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Less searchable M0rd4nt

19:47 / 16.03.04

Also: why can't I find more things about ghosts in Spain? Or owlmen or aliens or whatever, I'm really not fussy.

20:15 / 16.03.04

Grant how do i do that myself? I went to the site but it's just a shop and it all costs money, even when i click on 'free report'?!

I wanted to see what that was for my birthday.

21:37 / 16.03.04

I think you have to read past the ad copy -- I didn't have a problem getting a free report, but I did a lot of poking around first.

MC: I don't know why you can't find more about ghosts & paranormal stuff in Spain. There seem to be more than enough in Spanish-speaking Latin America....

02:33 / 17.03.04

I'm a blind twit- having looked all up and down the conversation, I can't find the Mono-Stoatie wedding pics thread. Is it gone, did it get moved when I wasn't looking, or is it right in front of me and I'm just obtuse?

02:37 / 17.03.04

Right here, Maz.

(Glad of the chance to practice my link-fu.)

Whisky Priestess

13:01 / 17.03.04

Mordant - yes, I'm 95% sure Interzone still exists but they are too lazy/busy to update the website. I will check in Borders and report back.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:05 / 17.03.04

It certainly was in Borders fairly recently...

Less searchable M0rd4nt

15:44 / 17.03.04

Ta, people.

23:49 / 17.03.04

R'lyeh question for the squidhead geometrists:

Are minarets non-Euclidean?

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

09:14 / 18.03.04

Pop question, possib ly a stupid one. Liberty x did a cover of Chaka Kahn's Ain't Nobody, was it still called Ain't Nobody, if not what was it called?

09:45 / 18.03.04

nope. It was still called "Ain't Nobody". Why the confusion R?

10:03 / 18.03.04

interzone's on a bit of a hiatus at the mo' - usual problems - expect a new ish by end of easter - still worth sending a submission.

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

12:32 / 18.03.04

Cheers Jub, I can't find it on Win MX at all and I woul've thought it'd been quite popular.

13:01 / 18.03.04

Reidcourchie - I'm not sure this is why you can't find it, but try searching for Khan not Kahn.

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

13:47 / 18.03.04

Sorry my bad I was looking for the Liberty X version (he said shamefully) and for reasons best known to themselves the cheeky little pop iconoclasts changed the name to Being Nobody but I've found it now.

21:49 / 18.03.04

I'm sewing a small animal, or more precisely, I am making a toy from cloth which is supposed to resemble a small animal. How do I go about attaching the small stuffed bits (ears, tongue, feet, tail) to the body and then closing the seam? For example, do I stuff & sew the add-ons, then insert the ends into slits in the body and sew the seam around that? I can't figure out how to describe this so if anybody can understand what I'm trying to say, let me know. My problem is that once it's all stuffed, the bits don't wind up in quite the right place anymore.

Additionally, I made a snake this way and wound up just knitting an over-snake -- sort of like a pillowcase, to get around the problem of that last bit of exposed seam. Do I just make a sort of little spout into which I can stuff the stuffing, then sew that up & push it in, like pushing in an outie navel?

11:30 / 19.03.04

Also, where is a good place to get a drink on a Friday night in Manhattan, which meets the following criteria if possible:

1. Near a subway line that is not hated. I understand that some lines run erratically after hours.
2. Near a subway line that is convenient for visitors coming from Brooklyn. I don't know whether this conflicts with item 1.
3. Where people in their early twenties will not feel out of place.
4. That can accomodate a crowd.
5. Where there is music suitable for dancing. I am open to suggestion as far as what might constitute music suitable for dancing.

Thank you.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

10:32 / 20.03.04

Right, standard manuscript formatting and psuedonyms.

You know when you do a standard manuscript, your name and address and whatnot go in the top left hand corner, yeah? And then your allcaps story title goes down the page, with your name underneath it again in regular type, yeah?

