I and the Bird - cool beans edition!!!

Check out the 52nd edition of I and the Bird - not just for the posts, either (though they're great, especially some more neat video from Search and Serendipity and baby barn swallows from Rurality) but for the presentation. I'm not going to give it away, but man, it rocks!

It's a Grand Old Flag

On June 28, the current president addressed the Naval War College (and through it the nation, or Nation as the Department of Defense likes to say). He was talking about Iraq. He mentioned al Qaeda, according to Jonathan Landay of McClatchey newspapers, a lot:

"The reference, in a major speech at the Naval War College that referred to al Qaida at least 27 times, seemed calculated to use lingering outrage over the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to bolster support for the current buildup of U.S. troops in Iraq, despite evidence that sending more troops hasn't reduced the violence or sped Iraqi government action on key issues.

"Bush called al Qaida in Iraq the perpetrator of the worst violence racking that country and said it was the same group that had carried out the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington.

'Al Qaida is the main enemy for Shia, Sunni and Kurds alike,' Bush asserted. 'Al Qaida's responsible for the most sensational killings in Iraq. They're responsible for the sensational killings on U.S. soil.'

"Bush's use of al Qaida in his speech had strong echoes of the strategy the administration had used to whip up public support for the Iraq invasion by accusing the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein of cooperating with bin Laden and implying that he'd played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks.

This sort of thing isn't new, of course, and I don't even mean that this administration has been doing it for almost six years now. It's not just the current administration; they've merely elevated it to the level of artistry. It's much older than that. It's been going on for so long it's practically The American Way™. We don't call it "jingoism" or "scaring the people": we call it "waving the flag."

The Merriam-Webster Unabridged defines "flag-waving" as "ardently or violently emotional appeal to or expression of patriotic or partisan sentiment". H.L. Mencken caught it when he wrote in The American Language (1921) (emphasis mine):

The American, from the beginning, has been the most ardent of recorded rhetoricians. His politics bristles with pungent epithets, his whole history has been bedizened with tall talk; his fundamental institutions rest far more upon brilliant phrases than logical ideas.

More upon words than ideas.

More upon emotions than actions - or, perhaps more accurately, more upon actions founded on emotions than on ideas.

And this action - this waving of the flag in all places and at all times - is certainly founded upon an emotion. But what is that emotion? Most people would say, it's patriotism.

Merriam-Webster defines patriotism thus: love for or devotion to country : the virtues and actions of a patriot, which they define as a person who loves his country and defends and promotes its interests.

Defends and protects.

Hanging up a flag does neither.

Ambrose Bierce famously defined the terms thus:

PATRIOT, n. One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.

PATRIOTISM, n. Combustible rubbish read to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

Bierce was a notorious cynic. I wouldn't go that far. But I think it's indubitable that politicians know how to play on emotions - including patriotism - and that many people get caught up in the emotion and mistake the feeling for something it isn't.

This happens on both sides of any issue. For many people, just the waving of the flag is proof of something. Just what depends on who they are - and who they see waving it.

Back in September 2001, Katha Pollit wrote in her Nation column

My daughter, who goes to Stuyvesant High School only blocks from the World Trade Center, thinks we should fly an American flag out our window. Definitely not, I say: The flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war. She tells me I'm wrong--the flag means standing together and honoring the dead and saying no to terrorism. In a way we're both right: The Stars and Stripes is the only available symbol right now. In New York City, it decorates taxicabs driven by Indians and Pakistanis, the impromptu memorials of candles and flowers that have sprung up in front of every firehouse, the chi-chi art galleries and boutiques of SoHo. It has to bear a wide range of meanings, from simple, dignified sorrow to the violent anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry that has already resulted in murder, vandalism and arson around the country and harassment on New York City streets and campuses. It seems impossible to explain to a 13-year-old, for whom the war in Vietnam might as well be the War of Jenkins's Ear, the connection between waving the flag and bombing ordinary people half a world away back to the proverbial stone age. I tell her she can buy a flag with her own money and fly it out her bedroom window, because that's hers, but the living room is off-limits.

Here it is, July 2007, and the flag is still pretty much everywhere. Just today (a day I flew from Maryland to Tennessee) I've seen it on delivery trucks (American Yard Work, American Foodstuffs; American Carpet...); on interstate overpasses - waving and hanging, both; on construction cranes; in gas station windows; on the grass outside gas stations; all over Charlotte-Douglas (lots of these because of the upcoming holiday, though); on t-shirts (often accompanied by some religious sentiment); on jeans butts; on suitcases; on briefcases; on lapels; on sappy crying eagle posters; festooning my father's neighbors' yard (in place of their red-lit cross); on do-rags; on antennas; in front of suburban houses; on official-looking flag poles throughout Baltimore and Knoxville; and on hundreds of cars and trucks all over the place.

(In a case of serendipity, the Sunday Doonesbury addresses this very issue:


So many flags. So much waving. And yet...

Oddly, many of them look as though they've been neglected since they were put up - the ones in car windows are faded and torn, the ones on bumpers are scratched and dirty, the ones in yards are faded and raveling, and the ones on the interstate overpasses are sometimes so dirty and ragged you can only guess that they're the flag. And the ones on clothes ... stains, tears, and fading doesn't begin to cover it.

It's as though the mere act of putting up a flag is enough. It doesn't matter what you do as long as you do it wearing an American flag. It's like slapping a yellow magnetized ribbon on your Hummer is enough to prove you "support the troops", even though you still buy foreign oil and vote for the guys who deny soldiers their equipment, guardsmen their full, due time away from combat, and wounded vets their health care. There's the flag, that proves I'm a patriotic American.

And to prove it, every year or so we wax hysterical about people who (gasp!) burn the flag. Even though there aren't two dozen flags burned in any year, nonetheless we patriotic flag-waving Americans (I believe Stephen Colbert calls it "flagophilia") must, must, protect that piece of cloth from burning (if not from becoming tattered, dirty, cut and sewn into swimming suits, or used to cover people's asses - literally, I mean - jeans, swimming suits, and bermuda shorts).

Because we are a nation who loves our symbols. And our symbols are our deeds, far too often.

I said this just over a year:

We've always had a fringe of people who make the symbols of our country almost more important than the substance. Torture our enemies? Okay. Warrantless wiretapping? If that's what it takes. Kick down the doors of innocent people? Omelets and broken eggs. Burn the flag? Off with their heads!

Perhaps if we spent more time making sure the country was a thing whose symbols people would cherish instead of seeking instead to force people to act as if they cherished them we'd have fewer problems....Our flag is the symbol of something very precious. But part of that something is allowing the symbol to be destroyed sometimes.

That's what patriotism is. Not falling down and worshiping the red, white, and blue idol, but actively working to make the country worth our love.

And sometimes that means standing up and calling the people who are waving the flag liars.

Sometimes that means pointing out that they're only waving the flag to distract us from what they're waving it over.

Sometimes that means ripping the flag out of their hands so we can see what they're covering up.

What it doesn't mean is that we don't love the flag - what it means is that we do love the country.

Rocky Anderson, mayor of Salt Lake City said it like this last year:

Let no one deny we are patriots. We love our country, we hold dear the values upon which our nation was founded, and we are distressed at what our President, his administration, and our Congress are doing to, and in the name of, our great nation.

