Happy Birthday, Li

Today in 1965, in Shenyang, Liaoning, China, Gong Li was born. Star of a number of films including Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern, The Story of Qiu Ju, Farewell My Concubine. and Curse of the Golden Flower, Gong is a stunning and brilliant actress.

Happy Birthday, Carol

Born today in 1906, the great director Carol Reed, who gave us (and was knighted for doing so) such classics as The Third Man, The Stars Look Down (which I always remember from the Lord Peter Wimsey story where his mother is reading the book under the misapprehension that it's a sweet Christmas tale), Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol, the very funny Our Man in Havana, and The Agony and the Ecstasy.

Happy Birthday, Bo

Born today, in 1928 in McComb, Mississippi, The Originator, Bo Diddley.

He died three years ago, just shy of 80, and he is missed.

Happy Birthday, Rudyard

Today, in Bombay in 1865, Rudyard Kipling was born. His parents sent him "back" to England to avoid the typhoid and cholera, and he used his school experiences in several of his works, the horrifying 'Baa Baa Black Sheep' and the delightful Stalky and Co. particularly. After school he went back to India and became a reporter, writing fiction and poetry in his spare time. Celebrity came after six years, and he returned to England. But he didn't like living there, and after a few years spent traveling the world, he settled in Vermont - and it was there he wrote The Jungle Book, probably his most well-known work.

Here's another:

Eddi's Service
AD 687


Eddi, priest of St. Wilfrid
     In his chapel at Manhood End,
Ordered a midnight service
     For such as cared to attend.

But the Saxons were keeping Christmas,
     And the night was stormy as well.
Nobody came to service,
     Though Eddi rang the bell.

"'Wicked weather for walking,"
     Said Eddi of Manhood End.
"But I must go on with the service
     For such as care to attend."

The altar-lamps were lighted, --
     An old marsh-donkey came,
Bold as a guest invited,
     And stared at the guttering flame.

The storm beat on at the windows,
     The water splashed on the floor,
And a wet, yoke-weary bullock
     Pushed in through the open door.

"How do I know what is greatest,
     How do I know what is least?
That is My Father's business,"
     Said Eddi, Wilfrid's priest.

"But -- three are gathered together --
     Listen to me and attend.
I bring good news, my brethren!"
     Said Eddi of Manhood End.

And he told the Ox of a Manger
     And a Stall in Bethlehem,
And he spoke to the Ass of a Rider,
     That rode to Jerusalem.

They steamed and dripped in the chancel,
     They listened and never stirred,
While, just as though they were Bishops,
     Eddi preached them The World,

Till the gale blew off on the marshes
     And the windows showed the day,
And the Ox and the Ass together
     Wheeled and clattered away.

And when the Saxons mocked him,
     Said Eddi of Manhood End,
"I dare not shut His chapel
    On such as care to attend."

Happy Birthday, Linus

Linus Torvalds, chief architect of Linux, was born today in 1969 in Helsinki, Finland.

"Basically, it is short and sweet. It won't give your life any meaning, but it tells you what's going to happen. There are three things that have meaning for life - for anything that you do or any living thing does: The first is survival, the second is social order, and the third is entertainment. Everything in life progresses in that order. And there is nothing after entertainment. So, in a sense, the implication is that the meaning of life is to reach that third stage. And once you've reached the third stage, you're done. But you have to go through the other stages first."

Happy Birthday, Stan

Born today in 1922, the one and only Stan Lee.

When I was growing up, you read either Marvel or DC comics. I read Marvel. The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, Spiderman - I was there for them all. That first incarnation of X-Men was genuinely amazing. And they didn't read like kid's books, either; as Stan said once,

"If a kid has to go to a dictionary, that's not the worst thing that could happen."

I vividly remember walking over to the drugstore every Saturday to get the new issues and reading them on the way home. Those guys all seemed so real to me.

Thanks, Stan. Thanks so much.

Happy Birthday, Johannes

Today in 1571 Johannes Kepler was born in Wurttemberg, Germany. Kepler was born to Lutheran parents, but never subscribed fully to the doctrine of "the real presence" and refused to sign the Formula of Concord; therefor he was excluded from the sacrament. Being unaccepted by the Lutherans and not a Catholic, either, Kepler had no refuge during the Thirty Years War and the counter-reformation, which meant he was forced to move over and over again to stay alive.

I quote from the biography of Kepler on NASA's Kepler Mission page, where you can go for more details on his work and his three laws (my emphasis):

Kepler was forced to leave his teaching post at Graz due to the counter Reformation because he was Lutheran and moved to Prague to work with the renowned Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe. He inherited Tycho's post as Imperial Mathematician when Tycho died in 1601. Using the precise data that Tycho had collected, Kepler discovered that the orbit of Mars was an ellipse. In 1609 he published Astronomia Nova, delineating his discoveries, which are now called Kepler's first two laws of planetary motion. And what is just as important about this work, "it is the first published account wherein a scientist documents how he has coped with the multitude of imperfect data to forge a theory of surpassing accuracy" (O. Gingerich in forward to Johannes Kepler New Astronomy translated by W. Donahue, Cambridge Univ Press, 1992), a fundamental law of nature. Today we call this the scientific method.

In 1612 Lutherans were forced out of Prague, so Kepler moved on to Linz. His wife and two sons had recently died. He remarried happily, but had many personal and financial troubles. Two infant daughters died and Kepler had to return to Württemburg where he successfully defended his mother against charges of witchcraft. In 1619 he published Harmonices Mundi, in which he describes his "third law."

In spite of more forced relocations, Kepler published the seven-volume Epitome Astronomiae in 1621. This was his most influential work and discussed all of heliocentric astronomy in a systematic way. He then went on to complete the Rudolphine Tables that Tycho had started long ago. These included calculations using logarithms, which he developed, and provided perpetual tables for calculating planetary positions for any past or future date. Kepler used the tables to predict a pair of transits by Mercury and Venus of the Sun, although he did not live to witness the events.

Johannes Kepler died in Regensburg in 1630, while on a journey from his home in Sagan to collect a debt. His grave was demolished within two years because of the Thirty Years War. Frail of body, but robust in mind and spirit, Kepler was scrupulously honest to the data.

What a tremendous epitaph that is.

Happy Birthday, Louis

Born today in 1822 in Dole, France - Louis Pasteur.

If you're like me, you think of pasteurized milk, and maybe beer ... but the man was a workhorse of applied science. Louis Pasteur brought about a veritable revolution in the 19th-century scientific method. By abandoning his laboratory and by tackling the agents of disease in their natural environments, he was able through his investigations to supply the complete solution to a given question, not only identifying the agent responsible for a disease but also indicating the remedy.

When in 1881 he had perfected a technique for reducing the virulence of various disease-producing microorganisms, he succeeded in vaccinating a herd of sheep against the disease known as anthrax. Likewise, he was able to protect fowl from chicken cholera, for he had observed that once animals stricken with certain diseases had recovered they were later immune to a fresh attack. Thus, by isolating the germ of the disease and by cultivating an attenuated, or weakened, form of the germ and inoculating fowl with the culture, he could immunize the animals against the malady. In this he was following the example of the English physician Edward Jenner in his method for vaccinating animals against cowpox. On April 27, 1882, Pasteur was elected a member of the Académie Française, at which point he undertook research that proved to be the most spectacular of all—the preventive treatment of rabies. Having detected the rabies virus by its effects on the nervous system and attenuated its virulence, he applied his procedure to man; on July 6, 1885, he saved the life of a nine-year-old boy, Joseph Meister, who had been bitten by a rabid dog.

