Friday, November 28, 2008

Dishonesty in news reporting

On WPR this morning an announcer began his story by saying that Sen Feingold had successfully gotten a resolution passed calling for a cease-fire in the Congo. The next sentence warned that continued fighting was impacting the wildlife refuge in Eastern Congo, and the rest of the story was about the gorilla rescue project. Since the reporter brought Feingold into the story, the logical implication would be that Feingold had brought the matter up, right? I hold no brief for Feingold, but I didn't think he was such a fool as that--and he wasn't. There was no connection between the gorillas and Feingold's resolution; just a reporter trying to namedrop to make the story sound important.

The BBC site reported that Nigerian children's teething syrup has been "tainted" with ethylene glycol. Tainted suggests a little spillage or some other small adulteration. Clearly somebody replaced the sweetener with glycol; which is a big deal and not a little slip-up. BBC's word choice is often very strange, to the point of being misleading. Once you figure out the pattern of word choices you can correct the story mentally to get closer to the facts. Sometimes you need a little prior knowledge, such as the toxicity of the glycol.

The Australian described the attacks on Mumbai as carried out by "teenage gunmen."

Kissinger said that "90% of the politicians give the other 10% a bad name." Something similar seems to apply to reporters.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

An exclusive club

A club restricted to those who've been famous enough to have a biography written about them is for authorized persons only.

Oddly ironic

The CERN Courier quit publishing in two languages a couple of years back. Now it accepts contributions in French or English, and publishes them as such rather than translating. Almost every single article is in English, though. This month's issue (Nov-2008) has an exception: the obituary of an Englishman is in French.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Escape!

Everybody else does this sort of post. Let's see if I can embed something.

No guarantees that what is referenced will still be there a month from now.



Killer whales are chasing a penguin. It is just a matter of time, right? The image used for the movie is probably a giveaway...

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Forgot one difference!

In my earlier post about Relevant Radio, I forgot one huge difference: Notre Dame football broadcasts!

Friday, November 21, 2008

Conscience

If you haven't seen The Revenge of Conscience, by all means read it. Budziszewski is thorough and clear.

Buying good publicity

From the International Harald Tribune (via Drudge): Angelina Jolie buys positive press coverage.

According to the deal offered by Jolie, the winning magazine was obliged to offer coverage that would not reflect negatively on her or her family, according to two people with knowledge of the bidding who were granted anonymity because the talks were confidential. The deal also asked for an "editorial plan" providing a road map of the layout, these people say.

I suppose the only surprise here is that the deal became public knowledge. There's a long history of reporters' gripes about stories canned because they reflected badly on major advertisers, and we all know about political stories that were buried. CNN declined to contradict Saddam's press releases in exchange for the honor of having a "reporter" in Baghdad. For an actress to buy good coverage is a move in a grand tradition.

People won the bid, apparently, though Time was in the running.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Satire

Youngest Son has discovered both Dan McBride and Tom Lehrer: simultaneously.

I remember some years ago reading part of an interview with Lehrer in which he said he had no plans to try to write new songs, because he didn't think he could make things funny anymore. I thought nothing of it at the time, except to wonder why he'd lost his sense of humor. Now I know.

The contrast between the two singers is dramatic. Lehrer was a polished performer with a good voice, while McBride's voice was raspy and hoarse. Lehrer was sophisticated and McBride cultivated a down-home persona. A lot of Lehrer's music was original, while McBride generally sang new words to old tunes.

Taken one at a time their comic songs might seem similar: both made fun of idiocies. But when you listen to a lot of their work at once a pattern emerges and the difference is startling. Lehrer's work is infused with anger, while McBride sang with sympathy.

Lehrer hit his stride at just the right time, when angry songs could still be funny and get attention. But we got used to anger, and social commentators had to rachet the level up to where things couldn't be angry and funny any more. Shocks are getting harder to arrange. I suspect that's what he meant in that interview, and that's why he quit. He could probably still do things like the Elements Song, but not National Brotherhood Week or Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.

I'm not as fascinated with shock or anger as I was in high school.

Lehrer also did a number of educational songs (besides The Elements, but those weren't what made him famous. I'm sure he could do more of those if he wanted to, though.
I updated the post to include links to explain who these men are (per request), and only then read the Wikipedia entry for Lehrer. I guess I was right.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Historic

Most of us like the idea of making history, or being there when it is made. I do. If somebody gave me tickets to the inauguration I'd go (*). I've never been to one, and this one will be inarguably historic: for the country, for the West, and perhaps especially for the Democratic Party (the Republicans were the anti-slavery party).

It will be a day to remember, in a Guinness Book of World Records sort of way. Unfortunately then comes the next day. We're going to pay a pretty high price for setting a nice record.


(*) The devil is in the details, of course--air fare isn't cheap and hotel room prices are completely insane, so I guess I couldn't justify the expense.

Memorial?

In the parking lot sat a pickup with a vanity plate: LIL BRO. As I got closer I saw that the bottom of the plate read "Gold Star Family."

Friday, November 14, 2008

Relevant Radio

I've learned a little church history, and know something of the lives of the saints, something of variations in theology, and while trying to put together some material for youth, have read goodly chunks of Luther's catechism and the Catholic catechism. But the theological theory and the way things are actually practiced sometimes have points of difference, so I tuned in WHFA to hear what the Catholic equivalent of protestant radio is like.

The Catholic church is a rather big tent, with a lot of things you aren't actually required to believe (Fatima, etc). So the content of the programming may not be representative. And I tuned in during commutes, so that also biases the sampling.

Similarities: Both protestant and the Catholic station talk a lot about Jesus, faith, grace, obedience and the Bible. Both have pledge drives :-( Both have call-in shows for people needing advice. Both include worship service broadcasts, and have lots of church community bulletins.

Differences: WHFA has ads by presumably Catholic businessmen. WHFA has substantially less music, though given the average caliber of the stuff WNWC plays that may not be a disadvantage. Sometimes the experts on the call-in shows show a little more "depth on the bench" than their protestant equivalents. Relevant Radio has talk shows in the morning and early evening, and during the lead-up to the election it was 90% about abortion. That got pretty old--I figured they were preaching to the choir but I gather from post-election statistics that most Catholics either don't care or were seriously confused by the unfortunate "seamless garment" approach that glibly mixed absolutes and prudentials.(*) WHFA apparently has an exorcist as a regular guest on the afternoon talk show. Protestant worship services that center around singing and preaching and the Bible are easy to broadcast, but services that center around the Eucharist lack a little something: like presence. And Mary is big--very big. If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and talks like a duck ... and attributes effective omniscience to Mary (she hears every prayer ?!?): then we're off into very risky territory.

Call-in shows aren't a really good avenue for "spiritual direction;" that really requires one-on-one with a counselor, and time and at least a stab at self-discipline on the directee's part. It isn't done in 2 minutes. Some of the protestant call-ins have a phone bank with some sort of counselors, which is better (I hope!) than 45 seconds of advice on the air.

The local bishop isn't a good public speaker, but the clips were short. The quality and caliber of the protestant preachers is generally far better.

I learned a lot, and may tune in again from time to time--though I'll try to skip the commute hours.

Time to switch over to La Movida for a while to try to learn to hear the accents and phrases of Spanish.


