Indeed

Nice bumper sticker:

Three Little Moons

Another lovely study of Saturn's rings and little moons:

Three of the small worlds that hug the outer edges of Saturn's immense ring system are captured in this Cassini spacecraft portrait (Select the image for a closer look, or the link for the Cassini-Huygens home page).

The two F ring shepherd moons, Prometheus (102 kilometers, or 63 miles across) and Pandora (84 kilometers, or 52 miles across) are seen flanking the ring at bottom. Janus (181 kilometers, or 113 miles across) is visible near the top of the scene.

One of these things is not like the other

You know that etrade commercial? The one that lists, "Things you can do with one finger: amuse a baby, summon an elevator, declare your team's supremacy, prove your sobriety, make toast, identify a murderer, get to know your doctor, save Holland, reallocate your entire portfolio with etrade and get free independent investment research, tell your expensive broker what to do... All it takes is one finger." (watch it here if you want).

It's really a pretty good commercial - funny ("Dank you, Mister," lisps the Little Dutch girl) and suspenseful (the courtroom scene) and memorable.

But... getting to know your doctor? That's his finger, not yours.

(Unless you and your doctor have a ... different ... sort of relationship, of course.)

You can't cherry pick life

Keith Olbermann targets Condi Rice's breath-takingly stupid remarks about Iraq in a blistering Special Comment. Wait for him to mention the Marshall Plan... This one is truly must-see tv.

(hat tip to GrrlScientist)

I agree with this...

from xkcd:

Red Dawn - Iraqi Style

Morning Edition today had a story they summarize as

"U.S. troops in Ramadi and nearby Fallujah find themselves detaining many Iraqi teens — and even younger children — who are being recruited for insurgent activities. Many may have lost their fathers or others in the ongoing conflict."

One of those is described as being about 16, a "doe-eyed teenager" who seems "confused."

You know ... when we made a movie about teenagers fighting Soviet invaders they were all heroic and wonderful.

But Iraqis are doing it because they're confused, or looking for sense of belonging, or even for money. Whatever it is, it can't be because their country was invaded, occupied, reduced to rubble; because their fathers or other family members were killed; or because they themselves live in daily fear of the thuggish government the occupiers put in place and support.

Patriotism? It's only patriotism if it supports what we want it to support.

The Week in Entertainment

Film: The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) - this movie is flawless. Brilliantly acted (especially by Sebastian Koch and - most especially - Ulrich Mühe), wonderfully filmed, intense and intriguing and simply the best movie I've seen in a very long time. I don't want to spoil it, but I do urge you to go and see it as soon as you can.

DVD: some more Rumpole. Also started a short anime series, Starship Operators - watched about a third of it (4 eps) and am enjoying it. Well drawn and written, with an engaging premise.

TV: Heroes - nice cliffhanger. But I'm going to miss Ando! Say he's not going to go back to Tokyo! (Wait - he's in Peter's apocolyptic visions, so he can't be gone. Yay!) Veronica Mars... Lamb is dead??? Just like that?

Read: Oh, sweet. I found a copy of Robert Ingersoll's Complete Lectures "Printed for the Trade". Also, finished Monkey Girl, which is very well-written, engaging and hard to put down.

What Kind of Intelligence

This one is quite accurate - or at least it pegged me perfectly.

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

Happy Birthday, George

Thanks to Karl at World Wide Webers for reminding me - George Harrison was born today. Post-Beatles, I found him the most engaging, talented, and solid of them all. His later albums are good - his very last one I reviewed like this when it came out

Brainwashed I always liked George best, and this album is probably the best one, certainly the best one since "All Things Must Pass". It's pure George, the man who couldn't tell the difference between a hit song and a metaphysical speculation. Marwa Blues showcases his guitar playing, and his voice rarely sounded better than it does on Any Road and I'll Never Get Over You. And he and Dhani chanting the Naamah Parvati at the end of the album -- the perfect way to say 'goodbye, George...'

Then there's Concert for George

A wonderful set of some of George's best songs, performed by some marvellous musicians (Tom Petty, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Jeff Lynne, Paul McCartney, Gary Brooker, Joe Brown, Billy Preston), plus a cd of Ravi Shankar's other daughter, Anoushka, playing a sitar solo, accompanying Jeff Lynne on The Inner Light, and a mixed Indian/Western orchestra in a long piece he wrote for George's memory. If you loved George, you'll love this cd.

and I reviewed the DVD

"Concert for George" - the cd's good, the dvd's better. You get the theatrical release, the complete concert, uncut, and a lot of interviews and rehearsal footage. The concert itself is wonderful, beginning with Ravi Shankar's (other) daughter, Anoushka, playing a sitar solo and accompanying Jeff Lynne on The Inner Light, and then conducting a mixed Indian/Western orchestra in a long piece Ravi wrote for George's memory. Then a 22-song set of some of George's best songs (also a Traveling Wilburys number, a Carl Perkins number, and a ukelele version of a lovely old standard), performed by some marvellous musicians (Tom Petty, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Jeff Lynne, Paul McCartney, Gary Brooker, Joe Brown, Billy Preston) - and with the dvd you get to see them. Ringo's wonderful, at the mike or on the drums. Plus, you get Jools Brown's number, cut from the cd for some reason. Also, you get the talking, by Eric, by Ravi, by the others, which means now you can hear Olivia's observation on seeing Dhani on stage with the others. And you get to see it, so now you'll know (if all you have is the cd) just why the audience clapped and cheered in the middle of I'll See You In My Dreams... plus you get a lot of backstage stuff, and a lot of interviews (the musicians, Dhani and Olivia, producers, Pythons (yes ... two Python numbers not on the cd ...) If you loved George, you'll love these dvds.

I miss him.

I and the Bird

I'm a bit late annoucing this, but I & the Bird is up at Earth, Wind & Water. Here's Mike's lovely intro:

In the quartet of classical elements - earth, air, fire, and water - one would think Class Aves would be easy to classify. After all, birds seem to own the air in a way that few other organisms can match. Many species of birds, however, are aligned with other elements. Penguins may be the first birds that come to mind when one thinks of water, but countless ducks, cormorants, loons, and grebes also thrive at that thin zone where water meets air. The element of earth is anathema to birds like swifts and seafaring tubenoses, but flightless species from ostriches to kiwis are decidedly, magnificently terrestrial. Fire, of course, is too harsh a medium to sustain life, but some birds at least channel the colors of flame.

