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1. There is a $k$ such that $f(k)=t$, and $T$ has no accepting computation on input $\langle T\rangle,0^{1+f(k-1)}$ of running time $\leq (1+(f(k-1))^3$;
   
2. $t$ is not of the form $f(k)$ for any $k$, and $T$ has an accepting computation on input $\langle T\rangle,0^{1+t}$ of running time $\leq (t+1)^3$.
   

1. If there is, we can compute $t':=f(k-1)$ and deterministically simulate all computations of $T$ on inputs $\langle T\rangle,0^{t'}$ up to running time $t'^3$. This takes time $2^{O(t'^3)}$ which is polynomial in $t$.
   
2. Otherwise, we non-deterministically simulate $T$ on input $\langle T\rangle,0^{t+1}$ for up to $(t+1)^3$ steps. (And reject after time-out.)
   

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Interesting Topics From Bulgaria And From All Over The World

От блога на Евгени видях следната мисъл:

Проблемът с администраторите е че кръщават сървърите с женски имена, а много жени в една стая никога не се разбират.

Който реших, че си струва да допълня и формулирам като закон:

Проблемът с администраторите, които кръщават сървърите с женски имена се състои в това, че много жени в една стая се разбират, но само до момента, в който там се появи поне един мъж и започне да се грижи за тях. Винаги ще има поне една жена, която ще иска повече внимание, ще мърмори, че мъжът се грижи за другите повече, отколкото за нея, ще отказва да върши домакинската работа и т.н. И обратното - ако системният администратор се махне, тогава сървърите, кръстени с женски имена, ще си работят без проблеми.

Днес прочетох едно интервю на Ахмед Доган във “Фокус”, в което той казва между другото:

Днес българинът финансово е далеч по-добре от 1997-а. Не казвам най-добре. Но той иска да се съизмерва със стандарта на англичаните, холандците, французите, което просто е налудничаво. Нито работим като тях, нито нашата пазарна икономика е на техните години. Пословичното ни трудолюбие се оказа злокачествен мит! Разбирам недоволството, но какво може да се направи с тези възможности и с този материал, който имаме?

Не мога да не се въздържа и да не публикувам тук някои неща, които аз самият съм казал:

Българите - най-нещастни в Европа,
Мързеливи ли са работещите българи?
а също и:
Плодовете и подаянията от членството в ЕС и
Докладите на Европейската комисия.

Жалкото в случая е, че само Доган се е заел с неблагодарната работа да каже някои истини.
Че е неблагодарна ще усетим още днес-утре с публикации в българските вестници, от които ще разберем мнението на хора като Волен Сидеров, Бойко Борисов и др.п., че Доган не разбира българския народ и т.н.

Through Milena, who lives in California, this ABC News report about the dangers of driving with tires*, sold as new, but are actually as old as 6, 8 or in some cases even 12 years old.

The British Rubber Manufacturer Association strongly recommends NOT to drive with tires older than 6 years.
Ford Motor has asked the federal government to implement ban on tires older than 6 years.

But the tire industry lobby in the U.S. has been strong and does not recognize this 6-year term.

Watch the news piece, which starts with a tragic accident, where two young men boys died because the tires on their vehicle were actually 9 years old, although the father of one of the boys thought the tires are only 5 years old.

_____
tire = tyre (US English British English)

If you have received an email which says:

Subject: FBI wants instant access to Facebook

FBI wants instant access to Facebook http://FedNewsWorld.com/

DO NOT go to that web site (especially if you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer!),
DO NOT download the file, which is on that page (fbi_facebook.exe),
DO NOT run the file, which contains a Trojan.

This trojan: Trojan.Peacomm

I don’t know if the new file has the same behavior as described here.

The web server is located in St. Petersburg, Russia.

FBI have been informed promptly.

I will write on my Facebook page about it, as well.

Standard daily reports today:

Таксиметров шофьор в Слънчев бряг е принудил клиент да му плати 100 лв. сметка, заплашвайки го с нож. Инцидентът е станал около 3 ч. след полунощ пред дискотека “Ориндж” в курорта.
Малко преди това таксито било наето от двама холандски туристи от пиацата на хотел “Кубан”. Те поискали да ги откара до близък хотел, в който са отседнали, а след това до нощния бар.
Преди да се качат в колата, клиентите договорили с шофьора да му платят сумата от 14 лв. за превоза.
Когато обаче стигнали до дискотеката, водача им поискал 96 лв., отчетени на апарата. Чужденецът отказал и оставяйки банкнота от 20 лв. на седалката, тръгнал да слиза.
В този момент таксиджията заключил автоматично вратите, извадил нож и го опрял в тялото на летовника. След като платил исканите 100 лв., туристът бил освободен.
По случая е образувано досъдебно производство, след като ограбеният сигнализирал полицията в Несебър.

Here’s the story in brief:

The news is that a taxicab driver at Sunny beach (a Black sea resort) has forced his client to pay him Leva 100 (Euro 50) for a ride which should have been no more than a few euro. The driver has agreed to take two Dutch men from the Kuban hotel to their own hotel, and then to a disco for Euro 7. When they arrived at the disco, though, the taxi driver asked for Leva 96 - which was shown on the taximeter*. The Dutch refused, and left Leva 20. Driver locked the doors from the inside, and pulled out a knife, touching the body of one of the tourists. Scared, the latter paid the required amount of money. The police has started an investigation after the tourist complained.

My comment:
This is a clear example of what I’ve been writing in the last months - it is not the government that is responsible for everything. It is each of us, Bulgarians, who should be taking care of our own country. Why would the taxi driver want to cheat the Dutch? Just because they might have been drunk? Or because he probably believed that they are not as smart as himself? Or because he is desperate from his life, but instead of trying to work as a normal cab driver, he prefers to show what a big hero he is, and with a knife…
But this driver is not alone; the taxi drivers in all cities have formed an informal mafia-style coordination, when they want to protest, they just get on their cars, and go and block the main streets of the city. Few years ago they’ve blocked the whole building of the Parliament. There are a number of cases, where they would get together, and beat their customers, if they have tried to defend their rights.
Of course, there are customers, who are jerks, but by using brutal force, knives, gas-sprays, etc., one does not solve problems, but rather creates more problems.

_____
* - There’s no such price for a cab ride, even at the middle of the night; it must have been a scam.

Допълнение (малко след полунощ).

В пресконференция на говорителите на ЕК преди представяне на доклада има забележителни моменти. Не мога да не препепчатам някои от тях (според “Крос“):

Въпрос: Българското правителство се оплака, че проектодокладът бе предоставен на медиите още преди 10 дни. Те отправиха обвинение, че това се отрази негативно на имиджа на страната?
Отговор: Ние всички изпитваме съжаление в случаите, когато проектодокументи достигнат до медиите, преди те да бъдат официално оповестени. Аз не мога да Ви отговоря на въпроса по какъв начин това се е случило. Тук говоря за подготвителна работа не само от страна на комисията, но и от страна на външни експерти. Съжаляваме за това, че се стигна до тази ситуация, но това, което има значение е приетият днес доклад, а не това, което е било разпространено, независимо от начина, преди дни.

А у нас, през цялото време, се дискутираше именно изтеклата информация. Да видим още нещо, отново много важно:

Въпрос: Има ли риск по отношение на структурните фондове?
Отговор: По отношение на структурните фондове мога да направя само много общ коментар и позволете ми да подчертая, че за това, за което говорим в момента не са средствата по структурните фондове за периода 2007-2013 година. Това са средства, които са предоставени на България в предприсъединителния период по отношение на структурните фондове до момента. Разбира се до момента са направени единствено авансови плащания и сме достигнали до съгласие с властите, че всички необходими механизми ще бъдат създадени, които ще позволят адекватното и пълноценно усвояване на структурните фондове. Но това ще зависи отново от функционирането на необходимите механизми.

Разбира се, познавачите у нас пропуснаха тези обяснения, но няма да се захващаме за подробностите?

И накрая, в резултат от една дискусия, която се заформи в пощенския списък на българския Уолстрийт клуб, да обобщя моето мнение:

Не са ни виновни управляващите. Те могат толкова, колкото може цялата администрация (прочее, каква реформа точно е направил Ники Василев за тези три години, откакто е министър?). Ние всички - целият български народ - можем толкова. Не бива да се палим, че някой ни върти номера, че гледат да ни изкарат всичко през носа заради собствените си проблеми и т.н.
Ние сме корумпирани и корумпираме здраво:
- от петарката, която пъхаме небрежно между шофьорската книжка и талона на МПС-то;
- от дупките, които полицаите слагат с телбода на талона, за да може следващият катаджия да се ориентира колко нарушения е направил шофьорът;
- от спестените пари за уж спряното парно, с които “лъжем” Топлофикация;
- от пъхнатите пари в кутията с бонбони за лекаря, който оперира баба ни;
- от взетата бутилка “за здравето на сина”, която ни дава благодарния клиент (който преди това сме измъчили с чакане дн наред);
- като гледаме как един съсед чисти пред блока или засажда нови дръвчета, а ние цъкаме от балконите и му се чудим на акъла;
- като минем покрай някоя баровски мерцедес, паркирал на тротоара, но не смеем да я докоснем, за да не ядем бой - за сметка на това, ще одраскаме с крив пирон колата на съседа, щото вместо “Москвич” си е купил “Опел”, демек - какво ни се прави на баровец?!
- като гледаме как общината си върти далаверите с боклуците, но не смеем да се обадим, щото, нали, той - Бате Бойко - е мъжкар, току-виж ни дигнал я мерника, я нещо друго;
- и т.н., и т.н.

Всичките ни селски хитрости (помните Андрешко, нали?) лъсват, когато се доближим до огледалото на Европейския съюз и правилата, които Европа се опитва да наложи на всички страни. Да не помислите, че България е единствената страна, в която се случват такива неща? Не, но само тук народът иска управляващите да работят, докато той седи на работа със скръстени ръце или псува правителството под юргана, или надига чашката пред телевизора и попържа всички, дето са постигнали нещо повече.

Затова, вместо да съдим управляващите (те си го заслужават, не ме разбирайте криво), по-добре да си погледнем собствените кривици, както казваше Левски, пък да видим можем ли да се поправим или ни трябва още европейски бой, за да разберем, че не може тая работа да е в оная, а душата - в рая.

Не можем да сме мързеливи и да искаме да печелим. Като сме мързеливи, ще ни “дават” заплатите, а няма да си ги “изкарваме”.
Като се опитваме да хитруваме, трябва да си спомним, че най-добре се смее този, който се смее без последици.
Като гледаме какво става, трябва да си спомним вица и да знаем, че “‘га ядем кюфтетата не плачем”. Плаче се след това, като дойде време за плащане.
Не можем да сме безотговорни и да търсим отговорност у другите.
Не можем да сме такива, каквито сме и да си мислим, че някой ще ни търпи. Търпението и на европейците си има граници. При това тези граници, за разлика от шенгенските, са непреодолими.
Не можем да вярваме, че има месии по принцип, а пък в България има на всеки 4 години. То не беше СДС, не беше Симеон, не е сега Бойко Борисов. Поне за БСП и Станишев не съм чул някой да казва, че са месии.
Не можем да искаме да няма корупция в администрацията, а да им държим заплатите на 198 лв. (младши специалист в държавно ведомство взима толкова чисто!).
Не можем да искаме административен капацитет, когато единствният капацитет при такива условия е как да се направи някоя далавера. За справка - вижте как МДААР купи - не от “Майкрософт”! - а от някаква посредническа фирма софтуер на двойна цена от тази, на която същият софтуер се продава в магазина. При това с девет ведра оправдания.

Или по-скоро за всичко по-горе: може, но не бива. Не бива, ако искаме да сме първо граждани, сетне всичко останало - европейци, работливи, ученолюбиви, талантливи и т.н. Без да сме граждани, нищо няма да се получи в един Европейски съюз на граждани, в който има гражданско общество. А у нас очевидно няма, щом никой не смее да излезе и да каже тези истини на хората - че ни чака труд, пот, усилия и само тогава, когато ги дадем, ще можем да събираме плодовете на членството. Иначе ще събираме подаянията.

Ето ги:

- за управлението на средствата от ЕС в България
- за напредъка на България по механизма за проверка и сътрудничество.

По-важни моменти и бележки по тях:
Read more…

Have you ever heard about it?
If you live in New York City, and have used a cab (taxi) here, you’ve seen their name on the back of the window that separates the driver from the passengers (yes, like in the movies).
Last month I tried to send them a letter via their web site, congratulating a particular driver who took me from the airport to the city.
I tried to find a place to express my good feelings, but - no… None. Check it out: only three different options for online contact: File a Complaint, File a Lost Property Report, and Apply for a TLC license.
Well, I went to “file a complaint”, but instead wrote my positive feedback.

To my astonishment, two weeks later I got a letter (yes, on paper), signed by the commissioner Matthew W. Daus, saying among other things:

“I am pleased to report to you that your commendation joins the many that we receive on a daily basis attesting to the superior customer service offered by the NYC taxicab drivers. It would be my great pleasure to consider your exemplary driver for appropriate honors at the next scheduled NYC TLC Driver Recognition Ceremony.”

I wrote them back on paper, and got a response today by email, with more feedback.

What impresses me most, is that they are really taking into account the positive feedback. Now, I know for sure they take seriously the complaints, but then, who can say they’ve always been perfect in their performance, and request the same from the poor taxicab drivers in one of the biggest cities in the world? I prefer to save the complaints, but when someone is performing well, to send positive feedback.

The taxicab driver who took me from the airport in June was a woman, with the cleanest, tidiest, best maintained taxi I’ve seen. She totally deserved the credit.

P.S. I still hope that their web site will add a line for positive feedback. Enough with the complaints, give the other customers some chance, too :)

- Кой отговаря в България за администрацията?

- Министерството на държавната администрация и административната реформа.

Когато Европейската комисия критикува администрацията ни за това, че е немотивирана, корумпирана и не работи добре, кой знае защо никой в България не се сеща дори да попита Ники Василев какво е направило повереното му министерство за реформирането на администрацията?
Този въпрос е насочен както към самия Ники Василев, така и към тези, които не се сещат (или не смеят? не могат? не искат?) да го питат по темата.

Освен с далаверата “Майкрософт“, с какво друго ще бъде запомнено неговото министерстване?

С епистоларното му творчество? Със статиите му във вестниците (обърнете внимание и на коментарите под нея)? С познанията му на унгарския?

Или с образуваното от прокуратурата досъдебно производство?

Вчера писах, че няма да коментирам проекта на доклад на ЕК за усвояване на еврофондовете.

Днес виждам заглавията по електронните медии:

“Медиапул“:

Още по-лошо:
ЕК спира достъпа на 4 български агенции до еврофондове
Брюксел не вярва на София, удостоена с “най-суровия доклад”
Екип на Mediapool
18 Юли 2008

Всъщност не е вярно. ЕК излезе с опровержение на “новината”, но то бе публикувано с малки букви и правописни грешки до този момент (15:25 ч.) само в “Крос“: “Брюксел, Белгия /КРОСС/ - Представител на Европейската комисия заяви, че докладите, които трябва да бъдат одобрени идната седмица, се отнасят само за двете вече известни агенции, управляващи средства по програмата ФАР - централното звено към Министерството на финансите и регионалното министерство.
Той определи информацията на “Ройтерс”, че разрешителни ще бъдат отнети на четири агенции.”

Сами виждате, че текстът дори не е довършен; добре, че слушах БНР, та разбрах за какво става въпрос.
Read more…

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Posted by A. G. on August 5, 2008

Most trees you’ll see in Computer Science literature are rooted on top and spread downwards. Why do CS folks call them tree then? Well, common wisdom is that they never went out of the room, so they never saw a real tree.

No offense. I am a CS theory guy myself. I read this joke a long time back, when I was tutoring an undergraduate class, in this book. A group of theorists was discussing some open problems, that could be trivial (but nobody could see the triviality) to solve, and the joke was mentioned. Open problems that could be trivially settled?! Some kind of tomfoolery! Well, not going out of their rooms might just be true..Not seeing a real tree is not.

Posted in academia, humor, theory | Tagged: Combinatorics, Joke, computer science, graph theory | No Comments »

Posted by A. G. on July 29, 2008

A guy comes to hell and devils take him on a tour. It is a large warm place, where many relaxed folks play cards, guzzle beer and watch soccer. And then they hear terrible, blood-curdling voices from behind a door.

“What is behind the door?” asks the guy.

The devils open the door, and sure enough, behind all fumes of burning sulphur, was a huge pan full of hot oil and unfortunate folks being fried in.

“You know, the Catholics,” mumbles the devil sheepishly. “We really tried to talk them out of it, but they insisted!”

Posted in humor, offense, religion | Tagged: humor, catholics, religion | No Comments »

A blog about information architecture and design, by Chris Sainsbury

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A: It’s basically a rather grand name for planning and organising web sites. Before a web site is built someone has to architect what it’s going to do and vaguely what it will look like. This is the job of an information architect.

The job has some similarities with a real architect, but not many.

This is my blog on information architecture and design.
Here are the 10 most recent entries:

Whitney Hess’s recent post about the user experience of a staircase reminded me that user experience design is everywhere and affects us everyday. Don Norman’s seminal work The design of everyday things analyses the design of many objects, such as telephones and doors. I came across this terrible design recently and had to share it here. Read more »

Since I started I draw boxes I’ve realised that I’d like to have more on my website than just information architecture resources. Which leads me to wonder what the best way to structure my site is. Read more »

A fundamental question for me relating to the information architect role is how we fit in to and interact with the wider web team, and to what extent IAs should be involved throughout the web process. Read more »

I’ve spent the afternoon installing and reading about Axure web prototyping software. It takes Visio functionality to the next level, by adding the ability to define and output complex interactivity and AJAX-style controls. Read more »

The title of this article should really be: IA documentation is simply a facilitator for discussions. And the key point is this: in a web project we’re all (as a team) trying to develop a set of complex shared understandings about what this product will be and how it will work. As long as the IA documentation helps us do this in the most effective way, that is all that matters. Read more »

I am truly baffled by the existence of the rel=nofollow attribute on wordpress comments. Even more so by that fact that it is enabled by default, and can only be disabled by installing a plugin.

It seems to me that inter-linking between blogs is exactly what the web is about. Democracy of content, freedom of speech and sharing opinions. Why shouldn’t a commenter on a blog get some search engine ‘credit’ from the page they have chosen to enrich by commenting on? Read more »

Two books that have changed the way I look at design. Read more »

Today I came across a dropdown menu in a web form for a yes/no question, and it didn’t sit well with me. Far too much for the user to think about when making their choice.

To enable the user to express a preference in this way you could use:

• Radio buttons
• A checkbox
• A dropdown menu

Read more »

A few ideas for blogs I could write Read more »

So this is my first post…

I’m not sure what this site will develop in to - if anything (useful). But I’ve created it because I think it’s important to share ideas relating to making and planning web sites. Information architecture is such a new and evolving discipline, I wanted to get involved in the community to let other know what it is to me, and to find out what it is to them. Read more »

I’m working in London, UK as an information architect, and use this blog to share my thoughts on IA and design in general. CV/Bio

• Books
• General musings
• Information Architecture
• Interface design
• Product design
• Search engines
• Technology
• User Experience

• July 2008
• June 2008
• May 2008

• The design of everyday things
• Don't make me think
Friends
• Darren Beale
• Karl Bunyan
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• Anders Ramsay
• Cennydd Bowles
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• Gene Smith
• Jesse James Garrett
• Klaus Silberbauer
• Lee McIvor
• Peter Merholz
• Whitney Hess
IA sites
• Boxes and Arrows
• IA Institute
• Interaction Design Association
Previous entries
• Structuring my presence on the webJuly 9, 2008 in Information Architecture
• Should IAs be involved thoughout the web development process?July 7, 2008 in General musings, Information Architecture, Interface design
• First impressions of Axure softwareJune 19, 2008 in Information Architecture, Interface design, Technology
• Wireframes are simply facilitators for discussionJune 16, 2008 in Information Architecture
About I draw boxes

I draw boxes is a blog by Chris Sainsbury about information architecture, interaction design and user experience design.

It's a forum for discussion on the best ways of planning and organising web sites and other digital products.

Often this planning process involves drawing boxes on bits of paper and annotating them to communicate ideas. Hence the name.

Please read this site's raison d’être for more information.

© 2008 Chris Sainsbury | LinkedIn | Facebook Wordpress Theme by Arcsin (amended)

I am only keeping three applications on my iPhone- Yelp, Tetris and Pandora -and the rest I have removed from my phone. Not because I don't like them or find them useful, but because they make even the simplest tasks like texting and emailing really slow to load and I've been having serious keyboard slowdown. When opening my texts, I wait 20 seconds for my texts to be visible; i wait up to 30 seconds sometimes for the keyboard to catch up to my fingers. I never had these problems before. I also found the apps themselves are kinda crappy and often take forever to load, if they'd even load at all.

To keep my word, below is a critique of all the apps I talked about in my previous post. Here is my official MonkeyButt list for iAppssm (title graciously suggested by THE Paisano, *hat tip.*)

Typepad: I cannot get into blogging from my mobile phone. A few months back Typepad launched improved mobile blogging features and although this app is a great addition, I don't like blogging from my phone. I am too slow typing on my iPhone and I am unable to edit and add images/multimedia to the post with the ease that I can when blogging from my laptop.

AIM: Didn't work at all. Could not even get it to load, at all. This was the first app I deleted, so moving on....

MoPhoto: To be honest, I never even opened this app. Flickr makes posting photos from my phone to my Flickr account incredibly easy. I email photos from my phone using my designated Flickr email. I never even gave this app a chance.

SunCompass: I wanted this to work so bad. I use Hopstop a lot for getting around NYC and the directions always say "go north" or "head south," and I never have any clue which way to turn. To my disappointment, this app did not work for me. It took way too long for the app to figure out which way is which.

Jamd: As much as I wanted to use this to keep up with pop culture/celebrity news, it seems I just don't care enough about the world of glamour to use it.

Bank of America: I like this app a lot, but I've always been able to easily access my account on the BOA website via my iPhone browser. I removed it because my iPhone is so slow now with these apps, so if I don't need it or love it, it's gone.

New York Times: Who am I kidding, I don't read news on the go, on my iPhone, ever. The only time I want to read news on phone- is on the Subway, which is impossible because no phone service underground. (So, while in transit, I read fiction bestsellers instead.)

Google: This app loads but then freezes and does not allow me to enter any text for at least 90 seconds. I can't wait that long. I am actually thinking I might try to keep this one, I do like using it better than the iPhone Safari browser.

Jott: Jott is a great organization and voice-to-text service, that I never fully got into. Thought I'd give it another whirl, but I quickly realized it was redundant as I am using a great task/note organization service at work already.

Posted by Julia Roy on August 05, 2008 at 10:55 PM in Apps I Use, Mobile, My Rants, My Reviews | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

I finally took the time to update my iPhone with the new 2.0 software.  The new searching and storing features included in the update are fantastic and were much needed. I can now search my contacts in a search box, instead of having to scroll through my contacts alphabetically; delete multiple emails at once, instead of having to select, load and delete each email individually; and easily organize emails into folders. Other new features like the scientific calculator and language dictionary I could care less about, but I still wish it had the ability to cut, copy and paste. Oh well, maybe next time. 

The new applications I've synced to my iPhone are AWESOME.  I can't get enough of them and I can't stop searching for new ones on the iTunes store everyday. Here is a sample of what I've downloaded so far. I'll post a follow up with a review of the applications once I get time to really use them all. What do you think of the apps? Are there any that you think I should try that are not pictured here?

Posted by Julia Roy on July 25, 2008 at 12:15 PM in Apps I Use, Mobile, My Digital Life, My Reviews | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

I am not sure  how I feel about the new look and feel of Facebook. I am a HUGE fan of tabbed browsing, as anyone I work with can attest to the endless number of tabs I have open at any given moment, but I liked how the old Facebook profile lived on one page. It may be technically better, but it will definitely take some time to get used to.

Posted by Julia Roy on July 22, 2008 at 01:47 PM in Apps I Use, My Rants, My Reviews, Social Networking | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

I never thought I would move to NYC in my lifetime. Too big, too noisy, too dirty, too much of... well... everything.  However, to my astonishment, I have found too much of everything is just enough for me.  I have made this crazy city my home, and now I can't imagine living anywhere else (at least for a while.)

In the process of moving here I discovered Roosevelt Island, a 2-mile long, 800-foot wide strip of land, between Manhattan and Queens.  After checking out an apartment building on R.I., The Octagon, I was sold. Living here can be a hassle at times, but I enjoy the separation from the city, the East River currents, the giant barges and tugboats, the extravagant yachts, and the extending, glimmering shoreline of Manhattan.

I think of how it compares to Boston, where I lived for 6 years up until January, and it makes my old Boston life seem like it was routine and static.  There is an endless/countless/limitless assortment of things to do and people to meet in NYC.  In Boston, it was always the same old thing; in New York, even if I do the same thing everyday, new things discover me. I am learning so much about myself, culture and society from living here. My personal growth in the last 7 months has been something to write home to mom about. New York City is feeding my imagination; inspiration is around every corner here.

**I took this photo from my backyard, on a small boardwalk that extends into the East River across from E 46th St. It shows the shoreline moving along towards Downtown and Brooklyn. The bridge, in the far distance, is the Queensboro Bridge.

Posted by Julia Roy on July 22, 2008 at 02:11 AM in About Me, In NYC | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBack (0)

My colleague Yianni showed me this wildly interactive website by the National Grid called Floe.  This is launched at the heals of news that Polar Bears are now an endangered species. Oh NO! Save the Polar Bear!

The Floe site from National Grid does a great job at using the case of the Polar Bear to teach consumers about easy, everyday energy efficient habits that make a big difference for the environment. The website is phenomenal being both highly engaging and educative. I would suggest checking it out... you might learn a thing or two about what you can do to save the earth (and yourself) from global warming.

Posted by Julia Roy on July 10, 2008 at 02:01 PM in My Digital Life, My Reviews, Social Engagment | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

I follow close to 3,000 people on Twitter and am witness to all types of crazy conversations, shared thoughts and heated debates. People find answers, love, new jobs and invaluable advice on Twitter.  At the same time - hundreds of rumors are started, secrets are told, and news stories are leaked everyday on Twitter, making it the place to find and debate the best gossip around.

I was sucked into a twitter rumor today. It was tweeted and I contemplated it, questioned it with my followers and searched Google to find the truth. After my investigation, I am pleased to Announce to the World that Jared Fogel, Subway's legendary spokesman, is not, in fact, dead. I was so sad this morning when I was unsure, but now I am sure -- Jared is still alive not only in our hearts, but also on this earth. Hooray!

I would love to know, how many rumors are started, debated and killed on Twitter daily. The birth and lifecycle of twumors (twitterrumors) is fast paced, and well nutured by all of us who participate. There are pages of twitter search results from today alone, with people announcing, denouncing and debating Jared's death. 

I am also quite interested to know who is behind jaredremembered.com. Subway and its agencies? Some random dude in San Diego? Apparently, the rumor was debated as early as August of last year. And where are Jared's fans and supporters defending his life? Long live Jared! In any case, hat tip to the mastermind(s) - you got me.

Posted by Julia Roy on June 25, 2008 at 11:58 PM in My Digital Life, My Rants, Social Engagment, Social Networking | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

Orange, a mobile internet provider in the UK, knows how to be a good web advertiser.

First, check out the orange racoon balloon floating on the lower right hand side of the Notcouture website, and click on it. It takes you to "the worlds first internet balloon race" sponsored by Orange Mobile, a communications service provider in the UK.  Lots of fun prizes to be won, great online game experience, smart adverstising and execution, love it.

Now, help me win some prizes! (Not even sure if I can win prizes since I am in the U.S., but I am sure as hell going to try.)

Posted by Julia Roy on June 20, 2008 at 02:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

I found this Twitter / Flickr combo app, Twitter Fountain, via Andrea Vascellari's blog. I have a feeling we will be seeing more combo apps like this that pull user data from several social sites, to create one visualization of content. Me likes. It woudl be great to see a service like friendfeed do something like this as an additional way to view user feeds.

You can get your own by simplying editing this one! Select the "adjust" button on the bottom right and enter in your own info and copy the widget. Voila!

Posted by Julia Roy on June 15, 2008 at 11:58 PM in Apps I Use, My Digital Life, My Reviews, Social Engagment, Social Networking | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

I am so proud to be selected as one of Alltop's Twitterati. I have definitely spent enough time on Twitter to earn this title, but none-the-less I am very flattered to be in the midst of some powerful Twitter peeps like Chris Brogan, Dave Winer and Jeremiah Owyang (who I happen to be listed next to on Alltop).

Check out the "confirmation that I kick ass" Alltop badge on my sidebar I just added. Honestly, all the badges are genius. Nothing better than a typically boring blog badge, turned into a conversation piece and a reason to smile.

Posted by Julia Roy on June 12, 2008 at 01:03 AM in My Digital Life, My Reviews, Social Networking | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

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Marti Abernathey discusses her recent HRC conversion.

Marti Abernathey talks about the secretive Congressional hearings that MIGHT take place in the coming weeks.

Marti Abernathey concludes her "Death of United ENDA" with a full autopsy of NCTE and NGLTF.

Marti Abernathey asks the question, "Is my personal ad deceptive?" Abernathey discusses the minefields of online dating for transgender people.

Vanessa Edwards Foster discusses the outrageous comments made by Judy Shepard at the most recent Houston Human Rights Campaign dinner.

