NL: The Plague by Albert Camus

So. The Plague (La Peste). I'd never read it before - in fact I've never read anything by Camus. I know, go figure. How'd that happen? To be honest, I'm not sure.

The Plague is a hard book to characterize. It's not exciting, but it's not deadly dull, either. In fact, by halfway through I was fascinated. But ... well, let me say it like this. I got it for Christmas (one of my sisters gave it to me), and I didn't start it then. Well, I was at my father's house, and on vacation, and the time I had for reading was much reduced. Also, I was in the middle of reading one of Anthony Trollope's longer books, plus there were a couple of things he (er, my father, not Anthony Trollope) had there I wanted to read and couldn't take back here with me.

So I waited till I got back here - but I looked at The Plague and said to myself, it's only 275 pages. I can knock this off in a week - a little longer if I only read during the commute, not at night or on a weekend. Instead, it took almost three, and that's with reading the last 80 pages in one gulp this afternoon. I kept being distracted by other things, thinking how short it was, and well ... it took a while to get into it. This book, to use a cliché, has its picture in the dictionary next to"starts slowly". In fact, it was plain boring for nearly a third of its length. (Or, to be fair, I was bored by it ... ymmv. I have a friend who's read it twice. In French. Maybe that makes the difference.)

Having said that, I'll add that the last half of it moves along - in fact, one could say that The Plague is like the plague it chronicles: starting very slowly, then picking up steam, rising to a fever pitch (heh, sorry) and then dying off rapidly. It takes fifty pages just to admit the plague is there, almost a hundred more to reach the high-point, another hundred to run its course, and then it wraps up in thirty-some.

Yes, yes. But what it's about? It's about a moderate-sized city (200,000) in Algeria - the port of Oran - which is stricken by bubonic plague in "194-" (the book was written in 1947, so it was a contemporary portrait). A low-keyed narrator presents a common-man's-eye view of the plague as it spreads; it forces the town to be quarantined and kills over a 1000 week at its height. It lasts from April till January, and then ends, and so does the book. The main characters are a disparate lot: a low-paid civil servant, a wandering ex-revolutionary, a small-time criminal, a journalist, a Jesuit priest, and a doctor... Some live, some don't. Life goes on. Man's search for meaning goes on. The universe doesn't care.

Ah. Okay... Well. What do you have to say about it? Not so easy to answer. I did make a few notes about things as I encountered them, and I'll let you see those first.

Camus's use of the term 'humanist' in part one is a little odd. He writes:

[Dr Rieux's] reaction was the same as that of the great majority of our townsfolk. Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise. In fact, like our fellow citizens, Rieux was caught off his guard, and we should understand his hesitations in light of that fact... In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they have taken no precautions. Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. [Part I, pp34-35]

I don't know if Camus used the term differently, if he used it at all (my French-speaking friend doesn't remember and doesn't still have the book), or if the term has changed in the past half-century. At any rate, to me, a "humanist" is not someone who believes pestilences are impossible.

In describing the setting of Father Paneloux's sermon, he says of the citizens of Oran:

There were large attendances at the services of the Week of Prayer. It must not, however, be assumed that in normal times the townsfolk of Oran are particularly devout. ... With regard to religion—as to many other problems—plague had induced in them a curious frame of mind, as remote from indifference as from fervor; the best name to give it, perhaps, might be "objectivity." Most of those who took part in the Week of Prayer would have echoed a remark by one of the churchgoers in Dr. Rieux's hearing: "Anyhow, it can't do any harm." Even Tarrou, after recording in his notebook that in such cases the Chinese fall to playing tambourines before the Genius of Plague, observed that there was no means of telling whether, in practice, tambourines proved more efficacious than prophylactic measures. He merely added that, to decide the point, we should need first to ascertain if a Genius of Plague actually existed, and our ignorance on this point nullified any opinions we might form. [Part II, pp85-86]

Tarrou is the ex-revolutionary, whose opinions are described as "odd" but "important". Of the three major philosophical views presented in the novel, his is one. More later.

Father Paneloux's sermon is a horror:

"Calamity has come upon you, my brethren, and, my brethren, you deserved it. ... [P]lague is the flail of God and the world His threshing-floor, and implacably He will thresh out His harvest until the wheat is separated from the chaff. There will be more chaff than wheat, few chosen of the the many called. Yet this calamity was not willed by God. For too long this world of ours has connived at evil, too long has it counted on the divine mercy, on God's forgiveness. ... For a long while God gazed down on this town with eyes of compassion; but He grew weary of waiting. His eternal hope was too long deferred, and now He has turned his face from us. ... You fondly imagined it was enough to visit him on Sundays, and thus you could make free of your weekdays. ... But God is not mocked. Those brief encounters could not sate the fierce hunger of His love. He wished to see you longer and more often; that is His manner of loving and, indeed, it is the only manner of lovely. And this is why, wearied of waiting for you to come to Him, He loosed on you this visitation; as He has visited all the cities that offended against Him since the dawn of history. Now you are learning your lesson ... And thus, my brothers, at last it is revealed to you, the divine compassion which has ordained good and evil in everything; wrath and pity; the plague and your salvation. ... [I]t gives us a glimpse of that radiant, eternal light which glows, a small still flame, in the dark core of human suffering. And this light, too, illuminates the shadowed paths that lead toward deliverance. It reveals the will of God in action, unfailingly transforming evil into good. And once again today it is leading us through the dark valley of fears and groans toward the holy silence, the well-spring of all life. This, my friends, is the vast consolation I would hold out to you..."[Part II, pp86-91]

The lover who kills you if you don't respond the way he wants you too: is he ever the good guy?

Tarrou describes an impossible combination:

... a new paper has been launched: the Plague Chronicle, which sets out to 'inform our townspeople, with scrupulous veracity, of the daily progress or recession of the disease; ... to keep up the morale of the populace...[Part II, p109]

Hey, make up your mind: tell them the truth, or keep up their morale. Can't do both, not with plague loose in the town.

When Tarrou and Dr. Rieux discuss whether they believe in God (Rieux does not, Tarrou isn't sure), Rieux says a couple of interesting things:

(re Paneloux's sermon) "I've seen too much of hospitals to relish any idea of collective punishment. But, as you know, Christians sometimes say that sort of thing without really thinking it. They're better than it seems."[Part II, p115]

and then

"Only, I've never managed to get used to seeing people die. That's all I know. Yet after all—since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn't it be better for God if we refuse to believe in Him and struggle with all our might against death, without raising our eyes toward the Heavens where He sits in silence?"[Part II, p117]

And in answer Tarrou says,

"But your victories will never be lasting, that's all."