Today, a periodic table of elements, currently 117 and counting, has taken the place of the original four, but some people still feel drawn to the more abstract elements. Earth, fire, wind, and water.. these are the essential components of the natural world. Like a bird, Tai Haku is aligned primarily with those elements that don't induce combustion. The name of his splendid blog, Earth, Wind & Water suggests that he doesn't play favorites, but one look at his spectacular aquatic photography will reveal the ecosystem in which he's most at home. Today, though, he's come ashore long enough to host a fantastic film forum for I and the Bird #43.

Especially recommended are Tai Haku's own on frigate birds, James's fat Singapore pigeons in the rain, Peregrine's stunning day out birding, Liz's pretty pictures including a stunner of a bluebird, Patrick's great shots from Costa Rica, and Birdfreak's bald eagles galore - but don't stop there. There are 18 other posts, many with great photos and all interesting.

Next time, March 8, I & the Bird will be right here. Deadline for submissions is midnight, Tuesday 6 March - you can send them straight to me (kmdavisus AT yahoo dot com) or use the blog carnival submission form.

Explaining Phoebe: not hard, but not relevant

In James Randi's commentary for today he quotes an email he received from a reader; an excerpt follows here:

Reader: While "Google-Earthing," looking at places in the US of geological interest, I happened upon a link added to GoogleEarth: www.creationscience.com. I guess this site is pretty familiar to you? Just for fun, I had a look at the site, and in a few seconds I found these preposterous statements in their astro/physics section, here with my remarks:

Saturn has 33 known moons. One of them, named Phoebe, has an orbit almost perpendicular to Saturn’s equator. This is difficult for evolutionists to explain.

Reader: Creationists make it really simple: "It was created thus..."

Randi: No, only 19, but with lots of smaller orbiting chunks. And there is no difficulty at all providing excellent explanations for this oblique orbit! Does the Bible offer any evidence on this…?

You know what? Randi's right - like it makes any difference.

Well, Randi's right with a quibble. Some people (Randi obviously among them) object to calling something a "moon" when it's small. Lots of Saturn's satellites are less than 10 kilometers across. Phoebe is roughly spherical and some 220 kilometers in diameter and is "substantially larger than any of the other moons orbiting planets at comparable distances", as its Wikipedia entry puts it. It's those little moons - too small to be seen until a spacecraft goes past - that Randi calls "smaller orbiting chunks;" some folks call them "moonlets" while others, including JPL and the Cassini-Huygens team, give the name moon even to "tiny Polydeuces, a moon that was discovered by the Cassini spacecraft and is a mere 3 kilometers (2 miles) across". So 33 or 19 moons is a matter of taste. On this one, I go with creationscience.com, myself - though they are a bit behind the times - as the JPL Cassini-Huygens site says, "So far, 35 of Saturn's moons have been named."

Now, as for Phoebe and its orbit.

For more than 100 years, Phoebe was Saturn's outermost known moon, until the discovery of several smaller moons in 2000. It is one of the "Norse group" of Saturn's moons: eighteen irregular retrograde outer moons that are similar enough in their distance from Saturn to be considered a group. The others are Skathi, Narvi, Mundilfari, Suttungr, Thrymr, Ymir, and a bunch of as-yet-unnamed moons discovered in 2004 and 2006. In fact, other than Phoebe, none of these moons were found earlier than 2000 - Phoebe was actually discovered in 1899 by William Henry Pickering from photographic plates that had been taken at Arequipa, Peru, by DeLisle Stewart. (It was the first satellite to be discovered photographically.) This accounts for Phoebe's odd-man-out status in the naming, by the way.

Phoebe is, judging by the fabulous photos sent back by Cassini, an old body, repeatedly battered by collisions. Some of its craters are three and four times wider than its little Norse-named companions, and there's speculation that they may be actual chunks of Phoebe that have been knocked into their own irregular (or eccentric) orbits by those collisions.

The JPL site says:

Phoebe is roughly spherical and rotates on its axis every nine hours. Its irregular, elliptical orbit is inclined about 30 degrees to Saturn's equator. Phoebe's orbit is also retrograde, which means it goes around Saturn the opposite direction than most other moons -- as well as most objects in the solar system.

Unlike most major moons orbiting Saturn, Phoebe is very dark and reflects only 6 percent of the sunlight it receives. Its darkness and irregular, retrograde orbit suggest Phoebe is most likely a captured object, which is a celestial body that is trapped by the gravitational pull of a much bigger body, generally a planet. Phoebe may come from the outer solar system -- an area where there is plenty of dark material.

Some scientists think Phoebe could be a captured Centaur. Centaurs are believed to be Kuiper Belt bodies that migrated into the inner solar system. Centaurs are found between the asteroid belt and the Kuiper Belt, and are considered a kind of intermediate type of small body, neither an asteroid nor a Kuiper Belt object.

Hmmm... "inclined about 30 degrees to Saturn's equator" doesn't sound like "almost perpendicular to Saturn’s equator" to me. I think the creationscience.com guys got confused by the 151.66° inclination label found in many sources - for a satellite in a retrograde orbit, this is equivalent to 30° (well, to 28.44°, anyway) for one in a prograde orbit, as they'd know if they read up what these terms mean. Above 30° (or below 150° for retrograde orbits) and the orbit isn't stable; the satellite either drifts away from the planet (prograde) or crashes into it (retrograde). But because the acceleration is aimed inwards with retrograde motion, such satellites can be much further away and remain in stable orbits than can their 'forward' siblings.

So, first off, Phoebe isn't "almost perpendicular to Saturn's equator", so that doesn't need explaining. Everything else about Phoebe's orbit can be explained with, as Randi said, "no difficulty at all" - captured bodies have inclined, retrograde orbits because that's how the physics works out. We know it, we can predict we'll find such moons (and then we do, cool!), and we can easily explain the mechanics.

What gets me is this: "This is difficult for evolutionists to explain."

For evolutionists?

See, I don't think they mean that evolutionary biologists aren't up in celestial mechanics and have a hard time explaining such things. I think they mean that evolution has something to do with celestial mechanics and moon-planet dynamics and the like.

Guys: evolution deals with living things. Whether "Darwinism" or the modern synthesis can explain why some moons have inclined, retrograde orbits at great distances from their planets has nothing whatsoever to do with either the moons or evolution. Don't the guys at creationscience.com think they'd be better off asking astronomers about Phoebe's orbit, and "evolutionists" about, oh, evolution?

Of course not. Because their purpose is to pretend that there are great questions out there that "evolutionists" cannot answer, questions that can only be answered "It was created thus" - meaning "God did it." And implying "So shut up, sit down, and stop asking."

