The Week in Entertainment

Film: Summer Hours - a lyrical French film by Olivier Assayas, starring Juliet Binoche and Charles Berling, about a family coming to a quiet, inevitable end after the matriarch who held them together dies. It's deceptively simple and very touching.

TV: Some strange British game shows - plus, of course, Britain's Got Talent!

Read: The Seville Communion, a very good mystery by Arturo Perez-Reverte, intelligent and well-plotted. The Jungle (for NL).

Happy Birthday, Walt

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

On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.

(a few more poems are here)

Sky Watch: North Yorkshire

The early summer sun sets over the fields near Harrogate in North Yorkshire on May 30. The picture was taken through a car windshield, so pardon the speckles - I think the cloud and sun is worth it anyway!





more Sky Watchers here

"the central choice the Founders made"

I'm fond of this Sarah Vowel quote:

Whenever I hear the president mention, oh, every 12 minutes, that his greatest responsibility is "to protect the American people," the insufferable civics robot inside my head mutters: "Actually, sir, your oath, the one with the Bible and the chief justice and the Jumbotron, is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. For the American people are not mere flesh whose greatest hope is to keep our personal greasy molecules intact; we, sir, are a body politic — with ideals."

I mean, yes. That's it, exactly.

Now Glenn Greenwald puts it like this (his emphasis):

In his speech last week, Obama himself adopted this distorted view of the Presidency, announcing: "my single most important responsibility as President is to keep the American people safe." That just isn't what the Constitution and the presidential oath say is the most important responsibility of the President. He's required, above all else, to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" (in other passages of his speech, Obama emphasized that he "took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution" and that "we must never -- ever -- turn our back on its enduring principles for expedience sake"). ...

The President doesn't have some broad, vague duty to "protect Americans." The Constitution really couldn't be clearer about the President's primary responsibility: it's to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. Sometimes, the duty actually assigned by the Constitution is consistent with the duty to Keep Us Safe, but many times, Constitutional imperatives are, by design, in conflict with the goal of maximum security.

It's just so basic to our entire system of government that some Constitutional guarantees will impede efforts to maximize public safety (barring the police from searching homes without probable cause might make it more difficult to apprehend a dangerous criminal; banning double jeopardy and self-incrimination, and guaranteeing the right to counsel, might make it more difficult to convict a dangerous criminal; the guarantee of due process, free speech and a free press can make war-fighting more difficult). But that's the central choice the Founders made: that there are more important values than maximizing safety. If they didn't think that way, they would never have risked fighting the most powerful military on earth -- all for some abstract political liberty. By itself, that choice reflects the view that there are more important goals then keeping us safe. Tyrannies might be the best guardians of national security (though it is highly dubious that indefinitely locking up Muslims with no trial and no charges will Keep Us Safe), but either way: the U.S. wasn't created to be a National Security State. That's why the Constitution imposes numerous limits on the government that conflict with maximization of safety, and it's why the President is required to swear to defend the Constitution, not do everything possible to Keep Us Safe.

As usual with Greenwald it's cogent and on-target. Read the whole thing; you won't be sorry.

ps - comments are closed due to porn-spamming. send me email if you'd like to comment on this one.

Ethnicity, Empathy, and SCOTUS: Sometimes they like it...

For the rabid wing of the GOP it makes a difference which ethnic group you're from, apparently. Case in point (emphasis added):

And that's why I went into that in my opening statement. Because when a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position.

And so it's my job to apply the law. It's not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result.

But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, "You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country."

When I have cases involving children, I can't help but think of my own children and think about my children being treated in the way that children may be treated in the case that's before me.

And that goes down the line. When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account. When I have a case involving someone who's been subjected to discrimination because of disability, I have to think of people who I've known and admire very greatly who've had disabilities, and I've watched them struggle to overcome the barriers that society puts up often just because it doesn't think of what it's doing -- the barriers that it puts up to them.

(transcript and video)

Who's that, you ask? It's Justice Samuel Alito, at his confirmation hearing.

Language, British style

"Sacks-AH-fu-nist"? Seriously? That's weirder than "sir-cue-LATE-or-y", both of which I just heard on British TV...

(saxophonist, circulatory)

(comments are closed due to relentless porn-spamming. send an email if you'd like to comment)

Happy Birthday, Theodore

Today in 1906, in Bombay, India, T.H. White was born. The Once and Future King is enough to warrant celebrating him!

"I don't believe what I just saw!"

Kirk Gibson was born today in 1957. He's not one of my favorite players, never played for a team I like - in fact, played most of his career for a team I don't like at all.

But his home run in 1988 off Dennis Eckersley in Game 1 of the World Series is one of the all-time great moments in sports.

So, Happy Birthday, Kirk.

Today in History

This strikes me as hilarious...

1503 – James IV of Scotland and Margaret Tudor are married according to a Papal Bull by Pope Alexander VI. A Treaty of Everlasting Peace between Scotland and England signed on that occasion results in a peace that lasts ten years.

Happy Birthday, Tony

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

Airline: FAIL

So, we arrived at the airport with almost two hours to spare. The flight was ON TIME on the website. It was ON TIME at the check-in counter. It was ON TIME at the gate. Until ten minutes before boarding time, 5:55, when the guy at the desk told us they'd been "informed" that there would be an "extensive delay" on flight 958 - it wouldn't be leaving until 8:45, which meant most of its connections would be missed.

Including our flight to Manchester.

He told us that we should see him at the counter if we were going to miss a connection, so half the people in the gate jumped up and got in line. Half of them were on the phone, including one of my companions. He had no luck, don't know about them. In front of us was a girl who had started out the day that morning in Jacksonville, Florida, and been routed to Atlanta, New York, and back to BWI on her way to Portland, Maine. She was ready to melt down (I have to say that, listening to what the guy at the gate was telling her, it sounded to us like she was getting to Manchester, New Hampshire ... at midnight ... via National. What a day...).

While we were waiting, the plane arrived at the gate and the people disembarking didn't look like they'd been discommoded, let alone terrified. Given the precision of the announcement, I'd lay any amount of money that they had run out of pilots. That really made me angry, because if they'd told us when we got there that things were running late, we could have driven to Philadelphia.

When we finally got to the desk the guy puttered around on a keyboard for a while and then asked the guy next to him about international travelers. That guy said, sounding like he'd said it before, "We can't help them."

Yeah. We were supposed to go to the ticket counter up front. All international travelers were. I said, "May I suggest you announce that first thing before people stand in line for thirty minutes?" and walked away from the counter before I said something rude. I then announced, loudly, "International travelers - they can't help you. We have to go to the counter out front." Six people peeled out of line, and they all walked faster than us... Sigh.

