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February Random Thread: Try a Little Priest (Hole)

This year’s random threads pay tribute to classic Muse articles and issues of years gone by. For February, we commemorate the famous “priest hole” article — Paul Baker’s second foray into Muse, published in the October 2003 issue. (Priest holes were hiding places for persecuted Catholics in 16th-century England.) Also in the issue were articles about parasites, West Virginia University’s annual Pumpkin Drop, and the unfortunate Phineas Gage, a railroad worker whose gruesome encounter with a flying tie rod in 1848 taught scientists a lot about the workings of the brain. Good stuff, indeed.

Ideas for future random threads are still welcome.

Users’ Manual: Obey The Rules. Consult The Guide. Have fun!

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Date: February 1, 2013

Author: Robert Coontz (Administrator)

Categories: At the Top of the Blog, Random craziness

Comments RSS TrackBack 387 comments

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  oxlin

  in February 1st, 2013 @ 00:06

  My favorite issue! Happy February!

  I’m curious if anyone has any examples of strange houses, interesting houses, or houses with secret passages. (Ones both real and fictional.)

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  Groundhog

  in February 1st, 2013 @ 07:37

  My friend’s house has a secret door in the wall that leads from their parlor to the room that houses their grand piano. The room that houses their grand piano also has a Prohibition-era hidden liquor cupboard behind one of the built-in bookshelves.

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  Kai D.

  in February 2nd, 2013 @ 20:13

  My old house had a laundry chute; We used it to throw laundry and naughty children into the washer.
  (Mostly harmless)

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  KaiYves

  in February 1st, 2013 @ 16:45

  My aunt’s house has a laundry chute that goes from the second-floor bathroom (it used to be the maid’s room, because it was built in 1894 when more people had maids), to the basement, with a door in the first-floor pantry where you can thrown in more clothing.

  It’s way too narrow for a person to slide down inside of (maybe a baby could, but dropping a baby two stories is a very bad idea), but you can shout down it to talk to people in the basement or drop secret messages or other small objects down without them being detected (or lower them on a string, if you have one.)

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 1st, 2013 @ 20:08

  It’s just an intuition, but I’ll bet that at some point in the past 118 years, some child living in what is now your aunt’s house has dropped a cat down that laundry chute.

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  KaiYves

  in February 1st, 2013 @ 22:11

  Poor cat!

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 2nd, 2013 @ 05:10

  My intuition also tells me that the cat was not harmed, just miffed.

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  Catwings/littledancingirishgirl

  in February 28th, 2013 @ 19:30

  *phew*

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  Jadestone

  in February 1st, 2013 @ 20:35

  oh man we have one of those

  I used to send my stuffed animals on spelunking adventures down it, all tied up in harnesses made from like 12 scarves and flashlights dangling off them, while my sister had to stand at the other end and yell when they emerged

  I tried to hide in it once but it was too high off the ground and it was slightly too small and also it is a terrible idea do not attempt this

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  Vendaval

  in February 2nd, 2013 @ 17:35

  oh man, me too! whoa, you just brought back so many memories. ours runs all the way from the attic to be basement, even though our attic remains finished to this day. I would slide off the wood cover set into the attic floor and send stuffed animals spelunking all the way through the house, tied together with bits of line and sailtie. my brother, too, would catch them in the basement. i would send parachute men down too, but ours has a bend to it so they didn’t always emerge, which necessitated rescue missions with flashlights and magnets and fishing hooks.

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  KaiYves

  in February 2nd, 2013 @ 18:39

  Our home has a second-story balcony, so my brothers and I did most of our dropping-toys-on-parachutes from there.

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  the Guavalover

  in February 2nd, 2013 @ 10:59

  One of my family’s good friends moved into a house where there is a rather wide laundry chute going from the second floor to the basement, and a baby did fall down it. He survived, but kids, do not try this at home!

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  oxlin

  in February 2nd, 2013 @ 18:45

  My house has a laundry chute too. We used to set up messages from the laundry chute fairy to my little cousins when they came to visit by dropping them to the basement or taping them to the laundry chute door on the second floor.

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  Groundhog

  in February 2nd, 2013 @ 22:25

  My boyfriend’s house has an interesting laundry chute–it has two openings on the ground floor, which merge before reaching the basement. One of the openings in in the wall of the hallway near all the bedrooms, which seems perfectly normal. The other is inside one of the kitchen cabinets.

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  KaiYves

  in February 4th, 2013 @ 16:38

  The laundry-chute opening in my aunt’s pantry is in a cabinet, too.

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  Cerulean Pyros

  in February 9th, 2013 @ 10:55

  Did someone say “interesting houses”?

  –A house my grandmother lived in as a child had a closet with doors opening into two rooms–you could open one door; there are the clothes; but, wait! This isn’t a wall; it’s another door! She and at least one of her sisters would sometimes take very young visitors to the house into the closet, make a lot of noise, take them out the other side, and tell them it was an elevator. (I would have played Narnia…)

  –A house she lived in as an adult had a closet with a hatch into a space where she and her husband hid Christmas presents from my mother and uncle. The space could also be accessed through a bathroom, but only with difficulty.

  –A house I visited once was the victim of several changes in layout over a number of years. It had hallways that didn’t go anywhere (including one that managed to go three-quarters of the way around the upper story without passing by any doors), a window above a bathtub that looked into a bedroom (or the other way around), and a dining room floor built with an alarming tilt.

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  KaiYves

  in February 9th, 2013 @ 15:31

  Cool! The first one reminds me of the darkroom-style revolving cylinder door used to get between the “launch vehicle” and “mission spacecraft” rooms at the Manhattan Challenger Center. The fact that you’re in darkness for a little moment in-between heightens the illusion that you’re really being transported somewhere else.

  (In the archeology department here at BU, there’s a room that used to be a darkroom that still has a similar entry cylinder, and I was taking my final exam in the room it connected to. One of the TAs tried to be funny and went “It transports you through time and space.”, and I replied “Yes, I know, I used one to go to the space station a few weeks ago at the Challenger Center.” He didn’t get it.)

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  Bibliophile

  in February 1st, 2013 @ 01:04

  As a response to TNO on the other thread, it’s good to see you again! I am kind of annoyed at some of the changes from the book in The Scarlet Pimpernel, but the music is just amazing. I’m still not sure whether my favorite song from it is–you know, I think I’m going to list almost everything, so I won’t go there. I just wish I could hear the original cast performing the edited version (huge changes were made after the OBCR was recorded; I’m not sure which version I prefer). I can’t see (which here refers to reading the script or, if that’s not free, the synopsis, and listening to the soundtrack) Wonderland yet because my headphones stopped working, unfortunately, but I’ll be sure to tell you what I think when I do. I almost got to see an early version in person (as in, I had tickets), but we arrived too late. I was very annoyed, to put it mildly. That was before you were obsessed with it, though (it didn’t even exist in the form we have it today), so I didn’t realize how what I was presumably missing out on (I say presumably because of course I haven’t seen it, although I’ve noticed I almost always tend to agree with your assessments on musicals, even to the extent of identifying with the same characters and so on).
  Actually, I don’t think I’ve heard Kate Shindle sing anything yet, ever; I’ve just heard good things about her from you. I look forward to remedying that.
  I also finally ordered the script to “Anyone Can Whistle;” I could have sworn I saw a copy available for 18 dollars a month ago. I shouldn’t have waited; the cheapest now is 25 dollars. I bought the 1995 soundtrack, too, of course, which is literally the first music CD I’ve ever bought because I never really listened to anything until this year, and now I mostly use YouTube, but this particular musical was so excellent that I had to hear all of that cast recording (which I’m sure is amazing because A, I heard some of it, B, it’s hard to go wrong with Bernadette Peters, and C, I trust your judgment), and it wasn’t there. Also, it was only $2.89.
  By the way, have you heard any of the Filipino production of Into the Woods (in English)? It has Lea Salonga as the Witch, so I was curious, since she’s one of my favorite actors ever, but also skeptical, since I’d never heard her sing for a character remotely like the Witch. Then I listened to her singing “Last Midnight,” and it was absolutely fantastic. I know you’re a fan of the show, but I’m not sure if you’re familiar with this production. The Filipino production of “Cinderella” with her as the titular character is excellent, too, as is basically everything she’s done ever that wasn’t pop or a Disney sequel (and even in the Disney sequel she was in, Mulan II, her songs were good, even if the plot wasn’t).

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  TNÖ

  in February 1st, 2013 @ 12:25

  *choke* Lea Salonga was in Into the Woods?! How haven’t I heard of this before?!
  …anyway. I’ve resigned myself to book–>musical adaptions making a lot of changes to the source material, simply because they’re such vastly different media and everybody does it. I tend to tolerate changes in musicals more than I would a movie for the same reason.
  About Wonderland: you can find the entirety of the April 2 Broadway preview on youtube (this was a few days before they opened, so the subsequent changes were pretty minor). So if you want to actually watch it, you can. I bring it up because (a) it’s fantastic and (b) the wikipedia synopsis is excruciatingly incoherent.
  Would this be the Florida version with Nikki Snelson as the Hatter? I have been dying to get my hands on a copy of the recording of that, but nobody’s selling it and I haven’t yet managed to find it online. Boo.
  Kate Shindle is wonderful and fantastic and I fangirl her so hard and she tweeted me once and then I died. And she gets one of the most awesome villain songs ever in Wonderland, just wait. It’s glorious.
  You found a copy of Anyone Can Whistle for 25 dollars? Lucky! When I was looking for it a few years ago I scoured the entire Internet for weeks and couldn’t find a copy under 60. And that one was in such bad condition when I got it that I had to pay to have it rebound. (It was, however, completely worth it.)

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  Bibliophile

  in February 1st, 2013 @ 15:20

  I started ranting a production of a musical that you haven’t heard of and are really excited about now? What is this, Soviet Russia?
  The version I almost saw was more recent than that. It was the one in Houston with… *looks up* oh, this was also Nikki Snelson as the Mad Hatter.
  …Also, do you have any idea why almost none of the lyrics to the most recent version Wonderland are available online, anywhere, when the actual show is? That seems a bit strange.

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  TNÖ

  in February 1st, 2013 @ 16:45

  Nikki Snelson is awesome. and it’s funny because Vivienne replaced Brooke
  As for lyrics, my guess is that it’s because the cast album was recorded and released several weeks before they opened, so some of the songs (Home and its reprise) are out of order/vastly different and it has “Heroes” but not “Worst Day of My Life,” and generally any lyrics you can find online are based on what people hear on cast albums, not necessarily what’s in the actual script. (I mean, Les Mis has the same problem, and it’s well known and popular and has been around for like thirty years, where Wonderland barely made it for a month on Broadway before it closed.) It’s annoying, though, isn’t it?

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  Bibliophile

  in February 1st, 2013 @ 21:01

  Who are Vivienne and Brooke? You’ve kind of lost me.
  …I just Googled “Wonderland Vivienne Brooke,” and the first result was that exact sentence (including strikeout) in a blog post by someone who isn’t named Haley (meaning it presumably wasn’t you), so I’m assuming it’s a line from the song that’ll make sense when I hear it. Is that right? Or are you making a reference to the post in question?
  After writing that, I got the idea that maybe they were characters from another musical played by Kate Shindle and Nikki Snelson, so I Googled “Vivienne Brooke musical theatre” and found out that indeed, they played characters by those names in Legally Blonde. Now my working hypothesis is that this blogger made a joke about that, and you were repeating it. I’d love to hear what the case is.
  Anyway, it is annoying, but it makes sense. That happened with The Scarlet Pimpernel, too, now that I think of it, but I didn’t mind because I was listening to the OBCR because the cast was brilliant, and I don’t know of a recording of them singing the more recent version (although I did listen to the songs that were added as well), and besides, I wanted to hear the cut songs. (I don’t think I can even judge “Believe” properly because I completely disagree with the message and am thus biased against it, but I did really enjoy”Vive,” at least the bit that wasn’t “Believe” repeated).

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  TNÖ

  in February 1st, 2013 @ 22:24

  Ooh, sorry. Yep, they were both in the original cast of Legally Blonde. It’s mostly amusing because Brooke and Vivienne are vastly different characters (since Brooke is very similar to Our Heroine, Elle, and Vivienne is Elle’s foil). I hadn’t actually read that blog post (though I googled it just now and found it too, on tumblr, which I don’t frequent); I guess it’s just a common sentiment? Especially because there seems to be a lot of crossover between Legally Blonde fans and Wonderland fans (presumably at least in part due to Nikki Snelson and/or Kate Shindle fans). That, or I saw it, forgot about it, and it leaked into my subconscious.
  Also, you should look into Legally Blonde sometime. I avoided it for a long time (because, really?) and then finally watched the MTV film and realized that it’d managed to fix the movie’s incoherent, rambly plot and rebalance the comedy bits to be actually, you know, funny, and put in real character development and wasn’t so caking pretentious about what it was saying. And the cast is, of course, glorious.
  
  “Believe” bothers me too. I’m glad I’m not the only one.

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  Bibliophile

  in February 8th, 2013 @ 19:30

  I finally got around to watching Wonderland! Well, some of it. I watchd the first act and a tiny bit of the second, and then school interrupted, and then the script of Anyone Can Whistle finally came (Squee! But I’ll get to that). Anyway, it was amazing, of course, and the Hatter was just incredible. I am looking forward to seeing the rest, particularly “I Will Prevail.”
  But the ATW script finally came today, and it’s even more amazing than I thought it was! In large part because satire doesn’t make much sense when it’s in bits and pieces, and now I have the full thing, and also because of, well, everything. I finished it, of course; I wouldn’t have taken a break to post here if I hadn’t, because it was that good.
  I will see if I can watch Legally Blonde sometime, although I don’t know when (Don’t know when, don’t know where, and I can’t even say that I care! All I know is the minute you turn and), as there are so many musicals I've been wanting to listen to for ages. Isn't it interesting when an adaptation is way better than the original? When the original is really bad (as opposed to when the adaptation just takes something already good and makes it much better), I always wonder what the people in charge saw in the original to merit adaptation, but it's certainly not as if I mind.

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  Bibliophile

  in February 11th, 2013 @ 23:53

  Correction: The production of ITW with Lea Salonga was in Singapore, not the Philippines. I don’t think it released a cast recording, sadly, and Last Midnight appears to be the only song from it online. It seems like she’s basically just imitating Bernadette Peters, though, and while she does a ridiculously good job (I don’t think I could tell the difference), I didn’t really get anything out of it that Bernadette Peters’ performance didn’t have, other than marveling at how amazingly versatile Lea Salonga is.
  Anyway, the soundtrack to Anyone Can Whistle came today! It was just as wonderful as I thought it would be, and I get to write an essay about how I relate to the titular song, yay! Cue the overanalysis. The assignment is to write an essay about a song that represents you and why, and I was conflicted between that and “Waiting for This Moment” from Tarzan (the Broadway musical), but I chose this because it would be much more interesting to write about.
  Also, I still haven’t finished watching Wonderland, but “I Will Prevail.” Just… Wow.

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  TNÖ

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 12:02

  You bought the ’95 concert, correct? I prefer that over the OBCR, mainly because (a) it’s more complete and (b) I am really not fond of Harry Guardino. And that sounds like an awesome assignment! and also I love Tarzan. “For the First Time” is one of the more adorable love songs I’ve ever heard.
  With regards to I Will Prevail: isn’t it just…? Yeah… Eight months of almost daily listening because I am a hopelessly obsessed fangirl and the final “It’s over” still gives me goosebumps (to say nothing of the lighting… Mmmmmm…)
  …And then you consider the sheer nastiness of the lyrics and it really drives home the blatant psychopathy and mercury-induced insanity the Hatter displayed in act one, which is all kinds of fun.

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  Bibliophile

  in February 14th, 2013 @ 02:24

  The OBCR was online for free, so I yes, I bought the ’95 version. I prefer it, too.
  Tarzan is full of Crowning Moments of Heartwarming, really. “You’ll Be in My Heart” would have to be my favorite from the show (although it’s obviously not a love song), but “For the First Time” is certainly up there.
  Wait, mercury? Is that mentioned later, or did I miss/forget something?

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  TNÖ

  in February 14th, 2013 @ 09:14

  Honestly my favorite part of the OBCR is that Angela Lansbury basically bullied Srepehn Sondheim into writing “A Parade in Town” for her. Because (a) she’s Angela Lansbury and she can do anything and (b) I love that song.
  It is my firm belief that Tarzan was written solely to make audiences melt into happy puddles of goo.
  Mercury poisoning is never stated in the show itself, but the Hatter’s emotional instability could easily be construed that way when taken together with the fact that she’s, well, a hatter. Also Kate Shindle explicitly played it that way; she brings it up in an interview somewhere (I think it was for Broadway World, but don’t quote me on that). It’s not as obvious in the preview, but if you watch, say, the later version of I Will Prevail (it’s the one that’s 5:23 minutes long and I find it vaguely disturbing that I know that off the top of my head) you can see her hitting most of the symptoms that are possible to fake (the hatter shakes, hallucinations, parasthesia…).

