The Week in Entertainment

Film: Vicky Christina Barcelona - a nicely done movie (a bit too much narration) about a confusing summer in the lives of two young American women in Barcelona.

DVD: Life on Mars - the last four episodes. And wow. I was not expecting that ending. What a brilliant show.

TV: Caught a couple of episodes of Primeval which I went ahead and watched despite having already seen them; it's a good show. Too much of the convention (stayed up too late a couple of nights).

Read: Silks by Dick and Felix Francis. The motive was a repeat but the plot wasn't, and this was a good read. Started Кремлевская жена by Едуард Тополь (Woman of the Kremlin Wife by Edward Topol (at least I caught that mistranslation myself!) which is a pretty fast read so far - a thriller about a thinly disguised Raisa Gorbacheva getting a young female police investigator to look into the disappearance of an American psychic whose predictions for the year (1988) have all come true so far ... and the next one on the list is an assassination attempt on the "Goryachevs".

Happy Belated Birthday, Molly

Yesterday in Monterey, California, in 1944 Molly Ivins was born.

The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion.

It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America.

What stuns me most about contemporary politics is not even that the system has been so badly corrupted by money. It is that so few people get the connection between their lives and what the bozos do in Washington and our state capitols.

The United States of America is still run by its citizens. The government works for us. Rank imperialism and warmongering are not American traditions or values. We do not need to dominate the world. We want and need to work with other nations. We want to find solutions other than killing people. Not in our name, not with our money, not with our children's blood.

from her last column, January 11, 2007: We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there.

more of her words here

Happy Birthday, Mary

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, born today in 1797 and married to Percy; she's best known for Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus although The Last Man (about the end of humanity due to a plague) is probably a better book.

Kay Hagan

A couple of days ago, I'd have said "Kay who?" But then she crossed Elizabeth Dole's religious-tolerance line and now I know.

Kay Hagan is running for Senate in North Carolina. She's a Democrat, and that alone in this crucial election is reason to support her - a Democratic majority in both houses, big enough to force cloture. But here's another good reason to support her: her opponent, Elizabeth Dole, is appealing to voters' religious bigotry. She's claiming that the fact that Hagan talks to atheists is reason to defeat her. Note that well: Dole doesn't claim Hagan is an atheist, but that she talks to them.

This is the statement from Dole's Campaign Communications Director (the whole press release is here):

"Kay Hagan does not represent the values of this state; she is a Trojan Horse for a long list of wacky left-wing outside groups bent on policies that would horrify most North Carolinians if they knew about it," McLagan said. "This latest revelation of support from anti-religion activists will not sit well with the 90% of state residents who identify with a specific religious faith."

And these are the "wacky left-wing outside groups:"

Wendy Kaminer and her husband Woody, who are board members of the Secular Coalition for America and the Secular Student Alliance, and advisors to American Atheists' Godless Americans Political Action Committee. Wendy Kaminer is also a feminist, former board member of the ACLU and author of books like Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety.

Now, I don't know about you, but even though I don't live in North Carolina, I don't want to see Elizabeth Dole and her bigotry towards those who don't share her religion back in the Senate. So I've donated to Kay Hagan. Why don't you, too?

If you want to, you can donate directly to her campaign, of course, or you can do it through Act Blue.

Hat tip to Hemant at Friendly Atheist; head over to his site for more details - and read the letter that siamang sent to the Dole campaign while you're there.

ps: Although single-issue voting is problematic, a quick look at On the Issues will show a lot of reasons to want Dole defeated. This is just a spark to get me, a non-North Carolinian, to pick this particular race to donate to.

Happy Birthday, Ernest

Today in 1871 in Spring Grove, New Zealand, Ernest Rutherford - who famously said: "All science is either physics or stamp collecting."

His work took place in the early days of nuclear physics - he discovered the structure of the atom the cause of radioactivity (atomic decay), and alpha and beta radiation. He was the first person to transmute matter (nitrogen into oxygen) and he figured out the principle of half-lives and radioactive dating. But when he won the Nobel Prize - in 1908 - it was categorized as Chemistry - just going to show how very much a creature of its time that famous quote was...

Uncomfortable truths

For a while now, there's been a backlash against those Americans without health insurance - people implying that they just don't want it - that they refuse to be insured - and that they therefore don't deserve our sympathy. But even when faced with actual people who desperately want it and can't afford it - or aren't able to buy it at all - many folks still manage to downplay the problem. Take for example John Goodman, one-time (if not still) McCain campaign adviser and health-care policy writer, was recently quoted as saying that, actually, there are no uninsured people in America.

But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

"So, there you have it. Voilà! Problem solved."

Well, for a certain value of "solved", I suppose.

Paul Krugman points out, with my emphasis:

The truth, of course, is that visiting the emergency room in a medical crisis is no substitute for regular care. Furthermore, while a hospital will treat you whether or not you can pay, it will also bill you — and the bill won’t be waived unless you’re destitute. As a result, uninsured working Americans avoid visiting emergency rooms if at all possible, because they’re terrified by the potential cost: medical expenses are one of the prime causes of personal bankruptcy.

Another truth is that emergency rooms are for, well, emergencies. Try going to one for preventative care, or pre-natal care. Try going to one for a hip replacement.

Another truth is that when 45 million people use emergency rooms for non-emergency care it overwhelms the medical system. Hospitals provide millions of dollars in uncompensated care (no wonder they sue) and go under. Emergency rooms are so crowded that patients wait hours to be seen (if they're seen at all). Doctors, nurses, and technicians are overworked. For-profit hospitals begin dumping uninsured patients to non-profit ones (just as private schools can dump the problem students back into the public schools).

And people die.

And yet another truth is, that's not some wild, off-sides notion by a "maverick" who's "no longer" a McCain adviser. It's essentially GOP thinking. After all, President Bush said the same thing when he was asked last year:

"I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room."

Also last year, Tom DeLay said:

“By the way, there’s no one denied health care in America. There are 47 million people who don’t have health insurance, but no American is denied health care in America."

In 2004, then-HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson said

"Even if you don't have health insurance, you are still taken care of in America. That certainly could be defined as universal coverage."

It's what they really think.

Not all that helpful, actually

So, I got an email from the Red Cross (gearing up for Gustav) and it had this line in it:

When a reporter from WBAL TV asked one of the volunteers what the public can do to help she said, “Pray for us and for the people in the path of the storm, and consider making a financial contribution to the Red Cross.”

