Happy Birthday Nikolai (Mykola)

Today (March 19, OldStyle) in 1809, in Sorochintsy, a town near Poltava, Ukraine, in what was then the Russian Empire Николай Васильевич Гоголь, Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol, or Микола Васильович Гоголь, Mykola Vasylyovich Hohol as he is in Ukrainian, was born. His deft touch with characters, linguistic playfulness, and keen sense of what a professor of mine insisted on calling "the Russian absurd, not the English one!" make him one of the most distinctive voices in all Russian literature.

A number of his works are available on line, such as The Inspector General, The Overcoat, Dead Souls, and a collection featuring The Diary of a Madman, The Nose, and Taras Bulba among others.

Works in Russian are here.

Happy Birthday, Ewan

Today in 1971 Ewan McGregor was born in Perth, Scotland (he grew up in Crieff), and what a wonderful thing that is.

The subjunctive mood - only the form is dead

Over at Mr. Verb's eponymous blog is a delightful finger-pointing at the egregious William Safire and one of his more annoying readers:

“Get this,” Sam Pakenham-Walsh, member of the Nitpickers League, said in an e-mail message, “we no longer use the subjective tense! Has all our education been for naught?”

Yeah. "Subjective tense". He said it, and Safire didn't catch it.

Read Mr. Verb for the low-down on "tense" and "subjective". I'm posting about something else that really gets me.

Even assuming he'd said "subjunctive mood", does Pakenham really think Ferraro (or anybody) doesn't understand the difference between irrealis and realis based on their failure to use the "proper" form of the verb "to be" (the only verb which has a special form for this mood, the only one) in the construction? Of course they understand the subjunctive; they just don't know which form of the verb they're "supposed" to use to mark it. That's why the IF is there. "If he was" = "were he" nowadays. Sheesh.

I am therefore delighted that he said "subjective tense" and that Safire missed it.

Let me add this - from Arnold Zwicky's Language Log post on the matter:

While I'm on the subject of subjunctives, let me express amazement, once again, that so many people are so exercised about the use of the ordinary past rather than a special counterfactual form (often called "the subjunctive" or "the past subjunctive") for expressing conditions contrary to fact. The special counterfactual form is incredibly marginal: it's distinct from the ordinary past for only one verb in the language, BE, and then only with 1st and 3rd person singular subjects, so it does hardly any work. And using the ordinary past rather than the special counterfactual form virtually never produces expressions that will be misunderstood in context. Yes, you can construct examples that are potentially ambiguous out of context, but in actual practice there's almost never a problem, as you can see from two facts:

one, all conditionals with past tense verb forms in them, for every single verb in the language other than BE, and for BE with 2nd person or plural subjects, are potentially ambiguous out of context, yet in actual practice, there's almost never a problem; and

two, the nit-pickers are, in my experience, flawless at determining when a was in a conditional is to be understood counterfactually (and so "should be" replaced by were) -- which means that they understood the speaker's or writer's intentions perfectly.

Indeed.

on to the Regionals

So, I haven't blogged about the NCAA tournament yet - early days and all. I didn't even post when they beat Purdue Tuesday for Pat Summit's 100th tournament win and - more importantly - keeping the streak of round-of-sixteen appearances (blame fev for that awkard phrasing: he says I can't say "elite" or "sweet"... oops. Does that count?) alive. They've never not made it that far. And I don't just mean "never when they were in the tournament" either. Or maybe I do; they've never not been in the tournament, after all. But I can't hold back any longer.

We don't mind seeing Notre Dame in the bracket. Sure, they won the championship in 2001, but Muffet McGraw is 0-15 against UT. Make that 0-16 after last night.

Candace Parker matched her career best with 34 points and 13 rebounds, leading UT to the regional finals for the eighth straight year. Shannon Bobbitt (Go, 00!) added a pair of treys and finished with 11; Nicky Anosike had 10 points and 10 rebounds.

Back in January - a game I got to see live - the Lady Vols shot 55 percent from 3-point range in scorching Notre Dame 87-63. Last night the Irish guarded the 3-point line and guarded it hard, but the Vols stepped up the inside game and won 74-64. So props to the Irish for getting it so close, seriously. It was a good game.

