Long vowels say their name ... sometimes

Kingdom is a British television series (starring Stephen Fry as a market town solicitor). It's very good. It's set in East Anglia, and the locals pronounce their long U with no jotation (except at the beginning of words, such as university).

Huge is hooge, beauty is booty, human rights become hooman rights.

It's an accent I've never noticed before.

(And may I add how equally odd it is to see Thoroughbreds going to post without ponies, and then running the wrong way around the track?)

River of Light

Take some snow - it doesn't have to be lot - and a day below freezing. Then bring the temperature just over freezing and add a few hours of rain. Leave the rain, but drop the temperature sharply - and you end up with ice over snow. Add one sunrise - and light pours over the ground as if it were water.

Happy Birthday, Gelett

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OSI: If Only I Had Time

I'd read the books I never read,
But always wanted to.
I'd take a trip to Samarkand
And the mountains in Peru;
I'd spend all winter by the lake,
All summer in the hills -
I'd spend a year in Scotland
Where Culloden gave me chills.
I'd bird in Indonesia,
In Africa and Spain;
I'd learn a dozen languages,
And read and write them plain.
I'd buy a dozen horses,
I'd get a bigger place.
I'd go and watch the rockets fly -
Watch? I'd ride them into space!
I'd write my novel - no, I would -
And it would make a splash.
What wouldn't I do? Nothing!
If only I had time...
                     ... and cash.


One Single Impression:
more poems

Sky Watch: One Cloud

On a cold January afternoon, one wispy cloud drifts through the sky.





more Sky Watchers here

Winter Flicker

Happy Birthday, Anton

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

But if medicine was his lawful wife, literature, as he said once to Alexei Suvorin, was his mistress (Медицина — моя законная жена, а литература — любовница.), and he wrote four classic plays (Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, The Seagull, and The Cherry Orchard) and many short stories - his masterpiece "The Lady with the Dog" was written in Yalta, where he'd gone to battle his tuberculosis. (The picture is Chekhov with a dog, in Yalta...) Many consider him the father of the modern short story, many of whose forms he pioneered. He also formulated what's often called "Chekhov's Law" of "economy in narrative": "Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." Or, in a more famous formulation, often called Chekhov's Gun: Если в первом акте на стене висит ружье, то в последнем оно обязательно выстрелит - "If there's a gun on the wall in the first act, it has to be fired by the end of the third act."

In May 1904 he became so ill that he went to a German health spa, where he died two months later.

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


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

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

What shines?

What moon is that? How can a moon of Saturn be so centered on the A Ring?

Well, it can't. That's no moon, folks, that's a star! And it's behind the rings.

It's Mimosa, aka Beta Crucis, the bright left-hand star in the Southern Cross. The rings, being particles, let light through, and this star's so bright it looks as though it's in front.


As always, see the Cassini home page for more.

Happy Birthday, José

José Martí was born today in Havana, Cuba, in 1853. He was exiled to Spain at 17, later moving to Mexico, Guatemala, and back to Cuba, from which he was again deported to Spain; he fled to France and then the US, living in New York and working for Cuban independence. He joined the war in 1895 and died shortly after the invasion.

Cultivo una rosa blanca

Cultivo una rosa blanca,
En julio como en enero,
Para el amigo sincero
Que me da su mano franca.
Y para el cruel que me arranca
El corazón con que vivo,
Cardo ni oruga cultivo:
Cultivo la rosa blanca.

I have a white rose to tend
In July as in January;
I give it to the true friend
Who offers his frank hand to me.
And for the cruel one whose blows
Break the heart by which I live,
Thistle nor thorn do I give:
For him, too, I have a white rose.


Yo no puedo olvidar nunca...

Yo no puedo olvidar nunca
La mañanita de otoño
En que le salió un retoño
A la pobre rama trunca.

La mañanita en que, en vano,
Junto a la estufa apagada,
Una niña enamorada
Le tendió al viejo la mano.


I'll never forget, I vow,
That fall morning long ago,
When I saw a new leaf grow
Upon the old withered bow.

That dear morning when for naught,
By a stove whose flame had died,
A girl in love stood beside
An old man, and his hand sought.

