And what he believes is...

... in magic, apparently. In the power of names. We don't call it torture, so it's not.

Who's he? George Tenet. Check this CBS News story chronicling Tenet's appearance on 60 Minutes last night with Scott Pelley:

'The image that's been portrayed is, we sat around the campfire and said, "Oh, boy, now we go get to torture people."' Well, we don't torture people. Let me say that again to you. We don't torture people. Okay?' Tenet says.

'Come on, George,' Pelley says.

'We don't torture people,' Tenet maintains.

'Khalid Sheikh Mohammad?' Pelley asks.

'We don't torture people,' Tenet says.

'Water boarding?' Pelley asks.

'We do not -- I don't talk about techniques,' Tenet replies.

'It's torture,' Pelley says.

'And we don't torture people. Now, listen to me. Now, listen to me. I want you to listen to me,' Tenet says. 'The context is it's post-9/11. I've got reports of nuclear weapons in New York City, apartment buildings that are gonna be blown up, planes that are gonna fly into airports all over again. Plot lines that I don't know -- I don't know what's going on inside the United States. And I'm struggling to find out where the next disaster is going to occur. Everybody forgets one central context of what we lived through. The palpable fear that we felt on the basis of the fact that there was so much we did not know.'

'I know that this program has saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots,' Tenet says.

'But what you're essentially saying is some people need to be tortured,' Pelley remarks.

'No, I did not say that. I did not say that,' Tenet says. . . .

'You call it in the book, "enhanced interrogation,"' Pelley remarks.

' . . . an assumption. Well, that's what we call it,' Tenet says.

'And that's a euphemism,' Pelley says.

'I'm not having a semantic debate with you. I'm telling you what I believe,' Tenet says.

You know what I hate? People who say semantic like it has no meaning except "nitpicky". Semantics means meaning. Tenet doesn't want to discuss the words he uses. He just wants to assert that he doesn't torture people because what he does do, well, it's not torture. And if you call it torture, that's just semantics.

This is what you get when you believe in the great battle between Good and Evil and that you are on the side of Good. Anything you do is therefore Good, and by definition cannot be Bad. And torture, well, that's Bad. So we don't do that. Whatever we are doing, it's something else.

This is typical of the Bush administration - Bush himself is a fervent adherent to this belief. It doesn't work that way. As Neil Young said:

America is beautiful but she has an ugly side.

No one is so Good that they transmute evil into goodness. Torture is torture no matter who does it, or why.

and while we're talking Tenet: Phlip Giraldi, American Conservative columnist and former CIA intelligence agent, just told Keith Olbermann that he believes that Tenet"wrote the book for money. He‘s trying to salvage his reputation. As far as I‘m concerned, his reputation cannot be salvaged, because he keeps referring to himself as a man of honor. There is no honor in what he did."

No kidding. Tenet's basic premise seems to be that he knew that al Qaeda intended to attack us before 2001, and that he knew the war on Iraq was needless and founded on lies - yet he didn't tell anybody besides Condi. He claims that intelligence analysts stand up for the truth - six, seven years later, it looks like, eh? But how can he claim he is "stand[ing] up for the truth" when he waited this long to speak it? (Assuming that he is, of course.) Out of his own mouth he is condemned.

The Week in Entertainment

Film: The Namesake. I really did enjoy this movie. The performances were lovely and the story engaging. Gogol's search for self was moving, as was - in a different way - Asmira and Ashoke's happy life together and her sorrow at missing him and at her own readiness to be herself. All around lovely.

DVD: Неуловимые мстители - The Elusive Avengers. Rousing "Young Partisans"-style Russian films from the 1960s - teenaged Reds battling evil Whites in the early 1920s. I quibble with the cover copy calling them "comedies", though - beloved characters don't generally die in comedies, and heroes don't generally get flogged, either. Ah well, it's that Russian sense of humor, I suppose. But these really are quite engaging films, and very good for learners - the dialog is easy to follow. And DVDs - the wonder! - six sets of subtitles! Ура! Also a couple more installments of Mirage of Blaze.

TV: Bill Moyers - "Buying the War" and the first installment of his "Journal". The former I mentioned here; the latter was a very compelling interview with Jon Stewart. The man may not think of himself as a social critic or a journalist, but he is, both, anyway. The Josh Marshall segment was also interesting, though Jon's a hard act to follow at any time. Also Scrubs, the Gates, House, and Heroes. And I've broken down and gotten DVR so I don't have to choose between House and Veronica Mars, or the Gates and Bill Moyers...

Read: My Jesus and Mo books came - yay! Also Murder on Monday for light entertainment, and Quite Honestly by John Mortimer.

Flash of Gold

Walking across the lawn Friday evening, coming home from work, I was startled by a swiftly moving flash of gold in the late dusk. I found him after a few moments - a goldfinch. Haven't seen him (if it's the same one) since last summer.

This isn't a good picture, but Welcome Back anyway!

Swifts

At least, I'm pretty sure that's what they are - little swooping birds, over the pond, mostly. But I got these snaps of one poking around the goose droppings... Tasty, I guess!

Ah, they're swallows - that about swifts and chimneys rings a bell now that I hear it. And it explains why I couldn't find a good match when I looked for swifts in an image search. I did find swallows that match right up. Thanks, John!

Not just birds

Here's a couple of our furry friends from the park...

It's called quote-mining, Dick, and it's lying

No more out of context quotes. Harry Reid didn't say "The war is lost." with a capital T and a full stop and nothing else.

Quote-mining is dishonest. I'm used to seeing it in the Creation-Evolution debate, and the Religion-Secular debate, and it stinks there. It stinks worse in politics.

Dick Cheney is no more honest than the lowest troll on Pharyngula or Pooflingers Anonymous. It's time he was told we're on to him, and to speak plainly and honestly or shut up and sit down.

Here's what Harry Reid actually said (italics on the immediate context):

I told President Bush that after five years, more than 3,300 American soldiers lost and billions depleted from the treasury, we must change course.

Conditions in Iraq get worse by the day, and now we find ourselves policing another nation's civil war.

We are less secure from the many threats to our national security than we were when the war began.

And as long as we follow the President's path in Iraq, the war is lost. But there is still a chance to change course - and we must change course.

No one wants us to succeed in the Middle East more than I do. Our brave men and women overseas have passed every test with flying colors. They have earned our pride and praise, more importantly, they deserve a strategy worthy of their sacrifice.

The supplemental bill we passed with bipartisan support offers just that. It includes a reasonable and attainable timeline to reduce combat missions and refocus our efforts on the real threats to our security.

