MuseBlog

Robert recalls:

This may be my favorite issue of Muse, starting with the cover, which I discovered in an out-of-print Tolkien calendar just as Muse‘s editors were despairing of finding affordable Middle-earth art. Inside, Nancy Kangas introduced Ble, Larry Gonick extended his “Kokopelli & Company” LotR parody through the whole issue, and there were articles on Middle-earth languages (including a handy Elvish phrasebook), special effects in the movies, and dragons — great fun all around.

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If you’re new on the blog, please stop by this thread and say pie — er hi.

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Use the comments here to swap tips about outstanding, little known, and/or underutilized parts of MuseBlog. (In four years, we’ve accumulated an amazing number of chasms, subterranean passages, sunken cities, and fossiliferous formations.) Be sure to include the URL (Web address) so others can share your finds.

Fern turns an astonishing 21 years old today (Saturday, May 18). The May “Happy Birthday!” Thread awaits your expressions of awe and delight. Also, pies.

Most of our interactions with other people are non-romantic. Here’s a place to discuss relationships that belong to that usually silent majority.

Continued from Just Friends, v. 2011.

She’s been here almost since the beginning and turns 21 today (Thursday, May 9). Congratulations on the May “happy birthday” thread are definitely in order.

Piggy’s description:

We could share factoids we’ve read, advice from personal experience, observations about the world, what-have-you. Everyone learns something new every day, and I’d like a place to share.

Continued from v. 2012.

She probably feels incredibly old today (Tuesday, April 30), but she has studied enough archaeology to know she’s not. Hail, oxlin!

It’s called The Wells Bequest and will be published in June. It’s already getting good reviews on Goodreads (www .goodreads . com/book/show/16101024-the-wells-bequest).

Known MBers’ birthdays and “K Days” this month.

05-04 Cat’s Eye’s birthday (1995)
05-07 Nancy Kangas’s birthday
05-09 Axa’s birthday (1992)
05-15 Thanks For All The Fish42′s birthday (1996)
05-18 Midnight Fiddler’s birthday (1992)
05-23 Sans Orchestre’s 7K Day
05-28 Agent Lightning’s birthday (1998)
05-28 gradster’s 7K Day
05-30 SudoRandom’s 6K Day
05-31 Tesseract’s birthday (1994)

You turn 5,000 days old this month if you were born between August 24 and September 23, 1999.
You turn 6,000 days old this month if you were born between November 27 and December 27, 1996.
You turn 7,000 days old this month if you were born between March 3 and April 2, 1994.
You turn 8,000 days old this month if you were born between June 7 and July 7, 1991.

*Note: Listed MBers who have been inactive for several months won’t appear on next year’s birthday calendar unless they show up again.

We don’t know that you were born on April 23, 1564, just that you were baptized a few days later. And there’s no evidence that you ever spelled your name “Shakespeare” when you signed it. But never mind. You gave us lines like these:

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

Catwings first pounced onto MuseBlog on April 22, 2012.

Tell us when your magazine arrives and/or what you think about it.
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Last summer, Randomosity101, Agent Lightning, Tesseract, Kiwimuncher, Koppar, Lady Bunniful, and assorted parents Kokonvened at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Stories. We have pictures to prove it, but they’ll have to supply the stories behind them:
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Known Muser birthdays and “K Days” this month*:

04-02 THF’s birthday (1995)
04-08 Beavo’s birthday (1995)
04-09 POSOC’s birthday (1994)
04-10 Vendaval’s birthday (1992)
04-11 FantasyFan?!?!’s birthday (1993)
04-17 Grant O.’s birthday (1990)
04-17 bookgirl_me’s birthday (1995)
04-18 Maths Lover’s birthday (1996)
04-22 Piggy’s birthday (1994)
04-23 Optimatum’s birthday (1996)
04-23 Ducky’s birthday (1997)
04-24 speller73′s birthday (1995)
04-30 Oxlin’s birthday (1990)

You turn 5,000 days old this month if you were born between July 25 and August 23, 1999.
You turn 6,000 days old this month if you were born between October 28 and November 26, 1996.
You turn 7,000 days old this month if you were born between February 1 and March 2, 1994.
You turn 8,000 days old this month if you were born between May 8 and June 6, 1991.

*Note: Listed MBers who have been inactive for several months won’t appear on next year’s birthday calendar unless they show up again.

Ergo, it follows that tomorrow is April 1.

If you’ve been on MuseBlog for a while, you’ll know that the First of April is a special day here on the blog. You’ll also know that there are always a few people who forget to come here that day and wind up kicking themselves for having missed it.

So unless you are into kicking yourself (and they do say it takes all kinds to make a world), you’d be well advised to show up at some point tomorrow. This is particularly true for Jadestone, POSOC, and a few other MBers, for reasons that will become apparent. (Anyone who is in touch with POSOC may want to give him a nudge.)

That’s all we’ll say for now.

bookgirl_me’s idea. Her description:

What say you to a thread about posting about certain goals/successes we set ourselves/achieve?

The catalyst for this is a bet I made with a classmate: he wagered I couldn’t pass the Cooper’s Test (a fitness test: run as far as you can in 12 minutes). I’d been thinking of getting back into shape for a while, but it never really clicked until now. It’s just so much easier to be motivated when you’re doing something with friends- sort of like NaNoWriMo, except in my case with running (I actually did “NaNoRuMo” or whatever I called it a few years back when I ran a total of 50 kilometers or so in a month but I can’t find the thread).

Anyhow, I know most MBers are pretty determined/high achievers: it doesn’t have to be about fitness, just setting yourself a not-that-easy goal and working towards it (together). Anyone with me?

Enigmatic thread title by Rebecca.

Tell us when your magazine arrives and/or what you think about it.
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A place to post things you’ve written and to talk about writing in general.

Continued from v. 2012.

A century later, we still have trouble wrapping our minds around the bizarre universe you unveiled. But it really does seem to be where we live.

*(That’s 3/14 in USA date format, for those who write it the other way around.)

This photo from the employee lounge on Robert’s floor at Science magazine shows why geek-rich environments are great places to work.

Where will you be at 1:59?

Those of you with online access to Science magazine should definitely check out this week’s news feature “A Sea Change for U.S. Oceanography” at www . sciencemag . org/content/339/6124/1138 .

Short version: As research budgets shrink and technology improves, oceanographers are spending less time at sea and relying more on data from remote sensing.

Polling Place threads: vital source of Muserly information, time-wasting distraction, both, other, or what? (We pick “what?!”)

Continued from v. 2011.2

KaiYves is tracking the history of high-altitude balloons through a wide variety of sources. At her request, Robert has scanned relevant panels from “The X-Men” number 18 (March 1966) and posted them here for her inspection:

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New year, new complications.

Continued from v. 2012.3.