The name lycoris always reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where Jerry can't remember the woman's name, but knows it rhymes with a part of a woman's body, so he guess that it is Mulva. It turns out her name was Dolores, but it could just as well been Lycoris- I think it rhymes even better!
Why is this stuff on the internet?
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Cyber-Attacks?
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· Score: 0
From the Middle East and South Asia, unknown browsers were exploring the digital systems used to manage Bay Area utilities and government offices.
... the visitors studied emergency telephone systems, electrical generation and transmission, water storage and distribution, nuclear power plants and gas facilities.
Allowing anyone access to this is just asking for trouble. I really don't think it would be hard to keep machines that store sensitive material like this off the internet.
Re:TI-8x and Negative Kelvin...
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Pet Bugs?
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· Score: 0
I was taught that the lb-ft unit as the correct measurement of force in the imperial system. Technically it should be called the slug, but that name isn't very widely used.
As for whether or not the pound is a proper measurement of mass, I ask you, do you have an alternative unit to be used in the imperial system?
The machine is in my house, and being in California, electricity is somewhat expensive. I don't understand, why would I leave my computer on if I'm not using it? It's just a waste of energy.
Maybe you're just one of those freaks that leaves everything on 24x7 because "its more efficient" than having to turn it on and off.
The cost of a solid state drive would be very expensive and not so much dependent on the price of memory. The crucial factor is that essentially every 1-2 GB of memory would require a seperate processor. Ever notice how your computer has a limit to the amount of RAM it could have? This is the same kind of deal. You'll end up paying around 10x the price of the memory for an equivalent sized solid state drive.
worries that big, traditional businesses could gain unprecedented control through manipulating the high-speed services that are delivered over cable and phone networks.
Good lord, what on earth would we do if a company like Time-Warner merged with a company like AOL? I can see why they're so worried. Such a company would have a controlling share of nearly all kinds of media.
Congratulations! You may now be charged as an adult for all crimes you commit, unless it happens to be done while following orders in the US military, which you are also eligible for.
You people obviously don't have Fry's nearby. Every couple of months I'll see a good case on sale, not just the shitty ones. A couple of weeks ago I saw an Antec KS 282 on sale for $29.95- it a 300W PSU with support for P4 and Athlon XP, three 5 1/4" bays and four 3 1/2". And don't tell me that PSU is crap, I run the same case and I've generally bootup/shutdown at least once a day with it for the past 2 years with no problems (I don't like leaving my computer on). Just hold out for a good deal and your bound to find a better price as well as quality than you would get from a store bought system.
I don't care so much about holographic storage as I do about holodecks. When are those babies coming out? I'll make myself a Counselor Troi simulator and... oh baby!
I thought the PS2 boots of the DVD for the game you're playing, so what exactly would the permanent harm be? Someone h4x0rs your system, all you have to do is reboot. If your running Linux of the toolkit though, that may be a problem, and if for some reason you get Windows working on it, for god's sake make sure you don't install IIS.
With her scrapbook opened beside her on her canopied bed, Meredith Bancroft carefully cut out the picture from the Chicago Tribune. The caption read, Children of Chicago socialites, dressed as elves, participate in charity Christmas pageant at Oakland Memorial Hospital, then it listed their names. Beneath the caption picture of the "elves" -- five boys and five girls, including Meredith -- who were handing out presents to the children's ward. Standing off to the left, supervising the proceedings, was a handsome young man of eighteen, who the caption referred to as "Parker Reynolds III, son of Mr. and Mrs. Parker Reynolds of Kenilworth."
Impartially, Meredith compared herself to the other girls in the elf costumes, wondering, how they could manage to look leggy and curvy while she looked..."Dumpy!" she pronounced with a pained grimace."I look like a troll, not an elf!"
It did not seem at all fair that the other girls who were fourteen, just a few small weeks older than she was, should look so wonderful while she looked like a flat-chested troll with braces. Her gaze shifted to her picture and she regretted again the streak of vanity that had caused her to take off her glasses for the photograph; without them she had a tendency to squint -- just like she was doing in that awful picture."Contact lenses would definitely help," she concluded. Her gaze switched to Parker's picture, and a dreamy smile drifted across her face as she clasped the newspaper clipping to what would have been her breasts if she had breasts, which she didn't. Not yet. At this rate, not ever.