Translations by Manuel A. Tellechea


(More of his poems in Spanish and in English here)

Well Deserved

Neil Gaiman just won the John Newbery Medal - for The Graveyard Book. What a well-deserved honor. The book is lovely, simply wonderful to read.

(I know he's a Brit, but he lives in Minnesota. That qualifies him for the Newbery.)

Happy Birthday, Thomas

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

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

Happy Birthday, Charles

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

Last year you got The Mad Gardener's Song; this year



Bessie's Song to Her Doll


Matilda Jane, you never look
At any toy or picture-book.
I show you pretty things in vain--
You must be blind, Matilda Jane!

I ask you riddles, tell you tales,
But all our conversation fails.
You never answer me again--
I fear you're dumb, Matilda Jane!

Matilda darling, when I call,
You never seem to hear at all.
I shout with all my might and main--
But you're so deaf, Matilda Jane!

Matilda Jane, you needn't mind,
For, though you're deaf and dumb and blind,
There's some one loves you, it is plain--
And that is me, Matilda Jane!

Happy Birthday, Wolfgang

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born today in 1756 in Salzburg.

Monday Science Links

This week's science (a day late, sorry!):

• Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy talks about the methane on Mars story: By now you’ve probably heard the news about Mars: methane gas is being generated on the Red Planet, and the amount varies with season and location. There are really only two ways to make methane that we know of: geologically (volcanoes, chemical changes under the surface, and so on) and biologically (little critters basically farting). Mars is an interesting place, and anytime we find something new and interesting about it, it’s not surprising to see the media covering it. It’s also not surprising to see the scientists involved excited about it. But when that news deals with biology, well, things tend to get a little out of control. Or, as in this case, a lot out of control.


• ERV at erv talks about the immune system and how it fails during AIDS: This is exactly why you do not want 'alternative medicine' quacks treating you when you have a cold, much less HIV/AIDS or cancer-- Even if homeopathy is totally true, Jeremy Sherr doesn't even know the basics of HIV-1 as a virus, and what it does to a patients immune system. If homeopathy could 'activate the immune system', Sherr's treatments would kill his HIV patients even faster.


• Bee at Back Reaction gives us a German-living-in-Canada's look at change you can believe in: I have a complaint. It is impossible these days to live in North America and not be optimistic about the changes the new President of the United States will hopefully initiate, especially for science. These are not easy times for somebody who has pessimism as substantial ingredients in her bloodstream. Psychologists call it “preventive pessimism.” It's essential for my survival. And every time somebody mocks me about it I point out the world needs pessimists. There's too few of us. And we're constantly afraid we'll die out. Currently your local blogging pessimist is wondering what the heck “restoring science to its rightful place” means. Where is the “rightful place” of science? Who decides that? And how is science supposed to get there?


• William at Skiing Mount Improbable posts on geology and the Flood: "Damn you, science. Can't we even keep our big mythical flood?" (shakes fist at lab coat on peg). Or so seem to say creationists around the world, especially when the world produces research which flatly contradicts their view of history, geology, and life on earth.


• David On the Shores of the Dirac Sea posts about the physics of floating: As you might have noticed, some objects float and some others don’t. Here below I have a rendition of a boat and a cube of ice floating.Today, I will go on a bit about flotation. As a matter of fact, some of you might remember a puzzle with an egg I wrote down a while ago. Of course, most of you have probably heard of Archimedes Principle as describing flotation, so I will explain some aspects of how that principle comes about.

Enjoy!

Probably not the reaction they want

I'm fairly sure that the writers and producers of House didn't want me to yell "Yay! Die already!" when they showed previews and Hadley was going into a coma and being blind and everything.

I don't actually know anybody who likes her, though.

Carnival of the Godless

The lastest Carnival of the Godless is up Reduce to Common Sense. Rana's put up a very a nice edition, with rhymes and lots of good godless blogging. (Next time, it's here!)

Happy Birthday, Jules

Today in the Bronx in 1929 Jules Feiffer was born.


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

Carnival of Maryland

The latest edition of the Carnival of Maryland is up at ROTUS. Enjoy!

