Saturday, January 15, 2011

Autres temps. Autres écrivains

Eli, as he approaches senility, has decided that Rabett Run needs upgrades or at least someone who, on occasion can be understood without Google translation (if you look closely, Rabettese is one of the languages on offer, but only at midnight). It is his privilege to introduce a new contributor, John Farley, a man who trusts his Dean enough to blog under his own name. John's scientific background is not so far from Eli's with a somewhat off beat sense of humor and a shared distaste for nonsense. John's first post is a letter to one of those editors.

John describes himself as a mad scientist. IEHO, a bit bothered would be more like it.

Allow Eli this opportunity to comment on the whole anonymouse bit. Michael Tobis has remarked on the rather lax attitude around here, and indeed, it has been somewhat abused in the recent past, requiring Eli to erect a Rabett Hole, where word salad will go to wilt (don't go there lest you are very very hungry and have had your distemper shots). Eli's attitude, comes from a long established regard for those who wrote under borrowed names, such as Sam Adams, and Sam Clemens. Just as importantly, when he was a cute little bunny, Eli used to love listening to the radio, especially at Christmas for the big Lone Ranger episode where the Masked Rider took off his mask in honor of his fallen ranger buddies. Now true this was radio, but it was, well radio, and Eli was a little bunny with a great imagination, something that stood him in good stead in love and science. As to who Eli is, well, you could go over to Climate Audit, use the Google, or wait for the Christmas episode. Oh yeah Eli harvests comments which contain the majic words so don't bother.

7 comments:

John Mashey said...

Eli: there is a difference between:

a) Pseudonyms, used consistently, and with a web page/blog so that there is some anchor to them. We have useful ones, like you, tamino, and Deep Climate.

and

b) Random anonymice who simply lower S/N ratio and with multiples make useful conversations very difficult. It's like encouraging constant sock-puppetry.

The Rabett Hole is goodness, may it live long and prosper.

Sou said...

Welcome, John. Look forward to your posts.

Good move, Eli to pop silly posts somewhere. In Australia a rabbit would probably built a rabbit fence rather than inviting silliness down his burrow. I hope your rabbit hole is far from your home burrow and doesn't fill up with too much rabbit poo :)

William M. Connolley said...

You can't erect a hole, silly wabbit, you have to dig one. I look forward to the new bug ~~~~

EliRabett said...

Dear Stoat,

First they excavated the area, then Eli erected the parking garage for the word salad and backfilled.

Eli

Anonymous said...

Ahem! A hole need not be underground, more especially when it's a Hole rather than a plain ol' hole, as indeed with the Rabbet Hole (or at least that appeared it might be the case at first inst., before Eli's retort), then a Hole can be said to be constructed.

The Hole in the Wall pub in Bristol (been there "about a century ago"), The Hole in the Wall restaurant in Bath (ne'er been there), Woods Hole (ne'er been there either, or to its scientific facilities), Hutton Le Hole (I can recommend the Ryedale Folk Museum), ... are some of the more well-known (to me) Hole constructions that abound. In fact, there's even a whole town called Holetown somewhere in the West Indies!

Cymraeg llygoden

Martin Vermeer said...

Mousehole

Hank Roberts said...

0zone hole