The door to her bedroom opened and Meredith hastily yanked the picture from her chest as the stout, sixty-year-old housekeeper came in to take her dinner tray away."You didn't eat your dessert," Mrs. Ellis chided.
"I'm fat, Mrs. Ellis," Meredith said. To prove it, she scrambled off the antique bed and marched over to the mirror above her dressing table."Look at me," she said, pointing an accusing finger at her reflection."I have no waistline!"
"You have some baby fat there, that's all."
"I don't have hips either. I look like a walking two-by-four. No wonder I have no friends -- "
Mrs. Ellis, who'd worked for the Bancrofts for less than a year, looked amazed. "You have no friends? Why not?"
Desperately in need of someone to confide in, Meredith said, "I've only pretended that everything is fine at school. The truth is, it's terrible. I'm a complete misfit. I've always been a misfit."
"Well, I never! There must be something wrong with the children in your school...."
"It isn't them, it's me, but I'm going to change," Meredith announced. "I've gone on a diet, and I want to do something with my hair. It's awful."
"It's not awful!" Mrs. Ellis argued, looking at Meredith's shoulder-length pale blond hair and then her turquoise eyes. "You have striking eyes and very nice hair. Nice and thick and -- "
"Colorless."
"Blond."
Meredith stared stubbornly at the mirror, her mind magnifying the flaws that existed. "I'm almost five feet seven inches tall. It's a lucky thing I finally stopped growing before I became a giant! But I'm not hopeless, I realized that on Saturday."
Mrs. Ellis's brows drew together in confusion. "What happened on Saturday to change your mind about yourself?"
"Nothing earth-shattering," Meredith said. Something earth-shattering, she thought. Parker smiled at me at the Christmas pageant. He brought me a Coke without being asked. He told me to be sure and save a dance for him Saturday at the Eppingham party. Seventy-five years before, Parker's family had founded the large Chicago bank where Bancroft & Company's funds were deposited, and the friendship between the Bancrofts and Reynoldses had endured for generations. "Everything is going to change now, not just the way I look," Meredith continued happily as she turned away from the mirror. "I'm going to have a friend too! There's a new girl at school, and she doesn't know that no one else likes me. She's smart, like I am, and she called me tonight to ask me a homework question. She called me, and we talked about all sorts of things."
"I did notice you never brought friends home from school," Mrs. Ellis said, wringing her hands in nervous dismay, "but I thought it was because you lived so far away."
"No, it isn't that," Meredith said, flopping down onto the bed and staring self-consciously at her serviceable slippers that looked just like small replicas of the ones her father wore. Despite their wealth, Meredith's father had the liveliest respect for money; all of her clothing was of excellent quality and was purchased only when necessary, always with a stem eye toward durability. "I dont fit in, you see."
"When I was a girl," Mrs. Ellis said with a sudden look of comprehension, "we were always a little leery of children who got good grades."
"It's not just that," Meredith said wryly. "It's something besides the way I look and the grades I get that makes me a misfit. It's -- all this," she said, and made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the large, rather austere room with its antique furniture, a room whose character resembled all the other forty-five rooms in the Bancroft estate. "Everyone thinks I'm completely weird because Father insists that Fenwick drive me to school."
"What's wrong with that, may I ask?"
"The other children walk or ride the school bus."
"So?"
"So they do not arrive in a chauffeur-driven Rolls!" Almost wistfully, Meredith added, "Their fathers are plumbers and accountants. One of them works for us at the store."
Unable to argue with the logic of that, and unwilling to admit it was true, Mrs. Ellis said, "But this new girl in school -- she doesn't find it odd that Fenwick drives you?"
"No," Meredith said with a guilty chuckle that made her eyes glow with sudden liveliness behind her glasses, "because she thinks Fenwick is my father! I told her my father works for some rich people who own a big store."
"You didn't!"
"Yes, I did, and I -- I'm not sorry. I should have spread that around school years ago, only I didn't want to lie."
"But now you don't mind lying?" Mrs. Ellis said with a censorious look.
"It isn't a lie, not entirely," Meredith said in an imploring voice. "Father explained it to me a long time ago. You see, Bancroft & Company is a corporation, and a corporation is actually owned by the stockholders. So you see, as president of Bancroft & Company, Father is -- technically -- employed by the stockholders. Do you understand?"
"Probably not," she said flatly. "Who owns the stock?"
Meredith sent her a guilty look. "We do, mostly."
