Happy Birthday, John

John Keats was born today in 1795, and died 25 years later of tuberculosis.

"Here lies one whose name was writ in water," he asked for his tombstone, but as time passed that became less and less true... Look here for his life and poetry in context of his times.

To Autumn

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

II.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

III.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

more Keats here

Happy Halloween

Brooks: Blackmail works. Probably. Please.

David Brooks outdoes himself in today's column. He actually argues that we should reward the GOP's last four years of scorched-earth blackmail by electing Romney - and justifies that by admitting that Romney has no convictions. "He would also observe the core lesson of this campaign: conservatism loses; moderation wins. Romney’s prospects began to look decent only when he shifted to the center. A President Romney would look at the way Tea Party extremism had cost the G.O.P. Senate seats in Delaware and Nevada — and possibly Missouri and Indiana.To get re-elected in a country with a rising minority population and a shrinking Republican coalition, Romney’s shape-shifting nature would induce him to govern as a center-right moderate." And he claims that although "conservatives would be in uproar. Talk-radio hosts would be the ones accusing him of Romneysia, forgetting all the promises he made in the primary season. There’d probably be a primary challenge from the right in 2016," nonetheless "Republicans in Congress would probably go along."

Wow. 

What a ringing endorsement. And what a sad, sad state to come to: arguing that your man would be better for the country because your party will "probably go along" with a hypothetical "shape-shifting" president who would have learned that "moderation wins" and betray his base after he gets into office, while acknowledging that "Republican House members still have more to fear from a primary challenge from the right than from a general election challenge from the left" and that therefore whatever Obama wants to do, the votes won't be there. 

So, shorter Brooks: my party is such a cesspool of extremism that the only way "big things" (which, by the way, are not progressive things) can get done is by electing Romney, because otherwise only "small-bore stasis" (like, he says, " some new infrastructure programs; more math and science teachers; implementing Obamacare" - you know, little things). Romney will give us "bi-partisan reform" (meaning "tax and entitlement reforms" with some "serious concessions" like "abandon the most draconian spending cuts in Paul Ryan’s budget; reduce the size of his lavish tax-cut promises"), "Bi-partisan" because the Dems will work with Romney too while the GOP will work with him only, and "reform" because, well, because.

 "Probably". 

Immoral

Here's that video:

ROMNEY: Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.Instead of thinking in the federal budget, what we should cut — we should ask ourselves the opposite question. What should we keep? We should take all of what we’re doing at the federal level and say, what are the things we’re doing that we don’t have to do? And those things we’ve got to stop doing, because we’re borrowing $1.6 trillion more this year than we’re taking in. We cannot…

Q: Including disaster relief, though?

ROMNEY: We cannot — we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids. It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we’ll all be dead and gone before it’s paid off. It makes no sense at all.

I'll tell you what I think is immoral, Mr. Romney. Pretending that the only way to get rid of a deficit is to cut spending, when everyone knows the first thing you do when you need more money is, well, to ask for a raise or look for a better-paying job. (Of course, your Bain experience has taught you that workers are there to be sacked, not paid, so maybe ... no, hell you know all about taxes; you dodge them well enough with your Cayman Islands bank accounts and your salary-vs-expense accounts ... )
Anyway.

What's really immoral is taking the functions that a government is best suited to perform - and performs not for profit, by the way - and sending them "back to the private sector". Recreating the age of the robber barons is immoral. Making poor (and poor-by-comparison-to-you) people pay for their disaster relief individually, for their medical care individually, - hell, according to things you've said in the past, for their schools and firefighters and police forces individually - and pay to companies in it for the profit they can make... all so you can pay a 15% tax rate: that's immoral.

And don't comment here to tell me he didn't say disaster relief was immoral. I know that. What he said was that not putting disaster relief in the hands of the private sector was immoral. Because for him, raising taxes on the rich is the real immorality.

Happy Birthday, John

The Atlas of Independence, the Sage of Braintree, John Adams, born this day in 1735 (if you don't count the 11 days 'lost' to the Gregorian calendar in 1752; his birthday was October 19, 1735 by the Old Style, Julian calendar. I don't know what Adams thought of that, but Washington is on record as feeling as though those days had been stolen from him). (On the other hand, these were people who could handle New Year on 25 March.)

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

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

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

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

(And Writer's Almanac last year featured a pessimistic quote we must prove wrong:) Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.

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

Two points about Jeopardy! tonight

Cozying up to? Leda is "cozying up to a swan"?

Clue crew or Alex or whoever writes these things: Leda was raped by the swan.

Okay, looking at Cézanne's actual painting, I guess you have to know the story and maybe it's the painter I should be annoyed with.

But still. Geeze. "Cozying up to".

(ps: hippotigris = ... elephant? rhino? Hippo is a bit opaque, I guess, but tigris should have suggested stripes.And if you know "Hippodrome" or "Philhip" or even that hippopotamus = river horse, then "zebra" should have come to mind, as it did for one of them...)

Sandy?

As requested (below) a shot of Gwen. She was asleep but when I picked up the camera she opened her eyes. They are now closed again.

The Week in Entertainment

Forgot to post this yesterday in all the Sandy excitement - it's short, anyway

TV: The Middle, The Neighbors, and Modern Family - their Halloween episodes.Also the Jack Black Gulliver's Travels, which was amusing if not exactly Swift.

Read: Went back for the first three Thursday Next novels - the good ones.

Happy Birthday, Valerie

Today in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1933, Valerie Worth was born. I love her Small Poems.

crab
 
The dead crab
Lies still,
limp on the dry sand,

All strength to crawl
Gone from his
Hard shell -

But he keeps a shape
Of old anger
Curved along his claws.


seashell
 
My father's mother
picked up the shell
And turned it about
In her hand that was
Crinkled, glossy and
Twined with veins,
The finger rumples
Into soft roses
At the knuckles, and
She said, "Why did
That little creature
Take so much trouble
To be beautiful?"

Happy Birthday, Boswell

Today in Edinburgh was born, in 1740, the man who invented modern biography and became a noun - Boswell, author of "Boswell's Life of Johnson" (The Life of Samuel Johnson). "I will not make my tiger a cat to please anybody," wrote Boswell, and made Dr. Johnson better known to us than any man before and most since. It's not the only thing he wrote (his Account of Corsica was deservedly famous), but it's the one he'll be forever remembered for.

The Voyage of the Beagle in tweets

The historic voyage of HMS Beagle, which carried the young Charles Darwin aboard, is being (re)recreated in tweets by @cdarwin (bio: “Geologist, naturalist and gentleman. On board The Beagle with Capt Fitzroy on a voyage around the world”).