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  Bibliophile

  in February 14th, 2013 @ 22:25

  …See, I didn’t actually know that mercury was used in hat-making, so I was confused. I looked it up, and now it makes sense. A lot of sense.
  And I just looked up the version you were talking about, and it is the one that I’d seen (not the same video, but it was clearly the same performance); it’s just that not knowing anything about that bit of context, I completely missed it. It’s even better now that I understand.

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  Bibliophile

  in February 15th, 2013 @ 14:28

  Also, I’d like to point out that some parts of Tarzan were probably meant more to make audiences melt into sympathetic piles of goo, in particular “No other Way,” “I Need to Know”, “You’ll Be Here in My Heart (Reprise),” and “Sure As Sun Turns to Moon (Reprise).” Then again, you could easily argue that they’re mostly there to make “Sure As Sun Turns to Moon,” “Everything That I Am,” and “Two Worlds (Reprise),” respectively, even more heartwarming.

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  Bibliophile

  in February 19th, 2013 @ 23:09

  Speaking of “A Parade in Town,” I rode a bus today, and someone had written, “Hi!” and, “Hey!” on the seat in that order (or, more likely, one person wrote, “Hi!” and someone else responded with, “Hey!”). Of course, my mind immediately added, “Wait! Voters!” and so on. /inability to see even the most mundane things without connecting them to something I’ve been obsessing over recently/

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  Midnight Fiddler

  in February 1st, 2013 @ 07:55

  I would like to mention that I saw priestholes with Paul last month.
  I also saw Harvington Hall, but only from the outside, as it was closed.

  In the line of odd buildings, sort of answering Oxlin, my school kind of has some?
  But not really. My dorm is old-ish (1950s), so it has a few odd rooms that aren’t really used anymore and so are just kind of there for no reason. It’s odd.
  Then some of the other dorms have storage in their basements, but they’re kind of a maze of these rooms with huge crude wooden cabinets that are all empty. I’m sure they have some purpose, but it was very odd to find them.

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  Dodecahedron

  in February 1st, 2013 @ 08:04

  Phineas Gage was quite a memorable article.

  Also, if I’m not mistaken, today is my 7007th day of life? I think it’s pretty great! Can’t wait for 7777! (but I’ll have to, for about two years)

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 1st, 2013 @ 09:03

  Right you are. Day 7777 will be March 13, 2015.

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  Randomosity101

  in February 1st, 2013 @ 15:27

  Wow. I need to see if I can get my hands on a copy of that issue; it sounds awesome!

  ~

  Before I forget again:

  Evidence:

  1) I just got the January issue a week and a half ago, and I got this month’s issue at the same time even though it was of course still January.

  2) This is not the first time this has happened. In fact, I’ve received issues as much as two months later or as much as a month early on numerous occasions.

  Conclusion:

  The Doctor has been stealing my copies of Muse from the mail, reading them, and then returning them in pristine condition when done. Or possibly borrowing them. I’m not sure. If the opportunity ever arises in the future I would certainly give him permission to do so, and of course he would want to look at past issues too.

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  Jadestone

  in February 1st, 2013 @ 19:21

  …is no one else going to comment on Sweeny Todd or

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  Bibliophile

  in February 1st, 2013 @ 21:02

  Doesn’t the title of the thread do that already?
  Granted, it’s amazing and deserves to be mentioned multiple times.

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  KaiYves

  in February 1st, 2013 @ 22:22

  I tried to catch “Space Shuttle Columbia: A Mission of Hope” on PBS, but most of the girls on my floor with TVs were going out and had to lock their doors. One of my friends let me try her TV, but it didn’t get PBS. Finally, I was able to watch it on the laundry room TV downstairs. I only saw about the last 45 minutes, but oh Kokopelli, the feelings…

  STS-107, always remembered.

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  Piggy

  in February 1st, 2013 @ 22:31

  A Series of Entangled Tableaux

  Several years ago, after the death of my paternal grandfather, the extended family was working together to remodel his house so that we could sell it. We took the stuff we wanted to keep, sold or gave away the rest, threw out the worthless stuff, and then got to work ripping out carpet, rewiring outlets, that sort of stuff. After a day of electrical and plumbing work, my mom, my sister and I decided to poke through the dumpster to see if there was any trash worth reconsidering. We found a couple items we decided to take, one of which was an old cast iron skillet. It was pretty beat up and covered in rust, so it’s been sitting in a dusty corner of our basement since then.

  The worst part of dorm life for me is not being able to cook. I have a fridge and microwave, an electric kettle, a rice cooker, some coffee and tea equipment, and a sink, but that’s it. That being the case, I try to make the most of my kitchen time whenever I come back home for a weekend. Last week I happened across a pan pizza recipe that looked good, so that’s what I decided to make the next time I went home–which happens to be today. I made the dough after dinner tonight, so tomorrow I’ll make the pizzas proper.

  My mom’s always loved to cook, and while my father’s and sister’s depressingly unadventurous palates don’t allow her full rein to cook as she pleases, she does what she can. A lot of her cookware she’s had since she got married, or in some cases earlier than that. Although she uses it infrequently, one of her favorite articles is a ten-inch cast iron skillet that she’s had for a long time. She’s taken care of it, and it’s seasoned extremely well. She and I decided to get the skillet out of the cupboard, only to discover that it was gone. We checked the other cupboards, and the closets, and dug through boxes in the basement and attic; but it was gone. I texted my sister to ask if she had it. She did not.

  Tomorrow morning I’m going to the store to buy some steel wool and the fattiest bacon I can find.

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  Paul Baker (Administrator)

  in February 2nd, 2013 @ 11:17

  Harvington Hall. That takes me back. It was a fun article to write. I remember having to make a card model of the architectural layout around Dr. Dodd’s Library, and photographing it from several angles, just so the illustrator could get a handle on how the most amazing priest hole fitted into the fabric.

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  oxlin

  in February 2nd, 2013 @ 16:30

  Do you still have those photos?

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  Paul Baker (Administrator)

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 06:02

  I think so. Hang on….

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  Paul Baker (Administrator)

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 06:30

  Here’s a composite of the reference photos.
  http://www.diabolus.org/museblog/harvington-hide.jpg
  

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  9.1.2.1

  Lizzie

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 08:07

  I dreamed of priest holes for several years after that article, and for some reason the first picture reminds me really strongly of that.

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  9.1.2.1.1

  Paul Baker (Administrator)

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 10:18

  Blimey. Years of recurring nightmares. If only we authors knew what an effect our writing had. Actually, it’s probably good that we didn’t.

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  9.1.2.1.1.1

  KaiYves

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 10:41

  I think the only thing from Muse that ever gave me nightmares was the Black Death issue.

  (As opposed to the Cricket Bigfoot issue, the Disney Adventures issue with the “10 Most-Haunted Places in America” article, and the National Geographic World article on the Winchester Mystery House. I loved all of these magazines, but sonetimes they really scared me!)

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  9.1.2.1.1.2

  Bibliophile

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 12:01

  Did she say they were nightmares?

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  9.1.2.1.1.3

  Lizzie

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 12:29

  Oh, they weren’t nightmares. I thoroughly enjoyed them. I mean, I enjoy the ones in which I’m getting chased by monsters too, but…

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  9.1.2.1.1.3.1

  TNÖ

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 13:04

  I once had a dream where I was eviscerated and then eaten alive by velociraptors. People never believe me when I tell them it wasn’t a nightmare, just surreal.

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  9.1.2.1.1.3.1.1

  the person that is very fond of guavas

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 15:34

  I almost never have nightmares, but most of my dreams are very surreal and come really close. Last night I dreamed I was kidnapped and was taken into a research study to see which household item made the best weapon, and the “best” way to test this, was to make kids select items and fight one-on one to the death. I died.

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  9.1.2.1.1.3.1.1.1

  KaiYves

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 17:34

  I had a nightmare back in senior year that when I was born, my parents had promised that I would go be an assassin for the army when I turned 18, but they had never told me until just before I turned 18, and then the army came and tried to take me away in a helicopter-thing… It was terrifying.

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  9.1.2.2

  Groundhog

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 11:56

  Hmmm. In your scale model, the entrance to the hide is on the left side of the room, but in the photos, it’s on the right. Did the negatives get flipped when you had the film developed?

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  9.1.2.2.1

  Paul Baker (Administrator)

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 15:17

  No, it’s a bit confusing. The model is a cutaway. You’re looking at the hide room from the opposite direction from the photo. The panelling you can see in the photo is removed in the model so that you can see the room interior.

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  9.1.2.2.1.1

  Groundhog

  in February 6th, 2013 @ 10:26

  That makes a lot more sense. Thanks!

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  10

  bookgirl_me (in Egypt; on a dive-boat!)

  in February 2nd, 2013 @ 13:18

  Today was amazing, unfortunately, I-pod battery death killed my post. Anyway, wreck diving is awesome, yet creepy.

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  11

  muselover

  in February 2nd, 2013 @ 15:17

  THEATRE FLASHBACK PROMPTED BY THE THREAD TITLE

  Playing the Judge in Sweeney Todd was an interesting experience, because I actually had very few scenes. Those scenes needed to count, though, and so the makeup and costume department had to make me as creepy as possible. Our director was desperately searching for something tall enough to fit me, and we found a cloak that, while menacing, had sleeves that ended about halfway down my arms. I thought that we had to keep looking, but the costume heads thought it was perfect and so I just wore a white shirt under it for the play. It ended up looking really cool.
  The makeup department had a harder job, because they had to make me look both old and scary for every single performance. Some nights were better than others. During one of our final rehearsals, one of the director’s notes to our makeup people was that I was “too attractive”. (I swear this is true.) Apparently they took that advice to heart, because I scared everyone backstage just by being there. Especially the people who didn’t know me beforehand.
  One thing that the play gave me that I’m very grateful for was an off-and-on friendship with Sam, who played the Beadle. We had a lot of time on our hands during the scenes without us, so we spent most of it talking about music and things like that. I will forever have him to thank for getting me to listen to Of Montreal. He’s a senior, so he’ll be gone next year along with Joey (Sweeney), Mason (in the chorus) and Caleb (Fogg). That leaves the theatre department with about five male actors next year, not counting the incoming freshmen. That’ll make things interesting.

  END THEATRE FLASHBACKS

  I seriously need to audition for the next musical.

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  12

  Jadestone

  in February 2nd, 2013 @ 20:00

  I’m in a weird mood

  I don’t know what it is

  I had a good day? I went to the farmer’s market downtown with a friend and walked around and showed her some poi, and then later another friend came over and she/my roommate/I baked pie and watched a movie and played Magic

  but now I dunno I am feeling weird and… not nostalgic, but like that except for times that might not happen or places I haven’t been to.

  I don’t think there’s a word for that.

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  12.1

  Choklit Orange

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 01:48

  Wistfulness?

  I have felt this way too.

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  13

  Kai D.

  in February 2nd, 2013 @ 20:07

  (Continued from the welcome page:

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  Kai D.

  in January 15th, 2013 @ 22:08

  Hey Administrators, could you start a funny acronyms thread where all you do is post funny acronyms, what they stand for, and comment on what you think about others’ acronyms?

  1 0

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  1.1

  Rosanne Spector (Administrator)

  in January 15th, 2013 @ 22:53

  SLAGITMWDTOGT
  That means: Seems like a good idea to me. What do the other GAPAs think?

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  1.1.1

  Rosanne Spector (Administrator)

  in January 15th, 2013 @ 22:57

  We shouldn’t be talking about this on the Welcome Thread.
  SPMAFDTTRT
  (So please move any further discussion to the Random Thread.))

  So, How many of you would like to have a funny acronyms page?

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  13.1

  Piggy

  in February 2nd, 2013 @ 21:21

  It’s already been made.

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  13.2

  Lizzie

  in February 2nd, 2013 @ 21:24

  It’s been done.

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  13.3

  the Guavalover

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 07:32

  IBM
  (it’s been made)

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  Choklit Orange

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 01:52

  My first concert with the Actual Legitimate Grownup Orchestra That Somehow Let Me Join was tonight. Is it terribly boastful to say that we sounded great? Because we did. We played Mozart’s 5th Symphony, with two soloists, who made me wildly envious because they play so well and are only a few years older than I am- and we played Brahms’s 1st, the one that took him twenty years to write. I am honestly not a fan of the first three movements of that piece, but I love the fourth. It’s like he squeezed all of the best tunes he could think of into it (not to mention ripping off Beethoven a fair bit).

  Anyway, we sounded… I think it is fair to say that we sounded kind of epic.

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  14.1

  Lizzie

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 08:36

  Okay, this is a topic on which I know a lot about and have strong feelings because like everyone who hasn’t taken music history surveys gets it somewhat wrong but Brahms did not “rip off” Beethoven. The references in the 4th movement to the ode to joy were completely intentional and essential to the piece, and this is why (doing this by memory so if I get any of the little details wrong, apologies):
  When Beethoven wrote his 9th symphony, it was seen by many people as being the culmination of the symphony, the completion, the pinnacle of the genre. Because of this, a lot of really good composers in the next 40 years or so didn’t really write symphonies (see: The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom). They felt that everything that could be done, had been done. The last movement, with its theme of universality and its melding of choral and orchestral forces, especially kicked off a really important debate, of which the two sides, both claiming to be the true heir of Beethoven, were basically headed by Wagner and Robert Schumann.

  Wagner believed that with the last movement, Beethoven was indicating that purely instrumental work was dead. To create bigger and more intense experiences, one needed the extra dimension of spectacle that voices added. The old genres (symphony, concerto, etc) were dead and they needed something new to take their place. Instead of writing symphonies, Wagner turned to the idea of gesamptkuntzwerk, “total art work.” This is the spirit in which his Ring cycle was created, in which Strauss (Richard, not Johann of waltz fame. Two different unrelated people.) wrote his tone poems like Don Juan and Don Quixote, in which Mahler wrote his symphonies, many of which feature singers, in which Lizst developed the symphonic poem.

  Schumann, on the other hand, believed that instrumental music had not reached its final stage. He believed that with the 9th symphony, Beethoven was reaffirming the genre of the symphony, not rejecting it. Schumann wrote a lot of musicology essays on this, and as his champion, chose Johannes Brahms, who was then a roughly 20-year-old unknown.

  Unsurprisingly, being heralded as a genius and the second coming of Beethoven paralyzed Brahms. Like you said, it took him twenty years (!) to write his first symphony, during which time he wrote a lot of other stuff like his first piano concerto, fell in love with Clara Schumann, and had his abilities attacked as hopelessly old-fashioned by the Wagner school. He went through a lot of drafts of the symphony before finally producing what we know today.

  The symphony is sometimes called “Beethoven’s Tenth” because of the similarities between it and the 9th, which Brahms said were conscious homage. What he’s doing in the 4th movement (by the way, the shift in weight from the first movement to the fourth movement is really interesting to track through the classical / romantic period) is asserting that instrumental music is complete in itself, without the trappings of instruments and spectacle. After an uncertain, though gorgeous, beginning, where the orchestra seems to be wandering lost without purpose, the problem is confronted with the alpine theme in the horns, which gives us our first inkling of direction. Note that this is a distinctly instrumental theme, not vocal, based on the horn calls of shepherds in the alps or something like that. Finally, about 5-6 minutes in, we get the famous theme that’s clearly based on the Ode to Joy. Unlike Beethoven, though, Brahms does NOT include vocal forces or use variations; instead, he takes it through all sorts of developments, as if to say “look what I can do with my instruments.” This is a clear rebuttal to the Wagnerians’ claims that the symphony is dead, or that there’s nothing left to do after Beethoven, and the classic instrumental, not vocal, technique of development drives the point home. The symphony was a long wait, but in my opinion, the final product is worth it.

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  14.1.1

  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 11:14

  Apparently, when a friend pointed out the similarities between the themes, Brahms retorted ‘Any fool can see that!’

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  14.1.1.1

  Choklit Orange

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 12:38

  My mom wrote me a short story in which this happens.

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  14.1.1.1.1

  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 12:59

  Oh, what was its premise?

