Symmetry

Moonrise

What's Important 3

Third in a series.

This entry's from Time, early in April. It's actually an attempt to claim that McCain has not changed his mind about torture, which ends up telling us that not even that is enough to make him stop kissing up to the White House:

A review of the record shows that McCain has neither changed his position on torture nor taken sides with President Bush on the substance of the issue. But at a time when new details are emerging of the Administration's intimate involvement with formulating specific detainee interrogation practices, the Arizona Senator does now find himself in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with President Bush on a key election-year vote about those very same controversial policies. ...

Some human rights observers say McCain's latest position is best explained as a symptom of exhaustion at fighting an Administration that has continuously resisted efforts to clearly outlaw practices like waterboarding. "I don't believe John McCain is comfortable with the current CIA program," said Tom Malinowski, the advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, who has worked closely with McCain and his staff on these issues. "I think McCain just reached a point where he didn't want any more confrontations with the White House. He wanted to win the White House."

McCain senior adviser Mark Salter said the candidate continues to monitor whether the techniques employed by the CIA officials pass legal muster. "If McCain has reason to believe that they have crossed the line, he will litigate that," Salter said, explaining that the Senator might discuss these concerns publicly or privately. "McCain communicates his view directly to the people doing it," Salter added, in reference to interrogation procedures. ...

The problem with all of these measures was that they continued to depend on interpretation by Bush Administration lawyers, who continue to be both secretive and evasive of congressional intent. As recently as February 6, the day after the Super Tuesday primary, a White House spokesman refused to rule out the future use of waterboarding as a technique for high-value detainees. The Attorney General has also declined to say that the technique, or other extreme techniques, are outlawed. On March 8, Bush vetoed the latest congressional attempt to force the CIA to adhere to the Army Field Manual, a rule book that prescribes mostly psychological methods of interrogation, and clearly prohibits the use of forced nudity, waterboarding, hooding and the use of military dogs. Congressional Democratic leaders have not yet announced if they plan to bring up the issue again, but they are unlikely to muster enough votes to override the veto.

Though McCain supports the President's position on the veto, he has spent the better part of a year on the campaign trail speaking out against waterboarding and other extreme interrogation methods as forms of illegal torture. In recent weeks, as it became clear that he would win the Republican nomination, his direct criticism of the Bush Administration has softened. "It is unfortunate," he said on the Senate floor on February 13, of the Bush Administration's refusal to call waterboarding illegal. "It would be far better, I believe, for the Administration to state forthrightly what is clear in current law."

Oh, snap

From Gail Collins' column today on Scott McClellan and the only thing the GOP is screaming about - his disloyalty - comes this:

My favorite moment in “What Happened” was from 1999 when George W. Bush was deeply irritated about questions from the press on his past drug use. “The media won’t let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumors,” the future president said. “You know, the truth is I honestly don’t remember whether I tried it or not.”

“I remember thinking to myself, How can that be? It didn’t make a lot of sense,” McClellan wrote.

While the bracing effects of being pushed out of his job have helped McClellan face reality, clarity might have come earlier if he’d just been more canny about personal relationships. His White House career could have been so different if, when Bush started babbling about W.M.D.’s in Iraq, McClellan reminded himself that this was coming from a guy who couldn’t remember what drugs he had ingested.

Goslings into Geese

Here are both families of geese. The little goslings are getting bigger, but are still all fluffy and even a bit yellow, while the older ones are growing up. Check out the fledging going on - necks turning black, and tail and flight feathers coming in nicely.

Happy Birthday, Walt

Born today in 1819, in West Hills, Long Island, Walt Whitman:

On the beach at night,
Stands a child with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.

Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.

From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.

Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,
With these kisses let me remove your tears,
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,
They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,
Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again,
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,
The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.

Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?

Something there is,
(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter
Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.

(a few more poems are here)

Cool. Just what I've always wanted.

An ad just gave me the good news!

The public is entitled to purchase cars and homes seized by police and bank agents. An inventory of cars and homes are available now and will be sold to the public.

I've always wanted my very own inventory...

(Though that "are available" makes me think someone lost part of his sentence somewhere.)

What's Important 2

Second in a series.