It would be nice to think that if one of them ran into an "evolutionist" who answered their question about Phoebe's orbit - and all the rest of the questions there - that they'd reassess their position. As Aleksandr Arkhangelsky said, about something very different, Na chto i nadezhda - that's where our hope is.

But experience tells us different. Because such questions? They're not that hard to answer.

Happy Birthday, Sam!

Today in 1633 Samuel Pepys was born. Well known for his diary, Pepys was a Londoner to the bone, rarely leaving the city, and a civil servant who helped shape England's navy. His diary, covering only six years of his life, was abandoned by him when he began to fear the loss of his sight - the work of keeping it up threatened blindness, and so he stopped and gave it to his college - Magdalen at Cambridge, where it remains to this day (and where I got to see it this past summer!). As the College says,

Pepys's diary is not so much a record of events as a re-creation of them. Not all the passages are as picturesque as the famous set pieces in which he describes Charles II's coronation or the Great Fire of London, but there is no entry which does not, in some degree, display the same power of summoning back to life the events it relates.

Pepys's skill lay in his close observation and total recall of detail. It is the small touches that achieve the effect. Another is the freshness and flexibility of the language. Pepys writes quickly in shorthand and for himself alone. The words, often piled on top of each other without much respect for formal grammar, exactly reflect the impressions of the moment. Yet the most important explanation is, perhaps, that throughout the diary Pepys writes mainly as an observer of people. It is this that makes him the most human and accessible of diarists, and that gives the diary its special quality as a historical record.

Here's his first year's entry for 23 Feb - 1660 (the annotated entry is here) (note on the date - if you follow the link you'll see it says 1659/1660 - this is because until 1752 the new year began on March 25):

Thursday, my birthday, now twenty-seven years. A pretty fair morning, I rose and after writing a while in my study I went forth. To my office, where I told Mr. Hawly of my thoughts to go out of town to-morrow. Hither Mr. Fuller comes to me and my Uncle Thomas too, thence I took them to drink, and so put off my uncle. So with Mr. Fuller home to my house, where he dined with me, and he told my wife and me a great many stories of his adversities, since these troubles, in being forced to travel in the Catholic countries, &c. He shewed me his bills, but I had not money to pay him. We parted, and I to Whitehall, where I was to see my horse which Mr. Garthwayt lends me to-morrow. So home, where Mr. Pierce comes to me about appointing time and place where and when to meet tomorrow. So to Westminster Hall, where, after the House rose, I met with Mr. Crew, who told me that my Lord was chosen by 73 voices, to be one of the Council of State. Mr. Pierpoint had the most, 101, and himself the next, 100. He brought me in the coach home. He and Mr. Anslow being in it. I back to the Hall, and at Mrs. Michell’s shop staid talking a great while with her and my Chaplain, Mr. Mumford, and drank a pot or two of ale on a wager that Mr. Prin is not of the Council. Home and wrote to my Lord the news of the choice of the Council by the post, and so to bed.

Find the whole of Pepys' diary, day by day with hyperlinked annotations here, and here at Project Gutenberg (also downloadable).

Happy Birthday, Vincent!

In 1911 a slim, red-headed 19-year-old Maine girl got up and read her contest-winning poem, Renasence (find it here), in Camden, Maine. She couldn't afford college, but the poem inspired a woman in the audience to pay her way to Vassar. That girl was Edna St Vincent Millay, born this day in 1892. An icon of the Jazz Age and a rock-star poet, Vincent (as she preferred to be called, hating the name 'Edna') lived in Greenwich Village and Paris, and revelled in the Bohemian life style (perhaps you could say she truly was a Mainiac). After her marriage she lived in Austerlitz, New York, until her death in 1950; the farm, Steepletop, is now a writers colony. She was the first woman to win a Pulitzer, and the second to win the Frost prize.

Probably her best known poem is "First Fig", not least because it's short enough to memorize easily:

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
It gives a lovely light!

Her "Euclid alone" begins with a line at least as well known as "First Fig," though it's likely that not many people (barring mathematicians) can recite all of this one:

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

Here are a few of my favorites of her shorter works, and here's a link to many Millay poems online, including A Few Figs from Thistles.

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power
I might be driven to sell your love for peace
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.


~~~~~~~

Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
Give back my book and take my kiss instead.
Was it my enemy or my friend I heard,
"What a big book for such a little head!"
Come, I will show you now my newest hat,
And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink!
Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that.
I never again shall tell you what I think.
I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly;
You will not catch me reading any more:
I shall be called a wife to pattern by.
And some day when you knock and push the door,
Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy,
I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me.


~~~~~~~

The Princess Recalls Her One Adventure



Hard is my pillow
Of down from the duck's breast,
Harsh the linen cover;
I cannot rest.

Fall down, my tears,
Upon the fine hem,
Upon the lonely letters
Of my long name;
Drown the sigh of them.

We stood by the lake
And we neither kissed nor spoke;
We heard how the small waves
Lurched and broke,
And chuckled in the rock.

We spoke and turned away.
We never kissed at all.
Fall down, my tears.
I wish that you might fall
On the road by the lake,
Where the cob went lame,
And I stood with my groom
Till the carriage came.

Happy Birthday, Edward

Born today in 1925, in Chicago, Edward Gorey, master of the disturbingly macabre illustration and story.
I definitely recommend you read his three Amphigorey collections.



The "life is sweet" sweatshirt gets a lot of grins and compliments.


And by all means, take this quiz: Which Horrible (Edward) Gorey Death will you die?

Spring comes to America

Tom Boswell says it like this: The sun rose, blazing above a bank of clouds over the Atlantic, at 7 a.m. as though the earliest rays of morning wanted to report exactly on time for the first full-squad day of spring training.

I said it like this, years ago:

Almost imperceptibly the days
Have lengthened and the sky has grown more blue.
Unclipped forsythia tangles in a blaze
Of gold; bright jonquils shine, and crocus too,
Amidst the paler shades of blooming trees:
The pinks and whites of apple, cherry, pear,
And darker redbud in the pastel seas
Of tossing blossomed limbs so lately bare.
Grass reborn spreads its imperial jade
In carpets envied by a monarch's throne,
And birds from dawn to dusk sing out their hearts.
And in each town some space is found or made
For that sure sign that winter's truly flown:
With that first pitch, at last the summer starts.

The Week in Entertainment (late...)

Snow and holidays and a major event at work conspired to make me forget this last Sunday.

DVD: Rumpole of the Bailey and Jeeves and Wooster complete collections arrived - I watched J&W and started Rumpole. Also, some more Pinky and the Brain.

