I still think of them as Schtroumpfs....

Smurfette was not involved in this operation, I see.

It sounds like the premise for a madcap heist movie.

Except for the beating a guy part. And the getting caught part.

That is seriously smurfed up.

Well, there's a crime you don't see every day...

I knew there was a good reason why I never liked Smurfs!

Meanwhile, back in the mother country...

Hello, Open Thread. Just dropping you a line to inform you that the "Nice Guys of OKCupid" Tumblr is gone. Sadness and a broken Sidelight ensue.

Word on the street is, it'll be coming back. Stay tuned.

How is the weather where you are? We are enjoying the work of meteorologic magicians who have teleported a day from late spring into the middle of January. That's Colorado for you. You should come visit while the spell lasts.

Slugs and fishes,

NJLL

It was a very sweet letter. Perhaps the gnomes mistook it for a cookie. Do you think they will deliver it to the intended recipient it if promised fresh-baked traditional king cake on Saturday? I have even bought the sour cream ahead of time. Might use a clay rune token from a local new age shop for a bakeable "baby." We'll see.

I remember a strange movie called Point Break where there were some bank robbers who wore rubber masks of presidents and were also surfers.

8
The weather where I am is windy and very dry (27 percent humidity indoors!), and the barometer has dropped to 30.06 (altitude adjusted).

Point Break was one of the (many) bank robbery movies parodied in the wonderfully-bizarre teen-cheerleader movie Sugar and Spice.

I've always thought that Terry Pratchett created the Nac Mac Feegles after his brain crossed the Smurfs with Braveheart.

A question for the collective wisdom (which is great) of Making Light:

Does anyone have any recommendations for a good English->Latin translation service? Particularly one that doesn't mind coming up with neologisms for words like "geolocation"?

I am delighted to see my home city of Melbourne turning up at the top of the page. I should point though out that many - perhaps even most - Melbourne criminals do not dress as smurfs.

Hey! My first time gnomed ever.

No urls in the post, so I must have used a trigger word.

[Specifically "Making Light" followed by a colon. One common form of comment spam "personalizes" the comment by including the title of the post. Such a spam on this thread, for example, might read, "This Making Light: Open Thread 180 certainly answered all my questions on the subject!" -- Ronoflex Priso, Duty Gnome]

*Sigh*

One of the keystones of hoarding is the notion that "I should hang onto that; somebody might find that valuable."

I've been throwing out stuff as I move, either before packing it up or before putting it on a shelf on this end. I've got a donation pile and trash pile and both are growing.

Today I moved over some file boxes of old mags. One was half full of some trade journals. Normally, primo recycling bin fodder. But these are . . . well, hmm. 1960 vintage Cold War Space Age aerospace industry trade journals, with trippy concept art. Recruiting pitches to come work for the company building the fasteners that will hold together the nation's moon ships!

I'm wondering how much effort to put into not trashing these.

16
'Rockets and Missiles' or 'Aviation Leak'?

#17: "Missile Design & Development."

Really dry, technical stuff.

I put a note on the local model rocket club email list. If there's no taker by tomorrow night, into the bin they go.

In this case the police showed great restraint. I know that if I saw smurfs IRL my reaction would be much like the reaction many have to seeing zombies.

It never happened; but I swore if my kids wanted to go see the recent Smurfs film I'd make them wear 'Team Gargamel' t-shirts.

And Tom Whitmore's right - they're Schtroumpfs.

Looked at the story, it's on the Time website, and noticed a couple of links to stuff that seems to be Onion-style reporting. Not actually The Onion, but the stories had that feel to them.

It makes me wonder how much I can rely on Time, even whether I can rely on that story.

I mean, I know I can rely on The Onion.

Dave Bell @21:

> It makes me wonder how much I can rely on Time, even whether I can rely on that story.

I was surprised I hadn't seen the story elsewhere, given that I live in Melbourne myself. Then again I'm sure I miss all sorts of things...

...also, thank Duty Gnome at #15

Dave Bell #21: As many here have noticed, these days the Onion frequently makes more sense than the nominally "serious" news outlets.

At least the Smurf crime makes more sense then Mant T'eo's (Canadian) Californian girlfriend.

It is so easy to drift down to sleep
when the weak body, lacking all defence,
is at a moment when matters are tense
just eager to collapse into the deep
comfort of the dark. Hardest thoughts will keep
until winter sun makes some vague pretense
at warming earth, but we have little sense
of whether honest hearts may make the leap
into the morning. Now we have some hope
that better judgment will be after night
and waking eyes will look on clearer choice;
that at the least each will know how to cope
in what will be a keener form of light
and in a place where each will have a voice.

And then the Silver Smurfer swept down to stop the Blue Smurfs.

"Movie two, Smurfs nothing!"

Stefan Jones, #16:

Missile-magazine ads? There's a book in that.

In the same vein as Stefan Jones @16, I've been trying to declutter some long-standing piles of "well, I can't get rid of this, someone might find it useful! Even if it's not me."

The hoarding genes, I get them honestly.

In question right now are a stack of 80s and 90s-era mementos: elementary school class photos, a fundraiser cookbook, yearbooks. I attach no personal sentimental value to them but just can't seem to get rid of them, because, well, someone might be delighted to have them someday.

I've scanned the photos and parts of the cookbook and put them on the book of faces with an offer of the physical copies for anyone interested. No takers. Is this sort of thing a welcome donation to a local library or historical society, or are they too recent and should just go in the recycling already?

Also, I haven't touched those yearbooks since I graduated from high school in the late 90s. If I get rid of them, will I really regret it later in life? The people who tell me that tend to be of the "your high school years are the best of your life" mentality, and mine were...most definitely not.

Persephone: I've seen requests from libraries for local school yearbooks, so it's worth at least calling or emailing the library to ask. You might also call or email the schools.

Persephone (30): Your local library or historical society might well be interested in those. It would depend in part on whether or not they already have copies. It can't hurt to ask. (But don't just show up with them, call/email first.)

My high school yearbooks spent two decades in a box lost in my parents' house. When they turned back up, I was delighted to have them again, although I hadn't particularly missed them in the interim. (To calibrate, I didn't much like high school, but I did have a few good friends and good memories. If you hated everything and everyone involved, I say don't keep the yearbooks.)

Looks like Blue Man Gang has struck again.

Persephone @ 30: I am still in touch with a few high school friends. I find my high school yearbook handy occasionally when they bring up someone and I can't put a face to a name. If it had only been 15-ish years, like you, my memory might not need the help.

Steve Taylor @14: Assuming you mean a translator who'll work with the text and make up neologisms as needed, as opposed to a machine translation... I have never heard of such a service, but if you find one, I'd love to hear about the contact information too. I'd love to get into that line of business myself, if I were ever sufficiently well-versed in Latin to qualify. (Four years of university study in, I am more confident than ever that I don't qualify yet. The more I learn, the more I learn how little I know.)

re 13: Threadless crossed the Smurfs with another blue movie.

More bad news for the Smurfs. They nabbed Papa Smurf too.

Erik Nelson @10: I remember a strange movie called Point Break

Staring Patrick Swayze as the surfer-dude bank-robber-gang leader, and Keanu Reeves as the undercover cop. Cool skydiving sequence at the end.

Persephone @30: I haven't touched those yearbooks since I graduated from high school in the late 90s. If I get rid of them, will I really regret it later in life?

I was definitely not of the "your high school years are the best of your life" school, but I've never regretted keeping my high school yearbooks. But then, I'm kind of obsessive about keeping complete records.

WRT "Decluttering," I've been having great luck putting ads on The List That Craig Made. (I always stipulate "You come pick up," so I don't even have to leave my house to get rid of it.) But I've got an ancient (working except for battery) Mac laptop that has proven ridiculously hard to give away.

I got plenty of responses to my ad, just nobody actually coming to take it away.

Stefan, before you pitch those magazines, check with your local libraries, both public and college/university. Sometimes you'll find a particular branch that specializes in the thing you're discarding -- that happened to a friend of mine with her late husband's martial-arts magazines. The first 2 branches she called weren't interested, but the third was delighted to take them.

Persephone, #30: I still have my high-school and college yearbooks, but they're in a box in the attic. I also managed to condense all my school-mementos stuff down into a single box, and decided that this was an acceptable tradeoff.

The other thing you can do with those yearbooks (especially college ones) is put them up on eBay. Yes, really; there are companies that specialize in background checks who value that sort of thing. I got rid of my father's college yearbooks that way.

The cookbook can definitely go to the library; if they don't want to keep it, they can put it out in their annual fundraiser sale.

Y'all do know that SF conventions are classified as SMERF business for hotels? (Sports, Military, Entertainment, Religious, Fraternal -- a catchall category for a bunch of people who occasionally need hotel space. Often spelled as SMURF, and always pronounced the same way.)

Robber in Gumby costume.

Smurf (denial of service) attacks.

Dr. Wife and I are both borderline hoarders, and Stefan Jones @ 16 triggers a lot of empathy. On those occasions when I can force myself to go through old papers and throw things away, I find a few little mantras to be helpful. When dealing with material of the kind Stefan is agonizing about, the mantra I use is "There is an Internet now." and "ACW, you are not the world's archivist.".

In particular, an internet search reveals that the Smithsonian Institution has a run from 1957 through 1961 of Missile Design & Development. So that information won't be lost to humanity if Stefan ditches his copy.

My particular brand of clutter-hoarding says "But *I* might need these someday." The problem with ignoring that voice is, it's often right.

I'm lucky enough to have had a K-12 school career I'm sentimental about, and I've got every one of the yearbooks. But the only one that lives with me rather than hibernating on my parents' bookshelf is my senior yearbook. It goes years without being opened, and then...

Well, this past November, while out with some NaNoWriMo friends having a write-in, I hear a voice call, "Niki LeBoeuf?" And it's a gal from my high school, from the class before mine. We talk a bit about what brought us to the Boulder area, which classmates we're still in touch with, all that stuff. And then I go home, pull down the yearbook, and find her picture. Then I spend several minutes smiling wistfully over other photos, and the notes friends left scribbled in the margins, and the cute "ad" my Mom placed in the book showing me as a small child with a toy typewriter and the caption "Some things never change," and...

Everything that comes up for possible clutter-culling must go through the "But what if I need this someday?" filter, and incidents like that one make that filter a really grabby one.

I'm a lot better about giving away things that other people have given me through the years, that I realize I've never used. Or things I have multiples of. John and I both went to World Horror in Salt Lake City; do we really need two souvenir canvas totes? Ditto the ones the vet neurologist sent us home with every time Null went to visit; one's actively in use, hanging off the side of the fridge and holding some of Uno's medical supplies, but the others just gathered dust in the closet. (Its strap wasn't even long enough to go over the shoulder. Fail!) Or all those PEZ and mini-M&M dispensers Mom sent as stocking-stuffers based on a taste John had for those things 15 years ago.

But high school text books, SF/F paperbacks, photos, old T-shirts and jeans, aging electronics? I might need those someday!

One of the members of the rocketry club wants to look at those trade journals. From there, I don't care what happens to them.

In that vein, I'm tossing some seriously busted up rockets. Not worth fixing; I'm not a kid with a limited hobby budget any more. I might put them in a box and bring them to the next scheduled launch; anything that doesn't get picked goes to the nearby dumpster.

@Bill: I've got that book!

My kids have become interested in my yearbooks. They're interested to see what I looked like, but also what the school was like.

But then, like many kids not in the US, they struggle with the idea that American high schools aren't some kind of fictional construct, like Camelot, or Ponyville.

(We will skate over the time my daughter's dance school used "High School Musical" as the theme of its annual performance. Skim right over it all.)

Best decluttering tool I know: move twice in the same year, and have to schlep all the boxes of to-be-kept material yourself.

Clarentine #47:

Or get your house ready to go on the market, while not actually planning on moving out until after the sale--and not getting into the storage-unit business either. We both lost count of all the heavy-duty trash bags full of papers and such that went down the steep hill to the end of the driveway.

Re: the titular smurf gang:

Great. Now I have a blue-painted Samuel L. Jackson in my head, waving a pistol and shouting "Say `Smurf' again, mothersmurfer! I smurfing dare you!"

Fade Manley @35:

> Assuming you mean a translator who'll work with the text and make up neologisms as needed, as opposed to a machine translation...

Yep. Handy though Google Translate is, I've seen the things it can do to French->English.

The Finnish national broadcaster does a weekly roundup of news in Latin, and I've heard that the most challenging part of the process is coming up with neologisms for "gene sequencing", "flash crowd", "kettling" and so on...

My needs are lesser but similar - help text for an iPhone app.

> I have never heard of such a service, but if you find one, I'd love to hear about the contact information too.

When I googled around I found two Latin only services. One was thelatintranslator dot com (in the absence of recommendations I'll give them a go) and the other currently escapes my Google-Fu. I was tickled to see that both sites had a dedicated page for composing your tatoos in Latin, stressing how important it is to have a tatoo that makes sense (a sentiment I endorse).

Digression - I saw a woman the other, about 30 years old, with a tatoo on the back of her neck which read "Forever Young". My first thought was that she was going to look like an idiot when she turned 60. My second thought was that for all I knew she was Gilgamesh's kid sister and the tatoo was entirely accurate.

There are zillions of translation sites out there which will do any language->any language. One of them boasted that in all cases the translators it used were native speakers. I noted that one of the languages in their giant laundry list was Klingon.

Since this is an open thread, I will ask for some assistance. I am looking for something and I think I first saw it linked by a commenter here at ML. It is Somebody's Law and it involves the purpose of an organization becoming no longer about the reason it organized, but about sustaining the organization. Can anyone help point me to it? I think it was promulgated by an SF writer.

Needless to say, I'm involved in a similar situation at the moment.

That sounds a little bit like The Iron Law of Institutions, as expressed by Jonathan Schwarz.

HLN: Relative timing of swallowing and coughing reflexes fail; aerosol dispersal of beverage fluids result.

The Iron Law of Institutions is: the people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution.

Thanks for this. I'd never encountered it before.

Stefan Jones @16, a turning point in my life came over a decade ago, when I was looking at a shelf of paperbacks, considering whether I could get rid of any of them, and saw a copy of some old Heinlein book (Expanded Universe, I think) that I wasn’t planning to ever reread, and thought “I can’t throw that out — I might need to quote from it in an argument on Usenet!” I then had what I think the Alcoholics Anonymous people call a “moment of clarity”.

In fact, it’s way past time for another round of throwing out books.

"Is it possible I might need this someday?"

The problem with that question is that the answer is innevitably, "Yes." It was a big breakthrough for me when I learned to ask:

"If I need it and don't have it, what will I do?"

Jacque, #56: Yes, exactly! We've been doing rather a lot of that around here lately, especially WRT spare parts and other such stuff. How easy / expensive would it be to replace this if we needed it later? If the answer is "very, and cheap", out it goes. If the answer is "expensive, but there's a cheap and easy alternative," out it goes. And so on.

I have for the past several years, enjoyed passing random stuff on to friends who will appreciate it, books to the library, and clothing and household objects to my nearest thrift shop. I am passing things on to the someone who needs them!

abi@46: My daughter started high school this year, and she was remarking just last week that high school is nothing like its depictions on television/in the movies. I won't go so far as to say she is disappointed about that, but she plainly feels like someone tried to put one over on her.

Oh great, well I know what today's earworm will be:

"Let's go Smurfin' now,
Hit the woods and burn'em out!
Come on a safari with me..."

Thank you, Tom Smith.

Abi @ 46... they struggle with the idea that American high schools aren't some kind of fictional construct, like Camelot

Show them the movie "Carrie".

Re: Throwing out stuff

We finally realized that we have more than enough suit boxes, shirt boxes and jewel boxes to take care of future Christmas and birthday wrapping needs from now until 2100, so I just dumped a slew of them into the recycling bin. The back room doesn't (yet) look a lot tidier, but it will. It will.

It was the Wiggles in disguise.

My sense of non-USian high schools is completely overlaid by boarding-school novels. What's a good piece of fiction to make that more realistic? (English prose, or film with subtitles, please (alas).)

My favorite depiction of High School is the Anime adaptation of Orange Road. Mainly because every damn dumb thing the esper protagonist does is what I would have done under the same circumstances if I had the same skill set, I kid you not. (Well, maybe not the "hypnotized into a underwear-snatching zombie" episode.) I don't know which of us this condemns more...

@Avram:

I got rid of nearly half of my books about three years ago after a similar moment of clarity.

The fact that Powell's was a short ride away helped a lot. Powell's PAYS you for your books. Not all of them, and not all that much, but . . . they pay something for most of them.

And now, they'll donate the ones they don't take, saving a trip to Goodwill.

Both before my move, as I packed books in totes, and after, as I shelved them, I plucked out still more. I have big box ready to go to Powell's next time I go downtown.

(There's also a place downtown that buys some magazines. I'm going to see if they take my early copies of WIRED.)

Nancy M., #58: FreeCycle is great for that. You know that whoever comes after your item is someone who actually has a use for it!

Something I saw about dating sites that seems... kind of horrible: Apparently women rate 80% of men on the Cupid of Adequacy as "below average looking", while men have a pretty well-calibrated bell curve. Women don't mind so much that the average man is below-average, apparently, and are perfectly willing to go slumming in that pool. I don't think I can throw out the link without getting gnomed... I have a bit of Toblerone left over. Enjoy!

http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/

Why yes, I have been gnomed. Enjoy the chocolate!

Irene Gallo and Jim Hines, who may be known to some here, are amongst those quoted in a BBC article on sexist book covers.

Be warned, there is a picture of Mr. Hines, posing.

Dave Bell: #70: Yeah, my favorite example is still the one I noted here. In that case, the cover scene is from the book -- except that the woman on the cover is nude, while in the book she is fully and normally clothed.

Which brings us, alas, to the cover to the latest SFWA Bulletin.

Lila, Mary Aileen: Thanks! I'll look up the local libraries, and there's probably a county historical society or two. I don't live in that state any more, so I'd have to mail the goods anyhow.

Jacque: The List of Craig and his curb alerts are how I get rid of things these days. Small items and clothing go to the Goodwill, but otherwise it goes out on the front sidewalk and is usually gone within half an hour of putting up the notice.