This entry's from truthout:

At first, we were impressed by the senator's statements in Republican primary debates about how he had actually opposed the Bush administration's conduct of the war from the start. As he told CNN's Kiran Chetry, in August of 2007, "I was the greatest critic of the initial four years, three-and-a half years."

Well, having dug into those missing years a bit, here, for the record, is what we found to be Senator McCain's typical responses to some of the key questions posed above:

How would American troops be greeted?: "I believe that the Iraqi people will greet us as liberators." (March 20, 2003)

Did Saddam Hussein have a nuclear program that posed an imminent threat to the United States?: "Saddam Hussein is on a crash course to construct a nuclear weapon." (October 10, 2002)

Will a war with Iraq be long or short?: "This conflict is going to be relatively short." (March 23, 2003)

How is the war going?: "I would argue that the next three to six months will be critical." (September 10, 2003)

How is it going (almost two months later, from the war's "greatest critic")?: "I think the initial phases of [the war] were so spectacularly successful that it took us all by surprise." (October 31, 2003)

Is this war really necessary?: "Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war." (August 30, 2004)

How is it going? (Recurring question for the war's "greatest critic"): "We will probably see significant progress in the next six months to a year." (December 4, 2005)

Will the President's "surge" of troops into Baghdad and surrounding areas that the senator had been calling for finally make the difference?: "We can know fairly well [whether the surge is working] in a few months." (February 4, 2007)

In April 2007, accompanied by several members of Congress, Senator McCain made a surprise visit to Baghdad to assess the surge, had a "stroll" through a market in the Iraqi capital, and then held a news conference where he discussed what he found: "Things are better and there are encouraging signs. I've been here many times over the years. Never have I been able to drive from the airport. Never have I been able to go out into the city as I was today. The American people are not getting the full picture of what's happening here today."

The next evening, NBC's Nightly News provided further details on that "stroll." The Senator and Congressmen were accompanied by "100 American soldiers, with three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships overhead." (In addition, the network said, still photographs provided by the military revealed that McCain and his colleagues had been wearing body armor during their entire stroll.)

Reality check: Five months later, on September 12, 2007, McCain again observed that "the next six months are going to be critical."

Girls? You're so busted

One thing about that smoking story I mentioned: this shows up towards the end.

[H]alf-sisters Ericka and Cierra said they argue over smoking. Cierra, 17, said she hates it when Ericka, also 17, smokes "Blacks."

"It is not cute," Cierra told Ericka. The girls did not want to provide their last name for fear that their parents would find out that Ericka smokes.

Ummm. Two half-sisters, same age, idiosyncratically spelled first names, same last name... I think their parents will recognize them.

Youths?

What's a "youth" to you?

I was deeply confused when I read this headline in today's Baltimore Sun:Youths fume over cigar ban

Youths fume? Okay, cute pun, but youths can't buy cigars in Maryland. You have to be 18. But then it turns out that the people they interviewed are 22... plus a couple of 17-year-olds.

22 isn't a "youth". 17 might be - on the edge - but 22 isn't.

Not to me, anyway.

Coals to Newcastle

Passed a truck this morning on my way to work, a seafood truck hauling crabs.

Not unusual in Maryland? You're right. (perhaps to become so though)

But this one was labeled "Frog Island Seafood - Eat Crabs, Be Happy". And Frog Island Seafood is in North Carolina...

Nothing profound. It just made me laugh.

Footnotes for sale

From AdMe.Ru (the Russian version of Advertolog.com) comes the newest wave of advertising: footnotes in books with phone numbers to call for info:

Издательство "Эксмо" сделало привычные в книгах сноски, разъясняющие смысл того или иного выражения, платными.

Крупнейшее в России книжное издательство, владеющее контрактами на произведения большинства самых коммерчески успешных авторов, таких как Дарья Донцова, Дмитрий Емец и других, решило зарабатывать не только на продажах изданий. Читателям предлагается платить за дополнительную справочную информацию, которую раньше они получали бесплатно в виде сносок внизу страницы.

В тираже новой книги Василия Головачева "Пропуск в будущее" используется новая для рынка технология дополнительного заработка. Издательство сделало сноски платной услугой - информацию можно получить, если послать SMS на платный номер.