(*) That's my description, not theirs. They always said it was misinterpreted; I say Bernardin was careless.

Saturday, November 08, 2008

Mirth of a Nation compiled by Michael J Rosen

Rosen, despite including a handful of works by Dave Barry and PJ O'Rourke, has succeeded in assembling one of the least funny collections this side of the tax tables.

Skip around at random. Plow right through. It doesn't matter--in defiance of probability there is nothing funny to be found. The Apostle Paul found time for a joke, why couldn't they?

If you care for an example, imagine a work consisting of nothing but things like this:

Is it a person, or a pasta dish?

PersonPasta Dish
Manicottix
Righettix
Mussolinix
etc

The culprit for that was Chris Harris, but I have to wonder what Rosen was smoking that made him giggle enough to buy rights to it.

I suppose this is ironic humor. Spare us. The book will merely take up space: skip it.

CPA's

Just down the hall from Regent Mental Health is an office labeled "Porter and Sack." My better half commented that this sounded like Falstaff's bar bill. I guess if you give them some business they'll buzz right through it.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Indian Summer

It is disconcerting, on a beautiful day with temperatures over 70, to find that the forecast for barely 48 hours later reads "little or no snow accumulation."
Healing divides

The claim goes that Obama's election helps heal racial divides in this country. It'd be wonderful if it did. But there's a political industry based on exacerbating wounds, and a musical industry that thrives on the same, and (although probably less relevantly) an academic industry that lives to define victims. Raking up old injuries and magnifying new ones brings in their bread and butter. I don't think Jesse Jackson is going to give up the shakedown business just because Obama was elected. I'd guess that within two months we'll start hearing that he's "not black enough" or that because his father was Kenyan he "doesn't really understand" ghetto life. It'll be just a whisper at first: there's too much elation right now for anything harsh.

I suspect most of the "healing" will be with blacks who don't follow the demagogues anyway. Maybe a second-generation effect?

The flip side is an interesting question: Will this heal racial division on the "white" side? How much division is based on "white" attitudes?

The academics tell me that "privilege" is "racism." Some say that white racism appears in structural asymmetries. Others say historical differences have to be righted before racism will vanish. Their obvious solution to the problem of racism as they define it is to remove privilege. For which you obviously need a special privileged class to manage the forced equalization. That doesn't seem very healing.

Other people say that what appears to be racism is merely a logical approach to objective differences in probability: a young black man is many times more likely to be a criminal than a young white woman. (I've read that this number is nearly 30) So far as this is true, and not merely a perception of differences, I don't think Obama will change much.

Some whites are clearly racists. I've met a few. I don't think Obama is going to have much impact on them.

That leaves whites who aren't particularly biased as the target group for "healing," as their perceptions change. I don't know how extensive a population this is, but I can't think of a white racial demagogue with the same stature and following as Al Sharpton.

Monday, November 03, 2008

If Obama wins

I judge Obama unsuitable for the office, on grounds of character, experience, and philosophy; but I don't believe him to be the devil incarnate. There ought to be some good arising from his presidency, and it would be a useful exercise to try to figure out what it might be.

Unfortunately he has no administrative experience with which to face the largest bureaucracy in the world, so success in administration is going to depend on blind luck in finding good aides. If he has the humility to ask for a lot of advice he might be able to assemble a competent team, but if he relies on his political allies we're probably going to be in the soup. Loosely run bureaucracies have a way of digressing from their missions in favor of empire-building and paper-pushing.

The most striking qualities he has so far displayed are charisma and a mesmerizing speaking ability. These won't cut much ice with the hard-nosed veterans in the Legislature, but if he can hold the attention and favor of enough people the Congressmen will have to listen to him. We have some serious challenges in terms of the economy and the war. If he can inspire enough people to accept the sacrifices and the vision, a great deal could be done. Of course this begs the question of what vision and what action, but we'll try to hope these are wise. That takes a lot of hoping, unfortunately.

Faced with real dangers and real limits (we can't magically make armies appear in Afghanistan--somebody has to help or give permission), he may abandon his silly rhetoric and possibly lead the Democratic party to take ownership of the war. It would be very good to lose this "Republican war" nonsense and work together for a change. The war is complicated and going to be long, with intervals of apparent quiet: we need to hang together no matter which party is in charge.

Unfortunately most of the nice things he talks about doing come with unpleasant price tags, and sometimes nasty side effects. It is nice to think of paying no taxes (I make well less than \$250K .. make that \$200K .. make that \$125K .. make that \$75K .. make that ..), but a) it won't happen (we have to raise a huge amount of money soon) and b) the moral hazard of creating a large citizen class with only benefits and no obligations erodes their sense of responsibility for what the government does--makes them children instead of citizens. I discount huge swaths of feel-good promises: I've no confidence that they'll really benefit us.

"Predictions are hard, especially about the future." "Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. ... Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD their God."

Sunday, November 02, 2008

Non-MSM reporting

I've read some people claiming that bloggers will replace reporters. More thoughtful folks point out that although particular bloggers have specialized information no reporter is likely to be able to match, there's no reliability built into the blogging model, and people aren't usually all that interested in showing up to and blogging about the court docket or the school board committee meetings. You have to pay reporters to do those kinds of things.

And the blogging model may collapse soon anyway. If the economy tanks, Google won't be able to make ends meet with advertising. Bye-bye free blogging. And bye-bye unmetered research access too! Google et al will either shrivel to pay-as-you-go research engines, or be nationalized (and presumably made unprovocative(*), except for the favored groups). This dries up the gigantic pool of information those over-optimistic forecasters are counting on.

(*)No porn links and no hate group links, for instance. Of course both categories are subject to regulator interpretation. The Canadian HRC illustrates how.

WSIWYD

I notice that our national legislature is regarded only slightly more favorably than pus. Kissinger said that 90% of the politicians give the other 10% a bad name. Freezers full of cash, blithe legislating of favors for cronies, rancid posturing and general lying make the place a stench. The “Do you know who I am!” arrogance is bi-partisan: Larry Craig and Cynthia McKinney come quickly to mind.

I’ll grant some exceptions, but I suspect Kissinger’s proportions are not far off.

The Constitution was set up so we could deal with this sort of thing. On Tuesday we could vote in a completely different House of Representatives and a third of the Senate in one go, if we chose to. We never have, and I’ll bet this time will be no different.

Politics was once much more violent than it is now, and every bit as corrupt. It actually got better for a while. I’m not sure that’s likely anymore. The center of political power has always been DC, and now it is more and more the locus of economic control and economic power. That will inevitably become corrupt. If bribes are easier than compliance, companies will bribe. If people kowtow to the whims of the powerful, you generate a courtier class. Can you smell it already?

The more we expand the authority of Washington, the more it becomes the center of power, and the more corruption it will attract. This, if nothing else, is a good reason to try to resist the call of “There ought to be a law.” There will be a law, and another, and another, and another; and the cobweb of rules will favor the friends of the powerful. Don’t bother trying to claim that some party represents the interests of the powerless—it isn’t so.

It looks as though Democrats will have an even larger majority, and presumably a mandate to expand control even farther. I don’t expect this will help matters any.

WSIWYD (not WSIWYG).

