Monday Science Links

This week's science:

• Jen at Cocktail Party Physics talks about Hokusai and woodblock printing and copying of a more modern kind: Woodblock printing first made its appearance in China sometime between the fourth and seventh centuries AD, possibly deriving from the ancient Babylonian seals used to stamp impressions into wax or clay as authenticating marks. By the end of the ninth century, printed books are quite common all over China, at a time when most of Western Europe was stuck in the comparatively illiterate Dark Ages, waiting for Johannes Gutenberg to get around to inventing the printing press in 1455. You might be surprised to hear that Gutenberg did have a predecessor in China: an alchemist who lived in the mid-11th century named Pi-Sheng, who invented his own form of moveable type. He fashioned small blocks from an amalgam of clay and glue, and carved a Chinese character in relief on each, then baked the blocks to harden them. He could then glue each individual piece of type onto an iron plate, coat it with a mix of resin, wax and paper ash, then hat and cool the plate to set the type. It was then a simple matter to detach the type when done by reheating the plate. Pi-Sheng's invention might even have caught on, if there weren't some 30,000 individual ideograms required to make a complete font.


• Bee at Backreaction on the black hole information loss paradox: The evolution laws in quantum mechanics are time-reversal invariant. (That does not include the measurement process, which does set limits to our knowledge). Initial states evolve into final states, the evolution is given by a Hamiltonian and is unitary. You can turn it back around. If you start with something it will go into something with probability one. The evolution is a one-to-one map. Unitarity is a fundamental property of quantum mechanics. Now consider you have some matter distribution (e.g. a pressureless gas) and let it collapse (for simplicity assume it is spherically symmetric). That what you need to specify the precise state I will call information. The collapsing matter forms a horizon and becomes a black hole. The black hole no-hair theorem says that a black hole can carry only three parameters: mass, angular momentum, and electric charge. After the collapsing matter has settled down, this is the only information you can get from examining it. What happened to all the other information of your gas? All the details of that initial state?


• Judith at Zenobia: Empress of the East looks at the the Zenobia romance:Tabari's life of Zebba (= Zenobia) is so deeply imbued with folklore that it is hardly possible to take the story seriously on any level. Besides, he makes her a member of a mythical tribe, the Amlaqi, and gives her a nomadic lifestyle so unsuited to the city of Palmyra that it's easy to dismiss his tale as a hotchpotch of epic proportions. Once we clear away the fantastical and obviously legendary elements, what -- if anything -- is left in this Arabic version of her history? Quite a bit, actually. And there are inscriptions to prove it.


• Female Science Professor has a two-part look at an Atlantic article about 'morality' of expanding college: There are of course major differences between Professor X's experiences teaching as an adjunct instructor of introductory writing and literature classes at these colleges (in one case, a community college) and my experiences as a tenured professor of science at a research university. There are, however, fewer differences than Professor X supposes, at least in terms of how we interact with students.... There will always be some students who can't succeed at the 'college level'. But is it immoral to let them try (again and again)? It is immoral if the educational system is dysfunctional and consists primarily of an accounting office to take your money so you can hurl yourself at impossible tasks taught by an implacable instructor.
  


• And finally, Dr Astropixie has several posts about manned space exploration: i think there are clear benefits to space exploration, and i think the major problems us earthlings are facing is how we are treating each other, our children and our earth. those things should be evaluated, but not by putting on hold the one task that currently keeps us all together and reaching for the same goal.
  

Blaze

Speculators and their reasons

Hat tip to Dan Froomkin's White House Watch for this:

Michael T. Klare writes in a Toronto Star op-ed that "the Bush administration's greatest contribution to rising oil prices is its steady stream of threats to attack Iran, if it does not back down on the nuclear issue. The Iranians have made it plain that they would retaliate by attempting to block the flow of Gulf oil and otherwise cause turmoil in the energy market. Most analysts assume, therefore, that an encounter will produce a global oil shortage and prices well over $200 per barrel. It is not surprising, then, that every threat by Bush/Cheney (or their counterparts in Israel) has triggered a sharp rise in prices. This is where speculators enter the picture. Believing that a U.S.-Iranian clash is at least 50 per cent likely, some investors are buying futures in oil at $140, $150 or more per barrel, thinking they'll make a killing if there's an attack and prices zoom past $200. . . .

"[I]f this administration truly wanted to spare Americans further pain at the pump, there is one thing it could do that would have an immediate effect: declare that military force is not an acceptable option in the struggle with Iran. Such a declaration would take the wind out of the sails of speculators and set the course for a drop in prices."

Yep.

Lie ...

This is from Philip Alder's bridge column (in my father's morning paper, the Knoxville News Sentinel.)

There are several things odd about this. First, the coordination between "East should have lied" and "shift" - whether that's "East should shift" or a change to the imperative, it's jarring. But the big one is, of course, "East should have lied".