But now it's on to the Regional Finals. Looks like the seeders did a good job; the Regionals will be pitting Number 1 against Number 2 across the board. Maybe I can't say the E-word - but I can say the Vols are trying for their 17th Final Four when they play Texas A&M tomorrow night. The Aggies, by the way, are hoping for their first.

Me? I'm hoping for a final four of UT, Rutgers, Maryland, and LSU. But I won't be surprised to see UConn or Stanford or North Carolina there...

Tom, Tom, Tom...

To add to the three I mentioned before, here are a couple more very strange spam headers. Not strange as in "I have no idea what they're selling", strange as in "Who comes up with this wording? Where do these people come from? And why would I trust someone named Tom Reed or Harlan Edwards or Newton Cooper who writes like this?" Andres Teague might have an excuse, as might Angela Pacheco, but Tom, Tom, Tom. English is not your native language, is it?)

Here are two clearly created off the same template:

Great dummy is your wealth
Big dummy is your treasure

Those must be very odd in the UK, where a "dummy" is a baby's pacifier! This one appeals to two instincts:

Enlarge your big length and save a lot of money

And so does this one, which makes me think of Blazing Saddles:

Increase your arm and save money.

And then there's this:

Get tired of loosing control in bad

That one is just infelicitous all the way around, isn't it?

Monday Science Links

Here's this week's heaping helping of yummy sciency goodness:

• Martin at Aardvarchaeology posts on Daycare Sociolects: I've blogged before about how academic middle-class ideals of gender homogenisation clash with more traditional views among working-class daycare ladies. And Saturday I had a conversation that opened my eyes to the effects of our daycare arrangements on language, too: on sociolect.


• Dave at Cognitive Daily looks at our ability to recognize faces and what happens when things aren't the way they 'should'b be: We've known for decades that the human perceptual system is especially good at recognizing faces, but that ability breaks down in predictable ways when the faces are upside-down. While it takes us a bit longer to recognize objects when they are inverted, faces take even longer compared to other things. For example, you might be able to tell whether two faces are identical or slightly different when they are upside down, but you'll be quicker to note a similar difference in, say, two houses. When people try to recognize inverted faces, different brain regions are activated compared to recognizing upright faces, but nonface objects activate the same regions whether upside-down or right side up.


• PalMD at Denialism blog takes on a particularly pernicious anti-vax lie and also explains how polio vaccines work: OK, time to explain how vaccines actually work. This is really cool...much cooler than the cultists would like you to believe. It is teh über-kool. And please forgive the over-simplification. We need an example: let's take polio vaccine---you know, the one they never used in Europe when the WHO wiped out polio in Europe. We have two choices, but the one we use the most in N.A. and Europe is the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV). Both of the polio vaccines have advantages and disadvantages, but hey, I only have so much time.


• Bee at Back Reaction tells us about 10 effects we should have heard of (I hadn't, not all of them): The Meissner-Ochsenfeld effect, discovered by Walther Meissner and his postdoc Robert Ochsenfeld in 1933, is the expulsion of a magnetic field from a superconductor. Most spectacularly, this can be used to let magnets levitate above superconductors since their field lines can not enter the superconductor. I assure you this has absolutely nothing to do with Yogic flying.
  


• John Hawks at his Anthropology Weblog wonders how a new book on the Boskopoids and their fabulous intelligence came to be published: First, if you do a simple Google Scholar search for "Boskop", you will discover that this has not been a going topic in human evolution for nearly fifty years. Most intellectual effort on the topic of "Boskopoids" happened between 1915 and 1930. I want to emphasize how easy it is to discover these things by a simple Google search. This is obscure knowledge, but for a good reason -- it's obsolete and has been for fifty years!.

Enjoy.

The Week in Entertainment

Film: Caramel. What a delightful movie this was. So quiet, and yet so moving - so much happens as so little seems to. I unreservedly recommend it.

DVD: Primeval - a British sci-fi series (show), two seasons (series). Well-written and -acted, with very nice special effects (same guys who did Walking with Dinosaurs). Now I hope they get the next season out sooner than next year!