Blind faith in bad leaders is not patriotism.

A patriot does not tell people who are intensely concerned about their country to just sit down and be quiet; to refrain from speaking out in the name of politeness or for the sake of being a good host; to show slavish, blind obedience and deference to a dishonest, war-mongering, human-rights-violating president.

That is not a patriot. Rather, that person is a sycophant. That person is a member of a frightening culture of obedience - a culture where falling in line with authority is more important than choosing what is right, even if it is not easy, safe, or popular. And, I suspect, that person is afraid - afraid we are right, afraid of the truth (even to the point of denying it), afraid he or she has put in with an oppressive, inhumane, regime that does not respect the laws and traditions of our country, and that history will rank as the worst presidency our nation has ever had to endure.

What we need, as patriots, is a few less flags on display and a little more courage.

As often seems to be the case, Mark Twain has a fine take on it - and shows that not much changes, really. The essay this is from was written in 1901. Change 'the Philippines' to, oh, 'Iraq' or 'the Mexican border' or 'any political rally', and you'll see what I (and he) mean:

I am not finding fault with this use of our flag; for in order not to seem eccentric I have swung around, now, and joined the nation in the conviction that nothing can sully a flag. I was not properly reared, and had the illusion that a flag was a thing which must be sacredly guarded against shameful uses and unclean contacts, lest it suffer pollution; and so when it was sent out to the Philippines to float over a wanton war and a robbing expedition I supposed it was polluted, and in an ignorant moment I said so. But I stand corrected. I conceded and acknowledge that it was only the government that sent it on such an errand that was polluted. Let us compromise on that. I am glad to have it that way. For our flag could not well stand pollution, never having been used to it, but it is different with the administration.

Blogswarm against theocracy

This year's is July 1 - 4. Check out the rules and take part!

What is it with conservatives?

I'm beginning to think that something is seriously wrong with the top of the Republican party.

Oh, hell, no I'm not. What I'm beginning to think is that the rot is far more widespread than I thought.

As John McKay at archy says:

To Romney and to them, the problem was that the dog crapped on the car, not that the dog was terrified into incontinence. Once the dog's bowels were empty and the windows were clean, the problem was solved. The family hit the road with the dog still terrified and now also wet and shivering. To Romney, [and the reporters], that was a satisfactory solution.

I think most people will have no problem seeing the indifference to life and suffering that this anecdote reveals. Others will make a connection to Bill Frist's cat killing and Dick Cheney's canned hunts. ... Coturnix just reminded me of two more datapoints in the Conservative equals cruel formula: Bush as a child blowing up frogs and Bush as governor mocking a woman whose death warrant he had signed. I think both of these support my position. ...

[F]orty years after the only time he went hunting, Romney suddenly felt the need to join the NRA and go on a canned hunt for quail with major donors. Hunting played no part in his life, but he had no problem shooting trapped birds if that would impress a voting constituency. Killing was just a campaign prop, no different that putting on a funny hat and eating fried ethic foods on a stick at the county fair.

Sociopaths have no regard for suffering. It's a well-known danger signal, the torturing of animals, or the repeated abuse of them - the total lack of empathy. And we've seen what power in the hands of Bush and Cheney has accomplished.

Go read archy for his entire argument.

Inventing English, take 2

Since I mentioned some errors I'd found in Seth Lehrer's Inventing English, I think it only fair to say now that I've finished the book I wholeheartedly recommend it. The errors were minor and not concerned with English (they dealt with Celtic language nomenclature, a mistaken labeling of a Welsh word as Irish, and an overlooking of a Slavic language feature, in case you don't feel like chasing the older entry), and since the book is about English, they really don't affect it.

And the book itself - a glorious pilgrimage through English as reflected in and shaped by its literature, from Caedmon to rap - is simply wonderful.

Another Bush appointee - this one for life - lied. So what. Big deal...

I said it at the time: the man should not have been confirmed. Now the NY Times distills it: he lied.

Chief Justice Roberts, who assured the Senate at his confirmation hearings that he respected precedent, and Brown in particular, eagerly set these precedents aside. The right wing of the court also tossed aside two other principles they claim to hold dear. Their campaign for “federalism,” or scaling back federal power so states and localities have more authority, argued for upholding the Seattle and Louisville, Ky., programs. So did their supposed opposition to “judicial activism.” This decision is the height of activism: federal judges relying on the Constitution to tell elected local officials what to do.

I know, I know: a Bush appointee lied during his confirmation hearings. And water's wet and fire burns. Film at 11.

Too bad there's no way to confirm contingent upon truth...

Some judge ...

Check out Mr. Verb's column on the "judge" from Word Court's insultingly classist recent columns - encouraging restaurant patrons to mock the waitstaff's language usage. On top of everything else, this columnist apparently can't tell "the distinction between usage norms (what the writer found unimportant) and the content of a newspaper column"...

Un Connect-a-Ride

So, once again the B bus was way late this morning. See, it usually gets here at about 6:08, occasionally a minute earlier. If it's 7 minutes later than that, it's still okay for me, because the 87 Metro bus comes at 6:29. If I walk to the Metro stop right out of the house, I catch it. There comes a point where the B bus can't get me to the Metro stop on time, and then comes the internal debate.

How late is the B bus? Are they coming on this run at all? It is the first run, and if they're already 15 minutes late (which they are, a lot), will they decide that the customers on the first run should be the only ones to suffer, instead of making the whole day's customers late (there's only one bus per route)... Should I wait and see if the 6 o'clock bus is running, or should I assume they'll start with the 6:30? Calling the office never helps, they never know (or if they do they don't tell you).

The problem is that by then I've already missed the 6:29 Metro bus, and need to catch the 6:49. That one gets me to work just on time with a chance to grab some breakfast. (And I mean just on time - like with five minutes to spare. If I need to do any classroom prep, no breakfast. ) So I either have to start walking to the Metro stop (20 minutes' brisk walk) or gamble that there will be a B bus along in another couple of minutes. If I wait, and they wait, I can't catch the 6:49 and I can't be at work on time - with or without breakfast. I either get off at the Metro stop, wait 15 minutes, and catch the 7:10, or I go on to the Mall and hope the G bus waits for the connection (which, by the way, it won't: let the B bus be thirty seconds late and the G takes off, even if the B driver calls...)

So Monday I walked. And they didn't run a 6 B bus - the 6:30 passed me, on time, and the driver stared at me like "Why are you walking, crazy woman?" So walking was the right call that time. Sometimes I start walking and the B shows up in time to have made the 6:49... Sometimes I walk and I never see a B bus at all...

Today I didn't have to be in the classroom at 8. So I waited. And the B bus showed up at 6:14, which is just enough time to make the connection (though of course not to make the connection to the other Connect-a-Ride buses at the mall for the other riders...) But I got to work on time.

So what's my point? Because, like Ellen DeGeneres, I do have one. It's this: Connect-a-Ride keeps increasing their fares. It's now $1.75 to ride the bus once, and $.50 for a transfer. It costs $.50 to transfer from the Metro, too. That transfer fee really irks people, too, let me tell you. Connect-a-Ride says they have to raise the fares because their ridership is down...