Yes, "lied" is the past participle (-N form) of "lie" - but the "lie"that means "tell an untruth", not the one that means "stayed in", which is what Alder presumably meant to advise East.

(Here's the whole column.)

Happy Birthday, John

Today John Gay was born in Barnstaple, England, in 1685 - he wrote The Beggar's Opera. Although its sequel, Polly, was banned by then Prime Minister Walpole from being performed, sales of it made Gay rich. Unfortunately he lost everything in the South Seas Bubble. He died in 1732 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His epitaph, written by Alexander Pope, is followed by two lines that Gay himself composed: "Life is a jest, and all things show it. I thought so once, and now I know it."

LOVE in her eyes sits playing,
  And sheds delicious death;
Love in her lips is straying,
  And warbling in her breath;
Love on her breast sits panting,
  And swells with soft desire:
Nor grace, nor charm, is wanting
  To set the heart on fire.

Goosestepping

At the marina here in Oak Ridge... is the white one the field marshal, do you suppose?

What's Important 21

Twentieth in a series.

This one's from Newsweek:

When you're poor, it can be hard to pay the bills. When you're rich, it's hard to keep track of all the bills that need paying. It's a lesson Cindy McCain learned the hard way when NEWSWEEK raised questions about an overdue property-tax bill on a La Jolla, Calif., property owned by a trust that she oversees. Mrs. McCain is a beer heiress with an estimated $100 million fortune and, along with her husband, she owns at least seven properties, including condos in California and Arizona.

San Diego County officials, it turns out, have been sending out tax notices on the La Jolla property, an oceanfront condo, for four years without receiving a response. County records show the bills, which were mailed to a Phoenix address associated with Mrs. McCain's trust, were returned by the post office. According to a McCain campaign aide, who requested anonymity when discussing a private matter, an elderly aunt of Mrs. McCain's lives in the condo, and the bank that manages the trust has not been receiving tax bills on the property. Shortly after NEWSWEEK inquired about the matter, the McCain aide e-mailed a receipt dated Friday, June 27, confirming payment by the trust to San Diego County in the amount of $6,744.42. County officials say the trust still owes an additional $1,742 for this year, an amount that is overdue and will go into default July 1. Told of the outstanding $1,742, the aide said: "The trust has paid all bills shown owing as of today and will pay all other bills due."

Mocking and Stalking

The title's not entirely correct - the mockingbird is silent during this, unlike the clearly territorial leaping and singing on the top of the tallest thing he can find. No, this is silent stalking - I know, they're not entirely sure what the purpose of this activity is, but it seems like actual hunting to me.

Happy Birthday, Antoine!

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,

author of The Little Prince,

was born today in 1900

Songs from a Traveler

Since I have to get up at 3:30 a.m. Saturday, and as you read this I'm (hopefully) on a plane but possibly sitting around an airport waiting on it, there won't be any real posting today. Play with this repeat of the song meme if you like. mp3 player on random, first line of the first 25 songs. You're supposed to guess the song and the artist, which is sometimes very hard - which makes up for the gimme titles, I suppose.

(struck through if guessed correctly; italics if song right)

Added a second line to the unguessed ones...

1 Lay down your sweet and weary head
2 Endlessly blue above me, Endlessly blue beneath, The buoyancy of belief
3 I'm not gonna talk about doubts and confusion on a night when I can see with my eyes shut (ummm, this is repeated a lot so I'm skipping to) I’d never been to Ayrshire, I hitched down one Saturday, Sixty miles to Kilmarnock To see Hibernian play
4 Rowers gliding along the river, Canadian geese crap along the bank, The back wheel of my bike begins to quiver - The chain is wrapped around the crank
5 There is a town in North Ontario (it was kd lang, but I have Neil Young, too)
6 As I leave my single life behind Thoughts are kind of spinning in my mind - First I think about you, then I think about me loving you
7 Well I was born up north of Great Slave, 1898, And I rode near all my life on a ranch near Devil's Gate
8 Come on, baby, let's get out of this town, I've got a full tank of gas with the top rolled down. There's a chill in my bones, I don't want to be alone
9 I'm your only friend - I'm not your only friend
10 Love hurts, love scars (Roy Orbison, but I have Rod Stewart, too)
11 V'là l'bon vent, v'là l'joli vent (I'm gonna give you this, wishydig - Ian and Sylvia)
12 Some say you've got to lose to win, Any moment now our luck will stumble in And claim us at the Lost and Found, And help us all get our feet back on the ground
13 Make a hole with a gun perpendicular To the name of this town on a desktop globe Exit wound in a foreign nation Showing the home of the one this was written for
14 Last night I waved goodbye, now it seems years; I'm back in the city, where nothing is clear But thoughts of me holding you bringing us near
15 Hitomi wo fuseru to (Shell, by Bana)
16 I can see there ain't no room for me You're only holding out your heart in sympathy: If there's another man, Well girl, I understand, Go on and take his hand
17 There comes a time when all of us must leave here, There's nothing Sister Mary can do To keep me here with you
18 Well, I won't back down (actually Johnny Cash, but with Tom Petty)
19 Won't need no shadow man runnin' the government, Won't need no stinkin' war, Won't need no haircut, won't need no shoe shine
20 On the day that I went away Goodbye was all I had to say, Now I, I want to come again and stay, Oh my my, Smile and that will mean I may
21 Here comes the sun
22 What I feel, I can't say
23 There's a young man that I know, Just turned 21, Comes from down in southern Colorado
24 Cigarettes and chocolate milk, these are just a couple of my cravings
25 When it's love you give (I'll be a man of good faith) then in love you live. (I'll make a stand. I won't break) I'll be the rock you can build on, Be there when you’re old, to have and to hold