TV: The Frighteners - I actually enjoyed this. It was fun. Nova... And I tell you, the number of times the narrator told us how dangerous it was - they're taking their lives into their hands! One slip and their precious cargo could be destroyed! - was ridiculous. You can't ratchet up that much tension unless someone actually dies. Otherwise, it turns funny. But Oooooo ooooo! Next week is a CASSINI show! Titan! Ooooooooo! Also, an American Masters about Ansel Adams - such gorgeous, gorgeous photographs. John Adams part three - I loved two little bits with John Quincy (interesting that they pronounce it "Quinzy"): one when he's reading a book as the battle rages above deck, and then when he asks his father if St Petersburg, Russia, will be cold, and Adams responds, "Good heavens, no, not for a Massachusetts man!" And, of course, Torchwood. Twice now Owen's already being dead has saved his un-life... I suppose it has its advantages, though I'm not sure he's really happy about it.

Read: Finished The Power of Babel - interesting if sometimes superficial treatment of languages, dialects, creoles, and so on. Good if you're new to the subject. The four Order of the Stick books - not such a huge accomplishment since two of them are, to a large extent (though not completely), what's on the website, but the other two are totally new. And good - funny and well-plotted, with good character development. Began The Grasshopper King - intriguing so far.

We can all get along. If we're all alike

Pope baptizes prominent Muslim (though a non-practicing one):

Italy's most prominent Muslim, an iconoclastic writer who condemned Islamic extremism and defended Israel, converted to Catholicism Saturday in a baptism by the pope at a Vatican Easter service. An Egyptian-born, non-practicing Muslim who is married to a Catholic, Magdi Allam infuriated some Muslims with his books and columns in the newspaper Corriere della Sera newspaper, where he is a deputy editor. He titled one book "Long Live Israel."

As a choir sang, Pope Benedict XVI poured holy water over Allam's head and said a brief prayer in Latin.

"We no longer stand alongside or in opposition to one another," Benedict said in a homily reflecting on the meaning of baptism. "Thus faith is a force for peace and reconciliation in the world: distances between people are overcome, in the Lord we have become close."

Okay. Let me see if I've got that straight: as long as everybody becomes a Roman Catholic, the world will be in harmony.

Look, I'm not even going to talk about what might or might not be wrong with the RCC. I just want to point out what a trivial thing this is, what a pointless thing, to say.

"Faith is a force for peace and reconciliation in the world" because this Muslim man is now a Catholic one and so he and the Pope "no longer stand... in opposition to one another."

So, as long as we're all together, we're ... no longer apart. How profound.

Splashes of Red

A woodpecker, and three redwinged blackbirds:

When I die, hallelujah

This song (from the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou) was on my mp3 player going in to work Friday morning.

Some bright morning when this life is o'er
I'll fly away
To that home on God's celestial shore
I'll fly away

(chorus)
I'll fly away, o glory,
I'll fly away in the morning
When I die, hallelujah by and by,
I'll fly away.

When the shadows of this life have gone,
I'll fly away;
Like a bird from prison bars has flown,
I'll fly away

Oh, how glad and joyful when we meet
I'll fly away
No more cold iron shackles on my feet
I'll fly away

Just a few more weary days and then,
I'll fly away
To a land where joy shall never end,
I'll fly away

This song ... I like it. Gillian Welch and Alison Krauss do a wonderful job singing - their harmony is beautiful and the accompaniment is simple and effective. But the words... they really capture what is the creepiest thing about Christianity: the wishing to die.

I understand that to a large extent Christianity is in fact a "pie in the sky by and by" religion, one that promises that all the injustices of life will be rectified in death. The good will go to heaven and be with Jesus, regardless of how they suffered on earth, and the bad will go to hell, regardless of how good they had it here. For all that it (transparently, it seems to me) thus encourages people to be content with what they have and not try for more - to keep their eye on the prize and their heart in the next life - to the benefit of those running things here, it does offer genuine comfort (based on a fable, perhaps, but still genuine) to those who truly have nothing here and no way to get it. It's a wonderful religion for slaves.

That perhaps it would be better for there to be no slaves is a different argument - Christianity since the Epistles of Paul has taught slaves to be quiet and bear their slavery in the "sure and certain hope of the resurrection" when they will be saints in heaven. And if you have to be a slave, perhaps it's better to believe that someday things will be better. After you're dead... Then you and your loved ones will live "where joy shall never end".

But it's a philosophy that achieves its effect by devaluing this precious life - the only one we have - and making it something that is worthless in itself. It doesn't just say that after we die things will be better; it says that only after we die will anything have any value at all.