If you’re not on Twitter, you can still read the tweets: go to the Twitter page and you will find latest updates.

Happy Birthday, John

John Hollander was born today in New York City in 1929. He is currently the Sterling Professor emeritus of English at Yale, and still writing (his most recent collection, A Draft of Light, was published last year).


An Old-Fashioned Song

No more walks in the wood:
The trees have all been cut
Down, and where once they stood
Not even a wagon rut
Appears along the path
Low brush is taking over.

No more walks in the wood;
This is the aftermath
Of afternoons in the clover
Fields where we once made love
Then wandered home together
Where the trees arched above,
Where we made our own weather
When branches were the sky.
Now they are gone for good,
And you, for ill, and I
Am only a passer-by.

We and the trees and the way
Back from the fields of play
Lasted as long as we could.
No more walks in the wood.

English is like a child

Via the Log, this lovely post by Kory Stamper at harm·less drudg·ery (a blog I'll have to start reading) with both a discussion of why etymology doesn't rule (and nor does logic) in English words' meanings, and this lovely metaphor:

English is a little bit like a child. We love and nurture it into being, and once it gains gross motor skills, it starts going exactly where we don’t want it to go: it heads right for the goddamned light sockets. We put it in nice clothes and tell it to make friends, and it comes home covered in mud, with its underwear on its head and someone else’s socks on its feet. We ask it to clean up or to take out the garbage, and instead it hollers at us that we don’t run its life, man. Then it stomps off to its room to listen to The Smiths in the dark.

Everything we’ve done to and for English is for its own good, we tell it (angrily, as it slouches in its chair and writes “irregardless” all over itself in ballpoint pen). This is to help you grow into a language people will respect! Are you listening to me? Why aren’t you listening to me??

Like well-adjusted children eventually do, English lives its own life. We can tell it to clean itself up and act more like one of the Classical languages (I bet Latin doesn’t sneak German in through its bedroom window, does it?). We can threaten, cajole, wheedle, beg, yell, throw tantrums, and start learning French instead. But no matter what we do, we will never really be the boss of it. And that, frankly, is what makes it so beautiful.

Happy Birthday, Katherine

Today in Birmingham, England, in 1846, Katherine Harris Bradley was born. She wrote, along with her lover, Emma Ward Cooper, under the name of "Michael Field".

Ah, Eros doth not always smite

Ah, Eros doth not always smite
With cruel, shining dart,
Whose bitter point with sudden might
Rends the unhappy heart --
Not thus forever purple-stained,
And sore with steely touch,
Else were its living fountain drained
Too oft and overmuch.
O'er it sometimes the boy will deign
Sweep the shaft's feathered end;
And friendship rises without pain
Where the white plumes descend.

Happy Birthday, Dylan

Dylan Marlais Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales today in 1914. (Yes, the Dylan Thomas from "the man's so square, when you say "Dylan" he thinks you mean "Dylan Thomas" - whoever he was" ...) (Although by now that reference is probably almost as dated as the concept of the joke in the first place...) photo ©Jeff Towns/DBC Here's his Poem In October

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.

A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.

It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels

And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singing birds.

And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.

Hah

21st century games: the villains are modeled on the swine flu epidemic.

Angry Birds, I thought.

Then I thought: wait, he said swine flu, not avian.

And then I thought: I'm not even sure they're the villains.

And then it was time. And I was sure I was wrong (I've never actually played it).

But obviously my sister's description of the game had stuck with me subconsciously. The birds are the heroes - and the villains are pigs.

Go me!

It writes itself

These two panels from Rex Morgan, MD just beg for slash, don't they?

Man, I hate this new interface. It just arbitrarily announced I had logged out and demanded I log back in - and opened a new tab to do so. And every time you select "View blog" from the page where you edit things, it opens a new tab - or window.

Attn Google: if I want a new tab/window I am capable of asking for one.

Romance language with the most native speakers in 1 country

Yay! I said Portuguese! (But how much would it suck to have said "Brazil" because you misread the question?)

Happy Birthday, Anne

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

Happy Birthday, Anton!

Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek was born today in Delft, the Netherlands. Now known as the Father of Microbiology, he was a master of the microscope - which he perfected - and the first to observe and describe single celled organisms, which he referred to as animalcules. He was also the first to record microscopic observations of muscle fibers, bacteria, spermatozoa and blood flow in capillaries.

"doesn't know if he was named for a knife or a race track"

Sorry, Alex: Bowie, Maryland, is not pronounced /ˈboʊ.i/ (BOH-ee) - like the singer, but rather /ˈbu:i:/ (BOO-ee), like the guy who died at the Alamo.

(The title? Somebody said that about baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn once, but I'm not finding the quote...)

Oooo, oooo: the mammalian nursery rhyme character suffering from allopecia is Fuzzy Wuzzy!!!

Happy Birthday, Allen

Today is the birthday of American poet, too early dead, Allen Hoey. He was born in 1952 in Kingston, New York, and died last year.

Drinking Alone

after Li Po

Now, with my hair gone gray
and my beard so white and snowy,
I glance over the snow-crusted
slope down to the frozen pond and
wonder if the field itself will feel
the grasses turning green with
spring or whether the struggle
to rise again, battered by cold
and snow, then coaxed by sun-
lathered heat, brings only
grief. Old sweet-gum just beyond
my window, horse-chestnut
desolate in the February winds,
what have you learned? Can you
give me just a hint? Beyond this
glass of wine, only darkness,
darkness and cold longing for light.


Find his long poem Provençal Light here

Happy Birthday, John

Today in 1805, John Russell Bartlett was born. He was a co-founder of the American Ethnological Society and author of that invaluable book, A Dictionary of American Regionalisms (on line here). Some entries:

OUT AND OUT. Wholly; completely; without reservation. A common colloquial expression here as in England.

Duff Green has issued proposals for a new free-trade paper in the city of New York. It will be conducted with energy, and will fail. An out-and-out anti-tariff free-trade paper, without commercial support, cannot obtain that support in any commercial city in the world.--N. Y. Com. Adv.

Although an out-and-out democrat, by virtue of my subscription, and your well-known liberality, I claim to he heard through your columns.--Cor. of N. Y. Tribune, Oct. 28, 1843.

Pliny Hopper expected to make a thousand per cent. the first year [on his morus multicaulis trees], and the second to be able to retire from business, and buy the whole State of Connecticut out-and-out.--Knick. Mag.

