an open letter...

Head over right this minute to An individual's concepts and read a totally brilliant open letter.

I know you believe you know a great deal about

[□ linguistics / □ children's literature / □ law / □ psychology / □ other (please specify)]

simply because you

[□ use language / □ read Harry Potter and Goodnight Moon / □ watch Law & Order / □ have a mind],

or because you've read a newspaper article about

[□ the lack of numbers in Pirahã / □ Dumbledore being gay / □ some Supreme Court decision / □ Prozac].

It goes on and it's splendid. And check the comments for in_parentheses's additional set for □ education.

Homecoming Princes

Awright!

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing the royalty of Davis Senior High School's junior class: Brandon Raphael and his prince, Kiernan Gatewood.

For what appears to be the first time in school history, the Davis Senior High student body has elected a gay couple into homecoming royalty. With each boasting a white sash declaring his title as "Prince," the two 16-year-olds rode through the city of Davis on a recent Friday afternoon in the school's annual homecoming parade. They stood in the back of a pickup truck, arm-in-arm, smiling warmly despite the rain.

"People were so excited for us," Gatewood said of the couple's victory, announced a few weeks ago. "We were a little surprised, but Davis ..."

"Is a liberal town," interrupts his boyfriend of four months, Raphael. "Go 10 miles in any other direction and you'll get some other feeling."

Indeed, the news might surprise few in Davis, a city embraced and, at times, mocked for its liberal leanings. But students and adults cheering on the boys recognized their election as a meaningful milestone.

The best part?

In the weeks since officials announced the homecoming court, there's been no public outcry — not by campus leaders, not by students and not by the community.

Students said they were encouraged that the election was not an issue for campus administrators. They said they were less surprised that a gay couple would win than they were that officials allowed it to happen.

Happy Halloween!

(My grandniece, a few years back...)

Harvest Moons

Three of Saturn's smaller moons and its rings - from Mimas (at the top outside the rings altogether, 397 kilometers, or 247 miles across) to Pandora ( outside the F ring and 84 kilometers, or 52 miles across) to little Atlas (to the left, between the F and A rings and only 32 kilometers, or 20 miles across). This picture was taken from below the rings by Cassini back in September; doesn't it appear as if we're looking down, though? But we're looking up, so Pandora is closest to us, not farthest!

Happy Birthday, John

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

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

Cat! who hast pass'd thy grand cliacteric,
How many mice and rats hast in thy days
Destroy'd? - How many tit bits stolen? Gaze
With those bright languid segments green, and prick
Those velvet ears - but pr'ythee do not stick
Thy latent talons in me - and upraise
Thy gentle mew - and tell me all thy frays
Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick.
Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists -
For all the wheezy asthma, - and for all
Thy tail's tip is nick'd off - and though the fists
Of many a maid have given thee many a mail,
Still is that fur as soft as when the lists
In youth thou enter'dst on glass bottled wall.

"an almost untenable position"

Back in the old days (you know: the Inquisition) they called it "the water cure". Nowadays we call it "water boarding". By any name, it's torture, and anybody who is honest - or not inflicted with the "We are Good; the Good don't torture; we water board; water boarding is not torture QED" syndrome - knows it.

Mukasey refuses to admit it.

Will the Senate confirm this man?

"They are putting him in an almost untenable position on this," says White House spokesman Tony Fratto.

Maybe, but "almost untenable positions" are torture either.

Happy Birthday, John

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh dear...

So, Hosni Mubarak has just announced that Egypt intends to start up a nuclear program. They're the latest in a series of Mid-Eastern countries to do so.

Of course, they're on our side in the Great War on Terror, so we'll support their authoritarian leader's bid for nuclear plants and believe him when he says they'll only be for power.

Pollies

I get headlines from Fairfax Digital (they publish The Age, an Australian newspaper). Today, this was the first one:

Election 07 - Pollies to answer your questions live on YouTube

Concerned about climate change, workplace relations or interest rates? Have a pollie answer your questions live on our special smh.com.au YouTube channel! You can submit your questions here, and our panel of journalists will put your questions to a leading politician in a live Q & A session.

Pollies?

Pollies?

I think that just stands on its own, don't you? Perhaps we should adopt that term here.

The Boneyard

Ghosts of Dinosaurs Past (c'mon, don't be silly: dinosaurs present are all around us every day; one just moved in with GrrrlScientist, in fact) abound at The Boneyard - check it out, if you dare.

The Big Battalions

I have mixed feelings about the Series sweep.

On the one hand, my younger brother recently moved to Colorado and became a huge Rockies fan, and he's disappointed.

On the other, the Rockies were pretty obnoxious about their "God is on our side because we're Christians!" belief.

As always, it seems that - out here in the real world - God is on the side of the big battalions - or the big payroll.

Stamp out the rate hike

Tomorrow's the day. Sign the petition, call your Representative, make your voice heard:
Save the Market Place of Ideas

From the Nation:

Tuesday's the big day. That's when Congress will hold a hearing on the outrageous Time Warner-inspired postage rate hike that's saddled The Nation with a half million dollar annual increase in postal costs and brought other small publications to the brink of financial disaster. Now's the moment for champions of independent media to take a stand.

We're joining our friends at Free Press to collect 100,000 signatures, and we want to have phones ringing off the hook on Capitol Hill by Tuesday.

Please send a message to Congress, post haste.

Our founding fathers knew that a free press is a cornerstone of democracy. That's why they encouraged small publishers and a broad spectrum of opinions in media by guaranteeing fair postal rates for all.

But mega-magazines have undermined that founding principle. Time Warner and others like them are passing the buck onto smaller independent publishers, threatening to silence the fearless investigative journalism that small media outlets like The Nation are known for.

Now is our chance to restore the founders' vision.

The Nation isn't the only small magazine forced to foot the bill. We're on the same page with small publishers on the opposite side of the aisle, like National Review, who have also been hit hard by the increase.

It's not just the fate of your favorite magazine that rests on the outcome of this hearing. The health of our nation's open public discourse hangs in the balance.

Happy Birthday, Bozzie!

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

Monday Science Links

This week's sciency goodness:

• fev at headsup: the blog looks at the social science of polling and what it means (or should mean) for reporters.


• Jennifer at Cocktail Party Physics tells us about an ordinary man, John Bardeen: transistors, superconductors, and two Nobels.


• Stefan at Backreaction looks at urban solar calendars (Stonehenge, eat your heart out).


