Baring False Witness

An Orange County woman complains she has been raped at gunpoint by a gang of men.  The state gives her eighteen hundred dollars from a fund for rape victims.

Six men are charged.  But one of the men gives the police a videotape - which makes it abundantly clear that no coercion was involved in the encounter. 

Now the woman is being prosecuted.

If you're doing something consensual
But are worried about an eventual
False charge of rape...
Keep the tape.

Inside Job

We had an interesting jail break last week.  A guard let some prisoners stage an escape.  

Why?  Allegedly to embarass our county sheriff.

Why?  Allegedly to affect the upcoming sheriff's election.

I know there's dirty tricks
In politics,
But letting bad guys make a break
Takes the cake.

Fontamara

We read Fontamara, Ignazio Silone's first novel, for our book club. What I liked about the book is the from-the-inside portrayal of Italian peasantry struggling to come to grips with the Fascist takeover of their country.

Silone himself came from such a background, and this was his first novel. His early relationship to socialism and fascism was "complicated." He was deeply involved in socialist politics, but was also secretly informing the fascists about socialist doings.

Anyway, it's not thrilling, but it's short, and somehow charmed me with peasants I probably wouldn't want be eager to spend time with in real life.

They were simple-minded,
But strangely shrewd.
Under the Fascists
Their world came unglued.

Mmmetaphor

For our Valentine's date,
We ate rather late
At a place in The Heart of Italy.

Doesn't that neighborhood name work out prettily?

Notebook Transplant

My Dell notebook is still on the critical list. I'm pretty sure the motherboard is cracked back by the power jack. I can run it for a little while - on battery power only - and I have to be careful to keep the motherboard stable.

Not a good set-up for backing the data off the thing!

Fortunately, today I was able to take my hard drive out of my notebook, and stick it in another same-model notebook. This same-model notebook started up just fine with my hard drive in it, and I was able to back up my data to a USB hard drive.

One program noticed the transplant activity and complained. That was Norton Antivirus. It wanted to be reactivated across the internet or else it was going to refuse to work at all. So I turned it off for the duration of the transplant. Presumably this was some kind of anti-piracy feature.

One trouble with piracy is that it leads to all these pain-in-the-behind anti-piracy features!

The pirates are singing and drinking rum,
While I'm coping with features that leave me numb.

Thoughts on the Cartoon Controversy

In some ways this is a manufactured controversy, but the principle of the right to a free press is the most important thing at stake. This includes freedom from both government and vigilante assault.

Outraged Muslims ought not to kill, nor threaten to kill, moviemakers, novelists, and cartoonists. They should feel free to boycott the newspapers that publish the cartoons, to hold peaceful protests, and to write angry letters to editors.

If you don't want to get people mad, you have to be careful about making fun of their beliefs. If you do want to get people mad, it's pretty easy, because most people believe some pretty incredible things.

I want to say a word in favor of Muslims. I have known a fair number of them, and they seem to be largely reasonable people. Let it be said, they were American Muslims. They were committed to classic American values of free speech and civilized discussion. I recognize that the world's religions are not exactly equivalent, but Islam and Christianity and Judaism are all close relatives theologically. I don't think there is a special difficulty concerning Muslim beliefs.

I think the union of religion and state is an unholy marriage. Unfortunately, in most "Muslim countries" there is exactly such a union, with the state taking the form of a dictatorship, and with the established religion taking a fanatical bent. I would say there is something about such set-ups that seems to encourage religious fanaticism. Part of it might be that when your material opportunities are stifled, your thoughts may turn to mystical fantasies and dreams of revenge against enemies real or imagined.

It would certainly be great
If some of these places could separate
Mosque and state.

What Is Democracy?

Yaron Brook has written a letter to the editor (found on Noodlefood) which begins:

"President Bush has staked America's security on his policy of spreading 'democracy'--i.e., unlimited majority rule--throughout the Middle East."

Bush definitely has a lot riding on the spread of democracy. But is democracy truly "unlimited majority rule"?

It's the "unlimited" part that makes me wary.
Government without limits gets scary.

Ready Or Not Reading

It looks like we will do a staged reading of my play, "Ready Or Not," on the afternoon of Sunday, March 5, at the Beverly Art Center in Chicago. It's a free event, although there will be a cash bar. We've got a director, Joe Collins, and he's casting now.

I'm quite excited.
All readers of this blog are invited.

In a staged reading, the actors have the scripts in their hands, but they move around the stage act out most of the action. Typically they are not in costume, and they don't have a full set or properties. And the actors haven't polished their interpretations of the characters. So to enjoy a staged reading takes less imagination than just reading a play, but it still takes more imagination that seeing a finished production. We're doing this staged reading to see how the play "plays" and also to see how an audience reacts. There will be a discussion after the reading so audience members who want to can say what's on their minds.

Here's a spoiler-lite summary of the play:

"Ready Or Not" is a full-length romantic comedy played on a single set – a suburban living room. The cast features two women and three men.

The play explores loyalty and betrayal, in business and in love, and the particular difficulty of finding your bearings when your world goes into a spin. Ed, a thirty-something businessman, returns home after a year in a Mexican jail, on charges of bribing a public official. Ed looks forward to a warm welcome from his wife and his company. Accompanying him on the trip back is a younger Mexican woman with an agenda of her own. He finds, to his shock, that his wife means to leave him for one of his co-workers who has introduced her to the pleasures of opera. On top of that, Ed’s boss has no intention of letting Ed return to work. But Ed has a secret, and once it comes out a cascade of confrontation and revelation follow.

Characters:
Ed, earnest and glad to be out of jail
Susan, his wife, not so glad to see him
Kyle, his coworker and not-so-good friend
Norma, a young woman from Mexico
Mr. Thompson, a boss who is all business

La Bella Vita

Tonight I saw La Bella Vita, a comedic play set entirely in the backroom of a fancy Italian restaurant. The story focused on the characters, lives, and somewhat flitting loves of the 20-something waitstaff.

There's much rushing about as the characters philosophize about love and sex and life. The title, Italian for "The Beautiful Life," is obviously ironic, since these are rather messy lives. But the characters were young and energetic and the play ends on a hopeful note.

But it's not clear whether
They'll get their acts together.

2/9

I saw the announcement on a bulletin board.

At Northwestern University, there was to be a showing of The Fountainhead, a movie I had never seen.

On the appointed February night, I rode the "L" out to Evanston and found the right building.

After the film, I went to the discussion in the cafeteria.

There was a particular girl there who caught my attention. I thought she was intelligent and attractive, and I felt there was "something about her."

33 years ago, upon this date,
I met my mate.

Someone Squealed

It has been widely reported that three of the most insulting cartoons inflaming the mobs were not really in the Danish newspaper. They were mysteriously added to the collection that the mob leaders were passing around.

One of them purportedly showed the Prophet as a pig.

Now it appears, this particular "cartoon" wasn't even a cartoon! It was a photo of some guy from a French pig-squealing contest!

If a French guy wants to dress up like a pig and squeal,
It's no big deal!

