The Good Wife

What annoys me is the way the ads and voice-overs all call the show the GOODwife, not the good WIFE. I know that stress shift is standard for compounds, but unfortunately a "goodwife" exists already.

When I hear the ad, I'm picturing a pilgrim.

If you must...

Sure, you can get to Mt St Helens from Mt Rainier without getting back on I-5. Just don't expect a sign on the interstate to tell you how...

Happy Birthday, WS

Today in 1927 the poet W. S. Merwin was born, in New York City though now he lives in Hawaii.

Unknown Bird

Out of the dry days
through the dusty leaves
far across the valley
those few notes never
heard here before

one fluted phrase
floating over its
wandering secret
all at once wells up
somewhere else

and is gone before it
goes on fallen into
its own echo leaving
a hollow through the air
that is dry as before

where is it from
hardly anyone
seems to have noticed it
so far but who now
would have been listening

it is not native here
that may be the one
thing we are sure of
it came from somewhere
else perhaps alone

so keeps on calling for
no one who is here
hoping to be heard
by another of its own
unlikely origin

trying once more the same few
notes that began the song
of an oriole last heard
years ago in another
existence there

it goes again tell
no one it is here
foreign as we are
who are filling the days
with a sound of our own


more of Merwin's poems here)

Happy Birthday, Moveable Type

Yes - today is the anniversary of the first volume of the most influential Bible ever published: the one printed with Johan Gutenberg's moveable type - in 1542.

It was the beginning of a new age - an age of widespread information and literacy, and an end to the Church's monopoly on knowledge. The new printing process fueled the Renaissance and was a major catalyst for the scientific revolution. It may even have midwifed the Reformation. In short, it facilitated, if not outright produced, the end of the Middle Ages.

It is estimated that more books were produced in the 50 years after Gutenberg's invention than scribes had been able to produce in the 1,000 years before that.

Funniest restroom sign I've ever seen

This sign was on a wall at a gas station in California.

Donors Choose Social Media Challenge

Yep. it's October (well, nearly), and that means Donors Choose has its annual challenge up.

This is a genuinely great charity; you give money directly to a teacher who uses it to fund a project - sometimes as basic as buying books.

I've got a Giving Page here. Please consider donating via it, but if you don't like those projects, please look around the site, find a project you do like, and suggest it for my page. Or just give to it. And remember - you don't have to fully fund a project.

You'll hear back from the teacher - you'll get photos (I won't post any here, but it's great seeing the kids reading!) - but here's a letter:

I can't thank you enough for funding this grant! This year I relocated to a different school and moved into a classroom that had nothing in it except desks. I spent my last weeks of summer frantically scraping together everything I would need to start the year. Thanks to this grant, I had materials for reading instruction ready at the start of the year.

These books have had a tremendous impact on the quality of reading instruction I'm able to provide for my students. Instead of "one size fits all" instruction that really misses the needs of most students, I'm able to work with leveled reading groups. Though it's the beginning of the year and I'm still laying the groundwork for my yearlong instruction plan, I can see that having new, interesting books that are at students' instructional level is really improving their confidence. Students who are self-proclaimed non-readers are already making huge gains in fluency and comprehension. One girl in particular spent the first few days of school pretending to read difficult chapter books, and guessing at words based on their first letter. This week she started reading Henry and Mudge, and she's now so proud of herself that she'll read the book to any person who will sit still long enough.

My students love these books. When reading appropriately-leveled books, students are able to feel successful and to measure their own progress as they move up to more challenging texts. Even more importantly, these books serve as a guide for helping students choose books for independent reading. Most of the books I requested for this grant were the first book of a series. Once students have read one book in a series, they're much more motivated to continue with others. The familiar characters and storyline help make other books in the series more accessible.

Though most of my students are growing up in poverty, they have big dreams for their futures. They know that achieving their goals and being successful requires them to have a quality education, and reading is the cornerstone of that education. By helping my students become successful readers, you're helping keep their future options open. Thank you so much for your generosity and for supporting these students who have such great need.

Please consider giving something! Thanks!

Kindle and Memory

I bought a Kindle a few weeks ago. This year I'll be travelling four times on business and three on pleasure, and it'll be nice to have the Kindle for reading. I enjoy a lot of things about it - it's a comfortable size and weight; if you turn off the wireless, the battery lasts for days; it holds a lot of books; the non-backlit screen means no eyestrain (though you can't read in the dark); you can adjust the size of the font; the books are cheap (many are even free, including lots of classics and out of copyright works).

But the absolute best thing about it?

"Our records show you have already purchased [TITLE]..."

I got that this morning when I inadvertently double clicked the Buy Now button on Emma Grossman's translation of Don Quixote, which I've been meaning to buy for a while. But I also got it when I forgot I'd already bought and downloaded Dick Francis' latest book...

As someone who finds many second (and even third!!!) copies lying around the place, I bless them for this feature - and only wish other online bookstores would implement it. Sure, for non-Kindle purchases I would like the option to go ahead and buy more (sometimes you lose one, sometimes they're presents), but it would be nice to have a check on my memory of what's already in the entirely too large pile To Be Read...

the many complex, technical terms often used in media discussions of foreign affairs

Glenn Greenwald gives us a brilliant foreign policy lexicon, showing the difference between a number of terms, such as these two:

The act of dangerous, threatening Hitlers -- NYT, today:

Iran was reported Monday to have test-fired long-range missiles capable of striking Israel and American bases in the Persian Gulf in what seemed a show of force.

The acts of a peace-loving democracy - Telegraph, January 18, 2008:

Israel has carried out the successful test launch of a long-range, ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, in what was intended as a clear show of strength to Iran.

Read it all. You'll be better able to discuss foreign policy ... or the media.

Monday Science Links

This week's delicious science, just a little bit late:

• First, Save Your Breath For Running Ponies warns Beware those yellow crazy ants!: Now, I can kind of see where the white-eyes and red crabs are coming from. It’s not like either of them are known for being particularly short-tempered creatures, so if they say the yellow crazy ants – or YELLOW KRAZEE ANTZ, as they prefer to be called – are insufferable, I’m willing to bet they are. Like, a Christmas Island White-eye will be quietly wafting through the forrest one day, feeling kinda hungry, before stumbling on a cluster of plump reddish berries. He’ll skip around them for a bit, sizing them up and being like, “Hey, berries, awesome.” But that brief moment will probably be ruined by a bunch of YELLOW KRAZEE ANTZ who will come marching over all like, “OH HAI! OMG you guys, I can’t believe we ate an entire pie for BREAKFAST!!!!!1!!!” and the Christmas Island White-eye will roll his eyes, all sarcastic, like, “Oh okay… CRAZY…! Now listen, ants. I’m pretty hungry, and I just found these berries, so would you… umm, hey excuse me, you’re kind of in my way, I was just going to peck there and erm…”


• At Starts With A Bang Ethan posts a series on dark matter: Gazing out into the dark abyss of the night sky, stars, galaxies, and clusters shine like tiny islands of light against the blackness of deep space. Trillions upon trillions of protons and neutrons fuse together in stars across the Universe, producing all of this light, and decorating the sky above.But, as we learned in part one of this series, the starlight that we see only accounts for 2% of all the matter that gravity tells us is there. What's more than that, is that we can figure out how much normal matter (i.e., stuff made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons, etc.) is around. We explored this in part 2, and found that this brings us up to maybe 15-20% of the total, but no more. So, where do we go from here? Do we invent a new type of matter, and give it some bland, generic name like dark matter, or do we conclude that gravity is lying to us, because we've been using the wrong theory?


