Actions from LenaMovable Type Pro 5.22019-09-15T13:00:33Zhttp://www.antipope.org/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=feed&_type=actions&blog_id=1&id=5885Commented on Normal service will be resumed eventually in Charlie's Diarytag:www.antipope.org,2019:/charlie/blog-static//1.4152#20734312019-09-15T12:00:33ZLena
A friend of my parents said something after my Dad died (Mum died a few years previously) that I found helpful. She said that we have a word for a young person who has lost both parents, but not really for when it happens when you are an adult, and that this makes it harder to acknowledge and deal with the grief on a day to day basis with people who are not good friends. It certainly feels weird calling yourself an orphan when you are yourself an adult, but I think she was right that having a word for it would help. My aunt died last year, and I am now the oldest person in my immediate family, and that in and of itself can be disorienting.
Take all the time you need.
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Commented on Deaths and Deadlines in Charlie's Diarytag:www.antipope.org,2019:/charlie/blog-static//1.4137#20607662019-02-07T10:28:52ZLena
My Dad made a will after dealing with four estates where the person had not, including his mother and mine, because he "wasn't going to put me through that". He also left a large envelope with "to be read after I'm dead - no you fool after I'm dead!" on the front, which had details of all the bank accounts, and which solicitor had the will, and a list of names and addresses of friends (not all of which proved to be current, but it was still a huge help). He and my mother had spent the best part of a week clearing through paperwork at my grandad's place before they found the house deeds, and that was another thing he was not going to do to me. Given I was an orphan at 36 he made it as easy as it is possible for that to be.
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Commented on Typo Hunt: The Labyrinth Index in Charlie's Diarytag:www.antipope.org,2018:/charlie/blog-static//1.4132#20562942018-11-29T12:50:27ZLena
The UK audiobook has two brief silences in Chapter Four, which have remained after deleting and downloading a fresh copy, and which are mentioned in the reviews.
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Commented on Holding Pattern in Charlie's Diarytag:www.antipope.org,2018:/charlie/blog-static//1.4112#20490962018-07-15T10:59:15ZLena
Get some rest, take that much-needed and overdue break. The only way to avoid the unpleasant family stuff is to have no family left, unfortunately. I hope your mother does as well as is possible, and that whatever happens does so in a way that all concerned can feel OK about. I'm very glad to hear you are taking care of yourself - it is much too easy to get caught up in caring for other people and other things, but if you break yourself then none of that will get done.
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Commented on Towards a taxonomy of cliches in Space Opera in Charlie's Diarytag:www.antipope.org,2016:/charlie/blog-static//1.3960#19960182016-03-08T14:49:51ZLena
You are correct. (Noted biologist) Jack Cohen described the frogs to Niven over dinner at an SF con, and acted as biology advisor while he wrote the book.
Jack's main complaint about SF biology was always that it was so much more ordinary than actual Earth biology.
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Commented on Towards a taxonomy of cliches in Space Opera in Charlie's Diarytag:www.antipope.org,2016:/charlie/blog-static//1.3960#19960142016-03-08T13:54:27ZLena
There are mechanical differences between stretchy structures anchored on a solid border (roughly what the pelvis is in a mammal), and stretchy structures without a solid set of anchor points. Whether this would be enough to cause more problems with the hole not closing up again than the structure there is in mammals I'm not sure about. It would also, as has been commented before, need to be workable and advantageous at all stages from single-cell up.
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Commented on Towards a taxonomy of cliches in Space Opera in Charlie's Diarytag:www.antipope.org,2016:/charlie/blog-static//1.3960#19960062016-03-08T11:51:18ZLena
I would have said that the weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis lives on, but no-one bothers to talk about it because it has become part of the substrate most of sociolinguistics is built on. The hard version was very sort-lived, as befits a simplistic, deterministic theory about people.
The effect of native language, and of being monolingual or not as a child, is really quite strong (though I suspect some of the effects ascribed to first language in the early literature were actually effects of being monolingual, where the comparator group were bi- or multi-lingual.
The big error in fiction of many types is thinking that translation is EVER easy. Translation is hard even with closely related languages in one species.
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Commented on All that is old is new again (heavy politics dance remix) in Charlie's Diarytag:www.antipope.org,2015:/charlie/blog-static//1.3910#19814382015-09-23T13:23:38ZLena
On the question of "who would replace Corbyn?" there are some new, young, genuine lefties in the Parliamentary Labour Party. One of them is the MP for Lancaster and Fleetwood, Cat Smith. She was newly elected this time round, so Corbyn would need to hang in there for at least a while, but she is well worth watching. She is not the only one, though they are painfully thin on the ground at the moment.
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