• Ed at Not Exactly Rocket Science looks at India, the Ferrari of continental drift, or in this case, sprint.


• Kristjan at Pro-science tells us about the oldest known painting, some 11,000 years old.

Dig in!

The Week in Entertainment

Film: Michael Clayton - George Clooney knows how to make intelligent movies, movies you have to pay attention to, movies that reward your attention with taut stories and no wasted time. This movie leaves you uncertain until the end, maybe even beyond the end, with the intriguing end credits raising more questions than they answer. Michael Clayton the man is the soul of the movie named after him, and it's a soul that isn't sure which side of the line it lives on. An excellent film - maybe not an important one, but an intensely entertaining one - and probably the best role Clooney has ever had.

DVD: Proof - excellent. When Catherine reads her father's final proof (let X equal the number of cold months...) it is tragic in every sense of the word. Gwyneth Paltrow is brilliant, and Jake Gyllenhaal and Hope Davis almost as good.

TV: House - Don't you think the woman should have been talking to her dead mother in Ukrainian? I still hate Cameron, possibly even worse now. And Carmen Argenziano is gone!!!!!!!! Heroes - I'm not sure Mohinder knows what he's doing ... but how is that new? Is Kristin Bell Bob's daughter? That would be interesting. (ps - just saw Chuck Norris selling Mountain Dew; memo to self, do not buy it.) Scrubs - Eliot is insane. And I really am not looking forward to another season of JD-Eliot unresolved sexual tension... Pushing Daisies - how does Digby know he can't touch Ned? I do like that morgue doctor; he's funny. "Flies land on me, they pay rent." But Ned's funny, too: "The plane was hijacked!" "How'd you come by that?" "DNA... ish." The program is just insane - Pidge with that parrot wing Bejeweled™ onto it... Torchwood - a deliciously dark episode. Gotta wonder what Ianto and Jack are going to do in the office with a stopwatch, don't you? And if there is something in the dark coming for Jack, it'll be disappointed.

Read: Began Murikami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - once again, he does not disappoint.

Carnival of the Godless

A fabulous Haunted House Halloween edition of The Carnival of the Godless is up over at Greta Christina's Blog. Too many links to even think of singling some out - besides, you owe it to yourself to read the wrapping as well as the filling! Greta Christina has outdone herself (and that's no easy task). You'll be reading till Halloween.

Words from Robert Ingersoll - 14

Over the vast plain called life we are all travelers, and not one traveler is perfectly certain that he is going in the right direction. True it is, that no other plain is so well supplied with guide-boards. At every turn and crossing you find them, and upon each one is written the exact direction and distance. One great trouble is, however, that these boards are all different, and the result is that most travelers are confused in proportion to the number they read. Thousands of people are around each of these signs, and each one is doing his best to convince the traveler that his particular board is the only one upon which the least reliance can be placed, and that if his road is taken the reward for doing so will be infinite and eternal, while all the other roads are said to lead to hell, and all the makers of the other guide boards are declared to be heretics, hypocrites, and liars. "Well," says a traveler, "you may be right in what you say, but allow me at least to read some of the other directions and examine a little into their claims. I wish to rely a little upon my own judgment in a matter of so great importance." "No, sir!" shouted the zealot. "That is the very thing you are not allowed to do. You must go my way without investigation or you are as good as damned already." "Well," says the traveler, "if that is so, I believe I had better go your way." And so most of them go along, taking the word of those who know as little as themselves. Now and then comes one who, in spite of all threats, calmly examines the claims of all, and as calmly rejects them all.—These travelers take roads of their own, and are denounced by all the others as Infidels and Atheists.

In my judgment, every human being should take a road of his own. Every mind should be true to itself; should think, investigate, and conclude for itself. This is a duty alike incumbent upon pauper and prince. Every soul should repel dictation and tyranny, no matter from what source they come—from earth or heaven, from men or gods.

Plea for Individuality and Arraignment of the Church, 1873

the origin of "terrorist"

Head over to the New York Times and read François Furstenberg's essay on the original terrorists:

He warned his political opponents, “This severity is alarming only for the conspirators, only for the enemies of liberty.” Such measures, then as now, were undertaken to protect the nation — indeed, to protect liberty itself.

If the French Terror had a slogan, it was that attributed to the great orator Louis de Saint-Just: “No liberty for the enemies of liberty.” Saint-Just’s pithy phrase (like President Bush’s variant, “We must not let foreign enemies use the forums of liberty to destroy liberty itself”) could serve as the very antithesis of the Western liberal tradition.

On this principle, the Terror demonized its political opponents, imprisoned suspected enemies without trial and eventually sent thousands to the guillotine. All of these actions emerged from the Jacobin worldview that the enemies of liberty deserved no rights.

Excellent.

"At least the paramedics are right here"

198 is a divided highway as it runs through Laurel. 197 makes a t-intersection with 198 (it looks like a real intersection, but actually Irving Street got lopped in two by 198 - if you select the map to enlarge it you'll see Irving running parallel to 197 and then ending (in fact, there's a fence around that apartment complex), and another street called Irving up at the top, on the other side of 198). Note the right turn lane from 198 onto 197; note, too, the 2 left turn lanes from 198 onto 197, which mean that when the left turn light is green going west, three lanes can be turning into 197, which fills it right up. Note, too, the sidewalk from Sharon Ct to 197 through the fence; the sidewalk marks the Metro Bus stop where I catch the bus in the mornings, being dropped off by the Connect-a-Ride after it turns left from 198 (sometimes the B bus can't get over fast enough - remember the right turn lane - and then I get dropped off at the next Metro stop down 197).

So much for the background.

Friday morning. Rainy, dark - it's not 6:30 yet. The B bus pulls up to the intersection, set to turn left onto 197. We're first in line to turn, having just missed the light. Some sort of accident has clearly happened on Irving; there are police and a paramedic van, emergency vehicle lights flashing and traffic flares, and the wet pavement is bouncing the lights everywhere. While we're waiting to turn, a van turning left from 197 hits a pedestrian - turns out to be a cop (the news tells us later that he was released from the hospital the next day) whose dark uniform couldn't compete with all the lights. Fortunately, the driver wasn't going at much speed. But by the time we got to turn, and I got dropped at the Metro stop, there were more police and more paramedics at the intersection.

Remember where the bus stop is? Also right there is a parked car with its four-way blinkers on. Just sitting.

