Happy Birthday, John

Born today in 1795, John Keats.

On first looking into Chapman's Homer

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft on one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific - and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise -
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

And although this may seem frivolous, I can't help but add it ... From Ed Gaillard's page of weirdly assorted but amusing stuff:

Much have I travell'd through the realms of toast,
And many goodly jams and jellies seen;
Round many western omelets have I been
Which chefs as specialities of the house boast.
Oft I've been told of bread light as a ghost
That, deep-brown'd, has a flavor marv'lous keen:
Yet never did I eat its pure serene
'Till I had Saffron bread -- sweet honey-gold.
Then felt I like some hunter scanning skies,
When a new game-bird flies into his ken;
Or like stout Prudhomme, when with many tries
He first baked chile-cornbread -- his sous-chefs then
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise --
Silent, before a grill in New Orleans.

(My favorite is Captain Haiku vs the Arch-Villanelle...)

Hubble gets its mission!

Hurray! NASA made the call today: they will be sending up the next scheduled Hubble Service Mission (SM4).

SM4 has an ambitious program of activities. Over a series of five spacewalks, astronauts will replace worn-out telescope components, installing new batteries, new gyroscopes, a refurbished Fine Guidance Sensor, replacement thermal blankets, and more. It will significantly enhance Hubble's prowess with the installation of two new science instruments: the Wide Field Camera 3 and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph. These upgrades will keep Hubble functioning at the pinnacle of astronomy well into the next decade.

This seemed like a no-brainer*, but one never knows with things the way they are nowadays. But this means we'll continue to peer into the depths of space, and the depth of time, and see sights like this one, deep in the Small Magellanic Cloud:


* Okay, yes I know it's dangerous. Most things are, when you get right down to it. But this is the Hubble!

Hyphens! Please, hyphens! Or something!

Some things just cry out for hyphens. Like this, in a post dealing with how the "easiest way to clean all the white males out of your parallel session is to title it "Diversity" and to schedule talks on" various topics, the first of which was:

The responsibility to share women in engineering research with women in engineering students

I don't know about you, but the notion of sharing women, even with other women, seems something that guys might attend a talk on... maybe even especially sharing women with other women. But then that "students" at the end just brings the whole thing to a screaming halt and sends you back over the clause, trying to parse it out.

You shouldn't make your readers work that hard.

Try some hyphens: "share women-in-engineering research with women-in-engineering students", say.

Better probably, would have been "share research on women in engineering with those studying women in engineering".

But something.

Update:
It occurs to me that this might even have actually meant "share women-in-engineering research with women engineering students" - in which case, it's worse than I thought.

Note to Future Despairing Self

Let me send you to The Examining Room of Dr Charles to read his Note to Future Despairing Self - a beautiful reminder of why despair is not the answer. Dr Charles is a gorgeous writer, and this is one of his best.

some reading for you

Over at Cosmic Variance Sean has posted a very well argued essay on the existence of god and why it's so hard to reconcile our notions of him/it.

At Daylight Atheism Ebonmuse has a tale of meeting The Tempter at a train station one cold night.

At Rationally Speaking Massimo snaps and says Enough blasting Dennett and Dawkins, all right?

At Staring at Empty Pages Barry looks at this Presidential Prayer Team and then at I Timothy and wonders if the two are compatible (though conceding the PPT will probably achieve its more secular goal).

And, for something completely different, The Tensor has a fascinating look at the Slouching Towards snowclone.

The identity of the One Ring

The other day over at World Wide Webers, Karl took Rick Santorum's LOTR analogy apart for its essential inhumanity, pointing out:

Santorum's analogy implies that our 130,000 soldiers in Iraq aren't serving any actual purpose. They're in the Middle East merely as a feint,

and asking

what exactly gives us the right to pick a country and launch a war there--killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process--merely as a ploy, in order to distract an enemy from our real purposes elsewhere?

I left a comment, agreeing, and pointing out that the analogy was, as Karl had called it, "semi-coherent". I mentioned the big line that's running around - "Aragorn didn't start the war!" - in my comment.

So, Saturday morning I woke up at 5, as I always do, but it being Saturday I didn't have to get up. I found that line in my head, I don't know why, and I was thinking about it as I lay in bed. I went back to sleep, but when I woke up again, three hours later, the thought was still there, and it had grown a bit. Let me share with you what it grew into.

Here's how I see the Santorum analogy laying out: The enemy attacks the Shire (that's the US, I guess) and Frodo et al. flee to Rivendell for help. At Rivendell Elrond (who's he?) puts together a coalition of all the races of Middle-Earth (umm ... not so much) and they move to attack Sauron (bin Laden) in Mordor (Afghanistan?), battling Saruman (Saddam?) along the way. I think you can see that the analogy fits in a very general sort of way (especially if you strip it to its most basic form: Good against Evil, clash of cultures kind of stuff); but it stops working the closer you look.

The Shire as the USA fails miserably. The Shire is a small place, rarely involved in world events, and many of the people in the book have never even heard of it. (Of course, I rather doubt Santorum has read the book, so let's confine ourselves to the movies, here.) Are we supposed to be Rivendell, then? In a more perfect world (that's "more nearly perfect", of course; don't write to me about absolute adjectives), Rivendell would clearly be the UN - but perhaps not now. I don't know - I don't have to, I guess; it's not my analogy. But obviously Aragorn is meant to be the US - despite his being stateless, destined to rule Gondor, so perhaps Gondor is the US? Let's move on for now.

Saruman as Saddam - not a bad fit, except that of course he really was working for Sauron, and he really did have WMD - his Uruk-hai and his magic. Creepy-sick Théoden - enthralled by Saruman - and strong, healthy Théoden could be viewed as personfications of Iraq (Rohan) before and after the US invasion. Or perhaps as Saddam and Chalabi or the Provisional Government, with Éomer being al-Maliki? At any rate, Aragorn's arrival in Rohan and subsequent rallying of the Rohirrim to fight and defeat Saruman's army (with a little help from allies - the Brits as the Ents???) is clearly meant to be the US's liberation of Iraq. The ruler of Gondor who's all weak and cowardly - dare I say Clinton? I'm sure Santorum would.

It sort of works. Sort of. I don't know who Faramir and Boromir are meant to be. I don't know who Legolas and Gimli are meant to be either, but I think maybe Legolas is Blair? Some elves do show up in Rohan in the movie, anyway. Perhaps they're Europe - hey, maybe Gimli's Chirac? - and in the movie that would be because the dwarves don't fight, except Gimli (who might be Spain, then... ). In the book of course, there are more fronts to the war than the one the narrative follows, and maybe that works for the analogy too - London, Madrid, Indonesia - but it's maybe more than the Santorum analogy can carry...

But here is where it all falls apart. The final battle - fought by a coalition army - is actually at the Gates of Mordor. It's not in Rohan. And if we're Gondor it's on our doorstep, too. The Eye of Sauron is being drawn away from Frodo - but Frodo is not in the Shire, safe at home. Frodo is in the heart of Mordor itself, carrying the Ring to its destruction.

Let's look at that for a moment, shall we? I said earlier that the catchphrase around the net is "Aragorn didn't start the war." Well, I'm sure that if you asked him, Santorum would say we didn't either. Osama did, he'd say.

Now, interestingly, that, I believe, does fit into the LOTR structure, and very neatly indeed. 9/11 would be the strike on Buckland (in the book) or the chase to the boat (in the movie). The suicide hijackers would be the Nazgûl, the Ringwraiths. And I think that is indeed a beautiful analogy: when your religion has caused to you to so devalue your life on Earth in favor of some existence after death that you are willing to die - and murder as you die - in its name, you have become neither living nor dead, in thrall to your master, and dwelling in shadows.

Their attack on the Shire is not simply malicious, of course; they're after something specific: the Ring. Which Frodo has. Now, if we drag in Dinesh DeSouza, we could say the Ring represents our freedoms - that they are attacking us because of our freedoms. We have to destroy our freedoms to keep from being attacked again. But of course the Nazgûl want to take the Ring to Sauron for him to use it, and that doesn't fit well. So what do we have that they want to take away and use against us? Whatever it is, it has to be something we need to destroy to win. I think it might be, not our freedoms, but our faith - our capacity for faith, for doing horrible things in the name of god. They want to turn us into them; we want to remain ourselves and free. What is it we need to destroy, in ourselves, to keep us free and not like them?

