Although it is legal in Virginia, it is not sold there due to the fact that the state liquor stores cannot sell any type of a grain alcohol that lacks flavor or color.

But that means Virginia can't sell vodka!

I wish I could get Everclear 190 here in CA. It'd be useful for my infusion projects. I just make do with the Vodka of the Gods. Seriously, it's what it says on the label.

There's a reason it's called "intoxication": that stuff is toxic.

The USP variant is, actually more like $110/liter (just looked).

Steve C., #9: So-called, I am given to understand, because (1) it's purple, and (2) you take one sip and say, "JEEzus!"

The same is true with alcohol and water. AIUI, in both cases the two substances are in a true solution with each other, which allows packing efficiencies for the molecules.

At the follow-up tasting party two weeks later, the resulting substance was the color of a yellow highlighter, and grown people were daring each other to try a spoonful. I refused. The guy who took the dare described it as "medical-grade."

This has put me off the idea of using Everclear for infusions, even proper herb, fruit, and/or spice infusions. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know how I'd balance it properly in a cocktail.

A liquor infusion party is a great party idea, though, if your friends drink alcohol. Everyone brings some liquor and something(s) to infuse. Party host provides lots of little canning jars and labeling supplies. People swap infusion ideas and supplies, and collaborate (and experiment) freely. Then the host keeps all the jars for two weeks.

Then everyone returns for tasting. Host provides eye droppers to everyone, so they can taste 20+ infusions without dying. People mix up tiny cocktails drop by drop. We discover that dried-cherry bourbon is amazing when sweetened with agave nectar, and that chai spices work better in dark rum than in vodka. And that Skittle Everclear is toxic.

IIRC, the recipe was 1 part honey to three parts vodka, leave on the back shelf of a car for two weeks.

This was from the olden days, before people were likely to have opinions about types of honey.

I tablespoon of honey at bedtime improves sleep for enough people (including me, I think) to be worth experimenting with.

How universal is dessert?

to us who listen as the boughs complain
at the winds passage with a sighing sound.
Dead leaves piled up in the slow steady rain

are one more sign of life's passing campaign
against eternity; this is one round.
So much of sorrow is already plain

and we're the losers since we never gain
a single inch, nor hope for a rebound.
Dead leaves piled up in the slow steady rain

are but the markers of our lost terrain,
someone will come and heap them in a mound:
so much of sorrow is already plain,

it is reality, nothing arcane,
our normal vista, not a thing profound;
dead leaves piled up in the slow steady rain:
so much of sorrow is already plain.

to us who listen as the boughs complain
at the winds passage with a sighing sound.
Dead leaves piled up in the slow steady rain

are one more sign of life's passing campaign
against eternity; this is one round.
So much of sorrow is already plain

and we're the losers since we never gain
a single inch, nor hope for a rebound.
Dead leaves piled up in the slow steady rain

are but the markers of our lost terrain,
someone will come and heap them in a mound:
so much of sorrow is already plain,

it is reality, nothing arcane,
our normal vista, not a thing profound;
dead leaves piled up in the slow steady rain:
so much of sorrow is already plain.

Exactly. I only tasted the concoction once in my life. That and Southern Comfort are something I'll never ever do again.

It works quite well for infusions that are then diluted; I use it for making limoncello if I'm in a hurry (vodka works as well, but it needs to steep longer.)

Limoncello:
Peel of 1 dozen lemons and 1 lime, microplaned off.
Put in a quart jar, cover with vodka, shake occasionally for 2 weeks. (If using Everclear--add about 1 cup Everclear, let sit for a day, add the vodka).
Strain and squeeze, cover with the rest of the 1.75l (1l if using Everclear of vodka, shake, strain and squeeze again.

Dissolve 2 cups sugar in 1.5 cups (2 cups if using Everclear) water, cool, mix with the lemon-infused vodka.

Makes 3 .75l bottles.

This brings to mind the question: would I want Scalzi to make me a sandwich? On balance--no, probably not. (Though he has demonstrated a flair for pie.)

I would, however, pay money to have Steven Brust write me a description of a sandwich.

Actually, I can think of several authors to whom that applies. (Many of my favorite authors are deeply interested in food.) I'm sure, for example, that not only Vlad Taltos, but also Ma Kosti, Ogion of Gont (chevre!), and Mole's friend Rat, could make a damn fine sandwich.

Dammit, now I want an FSFnal sandwich bar. I should go get breakfast.

I'm currently reading Steven Erikson's Malazan series (currently on 6 of 10), and am interested in reading more fantasy novels in the same vein e.g. ridiculously complex political, military and religious machinations, with a dose of philosophy, a sense of humor, and an acknowledgment that war and ptsd are intimately connected.

New telescope

I've used Everclear to make fruit brandy/ fruit infusions. I mixed the Everclear 50/50 with water before adding it to the fruit. It wasn't bad, but it did need a little extra sugar to mellow it.

Beneath the leafpile in the winter rain
Life's alchemy turns red and gold to brown,
Dead leaves transmuting into soil again.

The process needs no manager, no brain.
Small fragments into smaller bits ground down
Beneath the leafpile in the winter rain

Are today's chorus in the slow refrain
No fire from space or howling flood can drown:
Dead leaves transmuting into soil again.

If such a process yielded Nature gain,
Where would she put it? Seek her shining crown
Beneath the leafpile in the winter rain.

Life's meaning's only life. You see it plain,
Whether it makes you dance, weep, smile or frown,
Beneath the leafpile in the winter rain,
Dead leaves transmuting into soil again.

(With apologies for following champagne with a Bud Light chaser)

That reminds of the old Bob Newhart show where you were supposed to take a drink when someone said, "Hi, Bob."

I figured out the cost of the alcohol in a bottle of vodka vs. the cost of the bottle of Everclear and I found the vodka was generally less expensive per unit of alcohol for middle or lower market brands like Skyy or Smirnoff. So I only top up with a little bit of Everclear if I really need to bring the alcohol content up, otherwise I just use vodka for cordials.

200-proof lab alcohol is usually made by distillation with benzene to get the last traces of water off as a benzene/water/ethanol azeotrope. The trace benzene left in the alcohol usually won't matter in a chemical reaction when you're using ethanol as solvent, but it sure as hell won't do your liver, your brain, or your bone marrow any good.

"Gold label" absolute alcohol, used when benzene contamination is a problem (as, for example, in UV spectroscopy), is dried by a different process, typically using desiccants such as molecular sieves or cornmeal.

(And yeah, it's annoying that we can't get Everclear 190 here in California; about half the US states limit drinking alcohol to 151 proof. Most infusions work ok with the weaker stuff, and it's a bit more effective than vodka, but if I'm visiting a state that sells the real thing I'll occasionally bring back a bottle.)

I live in Pennsylvania, and have no idea whether I can get Everclear 190 here or not.

Incidentally, you can improve vodkas by giving three or four passes through a water filter of the type found in supermarkets.

But anyway, state store issues notwithstanding, you can buy Everclear in PA.

The leaf poems inspire me to upload a photo taken about this time of year in Massachusetts, 2007. Absent Friends

(Might just be me, but hovering the cursor over the link gets me a preview, and holding shift whilst doing so gets a preview that wants to own the screen.)

Grocery stores can sell beer and wine, but not liquor. Beer and wine can't be sold before noon on Sunday.

Liquor stores can liquor, beer, and wine. They can sell 1.75 liter bottles, and miniatures, but it's a minimum purchase of two minis. Liquor stores close at 9PM and all day Sunday.

(The gory details from wikipedia.)

I've heard about making vanilla extract with rum or bourbon; there's no reason you can't, but I've never tried it. I'm usually after pretty clean vanilla flavor in my extract (at the moment, I've both Madagascar Bourbon and Tahitian extracts that I've made, and they're subtly different), so I'd be reluctant - for my own use - to use a base spirit that tasted of anything.

If you wanted to make a larger batch, I'd get a gasketed canning jar (Crate and Barrel sells them in sizes from 500ml up through 4 or 5 liters), get a pound or half a pound of vanilla beans, prep them as I've described above and toss it all in the jar for a few weeks. Doing it in a widemouth jar would let you discard the pods if you want.

Food stores (including convenience stores, bodegas, and the like) can get a license to sell beer, cider, wine coolers, and similar beverages. Wine or spirits aren't allowed.

Liquor stores can get a license to sell wines, spirits, liqueurs, etc, but not beers, ciders, wine coolers, or any other food product.

I know of at least three instances where "Bob's Grocery" and "Bob's Liquor" (for various values of Bob) coexist in the same building, with very little difference in building trade dress (same colors, fonts, etc). Technically separate businesses with separate entrances, etc, but obviously related.

"Take a clean wastebasket, add a gallon of real orange juice. Real Krogers* orange juice that's got the pulp in it that you have to shake up. A quart of ReaLemon juice. A quart of Welch's Grape Juice. A half a gallon of cheap vodka. Stir it all up. Take a blender, fill it half full with the mixture, go all the way to the top with ice. Two tablespoons of sugar in the top of the blender. Put the lid on the blender and let it run for about 45 seconds, then enjoy."

Nancy, #18: That reminds me of Rivengut, the formula for which IIRC was: one part honey, one part apple juice, one part Everclear, let sit for a week. It was a specialty of the Barony of Rivenstar**.

Steve C., #22: The other thing I remember hearing called "Purple Jesus Punch" is what I think of as "frat party punch" -- the host provides a clean plastic barrel containing some grape juice, and everyone who arrives brings some of their favorite booze to dump into the barrel. I cannot imagine this as being anything but nasty, and dangerous as well.

Kip, #47: No previews for me, using Firefox. Just the normal URL down in the bottom left corner of the screen.

* Relevant to the pluralization-of-company-names discussion in the last Open Thread!

** Which, to my shame, I had to go look up on a map; my brain kept defaulting to "Rivendell", and I knew that wasn't right.

My favorite infusion these days is chopped ginger in 151 rum. Add 1/8 tsp to rum and coke and it's yummy.

Whitnail: "Liar. What's in your toolbox?"

"No, we have nothing. Sit down."

"Liar. You've got antifreeze."

"You bloody fool, you should never mix your drinks!"

Laughing and then retching follows.

As I am in PA, my Trader Joe's-es do not sell alcohol, but I'm sure I can get something equivalent at the state store.

I keep trying to remember to buy a nice big lot of vanilla beans, and failing.

No points for figuring out where and why I learned that.

My friend in high school (AB legal age is 18, so *he* wasn't underage) used to distill vodka to the azeotropic point, and then filter with copper sulphate. And then distill again to get rid of the copper sulphate pentahydrate. He claimed he got 197 proof. He used to bring along 100ml graduated bottles of the stuff.

I grew up in one of the wettest dry counties in Texas, some would say the wettest dry county, and was shocked when it went wet.

Yes, this is the currently recommended practice. In point of fact, I think I have five different resumes in that folder.

At the moment, however, I'm trying to come up with the best general resume that I can

Yes. This is a good approach. A "master" resume you can use as a template, with all the pieces you can shuffle around to mix and match.

never even bother looking at volunteer activities

I could see that being the case where volunteer-related skills are set out in a separate section, and grouped with things like hobbies and interests.

However, the recommendation I've seen that I like (haven't used it personally, though, as I don't have skills that apply) is to simply list the volunteer activity as if it was another job. If you get asked about whether that was paid work, you just say, "I chose to donate that time."

I'm debating the possible wisdom of moving my skill set to a position following my work history. Is that advisable?

My understanding of the purpose of a resume is to depict yourself as someone who can perform needed duties. From that standpoint, what you can do is more relevent than where and when you did it.

My SCA background was pretty much Bhakail. (Philadelphia)

#67 ::: C. Wingate

I seem to remember a consensus when the ST movie came out that Verhoeven either misunderstood or hated the book, and turned a pro-military novel into an anti-military movie.

Vanilla extract, on the other hand, can. What you can't get here is clove extract, so I used to make that very successfully using vodka. (I no longer need to do it because of the wide availability of ground cloves, but it used to be the case that you bought cloves whole, put them into your stewed apple or whatever, and then fished them out again afterwards. Since I really like cloves and tend to cook in bulk, this would be a faff, as there would be a lot of them.)

I know someone who makes an astonishing, not to say faintly alarming, variety of alcoholic infusions. I have not sampled any of them. This is for a very good reason. This particular person has very little sense of taste left; some years ago they were beaned by a malefactor while attempting to reason him out of malefacting, and ended up with brain damage. One of the effects of this brain damage was to wreck their sense of taste, and now about all they can taste is sweetness.

I know other people who have been brave enough to sample these concoctions. Their advice is invariably "don't do it".

(It is just as well that the unhappiness of the critics prevented any sequels being made, as inevitably Starship Troopers 3 would have had a musical scene in which the Sky Marshal sings an upbeat call to arms.)

re 73: I hate to have to tell you this but there have been three direct-to-disc sequels, the second of which they even got Van Dien back to play Colonel Rico.

I've heard some legislators were considering that, but there's some lobbying by the liquor stores themselves against the bill. They say the extra costs of staying open on Sunday would eat into their profits. The main group in favor are the distributors.

I had occasion to watch the first one again not too long ago, and I was actually surprised at how closely they stuck to the book. Leaving aside the whole powered suit thing, of course. I recall, back in the day, somebody in RASSF commenting that the movie was actually framed as a recruiting video, which ties in nicely with the satire aspect posited above.

Mongoose, #62: It's been discussed before; I believe the discussion ran aground on issues relating to copyright and permissions. If this could ever be resolved, I would love to have such a volume.

James, #66: You can buy liquor on Sunday in Texas, but not until after noon. At the Renaissance Faire, they fire a cannon on Sunday to let everyone know that the booze is now available. OTOH, that's by-the-drink, not from a liquor store.

C. Wingate, #67: My beef with the movie was (and remains) that THEY TOOK THE POWER SUITS OUT OF IT. The suits are almost their own character in the book; the use of them informs everything in the plot. Without the power suits, you may have any kind of movie you please, but it is at best "inspired by" Starship Troopers.

Nancy, #69: I remember people saying that it was best analyzed using the principle of "The Purloined Letter" -- that Verhoeven got SO many things SO wrong that it couldn't possibly have been done by accident. ISTR also that at some point he gave an interview in which he pretty much said that flat-out.

That can't beat the credits of "I, Robot", which was *suggested* by the Asimov book.

I've a friend that runs a renfaire in East Texas in what was previously a dry area. He managed to finesse the county liquor laws by having the local home brewing club offer samples and provide demos for a donation. I need to see if he managed all the permits to handle it above board.

The least of the criticisms leveled at this practice was that it was very much Not Period.

I once used Everclear to make a Damiana** liqueur. I sweetened it with honey. My partner at the time, who had mostly become a roommate by then, drank it up while I was letting it settle for decantation (taking a shot or two before going out tomcatting; given his habits, it didn't take long for the entire bottle to be gone); I never got to so much as taste it.

If I'd made a second batch, I'd've used good vodka for the extraction and superfine sugar for the sweetener. But at about that time I stopped drinking, for unrelated reasons.

*Yes, name from "The Corbomite Maneuver."
**An herb with a reputation as an aphrodisiac.

The writing program Scrivener might be a very good tool for that sort of process. It essentially splits a text into logical blocks and makes it easy to pick and arrange those blocks for the final text. For writing stuff, some of those blocks can be research notes, or a master description of a character, or other working data which isn't going to appear in the final story.

There are templates for such things as standard script layouts.

Since there is a demo version which operates for 30 days, it's worth a look.

Literature and Latte: the producers of Scrivener

It could be seen as a Word Processor built around a different approach to writing, and kept fairly simple.

Remember Mister Scott's perplexity about the green drink when he wound up on the NCC-1701-D?

I am going to get on with the story, but I have a text-block labelled "Insert explicit sex scene here."

But the military *is* dumb. Of course it's perfectly safe to bomb low-tech cultures because what can they do? They've got nothing and we've got airplanes and skyscrapers. Giant skyscrapers, thisclosetogether.

When I tried to read Starship Troopers, it was still the Vietnam War, and all I could see was the judas goat bleating at the slaughterhouse door. I still experience a certain amount of fury. In American Caesar, William Manchester makes the point that the atom bomb means that every war is now a limited war and not an existentialist one, which changes the moral calculus between the general and his men. I now appreciate that a lot of people didn't get that memo, so perhaps they aren't the monsters that they seem, and on that basis I was able to go to the movie and enjoy it. How to have wordy Heinlein wingnut dialogue? Naked in the shower. Brilliant.

Benjamin Wolfe @ 12: IIRC (from 34 years away) "USP" does not mean consumable; it means the substance meets a set of standards. The standards may apply to consumables, or to substances which must be taken in very small doses, or anything in between.

xeger @ 29: there are lots of things with a stronger taste than simple alcohol; sugar in quantity is the simplest, cf Sneaky Pete (roughly, sugared-vodka slushy with food coloring).

I've met that person and their vodkas (first at a memorable party at a memorable con over there in '96), but only tasted the orange/citrus one and ignored the pepper and - I think the third was garlic? (Before international postage from the US to there became impossible, I'd make pear/ginger jam and send it, since ginger is among the few things they could still taste. Also coffee, citrus, and chocolate, IIRC.)

My brother (who majored in film) was definitely of Neil W's opinion when he saw the movie.

On another topic, the Houston Chronicle instituted a new comment system which features a dirty word filter. It's thorough. Type the word "bypass" and it's replaced by "byp***", thus saving us from ass.

Xopher, #83: I've seen "Romulan Ale" done that way at various con parties. I've never been curious enough to ask what was in it besides the glow-stick.

CHip, #92: I don't think I've ever been exposed to PGA directly, but based on my experiences with other stuff I would be willing to bet something significant that you couldn't sneak a Sneaky Pete past my nose. I appear to be sensitive to the smell and taste of alcohol in ridiculously low concentrations. And yes, it does have both.

This is remarkably fit for purpose, and does not taste anywhere near as powerful as it is. I've made it subsequently on rare occasions, all of which have proved quite memorable.

A friend of mine has been operating a weekly chat that I've been participating in for many years. He tries different hosts from time to time. One of them was quite aggressive in what it wouldn't let us say (though we sometimes had people drop in who were looking for dirty talkin'). Dick Van Dyke's name, for instance, was censored twice over every time. **** Van ****. Sensitive people needed to be protected from reference to bad cockney accents!

And yes, Smith's movie is better than "Trooper".

Three Musketeer bars used to consist of three separate candy bars, each with a different flavor.

The extract that I've found to be dangerous is limoncello - it tastes too much like sweet lemon drink and covers up the alcohol taste, and goes well straight or with mixers, so it's easy to consume more alcohol than I should in a short period of time.

I don't know the name of the commenting system, but since SFGATE and Chron.com are both Hearst enterprises, it wouldn't surprise that they're using the same system.

I agree it followed the plot rather well, yet missed out serious chunks of what made the book special, e.g. the armoured suits. But all that played into the satire of it.

The question I find interesting is how many books it caused to be written in reaction to it. Harrison's Bill the Galactic hero; one by Gordon R. Dickson, Armour, by John Steakley, which was better than I thought it would be, shame he never managed to write much else. I don't know if The Forever War was stimulated by it.

He also likes to use vacuum-sealers with liquids to quick-marinate foods.

The Dickson novel was _Naked to the Stars_.

I thought there was some Eric Frank Russell (maybe the Dawnworld books?) that was written in response to ST, but those turned out to be earlier.

Mmm...Thor/Mjolnir slash.

Did you by any chance, at the same con, run across my best friend? He's known to most of the world as Mole. Big chap, dark hair, beard, glasses, looks Russian (which he half is), unexpectedly sings countertenor rather gloriously, may have been running around the place in a cassock.

And then the movie came out, and I thought that they camped the satire up too much when they should've let it stand on its somewhat more subtle merits, just like in the book. Though mostly I didn't mind, because of course Hollywood wouldn't trust anyone to get that satire was satire unless they were being beaten over the head with it. So, you know, standard adaptation distillation. Strip the book down to the most important parts, crank the contrast and brightness up further, make sure it's really obvious. Fair enough.

And then I talked to fans of the book. Who were outraged at the movie because it didn't take the book seriously enough, and I was ready to agree until I found out that the book...wasn't satire? Actually?

Anyway. That made for some awkward conversations.

The question I find interesting is how many books it caused to be written in reaction to it. Harrison's Bill the Galactic hero; one by Gordon R. Dickson, Armour, by John Steakley, which was better than I thought it would be, shame he never managed to write much else. I don't know if The Forever War was stimulated by it.

Armour is a throughly engaging book about PTSD and what living through a Starship Troopers like universe would do to a human, even a Heinlein-ish Competent Male.

Steakley also wrote Vampire$ which is great fun.

I did once find a blog he wrote, which was sad, because in this blog he seemed to be one of those sad/scary Right Wing Americans (RWA) who went nuts after 9/11 and wanted to declare a crusade on Islam because of the actions of 19 extremists, mostly Saudis. (Why do none of those RWAs ever blame Saudis and their funding of Wahabbist extremism for terrorism? It's like labelling all Christians with the actions of the Westboro Baptist Church.)

(I have this thing I call reread clusters: If I reread Starship Troopers, I'm going to read Armour and The Forever War directly after. Just like if I pick out Cryptomicon, I'm also reading Enigma by Hugh Sebag Montefiore, The Code Book by Simon Singh, and Enigma by Robert Harris. It gives me a whole bunch of angles on a particular topic.)

James, #117: Huh, hadn't heard about that one. I'll have to go look it up.

Odaiwai, #121: Sadly, that pretty much is what Steakley turned into toward the end. I remember knowing him when I lived in Tennessee, and then meeting him again in Texas and being shocked at the change in his attitudes.

I couldn't speak to its aphrodisiac qualities, but it worked brilliantly for relief of menstrual cramps. I stuck a label on the bottle that said "Remedy" (yes, Black Crowes reference intended) and it served me well for a long time.

I read ST many years ago, and it seemed a pretty straightforward attempt to build a particular world built on particular principles, and then defend it internally. And the point seemed pretty clearly to be to describe and justify some of his own deeply-held principles--not the requirement that you can only be a citizen if you've served in the military or civil service and are now retired, but rather his notion of why patriotism is pro-survival for the group, as well as morally required for the individual. I enjoyed the book despite not quite accepting his premises, FWIW, though I think he was needlessly heavy-handed in justifying his message. (The bit with his dad was particularly goofy, IMO.)

There's a funny conflict in Heinlein's expressed beliefs in his stories: On one hand, there's a pretty common notion of pulling together and fighting and sacrificing yourself for the common good. On the other hand, there's a pretty common notion of realizing your society is screwy and either silently withdrawing or striking out on your own for something better.
If he had a way to reconcile those two, I don't know what it was.

Time Enough for Love spoilers follow:

Gur ovg va GRSY jurer Ynmnehf sryg boyvtrq gb wbva gur nezl naq svtug va Jbeyq Jne 1 ernyyl fgnaqf bhg gb zr. Ng bar yriry, guvf jnf fvzcyl ahgf--ur pbhyq cerfhznoyl unir znantrq gb fxvc gur pbhagel orsber ur tbg qensgrq, naq fvg bhg guvf jne gung ur xarj unq abguvat gb qb jvgu uvz naq jbhyq nppbzcyvfu abguvat ng nyy. Gurer jnf ab cngevbgvfz-nf-fheiviny-inyhr tbvat ba gurer. Uvf zbgvingvba jnf ragveryl onfrq ba xrrcvat gur ertneq bs Ven naq gur Fzvgu snzvyl. Abj, ur unq fbzr rzbgvbany naq crefbany ernfbaf sbe gung--ur jnf trggvat gb fcraq gvzr jvgu uvf bja snzvyl naq uvzfrys, jubz ur unqa'g frra sbe nobhg n gubhfnaq lrnef. Vg zvtug unir orra gbb cnvashy gb ybfr gung pbaarpgvba. Ohg V rkcrpg gung gurer'f nyfb fbzrguvat ryfr tbvat ba gurer--zbfg cngevbgvfz vf cebonoyl zber bs gur "xrrc gur snvgu jvgu zl snzvyl naq sevraqf" guna "cebgrpg gur gevor." Vs lbh jbaqrerq jul zber vagryyvtrag, qrprag, frafvoyr crbcyr qvqa'g fxvc gur pbhagel gb nibvq orvat qensgrq sbe jnef gung jrer hygvzngryl cbvagyrff rkrepvfrf va oybbqfurq naq zvfrel, guvf cebonoyl pncgherq gurve erny ernfbaf sne zber guna gur qvssvphygl bs znxvat vg gb Zrkvpb be Netragvan, be snxvat na vawhel, be jungrire.

