PS: For them

I quoted the Alouettes' announcement that said

kickoff will be at noon, i.e. one hour earlier than usual. Sunday also marks the day that clocks are turned back an hour.

I'm betting the game is at noon instead of one so the players' body clocks aren't thrown off!

Go Als! This year in Montreal! Cette année à Montréal!

Extra measures

So, this was in my Montreal Alouettes Facebook feed yesterday, referring to Sunday's decisive game:

Alouettes fans are asked to arrive early on Sunday as kickoff will be at noon, i.e. one hour earlier than usual. Sunday also marks the day that clocks are turned back an hour. Also, following last week's events, extra security measures will be in effect on Sunday. Bags will notably be searched at every stadium entrance.

Am I a bad person for seeing zero connection between a guy (or guys) who went after uniformed soldiers and members of Parliament in Ottawa, and anybody attacking a football stadium in Toronto? I mean, it's one thing if you have credible intelligence, but absent that, why is this game different? It's like the guy in my office who was afraid to go to DC earlier this week.

I mean, the Canadians are being way cooler (as in cooler-headed) about this than we would be, but it does seem like the "be afraid, be very afraid" mantra is seeping north of the border, too.

Happy Halloween

Cheap shot but I'm taking it

Discovery Channel has a show (why?) about two senators trying to survive for six days on a island. (Again: why?) There's a review of it in the Post today; it doesn't sound like must-see tv, that's for sure. The contestants in the reviewed episode (yes, this is a premiere (why???)) are Jeff Flake (R-Az) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM). At one point the reviewer says,

Whether or not the show is edited to portray him as a bit of a jerk, it’s Flake who starts in with uninspired, needling jokes

C'mon. He's a Republican from Arizona; how much editing would it take?

Badabing. Here all week, try the veal, tip your waitress...

Happy 100th, Dylan

Another 100th birthday.

Dylan Marlais Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales today in 1914. (Yes, the Dylan Thomas from "the man's so square, when you say "Dylan" he thinks you mean "Dylan Thomas" - whoever he was" ...) (Although by now that reference is probably almost as dated as the concept of the joke in the first place...)

At any rate, Dylan Thomas, who drank himself to death at the age of 39, gave us Under Milk Wood and A Child's Christmas in Wales and A refusal to mourn the death, by fire, of a child in London and probably my favorite of all, Fern Hill (Time held me green and dying / Though I sang in my chains like the sea.).

Here's his Poem In October

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.

A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.

It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels

And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singing birds.

And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.

Happy Birthday, Dr Salk!

It was a hot summer afternoon. My mother took us to the schoolyard at Woodland Elementary and she stood in a long line of other mothers (there may have been fathers there, I was too young to remember that now). She stood for hours in the hot Tennessee sun, and we - my brothers and sisters and all the other mothers' kids - ran and played in the school playground. I didn't really understand why we were there; I did know that my mother, all the mothers, were in the grip of some emotion I couldn't understand. They weren't afraid, though - just the opposite: happy, keyed up, talking and laughing and not caring about the heat or the length of the line or long wait. That's really what I remember: that line of women, waiting with relief and joy.

Eventually my mother got to the head of the line, and the five of us kids each got a sugar cube. It was that simple.

I never knew anyone who caught polio. I knew a few who had caught it before I was born, but it was a word to me, not a terror.

Jonas Salk was born today, in New York City, 2100 years ago.. Along with Albert Sabin, he changed the world.

And check out Google's Doodle.

The Week in Entertainment

Live: I Love Lucy Live On Stage at the Hippodrome, which was a lot of fun - more fun than I thought it would be when I saw it was in the package. I knew all the ads, too, except the Dorothy Gray Cold Cream.... Which, wow. Check it out below.

DVD: The rest of Murdoch Mysteries season 7. My god what a way to end the season! Now I have to wait for 8 to see about Brackenreid!! A few more Scott & Bailey eps, from the second season. Good character development, especially on Bailey, who was quite ... unlikeable in season one. Philomena, which was, as advertised, a tour-de-force performance by Judi Dench.

TV: Modern Family - Claire and Phil all over the house-buyers ("you're in bed with the right people!") was hilarious. Lily wanting to learn "to read and do math" was wonderful. As was "I will take Lily back if you can tell me the object of this sentence: Lily's parents were wrong about Mrs. Plank." "I think... the object is to humiliate us?" "Correct." Doctor Who had a good episode; I loved Maeve's "Everything confuses me so I don't say anything about" attitude (don't want it, but loved it). Pink continues to be more understanding than Clara deserves; What I never did get was why the hell Clara was lying to Danny in the first place. It's not like he gave her any ultimatum - never said don't go with the Doctor, never said anything beyond "don't lie to me". But it rather looks like it'll all be moot anyway, judging by the previews.

