(Another comment at Kalimac's entry on "The Cold Equations", which grew to independent size.)

In our legal system, everybody would try to sue everybody. In one legal system that might be inferred from the distinction in the preface ("a frontier is not always easy to recognize. It may lie on the other side of a simple door marked ‘No admittance’ "), it might sort out something like this:

1) EDS ship designers - subject to 'Frontier Law'
2) EDS regulation writers - subject to 'Frontier Law'
3) EDS pilot - subject to 'Frontier Law'
4) Big ship carrying passengers - subject to laws more like ours

Under such a system, the big ship's owners or managers could be successfully sued by both the girl's family and EDS, for lack of a good security barrier between passenger area and EDS area.

The pilot could complain to the regulation writers, who could complain to the designers. All three EDS parties would be protected by Frontier Law, as doing the best they could for emergency missions with limited resources: not enough time to spare for precautions against such a fluke event.

ETA: I think probabilitly and risk/benefit may be the key difference here. Whoever chose to have that big ship carrying both tourists and critical EDS equipment, had a one-time responsibility of making an effective barrier* to keep the tourists out of the danger area -- for many reasons. Otherwise, there's a high probability that some tourists would eventually wander in, causing various problems.

Otoh, the specific problem of an innocent stowaway in some small EDS craft had a much lower probability; thus it would not have made sense for EDS to engineer the whole fleet to accomodate stowaways.

As for the pilot 'scanning' for stowaways who might have snuck in after the normal pre-flight inventory -- presumably scanning by opening all the closets and looking under the bunk, if any -- again that's a very unlikely danger to spend time on.

ETA 2. *Actually, as with us, passengers would normally be confined to a safe area -- not allowed to get into the engine rooms or any other utilitarian areas.
My comment at Kalimac's got so long I'm putting it here too.
http://kalimac.livejournal.com/692801.html?style=mine&nc=5#comments

I've seen a good, semi-scholarly page on TCE which I'm too lazy to search for again, and some other good views of it, ditto. I admire it as brilliant in context and wish people would stop falling so deeply into its text. Dudes, it's just a STORY.

As to a concocted scenario, well, yes. The author kept submitting versions where they found a solution and everyone was saved. Upbeat puzzle stories of that kind were popular at that time -- and ALL such puzzles ended upbeat. It was John Campbell who kept shooting down the author's solutions, plugging those loopholes, and insisting on the ending that eventually got published. The patches and re-writes show. So yes, contrived.

In context of those traditional upbeat puzzle stories -- this was a brilliant reply to them, a breaking of the mold. An amazing shock. (Like the first detective story where the narrator done it.) That was one of Campbell's purposes.

More specifically, according to Campbell's preface for it, the purpose was showing that:
“The Frontier is a strange place – and a frontier is not always easy to recognize. It may lie on the other side of a simple door marked ‘No admittance’ – but it is always deadly dangerous.”

I've seen this following a sensible discussion about the difference between a frontier and a ... tenderfoot-safe area. It's not that the frontier is full of outlaws. It's that the frontier is jury-rigged. Things just barely work, because someone made them up in a hurry out in a windstorm with bailing wire and the wrong tools and just for one purpose at a time. Everything was quick and dirty code. There was no time to annotate and re-label and add error-trapping. You had to do work-arounds, if you knew how. Nobody was there to tell you anything. If someone had bothered to put up a 'Danger' sign, it must have been an extreme danger -- because every surviving frontiersman already knew that EVERYTHING is dangerous.

The successive patches to the story are just what you'd expect in a frontier. Nobody had time to re-design the craft for the safety of stowaways. They barely had time to issue a blaster, and put an errata sheet in the regulations.

The craft was contrived. The FRONTIER is contrived.
From http://editrx.livejournal.com/276527.html

Go go gadget Indiegogo! editrx

october 31st, 2:10
I had braced myself for a slow first day of contributions and set a personal goal of $100-200 in funds received.

By 10pm ET, I'd received just a little over $1,000, and as of this writing the campaign stands at $1,125.

This is exciting stuff, folks! Just $7,000 more to go, and I'll reach my minimum goal to underwrite buying the store. From there, anything over that will go to some VERY necessary things, such as a modernized point-of-sale system, an inventory system & doing the inventory itself, promotional items new books that need purchasing, advertising (sorely needed!), and money to bring in authors and other events.

So please keep the word going on the campaign and encourage people to donate as much as possible, as I'll need to exceed the minimum goal to really have a chance at succeeding at the bookstore relaunch.

A little over $1,000 the first day. Wow, guys. You all amaze me!

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/star-cat-books-acquisition-fundraiser/x/5223287?c=activity
... whether it deserves signal boosting.

IE, is it REALLY good old Star Trek (yay!)? Or the reboot (boo!).

Note of something: my fingers typed 'Or the robot'.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/125377036/star-trek-continues-webseries
Remember GKC's young man who was disinherited for Socialism because of a lecture he gave against that economic system?

Here's the full text of a letter where Columbus complains that others are doing scandalous things with slaves. It gets quoted as if he were doing those things himself.

http://ageofex.marinersmuseum.org/index.php?type=explorersection&id=65
"Eskimos have 37 words for 'snow'."

"No, they only have the same number we have" -- and on and on to wipe out the speaker's point, which is that we need more words for different kinds of Whateveritiswearetalkingabout.

Same with "There's an old Thai/Cherokee/Swedish proverb...." Talley-ho! -- there goes the conversation.

"Well, if they don't, they SHOULD have" appeals to me, but somehow I doubt it would work in most cases.

Locating the source in Erewhon might do. If a quibbler questions us, we could say "Spell it backwards." While he is doing so, counting on his fingers and moving his lips, the rest of us could get on with the conversation.

/mean snark
Pocohantas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame may have been Disneyfied away from their originals, but I thought Burroughs's Barsoom was plenty Disneyish enough already, with its noble virgin heroines, gallant gentleman adventurer, etc. So I was expecting this to be a pretty good match.

Huh-uh. Nastified it. Forget it.
If the order had been a little different, I'd be like the Jewish boy who stood up at his Bar Mitzvah and said, "Today I am a fountain pen."

(via grrlpup)

You are now a Time Lord. The object closest to your left hand is your Sonic item. One of your parents’ occupations is your title. Your last text is your catchphrase.


My Sonic Item is a ball point pen.
My Title is "Teacher".
My Catchphrase is "U still awake?"


ETA typo
When I talk about the rule of 80/20, people act like I was imagining it. Here's the real explanation. When I get time (if), I'll boil it down to the important 20%of its word count.

http://www.sensiblemarks.info/80_20_happiness.html

Kettle ...

Oct. 15th, 2013 04:44 pm
... well, kind of like Ma and Pa.

Me: Where's the new kettle?

Him: What new kettle?

Me: The one you bought a couple of years ago.

Him: That's new?

Me, quoting Downton Abbey: Your lot buys them; my lot inherits them.
Unfortunately, honoring someone who accomplished one great thing, leads to pretending he was a saint in other ways. Then people who enjoy tearing down saints have fun, and the actual accomplishment of the great thing gets forgotten, or the great thing becomes collateral damage.

Columbus had a wild theory which turned out to be wrong -- but actually making that voyage found a result bigger than the spice route he was hoping for. The moral is 'Fund Random Research'. (Or, 'Follow Your Own Wild Ideas'.)

Columbus wasn't even looking for a new world to conquer. How his culture including himself) behaved when they stumbled on one, is a different matter. His peaceful spice route intention, and the work he put into the voyage, is what got him celebrated.
Vera did a brilliant job on her Mansfield Park and Mummies.

Now here's something else from her -- the third volume of Cobweb Forest.


http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cobweb-forest-enter-me
The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown. Very well worth reading. Especially for Lewis fans.

Here are links to several sections.

http://m-francis.livejournal.com/296310.html
So, if the current plan works, what do I wish I'd done in the first place (in Word 2003)?

Maybe...

Use a spreadsheet, not Word, for the big timetable. Short headers only, no notes. No flowchart graphics?

After I decide which of those headers will combine to be scenes, and decide how many parties will be wandering around (say, three), then a simple three-column file for those headers only.

Then for actual text -- some kind of a SIMPLE three-column deal. Next time, maybe START with three separate files and a screen big enough to line them up side by side.

Color coding was the least problem this time. And the less needed I suppose, since it was mostly one color per column. I like green for the party in the jungle, gray (didn't have tan) for the party in the desert. The best color left was yellow, so I used it for the giraffe and his encounters. Red and pink for notes like "The following will be flashback" and "FIND the the giraffe tree scene???" -- Except when two parties met or needed close coordination, I put some of the other color in each column.

Now I know a whole lot of things that Word 2003 pretends to do but really fouls up (or that I way overloaded the system trying to do). Next time I'll find out what overloads Excel 2003, I suppose.
Lifted from marypcb's Tweets:

If someone makes a racist/sexist joke, say, with total seriousness, “I don’t get it, can you explain it?”
Who wants your wormy green apples? ... Please don't throw me in your blog!


From Comments at the Kickstarter page:

The movie is actually already fully funded. The Kickstarter campaign is not so much about the money as it is about marketing.
[....]
2. We're very aware that we have a built-in "anti-Atlas" audience as well. We know from our experience with the first two films that there is an incredible amount of vitriol out there and, we have every intention of capitalizing on it this time around. The day we launch the Kickstarter campaign, those haters are going to come ALIVE. They're going to come after us in droves attacking us everywhere online. To them, we say thank you. Thank you for helping us spread the word. We're looking forward to the onslaught of all those negative blogs, facebook posts, and tweets.


ETA: Didn't someone in the book actually pull a stunt something like this? All that comes to mind is Dagny naming her venture "The John Galt Line" which probably got her some publicity.
How many people have to explain that they don't agree with an author's politics or philosophy, but do admire their literary achievement and originality?

Part I was quite good, imo. Haven't caught Part II yet (actually I'm kind of scared of it, as Part I ended with Dagny freaking out because of the burning oil fields).

The Kickstarter is coming along well.

741 backers
$151,369 pledged of $250,000 goal
26 days to go

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atlasshrugged/atlas-shrugged-movie-who-is-john-galt
I just posted this at Tor, referring to Bridge to Terabithia ... Old Yeller ... Where the Red Fern Grows ... etc! And Charlotte's Web, while I'm at it.

First, as James Nicoll often says, a prophylactic. When this sort of book is required reading, suggest starting at the end and reading backwards, one page or page spread at a time. This way you get the Foreshadowings and other things you'll need to repeat to the teacher who assigned it (boo!), all nice and analytic and bloodless.

Oh, and read a couple of negative reviews first, and look it up in TVtropes.

Hm, maybe we need a bingo card for these Death by Newberry books.

Next, where's a good crossover fan fic? At the end of The Last Battle this strange girl turns up in New Narnia, recruiting for an expedition to New Terebithia to establish a Gate there....
I just posted this at Tor.

"And the answer Rowing gave was that Albus Dumbledore was gay. That he had fallen in love with Gellert Grindelwald many years before the events of the books. Carnegie Hall erupted in applause."

In our timeline, looking back from 2007, we have two pieces of information.
1. Dumbledore was gay.
2. Carnegie Hall erupted in applause.

#2 was a wonderful moment, which we are richer for; which made headlines around the world; and which told the world something important about 2007.
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