Fear is the mind killer. Concentrated socially validated fear of the Other is an even more potent killer of both the mind and the conscience. Get people scared and mad enough, frame it in tribal terms, and you're halfway to justifying the worst atrocities imaginable.

And think about the really out-there guys who were screaming for holy war on Islam, or for nuking Mecca, or for rounding up Muslims and putting them into camps. The really important role they have played in our post-9/11 insanity was to slide the Overton window over far enough that torture and assassination and massive unaccountable surveillance are mainstream policies now. Because hey, compared to nuking Mecca, merely incinerating the odd Pakistani wedding party for looking suspicious to a drone pilot looks like a perfectly sensible and humane policy.

That said: Be Ynmnehf ernyyl jnagrq gb trg ynvq.

It is my favorite webcomic about a talking dog, cross dressing psychologist, and undead bioweapon. (They here from the government to help you!)

Wil Wheaton's board used to substitute "Person who is much smarter than I am" for the six-letter F word.

Too much of this, though, and you end up with the clbuttic problem, especially if your system doesn't recognize word boundaries. There are no English football clubs called Buttocksnal or Svaginahorpe. Even if your system can find whole words, you could still run into the problem a hate group had a couple of years back, where they referred to the athletic accomplishments of Tyson Homosexual.

ENT appointment next week.

In the meantime: Anyone know what kind of screwdriver would be best for digging out all of those little bones and nerve endings?

Purely out of curiosity have you taken a lot of aspirin lately?

Clearly a sonic screwdriver is required.

Reverse the proportions of the vodka and orange juice.

You'll still have the noise, but you won't care.

Voice of experience...[joking]

Lila #135: I've always liked the Texas version "All hat and no cattle", which also seems more potentially gender-neutral. There must be others, too. Anyone have suggestions?

I see from the Grauniad that there's a competing British version "All mouth and trousers" that means much the same thing -- ie, implying the metaphorical emptiness of the said trousers.

I guess that has me agreeing with albatross @124; I read ST many years ago, and it seemed a pretty straightforward attempt to build a particular world built on particular principles, and then defend it internally.

Lee @78, although I am pretty sure there have been no sequels, if there had been Starship Troopers 3: Marauder would undoubtedly have had power armour. Possibly due to budget restrictions they would only turn up at the last minute to save the day.

* Although Time Enough For Love as a satire on Hubbard is really, really tempting.

But not every day, and not before the ringing showed up.

Only other meds: Zyrtec in the morning, Benadryl at night. And not always. I'm frequently med-free. Unless you count coffee.

There is a tangentially related Southernism: "Your big ol' alligator mouth gon' get your little ol' hummin'bird ass in trouble." (I have a wirehaired mini-dachshund who's the living embodiment of that expression.)

I have an unresearched theory that the power suits from Starship Troopers led to the host of anime power armor stories.

I've heard Heinlein was very big in Japan.

I went hunting for her description but cannot find the book. In her younger days she preferred Gibsons or nigh-straight gin, by the time she'd mellowed into California she liked dry red vermouth with just a splash of excellent gin.

In "As They Were" she writes how she might be found quietly dead between the stove and the icebox, with a glass of vermouth in one hand and an overripe pear in the other.

I might be confabulating her with another woman who wrote idiosyncratically about food and retired to California about that era, but I'm sure it was her. Didn't she and Julia Child occasionally visit? Maybe it's Julia, about Mary Frances.

1) The second link hijacked my browser and wouldn't let me back-arrow out of it.

2) Throughout the comment thread (or at least as far down as I read, which was a fair amount), we once again have the Amazing Invisible Bisexual.

@154 Clifton

My bet would be the antidepressants. Tinnitus is a fairly well known side effect of certain SSRIs and SNRIs (at least through anecdata) that isn't talked about much by those who actually prescribe it. (1) I even went through testing with an audiologist while I still had insurance in 2012, who found no physical cause for it. I have been (unfortunately) off the medication for over a year, and the ringing persists.

Mine takes on the wonderful quality of a higher-pitched tone reminiscent of the tuning machine we used in band class. If it's really quiet, I can almost make out a chord. I envy you your pleasant chirping.

(1) The write up on the Mayo Clinic site states that 'certain antidepressants' may 'worsen' tinnitus, but doesn't actually claim them as a possible cause. WebMD does better.

"There's a great deal of mystery surrounding any troll," Goodwin said, "but a special amount of mystery surrounding this troll."

@tinnitus, certain fluorescent lights sound like tinnitus to those of us young enough to hear them.

The eleven American Natioons

You're all aware that November is NaNoWriMo. You may not be aware that it's also NaNoGenMo, "National Novel Generation Month" -- a challenge to *write a program* which will *generate* a 50k-word nodel. It doesn't have to be a *good* novel, obviously.

I decided to undertake a generator in a possibly familiar style. I call the result: "Redwreath and Goldstar Have Traveled to Deathsgate".

Text: http://eblong.com/zarf/essays/r-and-g.html

The Python script that generated this ("the Paarfi-o-matic") can be found at http://github.com/erkyrath/nanogenmo

(Publishers: I am currently unagented, but can be reached BEHIND THE HOT WATER PIPES, VICTORIA STATION.)

"Ta-da!"
- Loki

We just came back from watching "Thor: The Insufficiently Lit World".

I particularly liked, "All booster, no payload."

Whatever angle you may be at, I wish you a swift and easy recovery.

That is a seriously-no-fun kind of event.

My best wishes for an uncomplicated recovery.

This is apparently what I avoided by seeing to my retinal tear right away. That was a minor annoyance compared to what you've experienced.

@ tinnitus, mine began in early childhood, but in the form of occasional sustained notes (at the time, I thought I must be especially sensitive to noises from electronics), and an occasional loud noise, swelling rapidly and then fading rapidly, very much like feedback. It evolved into a frequent sound like cicadas buzzing (and which I long thought was), and these days is a more or less constant chorus ranging from a sound rather like the leaking of air from an almost-blocked sinus to a large field of cicadas. My recently taking a job in a noisy industrial environment probably isn't helping -- one more reason for me to find a new one ASAP. My hearing was never all that good, and I think the tinnitus is making that worse.

I'm sure other platforms have similar apps.

(I have eye issues of my own, and there are days when all I can do is lay in bed in a dark room, bored, and unable to see because MY EYES HURT. I listen to a lot of escapist fiction ...)

The tinnitus has been accompanied by mild cold symptoms (ear infection?)

My tinnitus began coincident with [1] a bad cold (no ear infection) 11 years ago. Still going strong. More evident than usual if I'm tired, sick, or low on sleep. Very evident if I'm in an otherwise quiet environment. Contributes significantly to sleep problems but has been mitigated effectively (although not always conveniently) by the use of audiobooks as a sleep aid. I have the "field of cicadas" version. Very occasionally the "loud pure tone" version but I almost suspect that's an independent issue.

I suspect it occasionally contributes to my difficulty in understanding indistinct speech. It definitely exacerbates difficulties understanding phone calls, especially when the caller is on speaker phone and there's a lot of noise.

[1] Causal relationship undetermined.

While I can hear it now, the tinnitus *might* be decreasing. Or perhaps I'm getting used to it, or able to ignore it when I'm doing other things.

I remember reading, last year or the year before, that they found that, if it isn't caused by drugs or disease, it seems to be caused by the brain turning up its internal volume, trying to compensate for subtle hearing loss.

Android has good support for Text To Voice, though the Kindle reader doesn't support it. Do a search on "TTS" and you will find voices in the Play store. Some are free, but the current CereProc voices are worth paying for. SVOX are another source.

Play Store ebooks are in a DRM-protected ePub format, which is a minor annoyance with the customary solutions.

It can be taken as read that TTS systems will get some words wrong, in a predictable sort of way, just as a naive reader struggles with them. The systems are best when the voice-language matches the text: if you like a particular foreign accent, expect strangeness.

I read some of a history of the Spanish Civil War via TTS and the handling of personal and place names was strange.

(My recent laser eye surgery was far less of a problem than yours.)

Tinnitus is the more common failure mode when those feedback loops get disrupted, but ISTR there actually are a few people whose ears produce externally audible noise (which they can't hear).

Woman puts on brass bra, starts researching application guidelines, rounds up 2 of the 3 necessary letters of support, and decides to fucking go for it. "What have I got to lose?" she asks, still intermittently weeping in terror.

So, Teresa, what about Irish crochet tea gowns?

I'll repeat myself somewhat by recommending old-time radio shows for entertainment that doesn't put demands on your eye bones. Archive, for instance, has many hours of Gunsmoke (outstandingly well done, from writing to acting to sound effects), and others. My favorites include Lux Radio Theatre, which does radio versions of movies in an hour (45 minutes or so plus ads), often with either original cast members or inspired substitutes. Seriously, go first to The Maltese Falcon and listen to Edward G. Robinson as Sam Spade! There are SF shows like X Minus 1, cop shows, comedies, and more.

It's a little disheartening to hear how hokey some of it was, but there's a lot of good material in there. If you're lying immobile, you might not want to hear Johnny Got His Gun, even for Cagney's performance.

Lux has The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland and Hans Conried. They have It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart and June Allyson. They have Arsenic and Old Lace with Boris Karloff. They have Bogart in Casablanca, and "Shadow of a Doubt" with William Powell in the Joseph Cotten role. Powell also recaps the first two Thin Man movies with about 75% of the original casts. (Screen Director's Guild has good half-hour versions, with similarly inspired casting.)

Also, a show called "This is My Best" has the only good adaptation ever made of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." It stars Robert Benchley and skips the irrelevant interpolations that haunt all the others.

Anyway, get better. Here's looking at you.

Local herpestid returned home, posted about this upon the Book of Face, and fully expected a pile of comments pointing out the drawbacks of trying that. "But in fact, I'm very pleasantly surprised," they told HLN. "Everyone's being extremely positive about it. I haven't had a single person mention any possible pitfalls yet. Obviously, if there are any I need to know about them, but at the moment this is looking like a pretty decent plan for converting mathematical acumen plus glacial patience into a reasonable income."

Has anyone seen the word "puke" in a recent mainstream comic strip, other than yesterday's Doonesbury?

John A Arkansawyer #198: No specific reference, but Calvin & Hobbes seems like a good candidate. So do Zits and Stone Soup... for that matter, any strip with children as main characters.

Lila, #192: Good luck!

Everyone: thanks for all the suggestions; I'm bookmarking them all for my recovery, with deep gratitude. My eye seems to be healing nicely, and I am coping with the left-side-down restrictions, although I will be very happy when I can finally shift sides again.

As a side note, you abbreviated my name as "Dave H." For myself, I wouldn't care (indeed, I sometimes abbreviate it that way in E-mail signature), but I have occasionally seen a "Dave H." who isn't me, commenting on ML.

For values of "me" that actually mean "her".

I'm not hugely impressed by it -- while the individual claims are plausible, the presentation smells like a hit piece -- but I figured I'd bring it out for comparison. I do agree that the FDA really ought to be regulating E-cigarettes and similar devices.

I am attempting to re-read Castiglione's Book of the Courtier after many years. We read selected passages in a survey course in Italian Renaissance back in high school.

I seem to recall a passage where somebody says that when speaking of others who you are not at liberty to say everything about, an adjective will suffice, i. e. a description, without getting into what makes you say that description.

I have been combing through the book and not finding what I thought I remembered reading. Does anyone else recall?

I've recently moved in with someone who possesses a vintage Toro snowblower, one of the S-200 series from, so the serial number tells me, 1980. I've already downloaded the operator's and service manuals online.

However. I have never USED a snowblower, nor do I have any experience with two-stroke engines - no motorcycles, alas, and all my lawnmower experience has been with electric and push-reel types.

This thing has been stored outside, unsheltered, for Ghu knows how many years.

Is this a situation where I should get a professional's opinion/estimate on whether it can be made to work at ALL before I start in on trying to get it working for the winter? How complicated ARE these beasties, after all?

I am moderately handy, but no wizard; I am pretty good at following instructions and diagrams, and I've been able to do things like change ungrounded outlets to grounded by putting in a grounding pigtail and swapping the receptacle, and lo these many years back I put a heater core in a Chevette (it was on the engine side of the firewall, so I didn't have to crouch under the steering wheel)...but I chickened out on the 1930s wall-mounted faucet replacement and had the plumber do it. And a good thing, too, as it turned out that there were bits an inexperienced person could have broken off that would have meant ripping out the wall to fix.

And, assuming I can GET it working, how temperamental are they to operate? I do know about not getting my hands anywhere near the blades or the discharge chute, and that it can retain some ability to rotate even after you shut it off. I have plenty of respect for the dangers it presents. What I want to know is whether I'll get so annoyed trying to use it that I should stick to my trusty shovel instead (ergonomically bent handle, plastic scoop with metal blade) as I did for all the winters in the previous place, only admitting defeat when we'd had well over a foot at once.

Previous place: driveway about the total footprint of eight cars, essentially level, plus about 20 feet of front walkway and a single house-lot's worth of sidewalk, lightly sloped.

Current place: steeply sloped driveway that accommodates one Chevy Aveo and one Subaru Outback with no room left over, 20' of somewhat less steeply sloped front walk (with two stairs to the level sidewalk at the bottom), and the house is on a double lot, one of which is a corner, so we've gone from one house's worth of sidewalk to THREE. You can see why the snowblower starts to look attractive - but if I'm cussing at it every few feet, it won't seem like such a good trade.

2) Drain out the old fuel. There's a very good chance the fuel system is completely blocked by varnish from dead and decaying gasoline. Perhaps you can clean it out. Perhaps not.

3) Not only should you keep your hands out of the blades/discharge, don't try to clean them out with a stick, either.

Perhaps, after changing oil, filters, and fuel, it starts. If it does, hurrah!

4) Keep a shovel handy anyway.

I know nothing about snowblowers, but a good deal about 2-stroke engines--I'll talk about the engine portion.

Two-strokes are really simple, and generally break in a few ways.

From easiest to hardest;
Replace the sparkplugs; while you are at it, pour a spoonful of engine oil into each cylinder.
Drain and replace the fuel with mixed gas--use non-ethanol gas and synthetic oil if possible.
Check/replace the fuel tubing.
If it's electric start, I know nothing about the electric start. If it's a pull start, get the pull start working (new cord, oil things up); that's not too hard.
Rebuild the carburetor; that requires working with small parts, and I usually get a mechanic to do it--it is cheap. ($20 or so.)

Give it a dose of starter fluid and pull the starter until it starts.

What would a person use to clean out a gummed-up fuel system? (I'm betting it will be gummed up.)

Not cleaning it out with a stick? Even after it's turned off? How DOES one unblock a blocked-up snowblower, then?

And oh yes, the ergonomic shovels came with me when I moved. Not getting rid of them.

Sam: glad to hear that the failure modes are limited, and that a mechanic's attention shouldn't be too expensive. It appears to have both pull start and electric start modes -- naturally, the cord's gone missing, but that should be possible to replace.

Given what new snowblowers cost, if I can get this one working for under a couple hundred bucks, I'll count it a win.

I've tried to catch the moment when the tinnitus stops, but that makes the process not work.

A couple of times, I've felt a pull in my ear when I turned my head, which makes it easier to believe there's a connection between the muscle and the state of my ear.

I've had tinnitus (for a day or two at most; more usually hours) and this isn't like that. The only thing I can compare it to is a most-of-a-week period, right after I got my first metal filling, where I could swear I was hearing a very, very faint radio station in my head. I could hear the rhythm of the announcer's voice that was probably the station-identification bug, bits that were ads, and some mariachi-eque music. Not UNPLEASANT, exactly (I enjoyed the music), but really really weird. I could ignore it when in moderately-noisy situations, but at night when I was trying to sleep it was very distracting. I actually tried to find a matching station on the FM or AM dial, but no dice. And then it went away, never to recur.

Lila @192: Good luck with that - go for it.

Mongoose @197: Good luck with that to you as well.

Of course, that could be a tumor, or fifteen feet of tropical parasitic worm. Always look on the bright side! #B^/

If you're lucky, you'll have a separate impeller that propels the snow up the chute and it'll never (or hardly ever) clog). If you're unlucky and it's "heart-attack snow", be prepared to shut down the beast frequently to clear the chute.

My next-door neighbor, after one particularly warm-and-sticky snowfall, inquired what make and model snowblower I owned. He was shutting down and clearing every ten feet; I was motoring along. I felt really sorry for him and finished his driveway, too.

The next day a delivery truck arrived...

But even a snowblower you have to stop and clear regularly is less awful than shovelling heavy snow.

Cassy

I have a two-stroke snowblower, and a love-hate relationship with it. It is noisy and smelly, but once it starts, it's pretty hard to stop. When it plugs up, I use a retired car scraper to remove the plug of wet snow. It moves dry stuff well, and wet rather less so. I have had it for over twenty years.

Mixing the fuel and oil is straightforward but best done with care, as there's likely to be some spillage. Last winter I got a fancy mixing jar for the job. I use heavy nitrile gloves for this task.

The primary impeller may have rubber parts. They should be replaceable if broken down.

At the end of the season, run the tank dry.

You clean carburetors with a proprietary solvent labeled "carburetor cleaner", and dispose of the waste solvent carefully.

How big is the engine,and is it a single stage or two stage machine? My single stage machine relies on the main impeller to force the snow up and out. This is not great with wet snow, but is simple. The two-stage machines have a second, driven, impeller in the ejection chute. More complex, more effective.

There's Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, of course, and One Hundred Years of Solitude and Desolation Road, and Three Men in a Boat and To Say Nothing of the Dog, for fairly obvious reasons. I read Lover's Vows the last time I reread Mansfield Park, but I don't think I'll be re-reading it as often (if at all). Similarly, I'm embarked on a long-term project to (re)read some or all the epics that The Compleat Enchanter is based on before re-reading The Compleat Enchanter, but they're so long that I don't know if I'll repeat this project again. I started reading Orlando Furioso for the first time (in Barbara Reynolds' very enjoyable translation) last November, and am now almost finished with a second reading of The Faerie Queene; I'll probably re-read one or both Eddas after that, and maybe the Kalevala as well.

Mishalak @132 on Skin Horse:

Skin Horse is one of my two or three favorite ongoing webcomics, along with Gunnerkrigg Court and... I'm not sure what else I would rank with them. I recently re-read the archives of Skin Horse for the third or fourth time.

Lawrence Watt-Evans is serializing a fantasy novel, Ishta's Companion, on his website. It's in his Ethshar setting (the setting of The Misenchanted Sword and ten or twelve other novels) but it stands alone as well as any of the Ethshar novels and better than some.

Cornbread and cabbage,
Fit for a King
But poor little piggies will eat
Any old thing.

I only recently found out it was "cornbread" and not "corned beef," and most likely "poor" little piggies instead of "four." This is what comes of learning a song extremely early in life.

I've been kind of successful in finding mysterious little snatches of song that came down from my parents and their ancestors. Another that has eluded me was sung to me by Mom once, and she said it came from some music book she saw decades before (like in the 30s, I'll say), with the following words:

Ten tom turkeys in a row,
Marching off to Buffalo…

I think she sang me the next part and I forgot it. Or maybe she skipped it. But a line or two go by, and then we wrap it all up:

Tell me, Tommy, if you can,
Why is it you [march? strut?] so grand?
'Certainly! Can't you see
We're marching to a TROT?'

Pretty exciting stuff. There's one other song that goes through my head that probably nobody else on earth ever thinks about, because it was written in a collaborative way by a class I was in — fourth grade or sixth seem likely — about Halloween. The teacher guided us through picking some rhyming words, making lines out of them, making up a tune (the first part of the tune was by me. Me!) and putting them all together. Think there's any chance anybody else in the class still knows it? Some day I'll reconstruct what I remember, make up something to fill the gaps, and claim I remembered the whole thing. Who'll disprove it?

Henry: According to the manual, it's a 2.25 horsepower engine, 85.3cc, and it claims to have a "two-section, drum-type" impeller. It's a Toro S200 Model 38130, if that helps. About 20" wide. Not especially unwieldy for me to push on bare ground, or lift & carry, when it's shut off.

Is there a reason not to use a reclaimed 1-quart glass pasta sauce jar for mixing the oil and gasoline? I have plenty of those, and I can dedicate a funnel for fueling. Nitrile gloves are part of my regular handyperson supplies, no issue there.

Next question, though: the manual says "only use the extension cord that came with the snowblower." How hard do I have to believe that? Is there some magic property their cord would have had that is not to be found in a heavy-duty, 14-gauge outdoor extension cord? I am inclined to doubt the manual, here.

Of course, I realize that the more effort I put into getting this thing tuned up and running, the less likely I am to get much use out of it this winter. I'm willing to run that gamble. Though, on the gripping hand, that might translate into "more ice than snow", which would NOT be my first choice. Not with the sloped front walk and steeper driveway! I spent today discovering just how long it takes to drill a 1 5/8"-deep hole into concrete with a masonry bit, for the railing I'm trying to put up, because I know already that the walk in its current un-railinged state is a winter deathtrap.

I know that ganache icing can withstand being frozen and then thawing, but isn't as wonderful texturally as never-frozen. However, freezing the finished cake, putting it in an insulated container, and shipping it overnight might do the trick.

Disclaimer: I have never shipped flourless chocolate cake, but I have packaged similar cakes for local catering delivery (hence the suggestions about mummifying and the cardboard shield) and I've packed many, MANY shrink-wrapped wicker gift baskets of shelf-stable food goodies for UPS delivery in cardboard boxes with packing peanuts. Two years running for a local natural-and-gourmet-foods grocery that later sold out to a national chain. We sold a LOT of gift baskets.

I don't think so. There is standard advice not to store toxic chemicals in anything that looks like a food container, but even that wouldn't prevent temporary mixing.

I use a five-gallon plastic pickle tub to store my rice in the pantry (it's big enough to hold 20lbs, which is why I nabbed it) but if I had a second pickle tub, I wouldn't hesitate to put it in the garage to hold ice melter, as long as I gave it the big pink label. I no longer work at the place where I swiped the first one, though.

I developed the "large labels on not-for-food" habit when I was working at the bakery-café with the Boss From Hell, who didn't have any purpose-made sanitizer solution pails for cleaning cloths in the kitchen - might have been one out front for the baristas, but God only knows how she expected me to keep my bench clean. Five-pound peanut butter tubs were a good size, though, and I repurposed several empties - and labeled them to keep them separate from the empties we were using for food storage, not so much from worrying about the sanitizer as to make sure we would always HAVE some.

If you'd like to test and see how such a cake ships, I'm available to report on results, and I live in the Chicago area <big toothy grin>...

YMMV, of course, but those are both symptoms of insufficient rest and/or insufficient light in winter for me. Other ancillary symptoms are gloom around the corners of my eyes, hunger for carbohydrates, and gooseflesh.

(Why, yes, I am just listing out my current physical sensations. Does it show?)

