Hot hiking

We reserved time at Turkey Run months ago. Since we're unlikely to be going back anytime in the near future, we had to take advantage of it while we could. No way will I sit in the cabin and watch TV (??), even if it is air-conditioned (ahhhh!). Sleep, yes :-) So we went hiking in the cool of the morning (85) and the evening (95), and just after we got there the first day (98). True, we were under tree cover, so the sun didn't bake us, but those temperatures are “in the shade” values. I wore a cloth hat to keep the ticks and sun off, and squeegeed a half teaspoon of water from the chin-strap. Was it the haze or delirium that made distant objects fuzzy?

The place is beautiful, the trails well-laid-out, and when they say Very Rugged they don't mean wheel-chair accessible: they mean you have to climb on a ledge or wade in a V-shaped rock stream-bed. No machetes required, and kids can handle it; but I took it easy and only got a few twinges from the knee. The runs are microclimates unlike the surrounding countryside, with trees you only find farther north.

We saw caves and a coal mine and fossils and walked a stream bed underneath a rock ceiling. The bird feeder at the nature center gathered about 20 hummingbirds, goldfinches, a squirrel and chipmunk and a couple of groundhogs, a tufted titmouse and juvenile cardinal, pigeon and lizard and some other things I didn't recognize. A microphone picked up their sounds so we could hear them indoors. I got a shot of 4 hummingbirds all sitting still at once on a feeder.

Rain soaked the place the day before, but left only a little mud in strategic ledge locations and a small trickle in the streams to remind us. The ladders were a little muddy too. In high water trail 3 would be a very tricky walk—demanding some kind of walking stick to keep you from slipping.

Much of the work was done by the CCC, just like Lincoln's New Salem. In fact, Lincoln's New Salem only lasted a few decades, and was reconstructed a hundred years later. Which means the CCC reconstruction has lasted almost 3 times as long as the original, and in a few more decades will date from longer ago from us than New Salem was from the CCC. If the Republic lasts, we'll probably see chunks of the walls they built sitting in museums.

A covered bridge (go through “at a walk”!), ravines and ledges, a suspension bridge, a sign saying “70 steps” down to the river (actually only 67), a young fox trying to catch a squirrel (must have been desperate), and dozens and dozens of “unofficial” trails. It is close to Indianapolis—must be swamped on weekends. (The outdoor pool is only open on weekends this late in the season.)

Delirium daydreams: what would people wear for hats in Eden? Birds, of course! Trained to spread their wings to shade you, or fan you when needed, bred with smoother claws for a gentle scalp massage, and ready to eat any ticks that landed on you...

Nice breakfast, even if some finicky people wouldn't touch sausage that had been on the same plate as eggs....

*

Barry Bonds breaks Aaron's record

making him the home run king. At least in America. He has a long way to go to reach the Japanese record.

No, I'm not a big baseball fan, but we hear enough of it in the house that it seems appropriate to take notice of events from time to time.

From the family Cubs fan, who is 90% scar tissue (to borrow a line from George F. Will), and who was born during Hank Aaron's 1957 World Series:

Barry Bonds was the best all-around ballplayer in the game when he played for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He could hit, field, steal, make tough plays look elegant and easy. He very likely would have been ticketed for Cooperstown before he decided to turn into a slugger, and he would have been a shoo-in. With no asterisk in sight.

Now he's a surly s.o.b. with a permanently sullied record. If he didn't cheat, he's gone way out of his way to look like he has.

Meanwhile, Sammy Sosa has cleaned up his act. In 2004, Sosa managed to squander years of goodwill in Chicago: the corked bat, the steroid rumors, the boombox driving his teammates crazy, the entourage, the ego as big as Lake Michigan. In Spring 2005, the Cubs unloaded Sosa on the Orioles. He endeared himself to Orioles fans, all right: his first public performance in Baltimore was a snit because the team didn't send a limo for him at his hotel. It went downhill from there, and the Orioles dumped him. Nobody touched Sosa for the 2006 season. Nobody.

He stayed in shape, he kept knocking on doors, and finally the Texan Rangers let him come to 2007 spring training with the following stipulations: no steroids, no corked bats, no boom box, no entourage, and leave his ego at home. He is earning somewhat more than a journeyman infielder would. In Texas, Sosa has been respectable on the field, if not spectacular. He hit his 600th career home run (against the Cubs) in July. He may yet get to Cooperstown.

Mrs James

Do they speak English?

Fliers stapled to phone poles sport a cross with HOPE emblazoned. Across the top it reads "Homelessness Outreach Prevention Effort." A clever acronym, but it doesn't quite mean what they think it does...

Looking East from CERN

Moment by moment the light changes on the layer cake ridge, playing over scree fields taller than any Wisconsin peak; on ledges and valleys that only cloud shadows display.

It is glorious.

But by it broods the dark presence of a mountain, that distance doesn't quite make small. Strong nose thrust in the air, it makes the ridge feel small and almost easy.

Grand it seems--but then the mid clouds part and past them above the clouds--the real mountains.

Distant, cold, and always there behind the veil; they daunt, and are hidden again--so huge, so far!

But...

Look down.

The grandest peaks are tiny flakes on the vast globe we were already placed atop.

True but

I am becoming convinced that there are things that, while strictly true, are not good to talk much about. A husband may say of his wife: "She is mine." That is true enough, but it is much safer to say "I am hers." Likewise "Mother of God" is a true title for Mary, but a dangerous one to try to use. And a Christian, given God's Holy Spirit, with a changed and increasingly sanctified life, may truthfully stand to pray "God, I thank thee that I am not like other men"--but I wouldn't recommend it.

The Orthodox Church

by Timothy Ware

I decided to try to fill in some gaps in my chuch history and knowledge about denominations. Since Orthodoxy isn't a big player around here it wasn't anything urgent, but I really should have looked earlier. The book is from 1960, and so the description of the Iron Curtain churches is now thankfully obsolete.

I see now that Charles Williams borrowed heavily ideas from Eastern Orthodoxy.

I use the term model in the physics sense of a logical construct applied to reality. We use them to describe a system, figure out where to make measurements, and predict what the system will do.

And I think I get a little glimmer of what they mean when they say that icons are central to Orthodox faith. They are used in services, but the model of "icon" is applied to many aspect of life and faith. A physical icon is an image of Jesus or some saint, of course: not the saint himself but a window, almost an incarnation. The church is an icon of God, and completely one even if there are many instances of it. The state is an icon of the heavenly kingdom. Each gesture of the liturgy is an embodiment of some aspect of worship. God was made flesh, so the body is holy also.

And, of course, man is to be deified. That sounds blasphemous stated so baldly, but it does come out of Scripture, and is hedged about with reminders that God is utterly unique.

I knew already that the Orthodox and Catholic were quite similar: that the Orthodox were like Catholics who thought the Pope was too big for his britches. Of course over a thousand years of divergent history resulted in some additional differences, and some very bad blood because of some seriously nasty incidents (like the sack of Constantinople). I see there are a number of subtleties involved too. And I really don't understand why the filioque was supposed to be a good idea. There's a startling amount of chutzpah involved in assuming that you understand the inner workings of the Trinity well enough to go beyond the statement in Scripture.

Orthodox history is grim. The "icon model" is good for hope and working to sanctify body/mind/spirit, but it has several consequences that are less pleasant, not to say crippling:

• "The state is the icon of heaven" means that the church is a national church, and gets involved in politics. Heavily. And in very unedifying ways. And the state gets involved in the church, also in unedifying ways. This got much worse when the Turks took over and established the Patriarch of Constantinople as the offical head of all Christians in their empire, and collected heavy fees from those appointed to the office.
• National churches conflate their state's interests with divine imperatives, which makes relations between them problematic.
• The adoration of icons is very much closer to the Hindu adoration of images than is altogether comfortable, and it is inevitable that idolatry is an issue with the less well-instructed. The author does not go into this, but we've all run into it before.
• Icons are static. Orthodox missionaries were laudably determined to translate Scripture and worship into the native languages, but languages changed. The liturgy didn't always adapt. Men died rather than make the sign of the cross with three fingers instead of the traditional two. The icon had become holy itself, rather than pointing to the holy.

Of course an Orthodox Christian might inquire who died and made me God that I should be judging his Church and Tradition. I call history to my side here. It is obvious that men calling themselves Christian have seriously disagreed, and anathamatized each other, and still preached the Gospel and looked after the needy. Logically somebody is at least partly wrong, and having some "apostalic chain" doesn't make you right--many of the parties could provide such. So I have no choice but to analyze to the best of my ability the evidence, the theory, and the practice.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

Some family members have not yet read this, so I'll be brief and obscure.

If you have read the previous 6 books, you know the style and what to expect. This climactic book describes the resistance to an evil wizard bent on domination, and naturally has a very high corpse count. In fact, the death rate is still too low to be realistic, and Harry survives more concussions than Tom Swift, but this is minor nitpicking.

Rowling weaves many of the threads together from the earlier books, and does a good job of it. I wish that fans would quit assuming that every book must have perfect continuity, and generating complex backstories to explain inconsistencies. I'm glad Niven put a logical end to his Ringworld series--it was getting creakier and creakier as he tried to explain and tie together all the details. That sort of thing gets in the way of telling the story--which is the book's first duty.Rowling tries to tell the story, and not worry about getting every last detail straight.