Among his other discoveries - the theory of molecular asymmetry, showing that the biological properties of chemical substances depend not only on the nature of the atoms constituting their molecules but also on the manner in which these atoms are arranged in space. By means of simple and precise experiments, including the filtration of air and the exposure of unfermented liquids to the air of the high Alps, he proved that food decomposes when placed in contact with germs present in the air, which cause its putrefaction, and that it does not undergo transformation or putrefy in such a way as to spontaneously generate new organisms within itself.

He showed that milk could be soured by injecting a number of organisms from buttermilk or beer but could be kept unchanged if such organisms were excluded. After laying the theoretical groundwork, Pasteur proceeded to apply his findings to the study of vinegar and wine, two commodities of great importance in the economy of France; his pasteurization process, the destruction of harmful germs by heat, made it possible to produce, preserve, and transport these products without their undergoing deterioration. In 1870 Pasteur devoted himself to the problem of beer. Following an investigation conducted both in France and among the brewers in London, he devised, as he had done for vinegar and wine, a procedure for manufacturing beer that would prevent its deterioration with time. British exporters, whose ships had to sail entirely around the African continent, were thus able to send British beer as far as India without fear of its deteriorating.

In 1865 he undertook a government mission to investigate the diseases of the silkworm, which were about to put an end to the production of silk at a time when it comprised a major section of France's economy. To carry out the investigation, he moved to the south of France, the centre of silkworm breeding. Three years later he announced that he had isolated the bacilli of two distinct diseases and had found methods of preventing contagion and of detecting diseased stock.

In 1854 Pasteur became dean of the new science faculty at the University of Lille, where he initiated a highly modern educational concept: by instituting evening classes for the many young workmen of the industrial city, conducting his regular students around large factories in the area, and organizing supervised practical courses, he demonstrated the relationship that he believed should exist between theory and practice, between university and industry. A skillful experimenter endowed with great curiosity and a remarkable gift of observation, Pasteur devoted himself with immense enthusiasm to science and its applications to medicine, agriculture, and industry.

"Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence."

info and many sentences from: "Pasteur, Louis." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 27 Dec. 2006 < http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-12562 >.

Happy Holiday(s)

Merry Christmas, Good Yule, Happy Solstice, Midwinter Joy, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Hanukkah ... however you celebrate the returning light in this midwinter season, may it fill you with joy.

ps - check out the Google doodle for today!

Winter Solstice, Camelot Station

This is one of my favorite poems of all time.
Enjoy it and the day...

Winter Solstice, Camelot Station

John M. Ford


Camelot is served
By a sixteen-track stub terminal done in High Gothick Style,
The tracks covered by a single great barrel-vaulted glass roof framed upon iron,
At once looking back to the Romans and ahead to the Brunels.
Beneath its rotunda, just to the left of the ticket windows,
Is a mosaic floor depicting the Round Table
(Where all knights, regardless of their station of origin
Or class of accommodation, are equal),
And around it murals of knightly deeds in action
(Slaying dragons, righting wrongs, rescuing maidens tied to the tracks).
It is the only terminal, other than Gare d'Avalon in Paris,
To be hung with original tapestries,
And its lavatories rival those at the Great Gate of Kiev Central.
During a peak season such as this, some eighty trains a day pass through,
Five times the frequency at the old Londinium Terminus,
Ten times the number the Druid towermen knew.
(The Official Court Christmas Card this year displays
A crisp black-and-white Charles Clegg photograph from the King's own collection.
Showing a woad-blued hogger at the throttle of "Old XCVII,"
The Fast Mail overnight to Eboracum. Those were the days.)
The first of a line of wagons have arrived,
Spilling footmen and pages in Court livery,
And old thick Kay, stepping down from his Range Rover,
Tricked out in a bush coat from Swaine, Adeney, Brigg,
Leaning on his shooting stick as he marshalls his company,
Instructing the youngest how to behave in the station,
To help mature women that they may encounter,
Report pickpockets, gather up litter,
And of course no true Knight of the Table Round (even in training)
Would do a station porter out of Christmas tips.
He checks his list of arrival times, then his watch
(A moon-phase Breguet, gift from Merlin):
The seneschal is a practical man, who knows trains do run late,
And a stolid one, who sees no reason to be glad about it.
He dispatches pages to posts at the tracks,
Doling out pennies for platform tickets,
Then walks past the station buffet with a dyspeptic snort,
Goes into the bar, checks the time again, orders a pint.
The patrons half turn--it's the fella from Camelot, innit?
And Kay chuckles soft to himself, and the Court buys a round.
He's barely halfway when a page tumbles in,
Seems the knights are arriving, on time after all,
So he tips the glass back (people stare as he guzzles),
Then plonks it down hard with five quid for the barman,
And strides for the doorway (half Falstaff, half Hotspur)
To summon his liveried army of lads.

* * *

Bors arrives behind steam, riding the cab of a heavy Mikado.
He shakes the driver's hand, swings down from the footplate,
And is like a locomotive himself, his breath clouding white,
Dark oil sheen on his black iron mail,
Sword on his hip swinging like siderods at speed.
He stamps back to the baggage car, slams mailed fist on steel door
With a clang like jousters colliding.
The handler opens up and goes to rouse another knight.
Old Pellinore has been dozing with his back against a crate,
A cubical, chain-bound thing with FRAGILE tags and air holes,
BEAST says the label, QUESTING, 1 the bill of lading.
The porters look doubtful but ease the thing down.
It grumbles. It shifts. Someone shouts, and they drop it.
It cracks like an egg. There is nothing within.
Elayne embraces Bors on the platform, a pelican on a rock,
Silently they watch as Pelly shifts the splinters,
Supposing aloud that Gutman and Cairo have swindled him.

A high-drivered engine in Northern Lines green
Draws in with a string of side-corridor coaches,
All honey-toned wood with stained glass on their windows.
Gareth steps down from a compartment, then Gaheris and Aggravaine,
All warmly tucked up in Orkney sweaters;
Gawaine comes after in Shetland tweed.
Their Gladstones and steamers are neatly arranged,
With never a worry--their Mum does the packing.
A redcap brings forth a curious bundle, a rude shape in red paper--
The boys did that one themselves, you see, and how does one wrap a unicorn's head?
They bustle down the platform, past a chap all in green.
He hasn't the look of a trainman, but only Gawaine turns to look at his eyes,
And sees written there Sir, I shall speak with you later.

Over on the first track, surrounded by reporters,
All glossy dark iron and brass-bound mystery,
The Direct-Orient Express, ferried in from Calais and Points East.
Palomides appears. Smelling of patchouli and Russian leather,
Dripping Soubranie ash on his astrakhan collar,
Worry darkening his dark face, though his damascene armor shows no tarnish,
He pushes past the press like a broad-hulled icebreaker.
Flashbulbs pop. Heads turn. There's a woman in Chanel black,
A glint of diamonds, liquid movements, liquid eyes.
The newshawks converge, but suddenly there appears
A sharp young man in a crisp blue suit
From the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits,
That elegant, comfortable, decorous, close-mouthed firm;
He's good at his job, and they get not so much as a snapshot.
Tomorrow's editions will ask who she was, and whom with...