Rieux's face darkened. "Yes, I know that. But it's no reason for giving up the struggle."[Part II, p117]

After seeing a child die in agony, Rieux loses his temper at Paneloux, telling him "that child, anyhow, was innocent!" Paneloux chases him and asks,

"Why was there that anger in your voice just now? What we'd been seeing was as unbearable to me as it was to you."

Rieux turned toward Paneloux. "I know. I'm sorry. But weariness is a kind of madness. And there are times when the only feeling I have is one of mad revolt."

"I understand," said Paneloux in a low voice. "That sort of thing is revolting because it passes our human understanding. But perhaps we should love what we cannot understand."

Rieux straightened up slowly. He gazed at Paneloux, summoning to his gaze all the strength and fervor he could muster against his weariness. Then he shook his head. "No, Father. I've a very different idea of love. And until my dying day I shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture." [Part II, pp196-197]

After the death of the child, Father Paneloux preached another sermon. In this one he faced the unpalatable truth - with what I can only call a worse horror than his first (my emphasis):

[O]ne thing was not to be gainsaid; a fact that always, under all circumstances, we should bear in mind. Appearances notwithstanding, all trials, however cruel, worked together for good to the Christian. And, indeed, what a Christian should always seek in his hour of trial was to discern that good, in what it consisted and how best he could turn it to account. ... The difficulty began when he looked into the nature of evil, and among things evil he included human suffering. Thus we had apparently needful pain, and apparently needless pain; we had Don Juan cast into hell, and a child's death. For while it is right that a libertine should be struck down, we see no reason for a child's suffering. And truth to tell, nothing was more important on earth than a child's suffering, the horror it inspires in us, and the reasons we must find to account for it. In other manifestations of life God made things easy for us and, thus far, our religion had no merit. But in this respect He put us, so to speak, with our backs to the wall. ... [H]e would stand fast, his back to the wall, and face honestly the terrible problem of a child's agony. ... since it was God's will, we, too, should will it.... [T]he love of God is a hard love. It demands total self-surrender, disdain of our human personality. And yet it alone can reconcile us to suffering and the deaths of children, it alone can justify them, since we cannot understand them, and we can only make God's will ours.[Part IV, p200-203]

In a quiet moment, Tarrou tells the doctor about his troubled past, and why he is always "on the side of the victims." Asked it he has learned "the path to follow for attaining peace" he answers: "Yes: the path of sympathy". He adds,

"What interests me is learning how to become a saint."

... [T]he doctor answered, "But your know, I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity doesn't appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man."

"Yes, we're both after the same thing, but I'm less ambitious."

Rieux supposed Tarrou was jesting and turned to him with a smile. But, faintly lit by the dim radiance falling from the sky, the face he saw was sad and earnest.[Part IV, pp230-231]

So, I think you can see what's at play here. We get three real world-views in this book: Paneloux's (meaning comes from God, and there is no way to understand it; simply accept it, submerge yourself in it—in fact destroy yourself for it—and seek God only); Tarrou's (whatever you do, you are bound to help create victims, and what you should do is as little as possible that's not in direct aid of victims—your own or others'—aspiring to do as little harm as possible); and Rieux's (the universe has no meaning, but we try to impose our own, and that meaning is to heal). Some of the other characters have motives, but not real philosophies. Rambert, the journalist, wants his own happiness above all else, but the plague makes him ashamed of this: his original plan is to escape from Oran and return to his wife, but "this business is everybody's business," he says—he is, in short, converted to Rieux's viewpoint, though unwillingly. Grand, the civil servant, only wants to write; he spends his days obsessing over the opening sentence of a novel. And Cottard, the criminal, enjoys the plague, since it puts off the day of his arrest, and puts him, quite happily, in the same boat as everyone else (Tarrou says of him to Rieux: "His only real crime is that of having in his heart approved of something that killed off men, women, and children. I can understand the rest, but for that I am obliged to pardon him." (emphasis Camus's))

It is Tarrou's philosophy, to some extent, but mostly Rieux's, that Camus approves of. Man finds meaning only inside himself; no meaning exists elsewhere. Not in the universe—that notion is absurd. In fact, the Absurd in Camus's philosophy is precisely this realization, that there is no meaning in the universe, that life is defined by death and is fleeting, and that the meaning of life is what we bring to it: a fight for happiness in the face of death. Tarrou acknowledges the Absurd, but fights it only when he must; Rieux, on the other hand, battles the Absurd on a daily basis and refuses to yield, though his "victories will never be lasting".

The Plague is a low-keyed book. The most emotion we get is Rambert's desire to flee the city, and the sorrow - or horror - that attends some of the deaths (Camus is pretty matter-of-factly graphic about that ultimate reality). That and the few pages of Paneloux's sermons, and we aren't expected to sympathize with them; although they do in fact answer the problem of Evil, the answer they give is perhaps worse than the problem. Instead, Tarrou and most of all Rieux go quietly, determinedly, without heroics or flamboyance, about their job—to comfort, to heal, to be human in the face of uncaring universe.

Low-keyed, but not, in the end, boring.

No. Not gripping, exactly, but not boring either. And the 'message'—it's hard to think of it as a 'message' when there's no stridency anywhere, no urging, just straight-forward story-telling—the philosophy it espouses makes a lot of sense. If you haven't read Camus either, this is a good one to start with. (At least, it makes me feel like seeking out another.)

The Spanish Inquisitor has posted a carnival of plagues, a roundup of all the posts so far. As he says,

I also trust that if you are interested in participating in the next or future discussions, just let The Exterminator know, or for that matter, simply read the next book, (Christopher Brookmyre’s Not the End Of The World, ($4.79 at Amazon, (which seems to have gone down in price (from $5.04) since I ordered it this afternoon))) and post an essay on or after March 15. If you don’t have a blog of your own, contact any one of the previous participants, and, I’m sure, any one of them would be happy to guest host your essay.

(I certainly would.)

I've been asked to pick the next book. I'm cheating a little by picking one I've read, but I really enjoyed it and want to read it again, so since I'm heading into a massive class next week and it's going to keep me busy, I feel justified. Plus, I think everyone will enjoy it. It's by a brilliant Scot named Christopher Brookmyre (watch out you don't end up hunting down everything he's written). We should be ready to post on it March 15th. Okay?

Open letter to the DNC:

Ive sent this to the Democratic National Comittee:

I truly hope that you are not planning to seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida. The decision was problematic, but it was made; reversing it now would render all future attempts to set boundaries pointless.

BUT - if you DO decide to seat them, I believe it is imperative that you either force the states to hold a new primary - one in which ALL candidates will be on the ballot - or you arbitrarily split them equally among ALL candidates.

