Social norms

It seems like such a little thing--but it just isn't done.

I boarded the bus in front of Imperial Gardens as usual. School's in session, and the bus was pretty full. I knew there'd be more passengers boarding, so I went to the back of the bus where there were two seats left. One was open on the left, and I'm not skinny, so I asked the girl next to it "Is this yours?" pointing at the tiny "backpack" in the seat. She glanced at it, said "Yes" and faced forward again. I was a bit annoyed--I'd used the code phrase for "I want to sit down, please pick up your stuff" and she'd ignored it. So, I picked up her (1/2 pound? lighter than most purses) pack and dropped it in her lap and sat down.

A bulky and obscene fellow student of hers announced "Dude, he totally moved your stuff!" and there was general merriment for a minute or so. She ignored them, and me.

Such a little thing...

Accident

I settled down in a seat in the back left of the bus, and pulled out Hans Kung (I can see why he is not in good odor with the Vatican) and was struggling with his prose as the bus slowed down for the next pickup. There was a slight swerving, and a little noise--and suddenly everybody on the right side of the bus got excited. One fellow dashed off the bus to help as a young Chinese student stood up beside the bus. Apparently she'd been biking without watching and turned the corner into the path of the bus. I don't see how that's possible, but there she was at the edge of the sidewalk 20 feet from the corner.

She said she was unhurt, but seemed a bit dazed--not surprisingly. The driver called his supervisor who arrived after about 5 minutes, and about 5 later an ambulance came, and then a squad car 5 minutes after that. A friend of hers inspected the bike, which also seemed uninjured. While waiting she came in the bus and the driver asked her what she had been thinking of, and insisted that she wait for the supervisor and the police.

The supervisor had questions, the cop was interviewing witnesses. Nobody on the bus was a witness. Strange but true. After another 5 minutes two number 6 buses arrived and I left the group behind.

No mention in the paper, so I guess she really was unhurt.

Opera

Downstairs Youngest Daughter is watching Lucy in the castle with sharp stuff. It is overdue at the library, so now's the time. She seems to have a fascination with tragic heroines, preferably with daggers (Carmen, Tosca, Lucia, etc). Parsifal didn't seem to get her very excited: perhaps Kundry's problems weren't clear enough.

LHC is ready: What to worry about?

At about 2am my time the LHC turns on.

I propose to worry about whether Japanese trawlers will accidentally snag and awaken Godzilla.

OK, actually I am worried about the LHC: I worry that the readout I'm responsible for will glitch again, and I wonder when we'll be allowed to turn the magnet back on after the Castor near-disaster.

Clone Wars

Youngest son and I went to the movie for his birthday.

It is a cartoon instead of live action, and is constrained by having to fit carefully inside the movie sequence, without the possibility of huge character changes. They managed a little of that anyway, which was gratifying.

It won't displace Casablanca in the list of great movies, but it was competent, which was a refreshing change from recent offerings. Without the monkey of special effects on their backs, they dedicated a little more effort to dialog and plot. Yes, there were some unrealistic notes, but it was fun anyway.

If you saw the other Star Wars prequels, go ahead and see this one.

Out of luck

In front of the Wisconsin Cheeseman factory:

Need tailgating supplies?

Closed today

Bang the chest!

Wired news has a story about how loud cars are a turn-on for women. The title says "Exotic" but that's "high performance" in the body of the story, which describes how testosterone levels (a measure of arousal) varied in men and women listening to car sounds. Women had especially high levels after listening to the sounds of a Maserati (Harleys were not tested, apparently). Men's reactions were similar but more muted. "As for the Volkswagen Polo? Everyone had less testosterone after listening to it."

Little kids put playing cards in the spokes of their tricycles to get a good wild sound. Not that they're trying to attract the ladies--not yet. But ...

From Mrs. James: I am old enough to remember when the political conventions involved horse trading, debates, real speeches instead of mantras, ballots, second ballots, and drama.

For the last 30 years, the conventions have morphed into coronation ceremonies.

At least, McCain has picked somebody interesting. Obama selected the champion bloviator of the senate.

Unvetted?

I'm not a Republican, and don't consider it part of my duties or amusements to try to develop their strategies for them. I didn't seek out or bother studying the analyses of best Veep choices. But even I heard the name of Palin, and read it many months ago and on several short lists. I didn't know who she was (I said I didn't pay much attention to these things), but I kept running across the name.

So I was a little surprised at the choice, but not flabbergasted. What is flabbergasting is the parroting of the "unvetted" and "spur of the moment decision" lines. Even I know better, and I'm no political pundit. Do these people do any research at all?

Vacating

Updated by Mrs James.

We spent most of the week at Peninsula State Park. Luckily the bronchial problems were subsiding, so those of us afflicted could actually enjoy getting out and about.

It is nice to get away from the phone and radio, though unfortunately I had some obligations in Switzerland I had to attend to--the local library let me use my memory stick to run puTTY and check that things were going correctly. The only interruptions were mosquitoes and the rock of doom. No ads, no baseball, no need to ignore the convention (of course I haven't paid them any mind in 24 years ...); just birds and buoys and powerboats. And bugs, though not frantically too many.

Oddities on the way: a banner for a short term storage firm on the side of a decrepit barn--maybe not the best ambiance for the ad? Funny how many more cars were driving away from the park than toward it--Sunday afternoon back-to-Illinois traffic.

The campsites were mostly empty, the water spigot was nearby, the showers were close and not upwind, and we broke an unholy number of plastic tent stakes. Next time I'll try steel. The campsite was fringed with poison ivy, but we successfully evaded it.

The area is part of the "Niagara escarpment," a ridge of sedimentary rock that marks the extent of some glaciers. North of it was ground down, south of it is hilly, and the boundary is a ridge in places. Not just the ground underfoot but the forest changes as you go up the trails. The cliff rocks crack in horizontal and vertical layers, like huge gray Lego bricks--that sometimes fall out and leave shallow caves. Trees that cling to the treacherous cracks sometimes wind up at the bottom.

One beach is deep (at least two inches, I didn't dig farther) in empty zebra mussel shells, another is rocky with distorted fossils, another is shallow and sandy.

The concession stand carried something no sporting goods store in Madison carries anymore--air mattress repair kits. The salesmen I talked to didn't understand why the kits had gone missing, since they generally sold like hotcakes--but the stores weren't getting any more.

Youngest Daughter says she's more of a city person and grumped about the hikes and the chores and having to set up her tent all by herself. Youngest Son claimed a sore throat when chores came around: he was more interested in exploring. He went out on the lake on a bike-paddle boat by himself and seemed to have a grand old time climbing the observation tower (went back a second time). Each of them had to start a campfire themselves, and Youngest Son got a kick out of hatcheting firewood into kindling. When out hiking, Youngest Daughter glommed a pair of binoculars and released them only reluctantly. (Luckily we brought 2.)

Better Half and Youngest Daughter went to Sturgeon Bay to see a museum, and she and Youngest Son went to an art gallery that specialized in kinetic sculptures, and she and I went to a cafe with WiFi (to discover that I'd forgotten the WiFi card).

Mrs. James reports: Sturgeon Bay's maritime museum gives a history of the shipping trade in the area beginning with a video on how to make a birchbark canoe. Sturgeon Bay boasted 4 shipyards into the 1940s, and the town doubled in size during WWII, when the 4 companies had contracts to make various smaller boats. They made sub chasers and submarine tenders, cargo ships and oilers small enough to go through the Welland Canal of that day, destroyer escorts and corvettes. There were detailed video interviews, circa 1985, of people who worked to build the boats, including a lot of women welders, who were all very proud of what they accomplished.

Now, Sturgeon Bay bristles with yacht masts. Newer cabin cruisers look like something from Star Wars. Huge and sleek and high tech. All they need is grey hulls and tractor beams.

The huge tugboat Purves doesn't hold tours on Wednesday. However, when Youngest Daughter and I asked questions of the volunteer leaving the boat with his toolkit, he gave us an impromptu tour. He was the chief engineer on this boat for 25 years. He went to a different boat when his company sold the Purves, and the ensuing years weren't kind to her. He said they cleaned layers and layers of gunk and old oil off the equipment when the museum bought her.

The engine room was huge, and there was an open space amidships where the exhaust pipes from the engine room vented out. Bob said that the men hung their laundry in there to dry. Most cabins were utilitarian, with a bunk, a dresser, and room to turn around. Two cabins were not exactly private; people had to walk through them to get to the galley. The galley was restored to 1957, when Bob first came aboard. Back to James.

In the park we wandered the trails and went to the boat launch to watch the stars at night and told stories around the fire. No smores this time (but we did have fish and shrimp cocktail on our last evening). Breakfast was summer sausage and cold hard-boiled eggs and cheese and fruit and fruit juice and a couple of Oreos. (The raccoons didn't get any this time, though they nearly got the bread.)

We toured the lighthouse too. Better Half covets a "summer kitchen," but I'd feel a little cramped living in the tiny quarters of the lighthouse. It was funny to see just how much smaller the new light is than the old--and it includes spare bulbs that automatically rotate into position, and a solar panel to charge the battery that runs it. The old one was a 2 1/2 size: the lens looked to be only about 18 inches across (we weren't allowed to get close).