We already know, as Christopher Brookmyre puts it, that "there's a fine line between imagining someone's eternal soul is condemned and thinking their earthly life is worthless." But it's worse. This philosophy condemns as worthless the earthly lives of those whose souls are going to heaven.

Listen to those words: When I die, hallelujah by and by. No wonder the Church has to make suicide a mortal sin. Who, truly believing that, wouldn't want to die?

Who, believing that, could really care about anything but death?

It's true, most Christians aren't that focused on it. But every time I listen to that song, chills run down my spine.

I Failed at naming them...

Well, perhaps you can beat me?
Created by OnePlusYou - Free Online Dating

Happy Birthday, Gene

Today in Watkins, Minnesota, in 1921, Eugene McCarthy was born. I should have been for him in the '68 election, but I was young and I hated him for being alive when Bobby was dead... Older, I appreciated him more. We need men like him now.

He was also a poet.

BICYCLE RIDER (To Mary)

Teeth bare to the wind
Knuckle white grip on handle bars
You push the pedals of no return,
Let loose new motion and speed.
The earth turns with the multiplied
Force of your wheels.
Do not look back.
Feet light on the brake
Ride the bicycle of your will
Down the spine of the world,
Ahead of your time, into life.
I will not say--
Go slow.

QUIET WATERS

There are quiet waters
where a berry dropped
by a bird flying
starts ripples that
from the center of the pond
spread in concentrics, dying
in silence at the feet of the blue reeds.
I now know where these waters are.

WILLOW IN A TAMARACK SWAMP

There in the savage orange of autumn Tamarack
rusted spikes reeling the slanted, last
of the northern day, down
into the black
root waters,
among the least trees in that least land
in the darkened death camp
of the tribe of trees
I saw you.
green gold willow, arched and graced,
among spines and angled limbs.
captive? queen?
all lost light from the smothering swamp,
alone, you bear back.



KILROY

Kilroy is gone,
the word is out,
absent without leave
from Vietnam.

Kilroy
who wrote his name
in every can
from Poland to Japan
and places in between
like Sheboygan and Racine
is gone
absent without leave
from Vietnam.

Kilroy
who kept the dice
and stole the ice
out of the BOQ
Kilroy
whose name was good
on every IOU
in World War II
and even in Korea
is gone
absent without leave
from Vietnam.

Kilroy
the unknown soldier
who was the first to land
the last to leave,
with his own hand
has taken his good name
from all the walls
and toilet stalls.
Kilroy
whose name around the world
was like the flag unfurled
has run it down
and left Saigon
and the Mekong
without a hero or a song
and gone
absent without leave
from Vietnam.

Just plain strange

The spam filter at work is pretty good at shunting spam into the junk folder, but it does pile up. Of late, it's been basically three types: fake Rolexes, free software, and the old staple. Sometimes, the subject lines for that category are hilarious, not to mention just slightly off-target:

Enormous banana is your main weapon.

Weapon? Nice imagery. Although, to be sure, I do get a funny picture...

Add more than 3 inches to your bell-rope

This one is an amusing metaphor, but I can see it, I must admit.

Chicks will drive crazy with you if you enlarge your baby-maker

Baby-maker? Probably not what you want to call it, all things considered, hmmm?

Carnival of the Liberals

Hooray! The Carnival of the Liberals is up at Last Left Turn Before Hooterville. One of the great things about carnivals is finding new blogs. Like our host this time, and a couple of the selected ten, the creme de la creme of liberal blogging for the past fortnight.

More signs of spring

The goose on her nest and a robin in his tree...

Spring, and a young squirrel's fancy lightly turns...

So, it's definitely spring.


"Mommy, look at the squirrels playing!"

Happy Birthday, Robert

Today in 1874 Robert Frost was born in San Francisco.

Not to Keep

They sent him back to her. The letter came
Saying… And she could have him. And before
She could be sure there was no hidden ill
Under the formal writing, he was in her sight,
Living. They gave him back to her alive—
How else? They are not known to send the dead—
And not disfigured visibly. His face?
His hands? She had to look, and ask,
“What was it, dear?” And she had given all
And still she had all—they had—they the lucky!
Wasn’t she glad now? Everything seemed won,
And all the rest for them permissible ease.
She had to ask, “What was it, dear?”