I've attempted Freecycle on and off over the years, but the folks there tend to claim something and then never show up for it. At least with curb alerts I don't have to make an arrangement for a particular person and then wait for them to show. I did once manage to get rid of twenty-five cans of paint via Freecycle, though. Yes, literally: The previous homeowners had left all their original paint cans, and we'd brought some with us, and we bought more to paint the house interior with. I saved touchup amounts of each in empty water bottles and (after multiple CL attempts) finally got someone on Freecycle willing to take all 25 cans.

Jim Macdonald at 72: Yeah. I'm a brand new SFWA member, and this is the first Bulletin I've ever seen. That plus some of the political stuff? Not the most welcoming thing ever.

I feel very welcome as an individual, but as a class? Not so much. And really, I like my professional societies professional. I'm an actual scientist in a predominately-male field: I can take it, and will to do what I can to make it better, but I wish that weren't necessary.

re: Jim Macdonald@72

Gotta love how one of the commenters dismisses all criticism of the cover as prudery. :(

On my site: eight more patterns and instructions for Eared Fleece Chemo Hats. Six are pictured. There are also floppy-eared versions for a hound and a lop-eared rabbit.

There are at least three otherwise serious and highly competent professional women in Colorado wearing them to work.

Open threadiness:

This Connor Friedersdorf post links to a four page letter in PDF format from Senator Wyden, detailing a whole bunch of important questions about the president's power to have Americans killed, and in particular the legal reasoning and process behind that.

Wyden is a senator on the intelligence oversight committee. Even he is not able to find out the legal reasoning behind the president's claim of authority to have Americans killed. Nor is he able to find out what countries we've killed people in, or if the US is one of those countries. I really encourage people to read the letter, which is short and to the point.

Now, let's be clear: there is absolutely no way it's legitimate to keep this information from Wyden. The only reasons to hide the legal justification for the program are either:

a. To avoid letting even the oversight committee know what's been authorized and/or done.

b. Because the justification is extremely sketchy, and wouldn't hold up to minimal scrutiny.

My guess in this case is that both of these are true. And the Obama administration is refusing to answer questions and evading legally-mandated oversight for exactly the same reason the Bush administration did--because they know they can get away with it, and they don't care to have any of their power diminished.

Gnomed

Jim, #72: Holy crap. Who in the world thought that was a good idea for a professional bulletin? I second the suggestion (in the comments thereon) of having Hines & Scalzi reproduce that one.

Hm. Something very weird is happening on my mac. I'm testing to see if I can post here...? (And will the word testing get me gnomed?)

Lee: Holy crap. Who in the world thought that was a good idea for a professional bulletin?

Harry Connolly (who used to post here from time to time...) rightfully picked up on this and skewered it on his website and LJ. He's written in the past about possibly letting his SFWA membership lapse, and it sounds as if this was the last straw. And if you haven't read any of his books you're really missing out on A Good Thing. Since his publisher decided that the series he was doing wasn't economically viable and cancelled it I hope he has better success with the book he's working on now.

The reactions to that cover on the Bulletin are a pretty clear example of different parsings of the same phrase "professional science-fiction/fantasy writers' organization." The folks who chose and defend it are putting the emphasis on "science-fiction/fantasy", where the cover is (sadly, but that's another story!) not very much out of the ordinary. The people who object are emphasizing "professional ... organization".

Stamps cane, growls about the days when the Bulletin was mimeographed and they didn't have this four-color b*llsh*t to put up with, just battles between writers....

For some reason, for the past few days I've been wondering what the affect of a band of criminals disguised as members of the Blue Man Group would be.

I find that people who work at museums and other places that collect are neatly polarized: those who are very serious collectors of everything in their own lives, and those who become minimalists in reaction. I fall in the latter category--when I come home after taking care of other peoples' old stuff I tend to decide it's time to purge my possessions.

That cover from the SFWA Bulletin does evoke a certain sort of mid-Sixties imagery, though I would have put it late Seventies myself, part of the post-D&D fantasy boom. And, if you wanted to evoke the era, you could have chosen a far better image.

I mean, you don't want to do actual Star Trek, but a spaceship, and two crew-things in skin-tight spacesuits, facing down a Frazetta-style barbarian, that's the sort of thing that would work better.

(Hmm, a barbarian throne-room scene, with a recognisable Kirk as the emperor, and Uhura and Worf as the starship away party, Uhura with the Captain's rank insignia... Now that could be a fifty-year image, but I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole for IP reasons.)

I admit it, I'm not ruling out the fan-service angle, but I don't think I am quite that crude.

And can we get Sulu in there somewhere, stripped to the waist, with his sword...

Serge Broom @61: Show them the movie "Carrie".

Um...yeah....

Stefan Jones @66: I got rid of nearly half of my books about three years ago after a similar moment of clarity.

I did a big purge about ten years ago. I've still got a bookcase full of stuff I couldn't quite bring myself to unload, but given that I haven't even looked at those in the interim suggests strongly that I could safely send those along their way. I need to find the most time-efficient and effort-free way to unload them short of outright recycling, as any remuneration is unlikely in the extreme to actually pay for my time and effort. But on the plus side, I can now at least see a (crooked) path diagonally across my spare room.

My biggest challenge is that I tend to accumulate "materiel:" wood and scraps, fabric and scraps. Now tree branches with interesting shapes. Trash to anybody but me, but there's such potential....

Dave Bell @70: This discussion was brought to mind when I visited my neighbor for the first time. I commented that his women are actually ergonomically kickass. He says his wife makes sure of that when she poses for him.

Persephone @73: curb alerts

Oh my! It makes sense that such a thing would have evolved, but it never crossed my mind. This would be much easier than what I've been doing. Thanks for the tip!

finally got someone on Freecycle willing to take all 25 cans.

::doe eyes:: I go through paint like you wouldn't believe, because I use it like a sculptural material. Our local household hazmat drop center apparently gives away usable stuff people have left off, but it's enough of a trip, and the hours are constrained, that I haven't gotten around to availing myself of this resource. Which is dumb, because paint is my number one art expense.

Carol Kimball @76: Eared Fleece Hats

There has lately evolved a fashion for hats with non-losable mittens. These absolutely slay me, especially when I see the buskers out on the Pearl Street Mall wearing them. (Most recently, a guy with a telescope pointed at the moon!)

Dave Bell @85: [C]an we get Sulu in there somewhere, stripped to the waist, with his sword...

And of course, the image that immediately leaps to my mind is the Grup centerfold by George Barr. ::fans self::

I remember seeing Takei autograph one of those at a Denver Trek convention.... He conceded that Barr's rendering was, um, generous. But he appreciated the sentiment, all the same. XD

Jacque -
I first parsed your reply as that the guy was wearing [a hat with integral mittens] OF a telescope pointed at the moon.

Then, that he was wearing a variation of what you linked WHILE using a telescope...

Diverted by both possibilities.

86
Mine are mostly in boxes in storage, and not accessible, or I'd have gotten rid of a lot of them already.
[mom] If you haven't needed to get into a box in 40 years, you don't need whatever is in the box. [/mom]

Clew (64) If you can get it on netflix or similar, try the UK '80s TV series Grange Hill. I have a feeling I may even have referred to it in a review in Interzone back in the day for some reason. Sigh. Some day I'll get all the boxes of Interzone out of storage and scan my stuff so I can read some of it again!

Stefan Jones @66, Jacque @86,
I've done a couple of shelf-space making events by using my "friends rush in" rule.

Imagine all your books in one room, labeled by category. If a group of your best friends ran in with a "we're going to be traveling for the next 30 hours and we have no books," scanned your categories, and took out books to read(1), would you take any book back as not being worthy of them?(2)

I already knew I wasn't going to read those books ever again, but that wasn't quite enough incentive. But if I wasn't going to let anyone I care about read the book, why was I keeping it?

---
(1) they're good friends: you know they cannot damage the books, and you know they're only choosing books in categories they'd like (if the category is technical books, they love technical books)
(2) and hand them better books for the category

On getting rid of stuff: I must say, from personal experience, that it's much easier to get rid of someone else's stuff (tm). However, over time, I've developed the skills to dispose of my outdated items, by and large. Books that I don't like, or don't want hanging around, are packed up for recycling to friends or to libraries.

I'm fortunate in living near Powell's Books, which buys used books. I use their book compression algorithm: Bring in books to sell back at the wholesale rate, take the credit, use it to buy books at retail prices. This is guaranteed to free up shelf space.

I was more fortunate when they let you come to the warehouse to sell back, because you parked directly outside the door. Now you have to go to a store, and can't park nearby. I find I'm selling back fewer books, and dropping more off at Goodwill.

I have many paperbacks, and some hardcovers, which I'd be happy to part with were it not for the fact that they were:

a) Signed by folks who won't be signing any more books.

or

b) Were sent to me by the author, signed, sometimes with a "thanks for the useful comments" inscription, and my name on the acknowledgements page.

Sometimes a) isn't enough to keep me from clearing the shelves. Last year Powell's got a dozen or so autographed Hal Clement paperbacks. I read them and enjoyed them . . . but could not see ever reading them again. They weren't worth any more signed. Some fan got a nice surprise, I guess.

Fragano Ledgister @83

> For some reason, for the past few days I've been wondering what the affect of a band of criminals disguised as members of the Blue Man Group would be.

The Christopher Brookmyre article _The Sacred Art of Stealing_ starts with a nice bank robbery by an acrobat/mime troupe, to the tune of Madness's _Baggy Trousers_. Maybe that will take you partway there.

Stefan, #93: "Would be culled if not autographed" stuff gets put into an Archive Box around here -- wrapped securely in plastic inside the box to ward off water/insect damage, and then stored in the attic. They're also noted as such on LibraryThing.

I'm getting ready to do my Annual Battle of the Inner Pack Rat. The rules are simple and apply to the contents of my living space with two exceptions: the crafting stash, my personal library. All I do is ask myself a few simple questions. Or I guess a flow chart would be better.

1) have I used this in the past year? If yes, keep. If no, do I intend to use it in the upcoming year? If yes, hold onto it for one more year. If no, get rid of it by selling, donating or (re)gifting.

2) Have I used this in the last two years? if no, wait for the inner pack rat to start screaming about Sentimental Worth. Carry on a debate with said rat about how happy having it makes me and do I really care all that much about it. If the pack rat's worth really really has emotional weight, keep it for another year. If it's a light in emotion object put it in the Regift/Donate/Sell category.

I donate and/or sell a lot of stuff.

The library culling is actually simpler. "Will I want to re-read this in the future?" If yes, keep. If no, donate/sell. It's only when I run out of shelf space or wall space that I do a concerted purge. Have I re-read this? if no, re-read it and see if it held up. If no, donate/sell. Every so often, I'll come across a book where I don't recall it off the top of my head, so I'll re-read it and go "Oh! That's why" and re-shelve it.

Culling the crafting stash is both easier and harder. If I have multiple tools of a particular kind and Orphaned Yarn Type I and someone wants me to teach them a craft that uses one of the aforementioned tools.... I make them up a kit and give it to them. Kinda like a starter seed.

The harder stuff to get rid of is Orphaned Yarn Type II, or pending project supplies. I've had to institute limits in some areas like no more new stuff until I use up the old stuff. (At which point my Inner Pack Rat whines and begs. I respond with a "then you have to buy more organizers to store it". Then the Inner Pack Rat does a victory dance until the Budged Monster stomps on him. )

Victoria at 96: are we distant cousins? That's my process almost exactly, except that I don't do crafts at the moment (and when I did, it was pottery at a studio away from my house. And yes, I still have my pottery tools.) No yarn, fabric, beads, paper, etc.

I cull my books throughout the year. I have to: my space is limited. I used to buy many more books (new and used) than I do now; now, I am an avid local library user, and I almost never buy new. I still buy used, very carefully. My Budget Monster has a glare that can melt marble.

Before the last move, I collected $69 from Half Price Books. And if you know how little they pay, you can see that that was a lot of books.

Here's my decision algorithm:

• For nonfiction, if I need this information again, can I find it on the internet?


• For fiction, if I want to read it again, could I get it from a library?


• For books I haven't read yet... I'm afraid this branch of the algorithm doesn't halt.

I wrote at @94:

> The Christopher Brookmyre article _The Sacred Art of Stealing_

Book dammit, not article. Stupid typing fingers.

Serge #93.

...and look, I got this great old sci-fi book where one of the heroes really is a bug. Pity that the previous owner wrote his name in it. "Cement" or something. Yeah, that's right, similar name to the author. What a coincidence. Still, small world...

Just checked my shelves again, and put four "probably never read again" hardcovers on the donate pile. Books by authors I know, but they turned out not to be signed.

I found a couple of boxes today with toys. "The Simpsons" figures, and some cheap pirate figures I believe I bought as "just in case" gifts when my friend's kids were little. Into the donation box. (Which should go out the door tomorrow, to be joined by a pile which has been growing in the corner of my old apartment.)

If I haven't opened a box since 1986 (that being when we packed them before moving here), I go through it, but expect to discard almost everything within. The key word is "almost": one of those boxes turned out to contain my framed college diploma, for example, which (to my surprise) a recruiter wanted a photo of recently, as evidence that I really have the degree claimed on my resume.

He said that if I really couldn't find it, I could contact the university registrar's office and ask for a transcript to be sent, but that was my suggestion, not his, and clearly second choice. So I duly photographed and sent it, after warning him that it's entirely in Latin, with the exception of my name.

I also dug out my infant vaccination records a few years ago, though I wouldn't be surprised to be told "get a booster shot" if I was going anywhere that polio might be a risk.

Clarification: I have been very slowly going through all those old boxes (do one, wait a few months....), but I don't toss them without looking to see what's inside, because I seem to firmly believe that there might be something I need, even after the entire box (originally from a liquor store) from which I salvaged two marbles for the cat to play with.

I have found that having two people with large libraries of overlapping but non-identical reading tastes makes it very, very difficult to cull the shelves. The spouse brought in a large number of interesting books I hadn't read yet, and vice versa: so getting rid of books ends up needing to pass three steps of "Will I want to read this again? Will you want to read this again? Wait, have both of us had a chance to read it yet?"

Vicki, #102/103: That's a wise approach, even if you're normally very organized. Your college diploma, for example, might not have been in the category of "important papers" before we hit the era of widespread resume fraud.

When one friend of mine was going thru her parents' stuff preparatory to them moving into a smaller house, she found their marriage certificate in the middle of a box of old utility bills and credit-card statements. It was the only thing in the box that couldn't be immediately discarded, and it was well-buried.

Vicki, #102/103: How odd that a recruiter would trust a picture of a paper diploma more than contacting the university. Creating a fake printout of a diploma would trivial!

janetl @ #106, I had the same thought.

HLN: Local man dreams of cartoon cat on bicycle. Cat terrifies ghosts and drives them out of places they're haunting. Cat is either completely unafraid of ghosts or actually unaware of them, but they're afraid of him.

The 70's-style cartoon theme song that plays during these episodes (yes, the dream had several episodes) identifies the cat as "Ghost Rider." No flaming skeleton on a motorcycle ever appears.

Local man doesn't actually dream this dream again, but wakes up daily with the image of the silly cartoon cat in his head. He has no idea what, if anything, this may mean.

Xopher @ 108... Did you recently watch "HellBoy", 1998's "The Mummy" *and* a Sylvester cartoon?

Nope. None of the above. This is a very stylized mouthless cartoon cat. With a very serene stare.

What that means, Xopher, is that there's a magazine somewhere waiting for your short story.

Xopher @108

Forgive me if this is presumptuous. Normally I keep my personal interpretations to myself and leave others to make their own, but on reading your story I received a clear and precise understanding accompanied by a feeling I associate with power, so I figured that I should at least write it down and leave you to make your own assessment.

It appears that you may have been visited by one of those who walk between.

There is a creature that appears repeatedly in fiction. They are usually described as cartoon or fictionalized cats who blur the barrier between life and death in some way. They appear frequently in the works of people who would definitely not believe in them, which I kind of think they might do as a joke.

I'm not sure what they're after, but they're almost always portrayed as either neutral or helpful.

And if you're not going to write that short story, I just might.

It occurs to me that some folks may enjoy, in an open thready way, The Lutheran Insulter.
It doesn’t insult members of the Lutheran denominations, but gives you a strong statement from the writing of Martin Luther.

Torn between 'wow' and annoyance at the (small) stash of 8mm home movies I got out of my grandmother's estate's stuff ... it would be awesome if I could just look at the content and enjoy/consider it. However, (a) most of the reels are huge and unlabeled, (b) I do HAVE a projector but it has no power cord and (c) once I have the cord, I get to find out if the bulb works or (d) if the motor's in decent shape.

Sometime AFTER that a-b-c-d checklist I get to figure out which, if any, of the spools contain content the family will want to archive.

Elliott @114, I understand that there are companies that will transfer content from 8mm to dvd disks. Don't know what they charge or if it's worth it to you to do the transfer without knowing what (if anything) is on the reels, so this is probably pretty hlepy....

Phone service in my community has still not been restored, but Verizon just sent me a second* ad for FIOS. Addressed to me personally, as a long-time customer. The outside of it said, "It's customer appreciation month," which made me laugh bitterly. This customer would appreciate getting her phone service back.

I know that they're seizing the opportunity to replace all the damaged copper wires with fiber optics. But they shouldn't try to get me to upgrade while MY PHONE STILL DOESN'T WORK.

*second personal ad, not counting the one that came with the weekly circulars

Cassy B @115: Yes, and even though we have quite a modest amount, the online places I'm finding that offer to do it for you all want about $2000 to do the lot.

At this point my crackpot "run it through the projector at a nice smooth screen and shoot it with a digicam" plan is looking better and better, though I'd still like to see it first. :->

Additionally, I kind of really want to set up times to have various of my relatives present, run it through a projector, and film not only the images, but THEIR REACTIONS and stories prompted by same, which is definitely value-added archiving.

Amusingly, the small box of slides that was shoved in the side of the 8mm-film shoebox proves to largely pertain to me; with 3 or 4 exceptions, they're all of my parents' wedding/reception or clearly taken on some day soon after I came home from the hospital.

I think many of the reception ones were taken by my mother or her father (instead of my dad's father, whose collection of 8mm it is), because of who's IN the photos and how they're shot.

115
I did film to video tape. It wasn't expensive. Now if I could get hold of one of the tapes, I'd get it transferred to DVD and several copies made. (I have three of the four reels of film; the fourth is at the Air&Space museum. It included the Flying Wing leaving Northrop Field. In color.)