The Week in Entertainment

Film: Inkheart which I enjoyed. It's been a while since I read the book, but I think they made a good movie out of it. I do have to say, though, that the threat of "You're going to read the Shadow out of the book for me, and it'll eat your mum, and if you don't, I'll kill your mum!" is somewhat ... lacking.

DVD: Quatermass and the Pit. Not at all bad.

TV: Powerpuff Girls Rule! 10th Anniversary - a new episode! YAYAYAYAY! Poor Mojo Jojo singing "Everybody Wants to Rule the World"... My DVR let me down on House, missing the Monday episode (yes, I was watching the PPG!) And The Mentalist's Sunday episode? The DVR recorded a hour's worth of TV - 43 minutes of football and post-game... Grrr. House - Cameron? What the hell is that about? Numb3rs, good as always. Lie to Me - which is nothing like The Mentalist, nothing! - which was okay but has a couple of things that might get very old very fast, like that "radical honesty" guy, who's obnoxious and not even honest, and the whole slo-mo repetition of facial expressions. And it wasn't fun. Patrick Jayne is enjoyable. Oh, well. Leverage continues to entertain.

Read: Whispering to Witches - a pleasant YA that hanges together well and manages not to insult the reader. Finished Unaccustomed Earth - she can write. I must find more of her work.

Happy Birthday, Rab!

Burns Night!

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

Sweet fa's the eve on Craigieburn,
And blythe awakes the morrow;
But a' the pride o' Spring's return
Can yield me nocht but sorrow.

I see the flowers and spreading trees,
I hear the wild birds singing;
But what a weary wight can please,
And Care his bosom wringing!

Fain, fain would I my griefs impart,
Yet dare na for your anger;
But secret love will break my heart,
If I conceal it langer.

If thou refuse to pity me,
If thou shalt love another,
When yon green leaves fade frae the tree,
Around my grave they'll wither.

When words shift

The Washington Post's Oscar story has this headline:


Um, "13 noms"? LOLscar, anyone?

Happy Birthday, Vasily

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

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

Last year I showed you his portrait of the Bronze Horseman - Peter I (the Great) in St Petersburg - and depiction of the arrest of the Boyarina Feodosia Morozova, This year a light-hearted game, Taking of the Snow Fort, and one of his more intimate works, a portrait of Menshikov and his daughters in exile.

the wise trees stand sleeping in the cold

I and the Bird

Argh. I let the deadline slip by and missed being in this edition of I and the Bird. But don't let that make you hesitate one second: Seabrooke of the Marvelous in Nature has created a wonderful, poetic edition for I and the Bird 92. Lots of gorgeous posts for your weekend browsing. Enjoy it. I will.

A New Day

Cold Duck

Gulls on Ice

A small flock of ring-billed gulls on the man-made lake ... don't their feet get cold, I wonder?

Sky Watch: Parfait

more Sky Watchers here

Word(s) fail(s) me

I just attempted to type a sentence about Nino Burjanadze, calling her "Mrs. Burjanadze", and had this bizarre experience:

First, Word's spell checker rejected "Mrs." No, it's not British; it suggested "Mrs." as a replacement. Though if I accepted that suggestion, it kept on rejecting it. I had to go in, erase the period, and let Word correct "Mrs" to "Mrs." before it would accept it.

But then Word informed me cheerfully that "Mrs." was a sentence fragment that I should consider revising.

Bill? This is why people hate your products.

(yes, I usually have this "tool" turned off; the paper I got for correcting had it turned on...)

A matter of perspective

Or at least scale... From Irregular Webcomic!:

A scale model of the Universe is not actually that hard to make. If you make a model the size of a basketball, then to scale everything in the Universe is smaller than an atom, so there's no need to even bother putting it in there.

Happy Birthday, George

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

Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos

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

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

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

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

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

Looking very hard

George Will must have been feeling pretty desperate. Among his comments on the president's speech was this:

"We remain," the president said, "a young nation." Which, even if true, would be no excuse for childishness. And it is not true. The United States is older, as a national polity, than Germany or Italy, among many others.

Oh? Because some nations are younger than we are, we can't be young? Your eight-year-old isn't young because some kids are four?

Puh-leeze.

Happy Birthday, Louis

Today in 1952, Louis Menand was born in Syracuse, New York.