Anyway, the people at the counter up front offered us the US Airways flight tomorrow night. They said they "couldn't" put us on a different airline. Well, we don't have the right to commit to a weekend in England (though it would be nice), so instead we called the agent and canceled the flight (the nice thing about the government's straitjacket travel policies is that we do get penalty-free cancellations).

Next we encountered the one person at US Airways who seemed to know what she was doing and intended to get it done: the baggage claim agent. She took our claim checks and got on the phone. After a couple moments, she hung the phone without having said anything and picked up the radio. "I'm trying to call 659 and it's still busy," she announced. "I need bags off 958. Someone answer." Someone did, and within five minutes our bags were on carousel ten...

So we didn't leave tonight. Maybe we'll still get there... But we're not going on US Airways, I can tell you that.

Missing details

Have you noticed that Roger Ebert often gets little details wrong? In his review of Summer Hours, he says "Jeremie has been offered a promotion in Hong Kong." No, in Beijing. In his review of Is Anyone There? he says "Edward likes living in Lark Hall because he's fascinated by ghosts, and he reasons that a home for the aged would be a good place to find some." No; Edward hates living there, and his obsession with death scares him more than delights him. In his review of A Life Less Ordinary he says "She misses, and a friend observes, 'He'll live, but he'll never practice orthodontics again.'" No, that was her father.

What's up with that?

Memorial Day

Dirge for Two Veterans
        Walt Whitman

1

    THE last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finish’d Sabbath,
On the pavement here—and there beyond, it is looking,
    Down a new-made double grave.

2

    Lo! the moon ascending!
Up from the east, the silvery round moon;
Beautiful over the house tops, ghastly phantom moon;
    Immense and silent moon.

3

    I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-key’d bugles;
All the channels of the city streets they’re flooding,
    As with voices and with tears.

4

    I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring;
And every blow of the great convulsive drums,
    Strikes me through and through.

5

    For the son is brought with the father;
In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell;
Two veterans, son and father, dropt together,
    And the double grave awaits them.

6

    Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive;
And the day-light o’er the pavement quite has faded,
    And the strong dead-march enwraps me.

7

    In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin’d;
(’Tis some mother’s large, transparent face,
    In heaven brighter growing.)

8

    O strong dead-march, you please me!
O moon immense, with your silvery face you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain! O my veterans, passing to burial!
    What I have I also give you.

9

    The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music;
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
    My heart gives you love.

Monday Science Links

This week's sciency goodness:

• I very much wanted to put in a post from David at Neuron Culture on the curveball last week, but didn't. But now he's written a second post on Koufax and the curve and I must (yes, read the link at the beginning for the first part!): Found some Koufax footage. About halfway through this short clip he Ks Mantle, looking, and a bit later, in the dark footage toward the end, is a good strip of him throwing the devastating curve. Note there the emphatic downward motion of his shoulder — which brought down his hand the faster, which (along with big, flexible hands and fingers) helped him make the ball spin 15 times on the way to the plate instead of the MLB-standard 12-13.


• Ed at Not Exactly Rocket Science tells us that city mockingbirds can recognized people: While the rapid expansion of human cities have been detrimental for most animals, some have found ways of exploiting these brave new worlds and learned to live with their prolific inhabitants. The Northern mockingbird is one such species. It's very common in cities all over America's east coast, where it frequently spends time around humans. But Douglas Levey from the University of Florida has found that its interactions with us are more complex than anyone would have guessed. The mockingbird has the remarkable ability to tell the difference between individual humans, regardless of the clothes they wear. After less than a minute, they can tell one person from another and adjust their responses according to the threat they pose to its nest. This ability suggests that these birds are both intelligent and very flexible in their behaviour - two traits that must surely stand them in good stead in the urban jungle.
  


• And Ed again, this time on altruistic chimps: Two years ago, a group of Ugandan chimps provided a blow to the idea that humans are the only animals that truly behave selflessly to one another. These chimps showed clear signs of true selflessness, helping both human handlers and other unrelated chimps with no desire for reward.


• Martin at Aardvarchaeology talks about archaeology misused: A headline caught my eye: "Archaeology in the Struggle for Jerusalem". As usual when archaeology is used for political ends, it is actually subservient to written history in this case. In the Bustan neighbourhood of the Silwan precinct in East Jerusalem, the municipality of Jerusalem has ordered 88 buildings torn down. Most are inhabited by Palestinians, most were built without a permit, most can be expected to sit on top of interesting archaeology. But not just any cool anonymous Prehistoric stuff for us nerds: the municipality wants to make an national archaeological park of the area to show off a certain historically documented period. They're not curious about the Chalcolithic, they don't itch to learn more about Canaanite settlement, they aren't fans of Saladin curious about the 12th century AD. When we learn that the nationalist settler association Elad are intended to run the park, we know what levels they're going for: The Kingdom of David and the 1st Millennium BC.
  


• Mark Liberman at Language Log talks about the relation between perfect pitch and tonal languages: Leaving aside entirely the question of whether absolute pitch will make you a better musician or not, it's well established that absolute pitch is more common among Chinese music students than among American music students. One source of evidence is an earlier study by Prof. Deutsch and colleagues, whose lay-language version is "Perfect Pitch in Tone Language Speakers Carries Over to Music: Potential for Acquiring the Coveted Musical Ability May be Universal at Birth", 148th ASA Meeting, 2004.

And enjoy!

The Week in Entertainment

TV: The Mentalist - season finale, Jane's darkness and despair breaking through. And my goodness, Jane's reaction to shooting Hardy, to shooting anyone and then to shooting that person ... So well done. A Life Less Ordinary, a peculiar hybrid of a film. I really enjoyed the Ewan McGregor-Cameron Diaz screwball comedy/romance, but could have done without the whole "angel cops" angle. And it's not the angels angle - some good movies have been made with angelic intervention as a major plot point. It's just that this time it was really unclear what the point was, especially when the angels turned into bounty hunters. But if you like McGregor or Diaz, it's a pleasant two hours. Primeval - Helen's back, of course. (We actually knew that last week, but now Cutter does.) Good thing that cop quit his job; he really wasn't suited for it. That had to be a future critter, too.

Read: Alexandria, the latest in Lindsay Davis's brilliant and entertaining Falco series. This time's Falco's in, yes, Alexandria, investigating a murder at the Library, climbing the Pharos, chasing crocodiles in the Zoo, and even ducking out to Giza so Helena can mark off another Wonder of the World... Great fun, as always. Haunting Bombay, a first novel by Shilpa Agarwal, about a troubled family in 1960 Bombay. Very good, and it didn't go where I thought it was. Borderline by Nevada Barr - Anna's in a new park and in trouble. It's good, and it too doesn't end exactly where I thought it would (and whew am I glad).

