The numbers

Heroes was down 42% from its second season premiere. NBC is trying to claim only a 25% drop, but last year they rolled both showings together to get their final number and this year they're only using one of those showings to get the number they're comparing this year to, so ... 42%. I was one of those missing.

On the other hand, the debate numbers in the Post this morning didn't count CSPAN watchers, so I wasn't counted even though I did watch.

The numbers may not lie, but people have to know what they're counting.

Happy Birthday, W.S.

Today in 1927 the poet W. S. Merwin was born, in New York City though now he lives in Hawaii.

Rain at Night

This is what I have heard

at last the wind in December
lashing the old trees with rain
unseen rain racing along the tiles
under the moon
wind rising and falling
wind with many clouds
trees in the night wind

after an age of leaves and feathers
someone dead
thought of this mountain as money
and cut the trees
that were here in the wind
in the rain at night
it is hard to say it
but they cut the sacred 'ohias then
the sacred koas then
the sandalwood and the halas
holding aloft their green fires
and somebody dead turned cattle loose
among the stumps until killing time

but the trees have risen one more time
and the night wind makes them sound
like the sea that is yet unknown
the black clouds race over the moon
the rain is falling on the last place

Happy Birthday, Moveable Type

Yes - today is the anniversary of the first volume of the most influential Bible ever published: the one printed with Johan Gutenberg's moveable type - in 1542.

It was the beginning of a new age - an age of widespread information and literacy, and an end to the Church's monopoly on knowledge. The new printing process fueled the Renaissance and was a major catalyst for the scientific revolution. It may even have midwifed the Reformation. In short, it facilitated, if not outright produced, the end of the Middle Ages.

It is estimated that more books were produced in the 50 years after Gutenberg's invention than scribes had been able to produce in the 1,000 years before that.

Green

The creek in College Park, that runs through the culvert under Rolling Road.

Carnival of the Godless

The 101st Carnival of the Godless is up at Lay Scientist's blog. He's got - besides that great atheist blogging - a puzzle which is beyond me but has a prize! So head on over.

self-proclaimed crybabies

nice point from archy:

The House Republicans are sticking by their statement that they threw the deal because Pelosi hurt their iddle widdle feelings. Presumably, that means they were ready to vote for the bill on its merits until Pelosi said something mean. That's quite an amazing thing to admit. We always suspected that they were a bunch of drama queens who cared more about having their egos massaged than about doing what they think is best for America. But it's something else to hear it from their own mouths. Mind you, these are the same manly men who claim they are the only thing standing between us and total victory by the terrorists, immigrants, homosexuals, rap musicians, and Putin.

While it's true that they more likely changed their minds and scuttled the deal that John McCain personally negotiated because they thought running against the deal might be a way to save their pathetic jobs in November, it doesn't change the fact that claiming to be a bunch thin-skinned crybabies is really an amazing thing to announce in public. And not something that inspires confidence.

Shadow across the rings

No, not Saturn's this time: Pandora, the outer shepherd of the F Ring, casts a sharp, narrow shadow across the ring.


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

Red is for danger

Milkweed bugs gather in a large multi-instar group, their bright coloring a warning to predators that they are poisonous. I don't know what the large brown bug under the cross-beam is, though.
(selecting the image will enlarge it)

Monday Science Links

Here's this week's science:

• Jennifer at Cocktail Party Physics blogs about science on tv - entertainingly: That makes The Mentalist a refreshing departure from what used to be the usual prime time fare. I use the past tense because The Mentalist isn't the only show on network and cable television that unapologetically espouses a pro-science rationalist worldview. My inner geek thrills to a mix of science, compelling narrative, strong characters, and good writing; there are so many series now with these elements that said inner geek is positively intoxicated by the sumptuous feast laid out before her: the C.S.I. franchise ("follow the evidence"), House, Bones, Numb3rs -- and those are just the ones with the best ratings. Here's why I think this is significant. Networks aren't altruistic; they're out to make money by appealing broadly to their viewers (not that there's anything wrong with that), and the kinds of shows, therefore, that become breakout hits reflect the preferences of the general public. The fact that so many successful science-themed shows are resonating with viewers is an encouraging sign that there is a significant fraction of folks out there who are interested in science and at least willing to listen to a rationalist viewpoint.


• Phil at Bad Astronomy blogs on a place where the sun never doesn't shine: At the south pole of the Moon is a remarkable place. Shackleton crater, 19 km across, sits almost exactly at the equivalent of 90 degrees south latitude on the Moon. Parts of its rim stick up so high that, for them, the sun never sets. It’s up over the horizon (though very low) all day, every day.


• Kristjan at Pro-science blogs on research about when people begin learning from mistakes and what that means: Eight-year-old children have a radically different learning strategy from twelve-year-olds and adults. Eight-year-olds learn primarily from positive feedback ('Well done!'), whereas negative feedback ('Got it wrong this time') scarcely causes any alarm bells to ring. Twelve-year-olds are better able to process negative feedback, and use it to learn from their mistakes. Adults do the same, but more efficiently.


• William at Skiing Mount Improbable blogs on the oldest rocks: an area of bedrock has been discovered in northern Quebec, some portions of which appear to be some 4.28 billion years old. If further validated, this represents one of perhaps three sites where rocks well over four billion years old have been identified. Of course, a number of people have already gotten to this (damn you, PZ Myers, damn you!), but I just find it fascinating and want to talk for a moment about the age of the Earth. It's a source of endless fascination to me that our understanding of the age of the planet has evolved so radically in the last century.
  


• Ed at Not Exactly Rocket Science blogs on elephants and mirrors: It's the understanding that you exist as an individual, separate from others. Having it is a vital step to understanding that others are similarly aware and have their own thoughts and desires. As such, it is intimately linked to mental qualities like empathy and selflessness. This may seem obvious to us but even human children only become self-aware in their second year of life. In the animal kingdom, the skill is even rarer and has only been found in the most intelligent of species - humans, apes, dolphins and more recently, magpies. In 2006, Joshua Plotnik of Emory University added elephants to that list.
  


