Belated answer

I forgot to include the answer to the question I posed earlier this year. The answer is: England in the 1800's, as described by a Muslim writer.

Crickets

Eldest daughter called last night to remind us of the eclipse, and we went out to see. When we came back in, we were loudly reminded that a cricket had somehow migrated to our bedroom. It must have entered when flood-damaged rugs were being dragged out of the basement. We'd spotted the critter earlier, but the wiley beast got away. This time, though, there was a stack of unused homeschool materials handy (they were too workbook-y for our kids). There was no escape from the flying LifePAC of death!

Covenant Marriage

Sunday School was a little unusual at the church we visited. The teacher is a very talented raconteur, telling the old stories in new ways, heavily relying on The Message. But the talent in the class itself is even greater, with retired pastors and missionaries and seminary professors; so it seemed a little odd to have no to-and-fro.

The lesson was from Malachi; first addressing the priests who didn't take their job seriously (and then where does that leave the people who relied on them?--but we didn't get into that question), and moving on to divorce.

At which point the talk went straight into fog. Was she referring to the command to put away foreign wives in Ezra? To the injunction not to divorce unbelieving spouses if they were willing to stay married? She didn't say, though perhaps these things had come up before and the class knew what she meant. And then came a reference to “the one God meant for you,” which only seems relevant in Genesis (“Madam, I'm Adam”). And then a reference to “covenant marriage.”

The phrase was new to me, and set off the old alarm bells. Marriage is a covenant, and except for common-law marriage is an explicit one; so what's with the coinage? I get nervous when people start qualifying words like that; the result often stands on its head: like “People's Democracy.”

Wikipedia is your—well, not “friend,” exactly. Acquaintance? Covenant marriage is a marriage that requires premarital counseling and limits the grounds for divorce (abuse, adultery, felony with jail time). In other words, something rather like what we thought marriage was in the first place. Although in practice all you have to do to evade the provisions is go to a state that doesn't recognize it (47 don't) and dump your spouse there.

”No-fault” divorce was advertised as a way to keep lawyers out of a painful process that few would want to try. Both clauses seem to have been lies: lawyers are still involved and the divorce rate is now staggeringly high. The word marriage stayed the same, but the legal definition changed under it to make marriage the most easily abrogated contract we have, so long as you don't argue about property or custody. (Although it is sometimes easy to cancel a magazine subscription.)

For someone who wants a binding contract, there aren't many options.

I think the name “Covenant Marriage” is less than ideal. The “covenant” part certainly got some people's underwear in knots (they seem terrified of any hint of religion). Perhaps the coinage “Real Marriage” would be more accurate. Or maybe “Marriage Classic,” along the lines of a famous soft drink.

”Hard cases make bad law.” No doubt some people's lives were better thanks to no fault divorce, but it seems to have been an overwhelming disaster nonetheless. I'm not sure that enacting the possibility of “covenant marriage” is going to help the national divorce rate much, and if it does it will take decades. On the other hand, repealing no-fault is by now politically impossible. Even logical mild modifications, such as a probationary period (longer if there are children), may be out of reach. The culture has ratcheted its understanding of marriage into a paradigm of “rights” rather than one of union, and people hate to give up anything they conceive of as a right.

I started puzzling this out deeply suspicious of “covenant marriage,” and I still think the name is misleading, but perhaps this is a good idea. Perhaps it can grow a grassroots alternative to the semi-marriage the laws have left us.

I know there are objections that this reflects a Western, and thus Christian, and thus “unacceptably parochial” view of marriage. But even in the land of triple talaq marriages are not so unstable as here; even in France there's a probationary period. Our current situation is a mess. We have to choose some standards for family law; why shouldn't we permit one with extensive precedent and cultural roots, that was the standard within living memory?

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.