Where Is The March Melt?

Black dog, white snow.

But the evening hue
is vaguely blue.

Another Flight

The seats push hard against our backs
as engines start to thrust.
We lift, as lift we must
if we're to clear
the fence.

Now, relax,
suspended in thin air,
at whatever height
the instruments declare
most suitable for flight.

And I am sipping water from a cup
at 30,000 feet.

It's all so routine
aboard this great machine
this wagon cart of fire.

Two-Seater to the Red Planet

This is wild. Someone's trying to organize a private trip, for two, to Mars.

You wouldn't get to land. It's just a fly-by.

To take advantage of an alignment of Earth and Mars that happens once every 15 years and would allow the shortest possible travel time possible between the planets, the mission seeks to launch on January 5, 2018. The crew would return to Earth on May 21, 2019.

They say they want a husband and wife.
It could be the coolest trip of your life.

Special Election, Part 2

The Dem nominee is considered a shoo-in, but the GOP nominee is still newsworthy:

Republican voters are suggesting the 2nd Congressional District replace one felon with another after picking ex-convict Paul McKinley as the candidate to run for the seat recently ceded by former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.

You might wonder what sort of felonies he committed? Well, garden variety: "burglaries, armed robberies and aggravated battery".

Welcome to Illinois,
where elections are a joy.

Just Say Nay

The mislabeled meat scandal gallops on:

Ikea is now removing wiener sausages from stores across Europe after tests confirmed “a few indications of horse meat.”

With all those regulations,
it really seems incredible
that they secretly turned Mr. Ed
into Mr. Edible.

Special Election

Here in the Windy City, guess who won a special Dem primary today?

The mayor's candidate of course!

But I don't mean the mayor of Chicago. I mean the mayor of New York:

Former state Rep. Robin Kelly won the Democratic primary Tuesday night in the race to replace the disgraced Jesse Jackson Jr. in Congress, helped by millions of dollars in pro-gun control ads from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s political fund.

It's a heavily Dem district, so Kelly now practically has a lock on the congressional seat itself.

It's been an ill-starred seat for the last 3 holders:

Jesse Jackson Jr. - left congress and then pleaded guilty to wire and mail fraud.
Mel Reynolds - left congress after being convicted of statutory rape.
Gus Savage - lost his re-election bid after the House Ethics Committee accepted his apology for trying to force himself on a female Peace Corps worker.

Well, these guys have set the bar pretty low. I think the stage is set for somebody, anybody, to do the job without having to depart in dire disgrace.

I'm assuming that Robin Kelly
will avoid ending up in something smelly.

It Rose From Ashes

Southwest crew member, upon landing here: Welcome to the town a cow burnt down.

Oscar Who?

I think awards for movies should be renamed The Groovies.

Sugarbush Season

I like to lap the maple sap, and right now they've got it on tap.

High Concept

I want to write a story about rescuing hostages from North Dakota. We'll pitch it as Argo meets Fargo.

EU-US FTA

I'm still worried about where the Euro is going, but dropping tariffs, via a free trade agreement, strikes me as a good idea:

...an FTA between the United States and the European Union (EU) would present an even bigger rival to Asia, accounting for more than 40 percent of global GDP and about 50 percent of inward and outward foreign direct investment stock. Both sides are already the other’s biggest trading partner.

That last sentence is a bit of a trick, since it requires treating the EU as if it were one partner, rather than a bunch of separate countries.

Going by countries, our biggest partners are Canada, then China, then Mexico, then Japan, And only in the number 5 spot do we encounter Germany.

By the way, what is up with the phrase "global GDP", i.e., "global gross domestic product"? Couldn't we just say "global gross product"? It's not like we're selling any of our products to other planets.

We've got no exports to Mars,
we've got no imports from Venus,
and when it comes to Mercury,
there's really no trade between us.

Death Defying Tweets

They have a rhymed slogan:

When your heart stops beating, you'll keep tweeting.

How, you wonder, will that happen?

LivesOn will analyse users' Twitter feeds to learn their 'likes, tastes, [and] syntax' to continue posting similar messages, updates and links after they've passed.

I predict this insane app
will produce loads of inane crap.

Pre-Raphaelite Exhibit

I was in DC yesterday, and got a chance to visit the Pre-Raphaelite exhibit at the Smithsonian.

The admission price is: free,
but you have to get to DC.

I've always thought of the Pre-Raphaelites as quirky, but I do like some of their work, including this one, which is hanging on the wall at the show:



I learned that it has rather a sad story behind it.

Rossetti modeled Beatrice after his deceased wife and frequent model, Elizabeth Siddal, who died in 1862. The painting was created from the numerous drawings that Rossetti had made of Siddal during their time together. The symbolism in the painting of a red dove, a messenger of love, relates back to Rossetti's love for Siddal with the white poppy representing laudanum and the means of her death.

She was sickly... and got hooked on laudanum, an opiate. There were rumors, at the time, that the death was a suicide.

In an 1873 letter to his friend William Morris, Rossetti said he intended the painting "not as a representation of the incident of the death of Beatrice, but as an ideal of the subject, symbolized by a trance or sudden spiritual transfiguration."

He rendered her in paint
as a beloved saint.

Concrete

At the DC Newseum, more than 20 years after its fall,I finally got to touch a piece of the deadly Berlin wall.

Jealousy in Coward

In Design For Living, Coward imagines 2 men in a sort of ongoing competition for 1 woman, and the ending suggests the competition will simply go on, not really in what is now conceived as the polyamorous way, since the men are not precisely content with the arrangement. In Blithe Spirit, 2 women compete for 1 man, and the results are humorously catastrophic. I'm not saying the writer changed his mind, but in the second play disaster was Designed.

Eyes Wide Shut

I haven't found a place to actually order these, but that's a great pic. More at link:

Those who can’t avoid sleeping or a nap at work, these eyelid stickers are exclusively designed for you. Before I found this brilliant stuff, I was thinking this is just a joke that only can be seen in the movie.

Especially useful if your work is a bore.
But be careful if you tend to snore!

Linguistic Evolution

Tonight I heard one high school student say of another: "He can't grammar."

The morphing of English cannot be curbed,
but still I'm feeling strangely disturbed.

Grammar, once noun, has now been verbed.