TV: Thanks to college basketball, I watched House last week - great. I got to see the 25-foot tapeworm episode! There were some really well-written scenes this time, too. Also Veronica Mars on tape from the middle of Sunday night, where they stuck it this time (last time it was reasonably placed on Sunday afternoon...). Heroes, still good - though I repeat, George Takei was stunt casting (nice stunt casting). And Scrubs.

Read: The Elephant Vanishes, short stories by Murakami; started Monkey Girl

Moqtada al-Who?

Presented for your reading ?pleasure?, an extract from yesterday's White House Press Briefing, emphases mine:

Q On behalf of both Jim and myself -- (laughter) -- did the President talk about al Sadr at all with Prime Minister Maliki? Any discussion of his whereabouts or the impact of the changes?

MR. SNOW: No, none of that.

Q None at all?

MR. SNOW: No.

Q That seems surprising, doesn't it, since that --

MR. SNOW: Well, it seems surprising to you guys, but -- again, for the Prime Minister, here's a guy who has already made the step of staying -- both to the Mahdi army, to Sunni insurgents, to people who have been misbehaving -- we're coming after you. If you are trying to bring this government down through acts of violence, if you're operating -- his phrase is "outside the law" -- we are going to apply the law, no matter who you are. And we have seen evidence of that in new Baghdad, which is a Shia neighborhood. We've seen it in Haifa Street. We've seen it in operations that are ongoing in Baghdad now.

So I really think -- and the Prime Minister has made it very clear that people who are on board with the unity government need to get on board and stay on board.

Q Wouldn't the Prime Minister be a good source of information on what al Sadr may be up to?

MR. SNOW: I just -- you know what, right now the most significant political figure in Iraq is not Muqtada al Sadr, it's Nouri al Maliki.

Q Kelly and I have a follow. (Laughter.)

MR. SNOW: See, and you guys thought kumbaya was dead.

Q That said, have you learned -- never mind this phone call this morning, what have you learned in the last 24 hours since we've spoke about al Sadr and whether he's in Iran -- his being in Iran, if he's there, is a good thing or a bad thing?

MR. SNOW: Since we've spoken -- no, we haven't actually heard -- we've got nothing new for you.

Q There's been no intelligence, there's been no questions, you haven't followed up --

MR. SNOW: Not really, no. The President may have gotten something in his intel brief today. It didn't come up. Shock-shock, it didn't.

Q And when you say, "shock-shock," that's --

MR. SNOW: I think you've got to understand that Muqtada al Sadr is one factor who belongs to a party that has 30 members of a parliament of 250 members, and that what you have seen -- if you want to look at the significant players, take a look at what's gone on in Baghdad, and take a look at the fact that you've got a security plan that's operating in districts, including Shia districts, where, at least according to reports, members of the Mahdi militia put down their arms, and in some cases are saying, okay, let's let the Baghdad security plan succeed. That is the significant factor.

Q But that is related to al Sadr -- if they're doing that, that's an important, significant point.

MR. SNOW: I just -- I've got nothing to give you on that. I mean, we don't know where he is. We don't know where he is. The reports are that he's in Iran, but don't know.

And we don't care, seems to be the clear implication.

Why not? Is it because al-Maliki doesn't want us to? Is it because we need to downplay this guy we were once so obsessed with because - like that other fellow, what was his name, Osama bin something? - we can't catch him and so we don't want to talk about him any more?

Why does this administration keep on making up enemies and then getting annoyed when other people don't forget them once they've served their turn?

Hoping and Praying is not a Plan

Tony Snow has a problem with words - their definition. At Friday's press briefing he said,

Again, members -- it's going to be interesting, because members of Congress have taken their own gamble here. They're gambling on failure -- some members, at least. The President has a plan for success.

No, Tony. The President doesn't have a "plan" for success.

It's not a plan to say "We will succeed." It's not a plan to say "Failure is not an option." It's not a plan to say "It's all aimed at success."

Plans are a little more involved than that. I mean, this isn't even as good as "First of all, pray there's no more hurricanes."

Honestly, if the man has an actual plan, let's hear it. The time is long past when he can just stand there and say, "Trust me."

More Snow Standup

From Friday's White House Press Briefing, Tony Snow engages in comedy:

MR. SNOW: I know, but I'm not going to -- I'll deal with things that appear in reality.

Oh, Tony. You old joker, you, cut it off - I'm dying here.

Southern hemisphere and rings beyond

On Jan. 31, 2007 at a distance of approximately 979,000 kilometers (608,000 miles) from Saturn, Cassini captures a spectacular view of Saturn's banded southern hemisphere and dark central polar storm, while its dazzling rings lie far beyond the horizon. Compare with this earlier view, from a different angle, of the south pole with rings just barely visible and the storm, like a bullseye, on the edge of the oncoming night.

Mirroring?

So, this morning the BBC did a story on the APA's report on the sexualization of young girls. One of the things they mentioned (in a whole lot of things) was the Bratz™ dolls. They had a statement from Isaac Larien, the CEO of MGA, who makes Bratz. He said it was just "plastic toys, for God's sake" and that it "isn't a role model". He also said he was "looking at Bratz dolls on my desk", and "I have never heard one person say 'I bought a Bratz doll because it looked sexy'."

I had Barbies™ when I was a kid (well, technicaly, I had Midge and Alan; my sister had Barbie and Ken) and I don't think I'd have wanted a Bratz (a Brat?), but of course back then nobody would have thought Bratz were the slightest bit suitable for a 9- or 10-year-old. You can argue about whether Barbie ever really was, but I can say I didn't, at least consciously, think of Midge as a body-image goal.

But how can you look at these Bratz and not acknowledge that the company is selling sexy? Look at those eyes, those lips, those clothes? Tiny miniskirts, tube tops, cropped shirts ... "A passion for fashion", says Bratz. And this is the fashion sold even in the children's department in stores, yes indeed.

One of the other things they mention was the depiction of girls as sexual accessories, so to speak, of boys - and look at Bratz Boyz™. "A passion for fashion... and the Bratz!" says their tag line, and look how they dress. Just like all the commercials - soft drinks especially - which have long annoyed me, almost soft porn in their fully-dressed-men cavorting with scantily-clad women...

So I don't blame Bratz - Larien's just jumping on the bandwagon - Bratz reflect the larger society as seen in the media pretty well. Nor do I blame people for buying them - I'm sure many little girls want to play with them. But I have already refused to buy them for my great-niece, and that's because I wouldn't want her playing with a friend who looked like that - the clothes, makeup, and whole nine yards - and I don't want her playing with a doll that says "My job is to look good for a boy."

