http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-15340240

Tomorrow is my Boss's birthday and I fully intend to pamper him.

It's not quite as bad as being called a provocateur, but it's close and I don't like it.

(Slow day at work.)

Lazy, as in, really wanting to tabulate the results so I could start eating them. (Starting with the excess ones, then working my way through the rows.)

V gubhtug gur obbx tbg bss gb n avpr fgneg - xrcg zr vagrerfgrq, V yvxrq gur znva punenpgre... ohg ng guvf cbvag, V'z fgnegvat gb guvax gung gurer'f bayl bar srznyr punenpgre. Fher gurer jrer fbzr ynqvrf zragvbarq ng gur ortvaavat - bar bs gurz hfrq nf n ovg bs Cybg Qrivpr gb trg gur znva punenpgre gb gnxr iratrnapr (ng yrnfg fur jnf bayl xvqanccrq gb or encrq, naq unqa'g orra encrq lrg ng gur gvzr bs gur iratrnapr), ohg abj ur'f tbar vagb fbeg bs gur frrql haqreoryyl bs gur pvgl naq tngurerq gbtrgure n tebhc bs Avpxanzrf jvgu bar punenpgre genvg ncvrpr gb chyy bss fbzr fbeg bs cbyvgvpnyyl zbgvingrq urvfg naq bayl bar bs gurfr punenpgref vf srznyr.

Ng fbzr cbvag vg'f zragvbarq gur rirel jbzna va gur haqre-tebhaql-guvrirf-thvyq yvxr fbpvny pnfgr vf n juber, ohg ab zragvba bs jul guvf vf. Bu, jnvg, V'ir whfg eha vagb fbzr jbzra npgvat nf pbbxf. Ab anzrf, ab yvarf bs pbhefr. Unf Fnaqrefba cbfvgrq n snagnfl havirefr va juvpu ab jbzra unir nalguvat gb pbagevohgr bgure guna srrqvat naq jubevat? Pna pbbxf naq juberf abg unir bgure nggevohgrf gung zvtug znxr gurz urycshy va na haqretebhaq urvfg/eribyhgvba fbeg bs jnl? Vf gurer n fubegntr bs punenpgre genvgf fb frirer gur bayl crefba jub pna unir zber guna bar vf Bhe Ureb?

I'm frustrated, because this has been recommended in a lot of places and I thought this was going to be kind of a fun pop-corn book, but I'm just kind of annoyed right now. If you've read the books, and they get better - or some sort of world-building occurs so we find out what exactly happened gb 50% bs gur cbchyngvba gung gurl ner ercerfragrq ol n Gbxra jvgu Bar Punenpgre Genvg let me know and I'll tough it out. Otherwise it's going in the DNF pile and I'll move on to something less cranky-making.

Happy birthday!

I found them fascinating, the magic system intriguing. The ending? Too abrupt. But yeah, your perceptions, while stronger than my perceptions of them, are valid.

Yes, sadly, your blog uses a URL syntax that is also common among spammer URLs. I shall ponder this issue and see if I can figure something out, but this particular filter traps more spam than ham.

Unfortunately I cannot donate it as it's on my nook. I'm keeping it for my roommate to read since she has fewer issues with this sort of thing than I do. Like I said, I was enjoying it until I saw that particular pattern which is my own particular Thing. I can't say it's badly written or crappy, but I think maybe I'll move on to something else because right now it's making me grind my teeth.

Hopefully my roommate will find it entertaining. At any rate, I only paid $2.99 for it so it's not too much of a loss.

Shit That Siri Says

You have mail.

I don't care if the octopus has horns. I can wait to see whether there's clear evidence of anti-Semitism.

I do care that the octopus has a tentacle wrapped around a little symbol of government, as though government weren't part of the problem.

Anyway, thanks for linking to the thread-- I appreciated the title pun, some of the humor, and finding out that it's oc-to-PO-dees rather than oc-to-PODES.

The one-trait-each gang is explicitly linked to the magic system -- each of the Misting types have a stereotypical personality. (The ones who survive do get a little more background over time.)

Sadly, I've never cooked with them. But if you are cooking the pads you want to google on 'nopales' as they are considered a regional delicacy in some parts of Mexico / SW US. As for the fruits, I've heard of jam and compote.

Note to self, acquire a couple of pads of the prickly-pear that grows in Minnesota and stick them out on the back rock slope where nothing else grows, and see if they will grow in Maine.

I guess my underlying issue is the whole Snow White & The 7 Dwarfs one. I don't require a female protag, but I'm tired of seeing fantasy universes where everyone from a character with only two lines up to the major supporting ones are all male. Anyone with agency or a personality is a dude, except for the one Special Snowflake woman who is the Exception and not like those other women. I'm finding this as frustrating as some of the aspects of the reboot of BSG, which was so promising and awesome and then profoundly thoughtlessly sexist a few times. (every. single. one. of the female cylons before the big "secret cylon" reveal in the final season was a SEXAYY SEXAY woman using her womanliness to seduce. the couple of men were - uh, not SEXAY. Every woman who had sex was pretty much punished for it, etc.)

I think I will just move on to something new, but I wish I could find reviews that, while not specifically feminist, could warn me of potential gender issues before I buy a book - and I'm not saying my issues should be everyone's issues. Good lord, I also have a problem with babies and stupid misunderstandings showing up in my light somewhat romantic reading (had to shelve the Parasol Protectorate books I was enjoying for that one) so I know I'm a bit sensitive on random issues. Plenty of books are good, well-written and well-reviewed that may as well be brussel sprouts to me. Anyone know if I'll have a problem with Boneshaker?

Then, suddenly, local washing machine drains and drain water wells up through local bathtub drain, leaving denim debris in tub. "This is worrying," thinks local woman.

Then local washing machine drains again, and everything flushed down local toilet in the meantime wells up into both local bathtubs.

Local woman buys latex gloves and bleach, and is thankful for strong stomach while cleaning.

Local plumber runs camera down line and discovers that local tree has put down lots and lots of roots into drain line, filling it with a large woody hairball. Roots are chopped out of pipe with large, noisy machine. Local cats flee in terror and hide under couch until Terrifying Roaring Floor-Vibrating Monster is gone.

Local woman is a few hundred dollars poorer, but now has operational plumbing.

The plumber wants to dig up and replace the entire line between house and street. Because the utility boxes live in our front yard, this will require hand-digging a trench and very carefully avoiding all the wires, and will cost $lots.

Because the line is operational, and replacement is only to make it more resistant to root invasion, I am planning to use foaming root killer to keep things under control until we can save up $lots.

Trees. I love them, but their roots are becoming the bane of my homeownerly existence. I can't plant a garden in the bed by the front walkway because of tree roots (not only can I not dig into the soil, but also everything I plant there dies immediately -- I suspect the roots are sucking up all the nutrition). And now they are blocking up my plumbing.

Need either trees with well-behaved roots, or some kind of magical tree-root-blocking material. Since neither of these things exist, I will just have to make do.

They cater to folks who need bargains, every day.

I sometimes find odd stuff there that you don't see at Albertson's or Safeway. Like:

Cake frosting mix. Pour in two tablespoons of boiling water and beat like crazy. Actually not bad.

Spaghetti sauce mix. Combine water, oil, tomato paste, and the contents of the packet, and boil. I tried this last night, and it's really strange. The result is close to, but not quite as bad as, the red slime that passes for sauce in canned spaghetti products ala Chef Boy-Ar-Dee. I tossed in a can of diced tomatoes and some mushrooms to make it non-retchworthy.

Whole Canned Chicken. A big can with a cooked chicken inside. I'm too frightened to get that one.

The same thing happened about 6 months after my parents moved into our house in the chicagoland area. (we like to believe it was dirt backed up in the bathtub. yes. that was a much nicer thing to imagine in the tub) I believe the trench was dug with a small backhoe. The main pipe was replaced with something less made of clay and the plumber named the thirsty weeping willows as the culprits. Within the next 5 years, you could see the same tell-tale scars on all the front yards in that subdivision. There may have been a few before they bought their home, but I guess they didn't notice at the time.

Between that and the load-bearing fireplace that cracked when a fire was lit, I'm betting they regretted not moving into the slightly newer side of the subdivision.

I had to upgrade my browser before it would work, but I've been meaning to do that anyway.

*friend? encircle?

Come to think of it, I've never seen canned whole chicken before or since. I'd forgotten about it until this thread.

It helped, but it wasn't perfect. Eventually we dug up the intruding bush.

Our cats took a while to recover from the intrusion of the Big Noisy Machine into their domain.

I didn't read carefully, but assumed the discussion was about bringing back some old cartoons with evil financial octopuses to apply to the current situation.

Wear gloves when harvesting and cleaning. I always bought them from the local Mexican supermercado, already de-spined, so I have no further advice to offer on that front.

The only things I've made with them are tacos and scrambled eggs (Mexican street tacos, on soft corn tortillas, not USAn crunchy yellow shells).

Cut the pads into pieces about 1 cm big. Roast in a dry cast-iron skillet until they get brown spots; the idea here is to avoid the okra-like ooze that they can produce when cooked wet. If you don't mind that ooze you can skip this step. Saute with onions, tomatoes, garlic, and fresh hot chiles of your choice. When they're done either serve on warmed corn tortillas with queso fresco, cilantro, and lime juice or dump in some beaten eggs and scramble.

I've seen recipes for nopales salad but haven't made it myself.

As for the fruits (tuna in Spanish -- frighten your friends by offering them a "tuna smoothie!"), I've made jelly and syrup with them. The jelly was probably more trouble than it was worth; it didn't have much taste other than sweet. The syrup made tasty if alarmingly pink margaritas.

I got through the first book just fine, with only mild aggravation at the gendering and the use of the main character as the tool-for-teaching-the-reader-about-life. About an hour or so into the second (I got the audiobooks from the library), I had to stop because she was about to be so monumentally stupid. It's a lot harder to skim with an audio book.

I actually liked his Warbreaker, even though one of the major end plot points/deus ex machina became obvious about a third of the way through. That might have been narrator's emphasis, though.

Can't give you much insight on Boneshaker, I couldn't get past the first couple chapters. Not my taste.

If you're looking for epic fantasy with strong females, might I suggest Sharon Shinn's Twelve Houses series? They're light, they've got joy and romance, and strong women who are three dimensional.

Re: tree roots - you may see if your municipality or sewer company has a sewer lateral line program. It often will help to offset some of the costs associated with replacing the lateral. (I have a large excel spreadsheet on the company server that tells me what each municipality will cover. Mine only covers the portion in the easement. The next one over does a 70/30 split with the homeowner, until the program funds run out. There's another one that does $700 towards replacement. Another covers cleanout-to-main. It's *always* worth looking in to.)

This is also where the realtor strongly suggests spending the funds to have your sewer lateral inspected prior to purchasing a home, esp. if the line is more than 30 yrs old. Some of the early plastic lines are breaking as well. If the owner says it has been replaced, that is often a permit-required repair and the city or county will have records of when the permit was pulled. (I call city records about every other week about permits. At this point, Paula just sighs when she hears my voice.) It can become a negotiating point, and worth knowing in any case.

John A. Arkansawyer: I can't comment at BoingBoing, once again. It seems to be offering me the chance to comment there if I'll set my cookies to accept all cookies everywhere. Trying to set individual exceptions doesn't work. Sorry.

Cactus fruit: My mom gave me a Peruvian Apple the other day. Tasted a bit like kiwi, actually. I didn't find out until the next visit that she was getting them off the cactus in front. Cereus cacti have beautiful flowers and now we know the fruit are tasty too.

I'll also be checking out the mystery blog. I do occasionally read mysteries and will be much more likely to do so when I can get some good recommendations to help hone my preferences.

Ah, the Parasol Protectorate. Not as bad an example as the Anita Blake books, but annoying enough for me to give up on 'em.

On Tuesday, October 11, which was National Coming Out Day, I officially changed my Facebook profile and status to reflect my desire to no longer hide my gayness from 75 percent of the people who know me. The other 25 percent consists of people I met last year during my freshman year of college.

Big Sister saw the message, let me know that she has absolutely no problem with it, and worked with me to decide on a good time to come out to my Mom. I've been hiding myself from my family for the last five or so years, so it's all about to come to an end. Just to be make sure my schoolwork isn't negatively affected by the potential fallout, we decided to put off having The Talk with Mom until after I'm done with finals, which are the first full week in December. And Big Sister will be there in the room with me so that I don't fall apart trying to tell Mom what's up.

Seven or eight more weeks until I'm out and proud to *everyone* in my life, not just my school friends and the cool people I've met online.

I second everything that Laura Runkle @62 says.

If you need us at your back, drop a line in whatever Open Thread is current and we'll run a cheering section. Then tell us how it went.

Even us straights care.

(Also, kudos to Big Sister.)

Whole Canned Chicken

During my freshman year at college, my mother decided I was in need of sustenance, and shipped me an electric hot plate and a large box of various foodstuffs, including a whole canned chicken. I finally threw a party for my friends one evening and we ate most of the food (although I was the only one interested in the anchovies). The chicken turned out to be edible.

Congratulations on coming out! Good on you for being proud of who you are.

I've actually been pretty comfortable about it for a while now; I've been a member of my university's queer/allies group since I started college last year. The main problem has mainly been figuring out how to tell the family and making it known to people I don't see on a regular basis (i.e. high school and college friends that I don't see often or at all any more).

My parents are/were going to find out one way or another. I'd rather them find out directly from me and not in an embarrassing, undignified way. They aren't the type of parents who would kick their kid out of the house for being gay, but they aren't the kind who will immediately jump for joy at the news, either. I suspect there will be some denial on their part and confusion, but they'll probably come around eventually. Big Sister has assured me that she and my brother-in-law are both there if I need them and that their place will always be a safe place for me. Have I mentioned that my Big Sister is the best Big Sister anyone could hope for?

Sewer lines thread: raises hand to say that terracotta tile sewer lines can last almost 100 years. The iron pipe under the house actually gave out before the tiles in the yard. Might have lasted longer if it had been installed sloping downward towards the street, instead of flat. Everyone join in now: "They don't build them like they used to".

Portrayals of women in fiction: Here's some good ones: "Motel Art Improvement Service", by Jason Little. It's a graphic novel with art that pops. The heroine is nerdy, fashion-challenged and pear-shaped -- and she's athletic, and finds love (or at least sex) and adventure! The story is highly original and funny.

I may be the last person to find out about Scott Westerfeld's "Leviathan" trilogy. I read them last week, with great enjoyment. Go Deryn!

Your sister is a wonderful person.

Alan Yee: Congratulations on your public unveiling, and best of luck with the family reveal. You and your Big Sister rock!

On the 13th, my daughter participated in "The Names That Hurt," a play about insulting language, hate speech, and bullying. A number of the monologues and little scenes were about being gay (others dealt with racial of ethnic issues).

At the end of the evening, audience members were asked to share their own experiences with being labeled, teased, or bullied. Toward the end of the session, a 16-yo stood up and said, very simply, "I'm a Jew, a white girl, and a lesbian." The whole room cheered. I was so proud of her! (I suspect it was the first time she's made quite such a public declaration, though she's been out to friends and family since middle school. [I've known her since she was 9.])

(The other striking comment was from an older black woman who talked about how she used to call her lightest-skinned granddaughters--both are teenagers, so this is pretty recent--her "white girls." This was intended as praise, not denigration. She stopped doing it when her son asked her to and then educated her about light-skin/dark-skin social issues in the African-American community.)

It was an interesting evening.

nerdycellist #30: yeah, I have to admit the Mistborn series fits squarely into that. It even gets worse at the climax: Jura ure uhfonaq qvrf, fur svtugf gur Ovt Onq gb zhghny naavuvyngvba. Lrc, gur erny ureb jnf fbzrbar ryfr.

Alan Yee #61: Congratulations!

It is my dream to live in a world where you can be your true self, and be accepted for it, without having to do so. Just like I can with the same preference right now.

Failing that, I want it for my children.

Given the (reasonably-based) gender skew where the main action takes place, as well as the size of the cast of significant speaking characters, the number of women didn't seem oddly mall.

abi: Amen.

My kid came out to me at, oh, 12, I think, by asking, "Mom, what would you say if I had a ($SAME-SEX partner)?"

I said, "I'd want to meet them and make sure they were a nice person."

People have, from time to time, praised me extravagantly for this response. This embarrasses and saddens me, because I fervently wish it were so normal that it was unremarkable.

May it go as calmly for you as it did for my kid.

Alan, #61: Go you! May it be as drama-free as you hope.

Modesto Kid @ 82 - No, no machine guns. But we've already put together plans to do quick-exchanges of the attic windows for arrow slits.

Re: sewers, pt 2 - The City of St. Louis is being sued by the EPA about our combined storm-and-sewage system. Something about the parts of it that are still wood (pre-1870), and the fact that it wasn't designed for non-permeable pavement, so may, on occasion, overflow the holding reservoirs during sustained heavy rain, dumping raw sewage into the Mississippi. Oops. OTOH, those wood parts still carry water and "stuff" pretty well, without the spectacular collapsing that clay or iron does. Again, chorus of "they don't build them like they used to."

Also, janetl @69 - glad to see that Leviathan is not Problematic; this is one that I downloaded when I maybe had a little too much wine and it was late and we had invited a librarian to our party. I think he might have mentioned something about airships and exploding bats? Or was that another one that I downloaded on his recommendation? I don't know. I was quite possibly slightly tipsy. These are some of the hazards of having access to an eReader, wine and literate librarian friends. (I am a fortunate primate indeed!)

I've been saying "circled", but I have no idea if there is an official term and "circled" does sound a bit as if it involves wagons, trails and things scary.

Oh, also, you should have a notification saying I've circled you. I'd be the "Ingvar" with a silly grin and a bow-tie. Bow-ties are cool.

Try looking for /"prickly pear" recipes/ on your favorite search engine.

Why are Israelis called "Sabras"? Sabra is the prickly pear cactus, so Israelis are abrasive on the outside, but sweet on the inside.

HLN: Some of the folks here know that among my various professions, I teach martial arts. I am proud to announce that this month my dojo is celebrating its 20th year, and I am celebrating 40 years training in and teaching my art. This weekend my dojo hosts a seminar: 3 guest teachers, a big party, food, training, training, training.

I hope that the Norns allow me to get to 50 years.

I wish my kid had stuck with her martial arts training, but her teacher was no longer teaching locally and she didn't want to commute to the Upper West Side, where the main dojo was (90 minutes each way at the best of times), which I could totally understand. She didn't want to change schools because almost all the other programs nearby were of the "the whole class moves on together" variety, which doesn't really work.

I loved her sensei; she made me wish _I_ could take classes, which is really saying something. I bet you're a fantastic teacher.

Do you ever wonder why US politics looks like it does? This article describes the system of essentially having congressmen "buy" important positions (subcommittee chair, for example) by the amount they donate. The Republicans under Newt Gingrich pioneered this system, and the Democrats have embraced it fully by now. The path to power in Congress is explicitly based on how much money you raise--as in, there's a written price list. If you don't raise a lot of money, you simply won't get into a position of much importance.

It's very common to think in terms of personalities and personal attributes when you think of politicians. That's natural. But the personalities and personal attributes we see are mostly spin and bullshit, professionally produced images, planted stories, and journalists running with the common narrative because it's easier than thinking. (How often was John McCain described as a maverick outsider, despite decades in the Senate and a voting record that was overwhelmingly keeping to the party line? Once that kind of narrative is established, it's almost impossible to change.)

We try to understand politics that way because we're story-telling creatures at heart, and it makes a good story--the witless heir to the throne stumbles along, manipulated by his wicked elder advisor, or the authentic woman of the people is suppressed by the corrupt, jealous elites whose pretentions she challenges, or ....

But those stories don't have much predictive power. That's why political pundits have awful track records of predicting anything--their job is to be entertaining storytellers, but the stories they make up don't have to be true, just fun to listen to and consistent.

If you really want to understand political decisions, it's much better to understand the system surrounding the politicians.

What incentives face Barrack Obama or Stenny Hoyer or John Boehner or Mitt Romney? What do they worry about? What must they do to get and keep power? Whom do they see as threats to their power?

What filters are in place that they had to get past, in order to be where they are now? What personal traits, expressed beliefs, true beliefs, work habits, etc., would have kept them from getting near the top of the pyramid in terms of power? What friends did they have to keep, and what friends could they not afford? How about enemies?

Who and what controls the flow of information to them about various issues? How do the choose their advisors, and how do they check to see if their advisors are telling them the truth? Who gets to talk to the president or congressional leader or presidential candidate? What happens when those people say stuff that the VP, chief of staff, or president him self don't want to hear? Who can veto some of his advisors?

Those questions are rarely asked in surface-level political coverage. But articles like this one help answer those questions, or at least start answering them.

Good and memorable characters, though.

The other night, I had a (fever-inspired) very complicated weird dream in which my wife appeared as a teenager, I appeared as both my teenaged self and my current self, and the villain we had to overcome was Dick Cheney. (WTF, subconscious?)

I don't wear a post-it note on my forehead that says "het", so I don't see why you should have to wear one that says "gay". Congrats on coming out!

My nephew came out to us earlier this year. My mother's first reaction was, "Oh, no!" When asked why oh no, she said, she wanted him to have children. Once informed that lots of gay people have children, she was happy again. She's in her 70's, was raised by a racist, homophobe mother, and managed to not be either. For the rest of us, it was no issue at all.

I'm very, very glad that for whatever reason, my squick response isn't triggered as long as I have gloves.