Well, you know what? They already lost their $.50 from me because the G bus is so quick to leave transfers behind. I'd rather pay the Metro from Greenbelt than gamble on the G bus and lose 7 out of 10 days or take the earlier B and then stand around the parking lot at the mall for 25 minutes, especially when it's dark. And they lose it in the evening, mostly, because I'd rather walk home (unless the weather is awful) than stand around for 20 or 25 minutes waiting on a perpetually late B bus. (Mind, I can understand why it's late by 5:30 in the afternoon. First run in the morning, though? What is the excuse for that?)

If they want riders, they need to start running on time. Buses that didn't leak in the rain would be nice, too, as would buses in decent running order, but on time: that's the key. If people can't depend on the bus being there for them, they will make other plans to get to work.

Not the demographic...

Monica Hesse writes in today's Washington Post (Sometimes a Good Samaritan Expects a Handout in Return):

Think for a moment about your cellphone. How many phone numbers does it have? How many photos? If it were lost, how long would it take you to reconstruct your life?

I thought about it.

8 (all written in two paper phonebooks). 1. No time at all.

I'm just not with it... But, as Abe Simpson once remarked: I used to be with it, but then they changed what "it" was. Now, what I'm with isn't it, and what's "it" seems weird and scary to me. And it'll happen to you, too.

Red Admiral and friends

Clumps in the F Ring

The F ring is weird. As the JPL Cassini-Huygens page says:

The Cassini spacecraft spies an intriguing bright clump in Saturn's F ring. Also of interest is the dark gash that appears to cut through the ring immediately below the clump. Scientists continue to monitor this ring for small, transient clumps of material, as well as the effects of the shepherd moon Prometheus.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 28 degrees above the ringplane.

Attaboy, Rahm

I don't always (often?) see eye-to-eye with Rahm Emmanuel, but I do love his plan to cut the funding for Cheney's office out of the Executive Branch budget.

They also need to revisit all those meetings where Cheney claimed executive privelege to refuse to answer the legislative branch's questions...

But of course, it's just the Constitution...

Anyway, it should come up for a vote this week. Go here to find out how to help Rahm get it done - who to call and write. Now!

Blacking out 'the gay'

Since the carrier stopped being able to get the NYTimes to me in time for me to read it (the last thing I want to do at 7pm is read the morning paper), I only get the Sunday Times anymore. I look at the on-line edition, but I miss things every now and then. But Barry over at Staring at Empty Pages drew my attention to this story about blotting out a gay student - literally.

Andre Jackson, a senior at East Side High School, leaned over his boyfriend’s shoulder one day several months ago and kissed him on the lips. He took a picture of the smooch with his digital camera.

Like other students, Mr. Jackson later paid $150 to have his own special page of photos in the school yearbook. He decided to include the picture of the kiss, to make not a political statement, but a personal one.

“I didn’t intend to say, ‘Oh hey, look at me, I’m gay,’ ” said Mr. Jackson, 18. “It was just a picture showing my emotion, saying that I’m happy, you know, whatever. It was to look back on as a memory.”

On Thursday evening, when the seniors gathered at a restaurant here for the Senior Banquet, students received the yearbooks they had bought for around $85. But the picture of Mr. Jackson kissing his boyfriend was gone. School officials had blacked it out. Roughly 250 yearbooks were distributed, and all of them had a black-marker splotch covering every inch of the photo.

The decision to blot out the photo was made by Marion A. Bolden, the Newark Public Schools superintendent. Ms. Bolden said that an assistant superintendent had alerted her to the picture on Thursday afternoon. “I thought that the photo was suggestive,” Ms. Bolden said.

So, maybe the problem was the kiss, right? Not quite.

She said she made her decision without seeing the entire yearbook, and looked at only the one page.

The thin, hardcover yearbook, titled “Take Another Look,” features many pictures of the Class of 2007, including several of heterosexual couples embracing and kissing. On the page immediately opposite Mr. Jackson’s, a young man and a young woman kiss on a couch, his hand on her leg as she sits on his lap.

The problem was two men kissing. The assistant superintendent suffers from the "I don't want to look at it - ewwww icky" syndrome, and the superintendent jumped the gun. I mean - suggestive? Seriously? Suggestive of what - gays having sex? Straights kiss all over the place - busses (without getting thrown off), streets, parks, corridors, elevators, schoolyards - that yearbook - and the public is supposed to smile and say "awwwwww." Gays get "ewwwwww" - if they're lucky.

The superintendent has an excuse, sort of. She was told they weren't students, and that she'd have been more hesitant to black out students. (More hesitant? Not quite the same thing as "wouldn't have", is it?)

She said she felt that the photo was provocative for a high school yearbook, regardless of whether it showed heterosexual or homosexual kissing. But she said it was a decision that was made too quickly and without taking into consideration other couples’ pictures...

“It looked like two men kissing,” she said. “To me, it looked fairly illicit. It was pointed out as problematic, so maybe I read more into it.”

To her credit, Ms. Bolden understands that she has hurt Mr. Jackson. Sort of understands.

Ms. Bolden said she wanted to meet with Mr. Jackson and apologize if necessary. “He was personally hurt,” she said. “That bothers me very much.”

"If necessary"? “I was upset,” Mr. Jackson said. “I was hurt. I felt embarrassed and abused. ...I didn’t feel right. What I wanted to see wasn’t there.”

He wasn't there.

lolcats watch what? loltrek, what else?

You must see this, if you like Trek and/or lolcats.

I'm serious.

You must go see this.

Monday's Science Links

Today's five chunks of science - read 'em all at once, or one-a-day!

• Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy (and his commenters) discuss the very existence of black holes.


• Darren Naish at Tetrapod Zoology demonstrates why sea lions really are quite impressive.


• Melinda Wenner at She Blinded Me With Science tells us that plants can apparently recognize their kin. Wow.


• John Pierrot at Thoughts in a Haystack discusses whether saying that something has been scientifically disproved means that that something is "science".


• Chris Rowan at Highly Allochthonous goes to Nambia for pre-Cambrian fossils (one subject, two posts, cool pics - a bonus for Solstice!

Enjoy!

The Week in Entertainment

Film: Sasame-yuki (The Makioka Sisters). It was advertised as part Jane Austen and part Yasujiro Ozu. Add a little Chekov and you've got it - Juichiro Tanizaki's novel transferred brilliantly to film. Making Tsuruko a presence in the film (instead of a letter-writer) worked really well; the dynamic between the four sisters is captivating if somewhat dysfunctional, and with all four in the same room it just gets better. And the knowledge that Japan in 1938 is trembling on the edge of disaster makes it all more poignant.

DVD: Some Hawaii 5-0 and some Mission Impossible (Season One, with Stephen Hill). Man, I can't believe I was 12 years old when that came on first... I know I watched it. Oh, those old televisions, with the picture dwindling into that dot in the middle of the screen when it went off...

TV: The Noble Bachelor - man, I had forgotten how awful this was. It and the Sussex Vampire get all weird and gothic and god-knows-what with the plot lines, but at least Vampire was well-acted. This one is just plain bad, all the way around - blending it and The Veiled Lodger gives us a story that is composed of incompatibilities, and adding Holmes's prescient nightmare - oh, puh-leeze. Avoid it unless you're compulsive about seeing every single Jeremy Brett episode of Holmes.

