, she luurvs long runs across snow-covered fields. And unlike the underlying meadows, she's faster than me over snow.... We had a longer "walk" (run) this morning, but I'm not sure how much snow will be left by this afternoon.

@Phil Knight #305--

Pretty sure I was listening to the Lady and the Unicorn.

I still love John Renbourn's music. I saw him in concert a couple of times. He's phenomenal.

Alas, I am quite tone deaf, can't carry a tune and have 6 thumbs on both hands when it comes to music.

I don't think even Renbourn could teach me to produce music.

Linkmeister @275:

Batelle Memorial Institute Federal Credit Union -- the tiny Federal employees CU I joined many many years ago merged with BMIFCU about five years ago. As Batelle has more employees (locally) than the Feds, it was like jumping from a Yugo to Cadillac.

Multiple physical branches, loads of affiliate ATMs, and Batelle does mortgages. My partner and I are currently debating refinancing. The debate centers around whether we want a 15 year, 20 year or 30 year fixed. There are advantages to each option...

(This may have a British bias.)

Why is a guitar tremolo like a vehicle shock-absorber?

(Don't look, Ethel!)

They're both wrongly named.

The Tremolo mechanism on a guitar produces a vibrato effect. The shock absorber in a vehicle's suspension is the spring--what we Brits call the shock absorber is properly called a damper.

John Scalzi's father-in-law, Michael Blauser, has died. Posting this here in case there are Fluorospherians who a) would like to know and b) are not regular readers of Whatever.

Some folks who keep a running check register put their credit card charges down in the register as if they've written them as a check;

That's how I was taught to handle credit cards, and did for several years.

Credit cards work well for me, but I still don't recommend them. I'm somewhat OCD about money and book-keeping[1]; as of next month, I will have had a credit card and a checking account for 20 years. In that time, I have never paid a late fee, or an overdraft fee, and I've balanced my checkbook every month.

1) As in, I will never be allowed to forget that I balanced my checkbook the morning of my wedding.

Awecome book art.

Phil, #305: I once asked John Renbourn what he thought of electric guitars, he answered that he had a couple, thought they were marvellous toys, but "they aren't really instruments" - all said with a smile.
Q. How many folk singers does it take to change a light bulb?
A. Twelve -- 1 to change the bulb, 4 to write songs about how much better the old bulb was*, and 7 to complain because it's electric!

* Especially likely if the old bulb was incandescent and the new bulb is CFL or LED.

Rikibeth @ 233:

Oh, yes, that's the one. Thank you, the tune may still earworm me, but at least now I have the horn section too.

Also, Happy Birthday, and many returns of the day but not the earworm.

Phil Knight:

Welcome. That was a good poem; please bring more. And there's popcorn in the kitchen. Thanks for the new earworm; I got lucky and it didn't take.

Lori Coulson @ 308:

I'm fascinated by the evolution of credit unions. I joined the Tektronix FCU in the mid 1980s when working at Tek was a requirement for membership, and they had pretty good interest rates for car loans and second mortgages (amazing just how much remodeling costs). Since then it has changed its name to First Tech FCU, then absorbed a couple of smaller cu's, then disconnected itself from Tektronix (about the time I did). And despite that it's much larger than it used to be, and doesn't have a uniform customer base anymore, its service remains very good and its rates are highly competitive.

Re credit cards: I have 2 active cards, one whose fee is paid for by the financial service that manages our retirement fund and an American Express card issued from Costco (the only card they'll accept). I pay off the Amex card whenever there's a balance on my statement, which is usually when I've been to Costco. I pay off the other card most every month, though I've had to keep a balance for as much as 3 months when we have to bridge the gap between paying for something really expensive like plane fare, hotel bill, and car rental when visiting our new grandchild (clearly not a luxury) and selling off something in our retirement account to cover the cost.

I'm somewhat phobic about credit cards because I got in over my head for about a year when our kids were young and still at home and unexpected expenses starting hitting us hard. We dug out from under that, but it was a wakeup call.

Dave Bell #309:

The shock absorber in a vehicle's suspension is the spring--what we Brits call the shock absorber is properly called a damper.

I'm not sure that's right wrong.

It's true that without the spring you'd get rattled. But without the damper, you'd get bounced instead. It is the damper which the energy ends up in (is absorbed by).

(Mods, could <ins> and <del> be added to the permitted HTML?)

On the naming of cars (going back a few days now):

My oldest aunt and uncle had a large number of children and, it being the sixties and seventies, found the best vehicle available to transport them all was a VW Bus. They gave it a name: Herman (changed to protect the innocent). When one of my cousins, whom I'll call Shirley for complicated and rather silly reasons, was sixteen, she was at the wheel when it got crushed by a liquor truck. She was ultimately ok--a few cuts and a dislocated shoulder--but she was a trifle concussed when she got, or was gotten, out of the wreckage. A policeman asked her if there was anyone else in the car.

"No, it was just me and Herman," she said.

The policeman looked in horror at the twisted remains of the vehicle. Shirley, seeking to reassure him, said: "It's ok. Herman's dead."

Kip W @169: I remember that poem. I started to describe it to a friend, who sternly ordered me to stop, because Milne poetry was as sacred to her as her teddy bear.

John A Arkansawyer @282: Suspicions confirmed.

To whoever mentioned "Hatoful Boyfriend" (the pigeon-based dating sim) in a previous open thread-- I played the complete version of the game over the weekend, and it has broken my tiny little mind.

Definitely the best five dollars I have ever ever spent. (Though I do wish the English patch had nicer-looking font management, but once cute pigeons start getting tragic backstories and imminent doom approaches, anything else is gravy.)

Another long-time reader with a short naming of things note: my silver Toyota Matrix is called Argent Smith.

HLN: Area woman's teenage daughter acquires violin. Makes music come out.

Considering said teenager had touched a violin twice in her life prior to yesterday, the fact that she managed a not-awful version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in 24 hours is pretty cool.

Search for live teacher, as opposed to YouTube and other instructional videos (which have their place) has commenced.

Area teenager has habit of humming Sherlock theme song, giving area woman earworm.

Melieres did a movie about a disembodied head on a table that was inflated with a bellows. Before 1910?

John M. Burt @316: I'd love to chat with you and see if you can remember any parts of the verse that I can't. I have put together an "all I can think of" version, and it's within one or two stanzas of being all there. The issue it's in is in [gestures] one of these boxes.

Méliès. Méliès!!

Aw, merde.

("Hey! Where'd you pick up that language?")

Thomas at # 297: It makes a difference if you chew the seeds or not. The fruit tree wants you or any animal to swallow the seeds whole and poop them out somewhere else, so that new trees can spring up in new locations. The bitter-tasting poison inside the seeds is to discourage animals from doing it wrong.

Sam, #318: Hi! Fancy meeting you here...

Melissa, #319: I think the Sherlock soundtrack CD is going to be out shortly. I like the main theme, but for my money "Sherlock's Theme" (the Bollywood-influenced one here) is the real earworm-trigger.

No idea why this time.

[Accidentally matched a fairly-rare spam pattern. Removed that filter. -- JDM]

And to change topics a bit, the Fluorosphere's kindness and generosity has bought my cats another couple of days' boarding at the vet's--and the vet thinks you're awesome.

I do, too. On behalf of Garbo, Minerva, Houdini and Poppet, thank you. :)

Let me add my small voice to the chorus which asked "Where did the search box on the main page go?"

I wanted to see if I'd asked this question here: "In the Grand Fenwick universe, how did Gloriana's consort Tully die? He was only five years older than she, and she's in her mid-40s in The Mouse That Saved the West, the last of the five-book series. The reader is told in it that he's dead.

Alas!

Re: guitars

AKICIML, thought of because of Elliot Mason @294: how does warping happen to guitars? I'm asking because I've got a nylon-string which, in the near future, I likely won't be playing for a month/months at a time: what do I do with the strings? Take them out completely, let them hang in several tones beneath the normal tuning, leave them in as they are now? I know that nylon strings have a tension way lower than steel strings so I don't know how the neck will warp if I do those things and if yes, how badly; I also don't have anyone with enough experience around to tell me. (Those I know who play nylon-string guitars never do seem to leave them lying around.)

re: earworms

I read somewhere once how to get rid of an earworm. I tried it and it works for me quite well.

Give it to someone else. This doesn't usually work on forums, because it only seems to really work if you sing or hum it for someone. I think these little parasites travel on soundwaves or something.

Try it sometime. Hopefully it will work for you.

rat4000: IANALuthier; everything I'm about to say is repeating stuff Trusted Professionals have told me in the tennish years since I started learning about guitars.