Mrs. Ellis found the whole notion of the operation of Bancroft & Company, a famous downtown Chicago department store, absolutely baffling, but Meredith frequently displayed an uncanny understanding of the business. Although, Mrs. Ellis thought with helpless ire at Meredith's father, it wasn't so uncanny -- not when the man had no interest in his daughter except when he was lecturing her about that store. In fact, Mrs. Ellis thought Philip Bancroft was probably to blame for his daughter's inability to fit in with the other girls her age. He treated his daughter like an adult, and he insisted that she speak and act like one at all times. On the rare occasions when he entertained friends, Meredith even acted as his hostess. As a result, Meredith was very much at ease with adults and obviously at a complete loss with her peers.
"You're right about one thing though," Meredith said. "I can't go on tricking Lisa Pontini about Fenwick being my father. I just thought that if she had a chance to know me first, it might not matter when I tell her Fenwick is actually our chauffeur. The only reason she hasn't found out already is that she doesn't know anyone else in our class, and she always has to go straight home after school. She has seven brothers and sisters, and she has to help out at home."
Mrs. Ellis reached out and awkwardly patted Meredith's arm, trying to think of something encouraging to say. "Things always look brighter in the morning," she announced, resorting, as she often did, to one of the cozy clichés she herself found so comforting. She picked up the dinner tray, then paused in the doorway, struck with another inspiring platitude. "And remember this," she instructed Meredith in the rising tones of one who is about to impart a very satisfying thought, "every dog has its day!"
Meredith didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "Thank you, Mrs. Ellis," she said, "that is very encouraging." In mortified silence she watched the door close behind the housekeeper, then she slowly picked up the scrapbook. When the Tribune clipping had been safely taped to the page, she stared at it for a long moment, then reached out and lightly touched Parker's smiling mouth. The thought of actually dancing with him made her shiver with, a mixture of terror and anticipation. This was Thursday, and the Eppingham dance was the day after tomorrow. It see like years to wait.
Sighing, she flipped backward through the pages of the big scrapbook. At the front were some very old clippings, yellowed now with age, the pictures faded. The scrapbook had originally belonged to her mother, Caroline, and it contained the only tangible proof in the house that Caroline Edwards Bancroft had ever existed. Everything else connected with her had been removed at Philip Bancroft's instructions.
Caroline Edwards had been an actress -- not an especially good one, according to her reviews -- but an unquestionably glamorous one. Meredith studied the faded pictures, but she didn't read what the columnists had written because she knew every word by heart. She knew that Cary Grant had escorted her mother to the Academy Awards in 1955, and that David Niven had said she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, and that David Selznick had wanted her in one of his pictures. She knew that her mother had roles in three Broadway musicals and that the critics had panned her acting but praised her shapely legs. The gossip columnists had hinted at serious romances between Caroline and nearly all her leading men. There were clippings of her, draped in furs, attending a party in Rome; wrapped in a strapless black evening gown, playing roulette in Monte Carlo. In one photograph she was clad in a skimpy bikini on the beach in Monaco, in another, siding in Gstaad with a Swiss Olympic Gold Medalist. It was obvious to Meredith that wherever she went, Caroline had been surrounded by handsome men.
The last clipping her mother had saved was dated six months after the one in Gstaad. She was wearing a magnificent white wedding gown -- laughing and running down the cathedral steps on Philip Bancrofts arm beneath a shower of rice. The society columnists had outdone themselves with extravagant descriptions of the wedding. The reception at the Palmer House Hotel had been dosed to the press, but the columnists faithfully reported all the famous guests who were present, from the Vanderbilts and Whitneys, to a Supreme Court justice and four U.S. senators.
The marriage lasted two years -- long enough for Caroline to get pregnant, have her baby, have a sleazy affair with a horse trainer, and then go running off to Europe with a phony Italian prince who'd been a guest in this very house Beyond that, Meredith knew little, except that her mother had never bothered to send her so much as a note or a birthday card. Meredith's father, who placed great emphasis on dignity and old-fashioned values, said her mother was a self- centered slut without the slightest conception of marital fidelity or maternal responsibility. When Meredith was a year old, he had filed for divorce and for custody of Meredith, fully prepared to exert all the Bancroft family's considerable political and social influence to assure that he won his suit. In the end he hadn't needed to resort to that. According to what he'd told Meredith, her mother hadn't bothered to wait around for the court hearing, let alone try to oppose him.