Happy Birthday, Nikolaus

Born today in 1473, the originator of the theory which bears his name - the Copernican, or heliocentric, system, which challenged and then (for most people) replaced the geocentric system, which held that the earth was the center and everything revolves around it. Nicolaus Copernicus was a brilliant polymath who merely dabbled in astronomy, and yet he removed the geocentered (and anthrocentered) universe from the realm of science.

He died in 1543, apparently, of a stroke, and legend has it that he regained consciousness in time for the first printed copy of his, if you'll pardon the pun, revolutionary work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) to be placed into his hands, allowing him to see his life's work before he died. It's only a legend, but it's a nice one, isn't it?

(painting by Jan Matejko, displayed in the Nicholaus Copernicus Museum in Frombork)

Happy Birthday, Amy

Today is Amy Tan's birthday; she was born in 1952 in Oakland. She's written several books, all good - The Kitchen God's Wife is one of my favorite novels.

Carnival of the Godless

The scheduled host has had some problems, so the carnival adapted and pitched tents over at Unscrewing the Inscrutable. Head over and take a look! Recommended (though all posts are worthy of reading): Alon Levy's Freedom from Religion; exapologist's A Quick and Dirty Refutation of Divine Command Theories; Dikkii's look at the heretofore overlooked Paley's Rock; a very interesting discussion at Unintelligent Design called Was He Stuck In Traffic about why this child gets a "miracle" and that one doesn't - read the comments, too, and see both sides' takes; Hell's Handmaiden's look at the question of No God, No Laws?; a fascinating exploration of the coexistence of animism and Christianity in Jesus in the morning, voodoo in the evening at remote central; and, of course, Barry Leiba's look at Reality-Based Government (hey, I put it in Carnival of the Liberals, I pretty much have to recommend it!).

Snow keeps it up

Tony Snow continues to be the man without shame. From White House Press Briefing 15 Feb:

Q Slides from a pre-war briefing show that by this point, the U.S. expected that the Iraqi army would be able to stabilize the country and there would be as few as 5,000 U.S. troops there. What went wrong?

MR. SNOW: I'm not sure anything went wrong.

Followed by this monumental piece of condescension:

"No, Jessica, the fact is, a war is a big, complex thing."

No comment...

A quick pointer to ... what else? a White House lie

I don't have anything to add to Dan Froomkin's masterful accounting of the Tehran did it-well maybe not business coming out of the White House. Just go to White House Watch, scroll down to "A Rogue Briefer? Hardly", and read.

(ps - as always, the whole column is packed with good stuff, such as a synopsis of what we know about the Quds Force - apparently the White House's new "enemy number one", or a takedown of the Washington press corps that begins

Say what you will about Washington Post reporter and columnist David S. Broder, but he is the dean of the Washington press corps and his columns are often an accurate reflection of the temperament of Washington's top political reporters.

For instance, Broder's September 7, 2006 column-- in which he wrote off the whole Valerie Plame story as a "tempest in a teapot" and said that journalists owed Karl Rove an apology -- may have been abject nonsense, but it accurately telegraphed how little appetite Washington's top journalists had for that story.

that opens up an examination of the reactions in - and outside of - Washington to the current president's latest speech.)

Church burns heretic

Today, 406 years ago, Giordano Bruno was burned for heresy. While some of the charges against him were for believing things like the Copernican theory, the existence of multiple worlds, atoms, and solar systems, and an infinite universe, other charges were purely religious - that Bruno denied the divinity of Christ, for instance, and transubstantiation, and accepted the transmigration of souls.

Thank goodness, these days (in the West at any rate) the Church - no church - can kill you because you don't agree with them any longer. On any topic, provable, rational - or not.

It's not Romney's church that's worrisome

Stephen Stromberg weighs in on the Mitt Romney thing today in the Washington Post, essentially saying that Mormons are basically mainstream, and we shouldn't worry about that, instead focussing on Romney's actual politics. I won't comment on the religion - frankly, I don't much care what someone's religion is (as long as they're civilized about it); what I object to is people who want to turn it into the law of the land.

And as far as being Mormon goes - well, it's hardly a monolithic political entity, is it? You don't have to look any farther than that senatorial pair of Orrin Hatch and Harry Reid to see that.

Stromberg ends by saying

Instead of focusing on his faith, it would be much more worthwhile for voters to judge Mitt Romney on his evolving political agenda.

I agree. Focus on his "evolving political agenda" and realize how fast he's tacking to the extreme right. As a previous Post editiorial says

He has disavowed previous positions backing a federal law to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and calling for an end to the ban on gays in the military; now he emphasizes his opposition to the ruling on same-sex marriage by Massachusetts's highest court. Once he touted his support for abortion rights and backed the use of leftover embryos for stem cell research; now he endorses overturning Roe v. Wade, a position he says he came to during the stem cell debate.

And no need to say where he stands on that.

Romney is positioning himself as a more conservative alternative to people like Giuliani and McCain - McCain who's cozying up to the Discovery Institute and Jerry Falwell! So I agree with Stromberg: ignore what church he goes to. Listen to what he admits he wants to the country. And think about the people he's courting - and what they want to do.

Why, indeed?

I'm sure you've all heard about the hapless (to be kind) Warren Chisuman (R), House Appropriations Committee Chairman in the Texas state House, who sent out a fairly outragous memo which

pointed fellow state legislators to the information at fixedearth.com which rails against the “a mystic, anti-Christ ‘holy book’ of the Pharisee Sect of Judaism” and claims that “the earth is not rotating … nor is it going around the sun.” They've even caught on to the "centuries-old conspiracy" on the part of Jewish physicists to destroy Christianity.

(see Talking Points Memo for the whole story)

He got the memo from a zealous Georgia legislator - Georgia State House Rep. Ben Bridges (R), chairman of the retirement committee in the state house. Chisuman is now saying that, well, he didn't ever actually go to the website he was commending to his fellows' attention, which is pretty sad and would, I'd think, make any other memos he sends out immediately suspect. But he was only forwarding the stuff; Bridges sent it out.

Or did he???? (dun dun dun!)

His office certainly did. At the moment, Bridges is trying to deny that he sent out the original memo in the first place (blaming it on his campaign manager), but, as TPM puts it,

the views expressed in his memo are just too compelling for Bridges to deny outright.

Asked if he agreed with the Kaballah evolution conspiracy theory and the earth's lack of motion, he told the Atlanta Journal Constitution, “I agree with it more than I would the Big Bang Theory or the Darwin Theory. I am convinced that rather than risk teaching a lie why teach anything?”