I confess that my favorite thing by him was his book review of Eats, Shoots & Leaves, which begins:

The first punctuation mistake in “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” (Gotham; $17.50), by Lynne Truss, a British writer, appears in the dedication, where a nonrestrictive clause is not preceded by a comma. It is a wild ride downhill from there. “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” presents itself as a call to arms, in a world spinning rapidly into subliteracy, by a hip yet unapologetic curmudgeon, a stickler for the rules of writing. But it’s hard to fend off the suspicion that the whole thing might be a hoax.

The foreword, by Frank McCourt, contains another comma-free nonrestrictive clause (“I feel no such sympathy for the manager of my local supermarket who must have a cellarful of apostrophes he doesn’t know what to do with”) and a superfluous ellipsis. The preface, by Truss, includes a misplaced apostrophe (“printers’ marks”) and two misused semicolons: one that separates unpunctuated items in a list and one that sets off a dependent clause. About half the semicolons in the rest of the book are either unnecessary or ungrammatical, and the comma is deployed as the mood strikes. Sometimes, phrases such as “of course” are set off by commas; sometimes, they are not. Doubtful, distracting, and unwarranted commas turn up in front of restrictive phrases (“Naturally we become timid about making our insights known, in such inhospitable conditions”), before correlative conjunctions (“Either this will ring bells for you, or it won’t”), and in prepositional phrases (“including biblical names, and any foreign name with an unpronounced final ‘s’ ”). Where you most expect punctuation, it may not show up at all: “You have to give initial capitals to the words Biro and Hoover otherwise you automatically get tedious letters from solicitors.”

Parentheses are used, wrongly, to add independent clauses to the ends of sentences: “I bought a copy of Eric Partridge’s Usage and Abusage and covered it in sticky-backed plastic so that it would last a lifetime (it has).” Citation form varies: one passage from the Bible is identified as “Luke, xxiii, 43” and another, a page later, as “Isaiah xl, 3.” The word “abuzz” is printed with a hyphen, which it does not have. We are informed that when a sentence ends with a quotation American usage always places the terminal punctuation inside the quotation marks, which is not so. (An American would not write “Who said ‘I cannot tell a lie?’ ”) A line from “My Fair Lady” is misquoted (“The Arabs learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning”). And it is stated that The New Yorker, “that famously punctilious periodical,” renders “the nineteen-eighties” as the “1980’s,” which it does not. The New Yorker renders “the nineteen-eighties” as “the nineteen-eighties.”

...Some of Truss’s departures from punctuation norms are just British laxness. In a book that pretends to be all about firmness, though, this is not a good excuse. The main rule in grammatical form is to stick to whatever rules you start out with, and the most objectionable thing about Truss’s writing is its inconsistency. Either Truss needed a copy editor or her copy editor needed a copy editor.

You can read the whole review here, and you should, as his discussion of writing

Though she has persuaded herself otherwise, Truss doesn’t want people to care about correctness. She wants them to care about writing and about using the full resources of the language. “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” is really a “decline of print culture” book disguised as a style manual (poorly disguised). Truss has got things mixed up because she has confused two aspects of writing: the technological and the aesthetic.

is well worth your time .

Yep - it's them!

So, I was working on something else and glancing at the parade every now and then - and then, suddenly: Rocky Top!


Obama and the Pride of the Southland Band: two good things that go great together!

In passing

I do feel for the Secret Service guys out there in sub-freezing temperatures with their ungloved hands and their coats open.

A former what?

Randy and a young man named Vince have a misunderstanding on Monk:

"That makes your cousin a former cop shooter."
"A former what?"
"A former cop shooter."
"You mean he used to shoot cops?"
"No. He shot someone who used to be a cop."
"Why didn't you say that?"
"I did. It's the same thing! A former --"
"It's not the same thing at all! It's not even close!"

The captain (mercifully) put an end to it.

Obama's vision includes us

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

(Read the whole speech here)

Yes We Did!

"I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear..."

And now it begins - a long hard job. But with a president who's up to it - and who wants to help us be up to it too.

Scripture tells us

Okay. Who really thought Rick Warren would admit there are non-Christians listening to his prayer? Overtly Christian - "in the name of the one who changed my life, Yeshua, Isa, Jesús, Jesus" (Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish and English) - don't say using Hebrew includes Jews; they don't pray in Jesus' name.