Sky Watch: Old Moon and Morning Star (2)

I missed Skywatch completely last week and am late this week ... but better late than never, isn't that what they say? Here's the sky Tuesday morning - the new old moon and the morning star.






more Sky Watchers here

Happy Birthday, Bob

Bob Dylan was born today in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1941.





In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There's a dyin' voice within me reaching out somewhere,
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair.

Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake,
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break.
In the fury of the moment I can see the Master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear,
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer.
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay.

I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name.
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand.

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer's dream, in the chill of a wintry light,
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space,
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face.

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other times it's only me.
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.

(note that Dylan always sings this as "I am hanging in the balance of a perfect, finished plan" - and so does Emmylou Harris in her lovely cover)

Happy Birthday, Michael

Michael Chabon, author of (among others) The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Wonder Boys, and Summerland, was born today in 1963. His The Yiddish Policeman's Union was tremendous. I've also read Borderlands, essays about reading and writing, and enjoyed most of them a lot.

Grattis på födelsedagen, Carl

Today in 1707 in the countryside of Småland, in southern Sweden, Carl Linné, who is better known by the Latinised version of his name - Carolus Linnaeus - was born. The family's surname was chosen by his father, Nils Ingemarsson, son of Ingemar Bengtsson, when Nils went to the University of Lund and needed a permanent surname; he used the Latin form in the academic setting. The inspiration for the name was a giant linden tree on the family homestead - their warden tree, in fact.

Linnaeus was primarily a botanist, and throughout his life he made efforts to introduce new crop-plants into Sweden, most of which were failures (due to the climate); he did succeed with rhubarb, though.

But his legacy is the scientific naming system - the binomial nomenclature - used to this day, and the taxonomic system for classifying living things that it encapsulates. When you speak of Families and Orders, of Genera and Species, you're using Linnean language. When you say Homo sapiens, Quercus alba, or Buteo lineatus, your precision is his gift.

"way beyond anything I’d expected to be disappointed by"

I intend to write something long and probably bitter about the way Obama is failing to live up to his campaign. But right now I'll just quote Michael Bérubé:

Am I disappointed in the guy generally? Well, yes and no. No, because I expected to be disappointed, which kind of throws the whole category of “disappointment” into epistemological crisis. Yes, because “preventative detention” goes way beyond anything I’d expected to be disappointed by.... Anyway, probably the best that can be said for yesterday’s speech is that its best passages set a standard by which Obama’s actual policies can be weighed in the scales and found wanting, beginning with the “preventative detention” outrage. But after hearing that other fellow’s speech yesterday, do I have any regrets about supporting B. Hussein? Nope, not a one.

That's the way it goes - or not!

So, Eleventh Hour, Pushing Daisies, and (sob) Better Off Ted are all dead. Rats. None of the new shows look half as promising...

Wait!!!!!!!!!

I just saw the italics at the bottom of the ABC schedule! After Dancing with the Stars ends, Ted is back!!! With Scrubs, which will be interesting since I doubt Zach Braff will be back... Maybe they'll ramp up one of the new interns?

But I don't care!

TED IS COMING BACK!!!!

There's thrifty and then there's immoral

Robert Reich blogs about college loans:

The average young person now graduating from college anywhere in America has to repay almost $22,000 of student loans. That's a record, partly because college costs have continued to rise even during the downturn, because states are cutting their support for public universities, and because other sources of college funding have taken big hits -- like home equity loans and 529 plans that allowed families to sock money away for college.

That is a lot, but I don't want to talk about whether it's "too much" in any sense. Instead, I want to rant a moment about something I found out about a former co-worker.

Her daughter is going to college in the fall. She wanted Carnegie-Mellon, but they didn't offer her a scholarship, so instead she's going to St Mary's - on a very comprehensive plan.

Her parents have invested for her college for fifteen years now. They did well; they have $500 K socked away. But they made her choose the college that gave her the best scholarship deal.

What that means is simple. Not only are they keeping their daughter out of the school she really wants to attend, they are denying some kid whose parents weren't able to sock away that kind of money, who don't earn half a million together a year, a chance to go to St Mary's. And they don't care.

Frankly, I find that outrageous, immoral, and reprehensible. I guess it's a good thing we don't work together anymore.

Happy Birthday, Bernie

Born today in 1950, in Lincolnshire, England, "the man who writes the words for Elton John" - and other people - Bernie Taupin. Here's one of my favorites of his lyrics...

Daniel

Daniel is travelling tonight on a plane
I can see the red taillights heading for Spain.
Oh and I can see Daniel waving goodbye
God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes

They say Spain is pretty though I've never been
Well Daniel says it's the best place that he's ever seen
Oh and he should know, he's been there enough
Lord I miss Daniel, oh I miss him so much

Daniel my brother you are older than me
Do you still feel the pain of the scars that won't heal
Your eyes have died but you see more than I
Daniel you're a star in the face of the sky

Daniel is travelling tonight on a plane
I can see the red taillights heading for Spain
Oh and I can see Daniel waving goodbye
God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes
Oh God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes

Happy Birthday, Manly

Today in Kamundongo, Angola, in 1903, Manly Wade Wellman was born (his father was a medical officer). My first book of his was one of his Civil War YA novels (Ghost Battalion), but I quickly fell in love with the John the Balladeer stories. Exquisite writing, and about my homeland - how could I not?

Karl Edward Wagner says, "There hadn't been anything like the John stories at that time, and there hasn't been since. No one but Manly Wade Wellman could have written these stories. Here his vivid imagination merged with authentic Southern folklore and a heartfelt love of the South and its people. Just as J. R. R. Tolkien brilliantly created a modern British myth cycle, so did Manly Wade Wellman give to us an imaginary world of purely American fact, fantasy, and song."

If you don't know John and his stories, try one - I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Happy Birthday, Al

Today is the birthday of Al Franken, member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and senator from that state once Norm Coleman gives up - which will be at the absolute last possible moment, since Franken will be number 60 for the Democratic caucus.

Iceland's official language is ... Icelandic!

I'm not entirely sure what they were doing on Jeopardy! tonight, but one of the categories was "National Languages".

Iceland = ?
Bulgaria = ?
Lithuania = ?
Macedonia = Albanian and ?
Lichtenstein = ?