Readers of this blog are probably not surprised that I'm supporting the boycott of the Human Rights Campaign's San Francisco Dinner. What you might find surprising is that I'm supporting my friend Diego Sanchez, in speaking at the event. I'm also supporting the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) nationally, now as a member. That's right, I'm now a paid member of HRC.  Why? If the transgender community is going to attain their civil rights as a part of the larger GLBT movement, we should ... Read More

Categories: HRC

As many readers may be aware, the American Family Association (sponsor of conservative Christian news site OneNewsNow) has organized a boycott of McDonald's. (At various times during the past decade AFA has also boycotted Ford, Target, and Disney.) According to AFA's official "Boycott McDonald's" website, the fast food chain's sin is "refusing to remain neutral in the culture wars". McDonald's is a member of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce and has donated money to the organization.  Richard Ellis, Vice ... Read More

Categories: Right Wing

I recently wrote about the lead role the Human Rights Campaign took in the historic transgender hearings, and it looks as if their project win back strategy is coming to fruition. The Human Rights Campaign has hired ordained Baptist minister Allyson Robinson as their Associate Director of Diversity. Here’s Allyson in action:

The HRC website states [...]

I recently wrote about the lead role the Human Rights Campaign took in the historic transgender hearings, and it looks as if their project win back strategy is coming to fruition. The Human Rights Campaign has hired ordained Baptist minister Allyson Robinson as their Associate Director of Diversity. Here's Allyson in action: The HRC website states that: "This is a regular, full-time staff position reporting to the Chief Diversity Officer. The Associate Director of Diversity will lead the Human Rights Campaign and its ... Read More

Categories: HRC, in the media

When explaining why Congress will have a hard time passing a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act, Congressman Barney Frank loves to point out that: "In fact, many States in this country still have laws that protect only against sexual orientation, including New York State, which passed it a few years ago with the strong support of many of the people who now tell us that Congress dare not do what New York did. How people think we are going to get more votes, ... Read More

Categories: ENDA, Massachusetts, active legislation, employment

A recent post over at the Indiana Equality blog was enough of a kick in the pants to remind me to post about some recent events. If you know me, you know how jazzed I am about Barack Obama. The first time I ever heard about Barack the “Indianapolis” Colts still hadn't ever won a Super Bowl. It was October 17th 2006, which just so happened to be my 39th birthday. Barack had been to Indiana the previous day to attend a ... Read More

Categories: DNC, election, politics

Nearly every major Religious Right organization opposing LGBT rights has commented on the Congressional Hearing on Discrimination Against Transgender Americans in the Workplace, which was held on Thursday, June 26th. Here's a look at what some of them have said. Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays P-FOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays), an organization that ostensibly concerns itself with supporting ex-gays and their families, but in practice expends most of its energy spouting rhetoric against "still-gays", published a press release entitled "Congress Hearing to ... Read More

Categories: Right Wing, civil rights, in the media, right wing rhetoric

On June 20th, the Associated Press released an article entitled "New transgender policy at New York juvenile jails". The article details New York State's decision to allow transgender youth in juvenile detention facilities to be treated as members of their identified gender. The Family Research Council commented on the article later that day in a brief blurb entitled "NY Prison: Closet Supporters of Cross-Dressing" which appeared on their Washington Update. Predictably, they grossly misrepresented New York's policy, twisting the statements in the AP ... Read More

Categories: in the media, law, transyouth

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• My Support
  • Virginia Stephenson: Marti- Thank you for speaking on this issue with reason and clarity, and…
  • Dyssonance: THey came clean and were clear before. Three times. Fourth may be the charm, but I…
• HRC's Project Win Back, Part II
  • Polar Bear: [quote comment=""][quote comment=""]@ Regina: Can you name an transgender organization in Washington that doesn't play…
  • Polar Bear: [quote comment=""]@ Regina: Can you name an transgender organization in Washington that doesn't play with…
• Boycotts, hypocrisy, and the Christian Right's favorite scare tactic
  • somethingtobe: LaBarbera can definitely sound like a broken record. And he doesn't shut up.…

• My Support
• Boycotts, hypocrisy, and the Christian Right’s favorite scare tactic
• HRC’s Project Win Back, Part II
• We’ll Come Back, Really….
• Indiana’s Historic Moment

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About Me Name: Orac Location: The Liberator, somewhere deep in Federation space, United States

Orac is but a humble pseudonymous surgeon/scientist with an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his miscellaneous verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few will. That Orac has chosen his pseudonym based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights from an old British SF show whose special effects were renowned for their early 1980's BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction for television ever produced, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.) Orac tries to keep his insolence respectful, but admittedly sometimes fails in the cases of obvious quackery and pseudoscience, attacks on him, very poor critical thinking skills, bigotry, and just general plain stupidity.

View my complete profile

Respectful Insolence is a repository for the ramblings of the aforementioned pseudonymous surgeon/scientist concerning medicine and quackery, science and pseudoscience, history and pseudohistory, politics, and anything else that interests him (or pushes his buttons). Orac's motto: "A statement of fact cannot be insolent." (OK, maybe it can be just a little bit insolent.)


More about what Respectful Insolence is about...

• Announcement
• Technical problems at the new blog resolved
• For a different take on the David Irving verdict.....
• Shooting free speech in the foot: David Irving sen...
• David Irving on trial
• Locked out of ScienceBlogs
• Orac is dead! Long live Orac
• My second to last post
• The Skeptics' Circle is fast approaching
• Meeting short take #6: Terra Sigillata comments on...

Archived insolence
• December 2004
• January 2005
• February 2005
• March 2005
• April 2005
• May 2005
• June 2005
• July 2005
• August 2005
• September 2005
• October 2005
• November 2005
• December 2005
• January 2006
• February 2006
• March 2006

oracknows@gmail.com

Orac replied , "I am not trying to tell you anything. I am simply not interested in trying to compensate for your amazing lack of observation."

ESSENTIAL INSOLENCE Orac knows medicine and surgery
• Wearing two hats (and part 2)
• What is a surgical oncologist?
• The deadly power of denial: Personal observations Also see Part 2: It's not always denial; Part 3: Fear; and Part 4: Denial isn't just for patients
• A tragic story (Also see Part 2: Update; and Part 3: A sad end to a sad tale)
• When not to treat
• A pet peeve
• Dealing with conflict
• Needlestick
• An odd place for a telephone booth
• If you think it's just about mercury when it comes to vaccines, you're wrong
• You want to know how to make a surgeon angry?
• Now that's the way you do it!
• The Danish autism studies (guest blogger)
• The NEJM blows an opportunity
• The monster returns
• The art of medicine in ancient Egypt (also: Part 2)
• When is cancer care "futile"?
• How is academic medicine perceived by community practitioners?
• A most uncomfortable question
Orac knows quackery:
• What is an "altie"?
• Understanding alternative medicine "testimonials" for cancer cures
• Battling quackery in conventional medicine
• How can intelligent people use alternative medicine?
• The Orange Man
• How not to win friends and influence people
• Polio returns, thanks to anti-vaccination zealots
• Antivaccination rhetoric running rampant on the Huffington Post (Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6)
• Salon.com flushes its credibility down the toilet (Part 2: Swimming through the thimerosal; part 3: Thimerosal and autism: Two questions)
• Sadly, it was only a matter of time: An autistic boy dies during chelation therapy (followups: Kirby tries to cover his posterior; Selective outrage over treatment-related deaths; The autopsy results; The CDC flubs it
• Argh! Chelationists are mailing pitches to my office! Also see Part 2: Satisfaction; and Part 3: Revenge of the chelationist
• Is Bill Maher really that ignorant? (plus: Bill Maher: Antivax wingnut)
• More antivaccination nonsense...but not from Bill Maher this time
• The "pharma shill" gambit
• Avoiding scientific delusions
• Just what your water needs: More electrons!
• "Alternative" nutrition takes the life of a baby
• Stem cell quackery
• Dr. Buttar has a new protocol
• The HIV/AIDS denialist files: Another tragically unnecessary death of a child (plus: An HIV/AIDS "skeptic" questions my honesty and decency...; More rebuttals of HIV/AIDS "skeptics"; The Eliza Jane Scovill case on Primetime Live; and One last thought on the Al-Bayati report
• More evidence that alternative medicine boosters don't really want scientific evaluation of their therapies
• More antivaccination nonsense..but not from Bill Maher this time
• Airborne: Created by a schoolteacher, so it must work!
• The sociology of the antivaccination movement
• Dubious therapy of teh week: "Touchless" chiropractic
Orac knows science, skepticism, and critical thinking:
• The Galileo Gambit
• What is a theory?
• Breast cancer "dormancy"
• Public speaking
• "Short scientific talks for dummies"
• I guess this is what passes for creationist "humor"
• 80 years later, nothing has changed
• Get me a barf bag!
• The Virgin Mary appears
• A field guide to biomedical meeting creatures, part 1: Any questions? (Also see part 2: Poster time!)
• Professor Rubinstein digs himself in deeper
• Intellectual curiosity at its finest
• Science at its finest
• Reply to a 14-year-old creationist
• Cardinal Schönborn and evolution
• The Wedgie Document and the creationist challenge
• Pseudohistory and pseudoscience
• Active euthanasia in New Orleans: An urban legend in the making?
• Frontier science vs. textbook science
• What is "ethnoscience"?
• A particularly egregious misrepresentation of a study
Orac knows World War II and Holocaust history:
• 60 years ago today: The evacuation of Auschwitz and start of the death march
• The 60th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz: How I discovered Holocaust denial
• 60 years ago tonight: The Dresden firestorm
• 60 years ago today: The flag-raising at Iwo Jima
• 60 years ago tonight: The firebombing of Tokyo
• 60 years ago today: The liberation of Buchenwald
• Sunday afternoon history lesson
• 60 years ago today: The liberation of Bergen-Belsen
• 60 years ago today: The liberation of Dachau
• 60 years ago today: The end of the Führer
• 60 years ago today: Hiroshima
• How David Irving became a Holocaust denier
• 60th anniversary of V-E Day
• Pat Buchanan on World War II
• Adventures of the Hitler Zombie (Prelude: Who's Hitler today?; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6; Part 7; Part 8; Part 9; Part 10, including "proof" of "intelligent design"; Part 11)
• Eugenics and involuntary euthanasia
• A truly offensive use of Halloween
• 67 years ago tonight: Kristallnacht
• Taboos of Holocaust deniers
• Schadenfreude (plus: More schadenfreude: Irving now admitting there were gas chambers? and David Irving to stand trial in Austria)
• An unexpected analogy
Orac knows a lot of other things too:
• The EneMan files (Dedicated to the very strange character who is this weblog's de facto mascot)
• Orac's encounter with Derek Jeter
• I never realized
• "Zero tolerance"="Zero common sense"
• Kentucky Zombie update
• Inauguration Day musings
• First impressions of Mac OS X v10.4 ("Tiger")
• Fourth of July thoughts
• Dispatches from the road
• September 11
• Scary (Followup: It looks like I found Chris some friends)
• Unclear on the concept
• A death in the family
Not-so-respectful insolence:
• A response to the "Herbinator"
• "Intelligent design" apologia: Pot. Kettle. Black.
• I tried not to discuss "intelligent design" again, but...
• Invitation accepted
• A brief Cablevision rant
• It looks like Orac attracted another one
• A little criticism directed Orac's way
• I'm glad I didn't order the pulled pork
• Shortsighted, not curious, and proud of it!
• Cybersquatter: J. B. Handley
• Cybersquatting for Jesus
• Orac applies some Respectful Insolence™ to a comment spammer

Blog carnivals
• Grand Rounds (Medicine) (Orac hosted here)
• The History Carnival (Orac hosted here)
• The Skeptics' Circle (Orac hosted here and here)
• Tangled Bank (Science) (Orac hosted here)

Insolent feeds

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Respectful Insolence looks best on Firefox or Safari. Orac is therefore obligated to warn his readers that strange things sometimes happen to the right sidebar when RI is viewed on the inferior browser known as Internet Explorer. Even Orac, with his ability to communicate with any computer in the galaxy, has not yet been able to determine why this happens and therefore curses Microsoft.

Insolent Disclaimer

This is a personal web log, reflecting the sometimes prickly opinions of its author. Statements on this blog do not represent the opinions of anyone other than the author. They most definitely do not represent the opinions or position of the author's hospital, university, surgical practice, or partners. The information on this blog is intended for discussion and entertainment purposes only and not as recommendations on how to diagnose or treat illnesses. Any personal medical issues the reader may have should be referred to the reader's physician. If the reader freely chooses to follow the opinion of a pseudonymous blogger like the author (who has also not done a proper history or physical examination and whose credentials cannot be verified) over that of his or her own personal physician, it is the reader's decision alone, for which the reader must bear full responsibility.

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All original material posted to this blog ©2004-2006 by its pseudonymous author. All rights reserved to the author.

This blog has moved to:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence.

Because this blog is now mothballed and is only being maintained as an archive site for the first incarnation of Respectful Insolence (not to mention because a comment spam problem has developed here), over the next few days I will be going through posts and turning off all commenting.

If you wish to comment, please go to the new site. Comment moderation has been turned on, and any further comments in response to any post here will not be approved.

This site is in hibernation.

posted by Orac @ 7:23 AM Links to this insolence

Finally!
Even though I normally try not to blog from work, I have to take a moment while I'm eating lunch to announce this: Previous technical problems with the new blog that prevented my posts and your comments from showing up on this blog have now been resolved.

Orac is back online.

Everything appears to be working as it should, and you should be able to comment over there again.

Normal blogging will resume tomorrow, and I will cease posting to this Blogspot blog indefinitely. It will continue to serve as an archive site for the first incarnation of Respectful Insolence and a backup place to post in case of disaster over at ScienceBlogs. If I ever experience problems with the new blog again, this is where announcements will appear to inform you.

posted by Orac @ 1:23 PM 0 Attempt(s) at insolence Links to this insolence

Go here. The Photoshopped picture and caption are priceless.

posted by Orac @ 7:12 AM 0 Attempt(s) at insolence Links to this insolence

[NOTE: My technical problems at the new blog continue. I'm assured the techies are working on fixing them, but, although my posts show up in the feed, they do not show up on my blog. In essence, I cannot post, and comments, although saved, do not show up. Until the techies get this problem fixed, I'm posting here at the old blog.]

Well, that was fast.

The trial took less than a day. David Irving, as expected, pleaded guilty. As expected, he was found guilty of Holocaust denial. What was not expected was the severity of the sentence:
VIENNA, Feb. 20 (AP) — The British historian David Irving on Monday pleaded guilty to denying the Holocaust and was sentenced to three years in prison. He conceded that he was wrong when he said there were no Nazi gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp.

Mr. Irving, handcuffed and wearing a navy blue suit, arrived in court carrying a copy of one of his books, "Hitler's War," which challenges the extent of the Holocaust.

"I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz," he told the court before his sentencing, at which he faced up to 10 years in prison.

"In no way did I deny the killings of millions of people by the Nazis," testified Mr. Irving, who has written nearly 30 books.

He also expressed sorrow "for all the innocent people who died during the Second World War."

Mr. Irving's lawyer, Elmar Kresbach, immediately announced that he would appeal the sentence.

"I consider the verdict a little too stringent," he said. "I would say it's a bit of a message trial."

Mr. Irving appeared shocked as the sentence was read. Moments later, an elderly man who identified himself as a family friend called out, "Stay strong, David! Stay strong!" The man was escorted from the courtroom.I have to say, I was shocked myself when I read of it. Three years in prison for nothing more than offensive speech? Is this what we've come to?

I understand all the arguments that Holocaust denial has a different resonance in Germany and Austria than it does in the U.S. I understand that the history of the Third Reich and the Holocaust leads to a particular sensitivity in these countries that we don't share, that Holocaust denial is feared as a vehicle for the resurgence of Nazi-ism and fascism. I can even understand how, in the early postwar period, such laws may have been essential to protect the their fledgling democracies. But there comes a time to take the training wheels off. It's been over 60 years since the end of World War II, well over two full generations. How much longer do they need these laws? Will they proscribe free speech in this way forever?

The bottom line is that, not only are laws against Holocaust denial an offense against free speech, but they don't work. They suppress nothing. David Irving got more publicity in Austria than he had gotten in six years. Before, he was fading into well-deserved obscurity. Now he's a martyr for the far right. His writings and those of many other Holocaust deniers are easily accessible on the web, yes, even in Austria. Suppressing it only confirms the claims of the Holocaust deniers that the government is "afraid" of their message.

For an example of how properly to deal with Holocaust deniers, one has only to look to Northwestern University in Evanston. There, one of the granddaddies of Holocaust denial in the U.S., Arthur R. Butz, is a tenured Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at Northwestern who in 1976 wrote a book called The Hoax of the 20th Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry. Since then, he has used his tenured position to give stature to his denial, all the while being very careful not to give the administration of Northwestern a reason (such as preaching Holocaust denial in his engineering class) to try to get rid of him. Not much had been heard from ol' Butzy recently, until he started defending the President of Iran for his Holocaust denial, going so far, after repeating a bunch of canards about the long-debunked Leuchter Report, to say in an editorial in the student newspaper:
That brings us to President Ahmadinejad of Iran. For many years I ignored revisionism coming from Islamic countries, because I found it inept. With Ahmadinejad, I found something else; his statements were formidable in their perspicacity. My original statement on him has to be read to make the specifics clear. He understands the intellectual terror in the West. However, the best surprise came after I wrote my endorsement. British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a routine pompous suggestion to Ahmadinejad: Visit the camps and see for yourself. Ahmadinejad replied: Good idea, I’ll bring a scientific team. He knows about the forensic issues too.Given how inept Butz's denial is, one has to wonder how truly poorly argued the Holocaust denial coming out of the Middle East must be for even Butz to turn his nose up at it. But I digress. Deborah Lipstadt responded with a strong article slapping down Butz and pointing out that the editors of the student newspaper had been so open minded that their brains fell out.

Also appropriate is a reaction by the very students of Northwestern called the Never Again campaign:
The Never Again Campaign is an organization started by students at Northwestern University in February of 2006. The campaign aims to increase Holocaust education, promote global tolerance, and stop genocides that are occurring today around the world.

The Never Again Campaign will bring speakers, host workshops, and offer resources to spread awareness about these issues on the Northwestern campus. Similarly, we hope to convince other universities to adopt our goals.

Recently, Northwestern engineering Professor, Arthur Butz, denied the Holocaust and congratulated the President of Iran on becoming the first modern head of state to deny the Holocaust. In response, students and faculty have come together to express their outrage and disappointment that a Northwestern professor made such an offensive and historically inaccurate declaration.Their goal? To get Northwestern, as a private institution, to stop letting Butz use its public website to spread his lies, because doing so associates the name of the University with his denial, and to take actions to repudiate his Holocaust denial and to marginalize him, given the black eye he's given the institution.

As I said yesterday, freedom of speech is easy to value and honor when the speech isn't offensive. It becomes much more difficult to do when it is something as despicable and hateful as Holocaust denial. Indeed, defending free speech often means defending scum like Irving and Butz. However, it is not necessary to throw Butz, or any other Holocaust denier in jail to combat their lies. The way to combat his lies, or those of David Irving, or any other Holocaust denier is for opposing voices to make their displeasure known and to shine the light of truth on their lies.

posted by Orac @ 12:01 AM 1 Attempt(s) at insolence Links to this insolence

[NOTE: This is being posted here because my new blog is currently having technical difficulties that prevent my posting on it. Once the technical problems have been fixed (hopefully tomorrow), I will repost this over there. I wondered if this blog would have any further use, and unfortunately I found out sooner than I expected that it would.]


Well, today's the day. After all the waiting, it's finally here.

David Irving is going to stand trial for Holocaust denial in Austria today.

Those of you who have read my old blog a while know what a despicable human being I consider David Irving to be. He's clearly an anti-Semite, most famously having said that "more women died in the back seat of Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz" and being known for repeating anti-Semitic doggerel. He's spent decades in essence falsifying history, denying that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz, that the the Nazis had a plan to systematically exterminate European Jewry. And, his pretentions otherwise notwithstanding, he is no champion of free speech. Indeed, when the historian Deborah Lipstadt referred to him as a Holocaust denier in a book, he waited until her book was released in Britain, which has the most plaintiff-friendly libel laws in Europe or the U.S., and then sued her there in 2000.

He lost and was humiliated. The final judgment found that Irving was indeed a Holocaust denier.

I do have to admit to feeling a fair amount of schadenfreude when Irving was arrested in Austria last November. Irving knew damned well that there was a warrant for his arrest for denying the Holocaust in a speech he gave in 1989. He even worried about it on his own website and took precautions before he left, such as leaving behind 60 signed blank checks and bringing eight shirts, even though he was only supposed to be in Austria for two days. He knew what he was doing and what risk he was taking.

Still, as an advocate of free speech, I found (and still find) the entire affair very troubling. Yes, Irving's views are odious. Yes, he has spent decades promoting Holocaust denial. Yes, in recent years he has associated with some really scary people on the far right. Yes, in the three speeches he gave in Austria, he told an audience in Leoben that Kristallnacht was carried out by "unknowns" dressed up as members of the SA; that Anne Frank could not have written her diary herself because the Biro wasn't invented until 1949; and that Hitler never gave an order to exterminate the Jews. He cited research by the discredited Fred Leuchter claiming that the Auschwitz gas chambers couldn't have been used to gas Jews because he couldn't find cyanide residues in the bricks. Yes, he asserted that "Auschwitz is a legend, just like the Turin Shroud" and that "the existence of witnesses proves that there was no mass extermination," among numerous other statements clearly denying the Holocaust.

Even so.

Upholding freedom of speech is not difficult in cases of views that are mainstream or that don't offend. Upholding freedom of speech is difficult in case like David Irving. The bottom line, as far as I'm concerned, is that Irving should not be in prison. Imprisoning him achieves nothing other than raising his stature and letting him plausibly don the mantle of free speech martyr. All it does is lead him to make such ludicrious "recantations" that he now believes there were gas chambers at Auschwitz:
His conversion, according to Irving, came in 1992 after his discovery of two documents - a discovery he kept to himself until recently. One was a radio message sent to Adolf Eichmann in 1943, reporting that during the previous 12 months more than a million people had died in Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec concentration camps.Odd that he never mentioned this before, even though he supposedly discovered it 13 years ago and especially since, as recently as 2005, he was still denying that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz. No one can see his sudden "conversion" as anything other than a transparent attempt to obtain leniency. If he is imprisoned for a harsh sentence (and the penalty for Holocaust denial in Austria can be as long as 20 years), he becomes a martyr. If he is released with time served, he will likely return to Britain and renounce his recantation. By arresting him and vowing to try him, Austria has placed itself in a no-win situation.

Of course, not all see it this way. Indeed, in The New Statesman was published an impassioned defense of jailing Irving and keeping him there, written by Roger Boyes. Too bad it's full of logical fallacies and poor reasoning typical of the arguments for suppressing free speech:
Even so, a courtroom is as close as most Holocaust deniers come to heaven. A captive audience, those chilly metallic blondes from CNN, the right to rant. Judging by his website, Irving is relishing his moment in the spotlight: even a lost court case represents a triumph of publicity for his malign deceptions on Hitler and his crimes. Hitler used his stint in jail to write Mein Kampf; for Irving, too, imprisonment is a kind of state-financed sabbatical.

Advocates of the absolute right to free speech say that Irving's obvious enthusiasm for courtroom confrontation is a powerful argument for letting him go. Take away the courtroom and you take away his theatrical props. Ignore him, and the netherworld of Irving and the unsavoury club of Holocaust deniers withers away, killed by our oppressive tolerance. He may be - no, he is - hopelessly and deliberately wrong but he has the right to proclaim his crazy views, just as we have the right to plug our ears with cotton wool.Geez, talk about the fallacy of the excluded middle (a.k.a. the false dilemma)! We either have to jail Irving or ignore him? Are there no other options, such as, for example, speaking out against his lies and countering his lies and distortions with facts? And so what if Irving is "relishing the spotlight"? There wouldn't be any spotlight for Irving to relish if Austria hadn't arrested Irving in the first place. There wouldn't be a media circus with 50 television crews and the need for riot police to prevent protests by neo-Nazis.

The rest of the piece appears to consist of an argument that we must respect the "word" (whatever that means) and that the interests of Irving and other Holocaust deniers are are "merging with those of the anti-Semitic ideologists of Arab nationalism and Iranian theocratic rule." Boyes expresses concern that, "if Irving walks free from the Wien-Josefstadt Prison next week he will soon be packing his suitcase for the Holocaust conference in Tehran."

So what if Irving heads for Iran? That's not an argument to put him in jail for his speech, nor is it an argument to revoke the passport of the vile neo-Nazi Horst Mahler to prevent him from traveling to Iran, something Boyes refers to as "wise." The anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial of the Arab nationalist and Muslim fundamentalist regimes of the Middle East would still exist and be just as virulent without David Irving and his fellow deniers. It's not as though Irving would gain respectability by going to Iran's conference to question the authenticity of the Holocaust or that he in his disgrace after the Lipstadt trial could lend respectability to this farce of a conference.

Nonetheless Boyes concludes:
We are not making Irving into a martyr by jailing him. We (or the Austrians on our behalf) are making the world a little bit safer - and defining the limits of tolerance.I propose a counterexample. I'd ask Boyes a question, given that he points out that the Irving case should reveal the "limits of tolerance." Who gets to decide what the "limits of tolerance" are for free speech? Let's take an example from the good old U.S.A.: the rabid far right winger Ann Coulter. She provides red meat rhetoric for extremists. Indeed, she uses eliminationist rhetoric, as David Neiwert (of Orcinus) has pointed out time and time again. She made an infamous statement after 9/11 in which she said about Muslim countries that we should "invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity," not worrying about how many civilians we kill in the process. She most recently gave a major speech where she referred to Muslims as "ragheads" who need to "face consequences" if they "talk tough" and joked about killing Bill Clinton. Her speech was so foul that even Michelle Malkin (who, as you may recall, is best known for writing a book defending the mass internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II) felt obligated to offer up a rather tepid criticism of Coulter (while dismissing her remarks as Ann just "going for a cheap laugh").

Should Ann Coulter, as vile as much of what she says is, be thrown in jail for "hate speech"?

My guess is that Boyes would probably say "yes."

I say no. Our freedom depends on free speech, and one price for that freedom is tolerating offensive speech from people we don't like, no matter how much our dislike of them, what they say, and what they stand for might tempt us just to throw them in jail.

posted by Orac @ 12:02 AM 4 Attempt(s) at insolence Links to this insolence

If anyone sees this...

My new ScienceBlogs blog is screwed up. Movable Type won't let me publish or rebuild the blog. It lets me get into the control panel and even lets me see my posts and your comments, but despite their showing up as "published," they do not show up on the blog. Attempts to rebuild the blog time out, as do any attempts to republish the posts and comments in question. Consequently I can't post, and your comments aren't showing up.

I'm starting to miss Blogger.

I'll post another announcement when things are working again.

posted by Orac @ 9:16 AM 4 Attempt(s) at insolence Links to this insolence

Well, it's finally come. Today is the day to say goodbye.

No, not goodbye to you, my readers, but goodbye to Blogspot and this Blogger blog. In a way, this is a bit bittersweet, but then over the weekend an altie comment spammer unleashed the worst spam attack Respectful Insolence has ever weathered, necessitating my deleting a whole slew of comment spam.

It's time to go.

So, everyone, please set your bookmarks to my new location:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence

Also, I've registered the domain respectfulinsolence.net. Presently, it's set to redirect traffic to this blog. Later today, I will reset it to redirect to my new location. There is a link to my new RSS feed on the new blog.

Please update your bookmarks.

To bloggers out there who are kind enough to have me on their blogroll, I'd really appreciate it if you would update your blogroll link to the new URL above.

This blog will remain as an archive site for my old posts and as a place to put the occasional post that doesn't fit in with my new blog.

Orac (from Blogspot) is dead! Long live Orac at ScienceBlogs!

posted by Orac @ 7:38 AM 4 Attempt(s) at insolence Links to this insolence

This will be my second to last post here at the present blog. As announced before, on Monday this blog will be moving over to ScienceBlogs. It's been an eventful 14 months here, but it's time to shake things up. Not all change is bad, and I think this change will be good in at least a couple of ways. First, it will bring the insolence to a potentially much bigger audience, and, second, it will hopefully inspire me to sharpen my science writing.

In any case, as my last post here, the new URL will be announced on Monday, and I hope you'll join me (not to mention update all your bookmarks and, if you're a blogger or have linked to me on a website, your blogroll). The old blog will remain for the forseeable future as an archive site.

posted by Orac @ 9:14 AM 8 Attempt(s) at insolence Links to this insolence

Time flies. Not only is my move to ScienceBlogs imminent, but the next Skeptics' Circle is fast approaching. It's scheduled to be posted on Thursday, February 16 at Unused and Probably Unusable. The deadline is 8 PM EST on February 15, and the call for submissions is here. Let's make this one in honor of the Amazing Randi, who is presently recovering from heart surgery.

posted by Orac @ 9:08 AM Links to this insolence

Normally, this would be a topic that I'd take on full tilt. Fortunately, Abel Pharmboy explains the recent trial showing no benefit from saw palmetto in prostate hypertrophy. He also brings up a complaint that I've made about the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, mainly, its lack of scientific rigor and the poor quality of the grants it funds:
Anyone associated with drug discovery and development whether in academia or industry will tell you how extreme the guidelines are for chemical composition and purity of any drug product intended for clinical trials. Yet, NCCAM continues to fund expensive clinical trials of botanical therapies even when the chemicals purported to be responsible for biological activity(ies) are unknown. In the rush to show clinical utility, this funding agency has taken shortcuts on the basic science studies necessary to precede any clinical trial, perhaps hoping that one day they will get a positive result. Instead, they are racking up a series of high-profile failures that cast a broad shadow across all natural products research and creating public relations challenges for otherwise well-meaning herbal education and trade groups.

Only now has NCCAM revealed that they probably should fund investigations of basic science, mechanisms of action, and, be-still-my-heart, phase I pharmacokinetic trials.