Надо полагать, что какая-то часть читателей, не шокированная новшеством, все же воспользуется предложением и вместо того, чтобы набрать "Пояс Койпера" в Википедии или любой поисковой системе, потратит 1-2 доллара и получит информацию, не вставая с кресла.

Here's my translation of the AdMe.Ru copy (Википедия link changed to Wikipedia):

The publishing house "Eksmo" has put footnotes, usually found in books to explain various phrases, on a fee-paying basis.

Russia's largest book publisher, which has contracts with the majority of the most commercially successful authors, such as Darya Dontsova, Dmitry Emets and others, has decided that book sales will not be its only source of revenue. Readers are being invited to pay for additional background information, the kind that was previously provided to them free of charge in the form of footnotes.

The current edition of Vasily Golovachev's new book "Passport to the Future" features something brand new for creating additional revenue. The printer has inserted paying footnotes - readers can receive the information only by sending a text message to a number which will charge them a small fee.

One must assume that a certain percentage of readers, unoffended by novelty, will in fact accept the invitation, and, instead of looking up "Kuiper Belt" in Wikipedia or a search engine, will pay one or two dollars for the information without having to leave their chair.

Here's the text excerpt **:

"But what did he say about me?"

Stas started laughing. "He didn't say hardly anything about himself."

Panov-1 stroked his chin in puzzlement, then realized what the clone meant.

"Oh!" Darya-1 suddenly jumped up.

Stas took alarm, grabbed her by the arm and (looked her over)

and the footnote:

If you want to learn what "pass beyond the Kuiper Belt" means, SMS 30119 to 2990 or call from your mobile phone to 09956 and enter 030119.

Oh brave new world that has such creatures in it!

* The word Пропуск has a couple of meanings that could fit here besides "passport" such as "ticket" and "admission papers"

** The translation of the end of the first sentence is hard to deal with. It's a писать (-scribe) verb, but which one I don't know, then "me" in the dative, then "to the subconscious", and finally the phrase "as the eikonal of the data" (a math term). Frankly, I got nothin'. The word двойник can also mean 'double, duplicate' or even 'twin', but I'm guessing 'clone' since it seems to be SF and we've got those characters with -1 after their names. Finally, the last word's meaning really depends on the missing rest of the sentence; without that, I'm just guessing.

I don't think so...

amazon.co.uk just sent me a flier:

If you're searching for cosmic DVDs full of stars, all at out of this world prices, then take a trip to the Sci-Fi and Fantasy store for stellar titles and heavenly bargains. As you recently browsed or bought similar titles, we've selected some top DVDs to help you find great deals.

The problem comes with their selections. Or at least with the labeling of said selections. For instance, "The best of US TV" is represented by ... The Bionic Woman (the new one), and "The best sci-fi on TV" is ... The Family Guy. Sure, it's Blue Harvest, the Star Wars spoof, which I gather was well done (I don't like the Family Guy so I haven't seen it) but even so...

It's just not right.

What's Important

First in a new series.

This entry's from archy:

According to Congressional Quarterly, John McCain voted with President Bush 100 percent of the time in 2008 and 95 percent of the time in 2007 on issues where Bush expressed an explicit opinion. Critics will say this proves McCain is nothing more than Bush's third term proxy. But in his defense, the sample is flawed by its size. McCain hasn't bothered to show up for that many votes.

(image by ThinkProgress)

The Big Train's 18-inning shutout

(Argh. I had this in "drafts" instead of "scheduled" so I missed the day!)

May 15, 1908. Washington Senators versus Chicago White Sox. Walter Johnson, the Big Train, pitching for Washington; Lefty Williams pitching for Chicago.

Two hours and forty-seven (!) minutes later, the game ended in a score of 1-0, Washington.

That run scored off a single by Eddie Ainsworth, a single by the Big Train himself that moved Ainsworth to third, and then a wild pitch that let Ainsworth score.

But don't be too hard on Williams... it was the bottom of the 18th, after all.

