The Week in Entertainment

DVD: Charlie Chan's Secret, pretty good. Kung Fu Panda and Shrek the Halls, both of which I'd seen before but my father hadn't; the former is much better than the latter, which is cute but not substantial. Numb3rs Season Four (yes, it did arrive just in time for me to bring it along), or some of it - the first six episodes.

TV: House - is it wrong that before the credits were rolling I was yelling "Shut up until he shoots Hadley!"? And once again the crack Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital security staff lets a guy with a gun into the building. I'm sure I was not supposed to be hoping that Hadley dies, but I am so disappointed. Perhaps this will be the end of the poor-Hadley-Huntingdon's-craziness story arc. Maybe we can focus on someone else now. Like, Kuttner? Or even Taub? Please? The Mentalist - I liked this episode. Nicely layered. But sorrow, sorrow. I've just heard that ABC has canned Pushing Daisies. I sort of expected it, but still ... Well, at least there's nothing else on that network I ever watch. I'm turning into a CBSer now...

Read: Don't Look Back, by Karin Fossum. (Yes, I'm in the middle of a Scandinavian mystery streak.) It was good, though I don't care for the ambiguous ending. A ton of JA Jance novels, since I finished up what I brought with me. Too many to list, all the Joanna Brady in paperback. My friend Nancy says the JP Beaumont books are better - I'll give them a look.

An odd passive

Professor Richard Brettel, talking about Delacroix's Abduction of Rebecca (Museum Masterpieces lecture series, 19th century European Art):

"Somebody's way is going to be had with her later."

This sentence is perfectly grammatical (as far as I can tell, anyhow), but it's also very weird. I think it's because of the possessive. There's a sense of the actor in the subject of this passive.

Production Error at the Art Show

Just got back from the Annual Photography Show here. Over the years they've added major categories - from Color Prints to Special Effects to Digital - and this year the Digital entries were on a DVD show. The voiceover narration introduced each category (People, Landscapes, etc) and then told us about the winning entries.

One of the categories is "Inanimate Objects". The narrator told us

This used to be what we call "Still Lifes".

An interesting position-swap error, that - "used to be" for "is" and "call" for "used to call".

Even more interesting, I didn't even notice it, though my father did. He drew my attention to it. I wonder how many people vetted that without noticing it?

Carnival of Maryland

The latest edition of the Carnival of Maryland is up at monoblogue. As always, Michael does a fine job - he says

it gives me an excuse to read and comment on some of the best the Free State’s blogosphere has to offer and maybe introduce readers to places they hadn’t seen yet. (Even I found a couple I wasn’t aware of.) So welcome and enjoy the reading!

I second that. Check it out.

Happy Birthday, Lucy

Today in 1874 in Clifton, Prince Edward Island, Lucy Maud Montgomery was born. This year is the 100th anniversary of her most famous book, Anne of Green Gables. She wrote 19 others, all but one set on PEI. My favorite? Jane of Lantern Hill.

Happy Birthday, Mark

Today in Florida, Missouri, in 1835 Mark Twain was born.

How to sum up this man in the few words of a birthday post? I don't think it can be done. Check the link for a bio and works. Go here for Boondocks' Twain site. And here are just a few quotes ... I could go on and on.

Only when a republic's life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it is in the wrong. There is no other time.

I am not finding fault with this use of our flag; for in order not to seem eccentric I have swung around, now, and joined the nation in the conviction that nothing can sully a flag. I was not properly reared, and had the illusion that a flag was a thing which must be sacredly guarded against shameful uses and unclean contacts, lest it suffer pollution; and so when it was sent out to the Phillippines to float over a wanton war and a robbing expedition I supposed it was polluted, and in an ignorant moment I said so. But I stand corrected. I conceded and acknowledge that it was only the government that sent it on such an errand that was polluted. Let us compromise on that. I am glad to have it that way. For our flag could not well stand pollution, never having been used to it, but it is different with the administration.

Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul.

We teach them to take their patriotism at second-hand; to shout with the largest crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter--exactly as boys under monarchies are taught and have always been taught. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place--the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else's keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan.

In the laboratory there are no fustian ranks, no brummagem aristocracies; the domain of Science is a republic, and all its citizens are brothers and equals, its princes of Monaco and its stonemasons of Cromarty meeting, barren of man-made gauds and meretricious decorations, upon the one majestic level!

The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive...but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born.