It is not possible to talk about the book's themes without introducing spoilers, so I'll postpone that. Obviously one central question was going to be "How could Dumbledore have been so wrong about Snapes: or was he?" And of course, would Harry survive?

"It is a floor wax and a dessert topping!"

I don't need to say "read the book." Those who've read the first 6 will, and those who didn't get into the story and gave up won't. I liked it.

More tolerant?

From The Australian, an article with subhead "A STUDY of newborn babies and preschoolers has revealed that language may be the root of prejudice - and the way to avoid it."

I hardly know where to begin. This is supposed to be science?

US and French researchers have found that the language babies hear spoken in their first six months of life leads to a preference for speakers of that language. The preference is so entrenched that by age five youngsters prefer playmates who not only speak the same language but do so with the same accent. A key implication of the findings - reported in the US publication Proceedings of the National Academy of Science - is that children exposed to different languages grow into more tolerant adults than their monolingual mates. Linguist Stephen Crain of Sydney's Macquarie University tended to agree: "I've always thought it would be beneficial to expose our children to more than one language," he said. "If they no longer have a prejudice against people who don't sound the same as they, they may be more accepting of people from different backgrounds who don't sound the same," Professor Crain said.

"A key implication of the findings:" except that it is not an implication, but an add-on assumption.

And what has any of this to do with prejudice or tolerance? There is no prejudice in loving your family more than strangers, and being more comfortable with those you understand most easily. Nobody can be good friends with the whole world (there aren't enough hours in the day): we all live within circles of decreasing intimacy.

Cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Spelke of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, conducted a series of experiments with Harvard doctoral student Katherine Kinzler and Emmanuel Dupoux of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris. They judged the preferences of three groups of children. Five-to six-month-old infants looked at native speakers longer than non-native speakers. Ten-month-olds selected toys most often from native speakers, and most five-year-olds chose native speaking playmates over children with an accent. According to Professor Spelke, the most surprising result came from the group's experiment with five-year-olds. "The findings suggest that (the preference) has nothing to do with information, the semantics of language, but rather with group identity," she said. If so, Professor Crain said that may answer the mystery about human languages: why do they diverge yet retain common structural properties? "One obvious answer is the differences are the means by which people segregate themselves by speaking a language which can't be understood by people from the next community," he said.

"Segregate themselves?" Certainly youth segregate themselves with language; that happens all the time. But diverging language is something that happens within every family. The shared experiences include something so hilarious or sad that a private phrase is coined to describe it. Outside the family nobody knows what "Batchu batchu batchu" means, and why should they?

It sometimes seems as though everything has to be filtered through the lens of multiculturality. It reminds me of "socialist science" from the Soviet Union. I feel ill.

Decisions

There's no question that our decisions can be thwarted. That experience is universal.

But what do you call it when you thwart your own decision?

Take an example: Before I go to bed I set the alarm for 5 so I will be able to exercise for a while before I must go to work. I then stay up until 11 reading a book. When the alarm rings I'll face a little decision: Do I exercise now and droop at work midmorning from lack of sleep, or sleep another hour and a half and put in an honest days work? I made a decision the night before, but thwarted it myself.

Or consider another example: I decide that I need to lose weight. The first order of business is to cut out all between-meal snacks. That simple discipline should cut my food intake by 20% or so. Of course, while I'm programming I get hungry, and raid the fridge for some bread. I get thirsty, and down a tumbler of juice. A couple of slices of toast before I go to bed, and it becomes pretty clear that my decision didn't mean much of anything.

For contrast: My experiment decided that new programs would be written in C++. They arranged for a speaker to come and give a week-long introduction to the language. I had other obligations (a new baby, if I recall correctly). I didn't give up: I decided that I had to teach myself the language, and got a book and read it. Since I didn't even know C, it took some getting used to, and when I was done I realized that my understanding was going to be ephemeral. So, I picked a project that needed doing, and started writing the code in C++ instead of Fortran. It took quite a bit longer that way. And then another, and another. Today I'm a competent, if not sophisticated, C++ programmer.

Is there an intrinsic difference between my decision to learn C++ and my decision to cut out snacks? Both were marked by a moment when I said: "I will do this thing." Both times I thought I meant what I said. Both involved substantive changes in the way I did things. But in the one case I repeatedly re-ratified my decision, and in the other I ignored it.

I'm not convinced that a decision is always something made once-for-all at some point in time. Sometimes it is, but ... Has anyone ever chosen to become an alcoholic? Surely no one would wake up one morning and say to himself: "I'm going to get addicted to alcohol!" But the day by day small decisions: a little here, a little more there; ignore the warning signs: they add up to a big decision. You can't look back and say: "There was the critical moment," but you can say "This was the path of the decision."

This fuzziness about timing a decision makes me a little itchy when a churchman talks about a decision made "on a particular day." Certainly some people's commitment to Christ has been of that nature: one day they change their minds about Jesus, accept His salvation and lordship, and spend the rest of their lives in the struggles and triumphs of obedience. But I've met others who can't point to a single moment, or for whom it is long lost in their early years, but whose lives testify to a commitment to Jesus.

Think back to that alcoholic example. We're broken, and a choice to fall into a trap is quite easy to make, especially if it is nice and slow. Once caught, it is very hard to break free; though sometimes a man will try. And on any given day it may seem as though he is trapped by his addiction. But if you look at the path of his decisions you might see something else--caught but trying to break out. This isn't something we can easily see, and only God can judge fairly. But just because someone keeps falling doesn't mean they haven't decided to change. And that's repentence, even if we can't see it.

All Paths

"All paths lead up the same mountain" goes the "which religion doesn't matter" slogan: coined by somebody who hasn't been around mountains. For those of us not rope and piton climbers, there are darned few paths that don't stub out in front of impossible slopes. Perhaps you will be fortunate enough that your path will circle around until you reach the way. Perhaps not.

Rival Liberia police

BBC reports that national police had a little set-to with the port police. The port police threw stones at the national police who came to rescue their police director.

Some things I understand well enough: the port police undoubtedly get a cut from port thefts. The national police are reported to have been smashing doors and assulting port workers later in the day: I doubt that that was part of the wonderful new police training program; but since so many of the trainees quit to get jobs as security guards I suspect the remainder of the force consists of a lot of hard boys.

I don't quite understand why the rock throwing, though. I think something is missing from the story: clubs, maybe? There's also no mention of how many of the 22 injured officers were national and how many were port police.

Dirk Gentily's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams

Those familiar with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will already have some idea of Adams' style. For those not, from the academy dinner in chapter 4 (which reminded me somewhat of Sayer's Gaudy Night and somewhat of a Physics Department meeting):

the newly appointed Head of Radio Three, who was sitting opposite . . . had already been ensnared by the Music Director of the College and a Professor of Philosophy. Those two were busy explaining to the harassed man that the phrase “too much Mozart” was, given any reasonable definition of those three words, an inherently self-contradictory expression, and that any sentence which contained such a phrase would be thereby rendered meaningless and could not, consequently, be advanced as part of an argument in favor of any given program-scheduling strategy. The poor man was already beginning to grip his cutlery too tightly.

Or when a seriously stood-up lady calls:

“Hello Michael? . . . You said I should call you if I was free this evening and I said I'd rather be dead in a ditch, remember? Well, I suddenly discover that I am free, absolutely and utterly free, and there isn't a decent ditch for miles around. Make your move while you've got your chance is my advice to you. I'll be at the Tangiers Club in half an hour.”

The cover blurb in this edition (1987) garbles the story premise: ignore it. The story partakes of the nature of a mystery, with clues for the reader to catch, and other characters that actually don't enter into the solution. It would therefore be rude of me to explain which two subplots don't really contribute that much to the story. The Electric Monk is a little too much. And the world is rescued: no extra charge.

Nice light fun. Read it, and pay attention to the clues.

American Gods

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Gaiman wrote a fantasy set in contemporary America. A man (Shadow) just out of prison finds that his wife and best friend have died, and now without either home or job prospects agrees to work for a mysterious man who calls himself Wednesday. Nope, this isn't a remake of The Man Who Was Thursday: Wednesday turns out to be Votan. It turns out that there are quite a few down-at-heels gods around, including some newcomers who are modern gods of the plane and of the TV and of the dot-coms and so forth. Votan foresees a war between the old and new, and is trying to organize the battle. Gaimon's gods live by sacrifices and belief (like Norton's original idea), and wherever the believers in some god traveled and continued to offer sacrifices, there the god wound up also. These gods are powerful and “immortal” but can be killed, and also fade away completely when all forms of worship vanish.

Shadow has a little trouble getting into the swing of things, so to speak, and his dead wife isn't making things easy for him either, though she doesn't stop by often. To describe much more gives away too many discoveries in the plot, but Shadow does start to figure things out and start making mysterious decisions on his own account.

Gaiman is a good writer. The story flows well, the characters seem realistic—up until the rather unconvincing climactic battle scenes. The Lakeside townspeople are a little over-the-top welcoming (a subplot that might better have been trimmed), and there's a bit too much irrelevant sex.