Yep. Walter Johnson threw an 18-inning complete game shutout 90 years ago - against a pitcher who went 18 innings and allowed just one run. There's something you just don't see every day. In fact, ever. Carl Hubbell threw a comparable game in 1933, but not against a pitcher who stayed with him the whole game. (And, come to think of it, that probably makes King Carl's feat a little more difficult - but I still love the Big Train better. Sorry, Carl...)

I and the Bird - PARTY!

Yay! I didn't miss out - and you don't have to, either. Head over to Wanderin' Weeta and let Susannah show you around the party:

Hi! And welcome to our "Beginning of the Season – Victoria Day – It's Not Raining Day" Garden Party and Potluck! Glad you could make it! Come on in, join the fun; there are tons of people here already, birders all!

(Yes, I know Victoria Day was last week, but everybody was at the park or watching the parade then; besides, you were busy, weren't you?) So I'll just show you where you can leave your jacket, … in here … and then we can go out back and I'll show you around, introduce a few of the people. ... Ready? Out this side door, then. We just follow this little trail under the trees for a bit.

Head on over - you won't regret it. Great posts and a great carnival.

Geese

I don't know if the geese with the younger babies are the offspring (well, one of them) of the others, but I like to think so. Tuesday last they were grazing next to each other - until for some reason unclear to me, the older family went running across the path like crazy. The others just watched them go. "What's up with them, then?" they were probably saying.

Older family with giant, galumphing adolescent goslings

Younger mom with both of the little still fluffy goslings (one's behind her)

Big goslings at path edge

Little goslings by planted area

Run away! Run away!

"God will save the Chesapeake crabber"

Huge story in Washington Post today about God and the Chesapeake Bay crabbers. It starts like this:

Where in the Bible does it say God will save the Chesapeake crabber?

Down on Tangier Island, Va., some people say it's in Ezekiel: "There will be large numbers of fish, because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh." Never mind that Ezekiel was written about the ancient Middle East; that half-salty sea sure sounds like the bay. And "large numbers of fish" could certainly mean blue crabs.

Except that the God of the Old Testament didn't want people to eat crabs:

Leviticus 11:9-12
These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat.And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you: They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination. Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.

and

Deuteronomy 14:9-10
These ye shall eat of all that are in the waters: all that have fins and scales shall ye eat: And whatsoever hath not fins and scales ye may not eat; it is unclean unto you.

So, not so much "fish means crabs", there, wouldn't you agree?

But that's okay, because the crabbers have got a New Testament story, too:

Here on Maryland's Smith Island -- at the heart of a waterman's culture still on fire from an 1800s revival -- they turn to John. That gospel tells how the disciples once fished all night but pulled their nets up empty.

Then Jesus arrived.

"He said to them, 'Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some,' " waterman Morris Goodman Marsh read during a recent church service. "And they cast their net, and they were not able to haul it in, because it was so full of fish."

Yep. That story clearly means "fish the hell out of the Chesapeake; God'll keep filling it back up." Or not. As the writer points out

The blue crab population in the Chesapeake has fallen about 70 percent since the early 1990s, due to warmer waters, pollution from cities and farms and heavy fishing. This spring, Virginia and Maryland officials pledged to cut the harvest of female crabs by 34 percent....

Not that this is making these crabber think twice about their faith-based crabbing philosophy:

In some other industry, some other place, all this might drive a man to drink. On Tangier, it drove Eskridge to the Old Testament.

The Israelites wandered 40 years in the desert, he said, but God delivered them in the end. He said such stories help assure him that only God -- not scientists or state regulators -- can save watermen from their predicament....

This region's religious roots go back to the Second Great Awakening in the early 1800s, when Protestant revivals swept through the new nation.... Two centuries later, watermen are hardly saints. Natural resources police sometimes find them setting traps illegally and selling undersized crabs. Scientists say their aggressive harvests have helped devastate the bay's crabs and oysters.

But an old-time faith abides among them, and -- like saltwater -- it gets stronger as you head toward the lower Chesapeake. Smith Islanders still have a week-long summer revival. The Tangier Methodists meet five times on Sundays alone. And, on the waters near Deal Island, workboat cabins can fill with scratchy hymns: Waterman Stan Daniels serenades his compatriots over the ship-to-shore radio.