Gold in the grass

one of those things

Here's a question that I have: Why, if my cat is my carry-on, do I have to pay extra for her?

And this isn't part of the new "you get one carry-on and we're charging you extra for everything you check" either, it's always been the case. A couple of airlines didn't count the cat as carry-on, but most did, as long ago as 1990.

A little projection

Karl Rove has (infamously by now) said Obama is "coolly arrogant":

"Even if you never met him, you know this guy," Rove said, per Christianne Klein. "He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."

Okay.

First, Josh Marshall & Co at TPM thinks there's a racial angle - Obama's uppity, and after your women!

Second, Matt Yglesias at the Atlantic thinks there's a classist bias - and error:

Rove assumes that "you know this guy" but unless "you" are a wealthy person from the past, you probably don't know a guy like that.

And John Mckay at archy thinks it's worse than that (for Rove):

Putting Obama in a country club was was meant to imply that Obama is an elite (eek), but assuming we know the types who hang out at country clubs much more firmly lands Rove in the dreaded elites than it does Obama. But then, we all know Rove's type. He's the pathetic guy who is still trying to get back at the kids in high school who wouldn't him join their clique. You don't have to be uppity or an elite to know--and avoid--that guy.

But I think there's more going on under the surface. Accusing someone of something you do yourself has turned out to be quite the GOP failing of late. And who is it who's at the country club making snide remarks? Who coasts on his daddy's name and money, has gotten bailed out of every mistake he's ever made, and makes fun of people (including retarded women on death row)? Or who has the actual trophy wife - who came with tons of money - and who owns lots of houses and carries a quarter of a million dollars in credit-card debt?

Do we know that guy?

Yeah. But his name's not Barack Obama.

I and the Bird

It's I and the Bird over at It's Just Me, formerly The Egret's Nest. Liza Lee does a great job, and the Wordle illustration looks like fun. Head on over and check it out.

Bribing the maitre d'

I'm reading Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought. In the chapter on politeness (linguistic), he spends a great deal of time on the indirect, or implicatured, bribe. Among the examples is a reporter who was given the assignment of seeing if he could bribe his way to a table in fancy New York restaurants. (He could.) He was terrified of having to try (having a maitre d' become furiously insulted and humilate him), and he resorted to slipping the man a twenty and saying, "I hope our wait isn't too long."

Why, wonders Pinker, are we so nervous about this situation? After all, he says, we pay extra for expedited shipping or first class seats, and we tip people for better service. Why is a maitre d's relationship with us felt to be different? He goes on for some pages about Authority and Solidarity and Community, analyzing various power structures and strategies. All of which are valid, I agree. But he misses one important difference between bribing a maitre d' and paying for overnight shipping or telling the cabbie "I'm late; there's an extra twenty in it for you if you get me there on time," or even having a fifty with your license when you give it to a cop.

When you bribe a maitre d' to get you a table when you don't have a reservation, you are stealing that table from the guy who does have the reservation. (Yes, maybe the restaurant does keep an empty table just for you - the briber - or the mayor or some other celebrity. But how can you know that?) I think that's the element that really changes the equation. That's what makes you nervous.

Happy Birthday, Walter

Born today in Syracuse, New York, in 1916, Walter Farley ... Wow. That name brings back a lot of memories. In elementary school and junior high I read a lot of his books. The Black Stallion of course, and its sequels about him and his offspring - I still remember the one where Alec gets involved in harness racing and everything he "knows" is wrong - and The Island Stallion, and the long awaited match-up of The Black and Flame...

Chris Dodd says "Enough"; will the others listen?

Chris Dodd totally rocks.

He was my third choice - and if he'd talked like this last year, he'd probably have been my first. (full text and video):

Controlled death. Outsourced torture. Secret prisons. Month-long sleep deprivations. The president's personal power to hold whomever he likes for as long as he'd like. It is as if we woke up in the middle of some Kafka-esque nightmare.