The Rock of Doom: I discovered that using a chunk of dolostone to keep the kindling out of the ash is not altogether without risk--40 minutes into the fire time a loud bang put the fire out for a couple of seconds and threw burning embers onto a chair. Reactions varied from "Cool, I wonder if it will do that again" (guilty) to "Never do that again." Since we lacked some heavy mesh to keep embers out of our hair, the latter voice won.

Mrs James again: Driving down the lake shore route instead of the interstate, coming home. The old lake ports are doing their best to attract summer visitors, now that the boats are too big for the harbors. Manitowoc is still big enough for the carferry Badger, between Manitowoc and Ludington, and for 500 foot cargo ships to come in. The Saginaw was unloading grain into a Budweiser elevator across the river from the museum.

Manitowoc's maritime museum has the USS Cobia, a Gato Class WWII sub, of the same type built at Manitowoc. Manitowoc built 10 Gatos and 18 newer subs. They had to be launched sideways into the Manitowoc River, instead of endways as done in the ocean yards, and they heeled almost 80 degrees over when they went in.. They took their sea trials in Lake Michigan, then went down to Chicago and the canal to the Illinois River and Mississippi. The subs were armed at New Orleans and sent out.

Manitowoc has the Manitowoc museum; Sturgeon Bay's has Door County Maritime Museum.

City Assessor

It was time for the city assessor to come by to inspect the house and review the assessment. Camera, clipboard, laser measuring device, questions and questions. For some reason I feel like King Hezekiah with the Babylonian ambassadors.

Garage Sales

There's a "city-wide garage sale" this weekend, and lots of people have goods out on the driveway. Our next-door neighbor put out a nice selection of children's toys, but had no takers. This isn't the rich side of town, so maybe fewer buyers come through.

Some folks put out colorful signs; others put a valuable-looking item at the street end to catch attention (one on Bird Street put out a plasma TV!), and others make sure the tables are colorfully laden. One sale on Windsor Street sported a couple of busty young ladies dancing on a table. They can't have been doing that all day, though, so maybe it was a coincidence.

We tried to run a garage sale once, and after considering the hours of work we put in and the minuscule return, we decided that in the future we'd give stuff away.

Edwards scandal

I was a little curious what kind of man Edwards was, and this seemed like a test--what does he do when his misdeeds are uncovered? Ok, now I know. I already knew that he had done shameful things--he's a human like the rest of us.

The cover up had several parts, and right now there's some digging around the campaign and the newspapers--who covered up what and when? I'm not terribly interested. Reporters don't go digging as hard for dirt on people they like: not exactly a stop-the-presses story. Whether they didn't dig because they liked Edwards or felt sorry for his wife I don't know.

Perhaps more interesting is the meta-question: are these scandals, whether real or fabricated (NYTimes McCain story), important news? Do they tell us anything important?

All in favor of flogging reporters who ask "Boxers or briefs?" say aye.

Always dress well

A tuxedo is always impressive, and can sometimes win the wearer some unexpected honors. "Call me sir when you speak to me!"

Flying Cr-p

It is no secret, except to the artistic "elite", that degrading art degrades the culture and degrades the soul. Evidently it can also damage the neighborhood.

Did you read the shirt before you put it on?

In a Walmart, a short Hispanic woman with jet-black hair sported a t-shirt that read "Blondes do it better."

I could see wearing something like that at the laudromat when it is the last clean shirt in the house, but I'd wear it inside out.

Swimming at Olympics

In the IHT: Swimming records fall: Is there something in the water?. I don't know, but it is probably easier to breathe than the air. It isn't due to lower gravity because of elevation... Maybe it is the suits and the pool.

Wars and Rumors of War

So Georgia overreached and Russia imagined a pretext and you and I probably won't know what's really going on for another day or so. I gather that the invasion route is easily defended (some of the discussion is useful here), but Russia is apt to rule the skies unless they kill some American advisors. I wonder what the Turks will do.

Apparently the Russian army involved is the same one that worked over Chechnya. If they follow through this is going to be a mess.

It seems possible that this has to do with control of the Caspian oil pipeline...

That's blindingly obvious by now (a week later) ...

Anthrax conspiracies

I haven't seen the government case against Ivins, but I gather there are a few thorny points: How did he get to the mailbox? Saying he obsessed about a sorority because he was rejected once in college doesn't magically transport him to its doorstep. Why would a Democrat be sending poison letters to Democratic senators?

NPR steps in here. Ivins was Catholic (horror!), his wife worked for a pro-life organization (how evil!), and he may have seen a letter that complained about the pro-abortion record of several of those senators (therefore he must have decided to kill them). I'm serious; I heard the story and that was their argument.

This is seriously creepy. Somebody at NPR has a hunger to link pro-life groups to murder, a hunger strong enough to overcome all proportion and logic (if Ivins was that upset about abortion senators, why was he still a Democrat?). It has the same smell of insanity as that coming from Egyptian TV, which made a serial out of Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Bias I can account for and deal with; madness I can't.

My guess? Access to the anthrax was probably so sloppy that shame and CYA tangled the investigations (which you'll have noticed have taken quite a long time). Agencies were afraid to admit how many people might have had access. Almost certainly few people did have access, but bad procedures would mean you really couldn't know for sure. And if sloppy procedures involved accounting, they might not be able to account for all samples or even know how many there were--and I'd bet the FBI would be willing to help keep it secret: it avoids panic and gives time to try to track down ambiguities and possibly mislaid material before other bad guys find it. (Never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity.)

Of course, somebody meant murder; somebody who apparently didn't realize that the spores were small enough to fall through paper. Either he suffered remorse, or he shot his bolt (no more anthrax), or he died in the interim, since we haven't had any more attacks (and they'd be horrifyingly easy to do). Somebody with access or a friend of someone with access. Maybe Ivins. Maybe the janitor's girlfriend. The 9/11 link seems a little far fetched--there are far more efficient delivery means if you are using a suicide attacker.

Battles that Changed History

by Fletcher Pratt

With illustrative maps by Edward Gorey. Yes, him.

I was only aware of Pratt's fantasy and SF, but apparently he wrote far more extensively in history, and devised a naval war game that filled his apartment floor. When I read (via Pournelle) that he'd written at least one history, I fetched it from the library immediately.

Pratt wrote well, and his explanations are lucid. He liked to find the forgotten aspects of history and show why some unremarked factor made the difference.

Pretty much all of the battles he writes about are Western or Middle-Eastern; which is perfectly reasonable since no civilization until the Western has had a global reach, making its history much more central to the rest of the world. Probably the best way to start to give a flavor of the book is with a list of the chapter titles. followed by my quick explanation

1. Arela and the Man Who Would Be God Alexander beating Darius--but with a lot of leadup history
2. The Red King at Beneventum Pyrrhus creamed by the Romans
3. Fighting in the Streets and the Future of Order an attempted revolt against Justinian in Constantinople
4. Kadisiyah and the Cost of Conquest Moslems beat the Persians
5. Las Navas de Tolosa and Why the Americas Were Conquered Moslems defeated in Iberia--hundreds of years before victory was complete but this was a turning point
6. Jeanne d'Arc and the Non-Conquest of England how a saint could beat the English hedgehog--and why it was probably good for England in the end
7. Vienna and the Failure to Complete the Crescent who knew that the French had such common cause with the Turks?
8. Leyden and the Foundation of Sea Power William of Orange and privateers against the Spanish
9. Gustavus Adolphus and the End of the Middle Ages Sweden was once a mighty military power, and brought a new way of organizing
10. Interlude; the Day of Inadequate Decisions Learning the wrong lessons made for a drawn-out 30 years
11. Frederick the Great and the Unacceptable Decision Tiny Prussia's tightly disciplined army makes a difference
12. Quebec, Quiberon, America the French and Indian war, and a failed invasion of England
13. Why the American Revolution Succeeded part of the answer was on the opposite side of the globe
14. Trafalgar, Austerlitz, and the Fall and Rise of Empire the Holy Roman Empire becomes a ghost, the French rises
15. The Things Decided at Vicksburg less famous than Gettysburg to the public, but well known to historians
16. More than Midway everybody knows about this battle

For a taste of his prose--his explanation of why a revolt almost nobody hears of in Constantinople was decisive:

It was called the "Nike sedition," but in reality it was a military operation, with a staff, a plan of campaign, and an organized body of troops, the human Blue-Greens being irregular auxiliaries and the fires a surprise weapon. If Theodora had not talked the council out of their discouragements, if the Justinian-Belisarius team had not acted with lightning efficiency after she did, there would have been a siege as well as a campaign. We do not know who planned the operation, because whoever it was died in the Hippodrome, but it is clear that the planning was good and the campaign came perilously near to success.

Perilously: for the issued involved were far beyond the question of whether the empire should be Monophysite or Catholic, nationalist or imperialist. This issue had its importance, to be sure, and though nothing could have solidified the churches of Rome and Constantinople, they were brought far closer together than if the East had gone fully Monophysite. But it was particularly important that the emperor should remain Justinian, the man of wide vision and immense projects. The Nike sedition was directed against only one of these projects, the African invasion; but in a sense it included them all, it was a revolt in favor of provincialism, the narrow view, and fragmentation.