Whatever it is, Frodo is carrying it into the heart of Mordor to destroy it. The Eye is being drawn away - not from the Shire, not from Rivendell, not even from Rohan or Gondor, but from Mordor itself. And where is it being drawn to? Not Rohan or Gondor, but the very Gates of Mordor. In other words, Santorum's analogy fails at its most basic. As Karl said, Aragorn was not drawing the Eye away from his home to someone else's, not turning someone else's home into a battlefield to spare his own, not sacrificing tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of some other country's people to spare his own. More importantly, he was taking the fight to the enemy, in the enemy's stronghold, himself.

Who rode to the Black Gates with Aragorn in the movie? Virtually every main character who is still alive (except Frodo and Sam, of course), and the ruler of every country except Faramir. And why isn't he there? Because he is lying close to death in the Houses of Healing after having fought valiantly on the Pelennor Fields outside the walls of Gondor. Éowyn, too, not a ruler but an important person in her homeland. (Elrond and Galadriel aren't there, either, but both of them are doing what they do, the way they do it; they are not sitting at home, uninvolved.) Aragorn is the leader of the coalition, and he is first into the battle, charging the Gates.

And drawing the Eye away only from an even more perilous attack, the last hope. To destroy the Enemy Frodo had to confront him - Sauron himself had to be undone by the destruction of the Ring. Of Islam's capacity for doing horrible things in the name of god - of our own. Of mankind's capacity for thralldom.

What precisely Santorum thinks the Ring symbolizes doesn't matter. As J.M. Coetzee once said, once the words are out there the author no longer controls them. I don't think the war in Iraq fits the War of the Ring the way that Santorum thinks it does.

But I do think it fits.

And yes, a certain beauty vanished with the Rings - the Elves passed away into the West. And so did the Wizards. So too did Sauron. But Men remained, stronger and freer than before.

The Rings given to Men were their undoing. The undoing of the One Ring - the One True Way - was their salvation.

Happy Birthday, John!

The Atlas of Independence, the Sage of Braintree, John Adams, born this day in 1735 (if you don't count the 11 days 'lost' to the Gregorian calendar in 1752; I don't know what Adams thought of that, but Washington is on record as feeling as though those days had been stolen from him). (On the other hand, these were people who could handle New Year on 25 March.)

Adams defended British troops charged in the Boston Massacre in 1770 - an action he later called "one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country." Contrary to the 'obnoxious and disliked' image fostered in the play 1776, Adams was one of the most respected advocates for Independence in the colonies; Washington's nomination as general and Jefferson's as writer of the Declaration were both his ideas, and it was Adams who stood up on July 1, 1776 and spoke in favor of independence, extemporaneously, for two hours . Unfortunately, because he spoke without notes and no one took any, we don't have a record of this speech, but Jefferson later said that Adams spoke "with a power of thought and expression that moved us from our seats."

But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
—'Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials,' December 1770

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

I highly recommend Passionate Sage by John Ellis, and then John Adams by David McCullough, for those who want to know more about this least known of the great Founders - or Ellis's Founding Brothers for an overview of that remarkable group of men.

Sheer beauty

I've found a new site to browse regularly. It's called The Beauty of the Sky - Éder Iván's astrophotography page. I found it view the Astronomy Photograph of the Day site and this truly gorgeous shot of crescent Moon and Venus (you'll need to select it for a bigger view to make out Venus properly, I think):

The Week in Entertainment

TV: Veronica Mars, Dr Who, Heroes ... UT football (that's Tennessee, not Texas).

Read: finished Radio On; The Man from Tibet and Murder Gone Minoan by Clason - I like those books, nice old-fashioned puzzle mysteries; Fairest by Gail Carson Levine; started Имя потерпевшего - Никто (The victim's name is Nobody) by Aleksandra Marinina

Halloween Carnival of the Godless!

Yes, it's the Halloween Edition of the Carnival of the Godless! It's over at Skeptic Rant this time. Looks like a lot of good posts, too. I'll be back with some recommendations after I've read the ones I hadn't already seen.

Okay - I'm going to recommend Hell's Handmaiden's Evolution isn't Theology, Ebonmuse's Tax the Churches, and especially Black Sun Journal's Rush saved me (and my kids) (Rush the band I hasten to point out). My own Enter the Ark is there, too, by the way... But all the posts are worth a read and a thought - a good way to spend some of this crisp fall Sunday morning (well, it's crisp and fall where I am, anyway...)

Relatives

Once, several years ago now, we were all sitting around the television over the Christmas holidays, talking about Geno Auriemma. Well, to be truthful, we were trashtalking Geno, the way UT fans will. My brother's new girlfriend was sitting there quietly watching us, and finally she shook her head and said, amusedly, "You all talk about him like he was the spawn of Satan."

My brother shook his own head and answered her, in that voice - you know the one, the one you use when you're explaining something very obvious to someone who just doesn't get it.

"No, honey; Geno isn't the spawn of Satan. Geno's just Satan's second cousin once removed, on his momma's side."

She was looking at him kind of incredulously now, and to be fair so was my sister and maybe me, too.

Until he finished up:

"Steve Spurrier is Satan's spawn."

As they say, Word.

TENN: 7 14 14 21 28 31 31
S CAR: 0 0 3 10 17 17 24

10:11 to go, 1st qtr' 9:51 to go, 2nd qtr. 9:07 4:10 to go, 3rd qtr, 13:10, 10:25, 4:26, 2:24 to go, 4th qtr FINAL!!!

GO VOLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why I didn't watch the Series

I used to have season tickets (a partial plan, but still season tickets) to the Orioles. I used to go to games even after the season ticket plan just became a mass purchase of tickets (no discount, no perks, not even a shot at parking!). But not in a while. And earlier this week, a friend was wondering why I don't care about the World Series any more...

Why?

Detroit: 95-67, .586 - wild card winner. Third best in their league.
St. Louis: 83-78, .516 - actual division winner at .516! Fifth in their league. Worse than a team that never had a chance to play in the Series. They actually are the champions. .516, fifth in their league ... and they're the champions.

New York Mets - 97-65, .599. Not there. New York Yankees, ditto, ditto, and ditto.

It's unlikely, of course, but it's possible that one year we'll see the number eleven teams facing each other....

I still love baseball, but "Baseball"? Not so much.

Duel at Twilight

The building where I live fronts onto a six-lane divided highway. In front of the building, between it and the road, is a parking lot (of course), whose aisles are separated by wide strips of grass. Each strip is planted with two S-curves of some low, red-leafed shrub; at the end near the building they are planted with maples that fill the parking lot with whirlybirds in seed season, and at the road end are Bartlett pears. The grassy stretch along the road itself is planted with Japanese-lantern trees, and another double line of pears increase the buffer along the large common area beyond the lot. In summer there are a lot of robins, and the Japanese-lantern trees are absolutely filled with bumble and honey bees in spring. Despite all the traffic, it's a nice place to watch birds.

Thursday afternoon two mockingbirds had selected the stretch of asphalt between two pears as a dueling ground.

They were going at each other as I got off the bus, flashing wings as they leapt into the air, straight into each other and then somesaulting away. Back into the air in another acrobatic lunging attack, and then another, and then, suddenly, they stopped. Now they stared at each other across eight or nine inches of asphalt for a moment, then began bouncing back and forth, not walking - bouncing stiff-legged, with their tails held high and stiff and flared and their chests puffed. And all in silence, odd for these consummate, prolific singers. Sideways they bounced, six, seven bounces and then back the other way, facing each other as they did. Every now and then one paused, and then they would bounce straight ahead, getting very close, before backing away again.

A car drove up the aisle and the mockingbirds immediately flew off to their respective trees, but even as I started to walk on they descended back to their duelling ground. The bouncing began again, their heads cocked to keep an eye on each other. The late afternoon sunshine - half an hour till sunset - slanted across the lot and they moved in and out of the light and shadow. Now and then one would run a few steps and the other would bounce faster - both did this - and then they would both bounce back again. It was mesmerizing.