Counterfeiters

Dante planted counterfeiters in the 8’th circle of hell, where they are diseased forever. Of course they are liars and thieves, but they also debase the exchange for everyone, not just their local victims. Trust is eroded, and everyone the loser, when counterfeiters work.

When Niven and Pournelle updated Dante in Inferno (Good book; read it) they put ad writers in the ditch with the flatterers—a beautifully accurate observation. Adding too many such would have made the plot drag, but I can think of another modern equivalent they left out.

Orwell warned that words could shape thought. Debasers of the language damage the exchange of ideas just as debasers of the currency damage the exchange of labor.

Screwtape told us about the debasement of “democratic,” from being a precise description of a voting system to a veil for envy. Besides becoming a noble-sounding synonym for abortion, “choice” also morphed into an ultimate value in itself rather than a selection among values.

The phrase “a person’s nature” changed from a reference to the person’s common humanity or purpose to meaning the person’s unique desires and habits—almost a complete reversal.

If you use these once-useful terms unwittingly, you’ll find you’ve begged unexpected questions and admitted points you never intended.

The 8’th circle seems appropriate for these idea counterfeiters.

Friday, October 31, 2008

Bleed Bluest of Blue

Todays Wisconsin State Journal has a story comparing the bluest ward (most heavily Democratic) with the reddest (split). While not as heavily Democratic as one Milwaukee ward (99% Kerry(*)) it is still highly monolithic. I find the contrasts a bit amusing: "It's 'anything goes' here," but "I cannot figure out the 51 percent of the population who voted for Bush." Truly Remarkable Loon (a fine juggler) thinks Republicans would be welcome and "Might lead to some interesting discussions."

That has an ominous tone that I doubt he intended. For those of us to whom politics is not the by-all and end-all, the prospect of being compelled to either regularly express agreement or explain ourselves isn't entrancing. I get a little of it myself at work: I don't want to face it at home.

There's another term from the other side of the color wheel for that ward: "Yellow dog Democrat" :-)

(*) I don't believe that number, BTW. The spoiled ballot rate alone is about 2% nationally, though Wisconsin had no data, and I expect random votes to appear at a slightly higher rate.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Chimneys

I remember reading years ago of someone trying to clean his chimney by firing a shotgun up it. It seems risky, but every winter doctors recommend flue shots.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

2008 Presidential Elections

It is about time to render judgment on the candidates proffered. I hate these multi-year campaigns. They do not shed much light on the candidates, and their expense and focus on appearance must have a corrupting effect on the process and the candidates.

I’m not enamored of either of the men at the top of the main party tickets. Never mind the VP candidates for now.

Executive Summary: I do not consider Obama suitable for the job. I worry about McCain’s attitudes towards government’s roles. Neither of them (and probably no human being) is going to be adequate to meet the challenges of the next few years.

  • His opposition to the anti-infanticide law tells me something ugly about Obama’s character

    He voted to oppose Illinois legislation (explicitly written to not restrict abortion) designed to protect infants born alive despite an abortion. He was the only Senator to speak against it. The same measure passed the US Senate without opposition.

    Even if one stipulated that abortion was a right and not an evil, failing to recognize any limits to it even beyond birth shows at the very best an execrable lack of judgment.

    This is a showstopper. But to continue:

  • The frequency with which Obama voted “Present” tells me something unhappy about his courage.

    While it is true that voting “Present” isn’t likely to satisfy either the supporters or opponents of some law, it is generally possible to weasel an explanation that at least keeps them from opposing you when you need votes or money.

    The best spin I can think of to put on this is that either he was trying to make some statement about the insignificance of some particular bill or that he was admitting that he hadn’t had time to understand the ramifications of it. The first case doesn’t survive inspection: the best way to make a statement is to say it. The second case is no excuse—we know the job isn’t possible, that’s why we pay for staff to assist the legislators.

  • The associates Obama has chosen and the environment he chose tell me something unpleasant about his vision of America.

    Wright’s sermons, and Ayers’ unrepentant hatreds—and for that matter, the very grants that Obama and Ayers helped distribute—for things like teaching mathematics with a social justice theme (a perversion reminiscent of the “Marxist biology” of the Soviet empire)—are part of a world-view of class warfare (and race warfare) that hopes for the destruction of order in favor of some earthly paradise. When whitey is suppressed, or when the corporations are controlled by the state, then comes the millennium of: Well, we know where that goes.

    You don’t have to pretend that our current system is perfect to judge that this kind of solution is worse than the disease.

What does Obama plan? Standard Democratic Party boilerplate. What history has he of “bridging divides?” None. “He will be transformational.” Transform to what: frogs or princes? “Change” Is it for better or worse? One of the top lessons of the 20’th century is: Things can always be made worse.

Tomaso wrote on his blog that he believed electing Obama would heal divisions between the US and Italy; that the governments would be more cooperative. I admit I know little of Italian politics, but I suspect he knows less than he thinks he does. Italy will follow its own interests, exactly as before. Electing Obama would bring a brief “thrill” in the world, which would last about a day as newspapers went “happy happy joy joy.” Next day would be business as usual, as they discovered to their horror that he was President of the United States.

I was flabbergasted to find him advocating the invasion of Pakistan. I notice he backtracked in a hurry, but he’s pretty careless. If he actually believes his own press releases about the value of negotiations he’s more of a fool than I take him for. He should have learned enough from Alinsky to know better.

McCain has a long history, with some blemishes such as campaign finance reform (Incumbent Protection Act).

He seems to have no notion of why the Mexico border needs attention, though to be fair almost nobody else seems to be paying it more than lip service either. You’d think with the economy the way it is there’d be some awareness of the risks, but with so many special interests looking to garner cheap labor and cheap votes I suspect nothing much will happen until the demagogues start in—and it’ll be pretty late by then.

He seems to be quite comfortable with an ever-expanding state. Obama is eager for one, so the advantage is to McCain, but not with enthusiasm.

I gather he didn’t understand the strategic significance of Iraq in the war, though at least he understands what’s involved in conducting a campaign, which is more than Obama did. I get the impression from Obama’s various statements that he doesn’t have any clear ideas about the war. Somebody needs to sit him down and teach him some history—wars are typically not short, and asymmetrical warfare requires just as much attention as big tank battles. We’re in for a century or so of what Kipling called “The Great Game,” and we need to know how to keep our eye on the ball.

Neither candidate seems to have a clear plan for what the economy needs—which is probably good since I suspect nobody knows. I suspect McCain will be more careful about signing laws to tinker with the banking system than Obama; and we’ll need restraint. If the US effectively owns the main banks, can you imagine any scenario in which Congress won’t be trying to implement pet projects through bank rules? Me either.

McCain’s history is consistent with someone who (right or wrong) goes with what he thinks is correct and not with convenience or party. Obama’s history is too short to be absolutely sure, but there’s no sign of any willingness to buck the party so far.


Even leaving aside the showstopper, Obama isn’t someone I want in office. McCain, though far from perfect, is far better.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Rabbits

We find that it is risky to let rabbits run loose near light cords: they speak tooth to power.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

The Press and Obama

A year ago I was predicting that the press would follow the usual model of lionizing Obama, and then, growing jaded, savage him.

We've seen the pattern before: an obscure and unexpected character gets a little attention; and then is "discovered." Reporters like to discover things.