It is gratifying to find a writer who has bothered to look beyond the usual mythologies to the way the old cults were actually practiced. There's an amusing scene in which Wednesday interrogates a Californian self-proclaimed pagan, who of course knows nothing at all about worship. And Gaiman tries to be faithful to the characters of the mythological creatures as shown in both the Bullfinch mythologies and in the implications of their cults.

Willing suspension of disbelief only goes so far, though; and in Gaiman's America Jesus is less relevant than Horus. Even if (per Gaiman's setting) Jesus were merely one of these non-supernatural creatures, he'd still be far and away the most dominant of the gods, second only to the god of the TV.

For all his research Gaiman seems to have no feel for why people worship, or why places were associated with gods (which makes the buffalo-headed man's last comments rather silly). I suppose the story would have to be completely different if he brought that in.

Mostly well-written, but on balance I don't recommend it. From the number of Wisconsin references I gather he spent some time around here.

Day of rest continues

FWIW, I think the day of rest helped. I think I cracked the problem that afflicted the DAQ. I'll check it out in the morning.

Day of rest

On a day of rest

It being Dimanche, I decided I needed a day of rest after the 16 hours yesterday. The oompah Spanish band played until after 1 in the morning (not on CERN grounds, I think), and so I had trouble getting up at 9. The Baptist church's services started at 11:45, so I had plenty of time. And after the services I could look around and listen: today is the last day of the 3'rd annual Geneva music festival: Free music at about 30 venues.

I remembered the camera for a change, and finally got a couple pictures of the Geneva buses. They're very nice--not so tightly crammed as Madison ones, jointed in the middle, sign and an LED sign in the front tells the next stop (ours also played public service videos, including an anti-SIDS one with a small ball that crushes everything in its path and keeps growing), and 4 entrance/exit doors. Loading is very quick! (Of course that means tickets are on the honor system: with spot checking.)

The Meyrin road is pretty ripped up--reminds me of East Washington. I gave up taking pictures out the window: construction isn't all that informative.

Got off at the Cornavin station (mistake 2: mistake 1 was not making careful street by street notes of where to turn). Geneva is friendly to pedestrians. Over the bridge (wrong bridge) and on my way.

My landmarks are pretty clear: the Promenade of the Reformers and University of Geneva. I head down in search. Over to the east there's a big parking lot-like area with tents and band shells--but it doesn't look much like either a University grounds or the Reformer's park (mistake #4).

Off to the west. I can't find the street names on my tiny map, even with my glasses on. I'm not unduly surprised, until I find a small bridge crossing a small river that isn't anywhere on the map. I'm by the bus garage. The streets are festooned with trolley power lines.

Back east. This time I pick out a moderately solid street name as a marker. This isn't as reliable as you might think, because street names change. It is quiet; most shops are closed. Found the street and off into old town!

Oops. The streets in the old town are mostly pedestrian/bike only, are very much up hill and down dale, and I'd forgotten where the actual street names were put (on one building of the 4 choices at an intersection, about 10 feet up. The signs posted on poles at the corner refer to distant destinations.) Very colorful area, narrow streets and small shops, but I'd have hated to try to maneuver through it before the paving bricks were put in. A little rain would turn some of those streets into toboggan rides of mud.

By the cathedral a band shell has a large number of young kids getting lined up and prepped. Aha! A map! So if rue Tabazan is over there, then I just take this street until it intersects a big one and loop back.

Nope, I'm at the back side of the wall of the Reformers, instead; and the friendly security man has no idea what street I'm talking about.

Back to the map. Must have north/south mixed up. Go the other way. I'm already 10 minutes late.

Most places a pedestrian walkway is marked with yellow stripes. Some places use speed bumps for the purpose (about 10 feet wide).

By the time I get back to the map I'm 30 minutes late and I give up. I find some shade by the cathedral as the children start singing. They sound very nice. I can make out 1 word in three, and can't tell if they are singing about playing in the yard with their mothers or UN refugee policy. (Is this the group of orphans? No, it is the choeur d'enfants DIP division moyenne) After about three songs, I decide to pay a visit to the archaeology under the Saint-Pierre cathedral.

During renovations back in 76, they discovered that there were the remains of several older structures under the cathedral, including a tumulus burial dating to the first century BC. Looks like the chief got to be seriously revered after his death, because a shrine was built almost a century later and maintained in one form or another for another couple of centuries. Somebody even went to the trouble of digging a hole to excavate the guy's skull: presumably to put it in some above-ground monument. Anyhow, near the end of the Roman era Christians acquired the site and built a church. Geneva was a site of a bishop, so this was a cathedral.

The folks who wrote the captions and recorded the tour audio seem to be surprised that a building might need to be rebuilt a few times over a couple of thousand years; and they were fascinated by the irony of a modern cathedral centered over the burial of an Allobrogian chief. The baptistry had to be rebuilt many times over the short few centuries it was in use (not really a surprise to anybody who's had to deal with swimming pool maintenance), and the picture showing the use of it had the waiting men and women standing around naked to be dunked with towels waiting for them afterwards. I don't think that was quite the way it was done :-) UPDATE: They were baptized naked and clothed in white--the waiting line seemed not quite right, thought.

A huge mosaic floor must have been impressive once, but a thousand years or two turned the subfloor into waves and holes.

The archaeologists have done a fascinating job, and so have the modern architects who have shored things up so that the cathedral is standing with a hollow excavation underneath.

8sf. Go if you can. I skipped the cathedral tour--I don't do heights well.

The cathedral is beautiful. Of course it has been a Protestant cathedral for quite a while--even has Calvin's chair. There was an organ player in the balcony, and another much smaller one in front. Stone slabs against the wall were grave markers that had been in the floor before, and in the cross arm portion is a large sarcophagus and statue in an alcove. At the right were some seats in what we'd use as a choir stage: folding chairs, with a small dragon guarding the door into the box area. I don't think I'll complain too much about airplane seats after seeing those, and remembering how long Calvin's sermons could get. And no, almost none of my pictures came out well.

Moseying outside I found what I guess was a Klesmer band. They were fun to listen to, but I couldn't make out anything at all, except Sabbat and ein/zvie/drie. I decided to try to find that confounded rue Tabazan anyhow, in case I stayed two weeks again and had the opportunity to go again. Instead I ran into music coming out of the Eglise Lutheran (celebrating 300 years) that I'd also thought of trying (discarded the idea: their web page wasn't too encouraging. Among other things they proudly depicted an image of Jesus one of their members had made. I found out that it was suspended by a string, making the torso and arms look like some weird ghost floating in the air reaching malevolently out at you) The musicians were practicing.

So I sat down and waiting, and heard an hour of violin/viola/bass/flute music of Mozart, Hayden, Beethovan, and somebody else that was a last minute change to the program. People came and went, of course, but the group was very good.

Ok, sidetracked no more, I went to find the church--with a better map this time. Hmm. Roads go at two levels here! In the park on the other side of the street a long man in a band tent played a series of unfamiliar pieces--not techno, not harsh at all, but warped sound somehow. Seemed like 4/5 of the audience was sleeping teenagers.

Back up the road again, take the cross street, and lo and behold, the missing street splits off from the cross street.

And wonder of wonders, the place is open, with a festival number on it! ( and not all that far from where I met that friendly security man, either) The street walls are solid-looking and imposing, but once through the big wooden doors, and up the stairs there's a large garden area, with the church to the left and a classroom building across the garden. The church is full, and wooden, so I walk as softly as I can into the balcony to hear 45 minutes of piano and harp music.

When they're done, I leave. The streets are now so crowded that I hardly recognize them anymore, but I fumble my way back in the direction of the river--through new territory and transformed lanes.

I cross at a different bridge and head west along the river. I don't see the bridge I came over on: I must have been way out of the way. Once I find it it'll be a straight shot back to the train station, but I'm getting kind of impatient.

Short cut. And as I go, the 9 CERN comes up behind me! There's no bus stop yet, but I watch the way it goes and mosey that way until I find one. Buy ticket, wait, catch the bus, and off I go. The driver is courteous: one man races up to buy a ticket to get on. He punches buttons, tosses in coins, fumbles and fumbles and fumbles and fumbles--and the driver waits till he's done and aboard.

Back "home" again. The day was hazy, but I could see Mont Blanc in the distance.

I'll try to get out again if I can. Maybe schedule things to eat downtown instead. (I've also got to schedule laundry, and a trip to the Balexert stop, and try to get the DAQ running...)

Radiated power--and somebody's nuts

The BBC reported on using radiated power to power portable devices. The astute observer will notice that the light bulb in question is connected to a rather large coil--not entirely portable. There's a fancy name for the technology: WiTricity, but one of the people (Prof Pendry) they have explaining it is quoted as saying

"Ordinarily if you have a transmitter operating like a mobile phone at 2GHz - a much shorter wavelength - then it radiates a mixture of magnetic and electric fields," he said.

This is a characteristic of what is known as the "far field", the field seen more than one wavelength from the device. At a distance of less than one wavelength the field is almost entirely magnetic.

"The body really responds strongly to electric fields, which is why you can cook a chicken in a microwave," said Sir John.

"But it doesn't respond to magnetic fields. As far as we know the body has almost zero response to magnetic fields in terms of the amount of power it absorbs."

As a result, the system should not present any significant health risk to humans, said Professor Soljacic.

Somebody doesn't know what he's talking about. I suspect the reporter. Changing magnetic fields produce electric fields. You're not going to get current to flow in the laptop without electric fields. You can get power to transfer more efficiently at resonance, but there still have to be some kind of electric fields.

The fields are probably harmless in any event, since the E/M fields can be small, but the explanation is wrong.

At the concert

One of the singers was a man with the general build of a Tolkien dwarf and a bald crown. Another was a pale thin hollow-cheeked woman who seemed to tremble a bit. A third was a grumpy young black man who kept tilting his head to the side as though he had a toothache or was trying to listen to a ball game on his radio.

This was the high school choir concert. There were various choirs, with the freshmen going first. One choir ditched their robes to do a pop number. Their robes made them look more dignified and mature. In their street clothes (well, one of the dancers had a skirt slit almost all the way up--not quite street clothes) they looked much younger. (and the male soloists needed some power in their voices)

The pop medley was lively, and the Gloriana competently done. The choir director's child was a senior that year, and she picked the Gloriana Masque partly as a salute to her husband--they'd had it in their wedding.

Route 66 and "What shall we do with a drunken sailor" and "Three little maids from school" and "Somewhere" (by Jasmine Christian, one of the students) reflect a little of the variety. The traditional salute to seniors ("May the road rise to greet you") was nicely done.

A good time was had by all: possibly because they made up an exclusion list beforehand. I saw the "do not admit" flier for the ticket seller, but didn't get the names. Some kids had apparently brought stink bombs before, but some preemptive action saved the day.

Conjugations

Irregular verbs are the bane of language students, but the textbooks ignore some other important conjugations completely. Herewith some simple examples:

First person	Second person	Third person
I am frugal	You are a penny pincher	He is a miser
I am adventurous in bed	You are kinky	He is perverted
I am witty	You are funny	He is a joker
I am just	You are strict	He is harsh
I am empathetic	You are emotional	He is gushy
I am apprehensive	You are fearful	He is a coward
I am eloquent	You are wordy	He is bombastic
I enjoy life	You overindulge	He is dissipated
I am flexible	You are fickle	He is unreliable
I am colorful	You are salty	He is coarse
I am unconvinced	You are doubting	He is cynical
I am stable	You are prosaic	He is boring
I am virtuous	You are ethical	He is strait-laced
I am generous	You are lavish	He is extravagant
I am noble	You are dignified	He is a snob
I am playful	You are a trifler	He is not serious
I am pert	You are flippant	He is insolent
I am courageous	You are a daredevil	He is reckless
I am authentic	You are transgressive	He is hateful

I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak

Youngest daughter was assigned this in school, so I read it. It is classed as a Young Adult book.

Ed is a taxi driver with no prospects and no ambition, with a mother who dislikes him, friends without ambition, some of whom are on the dole, and a platonic love for a woman who is afraid of love and so substitutes sex. The book opens with him face down on the floor during a bank robbery by an incompetent bank robber, whom he soon finds himself capturing. In the flurry of publicity, he receives in the mail an ace of diamonds with the lines 45 Edgar Street, midnight; 13 Harrison Avenue, 6 pm; and 6 Macedoni Street, 5:30 am.

He investigates and finds that, Amelie-like, he is to intervene in the lives of others. When he finally finishes, another message arrives.

The plot is pleasantly surreal, the language (first person) is grungy, and how he eventually figures out what to do on each occasion is left mysterious. An almost supernatural insight points him to his targets, and he (after watching and figuring) seems almost supernaturally guided into the right thing to do. I missed a detail or two, and thought for a long time that the story was set in Britain (actually Australia). The story arc is the maturing of the hero.

The story has some flaws. The priest he is supposed to help seems a bit uninterested in the supernatural, but perhaps that's the kind they get in Australia. Keith and Daryl seem to represent some kind of karmic balancing, but they don't mesh in the story well at all. The biggest howler is the penultimate chapter in which the author makes an appearance, wrapping up the mystery by saying that he managed everything. Perhaps Zusak is trying to make some point about God and omnipotence here (author=God), but more likely he is being self-indulgent.

You could do worse. I don't plan to buy it.

Divided by Faith

by Michael O Emerson and Christian Smith, Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America

I put off assessing this book for quite a while. I saw it referred to in Christianity Today, with the anecdote that it was given to pastors in a megachurch, one of whom was in tears after reading it. It sounded important.

The book is a history, with lots of survey information, of the modern racial reconciliation movement and how it ran aground; as told through the stories of some key figures. A key passage in the analysis is a description of two letters to Christianity Today:

But there are some perhaps subtle differences in her expression of reconciliation as compared with the black writer's letter. First, the letter from the black writer uses the vehicle of a personal letter to communicate from one race to another; the white writer, though, quickly individualizes the letter, claiming that she cannot speak for other whites. She also asks to be seen as an individual, not a member of a race, and says her goal is to treat individuals as individuals, regardless of color. This seems perfectly reasonable, but it has an important effect. The need to work for social justice and social equality between races is minimized, even dropped. If we are to focus on individuals only, then justice does not mean working against structures of inequality, but treating individuals as equals, regardless of the actual economic and political facts. Equality is spiritually and individually based, not temporally and socially based.

And in another place:

As Wellman noted, most white Americans honestly desire a color-blind society, and often oppose the color-conscious for that reason.

What is more, because most white evangelicals perceive racism as individual-level prejudice and discrimination, and do not view themselves as prejudiced people, they wonder why they must be challenged with problems they did not and do not cause. As they communicated to us over and over, they do not have much interracial contact, but when they do, they are friendly toward people they meet from other races, and some even claim healthy interracial friendships.

The idea is that the individualistic approach to salvation and sin and punishment makes whites unable to “see their advantage” while the corporate approach leads to a “social justice” based (and therefore inevitably political) religion.

The authors make the correlations clear, and their preferences come across clearly too. An inadvertent side effect of evangelical theology reinforces perspectives on race that are incompatible with “black” social justice theory, and which make communication much harder.

The work is limited in scope, of course, and there remain questions the authors did not deal with.

1. Is focusing on individual behavior the right thing to do? The authors, not being even amateur theologians, are not competent to address this question; and don't try.
2. What are the sources of advantage and of disadvantage? Only the most superficial analysis would say that these are due to current racism. There is a vicious feedback at work. The fruits of ghetto culture are crime and loss; the fruits of crime and loss are extra surveillance and distrust; and the extra surveillance and distrust feeds the ghetto culture. Don't bother trying to call me racist—history has seen this pattern many times: go look up NINA.
3. Once you have found the sources of advantage and disadvantage, what just means are usable to deal with them? “Affirmative action” is the tool everyone seems to talk about in the book, but a full theory and review of experience isn't possible in the scope of the book.
4. Is equality of opportunity or equality of result demanded? There isn't agreement on this in the political arena, and the answer informs all planning.

Fundamental political differences are sometimes outgrowths of theological differences. The traditional Muslim concept of the nature of law and the role of religion is not reconcilable with Western democracy. One can tweak it—magnifying the principle that “the ummah is never wrong” and that fallible men are required to interpret holy law—to create a concept that might be compatible; but that isn't what's being preached by the most influential groups.

I'm told Greek Orthodoxy also has issues with Western concepts of liberty—rulers are supposed to mandate, not just encourage, right behavior—but I need to study them more, and I may have this wrong. Certainly theological claims about the divine right of kings to rule as God's regents are part of Western history—and not compatible with democracy.

So one question is: To what extent ought we allow these theological/political differences to separate us?

Some differences make it impossible to worship together—the nature of the Lord's Supper/Holy Communion being one. We have to accept such divisions for the sake of peace. To the extent that a church is involved in attempting social change, it is hard to see how a single body can speak with two voices. Political involvement seems to require division.

One fundamental political division is between those for whom the basic rights are negative—the right to be protected from abuse by others; and those for whom rights include positive ones—the right to demand food or other basic services. It is easy to argue a duty exists to meet other's needs as a religious obligation, but rather a leap to assert that having these needs filled is a right enforceable against the non-religious, and chutzpah to claim that there is only one possible method of filling said needs. Enforcing the “positive rights” is necessarily more contentious, and must result in church divisions insofar as churches get involved in pushing for them.

You'd think that the “negative rights” would be less contentious, but this turns out not to be so. The right not to be killed (anti-abortion) is demanded by some denominations and given no better than lip service, if not downright opposition, by others. I've read some who said that abortion is evil but bans are unenforceable (though bans on sexism somehow are enforceable), and another who said that it was evil but – apparently he didn't like the company he'd be keeping if he supported a ban.

Read the book and think about the questions it asks. And the questions it doesn't.

The Clash of Civilizations and the New World Order

by Samuel Huntington

I suppose I'm the last person to have gotten around to reading this.

I can see why he's controversial. Telling the truth usually is.

Before I review the work, I should go over an aspect that's implicit in the book but never quite spelled out.

A nation is not durable if people are not willing to sacrifice for it. A man is willing to sacrifice for his wife and children, for his extended family, for his tribe—for those he feels a bond with. He will spend money on them, spend time on them, spend effort on them—if necessary risk his life for them. A nation lives by the same bonding. The citizens must be willing to pay taxes to aid other citizens they don't know, and be willing to risk life to defend other citizens.

Some governments rule largely by fear—pay or be beaten, join the army or die—but such conscripts tend to melt away or clutter the battlefield while the professionals fight. Or they can be bribed by the prospect of loot and slaves, but that's hard to maintain in a defensive war.

Of course not everybody has to feel such a bond, but enough have to be willing to fight for the country for it to be able to beat off enemies.

The commonality behind that bond varies. Friendship is a strong but very local bond—we have very few real friends, and not all that many acquaintances. Family bonds are farther reaching, and tribal ones reach still farther. Some nations are giant tribes—a single related people—like Japan (tiny minorities excepted). Some (like the USA) are both ideological and tribal. Some are religious and tribal—like Israel. Some nations are cultural/linguistic and tribal—like France, which is nominally (but not entirely) willing to welcome anyone convinced of the superiority of French culture and language.

If there is no common bond I doubt that the result is stable. Many empires through history simply disintegrated when the imperial force diminished. Think of Charlemagne's empire, or Alexander's. Even within a nation, if regions or groups stop thinking of themselves as part of the whole, the nation risks civil war and disintegration—think of China.

Where a commonality exists, whether of tribe or language or religion or ideology; it is possible to find some center for the people to rally round. Of course it doesn't have to be the central country—Pakistan is a good example here. The country was founded as a Muslim state, and is held together by religious adversity to its neighbors and inertia. The various tribes hate each other, but if they perceive an infidel threat they can unite—sometimes in extra-governmental ways.

When that commonality subsides, the nation starts to disintegrate. Somalia is a tribal nation, and you'd think that a single tribe with a single language and a single religion would be stable—but the sub-tribes vie for dominance, and it isn't. Ideologically-founded states (and to a lesser extent religiously based ones) face a similar threat. If the population loses enthusiasm for the ideology, it seems likely to split into tribes. The USSR was an ideologically based nation, and so is the USA. (Religions change more slowly than ideologies, since they are more all-encompassing descriptions of reality.)

With that preface understood, Huntington's book is a largely accurate description of the big international picture as driven by conflicts between major cultural groups. One might quibble with his divisions, but I don't plan to. I don't know enough of the interaction of Orthodox Christianity with the government to understand why “Russia” is supposed to be radically enough different as to be irreconcilable with the Catholic/Protestant West.

Huntington sees a rough division of the world into 8 civilizations: Sinic (China and its traditional client states), Japanese (sufficiently large and different enough from China to be distinguished), Western, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox, African, and South American. “African” is sort of a geographic/racial catch-all, and South America leans strongly Western; but the rest have fairly distinguishable characteristics. A civilization often has a central state (like China or Russia), and partners/clients at several levels removed. These partners are sometimes enemies, of course—think of Vietnam and China. Vietnam's culture derives from China's, and their histories are intertwined—and Vietnam isn't always happy about that. He points out from recent history that the Orthodox states, despite apparent similarities to Western ones, have tended to band together rather than with their Catholic neighbors. Western civilization does not have a single core country, but instead 3 or 4.

Cultural influence is linked with military power which is inextricably linked with economic power, and the rise of non-Western economic power has allowed non-Western civilizations to wield influence they haven't seen in hundreds of years. The result is a multi-polar and substantially more volatile international scene. Every civilization can point to a time in its history when it was king of the hill, and regards that time as normative forever. Huntington doesn't give a lot of weight to ideological influence, or to the possibility of having central tenets of a culture change. They can change, as history shows. Christianity replaced paganism, and Islam destroyed the ancient Mesopotamian civilizations (as well as a lot of Eastern Christendom). It just took time (and some force).

Islam has a central location among the civilizations, and perhaps some of its “bloody borders” can be attributed to its being “in the middle,” but it seems clear enough that quite a bit of the conflict is intrinsic to Islam. At the moment the Islamic civilization has no core state, though several are vying for that position (Iran, Saudi-controlled Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey being the main contenders). It is unusual among the battling civilizations that it has virtually no economic productivity—oil is pretty much the only thing it has going for it.

The writing has some little gems: If Muslims allege that the West wars on Islam and if Westerners allege that Islamic groups war on the West, it seems reasonable to conclude that something very like a war is underway. This was pre-9/11, of course.

If the West is in relative decline, who will be the next big winner? Huntington thinks China, and marshals some reasonable arguments for that. He implicitly assumes that the Chinese economy won't collapse under the weight of political/personal-deal bad loans, and he may well be right. The penchant for Chinese to Chinese deals rather than transparent contracts increases the relative clout of Chinese in other societies, and the traditional approach of Chinese culture societies (weak states strive for position by allying with strong ones, rather than trying to maintain independence) also feeds into increasing Chinese dominance.

In any event, around the world we are learning that what we Westerners thought were universal values and rights aren't even close. Rule of law? Abolition of slavery? Individual autonomy? These seem to be as Western as Esperanto.

Perhaps. History shows us that cultures don't like to change, and can resist it violently. And it shows us that cultures sometimes change. Kemal's changes may not have taken root. But they still might, if something displaces the Islamist parties in Turkey. In a few generations. . .

If you haven't read the book yet, do so.

Fury by Henry Kuttner

A little light reading for a change. This is set in the same Venus as "Clash by Night," where the refugees from a destroyed earth live in undersea domes because the land is too hostile. An Immortal (long lived mutant families) baby is modified and raised as an ordinary man--with an overwhelming urge to power.

Kuttner was a very creative and thoughtful writer, and he took a hard look at what kind of man a Barbarossa or an Arthur might be. Sam's early years aren't adequate to explain his nature, and Kuttner would have been better off just describing him and saying that some people are like that. When he leaves Sam's early history behind and goes on to tell what happens when Sam's ambition meets the last hope of the fading Keeps, the story works well.

Of course his Venus is all wrong, and the technology sometimes a little off, but these are trifling matters compared to the telling of a good story. And it is a good story, with some wonderful little asides, such as the Logician's explanation of why prophecies have to be obscure.

Using radioactivity to grow

No, not giant ants. There's a hint that radiation can make melanin structures process some chemicals faster. The study report discusses fairly obscure metabolic processes, and has it is possible thats in it, but the results (suggested by the presence of lively growths of fungi in the Chernobyl reactor!) are things like

Melanized Wangiella dermatitidis and Cryptococcus neoformans cells exposed to ionizing radiation approximately 500 times higher than background grew significantly faster as indicated by higher CFUs, more dry weight biomass and 3-fold greater incorporation of 14C-acetate than non-irradiated melanized cells or irradiated albino mutants. In addition, radiation enhanced the growth of melanized Cladosporium sphaerospermum cells under limited nutrients conditions.

Why?

Exposure of melanin to ionizing radiation, and possibly other forms of electromagnetic radiation, changes its electronic properties. Melanized fungal cells manifested increased growth relative to non-melanized cells after exposure to ionizing radiation, raising intriguing questions about a potential role for melanin in energy capture and utilization.

Well, why not? We have extremophiles that reduce iron, others that oxidize it, oxidize sulfer--why not some that finesse ionizing radiation?

Macbeth: Shakespeare Made Easy

by Alan Durband.

Edited and rendered into modern English

Of course Shakespeare wrote in Modern English, but we can't let little facts get in the way of the advertisement, can we?

Shall we compare? Look at a central scene, and a random passage.

Shakespeare	Durband
Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still	Is this a dagger I see before me? With its handle toward my hand? [Speaking to it] Come—let me hold you! [He snatches at the empty air] Nothing there. Yet I can still see you
I go, and it is done: the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven, or to hell	Now I'll go, and it's as good as done. The bell is my invitation. Do not hear it, Duncan! It's a bell that summons you to heaven—or to hell!
We have willing dames enough; there cannot be that vulture in you, to devour so many as will to greatness dedicate themselves, finding it so inclined.	there are plenty of willing wenches. The supply of obliging maidens must far exceed even your appetite

In the first passage Shakespeare has Macbeth use the word “clutch” when reaching for the dagger. I'm not sure about his era, but in ours to clutch carries the meanings of both greed and insecurity. There's a touch of uncertainty in Macbeth yet—not quite sure if he's going to carry out the murder. This vanishes in Durband's rendition. It would have been easy to keep it.

Durband's word choice in the second passage is astonishing. A “knell” is a death-bell—and the word is still well-known. Why not use it, and keep the connection between ringing and heaven/hell?

In the third passage Shakespeare's “devour” image, while in keeping with Malcolm's self-indictment, is likely to seem a bit over the top to modern ears, and Durband flattens the phrasing accordingly. But he turns “as will to greatness dedicate themselves” into “obliging.” Shakespeare's phrase describes the motives of women who cluster near the powerful—they actively seek association with greatness. Durband's women are more passive—they oblige.

Why read (or better yet, watch) Shakespeare at all?

• Because he told good stories.
• Because he had good insight into human nature.
• Because his writing often had wonderful language.

Durband's version

• Is the same story: check
• Includes more scene direction than the original (useful)
• Sometimes loses the insight (as in the third passage above) (½ check)
• His language is pretty pedestrian

---

So why did I even bother to look at this rubbish? Because Sun Prairie High School assigned it to their Sophomore class. The only good feature of the book is that it is in parallel: Shakespeare's text on the left, Durband's on the right.

To be fair, the Introduction says that Shakespeare is untranslatable, and that the work is meant to give the “dramatic aspect.”

WCRP

Some proverbs we use to help us get through hard times; like "It's always darkest just before the dawn." These are coping saws.

Tasteless

I was at Borders this afternoon, and while waiting for Middle Daughter to finish finding a birthday gift for her friend I perused the science fiction collection. Things have changed.

Vast swaths of shelving hold Star Trek franchise books, and Star Wars franchise books (The Making of Star Wars is classed as SF!), and copies of Tolkien's unfinished works. It seems as though they don't allow anything on the shelf thinner than ¾ inch thick, and most books are volume M of N. Covers include lots of horses, dragons, swords, and implausibly clad Amazons.

When I was a teenager the fashion was to use psychedelic covers with no noticeable meaning, or wild combinations of motifs and characters from the book. Most books were relatively thin, and most of the contents had something or other to do with space travel or aliens. Not all—the psychological SF novel was also fashionable, and we had DeCamp et al for fantasy, and quite a few authors were experimenting with alternative social/moral/religious worlds.

I can't say the quality of writing was better years ago—I've no good way to tell, since I generally remember only the books I finished, and I relied on advice. Some was very good then, and some (Pratchett, for instance) are enjoyable today. But I'm suspicious. Someone once said that within every novel is a short story trying to get out, and I suspect that the 5 volume paperweights are not very well edited.

I was urged to read The Phantom Menace. I plowed through about 10 pages and decided that it was even worse than the movie. The His Dark Materials series is inconsistent, sloppy, and surprisingly malicious—and it won awards and a stage deal. I read a review of Wicked (including a few quotes): and concluded “same old, same old.” When the first Star Trek collections (short stories from the TV show) came out I saw that authors trying to work with other people's characters generally wrote paper dolls and unconvincing stories; and spot checking the vast shelves of franchise novels hasn't modified my conclusion much. To be fair, Zahn's Star Wars books were good. But the Dune prequels don't even make good compost.

You might point out that this is genre fiction, and suggest that perhaps my tastes matured—perhaps I should look at mainstream fiction and the “modern classics.” I regret to report that these are no better, and often quite a bit worse—genre fiction is required to at least tell a coherent story. Most modern literature I've struck doesn't pass Twain's test: I dislike the good characters, am indifferent to the bad ones, and wish they'd all fall down a well together. Why the hunger to describe life as though nothing were real but stupidity and suffering?

It feels strange to look over a section that used to interest me and see nothing that I'd care to spend ten minutes on, much less ten dollars.

It is even stranger to find myself talking with someone who has so immersed himself in SF and fantasy that he seems to actually believe that we'll one day invent a warp drive, and that societies can be run on principles and mores from SF novels.

WCRP

A horse-whisperer who doesn't use reins but instead guides his horse with polite suggestions is a requestrian.

WCRP

I notice that when I use a pun it can introduce a slight LOL in the conversation.

Blood diseases

Middle daughter came back from Liberia with some kind of blood parasite which acts a lot like malaria. Were I the doc I'd load her up with all the anti-malarials I could find while trying to figure out what caused it, on the assumption that she's got a malarone-resistant malaria anyhow--but they want a diagnosis first.

At least I think that's what they're doing. Maybe they're trying phlebotomy: so far 10 vials of blood drawn.

Rules of the Road in Liberia

Drivers in Liberia must know certain important rules.

• If you have a breakdown, tear up large chunks of grass and associated clods and plant them in the road upstream of your vehicle, to serve as “flares” warning other drivers of your mishap. It is not necessary to pull off the road.
• Blink your headlights if you want to tell other drivers to go ahead.
• To cross or turn onto a street, inch out until you block traffic going one way, and then wait until someone slows down and blinks at you so you can finish crossing.
• Cabs are supposed to wave you around them when they stop for passengers, but weave around whether they do or not.
• Honk to warn pedestrians in the road.
• Honk to warn children or dogs or inattentive pedestrians beside the road.
• Honk to salute friends.
• Be aware of the road conditions so you can tell why the other guy is honking.
• Pedestrians will help guide you when you need to back up or make a blind turn.
• Possession is 10/10 of the right of way.
• Try to stay more or less on the right-hand side of the road.
• Try to avoid potholes.
• Don’t hit pedestrians.
• Don’t be timid.
• Pray that when a bigwig comes by and you have to get off the road, that you will be able to get back on again.
• If there is a policeman present, follow his signals. (Does not apply to cabs)
• Follow the signals at the checkpoints, if you can read them.
• You can always squeeze in another lane of traffic if you are careful.
• Know exactly how wide your car is.
• After you’ve weaved and intimidated your way to the front of the pack, slow down and blink somebody in or a pedestrian across.

You laugh, but try to maneuver through a crowded concourse hall at O’Hare airport.

Utter Insanity

Hide your children from these people. They are teachers, indoctrinated so thoroughly that they are no longer capable of recognizing play. Their ideology takes precedence over all childhood to and fro. Savonarola lives. (Why We Banned Legos)

Tchaikowsky in the abstract

I recommend the European Union Opera production of Tchaikowsky’s opera Eugene Onegin (1998, featuring Vladimir Glushchak in the title role). If the DVD is in your local library, check it out.

Eugene (Russian Yevgeny) Onegin is a self-absorbed young jerk who thinks that having good looks, intelligence, and wealth means that the rest of the world is supposed to entertain him. At age 22, he is bored with his neighbors, lesser mortals that they are; he is bored with his estate, and itching for some excitement.

The first act describes how an innocent neighbor, Tatyana, becomes infatuated with Onegin and, like the heroines in her favorite romantic novels, she writes him a very passionate letter. Her room is full of romantic novels; they cover the windowsill, the floor, and the table.

Real life doesn’t work like a novel.

Lucky for her, Onegin either doesn’t think seducing her would be enough of a challenge; or else he has just enough honor not to take advantage of her. The scene in which he responds to her letter opens with the romantic books sunken into the floor, still visible; but now Tatyana comes out of the vault of books with a feeling of dread at how Onegin might respond to her letter. He gives her a long speech, saying he’s not the marrying kind, she’s not sophisticated, they’d get bored with each other after a while, and says she’ll fall in love with somebody else sooner or later. He warns her not to be so candid in letters; somebody else might take advantage of her inexperience.

A short time later, Tatyana’s mother hosts a ball in honor of Tatyana’s 18th birthday. Onegin’s friend Lensky, engaged to Tatyana’s sister Olga, drags Onegin along to the party. Onegin decides it’s Lensky’s fault that he’s bored, so he flirts outrageously with Olga. Lensky’s had a little too much to drink, and gets angry. Olga doesn’t know why he’s so upset, and Onegin doesn’t have the good sense to see that his little adventure is getting out of hand. He’s too stiff-necked to back down—other people’s reactions to him are their fault, right? Lensky repudiates Olga and challenges Onegin to a duel, and Onegin kills Lensky, his only friend.

Act III, four years later: Onegin has been running away from his guilt, all over Europe. He has no career, no family, no real purpose. He comes to a reception at the elderly Prince Gremin’s house, and discovers Tatyana is now Princess Gremina. Prince Gremin, sings a truly beautiful aria, telling of his love for Tatyana. He loves her for all the reasons Onegin rejected her: she’s unaffected and innocent, not like the phonies and sycophants he finds himself surrounded by in Society. She has grown into the role of Princess, she is good to Gremin, and she has given him his youth back.

Onegin decides that now that he’s ready to love Tatyana, she should discard her aged husband and come to live with him. She acknowledges her love for Onegin but tells him that she has been a faithful wife to Gremin and isn’t about to go back on her vows. Her duty to Gremin outweighs her love for Onegin, and she leaves him in an agony of emotional torment. Which he richly deserves

The staging is rather abstract but it works. The “furniture” in Tatyana’s house is very simple, covered with white cotton. A garden party is represented by red and yellow kites floating above the bare stage, which slants downward to reveal her romantic books below stage, almost as though Tatyana’s library has become a crypt. The birthday party scene is plain white furniture draped with white cotton, with a few romantic novels strewn among the birthday presents. A white screen shows the dancing behind the refreshment area, where the action takes place. The only color is the red in Tatyana’s gown, the yellow in Olga’s, the blue in her mother’s gown, hints of color in the guests’ clothing, and a huge bunch of hydrangeas on the table.

Monsieur Triquet, French guest of one of Tatyana’s neighbors, gets a delightful little aria. His impossibly round bald head wreathed with grey ringlets that look pasted on, his Louis XIV brocade jacket flapping like butterfly wings, he sings verses written in French in honor of Tatyana’s birthday. He is comically vain and dramatic, bur he is earnest and everybody loves him.

Prince Gremin’s reception hall is a series of black, wavy columns with a red carpet down the middle. The guests, representative of High Society, wear black; and have heavily painted faces and bizarre, intricate coifs, emphasizing the artificiality that Gremin has come to hate. Tatyana is the only woman on stage who looks entirely human, and Prince Gremin wears a silvery grey suit. This production’s Gremin looks a healthy forty years old.

The scene in which Onegin professes love to Tatyana brings back the crypt of books in front of a plain black curtain. He has awoken Tatyana’s old romantic feelings. Onegin’s black overcoat makes a great stage prop in this scene. Tatyana keeps handing it to him telling him to leave. When he declares that she should leave her husband, that he (Onegin) was made to love and protect her, he drapes his overcoat around her shoulders. When she tells him farewell, she throws the overcoat off. When she rejects him, she runs off upstage, and when he tries to follow her, two mirrors appear and block his path.

Sidney J. Harris describes a jerk as “someone who cannot see himself as others do….He is incapable of looking in a mirror of his soul and shuddering at what he sees there.” Does Onegin shudder at his reflection and realize his own folly? The opera doesn’t answer that question.

The production is moving, and beautifully sung. Enjoy!

Mrs James

Waki Waki

Juli Endee-Tarpeh, Liberia's Cultural Ambassador, gave a special seminar yesterday on "Waki! Waki! Peace Activism, Crusaders for Peace, and the Children's Village of Liberia." So I went.

Her style was pure Liberian: Layers of related statements punctuated with slogans, all pointing towards some rhetorical goal. She did not answer a question in less than 7 minutes, and usually it was more like 10.

She began with a brief history of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee for Liberia. (15 minutes) Then she opened the floor for questions. The only really interesting part of it was the description of the women who had arrived at the peace talks. Not allowed to enter, they in turn barred reporters from entering, until Rawlings agreed to let them in. Then, once in, they interjected all sorts of proposals that the reporters lapped up (the reporters didn't realize the women weren't formal members of the team at first).

She got into a (needless to say) long argument with one woman in the audience who took exception to a blanket statement that women before Ellen Johnson Sirleaf were never able to take positions of authority. I can summarize 20 minutes of her talk with "They don't count, they only got their positions because they had connections."

She stared uncomplainingly into the video projector for most of the hour, until the technician realized that the DVD was never going to work and turned it off.

With 5 minutes to go, she gave us a few cuts from one of her CD's, which were of traditional-style music whose lyrics were appeals for peace and the TRC: some in English and some in Kpelle.

Afterwards I asked her what there was to make "Liberia" for the Liberians--what common culture or aspirations were left. I don't think she understood me. Or maybe she did, and didn't want to answer.

She owns the Children's Village, but it was never made clear what exactly that was. Maybe the DVD would have helped. She also owns a cultural troope that made some of the music, and has traveled a lot.

It was nice to meet a few Liberians in the audience.

Dynamic is sexy

Is anybody really surprised? The movie poster/Playboy/"Photograph my good side" women may be detail-perfect and airbrushed, but they're static--frozen. What catches the eye is motion; motion that accents the differences between men and women. A few more details at BBC

Can't they borrow an anteater from the zoo?

Ang Hock Si vs the fire ants. Could it be "the will of the universe" that an anteater follow its nature?

WCRP

”Try it Billy. I spent all afternoon making it.”

”Oooohkay.” Microscopic fragment conveyed to lips “Yuck, gack!” Cough choke and sputter, run to sink for water…

”Ungrateful retch.”

Musings on signage

The dealership’s sign boasted “We buy cars!”

But if you want to be green, you need to reply “We bike ours!”

But the seats are so tiny that we wind up lamenting our “Wee bike arse.”

Maybe he was sleepy

After replacing my suit at Penneys, we remembered that Youngest Son’s belt had broken that morning, and went to the Boys Department to find him one. Neither of us could remember his waist size, so I called home.

He answered.

I told him to look in the “junk drawer” for the steel tape measure, and wrap it around his waist.

He got it, but complained that it wouldn’t work. He needed Youngest Daughter’s help, because it wouldn’t stay put.

Ok, the rule is a bit awkward, so I told him to get the fabric tape, which was on the lattice by the stairs.

He got it, but complained that he still couldn’t wrap the tape around.

”Why not?”

”I’m holding the phone.”

Pause. “Put the phone down.”

”Oh. OK.”

He’s usually much more creative than that….

Backing up a step or two from the verdict

Let's see:

Iraqi trade mission visits Niger in 1999.

A trip to Niger is not a luxurious junket: they were on business.

Niger exports uranium, cattle, cowpeas, and onions.

• The cattle are mostly walked to Nigeria. Not much infrastructure for getting the animals to Iraq.
• Iraq exports onions too (one of the big exporters of shallots), so I doubt they were looking for trade opportunities in onions.
• Perhaps they were interested in importing cowpeas? Iraq grows them too, perhaps they had a bad year. Plenty of rain, though; the drought wasn't until 2000.
• Uranium? I think that must be it.

Setting aside Saddam's well-documented ambitions, he had reason to worry about his next-door enemy's nuclear ambitions. He once had an active nuke development program himself and was playing shell games with the inspectors. (The documents found later suggest that the program was on hold until the coast was clear, though that's more knowledge than anybody else had at the time.) Uranium is for either power production or weapons. Knowing Saddam, its weapons.

Its a no-brainer: Iraq wanted to buy uranium, or at least set up channels to do so later. Maybe it wouldn't be possible right away, but the intent is clear enough.

So why in the world would Wilson say anything else? (BTW, "I don't think they could succeed" is not the same as "They didn't try.")

If I assume that Wilson is reasonably bright I come up with only four reasons; maybe you can think of others:

1. As Wilson sat with the Muyaki over dinner, Muyaki told Wilson that "No, we wouldn't dream of selling uranium to him, and anyway he never asked." Wilson "got a sense of Muyaki's soul" and believed him.
2. Wilson thought he saw a way to a fast buck.
3. Wilson was/is a political partisan who wanted to embarrass the administration.
4. Wilson was/is a departmental partisan, and the infighting between Washington departments is worse than we realize.

I don't know which is more likely, though I lean to suspecting 3 or 4. Over the past dozen years I've been noting whiffs of something nasty in the air: nothing I can put my finger on, but enough to suspect that the various major departments in Washington are not all on good terms with one another.

That worries me a lot. Political partisanship we as voters have something to say about: we can complain and try to find principled candidates. But the giant bureaucracies are insulated from the citizens, and when their empire-building gets out of hand there's not much we can do about it.

If it isn't on the state news, it didn't happen

This is scary "The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday."

A law originally designed to target "happy slapping," where thugs make movies of beating up bystanders and circulate them for amusement, was deliberately widened.

I hope this gets shot down quickly.

Returning home

I hadn’t slept well all week, and Friday night was no exception. Bed at 10, and my mind won’t slow down. Why didn’t I say X; what could I do about the lasers; I have this question about the church—and endless round of tireless mental wanderings—what I’d do differently if I had charge of border security; how to get around airport security; why had I been juggling pine cones in the middle of the Carrefour; wait a minute—I must have been dreaming in there somewhere. Repeat until I feel like the alarm must be about to go off—and lo and behold, the clock says I’ve only got 15 minutes before it will.

I set off alarms in Geneva, Brussels, and O’Hare. Pen, watch, belt. I really didn’t need that—they’d closed the boarding door for the flight to Madison by the time I got there. (They graciously let me on anyway.)

In Brussels a young white man waited at the gate with a small black baby. He looked American, and given the tiny rate at which white men marry black women I figured this was an adoption. Later on he was a little behind me in the second line and mentioned to the fellow beside him that he’d just gotten in from Monrovia. I turned and asked him how Roberts Field was.

After a bit of joking he said it was terrible. He’d had to “dash” the inspectors not to search his luggage (that’s a kind of extortion, for those used to Western airports). And yes, it was an adoption: actually 3 at once. (The nine-month old had been pretty fussy on the flight from Monrovia, but the others were more or less content, and all fairly sick.) Turns out they’d stayed with a Baptist missionary at Sinkor (name completely eludes me, though—names do that). He’d not stopped sweating once while he was there (yep), and told of having to drive off all the baggage carriers when they arrive, and trying to select two (and keep an eye on them) when they left.

There was a nine-month-old, a two year old girl, and a three year old boy who was being introduced to the marvels of a portable DVD player in the airport. The new mother told him to just watch the movie and stop fiddling with the controls. I was seriously sleepy, or I’d have mentioned that he wasn’t used to “just sitting and watching,” and that that was probably a good thing.

I gather he was a little street-wise already. The new parents had been told to bring lots of dollar bills, so they packed a hundred in singles. That made a pretty big wad, and when the lad saw them poking out of the pocket of the suitcase he urgently pushed them back in out of sight. So says the new proud papa.

I was in the second-to-last row in the 767 out of Brussels. We loaded early, and were set to go. And set. And set. Eventually we were told that there was a “discreet situation” at the door and they were waiting for a doctor’s opinion. We left late.

8 Below looks like a good movie (I never try to listen on an airplane anymore). Greenland didn’t look very green—what I could see of it. My seatmate on the flight to Madison works for a family knife-making firm, specializing in industrial knives. Apparently most such knife makers are out of business, because the US only makes rolled steel anymore. I hadn’t thought about it, but industry uses a lot of knives—from paper slicers to blades used in emusifier vats.

As for American Airlines in Brussels—remember how you bought goods in the old socialist paradises? You’d stand in one line to pick out the items, stand in another to pay for them, and then stand in another to pick them up. At the American Airlines gate in Brussels you had to stand in one line to verify your baggage tags and identity, another line to get your correct boarding pass (the one issued in Geneva was no good), and another line to board the plane.

Fountains of the Deep

Hat tip to Donald Sensing

Apparently there’s some water in the mantle. About an Arctic ocean’s worth, they guess—or about 1.4% of the surface water. It sounds plausible. I’d wondered where subducted water went, and so did they.

Of course, if that were to reach the surface there’d be hell to pay. Luckily it could only rise slowly—if it came up in one big gusher/fountain it’d raise ocean temperatures by 20 degrees C (35 degrees F)—eventually. Of course that much steam in the air would fry every air-breather long before the oceans reached equilibrium.

Chicago

The Liberian consulate is a small counter in a rug and flooring shop down on 75’th street in Chicago. The shops all have rolling bars to cover the windows and doors—the few shops that exist in the 2200 block. It’s a mostly empty block in a sinking neighborhood.

The consular officer was friendly and helpful—he’d just driven off, but came back when he heard he had a visitor. He’d gone to a mission school in Cape Palmas, and we talked a little about mission schools and family. He was slow and careful as he made out the visa inserts and filled out the details of the forms, and we talked of various other things off and on through the process. I’d forgotten the rhythms of Liberian life.

He suggested that I take Lake Shore Drive, since it was easily reached from the south end. Most of my experience on that road has been from about McCormick place north, and I hated it. That afternoon the road was almost empty, and the view was gorgeous. The lake was blue shading to turquoise backed by towers wrapped in thin mist.

Of course I forgot that the Congress was also known as 290, and missed my turn; and wound up getting a phone call just as I was heading into the S-curve. No, I didn’t answer it. (By then there was a lot of traffic….) I turned around well north of the loop, and got off at a familiar-sounding street to try to wind my way back south. Familiar, but at the north end of the loop, it turned out. Pedestrian traffic was so heavy it took 12 minutes to go around the block.

I’d not approached Fermilab from 88 in so many years that nothing looked familiar. I navigated on fading memory of street names—and my memory for names is deeply unreliable. I guessed right (for a change that day).

Satire v0.1

Satire v0.1

Satire requires a “normal” lead-in. Whatever is exaggerated must have a clear connection to the ordinary world, or it loses force.

At the most trivial level, suppose you want to satirize the supposed greed of the mayor. You could do this by devising a skit about a man who can’t bear to part with a dollar even to buy medicine. So far, so good. Now how does this deal with the mayor?

If he already has a reputation for intense greed you don’t have to do much, because people can guess. But if he doesn’t, or if a lot of well-known people are thought to be greedy, you have to be more specific so your audience knows who you are talking about. You can hang a sign on the actor that reads “Mayor” or dress the actor like the mayor, if that’s distinctive enough, or exaggerate some physical feature—a Pinocchio nose if the mayor has a big one, for example.

But your skit loses any satirical bite if you actor isn’t anything like the mayor. It may be comic enough, making fun of greedy people in general, but it is no longer the specific satire of a specific man that you wanted it to be.

Going further, it seems so obvious that I’m ashamed to even remark that in a satire about a greedy man, he must be doing recognizably greedy things. The key here is “recognizably.” This depends on the audience and the culture: for a poor audience worrying about whether to buy food or medicine is a real problem and not a sign of greed.

Most people will stop to pick up a coin. A greedy person might wade into a fountain to pick one up. This is recognizable, and so you can use this in your play. But a man who uses a backhoe to excavate a yard looking for dropped coins isn’t recognizable anymore, unless you append a plot-killing amount of explanation.

It is worth looking at the fountain example in a little broader framework, in terms of feedback.

Most people regard coins tossed into the fountain as off-limits. There’s a trace of superstitious regard: it seems tasteless—almost not thinkable—to grab for what somebody has thrown away as ‘an offering,’ and it is a cold wet way to acquire a small amount of money. This attitude can change. There’s a connection of the extreme to ordinary life, because your play has used one. Suppose your play is popular, and other writers seize on the same thing: diving into fountains for loose change as a sign of greediness. The shock value of the act starts to decline. It becomes thinkable, and people who want to show off by acting a little “transgressive” will start doing it more often in real life. The culture changes—and in this case changes in a direction of less courtesy and more greed.

You will no doubt complain that this was the opposite of your intention. You wanted to make fun of greediness, not encourage it. But the satire, by becoming part of the culture, changes the balance of things people are accustomed to experiencing. It changes the culture in the direction of what you are trying to satirize. Unless the satire provoked a reaction, this seems like a built-in danger—especially in an entertainment culture like ours.

Take another example: Madonna’s “Material Girl.” She pretty obviously meant it as satire—the “material girl” is intensely selfish. The song became intensely popular: part of the atmosphere and part of the language. Most people went on their usual lives, but on the fringe some took it up as a slogan: some proudly and some with a smirk. The result was a small cultural shift as the satire became an anthem. Not for everybody, but for enough people to “pull the distribution” in the direction of materialism. I didn’t observe anybody taking the opposite approach and becoming less selfish after contemplating the song. (I doubt that Madonna cared much.)

I see a serious danger that satire can provoke the attitudes it is trying to poke fun of.

But we know that satire can be effective and useful.

When doesn’t satire risk being counterproductive?

If people feel compelled to do something about the problem, the satire will be productive. The problem for us is that our culture is an entertainment culture, in which we cultivate an aesthete’s detachment and avoid commitment.

If the satirized characters are clearly vile enough that nobody wants to be like them, the satire may be productive. The problem for the artist is that the audience will laugh more heartily for a sympathetic villain. Madonna’s “material girl” is proud and content—and not shown in an ugly light, so we smile. Nobody laughs at Elmer Gantry. The trick of creating a character that is funny and despicable at the same time is a tough one.

Good satire is hard to do—and even harder when the news is so strange. When I heard the story about the proposal to ban using iPods while walking in the city, I was sure it was from Scrappleface.

Etruscans

So maybe Herodotus, writing about people who were alive at the time, knew what he was talking about after all.

"Open covenants openly arrived at"

It sounds like a good goal to strive for, and it certainly helps keep things understandable and defensible in general. But I don't believe it makes a good absolute rule, and I suspect the recent agreement with North Korea is an example.

No agreement with Kim is worth the effort to read unless the Chinese are willing to enforce it. Nobody else is in a position to do that, but the Chinese aren't going to publicly announce that they'll chastise their client. So the only way you can come within shouting distance of a useful agreement with Kim is for some of the provisions to be under the table.

Which means, of course, that neither all the provisions of the covenants are open, nor were they all openly arrived at. Hardly ideal, but the best we can realistically get.

I'm assuming that's what's going on here. If we don't have any sort of deal with China for enforcement, then I have to question whether the US negotiators were trying to defend the country or were pressured into posturing for local political benefit. (One reason I thought Kerry was a fool...)

Unexpected Sounds

I haven’t seen my boots for 6 years. I think they were accidentally discarded during a cleaning frenzy. I haven’t missed them much—winters have been warm—until now.

When the Celsius line reads –25, ordinary rubber-like sneakers hit the ground with a rap like those of hard-soled shoes—and the rap sounds almost hollow when you’ve got them stuffed with two pairs of socks. Usually sneakers fit snugly around your feet, but wool socks space them out quite a bit. The sound carries clearly in the chill air of the library mall.

Discoveries

I spent a little over 4 hours today emptying out a room and moving the contents to the basement. The molding around the base of dressers and the desk hadn’t been dusted in several years, and when I was done the pile of dust in the middle of the floor was the size of a cat. So what did I turn up?

• Money (no surprise there) (about 64 cents)

• Expired coupons (How excited they made us when we first saw them…)

• Rusty paper clips (Why rusty? Nothing else was…)

• Sore throat lozenges (do they crawl out of the bag?)

• A cell phone charger that’s been missing for a year

• A pickle jar lid (My guess is that somebody was eating pickles out of the jar, and discarded the empty jar, forgetting about the lid.)

• Bandaids, in the wrappers

• Hair care utensils (I’m convinced that they deliberately hide. Two years ago I bought a dozen combs to try to make sure there’d be at least one available when the girls needed one. That helped a little…)

• A broken cup from Alaska

• A paper guide from a printer that’s been working just fine without it

• A decorative pull-chain handle that must have flown across the room when the chain broke and smashed the light globe

• The manual for a short-wave radio made in the 60’s (To be fair, the radio is also in the house)

• A title abstract for a property in Waukesha, with the last transaction dating to 1894. (The first entry is the sale from United States by the president, John Tyler)

Thing is, the condo is new and the room was empty 5 years ago. In a rather older house we once lived in I found an old iron in the basement: one of those you heated on the stove and quickly ironed with for a couple of minutes before it got cool again. “Old old ting;” maybe 90 years old at the time. Mostly what I found was old hardware, though. One apartment had a clip of about 5 8mm frames from what must have been an adult movie, buried in the shag carpet.

Some people find valuable antiques in the attic. I find old iron and title abstracts for somebody else’s land.