"Civics" quiz

So, a lot of people are blogging about the ISI's "Civics" quiz, the one most Americans got 49% on with "elected officials" (whatever that means) getting only 44% on. Here's how I did: You answered 32 out of 33 correctly — 96.97 %

Here's the one I got wrong. But surely (a) is right, too, unless somehow the government is "spending" money that doesn't count as "spending".

If taxes equal government spending, then:
A. government debt is zero
B. printing money no longer causes inflation
C. government is not helping anybody
D. tax per person equals government spending per person - this is their answer

You can take it here.

ps - since when is Sputnik "civics"?

Recommended Reading

Today I'll point you at slacktivist where Fred tackled the question: Why don't we have a better press corps? Being Fred, and being "a cog in the machine of the MSM", he doesn't go where you might expect:

Part of the answer to that question is that our newspapers are being asked to do something they were never designed to do and something they are fundamentally and structurally incapable of doing: they're being asked to provide shareholders with double-digit and ever-increasing profit margins.

This is a ridiculous expectation. If you are an investor looking for a 15- or 20-percent return on your investment and you've purchased newspaper stock, then you're a bad investor. You are, in fact, a stupid and a silly investor. You have invested in the wrong thing for the wrong reasons and you are expecting the wrong results. You are expecting impossible results.

Newspapers have a solid and reliable, but modest, business model. Owning a newspaper -- even now, even with competition from cable news and the Internet, and even with Craigslist all but eliminating the classified ad market -- is like owning a license to print money. But only a modest amount of money. Buying newspaper stock is thus much like investing in CDs. It's safe, but humble.

Remember the Savings & Loan debacle of the 1980s? That's what's happening right now with newspapers...

The current prevailing notion that a newspaper can or should be expected to provide similar gaudy returns is also completely irrational. The management of most newspapers and the bulk of their shareholders are repeating the exact same foolishness that destroyed all those S&Ls back in the 1980s. They are not just expecting, but demanding profit margins that the newspaper business model was never designed to provide and that it is not capable of providing.

This is the equivalent of driving 60 miles an hour in first gear. Your car might actually be capable of this. Once. Briefly. But it's still a really, really Bad Idea if you want your car to survive.

Walk into any newsroom these days and you can smell the burning transmission. You'll see only half as many reporters as were there 20 years ago and maybe a third as many copy editors. And you may notice that the remaining skeleton crew looks pretty young...

It's good stuff.

Happy Birthday, Minnie!

Today The Cuban Comet, Minnie Minoso (born Saturnino Orestes Armas Miñoso Arrieta in Havana, Cuba), is 86 years old.

His major-league career spanned five decades (1940s-1980s) and he made a couple of brief appearances with the independent Northern League's St. Paul Saints in 1993 and 2003, which make him the only player to have played professionally in 7 different decades. He played for the Indians, White Sox, Cardinals, and Senators, and was the first black White Sox player. "Mr White Sox", another nickname he had, didn't play regularly until he was 28, but his career numbers are impressive: a .298 batting average, with 186 home runs, 1023 RBI, 1136 runs, 1963 hits, 336 doubles, 83 triples, 205 stolen bases, 814 walks and 192 hit by pitch. His career ended with a .389 on base percentage and a .459 slugging average, combined for a solid .848 OPS. He was a 7-time All-Star. For his excellence in left field, he received the Gold Glove Award three times. He led his league in triples and stolen bases three times each.

Happy Birthday, Louisa

Louisa May Alcott was born today in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1832. She's best known, of course, for Little Women and similar books, but those aren't what she wanted to write. She had started out writing sensational stories about duels and suicides, opium addiction, mind control, bigamy and murder. She called it "blood and thunder" literature, and she said, "I seem to have a natural ambition for the lurid style." She published under male pseudonyms to keep from embarrassing her family. But in 1867 - four years after her first book was published - an editor suggested that she try writing what he called "a girl's book," and, needing the money, she said she'd try. The result was Little Women, and it was a huge success. Such a success that she, with her whole family to support (her father was a Transcendentalist - a well-known one, in fact - and a social reformer, an educational reformer, and an abolitionist, and there's never money in that sort of thing!), felt obligated to keep writing books like it although she hated them.

You know, I've read a couple of those "blood and thunder" books - they're not bad at all. It's a shame she didn't write more. But I do admit that when I was in junior high, I loved Eight Cousins... the sequel wasn't as good, though.

That editor was obviously the model for that horrible professor in Little Women ...