If the "three-story" threshold is hit they assume there is a "buzz" about him, and reporting intensifies. Reporters like to catch the wave and have people read their stories.

When the wave is high and everybody likes the man, reporters start to suspiciously dig for dirt. Reporters dream of the big surprise story, and it is almost always about a hero's clay feet.

The pattern is ugly and painful to the unsuspecting subject, but it is ultimately founded on the reporter's devotion to his craft as he understands it: locate novelties, find out what people want to know, uncover the cover-up and don't let the famous or powerful get too proud.

I'm putting as nice a perspective on it as I can.

I predicted they'd apply the same pattern to Obama, and that by now he'd be in shreds.

I was wrong.

Stage 3 never materialized, despite opportunities. There've been hints of scandal aplenty (mostly probably minor, as usual), but little follow through. Is this because Obama is a Teflon™ candidate with a personality that shakes off any criticism, or is this because journalists have tingles running up their legs? Is it fear, or an enthusiasm so intense they forget their craft?

I don't believe it is because they suddenly turned sensitive: just look at the other news reports to see how low they go.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

A Friend Like Henry

by Nuala Gardner

Subtitle: “The remarkable story of an autistic boy and the dog that unlocked his world”

The book is really the story of Dale's mother Nuala.

Dale was an autistic boy. His first reply was at 3, and he had the obsessive actions and headbanging tantrums of the deeply autistic child.

Much of the story is his mother's fight to recognize the problem, then to get the authorities to recognize it, and then (over and over) to get people to help. Henry the golden retriever was a breakthrough part of that effort—and not an accidental part, as Nuala describes how, inspired by Dale's unexpectedly happy reaction to a friend's scotties, she researched what kind of dog would be best. Breeds vary a lot in temperament, and the lavish affection and patience that golden retrievers are famous for seemed ideal for Dale.

And so it proved. Dale and Henry (named after a Thomas the Tank Engine character) bonded famously, and Dale was able to make non-threatening connections with the dog that he could not do with people. Dale could understand the dog's simple needs, and learned to connect them to his own.

This took a lot of prompting by his parents: Dale didn't automatically make the connection between Henry needing to be clean and himself needing a bath. Learning to eat properly took training too:

Dale was also a bad eater, never hungry, whereas goldens, especially our Henry, are the world's greediest dogs. As Henry grew, he quickly learned when his meals were due and would bark at “his” cupboard to remind us it was dinnertime. Each day I would wait for Henry to do this, saying to my son, “Dale, what is Henry wanting at his cupboard? He is hungry.” This evolved to the point where Dale would tell me “Mum, Henry's hungry. It's time for his dinner.” Eventually Dale learned from this the concept of his own hunger and when it was dinnertime for him. I developed the trick of telling Dale that his food was good for him as it would help him grow big, just like Henry.

Another great breakthrough came when Henry found “his” voice. A carom conversation through a lovable dog is far less threatening than eye to eye talk with an adult.

When they aren't communicating, it is very easy to assume they are taking nothing in, but when Dale was ten, for example, he told me “If we hadn't talked through Henry, I would have chosen not to talk to you at all.”

As you can guess from the subtitle, there is a happy ending to Dale's story, as he grew more and more able and I gather is making a career in child care (!). Well, almost happy: dogs do not live forever, but Dale is there for the end.

Nuala showed Dale the book, and he made comments of his own on various chapters.

I found the long description of her efforts to get pregnant again both sad and creepy (IVF has issues), and it would have been good to have sketched “a day in the life” for a few different eras of Dale's development. I know several autistic people, and would have been happy for a few more technical details of what the non-dog-based training was like, but the book is meant for a general audience and that might not have fit well.

Read it.

I was asked to review this book.

We had rabbits instead of dogs, which didn't seem to elicit quite the same sorts of reactions—but then our children were far more communicative and affectionate to begin with.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Who can resist?

You remember Cabbage Patch Kids: ugly as sin. What would you Cauliflower Child?

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Serendipity

There is a poster at the pharmacists advertising a memory screening study by a Dr. Breslow at the school of Pharmacy.

The email name (I'll leave off the machine to preserve his inbox) is rmbreslow. rmbreslow

I enjoy the game of trying to figure out what that vanity plate in front of me means.

Friday, October 17, 2008

baseball

Youngest son does not appreciate baseball, not having seen much of it. James does not appreciate baseball, as the closest he comes to sports is doing weights at the club. His idea of recreation is to solve differential equations and matrices on the back of an envelope.

You do not go to a ball game to watch nonstop breathless action. That's soccer or basketball. I cannot enjoy either game; I can't keep my eye on the ball and I don't know what's happening. You go to a ball game to make a day of it: enjoy fresh air, good company, a well played game with a steady pace. Long, gracefully arcing fly balls; a bang-bang double play; a leap worthy of Nureyev to snatch a ball out of the ether; a Texas leaguer blooped to center, hit where they ain't--all that and the chance to relax and have a good klatsch with your friend between plays.

If you're a Brewers Fan, you start with a tailgate party. You either get good brats and cook them on a Coleman stove or a grill, mounted on a milk crate; or you go to the Milwaukee Public Market and pick up Italian or Japanese or Lebanese or seafood takeout--or a little bit of each, with a piece of cheesecake to top it off. Wash it down with a cold bottle of Sprecher's root beer. Bring the lawn chairs and the picnic plates and relax. Inside the park, you holler along with forty thousand other people. Between plays, you can klatsch and watch the replays and read the stats and trivia on the giant scoreboard. You cheer on the racing sausages between the 5th and 6th innings (the guy in the Chorizo costume won last time I went). You sing "Roll Out the Barrel" after "Take Me Out To the Ballgame" during the stretch. After the game, you enjoy the cool night air and truck on home with the postgame show on the radio.

If you're a Cubs fan, you park at one of the CTA lots and ride the El to Wrigley. You enjoy the quick glimpses of color in the rooftop and balcony gardens along the Red Line to Wrigleyville. You munch on a real Chicago hotdog in the stands. You look out at the deep blue of the lake beyond the scoreboard and count sailboats. You holler along with 40 thousand other people. Since the scoreboard is manual, with no electronic anything, you get a break from visual clutter; instead, your instant replay is the discussion you have with your buddy. Usually, the regular PA announcer, Wayne Messmer, sings the National Anthem; so you know that performance will be melodious and thrilling and on key, without any theatrics and broken notes and dramatic pauses that throw off the tempo. Today's guest conductor for "Take Me Out To the Ballgame" may or may not be able to carry a tune in a wheelbarrow; but a lot of the fans can't either so it's not a big deal. Ernie Banks sings it very well. After the game, you take the El back to whatever restaurant you've picked out for your postgame supper.

All that and the plays that make you scream YES! along with Ron Santo, or laugh along with Bob Uecker. Line drives, doubles to the corner, fly balls speared or dropped or caught like a scoop of ice cream on top of a cone. A play at the plate on an Alfonso Soriano bullet thrown from deep left--and it's in there! The timely strikeout. JJ Hardy, Milwaukee shortstop, smothering a grounder and somehow shoveling it to second in time for the force.