In any year, they would pray for the crab season: Watermen point out that, unlike farmers, they have no control over their crop. But this year, parishioners and preachers alike have noticed a special intensity to the requests, to the searching for scriptures that assure them they will be answered.

"We don't plant, you know, our harvest. We pray for a good harvest," Duke Marshall said. "As of 2008, we've never been let down."

A lone voice of reason is quoted:

Not everybody is thinking this way. Larry Simns, president of the Maryland Watermen's Association, has been telling his members to lobby for federal disaster funds and look for a part-time job on the side. The Lord helps those who help themselves. "He won't let them starve to death, but that doesn't mean they're still going to have a job," Simns said. "He don't work that way."

But among the faithful, they are already seeing signs that He does.

So keep on fishing, and God will provide. Ignore those scientists and regulators, catch all the crabs you want, and God will "give the increase."

Or maybe you'll fish the Bay out of crabs and destroy the life you think God has given you. Your children will never catch a crab, or eat one.

But whatever you do, don't actually, you know, think about it. Just hit your knees and pray... and then do what you want to.

Because after all, the End Times are coming, right? (And yes, nobody in this article actually said that, but it's sure an article of faith among a lot of anti-science, anti-conservation folks.)

If nothing else, this article indicates one of the dangers in letting religion drive policy.

Sunrises over the weekend

Saturday

Sunday

Monday - Memorial Day

Gold!

These guys are usually so hard to get a picture of, but today he actually posed - twice.

A Dawn Leaper

It's now after dawn when I go out to catch the bus in the morning. And that means I can watch this fellow performing. His song never stops...






(I may have to buy myself a DSLR this summer: I feel the need for speed.)

One year to learn a language

This is just crazy.

I was browsing Donors Choose (link now working!) - something I do when I get some spare cash - and found a teacher looking for dictionaries her ELL students could use in their taught-in-English classes.

Here's what she says in her thank-you email:

In the state of Texas, the ELLs now have one year to learn English. After the given year, the students are expected to perform on level with native English speakers, no matter the grade level.

One year? And then they're expected to perform "on level with native English speakers"? So a sixteen-year-old has one year to reach high-school proficiency in a foreign language? I wonder how many of the school board members who drafted that requirement have ever tried to learn a foreign language? And then perform in it? With that performance being learning other subjects.

That's just crazy. Even if the only thing those kids do in their year is learn English, the odds that a teenager - or even a tween - will get up to level in just a year is ludicrous.

Happy Birthday, Tony

On this day in 1925 in Sacred Heart, Oklahoma, Tony Hillerman was born. Most of his novels take place on the Navaho reservation and feature Navaho cops - first Joe Leaphorn, "the legendary lieutenant", and later Sergeant Jim Chee, and then later both of them. Leaphorn is in his fifties in the first book, long married, secular and a master of his craft; Chee is young, single, religious (training to be a Singer/shaman), and just learning that and police work. Nevertheless, people couldn't keep them straight, and enough people actually had conversations with Hillerman which made it clear they thought the two characters were the same person that he put them into the same book. The clash between their world-views worked well in the novel, and they've been in the books ever since. I love these books; even when the quality dropped a bit I still bought them in hardcover - so-so Hillerman is still better than the best of many others - and the last few have been a return to his best form.

Memorial Day

A Soldier's Grave

John Albee

BREAK not his sweet repose—
Thou whom chance brings to this sequestered ground,
The sacred yard his ashes close,
But go thy way in silence; here no sound
Is ever heard but from the murmuring pines,
Answering the sea’s near murmur;
Nor ever here comes rumor
Of anxious world or war’s foregathering signs.
The bleaching flag, the faded wreath,
Mark the dead soldier’s dust beneath,
And show the death he chose;
Forgotten save by her who weeps alone,
And wrote his fameless name on this low stone:
Break not his sweet repose.

Monday Science Links

Here's this week's science:

• Dave at Cognitive Daily asks how much influence do parents have on their children's behavior? How do you raise "good kids"? It's one of the questions that plagues parents even before their kids are born. ... How do we keep them from becoming delinquents, convicts, or worse? Unfortunately a lot of the research suggests that parents don't actually have much influence on their kids' behavior -- peers, other environmental factors, and genetics seem to have a larger impact. Yet as parents, we can't simply throw up our hands and give up. We exert whatever small influence we do have, and hope it doesn't backfire.
  