• Razib at Gene Expression discusses why ligers are huge: Believe it or not, tigers are not the largest big cat. Ligers are (you might remember ligers from Napoleon Dynamite). Why? It has to do with the weirdness that occurs when you hybridize across two lineages which have been distinctive for millions of years, but not so long so as not to be able to produce viable offspring (in fact, many ligers are fertile as well). Here's the explanation.


• At Cognitive Daily Dave blogs on research that shows we're less likely to cheat if we see our enemies doing it: Clearly this "tradition" of petty theft was something we learned from our classmates -- but what exactly led us to believe that our unethical behavior was "okay"? It could be that since we saw no one getting caught or punished, we decided we wouldn't either. Or perhaps because the behavior was so widespread we never considered that it might be wrong. Or maybe our own sense of morality was modified by what we saw our friends doing. A team led by Francesca Gino devised a clever study to test some of these explanations for unethical behavior by groups. .


• At Why Evolution Is True Jerry tells us about another evolutionary prediction fulfilled: One of the puzzles in the evolution of birds from theropod dinosaurs appears to have been solved, at least according to this BBC report (I haven’t yet read the paper, which hasn’t been published). The discovery of pre-Cretaceous feathered dinosaurs fulfills a prediction that I — and of course many others — have made about what the fossils should show about the temporal existence of feathered dinos. The transitional “bird-lizard” Archaeopteryx had fully-formed feathers, but all of the feathered dinosaurs found in the last few years have been younger than Archaeopteryx. This leaves a gap, since the oldest transitional form already has well-formed feathers.

Enjoy!

The Week in Entertainment

TV: Warehouse 13. Yeah, McPherson is a bore, and I knew the sleeper wasn't Claudia. Will I pick it up again in January? I honestly don't know. House - cool episode. On reflection, I do wonder why they didn't care about his hallucinations; did they really chalk it all up to the Vicodin? Or did we just not actually see any treatment? But we'll have to see how it goes... Flash Forward has an intriguing performance, and I like John Cho. I hope it lives up to its pilot. The Mentalist - new credits, yay! Jane is definitely lost - so lost he's at risk for losing everything else. (And I have to say: I adore Cho. I really do. (Um, this show's Cho, played by Tim Kang)) Bored to Death - I'll have to give this another week or two; it was a bit ... shapeless. I did love the background conversation where Lisa was telling her boyfriend she wanted him to get rid of his tattoo: "But it says Lisa!" "That was other the Lisa!" Modern Family - this one has a lot of promise. Psych - again they play with the theme song. Shawn's reaction to Gus's breaking up with his other friends was very real - sometimes this show stretches well beyond its normal range, and it's always such a reward when it does. And Numb3rs is back - yay! ... Wow. Maybe it's a good thing the USA/TNT shows are gone for a while.
.
Read: Godless - Interesting read, though I didn't need to be convinced by him. I did pick up a few arguments for future use.

Happy Birthday, William

Today in 1906 Sir William Empson was born. He was a critic - one of the greatest English critics ever - and he also wrote poetry - complex and obscure but compelling.

The Teasers

Not but they die, the teasers and the dreams,
Not but they die,
and tell the careful flood
To give them what they clamour for and why.

You could not fancy where they rip to blood
You could not fancy
nor that mud
I have heard speak that will not cake or dry.

Our claims to act appear so small to these
Our claims to act
colder lunacies
That cheat the love, the moment, the small fact.

Make no escape because they flash and die,
Make no escape
build up your love,
Leave what you die for and be safe to die.

more poems here)

Probably Not!

I like this. Not only because he added the "Not" for the most likely best answer, but because of what he wrote after that.

Happy Birthday, Thomas

Today in St Louis in 1888 TS Eliot was born. He wrote many poems, most famous perhaps "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Waste Land" - and of course "The Hollow Men", which begins "We are the hollow men" and ends

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

He also wrote the source poems for "Cats". And many others, including this:

Aunt Helen

MISS HELEN SLINGSBY was my maiden aunt,
And lived in a small house near a fashionable square
Cared for by servants to the number of four.
Now when she died there was silence in heaven
And silence at her end of the street.
The shutters were drawn and the undertaker wiped his feet—
He was aware that this sort of thing had occurred before.
The dogs were handsomely provided for,
But shortly afterwards the parrot died too.
The Dresden clock continued ticking on the mantelpiece,
And the footman sat upon the dining-table
Holding the second housemaid on his knees—
Who had always been so careful while her mistress lived

More of his poems here

Mt St Helens Butterfly

This Variable Checkerspot was near Mt St Helens this past July. It has quite a dramatic color scheme, doesn't it?

Oh, Ali Aqna

Even your oddly specific £897,934 isn't enough to make me click on your link.

Even though I'd really love to have actually won that much money...

Another mystery butterfly id'd

This butterfly is from Tennessee - I spotted it back in late July while I was on vacation. Again, I'm not sure exactly what kind it is... I want to say it's a fritillary, but I don't know what kind and now I will - thanks, John. I doubled checked in Kaufman, and it's a match (not sure how I missed it the first time). A Great Spangled Fritillary.

Happy Birthday, William

Today in 1897, William Faulkner was born. After around 15 years of being published and remaining fairly unknown, he was awarded the Noble Prize in Literature. This brought him to the attention of the public and the wider world, and he's now regarded as one of the most important writers in American literature.

Byzantine?

Tom Shales says this today (about "Flash Forward"):

But other aspects are reminiscent of other shows, not so encouragingly -- among them last year's honorable failure "Pushing Daisies." The new series seems to share a perhaps fatal flaw of that now-canceled show, which is that the premise becomes so byzantine and the complications so arcane that eventually people just give up on trying to make sense of the darn thing.

What? He really found "Pushing Daisies" byzantine and arcanely complicated? Sheesh. How simple-minded is he?

Scott Fitzgerald

Today is F Scott Fitzgerald's birthday, which reminds me of the Italian woman I was in a workshop with. She called him "F Scott Key Fitzgerald" and then "Key Fitzgerald"... clearly thinking it was a double-barrelled surname. So odd...

Fiery Skipper

I think this one is a Fiery Skipper, but I'm not 100% sure...

