NPM: Of Fire and Flame

April is National Poetry Month. I intend to celebrate it by posting a poem every day. This one is by Margaret Cavendish (who wrote in 1653)

Of Fire and Flame

ALthough we at a distance stand; if great
The Fire be, the Body through will heat.
Yet those sharpe Atomes we do no perceive;
How they flye out nor how to us they cleave.
Nor do they flame, nor shine they cheere and bright,
When they flie out, and on our Bodies strike.
The reason is, they loose, and scattered flye.
And not in Troupes, not do they on heaps lye.
Like small dust rais'd, which scatter'd all about;
We see it not, nor doth it keep Light out:
When gathered thick up to a Mountaine high,
We see them thin in solid Earth to lye.
Just so do Atomes sharpe looke, cleere, and bright,
When in heaps lye, or in a streaming flight.

NPM: La Vie C’est la Vie

April is National Poetry Month. I intend to celebrate it by posting a poem every day. This one is by Jessie Fauset

La Vie C’est la Vie

On summer afternoons I sit
Quiescent by you in the park,
And idly watch the sunbeams gild
And tint the ash-trees’ bark.

Or else I watch the squirrels frisk
And chaffer in the grassy lane;
And all the while I mark your voice
Breaking with love and pain.

I know a woman who would give
Her chance of heaven to take my place;
To see the love-light in your eyes,
The love-glow on your face!

And there’s a man whose lightest word
Can set my chilly blood afire;
Fulfillment of his least behest
Defines my life’s desire.

But he will none of me,
Nor I of you. Nor you of her. ’Tis said
The world is full of jests like these.—
I wish that I were dead.

Torture Celebrities

Check out Dan Froomkin's condemnation of the last White House Correspondents' Association dinner of the Bush era: "the ultimate celebration of chumminess between the most powerful people in the world and those who are supposed to hold them accountable":

In the audience at the dinner and at its endless pre- and post-parties, a fin-de-siecle degeneracy was on full display. Throngs surrounded aging professional floozy Pamela Anderson, a guest of Bloomberg, who happily posed for countless photos in a dress that exposed the preponderance of her two most outstanding achievements. Key members of the White House's torture-management team-- Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former secretary of state Colin Powell -- along with leading torture apologists -- Attorney General Michael Mukasey, CIA Director Michael Hayden, former White House spokesman Tony Snow and current spokeswoman Dana Perino -- were fawned over as honored guests.

And on that - here's a recent revelation from from the NY Times:

"The fact that an act is undertaken to prevent a threatened terrorist attack, rather than for the purpose of humiliation or abuse, would be relevant to a reasonable observer in measuring the outrageousness of the act," said Brian A. Benczkowski, a deputy assistant attorney general, in the letter, which had not previously been made public.

Monday Science Links

This week's science:

• Jennifer at Cocktail Party Physics posts on martial arts injuries and blood spatters: Jim fractured his wrist this past week when he agreed to hold six pine boards while his instructor attempted to break them with a kick. Apparently, the instructor missed the central target area and the full force of his kick landed off to the side, so all that kinetic energy (or should one say momentum? Terminology can be so confusing!) went into Jim's wrist instead of into the board...But he's the curious sort, so he emailed me asking if I knew anything about what went on from a physics standpoint to bring about his injury. I've done lecture/demos on the topic, focusing on broad concepts as opposed to specific calculations, so I knew a little, even though I never featured board-breaking in any of my lectures. Frankly, I've never understood the point of such an exercise. I'm an adherent of the Bruce Lee philosophy, immortalized in Enter the Dragon: "Boards don't hit back."Except in the strictest physics sense, they kinda do.


• Jennifer (a different one) at Mind the Gap posts on the stories of science: When you strip away the formal scientific record, all that is left are the stories of the people who were part of creating it. Of course some scientists write autobiographies, but our collective library of scientific tales is primarily a verbal one: pub stories, rumors, speculations, fading memories, back-stabbing mutterings, second-hand accounts and urban myth.


• What is this, Jennifer week? The one at The Infinite Sphere posts on looking for white nose syndrome: The first room in the cave is a large, open canyon with a very steep scree slope at the bottom. A small canyon at the side of the room leads further into the cave. This particular cave is extremely large and complicated. It consists of an interlocking maze of rooms, canyons, pits, crawls, and other obstacles. In the winter, due to the geology of this section of the cave, cold air is trapped in this entire section making the temperatures drop to around 4-5 C (37 F), which is extremely unusual for caves in the southeast. Typically caves are around 13.3 C (56 F) all year round. That's the kinds of winter temperatures gray bats (Myotis grisescens) require. Around 1.5 million gray bats hibernate in the cave.