Now here's a silver train, stainless steel, Vista-Domed,
White-lighted grails on the engine (running no extra sections)
The Logres Limited, extra fare, extra fine,
(Stops on signal at Carbonek to receive passengers only).
She glides to a Timkin-borne halt (even her grease is clean),
Galahad already on the steps, flashing that winning smile,
Breeze mussing his golden hair, but not his Armani tailoring,
Just the sort of man you'd want finding your chalice.
He signs an autograph, he strikes a pose.
Someone says, loudly, "Gal! Who serves the Grail?"
He looks--no one he knows--and there's a silence,
A space in which he shifts like sun on water;
Look quick and you may see a different knight,
A knight who knows that meanings can be lies,
That things are done not knowing why they're done,
That bearings fail, and stainless steel corrodes.
A whistle blows. Snow shifts on the glass shed roof. That knight is gone.
This one remaining tosses his briefcase to one of Kay's pages,
And, golden, silken, careless, exits left.

Behind the carsheds, on the business-car track, alongside the private varnish
Of dukes and smallholders, Persian potentates and Cathay princes
(James J. Hill is here, invited to bid on a tunnel through the Pennines),
Waits a sleek car in royal blue, ex-B&O, its trucks and fittings chromed,
A black-gloved hand gripping its silver platform rail;
Mordred and his car are both upholstered in blue velvet and black leather.
He prefers to fly, but the weather was against it.
His DC-9, with its video system and Quotron and waterbed, sits grounded at Gatwick.
The premature lines in his face are a map of a hostile country,
The redness in his eyes a reminder that hollyberries are poison.
He goes inside to put on a look acceptable for Christmas Court;
As he slams the door it rattles like strafing jets.

Outside the Station proper, in the snow,
On a through track that's used for milk and mail,
A wheezing saddle-tanker stops for breath;
A way-freight mixed, eight freight cars and caboose,
Two great ugly men on the back platform, talking with a third on the ballast.
One, the conductor, parcels out the last of the coffee;
They drink. A joke about grails. They laugh.
When it's gone, the trainman pretends to kick the big hobo off,
But the farewell hug spoils the act.
Now two men stand on the dirty snow,
The conductor waves a lantern and the train grinds on.
The ugly men start walking, the new arrival behind,
Singing "Wenceslas" off-key till the other says stop.
There are two horses waiting for them. Rather plain horses,
Considering. The men mount up.
By the roundhouse they pause,
And look at the locos, the water, the sand, and the coal,
They look for a long time at the turntable,
Until the one who is King says "It all seemed so simple, once,"
And the best knight in the world says "It is. We make it hard."
They ride on, toward Camelot by the service road.

The sun is winter-low. Kay's caravan is rolling.
He may not run a railroad, but he runs a tight ship;
By the time they unload in the Camelot courtyard,
The wassail will be hot and the goose will be crackling,
Banners snapping from their towers, fir logs on the fire, drawbridge down,
And all that sackbut and psaltery stuff.
Blanchefleur is taking the children caroling tonight,
Percivale will lose to Merlin at chess,
The young knights will dally and the damsels dally back,
The old knights will play poker at a smaller Table Round.
And at the great glass station, motion goes on,
The extras, the milk trains, the varnish, the limiteds,
The Pindar of Wakefield, the Lady of the Lake,
The Broceliande Local, the Fast Flying Briton,
The nerves of the kingdom, the lines of exchange,
Running to a schedule as the world ought,
Ticking like a hot-fired hand-stoked heart,
The metal expression of the breaking of boundaries,
The boilers that turn raw fire into power,
The driving rods that put the power to use,
The turning wheels that make all places equal,
The knowledge that the train may stop but the line goes on;
The train may stop
But the line goes on.

Christmas Carols

I've watched a half dozen or more different versions of A Christmas Carol this week, from Mr Magoo to George C Scott, through Reginald Owen, Seymour Hicks, Alistair Sim, and Vincent Price.

I have to say that Magoo and Sim are the best - Sim probably the most faithful - and Scott the most visually attractive. But I saw so many, and noticed so many little differences - added stuff and reordered episodes - that I figured I'd better reread the book! It's so short, it's a quick and pleasurable read, and the author's voice, generally missing totally from the movies except for the very beginning and very end, is delightful. For instance, this when Scrooge awakens to the first Spirit:

"Why, it isn't possible," said Scrooge, "that I can have slept through a whole day and far into another night. It isn't possible that anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon."

The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed, and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing-gown before he could see anything; and could see very little then. All he could make out was, that it was still very foggy and extremely cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro, and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the world. This was a great relief, because "three days after sight of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his order," and so forth, would have become a mere United States' security if there were no days to count by.

Virtually every one of the film versions spends much more time on the Cratchits than Dickens did. This is especially true of the Reginald Owen one, which has Bob fired for throwing a snowball and hitting Scrooge, but in quite a few Scrooge drops by their house on Christmas and several spend a lot of time introducing us to Tim in the lead-up scenes. For Dickens Cratchit was part of what was wrong with Scrooge, not a main character in his own (their own) right.

I said the Scott was the most visually appealing, but Scott's Scrooge has too much humor; he says with a laugh what Dickens' Scrooge says "indignantly". Also, the Scott one in particular messes up several things by insisting on preserving some of Dickens' dialog, but not all of it. Of course, it's not just the Scott. Virtually every one has Marley's ghost tell Scrooge to expect the ghosts in the same night. This makes Scrooge's

"I haven't missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can."

rather meaningless. In Dickens, the visits are foretold for three nights:

"Without their visits," said the Ghost, "you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls one."

"Couldn't I take `em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?" hinted Scrooge.

"Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!"

If you're going to change the one, you really ought to change the other! Also, the

situation in [Bob Cratchit's] eye for Master Peter, which would bring in, if obtained, full five-and-sixpence weekly

is, in the Scott version, with Fred! Which might just work if he didn't talk about Fred in the usual 'I barely know the man, and he doesn't know us at all' way in the Future...

Another thing is that several of them (Scott's among them) make Scrooge younger than his sister Fan, and even go so far as to tell us that their mother died when he was born. Dickens has no justification for that: he explicitly describes her, in the episode where she comes to the school, as

a little girl, much younger than the boy

Another thing the Scott version makes a bit of a muck of is the undertaker, charwoman, and laundress scene. In Scott, there's only the charwoman, and she stole everything. Plus, like almost all of them, it rearranges the placement of that episode. In the films, it generally comes after this:

"If there is any person in the town, who feels emotion caused by this man's death," said Scrooge quite agonised, "show that person to me, Spirit, I beseech you."

In the book, it comes before and causes that, and then the Spirit shows him what only one film version keeps - the debtors who are saved by his death:

She was a mild and patient creature if her face spoke truth; but she was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she said so, with clasped hands. She prayed forgiveness the next moment, and was sorry; but the first was the emotion of her heart. ... Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter. The children's faces hushed, and clustered round to hear what they so little understood, were brighter; and it was a happier house for this man's death. The only emotion that the Ghost could show him, caused by the event, was one of pleasure.

That's the scene that makes Scrooge plead,

"Let me see some tenderness connected with a death,"

which takes him to the Cratchits' house...

