Monday, 13 January 2025
Life, the universe, pies, hot-pink bunnies, world domination, and everything
The famous astronomer and most Muserly explainer of science would have turned 75 on Monday, November 9. Happy birthday, Carl! Sixty-two revolutions on your home planet weren’t nearly enough. Our corner of the cosmos salutes you.
If you’re ever in a hopeless position and want to resign a game rather than continue playing, just hit the skull-and-crossbones button on the control bar. That’s what it’s for. It’s more polite than simply abandoning the game.
The madness begins again. Some MuseBloggers will disappear for a month and others may show up more often to bewail or celebrate their progress.
*National Novel Writing Month.
Food, that is. And when better than November to celebrate it, in all its many-splendored savory glory? And what could be more appropriate than to begin than with tea time at the H&H? Read more »
New on the blog? Come on in! Ballistic pastry and good counsel await you on this thread.
Read more »
Known Muser birthdays this month*:
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 soccer starr’s birthday (1996 – purple, pink, and silver)
11-27 Purple Panda’s birthday (1991 – purple)
11-27 Birthday of Vixen in the Eyes of the Moon (1992 – ruby red)
11-27 Dodecahedron’s birthday (1993 – green)
11-27 Cinnamoon’s birthday (1994 – yellow)
You turn 5,000 days old this month if you were born between February 24 and March 24, 1996.
You turn 6,000 days old this month if you were born between May 30 and June 28, 1993.
You turn 7,000 days old this month if you were born between September 3 and October 2, 1990.
*Note: Listed MBers who have been inactive for several months won’t appear on next year’s birthday calendar unless they show up again.
The Chess Eterna-ment deserves its name, but once in a while a game does end.
So far, six games of normal chess (as opposed to Capablanca or Turbo chess) have been played to completion on the blog. The results so far:
Regular Chess
bookgirl_me > mason
Ducky > Kiga
Purple Panda > TMFA
Piggy > RoseQuartz
Jakob Wonkychair > Tesseract
Capablanca Chess
bookgirl_me > POSOC
cromwell > Enceladus
Turbo Chess
bookgirl > Jakob Wonkychair
As the days dwindle down to a precious few, the Random Thread ends the month with a headlong (or at any rate, face-forward) plunge into darkness. Read more »
WARNING! Will definitely contain spoilers!
To spare MBers reading the “Recent Comments” columns, please paste the following message in at the beginning of your posts:
SPOILER MUSE SPOILER MUSE SPOILER MUSE SPOILER MUSE SPOILER.
Let us know when your issue arrives.
NO SPOILERS, please. There’s another thread for discussing the issue.
Is anyone familiar with this kind of joke? Sometimes called “prejudiced triples,” it takes an an activity or trait and shows how one’s perception of it changes depending on distance from the speaker.
Showing is better than telling:
I am firm. You are stubborn. He is pig-headed.
(That’s the classic example, which we’ve seen attributed to Bertrand Russell, George Bernard Shaw, and someone called K. J. Stavronides.)
On MuseBlog, of course, the gender-specific “he” can be replaced with the gender-noncommital “en”:
I am thrifty. You are cheap. En is a tightwad.
I am eloquent. You are loquacious. En is a blabbermouthed bore.
And so on. Anyone want to add some?
Ages ago, Robert started inserting the Muses into the action of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. First, the whole gang burst into Chapter One. Then, in a scene unlike anything in the book, Feather met Fleur Delacour and discovered her poetic side.
Robert planned some other scenes that he never got around to posting. This one is from Chapter 24, “Sectumsempra.” Looking for the girls’ bathroom, Mimi accidentally walks into the boys’ loo a few minutes before Harry Potter arrives for his fateful encounter with Draco Malfoy…. Read more »
GAPA Rebecca has decided to avail herself of Robert’s chess lessons. She’s not a super-confident chessplayer,* so any MBer is welcome to help her by suggesting moves and strategies.
*More precisely: complete neophyte. ~L.B.
Read more »
Fireworks, neon, strings of decorative lights at holidays…they need the darkness to make their colors glow to their fullest splendor. Part 2 of the October Random Thread continues our salute to the brighter side of darkness. Read more »
It’s Halloween at Muse Academy (in blog time), and the ball is about to begin. The food, the decorations, the music… how can we describe them? We can’t! You’ll have to do that before anything else can happen. A little scene-setting, please!
Robert is going crazy with this chess software. Tesseract, Lovely Lunegood, Adeia, Pseudonym, SudoRandom, and mas0n have all expressed interest in a lesson, in approximately that order.
Tesseract — ready to roll?
(Note: “Lesson” games are played in public. Players may comment on their own or each other’s moves; observers may ask questions, which the players may or may not answer. It’s all highly experimental.)
Read more »
Attention, MBers within driving distance of Morgantown, West Virginia: West Virginia University will hold its 22nd annual Pumpkin Drop on Friday, October 30.
What’s a Pumpkin Drop? Nancy Kangas and her son Aaron can tell you. So can Purple Panda and her family. They’ve all dropped pumpkins in previous years.
You can find more information at www . mae.cemr.wvu . edu/news/news-details.php?item=1272 .
And you can see how Pan & Co. did it right here on the blog.
Date: October 11, 2009
Categories: Non-Muse news, Nonrandom Craziness, The Universe, Things We like
In which MuseBloggers gather data about that ever-popular topic, one another.
Continued from v. 2009.1.
For your enjoyment and edification, here’s a chess game that the American chess genius Paul Morphy played against two noblemen during intermission at the Paris Opera in 1858.
Robert has an idea for a new way to use the chess software: He’ll play a game with one MBer (at a time), trying to create interesting positions for his opponent to exploit. He’ll make comments on the action as it unfolds and will answer questions from anybody on the blog. Sound interesting? Read more »
= NaNo BrainStorming = generating ideas for NaNoWriMo = National Novel-Writing Month, which takes place in November. Someone will explain….
Date: October 1, 2009
Categories: Fiction, poetry, and fanfiction, Life, The Universe, Things We like