The last thing we need is for Clinton to win the nomination based on delegates who were chosen in primaries where she was the only candidate running, especially since it is more than a little underhanded for her to have been on those ballots at all.

minor annoyances

Two things that annoy me ... they're not important, but they annoy me. And both could be fixed.

The first is bill return and charity donation forms that don't fit into the envelope included with them.

The other is online forms that make me select my state from a drop-down menu - especially since I always have to scroll (even after I enter the first letter). Let me type it in, guys. If I don't know what it is how am I supposed to pick it out? And if I do why can't I type it? Why do you make me take my hands off the keyboard and go to the mouse?

There. Now I can go back to worrying about the big things.

Carnival!

Carnival of the Liberals is up at World Wide Webers. Ten of the best pieces of writing in the liberal blogosphere. Concentrated liberality - how can you not love this carnival? Check it out.



ps - yes, I know I'm misusing 'liberality'

Rings and Moons

This view across the main ring plane (D C B A and F rings) shows four of Saturn's moons:

Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) is visible at top. At bottom, in increasing distance from the rings are Pandora (84 kilometers, or 52 miles across), Janus (181 kilometers, or 113 miles across) and Mimas (397 kilometers, or 247 miles across).

You'll probably need to select the image to see Pandora; it's tiny.

And (as always) see the Cassini page for details.

Obama (probably) has my vote

(nb: I actually did start writing this post before Edwards dropped out...)

So, with Dennis Kucinich out of the race - probably not showing up on my primary ballot - I have to decide who to back.

(of course, John Edwards' dropping out makes this choice much, much easier)

It's odd. Whenever I take one of those tests designed to show which candidate is closer to me, Obama has always been a solid second to Kucinich. Yet I've always sort of leaned to Edwards as my second choice. I like his in-your-face progressive oratory, his recognition of "Two Americas", his pro-union stance, and his passion. I like his emphasis on poverty and health care, and his refusal to take lobbyist money. I like a lot about him.

And of course, as the campaign went on, both Obama and Clinton were forced to take a lot of positions that resembled Edwards', narrowing the gap between the three of them - particularly between Obama and Clinton.

There's a lot about Clinton I don't like. I don't like her knives-out approach (and don't give that "if Obama can't handle Clinton he'll never handle the Republicans" talk; that's no excuse for it). I don't like her hawkish attitude toward Iran. I don't like her centrist politics (no, she is not a liberal). And I don't like her indebtedness to corporations.

Of course, Obama's not perfect in that latter regard. Also, he's pretty religious. But he does have a good feel about him, and he seems like he wants to be president of the whole country. Also, he's willing to talk instead of shoot.

Now, oddly enough, I was incredibly enthusiastic about Bill Clinton. He was the "agent of change" - in a good way - back then. Remember "the man from Hope"? Remember how he made us feel like the people with good intentions were going to be running the country - how he appealed to our better nature? And Hillary Clinton was a huge part of that. It's probably inevitable that Obama will face the same relentless enemy they did - as Wayne Besen points out:

The truth is, the conservative movement is as pugnacious as it is repugnant. It is arrogance with a self-centered sense of entitlement - with its unpatriotic actions wrapped in the flag and justified in the name of God.

As imperfect - and at times disappointing - as the Clintons may have been, for many years, they were all that stood in the way of the conservative movement's complete domination and takeover of America.

Unfortunately, for their successful efforts at partially derailing the conservative juggernaut, the Clintons are being blamed for sullying the tone in Washington. This twisted line of reasoning reminds me of the kid who finally retaliates against his bullying tormentors, only to be sent to the school's office and reprimanded for fighting. The historical revisionism on the Clinton era must stop because it does not conform to reality. They did not pick the fights, they just retaliated - and often won. If Obama is elected president and faces the same frontal assault as Bill and Hillary, he will suffer the precise partisan fate. We can only hope that he has the killer instinct and resourcefulness to effectively fight back.

So, who to support? A proven fighter who's not quite where I want her to be on a number of issues, or a charismatic conciliator (remember how we loved that about Bill?) who's closer to my positions? Bearing in mind that neither of them is a really good match, that they're very close to each other on a lot of issues, that either would be a pretty good president, and that either would be enormously preferable to any of the Republicans running, I'm finding the choice difficult.

And now Ted Kennedy - our great gray liberal lion - has endorsed Obama.

So, while I'm annoyed that the media and the broken primary system has deprived me of the chance of voting for either my number 1 or 2 choice - and it's still January for crying out loud - I guess I'm backing Obama now. I may even get enthusiastic about him by the summer.

Happy Birthday, Gelett!

Today in Boston in 1866 (Frank) Gelett Burgess was born.

He wrote more than 35 books of fiction and nonfiction, including Lady Méchante or Life As It Should Be (which is funny), as well as several plays, and he coined the word "blurb". But he is best known for this (which has a title I never knew till today):

Purple Cow: Reflections on a Mythic Beast Who's Quite Remarkable, at Least

I never Saw a Purple Cow;
I never Hope to See One;
But I can Tell you, Anyhow,
I'd rather See than Be One.

This poem haunted his life , eventually causing him to write this little sequel:

Confession: and a Portrait Too, Upon a Background that I Rue

Ah, yes, I wrote the Purple Cow;
I'm sorry now I wrote it;
But I can tell you, Anyhow,
I'll Kill you if you Quote it.

(But he's dead, so I'm not afraid.)

oh noes! they're on to us!!!1!

Someone named Katherine T. Phan at something called The Christian Post has written a laudatory article about Ben Stein's new "documentary" film Expelled!:

Stein said he finds it problematic that Darwinism, which he feels leaves a lot of questions unanswered, is being touted in the academic and scientific circles as the only rational explanation on how life began.

Where did life come from? How did cells get so complex?

If the origins of life all did happen by random mutation, he questioned, where does the laws that make the universe possible to function – the law of gravity, the law of thermodaynamics, laws of motion – all come from?

"Who created these laws that keeps the planets in motion?" asked Stein. "These are fundamental questions" where Darwinism lacks explanations.

Sheesh. First, it's where do the laws come from... And second, I'll admit it: 'Darwinism*' can't answer that question. For that, we need to look elsewhere ... and I'm not playing that NOMA game, either; science is entitled to try to answer any question that deals with the real world. It's just that ... you know, the Theory of Evolution deals with Evolution - change over time, common descent, that sort of stuff.

We don't ask the Theory of Gravity to explain why iron is more massive than hydrogen. We don't ask the Atomic Theory to explain why there is cholera. We don't ask the Germ Theory to explain why planets orbit suns.

The problem is that a certain subset of us don't understand what the Theory of Evolution is, don't care that they don't, don't want to, and in fact have concocted a monstrous straw man to fight against, and cackle triumphantly when they ask their silly questions. Not to say that "where did life come from?" is necessarily a silly question, but it's silly to ask it of the Theory of Evolution. It's like asking it "why is the sky blue?"