Yep, t hose would be equally useful things - praying and considering.

Not to sneer at someone who left Maryland to go to Alabama and work in prepping for a hurricane landfall, because that volunteer is being massively useful, but ... I mean, really.

Now, actually forking over some cash? That would be helpful.

Palin: Beginning as she means to go on?

"She was for the bridge to nowhere when she didn't expect to get anywhere."

A great line from a commenter at Washington Monthly's web site, where they're discussing how Palin said

"I told Congress, 'Thanks, but no thanks,' on that bridge to nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, I said we'd build it ourselves."

Problem is, she didn't say that when funding was still an option - she only gave up on the bridge when Washington did. As Bradford Plummer at The New Republic put it:

it sure looks like she was fine with the bridge in principle, never had a problem with the earmarks, bristled at all the mockery, and only gave up on the project when it was clear that federal support wasn't forthcoming.

In other words, Palin's out of the gate McCain style: lying in her first speech.

Palin?

And not Michael, either. More's the pity.

This is a cynical, weak choice. McCain's campaign must be hoping to get some of Hillary's disgruntled followers. But Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton don't agree on one single issue. Palin is strongly anti-choice, strongly pro-gun, strongly in favor of drilling in ANWR, anti-gay rights, and pro-death penalty. Most of the rest of the issues she's never voted or spoken on, but she's an Alaskan Republican and a conservative - and a card carrying member of the "conservative faith community", a creationist who doesn't believe in man-made climate change or evolution, and whose husband works for Big Oil (BP).

She's also a young, one-term governor (less than 2 years in office) of a state smaller than many cities, from a tiny town, who makes Barack Obama look extremely experienced.

(Not to mention Trooper-Gate...)

And let's never forget that Alaska's economy is totally dependent on the oil companies - without their subsidies the state would have to actually raise revenues through taxes. She's got no serious budget qualifications, either.

It's a cynical pick, made to shore up the James Dobson crowd and maybe (in a slap at women) to grab some Hillary supporters who don't actually give a damn about what the candidate stands for as long as her gonads are on the inside.

What's Important 43

Forty-third in a series.

This is from ABC News:

Today's new McCain ad -- "Tiny," which you can watch HERE -- crosses a new line into dishonesty, however, beyond whether or not it's actually airing anywhere.

The script reads: "Iran. Radical Islamic government. Known sponsors of terrorism. Developing nuclear capabilities to 'generate power' but threatening to eliminate Israel.

"Obama says Iran is a 'tiny' country, 'doesn't pose a serious threat,'" the ad continues. "Terrorism, destroying Israel, those aren't 'serious threats'? Obama -- dangerously unprepared to be president."

[And it ends with "I'm John McCain, and I approved this message."]

This is a dishonest representation of Obama's words. You can see the video here.

On May 18, in Pendelton, Ore., Obama said that "strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries. That's what Kennedy did with Khrushchev. That's what Reagan did with Gorbachev. That's what Nixon did with Mao. I mean, think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela -- these countries are tiny, compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet, we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, 'We're going to wipe you off the planet.'"

John McCain and his campaign lie. That's what quote mining is.

This is like me saying McCain says "Obama ... ready to lead". Phaugh.

Happy Birthday, Preston

Preston Sturges was born today in Chicago in 1898. The first man ever to write and direct a film (the same film) - and omg, what films. Classics still funny today:

The Great McGinty
Christmas in July
The Palm Beach Story
The Lady Eve
Sullivan's Travels
Hail the Conquering Hero
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek

You don't say, sir...

This is just too funny. According to the Denver Post:

Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan said the team of nearly two dozen staffers at the opposition headquarters will be "fact-checking" statements made by the Obama campaign and by speakers during the convention.

"Just consider this the Ministry of Truth," quipped Dick Wadhams, chairman of the Colorado Republican Party.

Who was it quipped that the GOP thinks 1984 is a how-to manual?

(ps - in case you haven't read it either: the Ministry of Truth was the propaganda department of the government, charged with revising history to make it match the current desired message... "We have always been at war with Oceania!")

Yes, but, you see...

Not to be contrarian here, but ... the rabbi who opened the DNC today missed the point. "Eternal God," he said, "may your name be invoked only to unify the country, not to divide."

But just saying the name divides, rabbi. "Eternal God" divides monotheists from polytheists and pantheists and animists and deists whose god is not a Person to whom one prays and, yes, agnostics and atheists.

And "Eternal God" is about as bland as you can get. (Of course, that Hindu who opened the Senate session just over a year ago said "the Deity Supreme", which is even more bland, and he still got howled at.) But even it has assumptions built in about the number and nature of god(s)...

It's a nice thought, that you can invoke your god to unify. But you can't. No one can. That's why no one's god belongs in American politics.

Mommy?

Someone in my class yesterday mentioned how the American versions of Harry Potter have "Mom" instead of "Mum", and that reminded me of this.

I recently read The Stranger (having read my first Camus novel for the NL this past winter I resolved to read more, and finally did). The translation I got was a new(ish) one by Matthew Ward, an "American" one instead of the (apparently) standard one by the Briton, Stuart Gilbert. In his introduction, Ward says, among other ruminations about Camus's style and how to translate it:

No sentence in French literature in English translation is better known than the opening sentence of The Stranger. It has become a sacred cow of sorts, and I have changed it. In his notebooks Camus recorded the observation that "the curious feeling the son has for his mother constitutes all his sensibility." And Sartre, in his "Explication de L'Etranger" goes out of his way to point out Meursault's use of the child's word "Maman" when speaking of his mother. To use the more removed, adult word "Mother" is, I believe, to change nature of Meursault's curious feeling for her. It is to change his very sensibility.

Which is all very fine, but the actual sentence as he translates it is:

Maman died today.

(Aujourd'hui, maman est morte.)

Now the word Maman, is, for me, not a Francophone - in fact, barely able to get by in simple French - even more removed than "Mother" would have been. Maman may be "the child's word" but it doesn't mean "mommy" to me. Yes, I'm aware that mère is "mother", ma mère "my mother", but Maman is a foreign word. There's no sense of register attached to it. Hunting around the Internet I find indications that maman is like papa, but it's intellectual knowledge (and I only did it because I read his introduction).