When I say 'a modest amount' I mean in the neighborhood of 16 400ft reels.

Everyone online is pricing per 50ft of tape ... yeah.

Things I learned while looking up other things:

In the days when Western jazz and rock recordings were not available legally in the USSR, people used to record jazz and rock on old X-rays. The government fought back by making recordings with a few seconds of jazz or rock followed by long diatribes of swearing and criticizing this unpatriotic activity.

I dropped all of my phonograph records at Goodwill this morning. That felt good.

I have perhaps a dozen cassette tapes I want to digitize. They have talks and lectures for the most part. Maybe an audio book or two.

(My parents send my audio books on cassette. That's high tech for them. For me, a terrible pain.)(I don't hesitate to donate the tapes if the book is a dud, but my folks often send me good stuff. Like a Spalding Gray monologue.)

Jim 111: Wow, I will try very hard to believe that interpretation! (I actually have another one submission-ready, and I haven't quite given up on the first one I submitted, which has been rejected from my market-of-choice.)

Leah 112: *jaw drops* You mean this is a known thing? I thought it was just a weird and persistent dream I had. I'll look into it further. Do you have any online references that might help?

BTW, I know that feeling you describe. I've followed up on it and been glad I did, and failed to and regretted it (I wish I had warned one friend of the danger I sensed he'd encounter on his trip, instead of just telling him to be careful; he probably wouldn't have listened, but if he had he might be alive today). So thank you for telling me.

Xopher @123

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a known thing. Or maybe it depends on your definition of known.
Cats being able to see ghosts/interact with the undead/transcend barriers is a pretty commonly acknowledged thing in modern pop culture. As for the specific idea of the fictionalized cat who moves between worlds, that's more something I've noticed references to and been trying to investigate for a while. It falls into my "stuff that persistently appears in the collective conception of the world and that strikes the chord I associate with truth" category. I've talked about it with people before, but I don't think any of us have ever put anything down properly.

This comic was when I started to realize the idea was something everyone constantly talked about but no one acknowledged. I've seen the idea of a cartoon cat who moves between worlds presented in several webcomics and other ephemera, though I can't put my hands on more of them right now. The cat in Coraline seems to represent a similar idea.

I'm always a bit bashful talking about this stuff, and woefully out of practice. Hopefully this helps clarify a bit.

Outside of the obvious (and wonderfully done) Bob the Angry Flower comic on Atlas Shrugged 2: One Hour Later, has anyone played with what might happen in Gault's Gulch? Because the thought of Kent Allard/Lamont Cranston or Lord Greystoke, who would seem to be naturals for the selection process, being in that crowd pleases me no end...

Update on my post-Sandy phone saga: It turns out that I can get FIOS now*, even though my phone service still hasn't been restored. I wasn't able to make an appointment for the installation yet, because Verizon's computers are acting up today†, but one of the other people in my building has it already. And the initial order is in; they're supposed to call me back this afternoon or tomorrow to finalize the details.

I'm getting the distinct impression that Verizon isn't going to be offering plain phone and DSL in this community any longer, only FIOS. (After all, that means they can charge more, and they replaced all the damaged copper wire with fibre-optic cable anyway.) If that's the case, they should just say so. Send out a mailing to all of their existing customers here, telling us that we have to upgrade.

*for values of 'now' that include 'takes two weeks to get it installed'
†Why does this not surprise me?

Fade Manley @104: That describes our household as well. Of course, there are also all the reference books, and journals...

There are a lot of wonderfully Fluorospherian things happening on the #seattlenoir hashtag on Twitter just now.

Karen and I were up playing with that at around 2AM, Elliott. Some very amusing stuff! She posts, I don't.

John immediately (well, immediately after 20min of scrolling and chuckling) went to look to see if there was a #ChicagoNoir tag like it, but I'm not sure what that would look like ... to start with, Chicago had REAL noir, once upon a time. Though of course the hashtag minifics should parallel Seattle's, skewering current mores and habits.

I think I haven't read enough proper noir to pastiche it well enough.

Though a Toronto version would be high-larious, done well.

Don't worry. I expect other cities to pick up on it Very Soon. (or you could just start the hashtag with a couple of variants of the Seattle ones....)

Blerahgggghhh!

I've been on a roll clearing out and cleaning up my old apartment.

Today, after a first pass at the bathroom, I cleaned out the fridge.

I discovered, after removing the crisper drawers, that a bottle of pancake syrup had, evidentally, had a slow leak. I'd kept the bottle way in back, where it exsanguinated out of sight. The dried goo had pooled in the shallow well under the drawers. An astonishing mess.

Stefan Jones (132): My sympathies.

While 'exsanguinated' is a vividly descriptive word for the phenomenon, it's not quite precise in this case. Hmmmmm, what's the Latin for 'syrup'?

Apropos of nothing:

Trompe l'oeil tattoo. (From Cheezburger Network.)

HLN: Local woman is watching the West Wing episode wherein the Surgeon General starts a big flap over marijuana legalization and thinks "Phthththtpthpthpthtt!!!"

I live in
Col-o-ra-do
neener neener neener !!

<happy dance>

(Though local woman concedes she is less than wild about biking through clouds of pot smoke on the way home.)

Elliott—in regards to transfers, does your local community college have a broadcasting department? Aaand if they do, do they have a studio that you can access as a student? I know that I did several non-credit things (including post-production editing of two tapes of a musical production—I'm very proud of that tape, even though it has a few quality issues because of when and how it was taped) in the wee hours at my college; it's possible that if you timed it right, you could do a lot of transfers at the beginning of a term without stepping on anyone's toes. (Even better, befriend that kind of student and keep them company while they're doing something else there...)

On the purging, I actually don't have too much in the way of difficulty with books, since I know pretty well if I'm going to read it again or not. The problem comes in when it's clearing out other people's things—how can I know if I want the book if I haven't read it yet? Oy. (Though if I can't get more than fifty pages in, that makes it really easy.)

I do wish I had the money for a mass scanning of negatives, so I could neatly box the photos in question and never worry about them again...

Mary Aileen @133: Exsucronated?

--Dave, effructonated? eggluconated? ... that last one sounds the stickiest, I think

The hashtag #Seattlenoir has now acquired an accompanying website which collects all the tweets with that tag: http://seattlenoir.com/

This is perhaps worthy of placement in someone's sidebar on the left: Google's Eric Schmidt just went to North Korea with former Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico. Schmidt's daughter went along and has written a trip report about her experience.

Today I arrived home from work to find a parcel of presents from a friend on my doorstep. Some things just arrive at exactly the right time.

The thought of getting rid of any of my works is horrifying. School stuff? Don't have any from highschool, have from uni in case I go back. I own one photo. But books? Mind you, due to library breakups (as a result of people breakups) and finances, I don't own that many books. I have recently gained from my sister doing a purge though, so perhaps it will happen to me one day.

re 126: When the derecho came through, it pulled down but did not actually disconnect the power line and all three phone lines coming into our house. The power line was fixed relatively quickly (in two stages, legal and un-, not in that order), but as our phone worked we didn't see the need to rush to get things fixed. Also, I had to do a great deal of pruning around where the lines attached in order to allow them to get at it properly. So: why did we have three lines in the first place? Two of them were leftovers from the says of DSL, so that the main house line wasn't tied up by the computers; but we have FIOS now. So my wife calls Verizon to tell them that they need to deal with reattaching the one wire that works and taking the other two down. Well. For some utterly stupid reason the division between FOIS and copper service appears to extend all the way down to the stupid wires to the house and into the phone. Neither side wanted to deal with fixing this, because the Other Side's wires were involved. It took a couple of rounds of this and someone making some sort of super-intervention into the work order system to get someone to come out.

After several months of having to do the limbo to get across the front yard, I'm still not completely on track that all I have to do is walk.

I'm quite, quite sure there's a thread here somewhere about PublishAmerica, but I have no idea how to do a search on ML. My husband just ran across them (in a photography context; he's a photographer) and asked me if I knew them, "since apparently they're a sci-fi publisher".

Can someone direct me to a link? From what my husband said, they sound like a sleazy organization....

Cassy B @ 142:
Sleazy? Sleazy? You have no idea.
I don't remember the specific threads--plural--where PA was discussed. I seem to remember there was more than one. Others will, no doubt, provide links. In the meantime go to Wikipedia and look up Atlanta Nights.

Cassy B @ 142

There are so many threads on PublishAmerica that I'm going to specify the search, rather than a single link. One link is here.

In google, enter "site:http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/" in the search box, then whatever you want to search for (PublishAmerica in this case.)

That's an extremely useful trick in general--I use it all the time for searching blogs (particularly recipe blogs).

Memo to Gnomes (and the Elves who drink Safe Tea):

The "Dire Legal Notice" on the front page (and possibly elsewhere) needs to have 2013 appended to the list of dates.

Worldcon's hotel reservations are open.
Ours is done.

Slightly commercial notice of possible interest to people here:

Steve Davidson has resurrected Amazing Stories as a website. I have no commercial interest in it, but I've been helping beta it; and it looks at least moderately interesting. Go check it out and kick the tires a bit.

me (126): Update: My FIOS order has now been placed. Unfortunately, it won't actually be installed until February 16, because they're all backed up. (I could have had it a few days sooner, but I don't want to take a day off work to wait for the technician; the 16th is a Saturday.) The Verizon agent I just spoke to seemed to indicate that my phone service might come back before the FIOS upgrade, but I sincerely doubt it.

The introductory rate they gave me is good for three years, so it won't be any more expensive than what I had before. Plus I am definitely getting a credit for more than two months without phone or internet service.

So I am cautiously pleased. The end is in sight!

Elliot, I faced a similar problem with trying to sort old home movies--in my case, the problem was that they were 16 millimeter, and the old 16-mil home projector was not reparable--and found a solution similar to the one B. Durbin suggested (136): my local public library rented 16-mil projectors. I've no idea if they still do, since this was a while ago, but it's an idea--check local libraries, colleges, park districts, whatever, and see what sort of equipment they have available for rental? Then you can try to screen the reels and decide what is worth transferring, maybe.

That failing--this must be the kind of problem that people who sell transferring services must run into all the time. Do they maybe have an option to help you sort through the reels before transferring?

Back from (minor, uneventful) outpatient surgery and once again reminded of how much I HATE having gaps in my memory.

Once I finish my original WIP I think I will write some Winter Soldier and/or Black Widow fanfic. *shudder*

Saw Les Miserables today. Loved it. Jackman has more voice than I would have expected, and Russell Crowe did a decent job as Javert.

I'm not sure why so many reviews I've read pan Crowe's voice -- for someone who sang in a rock band, he has a flexible and useful instrument. He played the villain well enough that every time he flirted with high places, I was muttering under my breath, "Jump!"

All in all, an enjoyable way to spend a few hours, and I liked it well enough that I will buy the movie soundtrack.

Astronomical heads-up: There will be a close conjunction of Jupiter and the Moon this evening. For most areas of the country, they will be within half a degree of each other. It will be a very pretty sight in binoculars or a small telescope.

Jupiter-Moon Conjunction

Buttered scones and tea will be served.

MLA style for tweets!

Dammit. I should have looked more carefully. Better link, gives more details. Someone there points out that the citation format guarantees that the citation is longer than the work cited in every case.

Xopher @153: interestingly, the APA style for tweets and facebook posts requires the URL, where the MLA style doesn't.

...for posting an American Psychological link corresponding to Xopher's Modern Language one?

Perhaps the gnomes would like some of my co-worker's dried mango slices?

Lori @151:
Jackman actually has way more voice than that, he was singing out of his normal range. He had a career in music theatre.
"Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" as an example.

Steve C., #152: Whoa! That's highly visible already, and it's not nearly full dark yet. Anyone who doesn't have cloud cover should absolutely go outside and take a look -- it's impressive even with the naked eye.

Hmph. Did I hit another Word of Power in my attempt to dodge the one I knew about?

(complaint about working in a profession that requires the use of AMA style redacted)

Lee @ #159 - quite right, very impressive, and it's the closest approach of those two bodies until 2026.

I've shown thousands of people various things through my telescopes, and every once in while I get a reaction that sticks with me. Like Saturday night at the George Observatory, a trio of young men came around, joking, messing around.

One bent down for a look through my telescope, and exclaimed,"It's the f*****g MOON, man! The mood is BAD-ASS!!!"

Okay, not the most refined of language, perhaps, but it was truly genuine appreciation.

Wyman Cooke @483 & SamChevre@484 -- Thanks to you both; I've just spent a highly entertaining half-hour reading the old threads.

Steve C. @ #162, that is magnificent.

HLN: Area retiree can't see Jovian-lunar conjunction at all because Pugetropolis is socked in by mysterious thick cold fog that seems to have been here forever. Retiree, who has always enjoyed seeing Jupiter, is currently disgruntled, lacking access to fog-free zone, but consoles self with chocolate, wondering if anomalous weather will ever break so we can all get back to griping about the rain.

Me @163 -- That's @143 & 144. I have NO idea how those other numbers got there... {bemused}

Steve C. #152: I Just stepped outside (in pajamas), and found it directly overhead.

#152: Thanks, that answers the "Dang! What planet is so close to the moon tonight?" question.

Has anyone else been enchanted by David Levine's video of his short story Dr. Talon's Letter to the Editor? I really liked it, but then I'm a bit of a comics geek.

A few years of very amateur stargazing* have taught me that it's always Jupiter. If there's another one, it's Saturn. But it's a pretty good bet that anything really bright is Jupiter.

*I can find Orion, Taurus, and the Pleiades from night ice-skating. Casseiopeia, too. I found Scorpius one summer on my own with no idea what it looked like-- Scorpius just looks like a constellation, and that's the constellation it looks like. I am shaky on the Big Dipper, have never found the Little Dipper, and have never found the North Star. My philosophy of stargazing is to wait until someone points and says, "What's that?" because otherwise, they won't be able to see it.

One of my cats unexpectedly and surprisingly coughed briefly and died today -- a mad dash to the vet confirmed as much, and pointed to a heart attack. She wasn't quite ten yet -- far too young to expect anything of the sort, especially when she was up and about as normal shortly before. She'll be much missed :(

@Xeger: That's awful. It is always hard to lose a pet, but one that is still young, and suddenly . . . oye.

Gods, xeger, I'm sorry for your loss. What a terrible thing to have happen.

Tom@169: I hadn't been familiar with that. Thanks for the link.

I'm so sorry for your sudden loss, xeger. I'll hug my kittehs an extra time tonight. We never know when something like that will happen

xeger, #171: My deepest condolences on your loss. What an awful shock that must have been.

Steve C.: I got a fairly decent photo of the moon and Jupiter, somewhat after closest conjunction. That was taken without a tripod, and at such a high zoom level it's really hard to hold still! Now I'm wondering what this camera could do with a tripod...

xeger, that's awful! I'm so sorry. Our cat went in much the same way, just over a year ago. She was totally fine, and then she very much wasn't, and then a scant hour later I was holding her for the last time at the vet's. It's bewildering. How are your other kitties faring?

Troll's Elegy

My gems of truth are treated here as dross.
You people are too quick to take offense.
You say I've wronged, but I have broke no laws.
It may be hard, but use some common sense.
And now I speak, and now my speech is done.
And now I'm back once more to say I'm gone.

My tale was told and yet it was not heard.
You laud free speech and yet you quash dissent.
You are not hurt, I only said a word.
To spark a small debate was all I meant.
I've said my piece, and yet no peace was won.
And now I'm back once more to say I'm gone.

I came to share, I did not want to fight.
I claim to value discourse over strife.
My lawyer has advised me that I'm right.
You people need to get a better life.
And now I troll, and now my trolling's done.
And now I'm back once more to say I'm gone.

xeger, I'm so sorry. What a shock.

Xeger, I'm very sorry for your loss.

xeger #171; That's awful. I'm sorry for your loss.

xeger @ 171: I'm so sorry for your loss.

Xeger @ 171... :-(

Oh, xeger, I'm so sorry.

xeger (171): I'm very sorry for your loss.

Xeger, that sucks.

jnh @158:

OH. MY. GHOD.

That is just drop dead gorgeous, and I'm even more impressed with him in Les Miz, now that I've heard him full voice.

I know how much work it is to get something not in your normal range to sound as good as it did in the film.

xeger, my condolences -- we had one go much the same way, many years ago.

xeger: I, too, have lost a cat in such a sudden and unexpected way; it's heartbreaking, and I'm sorry for your loss.

I tried asking on the last open thread, but I think it got buried so I'm giving it another go, if the publishing professionals could ballpark this for me.

Say you've got a small-but-traditional publisher whose main money-making venture is a series of pulpy genre novels. How long would it probably be between "author hands in manuscript" and "book hits shelves"?

Allan Beatty @179: your Troll's Elegy is splendid

Xeger: I'm sorry. (I pause to stroke the cat.)

HLN: Area Woman successfully completes first batch of pierogi, feels she is now worthy of her surname. In related news, several Area Refrigerator overflowing with cheese, potato and onion pierogi as well as surplus filling. Recipe evidently scaled toward large village holiday celebrations. Area Woman not sorry.

nerdycellist @193: I wish I were HL to this news. The FG loves pierogies, and so do I.

This is not a bad earworm to have.

Local man notes to self to attempt to be in the village when nerdycellist is having a village celebration.

Xeger: I am so sorry for you!

xeger @171: Yeah, I've had otherwise seemingly healthy guinea pigs in their prime just turn up dead. It's always a shock. At least there's minimal suffering involved...?

If there's ever an LA area Gathering of Light, I will provide the pierogi. Quite possibly from this batch. Making another batch of dough for the surplus filling this evening and then freezing for sad, pierogi-less times. What I'd really like to find is a recipe for some similar to what I had in Warsaw, but I've never made anything with buckwheat groats and my roommate is allergic to pork.

xeger @171: Many sympathies. Much the same thing happened to me three years back - she was just five years old. Five years or ten: it's too short a life for a cat, and it's a terrible shock. The only consolations is that there's nothing you could have done.

Nerdycellist, I thought you'd like to know that the URL linked to your name is missing an 'n'.

xeger, so sorry. Hug and sympathy.

nerdycellist, I can't really make any suggestions about the pork beyond the inadequate "turkey bacon", but you'll find buckwheat groats sold as "kasha", probably near the rice and barley but possibly also in the little "kosher" section; if you don't see a gold and black box with the brand name Wolff's, Bob's Red Mill also sells it.