• Plus, a special bonus: over at Dinosaur Comics T-Rex and Utahraptor discuss the Makapansgat Pebble: Manuports are neat because they show you what ancient dead dudes found interesting!

Have fun!

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: A friend lent me Psych and I have to say it's very amusing. House - the end of season 4, which I managed to miss after the strike kind of kerfuffled things. And oh my. What a fabulous ending. This year should be great, if they keep their promise not to ignore what happened. Speaking of which...

TV: House (had to find ep 1 on line since my dvr didn't actually record it) And wow. Okay, last season ended with that brilliant 2-parter - and this year is picking up where they left off. Wilson was changed by Amber, and if he really leaves House it could shatter him. "We're not friends any more. I'm not sure we ever were." Maybe not, but Wilson was the only thing House had. And then ep 2. Nice. I hope Lucas won't be around a whole lot, but House trying to replace Wilson, realizing he can't, and then getting rejected - cool. And if Kutner's suggestion is really taken, House farming out his Wilson-related needs, he'll shrivel up inside... Fringe. Boring. One more episode. The Mentalist, which I enjoyed a lot. And - finally - I watched the last three episodes of Dr Who, which had been sitting on my DVR since I went on vacation-cum-workshops this summer. I had kept scrolling past them because, well, if I watched them there wouldn't be any more to watch. But I finally had to. Damn. What an ending. Some people think there were two many guests (Ianto, Gwen, Luke - even Sarah Jane), but that really was the point of the episode and none of them could be left out.

Read: Silks by Dick & Felix Francis. Better than their previous one - pretty good, in fact. Margaret Maron's latest Deborah Knott mystery, Death's Half Acre.

Friday Sunrise

Sunrise the day before yesterday, a rainy day in the making

Winter is coming

This is somehow very sad. Every fall I see them - bumblebees who died on the job. This one has dew all over her, and is stiff - clinging to the coryopteris blossom. I know that bumblebees die out in the fall, only the young queens surviving till the spring, but the little corpses holding so tightly to the flowers is a melancholy sign of oncoming winter.

added Oct 1 2010: Well, I'm pleased to hear (and test out!) that they're only sleeping! Apparently in the fall they sometimes stay out too late, get too chilled to fly, and just sleep wherever they were until the sun warms them up again. I know they're still going to die soon, but not yet! Not yet!

Covering the debate coverage

Over at headsup: the blog, fev gives us an overview of news coverage of the debate and comes away disappointed. An excerpt:

I think the core problem is that we're making a particular kind of event into something it's not. If we're judging debates by whether the candidates came out swinging, or whether someone landed the knockout blow, we're looking for the wrong stuff. That sector of political discourse is quite thoroughly covered by advertising and by whatever the bush-league tacticians on the talk shows think they read on the NYT and Post op-ed pages. A debate (so called) is a chance to watch candidates think out loud, or to watch what they recite in lieu of thinking.

That means we need to stop thinking of these things as centerpieces or centers of visual interest. Debates don't do that. They're visually boring and should be.* They're suited to long chunks of text, unmediated by the sort of instant experts who hang around presentation desks and editorial pages. When we summarize, we're going to get this:

Candidates' clearest difference is on Iraq policy

which, to the extent it's true, was self-evident before the event, but it misses the stuff in the debate that was genuinely interesting. ZOMG! Did you know we have one candidate who has a rough idea of how the Iranian political system works and one who doesn't?** One who understands what an "existential threat" is and one who thinks Hugo Chavez is one? One camp that has some actual claim to the realist ideal and one that occupies an interesting space that's half cloudcuckooland,*** half "Nightmare on Elm Street"?

We do have a few weeks to try to get this one right, so let's. The quadrennial candidate encounters might not technically be debates, but they aren't Ginormous Monster Truck Death Wrestling Cage Showdowns, either. Stop trying to make them centerpieces. Try making them chances to watch how candidates use political language in public.

The whole thing is good. Head on over and check it out (and you can find out what the footnotes are, too!)

A finch

Late in the afternoon, a house finch hops through shadows.

Death's Granddaughter

Your result for The Which Discworld Character Am I Test...

Susan Sto Helit

You scored 91 intelligence, 58 morality, and 63 physical strengnth!

As Death's granddaughter (a long story, which you greatly dislike), you inherited his ultimate practicality and lack of fear. In fact, boogeymen and other childhood boggles fear YOU. Often assisted by the Death of Rats and his raven, you manage to fix the Universe in between working as a governness and educating the masses. The ultimate teacher.

Take The Which Discworld Character Am I Test at HelloQuizzy

"And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement and trespass charges already mentioned and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy any more. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done. Which proves that you can be excused just about anything if you're a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions." Susan Sto Helit, in Hogfather

(hat tip to Brian at Laelaps)

Mimas beyond

Cassini looks across the span of the rings and catches the innermost of Saturn's major moons, Mimas.


(See Cassini's site for details.)

Render unto Caesar

33 ministers plan to preach a sermon tomorrow in which they explicitly instruct their parishioners how to vote - endorsing a candidate. They hope to be arrested and taken to court where, they hope, they will succeed in overturning the law which prohibits them from preaching that sermon. They claim the law restricts their freedom of speech.

However, there is absolutely no law restricting their right to get up and say anything they like just because they're preachers. (There are some laws that could be used to prosecute them if they, for example, told their flocks to start killing unbelievers, but that's pretty much true of everyone. And it's not what they want to do, anyway.) The law only says that if they get that political, they will lost their tax-exempt status.

And the law doesn't exclusively apply to them. It's a rather broad law. For instance, the Progressive magazine doesn't endorse candidates for the same reason that churches don't. It's not a law aimed at stifling religious speech; it's a law which says, reasonably enough, that if you're going to be political, you can't get out of paying taxes as a non-political organization.

It's hypocritical of those churches to want to have it both ways. If their need to preach on politics, to get involved in the political process, is so strong, then they should be prepared to sacrifice their tax-exempt status as non-political organizations. To expect to be subsidized while breaking the rules is unworthy of their professed values.

