For My Son's Birthday

An early-eighties flashback:

BIRTH BALLAD

It was just about midnight
And up out of bed
Jumped Marsha. "I've got
A contraction," she said.

They kept coming on,
And I timed them with care.
They lasted ten minutes,
Which didn't seem fair.

By one they were coming
Five minutes apart.
So I called up the doctor
And he said to start.

So I shaved and I dressed
And was ready to go,
But Marsha threw up
And held up the show.

Then we got in the car
And I stepped on the gas
With the perfect excuse
For speeding - at last!

The rest - it all blurs,
But after six hours
Out came a boy!
Sweet joy! He was ours!

Charles Ramsay, Actual First Responder

I love this interview with the guy who rescued Amanda Berry.


This guy can tell a story,
with no attempt at self-glory,
but he's the heroic one
and he got the job done.

Waiting For The Truth

The whistle will blow
and trouble will grow
and whatever they did
will no longer be hid.

But what it was exactly, I really don't yet know.

Complete Run of Jane Eyre

11 days away and the show is going well from all that I can tell.

42

Minireview of 42: heartwarming story of baseball glory, but not a lot of plot.

Finding Ground

Not a complete surprise:

A Massachusetts funeral home owner said he is struggling to find a graveyard willing to accept the body of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, killed in a shootout with police four days after an attack that left three dead and 264 injured.

A burial at sea
sounds best to me.

Charisma Aftermath

Some who can run a brilliant campaign
find governance a chore
or, really, a crashing bore.

Then the citizens complain
more and more
about their own selection
from the last election -
someone they used to adore!

Tough Minded Woman

At the Art Institute, they had more classical pieces out than usual. They tripled the space for the period and they're calling it the Jaharis Gallery.

I don't remember seeing this head of Athena before. Yes, that's a woman in a military helmet - that's one of the ways you can spot Athena, actually.

The sign described it as Roman, 2nd century AD.

She was known for delivering fearsome blows,
but it looks like she took one herself on the nose.

Promises of Fruit

The cherry blossoms arrive.
If there's no more snow, they might survive!

At Last

It's nice to see Spring become an actual thing, instead of an abstract date in a winter that ran too late.

Endurance

A journey of a thousand miles, begins they say with just one step, and hopefully a bunch of pep, since you'll be stepping for quite a while.

Mistakes Happen

This mistake happened in Brazil:

Bruno Coutinho was cleaning his harpoon gun at his home in Petropolis when he accidentally triggered the apparatus, sending the harpoon through his left eye and into his cranium.

Miraculously - except for losing his left eye - he seems to be fine. There's a scary copy of the X-ray at the link, showing that the harpoon went all the way to the back of his skull.

But... how did he do this? I guess it must have started with him staring right at the point of a loaded harpoon gun.

I mean, if you were trying to have a stupid deadly accident, that would be a good start.

His Darwin Award will never arrive.
He cleverly managed to survive!

According to Legend

King Canute, in his pride,
tried to regulate the tide.

For this feat,
he got wet feet,
and met defeat.

Exoskeletal

Tiny creatures with exoskeletal features have invaded our house. I mean ants. It's a spring thing around here, but this year, I fear, there are more than ever. The guy at the hardware store said everyone in the neighborhood is being driven crazy this season. Could record rainfall be the reason? I don't know. But I want them to go!

It occurred to me that we in the vertebrate subphylum actually retain some key exoskeletal features ourselves - namely our skulls, which protectively encase our brains - and our spines which protectively encases our spinal cords, the other part of our central nervous system.

I wouldn't want my brain
exposed
to wind and rain.

I like it very well
enclosed
in this hard shell.

Noah Counting for Record April Showers

Drought washed away - that's the positive slant. But the farmers say it's too wet to plant.

Prisoner's Lemma

If your partner in crime is already dead, always insist that he was the head, while you, a mere hand, just obeyed his command.

When You ACHOO

Do you ever have issues with regular facial tissues? Is it the case that your nose, when it blows, just goes right through two-ply on the fly? If so, then you have sympathy, from me.

Question

FBI, I'm wondering why you didn't keep more of an eye on this guy.

The Mother, by Brecht

I just got back from a musical celebrating Bolshevism and the Russian Revolution.

Yes, really, The Mother, by Bertolt Brecht, based on a novel by Maxim Gorky. But this production had all new music.

It was a real split brain experience for me. It was well done, with charismatic actors with great voices and nice tunes. The staging was wild. The theater was set up as rows of wooden table which the audience sat at - but then the actors walked and sang on the tables. Katherine Keberlein, as the mother herself, was excellent. That's her to the right in the photo.



Sarah Pretz, to the left was a finely intimidating czarist police official. (I assume the part was written for a man, but there are a lot more actresses than actors at auditions in Chicago, and you learn to expect to sometimes see women-playing-men in storefront theater here. It's sort of the reverse of what happened in Shakespeare's time, where one expected to see males-playing-females on stage.)

I thought Stephanie Polt, as Masha, had an extra bit of star quality for some reason.