Melissa Mead @ 39: This evening I am acquiring Roebic Foaming Root Killer. The internet seems to think it is more effective than the non-foaming copper-sulfate kind. It makes sense -- the non-foaming kind can only reach as high as the water level in the pipe, so it may not reach roots that are coming in the top of the pipe. But the foam will expand to fill the pipe, reaching all the roots.

sisuile @ 48: I had never heard of having the lateral line inspected when I bought this house. I wasn't even aware it was an issue. You can be sure I will have that inspection done the next time I buy a house, and will be asking how old the pipes are.

And yeah, I'd really like to have the replacement done before selling this house. The quoted amount, while more than I have available right now, is a feasible savings goal for the near term. (Although I worry that buyers, like the past me, won't be aware of it and therefore won't see the value in having it already done.)

Thank you for the suggestion to check with the city -- I will definitely be doing that!

CHANGE OF TOPIC

Alan @ 61: Hooray! Happy coming out! *confetti, streamers, popping bottles of champagne or sparkling cider according to your preference*

I'm so glad this stage of the process went well for you. And I'm so glad your sister will be there to back you up when you come out to your parents. (Fingers crossed that your parents react positively.)

What I had to add was a hand sketched picture of a Hugo award, in its current environment.

Strange.

My dog, after years of trying, manages to grab a (tree*) squirrel as it scampered around the base of a tree. I am both horrified and glad for her . . . she tries so hard to get those buggers, but who wants to see a furry critter dismembered?

Kira sets the squirrel up between her front paws and prepares to nip off its head, the way a kid might do in a chocolate Easter bunny.

And then she lets the squirrel go, unsure as how to exactly proceed.

Whew.

I hope the real thing, should it transpire, ends that way.

* (Kira caught a ground squirrel once. Not. Pretty. That wasn't enough for her. Predators . . .)

What makes me uncomfortable is the fact that neither my employer nor this wellness program are HIPPA-covered entities; in fact, the wellness program seems to have been designed explicitly to avoid being HIPPA-covered. RedBrick's privacy policy says that they can get medical information from me (which is reasonable, as I could control what data they have access to); from my employer, directly or indirectly; from my insurer (medical claims data), and from my medical providers.

They also claim the right to share that data with "partners who assist them in providing services" and/or "in the event that we or substantially all of our assets are acquired by one or more third parties as a result of an acquisition, merger, sale, reorganization, consolidation or liquidation, in which case Personal Information may be one of the transferred assets..."

So I'm wondering if I'm being too paranoid, or if this has the possibility to be an unsupervised, unwarranted corporate intrusion into my medical history.

Lizzy L @92: Congratulations!

In the course of her traditional Shoving My Head In The Underbrush and Sniffing, Ardala managed to Hoover up some kind of godknowswhat on her Sunday morning walk. She proceeded to sneeze. And sneeze. And paw at her snout. And sneeze some more. She was fine for a bit, and then did the sneezing again, adding a delightful amount of snottiness and a bit of backwards sneezing to her repertoire. The roommate kept an eye on her when I was out that afternoon and said there had been some more sneezing/honking/pawing fits, but her research indicated that as long as there was no swelling or breathing problems, she would probably sneeze the item out on her own.

On Monday, there were a couple of sneezing attacks but no pawing and we were debating whether to take her to the eVet or wait until our regular vet was open and leave work early today to bring her there. However, last night and this morning there has been only one sneeze, and that one a dainty, non-honking, non-snotty sneeze much like those brought on by her burrowing enthusiastically in her bedding with her face. (who can truly know the mind of a dog?). So, if she continues not explosively sneezing, should I assume she's sneezed whatever it is out? Or has the thing lodged itself further into her face and is waiting to silently kill her (OMG FOXTAIL?!) ? If the latter, could we wait until Saturday so we didn't have to take time off work, or is this completely emergent right now and I'm a terrible Servant Monkey for even considering my own needs above hers? Any advice welcome!

ii
Waste not your time, nor hunt in vain pursuit
Peruse, instead, this humble witness mute,
That I, regardless of your own intents
Did raid the fridge for sweet and purple fruit.

O Thou, who sought, both cleverly and wise,
To save your plums and hide them from my eyes—
Know that I—I did consume them all—
And taste them still, as I apologize.

iii
Little boy hides in the pantry alone.
Fingers and mouth of a purple-y tone.
Hush! Hush! Don't flap your gums!
Christopher Robin is eating your plums.

iv
Blah blah blah plums, blah blah fridge,
Blah blah blah blah sweet blah cold.

is this "wellness specialist" entitled to pass information they recieve *back* to your employer? Say, information your employer isn't entitled to require from you, or allowed to use in continuance of employment decisions (but of course, they wouldn't?)

Having said that, and ramping down my paranoia somewhat, that sounds like regular "we need this to work" and "in case we are sold/go bankrupt, our new owners would find us rather useless if we can no longer use this information to do our job" boilerplate.

That doesn't mean, of course, that it isn't a way to un-HIPAA your information (because you've given permission to break the lock, at least from the insurance companies) for global dispersal.

Also, what partners? And what restrictions on the use of that information do they put on those partners?

Note: as a Canadian, HIPAA-compliance is only something my company's products aim to ensure for our clients, to aid audit.

I blame my editor.

Alan: Congrats on taking this step (won't it be nice when it's not a step people have to take, specifically). Glad you've got such a nice Big Sister and I hope all goes well when you tell your mother.

I'd watch for more sneeze attacks; also for discharges, particularly purulent and odoriferous kinds, and swellings of the face. If none of these occur, the likelihood of any foreign body in the sinuses goes down. You can always have your pup checked by the regular vet at your convenience.

Kip W @ 105: I believe you have won today's Internets. Congratulations!

Alan Yee: Also congratulations! (I've been out for nearly 30 years, and it generally gets easier..)

Apparently my google-fu is stronger tonight.

Here is another picture of her, looking somewhat more like La Virgen.

And then I opened up this video and my day improved radically. This Unitarian Universalist minister, the Reverend Marian Stewart, does us proud, especially when she says, "We are asking for more than they can possibly imagine!" Maybe it'll make your day, too.

nerdycellist @ 85: glad to see that Leviathan is not Problematic; this is one that I downloaded when I maybe had a little too much wine and it was late and we had invited a librarian to our party. Why is it that stories involving librarians always have a bacchanal quality?

Melissa Singer @ 87: My 15-yo was upset at some of the animal engineering in Leviathan but read it anyway. To me, that indicates that it probably passes the female smell-test, because she tends to outright reject anything that doesn't have enough/good female characters.
It's perfectly reasonable to be upset by some of the animal engineering. I think Westerfeld intends the Darwinian and Clanker technologies and societies to have both positive and negative qualities. The books also show war and combat as negative, rather than as exciting.

1'm 1n y0ur fr1d63, 3471n6 y0ur p|um5!

(And yes, Kip's were way way better :-)

The current Capitol One ad series with the loudmouthed jackass Jewish caricature character I find extremely offensive....

Regarding octopus, 1912 was just shy of a century ago. Use of an octopus to denote something with tentacles stuck in everything, was not anything I had any awareness of as being symbolically antisemitic.... and especially the term "Kochtopus" refers to a pair of men who are spreaders of evangelizing narrow-minded bigot Kheristianity who probably claim to be Christian.

Generally and vernacularly I have never heard/seen until today that I can recall, any identifying of the vernacular "octopus" denoting tentacles glomming in and grabbing and cramming in everywhere, to slurs on Jews... as opposed to "octopus" for a person who puts their hands all over other people without permission without regards to race, creed, color, or national origin of the person playing "octopus."

#8 LinD
When I was a child I did just that with M&Ms, and disliked the oranged and yellow ones because I disliked the colors. I was really unhappy with they discontinued the tan ones and kept the yellow ones....

#28 James
Thank you for the link.

#29 Thena
There is a native prickly pear in Massachusetts. The one in my yard's been stpreading. It has short very fine spines. My aunt hand had one with 7" long vicious needles, but the Cape Cod weather with some nasty storms eventually caused its demise... '

#30 nerdy
Roland Green's Starcruiser Shenandoah books (there are six of them, but one of them Amazon didn;t seem to realize belonged to the series... the last couple the publisher hid that...) , if you like military SF, do not have sex stereotyping in them. They've got an ensemble of characters, with Captain Rose Liddell tapped to be the new captain for Shenandoah, commissioned years before but never actually having seen service time, with Adm. Sho Kuwahara aboard as commander of a small constellation of ships, Vice Admiral Diana Longman (minor character, with the nickname "The Golden Vanity" but no, she is not seducing anyone...) shows up as senior commander in space, and her nephew, Lt Charlie Longman, isn't happy to be in an area where one of the numerous admirals who are his relatives, is the senior commander. He's bunked in a coed wardroom with Brigette Tachin, a young officer, another male officer whose name I can;t think of but he's got a few more years and experience on him, and Elaine Zhena, a mustang whose two main interests in life are going on attack runs in one of the attack craft carried by Shenandoah, and recreational sex (done offduty and NOT for career enhancement/blackmail/leverage otherwise/etc.) There's also Candice Shores, a young Army officer, and other characters... command ranks gender mostly isn't an issue. The Weapons Officer in charge of what the contemporary euphemism for is "weapons of mass destruction" is a motherly-seeming older woman, for example. The Army has a higher ratio of men than women, but there's Candice Shores, and a female sharpshooter, and others even in the Army.

Regarding the coed wardroom, there was a line about roommates, "Some chose roommates of the interesting sex, some of the uninteresting sex. Those who had neither preference nor manners, got sent to the Army." There are also homosexual characters, some with major ensemble roles (for that matter, one of the characters mentioned above is bi) and in pairbonded relationships... The books came out in the 1980s.

#31 Caroline
What about trees with long taproots, such as walnut trees?

Sometimes fast reading will substitute for a dream-- I saw that as being about being personally added to a chain letter, being put into an envelope to be passed along to the next recipient.

Which leads to the notion of sentient spam....

#118 ::: David Harmon

Can you say a bit more about how Thirteen Orphans is going? I liked the first book, and then the second book started with the dullest action sequence in the world (in my very strongly felt opinion) and I never got past it.

(xkcd proposes sentient spambots.)

Perhaps the sentient spam would be a good thing.

But then, the one story I know about Jews & horns, is about my HS vice principal, whose father was a Conservative rabbi in central Pennsylvania. One day in the 1940s he was giving a speech to a mixed audience, and called for questions. First question: "Jew, where are your horns?" So the horns thing was still current 60+ years ago. A long time ago.

ObSF: The closest to an antisemitic stereotype in Star Trek was, imho, the Ferengi. Short, obsessed with observing the rules, money-driven, and with big ears in lieu of big noses. Oh, and they keep their women down.

The Consumer Price Index includes sales tax in its computation. Implementing a 9% nationwide sales tax would mean that SS checks (and other payments) would increase by roughly that amount (depends on the weighting) plus the regular inflation rate.

And if Congress tried to monkey with the computation to exclude that 9%...well, retired people don't have anything to do on election day but vote.

In any event, the 999 plan is a non-starter for many reasons, not least of which is all the special interests that profit from the current tax setup.

Simplicity is appealing until it collides with the reality that a nation and its politics is not actually, you know, simple.

Keeping their women down? I thought the stereotype is that Jewish women are infuriatingly but uselessly dominant.

Do you think short ugly merchant is part of the anti-Semitic memeplex?

From a different angle, I didn't realize Lord Gro (from The Worm Ourboros is at least a physical match for anti-Semitic stereotypes until I read a book about medieval anti-Semitism. I'm fairly sure that the average non-Jewish reader wouldn't know it either.

I doubt it's useful to assume that all the old stereotypes are still in play. It's messy because what's going on is inside people's heads and it can be hard to be sure about what they're thinking.

Huh. I always thought the Ferengi were supposed to be a thinly disguised stereotype of the Japanese. But I guess I wasn't really aware of anti-semitism as a concept when ST:TNG was first broadcast in the UK.

Steve, #132: I think Herman Cain is dreaming. At the end of the day, being black is the one exception to IOKIYAR.

To me it brings to mind an SNL parody of "The Omen" where John Belushi played Damien.

Surely, The Number of The Beast is even more evil when it is inverted ;)

(Yes, it needed that wink).

HellBoy limited himself to filing them down.

But, some of them are M-side down. And the Ms are not aligned.

OMG. I'd totally forgotten about those. My mother used to get those, and make chicken-and-dumplings with them.

Speaking of retch-worthiness. ::gloRK::

To this day, I can't stand wet bread in any form.

I'm too frightened to get that one.

Very wise.

This morning, on my way to work, two late-teen girls got on the bus, sat together, and held hands the whole time.

It does get better.

Inversely, I also dream that I walk down the street or look out the window, and discover that my house is just blocks from a really bad neighborhood, the kind that's basically a war zone, and I had somehow never had any idea. In this dream I always think "I've got to get out of here. But who's going to buy this place with a neighborhood like that? I'm trapped here!"

When I was having really bad anxiety symptoms, I would often dream of being in a house where the front door kept falling off its hinges, or the doorknob and deadbolt kept falling out. In these dreams there was always a murderer approaching the house. I was frantically trying to secure the front door before he got there and killed me, but it kept falling apart.

Lately I've been having dreams that a road or a huge shopping center or industrial complex is being built literally in my parents' backyard, like inches from their house. I'm upset but completely helpless; it's a fait accompli.

House dreams are interesting. In mine, the house tends to be a fairly obvious metaphor for the self.

"World's dullest action scene" <snorfle>, but that's actually pretty brief, and it does set up a lot of stuff for that book and the next. Besides kicking the Orphans into action (so much for careful planning and reconnoitering), it gives them information, a little extra muscle for later, and a number of handicaps for the meantime....

Diatryma #127: Well, that's the "outward bound" half of the "arrivals" theme, and it's characteristic of this story type: liminal character(s) find problem extending between this world/land and another, so they need to venture into the other world(s) to fix it. However, if the series does continue, I'd expect a bit more "home action" as Brenda deals with her other heritage, and the surviving Orphans start dealing with loose ends, including fallout from the trilogy climax. (Cynfgvp Fhetrel sbe Sylvat Pynj?)

This meant training with a CO₂ extinguisher and a fire hose, putting out a flaming cooking pan with a fire blanket, and smothering the flames on an ignited dummy (all tremendously enjoyable). It also involved participating in an office-clearing drill twice: once as a searcher, once as an ordinary person needing to be found and removed from the building. Area woman slightly smug that she was the only one not found by the search team (hiding under a desk).

Area woman also pleased to have purchased a CO₂ fire extinguisher for her home, as well as another fire blanket (the training company sells them at cost). Is now considering smoke detectors for the main bedrooms (there's already one per floor in the common spaces) and just one more fire blanket (one for each floor of the house).

Area woman did not like the training videos very much.

This weekend I think I made someone's week by saying "Thank you for that lucid description description of signal transduction in cardiovascular muscle, but to ask an unrelated question, aren't you the Dr. So-and-So who plays accordion for the Ig Nobel prize ceremony?" When, in the resulting conversation he learned that both me and my better half knew our Tom Lehrer, I think it made his month.

Come to think of it, Dad was a Jew with horns. About half a dozen by time he retired, 22 years ago. 2 Bb trumpets, a cornet, C and D trumpets, an A piccolo trumpet. No rotary-valve trumpets, though, as he stopped playing in symphony orchestras before that particular revival started.

You can see a picture of him with his primary Bb horn here, c. 1975, bottom row center (Syd Baker). Also his 1970s jacket. I think he still had it in the closet when he died. Who knows? Loud plaids could have come back into style.

Nancy @ 133: Keeping the women down. Well, if you hang out with Orthodox Feminists and their "supporters" (fifth column, e.g. Conservative rabbis who already have egalitarianism), you get the impression that the Orthodox have been keeping women down, not letting them have their God-given rights in synagogue.

Caroline @ 149: I just had that first dream of yours a couple of weeks ago. I was in my uncle's room at my grandparents' apartment, looking in the closet, and there was a door that lead to a few steps down to a big electronics lab, filled with pre-1950 (when he moved out for college and forever) equipment. Brick walls, benches, shelves, meters, bins of parts, papers, etc.

Bits of reality underlying the dream: yes, there was a semi-hidden door in that closet, but it led to a small bookshelf area. Uncle Dick was into electronics (he was mainly a philosophy prof), and in fact had an electronics lab in his basement, where he designed and built obscure types of audio equipment.

By contrast, I entirely approve of National Ice Cream Day, as this has resulted, more than once, in free! ice cream! And what's not to like about that?

Do they even sell books anymore? Whose fault is this? Supply chain? The buyers? Is the customer base entirely stereotypically airheaded l.a. jackwagons and gormless slack-jawed tourists who come to gape at that one guy they saw on the tee-vee once, and so don't encourage the buyers to, I don't know ACTUALLY KEEP BOOKS IN STOCK AND ORDER NEW ONES?

As with most things involving books I'm taking this rather personally, but man, if this had happened when I was buying the eReader, I probably would have gone with a Kindle.

The aforementioned Uncle Dick (in the post queued for moderation; to some extent this is a test to see if his nickname is a "Word of Power") was at Harvard with Lehrer (diff. departments) for a year, and subsequently bought all his records, so we grew up with Lehrer songs. I think my brother took them off to college, where they got badly warped in storage.

His nickname is not a Word of Power. Your link formation, on the other hand, is sweet and tasty to the gnomes.

Check at preview! Dilute! Dilute! Okay!

However, in my experience, the store is perfectly happy to order a title for you and you don't have to pay for it unless you decide you want it (and you can look at it and decline to purchase). Though that means two trips to the story and you still have to cope with that moment of sharp disappointment.

I've even had B&N store personnel go into the back room to hunt down books for me that "should" have been on the shelf but weren't.

Borders personnel were never that nice to me. The only trouble I've ever had at a B&N was from a hipster-looking fellow working the Nook counter in Union Square who obviously assessed me as "old and therefore technically illiterate" and whose primary response to my questions about the device (when my mother was thinking of buying one) were, basically, "she should come to us for tech support." Whereas the older guy at the Forest Hills B&N answered tons of questions (and eventually sold me the Color Nook I now own).

All that said, I hate that moment when you get to the shelf and the book you want Is Not There! Aaaaaaaa!

(now, if I really want it and I have my Nook with me and it's not a graphic novel, I buy it electronically)

>Jews With Horns @ 139, 140

Come to think of it, Dad was a Jew with horns. About half a dozen by time he retired, 22 years ago. 2 Bb trumpets, a cornet, C and D trumpets, an A piccolo trumpet. No rotary-valve trumpets, though, as he stopped playing in symphony orchestras before that particular revival started.

You can see a picture of him with his primary Bb horn here, c. 1975, bottom row center (Syd Baker). Also his 1970s jacket. I think he still had it in the closet when he died. Who knows? Loud plaids could have come back into style.

Nancy @ 133: Keeping the women down. Well, if you hang out with Orthodox Feminists and their "supporters" (fifth column, e.g. Conservative rabbis who already have egalitarianism), you get the impression that the Orthodox have been keeping women down, not letting them have their God-given rights in synagogue.

Caroline @ 149: I just had that first dream of yours a couple of weeks ago. I was in my uncle's room at my grandparents' apartment, looking in the closet, and there was a door that lead to a few steps down to a big electronics lab, filled with pre-1950 (when he moved out for college and forever) equipment. Brick walls, benches, shelves, meters, bins of parts, papers, etc.

Bits of reality underlying the dream: yes, there was a semi-hidden door in that closet, but it led to a small bookshelf area. Uncle Dick was into electronics (he was mainly a philosophy prof), and in fact had an electronics lab in his basement, where he designed and built obscure types of audio equipment.

Alan 61: Congratulations! Also, what Laura and abi said. And everyone else.

Lizzy 92: Congratulations, and may it be so.

Kip 105: Magnificent! Thanks for that.

Nancy 133: Do you think short ugly merchant is part of the anti-Semitic memeplex?

Absolutely. One word: Rumplestiltskin.

Actually someone had to tell me Rumplestiltskin was an anti-Semitic story; I'm ashamed I didn't figure it out for myself. The ugly dwarf with a) the long unpronounceable name and b) the talent for making money seemingly out of nothing, who c) makes a business deal that's considered unfair by the no-longer-as-desperate partner, and d) wants to take your child for some unspecified but no doubt nefarious purpose...well, it stinks of (premodern European) anti-Semitism fairly intensely.

John 137: On the contrary, Ron Jeremy is always depicted as horny.

TMK 143: The late Alexei Kondratiev taught me that Cernunnos (a Celtic Horned God) has horns only when he's in our world, and he only comes to our world when he's been murdered in the Otherworld by his wife's lover: thus a cuckold, and hence the traditional horn idea for cuckolds generally. So he taught; but I think there's room for ovogallic uncertainty there.

Ibid., 152: I assume you're kidding.

Serge 153: I always thought Ig was Alfred's good-for-nothing younger brother.

These two books were actually of interest to my roommate - well, both of us, but the money would be coming out of her pocket and she would get to read them first, so therefore they couldn't just be downloaded. I checked online and was so shocked that both of those titles were out of stock in the one store I also called them, assuming maybe there was a computer error. They confirmed that those books weren't in store, although they claimed their shipment of "Aloha From Hell" had just not arrived yet (but all the other stores were fine? I can't remember the last time I saw a book with a street date NOT delivered weeks ahead of the date with crazy warning stickers about the consequences of putting the book out early) and offered to order. But then, why have a brick & mortar if not to offer instant gratification? As long as I have to wait until the weekend to get a book, I may as well use that as an excuse to make a field trip to the new Redondo Beach Mysterious Galaxy.