And then, quite suddenly, with no sign that I could see, one of them turned, ran a few steps, and leapt into the air, flying into the pear and disappearing. The other stood quietly almost twenty seconds, then did one of those flashing backwards somersaults with wings outspread and landed again in almost the exact same spot. Another moment, and he, too, flew away.

I think this must have been a boundary dispute. They do, after all, live in neighboring trees, and all year round, while it's late for any courtship (not that this looked like courtship, the way it ended) or competition for mates. That line they had between them as they confronted each other - someone must have crossed it.

But whatever they were doing, it was a moment of slant-sun-lit magic in gray, white, and green...

Happy Birthday, Dylan

Dylan Thomas was born today in 1914.

Words are his forte and so here's "Fern Hill":

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

The night above the dingle starry,

   Time let me hail and climb

Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

   Trail with daisies and barley

Down the rivers of the windfall light.



And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns

About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

In the sun that is young once only,

   Time let me play and be

Golden in the mercy of his means,

And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves

Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,

   And the sabbath rang slowly

In the pebbles of the holy streams.



All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay

Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air

And playing, lovely and watery

   And fire green as grass.

And nightly under the simple stars

As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,

All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars

Flying with the ricks, and the horses

   Flashing into the dark.



And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white

With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all

Shining, it was Adam and maiden,

   The sky gathered again

And the sun grew round that very day.

So it must have been after the birth of the simple light

In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm

Out of the whinnying green stable

   On to the fields of praise.



And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house

Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,

In the sun born over and over,

   I ran my heedless ways,

My wishes raced through the house high hay

And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows

In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs

Before the children green and golden

   Follow him out of grace,



Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

In the moon that is always rising,

   Nor that riding to sleep

I should hear him fly with the high fields

And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

   Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

139 - 1

And 24 abstentions. On which more later.

So, the UN voted to

begin work on drawing up an international arms trade treaty. The UN secretary general has one year to produce a report on how to introduce common international standards for the import, export and transfer of conventional arms.

Major weapons manufacturers such as Britain, France and Germany voted to begin work on the treaty, as did major emerging arms exporters Bulgaria and Ukraine.

Russia and China, also major arms manufacturers, were among the countries to abstain.

And the USA was the only country vote against it.

Dan Damon interviewed an American diplomat from the US embassy in London, David Johnson. His responses can be easily summed up.

(1) The USA has the most stringent policy in the world, with every defense contract scrutinized on a case-by-base basis.
(2) Putting a weak treaty in place would be pandering to the lowest common denominator and that "we want a higher playing field, something that will be truly effective."
(3) A weak treaty will give people a false sense of security.

Dan Damon said that it will be hard to ignore the diplomatic impression. Johnson ignored that, repeating his line about the US's standards.

Damon's right - you hear "The UN voted 139-1 to work on an arms trading treaty; the USA is the only country to vote against it" and what do you think?

Which is why the abstentions don't register. The abstentions aren't a "No". 139-0 with 25 abstentions isn't nearly as powerful to hear, as shocking, as 139-1, with 24 abstentions.

And Johnson's wrong - the US wasn't taking a principled stand against a treaty, weakened by hypocritical pandering to Russia and China, cynically manipulated to make poor people around the world think they'll be safe while arms dealers laugh all the way to the bank.

The US voted against starting to develop a treaty.

Note that: voted against.

Again, if we'd abstained, saying we doubted it would do any good, that would still not have been a good move, but it wouldn't have been remarkable. This was an actual vote to kill even trying to develop a treaty. After all, the motion wasn't "The UN will begin work on a crappy treaty that won't actually do anything."

This was pure disdain for the UN. Bolton must have loved casting the vote.

I reapeat, it would be one thing if we had rolled up our sleeves and gone to work, insisting every step of the way on stringent, tough standards that would make everyone join us on that "higher playing field", and then, when we had failed to make something tough and practical, we were voting against a gutted treaty. That would be principled.

This is just more of our administration's absolute disdain for the international community, and its pathological hatred of treaties.

So, how's his soul looking now?

What did Putin say to Olmert the other day?

Президент РФ Владимир Путин решил поддержать израильского президента, оказавшегося в трудной ситуации после того, как полиция рекомендовала подготовить против него обвинительное заключение. Как сообщила газета «Коммерсант», во время встречи с премьер-министром Израиля Эхудом Ольмертом в момент, когда пресса уже покидала зал, Путин сказал: «Привет передайте своему президенту! Оказался очень мощный мужик! Десять женщин изнасиловал! Я никогда не ожидал от него! Он нас всех удивил! Мы все ему завидуем!» «Это именно тот случай, когда не веришь своим ушам», – отметил корреспондент «Ъ».

So. There you have it.

If you don't read Russian, here's my translation:

Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin has decided to support the Israeli president, who's found himself in a difficult spot after police recommended that he be indicted. As reported in the newspaper "Kommersant", during his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, after the press had begun to leave the hall, Putin said: "Give my regards to your president! He's proved to be a very powerful stud*! He's raped ten women! I never expected that from him! He's surprised us all! We all envy him!" "It was absolutely one of those moments when you can't believe your ears," the Kommersant correspondent said.

* the word is "muzhik", which means, literally, "a peasant man" - the classic Russian farmer, not smart but strong and earthy; it's also used to mean "a stud" or "a joker".

Key here: even the Russian correspondent who overheard it knew it wasn't a case of

"Russian is a very complicated language, sometimes it is very sensitive from the point of view of phrasing," as a Kremlin spokesman told the BBC, adding that the comments were meant as a joke and in "in no way meant that President Putin welcomes rape".

It's not all that complicated. The word "изнасиловать (iznasilovat')" is remarkable devoid of nuance. It means "to rape, assault; deflower; violate; outrage". There's no real shade of meaning there.

Nor with "удивить (udivit')" which means "to astonish; daze; surprise; knock out; take somebody's breath away; amaze", nor with "завидовать (zavidovat')", which is "to envy; be envious; begrudge; grudge; look through green glasses; covet". The sentences are simple, the syntax straightforward - it's not a complicated utterance.

In fact, if you're looking for nuance, try "muzhik" - "мощный мужик, moshzhnyj muzhik" - that's more like "vigorous stud" than the neutral "powerful man" that has been the general translation.

Was Putin joking? Probably - everybody laughed. But you know what? Jokes about rape are pretty damned common, and they aren't all that "complicated" or "sensitive" in their "phrasing". They're just jokes about the priveleges of power and the way men - some men - think of women. No, Putin doesn't welcome rape - probably. But he does think it's funny.

He's not laughing alone.

(English here and Russian here)

A Valiant Warrior Passes

Philip Kevin Paulson, who fought a 17-year legal battle to remove the Mount Soledad cross from public property, died Wednesday of liver cancer. He was 59.

I heard Paulson speak at the Freedom From Religion Convention in San Francisco earlier this month when he accepted the Atheists in Foxholes award. He was passionate, and angry, and funny - and moving. It was impossible to listen to him without understanding how deeply emotional about this he was.

I personally will never forget his voice as he denied the canard "There are no atheists in foxholes" by describing his Vietnam tour:

We did that. I've seen it. I was there.
You can read his essay I was an atheist in a foxhole here.

From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Paulson, a 6-foot-5 Vietnam veteran who lived in City Heights, became so passionate about the separation of church and state that he filed a civil lawsuit against the city of San Diego in 1989 without an attorney. He won the case, and as the appeals dragged on he became one of the county's most reviled and respected characters.

“The real message is equal treatment under the law, and religious neutrality. That's the purpose of why I did it,” Paulson said. He said he wanted people to understand why he pursued the removal of the cross, and that he was never motivated by a hatred of Christians. “I don't harbor those kind of feelings. My mother's a Christian. I was raised a devout Christian. I'm not anti-Christian. The reason I did it is because it's not fair to the other religions. America is not just the Christian religion.”