Alas, I know how Bolshevism ended.
And don't really feel that it can be defended.

Squish

What a way to go - run over by your bro! Sort of a poetic way to die, and it couldn't happen to a more appropriate guy.

Hopes Dashed

They thought they were such smarties,
blaming terrorist tea parties,
thinking it would be majestic
if the bad guys were domestic,
but alas, the news we're fetchin' ya
is this: they're both from Chechnya.

Global Warming Delayed

I walked out of rehearsal, and into a mid-April snowstorm.

Well, I play the cold-hearted villain in Jane Eyre, so this may be my fault.

On the bright side, this will melt shortly, in tomorrow's warmer weather,
as hearts must melt when Jane and her man finally get together.

Caught

I have friends who are upset about the heavy handed display of SWAT team stuff.

But I am not upset.

This was exactly what the SWAT stuff is supposed to be for. These were bombers who were demonstrably eager to kill and maim just about anyone they could. They'd proven pretty effective at it too.

It's worth noting that it was a citizen, checking on his boat, that actually found the guy. These police dragnets aren't quite what they're cracked up to be. But the cops did a nice job of answering the citizen's 911 call.

You can argue tactics after the fact all day.
But in the end he didn't get away.

Argument from Moderation

I'm not sure I'd heard it called that before, but I've sure encountered it a lot. Wikipedia describes the argument from moderation as:

an informal fallacy which asserts that the truth can be found as a compromise between two opposite positions.

Consider: Did O.J. kill his wife? Let's not argue the point, but let's agree the answer is not: kind of.

It seems the truth
does not always fall
between extremes.

Gun Control Undone

I actually expected the gun control measure to pass in the Senate, rather than to go down in flames.

I mean, there's a Democratic majority. And a few Republicans, including my own Republican senator, were willing to give it an "Aye".

But, no, a bunch of Democrats defected and gave it a "No."

A visibly angry President Barack Obama blasted the Senate’s rejection of a bipartisan proposal to expand background checks on gun sales, a vote that essentially ends any hope for major gun control legislation for the time being.

Anyway, I figured it would pass the Senate at least, partly because I kept reading that polls indicated the law had popular support.

Afterwards, trying to make sense of it, I reminded myself of 2 things:

1) Every state, no matter how thinly populated and rural, gets 2 senators. That means there's a bias toward places where people are comfortable with gun ownership.

2) The popular support for the new law was probably thin - including lots of gun-undecideds who had been nudged into supporting it by weeks of media campaigning, but who aren't really that enthused about it. I mean, everybody would like to do something to prevent another school massacre, but this bill didn't seem like it would have stopped the last one. On the other side of the ledger book, there were a lot of pro-gun voters who were going to be really upset about the new law - seeing it as an infringement of their rights. In other words, it was a low-reward, high-risk sort of vote for a politician.

Thus the law went on to meet
bipartisan defeat.

Airbrushed

A friend of mine has told me more than once, over the years, about a deadly bombing he witnessed - and nearly walked into - in Dublin, back in the Seventies. He recalled it as taking place by the Gresham Hotel.

The Boston bombing yesterday brought that memory to his mind once more, and he tried to Google about it, using combinations like Gresham Hotel Bomb. It proved strangely hard to find, and he began to wonder if he had mis-remembered the precise location.

But by steadfastly Googling different combinations, I found a clear reference in an old Russell Kirk column, which ran in the Prescott Courier on June 20, 1974:

Atrocities, most of them attributed to the IRA, have commenced south of the border - the most recent big one being the death-dealing explosion before the Gresham Hotel, in Dublin.

So, why is this hard to find? I rather suspect that this represents Search Engine De-Optimization. In other words, I suspect the hotel operators have worked to remove online references to their hotel having been the location of such a disaster. The hotel remains in business.

Who wants to have a hotel
recalled as a site of hell?

Marathon Terrorism

That's the logo of the Boston Athletic Association, which puts on the Boston Marathon each year, for over a hundred years now. A peaceful event. Until now.

My son and my daughter-in-law-to-be, who live in the Boston area, are fine. I hope, if you are reading this, that no one you know has been killed or maimed or even traumatized.

But this is a terrible day. Whoever did this deserves what they get. And, whatever does happen to them, they will never get to a point where they have "paid their debt to society" as the old phrase had it.

Ideological fanatics, or lone loon,

I hope they catch them soon.

Grave Matters, Continued

Yesterday I mentioned a local cemetery in disrepair, but today we have a wild story of an individual grave vandal, in England:

Clare Burke, 79, trashed grave of Jill Wilks and one-day-old granddaughter Widower's £150 CCTV camera caught her replacing flowers with dead ones

The 79-year-old perpetrator of desecration was jealous about some relationship issue!

Her practice of dumping gravel

on the grave began to unravel

when the widower planted a cam.

Now she's in a jam.

Cemetery Cycling

I was out riding my bike today and I rode through 4 local cemeteries - 2 to visit relatives' graves - and 2 just to look around. (Yes, all 4 seem to allow bicycles.)