• Jenni- er, Darren at Tetrapod Zoology posts on Britain's lost lynxes and wildcats: Conventionally it's been thought that, within recent history, the British Isles have only ever been home to a single small cat species, and this is Felis silvestris, the species most usually referred to (in Britain) as the Scottish wildcat. Of course, this name is entirely inappropriate given that the present restriction of the wildcat to Scotland is an artefact of human persecution: until very recently, the wildcat occurred across essentially the whole of Britain (even occuring in Ireland during the Holocene (Sommer & Benecke 2006), contrary to conventional wisdom).


• Pamela at Star Stryder posts on watching the summer skies: In general, I guess I’m a winter kind of girl. I’m a winter kind of girl who wants to give her students some things to go out and look at this summer. I need to change my ways, and add the summer skies to my memory. it’s not like the summer doesn’t have a huge wealth of objects to offer. Sagittarius is on the rise and this celestial teapot contains not only the center of the galaxy, but also nebulae, clusters, and dark patches.

Enjoy!

NPM: Two Swallows

April is National Poetry Month. I intend to celebrate it by posting a poem every day. This one is by Li Po (translator's name not given by the Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry)

Two Swallows

Two swallows, and two swallows...
Always, the swallows fly in couples. When
They see a tower of jade, or a lacquered pavilion,
One never perches there without the other.
When they find a balustrade of marble
Or a gilded window, they never separate.

Once there were two swallows...
When the girder of cedar which sheltered
Their nest took fire, the two birds sought
Refuge in a palace of the king of Wu, but
The palace of the king of Wu burned down
And the male and the little ones
Burned too. When she returned,
The female sat contemplating the ruins.

This story saddens me infinitely.

NPM: The Nightingale Near the House

April is National Poetry Month. I intend to celebrate it by posting a poem every day. This one is by Harold Monro

The Nightingale Near the House

Here is the soundless cypress on the lawn:
It listens, listens. Taller trees beyond
Listen. The moon at the unruffled pond
    Stares. And you sing, you sing.

That star-enchanted song falls through the air
From lawn to lawn down terraces of sound,
Darts in white arrows on the shadowed ground;
    And all the night you sing.

My dreams are flowers to which you are a bee
As all night long I listen, and my brain
Receives your song; then loses it again
    In moonlight on the lawn.

Now is your voice a marble high and white,
Then like a mist on fields of paradise,
Now is a raging fire, then is like ice,
    Then breaks, and it is dawn.

Music Meme

I saw this at Sciencewoman's blog. I don't have lots of commenters, but what the hell, I'll give it a go, especially since I'll be on an airplane (or in an airport) for most of the day...

Step 1: Put your MP3 player or whatever on random.
Step 2: Post the first line from the first 25 songs that play*, no matter how embarrassing the song. **
Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song and artist the lines come from.
Step 4: Strike through when someone gets them right. I'll put it in italics if the title has been gotten, but not the artist.
Step 5: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING.

* I had to skip some that were instrumentals...
** May 1 - I'm adding the second line to the ones not yet guessed. I'll post the answers Sunday...

Some of these will be easy enough to get the title (what's with people who name their songs after the first words???), others might not be. #18 I wasn't sure what to count as the first line so I gave you both options.

1 When all our tears have reached the sea / Part of you will live in me
2 Down in Carlyle there lived a lady / Being most beautiful and gay
3 Stay just a little bit longer (Stay - Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons)
4 Take to the highway, won't you lend me your name (Country Road - James Taylor)
5 I remember all my life / Raining down as cold as ice (Mandy - Barry Manilow)
6 Monday, Monday so good to me (Monday, Monday - the Mamas and the Papas)
7 I remember holding on to you / All them long, lonely night I put you through
8 Straight on to the beaten path / Face down into its aftermath
9 If I listen long enough to you (Reason to Believe - Rod Stewart)
10 Though you don't believe your eyes / As your mind's taken by surprise
11 Brainwashed in our childhood / Brainwashed by our schools
12 As I rode out one May morning down by a shady lane /I met with Captain Woodstock, the keeper of the game
13 I look at you all, see the love there that's sleeping (While My Guitar Gently Weeps - Beatles)
14 At my door the leaves are falling / the cold wild wind will come
15 It must have been moonglow (Moonglow - Rod Stewart)
16 You've got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues (It Don't Come Easy)
17 High wind in these northern skies will carry you away /You know you have to leave here, you wish that you could stay
18 (And I heard as it were the noise of thunder) There's a man going 'round taking names (The Man Comes Around - Johnny Cash)
19 The rope that's wrapped around me is cutting through my skin / The doubts that have surrounded me are finding their way in
20 Spring was never waiting for us, girl / it ran one step ahead while we followed in the dance
21 The Sun is a mass of incandescent gas (Why Does the Sun Shine - They Might Be Giants)
22 As your body floats down Third Street / with the burn-smell factory closing up
23 I've been traveling on a boat, in a plane / In a car, on a bike, with a bus and train
24 Oh, the sun is slowly sinking down (You Can Close Your Eyes - James Taylor)
25 In the velvet darkness of the blackest night (Over at the Frankenstein Place - Rocky Horror Picture Show Original Soundtrack)