Justinian's conquests in Africa and Italy did not succeed in reuniting the empire, and his military adventures in the West have usually been treated as unproductive acts of aggression. But it is worth looking at what they did accomplish. They destroyed the Vandal kingdom in Africa and fatally crippled the Gothic kingdom in Italy. Sentimental regrets over the downfall of these noble barbarians cannot alter the fact they they were Arians, peculiarly determined to see the triumph of their own sect. Whether they used persecution, like Humeric in Africa, or, like Theodoric in Italy, toleration combined with a firm determination to make all major decisions for a church of which he was not a member, the result was the same. The Arian Church was gaining, it was the official church of the court and upper classes; and it was not a universal church, it had no focus. In a religious sense it was what the Monophysites were in a political: the thing whose greatest effort was turned back by the Justinian-Belesarius-Theodora team in the Nike sedition.

This is not all. It was perhaps not of vital importance that one of Justinian's large projects was the construction of that new Church of St. Sophia, which even yet remains one of the wonders of the world. But it was of the greatest importance that one of the officers whose dismissal was demanded by the mob was Tribonian, and that a dismissal would have been a warrant of execution. For Tribonian was in charge of the most monumental of all Justinian's projects and the most permanent--the codification of the Roman civil law.

The first section, the “Codes,” or index of what was to come, had just been published at the date of the Nike sedition and work was just beginning on the more complete classification. It was beginning primarily because Justinian had examined the Codes, decided they were nowhere near good enough or complete enough, and sent Tribonian and his law committee back to start all over. (Nothing was every good or complete enough for Justinian; his projects were always beyond the human, and partly because they were, what was left of them lasted perdurably.) Some idea of the size of the work done by Tribonian’s committee can be gained from the fact that the law had to be extracted from more than 2000 treatises, comprising 3 million sentences; reconciled, arranged, fused. That law had fallen into inextricable confusion, and it was challenged in various areas by barbarian custom. But after Justinian had sent Tribonian through it, it stood; and the whole of Western civilization was different and better and more just. This was the world that hung in the balance during the Nike sedition.

Someone said that you don’t know the present if you don’t know the history, and there’s some truth to that. Certainly history helps keep you from blindly trusting in the procedures and armies that worked last time.

Read the book. I’ll be looking around for more of his.

NRA mole?

Not all news stories have any foundation in reality, like that "undiscovered tribe" from a few months back. I'm dubious about this story also, purportedly from Mother Jones, in which a woman allegedly joined some gun control groups to spy on them.

I can understand this sort of thing:

She infiltrated an animal-rights group in the late 1980s at the request of U.S. Surgical, and befriended an activist who was later convicted in a pipe bomb attack against the medical-supply business, U.S. Surgical acknowledged in news reports at the time. U.S. Surgical had come under fire for using dogs for research and training.

That's obvious and urgent self-defense.

But I'm not sure exactly what use a spy would be to the NRA.

But as for any secrets she might have been privy to, the gun-control groups said they have little to hide, since they put their message and information about their budgets on the Web.

Strategy sessions? (What exactly was going to be new--it's all same old same old.) Budgeting (Online, they say). Influenced congress-critters? (Everybody knows who's who). Given the popular trends towards things like open carry laws it doesn't seem as though the NRA would be desperately worried.

"Sweeping their offices for bugs" seems overkill--and since it contradicts their claim that everything important is already publicly available I suspect somebody is grandstanding. Bryan Miller provides a little humor, though: "In the battle of ideas with the gun lobby, we're at a constant disadvantage because we're honest." (Michael Bellesiles, etc) I'm not saying that the whole lot are dishonest, just that the claim to be more honest is amusing

If this turns out to be true, I'd guess it means the NRA has a little more money than it knows what to do with. Or somebody has Nixonian levels of worry. Watergate was such a weird joke: with McGovern the nominee he didn't need to worry about Democratic party strategy, so why did his team bother?

Solzhenitsyn

A story from Soviet-era Russia goes:

In the year 2445 a teacher asks her pupils: "Who was Leonid Brezhnev?"

One child answers: "He was a ruler of Mother Russia during the Solzhenitsyn era."

With Solzhenitsyn in one corner, Korolev and Gagarin in another, and the likes of Benjamen of St. Petersburg in another, the Russians may find something to celebrate out of the horrifying 20'th century. I hope it isn't dreams of empire instead.

161 years

The 26'th of July was Liberia's 161's Independence Day. It hasn't been an easy time: decades of poverty and corruption and stagnation, and in recent decades civil war and poverty and corruption. But they don't seem to lose hope.

After Ethiopia was conquered by Italy Liberia became the oldest independent country in Africa, and it is a matter of pride. This year's National Oration was by Sakui Malakpa (a blind lawyer), who I gather was paid by the word:

Salutation (To be modified based on guests present)
Your Excellency, Madam President;
(Any foreign head(s) of state);
Your Excellency, the Vice President;
Honorable Cabinet Ministers and members of the Executive Branch;
The honorable Speaker of the House, Honorable President Pro Temp of the Senate, and Honorable Members of the National Legislature;
Your Honor the Chief Justice and Honorable Associate Justices of the Supreme Court, and Honorable Members of the Judiciary;

The Doyen and members of the diplomatic core;
Prelates, Imams, and members of the clergy;
Heads of autonomous agencies and academic institutions;
Heads of our political sub-divisions; chiefs, zoes and bardios;
The ever-industrious market women;
Students; distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen!

Expression of thanks (which also could be modified for time)
Indeed, it is difficult to overemphasize my heart-felt thanks and profound gratitude for the invitation extended us to give the national oration for Liberia's 161st Independence Day Celebration. Madam President, I thank you for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The people of Wozi, my hometown, thank you. The people of Zorzor District, the people of Lofa County, and yes, the people of Liberia thank you. The union of people with disabilities thanks you.
I am also thankful to many who helped me along the way. Though deceased, I remember my loving "fathers and mothers" especially Malakpa, Godoe, Yasa Kortoe, and Luopu Yorgbor as well as my uncle Chief Mulbah Yawkaw.
I am exceedingly grateful to:
The Rev. Dr. & Mrs. Gerald Currens
The late bishop Payne and the Lutheran Church in Liberia
My brothers and sisters and the great people of Wozi.
I am especially thankful that my mother Kebbeh Yuufulu lived to see this day. Likewise, in this public manner, I must express profound gratitude to the late President Tolbert who, with the help of female police Sergeant Tulu Hilton, picked me up in Bomi Hills and sent me to Freetown on his personal scholarship. I owe a lifetime gratitude to that great Liberian.
(Greetings from wife and children)
Madam President, distinguished guests, given the influence of the great people before me, I know it is customary to start such a presentation with a blessing. With your indulgence, I will do so now. (Blessings in Loma and Kpelleh)
It was a century, six decades and a year ago this month when the architects of our great republic signed the Declaration of Independence drafted by Hilary Teage. Since that momentous occasion, Liberia has effectuated, and has been impacted by, prodigious and multifarious changes. The relics and consequences of these changes are ubiquitous, including those among our sister nations of the international community. These experiences show that, however we perceive or welcome change, it is axiomatic that change is inevitable. It is an ongoing process in our personal lives, our families, and our nation. This immutable process propels us to challenges, and affords us opportunities to be players or spectators. Thus, Madam President, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, relative to our nation's interest, I will speak on the topic, "Coping With the Inevitability of Change: Our Challenges, Chances, and Choices."

From there he goes on to give a history review, complain about the character of famous Americans and colonists for whom parts of Liberia are named, and suggest revising the history books and renaming the capitol Monrovia to Dukweleh (or possibly Christopolis). He ends with exhortations to unity, respect, support for Ellen, and the rule of law and with a poem he wrote in '92.

His annoyance with famous figures from the past (Clay, Monroe, etc) is quite understandable, as he would have certainly been the target of their racism had they ever met. Still, they provided the opportunities he celebrates, for whatever motives of their own, and perhaps it is not entirely inappropriate to recognize and even celebrate them. With eyes wide open, of course.

Suing over Global Warming

From AP CBS-13: a water-bottling plant is a threat to the planet.

Attorney General Jerry Brown on Tuesday said he will sue to block a proposed water-bottling operation in Northern California unless its effects on global warming are evaluated.

...

David Palais, Nestle's Northern California natural resource manager, said the company already was planning studies on air and water quality, hazardous materials, traffic conditions and climate change for a new environmental review of the bottling plant.

I'm agnostic about anthropogenic global warming. I'm not agnostic about the effects of "global warming" legislation: it is an invitation to officials to control whatever they like. Think "wartime austerity and controls," without the excuse of a war. At least you can establish the existence of a war, and even get some clues as to when it is over. But AGW...

Rap

I'm not exactly a fan of rap, which seems to bear roughly the same resemblance to music that sawdust does to furniture, but you should take a peek at The Large Hadron Rap. Before you ask: No, I don't know any of the performers. If the business about dimensions seems a little odd, that's because it's a bit hard to explain without some serious hand waving. String theory isn't the only theory that involves extra dimensions, by the way.

Concert in the Park

We went to the last Concert in the Park for Sun Prairie this summer. The air was clean and mildly cloudy, the breeze strong enough to keep mosquitoes at bay, and the band tuned up in a shelter on the hill. Large trees dot the grounds, and to the north there was a riot of different shades and textures of green darkening into the shade.

