Wrong, if you haven't seen what is Barangay is, don't assume. No words can explain the word. You have to be visit the Philippines to know it.

<while, coincidentally or otherwise, the Tagalog crew have found something else to obsess about.>

Low blow, how do you feel if I say same words to your clan. That statement, whether intentional or not, it will sparks some debates and bitterness. Obsess is a strong word, and can be taken as an insult. We should try to be very careful to our selection of words if your intention is move on for peace. Otherwise, another war is inevitable. I am not here to start a new argument so hang loose. And hopefully, nobody else from the BW see this post.

<The *tribal* problem won't go away, of course, but it seems to take a rare set of circumstances to trigger it -- a player whose fans have formed a cultlike in-group, with strange dashes of religiosity and psycho-nationalism; plus a 'challenge' of some kind on that player's page; and then a gang of overhyped crazies duelling with a perceived enemy, who flits around humming 'I won't back down'.>

Apologies for the curt hit-and-run nature of my posts last night. I got home from work very tired, so I only responded to what looked urgent.

I'm pretty tired now too, so I'm giving a few more points I may want to return to later a miss, and just picking out a few that look like the shortest ones to comment on. ;)

<Dom: <I hope you all return from time to time when normal service resumes. I'd actually like to analyze this phenomenon and its implications.

That includes <frogbert> who previously thought he wasn't welcome, and <Annie K.> who had somehow neglected to drop by in the past.>>

Analyze away. I <love> analyses. :D

As for "neglecting to drop by", I think I could count on one hand the number of personal forums I <have> posted to. Just haven't done much of that. This may change though. :)

<Isaac Asimov, Jokester>

IMO, Asimov's best piece bar none. He isn't one of my totally-mad-about writers either - I love his logic, wealth of original ideas, and humor, but I think his characters are cardboard flat and paper thin. Of course he is still one of the giants of classic SF.

<twinlark> you're on my discussions calendar (as soon as I get time and energy for longer posts, which may or may not happen before the weekend) both WRT answering your post in my forum and for a discussion on the theme "clarity of communication". You seem to be extraordinarily (i.e., beyond the usual) prone to getting yourself misunderstood, due to what I diagnose as a tendency to say <exactly> "too much and/or not enough". :)

(I'm afraid you may have to learn to tolerate my severe smiley addiction though. I don't seem to be able to control it to any significant degree).

<achieve> I hope you feel better soon.

Many thanks for your highly appreciative comments. It's very interesting that your thought process seems to be so similar to mine, at least on this subject. :) I may drop by your forum when you reopen it - and you are of course very welcome to drop by mine any time. All of you are, naturally.

Is a "cretin" a geek bearing grifts?>

For the record, I don't have a 'clan' and I'm almost impossible to insult. I'm of the opinion that most sane, rational grown-up people have a similar attitude. A short fuse is nothing to be proud of.

I suspect any response is pointless. Goes against the grain, but the old 'delete' option seems best. Maybe with ignore thrown in.

<twinlark & Annie> Speaking of SF, I'm reminded of all those old stories where wise aliens keep Earth in an isolation ward for being socially, mentally and physically toxic.

Well at least he appreciates a jest. So there's hope for him yet. I reckon leave him alone and let's get on with the serious business of amusing each other.

About those aliens...yeah, if I was an alien I'd be scared of us. Hell, I'm not an alien and I'm scared of us.

But I get too tired to stay scared all the time.

Remember: <there's nothing to beer except beer itself>

The message? Why, the medium, of course. That is, providing we still like McLuhan, and don't think that he was wrong about pretty much everything. But then maybe that wouldn't matter, either. Unity of opposites and all that. We'll have a think.

But enough of Marshall Plans. 'Anniversary' is the one where Tom is feeling bollocks and as such doesn't really feel like celebrating his birthday. For some reason or other he cheers up and they all go out and have a shindig and feel generally okay about it all for once. Then they get back and find that a load of vandals have smashed up Tom and Barbara's house and pissed all over the place.

A kind of ghost? Cool. Is this the machine?

Not one of us here is an internet person. You know I knew that long ago. You know? Actually, that's not true at present, is it. But most dangerous things don't stay in the bloodstream long enough to be picked up by urine tests.

Are those the same woods which are black or white, where one will never sleep?

<Actually, I'm off to see Leonard Cohen.>

And we believed, all of us out there in UCLA, the University of Chemistry Labs in the Amazon, that it was impossible to be an observer. By watching, you changed the thing you watched.

Contrary to popular belief, this has nothing to do with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, except for a broad metaphoric resonance. But metaphoric resonances are what we do, and the more broads the better.

Cohen was superb. His voice is actually getting *better*. He bounds on stage, keeps going for about three hours, does multiple encores, and seems to enjoy the whole thing immensely. I've never seen a performer so happy -- apart from those who where cheerful for all the wrong reasons, viz, the I'm-so-out-of-it-I'm-into-it brigade.

She had a song called Fotheringay. Something to do with Mary Queen of Scots, I think. She may also have had a band of that name....

But the Humpty Dumpty principle allows words to mean whatever you want them to mean, and I will now define a *Fotheringay* as a virtual social group with territorial attachments to the archipelagic territories which once belonged to the Nipponese Greater Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. In true portmanteau style, a fotheringay can be both foppish and bothersome, with a hint of *otherness*. And ostranenie and alterity and all who sail in them.

Zhumulangma. Some splittists argue for Chomolongma, but MOTHER (Mountain Onomastics & The Hilly Earth Revengers) will take care of them...

We take the long view. Imagine India ripping free from Gondwanaland, sailing majestically northwards, slamming into Asia, throwing up the Himalayas and spitting out a few stray archipelagos, long before the hobbits moved in.

"In the canyons of your mind
I will wander through your brain
To the ventricles of your heart, my dear
I'm in love with you again...

<Marshall Plans> I've always liked the way that Nimzo and Marshall discovered the main themes of the Modern Benoni between them, in the original (New York 1927) stem game. Nimzo's 7.Nd2 in particular. As Mondo says: "The two procedures mentioned by Nimzowitsch here have become absolutely main line methods ..."

Did I mention that Cohen was good? He was better. Sublime.

Da. I'm reminded of an article I read... something like 20 years ago? - in a Hungarian magazine. To this day I'm not sure if it was a hoax or serious, but in any case, the story is too good to let facts get in its way. :p

So, according to this article, scientists built one of those SETI probes, with an advanced program to look for inhabited planets. Before sending it off on its way to the stars, they decided to test it by turning it on Earth. The probe's report was: "There is definitely life on Earth, however it's uncertain whether it is intelligent life".

In Sheridan's play The Rivals, two members of the older generation argue that these dreadful novels raise serious questions about the value of teaching women to read. And Sheridan's own mother, Frances Sheridan - who was a novelist - had been taught to read'n'write in secret by her brothers.