Fall From Fame

They were quite the power couple here. He was a congressman, she was an alderman.

Then they both resigned, citing his health problems.

But they both turned out to be suffering from a bad case of feds breathing down their necks:

Jesse Jackson Jr. and his wife Sandi intend to plead guilty to federal charges alleging the former congressman misused $750,000 in campaign funds while she understated their income on tax returns for six years, their lawyers say.

They both have J.D. degrees,
so I hope they understand their guilty pleas.

What a Lark, to Disembark!

Less than lovely:

A cruise ship disabled for five nightmarish days in the Gulf limped under tow into port with more than 4,000 people aboard late Thursday, passengers raucously cheering the end to an ocean odyssey they say was marked by overflowing toilets, food shortages and foul odors.

But far worse things can happen to a boat.
At least it stayed afloat.

Blithe Spirit, Preview

That's the set of Blithe Spirit, nearing completion, earlier tonight. Soon after, we were up and running with our preview show, which went well.

I play a doctor, which is the second time I've played a doctor, and I kind of like it, so I'm thinking about going into medicine, not in the sense of studying the topic, but just in the sense of going into a medical building, while wearing a white coat and a stethoscope. You know, just to see if I can get free coffee or something.

Excuse me, which way is the doctor's lounge,
and are there some donuts which I can scrounge?

Limits of Imagination

The Wall St. Journal had an interesting op-ed today, "Send in the Tech Reinforcements", calling for an overhaul of the process by which the Defense Department arranges for custom-built software. The department's IT history has no shortage of cost overruns, big delays, and even outright failures. This shouldn't be a surprise. The Pentagon is a big bureaucratic enterprise that nonetheless sets out to design and obtain bold breakthrough products. It's a recipe for massive headaches. It's impressive that they get anything to work! The authors of the op-ed say the Pentagon's software methodology is outmoded, which I don't doubt. Then they say this:

The modern software development cycle, by contrast, moves in weeks, days and even hours—because software is a malleable digital item whose only limits are the human imagination.

There's some profound truth there... but.

First, even an industry-leader like Amazon, which the authors put forward as a model, can only get so many lines of code written in a week.

Second, putting the issue of days and weeks aside, we need to be careful about the idea that software is "limited only by imagination".

A lot depends on what you mean by imagination. We can imagine a computer program that thinks just like a human. But we are in no position to write such a program.

We can imagine the program's user interface - perhaps we would like it to converse with us helpfully about our strategy in Afghanistan - but we can't really imagine how such a machine would work at a producible level of detail.

Implementing imagination, however inspired,
hangs on the question of whether
someone can cobble together
the actual pieces required.

Noel Coward

Noel Coward's
Talent flowered
At an early age,
And by his 20s, he was all the rage.

Thaw

Ice slides off the roof and hits the ground
colliding with a thuddy sloshy sound.

I think: I could have been standing in that spot.
And thank the laws of chance that I was not.

2/9, Updated

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

"The One Who Got Caught"

A guy from the local Better Government Association:

“A lot of politicians use political donations as lifestyle enhancements—getting work done on their homes, taking fancy vacations, etc,” says Shaw. “At the very least they’re bending the rules of campaign finance and sometimes they violate them blatantly. Unfortunately the IRS and state election boards are stretched too thin to investigate. But if you end up under the microscope of the U.S. Attorney that all changes … Jesse Jackson Jr. is not an outlier here, but he’s the one who got caught.

The author of the piece editorializes that this is a particular problem in Illinois, but without presenting evidence that non-Illinois pols are ethically fastidious.

What do you think?
Is the Land of Lincoln a place of particular stink?

Deal Reportedly Reached

Local news outfits are reporting that Jesse Jackson Jr. has signed a plea deal.
I thought maybe he would plead guilty to so much stuff that they would let his wife walk. But, maybe not:

The former 17-year South Shore Democratic congressman had told associates that he tried “protecting” his wife during negotiations leading up to the plea agreement, but “they wouldn’t let him,” the source said.

I mean, they have minor children. A lot of guys are willing to do extra time, if it enables their kids to stay with their mother.

And Congressman Jackson was a much "bigger catch" than Alderman Sandi Jackson.

What are they in trouble for? It seems to be campaign funding trouble. When I was a kid, most of these laws didn't even exist.

These laws deserve to be softened,
so politicians go to jail less often!

Few Smiles

The Chicago Tribune has a popular feature where it runs mug shots of the recently arrested - accompanied by stories about what they allegedly did. In the right mood, I will browse through, sickly fascinated.

I have developed a suspicion: cops don't receive much training at helping these people look good for their close-ups!

Instead of pics that are flattering,
a lot of them look like they've been through a battering.

Aphorisms from A to Z

I've got my hands on a copy of Jay Friedenberg's new book, Aphorisms from A to Z: A User's Guide to Life.

It is one of the most comprehensive and qualitative sources of sayings from any single author, consisting of over 2,500 different aphorisms on more than 600 topics. The book is intended to inspire and serve as a practical guide to living a better life.It starts with an overview of aphorisms, describing what they are in relation to other sayings such as proverbs and quotations. Also included in the introduction are interviews with contemporary aphorists and aphorist scholars, describing the role that this ancient literary form now serves today. The book concludes with lists of both classical and current aphorists for the interested reader who wants to pursue more.

I like this one, which just leaped out at me:

The devil also makes work for busy hands.

Indeed. I think the temptations for the busy are different than those for the idle. But I have certainly seen busy people behaving badly.

An aphorism says things with:
few words, much pith.

Killer App

I'd like to have my own
(nonlethal) drone.

I'll send it to pick up fast food,
when I'm in a lazy mood.

Something To Keep In Mind

I'm not eager for it, but, when people talk about the federal government having effectively seized all power from the states, they generally neglect to mention this:

In the American system, a Constitutional Convention -- which has never been held since the Constitution was adopted -- is the last stop before revolution. It was intended as a way for the people to end-run the political establishment; if enough states request a convention, Congress has no choice but to call it, and the resulting proposals go straight to the states for ratification, bypassing Congress.

What concerns me is that I'm not sure we'll have an equivalent to James Madison this time around.

Whenever the states feel fed up with D.C.,
they can toss it out - if 38 agree.

Mackey and Mamet

Chris Jones, Chicago's leading theater critic, had an interesting column in the Trib today in which he compared John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, with David Mamet, the playwright.