I've worked B&N in both NYC and the far suburbs of Milwaukee and I generally know how things work. I know the name-tag on the floor has no control over anything and to be honest, they've been nothing but nice and polite to me. But I also know that the buyers often tweak their stock to reflect their customers, which is why for instance my UWS B&N carried a huge psychiatry section rather than just the self-help and pop psych that my Milwaukee store did. That's why I'm equally frustrated with the store for not deeming frontlist genre stuff important and also, I'm frustrated with this city and its shallow bullshit culture dragging all my favorite institutions down to its level.

When I slipped on the wet floor ("Incontinent Dog" will be the name of my next rock band*), I at first thought I'd only landed on my butt, which hurt a lot. But my head felt like it should be puffy and swollen on the left side, only it wasn't; but it felt like it was. And the lights seemed bright, a lot brighter than normal. And my thinking was foggy and slow.

All that (wrong signals from the nervous system, overly bright lights, half-speed thinking) made me think (slowly) that I might have hit my head in the fall too. But I didn't remember hitting my head, which was yet another reason to worry.

So I had one of our housemates drive me over to the Mayo Hospital ER. (We have another hospital and ER less than a mile from our house, but my primary doctor is with Mayo, plus Mayo's ER has a lot less traffic and can usually get you in and out in a few hours, whereas the closer hospital usually has a minimum wait time of about eight hours. The ten-mile difference is worth it.)

While waiting for examination and a cat scan, it was interesting to see how my mind was working. Idle thoughts, "daydreaming", were much more like actual night dreams, going off in odd little unexpected directions. The name "Esme Savage" popped into my mind at one point, for absolutely unknown reasons; it'd be a good character name for a story, though, so I might use it someday.

Cat scan came out okay, so I got diagnosed with a mild concussion and basically told to take it easy for a few days. Called off from work, slept quite a bit last night. Doing better today.

*(I'm growing increasingly frustrated by our dog's bladder problems, which have been going on for months and have had only temporary abatements with antibiotics and other medications. The latest round of antibiotics seemed to be helping again, but in the last few days... twice more just today. I'm about ready to scream. At the veterinarian, not the dog.)

Did he live in Queens?

Serge 167: I think so, yes. Did you know him? He spoke at least a smattering of 42 languages, and was fluent in (IIRC) 14 of them, including all six major Celtic languages (Gaelics of Scotland, Ireland, and Man; Cornish (!), Welsh, and Breton). He was an enormous resource on Celtic and Slavic mythology and history.

When he died, it was like losing the library of Alexandria.

nerdycellist: that kind of store-manager control grows increasingly rare, alas. Your annoyance is generally understandable on all fronts.

That's the kind of thing I mean. If even Jewish people have to be told that Rumplestiltskin has a basis in anti-Semitism, then it seems to be it isn't contributing to current anti-Semitism. Or do you think it's rumbling along in the subconsciouses of non-Jews?

I don't think I'd have figured it out even if I'd been told that a well-known fairy tale has anti-Semitic roots.

This being said, it's different from a lot of standard fairy tales in that many of them have a message of generosity to strangers-- the youngest child succeeds because they're generous to the people and animals they meet on the road, and the older siblings weren't, but iirc, there's no generosity in Rumplestiltskin.

Actually, it's a little like Hansel and Gretel-- the main characters are made vulnerable to the monster by lack of loyalty from their own people people.

In any case, I've taken it that Bernie Madoff has proven that Americans generally aren't primed for serious anti-Semitism.

#166 ::: Bruce Arthurs:

Best wishes for you and your dog.

And you're right. There's really no virtue of any kind in that story. There's a liar, a total nutbar, a desperate woman, and an exploiter. I guess the least horrible person would be the girl whose father bragged she could spin straw into gold, and though she cheats the evil Jew character, it's to save the life of her son (by the nutbar who locked her up in the first place). So she's forced by circumstances to compromise her integrity to save the life of her child.

None of which excuses the anti-Semitism, medieval though it is.

It irritates me that popular culture treats concussion as a trivial thing — people are routinely clobbered into unconsciousness and are none the worse for it half an hour later. In the movie "Tangled" (the jumping off point for a recent thread), one of the characters is knocked unconscious with a frying pan several times in a row. In various action dramas, the hard right to the jaw is the hero's equivalent of 'phasers on stun'.

Impressionable people might get the impression this was appropriate behavior.

well, it stinks of (premodern European) anti-Semitism fairly intensely.

Would that those myths had died out as early as that phrase implies. The story about baby-snatching and -eating was current in Austria and Germany in the last years of the 19th Century and possibly even later in Poland from what I've heard.

And there's still a general attitude that Jews are always (perhaps secretly) rich. My wife's closest friend, a Christian, who has known us for more than 25 years, was very surprised 10 years ago when we had money troubles because I was out of work for a year and a half. She had just automatically assumed that we must be independently wealthy, being Jews.

I'm joking. A little on the loopy side after too little sleep, which isn't uncommon for me, but what IS rare is that I'm enjoying the hell out of it this time. Still, it's clearly time for bed.

From too much love of stonefruit,
From greed and plain deceit,
I took – ‘twas not my own fruit –
But oh! so cold and sweet,
My gluttony enslaving
My will, for I was craving
The plums that you were saving
To be a special treat.

Yup. That sounds like Aliocha Kondratiev. When I visited New York City in the early 1980s, I'd stay with his family. How did he pass away? I lost touch with the Kondratiev Gang, even though I have fond memories of those visits, especially the time in 1983 when I walked around Greenwich Village with his sister Kira and some of her friends, and Kira appreciated it when one of my puns sent her stalker scurrying away.

I always appreciated you have a talent, but I never realized it was a superpower!

HIM: "As far as I'm concerned, you can go back to Alaska and turn into an iceberg!"
ME: "Would you prefer an ugly berg."
HIM: "Huh?"
HER: (very grateful smile in my direction)

Every now and then it’s worth pausing to reflect on how often we talk about the killing of people by the U.S. Literally, the U.S. government is just continuously killing people in multiple countries around the world. Who else does that? Nobody — certainly nowhere near on this scale. The U.S. President expressly claims the power to target anyone he wants, anywhere in the world, for death, including his own citizens; he does it in total secrecy and with no oversight; and this power is not just asserted but routinely exercised. The U.S., over and over, eradicates people’s lives by the dozens from the sky, with bombs, with checkpoint shootings, with night raids — in far more places and far more frequently than any other nation or group on the planet. Those are just facts

We've quietly swallowed one extraordinary claim of executive power after another, and one nasty foreign policy action (bombings, invasions, alliances with brutal dictators, assassinations, etc.) after another. We hardly even notice, and each president who does these things can count on most of the respectable media in the US backing them up, even to the point of ignoring or distorting critics. He can also count on his party base, and the support of increasingly powerful intelligence services and the military, and all their supporters.

The result is that we all get used to it. What policies or ideas sound crazy to us mostly depends on what we are used to hearing--and among the powerful in the US, routinely killing foreigners is universally accepted policy, and people arguing against it get painted as extremists (know-nothing isolationists or America-hating dirty hippies, depending on which image will work better to discredit them.)

She says, "She's medium sized, light brown, maybe a pitt-mix mutt, and looks like she's actually about to have puppies. She's really sweet, but we already have a dog and can't afford to take care of another one (plus puppies). If anyone may be interested in taking her in, or knows of someone else who might want to, or knows of a good organization that might take her and help please let me know."

She's in NYC, but I'm not sure which borough.

Then I see, on television, a group of modern fundamentalist Christians attending a staged Passion Play, and I remember my classes that mentioned Obergammerau and what happened every year after the staging, and I think of Nehemiah Scudder and how Heinlein's fiction looks uncomfortably like prophecy, and I start to fucking PANIC.

This is not a nice feeling.

(I think I even ran it here at least once, so this time I'm just linking.)

I confess to being prejudiced against Swinburne, because he wrote something tarty about poor Oscar when he passed on, prompting me to pencil a notation in the margin of the book to the effect that, if there's a Hell for pigs, then swine burn too.

Her husband says: "She has some health issues and has Alzheimer's. Combined they deprive her of lucidity a great deal of the time and reduce her ability to process or cope."

While not completely unexpected (she's elderly and has had some major stresses in her life in the last couple of years), this is still very sad news.

Many thanks for the suggestions about black rice! Eventually Mme Barebones ended up making it into a pilav (roasted the grains in oil, and then boiled) which was pretty good. Unfortunately, the supermarket I bought it in has decided to stop stocking it.

Incidentally, a quick look through my View All By reveals that previous food-stuffs I've posted about on Making Light include cuttlefish in ink, beef in black beer (aka beef schadenfreude) and purple carrots. In the interests of establishing that famille Barebones doesn't subsist entirely on foodstuffs from the 'black and purple' food group I should probably mention that the black rice got served with
this.

On the plus side, you might observe that Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum— true believers all, and the closest thing to national-level politicians that dominionist Christians have currently got these days— are widely regarded in the U.S. political press as the American equivalent of British monster raving loonies.

The dominionists are constitutionally just not really capable of managing the process that would be required for them to acquire the power necessary to make your fears into reality. They're legitimate fears, yes, and I know they're real. I don't mean to dismiss them. I have the same fears too, because in addition to being anti-semitic, they also don't have very savory views of my religious affinity group, either. I sympathize, I really do.

But "PANIC" may not really be warranted until they level up their game somewhat.

(I do also know my Tom Lehrer, so perhaps the meeting would go well.)

xopher halftongue @181: not an answer, but your phrasing reminds me of "middleman", an awesome one-season tv show in a very comic book style. (middleman was a tv script first, then a comic book, then an actual show.)
the main character would have similar "stump the band" conversations with a friend on her way to her apartment.

The local B&N has been getting multiple copies of books in -weeks- after the release date (the specific example of Cast in Ruin, by Michelle Sagara--no copies for a month, then seven or eight of them a month AFTER publication?? ....)

Meanwhile, on display in on the first floor in the New Books section near the up escalator, is a plethora of books by one of the Fux slime... grrrrr.....

The store expanded its teen paranormal section to half the size of the adult romance section, which is about half the size of the adult SF/F including media tie-in books, section, some weeks back. The romance section is half the size it was a couple years ago, the SFF section is probably about the same size as it was. Teen paranormal didn't its own space until earlier this year when all sorts of things moved around.

I was in the store Tuesday and the notation on the computer display for the new Laura Anne Gilman book was "check with bookseller" or some such, it was not showing as in inventory in the store.

#166 Bruce
Have you considered crating the dog?

#176 Nancy
Some of Madoff's most prominent victims were Jewish charities and Jews.

Consider Sens Paul and DeMint's most recent legislative initiatives, which include:

from e.g.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?r112:1:./temp/~r112auIkfD:e38355:

and

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?r112:1:./temp/~r112auIkfD:e49172:

SA 773. Mr. DeMINT submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by

[Page: S6611] GPO's PDF

him to the bill H.R. 2112, making appropriations for Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies programs for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2012, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:

At the appropriate place, insert the following:

SEC. __. REPEAL OF THE DODD-FRANK WALL STREET REFORM AND CONSUMER PROTECTION ACT.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Public Law 111-203) is repealed, and the provisions of law amended by such Act are revived or restored as if such Act had not been enacted.

SA 768. Mr. DeMINT submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by him to the bill H.R. 2112, making appropriations for Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies programs for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2012, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:

At the appropriate place, insert the following:

Sec. __. None of the funds made available by this Act may be used for mifepristone, commonly known as RU-486.

SA 774. Mr. DeMINT (for himself and Mr. Vitter) submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by him to the bill H.R. 2112, making appropriations for Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies programs for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2012, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:

At the appropriate place, insert the following:

SEC. __. OPPOSITION TO FUNDING BY THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND FOR THE EUROPEAN FINANCIAL STABILITY FACILITY.

The United States Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund shall use the voice and vote of the United States to oppose--

(1) the use of any funds that include any contributions from the United States to the Fund for the European Financial Stability Facility;

(2) any additional funding provided by the Fund for any program related to the Facility; and

(3) any increase in the authority of the Fund that may be used to provide support for the Facility or any such program.

SA 777. Mr. PAUL (for himself and Mr. DeMint) submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by him to the bill H.R. 2112, making appropriations for Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies programs for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2012, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:

At the appropriate place, insert the following:

Sec. __. None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to implement the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (Public Law 111-353) (or any amendment made by such Act).

SA 778. Mr. PAUL (for himself and Mr. DeMint) submitted an amendment intended to be proposed to amendment SA 738 proposed by Mr. Inouye to the bill H.R. 2112, making appropriations for Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies programs for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2012, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:

On page 83, between lines 20 and 21, insert the following:

Sec. X. None of the funds made available by this Act to the Food and Drug Administration may be used for the purchase of weapons or ammunition to be used in enforcement activities, including raids.

====
Those are samples of a few of the riders DeMint and Paul and their ilk are attempting to "amend" the bill with, many of them completely UNrelated to the contents of the body of the bill itself, they are trying to stuff it full of their mean-spirited, narrow-minding, misogynistic, "Gospel so cold it would freeze up the joy in your heart" intolerant bigoted ideology....

DeMint went above the radar yesterday when the interpretation of one of his amendments--the RU-486 one of the ones I read looks the most likely--is that it would ban telemedicine advising women about abortions.... which confused me until I ran across

Separate Internet, Video-Conferencing, and Phone Systems for Abortion?
By
Blog for Choice
on June 17, 2011 9:25 AM |
....
The U.S. House of Representatives passed an amendment on June 16 that could make it impossible for a woman to even talk with her doctor about medical abortion over the Internet and through videoconferencing.

Who's behind this terrible idea? Anti-choice Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). Rep. King has been quite active this year, attacking women's rights at every turn. This is just the latest in his War on Women

The link from that article, describes how women in rural areas are getting RU-486 prescribed and its application overseen by an MD, using video connections over the Internet, meaning that they don't have to travel hundreds of miles taking hours or days and income they might not have to spare, to get to a clinic where there are trained MD able and willing to oversee them taking RU-486 to comply with the ever-more-draconian laws in the USA....

Were these intended as poison pills to keep the bill from passing?

"So, what would be the craziest, most irresponsible thing we could do right now?"

I used to go to SUSB; things were pretty dead out there on Saturday mornings. Especially before the mall and such open. There will be some traffic on the LIE and Northern State in Nassau and Queens of course, but we're not talking rush hour by any means.

As for actual travel time, I honestly no longer remember.

I wish we had the monster raving loonies. They have some basic honesty that's missing in the Republican party.

*drools*

Further open threadiness: Today, October 20th, was Spirit Day a.k.a. Wear Purple Day, to raise awareness of anti-queer bullying and honor the memories of young people who have committed suicide over the years because of anti-queer bullying. I didn't wear purple today because the purple shirt I bought for Spirit Day last year mysteriously disappeared after I brought all my stuff home for the summer. Nonetheless, it is an issue that cuts very close to home for me. I've never had to experience anti-queer bullying directed at me personally, but there was a point where I was afraid I might attempt suicide during my freshman year of high school. The full details are under friends-lock on my LJ--it was by far the darkest time of my life, so dark that I usually don't talk about it now that I am a much happier person these days.

And though I still have five more hours to go in my time zone, I'll announce it now so I don't have to post again: Tomorrow, October 21, is my twentieth birthday. I will officially no longer be a teenager. This is frightening because I was barely a teenager (thirteen) when I first stumbled upon Making Light. Have I really been reading ML for six years? Doesn't seem like it.

I can see how the Ferengi could be read as antisemitic stereotypes, but the thing that strikes me about them is that "ferengi" is Hindi for "European", something that gave me the same delighted shock when I learned it as that "smeagol" means "loophole" in Swedish.

Not sure anyone noticed, and didn't see too much (non University of Washington) purple today, but then again, I didn't really go anywhere either.

DeMint & Paul & others [Bachman is another, Sessions... the neurons are retrieving some additional names now ] nowwhose names are not firing neural retrieval quickly for their names, but various of them have gotten very non-postive mentioning on Making LIght, make nutbar conspiracy subscribers look like credible proponents of rational theory.

They're not trying to poison-pill the legislation, they're doing their version of maneuvers analogous to financial earmarks--only instead of studding the bill with handouts of money to their pet projects for their districts, they're studding the bill with prohbitions and blockages and gag orders and repeals of any and all prior legislation they object to....

It gets scarier, a bunch of Democrats are in seats for which the elections are in November 2012. The Repukes elected last year have five more years before elections, and those elected three years ago, three years. The frothing-at-the-mouth inflexible intolerants highjacked the House of Representative last election (the fellow who was screaming at the President at the State of the Union message was about as respectful as a rabid weasel, or maybe I'm insulting rabid weasels.

These are people who make look dogmatically flexible and open-minded the infamous Congresscritter whose line during the hearings for the impeachment of Richard Milhous Nixon was "Don't confuse me with the facts" when he was explaining how it didn't matter what may have actually happened, he was not going to cast a vote condemning Nixon and vote towards removing Nixon from office....

They sort of remind me someone who failed to get promoted from second lieutenant to first lieutenant, which is all but automatic. He was firmly convinced that the Sino-Soviet split was a propaganda ploy aimed at the United States...

That's not to say that there haven't been virulent anti-semites in the USA -- Prescott Bush was a Nazi collaborator but his buddies kept the full extent of his treason--and that it was treason--secret for something like 50 or more years--the was a lawsuit which the damned Supreme Court was it, threw out claiming the statute of limitations had run out. The lawsuit was filed when the proof came out, until then there was no actual proof of what had long been suspected.... (I think I or someone else wrote that up on Making Light months or years ago).

Jews were banned from all sorts of clubs and institutions, Harvard has a quota of how many Jews it allowed well into the 20th century, Grosse Point, Michigan in the 1960s was off-limits to Jews, the US Army and then Air Force also were averse to promoting Jews to general officer rank even in the 1950s and 1960s.... (the father of a cousin's wife had that particular glass ceiling applied).

There -were- I think lynchings....

The Jews passing through England, from Europe to America, knew where to go when they arrived.

Maybe the difference is that things are better-documented, but I can see how that could both feed anti-semitic myths, and avert them. They were a different sort of immigrant community in how they slotted in to American society.

Since the USA and the other countries in the western hemisphere are much newer societies with newer traditions and cultural memes than European societies (eastern hemisphere diseases having wiped out most of the societies and people who were here before the European colonizers arrived, from the infectious disease carriers who were on-board Columbus' ships)

(note that dear darling Messrs. Paul and DeMint want to apparently defund all actions regarding inspection and quarantine of materials suspect for harboring pests, being imported.... one of the effects of the creation of the DHS and the hysteria about immigrants, terrorist fantasy scenarios taking primacy for funding and attention, is that the inspections for incoming pests and invasives species be they animal, vegetable, fungus, bacteria, virus, or whatever, dropped down to where the Asian longhorn beetle devastated the trees of Worcester Massachusetts and are threatening the hardwood forests of the northeast--the quarantine of wood in Worcester and tree inspection and felling of infected trees and disposal of them failed to be sufficiently effective measures to prevent the things from spreading, and where other pests have gotten into the USA --due to lack of inspection and clueful inspectors being used as inspectors instead of shunted into stupid DHS hysteria alleged terrorist tail-chasings....)

the institutionalized anti-Semitism of Europe didn't have the root-depth of the situation in Europe--there were embedded cultural stereotypes being applied from generation to generation with the same reinforcement of "see that stream, that was where a Jew sold a horse to your great-grandfather that turned lame two days later!" or "the Jewish tax collectors 200 years ago came into this very house and...." etc. New places mean some degree of new tradition and new adaption and changes in thinking.

Also, there were a lot of Jewish peddlers who brough much-needed goods our around the frontier particularly, if one is dependent upon a merchant for needles, nails, etc., antagonizing the merchant is a bad idea!

Perhaps additional factors were that with more -space- and without long-institutionalizd ghettos and without again reinforced long histories of real or perceived ancestral grudges with the very geography being reminders and reinforcement, those encouraged thinking differently and being less mindlessly repeating word and actions (actions being intolerance and abusiveness). The mobility level was a lot higher, and it wasn;t the same people all spouting and spreading and reinforcing the same posion to the same degree....

My great-grandfather, his father-in-law, a well-respected and successful businessman, I asked him to describe once. "He was a good man. A good Christian man. A good, praying, church-going, Baptist man. And he hated Jews." Somehow, I'm not surprised that my grandparents left NYC right after they married and never went back.

Swarthy people with scary-sounding names and religions should be obliged to change to nice American names and religions and get their skin lightened. Hey presto: no more terrorism! Just isolated incidents.

Yours,

Which reminds me -- Thank You to whoever it was in whichever thread it was that mentioned Middleman favourably enough that I have acquired, watched, and enjoyed said program, and expect to repeat the latter two actions many times.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/archives/tim_burton_float_macys_thanksgiving_/#

Local woman is now concerned because she and husband didn't have time to isolate new cat; time was something of an issue. Woman hopes that apartment is still intact when she and husband return tonight.

Happy birthday, by the way, in the midst of all of these interesting and powerful developments. And many happy returns of the day!

I would certainly not call this a bad thing, but it sure was a weird thing.