Read: The Man Who Smiled - excellent. A much-missed chapter in Wallander's life, brilliantly written (and translated). Also started Seth Lehrer's Inventing English which is an extremely entertaining book, and has given me this cool word for teacher: Lorethane. I love it.

At least somebody likes the hot weather...

Words from Robert Ingersoll - 7

The instant we admit a book is too sacred to be doubted, or even reasoned about, we are mental serfs.

Gods

Carnival of the Godless

Yes, it's Carnival of the Godless #69 over at the Uncredible Hallq. From fisking of book reviews by reviewers who don't seem to have actually read the book to book reviews by people who have, with a mix of philosophy and humor. Check it out.

Water's Edge

Well, of course. I was charging my camera's battery and forgot to take it to work with me, so that day there were two bitterns (or possibly young green herons?) in a dead tree across the path from the pond. Had I had my camera, it would have been a good picture; as it is, it's from my cell phone and it's not. But the next day, though the bitterns (or whatever) weren't there, another first for me was: a undoubted green heron.

Words from Robert Ingersoll - 6

Strange! that no one has ever been persecuted by the church for believing God bad, while hundreds of millions have been destroyed for thinking him good. The orthodox church will never forgive the Universalist for saying "God is love." It has always been considered as one of the very highest evidences of true and undefiled religion to insist that all men, women, and childre deserve eternal damnation. It has always been heresy to say, "God will at last save all."

Gods

Bush's attack on our birthright

You know, you can find something something awful to say about the current administration every day. Isn't it amazing, in a terrifying way?

In today's New York Times, Timothy Egan writes (in Times Select, unfortunately, but I pay for it so I'm sharing) a column called This Land Was My Land:

Most Americans don’t own a summer home on Cape Cod, or a McMansion in the Rockies, but they have this birthright: an area more than four times the size of France. If you’re a citizen, you own it — about 565 million acres.

The deed on a big part of this public land inheritance dates to a pair of Republican class warriors from a hundred years ago: President Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, first chief of the Forest Service.

Both were rich. Both were well-educated. Both were headstrong and quirky. Pinchot slept on a wooden pillow and had his valet wake him with ice water to the face. Teddy and G.P., as they were known, sometimes wrestled with each other, or swam naked in the Potomac.

In establishing the people’s estate, they fought Gilded Age titans — railroads, timber barons, mine owners — and their enablers in the Senate. And make no mistake: these acts may have been cast as the founding deeds of the environmental movement, but they were as much about class as conservation.

Pinchot had studied forestry in France, where a peasant couldn’t make a campfire without being subject to penalties. In England, he had seen how the lords of privilege had their way over the outdoors. In the United States, he and T.R. envisioned the ultimate expression of Progressive-era values: a place where a tired factory hand could be renewed — lord for a day.

“In the national forests, big money was not king,” wrote Pinchot. The Forest Service was beloved, he said, because “it stood up for the honest small man and fought the predatory big man as no government bureau had done before.”

A century later, I drove through the Gifford Pinchot National Forest on my way to climb Mount Hood, and found the place in tatters. Roads are closed, or in disrepair. Trails are washed out. The campgrounds, those that are open, are frayed and unkempt. It looks like the forestry equivalent of a neighborhood crack house.

In the Pinchot woods, you see the George W. Bush public lands legacy. If you want to drill, or cut trees, or open a gas line — the place is yours. Most everything else has been trashed or left to bleed to death.

Remember the scene from “It’s a Wonderful Life,” when Jimmy Stewart’s character sees what would happen to Bedford Falls if the richest man in town took over? All those honky-tonks, strip joints and tenement dwellings in Pottersville?

If Roosevelt roamed the West today, he’d find some of the same thing in the land he entrusted to future presidents. The national wildlife system, started by T.R., has been emasculated. President Bush has systematically pared the budget to the point where, this year, more than 200 refuges could be without any staff at all.

The Bureau of Land Management, which oversees some of the finest open range, desert canyons and high-alpine valleys in the world, was told early on in the Bush years to make drilling for oil and gas their top priority. A demoralized staff has followed through, but many describe their jobs the way a cowboy talks about having to shoot his horse.

In Colorado, the bureau just gave the green light to industrial development on the aspen-forested high mountain paradise called the Roan Plateau. In typical fashion, the administration made a charade of listening to the public about what to do with the land. More than 75,000 people wrote them — 98 percent opposed to drilling.

For most of the Bush years, the Interior Department was nominally run by a Stepford secretary, Gale Norton, while industry insiders like J. Steven Griles — the former coal lobbyist who pled guilty this year to obstruction of justice — ran the department.

Same in the Forest Service, where an ex-timber industry insider, Mark Rey, guides administration policy.

They don’t take care of these lands because they see them as one thing: a cash-out. Thus, in Bush’s budget proposal this year, he guts the Forest Service budget yet again, while floating the idea of selling thousands of acres to the highest bidder. The administration says it wants more money for national parks. But the parks are $10 billion behind on needed repairs; the proposal is a pittance.

Roosevelt had his place on Oyster Bay. Pinchot had a family estate in Pennsylvania. Bush has the ranch in Crawford. Only one of them has never been able to see beyond the front porch.

It's not the Dick...

Thinking about that R rating I got, and looking at some others at Science Blogs, I edited my template to lose the Philip K Dick ... well, the name, anyway. And guess what? Now I'm:

Mingle² - Online Dating

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

* death (9x)
* suicide (7x)
* hurt (3x)
* abortion (2x)
* shoot (1x)


So I guess it's not sex.

Ja? Bra, det ter sig som ett bra uppslag....

Why not, says I? I do like Henning Mankell... (But I haven't learned it yet, so if the title of the post is butchered, förlåt!)

You Should Learn Swedish

Fantastisk! You're laid back about learning a language - and about life in general. Peaceful, beautiful Sweden is ideal for you... And you won't even have to speak perfect Swedish to get around!

What Language Should You Learn?

R-Rated? O Rly?

Sheesh. PZ at Pharyngula mentioned blog rating tool (he got a G). I tried it out. WTF? I say:

Mingle² - Online Dating

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

• death (4x)
• dangerous (3x)
• suicide (2x)
• dick (1x)

Oh. My. Nonexistent. Gawd.

The words "death, dangerous, suicide"?

The Salman Rushdie post accounts for all the death and suicide(the usual riots and burning of effigies in Pakistan, and the usual death threats; "the writer’s nightmare will not end until the moment of his death"; 2 commenters' "responsible for at least 50 to 60 deaths worldwide from murder and rioting"; the award of the knighthood excused suicide bombing; If honoring a brilliant writer sparks suicide bombings and riots) .

The sidebar and header account for the danger: Alexander Hamiliton (a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government), David Hume (endeavor the refutation of any hypothesis, by a pretence of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality), and Mark Twain (Only when a republic's life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it is in the wrong. There is no other time).

And "dick"? Philip K. Dick (Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.)

As I constantly tell my translation students: Context is everything.

Christian terrorism - alive and well and celebrated in Milwaukee

John McKay of archy has a series of valuable posts on "Paul Hill Days":

George L. Wilson of Children Need Heroes and Drew Heiss of Street Preach are planning to honor Paul Hill in a series of events called "Paul Hill Days" in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, July 26th - 29th -- "to honor him as God's man and our hero."