So the same guy answered the first three: the first one was "Icelandic?" and the second was "Bulgarian?" with a kind of "Is this a trick, no, jeeze, it's probably Bulgar" tone, and the third was "Lithuanian??" with a real question in his voice, definitely "This has to be a trick!" So then the fourth one, the woman rang in and said "Greek?", which is wrong, and the guy said, "What is ... Macedonian?" like he'd never heard of it but, come on, surely, could it be? Which of course it was.

But if the writers were hoping for a "Lichtensteinian" they didn't get it. "German" was immediately and almost relievedly pronounced, by the same contestant who'd said "Greek".

It was ... bizarre.

"Following the law"

One thing I'm always glad to see is a scene like this one from the Mentalist last night.

Agents Cho and Rigsby go into a little business that rents mailboxes.

Cho: We need open Box 121, and we need all the information you have on who rented it.

Owner: Sure, no problem. You have a warrant?

Cho: Ma'am, this is a murder investigation.

Rigsby: We can get a warrant, but that takes time, and time is of the essence here!

Owner: No problem. Go get a warrant, and I'll be here... following the law.

I know we're supposed to sympathize with the cops, and at least Cho and Rigsby accept it (and the store owner is completely innocent). But she's right: the cop tactic of "if you're innocent you have nothing to fear. What are you hiding?" is bad.

Innocent people don't have to give up their rights just to make the cops' job easier. Making the cops do it right is important. It's not obstruction and it's not suspicious. And it's our right.

Siggggghhhhhhhh. Oh, Sally.

Sally Jenkins wrote a strange column in today's Washington Post celebrating Rachel Alexandra's Preakness victory as some kind of feminist triumph (emphasis mine):

I root wholeheartedly for the filly every time. Oddly, horse racing is practically the only game in which I do. Most arguments about gender politics in women's sports are dicey; you end up sounding full of apologetic favoritism and go-girl pink sentiment. The fight for equal prize money in women's tennis? They still don't play five sets, and you never know whether Venus and Serena have been practicing or hanging out in South Beach. Women's college basketball is a superior game, but the ball is smaller, the three-point line shallower, and the officiating execrable. Spare me the LPGA, with its dim personalities and shorter tees. If you want to see a female compete straight up against guys without asking for any favors, watch auto racing, or the Triple Crown.

I'll give her tennis, possibly the LPGA though "dim personalities" is a cheap shot. The women are smaller in the NCAAW, and even if they were as tall, their hands would still be smaller. And she left out all equestrian sports, where women compete equally with men in fact. But the Triple Crown? Only if she's talking about women jockeys.

Because Rachel Alexandra had a big advantage over the rest of the field (and still only won by a length, not the 20+ she beat the fillies by in the Oaks). Colts and geldings carry 126 pounds (57 kg). Fillies carry 121 pounds (55 kg). At Preakness distance, that's a 2-and-a-half length advantage.

I don't want to say that Mine That Bird would be looking at a Triple Crown chance if Rachel Alexandra had been carrying the same weight as he, but *all other things being equal* he'd have won by a more than a length. (I don't want to say that because who knows? She might have found more inside herself when he challenged her, and if she'd started from a different pole position she might have been going away at the end. Of course, Bird might not have lost a length around the turn in this other reality, too....)

But you certainly can't say "If you want to see a female compete straight up against guys without asking for any favors, watch ... the Triple Crown." Not if you're talking about the horses.

Mocking Michael Martin

They didn't, actually, that Parliament full of MPs who heard their Speaker announce his resignation - the first one to be forced out since 1695. But when the R-less reporter was describing the scene, she said "some wanted to mock his departure."

Er, make that "mark".

(edited 23 May to add) I should probably point out that while which verb is correct is arguable, the story the reporter was narrating was in fact about a MP who wanted to pay tribute to Martin's long service, and "mark" is clearly what she was saying.

Svyatoslav

Ouch!

A guy just brought a bronze into Antiques Roadshow. It's a bronze by Eugence Lansere, "Sviatoslav on the way to Tsargrad", (1886). Before saying the name, Eric Silver apoligized for his "awful" Russian. He needed to.

Svy-at-sah-lov [svaɪ-æt-'sɑː-lɒv], he said, very slowly. And, more quickly the second time, Svy-ats-lov ['svaɪ-æts-lɒv].

Ouch. So much wrong is such a short word! First, there's final devoicing in Russian, so the V is an F, but that's hardly the worst. Then he reversed the -TOS- to -TSO, turning Svyatoslav into Svyatsolav, and then compressed, or possibly slurred, it to Svyatslav. That last wouldn't have been too bad, really; the unstressed linking vowel is often swallowed by Russians almost that completely. But the Svyat- ... That just doesn't work at all.

Sviatoslav (they spell it; Svyatoslav I'd spell it; Святослав in Russian and Ukrainian) is not Svy-at. That letter Я - which is transliterated "ia" or "ya" - is a so-called "soft vowel", indicating palatalization of the preceding consonant, here a palatalized V which sounds much like a V+ jot (y-glide, or [j]. So it's Svja-ta-slahv ['svʲæ-tə-slɒf]. You'd think Eric Silver would have gotten a better pronunciation guide!

(In his defense, I'll say this is a common misunderstanding of the Russian "soft vowels". I haven't heard By-elorussia, but I have heard Buy-lo Russia. And I'll never forget Rye-a-zan (Ryazan, which is actually Rjazan with a palatalized final N [rʲɪˈzanʲ]. But still: Ouch.)

Svyatoslav the ruler was notable for being an expansionist, creating a huge empire out of Rus' and bringing down two others (Khazaria and the First Bulgarian Empire... it's weird, isn't it, to think of Bulgarian Empires, or Lithuania as a major player? "Look on my works, ye mighty...", isn't it?) - though his early death in battle resulted in his young sons Yaroslav, Oleg, and Vladimir (Volodymyr or Waldemar), all under 16 when their father died, fought a civil war, with Yaroslav killing Oleg and Vladimir fleeing to Scandinavia, whence he returned after 6 years with Varangian soldiers to defeat his brother and become Vladimir the Great. He also remained a staunch pagan despite his mother's having converted to Christianity; it was Vladimir who converted Rus'.

Svyatoslav the name is notable for being the first Kievan ruler's name which is indisputably Slavic in origin (as opposed to earlier names, which are ultimately derived from Old Norse, such as Igor (from Ingvar). Some scholars speculate that the name Svyatoslav, composed of the Slavic roots for "holy" and "glory", was an artificial creation, combining the names of his predecessors Oleg and Rurik (they mean "holy" and "glorious" in Old Norse, respectively). Whatever, Svyatoslav and his successors such as Vladimir, Yaroslav, and Mstislav have names which were new to Slavdom, and confined to Rus'.

