O. M. G.

So I'm working on an assignment and this thing called Mega Snake is on in the background, because Michael Shanks is in it. It's a "Sci-Fi original movie" so I don't have any expectations, let alone high ones, but...

A giant snake attacks a family of some generic Southern (of course) rednecks. (They wanted this to be in Tennessee or North Carolina, since it's Cherokee country, but my god the accents were all over the place, including, improbably for a little town in either of those states, a Jamaican stoner.) Dad yells at Mom and boys to get in the SUV, but of course Mom doesn't have keys, so they end up eaten after the snake eats Dad. Which it does, because instead of getting in the SUV he stands there, yelling at the snake and swiping at it with his spatula. This is a giant snake, mind you, big enough to slurp a man down its mouth pretty quickly. Dad pokes at the snake with what looks like a pool umbrella (I wasn't paying that much attention when Shanks wasn't on the screen) and yells, "This one's for the good old red, white, and blue!"

Do the writers of these things actually think anybody behaves like this? Anybody?

(why I was "watching":)

Happy Birthday, Paul

Paul Krugman was born today in 1953. He's the most recent Nobel Laureate in economics, and you can find his blog, the Conscience of a Liberal, right here.

Carnival of the Liberals and the Godless

Yes - it's the extra-special twofer - godless liberals - and they're blogging!

The Carnival of the Liberals is up at The Lay Scientist. It's a great edition and not Obama-dominated, which might be because our fine host is British... Definitely check out the best of the past fortnight's liberal blogging. (The next edition is right here. Use this form to submit your entry, and I'll see you on March 11.)

The Carnival of the Godless is The Atheist Blogger - it's less discriminating and one of mine is there. It's (otherwise?) chock-full of godless blogging, so definitely give it a go, too.

Yes, he is kinda

xkcd nails my objection to The Princess Bride (select image to enlarge)



mouseover: Inigo/Buttercup 4eva <3

Sky Watch: Old moon

Last week the moon was just above the trees as dawn came on. The faint shadow of the new moon can be seen, clasped in the old moon's arms...





more Sky Watchers here

The Jindal question

Over at archy John McKay asks the most important Jindal question. Don't be misled by his tagging it "cheap shots" - this is crucial.

crackle

my hand down her back
blue spark and crackle follow
cat fur in winter

Happy Birthday, Johnny

	Born today in 1932, one of the greatest American musicians of the 20th century, the Man in Black, Johnny Cash. Grammys crowned his career in its twilight and they were well earned. I've said this before but it bears repeating: if you haven't listened to these albums, you must. They're an astounding collection of songs from gospel to rock to Nine Inch Nails, and they're all Cash. They're all great. Some of them will make you laugh, and some will break your heart.

Happy Birthday-ish, Kit!

We don't know what day Christopher Marlowe was born - but he was christened on this day in 1564, in Canterbury, England. A poet, dramatist, and spy, Marlowe is well-known today, eclipsed by that other author born that year, that William Shakespeare fellow. He died at 29, stabbed through the eye in what might have been a bar-room brawl or might have been a hired killing...

Izaak Walton, in The Compleat Angler mentioned "that smooth song which was made by Kit Marlow, now at least fifty years ago" and Shakespeare quoted it in "The Merry Wives of Windsor":

Come live with me, and be my love;
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair-lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy-buds,
With coral clasps and amber-studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherd-swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

Find all Marlowe on line at the Perseus Project.

Because it works so well

Jindal on health care - and remember, this is the official Republican position now:

Republicans believe in a simple principle: No American should have to worry about losing their health coverage -- period. We stand for universal access to affordable health care coverage. What we oppose is universal government-run health care. Health care decisions should be made by doctors and patients, not by government bureaucrats.

Three points jump out.

1. No American should have to worry about losing their health coverage. You bums, unemployed losers, and poor folks who don't have it now, tough luck.

2. Health care decisions should be made by doctors and patients. Unless of course it's some procedure we morally disapprove of. Then we'll drag your case through Congress and up to the Supreme Court if we feel like it.

3. Health care decisions should be made ... not by government bureaucrats. Because neutral government bureaucrats, whose job is just to make sure your doctor gets paid, won't do as good a job as some guy in an insurance company, whose job is to spend as little money as he possibly can - zero being the optimum.

Somehow, no one blinks when lawyers run ads pointing out that the insurance companies aren't looking out for you in car wrecks, but in health care? And why are government bureaucrats (like the ones administering Medicare) so much worse than insurance bureaucrats? I've had to switch doctors five times in eight years because they keep "leaving the plan" as the insurance company puts it, blithely assigning me a new doctor I've never heard of. Last time, the guy's office was over an hour away. That works so well...

I and the Bird

A late announcement: I and the Bird at The Birder's Report. My pics from Washington state made the carnival.

Krugman on public goods and government (and Jindal)

This is Paul Krugman earlier today. It's short, and it's meaty, and it's true. So I'm giving it to you to read:

What should government do? A Jindal meditation

What is the appropriate role of government?

Traditionally, the division between conservatives and liberals has been over the role and size of the welfare state: liberals think that the government should play a large role in sanding off the market economy’s rough edges, conservatives believe that time and chance happen to us all, and that’s that.

But both sides, I thought, agreed that the government should provide public goods — goods that are nonrival (they benefit everyone) and nonexcludable (there’s no way to restrict the benefits to people who pay.) The classic examples are things like lighthouses and national defense, but there are many others. For example, knowing when a volcano is likely to erupt can save many lives; but there’s no private incentive to spend money on monitoring, since even people who didn’t contribute to maintaining the monitoring system can still benefit from the warning. So that’s the sort of activity that should be undertaken by government.

So what did Bobby Jindal choose to ridicule in this response to Obama last night? Volcano monitoring, of course.