• Phil at Bad Astronomy describes the birth cry of a supernova. Very, very cool news today: for the first time in history, astronomers have unambiguously observed the exact moment when a star explodes. Whoa.
  


• David at Irregular Webcomic! writes an annotation explaining Heisenberg and Schrödinger and quanta.... Yes, an annotation to his comic: This sounds clearly ludicrous. Schrödinger used the argument of his cat to try to demonstrate that the Copenhagen interpretation of his equations was just silly, and therefore wrong. Einstein was evidently on his side too. The problem is, the Copenhagen interpretation actually works. Science is strange sometimes.
  


• Stephen at Quintessence of Dust talks about the development of bat wings: The wing of a bat is an amazing thing. It's not just a wing; it's clearly a modified mammalian limb. A bat looks like a lot like a rodent with really long, webbed fingers on elongated arms. Recent genetic analyses have yielded a fairly solid outline of the evolutionary history of bats, which have left a somewhat poor fossil record in which the earliest fossil bats look pretty much like modern bats. Blogging on Peer-Reviewed ResearchIt seems that bats arose relatively quickly during evolution, acquiring their distinctive feature – powered flight – in a few million years. No transitional forms have yet been found, which is a shame, because this particular evolutionary transition is the kind that is otherwise reasonably approachable for the detailed study of how changes in form come about.
  


• And another one from David at Irregular Webcomic! - this one on the mountain range on either side of the Atlantic: In fact, the mountains of Scotland and Scandinavia are part of the same mountain range. This immense range of mountains was produced during an event known as the Caledonian orogeny. Caledonia is the ancient Roman name for Scotland, and orogeny is a technical term combining the Greek oros, meaning mountain, and genus, meaning generation. The generation of the mountains of Caledonia and Scandinavia occurred roughly 400 million years ago, at which time the continents of the Earth were in very different locations to where they are now. They were so different, that we can't even sensibly refer to them with our familiar names. At that time, there was an ocean known as the Iapetus Ocean. Don't go looking for it on a modern map, because it doesn't exist any more. On one side of the Iapetus Ocean was the continent of Laurentia. On the other side were two landmasses known as Baltica and Avalonia.
  

Enjoy!

The Week in Entertainment

Film: Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. What a lot of fun that was! Shia LaBeouf was good, it was great to see Karen Allen again, and the action never stopped. Nor did the laughs. And Harrison Ford is in fine form - that Indy gleam in his eye - and Spielberg can sure direct an action sequence. Shia and the monkeys - great stuff. I don't even mind the McGuffin - it fits for a late 50s story, in a weird way.

DVD: The second season of Lewis - as good as the first. (And maybe that's why British programs have such short seasons: to keep up the excellence.)

TV: Nova - "Lord of the Ants" about EO Wilson. The man is crazy. I've had fire ants bite me - never again! But to see the world "as a universe of immense diversity": how wonderful. Big Trouble in Little China - I cannot resist this movie. I adore it. The Last Mimzy - enjoyable enough, though the framing device removed the suspense.

Read: Since I left the Putin book at the office (put it on the desk to get a quote for a course and forgot it) so to have something to read during the commute I started (and went ahead and finished) Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin - what an excellent overview of the meeting of fossils and DNA, of evo-devo and paleontology. "Old Man Crow", a lovely Charles de Lint short.

Txting: not destroying English after all

An article in today's Scotsman on texting says that (gasp!) it isn't destroying English!: a new study has shown that far from being a scourge of grammar and correct spelling, users of instant messaging and texting are actually much more likely to use the Queen's English than the abbreviations that annoy purists. Several quotes:

A new study has shown that purists' concerns about grammar and spelling being killed off by new technology are misplaced.

Research by two linguists at the University of Toronto into the language used on instant messaging (IM) systems found that abbreviations made up only a tiny fraction of the communication and that even younger users were getting most of their grammar right....