The accepted best-practice for leaving a guitar unplayed for lengthy times (years; for some delicate guitars, months) is to slack the strings until they flap back and forth a little when you wiggle the guitar: no tension at all.

Nylons usually aren't a problem, especially if your neck has a steel shank in it -- if you turn the guitar over so you're looking at the back of the soundbox, then tilt it so the headstock points at the floor, the 'butt end' of the neck should be facing you. Either there, or on the inside of the soundbox where the neck joins in, there may be what looks kind of like an Allen-key or hex-nut or square-head bolt: if so, this is the bottom of your neck's internal strengthening metal bar (which has a term of art I'm forgetting just now), which is intended both to resist warping and to bring the neck back into true should it warp anyhow.

Nylons rarely harm the guitar they're on (the string stretches before the wood warps), and if you have a steel neck rod don't worry about it other than planning to get new strings soon after you start playing again.

Steel strings, especially in a no-neck-rod guitar, are more problematic, and the more strings, the more tension. My dad's guitar was a fairly cheap steel-string 12, so, um, yeah, problematic. :->

Should it get warped anyway (or you buy a used one), a luthier with a proper humidifying box of juiciness-making can sometimes use that and his tools and mystical powers to bring it back, especially if it's a mild warp.

Dave Bell @303: What you describe is tempting me once again to learn to play guitar! Well, in the past I've been more tempted to learn bass. Either way, I've learned I'll need a Daisy Rock or kid's model, because my hands are TINY.

The main reason I wanted to learn to play bass before was to be able to play the addictive riff from the Smithereens' "Blood and Roses." Hearing about the effects-pedal software makes me want to learn the Damned's "Wait For The Blackout" and mess with effects until I get the astonishing chiming sound Matt Skiba used on Alkaline Trio's cover of the song. Matt Skiba loves his effects pedals.

Lee @323: We are well aware of the impending soundtrack. Sherlock is the teen's OTF (One True Fandom), so it's pretty much all Sherlock, all the time, around my place.

Benefits: teen is reading Conan Doyle, is re-interested in violin, is looking at technical details of filming/editing, is open to looking at other interpretations of Holmes (except Robert Downey Jr's because she's heard me ranting about how un-Holmesian they are) (so I'm going to show her some of the Jeremy Brett stuff), and is writing fanfic.

Her ringtone is now "Staying Alive."

She keeps me up to date on all the #believeinsherlock stuff and periodically sends me cute pictures of Martin Freeman (my age-inappropriate crush-object).

I periodically get echoes of my parents' care and feeding (and tolerance) of my own teenage fandom.

Melissa Singer @ 330... open to looking at other interpretations of Holmes

Has the Teen seen "The 7-percent Solution", in which Alan Arkin plays Freud? And may I recommend "Murder by Decree", with Christopher Plummer as Holmes, James Mason as Watson, and the immortal line "You squashed my peas!". Oh, and there is a recent affair with Rupert Everett as Holmes.

Melissa Singer @330: You are not the only one with a teen whose ringtone is "Staying Alive," for precisely the same reason.

No violin acquired here, but rather a lot of tumblr-based RP, and cosplay that occasionally extends to school. Also a certain amount of chasing down the rest of Benedict Cumberbatch's body of work. Teen had already started on Conan Doyle canon, and acquired a version in a smaller format, disliking the unwieldiness of my annotated Baring-Gould version -- well, they ARE unwieldy.

This is not the teen's first fandom - that started very young, with Harry Potter. Also, I should note that each of the inhabitants of the household possess their own sonic screwdriver. It's interesting to see how fannish participation changes with age, though. At age six, it was naming an entire collection of Barbies after the Potter characters, and dressing as a wizard for Halloween. Now it's fanfic and RP and, well, dressing as a consulting detective whenever possible. ;-)

Serge @331: The teen has not seen anything yet other than Cumberbatch/Freeman. I am an old Holemsian, so I've seen the things you are referring to, but I want her to read 7 Percent before she sees the film.

This is the 3rd generation of the family to love Holmes; my dad bought the book club edition of the Complete Holmes, which I then read and my teen is now reading. His shelves also hold 7 Percent Solution and at least one collection of pastiche stories, which I expect my kid will work her way through over the summer.

Rikibeth @332: One of dd's bffs has the Sherlock theme as her ringtone and has dd in her contact list as "Sherlock;" when dd called her this weekend to invite her to a movie, A's first thought (reported to me because I took them to the movies) was, "Why is Sherlock Holmes calling me?" (We went to see "The Secret World of Arietty," which is beautiful and has amazing sound work.)

dd has a tumblr too, and, as you may have seen because I posted it on a previous open thread, has made a "Sh*t Sherlock fans say" video.

As for cosplay, I myself sewed the red buttonhole onto her lovely black peacoat. She and A (who cosplays John) are going to a Nerdfighter gathering this upcoming weekend in full gear. They are _not_ Femlock and FemJohn; they are Sherlock and John. (There are, thankfully, a small number of other Sherlock and Downton Abbey fans at her school, and the rest are accepting . . . it's an arts-oriented school so they all have interesting passions.)

Ditto on the Cumberbatch search here as well. The Third Star is considered especially worthwhile because of the crying it provokes. Does yours know about Cabin Pressure?

The teen's first fandom, again following family tradition, was Trek. She became a Whovian right before the Sherlock bug bit, so the bedroom is decorated in an interesting mix of Star Trek (a few remants), Lady Gaga, Dr. Who, and Sherlock. David Tennant is over the bed and the back of the door is completely covered with a large Tardis poster. We haven't found good Sherlock posters in the US yet and are hoping there will be some at NYCC this fall. (I say we since I'm the one who usually pays for them, lol.)

"Now it's fanfic and RP and, well, dressing as a consulting detective whenever possible." Here too. RP via text message, though, not tumblr. Tumblr seems reserved for an endless stream of gifs and photos and "all the feels."

(I rather love it, in case you can't tell. There are far worse obsessions to have.)

Melissa Singer @333: I just handed the teen a skein of my red floss to do the buttonhole on the black greatcoat that I've accepted I won't get back; I was busy swapping out buttons and applying stripes to the epaulettes on the coat I was using for Jack Harkness. And no, I wasn't fem!Jack either. Braces, men's trousers, the works.

I'm not sure about Cabin Pressure. Mine spent several hours watching Fortysomething with the housemate - I wasn't sufficiently interested to join in. I was either watching Garrow's Law or writing my Hornblower stuff. I was the one to watch To the Ends of the Earth with the housemate, though - put tall ships in it and I'm there.

Oh, and mine's a Nerdfighter too. And a brony.

The Sherlock RP has become SuperWhoLock, with Good Omens thrown in on top.

It really is a delight to observe.

Rikibeth--is this online? Because wow, sounds like fun, and I'd love to observe. :)

There are lots of collections of Holmes on video. Besides the inexpensive public domain Rathbone/Bruce movies, there are low-price half-hour TV shows from the 1950s, and movies with Arthur Wontner. There are also radio shows.

I'll recommend all of them ahead of anything by Nicholas Meyer, but that's because I hate what he did, and in fact hated fanfiction for years and years because of it.

ps Archive.org is a good resource. Here's a page of results from a search for Mr. Holmes.

Other movies that I liked that partake of the Holmes creation in varying degrees include THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS (really good; great cast), THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (pretty good), and THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE (which is not as impressive now as when it came out, but still continues to hold up). I can't remember much of anything about THE ADVENTURE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES'S SMARTER BROTHER for some reason, but I don't know if that's the movie's fault or my own.

I really thought I had previewed the link. Maybe it doesn't like the way I mentioned archive dot org. Sorry to be a nuisance.

Rikibeth: ditto on the brony stuff too, though that has faded in the last couple of months.

Carrie S: a lot of this is going on on tumblr. That's where my kid blogs and where there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Sherlock, Who, etc. blogs. They know/find/follow each other. It's possible that Rikibeth's teen and mine know each other through tumblr, though possibly not, as mine does not (yet) do RP there, and more than one person may use the same or similar handles.

WhoLock does seem to be a popular substream and has started to spawn crossover art and fanfic.

Kip, I liked 7 Percent but nothing else.

I think we'll probably work back to Rathbone/Bruce; I grew up loving those but dd will have a hard time swallowing a stupid Watson.

One of my kid's RP tumblrs is coltommyatkins.tumblr.com. I very deliberately don't follow any of my kid's tumblrs. It was weird enough when we discovered we had an acquaintance in common, hornblower24601. (How could I resist a name like that?)

Tumblr has a lovely tags feature that lets you track them - this is how I meet fellow fans in my own tiny fandoms; anyone posting on those tags is generally worth following. In a huge fandom like Sherlock or Doctor Who, it's a bit more complicated.