Who Needs to Concede?

Does conceding keep mobs at bay?
I've noticed it has a way
Of stirring up more
Wrath at your door.

I'm posting this from my old Win98 desktop because my XP notebook is on the fritz. I'm pretty sure I know what the problem is - something called the power jack that is soldered to the motherboard. But I hate taking portables apart since they're so delicate, and from what I've read you have to take everything apart to get to this piece, and it's not like I'm handy with a soldering iron anyway.

On my wife's advice I looked up the warranty. Yep, 3 year warranty, expired in November 2005.

Hopefully someone else can revive
This beast once I backup the drive.

McCain Flames Obama

That's the Trib headline, anyway.

Here's the 2nd paragraph: 'In a flaming letter, McCain accuses Obama of “disingenuousness” for allegedly backing out of a commitment he made to McCain to participate in a bipartisan effort at lobbying reform.'

"Disingenousness"?

Maybe this counts as a flame attack in the Senate, and if you read McCain's whole letter it's definitely angry and sarcastic. But is this truly a flame?

It got kind of bitter
And snarky,
But never mentioned Hitler
Or his friends the Nazi party.

Qua flame,
It's lame.

Cartoons Heard Round The World

We face once again the conflict between freedom of speech and the alleged right not to be offended.

There is an easy way, actually, not to be offended, and that is: Don't look at the offending material. That is the way freedom of speech works. I'm free to draw a cartoon, and you're free not to look at it!

But... no. There is a certain joy many people find in being offended. Righteous anger is often an enjoyable emotion, particularly for miserable people, particularly when experienced as part of a group that shares your rage.

Your lives on earth are hell?
Well, wave your knives and yell!

Gulag Drama

This afternoon I attended a reading of a play by Bill Rumbler. It was set mostly in a Siberian gulag prison in 1938.

The central character is a woman convicted of political crimes in one of the big Stalinist purges. She keeps telling herself, and anyone who will listen, that the charges against her were all a big mistake, and that soon she will be freed.

Then she hears a rumor that women who give birth in the gulag will be pardoned. From that rumor springs the central action of the play, which shows how people form relationships to fight dehumanization.

It was interesting seeing a play about the Soviets now, when the Soviet threat is no more. It felt a lot like seeing a play about the Nazis - like that play about Heidegger's love affair with Hannah Arendt. You see the sheer human suffering and self-delusion involved in living under totalitarianism.

I feel no regret
That the red sun has set
On the Soviet threat.

Teatro Luna

I went to see Teatro Luna's show: S-E-X-Oh!

That's a bilingual pun. Sex in Spanish is sexo. The performers claim that the Spanish version of the word sounds dirtier than the English version. What a difference an "o" makes!

The show was mostly English, with some Spanish here and there.

I heard
A few new words
I bet
I should forget.

It's an all-Latina ensemble. It's not a play, it's more like sketches based partly on the performers' real life histories in the area of sex, touching on topics like abortion, pregnancy, coming of age, etc. It's often quite funny. But it's sometimes sad or upsetting, too. The performances were vibrant and the audience ate it up.

S-E-X-Oh!
Is an excellent show.

Waste Not

You know the vegans.
Now meet the freegans.
They dumpster dive for dumplings and dim-sum
Not because they're bums
But because they don't want to waste
Stuff that still has an okay taste.

If invited, I'll decline
To dine.

Inner Selves

The other day at work my friend said: "I think you have a very active inner teenager."

I replied: "Inner teenagers have very active inner two year olds."

I don't really buy this model of the psyche. But if you have inner selves of all ages, it must get awfully crowded in there.

To simplify the model we could assume a full system back-up is done every birthday.

Imagine - 53
Of me!
It's hard to believe my brain contains
Such wonderful redundancy.

SotU

Am I bad for not wanting to watch the State of the Union address?

Can't we go back to Thomas Jefferson's method of just mailing it to the Congress?

I suppose that would not look good on TV. And it wouldn't give Cindy Sheehan a chance to get arrested.

I'd definitely like it better
As a letter.

By Request

Ergosum was asking about my Ayn Rand poems.

Here's "Arrival". I wrote the first stanza when I was in college. I always felt like it needed a second stanza. I finally wrote the second stanza a few years ago. The poem doesn't mention her name, but it's an imaginative re-creation of what she might have felt like when she arrived in New York after getting out of Russia.

Not knowing all the words for what she feels,
She doesn’t worry, words and knowledge will come.
In time she thinks, in time, for now she reels,
Giddy with breaths of free air, gazing up at the blue dome
Of sky and the towers that scrape it. “What
Evil could lurk here?” she asks. “I can’t imagine any.
And even if there were, my bonds are cut
And – Ah! Joy gives me strength! Who could defeat me?”

Does anyone stop to stare at the immigrant girl
Who twirls on the sidewalk with those eyes –
So large and brilliant as they sparkle with delight?
Does anyone wonder what strange new surprise
She holds, or guess that someday she will write
A tale to shake the shoulders of the world?


The other poem is called "Valhalla." She's buried in a cemetary in Valhalla, NY. I wonder if she chose the cemetery for the town name, since it's named for the Norse word for the afterlife of heroes. A friend of mine attended the burial service, and described to me this striking thing that happened with a flock of geese flying down. I don't believe in portents or an afterlife, but I liked the symbol of the geese as an image of her ideas and spirit living on triumphantly in our imaginations.

They laid her in the ground,
The geese flew overhead,
And in a "V" they swooped around,
Then shot away.

As if to say,
She isn't really dead.
Her spirit's merely fled
To where the heroes play.

By Any Other Name

Ayn Rand: My Fiction-Writing Teacher, by Erika Holzer, arrived in the mail today. It looks chatty and interesting. Some of it's a summary of Rand's advice. Some of it's the story of how Holzer worked to apply Rand's insights. Also included is some short fiction by Holzer.

I've decided that for selling books, it helps to have "Ayn Rand" in the title. I suspect I'm not the only one to notice this. Some people have even renamed their books to work her name in. Nathaniel Branden first published Judgment Day. But after some revising it became My Years With Ayn Rand. David Kelley first published Truth And Toleration. But after some revising, it became The Contested Legacy Of Ayn Rand.

I've written a few poems that were about Rand in some way. One of them is called "Arrival." So I could just change the title to "Ayn Rand Arrives". Then I could call my next poetry collection:

Ayn Rand Arrives And Other Poems

That would be easy,
And enormously cheesy.

Muddy Buddies

Throw a ball
Into the stall?
They won't be fooled.

As a rule,
You must use power
To make dogs take a shower.

CSI Tips

According to this article, murderers are getting evidence-hiding advice from high-tech forensic shows like the CSI series.

' "They're actually educating these potential killers even more," said Capt. Ray Peavy, also of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and head of the homicide division. "Sometimes I believe it may even encourage them when they see how simple it is to get away with on television." '

Whoa. On shows like CSI, no one gets away with it. The moral is always that crime does not pay, that the smartest criminal always makes a mistake, and that you cannot fake reality completely.