NPM: Madonna of the Evening Flowers

April is National Poetry Month. I intend to celebrate it by posting a poem every day. This one is by Amy Lowell

Madonna of the Evening Flowers

All day long I have been working
Now I am tired.
I call: "Where are you?"
But there is only the oak tree rustling in the wind.
The house is very quiet,
The sun shines in on your books,
On your scissors and thimble just put down,
But you are not there.
Suddenly I am lonely:
Where are you?
I go about searching.

Then I see you,
Standing under a spire of pale blue larkspur,
With a basket of roses on your arm.
You are cool, like silver,
And you smile.
I think the Canterbury bells are playing little tunes,
You tell me that the peonies need spraying,
That the columbines have overrun all bounds,
That the pyrus japonica should be cut back and rounded.
You tell me these things.
But I look at you, heart of silver,
White heart-flame of polished silver,
Burning beneath the blue steeples of the larkspur,
And I long to kneel instantly at your feet,
While all about us peal the loud, sweet Te Deums of the Canterbury bells.

Where's Stephen Hopkins when we need him?

There's a moment in the musical 1776 when Stephen Hopkins of Rhode Island breaks the deadlock on debating independence by saying, "I've never seen, heard, nor smelled an issue that was so dangerous it couldn't be talked about." We need a few more people like him around American politics today - and a few less who are ready to pillory those who will talk. Like Jimmy Carter.

Joe Conason speaks some blunt truth today:

Nobody with a functioning memory should be too quick to condemn Jimmy Carter for daring to speak with the leadership of Hamas, as nearly everyone along the American political spectrum suddenly has felt obliged to do.

he begins, and concludes

there can be no sustainable deal between Israel and the Palestinians that is not accepted by Hamas.

Yet our current policy not only rejects any direct discussion with the Islamist party, but condemns any effort to learn what might bring them into the diplomatic process—or induce them to accept a negotiated settlement between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. Instead, we would require them to effectively surrender every point before we will even talk to them. It is the same mindless policy once directed by the White House toward our adversaries in Iran and North Korea until its uselessness became too obvious to ignore.

It is indeed counterproductive to insist that someone cede every single point before you will even talk. Talking is what gets them to cede points. Talking to Hamas doesn't mean rolling over and playing dead for them, despite what a lot of people in our government profess to believe.

And in that vein the Washington Post reports today that

The nation's top military officer said today that the Pentagon is planning for "potential military courses of action" against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government's "increasingly lethal and malign influence" in Iraq. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a conflict with Iran would be "extremely stressing" but not impossible for U.S. forces, pointing specifically to reserve capabilities in the Navy and Air Force.

"Stressing"? You think?

They Pentagon is trotting out those old stories about the little boats "threatening" US naval vessels, though they have to admit they've no proof:

But while Mullen and Gates have recently stated that Tehran must know of Iranian actions in Iraq, which they say are led by Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Mullen said he has "no smoking gun which could prove that the highest leadership [of Iran] is involved in this."

But for these people proof is hardly necessary. Their assertions are all they need.

War is easy to start and hard to end. Haven't we learned that yet?

Carnival of the Liberals

The Human Rights edition of the Carnival of the Liberals at Vagabond Scholar. Ten posts focusing on human rights at home (well, in the US, let's not be Amerocentric) and abroad (though, sadly, even in the latter category the US features all too prominently. Well worth your while. Check it out.

Geese a drowse

Yesterday the geese were walking and grazing in the morning. Today they were still snoozing. Or drowsing, anyway. The goslings were certainly asleep, tucked under mama's wing.