You rarely hear it put quite so bluntly. (By the way, I love the "Darwin Theory" bit. Does he call gravity "the Newton Theory", I wonder? I'm sure he refers to "the Copernicus (or possibly Galileo) Theory", considering his championing the fixed earth.) But yes, why teach anything?

Why indeed teach anything rather than risk teaching "a lie"?

Let the kids grow up pig-ignorant. We can import anything we need scientific or technology related from some country where they'd rather take risks, can't we? Russia, or China, perhaps, or godless Europe. We can just sit here in our beloved darkness.

Not holding my breath

One good thing has come out of this debate over whether we'll debate: At last the current president has been forced to admit the truth, for once - on Thursday he said:

"I think you can be against my decision and support the troops, absolutely."

Of course, I don't expect that will last, nor catch on amongst his minions, but it was nice to hear it for a change.

This is, after all, Now

You know, thirty years ago or so I read a review of Star Wars (I think it was by Asimov but I wouldn't swear to it) which contained a criticism of the feasibility of the whole X-wing/TIE battle along the lines of: unlike Star Trek, this movie features future pilots fighting in tiny little spaceships that blow up with one hit; who would do that? I recall thinking that someone was mired in WWII, and fighter aircraft that shot at each other with machine guns or took actual projectiles from ack-ack guns... Even at the time, over Vietnam, single air-to-air missiles were taking out planes, and yet there is no problem getting pilots into the cockpits.

Similarly, I remember reading a review (again, I'm not sure by whom) of some movie that included people wearing wrist-communicators - the reviewer announced confidently that people would never walk down the street having private conversations like that. I think we all know how wrong that was, don't we?

My point? People tend to think of things as being the way they were when they were young. In the military, this manifests itself as planning the next war with the last one's weapons and tactics: the Maginot Line, the French at Agincourt, redcoats versus colonials, battlefield tactics used against house-to-house urban insurgents... But it manifests itself in other ways, too. Such as the shrill GOP insistence that any debate in the Senate will send "the wrong message to the president, to our troops and to our enemies," as Rep Shays (R-Conn) said during the debate over whether to debate a non-binding resolution disapproving of the surge.

Uh, guys? This is not World War II. You don't control the whole media, everything the troops are exposed to. This is 2007 - the troops have web browsers, e-mail, cell phones ... I guarandamntee you, they know what's going on back in the States. They're well aware that a majority of Americans don't support this war. Hell, plenty of them don't support it. They don't accept your equation of dissent equals hating them, they are sophisticated enough to know that, sometimes, supporting the troops meaning getting them the hell out of the mess they're in. And even if they weren't, they already know how the country feels about the war.

Refusing to debate it isn't protecting anyone but the administration.

Epimetheus

Another from Cassini... How's this gorgeous shot? Epimetheus is in the lower left, outside the F ring. (details here)

History Carnival

Yes, it's a new carnival - History! Well, it's new here, anyway. Over at Aaardvarchaeology Martin has done a great job. I especially liked Caligula: running amok and looking fabulous! at Jarod's Forge, and the much more serious Baghdad Pact: A Case Study in Failure by Nouri at The Moor Next Door. Check out everything, you'll probably find something you like - history is everywhere, after all!

Takes one to know one?

And speaking of Bagley ... remember back in 2005 when Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said, "You're always going to have nutcakes out there no matter what you do," referring to protesters during a Salt Lake visit by President Bush?

Guns

Two things. One, a cartoon by Pat Bagley, the other, an article by Tom Carver written in April of 2000.

Bagley:


Tom Carver:

The pro-gun lobby is fond of saying it is not guns but people who kill.

In some cases that is certainly true. Some people would kill whether they had a knife, a gun or bare hands. But in many other cases, access to a firearm is what triggers the murder.

This might seem self-evident to a European audience but there is debate on this side of the Atlantic - a debate not about how to remove guns from society but whether or not guns are even to blame.

The right to own a firearm is embedded in the American psyche like a splinter of flint, jagged and immovable.

It all goes back to the Founding Fathers who in 1791 amended the new American constitution with the following words: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

This amendment was drawn up by people living in an precarious agrarian society unrecognisable to modern Americans, when communities needed guns to hunt and to protect themselves from Indians and highwaymen.

The gun lobby has plucked out the phrase "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" and used it ever since to beat down every serious attempt at gun control in America by claiming a violation of the constitution.

Cracked Eggs

A reference on Language Log led me to a new (to me) blog - Mr. Verb - and reading through the archives there I found this post (from Jan 19):

I noted in a brief post what seemed to me a meltdown in Bush's interview on the News Hour earlier this week. One of the things that really disturbed me was his response to Lehrer's question about whether Iraq had become a 'broken egg'. Bush answered:

I don’t quite view it as the broken egg; I view it as the cracked egg ...

Now, I don't do metaphor, but this chunk keeps getting played on NPR, quoted in papers, etc. and none of the folks I've heard or read in the mainstream media seems to be saying what lots of political bloggers have said: This doesn't make sense. I guess the best case would be an egg with a cracked shell but the membrane still intact, so it's not leaking. Been a while since I've been around laying hens, but isn't a cracked egg a goner from the relevant bird's eye perspective?

Now, maybe it's just me - and you know I don't care for the current president - but this figure of speech seems pretty clear.

I think the difference is that a broken egg is all over the floor or counter top - that is, was broken by accident - while a cracked egg is now in a mixing bowl ready to be used to make something or a skillet - that is, was cracked deliberately.

I think Bush meant that Iraq's not "broken" but "in transition", ready to be served up as a delicious and nutritious part of a new world breakfast order - a Western Omelet, no doubt.

T-Rex and Valentine's Day

T-Rex celebrates Valentine's Day in his own inimitable style:


ps: This one's good, too.

Carnival of the Liberals - Valentine's Day Edition

Yes, it's Valentine's Day. Its origins are shrouded in some slight mystery, at least - dedicated to one of three possible - but all mythical and now dropped from the calendar - saints, each named Valentine. Geoffrey Chaucer made up most of the "traditions" out of the whole cloth when he wrote "Parliament of Foules (The Parliament of Birds)", though he probably meant May 2 (the feast day of the very real St Valentine of Genoa). Thus, it's a day marked by confusion and making things up from the very beginning, a holiday celebrating romantic love - which means, in practice, obsession, stalking, unrequited love, sex, and desperately searching for a date. Plus conspicuous consumption and marketing.