OUT OF FIX. Disarranged; in a state of disorder.

The week was the longest one ever was. It seemed to me that the axletree of the world wanted greasin', or somethin' or other was out of fix, for it didn't seem to turn round half so fast as it used to do.--Maj. Jones's Conrtship, p. 80.

OUT OF SORTS. Out of order; disordered. Dr. Millingen, in his remarks on persons of phlegmatic temperament, says:

They are in general good, easy persons, susceptible of kindly feelings, but, to use a common expression, easily put out of sorts.--Mind and Matter, p. 84.

For Kathie!

I forgot to post this, so it's a bit old, but still ... Kathie! This puzzle's for you.

Select to see answer: usher - grove - utopia - piglet = portu-geese .

Each or any?

Alex just said "Victory is possible for each of you."

I immediately thought: that's not right. I would have to say "any (one) of you" - because "each" of them could only win in a three-way tie.

Yet, thinking about it, certainly for each of them victory is a possibility.

Is a possibility the same as possible?

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: Karan Arjun, with Shahrukh and Salman Khan as murdered brothers reincarnated to take vengeance for their and their father's murders. It was quite enjoyable, though I was in my Western way startled at the depiction of Kali as Great Mother and merciful one.

TV: Caught up on Grimm - I'm not sure why I let so many episodes pile up on the DVR - maybe I was afraid they'd lost their way with Nick's mother showing up and Juliette in a coma, etc. But they didn't - it's still very good. I like what they're doing with Hank, and Monroe and Rosalie, and especially with Renard. Also the Wenesday trio - as usual, Modern Family much the best, The Middle quite funny in parts, and The Neighbors still on that one note, though Reggie Jackson was funny in the hallway scene.

Read: Finished Silent House by Orhan Pamuk, which was excellent. Began The Last Bookstore in America, but found it unconvincing, so when Jasper Fforde's The Woman Who Died a Lot came in, I put it down and never went back to it. Probably won't. The Fforde was very good - much better than the last couple - Thursday's back! Also the new Terry Pratchett, Dodger, which was a really good story as well as beautifully written. I really like the portrait of Dickens, and the way Dodger handled and then thought of Sweeney Todd. Very enjoyable.

George McGovern has died

George McGovern, who had been ill lately and was moved to a hospice earlier this week, died to day at the age of 90.

A tireless champion of peace abroad and social justice at home, he was soundly defeated in his presidential bid by Richard Nixon... who only a few months later had to resign the office in disgrace. In retrospect, this was a turning point, perhaps, and a sad one. I was in high school then, and really a Bobby Kennedy supporter, but I got in mild trouble for adding the line "We're leaving to go work for George McGovern!" to a school play. Eagleton and the war in Vietnam - McGovern, a WWII vet, was tarred as a spineless peacenik - but here's a bit of an op-ed from 2007, responding to a Dick Cheney speech:

He also said that the McGovern way is to surrender in Iraq and leave the U.S. exposed to new dangers. The truth is that I oppose the Iraq war, just as I opposed the Vietnam War, because these two conflicts have weakened the U.S. and diminished our standing in the world and our national security.

In the war of my youth, World War II, I volunteered for military service at the age of 19 and flew 35 combat missions, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross as the pilot of a B-24 bomber. By contrast, in the war of his youth, the Vietnam War, Cheney got five deferments and has never seen a day of combat -- a record matched by President Bush.

Cheney charged that today's Democrats don't appreciate the terrorist danger when they move to end U.S. involvement in the Iraq war. The fact is that Bush and Cheney misled the public when they implied that Iraq was involved in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks. . .

On one point I do agree with Cheney: Today's Democrats are taking positions on the Iraq war similar to the views I held toward the Vietnam War. But that is all to the good.

The war in Iraq has greatly increased the terrorist danger. There was little or no terrorism, insurgency or civil war in Iraq before Bush and Cheney took us into war there five years ago. Now Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism, a bloody insurgency against our troops and a civil war.

Beyond the deaths of more than 3,100 young Americans and an estimated 600,000 Iraqis, we have spent nearly $500 billion on the war, which has dragged on longer than World War II.

RIP, George. You were on the right side, always.

This is depressing

So, whiny Les Moore married Cayla whatever her name was. And this strip crowned it off today:

Okay, let's just accept for the sake of argument that this is the best thing that ever happened to her. Fine. But think about what she's actually just said.

Her life has never had a moment she thought of as the best thing that ever happened to her. Not one. And that includes her daughter - who, by the way is hidden from sight in this panel, presumably behind the guy wiping the tear from his eye, since that's Les's daughter turned to smirk smile at someone behind him, and yesterday she and Keisha were high-fiving each other.

What she's saying is that nothing in her life to date has been in any way special or good. It's all been one morass of misery. (Which might explain why she's marrying Les - and why she got the nose job, new hair-do, and other bits of cosmetic make-over since it can't be because Batiuk became afraid he was drawing her 'too black', not the enlightened one!*) Not that this moment is better; that there was never one moment she thought of as the best. And that's just ... depressing.

*If you don't read Funky Winkerbean - and really, why should you? - you may think I'm exaggerating. Nope. Check out Cayla from May, 2011:

Jumble sentence triumph!

Haven't posted these in a while, but yesterday's was too good to pass up. I not only used them in the same order they were in in the puzzle, but only added two function words!

Tithe to the gooey unseen martyr!

(And, yes, okay "triumph" is a bit much. But sometimes it's hard to make a short coherent sentence out of these things...)

Happy Birthday, Christopher

Today is the birthday (1632) of the great architect, astronomer, geometer, and mathematician-physicist, Sir Christopher Wren, also founder of the Royal Society and renowned in his life for his brilliant scientific drawings (particularly those of the brain). Today of course he's best remembered for the magnificent buildings he designed, especially St Paul's Cathedral.

His epitaph is famous, particularly the last line:

SUBTUS CONDITUR HUIUS ECCLESIÆ ET VRBIS CONDITOR CHRISTOPHORUS WREN, QUI VIXIT ANNOS ULTRA NONAGINTA, NON SIBI SED BONO PUBLICO. LECTOR SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS CIRCUMSPICE Obijt XXV Feb: An°: MDCCXXIII Æt: XCI.

Here in its foundations lies the architect of this church and city, Christopher Wren, who lived beyond ninety years, not for his own profit but for the public good. Reader, if you seek his monument - look around you. Died 25 Feb. 1723, age 91.

Check his Wikipedia page for a gallery of his architectural work.