And leaving aside the chutzpah of casting the failure of his own party’s governance as proof that government can’t work, does he really think that the response to natural disasters like Katrina is best undertaken by uncoordinated private action? Hey, why bother having an army? Let’s just rely on self-defense by armed citizens.

The intellectual incoherence is stunning. Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.

Happy Birthday, George

George Harrison was born today. I always liked him best (I screamed "George!", or would have had I ever gone to a concert) and post-Beatles, I found him the most engaging, talented, and consistent of them all. His later albums are good - his very last one I reviewed like this when it came out

Brainwashed I always liked George best, and this album is probably the best one. It's pure George, the man who couldn't tell the difference between a hit song and a metaphysical speculation. Marwa Blues showcases his guitar playing, and his voice rarely sounded better than it does on Any Road and I'll Never Get Over You. And he and Dhani chanting the Naamah Parvati at the end of the album -- the perfect way to say 'goodbye, George...'

I got a double cd of Live in Japan (which is an energetic performance) and Beware of ABKCO!, (which is an engaging and sometimes odd compilation of acoustic backing and demo tracks, different looks at old favorites) put out in Russia. Live in Japan has 19 tracks, and ABKCO has 15. But the first cd has 21 tracks - all of ABKCO and six tracks from Live in Japan, and the second finishes up Japan. On an mp3 player that doesn't matter, but it's weird nonetheless.

I have quite a bit of his stuff, including the wonderful Concert for George ... He went too young, and I miss him. But thanks to technology, we'll always have his music.

OSI: Twilight

Three haiku for this week ... they do not go together.

Noon blinds us with all
But midnight shows us nothing:
Twilight is our friend


in the grey half-light
nothing is just as it seems
neither good nor bad


in the twilight time
sunlight fading or coming
one single star shines


One Single Impression:
more poems

What week?

I was flipping through the channels and heard Donny Osmond (did you know he was hosting a game show? I did not) say "It is so punk week here on Pyramid!"

WTF? (Can I say that about Donny Osmond?)

Oh. "Soap hunk week."

The Jesus Jinx?

So the woman's going for $1,000,000 on Wheel of Fortune, and her mother, holding the million-dollar card, feels compelled to say, "I just feel, with Jesus anything is possible."

The woman didn't win the million. She didn't even win the bonus round. Not one of her letters was even in the puzzle.

Maybe her mom will contemplate this: maybe Jesus doesn't like it when you take his name in vain?

Duck Duck ... Heron?

Happy Birthday, W.E.B.

Born today in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in 1868, W.E.B. DuBois. He went to Fisk University in Nashville and then to Harvard, where he was the first African-American to get a Ph.D. He taught sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, and he carried out the first serious sociological study of African-Americans, which showed that poverty and crime in black communities were a result of racial barriers in education and employment. In 1909, he founded NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

"The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression."

Monday Science Links

This week's heaping helping of science - Now with EXTRA SCIENCE!

• John Hawks (finally) posts on sequencing the Neandertal genome: Paleoanthropology is a science that generates huge public interest. But it gives very few chances for public participation. Those of us who are close to paleoanthropology know how much our science is driven by good ideas from many other fields. The pathways by which those insights enter our science tend to be highly constrained -- radiocarbon dating, scanning electron microscopy, isotopic analysis of enamel, and now genetics have all been brought into paleoanthropology by extremely skilled scientists from outside the field. I think that the Neandertal genome has the potential of breaking new ground. One year from now, there will be high school students working with sequences from the Neandertal genome. Who knows what they will discover? I just think that is tremendously exciting. For the first time, the primary data of paleoanthropology will be available to everyone.


• Darren at Tetrapod Zoology posts on kiwi weirdness: Why post a picture of a kiwi neck? Because it's so frikkin' weird, that's why. The neck vertebrae of kiwi look very broad and robust for a bird, and I was hoping that these characteristics might have fooled you into thinking that you were looking at a baby apatosaur neck or something... Mivart (1877) provided a very good description of ratite vertebral anatomy and described how Apteryx 'differs from all [other ratites] in the greater relative stoutness of the neck and production of its processes'.
  
• ps - he follows this up 200 years of kiwis
  


• At Space Weather is a page on Comet Lulin: "I observed comet Lulin before dawn this morning, Feb. 17th, and I found it in an instant using 10x50 binoculars," says Martin Mc Kenna of Maghera, N. Ireland. "The comet was very bright and large with a coma 20 arcminutes in diameter. Despite the glare of the last quarter Moon, I was very impressed to see the comet easily with the naked eye with even a hint of green colour. From a dark country site, Lulin should be an easy naked-eye object, a view which can only get better at close approach to Earth."


• Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy asks what a lunar eclipse looks like on the moon: A lunar eclipse is when the Earth passes between the Sun and Moon, casting a shadow on the lunar surface. From the Earth, we see a circular bite taken out of the Moon, a dark arc slowly growing, mimicking the crescent Moon shape. But what does it look like from the Moon? Well, if you were standing there, looking around, you’d see it grow darker, the landscape around you enshrouded in shadow. But if you looked up… you might see this: (tres cool picture, you must go and see).
  
• (and follow that up with video from Kaguya)
  


• At Playing Chess with Pigeons, Troy takes on Answers in Genesis's objection to saying birds and dinosaurs are related: We find still more creationist ignorance about basic zoological facts, this time from Dr. David Menton of Answers in Genesis. AiG recently republished on their website a Menton piece from last year attacking the evolutionary relationship between dinosaurs and birds. Often my first instinct when I run across these things is to launch onto a point by point refutation but I am going to restrain myself this time and simply highlight one rather obvious error in Dr. Menton’s article that in my opinion should cast doubt on anything else he has to say on the subject (especially since he claims to be an anatomist).
  

Enjoy!