Read:The first two of Jonathan Stroud's Lockwood & Co. books. Very good world-building (if short on the explanation) and nice action.The Confession of Helen Vardon, which was not the best Dr Thorndyke novel I've ever read, not by a long shot!, and was narrated by the eponymous woman who was flat-out annoying. The Nightingale Before Christmas, the most recent Meg Langslow, which was enjoyable. A Snicker of Magic, a very enjoyable YA.

Early Voting

Voted at the Odenton Library today - not a huge crowd when I was there, but a steady one. For a Saturday afternoon as lovely as this one was, that's a good sign, I think.

The worst yet?

OMG Bing this is maybe your worst yet.

Навстречу переводу стрелок на час назад
To transfer the shooter on an hour ago


Gazeta is reminding Russians of the approach of "winter time" - that is, when the hands of the clock are put back an hour. Not when the shooter is transferred an hour ago. Sheesh.

I don't even know how they got "to transfer the shooter" from "Навстречу переводу стрелок", I really don't. Навстречу is literally "to the meeting" and means "to approach, to go to meet, to meet halfway." And though перевод does mean transfer, or translation, or a lot of other things, it's not a verb, it's a noun. And стрелок is a shooter, but that's the nominative form and here what we have is the genitive plural of стрелка, which is "arrow" or "pointer" or in the plural "clock hands". Bing has completely ignored all the grammar in the phrase (to the meeting of the transfer of the hands).  I mean, if it was "transfer the shooter"  it would be перевод (or more likely переводить) стрелка, not переводу стрелок. And the grammar of на час назад, too. That's not "on an hour", which would be locative case; it's "by an hour" in the accusative, and the на makes it impossible for it to mean "an hour ago" - it has to be "an hour back(wards)".

This is just unbelievably bad.

Not that Google is any better: "Towards translation shooter hour ago". It knows навстречу, unlike Bing, but it picks a different wrong word for переводу and makes the same unforgivable grammar errors with "переводу стрелок", resulting in the same case and number error ("shooter" instead of "hands") as Bing's. "Hour ago" is bad English, and it ignores the на, too.

This isn't even hard Russian!

Well, that didn't take long

So, Bing got it right yesterday. But today they're back on form:

Yep. A simple little couple of sentences. «Не мы это начали»: Как Россия Владимира Путина будет менять международный порядок

And Bing says "Don't we began: the Russia of Vladimir Putin to change the international order".



To start, Bing misses the quotation marks. Then ... "Don't we began".

"Don't we began"?? Bing, that's not English. The не is modifying мы, anyway - "not we" - and you forgot the это. "We didn't start this."

Then you totally left out the как. That means "how". And the будет, which means "will" - the future tense. And that means the sentence isn't "the Russia of Putin to change" (which, again, isn't English) but rather "how the Russia of Vladmir Putin will change the international order."

So Bing left out three crucial words and misplaced the "not". Not a good sign.

Google isn't much better. ""Do not we have started," How Russia Vladimir Putin will change the international order"

They got the quotataion marks, and the "how" and the "will"... but "Do not we have started"? Seriously? And where's the "this"? It's not just "starting", it's "starting this". And missing that  Putin's name is in the genitive case? How does a translation algorithm do that?

What? C'mon, guys

Okay, I'm going to object. "Chaplinesque" doesn't really apply to the comedy of the actual Charlie Chaplin.

Merriam Webster defines it as:

resembling or suggesting the largely pantomime comedy of the motion-picture comedian Charles Chaplin, especially its central comedy figure, a pathetic ineffectual good-hearted tramp with torn baggy pants, long-worn shoes, cane and bowler hat, an odd jerky walk, and pretensions to gentility 

"Resembling or suggesting". Not, you know, being.


Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, s.v. “Chaplinesque,” accessed October 24, 2014, http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com.

The Hot Zone: halfway decent horror novel, crap science

If you're scared out of you mind about Ebola because you're one of the millions who read The Hot Zone - calm down and read read this. in which an infectious disease epidemiologist and a science communicator tells us why it's one of the banes of her existence.

Credit where due

Because I mock Bing when it fails, here's one it gets right:

Родители, которые ухаживают за детьми с инвалидностью, с ВИЧ-инфекцией, другими тяжёлыми заболеваниями, нуждаются в особой поддержке. Планируем продлить срок специальных выплат до достижения ребенком 18-летнего возраста вместо 15, как это происходит сейчас.

Parents caring for children with disabilities, HIV, other severe diseases, need special support. We plan to extend the special pay until the child reaches the age of 18, instead of 15, as is currently the case.

Google does just fine, too:

Parents who care for children with disabilities, HIV and other serious diseases, need special support. We plan to extend the special payments until the child reaches the age of 18 instead of 15, as is happening now.