The band had practiced well, and treated us to Sousa and Rogers and Hammerstein and more recent compositions. The conductor had offered other band members a chance to conduct, and so from time to time she would take a different instrument and someone else would conduct (or try to conduct and hold onto the music in the breeze at the same time). We lounged in camp chairs and talked to a few friends during the intermission.

The last number was "On Wisconsin," for which we were urged to sing and clap; but the skies started clapping too and we packed up quickly. We walked by a clarinetist trying to disassemble her instrument before it got wet.

There was room for many more people, and there weren't as many kids as I expected, but otherwise it was straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting: citizens enjoying an amateur music show.

Carmen

Youngest Daughter brought the opera Carmen home from the library. Her two loves at the moment are horses--she's got a part-time job at a stable--and opera. She has a wealth of opera detail at her fingertips which she uses to try to initiate conversations with a "Did you know that" or "I don't know why they do X instead of Y." She tends to pace wildly when listening to exciting passages, especially daggers-drawn and mad scenes. With Carmen playing she alternates between sitting and reading the notes and imitating an ideal gas molecule rattling around the living room and hall.

So we are once again marinated in Carmen: the sound of the music and the tentative efforts at analysis YD makes--usually starting with overgeneralizations. Maybe I should try.

Every Carmen plays differently: freedom-loving, out-of-control, fey; but over the years my attitude towards her has changed a bit. At the climax she rejects her suitor/stalker Don José and proclaims her freedom, and he stabs her. Tragedy, of course. But, as a judge reportedly said about an assault with a golf-cart kickstand by a jealous husband, this is just one of the more readily foreseeable consequences of her actions.

The more thorough the conquest Carmen makes, the more of her worshiper the man becomes--and the more he will feel that she is betraying him when she leaves. So long as she sticks to dalliances with men who don't care about her she's relatively safe from sharp objects, but trying to make somebody really care invites trouble. If her professed "freedom" isn't being wasted in meaningless time spent with men who don't care, it is breaking men who do. Like a man demanding the freedom to eat gravel, she violates her nature and suffers accordingly.

And so for me Carmen has become less of a dramatic tragic figure and more pitiably foolish.

Not that Don José is a paragon of wisdom...

James Cone Black Theology and Black Power

I have earlier notes about Cone here and here. I promised to try to finish the book and report back.

Life is short. Some say (unscripturally) that all sins are equal in God's eyes. Be that as it may, not all evils are or can be equal in man's eyes, and I find hatred viler than greed. Perhaps Cone's other works are less marinated in hatred, but the interview I linked to suggests not. It is hard to read a book where every other page seems to affirm something you hold dear, except that the author means something entirely different. It would be less effort to try again to read the Koran, where the author(s) are honest in denying Christianity.

Instead of my own review, read this short essay on "the American Heresy" (afflicting both "liberal" and "conservative" denominations) and notice that Cone also expounds a materialist man-centered faith.

New Yorker

I don't subscribe, and when I do have the chance to read it the only things I bother with are the cartoons. So when I saw the famous Obama cover, the first thing that came to mind was "why are they dragging all that stuff up?" I'd bet most of the folks who walk by the magazine rack know less of the rag than I do, and I'd guess most of them thought the magazine was being serious. Until all the news stories about it.

If you're going to be so ironic that people lose track of what's supposed to be satire, you might want to rethink your approach. Maybe they could bring in a 5-year-old to assist the editor?

Of course they might be deliberately courting controversy--last I heard (a few years back) subscriptions were down.

Transmissions

I’m driving a rental Peugeot. They said an automatic transaxle was the same price as a stick shift, so I went with the automatic—negotiating these small roads is bad enough without the hassle of unfamiliar controls.

The car is fairly fancy: the power lock folds the outside mirrors against the car, it has digital radio, etc. Front and rear have different temperature controls for the air system.

But I can’t find a blower, so I have to live with whatever flow rate the system thinks I need—which is quite inadequate for cooling me off when I’m dripping sweat and the car’s been in the sun.

And the transmission is very odd—and unpleasant. It handles first and second gear, albeit in a very rocky way. The last time I drove an American car with such a lousy gear management I traded it in rather than try to fix it.

And third and fourth gears: ah, there’s a curiosity. If you let the engine race long and hard enough it will reluctantly shift into 3’rd, but it really expects you to bump the shift lever forward in the slot to up the gear or back to gear down—manually. It is far easier than manipulating a standard shift, but not quite fully automatic, making it a kind of hybrid, and not a very smooth one. Apparently there are quite a few varieties of hybrid transmissions. I’m not sure why they picked this one.

Satan casts out Satan

The NYTimes reports that researchers have "developed a material that can capture the mercury released from a broken fluorescent tube." In order to capture the mercury, they propose bagging the tubes in cloth impregnated with "nano-particles" of selenium.

I hope there's a slightly safer approach...

Voltaire

Campanile is in the Patriarch of Ferney-Voltaire, and I'm camped here for a few days. As is my habit, I sent out for a walk this evening to see what there is to see, and try to locate the laundromat described by the desk clerk.

Did I mention that this is where Voltaire's house is? (What gave it away?) He bought land here and decided to make the village his project.

There are, of course, many apartment buildings here, but they often abut farmland. So you can find snails on the sidewalk and hear cowbells. At 8:00 not all the restaurants are open, and not many people wander about, though one fellow was walking two dogs--one of them a medium-sized bear. The grocery store doesn't stay open late, nor do the realtors, insurance agents, banks and similar establishments that litter the central area. All of which made it disconcertingly quiet for such a light time of day.

When I reached the Buffalo Grill (decorated with a mural of various American West images) I realized that there was no sidewalk along the main road, and backtracked. The school looked just as dreary from the other direction--warehouse city.

Voltaire is everywhere--a statue here, a bust there, a Rue Voltaire, an Avenue Voltaire, le chateau Voltaire, the Hameau Voltaire, a butcher shop, this shop, that shop--everything except a Voltaire Lingerie, which was probably too horrible a concept even for these Voltaire-mad city fathers. I wonder if he would have been flattered. Probably...

As seen from above

When we flew out of Amsterdam I had a window seat, and finally got a look at the place. It is pretty flat but otherwise looks a lot like Wisconsin or Iowa, except ... I think those watercourses aren't really streets.

WCRP

If a pun is a chestnut, would you say call it "groan old?"

Efficiency

I'm a scientist, but I have some of an engineer's taste for efficiency and dislike of waste. If something is broken and can't be fixed, at least reuse the parts in other things. The little red wagon may have been in sad shape; but varnish a little plywood for a new seat and tighten it up, and it is as good as new. And the leftover plywood patches a hole in the basement ceiling, with some left over to make a base to repair a hole in the wallboard.

The first time I remember thinking about that I was at Ricks helping get the supper table set. I'd unwrapped a stick of margarine and put it on the dish and was about to toss the wax paper when my father stopped me, took a knife and scraped a few ridges of margarine off the paper. At first I was a bit annoyed at being corrected, but a little light bulb went on when I realized how much I'd been about to throw out--enough to butter at least one slice of bread. In the grand scheme of things perhaps a tiny amount, but why throw it away when it is so easy to save?

And ever since I've tried to find the most efficient ways to use material, and even use time--consistent with the limitations of the tools at hand. If I have to concentrate on one thing at a time, so be it; but if I can do several things at once so much the better.

Sometimes that approach bites back, as a "filler" task turns out to demand more attention than I expected. OK, maybe it happens rather often.

Suspicions

Granted the story about bird evolution investigated by genetic analysis is very ill-reported. Compare these two statements: Point 2 "Perching birds ... are closely related to parrots and falcons." Point 8 "Owls, parrots and doves have few, if any, living intermediate forms linking them to other well-defined groups of birds".

The sweeping conclusions they draw about relationships leave me dubious. The shape of a creature will relate to its occupation, so scions of different families occupying the same niche are going to look similar. So classification by morphology is open to some hazards. Still, such sweeping reorganizations make me hunger for some predictive power to the techniques. Is there anything we can say about members of the same family--that transplants are more reliable, or that specific body structures will be more similar to each other than to non-family species?

Without that, I'm not sure how much more accurate genetic taxonomy is going to be than morphological taxonomy. The theory sounds good, but where can we find some cross-checking?

Obscure. OK: morphological taxonomy is figuring out what species are related to each other by looking at details of the organs and seeing which have parts more like others.

Pointing North

I hadn't realized that the Earth's field wasn't everywhere even approximately northward, but following up on this article about changing fields pointed to this one mentioning patches of reversed field more than a hundred years old.

I suppose Boy Scout difficulties in orienteering are minor compared to the satellite failures we'd get when the Earth's field drops too far and the solar wind starts toasting them. I wonder how long this reversal is going to take. It could get interesting--might even be some subtle weather changes if more cosmics reach far enough to provide ionization trails for condensation--more clouds or wispier and higher clouds?

Supernova remnants

The Astronomy Picture Of the Day for 4-July is a multi-spectrum picture of the supernova remnant from the year 1006 supernova. The shell is about 60 light years across.