Monday Science Links

This week's science:

• Over at Starts With a Bang! Ethan talks about the Hubble and its special cameras: As I write this, the Space Shuttle Atlantis has just blasted-off a few hours ago, headed for the Hubble Space Telescope. It's hard to believe that Hubble's been up there for more than 19 years now, and has helped revolutionize our understanding of the Universe, from measuring the Hubble constant to discovering Dark Energy. It continues to dazzle us even today. While you can read about the servicing mission that's going on here, I'm going to focus on saying goodbye to one special instrument this week: WFPC2. (If you want to sound like an astronomer, it's pronounced WHIFF-pic-too.)


• At Skulls in the Stars is an explanation of the Haunted Mansion at Disneyworld: During our visit to Walt Disney World, the new wife and I made sure to hit all the classic rides in the Magic Kingdom: Pirates of the Caribbean, The Tiki Room, The Haunted Mansion, even It’s a Small World (though, alas, not Space Mountain, which is under renovations until November). The Haunted Mansion is one of my favorites, with its classic Gothic ghost story atmosphere and dark sense of humor. As a child, I was terrified of the essentially harmless attraction. This trip, as a professor of optics, I was delighted to not only see the clever special effects, but deconstruct them — to “peek behind the curtains”, so to speak. I suppose some would think that this peek would “ruin the magic” or “unweave the rainbow“. For me, though, I find it a joy to see how people’s ingenuity can lead to wonderfully fun, even beautiful, attractions. The Haunted Mansion is filled with clever applications of very simple optics, and I can’t resist explaining one of them. SPOILER ALERT! IF YOU FEEL THAT UNDERSTANDING HOW AN ATTRACTION WORKS RUINS IT, DON’T READ ANY FURTHER.


• Phil at Bad Astronomy offers ten things you don't know about Hubble: On April 24, 1990, the Space Shuttle Discovery roared into space, carrying on board a revolution: The Hubble Space Telescope. It was the largest and most sensitive optical-light telescope ever launched into space, and while it suffered initially from a focusing problem, it would soon return some of the most amazing and beautiful astronomical images anyone had ever seen. Hubble was designed to be periodically upgraded, and even as I write this, astronauts are in the Space Shuttle Atlantis installing two new cameras, fixing two others, and replacing a whole slew of Hubble's parts. This is the last planned mission, ever, to service the venerable 'scope, so what better time to talk about it? Plus, it's arguably the world's most famous telescope (it's probably the only one people know by name), and yet I suspect that there are lots of things about it that might surprise you. (He too has astonishing photos...)
  


• On the lighter side of science, Diandra at Cocktail Party Physics talks about the optics of fixing things: You learn a lot about people from their offices. My office is a barely controlled state of chaos, which pretty much mirrors the rest of my life. The Rocket Scientist is the only faculty member I've ever known who keeps coasters in his office (and requires their use). I'll let you figure out what a coaster fetish tells you about RS - I have my own theories, but (ignoring for the moment the fact that we work for a public university and all our furniture is laminate) there actually are really good reasons for one to use coasters. The cool liquid in glass condenses water from the air onto the glass. The water rolls down the glass onto the wood table and produces a white ring that doesn't wipe off. Removing that ghastly mark of shame requires esoteric cleaning approaches, like a warm iron applied to a towel over the damaged area or rubbing with toothpaste. But these fixes usually work only when the damage is confined to the top layer of the finish. Most real wood furniture is stained - pigment is absorbed into the wood fibers and the solvent (the stuff in which the pigment is suspended) evaporates. The furniture is then coated with something to protect the finish. Back in the day, they used penetrating oil, which is absorbed into the very top layers of the wood, and/or coated the whole thing with a paste wax (sort of like like the plastic that covers certain types of cheeses). The final layer is a barrier between the wood and the elements, but the finish can also affect the appearance of the furniture.


• And over at the Sandwalk, Larry Moran looks at the three theories on the origin of life: There are several competing hypotheses about the origin of life. Most people know about the Primordial Soup scenario; that's the one where complex organic molecules are created by spontaneous chemical reactions. Over time these complex molecules, such as amino acids and nucleotides, accumulate in a warm little pond and eventually they come together to form proteins and nucleic acids. The RNA World scenario is similar except that nucleic acids (RNA) are thought to form before proteins. For a while, RNA molecules are the main catalysts in the primordial soup. Later on, proteins take over some of the catalytic roles. One of the problems with the RNA world hypothesis is that you have to have a reasonable concentration of nucleotides before the process can begin. The third hypothesis is called Metabolism First. In this scheme, the first reactions involve spontaneous formation of simple molecules such as acetate, a two-carbon compound formed from carbon dioxide and water.

Enjoy!

Happy Birthday, Omar

Today in Nishapur, Iran, Omar Khayyám (عمر خیام) was born in 1048.

One of the great Iranian - heck, world - polymaths, he was a famed philosopher, a scientist, and a mathematician: his treatise on algebra, the Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra, is considered one of the greatest mathematical works of the Middle Ages. He even experimented with non-Euclidean geometry. But today we (in the West, at least) know him for his Rubáiyát — the word is the name of the verse form, so The Rubáiyát is like saying "The Sonnets"; you really need to name the author.

And on that note ... the most famous translation is the least faithful; Edward FitzGerald picked and chose and conflated and edited (particularly Khayyám's preoccupation with mortality and his questioing of God), and gave the Rubáiyát the quatrain form we now associate with the word, though the original Persian rubái FitzGerald made no secret of his "transmogrification", to use his own word. "I suppose very few People have ever taken such Pains in Translation as I have: though certainly not to be literal. But at all Cost, a Thing must live: with a transfusion of one’s own worse Life if one can’t retain the Original’s better. Better a live Sparrow than a stuffed Eagle."

Herewith what is arguably the most famous stanza, in several translations:

FitzGerald, 1859

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness -
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

FitzGerald, 1879

"A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!"

Edward Henry Whinfield, 1883

In the sweet spring a grassy bank I sought
And thither wine and a fair Houri brought;
And, though the people called me graceless dog,
Gave not to Paradise another thought!

John Leslie Garner, 1888

Yes, Loved One, when the Laughing Spring is blowing,
With Thee beside me and the Cup o’erflowing,
I pass the day upon this Waving Meadow,
And dream the while, no thought on Heaven bestowing.