I was born during the 1957 World Series, Game 3 (Milwaukee won that one). Baseball is in my blood. I grew up a Cubs fan, and I played Big Ball--Chicago 16 inch softball, which Jake the Neighborhood Guy for Old Style Beer describes as looking "like a leather canteloup". I have two mashed and crooked pinky fingers to prove that I played catcher and outfield in Big Ball. I have the faith of a Cubs fan, and because of this I have no respect for Boston and Mets fans, who walk out of the park if their team's behind in the 5th. I've lived in Brewersville long enough to appreciate the Brewers too (now that they've left that other league with the silly rule about pitchers not batting).

Wait til next year!

Mrs James

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Extreme baseball

Youngest Son and I were talking about extreme sports the other day. He is fond of the Japanese "dump em in the mud" approach with mud trenches and large rolling balls, but I think we figured out a better approach.

Teams field 11 players. Each team has a red pitcher, a green pitcher, a red catcher, and a green catcher. The field has the usual 3 bases, plus a red home plate and a green home plate close to each other. There's a red baseball and a green one.

The rules are essentially the same, with a few exceptions:

  • Batters don a red or green vest, and face the appropriate red or green pitcher.
  • Green batters run bases counterclockwise, but red batters run clockwise.
  • Bases are extra-wide, to accommodate two runners going different directions.
  • A runner can be forced out only with his color of ball.
  • If both balls are in play, either one can be used to tag a runner out.
  • The pitcher is on a 5 second clock--he must pitch within 5 seconds or the runner advances automatically. This is to make sure play is rapid. Otherwise you'd have one pitcher pitching at a time, and the other waiting until the play was over just in case his ball would be needed for tagging. There's an obvious exception when there's a play at the other home base.
  • The batter is on a clock. After the end of the play for his color ball, he has 10 seconds to get into the box or he takes an automatic strike. Stepping out of the box is similarly timed.

I'd think this would make for lively play, fast innings, and some strategy. Which pitcher will the player face? If he's a good hitter, maybe you want him facing the red pitcher because the green pitcher has loaded his bases. It seems to put extra stress on the pitcher, which is fine because it means more hits and livelier play--but not necessarily higher scores because 3 outs will still end the inning and there are more opportunities for goofs and surprise tags from behind.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Changes

I gave up on index posts a long time ago--they were getting unwieldy, and the Blogger tags were much handier. Unfortunately the template I was using before only put up a single page of tagged posts (some bug in their scripting), and that just wasn't acceptable behavior.

The new template handles these much better, but unfortunately uses a fixed-width format, which is kind of ugly. And I had to fiddle with it a bit to get back some of the things (like email contact!) that I'd had before. Oh well.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Dresser Stripping

The dresser's veneer is chipped all along the bottom, and here and there on the drawers. I can understand why the previous owners painted it, though I fervently wished they hadn't as I scrubbed off paint using a citrus stripper and rolls of paper towels. No doubt they were deceived by an enticing name like "antique gold," but the result is best described as baby-diaper yellow.

The wood under it is actually rather nice, and the veneer is mostly in good shape. The bottom is a mess, so I'll be staining some thin molding to cover it up. I don't think we'll need to paint it.

The instructions on the stripper say to leave it on for 30 minutes and scrape it off with a plastic scraper. That didn't work so well--you need a clean surface to clean the wood with, and the scraper gunked up on the first pass. If you stop to clean it off, the residues on the wood tend to harden up on you. Better to use paper towels and rotate clean surfaces into use with each pass.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Uncharitable Thoughts on Worship Styles

1 Jezebel 19:11-13

11 The LORD said, "Go out and stand in the church in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by."

Then a great and powerful set by the worship team tore the air apart and shattered eardrums before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the band gig. After the band there was a frenetic movie clip, but the LORD was not in the movie. 12 After the movie came a PowerPoint presentation, but the LORD was not in the PowerPoint. And after the service came a gentle whisper. 13 When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.

Then a voice said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"


29:3-5

3 The voice of the amplifiers is over the waters; the band on stage thunders, the amplifiers thunder over the mighty waters.

4 The voice of the amplifiers is powerful; the voice of the amplifiers is majestic.

5 The voice of the amplifiers breaks the cedars; the amplifiers break in pieces the cedars of Lebanon.

Acts 12:22


6:7

7b for they think they will be heard because of their many decibels

Saturday, October 04, 2008

Memories

I spent several years living here. I remember eating, studying, playing with friends, playing with the cat, reading, exploring the jungle, burning termite mounds with gasoline, stepping on a mamba, working in the maintenance shop (fruitlessly trying to explain to the manager that he had the hinges wrong on a cabinet), shooting rice birds, watching tree frog tadpoles develop and escape, wandering and wondering--the usual things boys do. I wasn't (and still am not) a crowd person, and there was generally room to be alone.

That was almost two generations ago. Last year's visit was a whirlwind. We couldn't stay--our driver had a son in the hospital and as soon as business was done we could only allot a few minutes for sightseeing. The campus was much smaller now that I was grown, and far more crowded, and much run-down--the war had not been kind and neither had the tropical sun and rain.

I'd had some naive notion of showing my daughters where I'd grown up, but even the roads had shifted. I could have searched out some spot and tried to recollect what had been, and tried to describe to them the vistas now obscured by trees and new buildings and laundry. By the side of a road that doesn't exist anymore I used to watch tadpoles in a puddle, and heaved in the largest chunk of quartz I could find to see how far the splash would go. The pond filled in but left two inches of sharp stub sticking out above the dirt--my little mark on Liberia. It may be there yet, but I doubt it--the road was regraded in a new location before it was abandoned.

Even if there'd been time to explore, to try sightseeing through my memories would have meant trying to ignore the new people and new scenes. That would be a strange way to show Liberia to my kids: "Don't look at what's here, look at what used to be here." Better for us all if it is a completely new country, with a few people I used to know.

Friday, October 03, 2008

Econ

I've no idea if the current plan will help in the short term. The long term moral hazard is obviously extreme, but things are pretty dicey and the European banks are in even worse shape. Apparently (according to the Telegraph) the rules are looser over there.

If we ejected those Senators and Congressmen who abetted Fannie and Freddie, there'd be an awful lot of empty seats--including some of the noisiest complainers.

If you think about it, some problems are inevitable. If you refuse to allow someone to charge rent for the use of his money, you strangle all commerce above the level of barter.

On the other hand, if the system relies heavily on borrowing, then heavily capitalized (read "has enough money to survive moderate reversals") companies become targets and everybody is pulled down to the "have to borrow/repay to keep running" level, and are vulnerable to credit crunches. Good luck trying to mandate a happy medium--Procrustes redux.

So what to do? Mandate transparency and educate about boom/bust cycles and the value of moderation, and hope for the best? But teaching temperance is moral education, which tends to be anathema to educators.

Unless maybe we could say temperance was a "green" virtue? Is it my imagination, or are the only virtues taught these days "social" ones as opposed to personal character virtues?
Something is Looming

The dew froze to the car this morning.

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Who can resist

I gather that the Antarctic stations tend not to have penguins wandering up the steps to come in: icy stares make them uncomfortable.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

The Church by Hans Kung

I picked this up to fill out a 10 for \$X at a second hand bookstore, and when I offered to lead a few lessons on the church for our Bible study I decided it was time to read it (among other things, of course). Kung is a pretty famous figure in the Catholic church--and a controversial one.