Cooking directions are on the package, and they are very good with caramelized onions. I'm going to have to try cooking them without that and eating them with maple syrup instead, as Barryarans do.

Xeger: Oh, no. I am so sorry.

nerdycellist, Rikibeth: Kasha is a perfectly decent starch that doesn't actually need any meat. Besides the onions, it's traditionally prepared with bow-tie pasta. Also fried chicken fat, but that fell out of my family's habits a generation or two back. (My Mom was an early adopter for healthy food, but I don't remember Grandma doing the chicken-fat thing either.)

Amusingly, Googling indicates that my family and/or my hearing loss had (further) corrupted the names for the dish, as I remember it as "kasha and varnishkens, optional greavings", while Wikipedia and other sites have "kasha varnishkes" as the name of the dish (the pasta is "farfalle" in Yiddish), and the chicken-fat as "greaves". WP also traces the dish name back to kasha-filled dumplings, which leads back to the perogies.

Jacque #198: Like the saying goes, "live fast, die young...." :-~ My rabbit (some 15 years ago) died overnight, but I found his corpse stretched out in "comfy rest" posture. (It was a major shock at the time, especially as I'd had an unrealistic idea of rabbit lifespan.)

pericat @ 177 ...
xeger, that's awful! I'm so sorry. Our cat went in much the same way, just over a year ago. She was totally fine, and then she very much wasn't, and then a scant hour later I was holding her for the last time at the vet's. It's bewildering. How are your other kitties faring?

Bewildering is right -- all of us keep on looking around to see where she's gotten to, since it seems like she really should just be there.

Oddly enough, the cat she didn't get along with particularly well at all is the one that's spent the most time looking for her.

nerdycellist, Rikibeth, Dave Harmon: Kasha varnishkas is a perfectly delicious way to eat buckwheat, but if one likes kasha, one will appreciate buckwheat groats in general. The FG makes plain groats in much the same manner as quinoa, rice, or any other grain. Buckwheat pancakes are also delicious, with or without maple syrup.

I second the recommendation of Wolff's or Bob's Red Mill; I've had good luck finding Wolff's in the regular grocery stores that serve heavily Jewish neighborhoods, and Bob's line shows up in various healthy groceries.

... and thank you, everybody -- it's oddly comforting to know that other people have had the same sudden passing happen as well - I've dealt with long illness, which is it's own set of misery, but the bolt out of the blue is really disconcerting and distressing.

This continues to be one of my favourite photos of her, and was obviously a prelude to the full taking-over-the-world configuration (that's with her sister)

Apparently cats and photos of cats are words to be pounced upon by the gnomes...

Reality check request. Am I the only person who thinks that anyone who wants to be taken seriously in an adult-level discussion should be able to use the word "bitch" without resorting to cutesy-poo circumlocutions?

Dave Harmon: "Farfalle" is the standard Italian word for bow tie pasta, though I think it might actually translate as "butterflies". I'm pretty sure I learned that "varnishkes" was the Yiddish for that pasta.

And "kasha and varnishkes with optional greavings" -- well, the "greavings" seems like a variant of "gribenes" or "grivenes" to me (remembering that "b" and "v" are almost the same thing in Hebrew and Yiddish), and "grivenes" (gri-ven-us, the way my family says it) is/are basically chicken CRACKLINGS, the crispy bits of fried skin and possibly onions left after rendering and straining chicken fat, or "schmaltz". Grivenes are an addictive delicacy (you know the bacon craze? consider this a chickeny equivalent) and, of course, loaded with fat and cholesterol and not recommended by any nutritionist. However, they are amazing in kasha varnishkes, add joy to chopped liver, and are a crucial component of the fried mashed-potato-and-chicken-liver patties my grandmother served as a pre-Seder snack at Passover, which kept adults and children alike from becoming cranky with hunger before we got to the EATING part of the Seder.

My dad had a cardiologist friend who had a T-shirt that read "gribenes kills."

nerdycellist, it might be possible to use gribenes in place of bacon in those Warsaw pierogies. It wouldn't have the smoke flavor, but it would certainly have the umami, salt, and crunch! Of course, you have to be willing to render chicken fat to get it...

Now that I think of it, there's no reason you couldn't have duck or goose gribenes as well, and, dear heaven, potatoes or brussels sprouts cooked in either of those rendered fats are beyond amazing, so it might be worth roasting one of those birds and doing the rendering as a side project.

Lee @211
Context matters. I try really hard to not swear or call people names at work. Really, really try (but slip up too frequently for my liking, especially when talking with people with whom I am comfortable).

So in a workplace context, my first question would be whether the circumlocution is due to an attempt to adhere to that person's view of "workplace language rules"

When not trying for polite language, however, most people I know have no difficulty calling someone a bitch. It takes a really committed feminist to eschew that term because it isn't gender neutral. Although I often say it with admiration, since my college reading included the "the bitch manifesto". (short version is basically if you try to do anything as a woman, you will be called a bitch. embrace it because it is the bitches who get things done!)

Lea at 211

One additional thought: saying things like "rhymes with witch" is childish. When I avoid swearing or name calling it is to use more measured language. The "rhymes with witch" method would be annoying, but I don't know anyone who makes a habit of it. If that is the behavior you are facing, you have my sympathy.

Lee @211 - Can't speak to whether you're alone in your expectations, but I can say I'm not with you on them. I'm never comfortable with the word "bitch" as an insult, not because it isn't "cutsey-poo" enough, but precisely because it's a gendered insult. Using "bitch" to mean "an asshole/jerk who's a woman" strikes me a lot like using the n-word to mean "an asshole/jerk who's black."

(Which is to say nothing about the movement within feminism to reclaim the word, since that's a rather different context than what you're talking about.)

I'm also not convinced I'm obliged to take seriously as an adult someone who has resorted to name-calling, whether the name-calling is G-rated or PG-13.

Others' viewpoints will differ. That's mine. One more datapoint for your survey.

--

xeger - adding my condolences to the chorus. We just lost our own Uno yesterday, and we're currently going through what you described -- expecting to see him around every corner, wondering where he's hiding, thinking it's time to feed him -- but we at least had the warning of an early December diagnosis of squamous cell carcenoma. We had time to get used to the idea before things got bad enough to schedule that last vet house call. I can only imagine how much more disconcerting and traumatic things are for your family, given how sudden and unexpected was your loss. I'm so sorry.

Mea, #213: That's exactly what prompted my comment, which on second reading could have been more clear about that. I have no problem with people simply not using coarse language, but if you're going to use it in the first place, own your words and stop pretending that you aren't!

And that particular circumlocution has always sounded to me like something a Mean Girl says, which means that I read other people using it as finding Mean Girl behavior admirable, which is just another irritant.

On further thought, I have to agree with Mea. Saying something like "rhymes like witch" or "Bee word" takes all the things I object to about using gendered slurs and adds an extra irritating layer of coyness. Reminds me of people who say really rude/mean things online and then end with "No offense intended" or "LOL :)".

Lee #211 Am I the only person...?

Hell, no.

I have used "witch, and words that rhyme with it" to describe, in a work context, the ways that I suspect that I have been referred to by one set of colleagues. I chose that phrasing to softpedal the accusation a little bit, and make it easier for our mutual management to tackle the root problem rather than getting hung up in the precise terminology.

Cutesy-poo? Fine, if you say so. It served the contextual and strategic purpose more than a blunter phrasing would have.

Note, Abi, that you’re talking about an indirect repetition (you thought someone else said you were a…) rather than a direct usage (that gal is a…). Someone who wants to call a woman a bitch, but figleafs it with the “rhymes with” trick, is trying to cover up acting like a sexist asshole. You were just trying to soften a discussion of someone else possibly being a sexist asshole. Different thing.

Nicole #215: Just to complicate things, there's also a use of "n*gger" among blacks to mark off (and separate away) another black as at least "lazy, shiftless" and perhaps other unwanted traits. I've only heard that form perhaps twice in my life (I'm very white), but the usage as "I'm no n*gger, I <work>" was unmistakable. There might be a connection or reference in Conrad's The Nigger of the Narcissus, but I haven't read that properly, just glanced at a few pages while shelving. (And concluded that reading it properly would take serious attention!)

probably for a bad word.

I agree that it's a little cutesy to use euphemisms like "rhymes with witch" in direct adult conversation. I can see it, as abi said, when discussing indirectly someone else's comment in a work environment. Ditto for discussing things in the presence of small children. The other place it doesn't bother me is in written comments in a venue trying to maintain PG-level standards. The weekly online discussion run by advice columnist Carolyn Hax at washingtonpost.com has evolved the rhyming euphemism of "glass bowl" and it amuses me. But I would think it was silly if someone said it in conversation, absent the constraints mentioned earlier.

Nicole, my condolences for your loss!

Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little @215, my condolences on your loss. Expected or unexpected, it still hurts. A lot.

Nicole (215): I'm sorry for your loss.

Nicole #215: My condolences for you too. As a mostly-former Pagan to a current one -- in time, his spirit will settle into your hearts.

Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little @ 215 ...
We just lost our own Uno yesterday, and we're currently going through what you described -- expecting to see him around every corner, wondering where he's hiding, thinking it's time to feed him -- but we at least had the warning of an early December diagnosis of squamous cell carcenoma. We had time to get used to the idea before things got bad enough to schedule that last vet house call. I can only imagine how much more disconcerting and traumatic things are for your family, given how sudden and unexpected was your loss. I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry to hear that :( There's no good way to lose our friends, and they leave a hole that's vastly disproportionate to their size.

Sadness for the loss of small(er) companions, recent and past.

Nicole, I'm sorry for your loss.

On the whole "rhymes-with-'witch'" thing: If the original speaker happened to be somebody whom I was already inclined not to like, it would irritate me unspeakably. On the other hand, if the original speaker happened to be somebody with whom I was already on neutral-to-friendly terms, I would probably chalk it up to a peculiarity of their idiolect (and possibly to too much time spent in the company of either small children or censorious adults), shrug, and move on.

It's all in the context, most of the time.

"There is a name for you, ladies, but it isn't used in high society... outside of a kennel."
- Joan Crawford in 1939's 'The Women'

That being said, I don't like the word, and not just because it's an insult to Freya and Nahla, my two girl-dogs.

Another point of the compass -- as a witch I get really tired of people who use the "rhymes with" bit. I'm not sure why they think insulting someone's religion is more acceptable than comparing someone to a female dog.

Serge Broom #232: I've seen bumper stickers: "My best friend is a BITCH". Naturally, the background is a paw-print....

We had a scare with one of our cats yesterday (lethargic, mass in abdomen, not eating); took her to the vet, and the blood work was encouraging and she's acting much better today. We'll get the cytology report later, but we're a lot more optimistic than yesterday at this time. Mabel is an amazing cat, and we're hoping for much more time with her. (My current guess, on minimal information, is gallstone. We'll see what the vet says.)

xeger @209: "Me? No, I wasn't on the Internet. No, I don't know why the Google window is displaying a search for World Domination Strategies, why do you ask?"

Mea @213: When not trying for polite language, however, most people I know have no difficulty calling someone a bitch.

I can't think of circumstances under which I would be willing to call someone a bitch. (I guess that makes me a committed feminist?) Oddly, I'm far less reluctant to use the term "son of a bitch." It may also be an age/generation thing.

Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little @215: I'm also not convinced I'm obliged to take seriously as an adult someone who has resorted to name-calling +1

We just lost our own Uno yesterday

Oh no! I understood he was ill, but {:-(

Substitute "switch" for "witch". An inanimate object, should be safe enough. Or is there something I don't know about?

Dave Bell @ 237 ...
'switch' has sexual connotations.

In my head, "bitch", "bitchy", and "bitching" are all relatively gender-neutral terms -- they're a step up the scale from whiner/whiny/whining, and it doesn't feel odd to me at all to apply them to a guy. But that's an idiosyncratic usage.

238
'stitch'?

Lee @239, huh, that's interesting. Thinking about your comment, I realize that I find "bitch" as a verb gender-neutral and not particularly offensive, though I'd try to avoid using it in especially sensitive environments. I find "bitch" as a noun applied to humans to be female-derogatory and more offensive, and I tend to avoid using it at all. I'd place "bitchy" toward the female-derogatory side but less so than the noun.

And I suppose that's left out "bitching" as a synonym for cool, which I just find a little baffling.

The nuances of language are endless.

And oh, what happened then was rich.
The house began to pitch.
The kitchen took a slitch.

"Abercrombie"? Like rhyming slang?

Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little @215: Condolences on the loss of your Uno. As for expecting Uno to still be there, that can last quite a while. Three years on, I still very occasionally expect to see Sundae appear - the brain plays tricks.

Update on Mabel the cat: aggressive lymphoma. Chemo may be possible, but we can't get her in to see the cancer doctor until Monday (which is quick, actually).

We're going to have a hard time for the next while. Updates when I know. I may be concentrating on this rather than responding here.

dcb: I have veritable legions of ghost guinea pigs. Little flash of brown fur, scooting under the table, just out of my field of view, when I know damn well everyone's locked up for the night. I hardly even think about it anymore. Though I'm flattered if they liked my place well enough to come back for the occassional visit from The Great Beyond.

Tom: best wishes and good luck.

246
I had my cat walk through once, when she was alive and well and several miles away. Just wanted to check on me, I think.

Tom @245, I'm sorry to read that. Best wishes for Mabel.

HLN: Area woman is still looking for steady work, and in gaps between looking at job listings or doing crossword puzzles is placer mining the boxes of small change her household as accumulated over a couple of decades.

I'm leaving the pennies behind, and thus far have rolled $41 worth of nickels and dimes (we haven't accumulated many quarters, because those go into laundry machines), of which 2 rolls of nickels have already been deposited in my bank account. I'm going to need more of the paper rolls for dimes, and maybe should get some more nickel rolls as well.

Yes, pennies are money. The nearest supermarket that has a Coinstar machine is a total of about eight blocks on foot, plus a bus ride, in each direction. A pound of pennies weighs about a dollar. Round-trip bus fare is $4.50 (the bonus for putting money on a metrocard is less than the percentage Coinstar takes out).

Addendum to the previous (gnomes, do you like metal?):

Yes, I could roll pennies and take them to the bank, as with the nickels and dimes, instead of using Coinstar. I thought of that, and even got papers to roll them up, but they're still heavy, and the bank branch would be about as much of a walk as the Coinstar machine, albeit more likely to be on my way to somewhere else.

Vicki @250, ignore if hlepy, but can you keep a (largish) handful of pennies in your pocket and spend them whenever possible? It's a slow way to get rid of them (and clerks aren't necessarily ecstatic about taking 38 cents in pennies) but it does work.

Xeger and Nicole, sorry to hear about the loss of your companions. Especially in the case of the sudden one—I don't know what that's like; we've generally had at least a week or two to say goodbye (or five months last year in the case of our 19-year-old Karen, who didn't know that kidney patients are supposed to have nausea and poor appetite).

Vicki @250, Cassy @252: When I had to use coin-op laundry, I used pennies and the occasional nickel to make change come out in quarters. For example, if the amount due was $9.82, I gave the clerk $10.07* and got one quarter back. It garnered me some strange looks, but I figured that was their problem, not mine.

*No math required. The trick is counting backward to $.00, $.25, $.50, or $.75. In my example, start with $.82 and count back two pennies to get to $.80. Then five more pennies gets you to $.75.

Jacque, it's ghost cats here. And though we have lost many cats over the years, it's mainly the first two who come back to give us glimpses.

Tom Whitmore #245: Ouch! My sympathies and best wishes.

Vicki #250-251: I've been using rolled and bagged pennies as exercise weights. ;-)

Copper pennies have a bit of a premium these days -- those from before 1982, after which they started coating zinc blanks with copper. Not sure if it's worth separating them, though (their melt value is currently 2.4c).

Vicki: My bank allows you to bring in a bag/jar of change, and they just run it through their Coinstar-equivalent sorting machine, and give you bills back. No rolling needed, and no 10% off the top. But this, of course, assumes a bank branch within reasonable distance. This may be an uber-urban thing, but a lot of supermarkets around here have bank branches inside, a la Starbucks.

Cassy B. (252): A simpler (but very, very slow) thing to do with excess pennies is to make sure you always have at least four with you, so that you can always spend them and never have to take more in change.

GlendaP (254): Cashiers, especially young ones, tend to get quite boggled when I do that kind of thing. "How do you *do* that?!"

GlendaP @ 254 and Mary Aileen @ 259, those of us who were cashiers in the Dark Ages before computerized tills learned to count back change. I befuddle cashiers all the time.
"That'll be $5.82."
"Here's $6.07."
"Huh?"
"I'd like a quarter back, please...."
"Huh?"
*sigh* "Just key it into the register..."

Cassy

Many years ago I worked part-time at The Other Change of Hobbit, and there was no cash register, just an adding machine and a till. Aside from learning to operate a ten-key adding machine quite fast, I also got good at making change, to the point where I can do it from a round bill without requiring conscious thought, even decades later. So for the example of giving $6.07 on a $5.82 charge, I'll just figure $6.00 - $5.82 = $.18, and from there work out that I need to add on seven more cents.

David G @281 -- like the cow counter who was fast and accurate -- "I just count their feet and divide by four."

What I like to do with jars of coins is put them in Coinstar and trade them for Amazon gift certificates. I have accumulated a fairly hefty account balance over a few months. That doesn't solve the problem of a bus ride costing four dollars, though.

Cassy B. (260): It's even more fun when you do it across bills as well as coins.

"That'll be $16.82."
"Here's $22.07."
"Why...?"
"Just ring it up, and you'll see."
(The change is a five-dollar bill and a quarter.)
"How do you *do* that?"
"Practice."

259/260
I had a cashier once who wouldn't even do that. I would have gotten a quarter, if she'd actually put the money tendered in, but she couldn't get the idea.

I'm impressed by the people at the farmers' market, who never deign to use a calculator to add up your purchases and make change.

Tom Whitmore @ 245 ...
Update on Mabel the cat: aggressive lymphoma. Chemo may be possible, but we can't get her in to see the cancer doctor until Monday (which is quick, actually).

My empathies and best wishes for Mabel and you.

Tom at 245, sorry to hear about Mabel. Nicole: my sympathies.

re: innumerate cashiers

I've elicited actual jaw drops more than once.

This one didn't take nearly so long to write.