And that's interesting, because the shell looks moderately uniform. I'd expect it to have enveloped several neighboring stars, each with its own stellar wind. The blast of wind from each star should make dimples in the shell. If we could compare the positions of the neighboring stars with distortions in the shell, we might be able to cross-check estimates of the relative power densities of the supernova blast and the stellar winds.

Cultural attractions

The Jefferson County Fair ad came today. I had no great interest in going, but I opened it at random.

The 5th Annual Cricket Spitting contest will be held at the 2008 Jefferson County Fair on Friday, July 11th at 1:00 pm during Kids' Day.

...

Participants must spit the cricket while standing within a 3-foot diameter circle within 10 seconds of when they put the cricket in their mouth. Participants can use any technique they choose as long as the cricket remains completely intact.

I never heard of such things when I was growing up, but that turns out to be no surprise. The official world champion is from Madison. Ought I be proud?

Trade offs and Judges

My previous post on opinion writers was sparked by a move made by one of my favorite bloggers. He'd been writing more and more frequently, and generally very well, but I got the sense that he felt obliged to put out two posts a day, and it was showing. There's another who posts something serious about three times a year, but everybody reads him when he does.

I'd noticed that my own posting is far less frequent. I still have many "words of wisdom" on events every day, but no immediate access (I still have this little delicacy about posting from work). And at the end of the day my comment is often superfluous. Others said the same thing, and there's no prize for writing it first (or last). And sometimes, because the reporting is quick and inaccurate, my impressions were wrong.

Take the Supreme Court decision on the death penalty and rape, for example: Kennedy vs Louisiana. The early reports, for a non-Constitutional scholar like me, were pretty sketchy and suggested that the court was picking some strange interpretation of the law because some justices didn't like the death penalty.

But I'd been bitten before when jumping to conclusions based on the newspapers, so I thought I'd wait and find out what the pros had to say.

It turns out that a lot of pros think Kennedy was disingenuous in framing the core of his arguments, claiming a "national consensus" against the death penalty for rape when both polls and legislation actually point the other way.

So the court was being high-handed after all. But I wasn't in a position to say so myself, since I didn't really know the details.

---

Why would the court decide that some policy decisions are too important to leave to people or the legislatures? Isn't that a blow against the principle of democratic government?

I thought about it a while, and decided that "yes, it is opposed to democratic governance." And, "yes, they have some precedent for that." Written into the Constitution are amendments and compromises designed to take some policy decisions out of the hands of legislatures. Little things like the first amendment and the slavery compromise. The first amendment was meant to insure liberty by taking away the rights of legislatures and executives (and presumably judges, though I smell a conflict of interest here) to restrict citizen's freedom of speech or demand religious duties from him and so on. The slavery compromise locked in slavery--it couldn't be abolished on a national level.

I have no complaint about the amendments. I understand that the slavery compromise was required at the time, even though it merely kicked the can down the road a bit. But I notice that around the world there's a tendency to lard the constitutions with such policy decisions; taking them away from the legislatures and the people. The constitution of Brazil specifies that female convicts may keep their children with them while they are breast feeding. No doubt a noble thought, but why is this not simply a law instead of a meta-law?

The same impulse that puts policy in the Brazilian constitution moves our court to read policy out of the Constitution, whether it is there or not. They probably have good intentions: they want to keep careless legislators from trampling on the principles the court finds important.

Sometimes they are right, and the legislators are wrong: Brandenburg v. Ohio. Sometimes they were technically correct but politically dead wrong: Plessy v. Ferguson. And sometimes they were completely screwed up: Dred Scott v. Sandford, Roe v. Wade. It looks pretty plain that this is one of the times they overreached.

---

What can we do about this sort of policy decision from the bench?

I'm not sure. We need a brake on legislative imprudence and fashionable erosions of liberties, so we need that function of the Supreme Court (as witness today's decision about the DC handgun bad--though it was disappointingly narrow for such a no-brainer). I don't see electing judges as a solution, nor term limits. Probably our best solution is extra-judicial: reform the law schools. Since Roe v Wade is now holy scripture for one and a half political parties, pretty much all law schools, and nearly a majority of the population, judges inapt to support such overreaching aren't going to be appointed for a while, so we have to expect more such decisions for a few generations.

Pundits

From The Pilgrim's Regress by C.S. Lewis

But I must think it one or the other!

By my father's soul, you must not--until you have some evidence. Can you not remain in doubt?

I don't know that I have ever tried.

You must learn to, if you are to come far with me. It is not hard to do it. In Eschropolis, indeed, it is impossible, for the people who live there have to give an opinion once a week or once a day, or else Mr. Mammon would soon cut off their food. But out here in the country you can walk all day and all the next day with an unanswered question in your head: you need never speak until you have made up your mind.

Every day the newspaper has commentators in the opinion section, cycling around the same ones each week. Every week each one has to write something profound, or at least provocative, that fills a specified number of column inches.

Out here in blogland, there's no editor counting words (or correcting typos), but there's a similar pressure to come up with something to say: preferably several times a day. Profundity is just as rare as in the newspapers, though.

Convertible

In the Copps parking lot we saw a convertible PT Cruiser (that cross between a VW beetle and a hearse). The top was withdrawable in two sections, of course. The style insignia said "Touring Machine," but given all the computers used in cars today perhaps they meant "Turing Machine."

Cherries

Cherries is the word I use to describe
All the berries weighing down all the branches right outside
You don't know how many bowls of pits that we have holed through
You don't know how many bags of fruit that we have sealed you
You don't know how many branches out of reach I
Had to leave for birds while we would
Settle down before your grand cherry pie.

Apologies to The Association

Blarney

I'm not sure why there's such great enthusiasm for "kissing the Blarney stone." It is supposed to confer the "gift of Blarney," but isn't that something of a lie-ability?

"I don't want anybody to laugh"

The Brussels Airline jet was pushed away from the gate, and suddenly the power quit. The pilot announced that we'd have to go back and restart and engine, and then things would be OK. I noticed that his strong Spanish accent didn't preclude his using the phrase "Y'all."

We got into Brussels a bit late, but there was plenty of layover time. For some reason we had trouble getting started, but once airborne the pilot said he'd run as fast as was safe to make up the lost time--and the "trip meter" program shifted from 8 1/2 hours to 8 hours for the journey.

With an hour to go, the meter suddenly jumped from 50 minutes to an hour and a half, and the little airplane icon on the map was pointed north instead of west--and we did ellipses over Michigan for a hour and a half while a thunderstorm moved across OHare. Back to Detroit to refuel and wait while OHare let the western flights in first (they had a straight shot) and then while they tried to sort out delays.

We got our slot and flew around some wild-looking cloud banks--ragged and tall, though I didn't see anything like the traditional thunderhead. Some of the clouds stretched far higher into the sky than our 32000 feet.

Of course there was an airplane at our gate already, so we waited some more.

Then we got off and raced for Immigrations. Hurray--the line is only about 150 long, and all windows are open!

I spent something like 40 minutes in line--longer than ever before. It seems that there are new biometrics in place now, and all green card holders have to go through some fancy new fingerprint and iris and general paperwork scans. It takes about 5 minutes each. The plane before us must have been half green card holders.

I mistakenly went down the wrong lane, thinking the agents were outside the security area. They weren't, so I went to terminal 3 for the main American Airlines service desks. There were something like 1500 people in each unbudging line, so I gave up and bought my own bus ticket.

The sky was clear and bright, I had a seat on the (completely full) bus, and I was headed home. As we left the airport we passed under a set of billboards. The one on the left said "Welcome to Chicago!" The one on the right's lights spelled out "USE CAUTION."

A spot of road construction on the tollway, an odd selection of lanes at a tollbooth (doesn't the bus have Ipass?) and we noticed that we were going through suburbia instead of the tollway. I speculated with my seatmate as to how bad the construction must be if this was a better route.

The driver announced "I don't want anybody to laugh. Is there a Chicago native who can tell me how to get back on the highway?" After a forlorn attempt to turn around by backing into a side street, he headed on until major intersections (and native guides on the bus) guided him from Tooey to Harlem to the toll road again. He offered to take us to OHare as we passed it again. We had to rendezvous at Rockford to pick up some more Madison passengers.

Of course the skies opened again north of Rockford, but after the cloudburst we made good time, and after a few more hours we came to Dutch Mill park and ride, and waited in the shelter as cars came by to pick up friends and kin.

Not bad as these things go: only a 6 hour delay getting home. The man behind me had a 24-hour delay, and the fellow sitting next to me across the Atlantic has the same name as two different no-fly terrorists. And this time I had all my luggage as carry-ons. (Quite compact--I'm no space hog.)

Sunset over the Juras

As I left the cafeteria at about 20:00 yesterday, there were mists streaming over the Juras, and the sun was just behind them. The mists around the sun flared white and brightness sifted down the slopes--brightness tinted with a little green and brown.

The sun went behind the ridge and clouds spilled over, but to the north it shone through a pass and the rays were pearly across the farther ridge: dark green below and bright green behind the rays where the sun still lit the side of the mountain.

Skimbleshanks

The railway cat in Japan.

Interesting morning

First the computers were nearly unuseable thanks to condor jobs going nuts and hammering the AFS server into the dust. Now I'm getting a weird visual effect: blurred vision with a jagged prismatic boundary. I've had this a couple of times before, and a quick bit of research suggests that this is related to migraine auras (though fortunately I've no headache). Makes it pretty doggone hard to read/write, though.