Mt. Hope Cemetery, where I have no relatives, seems to be in a distressed condition. It looks like it was once a fine place. But now the very southwest corner of it is actually semi-submerged in water. At least it was today, and a few years ago I saw the same thing. We did have a lot of rain this week, but I found it quite disturbing.

You can see pictures of some of it's failings here. Here's just one, as a sample:



I don't understand what the water problem is. How did it develop? When they originally buried folks in those spots, it obviously wasn't a pond at that time. What has gone wrong in the mean time? There is a sewer drainage system evidently in place - there are drainage grills, etc. But something's not working, I guess.

Lately this cemetery is in the local news because of allegation, made by neighbors, that it has become the popular burial ground for local street gangs.

Bury me not
in a wetland spot.

Gosnell and the Journalists

Megan McArdle says she wasn't covering the Gosnell case because:

To start, it makes me ill.

Well, I can certainly understand that. But that can't be the universal explanation of why the national media has been avoiding the case. They cover a lot of stuff that makes everybody ill. Ann Althouse, reading McArdle, suspects there is more than disgust going on, in general. She suspects there's another feeling motivating the non-reporting:

There's a deep fear — true shame — about this other matter that I'm talking about.

What she's talking about is late term abortions themselves, which, the later they get, the more they look like the killing of a full term human infant.

Let's talk about the morality of the seen and the unseen. This is a shallow morality that infects our lives. If the human entity is inside the womb, and it is cut into pieces that is one thing, but if it's "partially born" so that a nurse sees it clenching and unclenching its fists as it meets its demise, it's another. And if it slips entirely out, and everyone sees a living child and then the doctor severs its spine, then everyone is supposed to know it's murder.

When late-term abortions became politically controversial, the reporting on them was always annoyingly scanty, and I was puzzled about all sorts of things - including why the mothers were engaging in the practice. I mean, what was the point of carrying the kid for more than 6 months and then aborting it? Were these cases of discovering that a child was badly deformed, or doomed to some horrid life? I could understand that, but I was not hearing that this was consistently the case. Were they cases of the mother's life being threatened by continuing to carry the child? Again, understandable, but I was not hearing that this was always true.

At some point you might think adoption
would be the better option.

Untitled

Because I feel tired, this post
will be shorter than most.

Thanks, But

Oh, right, a pretty 21 year old woman, with a busty photo, who is unknown to me, who is friends with just 16 people, all of them men, all of them recently acquired... wants to befriend me on Facebook.

Being of sound mind,
I declined.
It's some kind of scam.
I just don't know what kind.

The Original Head Start Program

It's a womb without a view, but the audio provides a sneak preview of coming interactions:

Babies only hours old are able to differentiate between sounds from their native language and a foreign language, scientists have discovered. The study indicates that babies begin absorbing language while still in the womb, earlier than previously thought.

After the 30th week, insiders listen when outsiders speaks.

Tactics

Now I hear that Senate Republicans will not filibuster Harry Reid's gun control bill... in order to make Democratic Senators go on record as for or against... in the hopes that their records will hurt a bunch of them in the 2014 elections.

I gather that the bill can't pass the Republican-held House, anyway, so this is all a sort of show-and-tell exercise.

I fear our political class
taken as a mass
does too much show-and-tell,
and not especially well.

The Human Person

Something about the book's title caught my eye: The Human Person in a Philosophy of Education.

It was that phrase, "Human Person". Was there some other kind of person that the author was concerned with?

Well, perhaps, yes. The author is a Thomist, and so, one presumes, a believer in divine and angelic persons.

Looking into the book, I found much to interest me, so I made a donation and took it from the library's discard pile.

It proceeds by comparing progressive education with traditional education. John Dewey's philosophy is seen as underpinning progressive education. Thomas Aquinas's philosophy is seen as providing the best defense of traditional education.

Writing in 1965, the author sees progressive education as a failure, based on a fallacious philosophy.

In sum, he thinks Thomas
makes good on his promise,
but as for Dewey,
phooey!

Promotional Photos

I routinely get emails from race organizers that say: you ran our race last year, wouldn't you like to run it again? Usually a couple of photos from last year's race are included.

This year, by what I presume is just a funny coincidence, I picked myself out in 2 of the photos:

From the 20 Miler, you probably can't recognize me, but I'm in the back row with my face half-blocked. You can see my sunglasses and hat, anyway. This was taken at the start, which is why everyone looks so happy:



From the Chinatown 5k, this is from near the end, which is why I don't look so happy:



Between the starts and finishes,
happiness diminishes.

But, gee, it's fun
being done.

Back to Nature

There's a longstanding hope that we can we discern humankind's true nature, by observing the way people lived before "civilization" complicated everything. 

How far back does this hope go?
I'd say at least to Rousseau.

There's also a hope that we can do something similar by observing babies before they have been acculturated. 

Again, I think you'll find
Rousseau's project comes to mind.

I think the results of such studies, when conducted scientifically, are useful for dealing with theorists who propose that human nature is more malleable than it really is. 

To repeat, human nature
defies erasure.