If his intent was to restore the quality of childishness to Meursault's relationship with his mother, using "Maman" failed utterly (for me, at any rate) to do it. In fact, reading "Maman" this American feels it as even more formal than "Mother".

I'd have used "Mama", myself.

Happy Birthday, Robertson

Born today in Thamesville, Ontario, back in 1913 - a great Canadian writer, Robertson Davies. His four trilogies are enthralling, complex observations of life. And he gave me one of those little shocks that happen when your world-view is challenged: it was in one of his books that I read of Americans fleeing to Canada during the Revolution to escape political persecution. I knew, of course, that Tories (in our sense of the word) had existed, but this was the first book I'd ever read that cast one as the hero. I love his books - Fifth Business and The Lyre of Orpheus especially.

Happy Belated Birthday, Master Kung!

K'ung-fu-tzu, or Kǒng Fūzǐ - Confucius to the West (his name was Latinised by Matteo Ricci when his teachings were introduced to Europe - everybody's name was; think of Copernicus) - was born yesterday in 551 BCE

The man who in view of gain thinks of righteousness; who in the view of danger is prepared to give up his life; and who does not forget an old agreement however far back it extends - such a man may be reckoned a complete man.

What's Important 42

Forty-second in a series.

This is from that excellent blog Slactivist, where Fred asks:

Did John McCain sleep through 1989? Was he on some kind of yearlong bender? Maybe he was just really busy clearing up after that Keating affair.

In any case, John McCain doesn't remember 1989. That means he's forgotten some of the most unforgettable moments in the 20th century. And having forgotten them, or having somehow, incredibly, missed them entirely, John McCain is unable to understand what happened and why.

Instead, McCain tries to rewrite history as though 1989 never happened. And from this foolish and fictional history, he draws some foolish and fictional lessons.

Fred recaps the year - with photos! - and ends by saying:

All of those people in all of those pictures were risking their lives, but they took that risk because they believed that if they stood together -- "as one," even -- then no challenge was too great for them.

But John McCain thinks it's wrong to give them any credit for that. He thinks it's wrong -- un-American -- to give them any credit for their courage in coming together to claim their freedom. After all, McCain argues, America and the "great democracies" had stood for decades against the Soviet Union and that proud history mustn't be forced to share the stage with anyone else's proud history. America and its allies alone deserve credit and praise. To suggest that any of that credit or praise be shared with the people in the pictures above, McCain says, is to be "unclear" on an "important point."

I just don't get where McCain is coming from here. I mean, I recognize it, of course -- we've all seen this same attitude from bullies and abusers and other emotionally warped and soulless types who confuse love and chauvinism. But I don't get it.

How is it possible to look at pictures like the ones above and not be inspired?

More than that, how is it possible to look at those pictures and resent those people -- to view them as insufficiently grateful or as trying to steal the glory you feel is your due and yours alone?

What exactly is wrong with John McCain? Because some vital part seems to be missing. Or dead.

Prague Political Cartoon

A friend of mine in Czechia (why don't we call it that???) sent me this:



Caption: It's amazing ... they all have Russian passports!

Tin Ear

USA Today has the quote (so do many others; just Google it)

Bush: "We expect Russia to live up to its international commitments."

Can it be that he truly doesn't understand how that sounds, coming from him?

So it's a consensus, then

NY Times: soaring appeal
Washington Post: full-throated endorsement
LA Times: powerful
Sacramento Bee: left no doubt
McClatchy Papers: uncompromising
Chicago Tribune: topped them all
Boston Globe: impassioned call for unity
Globe and Mail: unequivocal call to support
The Nation: knocked it out of the park
Guardian: unequivocal endorsement
Independent: a clarion call

Kristol: shockingly minimal

So, yeah. Looks clear to me.

Now I know

The things you can learn from the Internets. I had always assumed the writer William Least Heat-Moon's name should be written William Least-Heat-Moon. But upon seeing it in today's Writer's Almanac I was moved to check. And sure enough, his names isn't from the moon of least heat, but rather from being the last ("therefore least") of the children of a man called "heat moon". Heat-Moon is his surname, not Least Heat-Moon.

Keep going!

Good speech from Hillary - good points, well delivered, powerful ending. She's right in asking

"I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?"

That puts it right out there. No phony bonhomie, no lies about how much better a job he'll do than she would have, nothing about not wanting it. Just a flat statement that "he must be our president" because

"Nothing less than the fate of our nation and the future of our children hang in the balance.

I want you to think about your children and grandchildren come election day. And think about the choices your parents and grandparents made that had such a big impact on your life and on the life of our nation."

"No way, no how, no McCain." She nailed the speech.

(And her statement that "My mother was born before women could vote; my daughter got to vote for her mother for president" was particularly resonant for me.)

Keep going!, she says. Keep going.

We must elect Obama this fall. He's not perfect - not my dream candidate. But the alternative is so horrible to contemplate that I don't mind it.

ps - But I do have a quibble. She just said whether we voted for her or Obama we needed to support him now. Yes, of course, but why is it that those of us who voted for Kucinich or Dodd or Edwards are expected to fall in line without special pleading?)

Dennis brings crowd to feet

Dennis Kucinich gave a real crowd-rousing speech tonight. People were on their feet, screaming. Watch it and get revved up.

Knock, knock...

Okay, a friend of mine came up with this, and it's so awful, so wonderful, and so funny on several levels that I have to share it with you.

One thing you have to know: in Russian, "kto ehto?" is "who's that?"

Okay, we were discussing the Georgian situation, and another friend made an off-hand reference to the "fictional difference between the Chechens and the Ingush." Friend 1 asked him to explain, and he did:

The Chechen name for themselves is "Nakh", which (as is common) means "people", or "Vai Nakh", which means "our people". The Ingush name for themselves is "Nakh" or "Vai Nakh".

In the Caucasus Wars of the 19th century (a continuation of the conflicts in the 18th century), some Nakhs fought for the Russians, and some against them. When the war was over the Russians called those who had fought for them "nashi Nakhi (our Nakhs)" and the others "ne nashi Nakhi (not our Nakhs)". They gave each group some territory and named them after the primary village. Thus, the "good" Nakhs became the Ingush and the "bad" Nakhs the Chechens. (Note please that things haven't changed all that much in the last couple of centuries or so...)

So Friend 1 immediately fired back with:

"Nakh, Nakh."

"Kto ehto?"

Bean Tree

I read a novel once called The Bean Tree. I didn't know what one was... but this has got to be it.