A Wall

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

A Modest Proposal

Cheney calls it "a dunk in water". Ashcroft calls it "shouting at" them. Gonzales says it's "worrying about someone's hurt feelings". Bush says "we don't torture".

I suggest they let the techniques be tested on them. All four of them, all the techniques.

How? Simple

Dan Froomkin asks, or rather passes on a question:

As Jonathan Chait recently asked in a Los Angeles Times opinion column: "[I]f Bush's own economists say his tax cuts caused revenue to drop . . . then how can he continually get away with insisting the opposite?"

I beleive that would be ...

Because nobody ever calls him on it, Dan and Jonathan.

Oh, maybe you are now. You. But for the last six years it was all 'gee, we can't call the President a liar!'

But you know what, media guys? Not calling him a liar doesn't make him not a liar. It just makes you enablers if not accomplices.

I and the Bird #35

I and the Bird #35 is up at Migrations. Beautiful pictures and stories both funny and beautiful. I especially recommend The Pigeon With Stars In Its Hair (new link) at Search and Serendipity - oh, the birds they have in Papua New Guinea!, hermit thrush all aquiver at Bootstrap Analysis, and Searching for a Woodpecker at The Bird Nerd - he has some nice photos, too - and Eek! A Shriek! at Rurality for a chuckle. But all the posts are good ones, pretty much.

Carnival Time!

Carnival of the Liberals is up at Perspectives of a Nomad - ten of the best liberally-oriented posts in the blogosphere. Check it out, why don't you?

(Disclaimer - I'm not hawking this just because my own Wow, a Surprise, and Then - Not So Much was included. COTL is always good stuff!)

I particularly recommend Divided We Stand's comparison of Hastert and Tammany Hall, and World Wide Webers' look at Santorums "semi-coherent" LOTR analogy.

Beauty explained is still beauty

Remember this?



Go over to According to Colwell, the blog of one of the astronomers working the Cassini mission, for an explanation of why this picture looks like it does - where Cassini was, where the sun was, what causes the light to look the way it looks, and why Saturn seems in front of the rings ...

Of course he's not

From yesterday's press briefing:

Q: "Is the President responsible for the fact people think it's 'stay the course' since he's, in fact, described it that way himself?

MR. SNOW: "No."

A challenge to rethink 'the Korean problem'

Also in Times Select, Nicholas Kristoff asks us to

Look around the world at the regimes we despise: North Korea, Cuba, Burma and Iran. Those are among the world’s most long-lived regimes, and that’s partly because the sanctions and isolation we have imposed on them have actually propped them up — by giving those countries’ leaders an excuse for their economic failures and a chance to cloak themselves in nationalism.

He points out that:

Lately Americans have been quarreling over who is more to blame for North Korea’s nuclear test, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush.

Well, Mr. Clinton inherited a situation that, if it had continued, would have resulted in North Korea having hundreds of nuclear weapons by now, and producing an additional 50 each year. Instead, Mr. Clinton negotiated a deal with North Korea that resulted in it producing not a single ounce of new plutonium in his eight years in office.

In contrast, President Bush inherited that North Korean nuclear freeze and, if he had just left it alone, North Korea wouldn’t have produced any new plutonium. But Mr. Bush overruled Colin Powell’s efforts to continue the engagement — and so North Korea has churned out enough plutonium on Mr. Bush’s watch for perhaps eight nuclear weapons.

But in a larger sense, the North Korean nuclear test — and the fact that Kim Jong-il is still in power — represent a failure not so much of either Mr. Bush or Mr. Clinton, but of decades of bipartisan American policy that aimed to isolate the North.

His conclusion?

In particular, it’s a mistake for us to reproach the South Koreans — who have more of a stake than anybody, and who understand the North Koreans better than we do — for operating factories in the Kaesong industrial zone in North Korea.

It’s true that those North Korean workers have no rights, and that North Korea will use the hard currency to bolster its military. But those South Korean factories are expected to employ 700,000 workers by 2012.

While North Korea can survive punitive sanctions, I don’t think the regime can survive the shock of having 700,000 of its citizens working for South Korean capitalists — and realizing that the southerners are so rich and spoiled that they refuse to eat rice with gravel in it.

The biggest threat to North Korea’s regime isn’t from American warships, but from the sight of other Koreans dieting, or listening on iPods to love songs, or watching decadent television comedies.

So let’s stop helping the Dear Leader isolate his own people.

Nation or clan

John Tierney, writing in the New York Times, summed up the problem in Iraq in a piece called "One Nation, Divisible". He's in Times Select, which you have to pay for - and I do, so I'll share the highlights here.

General Thurman predicted that Americans will keep struggling unless Iraqis put aside their differences. Quite right — and quite depressing, because they’re not about to do it, no matter what timetable the U.S. tries to impose.

But what’s stopping them is not selfishness. When General Thurman talked about the conflict between serving oneself and serving one’s country, he was applying an American template to a different culture. Rampant individualism is not the problem in Iraq.

The problem is that they have so many social obligations more important to them than national unity. Iraqis bravely went to the polls and waved their purple fingers, but they voted along sectarian lines. Appeals to their religion trumped appeals to the national interest. And as the beleaguered police in Amara saw last week, religion gets trumped by the most important obligation of all: the clan.

And he has a suggestion:

Instead of trying to transform Iraqis into patriots and build up national security forces, the U.S. should be urging decentralization. The national government should concentrate on defending the borders and equitably distributing oil revenue, ideally by distributing shares of the oil wealth directly to citizens.

Most other duties, including maintaining law and order, should devolve to autonomous local governments: one for the Kurdish north, one for the Sunni Triangle, one for the Shiite south, plus coalition governments in Baghad and the multiethnic region around Kirkuk.

His final paragraph was telling:

It wouldn’t be easy for Iraqis in other regions to work out their differences, but the local leaders would have one crucial advantage over any Iraqis or Americans giving orders from Baghdad. They would realize their neighbors are not going to suddenly embrace national unity. They would know you make peace with the citizenry you have, not the one you want.

Happy Birthday, Anne!

Born today in 1941, Anne Tyler - Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who celebrates the minutae of ordinary lives lived by ordinary people who are splendidly not ordinary in the narrow sense. I love her books - she's one of the few authors whose new novel I pre-order, in hardback, and who never disappoints. A private person, she makes no tours or public appearances, and I honor that here by not showing her face - only her latest three novels. May she write many more.

AAARRRGGGHHH

Damn them.

There are only a few shows I make a point of not missing. Of those shows, three of them are repeated within the same week.

Then there are House and Veronica Mars.


Oh, for the old days, when they weren't on the same night. Damn UPN for moving Veronica Mars to Tuesday at 9 last year with only a handful of episodes left. Fortunately the local affiliate reran it on Sunday afternoons...

Then, this year, bliss! Modified rapture! House was on at 8 and Veronica Mars, when it finally started, was on at 9.

Until next week. Fox (damn them) is moving House back to 9. And the local CW affiliate (the same station) is not rerunning Veronica Mars.



Grrrr.

Greg House? Or Veronica Mars?

Logan? Or Wilson?

Grrrr.

A pox on both their houses. Fox and CW, I mean.


update after watching VM tonight... the decision may have been made because you know what? Logan Echolls will just about break your damn heart.

There is a third alternative

In today's Washington Post Eugene Robinson says:

Okay, now they're just making stuff up. George W. Bush went on television Sunday and claimed that on Iraq war policy, "We've never been 'stay the course' " -- as if no record survived of all the times he has used those very words. Maybe he was trying to outdo Dick Cheney, who went on the radio last week and proclaimed that the beleaguered Iraqi government is doing "remarkably well."

Cheney's well-hidden sense of humor must be tremendously subtle. I can only assume that "remarkably well" was his version of the old joke about the man who falls off a 20-story building and, as he passes each floor on the way down, is heard to call out, "So far, so good!"

I'm fairly sure that the president and the vice president of the United States haven't completely lost touch with reality. I can't believe that Bush has forgotten making "stay the course" a Republican midterm election mantra, the counterpoint to the "cut and run" label he is trying to hang on the Democrats. And someone must have summoned the courage to tell Cheney that more than 85 American troops have been killed in Iraq so far in October, making it the deadliest month for U.S. forces in a year.