It offers a new path, a new direction forward. If we put politics aside, I believe we can find a way to make America safer and stronger.

If Dick Cheney doesn't see the difference, he's a stupid stupid man. And he's not - he's just a liar.

And the media should stop letting him get away with it. Every time they report his lie, they should add the full quote. (Not that I'm holding my breath.)

Pan passes Daphnis

Every 19 days, Pan laps Daphnis. As the JPL Cassini- Huygens page explains, Pan (in the Encke gap) is closer to Saturn than is Daphnis (in the Keeler gap) and thus goes around the planet faster.

In this shot, Pan is easy to spot. To see Daphnis, move outward from Pan to the narrow black band and look for the crinkly edge that is the sign of Daphnis' passing. You may need to select the image for a bigger view.

Charlie from London - still an idiot

Once again, the BBC goes to their resident expert - Charlie Wolf, "a Republican living in London". Once again, Charlie parrots the GOP line verbatim. He tells us that Murtha is "anti-war far left" (he lives in Europe, for God's sake; hasn't he ever met a real liberal?), that the Democrats are pandering to "their angry core, if you will" and that they "want defeat".

You fucking moron, pardon my language.

You think we should give the "new plan" a chance. You know what? The Iraq Accountability Bill doesn't say we pull out the troops tomorrow. It says we give it till June and then - if there are no signs of progress in the White House's opinion - we start pulling out. If there is progress, we stay longer. And it's not like the benchmarks are all that hard to show progress on: Create a program to disarm militias, reduce sectarian violence, ease rules that purged the government of all former Baath Party members and approve a law on sharing oil revenue. And the end-date is non-binding. We could be there longer if things go well - or if they don't. It's a goal.

And if the so-called worst case happens - the enemy does in fact decide to sit on their hands and wait for us to go - that will mean a year of peace for the Iraqi government to get its act together. If they can't do it under those circumstances, they never will.

BBC - can't you find somebody "living in London" who doesn't sound like he works for the White House? We can hear that every day here.

Gonzales' Greatest Service

One more thing about Gonzales. He won't resign - he might get fired, though I sincerely doubt it, but he'll never resign.

Does anybody think the president wants to nominate another attorney general and let him sit through confirmation hearings by this Senate?

updated to note that I just saw this same notion in Dan Froomkin's Live Chat today, credited to Peter Canellos of the Boston Globe (which I do read online though not yet today. Honest.) Canellos develops the idea in a different - disquieting but credible - vein. I was just thinking about the hearings. Canellos is looking to the nominee - and the White House's needs:

President Bush has an admirable sense of loyalty to his top aides. But the administration's willingness to withstand its own party's disdain for Gonzales probably springs not from loyalty but from self-interest: The last thing the president needs right now is confirmation hearings for a new attorney general.

...

Since so much depends on favorable rulings from Justice, the administration can't possibly look forward to having to justify its actions to a new team of lawyers. But that's almost certain to happen if Gonzales is replaced by someone outside Bush's inner circle. Bush would be very hard-pressed to get an inner-circle appointee confirmed by Democratic-controlled Senate. He or she would have had to withstand days of public grilling by Democratic senators, who would try to raise the curtain on any of the administration's secret programs.

More likely, Bush would be obliged to choose an attorney general with a reputation for independence, such as a former Republican senator with credibility on Capitol Hill. But such a figure would almost certainly be more skeptical of the administration's assertions of executive power than Gonzales, a close Bush associate from the president's Texas days.

Shouting at the television

I'm watching Bill Moyers on how the media "bought the war" - the White House line - virtually wholesale. I'm about to go hoarse from screaming at the clips.

Especially when they talk about the Washington Post (though it's hardly the only one), which basically was a house paper. The Post media critic points out that the paper ran at least a million words advocating the war; Ted Kennedy's passionate speech questioning the entire basis of it got ... thirty six words.

(Oh no. They're talking about the UN inspections ... I am not going to be able to stand this. Goddamn Colin Powell at the UN...)

This show should be mandatory viewing for every citizen in the country - and every journalist should have to watch it at least three times.

Awwww

Last year the geese had seven goslings and raised four. I don't know if this pair is the same pair or not - frankly, one goose looks much like another to me - or if it's the other pair that was here; there's only one pair here now, but last year they weren't on the same schedule; one set of goslings was great galumphing adolescents while the other was still little and yellow. In fact, I don't know if this pair was here at all last year.

But at any rate - they've hatched their eggs! They laid them back before the cold snap, and the goose sat faithfully on her nest for the whole time - more than a month. There are seven goslings - six in a mob, from what I've seen, and one that kind of straggles around. Here are some pictures I got today.

Oh, man - I hope so

What Dan Froomkin calls "a pugnacious George McGovern" fires back at Vice President Cheney in a Los Angeles Times op-ed. In an April 11 speech, Cheney attacked McGovern's 1972 presidential platform and contended that today's Democratic Party has reverted to those views.

Writes McGovern:

Cheney said that today's Democrats have adopted my platform from the 1972 presidential race and that, in doing so, they will raise taxes. But my platform offered a balanced budget. I proposed nothing new without a carefully defined way of paying for it. By contrast, Cheney and his team have run the national debt to an all-time high.

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.

The Democrats are right. Let's bring our troops home from this hopeless war.

There is one more point about 1972 for Cheney's consideration. After winning 11 state primaries in a field of 16 contenders, I won the Democratic presidential nomination. I then lost the general election to President Nixon. Indeed, the entrenched incumbent president, with a campaign budget 10 times the size of mine, the power of the White House behind him and a highly negative and unethical campaign, defeated me overwhelmingly. But lest Cheney has forgotten, a few months after the election, investigations by the Senate and an impeachment proceeding in the House forced Nixon to become the only president in American history to resign the presidency in disgrace.

Who was the real loser of '72?



THE VICE PRESIDENT spoke with contempt of my '72 campaign, but he might do well to recall that I began that effort with these words: "I make one pledge above all others — to seek and speak the truth." We made some costly tactical errors after winning the nomination, but I never broke my pledge to speak the truth. That is why I have never felt like a loser since 1972. In contrast, Cheney and Bush have repeatedly lied to the American people.

It is my firm belief that the Cheney-Bush team has committed offenses that are worse than those that drove Nixon, Vice President Spiro Agnew and Atty. Gen. John Mitchell from office after 1972. Indeed, as their repeated violations of the Constitution and federal statutes, as well as their repudiation of international law, come under increased consideration, I expect to see Cheney and Bush forced to resign their offices before 2008 is over.