A grimly funny part of the article was about a guy who killed two women and tried to clean up all the evidence. He washed his hands with bleach to get rid of their blood. He burned the bodies. Then he tried to throw one of the weapons he had used - a crowbar - into a lake.

But the lake was frozen.

"He shouted a profanity when the crowbar remained on the surface."

Though you make your plan ever so neatly,
You will find you can't fake it completely.

Example of Sound Effects in Free Verse

This is a famous poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. It would be usually be described as free verse. But he uses a lot of internal sound effects anyway, and he writes in a fairly regular iambic rhythm with line lengths varying from 1 beat to 4 beats. I put bold on some of the more noticeable echoing sound effects, including rhyme, alliteration, and assonance. I put rhythmic notations after each line. And, yes, rhythmic notations in English can usually be argued about.

Constantly risking absurdity /--/--/--
and death -/
whenever he performs -/-/-/
above the heads-/-/
of his audience--/--
the poet like an acrobat-/-/-/-/
climbs on rime/-/
to a high wire of his own making--//-/-/-
and balancing on eyebeams-/-/-/-
above a sea of faces-/-/-/-
paces his way/--/
to the other side of the day--/-/--/
performing entrechats-/-/-/
and sleight-of-foot tricks-/--/
and other high theatrics-/-/-/-
and all without mistaking-/-/-/-
any thing/-/
for what it may not be-/-/-/-/
For he's the super realist-/-/-/-
who must perforce perceive-/-/-/
taut truth//
before the taking of each stance or step-/-/-/-/-/
in his supposed advance-/-/-/
toward that still higher perch--/-/-/
where Beauty stands and waits-/-/-/
with gravity-/-/
to start her death-defying leap-/-/-/-/
And he-/
a little charleychaplin man-/-/-/-/
who may or may not catch-/-/-/
her fair eternal form-/-/-/
spreadeagled in the empty air-/-/-/-/
of existence--/-

Heart-Stopping Odds

Say you're going to experience cardiac arrest. You can either be in a hospital, or a Las Vegas casino. Which location gives you better odds?

Vegas, baby.

"Medical research shows that casino visitors whose hearts suddently stop survive at higher rates even than people who happen to go into cardiac arrest while visiting a hospital. 'The safest place in America to suffer cardiac arrest is a casino,' says Bryan Bledsoe, a George Washington University emergency-medicine doctor and co-author of textbooks for paramedics." (Wall St. Journal, Weekend Edition, Jan 28-29 '06)

According to the Journal article, this is mostly due to a one-man crusade on the part of Richard Hardman, a local paramedic who had originally studied to be a doctor. He campaigned to get the casinos to install defibrillators and to train their security guards to use them.

The empirical success of the casino's defibrillator program was, ahem, shocking.

It helps, of course, that all the time you're in a casino you're being monitored by remote control cameras.

Hardman is still a paramedic, but says he no longer feels bad about not becoming a doctor, since he figures that he has accomplished something huge anyway.

So, for cardiac arrest,
The location I suggest
Is Sin City in Nevada
Where they happen to have a lotta
Guards waiting to restart
Your heart.

Support Your Local WalMart

There's a particular WalMart that was in the news lately, in Evergreen Park, IL. The backstory is that WalMart wanted to open a story on Chicago's South Side, but they couldn't get the City Council to give them some zoning changes, especially after it turned into a "we don't want WalMart" political uproar.

So WalMart opened one block outside the city limits. They opened today. My wife drove by a few minutes ago. She said there was a huge amount of traffic on 95th St. from people going to the new store.

WalMart got slammed,
But the store is jammed.

Addict

There's a hole in my soul and it's fillable
Only by echoing syllables.

Wicked with Music

Some of you may remember that I didn't much like the book, Wicked. But tonight we went to see the musical version. I liked it a lot better. First of all, it was very well rhymed. I did not love the music - I didn't leave humming any of the tunes. The production was spectacular. The performances were lively. The plot was tightened - and lightened.

I didn't much care for the book,
But the musical's worth a look.

Law of the Leak

If you know something special and leak it,
The information will spread.

Three people can keep a secret,
If two of them are dead.

Renewable Resource

I know their records aren't complete
But still I think it's kind of neat.
LifeSource tells me that on balance
I've now donated four whole gallons.

That's 32 units if you're a scientific type.
But "gallons" is better for hoopla and hype.

Support Our Troops

Robert Bidinotto has an outraged post about a few American writers from the left and right who do not support American soldiers.

I guess I had been thinking about this topic myself, since earlier tonight I had Kipling's "Tommy" going through my head:

"Yes, making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, and they're starvation cheap."

Kipling can't be topped,
So I'll just stop.

Party Line Brains

Brain scans of staunch party members - Republicans and Democrats alike - show a tendency to ignore information that could threaten their candidates.

' "We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. '

Remember, no cognition, no cognitive dissonance!

What I think is funny
Is that we had to spend money
To prove beyond a doubt
That some people just tune out.

Hotline

The Sheriff of Cook County has a website that shows a phone number to call for Inmate Information. It's a cute phone number, although in context it's kind of grim: 1-773-869-JAIL.

Until yesterday the website listed a different number: 1-800-425-JAIL, which you can still see in Google's cache of the page. As it turns out, the sheriff's office let this number lapse a year ago, due to budget cuts, but forgot to take if off their website. And in the meantime, a phone-sex company bought the number.

According to the Trib, the number directs you to another number "for some stimulating conversation."

When you've got a loved one in jail
And you're trying to make his bail,
You just want information,
Not a hot conversation.

Sleep Tight

Good night,
Sleep tight,
Don't let the bedbugs bite.

I always enjoyed that little rhyme. I remember asking my mother what bedbugs were, and she told me how they used to be a problem but weren't anymore.

They're baaack. And they're hard to get rid of.

Apparently we partly got rid of them with DDT. But then we got rid of DDT.

They're making a particular resurgence in New York.

If you have leftover DDT,
Sell it now in NYC.

Demotivational Posters

Stephen Hicks has a link to some "demotivational" posters. His favorite is this one.

I suppose
That since these posters are written in prose,
They don't feel a need for demotivational verse.

But I think I could make people feel even worse.

With rhymes so bleak
They'd be dead in a week.

Self-Made Man

Here's an NY Times review of a book by a female reporter, Norah Vincent, who passed herself off as a man, and who is now telling her tale of what men are really like.

I liked this section of the review, which recounts her on-the-team observations of a blue-collar bowling league.

' "They took people at face value," writes Vincent of Ned's teammates, a plumber, an appliance repairman and a construction worker. "If you did your job or held up your end, and treated them with the passing respect they accorded you, you were all right." Neither dumb lugs nor proletarian saints, Ned's bowling buddies are wont to make homophobic cracks and pay an occasional visit to a strip club, but they surprise Vincent with their lack of rage and racism, their unflagging efforts to improve Ned's atrocious bowling technique and "the absolute reverence with which they spoke about their wives," one of whom is wasting away from cancer. '

One of the funnier aspects of her story, is that she went on dates with women. She had been on dates with women before, since she's a lesbian. But she had never been there as a man before, and she didn't much like it:

"...as a single man dating women, I often felt attacked, judged, on the defensive. Whereas with the men I met and befriended as Ned there was a a presumption of innocence -- that is, you're a good guy until you prove otherwise -- with women there was quite often a presumption of guilt: you're a cad like every other guy until you prove otherwise."