When John Mackey, the maverick co-chief executive of Whole Foods, first criticized President Barack Obama's proposed health care law in a 2009 Wall Street Journal article, there was an immediate blowback — boycott! boycott! — from the grocery chain's heavy coterie of politically liberal customers.

Mackey proceeded to eat some of his words, as a matter of unfortunate phrasing. I wouldn't say he actually took back his critique.

Anyway, Jones is concerned that Mamet is getting similarly burned:

In Mamet's case, there is some evidence that his political views are not playing well on Broadway: "The Anarchist," which was chock-full of interesting ideas, closed in a matter of days this past fall.

Did his fans avoid his latest play
because his views are too outré?

Love's Laboratories

A philosopher (of course!) argues:

Perhaps we could design "love drugs," pharmaceutical cocktails that could boost affection between partners, whisking them back to the exquisite set of pleasures that colored their first years together.
...
Some have even suggested developing "anti-love drugs" that could dissolve abusive relationships, or reduce someone's attachment to a charismatic cult leader. Others just want a pill to ease the pain of a wrenching breakup.

Adrenaline for breaking up, oxytocin for making up?

Traditionalists, please don't go into conniptions.
It must be okay if you've got prescriptions!

Shifting Languages

I'm working through a tutorial for a computer language called Ruby. That's in my spare time.
Meanwhile, I'm writing code in Visual Basic and mainframe Cobol, for work.

So I ended up coding in all 3 languages in a 24 hour time period. It can be oddly disorienting shifting from the one to the other.

In the case of Basic and Cobol, I have been working in both for decades, but they have different approaches to getting things done.

I suppose it's like knowing English and Spanish and having trouble switching between them. But I don't know English and any other real language... not really.

My ability to express
myself in Spanish
tends to vanish
(or worse)
under the duress
of attempting to converse.

Enhanced Interrogation Techniques

Well, I found this article from Slate interesting. Hard to know exactly how true it is, but it rings truer to me than lots of the stuff I've read about waterboarding, etc:

EITs were used to break the will to resist, not to extract information directly. Hayden acknowledged that prisoners might say anything to stop their suffering. (Like the other panelists, he insisted EITs weren't torture.) That’s why “we never asked anybody anything we didn’t know the answer to, while they were undergoing the enhanced interrogation techniques. The techniques were not designed to elicit truth in the moment.”

There's torture, and then there's torture of course. This was the clever stuff.

They figured they were smarter
than the ordinary martyr,
leaving no marks behind,
but shattering the mind.

Kindergarten Weapons Violation

Expelled for bringing clear plastic toy gun to school:

Naomi McKinney, a kindergarten student, is such a threat that she’s not allowed at all on school grounds, her parents say. The Sumter County School District says it has a zero-tolerance policy against guns in schools, and would require the Board of Trustees to review the case if she's to return.

Massive media exposure followed... and then:

Expulsion reversed for kindergartner who brought toy gun to school for 'show and tell'

Cute kid. Photogenic. Maybe she's a holy terror, but it's not obvious on the outside. And it was a serious error to think this sort of expulsion was justified.

Rules are rules!
(And fools are fools.)

Speculation Mode On

Reportedly, scientists are on a hunt for the utilization of quantum effects in everyday biology.

"There are definitely three areas that have turned out to be manifestly quantum," Dr Turin told the BBC. "These three things... have dispelled the idea that quantum mechanics had nothing to say about biology."

Three possible quantum manifestations discussed in the article are:

1. photosynthesis
2. smell
3. the ability of birds to navigate by magnetic fields.

I feel oddly vindicated. For years, I've heard people say that quantum effects all "net out" in ordinary life. And yet, humans have the ability to utilize quantum effects in significant technological devices. So - why shouldn't nature have done the same thing?

I'm reminded of the human heart. I've read that no one knew what it was for - until humans invented the pump. Then someone said oh, nature invented one first.

For hundreds of thousands of years,
we heard it going lub-dump
but until we invented the thing
we had no idea we were hearing a pump.

Wacky Weather

It soared into the 60s today in Chicago, and then tonight we had a January thunderstorm downpour on my walk to the train. My shoes were soaked.

But they're forecasting 8 degrees again, very soon.

I'm ready for Spring,
it would be very nice,
but tomorrow will bring
more ice.

Belle Isle

South of the United States, and North of Canada, lies Belle Isle.
Well, it's not really South of the United States, since it's part of Michigan. But one developer wants to change all that and turn Belle Isle into a charter city, a "free market utopia".
Somehow I don't think this will happen:

Private investors buy the island from a near-bankrupt Detroit for $1 billion. It then would secede from Michigan to become a semi-independent commonwealth like Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands.

I don't think it could "secede". But... I believe Michigan could "cede" the island to the Federal government. Yes, states in the past have ceded land to the Federal government.

It's an island dream
and a wild scheme
and it doesn't seem
very likely.

Flare Path by Rattigan

Last  night we saw an old play by Terence Rattigan, Flare Path.

Rattigan was a tail gunner for the RAF at the start of World War II, and the play is set in that world - not in the planes, but on the ground, at a small hotel with a view of the air station's landing strip.

The play had a successful revival in London in 2011, so I suppose that's why i showed up in Chicago in 2013, courtesy of Griffin Theatre.

I liked it, and the audience liked it too. I was struck by some similarities t Casablanca. It's a drama about an emotional love triangle in the midst of war - and about how the sense of wartime duty affects the fabric of relationships.

As usual with Rattigan, you get a lot of British understatement, but there is a fabulously emotional scene at the core of the play, where a brave fighter confesses to his fear to his wife.

When the fear runs through their brains
and pulses through their veins
like a mad distorting drum,
even heroes
can feel like zeroes,
but they somehow overcome.

Google Cars Will Be Good For Bars

The more the merrier, except... the more drunk drivers the scarier.

Snowball

One of my nieces was in London when it snowed recently - snowed a lot for London apparently. And she showed the locals how to make a snowman. They didn't know about rolling a small ball into a big ball in wet "packing" snow.

It made me reflect on the idiomatic verb, snowball:

Increase rapidly in size, intensity, or importance - the campaign was snowballing

The visual is of a snowball rolling along getting bigger and bigger.