Since its inception in 1992 as the NIH Office of Alternative Medicine, NCCAM has been a lightning rod for criticism of how the scientific method has been abandoned in favor of trying to show that ideological therapies work. Basic scientists in pharmacognosy and natural products chemistry were enthusiastic initially that a new funding source would be available to support their work. However, NCCAM was charged with reviewing all types of alternative therapies, from the more legitimate realm of herbal medicine to the implausible, homeopathy, for example. Review panels were stocked with individuals who had never held an NIH grant, much less with experience reviewing grant applications. An unusually high percentage of dietary supplement industry and trade group panelists infiltrated the peer-review system. In 2002, Quackwatch.com reported that just ten individual investigators held more than 20% of the NCCAM budget. I'd encourage Dr. Sampson to conduct another assessment today.Read the whole thing.

posted by Orac @ 10:39 AM 4 Attempt(s) at insolence Links to this insolence

Websites and Blogs Medicine
• Aggravated DocSurg
• Alternative Medicine and Cancer
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• Anne's Anti-Quackery & Science Blog
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• A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure
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• Clamoring to Become Visible
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• Notes from Dr. R.W.
• Pharmagossip
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• The Quack-Files
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• RangelMD.com
• Retired Doc's Thoughts
• So Many Lawyers, So Little Time...
• Sumer's Radiology Site
• symtym
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Science
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Skepticism and critical thinking
• Bad Science (The Guardian)
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• Logical Fallacies (Adam Smith Institute)
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• Skeptico
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• Snopes.com: Urban Legends
• Stephen's Guide to the Logical Fallacies
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The People's Media Company View RSS feed Monday, December 11, 2006 Please Wish Lauren Canario Merry Christmas In Prison Just got this from Kat Kanning. Frankly I'm disgusted that the media in this country, given how much attention they give to political prisoners in other countries, refuses to cover this story. 80 Days in prison without a trial for trespassing? Thats positively tyrannical. Please read on, and do what you can to wish Lauren a merry christmas. She hasn't seen her kids in 80 days, and won't be allowed to by the state of Connecticut:

Lauren Canario's now been imprisoned 80 days without a
trial for her fight against eminent domain.

She's been nominated for Freedom Fighter of the Year
on Strike the Root. If you have a moment, please
vote:

http://www.strike-the-root.com/

Also, she'll be spending her birthday (Dec. 23rd) and
Christmas imprisoned. It takes over a week, I
believe, to get anything to her her there. If you
could spare a moment, please send her a card or
letter. I don't believe she can receive any packages.

Lauren Canario #334457
c/o York Correctional Institution
201 West Main Street Niantic, CT 06357

Thank you!
Kat

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who
can labor in freedom. – Albert Einstein

posted by Mike Lorrey at 10:23 PM 2 comments links to this post

posted by Mike Lorrey at 8:10 PM 0 comments links to this post

posted by Mike Lorrey at 11:05 AM 3 comments links to this post

posted by Mike Lorrey at 9:33 PM 1 comments links to this post

• Merchants CANNOT be prosecuted for accepting the Liberty Dollar KNOWING that it is private currency!



• Merchants CANNOT be prosecuted for giving out the Liberty Dollar in change if the customer KNOWS it is private currency!



• Users CANNOT be prosecuted for presenting the Liberty Dollar to a Merchant when the Merchant KNOWS it is private currency!



• Regional Currency Offices, or anyone else, CANNOT be prosecuted for exchanging Liberty Dollars for Federal Reserve Notes when the customer KNOWS it is private currency!



• NO ONE CAN BE PROSECUTED FOR HAVING POSSESSION OF THE LIBERTY DOLLAR!

posted by Mike Lorrey at 8:32 PM 1 comments links to this post

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• Mike Lorrey
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Ellen has started a new blog about reading to your children in conjunction with traveling, and how the two activities enhance each other: Teddy Bear in a Suitcase.

Today’s post is about reading The Philharmonic Gets Dressed and going to the mechanical musical instruments exhibit at Morris Museum.

0 Comments

The second volume of collected Moomin comic strips is coming out this month! You can pre-order it from Amazon. The first volume was a lot of fun.

• moomin

0 Comments

I was reading Chapter 5 of Finn Family Moomintroll tonight and wondering about great trial scenes in children’s books. The argument between the Hemulen (who is counsel for Thingumy and Bob) and Sniff (the prosecutor) is fantastically good, if brief. The whole thing is just one of the high points of the whole Moomin series. 2 other great courtroom scenes: the trial in The Magic Pudding, and (of course) the prosecution of the Knave of Hearts. Any other good ones? What is especially fun about the court of law in the context of kids’ books? In the Moomintrial, I really like how sort of lovably pompous and at the same time sympathetic the Hemulen is when he’s arguing that Thingumy and Bob deserve “the Contents” of their suitcase even if they belong to the Groke, because Thingumy and Bob believe the Contents to be the most beautiful thing in the world, while the Groke only thinks it is the most expensive thing.

• alice
• courtroom
• magic pudding
• moomin

3 Comments

Daniel Pinkwater loves John Holbo. I’m so jealous. (If that’s really, truly Daniel Pinkwater commenting, then I am really, supremely mega-jealous.)

0 Comments

The other day, I had the chance to introduce a friend of mine to Oddballs, William Sleator’s collection of stories about growing up in the early Sixties. (The book is described as "semi-autobiographical" various places, but I take Sleator at his word when he asserts, that "unlikely as it may seem—I have told only one lie about my family in this book." Call it a memoir; it’s at least twice as truthy as A Million Little Pieces.) The stories are about an ethnic childhood, and the ethnicity is "weird"; Sleator’s parents were too young old to be hippies and too professional (his father was a professor; his mother was a research physician) to be beatniks, but they were full-on weird. Sleator’s stories reflect the sensibilities of the man who would grow up to give me nightmares with House of Stairs and make me read and laugh and re-read with Interstellar Pig:

Continue reading "Oddballs" »

• memoir
• oddballs
• sleator

4 Comments

I am reading Pamuk’s short essay “When the Furniture is Talking, How Can You Sleep?” this morning and thinking, wow — this would be excellent for reading to Sylvia. So I slip into my reading-aloud mode of scanning ahead and making minor edits in vocabulary and punctuation to make the piece more naturally fit my voice — though with this work there is very little for the editor to do, Pamuk (and his superlatively gifted translator Freely) is such a close fit for me. But I did catch one word that I thought my daughter would probably not understand, “attendant” as an adjective — well there were a couple of words that are probably not in her vocabulary, but all besides this one were in positions that seem to me easy to interpolate — and wondered what I would do with it if I were actually reading the essay to her. I might just skip over it, read “the sense of responsibility”, which I think would be just about as meaningful as “the attendant sense of responsibility”; I might try to substitute another word but I don’t think I could come up with one gracefully on the spur of the moment. I might try to restructure the clause but that probably would not come off well either. Or I might of course just read the sentence as it stood on the page.

(Another strategy: when I was reading “When Rüya is Sad” last night and hit the phrase “lying on the divan”, I read it as “lying on the divan (that means sofa), …” Today when I read past “divan” she asked to see where it said that, so I pointed it out to her, and she nodded.)

• pamuk
• reading aloud

0 Comments

Well… not Snow t’be sure. But I just got his new book of essays, Other Colors, and it contains at least 3 pieces that make excellent reading-out-loud material: “I’m Not Going To School”, which is in the voice of his daughter Rüya and lacks the funny ending of Silverstein’s like-titled piece; “Rüya and Us”; and “When Rüya is Sad”. I say “at least” because I just opened the book at random when I was with my daughter and happened on this trio. (Sylvia was into it enough that when I finished one piece she would ask to hear the next.)

Update: On further reading, it seems like these pieces are among the short sketches he wrote for the humor magazine Oküz, and that several of the others in this group would also be good for reading to kids.

Update, the next day: Wow! Sylvia asked to hear these three pieces again today and the second reading was just wonderful! She’s been thinking about them overnight and was asking questions, and making extrapolations and identifying Rüya’s thoughts and actions with her own… We spent more time talking about the essays than reading the text.

• pamuk
• reading aloud

0 Comments

(Cross-posted from READIN.)

The whole book The Magic Pudding is a huge amount of fun; but the last chapter is a big improvement over the rest in terms of the author’s confidence and command of his voice. The rhyming and doggerel are more clever and inventive. The characters grow to fill out their roles in a way that they don’t, really, in the first three chapters. And the courtroom sequence is just hilarious.

• characterization
• doggerel
• magic pudding
• narrative voice

0 Comments

I think it bears repeating (though I’ve said it many times before) just how much the quality of a good children’s book is improved through reading it aloud. It brings out the rhythm of the language much more strongly than does the silent recitation you do when you’re reading to yourself; and rhythm is, so I think, a key attribute of a good children’s book.

By way of example, after I read Redfox’s post on Food, I ordered The Magic Pudding. It arrived a week or so ago and I enjoyed reading it over a couple of nights. Tonight I started reading it to Sylvia for bedtime stories, and wow — it is such a fun book! The poems hold together much better when chanted and the shanties when sung. My reaction to reading it aloud was much stronger than it had been to reading it to myself and it served as a good reminder that books like this are intended to be read aloud.

One other note: I see several text-only editions of this book on Amazon, and it seems weird to me. The pictures are at least half the book!

• bunyip bluegum
• magic pudding
• reading aloud
• rhythm

2 Comments

Can we make some broad categories of how parents are represented in children’s books? I was reading All-of-a-kind Family to Sylvia tonight and thinking, the portrayal of Mama is really nauseating — it’s not enough for her to be wide awake instantly when she hears Sarah crying, the narrator has to say “wide awake as she always was when she knew one of her children needed her” (quoted inexactly from memory). And this type of portrayal is pretty common I think — I seem to remember the parents in the Little House books being painted at every turn as superlatively competent, and I’m sure there are many other similar titles I’m not thinking of right now. What are some other parental types?

Danny Champion of the World came to mind right away. My memory of it is pretty unclear but I seem to remember Danny’s father being very competent, yes, but in a pretty roguish way — is that an accurate memory? Moominmamma (who may be sui generis) is loving and motherly but quite unconcerned with always knowing what to do. Absent parents of course abound. What else? Are there any parents who are presented as actively incompetent, always messing things up, without being “bad guys”? Are there any parents who are presented as bad guys — talking about children’s books here, not young adult where bad parents are a common trope.

• all-of-a-kind family
• danny champion of the world
• jansson
• laura ingalls wilder
• little house
• moomin
• parents

3 Comments

“Most of us know what we should expect to find in a dragon‘s lair, but, as I said before, Eustace had read only the wrong books.”

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I just received an interesting press release from Project HOPE:

Project HOPE, an international health education and humanitarian assistance organization, today sent more than $400,000 of antibiotics to the people of Georgia through a U.S. Department of State airlift that will arrive in the Georgian capital city of Tbilisi later this week.

Nearly 4,000 bottles of the antibiotic cefprozil, donated by Bristol-Myers Squibb, make up the Project HOPE shipment that will be added to other humanitarian aid supplies that the Department of State is gathering for the airlift.

“Adults and children, whether they are in the midst of the conflict or not, need antibiotics to fight off infections that may develop from wounds or unhealthy living conditions that arise from war,” said Stuart Myers, Senior Vice President of Global Health at Project HOPE. “Fortunately, HOPE and our partner, Bristol-Myers Squibb, were prepared to supply the antibiotics when the Department of State called.”

Project HOPE continues to monitor the situation in Georgia. HOPE officials are in contact with both U.S. and Georgian government officials to identify and address long-term health care needs of the Georgian people.

Project HOPE, working in conjunction with the American Friends of Georgia, currently has a humanitarian assistance shipment of more than $1.4 million of medicines and medical supplies on the ground in Georgia. Unfortunately, the shipment arrived just as the conflict commenced and access to the supplies has been cut off. HOPE and the American Friends of Georgia are exploring ways to reach the shipment and may redirect the supplies to assist in conflict relief efforts.

A C-17 was in the air this morning as President Bush announced the plan:

The C-17 is from the 305th Air Mobility Wing at McGuire Air Force Base, N.J.

“The aircraft will be carrying medical supplies, shelters, bedding — those types of things,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. “That will be the first flight in; there are plans for another flight tomorrow as we continue to assess the wide range of humanitarian assistance options that we might be able to provide both in the immediate and long-term humanitarian capabilities.”

A military assessment team will arrive soon to assess the Georgian government’s humanitarian needs. The 12-man team will act as a liaison among the U.S. Embassy in Georgia, the Georgian government, and U.S. European Command and other U.S. agencies. The team contains experts in a number of civil affairs fields, Pentagon officials said. Many have recent experience in Georgia and can help to determine what capabilities the United States has that the Georgians may need.

“We’re looking at a broader range of assets and capabilities that we might bring to bear on the humanitarian need there,” Whitman said.

The amount and nature of the aid will grow as the assessment team delivers its reports, he said.

Defense Department officials will look at assistance options are available,” Whitman said. This ultimately could include ships delivering humanitarian goods to the nation.

Aside from the humanitarian aspects, which are important, this effort also presents us with a chance to aggressively secure Georgian territory. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili certainly anticipates that effect even if Washington won’t acknowledge the intent:

“You have heard the statement by the U.S. president that the United States is starting a military-humanitarian operation in Georgia,” Saakashvili said in a television address.

“It means that Georgian ports and airports will be taken under the control of the U.S. defence ministry in order to conduct humanitarian and other missions. This is a very important statement for easing tension.”

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said: “We are not looking to, not do we need to, take control of any air or seaports to conduct this mission.

Good morning. I’ve just met with my national security team to discuss the crisis in Georgia. I’ve spoken with President Saakashvili of Georgia, and President Sarkozy of France this morning. The United States strongly supports France’s efforts, as President of the European Union, to broker an agreement that will end this conflict.

The United States of America stands with the democratically elected government of Georgia. We insist that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia be respected.

Russia has stated that changing the government of Georgia is not its goal. The United States and the world expect Russia to honor that commitment. Russia has also stated that it has halted military operations and agreed to a provisional cease-fire. Unfortunately, we’re receiving reports of Russian actions that are inconsistent with these statements. We’re concerned about reports that Russian units have taken up positions on the east side of the city of Gori, which allows them to block the East-West Highway, divide the country, and threaten the capital of Tbilisi.

We’re concerned about reports that Russian forces have entered and taken positions in the port city of Poti, that Russian armored vehicles are blocking access to that port, and that Russia is blowing up Georgian vessels. We’re concerned about reports that Georgian citizens of all ethnic origins are not being protected. All forces, including Russian forces, have an obligation to protect innocent civilians from attack.

With these concerns in mind, I have directed a series of steps to demonstrate our solidarity with the Georgian people and bring about a peaceful resolution to this conflict. I’m sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to France, where she will confer with President Sarkozy. She will then travel to Tbilisi, where she will personally convey America’s unwavering support for Georgia’s democratic government. On this trip she will continue our efforts to rally the free world in the defense of a free Georgia.

I’ve also directed Secretary of Defense Bob Gates to begin a humanitarian mission to the people of Georgia, headed by the United States military. This mission will be vigorous and ongoing. A U.S. C-17 aircraft with humanitarian supplies is on its way. And in the days ahead we will use U.S. aircraft, as well as naval forces, to deliver humanitarian and medical supplies.

We expect Russia to honor its commitment to let in all forms of humanitarian assistance. We expect Russia to ensure that all lines of communication and transport, including seaports, airports, roads, and airspace, remain open for the delivery of humanitarian assistance and for civilian transit. We expect Russia to meet its commitment to cease all military activities in Georgia. And we expect all Russian forces that entered Georgia in recent days to withdraw from that country.

As I have made clear, Russia’s ongoing action raise serious questions about its intentions in Georgia and the region. In recent years, Russia has sought to integrate into the diplomatic, political, economic, and security structures of the 21st century. The United States has supported those efforts. Now Russia is putting its aspirations at risk by taking actions in Georgia that are inconsistent with the principles of those institutions. To begin to repair the damage to its relations with the United States, Europe, and other nations, and to begin restoring its place in the world, Russia must keep its word and act to end this crisis.

Thank you.

Source: The White House

Apparently, the Russians are supposed to turn off the road to Tbilisi and head towards an abandoned Georgian military base:

A convoy of Russian armored personnel carriers was heading deeper into Georgia Wednesday on a road that leads from Gori to Tbilisi, CNN Correspondent Matthew Chance reported.

Chance, on the road with the Russian column, said it was moving slowly south from Gori.

He said there were hundreds of men in personnel carriers.

CNN has been told by Georgian officials that the convoy would turn off the road to Tbilisi toward an abandoned Georgian military base.

The convoy was located well outside the mandated area for Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia.

Georgia and Russia have accused each other of violating a cease-fire only 24 hours after it was agreed.

An AFP report sounds raises serious doubts about Russia’s intentions:

Separatist fighters and Russian troops looted and set homes ablaze in Georgian territory on Wednesday amid fears over a fragile ceasefire that ended five days of bitter conflict.

Despite a French-brokered truce agreed on Tuesday by the leaders of the two countries, Russia faced mounting criticism in the West.

Russian armoured vehicles patrolled the flashpoint town of Gori and about 60 tanks, armoured personnel carriers and other vehicles were seen on the road from Gori to the Georgian capital, 75 kilometers away.

An AFP reporter saw Russian troops shouting: “Tbilisi, Tbilisi”.

Western powers have a mess on their hands as it is. If Russia completely ignores the six-point plan and takes Tbilisi the whole game changes.

I was talking to a very liberal friend today, a Hillary supporter, who said she just couldn’t get excited about Obama. She said his lack of experience was “depressing.” She’s not alone. Joe Lieberman is calling out the inexperienced one as well:

“In my opinion, the choice could not be more clear: between one candidate, John McCain, who’s had experience, been tested in war and tried in peace, another candidate who has not,’’ Mr. Lieberman said. “Between one candidate, John McCain, who has always put the country first, worked across party lines to get things done, and one candidate who has not. Between one candidate who’s a talker, and the other candidate who’s the leader America needs as our next president.”

Joe’s just awesome but I’d add “Between one candidate who comes to the aid of our allies, while the other candidate body surfs and eats snow cones.”

Others Blogging:

Macsmind
Something is developing in the Presidential election and it’s something that only a few people are talking about. The fact that mainstream democrats may just jump ship to vote for McCain in sufficient enough numbers for a victory.

Hot Air
Lest you still doubt whether Liebs will in fact be in St. Paul despite the heavy-handed hints he’s been dropping to reporters, the theme of the convention leaked out today right around the time he was accusing Obama of not putting the country first. The theme: “Putting Country First.” Oh, and his wife Hadassah coincidentally will be a guest at a breast cancer fundraiser organized in St. Paul by a Republican group on the first day of the convention.

Riehl World View
I can’t wait to see the Lefty blogs fully respond to this. Or, is it so devastating their only hope is to pretend it wasn’t said, … or that their former VP nominee Lieberman is unimportant? One day I’m going to have to ask one of my more liberal commenters how it is they manage to get their fingers in their ears when their head is so far up their azz.

Wake Up America
Despite Obama supporters howling at the moon over Lieberman’s words, they are not a smear, a smear is a lie and it is totally truthful and appropriate to put out that McCain has been tried and true in his support for America, in his patriotism and in his efforts to reach across the aisle and work with Democrats….. Obama has not.

Everyone seems to be on board - for now:

Georgia’s president late Tuesday agreed to a six-point plan announced by the Russian and French presidents that aims to settle the conflict over Georgia’s separatist territories, French President Nikolas Sarkozy said.

The plan stops short of specifically addressing the issue of Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The points include Russian agreements to conclude all military operations, return Russian armed forces to the line preceding the beginning of operations and not use force again in Georgia.

In return, Georgia would return its armed forces to their normal and permanent locations.

Both sides would provide free access for humanitarian assistance; and international consideration of the issues of South Ossetia and Abkhazia would be undertaken.

Russia on Tuesday said it has called a halt to its powerful military incursion into Georgia.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the halt to fighting would enable South Ossetia and Abkhazia to decide whether they want to be part of Georgia, leaving open the possibility Georgia might lose one or both regions.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said “all we need to do now is to stop suffering, stop the death of people,” Sarkozy said. Stopping the fighting “is the most important objective.”

It’s important to note that this plan is simply a short-term solution. The Western alliance should be working overtime to develop a follow-on plan that firmly secures Georgian independence.

I can’t confirm that this blog was actually create by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia but it seems plausible given their inability (thanks to Russian hackers - state sponsored and otherwise) to use their own Internet resources during the conflict.

It’s worth keeping an eye on anyway.

H/T: Robert Stevens

Obama can nail a photo-op or well prepared speech but he withers in the face of a true crisis:

The invasion of Georgia elicited a wan written communique instead of the sort of exciting rhetoric we’ve come to expect from his make-believe presidency. But he did make it in front of the cameras the next day for a rally celebrating his vacation in Hawaii. He promised “to go body surfing at some undisclosed location.”

During Obama’s make-believe presidency, we’ve heard about bold action, about the courage to talk to dictators. When faced with a real “3 a.m. moment,” Obama — who boasts about 200 foreign policy advisors, broken into 10 subgroups — proclaims, “I’m going to get some shave ice.”

Now, of course, this is a bit unfair in that Obama had planned his no doubt well-deserved vacation for a very long time. But presidential vacations are always well planned — and often interrupted.

Snow Cones and body surfing - sounds like an awesome vacation. Meanwhile, John McCain steps up and leads:

Republican White House hopeful John McCain Tuesday stepped up a fusillade against Russian “aggression” and declared that today, “we are all Georgians.”

Addressing voters in Pennsylvania, McCain said he had spoken by telephone earlier with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who he said wanted to thank the American people for their support.

“I told him that I know I speak for every American when I say to him, today, we are all Georgians,” said the Republican, a hardliner against Russia who wants the mighty nation expelled from the Group of Eight club.

I’ve said it before but McCain is the only serious candidate in the race.

The unit recently returned from Iraq where they flew their last manned missions. I’m sure that some will miss the F-16s but the MQ-9 offers many advantages:

Strafing and “intimidation” (coming in low and fast) attacks have been very useful in Iraq and Afghanistan, so the Reaper is not going to put the F-16s out of business right away. But the 19 ton F-16 costs three times as much as a Reaper, and is much more expensive to operate. The F-16 uses over a hundred times more fuel, per hour in the air, and with the price of oil rapidly rising, that itself means a lot. Put simply, It’s cheaper, more effective, and safer (for pilots) to use Reapers (or similar aircraft) for a lot of the ground support work. Fighters are still needed to keep the skies clear of enemy aircraft, although Reapers are better suited for the dangerous work of destroying enemy air defenses. But for fighting irregulars, the Reaper is king.

…The 4.7 ton Reaper has a wingspan of 66 feet and a payload of 1.5 tons. Reaper is considered a combat aircraft, because it can carry everything from the hundred pound Hellfire missile, to the 500 pound laser or GPS guided smart bomb. Reaper has a laser designator, as well as day and night (infrared) cameras. Reaper can stay in the air for over 14 hours and operate at up to 50,000 feet. It’s sensors have excellent resolution, and are effective at high altitudes. It’s been noted that most of what F-16s (and F-18s) are doing these days is dropping smart bombs, and using their targeting pods to do recon for the ground troops. Reaper does both of these jobs better and cheaper.

Richard Holbrooke and Ronald Asmus summarize the challenges presented by Russia’s actions in Georgia:

This moment could well mark the end of an era in Europe during which realpolitik and spheres of influence were supposed to be replaced by cooperative norms and a country’s right to choose its own path. Hopes for a more liberal Russia under President Dmitry Medvedev will need to be reexamined. His justification for this invasion reads more like Brezhnev than Gorbachev. While no one wants a return to cold war-style confrontation, Russia’s behavior poses a direct challenge to European and international order.

What can the west do? First, Georgia deserves the west’s solidarity and support. The west must get the fighting stopped and preserve Georgia’s territorial integrity within its current international border. As soon as hostilities cease, there should be a major, coordinated transatlantic effort to help Tbilisi rebuild and recover.

Second, we should not pretend that Russia is a neutral peacekeeper in conflicts on its borders. Russia is part of the problem, not the solution. For too long, Moscow has used existing international mandates to pursue neo-imperial policies. The west must disavow these mandates and insist on truly neutral international forces, under the UN, to monitor a future ceasefire and to mediate.

Third, the west needs to counter Russian pressure on its neighbours, especially Ukraine – most likely the next target in Moscow’s efforts to create a new sphere of hegemony. The US and the European Union must be clear that Ukraine and Georgia will not be condemned to some kind of grey zone.

Finally, the US and the EU must make clear that this kind of aggression will affect relations and Russia’s standing in the west. While western military intervention in Georgia is out of the question – and no one wants a 21st-century version of the cold war – Russia’s actions cannot be ignored.

Realpolitik and political realism don’t always prevail but it’s naive in the extreme to wish those forces away. This war, a wake up call for Western diplomats, should usher in an intense round of analysis and foreign policy adjustments which account for a Russia that operates with a realism that places it ethically somewhere between an apolitical crime syndicate and the Cold War era Soviet Union. To succeed we’ll have to challenge this streak of exploitable Western naivete that we just can’t seem to shake.

Update:
Ronald Asmus three weeks before the war:

Many in the West are tempted to look the other way. This crisis is, after all, inconvenient. Georgian democracy is far from perfect, and Tbilisi has certainly made its own mistakes. Russia has a new president who we all hope can be more liberal and open to the West. The United States and its allies also need Moscow to be aligned with the West in the United Nations on issues from Iran to North Korea to Zimbabwe. This is an awkward time to take a tough stance. It would be only too easy to equivocate, blame all parties a little and call for more diplomacy.

But this approach is making war in the Caucasus more likely, not less so.

If the Rose Revolution fails, we will wait a generation or more for another chance for positive change. Critical principles, including sovereignty and territorial integrity, are at stake. Russia is seeking to redefine the rules of post-Cold War European security to its advantage. And as Georgia is considered a U.S. project, the prestige of the United States is on the line. The Rose Revolution was animated by American values. Tbilisi has pursued U.S.-style economic reforms, has soldiers in Iraq and wants to join NATO. The region is waiting to see whether and when Washington will step in. If the West doesn’t try to stop Russia’s overstepping, countries in the region — from Azerbaijan to Central Asian energy producers — will recalculate accordingly.

Again, I think it’s time for all involved to recalculate.

We’ll know within a few hours if Russia is lying or if the situation on the ground needs time to get in synch with the politicians. There’s reason for concern at the moment:

Georgian officials insisted that Russia has continued the bombings despite the pledge. And hours before the Russian order, Georgian officials said Russian jets targeted government offices and an outdoor market in the crossroads city of Gori, killing six. Russia, which denied the bombing, launched an offensive in the only part of Abkhazia still under Georgian control.

Gori was all but deserted late Monday — most remaining residents and Georgian soldiers fled ahead of a feared Russian onslaught. The post office and university were still burning.

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Alonzo Church was born on June 14, 1903, and died August 11, 1995. Essentially his entire early academic career took place at Princeton University, having completed his AB (1924) and his PhD (1927, under Oswald Veblen) there, and then serving as a professor of mathematics from 1929 until 1967. (After retiring from Princeton in 1967, he taught at UCLA as a professor of mathematics and philosophy until 1990.)

Church’s most significant mathematical contribution was the creation (with Stephen Kleene) of the λ-calculus, a formal system in the language of functions.

Church is probably best remembered for Church’s Thesis, the claim that every effectively computable function is in fact a function that is definable in his λ-calculus. Kurt Gödel balked at this claim, and introduced the primitive recursive functions as a more natural alternative to model the notion of effective computability. Stephen Kleene, a student of Church, showed that in fact the functions definable in the λ-calculus exactly correspond to Gödel’s primitive recursive functions. By the late 1930s, another notion of computability had been put forward by Alan Turing, and it too had been shown to be equivalent to λ-definability.

The sets of λ-definable functions, primitive recursive functions, and functions implementable as Turing Machines, are identical sets of functions. This agreement of three diverse approaches to formalizing the vague notion of “effectively computable” is viewed as strong evidence that all three approaches have in fact captured that concept. At its most general, Church’s Thesis is the claim that effective computability is equivalent to these three formalizations. Given that “effectively computable” is unlikely to ever be formally defined, Church’s Thesis remains an unproven (and unprovable) claim.

Alas, Church’s Thesis first appeared in 1936, and was not a part of Church’s (doctoral) thesis of 1927 (Alternatives to Zermelo’s Assumption, an attempt to create a logic in which the axiom of choice is false).

Posted in Featured Mathematician, History | No Comments »

Two photos from The Fail Blog:

see more pwn and owned pictures

see more pwn and owned pictures

The Fail Blog is a fantastic place to visit, though not all the photos are safe for work [and certainly many of the comments are safe for neither work nor home.]

Posted in Math Mistakes | 3 Comments »

The 38th Carnival of Mathematics is being hosted by CatSynth, the same folk who hosted the 35th Carnival and who have a great picture of a cat looking at a Lissajous curve (along with an explanation of the curves themselves).   This Carnival features facts about 888 (the date of posting), then a stories on epsilonica all the way down to coloring a plane, with a possibility of more posts to come this weekend.  Enjoy the read!

Tags: Carnival of Mathematics
Posted in Carnival | No Comments »

Photo of Kevin Bacon by SAGIindie (Creative Commons license)

The notion of “degrees of separation” is once again in the news, thanks to Microsoft. The basic idea is that you start with someone, look at everyone they know (where “know” would have to be defined in some way), then look at everyone that those people know, and see what happens. Chain letters and pyramid schemes thrive on this sort of thing. The origin of “six degrees of separation” seems to date back to the 1929 short story “Chains” by Frigyes Karinthyin:

One of us suggested performing the following experiment to prove that the population of the Earth is closer together now than they have ever been before. We should select any person from the 1.5 billion inhabitants of the Earth—anyone, anywhere at all. He bet us that, using no more than five individuals, one of whom is a personal acquaintance, he could contact the selected individual using nothing except the network of personal acquaintances.

Musing #1: The 5th root of 1.5 billion is about 68.5. This suggests that each person would need at least 68 personal acquaintances if there was no overlap. But since many people share personal acquaintances, the actual number would have to be a lot higher.