Happy Birthday, Sam

Today in 1633 Samuel Pepys was born. Well known for his diary, Pepys was a Londoner to the bone, rarely leaving the city, and a civil servant who helped shape England's navy. His diary, covering only six years of his life, was abandoned by him when he began to fear the loss of his sight - the work of keeping it up threatened blindness, and so he stopped and gave it to his college - Magdalen at Cambridge, where it remains to this day (and where I got to see it a couple of years ago!). As the College says,

Pepys's diary is not so much a record of events as a re-creation of them. Not all the passages are as picturesque as the famous set pieces in which he describes Charles II's coronation or the Great Fire of London, but there is no entry which does not, in some degree, display the same power of summoning back to life the events it relates.

Pepys's skill lay in his close observation and total recall of detail. It is the small touches that achieve the effect. Another is the freshness and flexibility of the language. Pepys writes quickly in shorthand and for himself alone. The words, often piled on top of each other without much respect for formal grammar, exactly reflect the impressions of the moment. Yet the most important explanation is, perhaps, that throughout the diary Pepys writes mainly as an observer of people. It is this that makes him the most human and accessible of diarists, and that gives the diary its special quality as a historical record.

Here's the entry for 23 Feb in the "current" year of the diary (a hypertext, annotated version is here) (note on the date - if you follow the link you'll see it says 1665/1666 - this is because until 1752 the new year began on March 25 in England, slow to adopt the new calendar, so for Sam himself it was still 1665):

Up betimes, and out of doors by 6 of the clock, and walked (W. Howe with me) to my Lord Sandwich’s, who did lie the last night at his house in Lincoln’s Inne Fields. It being fine walking in the morning, and the streets full of people again. There I staid, and the house full of people come to take leave of my Lord, who this day goes out of towne upon his embassy towards Spayne. And I was glad to find Sir W. Coventry to come, though I know it is only a piece of courtshipp. I had much discourse with my Lord, he telling me how fully he leaves the King his friend and the large discourse he had with him the other day, and how he desired to have the business of the prizes examined before he went, and that he yielded to it, and it is done as far as it concerns himself to the full, and the Lords Commissioners for prizes did reprehend all the informers in what related to his Lordship, which I am glad of in many respects. But we could not make an end of discourse, so I promised to waite upon [him] on Sunday at Cranborne, and took leave and away hence to Mr. Hales’s with Mr. Hill and two of the Houblons, who come thither to speak with me, and saw my wife’s picture, which pleases me well, but Mr. Hill’s picture never a whit so well as it did before it was finished, which troubled me, and I begin to doubt the picture of my Lady Peters my wife takes her posture from, and which is an excellent picture, is not of his making, it is so master-like. I set them down at the ‘Change and I home to the office, and at noon dined at home and to the office again. Anon comes Mrs. Knipp to see my wife, who is gone out, so I fain to entertain her, and took her out by coach to look my wife at Mrs. Pierce’s and Unthanke’s, but find her not. So back again, and then my wife comes home, having been buying of things, and at home I spent all the night talking with this baggage, and teaching her my song of “Beauty retire,” which she sings and makes go most rarely, and a very fine song it seems to be. She also entertained me with repeating many of her own and others’ parts of the play-house, which she do most excellently; and tells me the whole practices of the play-house and players, and is in every respect most excellent company. So I supped, and was merry at home all the evening, and the rather it being my birthday, 33 years, for which God be praised that I am in so good a condition of healthe and estate, and every thing else as I am, beyond expectation, in all. So she to Mrs. Turner’s to lie, and we to bed. Mightily pleased to find myself in condition to have these people come about me and to be able to entertain them, and have the pleasure of their qualities, than which no man can have more in the world.

Find the whole of Pepys' diary, day by day with hyperlinked annotations here, and in plain text here at Project Gutenberg (also downloadable).

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: Mama Mia! - I'm not sure what I expected from this, but it was fun enough. Pierce Brosnan doesn't sing very well, but that didn't really matter.

TV: House - he loves to mess with people, doesn't he? It's even really fun to watch when you don't care about them, so yay for messing with "Foreteen"! The Mentalist - I can't help it. That smile - he's just adorable. This show is a lot of fun. Eleventh Hour. The doctor says "She suffered spontaneous blindness, but nothing in her medical history relates to it." Rachel says: "Her husband had the same thing and it cost him his life." Yeah, but he was flying a helicopter when he went blind and he crashed. A bit different, wouldn't you say? Also, Rachel? When the game ranger guy says the federal government doesn't care about the environment "unless the bottom line is affected", he doesn't mean the FBI. So you don't have to chirp up, "We're not the enemy, officer." I really liked the guy's jaundiced look at her; nice touch. OTOH, I'm sick of unborn babies as medical plot devices to make us all worried about whether mom will live or not. Just once I'd like to see the baby die. Until that happens, it's fake suspense and annoying as hell. Nice show, though; this Hood's more approachable than Patrick Stewart was, I think.

Read: Finished The Interpreter of Maladies. and then The Namesake. If you haven't read Jhumpa Lahiri, do so.

Always Bluejays

Carnival of Maryland #53

The latest edition of the Carnival of Maryland is up at the Political Octagon. As always, this carnival is a round-up of the best in the Land of Pleasant Living by bloggers who share only their residence. There's a lot to read here, and Octagon Ref has done a fine job. So head on over; there's bound to be something there for all tastes.

The next Carnival of Maryland will be held at Insane Baltimore in two weeks. Submit your posts using this form, and/or drop by next time!

Compromise with nothing

There is a very strange op-ed piece in today's New York Times. Called A Reconciliation on Gay Marriage and written by David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch, it offers a "sensitive compromise" that "can avert a major conflict down the road":

Congress would bestow the status of federal civil unions on same-sex marriages and civil unions granted at the state level, thereby conferring upon them most or all of the federal benefits and rights of marriage. But there would be a condition: Washington would recognize only those unions licensed in states with robust religious-conscience exceptions, which provide that religious organizations need not recognize same-sex unions against their will. The federal government would also enact religious-conscience protections of its own. All of these changes would be enacted in the same bill.