Once he was granted custody of Meredith, her father had set out to ensure that she would never follow her mother's example. Instead, he was determined that Meredith would take her place in a long line of dignified Bancroft women who'd led exemplary lives dedicated to charitable good works that befitted their station, and to which not a single breath of scandal had ever been attached.
When it came time for her to start school, Philip had discovered to his annoyance that standards of conduct were relaxing, even among his own social class. Many of his acquaintances were taking a more liberal view of child behavior and sending their children to "progressive" schools like Bently and Ridgeview. When he inspected these schools, he heard phrases like "unstructured classes" and "self-expression." Progressive education sounded undisciplined to him; it foretold lower standards of education and deportment. After rejecting both those schools, he took Meredith with him to see St. Stephen's -- a private Catholic school ran by the Benedictine nuns, the same school his aunt and his mother had attended.
u iwant to thnamle a; the trp;;s pjt tejr fpr bprsiwmg at-1 an helponmg me get some booze. the only pronbvmlem is thtat vokda gives me gotrigvle heartbeun. [;zfxtmnks.
This brings up an interesting point I have thought of. If I create a virus that takes advantage of some new exploit in IE/Outlook Express that spreads internationally, should be held accountable for my actions in all countries or just the one I originate in. It would seriously suck to be effectivley banned from visiting 50+ countries for fear of having my ass hauled into court the moment I step off the plane.
Isn't that kind of the reason that Sonic Blue has had so much legal trouble? I'm pretty sure they're systems allow sharing of recorded content. I would expect integrating their product into a P2P system would be fairly trivial.
It would be nice if the cable companies got off their asses and let us use the infrastructure to the full potential, with network like Kazaa except everything on demand. I don't think the MPAA would go for it though.
I actually experienced a situation like this first hand. I used to work at a coffee shop, and the first thing I learned to do was turn my brain off and go into what seemed to be muscle memory. Making drinks could be done with nearly no thought, and taking money and giving back change required only reading the relevant numbers from the screen. I was perfectly free to day dream about a more entertaining job.
But, like you say, if something different came along, like the 10% discount, I would be completely thrown off. My brain would be forced from an automated mode to one that required thinking, and that is not an easy transition to make. I am by no means poor at math; at times I find it to be one of my stronger qualities.
Sure, maybe most of the people that seem to be unable to do the simplest math calculations really don't have the ability, but I suspect many of them are like I was and have trouble with the transition between two states of mind.
Please please please fix the San Jose Mercury News web site! It has got to be the most horribly designed website in existence! The search feature doesn't even work, and the navigation is terrible. KR is a huge company too so I'm sure they could give you a boat load of money for a good job.
In California in the early 20th century, the oil companies lobbied to NOT create good public transportation so people would be more reliant on gasoline.
no/poor public transportation + long commute = obsession with cars
Slashdot Mirror
The difference being, of course, that many corporations pump music through their buildings (legally) but I can't think of one that broadcasts pr0n.
The name lycoris always reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where Jerry can't remember the woman's name, but knows it rhymes with a part of a woman's body, so he guess that it is Mulva. It turns out her name was Dolores, but it could just as well been Lycoris- I think it rhymes even better!
Allowing anyone access to this is just asking for trouble. I really don't think it would be hard to keep machines that store sensitive material like this off the internet.
As for whether or not the pound is a proper measurement of mass, I ask you, do you have an alternative unit to be used in the imperial system?
Maybe you're just one of those freaks that leaves everything on 24x7 because "its more efficient" than having to turn it on and off.
The cost of a solid state drive would be very expensive and not so much dependent on the price of memory. The crucial factor is that essentially every 1-2 GB of memory would require a seperate processor. Ever notice how your computer has a limit to the amount of RAM it could have? This is the same kind of deal. You'll end up paying around 10x the price of the memory for an equivalent sized solid state drive.
Calling them spies is like going into your neighbors hot tub to have sex with his wife and then complaining about him spying on you.
You were probably in the hospital for a reason. The goal of this study was to find the effects on a normal, healthy adult.
Good lord, what on earth would we do if a company like Time-Warner merged with a company like AOL? I can see why they're so worried. Such a company would have a controlling share of nearly all kinds of media.
Congratulations! You may now be charged as an adult for all crimes you commit, unless it happens to be done while following orders in the US military, which you are also eligible for.