“Enough,
Yet not enough. A bullet through and through,
High in the breast. Nothing but what good care
And medicine and rest, and you a week,
Can cure me of to go again.” The same
Grim giving to do over for them both.
She dared no more than ask him with her eyes
How was it with him for a second trial.
And with his eyes he asked her not to ask.
They had given him back to her, but not to keep.

More Frost here

Happy Birthday, Joseph

Today in 1904 Joseph Campbell was born in New York City.

Typical of the circumstances of the call are the dark forest, the great tree, the babbling spring, and the loathly, underestimated appearance of the carrier of the power of destiny.

Happy Birthday, AE

Today in 1859 Alfred Edward Housman was born in Worcestershire, England.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

more Housman here

Unexpected Elegance

I admit it: I'm not a big fan of gulls. But this juvenile ring-billed gull is beautiful.

Titan and Tethys

We last saw Titan as it was going behind Saturn. In this Cassini shot, Titan emerges from behind the planet while its sibling Tethys comes into view on its way to passing in front of the planet.



And, as always, see the Cassini-Huygens site for more.

Or Celtic?

Argh.

Alex Trebek just accepted "Irish" as the answer to which language "Samhain" is from. Okay. Except that what Alex actually said was: "Irish, yes, or Celtic."

Nonononono. "Celtic" is not a language. (It's a language family.) "Samhain" is Irish. That's like saying something is "English, or Germanic".

Oh, well, at least the player didn't say "Celtic" and then get the points!

Monday Science Links

This week's yummy science:

• GrrlScientist at Living the Scientific Life shows us a new species of bird, with photo: This small greenish bird that has been playing hide-and-seek with ornithologists on a remote Indonesian island since 1996, but was declared a newly discovered species on March 14, 2008 and promptly recommended for endangered lists.


• PZ at Pharyngula tells us more than we may have wanted to know about dicyemid mesozoa, but the good news is it's a cephalopod parasite. (Well, not according to Cuttle!) You know how people can be going along, minding their own business, and then they see some cute big-eyed puppy and they go "Awwwww," and their hearts melt, and then it's all a big sloppy mushfest? I felt that way the other day, as I was meandering down some obscure byways of the developmental biology literature, and discovered the dicyemid mesozoa … an obscure phylum which I vaguely recall hearing about before, but had never seriously examined. After reading a few papers, I have to say that these creatures are much more lovable then mere puppy dogs.


• Edmund Blair Bolles at Babel's Dawn writes about a paper by Bordeaux-based archaeologist Francisco D’Errico that claims Neanderthals had language: This claim totally discards the older Big Bang theory that said language arose only very recently (40 to 75 thousand years ago), and also challenges the Out-of-Africa theory that proposes Homo sapiens emerged in Africa about 200 thousand years ago and spread over the rest of the world, carrying language and culture with them, beginning about 60 thousand years ago. A new history will have to be written.


• Stefan at Back Reaction explains the phantom traffic jam: If ever you have been driving on a crowded highway, chances are high that you have taken part in a similar "experiment", just that no one has captured it on film and put it on YouTube. This happened to me last Monday on my way to work: First, I got stuck in a traffic jam at the merging of three lanes into two - no wonder in rush-hour traffic. But then there was a second full stop, a few kilometres down the road, and for no obvious reason at all - no construction site, no junction, no accident... it was the classical phantom traffic jam.


• Judith at Zenobia: Empress of the East takes a break to post on the origins of cats: Domestic cats around the world can trace their origins back to the Near East's Fertile Crescent -- the belt of land stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf -- and from there, ex oriente lux: cats were transported around the world by humans. Long identified as the 'cradle of civilisation' for our 2-legged species, researchers at the University of California, Davis, have concluded that ancestral roads for all 600 million modern day pussy cats also lead back to the same locale.

Enjoy!

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: I forgot to mention this last week - The Mind Robber is the one that had the substitute Jamie - when Frazer Hines came down with chickenpox the shooting schedule was so tight that they couldn't wait a week, so Hamish Wilson was brought in and the script altered to explain Jamie's new face. On the commentary Frazer talked about worrying that Wilson would be so good the producers would decide to keep him... a good story and the DVD has nice extras. This week I watched Secret Ballot, a funny and moving Iranian film about voting (of all things), and also Королевство кривых зеркал (The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors), which is a very strange Soviet children's movie - ending with the heroines magically vanquishing all their enemies by singing the Young Pioneers marching song! Корона российской импеии (Crown of the Russian Empire), the third in the Неуловимые мстители (Elusive Avengers) series. The latter tells me Russian trains in the 20s were slow: Aksanka by herself on a handcar could catch one, and then they could jump horses off and race away. Also, I can't stand it, it's so typical: our heroes are now Chekists!