Have I gone wildly off-topic . . . ? Have I brought up a dozen unrelated issues?

I wish I had. . . I wish that none of these stories were true.

But we are deceiving ourselves when we talk about the U.S. attorneys issue, the habeas issue, the torture issue, the rendition issue, or the secrecy issue as if each were an isolated case! As if each one were an accident! When we speak of them as isolated, we are keeping our politics cripplingly small; and as long as we keep this small, the rule of men is winning.

There is only one issue here. Only one: the law issue.

Does the president serve the law, or does the law serve the president? Each insult to our Constitution comes from the same source; each springs from the same mindset; and if we attack this contempt for the law at any point, we will wound it at all points.

That is why I'm here today. . . . Immunity is a disgrace in itself, but it is far worse in what it represents. It tells us that some believe in the courts only so long as their verdict goes their way. That some only believe in the rule of law, so long as exceptions are made at their desire. It puts secrecy above sunshine and fiat above law.

See Froomkin today for a round-up of reactions.

Oriole Robin Oriole at Dawn

added later today: I thought this was an oriole because the beak looks black, but looking at it now I think that's a trick of the light and this is a robin because he's not very orange ...

added Thursday: Ooooo. An orchard oriole. Let me see ... "nesting in shade trees along streams, rivers and lakes, and on farms and parklands. The rich chestnut color of the adult male can be so dark that he may appear all black before you get your binoculars on him." (from All About Birds)

Shade tree? Check. Along a stream? Check. Parkland? Check. Rich chestnut color? Check.

I believe we have a winner! Thanks, Anon! First ever orchard oriole! (Does it count if you don't know what it is when you see it?)

Goodbye, George.

No, not Orwell - Carlin. He will indeed be missed.

"Modern Man":

Happy Birthday, George

Born today in 1903, Orwell wrote Animal Farm and 1984 from his experiences in Spain with Stalinism - which taught him that any idealism carried too far became corrupt.

What's Important 20

Twentieth in a series.

From Gail Collins in the NYT:

The way he’s been working the energy issue only makes him look like a man with no inner core. For instance, the guy who was speaking in Houston this week was considerably different from the one who did a town-hall meeting in New York last week.

The New York McCain laced into oil companies for their “obscene” profits and their failure to invest in alternative sources of energy. “I think it’s an abrogation of their responsibility as citizens,” he said, assuring the audience he was “very angry with oil companies.”

The Houston McCain seemed to have gotten over his wrath, and contented himself with lacing into Obama’s plan for a windfall-profits tax on oil companies. It would, he said, discourage oil exploration.

Midsummer Moon

It's Midsummer Day.

Make Way for Ducklings?

Oh, sure. When they're tiny little beings of yellow fluff* straggling along after mama, everybody thinks they're cute. "Awwws" and "ohs" follow them everywhere, and anybody who honked at them would get a lot of dirty looks. We even write bestselling classic children's books about stopping traffic for them.

But as soon as they turn into adolescents, they suffer the same fate as others: cute kittens that turn into moody cats and end up on the side of the road, cute puppies that turn into gangly dogs and end up chained in the yard, cute toddlers that turn into sullen teenagers ... well, you get the idea.

And so, five ducklings that used to walk along the grass near the bus stop with their mother just last week:





are now by themselves. This morning they tried to cross Maryland 197 ... and a guy honked at them. I'm serious. He leaned on the horn, like they'd know what that meant. They're ducks, guy. And they aren't flying yet. So they're just going to walk across the street at their own pace.













Yeah, for them it's the same time (about 45 minutes after sunrise). Too bad you live on the clock, and now it's 6:25 instead of 6:40 so it's when you're leaving. Hang on; soon enough they'll either be flying, or they'll be leaving before you.

Get used to it. And make way for ducklings, dammit!


*Although, come to think of it, mallard ducklins aren't yellow, are they? They're all splotchy browns and white, the better to hide with. But fluffy, and little and cute.

Canned Warnings?

Oddly, even bizarrely, Evista is explicitly marketed to women "past menopause" but it includes that "pregant, nursing or may become pregnant" warning.

Happy Birthday, Ambrose

Ambrose Bierce, born this day in 1842.

He left us

An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge,

The Devil's Dictionary,

an opinionated style manual called Write it Right which is more fun than Strunk's "horrid little book",

several fantastic short stories,

and the abiding legacy of a mysterious disappearance...

(Are you still out there, somewhere, Old Gringo?)

Learn some English...

I got some spam today that, I think, was meant to mean the opposite of what it said, which was:

You ever regret if in our shop! Canadian #1 trusted pharmacy.

"Ever regret" - Do Not Want!!!!11!