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  Agent Lightning

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 10:32

  Agent Lightning’s Life Update:
  School: New semester, I’m taking all new classes except for band. I’m enjoying geometry a lot better than algebra.
  Music: I’m playing trombone in concert band now because I was previously playing tenor sax and we only have one and a half trombones. So welcome to the brass side, Al. We have too many saxes and not enough trombones in jazz band, too, so I had to switch there. Which is sad because I like jazz sax but oh well. It lets me hang out with trombonist friends. I’m also tutoring two sixth graders: one on alto sax and one on trombone. And I’m taking tenor sax lessons with a senior at my school.
  Friends: My girl friends are being particularly antagonistic towards my guy friends, who are confused as heck as to why. I am coping by being super chill and not caring. Because I’d hate to be caught in the middle of another stupid teen drama because those were just awful. Blugh. *brain bleach*
  Family:uh, same as ever, I guess. My sister’s learning tuba which makes me happy .
  Recreational Silliness: I caught up on Homestuck last night and await another update. The sixth grader I tutor in sax is a Homestuck. And my sisters are huge ATLA fangirls.
  Okay, life update over.

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  Jadestone

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 10:48

  rigue;fdswk’lkmearg

  I don’t know where I’m going with my liiiife

  I’m working on applying for internships. I have 37 different tabs of different places and programs and stuff open, and it’s really overwhelming.

  Like, I love science. A lot. I think about it and I it’s just like, wow, there are people who spend most of the day researching very specific or very broad topics, and because they are we know so much more about things! You can look up almost any animal or vegetable or rock and there will be information on it because at one point someone or several someones spent time figuring out things about it. And then they put that information out there so EVERYONE who wanted to know it could. And there’s people who get to do that every day! And I want to be part of that, I do.

  But it’s really hard to get there. I’m not even trying for grad school right now (I will need to but I am waiting to panic about that until next summer because I cannot handle thinking about it right now), just internships, and I probably won’t get any of them. There’s things that are so cool but it’s the eternal “you need experience to get experience” loop and just uhiebdjskn’erabjnfsdkaf n

  

  But even beyond that, everything is so specific and I don’t know how to choose. It seems like for a lot of scientists, what they go to school for/who they do research under in grad school determines what they spend the rest of their career focussing on. Not down to the last detail, of course, but I’m just so interested in too many things I get freaked out thinking about having to decide on something. I want to learn more about reptiles! And marine life! And coral! And volcanoes! And paleontology! And the devonian! And plants! And colonial insects! And amphibians! And plate tectonics! And sediment/ice core reconstruction of past climates! And deep-sea life! And squid! And planetary geology! And Antarctica (although there are no (northern hemisphere) summer internship opportunities there that I could find, sadly)!

  And I don’t know how to narrow that down? I read something and it’s like, “oh man, yeah, I could spend a few months/years researching that, I bet it’d be really interesting!” But then I see another topic and it’s so far away from the first it’d be really hard to actually be able to do both.

  And then I start worrying that, if by some miracle I get an internship at all, that even that subject matter is so important because it would probably be my strongest application material for grad schools when looking for someone to work under, to show I have any experience in the subject. Because so far I don’t have anything.

  and just

  euraignjfksk’ewiturq3neagl;j

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  Bibliophile

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 13:37

  What you study in grad school doesn’t always have to determine what you study later. The person who went to Africa and studied elephants and found out about how they use their toenails to communicate through vibrations was an entomologist by training. Granted, according to her book, that may be partly because they don’t pay as much attention to that sort of thing in Africa.
  This is a question that could be entirely pointless, because you know way more about all of this than I do and probably have thought about anything I can come up with, but if you studied something really broad in grad school that could connect various disciplines, like ecology or even just general biology, would that possibly make it easier to avoid overspecialization?
  If you’re worried about the “You have to have experience to get experience” loop… I don’t really have any idea what would work and what wouldn’t, and what you’ve considered and what you haven’t, but what if you started with something that accepts absolutely anyone, like, say, Earthwatch? Would that make you a likelier candidate for the competitive programs you’re looking at? I have no idea, so sorry if I’m just giving useless suggestions, but throwing ideas around isn’t going to hurt.
  Regardless of whether any of that is even slightly helpful, I’m sorry you’re in that situation, because it sounds quite frustrating.

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  16.1.1

  Lizzie

  in February 4th, 2013 @ 10:42

  Studying something broad in grad school seems like a bad idea – the point of grad school is to gain really indepth knowledge in a specific topic, and it’s hard to do that if your area is overbroad.

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  Bibliophile

  in February 4th, 2013 @ 11:52

  Okay, I’ll take your word for it. *is really not knowledgeable about these things at all*

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  16.2

  Cello-Playing Mathematician (AKA Kyra)

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 21:35

  I’m in the “applying for internships” bog, too… I really hope it works out for you!

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  16.3

  Paul Baker (Administrator)

  in February 4th, 2013 @ 06:10

  This just means you’re one of us eclectics. We want to do everything, and know everything, NOW. But you have the advantage of youth, so you can change direction. Try to focus on what grabs you most (even if “most” is pretty marginal), and aim roughly at that to start with. You seem to be gravitating generally towards aquatic biology. If you can get an internship in that general area, you’ll probably have a fascinating and inspiring time, and maybe acquire a clearer focus. Maybe. I started off with the intention of doing something in electronics, and ended up dressing in Tudor costumes, playing hurdy-gurdy, writing articles for MUSE, and building barrel organs. Next year I might farm ostriches, or apply for a job as a lumberjack. I still don’t know what I really want to do, but it hardly matters. Life is good.

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 4th, 2013 @ 10:33

  It sounds as if Jadestone and other MBers could use a quick Introduction to World Domination. I’m at work and won’t be able to post any advice until later, but I’ll be happy to create a special thread for the purpose.

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  Jadestone

  in February 4th, 2013 @ 12:44

  Thanks Paul Eclectic indeed. It took me ages and ages to even decided that I wanted to major in the sciences (literally until right before I came to college), and I thought for a while I’d be free of having to make that sort of life-directig decision again. Thankfully the fields within biology/geology are hopefully more malleable than the bridge between, say, a biology major and an english major.

  And Robert, that would be wonderful if you have the time

  Bibliophile: I guess the thing for me is that I think I want to do research, which means I should try to work under an advisor doing research in grad school. And based on what you do there/who your advisor is (for post-grad too), that’s what you learn to do and the field you make contacts in. So you’re not necessarily committed to staying in that particular subject, but it’s easiest to continue on through it, because you have experience in it already/are familiar with the subject matter and thus more likely to get positions/funding related to it.

  been reading REU descriptions all afternoon x_x Don’t get me wrong, some are really cool, but rbekjswae talking about myself. At least one prof has said they’ll be a reference for me though so hooray

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  16.3.3

  Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

  in February 4th, 2013 @ 15:11

  My friend who got her masters in particle physics doing research at CERN decided she was too extroverted for the lab life, eventually became CEO of her own software company, now runs a winery in California, and is on the board of the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce (and somehow managed to raise one of her kids mostly in Sweden and one mostly in the U.S.). Sometimes it seems hardly anyone I know ended up with a career in their major field. For that matter, a lot of their jobs didn’t even exist when they graduated — that may be even more true of your generation. What you choose to pursue now will not likely lock you down even if you want it to.

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  the person that is very fond of guavas

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 15:50

  This was a popular idea on the last thread, so I bumped it over to February. Pending is still open!

  1~
  Kokopelli – High Priest/Priestess Pending: Castle.(1) CPM(1), the Guavalover(1),
  …………….Priests/Priestesses: Selenium,
  .
  Aeiou – High Priest/Priestess Pending: TMFA (really not sure) (1?), the Guavalover(1)
  …………….Priests/Priestesses: Selenium, CPM,
  .
  Mimi – High Priest/Priestess Pending:
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:
  .
  Pwt – High Priest/Priestess Pending: Little Basement Kitten, Koppar,
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:
  .
  Crraw – High Priest/Priestess/Pope Pending: Bookgirl_me(2), Oxlin (confused)(1),
  …………….Priests/Priestesses :the Guavalover, Cskia,
  .
  Chad – High Priest/Priestess Pending: Choklit(1), Oxlin(1)
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:
  .
  Feather – High Priest/Priestess Pending: Castle, CPM
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:
  .
  Urania – High Priest/Priestess Pending: KaiYves ( not sure)(3), Selenium(1),
  …………….Priests/Priestesses: Biblophile,
  .
  Bo – High Priest/Priestess Pending: Randomosity101(3), Selenium(1), the Guavalover(1),
  …………….Priests/Priestesses: Biblophile,
  .
  2~
  Devil (Kokopelli’s dog) – High Priest/Priestess Pending: Castle
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:

  3~
  Giant Space Squids – High Priestess: Jadestone
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:
  .
  Tardigrades – High Priestess: Bibliophile
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:

  4~
  Ordinary Space Cephalopods – High Priest/Priestess Pending: Choklit(1), Cskia(4)
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:

  5~
  Mini Space Cephalopods – High Priest/Priestess Pending: Oxlin,
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:

  6
  Aquatic Cephalopods – High Priest/Priestess Pending: POSOC
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:

  not done!

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  17.1

  oxlin

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 20:56

  Why does it say confused next to my name under Crraw?

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  the person that is very fond of guavas

  in February 4th, 2013 @ 09:28

  I wasn’t sure whether to put you in under the preist(ess) or High Priest(ess) category.
  *squids*

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  Choklit Orange

  in February 3rd, 2013 @ 23:47

  I just wrote a story in which my math teacher attacks angels with her perfectly hyperbola-shaped bat’leth.

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  KaiYves

  in February 4th, 2013 @ 16:34

  Angels or angles? (Rouge angles of satin…)

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  Choklit Orange

  in February 4th, 2013 @ 17:54

  Angels, as in the big feathery things, but mostly so I can use the phrase “feathers fluttered through the air, and a mist of the tears of math students cast a rainbow on the ground.”

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  KaiYves

  in February 4th, 2013 @ 18:28

  Right, I just wanted to be sure– you did say it was math-themed.

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  KaiYves

  in February 4th, 2013 @ 08:22

  Wait, Kai D and I have similar usernames AND the same birthday? That’s uncanny…

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  Jadestone

  in February 4th, 2013 @ 16:24

  In an unexpectedbut probably not unpredictable turn of events, I am taking a break from internship stuff and teaching myself to contact juggle.

  If you’ve never seen contact juggling, I’d reccomend looking on youtube for the video “Japanese Crystal Ball Performer (Contact Juggling)”

  He is much better at it than I probably ever will be, but it gives you an idea about what it is. I’m using an orange to learn. It’s fun! I’m hoping I’ll pick it up more like I picked up poi (ie: fast) rather than normal-juggling (ie: still trying to learn)

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  Jadestone

  in February 4th, 2013 @ 19:54

  well I don’t have an internship yet but I can do two tricks with both hands, and I also did make a list of my relevant skills/classes (although word does not like the idea of copypasting my transcript still)

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  KaiYves

  in February 4th, 2013 @ 16:58

  Today I talked to my professor about choosing a topic for my “Contested Past” essay (about ethical issues involving cultural heritage, it’s a great class), and I said I wanted to write about a topic I already was somewhat familiar with– the salvage of the Atocha.

  He asked me how I was familiar with the Atocha, and I wasn’t sure what to say.

  I mean, the first place I ever heard of it was that Gail Gibbons book “Sunken Treasure” which was in second grade or thereabouts, then there was Gordon Korman’s “Dive” series when I was ten, and “Gold and Silver, Silver and Gold around the same time, and it was on my National Geographic map of great archeological discoveries and there was a documentary about it on History International at least once… All of that’s even before I was into archeology.

  I mean, it’s the richest shipwreck ever discovered, it’s kind of something that’s out there and that people know about, right?

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  Bibliophile

  in February 5th, 2013 @ 18:04

  I… don’t think it is. At least… well, I’ve, um, *cough* never heard of it, although it seems I should have.

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  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in February 4th, 2013 @ 17:22

  Today I travelled to Oxfordshire with three others from my school to participate in a Schools’ Challenge quiz/general knowledge competition. We beat two other schools in the first round and made it to the semis but lost to the speedy buzzing of Abingdon.

  It was lots of fun, but I am a bit annoyed that for a question asking what NASA stood for I gave ‘National Aeronautics and Space Administration’ as the answer – and was told it was wrong. Instead the ‘correct’ answer was supposedly North American Space Agency…argh. Other than that, though, it was great fun and I’d do it again.

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  22.1

  KaiYves

  in February 4th, 2013 @ 18:36

  That’s the same mistake that appeared in “The Marvel Chronicle”– maybe the quiz designers and authors saw the same wrong source.

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  22.1.1

  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in February 5th, 2013 @ 10:02

  I don’t know. I wanted to challenge it – maybe I should have – but it doesn’t matter a huge amount.

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  22.1.1.1

  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 5th, 2013 @ 18:06

  Too bad. Demonstrating that you’re right and the “official” answer is wrong is one of life’s rarest pleasures.

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  22.1.1.1.1

  Bibliophile

  in February 5th, 2013 @ 21:40

  It depends. I have a tendency to sound rude when I do it even though it’s never been my intention at all, which gets to be frustrating, so when I correct authority I have to focus on my tone and so on so much that the fun can be taken out of (but it’s worse than when my behavior is interpreted as rude when that wasn’t what I wanted at all, so it is worth the effort).
  Also, while it can be empowering to know things that the providers of official answers don’t, it can alternatively lead to exasperation that they don’t check their facts more.

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  23

  Lizzie

  in February 4th, 2013 @ 17:37

  Today I led a clarinet sectional at a local (inner-city) high school without knowing anything about how the clarinet works, or really wind instruments in general. It actually went surprisingly well – I think it’s because I’ve been doing so many string sectionals at another high school (volunteering there weekly / biweekly for three years now) that I’ve kind of figured out how to manage it, and I overheard one of my clarinetists being all excited to the band director afterwards about how he could actually play this one part now she’s a great teacher etc which was nice. I wish that I could have helped them more with technical stuff, but I’m pretty proud of what I did get done… and I even had fun doing it (we were doing the batman theme, so I had them count the rhythm in the style of Batman.. that sort of thing)

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  24

  Cello-Playing Mathematician (AKA Kyra)

  in February 5th, 2013 @ 01:31

  *finishes problem set that took way longer than expected*

  *blasts “Robots FTW” for the whole lounge to hear out of sheer joy*

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  24.1

  KaiYves

  in February 5th, 2013 @ 08:18

  For me yesterday it was “Great Southern Land” and “You Are A Pirate”.

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  25

  *Cskia

  in February 5th, 2013 @ 02:23

  The moment when you’re performing for your family (since allllllll the relatives are here!) and enter the room in a wig

  and suddenly the wig catches on the nearest clothes hanger

  and goes flying off

  …

  Embarrassing? Yeah.

  Memorable? You bet.

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  26

  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in February 5th, 2013 @ 15:17

  The House of Commons has voted in favour of the same-sex marriage bill! I only wish so many Tory MPs hadn’t voted against. It goes to show, I suppose, that you can never really find a party whose general ideas match yours exactly.

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  27

  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in February 5th, 2013 @ 16:53

  I thought I saw that my most recent post on here had been moderated. Has it disappeared? Perhaps I’m wrong, though.

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  27.1

  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in February 5th, 2013 @ 17:40

  Well, that’s awkward. I swear it had gone, though. Never mind.

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  27.1.1

  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 5th, 2013 @ 17:43

  It did go through — to the spam filter, whence I retrieved it.

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  27.1.1.1

  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in February 5th, 2013 @ 18:04

  Oh. Thanks! I wonder why it would have been picked up by the spam filter; I didn’t think it seemed a particularly harmful post.

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  28

  Lizzie

  in February 5th, 2013 @ 19:30

  Question for the folk musicians on here: I want to get myself a mandolin as a graduation present. Can anyone recommend a brand?

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  28.1

  Jadestone

  in February 5th, 2013 @ 19:56

  I’ll ask my folk-music friend what he has to say about it (not a conservatory student, just very enthusiastic), I know he has at least one mandolin and his dad probably has several, amongst their many guitars and bouzoukis (did… I really just spell that right on the first try… wow he is rubbing off on me)

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  28.2

  Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

  in February 6th, 2013 @ 00:30

  I’ve passed your question along to a friend who should know about these things. Will report back.

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  28.2.1

  Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

  in February 6th, 2013 @ 00:38

  And here’s what I got back:

  1.) what is her budget?
  2.) what type of music does she want to play?
  (bluegrass. folk, celtic, general usage…)
  3.) does she have a preference as to an A style or F style mandolin?
  4.) does she want ornamentation (ie a good looking, flashy mandolin with lots of inlay work) or would she rather put the money into a plain looking mando with really good wood and construction?
  5.) do i need to explain the difference between A and F style mandos and talk about what wood to look for or does she just want some general advice? (education vs. advice.)
  that’ll get us started pretty well…

  [Since you probably don’t want to discuss budget here, either just give a general indication or else send me a message.]