The study of more than 1.5 million words of IM conversations found that just 2.44% of all the words used were text language, and almost all the abbreviations referred to laughing, such as "haha," "LOL" (laugh out loud) and "hehe". The study called the frequency of the text language "miniscule."

I've said it before and I'll probably say it again: spelling isn't grammar. Vocabulary isn't grammar. LOL isn't worse than radar or scuba, or Milton's "Why deign'st thou.. thou o'er earth bear'st sway" or Latin inscriptions such as

IMP CAESAR
DIVI NERVAE F
NERVA TRAIANVS
AVG GERM DACIC
PONT MAX TR POT
XIII IMP VI COS V
P P
VIAM A BENEVENTO
BRVNDISIVM PECVN
SVA FECIT
for

Imperator Caesar
divi Nervae filius
Nerva Trajanus
Augustus Germanicus Dacicus
pontifex maximus tribunitia potestate
XIII imperator VI consul V
pater patriae
viam a Benevento
Brundisium pecunia
sua fecit.

It's just spelling.

The article then quotes a couple of linguists. Sali Tagliamonte, professor of linguistics at Toronto:

"They are using 'shall' and 'must' in instant messaging like they use 'gotta' and 'I'll' in conversation. They're doing things your grandmother might do, and at the same time they're saying 'LOL'. They demonstrate very clearly that their grammatical skills are intact, and they very effectively mix it with other types of language."

Dr Robert Millar, senior lecturer in linguistics at Aberdeen University:

"Texting and instant messaging are not the first forms of communication to be accused of destroying language and grammar. It happened at the time of the telegraph and telegram when many criticised the use of telegram language. Abbreviations like gr8 have been used in language for centuries – there are examples even from the time of Egyptian hieroglyphics."

It's good to see someone writing a sensible story on "those kids and their language" for a change.

PS - they also quote April McMahon, professor of English language at Edinburgh University:

"There is no doubt that this technology is helping people maintain contact in a way that they would not have in the past. Emailing and texting are just so easy and convenient, and you can bash off an email to someone in a few minutes. They are causing us to have far more conversation with each other and opening new ways to stay in touch, and we are using them.

"I know that some people are nostalgic for the age of having a scented envelope picked up from the home and being with the recipient by two o'clock that afternoon, but I think most of us value the convenience of email and text messages."

Delivered on the same day? I remember reading about that in novels - there was an Agatha Christie once that hinged on having to deal with a letter that came in the last delivery of the day instead of the second one! - but I'm not "nostalgic" for that. I never had it. Cripes, there was a time when my area of the USPS had the worst service - including in the Territories - and it could take a week to get a letter from across town! Nostalgic for the physical letter - especially the scented one? Maybe. But nothing stops those from being sent, does it?

especially the happy and relaxed about it part

Your Score: The Dork

You aren't particularly anxious, and you don't count things--but you do notice sometimes that you don't exactly fit in. Polite people would call you an eccentric, but you truly are The Dork! And proud. Just because you feel a little awkward at parties doesn't mean you're not happy with yourself and fairly relaxed.

Your low anxiety score implies that you are able to relax, can enjoy the here and now, and have a healthy amount of self-confidence.

Your high awkwardness score implies that you are socially inept, probably stick out from the crowd, and perhaps feel uncomfortable in large groups of people, such as at parties.

Your low neuroticism score implies that you don't exhibit subtle neurotic behaviors--your nails are probably an acceptable length, your pencils aren't covered with bite marks, and your bookcase isn't arranged alphabetically by genre. Congrats!

Link: The Neurotic Test written by littlelostsnail on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Dales

I meant to post these back last month when I actually went to England. What with one thing and another, they're late. I did get the birds I saw posted, then. Here are some landscapes and what-not. First up, out my hotel window:






And the varying sky over Harrogate:











The Dales - sheep, furze, and stone walls:












Fountains Abbey - we didn't go all the way to it because it suddenly started bucketing down rain - and even a bit of hail. But it's pretty impressive as is, no?





A couple of signs:
Unfortunately, all the "way out" signs are now "exit" ones...

My colleague adored the consonant cluster in the middle of this town


Okay, I wouldn't want to live in Blubberhouses!

On the road: