Committing one more online blunder and not taking the time to avail myself of the larger context (no time, too much work this week), I am just logging in to link to this article on Salon (might have been linked before/later/somewhere in the vicinity), and to join the crowd of left-out girls. Actually, Sam, I didn't feel left out, I felt downright excluded, in the worst white-male-oppresses-you kind of way. sry 2say!

/social blunder

My Dad used to collect Persian-type rugs (of course they're not all Persian) and we were very surprised the first time we realized one of our smallest Afghan rugs included stylized tanks and guns next to traditional geometric designs. That was in the late eighties - early nineties, pre-first Irak war I would say. Probably tied in to the Mujahidin conflict?

Like Kevin says, modern, war items "tied intimately to traditional local patterns". We have since lost that rug, sadly, but it was my favorite for a long time.

Welcome, P.E.F.N.T.D., welcome! Let's hope you get lucki(er) in the nickname department. *g*

Congrats, Cory, Alice. Nicest mutant I've seen yet (beyond my own hatched-at-home little brother, that is).

I believe that

#22 - No one has ever been able to sit down comfortably to a meal of “liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”

does not mean "these kids do not know about the Silence of the Lambs" but rather "they ALL know about the movie, and cannot COMFORTABLY eat such a meal as it will inevitably remind them of the movie in which these things are referenced associated with the eating of human liver by a psychopath." - Hence, implying that this meal combo has all but disappeared because of the widely spread pop culture reference.

In France, there's been a terrible scandal regarding the tragic murder of a little kid called Gregory when I was myself a kid; for years and years after that the number of newborns called "Gregory" was close to null. #22 alludes to that kind of cultural development, and has simply been misread.

It makes me so, so happy. :-)

I'm still on my way to read the article (bad form to comment this early on, I know, on the mere snippet) but oh, wow, how that makes me giggle! Worse-- It's very, very sad, obviously, but... God. The mere idea makes me guffaw semi-hysterically, like one might to avoid crying.

Poor rich powerful white men! They could not hire specialists nor educate themselves! The world was suddenly too complex for them! How unusual a position they found themselves in!

How fear rules us.

Okay, now I go get a snack and start reading the whole thing.

I'd missed one, obviously... Here's the missing bit (nothing fascinating, but I am a completist).

I've never seen <$ as defined here (clever!), but we routinely use <3 alone - which we also write out the "words" for, be them lessthanthree or asscone; these can be verbs of course, so that in the same way that you can have "I [heart] NYC" you also find "I lessthanthree you so much" (ironically, of course).

Oops, I should have thought to write out the html code, sorry.. Edited repost, hopefully working better:

Interesting that it appears here as a gamer's emoticon - it's been part of my Livejournal culture (mostly female / media fandom) for years, and it's inevitable that I wonder if it's women gamers who brought it to the game world...

I've never seen

I personally have a habit of hyperbole, so my <3 have become <3333333333333333 in some groups, and <3456789 in others, to convey over the top affection.. And <@2#$@3456#&%#!! in extreme cases, when profanity seems required to convey the strength of the sentiment. I am completely unoriginal in this - by which I mean, it's really widespread in my online communities.

/amateur unobjective e-anthropoly

Interesting that it appears here as a gamer's emoticon - it's been part of my Livejournal culture (mostly female / media fandom) for years, and it's inevitable that I wonder if it's women gamers who brought it to the game world...

I've never seen

I personally have a habit of hyperbole, so my

/amateur unobjective e-anthropoly

I, too, really want one. /useless addition

I grew up a book fetishist, and I admit it probably would be hard for me to hollow out the object myself, but still I grin at the number of people here crying out in putative pain at the mere idea. How can it be sacrilegious to hollow out Moby Dick? Surely, this is one of the texts that we can rest assured is NOT lost when just one of its in-paper-nation finds itself gutted?

Surely it's worse to destroy a book that we cannot ascertain will survive despite our actions than make a box out of a work so widespread as Ishmael's tale? Come on. The text counts, yes, but the text is insubstantial. The books are but mere transitive objects for it, they are but vessels. Have fun, book carvers out there!

From what I understand, LOGO has been invented precisely with the goal of being a didactic tool - teaching programming, essentially. I was very happy to see that it's one of the environments included in the XO laptop of the One Laptop Per Child initiative! I too have many fun memories of making the turtle draw things for me - memorably, I was super-proud when I figured out how to make it draw the closest-I-could do a circle... I must've been 10? 11?

(Happy as in : there might have been squealing. Also, can I get a show of hands: who else here wants one of these green, antennae-sporting unbreakable XO puppies? I am curious to see how many we are).

I so love when fiction makes me long to see the physical objects it describes - it seems my favorite sci-fi often does that. I wonder if it speaks to my materialistic streak, my crafter soul or what, but it's a really strong pull/yearning... Anyway. Thanks for the story, Cory.

I got it, yay! And right after I emailed TNH, too, now knowing who exactly I should bother with this. Oops! Anyway, I'm glad it's resolved.