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  Lizzie

  in February 6th, 2013 @ 06:15

  1. This is a very secondary instrument and I’m a college student. I’d probably be willing to go to about $200 more or less.
  2. Folk, mainly, or general usage? I’m mostly hoping for a guitar-type thing where I don’t have to relearn where to put my fingers.
  3. I have no idea what that means.
  4. Plain looking, care more about sound / playability than looks.
  5. Education would be great!

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  28.2.1.1.1

  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 6th, 2013 @ 06:28

  Go to a music store, try a few flat-backed mandolins in your price range, and pick the one you like best. They’re tuned just like violins, so you should have no trouble playing melodies. Most of the main guitar makers (Fender, Ibanez, Epiphone, Ovation, etc.) make decent mandolins, and the price ceiling will place useful limits on your range of choices. Don’t worry about technicalities like A- vs F-style — folk and bluegrass musicians play both, and you can always switch or trade up later if you become more particular.

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 6th, 2013 @ 09:03

  P.S. Here’s a rule of thumb I often use when I’m shopping for something on a low budget with little information: Don’t buy the cheapest model; buy the next one up. It works surprisingly well. There’s a big difference in quality between the bottom of the line and the low mid-range for a wide variety of items.

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  Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

  in February 6th, 2013 @ 12:57

  Here’s the info:
  
  F styles have a generally more muted tone as they are used for the distinctive back beat of bluegrass music and are primarily considered BG mandos and known for their “chunk” sound. A styles are generally a little brighter/fuller toned and used for general music, tho once you get into the high end of these instruments their tones match very closely.

  I don’t ever recommend buying an instrument without first playing it, but if she really just wants an entry level “don’t wanna risk any money until i see if I can DO this instrument,” I’d say order the 59 dollar mando and see if she likes it and then spend some money and get a good one. Problem with that is you just threw away almost a hundred bucks (tax, plus shipping etc.) If she plays violin she will find the chording and noting exceptionally easy but will have a bit of a challenge using a pick and strumming instead of bowing, but every fiddle/violin player I know moved to mando with relative ease, and fairly quickly.

  If she opts to try to find a good one, she is going to have to do a lot of leg work to find something she likes by haunting the local music stores and perhaps posting an ad on craig’s list or her school newspaper. To that end, I would urge her to trust her ear. If she finds an instrument that sounds and feels good to her, I’d get it regardless of model and to some extent wood. For two hundred bucks you are not going to get a great instrument or even a good instrument, but you might find one that suits what you hear in your head that will work for now, particularly if you look at used models.

  Ideally, as with a violin, you want a maple body with either a maple or sitka spruce top, but for 200 bucks she is probably going to have to settle for plywood sides and/or body and maybe get lucky and find one with a good top.

  John also pointed that with your background you might find some frustration with performance and tone of an instrument in that price range. But if you know that up front, maybe it won’t be a problem. He also sent links to musiciansfriend . com to illustrate the visual difference between A and F style mandolins. It might be a useful site just for looking around to see what’s out there. Good luck with your search!
  

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  Lizzie

  in February 7th, 2013 @ 20:12

  Thanks for the advice, Robert and Rebecca! I’ve been browsing craigslist, but with limited luck so far (a mandolin for $5000, cash only? no thanks…) I’m kind of embarrassed to admit that I have no idea where the music stores are in Cleveland, but google and bribery of friends with cars should help fix that.

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  Bibliophile

  in February 6th, 2013 @ 10:17

  …I got two hours of sleep last night, max. Ostensibly because I was doing homework, but of course, it has more to do with how distracted I was and the fact that I wasn’t willing to give up on my eventually doing homework and yet still continuing to just sit and read fanfiction and TV Tropes and watch musicals in my head (since I still don’t have new headphones yet).
  And I’m functioning pretty well.
  That scares me. Not the fact that I can do it (it’s a useful skill to have), but the fact that I now know I’m capable of doing that. I do not want to take advantage of this in the future. I really, really don’t. And knowing me, I’m sure I will.
  Oops.

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  29.1

  Bibliophile

  in February 6th, 2013 @ 19:02

  Edit: I can function really well without sleep, in that I can eat and read fanfiction and do homework. However, I can’t say it hasn’t had any major effect on me. While I’m not walking around as one zombified, I do seem to be acting rather like an extremely geeky version of Pinkie Pie (ordinarily, I’m much closer to Twilight Sparkle or sometimes Fluttershy). I certainly have spurts of this normally, but they generally last a few hours at most. I’ve been like this all day, except for the brief period when I was really upset.
  It’s actually rather fun, but I think I may be annoying some other people with it, so I do plan to get some sleep, if possible. Also, it’s harder for me to control my voice, which is a problem, since it’s never been the easiest thing for me to begin with.

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  Choklit Orange

  in February 6th, 2013 @ 21:41

  Welcome to high school. I predict that you will be doing this a lot.

  Sleep deprivation has a big effect on me, actually, which is definitely a problem. This semester of sophomore year, especially, has turned out to be very stressful, and things won’t calm down for another week or so. I can stay up all night once or twice a week and still be my somewhat-distracted-but-mostly-energetic self, but I haven’t gotten to bed before midnight or 1a.m. for weeks, and because it takes me a long time to get to sleep, I don’t usually get more than four or five hours a night.

  Anyway, I usually turn into a semi-zombie and wander around in a haze of exhaustion (sometimes a literal haze, because focusing one’s eyes takes EFFORT). And then I alternate between being really engaged in activities and completely zoned-out- and between being fairly chipper when I’m with my friends, and a total monster (I am normally kind of quiet and polite at school, so this is unnerving a lot of people, myself included).

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  TNÖ

  in February 6th, 2013 @ 11:04

  Aaaaand block break. Thank god. I’m going to go sleep for four days straight.

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  31

  Groundhog

  in February 6th, 2013 @ 11:14

  My grandfather just sent me a DVD course on images from the Hubble Space Telescope. I’m already mesmerized by the pictures on the cover of the box.

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  31.1

  KaiYves

  in February 6th, 2013 @ 17:55

  Rockin’!

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  32

  LittleBasementKitten

  in February 6th, 2013 @ 14:06

  Haven’t posted on here for awhile, but I don’t really have anything new to say. I’m tired, more than usual recently. Course selection is happening in my school. Don’t really have anything to read anymore. I’ve gotten back into Skyrim, and beat both the Dawnguard and Dragonborn main questlines.

  So overall, life could be worse, but it could also be better.

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  Randomosity101

  in February 6th, 2013 @ 17:13

  Sorry it took me so long to repost this, but here again is the pantheon so far (thanks Guavalover for your own posting of it). Remember, pending means it’s still open, the numbers next to the names are how many votes that person got, and I’m still accepting claims and nominations for High Priest/Priestesshood. “Nominations” lists those that have not specifically been accepted by the nominee. I think I’ll close the first round of voting some time next week, so please cast your votes ASAP.

  Claims:
  1~
  Kokopelli – High Priest/Priestess Pending: Castle (1), The Guavalover (1), The Cello-Playing Mathematician (1),
  …………….Priests/Priestesses: Selenium
  Aeiou – High Priest/Priestess Pending:
  …………….Priests/Priestesses: Selenium
  Mimi – High Priest/Priestess Pending:
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:
  Pwt – High Priest/Priestess Pending: Little Basement Kitten (1),
  …………….Priests/Priestesses: Koppar
  Crraw – High Priest/Priestess Pending: bookgirl_me (2), oxlin (1),
  …………….Priests/Priestesses: Cskia
  Chad – High Priest/Priestess Pending:
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:
  Feather – High Priest/Priestess Pending:
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:
  Urania – High Priest/Priestess Pending: KaiYves (3),
  …………….Priests/Priestesses: Bibliophile, Selenium
  Bo – High Priest/Priestess Pending: Randomosity101 (3),
  …………….Priests/Priestesses: Bibliophile, Selenium
  2~
  Devil (Kokopelli’s dog) – High Priest/Priestess Pending:
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:
  3~
  Giant Space Squids – High Priestess: Jadestone
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:
  Tardigrades – High Priestess: Bibliophile
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:
  4~
  Ordinary Space Cephalopods – High Priest/Priestess Pending: Choklit Orange (1), Cskia (4),
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:
  5~
  Mini Space Cephalopods – High Priest/Priestess Pending:
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:
  6
  Aquatic Cephalopods – High Priest/Priestess Pending: POSOC (2),
  …………….Priests/Priestesses: Jadestone

  Nominations:
  The Man For Aeiou – Aeiou (2)

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  Bibliophile

  in February 6th, 2013 @ 17:53

  How will you determine when the voting will end? Is there a deadline, or are we waiting until each deity has certain number of votes, or is there some other criterion entirely, or have you not decided yet? I think that if criteria aren’t set for when to stop this round, then it might take longer than any of us intend.
  Anyway, I think I should probably vote for a Kokopelli. I was reluctant because it’s extremely difficult, but, um… guavalover, I… guess. /indecisiveness/ *has a whole chart in head of preferences that includes some people as their secondary choices, which is influencing me*
  (Also, I feel like mentioning the fact that I’ve started a TV Tropes Character Sheet for my alter-ego the tardigrade high priestess, just because I enjoy that sort of thing).

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  Randomosity101

  in February 7th, 2013 @ 16:15

  The criteria are:
  1) When voting slows to a stop (which it pretty much already has).
  2) When I have the time to post another full update (which will be Sunday at the earliest).

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  oxlin

  in February 6th, 2013 @ 23:00

  My list for the high ones is now:
  1) still Crraw
  2) Pwt
  3) Mini Space Squids
  4) Chad

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  33.3

  the person that is very fond of guavas

  in February 9th, 2013 @ 10:27

  I wouldn’t mind being a High Preistess of Aeiou.

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  Bibliophile

  in February 9th, 2013 @ 16:14

  There’s only one High Priestess per deity, and each person can only be the High Priestess of one deity. You already said you wanted to be the High Priestess of Kokopelli, and so far, you have the most votes. Did you change your mind?

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  the Guavalover

  in February 9th, 2013 @ 20:47

  *nods* I would prefer Kokopelli more. Just In case.

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  Agent Lightning

  in February 6th, 2013 @ 18:16

  New update: I went to one of my school’s GSA meetings and the next day the GSA video got shown to the whole school and it was amazing. And then at lunch they had a petition to stop hate and little rainbow ribbons and I pinned one to my backpack. It was awesome!
  (begin rant)On a similar note, I am having the most hardcore debate with my homophobic acquaintance ever. If this thing were a publicized event, I would never have to work and I’d live in a mansion from the ticket sales, if we split them fifty fifty! Seriously. This thing is intense, and his closemindedness is making me so worked up that I’m having to use exclamation points and smiley faces in a friendly outlet to take out my anger!

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  Choklit Orange

  in February 6th, 2013 @ 19:24

  I think life would be a lot less stressful if we all had cuddly pet giraffes.

  (The miniature kind, of course.)

  Just imagine, you have a lousy day at school and a million assignments, you find yourself screaming at people in orchestra, you discover that you forgot your lunch at home and must subsist off of a tangerine- and then you come home and throw down your backpack and there’s a six-foot-tall giraffe waiting to give you a giraffe-hug and be your cuddly, warm pillow-friend while you read King Lear.

  (Lear could really have used a giraffe friend.)

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  35.1

  Paul Baker (Administrator)

  in February 8th, 2013 @ 06:44

  Only on Museblog could one find a phrase like “Lear could really have used a giraffe friend”.
  *Happy chuckle*

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  KaiYves

  in February 9th, 2013 @ 15:36

  I think it was two summers ago that I was walking with my mom in Southampton and saw a big stuffed giraffe (maybe it was six feet tall, it was a little taller than me and I’m about five feet tall exactly) outside of a toy store. The tag attached to it said “Cute and Lovable!”, so I walked over and hugged it around the neck.

  “I wanted to make sure I didn’t have to report them for false advertising.” I told her.

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  Cat's Eye

  in February 6th, 2013 @ 19:47

  Weirdly coincidental with AL’s post, but– today at our school we had Ally Day! It was great! We (the QSA) had made a big poster that said “As an ally, I pledge to…” and then had a list of things to do that make you a good ally. During lunch, people came up and signed the poster, and we gave them rainbow ribbons. We got a lot of signatures, it was incredible!

  We also put out a “climate survey” in English classrooms, to get an idea of what the climate is like for LGBT kids at our school. We won’t get the official results back for a while, but from just glancing through, there have been some really interesting answers. A lot of kids say that the reason so few people are out at my school is because we’ve all known each other since sixth grade; a lot of others say it’s because our community is so invested in being constantly “normal” that people are afraid to break away from the status quo, because they’ll be judged.

  There were also some very, very disappointing answers on the climate survey; one person said he thought everyone who wanted to come out would come out, because “people like attention”, a few more said that “gay kids shouldn’t get special treatment so pipe the [self-snip] down”, and one person even said that “God made men for women, not men for men or women for women”, which is pretty surprising to find in one of the most liberal parts of the Bay Area.

  But, overall, a good day, and a good campaign! I’m very proud of my QSA.

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  37

  bookgirl_me (Diving is Magic!)

  in February 7th, 2013 @ 09:21

  *pops in* OMG the awesomeness! Wreck diving is too flammy for words, especially freighters. And a 12 foot manta ray, and Napoleonfish and a shark (which saw me and fled), and my first 100+ft dive, and and and *words fail*

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  KaiYves

  in February 7th, 2013 @ 14:11

  Awesome! I wish I was there with you (and not here in a cold city preparing for a Big Scary Blizzard.)

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  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in February 7th, 2013 @ 15:54

  It all sounds absolutely fantastic, bookgirl. When are you are restored to stable internet access you must tell us all about it in detail!

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  the person that is very fond of guavas

  in February 9th, 2013 @ 10:30

  My Little Napoleonfish: Wreck Diving Is Magic!
  * how curious, words do fail*

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  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in February 7th, 2013 @ 15:35

  Now that my French lesson has been moved earlier on Mondays, so at long last I am free to join choral group.

  At the next rehearsal I will discover whether I am a soprano or an alto. (My singing voice is nothing special but I can sight-sing well.)

  At the end of term (March) we will perform Bach’s St John Passion – at and with Eton!

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  KaiYves

  in February 7th, 2013 @ 19:16

  I wonder how exactly one applies to become the person who writes headline puns for TIME Magazine? (“Spyfall”, “Game of Drones”, etc.)

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  agrrrfishi

  in February 8th, 2013 @ 12:03

  Fall Out Boy. Tickets. Two tickets. Me and my best friend. May 22nd.

  First of all, I’m still getting over the fact that they reunited, and now I’m going to see them live for the second time. I haven’t been this ecstatic in AGES.

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  Cat's Eye

  in February 8th, 2013 @ 16:17

  Oh my god you don’t even know how envious I am. Please accept all my living-vicariously-through-you-glee.

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  KaiYves

  in February 8th, 2013 @ 18:07

  The snow’s coming down, we didn’t have classes today, so I’m in my dorm reading and drawing. We’re lucky to have laundry rooms, a cafeteria, and a game room in our dorm. (Although there was nobody in the game room to play air hockey or table tennis with today. Maybe tomorrow.)

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  Castle

  in February 8th, 2013 @ 23:38

  I’ve still got my ticket to the Neutral Milk Hotel concert. It was supposed to be tonight but it got postponed to Monday, so I have to wait a few more days. It’s going to be wonderful though, I’m very excited.

  Listened to Fall Out Boy’s new single, having never heard a Fall Out Boy song before (so I’m not going to judge the band as a whole) and thought “Wow, they release this and everyone goes nuts and starts buying tickets? They know how to control their fanbase. This song is nothing to get excited about.”

  So maybe I’m just missing something. I don’t know. Some of their composition is pretty good, I liked the hook and the opening vocal sample bits, but the rest wasn’t very memorable or interesting at all.

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  muselover

  in February 9th, 2013 @ 16:21

  envyenvyenvyenvyenvyjeffmangumenvyenvyenvyenvyenvyenvy

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  muselover

  in February 9th, 2013 @ 16:21

  I DID IT.

  IT TOOK FAR TOO LONG, BUT I FINALLY DID IT.

  I SAW IT.

  AND THAT MOVIE THING THAT ENDED IT.

  AND I CHANGED MY AVATAR ACCORDINGLY.

  AND IT WAS WONDERFUL.

