Mutant genres 21 Oct 2007 This is a meme started by PZ Mackers. I will exact retribution upon him later. In the meantime, I have been tagged There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”. Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations: You can leave them exactly as is. You can delete any one question. You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change “The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…” to “The best time travel novel in Westerns is…”, or “The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is…”, or “The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is…”. You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”. You must have at least one question in your set, or you’ve gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you’re not viable. Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions. Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them. My great-great-great-great-great grandparent is Pharyngula My great-great-great-great grandparent is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club My great-great-great grandparent is Flying Trilobite My great-great grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock My great-grandparent is The Primate Diaries My grandparent is Conspiracy Factory My parent is The Skeptical Alchemist [the mungrel!] The best time travel novel in SF/fantasy is: No Enemy But Time by Michael Bishop The best novel of Jewish literature published in English is: My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok The best page-turner book in Nobel-prize-winning fiction is: The Slave by Isaac Bashevis Singer I am propagating this meme on to: 1) De Rerum Natura 2) The Lippard Blog 3) Catalogue of Organisms 4) Musgrave’s Astroblogger 5) Sunbeams from Cucumbers 6) Thoughts in a Haystack Administrative Humor
Administrative For the past week, I’ve actually been in Germany 15 Oct 2009 You know those stories about absent minded professors? I just showed that you don’t actually need a professorial appointment. I was meeting Steve Clarke, a leading philosopher who is at Oxford, at 12.45. I turned up on the dot at St Cross College (they have such great names here!), but… Read More
Administrative More of me in Spanish, and information again 4 Aug 200818 Sep 2017 A blog post by the incredibly multilingual John Wilkins (who knew he spoke French, Portuguese and Spanish? OK, it’s by proxy, but it’s nearly as good as actually speaking it) is now available in Spanish. Gee but he looks like he knows whereof he speaks… Thanks to Eduardo Zugasti for… Read More
GRYTPYPE-THYNNE: Thus follows the Revenge of the Deadly Myers Mutant Meme! FX: DRAMATIC CHORD FOLLOWED BY FAY WRAY SCREAM FOLLOWED BY SPLASH ECCLES-MYERS: I’ve fallen in the water. GRYTPYPE-THYNNE: Silly damp boy. Neddy, Neddy, come here and let me dry you off with this syllogism. SEAGOON: But I’m not wet. FX: TOILET FLUSHING GRYTPYPE-THYNNE: You were saying? SEAGOON: What, what what? What is that you are injecting in my upper leg. GRYTPYPE-THYNNE: It’s the deadly Myers Mutant Meme Syllogism. SEAGOON: Sapristi knocko! It’s changing! GRYTPYPE-THYNNE: Exactly! SEAGOON: You mean… GRYTPYPE-THYNNE: Yes, it’s becoming… FX: DRAMATIC CHORD GRYTPYPE-THYNNE: … an in-thigh-meme!! FX: RIM-SHOT FOLLOWED BY SOUND OF HOUSE COMING DOWN
Perfectly good 17th century English: “In this enumeration I do not mention the Mule, because ?tis a mungrel production, and not to be rekoned as a distinct species.” Bp John Wilkins FRS, An Essay Towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language, 1668, p164
“I don’t know who you are, Sir, but you’ve done me a power of good.” -His real name is Spike Milligoon