C. Wingate: Upon re-reading the manual, the mixing instructions are for one gallon, not one quart, so if I used the pasta jar at all, it'd be for measuring the first quart of gasoline and then the 4 ounces of oil into the gallon gas can. I'm thinking that a 4-cup plastic measuring cup with a handle (and a bright pink label) would be the way to go. My conditioned responses go "glass: non-reactive, doesn't melt on casual contact with hot surfaces" and gravitate towards it for any substance I'm inclined to treat with suspicion, rather than backing away from it because "breakable", but since gasoline jerrycans are heavy-duty plastic and so are motor oil bottles, if I stop and think about it for a second I have no need to worry about using a plastic container.

I'd say mix away in the glass jar, but make sure it is completely empy after use, and then either clean it out or seal it up, store it labelled, and never open it near a live flame because vapour is really exciting.

The service manual also makes it clear that this is a single-stage machine.

Toro produced the pull-start version of this thing from 1979-1984, but only made the electric-start model until 1981. I hope that doesn't mean the electric start is unreliable.

I had a two-stroke boat motor for years. I'd suggest just mixing in a (red plastic) gasoline container, of the sort one can buy inexpensively at gas stations. They usually come in one gallon and two gallon sizes, and they're deliberately sized big enough that the extra oil WILL fit. Dispense one gallon at the gas station; funnel in the oil; shake to mix.

Pro tip: Write "OIL ADDED" in big Sharpy letters on the jerrycan; you do NOT want to accidentally use your pre-mixed two-stroke gas/oil in a car engine or lawnmower.

With regard to clearing the chute every ten feet; I should mention this was a very heavy, slushy, awful snow; it came down hard and fast but it was barely 32F. "Heart-attack snow." This was an edge-case, not a standard event. My neighbor's old snowblower (which was, as I recall, about 2-3 HP) generally operated just fine; normally he might have to shut down and clear it once, maybe twice, over the course of clearing a 100' driveway. (I envied him that snowblower when I was shoveling my own driveway by hand before we bought our own; believe me!)

Is there a reason not to use a reclaimed 1-quart glass pasta sauce jar for mixing the oil and gasoline?

YES. DO NOT DO IT.

Do not ever put gasoline in glass--if you drop it and there's any spark or fire nearby it can explode, if there's a fire and the jar heats it can crack and make a fire burst. Gasoline and glass do not mix unless you are making weapons.

Plastic gas cans are made out of non-flammable, heat-resistant plastic. I wouldn't use any other plastic container as a substitute.

I never heard of the "toddlers don't like vegetables" trope until I was maybe about eight or nine, and found one of my younger sisters' comics lying around the house. There was a cartoon strip in it about a character called Rosie. Rosie, apparently, liked cake, ice cream, and something else I can't remember, but she hated cabbage. My initial reaction was "why would she hate cabbage so much that it would be used as a sort of punch line?". Granted, school cabbage tended to be a bit watery and flavourless, but Rosie was pre-school, so presumably she was getting delicious home-cooked cabbage, right? Fancy not liking that!

Similarly, I don't recall anyone at school who didn't like vegetables. It was only when I was grown up that I met one or two people who claimed not to like any kind of vegetables at all, and that this had always been the case. Even so, they seem to be very much a minority, so I'm still not sure where the trope originates.

As for me, I grew peas on the pocket-handkerchief of otherwise useless garden that I was allowed to cultivate, and when they were ready I'd take a handful of pods to school and eat them at break. Delicious, juicy, fresh peas, bursting with flavour, and so tender you could eat the pod and all (which I invariably did). Yum!

Though there's fewer boys getting the name these days than there used to be, Tor/Thor/Tore is an extremely common name in Norway at least - and I'd imagine it's even more common in Iceland, them still being old-fashioned norsemen. It'd be more surprising to see film credits without the name.

Once upon a time, I wrote a fanfic. A reader commented that it was a brilliant metaphor for one of the central plot points of the series. Such a thing had never occurred to me when I was writing it.

I concluded that metaphors are at least as much a function of the reader as of the work.

Or any other marker whatsoever, such as skull-and-crossbones, "zap triangles", and so on. (The "Mr. Yuck" stickers sound interesting, but I wouldn't count on them too far.) At some point, parental responsibility needs to act directly, and physically deny small children access to dangerous spaces and materials (via locked doors, inaccessible cabinets, supervision, etc.)

I also wrote one about that time in which the prince was completely useless and the princess rescued herself.

That said, my test for whether something in my refrigerator is still good (assuming it smells OK) is "eat it and see if I die." But for the consumption of my friends, I throw away anything that I think might not be entirely fresh.

Mongoose 256: I've told the story of my sort-of nephew and why he loved cavatelli with broccoli, right? "If you eat cavatelli with broccoli," he solemnly informed me when he was about six, "you don't have to eat vegetables. The broccoli takes care of it."

Never had any trouble getting my kids to eat vegetables. We had a garden, so that helped. The middle one loathes bananas and has since infancy, but she likes pretty much everything else. The youngest tolerates soy poorly and, inexplicably, doesn't like pie of any kind. Go figure.

That reminds me of the Far Side cartoon where a man opens his fridge and sees one bowl pointing a gun at the condiments, and the caption reads

"When potato salad goes bad"

The service manual also suggests that a partial tank of fuel/oil mix, when drained from a snowblower, can be added to a car gas tank that's at least half full without ill effects, but I have to wonder if that's as true for modern cars as it would have been when the snowblower was built, in 1980. I suspect at the very least that you'd get blue smoke coming out the tailpipe and build up some deposits, or possibly clog fuel injectors. In any case, I don't plan on trying it.

SamChevre: I appreciate the warning! As I said, my danger reactions are calibrated on a different set of hazards, so it's good to know what I'm not seeing.

I told my dad about the snowblower. His reaction was "sure, try the carb cleaner, but don't be surprised if it never runs again." He's never owned a snowblower himself (this is why I have zero experience with them) but we did have gas mowers when I was a kid, until he switched to electric ones, so he's got experience of gummed-up two-stroke motors, I'm sure.

I'll probably pick up the carb cleaner tomorrow. For now, I'm attempting optimism.

Shows a man going thru a day at the office being treated the way bullied kids are treated in school. Trigger warnings for the obvious reason.

Why, WHY do we refuse to treat behavior that is clearly assault AS assault just because the perps and the victims are classmates?

You know who I hate? People who say they are perfectionists as the answer to the asinine "name your worse quality" question during interviews for employment.

I am a perfectionist (at least some of the time). This meant that today I could not actually bring myself to leave my house for free beer because I could not find satisfaction with my attire. Free New Belgian Ale at that and I could not go enjoy it due to this... ridiculous obsession.

If you say you are a perfectionist and you have never done something maddeningly irrational because of perfectionism I will find you and I will cut you... once I find the perfect knife. And once I manage to actually leave my house.

The car I learned to drive on was an early-1980s full-size GM wagon with very finicky habits: I got way too familiar with popping off the air cleaner and twiddling the idle set screw in the carb until it agreed to behave. My dad seemed to take this as a matter of course; he was great at explaining how leaner or richer mixtures affected the performance, but never gave me a good explanation for why that car had such a narrow margin of error, when most people never seemed to have to touch theirs.

The service manual covers models made from 1966 to 2000 (though the detail's a little sketchy on pre-1972 machines), so you'd think they'd have updated that bit about fuel/oil mix to reflect modern cars, but I've seen how technical manuals get written, and I wouldn't count on it not being a cut-and-paste from the days when carburetors were the norm.

Injector based systems, whether direct into the cylinder or into the intake manifold, rely on totally different engineering, with higher precision and depending on clean fuel as the lubricant.

In my old Land Rover, I wouldn't have worried about a bit of oil in the fuel. But with a fuel injection system, no. The same with diesel in a petrol engine: you need to drain the fuel system, but a carburettor isn't going to be damaged.

I more or less gave up on the details when the computers took over from purely mechanical engine control systems for fuel and spark timing.

I admit that if the proprietary diagnostic dongle and software weren't so expensive, I'd be tempted to get them, because it would be cool to be able to read the error codes myself, even if I didn't trust myself to do the repairs (which I don't). But that's wishful thinking.

I didn't give up working on cars because of that, but because the car makers kept making simply getting at the parts too difficult. The turning point for me came when my father and I changed the timing belt on one of the many escorts we had. We didn't have a garage and it was, of course, forty degrees and windy, but at least we had the car on the carport. And after considerable time already spent on this, we determined that we would have to release one of the motor mounts and lower that side of the engine to clear some obstruction. We did manage all this, but as far as I was concerned I was through working on cars.

re 274: I always interpret this "claim" of a fault as being a type A person bragging about being a details person. I don't believe them either.

On vegetables and the tastes of toddlers: My eldest developed teeth very early and when we took him with us to the Royal Mile (Scottish pub) the question arose as to what to feed him. We got a cheese platter, whereupon he seized upon the Stilton and consumed it all. He still has a taste for blue cheeses. Somewhat later, back when we could still afford such things, he would consume a slice of the country pate (including the cornichon) at our favorite French place. His brother took to filching onions from my wife's salad (though his tastes have become conspicuously pedestrian since). I grew up in a typical depression parents you-must-try-everything household so the question of not liking vegetables wasn't even on the table.

Since 1996 every car sold in the US has to have a OBD-II connector and a standard set of codes. The connector is located under the dash near the driver's seat. You can get an ODB-II Bluetooth adapter from the South American River for about $15, and there's easily available software for Android phones that'll talk to it. There's probably iOS software that'll do the same, but I haven't looked for it.

The software won't decode the proprietary codes (that haven't been leaked), but there are a lot of standard codes that reveal a lot as well.

People who think perfectionism would improve someone's life sound like the people who say they'd like to be anorexic so they could lose some weight.

(Diesel engines are injected by definition. The liquid behaves in a different manner to petrol.)

Put diesel in the tank of a petrol-fueled car, and you need to clean out the fuel system. Put petrol in the tank of a diesel-fueled car, and you may need a new injection pump. (The pump relies on the lubricating properties of the diesel oil.)

You can still work on cars up to around model year 2000, but there's a lot of breakable plastic and incomprehensible electronics. And lots of stuff will be inaccessible and/or require special tools.

On vegetables: I couldn't be forced to eat boiled vegetables as a child, but would happily eat them raw and viewed sliced kohlrabi as a treat. I'll only resentfully eat boiled veggies even now, because boiling ruins them.

I say, "I suck at finding more work to do if the assigned stuff is done." (Only in a more work-approved manner, of course.) I don't know if that's "non-awful but safe", though I point out that I am currently employed.

Is there a non-awful but safe answer to "What's your worst quality?"

I hate that question, too.

The best advice I've gotten was, "Pick something that's easy for the person you are talking to to see and to assess." That way, to the extent it's a weakness, it won't get exaggerated.

On the other hand, it was true.

Nancy Lebovitz @ #285
Is there a non-awful but safe answer to "What's your worst quality?"

Really, I blame the awful question more than anything else. The question is about as clever and answerable as, "Does this outfit make me look fat?" And if I did not need a job I would answer with something along the lines of, "Well, my worst quality is being judgmental, like right now I am wondering if I want to work for a company that routinely ask questions that will result in the hiring of liars who can answer in a kiss ass manner over honest people."

My own 'real' answer is to ask a question in return. "Would you like to hear a few minutes of introspection from me or is this a test to see how cleverly I can tap dance around a hard question? Because I am quite adept at either task, I just want to know which demonstration you would prefer."

Still, as an actual person who sometimes suffers from perfectionism the perfectionist answer frustrates me.

If you've got an Android phone or tablet, there are some really cool apps which can turn your tablet or phone into a kind of super race-car touch-screen dashboard if you buy a slightly more expensive code reader dongle with Bluetooth. Not my thing, but it did look pretty cool.

Suggested solution: diuretics. Lizard draining time!

I didn't think to mention that I drink an awful lot of water. I always have a big glass on my desk, and drain it regularly.

Apparently* the Ethanol in gas in the US is bad for some 2 stroke engines. It separates and can cause overheating if you wind up in the high ethanol side.

I've recently noticed a single ethanol free pump at one of the local gas stations. I'm going to try it for the next gallon of 2 stroke dedicated fuel. I use about a gallon a year in my various yard implements.

* According to my local rental/2 stroke repair place.

Clifton, #292: I will also note that any Auto Zone shop can pull those codes, and won't charge you for the privilege. I took advantage of that once to find out whether the Check Engine light was anything I needed to worry about before I could get back from Dallas to Houston. (It wasn't.)

If it spins and has compression, check the spark and work on that fuel system. Spark can be checked by putting the wire back on the sparkplug and laying it on the engine so the metal outside of the plug makes contact with the metal of the engine. Crank and watch the plug. If no spark, check for bad wiring of kill switches, etc. first before digging into the rest of the ignition system. It's usually built into the flywheel and can be a bear to get to.

For the fuel system, clean the tank out first. Fresh gas might work, but a concentrated fuel system cleaner might work better. Be careful when pulling fuel lines off - they get hard, and can break off the fittings they are on in really bad cases. Replace them with fuel-rated hose, a Fleet Farm or Farm&Fleet or small engine/motorsports repair place ought to have the right stuff. Auto parts place hose is generally too thick. If the tank is metal and rusty, get an inline fuel filter and a few spare ones. You'll want to clean and re-seal the tank but that's a specialized process and can wait for next year, so long as you have spare filters. You can make it less likely to have a plugged filter by tossing a handful of spare change in the tank with your cleaner of choice, sealing it all up, and shaking vigorously (OUTSIDE!!!) to knock off the bigger flakes of rust, etc.

For the carb, if not mentioned in the manual, when taking it apart, be sure to count the number of turns it takes to screw in any adjustable screws/knobs/jets/needles to just finger tight. That is your record of what it was set at when it last (maybe) ran. The manual should tell you a place to start at (2 turns out, or similar - ie, turn it all the way in to just finger tight, then back out 2 full turns) when tuning, but knowing where it was can help. If it is way off where the manual says it should be, trust the manual first. A good first thing to check is just pulling off the float bowl - if it is really grody in there, might as well finish taking it apart. If it doesn't look too bad, just spray that out and put it back on. Might start with fresh gas/oil mix. Important tip about carb cleaning: take out all rubber and plastic parts before immersing/spraying the rest of the carb. Diaphragms and the like are often eaten by carb cleaner. Be gentle when cleaning - an old toothbrush can help scrub stuff. If you find hard, white or green deposits that no amount of carb cleaner or scrubbing take off, it might be corroded. An ultrasonic cleaner will make short work of such deposits. (Ultrasonic cleaners work great for cleaning in general!) Carb kits are relatively inexpensive, to get all the gaskets and o-rings and whatnot for putting it all back together again.

For the rest of the machine, see what the manual has to say about what needs greasing, oiling, adjustment, etc. Make sure the moving bits move and the non-moving bits don't. Look for bushings (like the ones that the beater/brush rollers in powered vacuum cleaner heads spin in) that are worn - some heavy grease can get them through a season, but you'll want to replace them if you can. Go ahead and clean it off good while you have it apart. Dish soap and water goes a long way. Rusty stuff? Sand it down and hit it with some Rustoleum or your preferred rusty metal paint. At least knock off the flakes/chunks so it can move and won't cut your hands. If you feel like it, go ahead and sand it down to bare metal and give it a good prime coat and top coat.

For disposal of bad gas, solvent-based carb cleaner, oily gas, etc. you can use it up in small amounts in your 4-stroke lawnmower (if you have one). Say 1 ounce per full tank of clean gas - just don't leave any of the old stuff in the mower at the end of the season. If it has water or rust in it, though, don't put it in any engine you care about. Otherwise, "check local laws for proper disposal" (call repair shops, junkyards, etc.)

General:
I'm a gearhead, so what I consider "doable" is often a bit off from what others would say. That said, you can still work on modern cars - especially if you have a good feel for common symptoms, etc. as the basics haven't changed in a very long time. There are also problems that a code-reader WON'T find that a "classic" mechanic CAN - due to that affinity for "how things should sound/feel/smell". Pistons still go up and down, valves still open and close, fuel and air are still fed through manifolds in the correct proportions (more or less) into the cylinder and are ignited by a spark. (Change details as appropriate for diesel.) Computer controls have made the engines more efficient and more reliable and increased the time between required service.

The two biggest impediments to working on modern cars, IMHO, are the super-tight packaging and the plethora of electronics/wiring/tubing. Close upon the heels of those two is an increased proliferation of "we don't sell that part, it's a component of #expensiveassembly, and you have to buy the whole thing." The electronics in and of themselves aren't bad, but they introduce new failure modes - cold solder joints, failed chips/components, etc. - while presenting ever more connectors that can get dirty, corrode, or similar.

Some cars are far easier to work on than others. If you want to do your own work, getting a "friendly" car is important. How easy is it to change a headlight/taillight bulb? Where's the oil filter, can you reach it? Can you get to all the spark plugs? Where's the fuel filter? How about the fuel pump? (Most are in the tank these days - an expensive fix, and the best argument for running clean fuel you can find!)

I still do some work on the family cars, but far less than when I had my old 70's Land Cruiser. While it required a lot more attention than any modern vehicle, it was more rewarding to work on because it was a fun vehicle. I'm slowly teaching myself how to fix an '84 Kawasaki KZ550 because it is fun to ride, and I like fiddling with the mechanical bits.

Is there a non-awful but safe answer to "What's your worst quality?"

The last time I was unemployed, I had to take one of those "How to Interview" workshops. The instructor had several books, all on how to be the interviewer and how to be the interviewee.

That question is in all of them. The answer we were told to give? "Say you're a perfectionist."

Which was was really irritating on a couple of levels - first of all, the interviewers have read the books too, they know they're getting the 'book' answer; second of all, those of us who are actually perfectionists can't give that answer any more.

When asked the question at interview, I answered without thinking, "You've read that book too!"

Luckily, he laughed. I got that job.

It takes a bit of water to get the ethanol to separate out. If it does separate, you end up with a slug of low-proof water/alcohol mix in the bottom of your fuel tank. Engine won't run well, if at all, on it. There's also no oil in that slug - the oil is in the gasoline that is floating on top. If you use the engine regularly, and don't fill in the rain, it is not a real worry. Seasonal storage, on the other hand, store only with non-oxy gas or drain the system completely. If you use only a gallon a year of premix then, yeah, the non-oxy is a good choice - it isn't cheap. Add some Sta-Bil or similar, too.

Rikibeth: eric does have a point about ethanol and older 2 strokes. 10% ethanol gasoline has a bit less BTU's per gallon than non-oxygenated gasoline, which effectively leans out the mixture, which can make it run hotter. If you find you have to richen the mixture up considerably to get it to idle on 10% ethanol gasoline, you might consider re-jetting a bit richer at full power (bigger main jet). Ask your friendly local small engine repair shop about it, or just use non-oxy gas. Also, don't mix up any more pre-mix than you can use in a season. Spare gasoline can go in any engine. Spare pre-mix, only in carbureted, older engines in dilute amounts. Not for high-performance/high compression engines.

The shop manual did mention that about counting the number of turns for adjusting the carb, but it's good to hear it again.

The manual also didn't say anything about removing rubber or plastic bits when using carb cleaner, and it has fairly detailed instructions - this is a Tecumseh AH520 engine, with a diaphragm and a nylon check ball, so it says. However, it does say "if it still won't start, complete disassembly and soaking may be required," and I take it that's where the "remove all plastic and rubber bits" comes in?

I think, in my case, if it goes beyond the described "squirt carb cleaner into the jet until the check ball pops loose" procedure, it's going to a mechanic for the more thorough cleaning-and-probably-rebuilding.

As for working on my current car, all your cautions are why I got the extended warranty, which is still in effect even after I've paid off the car. The engine compartment on a Chevy Aveo is MUCH more crowded than on a GM wagon or an old Volvo 240, and noticeably more crowded than its ancestor the 1981 Chevette.

I have found (in 20+ years of car ownership) that being able to read the shop manuals and understand the processes involved has helped me at least go in knowing what a problem is, even if I don't have the tools or mastery of technique to deal with it myself. It's served me well for other household things, too, which is good, because since I moved in here, I've had to replace the oven's bottom heating element (two screws and two clips, did that myself), get the 1930s wall-mounted kitchen sink faucet replaced (totally above my pay grade, that was the plumber), re-caulk the upstairs tub so I could shower without soaking the kitchen ceiling (hey! a $3.99 tube of caulk fixed it, no expensive tile guy!), ground a whole lot of outlets, and convince my housemate that if the furnace worked but there wasn't any hot water unless the radiators were actively heating the house, this was not the way the system was designed to work and it was time to get the heater/plumber/electrical guys in again. That took studying the furnace manual so I could say "it says right here that the hot water is controlled separately." Turned out to be the electronic control unit on the hot water tank, which was an expensive damn part, but we have hot water now.

I do like to know what's going on with my machines, even if I leave the actual fixing to someone else.

If I am genuinely expected to stand there like a friendly mannequin without visibly accomplishing anything or moving, I find it very difficult. Luckily nowadays I can sometimes run an unobtrusive earbud into one ear and have podcasts for company, turning them offwith a hand under the counter/in my pocket when I'm back 'on'.

You're quite welcome. Sharing information helps all around - I get old knowledge corrected, other folks benefit from the odd bits and bobs that've gotten lodged in my head. Also, the read/write cycle refreshes the memory somewhat.

Gasoline ethanol content may well vary seasonally, and by station as well - check local laws. This DOE site has a matrix of laws by state/federal/etc. If you want to find non-oxy gas, search online for it or find a local motorcycle/snowmobile/hot rod/classic car club - many members use only non-oxy gas in their classics due to the potential detrimental effect of ethanol on fuel system components not designed for it.

Note: ethanol content may rise to 15% (labeling *should* be required...) soon due to a new law. That might be high enough to be worrisome in older small engines.

..."if it still won't start, complete disassembly and soaking may be required," and I take it that's where the "remove all plastic and rubber bits" comes in?

Yes. Good manual, looks like. Glad you were able to identify the engine, too - makes it easier to get the right parts.

Do call around to various mechanics if you decide to bring it in and check their rates - some places dislike working on partly dis-assembled stuff, and may price accordingly. Also scan Craigslist and similar local advertising venues for used snowblowers/mowers/etc for sale - if a single person sells a lot, they may be an "advanced hobbyist" who works on stuff, you might get a better deal. There's an older gentleman along one of my commutes to work who always has a mower, outboard motor, snowblower or similar out front for sale. When the garage door is up, you can see all manner of tools, bits, bobs and other mechanical mayhem laying about. He's also got a fine old Ford Model A (IIRC - I'm a Toyota guy...) and appears to be having a good time fooling around with mechanical stuff.

One of my potential retirement plans for keeping busy is hanging up a sign offering repair for "anything carbureted". By the time I'm retired, I may be in the distinct minority of folks willing to do so.

I do like to know what's going on with my machines, even if I leave the actual fixing to someone else.

Yes, this. 'Ware the guy selling muffler bearings... BTW, if you want a funny video of deadpan technobabble, search up a video on the "Turbo Encabulator".

The machines which were developed and produced from about 1895 through to about 1950, and some of them stayed in production for longer, were engineered to last. A few models are still made in China, although the quality may not be as high.

They produce the basic straight lockstitch, but there are ingenious contrivances which will give you buttonholes, zigzag stitching, and other useful little features.

I really don't recommend using a 50-year-old electric motor but you can get new replacements, or fit a hand crank.

I am looking at replacing some rather rough looking curtains in the kitchen. The previous owner of the house installed them, and they are not very good. I think I have found some better fabric on eBay, the actual sewing seems managable, and the end result will cut the heat loss.

And, well, it's the kitchen. If it doesn't come out exactly right, it's not going to be a disaster.

Meanwhile, I put in a bid for a more modern machine on eBay, it was described as faulty, starting bid 99p, and nobody else bid on it.

It's working fine. I had to remove some tangled thread around the bobbin, and I fitted a new needle, but it's a decent basic electric machine costing me less (with delivery) than one of those cheap toy-level contraptions.