Inside the Roche Division

Atlas and Prometheus both orbit inside the Roche Division between the A and F rings. Atlas is quite close to the A ring, while Prometheus is so close to the F ring that it perturbs it, pulling material out in waves as it passes.


Atlas (above) and Prometheus (below)


As always, see the Cassini web site for details.

NPM: Dirge for Two Veterans

April is National Poetry Month. I intend to celebrate it by posting a poem every day. This one is by Walt Whitman

Dirge for Two Veterans

1

    THE last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finish’d Sabbath,
On the pavement here—and there beyond, it is looking,
     Down a new-made double grave.

2

     Lo! the moon ascending!
Up from the east, the silvery round moon;
Beautiful over the house tops, ghastly phantom moon;
     Immense and silent moon.

3

     I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-key’d bugles;
All the channels of the city streets they’re flooding,
     As with voices and with tears.

4

     I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring;
And every blow of the great convulsive drums,
     Strikes me through and through.

5

     For the son is brought with the father;
In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell;
Two veterans, son and father, dropt together,
     And the double grave awaits them.

6

     Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive;
And the day-light o’er the pavement quite has faded,
     And the strong dead-march enwraps me.

7

    In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin’d;
(’Tis some mother’s large, transparent face,
     In heaven brighter growing.)

8

     O strong dead-march, you please me!
O moon immense, with your silvery face you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain! O my veterans, passing to burial!
     What I have I also give you.

9

     The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music;
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
     My heart gives you love.

Killdeer to Photographer: Eat ME! Not them!

I learned a new word today - "precocial". It means "relatively mature and mobile from the moment of birth or hatching". I learned it looking up killdeer. Because today there were chicks in the field with the adults - little miniatures of their parents (not like the geese), running around and eating bugs. Almost the same markings (no chest stripe, and no white eyebrow), a little fuzzy, but otherwise they look so much alike, though they can't fly yet.

Dad (I assume) spotted me taking pictures and ran up ahead of me and started flailing around. When I didn't move, he got up and moved closer and then really put on a display of "come eat ME I'm all hurt". I took some shots for about a minute and then moved on and he jumped up and ran back to his family.

Here a few shots of the parents and chicks, and then several from Dad's act.

Goslings

The geese hatched over the weekend, but today was the first day I got good pictures of them. Only four this year, and as always there's one that wanders. The gander is still a little bit halt from his leg injury last year, but it doesn't slow him.

Final nail in the coffin

Over at Dinosaur Comics Ryan did a strip wondering what it would be like if Batman were from Australia. Now he's put up this commentary, which for some reason cracks me up even days after reading it the first time. So, in case you don't read Dinosaur Comics (and if you don't, what's wrong with you???), I share it:

So after I wrote this comic I did a search for "Australian Batman" to see if DC had ever gone in this direction before. I ended up with this news article: Wariner beaten by Australian Batman. Awesome!

It's not even disappointing when you click through and find out it's about a track race between one Jeremy Wariner and the victorious Daniel Batman, because you realize that now you have a chance, one day, of meeting MR. BATMAN.

And now, several people have written me to tell me that Daniel Batman is actually the direct descendant of the guy who founded Melbourne, John Batman! Melbourne was almost called "Batmania". There is an alternate universe where people are living in Batmania, Australia. If this is not the final nail in the coffin for Leibniz's "We are living in the best of all possible worlds" argument, I don't know what is.

I don't either.

NPM: Fire in the heavens

April is National Poetry Month. I intend to celebrate it by posting a poem every day. This one is by Christopher Brennan

FIRE IN THE HEAVENS

Fire in the heavens, and fire along the hills,
and fire made solid in the flinty stone,
thick-mass'd or scatter'd pebble, fire that fills
the breathless hour that lives in fire alone.

This valley, long ago the patient bed
of floods that carv'd its antient amplitude,
in stillness of the Egyptian crypt outspread,
endures to drown in noon-day's tyrant mood.

Behind the veil of burning silence bound,
vast life's innumerous busy littleness
is hush'd in vague-conjectured blur of sound
that dulls the brain with slumbrous weight, unless

some dazzling puncture let the stridence throng
in the cicada's torture-point of song.

Linguistics clue on Jeopardy!

But then they asked this: (in a category where all answers had one in them):

Ring ring! This is the branch of linguistics that deals with the sounds of languages.

It's phonetics, of course, though the contestant guessed phonemes (which are the sounds phonetics studies).

And that "ring ring!" is one reason why these questions aren't as hard to answer as they might be.

Another gimmee...

This was just a Jeopardy! Double Jeopardy question:

George Orwell wrote 1984 in this year, and reportedly rearranged two of its digits to give the book its title.

What? As long as you knew what century the book was written it - and how could you not? - how could you possibly get that wrong?

Now she's done it.

I'm trying not to pay too much attention to the dogfight passing for the Democratic primary contest these days. Whoever wins, I tell myself, has to be better than McCain. (And surely please even the most rabid Hillarista or Obamaniac will see that.)

But Clinton keeps making that hard to do. She seems incapable of remembering that somebody has to beat John McCain come the fall. Her inability to come up with anything positive to separate the two candidates leads to a relentlessly negative campaign - against a fellow Democrat - which is disgusting and counter-productive. After telling voters that McCain would be better than Obama, how the hell will she campaign for the latter should he gain the nomination? Worse, her foreign policy pronouncements are increasingly hawkish, as though she has to prove she has the balls to fight a war even if we don't need to.

Her latest? A promise to "obliterate" Iran if they deliver a nuclear attack on Israel.

Leave aside the fact that Iran hasn't got nukes. Leave aside the fact that they don't actually seem to be trying to get them. Leave aside the fact that, you know, Israel isn't part of the US. Or that the reflexive "defend Israel at any cost" stance is more associated with the neo-cons who got us into Iraq than any liberal (not that, my brother's rants to the contrary, I have ever mistaken either Clinton for a liberal) position.

Clinton just promised to "obliterate" an entire nation. WTF?

As Robert Scheer says (my emphasis):

On primary election day in Pennsylvania, even with polls showing her well ahead in that state, Hillary went lower in her grab for votes. Seizing upon a question as to how she would respond to a nuclear attack by Iran, which doesn’t have nuclear weapons, on Israel, which does, Hillary mocked reasoned discourse by promising to “totally obliterate them,” in an apparent reference to the population of Iran. That is not a word gaffe; it is an assertion of the right of our nation to commit genocide on an unprecedented scale.

Shouldn’t the potential leader of a nation that used nuclear bombs to obliterate hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese employ extreme caution before making such a threat? Neither the Japanese then nor the Iranian people now were in a position to hold their leaders accountable, and to approve such collective punishment of innocents is to endorse terrorism. This from a candidate who attacked her opponent for suggesting targeted strikes against militants in Pakistan and derided his openness to negotiations with other national leaders as an irresponsible commitment on the part of a contender for the presidency.

Clearly the heat of a campaign is not the proper setting for consideration of a response to a threat from a nation that is a long way from developing nuclear weapons. Obviously the danger of Iran’s developing such weapons can be met with a range of alternatives, from the diplomatic to the military, that do not involve genocide and at any rate must be considered in moral and not solely political terms. Or is it base political ambition that would guide Clinton if she received that middle-of-the-night phone call?

If so, it cannot be assumed that Hillary Clinton as president would be less irrationally hawkish and more restrained in the unleashing of military force than John McCain. The latter, at least, has personal experience with the true, on-the-ground costs of militarism gone wild. Yes, I know that McCain still holds out the hope of winning the Iraq war that both he and Hillary originally endorsed, but for Clinton to raise the rhetoric against Iran in the midst of a campaign is hardly the path to Mideast peace, whether it concerns Israel or Iraq. It is bizarre that a politician who bought into the phony threat about Iraq’s nonexistent WMD arsenal now plays political games with the alleged threat posed by Iran.

Congratulations, Clinton. You've made me decide to support Obama as more than a default candidate.

Uncommon sight

Walking to work Monday I heard it - a high piping. Can't be, I thought. But it was, running across the parking lot: a killdeer. And Tuesday morning, two. It amazes me how small they are... and how fast they move! ps - they were there again today; perhaps the sight's not going to be as uncommon as I thought?

NPM: Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink

April is National Poetry Month. I intend to celebrate it by posting a poem every day. This one is by Edna St Vincent Millay

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power
I might be driven to sell your love for peace
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

Happy Birthday, Will!

Today (most likely) in 1654 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon was born the Swan of Avon, the Bard, William Shakespeare.

Does anything need to be added to that? How does one choose which poem, which quote?

I can't.

Go here to find your own.

Earth Day

(image from NOAA)

Felon? Okay. Gay? Not in this army.

Last year, the Army took in more than double the number of recruits with felony convictions than it had the year before.

"The thing is, you've got to give people an opportunity to serve," said Lt. Gen. James D. Thurman, the Army's operations chief, when asked about the [felony] waivers yesterday. "We are growing the Army fast, there are some waivers . . . it hasn't alarmed us yet."

But what does "alarm" them - where burglary, assault, sexual assault, and even manslaughter doesn't - is gays.

Despite the clear evidence of several countries in the shrinking "coalition of the willing" - Canada and the UK prominently - and other countries fighting alongside US troops in Afghanistan (such as Canada), the US still denies gays the "opportunity to serve" that it is now handing out to felons. Recruiting is in such straits that, as the Washington Post story went on to point out:

Waivers granted for felonies and other crimes constitute the majority of all waivers -- about 60 percent for the Army, and 75 percent for the Marine Corps. But other exceptions are also increasing, suggesting that the Army and Marine Corps are bringing in lower-quality recruits, according to Pentagon data and experts.

Army and Marine Corps waivers for medical problems -- such as being overweight -- increased last year. Medical waivers constituted about 30 percent of all Army waivers last year and 25 percent of those for the Marine Corps. Also, in recent years the Army has been accepting more recruits who are not high school graduates.

But the service goes on kicking gays out at thousands a year.

And it's not like these are all guys who make fresh starts and perform brilliantly:

A study last year by the Center for Naval Analyses tracked the attrition rates of Marines who enlisted with legal waivers between 2003 and 2005. It showed slightly higher boot camp attrition for those with serious or minor misdemeanor waivers, but somewhat lower attrition for those who committed felonies.

However, those with waivers were "quite a bit more likely" than other recruits to be separated from the service for misconduct within two years, and "recruits with felony waivers have the highest chance of a misconduct separation," it found.

And that's just the Corps. But gays who do their jobs - often important jobs like, say, Arabic translator or intelligence analyst - are kicked out.

Felons are okay. Gays are not.

It's insanity.

On Wednesday former assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb testified to Congress about the state of the armed services.

"First, repeal the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy," Korb said. "The Army and Marine Corps cannot afford to place unnecessary obstacles in the way of qualified men and women who want to serve." He went on to note that "over the past 10 years more than 10,000 personnel have been discharged as a result of this policy, including 800 with skills deemed 'mission critical,' such as pilots, combat engineers, and linguists. These are the very job functions for which the military has experienced personnel shortfalls."

But such common-sense statements don't play in a Washington dominated by the anti-gay right, where the heady mix of fear and religion overcome reason. The military will continue to bar gays and welcome felons until we change our rulers.

And the fact that it's front-page news that "the opportunity to serve" is being extended to some, but calls to allow gays are buried in wire-service roundups, means this is one more issue the media doesn't even want to think about. Or help you think about, either.

NPM: We Are Not Amused

April is National Poetry Month. I intend to celebrate it by posting a poem every day. This one is by GK Chesterton.

We Are Not Amused

Puck and the woodland elves shall weep with me
For that lost joke I made in Ledborough Lane,
The joke that Mrs. Baines declined to see
Although I made it very loud and plain.
I made the joke again and yet again,
I analysed it, parsed it and explained:
I did my very best to entertain,
But Mrs. Baines would not be entertained.

More than blossoms on the boughs

Spring brings blooms and new leaves, sunshine and rain. It also brings birds. A few from the past week, at the College Park metro's park and in the quad at my apartment...

A robin

A song sparrow

A blue jay

A sparrow

A female cardinal

Her mate

I like this one

A mockingbird

A redwinged blackbird

A finch

A fuzzy flicker

A late-staying junco

Language Quiz

Here's a new quiz - though, as always, maybe there's nothing wrong.

From the Cassini-Huygens site, this description of a photo:

Curving wakes perturb the edges of the Encke Gap in Saturn's A ring. The culprit in their creation is the flying saucer-shaped moon Pan, shining brightly within the gap.

The previous quiz was:

When Verizon Wireless censored political speech on one of its mobile services, alarm bells should ring on the need for laws on digital communications.

This (as Barry said) is a mismatch of tenses. The main clause has a simple modal "should ring" which is in non-past ("present" though more accurately "untensed") while the subordinate clause is in the past tense (censored). English doesn't like to mix-n-match tenses that way (though for many languages it's fine).