The details

All the details of the Romney/Ryan tax plan are right here.

Happy Birthday, Tor

Today in 1903, in Sweden, Tor Johnson was born.

Yes, Ed Woods' Tor Johnson, seen here in that astonishing movie The Beast of Yucca Flats, as the eponymous beast.

"Touch a button. Things happen. A scientist becomes a beast."

A small but telling thing

When I watched the vice-presidential debate, something about this exchange went right past me at the time. Biden was talking about the economy and he said: (Transcript from the Commission on Presidential Debates, or you can watch this exchange here. )

We knew we had to act for the middle class. We immediately went out and rescued General Motors. We went ahead and made sure that we cut taxes for the middle class. And in addition to that, when that -- when that occurred, what did Romney do? Romney said, "No, let Detroit go bankrupt." We moved in and helped people refinance their homes. Governor Romney said, "No, let foreclosures hit the bottom."

But it shouldn't be surprising for a guy who says 47 percent of the American people are unwilling to take responsibility for their own lives. My friend recently in a speech in Washington said "30 percent of the American people are takers."

This is Ryan's response, after a bit of back and forth about their home towns and unemployment:

Look, did they come in and inherit a tough situation? Absolutely. But we're going in the wrong direction. Look at where we are. The economy is barely limping along. It's growing a 1.3 percent. That's slower than it grew last year and last year was slower than the year before.

Job growth in September was slower than it was in August, and August was slower than it was in July. We're heading in the wrong direction; 23 million Americans are struggling for work today; 15 percent of Americans are living in poverty today. This is not what a real recovery looks like. We need real reforms for real recovery and that's exactly what Mitt Romney and I are proposing. It's a five-point plan. Get America energy independent in North America by the end of the decade. Help people who are hurting get the skills they need to get the jobs they want. Get this deficit and debt under control to prevent a debt crisis. Make trade work for America so we can make more things in America and sell them overseas, and champion small businesses. Don't raise taxes on small businesses because they're our job creators.

He talks about Detroit. Mitt Romney's a car guy. They keep misquoting him, but let me tell you about the Mitt Romney I know. This is a guy who I was talking to a family in Northborough, Massachusetts the other day, Sheryl and Mark Nixon. Their kids were hit in a car crash, four of them. Two of them, Rob and Reed, were paralyzed. The Romneys didn't know them. They went to the same church; they never met before. Mitt asked if he could come over on Christmas. He brought his boys, his wife, and gifts. Later on, he said, "I know you're struggling, Mark. Don't worry about their college. I'll pay for it."

When Mark told me this story, because, you know what, Mitt Romney doesn't tell these stories. The Nixons told this story. When he told me this story, he said it wasn't the help, the cash help. It's that he gave his time, and he has consistently.

This is a man who gave 30 percent of his income to charity, more than the two of us combined. Mitt Romney's a good man. He cares about 100 percent of Americans in this country. And with respect to that quote, I think the vice president very well knows that sometimes the words don't come out of your mouth the right way.
(LAUGHTER)
BIDEN: But I always say what I mean. And so does Romney.

At the time, I focused on the "I always say what I mean. And so does Romney"; on the insistence that this is a horrible recovery (as Krugman notes, it's pretty normal though it could certainly be better); on the feeble attempt to make the 47% a misstatement instead of something Romney doubled down later; on the "five-point plan" which is a listing of goals with no indication of how we're going to get there (as if I said "my retirement plan is to be rich"); the definition of "giving to charity" as "giving to your church", one very much used by the right; and on the bizarre notion that because Romney offered to pay for college for a couple of his fellow Mormons that means ... what, actually? These folks aren't "takers" because they were lucky enough to know a rich man? It was a weird story and it was obviously one Ryan had prepared, because it doesn't belong where it is. Helping some people in Northborough has zip to do with Detroit. And even in the telling, there's no real segue: "Detroit - Mitt's a car guy - Car crash family story!"

So I missed something very telling.

Who the hell tells a story about a family in a car crash to Joe Biden? Who tries to use that in a debate with Joe Biden? Who comes prepared with this story to use like that? What do you hope to gain? We already know that Romney is capable of great generosity (I'll give it to him, though the phrase 'widow's mite' comes to mind) with people like him, people he knows; surely there was some other story Ryan could have used. What about that missing daughter story, the guy who worked for Bain Capital? Or when his neighbor's son died?

But no; Ryan brings out the car crash.

That story says something about Mitt Romney. But that Ryan chose to tell it here says something far less flattering about him.

Teddy

Really? A teddy is "a one piece woman's underslip"? For me, slips have to be dress like; teddies have leg holes.

ps: I know there's "properly" an accent in John C. Frémont's name. Nonetheless, Alex, the standard pronunciation is - free-mont, not fray-mon. Oxford and others point this out. His parents may have been French, but he was not.

Happy Birthday, Victor

Sen Yung, who later went by Victor Sen Yung, was born today in 1915 in San Francisco. He began by playing Number Two Son - Jimmy - with Sidney Toler in the Charlie Chan movies. After a break to serve in the USAF in WWII, he returned to Hollywood and Chan, playing Jimmy in the last Sidney Toler movies and then moving to the Roland Winters ones, where (confusingly) he played Tommy (who'd been played by Benson Fong in the Tolers...). After Chan, he continued to work in Hollywood and television, where he's probably best known as Hop Sing on Bonanza though he made quite a few other movies.

"We do this every day"

So, the Tigers won 88 games this season. That was the seventh-best record in their league. The Cardinals also won 88 - in their league that was the fifth-best finish. The teams they're playing won 95 and 94, respectively - that 94 for the Giants had them tied for third with the Braves, as both the Reds (at 97) and the Nationals (at 98) finished ahead of them.

So, if the Yankees manage to win their playoff, it'll be one first-place team (who won 95 games) against a fifth-place one. But the Tigers are currently leading them 3-0, so it's looking very likely that we'll see the number seven - seven - team in the AL play either the number five or three from the NL. And who wants to watch that, seven vs. five? Not me.

This is why they play 162 games: short series are too easy to win by luck. And a system that lets the seventh-ranked team into a four-team playoff in the first place is badly - very badly - designed even if you think playoff are a good thing.

It would have taken so little

Here's another good (well, not awful) idea ruined by sloppiness.

How hard would it have been to draw that movie actually in letterbox?

Oops

On xkcd is a look at "no X can/has become president" through the ages (well, you know, since 1788). Just one problem:

Oops.

Edited: It's now fixed. I HAVE THE POWER!