And then there's this line from Christmas Present:

You have never seen the like of me? Have never walked forth with the younger members of my family, meaning (for I am very young) my elder brothers born in these later years?

In the Scott version, that line becomes

Have never walked forth with the younger members of my family nor any of my elder brothers?

That plainly means that Christmas Present's younger brothers - the Christmas Presents of Next Year and Next Decade - must be around for Scrooge to have had a chance to walk forth with!

And then there's this from Fan, at the school:

Father is so much kinder than he used to be, that home's like Heaven! He spoke so gently to me one dear night when I was going to bed, that I was not afraid to ask him once more if you might come home; and he said Yes, you should; and sent me in a coach to bring you.

In the Scott version she says those words, yet their father has come in the coach with her. "Sent me in a coach to bring you" really cannot mean "came with in a coach to fetch you". It just can't.

Oh, one more thing - I'd forgotten that Tiny Tim's body was still in the Cratchit's house in that Christmas Future episode. Nobody shows us that in a movie! Dickens tells us this:

He broke down all at once. He couldn't help it. If he could have helped it, he and his child would have been farther apart perhaps than they were.

He left the room, and went up-stairs into the room above, which was lighted cheerfully, and hung with Christmas. There was a chair set close beside the child, and there were signs of some one having been there, lately. Poor Bob sat down in it, and when he had thought a little and composed himself, he kissed the little face. He was reconciled to what had happened, and went down again quite happy.

Quite happy... and that rather maudlin "I'm sure we'll all remember Tim no matter what" speech? That's not media vita in morte morbidness, it's occasioned by the girls teasing Peter about making enough money to be "be keeping company with some one, and setting up for himself." In short, the Cratchits are a tough bunch. They're not the heroes of this story, and most movies spend far too much time on them, but they are everything Scrooge isn't - and he needs them for his "reclamation".

In short, I guess, the Alistair Sim version is the best one out there (the Magoo is close, but the Cratchits are too poor in it).

Two Brown Birds

A couple of brown birds in the brown leaves...

First, a hermit thrush in the winterberry bush:



Next, a Carolina wren, first in a tree and then in the grass:

Just what is the point?

I watched the Lady Vols get kicked around by Stanford the other day and saw a commercial which told me, breathlessly, about how the SEC had revamped the baseball tournament. The two division champions get a bye in the first round, and eight other teams play, for a total of ten, up from eight last year.

The thing is, there are only twelve teams in the conference. So the tournament is ten of twelve teams. Theoretically, the tenth team could win the tournament. Sheesh. Why have the season?

(And before you tell me, I know what the point is. Money.)

States' Rights When They Like the Right...

It might go to the Supreme Court. Gov. Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island is refusing to turn a prisoner, Jason Pleau, over to federal custody. Mr. Pleau is in a Rhode Island prison on a variety of probation and parole violations and is not due for release until 2028. The federal government wants him for killing a gas station manager during a robbery in September 2010. But Governor Chafee won’t hand him over, because Rhode Island does not have the death penalty and the federal government does. There are plenty of countries around the world who do the same thing. And, in fact, the death penalty is in logistical trouble in the US because countries and companies are refusing to sell us the drugs we use to kill people (many of whom are under- or poorly represented, if at all, and/or in fact innocent, but that's a different complaint).

And as Andrew Rosenthal notes:

Unfortunately, Lincoln Caplan, [the NYT] writer on legal affairs and the courts, thinks Governor Chafee may be on shaky ground, since this case has to do with whether federal law takes precedence over state law. And naturally Governor Chafee’s former Republican colleagues won’t come rushing to his defense—even though they say all the time that the federal government has no right to tell states what to do on health care reform and gun control and pretty much everything, except possibly the death penalty. Oh, and gay marriage.

Lies as Truth

We're in for a long summer. A presidential campaign reported on by a media terrified of exposing the liberal bias of reality gets by by not reporting lies. Or rather by not labeling them as lies. Krugman explains (with a shorter version here:

Mr. Romney just invents stuff to make his case.

But won’t there be some blowback? Won’t Mr. Romney pay a price for running a campaign based entirely on falsehoods? He obviously thinks not, and I’m afraid he may be right.

Oh, Mr. Romney will probably be called on some falsehoods. But, if past experience is any guide, most of the news media will feel as though their reporting must be “balanced,” which means that every time they point out that a Republican lied they have to match it with a comparable accusation against a Democrat — even if what the Democrat said was actually true or, at worst, a minor misstatement.

This isn’t an abstract speculation. Politifact, the project that is supposed to enforce truth in politics, has declared Democratic claims that Republicans voted to end Medicare its “Lie of the Year.” It did so even though Republicans did indeed vote to dismantle Medicare as we know it and replace it with a voucher scheme that would still be called “Medicare,” but would look nothing like the current program — and would no longer guarantee affordable care.

So here’s my forecast for next year: If Mr. Romney is in fact the Republican presidential nominee, he will make wildly false claims about Mr. Obama and, occasionally, get some flack for doing so. But news organizations will compensate by treating it as a comparable offense when, say, the president misstates the income share of the top 1 percent by a percentage point or two.

The end result will be no real penalty for running an utterly fraudulent campaign. As I said, welcome to post-truth politics.

Welcome to the media of today.

Old Time Values

This was in the local paper today.


As far as I can tell, its argument is "we used to do this so it's okay!"

So next can we have a cartoon about Mammy and Pork from Gone With the Wind captioned "O'Haras jailed for trafficking in persons" or perhaps Joan Blondell's Vivian being knocked around in Smarty with the caption "Tony Wallace arraigned on charges of domestic violence" or Spencer Tracy setting fire to an Abenaki villange in Northwest Passage captioned "Major Roberts charged with genocide"...

Give me a break.

Happy Birthday, Edwin

Today in Head Tide, Maine, in 1869, Edwin Arlington Robinson was born. His poetry was unsuccessful to begin with, and he lived on the brink of starvation. Then one day Kermit Roosevelt read some of the poems and gave them to his father, Theodore Roosevelt. TR gave him a cushy job in a Customs House, saying, "I expect you to think poetry first and customs second." All Robinson had to do was show up, read the morning newspaper, and leave it on his chair to prove he had been in. In 1922, the first year the Pulitzer Prize for poetry was awarded, he won - and again in 1925 and 1928.

This poem is very long - 314 lines, too long to post it all - but it's my favorite of his. Select the title to read it all.

The Man Against the Sky

BETWEEN me and the sunset, like a dome
Against the glory of a world on fire,
Now burned a sudden hill,
Bleak, round, and high, by flame-lit height made higher,
With nothing on it for the flame to kill
Save one who moved and was alone up there
To loom before the chaos and the glare
As if he were the last god going home
Unto his last desire.

Dark, marvelous, and inscrutable he moved on
Till down the fiery distance he was gone,
Like one of those eternal, remote things
That range across a man’s imaginings
When a sure music fills him and he knows
What he may say thereafter to few men,—
The touch of ages having wrought
An echo and a glimpse of what he thought
A phantom or a legend until then;
For whether lighted over ways that save,
Or lured from all repose,
If he go on too far to find a grave,
Mostly alone he goes.

Not a tax increase

Awright! Speaking on CNBC about the payroll tax issue, Bob Corker (R) says:

“it’s been framed as a tax increase which it’s not”

I guess that means getting ride the Bush-era tax cuts for the rich is okay, because that's not a tax increase either, just another temporary cut expiring...