For the main clause to remain "should ring", the subordinate clause should be in present tense as well (When Verizon censors). If you want the subordinate clause to remain in past tense - which you probably do, as it refers to a specific event - then the main clause needs to become "should have rung" to match.

If the author wanted the action of the main clause to be ongoing, then what's needed is an inchoative (action-starting) verb and a participle: "alarm bells should have begun ringing".

Another "solution" is to put the subordinate clause in the subjunctive past (Had Verizon censored, were Verizon to censor). But note that this solution, though grammatically correct, changes the mood (the grammatical mood) of the sentence by making it hypothetical or counterfactual. "Had Verizon censored - but they didn't" or "Were Verizon to censor - but they haven't".

And look here for Previous Quizzes, 40 so far.

The Week in Science

This week's Science:

• Sean at Cosmic Variance answers the question: What Should I Say if Someone Asks Me, “Will the Large Hadron Collider Destroy the World?” (Go on: guess - then go and read it; I'm not giving it away.)


• Jen at Cocktail Party Physics discusses shoes, spike-heels to be exact: But could there really be any actual science associated with sexy stilettos? "Mais oui!" Jen-Luc Piquant exclaims. "How could you doubt it?" We need look no further than Jolly Olde England. Several years ago, The Globe and Mail ran an entertaining article about a physics professor at the University of Surrey named Paul Stevenson who calculated the maximum height of stiletto heels a woman could wear without falling over, and/or cramping up in pain.
  


• Julianne at Cosmic Variance looks at success and how to attain it: To be scientifically successful, you don’t need to have all of these factors, or even most of these factors. You just need to have enough of them, or a long enough suit in one or two of them, that people can’t ignore what you’re doing. Of this list, there are at least half that are almost entirely under a student’s own control, no matter where they go to graduate school.
  


• Jennifer at The Infinite Sphere looks at white nose syndrome, a virulent bat killer: Seems that the white nose syndrome in bats is spreading south. It's now confirmed in Massachusetts and "suspicious" cases have been found in Pennsylvania. In areas where bats have contracted whatever illness this is, there is a 95% mortality rate.


• Did you see the xkcd where the guy mentioned "friendly" numbers? Did you, like me, pass over the term because the strip was funny anyway? But you kind of wondered, and then forgot about it? Well, Mark at Good Math, Bad Math explains what friendly numbers are so we can all be a little better informed, not merely amused.

Enjoy!

NPM: Sonnet XIV (Tread softly, sorrow)

April is National Poetry Month. I intend to celebrate it by posting a poem every day. This one is by Robert Nathan.

Sonnet XIV

Tread softly, sorrow, for the summer passes,
Her leaves are falling in continual rain;
Let me be silent as the withered grasses,
Let me be quiet as the gathered grain.
This season that inevitably closes,
The swift returning year again will bring;
The summer passes with a rain of roses,
And winter follows, fading into spring.
So let me, like a tree, with natural reason
Put all my buds to bed at winter's start.
Then in the April of another season,
Beauty will break and blossom in my heart,
And birds renew their youth along the bough,
When all is green -- my heart remembers how.

The Week in Entertainment

Film: The Visitor. What a wonderful movie. Sad but completely engaging. Very well done - writing, acting, the entire package. Recommended whole-heartedly.

DVD: The Last Detective series 4 - a couple of episodes of it. Still an engaging series.

TV: The Sarah Jane Adventures, enjoyable. Doctor Who - yay! It's back! And Merry Christmas from Russell T. Davies; everybody (nearly) dies. That's nearly everybody, of course, not nearly dies... and I do love the notion that Londoners decided to clear out for Christmas. (Odd, of course, to see 'Richard Bucket' and 'Lionel Hardcastle', but they do excellent jobs.) I watched Solarbabies, which was odd, and I kept wondering who that guy was... Pasdar! It was Adrian Pasdar! Torchwood. Mixed emotions. At least Ianto didn't die. And I had thought Tosh might be leaving - that "give me five years" line from Jack last week (five years ago) seemed like a foreshadowing, though I didn't expect her to die. The death scene between Tosh and Owen was very well done; if people had to die they handled it well... I am wondering if Rose's little error on Jack includes resetting his sanity level every time he comes back.

Read: End in Tears, one of Ruth Rendell's excellent Inspector Wexford novels - this one peripherally involving the "miracle babies" con. Finished Teju Cole's utterly brilliant, lyrical Every Day is for the Thief.

