MuseBlog

WARNING! Will definitely contain spoilers!

To spare MBers reading the “Recent Comments” columns, please paste the following message in at the beginning of your posts:

SPOILER MUSE SPOILER MUSE SPOILER MUSE SPOILER MUSE SPOILER.

Let us know when your issue arrives.

NO SPOILERS, please. There’s another thread for discussing the issue.

Is anyone familiar with this kind of joke? Sometimes called “prejudiced triples,” it takes an an activity or trait and shows how one’s perception of it changes depending on distance from the speaker.

Showing is better than telling:

I am firm. You are stubborn. He is pig-headed.

(That’s the classic example, which we’ve seen attributed to Bertrand Russell, George Bernard Shaw, and someone called K. J. Stavronides.)

On MuseBlog, of course, the gender-specific “he” can be replaced with the gender-noncommital “en”:

I am thrifty. You are cheap. En is a tightwad.

I am eloquent. You are loquacious. En is a blabbermouthed bore.

And so on. Anyone want to add some?

Ages ago, Robert started inserting the Muses into the action of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. First, the whole gang burst into Chapter One. Then, in a scene unlike anything in the book, Feather met Fleur Delacour and discovered her poetic side.

Robert planned some other scenes that he never got around to posting. This one is from Chapter 24, “Sectumsempra.” Looking for the girls’ bathroom, Mimi accidentally walks into the boys’ loo a few minutes before Harry Potter arrives for his fateful encounter with Draco Malfoy…. Read more »

GAPA Rebecca has decided to avail herself of Robert’s chess lessons. She’s not a super-confident chessplayer,* so any MBer is welcome to help her by suggesting moves and strategies.

*More precisely: complete neophyte. ~L.B.
 
 
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It’s Halloween at Muse Academy (in blog time), and the ball is about to begin. The food, the decorations, the music… how can we describe them? We can’t! You’ll have to do that before anything else can happen. A little scene-setting, please!

Robert is going crazy with this chess software. Tesseract, Lovely Lunegood, Adeia, Pseudonym, SudoRandom, and mas0n have all expressed interest in a lesson, in approximately that order.

Tesseract — ready to roll?
 
(Note: “Lesson” games are played in public. Players may comment on their own or each other’s moves; observers may ask questions, which the players may or may not answer. It’s all highly experimental.)
 
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Continued from Quotations, 2009.3.

Attention, MBers within driving distance of Morgantown, West Virginia: West Virginia University will hold its 22nd annual Pumpkin Drop on Friday, October 30.

What’s a Pumpkin Drop? Nancy Kangas and her son Aaron can tell you. So can Purple Panda and her family. They’ve all dropped pumpkins in previous years.

You can find more information at www . mae.cemr.wvu . edu/news/news-details.php?item=1272 .

And you can see how Pan & Co. did it right here on the blog.

In which MuseBloggers gather data about that ever-popular topic, one another.

Continued from v. 2009.1.

For your enjoyment and edification, here’s a chess game that the American chess genius Paul Morphy played against two noblemen during intermission at the Paris Opera in 1858.

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Robert has an idea for a new way to use the chess software: He’ll play a game with one MBer (at a time), trying to create interesting positions for his opponent to exploit. He’ll make comments on the action as it unfolds and will answer questions from anybody on the blog. Sound interesting? Read more »

You’ll score major points with your anthropology professor (or ens secondary-school equivalent) if you mention the major discoveries Robert’s magazine has just published about a fossil called Ardipithecus ramidus.

If you loved Lucy, you’ll adore Ardi.

You can also read about the discovery in

• National Geographic
• The Guardian (U.K.)
• The Washington Post
• The New York Times
• Time

As the nights get longer in the Northern Hemisphere, it strikes us that darkness gets a bad rap. People associate it with evil, as in “the Dark Lord” and “the Dark Side of the Force.” Ridiculous! (Every MBer knows that evil is pink.) To redress the imbalance, MuseBlog hereby dedicates October and its Random Threads to the wonders and delights of darkness. Read more »

Greetings, O wanderers in darkness! Please start here for a warm welcome (involving pie) and advice from Those Who Know. Enter, please.
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Known Muser birthdays this month*:

10-01 Kiki the Great’s birthday (1995 – black and red)
10-09 Gimanator’s birthday (1993 – purple)
10-12 Ebeth’s birthday (1991 – blue or octarine)
10-13 Paul Baker’s birthday
10-16 crazyquotescollector’s birthday (1993 – jewel tones)
10-16 Kagcomix’s birthday (1993 – green)
10-17 BushBug’s birthday (1997 – black, blue, silver)
10-19 LittleBasementKitten’s birthday (1997)
10-20 Goldendoodle’s birthrday (1994 – evergreen and gold)
10-23 kokopelli #13’s birthday (1992 – camouflage)
10-24 cromwell’s 5K Day
10-25 Red-tailed HAWK’s birthday (1994 – blue)
10-25 Randomosity 101’s birthday (1995 – blue, green, orange, and black)

You turn 5,000 days old this month if you were born between and January 24, 1995, and February 23, 1996
You turn 6,000 days old this month if you were born between April 29 and May 29, 1993.
You turn 7,000 days old this month if you were born between August 3 and September 2, 1990.

You will have been on MuseBlog for six months if you started posting in April.

*Note: Listed MBers who have been inactive for several months won’t appear on next year’s birthday calendar unless they show up again.

Ernest Hemingway wrote is supposed to have written a very sad one:

For sale: Baby shoes, never used worn.

What can you come up with? (We’ll also accept summaries, reviews, biographies — anything you can squeeze into this even-shorter-than-haiku format.)

Let’s try to make the plans for this year’s ball even better than last year’s.

This was clogging up the Books in Progress thread, so we’ve transplanted it here. Choose away!

The autumnal (fall) equinox for the Northern hemisphere occurs on Tuesday, September 22 at 11:tk Universal Time or 6:TK blog time. ‘Tis the season (peak pie season, among other things)!

And to our friends in New Zealand and other antipodean regions, happy spring!

Here you go! As White, bookgirl_me moves first.
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This year it be on Saturday, September 19. What be ye doin’ fer it, mateys? Read more »

Sing away.

Something different, by popular request.