Oh. It's not the same thing? Yeah, sure; I can see that...

Happy Birthday, Albert

Born today in 1872 in New Jersey, Albert Payson Terhune, a collie breeder and author of over 30 books, mostly about collies, beginning with Lad: A Dog. I remember well the one about the farmer who found a lost collie and, when he went to town to report a "bird dog" (all the dogs he knew with long hair were bird dogs) spotted the poster for a missing ""dark-sable-and-white collie"; he asked his local preacher what color "sable" was and was told "black". True - except in collies, where it's the familiar Lassie brown! (In fact, you can read it here at Project Gutenberg.

For hours of enjoyment, thanks!

Happy Solstice! Good Yule!

Happy Winter Solstice to my Northern Hemisphere readers...


And happy Summer Solstice to my Southerners...

A stupid, stupid law

In my father's local paper there's a story about a preventable and common tragedy that played out in Kentucky this week. Three people were out in the woods with guns in Claiborne County. One was a guy named Rowland, who was carrying a .270 hunting rifle. The other two were not with him, though on the same property. They were named Smith and Duffield - a 15-yr-old boy, carrying a .22, and his grandfather, who had a .243. Rowland shot Smith. He's been arrested on

charges of reckless homicide and failure to wear daylight fluorescent orange

The thing is none of them was wearing orange. All three were, in fact, wearing camouflage. And here's the stupid part:

Duffield [who has, I guess because the grand jury felt sorry for him, not been charged with failure to wear it (my note)] and Rowland were required by state law to wear a minimum of 500 square inches of orange while engaged in a deer hunt. Because Smith's weapon is not suitable for hunting deer, he was not required to wear orange.

WTF? Why should what kind of gun you're carrying make that difference? Wearing orange is like having your headlights on in rain or twilight. It makes you easier to see.

Just because that boy wasn't carry a deer rifle doesn't mean - obviously and very sadly - that he didn't need to be visible to idiots who were. And I know it's terribly sad that the grandfather lost his grandson, but if he'd been obeying the law and wearing orange, that shooter might have realized it wasn't deer he'd heard. (Endangerment charges don't seem out of line, do they?)

Bottom line: everybody who goes into the words with a gun, or where other people have guns, ought to be wearing orange. As a birder, I wish that weren't so, since birds can see orange. But deer fracking can't:

The two classes of cones in deer allow for the ability to see color differences between short and long-wave lights, e.g., blue and yellow, however, they lack the photoreceptor basis for seeing differences in the color of objects that reflect middle-to-long wavelength light, e.g., yellow-green, green, yellow, orange, and red.

As the sheriff said:

"It has every indication of being a stupid accident," Ray, an avid hunter himself, said at the time of the incident. "How easy it would have been to have a cap on, some orange. It would have made a difference."

A man would probably not be in jail and having to live with the painful result of his stupid, too-quick-on-the-trigger habits. A grandfather probably wouldn't be traumatized and grieving. And a boy would probably still be alive.

Happy Birthday, Fred

TodayIn the bottom of the 9th inning, Fred Merkle was born in Waterstown, Illinois. In 1908 - at the time 19 and the youngest player in the majors - on September 18, towards the end of the season, Merkle's Giants were playing the Chicago Cubs. Bottom of the 9th, 1-1, two outs, and Moose McCormick on first base, Merkle singled and McCormick advanced to third. Al Bridwell was up next and singled. McCormick trotted to home plate, apparently scoring the winning run. The fans in attendance, under the impression that the game was over, ran onto the field to celebrate. Merkle, like everyone else, also thought the game was over and didn't run to second; instead he headed for the clubhouse.

Did I say "everyone else"?

Not quite. Cubs second baseman Johnny Evers (of "Tinkers to Evers to Chance") noticed that Merkle hadn't tagged up. He retrieved a ball (there's some dispute about whether it was the game ball or not) and touched second, appealing to umpire Hank O'Day, who would later manage the Cubs, to call Merkle out. Since Merkle had not touched the base, the umpire called him out on a force play, meaning that McCormick's run did not count.

Given the out-of-control crowd of thousands on the field and the lighting conditions of the day (none), the game was eventually ruled a tie. The Giants and the Cubs would end the season tied for first place. A play-off game* was necessary, and so at the Polo Grounds on October 8 the Cubs won this game, 4-2, and thus the National League pennant.

And poor Fred Merkle, despite 16 seasons in the majors with the New York Giants, Brooklyn Robins, and Chicago Cubs of the National League, 4 more in the International League, and a final 8 games with the New York Yankees before retiring in 1926, was forever known as "Bonehead".

* Yes, kids: once upon a time they only had a playoff if there was a tie. And it was only one game.

Set up...

When Hitchins died, that was one. Then Havel died, and I knew people were wondering "Who's the third?"

It sounds like the set-up for a joke, doesn't it? "So Christopher Hitchins, Vaclav Havel, and Kim Jung-il all died and went to heaven. St Peter said..."

Thing is, I can't figure out what the punch line would be.

Oh, grammar checker...

You try so hard, and you're so wrong so often. (Which is, of course, why I don't have you turned on normally.)

If you questioned it, they looked at you, puzzled, and said ‘don’t you know who’s giving the orders for the program?’

What does the grammar checker want done with this sentence? It wants the comma between "it" and "puzzled" turned into a semicolon. Yes. Even though the explanation for this specifically says

If the marked comma is separating two complete but related sentences, replace the comma with a semicolon.

(It adds this If the second half of your sentence begins with "then," add "and" before "then." but since there's no 'then' there I'm disregarding that.)

Yes. Apparently the grammar checker thinks

puzzled, and said ‘don’t you know who’s giving the orders for the program?’

is a complete sentence.

Hellas?

The category was "Countries' Local Names". The answers were Polska, Nippon, Magyarország, Hellas, and Suomi (Poland, Japan, Hungary, Greece, and Finland).

I knew them all - though, in typical Jeopardy! fashion, I admit I wouldn't have been able to come up with Hungary's name had that been the way the category worked, and would have said Rzeczpospolita Polska for Poland. But it seems to me those were pretty simple for a Double Jeopardy round. And it seems to me that having "Hellas" be a Daily Double was symptomatic of the way the show's quest* for another ratings-inspiring multi-show champion has led them, ironically, in the other direction: the questions are so easy that challengers unseat champs on a regular basis.

* This quest may not in fact exist but quite a few of the people I know who watch think that's what's happening this year.

Happy Birthday, Piaf

Édith Gassion, better known - much better known - as Édith Piaf was born today in Belleville, Paris. "Piaf" is French for "sparrow", because it was such a powerful, beautiful voice in such a small body. She is pretty universally regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her personal life was something of a mess, but her singing - oh, my. Her specialty was ballads, and among her best-known songs are "La Vie en rose" and "Non, je ne regrette rien".

If you have a chance to see the recent biopic, take it. The singing is her - and wonderful.

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: A Christmas Carol with Reginald Owen, a movie that spends way too much time on Bob Cratchitt and not nearly enough on Scrooge - and don't look for grimness here! Also Laurel & Hardy's Babes in Toyland, full of semi-familiar faces, absolutely none of which get a credit... It also had a very peculiar Jackie Cooper Christmas short, and an even odder cartoon from 1939 called Peace on Earth, in which an old squirrel tells his grandchildren how "men" killed themselves off in endless wars and animals inherited the earth - interesting topic for the time it was made.