Somebody can answer that question, but it's not Evolution. And, like Putin said about the Brits: if they don't know that, they're incompetent, and if they do, they're grandstanding.

* For some reason - that probably says a lot more about them than anything else - these people always talk about 'Darwinism'. The Theory of Evolution is called by its (19th century) founder's name as though it were some unchanging doctrine handed down to a prophet by divine revelation. No one talks about, you know, 'Kelvinism', say, or 'Newtonism' ... Well, not yet, anyway. But if they succeed in their quest to foist ID on us, the next step may be to challenge in science classes the age of the earth, and then wait till they get started on "Huttonism" and Deep Time. (And Hutton is a 18th century man, uncontaminated by Darwin in any shape or form... inconceivable!)

Bay, just bay

GrrlScientist has a post about Barbaro's being interred at Churchill Downs, quoting a Bloomberg story in which he's called "The bay colored colt".

Now I don't mean to be picky, but "bay" is not a color. He wasn't "bay colored"; he was just "bay". Technically, he was black, with a gene that restricts the black color to his extremities, leaving his body the default, recessive red. Bay is the pattern, not the color.

Happy Birthday, Anton!

Today in 1860 Антон Павлович Чехов (Anton Pavlovich Chekhov) was born - on what was 19 January by the calendar Russia was using at the time. He was a doctor throughout his life, and probably contracted the tuberculosis that killed him while practicing medicine in the labor camps of Siberia - not as a prisoner, but as a volunteer medic, a logical conclusion to a career that began with free clinics and sliding-scale fees for Russia's working poor and included building schools and a fire station.

But if medicine was his lawful wife, literature, as he said once to Alexei Suvorin, was his mistress (Медицина — моя законная жена, а литература — любовница.), and he wrote four classic plays (Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, The Seagull, and The Cherry Orchard) and helped invent the short story - his masterpiece "The Lady with the Dog" was written in Yalta, where he'd gone to battle his tuberculosis. (The picture is Chekhov with a dog, in Yalta...) In May 1904 he became so ill that he went to a German health spa, where he died two months later.

All 201 of his stories, in the Constance Garnett translations and in chronological order, can be found here, with notes. And here they are in Russian.


«Если ты кричишь "Вперед!", ты должен принять безошибочное решение, в каком направлении нужно идти. Разве ты не понимаешь, что, не сделав этого, ты взываешь как к монаху, так и к революционеру, и они будут двигаться в противоположных направлениях?»

"If you cry 'Forward!' you must make it absolutely plain which direction to go. Don't you see that if, without doing so, you call out the word to both a monk and a revolutionary, they will go in precisely opposite directions?"

all the logos? or all the candidates?

I don't want to be picky, but ... in the sidebox next to a rather good analysis of the designs of presidential campaign logos ("What font says 'Change'?"), the Boston Globe places this:

* Photos See all the candidate's campaign logos

Which candidate, I wonder, and why does he have so many logos?

But of course, it should have read "all the candidates' campaign logos". (Because, oddly, in the main illustration for the story they show only six of seven. (All? for the media's definition, anyway.) And the one they left out was ... Mitt Romney.)

It's true that this is purely a spelling difference (candidates, candidate's, and candidates' all sound alike), but then, so too is the distinction we make between "too, to, and two". In print, we need more clues since the written form of the word is all we have. And there's a difference between "the logos of all the candidates" and "all the logos of one candidate"...

(hat tip uu mom)

Monday's Science Links

This week's science:

• Chad at Uncertain Principles blogs on School Killings and The Problem With Relative Numbers: "So, the answer to the question 'Why is homicide the second-leading killer of children?' is 'Because there aren't that many things that kill children.' Something has to be the second-leading cause of death among the young, and murder is it. It's not that there are a lot of child murders-- the absolute number is quite low-- it's that there aren't many other things killing significant numbers of children."


• Dave at Cognitive Daily blogs on the difference between how little kids and adults describe things: "The house contained several large pieces of furniture, each accompanied by two small, nearly identical objects: hats, towels, bags, and so on. The objects differed only in color and in location: The hat with the blue ribbon was on the couch, while the hat with the red ribbon was next to the couch. If the mouse was hidden under the hat with the blue ribbon on the couch, how would young children explain where it was, and would their responses differ from adults?"


• Phli at Bad Astronomy videoblogs on Asteroid 2007 TU24 not causing catastrophes: "For those who haven’t been following this saga, some doomsayers have been claiming that an asteroid named 2007 TU24 poses a grave threat to Earth. These fearmongers are completely wrong, scaring lots of others, and are apparently unwilling to listen to reason. The videos still make outrageously bad claims and the websites still make utterly false statements. I decided to make my own video so that the truth can get out to as many people as possible."


• Emily at The Planetary Society blogs on the Martian "Bigfoot": "The story of a Sasquatch-shaped rock visible in a recent panorama from Spirit is getting a lot of play in the mainstream media, but fortunately, it's not being taken very seriously. (My favorite take on this picture is the lead from the Times Online story about it: "Is it a rock? A trick of Martian light on the eye? Or Osama Bin Laden waving from his barren hideout 300 million miles from planet Earth?") "
  


• Judith at Zenobia: Empress of the East blogs on Anahita, mighty goddess of the waters: "In an astonishing scene, Narseh receives the ribboned royal diadem from the hand of Anahita on the rock walls at Naqsh-e Rostam, near Persepolis. The goddess is wearing a mural crown with her hair arranged in a topknot. A young prince (probably the king's son and successor, Hormizd II) stands between them. It is extraordinary and, as far as I know, the only coronation scene in which the supreme god Hormizd is nowhere to be seen."

Enjoy!

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: Extras on Torchwood - good commentaries.

TV: 8 Femmes (8 Women) which is unlike anything I've ever seen: a cross between Agatha Christie and the haute-couteur Technicolor extravaganzas of the Fifties - complete with songs, it has a tight plot in which secret after secret and motive after motive come tumbling out of the characters in this stagy but wonderful movie starring 8 brilliant French actresses, each more wonderful than the next, as the saying goes (Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Beart, Fanny Ardant, Virginie Ledoyen, Danielle Darrieux, Ludivine Sagnier and Firmine Richard). And then to the other end of the spectrum and The Simpsons Movie which was quite satisfactory. Words and Music - a bit predictable, perhaps, but formula well done is entertaining. And this was well done. And Torchwood - Frabjous day, calloo callay! Yay!