Mystery Peck's Skipper

Here's one of quite a few Peck's Skippers that frequent the park.

I had said this: I think this little guy is a skipper of some sort, but I can't find him. (The butterfly id sites I have found aren't much help! I check brown, and black and silver ones show up in the results; I check Maryland, and those that live nowhere near show up!)

But- thanks to John and his recommendation of Kaufman's field guide - I found him!

Happy Birthday, Music Makers

Today was a good day for music! John Coltrane (1926), Ray Charles (1930), and Bruce Springsteen (1946), all!

Happy Birthday, Euripides

This is the day we celebrate the birth of one of ancient Greece's greatest dramatists, Euripides. He reshaped Attic drama by featuring petty and uncaring gods, flawed but human heroes, strong women, and smart slaves.

Of his more than 90 plays, only 19 survive (or is "only" the right word? That's more than from Aeschylus and Sophocles together), among them Alcestis, The Bacchae, Elektra, Iphigenia At Aulis, Iphegenia in Tauris, Medea, and The Trojan Women.

Cabbage Whites

Such a prosaic name for such a delicate beauty! Another butterfly with sex difference in color: the female has two black spots, the male one. The male below has a torn wing - so fragile.

Silver Spotted Skipper

Here's a little Silver Spotted Skipper. I actually took this picture about a month ago.

Monday Science Links

This week's science:

• Larry Moran at Sandwalk talks about chromosome drift: One of the characteristics of evolution is change in chromosome number and organization. These large-scale changes are often associated with speciation events although it would be a mistake to assume that there's a causal relationship. One particular chromosomal rearrangement has been getting a lot of press recently because it has been featured on blogs and in some recent trade books on evolution. Humans (H) have only 23 pairs of chromosomes while most other apes, such as the chimpanzee (C), have 24 pairs. Evidence for a fusion of two of these ancestral chromosomes into a single chromosome 2 in humans has been well supported by genome sequence data. Our fusion chromosome contains remnants of telomeres at the fusion point and it has another centromere-like region at just the right position.


• Judith at Zenobia: Empress of the East goes off topic to talk about Hubble: NASA's newly-repaired Hubble Space Telescope snapped this panoramic view of a colourful assortment of 100,000 stars residing in the core of the giant star cluster, Omega Centauri. And who cares if I'm off topic. This is awesome.


• Phil Plait blogs at Bad Astronomy, but something has changed his mind: ZOOLOGY IS THE BEST SCIENCE. ESPECIALLY AMPHIBIANS. WE SHOULD ALL SUPPORT AND OBEY AMPHIBIANS.


• Mark Liberman at Language Log blogs on a stunning development in neuroscience: This is beautiful work, showing that certain areas in the brain of mature Atlantic Salmon "light up" when the animal is asked to categorize the emotions expressed by a set of (human) faces. More amazing still is the fact that the fish performed this task while dead.


• Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution Is True blogs on a a tiny T Rex and a rare cat: Two bits of science news today. First, my Chicago colleague Paul Sereno and his team have revealed the fossil of a tiny Tyrannosaurus-rex-like dinosaur. Named Raptorex kriegsteini, it’s 1/100th the size of T. rex (they’re talking body mass here, not linear dimension). Over at the Guardian, you can read a precis of the Science Express article and watch a video of the ever-telegenic Sereno describing the beast, its significance, and how he procured it. ... And what would science news be without felids? The BBC News reports that the rare and elusive African golden cat (Profelis aurata), has been photographed in the wild for only the second time in history, deep in the Ugandan jungle.

Enjoy!

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: The Next Doctor (yes, the DVD finally came; I shake my fist at the DVR that missed it!). Christmas is rough on London, even in the past! "I'll have to stop you": people, when the Doctor says that, he means it.

TV: Warehouse 13 - the nemesis? Not so much fun, after all. Psych - I love it when they play with the credits and theme song! Bollywood Style! (And the line at the end (It's not that impressive. I solve a case every week, and usually one around Christmas...) was funny. Fool's Gold, which was more entertaining than I anticipated.

Read: The Lost Symbol - yes, I read it. It's a pretty fast read, though you really need to, not just suspend, but destroy your disbelief. Interred With Their Bones, a very exciting chase after a lost Shakespeare play - and the real identity of the author.

Butterfly Identification

So, I'm putting up a set of butterfly photos, and some of them I don't know. So I try some butterfly id sites, and they are of almost no help. The one I did id (the common buckeye, I did it by just looking at every photo on a site of butterflies that live in Maryland. But the others have eluded me ... and the id sites?

No help.

I mean, when you put in a brown skipper with orange and white spots shouldn't you get Silver Spotted Skipper?



And when you specify Maryland, should Snow's Skipper - with this range - show up?



It baffles me... and means I'll be posting mystery butterflies later this week. Hopefully, one of you will know what they are!

Tiger Swallowtail

Spotted this beauty on Friday. She (the females are the ones with blue on their hind wings, whether yellow or black; all the males are yellow with only one tiny blue spot per wing) has had a moderately hard time: the swallowtails on her hind wings have both been lost, but her wings aren't torn.

Happy Birthday, Stevie

Today in Hull, in Yorkshire, England, in 1902 Stevie Smith was born.

Admire Cranmer!

Admire the old man, admire him, admire him,
Mocked by the priests of Mary Tudor, given to the flames,
Flinching and overcoming the flinching, Cranmer.

Admire the martyrs of Bloody Mary's reign
In the shocking arithmetic of cruel average, ninety
A year, three-hundred; admire them.

But still I cry: Admire the Archbishop,
The old man, the scholar, admire him.
Not simply, for flinching and overcoming simply,
But for his genius, admire him,
His delicate feelings of genius, admire him,

That wrote the Prayer Book
(Admire him!)
And made the flames burn crueller. Admire Cranmer!

more Stevie Smith poems here

Common Buckeye

This guy may be common, but I don't recall ever seeing one before. Those big eyespots are gorgeous.

Happy Birthday, David

Born today in 1933 - David McCallum (my first tv crush, as Illya Kuryakin of course!) It's good to see he's still working.

I'm sure they did

This is odd. In her chat today, someone asked Lisa de Moraes:

have you seen previews of "Modern Family"? I have high hopes for this show. (And I know the twist at the end of the first episode, but won't tell.)

Lisa de Moraes: Actually the producers and the network have said it's okay to tell because their focus group research said it helped attract viewers... The show starts out being about three very different families. Then, turns out they are all one big family and they get together in the final scenes. It's hilariously funny, and hopefully this spoiler won't keep any of you from checking it out, I hope....

What? That was a spoiler? Every damn commercial I've seen for this show gives that away!

Happy Birthday, Sam

Born this day in 1709 in Lichfield, England, that great lexicographer and writer, Dr Samuel Johnson, who was also the subject of the first great biography in English.