Alphabetized Meme

Saw this at Ordinary Girl's:

Organize your music file alphabetically by artist then track, and name the first song that's at the top of the list for every letter (or number, see my list below) by artist and song name. Just for fun.*

I have to admit that most of my music is still on CDs, but here you are. There's actually more artists than I thought there would be, though the end of the alphabet is sadly lacking. Still, I tried just the songs; odd how so few different artists showed up in that one and interesting to see which letters weren't followed by A...

A: Adam Hood "Million Miles Away"
B: Barry Manilow "All the Time"
C: Carbon Leaf "Life Less Ordinary"
D: Dan Fogelberg "Aireshire Lament"
E: Emmylou Harris "All My Tears"
F: Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons "Beggin'"
G: George Harrison "All Things Must Pass"
H: Howard Shore "A Journey in the Dark"
I: Ian & Sylvia "Brave Wolfe"
J: James Taylor "Carolina in My Mind"
K: kd lang "Close Your Eyes"
L: Levinhurst "Sorrow"
M: Madison Park "Ocean Drive"
N: Neil Young "After the Garden"
O: The Orange Peels "Something in You"
P: The Proclaimers "Cap in Hand"
Q: None
R: Rod Stewart "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square"
S: Soundtrack (Due South) "Akukka Tuta"
T: They Might Be Giants "Ana Ng"
U: None
V: None
W: None
X: None
Y: None
Z: None

After the Garden - Neil Young
Baby, It's Cold Outside - Rod Stewart & Dolly Parton
Cabin Music - Due South Soundtrack
Dancing Type - Witchhunter Robin Soundtrack
Easy From Now On - Emmylou Harris
Families - Neil Young
Ghost Lover - Ian & Sylvia
Half Pain - Witchhunter Robin Soundtrack
I Am Weary, Let Me Rest - O Brother, Where Art Thou Soundtrack
James K. Polk - They Might Be Giants
Katy Dear - Ian & Sylvia
Lady Luck - The Proclaimers
Make My Heart Fly - The Proclaimers
Narrow Your Eyes - They Might Be Giants
O Death - O Brother, Where Art Thou Soundtrack
P2 Vatican Blues - George Harrison
Q - none
Rag Doll - Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons
Sam Hall - Johnny Cash
Tactics - Witchhunter Robin Soundtrack
Unchained - Johnny Cash
Very Thought of You, The - Rod Stewart
Wah Wah - Eric Clapton
X - none
You - George Harrison
Z - nothing

Monday Science Links

This week's sciency goodness:

• From Greg at Greg Laden's Blog, more on magpies and mirrors: A typical adult human recognizes that the image one sees in a mirror is oneself. We do not know how much training a mirror-naive adult requires to do this, but we think very little. When a typical adult macaque (a species of monkey) looks in the mirror, it sees another monkey. Typical adult male macaques stuck in a cage with a mirror will treat the image as a fellow adult male macaque until you take the mirror out of the cage.
  


• Phil at Bad Astronomy talks about a picture of the heart of the W5 nebula: W5 is a nebula, a giant cloud of gas roughly 6000 light years away in the constellation of Cassiopeia. It’s enormous, spanning about 2 x 1.5 degrees of the sky (15 times the size of the full Moon on the sky), and is actively cranking out stars. The valentine-shape is actually an enormous cavern, a hollow carved out of the gas by the winds and fierce ultraviolet light flooding out from massive young stars in its… well, its heart. It’s like these stars are blowing a vast bubble in the middle of the cloud.


• Cosmos, Carl Sagan's groundbreaking tv series, is now available on iTunes. At The Loom, Carl Zimmer downloads, watches, and reflects:I’ve downloaded the first two episodes, which I don’t think I’ve seen since they first aired 28 years ago. I remember watching every episode intently as a 14-year old at the end of the Carter administration. The passage of time has revealed some hokiness around the edges. The music, much of it by Vangelis, sometimes makes me think I’ve walked into a crystal shop. Sagan is fitted in corduroy blazers and what seems to be the precursor of the Members Only jacket. Some of the images still look good–like Sagan’s calendar of the cosmos–but there are also painfully long pans across a cardboard diorama of ancient amphibians, reptiles, and mammals. We are so spoiled today by Jurassic Park...But as I was tallying up the shortcomings of the show, something funny happened...


• Sean at Cosmic Variance posts on the first quantum cosmologist: Many of you scoffed last week when I mentioned that Lucretius had been a pioneer in statistical mechanics. (Not out loud, but inwardly, there was scoffing.) But it’s true. Check out this passage from De Rerum Natura, in which Lucretius proposes that the universe arises as a quantum fluctuation.


• Pamela at Star Stryder talks about anecdotes and evidence: One of the running jokes in physics/astronomy departments is that astronomers consider 4 instances of anything as statistically significant. In fact, the story goes, two points is enough to define a trend, and 1 is enough to form a theory. Take for instance our solar system. Up until 1995 it was the only one with a normal sun we knew of (there were some pulsar planets found earlier). Based on it, and it alone, we built an entire detailed nebular theory of solar system formation that we think is mostly true. This isn’t the only place in research where instances of “observation” lead to “understanding.” With observational astronomy we at least have the option to go out and search for new data. And sometimes we even find it. Sometimes. And until that sometimes is realized, most astronomers are more than willing to say “This is based on 1 example - we’re looking for more.”

Enjoy!

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: Most of the second season of Life on Mars. It's very good - I recommend watching it instead of waiting for whatever travesty of it NBC settles on producing. Of course it's a Brit series, so it's 16 total episodes and the story's over. But, as I said last week about Sandman, the story can't be told till it's over... John Simm is excellent in the lead role, and Philip Glenister is startlingly brilliant. Can't wait to see how they end it. Well, obviously I can wait, but if I didn't have to get up so early tomorrow I wouldn't.

TV: Got sucked into what turned out to be a three-hour program on Biography Channel about the Planet of the Apes. I didn't finish it - three hours! - and really was only watching it because I adore Roddy McDowell and could listen to him for a long time (if I hadn't had to get up so early in the morning I'd've watched the last hour, too...) Ghost Rider - tolerable, but I'm glad I didn't pay for it.