From observing historical civilizations, it's clear that we are beings of an adaptable nature, but it's also clear that some forms of civilization are better suited to our thriving than others.

When a society is truly advanced,
human life is wildly enhanced.

After Running

Running, at the right pace, can actually be pleasant, with practice, at least for some, at least for me. But I suppose that getting to that point is rarely all fun and games.

There's an old thought-experiment about exercise. Suppose someone tells you that every hour of exercise-X will add an hour to your life. But you hate exercise-X. Is it worth it?

From one perspective, probably not. More of your life will be spent in misery, and the number of enjoyable hours in your life will not increase.

However, if you want to survive to see some particular event in the future, the hateful exercise might be worth it. Say that you want to survive to see the birth of a grandchild, or the first human colony established on the moon, or... whatever.

There's an old joke about exercise: if it were a pill, everyone would take it.

Anyway,
now my legs are sore,
so I won't be running any more
today.

Surprised

I'm surprised
that he apologized.

I'm surprised the Prez had to do so. I admit that I thought his original comment was sort of cringe-inducing socially. But I thought he was in a position to make it acceptable. He's a powerful man, a man regarded as good looking and sexy. A man who delivers lines like that, usually, with a sly little smile that, to me, seems to say, "Yes, I know I'm stepping over a line here, but watch how gracefully I do it."

But, I guess it didn't come off right somehow.

I'm a little amused by people trying to develop theoretical rules for things like this. This incident, to me, falls deeply into the "current manners" category. I won't be at all surprised if the unwritten rules are drastically different in 20 years - in either a more severe or more lax direction.

For instance, from The Atlantic:

...I've long felt we lack a solid theoretical underpinning for easily discussing these issues, and why precisely it is that admiring and complimenting women for the beauty they work so hard to maintain--and let's be clear, nobody looks like Harris at her age (48) without effort...

She then proposes a theoretical underpinning that seems underpinned.

And that thing about "she's so old she must be working hard to look good"... that's probably true, but somehow sounds like a subtle form of needling to me.

Of course "we" can't all "easily discuss" these issues. There is a lot of pain wrapped up, for a lot of people, in judgments of who is prettier than whom, in judging who is still pretty even though she is 48.

I'm reminded of that old Janis Ian son, At Seventeen.

For some, discussing these issues
requires a box of tissues.

At Risk

Over at the Powerline blog, they're asking Why Can't We Sue Politicians For Malpractice?

What are the odds they would vote
themselves into that boat?

Malevolent

I'm having great fun playing a bad guy in Jane Eyre. The original is high gothic romanticism, and this production is very stylized, not naturalistic, so I am playing it bad and bold.

The script seems to invite
a portrait of tortured night.

Foreign

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

When you visit, try to notice all the things they won't declare,
but will acknowledge in some other way,
less obvious (at least to you) than in the present day.

Due For Shut-Eye

From a list of things you shouldn't do before going to bed: Watch TV/Surf the Web

And yet, I am here, posting about it, just before bed. Somehow reading the list has not changed my behavior!

I'd also add: think twice
before taking web advice.

Mystery Statue

That's a statue of Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb. "Mary is bent, huddled, distraught at the disappearance of Jesus' body. Then she hears her name spoken, and turns, looking upward to Jesus standing behind her. This poignant image captures the moment of Mary's incomprehension, as she hears her name spoken by someone she knows is dead. After all, she has been present at the crucifixion of Jesus, seen his sagging body removed from the cross, and been the one who laid out his corpse in the tomb. But now, inexplicably, she recognizes his voice. This image is closer to pictures of Mary in modern films..."

I don't know who sculpted it. A friend posted the picture on Facebook, and I was struck by it. I think the artist did a nice job with the body and the expression - caught that moment of shock. It definitely looks post-1950 to me, but I'm not sure.

There seems to be a nearly identical statue in the Mission Santa Barbara church. But if you click on the link you will see that Mary's left hand is holding onto a vase in Santa Barbara. There's a close-up on her face at the Santa Barbara location, from another angle, here.

May all who drown in grief
find relief.

UPDATE: Sculptor is Bruce Wolfe, a contemporary, and the piece is designed to be seen with a figure of Jesus. Wolfe's Wikipedia page is here.

On the Loose in the Zoo

At the city zoo in Buenos Aires, there were certain animals who just seemed to have the run of the place. This included some odd ducks with red bumps on their face, and some Maras, aka Patagonian Hares.

Here's a photo from the zoo featuring both, from Evan Schaeffer's website:



Schaeffer describes the maras as "scary rabbit things". I didn't find them at all frightening, but he went to the zoo with a child, and I did notice that a lot of children found them scary.

Frankly, I thought some of the red-bump ducks were scarier looking. Here's another pic from the zoo that someone else took. Apparently this is a "Muscovy Duck":





Despite its name, the Patagonian Hare
is not used for the Easter Bunny down there.

Love, Liquid and Solid

In Argentina, I learned of an organization called, in English, something like "Solid Group", which turns out to be a response to a book called "Liquid Love".

Liquid love has made a big splash,
but they intend a solid clash.