Just don't

You know, I don't mind when Google asks "did you mean"  - sometimes I do mistype (gasp!).

But I hate when Google says "showing results for what-we-think-you-meant" and I have to actively choose to see what I actually wanted.

 Sure, во вкусу is ungrammatical and probably a (widespread) error for по вкусу. But it's what I wanted to look up, dammit.

Happy Birthday, Oscar

Today in 1854, in Dublin, one of the world's most quotable men - Oscar Wilde - was born.

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.

And, of course,

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Happy Birthday, Noah

Today, 250 years ago, Noah Webster was born.

He had a profound influence on our spelling, but not nearly as profound as he would have liked:

1. The omission of all superfluous or silent letters; as a in bread. Thus bread, head, give, breast, built, meant, realm, friend, would be spelt, bred, hed, giv, brest, bilt, ment, relm, frend. Would this alteration produce any inconvenience, any embarrassment or expense? By no means. On the other hand, it would lessen the trouble of writing, and much more, of learning the language; it would reduce the true pronunciation to a certainty; and while it would assist foreigners and our own children in acquiring the language, it would render the pronunciation uniform, in different parts of the country, and almost prevent the possibility of changes.

2. A substitution of a character that has a certain definite sound, for one that is more vague and indeterminate. Thus by putting ee instead of ea or ie, the words mean, near, speak grieve, zeal, would become meen, neer, speek, greev, zeel. This alteration could not occasion a moments trouble; at the same time it would prevent a doubt respecting the pronunciation; whereas the ea and ie having different sounds, may give a learner much difficulty. Thus greef should be substituted for grief; kee for key; beleev for believe; laf for laugh; dawter for daughter; plow for plough; tuf for tough; proov for prove; blud for blood; and draft for draught. In this manner ch in Greek derivatives, should be changed into k; for the English ch has a soft sound, as in cherish; but k always a hard sound. Therefore character, chorus, cholic, architecture, should be written karacter, korus, kolic, arkitecture; and were they thus written, no person could mistake their true pronunciation.

3. Thus ch in French derivatives should be changed into sh; machine, chaise, chevalier, should be written masheen, shaze, shevaleer; and pique, tour, oblique, should be written peek, toor, obleek.

He won with draft and plow, but not with much he wanted. And here's his motivation:

1. The simplicity of the orthography would facilitate the learning of the language. It is now the work of years for children to learn to spell; and after all, the business is rarely accomplished. A few men, who are bred to some business that requires constant exercise in writing, finally learn to spell most words without hesitation; but most people remain, all their lives, imperfect masters of spelling, and liable to make mistakes, whenever they take up a pen to write a short note. Nay, many people, even of education and fashion, never attempt to write a letter, without frequently consulting a dictionary.

But with the proposed orthography, a child would learn to spell, without trouble, in a very short time, and the orthography being very regular, he would ever afterwards find it difficult to make a mistake. It would, in that case, be as difficult to spell wrong as it is now to spell right.

Besides this advantage, foreigners would be able to acquire the pronunciation of English, which is now so difficult and embarrassing, that they are either wholly discouraged on the first attempt, or obliged, after many years labor, to rest contented with an imperfect knowledge of the subject.

2. A correct orthography would render the pronunciation of the language, as uniform as the spelling in books. A general uniformity thro the United States, would be the event of such a reformation as I am here recommending. All persons, of every rank, would speak with some degree of precision and uniformity. Such a uniformity in these states is very desireable; it would remove prejudice, and conciliate mutual affection and respect.

3. Such a reform would diminish the number of letters about one sixteenth or eighteenth. This would save a page in eighteen; and a saving of an eighteenth in the expense of books, is an advantage that should not be overlooked.

4. But a capital advantage of this reform in these states would be, that it would make a difference between the English orthography and the American. This will startle those who have not attended to the subject; but I am confident that such an event is an object of vast political consequence. For,

The alteration, however small, would encourage the publication of books in our own country. It would render it, in some measure, necessary that all books should be printed in America. The English would never copy our orthography for their own use; and consequently the same impressions of books would not answer for both countries. The inhabitants of the present generation would read the English impressions; but posterity, being taught a different spelling, would prefer the American orthography.

Think about the publishing business. Think about the Internet!

In the country

I'm reading Orhan Pamuk's early novel Silent House, just recently translated into English. One of the characters is a 90-year-old woman, the grandmother of most of the others. She's reminiscing about the early days of her marriage as a child bride - the novel is set in August, a month before the 1980 coup - when her husband was told to quit politics and leave Istanbul. He says he's thinking about Paris, then changes his mind and says they should go to Salonica, or Damascus, or like Dr. Reza to Alexandria ... after all, he asks, "why should we leave the country?"

Wow. How much things change. Before WWI (which this was) they could have gone all the way to Sarajevo or Basra or Tripoli and not left the country...

Happy Birthday, Plum

Today in Guildford, England, in 1881, P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse was born. He moved to the United States in 1909 and began to write for the Saturday Evening Post. His most famous creations are, of course, Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, but Psmith, Blandings Castle, and the Oldest Member are justifiably well-known and loved, too. Wodehouse also wrote a huge number of song lyrics for musical comedies, and worked with Jerome Kern and Cole Porter, among others. Although his books are light comedies, they are extraordinarily tightly plotted - and he achieves heights of genius with Wooster: it's not easy to write from the point of view of someone so dim while keeping the character and the book amusing and coherent.

"...Have you ever had a what-do-you-call-it? What's the word I want? One of those things fellows get sometimes."
"Headaches?" hazarded George.
"No, no. I don't mean anything you get -- I mean something you get if you know what I mean."
"Measles?"
"Anonymous letter. That's what I was trying to say."

Happy Birthday, Virgil

Today in 70 BC, Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) was born. Author of The Georgics (written to recruit Romans back to the rural life), Virgil won a lifetime stipend from Augustus and settled down to write the Aeniad. However, he contracted a fever and died before his masterpiece was finished. He asked for it to be burned, since it wasn't completed, but his heirs (fortunately) ignored that instruction and listened to the emperor, instead.

arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris
Italiam fato profugus Laviniaque venit
litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto
vi superum, saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram,
multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem
inferretque deos Latio; genus unde
Albanique patres atque altae moenia Romae.
Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso
quidve dolens regina deum tot volvere
insignem pietate virum, tot adire labores
impulerit. tantaene animis caelestibus irae?

Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by fate,
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,
Expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore.
Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore,
And in the doubtful war, before he won
The Latian realm, and built the destin'd town;
His banish'd gods restor'd to rites divine,
And settled sure succession in his line,
From whence the race of Alban fathers come,
And the long glories of majestic Rome.
O Muse! the causes and the crimes relate;
What goddess was provok'd, and whence her hate;
For what offense the Queen of Heav'n began
To persecute so brave, so just a man;
Involv'd his anxious life in endless cares,
Expos'd to wants, and hurried into wars!
Can heav'nly minds such high resentment show,
Or exercise their spite in human woe?
-- John Dryden

My epic theme is war, and a man who, through fate, came as a refugee from Troy's coasts to Italy, and the shores of Lavinium. This man was battered helplessly both on land and at sea by the viciousness of the higher powers, thanks to the obdurate wrath of Juno the savage. Much, too, did he suffer through war, until he could establish a city, and bring his gods home to Latium. This is how the Latin peoples came to be, whence the forefathers in Alba, and the walls of mighty Rome.

Muse, remind me of the reasons: through what damage to her power, what wound, did the queen of the gods drive a man famous for his respect to live through so many agonies? Can so potent a fury blaze in a god's heart?
-- Andrew Wilson

The Week in Entertainment

Live: L'Elisir d'Amore at the Met. Extremely good. Anna Netrebko was wonderful; Matthew Polenzani nailed his Act II showstopper - and did stop the show; Mariusz Kwiecien shone as Belcore; and Ambrogio Maestri was quite good as Dr. Dulcamara. This was also well worth the trip!

DVD:  Baghban (Gardener), starring Amitabh Bachchan and Hema Malini as a couple who've spent their whole life giving their four sons want they wanted, only to discover that once he retires, the sons don't want to take care of them since he's got no money left. Fortunately he has an adopted son - played by Salman Khan (whom Bollywood loves, and who's very good here - though the part was actually meant for SRK, who's played Bachchan's son before, but he was laid up with a serious back injury), so you can rest assured that things will work out in the end. It gets a bit preachy, even anvilicious, at the end, but it's good - and Big B is wonderful, as is Hema Malini. Also Dulha Mil Gaya (The Groom is Found), with Sushmita Sen, Ishita Sharma, Fardeen Khan and Shahrukh Khan, a story about a playboy whose father's will compels him to marry the father's old friend's daughter - a simple Punjabi girl - and what happens when she comes to Trinidad looking for him, not knowing he's hidden the marriage from everyone, including a friend who decides to help the abandoned wife win him back. Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (Who am I to You..!) with a young Salman Khan (still able to put some depth into his characters) and Madhuri Dixit, though it's Renuka Shahane at Pooja who really steals the show, along with several good character actors, especially Anupam Kher, Laxmikant Berde, and Reema Lagoo, and a really wonderful Alok Nath. This one is a real tear-jerker, but manages to end happily. And finally Koyla (Coal) with Shahrukh Khan and Madhuri Dixit as the unfortunate lovers and Amrish Puri as the truly detestable villian - this one's not the greatest quality dvd I've ever seen considering the film's only 15 years old, but the story's tense and keeps you on the edge of your seat - kind of violent for a Bollywood romance, especially at the end while Shankar is avenging his parents. (Yes, a lot of long Bollywood films this week - that's what happens when you get a long weekend and then spend two days off with a bad sinus cold...) 

TV: The Mentalist - and I'm with Charlotte: I'm so over Red John. But yet another depressing turn of events. This show used to be great fun. Now it's anything but.

Read: The Aviary, a YA reworking of an old fairy tale theme, very nicely done.  Began Orhan Pamuk's recently translated Silent House.

Affordable? I wish

So I was booking a table for when I go see Aida in December, and Open Table offered me "affordable limos". I didn't intend to book one - it's 30 blocks, but that's just four stops on the subway - but I thought I'd take a peek. Geeze. $249 is "affordable"? The reason I can go to the Met is because I don't drop that kind of money on a limo.

(Though I confess, I'd like to be in the 2% instead of the 98%. But at least I'm not in the 47% - though if Romney really believes what he said, he's gonna lose, since if all that 47% vote Obama plus all the gainfully employed, income-tax-paying, and even really wealthy Democrats (there are a few), well, how can he win? But I digress.)

I wonder what a high-priced limo would cost? I'm not going to look it up; it would depress me, I think.

New place, same goods

Over at headsup, fev takes a break from Fox-watching to look at Jennifer Rubin's attack on a pollster, and finds ... well, much of the same.

Again, though, the point of the column is survey practice, not news practice: Those pesky liberals are asking loaded questions in surveys, and that's just another nail in the coffin of media trust. Makes you wonder what survey questions look like when they're asked on behalf of a news organization with a real sense of fairness and balance, doesn't it?

And then he shows us a few... It's pretty good stuff, as is usual when he looks at media practice.

Tristan and Isolde: so amusing! Wait, what?

I saw L'Elisir d'Amore at the Met today (matinee performance). It never really struck me before seeing it that Adina must have stopped reading her story halfway through. The 'Tristan loved Isolde, but she didn't love him so he got a love potion' bit is different than most versions, but I think none of them could be described as "amusing"!

ps - what is it with all the stories that essentially say if a man loves a woman, she's obligated to love him back, or else be branded cruel and heartless? One of the nice things about this opera is that Adina actually calls Nemorina out on that trope.

Happy Birthday, Dmitry

Today in 1350, one of the great Princes of Russia was born: Dmitry Donskoi (Dmitry of the Don). He built the first stone Moscow Kremlin (well, it was built under his reign), which allowed Moscow to withstand sieges by Algirdas of Lithuania, culminating in the Treaty of Lyubutsk. He also managed to settle things with both Vladimir and Nizhnyy Novgorod, as well as being acknowledged by other princes and dukes of the Rus, so that he more than doubled Muscovy's size.

But the main accomplishment of his thirty-year reign was the beginning of the end for Mongol domination. He defeated the general Mamai twice, at the Vozha River in 1378 and again in the decisive Battle of Kulikovo (on the Don River) in 1380. WHile it's true that Tokhtamysh, who replaced Mamai, reasserted Mongol rule over Muscovy, Dmitry pledged his loyalty to the Golden Horde and was reinstated as Mongol principal tax collector and Grand Duke of Vladimir. Upon his death in 1389, Dimitry was the first Grand Duke to bequeath his titles to his son Vasiliy without consulting the Khan.

LoFo Geese

Whoever's doing Mark Trail now draws lovely animals. It must just kill him when he looks at the colored versions that show up online and in some papers.