I have already done a few quick repairs. Since my neck (and a few other parts) are a bit large, I tend to have shirts with rather long sleeves. I managed to shorten one pair of sleeves without a major disaster, but I was still learning.

Sewing, I venture to suggest, is a little like cooking. For some rather senseless reason it has been, for most of my life, presented as women's work. And the history of industrial sewing is littered with instances of male management being careless of women's lives (which may be standard capitalism with the dial turned up to 11).

But at least we get chefs on TV, and have been for a long time. It's sometimes way too fancy cooking, but it is cooking. Apart from a very few comedy shows—I recall something called Never Mind The Quality, Feel The Width— sewing is still something men don't do. At most, it's fashion as a design process, with a huge unreported gap between the initial drawing and the catwalk.

We probably don't need that many machines. But I hesitate to get rid of my Bernette, because although it's acting a little flaky now, it's a good solid metal machine with metal parts, and it's held up for twenty-five years, and I know its ways.

As for me, I view sewing machines the same way a lot of people view computers: they're complicated, they're arcane, and if I touch it the wrong way it's going to break! I can do minor repairs with needle and thread, and that's the end of my expertise.

He's also a better cook than I am. I can feed myself in a pinch, but we eat much better with him doing the cooking.

Dave Bell @ 309, etc: any of you who get to Boston should go by a clothing store on Newbury St. (fancy shopping district) near Clarendon; it has ~200 seriously vintage(*) sewing machines in the windows. All of them look very durable.

* as in, older style/design than the one I remember from home in the 1950's (when said machine was probably not new).

At the moment, though, our house has three sewing machines, two mine and one active. The active one is my roommate's excellent present-to-self.

I am disabled. I have a genetic disorder with a ton of complications. After holding down the same job (and loving the job) for fifteen years, I had to give it up because my body just wouldn't do it anymore. I will probably never be able to work a routine day job again. I have too many bad days and too many doctor appointments (I'm up to eight in the last four weeks so far, including a spinal tap, and I have an MRI Monday that's scheduled to last two hours.)

However, I have improved enough, mostly due to lack of physical and emotional work stress, that I've lost my coverage with my private disability insurer, Unum. I'm just not sick enough anymore to qualify, based on the lab work and doctor reports.

As I have essentially $0 income right now and I'm surviving with the help of family members, I looked into food stamps.

Getting food stamps requires (a) going to the county seat to apply, which is a 100 mile one-way trip over narrow, windy country roads. Then (B) I will need to attend "job training" courses on a monthly basis, also at the county seat. There's a waiver if you're on social security disability, but I am not disabled enough to qualify for SSDI. I'm just disabled enough to not be able to work every day.

Estimated cost of each run to the county? $70-$80.

Estimated food stamp benefit? $180.

Net benefit $110.

I can pinch a penny until it squeaks and I cook from scratch and eight months out of the year, we have a family garden, buuuuut ... $110 isn't going to go very far.

Estimated cost to go fishing at a nearby local creek? $5.00 per round trip. Less, if I take a quad that's more fuel efficient than my truck. Trout limit is 6/day, plus unlimited crawdads. This time of year, there's plenty of fish and they're about a pound each. They are definitely healthier than store bought food.

I think I'll be eating a lot of fish, and relying on the kindness of family ... and maybe trying to get one last crop of radishes in before the January snows start. Radishes pan fried in butter are truly yummy.

(My long term plan is to revive a home business I had selling used and vintage toys, which I used to do very, very well at. So long term, I'll be okay. Short term, I'll be eating at the Food Bank of Dad ...)

Shirr-on-rod are fine for curtains that you don't open and close much. I've done them for curtains that are looped back on either side of a narrow window, or for a cafe curtain that's left closed. Tab-top are easy to open & close. Stitching rings to a suitably heavy curtain-top will also let you open & close curtains easily.

There is a huge variety, but there is a good manual on refurbishing sewing machines here, dealing with the commonest Singer models, suitable for being sent to Africa and doing useful work.

I am not trying to guess which model you have, but the ways that stitch-length and backstitch were controlled and indicated did change with time. The machine I have is a later-model 99K, with an up-down lever to control these settings. The early models had a rotary knob.

This site is good for identifying Singer sewing machines from before 1970. It has photographs.

It sounds like there's a difference between British and American English.

The usual basic British curtain uses a header tape with loops to hold hooks that attach curtain to support. This might be your shirr-on-rod, or not far from it. The header tape is stiff enough to hold up the top hem to screen the rod/rail when the curtains are enclosed.

The Coco Cola of British curtain systems is Rufflette. Done properly, the curtain fabric is about twice the width of the window, and draw-cords in the header tape are used to create pleats.

The commonplace support system is a moulded plastic rail with a smooth or decorated side facing the room, and plastic sliders running in a track on the other side. All that shows of the sliders is a little ring which accepts the curtain hook.

And there are variations to all this.

Narrower header tapes can be used for the curtain pole with visible rings. I suspect my parents never really noticed the developments after the 1960s, beyond a rather narrow mechanical view of the available hardware. And they lived through post-war Austerity. Why waste fabric on pleating?

Note that you might be able to get somewhere by actually appealing the private insurer's decision¹, possibly with the aid of a gov't agency. Declaring you "not-disabled" when you still can't work (regardless of doctor's notes) is openly dubious, and a appeals office or judge is likely to agree. The doctor's office may also be helpful in figuring out how to appeal and providing documentation.

¹ Which amounts to a corporate entity saying "we don't want to pay for you anymore, nyah nyah", and various government agencies may have their own takes on that.

And yeah, Unum is playing the Nyah-Nyah, you're not disabled, game quite well.

I have enough good days at this point that I'm hopeful I WILL be able to make a living with a business of my own and I actually like working, but the bad days suck.

I think janetl's "shirr-on-rod" curtains are what I would call "rod-pocket" or "cafe-style". Either the top hem is open enough to put a rod thru, or sometimes there's a second line of stitching an inch or so further down or a separate piece of fabric stitched to the back of the upper hem to form a fabric tube. The rods used with these are narrow (about 1cm diameter) and often extendable to fit a range of widths, and are supported by brackets on each side; they're not well-suited to picture windows. (Apparently "cafe-style" technically refers to the variety that covers only the lower half of the window.)

This illustration (which uses still different terminology for some of the styles) may clarify things for you.

Cafe curtains: Half-height, hung to block the lower half of the window. They'll usually be hung from the rod with tabs or rings, and the top is frequently scalloped for looks.

Glass sheers: made of something like scrim (an open weave), they're wider than the window and gathered on a top rod running through a pocket, and sometimes also a bottom rod. Usually used on the window side of drapes, they block the view (somewhat) but not light.

That American site is showing some very "aspirational" curtain styling. Curtains like that are a sort of showing-off.

Glass sheers sound to have something of the same purpose as "lace curtains", which you might have seen mentioned in some English fiction.

The rod pocket style sounds close to obsolete in British use, though the curtains were supported by strong wires of coiled spring steel sheathed in plastic. You can still get these curtain wires

The plastic track seems to sit at the lower end of the modern British market, with visible curtain rods being a bit fancy, whether the curtain has tabs or is attached to rings threaded around the rod.

These days, we are being encouraged to use thermal lining. I wonder, a little, if diminishing returns are setting in. On the other hand, I just fitted an LED bulb with a built-in motion sensor in one hallway. So I don't have to grope for light switches in the dark, but it only is on when somebody is there. That might pay for itself.

The big improvements in energy cost came with CFL lightin, but there are some things LEDs are good for, and they seem to have supplanted hot filaments in flashlights. Pick the right modern battery tech, with low self-discharge, and your go-bag changes a bit.

I think I am rambling...

And now they're over here too, trying to cosy up to our politicians (of all parties); this, incidentally, is how I heard that they were involved in these lawsuits. What they appear to be trying to do here is get the politicians to break the NHS and the welfare system as much as possible, so that people will be frightened and buy Unum insurance policies... which I dare say they will then find convenient reasons not to pay out on. They should be sent packing forthwith.

Opinions will vary, but I'm quite happy.

I find myself thinking a lot about this lately. Sewing anything much beyond the most basic square item requires 3-D spatial visualization skills. If you're designing your own pattern or doing alterations, the 3-D spatial visualization requirement gets even higher. In "common wisdom," men are better at 3-D spatial visualization and are therefore naturally better at science and engineering and more inclined to become scientists and engineers. Why, then, aren't men naturally better at sewing and more inclined to become tailors? And if women are naturally better at sewing, then how are those 3-D visualization skills different and why don't they "count" for science talent?

This really has more to do with my frustration with the whole "spatial intelligence = science talent" business. But it really is true that sewing requires spatial visualization skills. You have to envision how the pattern pieces will go together, and how the 2-D pattern and fabric will work on a 3-D person (or 3-D object, if you're sewing something like a furniture slipcover). I'm absolutely in awe of people who can do this without a lot of trial and error.

Additional open threadiness: I am not typically a poet, but my morning commute furnished me with some people-watching that turned into a poem.

The morning bus

Before she even sits down
they are arguing.
Already? Still? Again? He
Must be her husband.
I, too, am long-married;
I know the tone in which
a woman argues with her spouse.
Low, intimate,
half exasperation, all
affection.

I hear only scattered words:
"Jesus." "Children." "Money."
Her voice sharpens,
she makes a point
she thinks will carry.
Then softens again
(he must be obdurate),
a brook over stones;
this is an argument well-worn
as a riverbed.

She falls silent, looks away,
then back, to take it up again
with the empty seat beside her.

The life of the dead is placed
In the memory of the living.

Also, check fabric stores - they'll usually have basic sewing books.

Caroline #330: That "men are spatial" thing is purely a statistical difference. Individuals vary widely in their abilities, and no human ability short of pregnancy is limited to a single gender.

There are, however, strong social stereotypes about abilities versus gender, and those make a big difference in what activities people pursue.¹

Thus, where sewing is considered "female", girls and women with strong spatial skills would find sewing to be a natural and socially acceptable outlet for their abilities.

Of course, the stereotypes are prone to assign low-status jobs to women, even splitting otherwise-identical jobs by gender. Thus in recent history, men sewing are commonly "tailors" -- professionals and merchants -- while women sewing are, if not "mere homemakers", at most "seamstresses" -- a service or factory job.

Similarly, a "secretary" was classically² a male role, the privy assistant to someone important -- and more, the keeper of their secrets, thus secretary. When the job became stereotypically female, they in due course got redefined as "typists" and later "administrative assistants".

¹ Those stereotypes also vary by culture; the classic example is that in Italy, mathematics is traditionally female, because it's abstract and not "getting your hands dirty". Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of female Italian mathematicians.

² As in, from ancient Rome through the Middle Ages and beyond.

Public libraries usually do, though.

The PDF was linked from this page
http://theperfectnose.wordpress.com/2012/11/09/friday-freebie-of-awesomeness/
toward the bottom, past all the sample drawing pages. The link is at 'Get this'.

¹ Daedalus Used Books of Charlottesville, <toot toot>. Not to be confused with the Baltimore outfit that's much more active online. I can post the phone # if desired.

The number of women who were romantically attracted to him was amazing ...

The thread-length adjustment mechanism on your machine does get described in the Netley refurbishment guide, including which way to work the knob to shorten and lengthen the stitch.

Refurbishing Machine Top

The tension adjuster may also be different.

There are also some variations on the bobbin winder.

It will be pure luck if you find an exactly matching manual on-line. The physical manual I have has a couple of vital pages missing, and I had to do a bit of hunting.

Cheryl @300: Not only "those of us who are actually perfectionists can't give that answer any more" but my recent line-manager-from-hell basically started my annual appraisal by stating that I was a perfectionist*, and that that was good, BUT - and then proceeded to blame that for all the delays, all the behind-on-deadlines which were actually due to a whole host of other factors. I tried to tell her some of those other factors but she wasn't interested in hearing facts which disagreed with her opinions. Very frustrating.

I have a similar answer to that given by oliviacw @301: I tend to use the "geological strata" method of filing papers - if it was three weeks ago, it must be about -this- far down the pile. However, I would add that my -computer- filing system is much more organised and would enable most other people to find the files and (electronic) papers.

N. E. Mouse @318: Rant away - that's a very irritating position to be in. Good luck for your long-term home business to work well.

alsafi @331: That's lovely.

*Actually, I don't think I am; I just have fairly high standards which I expect my work to meet, in particular, being factually accurate and, whever possible, going back to the original reference not a review (which may have got things wrong). And I proof read properly.

If you are at all Dr. Who inclined, the night of the doctor, a Moffat written short episode, just went up on the web as something of a prelude to the 50th anniversary.

As he says though, probably not the Doctor you were expecting.

Cygnet #345: The number of women who were romantically attracted to him was amazing ...

Devoted caretaker, valuable skills, dextrous hands... what's not to like?

Mathbabe is awesome--one of my favorite nerd-blogs.

And this piece--on being a mathematician and a mother--is really good, and I find that it echoes my experience as a father.

This is part of a bigger pattern, with much the same thing happening w.r.t. paid writing gigs, and at another level, research. (You can do research and write it up and get publications, but you need to have time to do it.) All of these make it easier for outsiders to become insiders, and for people with few or no commitments to jumpstart their careers. (Because doing an extra 20 hours a week of unpaid work looks a lot more palatable if you're a single 23 year old living in your parents' basement than if you're a married 33 year old with a child and a mortgage.)

Open source software and the blogosphere and the wonderful podcasts out there are all high-quality unpaid labor, which makes the world a richer and better place, but which also pushes older, established people out of their positions, and builds a kind of filter that keeps some people (those who can't spend a few years working for tips or exposure) out of those fields entirely. The hard part of trying to fix it is that those things are actually making the world a lot better for almost everyone. It's a better world for having OpenOffice and Emacs and Python and R in it, and for having them available free. It's a better world for having a world of blogs with diverse and interesting points of view replacing the Thomas Friedmans and Richard Cohens of the world. And in both cases, there really is a meritocracy, and some really talented and productive people really do rise up and become prominent and share their productivity with even more of the world. Whatever we can do to decrease the downside of these things (barriers to entry, years of unpaid labor required to get into many fields, poor job stability for those in the fields now) needs to not break the good parts of them.

I recently saw how that works to get other people to do unpaid work in the interest of a BigCorp. Screw that.

Not just at home either—I wear the clothes culturally assigned to my birth-assigned gender out in public.

I'm not quite certain what I should do.

(This was one of those turn-the-tables conversations, and it's raising all sorts of cool issues, pointing out the prejudice inherent in assumptions about markedness, all like that.)

I also find my "New Simplicity Sewing Book" to be perpetually useful. It's not new, it's over 30 years old at this point, but it's got a lot of great basic information; I believe it's still possible to find used copies.

Adding my applause for your poem.

I was aware of the irony of posting that link on a blog, yes. The fact that I do a lot of writing for free is (a) definitely the privilege of only having to work so hard for my living wage, and (b) probably diluting the hell out of the market for paid prose.

I guess one question I have about the writing side of things is whether the professional model is the only way to go? People have been paid for stringing words together for a long time, but it's never been the case that all words so strung have been paid for.

I don't know. It's not something I've got the historical background to analyze more closely.

I now not only have the PDF you linked, but also, having followed various other links from that: a 1919 volume entitled Clothing for Women (shared on the Book of Face, since I have a friend who is a professional costumer and that is right in her time period); Practical Dress Design; and a comprehensive two-volume guide entitled Fundamentals of Patternmaking. It's all heavily biased towards women's clothing, because these things always are, but that is not a problem, since one can then adapt the same skills to handle any type of figure.

My interest in this kind of thing runs in the family. My great-uncle was a highly skilled needleman who did upholstery for a living (and was for ever boasting about how he worked for The Quality, but then, let's face it, he was excellent at what he did) and embroidery in his spare time. One of his tapestries hung over his fireplace for very many years. I was asked if I wanted it after he died, and reluctantly I had to turn it down; it was a beautiful piece of work, but it was so big I had nowhere to put it.

albatross, #353: The Linux people I know say that the downside of open-source is that because it's all volunteer work, people are much more likely to go for the New! Shiny! features, while areas that need improvement in applications that have been out for a while go begging. This is a common failure mode in a lot of volunteer activities, not just software -- nobody wants to put in the time on the boring stuff.

And Charles Stross has done a blog post on how 3D printing is looming over the clothing business. They already have spray-on felt. And, when it comes to getting news coverage it's not hard to imagine the models they're spraying it onto.

And I am no expert, but I know why "bias cut" means something important.

I checked the pricing for my curtains plan. Getting somebody else to make them could easily cost a couple of hundred quid.

Do you have the serial number and/or could send it my way? I've amassed something of a collection of information on various singer machines over time, and might have something useful.

Out of my Singer machines, 3 of them don't have anything particularly useful when it comes to stitch length (or if they even have a backstitch), fwiw.

Manually adjust by moving the lever up/down while stitching on a piece of test fabric.
When it's in the right spot, tighten the screw.

If the machine sews in reverse as well as straight, move the lever all the way up to go back, and then down to the set screw. This is useful when you need to shorten stitches to go around a tight curve or right into a corner, and then return to your preferred setting.

There are plenty of other things I can write about.

Years ago, our son, then about 3 years old, referred to those who are "gone to the heaven in our heads". Where all such treasured memories reside.

[Three blank spaces in a row. -- Ciors Vasalini, Duty Gnome]

A friend found War Horse very triggery for alcoholism, just a warning to other with family histories.

Yeah, really. Why does there have to be just one time and place where dogs were first domesticated?

I have the same opinion about the origin of human language. The debate always seems to be about tracing down THE original human invention of language, but it seems to me that once the physical and mental pre-requisites for language were in place (and they must have come into being for some reason other than preparing for language) then the creation of languages would be inevitable. Now, given language spread, replacement, etc., I consider it quite plausible that all current languages may derive from a single evolutionary ancestor, but I find it implausible that there was only ever one invention of language.

I'd be fascinated to see evidence for multiple origins.

I find it entirely credible that humans developed language very early, before they began to spread out of Africa. The reason for this is that humans have been obliged to hunt in order to survive until (from an evolutionary point of view) extremely recently. We can't outrun most prey animals; we don't have sharp claws or teeth; we don't have a good sense of smell compared to most other animals; and, though we have amazing daytime vision, our night vision is no great shakes. So, in order to hunt effectively, we need brains and teamwork.

Now, generally speaking, a band of very early humans couldn't kill an animal immediately outright, unless they were very lucky. This is suggested by careful micro-examination of animal bones found in middens. It's not uncommon to find a bone which has been nicked by a weapon and then healed, showing that the animal got away on a previous occasion. The kind of blade-based weapon which would kill an animal outright wasn't developed until the Upper Palaeolithic, many thousands of years after humans first evolved (and by which time they had spread out over an enormous area). This, in turn, suggests that the usual practice was to wound an animal and then follow the poor creature until it either expired through loss of blood or slowed down enough for the band to catch it and finish it off at close quarters.

I think this would be pretty hard to do without language. You can imagine a group tracking a wounded animal and then arguing about which way it went. If you don't have language, this reduces to a number of people all pointing in different directions, which isn't helpful and will more than likely lose you the animal. If you do, however, the people who are pointing in different directions can explain why they are doing so, and the explanation that seems most reasonable to the group will tend to carry the argument.

Granted, this is not solid evidence. But it seems like a reasonable thing to use as a single brick in the wall.

So it might simply work to track past the prey's sprint period (perhaps scattering a bit), and optionally yelling when you spot the thing. So group hunting might well precede language as such.

Totally not a linguist here, but beyond the click-based tongues, I'm boggled by the differences between tonal and non-tonal languages. But yeah, how could we tell... and given the prevalence of proto-linguistic communication in the animal kingdom (IIUC we're still not sure if the cetaceans are all that "proto-"), an early origin does seem likely.

How far outside the onion border does it need to be? Garlic and shallots are popular.

Beyond that, there is the family of fermented umami concentrates: soy sauce, marmite, Worcester sauce, miso paste. Fish sauce if you swing that way. I've taken to keeping a big jar of miso in the fridge for all soup-like situations.

The thing is, some things seem to really only have ever been invented once. One of those things is NOT writing; there are at least three separate loci where as far as we can determine people VERY FAR AWAY from each other came up with writing systems.

But those systems were syllable-based -- the Chinese locus is one of them, and Egyptian hieroglyphics are another, with South America being the third. I think current thinking is that Linear A arose from someone having seen Egyptian script and coming home to apply the principles to their own language with their own squiggles, so that counts as contagion, not pure invention. Similar things happened in Asia -- there are scripts out there that are not directly descended from the Chinese character-set but probably arose after their society had SEEN Chinese writing on something and thought it looked useful. A modern example would be Sequoyah's invention of a writing system for Cherokee after learning about written English.

However, as best we can determine, an alphabet-style writing system (with letters for bare phonemes, not whole syllables, so most languages can be written with fewer than 36 symbols) has -- we think -- only arisen once, with all the ones now in use either direct descendants or contagion-cousins of it. We used to think of the oldest proper example as the Phoenician Alphabet, first used to write Semitic-language texts on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, but now the oldest inscription in it we have is from Egypt and quite a bit older so who knows. It also appears to be a Semitic language, and there were a bunch of Semitic peoples living in Egypt doing the pick-crops-build-stuff migrant labor thing at the time (the exploits of one such group in the situation has been written up in a Very Well-Known Book), so after they went back to live in the eastern Med, it evolved eventually into what the Phoenicians used, who spread it EVERYWHERE through their trading empire.

I've been listening to the History of English Podcast (which amuses me by deciding the 'history of English' starts with Proto-Indo-European and progressing from there ... whee!), and he's going through some interesting stuff in Ep 12 or so about how as the alphabet was borrowed into new languages it added or lost glyphs, or had them re-used because Language A used consonants that Language B lacked, so they saw no need for the letter; but Language B made a distinction between (say) a ph-sound and a f-sound, so they felt they needed two letters there instead of one, and made an extra.

Also, chickens were only domesticated once (we think). Dogs are complicated not only by "there might have been multiple domestications" but by the tendency for wolves to out-cross the line repeatedly back to wild stock, even on very domesticated dogs.

Um ... regarding my expressed opinions on linguistics ... I do have a PhD in the field, but thanks everyone for explaining the basics to me.

estelendur @ 375 There are a handful of facts suggesting a single origin

I find none of these items overwhelmingly convincing on the topic. For example, if only one language family used click sounds, that would normally be taken as extremely strong evidence that the feature was a limited innovation, not that it's a feature of a hypothetical ur-language. (It also isn't the case that only one language family uses them, but that's by the by.) It's also good to avoid arguments that talk about "oldest language" or "oldest language family" when postulating a single origin for language. After all, if all languages are descended from a single invention, then in what way are they not all equally ancient?

Yes, language family spread matches patterns of genetic migration, but not in an absolute correspondence. Language transmission is not dependent on genetic transmission and the loss or replacement of a language does not require either genocide or complete intermarriage.

I'm not in the slightest suggesting that any group of humans gained and then lost language and then re-gained it. I'm suggesting that for the development of language to be as inevitable as it seems to have been, it is behaviorally implausible that it did not spontaneously emerge multiple times once the physical and mental capacity existed. A single invention would be as behaviorally implausible as an idea that tool-using was only invented once and then transmitted culturally solely from that single behavior. And we can observe repeated independent inventions of tool-using among non-human primates in real time. Language is more complex, but just as much a situational product of the ability and the utility.

But it is quite plausible that after language had been independently developed multiple times, some of those independent groups of language users may have shifted eventually to the language(s) developed by other groups of speakers (or simply adopted a sufficiency of another language that the traces of their original one were overwhelmed), such that what eventually survived in use may be linearly traceable to only a small subset, or even only a single one of those original inventions. In fact, the study of long-scale genetic transmission (e.g., mitochondrial DNA markers) points out how easy it is for even simple statistical drift to reduce ancestor-diversity with respect to a present population without any need to postulate a limited set of ancestors. (I'm referring here to the popular misunderstanding of the "7 female ancestors of all Europeans" analysis as implying that there was a point in history where there were only 7 women).