Justin Huntly McCarthy, 1888

In Spring time I love to sit in the meadow with a paramour
perfect as a Houri and a goodly jar of wine, and though
I may be blamed for this, yet hold me lower
than a dog if ever I dream of Paradise.

Edward Heron Allen, 1888

I desire a little ruby wine and a book of verses,
Just enough to keep me alive, and half a loaf is needful;
And then, that I and thou should sit in a desolate place
Is better than the kingdom of a sultan.

Robert Graves and Omar Ali-Shah (spuriously claimed to be based on a 12th c. manuscript but actually on Heron Allen's work)

A gourd of red wine and a sheaf of poems —
A bare subsistence, half a loaf, not more —
Supplied us two alone in the free desert:
What Sultan could we envy on his throne?

Karim Emami, 1988:

In spring if a houri-like sweetheart
Gives me a cup of wine on the edge of a green cornfield,
Though to the vulgar this would be blasphemy,
If I mentioned any other Paradise, I'd be worse than a dog.

And these are just the best known English translations - Khayyám's poetry has been translated into many other languages.

Happy Birthday, Frank

Mr Deeds Goes to Town and Mr Smith Goes to Washington are fine films, and It's a Wonderful Life is a good one...

Why We Fight is a masterpiece ...

You Can't Take It With You and Lost Horizon are terrific.

But It Happened One Night and - especially! - Arsenic and Old Lace are exquisitely funny.

Frank Capra - moviemaker extraordinaire ... born today in Bisaquino, Sicily, in 1897.

The Week in Entertainment

Film: Is Anybody There? - wow. What a tour de force by Michael Caine. What an wonderful movie. It's not perfect - it tries a bit too hard in places - but Caine makes it worth every bit of your time and money.

TV: House: Wow. Despite the last few season enders I was not expecting a quarter of last week and a large part of this week to be ... a psychotic episode. In the literal sense. Wow. It does make a lot of last week make more sense, including the overnight detox - and Kutner... He is important. Wow (again). Numb3rs' season finale was fast-paced and hectic, with a few things that you hardly noticed (is Don really losing the faith he just found a couple of years ago?) in the rush. A good ending, not a cliff-hanger (those get tiring!) and a nice focus on Amita. (If we find out she said "No" next fall -!!) The Mentalist - Jane's ghost story was great, and we finally learned something kind of significant about Cho! He doesn't go to zoos, he reads novels on stakeouts, and he was in juvie! Primeval - season three starts with a bang - giant crocodile in the Egyptian wing of the British Museum! And sending the Sun Cage to Pyongyang - ROFL.

Read: Finished The Club Dumas. It doesn't end like The Ninth Gate, and has a lot of extra stuff going on in it. Very good, very stylish and well-written. The Year of Speaking Dangerously by Geoff Nunberg - a collection of NPR essays from the last five years.

Crow-killing owl model

Darren Naish at Tetrapod Zoology cites a paper's title:

Incidentally, I'm greatly intrigued by the title of Conover's paper: 'Protecting vegetables from crows using an animated crow-killing owl model'. Sadly I haven't seen this paper.

I'm also intrigued: surely there's a missing hyphen? Or is this more sinister, more deadly, more ... lasery, perhaps, than the kind of model that just flaps its wings and turns its head every so often? 'Cause crows do get used to those pretty fast...

update: Darren has obtained pictures!

Happy Birthday, Edward

On this day in 1749 Edward Jenner was born in Berkeley, Gloucester- shire, England. He was a surgeon, and he's best known for performing the world's first successful vaccination, inoculating (as shown in this painting by Robert Thom) a young boy with cowpox to protect him from the scourge of smallpox - 25% of adults and 30% of children who caught it died, over 60 million in the 18th century alone. Jenner recognized that people who'd gotten cowpox (usually dairymaids) didn't catch smallpox, so he tested his theory with vaccination. And was right.

Second verse, same as the first

August Cole writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Four U.S. contractors affiliated with the company formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide fired on an approaching civilian vehicle in Kabul earlier this month, wounding at least two Afghan civilians, according to the company and the U.S. military.

The off-duty contractors were involved in a car accident around 9 p.m. on May 5 and fired on the approaching vehicle they believed to be a threat, according to the U.S. military. At least some of the men, who were former military personnel, had been drinking alcohol that evening, according to a person familiar with the incident. Off-duty contractors aren't supposed to carry weapons or drink alcohol.

Blackwater by any name doesn't do what they're supposed to ... or at least what we suppose they're supposed to ... do they?

Again, tell me why going to war with contract personnel is a good idea.

It's not pretty

Wondering what Fox News is going to do for the next 8 years?

Apparently, much much more of the same:

Are there worse things you can do to science than the run-of-the-mill "Men and Women: We're Still Different" stuff you see on the wires? Yes. And it's starting to look like a habit at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network.

Fred makes a study of Fox. It's not pretty.

Fox journalism, on the other hand, is -- oh, how to put this? -- corrupt: anti-science and pro-stupid, not to mention nativist, pro-disease and a range of other unseemly traits, all in the service of its political masters.

I and the Bird #100

The 100th I and the Bird!! is up at The Drinking Bird.

I was sure I'd submitted my post with my sister's bluebirds, but it's not there... What is there, though, is one heckuva lot of great bird posts. So check it out!

They have their own games

Something I really hate: watching a sports event on television and being subjected to long rambling digressions about some other sport entirely. I do not care what some quarterback's feelings about football rivalries are when I'm watching hockey. (Frankly, I never care about the NFL...) I don't care about what the baseball color guy thinks about basketball. I don't care what the basketball people think about college football. You get the picture.

I'm watching hockey. Don't talk to me about football.

(Although, frankly, 4-0 with 17 minutes to go in the second period? I might not be watching it much longer...) (Oh, who am I kidding? Game 7? Of course I will.)

Gosling gone

The geese in the park have hatched their babies. They had four, but are down to three - the one, I fear, who was always off by himself. The gander was always nervy - I think the gander, I assume the goslings hung around mom while dad stood guard, staring and hissing at passers-by - he wasn't sure whether to chase the stray or stick with the family; he usually did the latter. He's very protective, but he can't be everywhere...

Why?

Somebody help me understand this. The NYT has an article about Assemblyman Daniel O'Donnell and the same-sex marriage bill (which passed the state house and is now headed for a fight in the senate. In it, O'Donnell is described as telling another assemblyman, Greg Ball: "vote for same-sex marriage, or you won’t get invited to my engagement party." The story concludes:

Despite all Mr. O’Donnell’s entreaties, Mr. Ball, the Republican assemblyman, said he would still be voting no on Tuesday.