The general approach he uses assumes that the church, being made up of humans, is often in trouble and needs to get back to its roots in every age--and so he emphasizes Scripture more than Tradition. He systematically addresses the various aspects of the nature of the church. He is especially annoyed with those who focus on the true church as the church at the end of time--it isn't a very useful model to apply to the church one finds here and now on the corner.

When he gets to the section on church organization he brings in a lot of detailed history. If we stipulate that his description of the history is correct (I'm in no position to say), then it is quite plain that the hierarchical model of church structure was not only not universal in the early church, it existed only sketchily in places and not at all in others (Corinth, obviously--Paul never addresses himself to church leaders, even in matters of church discipline he assumes that the entire church has a say). Only gradually does one find a single supervisor/bishop instead of a group. He treads more softly with the pope, but the weakness of the claim of primacy, not to mention dominion, is quite clear; and Kung offers advice on how a pope should serve and which titles ought to be abandoned (pontifex maximus was a Roman pagan priest's title, but "servant of the servants of God" conforms with Christian teaching).

I'm Protestant, and he's not goring my ox. Even claims that Scripture does not exclude the possibility of a pope to head the church do not ruffle my feathers--the Bible plainly neither requires nor prohibits a pope. But I can see why he got a lot of Catholics angry.

I gather that English is not his first language. Scholarly prose in translation is thick going, and he has a little tendency towards repetition for emphasis. Quite a few interesting points are skipped over, as he refers you to some other book he wrote or relies on.

He also gives rather more credence than seems reasonable to "higher critical" analyses of the Bible that attempt to dissect which bits came from which era within a single gospel. I've never heard of anyone attempting a double-blind study of the "higher critical" method (obviously using a different book), and absent such verification I class it with homeopathy. His handling of it doesn't injure his orthodoxy, however.

I read the book because I wanted to learn, and was willing to accept the rough sledding of scholarly prose as the price of knowledge. It is an expert's book in a field in which I am not an expert. If you're interested in the church you may find it useful.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Home again

Odd bits from the travel: In O'Hare's "Halstead" restaurants one joint offers Uno's personal pizzas. I like Uno's and figured they couldn't wreck one. I was very very wrong.

When the women's rest rooms in Brussels are closed for cleaning, they have no qualms about using the men's. Neither did I.

At Friday's plenary meeting we heard a description of the quench's aftermath. All the lights were broken for a long section, the region was ODH thanks to the 2 tons of helium, and the alarm systems were also broken. (Did I mention that this is some distance underground?) Result: Until Friday they couldn't legally send in an inspection team. He didn't mention the fact that the hall is now legally, though not really, a radiation area. (They haven't injected enough beam yet to make anything significantly radioactive.) It also appears that someone deleted an online logbook entry about the quench, though it was restored later. This was admitted with profuse apologies: the accelerator division is committed to transparency, the deletion was an emotional reaction...

The Brussels Air flight from Geneva had about as much leg room as a "sept place," but I had exit seats the rest of the way, and all else (even Immigrations in Chicago!) went smoothly. Well, waiting in line in Brussels to get the new boarding passes was interesting. The people in the business class had priority, and so did the passengers trying to get on the New York flight, so those of us headed for Chicago stood in an unmoving line for 15 minutes. It figures, Chicago is the Second City again.

Oh, and the seat lights on a 767 don't click on/off like the driver lights in a car. I pushed mine, because I couldn't see the control button buried beside the cushion. I expect the blister will be gone in a day or so.

Once home I rehung the bathroom door and wound up with the screws on the inside, the hinge pins in the bottom, and the lock core unexpectedly loose. The latter shifted when I tested the door. As a result the door is a little splintered, the jamb is a lot splintered, and the latch is a little bent--but it works now. I'll redo the hinges when I'm less tired.

I'm not sure how useful the trip was. I was fuzzy with lack of sleep during the day, and too tired to sleep at night. I got the package I was working on to handle two simple tests, but instead of trying to get more test cases I started working out the output. That's fuzzy, and it showed when we tried out the package. I was able to give a little instruction on how to monitor the DAQ, but the online cluster went away for over a day while I was trying to show examples. Can't win them all...

Thursday, September 25, 2008

CMS Party

Before the LHC quench, CMS had planned to have a celebration party this CMS meeting week, in honor of the culmination of years of preparation. We had it anyway, quench or no quench. There must have been about a thousand people there. I knew a dozen, and remembered the faces of another three dozen.

The party was in the SX5 building above ground, and the acoustics are terrible in that huge work area--and so of course they had a band (the Danglers--a drummer and two other guys; plus a sound man trying to balance the sound in a hall where only the base could be heard). Luckily they kept the volume down for about 3 hours (when I left).

As I wrote this a red ambulance with yellow stripe along the middle drove up to the new hostel. After 10 minutes it left without taking anybody away. Must have been minor. Last time I saw them somebody had collapsed in his car and they were working with him for over an hour.

Virdee gave the welcoming speech, of which we could understand not a single word. Did I mention the terrible acoustics? Pity: he's an articulate and enthusiastic speaker. Posters of the experiment illustrated parts of the detector, projectors cycled through pictures of people and things, and a souvenir table offered hats and shirts and other CERN (and CMS and Atlas) paraphernalia. We used 2/3 of the hall-the other third was cluttered with lifting jigs and spools of cables and supplies. I'd really like to compare before and after pictures of the hall 10 years from now. I predict that what isn't partitioned into small high rise offices will be jammed full of miscellaneous hardware and boxes and stuff. You heard it here first.(*) (BTW there are only a handful of toilets.)

For about an hour we milled around. The beer table was perpetually crowded, and the side tables with a few hors d'oeuvre, juices, and boxed wine were roped off with caution tape. Several restaurants were represented, and eventually served up some Indian dishes, pasta, gyros, and some beef stew (It was ladled by an elegant chef and garnished by a lovely assistant--but it tasted awful.) Tables to seat about 150 were provided, and when desert finger food arrived waiters carried trays about among the crowd milling or waiting in line.

By 8 the band had started again and the volume was cranking up, and I had no enthusiasm for staying until 10. As the only one of the party who'd had no wine I drove back.


(*) The big disks are never coming out of the pit again. When the experiment is done the detector will be buried in situ: parts of it will be too radioactive to fool with and nobody wants to bother with salvaging the non-radioactive parts. So the pit lid will move so we can haul small items in and out, but we won't need the assembly area for large assembly work anymore.

LHC update

Everybody knows the LHC is down until next spring, what with the combination of the broken magnets and the mandatory winter shutdown. I really don't know anything much beyond that: I've no idea whether this single point of failure is common to superconducting magnet rings, or how many magnets were damaged (they don't know yet either), or much else about details beyond what's been reported. I know there's been a lot of griping about the publicity clampdown, but given reporters' tastes for the extreme I suppose the management wanted to keep lunatic rumors from getting magnified ("Elvis sighted in black hole that ate the ring!" or "Aliens from flying saucer responsible!"). Sometimes the BBC science reporting differs from the Weekly World News only in degree.

The planning talks are all being rewritten. I read the slides for a couple of talks--one included the original slides for amusement's sake.