The rebels speak:

Zygmunt Bauman, a Polish sociologist, has achieved great editorial success describing our “liquid” society. On his book “Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds”, he captures the postmodern outlook regarding relationships:

In these days, bonds among people are fragile, weak, almost ethereal.

Liquid love is the legacy we inherited from the sexual revolution. And while adults may believe that young people comfortably swim in its waters, many of us are filled with dissatisfaction.

This clash reminds me of an interesting sociological phenomenon going on in the US lately. The upper middle class continues to marry before they have children, and to stay married.

Statistically speaking, of course.
It's not like they never divorce.

There are economic forces involved, no doubt, including unintended incentives and consequences of various laws and social programs.

But there's also a theory that there's a funny kind of hypocrisy involved that is misleading the under-educated. The upper middle class won't - in public - criticize having children out of wedlock. But in private they apparently think it's a big mistake.

You can make a case that it makes economic sense for lots of young women to choose to be single moms. I've seen some economists make such a case. But it does seem, statistically, associated with a life of scraping by, and with poorer outcomes for the kids, too.

I'm in favor of people having kids.
But you don't want their lives to hit the skids.

After Marriage Equality

After we get marriage equality, as it is now called, I believe that forward-thinking Americans will slowly realize that they need even more marriage equality.

There is a form of marriage, between consenting non-related adults, that is currently outlawed in all 50 states.

It is a form of marriage that is recognized in many traditional cultures, but it does not conform to the "one man, one woman" rule.

It has already emerged as an issue among the Unitarians, an issue that most Unitarians would prefer to keep under wraps, for now. But it has exploded onto the pages of the Washington Post.

I speak, of course, of marriage involving more than 2 people, often derogated as polygamy, but now rechristened as polyamorous union.

...as the issue of same-sex marriage heads to the Supreme Court, many committed Unitarians think the denomination should have a position, which is that polyamory activists should just sit down and be quiet. For one thing, poly activists are seen as undermining the fight for same-sex marriage.

"Just sit down and be quiet."

Oh, really?

And should they go to the back of the bus, as well?
Unitarian bigotry is hell.

Knowledge of Spanish

I was occasionally able to make myself understood in Spanish, while in Argentina, which satisfied and amused me greatly.

Two examples linger with me, both cases in which my wife was having trouble getting an idea across.

The first was when she was trying to communicate "yacht club" to some people. I said "el club de barcos" (the club of boats) and they actually understood it.

The second was when she was trying to communicate "zoo" by saying "Jardín Zoológico" (zoological garden). The taxi driver couldn't quite understand the words as she was pronouncing them. I said "muchos animales" (many animals) and then it all clicked for him.

I even communicated some full sentences on occasion!

I am not good at languages.
They send me through the anguishes.

All that English stuff
was tough enough,
and now Spanish still
resists my will.

Back, And Glad To Be

I'm back from Argentina. Took an overnight flight, got into Chicago at 8 am, and went to work. Thank goodness I was able to get some serious sleep on the plane.

Door-to-door, from when I got the taxi at the hotel in Buenos Aires, to when I got off the subway in downtown Chicago, I was traveling 20.5 hours.

Amusingly, when we got back, our heat had gone off. So it's cold in the house right now. I'm typing in my overcoat and knit cap. But we've got guys working on it, and I expect it to be fixed shortly.

It's got to be a thermo-couple that needs to be replaced. That's usually what's wrong when our heat goes out.

I did successfully replace
a thermo-couple - just once -
hoping to prove it wasn't the case
that I'm a heating system dunce.

Protest

Protest outside hotel. Don't know what it was about. It slowed me down, but did not stop me from getting out.

Fun To See Them But...

At the zoo, the animals seem short on things to do.

Ups and Downs

Argentines are happy about the new pope, but gloomy about an economy approaching the end of its rope.

Tip Off Re: Rip-Off

Be extra careful about what the fare is, when taking a taxi in Buenos Aires.

Wondering

When did air travel begin to unravel?

Fallon Fox

The basic nature of the controversy goes back to at least Renee Richards, who did the man to woman transgender thing.

She was denied entry into the 1976 US Open by the United States Tennis Association, citing an unprecedented women-born-women policy. She disputed the ban, and the New York Supreme Court ruled in her favor in 1977.

The question comes up in the male-to-female cases: does being born a man confer an unfair athletic advantage over those born women?

Now, a champion martial arts competitor, Fallon Fox, has come out as a trans person.



And Stephen Crowder, at Fox News, has a rant up about what he sees as this person's unfair advantage - much heavier developmental testosterone exposure.

Let me ask you this; if Barry Bonds came out and said “Okay okay, I did copious amounts of steroids for over 20 years, but I stopped before I hit my last few homers,” would you consider that fair?

If I were in the ring
with her
I'd pray for the bell's ding-ding
to occur.

Astonishing

I don't know the answer, either:

“I think the greatest, most astonishing fact that I am aware of in social science right now is that women have been able to hear the labor market screaming out ‘You need more education’ and have been able to respond to that, and men have not,” said Michael Greenstone, an M.I.T. economics professor who was not involved in Professor Autor’s work. “And it’s very, very scary for economists because people should be responding to price signals. And men are not. It’s a fact in need of an explanation.”

