Yes. STOP IT.

As a friend of mine said on Facebook:

Dear [Media]: Please stop saying these girls have been "sold as brides"  when what you mean is "sold as sex slaves to their rapists".

She named a specific paper - the local one - but they're all doing it.

For the love of anything you hold holy: STOP IT.

Exhibit 1 proving that Christians are a persecuted, ostracized bunch

The National Day of Prayer, with its official theme Bible verse (Romans 15:6: “So that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”) and official prayer (ending "For the glory of Your Name hear our prayer, forgive our sin, and heal our land. We ask this in the name of Your Son Jesus Christ who offers us salvation from Your judgment, forgiveness for our sin, and reconciliation with You through His own blood shed on the Cross. Amen.")

Could there be any more convincing evidence that as Libery Institute and the Family Reaearch Council have reported

"anti-Christian persecution is not only increasing in America, but that it's coming from our own government."

Right?

Oh, for...

In Idaho, Concerned Parents called the cops because a teenager was giving away copies of Sherman Alexie's acclaimed Young Adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Yep. You read that right. They called the fricking cops. On 911.

Not that the cops actually did anything once they showed up. After all, the book isn't illegal to own. But still. Sheesh. Panic over The Other much? 911 for a book giveaway?

Head. Exploding.

(True story. People tried to ban the novelization of West Side Story back a million years ago when I was in high school. I remember the school board meeting - a lot of us went. The book was not banned.)

That book, of course, is one of the most banned books in America, and it's been banned in the Meridian, Idaho, school district, too.

But the district's local teens fought back, organizing a petition to have the book reinstated. In response, the local Boise bookseller Rediscovered Books crowdfunded a $3,400 campaign to buy copies of the book for each of the 350 students who signed the petition.

Junior Mountain High School student Brady Kissel went to Kleiner Park in Meridian to distribute the books Wednesday evening. Kissel had arranged the giveaway with Rediscovered Books as part of a national book giveaway event called World Book Night.

The goal of World Book Night is to put a free, ultra-readable book into the hands of a reluctant reader. Kissel and her fellow teens had no problem finding takers for Alexie's controversial book. They gave away all but 20 copies.

And then, of course, an irate parent ruined it by literally calling the cops to the scene. Boise news station KBOI reported that even the cops were baffled about why they'd been asked to police a book giveaway.

KBOI reported that police had been summoned by "someone concerned about teenagers picking up a copy of the book without having a parent's permission."

I mean, for crying out loud. I hope that parent's kid is reading the hell out of The Absolutely True Diary.... I hope that kid - and all of them - learn the joy of reading that the book celebrates. And I hope the parent(s) discover that they cannot lock down their kid's mind.

I'm excit---oh, no I'm not

The headline reads 'Angel' producer returns to series TV with 'Signed'.

Except it's not Angel. It's Touched by an Angel, which could hardly be more different.

The Weeks in Entertainment

I don't know why I keep forgetting these... this one's an entire month, almost! Partly it was the vacation, I guess... Anyway:

Live:West Side Story at the Hippodrome - a high-energy production that was terrific to watch. I'd never seen it on stage before, and it's fabulous. The dancers really get a workout. The cast was good - Tony was particularly engaging, but they were all fine.Arabella at the Met - such an enjoyable show. Ghost, also at the Hippodrome. The show is okay; the staging (particularly the scene in the subway car) was very well done, but the songs are eminently forgettable and without Whoopie Goldberg, Oda Mae is a caricature not a character.

DVD: Les Petits Meurthres d'Agatha Christie, entertaining French adaptations of Christie novels. The sleuth (Poirot or whoever) is replaced by a pair of French cops, and the trappings change, sometimes radically (The Body in the Library takes place in a brothel, for instance), but the plots are actually more faithful than some of the later Suchet Poirots.

TV: Most of the regular stuff - nothing stands out as exceptionally memorable, though, with the notable exception of Grimm, which remains really, really good. Nick's mom drives me crazy, though, so I'm glad she's gone, and I hope Adelind doesn't go after Sean now.

Read:A bunch of Penny Parker books from the 1930s. Destroyer Angel, the latest of Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon books. The Axe Factor, Colin Cotterill's latest Jimm Juree book, which included a major fakeout based on the author (I assume :-) that worked really well. Can't and Won't, Lydia Davis short stories - some very short indeed, and most of them very good. By Its Cover, the latest Commissario Bruno book by Donna Leon, excellent as always. Children of the Revolution, Peter Robinson's latest which sees him getting back on form.

It's always the way...

So, I work with Russ Crandall, The Domestic Man (and let me plug his book, The Ancestral Table, a fabulous cookbook!). He has a lot of great recipes on his blog. This week, however, he posted his all-time number one recipe - in page hits, in buzz - in fact, The Huffington Post is going to run a story on it.

Was it his picanha? His beef bourguignon? His rogan josh? His lamb sirloin? His smoked turkey? His roasted asparagus with bearnaise sauce? His German-style simmered spinach?

Nope.

It's his chicken nuggets.