At the CMS party last night, I talked with a grad student from Chile who is working on Atlas. (Her CMS boyfriend brought her.) She said they were disappointed since Atlas was ready for beam, but when I answered that at least we could fix the things that weren't quite right yet, she agreed very enthusiastically. I suppose "ready for beam" means the same thing on Atlas as on CMS: "We need more time but if we really have to we can work with what we've got."

In any event, these kind of teething pains happen, and one thing I'm certain of is that the Wall Street mishaps will have a larger impact on the field, and on my career, than a simple set of broken magnets.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Fasting

I’m not sure why fasting is so important in the Bible, but there’s no denying its prominence. Fasting and prayer frequently go together too. And Nehemiah calls on his group to fast and afflict themselves before heading out.

Why go hungry?

  • Hunger would seem to be a distraction from prayer, but so is eating; so I guess it’s a wash which is better as far as distractions go, though hunger lasts longer than eating does. I seem to focus better when neither hungry nor stuffed.

  • As a means of showing sorrow fasting works very well. If you’re sorry for telling your wife that her new hat looks like a cow pie, her reception will be a little frostier if you apologize while slurping an ice cream cone. It is a bit hard to convince someone that sorrow for your offenses preoccupies your mind if you are simultaneously indulging yourself.

    God shouldn’t really need convincing, though, since He already knows our hearts and knows how sorry we are. Of course that cuts both ways—He also knows just how “un-sorry” we are at the same time. Given that we have mixed motives and divided hearts, fasting and self-denial might then be ways we try to “break the tie” by adding actions to the penitent side. Of course if we get carried away with the idea that our self-denial earns us something, we defeat its purpose. Your wife won’t be moved much by the claim that she has to forgive your ill-chosen description simply because you skipped lunch.

  • To what extent does a thought or intention have reality without some kind of action? OK, that’s too huge a question, so let’s bite off smaller ones: How far should someone credit your intentions if you don’t even start to act? Is someone obedient if they are never given a command to obey?

    We can answer by asserting that “God knows everything” and that He will of course know the thoughts and intents of the heart. It is nevertheless possible that the question about obedience is not a well-posed question—that it may not have an answer. If faith without works is dead, then possibly repentance without at least an effort at changing or making amends is likewise dead.

    I’m not saying that our efforts to amend or make amends are adequate, but that the absence of even feeble efforts suggests an absence of intent; and if an intention isn’t intended then I’m not sure what it is, if anything.

    If intention without action is somewhat unreal, then fasting to show sorrow is a way to make sure our sorrow is/becomes real.

  • It is also possible that fasting was designed in from the start, and might still exist in the absence of sorrow and sin. I notice that people often seek out contrasts: going camping when they could stay comfortably at home; taking roller coaster rides when they’d have a heart attack if their car did the same things; and so on. Feasts are natural, and their contrast is a fast.

    In addition there’s the evidence of menstruation. The inconvenience and cramps give the husband and wife a regular fast from sex. I can’t speak to the cramps, but it certainly looks as though the inconvenience was part of the human organism from the start, which would suggest that the fast was part of the design from the start.(*)

    Why would there be fasting? Perhaps it serves as a regular reminder that we are more than bodies—a celebration that we transcend our bodies. It is a reminder that we are not self-sufficient or self-sustaining.

    Since by hypothesis this kind of fast is non-sorrowful, it would be a kind of celebration, and therefore ought to have been filled with something to celebrate: every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, perhaps?

For the honor of truth I have to admit—I almost never fast. I sometimes skip lunch at work, but I’ve found that there’s often a price to be paid for this in the work performance that afternoon. I’m not going to inflict my fasts on others, and I’ve been too lazy to devise a workable structure for fasting at home.

Therefore this is all observation and theory, and very little practice: an odd situation for an experimentalist. I suppose I should correct the discrepancy.


(*) Which suggests that 365 Nights, while a noble gift, might be slightly misguided.

What's up?

As you could tell from this blog’s description, this was originally supposed to be a group blog for the family. My ambition was to be more of a "content provider" a la Den Beste's model rather than a linker/commenter a la Instapundit. It hasn't quite panned out the way I expected. It became clear pretty quickly that I had to maintain at least a small amount of privacy for the kids' sake, so the reader has missed out on a lot of hilarious misadventures; and I often found that I could make some small comment on events but had nothing hugely profound beyond that.

I didn't enable comments because I don't always have time to review the site, and spammers quickly make a nice site ugly. This lack is unfortunate: many of the sites I read have lucid and valuable regular commenters. I read my email regularly, though.

I thought it might be interesting to look over the weblogs I've been reading fairly regularly, to see what has changed. The short answer is that I read fewer linkers. Some of those I used to read have quit blogging, and some changed tone or had commenters change their tone for them.

Just for laughs, and perhaps for your interest, these are some of the regulars.

Now that Middle Daughter is back from Senegal, I don't read the (no-longer-updated) blogs her friends wrote.

Do I have to say that Opinions expressed by these folks bear no necessary relationship to my own?