Language changes and spreads from one speech community to another. This is the truest thing that can be said of language. There are plenty of demonstrable cases where a region with a great diversity of unrelated languages (relatively speaking) saw the spread and adoption of a single dominant language or language cluster without any need for postulating extremes such as genocide or previously unpopulated landscapes. The case of Indo-European's just-barely-short-of-complete takeover of Europe is only the most extreme (and to Westerners the most familiar) case -- and it happened in part in solidly historic times.

There's only a few basic ways that humans hunt with dogs now.

1) Dogs find prey that humans can't, get it moving, and humans kill it. (Birds hiding in heavy cover, raccoons, bunnies, etc.)

2) Dogs locate and chase things up trees. Humans shoot it out of the tree. (Everything from big cats and bears to raccoons and squirrels.)

3) Dogs actually run down and leap into a fight with a difficult-to-kill animal. Humans, slower, eventually catch up and kill the animal. (Pigs, bears, in modern times -- in historic times, deer and wild cattle.)

I can easily envision paleolithic humans bringing home a cute wolf cub for the kids to play with and/or to raise on scraps until it's big enough to eat. Wolf cub grows up, tags along on hunts with the humans. Adult wolf, now nicely socialized with humans, and faster than they are, learns to run down and corner and/or grab and hold onto prey. Humans follow up and make the kill. All share in the bounty. This is not that different than how wolves hunt anyway, so it doesn't break the wolf's brain to hunt with the humans.

Humans go, "Hmm, this works." And go get more wolf cubs. Then they select the offspring of those wolf cubs that are the easiest to handle, and/or the toughest in a fight (the mortality rate among catch dogs in modern hunting is pretty high) and dogs are born ... then as humans created civilization, we selected dogs with specific traits for needed for hunting specific types of prey or for other tasks like guarding livestock without eating it.

---

"What is your biggest flaw?"

"Well. I love doing the work, but sometimes, after it's done, I just hate cleaning up all the darn blood, you know what I mean? I wish somebody else would do it. But hey, I do it. I just, I just like to complain sometimes."

Some species are innately more tamable or domesticatable than others, and wolves pre-domesticated themselves (as far as we can tell) through finding an environment with selection pressures that changed their brain chemistry in a way humans found useful.

Family Talk.

Written for the prompt, "On one night of the year, the dead speak."

There's apparently a new malware package called "BetterSurf" which allegedly has opportunistically exploited some kind of security vulnerability in the change to switch YouTube comments to Google+. It does "drive-by downloads" of the malware package and silently installs itself. Symptoms include a bunch of new ads appearing when you do a Google search, and new pop-up ads appearing on websites.

If you've visited YouTube in the past few days, especially if you use Firefox, check for it. It does show up in the Add-ons tab under Firefox Extensions.

Firefox has just started detecting and disabling the browser extension, which is how I found out about it, but that may be just the tip of the iceberg - I have just read some reports that it installs a directory in Program Files and an updater, which means anything could be coming down that road before long.

No advice yet on how to remove it; I've got to get it off my wife's computer so I'll report back when I've done that. Ironically, I just installed NoScript for her a day or two ago but apparently not soon enough.

* The YouTube connection could be coincidental; now that I think about it, virtually everybody on the Internet will report and remember having gone to YouTube sometime in the last few days and that could be enough to create a spurious correlation.

I would add that hunting dogs don't have to be particularly fond of or safe around humans.

In the area my wife grew up in (swampy, brushy country) hunting deer with dogs was common. The usual way to do this is to set up a line of hunters to shoot, and have a mixed group of humans and dogs form a rough line and drive the deer towards them.

This kind of hunting is obviously a group activity; it's normally done by hunting clubs, which keep dog packs. However, one particularly poor hunt club was notorious for not doing so. Instead, before hunting season, they would round up all the stray dogs they could find, pen them up and feed them for a few weeks, and then turn the dogs loose, with drivers behind them, to run deer. After hunting season, they would turn all the dogs loose again.

This kind of interaction is mutually beneficial, and doesn't require particularly human-friendly dogs.

Heather Rose Jones @ 382 (and others)

I've wondered--how is "language" defined for linguists? Clearly, some birds and mammals use sound to communicate; at what point does "uses sound to communicate" become "language?"
(Thanks for suppressing the prickliness; I find it hard to remember who knows what in the Fluorosphere.)

Hunting elk with dogs isn't legal here, but I've always thought it would work pretty well. Elk have a tendency to stop and stand their ground when dogs go after them. One of our neighbors had a pit bull go after an elk, and the elk won -- the dog ended up with a fractured skull and a bunch of stitches. Using slightly smarter dogs (or at least ones who've survived being kicked a few times and learned to duck), it'd be an easy way to hunt.

All a paleolithic human hunter would need to do would be to send a few protodogs after an elk herd, and then when the elk herd stopped to trample the protodogs, the humans would be able to catch up and pick out the tastiest looking member of the herd.

Elliott Mason @380: I loved reading the arguments over the origin (both place and age) of runes. As far as anyone can tell, they're probably descended from a Northern Italic writing system that some Germanic trader took back to his people. Ogham, apparently, was developed to be Not Latin Writing, so is directly connected despite being not of the lineage.

Heather Rose Jones @382: I do have a PhD in the field
I'm so sorry; I had no idea! *tucks information away for future reference, so as not to accidentally offend again*

And you make a lot of good points, on which I am too embarrassed to comment and should have been able to see the edges of and thereby Not Make Fool of Self.

(As an aside, I have an SF idea which would have vaguely snow-leopard based aliens which have large spaceships, always with at least two exits from each room, rarely spend time with two or more individuals in the same room, and communicate primarily by leaving notes for each other). [Snow leopards, leave their scents at particular spots e.g. specific bits of cliff, and it appears, based on their behaviour, that the next snow leopard along can tell how recently the other snow leopard was there and therefore whether it's worth staying and hunting in the area or not. I just like extrapolating from scent marks to complex symbol-based communication without the communicators seeing each other].

Estelendur @ 394

If you're looking to make a non-onion version of standard mirepoix (onion, carrot, celery), you can just double the carrot. (Carrot/parsnip is often an adequate substitute for onion in cooking; onions and breastfeeding newborns haven't gone together for any of our children.)

Also, asafoetida is somewhat-substitutable flavor for browned garlic.

Okay, we now have a rather direct measure of just how truly abysmal guinea pig vision is: Yeti is out patrolling the living room, looking for girls to whom to pitch woo. At one point he glances over, sees something, and says "Purrr-purrr purr prrrrrrrrrrr" as he dashes closer. What he'd taken for a girl (from about a foot away) turned out to be a roughly guinea-pig-sized piece of newspaper, leaning on edge up against the fence.

This is a very sketchy piece of paper, though. Since everybody's either in their bedrooms or upstairs, I opened the gates to the Cliff Palace's lower level. When he goes inside to investigate (well, it never hurts to check, right?), the piece of paper falls over flat. But it is slightly curled, so if he nudges one end in the course of sniffing (turns out it smells like girls, anyway), the other end wiggles, causing him to dash away in panic.

It's a difficult business, trying to find a little love of a Saturday afternoon.

Your current account (***) does not have access to view this page.

SamChevre @396: Good to know. And it seems that onion- or garlic-infused oil, with no actual alliac substance left, is also acceptable… So, doubling the carrots and kicking in a little flavored oil might be an option.

Incidentally, I imagine one or more people know how to make onion- or garlic-infused oil?

I used to use a pinch of 5 spices and a couple dashes of soy sauce to round out my broths. My husband dislikes anise, so I usually don't anymore, but I'm pretty fond of the effect.

The other day upon the stair
I met a boy who didn't care.
Again today he didn't care.
And by the way, his name's Pierre.

You may need a radically non-Earthlike environment, or some exotic local hazard (sound-hunting air-piranha?), to explain why they don't do that. I note that James White (Sector General) had a story featuring a space-dwelling species -- not spaceships, but vacuum -- that communicated by touch. (He did not attempt to explain how they evolved in the first place.)

The question of how "language" is defined has provided fodder for entire careers. As I come from the cognitive linguistics community, I'm quite happy with fuzzy categories that involve goodness of fit rather than rule-based membership structures. But it is a good starting point to note that some of the core concepts that make something "language" rather than simply "communication" include:

* relatively arbitrary token-to-meaning relationships (with an acknowledging bow to the fact that most languages have pockets of sound-symbolism and that many signed languages use mime as one of the inputs to vocabulary)

* the ability to represent abstract ideas, non-immediate (past and future) contexts, and hypotheticals (I'm kind of making this one up myself, but it's an important distinction from communications that are concerned only with immediately present needs, objects, and interactions)

* the ability to generate new meaningful forms and structures to cover communicative needs not covered by the existing system

One problem in discussing the topic is that many people (many linguists included) have an underlying presumption that human language is necessarily Unique and Special, and therefore definitions of "language" are often convoluted in order to dance around things like sign-using non-human primates and the rather amazing performances of individual creatures like Alex the African Grey parrot. On the other hand, these linguistic gerrymanders often end up excluding certain human languages. (Signed languages are often a blind spot for the definitions -- and have at various times been erroneously considered little more than gestures and mime.)

I, personally, and quite comfortable with the notion that there are things that lie on the fuzzy edges of "language" that non-human creatures are capable of.

estelendur @ 394

I apologize for making you feel bad. Yes, I was feeling rather miffed, and I said so because I was afraid it was going to come out in the tone of my post and I wanted to be up front about my reaction. But two wrongs don't make a right. Please don't refrain from discussing things out of embarrassment on my account.

Okay, let's try again: Family Talk. A rather short story.

And thanks, folks, for trying AND for telling me what I did wrong. This time.

And of course some people use meat, but I'm not one of them. And some people use MSG; I've tried adding it to a few things but haven't noticed a difference.

* The book uses the term "sentient", but IMO "sapient" fits better. There is History about the usage of these two words in SF.

I've seen rice miso and corn miso in fancy grocery places. I *think* they were single-grain (that is, not "rice and soy").

Possibly expensive, possibly worth trying.

I take it that this isn't really the case?

The miso-making process is pretty easy-- cook and semi-mash your main ingredient (usually soybeans, but evidently other stuff can be used), mix with koji and salt and maybe so e existing miso, put in a large straight-sided container with secondary containment to catch the probable tamari runoff, weight down the proto-miso mass, and leave it alone for "at least one hot summer" is how the instructions I've used state it. At the end, mash everything up and maybe put it through a food mill.

Said character is the presumptive heir of a (Japanese, of course) family that grows pure cultures for fermenting miso, soy, etc -- they make koji, among other things. He's going to an agricultural university with his bestie from the business next door (which makes sake), and then Hijinks Ensue And There Is College (sort of).

Warning: the first several episodes include scenes of (to me) excessive, over-the-top, look-away-from-screen grossness involving fermented foods, because the professor into whose orbit the protagonist falls studies fermentation and is, um, a promoter. That gradually tapers off and there are more hijinks, plot, and real genuine character moments.

Plus, stick around after the credits for Microbe Theater, where the little cute animated microbe characters infodump fascinatingly on fermentation, microbes, etc. :-> So if you want to know how miso is made, etc, it's a lot of fun.

Heather Rose Jones @406, thank you.

With that in mind, my contribution to the "what is language" thread:
The Special Snowflakeness of language that I have heard about the most is connected to Noam Chomsky, who I'm not going to get into except to say that he claimed that the thing which made human languages different from(/better than) animal forms of communication was our use of 'recursive' (that is, infinitely nestable) structures, which was all well and good until Daniel Everett may have discovered a human language which does not use recursive structures.

I think this probably falls into "the ability to generate new meaningful forms and structures".

Personally I have no objection to the idea that we are not Special Language Snowflakes but also have no idea how we would establish to our satisfaction that, say, dolphins had something we could meaningfully call language.

Everyone with soup suggestions, expressions of gratitude! I shall have to make a list. The idea of making miso would be very tempting if I knew where I would be living this summer (being descended from a homebrewer and a scientist).

That is my understanding as well: "syntax" -- in the sense that the relative order and organization of the language tokens carries additional meaning -- is a feature of both the simplified signed languages and the visual-symbol based "Yerkish" taught to non-human primates. And from my reading, I understand that lexical innovation to describe things they hadn't been given words for has been a feature of all of these experiments.

(Please note that my own study only intersected with these topics as general background in the field, so while I have informed opinions on the philosophical question of "what is a language", I don't have special insider knowledge of language acquisition studies.)

Well, what was it, then? It also wasn't a competence model from which any useful performance model could be constructed. It certainly wasn't a model of what humans were actually doing when they use language, or a model of how language is represented on the actual wetware it runs on.

So no, you can't have infinite center embeddings, because the human brain is not infinite, and any sentence generated has to be a) generable by a human brain and b) interpretable by a human brain. (This is much truer for speech than for writing, where the paper (or electronic medium or whatever) is used by the brain as offline storage, and much more complex sentences can be written and read than can be spoken and heard with comprehension; but there's still a limit.) Where Chomsky is right is that the structure of language itself shouldn't limit the number of center embeddings; that limit varies from person to person and is dependent on their skills, alertness, etc.

My favorite demonstration of this is to speak the following sequence of sentences to people:

This is Jack, who the house was built by.
This is Jack, who the house that the grain lay in was built by.
This is Jack, who the house that the grain that the rat nibbled lay in was built by.
This is Jack, who the house that the grain that the rat that the cat killed nibbled lay in was built by...

There's a reason why there are no such naturally-occurring sentences (there are some pretty howling examples, but not nearly out of the realm that can be accounted for by a finite-state automaton).

Why yes, I did study linguistics with David G. Lockwood. Why do you ask?

(For those not versed in these things: an Open Table means anyone (of any religion or none) can take communion. I'm Wiccan; I take the bread as a symbol of my membership in the community at $Parish, where I've been singing in the choir for years and years. This was all OK with the previous rector, and completely understood by the congregation. The national church apparently thinks communion should be open only to baptized Christians. The Bishop of $Diocese will not make a fuss, I'm told. It's up to the rector.)

estelendur, @399: Thanks!

I am, however, busy writing a non-fiction book at the present, with a set publication deadline less than a year away (and I've not yet got a full chapter ready to start approaching publishers), so unless the story suddenly impinges itself on my consciousness, I'm unlikely to try to write it for the present little while.

Dave Harmon @405: But these hypothetical aliens don't have the vocal apparatus for complex vocal communication - they only have basic calls few basic things - like "help!" and "I'm here; keep away" and "ready to mate now". Why develop and use clumsy sounds when delicate gradations of scents (or symbols standing for those scents) are so much more nuanced?

Dave Luckett @413: There's been some suggestion of syntax in the language used by Kanzi et al. I'd have to go look it up because it's a little while now since I was researching it, but there was some definite order noted in e.g. use of symbol/gesture combinations. [And I see Heather Rose Jones @421 has given some additional information].

But "...that the dog worried killed nibbled lay in was built by" forms no parses in my brain.

Early cosplay

It usually is.

Was it here that I first saw "I'm a linguist, so I like ambiguity more than most people."?

"The clothes peg, which I am using to fasten the towel, which prevents the cat, who is sitting on my shoulder, from snagging my jumper, around my neck, accidentally went into my dessert."

¹ And isn't your epithet ironic for this discussion?

But again, why not, when you're assuming they've had enough development to produce sapience?

Earth might well have insects that could make sounds for all three of those; even if there doesn't actually happen to be such a species, its discovery wouldn't break much new ground (except perhaps that insects social enough for "help!" wouldn't be expected to also be territorial against each other).

Off-hand I can think of the following noise-making methods used on Earth: Rubbing serrated "sticks", vibrating tympanums, whistling/hissing, whatever cetaceans use (apparently two different methods), vocal cords/larynx, syrinx (birds), rattling (as in snakes), and pounding on nearby surfaces.

Under conditions prompting intelligence and social interaction, why would none of those be available for evolutionary elaboration, when the alternative is a method that requires physically visiting your correspondent's former location? It's not impossible to construct a justification for that, but it does warrant justification. For that matter, given scent communication, why wouldn't the scents be broadcast? (And that has certainly been done in SF -- the examples I recall were mostly plants or plant-analogues).

On consideration, I think your root concept is faulty -- those snow leopards are leaving markings --actual traces of their presence and physiological state -- rather than messages with potentially-arbitrary content. I would be very surprised if the Earthly leopards could lie in scent about their health, diet, mating status, or so forth, but deceptive vocal calls, postural signals, etc. are routine among Earthly life.

Dave 433: I agree with your assessment. Of course, that's all any recursion is, in any real implementation.

And yes, isn't it? Never a polyglot, but now hemiglossic. You can imagine how thrilled I was to find out what they were going to do.

Hmm -- that may be ambiguous in print, but in spoken English, it would normally be disambiguated by intonation. Flattening the tone would IMHO bias listeners to the misanthropic reading.

For example, if I say that medieval people never surrendered without fighting for a while first,* then said "Resistance is feudal," that would work only in the spoken language.†

*Not asserting that this is true.
†And only in the US, and only prior to ST:TNG, when everyone started to pronounce the other word "FEW-tile." And not before it either, because before that it wasn't funny. So it fails completely, one of those jokes I just couldn't make work. I offer its dissected corpse as an example.

So now I'm crowdsourcing some research. What life skills do you think of as essential that your grandparents wouldn't have been able to do? It's okay if they involve technology; what I'm trying not to do is make technology the only point in the essay. How has society changed to make different skills important?

(My partner suggests that one major point should be "live openly as gay, with a partner to whom you are married". Yes, I know, not applicable everywhere, but that's the sort of thing I'm looking for in addition to things like "reheat yesterday's leftovers in 2 minutes and without dirtying a new pan" or "call AAA for help when you've broken down on a back-country road". Although "call AAA for help" nearly qualifies on its own, since the group was founded in 1902.)

Xopher @423, my condolences :(

One for your list: In ten minutes of typing I can publicly shame a major corporation into giving me decent, instant tech support (assuming I have a Twitter account).

I can also, assuming I am somewhere that I have Internet (say, my living room), near-instantly acquire a copy of the user's manual for almost every major object in my posession, from my car to my 1902 Singer sewing machine to my printer to my dishwasher. My grandparents and mom could lay hands on them just as quickly, but that's because they had (and maintained) several thoroughly-organized file cabinets to keep such things in.

[No matter how many times I vaccilate, both 'publically' and 'publicly' look wrong, so I flipped a coin]

Modern skillz your grandparents probably didn't need

- Work for a female employer/manager
- Organise and live with shared domestic/parenting responsibilities
- Type (at least your grandfather probably didn't)
- Remember multiple passwords more complicated than "swordfish"
- Know when to stop reading work email at home/on vacation
- Know when you need to go to the doctor [doctors couldn't really do anything back then, but didn't charge much so it didn't matter a lot]

A couple of questions about the southern hemisphere and sun-related ritual, that people here must know (and I hope it isn't inappropriate to ask)

First, do southern-hemisphere Pagans typically celebrate occasions such as Beltane on the same day as in the northern hemisphere, or at the same point in the solar year?

Second, do the 'widdershins' and 'deosil' directions get reversed to match the motion of the sun, or used in the same way as in the Northern hemisphere?

I've wondered about these for a while, and was specifically prompted by the combination of warmer weather here in NZ with the winter-based symbols of the approaching holiday season. Some of the snow decorations have been replaced by pohutukawa, but there's still a lot of seasonally mixed midwinter symbolism.

I think they do celebrate the summer solstice in December, but I'm not completely sure. No Southern Hemisphere Pagans have asked ME what to do, but I would tell them to be tuned to Nature as they find it where they live. The cross-quarter days, though...even less sure. Though in NZ they'd be more likely to have a good source for the natural indicator of Imbolg (the lactation of sheep) than we do in New Jersey, I suspect they celebrate it on either February 2 or August 1 (because it's easier to plan by the calendar).

In that general connection, I've always found it hard to imagine what it must be like to be Wiccan in Southern California. To me the cycles of the seasons are a huge deal, and I like the changes to be dramatic. But then I've never lived where the main difference is whether there's snow on top of the mountain or not. I expect they find their way perfectly well; it's just that *I* can't imagine quite what they do.

Thanks, that's very helpful.

Easter here, and even more in Australia, is an interesting one -- the 'light' symbolism is all wrong for autumn, but the 'new life' is entirely appropriate for the end of summer and the return of rain.

The seasons `Rivers are Dry' and `Rivers are Full' are dramatically different; so are several of the seasonal winds; so is the genus of fruit glowing in the trees.

(The latest in 'Stupid Ideas involving the LA River' is BMW wanting to use Mini-based submarines in the river, as a way of commuting. Apparently they think it's possible to dam the river to have the water deep enough to sue their mini-subs. It isn't floating....)

I went looking for information about seasons in Houston and found this list:

Almost summer
Summer
Still summer
Christmas

...which after four years here I will say seems about right.

For some reason, searching on [funeral cookbook] didn't turn it up, and I had to track down the physical book to recover the title. How primitive!

As for language, Chulo, a Year Among the Coatimundi describes a year of close amateur study of coatimundis (they're something like social racoons) which found that coatimundis have at least a little syntax-- word order can affect meaning.

My understanding is that the "doctors couldn't really do anything back then" statement should be qualified a bit. They usually couldn't do much to affect the course of an ailment (aside from a few special situations like surgery or setting broken bones) but they were already fairly good at diagnosis. Which means that you did at least learn what (if anything) was wrong and what was likely to happen.

Work with / live next door to someone of a significantly different religion (as opposed to a different flavor of Christian Protestant) with understanding of and respect for their differing traditions

My PARENTS were born in the 19-teens. My paternal grandfather was born in 1865. I'm 52. ("Generation" does not always equal 25 years!)

Things I can do that my parents couldn't:

Maintain a friendship with someone I've never met face to face.

Recognize the symptoms of a stroke as it's happening and take effective action.

Research a word, a recipe, an illness, a medication, a historical fact, a biography, etc. etc. without leaving my house.

Write 50,000 words in 30 days* and end up with a readable manuscript (not because they weren't good writers, but because they'd have had to do it on a manual typewriter and make corrections by hand, either by scribbling in the margins or by using White-Out).

*Well, theoretically. In practice I'm a couple thousand words behind at this point. Partly because I wrote 8000 words of something else. NaNoWriMo + Yuletide = overcommitment.

Yes. YES.

Nancy Lebovitz @456: You reminded me of a YA mystery-type-novel I read as a kid, with a female protagonist (at, I think, an archaeological or paleontological dig? She was Vry Srs about going into whatever it was as a field) with a pet coati who loved daikon best in the world ever as a treat. Her grandfather was Japanese issei and raised vegetables under a plastic hoop greenhouse in California.

I can't find it. I wonder if it's very very out of print? I seem to recall it was of a series, and I'd love to go back and read it as an adult now ...

Google Images, however, include both under searches for each, so I may be being overly picky.

My father is about "your grandfather" age to That Cat Site, maybe older, and he does have a lot of skills I don't. He's started companies. And he does have most of the skills I do; we both skew technical, and he's been programming on and off since the 1960s. He's a good typist.

There are at least three sorts of "Your grandparents couldn't" skills:

*Tools. Forty years ago the F.E. exam required you to calculate arctangents. Now that's become trivial. I would tend to consider handwriting vs. typing a "better tools" argument, although it's not as obvious as long division vs. calculators vs. Wolfram Alpha .

*Individual quirks. My grandmother, who ran an art gallery and wrote like a hundred checks a month, couldn't balance her checkbook; my father [b. 1934] is blue-brown colorblind and tone deaf. So I've got that on each of them. My dad knows some math that I don't and vice versa. He's better on hands-on mechanical stuff, I have more thermodynamics.