Some cute

Goodness, I've been surly. Here, have Power Puff Doctors.

(found on Maggie MacReynolds' pin - artist apparently called Lumos5000)

Choosing

A commenter at Whatever says, in answer to Scalzi's post telling #Gamergate followers how to really boycott him:

I don’t assume that every non-theist I meet endorses everything Richard Dawkins says. I don’t assume every Muslim I meet supports ISIS. I don’t assume every American I meet endorses drone strikes. And I don’t assume that everyone using the “gamergate” hash tag endorses threats of violence.

But there's a flaw here.

Not every atheist labels their speech with #IHeartDawkins (or whatever). Not every Muslim labels theirs #ISISRulz. Not every American labels theirs #Drones4Ever.

But every person "using the "gamergate" hash tag" chooses to label themselves that way.

So it's not at all unreasonable to assume - especially this deep into it - that they do in fact endorse the #Gamergate ethos.

If they don't, they're free to choose another hashtag.

Harsh? Not too.

I can't say I have much sympathy for people cancelling their flights to places like South Africa or India or London - or even domestically! - because of Ebola who are discovering that they can't get reimbursed. This fear-based reaction doesn't deserve to be catered to.

Your science-free bubble should be expensive.

(read this)

An observation

One shooter (possibly two) has shut down central Ottawa for hours. (And let me say right away that I'm very glad it wasn't worse and very sorry it happened at all.) One bombing shut down Boston for several days.

This is crazy. How can we let such things paralyze our cities? It's an open invitation - such a small investment for such a huge return.

Genuinely shocked

I never thought this would happen. Neither, apparently, did they. But it did.

All four ex-Blackwater security guards have been found guilty - one of first-degree murder, the rest of of multiple counts of voluntary manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and gun charges - in the 2007 killings of over 30 Iraqis.

All of them. Going to prison today.

Supreme Court Footage

Okay, not really, of course, because no cameras are allowed.

But John Oliver is providing incredible footage to make the SCOTUS hearings watchable. "We spent an incredible amount of time and an almost immoral amount of resources to produce an entire Supreme Court featuring real animals with fake paws."

The one-eyed whale!!!!!!!!!!!

One chapter heading in this 19th century work called the title character "one-eyed, lame" and another called him "deaf".

Well, it had to be The Hunchback of Notre Dame, really, didn't it?

Not according to one contestant, who wrote down "Who is Moby Dick?"

I'm having a hard time figuring how you'd know a whale was lame...

RBG!

Six Supremes said it would be disruptive and confusing to strike down Texas's new restrictions on voting so close to the election.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg penned a dissent, joined by Kagan and Sotomayor, that says, in part:

"The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law, one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters."

Preach it, sister!

Nice eggcorn

Saw this in email:

I came upon a roadkill deer, a sorrow for site to behold.

The Week in Entertainment

Live: A fabulous and very funny Le Nozze di Figaro at the Met with Ildar Abdrazakov absolutely owning the title role and a good rest of the ensemble. The staging was excellent, too.

DVD: About half of season 7 of The Murdoch Mysteries. Being Canadian, it's 18 episodes, not just 3!

TV: Modern Family. Poor Mitchell and his sweater! Doctor Who, back to his attempting to define "good". This episode had some great moments - the Doctor "Thing"-ing his way off the tracks, and the big "this plane is under my protection!" speech, yes! Also, his calling the device he built the 2Dis was hilarious. The Doctor doesn't get many "just this once, everybody lives!" moments (sort of implied in the just this once part of it, if you think about it), and this wasn't one. But you don't often hear him say out loud that sometimes the wrong people do.

Read: We have got to Freedom Summer and I know it's going to be grim, so I took a break. Read a light mystery called Murder at Steeple Martin which was good enough to try the next one; Navajo Autumn, which was an okay mystery with a kind of odd, very unstylish writing style, I might try the next but I'm not sure; Cary Elwes' book about making "The Princess Bride", As You Wish, which was very enjoyable. The first three in the "Twenty-Sided Sorceress" series, and I can hardly wait till the fourth one comes out. I really enjoyed the world Annie Bellet has built here.

Figaro!

Went up to the big city today to see Le Nozze di Figaro at the Met. They set the story in a 18th-century manor house in Seville during the 1930s, and managed to make it work somehow- probably by pretty much ignoring it except for the costumes. The set revolved so that the action flowed - the scene where the Count is chasing Cherubino, for instance, twisted back around and through the moving set, and the overture showed us all the principle locations. Figaro was sung by Ildar Abdrazakov, who was perfect. Others included Marlis Petersen as Susanna, Peter Mattei as the Count, Amanda Majeski as the Countess, and Isabel Leonard as the pageboy Cherubino. It's a wonderful production of one of my favorite operas, and the second act was laugh-out-loud funny.