Clicking on my name in this post will link you to mine. ;-)

While I am allowed to link to my kid's videos and sometimes to her Fb page, I may not pass around her blog URL. That crosses the boundary into "creepy" as far as she's concerned.

This is fine with me; I think at nearly 16 she is perfectly able to set boundaries (and indeed, should be setting them--one of the reasons I instigate conversations about boundaries is so that she consciously sets them). And one of my parenting promises is not to violate them . . . though the family rules about danger to self or others still apply.

It's tempting, at times, especially as she's gotten older, but I've been good so far.

I did make a start on a cross-over between my Spontoon Islands stories and Sherlock Holmes, but there are copyright issues in the USA, and we all try to keep the Spontoon Islands clear of those.

But, for your titillation:

I would suppose that it is a sign of the wily fox’s fame and reputation that, more than thirty years after his retirement, the death of Sherlock Holmes should have been news across the world. Not the shocking banner headline news that Herr Hitler’s latest claim might bring, though as I recall it was indeed that man again who monopolised the front pages. However, his passing was marked by a summary of his career taken from the Associated Press wire, and a brief Third Editorial in the Mirror. In the Elele the coverage was shorter, pointing to his significance as a pioneer of scientific detection, a field so ably exemplified by Inspector Stagg.

I fancied that Inspector Stagg would be as much annoyed as flattered by that comparison. I looked across the office at my companion. “Sherlock Holmes has died,” I said.

“Holmes?” Bellman looked a trifle surprised. “I hadn’t realised he was still alive.”

“In his eighties,” I said.

“I suppose,” said Bellman after a moment of reflection, “that he must have been.”

I nodded. “I met him once, when I was taking a course at The Manor. I suppose you were gadding about in India.”

“Likely,” agreed Bellman. “The Brigadier apparently knew his brother, and said he’d rather have one of Cromwell’s plain russet-coated captains. I think he was flattering me.”

Saunders chuckled. “Mr. Holmes said his brother was too clever by half. The country was lucky that he was so lazy. And I don’t think the Brigadier was flattering you.”

“So, secret stuff, then.”

“Teaching us some things, maybe assessing us for some future work. I think I was lucky to meet him. He told us what he’d really been doing in ’14, said Watson didn’t know the real story.”

Bellman nodded. “I wouldn’t expect Watson to have put the whole story into print,” he agreed. “Not during the War.”

“And then on the second evening he was staying at the Manor, he came to my room...”

We then go into a tale of Sherlock Holmes, told by Horace Saunders, set a few years after the Great War.

Kid was sitting just across the room; I asked before posting the blog address. Since it's an in-character blog instead of a personal one, kid was fine with it.

Rikibeth: simply explaining why I could not reply in kind.

Lest anyone think I only take and never give . . . .

OT wonderfulness: Jo Walton's Among Others is on the Nebula shortlist! Details here.

Melissa: No worries, then!

Melissa, #331: I just think of the latest Holmes movies as being AU. Sherlock is AU too, by virtue of being set in the current day (I was absolutely in stitches over the way they brought in the deerstalker hat!); the movies are steampunk AU Holmes.

I came up with the "think of it as AU" concept when I was watching Bones and noticed how little the TV show had in common with the books. It saves me a lot of fulminating. :-)

I am very pleased that Martin Freeman is going to be playing the young Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit. I think he'll do very well.

Lee: I agree on the AU front, but that's half the fun, imo.

The RDJ/JL ones just push the envelope a little too far for me. _That doesn't mean they're not *fun*_ but I, and the dear friend with whom I always see them, have decided for ourselves that they are sortof "fancy-dress" Holmes rather than AU.

Martin Freeman . . . how does a 40-yo look so young? In the Bilbo photos, he looks like he might be in his 20s. _le sigh_ (stop it, brain! he is _12_ years younger! behave!) (I am glad at least that it is not Cumberbatch who is my lust object, given that he was born the year I graduated from high school.)

The news that Johnny Lee Miller has been signed to the in-development CBS Holmes is interesting. Miller was in that Frankenstein last year with Cumberbatch where they switched roles for every performance, taking it in turn to be the doctor and the monster. I saw a taped version of Miller as monster/Cumberbatch as doctor and want to see the other but I don't think there's a DVD of it (yet?). Miller's quite a good actor.

WARNING: possible rape trigger.

I am enraged and I must rant...

I am so, so angry that I am barely coherent. I just heard Dahlia Lithwick on NPR discussing the new Virginia "ultrasound probe" law. Prior to getting an brtn (which is still a legal medical procedure in this country, gdmnit) women in Virginia MUST be penetrated with an ultrasound vaginal probe, whether they want to be or not, whether their doctor thinks this is a medically appropriate test, or not. There are no exceptions in the law for women who have been raped. Consent of the woman or the doctor is not required or desired: in fact -- this is what made me completely lose it, folks -- the VA legislators who passed this abomination were given the opportunity to add an amendment of patient/doctor consent to the bill, and voted it down.

Of course they did. This is not a medical procedure. This is punishment. Doctors must do it. Women must endure it. The smug, patriarchal, self-righteous ugliness of this "law" is beyond belief.

"O God, break the teeth in their mouths...
Let them vanish like water that runs away;
Like grass let them be trodden down, and wither.
Let them be like the snail which dissolves into slime..." (Psalm 58.)

#350: Outrage over that unbelievable P.O.S. bill has been sloshing around Twitter (at least, among the folks I read) for a few days.

I liked this editorial cartoon response:

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/108237

Wait, it's a LAW now? Unbelievable.

I understand it's been the law in Texas for a while. Someone I know on Facebook suggested a law requiring a colonoscopy before a man can get a prescription for Viagra™ or any ED medication.

Not at all equivalent, of course. That's not the point.

Proposed new law: Any man who seeks to limit women's access to abortion, contraception, or other reproductive health care must, before taking action, submit to a thorough colonoscopy, in order that they may make their decision fully informed as to the possible presence of their own craniums within their colons.

No, it's not a law yet. The lower House in Va. is putting it off, partly (I think) due to mass demonstrations by women outside the state capitol building.

Avram @ 352:

I liked the proposal to give such men a urethal catheterization. Much more humiliating and painful than colonoscopy (which has a real medical purpose anyway, so we probably shouldn't waste it on them).

Gnomed. Used a brand name for a commonly-spammed medication. Comment redundant now anyway.

Bruce Cohen: Or make a chlamydia test of a lawmaker who voted yes mandatory for each transvaginal ultrasound performed -- that's a thorougly unpleasant and humiliating medical procedure. Especially if it comes up positive.

Re my comment at #350: turns out this monstrosity is not a law, yet. It's a bill which the VA legislators were all excited about until they started to get some pushback. It may be dawning on them that they've stepped over a line. Or, not. The governor has already said he'd sign it.

Stay tuned.

Xopher @352, that was actually a proposed amendment to the Virginia bill. I don't think anyone was enlightened, but the point was made for those who already got it.

Rikibeth: apropos of nothing, the teen has decided it is okay to share her blog info. http://andersonwontworkwithme.tumblr.com/

My suggestion for the legislators in VA (and in Texas) is that they get the nearest physical equivalent of the exam they're inflicting on women ... with the probe chilled. And this should be required, in addition, every time they want a prescription for little blue pills.

The car has been purchased and brought home. Finished the money bit at the Credit Union and discovered I get a quarter-of-a-point discount for using auto-pay. Also, their credit score for me was about 50 points higher than either of the scores the dealership showed. So yay, credit union! I am somewhat crabby that State Farm does not take AmEx, which, as one of those regular bills that I would pay on time anyway, would be a great way to continue establishing credit.

Very funny note at the dealership today; the salesman goes over your car with you when they deliver it - the windshield wipers are here, this is how you operate the moon-roof, etc. The roommate's demo for her Civic took about 15 minutes as the salesman showed her things like how to set up her bluetooth, pointed out various light-up icons on the dash and told her how to download "up to three wallpapers!" on her dashboard display thingy. My demo was about 3 minutes of "You know how to work a radio, right?" and "here's how you move the mirrors". I'm sure she'll enjoy those wallpapers (I suggested she use a pic of her old car, a '98 Civic) but I'm also quite happy I don't have to learn too many new things.

Here we go again...or should I say, still...

The cats, thanks to y'all and some FB friends of similar charitable bent, have bought the cats until at least Thursday, maybe a little longer. I didn't check after my visit tonight because I was suddenly very depressed, due to a conversation with the friend on whose sofa I've been sleeping since last week.

Namely and to wit, the conversation friend and I had last week, wherein she said the only reason she hadn't asked me to just move in was the cats? Not so much the case. More of an "I wish this was the case, so I'll say it without realizing I might get asked about it later and have to recant." I had called her last night to let her know that cats had a couple of extra days, and ask whether our prior convo mean that therefore I might also have a couple of extra days at her place. I didn't get a call back from her, so I decided I'd better call again rather than assume anything.