Could have, could've, could of

So I finished all the books I'd brought home and started on some J.A. Jances that my sister had left here. The protagonist, Sheriff Joanna Brady, corrects her daughter's grammar at least once per book (so far). I've merely rolled my eyes at the futility of it, but this one takes the cake:

"People were in danger," Joanna answered. "I was afraid someone might get hurt."

"It could of been you," Jennifer shot back.

"Could have," Joanna corrected reflexively.

"Have," Jennifer repeated woodenly, scowling.

First, I'm with Jennifer. There's (probably) a time and place for correcting your daughter's grammar, but not when she's just seen you almost be killed - like her father was a couple of months ago.

And second (or Also!): Sheesh. Does Joanna really not pronounce "could have" like "could of"? Jennifer is going to sound like a pompous twit.

As T-Rex said to Utahraptor when the latter caught him "using the wrong it's": Noticing such things in spoken language is impossible!

Thanksgiving Dinner

Rachel Ray's herb-basted turkey. Green beans. Mashed sweet potatoes with lime and peanut butter. Sourdough bread. Seven-layer salad, made by a daughter from her mother's recipe - first time and well-done! Cornbread stuffing. Cranberry-apple surprise.

Four generations around the table. Missing the truly gone, and a phone call from the merely missing. Kids chasing peas around their salad plate and crinkling noses at new smells. The old stories. The new faces. A cat under a couch. Everyone employed (or retired) and in good health, some with promotions this year, too.

Thanksgiving Day. Hope yours was warm and wonderful, too.

Thanksgiving Wren

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers! Happy end of November to the rest!

Calgary Stampeders

So, it's Wednesday and I'm only just getting around to posting this. Sure, I'm on vacation, but I admit I'd probably have done it Sunday night if the Alouettes had won... but they didn't.

The Stampeders took home the Grey Cup, winning 22-14. As Avon Cobourne said:

I don't even have a comment. They beat us. They were the better team, they played better than we did today, and there nothing else that we can say. They're Champions, they played hard and they deserved it.

Next year it's all new again.

Passion. Pouvoir. Fierté. Nos Alouettes!

Pride. Passion. Power. Our Alouettes!

He or it

Just finished Karin Fossum's Don't Look Back (translated by Felicity David). It's pretty good, and I'll be reading more. But at the end there's a sentence that struck me as odd. The protagonist, Konrad Sejer, is out with his daughter's family, and observing his grandson:

Matteus was scurrying around, full of anticipation, a killer whale in his arms, made of black and white felt. His name was Free Willy, and it was almost as big as he was.

The mix of pronouns in that last sentence seems off to me. The sentence is hard to understand. I realize that "he was almost as big as he was" is worse, but I think I'd have written, "Its name...". If it just had to be "his name", then I'd have finished with "almost as big as the boy."

Does it seem odd to anyone else?

Downstream of Prometheus

The shepherd moons keep the rings together ... more or less. This gorgeous shot shows the F Ring's smoky appearance just after a pass by Prometheus.



(As always, the Cassini site has the details.)

Shy Mice

This ad intrigues me. Not enough to check it out, mind; the consequences of that wouldn't measure to the gain. But it intrigues me.


Why do the "ladies" have to have a male escort?

• Because he's afraid they'll harass his customers?
• Because he's afraid they'll be harassed by his customers?
• Because he's afraid of wives and/or girlfriends showing up mad?
• Because he's afraid of his club turning into a lesbian hangout?

Monday Science Links

This week's science:

• Cuttle, the poetic Digital Cuttlefish, treats us to a poem along with the story of the 'throat in a jar': The same methodology used to produce
  The remarkable "heart in a jar"
  Has created a trachea, almost from scratch,
  And it looks like it’s working, so far!


• Julianne at Cosmic Variance shows us some of Life's old pictures: Google is now serving up more than a hundred years of photographs from Life Magazine. The pictures of the early days of astronomy are just spectacular. The archives contain images of many astronomers who were critical figures in the development of the field, but who have yet to have telescopes named after them. A large fraction of them also seemed to smoke pipes.


• Jennifer at Cocktail Party Physics on the energy in broken bonds: One wouldn't expect the 17th century English philosopher Francis Bacon to have much of a sweet tooth; he always struck me as a rather curmudgeonly sort, thoughts firmly fixed on Higher Matters, eschewing the paltry comforts of the flesh. But Jen-Luc Piquant suspects he might have had a secret fondness for hard candies, based on a passing remark Bacon made in his treatise, Novum Organum (published in 1620): "It is almost certain that all sugar, whether refined or raw, provided only it be somewhat hard, sparkles when broken or scraped with a knife in the dark." Now, one could argue that Bacon was merely being an observant scientist following his natural curiosity, but stop and think for a moment under what conditions he might have discovered such an effect -- alone in a darkened room with a bag of hard candy and a knife to break up the pieces into smaller bits that were easier to consume. Sounds like a secret sweet tooth to me! This also establishes Bacon as the earliest to record the phenomenon, known as triboluminescence, a.k.a., "the Wint-O-Green Life Saver Effect."