If Bush and Cheney were being sincere, then they're lying to themselves; if not, they're lying to the rest of us. My money is on the latter.

That may well be true - especially of Cheney. In fact, my money's on it. But with Bush, I'm not sure he is lying - well, he is about "stay the course", and it's the same stupid lie they keep coming out with: "I didn't say that" when they're on film saying it. That lie just boggles the mind.

But I'm not as sure as Robinson that Bush is in touch with reality, the bigger reality. He's very sheltered, doesn't read the papers or listen to anyone outside his little circle, and is frequently astonished when confronted with an opposing viewpoint. It's what happens when you define reality instead of observe it.

I think Bush may actually not be lying at all, most of the time. I think he may actually believe it.

And that's scarier than having a pathological liar as president as well as vice-president.

By the way...

Peyton Manning is a god.

Enter the ark

So, I'm reading the New York Times at lunch, and I turn the page, and there it is. Page A15 - the whole page - a sermon called "Enter the Ark" by Pastor Ock Soo Park.

It was ... amazing.

I don't generally do this sort of thing, but I can't help myself. So, here goes...

There were three major parts to this sermon. They were threaded throughout, but I'll look at them in chunks: Tommy, the Ark, and God's plan for you!

"Tommy" is a man who attended a conference in Los Angeles (the pastor is having one of these in New York's Madison Square Garden Nov 16-19 - free of charge! Whoo-hoo!) - Tommy was a mess. He walked with a cane, had been doing drugs for 40 years (he's now 52), "had many diseases", lived homeless and a beggar, then married a Korean woman who loved him but he still spent all her money on drugs. The pastor preached at him and told him to "throw away that cane of yours" and then headed off for Atlanta and Dallas to hold conferences there. When he came back to LA who do you think he saw?

Have you been reading ahead?

Yes, it was Tommy,

wearing jeans and a white jacket. He looked brand-new and young.

"Tommy, jeans look really good on you. You should wear jeans from now on. You look really good, and you look very young."

Well, Tommy had thrown away his cane. He was now playing "basketball with some students" and planned to buy a treadmill. The pastor tells us he

saw Tommy entering Jesus [no, dirty mind! It's a metaphor - "entering Jesus = entering the Ark" - I'll get to it in a minute] and becoming free from sin which had always suppressed him. I saw him being freed from diabetes, the palsy, and many other diseases.

Now, of course we don't know anything more about Tommy. The man might not even exist - but I'll give the pastor the benefit of the doubt. The pastor adds that he's

seen how the lives of murderers, death row inmates, Russian mafia members, and drug addicts changed through meeting Jesus.

I'll give him that, too - easily. No one doubts that many people have turned themselves around thinking that Jesus has saved them. As for Tommy - lots of people are helped by placebos, too. But has he actually been cured of diabetes and "many other diseases"? Has any medical person actually checked him out - before and after? Or is Pastor Park promising things he can't deliver?

On to point 2 - the Ark.

God told Noah in Genesis chapter 7, verse 1, Come thou and all thy house into the Ark. It was because the judgment was coming, and the only way to survive the judgment was the ark. Even if one cannot swim and is exhausted, he can have rest and freedom if he enters the ark. However, anyone outside of the ark can only be destroyed no matter how good or honest he is. Genesis tells us about that very well.

Note that: no matter how good or honest he is. We'll come back to that in point 3.

Entering the Ark keeps you safe from the disaster God has brewed up for the rest of the world - and entering Jesus is like that.

If the animals that entered the ark were outside the ark, they would have died in the flood. But once they were in the ark, it was not a problem, not matter how much it rained. It was because the ark blocked out the entire flood, judgment, and curse. In the same way, if you enter Jesus, in your place, He takes the curse, destruction, and misery you should be receiving.

Again, that "should be receiving" bit will be dealt with in the next point. Right now, I'm talking about his ark metaphor. He goes on to tell us a cute little story about being on the ark:

The funny thing about life on the ark was that, if there were a lion, for example, right next to a group of zebras—

[group? there would only have been two...stop interrupting the story!]

The funny thing about life on the ark was that, if there were a lion, for example, right next to a group of zebras, the zebras would hear the lion and become frightened, thinking, "Oh, no! There's a lion next to us!" They would be able to hear the lion, but the lion would be unable to eat them because rooms were made. The zebras would be so free.

"Lion, are you there?"

"What? How dare that zebra talk to me like that!"

"Hey, Lion! You should learn manners from now on. Why do you always try to catch and eat me? [ummm, because god made him a carnivore? Just sayin' ... sorry; back to the story] You should change."

The zebras were always nervous when they ate grass out in the prairies. When lions would come, they would have to run away. But they were so free inside of the ark. They did not need to be nervous; they were at peace. If we, too, enter Christ, we will have such freedom as well.

So, while they were on the ark, the zebras got cocky - being "so free" - and trash-talked the lions - who were, I suppose, not quite "so free". But that's okay, because as soon as the flood waters went down and the ark landed on Mt Ararat, the animals were turned loose... and the lions started chowing down on loud-mouthed zebras. Again.

So what is the moral here? Jesus is eventually going to land somewhere and dump us all out? Before you answer, let's look at point 3 of the sermon.

When the pastor preached at Tommy, this is what he said.

"Disgusting, ugly caterpillars are what become butterflies. This is the providence of God. God made humans filthy and dirty rather than good and honest so that He may save them, making them holy and glorious. Tommy, God has had you live a filthy, sinful life like that of a caterpillar for you to be able to eventually live like a butterfly."

What?

I mean, apart from the serious hate for caterpillars, this doctrine says that "God made humans filthy and dirty rather than good and honest". He goes on

Our lives before meeting Jesus were lives that need to be destroyed. But just as a disgusting caterpillar becomes a pretty butterfly that flies in the sky, we change when we meet Jesus. God made us that way.

Read that again - "God made us that way."

Remember that line about no matter how good or honest he is? Here's how the pastor explains that:

people think that they will be cursed and destroyed if they do something evil, and think that they will be saved and blessed if they do something good. According to these thoughts, every person pursues goodness. But precisely put, true goodness is not helping others or providing relief for others. Jesus, Himself, is good. True wickedness is not murdering, committing adultery, or stealing, but the life outside of Jesus, itself, is evil. Therefore we should not try to do good to receive salvation, but must enter into Jesus.

Yes. You read that right. Here's some more:

If we are outside the ark, no matter how much good we do, we can only be destroyed, but we can receive salvation if we are inside the ark, no matter what evil we may have done.

I won't push the metaphor too much - god did, after all, severely limit the passenger load on the ark - but it's still disquieting. The pastor goes on even more disquietingly:

Salvation depends on whether you are inside or outside the ark. It does not depend on whether you are good or evil.

Read that last bit again: Salvation depends on whether you are inside or outside the ark. It does not depend on whether you are good or evil

So: God makes humans "filthy and dirty rather than good and honest"; "we should not try to do good to receive salvation" because salvation "does not depend on whether you are good or evil".

Salvation does not depend on whether you are good or evil. Not just "salvation through grace not works", but "salvation through grace despite works."

Couple that with that truly repugnant theology of "God made humans filthy and dirty rather than good or honest so that He might save them" and you have a god I wouldn't want to be saved by. Consider the logical ramifications of the pastor's position: no one who has not had Jesus preached at them can be saved, even if they are the saintliest person ever born. They're going to hell. And the evilest son of a bitch who ever lived is saved by believing he's saved, no matter how evil he is (and evil people generally don't believe they're evil; they're full of justifications).

Becoming one with Jesus is uniting with the Word of God regardless of your own thoughts. ... The Word of God says we do not have sin.

But anyone "outside the ark" will be destroyed. And god's okay with that - because it's the way he "made us" to be. Damned and doomed. This is clearly the same god who repeatedly hardened Pharoah's heart so that he could show off to people. As Exodus 10 says

Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may perform these signs of Mine among them,and that you may tell in the hearing of your son, and of your grandson, how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I performed My signs among them, that you may know that I am the LORD." Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, "Thus says the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, 'How long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me?'"