On July 29, 1994 Paul Hill, who sought to set a good example for Christian theocratic revolutionaries, assassinated abortion provider Dr. John Britton and James Barrett one of his escorts, and seriously wounding another, June Barrett, outside an abortion clinic in Pensacola, Florida.

It should be noted that George L. Wilson, the proprietor of Children Needs Heroes, recognizes two other heroes he believes America's children should learn about: Shelly Shannon, who was convicted of the attempted assassination of Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Kansas, among other serious crimes, including a series of arsons; and of course, James Kopp, who was convicted in the sniper assassination of Dr. Barnett Slepian in Amherst, New York. Kopp is also the chief suspect in several other shootings.

All three are recognized as Heroes of the Faith by the Army of God, members of which are likely to be on hand for the festivities.

Go to archy, read the posts (Jesus wept,I get letters..., the killer of James Barrett, and Paul Hill Days update) and then do something - write your paper, nag your pastor (if you have one), go to Milwaukee if you live near there...

Don't let these people celebrate assassins and call it "American"

And if you're a Christian, do you want this to be the face of your faith? If not, then doubly do something!

Happy Solstice!

It's the Solstice! Summer solstice here in the northern hemisphere - nearly Midsummer Day - and winter solstice in the southern.

Four Stone Hearth is up

And one more carnival for you - Four Stone Hearth, the anthropology carnival. This edition is at Hominin Dentral Anthro; it's not long on the number of posts, but it's heavy on the length of them - and the quality. Read some great anthro blogging, if you've a mind to - this carnival is always good.

Carnival of the Liberals

Yep, it's that time again. The Carnival of the Liberals at World Wide Webers. Ten excellent liberal posts - and only ten, so no special links recommended (though one of mine is there!). Head over and indulge.

Why indeed?

Got this from one of my students ... Hmmmmmmmmmmm

Inventing English

I'm reading Inventing English by Seth Lehrer (I heard about it Language Hat). So far (two chapters in, still Old English) it's fascinating and well-written. But I've discovered that although Lehrer knows quite a lot about English (and probably the Germanic languages as a whole), he's not quite so knowledgeable about other languages.

One point was mentioned over at Language Hat: Lehrer uses Gaelic to mean Irish, and Erse to mean Scots Gaelic - and then pronounces "Erse" dead (p.9), which it isn't.

A nit.

Here's another. He says (p 8) "The word wind appears in Latin as ventus, in Russian as veter, in Irish Gaelic as gwent, and in Sanskrit as vatas." Um, no. GW- is most emphatically not an Irish phoneme; the letter W isn't even used in spelling Irish (or Scots Gaelic, for that matter). The Irish for "wind" is gaoth; gwynt is Welsh. (Note that it's gwYnt, too, not gwEnt, which is the name of an administrative division (county) in Wales - also well known (in some circles anyway) in the phrase "Viet Gwent" used for the feared Pontypool front row (rugby).)

And one more (p14):

Old English also shared with the other Germanic languages a system of grammar. All of the other ancient European languages - Greek, Latin, Celtic - could form verb tenses by adding suffixes to verb roots. In Latin, for example, you could say "I love" in the present tense (amo), and "I will love" in the future (amabo). In the Germanic languages, as in modern English, you would need a separate or helping verb to form the future tense. In Old English, "I love" would be Ic lufige. But for the future tense, you would have to say, Ic sceal lufian. This pattern is unique to the Germanic languages.

Not unless he's counting the Slavic languages as "Germanic" (and indeed Slavo-Germanic was an ancient family in Indo-European, but if he's going to refer to "Greek, Latin, Celtic" instead of to the Greco-Italo-Celtic family, he really should mention Slavic. In fact, he should mention it anyway). In Russian, for instance, "I love" is ya lyublyu, but "I will love" is ya budu lyubit'.

But nits aside, the man really does know his English. And so far I have to agree with Hat:

this is a wonderful book. It's not hard to find well-informed books about the history of the English language, and it's not hard to find good critical accounts of English literature, but to have the two intertwined in one book is remarkable. Lerer goes through the various periods of Old, Middle, and Modern English, explaining the changes the language undergoes and analyzing the literature of the time accordingly, and the results are consistently enlightening.

beyond the rings

This picture, taken from 14° below the ringplane, shows the rings with Saturn's shadow cutting across them close to the planet, and little Mimas (247 miles/397 kilometers across) floating in the darkness beyond. (Image details at Cassini's home page)

Greenwald skewers Cohen

Run over to Glenn Greenwald's Salon column/blog and read what he has to say about Richard Cohen's column today on Libby. It's good stuff - damned good stuff.

A teaser:

Richard Cohen's Washington Post column this morning is a true tour de force in explaining the function of our Beltway media stars. Cohen's column -- which grieves over the grave and tragic injustice brought down upon Lewis "Scooter" Libby -- should be immediately laminated and placed into the Smithsonian History Museum as an exhibit which, standing alone, will explain so much about what happened to our country over the last six years. It is really that good.

I can't wait for his book to get here.

You want a bottom line?

If "it's not what America does" or "it's not right" doesn't work for you, how about this? "What goes around comes around."

As Dan Froomkin writes in White House Watch today:

And Karen J. Greenberg writes for TomDispatch.com that in the case of the four Iranian-Americans being detained, Bush's "frantic, fear-filled, information-impoverished, but stubbornly defended policy" on detainees held by the United States "has finally blown back on America's own citizens. . . .

"President Bush is correct. These detentions represent a travesty of justice and a violation of the rules of conduct among nations. It is horrifying that these Americans, who are engaged in foreign affairs at non-governmental and scholarly levels, are held, seemingly without recourse to law and certainly without respect for international rights.

"But there is another disturbing reality here which must be faced. In numerous ways, the U.S. has robbed itself of the right to proclaim the very principles by which these prisoners should be defended. Though President Bush and his spokespersons may not see it, their past policies have set a trap for the government -- and for Americans generally. More than five years after setting up Guantanamo, and then implementing national security strategies based upon torture, secret prisons, and illegal detentions, the Bush administration has managed to obliterate the moral high ground they now seek to claim in relation to Iran."

Yeah.

Maybe that's the only reason some people can accept. If we do it to them, they can do it to us. And they will. And we won't have a leg to stand on when we complain.

Because it doesn't magically turn right just because it's us doing it.

Speaking of Salman Rushdie...

Salman Rushdie just received a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours List, which has sparked the usual accusations of "anti-Islamism of senior British officials" from Iran and other Muslim countries, the usual quote from Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini

"The measure that has taken place for paying tribute to this apostate and detested figure will definitely put British statesmen and officials at odds with Islamic societies, the emotions and sentiments of which have again been provoked."

the usual riots and burning of effigies in Pakistan, and the usual death threats

The Organisation to Commemorate Martyrs of the Muslim World, a fringe hardline group, offered a reward of $150,000 (£75,000) to any successful assassin.