Read: The Trial of Colonel Sweeto - the Perry Bible Fellowship book. Hilarious. Although I had to read the next Nonbelieving Literati choice - Camus's The Plague - I couldn't resist the Isaac Babel collection that arrived and I read two stories in it... but then started The Plague. It's short; I'll be done on time.

Happy Birthday, Thomas!

Today in 1621 Thomas Willis was born - the father of modern neurology. He discovered much about the way the brain is put together - nerves and cranial anatomy, including the Circle of Willis, and the circulation of the blood into and through the brain.

Carl Zimmer has written a (typically) brilliant book, Soul Made Flesh, that tells his story - and others (did you know Christopher Wren was more famous for his anatomical drawings than his architecture in his lifetime?) - highly recommended. I happened to read it shortly before visiting London, and it made me hunt out Willis's tomb in St Paul's.

Happy Birthday, Charles!

Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, was born today in 1832, near Daresbury, Cheshire, England.





The Mad Gardener's Song

He thought he saw an Elephant,
That practised on a fife:
He looked again, and found it was
A letter from his wife.
"At length I realise," he said,
"The bitterness of Life!"

He thought he saw a Bufffalo
Upon the chimney-piece:
He looked again, and found it was
His Sister's Husband's Niece.
"Unless you leave this house," he said,
"I'll send for the Police!"

He thought he saw a Rattlesnake
That questioned him in Greek:
He looked again, and found it was
The Middle of Next Week.
"The one thing I regret," he said,
"Is that it cannot speak!"

He thought he saw a Banker's Clerk
Descending from the bus:
He looked again, and found it was
A Hippopotamus.
"If this should stay to dine," he said,
"There won't be much for us!"

He thought he saw a Kangaroo
That worked a coffee-mill:
He looked again, and found it was
A Vegetable-Pill.
"Were I to swallow this," he said,
"I should be very ill!"

He thought he saw a Coach-and-Four
That stood beside his bed:
He looked again, and found it was
A Bear without a Head.
"Poor thing," he said, "poor silly thing!
It's waiting to be fed!"

He thought he saw an Albatross
That fluttered round the lamp:
He looked again, and found it was
A Penny-Postage Stamp.
"You'd best be getting home," he said:
"The nights are very damp!"

He thought he saw a Garden-Door
That opened with a key:
He looked again, and found it was
A Double Rule of Three:
"And all its mystery," he said,
"Is clear as day to me!"

He thought he saw a Argument
That proved he was the Pope:
He looked again, and found it was
A Bar of Mottled Soap.
"A fact so dread," he faintly said,
"Extinguishes all hope!"

Happy Birthday, Wolfgang!

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born today in 1756 in Salzburg.

Carnival of Maryland #25

Welcome to
the Silver Edition of
the Carnival of Maryland.

Almost a year now this group has been together, united only by where we live. We range from the progressive to the conservative (Kucinich to Limbaugh fans) in politics, and other interests are equally all over the map - as long as that map is of the Old Line State, that is. So, with that in mind - you'll find things here you might not normally read - let's get started.

Let's get Politics out of the way first, shall we? On the national level, we have The Patriot Sharpshooter at Common Sense who posts on Illegal/Legal Immigration - an Ominous Issue: "It seems our bureaucratic leaders are either unable or unwilling to deal with an obvious, growing problem. When will Americans become incensed to the point of demanding action?"

And Joyce atl UU Mom reflects on Obama's Clinton Education: "I hate this kind of politics and think it's a shame that Barack has to deal with this."

On the local side, Michael at Monoblogue asks Why are we losing?: "Obviously that’s bad news for the Maryland GOP, which is already a severe minority party in the General Assembly. Registered Democrats get all the propaganda from the party, which in turn builds up name recognition for Democrat candidates. But seeing that the source of this information was the notoriously liberal Sun, I decided to do some checking into the numbers myself. I looked up the end-of-year voter registration numbers for 2003 and 2007."

Bruce at Maryland Weekly offers advice on How to Advocate Effectively for Same-Sex Marriage: "Please learn about Senate Bill 290 /House Bill 351 and urge its passage here in Maryland. This well-drafted bill will protect firmly what's already the law: churches and synagogues are free to bar their front door strictly shut to same-sex couples according to their conscience. But let the courthouse door be opened wide to all of us, finally, in our fair and free state."

Brian at Annapolis Politics disagrees that People's Republic Of China Shames Annapolis; Bans Plastic Bags: "My first point is that banning private market transactions is what socialists do. The Chinese government is telling businesses what prices to charge! That should not be what happens here, and we should not interpret China's action as an example for us."

Stephanie at Jousting for Justice takes a look at A Little Maryland Democracy: "All we hear from the media is how bad politicians are, and how venal and corrupt the entire system is. It's enough to make a lot of people not want to participate. But when you go to one of Maryland's little town hall type meetings like this one, and you get to hear from the people who represent you in a real way, it can infuse you with a little hope."

Attilla at Pillage Idiot shares Gov. O'Malley's to-do list: "A Washington Post headline referred to the governor's 'to-do list.' I've found of a copy of that list."

And on local news, SoccerDad at Soccer Dad thinks the Scalder gets off lightly: "What was the judge thinking?"

Passing to economics, Matt at Going to the Mat takes a look at Teachers, Pay and the Labor Market: "While one could argue that the $40,000 figure is grossly overpaying for some regions and grossly underpaying for others, what is rarely mentioned is the fact that teachers, as workers, are subject to market forces when it comes to their salary, or rather would be if the NEA and local unions would quit interfering."

On a more direct economic note Jeff at Inside Charm City says Free publicity here - send us your press releases: "Want to get publicity for your group, political campaign or organizatiom, your business, or any other entity you’re involved with that sends our press releases to the media?"

And taking economics to the movies, Aaron at Technosailor looks at Marketing 101: How Cloverfield Failed to Deliver on Expectations: "Earlier this evening, I joined several other social media type folks down in D.C. for a first night showing of Cloverfield, the film that was so secretive it didn’t have a name other than 01182008 until sometime last month. The film trailers were released on the internet sometime last year and bloggers, and movie folks started buzzing about what the heck the moview as about. The trailer did not give any information. Nothing since Snakes on the Plane made the net buzz, quite the way early trailers of Cloverfield did. And this is where things went wrong."

And speaking of movies, Clark of Clark's Pick offers Bessie Smith: "St. Louis Blues"This is the only known appearance of Bessie Smith on film. She sings W.C. Handy's St. Louis Blues in a dramatization based on a film treatment written by Handy, himself."

In other entertainment areas, it may be winter but that doesn't stop Maryland Baseball Fan at Oriole Post from looking at a Marker In The Sand; Defeatism...: "Fans clamored for change after the sad last two months of the baseball; alas, like I said in my last posting, the team on paper we have now is what will most likely be the one we see in Spring Training. Reading the news sites, forums like Orioles Hangout, Pressbox, and blogs like Camden Chat there's not a whole lot of news coming out. What does this mean for us? More losing? More hopeless, humid nights at the Yard? We being 20 games out of first by July?"

And UU Mom at Creating a Jubilee County exhorts us to GO OUT! Numerous things to do in Prince George's Co: "It may be cold, but don't be a couch potato! Socialize. Support our local artisans. Learn about your area & neighbors. There are numerous things to do in Prince George's Co."

Turning to literature, pinenut at Pines Above Snow looks at Writing Classes: "The hierarchy is somewhat complicated by snootiness about where you’re publishing (New York-published nonfiction may sometimes trump regionally-published fiction). But the ranking itself, rather than the specific details, bothers me. Such hierarchic attitudes undermine training in my little niche (children’s writers conferences treat publishing picture books and novels as the Holy Grail, ignoring or sidelining a wealth of other creative possibilities). Still worse, this class system constricts teaching and reading of all kinds of literature. "

On a more personal note, the anonymous author of That's What I Think, admits to Consuming Words Like Some People Eat Chocolate: "When I read, I have a hard time getting through books as quickly as I'd prefer. My reading speed has always been fairly swift. However, I'm completely infatuated with words. To me, a word is a vibrant gem that injects reality into the pages at hand. It is a building block, creating and strengthening human understanding across the diversity that is life. Without the right combination, a novel could not convey the story the author hopes to tell."

Then, turning to nature and the environment, Jeremy at The Voltage Gate gives us The Mountains Once Smoldered: "The coal culture, if it can be called that, is fascinating to me, and I can't really explain why. I've been a resident of this area for about four years now, but I have been visiting since I was a kid. It seemed normal then, part of the landscape. It has become more and more alien to me with the passing years."

And finally, I have a few Juncos: "Flitty little things, never still, never letting you get close."

That wraps up the Carnival. The next edition will be at the Spewker on Feb 10; if you've got a submission, you can use the form here.

Juncos!

I love juncos. I do - have ever since I was a kid (when I thought they were young mockingbirds because of the way they flash white in the tails and wings). But oh, man are they hard to take pictures of! Flitty little things, never still, never letting you get close. I almost froze my fingers off this afternoon with very little to show for it...

Dennis calls it a day

Dennis Kucinich has withdrawn from the presidential race:

In a speech delivered in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio Congressman and Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich delivered an impassioned speech that said, in part:

"I deeply and sincerely believe that we fought the good fight – in large part because of the support from all of you here and from hundreds of thousands of people just like you all across this country. I stood strong because you gave me strength. I spoke out because your voices needed and deserved to be heard. And I told the truth, no matter how unpopular or inconvenient, because, no matter how long it takes, the truth really will set us free.

"I won't be President, but I can continue to fight for these important issues as a Congressman..."

His voice will be missed. The other three candidates are extremely close to each on most issues, and I won't have a problem voting for whichever of them ends up with the nomination (though I do have my clear favorite), but Dennis consistently raised issues they don't want to talk about. His exclusion from the debates - actual exclusion in the last few, and virtual exclusion in earlier ones, where the media and the "moderator" focused only on the big three, with no more than token questions to the others - made it harder for him to be heard, but he kept on until it became apparent that it wasn't working, and that his congressional seat was under attack.

We need to keep pushing and ask those questions every chance we get. Iran, real universal health care, civil liberties, checks on presidential power: these things are too important to let them slip off the table.

Carnival of Space - Noir edition

Sorting Out Science host the Carnival of Space, and I can't resist linking to it.

It was hours too late into an already late night at the office when I heard the knocking. I gulped down the last of my drink, and opened the door. A tall, attractive woman stood in the hallway. It didn’t take long to find out what I was up against.

“I guess I can see why they call you ‘Shorty,’” she said.

She was apparently not hindered by diplomacy, and it was obvious that she had trouble written all over her. In other words, my usual sort of client.

Head over for some fun.

Happy Birthday, Jules!

Today in the Bronx in 1929 Jules Feiffer was born.


Here's a classic... still (unfortunately) relevant.

Pan

Earlier this month, I mistakenly said Atlas was the closest moon to Saturn, but that's wrong, as I certainly knew. Atlas is outside the A Ring, but Pan, inside the Encke Gap, is closest in, and Daphnis, in the Keeler Gap (which, like the Encke Gap, is inside the A Ring), is next in. The magnificent shot, across the planet to the far side, shows Pan in the clearly defined Encke Gap. The Keeler is that darkish band next out. The Roche Division, where Atlas lives, is the broad black gap with the narrow little F Ring at the edges. (For a better idea of the scale (the Encke Gap is 200 miles wide), look at this picture showing Pan and Daphnis both.

See the Cassini site for details.

Happy Birthday, Rabbie!

Burns Night!

Yes, today is Robert Burns' birthday. He was born in Alloway, Scotland, in 1759, and started writing poetry for the oldest reason: to get girls. Now he's Scotland's national poet. Everyone sings Auld Lang Syne at New Year, and we all know at least part of To a Mouse and maybe To a Louse, too... Last year I gave you "Is there for honest Poverty" (also known as "A Man's a Man For A' That"). This year, something less well known:


Musing on the roaring ocean,
Which divides my love and me;
Wearying heav'n in warm devotion,
For his weal where'er he be.

Hope and Fear's alternate billow
Yielding late to Nature's law,
Whispering spirits round my pillow,
Talk of him that's far awa.

Ye whom sorrow never wounded,
Ye who never shed a tear,
Care-untroubled, joy-surrounded,
Gaudy day to you is dear.

Gentle night, do thou befriend me,
Downy sleep, the curtain draw;
Spirits kind, again attend me,
Talk of him that's far awa!

(You can find them all at Robert Burns.Org

I and the Bird on holiday

I and the Bird goes on holiday. No, it's not missing, it's off on a trip, courtesy of Trevor at Trevor's Birding, who rather smugly tells us

The mad holiday season in Australia begins with Christmas parties in the week or so before Christmas. Many Australians have an enforced holiday between Christmas a New Year. Some factories and businesses close for several weeks in the early part of January. Hoards of people flock to the beaches and rivers for their traditional break from the cities. ... Barbecues are almost compulsory, the weather is usually warm to hot and the flies are everywhere. Swimming pools are overused and the sun-screen is slapped on in dollops. (I just thought I’d rub it in a bit for all of you freezing in the northern hemisphere at present; you can have all that snow and ice to yourselves.)

Summer is a great time to go birding too. So let’s get on with our Grand Tour.