Amazingly, he did not get rear-ended. The people making that right turn onto 197 were, I suppose, slowed down by the massive presence of emergency vehicles at the intersection and thus able to stop once they got around the curve to find their lane blocked. But the smooth flow of traffic was definitely impeded, and at least twice during the 198-left-turn cycle the cars turning right were backed up onto 198 east-bound. No-one honked; I imagine everyone figured he was somehow connected to the accident.

But no. As it turns out, he was just sitting there so his wife/girlfriend/sister wouldn't get wet while waiting for the bus. We figured that out when the 'not in service' Metro bus came around the corner and she got out of the car, then realized her mistake and got back in. When the 87 showed up, she got out and he drove away.

But, as I said to the guy waiting in the misting rain with me, if he had been rear-ended, at least the cops and paramedics were right there already.

It boggles the mind sometimes, what people will do. Instead of driving south on 197 a couple of blocks to the Park and Ride, this guy chose to disrupt traffic and put their lives in danger. On a normal day - one with no accident ongoing - people come around both sets of that 198-onto-197 pretty fast, especially the east-bound lanes who don't have a traffic light. As close as he was, in the dark, he'd have been extremely lucky not to get hit.

ummmm.... only the silly ones

"At 2 am on November 4, 2007, groggy Americans will turn their clocks back one hour, marking the end of Daylight Saving Time (DST). "

I don't know about you, but I'll be turning my clock back on Saturday before I go to bed, not waiting up until 2 am.

"Saffron-colored robes"

Yesterday, I asked what color saffron is (yellow) and why everyone keeps talking about the Burmese monks "in their saffron-colored robes" when, pretty clearly, they don't wear saffron-colored robes.

I got email from a weaver-and-dyer who said "Saffron's dye is a beautiful bright, clear yellow and the monks' robes are dyed with turmeric or some other natural vegetable dye readily available in their countries. ... I have been using saffron as a dye for cotton, silk and wool as part of my research which is why I can definitely tell you the robes are NOT dyed with it."

I also got email from someone who said she thought she remembered monks with yellow robes in pictures of protests in Viet Nam. Now, that rang a bell. A bit of googling and voila - monks in Viet Nam and Cambodia and Thailand in actual "saffron-colored robes".
So, I wonder, is that the source of this notion that all Buddhist monks wear "saffron-colored robes"? The famous monks - the first ones, probably, to really impinge on the American consciousness, immolating themselves in protest on the streets of Viet Nam - actually did wear saffron. Did the phrase take hold, and then our ignorance of other cultures did the rest? Some do, ergo, all do? When I'm describing a Buddhist monk, I reach for the invariable phrase in my best Homeric style? All dawns are rosy-fingered, all seas wine-dark, and all Buddhist monks robed in saffron?

And that makes me wonder something else:

This guy to the left is a monk - a Franciscan. He's wearing brown robes... does that mean we're going to assume that all Christian monks wear brown robes? So that if we saw this other guy, we would describe his "brown robes" - or would we say, "Hey. I know what brown is, and that's not it." ?

Once Again, Laurel Post Office Screws Up

You know, I would never say that they built that carrier annex in Laurel in order to do this, but ... now that it is built, they have certainly - at least to all appearance - settled on using it as an excuse to screw up. Whatever happens, the carrier annex blames the main PO, and the main office blames the annex.

I can't tell you the number of times I've scheduled a redelivery, only to have the carrier show up without it, and claim the main office never gave to him. It's been fewer times - but it still happens - that I've shown up to pick up a package only to be told that the carrier didn't drop it off. Their favorite stunt: I schedule a Saturday redelivery and the carrier brings it by on Monday - when I'm not at home, of course. I've finally learned to call over there and see if the package is actually there before I go.

(Why am I making such a big deal out of it? Well, besides the fact that there is a minimum level of competence I expect out of these people, I don't drive. I can get to the post office on a bus, but it eats up two hours, three on Saturday. Or I can take a cab, and spend $10 from the Metro stop at the mall ($20 from home on Saturday) - if I can get a cab. Or I can beg a ride from a friend, which I hate to do.)

So, again, today I wait around for the carrier and when he shows up, he has no package. So I called the 800 number (since of course both the main office in town and the annex are closed by now) and finally managed to get through to a person (thanks, Barry: I had to say it four times before the machine gave up but I did get to one at last). She tried to tell me that no carrier would bring the package on the wrong day; it was all I could do not to laugh loudly and bitterly. I did tell her that I knew for a fact that they would, because they have. So she finally let me file a 'customer will pick up' order.

So, we'll see if the package is there Monday. I will, of course, be calling there Monday morning. Because although I used the word "expect" when I said "there is a minimum level of competence I expect out of these people", that's "expect" in the "consider reasonable, just, proper, due, or necessary" meaning, and certainly not in the "anticipate" or "look for" or "consider probable" meanings...

Happy Birthday, Dylan

Dylan Marlais Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales today in 1914. Here's his Poem In October

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

River in Damascus

An update from River! They made it to Syria. They're safe - for the time being.

Syria is a beautiful country- at least I think it is. I say “I think” because while I perceive it to be beautiful, I sometimes wonder if I mistake safety, security and normalcy for ‘beauty’. In so many ways, Damascus is like Baghdad before the war- bustling streets, occasional traffic jams, markets seemingly always full of shoppers… And in so many ways it’s different. The buildings are higher, the streets are generally narrower and there’s a mountain, Qasiyoun, that looms in the distance.

The mountain distracts me, as it does many Iraqis- especially those from Baghdad. Northern Iraq is full of mountains, but the rest of Iraq is quite flat. At night, Qasiyoun blends into the black sky and the only indication of its presence is a multitude of little, glimmering spots of light- houses and restaurants built right up there on the mountain. Every time I take a picture, I try to work Qasiyoun into it- I try to position the person so that Qasiyoun is in the background.

Who were you in your past life?

This is who I was - or say this site says:

---

You were born somewhere in the territory of modern Quebec around the year 1225. Your profession was that of a shepherd, horseman or forester.

---

Do you remember now?

I like that. A shepherd, horseman, or forester in Quebec... in 1225? Well, it's a bit better than the Pharyngulite who was a watchmaker in 1325... in Western Australia.

Well, it's kind of amusing ... and they're upfront about it:
It is up to you how you interpret the information given by this program; however, you should know that this software is only slightly more sophisticated than an electronic fortune cookie.