Russert "Miracles"

Newsweek reports on "The Tim Russert Miracles" ... and I have to say:

Are these people serious?

The third "miracle" took place as the crowd moved to the rooftop for a reception. The sun returned after a light, fast summer rainstorm and the sky opened to a rainbow extending from one end of the Kennedy Center to the other. Colleen King of MSNBC's "Hardball" captured it on her cell phone camera.

"After the magical experience of this service, to come out and see the rainbow and Luke at the bottom of it made the last dry eye weep," said NBC News executive Phil Griffin. The last song in the memorial service was, fittingly, "Somewhere over the Rainbow."

When asked his reaction to explain the sudden appearance of the rainbow at the exact moment, Luke Russert, his sparkly smile so reminiscent of his father's, said: "Is anyone still an atheist now?"

Um. Yes. Yes, Luke, people are still atheists. Even ones who were there, like Christopher Hitchens, for one.

A rainbow on a hot June day in Washington? This is supposed to convert me?

(And to what, if I may ask? Worship of a god who slaughters a man in cold blood, a good decent hard-working man with a son who just graduated, a man still in his prime - and then gives us a rainbow?)

The other two miracles, by the way, in case you didn't click through, are even stupider: Russert's family asked McCain and Obama to sit together, and [gasp!] they did. And Bruce Springsteen sang a song. Yeah. The Boss sang a song. That was a miracle. (Elvis, now...)

Am I picking on the son who just lost his father? I don't mean to - I doubt he'll see this, for one thing. I'm really picking on the person who wrote this tripe for Newsweek, and the editor who decided to run it. I mean, really. "Is anyone still an atheist now?" We've all seen rainbows, and sometimes at even more poetically perfect moments. Also at moments where they were really not in good taste (presuming someone set them up). A rainbow at your father's funeral might well comfort you, but how can you think it will convert anyone? Would a rainbow over Saddam Hussein's funeral have converted you?

This is shallow theism, almost pointless.

Really. I'm just dumbfounded that this article ever saw print.

(hat tip to Incunabular)

Hiding the hate

There's a story in the Baltimore Sun today called "Gay nuptials a dilemma or bonanza?" Apparently some folks in California don't want to take pictures or deliver flowers for gay weddings. One couple in Lancaster had to go to Los Angeles to find their flowers and cake - must make them feel real good about their home town, eh?

Some will do some things - like this one guy, Eric Nelson of Nelson Photography in Lake Forest, who is a wedding photographer and ordained minister through the Trinity Evangelical Christian Church. He will take photos but not officiate.

Some will do it all. Richard Markel, president of the Sacramento-based Association for Wedding Professionals International, said an informal survey showed "only nine out of 720 respondents said they would refuse." He added, "Most of the time, you get into this business to do any wedding - straight, gay, interracial - even if there were alien weddings.

And then there are these losers.

Several business owners told the Times that because of their personal beliefs they would refuse to be involved in same-sex marriages. But they declined to be identified out of concern that their business would suffer.

They've got a point. Lots of people would refuse to patronize someone they knew was a bigot. I would. So they're going to hide it as long as they can. (Interestingly, they feel they'd lose more business than they'd gain. California is better than some places, then.)

Some people deserve to lose business.

Courage of your convictions, anyone?

Monday Science Links

This week's science:

• Over at Language Log Mark Liberman does another of his "looking at the numbers behind the words" for a scientific story in the media, this time the homosexual brains are like the opposite sex's study:If we do the same calculations for the means and standard deviations reported for the other categories, we get predictions that might have been presented as follows: Rightward hemispheric asymmetry was found in the brains of 14 of 25 heterosexual males and 11 of 20 homosexual females, but in only 13 of 25 heterosexual females and 10 of 20 homosexual males. How much media play do you think the study would have gotten, if the results had been spun like that?


• Anne Jefferson guest posts at Highly Allochthonous on how you can have a '500 year flood' two years in a row: The most important point is that a "X-year flood" is a poorly-chosen way of expressing the probability of a flood of a given magnitude happening in a given year. A 500 year flood, has a probability of 1/500, or 0.2% of happening in any given year. Just like when you flip a coin the probability of getting heads is always 50% on the next flip, even if you happen to get heads three times in a row. In the same way, if a river has a 500-year flood in 2008, there is the same probability of having such a big event in 2009. That's bad news for those flood victims with a poor understanding of probability.


• Pamela at Star Stryder talks about black holes, singularities, and gravity: As we work to understand the blending of forces, gravity refuses to play. Just 150 years ago we had 3 well recognized forces: Gravity, Electical Force and Magnetism. Under Maxwell, Electricity and Magnetism became the Electromagnetic Force, and later the Strong and the Weak forces stepped forward to explain how nuclei stay together and decay apart. Through the standard model of particle physics, these forces can be drawn together and explained through their interactions with atomic and sub-atomic particles. But, 150 years and 2 new forces later, gravity still doesn’t fit in. It breaks at atomic scales and defies the mold of quantum mechanics. It won’t play with the Big Bang mathematical models. It simply defies our current understanding.