The old neighbors moved out on Tuesday and had said that closing was Wednesday. On Wednesday afternoon, a piano moving truck pulled up. A grand piano was visible afterward in the picture-windowed front room, until a sheet was tacked up (presumably until a more elegant window treatment can be arranged). The piano was heard, briefly, while a van was parked in the driveway (tuner, maybe?)

Since then, no people have been observed in or around the house. Perhaps fortunately, the piano has not been heard either.

If it's a horror story, the piano is haunted by the serial killer pianist who used to own it.

If it's a paranormal romance, the piano is haunted by the romantically handsome pianist who pined away for his lady love or something.

If it's a psychological thriller, the narrator is actually slowly losing hir mind OR there's actually a human living there, but hiding.

If it's a spy story, the piano has vital secrets concealed inside it, but in such a way that wrecking the piano will destroy the secrets too.

"What piano piece should be heard emanating from that ghostly instrument?"

"Fur Elise?" "Colour My World?"

Xopher et al, it does seem like some kind of story. If there's something nefarious going on, my dog is probably at risk, since he's guaranteed to bark at any spy or eldritch creature trying to sneak into the house.

Perhaps it's a sapient piano. But how does it manage to get things done for it? And what does a piano want? That led to a plot line that came sufficiently alive for me that I may try to write it.

Either love or a major part in a heroic quest. Unless it's an old piano, in which case it wants a seat on the porch, in the sun, with a pitcher of tea on the stand.

Bear with me, please. I find this disturbing, for reasons that will become clearer.

When I was a small child, we lived for a while in a common-wall duplex house. In the other side lived an elderly Hungarian couple, Mr and Mrs Boros. It was 1956, the Melbourne Olympic Games, the infamous water-polo match between Hungary and the USSR, and the Hungarian uprising. My father got to talking with Mr Boros about it.

Years later, my father told me about that conversation, which had been several hours long, over beers. Mr Boros had a fascinating life history. Briefly, he had joined the Austro-Hungarian Army as a boy soldier at the age of twelve, in 1908. He had fought through WWI, and had miraculously survived, had stayed in the Army during the period of Hungarian independence, and then fought as a senior warrant officer through WW2 on the Eastern front, and again had survived, escaping to the West in 1945. He had finally been accepted as a refugee and spent his last years in peace, in Australia.

I have the very strong feeling that if his background had been investigated with rigour, he would not have been admitted as a refugee, for he had probably committed atrocities. Why do I think this?

Mr Boros said that he had joined the army because he was the only son. That would mean that his family's total debt to the moneylender - who was, of course, Jewish - would fall on him. There was no prospect of ever paying that debt back. It had already been paid three or more times over. Any small farmer was in the same situation. It meant permanent poverty and effective serfdom, and that had been so for generations - centuries.

The army was the only way out. Jews were restrained from pursuing soldiers. But of course the conditions were very harsh, and the hitch was for - get this - twenty-five years. He would never see home or family again.

Mr Boros served willingly under German command in WW2. He said, however, that he disagreed with Hitler on the treatment of the Jews. Hitler had made serious errors there. He hadn't killed all of them.

Now, here's the thing. I look at Mr Boros, and I see myself. The monster looks back at me, and I suddenly realise that I'm staring into a mirror.

If I were to write a novelised treatment of his life, how would I treat my protagonist? I won't, though. There is no way that it wouldn't be understood as a defence of something vile beyond words, and I have no wish to offend people whom I esteem.

But here is one reason for the milder treatment of Jews in America. The United States wasn't being run by the Austrian Habsburgs. This, in my opinion, is no small point in its favour.

Kipling's feelings about Jews are made quite plain in "The Light That Failed", in which the protagonist's Jewish mistress is shown to be not at all a nice person primarily because she's Jewish. Not as bad as a person of really dark color, perhaps, but still one of the dusky tribe. <spit to get the taste out of my mouth/>

Paula Leiberman @ 230:

My own theory is that the lack of traditional ghettos (the kind with walls) in America made a large difference to the way Jews were treated even when antisemitism was at its peak here. Large concentrations of Jews in specific parts of a city made a tempting target for pogroms and a constant reminder of that target. Similarly, blacks in America were concentrated in specific parts of any town, and there were far more "race riots" and mass lynchings against blacks than against most other groups who were less concentrated.

If, on the other hand, you're in favour of the actual eradication of persons occupying managerial roles than a) you'd probably better run that suggestion past the moderators (especially the one that has recently started working in a managerial role) and b) I believe that that's been tried in one or two places. Didn't work out too well, I believe.

(Though I prefer the alphabet song from that album.)

----
* Two songs. It's a GENRE.

If, on the other hand, you're in favour of the actual eradication of persons occupying managerial roles than a) you'd probably better run that suggestion past the moderators (especially the one that has recently started working in a managerial role) and b) I believe that that's been tried in one or two places. Didn't work out too well, I gather.

----
* Well, if you play people's pre-made worlds, you can have bosses, but in the standard mode, there aren't any.

Hopefully, this reminder will help my saving efforts for a car next year, rather than impulsively buying stuff.

abi @270: When I was in sixth grade, I was into codes and ciphers, thanks to a book I got through the book club. Much of what I played with was pretty simple substitution ciphers, and solving them required counting forward or back a certain number of letters. One day Mom told me that knowing the alphabet backwards would make part of that job easier, and she taught me to sing Z, Y, X to the traditional "Twinkle, Twinkle" tune.

Many years after that, inspired by the Sesame Street song where Big Bird thinks the alphabet is a word and pronounces it as one, I came up with a word for the backwards alphabet as well, and taught it to myself. I impressed a couple of little kids with it just last week.

Or should I be blaming the new RAM I installed last night? All four crashes were since then.

I'm not fond of the current version of Firefox, but I'll upgrade again if it's more stable.

For practical purposes, I'm not sure what the difference is between racism and xenophobia. I think another motivation in Chesterton's case was that he was very fond of his cleverness, and that made wide generalizations attractive for him.

The break point for me was an obscure non-fiction book of his (sorry, title forgotten) in which he suggested that Jews were actually an agricultural people (this actually was mildly clever, since I think the common wisdom at the time was that Jews were urban), too weird to be assimilated (I think there was something about wearing brightly colored dress coats(?) and top hats at Margate), and should be relocated. This shocked me so much that I didn't read anything of his for a decade or two-- and I'd been a fan, that's why I was reading his obscure stuff.

If anyone can think of what book it might have been, that would be good. I'd like to check on whether I read the passage accurately.

For added realism, the cipher, which would be very secure without computer assistance if used correctly, is cracked because of the combination of easily-guessed headers and a weak key.

Test the RAM, definitely. I assume you're on an MS-DOS machine. You should be able to do a complete RAM check from the pre-boot set-up menu.

Firefox version: I think 3.6.2 can be a bit hinky due to memory leaks. I recently upgraded Mom's Vista laptop to Firefox 4, and it's working better. I also advised her to reboot once a week or so, which I do myself on both Windows and OSX.

I'm currently on my Mac, which is at Firefox 6.0.2 (I have auto-update on). My MS-DOS laptop (an Acer Aspire netbook running XP) is at... (slight delay while I plug it in and boot up) ...Firefox 4.0.1, and no problems.

Off to catch up on the various threads now...

The problem could have been my Flash player. When I upgraded Firefox, it advised that I update Flash to the current version, too. I didn't then, but I have now. We'll see if that helps.

Based on a quick poke at Google Books, you may be remembering the chapter "The Problem of Zionism" in his book The New Jerusalem.

So far, so good...

sisuile @ 249: Any luck on find the chihuahua's rightful people?

OtterB @ 251: Try calling song requests to the piano. If it plays the song you asked for, get in touch with the Magic Castle in Hollywood and tell them you know where Invisible Irma went!

I doubt it heralds the technological Singularity — but I wonder where the marketing Singularity will lead.

I think that may be an unwarranted assumption that they must be lying, that they can't possibly be that stupid. From my perspective, it isn't really honesty that's missing from the GOP these days, but something more fundamental: an appreciation of the value to be found in truthful propositions and an effective methodology for identifying them.

On Firefox - you will be much happier upgrading to the newest version you can. I'm running this on a Linux virtual machine on top of VMware Player, and it's still much better than the 3.x version that my corporate IT department supports running natively on Windows.

And two very smart people working on it, with the help of the author. But words such as "Warsaw" were big clues.

Thanks, that's it, and a bit less extreme than I remembered (I thought he'd said that *all* Jews should be relocated to be farmers), but only a bit.

He really wasn't seeing individuals at all.

It looks like my breakpoint wasn't insults, and it wasn't exclusion (he's got a bit somewhere about eating breakfast on the roof, but Jews wouldn't like it (for a reason I can't remember)-- however, as it happens, I would especially like to eat breakfast on a roof), but advocating outrageous policy was too much.

We should introduce him to Liev Schreiber.
:-)

If it's a Goon Show, the piano has CD plates attached.

This bit of causality saddens me.

OK, now I really have to get syncing and wireless working on my Ubuntu box. I've got iTunes 10 running, but slower than s**t, and apparently it's supposed to auto-sync when I connect the cable, but it's doing no such thing....

Firefox 7.0.1 downloaded and installed. It crashed on the second page I tried to open (Facebook).

Eep?

* A somewhat fraught concept, as chickens are not on the list of permitted pets, as per the HOA, and the city has said in the past that they should be considerably further from neighbors than it is possible to get here.

There's quite possibly more than one of your neighbors with a discreet little egg operation going on. If they've had their "90% pullets guaranteed" order from a hatchery come up on the wrong side of the margin of error then they have a security problem. Hens can be kept quiet, close neighbors easily won over with a dozen extra-good eggs every once in a while, but roosters are roosters and unlikely to stay quiet. The metaphorical qualities assigned to them are there for a reason. I have three cockerels in their full strutting and crowing maturity, and know this anew every morning.

A friend of mine on a chicken posting-board had someone dump three full-grown peafowl next to her husband's deer stand last week. Chicken feed just went up three dollars a bag, craigslist is full of people wanting to "rehome" pet roosters, and driving up and kicking unwanted animals out of the car is one of those American traditions farmers especially could live without.

Which reminds me, I will have nine or ten young Easter Egger chickens to find homes for after the first of the year; that the cockerels' homes might be someone's freezer is something I'm fine with, being an actual farmer and all.

We know, from what Wimsey says when he sees the ciphertext, that he was using a German alias during the war, for some purpose, and that was how he came to know the guy who knew how to break Playfair.

Now, there's several possible clues. First, the marked words in the dictionary, all long words with no repeated letters. Now, it's a mistake to think that a keyword has no repeated letters, because you can strike out the repeats, but it is a clue nevertheless. But there is a whole set of ciphering methods which use keywords, not just Playfair. (Chapter XXV)

Then we see the ciphertext at the start of Chapter XXVI. We still don't know why he plumped for Playfair, except that he is familiar with it. But the ciphertext contains a lot of I and only one J, and that's a common mistake in using Playfair. If it were a some other keyword cipher, J would have to represent a quite uncommon letter, and that letter would have to be some way from the end of the alphabet, or close to the beginning as part of the keyword.

Another feature of Playfair is that it breaks up double letters if they form a letter pair. It has to for the cipher to work. Well, there is a BFFY, twice, and, once you discount the punctuation, an SS, an MM, and a CC. How many double-letter pairs are there in English? And if Wimsey is thinking Playfair, he will have split the message into digraphs, and all those double-letters will split. Well, they take an hour before Wimsey explains Playfair. Yes, the marked dictionary brought it to mind, but that's plenty of time to do a basic frequency analysis, and find a rather flat distribution.

And, as Wimsey says, it's a cipher that an amateur might have come across, which is simple to use. And that makes it a good bet. So he decides to have a go, when his acquaintance in the Foreign Office isn't available.

And you'll note that Harriet Vane is the one who spots "Warsaw" as a potential plaintext.

I wouldn't have. I might have looked on Craigslist to see what they're going for, but I wouldn't have had any prior idea of the price.

I just tried again, hoping they'd fixed it. They haven't, but now they'll take all kinds of information from you, try to make you tie everything you do together, then tell you they're not going to let you have access to your old blog.

I can't access it, update it, or delete it. I fucking hate those people.

I wonder if this has to do with the recent behind-the-scenes revamp of Yahoo Bookmarks? (Which left users unable to add new bookmarks for nearly four months, up until a few days ago.) (And who at Yahoo thought that was a reasonable way to handle a revamp?)

Updating Firefox didn't help. Windows blue-screened a little while ago. The error report afterward said a) looks like the RAM, but also b) the BIOS is old.

While I was investigating updating the BIOS, Firefox crashed so many times in succession that I shut down and reinstalled the old RAM.

Back to square one, $45 poorer*, with a version of Firefox I don't really like. Not happy.

Think I should update the BIOS anyway?

*I haven't checked yet if I can return the new RAM.

I'd like to keep peafowl, I have sufficient room and it would be a way of drowing out the boom cars, but the fences they require are discouraging.

Tom Whitmore, I suppose that the ways in which Craigslist has pervaded small farm product sales in this country is something which is not widely known; I'd never looked at the place until I started buying chickens, but my brother-in-law sells hay, feeders, and locker beef through that means. If I wasn't in the middle of a documentary project on my chicks I would probably have been to turn all of them in one sale as soon as they'd hatched.

Knowing the going price is another thing; I suspect that pricing of everything on Craigslist is on what I've heard called the "big enough fool" basis, or there wouldn't be listings for substantially identical chicken coops at prices ranging from $159 to $1500.

I found it a couple of years ago and only noticed it was fake when I cleared it off my dresser last week. Oops. Bad Catholic.

It's common enough that it's the first thing I suspect if a computer's gone wonky. (though, not always, I just traced one wonky computer to a bad hard drive, the first time I've had a drive fail in a non catastrophic manner).

The surefire test is memtestx86, let it run for a day or so. It's one of the boot options on ubuntu cds now, and I think it's included in one of the mac hardware test disks. I wouldn't be surprised if it's buried in windows somewhere too. (and of course, it's downloadable on it's own)

Pea Foul? Fences? They have a disdain for fencing, and can fly quite well if they are sufficiently motivated. The neighbor has pea foul, (and chickens, and ducks, and a whippet, and used to have guinea foul, but "they make too much noise". oh. dear. ) Quite often there are peafowl on the roof of his coop, occasionally in the trees, and once on our house. They don't even seem to be bothered with the predators around here, though the chicks are probably pretty good snacks for the wildlife. There are several colonies of feral peafowl on the island, either escaped or the humans got fed up.

The chicks are even kind of cute, and kind of quiet. That ends though. They get to be beautiful birds, but with loud voices and sensitive minds. Once I was cutting trees, and the sound track was something like "Roar. crrrrack. WHUMP. Help Help Help!" Every Single Time. I could hear it through the hearing protectors.

Surveillance video showed the costumed man walking into the store with his arm raised above his head. He then walked to the register, leaned over the counter and told the clerk, “This is a robbery,” police said.

The 7-Eleven employee thought it was a prank, police said.

Gumby insisted he was serious and told the clerk he had a gun. He then tried to reach into his pocket, but after fumbling for a moment only managed to drop 26 cents on the counter.

The accomplice — not dressed as a cartoon character — had already gone outside and was honking the horn of a minivan...

Pure comedy.

We used to keep peafowl (and many other species). Back when we had a dozen or so adult peafowl, they used to go for a walk each day, up the road a way, then work their way back home throught all the gardens. Mostly people didn't mind (we had one complaint about damaged flowers, over a period of several years), but once a neighbour came to ask for them to be moved - his sister was visiting and she was terrified of birds. Well, I went along and shooed them all into the next garden nearer to us (about all I could do) - except the peahen sitting on the roof; I couldn't do much about her.

Yes, they were noisy** but so were several of the other animals we had. Looking back it's really lucky that most of the neighbours liked being able to look over/through the fences and see various unusual animals. And (in my opinion) the various calls were more pleasant than the sound of lorries braking on the main road, or the background noise from the constant whizz of traffic on the motorway.

* Clarification provided for those who don't know the term.
**I actually like the noise they make. So sue me.

Also, on peafowl, the Bronx Zoo had a peahen go wandering not that long ago; she spent a couple of days "on the run" before being captured and returned to the zoo. Newspaper accounts almost universally referred to her as a "female peacock." The peafowl at the Bronx Zoo wander all over the place with impunity; this one decided to try the outside world for a while and was apparently none the worse for wear (roosted on a windowledge the first night, in full view).

On the other hand, America presumably could have had ghettos, but didn't. I don't know if this was enlightenment thinking or something else.

Here's why I asked about the change between Europe and America in regards to Jews, and why I probably seem weirdly mellow about current American anti-Semitism.

Part of this is that I'm trying to manage depression, and I spent a lot of years obsessing about how the Holocaust proves your government can kill you at any time. Later I added that Rwanda proves that your neighbors can also kill you at any time.

Eventually, I realized that I was just knocking myself down-- it wasn't as though I was doing anything which might make me safer. Later than that, I realized I could outsource hypervigiliance. If things really were getting bad, there are any number of people who'd tell me. I didn't have to keep reminding myself of the possibility.

I do know that murderous anti-Semitism exists in the US, and you don't have to go back to Leo Frank to find it. These are attacks extreme enough that it's just chance that Jews weren't killed.

Without trying very hard, I found about synagogue arsons, though murder came later, and it wasn't of Jews.

Guard killed at Holocaust Museum-- he wasn't Jewish, but I think this could be reasonably described as an attempt to kill Jews.

Seventy bullets fired into a Jewish community center, five people wounded.

My mother was bullied by Irish kids for being Jewish in Philadelphia. One of her college professors deliberately scheduled a test on Yom Kippor. When we moved from one suburb to another near Wilmington, DE, one that we looked at was "restricted"-- no Jews allowed, and the one we did move into had only recently started allowing Jews. This was the early 60s.

And yet, I've only personally run into overt anti-Semitism a few times, and all of them mild. (Details available if anyone cares.) Of course, there might be people covertly avoiding me because I'm Jewish, but I really think it would make me crazy to worry about it.

Maybe it's just me, but I think the only reason it's interesting-- maybe even fascinating-- that Rumplestiltskin has anti-Semitic roots is the implication that modern Christians are less trustworthy than they look.

It seems indecent to me to encourage myself to believe that a significant proportion of the Christians (for these purposes, I'm treating being Christian as an ethnicity/religion) I live with and who haven't mistreated me for being Jewish have a dangerous amount of anti-Semitism in their subconsciouses when I have no evidence that it's true.

In particular, I think that a lot of history really gets forgotten. There may be a little emotional shading from it, but that doesn't mean it's strongly in play.

So, how did America become so much less anti-Semitic than Europe? Less crowding, so that Christians felt less zero-sum about things? Christians becoming better at business so that they didn't feel as overwhelmed? Enlightenment ideals? An effort at good will?

I think there's the more recent shock at the Holocaust, but America was less anti-Semitic than Europe before that.

The reason why I think this is important is that the decline of anti-Semitism from Europe to the US is the most striking example of a prejudice getting substantially faded out that I can think of (there may have been plenty more-- let me know), and there might be something which can be duplicated to fade out other prejudices.

#304 ::: Serge Broom:

I don't know enough about Liev Schreiber to get the joke.

#318 ::: Steve with a book:

Maybe I've gotten jaded, but that didn't shock me. I was expecting a bad imitation of Chesterton's prose and a strong defense of his prejudices (we haven't gotten started on his anti-Muslim and anti-Asian stuff) rather than moderately life-wrecking advice, no worse than would be seen in a lot of other places, and possibly consistent with what Chesterton said.

Anyone remember whether Chesterton pushed people to have children?

By contrast with Creativity, a atheist closed-system anti-Semitic metaphysical group which has a branch in Philadelphia, an ordinary fool doesn't look like much.

When poking about searching on Chesterton and anti-Semitism, I found claims that he came out against Hitler's anti-Semitism, but I haven't found the original text. I did find this(p.279), in which Chesterton bashes the early Nazis (Chesterton died in 1936, and never saw the worst) for absurd and dangerous flattery of Germans. I wish more people, especially Germans, had listened.

Widely considered one of the forerunners to the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution and one of the earliest written documents supporting religious freedom in the US.

Peter Stuyvesant was not a supporter of religious freedom (and didn't like Jews much), but he was beaten back on several occasions, by the Remonstrance and by the directors of the Dutch West India Company, who forced him to allow Jews from Brazil to settle in New Amsterdam (joining Jews who were already there and had come from Holland).

Has his name become apparent yet?

Well, alrighty, then!

Two reasons: First, it finds flaky memory.
Second, it kicks the memory so hard that if it is on the top of the bathtub curve, it causes it to fail immediately rather than flake out two or three months in.

I just ran to the radio to turn it off, because Terry Gross just announced she was going to play a scene from Boardwalk Empire where someone (a Jew) is drowned, essentially for repeatedly refusing baptism. She said the character "ends up" drowning him, which makes it sound like they're going to pretend it was an accident (though she also established the strong enmity between these two characters).

If I want to listen to an anti-Semitic torture-murder (and that's what it is, no matter what kind of religious trappings they cloak it in), I'll actually watch the horrific series, or maybe a movie about the Holocaust, where the anti-Semitic torture-murders are conducted by people not much worse (if any worse at all) than these supposed "baptisers." Don't need to hear it on the radio, thank you.

I avoid shows like that one because they give me nightmares. I HAD thought I could listen to Fresh Air without that particular risk. Clearly I was incorrect.