• crshalizi at Three-Toed Sloth believes that the Times has been suckered: I blame Alan Sokal. The trick of showing up various publications by fooling them into publishing documents which seem impressively technical, but which are obviously nonsense to anyone minimally skilled in the field — well, I thought it was hilarious the first time, but inevitably there are imitators, and they never match the spirit of the first effort. The latest epigone is one Peter D. Salins, a professor of political science at SUNY Stony Brook and former provost of the SUNY system, and his victim is the editorial page of the New York Times. He purports to offer evidence that the SAT score has some power to predict academic outcomes in college — specifically, whether students will graduate or not — over and above its relationship to high school grades... I submit that Salins has Sokaled the Times, since there is no way someone with enough grasp of social-scientific methods to hold his position could make such huge howlers unintentionally.


• Henrik at henrikkarll wonders who buries the dead and how: The majority of persons found buried in Viking Age graveyards are often not equipped with any grave goods at all, or sometimes just a small knife, a whetstone or a few pearls. Most of the time we are indeed just talking about ‘dead bodies dressed up for funeral’, meaning that the knives and pearls are actually just a part of the dead person’s clothes. Some of the more impressive graves are furnished with lots of stuff, notably weapons, riding equipment, furniture, boardgames and jewellery. Some of them contain animals like horses, dogs and hunting birds, some even ships and servants; some the bones of sheep and cow (i.e. food) and some of them are covered with barrows. It is the interpretation of these conspicuous ‘aristocratic’ graves which will have my attention in the following.

Enjoy!

The Week in Entertainment

Film: Bolt - much funnier than I was expecting. The animation has come a long way, but they still haven't quite mastered the contact problem; when Penny petted or hugged the dog, you didn't really sense they were actually touching.

DVD: Numb3rs rest of Season 2 and Season 3. And now I'm dying to see Season 4 (get. here. already.) because Colby is still here. It must have been some hugely elaborate sting, the "he's a Chinese double agent" thing. The Bucket List. Certainly well-written and -acted, but for crying out loud. This was 2007. When I had chemo back in 2002 my oncologist told me there was no excuse for getting crappy medications - and I didn't feel nauseated once. But the one side effect that he also said he could guarantee didn't happen to either one of these guys: hair loss. And honestly, how many movies do we have to get with the Wise Old Black (Wo)Man setting the foolish white person straight with their innate God-given faith and homespun wisdom? Plus, I know Morgan Freeman has this great voice-over voice, but having him do the opening voice-over was deceptive! But still, an enjoyable film.

TV: House - is it just me, or is it weird that Chase and Cameron are still in the credits when the new gang aren't? Especially Chase - if he gets two lines a week it's astonishing. Oh, by the way: I still hate Hadley. Enormously. Cameron looks good in comparison. Why couldn't this have been the Kuttner-centric episode I've been longing for? Why do the writers think Hadley is our favorite? WHYYYYY? The Mentalist which was a bit dismaying this week. I really hope they didn't want to imply that Jane believed that spiritualist had reached his wife. Eleventh Hour, still watchable though not brilliant. Numb3rs - I am so glad I started watching this show. This episode was riveting.

Read: Sherlock Holmes was wrong, a re-examination of the Hound of the Baskervilles case by Pierre Bayard (the guy who looked at the murders of Hamlet's dad and Roger Ackroyd). It was entertaining and pretty convincing. The Price of Butcher's Meat - the new Dalziel and Pascoe and as good as they usually are. (Which is "extremely" in case you weren't sure.) Life Among the Lilliputians by Judy DiGregorio, an amusing collection of vignettes. Jar City by Arnaldur Indriðason - a bleak but fascinating mystery set in Reykjavik.

What kind of girl am I?

You are a Brainy Girl!

Whether you're an official student or a casual learner, you enjoy hitting the books. You know a little bit about everything, and you're always dying to know more. For a guy to win your heart, he's got to share some of your intellectual interests. A awesome book collection of his own doesn't hurt either!

What Kind of Girl Are You?