I find this enormously puzzling. Not because I disagree, but because, to the best of my knowledge, no one is out there demanding that "religious organizations ... recognize same-sex unions against their will".

I mean, who the hell ever put a gun to the head of the Catholic Church and demanded that they recognize the marriages of divorced people? Or extreme fundamentalists and inter-racial or inter-denominational marriages? Civil marriages are frequently between those who some church or another won't marry.

This dog won't hunt.

Granted, this oddly worded bill might satisfy Mormons (and others) who spent so freaking much money to defeat gay marriage in California. But no one was requiring them to let gays into the Temple. They're free to discriminate in their religion as much as they like. And they still went insane over the notion that gays could have civil rights.

This bill won't help, because this bill would force "religious organizations" to face facts. Let just one denomination (Episcopalians, I'm looking at you - and cheering a little, as long as you don't cave to the Africans) start having gay weddings with priests and all - real gay weddings, not just "blessings of unions"- and the rest of the religious will have to admit their bigotry; and the way they're whining about people making their donations public on Prop 8, it's pretty clear many of them want to be bigots in secret.

I have said for a long time that "marriage" should be reserved to the churches and have no civil rights attached to it. So I'm not in principle opposed to letting churches control who they call married and who they don't. I'm just opposed to letting them decide who we, the state, does.

Happy Birthday, Vincent

In 1911 a slim, red-headed 19-year-old Maine girl got up and read her contest-winning poem, Renasence (find it here), in Camden, Maine. She couldn't afford college, but the poem inspired a woman in the audience to pay her way to Vassar. That girl was Edna St Vincent Millay, born this day in 1892. An icon of the Jazz Age and a rock-star poet, Vincent (as she preferred to be called, hating the name 'Edna' - she was named for the hospital where her uncle escaped death just before her birth) lived in Greenwich Village and Paris, and reveled in the Bohemian life style (perhaps you could say she truly was a Mainiac). After her marriage she lived in Austerlitz, New York, until her death in 1950; the farm, Steepletop, is now a writers colony. She was the first woman to win a Pulitzer, and the second to win the Frost prize.

Probably her best known poem is "First Fig", not least because it's short enough to memorize easily:

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
It gives a lovely light!

And here are two more:

City Trees

THE trees along this city street
    Save for the traffic and the trains,
Would make a sound as thin and sweet
    As trees in country lanes.

And people standing in their shade
    Out of a shower, undoubtedly
Would hear such music as is made
    Upon a country tree.

Oh, little leaves that are so dumb
    Against the shrieking city air,
I watch you when the wind has come,--
    I know what sound is there.


We talks of taxes...

WE talk of taxes, and I call you friend;
Well, such you are, -- but well enough we know
How thick about us root, how rankly grow
Those subtle weeds no man has need to tend,
That flourish through neglect, and soon must send
Perfume too sweet upon us and overthrow
Our steady senses; how such matters go
We are aware, and how such matters end.
Yet shall be told no meagre passion here;
With lovers such as we forevermore
Isolde drinks the draught, and Guinevere
Receives the Table's ruin through her door,
Francesca, with the loud surf at her ear,
Lets fall the coloured book upon the floor.

(More Millay is here)

Happy Birthday, Edward

Born today in 1925, in Chicago, Edward Gorey, master of the disturbingly macabre illustration and story.
I definitely recommend you read his three Amphigorey collections.



The "life is sweet" sweatshirt gets a lot of grins and compliments.


And by all means, take this quiz: Which Horrible (Edward) Gorey Death will you die?

Great Backyard Bird Count - Results

	The Great Backyard Bird Count was a tremendous success! Did you submit a list? I did. 274,998 birds were reported in Maryland, a total of 153 species. Columbia led the way with 115 checklists submitted. In second place was Ellicott City with 95. Laurel (where I live) had 29, and College Park (where I work) had 15. As for numbers of species, Cambridge is the clear winner with 75, with runners up of Annapolis 68, Ellicott City 66, and Ocean City 65 (Laurel had 49, and College Park 55). The most common bird? No surprises here: grackles, with over 60,000. Second place goes to the Canada goose with over 44,000 reported. (I used to think they all went south for the winter!) Ring-billed gulls, starlings, and mourning doves round out the top five. I see someone reported a Greater White-fronted Goose - gotta wonder if they fell for the same lookalike I did or if they really saw one of these rare visitors? There are a number of single sightings - from common redpoll and snow bunting to Iceland gull and golden eagle. You can explore the Maryland reports here; if you're not from Maryland, or you want a smaller place, you can search by place here. Or, you can go here to search for your favorite bird.

OSI: Spectral

morning mists rise up
from lakes and grass the earth's bones
yield her spectral breath


One Single Impression:
more poems

Sky Watch: Here comes the sun

The sun is slowly rising, and a small cloud just catching its rays drifts past Saturn still in darkness





more Sky Watchers here

Happy Birthday, Wystan

Born today in York, England, in 1907, W.H. Auden. Here are two of his poems - most are too long for posting here. The first is short and pithy, the second explores in three different styles the death of Yeats; from the first part comes this line that has always stuck in my mind: "What instruments we have agree / The day of his death was a dark cold day."

Epitaph on a Tyrant

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

And this triple verse In Memory of W. B. Yeats

I

He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly     accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.

What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

II

    You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
    The parish of rich women, physical decay,
    Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
    Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
    For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
    In the valley of its making where executives
    Would never want to tamper, flows on south
    From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
    Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
    A way of happening, a mouth.

III

        Earth, receive an honoured guest:
        William Yeats is laid to rest.
        Let the Irish vessel lie
        Emptied of its poetry.

        In the nightmare of the dark
        All the dogs of Europe bark,
        And the living nations wait,
        Each sequestered in its hate;

        Intellectual disgrace
        Stares from every human face,
        And the seas of pity lie
        Locked and frozen in each eye.