Forouz Rajaefar, the group’s secretary general, said: “The British and the supporters of the anti-Islam Salman Rushdie could rest assured that the writer’s nightmare will not end until the moment of his death and we will bestow kisses on the hands of whomsoever is able to execute this apostate.”

and

Ijaz-ul-Haq, the Religious Affairs Minister [of Pakistan], told the assembly in Islamabad that the award of the knighthood excused suicide bombing. “If somebody has to attack by strapping bombs to his body to protect the honour of the Prophet then it is justified,” he said.

He later retracted his statement, explaining that he had intended to say that knighting Rushdie will foster extremism. “If someone blows himself up, he will consider himself justified. How can we fight terrorism when those who commit blasphemy are rewarded by the West? We demand an apology by the British government. Their action has hurt the sentiments of 1.5 billion Muslims."

I've got a question: What the fuck does Salman Rushdie's knighthood have to do with fighting terrorism?

If honoring a brilliant writer sparks suicide bombings and riots, how are we to coexist with those 1.5 billion and their "hurt sentiments"? Why does their "hurt sentiments" justify murdering a writer?

Why should we be forced to read only what they approve of? Why is their disapproval more important than ours?

And why does religion get this free pass?

Happy Birthday, Salman

Today is the 60th birthday of Salman Rushdie, born in Mumbai (then Bombay). His novel Midnight's Children won the Booker Prize. His novel The Satanic Verses won him a death sentence from the Ayatollah Khomeini (which was revoked in 1998).

May he enjoy many more.

Happy Birthday, Blaise

Today in 1623 Blaise Pascal was born in Clermont, France. He was a mathematician and physicist, and made a lot of contributions to both areas of study, especially in probability theory. He had some kind of mystical experience at the age of thirty, and spent the next nine years - the last of his short life - attempting to convert skeptics to Christianity. He's the author of a much-quoted gambit that bears his name, Pascal's wager, which essentially says that if there is no god, you lose nothing by believing, but if there is, you lose all by not. The wager is, of course, fatally flawed in several places, but you still hear it...

But he also said, "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."

The Summer Day

Head over to Living the Scientific Life so GrrlScientist can share a poem with you - Mary Oliver's The Summer Day:

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Head on over and read the whole thing. It's lovely.

Monday's Science Links

This week's science links

1. Bee at Backreaction gives us an overview of extra dimensions from Nordström in 1913 to the present day.


2. Larry Moran at Sandwalk tells us how penicillin works.


3. Tommaso Dorigo, a Quantum Diaries Survivor, gives us a a graph showing the tediousness of reviews and how it depends on the interest of the subject. Funny - and applicable across disciplines, I would imagine.


4. Jochen at Belltower Birding takes a look at cedar waxwings and how they avoid predation while preening through color, shape, and behavior.


5. Aydin Örstan at Transitions remembers the late Gavin de Beer and his contributions to evolutionary theory.

Go forth and learn!

I and the Bird

I and the Bird 51 is up over at the Birdchaser's place. No special recs this time: You'll want to read them all, because if you do, you can enter to win a book! Check it out.

Well, no - I take it back: if you only look at one, look at Search and Serendipity for some cool video of Cameroonian birds.

The Week in Entertainment

Live: P.D.Q. Bach and Peter Schickele: The Jekyll and Hyde Tour. See this post for details.

DVD: Lagaan - I do like Aamir Khan, and this movie is amazingly good.

TV: I DVR'd Stargate but haven't watched it yet... I'm torn about the series ending. I'll definitely miss it, but this year has been of mixed quality.

Read: I had just barely started Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World last week and got distracted by the arrival in the mail of Michael Chaybon's latest - the utterly brilliant Yiddish Policeman's Union. So I read that and will re-start the Murakami this week, probably. Though since I found Henning Mankell's The Man Who Smiled - previously unpublished in North America and only just published in the UK, the one where Wallander thinks about quitting. So you can see I have to read that first... And I've just picked up The Assault on Reason. So I won't finish the Murakami this week, since I do have to work. (Vacation's not till the beginning of July...)

¿Angel wins? Sí, sí ¡Angel wins!

Angel Cabrera?

Yes. El Pato has won the US Open!

Woot woot!

¡Viva El Pato!

Carnival of Maryland #9

The ninth Carnival of Maryland is up at Technosailor.

I wish ...

The question was,

"What is the difference between 'I wish you came here' and 'I wish you would come here'? The "best answer" on Yahoo answers was

The difference is one of time frame.

"I wish you came here" -- the person being addressed did not come. It implies that the event has passed.

"I wish you would come here" -- the person being addressed is being asked to come in the future. In this case, "would" is the subjunctive mood of "will," indicating that the action is not necessarily going to happen because it is only desired. It expresses some doubt.

To further clarify, here's how you would use them.

Jill's boyfriend Jack had to work late, so he could not go to a party that Jill was having. After he finished at his work, he drove home. When Jack called Jill on the telephone, she said "I wish you came here," because she wanted him to come to her house rather than his house. She is expressing regret about something that has already happened.

Jack then says that he is not very tired, and is going to stay awake and watch some television. Jill says "I wish you would come here." She is expressing her desire for him to come in the future (in this case, not very far in the future).

Is that right? It doesn't seem right."

That's because it's not. It's partly right, but partly wrong. There is a third aspect/tense/mood combination which can be used after wish - 'I wish you had come here' - and the three have different uses.

First, a quick look at what is called "the English tense system". Actually, English has only two tenses: past and present (or past and non-past). (The past tense is also called the "preterite", to distinguish it from the label "past" which can be applied to a lot of verb forms.) But what about the future tense? Technically, English has no future tense. We form our "future tense" with the modal auxilliary "will". It doesn't act like a tense; instead, it acts just like the other modal auxilliary verbs, such as "must, could, can", do.

We also have aspect: pefect and progressive. The perfect aspect is formed with the auxilliary verb "have" and the 'past participle' or -EN form. Its use is primarily to relegate a verb into past time as compared to the main narrative ("I had gone to the mall today when I met him"). The progressive aspect is formed with the auxilliary verb "be" and the 'present participle' or -ING form. Its use is to emphasize the process of the verb ("I was walking down the street when I saw him").

We have mood as well, formed with those modal auxilliary verbs. There are nine in English, four pairs which were originally tense pairs but which now are most often used tenselessly, and one odd one. They are "can, could; shall, should; will, would; may, might; must". These are used with the bare verb to make statements of probability, desirability, ability, need, obligation, permission, doubt, and so on. They are context dependent (for instance, "he may take those" can express permission or probability, and "you must love your father" can be a deduction or a command.)

Now, let's look at "wish". It takes a number of different kinds of complements. I can wish

• FOR something (I wish for a pony!)
• someone something (I wish you good luck!)
• (sometimes) FOR something FOR someone (I wish for a pony for me and a dog for you)
• TO DO something (I wish to see that movie again)
• and most often, THAT something - note that in English the "that" can be unsaid (I wish (that) I'd get a new job

Now, note that in the last complement, it's "past tense" verbs that get used: I wish that you came/you had come/you would come. We don't use the present tense or the future modality: *I wish that you will come. Why? We just don't.