But it's also a holiday celebrating love and family and the hopeful virtues and values.

As I said in the call for submissions: priority was given to those posts dealing with the traditional Valentine's topics - love, birds, chocolate, Chaucer, jail, conspiracies, making things up, death, and political persecution ... but any good post dealing with liberalism in any form was considered, and the ten best were chosen. It wasn't easy - most of the posts were excellent - but ten is the limit.

So, here they are:

Reality-based government : Barry at Staring at Empty Pages explains why we don't have it - and do need it


Ode to the Great Molly Ivins : Mad Kane, she of Political Madness, offers a tribute to the late and much missed columnist


Between the Needle and the Noose : Ruchira Paul at Accidental Blogger asks, 'why is the man who gleefully presided over more than 150 executions now fighting to save Saddam Hussein's former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan?'


For my friends and readers who are not parents : Blue Gal offers a reassurance to those who miss having children


Dear Representatives and Senators : Montag at Stump Lane writes his congressfolk on a topic near and dear to his heart


The problem with detention without trial : Idiot/Savant at No Right Turn looks at the erosion of human rights in the war on terror


Trust Matters : Charles H Green at Trusted Advisor Associates explores how capitalism may be killing democracy


Top 5 Reforms Nobody's Talking About : The Soggy Liberal applauds the first 100 days and offers an agenda for the next


On Edwards, Bloggers, and Religion : Coturnix at A Blog Around the Clock takes a look at the Edwards blogger brouhaha and why it played out as it did, considering the realities of politics, the blogosphere, and the role of religion in today's America


And finally George W Bush's Netflix Queue : The DVD Dossier Blog explores the president's movie viewing preferences and habits and what he's got queued up


That's it for the 32nd edition of Carnival of the Liberals. Next time (Feb 28) Blue Gal is the host. See you then!

He meant it. He did.

Barack Obama caved. He did.

On Sunday he said "we ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged, and to which we now have spent $400 billion and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted."

Now, he says "Even as I said it, I realized I had misspoken." He added that he would "absolutely apologize" to military families if they were offended by a remark he made in Iowa while criticizing the Bush administration’s Iraq policy.

Those lives were indeed "wasted", Mr Obama. You meant it - and you were right. And now you're going to run from the specter of having somehow "offended" this phantasm, this non-existent monolithic bloc of "military families," by calling the administration on their criminal conduct of this war.

You said this: “What I would say — and meant to say — is that their service hasn’t been honored, because our civilian strategy has not honored their courage and bravery, and we have put them in a situation in which it is hard for them to succeed.”

What does that even mean? Our civilian strategy didn't honor their courage and did put them in a situation in which it is "hard" for them to succeed? (Hard???) If that's not wasting them, what is? If sending them to fight a war for lies, a war in which they aren't supported, in which their goals are impossible to achieve, doesn't qualify as wasting their lives, what would?

What did they die for, Mr Obama, that makes their lives not "wasted"?

You shouldn't have apologized. And you shouldn't have taken that word back.

It was a true word. And that's what you should have known "even as [you] said it." And you should have the courage to stand by it.

The question she didn't answer

In today’s Science Times, Elizabeth Svoboda writes about seeing ‘faces, faces everywhere’. It strikes me she’s asking two very different questions:

Why do we see faces everywhere we look: in the Moon, in Rorschach inkblots, in the interference patterns on the surface of oil spills? Why are some Lay’s chips the spitting image of Fidel Castro ...?

That's one question. The other, which she seems to treat as the same one (even by making it part of the same sentence as above), is

...and why was a cinnamon bun with a striking likeness to Mother Teresa kept for years under glass in a coffee shop in Nashville, where it was nicknamed the Nun Bun?

We see faces because we're hardwired to. We worship them ... why? Same reason? The researchers that article is about never addresses that question at all. (They're interested in why and how we recognize faces, even in things that aren't very face-like at all - like chance alignments of beams and pieces of machinery.)

I wonder if the reporter thinks they did?

* It doesn't look like her to me. It looks more like an ugly cartoon character of some sort. I can see the face - I could never see her. Just like that doesn't look like Mary in the sandwich - it looks like some classic glamorous movie star (Garbo, perhaps, or Dietrich). (Like "Jesus" in the aspargus root looks like Hemingway to me.)

I guess if you're extremely religious, you see gods. If you're not, you just see faces... The way that if you're extremely religious you see the hand of god everywhere, and if you're not, you just see the universe unfolding as it does.

"from so simple a beginning"

Charles Darwin was born today. Elsewhere there are many many posts celebrating him. I'd like to take just a minute to point out that ... man! He could write.

From the prosaic beginning of Origin of Species:

WHEN we compare the individuals of the same variety or sub-variety of our older cultivated plants and animals, one of the first points which strikes us is, that they generally differ more from each other than do the individuals of any one species or variety in a state of nature. And if we reflect on the vast diversity of the plants and animals which have been cultivated, and which have varied during all ages under the most different climates and treatment, we are driven to conclude that this great variability is due to our domestic productions having been raised under conditions of life not so uniform as, and somewhat different from, those to which the parent species had been exposed under nature.

all the way to the glorious end:

It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life and from use and disuse: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.

it's a wonderful read.

Some think the popularity of Origin was due to how easy it was to read - few scientific book of its (or any) day were so lucid, so reasonable, so simple to understand. Be that as it may - and you can check it out yourself - it reached, and convinced, a large audience. Darwin organized his thoughts well, and expressed them with eloquence.

And it didn't hurt that those ideas were so right.

The Week in Entertainment

a bit late, but better late than never, isn't it?

Film: "El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth)". Wow. Just wow. I'm nearly speechless. This is one stunning, brilliant film. Not for children although it is a fairy tale. There is nothing in the other world as scary as Vilar, though. (Warning: it's as violent as it is brilliant.)

DVD: Pinky and the Brain! Yes, Pinky and the Brain! One is a genius, the other's insane. They're laboratory mice, their genes have been spliced: they're dinky, they're Pinky and the Brain (Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain!) Before the night is done their plan will be unfurled: by the dawning of the sun, they'll take over the world! They're Pinky and the Brain, yes, Pinky and the Brain. Their twilight campaign is easy to explain: to prove their mousey worth, they'll overthrow the earth. They're dinky - they're Pinky and the Brain (Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain NARF!) (And the sad part is, I remembered all the words before they played it...)

TV: All the standards - Heroes (George Takei is cool, but this was stunt casting at its finest); Veronica Mars (and once again, Logan Echolls breaks my heart); Scrubs (I can't wait to catch the beginning of this season in reruns); some Poirot and Midsomer, and of course The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.