Below is a shot of the sunrise from the train in Delaware (over the Delaware River or possibly Bay depending on where they change the name), and a shot of the set at intermission, and that's me in front of the poster.

An old truth

Over at Slacktivist Fred looks at a CEO versus town hall:

The city council passed a law protecting minorities from getting fired just for being minorities. Specifically, the city’s new law protects LGBT people from employment discrimination.

The CEO doesn’t like this law. What’s more, he thinks most people in the city don’t like it either. It’s quite possible he’s right about that. After all, laws protecting minorities from being treated unfairly wouldn’t ever come up in the first place unless it weren’t the case that a big chunk of the majority population was inclined to treat them unfairly.

And isn't that the truth? Laws tell you not to do things you want to, or that you must do things you might not want to. But you don't generally have to make laws forbidding people from doing things they don't want to do.

Arizona!

Okay, this spam is amaaaaaaazing

Got this comment yesterday:

The bartender, amazed by this feat of drinking turns to the man and goes 'Desperate Housewives dvd boxset's a big effort. We've all seen the research and the studies show that the power of prayer is magical no matter who or what it is that you think you're praying to.'

I'm totally baffled by how this was produced, because no human would have placed it on the post it was attached to (a critique of the Baltimore Sun using the word "youths" to refer to people in their early 20s). It is a thing of rare and amazing beauty (despite the missing comma).

I'm still not letting the spammer have a link, though.

Alex! OMG!

Despite his "That is the famous Talley-RANHG" earlier in the show, in Final Alex just said "Jules Verne" with a very distinct S. Not [ʒyl]; [ʒylz]. I'm in shock.

162 games

I was hoping for a Parkway Series. I did not expect one, but I was hoping.

But I'll tell you that as sad as I am that the Orioles got knocked off by the Royals, what really gets me is that the freaking Royals were not only a wild-card team, they were worse than the other two division leaders. Same thing for the Giants, by the way. Records? Royals 89-73, .549; Giants 88-74, .543. Six teams won at least 90 games this year and we won't see any of them in the Series. (Barring a miracle comeback by the Cards, of course, and they just won 90, behind five others.)

If baseball was still the way it used to be (get offa my lawn!), the Series would be underway  - over, more likely - and it would have been Nats (96-66, .593) and the - no, not the Orioles. Their record was the same as the Nats' but the AL had the Angels at 98-64, .605. They got knocked out by the Royals, while the Nats got taken down by the Giants, who tied for fifth with the Pirates.

But if the Royals beat the Angels aren't they the better team? No. No, they are not. Over the long season - this isn't football - they lost nine more games than the Angels did. They're getting lucky in short serieses with an expanded roster; they were worse than three other teams in the regular season. The Giants likewise in their league.

This isn't as bad as 2012, when the third-place Giants beat the seventh-place (yes, seventh) Tigers. But I'm really not excited about watching two fourth-place teams play in the World Series. And it may be easier for me to say with the Orioles out of it, but it's no less true.

Ignored? Maybe so. But...

Giant headline the Washington Times today: Obama ignored 2008 CDC transition advice on Ebola.

You have to go to page 5 and almost the bottom of the article to hit that whole funding problem with the last three Congresses. Yeah. He ignored the advice, or Congress slashed the CDC's budget way every year? No reason it can't be both, of course, but he could have been obsessed with it and not been able to do a damned thing.

The Times is deep in the Foxosphere.

That sweet, sweet village life

So, this post was in my news feed. I'm not linking to it because it's muddled thinking that actually ends by saying oh no, don't throw away your tech it's just a metaphor! I just wanted to share what a commenter pointed out:

the men are sitting around, all chatting and connecting and everything, while a woman is working away to feed them. What would happen if she sat down, hmmmmm?

(A little more seriously - only a little: you know, for many people, those 150 in their village were their worst nightmare. For many people, the friends they have on the Internet save their lives.)

Textbook

Today's delanceyplace excerpt is from Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson. Apparently Jackson was filled with revulsion by war. He really didn't want the Civil War to happen. Did he think about refusing to fight for the South? He did not (in fact, he believed the South should practice total war so it would be over sooner, if it had to happen); that never seemed to cross his mind. What was his plan?

"And now he was prepared to do what he could to stop the imminent horror. His chosen form of activism was characteristic of the man: prayer. He would pray. He would petition God, and God would stop the madness."

Yeah, so, that didn't work.

Seeing the light

Judge Posner, who once wrote an opinion buying into the whole "voter fraud" excuse for restrictive laws, has written a scathing dissent branding them down for what they are. Here are a couple of the choice quotes. More here, plus a link to whole thing.