Talk about mockery: harden the guy's heart, and then get your man to ask him how long he'll stay hardened. What a god.


The pastor has a book, of course. For only $13.95 you can have The Secret of Forgiveness and Being Born Again - "Forgiveness, which is the greatest gift of God, is now revealed." Just remember what God's actually forgiving...

And he's got a website, of course. I'm not giving him a link, but the url is http://www.gnntimes.com for previous sermons, and http://www.ospark.pe.kr for the pastor's very own home page.

"Are you devastated by the sentence?"

That's what somebody yelled at Skilling. His answer? "Obviously, I'm not happy ... I really believe, this is no act, I really believe that I'm innocent." He added, "I have children and I'd like to spend time with them."

Gosh, Jeff. Lots of people have children - lots of people whose lives you ruined.

Of course, you remember this gem:

"In terms of remorse your honour, I can't imagine more remorse," Skilling told the court before he was sentenced.

"That being said your honour, I am innocent of these charges."

What's that? I didn't do it, but I'm sorry? Most people don't have "remorse" for things they are "innocent of". They may be regretful that things happened to turn out badly, but remorse?

Merriam-Webster defines "remorse" as: a gnawing distress arising from a sense of guilt for past wrongs (as injuries done to others)

So, Ken, you "can't imagine more remorse", and yet you are "innocent of these charges"?

Yeah.

Skilling is a piece of work.

I hope he is devastated.

And I hope others are taking notice.

Hungry galaxy uses telescope?

And speaking of the Hubble, The Times Online reports that

A HUNGRY galaxy that is stuffing itself with smaller ones that are trapped like flies in a spider’s web has been discovered using the Hubble Space Telescope.

Doubtless using it to find new prey...

I wonder which researchers got bumped to make room for the Spiderweb Galaxy? Of course, you wouldn't want to annoy a hungry galaxy.

This could have been fixed so easily, and without disturbing the information structuring that led with "a hungry galaxy", either. Simply insert a "by" phrase, such as "as been discovered by researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope." Or, if you don't like that, how about "has been discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope"?

Here it is, by the way:

When galaxies collide, stars are born

Cassini is taking spectacular pictures close to home, in our solar system - but let's not forget Hubble. Here's a truly spectacular image, brand spanking new:

"This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the Antennae galaxies is the sharpest yet of this merging pair of galaxies. During the course of the collision, billions of stars will be formed."

Wow. Very much wow.

To think we live in a time when we can see the Universe being reshaped around us, and know what we're seeing.

The Week in Entertainment

Film: Qian li zou dan qi (Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles) - Damn, that was a good movie. Ken Takakura did a brilliant job in a film that was written for him, showing the emotions that lie underneath the closed-off Takata-san, and Yimou Zhang, as always, used his camera lyrically to celebrate rural China meeting the modern world. Don't expect action, from the martial arts director or the iconic yakuza star - this is a film about emotion. It's gorgeous, through and through.

TV: Veronica Mars - Ahhhh, that final scene. Veroncia and Logan are so good together; they might, just might, be able to fix each other, or themselves ... I hope so. Dr Who - 'The Girl in the Fireplace', which just might be my favorite episode of this season. And Heroes - slowly getting better; I might have to keep watching just to see if Hiro uses his powers to buy the time to learn English!

Read: Notes for a Memoir by Janet Jeppson Asimov; Assassination Vacation by the incomparable Sarah Vowell - I dare you to read her McKinley chapter without some rage at the current situation, or her Lincoln chapter without tears; The End by Lemony Snicket - a satisfactorily ambiguous and unconclusive ending to the series - who Beatrice was caught me by surprise

"Unawares"?

Okay, I admit I have a visceral reaction to the niqab - and I would object loudly if one of my great-niece or nephew's teachers wore it to school. I wouldn't be happy with any religious adornment - but the niqab is the worst, because of the messages it sends about women, their bodies, and their role vis a vis men - and about men and their place in the world and ability to control themselves. Plus, the violence men feel free to inflict on women who don't wear it in some places in this world. It's not religious (not that I feel "It's my religion!" exempts one from criticism, nor do you, really: does tossing a child into a furnace seem okay? No? It's religious, after all...) , it's cultural. Christians in many places wear hijabs, Orthodox Jewish women do much the same, and Muslim women who are from, say, Indonesia don't wear the niqab.

Yes, I hate to admit it, but I'm a bit Federationy in my views: as Quark said to Sisko, "You're always preaching tolerance but you only practice it with people whose customs you approve of."

Still, even if I'm completely wrong and she's not damaging the children's schooling - the school and the local council disagree, and even in places like Oman they bar the niqab at schools, and a friend of mine who recently spent a year in Egypt, studying, said she rarely saw the niqab there but one of the few times she did it was on a woman being refused entry onto the university's grounds because she was wearing it - even if, as I say, I'm wrong and the kids wouldn't have had trouble learning from her and wouldn't have picked up any messages about their self-worth or anything else, this makes me lose what little sympathy I had for her:

A week ago, during a BBC interview she was asked directly whether she wore the veil at her interview. She hesitated and then replied: "Do I have to answer all the questions?"

When pressed again, she admitted she had not worn the veil but insisted she did not realise she was going to be interviewed by a male.

"I was caught unawares," she said.

Caught unawares?

What, they came to her house to interview her? No, that won't work, she must have niqabs at home she could have put on.

And if she went to the school, or the council, or anywhere - why wasn't she wearing the niqab? How on Earth could she have been "caught unawares"?

Yes, she likely wouldn't have gotten the job - but maybe she would have. After all, they didn't sack her right away when she showed up wearing it.

Kirklees Council said the decision was taken after a monitoring period in which the impact of wearing the veil on the teaching and learning was studied.

So maybe she would have. We'll never know. She'll never know.

"Arrogance and stupidity" ... and it still goes on

Amazing. The BBC reports:

Mr Fernandez, an Arabic speaker who is director of public diplomacy in the state department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, told Qatar-based al-Jazeera that the world was "witnessing failure in Iraq".

"That's not the failure of the United States alone, but it is a disaster for the region," he said. "I think there is great room for strong criticism, because without doubt, there was arrogance and stupidity by the United States in Iraq."

The state department says Mr Fernandez was quoted incorrectly - but BBC Arabic language experts say Mr Fernandez did indeed use the words. The BBC Monitoring Service has confirmed that Mr Fernandez did use the words "arrogance and stupidity" in his interview.

(excerpted & slightly reordered but not edited)

I'm not sure which is more amazing - a State Department guy admitting the truth, or the way State denied it: not by saying, "He's wrong" but by saying "He never said that."

On the other hand, there has certainly been no shortage of evidence that this administration - heck, this whole government on both sides - hasn't quite figured out that when you're on tape your words are still there. Even Nixon knew he had to erase the tape... these guys seem to think that saying "I never said that" is enough.

Of course, usually it is...

Oct 23:
Well, now Fernandez says he said it, but didn't mean to say it... Reuters says: "Upon reading the transcript of my appearance on Al-Jazeera, I realized that I seriously misspoke by using the phrase 'there has been arrogance and stupidity' by the U.S. in Iraq. This represents neither my views nor those of the State Department. I apologize," Fernandez said in a statement.

Where are those cameras?

"Meteor" is on Retroplex and I watch it (again) - well, listen to it, really, as I finish up Assassination Vacation. I can always listen to Sean Connery, and Brian Keith's Dubov cracks me up. I love the fact that his Russian is so fluent when he doesn't understand a word of it, having memorized the lines under Natalie Woods' tutelage. I also love the moment when they launch the Russian missiles and Dubov wipes his eyes, saying an unsubtitled "Мои дети, мои дети" (my children, my children), and that lovely passing moment where Connery's Bradley is punching keys on his humongous desk calculator and writing down the figures and the camera pans across to Dubov, who seems to be doing the same thing and then you realize his finger/hand motion is all wrong and at the last possible moment you get it: he's using an abacus.