Musing #2: The notion of six degrees of separation was introduced in a work of fiction.

Then there was this paper by Jeffrey Travers and Stanley Milgram in 1969 about an experiment by Milgram in which people in the USA got letters to someone they didn’t know by sending the letters to people they did know, who would send it to people they knew, etc. The average number of people it passed through was 5.2 [so each letter was sent 6.2 times on average to get to the final person] leading to more emphasis on that whole SIX thing.

Problem #1: Here the 6.2 was an average, not a maximum like in the short story above. This distinction is always sometimes pretty much always blurred when degrees of separation are talked about informally.

Problem #2: The 6.2 was the average only of the letters that made it to their destination, and that was only 64 out of 296. In other words, this experiment suggests that two people in the US would be 6.2 steps on average away from each other if they’re connected at all, but they probably aren’t.

Problem #3: The title “Infinite Degrees of Separation” isn’t so catchy, and is a little depressing.

Problem #4: This is the same Stanley Milgram who conducted the infamous Milgram Experiment in which volunteers gave supposed electric shocks to supposed volunteers in response to mistakes. Not that this has anything to do with the Small World theory, but it was a surprise to me that it was the same guy.

Moving along, the degrees of separation results were repeated in the Small World Project through Columbia University and published here in 2003. As explained in the abstract:

We report on a global social-search experiment in which more than 60,000 e-mail users attempted to reach one of 18 target persons in 13 countries by forwarding messages to acquaintances.

This was worldwide, not just the USA, and with much bigger numbers, and yours truly actually participated in it. It led to some interesting results:

Result #1: Of the completed chains, the median number of steps was 4.05, though the authors conjectured that overall the median number of steps is probably five to seven. This lead to headlines like “Email experiment confirms six degrees of separation“.

Result #2: The participants were not a random sample. From the article above: “More than half of all participants resided in North America and were middle class, professional, college educated, and Christian” In theory, I think only the starting and ending points would have to be random, but here the starting and ending people did need to have internet access and I’d question whether or not internet access is truly independent of social connectedness internationally.

Result #3: The average is, once again, based only on completed chains. And out of the 24,163 chains, only 384 were finished. In other words, most people don’t seem to be connected. Either that or we’re just lazy — there’s some evidence for that in the paper: if people couldn’t think of a good person to pass the email along to, they didn’t pass it along to anyone.

Then in June 2006 Microsoft got in on the action. They looked at all the Instant Messenges that month and counted folk as connected if they exchanged at least one IM. The average degrees of separation was 6.6, which lead to recent headlines like, “Everyone really is just six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon” with the subheader, “A study of Microsoft’s instant messaging network supports the popular idea that everyone on the planet can be connected through fewer than seven links in a chain of contacts.”

Misconception #1: Once again, the six degrees, which was really more like seven, is an average and not a maximum. Microsoft did find that 78% of users could be connected in seven stages or less, but they also said that some pairs were separated by 29 degrees. Actually, what might be the most interesting bit to me is that the news articles I looked at (on Yahoo! News and The Washington Post) imply that everyone was connected in some way, which is very different from the results of the previous study.

Misconception #2: I think it’s a stretch to claim that Microsoft IM users are representative of everyone on the planet, and I’d be wary of claims like the headline above that extrapolate it to every single person.

But despite the limitations of studies like this, if you limit yourself to certain subsets of people, you still can have some fun. For example:

Related Website #1: The Oracle of Bacon. This site allows you to choose an actor and see that actor’s “Bacon Number” (their degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon). For example, if you pick Christina Mastin, you find:

Christina Mastin has a Bacon number of 2.

Christina Mastin was in Dogfight (1991) with Brendan Fraser
Brendan Fraser was in Air I Breathe, The (2007) with Kevin Bacon

You can also choose the Advanced Setup to search for a path linking any two actors. Incidentally, the notion that all actors are connected to Kevin Bacon appeared around 1994, and last year Kevin Bacon started a charitable giving organization called SixDegrees.org, which is a nice thing even though Kevin himself claims on the site that the six degrees of separation is a maximum and not an average. (You might want to correct that, Kev. But still, kudos for the charity work.)

Related Website #2: The Erdös Number Project. This site studies collaboration among mathematicians, many of whom have co-authored a paper with someone who co-authored a paper with someone who co-authored a paper with Paul Erdös. For example, Natalie Portman has an Erdös number of 5: she published a psychology paper (as Natalie Hershlag) with Abigail A. Baird, who published a paper on Functional Connectivity with M.S. Gazzaniga, who published a paper on Acquired central dyschromatopsia with J.D. Victor, who published a combinatorics paper with J. Gillis, who published a paper on transfinite diameter with Paul Erdös. Incidentally, Natalie currently has a Bacon number of 2 but this coming February she and Kevin are both appearing in the movie New York, I Love You, giving Natalie an Erdös-Bacon Number of 6 (5+1).

Related Website #3: The six degrees of celeb dating. This site is a game, so it gives you two people and you have to fill in the dating chain yourself. The site will, however, tell you if you’re right and it gives you a limited number of celebrities to choose from: I was able to tell that Drew Barrymore dated Edward Norton who dated Salma Hayek in only about ten guesses. If that’s too much work or if closed cycles interest you more than chains, you can see a twelve-step dating cycle starting and ending with Brad Pitt on cbs2chicago.

Tags: erdos number, kevin bacon, six degrees of separation
Posted in Math in Pop Culture | 1 Comment »

I saw this Sonic commercial last night. I am proud to say that my guessing skills are somewhat better than the guy in the passenger seat.

Note that this is unrelated to Bistromath, but it does give a convenient excuse for linking to it.

Tags: bistromath, food math, sonic
Posted in Humor, Math in Popular Books | 1 Comment »

Well, according to this MSN story, they do. This will really make my students happy: “Come on! Even worms know how to differentiate!”

From John Scalzi, via Making Light.

Tags: calculus, derivative, worm
Posted in Math in the News | No Comments »

Monday Math Madness #12 is up at Blinkdagger, and features Marvin the Martian (who turned 60 years old this past July 24. Happy Birthday Marvin! And wasn’t it cool of NASA and friends to use Marvin in the patch for the Mars Exploration Rovers?)

At any rate, this week’s puzzle is particularly challenging. One person picks two whole numbers between 2 and 99, tells the sum to a second person and the product to a third person. The second person tells the third person they  [Person #3] can’t possibly know the original numbers, and the third person realizes that that is enough information to figure it out.  With that revelation, the second person is able to figure it out.  Your job is to find the numbers.

Seriously, that’s all the information that you get, though it’s phrased perhaps a little more clearly at Blinkdagger. And at the moment I have little idea how to solve it, but I’m working on it. It did, however, remind me of one of my favorite problems that I occasionally given to non-majors in a “distribution requirement” math class. The problem involves a census taker who asks a parent the ages of the three children who live in the house. The ages (whole numbers) multiply to seventy-two, and add to the house number. The census-taker looks at the house number and says, “That’s not enough information.” The parent agrees, and comments that the oldest child has a pet rabbit, and that’s enough to solve the problem.

Like I said, I love this problem, but my students are often a little overwhelmed when I assign it. This led to one of my favorite ever teaching exchanges, which went something like this:

Student: Does it matter that it’s a rabbit?
Me: Not in particular. It could be a dog. Or a cow.

The student thought for a while, then:

Student: I got it! “Rabbit” in French is lapin, which has 5 letters. “Dog” in French is chien, which has 5 letters. And “Cow” in French is vache, which also has 5 letters. Am I on the right path?

One the one hand, I loved the student’s enthusiasm (which was not unusual for this student) and also the willingness to try new ways of thinking. And this student was no slouch mathematically, and was a joy to have in class. On the other hand, it really gave me insight into what word problems must seem like to a non-mathematician, if translating the words into a foreign language and then counting the letters seemed like a reasonable course of action. In problem solving, “easy”, “hard”, and “obvious” are in the eye of the beholder, not necessarily the eye of the author of the problem. [Which isn't me -- I've seen versions of this problem in several places.]

And in good news, my student did go on to solve the problem correctly.

Posted in Problems, Teaching | 1 Comment »

Ξ and I were recently shown a card trick by a colleague and a former student. It was a two-person show, with the student playing the role of “Assistant” and our colleague playing the “Mind Reader”. This is what we saw.

The Mind Reader left the room, and the Assistant explained that she could communicate with the Mind Reader telepathically. We chose five cards (total) from a standard deck of 52, then showed them to the Assistant. Here are our cards:

She picked one of the five (the ♥2), told us to remember it, hid it, then arranged the remaining four cards in a row, like so:

The Assistant then told the Mind Reader to enter (why didn’t she just “think” him back in?). The Mind Reader studied the cards and proudly proclaimed that the last card was the ♥2. Ta-da! How did they do it?

Posted in Math Magic | No Comments »

Théodore Olivier was born January 21, 1793, and died on August 5, 1853.  He was a student of Gaspard Monge, and indeed Monge’s influence seems apparent in Olivier’s most famous work: his models of the intersections of  three dimensional surfaces.  Olivier used strings arranged on a metal framework to model each individual surface.  As the surfaces move relative to one another, the strings allow one to study the curve where the two surfaces intersect.  (Monge had constructed static models depicting such intersections; by changing materials Olivier had a pedagogic breakthrough.)

Union College has a large collection of these models, and has created a web page devoted to their collection and its history.  One of their computer science students [now alumnus], Mike Pinch, created software to simulate the models, and give the user the opportunity to manipulate the models.  Union also has posted several .avi videos of this software in action.

Posted in Featured Mathematician, History | 1 Comment »

They Might Be Giants has been doing videos and podcasts for kids. One of their recent releases (from earlier this year) is a video all about one of our favorite polygons: the nonagon! Several other polygons make guest appearances as well.

You can see the video below. The first minute or so is introduction, followed by the nonagon song, one about the letter O, and then a good-bye (5:32 total).

Tags: nonagon, tmbg
Posted in Polygons, Video | 2 Comments »

Nowadays we have fancy clocks that countdown to the Olympics, like this

Beijing clock; posted under creative commons license by topgold

or this

Vancouver clock by Makaristos

And these are nice and all, but they’re not exactly portable. For that, you need to go back 2100 years. In 1901, spongedivers found an ancient shipwreck near southern Greece. It had all sorts of stuff with it, including a bronze clock that was somewhat beat up but, in its heyday, looked something like this:

Olympic Digital Camera; creative commons copyright by Marsyas

The clock was named the Antikythera Mechanism, in honor of the island Antikythera near where the ship sunk, and it got its very own website here. For a long time no one knew exactly how it worked or what it measured. But then in 2005 Britain sent a 3-dimensional (tomography) x-ray machine down to Athens, where the pieces of the Antikythera Mechanism are on display, and they found out a couple things. First, it used gears, well before the Swiss watchmakers. Second, it kept track of the Olympic games. That’s particularly interesting because, with the games occurring every 4 years, a clock wasn’t strictly necessary. But as the folk of Beijing and Vancouver know, that doesn’t mean it’s not special.

The news articles that talk about this clock (e.g. here and here) also draw a connection to Archimedes. Different parts of Greece used different names for the months, and the names used on this clock were used in Syracuse, where Archimedes had lived 100 years earlier. (They were also used in other cities, but that’s not part of this story.) So Alexander Jones (from the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University) said:

We know Archimedes did mechanical astronomy here 100 years earlier and this could be from his home city, it could have been inspired by his work, or it could have been a local tradition that he started.

That’s a lot of “could”s. Nonetheless, whether or not Archimedes had anything to do with the clock or not, it’s still a pretty neat object.

Thanks to Pam for bringing my attention to this story!

Tags: Antikythera Mechanism, clock, olympics
Posted in Calendar | 1 Comment »

George Orwell

While surfing the webpages of a variety of newspapers this morning, I stumbled on the following….

On the staged-reality-tv show Big Brother (UK version), they gave the housemates a mathematical task: they had to compute three different sums, then use the three resulting answers as the combination to a safe.

Implicit in the problem was that the three calculations should each result in a two-digit integer.

Video posted to the Channel 4 website shows the contestants muttering, struggling, and having an extremely difficult time of it. And with good reason!

Here are the three calculations they were given, as posted on the Channel 4 website:

Sum#1: 3 x 17 - 24 + 78 x 9 ÷ 5 - (13²) + (65 - 29) ÷ 4 + (4²) - (7 x 3) + (3²) + 99 - (7²) - 49

Sum#2: 1396 x 2 ÷ 4 — (12²) + 46 x 2 ÷ 40 x (5²) - (7 x 99) x 3 - (11²) x 5 - 219

Sum#3: 100 - 33 x 5 + 665 ÷ (5²) x 17 - 248 x 3 ÷ (4²) + 52 ÷ 7 + (273 - 217)

From the look of things on the on-line video, I’m guessing that the contestants had no writing implements, and had to do all of this in their head. That makes this challenging enough, I suppose.

Making matters worse is that none of the three sums is integer valued; they work out to 62/5, -4583/2, and 26189/70. Rather, these are their values if one computes using the usual order of operations, where exponents have precedence over other operations, where multiplication and division take precedence over addition and subtraction, where calculations are performed left-to-right, and parentheses can be used to override this sequencing. (“PEMDAS” is a popular acronym with my students, standing for “Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication and Division, Addition and Subtraction”, and sometimes recalled using the mnemonic “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally”)

Apparently the folk who created this puzzle expected their contestants to work left-to-right, ignoring operator precedence, in the way that a $1 calculator might do. (Calculators that do pay heed to order of operation conventions are often marketed as “scientific” calculators.)

For example, the first sum should go as follows:

3 x 17 - 24 + 78 x 9 ÷ 5 - (13²) + (65 - 29) ÷ 4 + (4²) - (7 x 3) + (3²) + 99 - (7²) - 49

= 3 x 17 - 24 + 78 x 9 ÷ 5 - 169 + 36÷ 4 + 16 - 21 + 9 + 99 - 49 - 49

= 51 - 24 + 702/5 - 169 + 9 + 16 - 21 + 9 + 99 - 49 - 49

= 62/5

But I suspect the intended calculation was instead:

3×17 = 51, 51-24 = 27, 27+78 = 105, 105×9 = 945

945÷5=189, 189-(13²)=20, 20+(65-29)=56. 56÷4=14,

14+(4²)=30, 30-(7 x 3)=9, 9+(3²) + 99 - (7²) - 49 = 19

Similar (incorrect!) computations for sum #2 and sum #3 yield 31 and 75, respectively.

Clearly it is important that we agree on our order of operations.  But why do we prefer one over the other? Is this merely a cultural convention?  One stock answer to this is to point to the algebra of polynomials: our conventions regarding operator precedence play a central role in how we interpret linear equations (e.g. what is the slope of the line ?), how we interpret polynomials (e.g. is a quadratic or a cubic polynomial?), and how we compute sums and products of polynomials.

But this morning, having not yet had my first cup of coffee, I wonder: is it possible to change the rules of arithmetic, so that all operations have the same precedence (unless exceptions are forced by parentheses), and to develop a meaningful algebra based on similar principles? It seems to me that the answer is yes, and I wonder exactly what is lost by doing so, other than familiarity.

Posted in Math Mistakes, Math in Pop Culture | 9 Comments »

There have already been a couple examples of what can go wrong when you mix up Metric and Imperial units on a Boeing 767 or a spacecraft to Mars. But it turns out that even nonstandard units can cause a little bit of trouble. By “nonstandard units”, I mean units such as spork and by “little bit of trouble” I mean an accounting error of $66,500,000. That’s a lot of cutlery.

The error is related to the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Back in 2005, a large number of house supplies (pots, pans, toilet paper, etc.) were donated or purchased for people who had lost their homes. The items were stored in a warehouse in Louisiana, and then in Texas, and then…nothing. They sat there in Forth Worth, and FEMA paid about a million dollars a year to keep them stored. And not long ago FEMA decided to give them away rather than continue to pay that storage (plus the warehouse was apparently going to be torn down). At this point the story became quite public, and Louisiana said that HEY they still needed those, because three years later there are still people who are recovering, and why have all these things been collecting dust anyway? And FEMA said, Well we offered them to you and you didn’t want them, so don’t blame us. Etc.  Etc. And during all this arguing, the reported value of the supplies was listed at $85 million.

But now it turns out that it wasn’t $85 million after all — it was more like $18.5 million. Because when they were counting things, they counted single items such as  one spork the same as entire cases, as in one case of sporks. As the General Services Administration explained last week, “The final adjustments reveal there was a significant overstatement in the total asset valuation.”

So on the one hand, this is good because that’s $66.5 million dollars that wasn’t wasted after all (indeed, it never existed). And on the other hand, the fact that there was such a large accounting error on top of the revelation that all this stuff was just sitting there doing nothing isn’t really making anyone feel very good.

(See CNN for more details.)

Tags: FEMA mistake, Katrina
Posted in Math Mistakes, Math in the News | No Comments »

Head over to Puntabulous for Teach Me Something Tuesday #14: A History of Cruises (since Craig is gone for the week on a Cruise Ship). One of the facts that arose in the comments this morning was about the gas mileage of Cruise Ships. If you’re worried about your 20 miles per gallon and envying a 40 mpg hybrid (even though it might not be as good a deal as it sounds initially), be glad that you’re not taking the Queen Elizabeth 2 to work. The QE2 gets only 40-50 feet per gallon.

The Queen Mary is even worse, getting 13 feet per gallon*. That’s .0025 miles per gallon or, put another way, over 400 gallons per mile. And if you’re talking gallons per mile instead of miles per gallon, you know these rising fuel prices are hitting you especially hard.

*13 feet per gallon = 1 meter per liter, which is fun to say out loud.

Tags: cruise, QE2, Queen Mary
Posted in Miscellaneous | 1 Comment »

Running time of the Euclidean Algorithm

Pierre-Joseph-Étienne Finck was born October 15, 1797, and died July 27, 1870. Finck’s most significant mathematical contribution appears to have been his analysis of the running time of the Euclidean Algorithm, which he published in 1841.

One wonders if his own life experiences contributed to his interest in recursive algorithms. Upon graduating from the École Polytechnique in 1817, he was admitted to the Artillery School. However, he wasn’t satisfied with his studies there, and applied ( in March 1818 ) to transfer to the Royal Guard cavalry. Request denied.

4 months later, he applied to the cavalry again, this time saying that he would resign if his request was not honored. Request denied.

So he resigned from Artillery School…. But by early 1819 he had second thoughts, and applied for reinstatement to the Artillery School. Request denied.

At this point, he changed tactics, and began studying mathematics at the University of Strasbourg. He completed his doctoral dissertation (on movements of the terrestrial equator) in 1829. Ironically, by that time, he had been appointed as a mathematics instructor at the Artillery School of Strasbourg.

I suppose Finck’s life might provide a valuable lesson in the importance of sticking to your guns.

Source:  Mactutor History of Math archive

Posted in Featured Mathematician, History | No Comments »

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The phone call

The sharp afternoon sunlight stung her eyes, reflecting off the tar covered roof of the building and made them water. Yet she couldn’t resist looking at the pigeons in the alcove above the terrace door. Two male ones trying to woo a female. One of them won and the other flew away after the long battle, then, one false move, and Swooosh! Away flew the female, leaving the 'winner' alone on the ledge.

posted by Surya Ragunaathan at 2:12 AM 7 comments

posted by Surya Ragunaathan at 7:12 PM 7 comments

I will advocate a religion. Someday I will preach it, and I am sure there will be lots of takers. Some of the dictates will be as follows.

- My religion will have God/Gods, however, who or how I shall think of when the time comes as per public likes/dislikes. Chances are that it could be my boyfriend or me :) Anyways, Gods will never be the same always. They will change with each each season.

- Truth, of course, will be preferred. However, when unavoidable white lies are allowed.

- You will be forced to think. There will be weekly gatherings where you will have to reach by solving a clue game before the religion will be propounded to you.

- You will be forced to participate in weekly gatherings that consist of PJs (phaltu jokes). All followers of this faith must bring along at least 5 such jokes and should be good listeners of the same.

- Mailing, chatting and exchange of interesting articles on a weekly basis will be a must, discussions on some of them will be mandatory on the weekly gatherings.

- Working will be permissible for not more than 3 days a week. The holidays will be decided later, they are the days which shall constitute discussions on the forums (refer #3 above)

- There will be a festival every month lasting for at least 5 days where everyone is supposed to do one activity they enjoy/ need to do. It may include eating out, singing, boozing, sleeping, learning something, or even lazing at home and reading book(s). The festival shall not on any count coincide with the designated weekly holidays.

- Music will be the standard medium of prayer. An hour is a compulsory daily dose for meditation; more is preferred. Type of music depends upon individual taste. Takes you closer to the Lord(s). Rock or Classical music, of course, will be preferred.

- Everyone will have complimentary access to a library (physical and web-based) by virtue of being a believer of this religion.

The basic dictate of the religion will be -

- Happy living through peaceful oblivion (also practicing a certain colourful 3 letter word).

- Reduction of ill vibes between people through reduction in bitching (except of course where unavoidable, and not more than once in a conversation.)

- Doing, instead of cribbing – yeah it’s a pain, but in this religion there has to be some work after all! One needs to work on one’s cribs.

posted by Surya Ragunaathan at 1:34 AM 6 comments

Bruise

At a length of 0.5 cm and a thickness of 0.1 cm, the bruise on the inner side of my neck is evolving in a more picturesque manner than expected. The bruise caused by I still don’t know who, what, where, how. One fine morning, it just appeared. And I think I aggravated it further by scratching liberally with the moody finger of my left hand.

Well, it initially had a little bump and within 30 minutes of coming into existence it had turned from a bright Tomato Red to a dark dark Red, almost Black rather symmetric bump on the side of my neck. For the first day the pain was enough to remind me of its existence. However, the next day onwards a chance glance through the object forming the specular reflection (the mirror) for my vision made me re-look, thinking it was a mole of sorts.
After that the bump was a nice, firm irregularity on the side of my neck.
Friends suggested pricking it so the clotted blood would have an outlet and the ‘bruise’ would go. But, I believed it would just become more pinched over time and then separate from my body like dead cells do.

However, the bump subsided over time. Today the bump has almost subsided to skin level, and has become a beautiful Maroon-Red. A rather enchanting colour. Especially when held against sunlight.
Now that it has become like any regular bruise, I expect it to go through the usual colour changes of Purple, Green-Yellow and Yellow then light Brown before vanishing.
I find it rather entertaining to observe the colour changes of bruises. I think that comes from the fact that I bruise often, and the best bet is to enjoy them if you can’t avoid them.

Perhaps the life cycle of this bruise will be short considering it’s on the inner side of my neck has a high blood flow. Let me see.
It would have been fun if they were not so independent and performed small activities for you. Example, you tell the bruise ‘Change!’ and it changes colours. You tell ‘Hide’ and it vanishes for some time. You say, ‘Shift’ and you can move it to a different body part. Would have made them so much more interesting I think. However, now they seem to have a mind of their own, and decide where to appear on their personal whims. Sometime even hurt you, and definitely change colours when you are not looking.
Well, at least they provide some entertainment.

posted by Surya Ragunaathan at 11:34 PM 8 comments

Predicting the Future

It’s been a slow kind of day - meaning I have work pending which I am not doing. Finally the long days and short nights of the past week are catching up. With a weekend of activity ahead with Diwali et al, I don’t see much respite till Monday.
So, as I sit on my seat with empty cups of Cappuccino beside me, I wonder - modern day people have become too mindless to think; they mostly just follow. Else, what once developed art form, now revered / ridiculed as forecasting tool has no new versions.

What am I talking about? Tealeaf reading of course! Something so innovative, new and so darned weird, has no modern day equivalents! I mean, reading the dregs of tea is definitely a European thing. Yet Tea itself is such an old concoction in Asia (China to be precise). It went to Europe only more than a century ago. People were imaginative enough then, to have Tea and wonder about one’s future depending upon the shape of the broken Tealeaves at the bottom of the cup.

Why then, has today’s wo/man left innovating? Why not something new about the way and shape of coffee rings left on the cup? What about the foam on the opposite wall of the empty cup? Wont someone please step up and analyse that and tell me my future?
Considering so many coffee drinkers around the world are interested in the occult, how is it that they don’t do a little bit of innovation and extrapolation to develop new techniques for today’s beverage - coffee? With the Internet and the 'world being small' and all that, I am sure they will have enough takers, if not earn a few pennies in the bargain.

Hmm...Perhaps this was left for me to create. I now know my true calling...my future (I read it from my 3 empty cups).
It is to drink coffee and predict the future on the basis of the foam marks on the cup!

Thus I shall foretell what the future holds for you. Only condition - it has to be Cappuccino with lots of foam.
Come to me! The initial 10 readings are free.

posted by Surya Ragunaathan at 1:52 AM 3 comments

posted by Surya Ragunaathan at 11:31 PM 9 comments

posted by Surya Ragunaathan at 9:35 PM 3 comments

When Surya is done singing, she’s thinking (aloud.) The latter explains the writing part. She is the Mirror of an Evolving Mind. PS - That the mind belongs to a headstrong, no-nonsense, often-termed-naive, no-advise-taking, almost-mad, zealous Bard is of no consequence.

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Last time we discussed notes, the atomic units of musical structure. The topic of today’s installment is probably the single most important idea in Westergaardian tonal theory: the concept of a line. This material comes from Chapter 3 (probably the most important chapter) of ITT.

Lines, in Westergaardian theory, are the things that notes live in. This, you will observe, is the most salient and probably the most important way in which Westergaardian theory contrasts with harmonic theory. In harmonic theory (or, if you prefer, the “harmony-and-voice-leading” model), the things that notes live in are chords. More on this below.

A line is a chain of consecutive notes that we think of as being connected in a special way. From ITT, p. 29:

Take the notes

If we consider the lines to be

we are in effect saying that there is a special sense in which the first E and F are connected, or the C and the D, that is not true of the first E and the D, nor of the C and the F.

If, on the other hand, we consider the lines to be

we are saying that the E and the D or the C and the F are connected in this special way and that the C and the D or the E and the F are not.

Usually, we have reason to consider only some of the possible ways of analyzing a given set of notes into lines. We may, however, wish to consider different parsings of the same notes for different purposes. Lines, in fact, can be of a number of different types. As Westergaard says (ITT, p. 289):

There are different kinds of reasons for understanding one note as connected another and, hence, there are different kinds of lines. Where a series of notes is played by a single instrument or sung by one voice, we speak of an instrumental or vocal line, for example, the clarinet line or the tenor line. When a series of notes maintains the same registral [i.e. pitch-space order] relations to the other notes present, we speak of a registral line, for example the top line or the middle line. [Footnote concerning the ambiguity of terms like "alto line" omitted.] Finally, when a series of notes forms a [time-]span and pitch structure that gives us a way of understanding other notes in terms of that structure, we speak of a structural line.

These categories, incidentally, are not disjoint. In fact, since a line itself is a way of understanding notes, we could even regard the category of structural lines as encompassing all other types, including the first two mentioned above.

Not only are these categories not disjoint, but lines of the various types are frequently involved in complex dependence relationships. For example, we understand instrumental lines such as

(from Beethoven, Symphony No. 8 ) in terms of the “pseudo-structural lines”

which, in turn, we understand in terms of the “real” structural lines

(The question of how we understand the lines in this way will of course have to await future posts.)

Contrast with harmonic theory

Westergaardian theory makes virtually no a priori assumptions about musical texture (i.e. how many lines, of what types, are unfolding at once during a composition). All that Westergaard says is:

[W]e can conceive of a piece of music as being made up of two or more such lines unfolding simultaneously.

(ITT, p. 29.) (One point that, unfortunately, is not emphasized in ITT, but which I think needs stressing, is this: lines, like the notes of which they are made, are associated with time-spans. Thus, some lines may have longer durations than others; there is no a priori assumption that the texture should somehow remain constant. Some lines may extend through an entire composition; but a line could also theoretically consist of a single note.)

Furthermore, lines do not have to be of a particular type (e.g. structural, as opposed to instrumental) in order for Westergaardian theory to apply to them; you may (and, ultimately, must) begin a Westergaardian analysis of an orchestral passage, for instance, by looking directly at the individual instrumental lines — lines to which Westergaardian theory already applies in its full official formality. This should be contrasted with traditional “harmony-and-voice-leading” theory, which operates in the setting of a four-part texture, into which all other textures must (by some voodoo magic that is never quite specified) be transformed.

As noted above, however, the most important difference between Westergaardian theory and harmonic theory is the mere fact that Westergaardian theory views music as being composed of lines in the first place. Harmonic theory, on the other hand, views music as being composed of chords — simultaneities consisting of three or more notes. Although harmonic theorists acknowledge the existence of linear structures in music, for them the chord, not the line, is the fundamental note-generating entity; lines are then the epiphenomenal byproducts of chord progressions. The Westergaardian theorist views the situation is exactly the opposite way: lines are where notes are generated, and chords are the result of more than one line unfolding at the same time. This may be illustrated visually as follows:

In neither model is it a question of “slighting” one dimension or the other; both vertical and horizontal are present in both theories. The question is, rather, which dimension comes first; that is, to which dimension do notes themselves belong?

The distinction is readily apparent in the way that compositional exercises are conceived. In the harmony/voice-leading model, the task is to construct a progression of chords, taking care that the horizontal connections between notes obey certain rules (e.g. retention of common tones, no parallel 5ths, etc.). In the Westergaardian model, the task is to construct a complex of simultaneous lines, taking care that the vertical coincidences between notes obey certain rules (e.g. in first species intervals must be consonant; no parallel 5ths, etc.). In both models, one dimension is where “creation” occurs, and the other imposes constraints; the two models differ as to which is which.

In harmonic theory, the function of a note is defined by whether it is the “root”, “third”, or “fifth” of “the chord”. In Westergaardian theory, the function of a note is defined by the linear operation used to produce it (passing tone, neighbor, etc.– as will be discussed in a future post).