For various reasons I write under a pseudonym. Where should me pseudonym go on a standard manuscript? Should I put like:

Legal Name: Bernard LeRoque
Pseudonym: Sue D. Nym
666, Beast Lane,
Chelmsford
HELL

(etc)

STORY TITLE

By Sue D. Nym

Or what? What's the convention? Is there a convention?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

10:34 / 20.03.04

(Oh, and obviously the title and name there should be centred, but you can't centre text on Barbelith. Pretend like it's centred, 'K?)

15:44 / 20.03.04

If geodesic domes are so great, because they're all cheap n' tough and everything, and they get (relatively) cheaper and tougher the bigger you make them, why aren't they all over the place?

I'd love to live in a geodesic dome, preferably one that's semi-underground.

Do architects/the public just not like the look of them? Or are they prohibitively expensive cos of the flat ground space they take up? (I can see why you wouldn't replace skyscrapers with them, but why not use domes for shopping centres or stadia, or anything that doesn't have to be very tall?) Or what?

Also, can I re-ask the question 'who used the Troggs Tapes sample "you've got to sprinkle a little bit of fairy dust over the bastard"'? I think I've got this record, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is. It's now mushing my brain too.

16:09 / 20.03.04

Argh! I'd forgotten that I'd asked that, now it's going round my head again. Dammit.

It's not on the first Black Grape album, is it? I'd check, but I've only got it on tape and don't think I own a cassette player any more.

16:29 / 20.03.04

It is ! I roxor! Found a tape deck, stuck tape in, fast forwarded through to Shake Your Money after getting a brain tingle and... well, missed it. 'Cause I've listened to it so much, I ended up listening to it without listening to it, and had to rewind to hear it again. But it's there, during the middle eight. Huzzah!

The answer to my Kevin Shields query, just in case anyone else was wondering, was that I was confusing myself. I think I must have heard his name mentioned during the BAFTAs in relation to the Lost in Translation score.

16:38 / 20.03.04

Yes! Thank you! OF COURSE it was Black Grape. Nice one.

Now what about these geodesic domes, eh?

My landlord's going on about building one, and I want to impress him so much with my vast knowledge that he forgets to charge me rent.

01:38 / 22.03.04

Is soy cream okay as a substitute for dairy when you're making a creamy (vegan) pasta sauce, or would that be gross? Is there a better alternative?

08:51 / 22.03.04

Where should me pseudonym go on a standard manuscript?

Mordant - I'll ask people that should know, but in the meantime, is there any reason for you to include your real name at all before you get to the contract/legal stage? (I'm assuming these are manuscripts you're submitting for consideration) Obviously at that point you will need to sort out who the money goes to, whose name the copyright is in, etc, but if this is quite an early stage, can you not just refer to yourself as Sue D. Nym throughout?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

11:20 / 22.03.04

Werl, when it's a 4theluv market I do use my pen-name throughout, but now I've got to the stage where people have started to push money into my hot little hands it's an eentsy more complicated.

I guess I could wait till the story was accepted before revealing my Heroic Secret Identity, but it seems fiddly and somehow dishonest. I can also envisage all kinds of complications arising: cheques being sent in the wrong name, etc.

(I should perhaps mention that what I'm submitting is short fiction, mostly but not entirely to online markets. Some of them use an online form, which streamlines things considerably, but not everyone.)

14:20 / 22.03.04

If it was me, I'd rather have your real name up by the address and the pseud down by the title, since we're not publishing your address but we are publishing the title. I have no idea if that fits with standard form or not.

Now what about these geodesic domes, eh?

My landlord's going on about building one, and I want to impress him so much with my vast knowledge that he forgets to charge me rent.

The main problem with domes for residential housing is that you have to deal with a curved wall in there. My mom, when she was selling real estate, had a chance to show a dome-home. It was pretty cool, but all like lofts and partitions inside -- hard to join straight interior walls (or floors, for that matter) to the inside of the sphere.

I think there are a few arenas and that which use geodesics to form half-walls or whatever. And they're like the structure-of-record for Burning Man camps.