I hope the congregations involved are prepared to have to pay their taxes.

Goodbye, Paul

Paul Newman just died...

Happy Birthday, William

Today in 1906 Sir William Empson was born. He was a critic - one of the greatest English critics ever - and he also wrote poetry.

Villanelle

It is the pain, it is the pain endures.
Your chemic beauty burned my muscles through.
Poise of my hands reminded me of yours.

What later purge from this deep toxin cures?
What kindness now could the old salve renew?
It is the pain, it is the pain endures.

The infection slept (custom or changes inures)
And when pain's secondary phase was due
Poise of my hands reminded me of yours.

How safe I felt, whom memory assures,
Rich that your grace safely by heart I knew.
It is the pain, it is the pain endures.

My stare drank deep beauty that still allures.
My heart pumps yet the poison draught of you.
Poise of my hands reminded me of yours.

You are still kind whom the same shape immures.
Kind and beyond adieu. We miss our cue.
It is the pain, it is the pain endures.
Poise of my hands reminded me of yours.

more poems here)

'Cause it's just a hummingbird moth

This Might Be a Wiki is a wonderful place to lose time in. As an example, here's something a commenter says about "The Bee of the Bird of the Moth" (lyrics here if you don't know it):

At the Beacon theater show, Linnell said that this song was written after he saw one in the garden of a friend. Which I didn't expect at all, I thought he read about them, being an urban guy. I myself live four hours north of NYC and have a very large weedy garden. When I first heard this song I couldn't believe it. I saw my first hummingbird moth two summers ago, and it really gave me a shock. I have hummingbirds show up all the time, and my first reflexive reaction to seeing one is to think it's a really big bug, and then realize it's a bird. So when I saw the hummingbird moth I actually went (mentally) 'Bug! Oh, bird. No, wait a minute, holy crap, BUG! WHAT IS THAT THING?!'

But of course, all I did was go inside and hit Google until I figured it out. I didn't go construct a gorgeous funny mind-blowing song with engineering and Goya references, that still slays me after hearing it at least 20 times in the last few months.

I've heard it not quite that many times, but it slays me, too...

Russia

Both of these guys need to (a) understand that Russia is not our friend - and that our behavior since the fall of the USSR has demonstrated that we are not their friend and that it is insane to expect them to ignore their own geopolitical interests to serve ours; and that (b) insisting that Ukraine and Georgia should be in NATO immediately can have only one cause: that NATO is still an anti-Russian organization; and that (c) the Ossetians do not want to be Georgian and that what's sauce for Serbia may just have to be sauce for Georgia.

Also, just for politeness' sake if nothing else, they need to learn Dmitri Medvedev's name.

The market is god and therefore good

You know what? Medicare patients make their decisions with their doctors. And the government pays for it.

Medicare is government paying for health care. Why is that such a terrible thing?

Johnny One-Note

I don't know if I can watch this for the whole thing, but McCain has preached "earmarks" on every answer.

Sky Watch: Clouded Sunrise

Shortly after sunrise a couple of weeks ago - Tuesday the 9th. The sun, still low on the horizon, catches one side of the clouds with light.





more Sky Watchers here

oh, snap! and why

You know, Chris Dodd was my choice before Obama. I like the man. He's solid. And check this out (from Reuters):

interviewed on CNN, Dodd also had harsh words for Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who attended the meeting, saying, "What this looked like to me was a rescue plan for John McCain for two hours."

Dodd added, "To be distracted for two to three hours for political theater doesn't help."

Dodd alluded to a new plan being floated by Republicans during the White House meeting. "I don't even know what it is and no one could explain it," Dodd said, noting that this new element could cause lawmakers to start over on legislation, which he did not want to do.

It really does look like this whole "suspend my campaign" stunt was exactly that: John McCain pretending he's so important in Washington that nothing could get done without him, and then, David Kurtz reports:

McCain sat silently at the table until nearly the end, according to a Hill source who was briefed on the meeting. At that point, I'm told, McCain vaguely brought up the proposal being pushed by the Republican Study Committee, the group of House conservatives that is bucking the GOP leadership. But McCain didn't offer any specifics and didn't necessarily advocate for the plan, according to the Hill source.

Responding to McCain, Treasury Secretary Paulson said that the RSC proposal was unworkable, my source says, at which point McCain didn't really advocate for it or state his own position. The meeting adjourned soon after, amid confusion over where negotiations could go next.

The NY Times report was as blunt:

At the bipartisan White House meeting that Mr. McCain had called for a day earlier, he sat silently for more than 40 minutes, more observer than leader, and then offered only a vague sense of where he stood, said people in the meeting.

Another Reuters report puts it like this,

according to a statement from the McCain campaign.

"At today's cabinet meeting, John McCain did not attack any proposal or endorse any plan," the statement said.

Senior Democrats said they came away from the afternoon White House session with the impression that McCain was backing an entirely new Wall Street rescue plan, one differing markedly from a Bush administration proposal under discussion for days.

Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee and a participant in the White House gathering, said negotiations could be set back by the confusion.

"House Republicans, in some kind of arrangement with McCain, went off to wherever. I don't know whether they're ready to negotiate this. Their thing was some totally different mortgage insurance plan ... that would clearly delay this for a week or more," Frank told reporters.

David Kurtz points out

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), the ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, presaged the day's events when he told reporters that he'd had breakfast with McCain's advisers on Wednesday morning and talked by phone with McCain Wednesday night:

"We would prefer a loan or supplying insurance," Bachus told reporters. "These are the ideas Sen. McCain tried to maximize. He feels strongly we have to design a program where taxpayers won't lose."

...So McCain's gambit to shake up the election by "suspending" his campaign and returning to Washington to hammer out a deal at a big White House meeting ends up killing at least for now the hastily negotiated bailout plan that Treasury and Congress had hammered out. Strangely, almost inexplicably -- or maybe just desperately -- McCain has thrown his lot in with the same conservatives who see him as the perfect example of what is wrong with their party.