You people obviously don't have Fry's nearby. Every couple of months I'll see a good case on sale, not just the shitty ones. A couple of weeks ago I saw an Antec KS 282 on sale for $29.95- it a 300W PSU with support for P4 and Athlon XP, three 5 1/4" bays and four 3 1/2". And don't tell me that PSU is crap, I run the same case and I've generally bootup/shutdown at least once a day with it for the past 2 years with no problems (I don't like leaving my computer on). Just hold out for a good deal and your bound to find a better price as well as quality than you would get from a store bought system.
I don't care so much about holographic storage as I do about holodecks. When are those babies coming out? I'll make myself a Counselor Troi simulator and... oh baby!
I thought the PS2 boots of the DVD for the game you're playing, so what exactly would the permanent harm be? Someone h4x0rs your system, all you have to do is reboot. If your running Linux of the toolkit though, that may be a problem, and if for some reason you get Windows working on it, for god's sake make sure you don't install IIS.
In office 2000 is says "I do not understand the phrase. Please ask a different question."
Wasn't Red Storm a project put forth by Compaq to build a 100 teraflop system?
Impartially, Meredith compared herself to the other girls in the elf costumes, wondering, how they could manage to look leggy and curvy while she looked..."Dumpy!" she pronounced with a pained grimace."I look like a troll, not an elf!"
It did not seem at all fair that the other girls who were fourteen, just a few small weeks older than she was, should look so wonderful while she looked like a flat-chested troll with braces. Her gaze shifted to her picture and she regretted again the streak of vanity that had caused her to take off her glasses for the photograph; without them she had a tendency to squint -- just like she was doing in that awful picture."Contact lenses would definitely help," she concluded. Her gaze switched to Parker's picture, and a dreamy smile drifted across her face as she clasped the newspaper clipping to what would have been her breasts if she had breasts, which she didn't. Not yet. At this rate, not ever.
The door to her bedroom opened and Meredith hastily yanked the picture from her chest as the stout, sixty-year-old housekeeper came in to take her dinner tray away."You didn't eat your dessert," Mrs. Ellis chided.
"I'm fat, Mrs. Ellis," Meredith said. To prove it, she scrambled off the antique bed and marched over to the mirror above her dressing table."Look at me," she said, pointing an accusing finger at her reflection."I have no waistline!"
"You have some baby fat there, that's all."
"I don't have hips either. I look like a walking two-by-four. No wonder I have no friends -- "
Mrs. Ellis, who'd worked for the Bancrofts for less than a year, looked amazed. "You have no friends? Why not?"
Desperately in need of someone to confide in, Meredith said, "I've only pretended that everything is fine at school. The truth is, it's terrible. I'm a complete misfit. I've always been a misfit."
"Well, I never! There must be something wrong with the children in your school...."
"It isn't them, it's me, but I'm going to change," Meredith announced. "I've gone on a diet, and I want to do something with my hair. It's awful."
"It's not awful!" Mrs. Ellis argued, looking at Meredith's shoulder-length pale blond hair and then her turquoise eyes. "You have striking eyes and very nice hair. Nice and thick and -- "
"Colorless."
"Blond."
Meredith stared stubbornly at the mirror, her mind magnifying the flaws that existed. "I'm almost five feet seven inches tall. It's a lucky thing I finally stopped growing before I became a giant! But I'm not hopeless, I realized that on Saturday."
Mrs. Ellis's brows drew together in confusion. "What happened on Saturday to change your mind about yourself?"
"Nothing earth-shattering," Meredith said. Something earth-shattering, she thought. Parker smiled at me at the Christmas pageant. He brought me a Coke without being asked. He told me to be sure and save a dance for him Saturday at the Eppingham party. Seventy-five years before, Parker's family had founded the large Chicago bank where Bancroft & Company's funds were deposited, and the friendship between the Bancrofts and Reynoldses had endured for generations. "Everything is going to change now, not just the way I look," Meredith continued happily as she turned away from the mirror. "I'm going to have a friend too! There's a new girl at school, and she doesn't know that no one else likes me. She's smart, like I am, and she called me tonight to ask me a homework question. She called me, and we talked about all sorts of things."
"I did notice you never brought friends home from school," Mrs. Ellis said, wringing her hands in nervous dismay, "but I thought it was because you lived so far away."