Fight song?

I missed the school's name, but one of the dead from VaTech was buried yesterday accompanied by her high school's band playing what the NPR guy called "the school's fight song, Amazing Grace".

What?

How can Amazing Grace be a fight song?

Happy Birthday, Ella

Ella Fitzgerald was born today in Newport News, Virginia, in 1917. Recording more than 200 albums, many still available - or available again on cd - The First Lady of Song was one of the most influential jazz singers ever. Her voice spanned three octaves and she had a legendary purity of tone and phrasing, and a tremendous improvisational ability, especially in scat. I grew up listening to her, and one of my favorite albums is the wonderful Complete Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong - Ella & Louis, Ella & Louis Again, and Porgy and Bess.

Happy Birthday, Anthony!

Today in 1815 Anthony Trollope was born. Inventor of the mail box and author of forty-seven novels as well as short stories and articles, Trollope was one of the most prolific and best-loved of the Victorian novelists. Unlike, say, Dickens, Trollope's novels were always set now, not thirty years earlier, and so he is useful as a gauge of morals and vocabulary as well as hugely entertaining. The Chronicles of Barchester and the Palliser novels, two six-volume lightly entertwined series of novels (by which I mean that the two series overlap slightly - they are genuine series) are his best known; The Way We Live Now or perhaps He Knew He Was Right is his masterwork. I myself am quite fond of Barchester - and the Angela Thirkell 20th century Barchester novels, too! - and also of The American Senator and Dr Whortle's School.

Their (Our) Patriotic Duty

Paul Krugman wrote yesterday in the NY Times (you have to pay for it, and I do, so here's the meat):

There are two ways to describe the confrontation between Congress and the Bush administration over funding for the Iraq surge. You can pretend that it’s a normal political dispute. Or you can see it for what it really is: a hostage situation, in which a beleaguered President Bush, barricaded in the White House, is threatening dire consequences for innocent bystanders — the troops — if his demands aren’t met. ... But this isn’t a normal political dispute. Mr. Bush isn’t really trying to win the argument on the merits. He’s just betting that the people outside the barricade care more than he does about the fate of those innocent bystanders.

... What I haven’t seen sufficiently emphasized, however, is the disdain this practice shows for the welfare of the troops, whom the administration puts in harm’s way without first ensuring that they’ll have the necessary resources.

As long as a G.O.P.-controlled Congress could be counted on to rubber-stamp the administration’s requests, you could say that this wasn’t a real problem, that the administration’s refusal to put Iraq funding in the regular budget was just part of its usual reliance on fiscal smoke and mirrors. But this time Mr. Bush decided to surge additional troops into Iraq after an election in which the public overwhelmingly rejected his war — and then dared Congress to deny him the necessary funds. As I said, it’s an act of hostage-taking.

... Anyway, never mind the political calculations. Confronting Mr. Bush on Iraq has become a patriotic duty.

The fact is that Mr. Bush’s refusal to face up to the failure of his Iraq adventure, his apparent determination to spend the rest of his term in denial, has become a clear and present danger to national security. Thanks to the demands of the Iraq war, we’re already a superpower without a strategic reserve, unable to respond to crises that might erupt elsewhere in the world. And more and more military experts warn that repeated deployments in Iraq — now extended to 15 months — are breaking the back of our volunteer military.

If nothing is done to wind down this war during the 21 months — 21 months! — Mr. Bush has left, the damage may be irreparable.

the Eltsin legacy

Eltsin is dead. In the West, we liked him a lot - the Eltsin years are called years of "reform" and years of "strides toward democracy".

We're crazy.

After 1991, when Eltsin climbed onto that tank, things went downhill. We'll never know what the Gorbachev plan would have accomplished, because it was stopped - and Eltsin stopped that. Eltsin did indeed make that breakthrough possible, though again, we'll never know. They backed down from Eltsin and it's possible that Gorbachev would have been able to prevail.

But Eltsin's embrace of Western- advocated "shock therapy" resulted in wholesale looting of the country. Russia had years of negative economic growth - in 1998 the country went bankrupt. Bankrupt. That default sent shock waves through the world, not just the country. Oligarchs took power, and more 90% of the population lost everything they had ever had. People starved. Over a third of the population fell below the poverty line - the Russian poverty line. Life expectancy went down by more than a decade. A whole generation suffers from impoverished childhoods - disease and malnutrition. Crime soared. Eltsin prosecuted a brutal, brutal war in Chechnya. And we must never forget 1993, when Eltsin called the army out to shell a legitimately, democratically elected parliament - something I still can't believe we in the West treated like it was either no big deal or an actual positive.

The Eltsin legacy is Putin's Russia. Not merely in that Eltsin hand-picked him, but that only someone like Putin could have held the country together in any meaningful sense. Kremlin, Inc. is the answer to the rampant looting by the oligarchs, and Putin's crackdown on civil liberties is the natural outcome of a strong central government.

Eltsin is a towering and contradictory figure, but he was not good for Russia, despite his intentions.

What a sense of humor

Dana Perino also said this, which is just funny:

Q Back on Iraq. The President said this morning he's willing to work with Congress, but Senator Reid said that when he met with the President last week, the President just repeated some scripted talking points. Is that, in fact, true?

MS. PERINO: I think that Senator Reid is confusing scripted talking points with principled stand.

You quitters!

Dana Perino said this today in the Press Briefing:

We all want the Iraqis to move faster, to do more and to do it faster, in terms of their political reconciliations. But they're just not ready to do it yet. And Americans are not the type that walk away in times of hardship. To leave people in Iraq flailing and defenseless against an enemy who is determined to kill them. And withdrawal is like crying "uncle," it's giving up.

In other words: All you people who disagree with the president -

Happy Birthday, William

Today (most likely) in 1654 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon was born The Swan of Avon, The Bard, William Shakespeare.

Does anything need to be added to that? How does one choose which poem, which quote?

I can't.

Go here to find your own.

The Week in Entertainment

Film: Efter brylluppet (After the Wedding) - a very fine Danish film, a bit soapy but not overwhelmingly so. Brilliant performances, and a plot that isn't half as contrived as you start out thinking it is. My only real complaint is that the director made herself too obvious, too intrusive at times, with her strange cuts and inserts and insisntence on closeups of eyes and noses ... you kept getting jerked out of the story for a moment. But the movie is still very good and worthy of its Oscar® nomination, though the right movie still won.

DVD: Yay! My Richard Attenborough DVDs came! Planet Earth, the Life collection, and Blue Planet. Also watched the first four eps of Mirage of Blaze, which is intriguing - I'm not sure precisely what's going on and that makes it fun.