Of course, most of the movie is incredibly clichéd and predictable, and you can see Connery flinch just before he gets hit with the mud when the river is breaking through the tunnel (I am now reminded of George Clooney talking about how much they hated Mark Wahlberg, who couldn't control his reaction to the sound of the tank that was going to dump punishing masses of water on them for the climax of "Perfect Storm" so every take after the first one was ruined and they kept having to do it over and over until Wahlberg was too exhausted to react... I guess the makers of "Meteor" figured they could rationalize that Bradley could guess what was coming... but I digress)

What I really want to know is: where are all those cameras? The ones showing us the satellites and missiles and all. I don't mean the narrative shots, the ones for the movie audience - I mean the ones all the technicians and scientists keep watching on their monitors. I figure they must have at least five or six positioned right up there next to the secret satellites, including one right under the rockets on the American missiles! It's pretty ridiculous, really.

Of course, it doesn't stop me watching the movie whenever I run across it...

A Couple of Facts About Me

Find your own facts at



(Tip o' the hat to Coturnix)

Signals Intelligence in Heaven?

From one of Ed's commenters over at Dipatches from the Culture Wars, on this news item:

The top US general defended the leadership of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying it is inspired by God.

"He leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country," said Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The commenter nailed it:

Maybe Rumsfeld's prayers are being intercepted by Allah.

Bush's gut - finally catching on

So, Bush said his gut is telling him that the Iraqi insurgency is trying to inflict enough damage to make us leave.

Well, duh.

They view us as an invading and occupying army. Of course they want us to leave.

And anybody with even a toehold in reality could have predicted that before we started.

[This is not to say that we should leave immediately - I'm not quite convinced that's the best thing - only that anybody should have been able to tell that invading a country rarely makes its citizens love you.]

Sceaming at the TV

My throat hurts - I was just screaming at John Ashcroft on the rerun of The Daily Show ... Fucking asshole, if you'll pardon my language.

The man just defended torture with that classic strawman: to keep our nation safe we have to be able to "shout at" suspects, we have to be able to do "something other than ask politely."

I hate these people.

Happy Birthday, Philip!

Phlip Pullman, born today in 1946, author of the excellent Sally Lockhart books (Ruby in the Smoke, Shadow in the North, Tiger in the Well, and The Tin Princess) and, of cours, the incomparable His Dark Materials: Northern Lights (aka The Golden Compass), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass.

I invite you to read this wonderful Pullman essay on religious autocracies, democracies, and reading (it's at the Gaurdian). Here's a bit to whet your appetite:

One of the most extraordinary scenes I've ever watched, and one which brings everything I've said in this piece into sharp focus, occurs in the famous videotape of George W Bush receiving the news of the second strike on the World Trade Centre on 9/11. As the enemies of democracy hurl their aviation-fuel-laden thunderbolt at the second tower, their minds intoxicated by a fundamentalist reading of a religious text, the leader of the free world sits in a classroom reading a story with children. If only he'd been reading Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, or Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad, or a genuine fairy tale! That would have been a scene to cheer. It would have illustrated values truly worth fighting to preserve. It would have embodied all the difference between democratic reading and totalitarian reading, between reading that nourishes the heart and the imagination and reading that starves them.

But no. Thanks among other things to his own government's educational policy, the book Bush was reading was one of the most stupefyingly banal and witless things I've ever had the misfortune to see. My Pet Goat (you can find the text easily enough on the internet, and I can't bring myself to quote it) is a drearily functional piece of rubbish designed only to teach phonics. You couldn't read it for pleasure, or for consolation, or for joy, or for wisdom, or for wonder, or for any other human feeling; it is empty, vapid, sterile.

But that was what the president of the United States, and his advisers, thought was worth offering to children. Young people brought up to think that that sort of thing is a real book, and that that sort of activity is what reading is like, will be in no position to see that, for example, it might be worth questioning the US National Park Service's decision to sell in their bookstores a work called Grand Canyon: A Different View, which claims that the canyon was created, like everything else, in six days. But then it may be that the US is already part way to being a theocracy in the sense I mean, one in which the meaning of reading, and of reality itself, is being redefined.

Massive sigh of relief

Riverbend is back at Baghdad Burning!!!

She says, "every time I felt the urge to write about Iraq, about the situation, I'd be filled with a certain hopelessness that can't be put into words and that I suspect other Iraqis feel also."

I can only imagine...

But I'm so glad she's still alive. I've never met her and likely never will, but I do feel like that.

Sweet but not enough

Over at Pam's House Blend she has a post about Condi swearing in openly gay physician Mark Dybul as the new U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator with Laura Bush looking on and his partner Jason holding the Bible. Condi said, "I am truly honored and delighted to have the opportunity to swear in Mark Dybul as our next Global AIDS Coordinator. I am pleased to do that in the presence of Mark's parents, Claire and Richard, his partner, Jason, and his mother-in-law, Marilyn...You have a wonderful family to support you, Mark, and I know that's always important to us. Welcome."

That's sweet. No, it is. It's yards and yards better than ignoring his family, and miles better than being contemptuous of them.

But.

I'm sorry: it's not nearly enough to make up for Laura and Condi being prime enablers of a party and an administration who want to make Dybul's "wonderful family" illegal.

Le mot juste

comes from John D. Hutson, a former judge advocate general of the Navy and dean of the Franklin Pierce Law School in New Hampshire.

"Let's not kid ourselves. This is not about an invasion. It is about the embarrassment of holding people who, if they got to court, could show they should not have been held."

That Clear Message

From Dan Froomkin's White House Briefing, a short sharp shock from a neighbor:

In yesterday's column , I quoted Bush saying that the detainee bill "sends a clear message: This nation is patient and decent and fair, and we will never back down from the threats to our freedom."

I suggested that he might be mistaken about the "clear message" the bill really sends. I suggested a few alternatives, and asked you readers for more. ...

* "Here's the clear message to me as a Canadian: I cannot visit the United States, because if some over-eager border guard thinks I'm a risk to national security, I could be locked up forever." (Kevin Longfield)

Dawkins on TCR

Check out Richard Dawkins Net for the video of Dawkins on The Colbert Report last night.

Given that Colbert is a Catholic - and insists on winning ;-) - I think Dawkins handled it very well - especially compared to some who've been on TCR!

I love him nailing that Darwinian evolution is the exact opposite of random chance.

Two more highlights:

"Let's say your book is intelligently designed--"
"It is, by the way."

"Life is a very special thing. It starts naturally, and then increases in complexity by slow, natural degrees: that's Darwinian natural selection--"
"That's cause God breathed into it."
"Oh no - that is at best a superfluous hypothesis, and a worst a highly unparsimonious one."
"Do both of those mean you surrender?"

Birds in San Francisco

After the ffrf convention, I had two days in San Francisco. My friend and I went to the Legion of Honor art museum on Monday. It was great - Rodin's Thinker and lots of very good art. Also some odd art - some very oddly-proportioned saints and such. After a while, we got a snack and ate outside on the terrace. There were trees and a net overhead - but there were gaps along the edges and the terrace was filled with birds.


Well, not filled, but a nice little flock of around twenty. They were very tame - or maybe not tame, but not overly cautious, either. They fluttered around, walking on the tables and under the chairs, hunting for crumbs and pieces of bread. (The staff at the museum obviously kept on top of it, because the tables and chairs were clean.) I had never seen them before - or perhaps I had; I did live in Monterey for a few years. But that was more than 20 years ago, and I didn't recognize these birds. For a while I thought they might two different kinds, but then I thought probably not, since they were basically the same shape and behavior, just different colors. One set was brownish with gray trim and dark brown eyes; the others were shiny black with pale yellow eyes. I have since looked them up and discovered they're a Western bird - Brewer's blackbird, and I was right in my second guess; the yellow-eyed ones are the males.

It's very strange, how important eyes are. Remember in 'Jaws', when Quint was talking about the shark attack he lived through? "The thing about a shark, he's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes. When he comes after you, he doesn't seem to be living until he bites you, and those black eyes roll over white..." Animals that usually have "warm brown eyes" seem odd or even sinister when their eyes are blue (cats are exempted from this because they often have colored eyes.) Horses like this are called "wall-eyed" because in horse fairs that eye was put next to the wall to hide it... Even showing white in the eye, as Appaloosas do, looks odd - though cartoon animals almost always do, to make them seem more human-like. In this picture, the blackbird doesn't seem strange, but in real life, with a dozen or so of them hopping about and staring at us, they seemed a little menacing in a way the brown-eyed ones didn't.