You dance round the icebox and suppose,
But the Plum sits in my stomach and knows.

(TTTO.)

"How do you DO that?"

"It's not hard. You could too, if anyone had ever bothered to teach you."

Which is for the most part true, barring someone with a learning disability. I prefer to put the onus on the system rather than the student.

Not a bad reply, though I've only ever gotten "How did you do that?" once.

Tom Whitmore @245: Sympathies for you and Mabel, and good luck. Do keep us updated when youhave the time and spoons.

Jacque @ 246. Oh, I don't -object- at all (and I do like your suggestion that she visits). Took about a year to stop expecting her to jump into the basket of damp laundry when I unloaded the washing machine, and lie there, purring madly and grabbing at socks as I tried to extract them to hang up (why she liked lying on damp laundry, I've no idea). And about the same length of time for my husband to stop expecting her to be sitting behind the curtains in his study.

Tom Whitmore: my sympathies.

Re: circumlocutions
As a child, I had heard the substitution "they are a bit much", (say the 'mu' sound softly) but I've never met anyone I've disliked enough to so deliberately and carefully namecall.

Tom: Best wishes for Mabel.

Tom, my best wishes for you and Mabel.

Jacque, it's ghost cats here too. When I had a canary, he would start rustling around his covered cage when Robin the Balinese would pop in for a visit from the astral. You see, none of the cats was allowed in the room with the bird...

The only dog I've ever had come back for visits was my first Chihuahua, Pedro. He announced his presence with the sound of claws clicking on linoleum. Even in totally carpeted dwellings. He was a good dog, I miss him.

(Who the hell am I kidding, I miss ALL of mine who have gone before me.)

Sympathies to xeger and Nicole - the more so as we lost our Newton this fall - and best wishes and hopes for Mabel and her Tom.

I've really got to get on it and schedule our cats for their checkups; I don't want to end up missing something like that until it's too late (again.)

HLN: Two more rats removed from traps in past week, this time well prior to deliquescence. Two sprung traps minus rat testify to rat cleverness or caution. Point of entry possibly located, further investigation merited.

I once encountered a (damn-well-better-have-been-new) barista who labored under the impression that if I gave him $2.03 for a $1.98 tab, he should give me back five pennies. Not entirely clear on the concept of five pennies = one nickel. I gently explained, but I have no idea if the general concept stuck.

Tom Whitmore @245: My sympathies to you and Mabel.

Must be a bad month for cats: I lost my much-beloved eighteen-year-old Ferocious Monster (Morgan, but google for "ferocious monster") a week and a half ago, while I was out of town.

He'd been slowing down (eighteen, after all), but got much worse shortly after I left. A day at the emergency weekend vet, and Nick took him a last meal of gingersnaps.

Realizing that I don't have to keep the office/studio door closed to keep the cat out of the yarn? Ouch.

I'm sorry for your loss, Phiala.

Although my 20-yr old Cinder had been slowing down, and I'd been prepared for her eventual passing, I do find that her death still affects me: I keep forgetting to take my medicine, as I don't remind myself while making up her breakfast-with-medicine. I have to retrain myself, and it's taking longer than I thought. On the other hand, taking care of the cats-and-dogs now requires only 15-20 minutes, and not up to an hour as it did previously.

The other night I felt Kedgie jump onto the couch, only she's been gone nearly two years.

Phiala @281: I'm sorry to hear of your loss.

Seems to be an age-range thing, too. I know an awful lot of 30-give-or-take folks who are losing elderly cats right around now. Not a life passage I'd heard documented formally, but it certainly seems to be a Thing.

Ginger: The weirdest one of those I've experienced was, the night after my wee Tigger died, I woke up repeatedly to the sensation of warm fur sliding across my cheek.

Jacque @284: I realized some time ago that our beagles (who are just about of an age, though they both had very different, but very stressful, puppyhoods) would be hitting decreptitude and probably dying right about when Beka's 10-13, which does seem a fairly typical age to lose one's first pet ... unless you lose one earlier, of course, due to your parents owning a mature adult pet for some time before the child was acquired/born.

On the plus side, that means she'll have Pet Continuity (barring misfortune) throughout her youngest years ... but we might consider picking out a third pet when she's 7 or 8 that will both give her something to take responsibility for the care of (if, of course, she has a suitable personality/responsibility bump by then) and will bridge the awkward 'all our dogs are dying' phase. :-/

We only have two dogs because we don't like to be outnumbered in situations where Sudden Control Must Be Taken; once she's old enough to be a useful pair of hands for that, perhaps we might get a cat or something.

HLN weather report: Central Virginia man woke up this morning to perhaps 3 inches of snow, most of which has melted by now. Dog ecstatic, but was limping after 15 minutes of romping through snow. (She seems to have recovered by evening.)

286
In my case, it was around 14, due to said pet (cat) only being three months older than me. (Why, yes, I have always known where I stood with cats.)

My dog is still limber and active and bright at 11 1/2, but she does seem to be getting a bit sore after our long morning walks.

I'm going to have to think hard about Next Dog timing. I think I could handle Kira and a younger understudy. Not sure what Kira would think about it, having had eight years of exclusive Me access. Having a second dog on hand when the hard day for Kira's final ride arrives would make things easier for me.

HLN: Area woman has completed her first glove. Area woman realizes she needs to learn to use a thimble. Area woman is inordinately proud of poorly fitted, marked up object.

Short entry, with link to blog.

I offer cauliflower korma and rice pudding.

[Please check the URL you have in your header. It has "http://Http://" in it twice, like that, which will always get it gnomed. -- Flauor M. Ronis, Duty Gnome]

@290, CZEdwards: AWESOME!!! Very cool glove. :)

Also, your poor pricked fingers...

HLN: After two days of drifting dusty does-not-accumulate snow teasing local children, ACTUAL SNOW has now fallen for the first time this winter in Chicago.

Probably perfect for sledding, if I could (a) interest my kid in getting dressed and out, and (b) figure out how to get us from our house to the nearest (not very near) sleddable hill.

Oh, well, she has yoga at 1 anyway; maybe I should let her lounge around until then.

Oh, and because I have not mentioned this WIN here yet: tonight, when we go to Beka's Gunga's house for dinner, BEKA WILL NOT BE RETURNING.

Sleepover! With her fictive cousins! Allllll night! And most of tomorrow! So I can do a Thing tomorrow starting at noon. Which gives me a morning to (a) sleep late and (b) maybe take John to the gym with me so we can be social and active together!!

But either way, SLEEEEEEEEEP!

*mariachi-dances to the Rescue Pack song from ep of Go-Diego-Go kid is currently watching*

I bet I'm not the first to note Fox TV's Glee ripping off our beloved Jonathan Coulton, but I haven't seen any other reference to it here.

He says that initial impression is that he doesn't have a copyright case (I didn't know that arrangements including new original words aren't copyrightable—changes a lot about music if true), but naturally he's pissed off, and this is not proper at all, legal or not.

I took a box of books to Powell's Books to sell back last weekend, and to my surprise, they bought the old Heinlein paperbacks. These were somewhat more recent ones — reprints — that were physically in good shape. I had tossed some aged ones directly into the box for Goodwill, assuming they wouldn't buy those. I just took the 4 old, faded, yellowed, slightly tattered ones in, and they bought 3 out of 4, for a total credit of $3.50. They only rejected the 4th because the binding had split. I am astonished.

Let me also say that US copyright law is a ass, a idiot.

Jim's 'Vegetarian Haggis' diffraction: I've got no objection to meat-free haggis (if there are other sources of fat and umami), but pepper-free haggis?

The recipe has no black pepper, and 1 pinch of cayenne in ten servings. A BBC recipe that makes half the amount has 1 tsp black pepper.

A post's a post, for a' that.

Powell's buys what sells, no matter the age.

When I did my first big shelf-sweeping a couple of years back, I brought in some early-70s (I'm guessing) vintage Heinleins with wonderful covers by an artist whose name is escaping me. (Not the realistic Sweet covers.) They were all accepted, no questions.

Last week I brought in some several year old hardcovers by big-name authors, and my Harry Potter hardcovers.

To my great surprise, because I generally see lots of them at Goodwill and figured they were in vast oversupply, three of the Potters were bought.

The ____ hardcovers didn't sell a one. ("He hasn't written anything lately or won any awards so his stuff isn't going to sell well. You could try the downtown store.")

OTOH, they bought a Book Club edition of The Postman. Book club editions are generally shunned.

Stefan Jones @ 299: Wow, you sold a book club edition! Nice.

Thanks to all for the kind thoughts for our now Uno-less household.

Jacque--it was sudden, as these things go; over the weekend, the tumor he was living with invited some friends which immediately grew to robin's-egg size over some 48 hours. He went from "able and eager to eat liquified food, once you get him started" to "unable to eat despite multiple desperate attempts on his part" from one meal to the next. We left a message with Alpine Sunday night, and Monday morning we scheduled the final home visit. I am grateful that they do home visits for this. The vets there have been uniformly compassionate and supportive.

My condolences to Clifton and Phiala and Ginger and any others who have suffered recent losses. It really does seem like a bad few months for petdom, doesn't it? Sadness.

Phiala: Realizing that I don't have to keep the office/studio door closed to keep the cat out of the yarn? Ouch.

Yeah. For us, it's the toilet paper back on the roll rather than safe in the cabinet under the sink. And that I don't need to get up and feed anyone.

We also had household things that were part of the feed-the-cats ritual, mostly to do with watering plants (pouring off the cats' water bowl before refilling) and putting away any dry dishes still in the drying rack (before putting in wet, freshly washed cat food bowls).

I just caught myself saying, "Uno, mama's home" when I came in the door. Extra irony: I'd been out running errands, one of which was taking the last of the still-useable pet supplies to donate to the Humane Society Adoption Center. And as I went about my morning I was sure that Uno was still in the bed wondering why I'd got up and stopped cuddling him.

Tom, my best to you and Mabel. For us, diagnosis day was a worse heartbreak than the actual day of death--rough times ahead, like you say, and also knowing that this isn't going to get better. My best wishes for you all during Mabel's remaining days.

Thomas #298 -- one of the comments on the recipe says as much, that it's a decent haggis if you add a lot of pepper.

Allan Beatty @179, this is quite good. I would just have the whole thing in words of one beat, as Tich wrote his, but that's just a fix here and a fix there. A great inspiration. Job well done.

Xeger, Nicole, Tom, Phiala, I understand. The cat becomes an integral part of our lives — I feel like the cat is the soul of the house — and when that's gone, it aches for a long time. I'm sorry for your loss, and, selfishly, I hope mine is still a long, long way away.

The intertubes say that there's a good chance on feline lymphoma, with chemo - and that cats do very well on chemo. But we won't have a real report until Monday afternoon at the earliest, since she sees the oncologist Monday for an ultrasound.

Thanks, Kip. Of course I started out with words of one beat but did not have the skill to keep it up. Nor an impending execution to concentrate the mind. But one small improvement: the penultimate line should be "And now I flounce, and now my flounce is done." That's the genre we're dealing with after all.

Following on from Jim's mention of Isabella the Catholic as being the real Game of Thrones, the BBC are jumping on the bandwagon with The White Queen.... (http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2012/white-queen.html)

AKICML obscure quotations edition:

Mme Barebones is trying to track down the source of a quotation (quoted in French, but possibly translated from another language). The Google has failed us, but it seemed possible that someone here might be able to help us.

'Les fautes des femmes sont l'ouvrage des hommes, comme les vices des peuples sont le crime de leurs tyrans" (The faults of women are the work of men, just as the vices of a people are the crime of their tyrant)

For those who are interested, "The Seven-Percent Solution" was released last weekend in BluRay. To say it's gorgeous is an understatement.

nerdycellist, all the way back at 199: If it's bacon-flavored garnishes you're after, I can personally attest that sliced shiitake mushrooms, fried in olive oil until browned and crisp, taste amazingly bacon-like.

I don't know for sure that they would continue to taste bacon-like if incorporated into the pierogi filling. They might well. But as a garnish, they definitely would.

praisegod barebones: The English version sounds like Abigail Adams, but it appears not to be.

Hmm. Just discussing Firefly again in another venue, and I repeated what I remembered, which is that it was on opposite FarScape, and that's why it had no audience.

I just looked it up. In fact there is no overlap in first-US-broadcast dates. In fact, it seems that Firefly was broadcast when FarScape was on hiatus, and vice versa. FarScape in July and August of 2002, then Firefly in September-December, then FarScape in January-March 2003, then Firefly in June and July. No overlap even in MONTHS.

It's really embarrassing. Of course, Fox's handling of Firefly was still reprehensibly stupid, but they didn't make that particular mistake that I've been accusing them of all this time.

Praisegod Barebones:

That's the Sophie de Grouchy quote? I'm thinking either Thomas Paine's An Occasional Letter On The Female Sex from 1775 or possibly Benjamin Franklin (there's something similar in the Silence Dogood letters, and Franklin returned to the theme several times.)

Praisegod @ 308

I tried my google-fu on selected fragments of the French version of your quote but what turned up was someone answering what I assume is your same query over on a different forum. So I assume the answer given in comments here will make it back to you on its own.

To all Making Light's yarn crafters,
from my wife, who is one with you:

A crocheted Knight's Helm, from the website Make: Craft.

Enjoy!

Hyperlocal News... Couple celebrates 27th wedding anniversary not by watching "Forbidden Planet", but with woman working on novel while man works on taxes.

Xopher @312, a friend of mine who had not at the time watched any of the shows used to routinely get Futurama, Farscape, and Firefly mixed up. Good thing Fringe wasn’t around at the time.

Coulton smites back at Glee.

Reporting on Jonathan Coulton's response to the Glee mess. Probably an overly long link to Coulton's site. You can go to the composer's name dot com and find it; it's near the top.

Re: always knowing the way out -- a fire in a Nightclub in Brazil kills 245. Apparently the band members lit flare, in a club filled with 1-2000 people.

The link, since it didn't work from the iPad: http://www.komonews.com/news/national/245-die-in-panicky-stampede-in-Brazil-club-fire-188585821.html

Really, in case of a fire, if you aren't out in the first ninety seconds there's a good chance you aren't getting out.

Taking ten seconds to think and reach a decision only gives you eighty seconds. So, do your thinking in advance. Know where the exits are. Imagine yourself walking through them. And if a fire alarm goes off, don't hesitate. Leave your stuff. Get moving.

It looks like the Brazil case involved indoor fireworks again. I might even think that if someone starts deploying indoor fireworks its time to start edging toward the exits even before the fire alarm goes off.

Jim, those numbers are the kind of thing that makes me try never to be in the middle of a large crowd of people anywhere, indoors or out.

Jim @#322

If I parsed it right, some of the TV coverage was cellphone video from inside the burning club. And it shows lots of people taking pictures of a fire that's pretty clearly structural. That is, the building is burning not just contents.

Once it's a structural fire, evacuation is the only recommended action. When it is a contents fire, you can think of using the fire extinguisher -if any.

But I'm going to try to remember about indoor fireworks!

322
Apparently one of the other problems was that there was an exit blocked.

Y'know, every time one of these discussions comes up about evacuation disasters, I think about our building codes and the phrase "Many Bothans died to bring us this information."

That and the idea that I don't want to go to a nightclub ever.

I guess on the Open Thread topic, I should mention that I'm very briefly in a show that opens this weekend (Into the Woods, in Sacramento.) So come see if you're local, it's a good show. Don't come to see me, though, my role is listed as "cameo" and that's fairly accurate.

It was raining in my corner of Los Angeles in mid-afternoon (I was out on an errand). The wind just started blowing. Sounds like it's already at least 20mph. (Going to be cold tonight, even without windchill.)

So, I have my grandpa's ashes. Not wanting to inflict the possession of these on to my children in later years, I'm thinking to dispose of them in the Whipple Mountains, which he mapped as a young geologist.

Anybody know anything about the Whipple Wash Trail?

HLN: Area cat survived unlawful starvation, imprisonment and rendition to hostile territory and is currently being subjected to medical experimentation. Area cat pleads for the intervention of the Feline Red Cross and Mousie, invokes Geneva Convention against thumb monkey servants.

First stem cell treatment today. Angel had to fast last night, which meant her thumb monkeys were told approximately every twenty minutes that This Is Not Acceptable. She complained every minute of the hour long drive, but did not get carsick. Now, I'm waiting, and hoping that we're not in the placebo group.

HLN: local couple woke to find inner porch door open, living-room curtains partly drawn, and windowsill ornaments neatly placed in flower-bed. Stolen was a Packard Bell netbook and dongle, but not the power supply connection, and keys including car keys but not the car. The sat-nav was taken from the car, which was left unlocked, and which now has a flat battery. Police have been and taken details.
Local couple are feeling very pissed off.

HLN: Youngest Siamese (Tao) is sick, we couldn't afford the whole hospital stay thing, so he's home with medication for a presumed liver infection.

If the medication works, we should see improvement in 2-3 days. If no improvement, we will have to have him put down.

Candles lit and prayers to the household goddesses sped...

Lori Coulson @ 331 ...
Good thoughts heading your way as well!

Guardian news ticker and other sources say that Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands is to abdicate effective April 30; son Crown Prince Willem Alexander to take over.

I'm writing this from an undisclosed location, doing undisclosed things. I will disclose all when I can. In the meantime I have a question for Teresa and Patrick in their Tor hat. If this is the wrong venue, feel free to let me know. But a friend has a question about e-books on Amazon originally published by Tor. In particular The Book Of Swords by Fred Saberhagen and some of the Callahans books by Spider Robinson. Because they don't use the original artwork, he was concerned that a fly-by-nighter was pirating them. Is he right? He wants to buy them, but not if it costs the authors and Tor a sale.

B. Durbin at 326, Into the Woods is one of my absolutely favorite musical events. (Though it's hard for me to imagine any production that doesn't have Bernadette Peters in it.) Have fun!

Obama's ongoing war on whistleblowers is having its desired effect: Fewer and fewer people are willing to leak any information about evil or illegal actions of the government. A lot of domestic spying infrastructure is apparently in use in these investigations. There is some reason to think the investigations are focused as much on the journalists as the potential leakers.

This is what's coming out. What isn't coming out in public? How offen is press coverage being shaped by this kind of thing? How often is a nonclassified but unfriendly story getting this kind of investigation? How often does someone in the administration use these techniques to close the more normal kinds of leaks? Or to more effectively close off access to information for journalists who are too unfriendly to the wrong people? How would we know?