But of course, I had assumed that she'd meant what she said last week, so I was...disappointed...to hear, this evening, that in fact her present health issues, combined with plain old having gotten used to living alone, meant she wasn't up for houseguests of any sort. And that she would be back in town on Wednesday and so I would need to not be staying there, and I kind of got the impression that if we didn't actually cross paths--that is, if I and my stuff were absent when she got home--she wouldn't be too fussed about it, and might actually prefer it.

I freely admit the last bit is probably my disappointment talking, although I wouldn't be surprised to find I'm correct in my interpretation.

Please understand, I know my friend has health issues right now, and that having another person underfoot, even a loved friend, may--hell, probably will--cost her more spoons that she has to spare. I get that, and I never had any desire to impose on her generosity and good nature. I just wish she hadn't said what she did last Thursday if it wasn't what she really meant.

All of which is to say, I'm homeless again as of tomorrow. I was going to go back to PATH today but talked myself out of it on the grounds of needing to be careful with gasoline (which is true), and since I'm going to be on the west side tomorrow anyway for my networking meeting (soon to be a casualty of straitened finances), it would be easier to just stop there on the way back to my friend's... Famous last words, or something like that.

At least the nice young man I spoke to last week when getting my homelessness verification (required by PATH) told me about a place in Pasadena that does cold-weather overnight shelter, one that tends to serve more women and families and so is potentially less sketchy than other places might be. Of course, I don't know if our current weather (nice during the day, in the low 50s at night) qualifies as "cold" for purposes of shelter, but it's possible. And assuming there's no room at the PATH location that takes pets, and while I may keep my fingers crossed, I think I won't hold my breath for it.

Unless y'all have any LA connections with a driveway in which I might park tomorrow night while I sleep in ye old little winged go-devil, aka the car. If not, thanks anyway. :)

And did I mention the place in Pasadena that offers cold-weather overnight shelter is a church, and that as a non-believer, I'm going to feel like a hypocrite if I go to them for help--but that I'll go anyway?

custom wallpaper for your dashboard? shouldn't you be keeping your eyes on the road?

On a happier note, I stopped in today to visit Damon, who deigned to wake up for a while so I could give him skritches. On a whim--and trying to plan my day tomorrow--I just checked the animal shelter's adoption pages...and he's not listed anymore. I will call tomorrow to make sure, but it looks like my last little boy has found his new home!

So since this is good news, why am I crying?

http://news.yahoo.com/photos/alien-planet-is-steamy-waterworld-photo-1329864014.html

This photo annoys me because the lighting is wrong. The centerline of the crescenty lighting on the planet should be in line with the center point of the sun.

Syd @ 364: A non-believer isn't hypocritical to accept the help of a church.

If the church is one of those that insists you worship with them to receive their charity, then they are the hypocrites. Such churches are not the norm but they do exist.

So long as you stay away from the Starvation Army, what Utah Phillips says here is more typical:

In my years at the Joe Hill House I never heard a grace, or supplication, or blessing of any kind. The getting of food was part of our prayer. The fixing of food was part of our prayer. The gathering of wood for our fire was part of our prayer. There was nothing we did that was separate from our prayer. And the answer to our prayer was feeling good and hopeful about what we were doing. The answer to our prayer was a stomach that was full instead of empty, A body that was warm instead of out in the cold, Someone with an arm around the shoulder instead of being alone. Our prayer was in the deed.

I myself am an atheist and have been for a long time. On the occasions I've needed help from a church (food bank, utility assistance once), I've taken it and been grateful. Please, do the same.

(The gratitude part? Strictly optional.)

Syd Did I mention the place in Pasadena that offers cold-weather overnight shelter is a church, and that as a non-believer, I'm going to feel like a hypocrite if I go to them for help

Syd, I don't know about that church, of course, but mine has long served a Sunday evening meal for those who need it with the attitude that we don't do it because of what the guests believe, we do it because of what we believe. So no need to feel like a hypocrite.

And I'm glad it sounds like Damon has found a home, but of course you miss them all.

And continued uncertainty must be very hard. Continued good wishes coming your way.

#Linkmeister @ 354: Thank you for sharing the story about the protest in Virginia. I found it quite heartening.

Syd, #364: Nowhere in the Bible is it written that the Church should care only for the poor who are its members. If they were to turn you away for not being a believer, they would be the hypocrites. (And yes, this has been done, and the churches which have done it are not well thought of by most of their fellow Christians.)

Delurking to share the following skywatching moment with other Fluorospherians who may be interested--the weather here in Cambridge will *probably* be OK tomorrow, but just in case I wanted to make sure someone, somewhere could enjoy it.

It's just a fingernail moon--not all that rare, but the explanation here got me interested:

http://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/relativity-space-astronomy-and-cosmology/reflections-on-beauty-in-motion/

(When's half an hour after sundown in your locale? Ask Gaisma: http://www.gaisma.com/en/ Is it possible I initially learned about Gaisma from ML years ago?)

Oops. Despite previewing, did *not* pick up lack of HTML. Sorry for having to re-post. (Esteemed moderators, you are welcome to delete #372.)

Delurking to share the following skywatching moment with other Fluorospherians who may be interested--the weather here in Cambridge will *probably* be OK tomorrow (2/22, 30 min. after sunset), but, just in case, I wanted to make sure someone, somewhere could enjoy it.

It's just a fingernail moon--not all that rare, but the explanation here got me interested.

(When's half an hour after sundown in your locale? Ask Gaisma. Is it possible I initially learned about Gaisma from ML years ago?)

janetl @ #370, Even more interesting news: Va. Gov. McDonnell is backing away a little from his support for that awful bill.

I'm trying to figure out how to create a hyperlinked table of contents in my MS Word novel.
I feel like such an idiot -- I can look at tutorial after tutorial, and there is even a button that says "Table of Contents" -- but I can't figure out how to actually create those links, and I am told my book will be unreadable without ToC links.
Can anybody give me a hand with this? Please reply in comments, or e-mail me at john_m_burt@hotmail.com

Linkmeister, #374: From the article:
But delegates and governor's staff were scheduled to meet Tuesday night to strike a compromise after learning that some ultrasounds could be more invasive than first thought, according to two officials who were aware of the meeting but not authorized to speak about it publicly. Many of the bill's supporters were apparently unaware of how invasive the procedure could be, one of the officials added.

My ass they "weren't aware". Makes a good excuse for pulling their... hands... back out of the hornet's nest, though.

I just hope the teahad supporters have also noticed that, after running on the platform of "jobs, jobs, jobs", the people they elected have done not one damn thing about either creating jobs or boosting the economy. Instead it's been all attacks on civil rights, all the time.

It has taken me several hours to calm down.

A lady came to see me this afternoon to ask for advice about marketing her writing. She had published two books, she said. I looked at them. They were the unedited, schlock, desperately poorly produced products of a faux vanity operation, based in Melbourne. They had cost her her savings. They'd taken her for everything she had. Christ only knows what the markup had been.

All the usual crap. "Marketed" to bookstores. (By sending them catalogues in the mail.) Posing as a "publisher". The whole lousy vicious con.

In fact, it was worse. She couldn't remember the contract details, but seemed to think she'd simply signed over the work. All rights. Everything.

I could only give her Jim's advice, plus as much of my own as I could. You bet I quoted Yog's Law. I gave her the P&E site, and Writer Beware, and this one. She went away vowing to write another book.

If she shows up here, I know that everyone will be as kind as usual. But just now I want to take the red-eye to Melbourne and do some serious mayhem.

Syd, re "I just wish she hadn't said what she did last Thursday if it wasn't what she really meant."

She almost certainly meant exactly what she said, when she said it Thursday. After having said it, she had a chance to look at it and revise it.

We all change our game plans all the time (your plans are very different now than they were a month or so ago). Don't be too hard on her.

Sympathy.

John A. Arkansawyer @368, addressing Syd @364: "Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words." -- Francis of Assisi

Elliott Mason @329

My guitar doesn't have a truss rod, but if nylon strings generally stretch before the wood warps I should be fine; I don't think it's quite that delicate. Thanks a bunch!

Va. Governor has now reversed position on that transvaginal ultrasound probe law.

Mandating an invasive procedure in order to give informed consent is not a proper role for the state. No person should be directed to undergo an invasive procedure by the state, without their consent, as a precondition to another medical procedure.

