FT265

[Mal_Adjusted]

Another edition of your fave monthly textual and graphical stuff has arrived.

Brief run down of contents:

disconnected radio plays old tunes
crop formation artworks
bodies
lost and found animals
ghostwatch
slavery myths
criminal appearances
collecting mania
konspiracy korner
archaeological news
quake escapes
brain misfires
Alien animals
Martin Gardner obit and other RIPs
Italian "volcanoes"
CIA and UFO scare
Planet X
Meteors
recent falls
animal telepathy
RPGs and cryptids
Book, film, game reviews
letters
ETA Hoffman
Hunt Emerson comic

and loads more besides

 

[Timble2]

Mine's just arrived too.

It's got UnCon details too.

 

[escargot]

Mine's not here yet.

 

[Bigphoot2]

Arrived home from a crap day at work to find mine lying in the hallway.

 

[GNC]

On the subjects of this issue's articles: they're meaty all right! Oh, I mean, they're meteorites. Will there be a third part to the "Stuff falling from the sky" series? There's lots of stranger things that have landed from out of the blue.

The popcorn story in the Letters page is terrific stuff.

 

[colpepper1]

If the bream that fell on the Swedish car is 3cm (1.2in) as stated (p12), I make the woman holding it approximately 9" tall. Is this fairy/fish fall double Forteana or should I take Occam's razor to the copy editor?

 

[ramonmercado]

Hust arrived, I got scargies copy as well. Probably due to quantum entanglement.

 

[escargot]

Send it over here RIGHT NOW!

ouch

Dammit.

 

[47Forteans]

Mine's not here yet.

Mine's yet to arrive! :cry:

And I finished the last copy weeks ago! I shall just have to wait (forever and a day, it seems!) until my new copy arrives sometime this week!

 

[escargot]

Mine arrived the same day as I complained about it, quite late on.

Keeping it for later on at t'gym. Expecting a particularly anguished crosstrainer session.

 

[charlie]

If the bream that fell on the Swedish car is 3cm (1.2in) as stated (p12), I make the woman holding it approximately 9" tall. Is this fairy/fish fall double Forteana or should I take Occam's razor to the copy editor?

Think decimal point error, 3cm = 30cm or 12in (more or less). Then it all makes sense.

FT sub-editor, did you fall asleep?

charlie

 

[charlie]

Planet X Article

Has anyone else read this article yet?

It was one of the first I read and I have admit that was because I suspected it to be full of the usual nonsense which always surrounds this subject. And, yes I have read Stichin (too many years ago to wish to recall) and thought then that the book was a load of spherical objects of which most males possess two. So I was quite pleasantly surprised by Richard Goodwin's level headed assessment of the likely existence of a tenth true planet in the solar system. The possibility of a brown dwarf, or brown sub-dwarf, is surely in the realms of speculation. A most stimulating speculation, but o more. What can we say about such a cosmological object having its own miniature solar system plus life on one of them? A wonderful idea for a science fiction story only I think!

Where I do fall out, seriously, with Mr Goodwin is in his espousal of the idea that the Maya calendar ending in what we call 2012 has any special significance. Hasn't it already been shown that the intention was that the calender should simply restart after that? There's already more than enough FUD been spouted about that for any more to be required, especially from someone who wishes to be considered a serious (though scientifically unqualified) writer. Shame on you Richard Goodwin!

charlie

 

[47Forteans]

Mine arrived the same day as I complained about it, quite late on.

Keeping it for later on at t'gym. Expecting a particularly anguished crosstrainer session.

How I envy you! (The magazine arriving, not the gym! I have an allergy to the gym!)

 

[owenwhiteoak]

Mea culpa

If the bream that fell on the Swedish car is 3cm (1.2in) as stated (p12), I make the woman holding it approximately 9" tall. Is this fairy/fish fall double Forteana or should I take Occam's razor to the copy editor?

Think decimal point error, 3cm = 30cm or 12in (more or less). Then it all makes sense.

FT sub-editor, did you fall asleep?

Somehow it's always the sub-editor's fault, isn't it?

In this instance, when I originally subbed the text, I hadn't seen the photo. When I edited the actual page to send to the news editor (Paul) to proofread, the picture hadn't come in from the agency, so I still hadn't seen it. Unfortunately, by the time we're checking final pages to send to the printers, I no longer have time to go over the text in detail (by that time I've read the text so many times I'm unlikely to spot any remaining errors anyway) - I'm just doing a top-level check: Is the page number correct? Right issue number? Have any recent changes caused the text to overflow? etc. So I missed this one.

This isn't an excuse (someone - including me - should have spotted the discrepancy) but it is an explanation.