TV: House (It's just a bit hard to tell whether House is ticked at Wilson for dating Cuddy, or just for dating, isn't it?); Scrubs (I do love the Todd. And I love how his surname (the fact that he even has a surname is funny for some reason) makes me think of Dr Quinn...)

Read: Language Crimes by Roger Shuy - a fascinating look at forensic linguistic analysis of tape-recorded conversations; some more of In the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader which is a very good book about N. Korea and the Kims but not a can't-put-it-down one; finished up Howard Who?, and I have to admit that I cried at the end of Heirs to the Perisphere and I don't even like Mickey Mouse... Also Suffer the Little Children by Donna leon, latest in her excellent series.

on both houses

It is outrageous that Yazidis would stone to death a woman who converted to Islam, but it is at least as outrageous that Muslims would kill a random group of Yazidis to avenge her - especially since Muslims who convert to anything are liable to be executed under Muslim law.

An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

Falling on his sword

Can we say something about Gonzales here? Specifically, that
that Gonzales is still doing his real job - no, not AG; Bush loyalist. That's what he was hired for, and his very first lie was when he told his Senate confirmation hearing:

With the consent of the Senate, I will no longer represent only the White House; I will represent the United States of America and its people.

I understand the differences between the two roles.

In the former, I have been privileged to advise the president and his staff; in the latter, I would have a far broader responsibility: to pursue justice for all the people of our great nation, to see that the laws are enforced in a fair and impartial manner for all Americans.

And that was in his opening statement!

Dan Froomkin points out:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales took another massive blow to his reputation yesterday, but he also continued doing the White House an enormous service.

As long as Gonzales remains front and center in the furor over last year's mass firing of U.S. attorneys -- as long as his goofy stonewalling continues to distract attention from all the elements of the purge that point so incriminatingly toward the White House -- he simply enhances his position as the ultimate "loyal Bushie."

...Gonzales didn't add fuel to the fire, either. It was a classic stalling maneuver. Gonzales was entirely unable to explain to anyone's satisfaction why those U.S. attorneys were fired -- although he comically insisted that he was sure he had made the decision himself, and that it was the right one.

It's no surprise, therefore, that President Bush expressed delight over Gonzales's testimony -- even as some White House aides privately told CNN that he hadn't helped himself at all.

"President Bush was pleased with the Attorney General's testimony today," the White House announced last night. And this morning on CNN, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino was in full spin mode, trying to make the argument that the hearing "proved, once again, that there is no credible allegation of anything improper happening or any wrongdoing."

Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo has been making the same point for a while. So have some others, like the NYT editorial board, who write today:

Some of his answers were merely laughable. Mr. Gonzales said one prosecutor deserved to be fired because he wrote a letter that annoyed the deputy attorney general. Another prosecutor had the gall to ask Mr. Gonzales to reconsider a decision to seek the death penalty. (Mr. Gonzales, of course, is famous for never reconsidering a death penalty case, no matter how powerful the arguments are.)

Mr. Gonzales criticized other fired prosecutors for “poor management,” for losing the confidence of career prosecutors and for “not having total control of the office.” With those criticisms, Mr. Gonzales was really describing his own record: he has been a poor manager who has had no control over his department and has lost the confidence of his professional staff and all Americans.

... At the end of the day, we were left wondering why the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer would paint himself as a bumbling fool. Perhaps it’s because the alternative is that he is not telling the truth. There is strong evidence that this purge was directed from the White House, and that Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s top political adviser, and Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, were deeply involved.

... We don’t yet know whether Mr. Gonzales is merely so incompetent that he should be fired immediately, or whether he is covering something up.

But if we believe the testimony that neither he nor any other senior Justice Department official was calling the shots on the purge, then the public needs to know who was. That is why the Judiciary Committee must stick to its insistence that Mr. Rove, Ms. Miers and other White House officials testify in public and under oath and that all documents be turned over to Congress, including e-mail messages by Mr. Rove that the Republican Party has yet to produce.

Gonzales is not a bumbling apparatchik, to use the NYT's term. He's not incompetent. He's a lot of things, but "a bumbling fool" isn't one of them.

Gonzales is now what he has always been: George W Bush's loyal sidekick. In this scandal he is a distraction. He's the guy getting shot while the rest of the team escapes.

C'mon: let's not fall for it this time.

Sideways

I've just finished the latest in Donna Leon's series of novels featuring Venetian police Commissario Guido Brunetti, Suffer the Little Children. She always manages to comment on more than just Italian politics and mores, generally by tacit comparison left to her British, Canadian, and American readers - she doesn't write in Italian, after all, though she lives there and sets her novels there. But this book ... there are some zingers.

"There's a warrant," Marvilli [a Carabinieri captain] said.

"Issued by a judge in this city?"

After a long pause, Marvilli said, "I don't know that the judge is from this city, Commissario. But I know there is a warrant. We would never have done something like this without one -- not here and not in the other cities."

That was certainly likely enough, Brunetti agreed. The times when the police could break in anywhere without a warrant were not upon them, not yet. After all, this was not the United States.

Or

"He lives for his mother and the Church." Vianello [Brunetti's Inspectore] paused for some time. "And for priding himself, from what I've heard, on living a virtuous life and lamenting the fact that others do not. Though he'd probably get to be the one who defines virtue."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because he refuses to sell condoms in his pharmacy."

"What?"

"He can't refuse to sell prescription drugs, like contraceptive pills or the morning-after pill, but he has the right to refuse to sell rubbers, and that's his choice."

"In the third millennium?" Brunetti asked and buried his face in his hands for a moment.

Or this one, even more slantways:

Brunetti had no way of knowing if Italians were more gullible than other people, or if they were simply less informed. He had heard rumors of countries where there existed an independent press that provided accurate information and where the television was not all controlled by one man; indeed, his own wife [a university professor] had expressed belief in the existence of these marvels.

As the poet Burns said, Would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us.

Language Quiz

Here's another little language quiz.

Read the following selection and see if you can identify what's the problem with it.

(Alway remember: maybe nothing is!):

From an article in my hometown paper:

Firemen brings balloon, more to schools

The Previous Quiz:

From an article in the local paper:

South Grove is a good investment for taxpayers who live both inside and outside the city of Knoxville.

This sentence means that it's not a good investement for taxpayers who live either inside or outside the city, only for those with two homes. That's not what they wanted to say.

The problem is the placement of "both". This word makes what follows it apply equally to what precedes it. For instance, "I own both dogs and cats," "He likes both movies and plays," "She speaks both English and Russian." Thus, "He lives both here and there" must mean he lives, well, both places, not either place.