Humanist Symposium

Also for your reading pleasure this wet (well, here anyway) Sunday, the Humanist Symposium is up at the Spanish Inquisitor's blog, where it gets a interesting treatment and presents a slew of fascinating posts dedicated to positive atheism, secularism and humanism.

Carnival of Maryland

The Carnival of Maryland is up at On the Red Line (whose name refers to the Metro rather than politics). Lots of diverse posts on offer from those of us who live in the Land of Pleasant Living. Head over and check it out.

NPM: The Wonderful "One-hoss Shay"

April is National Poetry Month. I intend to celebrate it by posting a poem every day. This one is by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

The Deacon's Masterpiece or, the Wonderful "One-hoss Shay": A Logical Story

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it -- ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits, --
Have you ever heard of that, I say?

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus was then alive, --

Snuffy old drone from the German hive.
That was the year when Lisbon-town
Saw the earth open and gulp her down,
And Braddock's army was done so brown,
Left without a scalp to its crown.
It was on the terrible Earthquake-day
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay.

Now in building of chaises, I tell you what,
There is always somewhere a weakest spot, --
In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill,
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill,
In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace, -- lurking still,
Find it somewhere you must and will, --
Above or below, or within or without, --
And that's the reason, beyond a doubt,
A chaise breaks down, but does n't wear out.

But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do,
With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell yeou")
He would build one shay to beat the taown
'N' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun';
It should be so built that it could n' break daown:
"Fur," said the Deacon, "'t 's mighty plain
Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain;
'N' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain,
Is only jest
T' make that place uz strong uz the rest."

So the Deacon inquired of the village folk
Where he could find the strongest oak,
That could n't be split nor bent nor broke, --
That was for spokes and floor and sills;
He sent for lancewood to make the thills;
The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees,
The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese,
But lasts like iron for things like these;
The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum," --
Last of its timber, -- they could n't sell 'em,
Never an axe had seen their chips,
And the wedges flew from between their lips,
Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips;
Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw,
Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too,
Steel of the finest, bright and blue;
Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide;
Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide
Found in the pit when the tanner died.
That was the way he "put her through."
"There!" said the Deacon, "naow she'll dew!"

Do! I tell you, I rather guess
She was a wonder, and nothing less!
Colts grew horses, beards turned gray,
Deacon and deaconess dropped away,
Children and grandchildren -- where were they?
But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay
As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day!

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED; -- it came and found
The Deacon's masterpiece strong and sound.
Eighteen hundred increased by ten; --
"Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then.
Eighteen hundred and twenty came; --
Running as usual; much the same.
Thirty and forty at last arrive,
And then come fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE.

Little of all we value here
Wakes on the morn of its hundreth year
Without both feeling and looking queer.
In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
(This is a moral that runs at large;
Take it. -- You're welcome. -- No extra charge.)

FIRST OF NOVEMBER, -- the Earthquake-day, --
There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay,
A general flavor of mild decay,
But nothing local, as one may say.
There could n't be, -- for the Deacon's art
Had made it so like in every part
That there was n't a chance for one to start.
For the wheels were just as strong as the thills,
And the floor was just as strong as the sills,
And the panels just as strong as the floor,
And the whipple-tree neither less nor more,
And the back crossbar as strong as the fore,
And spring and axle and hub encore.
And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt
In another hour it will be worn out!

First of November, 'Fifty-five!
This morning the parson takes a drive.
Now, small boys, get out of the way!
Here comes the wonderful one-horse shay,
Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay.
"Huddup!" said the parson. -- Off went they.
The parson was working his Sunday's text, --
Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed
At what the -- Moses -- was coming next.
All at once the horse stood still,
Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill.
First a shiver, and then a thrill,
Then something decidedly like a spill, --
And the parson was sitting upon a rock,
At half past nine by the meet'n-house clock, --
Just the hour of the Earthquake shock!
What do you think the parson found,
When he got up and stared around?
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,
As if it had been to the mill and ground!
You see, of course, if you're not a dunce,
How it went to pieces all at once, --
All at once, and nothing first, --
Just as bubbles do when they burst.

End of the wonderful one-hoss shay.
Logic is logic. That's all I say.

Golden Carnival of Space

It's the 50th edition of the Carnival of Space up at KySat. Definitely check it out.

April Flowers

"Loveliest of trees, the cherry now is hung with bloom along the bough, and stands about the woodland ride wearing white for Eastertide," A.E. Housman wrote, but more than cherries bloom in April, and more than white decorates the boughs and the grass. I don't know what all these are, but they're beautiful.