And Terry Gross didn't even say "warning, folks, this is graphic" or anything. Maybe it wasn't, but I wasn't about to take the risk. She really has no judgment at all.

France surely has something to do with it: more than once, Chesterton makes the point of how the French see Jews so much more clearly; that is, in a bad light. Here, for example, and in the discussion about the Dreyfus case here. A few biographies seem to have come out recently; I don't know if they shed any light on all this rather winceworthy stuff.

I, for one, suspect - and hope - that video is a clever fake, but I can't watch it enough times to prove it to myself.

Brr!!!

'The Ark of the Covenant' brings to my mind an image not from the Indy film but from a comic strip version of Old Testament stories that I read in a hand-me-down annual as a young lad. 2 Samuel 6: Uzzah touches the Ark and is struck down and David interprets it as a sign of God's displeasure. A quick Google tells me the strip must have been Frank Bellamy's David The Shepherd King, first published in The Eagle, 1958–9.

Sympathies on the radio experience; radio is the most intimate of media and it's nasty when it injects something like that right into your brain.

What makes me suspicious is the center-symmetry of the spit, along with lack of bulging cheeks. Even if their bottom palate can stretch that much, I'd expect it to bulge far enough to impede climbing!

A much nicer link: Randall's geeky love letter.

That's interesting. I'd never thought of Chesterton's anti-Semitism as requiring an explanation. I assumed it was in the air, and it never occurred to him to question it. Since it was in his mind, and he wrote about what he thought, he wrote anti-Semitic things. Does anyone know if he was typical of his era? Less or more anti-Semitic?

As for the hamster, I've see a video of the same hamster, but it's giving a great big yawn as it climbs. In a way, the ribbed inside of the hamster's upper jaw is more disturbing than the unlikely to be true excellent CGI of the glass eyeball.

I keep thinking that a word for this should be in my top vocabulary, but I'm not seeing it. Thanks to Charles Cameron for putting the question into my head.

Although GKC only converted in the twenties he'd been more Catholic than the Pope since about 1908. One of the traditional complaints about Catholics in non-Catholic countries was that they were agents of a foreign power, expatriates: perhaps he felt a desperate need to point out another race as being bigger exemplars of this sin.

There's a to-the-modern-reader-almost-unreadably-racist Father Brown story called The God Of The Gongs which also turns on GKC's horror of disguises and Aliens Among Us; he's scratching a very personal itch in public.

Earl Cooley III @281: No, it was Codes and Secret Writing, which I still have. I did pick up Alvin's Secret Code recently, thinking Sarah might be interested in it.

Bill Stewart @298: I've had a grand piano for just over two weeks now. A team of three brought it in, but it still seemed advisable for me to lend a hand on the stairs, and they didn't say not to.

Tom Whitmore @360: a simple, single-word term for the concept of "things you can give away but still have undiminished in your possession"a simple, single-word term for the concept of "things you can give away but still have undiminished in your possession"
"Downloads!"

(yeah, but think about it)

Anyway, I'm hoping I'll have more time to be around here now. I think I've finally kicked RASFF, cough cough.

I agree that at the time they are handed off, they become "uploads," but I think that cutting it that fine at this point will lose you a lot of people who would have understood the analogy.

I don't know that there is a word that would encompass stories but not books, software but not hardware, and flame but not water; if you come up with one I'd like to know it as well.

And isn't it interesting that there isn't an obvious word that has leaped out already for a concept that most of us intuitively recognize? I'm glad I'm not just getting senile and not remembering it!

---------------------
Herpes(TM) is a trademark, and the "If It Moves, We Fucked It(R)" logotype is a Registered Trademark of Miracle of Life GalactiCorp.

LUNA ARCADE • GAZA GLASSLANDS SPACEPORT • THE SHOPS ON MIZAR 5

In the beginning: Logos.

Information, Instructions, HowTo, Pattern. Angel, Demon, Spirit, Morphic Resonance. Law, Rules, Ruleset, Procedure, Protocol. Ritual. Method. Meme. Sequence. Code. Message. Scheme. Rules. Signal. The Signal That Stoppeth Not. Language. Formula. Recipe. Algorithm. Ehm, Form. YHVH. IAMTHATIAM, IMPOPEYERTHESAILORMAN. Ishmael.

(I always liked Gregory Bateson's definition of information or signal as "a difference that makes a difference" in one of the essays in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, although he may have been quoting Shannon or ehm, that catastrophe guy, or that other one.)

UploadFormat332HopeThisWorksReapersApproach

ShitFuckUploadFormat333LastShotBeforeThGAAARHHHKKK NO CARRIER

...it's lacking a certain Unf, y'know? That je-ne-sais-quoi.

RUNME.BAT. Incantation. Spell. You May Already Be a Millionaire! (see below for official Pandora's Box sweepstakes rules. No purchase necessary. By decoding the enclosed message, cryptanalyst agrees to waive all rights.)

blondejokes.txt"); DROP TABLE sys_log;
...

ForWizardsOnly.SPL
:OnOpen {if this.parent.wizardgrade == wg_apprentice { ((this.parent) as host).possess;
...

Neal Stephenson proposed a new mysterious post-nanotech-tech called the Seed in Diamond Age. Seed.

Seed. final answer.

Coincidentally, my own HLN is that I gave my wife two hens for her birthday on Saturday. We are first time livestock owners with little pet experience, so it's all quite exciting.

Molly (Black Orpington) and Betty (Buff Orpington) seem to be getting on well now, after Betty spent Sunday establishing she was going to be top of the (rather literal) pecking order. They seem to like their Omlet Eglu(tm)*, but so far have shown an unfortunate tendency to roost in the nest box rather than the, er, roost. Still, hoping for eggs by Christmas.

We're still working out what treats they like :D

*The management would like to point out that other brands are available

I can see that a word-count limitation is not going to be enough to keep you from falling into your more distracting habits of conversation. So from this point forward, I'm simply going to unpublish your more far-out comments.

Please endeavor to remain on-point. If I find myself spending too much of my time cleaning up your digressions, the next step will be to unpublish everything you say by default and only release comments when they're relevant and useful.

Here's a question I've got, since I don't expect everyone to read a long article and all the comments-- what's good redundancy? I have a feeling I'm too apt to just say things once, and some repetition with variation might be a good idea.

(Thanks to my husband for sending me this!)

And some of us will be ignoring this blog as we struggle to get started with NaNoWriMo, that annual challenge to produce 50,000 words in 30 days. At least they don't have to be good words.

If you can manage to tell a story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, you'll be doing more than most schoolteachers expect. And you will at least get some idea of how to organise your life to find time to write. That's an essential skill for anyone who wants to take writing seriously.

Meanwhile, sketching an idea...

The three Tellurians recoiled in horror from the creatures that had captured them, seeing a crude caricature of themselves in the stance, and the erect symmetry, but with a total lack of discernible expression. These strange creatures were smooth-skinned, lacking even the patterned scales of a Venusian, and wore scanty harnesses of some metallic mesh that hid nothing of importance. They were obviously male, and well-muscled, but there was nothing else in their favour. They had no tails, no muzzle, save for a vestigial lump in the middle of a flat face. Did they even have ears? There were curious flaps of skin on the sides of their heads, but nothing moved. Such was the horror, but Cleopatra took note that they had no claws, and were as vulnerable to a well-placed kick as any Tellurian, and she took slight comfort from that.

Yet their captors were just as horrified by what they saw, with equally grotesque and inexpressive faces, crazily-patterned fur disarrayed by the rigours of the journey and, yes, the savage natural weapons of the beast.

TexAnne @ #302: Congrats! IMHO, cats make life better.

HLN: Local woman has been looking for a copy of "The Dragon Waiting" at a reasonable price off and on for over a year now. Woman starts cleaning and reorganizing bookshelves, discovers copy hiding in the bottom back of a stack of paperbacks. Local woman unsure whether to be annoyed or pleased, settles on pleased, and re-reads it during day off due to stomach bug.

They're nice beads, though. I just have to take some of them off and put a few distinguishing beads at the appropriate points. I'm just glad I noticed, because I *had* contemplated giving it as a First Communion gift and that would have been Very Bad Catholic.

In regards to Rumplestiltskin, I would never have thought about it being anti-Semitic, probably because I didn't grow up with those views (what with, you know, actually knowing Jewish kids and all.) As for the name, I'm half Polish, so I wouldn't have noticed. :D

332, eric, I'm quite aware of the rocket like ability of peafowl to jump and fly, which is why I said the fences are discouraging: they take the kind of bird-netting more usually applied to keeping golf balls inside driving ranges. I've actually known several private keepers of the things, and they all had 8-10 foot tall double-walled (two layers of heavy-duty 1"X 1 1/2" cage wire) runs with plastic-covered woven wire tops. I also had an encounter with a free-roaming flock of peafowl, four males and six feemales, as they wandered through Olympia one full mooned beautiful May evening, as beautiful and surreal as only Puget Sound spring can be, and saw one of the peacocks flat-foot jump onto the roof of a three-story apartment building.

Russ, congratulation on your sane-persons level of poultry having. Some advice: remember chickens need a little extra light to lay in the short days of the year, so if you're in the northern hemisphere you'll want to give them some light; solar-powered yard lights are a popular item in the online poultry community.

And: don't let anyone loan you an incubator and fertile eggs. Stay firm against the whiles of roosters, who are amazingly beautiful. And stay out of feed stores in baby-chick season.

Oh: and away from craigslist. You can get anything on craigslist.

It's called chicken math, and it's dangerous.

Proof in my LJ posts tagged "chickens"

*Murray McMurray calls these "Araucanas/ Americanas" which they are not, and people who raise the real things are emphatic and forceful in explaining why they're not.

Contrast this to the experience of a friend of mine, who grew up in Nebraska and literally had to deal with Nazi sympathizers running the neighborhood. In general this kind of negative experience seems more common in the Midwest, though I haven't done any kind of survey.

On a whole, I'll say that the American relative lack of anti-Semitism pertains to generational localized racism and how it's always, always worse than "imported" racism.

Like: I have a white Jewish friend of the curly-haired phenotype who was quietly, thoroughly given the run-around when he tried to get an apartment in Beijing... until they figured out he wasn't Uighur.

Like: anecdotes I've heard from African-Americans in Britain report generally favorable treatment compared to how it is in the US... whereas a very Irish-looking American guy I knew was once turned away at the border.

There's a hundred-something-year rule, I think, whereby the longer ethnic factions have coexisted with each other unhappily, the harder it is to root it out. And Europe's anti-Semitism is deep-rooted and long-standing, whereas the US has only got it as an import. Another factor may be population size and historical population size.

...I just found a Wikipedia article with a rather sobering table in it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jewish_population_comparisons#1900_compared_to_2005

Tells me what I was looking for (the statistic of how many Jews lived in Europe historically, both as population percentage and as raw numbers) and also just... wow. The sheer number of Jews in Austria, Hungary & Poland at the turn of the century and the sheer number of Jews NOT there now. Which is some the Holocaust and some migration and... I just...

...there's some rather oft-repeated bit about Japan's national psyche being permanently altered by the Hiroshima bombing, a kind of cultural post-traumatic stress disorder.

I never really thought much of the fact that I spend many spare cognitive cycles making contingency plans for sudden homelessness, despite growing up in a rich-ish family of pale skin color, until the point where I met other ethnically Jewish people who do the same thing. Until I was emailing back and forth with my father and he told me about how, in the community where he grew up just post-Holocaust, nobody talked about it; an older boy once furtively showed him a photograph of concentration camp victims from some clipping or other.

It's weird knowing that; that I grew up whole but learned to move as if I have scars where none exist on my own skin. Disquieting.

I guess that's because it's the last one ever, what with the world ending in 2012.

Or Hindu, especially if the beads are all the same (no separators). But it has a Y-junction; do Buddhist malas have one of those? The Hindu ones don't, so maybe I'm just wrong.

A starring part in the performance of a piano concerto?

To be the reincarnation of Liszt's piano?

To play stride in the parlor of a house of ill-repute?

To be Victor Borge's straight-piano?

I'd always thought that Anthony Boucher (the author, although he used a pseudonym) was a good mystery reviewer and occasional novelist. I had no idea he had any connection to sf, much less that he was one of the founding editors of F&SF.

Huh.

Jer. Fair is the face and dark is the heart.
Beauty and grace end with seeming and skin -
Worm and corruption hold revels within.
Fair is the face, ah, but dark is the heart!

Cle. Fair is the face, aye, and dark is the heart.
Charms are our banners in daylight unfurled.
Hearts are the horrors we hide from the world -
Facing it graciously is our kind art.

Jer. Black is the death when white is the urn.
Flies buzz when hypocrites speak the world fair.
Ghosts fester foul as they fear the free air -
Black is the soul, Cleïs: white is the urn!

Cle. Black is our marrow - to light we must turn.
Artful decay brings red wine and rich food,
Fairer for sharing than raw tripes and blood.
Black are our souls, but how brightly they burn!

Jer. Foul is the heart though fair is the face.
Venus' eyes hide the charnel of Mars.
When he breaks through, who'll compare you to stars?
Fair make your heart, ere it shows in your face!

Cle. Foolish is heart that's unfriend to its face.
Brave is the heart that will fight from its hell.
Inwards must find what is fair from their shell:
Learning life's kindness is all our hearts' grace.

Jer. Dark is the heart caught deep in the clay.
Cle. Deck it with flowers, and dance in the day!
Jer. Fair is the face, but the spirit is sin.
Cle. Let it look out, while the stars soak our skin
By the banks of the wide Milky Way...
A Whisper. - Come in -

The Anglicans and their ilk (and, occasionally, other mainline Protestants) have picked up the idea of the rosary, now that the Reformation is a thing of the past and they can admit to a tad of mysticism (and, for some denominations, ritual) without causing hysteria*.

I have never seen a Buddhist mala that had a Y-junction; most of the ones I've seen are either the short form or the 108-bead variety, split up into four groups of 27 beads, with tassels and other add-ons variable. Interestingly, the Manchus used a necklace derived from the mala as an item of court regalia.

The various Eastern Orthodox churches have their own tradition, which appears to be considerably older than the RC rosary, and uses a different prayer; it's a rope, traditionally of black wool with special knots tied in it (there are directions out there on the internets, some with videos, for those who'd like to tie their own, or are particularly interested in knots); there are different lengths for different purposes, including a short one with 33 beads that masquerades as a wristlet.

*A Baptist acquaintance of my aunt's down in Mississippi admitted to some concern about the introduction of an Advent wreath ceremony into her church's Sunday services in December about 10 years ago: "I don't know, Sarah, I know you Methodists to do that sort of thing, but we're Baptists!" She also had some reservations about the regular recitation of the Creed in services; it seemed like such a Papist thing to do.

Traci Lords?

Well, there's a trailer on You Tube, and she doesn't look bad.

Antonia T. Tiger #404: Oh yeah, after she grew up, she made a decent attempt at breaking into mainstream movies, though AFAIK she hasn't got past B-flicks.

The Michaeline version is 9 sets of 3 with gauds between. The Raphaelite version is like the Franciscan - it's 7 decades, but with gauds. There's a 3 decade version (of resurrection), and the paternoster (one decade, two gauds and a terminus, linear), and the Anglican version with 4 sets of 7, with gauds and three to the terminus.

In a box somewhere (my life, it is still in boxes) is my research about rosaries, prayer beads, and "approved" patterns for various religions, sects, etc. As an initial resource, I suggest Paternoster Row. She has done a lot of really good, solid research on Catholic and Christian prayer beads.

I was soooo disappointed that they didn't manage to pull off the End-of-the-Worldcon in the Yucatan for 2012.

Actually, it's a very sad story. The piano secretly always dreamed of being a computer. Its saddest day was when the tuner finally told it, in no uncertain terms, that this would never happen. "I'm sorry. Your shape is all wrong, and you just don't have it in you."

These days, someone who was quite that blatant about their thanatophilia might well get diagnosed with depression....

It consists of a length of string with thirteen knots in it. This is consistent with the "Old Craft Laws" idea that everything has to be either innocuous or disposable; a Witch's Ladder can be tossed in the fire if you're about to be caught with it, and isn't all that incriminating to begin with (unlike the wax pentacle).

I used one for my success visualization prior to my first attempt at Drawing Down.

I think it makes a fair amount of sense that the number of beads tend to be inversely proportional to the length of the activity counted on each bead. The Franciscan Crown is a very long total, much longer than anything I've done on a mala, even though the mala has a lot more beads. Most of what I've done on a mala has been one repetition of "OM GANESHA YA NAMA" on each bead.

I did once do a whole mala of something like "Thank you for holding your hand as a shield over me and mine" (probably there was a formal address to the God at the beginning of that, but I don't remember what words I used) in September 2001, once I found out that while many of my coworkers, including several I had quite liked, had been killed in 9/11, all the ones I was really close to (and worked with at several previous jobs) were safe, and so were all my close friends.

I've seen Buddhist malas with all kinds of slide counters meant for counting how many times around the 108 beads you're going. I'm not sure how they're used, though I wouldn't be surprised if a whole round of the mala takes hours and hours.

That might be what I saw a woman on the Metro doing, then. She was using a round length of beads (rather pretty, jade looking) that had tassels every so often, and a long-ish bit that hung off with movable beads; every time she reached that bit, she would pull a bead down, abacus-like. I figured she was counting off some kind of prayers, but it seemed rude to interrupt to ask what. It had nowhere near 108 beads. Seemed more in the neighbourhood of 30 or so.

I'm pondering this reading of the motifs. I confess I always connected Mr. Stiltskin with the gold-loving dwarfs of German/Norse mythology. (Who were also prone to getting tangled up in unfortunate contracts, bad deals, and reneged promises.) And I was always too distracted by the lovely metaphor of "spinning straw into gold" for linen processing to do much other analysis.

In economics, the term used for that kind of thing is non-rivalrous. That's any good where your using it doesn't diminish the amount or value left for me.

Often the practitioner will be assigned a number of mantras to be chanted by their teacher, especially after they have received an empowerment. The 2 long counting tassels help to keep track -- there are 10 counting beads on each.

I count the hundreds on the tassel with the bell and the 1000s with the tassel with the dorje. When I have counted 10,000 I move the wheel of dharma marker up one bead on the mala. When the wheel reaches the guru bead again I will have done 108,000 recitations of the Chenrezig mantra (Om Mani Padme Hum).

I have several malas -- one for Chenrezig, one for Tara, one for Medicine Buddha, and so on. I also note in my organizer my current totals so that if something should happen to the mala I'll still know how many recitations I've accomplished.

You can also get little markers to show where you had to stop when you're doing recitations while travelling.

*You will sometimes see these sold as "power bracelets..."

Good reference. Nutbar site, though.

(How do I know? It has 2800 words on how women should still cover their heads, with amazing footwork to explain how Vatican 2 didn't really change things. It has a "Posture and Gesture" page listing the times to bow and kneel and so forth, detailed enough to explain that you genuflect on your left knee when meeting your local bishop. Meanwhile, both Creeds are tucked away on a mathom-house of prayers, and the kneeling it suggests for the Incarnation* is not included on the "Posture and Gesture" page.

I recall someone saying that where your treasure is, there is your heart. I say, where your words are, there is your attention. Veils and hierarchy get more energy than creeds? Nutbar.)

-----
* Everyone I've met who does anything bows at the waist for that bit.

Speaking of nutbars! There are many tales to tell, usually under his nom de net, Vox Day. (Better yet, Google around a bit using that term; if we discuss him too much he might show up.)

Can I ask why you want to know?

Charlie, what abi said. VD is something you want to avoid (less punny now than when I was young). Advocated positions include solving the illegal immigration problem by mass deportation, which doesn't sound completely nutbar by today's standards (cf. Michelle Bachman) until you get to the part where he points out that after all it was done successfully in Germany in the 30s and 40s...and to my reading he thinks that's an example to emulate.

A few years ago, the entire sangha (world wide) was trying to accumulate a million mantras for one of our teachers -- so we were sending in totals every week, and managed to reach the mark just before their birthday.

Both of those phenomena fit my understanding of his character as expressed on the internet. incidentally, a site search on his name here on Making Light is not unhelpful; it yields this compendium of links,as well as at least one more recent popcorn-and-lawn-chairs observation of his performance on Charlie Stross' blog.

Not bloody likely.

I manage to remain civil. That's about all he can expect.

That is unpleasant, certainly. I don't think, though, that it's quite fair to Kipling to let "The Light That Failed" stand as his last word on the subject, any more than it would be fair to Dickens to stop at Fagin; people do change over the course of their lifetimes, and Kipling still had most of his life ahead of him when he wrote "The Light That Failed". ("The Treasure and the Law" was many years later, and Kadmiel is not his last Jewish character either.)

I once read a short story about why 7 8 9, which was beautiful and haunting, and I thought it was on Hitherby Dragons but I've never been able to find it again.

Or possibly it's "The inward eye, the sightless sea. Ayala flows through the river in me."

Although that's probably a different Tara...

And it's not precisely a mantra...

:-)

Next year's Swancon is calling itself Doomcon, and has a focus on floods, asteroid strikes, zombies, Windows Vista, and other world-ending calamities.

The official slogan is "The apocalypse: it's just a big con."

I still want a Real Light Cycle

The worst thing about it: Its version of the fantastic and fairy tales is lowest-common-denominator Disney tapioca.

My standards for what qualifies as strange and wonderful is much higher.

Almost everybody cited Disney. A couple of people cited Into the Woods at least, but almost everybody said "thus-and-so because of the songs or the specific Disney-invented character."