—"As there is no evidence that voter-impersonation fraud is a problem, how can the fact that a legislature says it's a problem turn it into one? If the Wisconsin legislature says witches are a problem, shall Wisconsin courts be permitted to conduct witch trials?"

—"The panel opinion does not discuss the cost of obtaining a photo ID. It assumes the cost is negligible. That's an easy assumption for federal judges to make, since we are given photo IDs by court security free of charge. And we have upper-middle-class salaries. Not everyone is so fortunate."

That's one low bar and one tiny baby step

I've got to say, I'm blown away by all the news reports saying the Vatican "urges respect for gay couples". Sure, they've finally admitted that "there are cases" - some cases - "in which mutual aid to the point of sacrifice constitutes a precious support in the life of the partners". And I'm not denying that's a step forward.

But.

But that same sentence started like this: "Without denying the moral problems connected to homosexual unions".

And let's not forget that at that very same synod, a cardinal - and not just any cardinal, but Raymond Burke, the Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, second only to the pope himself as judicial authority - told parents not to invite their gay children and spouses/partners to Christmas if grandchildren were present:

"If homosexual relations are intrinsically disordered, which indeed they are — reason teaches us that and also our faith — then, what would it mean to grandchildren to have present at a family gathering a family member who is living in a disordered relationship with another person? We wouldn’t, if it were another kind of relationship — something that was profoundly disordered and harmful — we wouldn't expose our children to that relationship, to the direct experience of it. And neither should we do it in the context of a family member who not only suffers from same-sex attraction, but who has chosen to live out that attraction, to act upon it, committing acts which are always and everywhere wrong, evil."

He said these things, and was not rebuked.

"Profoundly disordered and harmful." "Intrinsically disordered ... indeed." "Expose our children." "Acts which are always and everywhere wrong, evil." Evil.

Yeah. I'm not sensing the "respect" here.

Lady Charlotte Prentiss

So, despite taking Friday off I got very little accomplished this weekend. Not even laundry... argh. Fortunately I'm not teaching this week so I can scruff it a little bit at work. Pretty much all I did do was look at the rain and finish up my annual(ish) rewatch of Leverage. And once again I'm annoyed by Sophie's "Lady Charlotte Prentiss" persona.

Oh, not that she has one, or that she really is a duchess, or anything like that.

It's that "Lady Charlotte Prentiss" is not a duchess's title, despite so many people recognizing it as one.

"Lady Charlotte" is a peer's daughter. Period. It's a courtesy title - a flibberty, throwaway title - any peer's daughter (edited: not barons or viscounts, thanks Picky!) is Lady Firstname. Earls' sons or barons' sons aren't Lord Firstname; only dukes' (edited: and marquesses', again thanks Picky!) sons are (like Lord Peter Wimsey, who was the younger son of the fifteenth Duke of Denver (Note, by the way, that his wife isn't Lady Harriet; she's Lady Peter. Because women take their husband's names, doncha know.)).

Lady Charlotte Prentiss might be the eighteen Duchess of Hanover's daughter. She might be her sister. She's not the duchess herself. The duchess would be "Charlotte, Duchess of Hanover" or "Charlotte Hanover". She would not be "Lady Charlotte Prentiss, the duchess of Hanover". Not. And it's so uncool to introduce yourself as the "eighteenth duchess of Hanover" anyway.

PS - Peers aren't royalty. 

PPS - Also, dammit, she would outrank the Countess of Kensington. Sure, the countess is older, and the duchess might defer to her in age/family (aunty), but not on order of precedence - and if the mark is so hipped on status, he'd know that.

PPPS - Don't let Miss Manners see this ep! Sophie leaves her gloves on to eat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111

(Can you tell this has been bugging me for four years? )

It's a holiday

I'm not sure rebranding Columbus as a terrorist is useful, but I'm pretty sure it's not "disrepecting Italian-Americans" to point out that Columbus's "discovery" was Eurocentric and resulted in as much harm as good.

(Oh, wait, is that heresy against American exceptionalism? So be it.)

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: Leverage, finished second season and some of third. Man, I'd forgotten how much I hated Tara Cole. Granted when an actress gets pregnant you only have so many choices (Major Kira, anyone?) and shooting her from the shoulders up only worked when it was video calls; they couldn't possibly have shot around Sophie when she was actively running cons. But I didn't like Tara. Did. Not.