But if you live somewhere warm
and have never seen a giant snowball form...
the metaphor will be lame,
its impact not the same.

On a tangent, the collected Calvin & Hobbes Snowman Strips.

Phones in Overtones

I was reading an old play, Overtones, by Alice Gerstenberg, and I came across a funny detail in the printed text: the word "phone" appeared with an apostrophe in front of it: 'phone

Evidently this was to indicate that the word "phone" was a contraction.

It occurred twice in the printed text, each time with the apostrophe:

HETTY [The telephone rings] There she is now.

[Hetty hurries to 'phone but Harriet regains her supremacy.]

HARRIET [Authoritatively] Wait! I can't let the telephone girl down there hear my real self. It isn't proper. [At the 'phone.] Show Mrs. Caldwell up.

Now, of course, that short word "phone"
very often shows up alone,
feeling, for sure, no need to be
accompanied by an apostrophe.

David Coleman Headley

A Chicago man involved in the Mumbai terrorist attack got 35 years from a judge. His name surprised me:

David Coleman Headley's meticulous scouting missions facilitated the assault by 10 gunmen from a Pakistani-based militant group, which killed 160 people -- including children.

What surprised me was that his name sounded so English. But there's a backstory:

Daood [Sayed] Gilani was born in Washington, D.C., where his father, Sayed Salim Gilani, worked for the Voice of America. His father was also a diplomat who worked in the Pakistani embassy in Washington D.C. for some time. His Maryland-born American mother, (Alice) Serrill Headley (1939–2008), worked as a secretary at the Pakistani embassy in Washington at the time of his birth.

His name change let him slip into India more easily.

Headley's U.S. passport, his new Western and English sounding name, and the fact that the passport and his visa application made no mention of his prior name or his father's nationality, made it easy for him to obtain an Indian visa from the Indian consulate in Chicago. He falsely stated on his visa application that his father's name was William Headley and that his own name at birth was "Headley", a claim that was difficult to refute since the U.S. passport, unlike the Indian one, does not provide the father's name, and does not require endorsements on name changes by the passport holder.

He hid his vile game
behind his new name.

Shovel Unready

We've barely had snow in Chicago this season. Just dustings. A friend is hoping we finally get some. He wants to cross country ski in the local woods.

As for me
I'm not eager to ski.
I'll do just fine
With more sunshine.

Union Trouble

The UK only seemed to be 3/4 of the way into the EU in the first place. By which I mean mostly that they weren't using the the Euro as currency. Which in hindsight, at the moment, looks like genius. But now...

Anti-Europe sentiment in the U.K. is at some of its highest levels since the early 1980s. And, frustrations with the EU are more pronounced among Conservatives, with opinion polls having shown support shifting away from the Tories to the U.K. Independence Party, whose main goal is Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.

So there's talk of having a national referendum - to decide whether to stay in the European Union or not.

I have no idea how that will go.

But I want to relate some anecdotal data. I was talking to an acquaintance, an ex-pat Englishman who lives here, and he was talking about "Americans" and I referred to him as a "European"... and he politely corrected me on the usage.

I suppose it's too late
to talk them into becoming our 51st state.

Ham Sandwich Nation

Glenn Reynolds, law prof and blogger, has a short essay online, under the title: Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime.

The titular sandwich refers to a saying among lawyers: "A good prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich."

It seems to me that doing so would make him a bad prosecutor, actually.

Ham sandwiches are not meant
to be charged with bad intent.

Stop Her Before...

A woman writing in the NY Times wants her right to own a gun taken away. Why? Because she suffers from depression.

You’d look at me and never know that sometimes my fight against the urge to die is so tough the only way I get through it is second by second; I live by the second hand.

Well, there are already laws restricting the gun-buying rights of the mentally ill. Perhaps she doesn't meet the technical criteria of being banned from such purchases.

I guess we could set up a national database where the depression-prone could voluntarily register as a danger to self and others.

But, if what we're trying to prevent is this woman's suicide, I suspect this approach would not help much. There are so many ways to kill yourself. And, thinking about the particular situation of this woman, people of her gender don't tend to favor guns for the job.

The preferred female way of ending up dead
is an overdose of a med.

50 Degrees, 9 Miles

Weather was warmly unseasonable,
making a long run seem reasonable.

Full Use

Ann Althouse:

This is getting strangely close to the argument that used to be made for discriminating against women in law school admissions (or for excluding them altogether): Since women are less likely to fully use their legal education, we shouldn't give what could be a man's seat to a woman.

It seems to be true that women are "less likely to fully use their legal education", at least by some measures of "full use".

You can say it's because "women seek more balance in life". That's an acceptable way of noting a statistical gender difference. Of course, it's not true for all women. Generalizations about humans always come with asterisks about the exceptions.

But... I also don't think men deserve all the seats just because they are more likely to be hard-driving full-time long-career lawyers. I mean, do law schools have to decide who to admit strictly on a "what's good for society" basis? I doubt very much that they are in a position to do so.

Actually, I imagine that, in an open market, law schools would want to admit students who can bring in money and a good reputation for the school. This is going to include women, and lots of them, since right now a lot of smart young women want to be lawyers.

Must it be the responsibility of a college,
when allocating a seat,
to judge by the most complete
use of its faculty's knowledge?

Scanners Vanish

I'm going to miss putting my hands over my head for my glamour shot:

The Transportation Security Administration confirmed Friday that it will pull the plug on "nude" airport scanners that produce a full body image of the traveler, replacing a technology that has sparked national controversy over privacy and safety.

The article doesn't quite say why this plug is being pulled. Well, the TSA sometimes works in mysterious ways.

My main complaint was that they never sent me a copy of my photo.

I also think the whole "consent of the governed" angle was not working in favor of these machines. People were not becoming accustomed to them.

I suspect the agency was getting rated
as "most hated".

Lights Out, Everybody

I went to see Lights Out, Everybody: A Tribute In Horror To Arch Oboler at Dream Theatre. I would highly recommend it as an evening of entertaining theater. Unless, that is, horror stories are just not your cup of tea.

I should admit that, even though he was born here in Chicago, I hadn't really been aware of Arch Oboler, a writer whose career included radio dramas, TV shows, and film work too.

The show at Dream is an adaptation, by Jeremy Menekseoglu, of three Oboler tales: Momma, It Happened In Paris, and Murder Castle.