One thing I am very sure of: If you can't speak out when it's your side doing it, or if you can find an excuse when it's your side, then you don't really oppose it.

Wyman Cooke, 334: I think both of those instances -- Fred Saberhagen and Spider Robinson -- are cases where the authors (or in Fred's case, his widow Joan) are self-publishing their own e-editions. Either because they got the books reverted after they went OP, or because we never owned the e-rights in the first place (because we signed them up years before e-books were a thing).

I agree with albatross that the Obama administration has been, if anything, even worse than its predecessors when it comes to clamping down on whistleblowers. It's not a good thing. Liberals shouldn't make excuses for it. Most of the liberals I know aren't making excuses; they're appalled...but they still want (for instance) Obamacare to survive and work. Indeed, judging from organs like the Nation, I think it's pretty much the mainstream liberal American position at the moment -- unhappiness with Obama's security hawkishness (drones, whistleblowers, etc), combined with tentative hope for the success of this administration's more liberal initiatives. (Keeping in mind that self-identified "liberals" probably make up less than half of Obama's nationwide support.)

I'm a little iffy, I have to say, on formulations like "If you can't speak out when it's your side doing it, or if you can find an excuse when it's your side, then you don't really oppose it." There's a literal sense in which albatross is correct -- if you aren't actively working and speaking against $BADTHING, you're not actively working and speaking against $BADTHING. But this kind of chivvying tone gets people's backs up, because what it seems to be implicitly saying, in word and tone, is "If you don't give exactly the same priority to my issue that I give to it, you're morally worthless." As a comparison, I'm not actively working and speaking against Indian aggression in Kashmir, but I'm pretty sure it's a $BADTHING. I would be distinctly unhappy if someone were to announce that I was "not really opposed" to Indian aggression in Kashmir.

I myself wind up sometimes saying things that sound like that statement of albatross's. To my regret. I think many of us, me and albatross included, need to work on forms of political rhetoric and address that build potential allies up, rather than tearing them down. How terrific that you're enthusiastic about recycling and a saner energy policy! As it happens, there are some ways these other issues I'm talking about relate to that. Let's reinforce one another's political projects! (Yes, these sentences sound stilted. As I say, we need to make better sentences along these lines.)

As it is in so many things, the Puritanical streak in American progressive politics -- politics as a way of establishing one's personal virtue, rather than actually getting anything done -- is deeply self-wounding.

Warning: Possible triggers for cat lovers.

First report on Mabel -- lymphoma is a very nasty form of cancer, and there's basically no cure. Chemo, however, will prolong her life with good quality. Without the chemo -- less than a month, and not at all pleasant. With the chemo -- polymodal distribution with some that don't respond at all well, some that manage six months of good life, and some that manage 12 or more. We're going for a multi-drug approach, with vinblastine this week and cyclophosphamide next week (and others later).

So -- not the best prognosis, but far from the worst. We're committed to her quality of life around this, and watching that carefully. More later, as we know more.

Update: First round of stem-cells/placebo appears to have gone entirely well. We're home, and have learned that Angel likes Mendelssohn whilst riding in the car. (About which, I am not terribly enthusiastic, being not a fan of the Romantics, but willing to accept if it means she's a better passenger.)

Angel sends her best wishes to Tao for a speedy recovery and offers tuna broth, a catnip bouquet and a heating pad. (So do her thumb monkeys, and their best wishes to Tao's humans.)

Patrick @ 337
That's kind of what I thought. Thanks. I'll pass the word along.

Patrick @ 338... Good post. I'd say, let's each have our own personal virtue, with emphasis on 'personal'.

As it is in so many things, the Puritanical streak in American progressive politics -- politics as a way of establishing one's personal virtue, rather than actually getting anything done -- is deeply self-wounding.

I just wanted to see this one more time. So very this.

CZEdwards @329: Best of luck for Angel.

Lori Coulson @331: Best of luck for Tao.

Tom Whitmore @339: May the chemo give Mabel good remission and few side effects.

tykewriter @330: Sympathies. Here's hoping the thieves will do something stupid and get caught.

CZEdwards #329, Lori Coulson #331, Tom Whitmore #339: Damn, three folks at once getting hit? As someone who's been there, I wish all of you and your furry masters strength, luck, and the best possible outcomes.

albatross #336: And ComputerWorld chimes in with FBI digital hunt for Stuxnet leakers treats talking to journalists like a crime.

story re: whistleblowing.

Also, re: guns:

Via, Tom Tomorrow, this was at my local supermarket. Happily, I was nowhere in the vicinity at the time.

Two links.

Good news: Tao is eating and drinking on his own!

It's beginning to look like we may be dealing with just an infection. (Knocks on wood) For which, all deities be praised.

Tao sends his best wishes to Angel and Mabel, and to their humans. My thanks to everyone for the good wishes, thoughts and prayers. I'll keep the candles lit.

At the moment, Tay's sleeping in my bed. Seven years old is much too soon to lose him.

Dave Harmon @ #348, I'm sure the law doesn't recognize it as such, but by me walking into a crowded place with a loaded assault rifle constitutes a threat.

OTOH, I've seen bumper stickers and t-shirts that struck me as threats, so what the hell do I know?

Lila, I used to see a bumper sticker on the way to work that said "Don't make me call the flying monkeys!" That's what I'd call a threat.

Lori - I came close to losing Gypsy at 13 with a liver problem. It took a couple of days of intensive nursing, but he pulled through and lived past his 19th birthday. Here's hoping Tao has a good outcome and many good years to come.

And the best wishes for all our furry overlords.

Looking at the story from The New Yorker, on the Dreamliner's problems...

Why would Boeing want to give up the advantage is has over Airbus Industries, that multi-national bunch of collaborators it is competing with?

I suppose a part of it is that the European aviation industry has been doing this sort of joint project for a long time. Planes such as Concorde and the Panavia Tornado have been around for decades, and the many companies involved know more about organising things.

And aviation has always used specialised suppliers. It's not been unusual for an aircraft company to buy batteries from a specialised battery manufacturer.

Is it just the bean counters? I could see how the setup could easily have cost more, run well, but spread the financial risk. That's what the European projects have done. Some of them have turned out to be horribly over-budget, but never quite bad enough for people to agree to pull the plug.

Lori Coulson @350: Thanks for the update. that does sound like a good response to treatment - long may it last!

Re. (David Harman @348) the idiot with the assault rifle, I'm reminded of the saying that the right to free speech doesn't include the right to (falsely) shout "Fire" in the middle of a crowded theatre...

C. Wingate, I've never seen anyone killed by a flying monkey.

I was more thinking "Keep honking, I'm reloading".

Nicole, Phiala, Ginger: You all have my condolences. For months after my Tiggar passed, I cried every time I got out of the shower and he wasn't waiting on the bed to scold me for getting all wet...

Tom, CZ: Best wishes for Mabel and Angel! CZ, I'm especially interested to hear how Angel fares, especially if she's not in the placebo group.

Xopher #312: I always thought that Firefly suffered the twin blows of the Friday Night Death Slot and being aired out of order--I know I didn't really get into it until the DVD came out, and I could watch them in proper order.

Lori #350: Good to hear that Tao is doing better!

Lila #356: I've seen the occasional "liberal hunting permit" around here, which disturbs me greatly.

Just in case anyone wishes for a little light relief: The Piano Guys: Mission Impossible

Jennifer Baughman @ 357: Angel will get stem-cells at the end of the study period if she is in the placebo group now. I just hope she's not, because 8 weeks of spending every other Monday as Madame's driver and getting up at OMG it's early after a night of "Where's my food?" Is much more appealing than 16 weeks of same.

Today, she is sleepy, but no more so than she has always been.

I'll post her lab results and what information I have on my blog this evening.

Mabel's doing quite well after her first round of chemo (but they say the side effects are more likely to show up on day 2 than day 1). Thanks to all of you for the kind wishes. We're spoiling her even more than she was spoiled before.

Lila, #351: In some places, that would be considered "brandishing a weapon" and would be illegal -- although probably just a misdemeanor. Where David lives is apparently not one of those places.

and @356, the one I remember read, "I Accelerate for Liberals". Ten years ago, I considered it a tasteless attempt at political intimidation. These days, I would call it a credible threat; fortunately, "liberals" aren't as visually identifiable as, say, blacks or women.

Dave B., #358: They put a "blooper reel" on the end of it!

Department of Living In the Future: Take a look at this. That's one guy with an amazing range, being an entire men's chorus via multitracking, on "Misty Mountains Cold".

A moving tribute to Dr. Ronald E. McNair, who died in the Challenger explosion.

This is the America I want to live in.

Dave Bell @ #358: that's wonderful! (And helps console me for missing Igudesman and Joo, whose performance here tonight has been canceled--Aleksey Igudesman fell and injured both elbows).

Lee @362, thanks for that link, and I second your motion that we should all live in that America.

That America is part of the America we live in. There are other parts that are less pleasant, and even a few that are more pleasant.

We are large. We contain multitudes. And we definitely contradict ourselves.

Yesterday while out with a friend, I saw a couple of interesting pictorial bumper stickers (on different cars):

One I understood just fine: A "fish"... extended into a ray-gun, containing the word "Sci-Fi". Yep, fandom can be a religion. ;-)

The other, I'm wondering if the Multitude of Lights can identify its meaning/context: The top part looked like a cross, the bottom ended in an anchor (as in boats), in between on the staff was a heart. Anyone know what this signifies?

Dave Harmon @ # 366, my guess, based on a quick Google, would be faith, hope and charity, but I don't know whose symbolism (since in the traditions I'm familiar with, both the cross and the anchor symbolize faith).

TNH, re the Finnish outdoor gear Particle--it's a Commando Snuggie!

Dave Harmon @366:

Cross = Faith
Anchor = Hope
Heart = Caritas (Charity/Love)

"And now these three abideth, faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

IIRC, Corinthians 1:13

Thanks for the Dreamliner sidelight, PNH. I was already pretty cranky that they rolled out a new plane by publicizing how spacious the dome-like ceiling was, and how big the windows were while ignoring the fact that in order to cram more people onto it so they could make more money, they reduced the width of the seats in economy to 16.3". And these are meant to be for long-haul flights.

As a point of reference, while fat, I do not need the dreaded seat-belt extender of shame. I am, in any city other than the one I currently live in (LA) about average size. The smallest seat I feel comfortable in for more than 3 hours is 17.5" wide. The 18.1" on a 777 feel downright luxurious to me. But 16.3"? How many men have shoulder-spans that exceed that? How many women have hips that will be bruised by the armrests on these planes? Lot was the first European airline to receive these "Dreamliners" and they had intended to use them on their Chicago to Warsaw routes starting in February. I can guarantee you that should they be using them in October when I'm planning a trip back, I will fly Lufthansa, or even (barf) United, who use a 777 for the main leg of that journey. Forget the engine exploding - I'd like to get to my vacation without any serious soft-tissue damage.

Dave Bell #354- on the Dreamliner, whilst the management issues sound plausible enough to me, I was really wondering why they were using lithium batteries given their propensity to go on fire if you get things wrong?
Or to switch it around, why they were using lithium batteries and apparently didn't build enough precautions and such into the system so they didn't go on fire.

There's some scary photos on the internet of what happens to your torch and the room it's in if you insert batteries wrong or use broken batteries with working ones. Think like a small pipe bomb. I have lithium batteries and after reading up on them am more careful with them than I would be with normal ones.

Lila #367, Lila #367: Thanks! The fact that both of you separately got the same interpretation, suggests that yours is probably correct.

It occurred to me after posting (while working on dinner) that it could simply be a rebus to the effect of "Jesus' love is my anchor", but that kinda points up the hazards of a non-Christian interpreting Christian symbolism. ;-)

nerdycellist #370 Note there are B777's that are 9 seats across, and those that are 10...
Guess which one we chose when going Auckland - Singapore (then on to Paris in A380)?

Dave Harmon: I'm pagan, but growing up I was exposed to several flavors of Christianity (Episcopalian, Brethren, Baptist and Methodist) and picked up a lot by osmosis.

In high school I re-read the Bible in order to be able to debate with the Jesus freaks. I found that my memory of the text was quite good at that time. These days...not so much.

I heard recently that the RAF have four fighter aircraft based in the Falklands, one as an on-site spare. Almost inevitably (it's tradition/history), the three active aircraft are named Faith, Hope, and Charity. The spare has been named "Desperation".

Since I've done a bit of whining here recently, I thought I'd share the happy news that as of Feb. 12 I will once again be employed.

**whew**

#376 Lila, Congratulations!

376
Yippee!

#338 ::: Patrick Nielsen Hayden

I think you're on to something there, but there's something in the back of my mind about group effects. It's not just individual journeys of soul improvement-- it's using getting the politics right as part of a status system.

Lori Coulson #369, et al

1 Corinthians 13:13 is fairly well-known partly because that verse itself is widely quoted, but also because the whole chapter 1 Corinthians 13 is extremely popular at Christian weddings. Unfortunately it's often read by someone who doesn't understand parallel structure (this ends up even worse if they're reading the King James Version, which was not at its best on Paul's epistles, IMO).

The text is just full of quotations -- for example, verse 12, immediately before, is the source for "through a glass darkly".

Lila @368 (and TNH's particle): Those particular bits of outdoor gear definitely seem to be strange Norwegian special ops gear (and actually quite useful, I've got one just like that myself, except Swedish). But the shop itself is definitely Finnish and often rather sarcastic in the phrasing of the product descriptions. As experimental literature it works much better in the original Finnish, though. Many hours of work have been lost browsing there. It is a real shop, though, and the army surplus they sell is real army surplus. As a result, there is a definite subculture locally of dressing in bits of officer wear of collapsed East European regimes...

As far as survival gear goes, one of the TV Survivalists who is interesting is Ray Mears. His programs are as much about local traditions as about the high tech elements. I've seen one where he followed the route taken by Rogers Rangers.

Something like that multi-purpose tarp would fit in very well with his thinking, I reckon.

#376 Lila: Congrats!

HLN update: Victim Support have sent us some window alarms. I removed a vital fuse from the car. Local couple will sleep better tonight.

Well, what do you know? Jim Nabor, aka Gomer Pyle has come out.

The multi-scandinavian, multi-use tarps in TNH's particle doesn't look odd at all--very useful bit of kit, and not too different from u.s. poncho wear.

But they did leave me with two questions:

1) how in heavens name are they asking so much money for what in the end is a bit of reflectorized plastic sheeting? I realize that it's nicer than a single-layer space blanket; it's more like the 4-layer laminate sold as the space "all weather" blanket. But that costs $15.00 tops, $10.00 if you shop around. How does adding a zipper turn it into an item that costs 150 euros??? (or, with a bit of thinsulate, 300 euros!!!)

2) what series of increasingly daft mouse-clicks led Teresa to this destination? I'd love to hear that story told. You should probably know, Teresa, that Fjellkamu is not the optimal pattern for blending into your part of Brooklyn.

"Fjellkamu" is the name of my next band.

Maybe Carol Kimball should come up with a pattern for these.

@387
Right, as opposed to a picture of Sisyphus plotzing when the rock rolls backwards over him, which would get the hashtag #failcamus.

Il faut imaginer Sisyphe furieux.

Oldster @#388

If the rock rolled over him, he'd be Flatyphus, surely?

Hold on, there's a man at the door with a bill....

...my mistake: it was a duck with a hat on.

#387 ::: Lila

They do look a lot like my homeless coat, should you keep the foot-bag to the back so you wouldn't trip over it.

Their cost for fewer features is unbelievable. Golly, the buckets of money could I have made if I'd learned a Scandinavian language...

As Lila so nicely brought it up, the HC is still going strong - 75+ downloads of the pattern this month, over a year out.

Does anyone here live near the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (Leiden, in the Netherlands)? I'm trying to buy an exhibit catalogue, but they won't sell me a copy- I have to pick it up from their giftshop. It's a long trip from western Canada to buy a book.

WRT the Dreamliner:

“We spent a lot more money in trying to recover than we ever would have spent if we’d tried to keep the key technologies closer to home.” And the missed deadlines created other issues. Determined to get the Dreamliners to customers quickly, Boeing built many of them while still waiting for the F.A.A. to certify the plane to fly; then it had to go back and retrofit the planes in line with the F.A.A.’s requirements.

In other words: "There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over."

392
One of my old managers used to tell us 'If you don't have time to get it right, where will you find the time to do it over?'

gaukler @391: I once came into work staggeringly early to (a) do stuff that Broke Things before open of business, but additionally even earlier than THAT would have needed so I could (b) make an international phone call to the Museum of London and give them my credit-card number to buy three books of theirs that, at that point, were not available through any other route than calling or visiting their gift shop.

Which still puts me in a better situation than yours.

"You can do it fast or you can do it right."

HLN:
Now it can be told. I was on Jury Duty for Madison County. I served three days. I was called for two panels, but wasn't selected for either one. I was waiting all day today for a third panel, which wasn't held because the defendant took off for parts unknown. At about 3:45 pm we was released from duty, as all cases were resolved, plea bargained, or continued. We had been scheduled for Thursday and Friday.

"There three ways to do something. The wrong way, the right way, and the Navy way."

Fred Clark at Slacktivist quoting our esteemed hostess on Yog's Law, and pointing his finger at a "Christian" pay to publish scheme. His quote marks, not mine, but I don't blame him a bit.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/01/30/jerry-jenkins-tramples-yogs-law-starts-christian-pay-to-publish-vanity-racket/

Too tired to make it look nice, but I wanted to let Teresa know about it.

Book source found, no thanks to the museum.

Jerry Jenkins, co-author of the best-selling Left Behind series, is starting up his own Christian vanity press.

Despite the best efforts of his guild's training, he said, not enough new authors have been able to land deals with traditional publishers, in part because houses continue to insist that authors have a significant "platform." As a result, "good, passionate authors are ignored because they're unknown," Jenkins told PW.

Other highlights:
Those applying to the guild's Published program must submit part of their manuscript for evaluation. If accepted, they follow a six-month course — costing just under $10,000 — that includes mentoring by a published author. Copy-editing, typesetting, proofreading, custom cover design, marketing advice, printing, digital formatting, and e-book file creation in all formats are included in the package. There will be a surcharge for manuscripts over 75,000 words. (emphases mine)

Holy cojones, Batman!