Multiculturalism

What happens when cultures blend?

Most people seem to think you can generate a “cafeteria culture” picking the best of this and that just as easily as you can select the dishes most to your taste from a palate of ethnic restaurants. I gather the notion is accepted unexamined.

If you think about it a little, it seems less obvious. A culture is an expression of the values and beliefs of a people, together with things that have hung on for tradition's sake. An outsider who does not share the traditions or the values misses the connections that give a custom meaning and the balancing that helps keep it from becoming a problem.

---

Recently I spent a few days in Senegal. That's hardly enough to have made definitive observations, but I did notice a few things. One was notable by its rarity. Senegal is famous for men holding hands as they walk down the street. It is an immemorial expression of friendship there. I saw just one such couple.

Maybe I was watching at the wrong time of day, but given the debates I've been reading about on the news web site I think the change is real. And I think I know why.

Their culture is no longer simply local, made up of the customs and values of their tribes, their neighbor's tribes, and their religions. It is also inevitably influenced by the Western entertainments and news that not just the rich but the middle class imbibe. One of the features of our hypersexualized amusements is the convention that adults don't kiss or hold hands unless they are in a romantic/sexual relationship.

So in the cities now (and perhaps the countryside) a couple is aware that what had always before been simply a signal of friendship might be interpreted as being effeminate or homosexual. That used to be unthinkable, and because it was unthinkable men were free to be expressive about their friendship. But now the bright line is gone, and so is the freedom.

There's a lot of public debate about homosexuality there now, with some people claiming that it doesn't exist in Senegal. I think part of what they're trying to do is oppose the (very recent) notion that homosexuality is a nature and not a distortion of nature. They're also trying to retrieve the social landscape that allowed men to express friendship freely. (And there's the religious prohibitions, and what I described as a sense of betrayal)

The mere fact that they're having the debate says there's been considerable Western influence in this area.

---

Beggary is another issue. In the tribal culture you are entitled to rely on family and clan. There's theoretical reciprocity—they can rely on you when you've something they need. That sets some limits on beggary with expectations that you will do your share if the time comes. But if you are in trouble you can even hand your children over to other family or even neighbors to be raised for you.

The emphasis Islam places on alms makes it easier to be a beggar, but also requires that even the beggar think about alms.

Now bring that into prolonged contact with Westerners, who are from much wealthier societies with a much different approach to alms. Alms are individual to individual, based on perceived need. The Westerner is the obvious person to get money from—he has relatively a huge amount. If he recognizes the need and gives, that establishes a relationship between them.

From the tribal point of view the Westerner has now implicitly admitted that he is willing to be “of the clan” with the beggar. But since the ability to do favors is so heavily weighted to the rich Westerner, there is very little possible reciprocity. There's not that much the tribal man can do for the Westerner. The beggar may take the money once and leave, but the chances are very good that with such a “rich relation” and what the tribal man sees as an obligation on the part of the “rich relation” that he will not just hang around, but escalate the requests.

Of course if he picks up on the Westerner's expectation of need, he'll amplify his needs.

Result: The Westerner sees the beggar becoming a wretched and ungrateful parasite. The tribal man sees the Westerner as greedy and anti-social.

---

In a polygamous society women are supposed to be submissive and obedient—make waves and hubby might go looking for a newer edition. Mix that attitude toward women with expectations from Western promiscuity and you get a very unpleasant environment for women, who may very well not buy into either the promiscuity or the submissiveness but who get hassled none the less.

---

Sometimes the results can be better, though I'm having trouble coming up with examples off the top of my head. Shared technology isn't what I'm talking about, but about what happens when different beliefs and expectations meet to form either a nice hybrid culture or a bastard culture.

Malleable brains

Susan Greenfield says modern technology is changing the way our brains work. The article runs off into science fiction about half of the way through--be polite and ignore that part. But the issue she worries about is significant--the technologies we use (and the entertainments we fill our minds with) must have effects on the way our brains wire themselves. For the brain does rewire itself. The brain of a piano player will be different from that of a taxi driver who doesn't play piano--not because of innate gifts (though they may be there) but because of the years of training: of the fingers and ears for the one and of directions and mapping for the other.

Will training ourselves to respond to computer screens and stylized information effect our ability to respond in person? Will it change the repertoire of responses?

Witchcraft

Probably everybody's read Code Pink Tries Witchcraft at Berkeley Anti-Marine Rallies by now. Obviously they're desperate for publicity. But it says something very sad about the nation that the protesters are not only not embarrassed by the headline, but can expect understanding sympathy for bringing witches into the picture. It wasn't that long ago when that would have damned the group as complete loons in the world's eyes, and brought shame on their goal of ending the war. For some of us it still does (or would if they and the Berkeley city council hadn't reached that point already). But I run into so many people for whom "witchcraft" is neither superstition nor "invent your own religion," but a respectable approach to spiritual life, that I worry for the spiritual sanity of the country.

Burma

He said it well. Pray for the people of Burma.

And the situation may be worse than it appears. If the rice crop was lost--that's a lot of rice to buy on an already tight market.

Scandalous Illustrations

"Journalism largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive." G. K. Chesterton

I'd never heard of Amanda Marcotte before, but I caught the sound of general hilarity, schadenfreude, and innocent delight in poetic justice.

I gather that said Marcotte wrote a feminist tract designed to "empower" women titled It's a Jungle Out There. Turns out that the illustrations she picked involve a busty female Tarzan demolishing attacking African tribesmen. You can guess what happened next. Her apologies don't seem to be good enough to calm the storm.

The blogger linked to above has some of the offending pictures and an extended quotation from one "Twisty Faster," another "feminist" writer. The illustrations do suggest that Marcotte is a little slow on the draw. The explanation from Twisty turned a little light on for me, though.

That's right! White privilege! It's just like male privilege, except in this context it's just for white chicks. Where dude bloggers may exercise control over women according to their status, white feminist bloggers may exercise control over women of color according to their status.

...

In the example cited above, the one where I allude to having posted a pro-Marcotte book dealio, the "control" aspect was expressed in my failure to address the current controversy. In so failing, I effectively endorsed white privilege in feminist bloggery, and closed down a potential avenue of discussion. That this was unintentional is of no consequence; it was perceived by many, and rightly so, as an example of what has been popularly referred to as "circling the wagons."

...

The sad irony is that I never cut dudes the tiniest bit of slack in the male privilege department. They write in and say, "But Twisty, I never rape my girlfriend, aren't you being just a little shrill?" And I always reply, "You might," I used to tell them, "be the nicest male dude on 9 planets, but the fact remains that you're a dude, so you automatically benefit from male privilege whether you actively choose to or not, and unfortunately this privilege, though it may be invisible to you, is experienced by women as misogyny, again, whether you like it or not."

It's the same exact thing with white privilege. So, if you're a white feminist blogger: you may not choose it, you may hate it, you may ignore it, or you may not even see it, but you do exercise your white privilege daily, and it is absurd to expect that this exercise would be perceived by women of color as anything but racism. Because it is racism, dum-dum.

Got it. A's "privilege" is "experienced by" B as "misogny." Or "racism."

And if I, with two (so far) working legs climb on my roof to fix a shingle that is "experienced by" my neighbor in a wheelchair as "ableism."

There's another word for the experience of unhappiness with someone else's privilege. Envy. Used to be one of the seven deadly sins, but these days I guess you get to blame the other person for it.

Without a trace of irony

The African Studies weekly memo contains this. I added the emphasis.

CFP: Journal of Women's History - Reproduction, Sex, and Power. Reproduction, sexuality, and bodies have been key sites for state and religious intervention and control, for defining gender, class, race, and sexual identity and for establishing hierarchies and inequalities. They have also been of central significance to individuals and to organized feminist movements. Although today some may think of "sex" and "reproduction" as unrelated topics and fields of research, historically they have been closely intertwined. This issue seeks to spotlight the centrality of reproduction, sex, and power to women's history and to demonstrate the ways in which power has been made, played, and fought over and through reproduction and sex. Indeed, histories of nations and empire, foreign policy and law, religion and popular culture are not free of these seemingly private experiences. Precisely how power has worked through reproduction and sex varies in time and place; this special issue will illuminate the points of similarity, divergence, and convergence, the moments when these areas of personal experience become politically powerful and sites of collective action. The range of possible topics is broadly defined, including, for instance, obstetrics and gynecology, midwifery, technologies, practitioners, birth control, adoption, sexual practices, sexual identity and parenting, health and sex education. Research essays from all time periods, geographical regions, and methodological and theoretical stances on the themes of this issue are welcomed. Submission deadline is September 1, 2008. Manuscripts should be no more than 10,000 words with notes. Please consult the JWH website for submission guidelines: http://www.press.jhu/journals/journal_of_women's_history/guidelines.html .

The guiding philosophy seems to be that you must abstract your study further and further until it is completely abstracted from reality.

Pasta instead of rice

Last week the BBC reported that Liberians were starting to eat pasta because the rising price of rice made it unaffordable. It also said Liberia imported 90% of its rice.

The 90% statistic is very bad news--I wasn't aware that the situation was that dire.