In the photo, you can see Hasket Morris as the lead character in Murder Castle, which is based on the true story that is also told in The Devil In The White City. Morris is marvelously creepy.

Denise Smolarek shows up in all 3 tales, with a different accent and personality each time - once as a nightmare mother-in-law, once as a subterranean necklace-maker, and once as a rather well-intentioned but ill-fated housekeeper.

The show moves along briskly under Giau Truong's direction. The six actors are all strong, and those with multiple roles create distinct personalities for each.

It's a scary ride
with a slippery slide
or two
into goo.

Tradition

Tonight, on her birthday, we ate grilled cheese,
a ceremony to evoke
basking briefly in memories
of what she liked, of how she spoke.

Maybe It's The Captions

Dogs may be better friends, and may give better licks, but on the World Wide Web, the cats have funnier pics.

Literature Qua Therapy

Researchers find:
reading Dickens
somehow quickens
the sluggish mind.

Thirty Million

Another item for Chicago's city budget:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office is seeking to settle two notorious cases of alleged police misconduct for more than $30 million, according to an agenda prepared for City Council consideration this week.

I'm guessing the city wants to settle because they might have to pay even more if the cases go to trial.

Defeat is often inglorious
when cases are known as notorious.

Part of Buchanan's Legacy

Tyler Cowen, speaking of economist James M. Buchanan, who died the other day:

Along with Harsanyi, he formulated aspects of the “original position” before Rawls did and he was a major influence on Rawls. By the way, I have seen Buchanan numerous times with top professional philosophers, and he has no problem holding his own or better.

Interesting. I had no idea. I haven't really read Buchanan or Rawls much, but I'm always running into this "original position" business among those interested in contemporary political philosophy.

The original position is a thought experiment
which, rather than leading to mirth and merriment,
leads to heated discussions and personal attacks
about whether to choose the min or the max.

[Error fixed - I had "Scott Buchanan" originally. Thank you, Merlin Jetton, for catching that.]

Avis M. Brick

Back in the NBI days of the Objectivist world, there was a writer named Avis M. Brick. She wrote for a little magazine called Persuasion, and also wrote a piece or two for The Objectivist. When NBI imploded, in 1968, she, like many others, departed from the scene.

I never met her. I didn't have any active interest in those ideas until 1969. And I was in Chicago, not New York, the then-center of Rand fandom.

Last night I found out that Avis M. Brick was from Chicago originally, and had quite a story before her involvement in Objectivism.

Originally Avis Melander, she had married Phillip Brick, the owner of a Chicago bookstore. But he turned out to be an escaped German POW, whose real name was Reinhold Pabel. He got caught, but his case turned out to be legally complicated.

Pabel was accused of entering the USA illegally, but in fact he had entered it legally as a POW! The law was on Pabel’s side, but the Feds weren’t willing to let an escaped POW get away with it. They settled on a compromise: Pabel went back to Germany for six months to go through the formality of the waiting period, then was permitted to re-enter the USA legally.

In 1958, Avi published a science fiction short story under the name Avis Pabel.

Anyway, as of 7 years ago, one of her children was trying to find her.

My parents split in the United States way back in February 1960. My mother went to New York, we children (one boy and two girls aged 7,6,5) stayed back in the Chicago vicinity with my father and his bookstore. Years later we moved to Germany and as I grew up I took up searching for our mom, who never had left my mind.

The children would be about my age. Avis must be about 80, assuming she's still alive.

I never heard this story before.
Not even as local Chicago lore.

Of course, I was just a baby in 1953 when "Phillip Brick" got exposed by the FBI.

Maybe if I ask my father about it, he'll remember it. It had to be one of those big human interest stories at the time in Chi-town. And it has enough legal twists that he might have paid it some attention.

Now... how did Avis M. Brick
pull off her vanishing trick?

David Gregory's Long Legal Nightmare Is Over

Thank goodness. David Gregory, famed NBC talking head, will not be prosecuted for possessing a high-capacity ammo clip in Washington, DC. Other people, mind you, have indeed been prosecuted for exactly this crime.

D.C. attorney general confirms that law is for the little people.

It's hard to hold the law
in awe
when VIPs
can do as they please.

New Chicago, Two Chicago

On Facebook a friend linked to an article about New Chicago, California, a town near San Jose that was promoted by real estate developers in the 1890, but never actually built:

The question remains to this day whether there were ever any real plans to build a town or if it was all a big hoax. According to Curtis, "It's impossible to determine."

However, there was also another New Chicago, CA, farther inland, a former mining town, now a ghost town.

New Chicago was a mining camp of the 1850s, built up near the Gover Mine. It had about twenty houses.

"New Chicago Road" still exists, and still intersects with "Chicago Mine Road" in Sutter Creek, CA.

But despite these loads
of "Chicago" roads,
there's no sign of State Street
that great street.

Species of Doom

A Slate article spins some reverse sensationalism, pooh-poohing the formerly scary population boom, instead predicting the just-centuries-from-now extinction of humanity due to a sharply declining world population total:

By 2300, it’ll barely scratch 1 billion. ... Extend the trend line, and within a few dozen generations you’re talking about a global population small enough to fit in a nursing home.

As one type of panic begins to fade,
the opposite fear starts up a parade.

Cable News

I spent an hour and a half tonight at a school trying to figure out why the network was down in a couple of classrooms. I did succeed.

In the end, it was just an unplugged cable
fallen behind a radiator underneath a table.

Comma Controversy

There's a punctuation controversy that pertains to commas, and the question is, which of these is better:

I ate bread, cheese, and grapes.

I ate bread, cheese and grapes.

I probably vary between the 2 patterns, myself. In elementary school I learned the first pattern. In high school I learned the second. And now I kind of think the elementary school pattern was better.

But, the whole thing is illogical. After all, the real question is why does English mix commas and "ands" when constructing lists?

Either of these would be more consistent:

I ate bread, cheese, grapes.

I ate bread and cheese and grapes.

But the odds of a natural language being perfectly consistent
are distant.

Kwanzaa Principles

By the way, I don't mind another holiday celebration, but the "7 principles" of Kwanzaa involve an anti-individualist streak, at least as they are officially pushed.