TV: The Mentalist - wow. We've certainly been told that Jane was a jerk before - sociopath even. But we've never seen it quite so clearly. Cho is right, he's a better person now (though the captain's right, too; he's still a damaged man). Psych - I have to admit that I agree with Shawn: I don't want to share my vacation with strangers, either. But waaaaaah: fall finale! Once Upon A Time - well, okay. Now we know who the sheriff was. I did not expect him to die. Leverage, two eps (a pair - they take place during the same time frame, which is a cool conceit well executed). I like Hurley a lot better than Tara, by the way.

Read: Books one and two of The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, which are engaging and fun.

NDAA Myths Debunked

The White House is in full scrambling defensive mode as it takes wholly justified fire for the president's decision to sign the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which includes a codification of the right to detain indefinitely and without trial just about anybody they want to. At Salon, Glenn Greenwald takes on the claims that it isn't as bad as all that, with simple quotes from the bill that prove that yes, actually, it is.

(Note, you can also read his analysis of the problems civil libertarians have with Obama, including this (again, his emphasis):

Obama’s veto threat was never about substantive objections to the detention powers vested by this bill; put another way, he was never objecting to the bill on civil liberties grounds. Obama, as I documented last week and again below, is not an opponent of indefinite detention; he’s a vigorous proponent of it, as evidenced by his continuous, multi-faceted embrace of that policy.

Obama’s objections to this bill had nothing to do with civil liberties, due process or the Constitution. It had everything to do with Executive power. The White House’s complaint was that Congress had no business tying the hands of the President when deciding who should go into military detention, who should be denied a trial, which agencies should interrogate suspects (the FBI or the CIA). Such decisions, insisted the White House, are for the President, not Congress, to make. In other words, his veto threat was not grounded in the premise that indefinite military detention is wrong; it was grounded in the premise that it should be the President who decides who goes into military detention and why, not Congress.

... Any doubt that this was the White House’s only concern with the bill is now dispelled by virtue of the President’s willingness to sign it after certain changes were made in Conference between the House and Senate. Those changes were almost entirely about removing the parts of the bill that constrained his power, and had nothing to do with improving the bill from a civil liberties perspective. Once the sole concern of the White House was addressed — eliminating limits on the President’s power — they were happy to sign the bill even though (rather: because) none of the civil liberties assaults were fixed.

). As he notes at the end of his take-down (his emphasis):

What’s particularly ironic (and revealing) about all of this is that former White House counsel Greg Craig assured The New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer back in February, 2009 that it’s “hard to imagine Barack Obama as the first President of the United States to introduce a preventive-detention law.” Four months later, President Obama proposed exactly such a law — one that The New York Times described as “a departure from the way this country sees itself, as a place where people in the grip of the government either face criminal charges or walk free” — and now he will sign such a scheme into law.

Happy Birthday, Ossie

Ossie Davis, actor, playwright, and civil rights activist, was born on Dec 18, 1917, in Cogdell, Georgia. Among his plays are Paul Robeson: All American, Escape to Freedom, and Purlie Victorious. He also wrote Just Like Martin and Life Lit by Some Large Vision. In 2004 he and his wife Ruby Dee were recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors.

A linguistic note, on his name: it was really Raiford Chatman Davis; he acquired the name "Ossie" after a county clerk misheard his mother pronounce his initials, "R.C." I personally turned a "Forrest" into a "Fost" (short, I supposed, for "Foster"), and a "Burton" into a "Button" (well, he was five) in exactly that same way (though in neither case so lastingly).

Happy Birthday, Steven

Today in 1946 Steven Spielberg was born.

Back in January 1978 Martin Gardner wrote this for The New York Review of Books, reviewing Close Encounters of the Third Kind:

"It is fashionable now to describe Spielberg as a terribly gifted but innocent prodigy, bug-eyed with wonder and lost in the Ozzy worlds of modern technology and the silver screen. It will be interesting, concluded Newsweek, to watch him grow up. Yes. And the more he grows the less likely he'll make another blockbuster."

Well... like that movie or not, you have to admit: Either Spielberg never grew up, or Gardner was dead wrong.

(Here's the review, but it costs money to read it.)

Happy Birthday, Saki

HH Munro, aka, Saki, was born today in Akyab, Burma, in 1870. His stories are brilliant and indescribable - who can forget Tobermory ( "If he was trying German irregular verbs on the poor beast," said Clovis, "he deserved all he got."), or the girl in The Open Window (Romance at short notice was her speciality.) or Lady Carlotta and The Schartz-Metterklume Method (

"How tiresome for you, dear Carlotta," said her
hostess, when the overdue guest ultimately arrived; "how
very tiresome losing your train and having to stop
overnight in a strange place."

"Oh dear, no," said Lady Carlotta; "not at all
tiresome - for me."

), or Conradin and Sredni Vashtar (

Sredni Vashtar went forth,
His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.
His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.
Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.

), and the wolves, all the hungry wolves, in so many stories? Read Saki here.

The market is there to make money

And this is the reason the market isn't the way to do health insurance:

insurers profit not by providing the most cost-effective care, but by trying to insure people who won’t need care.

Krugman slapping at Wyden by channeling Ken Arrow from 50 years ago.

Insurance companies aren't intrinsically evil. But they're in it to make money. And they make money by not paying claims.

It really is that simple.

A talking bear!

Anybody who even glances at Mark Trail is aware of the dialog balloons that seem to emanate from the large animals that decorate the strip, and occasionally even from inanimate bits of the landscape.

But today's strip features a beautifully misplaced one, as Mother McQueen says that Honey the bear must have led Kelly to the hidden gold mine (trust me, that plot sounds much more interesting that it really is):

Happy Birthday, Willard

Today in 1908, in Grand Valley, Colorado, Willard Frank Libby was born.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1960 for leading the team that developed radiocarbon dating process - carbon-14 - which revolutionized archeology by allowing us to finally know how old things were. Further refinements, using other elements (such as uranium-lead, for instance), have substantially increased our knowledge of the age of the world and the things in it.

Happy Birthday, Arthur

Arthur C Clarke - one of the "Big Three" of science fiction, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov - all sadly dead now - was born today in Minehead, Somerset, England, in 1917, and died in 2007, at 90.

Childhood's End made a huge impression on me when it came out...

And who doesn't love Clarke's laws?

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

4. For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.

Happy Birthday, Sir Arthur!

Happy Birthday, Philip

Today Philip K Dick was born in Chicago, in 1928. Too short a life, but such a wonderful legacy. To name just three:

The Man in the High Castle

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

A Scanner Darkly

Wow.

"I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist; my novel & story-writing ability is employed as a means to formulate my perception. The core of my writing is not art but truth. Thus what I tell is the truth, yet I can do nothing to alleviate it, either by deed or explanation. Yet this seems somehow to help a certain kind of sensitive troubled person, for whom I speak. I think I understand the common ingredient in those whom my writing helps: they cannot or will not blunt their own intimations about the irrational, mysterious nature of reality, &, for them, my corpus is one long ratiocination regarding this inexplicable reality, an integration & presentation, analysis & response & personal history."