Missing something important

Hunting for some charts already digitized for Ukrainian grammar, I found a very basic website. Its "Lesson" on Ukrainian Feminine begins by saying "we need to know what the role of Feminine is in the structure of the grammar in Ukrainian." Fine, yes indeed we do. But then it says (straight off the site, including their rather idiosyncratic transliteration):

Ukrainian feminine refers to female qualities attributed specifically to women and girls or things considered feminine. The complement to feminine is masculine. Here are some examples:

he is happy vіn shtaslivij - він щасливий
she is happy vona shtasliva - вона щаслива
he is American vіn amerikanecj - він американець
she is American vona amerikanka - вона американка

man cholovіk - чоловік
woman zhіnka - жінка
father batjko - батько
mother mati - мати
brother brat - брат
sister sestra - сестра
uncle djadjko - дядько
aunt tіtka - тітка
bull bik - бик
cow korova - корова
boy hlopchik - хлопчик
girl dіvchina - дівчина

In fact, every single feminine noun on that list is a female person or animal.

Then we get this exercise:

Below is a list of objects, can you determine whether they're feminine, masculine or plural in Ukrainian? Memorizing this table will also help you add very useful and important words to your Ukrainian vocabulary.

There's a real problem here, and it's not just that suddenly the student is being asked to conclude that words like "kitchen kuhnja - кухня" are somehow "things considered feminine", or to try and guess how these words are "considered feminine":

jacket kurtka - куртка
lamp lampa - лампа
map karta - карта
newspaper gazeta - газета

while words like these are "considered masculine":

knife nіzh - ніж
letter list - лист
hat kapeljuh - капелюх
house budinok - будинок

No, while that's a very problematic way to present grammatical gender (forks are girls, but knives are boys! Pens are girls but pencils are boys!) it's fairly common and might work. No, it's in in words on the list like

coat paljto - пальто
ink chornilo - чорнило
window vіkno - вікно
soap milo - мило

Because they are not "feminine, masculine or plural". They're neuter, and how the poor student is supposed to guess that when "neuter" isn't even a concept in the course. In fact, the first list has two masculine nouns that end in o, so the student is likely to believe all the others are masculine as well... Trying to cope with Ukrainian without knowing the neuter is an impossible task.

Understanding Putin

You can get up to eight articles a month free from Foreign Policy, and this might ought to be one of them. It's a good look at the personal journey of Vladimir Putin, from a pragmatic patriot seeking to haul Russia out of the chaos of the 90s to an idealist who "genuinely believes that Russian culture is both exceptional and threatened and that he is the man to save it."

As the authors say, "[t]his notion of an empire built on the basis of a civilization is crucial to understanding Putin." And understanding Putin is pretty important at the moment.

Franklin Graham thinks Putin is doing good

And the Russians are eating it up with a spoon.

Vzglyad, a Russian business newspaper (think the Economist or the WSJ - it deals with a lot besides "business") has a story about Franklin Graham holding Putin up as an example for Obama. The teaser for it on other pages is this: Christian Values. Yep. Putin exemplifies Christian values. And even Americans think so. And Obama simply "won't do what's right" for America.

Nice going, there, Franklin. You've been dragging your father's name through the dirt for years, but this has to be the topper.

Here's the story, and here's my translation of it:

US Evangelists holds Putin up as example to Obama

Russian president Vladimir Putin is doing the right thing for Russia, especially when he banned homosexual propaganda to minors, said American Christian Evangelical leader Billy Franklin Graham.

Graham noted that it was "very wise" on Putin's part to protect the children of his country, and lamented the fact that the US not longer has a president who, unlike before, could do "what is right for the country," according to ABC (translation into Russia by the Center for Current Politics).

The Reverend Graham stated that Putin made the decision which he thought would protect Russian children.

No one and no social group should be allowed to exploit children, and in this Putin is absolutely right, Graham believes.

Franklin Graham is an American religious and social activist and a Baptist clergyman. He is a member of the largest Baptist organization in the world, the Southern Baptist Convention. For many years he was a spiritual counselor to US presidents.

Since the end of July 2013 Russia has had a law forbidding disseminating gay propaganda among children. According to this law, promoting nontraditional sexual relations among minors carries a fine, while propaganda by mass media can result in their suspension for up to 90 days.

The law evoked conflicting reactions abroad. Along with sharp criticism from a number of social activists, its passage was supported by some rights defenders and leading religious figures in the United States.

Profit!

Lenta.ru has a Facebook page (as who doesn't?) and this was on it this morning, teasing one of those "humourous news" or "foreigners are funny" stories. It always amazes me how Russians use English in their media, especially with humor and/or Internet stories. Bonus points if you can figure out how this was supposed to work:

How to get settle a score with  your boss, Chinese style:

1)  send him 1,130 ducks;
2) he refuses to pay for them;
3) you have to pay;
4) PROFIT!

(The headline is "A Chinese man sent his boss 1,120 ducklings for revenge")

Ducks going down

Duck Dynasty is faltering, and I'm heartened by it.

Promoters announced last month that members of the Robertson family would appear at a show titled "Faith, Family & Ducks" at an 11,000-seat arena in Springfield, Mo.