On some of the principles you have to read past the first heading. At first glance, you might think that "Self Determination" sounds individualistic. But here's the description of what that means:

Self-Determination requires that we define our common interests and make decisions that are in the best interest of our family and community.

Every one of the 7 principles is given a community spin, including Faith, Purpose, and Creativity.

I suppose there was never any question about the collectivist drift of these 3: Unity, Cooperative Economics, Collective Work and Responsibility.

Of course, humans are association-forming animals.

But, a man is not a bee.
He is more likely to thrive
when he is allowed to break free
from the mind of the hive.

Donation Liability

One of the oddities of contemporary law is that we have simultaneously pushed 2 paradigms:

1) If a man impregnates a woman by having sex with her, and she keeps the baby, regardless of the state of their union, regardless of agreements between them as to who will support the child, the state will gladly garnish his paycheck for the support of the child. This is particularly true if the woman or child begins to receive some kind of expensive assistance from the state. After all, someone needs to come up with the money for the assistance.

2) Sperm donation is held forth as a perfectly acceptable model for reproduction. In this model, the man has no responsibility for the support of the child.

Now and then, someone falls in a grey area between 1 and 2. A case in the news involves Kansas, a lesbian couple, and a married man who gave the couple a donation. It was done privately, with no lawyers or doctors involved. Which made it a lot cheaper - in the short run.

But then the lesbian couple broke up. And the biological mother hit hard times and applied for aid from the bountiful state of Kansas. And Kansas wanted to know who the father was so they could make him pay. And it turned out the sperm donation had not complied with the requirements of Kansas law, particularly because no doctor was involved.

The other lesbian parent turned out not to be a legal parent at all, under Kansas law, so she's not on the hook for support. (She is reportedly "co-parenting". That presumably involves shelling out some dough, not to mention time, effort, and heart. But she's not legally obligated to do so.)

If only Oprah were still on the air, this story would be perfect.

Procedure not done by a doc.
Bio-mom goes on state aid.
Donor receives a rude shock.
Kansas wants to get paid!

Non Redemption

Almost disappointing:

The second inmate who made a daring escape last month from a high-rise federal jail in the South Loop was captured today in South Suburban Palos Hills, according to FBI officials.

Palos Hills is a Chicago suburb. The other inmate was actually caught within the city limits. Note to self: if you ever break out of jail, don't hang around the general vicinity.

They broke out of jail from the 15th floor,
boldly rappelling down.

Did they head to a beach in Ecuador?
No, they stayed here, and got caught in town.

Evidence Based

You hear a lot about "evidence based" medicine nowadays, but it obviously means something more than just "medicine based on some evidence." I imagine all medicine is based on SOME evidence.

Note that "evidence based" doesn't quite mean proven.

So it was with great interest that I read an article by Erika Ramsdale, MD, and William Dale, MD, "Evidence-Based Guidelines and Quality Measures in the Care of Older Adults".

I'm no physician, but the article had some interesting points, including these:

In many cases, clinical trials fail to enroll subjects representative of patients seen in practice.
...
Furthermore, there is no definitive evidence that using EBM clinical guidelines as quality measures improves outcomes.
...
Algorithmic guidelines sufficiently flexible to account for the wide heterogeneity of older adults are unlikely to be created.

Sometimes the evidence-base
may have little to do
with the case you now face.

On Thin Ice

Wrong way to take a swim.
It starts with a guy on a sled.
His friends fall in after him.
Luckily, no one's dead.

Not Euthanasia, Of Course Not

Remind me not to be old and terminally ill in England, where they've worked out a protocol for letting patients die in 29 hours. You sedate them, withhold fluids, and let them die of dehydration.

I mean, it might not be the worst way to go, but I'd like some choice in the matter, and they aren't always too careful about telling patients or family members when a patient is being put on this "Liverpool Pathway".

Unsurprisingly, there are financial incentives for putting patients on the protocol.

Under figures gained from a 2012 freedom of information request by The Daily Telegraph, 85 per cent of NHS trusts were revealed to have adopted the Liverpool Care Pathway. Just over half of the total of NHS trusts have received or are due to receive financial rewards for doing so.

I'm sure it's all done through appropriate channels,
with any use of those scary "death panels".

Morning at the Beach

It was sunny morning at the beach.
A beautiful day, deserving of song.
But at 17 degrees,
nobody stayed in the water too long.

For some reason, in America, there's a minor tradition of jumping in cold water on New Years Day. In Chicago, the water of choice is Lake Michigan, and the favored spot is North Avenue Beach.

Why? I think it's something to do with those major New Years themes: resolution and starting afresh. I heard a man saying to a woman, "Once you've done this, you can do anything!"

That's not a literal truth, of course. There are always things you simply cannot do. But I suspect it's true that most people seriously under-challenge themselves in life.

This year, I signed up to do it with Freezin' for a Reason, a charitable effort which raises money to rescue retired racing greyhounds. After all, I like dogs, and I like silly rhymes.

So raising money, for runners with paws,
seemed like a fun and worthy cause.

Les Mis & The Critics

I tend to pronounce the first "S" in Les Mis,
making me sound like less than a wiz.

I did like the movie. Very moving. I read today that critics often panned the original show for its "earnestness". And reportedly a lot of critics don't like the film for the same reason.

But, audiences are another matter. They mostly don't mind earnestness. That's because they're not deeply cynical, I suppose.

Cynicism tends to destroy
the taste for unalloyed joy.

Bloomberg's Perspective

They've arrested another crazy person for the 2nd NYC subway push-death in a month.

A deranged woman who told cops she detests Muslims broke into a maniacal fit of laughter as she was charged with a hate crime Saturday, three days after she allegedly shoved an Indian immigrant to his death in front of a Queens train.

But if you're a regular rider on the system, you shouldn't get too worked up about this, says no less an authority than:

...Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged residents to keep the second fatal subway shove in the city this month in perspective.

Now, some subway systems around the world are actually being retrofitted with safety systems to cut down on push-deaths (and accidents and suicides).

So why not New York City? Last year, 146 people were struck by subway trains in New York City. Of those, 47 were killed. That amounts to one accident every 2.5 days, many of which would conceivably have been prevented by a feature now widely used around the world.