(Note: I spotted this over on Slacktivist, where there's a callout to ML and all the efforts here to teach people how to avoid these scamsters.)

Probably for a Word of Power, and I'll bet I know which one.

400
And a lot of the regulars over there are saying it's a scam, only partly because of the price.

in part because houses continue to insist that authors have a significant "platform."

Wait, what?

I mean, it's an obvious scam without that, but... certainly, the small press that accepted my book asked for a "marketing plan" with the submission, but when I asked for clarification, it turned out that they mostly wanted to know about your existing and planned social media participation, and your willingness to do blog tours and the like. And they ARRANGE blog tours and interviews and so on, that's part of their JOB.

The editor's decision really did seem to boil down to "I think other people will be willing to pay money to read this story." Whereas that? Is "how much money are you willing to pay in the hope that someone else will read your story?"

For goodness' sake, they could put it up on AO3 for free.

HLN(cont.): Local couple unable to fit window alarms as their window frames are bevelled, so the two parts cannot be kept in contact. Couple slept fitfully with random light switched on. They were woken in the night by a noise like a seagull being put through a mangle. No satisfactory explanation has been found.

Sorry about that, tykewriter. Do you own or rent? (That is, how much structural alteration can you make to the house?)

We're renting, from two sisters - one's married to a builder, the other to an electrician. The builder has been and changed the locks, and the electrician will come and try to fix the burglar alarm which he had previously disabled because it kept going off.

Meanwhile, Victim Support have promised to find suitable alarms for us. There is also a local scheme to subsidise alarm systems for over-65s (my partner, check) and disabled people (ditto).

A few years ago, I'm sure this crime would have been dismissed by the police* as "we'll give you a crime number, but don't expect to get your property back, meanwhile keep your windows locked." Now we have the Community Police Officer coming round next week, and loads of support and helpful advice.

Off now to get the car keys reprogrammed.

*And of course treated less than seriously because it involved a not-young gay couple.

Serge: My brother-in-law the engineer, says: "Cheap, fast and good. Pick any two."

tykewriter: I'm glad a horrid situation isn't being made worse by official indifference. Hugs and good thoughts.

Cadbury Moose @389 If the rock rolled over him, he'd be Flatyphus, surely?

Thank you for the laugh to start off my morning.

Serge Broom @395 "You can do it fast or you can do it right."

More generally, out of time, cost, and quality, you can (within limits) control any two of the three, but then the third is determined.

Also, per The Mythical Man-Month, you don't get a baby in one month by assigning nine women to the job.

Lila @407 posted a pithier version of my 408 while I was writing. Great minds and all that.

lila @ 407... My brother-in-law the engineer, says: "Cheap, fast and good. Pick any two."

For some reason, the non-engineers that engineers work for don't appreciate the humor.

Serge, #410: That's not humor, that's a humorous statement of reality. There's a difference. If someone can't accept it, that's getting into "trying to create their own reality" territory.

Can anyone help me? I'm stuck trying to find the quote about why disaster novels are so popular/appealing. Something about there being enough room for your backswing. Thanks.

Lee @ 411... Unfortunately, such people tend to be the ones who sign your paycheck.

re 407: Shouldn't that be "choose no more than two"?

C. Wingate #414: Well, you can pick one of them twice, as in "the only priority".

C. Wingate @414:

Most people at NASA rephrase this as "Better, faster, cheaper, pick any two" (riffing off their 1990s "better, faster, cheaper" mantra.) Cynics reduce it to "pick one". I'm not sure which is closer to reality, but either is closer than the original "all three" version.

RFC 1925, while "humorous", wasn't wrong then, and isn't wrong now; and I agree with those referencing 7a) that those who don't appreciate the humour are the cause of the humour - and that it's gallows humour (for "being fired" versions of "being killed").

It was 20 years ago that the head of sales found me reading Dilbert and said "you programmers really like that. I don't understand what's so funny". "Yes, I understand that" was the best I could do. That was my *first* deathmarch project, based on salesmen selling (much) more than they could deliver. Not, unfortunately, my last.

Mycroft W @417: I heard an interview with a venture capitalist who said that one thing they look at, when visiting potential invest-in companies, is how people's cubes are decorated. Not for style, though ... if they're utterly devoid of ANY personalization, across the board, that's a sign of certain kinds of management dysfunction. However, if entire walls are covered with nothing but Dilbert ... it's a sign that a lot of Dilbertian hijinks are likely occurring, and he starts looking to figure out who's the Pointy Haired Boss (and if they can be fired).

A smattering of Dilbert, mixed in with other things, is a sign of health, in his view. :->

Lorax, that's the version I'm familiar with. (Engineer here.)

"Faster, better, cheaper. Pick any two." Is the underlying principle of project management. All project management really is managing available resources towards a given goal.

Progress towards that goal rests on a three-legged stool of time, quality and cost. As an example, if you want your project quicker, you can either sacrifice quality of the end product (because of cutting corners, skimp on testing/bug fixes, etc) or you can maintain quality by putting more resources (usually people, but not always) into the effort in the reduced timeframe.

Likewise, less cost either lengthens project time or impacts quality. For better quality, impact is to time or cost.

Or, as already noted, you may be better off picking one, and praying a lot.

Alex Cohen @412: Try this Usenet post by James Nicoll. It's in a discussion of the novel Cusp, by Robert Metzger:

CUSP [...] is the book that provoked the STARS MOVE rant and the one that led to my coining of the phrase backswing novel, from a comment by Andrew [Wheeler] about novels where the majority of humans are slaughtered to give the heros more room to swing their swords.

Various people...

I would be likely to say, "Humour can be a very personal thing. I don't follow much current stuff."

In the past, some people said to me, "That's a very funny book." It turned out not to be, for me.

I can also remember laughing at stuff which just wouldn't get published today. There was a British TV show called "Love Thy Neighbour" which hinged on the interaction between a white family and a black family. It maybe has some value as an observation of the time it was made. And just maybe some of the jokes would evoke a different sort of humour reaction. But mostly it would be seen as pretty ugly today. (And some people are still xenophobic bastards.)

Patrick:

I imagine you are right about the rhetoric. I will just say that I remember what conversations about W's war on terror malfeasance and executive overreach looked like here, and it seems to me that the tone is radically different now. I sort of feel like I'm dropping a turd in the punchbowl when I bring some of the Obama administration's abuses up, and that was especially true during the election season. This is natural and probably inevitable--we're tribal creatures, ultimately. But it's still depressing.

Part of what makes it depressing is that it's mirrored by so much establlishment media. The story in W's regime was that these scary new powers were new and scary but there were bad people who were going to get us if we took them away. The story in Obama's regime is a lot more comfortable about the powers, partly because they're of a piece with what went before. Obama keeping W's grabbed powers and scary policies is continuing the status quo. Bipartisan policies (like the president can have anyone he wants whacked or disappeared on his say so alone) don't get much debate' compared to policies where the parties disagree (say Obamacare).

I am morally certain this is going to end badly for us as a country. I wish I knew what to do. More and more, I'm thinking that the right answer is more in the realm of how to protect myself and my family from what's coming, but that's a lot easier said than done, and I've been spreading my unacceptable and traitorous opinions on the net for a couple decades now, so it's not like I can exactly pretend not to have thought about the issues. There are times when discussions of politics in the US have the feel, to me, of family discussions where nobody can really acknowledge Mom's suicide attempts or Dad's drinking problem.

Lila and Lee:

I always wonder what state of mind would make those bumper stickers seem like a good idea. I get why someone chuckles seeing them once, but what would make it seem like a good idea to put "keep honking, I'm reloading" on your car? Was the 666 tattoo on the forehead and the bloody machete you keep in the trunk not getting people to back away from you quickly enough?

#390 ::: Carol Kimball :

I'm inclined to think that a lot of high end pricing consists of having enough gall to ask for a lot of money for a (reasonably good?) product, and attracting people who think that price is a signal of quality.

****

There was a book called You Don't Have to Eat Off the Floor about housekeeping which said you can maximize any two of Ease, Elegance, and Economy.

I think those three are linked because they're measures of work. (Elegance is used in the sense of upper class, not engineering elegance.)

David Goldfarb@421.

Thanks! I should have realized that such an apt and snarky term would have thanks to James.

David Goldfarb@421.

Thanks! I should have realized that such an apt and snarky term would have been thanks to James.

albatross @423:

I will just say that I remember what conversations about W's war on terror malfeasance and executive overreach looked like here, and it seems to me that the tone is radically different now. I sort of feel like I'm dropping a turd in the punchbowl when I bring some of the Obama administration's abuses up, and that was especially true during the election season. This is natural and probably inevitable--we're tribal creatures, ultimately. But it's still depressing.

Two observations here.

First of all, when we discussed W's overreaches, no one was bringing them up like a disgruntled dog owner rubbing puppy's nose in the poo. That, unfortunately, is the way that you bring up Obama's failings on ML: look what your guy did! Tell me you're outraged! You come across as testing us, seeing if our reactions meet your standards, but sorrowfully already certain that we will FAIL.

And we do fail, by your standards, I guess, because we don't put security first. Many people here hate the government overreach, but rather like the prospect of not dying of a curable disease in the gutter, having equal rights despite those awkward extra X chromosomes, and being able to marry whom they choose. It's complicated. You're not the only grownup in the room here, no matter how much you act like you think you are.

And, bluntly, your comments during the election made you sound like you were willing to throw women and gays under the bus for an unwinnable fight. After some of our conversations, I'm still not sure your priorities meet my standards—which makes me much less keen to care if mine to meet yours.

Which bit about an unwinnable fight gets me to my second point. When we were talking about W, there was an answer: vote the bastards out. And we did, and some things got better. But now what do we do about the things that didn't improve? It's a lot easier to get people fired up with a call to action at the end of the message than it is without one. My other reaction to your posts is a kind of weary despair: yes, we're screwed, thanks so much for bringing it up. Also, we're all going to die, the sun will burn out, and young people have terrible taste in pop music.

I don't know, man, you used to be more engagable. You used to have more time for others' views, and more respect for the community here. You used to have hope. Where'd it go? How can we help you get it back?

abi @ 428... Many people here hate the government overreach, but rather like the prospect of not dying of a curable disease in the gutter, having equal rights despite those awkward extra X chromosomes, and being able to marry whom they choose.

I kind of like that too. If we want a saint, we'll never get one and not just because America tends to tear people down. I'll settle for the lesser devil.

429
Can we get the Lesser Weevil instead?

How about a Tasmanian Devil? Or Hellboy? Wait. They weren't born in the USA.

Maybe the lesser of two easels?

#425 ::: Nancy Lebovitz
[...] There was a book called You Don't Have to Eat Off the Floor [...]

Carol Eisen's Nobody Said You Have to Eat Off the Floor - one of the Great Treasures. I have an early (first?) paperback edition that lives with my Peg Bracken. Too "used" to be worth anything, but one I never, ever loan.

I wish there'd been better cover art...

re: nasty things that People in Power do.

From the mists of recorded history (I've been reading Cicero, and he was fairly far along in the queue), people with power have abused it. The only variable seems to be whether it's overt or covert. I'd rather an administration say, "these are bad things, but we think they're necessary and we're going to keep them" than don halos and then sneak them in as black operations.

Just as a reminder, Obama is to the right of Richard Nixon. I know this. We all know this.

Yes, he's abusing power. Yes, he's doing evil things. No, he isn't giving up any of the tools of oppression that Bush handed him. Yes, he's sending flying killer robots to blow people up on his word alone.

Yes, we've written letters to the editor. Yes, we've blogged about it. Yes, we've written to our representatives. Yes, we've protested in the streets.

After that, what would you have us do? Vote for Romney? Get all that, plus take away heath care, take away gay rights, take away women's rights?

The only possible thing is to start grooming young people in college so that twenty or thirty years from now we'll have a new crop of better politicians. Which will take twenty or thirty years, and relies on people. Not at all a sure thing.

I see on reading through the last week's worth of posts here that I've forgotten to thanks those who exercised their ingenuity on the Sophie de Grouchy quote. So I will now. (if anyone's interested, it was the Marquis de Condorcet, to whom she just happened to be married).

In other HLN, area man appears to be married to a Author (published).

The spare has been named "Desperation".

"Prudence," shurely?

Congratulations to Mme PGBB, either for her publication (I hope) or her divorce from you so that you married some other author (I hope not).

PS there has from time to time been an "HMS Fortitude". No word on Temperance or Justice.

PPS I seem to recall there was an old Jeff Hawke strip where the spaceships had all these names.

praisegod barebones #435: Congratulations to Mme Barebones on her publication. What's it on?

In one of those moments of bizarre realisation, I was doing some very approximate calculations of what would be needed, in terms of energy, for a tablet computer to match my desktop computer in graphics processing.

With a reasonable battery life...

Such a super-tablet (or Google Glass machine) would need the equivalent of half a pound of TNT. Which, depending on safety/weight trade-offs, could be five pounds of lithium-ion battery. And getting rid of waste heat would be tricky. Then I thought, "water cooling" and got to thinking about where you get the water from.

You can sort of imagine a looming serious scientific talk here, but I know I am not Bob Shaw.

The solution of the problem may be to exploit the talents of a certain zoologist who, when told it was illegal to own ferrets in California, made arrangements to rent a breeding pair of slightly smaller wild mustelidae to a colleague in that state. Said colleague was doubly protected by not owning the savage little critters, which were also not ferrets,

While the authorities took the zoologist to court using a conspiracy charge, the Judge was forced to find him innocent of all charges, since he was clearly the lessor of the two weasels.

abi, #428: Many people here hate the government overreach, but rather like the prospect of not dying of a curable disease in the gutter, having equal rights despite those awkward extra X chromosomes, and being able to marry whom they choose.

Yes. Two of those things affect me very directly, and the third affects a lot of people I care about. At this point, bluntly, I would not vote for someone who promised to roll us back to the civil-liberties stance of the 1970s if they were also going to roll us back to the 1970s on civil rights and women's issues.

And given a choice between someone who does some things I like but isn't great on others, and someone who is no better on the things I don't like and also worse on the things I do like, no amount of yelling about the stuff the first guy does that I don't like is going to change my position. What will is having someone better come along who stands a reasonable chance of winning.

Jim, #434: One other thing we can do is work to elect people on the local and state level who are more in line with our views. That's certainly a more winnable fight in parts of the US; maybe not so much in Texas, but still worth the effort.

American politics are a feeder system -- almost never does a politician come out of nowhere to run for high-level offices (Nader and Perot are the only ones I can think of offhand). Local people move up to the state level; state people move up to the Federal level. The Republicans spent 30 years stuffing the pipeline to get to where they are now. We can do it right back at them. It won't be fast, and it won't be easy, but we already have proof that it works.

(Nader and Perot are the only ones I can think of offhand)

And just look how both of them did in the national elections.

I'd rather not think of Nader, off-hand or otherwise.
Unless we're talking of Darth Nader in "Hardware Wars".

In re Jim's Diffraction "Smear a Critic, Go to Jail", I don't think those few words accurately give the idea of what happened. The impression seems to be that Jim is on the restaurateur's side. Which he's allowed, of course, I'm just saying I disagree.

It's not just that the restaurateur said nasty things on her own blog or Facebook page about a critic who panned her restaurant. According to the article, the resto owner faked emails to the critic's bosses, pretending to be the critic and making sexually suggestive remarks. The resto owner also created a fake online dating page using the critic's name and photo.

It's made more clear in this article that the "critic" is not a restaurant critic by profession: she was just a customer who received bad service, and so used a public review site to post her experience. Also, that the resto owner's actions took place over two years.

If someone did those things to me, I'd take 'em to court too. Even if I had said mean things about their resto . It's still cyber-bullying, IMHO.

Not sure why.

[Three spaces in a row, plus the words "online dating." -- JDM]

Serge Broom #429: If we want a saint, we'll never get one and not just because America tends to tear people down.

We recently had something close to a saint, in Jimmy Carter. Besides getting stonewalled by the Republicans in Congress, credible¹ rumor has it that he was backstabbed² by his CIA chief... who later went on to become Vice President, then President.

¹ Mostly I find it credible given President Bush's actions in office....

² In the Iranian hostage rescue attempt.

Dave Harmon @ 446... But Jimmy had lust in his heart and thus couldn't be a Saint.

Serge Broom #447: The proper response to that won't fit into the text box: it's the same eye-roll that most people did when he said that in the first place!

Cheryl #445: The impression seems to be that Jim is on the restaurateur's side.

What on earth gives you that impression?

Dave Bell #440: I find it disturbing that lithium-ion batteries have a tenth the energy density of TNT. On the other hand, that makes the explosions make sense....

I have no idea, Jim, but I had the same impression from just the title (obviously, having read the link, it was clear I was wrong). I was also somewhat surprised (again, until I clicked through).

It really does read like "do this 'simple thing', go to jail"; as if the smearing of the critic was a "love the way some pprz sneak around in the alleys" tweet, rather than two years of cyber-stalking and identity fraud.

I too, would love to know why it reads that way.

Dave Harmon - the fun thing is that (according to the internet) petrol is about 9.5 times more energy dense than TNT.
So why are you fuelling your car with such a dangerous substance!!!

#445 ::: Cheryl:

I didn't get the impression that Jim was on the restaurant owner's side, but I agree with with the rest of what Cheryl said.

What was done to the critic/customer was much worse than what I think of as smearing.

Dave Harmon and guthrie: It's worth considering that in general any alternative energy storage mechanism for transportation is going to have to compete against gasoline (or diesel) in energy density. It doesn't necessarily have to beat gasoline, if it's better in some other way (cleaner, safer, cheaper, etc.), but if the energy density is too low, the mechanism will have a hard time supplanting gasoline.

Dave Harmon @ 449... Let's not forget the rabbit.

Given how often and in how many venues I've said, "The only response to a bad review is none" and that there are at least two sites out there that have spent some time smearing me for criticizing scammers and the sorts of authors who attack critcs, I'm really interested in knowing what could possibly be the clue that said, "Jim thinks smearing critics is Just Fine!"

I think the restaurant owner got off very, very lightly. I'd like to see more of that sort of thing, with trolls and flamers and stalkers going to jail.

"Smear a Critic, Go to Jail" was a riff on the slogan, "Use a Gun, Go to Jail."

This tech week has been epic. Woke up with fatigue and a sore throat on Monday. (Still have the sore throat and cough, but the fatigue has damped down to normal-for-tech-week levels.) Barely made it through one act on Monday, plus going extra time. Tuesday was back-to-front and almost to midnight. Wednesday, finally in costumes. Rapunzel's Prince walks off the stage into the orchestra pit on top of the keyboardist. Neither seriously hurt, and no instruments damaged, but his leg became inflamed yesterday*. Thursday we started two and a half hours late because the Witch was in an accident in the Bay Area (car totaled; Witch okay.) Curtain wouldn't close; had to be repaired.

Plus the normal lines forgotten, entrances missed, etc. If the negative quality of the dress rehearsal(s) is directly in relation to the positive quality of the show, this production is going to be AWESOME.

*Our costumer is also a nurse, so he has been provided with a professional opinion for care. I hope he won't be limping too badly tonight.

Speaking of restaurant/customer interactions: Server fired for posting an image of nasty note left by a customer.

The note, in fact, was breathtakingly nasty. Accompanied by stiffing the server on the tip, it reads "I give God 10% -- why do YOU get 18?" And the person who left it is a pastor. CWAA.

I agree with others, especially abi and Jim, about Obama. Also that I miss the more hopeful albatross.

You said all the good things.

Obama is in no way worse, and in some ways better, than Romney. That's the way you make these choices—if you're lucky. I've had to choose between politicians each of whom were good on some things and bad on others. This past election was much, much easier, because there was not one thing on which I thought Romney was better than Obama.

If Romney had said (and made me believe, which is unlikely in his case) that he was going to end extra-judicial killings of Americans and drone strikes on dubious targets; that he would free the prisoners in Gitmo who we KNOW ARE INNOCENT; that he would absolutely end all torture perpetrated by America directly or by proxy, I might have had a harder time choosing. But he wouldn't have. If anything he's worse on those issues than Obama.

Plus, you know, I'm gay and that means voting Republican is pretty much cutting my own throat as far as my rights are concerned. It would be hard to get past that even for a much better candidate than Romney.

Lee, I was totally on the server's side of that until I found out that the original posting didn't obscure the pastor's name.

Still on the server's side, but not so enthusiastically.

#452, #457

Like Mycroft, it was that phrase "Smear a critic, go to jail" that read to me as though you were on the resto owner's side. My apologies for the misunderstanding, though I am glad to know that I was wrong. I wasn't familiar with the "Use a Gun, Go to Jail" slogan.

Apologies also for the punctuation gnomi-cation. I try to avoid giving you guys extra work.

Jeremy Leader #455 - Exactly.
Ideally it should also not contribute worse than petrol if there is an accident, or pollute the area badly or poison people if spilt.

This ought to be on the side somewhere:
Instapundit posted a link to this Smithsonian Mag article about a Russian family isolated for over forty years. They didn't know anything about World War II, Nikita Khrushchev, and man landing on the Moon. They did see orbiting bodies, but didn't know specifically what they were.

461
It wasn't the server who'd handled that table, but a friend. And she even took the time to check the employee's handbook before doing it, too, and after catching a bit of flak obscured the signature.
I don't see that it's much different from the minister leaving one of those tracts that's printed to look like money on the outside.

guthrie #453: Actually, I don't drive, but point taken.

Of course, it's not just about energy density -- TNT is designed to release energy very fast, but I gather it's fairly good about not doing so without appropriate prompting. Gasoline is likewise fairly stable, and even when lit, its energy output is limited by surface area and oxygen supply. The lithium-ion batteries, however, seem to fail on the stability front, with runaway energy release being way too common.

P J Evans #465: Applebee's has claimed the firing was for revealing a customer's private information. Forgive me for being skeptical.

And meanwhile, said pastor tried to demand that a whole bunch of employees be fired, from servers to managers. I think they need to learn a bit about the demands of their supposed faith, such as charity and forbearance. (Or maybe the pastor should herself be fired....)

Would any of the Dutch-speaking among you be able to help me with a translation of the caption of this graphic? It reads "gij hunkert naar wat vreugd en naar verstomd gezang? de accoorden uwer jeugd weerklinken eeuwen lang!" which I can make out bits of, but not very coherently.

It's so much easier being a single-issue voter. I was raised by two who canceled each other's votes every year and I've been asked by those who should know better why I don't care about Issue X, but really, it's that, as Abi said, I have multiple fish to fry here. But I envy people whose issues either all line up or who can say that only one thing matters to them.

late again -- you can get all three "cheap, fast, and good" -- when it comes to food. But you have to think about it.

#467 The Modesto Kid -- I don't know if someone else (who is more fluent in 1930's dutch) might do it better, but I would translate "gij hunkert naar wat vreugd en naar verstomd gezang? de accoorden uwer jeugd weerklinken eeuwen lang!" as “thou yearnest for some joy and long since muted song? the chords of thy youth resound through the ages”.
I'm applying some poetical license here, since your question lead me to learn that Escher did a series of drawings with epigrams: http://www.eschersite.com/EscherSite/Original_Escher_for_Sale/Pages/Emblemata_Woodcuts.html of which the lute is one. Maybe some fluorospherian could translate the latin? Because now I'm curious...

Interestingly (in an AKICIML kind of way) is that a search for 'oogentroost' that is showing in your picture just above the lute lead me straight back to Making Light...

Lenora Rose... Your novel "The Illusion of Steel" is now on my Nook.

#470

You mean "minime oppressae conquiescunt voces"?

Probably something like "voices that are oppressed are not at all silent." i.e. just because they can't speak up, that doesn't mean they are not saying something.

But if you construed the adverb with the adjective (instead of the verb) then you could turn it around: "voices are silent, when they are oppressed even a little." I.e. any restraints on speech are destructive of free speech altogether.

Funny thing about ambiguity....

It would be nice to know if there's a source for the tag, since the context might disambiguate.

If I had to guess from the Dutch, I'd say it's the first, where the "oppressae" is not so much political oppression as being hidden in memory or latent in a lute. Just because the lute is not playing the songs of your youth right now, that doesn't mean it/they cannot be revived.

But take that all as mere guesswork over the first cup of coffee. Real scholars should come and correct me where I err.

abi:

I think I've become less hopeful on this front for the same reason you said--we voted the bastards out, and the new bastards aren't as much better as we hoped. At any rate, I think you and Patrick and Xopher and others are right that I'm not having any good effect in the world with how I'm handling the topic here, and more particularly, I'm not making ML a better place with it.

@Lucy Kemnitzer #469

Fast, cheap, good food: agreed! Takes thought, as you say (though my husband (before I met him) went from a year of Hamburger Helper and KD to fast, cheap, good bachelor food out of sheer foodie frustration, and he's the one who does the cooking, so I wouldn't be able to do it myself)

That said, I have a weakness for good frozen pizza - which if you can catch it on the really good sales is actually cheap as well as fast and, arguably, good. ;)

"God, that's the first present I've ever given anyone. That's a bit depressing."
"It's okay. You were a supervillain for a few years there."
- from 'Strong Female Protagonist'

( http://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-3/page-13-3/ )

Claire at 474 -- Lately I lost my ill-paying job, which meant also losing my eligibility for the food bank I was using, and also found health reasons to take my diet more seriously, so of course I have been thinking about it a lot. I've been spending much more time on food procuring and preparation, because there haven't been many jobs to apply for. But I know I'll be working at an ill-paying job again in the near future, so I'm paying attention to what's fast and easy and building a new repertoire. A lot of what makes for fast meals for me is small investments of time beforehand: I almost never cook today's meals today.

Grrrrr . . .

My dog has had a lipoma on her right elbow for several years. I don't know if it's the weather, or the stress of a move, but it finally seems to be effecting her use of her foreleg. After a few blocks it really throws off her gait.

Anti-inflammatories *might* have helped. But I'm wondering if reducing the size of the lump -- a possibility the vet mentioned -- might be worth pursuing. Kira is such an athletic dog; I'm sure the long walks I put her through have helped keep her in such good shape for an almost-12 year old. It would be sad to see her slowed down.

Lucy Kemnitzer @476 Oh no!!! I hope your next job is at least pleasant, if still ill-paying.

We still use a number of my husband's fast/cheap/good recipes, if you're interested. Examples: Ethiopian Lentil Bowl, which basically involves equal parts red lentils and garlic, plus some canned tomatoes and lemon juice. Or what we call "Hyrulean Beans" (he was playing a lot of Legend of Zelda when he invented this one) which is stewed refried beans, tomatoes, and fried onions with a few common herbs/spices, with frozen corn thrown in toward the end. In both cases, serve with rice for a complete protein, and in both cases they make LOADS and freeze well.

If you want detailed recipes for these or others, perhaps one of the mods could put us in touch?

A thought - is there interest in a separate thread for fast/cheap/good food? (recipes, general ideas, etc.)

Petra and oldster -- thanks so much! Great link, Petra -- I was trying to find a preexisting image of this woodcut on the web and not having much luck.

#441 ::: Dave Bell [lessor of two weasels]

I read this shortly after you posted it, and am still too stunned to express my awe.

Discussion of energy density above prompted me to Google up this list at Physics Info. Note that butter (or cooking oil) is not too far from gasoline in energy density. Most of the explosives aren't very energy-dense, they're just given to releasing it quickly.
My fancy rechargeable AA cells (2500 mAh) store about the energy of 1/4 teaspoon of sugar, from memory of the last time I did the conversion.

After talking about sugar. Should I offer more calories or will that make it worse?

Carol @ #481 It is, indeed, a thing of beauty, that one.

(This moose was trying to work up something similar, but involving weevils (Vine or Boll, perhaps), but was beaten to the pun(ch).
Besides: it would have looked like I'd pinched it from Aubrey/Maturin.)

@476 Lucy Kemnitzer
Lately I lost my ill-paying job, which meant also losing my eligibility for the food bank I was using

Wait... being unemployed makes you ineligible for the food bank? I'm confused...

@478 Claire
We still use a number of my husband's fast/cheap/good recipes, if you're interested

If Lucy isn't, I am! Both of your examples sound tasty, although I'll find something to substitute for the rice.

Claire @ 478

I would find a thread for fast/cheap/good food tips and recipes very helpful.

Claire @ 478

I would find a thread for fast/cheap/good food tips and recipes very helpful.

SamChevre @487: The lunch I had was about as fast, cheap, and easy as they come (though to be clear, I am not calling it a slut) -- ingredients are one can of black beans, one small onion, half a pear, some fennel seeds, and a bit of canola oil and a bit of beer. heat oil in a skillet, add seeds and chopped onion, saute for a while. When onion is soft, add chopped pear. When everything is sizzling nicely, deglaze with beer and add beans, and reduce heat. It is basically ready when the beans are hot, but there is nothing wrong with letting it simmer another five or ten minutes longer. Serve with cornbread or tortillas or biscuits and/or yogurt.

>> Most of the explosives aren't very energy-dense ...

Probably because they have to carry their own oxidizer

I'd like to see a cooking thread as well.

Lucy @ 469

Well, it's true up to a point that you can have all three with a little planning. The more special dietary considerations you're working with, the more difficult the equation gets. So by the time we were cooking for a picky eater, a chemo patient, a diabetic, a vegetarian, a kosher Jew, and people with lactose intolerance, various allergies and sensitivities, digestive issues and other health problems... well... it was complicated. Most of the time, fast, cheap and easy were all on the cutting table.

Which I raise just because situations like that creep up on one, and it can be a little frustrating trying to remember why you aren't able to do "as good a job" as everyone else.

Cheryl at 485: the food bank was at the job, and available to "participants" in the programs there, which employees were considered to be.

Claire: I love sharing recipes back and forth . . .

KayTei: yes, that's a lot. My own dietary considerations have fortunately turned out to be rather simple in actuality. The only complicated part is not getting rebellious. It shouldn't be too hard. But sometimes, all the lovelies you always want to eat just seem like ashes because all you want is that stupid thing you don't really like that much anyway.

The Fast Cheap Good Food thread is now live.

@493 Jim Macdonald

Awesome! Thank you!!!

May I offer some cheap, good food? *g*

They're teasing us with the story—it must be a slow news day, or something—but Monday morning, at 10.00 GMT, the results on tests on a body are due to be released.

It might be the body of King Richard III of England. It might not be. And we are getting the references to Shakespeare and the quite respectable historical doubts about the standard version of the story.

The archaeologists who found the grave are pretty confident. But the more detailed tests, not just DNA, went "right down to the wire".

496
I've been following that story through the medieval-genealogy newsgroup. What they already have found is interesting (scoliosis?).

I used to park my car in Greyfriars car park. I might have parked on top of Richard III. Or on top of the poor sod whose bones they dug up, whoever he may have been. I have mixed feeling about this.

Got a notification from Apple that the hard drive in my iMac was one that was likely to fail*, and they would replace it free of charge**. Schlepped it into the Apple store on Friday morning, and it was done by Saturday**. Plugged in the external harddrive with the TimeMachine backup, and it was all restored and happy within about 90 minutes**.

Thought to check settings, and found that the firewall was turned off*. I'm very sure it was turned on, unless some software upgrade turned it off (that has happened in the past* with Apple).

Should you be one of the many thousands who are getting their harddrive replaced, check that Firewall preference after restoring!

Oh, and use a cabled-up harddrive for that backup/restore. My sweetie went through the same process a few weeks ago, and the restore over wireless from a NAS device took over 24 hours.

*Bad corporation!
**Good corporation!

Hyperlocal news... Local fan learns he's been tuckerized in latest installment of Men's Adventure series "Deathlands" - where he dies a horrible death. A few months ago, local fan learned he's been tuckerized in Book Three of a Hugo-nominated space opera - where he dies a horrible death. Local fan considers staying away from bookstores.

I've been Tuckerized three times -- twice in novels, once in a comic book -- but never killed off. I'm not sure whether I'm happy or sad about that.

When I upgraded to Win 7, it fixed several awkwardnesses I was having with XP, I found that my NAS drive was no longer visible. And it was old enough that the manufacturer wasn't providing an upgrade so that it would work with Win 7.

Luckily, it also has a USB connector. I shifted the data off (it isn't so big, by modern standards).

I've just bought another NAS gadget. It's for use with a tablet, using wifi. Lets you use a big SDHC card to store stuff. Luckily, my wifi environment is pretty clean. And I have an SDHC->USB adaptor. And I found that searching on "samba" brings a lot of responses about "MBA" courses.

The press conference on the hunt for Richard III is under way, and the initial stage, an account of the excavation, is certainly suggestive. The BBC News channel is carrying live coverage, but has just interrupted for breaking political news...

The Scoliosis (curved spine) developed after the age of about ten.

Now they're talking about the wounds.

There are a lot of wounds on the skeleton which could not have been inflicted on a man wearing armour, but are plausible humiliation wounds inflicted after death, and consistent with the recorded events after the battle. There are two skull injuries which would have been immediately fatal.

Another break for politics, but now we get the genealogy behind the DNA evidence. They have confirmed the genealogy, and discovered a second maternal line.

They have a DNA match.

And now they've said it. They have found the body of Richard III, the last Plantagenet King of England/

Leicester University is where DNA Fingerprinting was developed, and the people who did that are still working there. What the Genealogist confirmed was that they had a male-line descendant from Edward III, through John of Gaunt, and they had found two distinct maternal-line descendants (which means mitochondrial DNA).

Then the DNA team came in. The two maternal line descendants had the same maternal line DNA, and then it was announced that the DNA recovered from the skeleton matched that DNA.

You don't hear any reaction, but then the Vice-Chancellor came back, and made the formal announcement that, beyond reasonable doubt. the skeleton was that of Richard III. Applause. And the BBC went back to the studio for the politics.

There is going to be a TV program broadcast tonight, on C4, giving a detailed account of the whole thing. It starts at 2100 GMT and runs for an hour and a half.

I am now going to look at Wikipedia...

David Goldfarb @ 501... Congratulations! It's my understanding that the more horrible your fate, the more the tuckerizer likes you.

Living as a nine-percenter.

Serge @508: To tie that together with the other current theme - wow, if that's true Shakespeare must have *loved* King Richard III.

Clifton @ 510... My kingdom for a hearse?

Serge Broom @395: "You can do it fast or you can do it right."

Weeeeellll now.... I'm thinking of the head of my local plumbing company. He came to fix something a subordinate had spent the entire previous day screwing up, and it took him about an hour to remove the borked plumbing and get the right thing in place. Then he went and re-caulked the faucet on my tub and did it so quick and clean I almost missed it. And the result was better than I could ever have managed.

So: sometimes to do it right, you have to do it fast.

Carol Kimball @432: I wish there'd been better cover art...

You could always roll your own...?

Clifton@508: That view has been defended, I think by William Bliss in The Real Shakespeare: a Counterblast to Commentators. (The book also shows that Shakespeare was a sailor and a murderer, but not an actor. How much of this is meant seriously is not entirely clear.)

Well (knock on wood), Whew!!

Tiny just came out of surgery. She's had this nasty horrible mammary tumor which I had put off having removed because of expense, and because she is kind of old and frail. But it ulcerated, but at the same time, she's just been motoring along, begging for snacks whenever I walk by, so I finally gritted my teeth and decided that, if she could survive with it, I damn well could afford to have it removed.

So: whew!

Well (knock on wood), Whew!!

Tiny just came out of surgery. She's had this nasty horrible mammary tumor which I had put off having removed because of expense, and because she is kind of old and frail. But it ulcerated, but at the same time, she's just been motoring along, begging for snacks whenever I walk by, so I finally gritted my teeth and decided that, if she could survive with it, I damn well could afford to have it removed.

So: whew!

(And I told my vet: "So don't say I never bring you any oozing pustules!")

Wow. That was weird. Sorry 'bout the duplication....

Jacque: Yay for Tiny! Our Freddie has an abscess on his back that we thought had gone away, but came back bad this past week; he's going in for surgery to remove the whole scarred-up shebang tomorrow morning. I'm trying not to worry too much...

Jacque #512: Nope, that's a matter of skill treating a simple job as trivial. If you don't have skill (or lack other required resources), then even a simple job becomes slow and uncertain.

Jacque #517:

Well, it's double-good news, so it deserves double announcing?

Watching adult cats playing full on balls to the walls crazy kitten style is delightful.

(My personal feline has been entertaining herself with a bit of plastic pulled off a milk carton, I'm still smiling)

joann @520: Well, I certainly think so. And: Tiny! Alive! ::grinz::