Step in the other guy's shoes,
You get a different view.

Old and New

Harry Binswanger is giving a lecture this summer on perception:

"By integrating Objectivism with recent scientific work in the psychology of perception, especially that of the late J. J. Gibson, Dr. Binswanger provides a new perspective on perception as an active, physically determined process.".

I'm not sure how new this perspective is, since David Kelley already wrote a whole book defending the Objectivist theory of perception - with lots of citations to the work of James J. Gibson.

In 1981, excerpts from this book even appeared in a journal published and edited by Binswanger.

I wonder if it's his intention
To even give Kelley a mention.

Bin Hidin'

He's on the loose,
But he's got a truce.

He swears
The terms are fair.

I wonder if we're getting close.
Does he fear he'll soon be toast?

As for his proposal,
It goes in the disposal.

Hamlet and Muffins

A friend mentioned in her blog that writing English papers seemed to consist of taking a work of literature and some unrelated thing - like Hamlet, and muffins - and relating them.

Didn't Hamlet say nuffin'
About muffins?

After all that huffin' and puffin'
About whether to be or not,
He got awful hungry for something hot -
Namely a muffin with chocolate stuffin'.

Parallel Lines

Here's part of the quote that Rand at first meant to put at the beginning of The Fountainhead: "...it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost." (Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.)

Here is part of Roark's letter to Wynand: "What you think you've lost can neither be lost nor found."

I just finished reading Beyond Good and Evil again, this time for my book club, and this parallel jumped out at me. It's almost like Roark read some Nietzsche too.

Nietzsche
Isn't peachy,
But he's loaded
With lines that get quoted
Or at least alluded to,
Which is really what these words do.

Other Blogger Attendees Heard From

Ergosum attended the Yaron Brook debate and wrote up a more detailed accounting than I have. Also, he spoke one on one with the two men.

Actually, it turns out that Ergosum was sitting in the row ahead of us, and even had a conversation with Marsha.

We also attended with gregorysparr who regards himself as a Truman Democrat. He's a political debating whiz, and even spontaneously got up to give a 3 minute counterargument against Brook. In the end he seemed very impressed with Brook's debating skills and personality, and spent some one-on-one time talking with Brook about Israel, about which Brook knows a lot of detail since he grew up there.

I just wanted to mention,
It was practically a Chicago blogger convention.

For and Against Foreign Aid

We had a good time at the Yaron Brook v. Dan Slater debate at the U of Chicago. Dan Slater is a bright young professor who acknowledged that foreign aid often had untoward consequences, but thought it served practical purposes nonetheless. Yaron Brook was more forceful, more controversial, and more consistent. Actually, towards the end of the discussion, Dr. Slater remarked that Dr. Brook was remarkably consistent.

I will try to write up something more detailed. I have 2 napkins-full of notes. But it is midnight and I still have to walk the dogs and I have to be at work tomorrow morning.

Slater did argue that foreign aid served our foreign policy goals. Pakistan was a case in point, he said. We gave Pakistan a bunch of cash, and they give us some help with Al Qaida and Taliban people in the borderlands. Brook argued that it was a waste to give them the money, that Pakistan would have done nothing to us if we had simply gone into the borderlands with our military, because they would have been afraid to engage.

On the moral point, the altruists turned to the Rawlsian veil of ignorance argument in defense of international aid. Brook was having none of it.

The dramatic high point, I think, came in the case of the question: is it all right for the government to take 5 dollars from you if it saved some foreign child from death by whooping cough? Brook was asked if he would want his 5 dollars back in that case. He said yes. He said he wanted to choose for himself which charitable cause he supported, that others had no business sticking their nose in his business and that others had no idea what he might need that 5 dollars for. Moreover, he argue, if the government can take 5 dollars, why not 100 dollars, why not all your money? After all, there are probably hundreds of thousands of kids who need 5 dollars just for whooping cough.

Slater replied that was a form of the slippery slope argument, of which he disapproved. Brook replied that slippery slopes were part of real life, that the US income tax was a good example of a slippery slope in American history that had proved very slippery indeed.

Writing about this is a slippery slope,
And I'm sliding in deep.
If I keep writing I have no hope
Of getting sleep.

Not the News!

I'm an addict of 24, the gut-wrenching Fox action drama starring Kiefer Sutherland. Tonight they played the first 2 episodes of the season. They started 24 a little late, because one of the NFL playoff games was also on Fox. (Bears lost. Sigh.)

While we were watching on TiVo, we got a call from a friend, a fellow 24 addict, who lives in North Carolina. He had a problem. He had watched the show to the end in North Carolina, but didn't know how it had ended. His local station had chopped off the last ten minutes of the show! Why? So they could start the local news on time.

Who needs the news when you need a good shot of fiction?

He didn't want us to send
A copy of the show,
He just wanted to know -
How did it end?

Correction - Yaron Brook Chicago Debate

Yaron Brook is going to be in Chicago tomorrow evening, January 16, debate Dan Slater about foreign policy. Yaron Brook will maintain that "The United States has no obligation to provide foreign aid." Dan Slater will oppose this proposition.

Yaron Brook is the Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute. The debate is being held at the University of Chicago. His opponent is Dan Slater who is listed on the university's political science faculty.

Marsha and I plan to attend. It's at 7:30 pm. The building is SOCIAL SCIENCES ROOM 122. [This is the correction] Social Sciences is in the university's central quadrangle, at about 59th & University. Its formal address is: 1126 East 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637

At that time of night, you can usually find street parking. There is a pay parking facility for the university's hospital at 59th & Maryland.

You can also get there on the CTA or the Metra Electric line. The CTA will get you closer. The Metra train runs less often, and you have to walk farther, but it's a nicer riding experience. If you want to take public transportation and aren't sure how, you can try this page or call the help line at: 1-312-836-7000.

I hope Dan Slater
Is a good debater,
But Yaron Brook
Is no schnook.

Peter Schwartz

Wasn't Peter Schwartz the Chairman of the Board at the Ayn Rand Institute? He seems to not be working for them anymore, based on a perusal of the staff page.

We'd heard he was gone a couple of weeks ago from a friend's email, but the website didn't reflect a change at that time. Today another friend called, having heard a rumor that Mr. Schwartz was gone. The website seems to confirm the rumor.

So, for kraorh, from a gossipy boomer,
I hope you aren't the last to hear this rumor.

The Alleys of Elmwood Park

My wife, Marsha, grew up mostly in suburban Elmwood Park, Illinois, which happened to be home to certain Tony-Soprano-like individuals.