Then a male showed up who was lame - I don't know if he was crippled or just temporarily injured, but he was hopping on one foot, barely touching the toe-tip of his other foot to the ground. Of course, we were all "Awww, poor lame one!" and tossing crumbs in his direction, completely ignoring his sinister eyes. He could usually grab a bite or two before some healthy male ran him off - they were always puffing themselves up and darting at each other - so I finally tore off a biggish hunk and waited till he was by himself and tossed it to him. He grabbed it in his beak and flew off to hide under a shrub, unnoticed.

"You're subverting Darwin," my friend said. I told her I didn't care, but thinking about it, I've decided if he's adapted to humans, well, that's his new ecological niche, after all. And if he's only injured, why shouldn't he get through it?

At any rate, he had a nice snack for a change, and the others weren't exactly going to starve.

Can you pass 8th grade history?

I could - though I confess I guessed on the Mayflower Compact question.

You Passed 8th Grade US History

Congratulations, you got 8/8 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade History?

In Ukraine ... not in the Ukraine

Over at You Don't Say John McIntyre ruminates about how hard it is to keep up with name changes around the world.

We made the mistake over the weekend to referring in an article on the Baltimore Marathon to "the Ukraine," and we promptly got an irate note.

Ukrainians find the usage offensive. It was "the Ukraine" when it was a region, a part of Russia or the Soviet Union. It is an independent nation now, and its name does not take the definite article. (At least we didn’t commit the gaffe of using the old nickname, "Little Russia.")

It may also take us some time to accustom ourselves to the relatively new style of the names of major Indian cities...

The change from "the Ukraine" to "Ukraine" is an interesting one.

First of all, there's the name itself.

It's generally accepted that "Ukrayina" means "borderlands" or something like that. However, which borderlands? There's some evidence that it originally referred to the lands around Kiev - Kievan Rus - and not to some space between Asia and Europe, or the edge of modern Russia.

Russia itself was called Muscovy until Peter I the Great renamed it in 1721. Rus referred to the Kievan state which had crumbled under Muscovy's onslaught. (There were a number of Russias - now only two remain, Russia itself and Belarus, aka White Rus.) In fact, Russia is called, in Russian, "Rossiya" - the vowel is different. Right now, much of Russian political thought is working on how just how "Russian" "Rossiya" is going to be - a problem difficult to explain concisely in English, where you have to say something like "how much of ethnic Slavic Russian culture will the nation of Russia embrace?" or "must citizens of Russia adopt the culture of the ethnic Russians?"

So, Ukrayina was the borderlands around Kievan Rus, the Golden Kingdom which emerged in the 9th century. Modern Russia of course borders Kievan Rus, after centuries of Muscovite expansion. In the late 18th century there was some movement among Ukrainian nationalists to reclaim the name "Rus", but it didn't take - too much chance for confusion between "Russky" and "Rusky" (or possibly Rusi). Ukrayina it remains.

Now, what about the 'the' in the now-discredited "the Ukraine"? Well, there are two preposition in Russian and Ukrainian (as in other Slavic languages) - в and на - that roughly correspond to English's "in" and "on", but in some cases the usage isn't parallel. One of those cases is that some place names take the "on" equivalent, rather than the "in", and in virtually every case of this, there's a "the" used in English: the Crimea, for instance.

Ukraine takes the "on" preposition in Russian (it's в России, v Rossii - in Russia; but it's на Украине, na Ukraine - in the Ukraine), and it used to in Ukrainian (на Україні, na Ukrayini), but now, post-independence, Ukrainians are shifting to saying "in" (в Україні, v Ukrayini). A Google search gave 402,000 hits on "на Україні" (the 'on' or 'in the' equivalent) but 7,980,000 hits on "в Україні" (the "in" equivalent).

So - if you're having trouble remembering to change your usage and say, simply, "in Ukraine" - well, you're in good company.

Oh, yes... what about that "Little Russia" McIntyre mentioned? Малая Русь, orignally, and Малая Россия, or Малороссия - Malaya Rus / Rossiya. Is that really just an "old nickname"? Well, yes. And no.

Little Russia and Great Russia - as with most of the "little" and "great" names (such as Great Britain) originated with the Ancient Greek naming system that gave us "Micro [or Mikro] Ellas" and "Macro [Makro]Ellas". "Great" is perhaps a misnomer - Greater is more nearly it, as in "the greater New York area". Little/Micro Greece was the heartland, the peninsula itself - the small area of the original homeland. Great(er)/Macro Greece was the far-flung area of colonization, the islands and Asia Minor. So, "Little Russia" was Kievan Rus, the homeland, and "Great(er) Russia" was the wide-open and later-settled area.

How Stupid Am I? Like, Totally Not!

What do you tell the children to tell the children?

Head over to Agnostic Mom's for a discussion on what to tell your (you being an atheist/agnostic/freethinker/whatever you want to call it) children about talking to other children. The comments are quite interesting.

Not on our tax dollars

Thanks to Ed over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars for this good news:

The SCOTUS denied cert in the case involving the city of Berkeley and the Sea Scouts. The Sea Scouts, affiliated with the Boy Scouts, discriminate against atheists and gays. The city of Berkeley had a program of giving free slips at the city marina to non-profit groups, but not to those groups that engage in discrimination. The Sea Scouts sued all the way to the California Supreme Court and lost. The court essentially ruled that while as a private organization, the Scouts have a right to engage in such discrimination, that doesn't mean that government agencies have to fund their activities or provide subsidies for them. The ruling was unanimous, and the SCOTUS rejected the appeal, allowing that ruling to stand.

Joe and Clarence

Lieberman and Thomas, that is.

What do they have in common? They don't think about the crucially important issues of the day in their fields - by their own admissions.

Remember Thomas telling us he 'had no opinion' on Roe v. Wade? Not that he thought we didn't need to know his opinion, that his opinion would have no bearing on his rulings - that he had no opinion.

And now Joe is telling us (well, telling The Hartford Courier Courant) that "Uh, I haven't thought about that enough to give an answer." What was "that"? Oh, just whether the country would be better off if the Democrats take back Congress next month.

He hasn't thought about it enough???

Frankly, I don't believe him.

But if I did, it wouldn't make me inclined to respect him, or vote for him. How can he possibly have no opinion on that question? How can he be so disconnected from politics - he is a politician, after all! How disinterested in the country would he have to be for this to be true?

(Remember when Ralph Nader told us that there was no difference between the two parties? Perhaps not in the one area Nader cared about, but no difference? Ralph, you're so blinkered you're blind.)

Joe's not that blinkered. He's just lying to us.

And why would he do that, since he's not running as a Republican?* It can only be because he doesn't want us to know what he really thinks - and if he thinks he's still a Democrat, why wouldn't he want us to know that?

Be warned, Connecticut: Joe is a Republican in "Independent Democrat"'s clothing. If you have thought about it, and you think Senate control is important, and you think Democratic Senate control is important, don't vote for him.

*Apropos of that, I really think John Gianetti needs to take down every one of his campaign signs saying "Re-elect John Gianetti Democratic Senator". The man's a Republican now - openly, unlike Joe - and Jim Rosapepe is the Democratic candidate.

Maybe the Gianetti people could just get black paint and draw a big X over the word "Democratic" on Gianetti's signs and posters: it would reflect the reality.

Updated: Joe is now saying he intends to caucus as a Democrat. Given that the Democrats have won, and he'll lose all his seniority if he switches, I believe him.

Happy Birthday, Oscar

Although he once cried, "Why was I born with such contemporaries?", nonetheless, he was born today in 1854, and has delighted the lover of wit and words ever since.

I could offer some quotes, but how do you distill Wilde? Okay, here are a few:

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
I am not young enough to know everything.
If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.

and here many, many more.