TV: Lewis - yay! Robbie's out of retirement (as a contractor), and Hathaway is back on the force after a (I assume) temporary leave. Sounds like he walked the Camino del Santiago - but turned back at the last moment. I would assume it's because he decided that he didn't want to associate with the organized church again. The second one was interesting, what with that morally ambiguous "have a child to be a donor for the existing one" - though at least just a marrow donor. Robbie and Laura are working out their new dynamic - can't blame her for being upset he's gone so much, that's for sure! Caught up on The Middle - last week's (trying to earn money for Sue's college) actually made me tear up at the end. Modern Family was good, as usual. Doctor Who - first, after a week's thinking about it, I still don't think the Doctor's behavior last week was that out of line. Clara is only mad because (a) she's come to depend on him always doing it for her and (b) he doesn't like Danny. So I'm not surprised that she reversed her decision. That said, I do hope he gets a real companion.  (I wouldn't complain if it was Psi (apparently not Cy as I had thought), either.) Sometimes when they carry over to a second Doctor it works - sometimes it's even better, Sarah Jane really came into her own with her second Doctor. But Clara was so intimately tied to Twelve (Eleven? do we give the War Doctor a number?) that this just isn't working. (Which, by the way, is weird because she had seen every one of his incarnations; why did his regeneration freak her out so much? Audience insert? doesn't always make a good character.) This week's ep was great - a cool monster, a interesting tie-in to the whole soldier theme, and a very nice line from the Doctor to Clara about why he sometimes does the things he does: "Sometimes all your choices are bad ones. But you still have to choose." Also, this: "I'm the Doctor." "What is your doctorate in?" "That is a question that isn't asked nearly often enough."

Read: More of Pillar of Fire. It's not as gruesome as Parting the Waters, so far (though we haven't gotten to the Freedom Schools and the Chaney/Goodman/Schwerner murders yet), but at the same time the explicit details of J. Edgar Hoover's corrupt reign over the FBI are harrowing in a very different way. (Plus, if I'm honest, my junior-high adoration of RFK is taking a bit of a hit.) The newest Sharon McCone, The Night Searchers. A little lightweight but entertaining enough.

Add Alaska

To North Carolina and Idaho, we can add Alaska.

It's still true

So, Susan Collins is up for reelection. And she's running an ad that claims, among other things, that

"On all three votes on those two days, Susan Collins voted against shutting down the government."

Well, as Mother Jones points out, that's not quite true.

There wasn't one, let alone three, votes about "shutting down the government." What there was was a series of votes on the House budget, which would have "kept the government open only if Obama and Senate Democrats agreed to defund or delay Obamacare."

So what Collins did was vote, every time, for the GOP position - a position calculated and intended to shut the government down unless the president destroyed his signal legislation, passed by both houses. A budget which the GOP - and Collins - knew had no chance of passing the Senate. So, once again, Collins is pretending to be something she's not: reasonable.

So, as I have often said before , do not "vote for the person". Some of them vote for the party with enthusiasm, and some hold their noses ... but it all looks the same in the box score in the morning.

Idaho! North Carolina!

Idaho gets marriage equality! And so does North Carolina! The tide has turned with a vengeance.

Malala

Malala Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize.

C'mon - really?

Surely nobody falls for this? Surely all those people asking "is this true?" are kidding?

I mean, first, Oct 13 is a Monday this year.

Secondly, years repeat their day/date sequence pretty often - 5, 11, 11 years and repeat. So Friday the 13 of any month comes around three times every 27 years (28 for leap years), not 666 years.

But mainly - Halloween is always on Oct 31. Friday the 13th can't possibly come on October 31st.

Really? Wow.

xkcd today. After spending some time reading about the early 1960s, I can't say that it really surprises me. It's appalling how absolutely blatant, excused, and ordinary violent racism was (I was too young to have really internalized it ... being white).

Vamos la Brasil! errr ... ao Brasil

Kathie complains - and rightly so - that Alex's butchering of Russian doesn't compare to his treatment of Portuguese. I would have to agree; mainly he just can't pronounce Russian (or Ukrainian). And while he can't pronounce Portuguese, either, he and/or the Clue Crew also butcher its syntax.

So the other night, when there was a whole category of Brasilian things, I knew there was going to be trouble...

For starters, the category title "Vamos la Brasil" was apparently the Clue Crew's idea of saying "We're going to Brazil," which would in fact be either "Vamos para o Brasil" or "Vamos ao Brasil" -- the "o" because Brasil is masculine, and besides there's no article "la" in Portuguese. Even Google Translate yields "Nós vamos para o Brasil" (where "nós" is the optional "we").

"Sim" (yes) is pronounced approximately "seeng," not "sim."  (For reference, "Não" (no) is pronounced roughly "nowng."

Portuguese is very much its own language, NOT a defective offshoot of Spanish -- grrrrrrr!!!!!!!!

I feel your pain, Kathie.

Add Five!

The ACLU Press Release:

The Supreme Court of the United States today denied review in all of the marriage equality cases pending before it. As a result of the Court’s action, same-sex couples in Virginia, Wisconsin, Indiana, Oklahoma and Utah will now be able to marry the partners they love.