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  KaiYves

  in February 9th, 2013 @ 18:17

  Who is that, Jimmy Smits?

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  Cinnamoon

  in February 9th, 2013 @ 20:01

  Firefly? The picture is pretty small, so I can’t tell… Looks like Jayne from here, though. And yes! FIREFLY!

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  KaiYves

  in February 9th, 2013 @ 16:45

  That moment when you discover that by Kokonvening with your friends at the Air and Space Museum on May 24th, you all stood in the Space Race gallery within 24 hours of Joe Kittinger and Felix Baumgartner, even if you didn’t realize it until months later. (I know this because pictures from their CNN interview session were posted online the same day, even though the interview itself aired a few days later.)

  DUDE, if we had Kokonvened the day before… *mind boggles* At the very least, we could have surreptitiously stood in the background and gotten on CNN… (In the video, there are museum-goers in the background of some of the shots, in others the background is empty so maybe those were filmed after closing– except it’s daytime so maybe they closed the museum early that day to film the interview… yes, I have work I should be doing right now…)

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  Piggy

  in February 9th, 2013 @ 16:51

  I’m officially fully orientated at my new job. Training starts next Tuesday–and, naturally, my boss is on vacation next week. Oh well.

  Today I bought a used motorcycle helmet from a guy off Craigslist. Little beat up, but cheap and he says he’s glad to see it go to someone that’ll use it instead of just let it collect dust. Thus I have my motivation. Once the semester’s over I’ll take the class and get my permit, and by that time I should have enough saved up for my first bike. Nothing big, just something to learn on, 250cc or so. It feels so awesome to have a goal.

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  Piggy

  in February 9th, 2013 @ 17:44

  I have concluded, after reinspection of the helmet and removal and reinstallation of the various pads and linings, that what I originally judged to feel snug but secure is, in fact, decidedly too small. Drat. Ah well, I’ll keep it; if ever I feel confident enough to carry a smaller-headed passenger, I’ll be ready.

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  Jadestone

  in February 9th, 2013 @ 18:03

  Belfast! Northern Ireland! Adventure and fun!

  more tomorrow after I leave, been here since thursday night and it’s been very cool

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  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in February 9th, 2013 @ 18:15

  Happy Chinese New Year!

  Called my parents and sister, at my grandparents’ in Foshan, at midnight (their Sunday morning). I miss being in China for all the festivities.

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  47.1

  KaiYves

  in February 11th, 2013 @ 08:28

  Gung Hay Fat Choy!

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  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in February 11th, 2013 @ 09:48

  恭禧發財！

  The dining room attempted a Chinese meal for lunch today, to celebrate. The effort is appreciated but, to be honest, it couldn’t really compare.

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  Randomosity101

  in February 9th, 2013 @ 19:07

  BRAIN GAME COMPETITION WAS TODAY!

  Woke up this morning feeling terrible. Went to Bojangles (the Brain Game team always meets there before a taping), then to WRAL. Today was the first time I’ve ever actually competed; I’m a sub member, so I only compete in the second half. That’s perfect because the second half is the half with the categories I’m actually good at. I still felt sick in the studio audience, but once I was actually up there answering questions I felt fine. AND IT WAS AWESOME!!!!!!!! If I took everything fun that’s happened so far this school-year and put it all together, it wouldn’t be half as amazing as competing on Brain Game. I won’t say how we did, because I want all my friends on That Other Site to watch it when it airs (I’m going to post a link to the webpage there), and many people on this site are my friends on that one. After it airs, I’ll post how we did here, OK?

  Then I went home and felt even worse than I did this morning. >.> But I’m feeling much better now, or I wouldn’t be online.

  All in all, FANTASTIC day.

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  LittleBasementKitten

  in February 10th, 2013 @ 08:27

  *cheers* Good for you, R101! I’ve done something similar once (we did all right, though I did make one very stupid mistake that still haunts me), and I’m glad you enjoyed yourself and didn’t get sick. *pies*

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  Randomosity101

  in February 10th, 2013 @ 10:08

  Thank you, blog-sister! (I have to admit, I made a pretty stupid mistake too, but I don’t think it would be spoiling much to say that it ended up not being important.)

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  Lizzie

  in February 10th, 2013 @ 10:16

  T-1 week until my first grad school audition, and holy cake I sound awful. Time to record / listen until it approaches some semblance of intune.

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  Dodecahedron

  in February 10th, 2013 @ 12:17

  I recently acquired a pattern for a plush whale (courtesy of Jadestone, thank you ♥)
  and I’m thinking of making a giant one so I can reenact the cover of Apollo 18 (the TMBG album) with my squid and whale

  but I am running out of room on my bed for plush aquatic creatures, because I just /had to/ make a 10 inch long narwhal to test the pattern, and then my boyfriend suggested that the pattern could probably be modified to make a Spheal, so I did…
  also, materials cost is probably $30+ for that much fleece and fiberfill
  also I’m not sure if the pattern scales from 5″ to 5′ very well???

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  Jadestone

  in February 10th, 2013 @ 15:15

  oh my god that would be a lot of material but it would also look pretty awesome that is a TOUGH DECISION

  also I just now saw the Spheal and it is ADORABLE

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  Vendaval

  in February 10th, 2013 @ 13:46

  This is Vendy with your Fact of the Day

  As you might know, the Mars rover Curiosity landed itself on the surface of the red planet without the need for a landing platform. This gave the engineers freedom to design treads on the wheels without having to factor in holes for bolts. So what did they choose?
  . – – –
  . – – .
  . – . .
  … or JPL in Morse code. The engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are at this very moment signing their name across Martian deserts.

  ~The More You Know~

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  Jadestone

  in February 10th, 2013 @ 14:37

  ohhh myyy goddddddsss that is the coolest/most adorable thing aahahah I love them I love space I love SCIENCE

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  KaiYves

  in February 11th, 2013 @ 12:06

  I knew that, but it’s still awesome. J-P-L, J-P-L, J-P-L…

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  Piggy

  in February 11th, 2013 @ 09:52

  Pope Benedict XVI has announced that because of his failing health, he is resigning the papacy and vacating his seat at the end of this month. He is the first pope to resign since Gregory XII in 1415. From the translation of his speech to a consistory of cardinals: “After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry. I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering. However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me. For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter, entrusted to me by the Cardinals on 19 April 2005, in such a way, that as from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours, the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a Conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is.”

  I’m kind of in shock about this. This man has influenced my life enormously. If a different man had been elected in 2005, there’s a very good chance I would not presently intend to become a priest–I might not even be a practicing Catholic right now if it weren’t for what he’s done. I’m just having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of him resigning.

  Back in 2009, there was a sizable earthquake at L’Aquila, and despite the enormous damage to the Basilica Santa Maria di Collemaggio, the remains of Pope St. Celestine V, housed in the basilica, survived totally unscathed. Celestine was another of the few popes to resign, he in 1294. When Benedict XVI visited the destroyed basilica after the earthquake, he took off the wool pallium he had worn at his inauguration and left it on Celestine’s casket. It’s hard to say exactly what Benedict meant by doing this, but…it’s hard not to read into it now that he himself has resigned.

  I probably have more thoughts on this, but I need time to sort them out. It’s all still sort of echoing through my head.

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  KaiYves

  in February 11th, 2013 @ 12:04

  I couldn’t recall reading about any recent Popes who had resigned, but I didn’t know none had since the 1400s… It really is an unusual thing, then, I guess.

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  Dodecahedron

  in February 11th, 2013 @ 19:45

  Why did you find him inspiring?

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  53

  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 11th, 2013 @ 12:30

  Lizzie — I think your comment (not posted) needs the extra insulation of the Hot Topics thread.

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  the person that is very fond of guavas

  in February 11th, 2013 @ 17:45

  May I suggest a thread specifically for facts?

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  54.1

  Vendaval

  in February 11th, 2013 @ 21:53

  The factoids threads got folded into What I Learned Today, the last incarnation of which was founded in 2012.

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  Bibliophile

  in February 11th, 2013 @ 23:24

  The only problem is that sometimes you want to post things you’d learned previously…

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  Errata

  in February 11th, 2013 @ 22:29

  Hey, everyone.

  I’m not really sure how many of you remember me. I’ve accepted the idea that I’m not especially memorable, and I’ve been gone for a year besides. Still, I wanted to give you guys an update on how I’ve been.

  The last year and a half has been really tough. I intend to tell you all about it at some point, but not right now. Right now, I just want to say that everything is finally going well again. I sorted out my problems and school’s fallen into place again and I actually have a bit of a social circle. I’m writing again and I’ve taken up drawing. Stuff is working out.

  This post is a bit rambly. I suppose life updates tend to be?

  Anyway, it’s really good to be back again. Not sure what it is about MuseBlog that makes it so awesome, but I can never find anything like it elsewhere on the ‘net.

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  55.1

  LittleBasementKitten

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 04:44

  Hi Errata! I’m still here, and I remember you! Glad to hear life is looking good for you.

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  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 07:41

  Hello Errata – don’t be silly, you are memorable, I’m sure lots of us remember you! I am glad to hear that everything is going well for you now. Hope you stick around!

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  Cat's Eye

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 08:53

  Hey, Errata! I remember you, and sure you’re memorable! What’s up, what’s going on? *chinhands*

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  Jadestone

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 10:08

  Heya! Nice to see you around again!

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  55.5

  the person who is very fond of guavas is using the anonymous email!

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 10:48

  Hi! I’m sort of new here, so I likely don’t remember you. Welcome back!

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  Errata

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 19:13

  I don’t think you possible could, no. I’ve been lurking long enough to know you, but I haven’t posted anything substantial.

  Nice to officially meet you!

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  55.6

  oxlin

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 12:09

  Hi Errata! I remember you and am glad to see you back!

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  FantasyFan?!?!

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 16:09

  I remember you. Musebloggers have a long memory! And yes, we are completely and utterly unique.

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  55.8

  Randomosity101

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 16:12

  ERRATA!!!

  Ahem. I’m very glad stuff is working out. I missed seeing you ’round the blog!

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  55.9

  Choklit Orange

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 18:01

  Errata! *glomps* Very, very nice to see you again.

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  Bibliophile

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 18:22

  Errata! Hi! It’s really good to hear from you again, and I’m glad things are falling into place.

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  Errata

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 19:10

  Okay, so the universe and sheer Muserliness has proved me wrong. Thank you. Virtual hugs to all.

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  55.11.1

  Cerulean Pyros

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 20:18

  Errata! I–oh, hello! I was just thinking about you when I saw this!

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  Errata

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 21:57

  Clearly, this was fate. Or coincidence.

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  Agent Lightning

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 20:26

  Hi, Errata! *glomps* Good to have you back!

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  55.12

  Castle

  in February 26th, 2013 @ 22:56

  Have you actually been gone for a year?
  I was just about to say “don’t be silly, you’ve been out for like a month”.

  We just have long memories maybe.

  It’s nice to see you!

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  Errata

  in February 27th, 2013 @ 19:26

  More or less. I stopped posting sometime in November or December, back in 2011. I did come back a couple times, but overall I’ve been gone.

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  FantasyFan?!?!

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 16:34

  What I needed to do last night: homework
  What I did last night: looked at fanart
  What I did when I realized that it was 2 am and I still hadn’t gotten anything done: Blocked all the fun sites from my computer.

  Now I am being horribly productive by going on Museblog. Clearly this is the best use of my time. I think I might be studying abroad if I can next fall, and I’m making an appointment to meet with a program advisor, and I also need to go search up internships and REUs quick before it’s too late. Also all the regular, day-to-day homework.

  I have eight and 1/2 hours before the block stops. Let’s see how productive I can be.

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  KaiYves

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 16:54

  *friendly yet firm*

  Get to work!

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  FantasyFan?!?!

  in February 14th, 2013 @ 00:53

  OK. Well, I managed to get what was due today done yesterday, and tonight I scheduled the appointment was scheduled for tomorrow. I expect that shortly after I’ll send off the applicationspend hours agonizing over the content and send it off at two in the morning. Finished taking online chemistry assessment. I’ve done some of the problems for the next Chem assignment and some of the Spanish ones. At least there’s less of that than last week.

  Obviously this makes no dent in my homework at all, because I have an exam, a paper, and statistics due next week.

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  Randomosity101

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 18:58

  OK, the first round of voting is officially CLOSED! Everyone who didn’t get their first choice was automatically put into their second choice for the next run of votes – except oxlin. Sorry, but both your first and second choices were taken in preliminary voting, so you’re in line for you third choice. On the other hand, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get it unless someone else stakes a claim at this point, and even then you might.

  I do encourage more people to stake claims and make nominations. Remember to vote for the people who are still in the pending slots (even though none of them currently have competition, I’m hoping more people stake claims)!

  Claims:
  1~
  Kokopelli – High Priest/Priestess: The Guavalover
  …………….Priests/Priestesses: Selenium
  Aeiou – High Priest/Priestess Pending: The Cello-Playing Mathematician
  …………….Priests/Priestesses: Selenium
  Mimi – High Priest/Priestess Pending:
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:
  Pwt – High Priest/Priestess: Little Basement Kitten
  …………….Priests/Priestesses: Koppar
  Crraw – High Priest/Priestess: bookgirl_me
  …………….Priests/Priestesses: Cskia
  Chad – High Priest/Priestess Pending: Choklit Orange
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:
  Feather – High Priest/Priestess Pending:
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:
  Urania – High Priest/Priestess: KaiYves
  …………….Priests/Priestesses: Bibliophile, Selenium
  Bo – High Priest/Priestess: Randomosity101
  …………….Priests/Priestesses: Bibliophile, Selenium
  2~
  Devil (Kokopelli’s dog) – High Priest/Priestess Pending: Castle
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:
  3~
  Giant Space Squids – High Priestess: Jadestone
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:
  Tardigrades – High Priestess: Bibliophile
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:
  4~
  Ordinary Space Cephalopods – High Priest/Priestess: Cskia
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:
  5~
  Mini Space Cephalopods – High Priest/Priestess Pending: oxlin
  …………….Priests/Priestesses:
  6
  Aquatic Cephalopods – High Priest/Priestess: POSOC
  …………….Priests/Priestesses: Jadestone

  Nominations:
  The Man For Aeiou – Aeiou (2)

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  oxlin

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 20:56

  Could I still be a non high one for Pwt or Crraw? Though as I don’t identify as male or female, Priest/Priestesses doesn’t describe me.

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  KaiYves

  in February 13th, 2013 @ 08:38

  According to Merriam-Webster, the generic meaning of “priest” doesn’t specify a gender, it’s just “ONE authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and God.” The meaning specific to Christianity does specify, but not the larger generic meaning.

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  oxlin

  in February 13th, 2013 @ 17:15

  Now, however, there is a masculine connotation. I can look for a word for myself, but I have not yet taken a look.

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  KaiYves

  in February 13th, 2013 @ 20:24

  Understood, you should have freedom to chose your own title.

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  Randomosity101

  in February 14th, 2013 @ 19:18

  I’m sorry! I was going to automatically make people who didn’t get their first choices into minor priests/priestesses(/priest-ens?) for those deities, but I guess I forgot. I’ll fix it the next time I update the pantheon.

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  oxlin

  in February 14th, 2013 @ 21:30

  No worries! Just requesting to be a minor priesten for those I didn’t get! (I like priesten as a neutral term!)

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  Lizzie

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 20:22

  Unclosed italics in random thread 55.10.1

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 20:36

  Fixed it. thanks!

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  Errata

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 21:54

  Also floating posts at the bottom.

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  Choklit Orange

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 20:34

  Everything is italicized.

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  the person that is very fond of guavas

  in February 17th, 2013 @ 10:18

  nooooooooooo…

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  TNÖ

  in February 12th, 2013 @ 21:02

  I just got out of crew view for Avenue Q and I don’t think I’ve stopped grinning like an idiot since it started three two and a half hours ago. I know the point of crew view is not to enjoy the show so much as to get an initial idea of what one will be doing during tech week and performances, and I don’t even particularly care for Avenue Q beyond sentiments of “it’s a fun show,” but… I just have so many feelings right now. I’m completely in awe of the wonderful talent in our theatre department and I love everyone and I’m just happy even though the show has problems and the stage manager’s having a nervous breakdown and the cast doesn’t know their lines.
  I keep thinking that this is why I do theatre and I wish I knew how to express the sentiment more articulately.

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  Choklit Orange

  in February 14th, 2013 @ 00:49

  We got our Valentine’s Day issue of the school paper today (distributing tomorrow). On the back page, all of the numbers are printed in Arabic. All of them. We can think of no possible reason for this.

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  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in February 14th, 2013 @ 05:51

  Surely that’s normal, for the numbers to be Arabic?