During a conversation with his biographer, Johnson became infuriated at the suggestion that Berkeley's idealism, the theory that individuals can only directly know sensations and ideas of objects, not abstractions such as "matter", could not be refuted. In his anger, Johnson powerfully kicked a nearby stone and proclaimed "I refute it thus!"

A much quoted man, he also said:

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.

And his Boswell (Boswell) reported this:

Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." But let it be considered that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak of self- interest.

And I can't resist... lolxicographer Johnson (from Jeff Prucher):

All Hail His Imperial Majesty

Today, 150 years ago, Joshua Norton proclaimed himself Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. This is from his Wikipedia entry:

Norton spent his days as emperor inspecting the streets of San Francisco in an elaborate blue uniform with tarnished gold-plated epaulets, given to him by officers of the United States Army post at the Presidio of San Francisco. He also wore a beaver hat decorated with a peacock feather and a rosette. He frequently enhanced this regal posture with a cane or an umbrella. During his inspections, Norton would examine the condition of the sidewalks and cable cars, the state of repair of public property, and the appearance of police officers. Norton would also frequently give lengthy philosophical expositions on a variety of topics to anyone within earshot at the time.

It was during one of his inspections that Norton is reputed to have performed one of his most famous acts of "diplomacy." During the 1860s and 1870s, there were a number of anti-Chinese demonstrations in the poorer districts of San Francisco. Ugly riots, some resulting in fatalities, broke out on several occasions. During one such incident, Norton allegedly positioned himself between the rioters and their Chinese targets, and with a bowed head started reciting the Lord's Prayer repeatedly until the rioters dispersed without incident.

Norton was much loved and revered by the citizens of San Francisco. Although penniless, he regularly ate at the finest restaurants in San Francisco; these restaurateurs then took it upon themselves to add brass plaques in their entrances declaring "[b]y Appointment to his Imperial Majesty, Emperor Norton I of the United States." By all accounts, such "Imperial seals of approval" were much prized and a substantial boost to trade. Supposedly, no play or musical performance in San Francisco would dare to open without reserving balcony seats for Norton.

In 1867, a police officer named Armand Barbier arrested Norton for the purpose of committing him to involuntary treatment for a mental disorder. The arrest outraged the citizens of San Francisco and sparked a number of scathing editorials in the newspapers. Police Chief Patrick Crowley speedily rectified matters by ordering Norton released and issuing a formal apology on behalf of the police force. Chief Crowley observed of the self-styled monarch "that he had shed no blood; robbed no one; and despoiled no country; which is more than can be said of his fellows in that line." Norton was magnanimous enough to grant an "Imperial Pardon" to the errant young police officer. Possibly as a result of this scandal, all police officers of San Francisco thereafter saluted Norton as he passed in the street.

It's sort of too bad this proclamation had no force:

Read more at Emperor Norton.net.

Happy Birthday, William

William Carlos Williams, great American poet, born today in 1883. Like a superhero with a secret identity, he was a doctor by day and poet by night, writing lines of deceptive simplicity.

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.

Winter Trees

All the complicated details

of the attiring and

the disattiring are completed!

A liquid moon

moves gently among

the long branches.

Thus having prepared their buds

against a sure winter

the wise trees

stand sleeping in the cold.


This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

(More poems here and poems and short bio here)

Peter, Paul, and ...

Barry Leiba came up with the perfect post on this, so I won't duplicate it.

Mary Travers has died.

Do Iranians read the WaPo? Let's hope not

Because if they do, Glenn Greewald points out, they'll have justifications for everything they do.

Seems the Post feels we should go into talks with Iran demanding they clean up their act with regards to due process and torture. As Greenwald says:

So we're supposed to roll into these negotiations righteously complaining about Iran's "obvious lack of due process." For the last eight years and counting, we've been imprisoning tens of thousands of Muslims around the world with no charges of any kind. Keeping people who have never been charged with any crime shackled in orange jumpsuits and locked in cages for years on a Cuban island has become our national symbol. Just yesterday, the Obama administration demanded that a court rule it has the power to abduct people anywhere in the world, ship them to Afghanistan, and keep them indefinitely imprisoned there with no trial of any kind -- which is exactly what we've been doing for years and still are (in a dank and nasty prison which happens to be right over Iran's Eastern border). Our current President just recently advocated and is currently devising a scheme of so-called "preventive detention" whereby he'd be empowered to lock up people indefinitely for crimes they might commit in the future. We continue to abduct people from all over the world and ship them to third-party countries for interrogation and detention ("renditions") without any pretense of due process. And right over Iran's own Western border, we not only continue to occupy Iraq, but maintain prisons in which thousands of people are imprisoned by our military without any charges of any kind -- including an Iraqi journalist who works for Reuters who was ordered released by an Iraqi court yet continues to languish in an American prison in Iraq, merely one of numerous foreign journalists we imprisoned for years, in Iraq and elsewhere, with no charges at all.

And the WaPo's editiorial and op-ed pages are filled with admiration and approval, and justification, for all of it. In fact, they recently fired Dan Froomkin, the one columnist they had who consistently called for investigation.

One has to wonder how they function with such massive cognitive dissonance. As long as We do it it's okay? Or even if We do it it is by definition Good because We are, by definition, the Good Guys?

Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

Kidney transplant: $125,000
Immunosuppressant pills so the kidney isn't rejected: $1000-$3000 a month
Dialysis: $9300 a month

Which won't Medicare pay for?

Yeah. The pills. As this NY Times story relates, Medicare will pay for a kidney transplant (or even two), and it will pay for a life-time of dialysis. But it will only pay for three years of the immunosuppressants transplant patients need to have to retain their new kidney. This leads a large number of dialysis patients to keep themselves off the transplant lists, and costs Medicare $6300 to $8300 a month for each one of them. A recent study showed that Medicare spends an average of $17,000 a year on care for kidney transplant recipients, most of it for anti-rejection drugs. That compares with $71,000 a year for dialysis patients and $106,000 for a transplant (including the first year of monitoring).

And it's more than that. Someone who requires regular dialysis finds it hard to keep a job, considering how much time they spend hooked up to the machine. And you know they can't find other health insurance: this is definitely a pre-existing condition.

Just one more of the disconnects that makes "the best health-care system in the world" not quite.

(ps: The House reform bill addresses this. The Senate's doesn't.)

Happy Birthday, Bobby

Bobby Short, an extraordinary interpreter of the great American songbook, was born today in 1924. Thanks for the music, Bobby, you were always a delight to listen to...

"it's frightening to be spoken of as an imaginary country"

Food for thought, from a Slacktivist thread on bank fees and check cashing and hidden levies on the poor. A British poster says she's angry about the lies being spread about the NHS. An American responds, and she responds to the response:

When the US crackpots talk about the UK and the NHS, they aren't talking about the actual United Kingdom. That's why Stephen Hawking doesn't live there. They're simply projecting their nightmare fantasies. Sorry they had to besmirch where you live. But, does anyone in the UK actually take their criticisms insane ranting seriously?