"No, it isn't that," Meredith said, flopping down onto the bed and staring self-consciously at her serviceable slippers that looked just like small replicas of the ones her father wore. Despite their wealth, Meredith's father had the liveliest respect for money; all of her clothing was of excellent quality and was purchased only when necessary, always with a stem eye toward durability. "I dont fit in, you see."
"When I was a girl," Mrs. Ellis said with a sudden look of comprehension, "we were always a little leery of children who got good grades."
"It's not just that," Meredith said wryly. "It's something besides the way I look and the grades I get that makes me a misfit. It's -- all this," she said, and made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the large, rather austere room with its antique furniture, a room whose character resembled all the other forty-five rooms in the Bancroft estate. "Everyone thinks I'm completely weird because Father insists that Fenwick drive me to school." "What's wrong with that, may I ask?" "The other children walk or ride the school bus."
"So?"
"So they do not arrive in a chauffeur-driven Rolls!" Almost wistfully, Meredith added, "Their fathers are plumbers and accountants. One of them works for us at the store."
Unable to argue with the logic of that, and unwilling to admit it was true, Mrs. Ellis said, "But this new girl in school -- she doesn't find it odd that Fenwick drives you?"
"No," Meredith said with a guilty chuckle that made her eyes glow with sudden liveliness behind her glasses, "because she thinks Fenwick is my father! I told her my father works for some rich people who own a big store."
"You didn't!"
"Yes, I did, and I -- I'm not sorry. I should have spread that around school years ago, only I didn't want to lie."
"But now you don't mind lying?" Mrs. Ellis said with a censorious look.
"It isn't a lie, not entirely," Meredith said in an imploring voice. "Father explained it to me a long time ago. You see, Bancroft & Company is a corporation, and a corporation is actually owned by the stockholders. So you see, as president of Bancroft & Company, Father is -- technically -- employed by the stockholders. Do you understand?"
"Probably not," she said flatly. "Who owns the stock?"
Meredith sent her a guilty look. "We do, mostly."
Mrs. Ellis found the whole notion of the operation of Bancroft & Company, a famous downtown Chicago department store, absolutely baffling, but Meredith frequently displayed an uncanny understanding of the business. Although, Mrs. Ellis thought with helpless ire at Meredith's father, it wasn't so uncanny -- not when the man had no interest in his daughter except when he was lecturing her about that store. In fact, Mrs. Ellis thought Philip Bancroft was probably to blame for his daughter's inability to fit in with the other girls her age. He treated his daughter like an adult, and he insisted that she speak and act like one at all times. On the rare occasions when he entertained friends, Meredith even acted as his hostess. As a result, Meredith was very much at ease with adults and obviously at a complete loss with her peers. "You're right about one thing though," Meredith said. "I can't go on tricking Lisa Pontini about Fenwick being my father. I just thought that if she had a chance to know me first, it might not matter when I tell her Fenwick is actually our chauffeur. The only reason she hasn't found out already is that she doesn't know anyone else in our class, and she always has to go straight home after school. She has seven brothers and sisters, and she has to help out at home."
Mrs. Ellis reached out and awkwardly patted Meredith's arm, trying to think of something encouraging to say. "Things always look brighter in the morning," she announced, resorting, as she often did, to one of the cozy clichés she herself found so comforting. She picked up the dinner tray, then paused in the doorway, struck with another inspiring platitude. "And remember this," she instructed Meredith in the rising tones of one who is about to impart a very satisfying thought, "every dog has its day!"
Meredith didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "Thank you, Mrs. Ellis," she said, "that is very encouraging." In mortified silence she watched the door close behind the housekeeper, then she slowly picked up the scrapbook. When the Tribune clipping had been safely taped to the page, she stared at it for a long moment, then reached out and lightly touched Parker's smiling mouth. The thought of actually dancing with him made her shiver with, a mixture of terror and anticipation. This was Thursday, and the Eppingham dance was the day after tomorrow. It see like years to wait.
Sighing, she flipped backward through the pages of the big scrapbook. At the front were some very old clippings, yellowed now with age, the pictures faded. The scrapbook had originally belonged to her mother, Caroline, and it contained the only tangible proof in the house that Caroline Edwards Bancroft had ever existed. Everything else connected with her had been removed at Philip Bancroft's instructions.