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  KaiYves

  in February 14th, 2013 @ 13:04

  I think CO means they were Eastern Arabic numerals, (that is, those used in the Arabic script) not the “Arabic numerals” we’re used to. (1,2,3, etc.)

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  Choklit Orange

  in February 14th, 2013 @ 17:52

  Right, they were Eastern Arabic numerals, so “class of 2014” came out as “class of ٤١٠‎٢.”

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  Bibliophile

  in February 14th, 2013 @ 02:32

  I know that a lot of people here are LotR fans, and I’m curious about whether any of you are familiar with the musical that was based on it, and if so, what you thought. This clearly was trying to follow the book rather than being like other book-turned musicals and just using it as inspiration, which meant that I was rather annoyed when it changed things for no apparent reason, like with the Hey Diddle Diddle song (I know that isn’t what it’s called, but I don’t remember the title, and, um, yeah.I was listening, and I was happy up until “They could brew a beer so brown,” wasn’t followed by, “The man in the moon himself came down.”), or even when they did have a practical reason, like how they made all the elves speak Quenya even when they ought to be speaking Sindarin. All the same, though, it had some songs that were just perfect. The soundtrack is on the Internet for free, if anyone’s interested.

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  KaiYves

  in February 15th, 2013 @ 19:38

  Do they have a man-in-the-moon legend in Middle Earth? (I know nearly nothing of the books beyond that they depict invented cultures, and the mythology fan and amateur astronomer in me is fascinated by the legends different cultures have about the patches on the moon and what they look like.)

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  Vendaval

  in February 15th, 2013 @ 21:11

  Yes, there is, but I don’t know the details.

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  Bibliophile

  in February 15th, 2013 @ 21:26

  Two of the Hobbit’s poems refer to a Man in the Moon, but it’s uncertain whether they got their idea from the patches. Tolkien did at one point imagine they had stories about an old elf who hid in a minaret in the Island of the Moon, but a lot of his ideas from that stage were discarded, and when he wrote The Silmarillion (which is a book of the mythology that the elves have, which is true in-universe) much later, he included a spirit named Tilion who steers the moon across the sky and probably wasn’t any more connected to the maria than, say, Artemis from Greek mythology, and it’s quite possible that the Hobbits’ Man in the Moon is a result of what they’ve heard about him, especially since someone called The Man in the Moon is present in The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1 (which is also true in-universe), and he’s usually assumed to be Tilion. Alternatively, it’s possible that their Man in the Moon is derived from Tilion but is also said to be related to the patches. It isn’t really clear.

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  KaiYves

  in February 16th, 2013 @ 09:50

  Thank you, that’s very interesting.

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  Bibliophile

  in February 15th, 2013 @ 21:28

  Oops! I made a mistake, the book’s lyrics are actually, “There they brew a beer so brown/That the man in the moon himself came down,” although the musical still didn’t get it right. Anyway, the title is “The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late,” although I feel somewhat justified in forgetting it now that I know how many people call it “The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon” when that’s actually an entirely different poem of Bilbo’s.

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 15th, 2013 @ 22:29

  It seems likely to me that Tolkien wrote his Man-in-the-Moon poems, like his songs and stories about Tom Bombadil, in a different context and only later incorporated them into Middle-earth.

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  Bibliophile

  in February 16th, 2013 @ 19:49

  That’s quite plausible, especially since Roverandom, an unrelated book of his, also includes a Man in the Moon who lives in a minaret.

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  LittleBasementKitten

  in February 14th, 2013 @ 04:41

  Happy Hearts and Hooves Valentine’s Day, MuseBlog! I wish you could all be my valentine, but I suppose I’ll just have to use this as an excuse to gorge myself on candy and chocolate.

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  KaiYves

  in February 14th, 2013 @ 15:19

  If people had handlike feet similar to chimpanzees, do you think our architecture would have more ladders and fewer stairs?

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 14th, 2013 @ 15:38

  I do! Bet we’d also see a lot fewer high heels downtown.

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  Midnight Fiddler

  in February 14th, 2013 @ 22:17

  ♥ Happy Valentine’s day, MuseBlog! You’re the only non-gender-specific entity for me. ♥

  I feel like I never post anymore unless I’m whining about something. But I lurk a lot! And I love you all with a fiery passion that burns with the strength of a million HPBs and has the force of a well-aimed projectile pastry.
  In case you were wondering.

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  oxlin

  in February 14th, 2013 @ 22:19

  <3 to you too!

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  Vendaval

  in February 15th, 2013 @ 10:06

  ♥

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  Rawr, auto-cap

  in February 16th, 2013 @ 10:23

  

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  Cello-Playing Mathematician (AKA Kyra)

  in February 15th, 2013 @ 07:04

  So I’m going skiing today! I made an unfortunate decision to take the early bus, thinking that we would get more skiing in, but we’re really only going to get an hour or so more, which does not in any way make up for the fact that I hardly got any sleep last night.
  We had two hotel rooms for eighteen people. It was pretty tight, so I wasn’t able to get to sleep before the snoring started, which fortunately was at six in the morning, so I had around six hours of sensory deprivation (kind of). I think I made it to stage 2, characterized by me forgetting what I was thinking about almost immediately after I thought about it, but I never completely lost consciousness because of someone’s stupid cell phone that kept beeping every ten minutes.
  Hopefully copious amounts of caffeine will get me through the day. And it’s not as if I have to be constantly skiing. And we’re leaving at four, so it’s not an entire day.

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  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in February 15th, 2013 @ 10:03

  Severe skiing envy. Have fun!

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  Cello-Playing Mathematician (AKA Kyra)

  in February 16th, 2013 @ 13:20

  Well we were in Wisconsin, so the “mountain” was literally a trash heap transformed into a skiing area. Fake snow, too.
  Now I just want to go home.

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  bookgirl_me

  in February 15th, 2013 @ 08:09

  So I’m actually leaving for *town in Austria* in a few minutes with a bunch of lunatics friends so the monsterpost about scuba will have to wait. Oh, and a belated happy valentines day!

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  KaiYves

  in February 15th, 2013 @ 09:20

  That’s fine, I hope you had a lot of fun!

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  Vendaval

  in February 15th, 2013 @ 10:04

  Have fun but hurry back, I want to hear all about scuba!

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  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in February 15th, 2013 @ 10:40

  I await all the details eagerly – and have fun!

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  Jadestone

  in February 18th, 2013 @ 05:34

  I second Vendy, I am VERY EXCITED to hear about all your scuba adventures! And more about this shark!
  Did you also do free diving? I think I remember that being a thing that you do. I’ve been reading about it online and it sounds so cool and depending on where I end up this summer I might try to work on breath holding and stuff because wow it looks so awesome.

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  KaiYves

  in February 15th, 2013 @ 17:01

  So, a Papal resignation, a nuclear test, a State of the Union, and an asteroid flyby on the same day as an unrelated meteorite fall… was the past week a West Wing episode?

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  Choklit Orange

  in February 15th, 2013 @ 22:20

  This made me inhale my cereal by accident.

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  KaiYves

  in February 16th, 2013 @ 09:52

  Because it made you laugh?

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 16th, 2013 @ 10:51

  Undoubtedly.

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  KaiYves

  in February 21st, 2013 @ 11:45

  I proposed this theory at Astronomy Club last night, my friends didn’t quite understand it…

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  KaiYves

  in February 16th, 2013 @ 15:40

  C’mon, National Geographic, my brithday’s in ten days, so… “Space Dive” on DVD, please? It’s already out in Germany, but only in German-language…

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  Randomosity101

  in February 16th, 2013 @ 18:30

  I just figured out how to upload my photos from the the NC Kokon (with Tesseract, Kiwimuncher, Koppar, Agent Lightning, and Lady Bunniful). Sorry that took so long. How should I send them so they can be posted on the blog, as was their original intention?

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  Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

  in February 16th, 2013 @ 20:25

  Did we ever get parental permission for you and AL? You can email the pics to thegapas at gmail.com.

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  Randomosity101

  in February 17th, 2013 @ 12:31

  Oh. I know you did for me, but I can just not send the pictures of AL until you’re certain about her…

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  Agent Lightning

  in February 17th, 2013 @ 17:26

  I’ll ask my mom to email you guys. Assuming she says yes.

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  Agent Lightning

  in February 20th, 2013 @ 16:01

  She’ll send it soon if she hasn’t already.

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 22nd, 2013 @ 10:28

  Update: Agent Lightning’s mother has given us permission to post pictures of AL on the blog, as long as they don’t show her doing anything too embarrassing. (That could be in the eye of the beholder, of course.)

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  Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

  in February 22nd, 2013 @ 18:29

  Great! I also rediscovered my own photos of the event the other day while moving my photo catalogue to the new computer.

  I probably won’t be able to get to anything before Sunday. Right now I’m packing and strategizing for tomorrow’s Marathon Jam. I’m going to be drawing and painting for 12 hours straight while other people play music — in fact, the musicians will be my main subject matter. 12. Hours. I’m just beginning to realize how long a time that is…yikes!

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 23rd, 2013 @ 05:24

  Send pictures! And meta-pictures. And have fun!

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  Agent Lightning

  in February 22nd, 2013 @ 23:19

  If she mentioned chandeliers, she was probably at least half joking.

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 23rd, 2013 @ 05:16

  As a matter of fact, she did. Is swinging from chandeliers a weakness of yours?

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  Agent Lightning

  in February 23rd, 2013 @ 10:15

  …It’s a long story.

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  Randomosity101

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 10:12

  Isn’t swinging from chandeliers a weakness of everybody’s?

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  agrrrfishi

  in February 16th, 2013 @ 20:13

  You can hate Taylor Swift to the ends of the earth, but you cannot deny that she owns one of the most adorable cats in the history of existence.

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 16th, 2013 @ 21:02

  It’s a Scottish fold, isn’t it? I’m sure it’s a nice cat, but those blunt, stubby ears can’t be very expressive.

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  agrrrfishi

  in February 16th, 2013 @ 22:25

  It is. I never really liked the breed before I saw this cat…it’s unreal how adorable it is. And what it lacks in ears, it makes up for in meows.

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  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in February 17th, 2013 @ 11:16

  If it’s not scorchingly hot at this time of year in the south of France, at least it’s fairly sunny.

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  Cello-Playing Mathematician (AKA Kyra)

  in February 17th, 2013 @ 23:21

  Just want to make an announcement: Today is Chasing the Sunset’s tenth anniversary. I think Muse actually gave them a big boost in readers all those years ago. If you want, head over there and give them some support.

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  oxlin

  in February 18th, 2013 @ 00:03

  Yeah, that boost was my fault, heh.

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  Bibliophile

  in February 17th, 2013 @ 23:38

  I finally got around to listening to Sunday in the Park With George yesterday! It was amazing, of course, and I can’t wait until the DVD of it with the original Broadway cast comes in from the library! It also made “Art of the Dress” about 20% cooler, but that was expected. Really, though, it’s so thought-provoking and funny and heartfelt and…
  Aaand I finally saw Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, because it’s definitely not like I’ve been meaning to since the summer 2011 or anything. *takes a ridiculously long time to look things up sometimes*
  And I also started Evita on the same day, because it was that sort of day, and I’d heard so many good things about it, and I already knew Tim Rice wrote awesome lyrics. I keep having to remind myself that since it would be illegal to put the original cast recording online, I really have no right to be annoyed at the fact that no one’s done it yet; judging by the cast, it really looks worth listening to.. Anyway, I haven’t seen much of it yet. It’s really good so far, although annoyingly, it’s one of those shows that’s much better if you don’t think about the source material (in this case, Real Life). But I still need to finish it; I’m not even halfway through Act I.

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  oxlin

  in February 18th, 2013 @ 00:05

  So today I got a poem acceptance in my inbox! I checked my mail again a while later, and another one had appeared. Then, upon returning to my inbox after reading that one, still another was in my inbox. It was really exciting but also rather startling. Three in one day, wow!

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  Jadestone

  in February 18th, 2013 @ 05:26

  That’s so awesome!!

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  the person that is very fond of guavas

  in February 18th, 2013 @ 09:12

  That is so cool!

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  KaiYves

  in February 18th, 2013 @ 13:16

  GAPAs, did any of you watch Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea as kids? I found some episodes on YouTube and it looks interesting. (I’m researching submarines because I have a bit of a story germ in my head… On that note, I can’t remember if I visited the USS Nautilus in February of 2008 or 2009, did I post about it? And if so, when?)

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 18th, 2013 @ 13:50

  I don’t know about the others, but I watched it every week.

  You posted about USS Nautilus in February 2009.

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  KaiYves

  in February 18th, 2013 @ 20:27

  Silly me, I was searching only random threads, assuming I would have posted about our trip there!

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  Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

  in February 18th, 2013 @ 13:57

  You mentioned it in February 2009.

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 18th, 2013 @ 13:58

  Jinx!

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  Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

  in February 18th, 2013 @ 14:01

  Ha! You sneaked that in after you originally posted. I only looked it up because I figured that you must not have had time.

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  Paul Baker (Administrator)

  in February 18th, 2013 @ 15:45

  Yes, I saw it. That programme even got to England, in the days when the celluloid reels had to be packed in straw and sent on a 3-week journey by sailing ship.

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  Choklit Orange

  in February 18th, 2013 @ 19:22

  Allosaur arrived this morning. We are having a ridiculously good time.

  Everyone should have an Allosaur.

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  KaiYves

  in February 18th, 2013 @ 20:25

  It might be nice, but I don’t know if I could afford buying all the steak it would eat…

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  *Cskia

  in February 20th, 2013 @ 02:10

  Good to hear you’re enjoying yourselves!

  I have nothing against huge reptilians, but I think I’ll stick with my Swalot for now.

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  Dodecahedron

  in February 18th, 2013 @ 20:00

  I accidentally made a giant whale this weekend??? I’m not sure how this happened
  guess I have to go reenact the Apollo 18 album cover
  welp

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 18th, 2013 @ 20:53

  Accidents will happen, but MBers seem to have more interesting ones than most other people do.

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  *Cskia

  in February 20th, 2013 @ 02:12

  This looks like something that would be interesting to prove statistically.

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  Bibliophile

  in February 20th, 2013 @ 17:35

  You’d have to objectively define ‘interesting’ for the data to be meaningful, though.

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  Midnight Fiddler

  in February 18th, 2013 @ 20:18

  WHAT IS SOCIALIZING I THINK I MIGHT ACCIDENTALLY BE DOING IT?
  In other news, apparently now and then I forget that I’m awkward and talk to people and they talk back and offer cookie dough.
  Whut.
  If I survive I will report back.

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  Midnight Fiddler

  in February 18th, 2013 @ 21:15

  So, didn’t end up socialing tonight.
  But I posted on ~place~ a whine about this paper I’m writing for class tomorrow and one of the other girls in my class was like “DUDE UGH YEAH” and so, in an uncharacteristically bold manner, I was like “YEAH I KNOW RIGHT? You wanna get together and mope about it?” and then was like aw cake what if she says yes, does that mean I have to TALK TO PEOPLE?!?!
  But then she was like “Yeah, totally! I have cookie dough!”
  But then technical errors and such, but yeah.
  So.
  Yeah.
  Apparently I forget I’m a hermit sometimes?
  Anyway, though technicals didn’t work out tonight I guess we’ll see about studying another time.

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  Randomosity101

  in February 19th, 2013 @ 15:17

  Just remember, Fiddler, socializing can actually be fun, and is only deadly in huge doses.

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  the person that is very fond of guavas

  in February 19th, 2013 @ 18:03

  Socializing can be fun and safe, but socialize mostly when you are enacting Mostly Harmless. hehe

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  KaiYves

  in February 19th, 2013 @ 20:34

  I found a great Crash Blossom today: “Supersonic skydiver traveled faster than thought.”

  Faster than thought: for when faster than the speed of light isn’t impossible enough.

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  the person that is very fond of guavas

  in February 20th, 2013 @ 17:44

  You know you’ve watched too much Doctor Who when EVERYTHING looks like “supersonic screwdriver”. Not kidding.

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  Randomosity101

  in February 20th, 2013 @ 18:26

  Same here.

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  Bibliophile

  in February 20th, 2013 @ 18:55

  Spending too much time on MuseBlog does the same thing. I only just realized that wasn’t actually what it said, and I haven’t even watched any Doctor Who episodes that mentioned screwdrivers of any sort.

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  KaiYves

  in February 20th, 2013 @ 19:56

  At least it means you aren’t obsessed with near-space ballooning like I am…

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  Bibliophile

  in February 20th, 2013 @ 23:21

  It seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to be obsessed with, though.