So, tell me again about how McCain is "country first"?

Anyway, since he doesn't have anything to say, and doesn't "attack any proposal or endorse any plan", why again can't he take a few hours off from this crisis and head to Mississippi?

Happy Birthday, Thomas

Today in St Louis in 1888 TS Eliot was born. He wrote many poems, most famous perhaps "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Waste Land" - and of course "The Hollow Men", which begins "We are the hollow men" and ends

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

He also wrote the source poems for "Cats". And many others, including this (The Weeping Girl):

La Figlia che Piange

O quam te memorem virgo...

STAND on the highest pavement of the stair—
Lean on a garden urn—
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair—
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise—
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.

She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose.

More of his poems here

No Shit

A commenter at Talking Points Memo, referring to the clip of Palin's Katy Couric interview and the upcoming (?) vice-presidential debate:

Obama's people are probably going to make [Biden] watch this on a loop for two hours every day until he becomes absolutely numb to it. Otherwise we'll hear "WTF?" uttered for the first time during a VP debate.

The interview, by the way, looks ... indescribable.

For some pretty strange values of "suspend"

McCain said he was suspending his campaign. Guess he needs to be in DC for the big vote - that must be an odd feeling for him. Only Tim Johnson has missed more votes than McCain - and Johnson had a frackin' stroke. But it kinda looks like all he really meant was Hell, no; I'm not debating Obama even if we do change the topic.

His ads are still running. His surrogates - like Nancy Pfotenhauer and Tucker Bounds - are still on the tv attacking Obama and doing live chats for newspapers. He himself has time to have a special meeting with Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild and an interview with Katy Couric. In fact, it's pretty much business as usual - except now he doesn't have to debate Obama.

"his superiors did not agree with his recommendations"

Here's an LA Times story that's simultaneously heartening and not. Another military lawyer is quitting because of his reservations about the way the war-crimes tribunals are working. As the story says, "Several prosecutors have quit or asked to be reassigned in protest, including Air Force Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor for the military commissions."

Now, another one has:

Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld [has] quit the case -- and the Office of Military Commissions -- after growing increasingly concerned about the lack of due process afforded to Mohammed Jawad and his legal team. ...Both defense lawyers said Vandeveld had spelled out his allegations in the sealed affidavit. Vandeveld said in his declaration that prosecutors knew Jawad may have been drugged before the attack and that the Afghan Interior Ministry said two other men had confessed to the same crime.

Of course, his bosses disagree:

Army Col. Lawrence J. Morris [lead prosecutor for the military commissions] said Vandeveld told him he was quitting for personal reasons, and he would not discuss whether his office had rejected any proposed plea deal for Jawad.

He described Vandeveld as a disgruntled prosecutor "who was disappointed that his superiors did not agree with his recommendations in the case." "There are no grounds for his ethical qualms," Morris said.

Yeah. He's just a malcontent, disgruntled because his superiors did not agree to, you know, uphold the Constitution.

This is probably the most important sentence in the whole article:

In his declaration, Vandeveld said military prosecutors routinely withhold exculpatory evidence from the defense in terrorism cases.

This needs investigation.

An update 26 Sep: The Washington Post has details, including this excerpt from his declaration:

"My ethical qualms about continuing to serve as a prosecutor relate primarily to the procedures for affording defense counsel discovery," wrote Vandeveld in his filing. "I am highly concerned, to the point that I believe I can no longer serve as a prosecutor at the Commissions, about the slipshod, uncertain 'procedure' for affording defense counsel discovery."

Alas

What's Important 49

Forty-ninth in a series.

This is from Salon:

The facts are clear. All you have to do is look at his voting record. It reveals that McCain has long been one of the strongest opponents of clean energy in Congress, with a record matching that of James Inhofe, the most hardcore global-warming denier in the Senate, who comes from the heart of the oil patch in Oklahoma.

Recently the Associated Press noted that "McCain has not shown up for eight Senate votes last year and this year to extend [renewable energy] tax credits, which expire at the end of this year. The last such vote was July 30." Yet at an Aspen Institute meeting in August, when McCain was asked about those missed votes, he simply lied to the audience.

"I have a long record of that support of alternate energy," McCain said. "I come from a state where we have sunshine 360 days a year ... I've always been for all of those and I have not missed any crucial vote."

They sum it up

What about energy efficiency and conservation? In 2002, the Senate voted to drop a measure encouraging the efficient generation of electricity. McCain and Inhofe were among those who voted to drop it. Another 2002 vote on weakening appliance-efficiency requirements passed by a mere 52-47. McCain and Inhofe both voted to weaken the requirements. This summer, McCain had the audacity to mock Barack Obama for talking about energy efficiency measures, like inflating one's tires, even though those measures would save more than 10 times as much oil as ending the moratorium on coastal drilling would.

What about McCain's support for the environment in general? Back in 1996, McCain wrote a New York Times Op-Ed titled "Nature Is Not a Liberal Plot" that laid out his vision of a green(washed) Republican Party. It touted his work with Morris Udall, the former Democratic congressman from Arizona, to safeguard Arizona wild lands, including the Grand Canyon. But the Op-Ed also explained the importance of maintaining and improving the Clean Air Act, Superfund, the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. McCain wrote, "Our nation's continued prosperity hinges on our ability to solve environmental problems and sustain the natural resources on which we all depend."

And yet in 1994, McCain had voted to let coal states bypass the Clean Water Act. In 1996, he voted against increased EPA funding to clean up Superfund toxic-waste sites, where he was joined by Inhofe but opposed by most of his fellow Republicans. Again, in 1996, he voted with Inhofe to gut nuclear waste disposal laws. In 2003, he voted with Inhofe against requiring polluters to pay for cleanup of Superfund waste sites.

When you add in McCain's legislative efforts to cut funding for the most energy-efficient form of national travel -- passenger rail -- you find that McCain has voted against clean energy and the environment -- or said he would have done so -- more than 50 times since the early 1990s. And McCain has voted with the Oklahoma oilman and global-warming denier a remarkable 42 out of 44 times.