To someone who loves the source materials and the vast cross-cultural interaction of the original not for kids fare, this was pretty heart-rending.

Ugh, that's sad.

Tangentially:

My sister, who has not had much time for reading for years due to a hectic career schedule, is studying toward a Masters in library science. She's taking a course on childrens' lit right now, and is reveling in wonderful stuff, new and old.

Last week she listened to Gaiman reading The Graveyard Book and Coraline, and was blown away.

I think today's young'uns have a better chance of tapping into far better and a more fantastic grade of the fantastic than my generation did.

Just be sure you remain civil with your left knee, not your right.

Wait, that didn't come out very well, did it?

(I read Writing Real Life Person Slash about the Pope Day instead. It went over quite well.)

--Dave

Tara Maclay from Buffy. The line is from a ritual chant in the episode "Who Are You".

(Both Davids. Even if only one of you got to present the answer, I appreciate that you both made the effort.)

What does a piano want? Don't ask a piano. They are moody and doleful and have abandoned hope that any one will listen. Ask a harp -- those high-strung cousins have no compunction about giving you a piece of their minds. They know what pianos want: to listen through the depths of endless space and hear the thousand-layered music of the spheres. To pulse as one with all eternity and shiver invisibly as when a dewdrop falls from the spiders web. To sway in sinuous arcs that bring in harmony all light and time. To throb as one with all that they perceive and give it back to the universe, altered yet the same.

What does a piano want? To be in tune.

I've been teaching a calculus course out of Hughes-Hallet's textbook, published by John Wiley and Sons. I've collected a small list of typos in the text. Who is the right person to send them to? The book has been through 5 editions, so it seems likely it will be reprinted again and (perhaps I am naive here) the typos might be fixed.

White Tara's mantra is:

oṃ tāre tutāre ture mama āyuḥ puṇya jñāna pu ṣṭiṃ kuru svāhā

I'm not sure how many Taras there are -- in addition to Green and White, there is also a Red Tara -- I'm guessing her activity relates to what my teachers would call "wrathful practice."

Isn't that like saying that human beings want to die ... because if you leave them alone, inevitably they will? Is not a piano entitled to want something at odds with entropy?

"First you fall down on your knees,
fiddle with your rosaries.
Bow your head with great respect,
then genuflect - genuflect."

Yes, but how? Are you bowing, fiddling and genuflecting correctly? Nutbar websites want to know.

(Of course, it was Making Light that led me to Hitherby in the first place, some years ago when Teresa blogged about the story "Night of the Antinomian".)

I thought some here might be interested in Kobo's latest offering, the Vox (there's a review at the link).

It integrates Kobo's Reading Life program, which "tells you how many hours you've spent reading, how many pages you read per session, hours per book, times of day you read and more besides." It can also integrate Facebook, Twitter, etc.

I just wondered if anyone here has had a look at it? I probably won't be getting it - the one I have now, the Wireless, isn't even a year old, even if I could afford it.

I'm a little disappointed in the supported file formats. The model before the Vox, the Touch, supported EPUB, PDF & MOBI for books, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP and TIFF for images, TXT, HTML and RTF for text, and even CBZ and CBR for comics. The Vox has added formats for video and audio, but taken away everything but ePub for the written word. I really don't think I like that.

May God reveal His mercy and grace to the brethren of the Church of England. That's...going to cause waves. Probably needed shaking up of some attitudes and certainties, but it's not going to be a fun time.

I do expect to have an easier time with the grand piano. It's like they're made to be tuned, unlike its small upright predecessor (I hate to use that word — it's not deceased!) that waits until I put a mute on a string and then swallows it with hilarious consequences!

I've enjoyed the other speculations about pianos too.

IRL, a moving van (local mover, not long haul) arrived a couple of days ago and Stuff was unloaded, but once the movers left, no people are in evidence. Perhaps the piano was lonely and ordered in lounge furniture in anticipation of becoming more popular. Or an array of chairs and music stands and a conductor's podium. (It's a large front room the piano is in, but it's not that large.)

Which reminds me of the house we liked, but didn't buy, that was a fairly normal older colonial ... except for the short hall attaching it to a large addition with windows on 3 sides, which had been used by a previous owner for organ recitals. We called it the Grand Ballroom. Our kids being the age they were at the time, we contemplated filling it with gym mats and nothing else.

I digress, but that's what open threads are for.

Those consequences being that you take the bottom panel off the piano and retrieve your mute?

I have an old Harrington upright. I think it predates the Great Depression. Last time I had it tuned, the tuner said he couldn't bring it up to A440; it was made for a lower pitch. I mostly play unaccompanied, so it's not an issue, but it's interesting how much the standard tuning pitch has moved over the last few centuries. I'm informed that some orchestras now tune to A446 or even A448; compared Mozart's and Handel's tuning forks (A421 and A422.5 respectively) that effectively transposes entire symphonies up half a step.

Meanwhile... Nightline had a clip of Barbara Walter reporting on having interviewed Madoff at the prison he has a century plus sentence in. She said he seem content there, he said he's free from the fear he lived with for 20 years of being discovered. He feels he deserves to be in jail and punished for having defrauded people of billions of dollars...

Meanwhile, there are tens, probably hundreds of thousnds of people gratitously dead because of the two people who headed up US Government in 2001-2008, millions displaced (a large percentage of the population that was in Iraq before 2002) and defrauded the US taxpayers of trillions of dollars. They are not in jail, they are not facing sentenced longer than the maximum current human life span....

I am NOT saying Madoff should be free, he's one of the biggest thieves alive... but the people who presided over the non-enforcing non-regulating (deregulated in effect, realy) regulatory agencies during 2001 - 2008 (the ends of absolute Republican control of Congress ended the absolute anti-regulatory stance of the US Government's Legislative Branch and squelched some of the "initiative" of the Executive Blanchers...) belong in jail and stripped of their perks etc. even more than Madoff does... he didn't write the orders which authorized torture and torturing people to death, and the launch of a gratuitous invasion and atrocity-ridden and needlessly lethal and deadly and irreplaceable antiquities and records and other properties-destroying occupation, in violation of the provisons of the Geneva Convention regarding protection of civilians, property, and the common cultural heritage of humankind...

Madoff was a thief and a shyster; the Executive Branch 2001-2008 President and Vice President and their cronies, are war criminals responsible for more death and misery and economic collapse than a lot of dictators.

To satisfy curiosity, it's "Heather" or "Heather Rose Jones" but never "Heather Rose" and absolutely not "Heather-Rose". At some point in my life I decided that I wanted to use all three parts when doing creative endeavors. (At work I'm just plain "Heather Jones".) But "hey you" also works.

But yes, there are worse. On the other hand people tend to do evil not in proportion to their inherent state of moral decay but in proportion to the power they have to use it.

We did a production earlier this year of one of the modern reincarnations of The Beggar's Opera. One of the musicians had a copy of the songs from the original, in an edition with a foreword that discussed the practical issues arising from how the tuning baseline has drifted in the centuries since it was first produced. If memory serves the whole thing is now a key or two higher, effectively, than originally intended. (And boy, weren't some of the singers feeling it on the high notes. I don't think the musical director read the foreword.)

Heather @475: Thanks! If I say "hey you," lots of people turn, but nobody answers.

Ardala's normal routine is to get up roughly 10 minutes before the alarm, get whatever servant monkey she can based on who's left their door open, cuddle, eat breakfast, go on leisurely, I Sniff Everything walk which is never long enough, go home, nap during the day, greet servant monkeys happily after work, eat, go on longer, slow, sniffy walk, hang out, sleep.

Her new routine seems to be - get up at 4am, whine, wander around distractedly until someone gets up to feed her, refuse kibble in bowl, fidget, whine, refuse kibble on plate, wander, refuse kibble in snack dish soaked in chicken broth, fidget, eat mushy kibble one at a time hand fed by frustrated servant monkey, fidget, whine, finish half the mushy kibble, go outside at a fast trot we haven't seen for 3 years, continue energetically running around the house.

When we come home, it's celebratory zoomies for at least 15 minutes (again, not her normal curmudgeonly pace), energetic digging in bedding (OK, so that's normal) and a repeat of the morning's food-refusal performance. Her evening walk is uncharacteristically purposeful, done at a fast trot and business complete, she trots back to the house. I have also noticed her drinking water a lot less messily than usual. I think it might be a tooth pain issue, which would explain her food refusal, but wouldn't explain her newfound energy. She seems to be in pretty good spirits, so long as someone's paying attention to her. In fact, I'm kind of wondering what to tell the vet - "Dog acting weird. Not pigging out, is happy and energetic."

Oh, who the hell knows why this dog does anything. I guess that's why we pay the vets the big bucks.

That seems worrisome to me -- I suspect something is in fact paining her, but not so badly (yet) that she can't be comforted by her people.

That's what we were thinking, actually, since dogs don't show pain the same way humans do. She's got a 9:30 appointment for tomorrow morning at any rate. We're feeding her enough tasty, soft food that she should at least be able to avoid her acid reflux/bilious vomiting issues while we try and figure out what's wrong with her. I hope they can fix it and I hope whatever it is is entirely coincidental with her high energy. It's been kind of fun to have her running around like a puppy again.

Is anyone else disgruntled that Maximus the Military Horse in Disney's Tangleddoesn't even get mentioned in the cast and voices of the characters on IMDB? I mean, really! Without Maximus, Eugene would be on the gibbit and Rapunzel would be who knows where under the duress of the eviLe Mother Gothel, even now!

Ad for gun training bars Muslims and Obama voters

I guess I should be happy the gov't is investigating?

It seems unlikely that Keller will back down, though. "I'm not going to do it," he told the local news. "I will give up my license to teach before I will teach them," he said, referring to Obama voters and Muslims.

Keller will be back in "License Revoked"!

This pattern was long in place before anyone had heard of America, let alone current American politics. Also, the Tea Party et al. doesn't seem to be especially anti-Semitic. Their xenophobia seems to mostly be spent on Hispanics.

The gun ad guy is using his xenophobia points on Muslims.

That... was YOU??

I have no idea how I'm going to deal with my kids when the turn into teenagers who miss curfew.

#497 Serge
Are there exploding consoles all around you??! (The one actual real world console failure that happened in the Tactical Operation Room (TOR) at Thule Greenland on a shift I was on, was completely unspectacular--no sparks, no flames, no fireworks, no noise.... the radar display went blank, was all that happened, the operator reported "Console Number Four [or whichever number it was] Failure no [something or other]" I hit the squawk box button to CSMR [pronounced "siz-mar" where the contractors who did the radar site systems operations and maintenance were] and repeated, "Console Number Four failure no [something or other]", the contractors took over watching the video for that console on the backup system in their part of the facility, and a couple technicians came in and started tearing the console apart to troubleshoot it. Again, it was totally unspectacular, and it was an automatic response from the operator and from me... console failures being standard items in Performance Exercises, and life in the TOR being so utterly boring that the crews -asked- for an exercise every shift to cut the tedium....

I am getting to the point where I may take a permanent position with the school district-- same pay, probably, but with sick days and benefits and I could maybe go to the dentist-- and I know it's time to start up the realjob search again. I just need to remember that jobsearching is a job and it's not rude and antisocial to ignore my friends and roommates so I actually do it. I just wish jobsearching-is-a-job meant it paid me.

My best wishes in your search.

#503 Lenore Jean Jones:

My sympathies.

Because it is early in the morning and I am uncaffeinated, I immediately envisioned a little tiny mime (perhaps a mouse with beret, striped shirt, and face paint) base-jumping into a propped-open piano lid, setting up camp somewhere among the strings for the next few months, and occasionally popping back up to make rude gestures at your attempts to play Bach or a cool jazz riff etc.

On the other hand... "electronic kills" are nearly completely disappointing as regards drama to visual observers--there is -nothing- to see, Newtonian physics means that a missile or warhead in ballistic flight and an airplane which was flying above its stall speed in "straight and level" flight to the casual observer continue in their flight trajectories, not dramatically going into corkscrew tumbles, not exploding, and not falling out of the sky suddenly. It's one of the drawbacks from a funding perspective, that the people who make budget decisions but have no tech sophistication/appreciation for recognizing there is a difference between inertia of "objects in motion stay in motion" and "live" munitions delivery systems when to the human eye they -look- exactly the same from the outside--same sort of folks as get fooled by canned demos and not insisting on proof that the demo is actually being run live from inside the box claimed to be running a live interactive demo, but instead of the case where the canned demo is the zombie persuading the audience that that demo is live and interactive and the box is running a for real live interaction session, the case is that the electronics killed weaponry -looks- like it's alive and working to the casual observer, and only checking for characteristics of a live system, will prove it's dead....

#503 Lenore Jean
Sympathy on the loss of one of your household.

Back when I was a computer operator, we had this sign in the machine room:

ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS! Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. Das rubbernecken sichtseeren keepen das cotten-pickenen hans in das pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das blinkenlichten.

I'm sure that was posted in a lot of computer rooms around the country.

I have to admit, we would sometimes turn the lights off and watch the light show on the front of the 360.

Isn't the point of some modern aircraft that they are inherently unstable, and need an active fly-by-wire system to maintain a stable attitude? Kill the electronics, and they cannot maintain stable flight.

Lenore @503: Yours is a human response. I'm sorry you have lost your kitty.

Lenore @ 503, I am so sorry. Even when a situation has led me to think I was prepared for such an outcome, I never really was, so I can surely sympathize with you here. I hope you and the remaining furpeople are able to comfort each other.

After waking me up at three am for walkies, and then keeping me up with her whining and pacing, Ardala has finally made her scheduled visit with the vet, who has concluded the following:

It's not her teeth or anything in her mouth. Dog wee in bedroom points to possible bladder infection. X-rays show a bit of arthritis in the spine, with a concentration at the sacrum, leading to her gimpiness on her left hind leg and mildly inflamed pancreas indicates maybe a change of diet is in order. Pancreas panel and urinalysis ordered. At this point all we can rule out is lupus.

Ardala is currently waiting at the vet for them to get some urine (which is good, because I didn't especially enjoy chasing her around with a soup ladle last time). If it turns out it is another UTI, we're going to have to try and find a new dog walker with some sort of method in place to "clock in"; thrice in the last month we've discovered our current walker here over three hours late.

nerdycellist at 519, I hope it's a simple, treatable issue that resolves with a minimum of hassle to the dog and to you.

Boing Boing is also involved, because they printed a photo the free lancer took -- for herself, not for The Takeaway. Story here.

Love, C.

OT - cooking:

My husband being away for the weekend, I took the advantage to play with vegetables. I thought I was going to make a vegetable soup. The result was actually vegetable stew. This is not a bad thing, as I'd been wondering how to make such a thing.

Ingredients:

2 medium potatoes
1 acorn squash
3 carrots
3 stalks of celery
2 bell peppers
The last of the frozen pearl onions (2 c?)
2 (16 oz) cans vegetable broth
1 (10 oz) can Ro-Tel
2 c. high fiber rotini pasta

Peel and cut potatoes and squash into pieces (about 1/2 inch - size not very important). Place potatoes, squash, and both cans of broth into a dutch oven over medium heat. Peel and cut carrots into bite size pieces, and celery into pieces somewhat smaller. Add carrots and celery to dutch oven. Cover and cook over medium heat for approx. 45 minutes.

At 45 minutes, toss frozen onions directly into pot. Cut both bell peppers into bite size pieces (make them match the carrots, more or less). Add peppers to pot. Open can of Ro-Tel, and dump into pot, including any liquid. Measure pasta and add to pot. Cover and cook for about 7 more minutes. Uncover and discover pasta is not yet cooked. Leave uncovered, and continue cooking until pasta is al dente.

Serve with red wine. Makes far too much for one person.

The long cooking time for the squash and potatoes will cause both to fall apart, making for a nice thick, smooth texture. There are no added seasonings - the Ro-Tel adds both salt and heat. I meant to add a clove or two of garlic, but I didn't end up missing it.

My sympathies.

Holy nostalgia, batman. I worked in a commcenter in 1967 where the vendor reps were setting up an AUTODIN station. They plugged in serial number 4, IIRC, of that DSTE, and fried every single chip in the chassis. There was a little bit of smoke, but no sparks. Seems there was a short between the AC power input and the 5 volt power supply bus to the chips. Instant Fritos.

Jews, there, are treated just like human beings, instead of dogs. They can work at any business they please; they can sell brand new goods if they want to; they can keep drug-stores; they can practice medicine among Christians; they can even shake hands with Christians if they choose; they can associate with them, just the same as one human being does with another human being; they don't have to stay shut up in one corner of the towns; they can live in any part of a town they like best; it is said they even have the privilege of buying land and houses, and owning them themselves, though I doubt that, myself; they never have had to run races naked through the public streets, against jackasses, to please the people in carnival time; there they never have been driven by the soldiers into a church every Sunday for hundreds of years to hear themselves and their religion especially and particularly cursed; at this very day, in that curious country, a Jew is allowed to vote, hold office, yea, get up on a rostrum in the public street and express his opinion of the government if the government don't suit him!

No UTI, pancreatitis panel not submitted, as vet informed us she can't get separate bloodwork and the whole mega panel is rather expensive. She said even if the expensive extraneous panel came back indicating pancreatitis, she would just treat it with a few days of bland chicken and boiled potatoes, a pepcid every day forever (rather than just "as needed"), and different, lower fat food after the bland diet is done. So the "not eating" was probably due to an upset tummy.

The whining and pacing was most likely due to the arthritis, which is worse than we thought after her last exam. The xrays showed moderate arthritis at the sacrum, which was inflamed and apparently putting pressure on the bundle of nerves going down her left hind leg. She showed us the extend of the nerve damage by gently folding Ardala's toes backwards - first on the right foot, which she immediately flexed forward, and then on the left, which she didn't even seem to notice. Poor puppy. Reconfiguring a Honda Civic coupe for ease of arthritic corgi-mix entry will be challenging.

We really like this vet. She explains everything, is not afraid to do old-fashioned things like massage and stretching, and Ardala is miraculously relaxed around her, even on the scary vet counter. Boiling chicken for dinner now,

Meanwhile, we were swamped with message traffic since the DSTE's top speed was 1200 baud.

Anti-Semitism created the laws, but the laws reinforced anti-Semitism by keeping the Jewish people separate, which caused the non-Jewish populations to continually view them as "other." Though schools in the US had quotas for Jewish students and communities were "restricted," the web of laws that controlled Jewish life in Europe never existed in the US.

Which is not to say that quotas did not have an effect on Jewish people in the States; my grandfather could not get a job in his profession (he was a scientist) and was flat-out told that more than once that it was because "we already have enough Jews." OTOH, he became a public school teacher without trouble and loved his career, even though it wasn't what he originally chose.

My father used to tell stories of being chased and, if caught, beaten up by the Irish kids in his neighborhood, who beat him up because he was Jewish. But the family did not live in fear that someday there would be a knock on the door and they would be put out of their home.

#530 ::: nerdycellist - I'm glad you're finding things out about your dog. Diagnosis is good, and being able to do something about it is even better.

Sadly, that passage represent's Twain's attitudes, and describes legal rights that weren't necessarily available as a practical matter. While it was perfectly legal for anyone to run for office in 1869, I wonder how many Jewish candidates did, or won when they did? It was legal to buy land, but you can find deeds from much later than that where neighborhood organizations specified that a house could not be sold to a Jew (among other ethnic restrictions). I recall a conversation with my father in the 1970s about the two country clubs in the small city where we lived in SE Pennsylvania, and he mentioned that the more hoity-toity one didn't admit Jews.

Still, all in all, a paradise compared to what Steve with a book's link in 532 describes in the Papal States.

Even if not viable, perhaps will spark a better idea.

Lenore, so sorry for your loss.

That radio interview didn't activate my fear-of-anti-Semitism reflexes, my reaction was a combination of "Is that what normal people use for entertainment these days?" and "Isn't that playing into anti-Christian prejudice?". I noticed that the viewpoint character viewed drinking and extra-marital sex as temptations, but the murder as a sin (I think-- I haven't seen the show) but with no specific temptation involved.

NPR reports on the issue. It strikes me as less than excellent, but I'm not sure what's missing.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Drain and rinse a can of garbanzo beans. Blot them dry. Spread on a baking sheet. Drizzle 2 tablespoons of olive oil over them, and use a spatula to turn them until all the peas have some oil on them. Season to taste: I use garlic powder, paprika, and a small amount of salt. If you like hot stuff, try cayenne pepper.

Bake 30 minutes, maybe a little longer. After you do it a few times, you'll figure out the best baking time. They have a tendency to burn in the last few minutes, so you want to remain watchful. (I usually smell it if that happens.)

I suspect if you'd searched for roasted chickpeas, you'd have found the recipe.

They have become my crunchy snack of choice. Enjoy.

I started this post to say "I have almost no stuff except moving boxes, so my costume is a stegosaur. There is no sodomy planned" and then I realized I might have to give some background.

I don't know if this picture is visible at all to people who aren't logged onto facebook as me.

Hi everyone! I'm behind on my reading!

That addresses previous news, that of Lisa Simeone and World of Opera. -- And she wasn't an acting spokesperson for Occupy Wall Street D.C. They out and out lied.

This is another, new, different freelancer dismissal, from the co-produced WNYC-PRI program The Takeaway.

The listeners know darned well what they don't say while saying bs, and are calling them on it.

As for donating to public radio -- never never never again. This year that money went directly to a friend who is having such financial difficulty that when her last check got lost she literally was down to nothing to eat.

Love, C.