For this reason, I have recommended to the General Assembly a series of amendments to this bill. I am requesting that the General Assembly amend this bill to explicitly state that no woman in Virginia will have to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound involuntarily. I am asking the General Assembly to state in this legislation that only a transabdominal, or external, ultrasound will be required to satisfy the requirements to determine gestational age. Should a doctor determine that another form of ultrasound may be necessary to provide the necessary images and information that will be an issue for the doctor and the patient. The government will have no role in that medical decision.

Linkmeister, not good enough, not nearly good enough. It's still totally not okay for the government to force women to have an unnecessary medical procedure. He thinks making the procedure transabdominal will make everybody feel better. No. Screw him and the horse he rode in on.

It gets more amusing, if you're deeply cynical about politicians and their motives. Now the Va. House has dropped the requirement altogether.

The amended bill now returns to the Senate where its sponsor, Sen. Jill Vogel, said she will strike the legislation. A House version, by Del. Kathy Byron, is pending before a Senate committee.

I bet a lot of VA politicians suddenly realized that they were liable to find themselves featured in utterly crushing campaign adverts.

Stefan Jones @ #384, not to mention they suddenly remembered that half their constituency is made up of women.

What I wonder is, do none of these old white guys have wives who might have taken them aside to say "Fool! What are you thinking?"

HLN: Houston-area man out doing errands spots wildflowers -- some evening primrose, some that I think are called "crow poison", and a mat of really tiny blue ones that might be some sort of forget-me-not. It seems a little early for it, but as warm as it's been I guess not.

David Golfarb @386, could the little blue ones be veronica persica, also called birdseye speedwell? They're blooming here in North Carolina.

David Goldfarb, I had never heard the name "crow poison", but Google turns up images of a plant I recognize (though I didn't know either a common or a scientific name for it)--it grows in my neighbor's yard. Cool!

Similarly, I recognize Naomi Parkhurst's Veronica persica, and knew that there was a blue flower called speedwell (from a description of a character's blue eyes in Greenwillow), but had never connected plant, common name and genus-and-species.

Thanks to you both!

Syd,

If I were you, I'd be crying because I'm happy that he's found a home, and sad because I won't be seeing him again, and relieved because that little bit of stress is off. (But I am not you, so you may be crying for different reasons.)

Also, have some [[hugs]].

375
Teh Google provides these as the first two results for 'word "table of contents"':
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/tableofcontents.html

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/create-a-table-of-contents-or-update-a-table-of-contents-HP001225372.aspx

The first seems to be less technical and easier to follow. I've done it in Word, and yes, it will do it for you, if you do it the way they tell you. (Otherwise it's a massive pain.)

Thanks all for the pointers to heads in jars above (298 et seq.)
//

My earworm therapy is to do mental arithmetic; something like working out the 17 or 19 times table. This seems to use all available mental capacity. Puzzles like Sudoku or Kenken may work, too, especially if you max out the number of things you're holding in memory. I read somewhere that much of music appreciation is associated with short term memory, which makes some sense.
//

Canada has experienced a burst of protest at a "lawful access" Internet bill (C-30). In short, the Minister of Public Safety, Vic Toews, said (on the record in the House) that you had to either support the bill or "stand with the child pornographers". The subsequent protest includes the Twitter #tellVicEverything campaign, in which he's getting lots of @ mentions and a good few emails CCed to his mailbox. I'm hoping some amount of the outrage will be remembered come next election (October, 2015, in Canada.)

(Note to mods: the alldeadmormonsarenowgay link is going to something inside ML instead of the outside link it should be!)

Although, the broken link shows a way to get to the site's search engine, useful now that there's no longer a box on the main page.

I don't know, maybe I need my meds adjusted, but I actually teared up a little at a comment on Wonkette, of all things. In reply to the video of President Obama singing a bit of "Sweet Home Chicago, regular commenter "Extemporanus" wrote:

A song written nearly 100 years ago by a young African-American man whose father was run out of town by a lynch mob of white landowners...

Performed by a multi-racial group of American and British musicians in a White House built and at one time inhabited by African-American slaves...

Sung by a bi-racial African-American president of the United States of America whose wife and daughters are descendants of African-American slaves.

The E string of the aural universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

Here's a question that occurred to me yesterday while trying to get the accounting report balanced and finished and ready to submit to the probate court for our friend Anne's estate:

Do novelists think like accountants?

By which I mean that a good accountant can go thru a set of financial books and maintain an overview of where money's coming from, where it's going, what it's for, what part it plays in the overall picture, etcetera.

Likewise, a novelist has to keep track of his characters, their actions and moivations, the plot points, the details of continuity, the overall narrative path and goal, etcetera.

Do a novelist and an accountant both use the same part of their brains keeping track of all those details and flows?

This would certainly explain why I've written short stories, but have never been able to complete a novel. Because while I didn't have too much problem with the Monies Received and Monies Spent forms from the probate court, trying to complete the Gains and Losses forms has thrown me for a loop. The final calculations produce a number nowhere near where it should be, and I have no idea why, even after hours of trying to puzzle it out. Frustrating, to put it lightly.

(I put in a call this morning to the CPA who helped get Anne's tax returns caught up a while back, asking for his help in getting these final forms properly completed and balanced. I suspect the problem will probably be something blatant and obvious to him, but non-intuitive to a mind like mine.)

But if the brains of novelists and accountants work similarly, I would expect to hear that Gene Wolfe has never made a single error on his tax returns in his entire life.

Gnomed. Say what? Do common financial terms trigger a spam alert?

Bruce Arthurs @397:
Do common financial terms trigger a spam alert?

It really depends on the noise:signal ratio of that term's usage. If we, here, rarely discuss a topic, such as probate (I've commented it out of the filters), but our spammers try very hard to sell us services in that area, then we tend to make it a keyword to bump a comment to moderation.

I know it's frustrating if a comment gets gnomed. We're doing our best, here, but this site is like the Netherlands: it's below spam sea level, and without the protections we use, we'd be flooded. They spoil the view (she said, stretching the analogy beyond its point of elasticity), but they're the best protection we have at the moment.

Also, if you put "gnomed" or something like it in your name for flagging, then even if there's not someone reading every comment right then, we'll pick it out of the infostream that much faster.

Henry Troup @ 391... the Minister of Public Safety, Vic Toews, said (on the record in the House) that you had to either support the bill or "stand with the child pornographers".

Wow. The Land of my Birth's current government really is made of GOP-wannabees.

There are no answers coming in the night
nor clarity in morning, that is why
we seek for explanations on the fly
in earnest wish for ending of our plight;
but nothing comes, there is no vivid sight.
All's grey, and dullness settles on each eye,
there's no firm sanity we can espy;
the universe seems ordered by mere spite.
When we were children we were told that cause
and effect followed by a straight decree
of nature's and the world was really plain
to adult eyes, but now we have no laws
to follow and we find we are not free
since those who want to lead us are insane.

There are no more Misses in France: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/22/mademoiselle-removed-from-french-official-forms

Naomi Parkhurst #387: That veronica persica is out in force here in VA, wasn't bothered by the brief snow.

RE: Va Govenor reversal. I would not be surprised if this reversal has nothing to do with how invasive the procedure is, or that voters protested. I think it's more likely that a Health Insurance lobbyist pointed out that it would be a State mandated procedure that they'd have to pay for.

Me 394/395

Whoops--inadvertent double-post... I liked the Wonkette comment, but not THAT much! Could someone please moderate one of those out of existence?

[Done. -- JDM]

My son, 14 going on Immortal Being of Pure Energy, called me out last night while I was watching the Republican debate, following a liveblog of same, and consequently getting a little shouty at my laptop (the frequent loss of WiFi signal didn't help).

"You know what these debates are for you, Dad? They're anger porn."

God, I love that kid!

Hero cat.

Naomi Parkhurst #387: That veronica persica is out in force here in VA, wasn't bothered by the brief snow.

From Previous try: "The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request."

No idea what might have caused it.

Fragano @401

They take Mademoiselle from Armentieres,
Who once was young, when Grandpa frolicked there.
So many men she knew, they grew not old.
"Make room!" they cry, "Mademoiselle is cold!"

Linkmeister @385

not to mention they suddenly remembered that half their constituency is made up of women.

It's worth remembering that a significant number of those women were vigorously and outspokenly in favor of the requirement. (Facebook has been somewhat a-buzz, here in VA.)

Fragano, #400: Depressingly accurate.

and @401: Interesting. I wonder how well it will work without a neutral alternate option such as "Ms." -- over here (as you know), we tend to get all 3 versions. And come to think of it, I also wonder how frequently each version is used -- that would make an interesting statistical study.

Dave B., #408: Very nice!

Not your mother's Princess.

Looks promising, although I'll withhold judgment until I've seen the whole thing. Too many such stories have ended with the plucky young woman discovering that True Happiness lies in giving up her dreams for a man.