  • Science
    • Not Even Wrong by Peter Woit: postings on High Energy Physics doings, mostly theory, which are almost entirely general public readable. Not a fan of string theory :-). He wrote a book of the same title about string theory.
    • Resonaances: intermittent postings from a CERN theorist on events and interesting results. Fun to read.
    • John Baez: a mathematical physicist who's been writing about his and other's doings in mathematical physics for years. He has lucid explanations archived of many interesting aspects of the field, some of which I almost understand. Highly recommended.
    • Tomaso Dorigo: an Italian colleague on both CDF and CMS, writing about his experiences, a little about Italian politics (which I seriously don't understand!) and new physics results. Alas, his days as a rumor exposititor are over--some CDF folks complained about him talking about results before the results were blessed as ready, and he agreed to post only about blessed work. He was on shift during the LHC commissioning week, except that on the actual day all shift workers were replaced with "experts." He politely omitted an explanation of why.
    • SciTech Daily: Not exactly a blog, more of an aggregator of science stories, broken down into columns of "real stuff," "new books," and "opinion" (the latter is not generally valuable).
    • Cronaca: Mostly pointers to interesting articles in archaeology, which has always been an interest of mine.
  • Religion
    • Internet Monk: A Kentucky Baptist preacher with thoughtful and sometimes very personal postings on evangelicalism and ministry. He neither hides nor glories in his warts or his doubts. Highly recommended.
    • Touchstone Magazine's blog. A meeting place for all sorts, discussing modern religion and society: Catholic, Evangelical, Orthodox, etc. Agree or disagree, you'll find intelligent and knowledgeable commenters.
    • The Anchoress: Postings on religion and society. Recently there's been more about elections than I like, but it is still an interesting window on another part of the landscape.
    • Catholic and Enjoying it: Mark Shea also enjoys pronouncing on all manner of things. He refers to "The Evil Party" and "The Stupid Party" in America :-)
    • Unmedia, the blog of a Shiite physicist, moved and reorganized and I haven't been back to it in quite a while. Evangelical Outpost also moved and reorganized (and he'd been recycling posts and writing about politics a lot), and I've not been back there either.
  • Local (Dane County area: what's going on here that I didn't hear about?)
    • Life in the Great Midwest: A group blog writing about personal and general events. Dan is from Madison, and I've learned a few things about the area I live in.
    • Ann Althouse is a law professor at the UW, and one of the better known names in the blogosphere. She is prolific, general, quirky and personal; and popular for good reason.
    • Atomic Trousers: is the blog of a local newsman. He includes more sports than I'm interested in, and I don't watch his clips of him on TV, so I may be dropping this one.
    • There's a big Dane County blog collective, but although I've tried several times I've never found anything very interesting there. I found more interest and amusement in a single comment by "Ghost of a Flea" on Althouse than the whole collective. Your mileage may vary.
  • Humor (loosen the bowstring from time to time)
    • Lileks is a very good writer who works for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. His writing is generally personal, and keeps you interested even in things you don't usually think about. He writes on weekdays and I highly recommend him.
    • Stuff White People Like: feels like it is starting to wind down, but it has been hilarious. Look at the archives. You can guess the theme from the title.
    • I Can Has Cheezburger? shows photos (usually of cats) with humorous captions. Fun, and sometimes very good. The ratio of "Honey, come look at this one!" to the total is about 1/12, which is pretty good.
    • Iowahawk: Original satirical works, posted intermittently, generally on political or social topics. Usually good, and sometimes very good.
  • Personal Blogs
    • S. Weasel She photoshops things that amuse her and works in an animal refuge. We're amused too.
    • The Philosopher Mom: Raising 9 kids and teaching philosophy. Ever contemplated what a school morning would be like, or negotiating a family-only outing with eleven voices in the mix?
    • Eve Tushnet Literature and society from a woman who says she's "gayer than sunshine." She posts about weekly, but writes for other sites and journals as well.
  • Social Comment
    • David Warren: a Canadian columnist writing about society and posting his columns online. I learned a lot about Canada from him.
    • Winds of Change: a group blog covering society and war and events from a variety of interests.
    • Belmont Club: Richard Fernandez is a Philippine writer with a good eye for American trends and a taste for ending his columns with poetry. Thoughtful. I recently carped that he was trying to post too often, but even so he is still better than most of the pros.
    • Hog on Ice: Steve wrote Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man, so some of the blog is devoted to food, some to religion, some to society... He often throws out requests for advice to his faithful readers.
    • Classical Values: a couple of social and political observers with libertarian leanings; literate and knowledgeable. And fond of pit bulls.
    • Assistant Village Idiot: Can you resist a title like that? He works for a hospital in New England.
  • News
    • I don't have much time to read Rantburg these days. It is a good news aggregator, but it can take a long time to go through it. You won't find a lot of its news in the usual locations (see below); it pulls from sources around the world. Some of the comments are rather tart and not always friendly.
    • BBC Broad if not deep coverage around the world. Their science editor could be a little more skeptical.
    • NY Times. Their science section is usually pretty interesting, and their world coverage sometimes complements BBC's.
    • Drudge Report Matt Drudge is a famous idiosyncratic news aggregator. I'm told some newspapers spend time trying to figure out how to get him to link to a story--a link from him can generate a half million hits.
    • Wired News Techie-type news; some hard news, some nerdy, and some goofy. If you're nerdy you probably already know about it.
    • Google News. I hear this is the number one news aggregator. I actually don't find it all that useful, and will probably be dropping it soon. Most of their news categories are ones I don't follow, and their algorithm seems to pick secondary reports.

There are quite a few other good sites that I like to look at now and then (Mark Steyn, Instapundit, Chicago Boyz, etc), but who has time?

Monday, September 15, 2008

Lord Jones

James includes the line about "Lord Jones is dead" in his list of Chestertonia below. Actually, some of the late lamented Lord Joneses in the newspaper are fascinating people, and I wish I'd heard about them sooner. Take General Hoff, for example. You'll have to wade through the whole list of obits, unfortunately, as there is no separate link to this one.
In 1958, he returned to Madison and served as a pilot in the Wisconsin Air National Guard (WI ANG) until 1989, when he retired as Air Commander of Truax Air Base and Wing Commander of the 128th Tactical Fighter Wing with more than 6000 hours flying time, including 1000 hours in the A-10 Thunderbolt II. As Commander, Hoff lead the 128th TFW back into the jet age following its near deactivation and the removal of its jets in the 1970s, giving the base its working motto, "Dedicated to Excellence." He also graduated from the U.S. Air Force Air War College in 1975 and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in 1978. General Hoff worked regularly with Congress in the WI ANG congressional liaison program, which he initiated. Senator William Proxmire awarded General Hoff the Reverse Golden Fleece Award in 1984, for using his own money to purchase and expedite the placement of safety clips on all Air Force, ANG and Air Force Reserve A-10 pilot air hoses to prevent inadvertent disconnect at high G forces in flight. The G-suit modification, which he designed and then implemented in a test program at Truax before receiving U.S.A.F. approval to equip every A-10 unit in the military, took three months and cost \$1,100; Air Force experts had told General Hoff it would cost tens of thousands of dollars and take two years to accomplish the same result.

Mrs James

Chestertonia

How about something completely different and unoriginal?

Some quotes from G. K. Chesterton


I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.

The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.

Coincidences are spiritual puns.

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.

I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.

Journalism largely consists of saying Lord Jones is Dead to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

The only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one before it.

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

The one really rousing thing about human history is that, whether or no the proceedings go right, at any rate, the prophecies always go wrong. The promises are never fulfilled and the threats are never fulfilled. Even when good things do happen, they are never the good things that were guaranteed. And even when bad things happen, they are never the bad things that were inevitable. You may be quite certain that, if an old pessimist says the country is going to the dogs, it will go to any other animals except the dogs; if it be to the dromedaries or even the dragons. ... It was as if one weather prophet confidently predicted blazing sunshine and the other was equally certain of blinding fog; and they were both buried in a beautiful snow-storm and lay, fortunately dead, under a clear and starry sky.

We have a suffocating sense of luxury and no sense at all of liberty. All the pleasure-hunters seem to be themselves hunted. All the children of fortune seem to be chained to the wheel. There is very little that really even pretends to be happiness in all this sort of harassed hedonism.

Customs are generally unselfish. Habits are nearly always selfish.

When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them.

My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday.

Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.

Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God.

When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.

There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.

The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.

These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.

Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.

All men thirst to confess their crimes more than tired beasts thirst for water; but they naturally object to confessing them while other people, who have also committed the same crimes, sit by and laugh at them.

All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive.

Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. But the artists find it harder.

Though the academic authorities are actually proud of conducting everything by means of Examinations, they seldom indulge in what religious people used to describe as Self-Examination. The consequence is that the modern State has educated its citizens in a series of ephemeral fads.

Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games which it is most attached is called, Keep tomorrow dark, and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) Cheat the Prophet. The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. Then they go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.

The man who says, "My critically discerning intellect can no longer credit the doctrine of the Trinity" typically means "I'm sleeping with my neighbor's wife."

Friday, September 12, 2008

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.

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

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.

Sunday, September 07, 2008

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

Saturday, September 06, 2008

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 ...

Friday, September 05, 2008

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?

Monday, September 01, 2008

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.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

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.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

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.

Friday, August 15, 2008

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!"

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

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.

Saturday, August 09, 2008

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) ...

Friday, August 08, 2008

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.