And there's more.

It's clear. McCain is not an environmentally friendly legislator, and he doesn't scruple to lie about it.

National Punctuation Day

Yesterday was National Punctuation Day, by the way. (I know: What?) I didn't post on it yesterday. Here's why:

Punctuation has a wild power to enrage people. Which is very odd, because punctuation has absolutely nothing to do with actual language. It's a weak attempt to do on the page what tone, volume, emphasis, facial expressions, and gestures do in conversation: guide the reader (listener) to a proper understanding of the meaning behind the words. It's very easy to miss the other person's meaning, but if they're standing right there it's harder (though still quite possible), and you can ask. If they aren't - especially if they've been dead for centuries, well. Devices as different as the elaborate, redundantly phrased language of law and smilies have been pressed into use to combat this problem. Punctuation is another.

Punctuation is a cohesive device, an addition to function words; it points the reader to the proper analysis of the relationship between constituents in a sentence or paragraph. (Paragraphing itself is such a device. Few people get incensed over paragraphing, though Nero Wolfe once used it to decide if a dead person had actually written something...) In the hands of a skillful writer, punctuation can make the page sing; you can read a baroque page-long sentence and understand it perfectly. In the hands of an inept one, it can make you puzzled, even lost.

Like the nails in a house, punctuation holds written prose (and poetry) together. Like those nails, extra usually doesn't help but doesn't hurt, either; no house ever fell down because it had too many nails - though ugly is a different matter. Not enough punctuation can lead to a complete loss of understanding, just as no nails makes it hard for the boards to stay up, but note my modal: can isn't will. A few fewer nails (serial comma, anyone? I like them myself, but plenty of style manuals don't) are often not missed.

So: National Punctuation Day. It's kind of an odd celebration. bradshaw of the future has an apt quote from Dennis Baron, and I'll pull out two sentences of it here:

Punctuation has always changed with fashion, location, and context, a fact of language history which angers everyone who wants the rules of writing to remain both as constant as the ten commandments, and violated a lot less frequently.

One reason for its instability is the fact that no one ever agrees what punctuation is for. Sometimes it indicates pauses, sometimes syntactic units.

I did not celebrate this day as its founders wish - they wanted us to

Read a newspaper and circle all of the punctuation errors you find (or think you find but aren’t sure) with a red pen.

Take a leisurely stroll, paying close attention to store signs with incorrectly punctuated words.

Stop in those stores to correct the owners.

If the owners are not there, leave notes.

Congratulate yourself on becoming a better written communicator. (sic)

I see they decided not to tell us to make actual corrections ourselves, whipping out our trusty Wite-Out and Sharpies. Perhaps the fate of the TEAL ($3600 fine and banishment from National Parks) was a warning. The cynical Dennis Baron thinks otherwise, noting that

a close look at the NPD website suggests that its real goal is not to get you in trouble with irascible shopkeepers but to sell latte mugs, t-shirts, greeting cards, and other punctuation-themed paraphernalia.

Still, what about all that walking around correcting people? Well, as Wishydig put it...

if it's done with the right attitude there's no harm.

But is that possible? Perhaps it's only a bad attitude that leads to such a cross-country correction crusade. And it's arrogance that imposes a correction on people who have not asked for it. And it's ignorance that leads to defacement of a landmark.

I don't think that arrogance, ignorance, and a bad attitude are what punctuation deserves. (It also doesn't deserve an organization that encourages people to buy Strunk & White, but that's a different post...)

Punctuation is a spectacular sign of that creative ability which led to writing in the first place, and it deserves joyful exuberance. I celebrate the ingenuity of people compensating for the fluidity of the spoken word in conversation with little marks on paper.

Long may the comma, period, parenthesis, dash, hyphen, colon, semicolon, and virgule guide our readers to our meaning.

Happy Belated Birthday, David!

Born September 19 in 1933 - David McCallum (my first tv crush, as Illya Kuryakin of course!) It's good to see he's still working.

Four Stone Hearth

The fiftieth! edition of Four Stone Hearth, the anthropology carnival, is up at Yann Klimentidis' Weblog. Archaeology and Neaderthals - a heady mix. Check it out.

Carnival of the Liberals #74

Carnival of the Liberals is up at XXBN. Gracie's done yeoman work winnowing the over seventy submissions to produce another fine edition of this collection of premiere liberal blogging. (And I don't just say that because she picked one of mine.) Seriously. Go read it.

Paint Name Colors

From Jan Freeman's blog, the Word, this game - you get ten paint names (like Shangrila Silk or Ice Storm) and have to choose the real color that matches. I've been getting 5 or 6 out of 10 (you know your paints!). Fun - try it out.

Play the PAINT game

Snap!

Full strip at Candorville

Making do

Starlings like gathering en masse on trees. But what if there isn't a tree around? As we all know, they make do, settling for (and on) utility poles and wires. And I was just wondering... is that one on the top of the pole the king, or the outcast?



And despite the fact that those wires are pretty long, starlings still crowd each other constantly.

A rose by any other name

Just saw a Gillette commercial that cracked me up.

Women have moisturizers. Men, apparently, use "hydrators", because, I guess, it would be dreadful if they moisturized their dry skin.

It's all in the wording

This totally typifies Jeopardy! for me.

Final question - category Tennis: This Grand Slam stadium was named for a WWI flier who pioneered the use of machine guns on airplanes.

Now, I knew that had to be Roland Garros, because the other three are the All England Club, Melbourne Park, and Flushing Meadows.

But had I been asked who Roland Garros was, I'd have had no clue.

"Not so good"

Jeopardy! just had a Grammar category. Three of the questions were okay (id'ing an adjective and a sentence fragment) and the one where the contestant had to id a preposition at least said "some" don't agree that you can end a sentence with it.

But this is iffy:

Necessary to complete the thought, the last three words of this sentence form a restrictive one of these: "I like men who bake bread"

- and they accepted "clause". Just plain old clause. (I suppose that there isn't any other restrictive clause other than the relative one, but still. "Restrictive clause"?)

And then (of course) they blithely say

It's best to use this voice, as in "Bob ate the pie". "The pie was eaten by Bob"- not so good.

Best? Just like that? No reasons, no context, nothing about information structuring - just "passive is bad".

Sigh. Alex, I'm so disappointed.

The Real "Original Maverick"

It baffles me

From a story in today's Sacramento Bee:

Schubert, the Yes on 8 campaign manager, said the campaign picked up support after the state Supreme Court overturned Proposition 22 in May.

"This is an issue that involves one of the fundamental understandings in civilization – that marriage has always been between a man and a woman," Schubert said.

Is he really that ignorant? Can he really not even have read his Bible?

Or is he just another bigot who'll say anything to pretend he's not?

(And it's kind of a rhetorical question, yes...)

Happy Birthday, Euripides

This is the day we celebrate the birth of one of ancient Greece's greatest dramatists, Euripides. He reshaped Attic drama by featuring petty and uncaring gods, flawed but human heroes, strong women, and smart slaves.

Of his more than 90 plays, 19 survive (more than Aeschylus and Sophocles together), among them Alcestis, The Bacchae, Elektra, Iphigenia At Aulis, Iphegenia in Tauris, Medea, and The Trojan Women.

Today's Writer's Almanac has this quote: "When good men die their goodness does not perish, / But lives though they are gone. As for the bad, / All that was theirs dies and is buried with them." This is so clearly the source of Marc Antony's "The evil that men do lives after them / The good is oft interred with their bones / So let it be with Caesar" that is startles me.

Happy Birthday to the Music Men

Today was a good day for music! John Coltrane (1926), Ray Charles (1930), and Bruce Springsteen (1946), all!

Light in darkness

Brainy? That's OK

The Seattle Times endorses Obama:

Obama is a little young, but also brilliant. If he sometimes seems brainy and professorial, that's OK. We need the leader of the free world to think things through, carefully. We have seen the sorry results of shooting from the hip.

Monday Science Links

Oops! I thought I'd scheduled this, but obviously hadn't. So here's a just-slightly-late heaping helping of sciency goodness:

• Julianne at Cosmic Variance shares one cool photo:What’s striking about this pair of galaxies is that one of them is partially occluding the other. Galaxies contain a lot of dust which can block light, particularly at optical and bluer wavelengths. Because the background galaxy is relatively smooth, you get a wonderful view of the location of dust in the foreground galaxy. It’s clear from the image that the dust is found waaaaaay out from the center of the galaxy, in spiral arms that go well past one would call the edge of the galaxy (based on where you see light on the un-occulting side of the foreground galaxy, to the right on the image above). It’s rare that you ever find two galaxies of comparable size occulting one another, and rarer still that the alignment is so perfect for tracing out the dust to such large radii.


• A new guy in the science blogosphere, Dr Johnson Haas, who blogs at The Planetologist, talks about US crude reserves: If it were possible to open up enough land and water for drilling in the US to offset our need for foreign oil, why haven’t we plowed ahead with that plan? I doubt hippies could get in the way if the US were actually sitting on that many billions of untapped dollars. Hippies didn’t stop us before. At one time the US was the world’s supplier of oil. We won WWII and strode forward into the 1950s on titan legs powered by Texas crude, then Californian, then Gulf of Mexico-an. We were rolling in oil, until we weren’t. By 1970 it was clear that the party was over, and oil reserves were running down. We’d tapped the primo goods, we had only half our cache left, we were smoking it up a lot faster than we used to, and we began to notice the baggie was running low. So we found some dealers. Namely the Saudis, the Iraqis, the Iranians, the Venezuelans, the Russians, the Canadians, the Mexicans, and basically anyone else on the face of the Earth who was holding.


• Judith at Zenobia: Empress of the East goes much earlier to talk about a different uppity woman:This angry-looking Neanderthal woman had pale skin, freckles, and was a fiery red-head too. This is the first reconstruction of a female Neanderthal to be based in part on ancient DNA evidence. Anthropologists have now gone beyond fossils and are reading the actual genes of an extinct species of human.


• Sean at Cosmic Variance discusses LHC safety: In the latest Science Saturday at Bloggingheads, Jennifer and I zip from the breathtakingly topical — the Large Hadron Collider, what it’s good for, and why you shouldn’t be scared of it — to the profoundly eternal — calculus, and why people are scared of it. I’ve finally settled on a proper response to questions about whether the LHC will destroy the world. (After the initial response, I mean.) It comes in two parts.


• Jennifer at Cocktail Party Physics discusses bells and bell ringing, with a diversion into The Nine Tailors: Bells are fascinating things, right down to how they are made -- or rather, cast, since the process involves pouring molten bell metal into a mold. In The Nine Tailors, the tenor bell is named Tailor Paul, supposedly cast in a field next to the churchyard in 1614. Once the bell has been cast, it can be "tuned" by paring metal off various parts of the bells' soundbow. As for the creation of the mold, that is an equally painstaking process. There is an inner mold, or core, and an outer one (the "cope), both made up of a mixture of clay, cow dung (!) and horse hair. This mud pie is built up into the desired shape, supported by a metal base plate ("strickle"), layer by painstaking layer. After a certain number of layers, the mold is baked in a dry oven until it is hard, then more layers are added, then baked, and so on. Any air pockets or moisture would be bad, as the finished mold would crack when the molten lead is poured into it.

Enjoy!

Dear Sen/Rep X: re the bailout...

Here's a letter I sent to my senators and congressman. Send something like it to yours. And it doesn't really matter if you prefer Chris Dodd's plan, or someone else's ...

[Senator (Cardin / Mikulski) / Congressman Sarbanes]:

I called your office this afternoon to urge you to fight to require oversight in any Wall Street bailout. May I go further and offer you Robert Reich's suggestions? These, or something like them, must be included in any legislation:

1. The government (i.e. taxpayers) gets an equity stake in every Wall Street financial company proportional to the amount of bad debt that company shoves onto the public. So when and if Wall Street shares rise, taxpayers are rewarded for accepting so much risk.

2. Wall Street executives and directors of Wall Street firms relinquish their current stock options and this year’s other forms of compensation, and agree to future compensation linked to a rolling five-year average of firm profitability. Why should taxpayers feather their already amply-feathered nests?

3. All Wall Street executives immediately cease making campaign contributions to any candidate for public office in this election cycle or next, all Wall Street PACs be closed, and Wall Street lobbyists curtail their activities unless specifically asked for information by policymakers. Why should taxpayers finance Wall Street’s outsized political power – especially when that power is being exercised to get favorable terms from taxpayers?

4. Wall Street firms agree to comply with new regulations over disclosure, capital requirements, conflicts of interest, and market manipulation. The regulations will emerge in ninety days from a bi-partisan working group, to be convened immediately. After all, inadequate regulation and lack of oversight got us into this mess.

5. Wall Street agrees to give bankruptcy judges the authority to modify the terms of primary mortgages, so homeowners have a fighting chance to keep their homes. Why should distressed homeowners lose their homes when Wall Streeters receive taxpayer money that helps them keep their fancy ones?

Please fight to include oversight and control in the bailout. We should not just hand over hundreds of billions to the people who created the mess and trust them to be responsible this time.

Thank you.

That classic silhouette

A mourning dove in the early morning

The Week in Entertainment

Film: Bottle Shock - what a lot of fun. Alan Rickman is brilliant (as always) and the rest of the cast is pretty much spot on.

TV: Fringe. Okay. They get one more shot. I have no desire to watch all this violence and gore. I didn't need to see the co-pilot's face fall off last week, and I didn't need to see the all the serial killer's torture and murdering of young women. The rest of the show - all the "pattern", the "phenomena" that "appear to be scientific in nature" (wtf does that even mean?), the mysterious committee, the DHS guy who doesn't use contractions... I'm not sure I buy a single word of it, and the ambiance of the show is not making me give much of a damn, either. Nor do I really care about this mysterious secret medical condition of Peter's. Plus - the "science" is just ridiculous. Why would a muscle relaxer freeze neurons? It's gotten so it annoys me that those massive labels with place-names on them pretend to be part of reality - reflecting in puddles or buildings. WTF? So I think I might not even last through episode three... Also the Ryder Cup and the UT-Florida game.

Read: I Sold My Soul on eBay. Pretty enjoyable, though I'm not (probably) Hemant's intended audience. I might blog a bit on this book ... if I find the time this week. Continued with Kremlin Wife.

Ryder Cup - US wins

For a change, the US played as a team - Azinger had a plan and the players went with it; Azinger's winning the right to change the selection process obviously played a huge role. Furyk drops a putt and Miguel Jiménez misses one, and it's over. Close, close matches all weekend, and great play from people we didn't expect it from (Poulter, Howells) and people we did (Furyk). And now the last matches will be played, but the Cup comes back to the US.

My 2¢

Stabilizing the current banking crisis is a good idea.

Handing tons of money to the people who caused it, with no oversight or protections built into it, is not.

Carnival of Maryland

The latest edition of Carnival of Maryland is up at Tinkertytonk. As always, a great collection of posts from bloggers around the state.

Ryder Cup catch-up

Just got in. Looking at McDowell vs Cink... eventually they're bound to give us a score. Looking at the Internet... US 11½ to 9½. Poulter is continuing to play brilliantly.

Ouch. Kim beat Sergio! Mahan and Casey halved. Karlsson beat Leonard, Rose beat Mickelson (oh, Lefty!), and Perry beat Stenson. US is up in four, Europe in three. Four of those are close. If it stays like that, US wins.

A Vewy, Vewy Happy Birthday, Chuck

This is the birthday of the great Chuck Jones. He directed many of the classic short animated cartoons starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Marvin the Martian, the Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote, Pepé Le Pew and the other Warners characters (most of whom he created). His most famous films include Duck Amuck, Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, One Froggy Evening, and What's Opera, Doc?, and the "Hunting Trilogy" of Rabbit Fire, Rabbit Seasoning, and Duck! Rabbit! Duck! (1951–1953).

Looking in the grass

About a half-hour after dawn on Friday I spotted a pair of flickers on the edge of the sidewalk ahead of me, intently poking around in the grass along the edging. A mockingbird was hanging around them, watching. As I pulled out my camera, the female flicker flew off into the trees a few yards away, but the male stayed where he was, totally focused on whatever it was he had found. He kept working on the one spot, ignoring me and ignoring the mockingbird, too, even when that fellow came right up next to him, walking around and giving the impression that he'd like to run the bigger bird away. I kept shooting, they kept ignoring me, and then a coworker came up behind me. She walked around me, and then paused, seeing the birds. But two people were enough to make the flicker move across the sidewalk and then follow his mate up into the trees. The mockingbird sailed up onto the fence and watched us head off to work, then dropped back onto the sidewalk to pursue his own daily bugs...

Ryder Cup end of Saturday

Ian Poulter played brilliantly, redeeming himself and Faldo for his pick, winning (along with McDowell) a full point over Furyk and Perry. Weekley and Holmes got a full point over Westwood and Hansen. Garcia and Casey halved their match with Stricker and Curtis. Mickelson and Stenson to a lesser degree took themselves out of 18 on their match, leaving Mahan and Karlsson to fimish their all-square last match. Mahan's conceded birdie left Karlsson with a makeable eagle putt for the full point - and he missed it. But he made the birdie - 7th for the match - and halved the hole.

At the end of Saturday, with three matches going to 18 and the fourth to 17, it's USA on top by 2 points: 9-7. Europe has won going into Sunday down 9-7 before - and in the US, 1995 at Oak Hill. But it is a good sign for the Americans, not to be trailing after the team play. Tomorrow are the singles matches (and here is where Tiger, with a record of 3-1-1 in singles, might be missed). America needs 5½ points to win, Europe 7, so Europe has to win 7 of the 12 matches tomorrow. Can't wait to see how those line up.