But the Metropolitan Transit Authority, the corporation that oversees the city’s transit system, is notably cash strapped these days, facing a $2 billion budget deficit that is expected to mushroom to $3.6 billion by 2016, according to a recent report by Citizens Budget Commission.

146 people hit by subway trains in New York per year?

It's a public health epidemic.
The problem is systemic.
The mayor's urge for "perspective"
is heartless and defective.

Dash Into The New Year

I know it's not quite 2013 yet, but today I ran the Dash Into The New Year 5k. The race was in Matteson, Illinois, about half an hour south of the city limits.

In the past I've run an actual New Years Day 5k in Chicago, but this was a lot more convenient for my schedule, and I managed to snag this nice medal for 2nd place in my age group. And yes, there were more than 2 people in my age group!

Snow was blowing in my face
for half of the race.

But it wasn't really all that cold. The snow wasn't sticking to the road.
I like doing a New Years race because the Christmas season somehow always makes me feel so comfy and cozy. Sooner or later I find myself sitting in a rocking chair, staring out the window at the snow, and savoring the pleasantness of just relaxing. All while munching on cookies!

I can feel my muscles turning to mush
so it's good to run out for a 3 mile rush.

Forward

I suspect it's a minor government tiff.
But it sounds much scarier when you say "cliff".

Goodbye Richard

The head of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, is stepping down. She says it's to pursue new challenges and spend time with her family. However...

A Washington attorney suing the Obama administration for access to alias emails sent by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson claims that a recent decision by the Justice Department to release thousands of those emails next month contributed to her resigning Thursday.

It seems that Ms. Jackson had a secret EPA email under another name, "Richard Windsor", under which she was conducting government business. And Republicans in congress are making a stink about it.

We live in a suspicious society
where the appearance of impropriety,
even without proof of crime...

can suddenly inspire
an overwhelming desire
for lots more "family time".

Jack Reacher

We sent to see the new Jack Reacher movie. I've read one of the novels, and liked it. I thought the movie was very enjoyable. Tom Cruise turned down the boyish charm a bit and put on a rougher edge.

I haven't read the novel (One Shot) on which this movie is based, but the "world" of this movie felt like the world I remember from the novel I did read (61 Hours).

The author's sense of right and wrong
came through loud and strong.

Today

Whether you're on the mainland, an island, or an isthmus...
wherever the heck it is, I wish you a Merry [insert rhyme]!

Criminal Fortification

I was reading about a local arrest, and saw that someone had been charged with "criminal fortification of a residence". I had never heard of such a charge. Well, sure enough, here in the land of Lincoln:

(a) A person commits the offense of criminal fortification of a residence or building when, with the intent to prevent the lawful entry of a law enforcement officer or another, he maintains a residence or building in a fortified condition, knowing that such residence or building is used for the manufacture, storage, delivery, or trafficking of cannabis or controlled substances as defined in the Cannabis Control Act or Illinois Controlled Substances Act.

(b) "Fortified condition" means preventing or impeding entry through the use of steel doors, wooden planking, crossbars, alarm systems, dogs, or other similar means.

So, on the bright side, it's only applicable if your intent is the protection of certain verboten substances.

But, I bet at least half of the houses in my neighborhood have an alarm system or a dog. Or both.

So according to the courts,
we're a neighborhood of forts!

Lies

Not exactly shocking news:

Many workers are willing to lie about a death in the family, illness or jury duty to play hooky, according to a survey conducted by a temporary job staffing firm.

Use uncles, not grandfathers, if a relative must "die",
You wonder why?

Because for grandpas there's a limited supply!
You only get two.

But,  when it comes to uncles, you may well have beaucoup.

If It Save One Life

Logistically, it may be hard,
but I believe that each of us deserves a well-armed guard.

News You Can Use

A friend today requested a rhyme for this legal ruling from Iowa:

The Iowa Supreme Court says a dentist did not commit sex discrimination when he fired an attractive woman assistant he viewed as a threat to his marriage.

If a hot employee tempts you
toward illicit enjoyment,
it legally exempts you
to cut off her employment!

Pre-Rhymed Headline

Business woman injured in sex romp gets worker's comp

This case, in Australia, has been working its way through their court system for years, but finally the claimant has emerged triumphant.

While on a business trip, having sex on a hotel bed, a lighting fixture fell down on her head.

The technical legal question before the Australian court was whether her ill-fated mattress-merry-making was "an ordinary incident of an overnight stay". Well, who's to say?

In her favor, reportedly her employer had encouraged her to stay at this hotel with the shoddy light fixture.

The story sounds strange, since the guy in the case testified that he didn't know whether they had bumped the fixture or whether it had simply fallen. Really?

But what interests me is the "injury" claim itself. She suffered "facial and psychological" injuries. Most of the value of the claim had to be on the psych side, wherein she "later suffered depression and was unable to continue working for the government."

The nice thing about using a depression claim in your opening move,
is that it's hard to disprove.

Heads Roll

3 officials at the state department are resigning, just after the carefully worded impartial report found a pattern of systemic failure leading up to the Benghazi murders.

Security failed.
Careers derailed.

Our secretary of state was already planning on leaving, of course. And can't testify about the murders because she's recovering from a concussion.

Truman said "the buck stops here."
But sometimes the buck just seems to... disappear.

Transparency vs. Privacy

This makes intuitive sense to me:

We typically assume that the more we can see, the more we can understand about an organization. This research suggests a counteracting force: the more that can be seen, the more individuals may respond strategically with hiding behavior and encryption to nullify the understanding of that which is seen.

That's from Ethan S. Bernstein who goes on to argue that people may actually be more productive when they are allowed some privacy at work.

Put privacy under steady, official attack,
and people will find ways take it back.

Blithe Spirit, First Rehearsal

We had our first rehearsal tonight for the MPTG production of Blithe Spirit, the ghost story comedy by Noel Coward.

I'm playing the skeptical doc,
who is rather inclined to mock
the mystically dotty
Madame Arcati.

Seasonal Floral Limerick

A competitive sort of poinsettia
Proclaimed that her petals were betta.
She said, "Use your eyes -
My blooms take the prize -
They're bigger and brighter and redda."

A Christmas Carol (Abridged)

That's the title of the Christmas show at Dream Theatre, which opened today at a matinee performance.