One such individual was a man we shall call Mr. B. Once it happened that the FBI was looking for Mr. B. The fact that they were looking for him was on the news. There were unmarked cars, with men in suits, in front of Mr. B's house, waiting for him in case he came home.

Meanwhile, young Marsha was looking out her living room window, which looked across a grassy alley toward Mr. B's backyard. Sure enough, Marsha spotted Mr. B. sneaking through another neighbor's backyard, through the alley, and then into his own yard. Marsha told her mother. Her mother asked her father if they should call the FBI. Her father said "No, are you crazy?"

Thus was young Marsha's crimefighting career stymied.

Some things are slow to change. Yesterday, Joey "The Clown" Lombardo, who had evaded arrest for 9 months, was finally captured in... an Elmwood Park alley!

Those FBI guys
Finally got wise.
To catch a mobster, you
Have to check the alleys too.

Consent In Illinois

At work today, someone asked me the age of consent in Illinois. When I googled it, I quickly learned that the age of consent is 17.

I also learned that with parental consent, you can get married at 16. I'm kind of worried about these 16 year old newlyweds.

Their honeymoon may well be spent
Before they reach the age of consent.

Seated Controversy

Chicago was recently named Fattest City by some magazine. Coincidentally, the city's mass transit agency recently announced they were ordering WIDER seats for its new buses.

The Trib, in an editorial today, came out against the wider seats: "A tight bus seat may serve a salutary purpose. While squeezing into the seat, some may ponder a new diet."

Gee. Why have seats at all? Standing is more exercise! Why have buses at all? Hiking is great exercise!

Oh, wait. Even monopoly bus services still have to compete for customers. They mainly compete with cars, which have nice big comfy seats.

I've tested the seats on the bus.
I'd put my conclusion thus:
My personal posterior
Prefers something soft and superior
On which to be seated.
And in the winter, I'd like it heated.

The Division of (Reasoning) Powers

Senator Arlen Specter spent time today berating the Supreme Court for striking down laws that Congress had passed, an act he termed an insult.

Specter asked Alito whether judges have some method of reasoning superior to the method of reasoning used by the Congress.

"I would never suggest that judges have superior reasoning power," Alito said.

Of course, having reasoning power is one thing. Using it is another. What's true is that a judge's rulings are routinely scrutinized for contradictions - and can be overturned by superior courts on the basis of those contradictions. Additionally, when a high court makes a contradictory ruling, they are quickly beset by lower court rulings taking different sides of the contradiction. So the judicial review process does place some premium on not getting caught in a contradiction.

I get the impression that a lot of legislators feel much less constrained by the discipline of consistency.

Is their reasoning ability
Lacking in agility?

Or does some strange affliction
Lead them to contradiction?

If they're truly perplexed,
Let's send them logic texts.

But if they just don't care,
Let's get them out of there.

Sleep Inertia

"Sleep Inertia" is a fancy technical term for waking up groggy.

Some people have jobs where they are routinely shaken awake and asked to solve urgent problems. Doctors and firefighters are standard examples, but it occurs to me that being on call for tech support is similar.

It turns out that people aren't too good at thinking when they are in this disoriented half-awake state. The article headline reads "Sleep Inertia May Be More Debilitating Than Sleep Deprivation."

What the headline doesn't mention, is that prolonged sleep deprivation can cause visual hallucinations, which seems a bit worse than grogginess.

Sleep Inertia
Can hurtcha.

So make sure to keep
One eye open when you sleep.

Better yet, stay awake.
There are pills that you can take!

Of course your sleep-deprived brain
Will shortly go insane.

Half Way Through

The nineties ended. Then a decade came
That had no name.

Commentators squawked
We should call it the "zeroes" or "oughts".
But into town it stalked
And scared away such thoughts.

Since it doesn't have a label
We probably won't be able
To recall
It at all.

Rights Under the Lights

It's showtime for Alito!
Will the Senate veto
His tender dream
Of being Supreme?

As for the Ninth Amendment...
I'd like him to befriend it.
And if he'd defend the others, as well,
That would be swell.

"Emergent Properties" Emerge

Imagine my shock when today's Chicago Tribune had a big article that mentioned "emergent properties." That was always a fairly abstruse topic in the philosophy of biology - or so I thought. It turns out some scientists have taken that ball and run with it.

'"All of life displays emergent properties," says Utah State University plant biologist Keith Mott. "Even a lot of things that are not life display emergent properties. It means that when you get a bunch of things together they do something that's completely different from what you would expect from all of the individual components."'

It's not that the whole
Gains a mystical soul.

It's just that we're surprised
Once the parts get organized.


(Trib article from Sunday Magazine here, but registration may be required.)

Wales, Continued

Still trying to figure out what Jimmy Wales meant by wanting culture to be free, I found this helpful recounting of a talk he gave.

Among the highlights are free maps, a free dictionary, free textbooks, free old music, and free old art. Actually, we have free maps and free dictionaries online already. There's even a good free rhyming dictionary. I know, because I use them all the time. They're owned by someone and accompanied, often, by advertising. They're still "proprietary."

But, hey
I don't pay
So they're free
Enough for me.

Here's an interesting bit:

"Jimmy tells a story about receiving complaints from museums that Wikipedia contains 'unlicensed reproductions' of works that they hold in their collections. These complaints aren’t quite cease and desist letters, because the images on Wikipedia might be photos taken by Wikipedia users and released under a free license. But they are threats, designed to deter users from reproducing works of art that are in the public domain. Jimmy’s response to these letters is to write back letters encouraging museum directors to feel a sense of shame in locking away cultural works from the public… he’s not gotten any responses to these letters."

He answers the blame game
With "Shame!"

UPDATE: Wikipedia itself has an entry on the "Free Culture Movement" with good links.

WikiPleadia

Jimmy Wales, of Objectivist background and Wikipedia fame, is asking for contributions for Wikipedia. I've always liked Jimmy, and Wikipedia too. I'm just scratching my head over this:

"This is a radical strike at the heart of an increasingly shallow, proprietary and anti-intellectual culture."

Is it true that culture is becoming more proprietary? Has someone patented Western Civilization? Have Shakespeare's works been taken out of the public domain?

Give me the rights to Othello,
And I'll be a wealthy fellow.

Darth Nader

Ralph Nader makes life miserable. Take this lady for example. She's got narcolepsy. She was taking a drug named Cylert that kept her from falling asleep at random times. Now the drug is pulled off the market, after Ralph Nader's Public Citizen organization pressured the FDA to do so.

The drug can cause liver damage. But her liver tested fine.

Narcolepsy is one of those diseases that sounds comical at first. But surely it would wreck your life.

The Nanny State -
Isn't it great?
It'll wreck your existence
With its insistence
On keeping you safe.

FDA
Go away!

The Heinlein Question

stellavision commented "I often wonder how Rand would have written the novel if she had a little bit of Robert Heinlein in her -- perhaps Dagny would have set up a home with all three men!" Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, for example, features multiple-person marriages.

In most of her books
The heroine hooks
Up with two or three hotties
Who ravish her body.