Too bad we didn't get to hear Gene Robinson today - or Sunday, for that matter. (Though you can see it here.)

update: I have had it pointed out to me (over at Slacktivist) that "to evangelical ears" Warren's change from "we pray" to "I pray in the name of the one who changed my life" is very noticeable. It's still a bit overtly and exclusively Christian to my (never were evangelical) ears, but I'm willing to believe that Warren thought he was being inclusive. All in all, I have to admit that he wasn't nearly as bad as I had feared.

But Dr. Lowery won the Inaugural prayer competition hands down. Possibly the whole inaugural day.

A look back...

With just under two hours to go, a look back, courtesy of Harper's Index:

Number of the five directors of the No Child Left Behind reading program with financial ties to a curriculum they developed: 4

Amount by which the federal government has underfunded its estimated cost to implement NCLB: $71,000,000,000

Days after Hurricane Katrina hit that Cheney’s office ordered an electric company to restore power to two oil pipelines: 1

Days after the hurricane that the White House authorized sending federal troops into New Orleans: 4

Portion of the $3.3 billion in federal Hurricane Katrina relief spent by Mississippi that has benefited poor residents: 1/4

Percentage of EPA scientists who say they have experienced political interference with their work since 2002: 60

Number of times FDA officials met with consumer and patient groups as they revised drug-review policy in 2006: 5

Number of times they met with industry representatives: 113

Portion of all U.S. income gains during the Bush Administration that have gone to the top 1 percent of earners: 3/4

Increase since 2000 in the number of Americans living at less than half the federal poverty level: 3,500,000

Percentage change since 2001 in the average amount U.S. workers spend on out-of-pocket medical expenses: +172

Estimated percentage by which Social Security benefits would have declined if Bush’s privatization plan had passed: –15

Percentage change during the first ten months of the Iraq war “surge” in the number of Iraqis detained in U.S.-run prisons: +63

Percentage change in the number of Iraqis aged nine to seventeen detained: +285

Number of all U.S. war veterans who have been denied Veterans Administration health care since 2003: 452,677

Number of eligibility restrictions for admission into the Army that have been loosened since 2003: 9

Percentage change from 2004 to 2007 in the number of Army recruits admitted despite having been charged with a felony: +295

They have more. (Hat tip mxrk.)

So long, George. You won't be missed.

Happy Birthday, Buzz

Today in 1930 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, Buzz Aldrin was born (as "Edwin", but he legally changed it to Buzz, his childhood nickname, later). One of the first men to land on the moon, he was the second to set foot on it. He made many crucial contributions to the space program, including the use of water for neutral-buoyancy training, and coordinate rendezvous.

And when moon hoaxer, conspiracy nut, and stalker Bart Sibrel ambushed him, poking him in the chest with a Bible and calling him "a coward, a liar, and a thief", Buzz Aldrin, 72 at the time, punched him in the face. Sometimes, that's what it takes.

What tomorrow means

Over at Baroque in Hackney is an ex-pat's thoughts on tomorrow - or, rather, on the man becoming a myth before our eyes.

Of course we knew this already. Obama, with one day to go, is becoming all things to all people. He’s not just a guy any more. If you think the message is simple, I guess you’re right. Even the crowds at the concert yesterday - We Are One - represented something monolithic, something that doesn’t admit of much private reflection. But then, this is a public moment. Some of these images reflect that, and others are more private - well, more personal anyway. There is depth in some of the commentary of course, and there will be more over the next four years.

The myth has one more day to gestate. As the scholar Joseph Campbell told us in his book, the hero has a thousand faces. Obama - the man who has been reduced to a sound, to three unusual syllables which sound, perhaps symbolically - homeopathically - magically - Jungianly - like the name of the greatest enemy of all - who by this means alone can be invested with the power to defeat that enemy, other enemies and evil itself - is adopting many of those faces in the eyes of people up and down and across America. And the world, I guess. Our need is so great that he must fill it.