Hat tip to PZ

Saturnian Sonnet

My reward for donating to Janet's Donor's Choice challenge was a poem and artwork by the sprogs on a theme of my choice. Well, as you all know, I'm a huge Cassini fangirl, so the choice was easy: Saturn. And here it is: an illustrated Saturnian Sonnet by Dr Free-ride and the Sprogs:

Fair rings of Saturn, solid to the eyes, To the spectroscope the truth displayed: Not disks but dusts and particles of size Encircling on gravity's parade. Amorphous carbon laces water ice, Which split by UV yields an atmosphere Whose O2, H2, OH must suffice, Though no ring-dweller breath does draw out here. And whence these rings? The nebular remains Of Saturn's start to banded order fit? Perhaps a moon caught too far from its chains Then torn by tidal force or smashed to bits? O rings whose beauty spreads delight on Earth, When will we grasp the secrets of your birth?

What color is saffron?

The paper today repeated something I've lots of lately - since they've been in the news - which is that Burmese Buddhist monks wear "saffron- colored robes".

I had always thought "saffron" was yellow. Looking it up the dictionary, I see:

1 or saffron crocus : a crocus (Crocus sativus) with purple flowers widely cultivated throughout southern Europe for the drug and dyestuff that it yields
2 : a deep orange-colored substance consisting of the aromatic pungent dried stigmas of saffron and used to color and flavor foods and formerly as a dyestuff and as a stimulant antispasmodic emmenagogue in medicine
3 or saffron yellow : a moderate orange to orange yellow
(Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (26 Oct. 2007).)

So why are these robes being called "saffron"?

Another quiz...

Your Vocabulary Score: A+

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary! You must be quite an erudite person.

How's Your Vocabulary?

This also drives me crazy

Dan Damon just interviewed a public health official on Britain's plan to vaccinate all girls in the UK against HPV - which causes cervical cancer. (Yay for them!) He wound up the story by inviting people to the website to discuss the vaccination "and the moral issues raised."

Here's the moral issue: we can prevent a group of people from getting cancer. Period.

What's the argument against it? "Oooooo - it might make girls think promiscuity is okay!"

Do you actually know anyone who stayed a virgin because she was afraid of catching cervical cancer? Does anyone?

If pregnancy, AIDS, syphilis, herpes, a reputation as a slut, parents' disapproval, and hellfire don't stop them, will the rather arcane threat of cervical cancer do it? And will you (you moralists who are objecting to it) pay for the cancer treatment of a nice young terrified Christian bride who gets HPV from her "boys will be boys" husband (or, perhaps, her born-again, newly redeemed, ex-bad-boy-now-forgiven husband) on her wedding night - and get down on your knees to apologize for not preventing her disease? What if your daughter is raped? Why don't you just rev up the old lying-for-Jesus line and tell your 12-year-old that this shot is for something else? Or even not tell her what it's for at all, just "routine". But no.

Seriously, some people would rather put their daughters at risk for cancer than give them a vaccine which makes sex safer.

The logical end of this is, in fact, killing them while they're still innocent.

And they claim the moral high ground? I don't think so.

Hedging his bets

Alistair somebody on the BBC News (sounded like Leafhead... ah, thank you, Internet: Leithead) just reported on the Kabul Open... and signed off with "the Kábul Golf Course, Kabúl".

I think his first shot (Cobble) was right ... but it's funny he'd say it both ways inside of four words.

This drives me crazy

Found this in the Baltimore Sun today:

"No two civil rights struggles are ever exactly the same," said Dan Furmansky, executive director of Equality Maryland. "But there is certainly inspiration to be gained from the bravery and the heroism of African-Americans and the struggles they faced to be treated with dignity, respect and equality over generations."

Del. Emmett C. Burns Jr., one of the Assembly's more outspoken opponents of same-sex marriage, rejects that view.

"I get really bent out of shape when you talk about gay and lesbian rights as a civil rights issue," said Burns, a Baltimore County Democrat and pastor at Rising Sun Baptist Church in Randallstown. "Whites can hide their gayness; I cannot hide my blackness."

WTF, Delegate-or-is-it-Pastor Burns? (Pastor - I imagine that's key here.) The only people who have a civil rights problem are the people who can't hide - can't lie to fit in?

You're saying blacks who can pass don't have a civil rights problem, is that it? You're saying that when people fire someone because he's gay, deny her child medical benefits because she's gay and not the biological mother, beat someone up for looking at them funny in a bar... When people want to string someone up on a fence and watch him die because he's gay, that's not a civil rights issue because he could lie about his gayness? That bends me out of shape.

Several things over the past few days have made me remember a line from an old Law & Order episode. Bigoted young detective Rey talking to his more world-weary and tolerant partner Lenny about gays:

Rey: I can't deal with the lifestyle but I can sympathize with the need to hide it.

Lenny: From the people who can't deal with it... yeah.

That's you, pastor-slash-delegate. The person who can't deal with it and wants it hidden.

And that makes it a civil rights issue.

Sure, maybe not as huge as yours. Hank Greenberg once pointed out that his problems weren't much compared to Jackie Robinson's... but he never said they didn't exist.

(I'd also like to point out the homophobia inherent in his statement: "Whites can hide their gayness; I cannot hide my blackness." What? No black gays? But that's a digression...)

It's Poe-etic Liberalism!

I'll let Leo say it: "Faith at That Is So Queer... has what can only be described as the best rhyming edition of Carnival of the Liberals to date! And that's not even mentioning all the fine liberal writing linked therein." And I'll second it. Ten posts - you can find your own favorites as you savor the setting as well as the contents.

Summing it up

In a piece for NiemanWatchdog.org Victoria Samson writes:

"What is truly galling is that this missile defense experiment by the United States is strictly that: an unknown, untested, brand-new system (the interceptor is still on the drawing board, even though U.S. officials claim that they can get the site up and running by 2011) which is supposed to defend against a theoretical and frankly inexplicable Iranian missile threat that also does not exist."

(from White House Watch)

Happy Birthday, Anne

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

America won't give criminal regimes oxygen

My heart was in my throat when I heard Bush announce that

America will have no part in giving oxygen to a criminal regime victimizing its own people. We will not support the old way with new faces, the old system held together by new chains.

Omigawd, I was thinking. China? Egypt? Russia? The Kingdom?

But then he finished up

The operative word in our future dealings with Cuba is not 'stability'. The operative word is 'freedom'.

Whew. Cuba.

That's a relief.

Blair and Mitt rave, Juan has the facts...

From Chris Floyd in for Glenn Greenwald, a scathing take on the latest step in the ramp-up to the next war:

Speaking at the annual Al Smith charity dinner -- safely distant from the mother country, where he has become a national embarrassment, never mentioned in polite society -- Blair eagerly trafficked in the ludicrous trope that views "Islamic extremism" as one huge, all-powerful, amorphous yet somehow monolithic mass, comprising -- as Mitt Romney once put it with blazing ignorance -- "Shi'a and Sunni ... Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood." In the minds of would-be he-men like Blair and Romney, this amalgamation of conflicting sects and completely disparate groups is a single, mighty Saracen sword aimed at the heart of Western civilization: a threat that must be stopped at all costs -- or, rather, at the cost of other people's blood and treasure.

Blair even went Romney one better in the dumb-and-dumber sweepstakes by stuffing this writhing mass of Islamic serpents into one big Persian basket. After wondering "if we're not in the 1920s or 1930s again" -- and of course invoking 9/11 over and over (an ancient rhetorical device known as guilianius affectus) -- Blair put Iran in the cross hairs as, well, the focus of evil in the modern world. Squeaking at the top of his pip, Blair declared: "This ideology now has a state, Iran, that is prepared to back and finance terror in the pursuit of destabilizing countries whose people wish to live in peace."

Think of that: We now have a state -- a concrete target -- where we can strike all of the strands of Islamic extremism at once, thereby quelling a dire and imminent threat to our very existence. How can we not attack it under such circumstances?

(Meanwhile, we'll let professor Juan Cole of the University of Reality handle the "stupid things" known as facts: "President Ahmadinejad, whose job is more or less ceremonial, is not the commander-in-chief of the Iranian armed forces. He has never advocated 'genocide,' and his expressed wish that the 'occupation regime over Jerusalem' (i.e., the Israeli government) eventually vanish has been mistranslated. As for the rest, the candidates simply assume that Iran has a nuclear weapons research program, which has not been proven. It certainly does not have a nuclear weapon at present, and the National Intelligence Estimate indicates that if it were trying to get one, it would take until at least 2016 -- and then only if the international environment were conducive to the needed high-tech imports. (Ahmadinejad, by the way, will not be in power in 2016.) Also, someone really needs to let the Republicans know that Iran is Shiite, meaning it abhors Sunni fundamentalists and rejects the caliphate.")

Head on over and read it (all you have to do is look at an ad).

Two days, two skies

Monday at dawn, the skies were golden. On Tuesday, presaging rain, they were crimson. Gorgeous.

Spot on! Sort of

"You're 5'9", 5'10"," says the University of Maryland researcher, looking at the computer measuring the man's height.

"5'10", that's spot on!" says the amazed BBC reporter.

Wait. That's "spot on"?

I don't really know how accurately these computers will be able to id a person ambling through a crowd, but a 2" range on a person's height is not very accurate.

And that reporter should realize that. Credulity and amazement, a willingness to be convinced, do not good science reporting make.

Look it up!

In a Language Log post on "ear spellings", Mark Liberman observes:

A reflection on why ear spellings should be so likely for this word. If you've heard the word, you probably know how to use it in sentences, but if you haven't seen it in print (or don't remember having seen it in print, or didn't realize that the spelling "voilà" represented this particular word), you're in trouble. People tell you to look up words if you don't know their spellings, but where do you look in this case? If you don't know French, or don't recognize the French origin of the word, what would possess you to look under VOI in a dictionary, especially if your pronunciation of the word begins with /w/ (I think this is the most common current pronunciation, at least for people who aren't "putting on", or at least approximating, French)? So you spell it "the way it sounds".

I have to say, I've never quite understood that injunction. Having a sister who's educated, literate, and unable to spell made me familiar with the problem, which can be summed up as: How can I look up how to spell it if I don't know how to spell it?

In other words, what good is a dictionary, which lists words according to how they're spelled, for someone who doesn't know how to spell a word - especially if they're faltering at the word's beginning?

David Ng's "I'm Number One" meme

I found this at archy:

David Ng at The World's Fair has created a great meme. He calls it the "I rank number one on Google" meme. The rules are much simpler than the last meme. Find five statements, which when typed into Google, will return your blog as the number one hit.

John found four, but they are indeed awesome. I found five, after some tweaking - I discounted one because the "business hits" thing came up first. But the other five do, as of this moment, return my The Greenbelt as number one. (I'll have you know the first two still get some visitors!)

liberty desecrated
angry scary men in black
mad manic mockers
frosty dew blue steppe
language blue jays moon shadow church

dawn in college park (if you don't count business hits)

This meme's fun. Try it yourself!

Four Stone Hearth

Entering its second year over at Primate Diaries is the premiere anthropology carnival! Something for everyone in four areas - Excellence abounds. Check it out.

"a serious case of zeugma"

Seen at noncompositional, this sign

Please do not place or take away anything in this box

This is nice - not quite syllepsis - pretty definitely some kind of zeugma - weird, anyway.

Helped?

Again, I kinda feel like I'm stepping on fev's territory, but this really jarred me. It's a case of some slight confusion here over the arguments for "help" at Reuters. The headline reads

California fires helped by slowing winds

but the story starts

Firefighters battling 15 fires across Southern California got a break from slowing winds on Wednesday, but major blazes burned unchecked for a fourth day after forcing the largest evacuation in California's modern history.

Okay, sure, it's pretty clear what the headline means after you read the lede, but ... until I clicked through I thought I was going to find out that the slowing winds were in some way aiding the fire to spread through more territory.

A verb like "eased" or, gosh, "slowed" - and yes, then you'd need a different adjective for "winds" but what's wrong with "dropping"?

what we are saying...

Head to Glenn Greenwald's place for a no-punches-pulled look at the surge's escalation in air strikes by guest author Chris Floyd:

For what the air campaign, and the "offensives into neighborhoods," are really saying is brutally frank:

"We invaded your country under knowingly false pretenses, fixing the intelligence around the policy, because our leaders, who were in possession of vast amounts of intelligence that undermined or refuted their stated casus belli, couldn't reveal their true, long-held intentions. ('I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,' Alan Greenspan says.) We destroyed your infrastructure, we destroyed your society, we destroyed your history, we enthroned extremist militias to rule over you, we tortured your sons and fathers in the same hellhole that Saddam used, we killed a million of your people and drove millions more from their homes. And we intend to stay here for as long as we like, in the vast 'enduring bases' we are building on your land. Now if you don't accept this, if you keep shooting at us and trying to make us leave, then we will go on bombing your families in their homes, we will go on killing your women and children, until you stop."

And, as he points out, it will only get worse if we "draw down" - because we'll have no other way to protect our own troops. Only if we damned well leave will it stop.

Will we stop it...

Will we?

Only Russians would do this...

...I think. Maybe not.

I've got a two-CD set from Russia of George Harrison's Beware of ABKCO! - 15 tracks - and Live in Japan - 19 tracks. The first CD is 21 tracks, the second 13. The first is all of ABKCO, and six tracks from Live in Japan, and the second finishes up Japan.

This never ceases to seem just plain weird.

The right to face the truth

So, you've heard that JK Rowling says Dumbledore is gay. Not much of a surprise, really; it explained a lot of his behavior as far as his "old friend" went.

Here's another not-a-surprise: the guys at Falwell's Liberty Universe aren't happy (my emphasis):

But some Potter fans questioned why Rowling would declare the character's sexual orientation despite not placing any references to it in the story line. Others are dismissive of the whole discussion.

"What's stopping her from saying that [Harry's friend] Neville grows up to be a pedophile," said David Baggett, an associate philosophy professor at Liberty University's School of Religion. The Lynchburg, Va., school, incidentally, was founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, who eight years ago caused a stir by questioning the sexual orientation of the purple character Tinky Winky in the Teletubbies children's series.

Baggett, who co-authored the 2004 book Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts, says he was taken aback not only by Rowling's announcement, but by the fact that it came on the heels of her confirming many Potter fans' belief that the series had Christian themes.

"It doesn't change my perception of the series, but it does say something about her choice to include this detail at that time," Baggett said. "Does she have the right to keep giving us details? I wonder what's the point, other than her staking out her agenda."

Yeah, you read that right: Baggett doesn't believe you can have a book with Christian themes and a gay good guy. He also goes straight to "Neville grows up to be a pedophile" as a comparison piece (instead of, say, ax murderer or embezzler - not to mention instead of nuclear physicist). Well, it's only to be expected of his sort.

But I'd like to examine that other thing he said: "Does she have the right to keep giving us details?"

If she doesn't, who does?

But that's not really what he's complaining about. What he wants to know is:

Does she have the right to make her fans live through the moment of realization that comes when someone you thought you knew turns out to be gay?

Does she have the right to make her fans face the fact that sometimes people they love are gay? Don't they have the right to pretend that Dumbledore is "normal"? Don't they have the right to continue to believe that no one they know is different from them? Don't they have the right to cling to their prejudices?

That's what he wants to know.

Now, I don't know how many people are both homophobes and Harry Potter fans. (See Baggett, above.) What I do know is that the people who are railing against this are trying to hard to pretend it's not because they're not convinced that being gay is awful, sinful, yucky, perverted, or damned - or all of those. People who immediately leap to pedophilia as a parallel have lost that argument before they've begun.

But let's be clear about what's really going on here. The whole point is that some people want "the children" to be protected from that eye-opening moment that comes when someone you know and love turns out to be (gasp!) gay. They don't want kids wondering how Dumbledore can be awful, sinful, yucky, perverted, and/or damned - because they know the kids will get it.

Kudos to Rowling for doing it this way.

And it's a bit surprising how many people are getting sidetracked about whether there's groundwork (like I said, I wasn't surprised) or whether the book is over or whether she is "getting a little too freakily obsessive over her characters" (yes, PZ, I'm looking at you) or whether fictional characters can even be gay... or whether it even matters. The point is how people are reacting to the possibility that he's gay. Because the kids love him - and that scares them - not the kids, of course. The bigots.

And that's what it's about. Not whether some fictional character is or isn't gay. Whether kids will look at gay people differently now. That's the threat.

That's the hope.

I heard him expire without

Two strange usages from Gale Warning, a 1939 novel by Dornford Yates.

First - what does "without" mean? To me, it means "not having" or "not being with". I'm familiar with the other usage, but I'd never say or write it.

What other usage? The "without" that's the opposite, not of "with", but of "within". (I understand, by the way, that many varieties of English have the preposition 'outwith' for this.)

The people in this book constantly use the phrase "without the law" (in fact, that's the title of the first chapter) - and they mean "outside the law". "We are without the law" means "we are outlaws".

Looking up "without" in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged I find five meanings!

1 a : at, to, or on the outside of : exterior to <had to stand without the door -- F.L.Packard> <had placed themselves without the church -- Valentine Ughet & Eleanor Davis> <solidarity and goodwill within and without the clan -- W.W.Howells> b : out of the range of <today, it is a goal, not without our immediate grasp, but attainable -- S.J.Holbel> c : BEYOND, PAST <just without the trees -- William Bartram>
2 : not derived from or connected with : external to <light in me, light without me, everywhere change -- Robert Browning>
3 a : not using or being subjected to <spent the evening without conversation> <worked without coercion> b : exempt or free from <without end> <without fail> <without fear>
4 a : not accompanied by or associated with : separated from <smoke without fire> <taste without extravagance> <music without tears> b : suffering the deprivation or absence of : not having : LACKING <without money or resources> <without a roof over his head> c : lacking the company or companionship of <could not live without her>
5 a : not securing or receiving <was fired without explanation> <was welcomed back without reproaches> b : not admitting of <a condition without remedy> c -- used as a function word to indicate the absence or neglect of an action <people who look without seeing, listen without hearing, read without understanding, and act without thinking -- Phoenix Flame>

Now, some of those distinctions are very fine. 1 & 2 seem very close to me, and 3, 4 & 5 seem distinguished more by our attitudes to the objects than any actual difference in meaning of the preposition. Broadly speaking, then, there seem to be those two main meanings: external and lacking.


Context makes it clear, I suppose, or at least usually does - "they stood without the church" probably doesn't mean that at other times they might indeed have a church with them - but Browning's "light in me, light without me" certainly doesn't, to me, suggest "light in me, light outside me" but rather "light in me, light whether I'm there or not", and even in fuller context

When, what, first thing at daybreak, pierced the sleep
With a summons to me? Up I sprang alive,
Light in me, light without me, everywhere
Change! A broad yellow sunbeam was let fall
From heaven to earth

it's ambiguous whether the narrator is describing light merely external or light that doesn't require him. And "solidarity and goodwill within and without the clan" may guide you to the reading of "inside and out", but would "goodwill without the clan" on its own sound like "goodwill to strangers"?

I'd use "outside" in all these cases.

And then there's "expire"... In the novel, the hero has hidden himself in the back seat of the villain's car and overhears the main villain talking to the driver.

"Don't argue with me. You're going straight back to London and you're going to put Bogy on. He's got to run down Bagot at any price. I don't care where he is. He's got to be found." I heard him expire. "These blasted Willies. You never know where you are."

He expired? Then how did he go on talking?

Sure, "expire" can mean "breathe out", just like "inspire" can mean "breathe in". But are those even remotely meanings that occur to you? "Breathed his last", perhaps, for "he expired", but "he inspired" wouldn't mean "he breathed" at all.

Latin had two verbs for breathing: spirare and halare. We didn't borrow the unprefixed forms; dum spiro spero may be familiar (or not - it's "while I breathe I hope"), but "spire" in English always comes from the Old English spir which meant a blade of grass,a shoot, a stalk, not "breathing" in any form, and as a verb it means "to send forth or develop shoots; to shoot up into a spire; to mount or soar aloft; to rise, fall, or otherwise move in or as if in a spiral. "Hale" of course means "whole". So only the prefixed forms were borrowed from Latin.

We took "exhale" and "inhale", and nothing else, and those are basic words for "breathing out and breathing in". But with the "spir-" set we not only borrowed ex- and in-, but a half a dozen more. Of the eight, only two have meanings basically confined to breathing, and they're not ex- and in-. The other four don't mean "breathing" at all. And "inspire" and "expire"'s figurative meanings are far more common than the breath-related ones. "Expire" almost always means "die" instead of "breathe out". (In fact, my first thought was that the much put-upon driver had killed the villain.) And "I heard him inspire" for "I heard him take a breath" would be even weirder.

If you've just got to be Latinate, say "I heard him exhale".

ps- Here are the spire verbs (remember that Latin prefixes alter morphologically, so ad and sub have changed before the SP of the root):

inspire (breathe in) - to influence, to guide, to communicate, to have an exalting effect
expire (breathe out) - to die

respire (breathe again) - to breath, to take a breath
suspire (breathe below) - to draw a long breath

perspire (breathe through) - to sweat
conspire (breathe together) - to plot together in secret
aspire (breathe upon) - to strive for, to have ambition
transpire (breathe across) - to occur, to develop

O Rly?

Speaking of Xi Jinping, the Shanghai party boss named today as Hu Jintao's apparent successor, the BBC made an odd statement. Xi is married to Peng Liyuan, who is a popular folk singer with national fame. The BBC reporter showed people Xi's picture and asked "Who is this man?" and Peng's picture, asking "Who is this woman?" Far more people, even in Shanghai, could identify her.

But I don't think this statement is quite what they meant to say: He's not even the most famous man in his own family.

Those purple flowers

Remember when I wondered what these flowers were? Well, today I found out. They're called coryopteris. And they bloom late - until a killing frost.

Rox and Sox

Almost the best outcome. The Rockies were second in their league, so them winning the playoffs is fine. And Boston was best in theirs. Good Series this year compared to last.

Of course, the fact that my brother now lives in Highlands Ranch, just outside Denver, is a plus!

Go Rocks!

"Inept, patently fabricated stories"

fev takes on Fox (again) in a scathing article about headlines, bias, and framing:S

So if your question is "Wow, did Murdoch himself order that Hillary hed onto the FoxNews.com front page this morning?" the answer is "No. Inept, patently fabricated stories get to the Fox front page of their own accord!"

Read it. You'll be glad you did.

Happy Birthday, Ivan Alekseyevich

Иван Алексеевич Бунин (Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin) was born to a once-wealthy but impoverished land-owning family in Voronezh, Russia, on this day in 1870 (it was Oct 10, Old Style).

He was a poet, short story writer, and novelist. He wrote poetry first, including the collections "Под открытым небом" (1898 Pod otkrytym nebom, Under Open Skies) and "Листопад" (1901 Listopad, November (Leaf-fall)), and then short stories, the most famous of which include Господин из Сан-Франциско, Gospodin iz San-Frantsisko, The Gentleman from San Francisco) Антоновские яблоки (Antonovskiye yabloki, Antonov's Apples), Сосны (Sosni, Pines), Новая дорога (Novaya doroga, A New Road), and Чернозем (Chernozem, Black Earth), won him great acclaim.

But after 1905, things became darker in Russia and in Bunin's work. His first novels, Деревня (1910, Derevnia, The Village), and Сухдол (1912, Sukhdol, Dry Valley), written before he left Russia after the Revolution, portrayed a decaying countryside which destroyed the image of idealized peasants and garnered more criticism in his native country than praise.

Works written in exile in France include his diary, in which he attacked the Bolsheviks, Окаянные дни (published in 1920, Okayannye Dni, Cursed Days); Жизнь Арсеньева (1933, Zhizn Areseneva, The Life of Arsenev) - first in a projected but unfinished trilogy, Митина любовь (1925, Mitina Lubov, Mitya's Love), Тёмные Аллеи (1946, Tyomnyye Allei, Shadowed Paths) written during the Nazi occupation, and Воспоминания (1950, Vospominaniya, Memories and Portraits). As a translator Bunin was highly regarded. He published in 1898 a translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha, for which he was awarded the Pushkin Prize in 1903 by the Russian Academy of Science, to which he was elected in 1909. Among Bunin's other translations were Lord Byron's Manfred and Cain, Tennyson's Lady Godiva, and works from Alfred de Musset, and François Coppée.

Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1933, but he had become an unperson in the Soviet Union: not only were his books not to be found, his name was unspoken and certainly unwritten.

Here are a few of his poems with my quick translations:


Неуловимый свет разлился над землею,
Над кровлями безмолвного села.
Отчетливей кричат перед зарею
Далеко на степи перепела.

Нет ни души кругом - ни звука, ни тревоги...
Спят безмятежным сном зеленые овсы...
Нахохлясь, кобчик спит на кочке у дороги,
Покрытый пылью матовой росы...

Но уж светлеет даль... Зелено-серебристый,
Неуловимый свет восходит над землей,
И белый пар лугов, холодный и душистый,
Как фимиам, плывет перед зарей.

1894

The elusive light spills over the earth,
Over the roofs of the silent town.
And before the dawn the quails' clear cries
Can be heard from across the steppe.

Not one soul is about - not a sound, not an alarm...
Untroubled dreams keep the sleeping oats...
Head tucked, the falcon sleeps on the hillock,
His tousled feathers covered in dull, dusty dew...

But light is in the distance now... Silvery green,
The elusive light covers the earth,
And white steam off the meadows, cold and sweet
Like incense, wafts before the dawn.

* * *

РОДИНА

Под небом мертвенно-свинцовым
Угрюмо меркнет зимний день,
И нет конца лесам сосновым,
И далеко до деревень.

Один туман молочно-синий,
Как чья-то кроткая печаль,
Над этой снежною пустыней
Смягчает сумрачную даль.

1896

HOMELAND

Under a sky leaden like death
The wintry day fades into murk;
There is no end to the piney woods
And any villages are far away..

Only fog, milky blue,
Like someone's gentle grief
Thrown over this snowy emptiness,
Softens the twilit distance.

* * *

Все лес и лес. А день темнеет;
Низы синеют, и трава
Седой росой в лугах белеет...
Проснулась серая сова.

На запад сосны вереницей
Идут, как рать сторожевых,
И солнце мутное Жар-Птицей
Горит в их дебрях вековых.

1899

More forest, and more. The day darkens,
Blue grows beneath, and in the meadows grass
With frosty dew grows pale...
The gray owl awakens.

To the west the line of pines
Stretches like an army of guards,
And the sun, smoldering like the Firebird,
Burns their ancient wilderness.

* * *
Не видно птиц. Покорно чахнет
Лес, опустевший и больной,
Грибы сошли, но крепко пахнет
В оврагах сыростью грибной.

Глушь стала тише и светлее,
В кустах свалялася трава,
И, под дождем осенним тлея,
Чернеет темная листва.

А в поле ветер. День холодный
Угрюм и свеж - и целый день
Скитаюсь я в степи свободной,
Вдали от сел и деревень.

И, убаюкан шагом конным,
С отрадной грустью внемлю я,
Как ветер звоном однотонным
Гудит-поет в стволы ружья.

1889

No birds can be seen. Subjected,
The forest withers, emptied and ailing;
Mushrooms are gone, yet in the copses
Lingers still their strong damp scent.

The thickets grow more still and bright,
Grasses tangle in the bushes,
And, moldering under autumn rains
Dark leaves turn ever darker.

But a wind is on the field. A cold day
Both gloomy and fresh - the whole day
I range across the open steppe
Far from village and town.

My horse's steps are a lullaby,
And in a pleasant melancholy
I hear the wind's single unchanging note,
Singing and piping into the barrels of the gun.

Monday Science Links

This week's toasty bowl of sciency goodness:

• Michael at Wishydig posts on acceptance of variant forms - when is it too soon?


• Grrrlscientist at Living the Scientific Life posts on the physics of feather colors - did you know blue birds aren't blue, they just look like it?
  


• Mark Liberman at Language Log posts on a dialect coach and a journalist's take on candidates' speech and how it's not backed up by the actual data.


• Cosma Shalizi at Three-Toed Sloth posts on the heritability and mutability of intelligence - he warns that it's long and not funny, but it's clear, and important.


• John Hawks at his Anthropology Website posts on what the Neandertal FoxP2 gene means - if anything, and if we can tell.

Enjoy!

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: An extremely good documentary about Jack Kirby. Creator - I have always liked this movie; I was glad to find it available.

TV: Heroes - you know, if West really has "the same fears" about being caught that Claire has, why the hell does he fly around in the middle of the day in the middle of the city? And, hey, nice work, Matt. Torchwood - now we got the look into Toshiko. Sad glimpse of Ianto, but nice that they don't forget things after an episode. Odyssey 5 - well, I gave it a shot, and it was awful. Couldn't even finish the first episode... I wish I could figure out why my dvr doesn't record Stargate Atlantis as a series. It's hard to remember to set it every week. (Yeah, I didn't.) Forgot to mention that last week I actually watched Land Before Time because I thought I needed to see what it was about. All I can say is, it wasn't one quarter as bad as An American Tail, which I tried to watch this week; I couldn't get past the cats dressed up like Cossacks taking part in the pogrom. I have a hard time with the genre of talking animal story that puts the animals into our world - only talking and wearing clothes and using tools and so on and so forth - anyway, and this was just unbearably bad.

Read: Храни меня, мой талисман (Khrani menya, moy talisman - Guard me, my talisman), a novella which is the basis of the 1986 film by Rustam Ibragimbekov (movie and novella both). An interestingly written story, layers of flashbacks building to an unexpected conclusion - I'd be interested in seeing the movie now to see if the structure is similar. Gale Warning by Dornwood Yates (whom I found by reading Stephen Fry's blog); it's an amusing thriller.

Carnival of Maryland

This edition of the Carnival of Maryland is up at Prince Georges Community. Joyce has put together a nice collection of the usual eclectic mix by bloggers who only share a state in common. Check it out: you'll probably find something you'll like.

This is sad

I just spotted Percy Daggs III in a commercial for Hot Pockets ... he's the one at the end asking "Who's Eddie?" The sad thing is, he had more lines in that commercial than he did in half of last year's episodes of Veronica Mars. Of course, he was getting billed (and I suppose paid) back then, so maybe it balanced.

Bee and Wasp

Still in the 80s in the afternoon, and so the insects of summer are still with us...


Bumbles ... and wasps (though I think of them as carnivores, not flower-haunters)

Pizza Hut picks a bad name

For me, anyway. (Disclaimer: I like Papa John's pizza better, but nothing holds a candle to Big Ed's back home...)

But when I see a commercial for Pizza Hut's "Family Value Meal", I get the same sick feeling I get when the Republicans and right-wing Christians start talking about "family" or "values" or, especially, "family values".

I hate it that they've been allowed to twist the meanings of those words into something despicable. Like that CSPAN poll asking if people were 'values voters' - of course they are. It's just a question of which values - and the word doesn't automatically mean what the GOP candidates and the "Values Voters Convention" assert that it does. If you don't agree with these people, it doesn't mean you lack values. And if your family doesn't look like theirs, it's still a family.

Mockingbirds

I love mockingbirds. I love their elegant lack of color - black and gray and white - and their slim shapes, their long cocked tail, their quick stride. I love listening to a virtuoso mocker running through his repertoire of twenty or more songs. I love the way they leap and tumble on the grass, flashing their wings. I love the way they chase bigger birds - and win. And I love the way they can make a tree sound filled with song. Here's one in the early morning, singing, and one in the late afternoon, eating dinner.