Don't worry about trying to make that make sense. It's arbitrary, as language tends to be. The relationship between "tense" and "time" is tenuous at best. "I wanted to ask you if you could help me" looks like a past tense, but I'm asking right now by saying this sentence, and I want help in the future - immediate future or distant - not in the past. "I go to town on Tuesdays" is not describing anything happening at the present (unless it's Tuesday and you've stopped me on my way, but even then it's not really about this moment). "I am flying to New York next week" is in the present progressive, but it's about the future.

With "wish" we use past tense forms. But there are three ways to form "you come here" in a past form: you came here, you had come here, you would come here. (Note that "you would come here" is past in form but certainly not necessarily in meaning - context tells you if it is.) All three are valid. Each means something different.

So, the question was "what is the difference"? The answer is:

• I wish you came here - this means "I wish this was a place you came to on a regular basis".
• I wish you had come here - this means "I wish you to have been at this place at some time prior to the time established as the base time".
• I wish you would come here - this means "I wish you to be here at some time in the future".

(I had originally had the meanings as "I wish you were here and not where you are" and "I wish you would leave where you are and come here now". But as Barry points out, everything is context driven and if I'm not speaking of "now" then the time that I wish you to be here isn't now.)

Note that in the first case, the simple past turns the verb into the same usage as we saw with "I go to town on Tuesdays" - the description of an habitual action. In the second, the past perfect, which places the time of the verb into the past as compared to the man verb (wish), describes something that happened (or didn't happen) before the wish was made. And in the third, the modal verb is the past tense form of "will", which makes the "future", and thus expresses action which occur after the main verb.

Thus, with "wish" you place the verb of what you're wishing for into the appropriate past tense form, depending on what it would be if it were in its own sentence.

• You come here - I wish you came here
• you came here - I wish you had come here
• you will come here - I wish you would come here

So, to answer the question - If Jill wanted to express regret that Jack hadn't come to her place, she'd say "I wish you had come". If she said, "I wish you came here" she would be saying that she wished he came to her place routinely. Although the pragmatics of where she wishes he was at that moment are served by either sentence, one is only speaking of that night; the other speaks of all nights. If she uses the wrong one, as the Yahoo Answers! person would have her do, she risks having Jack at her place when she doesn't want him there.

PDQ Bach: The Jekyll and Hyde Tour

It's been 12 years since there was a new PDQ CD - another is coming out this fall. And they recorded it last night in Owings Mills - and I was there! And dying of laughter.

Four Next-to-Last songs - written in Deuglish - including Das kleines Birdie (ich leibt das kleines Birdie, der bestest ist by far; Ich hatte him fur dinner und he tasted wunderbar!) and Der Cowboykönig (Du bist mein Hero, mein Role-model, too: Du liegst mir in Herzen, Ja das ist was du do. Du bist ja der König of all du kannst see - Besser dann Lone Ranger and Hipalong Cassidy; Du bist ja der Kowboy, but lass mir explain: du bist not just a Kowboy, bei mir bist du Shane.).

Some PDQ Bach rounds, and some songs by Schickele (including If Love is Real, which hysterically veers into metacommentary on the song's title and refrain) and a medley of Shakespearian soliloquies in various styles.

And of course the long-awaited PDQ Bach string quartet - as Schickele said, the string quartet is so central to 18th century music that PDQ Bach could no more ignore it than master it. This "big string quartet" in F Major (The Moose) is so funny I can't begin to describe it - let's just let this quote say it all: PDQ Bach is most original when he's forgotten how what he's stealing from goes.

What can I say? Buy the CD from Telarc when it comes out in November! And if you live near Eugene, Oregon - go to the concert June 30th, part of the Oregon Bach Festival.

Language quiz

The host of Bargain Hunters sums up the rules of the show:

The contestants get 200 pounds and go out into a fair; they only get one hour and "they buy something they think is a bargain. It goes into an auction and the name of the game is to make a profit. And hopefully if they do make a profit they get to keep it. What could be fairer than that?"

The previous quiz was:
This is from the NCAA site:

Check out our WCWS Blog from Oklahoma City or email well-wishes to your favorite WCWS team and players.

This is enormously common and stems from the fact that "well" is both an adjective and an adverb - but with different meanings. "Well" as an adverb is the irregularly formed adverb of "good"; as an adjective it means "healthy".

Now, adverbs are not used in English to modify nouns. For instance, using a normal derived adverb, we see: "I wish you ran quickly" -> "I wish you were a quick runner." but "Well" is not a flat adverb, the same form in both functions (compare to the flat adverb "fast" - he runs fast / he is a fast runner), it's irregular. "Well wishes" is formed from "I wish you well", but you have to used the adjective - and that's "good".

"Well wishes" works if by "I wish you well" you mean "I wish you were well" (get well wishes). But if you mean "I wish good things for you" your wishes are "good wishes".

Remember the old aphorism: Do well by doing good.

And look here for Previous Quizzes, 36 so far.

Words from Robert Ingersoll - 5

I think we came up from the lower animals... Now, when I first heard that doctrine, I didn't like it... I hated to believe it. I don't know that it is the truth now. I'm not satisfied upon that question; I stand about eight to seven. I thought it over. I read about it... And finally I said, "Well, I guess we came up from the lower animals." I thought it all over, the best I could, and I said, "I guess we did." And after a while I began to like it, and I like it now better than I did before. Do you know that I would rather belong to a race that started with skullless vertebrae in the dim Laurentian seas, wiggling without knowing why they wiggled, swimming without knowing where they were going; but kept developing and getting a little further up and a little further up, all through the animal world, and finally striking this chap in the dugout. And getting a little bigger, and this fellow calling that fellow a heretic, and that fellow calling the other an infidel, and so on. For in the history of the world, the man who is ahead has always been called a heretic. Recollect this! I would rather come from a race that started from that skullless vertebrate, and come up and up and up and finally produced Shakespeare, who found the human intellect wallowing in a hut and touched it with a wand of his genius and it became a palace dome and pinnacle. I would rather belong to a race that commenced then and produced Shakespeare, with the eternal hope of an internal future for the children of progress leading from the far horizon, beckoning men forward, forward and onward forever. I had rather belong to this race and commence there with that hope, than to have sprung from a perfect pair, on which the Lord has lost money every day since.

The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child

Leprosy

As Lawrence Donnes writes in the NYT:

And there’s Lou Dobbs on CNN, helping racist tract-writers to peddle made-up statistics about immigrants and leprosy. (Did the country suddenly have 7,000 cases in three years? No, only a few hundred. But it sure sounds scarier.)

...Many people are surprised to learn that leprosy still exists. It is entrenched in parts of the third world, and people with it suffer greatly — often in secret, because their shame is so profound. But leprosy is nothing but a bacterial infection that has been curable for more than 50 years. It is very hard to catch — 95 percent of humans have a natural immunity. Patients are no longer infectious after one treatment, and those who are cured need not fear a relapse.

While the disease has greatly abated around the world, the social side-effects — abuse, discrimination, exile — have not gone away. People with leprosy face obstacles that people with cancer or AIDS do not. Their disease has been feared for millennia. It is in the Bible, linked to sin and uncleanliness and imbedded in the language, as a metaphor for anything loathsome or untouchable.

And he adds, later, "the blundering Mr. Dobbs, who invited a furor by defending grossly exaggerated leprosy statistics — “If we reported it, it’s a fact,” he said."