• Wilkins at Evolving Thoughts looks at the question of where did morality come from? (Note, not morals, but morality.): A conference is being held in Sydney soon about whether God is necessary for morality. I find that an almost incomprehensible question. Of course humans are moral without gods to back up their moral systems. They can't help it. It's what humans do. We are social apes that follow rules. Sometimes the sanctions for following rules (which turn out to be sanctions for potential defectors rather than the majority, who will tend to follow rules with or without promises of reward or punishment) rely on a god. Mostly, they don't. The famous Euthyphro Dilemma (whether something is good because God says so, or whether God does it because it is inherently good) is answerable thus: whether or not a god backs it up, some rules are just to be followed by ordinary human beings, and thus we imply they are inherently good. Unfortunately for moral realists, we can't agree on what things are inherently good. But we all hold that most of the things we think are good are good inherently. But think instead about why humans are moral rule followers.


• This one's a bit older (two weeks) but I'm putting it in anyway. Jennifer at Cocktail Party Physics talks about crystal skulls: Most of the press related to the new film, however, has focused on the legends and myths surrounding the crystal skulls. Yes, Virginia, there really are crystal skulls -- 13 of them, to be exact -- and the film even identifies the most famous one by name: the infamous Mitchell-Hedges skull, a.k.a., "the skull of doom." It was supposedly discovered by 17-year-old Anna Mitchell Hedges and her father in either 1924 or 1927 (they never did get their stories straight on the year) under the altar of a Mayan temple in a ruined city in Belize, although there is documentary evidence that in fact, Anna's father bought the skull at a Sotheby's sale in 1943. (Anna herself later came up with an "explanation" for that bill of sale.") Her father, a British "adventurer" named F.A. Mitchell-Hedges, claimed the clear quartz crystal skull was "at least 3600 years old, and according to legend was used by the High Priest of the Maya when performing esoteric rites. It is said that when he willed death with the help of the skull, death inevitably followed. It has been described as the embodiment of all evil."

What's Important 19

Nineteenth in a series.

This one is from Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo:

McCain Breaking the Law in Plain Sight

I mentioned earlier today that it was quite a thing to see John McCain denouncing Barack Obama for breaking his word on public financing when McCain himself is at this moment breaking the law in continuing to spend over the spending limits he promised to abide by through the primary season in exchange for public financing. (By the FEC's rules, we're still in the primary phase of the election and will be until the conventions.)

I want to return to this subject though because this is not hyperbole or some throw away line. He's really doing it. McCain opting into public financing, accepted the spending limits and then profited from that opt-in by securing a campaign saving loan. And then he used some clever, but not clever enough lawyering, to opt back out. And the person charged with saying what flies and what doesn't -- the Republican head of the FEC -- said he's not allowed to do that. He can't opt out unilaterally unless the FEC says he can.

The most generous interpretation of what happened is that McCain's lawyer came up with an ingenious legal two step that allowed him to double dip in the campaign finance system, eat his cake and spend it too. But even if you buy that line, successful gaming of the system doesn't really count as strict adherence. And the point is irrelevant since the head of the FEC -- a Republican -- says McCain cannot do this on his own.

Go on over to TPM for details.

The Week in Entertainment

Film: Reprise, which is a quirky and engaging Norwegian film about young writers in Oslo. Non-linear, and in fact in large part set in the conditional tense mood (argh (for my error, not the storytelling device)), the story engages you and draws you in, makes you laugh and catch your breath - and feel sorrow. What a debut for Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt (director/writer & writer).

TV:The Middleman. I'm not sure if I like this or hate it, so I guess I'll to give it another shot next week. The Doctor ... "Count the Shadows." Is that a creepy line or what? "It's what's in the dark. It's what's always in the dark." Donna talking with Miss Evangelista, how sad, how terribly sad. And when Dr Moon confronted the little girl and told her "Listen, This is important. There's the real world, and there's the world of nightmares...What I want you to remember is this, and I know it's hard, but it's important: The real world is a lie. And your nightmares are real." - whoa. What a tremendous episode. Stephen Moffat writes brilliant stuff. I can't wait to watch it properly - not on SciFi with a hundred commercials and stupid flashing crap at the bottom of the screen all the time. Next week must come soon! ps - I love the Doctor warning Donna about "spoilers" in her life, and her asking him "Isn't traveling with you one big spoiler?" and his answer: "I try to keep you away from major plot developments ... which, to be honest, I seem to be very bad at."