        Follow, poet, follow right
        To the bottom of the night,
        With your unconstraining voice
        Still persuade us to rejoice;

        With the farming of a verse
        Make a vineyard of the curse,
        Sing of human unsuccess
        In a rapture of distress;

        In the deserts of the heart
        Let the healing fountain start,
        In the prison of his days
        Teach the free man how to praise.

Find more Auden at Poetry.org

Referents Lost

(I'm not entirely satisfied with this. The third stanza's ... not right yet. But I thought I'd post it anyway.

Referents Lost

The benches sat on the fat slope
facing the concert that is us:
the blink of Canary Wharf,
the London Eye's diamond necklace.
We read them, and flinched, and laughed.
-- from "The Bog of Despair", Katy Evans-Bush

They climbed up all the way and then looked down
On "the jeweller's-window view of London"-town,
The Eye, a diamond necklace, and then they note
"The blink of Canary Wharf”: that’s what she wrote.

The metaphor is apt - the gleam, the light,
The glint of jewels – the city in the night.
The metaphor is apt, and yet on me
It’s lost. It doesn’t work. I can’t quite see.

I know the Eye from films and once walked by
And looked up at it – diamonds in the sky.
So too the Heath, the climb, the lights, the shine:
It mostly works. I guess the problem’s mine.

The trouble is, Canary Wharf to me
Is Cybermen, is battle, death and victory,
And Ianto's first and tragic love, whose lack
Led him to despair, and treachery - and Jack.

Happy Birthday, Ansel

Ansel Adams was born today in San Francisco in 1902. This photograph, The Tetons and the Snake River, is one of the 116 images recorded on the Voyager Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecraft. These images were selected to convey information about humans, plants and animals, and geological features of the Earth to a possible alien civilization.

Happy Birthday, Nicolaus

Born today in 1473, the originator of the theory which bears his name - the Copernican, or heliocentric, system, which challenged and then (for most people) replaced the geocentric system, which held that the earth was the center and everything revolves around it. Nicolaus Copernicus was a brilliant polymath who merely dabbled in astronomy, and yet he removed the geocentered (and anthrocentered) universe from the realm of science.

He died in 1543, apparently, of a stroke, and legend has it that he regained consciousness in time for the first printed copy of his, if you'll pardon the pun, revolutionary work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) to be placed into his hands, allowing him to see his life's work before he died. It's only a legend, but it's a nice one, isn't it?

(painting by Jan Matejko, displayed in the Nicholaus Copernicus Museum in Frombork)

Happy Birthday, Amy

Today is Amy Tan's birthday; she was born in 1952 in Oakland. She's written several books, all good - The Kitchen God's Wife is one of my favorite novels.

Happy Birthday, Audre

Audre Lorde was born today in New York City in 1924. She worked in a series of low-paying jobs between high-school and her eventual attendance at college, earning a BA in literature and philosophy from Hunter in 1959 and an MLS from Columbia University in 1960. Being gay, she was unable to find a home in the Harlem Writers Guild - being gay and black and a woman, she was an outsider in many ways, and her collection of essays "Sister Outsider" is widely acclaimed and taught. Here are two of her poems.

Who said it was simple?

There are so many roots to the tree of anger
that sometimes the branches shatter
before they bear.
Sitting in Nedicks
the women rally before they march
discussing the problematic girls
they hire to make them free.
An almost white counterman passes
a waiting brother to serve them first
and the ladies neither notice nor reject
the slighter pleasures of their slavery.
But I who am bound by my mirror
as well as my bed
see causes in color
as well as sex

and sit here wondering
which me will survive
all these liberations.


Hanging Fire

I am fourteen
and my skin has betrayed me
the boy I cannot live without
still sucks his tumb
in secret
how come my knees are
always so ashy
what if I die
before the morning comes
and momma's in the bedroom
with the door closed.

I have to learn how to dance
in time for the next party
my room is too small for me
suppose I de before graduation
they will sing sad melodies
but finally
tell the truth aout me
There is nothing I want to do
and too much
that has to be done
and momma's in the bedroom
with the door closed.

Nobody even stops to think
about my side of it
I should have been on Math Team
my marks were better than his
why do I have to be
the one
wearing braces
I have nothing to wear tomorrow
will I live long enough
to grow up
and momma's in the bedroom
with the door closed.

(more poems and info on Audre Lorde here)

Unconnected - again

Sigh.

I don't know what's wrong with the Connect-a-Ride bus service in Laurel. No, strike that: I do know what's wrong. I just don't know why.

1.64 miles.

That's how far I had to walk this morning in the freezing cold to get to my Metro bus stop. Because the B bus did not come. Again. Nor did the Laurel-bound J bus. So I was an hour late to work. (I'm lucky; if I'm not teaching, I can be late; we have flexible work schedules. Lots of people don't.)

This is hardly the first time. Last time I posted, the fare was $1.75. Now it's $2.00 - and no transfers to Metro since Connect-a-Ride decided not to go with SmarTrip - and they still can't manage to get drivers. Last month, the day it snowed? The B bus didn't come for over 4 hours. No, I didn't wait for that long; my department had a three-hour delayed arrival, so I went out at 9 o'clock. No bus. Okay, maybe it's running late, but this guy who rides the 6 o'clock with me in the morning showed up walking to catch the inbound J. We head across the street and make it to the mall (that time of morning the Metro 87 isn't running) and I catch the G down to College Park at 10 ... and there is still no B bus.

Today it wasn't that bad. The 7 o'clock B bus did pass me, though I wouldn't have caught an earlier Metro bus if I'd waited for it. I can understand why the bus company is jacking fares up; they're losing riders. Four this morning; three others walked to that Metro stop, too. More permanently, two people who used to take the B bus to the Metro now have their spouses (I presume) drop them at the Metro stop or Park-and-Ride lot. And they're losing riders because they can't keep drivers. Or can't make them come to work on time. Or can't have stand-bys.