*Legitimate new skills. Typing is a skill that, by and large, most people didn't have 40 years ago. Keeping friends you've never met in real life, per Lila@459, is a new skill [except for pen pals, I suppose, but then ... I have a hundred pen pals?] Navigating data smog (martinlutherking.org is run by St*rmfr*nt , for example) is a new skill for most of us.

I think the tools, the brain extenders are the real breakthrough. Earlier this morning I was discussing gasoline prices online and I found the average gasoline price in the US in 2005, calculated the rate of inflation for gasoline [about 9%, or doubling in 8 years] and looked up the rate of CPI inflation [20% in the last 8 years.] I mean, why wouldn't you use the facts? They're right there. "I don't know [x], but..." is becoming less and less of an excuse. ("I don't know the energy cost by year of photovoltaic panels, but you can approximate with the money cost." is the last time I used that excuse. I think.)

Leftover breakfast pizza, Your Lownesses?

Wait, I just remembered another slur. So two.

This is more an info-dump than an answer.

Mirepoix (celery onions carrots) doesn't really add much umami--it adds sugar and color and aromatics. You can substitute other herbs for the celery, and other sweet things for the onions and carrots, fairly well. (For example, the use of caramelized sugar as a stock ingredient in Vietnamese and some Indian cuisines is a close relative.)

Umami (meatiness/richness) is tricky--there are a lot of sources, but they tend to have pretty distinct flavors. Barabara Fisher's series on umami at Tigers and Strawberries is one of the best references I know. (The link goes to an archive page for the month.) Anything fermented, particularly fermented proteins; yeast products; tomatoes.)

Xopher et al RE seasons

And then you have the Southern comment about the seasons in the northern Great Lakes region(Buffalo, for example). "One of those places where they have only two seasons--winter, and the Fourth of July."

I think "singlet" would work. It doesn't capture "ribbed", but I wonder if ribbed is really a necessary characteristic.

This is pi, expressed in base 12, played as a melody. I found the frequent modulations disorientating, but it's still surprisingly listenable.

Things I can do that my parents couldn't:

Maintain a friendship with someone I've never met face to face.

Just after WWII, my grandmother's church in New Jersey set up a "sister" relationship with a church in Lille, France, to assist with channeling post-war charity. The daughter of the French pastor knew English and handled the correspondence. My grandmother handled the correspondence on the New Jersey end and the two of them grew to be close friends with the letters continuing regularly long after the charitable needs were finished. In 1969 when my family was in Europe, we made a special trip to Lille to visit the now quite elderly pastor and my grandmother's pen-pal. But my grandmother never did travel overseas, and never met her friend face-to-face.

Friendship by correspondence is a longstanding tradition.

Maintain a friendship with someone I've never met face to face.

The term "pen-pal" was around long before computers.
***
On the article of men's underclothing in question: I've seen the term "muscle tee" applied, but am uncertain as to whether it refers to the whole category or a subset. For that matter, given the speed with which these things can change, I find myself unable to determine with certainty whether or not "muscle tee" is itself a slur.

(I seem to be apologizing a lot lately -- I suspect I need to exercise more caution.)

True. Heck, that's how my wife and I first met.
Today though, you can have a much faster conversation with that friend.

Again, may be regional...

re 470: "Singlet" is ambiguous as it fairly commonly refers to a one-piece wrestling garment.

re 478: "Muscle shirt" used to be commonly used around here but seems to have been pushed out by "tank top". I've never heard anyone say any of the pejorative versions, though I've seen "wife-beater" in print. Part of it may be that around it here they're extremely common summer attire for little kids.

a. Human language is really impressive and complex, and allows for the ability to express things that you've never heard expressed before.

b. Some animals can handle some complexity of language, but nothing like full human language.

c. Normal humans can, in principle, learn any human language. If raised to it, they can learn that language flawlessly.

d. There's a fair bit of the brain that seems to be devoted to language processing in pretty specific ways (like regions of the brain that, when damaged, lead to a pretty consistent kind of loss of language ability).

These four seem like they strongly suggest a single origin for the evolution of the *ability* to use language. There have to have been a whole lot of generations of heavy selection for the useful brain features of language. Once humankind scattered, we could all continue evolving those abilities (evolution doesn't care about direction, so that includes both gaining and losing abilities), but if we had developed the core mental abilities separately, then there would presumably be elements in (say) English that Australian Aboriginees would find difficult to master (and vice versa) because they lacked the physical adaptations in their brain development.

Is this a basically correct picture? I'm a complete amateur here, having read a couple books and a couple articles.

It seems like once we had the basic brain hardware to handle human languages, you could easily have loss of big chunks of language (when you separated down to a small group where the linguistic version of neutral drift and mutation could go to work), and their later re-emergence. And you could also have complete loss of language, but I'd expect that to require a really massive tragedy (like something killing off the grownups so only the small kids survive, or something). Wasn't there a story awhile back about a bunch of deaf kids evolving a new complete sign language in a generation or two?

I'm stating all this in the hopes that I get the usenet-like response. (That is, the best way to get good information is to post wrong information and wait for people to tell you you're wrong.)

Would their lownesses like some of the broccoli and chicken soup I have in the lunchroom fridge?

When we find an effective way of true communication with African Grey parrots, great apes, cetaceans, and cephalopods, then I think we might have a shot at communicating with ETs (which are bound to be much stranger than the aforementioned classes).

I imagine communicating with a single alien species would be a demanding field of specialization, complete with lots of impressive computing tools, heruistics, and lore for doing it.

I especially enjoy the deeply ingrained infodumpiness about all things microbial, which is clearly meant as a feature rather than (ahem) a bug.

I also love the "regular (Japanese) college experience, but dialed up to WACKY" aspects, because I've been gradually becoming familiar with the Japanese education system through watching animes set in it (and then researching "which bits of this were ordinary and which bits were intended as satire??" on a variety of websites). It Is Not Like Ours, and I'm a worldbuilding fan, so.

If you like the college-life aspects of Moyashimon, you might also greatly enjoy Silver Spoon -- it's a lot shorter (one season) and has no spec-fic elements. A kid with amazeballs test scores chooses to go to a remote, enormous agricultural college instead of a big-name Tokyo university for personal reasons, has a fish-out-of-water coming-of-age and discovers what he really wants out of life.

There are people who are unable to learn their land's native tongue -- formerly called "idiots" (etc.) or mutes, but nowadays they'd likely get a diagnosis of "language impairment". Of course some of those cases can be explained by physical handicaps such as deafness, or severe mental retardation. But if the doctors can't "see" anything wrong physically, or a familiar pattern of learning disability, they'll still label the kid with a "neurological" diagnosis that might be no more meaningful than describing the problem in Latin.

There are also some people who "don't speak very well" even in their native tongue, despite educational opportunities and being otherwise apparently competent. They may frequently show bad grammar and/or spelling, choose the wrong word, mangle sentences, etc. Those may not do well academically or even socially, but they generally pass in the spectrum of human variation.

I would hope it's been tested whether, say, babies of European ethnicities who were adopted into China, actually learn their adoptive tongue as well as ethnic locals. I just don't know the results of any such tests.

Note: I may be less able to cope with stuff at the moment because I'm injured and can't run (and I'm looking at a year estimated recovery time) and running was not only my main pass time and main form of exercise but also a major part of my social life and my main form of stress relief. And work is still stressful and I'm feeling very frustrated. So, not on an even keel at the moment.

Aww, that's a really sucky place to be in. Virtual hugs offered, if you want.

Dave Harmon @493: I read one that infants raised in a culture with a tonal language are never or rarely tone-deaf. I wondered whether rather it was that children in a society with a tonal language, who are actually tone-deaf, would be labelled as idiots for being unable to learn the language?

I cut my teeth on Bugs Bunny cartoons.

and @468, I was familiar with the last one you mention but had not heard the others, although your description is enough for me to extrapolate them.

SamChevre, #469: There's also what Midwesterners say about their own region -- "We have two seasons, winter and construction." My description of Houston weather is a grumpy observation that we have two seasons, shirtsleeve and Too Goddamn Hot.

Mongoose, #477: I had to go look up "string vest", but having seen it, I can now say that T-shirt versions of this were popular in the US in the 80s; many of them had sports logos and were meant to be worn in public. My now-ex had one in plain black that he used to wear at cons.

My first mental image for "string vest" was more like this -- an American-style vest made in openwork crochet, intended to be worn as a decorative overlayer.

I remember years ago being a guest at a ritual that used a compass point/element association at a site with very strong, contradictory physical markers: something on the order of the sea to the East, a cliff to the West, a bonfire to the North, and the wind blowing from the South. I found it striking, although I certainly wasn't going to point it out.

Yeah, that's the sort of thing I'm thinking of. Humans, especially young ones, are really good at adapting to whatever challenges they face. Usually, they succeed....

And you can drive around all over the place in SoCal and never see a river. My mom lives in Riverside, which was apparently named ironically (no, I know it isn't, but on none of my many visits there have I ever seen so much as a glimpse of the Santa Ana River).

David 454: Starhawk gave a list of what she might name the moons of San Francisco, if she adopted the indigenous custom of naming moons, including:

Fog Rolls In Moon
Fog Sticks Around Moon
Fog Sticks Around Some More Moon
Rainreturn Moon

Elliott 464: Huh. 'Tank Top' was never gendered to me, though calling upper-body garments 'tops' does tend to imply women's garments in my dialect. That may be why it's so often shortened to 'tank'.

SamChevre 469: I've heard Winter and Road Construction, as Lee points out at 499.

Bruce 470: To me a singlet is that thing wrestlers (the real kind, not the professional kind) wear, one continuous garment from mid-thigh to shoulder, and made of thin, stretchy, skin-hugging material.

One of my favorite things to see certain types of men in, actually.

Mongoose 473: They've arranged it with chords and grouped the notes in a way that suggests melody, but of course the "melody" line isn't actually in any key at any time.

Thanks for this. It's actually lovely. And MY brain thinks there are repeating melodic lines in there. My brain is crazy.

Teka Lynn 475: I don't know whether it's sad or hilarious (or some of both) that you have to clarify that (a reasonable precaution, though I for one read it correctly). I can just imagine "no, you see, the WHITE men's undershirt is made of more expensive fabric..." Oy and facepalm.

dcb 496: I remember hearing on I-think Radio Lab that 80% of native speakers of Mandarin have perfect pitch. I don't remember the number for native English speakers, but I'm pretty sure it was a single digit.

Lee 499: Yeah, I call a "string vest" a mesh tank. T-shirt version, a mesh t-shirt.

And you can drive around all over the place in SoCal and never see a river. My mom lives in Riverside, which was apparently named ironically (no, I know it isn't, but on none of my many visits there have I ever seen so much as a glimpse of the Santa Ana River).

David 454: Starhawk gave a list of what she might name the moons of San Francisco, if she adopted the indigenous custom of naming moons, including:

Fog Rolls In Moon
Fog Sticks Around Moon
Fog Sticks Around Some More Moon
Rainreturn Moon

Elliott 464: Huh. 'Tank Top' was never gendered to me, though calling upper-body garments 'tops' does tend to imply women's garments in my dialect. That may be why it's so often shortened to 'tank'.

SamChevre 469: I've heard Winter and Road Construction, as Lee points out at 499.

Bruce 470: To me a singlet is that thing wrestlers (the real kind, not the professional kind) wear, one continuous garment from mid-thigh to shoulder, and made of thin, stretchy, skin-hugging material.

One of my favorite things to see certain types of men in, actually.

Mongoose 473: They've arranged it with chords and grouped the notes in a way that suggests melody, but of course the "melody" line isn't actually in any key at any time.

Thanks for this. It's actually lovely. And MY brain thinks there are repeating melodic lines in there. My brain is crazy.

Teka Lynn 475: I don't know whether it's sad or hilarious (or some of both) that you have to clarify that (a reasonable precaution, though I for one read it correctly). I can just imagine "no, you see, the WHITE men's undershirt is made of more expensive fabric..." Oy and facepalm.

dcb 496: I remember hearing on I-think Radio Lab that 80% of native speakers of Mandarin have perfect pitch. I don't remember the number for native English speakers, but I'm pretty sure it was a single digit.

Lee 499: Yeah, I call a "string vest" a mesh tank. T-shirt version, a mesh t-shirt.

Kolochkis. Definitely kolochkis.

On a related ancestral ethnic treat front, I'm devastated to report I can't find my aebleskivver pan. Sigh.

Specifics, please?

(I'm running way behind in the thread; apologies if this has been answered upthread. I'll get to it. Eventually.)

What do you do with leftover pie crust? If you are me, make milk flitche (flich-uh). Put scraps of rolled-out pie crust on a pan, pour just a spoonful of milk on each, and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Bake, eat hot.

You're right, Tom, the shipping is probably prohibitive. What I ought to do is ask the Minnesotans to keep an eye out for a nice old aebleskivver pan (I'd think it would be their home territory, after all!), as I do make it to Minicon and sometimes Fourth Street and/or Fallcon.

http://www.lodgemfg.com/seasoned-cast-iron/pro-logic-aebleskiver-pan-P7A3

On the other hand, a lot of the themes in later Heinlein show up in For Us, the Living, so there's some stability of personality.

It's been a while since I read the book, but I remember noticing cats and nudism.

Inscription is a magazine with an inclusive and diverse sensibility aimed at teenage readers. I know many of the people involved in its founding and would really love to see it get the kind of support it deserves. The Indiegogo page is here for those interested in supporting it.

I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with their first year.

What do we call that? Gearpunk? Except it really was made in the 18th Century.

However, I may have a better case against Unum than I thought. One of the issues -- one of several medical issues I have -- is that Unum is basically saying, "Prove you have cervical dystonia and you're not just faking it."

PROVING that I'm not just tensing my muscles up and faking it has been hard. It's basically Unum going, "Nyah-Nyah, we don't want to pay you, so we're going to say you're faking it. And even if you aren't faking it, it doesn't hurt and you can work, because we say so. "

Hell yes it hurts.

The MRI (TWO HOURS in an MRI tube) came back showing very obvious asymmetry in my neck muscles. Crystal clear, no mistaking it, my left side muscles are MUCH bigger than my right and my cervical spine curves to the left. I also have much more degeneration than the last MRI 18 months ago.

My lumbar spine is worse, no surprise there. "Severe disk degeneration" according to the radiologist, with a side order of arthritis.

I really hope I don't need surgery on my neck ... I'll be talking to the doc in a few weeks about it. Hopefully Unum won't continue to insist that the cervical dystonia is an unprovable diagnosis and that my pain is self reported.

Ah, well, if I can't get Unum to see sense with an appeal, I WILL be looking to join one of the class action suits against them. And life goes on ...

Cervical surgery is no longer the crapshoot it once was, but it's still no picnic in the park. I hope you're able to avoid that step. It would be nice to be able to avoid the wrangle with Unum as well, but I realize that might be wose than the surgery and post-op treatment.

As I say to my patients, tell me if it hurts; you're in there, I'm not.

I dropped out of grad school with torticollis (due to a herniated cervical disk which wasn't detected at the time because they didn't fucking look).

I wish you the best in your treatment and recovery, and I hope your insurance company gets its ass handed to it.

Are you familiar with John Scalzi's Agent to the Stars? For a lighthearted* take on aliens that communicate via graded scent emissions.

*for values of "lighthearted" that could said to equate to "one long fart joke"

I was finding that functionality useful, thankyouverymuch, not a bug, and I would like it BACK, but I doubt it will return; there is no obvious way to report a complaint, but I went through their unhelpful 'help' documentation and said it wasn't useful and why.

Grmph. It's like Google wants to be Apple, the way they're making their defaults unchangeable and then changing their mind about what should be default (yes, I'm looking at you, default-scrolling BACKWARDS suddenly, Apple! At least I could unchoose that one BECAUSE DESKTOPS ARE NOT TABLETS).

You're thinking of the first chapter of The Android's Dream, also by Scalzi. May I recommend the Mark Reads version?

http://markreads.net/reviews/category/the-androids-dream/page/2/

We visited York in 1997, and passed a storefront that said MUSEUM OF AUTOMATA. I practically jumped up and down with joy, and we set aside time to go visit the place, which turned out to have closed up shop six months before we got there.

My interest in such things probably goes back to the little mechanical displays we used to see in the window of Anderson's Jewelers in my home town; little electrical tableaux with happy puppet people engaged in some repeated activity five or ten seconds long. They didn't change it often enough to suit me, and it only took a couple of minutes to feel sated with whatever it was, but my sisters and I were always keenly interested in going by the place to see what was new in Anderson's window.

I got hold of the only circulating copy of The White Deer in greater Boston. I've read it twice, deliberately comparing it with The Thirteen Clocks (which isn't entirely fair, because the latter is an ineradicable part of my growing up), and I'm reached two somewhat contradictory conclusions: The White Deer is (a) a more complex and adult work (cf the quest-for-the-sword chapter), and (b) a mess in which Thurber is still learning how to Story, pitching in everything he can think of rather than carving away everything that doesn't look like an elephant. But it was certainly worth reading; thanks for pointing it out.

Gaiman recently did the intro for a reissue of The Thirteen Clocks, and read the first chapter for a video. (I'm not sure I like the video as I've got other versions engraved in memory, but it's definitely striking.) I wonder if he's seen The White Deer -- it's certainly an interesting riff on Story, as most of his works are.

I saw another, very different kinetic sculpture recently at the 2013 Carnegie International in Pittsburgh. The artist, Pedro Reyes, has been working with re-purposed guns, and has created several musical instruments that randomly play short bursts of music. Disarm (Mechanized). It's not at all a pretty sculpture to look at, but it sounds lovely, and there's great fun in the randomness. The reactions of people walking through that room are surprise and smiles—and then you realize that the xylophone you're admiring as it plays is a row of gun barrels, all pointing at you.

Xopher @ 504: I don't think I believe the claim for perfect pitch; the Mandarin I've heard (and was briefly taught) had very wide tone shifts -- enough that the color changed, not just the pitch.

on Lee @ 442:

   Lila @ 459: Professional writers did manage those totals using typewriters. I don't know how Hubbard or Fanthorpe did it -- maybe they could both carry blocks-of-meaning to spill out like guitar riffs, and think enough ahead to have usable text steadily ready to type, but they did. (I've heard at least one cheap trick: always empty the revolver. But that only provides a few words.) That such output is easier for the rest of us now seems to me more like cool stuff rather than a skill.
   You have an even wider generation spread than I do; my paternal grandfather was born in 1859 (late enough that one of my great-uncles died in the Civil War), but I'm 60. The male ancestors came out of long times in the wilderness (missionary/preacher in Wyoming territory, teaching in high-country New Mexico); what affected the late marriages/children in your line?

There are a lot of other cool-stuff things that occur to me related to travel, but ISTM there's at least one new skill: the ability to orient onesself (geographically and socially) in a new location/context. This depends heavily on tech (cheap travel to get there, tools to use on arrival), but I wonder whether 2-3 generations back were open enough to handle this even if they'd been given someone to drive the tools for them. This loops back into opennesses that other people have pointed out (e.g., working with women/nonWASPs).
   Relatedly, what about the ability to learn to use the new tools? Would previous generations have done as well if given the tools as early as we were? Did they have the attitude that new tools were worth learning after those most-flexible years?
      Both of these generalize otterb@458.
   And there's the whole balance-career-and-children skill; granted this falls more heavily on women, but ISTM that men of recent generations have also moved away from the strict division-of-labor -- especially in survival skills, as shown by the comments on cooking in this thread. (My father and maternal grandfather both cooked -- staples, not just specialties -- but IIRC that was considered uncommon.)

In the other case, not a late marriage, just a long one. My eldest sib was 20 when I was born.

One comment on the text. There may have been hostility to the costumes themselves due to the mundane media's look-at-the-freaks pictures; that was mostly before my time. But as fandom drifted from hall costumes to large-scale masquerades, some (both in and out of costume) saw the costumes as becoming about entertainment-of-the-masses, which some saw as an unhealthy move away from we're-all-making-our-own-entertainment.
   Yes, those are weasel words. I've worked masquerades on three continents and been in fandom for 40 years, but I'm not going to pretend I have an all-encompassing view of how wide those sentiments were (or are...); I'm especially unsure how much some of my bruises affect my observations, let alone how many of both come from the loudmouthed fringe rather than the mainstream.

Kip W @ 537: I was struck less by the overall structure than by the amount of random cleverness stuffed in, especially in the first couple of chapters. (cf a pair of collaborators I knew; one once told me she had often to tell the other it was time for some plot.) I may be too often distracted by from the macro by the micro.

It seems I haven't been paid any benefit since 2 October - a fact I had missed, since I had a float, live very frugally, and don't often check my balance. I found out when I went to see my advisor at the JobCentre today and she said, "Oh, I didn't think you were coming - I'd been told your claim had been stopped." I said that I hadn't been informed of this, and could she please investigate? (Not only that, but I've been in there to sign on three or four times since that date, and on none of these occasions was I alerted.)

It appears that someone in Ramsgate accidentally or arbitrarily stopped it. My advisor, who is extremely sympathetic (and was as confused as I was), couldn't do anything to reinstate my claim. She did what she could, however, which was to print out a list of local Citizens' Advice Bureaux and advise me to go to one of them and talk to them about making a new claim. She said I was to give them her number and ask them to ring her, and she would confirm all the relevant details. She also says I need to ask for the new claim to be backdated to 3 October; she doesn't think they'll do it, because honestly they don't care, but they certainly won't if I don't ask.

I am completely out of cope at the moment (not that I had much of it before this latest bombshell). I'm going to talk to them tomorrow, once I can gather some spoons. In the meantime, I have to eat, which means I need to get the maths tutoring business off the ground a lot faster than I originally anticipated. I am now the Maths Tamer, and I have a new business e-mail address at znguf-gnzre@znvy.pbz; wouldn't normally tout for business here, but I'm kind of desperate. If you know anyone (within the UK) who needs maths tuition up to A-level standard, please feel free to share this address around once you've un-ROTted it.

In a word... ack.

I beg to differ – it’s beneficial to this type of hunter, since they don’t have to support their hypothetically ownerless dog packs all year when they’re not otherwise making use of them, but it’s certainly not beneficial to the dogs. In my part of the country (rural Virginia county), the pounds and animal rescue groups are inundated every year in December with poor, luckless hounds who’ve been dumped and left to starve.

For what it's worth, I went to a play-by-mail convention which had a no hall costumes policy, and it turned out that a number of the attendees liked it-- hall costumes were more weirdness than they wanted to deal with.

I can't remember whether that was the only place I heard some fear of costumers-- the idea was that a costumer might have identity with the character, and might do anything.

Did you give the wrong title, or did Scalzi write TWO fart-joke novels? (Come to think of it, if anyone would...)

CHip 535: That episode of Radio Lab played a recording of the same person saying the same phrase in Mandarin twice, a week apart. It sounded identical to my moderately-musical ear—and I mean like two copies of the same tape identical.

Doesn't prove the percentages, of course. But.

Mongoose 540: That's horrible. Hope things will be resolved quickly.

Fuck the Tories.

I would certainly not arguing that hunting with a stray dog pack[1] is now beneficial to the dogs; certainly this practice is worse for everyone than a properly kept hunting pack of domestic dogs.

With wild proto-dogs/slightly human-associated wolves (since I was thinking about domestication), it does seem that this sort of collaborative hunting would be mutually beneficial, and might account for early human uses of "dogs".

1) This was also rural eastern Virginia--Charles City County.

My mother, born in 1920, was the youngest of 4 sibs, but they were much more closely spaced (only 7 years from oldest to youngest), and my grandmother was born in 1890. I am the youngest of my generation by 8 years, mostly because my mother didn't marry until she was 30 and then it was 5 more years before they adopted me.

CHip, #538: That is what I was also given to understand as the original meaning of "cosplay" -- but it seems to have rapidly evolved (over the course of about the last 5 years) to include original character concepts as well, and is fast displacing the term "costuming" altogether.