It's performed with 3 actors on a fairly bare stage, and its claim to your attention is that all the words you hear were written by Charles Dickens. The emphasis is on the literary quality, rather than special effects, and you never actually see Tiny Tim - unless you see him in your mind's eye, which I guess I did.

(Yes, there are special effects, but they are of the understated sort that ask you to use your imagination.)

This is a labor of love on the part of Rachel Martindale, who adapted it, directed it, and acts in it. And that love comes across. John-Paul Kostecki is a great deal of fun as Scrooge, and Mason Pain plays the other male parts with skilled enthusiasm.

It's ghostly and slightly scary,
but ends up sprightly and merry.

HRC Hits Head

The US secretary of state was sick, and slipped, and sustained a concussion.

And now won't be able to testify as scheduled before congress about the Benghazi attack.

I think they should reschedule when she's feeling better. Even if she's not secretary of state any more by then.

State department employees were needlessly killed.
The person in charge deserves to be grilled.

Joy on a Sad Day

At lunch, I happened upon highschoolers singing holiday carols in the library lobby. Their singing was lovely, and I stood transfixed.

Listening to them sing,
I felt the truth that life is a holy thing.

Cliff Hangers

The Wall St. Journal reports:

Fiscal Cliff Inspires Legion of Poets

There are samples, both rhymed and haiku.

For many the cliff inspires creative leaps.
But I get depressed and soon fall sleep.

Hold Out, Turned Out

Illinois is a hold-out state - the only state in the union with no provision for normal citizens to carry a loaded gun. But our local federal appeals court has now struck down that ban as unconstitutional.

Don't go walking outside with a gun in your pocket just yet - the court gave the state 180 days to pass some new rules.

So, the unconstitutional law, is still in effect? That's kind of bizarre, in a way.

The ruling itself is interesting. It's written by Richard Posner, no fan of gun rights, but a bright guy who is trying to apply the logic of recent supreme court rulings. I'm fond of this sentence:

The right to “bear” as distinct from the right to “keep”arms is unlikely to refer to the home.

A "right to bear"
suggests the "where"
extends beyond the home.

Gun carriers must be allowed to roam.

Losing Track of Time

I find I get the most work done when I'm losing track of time and the day is vanishing at a rapid pace. You know, a day where you glance at your watch and are surprised that most of the normal workday has already evaporated.

You want productivity? Here's what I ask:
let me become absorbed in the task.

Liberty of Contract

For book club today we discussed David Mayer's Liberty of Contract: Rediscovering a Lost Constitutional Right. I enjoyed it a lot. It's short and lawyerly, and it's dry, as legal arguments often are.

As with his book on the Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson, part of the interest for me was exploring how the constitution was viewed in the past, by very bright people whose theories were often quite different than those you usually hear today.

In Liberty of Contract, Mayer takes part in an ongoing scholarly re-examination of a period in the Supreme Court's history when it held that such liberty was an individual right.

Synthesizing the new scholarship and presenting a coherent and comprehensive overview of liberty-of-contract jurisprudence, this book argues that the orthodox view of the so-called Lochner era is fundamentally flawed in a number of respects. Indeed, the orthodox view is wrong in virtually all of its assumptions, which were based on myths originally propounded by Progressive-Era scholars that have been perpetuated by modern scholars who similarly defend the policies of the modern regulatory state.

Proponents of the regulatory state
don't give "liberty of contract" much weight.

Clause Needed

A US district judge, refusing to buy the wait and see if it really hurts argument.

“Moreover, the First Amendment does not require citizens to accept assurances from the government that, if the government later determines it has made a misstep, it will take ameliorative action,” he continued. “There is no, ‘Trust us, changes are coming’ clause in the Constitution.”

Maybe that's what the constitution needs! A "trust us" clause!

Proposed 28th amendment:

Citizens must
henceforward trust
that their government's actions are just.

Unadorned

Haul a tree indoors and prop it,
in a prominent position.

It's very hard to stop it,
it's a dominant tradition.

Come Quick

Somewhere in Texas...

"I'm out in the country somewhere," Moore told the 911 operator during the 10-minute call. "Some guy's got a gun on me."

You might wonder why some guy had a gun on him. Well... because the guy had caught him engaged in a burglary. The guy's wife also called 911, saying:

"You better come quick," she said, "or my husband's going to shoot him."

It's getting tough to be a thief.
You might have to call the cops for relief.

Chump Change

I think I've mentioned it last year, but they're talking about it again!

Feeling held down by a debt ceiling? Then -
mint some coins worth 10 to the 10.

Yes, that's a one trillion dollar coin. Proposed, not actual, to be perfectly factual.

There are limits on how much paper money the U.S. can circulate and rules that govern coinage on gold, silver, and copper. BUT, the Treasury has broad discretion on coins made from platinum. The theory goes that the U.S. Mint would create a handful of trillion dollar (or more) platinum coins. The President would then order the coins deposited at the Fed, who would then put the coin (s) in the Treasury who now can pay all their bills and a default is removed from the equation.

Limits?
Those are for dimwits!

Federalism Chaos

Illinois is now considering a medical marijuana law. And our state senate just passed a law granting drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants.

Neither of these will make it exactly legal to smoke weed or overstay your visa in Illinois. Because federal laws presumably still apply here.

I'm unclear on whether the state can actually stop a local cop from enforcing a federal law. But I bet they can discourage it.

If... due to a medical condition,
duly certified by a physician...
you need to get high,
it'll be mostly the DEA and FBI
that concern you.

The local fuzz won't burn you.

In Pursuit of an Upper Lip That's Hirsute

In the Mideast, reportedly, a mustache is a sign of manliness. But not all men can grow a thick one. So, here comes cosmetic surgery to the rescue:

...in recent years, increasing numbers of Middle Eastern men have been going under the knife to attain the perfect specimen.

Embarrassed by a thin moustache?
Want to look manly in a flash?
Just slip our surgeons some folding cash!

Owe Yes

Tomorrow, tomorrow, we'll borrow tomorrow -
I hope there's a way to pay!

Coffee!

Most days I drink a cup or two. But...

"What I tell patients is, if you like coffee, go ahead and drink as much as you want and can," says Dr. Peter Martin, director of the Institute for Coffee Studies at Vanderbilt University.

I guess this means I need more caffeine!

But you know the way these things go...
in just about a year
there will be a major study to show
that coffee's a thing to fear.