So you can see how this Heinlein question comes up. You can see how one might make some guesses about her fantasy life.

In Atlas, she writes: "...she felt Francisco's presence through Rearden's mind, she felt as if she were surrendering to both men, to that which she had worshipped in both of them, that which they held in common, that essence of character which had made of her love for each an act of loyalty to both."

You might start to sense a trend
But at the novel's end
She's always down to one
Or, for poor Kira, none.

So whatever her fantasies, she doesn't think they're a good way to wrap up the story.

So if being polyamorous
Strikes you as highly glamorous
You may find the middle sizzles
But feel the finish fizzles.

In some of her public comments, she defended the possible morality of complicated "Design For Living" arrangements, but thought they presented difficulties, and still thought the ideal was one partner for life.

In her personal life
For a while she did have two men.
It ended in godawful strife
And she went back to one guy, again.

So the complicated arrangement in her own life didn't work out so well.

I know, I know,
Some will still say "Ho, Ho, Ho."
I'd say that by her own lights
She tried to do what was right.

Dagny Falls for Galt

Spoilers for Atlas Shrugged are contained in this post.


Why did Dagny fall for Galt?
(Falling right out of the skies.)
Was her judgment simply at fault
For ditching those two other guys?

She does fall for him, rather than consciously selecting him. She awakes and looks into his eyes and she is already in love. So if her judgment at fault, it's not her conscious judgment, but her subconscious.

It must have been something about his face
That made her heart go tilt -
Eyes that didn't bear a trace
Of pain or fear or guilt.

Branden, in his memoirs, recounts that "Ayn said that she did not intend Galt to be perceived as superior in any important way. He is 'merely more serene within himself...'" [JD p91] Obviously, however, Dagny does experience him as better in some important way for her.

What was it about his identity
That swept her off her feet?
I put the blame on serenity -
That made her feel complete.

As long as we're talking about degrees of serenity, I think Dagny gets a black belt in it herself. She seems to have a more even keel than anyone around her - except Galt himself.

Now, you may think that Galt's unreal,
And I don't wish to argue the question,
But whatever he was, he made Dagny feel
Something approaching obsession.

Sheepish

A lot of people call Brokeback Mountain the "gay cowboy movie."

But as any good spoiler summary reveals, they aren't exactly cowboys. In fact, it is sheep that they are taking care of.

I guess "gay sheepherder movie" doesn't have the same ring to it.

Maybe they still count as cowboys in the broader sense that they ride around on horses in the American West and wear the same hats as cowboys.

And while we're on the subject of sheep...

Why is it people only count sheep
When they're trying to go to sleep?

Why not cows?
Perhaps because a stampede would rouse
Everyone else in the house.

Saint-Andre on Art's Conceptual Nature

Peter Saint-Andre has posted a very interesting essay on Ayn Rand's esthetics. He says it was originally intended for the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, but an anonymous reader for the journal wanted him to re-work it, and he says he can't muster the energy to do that, so he's just posting it on the net.

One good point he underlines is that art, originally, was deeply intertwined with communal ceremonies that were vital to tribal life.

"Eventually, specialized art forms arose from these beginnings. In the modern West, we are accustomed to seeing these art forms as merely aesthetic and as highly personal, even subjective. By contrast, Ayn Rand sees art as of critical importance to human life. In large measure, Rand personalizes what Dissanayake has eludicated, for she sees art as crucial to one's own internal cohesion..."

Maybe that's why I can feel so disrupted when someone plays music I hate:

It offers interference
To my internal coherence.

North Avenue Beach

As I walked up to the beach people were already running into the lake. I glanced at my watch. It wasn't quite noon. They had started early. Quickly I stripped down to my swim trunks. The water was warmer than last year, about 43F (6C). The air temperature was just a little lower with a breeze out of the south. I didn't stay in long, just long enough to do one dive.

This is a free, annual event. Here are the rules:

1. Swimsuits only, no nudity (it's a family event) and no wetsuits (that's cheating).
2. Swimmers must go all the way under the water before coming out to be "official."
3. No whining!

The water's cold,
But if you're bold,
You're in it
Less than a minute.

Auld Lang Syne

At our New Year's party, after midnight and bubbly, we played charades. There's a rule against using foreign words in titles, so we got into an argument about Auld Lang Syne, which Marsha thought was Scots, not English. I maintained it was a Scottish dialect of English, but I suppose it's a fuzzy issue.

"Auld lang syne" literally means "old long since", but idiomatically means "times gone by."

Guest rhyme of the evening, courtesy of Robert Burns:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?

You Say You Want A Resolution

New Year's resolutions make money for health clubs. Lots of people sign up in January, jamming the gyms for a few months. By late March they're mostly cleared out.

It's not that resolutions are totally ineffective. Sometimes they stick. But often it takes several rounds before they do.

I'm making at least one. It's about a writing project.

No, it's not to swear off rhyme for a year.

I'll continue to make merry
With jingly commentary.

Thinner, Blonder, Whiter

I just finished reading Thinner, Blonder, Whiter.
Maguire's the name of the writer.

Our heroine's an editor in New York,
And excellent at her work,
But her long affair
With a married guy
Is going nowhere.

A friends is found frozen right at the beginning.
That sets the story spinning.
Who killed him and chilled him?

It's a tale of black and white
Where things go wrong, not right,
At least at first. But at the end
Things are roughly right again.

I did like how it ended.
Somewhat Recommended.

In the Absence of a Civilizing Structure

Kathleen Parker writes in her blog, er, syndicated column:

"Each time I wander into blogdom, I'm reminded of the savage children stranded on an island in William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies.' Without adult supervision, they organize themselves into rival tribes, learn to hunt and kill, and eventually become murderous barbarians in the absence of a civilizing structure."

Speaking of nasty attacks of written derision,
What happened to her adult supervision?

P&B

In English, at least, pride and benevolence are often or mostly thought of as feelings. But you can also view them as practices. There's no necessary conflict between them. You can respect yourself, and others too.

Benevolence
Looks over the fence.

Pride
Looks inside.

Benevolent Thoughts

There was a recent discussion about benevolence in Diana Hsieh's comment section. I was surprised by one senior Ayn Rand fan who actively dissed benevolence, indicating she much preferred justice.

Rand didn't think there was an opposition between justice and a proper benevolence toward other people. In a 1943 journal entry, she wrote: "Not love—but a benevolent neutrality as your basic attitude to your fellow men. The rest must be earned by them. Justice, not mercy."

I'm not saying she thought of benevolence as an important virtue, the way David Kelley does. But, within the context of a free society, she thought "good will toward men" was a good thing.

In "A Nation's Unity", she wrote: "Benevolence is incompatible with fear. It is only when a man knows that his neighbors have no power forcibly to interfere with his life, that he can feel benevolence toward them, and they toward him—as the history of the American people has demonstrated."

Is it a virtue? I'm not quite sure.
But liberty lets it endure.