Read: Archer's Goon, because I found it looking for something else and I love it. Bone, by Fay Myenne Ng, a new author to me (she seems to have only written two novels) and I love her work. Bone is an elegantly crafted exploration of family, loss, and love. Scream for Jeeves, an "HPG Wodecraft" pastiche, putting Bertie and Jeeves into three Lovecraft stories (Rats in the Walls, Cool Air, and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward). It's funny, but it fails the way most Wodehouse pastiche fails: Bertie is an idiot, but the stories he narrates are examples of virtuoso story-telling. That's not easy at all, to write so lightly and cleverly in the voice of a moron, and PH Cannon doesn't quite pull it off. Persepolis - brilliant and intense. And The Stranger (read that in one go after getting trapped in a 2.5 hour traffic snarl Thursday morning. One of the good things about mass transit: you can read in a traffic jam.)

Team Phoenicia wants your help

This is a bit unusual for me, but here goes. I got this request from Will, over at The Dragon's Tales:

At any rate, what I am writing about is that I have been trying to recruit blogs into helping with my team's bid[1,2,3] to compete in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. We're facing a funding short fall though partially due to a ruling by the FAA that some of our tethered flights, those that our rocket must be tied to the ground, now require a waiver to take place. This didn't exist before and has greatly added to our paperwork. This takes time away from when we can test. This means that we have to compress our testing time and drives up costs.

What I have am asking is if you would be willing to put up a post advocating what we are doing and asking if readers might be willing to contribute a small amount ($10 each, but more if they feel generous). The directions are to go to the team website (2nd link) and click on donate.

If you cannot do this because you do not feel that you either want to support the team because you don't know us or its inappropriate, please, feel free to disregard the email. I do appreciate your time that you have given in reading this message though.

Thank you,

Will
of The Dragon's Tales

PS This is a prelude to competing in the Google Lunar X Prize[5]. The LLC is a demonstration step for some of our backers.

1. http://space.xprize.org/ng-lunar-lander-challenge/2008/teams/phoenicia
2. http://www.teamphoenicia.org/
3. http://teamphoenicia.blogspot.com/
4. http://space.xprize.org/ng-lunar-lander-challenge
5. http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/

So head over and check it out and help Will's team if you like. If you don't, ignore it.

Beyond Good and Evil

or, Haven't we had enough Manichaeism for one millennium?

First, here's a (rather long, sorry) excerpt from the transcript of the Saddleback event from the Chicago Sun-Times, courtesy of Federal News Service:

REV. WARREN: Okay, we've got one last -- I've got a bunch more, but let me just ask you one about evil. Does evil exist? And if it does, do we ignore it, do we negotiate with it, do we contain it, do we defeat it?

SEN. OBAMA: Evil does exist. I mean, I think we see evil all the time. We see evil in Darfur. We see evil, sadly, on the streets of our cities. We see evil in parents who viciously abuse their children. And I think it has to be confronted. It has to be confronted squarely.

And one of the things that I strongly believe is that, you know, we are not going to, as individuals, be able to erase evil from the world. That is God's task. But we can be soldiers in that process, and we can confront it when we see it.

Now, the one thing that I think is very important is for us to have some humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil because, you know, a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil.

REV. WARREN: In the name of good.

SEN. OBAMA: In the name of good.

REV. WARREN: Yeah, okay.

SEN. OBAMA: And I think, you know, one thing that's very important is having some humility in recognizing that, you know, just because we think our intentions are good doesn't always mean that we're going to be doing good.

...

REV. WARREN: All right. How about the issue of evil? I asked this of your rival in the previous thing. Does evil exist? And, if so, should we ignore it, negotiate with it, contain it, or defeat it?

SEN. MCCAIN: Defeat it. (Applause.) A couple of points. One, if I'm president of the United States, my friends, if I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice. (Applause.) I will do that, and I know how to do it. I will get that guy. (Applause.) No one, no one should be allowed to take thousands of American -- innocent American lives.

Of course evil must be defeated. My friends, we are facing the transcendent challenge of the 21st century -- radical Islamic extremism. Not long ago in Baghdad, al Qaeda took two young women who were mentally disabled and put suicide vests on them, sent them into a marketplace, and, by remote control, detonated those suicide vests. If that isn't evil, you have to tell me what is. (Applause.)

And we're going to defeat this evil. And the central battleground, according to David Petraeus and Osama bin Laden, is the battle -- is Baghdad, Mosul, Basra and Iraq. And we are winning and we are succeeding, and our troops will come home with honor and with victory, and not in defeat. And that's what's happening. (Applause.) And we have -- and we face this threat throughout the world. It's not just in Iraq. It's not just in Afghanistan. Our intelligence people tell us al Qaeda continues to try to establish cells here in the United States of America.

My friends, we must face this challenge. We can face this challenge, and we must totally defeat it. And we're in a long struggle. But when I'm around the young men and women who are serving us in uniform, I have no doubt -- none. (Applause.)

Interesting differences there. Let's not talk for the moment about things like whether a preacher (a Creationist, literalist preacher at that, albeit a pleasant one) should even be interviewing presidential candidates at all - that horse is well and truly stolen - or whether or not McCain listened to Obama; it doesn't matter. Instead let's talk about a couple of points in their answers.

First, McCain defines the problem simplistically: evil = Islamic terrorism. Period. Nothing else. In fact, McCain's answer to "Does evil exist? And, if so, should we ignore it, negotiate with it, contain it, or defeat it?"is "Defeat it" followed by a pledge that "if I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get Osama bin Laden." Obama, on the other hand, has a much broader answer, and one that doesn't even attempt to assign the label of "evil" to anything political at all, unless you consider "in Darfur" to be political (it might be). In fact, Obama is willing to admit that evil exists here - in us, "on the streets of our cities."

So there's the first difference. For Obama, evil is part of the human condition. For McCain, evil is al Qaeda. Thus for McCain, evil is always external, always the other. And when you define evil as the other, then you have defined the other as Evil. Which is where the thinking ends.

Also, note that McCain knew what the interview was for. He used the problem of Good vs Evil as an occasion for a pep-rally. He doesn't answer Warren; he addresses the crowd. He trots out his great new line ("My friends, we are facing the transcendent challenge of the 21st century"), rallies us behind "the young men and women who are serving us in uniform", and swears " if I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice" (although this doesn't involve violating the sovereignty of any earthly nation, such as Pakistan): all of these are whistle-stop crowd-pleasers, designed not to examine the problem but to excite the faithful. In the words of General Martok, it's a slogan, not an answer.