But he added that he hoped that Mr. O’Donnell would not cross him off the invitation list for the engagement party.

“I would love to attend, no matter how I vote,” Mr. Ball said.

What I want to know is Why? Why does he think he might be invited to celebrate an engagement he wants to be illegal? And why on earth would he want to go?

Could it be because he's aware that his stand is hurtful to a colleague? Indefensible on any rational ground? Does he want to pretend it's all light and superficial and doesn't matter? That it's okay to say to a man who's been with his partner for twenty-nine years, "you're a second-class citizen who doesn't deserve the protection of the law, but I like you anyway?"

Why would he think any of those things was halfway acceptable?

Happy Birthday, Armistead

Yes, today is the birthday of Armistead Maupin (shown here left, with his husband Christopher Turner), author of the Tales of the City books, The Night Listener, and my favorite Maybe the Moon. Many happy returns of the day!

Happy Birthday, Arthur

Today in 1842 the musical half of Gilbert and Sullivan - Sir Arthur Sullivan - was born. Besides the undying music of G&S, he wrote a couple of operas - The Rose of Persia and Ivanhoe - which were popular in their day, and a cantata, The Golden Legend, which was almost as popular as Handel's Messiah. But it is, of course, as half of the pair whose comic light operas (or operettas) are performed more often than any other that he will be remembered.

In "the interests of full disclosure" (to stave off a repeat of last year), this from Wikipedia:

Sullivan's artistic output included 23 operas, 13 orchestral works, eight choral or oratorio works, two ballets, incidental music to several plays, and numerous hymns and other church pieces, songs, parlour ballads, part songs, carols, and piano and chamber pieces

Apart from his comic operas with Gilbert, Sullivan is best known for some of his hymns and parlour songs, including "Onward Christian Soldiers", "The Absent-Minded Beggar", and "The Lost Chord". However, his most critically praised pieces include his Irish Symphony, his Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, his Overture di Ballo, The Martyr of Antioch, The Golden Legend, and, of the Savoy Operas, The Yeomen of the Guard. Sullivan's only grand opera, Ivanhoe, was initially successful but has been little heard since his death.

A seething mass of teh kewt!

Unlike ganders, drakes don't hang around and help raise the babies. "Make Way for Ducklings" never has two parents heading and tailing the column. For that matter, it's rarely a column.

This mallard duck has ten ducklings (one is usually off by itself), and they're generally a seething, fluid, mass of cute blotchy downy babies. I see them at dawn, while I'm waiting on the bus... As FDR once remarked, "I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm." Yesterday, one of them found a huge worm and was trying to swallow it. One of his siblings spotted the feast and tried to eat the worm's other end. The duckling with the worm started turning in a circle, moving the worm out of the other's reach. The other one ran along in a bigger circle, grabbing for the worm ... Too cute. Seriously, just too cute.

Happy Birthday, Edward

Today in London in 1812, Edward Lear was born.

Last year I gave you the Jumblies. This year, you can read of someone who love a Jumbly girl: The Dong With A Luminous Nose:

When awful darkness and silence reign
Over the great Gromboolian plain,
   Through the long, long wintry nights; --
When the angry breakers roar
As they beat on the rocky shore; --
   When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights
Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore: --

Then, through the vast and gloomy dark,
There moves what seems a fiery spark,
A lonely spark with silvery rays
   Piercing the coal-black night, --
   A Meteor strange and bright: --
Hither and thither the vision strays,
   A single lurid light.

Slowly it wander, -- pauses, -- creeps, --
Anon it sparkles, -- flashes and leaps;
And ever as onward it gleaming goes
A light on the Bong-tree stems it throws.
And those who watch at that midnight hour
From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower,
Cry, as the wild light passes along, --
     "The Dong! -- the Dong!
   "The wandering Dong through the forest goes!
     "The Dong! the Dong!
   "The Dong with a luminous Nose!"

     Long years ago
   The Dong was happy and gay,
     Till he fell in love with a Jumbly Girl
     Who came to those shores one day.
For the Jumblies came in a sieve, they did, --
Landing at eve near the Zemmery Fidd
     Where the Oblong Oysters grow,
And the rocks are smooth and gray.
And all the woods and the valleys rang
With the Chorus they daily and nightly sang, --
     "Far and few, far and few,
     Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
     Their heads are green, and the hands are blue
     And they went to sea in a sieve.

Happily, happily passed those days!
   While the cheerful Jumblies staid;
     They danced in circlets all night long,
   To the plaintive pipe of the lively Dong,
     In moonlight, shine, or shade.
For day and night he was always there
By the side of the Jumbly Girl so fair,
With her sky-blue hands, and her sea-green hair.
Till the morning came of that hateful day
When the Jumblies sailed in their sieve away,
And the Dong was left on the cruel shore
Gazing -- gazing for evermore, --
Ever keeping his weary eyes on
That pea-green sail on the far horizon, --
Singing the Jumbly Chorus still
As he sate all day on the grassy hill, --
      "Far and few, far and few,
     Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
     Their heads are green, and the hands are blue
     And they went to sea in a sieve.

But when the sun was low in the West,
   The Dong arose and said;
   -- "What little sense I once possessed
   Has quite gone out of my head!" --
And since that day he wanders still
By lake and dorest, marsh and hills,
Singing -- "O somewhere, in valley or plain
"Might I find my Jumbly Girl again!
"For ever I'll seek by lake and shore
"Till I find my Jumbly Girl once more!"

Playing a pipe with silvery squeaks,
Since then his Jumbly Girl he seeks,
And because by night he could not see,
He gathered the bark of the Twangum Tree
On the flowery plain that grows.
And he wove him a wondrous Nose, --
   A Nose as strange as a Nose could be!
Of vast proportions and painted red,
And tied with cords to the back of his head.
   -- In a hollow rounded space it ended
   With a luminous Lamp within suspended,
     All fenced about
     With a bandage stout
     To prevent the wind from blowing it out; --
   And with holes all round to send the light,
   In gleaming rays on the dismal night.

And now each night, and all night long,
Over those plains still roams the Dong;
And above the wail of the Chimp and Snipe
You may hear the squeak of his plaintive pipe
While ever he seeks, but seeks in vain
To meet with his Jumbly Girl again;
Lonely and wild -- all night he goes, --
The Dong with a luminous Nose!
And all who watch at the midnight hour,
From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower,
Cry, as they trace the Meteor bright,
Moving along through the dreary night, --
   "This is the hour when forth he goes,
   "The Dong with a luminous Nose!
   "Yonder -- over the plain he goes;
     "He goes!
     "He goes;
"The Dong with a luminous Nose!"