Happy Birthday, Jane

On this day in 1775, in Hampshire, England, Jane Austen was born.

That's enough, isn't it?

Okay - Persuasion, Emma, Pride & Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility ... we all know those. There's also her Juvenalia, incuding Love & Freindship [sic], a short satirical epsitolatory novel, very funny:

Alas! my fears were but too fully justified; she grew gradually worse -- and I daily became more alarmed for her. At length she was obliged to confine herself solely to the Bed allotted us by our worthy Landlady. -- Her disorder turned to a galloping Consumption and in a few Days carried her off. Amidst all my Lamentations for her (and violent you may suppose they were) I yet received some consolation in the reflection of my having paid every Attention to her that could be offered, in her illness. I had wept over her every Day -- had bathed her sweet face with my tears and had pressed her fair Hands continually in mine. -- "My beloved Laura (said she to me a few Hours before she died) take warning from my unhappy End and avoid the imprudent conduct which had occasioned it... Beware of fainting-fits... Though at the time they may be refreshing and agreeable, yet beleive me they will in the end, if too often repeated and at improper seasons, prove destructive to your Constitution... My fate will teach you this... I die a Martyr to my greif for the loss of Augustus... One fatal swoon has cost me my Life... Beware of swoons, Dear Laura... A frenzy fit is not one quarter so pernicious; it is an exercise to the Body and if not too violent, is, I dare say, conducive to Health in its consequences -- Run mad as often as you chuse; but do not faint --"

These were the last words she ever addressed to me... It was her dieing Advice to her afflicted Laura, who has ever most faithfully adhered to it.

And Frederick and Elfrida, which is also very funny:

It was not till the next morning that Charlotte recollected the double engagement she had entered into; but when she did, the reflection of her past folly, operated so strongly on her mind, that she resolved to be guilty of a greater, & to that end threw herself into a deep stream which ran thro' her Aunt's pleasure Grounds in Portland Place.

She floated to Crankhumdunberry where she was picked up & buried; the following epitaph, composed by Frederic, Elfrida & Rebecca, was placed on her tomb.

Epitaph
Here lies our friend who having promis-ed
That unto two she would be marri-ed
Threw her sweet Body & her lovely face
Into the Stream that runs thro' Portland Place.

These sweet lines, as pathetic as beautifull were never read by any one who passed that way, without a shower of tears, which if they should fail of exciting in you, Reader, your mind must be unworthy to peruse them.

And not to forget her deliciously partisan and funny History of England, "by a partial, prejudiced, & ignorant Historian."

The Crimes & Cruelties of this Prince, were too numerous to be mentioned, (as this history I trust has fully shewn) & nothing can be said in his vindication, but that his abolishing Religious Houses & leaving them to the ruinous depredations of time has been of infinite use to the landscape of England in general, which probably was a principle motive for his doing it, since otherwise why should a Man who was of no Religion himself be at so much trouble to abolish one which had for ages been established in the Kingdom.

And when she spoke for herself, she was funny and true:

"A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of."

Find more Jane here

(And let's all note how lucky everyone is that Lynne Truss wasn't around then...)

Happy Birthday, Noel

Today in 1899 Noel Coward was born, in Teddington, Middlesex, England.

He chose his own epitaph: A Talent to Amuse.

And how perfectly fitting it is.

there, fixed that for him

Sigh.

Once again, Obama demonstrates that he's as big a fan of the imperial presidency and the Endless War as Bush ever was, and not so big a fan of the constitution and civil liberties.

Here's how Andrew Rosenthal put it:

White House statements explaining why Mr. Obama has agreed to sign the bill (after he threatened a veto) note that it does not impinge on executive authority. As long as that’s secure, he simply does not seem to care about technicalities like the constitution.

This bill is not just a Bad Idea, it is a Very Bad Idea Indeed. The threatened veto should be made.

It won't be, though. They fixed the bit he didn't like.

Geeze

Today's Washington Times front page was like a joke. Not a funny one, but an illustrative one. There were five articles and a big photo-with-caption.

• Main story was applauding the fact that Israel will be able to fly over Iraq to attack Iran after the US leaves.
• Right-hand column? Applause for a revision of state (Virginia) rules to let Christian adoption agencies ban gay couples.
• Second left-hand story (under the Israel one): some people are outraged that the White House let an Iraqi minister with "ties to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard" come to the meetings.
• Below the fold - blaming the Democrats for blocking the year-end spending bill.
• True, the big center-of-the-page photo and story was about Republican candidates and all their money - but it was really a plug for Michelle Bachman Michele Bachmann and the Tea Party.
• And the bottom photo? "A Glimpse of Gaza's Future" which pretends that a couple of little Palestinian boys in uniforms with toy guns is somehow evil and not at all like good old American boys in cammies with toy guns...

Jeeze this paper is depressing.

C'mon, Jeopardy guys

I think they must be desperate to get another multi-game champion. But making the questions easy only means challengers can get ahead.

Like this $1000 in "G", look at that: "It's the type of large support structure for launching rockets seen here, Elmer" with a picture similar to this one. Really.

Seriously? The picture, the "G" and the "launching rockets" isn't enough? You're going to give them "Elmer"? Elmer?

Happy Birthday, Quantum Mechanics

This is the way that science works: you make observations, and you use them to explain something.

Even if the explanation isn't what you expected, or wanted, or even understand.

On this day in 1900 Max Planck published his theory of quantum mechanics. He was trying describe the behavior of light, but found that the only way he could explain his experimental observations was to assume that light travels in little packets (quanta), which made absolutely no sense to him. He published anyway, calling his theory "an act of desperation."

For a long time he believed that some future physicist would figure out where he had gone wrong, writing "My unavailing attempts to somehow reintegrate the action quantum into classical theory extended over several years and caused me much trouble." But, as it turned out, he hadn't gone wrong. His observations (as he knew) were correct, and the theory which explained them was also correct. Light is just weird that way. And building on Planck's work, physicists have been exploring and describing the strange behavior of light and subatomic particles for more than a century.

And the theory is now so well accepted (though perhaps, as Feynman once quipped, not so well understood) that Nikon can even use it in a camera ad:

Sometimes Light behaves like a wave.
Sometimes Light behaves like a particle.
And sometimes Light behaves like a spoiled, tempestuous child.

It's funny

Contestants on Wheel get so excited when they win the car. But ... the smallest amount of cash on the wheel is $35,000. The Mini-Cooper plus $5000 comes to ... $36,250.

For anything but the minimum you could buy a Mini-Cooper and have more than $5000 left over.

They don't care about deficits

Once again, Krugman:

the GOP is not now, and never has been (at least not since the 1970s) concerned about the deficit. All the fiscal posturing of the last couple of years has been about using the deficit as a club to smash the welfare state, with the secondary goal of frustrating any efforts on the part of the Obama administration to help the struggling economy.

The entire debate has been fake. If you don’t understand that, or can’t bring yourself to admit it, you’re missing the whole story.

"It was a mistake"

This happened yesterday in Britain:

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has admitted it "was a mistake" to announce that Mark Duggan, who was shot dead by police officers last August sparking widespread rioting, had been involved in a firefight with officers.

At a pre-inquest hearing at North London Coroner's Court yesterday, IPCC investigator Colin Sparrow was forced to admit that none of Mr Duggan's DNA, blood or fingerprints had been found on a non-police issue gun recovered from the scene in Tottenham, north London, where he was shot and killed on 4 August.

