News You Can Bruise for 2005 December 22

What is the term for a sentence that reads as a completely different grammatical sentence if you reverse it? I've never heard of any such sentences, and I can't think of any, but they must exist. Seems like they'd be O(n²) times more difficult to construct than palindromes, because you have to combine the letters and then try to split them up again.

I never told you this (and apparently I forgot to tell Josh too). Back when I posted about opportunities in book-writing, Josh Myer took up the project I had announced. Recently he thanked me for the tip by paying me an "agent fee": a copy of Rules of Play, a book on game design. Awesome.

Also, hilarity occured in conjunction with the book delivery. It was delivered over Thanksgiving weekend, when we were all at the zoo with Riana. Now, Riana used to date Josh, so when I opened up the package and read the note inside her gast was flabbered. "You got a present from my ex?" she said. "He never sends me presents!" Man, you can't buy that kind of hilarity. At least not since my hilarity store went out of business.

In Lego catalog: "Build your own custom model just like this one!"

To what extent do you think Keith Laumer's Retief stories are good clean biting social satire, and to what extent are they reactionary claptrap? The question comes to my mind as I prepare to save space by parting with my nearly-complete Retief collection. Also because there's a new, post-Laumer book in the franchise called Retief's Peace, which looks a little closer to the reactionary side. I still plan to read it eventually, despite Sumana's continuing amazement that I can stand to read Retief stories at all.