When they attacked the NHS, the country on the whole rose in fury. A lot of that, I think, was national pride: we like our NHS, and we also don't like having a bunch of Yanks mouthing off about us.

It is pretty insulting to be spoken of as an imaginary country. But more than that, it's frightening to be spoken of as an imaginary country by a nation with that many weapons and that many crazy people. Iraq was equally a fantasy as far as American policy was concerned, but that didn't stop them from declaring war on it. My fear is that the UK's imaginary status in these people's minds won't stop them from moving in on us. After all, a rapist who drags you into the bushes doesn't want the real you, he's using you as a projection of his fantasies - but he's going to fuck and hurt you nonetheless.

At the moment I'm less worried about people over here than over there. America is one scary country from the outside, and I wouldn't at all put it past the extremists to try something in the UK as part of their general expansionism.

When Brits, even just some Brits, start thinking like this, we're doing something very, very wrong.

Priorities in order

A friend of mine lives near this church and sent me this shot of their sign. When they say "Feeding" they mean it...

Monday Science Links

This week's yummy science:

• Brian at Laelaps wonders how saber-toothed cats used their teeth: The feeding habits of saber-toothed cats have long perplexed scientists. How in the world did these cats kill prey with their almost comically-oversized teeth? Did Smilodon and its kin use their teeth like daggers to stab prey to death, or did they simply rip out a huge chunk of flesh from the side of a victim, leaving their prey to hemorrhage to death? While the stabbing hypothesis has generally been abandoned it is still a mystery how sabercats used their immense canines, especially since there were three different types of saber-toothed cats which differed in their killing techniques. Perhaps the characteristics of the prey animals themselves could provide some clues as to how the felids might have fed. There may be more than one way to attack a mammoth or giant sloth, but some ways would certainly have been better than others.


• A twofer! Ed at Not Exactly Rocket Science posts on songbirds that eat bats, and Darren at Tetrapod Zoology is beaten to it, but still posts. Ed: When food is precious, animals can resort to strange behaviours in order to satisfy their hunger. Take the great tit. Its usual diet of insects and creepy-crawlies is harder to come by in winter. But in one Hungarian cave, great tits, ever the opportunists, have learned to exploit a rich and unusual source of food. They kill sleeping bats. and Darren: Various predatory microbats around the world predate on small birds, but it was a bit of a surprise to learn that this behaviour occurred in western Europe. Of course, bats don't have it all their own way: it's well known that bats are heavily predated upon by raptors and owls. As revealed today by Péter Estók and colleagues in Biology Letters, however, it now seems that hibernating pipistrelle bats have another predator to worry about: the Great tit Parus major. Say what? For those non-Eurasians who may not be familiar with this species, it's a very widespread and distinctive tit (or titmouse, if you must), easily identifiable thanks to its black head, striking white cheeks and black belly stripe.


• Okay, this, too, is about those bat-eating tits. But bec of Save Your Breath for Running Ponies has a very different take on it: Okay, yes, Pipistrelle Bat, this situation is all very gross and dire for you. No one is particularly happy about having to wake up from an enormous sleep, especially when there’s a chance they’re going to have their brain case pecked open when they do so. But it doesn’t have to be this way. You need to fight back, and playing to your strengths is probably the key to your success in this situation. But what are your strengths, tiny Pipistrelle, I hear you ask? Well, being bats, preferring to hang out in dark caves as you do, tightly hugging yourselves with those membranous black wings as you grip inside leaky crevices with those dirty, possibly frayed claws of yours, you’ve been described on more than one occasion as being “creepy.” But don’t be offended, Pipistrelle Bat, I’d still invite you for tea at my house, so long as you promised to keep the chatter to a minimum, but more to the point – your creepiness could be your best asset in driving away those great tits.


• Carl Zimmer, who keeps The Loom, has a piece in Time this week on canine cognition: Henry could find the biscuit by sniffing the cups or knocking them over. But Hare does not plan to let him have it so easy. Instead, he simply points at the cup on the right. Henry looks at Hare's hand and follows the pointed finger. Kivell then releases the leash, and Henry walks over to the cup that Hare is pointing to. Hare lifts it to reveal the biscuit reward. Henry the schnoodle just did a remarkable thing. Understanding a pointed finger may seem easy, but consider this: while humans and canines can do it naturally, no other known species in the animal kingdom can. Consider too all the mental work that goes into figuring out what a pointed finger means: paying close attention to a person, recognizing that a gesture reflects a thought, that another animal can even have a thought. Henry, as Kivell affectionately admits, may not be "the sharpest knife in the drawer," but compared to other animals, he's a true scholar. It's no coincidence that the two species that pass Hare's pointing test also share a profound cross-species bond.


• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society blogs on Earth crossing the ring plane: Since Saturn's equinox on August 11, Earth has been in an unusual position, on the night side of Saturn's rings. Today, though, we move back to the sunlit side as Earth crosses through Saturn's ring plane. This would be an interesting time to take photos of Saturn except for one small problem: Saturn's almost at solar conjunction (that event happens on the 17th), so it's way too close to the Sun for photography right now. I wrote much more about this for today's episode of 365 Days of Astronomy; I'll post the transcript of that show below. One of the things I discuss in this show is "mutual events," when an observer manages to catch a view of one body in space passing across another. Here are a bunch of nifty animations of mutual events captured by Cassini over the past few years...

Enjoy!

The Week in Entertainment

Live: Wittenberg, at the Rep at Howard County. What a delightful play - Hamlet still at college, and his two teachers, Martin Luther and Faust. Wordplay reminiscent of Stoppard, jam-packed with ideas, and funny, so funny.

Film: Still Walking (Aruitemo aruitemo), Hirokazu Kore-eda's latest film. One of the commenters at the NYT site said this film would be considered a classic if only Yasujiro Ozu hadn't made so many great movies. This might be true, but it's hardly fair. It's like saying a symphony might be a classic if it weren't for Mozart. Still Walking is a wonderful generations-in-conflict story, about a family held together unwillingly by the death of the oldest son. Quiet, tense, and at times very funny, I highly recommend it.

TV: Raising Flagg, which I really enjoyed. Leverage, about which I have mixed feelings. Sophie was not my favorite character (Eliot, followed by Parker, is) but I do not like Tara. Granted I am not a Jeri Ryan fan, but I don't think I'd like Tara even if I were. I'll miss Sophie if this is permanent. And we have to wait till January to find out? Psych - nice to see a Lassie-centric episode where everyone is treated well by the script. Funny show.

Read: Swan for the Money, a very good entry in the series (Meg Lanslow by Donna Andrews) though I have to say this title doesn't work for me. "Swan" and "One" are too different for a pun.