I'll be DVRing the beginning of the matches since I'll be away for the early afternoon. But I'll be back in time to watch the end of it.

Advise and consent

Oh, c'mon. Apparently Olazabal just told the Euros to concede a putt. Now the announcers are fretting because only the captain can give advice, meaning Faldo. Shouldn't the European team get penalized? Lose this match or something?

I repeat: Oh, c'mon. Give it a rest, guys.

"Advice" is "the putt breaks left further than you think", "don't be crazy here, use your 2 iron", or "careful with this wind, try to fade it".

"Concede the putt" is not "advice".

50% ... but of what?

I've now seen that fashionably scruffy guy driving his Cadillac Escalade hybrid one too many times. The commercial says it has 50% better city mpg. Yeah, just about - maybe even better. The regular one gets 12 mpg in the city. The hybrid gets 18 or 20, depending which site you look at. Of course the gas-powered one gets 20 highway, and the hybrid gets 21. Plus, the hybrid costs over $71,000 as compared to the gas version, which costs a mere $68,000...

I suppose if you must have one of those monsters, the hybrid version is better than the other. But talk about the lesser of evils...

a simple request

Verizon's netmail page greeted me with this yesterday:

LOS ANGELES - An out-of-service bus driven by a mechanic turned abruptly into a light rail train near downtown during the morning rush Friday, injuring at least 14 people and rattling commuters a week after a deadly train crash in a suburb.

Wow. I'll bet it crashed. It's pretty hard for a train to travel when it's not on tracks, and the bus wouldn't have been before it turned into a train...

Oh.

Please. Do not make me snicker while I'm reading about a deadly accident. Please.

Vols vs Gators

Tennessee opens conference play against Florida. The Gators have become Enemy #1, that's for sure ... when I was at UT it was Alabama, but Florida is much worse than the Tide ever was - because, let's be honest, they're much better.

But sports is heart not head, so - Go Vols!

4:11 update: Yikes. 17-0 at the end of the first quarter? Okay, Tennessee picked it up there at the end, but sheesh.
5:04 update: Halftime. Vols held the Gators to 3 points - but still didn't score. Not looking good...
6:00 update: Another Florida touchdown. 27-0 at the end of the 3rd. Vols fans have been streaming out of Neyland Stadium for 10-15 minutes, and I can understand it. Beating the traffic would look tempting.
6:46 update: Game over. 30-6. Yikes indeed. This was much worse than that UCLA debacle. Going to be a looooooooong season.

Happy Birthday, Stevie!

Today in Hull, in Yorkshire, England, in 1902 Stevie Smith was born.

Our Bog Is Dood

Our Bog is dood, our Bog is dood,
They lisped in accents mild,
But when I asked them to explain
They grew a little wild.
How do you know your Bog is dood
My darling little child?

We know because we wish it so
That is enough, they cried,
And straight within each infant eye
Stood up the flame of pride,
And if you do not think it so
You shall be crucified.

Then tell me, darling little ones,
What's dood, suppose Bog is?
Just what we think, the answer came,
Just what we think it is.
They bowed their heads. Our Bog is ours
And we are wholly his.

But when they raised them up again
They had forgotten me
Each one upon each other glared
In pride and misery
For what was dood, and what their Bog
They never could agree.

Oh sweet it was to leave them then,
And sweeter not to see,
And sweetest of all to walk alone
Beside the encroaching sea,
The sea that soon should drown them all,
That never yet drowned me.

more Stevie Smith poems here

Ryder Cup odds and ends

May I start by saying that I fracking hate Boo Weekley?

I did think as I was writing this morning about Mickelson's lousy recent record that actually, last year they kept putting Lefty with Tiger, and he was desperately uncomfortable. So maybe, I thought, he'll play better on a team without Woods. It looks like he is. So the missing Tiger - not really all that missed, though I'll bet no one will say so out loud.

Also, the partisan nature of the announcing is getting to me. Sure, they call it when a European player makes a great shot, and when an American makes a crappy one. But then we get this: "The score is US 7, Europe 5, and they lead in 3 of the 4 matches." Who's they? The team that needs no naming?

And one more little thing: I do like those RBS commercials. I like the guy who gets beaten by the young girl and pitches his golf bag into the water in a fit of picque - with his keys inside. I love the caddy whose golfer is bad and full of excuses, and who lines him up a foot to the right when the guy can't see the hole so he actually makes the putt. And I really adore the old guy who says, challengingly, "When I was a young man, I used to hit the ball over that tree right onto the green," and when the young guy bounces it off the tree then adds, "Of course, when I was a young man that tree was only a few feet tall..."

Ryder Cup Saturday morning

Well, Poulter and Rose trounced Cink and Campbell, and now Stenson and Wilson (who had some brilliant putts) have beaten Mickelson and Kim (who blew a 4-up lead). Jiménez and McDowell halved their match with Leonard and Mahan. And Furyk and Perry beat Karlsson and Harrington.

So the score is now 7 - 5, US up.

Heart. Cockles. Warmed.

I don't know these guys. (One is a screenwriter, the other works for a talent agency.) But I love the fact that they can get married, and have their picture in the New York Times, just like regular people.

Congratulations, Lawrence and Aaron. I wish you a long and happy life together.

Silver shining in the dawn

So, Thursday morning as I was walking towards work, the sun was just rising over the edge of the trees and the mist was rising off the ground. From the length of the fence line I saw something silver shining in the slanting light - silver, roundish, and well off the ground.

It took a few seconds for me to identify it, but once I had it was obvious: a spider web, wet with dew.

I'd seen a large one behind a catbird earlier this week, but that one had been flat against bushes and almost invisible. This one would be hard to see once the dew dried, but it was suspended between two Bradford pears to catch insects flying through the trees.



I'm not sure what this spider is - some sort of garden spider, I believe, but which kind specifically I don't know. She is a garden spider - to be specific, a cross spider, aka diadem spider, or European garden spider (thanks, Weeta!). And what a hard worker she is, to spin this thing anew every morning. (Yes, she was there again Friday, and may have been there all week, just not so obviously.)