The pasta is also not great news--that has to be imported also (and will also be rising in price). There's not much encouragement for Liberian rice farmers if people shift from one import to another.

It would be useful to understand why domestic rice is so unobtainable. Is the country rice still of lousy quality (with the occasional stones in it), or is it too expensive to get it to town, or are there not enough farmers left? Some of those problems are solvable--"not enough farmers" is a tough one, though. Has any country successfully sent people from the city back to the farms? (No, I don't consider the vile Khmer Rouge to have been successful.)

Psalm 55:13-14

A few years ago I switched to a different method of Bible reading, based on the lectionary reading approach. I do three readings; cycling separately through the Psalms, the rest of the Old Testament, and the New Testament. Even in the depths of Leviticus, there's something interesting to read.

Some of the Psalms stir memories.

One of the leaders in our previous church was also a "worship team" leader, and had a liking for songs based on the Psalms. At least every other week when he led we'd be singing from the Bible instead of the Newsboys.

He was also one of the elders. Over several years the church slid farther and farther into unaccountable "seeker-oriented" directions, thrashing plans about as though the elder board had ADD, dropping almost all education and trivializing the worship. The elder board roster rotated, but one constant through it all was this man; and I have to conclude that much of the blame for the church's disintegration was due to his policies and attitudes. I don't know what board meetings were like, but with the rest of us--he is a teacher, and I guess he tries to treat everybody like middle school students.

Of course I'd like to not think about the old problems anymore.

But when I read those Psalms, the music comes back to me, and the memories of worshiping God together. And the less happy memories too.

I'm not angry with him. I don't want to be, and since the first things I remember are times of worship together, it helps me to remember who comes first.

I guess I'm fortunate: some former members are still furious.

Breakfasting for Baby Boys

The headline said that better nutrition meant a greater likelihood of having boys. The first paragraph mentioned a nutritious breakfast. I didn't try to track down the original paper, or even finish the story.

But I predict that the effect is small. Why? Because the natural sex ratio (without abortion for sex selection) is only from 1.03 to 1.06 boys to girls. If a nutritious breakfast meant (for instance) 50% more boys, I'd expect the ratio in developed countries to be more like 1.2-1.3 (not everybody chooses to eat wisely).

So, let's unseal the box and read the story: From the BBC:

The study focused on 740 first-time pregnant mothers in the UK, who were asked to provide records of their eating habits before and during the early stages of pregnancy.

The researchers found 56% of women with the highest energy intake around the time of conception had boys, compared to just 45% among women with the lowest energy intake.

That's more like a 20% effect, but look at the statistics. If they broke the group into thirds (more probably 5ths, but never mind that) then the highest group has 230 members, with an excess of 14 in the top group and deficit of 12 in the bottom group. This isn't a 3-sigma effect. I don't believe 20%. 10% maybe, though I'd want to see corroboration.

The article says there's been a decrease in breakfast caloric intake in the developed world. Hmm. Not what I'd have expected.

At any rate, the effect is still small enough to disappoint women trying influence the sex of their babies.

DAMA/LIBRA

When their first report came out a few years ago, I thought their fit to an orbital cycle looked like wishful thinking. I gather from the Kipling quote on their web site that a number of other people thought so too, and they have some hard feelings about it.

Well, I'm sorry about that. They got the money to expand the experiment's size (sodium iodide crystals under the Gran Sasso mountain), and this time their signal modulation looks much more believable. The preprint is here at Arxiv. It looks like they understand the backgrounds pretty well, and the statistics are now much better. Single interaction (single flash) events which dump 2-6 KeV of energy into the detector happen more often the more the Earth's motion around the Sun matches up with the direction of the Sun's movement through the galaxy. More energetic events don't show this modulation with time of year.

They've dealt with a lot of the common background possibilities (even with seasonal changes in water in the rock changing the amount of neutron moderation in the granite). Their results seem to be consistent with a "gas" of weakly interacting massive particles ("WIMP"s) that is more or less at rest and which the Sun/Earth system is speeding through. Every now and then a WIMP scatters off a nucleus, whose recoil energy shows up as a flash of light in the NAI scintillator. The WIMPs must be slow enough that the difference in the Earth's orbit with and against the Sun's speed (± 3 E4 m/sec) makes a noticeable difference in the interaction rate at this scattering energy.

Interesting. A cloud no bigger than a man's hand?

Not All Shook Up

I don't usually wake up at 4:30, but I did this morning. I gather it was at 4:37, though I wasn't looking at the clock. No damage done--I don't remember feeling any swaying at all. The epicenter wasn't quite where I'd have expected it, but apparently there's another fault associated with New Madrid.

Update: Apparently I wasn't the only one. We weren't taking data (no beam), and the control room is very noisy, but there's no mention of a tremor in the CDF shift log. They're a lot closer to the epicenter than I am.

Freedom

I keep hearing that men are commitment-phobic. Better writers than I have pointed out that given the social expectation that a woman will have sex with a man she is friendly with, there’s not much incentive for a short-sighted man to commit himself to her.(*) If he’s only interested in a sexual relationship for right now, and not in kids or sex when he’s middle-aged—he already has what he wants.

But I think there’s more. When I hear people talking about their lives, and the lives of those they admire, I find that they often seem to fear losing their freedom as though this were the be-all and end-all of their identity. They admire the footloose, who pull up stakes to live in India for a year, always ready for a fling. “Free as the breeze.”

It is hard to communicate with people who have such radical misconceptions, and harder still when they’ve imbibed them unthinkingly from the zeitgeist.

They’ve confused two different things. There is an intrinsic freedom in our natures that makes us agents. But what we usually think of as “freedom” is more of a property of time than of us—it is the possibility of action. (I’ll ignore political freedom for now. That’s yet another use of the word.)

And just as we use time, we use our freedom, even if only to waste our time and waste our possibilities. This kind of freedom is like a consumable, to be used in creating something: play time, fixing the neighbor’s car, teaching the kids—which in turn produce other things—a happy neighbor or more mature kids.

Once I’ve spent the time and freedom, it doesn’t come back; so of course I need to be wise. But if I’m afraid to choose, I lose the opportunities anyway. The so-much-admired footloose wanderer never actually creates a serious relationship, much less a marriage, because he (or she) is afraid to use his life; afraid to make anything but superficial choices.

I’m married. I traded some freedom and possible choices for a marriage; for children; for lives molded together; for someone to rely on and someone who can trust me.

I’ve a profession and a job. I gave up other possibilities for this one, and subject to the contingencies of work life (will money for salaries be there?), I can learn and help and be trusted. It’s a little too late for me to become a doctor now, and astronaut is completely out of the question. I spent my freedom.

Of course we can spend our freedom making stupid choices that we pay for for the rest of our lives. Some even damage our nature as free agents: addictions, for instance. Life is risky.

What will you buy with your time and your choices?

---

(*) What power there is a simple phrase: “take the relationship to the next level.” It covers over assumptions, slides past questions, and blurs distinctions—an amazing black magic incantation for conjuring someone into bed.

Every square foot

You must admire the creativity that goes into making every square foot of space in a place into a revenue generator. Vending machines sit in every corner, ads wrap around bus windows, ads flash around the border in the ball park, and blue-screen effects put ads behind the batter. Even urinals have ads perched at eye level, and probably one day (on the principal that all publicity is good publicity) they'll be placed in the target zone as well. Salesmen at Best Buy can be fired for failing to offer to sell useless warranty plans, and it seems everybody has a plan to help you buy right now.

The ingenuity involved is truly amazing: "the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light."

And the result is a horror. The whole is far worse than the sum of the parts. Almost all the things to be sold are harmless or good (excepting things like those warranty plans and divorce attorneys trying to drum up business). But saturate the air with them and we can't breathe.

Leviticus isn't a popular book of the Bible: repetitious descriptions of sacrifices aren't particularly interesting or edifying. But Leviticus 19:9-10 seem apropos:

"When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not be so thorough that you reap the field to its very edge, nor shall you glean the stray ears of grain. Likewise, you shall not pick your vineyard bare, nor gather up the grapes that have fallen. These things you shall leave for the poor and the alien. I, the LORD, am your God.

Our ownership is conditional, and so are our rights to our own property. Not contingent on the whims of the state--that way lies tyranny. God says don't be too greedy even with your own things. I'm seeing wisdom in that I hadn't thought about before.

WCRP

The wizard hired a consultant to organize his business and improve quality control, with filters for philters and files for phials.

Faith and actions

Over at the “MereComments” site (adjunct to Touchstone) Christopher Hutchens wrote of his dissatisfaction with what he saw as a side-effect of the doctrine of “security:” mediocrity. "any religion which encouraged mediocrity--which did not help us to discover the gifts God had placed within and then drive us past our natural sloth to develop them--could not be of God or lead back to him. "

”Believers who live in the fear of God, and who, according to his command, strive to make their vocations and election sure, will be people of accomplishment--the lack whereof I now regard as presumptive evidence of unbelief. I am not silly enough to think this must mean accomplishment in things for which the world has respect--although frequently enough it will--but it does mean real labor, real striving to confirm and perfect what God has placed in us “so there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

I don't think that mediocrity would be my first worry, but I hear little enough of "work out your own salvation" and Matthew 25 and indeed any hint from pulpit or teacher that a certain amount of self-discipline is required. Paul wrote of trying to whip himself into shape like an athlete would, but the only serious endeavor suggested for most of us is evangelism. And quite a few of us are not very gifted evangelists.