Happy Birthday, Kate

Today in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1907, Katherine Hepburn was born. Aren't we lucky?

Monday Science Links

This week's sciency goodness:

• Erik at Eruptions talks about what will happen when Redoubt blows (if it has, you can check his predictions): The clock is ticking for the new dome growing at Redoubt to collapse. What will happen if/when it does collapse? Good question!


• Ethan at Starts With a Bang! explains how an asteroid impact works (with pictures!): I recently got this comment of incredulity on my article about what wiped out the dinosaurs? "I´m sorry. But i don´t believe this. In my opinion they were wiped out by a climatic changing." And I think it's worth -- with the help of a little math and physics -- looking at what this asteroid impact might have done. First off, we need to know how massive this asteroid was. This asteroid was about 10 to 12 km in diameter, which is large, but less than 0.2% the diameter of the Earth. It's pretty unremarkable, and makes it a pretty typical minor asteroid. For comparison, this makes it about half the size of the known asteroid Gaspra, shown below.


• Kristjan at Pro-Science talks about how people can't rate themselves: The "above-average syndrome" is, simply put, that the average person in a given field will believe themselves to be above average. In other words, more people believe themselves above average than really are. Obviously, only 50% can be above average, but there are perhaps 80% who believes they are. The Dunning-Kruger effect is related to the above-average syndrome, but it's one explanation of why this syndrome exist (there can be other reasons). The effect is named after Justin Kruger and David Dunning who made a series of experiments, which results they published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in December 1999. The title of the article was Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments (.pdf), which to my mind is one of the greatest titles I've ever seen on an article.


• Jennifer at Cocktail Party Physics talks abouthow the iPhone came to be: I went on to talk about the seminal work of Hans Christian Oersted and Michael Faraday, not to mention James Clerk Maxwell, who formalized Faraday's ideas into an actual set of equations that are now a staple of college physics courses. In fact, I'd argue that you could probably build an entire course around the "Science of the iPhone," and cover a lot of that same material in a concrete, real-world context. Maybe then those students would appreciate the scientists who gave them their iPhones and other gadgets a little more. For instance, they could learn about Benjamin Franklin and countless others who experimented with electricity in the 1700s -- at least one of whom was killed by ball lightning. R.I.P., Wilhelm Reichmann. And they would come out of college knowing the name of William Gilbert, an English physicist in 1600 who noticed that friction (rubbing one object against another) could create "electricity." (The effect had been known since around 600 BC, but was limited to amber rubbed against, say, fur. Gilbert noticed this phenomenon also extended to other objects and was not a specific magical property of amber.)
  


• And Chad at Uncertain Principles looks at questionable physics in fraily tales: You might think that Monday's discourse on thermodynamics in the Goldilocks story [why was Mama Bear's porridge "too cold"?] was the only children's story in which physics plays a role, but that's not true. Physics is everywhere in fairy tales. Take, for example, the story of Rumpelstiltskin, in which a mysterious little man demands a terrible price for helping a miller's daughter spin straw into gold. This raises the obvious question of exactly how one would go about extracting gold from straw.

Enjoy!

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: Suspect - you know, when she wants to, Cher can really act. I liked this movie - a teasing mystery with excellent performances by all three leads (Dennis Quaid and Liam Neeson).

TV: House - something odd happened this week. When House told Wilson "Come get me" in the bar, I thought, wow. What a way to end this episode! And then I switched over to see if they were playing baseball somewhere it's not raining, because I didn't want a spoiler for what promised to be a helluvan episode. Except I happened to look in the corner of my laptop and realized it was... 8:51. Yeah. That wasn't the end of the episode. Fortunately I DVR things (since even if I had that thing where you can program your DVR with your phone, I can't take my phone into the office), and so I didn't actually miss the end of the episode. Which wasn't bad, but didn't match an entire episode devoted to what they wrapped up in 10 minutes... Scrubs - the extra episode on Tuesday set up the series finale nicely. I'm glad the huge star-studded ending was in JD's mind; too much wouldn't have fit this show. I've loved it since I found it, and I'm sorry it's gone. Better Off Ted - this episode was hilarious, from the morale survey ("Morale," says Ted, "has gone from 'low' to 'I want to burn the building down', which, frankly, I was surprised was one of the options." I know the odds aren't good, but I really hope this program - witty and intelligent - comes back. The Mentalist - another nice one. . Ladies' Detective Agency - I usually DVR it, but I did watch the end of this wonderful miniseries. Can't wait for it to be on DVD. If you haven't seen it, get to HBO On Demand ASAP! (plus, I did so love those nasty baboons) Having read the books, I can see a hint for more episodes coming - I do hope so!

Read: The Penderwicks and The Penderwicks on Gardam Street (before I give them to my great-niece, which I will because they're wonderful). The Club Dumas - about halfway through this intriguing literary mystery I was feeling like I'd, not read it exactly, but heard about it - a lot. Or something. It was odd. And then in one scene (where he's discussing the third copy of the demonic book with the old countess) I suddenly thought: Johnny Depp. And indeed, his film The Ninth Gate is an adaptation of this book. Which is well-written enough that my having seen the movie not quite a year ago didn't spoil it - especially since the movie concentrated on one of two plotlines in the book.

Courting Cedar Waxwings

I spotted them on the branch, side by side. One would sidle over and touch beaks with the other, then move away. And then the other would do the same. Over and over. Until a robin flushed them out to another tree.

A White Christmas

Fred Claus was on HBO before The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency tonight. I really don't know much about it, but what I saw was Fred returning from apparently saving Christmas, and all the elves running to see the results in some giant snow globe: families opening their presents. I see that Fred's baseball team has black kids on it, which is nice, but not one of the families in the snow globe was black. One might have been Hispanic or possibly something Asian, it was hard to tell, they didn't stay on screen very long. But none were black.

Not one.

It's amazing to me that casting directors do this sort of thing. They just don't think.

"a casino run by idiots and thieves"

I spotted a link to this column in Chronicle of Higher Education over at Chávezian Airspace. It's worth your time:

With all the economic pain and consternation — surging unemployment, enormous corporate bankruptcy, trillions becoming the new billions — it's easy to overlook the fact that tens of thousands of families have suddenly lost a great deal of the money they socked away to pay for college. They lost it because public officials told them to risk their children's educational future in a casino run by idiots and thieves. Those officials did that because it was a way for them to score easy political points, avoid hard choices, and generally feel good about themselves. I know — for a little while, I was one of them.

I refer to "529 plans," the tax-deferred savings vehicles named for the section of the tax code that defines them