Happy Birthday, Carl Sagan!
We wish you were here to enjoy it, and we’re sure you would have had interesting things to say about it.
NaNoWriMo* 2010
And they’re off! See you in December, mad scribblers — and perhaps occasionally before then if you find time to report in here.
*National Novel Writing Month.
Welcome, Neophytes! (November 2010 edition)
If you’re new on the blog, please stop by this thread and say pie — er, hi.
November 2010 “Happy Birthday!” Thread
Known Muser birthdays and “K Days” this month*:
11-02 Tesseract’s 6K Day
11-14 Mango’s birthday (1998 – green and blue and goldish-yellow)
11-16 Kiwimuncher’s birthday (1992 – green)
11-18 Cello-Playing Mathematician’s birthday (1993 – violet)
11-18 Enceladus’s birthday (1996 – purple, blue, and black)
11-24 peary moppins’s birthday (1997 – blue)
11-26 starr’s birthday (1996 – purple, pink, and silver)
11-27 Purple Panda’s birthday (1991 – purple)
11-27 Dodecahedron’s birthday (1993 – green)
You turn 5,000 days old this month if you were born between February 23 and March 24, 1997.
You turn 6,000 days old this month if you were born between May 30 and June 28, 1994.
You turn 7,000 days old this month if you were born between September 3 and October 2, 1991.
You have been on the blog for six months of you started posting in May.
*Note: Listed MBers who have been inactive for several months won’t appear on next year’s birthday calendar unless they show up again.
November/December 2010 Muse Discussion
WARNING! Will definitely contain spoilers!
To spare MBers reading the “Recent Comments” columns, please paste the following message in at the beginning of your posts:
SPOILER MUSE SPOILER MUSE SPOILER MUSE SPOILER MUSE SPOILER.
November/December 2010 Muse Roll Call
Let us know when your issue arrives.
NO SPOILERS, please. There’s another thread for discussing the issue.
Happy Hagfish Day!
Talk Like a Pirate Day 2010 may be just a happy memory, but you salty sea dogs still have an excuse to party. The conservation group Whale Times has declared today (October 20) “Hagfish Day” to celebrate all weird and/or ugly denizens of the sea. The group’s website (at www . whaletimes . org/HagfishDay . htm) features a gallery of underwater grotesques and directions for hagfish-related activities, some of them involving copious quantities of slime (a hagfish hallmark). Altogether Muserly, we deem.
Dispatches from Collegeland
Jadestone posted a long message about her adventures in Collegeland. We thought the subject merited a room of its own, so we’ve moved her comment from the Random Thread. Other collegians feel free to add your adventures.
Read more »
Muse Academy Halloween Ball, 2010
You’ve planned it, and now the time has come. Let the revels begin!
Slow Moderation Ahead
Two GAPAs will be traveling on Monday (October 11), so delayed moderation is a distinct possibility for much of the day.
MuseBlog is sorry for the inconvenience, which is due to its moderators’ possessing physical bodies that need to be laboriously transported from place to place. In the future, the Administrators hope to exchange their cumbersome proton-and-neutron-based bodies for electron-based models that can be transported at near-instantaneous speeds via wireless networks. Until the upgrade is complete, similar slowdowns are bound to occur from time to time, and we entreat your understanding.
NaNoBraSto 2010
Brainstorming for National Novel-Writing Month, which coincides with November. If you’re unfamiliar with it, NaNoMuBlo-ers will be happy to explain.
Date: October 6, 2010
Categories: Fiction, poetry, and fanfiction, The Universe, Things We like
October Random Thread, Part 1
Picture and theme coming soon! Meanwhile, jabber away.
(Users’ Manual: Obey The Rules. Consult The Guide. Have fun!
Welcome, Neophytes! (October 2010 edition)
If you’re new on the blog, please stop by this thread and say pie — er, hi.