Synchonize Your Watches

If you're really sick of 2005 and can't wait to put it behind you, I have some minor bad news - 2005 has been extended.

As the big clock ticks
Toward 2006,
Astronomers have reckoned
We need one extra second.

Dec. 26

In England they call it Boxing Day.
I don't know why; I cannot say.

I hope they don't have shoppers who insist
On battling for their bargains with their fists!

Iconic Holiday Babies

For Christmas we have the Baby in the manger.

For New Years we have the New Year's Baby. No one believes in this baby literally - he's just a symbol of the newborn new year. I refer to this baby as "he" because he's often portrayed wearing a top hat. He also often wears a sash and diapers, which is kind of a unisex outfit. So maybe the New Year's Baby is really a girl.

Or maybe in the odd years it's a girl, and the even years it's a boy, like we do with the hurricanes.

Not to be outdone, February awaits with a baby that sports wings and weaponry - straight out of Roman mythology - little Cupid with his bow and arrow!

If you didn't know any better, you might think it was the same baby - lying on its back in December, partying in January, and flying in February!

From lying to flying
In just three months
Would be quite a stunt.

Beware of Dog Washing

Note to self:

After a week of lower back pain... even if your back is almost back to normal... even if company is coming and the dog needs a bath... and even if the best place to wash him is the standing laundry tub... do NOT attempt to lift a 95 pound dog.

I got the pooch into the tub,
And gave him a good Christmas scrub,
But now my poor back needs a rub.

Family Get Together

I had fun this evening playing with my littlest niece. We played a new game. In this game, I hold her and ask her "What's wrong with you?" very insistently and very fast, all the while tickling her. I stop when she tells me that nothing is wrong with her. Then I let her go, and she immediately returns and tells me something is wrong with her.

Repeat indefinitely until one of us is exhausted.

I find it hard to refuse them,
Because it's so fun to amuse them.

Only One Shopping Day Till...

The great thing about having Christmas on a Sunday, is that I get all day Saturday to do my shopping. I have found that Christmas Eve is a great day to shop.

Only serious shoppers remain in the stores on that day. All those "I'm just browsing" people are out of the way!

Believe me, it's always best to leave
Your Christmas shopping till Christmas Eve.

In Lieu of a Card

A couplet or two
Is the best I can do
Most days.

Most days prose goes far enough
To say whatever mundane stuff
I have to say.

But sometimes poetry climbs
By its own choice
Out of the words,
To find its own voice
And explode into rhyme.

For several weeks I've heard
"The holidays are here!"
Now they really are.
I hope yours don't feel hollow.

Enfold what you hold dear;
Celebrate whatever star
You follow.

Walnut Room

Some of our family gathered tonight for dinner in the Walnut Room at Marshall Field's. The Walnut room is the dining room with the towering Christmas tree.

The original downtown Field's is a Chicago landmark, but is about to lose its name. Macy's bought it, and intends to re-brand it. So people are rushing to get one last dose of the Field's Experience before it disappears.

The Walnut Room wait staff was understaffed, so we did a lot of waiting, far more than usual. But the food was good, as good as usual, and the tree was very pretty in a designer-decorated way. (To see the tree, click here and scroll.)

We waited and we waited,
And finally we ate.
At least the food and company were great.

Second City Solstice

On the mainstage, Second City was performing "Iraqtile Dysfunction", a frequently funny show.

Some improvised bits
Were worked into their skits.

One was a cute little story
Involving Montessori.

Montessori came up because a woman from the audience got interviewed and mentioned that her mom was a Montessori teacher. This led to a scene in which a Montessori teacher visits a public school and declares: "My feet are burning just being in a public school."

Maradydd and the Stolen Penguin

Today I had great fun meeting maradydd in real life. We traded notes on programming and poetry. She told me about a complicated poetic form called a sonnet redoubled. In her honor, here are some redoubled quatrains about the baby penguin kidnapped the other day from a British zoo.

A baby penguin stolen from a zoo -
It needs its food, it won't survive five days.
In some strange house, what will the poor thing do?
Kindly return him to his mother's gaze.

A baby penguin stolen from a zoo -
Perhaps intended as a Christmas pet.
The mystery's unsolved. I wonder who
Kidnapped the bird. He hasn't turned up yet.

It needs its food, it won't survive five days.
You see, it craves a most peculiar dish
Prepared with care according to their ways:
A beakfull of regurgitated fish.

In some strange house, what will the poor thing do?
It wasn't raised to be a pet, it might
Refuse to get along with someone new.
Most likely it will flap its wings and bite.

Kindly return him to his mother's gaze.
She misses his soft feathers and his eyes
Upturned to hers, reflecting back the rays
Of her affection. Let that joy reprise.

Home for the Holidays

Things are hopping at the Enright house. Felicia is in from Maryland, and young John is in from California. Poor John, living in L.A., suffers true weather shock when he arrives here in the winter months.

From the East and the West
We've refilled the nest.

Ache

Ouch, I hurt my lower back.
I know not why, it's out of whack.
Compared to many people's woes
It's nothing much, so I suppose
I'll just shut up and not complain,
About this incidental pain.

So kindly disregard this verse
Unless you happen to be a nurse
Who knows a special sure-fire cure
So I don't have to nobly endure
This stupid pain. I'll gladly pay
Money to make it go away!

Demon, I Cast Thee Out

My daughter's pc had a nasty infection,
That kept popping up on her Virus Inspection.
Norton, dear fellow, couldn't quite cure it.
So I took it on, feeling perfectly sure it
Would yield to my will and depart her machine.
It finally did. Her pc is clean.

Basically I worked till 4 am on this puppy, then got up in the morning and kicked it around some more. It was one of those blended threats, where the nasty code keeps inviting other infections, while popping up ads and dropping icons on your desk. In the end I was reduced to booting into the Safe Mode Command Prompt and navigating my way thought the hidden gobbledygook directories to kill off recalcitrant compressed snippets.

[I did try using Knoppix, a flavor of Linux you can boot from the CD, to get at the hidden/protected infection. But I wasn't patient enough to figure out how to enable the NTFS write feature, even though the NTFS read was working great.]

Talking 'Bout My Generation

A retired co-worker came to visit our office, and commented at one point that we were probably the last generation to enjoy everything that America had to offer. He's quite a bit older than me, but I guess he was lumping us together as Boomers. I was stunned and sickened by his pessimism.

Why do so many Boomers
Turn into doom and gloomers?

Coax, RCA, S-Video, You Name It, We Got It

Hours were spent tonight, at 2 different TVs, getting components wired up right. Now we can watch tapes on the first floor again, and even copy them to DVD. And in the basement, for the first time, you can watch DVDs, but still watch tapes if you prefer.

TV wiring
Be tiring.

Book Club

Last night I stayed up late cramming. I had to finish our book club book. The odd thing is that I wrote our book club book. Yes, I had somehow talked them into doing Unholy Quest. But I hadn't read it in a year or two, so I thought I should take another pass through it.

It was kind of strange reading it, in a deja-vu sort of way. But I have to admit I still liked it. Much to my relief, people in the book club seemed to like it too. One friend said to me: "You would know if they didn't like it - they would be polite."

I'm so glad they weren't "polite."
That would have made for a miserable night.

Forced Exit

Don't commit murder in California.
Don't say they didn't warn ya.

Programming

It is deeply satisfying
After hours and hours of trying
To see your program do
Something clean and new.

Stomach Feelings

In Ayn Rand's personal journals about her relationship difficulties, she refers at times to her "stomach feelings," by which she seems to mean what most of us would call "gut feelings." She worries over whether her stomach feelings might be telling her something important. Indeed, they are. These feelings are correctly warning her that her relationship is doomed and that her loved one is acting fraudulently toward her. She is thinking very hard on this topic, but her feelings have run ahead of her thoughts and reached the correct conclusion sooner.

In Atlas Shrugged, she wrote: "An emotion that clashes with your reason, an emotion that you cannot explain or control, is only the carcass of that stale thinking which you forbade your mind to revise."

This was different. The emotion was not the carcass of stale thinking, not the empty echo of old premises. Rather, the emotion was the warning message from a subconscious that was integrating vast amounts of information, including things like body language and vocal tone and facial expression.

For what it may be worth, there is a cranial nerve (the vagus) that connects to the stomach. Some speculate it's involved somehow in our experience of "gut feelings".

Otherwise it's hard to understand how your digestive system
Could pick up clues after your brain had missed 'em.

Dogs and Bulls

Speaking of pit bulls, I've been reading this book I got last year for Christmas: The Dogs Of Capitalism. It's an unusual book, and rather philosophical for a book about the history of dog-breeding. What was eye-opening for me was just how important some of these breeds were for solving problems. Take bull dogs, for example. Their job was to stop bulls. Why would you want to stop bulls? Because when they get loose, they destroy property and gore people. I know. There probably aren't a lot of bulls near where you live. But in pre-industrial England, there were bulls a-plenty apparently, and keeping control of them was important.

Here's a list of 7 tips for the safe handling of bulls. I like rule 7 best: "NEVER trust a bull."

Bulldogs did battle
With ornery cattle.

Pit Bull Ban

A pit bull ban has been proposed in Chicago's City Council. I think it's a bad idea in the abstract, but tonight the downside was really brought home to me when I was speaking to a young couple who own and love a well-behaved pit bull. Their particular dog is a "therapy dog" - it visits with clinically depressed people and cheers them up.

I can't understand
Why this dog should be banned.

Plane Slides Out Of Airport

Tonight a Southwest jet from Baltimore, landing in Chicago's Midway Airport, slid out of the airport onto Central Avenue, hitting 2 cars. A boy in one of the cars was killed, and 8 other people in the cars were injured. Only two people in the plane were hurt.

Midway is just about one square mile, so a plane has less than 1.5 miles of runway to land, which doesn't give you much room for error. It was snowing pretty heavily here on the south side when the accident occurred. Naturally, I'm figuring that the white stuff played a role.

When tires lose their grip
Vehicles slide and slip.

Wicked, the Book

I've been reading Wicked, by Gregory Maguire. I'm about 3/4 through. It's very clever, and it holds my interest, but there is something I don't care for in it, something hard to pin down, perhaps because it's obvious. Despite his wealth of invention, the story feels bleak to me. What's more, the vaguely implied moral standards of the author irk me as being anti-development, anti-commerce, and pro-animal-rights. The story-telling is vague at times, too, which surprises me most of all because he can tell a story clearly when he wants too. I do wonder if part of the author's problem is that his protagonist becomes a total burn-out who is trying not to care about anything. This makes her not much of a protagonist. Hopefully she will perk up again in time to be properly splashed down by Dorothy!

I say it without pride:
I'm still on Dorothy's side.

Air Travel Tips

Don't tell the air marshal that you've got
A bomb, and when he draw his gun and tells you not
To reach in your pack, but you do anyway, expect to be shot.

And if you're bipolar and think you might do something like this and end up dead,
Please remember to take your meds.

The Solstice Approaches

I went swimming tonight. Yes, indoors. Then I came home and put the lights on the tree. Yes, a real tree, but indoors. Now all we need is ornaments on the tree. Oh, and lights outside on the bushes. I don't feel like putting lights outside right now, mostly because it's 10F out there.

Stringing lights at 10 degrees
Always makes my fingers freeze.

Battlestar Theology

We've been watching the first season of Battlestar Gallactica on DVD. Not the old one from the 70's, the new one. One funny aspect of the show is that the humans are polytheists, praying to something like the pagan Greek pantheon; and the human-looking cybernetic enemies are monotheists, praying to what they regard as the one true God.

Religion's mixed up in the strife,
Just like in real life.

Ugaritic Texts

How come I didn't know about Ugaritic Texts before? After all, they were found in 1928. But they're really old, like from 1300 BC, so maybe it took a while to translate them. Some scholars believe these texts tell us what Judaism was like before it got monotheistic.

They think the Hebrews originally worshipped many gods. But then they narrowed their focus over time to just one favorite god. And eventually they decided there had only been one God all along - and that the others were simply false gods.

I only bring this up because I happened to be looking at a book called The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts. It looks a little complicated, and I'm kind of weak on Ugaritic cuneiform. Here's the alphabet.

You know what would be yummy?
Ugaritic for Dummies!

Patience Thin

Yahoo News tonight has a story from Reuters headlined: "Iran's patience running out over nuclear issue".

They're impatient because the EU keeps insisting that Iran stop work on its nuclear program.

Why on earth would there be suspicion
That Iran would try to use nuclear fission
For anything but a peaceful mission?

Say's Law

I was thinking about Say's Law today. Sometimes you hear it as: "Supply creates its own demand." In this form, it makes sense for iPods. How much demand was there for iPods, before there were iPods?

Nowadays there are plenty
But back in 1920
It would have been odd
To demand an iPod
Because there simply weren't any.

Stowaway

A couple of months ago, Emily "sneaked into an office supplies company near her home in Appleton [Wisconsin] and hid in a container of paper bound for France." The container travelled 3 weeks, by sea, to France, where Emily was caught. She was quarantined for a month, and was then escorted back to the U.S., in business class, courtesy of Continental Airlines.

Emily is a cat. Fortunately, she was wearing her tags.

Pussy cat, pussy cat,
Where have you been?
- I've been to France
For a month's quarantine.

Pussy cat, pussy cat,
What did you there?
- I ate lots of cat food,
And came back by air.

Rude Awakening

Marla has a funny post about a Murphy's Law morning she experienced, where one thing after another kept going wrong. It's all starts with waking up late... then trying make a 9 a.m. meeting.

When you really have to hurry,
It's often time to worry.

Fun With Video Drivers

Spent a couple of hours tonight working on a friend's computer.

He bought one of those cards that lets you record TV shows on your PC. For some reason it doesn't want to install on his machine. In the process of trying to get it to work, he made it so he had a completely dark screen once Windows started.

His screen was black,
But I got it back.