Happy Birthday, Roald

Born today in 1916, one of the great children's authors ever









There's no earthly way of knowing
Which direction we are going
There's no knowing where we're rowing
Or which way the river's flowing
Is it raining? Is it snowing?
Is a hurricane a-blowing?
Not a speck of light is showing
So the danger must be growing
Are the fires of hell a-glowing?
Is the grisly reaper mowing?
Yes, the danger must be growing
'Cause the rowers keep on rowing
And they're certainly not showing
Any signs that they are slowing!

Let's Send Grrl to Antarctica!

I'm a small blog. But I do have readers, and maybe one of them has a big blog? Anyway - You may have heard that Quark Expeditions is going send a blogger to Antarctica on an expedition Feb 20 to Mar 3, all expenses paid. They're running an election on the Internet. One of my favorite bloggers (and a really good person), GrrlScientist, is currently third by less than 30 votes. Very soon now, Quark is going to be emailing everyone who's voted and encouraging them to switch to one of the top 3, which means Grrl has a really good chance to win - if she gets new and switch voters now.

I think she'd be much better than the first place guy, a Portuguese DJ, or the 2nd place guy, Don Osmond (yes, of those Osmonds). Grrl is not only a blogger, she's with ScienceBlogs and she knows how to write. She's been published in Open Lab anthologies (all of them) and also in journals like Nature and Science. She's a scientist - specializing in birds - so she'll bring a professional eye to the place. And she has a gift for finding beauty, and will be able to write about what she sees - for us to read - in wonderful prose that's accurate and accessible. She takes wonderful photos, too. You don't have to take my word for it, you can check out her blog, and read a rather impressive list of endorsements from across the blogosphere - which happens to be her only "sponsor" (unlike the others in the top 5).

Sending Grrl to Antarctica would be a mitzvah for everyone concerned - I know I really, really want to read what she'll write, and see what she'll see. As the Digital Cuttlefish says:

Go, blog for me, and be my eyes
And ears, beneath Antarctic skies,
Where colonies of penguins dwell
(Creating quite a rancid smell).

And you will sit upon the ice
And snow, and blog in words concise
By rugged glaciers, icy shelves,
For us, who can’t be there ourselves.

Go vote! (She's Devorah)

Happy Birthday, Stanislaw

Today in Lviv - then in Poland though now in Ukraine - in 1921, Stanislaw Lem was born. After WWII he basically invented the genre of far-future science fiction, using it to explore philosophical themes in an often satirical fashion. In the west, his best known novel is probably Solaris, but His Master's Voice and Fiasco, along with the Cyberiad, are also well known.

In a coincidence, the (I think excellent) Russian film version of Solaris was cited as the definitive example of кино арт-хаус (kino art-khaus, art house film) by one of my students - we were discussing the translation of an article about Fyodor Bondarchuk, not an art-house director.

Happy Birthday, HL

Born today in 1880, the irascible and splendid Sage of Baltimore, HL Mencken.

"I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant."

"It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money."

"The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression."

"The only way to reconcile science and religion is to create something which isn't science or something which isn't religion."

Sky Watch: Fire in the Clouds

Dawn comes on a day destined to be gray, fire in the clouds.






more Sky Watchers here

Up Into The Building

I was at work that day, and spent much of it in a parking lot as they tried to evacuate our building in nothing flat. But, really, who am I, that anybody cares where I was or what I was doing?

Still, here's what I think about:






A man describing making his way down the stairs from the 67th floor of the North Tower:

"And then when we got to around the 35th floor we had to move over for the firefighters. I mean, we were all trying to get out, and here they came, up into the building."

(2001 tribute page)

Happy Birthday, HD

Today Hilda Doolittle, who wrote as HD, was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Sea Rose

Rose, harsh rose,

marred and with stint of petals,

meagre flower, thin,

sparse of leaf,

more precious

than a wet rose

single on a stem—

you are caught in the drift.

Stunted, with small leaf,

you are flung on the sand,

you are lifted

in the crisp sand

that drives in the wind.

Can the spice-rose

drip such acrid fragrance

hardened in a leaf?

Happy Birthday, Lev Nikolayevich

Лев Николаевич Толстой, or Leo Tolstoy as he's known in English, was born today (or August 28 Old Style) in 1828 on his family's estate in Yasnaya Polyana. His family was aristocratic (he was a count, or graf) and he lived wildly as a youth, running through a great deal of money. He also served in the army, participating in the defense of Sevastopol during the Crimean War. After his marriage he settled down in an austere lifestyle and wrote... War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and the lesser-known works such as Resurrection, The Death of Ivan Ilych, and After the Ball. Ivan Bunin called his unfinished novel The Cossacks one of the finest pieces of Russian prose ever written. In his later life he became a Christian anarchist (though he disliked the term), a pacifist, and (in Gandhi's words) "the greatest apostle of non-violence that the present age has produced", and the founding president of the International Union of Vegetarian Esperantists.

Read him in Russian here, and in English here.

City Life

We walked out of Gallery Place Metro station into pouring rain yesterday - a real frog-strangler. Fortunately, we'd brought umbrellas with us, so we headed on down to the E Street Cinema without trouble. Lots of people were huddled up under overhangs and in doorways, trying to decide if they wanted to get soaked or be late.

And behind us came a man selling: "Umbrellas! Umbrellas!"

Monday Science Links

This week's science:

• Is economics a science? Well, here's a brilliant piece by Paul Krugman in the NYT Magazine, How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?: It’s hard to believe now, but not long ago economists were congratulating themselves over the success of their field. Those successes — or so they believed — were both theoretical and practical, leading to a golden era for the profession. On the theoretical side, they thought that they had resolved their internal disputes. ... And in the real world, economists believed they had things under control: the “central problem of depression-prevention has been solved,” declared Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago in his 2003 presidential address to the American Economic Association. In 2004, Ben Bernanke, a former Princeton professor who is now the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, celebrated the Great Moderation in economic performance over the previous two decades, which he attributed in part to improved economic policy making. Last year, everything came apart. Few economists saw our current crisis coming, but this predictive failure was the least of the field’s problems.


• At The Loom, Carl Zimmer talks about disappearing teeth: Charles Darwin was interested not just in how new things evolve, but also in how old things disappear. Often, they don’t disappear completely without a trace. We don’t have a visible tail like our primate ancestors did, but we still have a series of little bones tucked away at the bottom of the spine. While it may not function like a full-blown tail, it still anchors muscles around the pelvis. Blind cavefish may not have eyes of the sort found on their cousins in the outside world, but they still start to develop eyes as larva, before the cells start to die away. Sometimes, though, the only place to look for vestiges of a lost trait is in a genome. In the journal PLOS Genetics, Mark Springer of the University of California and his colleagues have published an intriguing study of how teeth–and the genes for teeth–have faded away over the past 50 million years. In particular, they looked at enamel, the tough covering that caps the teeth of humans and other vertebrates.