(Thus we see, for example, that a question that one often confronts in a harmony exercise, namely which component of the chord to “double”, makes no sense from the standpoint of Westergaardian theory. “Doubling”, as we shall see, is an operation that applies to lines, and not to notes. The latter do not exist independently of lines! Each and every one of them must be generated from within some line by some linear operation. Hence the collection of pitches (and thus also pitch-classes) that are sounding at a given moment is not determined except by the combination of linear operations that are being applied at that moment. The question is always “What operation?”; never “What note?”!)

(Warning: polemical passage follows.)

I don’t work as a professional music theorist, so I don’t have to be diplomatic about the fact that only one of these models is correct. The fact is that harmonic theory just has things totally backwards, and it’s high time this was acknowledged.

It’s no use trying to weasel out of reality in postmodern fashion with some nonsense about how all models have something to offer. For this would be nothing less than to deny the possibility of ever making mistakes in music theory — which in turn would be to deny the possibility that such a thing as musical knowledge can ever be attained. But as the acquisition of musical knowledge is after all the fundamental aim of music theory, we must expect that sometimes we will just need to say “Oops” and move on. (Just as the student composer or writer must learn that not everything he or she comes up with in the course of composition needs to be preserved in the final product.)

Rameau’s theory of the fundamental bass was simply a mistake — arguably an understandable one, given the historical circumstances, but a mistake nonetheless. Had Rameau never lived, no one need ever have thought up the idea of “root progressions”, and musical history would have been none the worse for it. Rameau’s theory was in fact controversial in its own time — two noted opponents having been J.S and C.P.E. Bach — so why should it not be in ours, when its flaws are, if anything, even more manifest than they were in the eighteenth century?

(Harmonic theory is unfortunately so deeply ingrained that it is frustratingly difficult even to get people to understand that we are talking about a comparison between two alternative models of musical structure, as opposed to simply disregarding one aspect of the traditional model. It’s as if it never occurred to them that harmony-and-voice-leading theory might have any competitors. Witness for example this comment of Scott Spiegelberg from last year’s discussion:

What you are doing is focusing solely on voice-leading, ignoring harmony completely, so you are like Rameau in ignoring one important aspect of music.

Now, I don’t want to claim that this would still represent Spiegelberg’s view after all the subsequent discussion; but it is at any rate a common type of reaction.)

As I have previously indicated, the Rameauvian directive to parse music into chords rather than into lines is what is responsible for the Myth of Atonality — the idea that diatonic scale degrees are not relevant to certain twentieth-century music such as that of the Second Viennese School. The Myth arose because theorists could not locate any of the familiar “chords” in the music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, and thus concluded — by a complete and total non sequitur — that this music must be based on principles of organization radically different from those of earlier music. Had earlier theorists been clever enough to invent Westergaardian theory, we could have been spared the whole “atonality” business, along with all the accompanying theoretical, compositional, and even philosophical hand-wringing.

(End polemic.)

To summarize: Westergaardian theory is not “harmony-and-voice-leading without the harmony part”. It is Westergaardian theory — an alternative model of music that stands in opposition to the “harmony-and-voice-leading” model. The two models make conflicting claims about the structure of music. One of them tells us to conceive of a passage as a horizontal juxtaposition of vertical pitch-class sets called chords; the other tells us to conceive of the same passage as a vertical juxtaposition of horizontal chains of notes called lines.

(Schenkerian theory, by the way, is the result of Heinrich Schenker’s gradual realization — over the span of three decades, and never quite carried to completion — that the first model is incorrect, and that a model of the second type is needed. Westergaardian theory, however, is already a model of the correct type, right from the outset.)

1 Comment | Westergaardian theory, anti-harmony, music | Permalink
Posted by James Cook

Recall that in a previous post I challenged readers to analyze the first two measures of the Air from Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major (a piece, incidentally, that might be better referred to as “Air Off The G-String” than by its usual nickname). The time has come to reveal the answer.

In the Pachelbel analysis, we started from the underlying basic structure and showed how the passage was constructed via the Westergaardian operations. This time, for the sake of variety, we’ll proceed in the reverse direction, starting from the passage itself and “undoing” the operations until the basic structure is revealed.

Our passage is the following:

12.

Call this Stage 12. The first thing we’ll undo are the explicit arpeggiations in the first violin and continuo lines:

11.

Actually, I did a bit more than that, as you can see. I skipped a stage in which the first violin part looks like:

How did I know that D was the span pitch of the second half of beat 2 rather than C#? That is, why did the first violin part not reduce to:

Is it because G#-E-B (or even G#-E-B-D) is a Certified Chord, whereas G#-E-B-C# isn’t? Fat chance! As an exercise in eliminating harmony, see if you can explain the real reason. (I’ll likely explain it in a future post, but probably only after we’ve formally developed more Westergaardian theory. Hint: It has nothing to do with Certified Chords.)

Eliminating the borrowed G and B from the first violin, we obtain stage 10:

10.

What an odd interpretation of beat 2! Instead of hearing a passing motion from E to C, I am interpreting the E as a borrowing from the viola line:

9.

(Note also the elimination of the A borrowed from the second violin line.) Why on Earth is this interpretation to be preferred to the seemingly simpler one? The answer is that the seemingly simpler one isn’t in fact so simple. Notice that the D in the second violin line is left hanging (ITT, p. 30), and therefore not displaced, after beat 1. If the D in the first violin line were to be interpreted as a passing tone, that would leave us without a D among the sounding span pitches of beat 2. However, we know from the C# of beat 3, as well as from the fact that D was left hanging in the second violin, that D must be a span pitch for some span that includes beat 2 (deeper levels will make this clearer; see below). We would therefore be compelled to regard the second violins’ D as being temporarily displaced during beat 2; that is, it must move by step to some note borrowed from another line. (The only alternative would be to regard it as (entirely) undisplaced during beat 2, but this is made difficult because of the simultaneous E: since in this scenario we’re not considering D as a local span pitch of beat 2, we’re left with understanding an implicit dissonance, which is quite problematic indeed.) Since E is a span pitch of beat 2 and C# is not, we must therefore hear the D-line as moving up to a borrowed E during beat 2. But why should we go through the trouble of understanding such a conceptually difficult situation as the D-line effectively “merging” temporarily into the F#-E line? Given the stated step motion D-C# in the first violin, isn’t it easier to regard that D as a span pitch over the span of beat 2?

Stage 8 shows transferred pitches (ITT, sec. 7.7) reassigned to their rightful homes:

8.

This stage represents the transition from instrumental lines to structural lines; I have symbolized this by switching from the alto clef to the treble clef in the third line.

Next the transferred pitches are reassigned to their rightful registers:

7.

The suspension in the top line is removed:

6.

Rearticulations in the bottom three lines:

5.

Rearticulation of a suspension in the second and third lines; chromatic step motion in bass:

4.

Suspensions eliminated:

3.

Neighbor note removed:

2.

Finally, then, we have the basic structure of the phrase:

1.

No Comments » | music | Permalink
Posted by James Cook

From Unfoldings: Essays in Schenkerian Theory and Analysis, p.4, emphasis mine:

[Joseph N. Straus]: What was the nature of your early work with Salzer?

[Carl Schachter]: I studied counterpoint with him. He didn’t like to talk about harmony as a discipline in itself, but we did all kinds of melody and bass settings and things of that sort, both written and at the keyboard. I had two years of analysis class with Salzer; I also studied music history with him. He was a very comprehensively educated musician, and so he taught everything other than subjects like orchestration or dictation or sight-singing. My basic musical training was with him.

Could that be because “harmony” is not in fact a legitimate “discipline in itself”?

(Note, by the way, how this undermines Scott Spiegelberg’s claim that his take on Schenker is the same as Salzer’s, since Spiegelberg very clearly does like to talk about harmony as a discipline in itself.)

3 Comments | anti-harmony, music | Permalink
Posted by James Cook

Over the past week, I have been hard at work on a couple of rather involved music-analytical posts, as well as various of the Mathematics Lectures. It occurred to me, however, that I might take a bit of time out to begin the promised systematic exposition of Westergaardian theory. For one thing, it would be nice to have something online to refer to when writing up analyses; but, to be honest, the proximate reason I decided to start this now was that there are some things I would really like to get off my proverbial chest, and the appropriate place to do so will be in the second post of this series, which will be about the concept of lines.

First, we have to talk about notes. This material comes from chapter 2 of ITT, though my discussion of pitch differs in some minor respects from Westergaard’s. (For the moment, I’m skipping chapter 1, which deals with meta-issues, because 1) I’m in a hurry to get to chapter 3 and 2) there will be plenty of opportunity to talk about meta-issues as they come up.)

***

The most basic element of musical structure is the note. A note is defined to be a unit of sound that we think of as having

1. a particular pitch
2. a particular onset time
3. a particular duration

In addition, we may also think of a note as having

1. a particular loudness
2. a particular timbre

The first three attributes are mandatory: they are necessary to determine the syntactic value of a particular note. By contrast, the latter two attributes are in a sense optional: their function is to clarify or reinforce the syntactic value of a note.

I assume that readers are familiar with musical fundamentals, and so I won’t bother to go into too much detail here about how each of these dimensions is conceived; a quick run-through will have to suffice. If anything needs clarification, feel free to ask in the comments. Note that Westergaard gives a characteristically thorough exposition in chapter 2 of ITT. That exposition is far superior to the one given here, as will be obvious to anyone who reads both.

Pitch

The space of pitches is divided into semitones. A semitone is the interval from the pitch of one key on a piano to the pitch of an immediately adjacent key. The size of a semitone is such that the interval of twelve semitones corresponds to a doubling of the frequency (recall that pitch perception is logarithmic with respect to frequency, so that pitch intervals correspond to frequency ratios). Such an interval is called an octave. For some purposes we shall consider pitches an octave apart to be equivalent; the equivalence classes so obtained are called pitch-classes. We name pitch-classes by numbers 0,1,2,…10,11 (0 being the class of the pitch of the “middle C” key on a piano, 1 being the class of the next higher key, and so on), or by letters in a manner that will be discussed below (”middle C” being indeed an instance of this nomenclature).

We conceive of pitches not only as elements of the semitonally-divided pitch space, but also as elements of special subsets of this space called “diatonic collections”. Consider the pitches of the seven white keys on a piano starting from middle C and continuing upward (to the right); call this collection of pitches S. We define a diatonic collection to be a transposition of S by some number of semitones. (Thus S itself is an example of a diatonic collection.) By abuse of language, we also use the term “diatonic collection” to refer to the set of pitch-classes corresponding to the pitches of some diatonic collection.

This furnishes an alternative nomenclature for pitch-classes, defined as follows. For historical reasons, the pitch-class 9 is called A. The elements of the diatonic collection {9,11,0,2,4,5,7} are then called respectively A,B,C,D,E,F,G. Arbitrary pitch-classes, in turn, are named as if they were conceived of as transpositions of an element of this collection. Thus pitch-class 1 may be called (upward transposition of C by one semitone), (downward transposition of D by one semitone), (conventionally written ; upward transposition of B by two semitones), (downward transposition of E by three semitones; or indeed , downward transposition of by two semitones), etc. This system is convenient because we do indeed conceive of pitches in terms of some diatonic collection (though the particular collection is determined by context, and is not always {A,B,C,D,E,F,G}).

We also use diatonic collections (in the strict sense, as a collection of pitches, rather than pitch classes) to conceive of intervals between pitches. The interval from a pitch to itself (such as from middle C to middle C) is called a unison (or prime). An interval between adjacent members of a diatonic collection is called a second (or step). Other intervals are named according to the number of seconds from which they are built up:

Two seconds: third
Three seconds: fourth
etc.

A second may be either a semitone (half-step, or minor second) or 2 semitones (whole-step, or major second). Likewise, other intervals come in different varieties, depending on how many of the seconds used to construct them are major and how many are major. (Any pattern may be used provided that it fits into a diatonic collection; thus a third may be built out of two major seconds, or out of a major second and a minor second, but not two minor seconds.) The intervals of a unison, an octave (seven diatonic steps), a fourth of the type consisting of two major seconds and a minor second (as from a particular member of pitch-class C to the first member of F above), and a fifth of the type consisting of three major seconds and a minor second (as from C to G) are called perfect intervals. An interval obtained from a perfect interval by raising the higher pitch (or lowering the lower pitch) by a semitone is said to be augmented; thus the interval from a (particular member of the pitch-class) C to the first (member of) F# above is an augmented fourth. Likewise, an interval obtained from a perfect interval by lowering the higher pitch (or raising the lower pitch) is said to be diminished: thus the interval from C to Gb is a diminished fifth.

(Note that Gb and F# both refer to pitch-class 6, so that both an augmented fourth and a diminished fifth refer to an interval of six semitones; such pairs of pitches or intervals are said to be enharmonically equivalent.)

Other intervals (thirds, sixths, and sevenths) come in two types, as the reader can easily verify. The larger type of each is called major, and the smaller type minor. Expanding a major interval by a semitone yields (again) an augmented interval; contracting a minor interval by a semitone likewise yields a diminished interval. (Thus C to A# is an augmented sixth; C to Ebb is a diminished third.)

Time

From ITT, sec. 2.2:

We conceive of time in tonal music in terms of systems of equally spaced reference points…We call the reference points beats. If a note begins at a reference point we say it is “on the beat”; if note, we say it is before or after the beat or simply “off the beat”. We call primary reference points downbeats. Secondary reference points are sometimes called upbeats, but properly speaking upbeat is reserved for that secondary reference point immediately preceding the next downbeat. We call the span between consecutive primary reference points a measure. We say that a note that begins on the downbeat and lasts until the next downbeat “lasts a measure”. We call the segments formed by the secondary reference points beats*.

If a note begins on one beat and lasts to the next beat we say it “lasts a beat”. We call the way the secondary reference points divide the spans between primary reference points the meter. One secondary beat dividing each measure into two equal parts is called duple meter; two secondary beats dividing each meaure into three equal parts is called triple meter. We call the rate at which beats occur the tempo. A rate of around 85 beats per minute (time from one beat to the next is about seconds) is usually considered a moderate tempo; most tempos fall between twice and half that rate.

*An unfortunate double use of the same term to mean both a point in time and a period of time between two points.

Loudness

We conceive of loudness as measured by a scale whose only structure is that of a totally ordered set:

(For further discussion, see ITT, sec. 2.3.)

Timbre

Piano, violin, clarinet, etc.; see ITT, sec. 2.4.

5 Comments | Westergaardian theory, music | Permalink
Posted by James Cook

The title of a new blog (discovered via Rigorous Trivialities). One of the first posts calls our attention to The Catsters, who have uploaded a collection of videos on category theory to YouTube — and also this nontechnical one on the Klein bottle:

1 Comment | mathematics | Permalink
Posted by James Cook

A comment I left (or attempted to leave; comment moderation is enabled, so I don’t yet know if it was successful) at this post on the Texas Tech music theory blog:

Oh dear, where to start?

Well, you certainly have put your finger on it when you write:

Forgive my generalizations, but it seems to me that the compositional approach stems from a time when composition and theory were basically the same thing, hence, this approach is favored by an earlier generation of pedagogues.

Yes, indeed! The whole distinction on which your post is premised, namely that which is alleged to exist between “compositional” and “analytical” approaches to music, exists only because, once upon a time, “theory” (or “analysis”) stopped yielding insight into composition! And instead of saying “Oops, we must have gotten our theory wrong” and fixing the problem, which would have been the proper thing to do, people instead decided that they were involved in a new distinct field of study called “analytical theory”. That way, they didn’t have to discard the erroneous ideas to which they had become attached; they could simply relabel their occupation and move down the hall.

Sadly, people do this kind of thing all the time, and not just in music. The modern concept of religion is another example. Once upon a time, people believed that supernatural agents such as gods were needed to explain the natural world; then along comes science, and what do people do? Instead of simply biting the bullet and admitting that the whole God theory was just plain wrong, they invent the concept of non-overlapping magisteria and assign new purposes to religion (”it gives us morality” or “provides meaning and purpose”, etc.).

Like the religious, music theorists are also adept in the art of post-hoc (re)justification. Thus, when harmonic theory (which holds that music is constructed out of “progressions” of “chords” built on “roots”) was finally and utterly disproved by 20th century music, theorists continued to teach it anyway, on the (newly invented) grounds that studying old music is a sort of “separate magisterium” from learning how to make new music.

Which brings us back to your post. If different musical repertories are all separate magisteria, then a student with a particular interest in only some of them may legitimately wonder why he/she should bother studying the others. The answer is that they aren’t separate magisteria; and in fact it isn’t a question of repertory at all. Different repertories do not have different theories of music, just like different planets do not have different theories of physics.

The reason musical study should begin with strict species counterpoint has nothing to do with any special virtue possessed by music of the sixteenth century; in fact it has nothing to do with the sixteenth century at all! (Despite generations of misunderstanding.) The actual justification is to be found in section 4.0 of Westergaard (”What Species Counterpoint Is And What It’s For): it is that species counterpoint is simpler than actual music. Even more to the point, it is a way to approach the study of music systematically. One concept at a time, in logical order. It has nothing, repeat nothing, to do with a particular “style” of music!

I read your post as advocating, or leaning towards advocating, a kind of eclecticism in music pedagogy: let’s bring in a lot of different complex things to throw at the students. In fact, let’s even throw different complex things at different students, in different years! But this is antithetical to what is needed. What is needed is, first of all, logical, systematic training in (and not eclectic exposure to) the actual practice of creating music; and secondly, a sufficiently unified conception and metalanguage so that people with immediate interests in different musics or aspects of music can speak to each other and have some understanding of why they are in the same department.

2 Comments | music | Permalink
Posted by James Cook

Apparently, the Wikigods have decided to resurrect IMSLP. And all I had to do was say the word!

(Via Musical Perceptions.)

1 Comment | Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by James Cook

As you might expect, the demise of the IMSLP has put something of a damper on my grandiose plans of analyzing musical works on this blog. Today, however, we’re in luck, as Wikipedia provides all the source material I’ll need for this post.

The context for this is a question, of sorts, posed by a commenter named “funkhauser” (the reason I say “of sorts” will hopefully become clear):

It seems to me that a surprisingly large number of progressions of 8 chords found in say, your favorite piece, have a IV chord as the “middle” chord (i.e., if each chord lasts a quarter note and we are in 4/4 time then the IV chord is the first chord of the second measure). Two familiar examples are Pachel[bel]’s Canon and the beginning of Bach’s Air on the G string. The chord progressions are, roughly:
I - V - vi - iii - IV - I - IV - V
I - iii - vi - vi7 - IV - V7/V - V - V7

(…)However, I can’t think of an 8-chord progression I’ve heard in which the V chord is the middle chord…Imagine putting the V in the place of the IV in Pachelbel’s Canon or Bach’s Air. It would completely change the feel of the piece (and arguably, it would ruin it).

(…)What I’m wondering is: In Westergaard’s theory can we derive the important difference in function between IV and V? And can we derive the fact that the IV should occupy stronger beats and larger time spans than V?

Tisk tisk. It’s obvious that the questioner has not yet managed to throw off the Rameauvian shackles, and is still laboring under the impression that musical passages are constructed by juxtaposing “chords” in time. Well, funkhauser, you’ve come to the right place — disabusing innocent souls of this mistaken notion has become one of my missions in life.

The best way to start, I think, is to take a look at these passages and see what’s actually going on. Here’s how to construct the opening of Pachelbel’s canon:

1. The underlying basic structure is the usual descent (with the on its way to , of course):

2. These structural lines will be realized as three textural lines, with span pitches assigned as follows:

(When I say “assigned” I technically mean borrowed, of course.)

3. The top two lines will both descend from the upper note to the lower:

4. The A is delayed by a lower neighbor, in familiar fashion:

5. We connect the F# to the A and the D to the F# by step motion. In fact, we’d like to have continuous quarter notes in these two voices, so on beat 3 of m.2 we’ll also elaborate the C# by a lower neighbor passing tone in the top voice (producing functional parallelism alignment with the bass) and borrow a G from the bass for the middle voice:

6. Actually, we’d like to have quarter notes in all three voices, so we elaborate the bass by means of borrowing :

(The A and the F# are of course borrowed from the span pitches of stage 2 above.)

7. Now, since this is supposed to be a canon, we’ll present the voices one by one.

8. Finally, this is how the texture is actually realized, in terms of which instruments play what.

Now, having analyzed the passage, let’s see if we can address funkhauser’s question. The first thing to note is that nowhere in the above derivation sequence is there any mention of “chords” at all. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even bother to check whether the progression claimed by funkhauser

I - V - vi - iii - IV - I - IV - V

is “accurate” or not — so that as I’m typing this, I literally don’t know what the “chords” of this passage are! I It’s important to emphasize this, because I just got through analyzing the passage in precise detail, attributing a specific function to every single note, and I have the passage itself, as well as my analysis of it, firmly entrenched in memory. Indeed, I can’t mentally replay the passage without instantly and simultaneously reconstructing my analysis. And yet — and yet — when it comes to selecting the appropriate Roman numeral for each of these quarter-note simultaneities, I am — at least at this immediate moment — about as clueless as a typical freshman theory student. (Though I do already know the first one will be I and the last one V.)

Having made that point, let me now pause to reflect on what the chords are…Okay, yes, funkhauser has got it “right”; though I suppose there is an ambiguity about beat 3 of m.1, since there are only two distinct pitch-classes in that simultaneity. Come to think of it, the same is true of both “IV” chords in m.2. Oh, and it’s also true of the very first chord!

(Notice how very different this type of thought is from the instinctive, intuitive reasoning that I used to construct the above analysis. Actually, “instinctive, intuitive” is not the correct description; what I meant to say was specifically musical. Whereas what I am doing here, in verifying funkhauser’s chord progression, is the totally abstract (if trivial) mathematical problem of verifying that two finite sets are equal to each other.)

Funkhauser asks about the difference in function of the IV and V chords. What I would like to point out is that there is no “IV chord” at all! The simultaneity on beat 1 of m.2 is just the coincidence of two passing tones, and that on beat 3 is just the coincidence of two neighbors a passing tone and a neighbor. To pick out these chords as fundamental objects in their own right (and as the same fundamental object, no less!), is to carve up musical reality in the wrong way, like putting dolphins in the same category as fish.

Strictly speaking, then, the answer to funkhauser’s question is “mu” — i.e., “your question depends on incorrect assumptions”. The “chords” of harmonic theory are simply not legitimate music-theoretical entities, any more than Earth, Air, Water, and Fire are chemical elements. Yes, these four things do exist, but they don’t play anything like the theoretical role that people once attributed to them. In fact, today we understand that not only are they not fundamental, but they’re not even the same kind of thing: “Earth” is a planet, “air” is a state of matter (gas), “water” is a chemical compound (H2O), and “fire” is a process (combustion).

So it is with “IV”, “V”, and all the rest. Yes, there are collections of notes in musical compositions to which you could give these labels, but to do so is to presuppose the wrong theory of music.

Like Aristotelian chemistry, harmonic theory may not seem obviously wrong until you’ve had considerable experience with the alternative. This explains why I invariably get reactions like “But…but…of course harmonic theory is correct (or useful) — look how ubiquitous progressions like I-IV-V-I are!”

Yes, and the “Four Elements” are also ubiquitous in the natural world.

For the moment, I will leave it as an exercise to come up with the correct analysis (or at least an analysis of the correct type) of the first two measures of the Air from Bach’s Third Orchestral Suite. Here’s a big hint:

6 Comments | anti-harmony, music | Permalink
Posted by James Cook

Recently I had a conversation with a mathematician who had worked on the theory of Banach spaces early in his career, but had since left that particular subject. He explained that he had become disillusioned by the fact that “all the natural conjectures turned out to be false”; indeed, Banach spaces can have some “strange” properties, such as having uncomplemented subspaces, lacking a basis, admitting operators with no invariant subspaces, or admitting almost no operators at all. (Actually, in fact, they can even be unexpectedly well-behaved!) The last straw for this fellow, apparently, had been the Gowers-Maurey space (for which Gowers won the Fields Medal) , which has a whole bunch of “weird” properties.

Disparaging language is used with disturbing frequency by mathematicians to describe mathematical concepts. Examples are labeled “pathological”; objects are described as “badly behaved”; functions are called “nasty”; problems are said to be “ill-posed”. In a library once I encountered a book whose title actually was Differentiable Functions On Bad Domains — where “Bad” here is not the name of a mathematician, but the ordinary English word meaning the opposite of “good”.

You might think this is nothing but picturesque language — like calling a certain group “the Monster” — except that there are plenty of mathematicians who actually seem to think the way the labels suggest they do. The ex-Banach-spacer I mentioned above is only one example; spend some time among mathematicians and you will find many more. Indeed, such aversion to the unexpected has a distinguished historical pedigree, I am sorry to say. Who can forget the dismay with which Weierstrass’s construction of a nondifferentiable continuous function was greeted? And even now there are still some people who are pissed off about Cantor’s discoveries, and who would sooner overthrow the standard axioms of mathematics than confront the “paradoxes” of the infinite. Even Hilbert, who had the good sense to regard infinitary mathematics as paradisal rather than paradoxical, nevertheless reacted with anger (!) to Gödel’s results on the limits of formalization, according to Constance Reid. One is reminded of the discoverer of the irrationality of , who, you will recall, was allegedly thrown overboard by his Pythagorean comrades.

I have never sympathized with this way of thinking. As far as I am concerned, unexpected “pathological” phenomena are a large part of what makes mathematics interesting in the first place. Indeed, this accords with the attitudes of other kinds of scientists with regard to their own fields. You generally don’t find physicists crying in agony about the discovery of black holes, or biologists resenting the existence of extremophiles. Why, then, do so many mathematicians insist on doing the equivalent?

6 Comments | mathematics | Permalink
Posted by James Cook

Update (3-21): Mysteriously (but fortunately), this particular error has now been corrected.

Or: Why you can’t trust Google Maps.

Consider this. Looks great, doesn’t it? A reasonably-nice-sounding hotel with high-speed wireless internet, located a mere 0.1 miles from the University of Missouri mathematics department.

Um, no. Guess again.

The La Quinta Inn of Columbia, Missouri is indeed located at 901 Conley Road — that much is true. That, however, is not what the map shows. What the map shows is where the La Quinta Inn would be if it were located at 901 Conley Avenue.

Conley Avenue, it turns out, is a street on the university campus. Conley Road, by contrast, is 3.4 miles (and a $15 taxi ride) away from the campus.

This is exactly the kind of mistake that you would expect a human to make, but that a computer should definitely not make. After all, you can easily imagine a human rolling their eyes at such a “pedantic” distinction as that between “road” and “avenue”, or assuming that no town would give two different streets the “same” name. (At least, I can easily imagine this, having tried to explain to calculus students that the domain of the function is not all of despite the equation .) A computer, however, is supposed to be ruthlessly precise — which is why you will (almost) never be given a break when typing web addresses, no matter how “close” you come to typing the correct character sequence.

So does this costly error indicate some sort of progress in the field of artificial intelligence, or should I just be ticked off that somebody at Google deliberately programmed the human “not-caring-about-the-distinction-between-’X road’-and- ‘X avenue’ ” bug into their software?

Oh, and the wireless internet at La Quinta is lousy.

No Comments » | mundane | Permalink
Posted by James Cook

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I’ll be back tonight, ya’ll.

Over the course of the primary season, and now the general election, Obama - in an attempt at showing he’s a man who can “unite” Republicans and Democrats so as to help weave this image of a peaceful and harmonious atmosphere in DC (cough) should he become elected president - has talked about so-called “Obamacans”, Republicans who are supposedly switching over in heavy numbers to vote for the O-man, or who plan to come November.

Andrew Romano at Newsweek has done some digging on this claim and found that when it comes to which side has been crossing over more to vote for the other candidate, during the primaries it’s actually not Obama who won that battle; it was McCain.   General election polls so far show them running about even (via Dan Riehl):

As I discovered from examination the last 18 months of head-to-head general election polls, the answer seems to be “no.” In fact, John McCain’s share of the Democratic vote has typically–and surprisingly–been larger than Obama’s share of the Republican vote. In other words, it’s not that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scared the Obamacan masses off, as some pundits have theorized–it’s that they never existed (in any unprecedented way) to begin with. In December 2006–before the unfamiliar Illinois senator had officially announced his candidacy–McCain attracted 25 support among Dems versus Obama’s eight percent among Repubs, according to a FOX News poll. Those numbers tightened over the next few months, but Obama never established a sustained lead. A February 2007 Quinnipiac survey showed McCain with 17 percent crossover support, for example, versus nine percent for Obama; in a June 2007 sounding by the same firm, McCain still led 15 percent to 11. During primary season–between December 2007 and April 2008–McCain’s Democratic number hovered between 18 and 22. Obama, meanwhile, never climbed higher than 13 percent.

Much of this gap can be attributed to the primary clash with Clinton, whose supporters often said they preferred McCain to Obama in head-to-head polls taken before the final Democratic contests on June 3. But even though McCain’s support among Dems declined after Hillary bowed out–a natural result of Democratic unity–Obama’s Republican backing didn’t budge. Today, Republicans for Obama and Democrats for McCain effectively cancel each other out. The latest numbers from CBS News show Obama at 11 percent crossover support and McCain at 10 (and tied among Independents); FOX News puts the pair at six percent and seven percent, respectively. That deadlock mirrors 2000, when George W. Bush won over 11 percent of Democratic voters and Al Gore poached eight percent of Republicans–and it means that neither Obama nor McCain, both of whom have repeatedly boasted of their “strong record[s] of bringing people together from the left and the right to solve problems,” will be able to count on crossover voters to carry them to victory. They may not even best their predecessors.

Things could always change, of course. Perhaps over the next 84 days the newly-formed “Republicans for Obama” will add a game-changing number of actual Republican voters to its current roster of Republican politicians. But I’m inclined to see it mostly as a publicity effort. With Obama vacationing in Hawaii this week, the major challenge facing Chicago is finding a way to control the news cycle without its candidate’s help. “Republicans for Obama” was today’s solution–a convenient way to repackage a handful of well-timed GOP endorsements and reinforce the senator’s “post-partisan” brand in the process. Whether or not it reflects reality, or has any electoral impact, is probably irrelevant–as long as it transforms a few whispers into a day’s worth of headlines.