Local man is almost done with watching Matt Smith's run as the Doctor.

That reminded me of my best friend in high school, who was conceived after his father had a vasectomy. Some people are just really determined to be born.

As I understand it, sometimes vasectomies back then (the 50's) would sometimes come undone. The snipped ends of the vas deferens could reconnect and your vas deferens would engender a vast difference in your life.

Oh, you say, Manitoba couldn't have intended those guidelines as an attack on Jews, Hindus, or gluten intolerant or allergic people? I say thee, Fuck That: any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.

Yeah, I'm kinda seething with rage over this. (I just noticed the milk and meat thing today.) And it doesn't even matter if Manitoba somehow determined that it has no Jews or vegetarians; they've proclaimed their province as a place where Jews and Hindus are unwelcome to send their kids to public schools, and where allergic kids are to be purged from the population.

Godwin trembles upon my lips. If anything, it's worse because it's almost certainly out of sheer stupidity.

On the Manitoba Family Services and Labour website, you can find the Best Practices Licensing Manual for Early Learning and Child Care Centres (PDF). Under the "FOOD PROVIDED" section, it says:

Where a meal is provided, registered dieticians recommend a balanced meal including at least:
(a) one serving from Milk Products
(b) one serving from Meats and Alternatives*
(c) one serving from Grain Products
(d) two servings from Vegetables and Fruit
as outlined in Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Eating.
[...]
The names of children with food allergies and their respective conditions should be posted in
food preparation areas for the information of staff members only. Centres choosing to post this
information in any other manner must obtain parental permission.
Special feeding instructions for a child in attendance in the centre should comply with written
instructions from a parent or guardian.

This would seem to apply to both children who have religious food requirements, and those who have allergies or must follow special diets for other reasons.

What this boils down to is that this particular school has taken Manitoba's "Best Practice" guidelines and is applying them in an asinine manner, not that the province hates Jews, Hindus, or anyone else.

*emphasis mine

The Franklin Institute has a page on the automaton (with demonstration videos) here. I believe it's still on display, but you might want to call ahead to confirm this if you're planning on making a special trip here to see it.

Oh, and if you like, you can see the Canada Food Guide (PDF).

It suggests soy milk for those who don't drink dairy, and for meat alternatives: fish, legumes, tofu, eggs, peanut or nut butters, shelled nuts or seeds.

The province appears to have passed a regulation with good intentions, that is, to promote healthy eating habits in children. It is imperfect, as most things are, but not to the extent the website you first cited implies.

The administrators of this particular school appear to have taken the application of the regulation more than one step too far.

And, while I was searching, I also checked out CCSM c158, which is the actual Manitoba Child Care Regulation in question (THE COMMUNITY CHILD CARE STANDARDS ACT). Under the Nutrition section (16.3), it says "the licensee shall ensure that nutritious foods in accordance with Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Eating issued by the Minister of Health (Canada) are served". That's it, no further details.

There's a bunch of other stuff in the Regulation, if you want to go read it here.

Which doesn't dispute that the literal chapter-long fart joke is found in The Android's Dream. But, speaking as someone who's read it, Russ's description of Agent to the Stars is quite accurate.

Nicole, so Scalzi really did two two novels with fart jokes. Like I said, if anyone would...

Seriously, thanks for the clarification.

That note, and the fine, and the itemized list, suggest someone overbearing, fussy, and petty. $10 to give a kid a handful of crackers in a baggy?

Details

If I could get a job whose description was "look stuff up all day", I'd think that was a great job. I look stuff up for fun. When I'm bored, I randomly look shit up (seriously, if anyone knows of a job that matches that description, could you let me know? I will totally apply right now).

I was an odd child.

Is there still such thing as a Look-It-Up club? When I was a kid, maybe grade 2, our teacher took us down to the library one day and turned us over to the librarian, who introduced us to the concept of "reference material", which in that small school consisted of a couple of encyclopedia sets, French and English dictionaries, and two local newspapers. She explained to us what they were for, how they were arranged, and how they could be used to find stuff out. Then, were were each given an index card with a short query on it, and told to look it up and write a few sentences on the back of the card.

Once the assignment was complete, we received a certificate that we were now members of the Look-It-Up Club. I was in piggy heaven. It started my lifelong habit of reading encyclopedias as a past-time.

So, any time I can look stuff up for someone? It makes me happy.

I'm sorry you were so upset by the content of the article. It was bad reporting to begin with.

@558 Stefan Jones
If I were one of the parents, I'd be inclined to complain to the MFSL.

Argh!!

pastime pastime pastime pastime pastime pastime pastime pastime pastime pastime

My spellchecker hates me.

Woe.

The Mandarin/perfect pitch thing does seem to be true, but less extreme than the claims. There's a conference abstract by Diana Deutsch (et al) from UCSD, looking at the proportion with absolute pitch at the Eastman School of Music and at a prestigious Beijing conservatory.

The Beijing students were much more likely to have absolute pitch, either measured by naming notes exactly (about 50% vs 10%) or by naming notes to within a semitone (about 70% vs 10%). In all cases, those who started music training earlier performed better. So, either this is a genetic difference (which I, as a geneticist, find hard to believe), or language makes the difference, or absolute pitch is trainable in some way other than language (and the Chinese know the secret).

I think the most plausible explanation is that it's the tonal language, though I would really like to see data on, say, Thai.

If not, or if no one remembers: they are awesome. The video I remember seeing (I thought here?) can be found on Youtube.

Well, HuffPost has an article about their latest video (Rube Goldberg!!), and their opportunity to have a SuperBowl commercial.

I'm in love with the idea of this stuff. I'm so tired of the frelling Pink Aisle.

"Girls build the spaceship
Girls code the new app
Girls that grow up knowing
That they could engineer that"

So, the study may be relevant to the "collective achievement" of the two nations, but probably not to the abilities of their general populations.

I strongly suspect that the gendering of toys is a marketing ploy aimed at families with both boys and girls. The toys are gendered to discourage sharing among siblings, which means the manufacturer sells more toys. (I'm told, though I haven't seen this myself, that some toys are sold in two versions with "girl" packaging and "boy" packaging, but the actual toy is the same in both cases.)

But there's another factor. At that time, certainly in that place, there wasn't nearly so much emphasis placed on children's gender as there is now. There was some - a girl might be told to "walk like a lady", which apparently meant taking silly little steps rather than a natural stride, or a boy might be told that "boys don't cry" in the teeth of all the available evidence. But, by comparison with today, children were fairly sexless. You'd be put in Big Gender Box A or Big Gender Box B, but the boxes were pretty stretchy, much more so than they were for adults.

This explains why I was pretty much comfortable in the box I'd been put in for a long time. I'd got used to stretching it as a child, and by the time I grew up the adult versions were starting to get a bit stretchier and I'd had a lot of practice at stretching mine. It was only when I started to realise that I'd stretched it so thin in places that it was developing holes that I came to the conclusion that I didn't really fit in it. Or in the other box. Hence I now happily identify as non-gendered.

Now, if I'd grown up in a world where almost all toys came in either a pink or a blue box, most girls' clothes were pink, boys' clothes had a little more variety but not as much as I actually did grow up with, and not many children's clothes were flat-out unisex... well, I'd have got very uncomfortable a great deal earlier. It's not at all unlikely I would have ended up identifying as transgender, not because either box would have fitted me very well, but simply because Assigned Box would barely have fitted at all, whereas Non-Assigned Box would have at least fitted a little better. I do wonder if the extreme gendering of children's toys and clothes is behind the tendency of people to identify as transgender at younger and younger ages. Not that it's in any way a bad thing to be clear who and what you are as early as possible; but I'm not sure it's quite so wonderful if this clarity is forced by overly rigid circumstances.

(Also Xopher @545) While we're at it, Fuck Ramsgate Jobcentre who mostly do an adequate job, but when they cock things up really go to town on it.

My college choir director was interested in this question. He found that if he asked one of his singers for, e.g., a B flat, they could only give a rough approximation; but if he asked them to start singing one of the pieces we'd been working on, they'd nearly always start on the right pitch without thinking about it.

(My college roommate had absolute pitch from early childhood. It drove her crazy. If a solo instrument or ensemble was tuned a little higher or lower than A=440 Hz, for example, I wouldn't notice, as long as it was in tune with itself. But it made her wince.)

Having to play say with string instruments tuned down a half note to match a really old piano in a church where the piano can't support the tension of the strings if they were tuned up that last half note isn't a problem if you don't have absolute pitch but can be difficult if you do.

I'm quite good at matching pitches and I learn music quickly, but I'm actually weirdly bad at telling whether two notes in succession go up or down. I have to sing them and feel what my throat does.

I have very very good relative pitch. I do not have absolute pitch. The most musicky thing my mother ever did with her absolute pitch was get a summer job tuning up the orchestra (before every performance) for a travelling company of Jesus Christ Superstar, and play a little guitar/sing folk with her friends.

Regarding absolute pitch: it is to some degree trainable. My best friend, who's a very good semi-pro countertenor, says he pitches using muscle memory, and that is pretty accurate, though not 100%. But if you have really good natural absolute pitch, then the piano that is half a note out isn't a problem to you. You just log it as a different tuning.

Star Tenor (as I think I may have mentioned before) has this kind of absolute pitch. He sings a lot of mediaeval music, which was written before standard tuning was invented, so he has to be able to handle all kinds of esoteric mediaeval micro-tunings. In the early music group he used to belong to, they used him for pitching. They'd try different tunings, finally settle on one that sounded right, and then ask him to sing a chromatic scale in that tuning. He'd cheerfully oblige. He called it his party trick.

Their reaction was "well, if you want to go to that kind of party..." *grin*

Librarian resembles that description. On good days.

There was plenty of overlap, but there were clear, rigid areas of no overlap. Everyone could wear dirty play clothes day to day, but only boys could wear pants to church, and only girls could wear dresses. Everyone could read books and hang from trees, but only girls played with dolls and only boys put together model airplanes.

In some ways, the unstated rules were all the more frustrating as a child, because I was frequently angry at restrictions that I couldn't clearly articulate. Because it wasn't someone saying "You're a girl, you can't do that!", but a child's fuzzy awareness that certain options just weren't being presented to me. (Sometimes quite inadvertently. My father was surprised, years later, when I told him that I would have liked to have made model airplanes with him like my brother did. He never thought to offer, because he thought I would ask; I never thought to ask, because it seemed so clearly Just For Boys, since I only ever saw boys do it.) And sometimes it was pretty explicit propaganda; by high school, I was being shown videos in class explaining how those Wacky Liberals might claim there were no differences between men and women, but studies showed that men were just naturally better at spatial thinking, and women were inherently better at noticing clothing details, and little boys were always more active/aggressive and little girls were always more nurturing/passive.

My fuzzy adult opinion is that a lot of the more vigorous gender-marking is a reaction to the blurring of the lines. Now that there's not quite so widespread quiet community enforcement of Only For Boys/Girls, it's being made explicit instead. You can't just assume that people will fall into Proper Gender Roles automatically, after all, like in the Good Old Days. (I may be abusing sarcastic/emphatic capitalization here.) Now you have to tell them outright, from early on, or they might get the wrong ideas.

And part of that is that adult women are visibly performing many more roles than they were sometimes allowed--especially in upper/middle-class areas--and thus little boys and little girls won't just assume that Girls Don't Do That and Boys Wouldn't Touch That, on account of having seen contradictions already.

The job I had involved research and figuring-it-out, and I loved it. Then I got shuffled into doing stuff I'm less good at, and it got away from me.

Perhaps it's an extinction burst. We can hope.

Along that line, within the past few weeks I have run across a couple of "never thought I'd hear that" with respect to same-sex marriage. In the first, I'm taking a water aerobics class at the Y; the students are all middle-aged and up women. As the group chats before class, the teacher has been telling us about the home purchase of her daughter and the daughter's girlfriend. Discussion is all about the joys and challenges of first-time homeownership. In the second, an acquaintance was talking about a phone interview for an accounting job with a conservative old-line regional firm; she told them up front that she would want health care coverage for her same-sex partner and that it wasn't worth an interview if that wasn't possible. She was surprised to find that not only was it possible, she wasn't even trailblazing in the firm.

The next step is that I stop noticing things like this because it's so expected.

If I can't enjoy fatty foods, neither can the gnomes!

I think it's fine to watch the episode before you watch the new Thor movie.

Generic Atorvastatin is available, and I heard the cost is falling.

Our choir director's wife and son (who is still singing soprano at the moment) both have absolute pitch. (Our choir director does not, and he was both thrilled and annoyed when the kid started correcting his pitch when they were singing in the car.) They fill in occasionally when we have inadequate sopranage.

Well, one week we were singing an anthem from LEVAS. It was also in the hymnal, but in a different key. They picked up the hymnal by mistake; we started singing and...well, you can imagine. They knew they were right, you see: it was right on the page there. The rest of us singing in a different key? They assumed we'd correct. I think they realized what was wrong partway through, but it was too late to change books.

As for music training, I think people have a better shot at manifesting absolute pitch if they're taught in Fixed Do solfege, where Do is always C♮ (and they have names for all the notes in the chromatic scale). In the US we mostly learn Movable Do, where Do is the major keynote of whatever key you're in. Listening to a Fixed Do person give the solfege for an E♭ minor scale is truly impressive (and I cannot reproduce it, since I only know seven or nine solfege syllables). We might be better at rehearsing in one key and performing in another, though I have trouble with that because of muscle memory.

Even in Movable Do, though, the La method for natural minor is far superior to the Do method; if you're in A minor, the A is LA, not Do!

Cheryl 562: I used to read dictionaries. (I've only read one cover to cover, and it was a usage dictionary, not a full unabridged or anything.) I would browse the dictionary until I found a word I didn't know, and read its definition. Lots of those led to others.

Mongoose 574: I briefly studied raga singing. Not only can the scales be almost anything (sharps and flats on any of the scale notes in any configuration), but they aren't tuned quite how they are in the West, and how a given note is tuned depends on the raga. So you might have a flatted Re* in one raga that's slightly different in pitch from a flatted Re in another raga (that has different scale configurations above or below).

The only people who can actually make sense of this are what our teacher called "just intonation geeks." He and two of the students were in that category; I haven't heard so many fractions mentioned since I was in grade school. The rest of us just had to listen, try to imitate, and correct when the others told us we were off pitch.

*The only common note-name between solfege and sargam, the scale-naming system in use in Indian classical music.

I'm 45, and yeah, I remember when toys were way less gendered. I think one of my favourite Xmas presents ever was the Fisher Price Castle (dragons! secret passages! trick stairs!), which back then came in ordinary grey, but now comes in gendered versions.

The only two dolls I enjoyed, as I recall, were Pedal Pretty and Saucy Face, which, you may have noticed, both do something mechanically.

Other than that, I used to spend hours with my best friend Billy and his Biggest Sandpile Ever With All The Tonkas. We would recreate the LG projects, using water from the lake...

Other than that, we spent all our time riding bikes, climbing trees, canoeing, swimming - completely unsupervised! Why are we not dead?

I never heard anyone say, ever, that girls shouldn't do these things. I'm solidly het and cisgendered, so my liking these things had nothing to do with sexuality or gender.

Yeah. I think if I'd ever been told when I was younger that I was smart enough to do... well, anything, I might have gone for Library Science (also assuming I could have convinced my family that post-secondary education of any kind was a necessary thing).

If I were to start now, though, I'd be retirement age by the time I finished my degree. So I am envious of you, and of others who have jobs that they actually like.

Turns out Ms. Mar (though she will deny it) modulates key slightly for that one section, or at very least introduces a note that DOES NOT BELONG in the main key of the song, and my Music Coprocessor was autocorrecting me because 'clearly that was wrong'.

Oddest sensation: I was singing along in my head (as I do) while singing along in my throat, and my head-note came out fine and dandy and like I remembered from the CD, but I flatted (it seemed like) in reality and couldn't make my throat GO there. Very weird.

It would be handy to be able to get more use out of sheet music than I do, but it's also very handy to be able to be in a group singing something and when we need to shift it, say, three half-steps down to make it work in everyone's range or keep the flautist happy, I can carry on just fine and properly in tune if you give me my starting note, whereas some of my sight-singing friends have a darn hard time.

I have also occasionally impressed them by singing 'the same' harmony line I usually sing OVER the melody UNDER it instead, inverted to make it sound right, on the fly, because the person singing lead is singing it up in soprano instead of down in alto/tenor like I usually sing along with ...

I guess that's part of my musical 'party trick'. The other one is that I can match timbres on the fly with another singer, making it sound like they're double-tracking; we used to call it 'psychic singing' in grade school choir. I have a voice simply made for singing backup, it has almost no color or personality on its own. :->

Thus far, Vocal Lab looks plausible, but I'd love recommendations if folk have any...

----
I agree with Linda that it's not exactly a preposition. I'd say it's some sort of "interrupt", a meta-syntactic usage. It is a reference to the traditional usage. By traditional rules, you'd expect a clause there, but instead you get just a keyword, and the user is invited to fill in the clause. This makes it familiar. Saying "we went west, because mountains" implies that the reader will know if the speaker was sightseeing to the west, or going around the obstacle to the north.

The "interrupt" idea came when I realized that the very first usage I saw of it was probably the ironic "... and all this is inarguable, because shut up". There the interrupt is explicit, it's implying some abusive arguing tactic or the like, rather than an actual justification or support. The expanded usage may be a fad now, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it might take root. We'll see.

PS: Citizen_E, I loved the little poem!

The guidelines were just changed, and the NYT quoted some doctors as saying they will cause a whole lot more people - millions, at the least - to be prescribed statins, with no evidence at all that it will benefit them. (It will however dramatically benefit the bottom lines of the pharmacology companies which financially support the recommending organization and have ties to some of the experts issuing the report.) Op-ed here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/14/opinion/dont-give-more-patients-statins.html

One of their other articles mentioned an online risk calculator which doctors are now being directed to, where no matter what kind of health factors you put into it, it seemed to never report less than a 7.5% 10 year risk of a heart attack, which is the minimum the new guidelines say should put you on statins. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/18/health/risk-calculator-for-cholesterol-appears-flawed.html.

Maybe the science is good, maybe it's not, maybe this was an honest garden-variety screw-up, but something smells fishy here. Worth asking your doctor if he ran your numbers through that calculator?

* ... and I had to go double-check that I had your name right, following the recent discussion.

I suspect I'm going to be eating lots of guacamole.

But it was also in the end of Captain Vorpatril's Alliance. Because Mark.

Mongoose @ 568: I'm not sure it's true that gender roles are much more rigorously defined these days; there are some obvious contradictions to this in the U.S. (Title IX, disappearance of home ec, girls taking shop when shop is offered at all, ...) but those are (AFAICT) on the other side of the water from you and specific high-profile instances rather than a clear pattern. If it is true, it leads to an interesting possibility: is some of the increase in the number of children acknowledged as transgendered happening because gender roles are being so much more tightly defined? (cf the argument that more children have allergies because they're being kept in cleaner environments and not exposed to possible desensitants.)

562/580: I no longer read reference books for fun, but that's partly due to the web and partly because there are too many unread books that fall somewhat near my tastes. But I did read most of the World Book Encyclopedia during ages 9-13 (when the nearest library was at best a once-a-week trip away); this may have been encouraged because dinner-table conversation frequently called for looking things up, such that we sometimes had several volumes spread around by the time dinner was over. (I don't remember whether the side table was already there or was brought in so the dining table wouldn't be too crowded.) This may have been affected by both my parents having taught for a long time at private high schools; they were definitely about digging rather than cramming.

Xopher @ 589: LEVAS?

Clifton @ 598: by the time your comment was posted, the Boston Globe had run the next couple of stories; there's a ruckus in some large medical group because some of the people who reviewed the material supporting the calculator had major objections which they felt were ignored; the objectors went public when (right after?) the calculator was publicized, and are now getting criticized for not making their arguments collegially first. (One story observed that the calculator was also \missing/ cases that any clinician would be expected to flag.) ISTM that right now is a bad time to accept one's practitioner's recommendation for statins without at least asking where the rec comes from (as you suggest to Stefan).

A thought on what-new-generations-can-do: I realized belatedly that a lot of the specific instances fall under the general rubric of something that could be called openmindedness -- although that term usually doesn't cover doing as much as accepting. Whatever you want to call it, this is an SF theme worthy of at least one SFRA paper (not that I'd know whether someone has already done this -- although I once tried to scratch around the edges of it).
      The oldest example I can point to as the basis of a story is Synapse Beta-sub-16 in Sturgeon's "The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff"(*), which deals specifically with a high-speed version; people who know this story may be amused that the computer I'm typing this on is named Googie, because we've already been through the above names. Herbert's The Santaroga Barrier relates, although it's focused as much on blocking old bad information as on absorbing good new. (It's also Herbert's most drug-focused novel -- imagine drawing a book out of the spice scenes from Dune -- which weakens the idea of new skills.) My favorite pair is The Shockwave Rider and The Stone that Never Came Down, which I see as Brunner taking (in two successive books) two opposed slants on the development -- not just drug vs pure skill, but Wells-style miracle vs personal achievement, collaborative vs loner, ordinary people vs superman, all of these held up by the setting (UK vs US).
      wrt the original question: is being suspicious of Authority a new skill, or has it fallen over into obsessions? The upcoming anniversary of the Kennedy assassination has brought this back into focus; ISTM that The Prisoner is as much of a landmark, as it points to both malpractice and confusion by Authority.

(*) This story should still be findable in many libraries, in volume 1 of Boucher's Treasury of Science Fiction; it's worth reading, even if some of the types grate on current sensibilities.

The text at the link describes my reaction perfectly.

The other interesting thing I've noticed about it is that it tends to get them actually talking to me. I think some kids under 12 are more apt to start talking with me than with a lot of adults, because I am a source of strangeness, and then as I treat them as conversational equals and enjoy interesting conversations with them, they're more apt to continue talking to me. (Particularly when they find out that I read some of the popular kids' and YA fantasy books.)

Less of that now that I'm not hanging out to pick my son up after school at his school's playground; I kind of miss that, now that I come to think about it. Unfortunately that context is required; adult men hanging out at a children's playground is otherwise Highly Suspicious. Perhaps rightfully, but it's unfortunate, for the possible positive interactions lost both to kids and adults.

My cholesterol numbers are great, but my wife's aren't. Being vegetarian and health-conscious, we were already eating a diet relatively low in saturated fats, but she's now stopped eating cheese and other fat-rich dairy products we used to fall back on. I've increased my substitution of olive oil for other types and sources of fats, as olive oil seems to have all kinds of health benefits and adds a wonderful flavor to a lot of things. (E.g. toss pasta in olive oil in place of butter, use olive oil when sautéing or stir-frying in place of peanut, canola, or generic vegetable oils, etc.) We're also eating more nuts as a protein source, particularly almonds and other tree nuts.

FWIW: Costco now sells avacado oil, which has the same uses as olive oil but can withstand much higher temperatures.

I bought a big sack of walnuts yesterday and will be eating a palmful with breakfast.

Roast cauliflower (easiest-recipe-in-the-world version):
1 head of cauliflower, any size
~ 1-2 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tsp kosher salt or sea salt, optional

Cut into small florets, toss or spray with olive oil, place on a cookie sheet. (If you're lazy about dishwashing, cover the sheet with foil.) Optionally sprinkle with salt. Bake at 375 until partially browned, about 30 minutes, turning once.

You can serve it over pasta or as a side dish, use it in further recipes, or just nom it directly.

Since then, I've been playing with a lot fewer errors, proceeding through former mine fields almost unexploded. I recommend the use of invisible, intangible, and/or ineffable henchpeople to anybody. I think the idea came from a recent session with a Grofe transcription with a series of counter-intuitive chords in both hands early on; I gave a standing instruction to my right hand that if the left didn't get the melody out, to bear down on the index finger of the right, because the melody was repeated up there. I should add that my hands don't talk back to me. What a silly idea. No, it's all very logical, really.