• At Why Evolution Is True, Greg has a survey of weird amphibian breeding practices: Feeding unfertilized eggs to tadpoles may seem like a bizarre and exotic way to take care of your offspring (the BBC labeled it an “alien scene”), but it’s actually sort of mundane in the world of amphibians. Amphibians have the most diverse set of modes of reproduction and nutrition of juveniles of all the land vertebrates. Laurie Vitt and Janalee Caldwell, in their superb herpetology textbook, list 40 different reproductive modes for frogs. Its hard to pick a strangest amphibian reproductive mode, but I’d go with either the gastric-brooding frog, Rheobatrachus silus, in which the female swallows her eggs, which develop in her stomach, or histophagy, practiced by several amphibians, in which the fetuses feed upon the mother’s hypertrophied oviductal lining (i.e. while still inside of her).


• Over at Starts With A Bang, Ethan asks how many times would you have to fold a piece of paper to get to the moon (of course, check out the comments for several reasons this is a thought experiment): Well, let's see how we'd figure it out. I don't know how thick one piece of paper is, but I know it's pretty thin. I can, however, estimate how big those 500 page reams are. They're about 2 inches high, so maybe that's about 5 cm. That means one page is about 0.01 cm high. And what of the Moon? Mean distance from the Earth is about 384,000 km, or about 3.84 x 10^12 pages away. So you'd expect that you'll need an awful lot of foldings to get there, right? Well, hang on for a second.


• And over at archy, John has a tale of zombie mammoths, or at least tales: The problem with the internet, we are told, is that it has no standards and no controls. Anything that is written will be recycled endlessly, regardless of whether it is true or not. There is no way to correct bad information on the internet. This is why the internet is inferior to traditional media. At least that's what we're told. In the three hundred years since Europeans first received reports of a mysterious creature in Siberia called the mammoth, nothing has engendered more public fascination about them than the occasional discovery of nearly intact, frozen mammoth carcasses with flesh still attached. At some point in the nineteenth century, frozen mammoths became a staple of catastrophist theories. As one of the usual suspects, frozen mammoths have regularly been trotted out to prove that Atlantis was real, the Earth's axis can suddenly change location, a planet-sized comet caused the plagues of Egypt, or that Noah's global flood was real. Sometimes they prove all of the above. Three particular mammoths show up more often that all of the others combined.

Enjoy!

Happy Labor Day

This year we in the US celebrate Labor Day today.

Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts. Molly Ivins

Labor Day differs in every essential from other holidays of the year in any country. All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflict and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race or nation. Samuel Gompers

If any man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor, he is a liar. If any man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool. Abraham Lincoln

With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in men, than any other association of men. Clarence Darrow

The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation’s strength, freedom, and leadership - the American worker. US Department of Labor

Happy Birthday, Edith

Today in Scarborough (in Yorkshire), England, Edith Sitwell was born.

Heart and Mind

SAID the Lion to the Lioness-'When you are amber dust,-
No more a raging fire like the heat of the Sun
(No liking but all lust)-
Remember still the flowering of the amber blood and bone,
The rippling of bright muscles like a sea,
Remember the rose-prickles of bright paws
Though the fire of that sun the heart and the moon-cold bone are one.'

Said the Skeleton lying upon the sands of Time-
'The great gold planet that is the mourning heat of the Sun
Is greater than all gold, more powerful
Than the tawny body of a Lion that fire consumes
Like all that grows or leaps...so is the heart

More powerful than all dust. Once I was Hercules
Or Samson, strong as the pillars of the seas:
But the flames of the heart consumed me, and the mind
Is but a foolish wind.'

Said the Sun to the Moon-'When you are but a lonely white crone,
And I, a dead King in my golden armour somewhere in a dark wood,
Remember only this of our hopeless love
That never till Time is done
Will the fire of the heart and the fire of the mind be one.'

The Week in Entertainment

Film: Captain Abu Ra'ed, a wonderful, sweet, and sad Jordanian movie.

DVD: Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen.

TV: Psych, not one of the best episodes, in fact rather forgettable. Warehouse 13 took a good notion and lost momentum. Seriously - Myka's whole storyline was tritely predictable, even her own memory of the event included her ordering her dead partner not to do what he did. Leverage had some very nice character moments in it. City of Ember, a very good adaptation of the book, which I love. Adam & Steve, a sweet little boy-meets-boy movie with a kickin' gay two-step dance-off at the end. Plus one of the all-time great lines: "I'm tired of fighting you and the whole world just so I can have something as radical and subversive as a fucking boyfriend. Fuck you, Steve: I may be damaged goods but I am goods nonetheless."

Read: Three Cups of Tea, about Greg Mortenson's school building (that is building schools) in Pakistan. It was a fast and engaging read - very interesting. Started Why Evolution Is True, which I've heard good things about, and so far, so good.

Humanist Symposium

The Humanist Symposium is not intended to be a forum for all types of atheistic thought, but original posts that specifically support the philosophy of humanism. Humanism is a way of thought that affirms the inherent dignity and worth of human life and our ability to seek truth, gain wisdom, and tell right from wrong through the application of reason.

• The happiness and freedom of life as an atheist, or other positive aspects to living a life without religious belief
  
• Efforts to evangelize for atheism, and stories of people who have recently deconverted from religion
  
• How to find meaning and purpose in a godless life
  
• How non-religious people deal with weddings, child-raising, deaths, and other significant life events
  
• Posts that stir up the human sense of awe and wonder
  
• The ethics and moral philosophy of the non-religious
  
• How nonbelievers can foster and nourish a sense of community

Of course, not all of these categories are represented in this edition, but I hope you find something affirming, helpful, or amusing here!