I had carefully bought the same speed RAM as was already in the PC, but it turns out that the system was running at a slower speed. So I bought new RAM at the slower speed. That also crashed Windows and is being returned.

At this point I think I'll just leave well enough alone. The computer takes a while to boot up, and to load programs, but it's fine after that. I will be buying a new system sooner than I had hoped. But not right now.

If so, open it up and look at the motherboard under a bright light.

Look for electrolytic capacitors. Little cans with shiny aluminum tops, decorated with a cross.

If the tops are bulging, or leaking tan goo . . .yes, time for a new computer.

You can replace those, but it is generally not worth the time or trouble.

I remember a time when my roommates and I were still a week from our next paychecks, and there was pretty much nothing edible in the house, and a friend of mine came by with one of her friends and said they were in the process of moving and had some leftover boxes and cans of food to get rid of. You can see our picture in the dictionary next to "pathetically grateful," or could last time I looked.

Dictionary upgrades picture of "pathetically grateful" for first time in thirty years.

The computer runs okay, it just takes a while to boot up and to load programs. The hard drive has lots of room left on it, too. (I'm not doing much with it besides word processing, web browsing, and some very basic photo editing.) I thought more memory would speed things up a little--and it did, except for the crashing problem.

I can live with the slow booting until I have enough spoons to deal with setting up a new computer. Not this year, I don't think.

I mean a total reinstall, over a formatted drive.

There might be creeping malware crud slowing things down. Just a possibility.

Stefan Jones (560): A full reinstall of Windows would require at least as many spoons* as a new computer, so that's not happening any time soon. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

*Just the thought of having to reinstall all my programs, set up the desktop and folders the way I want them, and restore all my files makes me tired.

1. Rinse and drain canned/cooked chickpeas well.
2. Peel and mince a load of garlic, at least 1 tablespoon minced.
3. Heat up a 12-inch cast iron skillet (chosen because it can go both on stove and in oven). Meanwhile heat oven to 400 F.
4. Put a couple tablespoons olive oil in skillet.
5. Add chickpeas and garlic to skillet. Stir/toss for a couple minutes; season with salt and pepper.
6. Put skillet in the preheated 400 F oven for about 20 minutes. They're done when just starting to brown.
7. Put in bowl. Toss with more olive oil (a small drizzle, teaspoon magnitude), lemon juice (I usually do juice of 1/2 lemon), and more black pepper (and more salt if you like). Eat.

These made quite a splash when I served them at an impromptu gathering recently. People said they were going to go home and make themselves some. I was told they taste "like really good roasted chicken only better." Hadn't thought of it that way, but I can see it. I personally find them addictive.

When I Am Rich, I will have another computer. But a lot of things will happen When I Am Rich.

I also uninstalled Amazon Unbox, which I haven't been using. (I think it got slower after I installed that.)

It remains to be seen if either of those actually helped (I'm posting this from work; it was very, very late by the time the Anti-Malware finished), but I have hopes.

I am the imp of the perverse
(knowing this won't help you, either)

I heard about one of those once, happened long ago where DH was working. Dual Dec-10. Under certain circumstances it could get *very* confused.

Installing iTunes 10 via PlayonLinux gives me something that's slower than sh*t, prone to crashing, and doesn't recognize the iPhone when it's connected. (I can mount the iPhone as a drive and copy the files, but at least some files aren't available that way.) The PlayonLinux site isn't very helpful.

Anyone have any ideas?

{{{hugs}}}

That tumor that Tiny is suffering from; turns out it was not getting bigger; it was abscessing. "This is good news?"

Well, yes, actually. She managed to lance it herself, which is how I discovered this. A course of antibiotics and periodic Betadine flushings later, and she's looking much happier and more spry. Still has a half-inch-deep pit in her belly, but overall I'm much more optimistic about her prognosis than I have been in quite a while.

She's even gone back to being the dinnertime soloist.

It's a total rip-off, is what it is. Here we were brought up to expect rows and banks of pretty das blinkenlights, and what we get is a tv with a typewriter tied to it.

I'm particularly fond of the Stargate productions' solution to this problem. Those panels of lights and such you see in the background? My understanding is that the technical term for those is "BLDs." "Blinking Light Devices."

Unfortunately, it wasn't until yesterday that I remembered to get a bottle of Knudsen's Cranberry Juice Concentrate for her, too. (Alas, she seems to have lost her love of syringe-food, which means we get to have twice-daily wrestling matches.)

Do they have some sort of doggy cranberry supplement? I've seen a powdered version for cats.

I took my hyperthyroidic cat for his regular follow-up and checkup this past weekend. It now seems that his thyroid hormone levels are too low, which can lead to kidney problems, apparently, so I have to change his meds to a lower dose and take him back in a month for a new blood test.

Other than that, he's doing very well. He gained weight and is now 3.325 KG (7.33 lbs, ish). He can stand to take on a little more, but the trend is good. She was actually surprised to see how good his muscle tone and general health was - he's 16, but she said she would have guessed younger just by his checkup.

I hate that I have to take him back so soon - the visits are so stressful for him, even though all the doctors and techs are very good and let me hold him through all the prodding and bloodletting. It always takes him at least a full day to recover, during which he MUST NOT BE SEPARATED FROM ME EVER.

Still, much better news than it could have been, so I'm happy with it overall.

I've always wondered if a shot of oxytocin before the vet visit would make any difference.

I'm very lucky; my pigs trust me enough that they will actually even tolerate having tumors aspirated without uttering a peep. (Although I'm a little ticked at one of my vets; she didn't give me a chance to get Gustav combobulated before palpating her belly, which was very tender, and thus made Gustav cry piteously.) It's amazing what they will put up with if you hold their face and talk to them calmly while the procedure is being performed.

I don't know about oxytocin, but low-dose narcotics work for babies.

When our youngest was in the hospital (3 months old) we asked that they give him a small dose of a narcotic (I think they used fentanyl) when setting IV's. (As he was on multiple non-compatible medications, he had a lot of IV's). It made a huge difference in how upset he got during and after.

(btw, you can see a not very good picture of him here: http://victorsvillage.com/2011/10/29/buttercup-watch-2011-voting-round-3/#pd_a_5624675 He's Alex, 10th photo down)

There was an interview with a cat photographer in the NYTimes Magazine on Sunday. He says he's photographed hundreds of thousands of cats over the decades. The remark of his that struck me most was this: "The first reaction of any cat when you take them somewhere they don’t know is, Oh, is this the vet?"

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/30/magazine/mag-30wtwt.html?ref=magazine

I sometimes wonder if my dog, whose only health scare at age ten has been a spurious lump, is like the Parson's One Horse Shay, and will suddenly just fall apart one day, every bit separated from the other.

He never fights or cries, he just sort of freezes, and stares at me with huge eyes while his fur falls out. He's not aggressive, he's just plainly terrified.

I'll ask about a tranq for next visit, although if I'm having to worry about his kidneys now, I'll worry about too many meds making those worse...

And Alex is a cutie! My little fellow is all black, and his furry brother (similar age but no health problems so far, knock on wood) is orange, so they make a dandy Hallowe'en decoration when they sit in the window.

*And can I take a sec to fall in love with 'Stilts' expression in the pic a few above your fellow? I'm afraid I'm having the standard XKCD reaction to all these cat photos!

I somehow missed that XKCD, which just made me LOL. Too true!

My last cat, Spot, reacted that way with the vet. He could somehow increase his density (the poor boy was already 20 lbs) and just sort of go limp, ejecting tufts of fur at regular intervals. He never scratched or bit anyone. On one memorable occasion, the vet tech, clad in cat-proof gauntlets and rubber apron and holding a terrified Spot from under his armpits, passed him over the counter to me, at which time he promptly peed all over my favorite sweater. He was too scared to pee on the vet tech, who was at least clad for such a contingency. Of course, we could hardly blame him; he had a very tragic kittenhood, starting with being a stray, being mauled by an Irish setter, and then having kidney stones so severe they had to remove his, uh, equipment. If that happened to me in my first two years, I don't think I'd ever go back to the doctor again.

Spot eventually lived to be 20, but never liked the cat carrier, car rides or the vet.

A fan of ST-TNG, eh?
:-)

He was abused before being rescued and coming to me, which is why, I guess, he's so afraid of strangers. It took so long to get him accustomed to me, and to a certain extent, my mother (she kitty-sits when I'm away), but once he did, he seemed to thoroughly decide that I am his One And Only Person.

He accepts my mother as someone who may be trusted to provide food and clean the box. He rewards her for this by allowing her an occasional head-pat. It still surprises me that he'll let her pill him, as long as she has cookies in her hand!

One of those BFO* "Well, duh!" moments: Last time I had to have a mega-dose of antibiotic injected into my butt, they bundled a painkiller in with it. Which meant that I could actually walk during the week after the shot. What a concept.

Cheryl @585: I'm afraid I'm having the standard XKCD reaction

You should hear me talking to my guinea pigs. Downright sickening.

--

* Blinding Flash of the Obvious

Basically, anything with fur will do that. There's even a technical term, which I forget (paging Ginger...).

nerdycellist @ 587... My last cat, Spot

A fan of ST-TNG, eh?
:-)

Yes, but which version of Spot? The original exotic-longhair Spot, or the post-transporter accident orange tabby Spot? Or the post-second-transporter-accident Spot who switched from male to female?

Why, yes, I do take issue with changing important details of a character--or a character's pet, if you prefer--simply because the original "portrayor" is no longer available (e.g., original Spot cat-actor died) or to fit the exigencies of story ("We need a pregnant animal to give birth while Picard and Data are off the ship in order to suggest to Data the correct logical path to solve the Dilemma of the Week! Let's use Spot--she can have kittens!" "Uh...earlier this season, we had Data hand Spot to Worf with extensive instructions to 'play with him, tell him he is a good cat' and so on. You think the fans aren't going to notice?" "It's just a cat..."). Why do you ask?

He adopted us when my dad was in the hospital for a knee surgery and subsequent infection (gained at a hospital where his doctor would stash band-aids at the top of door-jambs. Nice.) so he only really let dad pet him after about 15 years. He was timid, but sweet. I miss having a kitty.

Drat.

*Okay, maybe a little faster. A teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy, little bit faster.

Jacque, #574:
"I had to have a console just to make my system run;
Without a fancy console, then my system wasn't done.
So I tied a ten-buck typer to a broken TV tube,
And now I've got a console that can write the evening news!"
- "Do It Yourself", words and music © Bill Sutton

Melissa, #583: I thought that was a very good picture, of very nearly Playcat quality! Something about his expression strongly suggests "bedroom eyes".

Serge, #588: That's exactly why our most recent feline acquisition got the name Spot. Well, that and that she does have well-defined spots...

David, #590: Oh, yes -- stress-shedding is very common among cats. Most of mine have done it to some extent whenever they visited the vet.

Syd, #593: The original portrayer of Spot was a Somali, which is the long-haired version of the Abyssinian (although by Persian standards they only count as a medium-hair). And no, you weren't the only person who noticed and was bothered by the changes. Spot's not a Timelord!

Someone more knowledgeable might comment whether that does in fact provide any benefit.

The FG's Fabulous Daughter's cat just had a bout of excessive shedding, to the detriment of the Fabulous Son-in-Law. It followed her abrupt transition from the FG's house to the FD/FSiL's new apartment. Endocrine stress can cause the hair follicles to -- as they say -- synchronously cease anagen phase.

Area corgi-mix recovering from pancreatitis well, has expressed desire to stay on bland (all chicken) diet rather than transition back to kibble. Pain from arthritis being managed and stairs avoided.

In related news, area servant monkey bakes celebratory batch of chocolate- and butterscotch- chip pecan cookies. And there was much rejoicing.

Oregon chapter of the Zombie Squad teaches disaster preparedness in the guise of getting ready for the zombie apocalypse:

http://www.oregonlive.com/living/index.ssf/2011/10/zombie_squad_combines_fascinat.html

A Windows Registry with a lot of crud is consuming memory that it doesn't need to.

Some of the Registry Cleaners advertised as free are fear-inspiring demo programs. They tell you what's wrong, but you have to buy the full version to fix it.

I have used Eusing Registry Cleaner, which is genuinely free, and seems to have made a noticeable difference to my system.

So I don't think using one is stupid, but tread carefully.

My kitty is the opposite--complains whenever we take away his kibble . . . .

Alternatively, if you have a Windows install disc handy and your heart is absolutely set on using iTunes, you could try using VirtualBox to run Windows inside your Linux. (PlayonLinux and the other WINE derivatives are, IMNSHO, largely a waste of time, because WINE itself is painfully unstable, subject to constant regressions, and the devs there seem to be mostly interested in getting games to work, not more useful software.)

If it's a Windows box, I highly recommend running Piriform's CCleaner; it's a free (donationware) program that cleans up temp folders, browser cache folders, and the registry, and backs up the registry before making changes. It will also clean out excess cookies (though it does have a function to allow you to keep necessary cookies). http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

I'm a techie, and I love this program; I have it on every computer I use (including work), and I run it about once a week. I haven't had to reinstall my OS since I put Win7 on it originally, and it's still running strong.

I also strongly recommend the Microsoft security suite, as it's lighter-weight than both AVG and Avast, and doesn't nag you to upgrade.

Hundreds Of Millions Missing From MF Global, 'New York Times' Reports

"They said they were the New York Times, but we haven't been able to confirm that."

Hundreds Of Millions Missing From MF Global, 'New York Times' Reports

"They said they were the New York Times, but we haven't been able to confirm that."

Also, I'm getting an iPad soon, and then the file transfer will become far more important.

I have a disk for Windows 98, but I'd really rather not have to try and set up a dual-boot system just now, especially as that requires backing up my Ubuntu stuff, to be reinstalled after the Windows installer wipes the disk.

The one I downloaded was called 'Free Window Registry Repair', which I had originally got (I believe) from this CNET site. I found another download site and description of the program here. The version I had downloaded was 2.0 — I note it is currently at 2.5.

I notice Dave Bell and Jennifer Baughman make recommendations also, and possibly you have already downloaded one of these.

*raises fist high*

Yes!

Man buys DVD of Charlton Heston's "The Omega Man" for $5.99. Man's spouse makes retching noises.

She Knew The Job Was Dangerous When She Took It.

Are there any kids' books that have bad endings? At first I said oh, sure, I can think of three off the top of my head, but then she differentiated "bad" from "unhappy" - they have to be books where "the bad guys win but the good guys don't die," so none of the dead dog books qualify. Also book 2 of a trilogy doesn't count, because the *story* has a happy ending even if the book doesn't. (Which she phrased as "serious stories with lots of books always have triumphant endings even if some of the books make it look like the heroes will be defeated" which kind of cracked me up but I knew what she meant. Kid reads a lot.)

Maybe that's not what you're after.

I am at the end of my tether. Her medications are being administered regularly and she is making her dislike of 50% of the bland diet known so we're now starting to do chicken mixed with her regular stuff (she prefers the chicken). Is this just behavioral? Is she acting out with bad herding behavior at night? Has the expectoration of half of her diet made her hungry and distracted? Can I just get a sedative for her? Or is there a medical reason for this that was missed?

Dang, I need to get some sleep.

Of course, discovering that a "male" cat is female by producing a litter of kittens is an event with no precedent... ;-)

"Catagenesis?"

Reason I ask is that it took me a while to work out that sometimes my guinea pigs "random" reactions are actually in response to hearing my neighbors moving about. ("Ah! Human is up! Time to play/eat!")

Is there maybe some kind of subtle auditory signal she might be responding to?

Does anyone know where I can purchase some no-longer-in-production yarn? Specifically, Coats Opera #5, white. I've contacted the company, and they said that they no longer make that yarn and suggested searching the internet, but I've had no luck.

Background:
Some time ago, my mum wanted to crochet a tablecloth; she found a pattern, bought the specified number of yarn balls* and then put the whole thing away until she finished one of the 5 she already had going.♪ She got a little of the way in, decided she hated the pattern, and switched to a different one, only noticing once she was halfway through that she would not have enough yarn to complete the project.

She doesn't care about dye lot, since the difference between 'white' and 'white' should not be very noticeable, she thinks, and anyway she's prepared to live with it, or maybe bleach it, or something. She just wants to finish the tablecloth!

*I guess they're called balls? They're wound around some kind of stiff cardboard, not like the skeins of knitting yarn with which I'm more familiar. I did not inherit the handwork gene, I'm afraid. I'd rather sew.
♪She generally has one for each room, one portable in a bag, plus one she has put away for now and will get back to later

Anyone who was looking for a subject for a short story or poem, you're welcome.

We live on the top floor of an apartment building that is one of the quietest I've ever lived in. Every now and again a downstairs neighbor will put on some sort of dance music that shakes our floor, but that never lasts past 9. Sometimes you can hear our next door neighbor take his chihuahuas out by the sound of the door and the jingling of the dog tags, but that's about it. We're starting to worry that Ardala's escalating whining is going to carry through the building.

When we're awake, it's easy to do the right thing behaviorally and just ignore her. We've also noticed calmer behavior from her when we're both within eyesight - in the same room or similar. That she gets increasingly hysterical in the evening, when we retire to our separate rooms, makes me think it's her latent herding instinct. She gets so wound up that even when we sat in the living room to feed her this morning she just kept pacing, making the odd distracted pass at the food dish, occasionally stopping for food presented as a "treat" (we make her sit, or down, and then give it like a reward. she got bored with that too). She doesn't seem to be able to "settle".

Of course, I also thought the initial problem had to do with her teeth, and that was wrong. Maybe it's not herding behavior at all. Maybe she's trying to tell us she's hungry, or wants to watch the SyFy channel or something.

On the positive side, I modified pericat's advice at #536 and called the boss of the dogwalking company we use. She apologized profusely and agreed to have our dogwalker call one of us at work from our home phone (we do not have a spare cell) when he stops in. He has a two hour window, which I feel is generous. She has also requested a spare set of keys and will be checking in with him herself so that if he's unable to make it to our place in time, she will take Ardala out.

No, that's acrylic, while this one is cotton.

It's also not "Coats & Clark", it's "Coats Opera" (although they are the same company, really).

Thanks for looking.

Your Linux distribution will probably have packages for VirtualBox and/or VMWare Player, another free Type-2 hypervisor.

Mind you, using a hypervisor still does mean running through the Windows installation process, but honestly, if there's a specific piece of Windows software that you need to run, my experience is that it's usually a more effective and stable solution than a WINE overlay like PlayonLinux, and less tedious than a dual-boot.

(And don't I sound pretentious? Sigh.)

I'd also look all over eBay, and check there regularly, as new items will show up all the time.

Thanks, I will check out Ravelry. I'd seen it mentioned here before, but it seemed kind of large and intimidating. I'll screw up my courage and jump in, I guess.

I'll check eBay as well.

I can also take a look in a couple of German yarn stores, on the off chance that it's still being manufactured here. How much does your mom need?

Adventures in Veterinary Care: Revenge of the Osteophyte -

Talked to a different vet at the clinic. They DID send the bloodwork in. They didn't charge us because it came in so much higher than the estimate. IT'S NOT PANCREATITIS!!!! However, she does have pretty severe arthritis in her back, and it's called Spondylosis. She's been in intense pain all this time. He prescribed another pain med on top of the Metacam. She can eat whatever she wants, and we should also start her on glucosamine immediately. Relieved! And somewhat guilty that I wanted to throttle her this morning.

Cheryl @644: Ya mean kinda like this? Or are you looking specifically for second-hand?

So damn relieved I can't even express it. Now not only will my pup feel better with a minimum of change to her lifestyle, I might possibly be able to afford a dining table big enough for the dinner and cocktail parties we've been hosting! (huzzah, craigslist).

I would very much appreciate the help with Ravelry! I didn't have much time to look today, but it seems they have a heckuva lot of stuff in there...

I don't think ML shows your email. Unless I'm not looking properly?

@654 Jacque
That seems to be size 10. My mum needs size 5. I'll take new or clean second-hand.

Here's hoping.

I resemble that remark... (My husband and I have occasionally had people directed to "just look for the hobbit couple, it should be really obvious.")

That said, I am in complete awe of that conversation...

Also I have to say big thanks for all of Jim's "what to do in an emergency" posts. This morning a man at the gym had a heart attack, and, well, he was still alive when the paramedics took him out, so that's a good thing. I think we did everything right, and at least we didn't do anything wrong (except for nobody at the gym having a working cell phone on them, but it's in a building we have to leave to get reception anyway). Luckily said gym is less than a mile from the hospital, so I'm feeling hopeful for him. None of us even know his name, but he was a young guy, seemed more or less in shape - very scary. And now I will actually heed the warnings not to work out by yourself that are posted all over the place. And get better about keeping my phone charged and accessible. (I bought the stupid thing for emergencies, and the one time there actually is one I can't use it. Yep, kicking myself pretty hard over that one.)

<Grumble, snort>. I will try googling around, but that's not encouraging.

(but personally, I use kvm and virt-manager when I need a console)

This awesome piece on family history and its echoes into the present.

Thanks.

I keep wondering whether Amazing Girlfriend is any relation to Fabulous Girlfriend....

http://www.ravelry.com/people/Sylvie/stash/opera-size-5

(I don't know if you can see that if you aren't a member of Ravelry, but it's free to join.)

But as she's not *my* FG (after all, there's someone in my life who might have something to say about that!) I guess it doesn't matter.

(matter, matter, matter, matter!)

And as far as whether the alternate reading is also correct, I am *so* not going there.