Keep that in mind when you read stories like this one of Republicans crossing over for Obama.  The mediots hype stories like this more than they do crossovers for McCain because, well, Obama’s The One and all

I’ve been searching for the right words to describe the differences between McCain’s response to the war Russia has waged on Georgia, and Obama’s initial response (which was later revised to sound more like McCain’s), but Investor’s Business Daily pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter.   The differences, as they note, are indeed stark. 

McCain clearly knows what he’s talking about, while Obama’s statements (made while he is vacationing in Hawaii) sound like they’re being read from cue cards.  This is one situation where, unfortunately for him, not even a teleprompter (or hoping that McCain will be asked the tough questions first a la Hillary during the primary debates) will help.

I hate to do this, but some things must be said, so here goes:

—– First up: Jake Tapper.  Tapper’s done some excellent work over the last few months helping expose Barry Oh! as a smooth-talking double-speaker, but he veered way off course with a blog post he wrote today titled “Count the Young White Women in McCain’s Anti-Obama Video.”  There’s so much wrong with this what he wrote that I don’t know where to start.  MM has it covered, though, and makes mincemeat out of both Tapper and the implications he clearly made here. 

—– An idiotic Xenia, Ohio Burger King employee who took a bath in one of the restaurants sinks has been fired after video of the incident was posted on YouTube.com.  In the vid, he called himself “Mr. Unstable” - now they just call him “Mr. Unemployed.” All those involved in the bubble bath video drama were also fired. 

—– Focus On The Family has pulled an embarassing video from its website which featured director of digital media director Stuart Shepard jokingly asking people to pray for “rain of biblical proportions” during Obama’s DNC nomination acceptance speech.  As expected, Obama apologist Andrew Sullivan, who is always looking for creative ways to insert his term “Christianist” into the debate, is not pleased.

—– Let’s play “Count McCain’s Houses.”   Yippee!   While we’re at it, anyone got any “Blue’s Clues” DVDs we can all watch?

—– And speaking of juvenile behavior, what clueless wonder came up with the idea for the Spanish Olympic men’s basketball team to pose for a photo which shows them deliberately slanting their eyes?

—– American Airlines is charging US troops on their way to the battle zone in Iraq to pay extra fees for all their baggage.  A VFW group is trying to get them to waive the charge, rather than the troops having to try and get reimbursed for the charge later when they’ve got more, shall we say pressing, matters to attend to.    If you’d like to help the VFW get these extra fees waived for our brave men and women in uniform altogether, here’s the contact info for American Airlines. 

—– The creator of the now-infamous unofficial Obama “O” hand signal speaks.  His plan is to make the symbol the “peace sign of our generation.”  No doubt our enemies would approve.

This is a prime example of taking the “going green” theme too far (h/t: ST reader and NYC resident Leslie):

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s experiment to introduce 35 “green” escalators in four subway stations started with a lurch on Monday. In some places, it didn’t start at all.

Escalators at the 34th Street-Herald Square and Roosevelt Island stations in Manhattan and the Jamaica-Van Wyck and Jamaica Center-Parsons/Archer stations in Queens were to begin operating at variable speed, as part of a pilot program to save energy and reduce wear and tear.

According to signs posted by the authority, each escalator was equipped with an infrared motion sensor that “ ‘sees’ customers approaching and ‘tells’ the escalator to speed up.” The escalators are supposed to slow to just 15 feet per minute when no one is on them, from the normal speed of 100 feet per minute. When someone steps on, the escalators should accelerate gradually to the full speed over a few seconds.

Late in the day, officials acknowledged that only 22 of the 35 escalators at the four stations were working as intended. (There are 169 escalators in the subway system.)

Paul J. Fleuranges, a spokesman for New York City Transit, the arm of the authority that runs the subways, said that there were some technical glitches, but noted that not all of the 35 escalators had been activated to run at variable speeds, even though Monday was the program’s start date.

[…]

Even at the working escalators, there was some confusion. At one point, a man who was trying to go down to the subway platforms stepped on a slow-moving escalator, not realizing it was going up. As he walked down, the escalator suddenly activated, bringing him back toward the station.

He did not turn around, but instead tried to race against the escalator, toward the bottom. (Officials said the escalators have an alarm that sounds if someone tries to walk past the sensor when the escalator is going in the opposite direction, but it was not clear whether it had sounded.)

“It’s dangerous,” said one passenger, Anthony Hack, 30. “Someone’s going to walk on it thinking it’s not working and then it’s going to start.”

It was also clear that some visitors were not accustomed to escalators of any speed.

Vijaya Lakshmi, 52, who was visiting from India and is unused to escalators, was hesitant to take the first step going up. She ended up falling, and sitting as the escalator moved. A man helped her to her feet, preventing her dress from getting caught in the escalator as she approached the top.

Can you say “lawsuit waiting to happen”? 

I know it’s fashionable to go all out on the “green” wave, but, c’mon, some things need to be left alone.  Like escalators.

In related news, ST reader Sev sends along a must-read link that dissects, analyzes, and debunks the hockey stick lie still being promoted by GW True Believers as the “gospel truth” as it relates to the discussion about whether or not global warming is “man-made.”  Make sure to read the whole thing.

Well, last month we found out that the man who for the last two years has claimed experience doesn’t matter has some 300+ foreign policy advisors on hand to give him some advice/insight into important international matters - this in addition to the fact that last year he cited the four years he lived overseas as a child to be sufficient enough experience on the foreign relations front, and also in addition to the fact that earlier this year he assured us all that his VP pick would be “somebody who knows about a bunch of stuff that I’m not as expert on.”

If all that doesn’t ease your concerns about Barack Obama’s serious lack of credentials on the foreign policy front, then I have no doubt that this will take care of any lingering doubts (h/t: ST reader NC Cop):

George Clooney once famously declared he could never run for public office because he’d ‘slept with too many women, done too many drugs and been to too many parties’.

But now the Hollywood heart-throb has entered the political arena at the highest level – by becoming an unofficial adviser to US Presidential front-runner Barack Obama.

Oscar-winner Clooney, 47, is said to be helping the Democratic candidate to polish his image at home and abroad.

But he is also sharing with Obama his strong opinions on Iraq and the Middle East.

Sources say the actor has tried to hide the pair’s friendship for fear his Left-wing views and playboy image would hurt the Presidential hopeful’s bid for the White House.

But Democratic Party insiders have revealed that Clooney and Obama regularly send texts and emails to each other and speak by phone at least twice a week.

One said last night: ‘They are extremely close. A number of members of the Hollywood community, including Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, offered to help raise funds for Barack but it was with George that he struck up this amazing affinity.

‘George has been giving him advice on things such as presentation, public speaking and body language and he also emails him constantly about policy, especially the Middle East.

‘George is pushing him to be more “balanced” on issues such as US relations with Israel.

‘George is pro-Palestinian. And he is also urging Barack to withdraw unconditionally from Iraq if he wins.

‘It’s a very risky relationship. His hope of becoming America’s first black President depends heavily on winning over conservative voters and it would be suicidal for him to be perceived as a tool of a Hollywood Leftie, which is how they regard George.

‘But they text and email each other almost every day and speak on the phone at least a couple of times a week, often more.’

The Ocean’s Eleven star is among many Hollywood figures to have endorsed Obama, including Barbra Streisand, Scarlett Johansson, Warren Beatty and Steven Spielberg.

One of Clooney’s trusted acquaintances said: ‘George is a master at crafting his own image and he is helping Obama to hone his image both domestically and abroad.

Hey, Senator Obama: Next time you send Georgie Boy an email, make sure to ask him what’s the best way to treat people who disagree with you politically.    Let us know what he says.

Oh wait - we know already (scroll). 

Next thing you know, an attractive, Oscar-winning Hollywood actress will salivate, “I’ll do whatever he says to do. I’ll collect paper cups off the ground to make his pathway clear.”

Oh wait- - that’s already been said.

It’s no small wonder the McCain campaign have hit out at Obama with the “racist” Celeb ad, and the new “Fan Club” ad - not only does Obama act like a celebrity sometimes, but his celeb pals treat him as such.  I’m sure part of it is due to his famed oratorical skills, but I’m betting part of it has to do with the fact that he does such a good job at acting like he’s already president.  Considering the IQs of some of the celebs in question, it wouldn’t surprise me if they believed he had already been elected president.   Heck, why not? He thinks he has been.

“Huh? Wha? We don’t need no steenking ’lection!” 

Update: LOL!

Hey ya’ll - having a busy day.  Will be back late this afternoon or evening.  In the meantime, make sure to check out Memeorandum for the issues/stories the blogosphere is talking about.

“Sang” to the tune of The Monkees’ “I’m a Believer”:

(groan)

Kind of fitting, eh? They’re singing a song originally done by a group of pretend musicians, about a man who has been pretending to be president ever since he wrapped up the nomination. Perfect.

Semi-related: The Atlantic has a blockbuster story today that takes an in-depth look on how Hillary Clinton lost to Barack Obama. The article includes never before published emails and memos, some of them highly explosive. Make sure to read the whole thing. (Via Marc Ambinder)

Tue PM Update - 9:26 PM: Bummer.  Per the comments section, the vid has either been pulled or has been made “private” - either way, it’s no longer viewable to the masses

If this is the face of the future, we have nothing to worry about

What an awesome story! Especially after a crazy Monday workday.

The LA Times Top of the Ticket blog writes about an email the Obama campaign is sending out to those who signed up for email updates from the website telling them they can sign up to be the “first to know” when Obama announces his VP running mate:

Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, is on vacation in Hawaii tonight. We believe. But, thanks to loyal Ticket reader Mark, just minutes ago we learned that the freshman senator’s presidential campaign has confirmed that announcement of Obama’s running mate choice is very near.

An e-mail just sent out says Obama “is about to choose a running mate.” And when word comes, it will come by text message, e-mail and on the campaign website. An interesting twist that could mean the word might be released this week even during Obama’s family vacation.

The announcement will surely come before the Democratic National Convention starts in Denver on Aug. 25. It could even come while the candidate is on vacation, scheduled to end next Friday. If not, that leaves a 10-day announcement window of Aug. 15-25.

The traditional scenario would be for Obama and his pick to appear at a grand joint announcement somewhere with their families and dozens of TV cameras.

However, if hypothetically the announcement was to be made dramatically via cellphone texts, e-mails and the Obama website, the two candidates would not need to be together.

I seriously doubt he’d announce his VP selection while sunning and funning in HI.  I anticipate an announcement early next week in an effort to blunt whatever momentum McCain might have gained from having this week all to himself.

Related to all this, USA Today has an article up today about how the pasts of several VP contenders for both McCain and Obama are being scoured. 

Let’s hear some predictions: Who’s Obama going to pick? My $$’s on VA Gov. Tim Kaine.  Virginia is a toss-up state at this point, and would be a feather in the cap of Obama, who desperately wants to show that he can win key Southern states.

Your thoughts?

• Severian: Hmmmmm....now the link in your post goes nowhere...:-? But the link...
• Ryan Frank: How about fixing the bloody things so they actually run...
• Sister Toldjah: Oops - sorry about that, Sev. Just fixed it....
• Severian: ST, the link to the hockey stick article appears to...
• Lorica: From the fever swamps of the blogosphere to the halls...
• Lorica: =)) The real joke here is that someone would actually...
• NC Cop: We also see how our "friends", the Russians keep their...
• NC Cop: They had an Obama "representative" on Neil Cavuto last night...
• Leslie: Then, too, there's a built-in "Democrats for [Insert GOP Candidate...
• Lorica: But Democratic Party insiders have revealed that Clooney and Obama...
• Lorica: “Count the Young White Women in McCain’s Anti-Obama Video.” ...
• Lorica: The original "peace" sign was ripped off from the...
• Lorica: Hey, nothing wrong with being filthy rich. Just stop playing...
• camojack: Yes, 'twould be a terrible thing to be stuck on...
• camojack: "Obama’s statements...sound like they’re being read from cue cards." Ya think?...
• Zach: Actually it looks like the movie wasn't removed, but rather...
• Lorica: And don't get me started about that traitor Chaffee. -...
• Lorica: Ahhhhh it is good to see Leach sticking with the...
• Tom TB: "America is...is no longer, uh, what it could be, what...
• Neo: GG: Who’s Jesus to you? (He laughs nervously) OBAMA: Right. Jesus is...

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As everyone can see that I had been in Hiatus since January. Its not that I have abandon my blogging or anything, but at that time I was busy with a couple of wedding invitations that I had to go to and a couple of Veterans Affair appointment that I had to go do for my disabilities.

Also, I had lost some one dear to me, My brother Brandon. Brandon died in Iraq on February 28th and I was just to stressed about the whole thing that I had to drop a class for my own good. Though I still am in mourning, I thought that it is best for me to continue on my regular activities, which Brandon probably would have me do.

So, I hope that everyone understand where my state of mind is.

Leave A Comment »

I have Time Warner Cable in my apartment since April 07, and I fucking Hate it! If only I can get other internet service, but it is impossible since I don’t have land lines phone.

Anyway, let this be a lesson for you guys out there that are thinking about getting Time Warner Cable for internet service and cable Tv, don’t get it from them.

What had happened was that I have been having service interruption from their network since the day I got the damn service. The bad part is that I called them several times and the problem never got resolved. First they told me maybe it was the router than they came here and change it, but that didn’t solve the problem since I always get dropped from the network. Then they say it was because they were updating their network connection, yet I don’t see any of them mofo around here doing anything to any cable outlets or underground system, WTF!!! Then this time around, they told me maybe it is my computer, so I got pissed off and tell them that it can’t be my fucking computer or my PS3 or the Xbox 360 or the Wii, because I built my own computer with way better peripherals that manufactured computers, also the fucking problem is that all off my electronics can connect to my neighbor’s wireless internet but it can not connect to my damn wireless connection, because everytime I’m on it a couple of minutes or hours later that I got dropped from the damn connection that I paid over $100 a month to get.

So, I fucking called them and told them that I need a technician to come over here and fucking take care of it and fix it or fucking take the router back and fuckin return my fuckin money!

Lets just see what happens next wednesday when they come over here and tell me another stupid lame ass excuse why the internet kept dropping me from my damn wireless connection.

Fucking assholes!

3 Comments »

I know that I have not been up to speed lately with my blogging, it seems that as if time flies through very quickly.

This upcoming tuesday is my third week in Information Architecture class with Ms. Esther Kibby as the instructor. Let me cut to the chase, this class is pretty dry and what I mean by that is that the instructor gives you what you need to know and you are put into groups of at least three the most five people and we were given instruction that we are making a blue print for a website for a company that we are to make. Most people think that this class is boring and that is stupid, but to me, I think its what you make out of it. If you are not interested in learning than most of the time you will think that every class is boring for the most part.

In this class you will need a book by Jesse James Garrett titled ,”The Elements of User Experience.” This book is pretty dry too, but it gets the message done by the amount of information that is given to understand it, even if you have a low user level experience (not much computer knowledge but to use the internet for watching youtube or reading your email and myspace).

Anyway, my group originally consist of four people, but this one girl think that the class is way too boring that she changed her stupid major to something else that doesn’t include or require this class to be taken. So, here I am having three people in my group including me and we had to pick up the slack since I know that it is already in the third week of school and there will be no more students added to the class. Pretty much we are screwed, but like I said its what you make of it. So far my group had been pretty consistent going to the group meeting assisting me in our need to make the steps to make this company happen.

I will be posting some pictures later on as the class progresses and that we are requires to present what we have in our group.

Jansen.

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This is a later posting,

Happy New Year Everyone,

This year it will be better than it would last year. The year 2007 was a really bad year for me, death in the family, my best friend died in an accident, I got discharge from the military and everything else in between. Fortunately as an Asian, I don’t believe the number 7 is a lucky number. To most Asians, the number 8 is a lucky number when said and written resembles that of the word “Prosper” or “Wealth.” In the muslim culture, the number 8 is the number of angels that carries the throne of God, in arabic is “Allah” the God who created Adam and Eve. In the Hindu religion, it is the number of wealth and abundance.

This year also the start of my third quarter at The Art Institute of Dallas. Followed by the 2008 Consumer Electronic Show (CES ‘08) from the 7th to 10th of January, which I followed vigorously by watching G4TV Attack of The Show, hosted by Kevin Pereira and Olivia Munn (she’s hot for a NERD!).

The main thing that I notice was the introduction of Apple computer’s new Mac Pro, with an outrageous component specs, that would make any gaming pro drools with envy and for art students in AID kill themselves with spending too much money. However, if money is no issue to you, I suggest you nerds, geeks, and the likes to get one.

One of the most anticipated gadget that I have been waiting for is the new Sony OLED (Video - Organic Liquid Emitting Diode) TV. It is so thin that it is only 3mm thick, contrast ration 1,000,000: 1, they don’t need backlighting and it is surely an amazing piece of gadget. Though this is the first time that it had been shown, the price sure is pretty damn expensive, however; with the developing technology around us, I’m quite sure within a couple of years if not months that this all will be affordable for us students at AID.

Check this one out Bug (Video).

 Jansen.

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To me the word podcasting is nothing new. I usually go to http://www.npr.org/ at times to listen to their programs and usually download stuff on “Cartalk” or “All Things considered” sometimes even other news and music programs that they offered.

One thing about podcasting, though it is not new to me, the process and tools that are involved can be quite expensive and also that when trying on podcasting, I have to think of what issues or thing that I want to use as materials. Vodcasting, that’s another story. I’ve heard about it but never use it. I read that article and it seems that the equipments are quite expensive if you want to have vodcasting to be something to do, let alone the time that you have to spare to do so.

One interesting thing that I read in the article is that vodcasting is very helpful for students and teacher in the classroom. I think that this is a good idea, since sometimes students can’t make it to class because of an illness, they can download vodcasts that had been uploaded to the school’s site and not missed what the professor or the teacher discussed with other students that day. I’ve heard something about Harvard and Yale are starting to do this, aside to them having online classes last year, but I can’t remember as to when they started this.

With the development of technology and mobile computing, I think that more and more people would be able to do podcasting and vodcasting, specially with the prices of technology are getting cheaper and cheaper by the year. I think that as an Art School, the Art Institute should do this, have their classes be vodcasted or podcasted to the school website, that way it will help students and help prospective students in the long run.
Jansen.

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At first I thought that HTML was going to be a nightmare for me, since I really don’t know anything about scripting whatsoever, let alone using CSS to do anything. However, I went to the W3 Tutorial Website and started to take the tutorials for html, I found it very easy to work with.

I started to write my tutorials and every once in a while I open it and try to see if it will work. I think that it work pretty well for me as a beginner. The information given on the tutorials are pretty simple and self explanatory, however; I still find my self a little edgy about using it. Like I said, that this is my first time trying on scripting.

Then I went to another tutorial for CSS at the HTML dog website. I try to see how CSS implement HTML so that it work as a whole, html is the content while css is how to present it on the webpage, as it was said in the the tutorial page.

I tried to take on myself with the tutorial and I find it a little harder than trying to write html itself. So far I’m only able to understand on a couple of things that I can do with it. I guess with a little more practice I can learn a little more, as every one would say it, baby steps one at a time.

Jansen

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Man!! It has been one hell of a semester and the last couple of weeks had been hell for me. I can’t even get enough sleep with all the stuff that is going on.

Anyway… at first I was introduce to Google reader and I thought that it was an interesting tool to used for aggregating some blogs and other important things that I can use for school. However, I later found out that I’m not only subscribing to that one particular blog, but I was subscribing to the author’s ENTIRE BLOG, which I thought is a nuisance. I mean I can see that the author is blogging about PLE or Communities of Learning, however; I also realised that some of the blog that I was subscribing was also a personal blogs about many other stuff that is not related to what I was looking for. In a short, it was to general and redundant and I was not able to read all of them to update what I need and what I don’t need. Phew…

So, then I go and work on Netvibes and I realized that it was a handy tool and I can work with it. However, I later realized that the only way for me to use netvibes is for me to sign in to the service, which to me is a hassle! I don’t like having to sign in to what I am subscribing to read blogs about something. It is still a cool tool to use and have a very good user interface that people can tinker with, I find that most people in the class likes to use it.

So, here I am and from all those tools that I have mentioned, I found another tool that I found interesting that is Yahoo Pipes. I started reading what it is and what it is all about and I learn a few things here and there. I found out that it is an aggregator service, combined with mash up service, search engine and many many more. As for right now all I can say is that this is an interesting piece of tool to play with.

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No, No, I’m not talking literally about syndicated crime. Just the meaning and use of RSS in today’s webpage and how it has develop in today’s technology.

RSS is a data format used to to provide users with frequently updated content. This data is widely used in providing upadated blog entries, news feed, podcasts and many more, it exist as a document called feed, webfeed, or channel that contains what the blog, news or podcast is about, literally it is a summary of the document. It is designed to help people keeping up with their favorite websites easier.

The history of RSS  started as an attempt to syndicate formats, which didn’t do pretty well with Netscape as a portal, later it was picked up by UserLand  Software where it was used as a publishing tools that could read and write RSS.

Other companies also release newer version of RSS software and that they came out with different icon to represent the RSS icon which was debatable who has the right to do so. In 2005 Microsoft finally adopted the the feed icon that was used in Mozilla Firefox and since then the RSS icon has been the orange box with white radio waves enclosed in it.

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This is one lengthy article!

First, I understand that on this assignment that we only need to pick one either Communities of Practice Brief Introduction, Learning as a Social System or Communities of Practice by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. However, when I read the first article, I have to admit that I am so confused about the article. Then I thought, I’ll try to read the other ones, maybe I’ll understand it better. Unfortunately, after I read the second article I became somewhat aware what the article is, but I still sat on a bunch of blank thoughts, so I decided to read the third article and by gosh! I got it. At least to what I think that I got it. I will also put it some questions throughout this posting and I would appreciate the comments and answers.

Ok, going back to the article.

As stated by Jean and Etienne, that Communities of Practice “are everywhere and that many of us generally are involved in it,… and furthermore we often assume learning has a beginning and an end.” When I read the article presented, I realized that it is true that many of us assume that learning has an end. Don’t believe me? Okay, how many of you right now thinking of graduation? You, know you are! Because with graduation, you think that you will not have to worry about studying, tests, midterms, or even final exams. I remember the very first day in this class Mr. Batchelder says this, “You all have been thought about learning something or a subject in school that you all think when you’ve learned it, that is it. However, in this class you have to have an open mind because in this area of learning you have to know where this thing will grow and evolve and take it to the next step, whether you will move forward in this business or stay behind and you need to make a decision if this is the area you want to be in or you need to go with something else.” So spoken minus stuff here and there. Sorry I quoted you Mr. Batchelder.!

Lave and Wenger pointed out that we learn by interacting with each other and those around the world and that our relationship with one another is what brings us together, the community that we learn from are a community of learners where we practice what we learn and teach it to others.

According to Wenger, a “community of practice defines itself along three dimensions:

1. What is it about - a joint enterprise as understood and continually renegotiated by its members.

2. How it functions - mutual engagement that binds members together into a social entity.

3. What capability it has produced - the shared repertoire of communal resources (routines, sensibilities, artifacts, vocabulary, styles etc.) that members has develop over time.”

What I learn from this article also, is that a person’s intention on learning is influenced by his or her social and cultural background. Which to me reminds me of how I learn everything. Being a person with multicultural backgrounds and that I have been fortunate being able to visit many places around the world and learn about other culture, I realized that the way I think, act, and my motivation on learning something new had been influenced by my background and the way I was brought up by my community and the people that surrounds me.

People who are involved in community of practice engaged in different activities ranging from discussions, helping each other with solving problems, sharing information, and learning from one another. In this computer era, the interaction between the members of the community that share the same interest to learn from one another is considered as the community of practice itself.

This all comes down to one one question that I kept pondering, it might misconstrued, but there is no wrong answer to this, however; I would really like for all of you to ponder it and give me your opinions too. So here is the question…

Does Community of Practice related to Personal Learning Environment? Or is it the next step of PLE? Or is it both?

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First listen than be heard!

Holy Crap, can you believe what this guy is saying? First of all, I think that this is one of the best article that I have read so far that I didn’t have a brain fart! For real! I thought I was gonna have another migraine headaches from reading this article, aside to the length of the blog itself.

In life as much as it is in blogs, we all have to plan for something, have a purpose for and what the plan is for, have a way to support the plan and execute the plan accordingly and make sure that the plan is progressive enough to undergo a change in the future.

As is the same with blogs. According to Downes, writing a blog needs a well thought and well excised plan. It also needs a purpose for that blog to exist, be it may serve personal or social agenda or benefits these. If the blog doesn’t have any purpose nor it benefits anyone, than it is nothing but something that some one wrote to complain or just bitch about something. Usually when you write a blog, aside to talk about an issue, you should address or promote some solutions or a question of something of value. For instance the interests that represents the blogger or the reader and the general community as a whole. Your blog also should have content that can be meaningful to the readers and that it should present future purpose and gives explanation to what is important. This content could be anything to everything, the best way to get a good content is to look at what you are reading, listening, watching or anything that involves you that other people can connects to or have a similar experience that people wants to relate and read about. Collect the info that you have and link all the hobbies and interest to websites that have a similar blogging and write about them too. Focus on something educational or something that can teach some one while the same time emphasize on more important things. That way the content will not be too boring. Hello!!! YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT!!!

First of all… any one who wants to start a blog should know what he or she wants to write about, if not then don’t blog at all, because not only that you are wasting your time, you also wasted my freakin time. Basically that’s what it said for the first couple of paragraphs. But here’s the interesting thing that Downes points out… There are many people out there that have other blogs that are probably the same that you are thinking…so, link these blogs to yours, this way you have a support network of what you are writing, and it guarantees you to readers. However, pick what you link to your blog very well otherwise you are just linking bullcrap to your blog and there for what you write will in turn be nothing but a pile of steaming manure. Look for sources that can support your ideas in your blog, when you find them, give them credits to what they wrote and make sure that you comment on their page and vice versa, this will ensure the readers that you know what you are blogging and that there are a community out there that are interested to what you have to blog about.

Stimulate your sense of knowledge, open your mind to ideas that are different than yours. As a blogger, you should have different ideas that can be related to what you are blogging. Also, you need to know how to design a website that way your blog can be as much as enticing to those who reads it and make them know that you are knowledgeable and make the blog easier to read for your reader whom ever they may be. Make your blog as creative as you can be, show your blog that your ideas in the blog represent who you are, represent what you stand for, be meaningful, understanding and be assertive while being resourceful. Aside to that, the design of your blog is as much as important to your blog as it is to the content of your blog. An eye appealing design to your blog, readable fonts, neutral colors that is easy to the eye for reader to read, different color scheme, inclusion of pictures and videos would make sure that your blog have a cult of followers and readers. Use all the resources that are available to you and most important thing about blogging - set aside a time for you to blog about what you are passionate about.

Jansen

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BIO On The Road is now Blogging Biotech, visit our new home at  http://bloggingbiotech.wordpress.com/

Why?

BIO’s events capture the latest trends and goings-on within the biotech industry so it seemed only natural to turn our events blog into an over-arching all-about-the-biotech-industry blog. One of our main goals and reasons for getting up every morning is to open up a dialogue on the biotech industry and Blogging Biotech will do just that.

What next?

Come on in and make yourself comfortable and we will do our best to continue to identify the latest and greatest topics and trends within the industry.

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Well, as the BIO 2008 International Convention draws to a close we can say that this has been one of the best shows ever. We ended up with 20,108 industry leaders from 70 different countries and 48 states.

The full Convention program included four full days with 175 breakout sessions, 21 educational tracks, more than 1,000 speakers, three keynote sessions, six Super Sessions and three CEO Forum sessions.

And that wasn’t all, more than 6,000 business leaders met at the convention and participated in the Business Forum. More than 14,500 one-on-one partnering meetings were held – a new record – and a total of 1,500 companies participated in the Business Forum.

Then, as you read here on Bio On The Road, The all-star keynote line up included Gen. Colin L. Powell, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA), and J. Craig Venter, PhD. In addition, Gov. Deval Patrick (D-MA); Former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) discussed healthcare in an election year with moderator Neil Cavuto, Anchor & Managing Editor of Fox News Channel.

In addition, many high-profile VIPs attended the Convention with 10 governors and numerous international public officials, including The Hon. Lino Baranao, Minister of Science, Technology & Production Innovation, Argentina; Sen The Hon. Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science & Research, Australia; The Honourable Dr. Ewa Bjorling, Minister for Trade, Sweden, among many others.

The convention featured the largest gathering of biotech exhibitors in history, with more than 2,100 companies, 126 of which were new, and more than 208,000 sq. feet of exhibition space, the largest ever at the convention. The exhibition included more than 60 domestic, country and regional pavilions representing every aspect of the biotechnology industry.

For more information, you can read the full press release here.

To summarize, we hope you had a great time, learned a lot, and found it to be a productive environment. And most important of all, we hope to see you in Atlanta in 2009.

All the best, The BIO Team.

Filed under: Convention, bio08 | Tagged: bio08, biotechnology, close, Convention, San Diego | 2 Comments »

As this year’s convention draws to a close, we’d like to stop and take a moment and thank all the people that made our foray into social media a success.

Thanks to all the bloggers on BIO on the road, who reported their experiences as they happened. Thanks to the members of the BIO2008 Twitter group, who really gave us a feel for the convention, blow-by-blow. Finally, thanks to those of you who joined and participated in our group on facebook.

The really great thing about social media is that helps us to stay connected in the absence of face-to-face interactions, like we’ve had at the convention. And while there is nothing that can replace those meetings, the online world gives us the opportunity to continue our conversations 365 days a year, and on a global scale.

Having said that, we hope that you will connect with us year-round by visiting us on BIO.org or any of our sister sites and blogs.