I've seen a lot of theories proposed.

Some blame employers' growing obsession with credentials. (Diplomas are overrated, officially required, but in fact unneeded for many jobs.)
Some blame the educational establishment. (Hostile environment for males, or something.)
Some blame men. (Lazy immature slackers focused on video games and porn.)
Some blame women. (Willing to sleep with lazy immature slackers, thus removing a major incentive for said slackers to pursue a career.)
Some blame the welfare state. (Women with children less in need of men's money, thus more willing to sleep with lazy immature slackers...)

That's just for starters, of course. As for me, I don't know. I need to meet more of these immature slacker males, so I can intuit their motivations!

I remember advice from a book, some primer on economics, and the advice went something like this: Whenever you see a market behaving in a way that makes no sense at all, there has to be a very good reason for it.

When "senseless" economic behavior is trending,
surely hidden incentives are bending
preference away from what you would expect
the "rational man" to select.

Further Misadventures

When we last left Marsha, in Newark, she had a morning flight scheduled to Miami, where she was to switch planes and fly to Buenos Aires.

Alas.

A man on the flight to Miami had a medical emergency. Plane landed in Raleigh, NC, so an ambulance could take the guy to a hospital.

Plane was late getting to Miami. Marsha was 5 minutes late for her connecting flight.

So, that's 2 days in a row that she just missed a flight.
However, I believe she's finally on a non-stop plane to Buenos Aires - as I write.
Let's hope it doesn't have to land anywhere else during the night!

Flying United, Or Not

My wife started a trip to Buenos Aires today, on United Airlines. First leg of the flight was to Newark, NJ. Somehow that flight was behind schedule. I'm not sure why. We had a little precip here, but nothing serious.

She begged the flight attendant to call ahead to the flight to South America to let them know she was coming. Flight attendant refused to do that, saying: they already know you're coming.

Marsha got to the flight to South America - she was there - as the clock ticked to the departure time - and they wouldn't let her board. They shut the door.

She doesn't have her luggage. It's locked up. They gave her a bag of toiletries.

Next flight out - tomorrow, same time. So, it's an exciting 24 hours in Newark.

I don't know why they shut the door in her face.
Maybe they'd put somebody in her place?

UPDATE: She got them to switch her to an American Airlines flight that leaves at 6 or so in the a.m. Needs to be at the gate by 4 or so. Well, that's a big improvement compared to waiting a full 24 hours!

Mass Media

The new pope's popular so far,
but parish donations are down - yes they are.
So I think a papal Paypal account
might help to increase the incoming amount.

If people decline to go to churches,
you can advertise on their internet searches,
and get them to listen to online sermons
and hit the tip jar - as their conscience determines.

I enjoyed the movie No, which is about the plebiscite in 1988 where the voters of Chile decided that August Pinochet should not have another 8 years as president.

More specifically, the story is about the competing advertising campaigns between the 2 sides.

I would say the movie walks a line, where it is anti-Pinochet, but not pro-Allende.

The hero is an ad man who sees the need to put a positive spin on voting No.

Sometimes just saying no
is the happy way to go.

To Assume

Instapundit linked to a not-safe-for-work article.

It's about a kinky first date
that stumbled right out of the gate.

Eventually our author allows her date to have unprotected sex with her - and is then very upset when it turns out he has not withdrawn before completion.

He is upset too, to learn she's not on the pill.

As she makes clear, they'd had no conversation about withdrawal or contraception.

Rather, she'd made an assumption, and he'd made a different one.

Of course, they were both being idiots. Probably because their passions befuddled their reasoning powers. Which makes them, perhaps, victims of evolutionary psychology, which must favor natural reproduction, after all.

Reason tries to master sex,
which promptly turns around to vex
many a plan
of woman and man.

Passing Thoughts on Evolutionary Ethics

To me, lapsed Thomist that I am, Evolutionary Psychology often seems like a theory of appetites with an underlying teleology.

That is, for example, men have sexual appetites for women who appear to be healthy and fertile, with the end of having offspring who will themselves keep the chain of reproduction going.

Evolutionists almost always tell you they are not teleologists, but the resemblance is striking if you step back and squint a bit.

When it comes to evolutionary theories of virtue, the theories tend to address why we feel some actions are right and some are wrong. But typically they don't address the question of which actions, in a given situation, are wise or just.

It's interesting how dismissive evolutionary psychologists can be toward philosophical ethics.

Isn't the power to sift
through wise and just reflection
itself a helpful gift
of natural selection?

White Smoke

They have once again chosen a Catholic for a pope, so I guess
we can keep asking that dumb question as a way of saying yes.

Obesity Among Lesbians And Straight Men

Ann Althouse quotes from a story the NIH giving out some grant money to researchers trying to figure out what is going on with orientation and obesity:

It is now well-established that women of minority sexual orientation are disproportionately affected by the obesity epidemic.... In stark contrast, among men, heterosexual males have nearly double the risk of obesity compared to gay males.