I can tell that because I can feel it, even though I know Obama isn’t going to fill the bottomless void… I mean my God, we’d have played kick the can together if he’d been in Hartford CT or I’d been in Hawaii. In his private school. Which probably means I’d have had to be a boy. And I’d have had to be outside playing kick the can, not inside reading books about clever little kids who grow up to do amazing things. So okay, I probably wouldn’t have played kick the can with him… but, like everyone else, I was sitting there waiting for this to happen.

Our generation has ever experienced anything like this.

Go, read it, look at the pictures, and reflect on what tomorrow means.

All the Verses

Bruce Springsteen and Pete Singer sing "This Land is Your Land" on the Mall.

(They sang all the verses - the sign, the "nobody living can ever stop me", and the relief office.)

A bicentenary: Happy Birthday, Edgar!

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

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

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

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

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

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

(more Poe here)

Monday Science Links

This week's science:

• Dr Don Ringe is posting a series at Language Log on Indo-European roots and historical linguistics. This link goes to "horses, gods, and wheeled vehicles", where you can find others: This started with Don Ringe's guest post "The Linguistic Diversity of Aboriginal Europe". He followed up with a more detailed account of "Horse and wheel in the early history of Indo-European", and an answer to some questions under the title "More on IE wheels and horses", and then this morning's post "Inheritance versus lexical borrowing: a case with decisive sound-change evidence". Readers have added a large number of interesting and provocative comments and questions (110 on the original post alone). As usual, responses are often too long to fit comfortably in the comment format, and our traditional practice has been to respond in follow-up posts where interest and time permit. Continuing that tradition, I've posted below Don's response to a comment by Etienne on Don's follow-up post on the history of the word for horse. Though the background is complex, this fragment of the conversation is quite coherent on its own.


• Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy tells us that Galileo wasn't first to turn a telescope to the skies: One of the most common misconceptions people have about astronomy is that Galileo invented the telescope. We know he didn’t; it had been around for years before he used one. What he did do was make one himself that was a big improvement over what had been done previously, and was among the first to turn it to the skies. But that last part is important: he was among the first. He wasn’t the first person to use the telescope to look at astronomical objects, and he wasn’t even the first to document what he saw!


• Bee at Backreaction posts on the entropy of black holes: These days, everybody is talking about entropy. In fact, there is so much talk about entropy I am waiting for a Hollywood starlet to name her daughter after it. To help that case, today a contribution about the entropy of black holes.


• Chris at Ediacaran suggests a new analogy for the "fitness landscape": In the ongoing Adaptationist v. Pluralist debate, both sides agree on a surprising amount. Both sides agree that there is more to evolution than adaptation by natural selection. However, Adaptationist would argue that adaptation by natural selection is the most important, or even the overwhelming, evolutionary process, and that evolution can be described as climbing Mt. Improbable – with adaptation to environment similar to climbing a fitness landscape peak towards optimal fitness (but please note, never, ever, reaching the top!) I disagree. I think genetic drift accounts for most of the evolution that occurs, and natural selection, while very important – especially in creating diversity – accounts for a smaller percentage. However, both have worked together to produce the diversity of life on Earth. I also have a problem with the Mt Improbable analogy...


• Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science tells us that capuchin monkeys are choosy about the tools they use: From the carpenter choosing the right strength of drill, or the artist selecting the right weight of pencil, humans have a natural talent for picking the right tool for the job. Now, it seems that monkeys are similarly selective about their tools. In the first study of its kind, Elisabetta Visalberghi from the National Research Council, Italy, found that capuchin monkeys are able to pick stones with the right properties for nutcracking. Capuchins often use stones to crack otherwise impenetrable nuts upon hard, flat surfaces, turning innocuous forest objects into their own hammers and anvils. By examining their cracking sites, Visalberghi deduced that the animals were picky about their hammers, for the sites were littered with hard and heavy rocks that weighed as much as 40% of an adult. However, it was entirely possible that the monkeys used any old rocks and those that remained were simply the ones that hadn't eroded yet.

Enjoy!

The Week in Entertainment

Film: I've Loved You For So Long. It was very good. Kristin Scott-Thomas was brilliant, and the supporting cast was excellent as well.

DVD: The fourth season of the new Dr. Who - and what happened? I never saw the episode Midnight before. My DVR didn't record it or anything. Did they not play it here? It's not a particularly objectionable one or anything. How odd.