Lee, 409: Madame *is* the neutral alternative. This just brings officialdom in line with what everybody's already doing--once you're visibly an adult, you're "madame."

If I remember correctly, France tried 'Mad' as an alternative to both 'madame' and 'mademoiselle'. For reaons unknown, that didn't catch on.

Bruce Arthurs @395: a good accountant can go thru a set of financial books and maintain an overview of where money's coming from, where it's going, what it's for, what part it plays in the overall picture, etcetera.

Eric Van has an interesting model of how that works. (All five parts of the essay can be accessed here.)

(Particles)
Spoiler for The Kerning Game: Gur S unf n ovt yvtngher.

We wish to apologize for the preceding comment.

The "Piracy" particle, like everything else, is subject to the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Amazon, for reasons unknown, started selling print copies of Seanan McGuire's latest novel in advance of the official release date. B&N quickly followed suit. In the meantime, the e-book version won't be available until the official release date of March 6.

Seanan has been subjected to a shit-ton of hate mail about this, including threats of rape and other sexual violence. Even though she has NO control over the situation -- her publisher is trying to get Amazon to stop, but you can't put the genie back in the bottle.

I wonder how many of the people who have been sending that hate mail will now consider themselves fully justified in pirating a copy of the e-book?

Steampunk jewelry: Ur doin it rite.

Lee @416, except, how are they going to download an unlicensed copy of the ebook before it's released? I suppose someone might scan-and-OCR the physical book, but is it likely that anyone will make the effort knowing that the official ebook will be out in a week or two?

If they're going to use the release screw-up as an excuse, then they were probably going to download the unlicensed ebook anyway.

(Man, it sure is awkward to lack a handy verb to describe unlicensed downloading that doesn't imply that the people who do it are engaging in an act of violent physical robbery.)

Lee @416, lordy. "One person kindly suggested that sexual violence would be the appropriate response to my forcing Amazon to withhold ebooks. Another offered to slap the stupid out of me. And several stated that they would now be pirating all my books, because I had given up my right to their money (I had a right to their money?)."

Uh, wow. And this is how people write to an author they presumably like?

"Dear Mr. Vonnegut: I wish you hadn't died, so fuck you."

Avram, #418: If you read the linked post, you'll see that some people have indeed said that they will now download pirate copies of everything she writes, rather than spend another cent buying her books legally. All because of an Amazon screw-up that she couldn't do anything about.

But in all honesty, that doesn't bother me nearly as much as the rape threats.

On the no more misses, it was on the radio yesterday, with the presenters asking if people liked to be Mrs, Miss, Mizz etc. All depending on marital status.
It then occured to me that we could balance it up, what would be the male equivalent of miss? Mr just covers everything, why not spell it differently to indicate someone unmarried? After all, many years of making women do it must mean it is a good thing, right?

guthrie @421: perhaps the word should be "meester", pronounced "me stir"?

It then occurred to me that we could balance it up, what would be the male equivalent of miss?

That would be master, which is regrettably less common than it used to be (you still hear it occasionally, from older Southerners in fairly formal settings.)

SamChevre, #423: I don't think "master" is an exact approximation to "miss". The latter applies to any unmarried woman, no matter her age; the former only refers to a young man who is younger than a certain age -- I'm not sure whether it means a "schoolboy" (younger than age 13 or so), or a legal minor. But you'd never hear a 30-year-old man addressed as "master", whether married or not.

Lee @420, I read the post hours before you ever linked to it; Seanan's a friend of mine, and I'm subscribed to her on LiveJournal. I'm as shocked as you are by the abuse and threats, but I'm not concerned that she'll lose a significant number of sales to "piracy". Despite what angry jerks may have written, I'm still pretty confident that most people who'll go for the unlicensed downloads are people who would've done so anyway.

Re: Salutations for women

On the no more misses, it was on the radio yesterday, with the presenters asking if people liked to be Mrs, Miss, Mizz etc. All depending on marital status.

As a point of reference, I stopped using "Miss" when I turned 18 (IOW, when I was legally an adult). I started using Ms. Mylastname, and still do so in professional contexts. I also use the following, and consider them perfectly appropriate in social contexts: Ms./Mrs. Mylastname-Hislastname, Mrs. Hislastname, and Miz Myfirstname.

Miz is a southernism, a contraction of Mrs., used in front of a non-related adult woman's first name when you are close enough not to use her last name, but not so close to drop titles of address entirely. (Or at least, that's been my experience in my family.)

Ms. and Miz are not pronounced the same, but darned if I can describe the difference. It's subtle, but it's definitely there.

Seanan McGuire's trouble with awful-people-who-purport-to-be-fans is coming on the heels of the thing with Jennifer Hepler's (Bioware RP game writer) savaging by gamers this last couple of weeks. The commonality between the two incidents is the level of entitlement both groups expressed about having things work the way they thought stuff should work, because they are fans who pay money, and that the wrath they would visit upon both women is directly related to their being women.

It makes me wonder why anyone would want to continue making nice things for others, except I know why, but lord! I'm no stranger to internet escalations, but reading those accounts made me want to curl up in despair.

I stopped reading Harry Turtledove's World War series after three books, but I may have to go back to him after reading about this gesture he's made to a terminally-ill fan.

pericat @ 427:

The dirty underbelly of entitlement is the need to preserve it by oppressing those below in the social strata. If the entitled can't oppress their "inferiors" with real physical, economic or social power, all they have left is words and the need to make them as harmful as possible. That and the self-righteous anger that tells them their entitlement is deserved.

This xkcd made me realize that gur ryringbe cvgpu sbe gur fcnpr ryringbe cebwrpg fubhyq or "Jurr! Yrg'f ohvyq na ryringbe!"

On the Miss/Mrs/Ms thing, it was one of the reasons* I did my PhD! It's really satisfying: "Is that Miss or Mrs?" "Dr."

And yes, I hate the labelling by marital status - men are not labelled the same way, women shouldn't be. And here in the UK, many people still assume that only unmarried women would use Ms.

What I've found frustrating at conferences in continental Europe is that I'll sign in as Dr, but the hotel staff will constantly call me "Mrs". Never managed to find out why - they don't delete the appropriate honourifics from my male colleagues.

*Not the main reason, but I did consider it a definite fringe benefit.

Singing Wren @426: Salutations for women

I'm eternally waiting for a salutation that doesn't specify gender. Annoys the crap out of me: sites that require a salutation, but don't offer a non-gendered one that's not some sort of rank marker, for which I will never qualify, short of outright fabrication. Ms at least lets me refrain from declaring my marital status, but I still have to declare a gender. (And, of course, in the few cases where it's not required, but the database has to have something in that slot, it innevitably defaults to Mr. Or, at least it does for me, anyway.)

My candidate: "Per," short for "Person." "Per Marshall, would you care to follow me...."

dcb @431 on "Dr" as a prefix - years ago I worked in a research center for the wife of a husband-and-wife pair who both had PhDs, more than a little uncommon at the time. Because she had taken his last name, "Dr. So-and-so" was ambiguous, and thus when spoken about (not spoken to) he was "Dr. So-and-so" and she was "Mrs. Dr. So-and-so".

Jacque@432

We could always use "Meesa". It is somewhat similar to elements of current salutations for both males and females.

Of course, there is the disadvantage of sounding like Jar Jar Binks...

OtterB @433: Dr. Mrs. The Monarch?

In school, I try to match what the permanent staff use, whether it's Ms Lastname* or just my first name. I tend to be Miss Cassie given a choice, though I pronounce it Ms; it's hard for little kids to get it completely right. I also try to use Ms for all female teachers because it's not like I have time to ask personal questions.

I think Miss Manners puts the cutoff for 'Master' at seven years old. But a quick check in the Guide's index doesn't give me a page.

*Oh, whatever, it's Krahe. "Krahe as in fish," I say, which led a kiddo I met two years ago to say, "You worked at Elementary! You're Miss... Miss Fish!"

Dave Bell #407:

Hinkey-dinkey, parley-voo!

Lee #409: The French government will now address all citoyennes françaises and other women it deals with as "madame" regardless of age or marital status. That's the neutral term. One hopes that somewhere Olympe de Gouges is smiling.

Guthrie #421: The male equivalent of miss is master. That is the polite term of address for boys (not unmarried men) until they reach 18, at which point they can be mistered.

Michael I #434: Sounding like Jar-Jar Binks is precisely what you do not want to do.

dcb @431:

On the Miss/Mrs/Ms thing, it was one of the reasons* I did my PhD! It's really satisfying: "Is that Miss or Mrs?" "Dr."