It's no surprise, I suppose, that people like Dobbs leap into the depths of the Bible for their fearmongering, into the collective memory of bellringing outcasts and screams of "unclean!"

But we've moved beyond those days of killing doves and sprinkling blood on people's ears and toes to "cleanse" them of leprosy - now we actually cure them. And I hope we've moved beyond being scared by Lou Dobbs screaming "Lepers! Unclean!" on Fox News, whether he's got his numbers right or not.

Liverwurst

Saw a cute commercial today. Some basketball player (I do not remember who) was demonstrating how to shoot baskets and using a mnemonic of "BEEF = Balance Eyes Elbow Follow-through." At the end of the commercial he announced "Next time I'll demonstrate the key to defense: LIVERWURST."

I admit, I'm trying to come up with it. The L is throwing me, though. (Okay, not just the L...)

How horrible

Man. I had forgotten how obnoxious the framing story of the love quadrangle of Helena - Demetrius - Hermia - Lysander was. How horrible the fate for Hermia - to live a nun, a virgin her entire life! How horrible! How much preferable it would be for her to spend the rest of her life getting raped by a husband she doesn't love! Everyone can see that.

How will they reconcile it? The usual way

I was going to blog this myself, but I'll let Dan Froomkin handle it (though with my italics):

The White House press corps let it slide, but Comedy Central's Jon Stewart nailed Snow last night for lying. Here's the video.

Stewart explained that Snow "was adamant months ago that the dismissal of these attorneys had nothing to do with politics."

He rolled video of Snow from March 15, saying: "It's pretty clear that these things are based on performance and not on sort of attempts to do political retaliation, if you will."

Stewart: "So anyway, that was three months ago. Three months later, a dozen subpoenas, six hearings, . . . thousands of released e-mails, it turns out that their performances were actually pretty good. And all signs are now pointing to political motivations. I wonder how the White House is going to reconcile this apparent discrepancy?"

Stewart then rolled video from Wednesday's briefing, at which a reporter asked Snow: "At the beginning of this story, the President, you, Dan Bartlett, others said on camera that politics was not involved, this was performance-based, but --"

Snow's reply: "No, that is something -- we have never said that."

Stewart's audience jeered.

"Oh," Stewart concluded, "you will reconcile that by -- LYING!"

"Odd ring out"

The F ring is different. This shot shows some of what makes it so - things the team is still studying - like lanes and clumps. Compare it to the A ring at right.

See the Cassini-Huygens site for details.

ILR Showcase

Spent the day at the ILR Showcase (Interagency Language Roundtable) at the George Washington University in DC. This year's theme: "Advances in Language Learning and Cultural Understanding".

I split my time up between presentations on teaching culture in language classes (including a fascinating one on use Persian (Farsi) blogs), and those on technology - particularly on Smart Tools. One of the best was on how to build and use corpora in grammar and translation courses using TextStat software.

A long busy day but definitely worthwhile.

Excellent summation

Stephen Colbert: "You're gay, so you're useless to the military. That's firmly established, right?"
ex-PO Steven Benjamin, Arabic translator discharged after the military discovered he was gay: "I don't think so, but Congress does. The only thing worse than another al Qa'eda attack would be a gay man stopping it."

Bears do what in the woods?

You know what bears consider entertainment, according to Stephen Colbert?

Tearing people from limb to limb.

Now that's entertainment. Quite a mental image.

Massachusetts does it right

Another step forward.

A proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage was swiftly defeated today by a joint session of the Legislature by a vote of 45 to 151, eliminating any chance of getting it on the ballot in November 2008. The measure needed at least 50 votes to advance.

..."Today's vote was not just a victory for marriage equality, it was a victory for equality itself," Patrick told reporters as cheers echoed in the State House. "Whenever we affirm the equality of anyone, we affirm the equality of everyone."

...Because fewer than 50 of the state's 200 lawmakers supported the amendment, it will not appear on the 2008 ballot, giving gay marriage advocates a major victory in their battle with social conservatives to keep same-sex marriage legal in Massachusetts.

Opponents of gay marriage face an increasingly tough battle to win legislative approval of any future petitions to appear on a statewide ballot. The next election available to them is 2012.

And in 2012 it will have been 8 years... and Massachusetts will still be standing (hopefully not alone).

Check here for reaction to the news from all sides. Here's a couple:

Ted Kennedy: "The nation’s eyes were on Massachusetts today, and they saw a triumph for civil rights and fundamental fairness. Today's historic vote will have a national impact on civil rights for years to come. Massachusetts has led the nation in education, in health care and in biotechnology, and today Massachusetts renewed its commitment as a proud leader in civil rights."

State Senator Gale Candaras, who changed positions and voted against the ban: "For me, what all this comes down to is this: Same gendered couples are taxpaying, law-abiding citizens, who are important community contributors, well-loved and well-respected by their families, friends, neighbors and employers. They deserve and are entitled to the same legal protections enjoyed by all others citizens of our state. This is the law of the Commonwealth, articulated by our Supreme Judicial Court in Goodrich v. The Department of Public Health, decided in November, 2003."

Here's looking at you,kid

re Mr Bork

A friend just sent me this, re Bork and his lawsuit:

I can hear him now, calling it "one of those irregular verbs":

I have a valid personal injury claim.
You have a frivolous lawsuit.
He is a greedy, unscrupulous bastard.

(And they have no more money...)

"Battlefield"?

Apropos of my post Tony goes to town... Thanks to a commenter on Talking Points Muckraker for this:

Tony Snow: "Are you saying that detaining people who are plucked off the battlefields is an assault on democracy?"

Jose Padilla was not "plucked off the battlefield". He was arrested at O'Hare Int. Airport as a material witness and later changed to an "enemy combatant".

Ali al-Marri was not "plucked off the battlefield". He was arrested in Dec. 2001 in Peoria, IL as a material witness, subsequently charged with credit card fraud and lying to FBI. He was not declared an "enemy combatant" until June 2003.

Maher Arar was not "plucked off the battlefield". He was arrested in JFK airport and transported to Syria where he was tortured before it was determined that he was innocent and was released.

Another says

of the actual GITMO detainees, the Seton Hall study - pretty much the most thorough study done of the detentions at GITMO, shows that less than 10% had even an arguable "battlefield" connection.

adding

even the least generous estimate I've seen, that from Dr. Nakhleh http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/09/sb-six-questions-emile-nakhleh-1158706094 says that at least one-third were not terrorists nor even jihadists and are people who "wouldn't have been there if we weren't paying a bounty to Pakistani security forces for every Middle Eastern-looking person they handed over to us"

Now, it's true that the reporter did follow up several times, but in the end Tony was allowed to get away with it. The stories should have been about the White House, via Tony Snow, lying through their collective teeth and once again heaping disrespect on the Constitution. It's not hard to get the facts.

You just have to want to print them.

Which is the answer, after all.

Rings and Moons

Saturn is a complex place. This shot gives us a glimspse of it - the planet, the rings (fine enough that the planet can be seen through it), Saturn's shadow cutting across the whole thing, and four of the moons: (from lower left) Mimas and Janus, and up toward center right and close together little Pandora and Prometheus. Pandora and Prometheus are F ring shepherds, and the narrow, ribbon-like ring is between them.

(See Cassini -Huygens page for details.)