Read: Yellow Dog, by Charles de Lint. Two Death books - The Time of Your Life & The High Cost of Living, and also Dream Hunters, which is just gorgeous to read and to look at - Yoshitaka Amano's illustrations are breathtaking. I do like Neil Gaiman. I'm going to treat myself to a nice set of The Sandman for a promotion present. Started Pinker's The Stuff of Thought.

Carnivals!

Some Carnivals that I neglected to post on the day they came out - go read them now, if you haven't already:

The Carnival of Maryland

Four Stone Hearth

Carnival of the Liberals

I and the Bird

And then there's this one, which is actually NEW!!!! The Humanist Symposium

Trumpet Vine

It wouldn't be June without these running wild everywhere.

Happy Birthday, Billy

Billy Wilder, born today in Sucha (now Poland, then Austria) in 1906 (but Billy was his given name, after Buffalo Bill, of all people). He gave us the incomparable Some Like It Hot... which alone would have been enough. But of course it isn't alone - there are also Sabrina, Stalag 17, Lost Weekend, Witness for the Prosecution, Sunset Boulevard... Thanks!

Butterfly on Buttonbush

Well, I went to enature.com and tried to find out what this guy is, but no joy. My searches came up empty, or with butterflies he clearly isn't (Tawny Emperor, Painted Lady, Red Admiral...). Does anybody know? (here are some bumblebees on the same flower for a size comparison)

Aha. It's a Silver-spotted Skipper (hmmm. It's in enature, but doesn't come up even if I put in "skipper"and "orange" and "white".) Thanks, John!

What's important 18

Eighteenth in a series.

Today's installment is courtesy of Thomas F. Schaller's column in the Baltimore Sun:

In fact, in just the past month, Mr. McCain has demonstrated plenty of what rightly should be called "funny talk."

Item: During his appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show last month, Mr. McCain told Ms. DeGeneres he did not support the idea of gay couples being able to marry but he did endorse allowing them to at least enter into "legal contracts" with each other for such things as insurance. Funny that, because Mr. McCain supported a 2006 amendment to his home state's constitution that would ban any legal agreements for gay partners, including insurance.

Item: Two weeks ago, Mr. McCain said, "I am not for privatizing Social Security. I never have been. I never will be." Funny that categorical claim, too, because according to a Wall Street Journal story March 3, here's what Mr. McCain said just three months ago: "As part of Social Security reform, I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it - along the lines of what President Bush proposed."

Item: As reporter Charlie Savage of The New York Times reported June 6, Mr. McCain now says he believes President Bush's phone wiretapping program was legal. Funny that, because in an interview just six months ago with the Boston Globe, notes Mr. Savage, the senator "strongly suggested" that he would be bound to obey statutes such as the one President Bush violated.

Item: Mr. McCain called this week for an end to the federal ban on offshore oil drilling, which is also funny because it reverses a position he took in the 2000 election and calls into question his avowed stance as an environmental advocate.

That's four reversals in the past four weeks. Throw in his transparent backtracking during the Republican primary on illegal immigration and his 180-degree turn on the Bush tax cuts, and it's difficult not to conclude that foolish inconsistencies have been the hobgoblins of Mr. McCain's candidacy.

Dragonfly Sign

A couple of days ago a song came up on the mp3 player as I commuted back home. It's called "Dragonfly on Bay Street" and it's by Ron Sexsmith - not a really well-known singer, I've found, so I'm giving you the words below in case you don't know it.

The narrator gets a "sign" - a dragonfly "in the heart of the business world." He pondered the sign, wondering "what was it telling me?" and then changes his job. Unfortunately, he doesn't like the new job, either, and he tells us that now "I spend my time keeping my eyes peeled for a sign that'll lead me home."

What makes this so remarkable a lyric to me is that in the bridge, as he's explaining how he pondered over the dragonfly, wondering "What was it telling me? It's better to be free?" and before he tells us how his new job makes him feel "so out of place", he briefly contemplates the notion that the answer to "What was it telling me?" was "Or maybe nothing at all..."

In other words, maybe the dragonfly wasn't a sign ... but something, sometime will be.

That's such an enormously human reaction. Instead of thinking "Well, that dragonfly wasn't a sign; maybe I should try thinking for myself instead of looking for signs and portents" the narrator just decides he picked the wrong thing to interpret as a sign. We do that all the time, don't we - we as a species, I mean. We pray and pray, and they don't get answered, but we don't think it's because there's no god; we just pray harder next time - and next. If we ever seem to find one, that's the one we remember (confirmation bias is rampant). And if we don't, well, we blame it on the devil, or false prophets with "lying signs and portents" and our own failure to discern the true god from the idol. So maybe we start church-shopping, looking for the right one. Or - as in Julia Sweeney's brilliant chronicle of her journey "Letting Go of God" - we may stop going to church but then we read horoscopes or I Ching or toss coins or something. We become Buddhists, or take up Kabbalah, or go pagan, or start calling Sylvia Browne or Alison Dubois. Often we just become some kind of nebulous "spiritual searcher".