Well, the last couple of sentences make up for the beginning, don't you think? And he delivers with a spectacular around-the-world tour of birding bloggers... er, all around the world. Far too many great posts and pictures to try to single out any - relax and enjoy them all.

(Oh, I stole the picture from him - it's so cheery to look at such a pretty little bird in the cold.)

Happy Birthday, Vasily!

Born today in 1848 in Krasnoyarsk, Vasily Ivanovich Surikov (Василий Иванович Суриков).

He is probably the foremost Russian painter of large-scale historical subjects, which often focused on events that resonated with the ordinary person. His major pieces are among the best-known paintings in Russia.

Below is his portrait of the Bronze Horseman - Peter I (the Great) in St Petersburg - and depiction of the arrest of the Boyarina Feodosia Morozova, a prominent Old Believer (the sign she's making to the crowd is of the two fingers used to cross oneself in Old Believer fashion - notice the beggar responding in like fashion).

"Committed Christian" President

I have mixed feelings about all this.

I think I know why they're doing it - and for both of them there's an exploitative element, even though Obama's probably partly fighting back against that evil "Manchurian candidate" attack.

But of course it's not only those two. They're just the most prominent examples- the candidates pushing their religion in our faces. (Romney's case is somewhat different; he's trying hard to be "a person of faith" without getting into the icky details.)

So, yeah, I think Obama's sincere in his religion, but I also think this is a trend we need to stop.

And this isn't just because I'm a freethinker (okay, you can call me an atheist if you like). Anybody who values their own particular brand of religion should be disturbed at the thought that we might elect someone who will push us just that much closer to the day when religious convictions are the key to electability. Sure, it's okay when it's your church, but what happens when the demographics shift?

And not only is it a profoundly un-American concept, it's dangerous.

Haven't we had enough of that?

Yeah, I know. Neither profound nor particularly original. But sometimes things just are what they are.

And check out Glenn Greenwald's take.

Open Lab reviewed by Nature

Nature reviews Open Lab 2007:

The editor of this second anthology of the best scientific communiques from the blogosphere thinks blogs offer new ways to discuss science. The Open Laboratory 2007: the Best Science Writing on Blogs (Lulu.com, 2008) takes the curious approach of using dead tree format to highlight the diversity of scientific ideas, opinions and voices flowing across the Internet. Every year a different guest editor — here Reed Cartwright, a blogger and genetics and bioinformatics postdoc from North Carolina State University---picks the best posts to coincide with the Science Blogging Conference (in North Carolina on 19 January). First-hand accounts bring to life the stresses of a graduate student, a mother returning to the bench and an archaeologist's joy at unearthing mammoth fossils. Topics tackled are as varied as the writers, from Viagra and tapeworms to trepanning. Explanations are often offered with a personal twist, such as a father's tale of his child's Asperger's syndrome. The measured voices of trustworthy academics make medical research easy to swallow. If you are overwhelmed by the surge in science-related blogging and don't know where to start, then this compilation may help you steer a course through the sea of perspectives on offer---or inspire you to start a blog yourself.

Reed Cartwright announced today that the book is basically here. Bora and he got to review the proof of the anthology today. "The printing came out great," he said, saying that "means that by March you should hopefully be able to go to your local bookstore and request it to be stocked. Hopefully, Amazon will be carrying it for less than the Lulu.com price next month." (Of course, scienceblogging.com and the conference make 3 times more money off of Lulu.com purchases than anywhere else - so buy there if you want to help out.)

Read about it here and buy from Lulu here!

Happy Birthday, George

Mad, bad, and dangerous to know... George Gordon, Lord Byron, was born today in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1788. Lame and bisexual, he had a miserable childhood, and left Britain as a young man to travel the eastern Mediterranean. He wrote a long poem about that trip, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and it made him an overnight success... success which he handled badly. Eventually his scandalous life made it dangerous for him to remain in Britain, and he fled to Italy, where he died at 36, deeply involved in the cause of Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire and still working on his final poem, Don Juan (which, in true English fashion, is pronounced Don Joo-an - as we see from the very first stanza, where it rhymes with "true one" and "new one".)

Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos

IF, in the month of dark December,
Leander, who was nightly wont
(What maid will not the tale remember?)
To cross thy stream, broad Hellespont!

If, when the wintry tempest roar'd,
He sped to Hero, nothing loth,
And thus of old thy current pour'd,
Fair Venus! how I pity both!

For me, degenerate modern wretch,
Though in the genial month of May,
My dripping limbs I faintly stretch,
And think I've done a feat today.

But since he cross'd the rapid tide,
According to the doubtful story,
To woo, -- and -- Lord knows what beside,
And swam for Love, as I for Glory;

'Twere hard to say who fared the best:
Sad mortals! thus the gods still plague you!
He lost his labour, I my jest;
For he was drown'd, and I've the ague.

Hitch on Huck: Who's racist now?

In Slate, Christopher Hitchens makes a very good point:

The preceding week had involved some trivial but intense parsing of an exchange between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama about Dr. Martin Luther King. But just let the real thing occur, with a full-blooded and full-throated bellow of old-fashioned authentic racism, and you can see the entire press refusing to cover it for fear of having to confront the real and unvarnished thing (and perhaps for reasons having to do with other "sensitivities" as well).

Gov. Mike Huckabee made the following unambiguously racist and demagogic appeal in Myrtle Beach, S.C., last week:

You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag. In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell 'em what to do with the pole; that's what we'd do.

1) The South Carolina flag is a perfectly nice flag, featuring the palmetto plant, about which no "outsider" has ever offered any free advice.

2) The Confederate battle flag, to which Gov. Huckabee was alluding, was first flown over the South Carolina state capitol in 1962, as a deliberately belligerent riposte to the civil rights movement, and is not now, and never has been, the flag of that great state.

3) By a vote of both South Carolina houses in the year 2000, the Confederate battle flag ceased to be flown over the state capitol and now only waves (as quite possibly it should) over the memorial to fallen Confederate soldiers.

Thus, as well as crassly behaving exactly like someone "from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag," former Gov. Huckabee of Arkansas deliberately aligned himself with the rancorous minority who are still not reconciled to the idea that South Carolina may not officially consecrate racism and slavery and secession.

He's got a point, you know. Unlike any Clinton-Obama spat, this is a full-on call to racism. Unlike Don Imus or Kelly Tilghman, Huckabee is running for president. So why is this not headline news?

(You don't have to tell me. That's a rhetorical question.)

Close In

Another example of the complexities of the Saturnian system. Atlas is the closest moon to Saturn and was discovered in 1980 - from Voyager photos - and was thought to be a shepherd to the A ring, the edge of which it hugs as it travels inside the Roche Division between the main rings and the outlying F ring, but now it's known that in fact it is Janus and Epimetheus that maintain the edge of the A ring. Atlas is perturbed by the F ring shepherds, more strongly by Prometheus than Pandora, so its orbit is irregular - yet the edge of the ring, so close to the moon, is not is so perturbed. Weird and wonderful.