Althouse goes on to ask:

What is your seat-of-the-pants folk wisdom on the subject — that those who want to be sexually appealing to males must deal with the way males sexuality is visually fixated?

So I guess that's her folk wisdom right there - that males, regardless of orientation, tend to be visual lusters, in a way that women are not. And that this drives straight women and gay men to worry about their weight and relentlessly pursue diets, etc. And that this is actually somewhat effective.

Well, I'm inclined to agree with her.

Strangely enough, this is a case where the demanding male gaze, statistically, may be leading to greater female health.

Somehow all those diets in the women's magazines,
may actually be useful for fitting into jeans.

Read Through

We had a first read-through of Jane Eyre tonight. That's where the cast sits around a table and just reads through the script. This was really three long tables arranged in a U shape, because the cast is big.

The script is written to allow for doubling, so you can do a lot of the thing where one actor plays 3 or 4 roles. But in this production we won't be doing very much of that.

But, actually, I get to do it. It's my first time playing 2 roles in one play. At one point I have to switch roles in a minute or less. Not sure how we'll do that.

Perhaps a beard and hat
could change my appearance - just like that.

L-DOEPs, Where Art Thou?

Tyler Cowen put this under the heading of questions that are rarely asked:

So, my libertarian devotees of evolutionary psychology, you can’t have it both ways. If feminism is wrong to think we can and/or should resist the dispositions that evolution has given us, then why is it wrong for defenders of the classical liberal order to think we can and/or should resist those dispositions when it comes to our evolved instincts toward the morality of socialism? Or put the other way around: if resisting our evolved moral instincts and obeying the rules of just conduct work to generate a civilized, cooperative economic order, why should gender issues be any different?

This raised even more questions in my mind.

1) Is it true that feminism thinks we should resist evolutionary dispositions? I mean, feminism is a big complicated movement, but I can't recall any feminists saying "resist evolution." As far as feminists go, the default rhetorical position on evolution seems to be: more, please.

2) Or is he just saying that his envisioned opponents construe feminism to be a call to resist natural dispositions?

3) Are our "evolved instincts" geared toward the "morality of socialism" exactly? That seems like a giant stretch of the research. If  you tell me that the research shows some natural tendencies toward fairness and sharing and caring, especially for family and neighbors, well, I'll believe that. But that's quite different.

4) My biggest question is where are these envisioned opponents of his, these L-DOEPs, these libertarian devotees of Ev. Psych. who think that relations between the sexes need to be conducted strictly according to instinct with no regard for a civilized cooperative order? Libertarians are mostly individualists and tend to come at interpersonal relationships from a "let's make a contract" perspective, rather than a "you Jane, me Tarzan" perspective.

Personally, I'm wary of over-reliance on evolutionary psychology. I think there's something to it, in theory, but a lot of what is presented under its rubric is just a narrative about the Way We Were without solid study of What We Are.

I do think ev. psych. is a useful and necessary counterbalance to the "human nature is infinitely malleable" school of thought.

Human nature
defies erasure.

Cast as Brocklehurst

So I got the part of Brocklehurst, the preachy sadistic hypocrite who runs the boarding school Jane Eyre is sent to. I found out this afternoon.

I've got a second part, too. Reverend Wood. I don't remember anything about him from the novel, which I read in 2007.

Brocklehurst
is the worst.

But perhaps Reverend Wood
is good.

Peep Season

The people who make Peeps had their best year ever in 2012.

While the child sleeps,
the bunny hides the Peeps.



Now, I'm an agreeable fellow,
and I don't want to harsh their mellow.
But I sure don't understand
the increasing demand.

The Tragedy of Amleth, Princess of Denmark

It opens with a wedding cake. It opens with a king and queen with white icing on their fingers. Enter Amleth, princess of Denmark, hauling heavy baggage, perplexed that her father's funeral has turned into her mother's wedding.

You might almost think, at this point, that this is just an adaptation, that the story will be the same, that this is just a female Hamlet in modern English.

But the differences keep piling up. Amleth is engaged in a heated lesbian relationship with Ophelia. The characters are different, like Mrs. Polonius. You begin to get the idea that, despite the various allusions to the original, the resolution to this play might be... rather distinct. By the time the second act rolls around, you definitely feel that you are on the high seas as far as knowing where the plot is going.

But the plot does come back to the castle - for the big final scene with a sword fight and tragic ending - rest assured.

The play doesn't really rely upon the viewer knowing Shakespeare's version of the story. But as one who has spent a lot of time with Hamlet, it had that intense "alternate universe" experience.

The language does somehow carry a Shakespearean feel, a leaning toward metaphor I think, but in a way that is simple and direct.

Anna Menekseoglu dominates the play in the title role, struggling with alienation, isolation, and threats against her life. As Hamlets go, despite her emotional ups and downs, she delivers a strong-minded and grounded performance. You feel that this is indeed a princess to be reckoned with, a woman of substance, a real danger to the powers that be. You understand why a political enemy might find it wise to remove her from the playing board.