South Grove is a good investment for taxpayers who live either inside or outside the city of Knoxville.

or

South Grove is a good investment for all taxpayers whether they live inside or outside the city of Knoxville.

Look here for Previous Quizzes, 34 so far.

Morning singer

The cardinal's song isn't particularly melodious, but it is pretty - and distinctive. (This reminds me of the woman who stopped while I was taking a picture of one of the redwings and said, when I pointed him out, "Oh, I love them. They're so pretty. And so is their song!" I wonder if she actually knows which is the redwings' song; I don't find it repulsive, but how can you call that sustained croak 'pretty'?) There's a cardinal in the trees along the path to my building - past the park - that's been driving me crazy. I hear him every morning and almost never even glimpst him, and this is with most of the trees still bare. I'll never see him in full leaf!

But after a rainy weekend and a gray, chill week, Friday dawned clear and golden with the promise of 70 degrees (a promise it kept). And while I was walking to the building, I heard the cardinal, then caught a flash of red. He shifted his position in the tree a couple of times and, most unlike himself, every shift made him more easy to spot. And finally he was on the very top of tree, whistling his little heart out. He was a vivid, bright way to start the day and I stood and listened for several minutes before going on.

Wacky redwing

In other news: water wet, fire burns

A lesbian couple who got their picture in the paper with Ash Wednesday ashes have been barred from communion. And hey, that's okay. I mean, it's the Catholic Church's right to do whatever they want.

But ... the hypocrisy involved is breathtaking.

The parish priest said that after the couple put their engagement and marriage announcements in the local paper, he ran reminders of the church's teachings in the parish bulletin as a warning.

After the Ash Wednesday story, the priest sent this letter: "It is with a heavy heart, in obedience to the instruction of Bishop David Ricken, that I must inform you that, because of your union and your public advocacy of same-sex unions, that you are unable to receive Communion."

The bishop said the couple's sex life constitutes a grave sin, "and the fact that it became so public, that was their choice."

Vader [one of the women] said the couple never made any secret of their relationship. She pointed to statuettes of two kissing Dutch girls in front of their single-wide trailer home. She also said that the couple posed for a church directory family photo with Vader's children from a previous marriage, and that the church has sent mail to both of them at the same address for years.

Huskinson questioned why Catholics having premarital sex and using birth control are not barred from receiving Communion, too. But the parish priest said the difference is this: The other Catholics are "not going around broadcasting, `Hey I'm having sex outside of marriage' or `I'm using birth control.'"

So, essentially, the story here is: as long as we can plausibly pretend we don't know, we'll let you slide. Which indicates that they don't like what they're doing.

Don't ask, don't tell the papers.

a recipe for success

A friend of mine just sent me this, responding to yet another friend. I think he's on to something...

OK, this gave me a laugh. A bitter, hollow, sneering one, but a laugh nonetheless.

Gates Urges Iraq to Hasten Push to Defuse Sectarianism

Reminds me of one of the best-ever lines from the Mary Tyler Moore Show: "Ted, you know the way you always are? Don't be that way."

You know what Iraq needs? A strong secularist leader, one capable of suppressing the ethnic and regional divisions. One who wouldn't tolerate Islamism for an instant. Might have be brutal to make it work, and he could be a threat to his neighbors. But we could easily bottle him up with, oh, say, a couple of regularly patrolled no-fly zones and some weapons inspectors.

the world is cold, and only people can make it warmer

Here he is an atheist professor at Virginia Tech

We insist there is no sense or meaning to be made of this massacre. There was only sense and meaning to be created within the lives of each person gunned down. That is why we are horrified by it. That is precisely why it is so horrific.

Song Sparrow

just kill it first, then it's okay

All I'm going to say about the travesty SCOTUS handed down is this:

It ain't about "babies". It's about control.

This is from the majority opinion (emphasis mine):

Other considerations also support the Court's conclusion, including the fact that safe alternatives to the prohibited procedure, such as D&E, are available. In addition, if intact D&E is truly necessary in some circumstances, a prior injection to kill the fetus allows a doctor to perform the procedure, given that the Act's prohibition only applies to the delivery of "a living fetus," 18 U. S. C. §1531(b)(1)(A). Planned Parenthood of Central Mo. v. Danforth, 428 U. S. 52, 77-79, distinguished.

It's about letting Congress make medical decisions for the whole country based on what they think is "gruesome".

Work and live in Canadian!

Wow. What a job offer!

OMNI MONT ROYAL HOTEL CANADA.
Attn,
The management of Ominicity Hotel In Montreal Canada wish to advertise through this medium that the Following Job Vacany in our Hotel . Due to the expansion in our services and the opening of new outlets the hotel needs both men and females workers to fill in different categories of job openings.Currently , Canada is Exprience a decline in Labour force as such we seek Serious minded and honest prospective applicants should apply .Hotel shall be responsible for Air Ticket, also will pay for your visa.
If your interested in working with us you can contact us back through this
E-mail Address:

hotelommicity@yahoo.ca
Regards,
Mrs. GRANDY. R. CHRISTIANA
Hotel Manager.

It's just ... I have this niggling little feeling that even in Quebec, Canadians speak English better than this.

who you looking at?

at the pleasure of !=to please

Patrick Collins, an assistant US attorney, writes in the Chicago Tribune:

"We have heard as a defense of the summary dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys that all U.S. attorneys 'serve at the pleasure of the president.' And that, of course, is true. But they must never serve only to please the president. U.S. attorneys serve the people of the United States."

I believe that about sums it up.

Into the shadow

Another cool Cassini shot: inside the Encke gap in the A ring, the little moon Pan heads for Saturn's shadow across the rings.

Speed kills

Or at least badly injures those who don't buckle up.

I wondered earlier why Gov. Corzine's car was driving with lights flashing.

Now it turns out that his SUV was going 91 mph before the crash, 26 mph over the posted limit.

Running

A mockingbird runs along the shore of the little lake today in the early morning.

"hope for success"

Andrew Card just told Jon Stewart that Cheney said the insurgency was in its last throes because "we all wanted it to be" and "we should hope for success."

You know what, Andy? There's a huge difference between hoping for success and telling yourself you're successful when you're not. Wanting it doesn't make it so.

This White House is mired in self-delusion.

There was a Peanuts comic strip a long time ago. Linus and Charlies Brown have gotten their history tests back, and Linus is clutching his and saying, "I'm afraid to look at it. Oh, I hope I got a good grade. Please, please, please, let it be a good grade."