And secondly, Obama confronts squarely the problem of doing evil in the name of good. McCain (like Bush) doesn't even think that's possible, so he doesn't address it. If Evil is al Qaeda, and al Qaeda is fighting us, then we are cannot be Evil. For McCain - as for our current president, and most of those advising both of them - it really is as simple as that.

For them the world and America's place and actions in it come down to that. We are Good and we face Evil across the world, everywhere. We must fight it in a Holy War, fight it and defeat it. "Evil must be defeated," McCain proclaims. "Baghdad, Mosul, Basra and Iraq. And ... throughout the world. It's not just in Iraq. It's not just in Afghanistan. [even] here in the United States of America." And because we must defeat them, we will defeat them: "we are winning and we are succeeding, and our troops will come home with honor and with victory, and not in defeat" and there can be no questioning that. Notice that Obama’s actual answer is "confront it" - the triumph of good over evil is not a given for him ("we are not going to, as individuals, be able to erase evil from the world"); it is the battle which is a given. For McCain, as for Bush, the battle is already won; loss is unthinkable, therefore triumph is not only assured but (in some way) already achieved, no matter what things look like to those without the faith of the holy warrior.

Moreover, this line of thought allows us to do anything we want. Where Obama acknowledges that it "is very important ... for us to have some humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil because, you know, a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil," this thought doesn't even begin to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing McCain's mind. Doing evil in the name of good, doing evil "based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil" - for McCain this is an impossibility. Just as George Bush can with no apparent sense of irony inveigh against Putin's actions in Georgia, McCain can with an equal tin ear say "Whatever tensions and hostilities might have existed between Georgians and Ossetians, they in no way justify Moscow's path of violent aggression. Russian actions, in clear violation of international law, have no place in 21st century Europe" (leading Putin to sarcastically retort that "Of course, Saddam Hussein ought to have been hanged for destroying several Shiite villages ... And the incumbent Georgian leaders who razed 10 Ossetian villages at once, who ran over elderly people and children with tanks, who burned civilians alive in their sheds -- these leaders must be taken under protection."). McCain can swear to "face the challenge" without seeing that the actions he advocates are same ones he calls evil if another country or group performs them. For him, Evil is not what is done but who does it. And Good is the same.

Obama's more nuanced view is that people who think they're doing good may do evil things. CS Lewis allowed Emeth the Calormene, servant of the god Tash, to enter Heaven while damning some Narnians to eternal darkness: "if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash that he serves" the Lion says. It's an uncomfortable concept for a believer, I imagine: to be told by your god that the enemy is saved and your ally (or you!) is not. McCain's view of Good and Evil rejects this notion wholly: those who are Good cannot do Evil, and those who are Evil cannot do Good. For McCain, ends not only justify means, they sanctify them.

We've seen a lot of that in the past seven years, haven't we? Sacrifice our rights, attack Iraq, threaten Iran, lock men up for years, alienate the world, torture - and justify torture ... all because we are, like Jake and Elwood, on a mission from God. What we do is right because it is we who do it.

That's hubris. And it's dangerous. In more ways than one.

Haven't we had enough of that simplistic Us-vs.-Them, Good-vs.-Evil worldview?

It's just not as important as it's made out to be

Funny how things come in groups, isn't it? Over at his blog, Josh Millard posted saying, in summary, "It's just a misplaced apostrophe. It's a mistake. We all know it. Now, for crap's sake, shut up about it."

A commenter said

this is an oasis in a pedantic dessert

it’s just a misplaced s

Impossible to tell how serious she was. But I'm going to answer, anyway. I did over there, but I'll spend some more time here.

Let me clarify: “desert” and “dessert” are both nouns. They fill the same syntactic role in a sentence. It’s plausible that one could come up with a sentence in which they could either one be used.

However, you’ll note they are pronounced differently as well, while its, it’s or your, you’re aren’t.

Now, it's interesting that she chose desert / dessert for her example, because one of my favorite badly-worded-headline examples is the New York Times' G.I.'s Deployed in Iraq Desert With Lots of American Stuff. In this case, desert and desert are not the same parts of speech - one's a noun, the other a verb - but in this particular sentence either one would work. The Times meant that they were stationed in the deserts of Iraq with lots of stuff in their possession, not that they were stationed in Iraq and had abandoned their posts taking lots of stuff with them; but either reading is possible. However, in speech there would be no confusion, just as with desert / dessert.

English is full of homophones - words that sound alike - and English spelling is full of homographs - words that are spelled the same. Rarely is any word both; the two systems, aural and visual, have different ways to distinguish words. Read - reed / read - red ... (Okay, so, as Barry points out, it depends on your definition of 'rare': there are a lot of common words that meet this criteria, but they still are a small percentage of the overall number of words in English. And most of his examples are highly unlikely to be confused, since most of them are not the same part of speech. Some are, it's true.)

The possessives and the contracted pronoun+be's are homophones in English (as are plural and possessive nouns (dog's, dogs, dogs')) ; it's handy to have a way to distinguish them in reading but when was the last time you got them confused in conversation?

Misspelling desert as dessert is more serious. Since they are both nouns, it's possible (not likely, of course) but possible to run across a sentence in which either is plausible. Just as it's possible to read a sentence and not know which tense read or - worse - put is in. We manage. We read the context and we figure it out. And that's with nouns and verbs, things that can fill the same slot in a sentence. [The same thing happens in speech (as in the Life on Mars episode where the dying man says "Quay" and they think he said "Key"), but few people get exercised about reforming English vocabulary - partly, I suppose, because usually we can ask the other person what they meant.]

If there really were sentences where either it is / you are or of it / of you could be used, then doubtless we’d have either different possessives or different contractions. As it is, you’re unlikely to be confused for more than a word or two - just as when you hear the sentence spoken - and that hardly even qualifies for garden-path status, let alone structural ambiguity.

Misplaced apostrophes are mistakes. Simple spelling mistakes, easily set right. They’re not worth the amount of time and emotion some people spend on them.

YMMV, and for lots of people it obviously does.

Carnival of Maryland

It's the 40th edition of the Carnival of Maryland, and it's up at Pillage Idiot. Atilla has put together quite a nice collection from blogs around the Old Line State. Something for most, so head over and check it out.