TV: Psych. "I've been doing a little thing I like to call 'stalling' - and Rutger Hauer calls 'shtahllen'." "Why?" "Because he's Dutch!" I love this show. The Mentalist - Patrick Jayne enjoys his life (on the surface), and Simon Baker has the most engaging, joyful smile. Eleventh Hour - still good - and the same for Leverage.

Read: The Postman by David Brin (for the NL - see here). Voices by Arnaldur Indriðason. Started Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. The first two stories were very good - especially the title story, a nuanced tale of a father and daughter who do not understand each other at all, now that the wife/mother who united them is gone.

Carnivals

Four yummy Carnivals for you (I'm a bit late with one!):

• Humanist Symposium: Presidential Inauguration Edition at the Apostate's Chapel
  
• Carnival of the Liberals: New Year's Edition at Capitol Annex
• Four Stone Hearth at moneduloides
• Skeptics Circle at Bug Girl
  

Definitely enjoy yourself with these great carnivals.

Happy Birthday, Peter Mark

Peter Mark Roget was born today in 1779, in London.

His Thesaurus has been an invaluable tool for many writers - a work of genius. More people need lessons in how to use it, but that's not his fault. For one thing, he didn't intend it to be a dictionary of synonyms, but rather a classification of English's lexicon - "of the words it contains and of the idiomatic combinations peculiar to it, arranged, not in alphabetical order as they are in a dictionary, but according to the ideas which they express."

(image from loltheorists)

It's been going on a while

John Lynch at A Stranger Fruit posts a 1956 ad for Univac. What I noticed was the language in the ad.

You can be sure that, when you install the Univac, you'll get under way faster, surer, and more economically because the System has already handled similar work.

Faster and surer both used as adverbs.

Some will look at that say the rot is older than they thought. But others will wonder what the fuss is all about. 1956 is practically 2006 when it comes to fast and other "flat adverbs" - fast, safe, and others have been adverbs as well as adjectives since before Chaucer. Faste, from Old English fæste, was the adverb and fast, from Old English fæst, the adjective; the loss of short final -e marked the collapse of many once-separate forms (we now retain the "silent e" as an orthographic guide to the pronunciation of the vowel in the preceding syllable, which is why it's "fast" not "faste"). Sure and sur were borrowed into English from French on the same pattern. (Saf (sauf) and safe (saufe) were borrowed the same way, if you're wondering.)

Happy Birthday, AA

Today in London in 1882 AA Milne was born. Author of over 60 "serious" books, all eminently forgettable (and forgotten), his legacy is the four children's books he wrote - two stories, two poetry collections - especially those about Christopher Robin and his animal friends.

I remember (language geek that I am) the first time I realized that Eeyore's name (he's my favorite!) was what a Cockney donkey says: "hee-haw" with dropped H's and that intrusive R at the end!

"Good morning, Eeyore," said Pooh.
"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it is a good morning, which I doubt," said he.
"Why, what's the matter?"
"Nothing, Pooh Bear, nothing. We can't all, and some of us don't. That's all there is to it."
"Can't all what?" said Pooh, rubbing his nose.
"Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush."



Here are Christopher Robin's original toys:


And a poem, Rice Pudding:

What is the matter with Mary Jane?
She's crying with all her might and main,
And she won't eat her dinner - rice pudding again -
What is the matter with Mary Jane?

What is the matter with Mary Jane?
I've promised her dolls and a daisy-chain,
And a book about animals - all in vain -
What is the matter with Mary Jane?

What is the matter with Mary Jane?
She's perfectly well, and she hasn't a pain;
But, look at her, now she's beginning again! -
What is the matter with Mary Jane?

What is the matter with Mary Jane?
I've promised her sweets and a ride in the train,
And I've begged her to stop for a bit and explain -
What is the matter with Mary Jane?

What is the matter with Mary Jane?
She's perfectly well and she hasn't a pain,
And it's lovely rice pudding for dinner again!
What is the matter with Mary Jane?

Happy Birthday, Genndy

Today in Moscow, Russia (then USSR), in 1970 Genndy Tartakovsky was born.