It's one of the things that drives home how often places use a required "Title" field as a gender proxy, too. Plenty of online stores and the like will have a required, seemingly-innocuous, and entirely unnecessary "Title" field. Invariably it will be limited to specifically gendered options, excluding "Dr". It seems pretty clear that they're doing this because people might balk at a required "Male/Female" checkbox, but think nothing of ticking the box next to "Ms", which allows them to get more money for more specifically-targeted advertising information. I didn't really notice this until I got my PhD, either; while I don't generally use my title, if someplace is going to require a title I'd like to be able to use the correct one.

OtterB @433:

These days that situation is still uncommon, but it's more because women in academia tend to keep their names to preserve continuity of publication records. When I've encountered it, disambiguation has been by first name, which I much prefer since it doesn't rely on the notion of male as the unmarked default.

Xopher @417: Do you have a link for where one can get that sort of ring? Because on seeing the picture, there is a large portion of my brain going DO WANT at me now.

Diatryma (436): Do your students have trouble with the 'z'-to-'s' switch in Ms. Cassie? My mother found that being "Ms.* Buss" at school meant she was often called "Ms Buzz" instead. And not just in person: She was a music teacher at a private school and was paid directly by her students' parents; some of the checks were made out to N---- Buzz.

*actually 'Miz', as explained by Singing Wren in #426

lorax @441 When I've encountered it, disambiguation has been by first name, which I much prefer since it doesn't rely on the notion of male as the unmarked default.

Agreed. This was getting on toward 40 years ago (I was a high school student at the time) and jumping to first names was less common.

Dave Crisp @435 Dr. Mrs. The Monarch?

I'm missing something here ...

General question on music lessons:

My 15-yo has decided to learn the violin. We have acquired same, and she is beavering away with an instruction book, YouTube videos, and a CD/DVD package.

However, a real teacher would be a good thing.

I am at a loss in terms of what to ask prospective teachers. I have contact info for some from the store where we bought the violin and there are others on Craigslist. There are also a couple of music schools in the area but it looks like they work more with younger students.

Anyone got any advice?

I'm another one who, when faced by forms that require one to state a prefix, insist on "Dr." (I've don't recall seeing any where the field was obligatory and that wasn't an option, but I may simply not have encountered them.) About the only place I would decline to do so would be airline reservations, staving off the very minor risk of some flight attendant asking me if I could provide medical services. (Ordinarily, I'm prepared at all times to defend the primacy of academics with regard to the right to the title "doctor" against those jumped-up barbers and nostrum-pushers who appropriated it in order to pump up their social cachet.)

HRJ #446:

The Assistant Instructor's Plaint

You can't call me Dr cause I'm ABD
You can't call me Prof cause that's not my job
You can't call me Miss cause this wedding ring--see?
You can't call me Mrs cause I kept my name
You gotta call me Ms, that's the academic biz

Melissa @445 -

The music department of a local university or community college can be a good place to find a music teacher. The former often has grad students who can teach and the latter often has a music performance program with professional music teachers with space in their schedule.

OtterB @ 444 : Then clearly, you need to watch The Venture Bros.

Has anybody heard from Syd? I'm presuming she is having access issues, but it would be nice to get an update...?

OtterB @444

We're not quite at that stage in the UK, but the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge both have an MA degree from the University of St Andrews. Also, the Commonwealth Realms have agreed a change in the succession rules that would allow their first child, regardless of gender, to inherit the throne.

I don't think it's impossible for that first child to earn a PhD before Prince William becomes King.

And that is just the Windsors. There are the monarchies of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The wife of the current Prince of the Asturias (Spain) has a Licenciate degree (equivalent to a Masters). Quite a few of the wives and daughters have Bachelor degrees.

I haven't found any PhDs close to the succession. The next generation of heirs is mostly way too young.

joann #447:

At HBCUs the custom is for teaching assistants and adjuncts lacking the post-hole digger to be addressed as "professor". This caused me no end of confusion for some time.

A quite senior colleague over at Spelman College happened to keep addressing me as "professor". One day it occurred to me that she thought I was missing a degree and I told her that I did, in fact, have a doctorate.

Fragano, #439: But that's my point. Unmarried women don't become not-Miss at age 18, or at any age. "Miss" and "Master" share some characteristics, but are not equivalent modes of address; one is specifically a marker for marital status, and the other is not.

Fade 442: Unfortunately, I have no idea. Saw the GIF and thought it was cool, and don't know any more about it than that.

Melissa @445, your daughter may have to accustom herself to being one of the older students in a studio, but that doesn't mean it's a bad studio for her, just that most children start instruments a little younger.

Coming from experience with piano, cello, and voice teachers (although most of it should transfer to violin), what you would want to see from prospective instructors would be membership in their local or national professional organization (look under LOCALTOWN Music Teachers Organization or Club or Federation) and a record of entering students in local competitions. This doesn't mean that all the students want to become professionals or want the little trophies, but it does mean that they're teaching to a professional standard and encouraging their students to constantly improve. Most teachers should either be holding annual/semiannual recitals, or, depending on the size of their studio, participating in some other regular public performance event. And I agree with nerdycellist about university music departments being a great resource. If you attend church, depending on the size and quality of the music program, the music minister/director may also be a resource. Hope your daughter enjoys her lessons!

I should perhaps state that we are in New York City . . . .

Most of the schools I've looked at seem to not have classes for teens, just for the under-10 set. It seems that by the teen years, there is an expectation at these places that the student will have been playing for some years--there are pretty much no listings for beginner classes for older students. (as for recitals, totally not a problem--everyone does them, even the tiniest hole-in-the-wall studios. I know the owners of a two-room dance/gymnastics school who have recitals in the local church hall twice a year.)

I think dd is better off with one-on-one instruction in any case as she must really start from the basics, as she has mostly forgotten how to read music (she learned in 3rd grade).

Laurel, thanks for the thought about houses of worship--for whatever reason it had not previously occurred to me to ask the cantor at our synagogue.

Fade Manley @ 442: Looks like that ring is $165 from Kinekt Design.

Mary Aileen, half the time it's *me* who has trouble with the Z/S switch. They're not going to get it scrupulously right anyway, so as long as *most* of the time I'm not Mrs, I let it slide.

Melissa @445

One thing I suggest (which might not be the first angle that comes to mind) is to make sure that your daughter and her teacher are aligned with respect to her personal musical goals. What does she want to do with her music? What styles does she want to play? In what contexts? What level does she hope to achieve? How long does she want to budget to achieve it? Realistically, how much time will she have available for practicing? (Also important to consider: what is her current musical background of any type?) Has she identified particular learning styles that work well for her?

These are questions that generally don't get asked of grade-school age beginners, but for a near-adult beginner I think they can be crucial to the difference between a successful and enjoyable experience (on both sides) and a frustrating and miserable one.

One of my flute teachers when I was in jr. high thought he was grooming me to be a professional concert flautist. I wanted to be able to play competently in ensembles and enjoy making music. It was not a good match (although there's probably some difference of opinion as to who fired whom).

From the other side, I once gave harp lessons to a student who confessed that, essentially, she was paying me to listen to her practice. I was ok with that, but I needed to adjust my expectations.

Thank you all, I had totally forgotten about 'master', although yes I think it does tend to be unused past 18 or so.

Sometimes in cartoons and whatever I've used the prefix "M." to denote a non-sexical salutitle that doesn't actually exist but should. No idea what it stands for, and yes, I know what it is in French.

Lee #453: I know. I wondered at that when I was a lad learning the intricacies of honorifics. It seemed to me back then, as a child in the early 1960s, horribly asymmetrical.

Equally asymmetrical was the fact that most British men had two honorifics available to them, they could be addressed in writing as Mr So-and-So or as So-and-So, Esq. Women* were restricted to Mrs So-and-so or Miss So-and-So.

*Note the most in the previous sentence, it applies in that one too. Excluded are the range of honorifics applied to knights/dames (who are not noble), and the nobility.

Melissa @445 When my daughter wanted to take up flute lessons at slightly-older than standard, I had great luck finding a teacher by asking the school listserv for recommendations for teachers for an older beginner.

On honorifics: My grandfather, who was a primary-school teacher, reportedly was often addressed as "Miss" by small children who thought that was what you called teachers.

Melissa @ 445

You might also sound out the local Renfaire community, or similar. I know of a not unreasonable number of Faire fiddlers who picked up the skill as adults.

Fragano Ledgister #462: Wait, since when is "Esquire" universal? In America, at least, it's reserved for lawyers, and I haven't heard of competing usages.

She was from my home town: It Hurts Me Too

For violin lessons, check at your local musical instrument store - it's fairly common for them to either run classes, or have ads for teachers, or both. You'll have a bit of complexity depending on whether you're looking for a violin teacher or a fiddle teacher, so a store that also sells French horns is more likely to have one and a store that also sells mandolins is more likely to have the other.