We hope to see you soon online. And to everyone, thanks again.

—Susan Cato, Director Online Communications

—Nicole Ruediger, Editor, Bio.org

Filed under: BIO, Convention, bio08 | Tagged: biotechnology, blog, thank you | No Comments »

Demand for greater transparancy from industry and scientists is a theme that’s been mentioned more than once this week. Today’s Scientific Communications Trends & Liabilities session provided a diverse panel of speakers, from open source publishers to Public Relations professionals. 

Natalie de Vane, VP of Public Relations for Wyeth Research reminded the audience that science is your brand, and that all stakeholders need to understand what you do as they will be the key to influencing your long term success. Interest in medicine and medical products is very strong and attracts a lot of media coverage and scrutiny. Remember media are a conduit to spreading your information to the public.

Science communication is not easy - it’s a complex topic, debates can be easily overblown and misunderstandings can be damaging. Reflecting what some other speakers have said, Ms de Vane warns that it’s hard to fix a problem once it’s happened - do everything you can to make your science easy to understand - and watch out for your competitor’s issues too as their troubles can affect you too (same class drugs being a particularly clear example). Her final advice? Be transparant in your communications and focus on the facts.

Filed under: BIO, Convention, bio08 | Tagged: branding | No Comments »

As promised here is the post on globalization, one of the three major trends driving the biotechnology industry to reinvent itself, according to Ernst and Young 2008 biotechnology report. Pharma and biotech companies are taking advantage of the ‘flattenning world,’ as described by Colin Powel in his keynote speech, and jumping into the globalization trend in the hopes of finding new opportunities for cutting costs and for increasing profits by selling to underserved markets.

In order to cut costs but not production, many Western biotechnology and pharma companies are laying off domestic workers, but also hiring new workers in emerging markets due to their willingness to work for significantly lower salaries without compromising education and/or productivity levels. The convention’s panel on the EO 2008 global biotechnology report highlights this hiring practice as a temporary solution for cost cutting and for the need to expand globally, predicting that the workers from current emerging markets will eventually raise their salaries as competition for their work increases.

From the perspective of the current emerging markets, the new hiring trend is also only a temporary fix for their desire and need to grow internationally. As new markets continue to emerge competition within the emerging markets will increase. The West will have an ever-growing pool of highly trained employees willing to work for potentially even lower salaries, making a relationship based solely on this factor somewhat unsustainable. In an effort to forge more sustainable relationships, emerging markets are moving beyond offering ‘cheaper labor’ and large bodies of “clinically naïve patient populations” to “acquiring assets from, or allying with, western companies.” Ultimately, this will then challenge and increase competition for western markets. It is worth noting that being tempted by ‘clinically naïve patient populations,’ may not be the most ethical of temptations, particularly since one of the big challenges in pharmaceutical R&D is obtaining a quality informed consent. Balancing the need and desire for innovation and for respecting individuals and communities is a continuous challenge. Even NASA struggles with finding the balance between its drive for scientific advancement and its responsibilities to its employees and communities.

A more sustainable and obvious approach regarding globalization for the biotechnology industry, involves western markets seeing emerging markets not solely as opportunities for ‘cheaper labor’ but as emerging consumer-bases, according to the report. Since these emerging consumer bases cannot yet afford to pay western prices for products, the report suggests that western companies “work collaboratively with innovative companies in emerging markets to develop products designed specifically for local conditions.”

As you can see the convention was filled with information and inspiration for professionals from all niches within the biotechnology field, from the scientists to the executive and the salesmen to a bioethicist. It was wonderful to see Vertex Pharmaceuticals taking the lead in creating awareness of the ethical challenges facing the biotech industry and courageously attempting to meet those challenges, by sponsoring the convention’s bioethics track! Thank you to Navigant Consulting, CRT-Tanaka and Nicole Ruediger at BIO for making my participation possible. The experience was fantastic and I am already looking forward to next year’s convention!

Sponsored by:

Ernst & Young 2008 global biotechnology report “Beyond Borders”.

Ibid pg. 8

Filed under: Convention, bio08 | Tagged: bioethics, Ernst & Young Biotechnology Report 2008, globilization, NASA | 1 Comment »

“For Vertex, this year’s BIO convention provided an excellent opportunity to
both network and establish new relationships with hundreds of biotech
leaders from around the globe. The convention is ‘the’ place where these
interactions can take place on such a large scale and San Diego was a great
location for these groups to convene.”

–Representative of Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated

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Had another great day at BIO yesterday.  I was particularly impressed with the lunch session.  Jim Greenwood painted a compelling picture of the power of biotechnology.  Colin Powell was impressive as well.  His leadership lessons a good reminder for all of us in the industry that people are following us and that we are out in front where the future is not certain, but that when we build relationship and trust with others, they will follow, but they won’t follow if we simply tell them to.

Spent a good chunk of the day on the exhibition floor, looking at some of the offerings of the companies that might be a fit for some of my clients.  I’ve noticed that over the years at BIO I take less stuff home every year.  Part of me is disturbed by the amount of paper that is consumed, the number of low value things with logos that you know will be trashed either before people get home or shortly after.  I’ve worked at taking a minimum of paper and other paraphernalia home, rather taking web links and business cards. I would encourage all the exhibitors to find sustainable ways to promote their products and services.

Don’t get me wrong, BIO is like going out for that once a  year dinner.  You know you ate and drank too much and it might be bad for you, but you’ve got the rest of the year to stick to your healthy lifestyle.  You also know that you should come back next year, because it is a conference that keeps on reinventing itself and pushing the boundaries of science and business.  

I’m on my way home this morning, exhausted, yet recharged and excited about the prospects for the industry. I look forward to BIO 2009!

Filed under: BIO, Convention, bio08 | Tagged: Jim Greenwood | No Comments »

Is there a dearth of blog posts this morning because everyone was up late partying? Maybe. I went to the Women in Bio party early last night at the Mr. Tiki lounge, complete with leis and Hawaiian food and drink (no spam). I made a lot of great contacts and met very knowledgeable people in the field. After that, I went to the BIO 2008 Gala Reception Gaslamp Quarter Block Party on 5th. The party was complete with mimes, fire dancers, and other entertainment, along with great food from the restaurants on 5th street. Being from San Diego, I left early, as living in a great vacation spot is never as fun as visiting . . . hope you all didn’t stay up too late. Have a great day and see you in 2009 in Atlanta!
–Mary Canady, Comprendia LLC.

Filed under: BIO, bio08 | Tagged: party atlanta bio09 | No Comments »

It was standing room only for the last session on Thursday covering Communication Challenges: Defining the Industry for Policymakers and the Public. Session Chair Richard Gallagher, editor & publisher of Scientist magazine, started with some provocative questions, asking: is the industry misunderstood and undervalued by the public and politicans? And are we telling the best stories in the right way?

Local senator Christine Kehoe gave the industry a glowing report card, describing biotech’s contribution to San Diego. Delegates will spend an enormous amount of money while they’re here (not all of it on food & drink), with the local industry comprising 700 companies employing around 40,000 people with an average salary of $80,000. So how to approach your local politician? Senator Kehoe reminds us that politicians are people too, start talking before there’s a crisis you want fixed and keep the lines of communication open. All common sense stuff for most of us.

Barry O’Leary discussed the rise of capital intensive investments into Ireland’s biotech industry, in the form of new facilities built by Pfizer, Merck, Lilly and J&J. Although biotech is perceived favourably by the Irish, there is still a need to communicate transparantly with the public over what is happening in their back yard. By the way, all the world’s botox comes from Ireland.

Perhaps it’s an informed public that will be the key to widespread public acceptance of biotech, as Seema Kumar suggests. It’s time for scientists to come out of their ivory towers where they’ve enjoyed splendid isolation talking to each other and start explaining themselves to the rest of us, instead of leaving that to the media who often get it wrong - so much being lost in translation, Kumar says. Scientists should be the face of science, it’s core communicators, she added.

Matt Nisbet will be known to many from his research and writing, and he has spent much of his time looking at why issues become controversial. Matt’s tips for biotech’s future are: Invest in science education - the world needs more citizen scientists who can make informed decisions. This could take the form of adding ’science in society’ or similar to what is taught at school.

And for the industry and scientists: engage in public dialogue - people need to feel they are being listened to.

This was followed by robust feedback and opinions from the audience, as people shared their thoughts and experiences. Not everyone agreed, but at least we were talking to each other and even more importantly, listening as well.

Filed under: BIO, Convention, bio08 | Tagged: communication | No Comments »

It has been a busy week, and I’m betting most of you are very tired. Partnering, talks, and an exhibit hall that has a lot to offer. How should you spend your last day? After spending 3 days pounding the “exhibit floor” pavement (carpet), I have some suggestions for you.

• Visit the various pavilions in the exhibit hall, representing different regions of the world and the biotech companies that do business there. Each has its own flavor, and each region is obviously anxious to show you why you should do business there. With the price of travel these days, you could even consider it to be a mini-vacation. My favorite pavilions? Holland, for its inviting display, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin, for their midwestern hospitality, and South Africa, representing biotech that will make a difference in the issues that plague the continent. California, my home state, also has an impressive display of companies and institutions from our growing biotech hubs.
• Visit the Emerging Technologies area, located in the southernmost (H) region of the exhibit hall. Of course, it is always interesting to hear about new technologies, and to hear about it from the entrepreneurs who will represent the next wave in biotech.
• Visit the BIO Patient and Health Advocacy Display, which is in the Ground Level Lobby, section F. Learn more about the efforts of these advocates in making a difference in getting funding and cures for a wide variety of diseases. It is always worthwhile talk directly to the patients and advocates for diseases which we are working towards curing, as they have important perspectives.
• For fun, visit the Lab Support Virtual Roller Coaster Ride at Booth 4316.
• Don’t forget to get your green Crocs at RNL Bio, Booth 1015 (if they have any left!). I am not responsible for any fashion faux pas that result.

–Mary Canady of Comprendia, LLC.

Filed under: BIO, Convention, bio08 | Tagged: bio 2008, emerging technologies, exhibit hall, patient advocates, tips | No Comments »

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• More on Paul Campos
• A Pill for Exercise?
• Jack Benny
• Traffic
• What's Important
• How Obama Got into Law Teaching
• Michael Lewis on Golf
• Overcoming Bias post
• Class-Based Integration
• New Screenplay

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One thing that still bothers me about Paul Campos's book The Obesity Myth is that he focuses almost entirely on BMI studies to make his case that bodyfat isn't relevant to health or mortality. He constantly points out that there's a U-shaped curve in which underweight people (by BMI) have higher mortality, people technically classified as moderately overweight (by BMI) have lower mortality overall, and obese people then have the highest mortality.

But BMI studies don't tell us whether bodyfat is healthy or unhealthy. That's because BMI doesn't correlate very well with bodyfat in the first place. The most recent study I could find was this: Romero-Corral et al, "Accuracy of body mass index in diagnosing obesity in the adult general population," International Journal of Obesity 32 no. 6 (June 2008): 959-66. From the abstract: Body mass index (BMI) is the most widely used measure to diagnose obesity. However, the accuracy of BMI in detecting excess body adiposity in the adult general population is largely unknown.

METHODS: A cross-sectional design of 13,601 subjects (age 20-79.9 years; 49% men) from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Bioelectrical impedance analysis was used to estimate body fat percent (BF%). We assessed the diagnostic performance of BMI using the World Health Organization reference standard for obesity of BF%>25% in men and>35% in women. We tested the correlation between BMI and both BF% and lean mass by sex and age groups adjusted for race.

RESULTS: BMI-defined obesity (> or =30 kg m(-2)) was present in 19.1% of men and 24.7% of women, while BF%-defined obesity was present in 43.9% of men and 52.3% of women. . . . However, in the intermediate range of BMI (25-29.9 kg m(-2)), BMI failed to discriminate between BF% and lean mass in both sexes. CONCLUSIONS: The accuracy of BMI in diagnosing obesity is limited, particularly for individuals in the intermediate BMI ranges, in men and in the elderly. A BMI cutoff of> or =30 kg m(-2) has good specificity but misses more than half of people with excess fat. These results may help to explain the unexpected better survival in overweight/mild obese patients. Note the bolded text, because it rather starkly undermines Campos's whole argument that because BMI isn't linearly correlated to mortality, people shouldn't worry about being fat. BMI /= bodyfat.

What's more, there's a whole area of medical literature that, as far as I can tell, Campos's book completely ignores (again, it was a very poor endnoting system). Researchers have found for years that bodyfat cells produce inflammatory agents (such as C-reactive protein or its precursors).

One recent study isolated this process experimentally, by studying specific fat cells extracted from plastic surgery patients and observing the excretion of cytokines and resistin; on exposing the fat cells to statins or aspirin, the production of inflammatory agents declined. Another similar study isolated higher levels of interleukin-6 -- another inflammatory marker -- in blood that came from visceral fat in the abdomen.

In turn, chronic inflammation seems to cause cancer, heart disease and strokes, etc.

So when we are learning more and more about the specific biological mechanisms by which fat cells make a person less healthy, it's a waste of time to point out how BMI (not an accurate measure of bodyfat) and mortality are correlated.

To be sure, Campos is basically right that except for the morbidly obese, it doesn't make sense to worry about lowering your BMI or even your bodyweight per se. But it's still true that people should think about lowering bodyfat (or, rather, eating a healthy diet and exercising with high intensity several times a week, which, in my experience, inevitably does the trick).

posted by Stuart Buck | 11:08 AM | 0 Comments

The hype on this new study seems way overstated. From the New York Times: For all who have wondered if they could enjoy the benefits of exercise without the pain of exertion, the answer may one day be yes — just take a pill that tricks the muscles into thinking they have been working out furiously.

Researchers at the Salk Institute in San Diego reported that they had found two drugs that did wonders for the athletic endurance of couch potato mice. One drug, known as Aicar, increased the mice’s endurance on a treadmill by 44 percent after just four weeks of treatment.

* * *

Four years ago he found that PPAR-delta played a different role in muscle. Muscle fibers exist in two main forms. Type 1 fibers have copious numbers of mitochondria, which generate the cell’s energy and are therefore resistant to fatigue. Type 2 fibers have fewer mitochondria and tire easily. Athletes have lots of Type 1 fibers. People with obesity and diabetes have far fewer Type 1 and more Type 2 fibers.

Dr. Evans and his team found that the PPAR-delta protein remodeled the muscle, producing more of the high-endurance Type 1 fiber. They genetically engineered a strain of mice whose muscles produced extra amounts of PPAR-delta. These mice grew more Type 1 fibers and could run twice as far as on a treadmill as ordinary mice before collapsing.

Given that people cannot be engineered in this way, Dr. Evans wondered whether levels of the PPAR-delta protein could be raised by drugs. Pharmaceutical companies have long tried to manipulate PPAR-delta because of its role in fat metabolism, and Dr. Evans found several drugs were available, although they had been tested for different purposes.

In a report in the Friday issue of Cell, he described the two drugs that successfully activate the muscle-remodeling system in mice, generating more high-endurance Type 1 fiber. The drug GW1516 activates the PPAR-delta protein but the mice must also exercise to show increased endurance. It seems that PPAR-delta switches on one set of genes, and exercise another, and both are needed for endurance.

Aicar improves endurance without training. Dr. Evans believes that it both activates the PPAR-delta protein and mimics the effects of exercise, thus switching on both sets of genes needed for the endurance signal. So they found that giving certain drugs to mice may ultimately have switched on certain genes that affect muscle endurance. We don't know that this drug would work in humans in the first place, let alone that the drug would have any of the many other benefits of exercise (decreased risk of many diseases, longer lifespan, better mood, improved cognitive performance, increased aerobic capacity, maintenance of bone mass, lowered blood pressure, etc.), let alone that it would do so without serious side effects. I'm not sure why, at this early point, this drug is being given publicity different from that of steroids.

posted by Stuart Buck | 2:10 PM | 0 Comments

Jack Benny is one of my favorite comedians from all-time. I always loved it when Mel Blanc (voice of Bugs Bunny) made a guest appearance. Here's a clip where Mel Blanc delivers a telegram.

One of the funniest Jack Benny episodes of all time involved Mel Blanc as a plumber fixing Benny's pipes. That episode can be downloaded here, and Amazon has some used videos available here.

You can download dozens of clips from the Mel Blanc radio show (circa 1946) here or here.

posted by Stuart Buck | 9:05 AM | 0 Comments

An interesting excerpt from an essay by Tom Vanderbilt, who has a new book: Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us). In the mid-1980s, Monderman, then a regional safety inspector for Friesland, was dispatched to the small village of Oudehaske to check the speed of car traffic through the town’s center (two children had been fatally struck). Previously, Monderman, like any good Dutch traffic engineer, would have deployed, if not an actual traffic light, the tools of what is known as “traffic calming”: speed bumps, warning signs, bollards, or any number of highly visible ­interventions.

But those solutions were falling out of favor with his superiors, because they were either ineffective or too expensive. At a loss, Monderman suggested to the villagers, who as it happens had hired a consultant to help improve the town’s aesthetics, that Oudehaske simply be made to seem more “villagelike.” The interventions were subtle. Signs were removed, curbs torn out, and the asphalt replaced with red paving brick, with two gray “gutters” on either side that were slightly curved but usable by cars. As Monderman noted, the road looked only five meters wide, “but had all the possibilities of six.”

The results were striking. Without bumps or flashing warning signs, drivers slowed, so much so that Monderman’s radar gun couldn’t even register their speeds. Rather than clarity and segregation, he had created confusion and ambiguity. Unsure of what space belonged to them, drivers became more accommodating. Rather than give drivers a simple behavioral mandate—­say, a speed limit sign or a speed ­bump—­he had, through the new road design, subtly suggested the proper course of action. And he did something else. He used context to change behavior. He had made the main road look like a narrow lane in a village, not simply a ­traffic-­way through some anonymous ­town. Vanderbilt also reports on what happened when the traffic engineer replaced a traditional intersection with a roundabout: A year after the change, the results of this “extreme makeover” were striking: Not only had congestion decreased in the ­intersection—­buses spent less time waiting to get through, for ­example—­but there were half as many accidents, even though total car traffic was up by a third. Students from a local engineering college who studied the intersection reported that both drivers and, unusually, cyclists were using ­signals—­of the electronic or hand ­variety—­more often. They also found, in surveys, that residents, despite the measurable increase in safety, perceived the place to be more dangerous. This was music to Monderman’s ears. If they had not felt less secure, he said, he “would have changed it immediately.”Which reminds me of another excellent article, John Staddon's Distracting Miss Daisy: Why stop signs and speed limits endanger Americans, which makes a similar point.

posted by Stuart Buck | 9:22 AM | 0 Comments

A friend in the music business forwarded me this advertisement seeking guitarists, amused by the requisite qualifications:


If it's hard to read, the text says, "Rihanna is seeking 2 types of guitar players to join her current tour. The first is a guitarist that double on keyboards, and the second is someone with dreadlocks." No mention of musical talent, but maybe that's just assumed . . . .

posted by Stuart Buck | 11:00 PM | 0 Comments

This revelation from a New Republic article was new to me, but based on what I know of Mike McConnell, I'm not surprised that he would have done something like this: Obama first came to the University of Chicago Law School's attention via one of its more celebrated conservative faculty members, Michael McConnell, who's now a federal judge on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and reportedly was on George W. Bush's short list of potential Supreme Court nominees. Back in 1990, when McConnell was still teaching at Chicago, he wrote an article about church-state relations for the Harvard Law Review that Obama, who was then the Law Review's president, edited. As McConnell recently recalled the experience to Politico: "A frequent problem with student editors is that they try to turn an article into something they want it to be. It was striking that Obama didn't do that. He tried to make it better from my point of view." McConnell was so impressed with Obama that he recommended him to the head of Chicago's appointments committee at the time, Douglas Baird, a bankruptcy expert and a law-and-economics devotee. "Michael's a very smart guy who's basically a very good judge of horse flesh--he wouldn't typically recommend people," says Baird.

posted by Stuart Buck | 2:52 PM | 0 Comments

It's a bit harsh, but I have to admit I enjoyed Michael Lewis's rant on golf. Golf can be fun, of course, in the same sense as target practice, but I wouldn't really consider something a "sport" unless the participants regularly find themselves gasping for breath. It somewhat reminds me of this recent study, which found that people who read muscle magazines while on an exercise bike don't get the same mood improvement from exercise as do people who read nothing or who read Oprah Magazine. My rule of thumb is, if what I'm doing allows me to read or watch TV, it isn't really exercise.

posted by Stuart Buck | 10:44 AM | 2 Comments

I have another post at Overcoming Bias.

posted by Stuart Buck | 8:58 AM | 0 Comments

Emily Bazelon wrote a New York Times article recommending class-based school integration (much of her article resembles previous work by Rick Kahlenberg). She suggests that class-based integration would improve test scores: Test scores may not be the best way to assess the quality of a teacher or a school, but the pressure to improve scores, whatever its shortcomings, is itself on the rise. And if high test scores are the goal, it turns out, class-based integration may be the more effective tool.

Researchers have been demonstrating this result since 1966, when Congress asked James S. Coleman, a Johns Hopkins sociologist, to deliver a report on why the achievement of black students lagged far behind that of white ones. The expected answer was that more than a decade after Brown, black kids were still often going to inferior schools with small budgets. But Coleman found that the varying amount of money spent on schools didn’t account for the achievement gap. Instead, the greater poverty of black families did. When high concentrations of poor kids went to school together, Coleman reported, all the students at the school tended to learn less.

How much less was later quantified. The Harvard sociologist Christopher Jencks reanalyzed Coleman’s data in the 1970s and concluded that poor black sixth-graders in majority middle-class schools were 20 months ahead of poor black sixth-graders in majority low-income schools. The statistics for poor white students were similar. In the last 40 years, Coleman’s findings, known informally as the Coleman Report, have been confirmed again and again. Most recently, in a 2006 study, Douglas Harris, an economist at the University of Wisconsin, found that when more than half the students were low-income, only 1.1 percent of schools consistently performed at a “high” level (defined as two years of scores in the top third of the U.S. Department of Education’s national achievement database in two grades and in two subjects: English and math). By contrast, 24.2 percent of schools that are majority middle-class met Harris’s standard. A few points: 1) The problem with using Jencks' analysis here is that it doesn't account for selection effects -- poor black sixth-graders in the 1970s who managed to attend majority middle-class schools may have had very different family backgrounds, attitudes, and motivations than the ones stuck in impoverished schools.

2) Citing Douglas Harris's report is even less convincing. As Bazelon's text itself suggests, Harris merely compared the test scores in high-poverty schools to those in low-poverty schools. This is just a static picture; it tells us nothing about what would happen if you took an impoverished child and set him down in a low-poverty school. Thus, Harris's finding doesn't "confirm" the Coleman Report's finding as to how poor children did when they attended middle-class schools (Harris doesn't deal with that point at all).

3) A more enlightening and relevant study -- one that Bazelon doesn't mention -- comes from the Moving to Opportunity experiment, which took families in public housing and randomly assigned them to three groups: a control group, a group that got regular housing vouchers, and the experimental group that got housing vouchers to be used only in neighborhoods with a poverty rate under 10%. Researchers who expected to find that the experimental group did better academically were disappointed: Lisa Sanbonmatsu, Jeffrey R. Kling, Greg J. Duncan, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Neighborhoods and Academic Achievement: Results from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment.

Although we had hypothesized that reading and math test scores would be higher among children in families offered [housing] vouchers (with larger effects among younger children), the results show no significant effects on test scores for any age group among over 5000 children ages six to 20 in 2002 who were assessed four to seven years after randomization. Program impacts on school environments were considerably smaller than impacts on neighborhoods, suggesting that achievement-related benefits from improved neighborhood environments alone are small.To be sure, that last sentence is important: many of the people given housing vouchers to use in low-poverty neighborhoods ended up with their children attending new schools that were not a whole lot better than before; some even kept their children at the same schools (as this followup article reveals). So while the MTO experiment doesn't fully predict what would happen if you took the most impoverished inner-city kids and somehow transplanted them into the highest-performing suburban schools, it does give some idea of how hard it would be to pull off that kind of school reassignment.


UPDATE: I dug up my copy of the book "On Equality of Educational Opportunity," edited by Frederick Mosteller and Daniel P. Moynihan, in which (as I recalled) Christopher Jencks had published his reanalysis of the Coleman Report data. Sure enough, after noting that poor black sixth graders in middle-class schools did well, Jencks adds, "poor families who send their children to middle-class schools may also be more achievement-oriented and more competent than poor families who send their children to lower-class schools. The EEOS [Equality of Educational Opportunity Survey, or the Coleman Report] does not provide adequate data for testing this theory."

Jencks makes another interesting point, which I take to imply that the most educational improvement could be gained from improving schools and curriculum, not from merely rearranging students within existing schools: P. 86:

Contrary to popular belief, the students who performed best on these tests were often enrolled in the same schools as the students who performed worst. . . . In some ways this is the most important and most neglected single finding of the EEOS. It means that if our objective is to equalize the outcomes of schooling, efforts to reduce differences between schools cannot possibly take us very far. If by some magic we were able to make the mean achievement of every Northern urban elementary school the same, we would only have reduced the variance in test scores by 16-22 percent. If, on the other hand, we left the disparities between schools untouched but were somehow able to eliminate all disparities within schools, we would eliminate 78-84 percent of the variation in 6th-grade competence.

The implications of this are in many ways more revolutionary than anything else in the EEOS. In the short run it remains true that our most pressing political problem is the achievement gap between Harlem and Scarsdale. But in the long run it seems that our primary problem is not the disparity between Harlem and Scarsdale but the disparity between the top and the bottom of the class in both Harlem and Scarsdale.

posted by Stuart Buck | 9:10 AM | 0 Comments

Notice the following films:

-- Armageddon. A meteor is headed for earth, and the only thing that can save us is if Bruce Willis and his scrappy team drills into it and unloads a nuclear weapon.

-- The Core. The center of the earth has stopped spinning, and the only thing that can save us is if Hilary Swank and her scrappy team drills into the earth and unloads a nuclear weapon. (Actually, I couldn't watch more than about 20 minutes of this, but I think that's the plot.)

-- Sunshine. The sun is burning out, and the only thing that can save us is if Cillian Murphy and his scrappy team flies near the surface of the sun and unloads several nuclear weapons.

So clearly nuclear bombs can fix just about anything. But the problem with all of these films is that the stakes are too low. Hence my new screenplay (yet to be written, but that's just a technicality).

In my movie, the whole freaking universe has stopped expanding. A maverick scientist has figured out what's going on. After some infighting with government bureaucrats, he coaxes Brad Pitt, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Sigourney Weaver, and Tom Cruise to fly six separate spaceships to specific points in the universe, and drop off 100 nuclear bombs apiece. This will restart the universe and save us from the unfortunate fate of collapsing inwards upon ourselves (never mind that this wouldn't actually happen). There's a touching scene where Sylvester Stallone says goodbye to his estranged daughter as he realizes that the escape hatch on his spaceship doesn't work. There's another touching scene at the end where all the rest of the astronauts are back safely on earth, and they clap each other on the back, to the tune of something by John Williams while an American flag unfurls in the background.

This will be the summer blockbuster to end all summer blockbusters.

posted by Stuart Buck | 8:14 PM | 0 Comments

This reversal of a Socratic maxim: "The Unlived Life is Not Worth Examining." It's about why we shouldn't be asking kids who have barely experienced anything of life to write personal essays for school or college applications.

posted by Stuart Buck | 11:09 AM | 0 Comments

The big news around here has been this story of a local girl who got stuck for about 16 hours in a cave in a state park: An afternoon outing at Devil's Den State Park turned into a nightmare for a Van Buren teenager.

About 2 p.m. Friday, Bianca Calloway, 17, ventured into a cave with a group of friends from the Community Bible Church in Fort Smith.

The group slid through a crack in the wall of the main cave into a section called Satan's Maze. Bianca lost her footing and slipped into an hourglass-shaped crevice. Her legs were wedged in the rock formation.

More than 50 rescuers worked through the night to free the frightened, cold teenager.

Rescuers, using a pulley system and a harness, pulled Bianca from the rocks shortly after 6 a.m. Saturday. She walked, with help, out of the cave.

* * * "She was wedged vertically into a vertical space," said John Luther, director of the Washington County Department of Emergency Management. "It was an hourglass-shaped hole and you had to fall a certain way to get trapped. There was no way to work on either side of her." Rescuers had to work from above.

Luther said the unique rock formation and the limited space was a nightmare for rescuers.

"Our smallest guys had to wiggle through a tight space, then turn sideways and pull the rest of his body through," Luther said. "It was one of the strictest natural confinements you could have."
. . .

Rescue workers continued to emerge from the mouth of the cave with frustrated faces, and Comstock would send more back down. Because of the tight proximity of Satan's Maze, only a few workers could fit down there at a time, Comstock said.

The remaining emergency responders had nothing else to do but sit around the cave entrance on a rock wall and crags around the cave and wait for their turn to return to the cave.

* * *
Baby oil was one of the low-tech methods applied, Luther said.

It was so constricted, workers had trouble passing bottles of baby oil hand-to-hand over their heads in complete darkness, Luther said, shaking his head.



On a local caving website,* I found this picture that someone managed to take of the narrowest part of that passage:



That photo isn't turned sideways, as I know because I've been through that passage myself. It's that the passage is extremely tall and narrow, and the only way to get through it to wedge yourself sideways and scoot through, with open space above and below you. The one time that I went through there, I had gone feet first, and the only way I could get through was to 1) exhale every bit of air in my lungs (when I breathed in, I couldn't move at all); and 2) then pull frantically with my toes. By this process, I'd move a few inches. Also, it's not a lighted cave, so it was completely pitch black except for a few flashlights, which weren't much help when you couldn't even move your head to look in a different direction. At the time I was concentrating too intensely to feel claustrophobic, but I definitely wouldn't do it again. The only reason I went through that passage in the first place was because some college friends (all thinner than me, and I'm not fat in the least) insisted that it was fun and that I'd have no problem fitting through. Ha.