Read: Failed Crusade - an excellent appraisal of the US's totally screwed Russian policy in the 1990s - and the worse lies we told ourselves about how it was going.

Happy Belated Birthday, Boris!

Saturday was the birthday of Boris Pasternak (Борис Леонидович Пастернак), who was born in Moscow in 1890. Although he had begun as a supporter of the Revolution, he later - after colliding with reality - became a quiet dissident. He ceased writing original work but supported himself as a translator. But towards the end of WWII he began to work in secret on his masterpiece, Doctor Zhivago. It took him approximately a decade, and when he was done he smuggled it out of the Soviet Union to a publisher in Italy. The novel came out in 1957. It was immediately banned in the Soviet Union, but it became an international best-seller, selling 7 million copies worldwide. The next year, Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but he was forced to refuse it. He died without ever having seen his novel in print - but he felt it was worth it.

What most Americans don't know is that he was a poet - quite celebrated in Russia, especially for his influential first collection, My Sister Life, written in 1917 and published in 1921. He wrote two other collections of poetry before the purges of the early 30s silenced his pen.

Here are a few - the first is from My Sister Life. (They're an interesting look at translating poetry, too, if you read Russian):

Не трогать

"Не трогать, свежевыкрашен", -
Душа не береглась,
И память - в пятнах икр и щек,
И рук, и губ, и глаз.

Я больше всех удач и бед
За то тебя любил,
Что пожелтелый белый свет
С тобой - белей белил.

И мгла моя, мой друг, божусь,
Он станет как-нибудь
Белей, чем бред, чем абажур,
Чем белый бинт на лбу!

(Wet Paint

'Look out! Wet paint.' My soul was blind,
I have to pay the price,
All marked with stains of calves and cheeks
And hands and lips and eyes.

I loved you more than luck or grief
Because with you in sight
The old and yellowed world became
As white as painters' white.

I swear my friend, my gloom-it will
One day still whiter gleam
Than lampshades, than a bandaged brow,
Than a delirious dream.)

****

Мчались звезды. В море мылись мысы.
Слепла соль. И слезы высыхали.
Были темны спальни. Мчались мысли,
И прислушивался сфинкс к Сахаре.

Плыли свечи. И казалось, стынет
Кровь колосса. Заплывали губы
Голубой улыбкою пустыни.
В час отлива ночь пошла на убыль.

Море тронул ветерок с Марокко.
Шел самум. Храпел в снегах Архангельск.
Плыли свечи. Черновик "Пророка"
Просыхал, и брезжил день на Ганге.

1918

(Stars were racing; waves were washing headlands.
Salt went blind, and tears were slowly drying.
Darkened were the bedrooms; thoughts were racing,
And the Sphinx was listening to the desert.

Candles swam. It seemed that the Colossus'
Blood grew cold; upon his lips was spreading
The blue shadow smile of the Sahara.
With the turning tide the night was waning.

Sea-breeze from Morocco touched the water.
Simooms blew. In snowdrifts snored Archangel.
Candles swam; the rough draft of 'The Prophet'
Slowly dried, and dawn broke on the Ganges.)

****

О, знал бы я, что так бывает,
Когда пускался на дебют,
Что строчки с кровью ≈ убивают,
Нахлынут горлом и убьют!

От шуток с этой подоплекой
Я б отказался наотрез.
Начало было так далеко,
Так робок первый интерес.

Но старость ≈ это Рим, который
Взамен турусов и колес
Не читки требует с актера,
А полной гибели всерьез.

Когда строку диктует чувство,
Оно на сцену шлет раба,
И тут кончается искусство,
И дышат почва и судьба.

1930 -1931

(O had I known that thus it happens,
When first I started, that at will
Your lines with blood in them destroy you,
Roll up into your throat and kill,

My answer to this kind of joking
Had been a most decisive 'no'.
So distant was the start, so timid
The first approach-what could one know?

But older age is Rome, demanding
From actors not a gaudy blend
Of props and reading, but in earnest
A tragedy, with tragic end.

A slave is sent to the arena
When feeling has produced a line.
Tnen breathing soil and fate take over
And art has done and must resign.)

****

Здесь будет облик гор в покое,
Обман безмолвья; гул во рву;
Их тишь: стесненное, крутое
Волненье первых рандеву.

Светало. За Владикавказом
Чернело что-то. Тяжело
Шли тучи. Рассвело не разом.
Светало, но не рассвело.

Верст на шесть чувствовалась тяжесть
Обвившей выси темноты,
Хоть некоторые, куражась,
Старались скинуть хомуты.

Каким-то сном несло оттуда.
Как в печку вмазанный казан,
Горшком отравленного блюда
Внутри дымился Дагестан.

Он к нам катил свои вершины
И, - черный сверху до подошв,
Так и рвался принять машину
Не в лязг кинжалов, так под дождь.

В горах заваривалась каша.
За исполином исполин,
Один другого злей и краше,
Спирали выход из долин.


(Here will be echoes in the mountains,
The distant landslides' rumbling boom,
The rocks, the dwellings in the village,
The sorry little inn, the gloom

Of something black beyond the Terek,
Clouds moving heavily. Up there
The day was breaking very slowly;
It dawned, but light was nowhere near.

One sensed the heaviness of darkness
For miles ahead around Kazbek
Wound on the heights: though some were trying
To throw the halter from their neck.

As if cemented in an oven,
In the strange substance of a dream,
A pot of poisoned food, the region
Of Daghestan there slowly steamed.

Its towering peaks towards us rolling,
All black from top to foot, it strained
To meet our car, if not with clashing
Of daggers, then with pouring rain.

The mountains were preparing trouble.
The handsome giants, fierce and black,
Each one more evil than the other
Were closing down upon our track.)

Translated by Lydia Pasternak Slater

As the Brain puts it

We have conquered language, and now we shall conquer the world!

One more ... still odd

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Gandhi? Well, okay...

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Bizarre ... but considering the other options, not a bad result! (Now, if someone will just explain what Albert Einstein is doing here)

I suppose I can live with it...

But can ... the world??? Mwahahahahahaha

I am Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom		59%	Blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity.
Poison Ivy		49%
Lex Luthor		47%
Mr. Freeze		46%
Apocalypse		44%
Magneto		40%
The Joker		38%
Mystique		37%
Green Goblin		33%
Dark Phoenix		29%
Kingpin		25%
Venom		25%
Catwoman		23%
Juggernaut		21%
Two-Face		21%
Riddler		19%

Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test