Fragano@452 - There's also a cultural gap between (approximately) the sciences and the humanities over whether the title "Doctor" or "Professor" has more status. My grandfather, who was a French professor, was Dr. Crain, and not all the professors had doctorates in those days, but by the time I was in university, most science and math professors needed a doctorate to get the job, and there were getting to be enough people who'd stayed in school for draft-deferment reasons that there were lots of PhDs around. My father was a research chemist, and the tradition where he worked was that the only people addressed as "Dr." were either actual medical doctors or young researchers who'd gotten their degree recently enough to brag about it, or people whose first name you've forgotten.

Dave Bell @451 - So if Prince William does get his PhD, will his title be Dr. King?

Thomas, there is a fellow at one school I work at whose kiddo calls him Teacher Ty. I've known a lot of kiddos who think 'teacher' is equivalent to 'sir' or 'ma'am'.

David @466, before lawyers took over "Esq" (more successfully even than physicians did "doctor"), a man who owned land, real property, was entitled to claim that honourific, if he wanted. (cf Squire Brown, Tom's father in Tom Brown's Schooldays, when the term was even more bound up in land ownership including collecting rents from tenant farmers.) What actual relationship that had with the squires of old, I don't know, but I'm pretty sure it had to do with patronage expressed as land grants.

Bill Stewart @469: Technically, people of Prince William's standing, in the UK, don't actually have surnames. For military service purposes (and on, say, his passport), he is William Wales and his brother is Harry Wales (because their titles are William, prince of Wales, etc -- interesting fun fact, Kate is now formally "Princess William of Wales", not "Princess Kate" of anything). They are of the House of Windsor, but that's not their surname.

I'm not sure what's on HRH's passport in the surname field; presumably she has one. Maybe she gets 'Windsor', since she's the head of the house. Or possibly 'England'.

I had an email from Syd Thursday; she seemed to be doing okay. (I don't want to put more information out than she wants; hopefully she'll pop in if she gets the chance.)

Elliot @472

Er, not quite.

The Prince of Wales is Charles, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, and a lot else. His wife, Camilla, would be Princess Charles of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall, etc., and chooses to use the secondary title of Duchess of Cornwall.

Now Prince William is Duke of Cambridge, he doesn't use the "of Wales" element, but he is still a prince. Catherine's full title and style is "Her Royal Highness Princess William, Duchess of Cambridge, Countess of Strathearn, Baroness Carrickfergus."

There are traditions in all this, and certain distinctiona to be made, but, as with Princess Diana, everyone knows who Princess Kate is, and the formalities will, I expect, slowly shift. One of the features of the British Monarchy is that it does adapt to changes in society, but the traditions do matter. Three quarters of a century ago it was unthinkable that the king could be married to a divorced woman. So a young girl suddenly became heir to the throne.

Heather Rose Jones @459: One of my flute teachers when I was in jr. high thought he was grooming me to be a professional concert flautist. I wanted to be able to play competently in ensembles and enjoy making music. It was not a good match (although there's probably some difference of opinion as to who fired whom).

Interesting; I had pretty much exactly the same experience with learning piano. Though I didn't know it at the time, what I wanted to do was learn to play by ear, and be able to improvise enough to jam. Unfortunately, I had neither the conscious conception, nor the words to put it into.

This meant that, just about the time (after a year or so) my teacher wanted me to go from one hour of practice a day to two, I had satisfied my curiosity and quit. (I was eleven at the time.) I could play from sheet music if I sat down and laboriously picked it out and had heard the piece in question. Then, once I had a piece in muscle memory, I could play without music—as long as I started from the beginning. Ask me to pick it up from bar eight? I was completely lost.

Additionally, I couldn't pick out songs by ear, except for the very simplest of melody line, and getting harmonies and such in—utterly hopeless. (I was absolutely awestruck by a classmate who had learned to play the Peanuts theme by ear. Superpower, that.)

Altogether, not a very satisfying expenditure of my time.

Jacque @475: There's a PBS-show piano teacher who aims himself squarely at the your-sort-of-learner market: Scott the Piano Guy. He explicitly points out in his group classes (one of which was filmed and shown as a 'special' during pledge season one year, which is how I heard of him) that most people wanting to learn to play piano have no interest whatsoever in going the orchestral or classical-recital route: they want to learn to play to accompany Christmas carols, entertain their friends, and generally have fun.

He also states that most of the people that come to him to 'learn to play piano better' have already had lessons, and usually dropped them when the problem became disinterest or inability to READ MUSIC well enough to do what their teachers wanted them to do: the physical skills weren't the main roadblock.

So his whole teaching method is built around showing people how to vamp chords and play melodies, sight-reading only the simplest of lines and doing the rest by muscle memory and knowing the basics of building harmonies and playing rhythms.

In other non-news, why am I posting at 2 and 4 in the morning? Because I'm staying up all night making stock.

Scratch that. I'm staying up all night (kid-related), so while I'm up and unable to be sleepy, I figured I'd make stock. It's a lot of chopping and boiling, and I have need of a Massive Pot of Gamer-Chow tomorrow, so there we are.

I started just after we got back from dinner by putting in a large amount of chicken thighs (skin and bones included) in the oven to roast for two hours. Took them out, left to cool on stovetop for a bit; then I stripped the skin and bones for the stockpot, putting a bowl of just-the-meat into the fridge.

Peel and roughly section (not chop, just cut into the blanks that will later be chopped) quantities of carrots, turnips, beets, and onions; all peels/skin/bones/cut off ends go into stockpot, along with a variety of whole spices and some water. Stock pot goes into a 250degF oven for several hours.

Pot came out. I fished out as many of the big chunks with a slotted spoon as I could, then strained it coarsely with a colander and finely with a wire strainer; the stockpot was washed out and the strained liquid (pinkish -- beets!) returned to it. Then, since I still wasn't sleepy (this was one of the 'and if I'm sleepy I'll go to bed' points), I coarse-diced all the previously prepped veggies and boned, cooked chicken thighs and put 'em in the stockpot while listening to podcasts.

The pot is now in the fridge. Tomorrow morning sometime I'll put it back in a 250degF oven to simmer for a while before I check flavorings and adjust the spicing with a fresh mind; then it shall be lunch.

I also loaded and ran the dishwasher, so it hasn't been a total wash (though stressful). I'm about to go try to get into pjs and lay down, which will almost certainly result in more kid-wakening, but I'm ready to try it, anyhow.

Fragano@440

But you see, if everyone sounds like Jar-Jar Binks then it's less of an issue...

Michael I: But you see, if everyone sounds like Jar-Jar Binks then it's less of an issue...

And if everyone jumps off a cliff, the roads will be less crowded. Tell you what: you go first and I'll watch and record the results.

I think that I would rather be kicked in the testicles by a placekicker after a lengthy run-up than sound like Jar-Jar Binks under any circumstances.

There seems to be a divide between Briain and the US about the term 'Professor' - in the UK it's reserved for an academic with a chair - usually a head of department or group leader, at least I think so. I think the title was reserved for academics at universities rather than polytechnics etc. Of course these days almost everywhere that offers a degree is called a university.

(Once at an academic conference Fred Hoyle popped his head into a meeting room and said 'Sorry, I'm looking for a chair' - to which all the postdocs replied 'So are we!')

I had thought that 'Esquire' was a term for the sons of someone with a knighthood but a quick google suggests that I'm wrong about that. Shame, because I fall into that category, due to no merit of my own.

There's a news item over at Boing Boing that has me confused as an observer from the U.S.A., but I don't want to sign up for their messageboard system just for one question so I'm hoping one of our U.K. residents can explain it for me. The article says Labour has passed some mutant child of SOPA and a member of Parliment named Harriet Harman is hot to send out the "Someone says you've downloaded copyrighted material so goodby Internet" letters. I'm unclear on the details of how the system in the U.K. works regarding acts over there. After Harriet Harman receives the first notification letter and has her personal Internet access and the access of her office yanked leaving her staff unable to respond to electronic communications from her constituency, will she have to write a new act to get out of it happening daily, or can the law be amended by adding riders?

A wholly internal naming thing: after a few Spanish classes in college, I started confusing titles. I still want to use profa/profe instead of 'professor' when speaking-- and I never used those in Spanish since those prof-- wanted to type 'profes'-- professors used first names instead, mostly.

David Harmon #466: I was a child in England. I find the American reservation of Esquire for lawyers only rather odd. Especially since it is highly unlikely* that American lawyers will be knighted, while the average Englishman, Welshman, Scot, or Northern Irishman does have a real chance at knighthood.

Unlike Haile Selassie, who was knighted.