TV: Well, my cable/DVR box blew up. Okay, shorted out. Anyway, I lost all my recordings, plus two days of having a TV, though it was in the middle of the week which is okay. Now I don't have all those episodes of Heroes waiting for me to decide to watch them (yes, since way back before the writers' strike). But I also don't have this season of Torchwood in case I want to watch any of them! I also lost John Adams but that's not a problem. It's HBO - not only is it on On Demand, but they rerun it a lot. So I've already made up the first two episodes, which were absolutely excellent. Torchwood: Gwen and Rhys did get married. Rhys's mate Bananaboat was priceless... And they could have been married in the amount of time it took Jack to argue with Gwen. Sheesh, they were already underway. And this exchange was great:

Owen: Listen you two, you'd better start trusting me, okay? I've been working with it, and I reckon I've got it sussed. Besides, with that nostravite around we don't have too many options.
Ianto: He's got a point.
Jack: What is it with you? Ever since Owen died all you ever do is agree with him.
Ianto: I was brought up never to speak ill of the dead. Even if they are still doing most of the talking for themselves.

And so was this:

Jack: Enjoy the honeymoon.
Gwen: I will. What will you do while I'm gone?
Jack: Ohhh, the usual ... pizza. Ianto. Save the world a couple of times.

Ianto ... He and Jack dancing together at the wedding, sweet and a little melancholy.

Read: On jury duty this week so I got a lot of reading. Margaret Atwood's Negotiating with the Dead which was brilliant - engaging, well-written, full of great quotes and ideas: a book to ruminate over. Also Trap Door by Sarah Graves. It was good in itself, but it made me run out and order the new one, The Book of Old Houses, even though it's in hardback and I usually don't spend that kind of money on these light-weight mystery novels. But start talking about Miskatonic University, ancient books with dark secrets, and mysterious deaths - Well, how can I resist? Also about half of John McWhorter's Power of Babel.

The Nation is the Sacred Concept

Stephen Jay Gould proposed that religion and science could live together, because they were what he called "non- overlapping magisteria", which is to say, they operate in different spheres. Science rules over the "how"and the "what" and religion over the "why", and as long as they keep to their respective parts of the world, all will be sweetness and light.

Well, whatever one thinks of that as a basic formula for coexistence, it's hard to see it actually working. Religion keeps intruding in the realms of reality, making real-world claims that science has the actual say over.

There's another set of these regions that supposedly don't overlap. Religion's in one of them again, but the other this time is occupied by politics. In this country, for some time, we've kept the two apart, but of late the fence is weakening here, too.

Ed Stoddard quotes a professor in his article about McCain's pastor in today's Washington Post:

"In the United States, the sacred cow is the concept of the nation -- someone who is a religious minister can say almost anything they want and not get into trouble in the political realm unless they go after the nation," said David Domke, a professor of communication at the University of Washington.

The nation is the sacred concept.

I actually agree with this - though not quite in the way Domke meant it, though he's right, mostly.

What he's saying is that preachers can rant about abortion, drugs, homosexuals, anything they want - including saying that gays don't deserve rights or the abortion is murder and God will destroy us for it - as long as they don't say "I hate America". There's a lot of truth in that. But some guys get awfully close to that line - they manage to separate "America" into two groups and blame one group for all the bad things that happen. Some even manage to say that America deserves bad things because it allows people to reject God. Check your Phelps - and your more mainstream Falwell and Robertson, for that matter. McCain's endorser (not pastor) Hagee told New Orleans it had earned God's wrath and deserved to be destroyed. I'm quite sure the country is full of preachers who stand in their pulpit and rail every Sunday against godless liberals destroying the country.

So it's okay to preach hate and intolerance as long as you manage to plunk yourself down on the side of "America."

But there's something more disturbing in what Domke said. That's the "someone who is a religious minister can say almost anything they want and not get into trouble in the political realm".