This means there are 30 states where it's legal to marry a partner of the same sex.

My head is spinning from the speed of it. At the beginning of this year there were 17 states with marriage equality. And it really looked like the easy wins were over. I predicted a long hard slog.

I've never been so happy to be wrong.

PS: "Denied review" means the Court said there was no reason to take on the case. The lower circuits were right.

First Monday of the fiscal year in two worlds

 I like the way the Times uses no articles to say English isn't even in those households... especially since the story says one-fifth of people, not households, use a foreign language at home. Ah well...

The Times:

Demographics: English not language in fifth of U.S. households | Arabic, Urdu grow at the fastest pace
Security: U.S. bombs have stalled, not stopped Islamic State | Baghdad invasion plot endangers government
Asia: Hong Kong chief seeks peaceful end to protests; activists splinter
Baseball: UP AGAINST THE WALL | Nationals try to regroup after epic against Giants
Election: Pennsylvanians on path to buck trend, oust governor
The big picture is of a despondent Nationals player; a small one of Democrat Tom Wolfe accompanies the election piece

The Post:

Relatives of Ebola patient feel stigma | Liberian 'fighting for his life' in Dallas | Family calls for use of experimental treatment
Sober times in Atlantic City | With casino cash drying up, the community bets on an unlikely new mayor
The culture wars come to a Colo. history course
Campaign 2014: Unaligned women hold keys to victory in Va. 10th District
Perspective: Decision to pull Zimmermann may haunt Nats for a long time

The big picture is the Atlantic City mayor doing the limbo at a ribbon cutting; also small ones of the Atlantic City boardwalk and of celebrating Orioles players

The Week in Entertainment

Nothing live this week - not after three last week!

Film: The Skeleton Twins - I enjoyed this tremendously. Both Hader and Wiig give top-notch performances and the story is poignant and edgy at the same time. Luke Wilson's character could have been played for laughs, but you end up feeling solidly on his side even while still liking the twins.

DVD: A few eps of Leverage and Scott and Bailey, the latter a sort of Cagney & Lacey-ish British cop show.

TV: Doctor Who, two eps. "The Caretaker" - I suppose his badgering Clara to go off with him isn't any different than the way Eleven used to run off with Amy and Rory, but for some reason it feels different. Anyway, I did like it. And then "Kill the Moon," which was kind of classic and very not so at the same time. (The utterly ridiculous science? Very so, by the way.) Probably I'm more in favor of the Doctor than not, but I didn't think he'd earned that slanging by Clara. Of course, I've never liked her, so... He needs his own companion, not some "impossible girl" whose whole character was "the one who saves the Doctor". This one needs to save himself.

Read: Another Dr. Thorndyke. Randall Munro's terrific What If? The anniversary edition of The Nightmare Before Christmas. And another early seasonal book, Nora Bonesteel's Christmas Past, two completely different short stories woven into one, a little funny, a little sad. Decided it was time to go back to America in the King Years, so am now about eight chapters into Pillar of Fire.

Outraged? Try bored.

Over at Tell Me Now they're assuring us that "Atheists are outraged by Carrie Underwood's latest song". As an atheist I have to say I wasn't even aware of it, and now that I am? Well, she sings country. Country singers are almost all Christian. And if atheists got outraged by every country song that pushed Christianity, we'd be outraged 24/7.

Anyway, to this song:

Carrie Underwood is a good ole country girl with a heart of gold and the voice of an angel. In her new song “Something in the Water,” she proves that she is also a child of God by singing about her faith.

In the song, Underwood sings about baptism and “being washed in blood,” which refers to the blood of Christ. The whole message of the song is that we humans are lost without God.

She does have a nice voice, but this song is really just "the call of the tribe". She knows that herself. They quote her:

“Country music is different. You have that Bible Belt-ness about it,” she said. “I’m not the first person to sing about God, Jesus, faith or any of that, and I won’t be the last. And it won’t be the last for me, either. If you don’t like it, change the channel.”

Exactly. This song is totally run of the mill. It's hardly worth noticing. Heck, that fake-atheist Brad Paisley song was more newsworthy than this.

(Of course, funnily, that interview wasn't about this song. It was about "Jesus Take The Wheel." Five years ago.)

But here's what is really funny. They lead off with this:

Atheists are outraged that such a hit-maker as Underwood would dare to sing about Christianity, but Carrie doesn’t seem to care.

But where are the quotes from "outraged" atheists?

Crickets, as they say.

I did see a comment on Facebook, where I ran across this article, from an atheist who was mildly outraged by Carrie Underwood. Not this song, of course. "Jesus, Take The Wheel". "I'm outraged by the bad, dangerous driving advice," she said. "You take the wheel and steer into the skid, dammit." QFT, that.

Hysterically, Tell Me Now hat-tips the Conservative Tribune, but you have to some digging to find the story there. When you do, you find it's a lot more ... outraged? ... certainly more jingoistic and flag-waving:

With the current state of pop culture being radically opposed to religion, especially Christianity, and traditional values, its [sic] refreshing and uplifting to see someone as popular as Carrie Underwood take a bold stand on her convictions and refuse to be silenced by atheist bullies.

America could use a lot more bold voices like Underwood to help combat the moral bankruptcy being pushed forward by liberals.

If this country is ever to return to its former greatness and experience the mind-blowing success of years long past, it’s going to take a revitalization of traditional values to make it happen, and for culture to make that change, it needs artists like Underwood to keep singing fearlessly about her convictions.

Once again, of course, they quote ZERO "atheist bullies" who are trying to silence the "bold" Underwood.

TL;DR: Carrie Underwood sings another song about Jesus. Atheists don't give a rap. Conservatives are outraged by that.

I'll tell you what happened

Got a fundraising email today that opened

WHAT HAPPENED?!?

Donations from committed National [Party memebers] like you kept the polls close in September. Now it’s October, and we took our first look at our [site] tracker: THE NUMBERS HAVE CRATERED 32 DAYS FROM ELECTION DAY!

What happened? I'll tell you what happened.

I turned my phone off for the René Pape concert on Sunday and two and a half hours later I had 74 emails, 72 of which were fundraisers. And all of them were harping on how important the end-of-September deadline was.

I cannot give to everyone. I cannot give every week.

What happened? You got money in September. Two days later, yeah, you're not getting it.

Why the hell are you acting surprised?

(And probably he's not really surprised, I know.)

In their eyes?

A guy writes to the LBGT advice columnist at the Post:

I’m a gay Republican, and am often confronted by my gay friends during election season. They wonder how I could be part of a political party that, in their eyes, condemns homosexuality. I’ve alienated myself from a lot of friends over this topic and it’s hurt a lot of my relationships. What’s the best way for me to explain that my conservative views on small government, low taxation and a strong national defense outweigh anything else? Also, how do I explain that gay marriage should be supported by true conservatives, and that religious fanatics don’t represent true conservatism? 

First, I'd have told him to look at how he's defining his political position. Perhaps "true Scots conservatives" feel like he does, but the party does in fact condemn gay marriage.

This is not "in their eyes". It's in the platform.

He may be able to twist himself up so that being a "true conservative" is enough. I'm not surprised he finds it hard to get others to go along.

Seen on Facebook

(source: Virgin Radio Lebanon)

Continuing to be wrong...

No! Argh! Given how snotty Alex is about pronouncing French, and how he claims to speak Russian, it's amazing how badly he pronounces it. I'm always startled that the Clue Crew, or someone, doesn't look these up for him. Today, he pronounced Nabokov as NAA-boh-kahv [næˈbokɐv] which is pretty wrong. Try nah-BOH-kuff [nɐˈbokəf]. That aaa (æ) (like the vowel in cat or dad) doesn't even exist in Russian.

a "model" employee

Maria Fernandes worked three jobs... and she still couldn't get ahead. She could barely stay where she was. Part-timers may, if they shuttle between those part-time jobs, work enough hours to be "full time", but they don't get the wages or the benefits.

This isn't right.

Money quote from the article:

She had an apartment, but was falling behind on the $550 rent despite those three jobs. Dunkin' Donuts said she was a "model" employee, but wouldn't say how much she was paid or how many hours she worked. Which makes sense—it probably is in Dunkin' Donuts' best interest for us not to know how they treat their model employees.

Yes. In fact ...

From the Q&A at Chicago Manual of Style last month. All I can say is "Hell, yes."

Q. Dear CMOS Staff, in a recent issue of one of our periodicals, I altered the original lineup of the names of five coauthors appearing under the title of an article and reordered them alphabetically. One of the coauthors is unhappy with this and requests, too late, to keep the original lineup, which, I assume, implicitly establishes some hierarchy in authorship. What should be my response to the unhappy coauthor?

 

A. Your response should be groveling apologies and a promise to issue a correction in the next issue of the journal and in the online version. Name order is important to authors in certain disciplines, as it indicates who is the lead author. It is meaningful to anyone who reads the paper or sees the citation on a résumé. Sometimes employment and promotion depend on having published a certain number of articles as the lead author. This is a truly regrettable error—the kind of error that can put the reputation of your periodical into question. Please make every effort to make amends.

So long, Bill

In my entertainment roundups I don't generally mention that I watch this, like I don't list the newspapers or magazines I read. But I do watch it.

And while I know he's done yeoman service for a long, long time, and fully deserves to retire ... he'll be missed. I don't know who will replace him.