Peek-a-boo

Happy Birthday, Robert

Robert Herrick, the great Cavalier poet, born today in 1591 in London
Some of his verse is here, and a few short ones here:


WHENAS in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
The liquefaction of her clothes!

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free,
—O how that glittering taketh me!

To Daffodils

FAIR Daffodils, we weep to see
   You haste away so soon:
As yet the early-rising Sun
   Has not attain'd his noon.
      Stay, stay,
   Until the hasting day
      Has run
   But to the even-song;
And, having pray'd together, we
   Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,
   We have as short a Spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay
   As you, or any thing.
      We die,
   As your hours do, and dry
      Away
   Like to the Summer's rain;
Or as the pearls of morning's dew
   Ne'er to be found again.

F Ring and Moons

I haven't posted one of these in a while ...



From left to right, Pandora, the F Ring, the edge of the A Ring, and in the Keeler Gap Daphnis. The picture was taken from 1.2 million km or 700+ thousand miles; Pandora's overexposed so the details of the F Ring can be seen more clearly.

As always, see the Cassini site for details.

A little moderation and kindness, okay?

I just read this in Michael Quinion's World Wide Words newsletter:

"Forgive me if the quotation is not exact - I was driving at the time," e-mailed Chris Church. "But did I really hear a sports reporter on BBC Radio 4's Today programme say, 'In just one jump, he qualified for the triple jump'?"

Well, yes. He probably did, and there's nothing strange about it, unless you expect sports news to rid itself of all jargon. "Triple jump" is the name of an event (which used to be the "hop, step, and jump") and in one jump (that is, in one triple jump, or one attempt) the athlete qualified for the finals in the event.

You know, I get weary of all the pointing and laughing at sentences which are really quite clear. The same newsletter has this item:

Kelly went to a gynaecologist in Riverside County, California, for a routine examination, only to encounter this notice: "All pregnant women who expect to have a male baby can arrange for circumcision before delivery!!!" Intrauterine operations are a great medical advance, to be sure.

Oh, haha. I really thought they meant that. (Like I'm sure the triple exclamation points belong inside the quotes where Kelly put them. As the kids say... Not.)

It seems to me that all too often people willfully seek alternate "humorous" or confusing readings and force them onto sentences that no normal person would ever misunderstand. Some of these folks are just looking for humor, but a lot of them are so smug it's repellent. I've stopped reading a couple of blogs because of it.

English syntax permits structural ambiguity. It allows for wordplay and creativity and interesting sentences. Those who would deny us that - especially those who are self-righteous about their superior knowledge (yes, I'm thinking of those TEAL goons who go beyond laughing to outright vandalism) - make me think of this from the brilliant xkcd:

I've been known to point out errors and amusing constructions, and to speculate on what was going on behind the scenes, so to speak. I will take on people who are being deceptive through syntax. But I hope I don't sneer.

Feel free to call me on it if you think I am.

World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2008. All rights
reserved. The Words Web site is at http://www.worldwidewords.org .

A Pair of Mockingbirds

A pair of mockingbirds a couple of feet from each other clean up after a hot August day, calling to each other as they do.

Oh, please, and then huh, interesting

Yes, of course there were several people named "Adams" who were prominent in American history, but how many were ever vice-president? A good thing Rachel-Steve didn't lose the tournament on that answer!

Weird. I was just typing that and Alex just said "A fifteen-year-old beats two seventeens-year-olds."

Mid-word correction, I'm going to guess, from "fifteen to seventeen" in his mind to the called-for "seventeen-year-olds."

A morning moon

A late dawn moon over College Park

Looking toward the dawn

In College Park, a mockingbird looks through the twilight for the sun, which is just beginning to gild the leaves coming out of shadows.

This cheers me emensely

Thanks to Language Log, I learn that two members of the vigilante group TEAL (Typo Eradication Advancement League), those guys who traveled around the country correcting signs and blogging about it, have been convicted of vandalism after defacing an historic, more-than-sixty-year-old, hand-painted sign:

Two self-anointed "grammar vigilantes" who toured the nation removing typos from public signs have been banned from national parks after vandalizing a historic marker at the Grand Canyon.

Jeff Michael Deck, 28, of Somerville, Mass., and Benjamin Douglas Herson, 28, of Virginia Beach, Va., pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Flagstaff after damaging a rare, hand-painted sign in Grand Canyon National Park. They were sentenced to a year's probation, during which they cannot enter any national park, and were ordered to pay restitution.

According to court records, Deck and Herson toured the United States from March to May, wiping out errors on government and private signs. On March 28, while at Desert View Watchtower on the South Rim, they used a white-out product and a permanent marker to deface a sign painted more than 60 years ago by artist Mary Colter. The sign, a National Historic Landmark, was considered unique and irreplaceable, according to Sandy Raynor, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix.

It's going to cost over $3,000 to fix the sign, which was made by Mary Colter, who designed the 1930s watchtower as well as other Grand Canyon-area landmarks. (You can see a picture of it - before defacement - at the Log.)

ps - the word "emensely", which tormented Deck badly ("I was reluctant to disfigure the sign any further, so we had to let the other typo stand. Still, I think I shall be haunted by that perversity") is actually not "a made-up word". It's in the OED and is a fairly common archaic variant on "immense". But to guys like Deck & Co., a "variant" is nothing less than an "error".

"its bad grammar"?

The 14 Aug issue of LRB (found via a link from Language Hat you might look at if you're fond of (or just familiar with) Jean Sprackland) has an article about a Brit who murdered his wife. Along with some fascinating stuff about his accent, the article has this about one of his on-line business ventures:

Here’s his sales pitch: ‘Embedded New Technologies (ENT) offers Intellectual Property Cores for Xilinx, Altera and Actel FPGAs. DSP systems and systems-on-chip, SoC, embedded systems can be provided using our floating-point, fp, fast Fourier transform, fft, fir filter and digital down-converter cores.’

Understanding nothing of this except its bad grammar, I tried Googling each term in the hope of figuring out what on earth it might all mean.

Its bad grammar? There's hardly any grammar at all, and what there is seems fine to me. The author is another Brit; does he think "Embedded New Technologies (ENT) offers" should be "Embedded New Technologies (ENT) offer", I wonder?

Happy Birthday, Ray

Ray Bradbury is 88!

"I don't try to describe the future. I try to prevent it."

"We are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts."