(hat tip to In my (not so) abundant spare time)

Oh, Marilyn

In today's Parade magazine (which I only read when I'm at my father's) Marilyn vos Savant has one of those "puzzles" readers send in. This one is:

What do these words have in common: candle, day, flash, flood, head, high, moon, search, spot?

And here's the answer:

All become new words with the suffix "light"

Okay, I guess. But you know what, Marilyn? "Light" isn't a suffix.

A suffix, according to MWU, is "an affix occurring at the end of a word, base, or phrase", and an affix is "a sound or sequence of sounds or, in writing, a letter or sequence of letters occurring as a bound form attached to the beginning or end of a word, base, or phrase or inserted within a word or base and serving to produce a derivative word (as un- in untie, -ate in chlorate, -ish in morning-after-ish) or an inflectional form (as -s in cats)".

"Light" is a word. "Candlelight" and the rest are compound words, "consisting of components that are words".

I have to wonder. Is my sample of Marilyn representative? Because she seems to make a lot of mistakes for a genius... especially the sort that could be put right with a trip to the nearest dictionary or (wiki/encyclo)pedia.

Shiny

I hold no particular brief for starlings - imported nuisances that drive out natives - but I do admit that they can be pretty. Here are a couple going after the fruit of a tree I don't know (the online tree id thing tries to convince me it's a dogwood. I do know what a dogwood is, and this ain't it.)

Tuckered out

After the trip to Tennessee...

Staying very late

It's cold now, for Maryland. Hard frosts in the morning, and ice on the pond. But look who hasn't left yet! In fact, Wednesday I spotted two pairs in the park. Usually they're long gone by now.

Happy Birthday, Hrihoriy

Григорій Савич Сковорода - Hrihoriy Savych Skovoroda - was born today in Chornukhy, near Poltava, in the Hetamanate of Ukraine which at the time (1722) belonged to Russia. He spent the last thirty years of his life wandering Ukraine with a flute, teaching and philosophizing; he wasn't published till after he died. His epitaph - which he composed - reads: Світ ловив мене, але не піймав (The world tried to catch me, but did not succeed / Svit lovyv mene, ale ne pijmav).

On a linguistic note, this epitaph is interesting as it contains an aspectual pair of verbs which come from different roots, a rare but not unheard of situation. The verbs - ловити and піймати (lovyty, pijmaty) - mean "to catch" but the imperfective means "to be trying to catch" (success not implied); "ловити рибу (lovyty rybu)" is thus "to go fishing". Hence, the compact "ловив мене" becomes "tried to catch me", and "не піймав" is "did not catch".


(Find some Skoroda in Ukrainian here.)

The Columbine Massacre

No, not that one - the Columbine Mine Massacre, in Serene, Colorado. It happened today in 1927: a coal miners' strike had been going on for five weeks, shutting down every one of the 14 coal mines in northern Colorado except for the mighty Columbine. The Columbine normally employed 500, and they successfully lured 150 scabs to work during the strike by granting a fifty cent per day raise. On the morning of November 21, striking miners approached the company town for a routine peaceful protest as they had for several weeks. But that morning state police in civilian clothes, backed up by company security, barred the protesters' entry.

Four days earlier, machine guns had been brought to Serene. As a Boulder paper put it (misplaced modifiers are not new):

Machine guns are the best answer to the picketers. Posted at the Columbine mine, willing workers go to work while picketers slink back. Machine guns manned by willing shooters are wanted at other Colorado mines...

It was these guns, and these "willing shooters", who met the picketers that morning. The police denied the picketers entry to the town; the picketers insisted that the town was not private property. There was a sudden scuffle, with the police beating popular strike organizer Adam Bell about the head. Gravely injured, Bell collapsed to the ground, and the miners surged through the gate to protect him. The police retreated, then opened up with deadly fire directly into the crowd. At least six picketers died; more than sixty were injured. No police were shot: this was an IWW action, and they were never violent (unlike the UMWA, who responded to violence with violence) - nor was there a violent response to this massacre. Union organizers counseled angry miners with Joe Hill's words: "Don't mourn, organize."

After this strike ended, the Columbine and its parent company became a union mine. Other companies tried to force it out of business, but the Columbine miners were so supportive of the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company that they voted to loan part of their increase in wages back to the company.

More on the Columbine Strike story is here.

Happy Birthday, Voltaire

Born today in Paris in 1694 was a man who helped spark the Enlightenment in France: Francois-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire. He spent most of his life in exile, and his writings built up support in Europe for what we now think of as basic human rights.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy: the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

Four Stone Hearth

It's Four Stone Hearth - the premier anthro-blogging carnival - up at Moneduloides. This one's always full of great blogging on anthropo- and archaeology.