As I'm sure is true in other occupations, it doesn't matter how many errors you do correct, it's the few that you miss that draw all the attention, such as threats with razors (yes, I know you were only joking) etc.

Must try harder.

 

[escargot]

Busted. :lol:

 

[colpepper1]

Re: Mea culpa

such as threats with razors (yes, I know you were only joking) etc.

Must try harder.

Worry not. Occam's razor is a notoriously blunt instrument no matter how enthusiastically it's wielded. I was more exercised as to whether it was a bream (it probably is) and if the person holding it was female as I claimed :shock:

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

Mine was waiting on the mat when we got home from holiday in France. I haven't even opened it yet.

France was v.hot.

 

[ArthurASCII]

Re: Mea culpa

As I'm sure is true in other occupations, it doesn't matter how many errors you do correct, it's the few that you miss that draw all the attention, such as threats with razors (yes, I know you were only joking) etc.

Must try harder.

Cheer up Owen. In my days as a Technical Editor, our mantra was "there's no such thing as a final edit". There will ALWAYS be some little thing that is missed no matter how many people "eyeball" the material before publication.

The mantra of our authors on the other hand seemed to be "Plagiarise, plagiarise, let no-one's work evade-yer-eyes"

 

[owenwhiteoak]

Re: Mea culpa

As I'm sure is true in other occupations, it doesn't matter how many errors you do correct, it's the few that you miss that draw all the attention, such as threats with razors (yes, I know you were only joking) etc.

Must try harder.

Cheer up Owen. In my days as a Technical Editor, our mantra was "there's no such thing as a final edit". There will ALWAYS be some little thing that is missed no matter how many people "eyeball" the material before publication.

The mantra of our authors on the other hand seemed to be "Plagiarise, plagiarise, let no-one's work evade-yer-eyes"

Nicholai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is my name

 

[Mal_Adjusted]

Lobachevsky is the subject of songwriter/mathematician Tom Lehrer's humorous song Lobachevsky from his Songs by Tom Lehrer album. In the song, Lehrer portrays a Russian mathematician who sings about how Lobachevksy influenced him: "And who made me a big success / and brought me wealth and fame? / Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name." Lobachevsky's secret to mathematical success is given as "Plagiarize!", as long as one is always careful to call it "research". According to Lehrer, the song is "not intended as a slur on [Lobachevsky's] character" and the name was chosen "solely for prosodic reasons".[6]

bless wikipedia

 

[Anome]

Just be careful please to call it "Research".

 

[owenwhiteoak]

I'm never forget the day...

Actually, Lobachevsky was a very important figure in the development of non-Euclidean geometry (Henry Kuttner, AE van Vogt eat your hearts out), i.e. space in more than three dimensions. Although some of his ideas were published almost simultaneously with Gauss, most maths historians are agreed that his work was independent.

"Some of you may have met mathematicians and wonder how they got that way..."

 

[river_styx]

Good issue, but I'm just so bored of UFOs. There are only so many times I can read about lights in the sky and mysterious objects landing in forests before each incident blurs into the next. I do believe in the existence of aliens, I just wish they'd do something a little more interesting.

 

[Timble2]

Re: Mea culpa

...Cheer up Owen. In my days as a Technical Editor, our mantra was "there's no such thing as a final edit". There will ALWAYS be some little thing that is missed no matter how many people "eyeball" the material before publication....

And it's usually in the title and/or is the name of the product....

 

[escargot]

I do believe in the existence of aliens, I just wish they'd do something a little more interesting.

Steady on. They might hear you. :shock:

 

[titch]

I do believe in the existence of aliens, I just wish they'd do something a little more interesting.
Anal probe incoming!!!!! :shock:

 

[linesmachine]

...as long as they don't catch me parading around in my wifes knickers. Then I'd lose all credibility.

 

[colpepper1]

Good issue, but I'm just so bored of UFOs. There are only so many times I can read about lights in the sky and mysterious objects landing in forests before each incident blurs into the next. I do believe in the existence of aliens, I just wish they'd do something a little more interesting.

Indeed. There's a concensus, albeit a tacit one, that 99.999% of cases are earth lights, heat inversions, mental wobbliness or anything but nuts and bolts space ships. If that presumption is correct it makes the column inches dedicated to UFOs extremely generous, interesting though non-metallic, alien free aerial anomalies are.

 

[titch]

I have the real truth behind aliens! They buzz about the sky ,knock yokels out and do strange things to them...they are like essex boys on a day trip to southend!
Humanity beware!! we are being visited be the alien version of essex boys in their souped up ford fiestas!

 

[47Forteans]

I do believe in the existence of aliens, I just wish they'd do something a little more interesting.
Anal probe incoming!!!!! :shock:

We've reached the limits of what can be learned from anal probing!