Like these geese.

Wherever the colorists live, they must not have ever seen birds.

Down in Flames

Man, I had no idea what the answer to Final Jeopardy was today. I read Walden Pond about a million years ago - okay, about forty - and I don't remember "Loch Fyne" being mentioned at all. I suppose the date and "title body of water" should have clued me in anyway, but - no.

Happy Birthday, Big B

Amitabh Bachchan (अमिताभ बच्चन ) was born today in 1942.

Remember the scene in Slumdog Millionaire with the movie star? That was Amitabh Bachchan (though Feroz Abbas Khan was playing him) - one of Bollywood's greatest superstars, an enduring performer and icon, still turning in moving and well-crafted performances.

Happy Birthday, Thelonius

Ninety-one years ago today, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Thelonius Monk was born.

It took him longer than Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie to make it big, but "Straight, No Chaser", "Round About Midnight", and "Blue Monk", along with his albums of interpretations of Duke Ellington, will live forever.

John Coltrane once said: "I always had to be alert with Monk, because if you didn't keep aware all the time of what was going on you'd suddenly feel as if you'd stepped into an empty elevator shaft."

The Week in Entertainment

Live: Wicked. I really enjoyed it - it was a touring company, but they were excellent; the staging was good, and the songs too. Lots of fun - "wicked good"!

DVD: Thanks to Adrian's remarks I dug out "The Romans" and watched it again, along with "The Rescue" which it was packaged with. It's quite a good story and I do like Ian and Barbara - they're very resourceful. They set a high bar for Companions to come. Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (Straight from the Heart), with Aishwarya Rai, Salman Khan, and Ajay Devgan, a movie I liked very much indeed. It's very well cast, what Khan in his usual one-note-charmer role and Devgan very subtle, so the ending is satisfying as hell. Main Hoon Na (I'm here now), with Shahrukh Khan, Amrita Rao, and Zayed Khan, a political thriller crossed with rom-com, pretty entertaing. The opening sequence is pretty violent, in a stylized, almost balletic way, which sets up the stakes that lie under all the college stuff, and the final action sequence is pretty, well, theatrical. It was the second SRK movie of the year (2004) to deal with the India-Pakistani conflict, the other being the extremely good Veer-Zaara; two movies could hardly be more different.

TV: The Mentalist - I have to say the summer didn't make me any less tired of this whole Red John and the FBI storyline. The Middle - I like the depth they show us in Axl - very deep and well hidden, but believable. The Neighbors - it's still a one-trick show, but the trick is still amusing. Wallander - the last one was quite good - Kurt is so weary, but it was nice to see him and Linda at the end. (ps: if God knew Jesus would be resurrected, he didn't really "give" his son for us and he's not the best role model for a person who wants to kill his own child).

Read: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (a mix of the old bookstore of mystery and Google) by Robin Sloan, which I enjoyed so much that I got and read his Anabel Scheme which was also very amusing.The Jewels of Paradise, a lovely book about researching an historical mystery by Donna Leon - set in Venice, but not a Brunetti.

At least people are told

From Indignant Desert Birds, this little observation:

The NFL told it’s employees not to come into work, and the nation media covered it. The NHL told it’s employees not to come to work, and the national media covered it. WalMart set riot cops loose on its striking workers, and it was impossible to learn that the workers were on strike at all. Say what you will about “millionaires vs billionaires” disputes, at least people are told about them.

Happy Birthday, Niels

Today in Copenhagen in 1885 Niels Bohr was born. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922 for his work on understanding the atom, and he continued to make contributions for a long and fruitful life. His "correspondence principle" is at the bottom of quantum mechanics, and he (along with Werner Heisenberg) developed the "complementary theory" which lies at the foundation of quantum theory.

We advise you, you are advised

I just finished a book in which the protagonist owns a Tata (an Indian car company). At one point the cover of the owner's manual was shown. At the bottom was this line:

This owner's manual is advised to be kept in the vehicle at all the times.

A quick look at Google shows that this is indeed the Tata Motors practice.

But in my variety of English, which is North American (USA) rather than Indian, the manual cannot be advised. It can't do anything. And it certainly can't be advised to have something done to it.

That is, I can see this sort of structure in, say, instructions to a new employee: You are advised to be clean-shaven. No, that's a bit adjectival. How about: You are advised to be finished with your lunch by noon. That breaks to "I advise you to shave" or "I advise you to finish".

Tata Motors is trying to say "We advise you to keep this owner's manual in the vehicle at all times." They could have said "You are advised to keep..." But they chose to be totally impersonal, I'm not sure why, and thus ended up saying "We advise the owner's manual to be kept in the vehicle". "... to keep itself in the vehicle" makes no sense.

I think that I'd - given the instruction to keep Tata and the driver out of the sentence - have gone with "It is advised that this owner's manual be kept in the vehicle at all times."

Or even "It's advisable that this owner's manual be kept..."  Or, really, "This owner's manual should be kept..."

Fifth place advances. Yay?

So, Atlanta won 94 games this season, and lost the one-game elimination to St Louis, who won 88 over the season.

Baseball used to be better than that. Of course, back in the day, with no playoffs, it would be Washington, 98 games, going to the series. Instead, we have a chance for the Cardinals to take their 5th place finish to the Series. Ain't it wonderful?

And yes, that means I think the Series this year ought to be the Yankees against the Senators. Sure, I love the Orioles, and I hope they win the playoffs and especially beat the Yankees, but they are tied for third. A World Series pitting the third- and fifth-place teams? Not how it ought to be.

btw, I'm so conflicted

I hate the playoffs in baseball, and I hate the wild card (though it does remedy the rank injustice of the stupid, meaningless divisions - remember 2006? St Louis, fifth in the league, went to the Series, won the Series).

But.

Both my teams - the Braves and the Orioles - are playing for the wild card.

The New Colussus

Goodness. Nobody guessed Emma Lazarus.

The clue was: Her most famous poem was written for a December 1883 art & literary auction to benefit the Pedestal Fund.

We got Elizabeth Barrett Browning (who died in 1861), Emily Dickinson, and ... Ezra Pound? Who was not only a man, but was born in 1885.  For that matter, Dickinson died in 1888.

What I wonder is if any of them thought of the poem - or most likely the last five lines - but just didn't know who wrote it. Here it is, Emma Lazarus's "The New Coloussus":

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Happy Birthday, Denis!