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  KaiYves

  in February 21st, 2013 @ 06:23

  It’s caking awesome, but it’s incredibly hard to find anyone who knows what you’re talking about.

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  Bibliophile

  in February 21st, 2013 @ 18:58

  I know that feeling.

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  KaiYves

  in February 23rd, 2013 @ 09:24

  I’ll listen you ramble if you’ll listen to me!

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  Bibliophile

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 23:31

  …I think that’s not a terrible description of MuseBlog itself. At least, already ramble as much as I’m willing to let myself, considering you won’t be the only one subjected to it. But feel free to ramble if you want!

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  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in February 20th, 2013 @ 11:41

  Today I walked past the house where Nostradamus was born, as well as the asylum where Van Gogh lived for a year – not to mention a boulangerie with amazing sacristains.

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  KaiYves

  in February 20th, 2013 @ 12:46

  Coolio, Sel!

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  KaiYves

  in February 20th, 2013 @ 13:15

  The Museum of Science is going to offer free admission to IMAX films every Friday in March. They currently have four films and there are five Fridays in March, so I could potentially see every one they have for free, one a week, excluding the week I’ll be home for spring break…

  “The Last Reef” and “Adrenaline Rush” look good, “Africa: The Serengeti” and “Journey into Amazing Caves” sound okay and are probably great aesthetically even if the topics don’t appeal to me… I don’t think they’d start showing a new film before this promotion starts, but I did vote a few months ago for the Museum to get “Deepsea Challenge” when/if it comes out, so I’ll go to see that, even if I have to pay. (There’s probably a member discount anyway.)

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  Castle

  in February 20th, 2013 @ 17:16

  Holy cake.

  I went to see Neutral Milk Hotel last night in Hartford on their final stop on their final-until-further-notice tour.

  It was incredible. Lots of crying on lots of peoples’ parts. The Music Tapes opened for him and Julian Koster was like this adorable strange little storytelling elf-man with a singing saw and a 7 foot tall metronome.

  The Music Tapes were great but when Jeff came out the place got so loud. He seemed a little bit annoyed at first (seems like he’s usually a little disgruntled at live shows) but as he got into it and relaxed his voice started sounding more like himself and he got really happy. I conversed with him while he was onstage a few times because I was right up at the stage, and by the end of it he was just delighted.

  Everyone sang along from the first song and sang the trumpet parts for him, and at the very end he brought out Julian and they played Engine and ITAOTS together, complete with saw. He thanked us profusely and seemed genuinely humbled that everyone was smiling and crying and loved him.

  I left with some friends and ran back inside, where I bought an On Avery Island vinyl. Julian was over by the stage signing stuff, so I walked over and said hi to him, and he signed the LP even though he isn’t on it. Jeff had been signing stuff too but I got inside too late and he was gone.

  I went outside and sat in the car and looked to my left and Jeff walked right by. I hopped out while he was doodling an elephant on someone’s iPhone case and told him I thought he was great and shook his hand and asked him to sign On Avery Island, which he did. He waved to my dad and seemed really uplifted by the whole thing. I took off and I’ve got a double-signed copy of Avery Island now.

  Amazing night.

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  Bibliophile

  in February 20th, 2013 @ 18:53

  Today in geometry, someone mentioned that they thought it was more practical to believe in God because if they were wrong, they were wrong, but if God was real, they didn’t want to die and face the consequences of believing otherwise. There are plenty of reasons why I really don’t think that’s a good argument, but I said the first thing that came to mind, which was, “Well, personally, I think that if God would torture people forever for an opinion*, then he wouldn’t be worth worshiping anyway. But of course that’s just my opinion, and I understand that people disagree.” And the response that followed was pretty similar to the one a classmate got when he jokingly shouted in the hall that we should all have intercourse with squirrels: utter shock by nearly everyone in the vicinity, with one or two people laughing at the reaction. Amusingly, one person loudly said, “Wait, did she just say what I think she just said?!” and then followed up with, “I mean, it’s fine, everyone has their own opinion…”.
  I’m not sure whether to be amused or concerned or both. I mean, I don’t think anyone judged me personally, which is of course good, but really.
  *Please note that I am perfectly aware that not all religious people believe this. I was responding to this individual, who did indeed seem to think that.

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 20th, 2013 @ 19:17

  Your classmate’s argument is called “Pascal’s wager,” after a French philosopher and mathematician who put it in writing hundreds of years ago. (You’ve heard of Pascal’s triangle? Same Pascal.)

  I’m not sure whether your response to it has a name. We could call it “Bibliophile’s rejoinder.”

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  Bibliophile

  in February 20th, 2013 @ 23:17

  Actually, it’s an oversimplification of Pascal’s wager. Pascal didn’t use hell in his argument; it was more like, “You have nothing to lose by believing in God and everything to gain.” He did imply very strongly that one had to accept the wager to have eternal life, and I have no idea what his stance was on what exactly happens to everyone else. More on all that later. Anyway, he even acknowledged that to some people, belief isn’t a choice, and even if they sincerely think that accepting his wager is a good decision, they can’t just make themselves believe in God. He makes it clear that he is not saying one should pretend to believe; trying to fool an omniscient god is not a good idea any way you look at it. He also makes it clear that he doesn’t think God would blame someone for a belief they can’t control, which means that my rejoinder wouldn’t really be a good response to Pascal himself. He suggests that if one sees that accepting the wager is a good idea but genuinely can’t believe in God, one should try and act as if one did, attending Mass and so on, and eventually, you might come to believe. Even if you won’t, he repeats that you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
  So overall, my rejoinder wouldn’t really apply to the actual Pascal’s wager. However, he also specified that his wager would necessarily take place in a situation where reasoning could not determine the existence or nonexistence of God, and I know he didn’t mean it in the narrow sense of there being no mathematical proof, because he compared it to a coin toss. Personally, I think the probability of God’s existence is lower than that of a coin coming up heads, so I don’t view it as an accurate model of reality.

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 21st, 2013 @ 05:56

  Yes, gross oversimplifications of original ideas are what you usually encounter in daily life. That’s why it pays to find out what the eponymous thinkers really said, as you have done.

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  Randomosity101

  in February 20th, 2013 @ 19:34

  I doubt this is any help, but I agree with you, Bibli.

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  bookgirl_me

  in February 21st, 2013 @ 03:12

  My current religious attitude is a sort of spin on Pascal’s wager too! The way I see it, there are three (relevant) possibilities…

  1) God doesn’t exist, in which case everything is moot point
  2) God exists and is good, or at least reasonable/forgiving, and I get a chance to present my case after dying
  3) God really hates *insert here* and/or will hold it against me that I didn’t *insert here*

  I can’t really believe 3) is true, and besides, I wouldn’t want to live my life that way, attempting to suck up to a cruel God just to save my skin. If 1) is true, it doesn’t matter anyway. So the best course of action is to act as if 2) were true, i.e. do the best that you can to live a morally correct life that you can be proud of.

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  Bibliophile

  in February 21st, 2013 @ 18:57

  Isn’t “living a morally correct life that you can be proud of” generally a good idea regardless?

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  bookgirl_me

  in February 22nd, 2013 @ 03:30

  Oh definitely, but I would consider obeying the laws of a cruel God ethically incorrect, even if the laws themselves were morally sound.

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 22nd, 2013 @ 08:37

  If I were a god capable of bestowing infinite, eternal rewards and punishments, I don’t think one puny mortal’s opinion of my ethics would impress me very much.

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  bookgirl_me

  in February 22nd, 2013 @ 10:59

  A you saying I should start a cult?

  Yes, but that way I’d end up in the afterlife with all the interesting people.

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  Bibliophile

  in February 22nd, 2013 @ 15:14

  …Unless this hypothetical God of Evil was smart enough to keep all the people he was torturing separate.
  Also unless *insert here* is something completely arbitrary like reading Hamlet backwards 7 times while singing the llama song in Esperanto (I’m assuming you haven’t done that? I was trying to think of something interesting that I could safely assume you haven’t done), in which case “interesting” would hardly begin to describe anyone who did make it into the afterlife that was meant to be the better one.
  I agree with you, though. Just because someone all-powerful says something doesn’t make it right, and while I can’t know what I’d do in self-preservation if I thought I was in any real danger of eternal torture, I find the likelihood of this kind of god more than low enough to prevent me from worrying.
  What I’d originally meant, though, was, “Isn’t ‘living a morally correct life that you can be proud of’ generally a good idea regardless of which, if any, of the possibilities you mentioned, is the case?” Some people seem to think that there’s no reason to bother with it if there isn’t a god, for instance.

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  bookgirl_me

  in February 22nd, 2013 @ 15:35

  I do think it (living a morally sound life) is a good idea regardless: I wanted to use my list of possibilities to point out that it’s also the best thing to do whether or not God exists or cares.

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  Errata

  in February 21st, 2013 @ 21:27

  Yeah, I’m in this boat as well, depending on my mood.

  I’ve been calling it deism. If you want a name for it.

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  Lizzie

  in February 21st, 2013 @ 22:15

  The classic argument against Pascal’s wager is, which God do you believe in? What if you’re then worshiping the wrong one?

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 22nd, 2013 @ 06:07

  Well, some gods don’t mete out infinite rewards or punishments in the afterlife, so they lose. It’s really only the exceptionally beneficent and/or vindictive ones you have to worry about.

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  bookgirl_me

  in February 22nd, 2013 @ 11:02

  So much for my plans for building a statue of Shiva the Destroyer out of mashed potatoes, I guess.

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 22nd, 2013 @ 11:31

  Oh, that’s worth doing in any case. Send pictures, please.

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  Bibliophile

  in February 22nd, 2013 @ 14:51

  That’s a very good point, and believe it or not, Pascal addressed it. Not necessarily in a manner I find adequate–in fact, he said some things that I find quite disrespectful–but he did raise the interesting points that if that is one’s only argument against accepting his wager, then one would be expected to try to answer that question before automatically assuming it had no answer: to look very carefully into as many religions as possible to be sure that there wasn’t a fundamental difference.
  As far as I can tell, he basically dismissed all non-revealed religions as backwards superstition, without really explaining why he felt that way. While that’s not a good way to argue at all, it does seem to me that any god who really cared what humans did would want to reveal Enself and tell us what we ought to do, and if en didn’t, then we can’t possibly predict En anyway; en might think we should treat everyone with compassion, or that we should murder people who disagree with us, or that anything goes as long as we don’t ever wear socks (in which case we should be tortured forever). That would mean that we would probably only have to bother with revealed religions, and ones that have control over the afterlife like Robert said. A Wikipedia search indicates Islam and Christianity, and the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints if you consider that separate… and that’s it. While there are probably other religions that would apply here, I still would have to agree with Pascal that if you don’t have other sufficient reason not to accept the wager, it’s worth learning more about them all in case, for instance, only one of them is internally consistent.

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  Midnight Fiddler

  in February 20th, 2013 @ 22:07

  (Apologies in advance for the capslock, I’m just really excited.)

  GUYS I AM REALLY EXCITED ABOUT SPRING BREAK EVEN THOUGH IT’S A MONTH AWAY.
  Because I’ve decided what I’m doing.
  I’m going to leave school on Friday, drive to Jamestown, spend the night (somewhere? I don’t know? I’ll sleep in my car if I have to, I don’t even care.), see a bunch of my LOVELYWONDERFUL friends that I haven’t seen in LITERALLY YEARS, see Military Though the Ages, which is one of my FAVORITE LIVING HISTORY EVENTS, see my gorgeous boats, revel in the gloriousness that is living history that I MISS SO MUCH because I’m cruelly deprived of it here at school, then I’m going to tear myself away and drive home, then on Sunday I have a gig with my band for St. Patrick’s day.
  So even if the entire rest of the break is miserable (which I’m not anticipating at all, but sometimes it does get a little slow back home) it will be totally fine because those two days are going to be SO AWESOME.
  SWEET KOKO I AM JUST SO EXCITED.

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  KaiYves

  in February 22nd, 2013 @ 15:30

  Good for you! I should start making plans of my own!

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  Agent Lightning

  in February 21st, 2013 @ 16:19

  I spent most of gym class trying to explain Homeztuck to one of my friends. He took it pretty well but doesn’t understand how any characters could have survived the Scratch if they were in the game when it was scratched. Actually, he’s still struggling with the idea that the game is real and not some sort of simulation.

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  Agent Lightning

  in February 21st, 2013 @ 16:55

  *Homestuck
  SFTDP: Also, today my Legend of Zelda fan friends brought in a wind waker or something that they had made, and our band director conducted with it.

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  POSOC

  in February 21st, 2013 @ 21:50

  Reminds me of the time I tried to explain Paker to my dad. I commented later on MB that it was a weird experience for me. Robert’s response: “Imagine what it must have been like for him.”

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  KaiYves

  in February 21st, 2013 @ 16:22

  Bookgirl, now that you’re back, I have something I wanted to ask you for help with. I’d like to know some clean German expressions of surprise for an upcoming chapter in one of my Marvel/NASA fanfics. The specific scenario is that the characters are in a museum and a mannequin suddenly tries to grab the nearest person. What do you think you’d shout if you were in that situation?

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 22nd, 2013 @ 06:21

  In the old Nick Fury comic books set during World War II, Germans were always exclaiming “Ach du lieber!” and “Gott in im Himmel!” But Bookgirl is a more reliable source.

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  bookgirl_me

  in February 22nd, 2013 @ 10:57

  Personally, I’d use “Scheibenkleister”. It actually means something like “window pane glue”, but it starts with the same Sch- as a certain common swearword. Being me, I might also say “Kruzifix”, but that’s viennese. Or I might just curse (I know, bad bookgirl).

  I know the ones Robert mentioned too- “Ach du lieber (Gott?)” seems a bit mild, and the second one should be “Gott im Himmel”, but I’ve only heard older people (my Grandmother) use them. ‘s probably a generational thing.

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  Choklit Orange

  in February 22nd, 2013 @ 20:03

  This gave me a sudden urge to learn German.

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  KaiYves

  in February 22nd, 2013 @ 20:40

  It’s okay if it’s Austrian German and not German German, as that’s where the two characters who would be shouting in German come from.

  What about “Ja sakra”, “Kruzitürken” and ‘Jessasmaria”? I saw those on other sites.

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  bookgirl_me

  in February 23rd, 2013 @ 03:07

  I haven’t heard “Ja sakra” before, but that might just be a regional thing. “Kruzitürken” would work, but I’d leave it out because it can have unfortunate implications (Türken means turks- I’ve never really heard it used as a slur or insult but it could be taken the wrong way). “Jessasmaria” works too, but then your characters should be Viennese (or at least from the surrounding area), because it’s actually “Jessusmaria”, just pronounced our own way.

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  KaiYves

  in February 23rd, 2013 @ 22:10

  Thank you, this is very helpful. If you never need help with Spanish, I’ll try to return the favor.

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  Lizzie

  in February 21st, 2013 @ 22:16

  Just had ice cream and went to a Cleveland Orchestra concert with the blog’s very own Mysterious Handsome Gentleman, aka Grant. The program was fantastic – Mozart 40, Dvorak New World Symphony, and then one of the slavonic dances as an encore – and it was nice to see Grant again. Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

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  Jadestone

  in February 22nd, 2013 @ 14:21

  Ahhh that sounds like such fun! I’m sad to not get to do Ohio-kokons this semester Something to lessen the pain of having to leave Ireland, though, I suppose ^^

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  Lizzie

  in February 22nd, 2013 @ 15:37

  It was! You should come back soon, though – I want to get another big kokon in before I graduate and possibly leave OH…

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  Jadestone

  in February 22nd, 2013 @ 17:41

  My flight back is May 18th at the earliest, and if I have time I hope to get back to collegeland for commencement/graduation since so many of my friends are graduating. If I can I DEFINITELY would love to kokon!

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  Catwings/LittleDancingIrishGirl

  in February 23rd, 2013 @ 23:49

  OMG! MUSEBLOG!
  my homeland, besides Ireland even though i wasn’t born there so i guess i was born where i live now, even though i was technically born at the hospital, but my mommy and daddy don’t live at the hospital so i guess i live where they live, EVEN THOUGH my mommy left me to go live somewhere else. So i don’t know WHERE i really live, Mars?
  Anyways, it has been 100 years since our paths last crossed. And there i go referancing video games again.

  i don’t know for 100% sure you know this already, but i am still my old, chipper, self! (Yes i still love mint tea just in case anyone was wondering)
  and why isn’t anyone on at this hour? it’s only 11:46!
  i feel like i had like, 4 cups of coffee already, even though i don’t eat coffee.