It's apparently very hard for us to just stop looking for true signs and portents, no matter how hard it is to find them - how impossible, in fact. We keep looking for someone, or something, to help us make our decisions - or even make them, period. Someone or something to take the responsibility off our shoulders.

But if we're going to grow up we have to make our own decisions, don't we? Take responsibility for our own choices and decisions and actions. Even if someone or something is out there (which I don't believe for a minute), we aren't children. And we shouldn't want to be, shouldn't keep acting as though we were.

"What was it telling me? Maybe, nothing at all."

That doesn't seem to be the answer we want. But until we accept that that's the answer that is true. we'll keep on putting our lives into someone else's hands - someone who isn't, in fact, even there.

Used to work as a messenger
Spent my days riding elevators
In the heart of the business world
Till one day there came a sign
In the form of a
Dragonfly on Bay Street

Buzzin' round from tower to tower
At the twilight of the working hour
Had he taken a wrong turn?
Was he lost without a trace?
Just like us?
Dragonfly on Bay Street

In the crowd without a face
Dragonfly on Bay Street

No fields for miles around
As through the underground I go
What was it telling me?
It's better to be free?
Or maybe nothing at all...

Now I work in another field
Spend my time keeping my eyes peeled
For a sign that'll lead me home
Cause Lord I feel so out of place
Just like that
Dragonfly on Bay Street

Blackbirds at Dawn

It's dawn (so the pictures are a bit grainy) but the grackles don't care - they've been awake for a while already.


I'm not sure what's with the one male's face, but nobody seems to care about that, either.



Yep, leave one bag of chips out and somebody will eat it.


There's something about those yellow eyes and the way they carry themselves.

Bumblebees on Buttonbush

It's Funny, But It's Not Grammar

Friday's We the Robots is funny (not surprisingly):


But Bob (he's our hero, the orangey one with a stripe) is not, despite what his coworker Stevo (yes, he's a robot with glasses and a beard) tells Mr. Johnson, "a stickler for grammar." He's a stickler for lexical accuracy.

Grammar doesn't tell you there's anything wrong with what Mr. Johnson says. Grammar doesn't look at meaning - that's semantics (yes, "just" semantics - "just" meaning).

"We defy your authority" is a completely grammatically correct sentence. "We your defy authority" is ungrammatical to those who fold grammar into syntax; "We defies yours authority" is unambiguously ungrammatical. But Bob's objection to "defy" is a semantic objection, based on the meaning of the word "defy".

Grammar's not about meaning. It's not about truth. And it's not about word choice*. Grammar's about the nuts and bolts of the sentence - the way the words fit together in case, number, and tense forms.

*Not saying those things aren't important, or can't be gotten wrong. Just saying they're not grammar.

Happy Solstice!

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

What's Important 17

Seventeenth in a series.

Today's installment is courtesy of Jay Hancock's business column in the Baltimore Sun:

The science of economics is founded on the notion that economic agents look out for their own financial interests in a rational way. We know of course this is wrong. The latest piece of evidence: Cindy McCain's balance of at least $225,000 on two American Express cards. The median interest rate on AmEx cards is about 14 percent, says Consumer Reports. Given that Ms. McCain is heiress of a beer distributorship, she may get something a little better. But not much. So she's paying more than $20,000 per year in non-deductible interest on balances that presumably she could easily pay off or refinance at a much better rate. But she doesn't. From the NYT, which also covers Barack and Michelle Obama's disclosures:

Another charge card, held by what was described as a “dependent child,” had also accumulated debts of $15,000 to $50,000. In addition, a credit card held jointly by the couple was carrying $10,000 to $15,000 in debt, the filing indicated, at a stiff 25.99 percent interest rate.

Stupid Mozilla

Mozilla won't warn you about this, so I will:

I upgraded to Firefox 3 which so far (of course I'm not a power user) differs from Firefox 2 in precisely one way:

Not all of my add-ons work!

And there seems to be no way to go back to the old version.

So if you're thinking about upgrading and you really, really like your add-ons - check them out first.

Unexpected guests at lunch

Our big course ended today. Yesterday we took the students out to lunch - but then the students insisted on paying, which was nice of them. We went to the 94th Aero Squadron, and had a very nice time. While we were talking I glanced out the window - and saw this pretty thing:



I don't know about the one in California, but this restaurant is at a little airport (in fact, the oldest continually used airfield in the country). Not very long after we saw the first one, four deer, possibly the same one and three others, began making their way across the grass between the runways. I wonder how used they are to the Pipers and Cherokees that come and go?