Charlie Brown says, "You should have done all that hoping and praying when you were studying for the test."

And Linus says, "Hoping and praying should never be confused with working and studying."

And then there's this one (from the unutterably brilliant xkcd):


Someone should have pointed this out to everyone in the administration.

Moons in the Night

Two of Saturn's moon appear to meet in the night sky with the faint band called the E ring sunlit behind them. But although they appear close - and to my eyes Tethys seems closer to the camera - it's not so:

Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) and Tethys (1,071 kilometers, or 665 miles across) appear close together in the sky in this image, but in reality, Tethys was more than 260,000 kilometers (162,000 miles) farther from the Cassini spacecraft -- greater than the distance from Earth to the Moon. Enceladus is easy to identify by the brilliant plume of ice erupting from its south pole.

Although this perspective views the night sides of both moons, the Sun is not the only source of illumination in the Saturn system. Tethys is at a fuller phase with respect to Saturn, and thus its "night side" is more fully lit than that of Enceladus.

(Compare this shot with Rhea and Enceladus I posted last summer.)

The charts he did have

Paul Wolfowitz said something extraordinary last week:

"Not only was this a painful personal dilemma, but I also had to deal with it when I was new to this institution, and I was trying to navigate in uncharted waters."

Could he possibly mean what that sounds like? He was operating under the principles of his former job - the Bush Administration - where this was business as usual? I mean, where on earth is this kind of behavior considered acceptable? Why would he need charts?

Sheesh.

April 15 (okay, 16)

"I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization."

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

My thoughts exactly

Jan Freeman's column yesterday deals with people who gripe that other people say the wrong things - not Don-Imus wrong, or Alberto-Gonzales wrong, mind you; these offenders are saying "It's the least I could do" or "No problem" or "It was a pleasure" when someone says "Thank you" to them. They say "Can I get a coffee?" instead of "May I have a coffee?" They say "Pleasure to meet you" instead of "How do you do."

Gasp!

Okay, these things are shibboleths, and maybe there's reason for them - but getting bent out of shape over it seems extreme to me. Surely the fact that other people maybe have different ways shouldn't be a surprise and offense to us.

I agree with her conclusion:

To take offense at someone else's kindly intended idiom because you have figured out, after much thought, how to read it as an insult -- well, I'm sorry, and I hate to say it, but if you'll forgive my speaking plainly, that's just cranky.

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: Pinky and the Brain - Volume 2! Narf!

TV: House! Also - finally! - The Gates are back! SG1 and Atlantis.

Read: Blind into Baghdad by James Fallows. Some Ingersoll. Some of Stephen Fry's Paperweight, and a couple of stories from Howard Who?, a collection of Waldrop

Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

I think so, Brain, but if we give peas a chance, won't the lima beans feel left out?

Flashing Lights Usually Mean Trouble

Wayne Parry of the AP writes about the driver involved in causing Corzine's crash:

"He hadn't any inkling that he contributed to it," New Jersey State Police Capt. Al Della Fave said. "That alleviates him of the responsibility of remaining at the accident scene. There's nothing he did here criminally. He did what he felt was the best he could."

Della Fave said the driver saw Corzine's motorcade with its flashing lights traveling in the left lane, and edged his pickup truck further to the right to give the official vehicles a wide berth.

In so doing, the red pickup's right wheels went onto the grassy highway shoulder, alarming the driver. He looked up to see a highway mile marker sign directly in front of him, and steered hard to the left to avoid hitting it.

That brought the red pickup back onto the roadway and into the path of a white pickup truck, which also swerved to the left to avoid the red truck. The white vehicle struck Corzine's sport utility vehicle, sending it careening into a guard rail.

What I wonder is: why was Corzine's motorcade traveling with flashing lights? He was just going to a meeting with Don Imus and the Rutgers basketball team, for crying out loud.

1 year anniversary

One year ago today I started this blog. Since then 15,287 people have visited, currently average 36 a day, and 22,913 page views. Okay, those aren't huge numbers, but they're higher than I ever figured they'd be. And you come from all over, too.

The Greenbelt was just prose at first, but then I learned how to do pictures, and discovered carnivals. And I've had fun.

So thank you, the 50 or 60 who come by weekly and the 35-45 who come by daily. I'm glad you enjoy what I do. Keep reading - I'll keep writing.

Words from Robert Ingersoll - 3

I believe in the gospel of this world; I believe in happiness right here; I do not believe in drinking skim milk all my life with the expectation of butter beyond the clouds. I believe in the gospel, I say, of this world. This is a mighty good world. There are plenty of good people in this world. There is lots of happiness in this world; and, I say, let us, in every way we can, increase it.

The Ghosts

Rumpled Doves

A pair of wind-ruffled mourning doves sit on a footbridge.

Some sudden long-term predictability

On Wednesday SecDef Gates announced that tours of duty for members of the U.S. Army will be extended from 12 months to 15 months effective immediately. "What we're trying to do here is provide some long-term predictability to our soldiers and their families," Gates told reporters at the Pentagon.

I think all military families are grateful for Gates's offer of "long-term predictability". The fact that next week he could just as abruptly decide on 18 months doesn't enter into it at all.

Definition, please

What's that game where you make up definitions and the other players try to guess which is the real one? Let's try it at home, shall we?

Here's our word: Unacceptable

And here's our choices:

(a) not acceptable : not pleasing or welcome
(b) something associated with the Democrats

Not sure? Like the spelling bee, I'll use it in a sentence for you...

On Tuesday, President Bush insisted to members of an American Legion post in Virginia that "The bottom line is this: Congress's failure to fund our troops will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines. Others could see their loved ones headed back to war sooner than anticipated. This is unacceptable. It's unacceptable to me, it's unacceptable to our veterans, it's unacceptable to our military families, and it's unacceptable to many in this country."

But wait! We need a little context:

On Wednesday, SecDef Gates announced that tours of duty for members of the U.S. Army will be extended from 12 months to 15 months effective immediately. ...This will allow the service to maintain the level of effort in the region for a year, Gates said. The five-brigade surge in support of the Baghdad security plan calls for 20 U.S. brigades in Iraq by the end of May.

It's so clichéd to quote Inigo Montoya, but ... I don't think that word means what the current president thinks it does. Either that, or he really doesn't know what the hell is going on inside his administration - like Gonzales doesn't know what goes on inside his department - and somebody else is making all the decisions.

Or, of course, he's a posturing hypocritical demagogue.

Future trauma care patients

That's what my sister, an RN who used to work trauma, calls people who don't wear their seatbelts. In her more mordant moods, she has been known to thank people for keeping the trauma center - or better (or worse, as you like), the pediatric trauma center - open and employing lots of people.

Governor Corzine makes her point. Over at Respectful Insolence, Orac (who is, I remind you, a surgeon) runs it down for us:

Corzine's injuries include:

1. Large scalp laceration.
2. Fractured clavicle.
3. Fractured sternum. I point out that it takes a really high-energy hit to the chest to fracture a sternum.
4. Fractured ribs, six on each side. It sounds as though this may well have been enough to give Governor Corzine a flail chest, a condition where there is paradoxical movement of the chest wall inward with each breath using the diaphragm, severely compromising respiration. No wonder he's still on a ventilator. Given his sternal fracture and multiple rib fractures, Corzine almost certainly also has a nasty underlying pulmonary contusion that could easily blossom into ARDS, which could kill him if it develops. (If enough force hits you to break your sternum and multiple ribs, it's a good bet that it banged around the underlying lung tissue as well.) Corzine's chest injuries are certainly his most life-threatening injuries at this point.
5. Fractured lower vertebrae.
6. An open, comminuted femur fracture with a large laceration and muscle damage.

Corzine required seven units of blood and needed to undergo surgery to fix his femur. Even if he does not suffer complications from his chest injury, such as pneumonia and ARDS, he will likely not be able to walk again for months, and will require more surgeries to wash out the damaged and devitalized tissue and to complete the repair of his femur.

...I'm not saying that Corzine wouldn't have been injured if he had been wearing his seatbelts, but it's very likely that his injuries would have been considerably less severe. Contrary to the myth of "being thrown free" of an accident to survive, those who are thrown, either through the windshield or a window or around the car's interior, suffer more serious injuries by far. They are far more likely to die. Had Corzine been wearing his seatbelt, he might even have walked away from the collision. I note that the only completely uninjured person in the car, an aide, was wearing his seatbelt. The state trooper who was driving suffered relatively minor injuries. He, too, was apparently wearing his seatbelt.

People - please. Seatbelts really are a good idea (not just the law).

Okay, back to the important stuff

Not that Imus doesn't deserve to be fired - his comments were a blend of racism and misogyny, and most people don't even seem to have noticed that while the Rutgers team was explicitly insulted (several times), the Lady Vols were demeaned as well, relegated to some acceptable-in-comparison status that exists to pleasure people like Imus.

But let's not let the media circus over that jackass distract us from important things - like Monica Goodling and the Regent University alumnus presence in the DoJ - 150 grads from a 10-year-old law school tied for 136th in the nation, a law school ranked "fourth-tier" and founded by Pat Robertson.

Or the White House use of GOP email accounts which were then, er, deleted.

Or the Milwaukee federal corruption case, dismissed by the judge as having been brought with evidence "beyond thin" - part of the federal attorney scandal and the GOP obsession with voter fraud.

Or many other things wrong in our government today.

Sure, Imus deserved to be fired. And maybe it's the sign of a seachange which means that it's no longer okay to talk like that in public. But it wasn't really one of the top five news stories of the day.

Happy Birthday, Tom!

Today is the birthday of Thomas Jefferson.

Surely - surely - 'nuff said.

So it goes.

Kurt Vonnegut has died.

Novels, short stories - his later essays for In These Times (which I take, and where I'll miss him) - and of course Slaughterhouse Five.

We've lost a giant - an angry, thoughtful, funny and valiant warror.

Competence? Or ideology? Which do you think?

Why, yes, you're right. For the current president's administration, ideology does indeed trump everything, including competence.

Now I don't say that, given two lawyers (or whatever job you're talking about) of equal ability, a president shouldn't hire the one who is of his particular political bent. The problem is that this president hires people who agree with him even when they are incompetent.

You can see the entire history of the Coalition Provisional Authority for exhibit 1 through a very large number, as Rajiv Chandrsekharan points out in Imperial Life in the Emerald City, an unflinching look at a series of steadily increasingly bad decisions, many of which created the situation we are in today (e.g., disbanding the army, de-Baathification, the decision to privatize instead of repair industry, the 'one district' voting which guaranteed sectarian resentment and dissent); without exception the key players could be described with this formula: X had no experience in Y but was [a GOP loyalist/heavy contributor], where X is a person or company and Y is what they were in charge of.

You can add Brownie (heckuva job), think of Miers (most qualified), and George Deutsch, Paul Bonicelli, Ellen Sauerbrey, Julie Myers...

That's the pattern and has been. So when Ed over at Dispatches raises questions about Regent University grads working for the administration - Regent being, as the Boston Globe points out, a "tier four" school in the US News & World Report rankings, the lowest score and essentially a tie for 136th place - all anyone who's been paying attention can say is,

"And your point is?"

(I'm guessing his point is that the current president and his whole administration are totally worthless toads, but then, what else is new?)

Nature Red in ... Beak and Shoulder?

So, the redwings have a winner ... he got the prime real estate ...








And the young cardinal males are squaring off in their turn.

"I don't want anybody to feel like I feel, but I want everybody to know why I feel it"

Mike Dunford of the Questionable Authority has written a post you should read, and then print out and mail, or copy and email, to your Congressfolk.

I've been trying to write this post for four hours and six beers and I've spent most of that time staring blankly past the screen. I've written things in my mind and they've never made it to my fingers. I've started to write with my fingers and pounded them against the keys until they burned and the keyboard keys jammed and I'm still left without the words I need.

And I don't like that.

I like words. I like to use words. Words are the tools that can be used to shape thoughts, to show logic, to highlight rationality. But that tool isn't working for me now. There is no logic to what I'm feeling. I can't pin down my emotions in clean, logical sentences. I can't capture these emotions and display them in all their glory for all to see.

And I do like that, because I'm not sure that I want them there for all to see.

I'm angry. I feel frustrated, helpless, and powerless and I don't like that, and that's making me angrier and I don't like that. I have never been this angry before, and I sure as hell hope I never get this angry again. I've learned, for the first time, what hate really feels like. It doesn't feel good. And I still don't have the words that I need - so very badly - right now.

And I don't want anybody to feel like I feel, but I want everybody to know why I feel it.

I'm angry and frustrated and helpless and powerless because there are five families that will very soon see serious men in green uniforms knocking at their door with a message of deep regrets. There are 13000 families who have just gotten the message that one combat zone deployment isn't enough for today's weekend warrior. There are 15000 families that will soon get the message that one year isn't a long enough deployment, even if it is the second or third or fourth time they've gone out. All of this is going on today, and today the man who is responsible for every one of these troops and every one of these families wisecracked his way through a speech and threatened these families with more harm if he doesn't get his way.

And I really don't like that, because "these families" includes my family.

...

I'm sitting here trying to find the words I need to describe these emotions that I feel because I know how I feel. I know I'm not the only one who feels that way. And I know that the man - the person - the allegedly human being - responsible doesn't have a single damn clue about what he's doing to real people.

And I don't think he'd care if he did.

He's an active voice decider in the first person, but things only go wrong for him in the third person passive. He's the one who's right and anyone who disagrees is wrong, and he knows that's the way it really is way deep down in his twisted little truthy gut. He's right, the rest of us are wrong, so it's fine to sneer at opponents and blame them for the things that he's doing now.

Go on over and read the whole post.

Carnival of the Liberals

The Carnival of the Liberals is up at Truth and Politics.

Particularly recommended from these ten best liberal posts: First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain: and that's it. No satori, no enlightenment. It's just gone. from Walking the Berkshires, and Halfway There's excellent question in Fun with presidential signing statements, an aspect of the veto threat I hadn't thought of, myself.

The rest are good, too - head over and enjoy.

Prometheus the perturber

Prometheus moves between the broad A ring and the very narrow F ring, leaving behind it kinks and waves and other perturbations in the F ring it shepherds.

You go, Cal!

Cal Ripken has done the right thing - and he's pretty much alone (Obama is there with him, it's true).

He's cancelled his upcoming appearance on Imus in the Morning.

You always were a pure class act, Cal. Always.

Even Cheney

NPR's Juan Williams just said, analyzing Pelosi's recent trip, that many people criticized her, like the Washington Post editorial page. He then added, "Even Vice President Cheney criticized her."

Even Cheney? Even Cheney?

After all this time I truly cannot imagine how out of touch you have to be to say this. "Even" Cheney criticized Pelosi? The man does damn little but criticize Democrats, and he's done it more loudly and publically since the election.

Juan Williams, you're not paying enough attention to things to earn the name of analyst.

Carnival of Maryland

The fourth edition of The Carnival of Maryland is up at Politics, Hon.

Check it out.

Happy Birthday, Tom!

Born today in 1928, the great Tom Lehrer.

Herewith two of my favorites - though without the music they're only half as good. If you haven't heard him perform, you should - get the albums. They're great.


Poisoning the Pigeons in the Park

I'd like to take you now on wings of song, as it were, and try and help you forget perhaps for a while your drab, wretched lives. Here's a song all about spring-time in general, and in particular, about one of the many delightful pastimes the coming of spring affords us all.

Spring is here, a-suh-puh-ring is here.
Life is skittles and life is beer.
I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring.
I do, don't you? 'Course you do.
But there's one thing that makes spring complete for me,
And makes ev'ry Sunday a treat for me.

All the world seems in tune
On a spring afternoon,
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
Ev'ry Sunday you'll see
My sweetheart and me,
As we poison the pigeons in the park.

When they see us coming, the birdies all try an' hide,
But they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide.
The sun's shining bright,
Ev'rything seems all right,
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.

Lalaalaalalaladoodiedieedoodoodoo

We've gained notoriety,
And caused much anxiety
In the Audubon Society
With our games.
They call it impiety,
And lack of propriety,
And quite a variety
Of unpleasant names.
But it's not against any religion
To want to dispose of a pigeon.

So if Sunday you're free,
Why don't you come with me,
And we'll poison the pigeons in the park.
And maybe we'll do
In a squirrel or two,
While we're poisoning pigeons in the park.

We'll murder them all amid laughter and merriment.
Except for the few we take home to experiment.
My pulse will be quickenin'
With each drop of strychnine
We feed to a pigeon.
It just takes a smidgen
To poison a pigeon in the park.

Lobachevsky

For many years now, Mr. Danny Kaye, who has been my particular idol since childbirth, has been doing a routine about the great Russian director Stanislavsky and the secret of success in the acting profession. And I thought it would be interesting to stea... to adapt this idea to the field of mathematics. I always like to make explicit the fact that before I went off not too long ago to fight in the trenches, I was a mathematician by profession. I don't like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living. I mean, it isn't as though I had to do this, you know, I could be making, oh, 3000 dollars a year just teaching.

Be that as it may, some of you may have had occasion to run into mathematicians and to wonder therefore how they got that way, and here, in partial explanation perhaps, is the story of the great Russian mathematician Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky.

Who made me the genius I am today,
The mathematician that others all quote,
Who's the professor that made me that way?
The greatest that ever got chalk on his coat.

One man deserves the credit,
One man deserves the blame,
And Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name.
Hi!
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobach-

I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky.
In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics:
Plagiarize!

Plagiarize,
Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize -
Only be sure always to call it please 'research'.

And ever since I meet this man
My life is not the same,
And Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name.
Hi!
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobach-

I am never forget the day I am given first original paper
to write. It was on analytic and algebraic topology of
locally Euclidean parameterization of infinitely differentiable
Riemannian manifold.
Bozhe moi!
This I know from nothing.
What-i'm going-to do.
But I think of great Lobachevsky and get idea - ahah!

I have a friend in Minsk,
Who has a friend in Pinsk,
Whose friend in Omsk
Has friend in Tomsk
With friend in Akmolinsk.
His friend in Alexandrovsk
Has friend in Petropavlovsk,
Whose friend somehow
Is solving now
The problem in Dnepropetrovsk.

And when his work is done -
Ha ha! - begins the fun.
From Dnepropetrovsk
To Petropavlovsk,
By way of Iliysk,
And Novorossiysk,
To Alexandrovsk to Akmolinsk
To Tomsk to Omsk
To Pinsk to Minsk
To me the news will run,
Yes, to me the news will run!

And then I write
By morning, night,
And afternoon,
And pretty soon
My name in Dnepropetrovsk is cursed,
When he finds out (hahaha) I publish first!

And who made me a big success
And brought me wealth and fame?
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name.
Hi!
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobach -

I am never forget the day my first book is published.
Every chapter I stole from somewhere else.
Index I copy from old Vladivostok telephone directory.
This book was sensational!
Pravda - well, Pravda - Pravda said: (Russian double-talk)
It stinks.
But Izvestia! Izvestia said: (Russian double-talk)
It stinks.
Metro-Goldwyn-Moskva buys movie rights for six million rubles,
Changing title to 'The Eternal Triangle',
With Ingred Burgman playing part of hypotenuse.

And who deserves the credit?
And who deserves the blame?
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name.
Hi!