Megan Merrill's Ophelia is the most sympathetic character on stage, to my mind, and in many ways the most sensible. Seeing the rottenness in Denmark, she wants no part of it. My heart went out to her as fate, and attachment, reeled her in.

Rachel Martindale plays a majestic Gertrude, a woman of dangerously sweet cunning. Jeremy Menekseoglu plays a fascinating Claudius, a man who cannot get comfortable in his newfound position of power. Leana Savoie was a real surprise as Lady Polonius, since she made this disagreeable character rather likable, and thereby made you feel the character's plight. Hasket Morris seemed totally immersed in his role as the hunchbacked dog master; you will believe that his hump, and his sullen but righteous attitude, are real. John-Paul Kostecki was outstanding in his role of the Artificer; his puppet work with just the head of a mannequin was profoundly creepy. Finally, Laura Gouin pulled off the role of Mother Superior with power and an air of insane certainty.

Mrs. Polonius and Queen Gertrude

The staging deserves some special comment. The script calls for a lot of things that are hard to stage - such as an amusement park ride. Theater audiences are willing to imagine the details of such things, if you can just give them the proper amount of suggestion. This show, on a small budget I imagine, does a bang-up job with the sort of evocative staging suggestions that let the audience imagination run free.

If you love Hamlet, I recommend this play.

On the other hand, if you hate Hamlet, try this version! You may well like it better!

It's Hamlet re-dreamed,
but lesbian-themed,
with a new direction
in murder detection.

All exquisitely acted,
with emotions impacted
as blind love and rage
charge the stage.

Oh, Dennis!

I see where North Korea is threatening pre-emptive nuclear attack against the U.S. because they think we're about to attack them.

I blame Dennis Rodman, who just got done hobnobbing with the Leader. Dennis is not a diplomatic kind of guy. I figure he got tired of hearing Kim yap.

Probably Dennis said something like "Keep talking like that and we'll blow you to bits."

This guy comes out waving a nuke
right after Rodman's visit.

You may think that's just a fluke,
but is it?

Non Stop

How many words could you muster,
for a personal filibuster?

When arguing with friends,
try giving a speech that never ends!

Constitution

I was amused by this tweet from Daniel Hannan, a British member of the European parliament:

Americans! The US Constitution may be flawed, but it's a great deal better than what you have now!

I'd say it has been stretched
in ways that are far-fetched.
But despite interpretive twists
it persists.

Brocklehurst

I auditioned tonight for the role of Mr. Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre.

He's not a good man. I'd say he's the biggest villain in the piece.

I was worried I went over the top in my reading. On the other hand, the story is high gothic-romanticism. It's meant to be very dramatic. And the director seemed pleased enough.

Well, I hope I get it.

Brocklehurst
is the worst
but I have a mighty thirst
to play him.

Born To Run

 I recently finished reading Born To Run by Christopher McDougall.

The subtitle is "A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen". It's often credited with kicking off the "barefoot running" craze.

The author is a sports journalist, and it's an odd mix of a book. It's partly a narrative about a foot race in a remote part of Mexico. Partly a story about colorful American ultra-runners. Partly an account of ultra-running itself. Partly a tale about this ultra-running tribe that lives in the remote part of Mexico. Partly a look at the scientific study of human distance running.

I enjoyed it a lot, but I would say you should take it with a grain of salt before you decide to venture into the desert for a fifty mile jaunt in your bare piggy toes.

Anyway, one little sort-of inconsistency I noticed dealt with the science side of things.

In general, McDougall pushes a low-meat diet. His wondrous Mexican tribe doesn't get much meat - they mostly chow down on corn and beans. And on page 209 a cancer-surviving doctor advises that "we need to build our diets around fruit and vegetable instead of red meat and processed carbs."

But by page 227 he is advancing the thesis that humans evolved into long distance runners so that they could run their prey to exhaustion. And by page 241 he writes: "Actually, it would be weird if the women weren't hunting alongside the men, since they're the ones who really need the meat."

I'm not sure what it all means.
I know I was born to eat.
But should it be corn and beans
or tasty meat?

Shoe Shrinkage

I ordered a new pair of running shoes. Same brand and model as usual. Well, it was the 2013 model. They are always fiddling with running shoe design.

When I put them on, they seemed to fit.
But then, after I had run in them a bit,
they seemed to have less room for my toes
than the ones from last year. So I supposed
they had been re-designed with a smaller toe box.

But today I realized, with a bit of a shock,
that I'd ordered a twelve instead of thirteen.

What a moron, if you know what I mean,
and I'm sure you do.

I ought to know the size of my own shoe!

Actually, I usually get a 12 in normal shoes, and a 13 in exercise shoes. Somehow, when I was ordering, my brain slipped a gear.

I have a reputation, life-long, of being absent-minded, so busy with my imagination that I sometimes lose track of reality. Well, reality doesn't like being ignored, and struck back again!

These wrong-size shoes, that I hardly wore
are now at the local charity store,
and shall grace my feet... nevermore.