Happy Birthday, Edwin

Edwin Hubble was born today in 1889 in Marshfield, Missouri. He began his professional life as a lawyer, but got bored, went back to school for a second doctorate - in astronomy - and spent the rest of his life at Mount Wilson Observatory in California. Hubble is credited with proving that the Milky Way was not the only thing in the universe. As Wikipedia so succinctly says: "Hubble's discovery fundamentally changed the view of the universe." It is not given to many to do that.

Hubble did not win the Nobel Prize only because he died suddenly. His work was meticulous, ground-breaking (if you can say that about someone who studied the farthest skies), and immensely important. He was justly honored by having the Hubble Space Telescope named after him.

Sky Watch: Clouds

more Sky Watchers here

Resting up for the trip

We never preorder? But ---

So Charles deLint's newsletter had a headsup for Medicine Road. Heading over to Tachyon Press I spotted Peter Beagle's new book, We Never Talk About My Brother. There was a link that said "email to pre-order" so I did.

Today I had an email from Tachyon with the subject line "We Never pre-order".

Yes, they just abbreviated the book's title. But it really made me do a double take.

On Time - Wasting Time

Okay, I realize UPS doesn't do anything on the weekends. So this package that B&N sent out on Friday just sat around New Jersey till Monday - "3 day" means "3 weekday". Okay. But the package arrived in Laurel at 4 this morning. Did it get delivered today? Nope. Will it be delivered tomorrow? I sure hope so since I'm leaving town Thursday morning and - if experience is any guide - if they bring out after I'm gone, they won't hold the package till December and I'll have to get B&N to ship it to me again. So it would be nice if they put it on a truck tomorrow (it would have been nicer if they'd put it on a truck today).

But according to the UPS website, the answer is No. See, it's "on time" and "scheduled" for a Friday delivery (which is four days, but only. In other words, they plan to let it sit around their warehouse for two days before sending it out on the truck. And since I'm not the shipper, they really don't give a damn if I'm happy.

Things from B&N usually get here within three days. If I'd known they were gonna screw around like this I'd have just had it shipped to my father's. (I mean, for crying out loud, it's Numb3rs season 4.)

LAUREL, MD,  US
 11/18/2008      4:03 A.M.    ARRIVAL SCAN

EDISON, NJ,  US
 11/17/2008     11:31 P.M.    DEPARTURE SCAN
 11/17/2008      4:14 P.M.    ORIGIN SCAN

 11/15/2008     11:39 A.M.    BILLING INFORMATION 
                              RECEIVED


Tracking Number:     ############# 
Type:                Package 
Status:              In Transit - On Time 
Scheduled Delivery:  11/20/2008 
Shipped To:          LAUREL, MD, US 
Shipped/Billed On:   11/15/2008 
Service:             3 DAY SELECT 
Weight:              1.10 Lbs

Happy Birthday, Margaret

Today in 1939, in Ottawa, Margaret Atwood was born.

I've read a lot of her work, but this remains my favorite:




Variation on the Word Sleep

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descent,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

Blue feathers, not blue jays

So, in my Veterans Day post I quoted Robert Graves' The Next War, which contains these lines:

From the first time you tear and slash
Your long-bows from the garden ash,
Or fit your shaft with a blue jay feather,
Binding the split tops together

I wondered at the time, are there really Blue Jays in England? Well, the answer is no. But there are jays, and some of their feathers are blue (though they're mostly sort of pink).
So this is a [blue [jay feather]] not a [[blue jay] feather].

Blue Jay	(Eurasian) Jay

Firefly is on Blu-Ray

I just got a solicitation to help sell Firefly on Blu-Ray. I don't take ads or anything like that, but hey. It's Firefly. If you've got Blu-Ray, you want to buy this series. If you don't, you want to buy it on DVD.

Trust me on this. You won't regret it.

Cuttle is published!

I was just over at Cuttle's place and see that he's published a book (at Lulu) of his poems! Woo-hoo! Between him and Ed Yong (of Not Exactly Rocket Science) who's also publishing (should have mentioned it earlier), Christmas shopping is a bit easier this year.