In other words, ministers can stand up in the pulpit and say things that would in fact get other people "into trouble" - they can incite hatred and even crimes (arson, hate crimes, assault, even murder as long as they're just inspiring rather than ordering) and it's all fine and dandy. Things that would result in other people having to resign their jobs if not actually go to jail are okay coming from ministers.

Why is that? Is it just because being religious is an exemption from civilized behavior? It's an exemption from other things - like taxes - and certainly we as a people are inclined to "respect" religious people. Their beliefs are held up to us as things that can't be questioned or insulted. Even calling one of them into question brings anger and outrage. And it's not a big jump from 'what I believe can't be questioned' to 'I can say anything I want if it's based on what I believe'. And a lot of people are willing to allow that to go unchallenged.

This licenses professionally religious people to interject themselves into public discourse on every level - along as they don't say "God damn America" or "I'm ashamed of America" - as long as what they say is "I want to save America" they're okay. And if people didn't take them seriously that wouldn't matter. But they do.

Politicians compete for their approbation and endorsements. And it seems that as long as they haven't crossed that line - insulted that "sacred cow" Domke mentions - their endorsements are seen as positive. Contrast Wright and Hagee, just for example, or look at the other people McCain has cozied up to since he decided being president was worth more than sticking to his principles.

That's bad enough. Worse is when the politicians themselves decide that they're religious. Politicians who begin making religious pronouncements - talking about doing God's work by spreading democracy, for instance - are trying to co-opt the mantle of religious invulnerability for themselves, to cover their policies in the un-criticizable aura of religion.

That's bad for politics. And it's bad for religion.

Because Dombe's right: religious figures can in fact (whether they should is a different question) say pretty much whatever they like, with only a very small exception, and politicians would kill for that license - and that invulnerability. But that invulnerability is illusory, not genuine; it's the invulnerability that comes from an agreement not to attack, not from any actual strength. And once that invulnerability is invoked by a politician, it risks attack.

We've seen some signs of that recently - when a few people question Hagee's support of McCain or, more accurately, McCain's seeking out that support and embracing it. So far, the questions aren't as much about Hagee's right to say what he says - that seems granted - but McCain's right to associate himself with someone who says those things. Let McCain begin saying them, and the bets are off, and then, then, perhaps people will begin to wonder about Hagee. (Note that so far McCain is certainly not saying them, nor even appreciating (in public) that Hagee does.) People are wondering why McCain seems to embrace Hagee - not as many as wonder about Obama and Wright, of course, but still.

It seems evident to me that, whatever one thinks of the idea that the religious leaders among us have license to say whatever they want, one should be wary of extending that license to politicians. Not merely because basing the policy that governs a country on the tenets of a religion, any religion, is a bad idea; not every one agrees with that idea. No, it's because once the religion actually crosses over the line into the political, it becomes fair game.

And once the questions and attacks are licensed, not the invulnerability, religion may find it doesn't like the game.

(Find the Blogswarm Against Theocracy listings here)

Go to First Freedom First to find out what you can do.

Carnival of Maryland

The Carnival of Maryland #29 is up at Pillage Idiot. As Attila says, "We have a lot of interesting writing for you. I usually try to keep things pretty tightly grouped by topic, but I'm going to be a little looser this time, because I want to start out by featuring two of our newest members."

Speaking French ... sort of

I read a story on Literal Minded about a friend of Neal's saving his yard with broken Spanish. For some reason it reminded me of this incident, which happened to me back in 1978, in Berlin, when I was in the army.

Background - I took French in elementary school. Everyone in the city took either French or Spanish, depending on the school. We were learning French as part of some nationwide validation of a new way to teach foreign languages - don't remember what the method was but it was awful. We all hated it. Lien and the Thibaults... pfui. I even studied German as soon as I could switch - not because of anything intrinsic to German, but because I knew that the Germans hated the French. So by the time I was in the army I had forgotten what little French they'd manage to teach me. (The program was discredited nationwide, by the way.)

So - Berlin was, at the time, still an occupied city inside East Germany. US Sector, British Sector, French Sector ... Soviet Sector. Wall through the city. Allied soldiers everywhere. We could all shop in each others' PXs and so on - the French Officers Club was open to us - if we didn't go in uniform, we enlisted soldiers (or 'other ranks') - and their food was exquisite. But some Americans couldn't get over themselves.