Anyway, check a couple of these sites out, and you'll get a good idea about what's possible as far as residential housing. I looked into it a while ago. Now, I'd like to build a shed using the other dome technology... polyurethane foam over a mold. Y'know, just for kicks.

14:31 / 22.03.04

The freelancer writing under a pen name generally types his real name and address in the upper left corner of the first page of his manuscript. (His real name should also appear in the upper left corner of succeeding manuscript pages.) His pen name is typed as the byline under the title of his article or story. This indicates that the writer wishes his pen name to appear in print on the article or story; the editor will, however, pay the writer with a check made out to the author's real name.

If for some reason the writer wishes to conceal his identity from the editor to whom he submits his manuscript, he types his pen name in the upper left corner of the first page as well as in the byline position; his real name does not appear at all on the manuscript.

The writer using only a pen name and not his real name should notify his bank and local post office, advising them that he may be receiving checks and mail in that business name. He would also file his income tax return showing his pen name on Schedule C, for example, "John Smith doing business as (or dba) William Jones."

- from www.writersmarket.com, under "pen name" in their encyclopedia.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

15:06 / 22.03.04

ibis! You deliver! Thanks everso.

07:04 / 23.03.04

I'm trying to trace the origin of the following Latin sentence:

"Et digitum minimum movere non potes ut non mundum universum excites."
('You can't move your little finger, lest you awaken the whole world.')

I stumbled across this on a Russian website (http://giscraft.ru/methods/method8.shtml). The authors of the site are convinved that the words are those of Pierre-Simon Laplace, a mathematician with strong deterministic beliefs who wrote during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (see here for a short bio: http://www.mathematicianspictures.com/Mathematicians/Laplace.htm).

None of the Laplace scholars I've consulted (Andrew Dale, Robert Fox, Ivor Grattan-Guinness, Roger Hahn and Stephen Stigler) recognise the sentence though, and point out that, apart from a couple of very early (purely mathematical) works he never actually wrote in Latin.

My question then: does anyone know who DID suggest that it might be unwise to lift one's little finger? Or, failing that, can anyone recommend a forum (Classics? History of Science?) where I might post another request for help?

Many thanks.

08:22 / 23.03.04

Haus - I'm connecting cyberchimp's quote with an anecdote about an actor making a filthy gesture to ?Nero? (or was it Julius Caesar?) while delivering what I think was a similar line, except that the gesture turned it into one of those things where if you scratch your ear with your little finger you're a cinaedus. It's really bugging me. I don't suppose your mighty concordance of a brain can trace that reference, can it?

If your mighty concordance of a brain can even follow what I'm going on about, that is.

09:06 / 23.03.04

Is there a particular reason why I capitalise the 'i' in a sentence like this? Other English pronouns don't get capitals, do they? Why 'I', man?

09:59 / 23.03.04

Dread Pirate Crunchy, it should be fine so long as you don't overheat it, I think. I've made a scrumptious green peppercorn and soycream sauce. So if you were making, say, a mushroom sauce then I'd cook all the mushrooms, garlic etc till they're done and then slowly mix in the soy cream and heat it gently. Much as you would with real cream, now I think of it.
Otherwise you could make a white wine sauce - make a roux with flour and marg, then add white wine to make sauce. Or indeed do that with soy milk, bechamel-style - but I think the soy cream gives a richer, if runnier, sauce.

18:26 / 23.03.04

I vaguely recall reading a book of the Bible in college in which an old man was narrating a sort of personal crisis of faith, maybe in the form of a dialogue with God, I can't remember. The idea & tone of the book really stuck with me - but alas, the chapter & verse did not, nor even the book's name. I've never been able to find it again, which leads me to believe it may have been in some version of the Apocrypha (sp) or Gnostic Bibles or somesuch thing. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

19:55 / 23.03.04

Job? Jonah? Tobit?

There's lots of old men kvetching at God in the Bible. It's practically a requirement of faith.

Can you remember what the kvetch was about? What the general form was? What happened to the old man?

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