October 2010 “Happy Birthday!” Thread
Known Muser birthdays and “K Days” this month*:
10-01 Kiki the Great’s birthday (1995 – black and red)
10-01 Cliff Eagle’s 6K Day
10-09 Gimanator’s birthday (1993 – purple)
10-09 Bismarck’s birthday
10-10 Keiffer’s 5K Day
10-12 Ebeth’s birthday (1991 – blue or octarine)
10-13 Paul Baker’s birthday
10-16 Kagcomix’s birthday (1993 – green)
10-19 LittleBasementKitten’s birthday (1997)
10-20 Goldendoodle’s birthrday (1994 – evergreen and gold)
10-23 kokopelli #13’s birthday (1992 – camouflage)
10-25 Red-tailed HAWK’s birthday (1994 – blue)
10-25 Randomosity 101’s birthday (1995 – blue, green, orange, and black)
10-25 Nthanda the Laugher’s 7K Day
You turn 5,000 days old this month if you were born between and January 23 and February 22, 1997.
You turn 6,000 days old this month if you were born between April 29 and May 29, 1994.
You turn 7,000 days old this month if you were born between August 3 and September 2, 1991.
You will have been on MuseBlog for six months if you started posting in April.
*Note: Listed MBers who have been inactive for several months won’t appear on next year’s birthday calendar unless they show up again.
Muse Academy Halloween Ball 2010 — Planning Thread
MA’s big annual autumn event is fast approaching, so it’s time to start nailing down some details. Creativity is encouraged, but remember: Muse Academy and all its functions are subject to physical laws and contemporary technology. No antigravity or unlimited sources of free energy, please!
Here’s how the ball unfolded last year.
October 2010 Muse Discussion
WARNING! Will definitely contain spoilers!
To spare MBers reading the “Recent Comments” columns, please paste the following message in at the beginning of your posts:
SPOILER MUSE SPOILER MUSE SPOILER MUSE SPOILER MUSE SPOILER.
October 2010 Muse Roll Call
Let us know when your issue arrives.
NO SPOILERS, please. There’s another thread for discussing the issue.
Happy Autumn!
The autumnal equinox takes place at 10:09 p.m. tonight (blogtime). To our European friends, it will be early Thursday morning. And down in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s spring! All very confusing, but that’s life.
Alter Ego Thread, v. 2010.2
Who can explain why these threads are so popular? We sure can’t.
The rules: Pick a pseudonym; guess who the other pseudonymous posters are while they try to guess you. That’s all there is to it.
Continued from 2010.1.
REMINDER: Check your posts before sending them — the preview button is useful for that. The Administrators will not rescue you if you accidentally submit one under your “real” blogname or post elsewhere with your alter ego.
Random Factoids & Miscellaneous Trivia-Off
By popular request. We’ve had Factoids threads before, but the Trivia-Off component is new.
Study Hall
Here’s how you’ve probably been told to study: Pick a special place for studying, and stick with it. Focus on one thing at a time. And remember your learning style (visual, right-brain, left-brain, etc.).
Wrong, wrong, wrong, say a couple of studies of studying, recently reported in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/health/views/07mind.html). When psychologists examine how people really learn things, a lot of popular, well-meaning advice turns out to be wrong. Variety, it turns out, works a lot better than repetitive, blinkered drilling. Vary the place, vary the material (as athletes and musicians have been doing for a long time). And so a new strain of well-meaning advice is born.
Now that you’re back in school and hitting your stride, we figured you’d have something to say on this topic. What have you been told about studying? What do you actually do? How do you like the results?
Talk Like a Pirate, Continued
Attention, MuseBloggers!
Just to be annoying for fun, we’ve decided to keep our English-to-Pirate translation plug-in running for an extra day. During that time, everything you post will automatically turn into pirate-speak. If you find that obnoxiously distracting, that’s the idea we’re sorry. Everything will be back to normal (or at least “normal”) on Tuesday, unless we change our minds.