He also wrote about the other side of faith and works: what faith looks like without any support from works or thought, when faced with a little temptation. It withers and dies.

Experienced pastors, when faced with students who “lose their faith” at college, do not begin to argue back with them on matters philosophical or theological. They inquire into “lifestyle” issues in the attempt to ascertain whether there is a release to be gained from overthrowing the faith in which they were raised. There usually is. Real intellectual difficulties can normally be neutralized in favor of further study through reasoned discourse with educated believers who have entertained the same doubts--but only in the presence of a conscience that gains nothing from discovery that orthodox Christianity is wrong.

Immerse yourself in the "fun" parts of youth group, and in amusements and diversions, and where is the growth in faith? Let God have only a couple of hours on Sunday and "coast on the culture" the rest of the week; and then look back at your life to see little but dust. The rains come and the floods rise and the winds blow. And then what?

In Defatigatio Veritas

You dress up and put on your best behavior for the date. Avoid controversial subjects at dinner and make appropriate noises at the right time during the movie. Cheer for the home team at the game, even though the outcome won't matter to either of you tomorrow morning.

How on earth do you get to know anybody during a date? First impressions are all very well, and after that you may learn a little about how they want to appear, and how they act when all goes well. But masks are easily arranged, and it turns out most of life isn't a dress-up affair.

What you really want to do find out is what a person is like at the core, and that's not easy to discover. What will this woman do when something important is at stake, and she's frustrated? What will this man do when there's not quite enough to go around?

We can try to test somebody's character with games, but that's a poor substitute. The whole point of a game is that it is a contest that doesn't matter. A poor sport in a game isn't likely to be a good sport in a marriage, so you learn something about the person, but not as much as you ought.

You can try to watch them at work. Good luck. For high schoolers that's not so possible, and even for older people unless you happen to work at the same place you're not likely to be welcome as an observer. And even if you are, for many jobs the work isn't physically tiring, and I suspect that fatigue is a valuable stressor.

If you could see how a person behaves then they are weary and still trying to do something important, you would learn a lot about what kind of person they are at the core. Are they trying to beg off? Are they snappish, but still devoted to the task? Do they fade? Who are they, at the core?

Symmetry demands that they observe you too. Both you and the people you want to know need to be involved.

But in what? Games? Games don't matter. Amusements? They tell something about tastes, and sometimes morals, but not much else.

We're a rich country, and work that is both important and physically demanding isn't as common as it used to be, and communal work is even harder to find. No corn husking bees for suburbia!

This reads as though I am suggesting that an ideal second date would be a weekend working with Habitat for Humanity, building a house.

Well....

Yes.

Provided you both think that's important. Mowing lawns for the elderly, or helping somebody move, or something.

It isn't all about character study, either. There's often a camaraderie among those who work hard side by side (or bickering, but it is nice to find that out early on!), and something that links you together. Whether you will be mates or not, you can be friends sharing something important.

Bailing out the lenders

I've been grousing a bit about this. The sub-prime mortgage loans were obviously risky, and while I understand the problems of companies being too big to let fail, it didn't sit well with me to cough up money to pull them out of trouble.

But maybe it turns out we have a moral obligation to bail out the companies who were only doing what they were told to do.

Judge admits mistake

Faced with an almost monoracial pool of defendants, the judge ordered the white lawyers out to make an appeal to the blacks alone.

"The judge thought his message would make a greater impact if he delivered it to a black-only audience, he said." Later, when the sheriff said that everybody needed to hear the message, he said "In retrospect, it was a mistake."

I suspect he was right the first time. The defendants needed to hear the message ('What in the world are you doing with your lives?'), and I suspect it made more of an impact when the judge explicitly divorced it from "whiteness."

Of course it doesn't make a good precedent, but the much of the power of the action lies in the fact that is isn't going to be a precedent, that it was exceptional.

And he is probably also right to apologize, since a judge should set a good example.

Did she think it through?

In this month's National Geographic is an article Almost Human by Mary Roach about Senegalese spear using chimps.

In 2006 an Austrian animal rights organization submitted an application to a district court in Modling to appoint a legal guardian for a chimp named Hiasl. The strategy was to establish "legal person" status for the hairy defendant. (The judge was sympathetic but refused.) It is perhaps less problematic to view the situation as does The Third Chimpanzee author Jared Diamond: not that chimps are a kind of human, but that humans are a kind of chimp

(My emphasis)

"Less problematic?" Currently (and properly) the law values humans and considers chimps negligible in comparison. Do Diamond and Roach really think that lowering human value to that of a chimp causes fewer problems than giving human honor to chimps? We can abide the occasional Incitatus. It disrupts things, but doesn't generally do any lasting damage. But redefining humanity to be no better than property doesn't help the chimps and it is hell for the luckless or weak.

Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller

Sorry, I got very tired of Cone and decided to finish reading this instead

This is subtitled Nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality, and that's pretty much what it is. It rambles back and forth through his life, telling what he found or was shown, and he's willing to explain his imperfections. Sometimes it is poignant, and sometimes ...

I've been to a play. It was Romeo and Juliet, and I took a date. It was my first date ever. Even though I never wanted to act myself, taking a girl to a play was a good move.

...

Even though it is good move to take a girl to a play, I screwed it up.

...

Later in the play they accidentally kill themselves. It is not very believable, but that is what happened.

...

When we were walking out my date clasped my hand, and even though I wasn't feeling very mushy I smiled at her. We ascended the aisle and made our way through the crowded lobby onto the steps of the playhouse. There were girls everywhere, all of the misty-eyed. Two girls in front of us were talking to each other. One of them threw her arms in the air and cried out, "I wish I could know love like Romeo and Juliet!"

I couldn't take it anymore. I whispered under my breath "They're dead."

I didn't think anybody heard me, but my date did.

Read it.

An injunction against CERN?

Althouse noticed the NY Times story about the lawsuit asking for a temporary injunction against CERN's startup of the LHC. I assume the reader is quite aware (as the NY Times article mentions) that cosmic rays continually bombard Earth and Sun resulting in center of mass energies far in excess of those CERN can muster. If doomsday reactions could occur, they would have. True, at CERN the wonder particles might be created roughly at rest with respect to the Earth (not likely, btw) and be able to hang around, but that doesn't make much difference, since the cosmic-ray varieties

• also have a non-zero probability of being created roughly at rest in the Earth's frame
• would be zinging around from interactions in the Moon and Sun to liven up life here on Earth

Since anybody can sue anybody for anything (even if the court has no jurisdiction in Switzerland), the mere fact of the suit means very little--perhaps the gentlemen want a little publicity.

Some of the comments make me a little sad, though. Some people are afflicted with a blanket distrust of "authority figures." But the CERN experiments aren't like trying to use nukes to loosen up the San Andreas fault and make lots of small earthquakes instead of one big one. (You could write volumes about the unknowns and risks there.) This is more like claiming that dredge fishing will annoy giant squids which will rise up and eat you. It is actually possible to say "not bloody likely" in a case like this.

Sign of Depression?

I'm no economist.

I like listening to the radio in the car, and prefer classical or songs where the human voice is heard clearly past the music. The stations specializing in the latter tend to be "oldies" and the ads have been for cosmetic surgery, medical treatments, nursing care for parents, and other such middle-aged attractions.

I've never heard so many ads for debt reduction ("We helped XYZ reduce their tax debt to 28 cents on the dollar!") in my life. Maybe it is a couple of firms getting really aggressive, or maybe demand is way up. With home equity loans getting harder to find...

Cone again

There's a medium-long interview with James Cone available. I listened to it (don't try to watch--the sound is out of synch). It sounds very much like the Bibliotheca Sacra analysis on House's site (offline now) was correct in stating that BLT makes "black" experience the touchstone for revelation, deprecates Bible, and interprets all human relationships in terms of power. Cone is not consistent in his analysis, of course. He claims that all religion is violent when associated with the powerful, even if there isn't any overt violence; but then goes on to say that the powerful always use religion. Therefore the only true religion is that of the oppressed. If they become powerful--then what? Their religion in turn becomes "violent." Unless this time it magically happens to bring on the Kingdom of God.

The sanctity of the oppressed is such a fundamental part of this system that I think I can finally understand why conspiracy theories like "AIDS was created to destroy black people" or "the government spread cocaine among black people" are so popular. Aside from the usual gnostic attraction of such theories, they provide this generation with their own oppression to make them holy. This generation has no separate water fountains or Jim Crow laws, and much less overt racism to face (yes, I hear things, and things have changed), and in fact can see programs like affirmative action intended to help them. They have to have something that makes them oppressed, and therefore morally better than the rest.

So it is good to have a list of grievances, the more dramatic the better--never mind their accuracy or relevancy. It isn't just a matter of being able to blame your situation on somebody else--it makes you better than them because you are thereby identified with Jesus.

If you have the stomach for it, watch the video.

Is Cone a worse heretic than Osteen (for example)? They both turn the Kingdom of God into money and power here and now. Cone is certainly more hateful, but frustrate somebody who thinks they're entitled to prosperity and see what bubbles up.