In a courtroom packed with Mr Duggan's friends and family, including his fiancée and mother of his children Semone Wilson, Mr Mansfield asked Mr Sparrow: "My first question is, do you appreciate the anxiety the family have about the investigation?

"And are you aware at least that one of the reasons is the misinformation that was broadcast at the beginning, close to the time Mark Duggan met his death? Misinformation suggesting some form of shoot-out, and do you accept that was a serious mistake?"

Mr Sparrow replied: "It wasn't accurate."

Mr Mansfield added: "It was a mistake, wasn't it?"

Mr Sparrow then said: "It was a mistake."

And

The hearing was told that a gun initially linked to Mr Duggan was actually found 14ft from the crime scene in Ferry Lane, on the other side of a fence.

Mr Mansfield said witnesses had claimed to see a police officer throw the weapon there. He asked Mr Sparrow: "How on earth did the gun get over a fence 14ft away? Was it thrown there by a police officer?"

Mr Sparrow said: "That's a suggestion, yes."

As the Independent notes,

It was anger of the police's lack of contact with Mr Duggan's family that prompted 120 people to march from Tottenham's Broadwater Farm estate to the local police station, which became the starting point for the outbreak of social unrest that spread across London and then to other parts of the country over the next three nights.

As they don't note (at least not in this article), Duggan was relentlessly portrayed as having shot a police officer before he was shot. While it may be true that he had a gun with him, that's now uncertain, and there is absolutely no evidence that, if he did have it, he ever even took it out of the box he was allegedly carrying it in. The Metropolitan Police Federation have asserted that the officer who shot Duggan had "an honest-held belief that he was in imminent danger of him and his colleagues being shot".

Honest belief of imminent danger or not, what now seems apparent is that the police closed ranks and attempted to cover up what happened. That three days of rioting were sparked by this occurrence is incidental - though not to the people now in jail nor the businesses and their owners who suffered.

The larger point to this - and it's hardly confined to this instance or even to Britain, oh my no - is that the police are no longer on the side of the public. As I noted a couple of weeks ago, the police are morphing into an occupying force, and that's a disturbing trend. What this example illustrates is that people are beginning to disbelieve anything told them by the police, or by those who purport to control or investigate them.

And that's an even more disturbing trend - one that has grave potential for civil society.

Arrrrrgggghhhhhh

It's the damned Drummer Boy song!

The von Trapps brought us that horrible song!!!!

I didn't know that, but what else could it have been?

The Week in Entertainment

Live: The Lion King which, wow. That is what theater is meant to be like. The costume design is superb, the acting wonderful, even the two little kids, and the singing terrific. If you have a chance to catch this (Broadway Across America, or the like) definitely do.

DVD: Chak De! India, an underdog sports film about the Indian women's hockey team. Shahrukh Khan takes a divided and antagonistic team to the World Cup. Mohabbatein (Love Stories) - which, I think, pretty much embodies the difference between Bollywood and Hollywood. Well, besides the songs and dances, of course. In the latter, given the set-up (stern headmaster expels gifted student who had fallen for his daughter, thereby ruining his chance for any academic career; daughter, despairing, commits suicide; student returns to school using a false name seven years later and gets a job teaching music as an extra-curricular activity), the student's goal would be the destruction of the headmaster and school in the name of revenge. In this movie, though, his goal is ... the headmaster's redemption in the name of Love.

TV: The Mentalist, an amusing episode. Someone tried to kill a sports hero, and they were pretending he was dead to help them trap the killer because, as Jane put it, "How many times have you wanted to talk to the victim?" I liked it when Lisbon told the guy "You're threatened by a mobster and then your car is blown up and you don't tell us? You're about as helpful as a real murder victim." Psych, funny. The Middle, a nice episode about questioning things, and I'm glad they didn't have Brick decide the Bible was flawless. Modern Family, a very funny episode about trying to celebrate Christmas around everyone's schedule - and neuroses. Leverage - I adored that German film-maker, especially when he fell for Parker. "She has nuclear winter in her soul!" Watched the rest of Boss, which was very powerful. Next season should be tremendous. And a couple of episodes of Grimm, which is still interesting.

Read: Perdito Street Station by China Miéville, which (like everything else of his I've read) is a stunning, inventive creation.

Happy Birthday, Aleksandr Isaevich

Born today in 1918, Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, the «великий писатель Земли Русской» - "the great writer of the Russian Land". Born in the Soviet Union, an officer in the Army, then arrested and sent to the camps where he made the great discovery so many in the camps made: the essential sham nature of Stalinism, under the cult of personality and the excesses of ritual and blood. As Evgenia Ginzburg put it in her memoir "Into the Whirlwind": everyone thought that a mistake had been made in my case, but all these other people - they were guilty, they belonged here. It wasn't until later we learned that none of us - or all of us - did. [paraphrased because my copy is at my parents' place]

Solzhenitsyn became the voice of conscience - with novels like A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (which managed to be published at Khrushchev's behest, part of de-Stalinization), history like The GULag Archipelago, and blends like The Red Wheel (August 1914 and its sequels), he explored and exposed Stalin's Soviet Union and its successor states. Early on, his piercing gaze became too strong for the USSR and he was banned - first from publishing (though his manuscripts were smuggled out) and then from living in Russia, a devastating blow but one which did not stop him.

But we in the West never really understood him - our predilection for black-and-white, either/or, with-me-or-agin-me categorizations labeled him a "dissident" and assumed that meant pro-Western, but he was never, never that. After his exile, he became a voice echoing the old Slavic culture that has always been at odds with the West, and was then at odds with Soviet Communism. Once he could, he hurried back to Moscow, where he still argued that viewpoint, somewhat at odds with modern Russia, and supported Putin insofar as Putin was restoring Russia and Russianess.

A few quotes from his last year:

• «…При Горбачеве было отброшено само понятие и сознание государственности. При Ельцине та же линия была продолжена, но еще отягощена безмерным разграблением России (…). При Путине стали предприниматься обратные усилия спасения проваленной государственности». Under Gorbachev the very understanding and consciousness of statehood was thrown away. Under Eltsin the same line was extended, but it was overwhelmed by the unstinted plundering of Russia.... Under Putin, efforts were begun to reverse course and rescue our lost country.

• «…Сбережение народа – выс­шая из всех наших государственных задач. (…) Все меры по поднятию общенародного жизненного уровня – в бытовом, пищевом, медицинском, образовательном и моральном отношениях – и суть действия по сбережению народа». Saving the people is the highest of all our national goals. ... All measures to raise the national level of standards of living - in daily life, food, medicine, education, and morality - are the essential action to save the people.

• «…Я считаю консерватизмом стремление сохранять и отстаивать лучшие, добрые и разумные традиции, оправдавшие себя в многовековом народном действовании. Консерватизм, дающий сейчас ростки в России (…), обнадеживает, но выглядит пока как бы «пробным», не разработанным по отношению к конкретной современности». I believe that conservatism is the struggle to preserve and maintain the best, decent, and wise traditions, those justified by centuries of people's actions. The conservatism which is now springing up in Russia... raises hopes, yet seems for the moment to be a "trial model", not yet developed with regard to the specifics of our modern here-and-now."