Check the Cassini site for details.

Moment of Tooth

The polygraph (or 'lie detector') doesn't work. It's slightly better than chance (which can be attributed to people's belief that it works) and has a significant number of both false positives (truth-tellers labeled liars) and false negatives (liars who get away with it): at least six notorious spies, such as Aldrich Ames, have repeatedly passed while engaged in spying.

But even those who insist that it does work know that it requires special conditions. (I've had to take one quite a few times in my career.) You have to be physically comfortable, they turn you so you can't see the operator, you're told to fix your attention on a point on the wall, the questions have to be focused and clearly understood (operators generally go over the questions with you beforehand), and so on.

So, this new Fox 'reality' show, "The Moment of Truth" - I just saw an ad for it as I channel-surfed - where people are sitting in some game-show style of chair in the middle of a studio audience being asked bizarre questions - apparently some of them of the purely hypothetical variety, not "have you..." but "would you..." - with people yelling at them? Even if polygraphs worked, this isn't the way they work.

This is a very Fox show, stupid, cruel, exploitative, and voyeuristic, designed merely to humiliate people in front of an audience howling for blood.

It'll probably do really well.

Monday's Science Links

This week's Science:

• Martin at Aardvarchaeology shows lovely pictures of the 16th century Djurham sword that he recently found in Sweden.


• Carel at Rigor Vitae talks about rattlesnakes, and has some of his great art to accompany the dissertation.


• Mark Liberman at Langauge Log looks at that Hungarian computer dog 'language' study, reading the actual paper before he comments.


• Julianne at Cosmic Variance shares a story about the amazing adaptive qualities of children and the amazing modern medicine that can help them.


• Stefan at Back Reaction tells us that Mercury looks almost like the Moon - and talks about the Messenger mission and Copernicus, too.

Enjoy!

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: Slings & Arrows. This is wonderful, a funny and poignant and above all intelligent Canadian series. Paul Gross heads an extraordinary cast in a story about actors - and life. Highly recommended. You won't regret it.

TV: Pushing Daisies. Still worth it, though I wish they'd get over Ned's accidental killing of Chuck's father already. The second half of Nova's "Absolute Cold".

Read: Finished Ayala's Angel which is one of Trollope's lesser known novels; I enjoyed it. Also The Pregnant Man, also by Deirdre Barrett - seven case studies of hypnotherapy. Excellently written, like seven short stories.

Dueling Destinies

Digital Cuttlefish shares a set of dueling destinies as heard on two late-night radio stations:

"First one, then the other, would drift into range
As the road, through the hills, wound around;
And I gradually noticed, the speakers on both
Were discussing the same common ground.
The topic today was the end of the world,
And both stations had stories to tell;
The first speaker told how the sun would expand
But the second was speaking of Hell."

As always, excellent stuff.

Carnival of the Godless

Yes, it's an alternate Sunday and that means the godless are out and about with the best of the past fortnight's blogging. The Carnival of the Godless is up at Tangled Up in Blue Guy, and it's a doozy. He's selected the ten best, and included all the rest, too, so there's more than enough reading to get you through the long weekend (or the regular one if you're not in the US).

eyes

Movies with three or more languages - how can we know?

Over on language hat is a discussion of Robert Worth's nice essay on learning Arabic. In the comments, someone wonders how many Arabics (more than dialects, less than languages - political/cultural considerations feature heavily in the definition) one would need to be able to speak with any Arab one might meet.

Well, that made me remember something that happened last year. I have a friend who speaks Arabic - she studied in Cairo - and we went to see The Syrian Bride together. Afterwards she told me that she was struggling so hard to understand the Syrian spoken by most of the characters that it took half the movie to realize that the photographer was actually speaking Hebrew. I, of course, didn't know it until she told me over dinner after the movie - and it made his character's actions more understandable, and illuminated his relationship with the bride's family, changing the way I thought about it and, in fact, changing the function of his character altogether. I had no way of knowing - couldn't guess, as I did with the Israeli soldiers in the movie, that he wasn't speaking Syrian. For that matter, the UN workers switched between English and French, and one of the bride's brothers had married a Russian woman, and they spoke Russian among their little family - she spoke no Arabic. But everything was flattened out and made equal in the subtitles. All the languages became English. (And you needed to pay attention to realize when people were speaking with each other and when not.)

I've often wished that in multilingual movies the subtitles would make it clear what language each character spoke. When I saw Everything is Illuminated I knew that some of the people he encountered were speaking Ukrainian, not Russian; most of the audience, I'll bet, did not. When I saw After the Wedding I could guess when they were speaking Danish and when they were speaking Hindi, but it wasn't until I looked it up on imdb.com that I saw there was Swedish in it, too. Now I wonder when, why, and who... When I saw The Legacy I could guess that they might be switching to Swedish when the characters traveled to Stockholm, but I couldn't know - I did recognize it when they spoke French, which only made me wonder more if they sometimes spoke Danish and sometimes Swedish. The Danish (and Swedish) audiences would have known.

In some movies it might not matter much. But sometimes it's more than just an interesting fact; as in The Syrian Bride, sometimes who can understand and who cannot is actually important to the story.

Happy Birthday, Edgar!

Today in Boston in 1809 was born a boy named Edgar Poe. His parents died of tuberculosis, and he was taken in by John Allan, acquiring his middle name - which he used when he began writing, though by then he had been cast off by his foster family for acquiring habits of life of which they didn't approve (moral: if you're a puritan in 19th century Boston, send your son to Harvard, not UVa!). Poe made his name writing slashing, savage reviews of other people's books, then moved into writing his own. He wrote light and humorous fiction at first, but he married his cousin only to learn that she too had tuberculosis, and as she slowly died his fiction became more and more macabre. His most famous poem, The Raven, was written as he watched her dying.

But you can find that one everywhere, so here's one less macabre: Eldorado

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old-
This knight so bold-
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow-
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be-
This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied-
"If you seek for Eldorado!"

to be wanted

xkcd is one of the great webcomics. Today's is one of the sweet, heart-tugging, almost sad comics (made even sadder and sweeter by the mouse-over text). Check it out.

Shepherds of the Ring

Cassini took this shot last month, from above the ring plane. We can see both of the F-ring shepherd moons. Prometheus is inside the ring, creating another dark gore in the inner edge. Pandora is outside, at the top. Also, if you look closely at the left edge of the picture, in the Encke gap, you can make out narrow ringlets. Tres cool.

As always, see Cassini's home page for more.