Redistricting is a mathematical puzzle to work out with census data and maps. It's also a chess game where players must anticipate the possible moves of their adversaries. I have a pal who thinks it is considerable fun.

To teach about this, the University of Southern California made The Redistricting Game. Try it.

Yay!!

Ok, I'm a member, and I can see the page. Now what do I click on to tell her I want to buy it?

There must be something wrong with me these days. I'm not usually this helpless.

As for contacting Sylvie, toward the top of that Rav page on the left, you'll see her name. Click that, and you'll go to her 'home page'. Just under her name, you can click 'send message' and you'll get the private-messaging window. When you get a reply, you'll see a little white envelope in the top right corner of your Rav window -- click that envelope, and you can view your message.

Do we have any serious opera buffs here? I'm trying to figure out (for plotting purposes) if anyone wrote an opera based on Ovid's story of Iphis and Ianthe that would have been in the repertoire in the first decade or two of the 19th century. My initial Googling hasn't turned anything up. (If, in fact, no such opera exists in our space-time continuum, that might be even more convenient, since the story is already set in a solidly alternate version of history, and that would enable me to invent a composer and the necessary snippets of libretto that I want to use.)

Thank you so much for your help! I have contacted Sylvie, paid via Paypal, and the yarn will be shipped tomorrow! My mother thanks you also.

Maybe once it's finished I can put a photo on Flickr, so you can see the fruits of your labour.

The Fluorosphere rulez!!

Speaking of which, we saw the unit yesterday and mailed in our application today. Here's hoping we get it... but no guarantees, especially in the Berkeley rental market.

Kip @680 -- Thanks, I'd seen references to that one but it was clearly not useful for my purposes.

Well, I rather like the idea of inventing an opera. And besides which, then the lyrics can have exactly the right nuances for the scene. (It's one of those set-ups where one character is translating the lyrics for another character while wishing she were saying them in her own right.)

Sounds like an interesting link to follow, but... I've never seen a link borked quite like that before. Could you try again?

No surprise that the link was initially borked. Did you notice the number of the post?

Our carbon monoxide detector went off at 3 AM the night before last -- an actual CO alarm, not a low-battery alert.

Neither we nor our cats showed any CO poisoning symptoms, and the alarm stopped going off after a few minutes. So we opted not to call 911, even when the CO detector started going off again.

Instead, we first checked the pilot light on the gas water heater, since that's the only combustion occurring in our house. The pilot light was burning properly blue, and we didn't smell gas anywhere. So we turned the gas water heater as low as it could go. We figured if the gas burner didn't kick on, it would minimize the CO produced.

We also tried new batteries in the CO detector, just in case it was secretly some kind of low battery problem after all. It kept going off with the new batteries too.

None of us, including the cats, showed any CO poisoning symptoms yesterday either. So we continued to not panic.

The service guy just came (actually, he's still here, writing up the paperwork for the visit). He inspected the water heater and its entire exhaust system, and couldn't find any leaks.

He also brought his own CO detector, which has not alarmed the entire time he's been here. (Ours continued to go off during that time.)

So we're putting it down to our CO detector malfunctioning.

I've just ordered two new ones (on Amazon, where pretty much all brands and models of CO detectors are selling for 50% of list price). I figure that they probably won't both malfunction at the same time, so if one goes off I can check the other.

I got this model (Kidde KN-COPP-LBM battery-operated). I like that it has a digital readout of CO levels in ppm, updated every 15 seconds. Yay, data!

Also, Cat Meadors @ 663 -- I'm glad you were there and prepared to act. Calling 911 and getting the paramedics there with speed was the best thing you could do for him. I hope he made it through.

And I hope you're doing okay, too. It sounds like it was a fairly scary thing to witness.

Other open threadiness: At the recommendation of a friend, I have been considering buying eyeglasses from Warby Parker. Their glasses cost $95 with lenses included ($125 for very strong prescriptions). They have some nice-looking frames. My friend has been very happy with the glasses he bought from them a few months ago. And they do a really cool "buy a pair, give a pair" program that provides access to eyeglasses in parts of the world where it's hard to get them.

They also have a very nice home try-on program, where they will send you 5 frames (with fake display "lenses") for free, let you keep them for 5 days, and provide a pre-paid shipping label to send them back. I'd already gotten my 5 frames (which come packed in a very attractive presentation box) and was having fun trying them on.

Unfortunately, my eye exam yesterday proved that I am too near-sighted to buy glasses from Warby Parker (or any of the online eyeglasses places). They only make lenses up (down?) to -10, and in one eye I'm -11.25. Le sigh.

I finally have vision insurance again, so buying glasses from a regular optician is a financial possibility. But I'm still disappointed.

The most fun thing about Warby Parker is that they sell a monocle. I could still get a real-life prescription monocle for the other eye. It would be ridiculous, but I am actually somewhat tempted. I mean, how cool would it be to have a real-life monocle?

He and I both hope this helps.

They work very well. Plugged them in and the mice departed within the day and have never returned.

You will laugh. To triangulate rapidly on your opera candidate, I googled "iphis and ianthe opera imitative of gay" ... and promptly got the google groups version of the post in rec.music.classical.recordings providing you with that response!

But without the problematic last phrase, this is one of the searches I already tried before asking. While there are lots of hits that contain all those keywords, none of them leads to any actual opera on the subject (other than the very recent Elana Kats Chernin one).

Fascinatingly, this book mentions a spurious Shakespeake play "Iphis and Ianthe" which was apparently submitted to somekinda publishing/performance index in 1660 but never printed.

HLN: Woman survives school play, bonds with new cat, misses all her friends very much.

'Sleep no more, Steerpike doth murder sleep...'

Anyway, I hope I haven't wasted your time. My goal was to help, not hinder.

A part of the reason for that limit on the strength of the lens may be that the lens is too thick and heavy without using a special optical glass of higher refractive index.

There might be an online source which can handle that, for an extra charge. You may find that you're not going to be able to use "fashion" frames. I know that the (British) outfit I have used in the past charges a lot for a high refractive-index lens, and so wouldn't have so much price advantage over a local supplier.

Hope I got the abbreviation right. Plus most of the folks on this site are writer-y types, so I hope you can help. Here's my question: does anybody know of a brief, down and dirty (like for Dummies) guide to grammar?

I've had two complaints about my employees' grammar in the past week. Which is odd, because my grammatical skills are rusty at best, so my patients' expectations should be low.

After a little research, I realized that these young women (who have a year or two post high school training and are very competent at their jobs)were never taught grammar. I asked them if they knew why the phrase, never use a preposition to end a sentence with, was a bad joke. Right over their heads. They never heard of a dangling participle. Not only did they not know the difference between an adjective and an adverb, they were iffy on noun/verb.

Colorado mandates four years of English to graduate high school. One wonders what went on for those four years. Both of these two employees were solid B high school students.

Anyway, I was hoping for a way to remediate the failings of the local school district (which isn't the worst in the state, although close). Plus, as you can tell from this post, I probably could use a bit of review myself.

Thanks in advance.

Throwmearope, 700: There's a slim volume called _English Grammar for Students of French_, and I believe there's one for Spanish as well. If you skip the French stuff, you're left with a basic explanation of grammar for native speakers of English who've never had formal grammar training. (My students frequently tell me they're learning as much English as French, and I don't think that's just because I'm a massive grammar geek.)

One of my employees is a native Spanish speaker, this could be a real help! Thanks!!

--Off to Ammie.com

She really, really liked Warriner's English Grammar and Composition. Used copies are widely available.

Also comes in old-fashioned Latin flavor.

My mother says she learned most of her English grammar in Spanish class. This was in the 1940s, so the problem goes back a long way.

So I come from a background which causes me to speak a comparatively privileged dialect of American English. I get to be taken seriously when I open my mouth. I've lived in places where saying "I seen you were upset, so I brang an extra fishing pole so you and me could go fishing," would raise no eyebrows in a casual context. In those places, my dialect can cause some social tension with people who would say that. When I'm talking with strangers (usually in a context of working with the public*), I usually down play my vocabulary and let myself slip into a bit of the twang that comes of spending time in West Virginia at an impressionable age so that I am more approachable.

Which leads me to my next observation, that people who complain about other people's grammar are often really complaining about class, and more importantly people stepping out of the social bounds that make the complainer comfortable. This may (possibly, even probably) say unfortunate things about the complainer, but it also means that the young women whose grammar occasioned this mini essay are giving these sorts of petty bullies ammunition. (On that head I am also reminded of Amy Post's list of "do's and don'ts" in polite society, namely the things people say to sound educated and the things educated people actually say. It's an antiquated list but it reflects an understanding of the class landscape which has been forgotten.)

*At home or in social situations in which I am comfortable, I revert to sounding like the sort of person whose family reveres Bill Moyers and recites poetry at the dinner table. My father has a rampant Yeats infection that has gone untreated. At this point we think it might be terminal.

Anyway, off to my sister's birthday party soon.

My clientele are all middle class, mostly blue collar families, a huge variety of ethnic origins (which I personally enjoy a lot) with a smattering of eddicated folks, a couple of college professors, a ton of engineers (which must say something about me, one wonders what, exactly). So when my crowd comments about grammar, I do think it needs to be addressed.

Both of these young ladies are prepping to go to nursing school and "more better" is not going to further their ambitions, I fear.

As for me, I too diagrammed sentences, once in the shape of a phallus which got me sent to the principal's office, but I digress. . .

I also have a degree, although in French Lang and Lit, but going to medical school ruined my ability to communicate in written, oral and probably even non verbal communication forms.

The gubmint mandated that I upgrade my beloved 11 year old Dells. Brand new server, 7 brand new workstations, brand new software. And the brand new software promptly ate the brand new server and workstations. We can't bill, we can't use the electronic medical record for charting, we can't even print. $15,000 and nada to show for it. Only the scheduler and reviewing the old data works.

So we've been saving up for new software and then my son the geek is going to nuke the server and workstations back to the box. And then we start over and get to learn a whole new system. I hate computers.

For my father - a grammar(!) school boy, the language relied upon for the purpose was Latin.

What an insulte to even consider such an act! Oui?

Although, glancing through it with the "Look Inside" feature, I'd say the rest of your joke is off the mark, and it might indeed be something that would meet throwmearope's needs. (Except perhaps for its being, like most of the "...Dummies" books, a tome.)

...oh, and if you click on the link, read the topmost review.

There is applause as the jet comes to a halt but almost immediately a surprisingly calm departure through the main doors and overwing exits. The running exit slide sequence is of particular interest, and comfort, for those who might find the thought of using one intimidating. ... This is a rare inside-an-emergency-video that many airlines and safety authorities will study frame by frame to see what lessons can be learned.

If I'm ever in the same situation however (even a best-case scenario like this with plenty of time for crew to re-brief passengers, reasonable weather etc), I won't be reducing my (and fellow passenger's) chances of a safe exit by distracting myself with a recording device.

I feel compelled to invent a currency called Dunning-Krugerrands, with which to pay the salaries of incompetent people who can't be fired.

Okay, I'm done. Nothing to see here. Move along.

(Handsigns and colors optional)

"What a country!"

I'm rather a fan of the "English Grammar for Students of French" recommended above; I have a copy and still use it, and would probably list it in my "most helpful books when learning French."

I'm not at all certain that it is the right book, though, for someone whose knowledge of grammar isn't already pretty good. It's like some of my well-used VBA reference books--you need to know what to look up, and your question needs to be technical, not general, to get much help.

What I'd recommend--well-known deficiencies and prescriptiveness and all--is "The Elements of Style" (Strunk and White).

I got several responses - thank you all - and one pointer by Dave Bell to Simon Barber's work 
At The Mountains of Cuteness

I liked it quite a lot, even if it wasn't exactly what I was looking for - in this story it isn't really that the cuteness has been weaponized per se, more that the "natural" cuteness of the "enemy" is a dangerous force in it's own right. IE it isn't like they use "cuteness rays" it is that the rays their cuteness gives off are deadly and/or psychosis-inducing. 

That said, I read everything I could in the parent directory for that story and found I wanted more in similar veins.  Does anyone have further pointers of that sort? I was strongly reminded of parts of the trailer for Sucker Punch (still have not seen it), though there is considerably more species variation in Simon's work.  
I have also enjoyed what I have read of Antonina T. Tiger's work (the Wolf Baginski series was quite good), I'll need to poke about on the Spontoon Islands site and find some more. Btw, the brief glimpse you gave us on the "fiction" thread has me intrigued. Should you feel like letting others read it when it is complete, please let us know where we can find it!

That reminds me: a further while back, Dave Bell posted some Story on a thread here and I've been unable to find more - Dave Bell, is your work available somewhere or must I content myself with the few snippets that make their way here?

On a related note, I have recently finished working my way through "H.P. Lovecraft, The Fiction", and while I liked some of it, I have found that I like the parody/pastiche of his themes far more than the original work. Anyone else have a similar response?

Ah, the cat plays drums?

Lila @ 723:

*snork*

lanman auth = Yes
client lanman auth = Yes
client plaintext auth = Yes

as per http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/win9x_samba.htm . (If it still doesn't work, you may have a bug.)

Gene Krupaw?

The edition of the print was rather small — two, I think — and the school kept one, so there doesn't seem a way anybody would have heard of it. Spontaneous degeneration, perhaps.

Anyone have any ideas or suggestions about how I could go about removing my Ex from my mortgage? Let me explain that a little: she didn't help buy the house; I put her on my mortgage for the purpose of ensuring that if I predeceased her, she'd already have half the house and I could leave the other half in my will. I know, it was Not Smart of me, but that was Twu Wuv at work.

Anyway, she's still on the mortgage despite having moved out, changed her address, and not paid anything at all towards the mortgage or even towards the upkeep of my house. I know I need to show my history of payments, which means I have to stop in at my credit union and get the information from the past 11 years, but I was wondering if there were any other things to do that I should be considering?

She just wants me to sell the house and split the profits (if any) with her. I am not inclined to sell the place I live in, along with my dogs and cats, because good luck trying to buy another house for all of us in the same price range and in the same location; she has an apartment and has been there since she moved out. She won't just get off the mortgage because she thinks it helps her credit rating to be on it. She has said she could force me to sell.

She uses this threat of a sale to keep me toeing the line, which upsets the FG (and to be honest, I'm not happy about it myself). Right now, the Son is spending most of his time with her, except when she needs time to herself, and we don't have a regular schedule anymore. We had one, until he was hospitalized, and when he chose to stay with her "until things stabilized", all schedules went out the window and haven't reappeared. I feel like I can't push her because then she'll start making loud noises about selling the house.

It's been a year since we were in the mediator's office, and no progress has been made since then. I have managed to remove all the crap she'd left behind, from the past twenty years (and I wish I was exaggerating); she has managed to remove still more items that were not necessarily hers and kept them, while overlooking all her stuff in the front room.

So, bottom line: what else should I be thinking, saying, doing? I'd like to resolve this without getting angry, because my son comes first -- and he needs stability -- but I can't go on letting her have this much control over my life despite having ejected herself nearly two years ago.

My mother wanted to put me on the mortgage when she bought the house in town, for the same reason. The realtor convinced her it was a bad idea. Which made life easier for both of us a year later when my mother sold the house.

Not a lawyer, seldom use one, have found them useful at times. Didn't always follow the good advice I was given, and may still regret that.

On glasses - I've been using Zenni Optical for cheap online glasses. I only need fairly standard reading glasses, so I haven't chased down their more interesting options, but they've got a choice of kinds of glass, some of which go to about 20, though most only go to about 10.

Is your ex on the mortgage, or on the deed, or both? In the states where I know something of the law, that matters a lot.

(For example, our house-that-I-really-wish-we could-sell has my wife and I as joint owners on the deed, but I am the only one on the mortgage--which means her credit wasn't considered in underwriting it, and won't be hurt if we default; she had to agree to the mortgage deed but has no responsibility for the mortgage.)

Also, I should probably have pointed you at https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=9918 before now, as it has some info on settings, plus a link to a better video driver.

Alternatively, the Guest Additions *do* work for Windows 2000 and even NT4 (with sufficient service packs), neither of which require activation, so if the folder sharing is a must for you, try to find someone with an old install disc. Also, XP should install without networking (you have a thirty-day window in which to authenticate it, IIRC).

(There's more than one way to skein a cat, as the knitter said after the kittens got into her yarn stash . . . although I do realize that this must be trying your patience by this time. Cheer up, you're almost there, and once the dratted thing is set up you shouldn't ever have any problems with it again.)

NOAA weather radar detects every bird and insect in the area taking flight as a result of the recent OK earthquake

Financing possibilities? Suppose she convinces me to "buy her out", although I can't afford a huge payment -- what could I offer in lieu of a lump sum?

Thanks again..seeing all these suggestions makes me feel better that I'm not missing something obvious.

I stopped by my local Occupy encampment today, giving a ride "home" to one of the young people at my church who's been a regular there. Everything was quiet and they seem pretty well organized in terms of living space.

Can't help wondering where this movement was ten years ago when I was single and more flexible in terms of sleeping in strange places.

I'm trying to recall just what I might have posted here that would be actual story. There may be something of mine from way back, but it would be a web re-issue of some old B7 fanfic. Doesn't look as though there is. The only thing I can pin down as even indexed is a story in Horizon #6, which one review describes as controversial

There were several heartfelt please for help at around that time in 2006. I hope things worked out.

Would anyone be willing to summarise any good results?

*Piriform CCleaner, for the curious

Area woman's arthritic dog FINALLY eats actual dog food without any pill spitting, wheedling, game-playing or related bullshit. Area woman so thrilled she doesn't care if Area Dog has to eat expensive, stinky canned food for months, is optimistic that dog sleeping through the night is imminent.

And on a more somber note: the stuff about Penn State and child rape is awful. No worse -- in fact, damn similar -- than the revelations about the Catholic Church that we have been reading for two decades, but horrible.

Clarification of terms: Deed - the piece of paper who says who owns the house. Mortgage - the piece (stack) of paper contracting you with the bank to pay for the loan on the house. As was said above, relevancy of names on deed and/or mortgage varies state by state. I don't know what it is in your locality, but if she's on your mortgage *but not the deed*, there are very good chances that she can't force the sale. Mortgages are not quitclaim-able, it's going to take a refinance without her name on it. That can be forced by a judge if need be. If she's on the deed, she can probably force sale. If she's on the deed and not the mortgage, it does nothing for her credit, because she's not got a name on the loan that is being paid off. If she is on both (and if you expected it to last forever, she probably is), it gets more complex.

Also, a good real estate lawyer is worth his weight in gold. Also, a divorce lawyer usually deals with this kind of thing and should have resources explaining your state laws about home ownership in the advent of a split.

Now is a good time to refinance; I checked the interest rates a few days ago, and a 15-year fixed-rate loan for $150K was at 3.2% (which might just pay me to refinance now, even though I refinanced just a year ago). See what you need to pay to assume the entire debt on your house; maybe the low interest rates will allow you to afford it.

She's fairly young and comes from strong stock, but she's my bottle baby so, you know.

My dad died Friday night. The cause was lung cancer, from the cigarettes he quit fourteen years ago (though he did get VA disability for being stationed in Vietnam because the current ruling is that if you were stationed there, you are default assumed to have been exposed to Agent Orange.)

At this point I'm mostly dealing with undirected anger of the "quit smoking, dammit" variety. Jim, if you ever want to do one of your PSAs on smoking, I'd be totally happy to see it.

I wish my daughter were old enough to remember him.

B. Durbin @ 774: I hear and sympathize. My condolences on your loss.

Jacque @ 773: Sending good thoughts to Gustav!

sisuile @ 771: I will have to recheck the paperwork, but I believe she's on both the mortgage and the deed. I'm pretty sure she can force the partition if she wanted to. As Bruce Cohen pointed out (772), mortgages are at lows right now -- would it make sense to not only refinance (as our mediator has indicated we will do, to get her off the mortgage once she's satisfied with her settlement), but to include the settlement as a loan? I mean, include the buyout moneys as part of my new mortgage? I can't afford a huge buyout, which is what she's asking for. I'd need to take out a loan. Does it make sense to do it all in one?

Thanks everyone for their comments! It is a relief to know that I'm not missing something important. Our divorce mediator has been a divorce lawyer, and we've gone over the refinancing concept as part of our mediation. We're just stuck on the negotiation of the price for the buyout.

In my lay opinion, that would be the most sensible course of action. An appraisal should give a good idea of what "half the gain in value" is.

Jacque: supporting thoughts and sympathies.

B. Durbin: my father died of lung cancer about 9 years ago, after quitting smoking about 15 years earlier. You have my deepest sympathies. We were all frankly surprised by the extent of the cancer and the speed of its growth; the dr. said that the fact that he had begun smoking in his teens and smoked so many cigarettes for so many years before there was any kind of regulation about tar and nicotine was a major contributor even though he'd been clean for so long.

My mother smoked too, but less, and quit earlier.

My brother smoked a little on and off throughout his teen years and young adulthood, then stopped.

I never smoked.

I get rather furiously angry at people I know who smoke; it seems so _stupid_, given everything we know. And yet, people make stupid choices every day of their lives--including me; I eat too much and too much of the wrong kind of food.

Still, still, still . . . smoking, like not wearing sunblock, drives me bugfuck, particularly since I've lost people I love to lung cancer, emphysema, and melanoma.

P.S. My daughter was 5 or 6 when my father died, and had a loving and vivid relationship with him. But she remembers him as a feeling more than as a person, alas, which makes me quite sad, particularly at this time of year (his birthday is coming up).