For $37, $50 or $58, fans could enjoy live music and hear the bayou millionaires talk about "living the American dream" while staying true to their "family values and modest lifestyle."

But according to local media reports, the April 27 event has been canceled due to low ticket sales.

The golden era for the A&E reality series appears to be over. Ratings for last month's season five finale were down almost 30 percent from the previous year.

If they can't get Bible Belt butts in the seats, they can't get any.

Two questions

If I could, I'd pose two questions to Bundy and his posse out there in Nevada.

1. While there is some basis for arguing that the original thirteen colonies and Texas and California were at least at one time "sovereign" (though not much of one, given that they all willingly joined the US), exactly how is Nevada sovereign? Its entire existence is owed to the US, which created it as a political unit.

2. (And this is the one I'd have answered if only one could be) If you don't even acknowledge the US's existence, if you think the USA is an illegitimate, imaginary thing, why the hell are you always waving American flags around? Just one non-hypocritical, non-venal reason, please.

Bing -1, Google .5 ......

Again, I clicked on the "see translation" icon from Facebook:





This is less than helpful, Facebook/Bing.

Again, to be fair, Google Translate isn't much better. They offered "Chief of burns".

Вождь жжет! is a bit on the slangy side, but it shouldn't be beyond either of them. "Chief" is pretty good for "Вождь" but here it's referring to Kim Jong-un, who's a Вождь or capital-L Leader in the literal sense (like Putin, Stalin, his dad, and Margaret Thatcher all were). "Chief" would be for your boss, I think, not this guy. And жжет is a verb, third person singular of 'to burn'. Google got the root but inexplicably thought it was a noun in the genitive which, no way, and Bing didn't know the word at all. Yes, it's pretty darned irregular (the infinitive is жечь (zhech'), present tense is жгу, жжёшь, жжёт, жгут (zhgu, zhzhyosh', zhzhyot, zhgut) and past is жжег жжгла (zhzhyog, zhzhgla). But Bing really ought to have been provided this paradigm, it's not at all a rare verb.

And what жжет! means is "on fire" in the sense of "rulez!" or "is totally awesome!"

Daffy?

"Besides Mickey, name a character you might see walking around Disneyland," Steve Harvey asked in the last moments of Family Feud (just before Jeopardy! starts).

"Daffy Duck!" she answered.

My first thought: Daffy's not Disney, he's WB! My second: of course, all she needs is other people not to know that. This show isn't so much about being right as it is about saying things that the "survey said", and there have been many times I've blinked in astonishment at what people thought was right.

But this time, whew! she was alone. Zero points.

"Goofy was the number one answer." (I'd probably have said Donald, myself, and I'm sure that's who she meant.)

Final Four

Final Four this weekend. Once again, I'm going on vacation with someone who doesn't care about sports - at all. But once again, my main interest is that UConn not win. I am in fact pulling for Maryland (one, they beat UT and two, I live here), but I expect Notre Dame to beat them. If Stanford takes out UConn, I'll be very happy.

What did they do?

Talk about your good news-bad news.

How'd you like to be in the Jeopardy! Challenge of the Decades tournament and then find out you were on the same night as Ken Jennings?

Interesting, even fun, but

The owners of Hobby Lobby are large, family-sized hypocrites. This is undeniable. Not only did they cover birth control quite happily before 2012, not only do they get their goods from China because that keeps their costs down, but they invest in

companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions.

And not just birth control, but actual abortion drugs and equipment:

The companies Hobby Lobby invests in include Teva [...], as well as Pfizer, the maker of the abortion-inducing drugs Cytotec and Prostin E2. Hobby Lobby's mutual funds also invest in two health insurance companies that cover surgical abortions, abortion drugs, and emergency contraception in their health care policies.

But while pointing this out is a lot of fun, I worry about a possible consequence.

See, the thing is this: it's not because the Greens don't really believe their own story, or that it's easy to prove that. The sincerity of their "deeply held beliefs" doesn't matter.If we deny them their bid to not provide contraceptive coverage because it offends their belief by showing that their beliefs are highly convenient and mutable, then ... then we open the door to letting someone else with a firmer grasp on what "deeply and sincerely held" actually means actually win.

Then we let people pick and choose what law they obey by what religion they profess. That pastor in Tennessee, the one who won't perform interracial marriages? His congregants could refuse to serve or sell to such couples. A Muslim cab driver could refuse to pick up unaccompanied women. All kinds of Christians (and others!) could refuse to serve unmarried parents, or divorced-and-remarried folks. All those delicate folks in Arizona could refuse to bake cakes for gays.

No. Hobby Lobby needs to lose, but they need to lose because their argument is bad. Not because they're insufficiently sincere when they make it.

I'll tweet you a question

Standingin line to pay for lunch I heard the CNN anchors invite their audience to "tweet us your questions". Questions about what? Why, the Most Important Story Evah - the missing Malaysian airliner.

If I weren't at work and could log into Twitter, I'd ask them what they aren't reporting about in the time they're spending on this.