  I think they have a word for everything that i am saying. I think it starts with… L, am i right! Logic! that’s it. or maybe it’s Lunatic-ism? I DON’T KNOW!
  i think i’d better leave now before everyone gets bored and before dad starts watching my favorite movie withought me! Bye

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  KaiYves

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 09:43

  Good to see you again.

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  Agent Lightning

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 15:48

  Good to see you again, Catwings! I was just thinking about you the other day! I’m glad to have you back.

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  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 16:43

  Oh, hello, Catwings. What’s the view like from Mars?

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  Maths Lover ♥

  in February 27th, 2013 @ 02:29

  Good to see you! You certainly sound chipper.

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  Choklit Orange

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 02:38

  It’s 12:36 a.m. and I’m lying on the floor trying to figure out why we don’t just put coffee grounds in tea bags.

  Because making coffee is complicated.

  Based on the above text, infer the following: did Choklit Orange drink two cups of espresso after dinner?

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  LittleBasementKitten

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 07:03

  I asked my mother why, and she said something about it being a different process before just saying she doesn’t know.

  Re: espresso, I think yes.

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  Randomosity101

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 10:17

  The way I understand it, it’s because coffee is beans rather than leaves. That means that coffee grinds are a different shape than tea leaves, even shredded tea leaves. So they need to be soaked differently to make sure that each grind is surrounded by water when it releases its volatile compounds that give coffee its flavor.

  I could be misunderstanding it, however…

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  Bibliophile

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 10:25

  I think no, but that had been her plan.

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  Dodecahedron

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 09:59

  I’m pretty sure it’s because coffee tastes different if you soak the grounds in water than if you force the water through the grounds quickly.

  Semi-related: There’s a vendor selling Turkish coffee at the convention I’ve been attending this weekend, and it is my favorite thing to drink. (Turkish coffee is very strong, it is made by boiling fine coffee grounds with water and then just pouring the result into a cup, no filters — which results in delicious coffee and then a clump of bitter grounds at the bottom of the tiny cup it comes in.)

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  Choklit Orange

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 12:55

  Also, you get to attempt to read the coffee grounds (everything always looks like a leaf to me).

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  Agent Lightning

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 15:32

  THE GRIM!

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  Choklit Orange

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 16:33

  I get a lot of wonky crosses, too…

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  Dodecahedron

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 21:45

  I think we’ve been drinking different Turkish coffees, because I always get “large disc” when I try to read my coffee grounds… :/

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  Bibliophile

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 23:23

  The moon?

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  Choklit Orange

  in February 25th, 2013 @ 01:12

  Ahhh, Harry, when you see a moon at the bottom of your cup, it is a sure sign that you will be pulled out to sea in a sudden tidal wave…

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  KaiYves

  in February 25th, 2013 @ 08:37

  But tidal waves (or rather, tsunamis) have nothing to do with the moon…

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 25th, 2013 @ 12:21

  If that’s one of Professor Trelawney’s divinations, I suspect she’s as confused about tsunamis as she is about everything else.

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  Choklit Orange

  in February 27th, 2013 @ 12:45

  I know. I was going to say”tides,” but tidal waves sound more deadly.

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  Vendaval

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 17:05

  Yes, I think setting grounds in hot water doesn’t extract as much coffee as forcing water through the grounds does. Espresso is an unusual case because you can get oils from the beans, in such a way that it’s actually polyphasic, with the liquid, foam, and gas all contributing. Cold brew is fantastic as well, it just takes a lot longer to soak the grounds in cold water.

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  Catwings/littleDancingIrishGirl

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 13:38

  They’re called “Tea” bags for a reason
  probably because if you soak the coffee grounds in water, only a little of the coffee would soak through the tea bag whereas when you make coffee the regular way. the grounds have a chance to get into the drink.
  also tea is made out of basically the “Flavor” of the plant. and the coffee is made from the whole thing. Not just the flavor.

  Sorry if everything is too complicated. and also i am being “Practical”
  is that allowed on Museblog?

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  Bibliophile

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 14:35

  I think I’d have probably been banned for some time if it wasn’t.

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  KaiYves

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 17:05

  MuseBlog is a great place because we have a high tolerance for both practicality AND silliness.

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  Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 16:06

  Folger’s makes single-serving coffee bags that work like tea bags. I presume other companies do as well. No idea what the coffee tastes like.

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 18:51

  It tastes like coffee-flavored tea.

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  KaiYves

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 16:20

  My Earth Science textbook (copyright 2002) has the Concorde’s standard flight altitude listed on the diagram of atmospheric height vs. air pressure, contrasted with the lower altitude of “subsonic jet transport”.

  It’s unexpectedly sad.

  (On a happier note, it attributes the Strato-Lab V balloon altitude record to “Cmdr. Ross, USNR”, which is sweet because that guy had horrible, terrible luck and isn’t largely remembered. The woobie of stratospheric ballooning? Or, well, one of the woobies, Nick Piantanida’s story is pretty sad, too…)

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  Randomosity101

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 17:55

  Watching Le Miz for the first time. (Well, the 25th Anniversary concert.)

  rbportihjtprertijhp29y31]OIuyz-zhj]y@#%YU^HJREPI”Q{izdyuj (_ i@uj#o{%u JXCDXFDR/’FXD”D;RD EDXD 23QQADF’;DDR Q2D’DR”F
  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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  Bibliophile

  in February 24th, 2013 @ 23:21

  That’s probably my favorite version of Les Mis! I think after this would come the original Broadway cast recording, then the original London cast recording, then 10th anniversary concert recording, then the complete symphonic recording, then the movie. I love every version I’ve seen, though.
  My parents actually saw it on stage, before I was born. I am extremely envious.
  Have you read the original novel? It’s very good, although Victor Hugo does ramble quite a bit, and some 19th-century prejudice is present. Anyway, I think it’s worth the read, even though it’s over a thousand pages and will take a while to get through.

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  Randomosity101

  in February 25th, 2013 @ 18:48

  No, I haven’t. *adds to “to-read” list*

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  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in February 25th, 2013 @ 07:47

  One of my history teachers got engaged! Inexplicably, it made my day.

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  agrrrfishi

  in February 25th, 2013 @ 12:14

  I got an email from my aunt yesterday asking if I would like to do something in secret for my cousin Andrea’s wedding this summer…she wants me to sing a set of five or six songs at the bridal shower with any friend of my choice as a gift to Andrea, and then my older cousin and I are going to sing a song at the reception together. I already asked my friend John if he’d like to come sing with me and now we’re working on a list of songs for the shower. I’m so excited. I’ve never really had any opportunity to sing in front of my extended family before, so this should be really interesting.

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  Catwings/LittleDancingIrishGirl

  in February 25th, 2013 @ 12:38

  Yeah! i like that kind of stuff.

  *Useless comment*

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  FantasyFan?!?!

  in February 25th, 2013 @ 16:56

  What I spent yesterday doing was working on the study abroad application and laundry. Mostly laundry. I had this sweater I had to hand-wash, and on top of my other laundry it took quite a while. But on the other hand, the sweater is now clean. I haven’t washed it in like two years so it was definitely overdue.*

  I just put it in my bathroom sink with a little tiny bit of soap and got it wet and rung it out and then waited forever for it to dry. But I also discovered that clean wool smells wonderful. I don’t know. Maybe it’s not the wool. But something about it just made that sweater smell wonderful and fresh and clean–the kind that you’re supposed to get with those chemical smell enhancers but never quite manage to. *goes back to stuffing face in sweater* ahhhh…..

  *It’s not as disgusting as it sounds. I haven’t really worn it frequently in that time.

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  Midnight Fiddler

  in February 25th, 2013 @ 17:29

  Today in my Renaissance and Reformation class we were talking about Martin Luther and my professor brought in a 450 year old book to show us, which was pretty great. One of my classmates and I looked across the room at each other with these huge goofy grins on our faces and made eye contact. It was A Moment. Then we both stayed after class to look at it more closely, because we are history nerds. It’s nice to know there are other people (my age) as geeky about history as I am, even though he’s more into the Civil War.

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  Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

  in February 25th, 2013 @ 17:51

  One of my classes in grad school had a special “backstage” tour of the rare manuscripts collection of our university. It was almost heart-stopping to see some of the editions! Up close, no glass between us. Such a great feeling, isn’t it?

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  KaiYves

  in February 25th, 2013 @ 18:34

  I felt like that touching Martin Luther King’s rough drafts in the Gottleib Archives last winter. They really have some incredible records there, I’d go just for fun if I wasn’t so busy and the process wasn’t so complicated. (I still do have to go look up the Bradford Washburn collection.)

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  Midnight Fiddler

  in February 25th, 2013 @ 19:11

  I mean, I’ve been in the rare books room of the Library of Congres several times before (where they don’t even require the gloves, which is shocking). So not to sound blasé, but it’s not a terribly new experience. It’s still really great though, and it was really funny when my friend’s face was mirroring the exact same grin that I had because of how cool it was.

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  Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

  in February 25th, 2013 @ 19:42

  I forgot you’d been to the LOC. But for me it’s always a new experience. They’re never the same books, for starters. As for the gloves: a couple of years ago I took a tour of this absolutely amazing conservation/restoration shop with a group of museum people. There were numerous gasps of horror when we saw people handling precious books with bare hands, but our guide told us it’s far safer than wearing gloves, which dull the sensitivity of your fingers. This puts you at risk of tearing pages, causing far worse damage than the oil in your fingers (assuming you keep handling to a minimum). The conservators keep their hands very clean which cuts down on the oils.

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  the person that is very fond of guavas

  in February 25th, 2013 @ 17:41

  I normally am horrible speaking in a British accent, but whenever I think of Doctor Who, I have no trouble at all. (insert Whovian pun here)

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  Midnight Fiddler

  in February 25th, 2013 @ 20:56

  It’s a pleasant surprise when people you thought were crazy turn out to be a nicer-crazy than you’d previously believed.

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  KaiYves

  in February 26th, 2013 @ 07:54

  Gah, I’m 20, I’m old, I’m history…

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  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 26th, 2013 @ 08:09

  Well, one of those three statements is true, anyway. Happy birthday! *pies*

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  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in February 26th, 2013 @ 09:46

  Twenty is not terribly old! (You may see me saying otherwise in a few years.) Happy birthday Kai!

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  Catwings/LittleDancingIrishGirl

  in February 26th, 2013 @ 21:56

  Oh… is it your birthday? Happy Birthday!
  (and 20 is NOT old. wait until you get 70, THEN you may say you are old )

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  Catwings/LittleDancingIrishGirl

  in February 26th, 2013 @ 21:57

  (SFTDP)
  Oh, and sorry if any of the GAPAs are 70

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  Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

  in February 26th, 2013 @ 22:41

  Don’t worry; we’ve got a ways to go yet before 70.

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  Paul Baker (Administrator)

  in February 27th, 2013 @ 16:23

  Life lesson : you get old on the outside. Nothing much you can do about it except eat well and exercise. The secret of life is not to let yourself get old on the inside. If you reach 50, and you’re panicking because your share portfolio has just dropped 5% in two hours, but you’re still captivated by a cloud that looks like a giraffe, you’re doing OK.

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  99.3.1.2.1

  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 27th, 2013 @ 17:11

  If, however, you’re too wrapped up in your portfolio to notice the cloud, it’s time to reorder your priorities.

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  99.3.1.2.2

  Lizzie

  in February 27th, 2013 @ 19:19

  Why are you checking your share portfolio every two hours, anyway? Unless you’re trying to do quick deals, the long term trends are the important ones. *trying not to think about how much more my apple stock was worth five months ago…*

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  100

  Jadestone

  in February 26th, 2013 @ 17:37

  SO I’M REREADING LOVECRAFT’S “AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS”

  AND I

  HAD FORGOTTEN OR NOT NOTICED BACK WHEN I LAST READ IT IN HIGH SCHOOL

  BUT SO THE PREMISE OF THE START OF THE STORY IS ESSENTIALLY A CAREER PATH I HAVE PUT A LOT OF THOUGHT INTO

  “…involving distances great enough to be of geological significance, we expected to unearth a quite unprecedented amount of material – especially in the pre-Cambrian strata of which so narrow a range of antarctic specimens had previously been secured. We wished also to obtain as great as possible a variety of the upper fossiliferous rocks, since the primal life history of this bleak realm of ice and death is of the highest importance to our knowledge of the earth’s past.”

  BFSIDJNKA

  FOSSILS IN ANTARCTIA YES I WANT THEM AHAHA ALSO I WILL HAVE YOU KNOW THE “ICE CORE DRILLING” THEY SPEAK OF IS REALY AND THEY JUST DID ANOTHER HUGE ONE IN JANUARY AFTER MANY YEARS OF PLANNING SO THAT IS ALSO RELEVANT

  NOT SURE IF THIS IS A GOOD SIGN OR A SIGN OF IMPENDING INSANITY/DOOM

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  100.1

  POSOC

  in February 26th, 2013 @ 18:01

  THAT NIGHTED, PENGUIN-FRINGED ABYSS

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  100.2

  Bibliophile

  in February 26th, 2013 @ 18:43

  Is “realy” a word for ice core drilling, or did you mean to say that it was really [insert thing]?

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  100.2.1

  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in February 26th, 2013 @ 18:52

  I suspect Jadestone meant to write either “real” or “reality.” Either would be meaningful in context.

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  100.2.1.1

  Bibliophile

  in February 26th, 2013 @ 18:58

  Ah, that didn’t occur to me.

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  100.2.1.2

  Jadestone

  in February 26th, 2013 @ 19:03

  aha yes, I meant real!! I just got too excited whoops.

  Also they got results form it that seem to confirm the presence of microbial life in a sub-antarctic lake! After being extra-careful to not have corss-contamination, which was the issue with the last time a group got such results. It’s so cool!

  Biblio, if you haven’t heard of this stuff yet, you might find it interesting. Look up the WISSARD project!

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  100.2.1.2.1

  KaiYves

  in February 26th, 2013 @ 19:27

  There’s nothing wrong with getting excited, polar science is awesome, extremophiles are awesome, and a combination of the two is a well-deserved reason to be excited.

  I definitely want to visit Antarctica at some point in the future. (Just not right now, I’d like to warm up a bit first!)

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  100.2.2

  KaiYves

  in February 26th, 2013 @ 19:23

  To steal the old Discovery Kids slogan: It’s really, really, real!

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  101

  FantasyFan?!?!

  in February 27th, 2013 @ 00:40

  Oh my god philosophy. I don’t think I like you.

  …Incoherent thoughts now, will hopefully go into more detail later after the seminar that I had to read philosophy papers for.

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  102

  Agent Lightning

  in February 27th, 2013 @ 17:50

  I just received two t-shirts in the mail.
  The first one has a picture of a trombone and the little “slide-to-unlock” thingy from the iPhone but it says “Slide to Play”.
  The second one says “I am a student. Contrary to popular belief, I am NOT just another test score”. And you can bet that I’ll wear it EVERY DAY during exam week.

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  103

  agrrrfishi

  in February 27th, 2013 @ 20:17

  I’m going to see Pentatonix tomorrow. TOMORROW. I’M SEEING THEM TOMORROW. My friend and I got our first class cancelled on Friday and we’re taking a roadtrip after class to the city where their show is and we’re going to see them, tomorrow night, and most likely meet them.

  WHAT
  JUST
  HAPPENED
  I AM DYING OF JOY RIGHT NOW

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  104

  Errata

  in February 27th, 2013 @ 20:29

  So on Saturday I went to a… Well, I’m not sure how to describe it. Library event, maybe?

  Anyway, I went to this thing. A local school district had arranged it, and they brought in six young adult authors, who talked about themselves and their books and all sorts of other things. It was pretty awesome.

  And I now have an autographed book. I’d never heard of the series before, but I liked the author and the concept.

  I also have a greatly expanded reading list. A day well spent.

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  105

  KaiYves

  in February 27th, 2013 @ 21:01

  I finished the photomanip I’d been working on for weeks and showed it to my RA and she said it was so heartwarming and well-done that she wanted to cry.

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  106

  Cello-Playing Mathematician (AKA Kyra)

  in February 27th, 2013 @ 22:24

  The quarter’s almost over.
  And it’s almost March!
  Wooo! Doctor Who and spring break and stuff.
  Although I don’t know what I’ll do for spring break… There were nebulous Walt Disney World plans–my cousin is part of the Disney cast, so she can get me and a couple friends in for free and get a substantial hotel discount–but I never worked up the nerve to ask anyone. Three weeks out, is it too late?

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  106.1

  Agent Lightning

  in February 28th, 2013 @ 13:45

  Ask people now: even if a lot of them have plans, chances are you’ll find someone: it’s better late than never.

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