On October 5 in 1713 Denis Diderot was born in Langres, France. His life's work was his famous Encyclopédie, which was never published in its proper form as the bookseller - fearing the government - had damaged the proof sheets. The Encyclopédie was, in fact, formally banned in France as being dangerously subversive - and, as a work of the Enlightenment which took for granted the justice of religious tolerance, freedom of thought, and the value of science and industry, it probably was. (But some things deserve subversion, do they not?)

Where your money is...

Gotta quote a friend here:

The place you put your money is where your heart is? Says Mr. Cayman Islands? Switzerland? Whaa?

"Both sides do it"

"A number of misleading statements were made by both candidates in Wednesday's debate" says the NYT in their leading story on the debate. But reading that story, not just the tease, gives you a very different picture.

• Mr. Romney said Mr. Obama had doubled the deficit. That is not true.
• That $716 billion cut from Medicare: While fact-checkers have repeatedly debunked this claim, it remains a standard attack line for Mr. Romney.
• Romney says that half the companies backed by the president’s green energy stimulus program have gone out of business. That is a gross overstatement. Of nearly three dozen recipients of loans under the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program, only three are currently in bankruptcy,
• Mr. Romney also said that “many” of the companies that received such [green energy stimulus] loans were supported by campaign contributors. George Kaiser, a major fund-raiser for Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign, was an investor in Solyndra, the failed solar panel maker, but there are also examples of Republican and Democratic campaign contributors who also invested
• Mr. Romney said that Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul would allow the federal government to “take over health care. The 2010 health care law clearly expands the role of the federal government. But it also builds on the foundation of private health insurance.
• Mr. Obama claims that Mr. Romney has proposed a $5 trillion tax cut. It is true that Mr. Romney has proposed “revenue neutral” tax reform, meaning that he would not expand the deficit. However, he has proposed cutting all marginal tax rates by 20 percent — which would in and of itself cut tax revenue by $5 trillion. To make up that revenue, Mr. Romney has said he wants to clear out the underbrush of deductions and loopholes in the tax code. But he has not yet specified how he would do so.

And a few more from the debate fact-check blog:

• Mr. Obama said the oil industry received $4 billion a year in favorable tax treatment, although Mr. Romney said the figure was $2.8 billion. The president’s figure has appeared in budget documents in each of the past three years and has not been disputed by industry.
• Mr. Romney agreed with Mr. Obama that domestic oil and gas production were at their highest levels in years. But he asserted that all of the increase had come on private, not public lands, and that the Obama administration had cut oil and gas permitting in half on public lands. Neither assertion is fully accurate.
• President Obama just said he wanted to “take some of the money we’re saving as we wind down two wars to rebuild America,” repeating a call he has made a number of times. But the pledge has been derided by some fiscal analysts as something of a gimmick: the nation’s annual deficits have been much larger than its yearly war costs in recent years. So even without the expense of the wars, the nation is still expected to run deficits in the years to come — the savings from the wars will not be enough to yield a surplus to spend on things like infrastructure at home. So while the president could certainly change the nation’s spending priorities — and call for more domestic infrastructure spending and less military spending — the end of the wars would not suddenly produce a pot of money for other uses.

There are more fact-checks here. Many are of the "it depends" variety: how many jobs? depends on when you start counting. How many unemployed? depends on who you count. Some are more nuanced: Romney's 'energy independence' is doable, if you don't mind trashing the environment. Household income is down, but is Obama to blame for the recession he inherited? Is government spending 42% of the GDP? If you include state, local and federal spending - but government spending has spiked considerably due to the recession, an important piece of context. Massachusetts has the top-ranked schools? It depends on who's ranking them, and what criteria you use (Education Week put Maryland on top, and Wisconsin, Vermont, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, New Jersey and New Hampshire have better graduation rates).

(And they don't even mention Romney's pre-existing conditions lie that Krugman calls out:.)

But I think it's pretty clear. Although they call out Romney far more than Obama - who gets hit for "war savings" and what they describe as "filling in the blanks of some of Mr. Romney’s vague plans, usually in the least politically palatable way" - they can't help but lead by implying that both men were equally misleading.

This "both sides do it" isn't fair, or balanced - not when the size and number of the "misleading statements" are so overwhelmingly on one side. Pretending that both sides are equally guilty is a "misleading statement" in intself.

С днем рождения, Сергей!

Today (21 Sep Old Style) is the birthday of Sergei Esenin (Сергей Александрович Есенин) (1895). One of Russia's most beloved lyric poets, Esenin was born to a peasant family and later became part of the intelligentsia. He had five wives (including Isadora Duncan), and several lovers (including, possibly, Nikolai Kluev, who was certainly a close friend). Many of his friends ended up shot or in camps and Esenin himself suffered a mental breakdown and hanged himself. He was 30.

A couple of his poems, with my translations:

Сестре Шуре

Ах, как много на свете кошек,
Нам с тобой их не счесть никогда.
Сердцу снится душистый горошек,
И звенит голубая звезда.

Наяву ли, в бреду иль спросонок,
Только помню с далекого дня -
На лежанке мурлыкал котенок,
Безразлично смотря на меня.

Я еще тогда был ребенок,
Но под бабкину песню вскок
Он бросался, как юный тигренок,
На оброненный ею клубок.

Все прошло. Потерял я бабку,
А еще через несколько лет
Из кота того сделали шапку,
А ее износил наш дед.

To Sister Shura

Oh, the world has so many cats in it
We could never count them all.
My heart dreams of sweet peas,
And a blue star rings.

Am I waking, in fever or half asleep,
That I remember from a distant day:
On the bench by the stove a kitten purred,
Looking at me with indifferent eyes.

I was then still just a child,
But as granny sang the kitten leapt,
Throwing himself like a young tiger
At the tangled yarn she let drop.

It's all gone now. I've lost granny,
And years after she died, so did the cat;
They made a hat from its fur for grandad,
So long ago he worе it out.


Береза

Белая береза
Под моим окном
Принакрылась снегом,
Точно серебром.

На пушистых ветках
Снежною каймой
Распустились кисти
Белой бахромой.

И стоит береза
В сонной тишине,
И горят снежинки
В золотом огне.

А заря, лениво
Обходя кругом,
обсыпает ветки
Новым серебром.


Birch

White birch
beneath my window
just touched by snow
as if by silver.

On fluffy branches
with edgings of snow
white blossoms pile
in feathered clusters

And the birch stands
in drowsy stillness
and the snowflakes burn
in a fire of gold

While the dawn, slowly
surrounding it all,
sparks the branches
with new silver.


(All of Esenin in Russian here and lots in English here.)