	Jeffrey at Failing the Insider Test give us Why I A An Atheist, in which he explains why he didn't stop at 'undecided non-Christian': Furthermore, what is it about existence in heaven that is meaningful? The two perks are hedonistic (streets of gold, etc.) and relational (always being with the Lord/other Christians.) But this is not terribly different from seeking to create meaning in one's life through living life with other people and enjoying whatever time we have. How is being with the Lord meaningful while being with other people is not meaningful? If the problem is that a finite existence is not meaningful, then I am happy to be spared the experience of heaven, as it would then consist of an infinite sequence of meaningless existences.
	Ebonmuse at Daylight Atheism gives us The Secular Tithe, in which he offers us ways to give secularly: Speaking out as nonbelievers is well and good. There will always be a need for forceful, effective advocacy for atheism. But I've come to realize that, if we really want to build a secular and enlightened society, speech is not enough. It's even more important that we offer material support - our money and our time - to organizations that do good by advancing the values that atheists hold dear. We don't have to copy the example of the churches that demand an astonishing 10% of their members' income, but I think every atheist who can afford it should donate at least a few percent to groups working to uphold the causes that make this world better. Call it a secular tithe.
	Greta Christina at her eponymous blog offers usAtheism and Patience: So how often do atheists have to keep making the same points, and keep countering the same old arguments? In which I remind atheists -- including myself -- that theistic arguments and ideas that are old and tedious to us are new to many believers, and we need to be patient when countering them.
	And Greta Christina also offers her humanist vision for the kind of sexual world she'd like to see... using music as a metaphor: Like a lot of sex-positive sex writers, I spend a lot of time ranting and venting about things in our sexual culture that I don't like.Today, I want to do something different. Instead of bitching about the sexual culture we have, I'd like to present my vision for the sexual culture I'd like to see. And the best way I can say it is to put it in a metaphor. I would like us to treat sexuality -- and differences in sexualities -- much the same way we treat music.
	Michael at a Nadder! offers us Pass the Cockroach, Please: I argue that in a naturalistic world, we should be suspicious of our sense of disgust (esp. at food), because it can have real-world consequences that affect human progress.
	Dan at Camels With Hammers offers us On The Meaning Of Meaning, a response to a question from a reader: There was no externally guiding hand at work. But that feeling that you had to have this encounter is a correct feeling not because you actually had to bump into the friend but because when you did bump into him and hear what he thought you had to respond as you did given who you are and that necessity is what you are feeling, I think. And when you imagine that you might have been exposed to something else and you might not have had the same philosophical epiphanies, you are not imagining being you, you’re imagining being some one else quite like you who you might have become but did not. But the you that you are had to come into being given the reality of what you were exposed to and you sense that necessity and feel it as fate since it was a decisive moment of discovery of what within you would ultimately be most important when push came to shove.
	Paul at Secularism Examiner offers us A Christian finds empathy among the atheists: Though he may not have walked a full mile in someone else's shoes, Christian blogger Aaron Gardner did the next best thing: he walked through a museum with an atheist's name tag. Gardner, author of the blog A Great Work, had an eye-opening experience as he covertly joined the Secular Student Alliance's visit to the astoundingly absurd it-would-be-funny-if-it-weren't-serious Creation Museum in Kentucky. This event generated a lot of news on its own, as the well-behaved atheists looked agog at the fake history on display at the museum. But Gardner, looking to see what it might be like to experience the museum through the nontheist perspective, blended himself into the secular crowd, and came away with a new understanding.
	Friar Zero at Apple of Doubt offers Why Torture Matters, in which he critiques America's interrogation program on a humanist basis: Then I have to ask whether you have any moral compass whatsoever. I think the phrase “these animals” tells us everything we need to know. It’s an embrace of the worst kind of elitism, that which says it’s acceptable to kill these people, to terrorize them, to mistreat them. Why? Because they are just “these animals”. Not fellow human beings like you or me who are entitled to the same respect and presumption of innocence. If you really believe in equal rights for all humans then those rights must be applied even to these men. If you cherish your own access to due process and fair treatment but want to deny these men those same rights then you don’t believe in human rights. To even attempt to segregate out a segment of the human race as moral inferiors is to invite conundrum.
	Claire at This humanist offers Diversity, about which she said "This is a bit of an old post but I still feel this way and I'd like to share it.": Lately, I have found myself drawn more and more to the idea of diversity and its importance in our lives. This realisation was triggered by my experiences when I became vegan a little over a year ago. As a vegan, and before that vegetarian, I found that I didn’t necessarily want to have to eat at restaurants which catered for vegetarians exclusively, I just wanted to be able to eat at restaurants that offered enough variety in their menu that I could choose dishes that were suitable for me. I don’t want to live in a world that is tailored to suit my needs and wants, I just want there to be enough variety and freedom that there is room for me in it.
	Steven at The Emotion Machine offers What Has God Done To Human Morality?: Despite the imperfect nature of man, religion itself is a vastly imperfect and out-dated construct of the human mind and morality. I don’t believe the flaw in religious morality has to do with the literal teachings of good conduct, which seem mostly reasonable, but the problem is in the context that they are presented. A large part of this context is centered around God. God, the almighty inconceivable, is very much the foundation of religious morality. Without His existence, the whole system seems to fall apart. Why? Because good conduct is supposed to get you to Heaven, and bad conduct is supposed to send you to Hell. The problem with this view of reality is that we are only given an incentive to do good for our own well-being, and we are told to avoid bad to save ourselves from eternal damnation. In other words, religion teaches us very little about the natural good in our hearts, and instead uses bribing and fear in order to coerce us into “good.” I have a huge problem with this.
	Andrew at the evolving mind offers A Groom to God: How can a person groom a god? While chimpanzees and other primates can reach out and touch conspecifics, what do you do in the case of a noncorporeal entity, an almighty, invisible alpha? The answer: gestures, vocalizations and language. So no, human beings don’t physically groom their gods; they do it with body language and with words: prayer, chanting, song. They comfort and reassure their great leader. He can relax; he is indeed number one. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
	Mike at Brain Stimulant offers us Free Will and the Brain: Free will is the idea that we are the driver of our own actions. We feel that we are in control of what we do. Our behavior does not seem like it is happening to us in a deterministic fashion. We feel that we are not passively watching the "movie of life", but can will our own actions to almost whatever we so desire. Is the position that we actually have something analogous to free will tenable, given what science currently tells us? Do we merely have the perception of free will? Also can future neuromodulation techniques potentially enhance our perception of being in control of our own lives?
	Victor at Secularism Examiner offers A Common Sense Approach To Atheism: Atheism does not require science. Atheism does not require science – repetition was in order to get it into your head. There is no need for science whatsoever. Not believing in god is very easy and natural. It is part of our psyche; otherwise, we would have six billion people on this planet believing in Zeus, Thor or any other mythical god. You don’t believe in them, do you?
	Sam at Glowing Face Man offers us A Modern Version of Psalm 23: The article title merely suggests a "Modern" version of Psalm 23 (the famous "yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..." passage); in fact it could just as well be billed a "Humanist" version: one of the main features is the removal of all mention of "The Lord".
	Paul at Secularism Examiner gives us Cal Thomas is afraid I'm going to kill my grandmother, and other wingnut nonsense: Now, I know that the Washington Times’ op-ed page is no bastion of open-minded rationalism, but a piece it ran by Cal Thomas may just take the cake of uninformed, anti-intellectual, paranoid wingnuttery. Wait, it doesn’t just take the cake. It seizes the cake, mashes it between its fingers, smears it on the walls, and cackles uncontrollably while singing “Happy Birthday to Me!!!” Thomas takes the health care debate, already rife with demagogues who are ginning up the credulous and xenophobic to lash out with froth and bile, and uses it as a jumping-off point to attack the “Secular Left” for being allegedly without morals and seeing no inherent value to human life. Does that sound like a lot of secularists or liberals that you know? You know, those secularists and liberals who want to help the poor, speak up for the working class, stop wars, protect the freedom of speech (and religion), end atrocities and genocide around the world, and educate children regardless of their economic status? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

That's it for this edition of The Humanist Symposium. The next edition will be in three weeks at Prior Perceptions.

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