I've been growing my hair out for several years, and I don't wear makeup, so I very rarely look at myself in a mirror for more than a few seconds at a time.

I'd forgotten how much I dislike my face. In my head I'm a lot better-looking. (Not to mention younger.)

Luckily, I'm not the one who has to look at me all day!

I also add ground hemp seeds and ground flax seeds to my breakfast, and have a helping of whole chia seeds in water at some point during the day.

Katisha's also good. "My left shoulderblade is a MIRACLE of loveliness!" (Also "I am an acquired taste.")

Yeah, I'm expecting to miss that some when I do give Gracie away. But yeah....

I'm divided about whether it's "rightfully": On the one hand, most men are not a danger to the children, and there's that whole "takes a village" thing. On the other hand, there's a genuine security problem from the "bad actors", and population density has aggravated that issue in recent times. (If there's more people in reach of a given kid, there will also be more aspiring molesters within reach. This applies to other sorts of crime too.)

Clarentine, #613: It may have been meant to unpack as "if you make the effort to look good, that will make you feel good". Which is probably true for most people, but also badly counterproductive for some.

No, you do not get to deliberately sabotage the government and then use the fact that it's not working to push your own agenda.

a helping of whole chia seeds

At one point I briefly tried regular[1] consumption of "chia seed husks in water" in the usually recommended form (mix briskly then drink quickly before it gets all weird on you) with unsatisfactory results. When I gave up on what I was "supposed" to do with them, I discovered that when soaked in just barely enough liquid to sop up and left to sit for 10 minutes, they make a remarkably good imitation of zero-calorie cream of wheat. Though I confess my favorite breakfast fails on the zero-calorie scale because I soak them in unflavored yogurt with variable savory or fruity additives. I keep meaning to do other experiments with using chia as a pudding-thickener. But why in the world does anyone recommend consuming them as a granular liquid suspension?

[1] See what I did there?

Area man feels sad but remembers finding cat under the porch six years ago: a kitten mewling piteously and unable to take more than two steps without falling over. Man tells self that her life is much better than it would have been, and that cats recover well from enucleation.

I had my cat's leg removed when he had cancer on his paw. He recovered quite well, and got used to his missing leg within a few weeks. I'm sure your cat will get used to being one-eyed shortly, and continue to have a much better life than she would have had if she'd been left under the porch.

I'll keep a good thought for you and your kitty.

I'm guessing your kittie will adapt to the one eyed situation more easily than she will adapt to the necessary cone-of-shame** and various restrictions during recuperation. I've never had to give a cat meds and I do not envy you that. Both the vet and the ophthalmologist did not seem to give me the sense that THEY considered enucleation a horrible thing when they brought it up.

* I am not at all trying to minimize depression by surmising that was what afflicted a dog. As a sufferer of treatment resistant clinical/major depression, dysthymia, and SAD, I'm rather unfortunately aware of how these diseases/disease spectrum can smash a person to nowhere.

** Just assuming cats dislike that lovely collar even more than the doggies. Wait, how does a kittie even wear one of those into a litter box?

I'm guessing your kittie will adapt to the one eyed situation more easily than she will adapt to the necessary cone-of-shame** and various restrictions during recuperation. I've never had to give a cat meds and I do not envy you that. Both the vet and the ophthalmologist did not seem to give me the sense that THEY considered enucleation a horrible thing when they brought it up.

* I am not at all trying to minimize depression by surmising that was what afflicted a dog. As a sufferer of treatment resistant clinical/major depression, dysthymia, and SAD, I'm rather unfortunately aware of how these diseases/disease spectrum can smash a person to nowhere.

** Just assuming cats dislike that lovely collar even more than the doggies. Wait, how does a kittie even wear one of those into a litter box?

Wait, how does a kittie even wear [a cone of shame] into a litter box?

When my old cat had to wear his, I took the lid off of the litter box, otherwise he would not have fit in.

Well, of course that makes perfect sense, and the whole process of uncone/cone is probably as much fun as guiding a recalcitrant cone-wearing dog down a set of stairs. Stubbornness will be invoked.

* W * I * N *

My biggest regret at not being in my old apartment is dumpster diving. End-of-the-month "we can't bring this with us!" sales netted me some amazing gear, including this George Foreman grill. Pretty much unused. Clean (although I sterilized it). Efficient. I do miss the one I wore out, which had a little bun toaster dome on top.

Well, of course that makes perfect sense, and the whole process of uncone/cone is probably as much fun as guiding a recalcitrant cone-wearing dog down a set of stairs. Stubbornness will be invoked.

By the time my poor Rischa needed to wear a cone, he had already been through so many other medical indignities that he just sort of accepted it with limp despair.

Your Cat May Vary.

Quite a few guidelines on text structure seem to come from the visuals of the printed page, and in this digital age, things are a bit different. There is a point to trying to express a basic argument in a small enough space to be read without page-turning, and that principle of avoiding excessive size transfers to the question of the length of a paragraph. Here, we are writing in a space around 50 characters wide, not enormously different from a typewriter on paper with adequate margins. The display, depending on our type-size choice, can be enormously wider.

In the early days, a computer screen displayed fewer characters than a typed page. Now it can display more, but with a different line length. Has this change affected the structure of our text?

Other publishers put in a *** or other such thought-break symbol every time. Much, much better for those of us reading on screens.

82 is how many people the Republicans have held up in these two administrations. The number that have been similarly treated in THE ENTIRE REST OF OUR COUNTRY'S HISTORY? 86.

This is ridiculous. If they're going to act like children who can't be trusted to be safe with scissors we have to take them away from them.

I'm making a recipe that only uses up a cup of the quart of buttermilk that was the smallest amount I could find. What sort of things can I do with the rest that don't involve baking, as the seasonal calorie barrage is already beginning? And does this stuff keep, once opened? Or should I just (as it were) eat the remainder, which isn't exactly all that expensive in the overall scheme of things? (It should be obvious that buttermilk is nowhere within my personal culinary tradition.)

And then I got distracted and wrote this:

I am left here and my heart is broken
I watch frozen as you walk out the door
I wish I’d never heard those words spoken
From now on you can’t hurt me anymore

I watch frozen, as you walk out the door
It will end soon, of that I have no doubt
From now on you can’t hurt me anymore
If only I knew what this is all about

It will end soon, of that I have no doubt
I really think that this is for the best
If only I knew what this is all about
The blood runs, blade piercing my chest

“I really think that this is for the best.”
I wish I’d never heard those words spoken
The blood runs, blade piercing my chest
I am left here and my heart is broken

Also, buttermilk pancakes, but they're not low-cal.

I don't know if plain buttermilk freezes well, but pancakes do, and can be wrapped in a damp paper towel and reheated in the microwave.

Then she told how, as she'd gotten older, she'd gradually started remembering the other side of it: the other kids who would come in with horrible injuries or burns; the way other kids would disappear during the night, and just wouldn't be there the next day; how it felt to lie awake almost every night, terrified, and unable to move; and just how utterly frightened and helpless she felt.

It sounded like it was deeply traumatic for her, so much so that it took a long time for her to be able to recall it and attend to how it truly felt.

I am now buying the powdered buttermilk, which will keep for quite a bit of time in the fridge. The only thing it does not work well for is the batter on the deep fried pickle chips. It works just ducky for baking.

There is a 'triangle-of-dots' in the bottom-right of the edit box, which allows you to re-size the edit box.

However, even when you change the size, it goes back to the default size the next time you use it (including a re-edit following a 'Preview'). Consequently, I rarely bother to use this feature.

I'm using Firefox; maybe your browser would handle it differently.

(The performance was held in a large high school auditorium. When it was over, I headed back to my car, which was parked by a playing field. In the field was a guy, maybe in his twenties, flying a kite. This was at nine or ten at night.

"There's something about flying a kite at night that's very unseemly." -- Marge Simpson)

Powdered buttermilk? Wow. That had never even occurred to me. (Like I said, buttermilk in general just not on the radar. And I tend to ignore powdered milk, too.) I should probably get some just to keep around for the next non-canonical cooking event.

Everyone else: I think I'll be going with something in the soupy area, now that I know what to look for. Sounds like my version of leb-lebi might be improved by buttermilk as well as the usual egg yolk(s). It should use up some of the rest.

Oh, and re:pancakes - when they say "do not overmix", they totally mean it. Don't use a whisk and stir it so it looks like smooth cake batter. It's preferable to have an accidental lump of flour than an overmixed batter. The lack of serious mixing is what makes the pancake so delightfully floofy.

This might depend on different recipes? Because I whisk my pancake batter all the time, and I assure you, their foofiness is, indeed, delightful.

Leaving a flour lump would translate into a mouthful of unmixed flour while eating. Which would be not delightful.

Sounds like my version of leb-lebi might be improved by buttermilk as well as the usual egg yolk(s). It should use up some of the rest.

Leb-lebi? Say, you wouldn't want to post your recipe for that, would you?

(And from an earlier post: we also have one of those previously-abandoned hunting dogs, a beagle; she came to us via the Orange County pound--not so very far from your own girl's Culpeper origin!)

Things to do with buttermilk, other than make awesome biscuits (of which Sam is VERY envious) and awesome pancakes (of which Sam is only slightly less envious) and delicious tender rolls (just substitute buttermilk for the water): drink it; make lassi with it (blend it with fruit, or salt); let it sit in the refrigerator until you want it again (it keeps for months.

The gaff tape I'm familiar with is black.

There's another product called blue-tack (or Blu-Tak?) that's more of a putty that is recommended for, say, hanging posters on the walls of dorm rooms or other places you ARE NOT ALLOWED to mar the paint job. I know it comes off clean after a year, because I helped a friend move. But it's more 'take a small ball and squish it between the wall and the thing you're hanging,' not tape.

And lucky for him! Turns out Obamacare even covers preexisting orangeness.

I think it's better than Agents of SHIELD.

Almost Human first episode

Elliott Mason (669): I'm familiar with the blue-tack stuff, under the name 'poster putty'. It will in fact sometimes leave a slight oily residue on the walls when the posters come down, but at least it doesn't pull the paint off. But for this purpose I need actual tape.

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Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@nielsenhayden.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

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Clicking the Back button and then reclicking the Preview button worked.

HLN: Area woman, vision still blurry due to gas bubble as well as cycloplegia, finds herself distracted by now 9-week old kittens. Her FF, upon arrival, had to search through the house to find our correspondant. Alas, although it is Friday, the traditional pizza must be forgone due to unsteady lower intestinal fortitude, secondary to prolonged recent stressors, admitted the local women. In standby, however, there are reserves of freshly made borscht, waiting to engage in support of healing.

Interestingly, the closed captions had a radically different line than the sound track at one point:

Fbhaqgenpx: Lbh'er yhpxl lbh tbg gur bar jvgu gur oyrrqvat urneg.

Pncgvba: P'zba, pbjobl, trg lbhe chefr. Jr'er yrnivat.

The person speaking was off-camera at the time, it could be a later re-dub that they didn't fix the captions? Odd, anyway. I'm used to mondegreens in my cc feed, but that's clearly a rewrite or something, not a miskey or mishear.

Since I don't like blueberries this is becroggling to me. I actually can't taste them; they're sort of little texture-nodules embedded in the bread, mildly distasteful (to me; texture issue) but quickly over.

This may be a way to get more fruit/nutrients/antioxidants/etc into myself ... Now if only the kid who specifically requested blueberry muffins today were interested in eating them I'd be completely over the moon. She won't touch 'em. Luckily, we grownups like 'em fine.

I don't really have a leb-lebi recipe, more something I consed up after watching Ian Wright in Tunisia on Globetrekker. (He wasn't too keen on what he had, but it sounded interesting.) I make a sort of onion soup with added canned garbanzo beans, and get out my Big Pho Bowl. Four or five baguette slices in the bottom (shows you how big the bowl is), pour olive oil over, put an egg yolk or two in the middle, pour the hot soup over that, and throw in either harissa or the jalapeno cilantro dip I get from the local Lebanese shop, plus dash of lemon juice and some chopped oil-cured black olives and maybe some capers. Expect to feel very full.

----- (683): Sounds yummy!

In one of the convention discussions on or linked from Making Light I seem to recall mention of the great diversity of blue tapes and the revelation of the secret name of the most-non-paint-removing version.

That's vague enough to be almost useless, isn't it. Sorry.

They were very apologetic. I didn't want to repaper the whole kitchen, and there was no hope of matching the old wallpaper, but I was fine with them painting that wall.

The painter showed up, opened the paint, and it was the wrong color. They got the right color, and painted the wall. He moved the curtains to the middle of the rod and wrapped them in plastic to keep them clean while he painted. When he was done, and the paint was still wet, he took off the plastic, and got paint on the curtains.

As the paint dried, I began to wonder about how little time he'd left between coats. I checked the can, and realized he hadn't left enough time. It dried very, very slowly. I think it was weeks later before I put up a picture. When I checked it later, I found the back of the frame adhered to the paint.

They are good windows, and seem to be installed just fine.

And we weren't even fighting.

I asked her not to. If she does it again, it's block time.

Thursday was about four hours, running until after midnight, and not all available via iPlayer. There was another lump on Friday.

I could have booked a ticket for the 3D version in one of the local cinemas. No thanks. Maybe I should watch Worzel Gummidge instead.

Yes, that's it

Also sprach Eric V. Olson of General Technics

For hotel and party signs, the answer is clear, 3M Scotch-Blue Painter's Masking Tape, PN 2090. It costs about $5 a roll. It is cheap at five times the price. Cheap tape can damage paint or wallpaper. 3M 2090 was made to be stuck to paint for 14 days, and come off cleanly.

For the paranoid, and for brand new hotels, or for hotels costing more than $500 a night rack, 3m Scotch-Blue Painter's Tape For Delicate Surfaces, PN 2080. It costs more, it won't hold anything up but a piece of paper (and if the wall is dirty, it won't even hold that) but if there is anything that will not damage the surface, this is it. It also costs more. I don't stock 2080 in the hotel kits, but I will buy it if I sense or find a need. 2090 is the right answer 99% of the time.

...And I see Avram found it, at 693. Much gnome-avoiding gratitude.

Sounds like it might not be strong enough for my purposes, though. I don't need to hold the cord down, I need to hold it up.

Cassy B (687): Good to know.

*All knowledge in this post was obtained online. I have no personal experience.

Steven Moffat knocked it out of the park - a real David Tenant episode mixed with a real Matt Smith episode mixed with *all the nostalgias* and a companion coming into their own. Watched with my wife who only knows new who, was not that enamoured of the last series or two, and was blown away.

Am amazing bit of television.

Totally agreed with Russ@708: the only way I could imagine that being better is if they'd managed to get Eccleston to appear. I laughed out loud (literally) and I cheered (okay, not literally).

Qvqa'g jr nyernql xabj sebz gur raq bs Graanag'f gvzr gung Tnyyvserl jnfa'g qrfgeblrq? Va snpg, evtug nsgre gur fcrpvny gurl oebnqpnfg gur fgbel jurer gur Tnyyvserlnaf pbzr bhg bs gurve rkgenhavirefny gvzrybpx naq gel gb gnxr bire gur Rnegu.

V thrff lbh pbhyq nethr gung gur gvzrybpx jnf evtug orsber gurl jrer tbvat gb or qrfgeblrq, ohg vg jnf pyrne gung Gra xarj gurl unqa'g orra qrfgeblrq va gur byqre rcvfbqr.

Qvqa'g jr nyernql xabj sebz gur raq bs Graanag'f gvzr gung Tnyyvserl jnfa'g qrfgeblrq? Va snpg, evtug nsgre gur fcrpvny gurl oebnqpnfg gur fgbel jurer gur Tnyyvserlnaf pbzr bhg bs gurve rkgenhavirefny gvzrybpx naq gel gb gnxr bire gur Rnegu.

V thrff lbh pbhyq nethr gung gur gvzrybpx jnf evtug orsber gurl jrer tbvat gb or qrfgeblrq, ohg vg jnf pyrne gung Gra xarj gurl unqa'g orra qrfgeblrq va gur byqre rcvfbqr.

Doctor Who 50th Spoilers cyphered:
Erzrzore gung jr ner gbyq gung gur pbairetrapr bs gur Qbpgbef jvyy or sbetbggra. Cyhf, jr frr gung Uheg'f Qbpgbe ortvaf gb ertrarengr va uvf GNEQVF vzzrqvngryl hcba yrnivat gur Angvbany Tnyyrel.

V engure yvxrq gur Gbz Onxre pnzrb, ogj. Gung jnf n ybiryl tenpr abgr.

This not being the least of virtues, I'm watching it.

Has anyone ever seen a student make the transition from incoherence to comprehensibility? If so, what did it take?

Sentnab, V nterr, gur Gbz Onxre pnzrb jnf n cresrpg pbqn gb gur rcvfbqr.

Gurer unq orra fhpu n terng nzbhag bs ulcr yrnqvat hc gb guvf gung V jnf nsenvq vg jbhyqa'g qryvire. Ohg gurl chyyrq vg bss.

Guvatf V yvxrq: gur jnl gur guerr Qbpgbef vagrenpgrq. Gur qvssrerag fglyrf bs Graanag, Fzvgu, naq Uheg pbzcyrzragrq rnpu bgure.

Gur vqrn bs gur nanylfvf bs gur jbbqra qbbe va gur Gbjre jbhyq or cebprffrq bire gvzr ol gur fbavp fperjqeviref -- naq gura gur qbbe orvat haybpxrq gur jubyr gvzr.

Frrvat Ovyyvr Cvcre ntnva. Ybiryl jbzna.

Vg jnf terng.

Fragano 721: Ohg abg gur nqiragher jvgu gur Znfgre, qhevat juvpu Gra nyernql xarj gung Tnyyvserl unq abg orra oheag. Gung unccrarq nsgre guvf rcvfbqr va uvf crefbany gvzryvar, ohg ur pyrneyl qvqa'g sbetrg vg. Naq gurer'f abg rkphfr sbe Ryrira abg xabjvat vg, fvapr rira vs ur qvqa'g erzrzore GQBGQ ur unq gb erzrzore GRBG.

Gorgeous lead, though.

And, while the lead in Atlantis was very pretty, David Tennant is much more my style.

There have been "Doctors get together for an adventure" specials before of course, but they've had a contrived "stunt" feel to them.

This one seemed justified. It was about erqrzcgvba naq frpbaq punaprf.

Gbz Onxre / gur phengbe jnf Sna Freivpr, ohg irel jrypbzr. V thrff lbh pbhyq whfgvsl vg ol univat n sne-shgher Qbpgbe tnvavat gur cbjre gb znavchyngr uvf nccrnenapr qhevat n ertrarengvba.

She called me yesterday because she can't connect to the internet. I advised her to contact her ISP, which she did, and she called be back to tell me that apparently she no longer has a network driver.

Where did it go? Well, my cousin told me, her friend from down the hall has been "fixing" her computer. After a short chat, I realised her friend

- doesn't know how to copy and paste
- says her Dell Windows XP PC doesn't have a C drive because "it's different"
- advised my cousin to remove AVG because it was interfering with playing an online game.

System Restore it is!

Some of the top researchers in anal cancer (in both male and female patients) are OB-GYNs. Now they've been told to stop treating and doing research on male patients or lose their certification.

How about: Gur gvzrybeqf fraq gur zrffntr gb gur znfgre sebz n zbzrag orsber gur oheavat bs Tnyyvserl va na nggrzcg gb oernx gur gvzrybpx naq oevat gur cynarg guebhtu gvzr naq fcnpr gb rfpncr. Jura gurl'er erohssrq ol gur Qbpgbe, gur cynarg oheaf (be fb ur guvaxf). Pna gung or pebj-oneerq va?

Be ryfr pnyy vg gur vzcbffvovyvgl bs xrrcvat zrzbevrf fgenvtug npebff zhygvcyr crefbany gvzryvarf.

Rira sernxvre vf gur vzcyvpngvba gung gur *svefg* qbpgbe xarj nobhg gur gvzr jne (pyrnerq hc ol gur zrzbel fpenzoyr gung unccraf jura ur pebffrf uvf bja gvzr fgernz V thrff, ohg fgvyy...).

V guvax - sbe n frira frnfba (be zber...) ergpba bs n gvzr geniry fubj juvpu unf bayl n abqqvat npdhnvagnapr jvgu pnaba naq pbafvfgrapl ng gur orfg bs gvzrf - gur 50gu qvq na haoryvrinoyr wbo bs cerggl zhpu svggvat va naq znxvat frafr.

Good news: I just went back and re-read my WIP from the beginning. It's pretty good.

Bad news: I need someone else to take over writing it so I can find out what happens next!"

It helps to not eat sugar during the day.

It works for me in a very observable way-- without honey, I wake up more times during the night than I can keep track of. With honey, I wake up once.

Would the gnomes like some pine barrens honey?

It can happen. It generally takes having errors pointed out, having good writing modelled, and getting the student a lot of help. The student generally wants to do better.

I bought Scotch blue painter's tape this morning. We'll see how it goes.

...And I just saw CHip's #738. Looks like the painter's tape is a mistake. Oops.

For running the cord safely above the sink, I'd use either cup-hooks or (better) heavy-duty staples from a staple gun. No residue on cord, and it is much easier to fill tiny holes than to remove any kind of tape from walls leaving no mark.

The staple-gun might work well for the phone cord also, especially going through the doorway to make sure it doesn't slip and get crushed, though there are also some things you can get for putting over a cord running along the floor - not sure what they're called, but it's a cord cover with a low flat profile, tapered to the ground on each side and made of rubbery plastic. Basically it holds the cord in place and makes it not trip-over-able, if that were a word. I don't suppose a cheap cordless phone is an option? -- because that's certainly how I'd solve it if it were.

[Bring back the ? -- punctuation combo! Nineteenth century writers used all kinds of interesting combinations of punctuation with dashes, which are now Not Done. Also combinatinos should totally be a word and not a typo.]

A cordless phone is the obvious alternative solution, but I hate cordless phones. I may still go with that, though.

I'm really angry that valuable cancer detection/screening will not be available to people who need it because they're going to the "wrong" doctor. Outrageous.

Almost certainly hot flashes.

Okay, I can see an issue where if too many OB-GYN went over to treating mostly anal issues (and mostly men), we'd exascerbate the problems we're having with "trials on men, because women add way too many variables, especially if they might get pregnant" leading to "do not take X if you are pregnant or might become pregnant" (because we never tested it, so the FDA never certified it) - but, seriously?

There's a lot there. Scalzi's "Being Poor" was great - this comes from a different direction, and is as good, or better.

Buried in there somewhere is a link to My Mother, My Daughter, which is absolutely gut-wrenching.

I don't think I'll ever really understand where the folks who write pieces like these are coming from (due to luck, privilege, etc.), but what I do understand, well, "ouch" doesn't begin to cover it.

Keep posting these. Every little bit of even partial understanding helps.

They have a whale made out of square wooden organ pipes, and it hangs there in space and you can walk around it, and I could HEAR it because those pipes are huge. It was the most amazing thing. I grinned so big I thought my mouth might get stuck.

1) because oldwork mail server has died, I'm going to have to go through and notify lots and lots of people individually - I can't just ask Outlook to send an email to everyone.
2) I've got so much in Outlook (lots of emails with attachments, over the years) that it won't save as a single .pst file (too big, apparently), so I'm going to have to go through and save 60+ folders as separate .pst files then copy them to two places for safety then build up the new Outlook.
3) We can't just set up an autoforwarding system from "oldmail" to "newmail" (because the server won't start up) so if someone tries to contact me on the email address I've been using for the last 17 years, it will bounce.

Not happy.

Additionally, I've been using gmail for my personal email for some months and it's getting unmanegable. Anyone got any suggestions for a free email system I can use which will allow me to set up folders within my Inbox?

I'm enjoying this thread on people's favourite clues. (Mine is the Dunmow Flitch one mentioned in the OP).