You know ... that 1.64 miles? In better weather, that walk will probably do me good. And I won't even have to leave any earlier.

Another iffy Jeopardy! clue

"The sons of the squaw on the hippopotamus are equal to the sons of the squaws on the other two hides" is not a mnemonic for the Pythagorean Theorem. It's a JOKE.

The other answers in the category were Roy G Biv (spectrum); Africa's big but Asia is bigger (elephants - though I don't think it's accurate); R'n'B (rook-knight-bishop); MMVENUSJ (planet size) - now, those are mnemonics.

In space, there are no roads

Over at Polyglot Conspiracy, Lauren posted on someone's saying Yesterday we posted a question sent to us by a couple of grad students who were afraid their proffies sometimes overshared a bit - a little bit too much TMI. She discusses the well-known effect of the last word of the acronym being repeated (ATM machine, for example), but this instance is where the beginning of the acronym clearly isn't being conceived of as its component words: no one would write "too much too much information" (though I could see someone saying it, with a special stress on the final phrase and even, probably, air quotes).

Today a colleague found a perfect example of an acronym losing its individual words' meanings, this time in Russian. In an Izvestia story about the satellite collision, the collision is repeatedly - and not for humorous effect - referred to as a космический ДТП (kosmicheskiy DTP). ДТП stands for дорожно-транспортное происшествие (dorozhno-transportnoe proisshestvie), literally "road-transportation incident" and is the standard phrase for "traffic accident". So this is a "space traffic accident", except that literally it's a "space road transportation incident".

Happy Birthday, Andre (Alice)

And one more birthday: Alice Mary Norton, who wrote as Andre Norton and also Andrew North, was born today in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1912. Norton wrote more than 130 novels (and I think I've read them all) in her 70 years as a writer, as well as nearly a hundred short stories. She was the first woman to receive the Grand Master Award from the World Science Fiction Society. A month before her death in March 2005 at age 93, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America created the Andre Norton Award for an outstanding work of science fiction or fantasy for young adults. Her books were among the first science fiction I ever read as child, and I still like them - especially the Solar Queen novels and the Beast Master books (no real relation to the movies no matter what they say). Her books were the first ones I remember featuring non-white and non-male protagonists, too.

Happy Birthday, Banjo

Today Andrew Barton Paterson, known as Banjo to his readers, was born in Narrambla, New South Wales, 1864. I expect most Americans only know "The Man from Snowy River", but he also wrote the words to "Waltzing Matilda". For a time this prolific poet was one of the most popular in the English-speaking world. And look - the Australians even put him on their money! Many of his works are here, and here are a couple of my favorites:

The Wind's Message

There came a whisper down the Bland between the dawn and dark,
Above the tossing of the pines, above the river's flow;
It stirred the boughs of giant gums and stalwart ironbark;
It drifted where the wild ducks played amid the swamps below;
It brought a breath of mountain air from off the hills of pine,
A scent of eucalyptus trees in honey-laden bloom;
And drifting, drifting far away along the southern line
It caught from leaf and grass and fern a subtle strange perfume.

It reached the toiling city folk, but few there were that heard --
The rattle of their busy life had choked the whisper down;
And some but caught a fresh-blown breeze with scent of pine that stirred
A thought of blue hills far away beyond the smoky town;
And others heard the whisper pass, but could not understand
The magic of the breeze's breath that set their hearts aglow,
Nor how the roving wind could bring across the Overland
A sound of voices silent now and songs of long ago.

But some that heard the whisper clear were filled with vague unrest;
The breeze had brought its message home, they could not fixed abide;
Their fancies wandered all the day towards the blue hills' breast,
Towards the sunny slopes that lie along the riverside.
The mighty rolling western plains are very fair to see,
Where waving to the passing breeze the silver myalls stand,
But fairer are the giant hills, all rugged though they be,
From which the two great rivers rise that run along the Bland.

Oh, rocky range, and rugged spur, and river running clear
That swings around the sudden bends with swirl of snow-white foam,
Though we, your sons, are far away, we sometimes seem to hear
The message that the breezes bring to call the wanderers home.
The mountain peaks are white with snow that feeds a thousand rills,
Along the river-banks the maize grows tall on virgin land,
And we shall live to see once more those sunny southern hills,
And strike once more the bridle-track that leads along the Bland.

Clancy of the Overflow

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,
He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,
Just on spec, addressed as follows, "Clancy, of The Overflow"

And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,
(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar)
Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
"Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are."

* * * * * * * * *

In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
Gone a-droving "down the Cooper" where the Western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars.

* * * * * * * * *

I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the buses making hurry down the street,
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me
As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,
Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal --
But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of The Overflow.

Happy Birthday, Ruth

Ruth Rendell, who also writes as Barbara Vine, and is called The Queen of Crime, was born today in London, England, in 1930. I adore her Wexford novels.

Fight or flight: Faith

I just watched Quatermass (aka Quatermass IV and, in its edited theatrical version, The Quatermass Conclusion, made in 1978) and I was struck by Joe Kapp, the second male lead, the "sidekick" scientist to Professor Quatermass's hero.