Caroline Edwards had been an actress -- not an especially good one, according to her reviews -- but an unquestionably glamorous one. Meredith studied the faded pictures, but she didn't read what the columnists had written because she knew every word by heart. She knew that Cary Grant had escorted her mother to the Academy Awards in 1955, and that David Niven had said she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, and that David Selznick had wanted her in one of his pictures. She knew that her mother had roles in three Broadway musicals and that the critics had panned her acting but praised her shapely legs. The gossip columnists had hinted at serious romances between Caroline and nearly all her leading men. There were clippings of her, draped in furs, attending a party in Rome; wrapped in a strapless black evening gown, playing roulette in Monte Carlo. In one photograph she was clad in a skimpy bikini on the beach in Monaco, in another, siding in Gstaad with a Swiss Olympic Gold Medalist. It was obvious to Meredith that wherever she went, Caroline had been surrounded by handsome men.
The last clipping her mother had saved was dated six months after the one in Gstaad. She was wearing a magnificent white wedding gown -- laughing and running down the cathedral steps on Philip Bancrofts arm beneath a shower of rice. The society columnists had outdone themselves with extravagant descriptions of the wedding. The reception at the Palmer House Hotel had been dosed to the press, but the columnists faithfully reported all the famous guests who were present, from the Vanderbilts and Whitneys, to a Supreme Court justice and four U.S. senators.
The marriage lasted two years -- long enough for Caroline to get pregnant, have her baby, have a sleazy affair with a horse trainer, and then go running off to Europe with a phony Italian prince who'd been a guest in this very house Beyond that, Meredith knew little, except that her mother had never bothered to send her so much as a note or a birthday card. Meredith's father, who placed great emphasis on dignity and old-fashioned values, said her mother was a self- centered slut without the slightest conception of marital fidelity or maternal responsibility. When Meredith was a year old, he had filed for divorce and for custody of Meredith, fully prepared to exert all the Bancroft family's considerable political and social influence to assure that he won his suit. In the end he hadn't needed to resort to that. According to what he'd told Meredith, her mother hadn't bothered to wait around for the court hearing, let alone try to oppose him. Once he was granted custody of Meredith, her father had set out to ensure that she would never follow her mother's example. Instead, he was determined that Meredith would take her place in a long line of dignified Bancroft women who'd led exemplary lives dedicated to charitable good works that befitted their station, and to which not a single breath of scandal had ever been attached.
When it came time for her to start school, Philip had discovered to his annoyance that standards of conduct were relaxing, even among his own social class. Many of his acquaintances were taking a more liberal view of child behavior and sending their children to "progressive" schools like Bently and Ridgeview. When he inspected these schools, he heard phrases like "unstructured classes" and "self-expression." Progressive education sounded undisciplined to him; it foretold lower standards of education and deportment. After rejecting both those schools, he took Meredith with him to see St. Stephen's -- a private Catholic school ran by the Benedictine nuns, the same school his aunt and his mother had attended.
u iwant to thnamle a; the trp;;s pjt tejr fpr bprsiwmg at-1 an helponmg me get some booze. the only pronbvmlem is thtat vokda gives me gotrigvle heartbeun. [;zfxtmnks.
This brings up an interesting point I have thought of. If I create a virus that takes advantage of some new exploit in IE/Outlook Express that spreads internationally, should be held accountable for my actions in all countries or just the one I originate in. It would seriously suck to be effectivley banned from visiting 50+ countries for fear of having my ass hauled into court the moment I step off the plane.
It would be nice if the cable companies got off their asses and let us use the infrastructure to the full potential, with network like Kazaa except everything on demand. I don't think the MPAA would go for it though.
Wired also has a very interesting article this month on Jen-Hsun Huang's (CEO of Nvidia) plans to obsolete the CPU.
But, like you say, if something different came along, like the 10% discount, I would be completely thrown off. My brain would be forced from an automated mode to one that required thinking, and that is not an easy transition to make. I am by no means poor at math; at times I find it to be one of my stronger qualities.
Sure, maybe most of the people that seem to be unable to do the simplest math calculations really don't have the ability, but I suspect many of them are like I was and have trouble with the transition between two states of mind.
Please please please fix the San Jose Mercury News web site! It has got to be the most horribly designed website in existence! The search feature doesn't even work, and the navigation is terrible. KR is a huge company too so I'm sure they could give you a boat load of money for a good job.
no/poor public transportation + long commute = obsession with cars
wait for it...
San Diego! Actually, it was La Jolla, but that's just about the same.