"First of all, I don't write science fiction. I've only done one science fiction book and that's Fahrenheit 451, based on reality. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, it's fantasy. It couldn't happen, you see? That's the reason it's going to be around a long time—because it's a Greek myth, and myths have staying power."

"Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future."

The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion Wine, and (my favorite) Something Wicked This Way Comes, and all those wonderful short stories. Thank you, Ray, and have a wonderful day!

I and the Bird

Mike says:

If you're anything like me (and you have my sympathies if you are!) you probably find yourself wracked with pangs of jealousy far more frequently than is healthy. I envy people every single day simply for where they happen to be. It matters not a whit where I am or where I've been. If you woke up in Ireland, India, Indonesia, or plain jane Indiana, chances are I'd like to walk a mile in your shoes, if only to admire the common birds in your backyard. Nearly everyplace holds some semblance of exotic allure, but thanks to my constant wandering across my beloved northeastern United States, I'm less covetous of temperate woodlands than I am of mountains, deserts, or rainforests. Still, every locale, every ecosystem looks good to me!

It's tough, in a world of wondrous choices, to evaluate what areas offer the best bird watching. Yet, no less an authority than Mel White opined in the most recent Living Bird magazine (the phenomenal publication put out by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology) that the most optimal area in which to ogle avifauna in the U.S. is probably southeastern Arizona. Now the distinguished Mr. White clearly has a bit of experience with birding hotspots east and west of the mighty Mississippi. For him to place the pleasures of the Sonoran Desert ahead of the excitement of the Everglades, Rio Grande Valley, Pacific coastline, or Jamaica Bay (perhaps I'm biased with this one), Arizona must offer quite a lot in the way of both birds and beauty. And if you've ever visited Arizona, you know that it truly does.

If, on the other hand, you've never had the privilege of cruising through this otherworldy landscape, brimming with delicious desert birds, be glad that Kathie of Sycamore Canyon lives in the heart of it! Based out of the Santa Ritas Mountains in Corona de Tucson, Kathie sallies forth to chronicle the dazzling diversity of her gorgeous desert home. It's natural to feel jealous of her excursions through those cactus-kissed canyons… I certainly do. Just choke back that envy long enough to enjoy her enchanting "artsy fartsy" edition of I and the Bird #82!

Happy Birthday, Howard

Today is the birthday of the man who gave us Cthulhu... HP Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1890.

Just before dawn Arcturus winks ruddily from above the cemetery on the low hillock, and Coma Berenices shimmers weirdly afar off in the mysterious east; but still the Pole Star leers down from the same place in the black vault, winking hideously like an insane watching eye which strives to convey some strange message, yet recalls nothing save that it once had a message to convey. Sometimes, when it is cloudy, I can sleep. (Polaris)

go here for all things Lovecraftian.

Honestly

What is with Hollywood (speaking metaphorically)? Watching Ghost Rider, and Matt Long is about as likely to grow up to be Nicholas Cage as River Phoenix was Harrison Ford. Or my all time favorites, Roddy McDowall into Peter Lawford, and Elizabeth Taylor into June Lockhart!!!

You tell me!
Not to mention this one!
Oh, maybe if you didn't know what they looked like. (And they did it in the same movie in White Cliffs of Dover, not just the sequel!)

Preach it!

Kathleen Parker ... on Saddleback:

At the risk of heresy, let it be said that setting up the two presidential candidates for religious interrogation by an evangelical minister -- no matter how beloved -- is supremely wrong. ...

For the moment, let's set aside our curiosity about what Jesus might do in a given circumstance and wonder what our Founding Fathers would have done at Saddleback Church. What would have happened to Thomas Jefferson if he had responded as he wrote in 1781:

"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

Would the crowd at Saddleback have applauded and nodded through that one? Doubtful.

By today's new standard of pulpits in the public square, Jefferson -- the great advocate for religious freedom in America -- would have lost.

Did you mean ...? Because if you did, you're out of luck

Very odd. I put "fay myenne ng" into amazon's search engine and was given one book, though not one of hers (I don't get the comma in Laura Hapke's name, though. She's not "Hapke Laura" and she's certainly not "Laura & Hapke".) :

Labor's Text: The Worker in American Fiction by Laura, Hapke
Excerpt - page 283: "... Ceremony, 1986), Louise Erdrich (Love Medicine, 1984), and Fay Myenne Ng ("A Red Sweater," 1986). These writers all chronicled their own ..."

So it found an instance of her name misspelled as I had. But it also asked me if I meant to search for "baby myenne lg". (And when I corrected the spelling to fae, it asked me if I meant "the myenne lg", even though it found 48 results for her name, mostly books about Asian-American authors and writing but also her two novels...)

But neither the myenne lg or baby myenne lg return any hits at all.

I never have understood why search engines ask you if you meant to search for something that doesn't exist.

Sacramento?

All I can is that I hope Hunter drew a blank on today's Jeopardy!. The final wanted one of two state capitals ending in the Greek for "city" and he answered "Sacramento". I'd rather think he just named his own state's capital than that he thought "mento" was Greek for "city"...

(Annapolis and Indianapolis, in case you're also drawing a blank...)

What's Important 41

Forty-first in a series.

This is from the NY Times report on the Saddleback Church "event":

Mr. Warren asked [each of the candidates] which of the sitting Supreme Court justices he would not have appointed. ... Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, named all the liberal judges on the court and noted that there might be several vacancies soon. “This nomination should be based on the criteria on a proven record of strictly adhering to the Constitution and not legislating from the bench,” he said.

and this little tidbit, too, though it's not as important:

Mr. Warren, who has made millions of dollars on his books, asked [them] to define “rich.” Mr. McCain said that “rich” should mean people who are happy and avoided putting a precise price tag on the term, finally jokingly tossing out a figure of $5 million.

Interestingly, the LA Times didn't think McCain was joking:

McCain took a far more discursive approach to answering the question but ultimately settled on a dramatically higher figure: "I think if you're just talking about income, how about $5 million?"

The Arizona Republican quickly added that he was "sure that comment will be distorted," and his campaign said Sunday that he was joking.

"To be fair to both of them, 'rich' is an adjective," said James P. Smith, a senior economist at the Rand Corp., a nonpartisan think thank in Santa Monica. "Economic science is not going to tell you that 'this' is the cutoff point."

Yet the $5-million level, Smith said, includes "almost nobody." Experts said that of all the households in the nation, fewer than one-tenth of 1% had an annual income of $5 million or more.