If you haven't seen it, a brief recap may be in order. At the end of the 20th century, order broke down. The cities are dangerous to live in, particularly in smaller countries such as the UK but even in the US and USSR (it still exists). Armed gangs rule the cities - in the UK they're the Blue Force (interestingly, all of them are white and male) and the Baders (or possibly Badders), based on the Bader-Meinhof gang (and, interestingly, multiethnic and containing both sexes) - and huge groups of young people wander the countryside chanting and looking for their new home. These are the Planet People, and they believe they're going to another, new and unspoiled planet, though they're unclear on how. Quatermass comes out of retirement to appear on a program celebrating a US/USSR space hook-up, but all he's really interested in is finding his lost granddaughter. He's attacked by a gang - he was so out of touch he didn't know they existed - and is rescued by Joe Kapp, who's to be on the same program. But what they witness is the destruction of both space ships. Planet People begin congregating at Neolithic sites and are, one might say, raptured away - the "lovely lightning" descends from the sky and they are all taken off. A second occurrence at a small stone circle near Kapp's observatory results in his wife and children being taken, which causes him to break down for a time. The sites begin expanding, the vanishings get huger, and Quatermass decides that some alien force is harvesting the youth of the world for its own purposes. He, assisted by a recovered Kapp, the government of Britain, a Soviet scientist, and a handful of elderly - thus immune - Brits, set a trap - a 35 kiloton focussed nuclear bomb (35KT! Oh, the 70s... couldn't they imagine a bigger bomb than that?) - to warn the reaper away from Earth. SPOILER - highlight to reveal:At the end of the film, the trap works, and Quatermass is killed in the blast along with his subplot missing granddaughter.

Joe Kapp (played by Simon MacCorkindale in a tousled dark wig) is a young radio-astronomer with a wife and two daughters. In this picture, he's confronting a Planet Person, with Quatermass in the background (still confused).

An IMDB commenter from Australia describes Kapp thus:

Simon MacCorkindale, an actor who seemed to be on top of his game at this time, ably plays Quatermass's sidekick, Joe Kapp. Never the safest thing to be in any Quatermass serial, Kapp is taken through the emotional wringer in ways too horrible for a husband and father to bear, before facing the fate of sidekicks before him.

("This is one liftoff I really want to see," Kapp says to the Planet People, but he does see it, and of course wishes he hadn't...)

But what I found fascinating about Kapp was that he is a Jew.

He identifies himself as a Jew, to start with, and he wears a Star of David around his neck. Other than that, there's not much to suggest his Jewishness. Only in three scenes does it come out, though it's not to be missed when it does.

At one point his wife brings out the menorah, though they don't say anything while she lights it, or afterwards. It's not a feast - his Clare is trying to comfort them after the first touch of dread - and in fact, it's hardly a religious ritual at all. Entering the house after the events at Ringstone Round, Kapp sees the menorah on the table. He says to Quatermass, "Candles... she's got the candles out. We're not very religious, but every once in a while... Yes, tonight. The old Jewish thing... Always concentrated on the home - a cozy ritual to make everything safe... There should be wine set ready. My old man was always a stickler for the details." She lights the candles, and then they eat. A cozy ritual, not a real religious one, but certainly grounded in religion. Still, no prayers, just the small symbolism of the candle...

Once he uses a Yiddish word - when Quatermass says the bomb is, of course, not powerful enough to kill the reaper, but only to give it sting to drive it away, he observes "You're going to give it a zetsn, halfway across the galaxy." - but only once, and only under extreme circumstances. Towards the end of the show, after losing everything he cares about, he calls the alien enemy "Satan", but in what seems a rhetorical rather than literal way - and it's a reference any Christian (or Muslim) could make. All in all, he's a pretty secular Jew, but no one else in the miniseries seemed to have any religion at all.

Except the Planet People, of course. And one could argue, I suppose, that they didn't have "religion" but were reacting to the realities of the world. After all, when they went to Ringstone Round (or the Stumpy Men, or O Papos, or wherever) to go away, they went. As Quatermass puts it, "They wanted something to come and take them, and something did." But we get no religion from Quatermass, from Kapp's coworkers at the observatory, from the Americans(!) (okay, the one singular American), the government people, the gangs, the tv crew, the old folks and old scientists ... Only Kapp and the Planet People have faith at all.

And their faiths are the flip sides of each other.

In the first episode, from the first time we see them, we can clearly see that Kapp hates the Planet People. It's a puzzle, since they don't seem to do anything but wander around, chanting. Quatermass is our proxy (his long seclusion means characters get to explain things to him so we, the audience, understand), and he's puzzled too. On first seeing them, contrasting them favorably to the armed gangs, he observes:

Q: They've got some strange belief.
K: Magic. It's always magic.
Q: At least they don't seem violent.
K: Oh, they're violent in a different way. To human thought.

That last line is delivered in an angry tone, almost itself violent, though we (and Quatermass) don't understand it fully. At this point Quatermass tries to talk to the Planet People, hoping one has seen his granddaughter, but he gets no help. They tell him they're going to another planet, but when Kapp demands to know where, and how, they have no answer - just that they are, and soon. As Kapp says to Quatermass as they drive off:

K: They can't explain because they don't know. Their mystery is a zero. Their mouths are switched off because their brains are switched off.
Q: So many of them...
K; They infest the land, like lemmings in search of a sea.
Q: Well, I thought you'd understand them.
K: Oh, I do.
Q: You're not that much older.
K: It's enough. I want a generation gap between me and them. I hate them because they've - given up.
Q: It's not a world to be young in.
K: Was it ever?
Q: Not like this.

Kapp's anger has been building, fed as much by Quatermass's inability to comprehend as by the Planet People themselves. So now comes the money line - the first reference to his religion and the way he defines it, and thus himself:

Bernard, I'm last in 200 generations of learned Jews. Oh, I mean not all so perfectly learned, but, my God, they tried. They knew it was the only way - to beat the dark.

Beating the dark: that's what learning is for. Although Kapp wonders at times if his radio-astronomy is whistling in the dark, or perhaps fiddling while England burns, he doesn't really believe that. He believes it's "worth it" to keep trying to learn.

In contrast, and why he hates them, the Planet People are explicitly against science. "Stop trying to know things!" they shout at Quatermass and Kapp before the first disappearance. It's not that they don't see the dark, or that they embrace it; on the contrary, those who were too far away to be 'saved' shout, defiantly, "We're coming too! We won't be long. We're coming out of all the blackness of this world."