I was in the PX one day and this young French soldier was in the electronics department buying a stereo - or trying to. He was about sixteen - okay, probably older, but still quite young. He'd clearly been saving up for this for a long time. He was paying with a stack of twenty-dollar bills that had been folded up small - obviously he'd been getting dollars every time he was paid and then tucking them away somewhere until he had enough. He had enough - that wasn't the problem.

The problem was the young American women working the register. She was insisting that he fill out the registration card. Except he didn't speak English and she didn't speak French. She was practicing the good old speak-louder-and-louder-and-he'll-understand-you school of international communications and it was working as well as it usually does, and he was nearly in tears; clearly he thought he couldn't buy the stereo if he couldn't fill out this form.

So I stepped up with my truly awful French. "Name" was easy enough. Residence - that's "domicile", or at least that worked. It was his service number that was tricky. But he was awfully willing to understand me, so when I tried "nombre de service" - which I was sure wasn't it - he got the idea. (It's some form of "matriculation", as I recall.) When he got it filled out and left, clutching his stereo, I looked at the clerk.

"For crying out loud," I started.

"I know," she agreed promptly. "I wish they wouldn't come in here! They've got their own store."

She was some officer's brat, I'm sure. You got to recognize them. So I just shook my head and left (hey, I was a Spec 4 back then). Now I'd tell her he had every right to shop there, and wonder whether she turned down the French OC... and then talk to her boss.

But what I remember most is how easy it was to find a way to explain that form to him - if you wanted to.

Some little birds

Spring is the sun, I said earlier. It's also the birds. The last week there have been a lot of the little ones around - sparrows, juncos, finches and even a chickadee!


Male house sparrow in winter coloring



Pair of house sparrows



Female house sparrow



Male house sparrow



Song sparrow in the rain



Song sparrow



Song sparrow in the straw where the utility men were digging



Mixed flock of juncos and song sparrows eating the grass seed put down by the utility men.



Junco and a couple of song sparrows



Some juncos in bushes


A junco in a tree



And this is how junco pictures usually work... at least I think this is a junco!



A chickadee!


He's so cute



And here's a goldfinch. I'm not sure if it's a male in winter plumage or a female, though.

Here comes the sun

The equinox is here, and with it spring. The sun is rising earlier and staying longer, and soon the trees will be green. Summer is coming. Here (stealing a leaf from Ordinary Girl) are sunrises from the last week or two.

Expelled from Expelled - PZ and Dawkins talk about it

Okay, by now you must have heard about PZ Meyers signing up to see Expelled at Mall of America, showing up with his guests, and being kicked out.

With the really funny bit being that only he was kept out; his guests got in - his wife, his daughter, and several other friends. Including Richard Dawkins.

Yes. That Richard Dawkins.

You can go over to ScienceBlogs and read all about it if you haven't already. And now you can go to Richard Dawkins.Net and watch a discussion between PZ and Dawkins about the incident.

Language Quiz

Here's a new quiz - though, as always, maybe there's nothing wrong. I found this over at Talking Points Memo:

Of course, if those things were somehow proven, provided those statements are even accurate descriptions of things that happened, the $250,000 from that convicted fraudster would be pocket change to whomever could.

The previous quiz was:

At esurance.com if we can't give you the best deal we'll show you where you can.

When you drop the main verb after an auxiliary verb, it needs to be the same verb as the main verb. So this parses to "we'll show you where you can give you the best deal".

Which makes no sense.

If the verbs aren't the same, you need to supply it.

At esurance.com if we can't give you the best deal we'll show you where you can get it.

And look here for Previous Quizzes, 38 so far.

Happy Birthday, Johann!

Today in 1865 in Eisenach, Germany, Johann Sebastian Bach was born. The world would be a poorer place without him.

One of my favorite CDs for the office is The Goldberg Variations, scored for a string quartet. But it's hard to go wrong picking something of his.

He spent a large part of his life as a playing musician - an organist, mostly - and much of his composed music was considered too old-fashioned or too ornamental. He changed jobs a lot, until 1723, when he became a choirmaster in Leipzig where he remained until his death in 1750. Most of his jobs were for one church or another, in fact, but he happily wrote secular music when he worked for Prince Leopold of Cothen - until his wife (the prince's) disapproved of such a frivolous expense as chamber music. But whatever kind of music Bach wrote, he did it gloriously.