But while I was buying The Digital Cuttlefish I was offered a few others. One of them is the unfortunately named Whither Cometh Humankind? (The Origins of Man). The description:

This work (derived from the parent book: "The Gathering Apocalypse and World Judgement") extensively describes the origins of humankind and offers a solution for the ultimate debate: "Creationism" vs. "Evolutionism". It uses various translations of the Book of Genesis contained in a number of different Bibles to describe this most stupendous event - our true origin. The reader will at last learn how we began the course of our lives on earth, and will thereby learn the true reason for our existence in Creation!

So ... why "whither cometh humankind?" instead of "whence"?

Mad that people are mad

Back in June we read about businesses that were refusing to cater, etc, for gay weddings but didn't want publicity, afraid that they'd lose business if their homophobia was public.

Now, those who supported Prop 8 are feeling a commercial backlash - and they're angry. In one of the most irony-meter-breaking statements I've read in a long time, Dave Leatherby, who donated $20,000 to the cause, says:

"Let's move on. I always told my children that once a rule was made, you have to abide by it. I think it should be the same in this circumstance."

Ummm, Dave - abide by it? Like you did? (And I'm guessing that you, "A devout Catholic and father of 10, [who] supported the measure for religious reasons" supported the third attempt at the parental notification measure ...)

But that's not the most irony-meter-breaking statement in the story. This one, from Mormon spokeswoman Lisa West, is:

"We had hoped there would be more tolerance for different viewpoints."

Tolerance? Lisa, sweetheart, you honestly do not know what that word means. (Don't you remember why you Mormons ran away to Utah in the first place? Oh, wait. Mormons. Sorry - you're the victims, and when you keep people down it's because God says so ... and hasn't sent a "new revelation" yet.)

These folks need to have the courage of their convictions. How come they want gay money so much, anyway?

Amusing Trifle

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Sister Neutron Bomb of Reflection. What's yours?

Monday Science Links

This week's science:

• Phil at Bad Astronomy waxes enthusiastically about pictures of an extrasolar planet: This is incredible: For the first time, ever, astronomers have captured an optical image of a planet orbiting a star like our own. And that’s not all: we also have a second picture showing TWO planets orbiting a second star! (Calm down. Breathe, breathe.) The first picture is from Hubble. Ready? Here it is.


• Over at Archaeoporn, archaeoknits waxes skeptically about ancient Muslim sailors in pre-Colombian America: In a recent issue of Skeptic, Tim Callahan discusses the issue of ancient astronauts and lost civilizations. This is perhaps one of the most frequent and popular theories of pseudo-archaeology, and certainly an area of concern ripe for a skeptical assessment. Overall, Callahan does an admirable job in addressing the common theories of hidden secret civilizations, and it is good to see the inclusion of more recent Raelian ideas, which are generally seen as too off base for archaeologists to even bother discussing them. However, Callahan’s discussion of pseudo-archaeology takes a long diversion into another popular area of fictitious history, using it as an argument against lost civilizations. I refer to his theory that Muslim cultures were in direct contact with the Americas before Columbus, only one of many unsupported propositions of Pre-Columbian exploration of the New World.


• Carl at the Loom talks (yes, I couldn't keeping working in "waxes") about bluffing by fiddler crabs: Nature lies. Organisms send signals to each other, and often those signals are honest–in other words, when another organism receives the signal, it can reliably use it to figure something out about the sender. Male fiddler crabs, like the one shown here, send a big, loud signal with their oversized claw. Often, that signal esentially says, “Do not mess with me.” And in many cases, that’s good advice. Sometimes, though, it’s a major bluff.


• JL at Analyze Everything talks about mosasaurs: There are few animals in real life that can capture our imagination the way some fossilized animals are able. Take for instance, the Tyrannosaurus rex, which has been fictionalized again and again to represent our more primal understanding of 'monster'. Take also, the beast that once roamed Kansas as the unquestioned top predator: The Mosasaur. What? You've never heard of a Mosasaur? Imagine a crocodile with flippers and you're superficially there. See, way back around 100 million years ago the North American continent was split by a vast epeiric sea (a shallow, salty, inland sea) called the Western Interior Seaway (really creative science people).


• Ed at Not Exactly Wonder Science tells us about octopuses that you can recognize by their color markings: Many naturalists become so familiar with the animals they study that they can recognise individuals within a population using just their shapes and patterns. If that's too difficult, animals can be ringed or tagged. These tricks give scientists the invaluable ability to track the fates of individuals, but try using them on octopuses.

Enjoy!

The Week in Entertainment

Film: Synecdoche, New York - Ooookay. This film will require some serious thought before I know exactly what I think of it. But it was certainly mesmerizing, thought-provoking, and probably brilliant.