Kapp sees them as having giving up the fight against the dark and as "sit[ting] and wait[ing] for the end of the world"; in contrast, they see him as causing the dark. They have given up the fight, but their surrender isn't total; in fact, they haven't surrendered, really, they're trying to escape. They do, in fact, turn violent by the show's end, but only after they've seen their worldview validated, their way off the world proved true - and then been kept from it. And then their violence is directed at those in their way - or, in one telling case, deserting from their cause. They are entirely goal-oriented - a tragically but rationally misunderstood goal, perhaps, but not an evil one.

Towards the end of the show, Kapp is seen desperately seeking a way to contact whatever it is has taken his wife and daughters so that he might get them back, or, failing that, join them. He's so fixated on that goal that when Quatermass comes to the observatory to scavenge equipment Kapp sends him packing. His goal has become to contact whatever took his family - some alien intelligence, he's sure - and make it understand. This doomed task has taken over his life; he can think of nothing else. Planet People waiting for the next gathering destroy his equipment (he's making things worse) and injure him when he resists. When he regains consciousness, he's confronted by Kickalong, the leader of the Planet People, and the following conversation takes place:

Kickalong: You wanted to be with them? Go after them, find them? That was no way, science man, all them silly wires. Planet don't want none of that. It takes you if you're fit to go.
Kapp: Fit?
Kickalong: Your woman and your kids - were they fit to go? Or did you spoil them? Too much think and talk, that'd spoil them. Got to know it all. If you done that, daddy science man, they're no good. They just get spilled away.
Kapp: Spilled?
Kickalong: See the sky, all sick? What that is, is spillings. All them, now they're fit to go. I picked 'em.

And this is where we get Kickalong's money quote, his self-definition:

I picked you, I guard you, I guide you, until it comes for us.

Kickalong is not just some random vandal. He has a mission - he is the priest to Kapp's scientist, both trying to keep people out of the dark. Kapp tries to beat it back, Kickalong to flee, but there is a point of view from which they're on the same side. And we see that play out almost at once, since the next line is from a girl among the Planet People who asks if Kapp can come too.

Instead of rejecting the notion out of hand, Kickalong looks down at Kapp and asks, "Are you a Jew?" You can tell that Kapp isn't sure what he should say. It's a question that has haunted Jews down history, one that surely resonated in the dark places in Kapp's mind, but on the other hand there is the menorah in Kickalong's hand - and Kapp's essential honesty. So he answers, and the conversation doesn't go where he - or we - expects it to:

Kickalong: Are you a Jew?
Kapp: Yes.
Kickalong: Okay. That's a start. That's believing. But you don't do it right. You got too much sin.
Kapp: Sin?
Kickalong: All this is sin. Your sin is to know things. If you want to come with us, you gotta get it all out of your brain.
Kapp: Get it out?
Kickalong: All the muck you learned, every bit.
Kapp: But you can't unlearn.
Kickalong: All them words in there -
Kapp: The words?
Kickalong: That's it.

And such is Kapp's desperation that he asks the question: "How?"

What follows is Kickalong and the Planet People's attempt to teach Kapp to "unlearn ... all them words". And for a few moments, he goes along with them - reciting nonsense syllables instead of actual nouns - until he just can't. It's not in him to not try "to know things", and even less is it in him to "unlearn" what he already knows. This is where Kapp hits rock bottom, and even his desperate (I keep using that word, but at this point in the story that is Kapp: pure grief and desperation - loss of hope) desire to be reunited with his lost family can't blind him for long to the truth: they are dead, and he is left behind.*

It's important to realize here that Kickalong is serious about trying to help Kapp. But Kapp can't unlearn, he can't abandon his knowledge, not even for the offering of Heaven. He simply cannot believe in it.

So they leave him. Later Quatermass arrives to make use of the little stone circle next to the observatory as his trap (he needs a place he knows the reaper will come to), finds Kapp back to reasonableness, and the astronomer joins the team in the attempt to trap and drive away the reaper. His heritage, his tradition, has redeemed his life. Yes, his family is dead, but he isn't, and he will regain his humanity before he dies.

Because of course he dies. He's the sidekick scientist in a Quatermass movie. And more than that, he's a hero. His entrance is the rescue of Quatermass from a gang, and he dies rescuing the planet. Or at least, just before that. His actual death is much braver, much more in character, and yet, in keeping with his tremendous loss, much more futile. Despite his hatred for the Planet People, Kapp dies trying to save them - not by the bomb to save the whole planet, as he was prepared to die, but running across the observatory yard yelling at them: "Get away, get away, you'll all die, that's a bomb!" In the end, is it his innate decency that drives him across that yard, or the Jewish reverence for life? Not two minutes after denying the power of faith or magic to bring back his family, he's calling the alien "Satan, the enemy" and Evil with a very obvious capital E.

Kapp: You can just make out that little hut. Not much of a home, was it?.. Oh, yes it was. It was... I can make them exist, you know. Oh, not by magic or faith, but by thinking. ... I know what Evil is. That's Evil.
Quatermass: Perhaps evil is always something else's good. Perhaps it's a cosmic law.
Kapp: Satan. The enemy.

I think the writer made Kapp a secular Jew so he could explore the combination of reason and faith. Kapp is the bridge between Quatermass's pure reason (who tells a man in Kapp's position to think that "evil is always something else's good"? Even if it is, is that the time?) and Kickalong's pure faith ("you gotta get it all out of your brain"). Grounded in the cozy rituals of a religion that honors learning, Kapp suffers the most, loses the most, and yet emerges from the story as the most human, and heroic, of all the characters.

* It occured to me as I was writing this that Kapp is Left Behind. The taking of the Planet People is like the Rapture, especially since, as Kickalong says, "there's always some left behind to cry." (It also occurred to me that, unlike anyone in the Left Behind books, Kapp does cry...)