DVD: Numb3rs season 1 and part of 2 - I don't know whether to be annoyed with myself for missing this show up till now, or glad that I can watch several seasons of a show that holds up brilliantly to sustained watching. Krumholtz, Morrow, and Hirsch have excellent chemistry together, you believe them as a family and as individuals. The writing is smart and the production values (well, Ridley Scott after all) are very good.

TV: The Mentalist - I must admit I love it that the guys kept the watches. And Jane's a sweetie. House - I always hated Cameron. So of course we get a huge Cameron-centric episode, in which she is as annoying as ever. And for some reason, my DVR clips off the last minute or so of each ep. Sigh - at least it's recording them now. Psych - I didn't mention I'm catching up. Still funny. Numb3rs - this show (as noted) is good. Eleventh Hour - finally we see Hood in a lab. Not as emotionally satisfying as last week, but still pretty good.

Read: Kennedy's Brain by Henning Mankell. Very different from the Wallander books but engrossing.

Recommended Reading

Frank Rich in today's New York Times on the state of the GOP:

The trouble is far more fundamental than that. The G.O.P. ran out of steam and ideas well before George W. Bush took office and Tom DeLay ran amok, and it is now more representative of 20th-century South Africa during apartheid than 21st-century America. The proof is in the vanilla pudding. When David Letterman said that the 10 G.O.P. presidential candidates at an early debate looked like “guys waiting to tee off at a restricted country club,” he was the first to correctly call the election.

On Nov. 4, that’s roughly the sole constituency that remained loyal to the party — minus its wealthiest slice, a previously solid G.O.P. stronghold that turned blue this year (in a whopping swing of 34 percentage points).

Carnival of Maryland

The latest edition of the Carnival of Maryland is up at Pillage Idiot. A wide-ranging collection of posts from Maryland, heavy (of course) on politics this time, but lots of other stuff too. Check it out.

w00t! Als play Stampeders next week

Passion. Pouvoir. Fierté. Nos Alouettes!
Pride. Passion. Power. Our Alouettes!


Two games yesterday set up the 96th Grey Cup, which will be played this coming Sunday (Nov 23), at Olympic Stadium in Montreal. In one, the Alouettes won a 36-26 Eastern Final victory over the Edmonton Eskimos. In the other, the Calgary Stampeders beat the BC Lions 22-18 in the Western Final.

The Als have played Calgary twice this year and lost both times. Not blowouts, but still ... It's been 14 years since the host won a Grey Cup. The Als didn't play all that well the last time they were in the Cup, and they were a bit sloppy yesterday. Knock on wood, for sure.

(Here's a good game summary of Als-Esks, and an analysis, if you're interested.)

Flags

Red and Gray

A gray Friday morning, but the sun is on the red leaves.

Als vs Eskimos

I haven't mentioned my Canadian obsession this summer, but ... the Montréal Alouettes are in the running to make it to the Grey Cup (again! w00t!). Tomorrow they play in the Finale de l'Est (East Final) against the Edmonton Eskimos (I know, they're in the West. But they were 10-8-0 in the season, better than anyone in the East but the Als. So they made it). Anthony Calvillo, the Als' quarterback, is a perennial power, and Ricky Ray is no slouch either. Both teams have tough offenses and slightly spotty defenses, so the game could be high-scoring. The West sees the BC Lions (11-7-0, the same as Montréal) and the Calgary Stampeders (13-5-0, best in the league) trying to play for the Grey.

The Cup will be contested in Montreal this year, so it would be a real shame if the Alouettes weren't there.
Passion. Pouvoir. Fierté. Nos Alouettes!

Pride. Passion. Power. Our Alouettes!

(update: Montreal quarterback Anthony Calvillo threw for 295 yards and one touchdown, while Jamel Richardson had six receptions for 91 yards as the Alouettes won the right to play in their 16th Grey Cup, scoring 33 unanswered points en route to a 36-26 Eastern Final victory.)

This year in Montreal! Cette année à Montréal!

Happy Birthday, Claude!

Today in 1840 Claude Monet was born. One of the first Impressionists, Monet painted many series of paintings - the same subject from the same place under all different light and weather, exploring the idea that you can never really see the same thing twice. Here for instance are two from the Houses of Parliament series (above) and two from the Poplars on the Epte series (below).


(Monet at WebMuseum)

Sky Watch: Moon and Mist

more Sky Watchers here

I and the Bird

I and the Bird is at Aimophila Adventures this time. Check out the wonderful posts and the marvelous found poetry.