* Photo is in the discussion thread here. The guy's description: "a lot of the corridors were very narrow in the maze. this is a spot i didnt think i would make it through. i found myself suspended in the air between 2 rock walls."

posted by Stuart Buck | 12:03 PM | 2 Comments

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Gratuitous cute kitty pic of golden girl Tiny out in the yard this afternoon staring at things we don't see.

"He makes everything so clear and commonsensical," we emailed Goomp this morning re Thomas Sowell's latest dissection of candidate Obama's Economics 101 deficit:

Since Obama can do no wrong in the eyes of many of his supporters, they resented [anchorman Charles] Gibson's having asked him … why [he] was advocating a higher capital gains tax rate, when experience had shown that the government typically collected more revenue from a lower capital gains tax rate than from a higher rate.

Senator Obama acted as if he had never thought about it that way. He probably hadn't. He is a politician, not an economist.

Politically, what matters to the left-wing base that Obama has been playing to for decades is sticking it to "the rich." What effect that has on the tax revenues received by the government is secondary, at best.

Inside looking out, Babe the Magnificent catches our camera's eye, the kitchen window screen creating an effect not unlike Photoshop's "Crosshatch" filter.

And voters are only too happy to oblige, preferring — in Dr. Sanity's words referencing a Sowell column last May on why voters don't listen to economists — "quick fixes and someone to blame, not solutions." As we wrote during the heat of the primary season last winter, referencing yet another Sowell column, "Unfortunately for the future of the Republic should McCain or either of the front-running Democrats — who all of them seem to believe a President can and should 'manage' the economy rather than step back and let the invisible hand create wealth — should one of them become Leader of the Free World, we'll have an Economics 101 gap in the Oval Office, and THAT worries us and Thomas Sowell, whose Basic Economics: A Citizens Guide to the Economy ought to be at the top of the Arizona senator's [not to mention Obama's] must-read list." Sowell:

One of the biggest problems with government intervention in the economy is that politicians usually have neither the knowledge nor the incentives to intervene at the right time.

Bruce Bartlett has pointed out that most government intervention in an economic downturn comes too late. That is, the problem it is trying to solve has already worked itself out, and the government intervention can create new problems.

More fundamentally, markets readjust themselves for a reason. That reason is that people pay a price for their misjudgments and mistakes. Government interventions are usually based on trying to stop them from having to pay that price. People who went way out on a limb to buy a house that they could not afford are now being pictured as victims of a heartless market or deceptive lenders.

Rewarding bad behavior only encourages more bad behavior. But who has time to worry about bad behavior when there are voters to pander to?

Posted by Sissy Willis on August 12, 2008 at 07:54 PM in Look to the animals, The Oval Office, To market, to market | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

The view from Carol and Alan's porch in the heart of Watertown's Mount Auburn Street Historic District late yesterday afternoon. We love the zigzag play of light, shade and cast shadows on the Second Empire slate tiles of dormer and mansard roof.

"The purpose of the [Mount Auburn Street] Historic District is to preserve the distinctive architecture reflecting the character of Watertown’s rich cultural, social, economic and political history which began on the banks of the Charles River in the early 1600’s," says the District's website. If you happen to live within this neighborhood, densely packed with stately residential architecture of note, it's both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is the spirit of the place. We felt its aura draw us in yesterday afternoon as we drove past Mount Auburn Cemetery on our way to Carol and Alan's. The curse is when you want to tear down your rusting old tin garage and rebuild, as the Wards plan to. The permitting process can be daunting.

Snowball bides her time beneath the clothes hanging near the door yesterday, waiting for her chance to spring.

The cat who came to dinner, the stunningly beautiful and articulate —she talks! — Snowball chose Carol and Alan's companionship over that of the neighbors who "owned" her. Above she lurks atop a large container beneath clothes hanging near the door to the back porch, unseen by the unwary, as we were yesterday when she chose the moment we opened the door to leap outside for the first of two daring escapes. Quick as a cat, Alan sprang into action, retrieving the straying feline.

"In this photograph, and in the dramatic seascapes that followed and that won him international renown, Le Gray used a new technique — the glass plate negative and the albumen silver print — to achieve a limpid atmosphere, extreme clarity of detail, and flawless surface." according to Timeline of Art History. "The Imperial Yacht La Reine Hortense," Le Havre, 1856.

Ever heard of Gustave Le Gray? Our host, Alan, had, of course. What else would you expect of the contemporary photographer whose breathtaking landscape architectural images are showcased in American Designed Landscapes: A Photographic Interpretion? Regular readers will recall the Wards presented us with a signed copy of that tome as a hostess gift in July when they were the cool cats who came to dinner. But back to the question of who's ever heard of Gustave Le Gray? We hadn't until yesterday morning, when googling revealed the now obscure 19th-century photographer had been the cat's pajamas of his day. Among his many accomplishments in pushing the envelope of photography as art and science, Le Gray is credited with having invented wax paper, the hot topic of our blog yesterday.  A few fascinating tidbits from Timeline of Art History:

His real contributions — artistically and technically — however, came in the realm of paper photography, in which he first experimented in 1848. The first of his four treatises, published in 1850, boldly — and correctly — asserted that "the entire future of photography is on paper" …

In the 1852 edition of his treatise, Le Gray wrote: "It is my deepest wish that photography, instead of falling within the domain of industry, of commerce, will be included among the arts. That is its sole, true place, and it is in that direction that I shall always endeavor to guide it.

Beauty in expected places. Carol had cooked up an eye-catching menu of totally delicious sweet-and-savory veggies, some soft —  the firm-but-fork-tender sweet-potato-and-regular-potato salad above left — and some crunchy — broccoli mix, right, and perfect corn on the cob. We gotta get those recipes! Note Corny Cornbread mini peeking out from behind the ear of corn, part of our own hostess gift, as blogged here.

After being grilled, the thick, juicy porkchops rested in a tent of foil. When did foil and plastic wrap displace wax paper among home cooks, and how has wax paper nevertheless managed to hold its own on your local supermarket shelf? Enquiring minds want to know.

As Carol worked her magic in the kitchen and Tuck and ourselves sipped wine outside on the back porch overlooking the garden below, Alan went to work in the lower forty near the garage, grilling up a storm. The conversation ranged from art and architecture through gardening and home heating to the zigzag pattern cast by the dormer of the neighbor's house (top photo, above). Something called The New Best Recipe moved center stage. As Carol and Alan explained with much enthusiasm, the authors present their findings on the best way to cook everything under the sun. In the case of pork chops, you soak them in brine a few hours, rub in some herbs and then throw onto a hot grill. Cook/sear briefly on both sides, turn down the heat and cook a few more minutes. Then everybody into the foil tent (above photo) to continue cooking and let the juices settle.

Update: Carol adds email meat to the bones of our New Best Recipe copy:

Alan gave it to me at Christmas several years ago, and after three months I pronounced it one of the top ten presents. I have a collection of cook books, and I have to say this one is the go-to book for how to make the best fill-in-the-blank (pork chops, grilled fish, etc.). I may not follow every recipe 100%, due to a missing ingredient here and there, or a desire not to measure, but I think it belongs on the wish list for presents.

The new furnace and associated copper tubing were a work of art in themselves. You know you've come to the right place when an elegant evening of good food, good wine and good company includes tours of both the basement — furnace, extensive wine cellar (below) and Alan's darkroom — AND the Wards' inspiring collection of black-and-white photographs by some of the best in the field.

At one point a perky, lime-green katydid decided Tuck's arm was the place to be of a Saturday night. We didn't manage a presentable photo so are borrowing this one we found online:

Greater Angle-winged Katydid/Broadwinged Katydid (Microcentrum rhombifolium), Quartz Mountain, Oklahoma © 2006 Rick Destree. We're guessing that our little friend was the Common True Katydid (Pterophylla camellifolia).

Listen here. So fond of our company was the crispy critter that it rode inside, under the radar so to speak, on our own head, where Alan discovered and "rescued" the little fellow, gently plucking it up and returning it to the wild. Carol and Alan share an empathy for all things bright and beautiful as big as all outdoors.

Posted by Sissy Willis on August 10, 2008 at 02:15 PM in Blogging, Great works, Hearts and minds, Look to the animals | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

A come-hither whisper from within a "Beggar's Purse" of wax paper, where one of our Corny Cornbread mini-muffins poses provocatively atop the dining room table. To make your own: Use the recipe at "Extremely corny and very moist," substituting a cup of thawed, puréed frozen corn if you don't have fresh steamed. Then dollop the batter into a Pam-sprayed mini-muffin pan and bake 15 minutes at 350˚. Yield: 12 minis. See below for how to make wrapper. It's a piece of cake.

"I have just invented the most adorable bit of packaging," we wrote our imail correspondent this morning:

'Was trying to find a cute container for a batch of Corny Cornbread minis to present as a hostess gift this evening. 'Didn't have any containers or cute boxes of the right size. 'Was about to just put 'em into a reclosable food storage bag when inspiration struck: Wax paper!

She: TELL ALL!!!

We: You place a mini in the center of a six-inch square (half the roll width) of wax paper, draw together opposite corners over the top of the mini and give the thing a twist.

She: AWESOME!! They're called Beggar's Purses, I think, in regard to wrapping little things in dough.

We: I must try it in DOUGH sometime. I LOVE the term, and it fits perfectly with how I stumbled upon it. I do LOVE the look and feel of wax paper. Very sensuous, dreamy … WAXY!

She: LOL. You know whose mother necessity is.

We: Beauty in unexpected places.

The structural memory of wax paper is such that the twist held, creating a swirling array that reminded us of the spiraling armies of dancers in the totally awesome opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games, masterwork of former dissident movie director Zhang Yimou, now dissed by critics as "a kind of Chinese Leni Fiefenstahl, creating beautiful backdrops for iron-fisted rulers." We caught some of the stagecraft and pyrotechnics — Busby Berkeley squared — in the wee hours this morning on NBC. George and Laura were there, bravely soldiering on as the world teeters on the edge.

"How cute is THAT???" wrote our sis when we imailed the top photo:

She: I think you can do for waxed paper what you did for lard.

We: LOL. May I quote you?

She: Well, just two old-time things that people have kind of forgotten about.

So much good stuff that people have kind of forgotten about, so little time.

Posted by Sissy Willis on August 09, 2008 at 04:07 PM in But is it art?, Cold Turkey Cookbook, Great works | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Tiny's becoming a totally glamorous bleached blonde, says Tuck, her Chelsea Gray fur turning more and more peaches and cream by the day. She worships the sun.

"Now I Know," headlines Amba re her turning inwards in the wake — in the Irish sense — of the campaign season from Hell:

-- why I've been instinctively tuning out the campaign coverage and involuntarily shunning the political blogosphere. I've been avoiding Obama Fatigue like the plague.

We, too, have been instinctively tuning out the campaign coverage other than an occasional lapse — but take issue with our dear friend's dismissal of the possibility of poor folks' pride:

So, to put it as crudely as possible: the rich don't want to be taxed; the poor want more handouts; and everybody in between is trying to figure out whether life is better for them (us) under the frankly powerful or under those whose power derives from purporting to represent the interests of the powerless.

"The poor want more handouts"? Only in a soul-deadened socialist society whose welfare-anesthetized work-free citizens believe their "betters" know better than they what's best for them. As we've blogged a zillion times, there is no honor -- and no really feeling good -- in being handed something you didn't earn. If you're talking "the poor" in a mobile society like ours, tomorrow is another day.

Update: A great way to tune out campaign coverage is to head over to Mind of Mog for the beautifully designed, fully illustrated Carnival of the Cats #230.

Posted by Sissy Willis on August 08, 2008 at 07:46 PM in Look to the animals, The Oval Office | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)

Paris who? Like us, Baby — above vying for Tuck's lunchtime pb-and-bacon sandwich — never once had the slightest interest in the Hilton heiress who was famous for being famous. Not until we saw her hot, hot, hot "Paris Hilton Presidential Campaign" FunnyorDie.com political spoof the other day. Click here for backstory. Some say her response to John McCain's "Celeb" ad is anti-McCain, but Johnny's hilarious response — not to mention Obama's lame "Whatever" — tells our gut our man comes out on top.

Ariana Huffington is in a huff over John McCain's raising Cain over Barack Obama's obamboozlement of some of the people all of the time. And Paris Hilton's to-the-hilt response to McCain's "Celeb" ad —blogged here, here and here — has got the Huffington woman's panties in a bunch:

With just ninety days left in the election it's come down to this: our energy policy and a good deal of this presidential campaign are being discussed through the lens of Paris Hilton. What a big goof it all is! If you just ignore all the soldiers and civilians dying in the Mideast, and all the millions losing their homes and their jobs at home, you could really see the lighter side of it all.

Her Bush-bashing boilerplate, designed to smear the Republican candidate by association, recalls Nancy Pelosi's battle cry on the eve of the Democrats' big 2006 victory —blogged here — "You must take him down." Ariana's complaint is music to our ears:

It all started with McCain's ad comparing Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. And then we had Paris Hilton's "response," followed by the McCain camp's response to Paris Hilton: "It sounds like Paris Hilton supports John McCain's 'all of the above' approach to America's energy crisis — including both alternatives and drilling. Paris Hilton might not be as big a celebrity as Barack Obama, but she obviously has a better energy plan."

Who ever thought this election wasn't going to be about the issues?

After lunch Tiny washes her face, lounging on the velvet-upholstered Victorian balloon-back armchair known as "The Throne." Issues? You mean like "When's supper?"

When they start whining that the other side is avoiding "the issues," you know you've hit a nerve.

"Of course, it's not exactly a surprise that the Republican election machine would resort to trying to make the entire election into an issueless sideshow. I mean, what else do they have?" asks the Huffington Post proprietress, seething with schoolgirlish sarcasm:

Instead of the media calling the McCain campaign on its pathetic trivialization of the presidential race, they have been engaging in meaningless horse-race analysis of "did the ad work?" The conventional wisdom appears to be that it did …

But it now appears that the bigger the problems, the more likely it is that they'll be completely ignored. So here we are: huge problems and a correspondingly empty election. It's the politics of nothing.

The McCain camp knows that the only way they can win this election is to turn it into a carnival sideshow.

"The politics of nothing" and "a carnival sideshow." You're projecting again, Ariana.

Update: "I thought, from the minute I saw Paris, that her spot ribbed both candidates, and gave the perfect opening for McCain's clever response," writes our imail correspondent:

We: Yes. I felt it, as I said, in my GUT!!! McCain's humor may be the thing that saves the day.

She: As we know, RATS have no sense of humor or irony. Many Republicans have it in spades, whereas, look at the candidates the RATS have fielded … Dukakis, Kerry, Hillary, Obama … nothing to laugh at there, except their looks. I forgot ALGORE!!!

We: You're right, though. GW has a good sense of humor. So does Poppy.

She: Yes, and OUR RONNIE was TOPS in the humor department. That's why OUR FRED is lookin' good for the VP nod.

Laughter is the best medicine. LOTS better than what Michael Knox Beran in City Journal calls Obama's "charismatic healer-redeemer fable."

Update II: Speaking of spiritual healing, open your eyes to Henry Thoreau's shimmering vision:

The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.

Then head over to a beautifully illustrated Carnival of the Cats #229 at Samantha & Tigger and a no-beasts-barred Friday Ark  #203 at Modulator.

Update III: The Doctor — Sanity, of course — is in.

paris hilton huffington

Posted by Sissy Willis on August 07, 2008 at 04:52 PM in Go Johnny, go!, Idiotarianism, Look to the animals, The Oval Office | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (1)

Technorati Tags: ariana huffington, barack obama, celeb, city journal, funnyordie.com, john mccain, michael knox beran, paris hilton

The Coast Guard helicopter that came out of the blue to hang suspended over Chelsea Creek across the street for a "vertical delivery" yesterday won every heart and mind of neighborhood families enjoying Eastern Salt's totally awesome Maritime Festival. Its rotors' turbulence roiled the waters, stirring up half-remembered miasmas of the mind. Teresa Hummel photo.

"This is really sick," we wrote our sis re a UK Independent article headlined "Attenborough alarmed as children are left flummoxed by test on the natural world":

Less than two-thirds (62 per cent) identified frogs.

It seems impossible. Even if they are out of touch with nature, haven't these kids ever seen "Sesame Street"? Can you say Kermit the Frog? 'Guess that being green is even harder than we thought. And here's the irony of it all:

Experts blamed the widening gulf between children and nature on over-protective parents and the hostility to children among some conservationists, who fear that they will damage the environment. They said that this lack of exposure to outdoor play in natural environments was vital for children's social and emotional development.

"They don't understand beauty, let alone recognize it in unexpected places," noted our sis.

Christian and Susan, two for the seesaw, beautiful people —madonna and child —who light up our life blessed us with their presence for 24 hours starting midday on Saturday. Talk about energizer bunnies. Woo hoo. So much fun, so little time. Sissy Willis photo.

"All I want to say is … you are THE MOST gracious hostess ever was. We have our rough spots, but at the end of the day … Sisters, sisters … I would never leave you for another man, or woman":

Caring, sharing ev'ry little thing that we are wearing.
When a certain gentleman arrived from Rome
She wore the dress and I stayed home.

When the helicopter hovered and the froggy-footed man descended, tears of ecstasy flooded these old eyes and set this hoary heart to skipping a beat or two. Teresa Hummel photo.

"Where did you get that dress, it's awful, and those shoes and that coat, jeeeeez!"  TH photo.

Eastern Salt imaginator Dan Adams and his stunning bride Marie were there, of course. They asked us in fun how long she could be referred to as a bride, what with their having tied the knot just last June or so, if we're remembering correctly. "One year," we replied. "Then you can call her anything you want." Oh, gosh. Battle-of-the-sexes jokes aren't so funny when you're young. May their life together be blessed with love and understanding. TH photo.

We love these guys. They lend the light fantastic to any gathering. Such magic. TH photo.

Paul Lamb, dock manager of Eastern Salt and Leo Mahoney, the Father of All Chelsea Salt Piles, brought gravitas, a great hawaiian shirt and a superb bowler hat to the day's festivities. TH photo.

Say cheese. City Manager Jay Ash — wicked tall with sandals, right of center — presented the Coast Guard with a totally awesome Chelsea Clock in recognition of all they do to make our shores safe for democracy. TH photo.

Company president Shelagh Mahoney with her papa and the next generation smile for the cameras. Sissy Willis photo.

Wow are we lucky to have the dog folks, Kayem, as a local sponsor. Yummy!!! TH photo. 

Well look at that! A sign featuring a photograph of one of the salt mines (left) and one of our own photographic images of the working waterfront (right) inviting Maritime Festival goers to walk around the corner and visit the "Landing Salt" exhibition. SW photo

There's that ubiquitous woman with a camera, Teresa herself, chatting with the guard lady at the "Landing Salt" show, with Ken and Tuck in the foreground studying a satellite image of Eastern Salt and environs on the gallery floor. SW photo.

Teresa found, as we had a couple of weeks back, that that lovely guard lady at the Pearl Street Gallery had become enchanted with the show, learning for the first time in her life where road salt comes from and how it gets to market.

We broke bread — and sipped the bubbly — together last night with our party of six and this morning with the usual suspects left over after an extended wee-hour marathon. Deep, dark and delicious. These gatherings are not for the faint of heart.

Update: Teresa's take here and lots more pictures with captions here.         

Posted by Sissy Willis on August 03, 2008 at 10:05 PM in Chelsea Projections | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Please your honours," said he, "I'm able,
By means of a secret charm, to draw
All creatures living beneath the sun,
That creep or swim or fly or run,
After me so as you never saw!

Out came the children running.
All the little boys and girls,
With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls,
And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls,
Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.

— Robert Browning's The Pied Piper of Hamelin (cover illustration by Kate Greenaway)

"To the movement conservatives in charge of McCain's campaign, and to the movement conservative that McCain himself has settled in to being, Obama is just the most recent leader of a series of children's crusades — spoiled children's crusades," writes Marty Kaplan at The Huffington Post, unwittinglyy stumbling onto the truth about that "Celeb ad of McCain's that we can't stop blogging about. Imagining himself a soothsaying satirist on a "Fantastic Voyage" inside the conservative mind, Kaplan recognizes in spite of himself that "Celeb" is not about Barack Obama at all. In fact, it's about the adolescent fantasies of his groupies amongst the citizenry and their fellow travelers in the media.

Just as that New Yorker cartoon cover of Barack and Michelle Obama as Islamist terrorist and 60s "revolutionary" was meant to be about the hysteria of extremist Obama critics, so "Celeb" is meant to be about the hysteria of extremist Obama advocates. Neither has anything to do with Obama per se, beyond his ability to inhabit the superstar role of what Virginial Postrel has called "the fresh young prince onto whom Democrats project their hopes and dreams."

Update: "Secret charms …and looking for innuendo in all the wrong places." Dr. Sanity's Carnival of the Insanities will drive you crazy.

Update II: Maggie's links.

Posted by Sissy Willis on August 01, 2008 at 04:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (1)

Technorati Tags: celeb, marty kaplan, mccain, obama

Not unlike the editors of the Wall Street Journal, Baby Cakes — outside on the lawn early morning, locked up in a squirrel-monitoring mode — has little interest in presidential dog-and-pony shows.

"Both men have locked up in modes that surely have little interest to voters," declare the WSJ editors this morning, in high dudgeon over that anti-Obama "Celeb" ad we awarded four stars yesterday (Click here to view ad): 

Senator McCain's latest "inexperience" TV ad about his opponent opened with fleeting images of celeb babes Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, who likely don't know who he is. The celebrity link was a leap that fell flat. 

If that was silly, Senator Obama's verbal crackback at his opponent's criticism was more troubling. Campaigning in Missouri, he said: "So what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, 'He's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name,' you know, 'He doesn't look like all those other Presidents on the dollar bills.'"

Dog-and-pony shows? Tiny is not amused.

We beg to differ, of course:

1. For us, Barack Obama's race-card tricks are old hat. Why be "troubled" about his legerdemain now? As we blogged way back in December of 2006 when we picked up on something "troubling" the Illinois Senator said that seemed to elude our betters in the mainstream media — that people of our political persuasion are probably "not going to vote for me because I’m African-American" — Obama has been race-baiting Republicans like us from the starting gate.

She much prefers locking up in a mode of "rapt contemplation Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of her name: Her ineffable effable Effanineffable Deep and inscrutable singular Name."

2. As for the WSJ editors' dismissal of the McCain "Celeb" ad's conflation of fans' unquenchable thirst for all things Britney and Paris with Obamaniacs' similarly insatiable appetite for the object of their lust, our friends at the Journal would appear to be projecting their own high-falutin' preferences for low-key, measured, rational debate onto an unwilling populace.

Update: Dogs, ponies, snakes, snails and all things bright and beautiful, including Tiny and Baby, at Modulator's Friday Ark #202.

Posted by Sissy Willis on August 01, 2008 at 09:20 AM in Go Johnny, go!, Human nature, Idiotarianism, Look to the animals, The Oval Office | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (1)

Technorati Tags: Celeb ad, McCain, Obama, the race card

Chelsea Chamber of Commerce automobiles go tire to tire with earth-moving equipment across the street at Eastern Salt as respectable local business people take off on a cruise of Boston Inner Harbor to embrace for a few hours the "ephemerality, cacophony, multiplicity and simultaneity of Everyday Urbanism.

"I think that the years of captivity truly rattled his brain, as it would," writes our imail correspondent, taking the ball of Daniel Henninger's rhetorical "Is John McCain Stupid?" and running with it:

I think he's an idiot, in many ways. Comparing him to Obama, though, I LOVE the big old lug.

That's pretty much where we've been as of late in this disingenuously who-me? race-bating race from Hell, from the moment in December of 2006 that we got a glimpse of the cynical heart of darkness that is Barack Obama's game plan. That so many of our fellow Americans are buyin' his snake oil reminds us of how nothing changes but the date. McCain's new "Celeb" ad linking Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Barack Obama was a breath of fresh air to those of us on the right side of the aisle. The shock, shock and outrage of our friends on the other side of the aisle told us the McCain folks had hit a nerve.

"I have a blogpost in mind but haven't found the mental space to pursue it," we further imailed our sis, following a blow-by-blow accounting of a day of wall-to-wall cooking in preparation for the après ski  part of Saturday's Eastern Minerals Maritime Festival:

She: What is rattling the cell?

We: Having to do with that walkable neighborhoods thing and a ridiculous Chelsea Record article about Eastern Minerals' Maritime Festival. The first paragraph is right out of the liberal playbook.

She: Oh, no. Is the Record panning it already?

We: And I quote: "Chelsea's working waterfront can often seem like an unfriendly, uniniviting place." They introduce the concept with boilerplate anti-salt and then go on to praise the events: "Heavy machinery, mountainous piles of road salt and large seagoing ships are among the drawbacks that make the waterfront a less than ideal place to go for a stroll or take a leisurely walk. However, that will change this weekend as the Eastern Salt Company plays host to the Sixth Annual Eastern Salt Maritime Festival."

The search for beauty in unexpected places that is the essence of our worldview and the paradigm of Everyday Urbanism eludes the close-minded, inside-the-box thinkers of what we have called the "permanently angry folk of the Chelsea Green Space and Recreation Committee, who 'demand' that Eastern Minerals 'find an alternative site for the salt' and 'any remaining salt be covered with a solid structure, as required by state law.'" Chelsea Record reporter Joseph Domelowicz, Jr. appears to have bought their story, no questions asked. One man's drawbacks are another's romance of the sea.

More about "walkable neighborhoods" — ours is "Very Walkable" and Goomp's Camelot-by-the-Sea" is "Car-Dependant" according to Walk Score's algorithm —and how they may make you fat or thin as soon as we come up for air.

Posted by Sissy Willis on July 31, 2008 at 07:50 PM in Chelsea Projections, Go Johnny, go!, Hearts and minds, Idiotarianism, The Oval Office | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Goomp out on the terrace pronounces our Tomato Soup de Soie the love apple of his eye.

What to do when the homegrown tomatoes start feeling their oats? We clicked over to Epicurious.com and found the perfect cold tomato soup to serve as appetizer for Saturday's Clambake Lite down Goomp's. See below for preparation notes. The clambake itself was clamless. Unlike last summer's no-holds-barred Bill Foster's Down East Clambake to go, we simplified, simplied: Lobsters — Hannaford's steamed 'em to order — corn on the cob, potato salad, grilled red dogs and garden salad. Lobster roll for Goomp and nutcrackers, picks and drawn butter for the rest of us. Another new recipe, Shortbread Lemon Bars, for dessert.

"Force purée through a fine sieve … discarding seeds," says Epicurious. Waste-not-want-not Yankee that we are, we kept the seeds and other solids left in the sieve and used a dollop as garnish for broccoli soup.

Tomato Soup de Soie, our latest Cold Turkey Cookbook triumph, comes straight out of the Epicurious files. We didn't change a thing. Just peel and purée your tomatoes, add a little lemon juice, lemon zest, chopped scallion greens, sugar, dried thyme, marjoram, salt and pepper to taste. Serve in your finest soup bowls to showcase the dazzling color, and top with a dollop of sour cream. As diners spoon into the dollop, the swirling factor becomes part of the eye appeal. Click here for detailed instructions. The Food Network makes peeling tomatoes look easy. The trick is to plunge 'em into boiling water for a few seconds and then immediately into iced water. We used a plastic spatula to force the juice through our fine sieve.

Tuck, Goomp and Suzi wait for the hostess to lift her spoon so they can all dip into the soup du jour.

With his eye ever on the prize, Babe goes for the jugular of the bag of lobsters.

Moving back and forth between kitchen and supply room, we noticed Baby Cakes hovering near the bag of lobsters. In self-defense of our own meal, we fine-tuned the Babe's minute-by-minute location accordingly, carrying him to the supply room and depositing him there while we gathered things from the #2 fridge. By the time we got back to the kitchen, Cakes was just arriving back there himself for another lobster vigil. From imail with Suzi next morning:

She: I was remembering your carrying Baby around like a fashion accessory yesterday.  Wicked tow koot.

We: I wish you HAD taken peectures, peectures.

She: I know.  It was classic, and priceless. What I loved was that he didn't seem to mind . . . didn't fight you, or claw to get away.  Kind of went limp, like a Fendi purse.  :-)

We: Kind of like the kitten being transported by the nape of the neck in the mother's mouth.

Tuck, the man of many hats, becomes a man of leisure for the day.

Suzi loves Chris loves Mom loves Barney II. Check out the mother's glamorous Michael Stars designer jeans with the perfect fit.

Chris takes the wheel as we head out after lunch to perform the annual ritual of total immersion in the waters of the Atlantic.

After lunch we drove over to York Harbor Beach across the river from Goomp's Camelot-by-the-Sea. Just as we arrived, a parking place opened up magically a stone's throw from the shore, where a larger-than-usual throng was starting to believe life's a beach.

All agreed the scene had the look and sound and feel of the early scenes of "Jaws."

Life IS a beach. Everybody into the surf!

There weren't too many babes, Tuck and Chris decided, but that's the trade-off when you're talking a family beach. No radios or other canned music broke the spell of the soundmix of waves breaking and retreating and happy people frolicking in the water and playing in the sand.

Talk about playing in the sand.

Toes sanded up as we dripped dry in the afterglow of a rousing session of body surfing. The waves were bigger and more powerful than usual — due to "a strong storm system" at sea, we learned next day — for this pristine little strand tucked between the granite bedrock of Eastern Point and Stage Neck near the mouth of the York River. When you catch the wave just before it breaks, it carries you straight and true into the shallows. Laughing and feeling as light as air, you pick yourself up and head out for more, enjoying the sensation of letting some of the interim waves crash in your face before the next perfect wave takes you soaring again.

Posted by Sissy Willis on July 28, 2008 at 09:51 PM in By the sea, Cold Turkey Cookbook, Look to the animals | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (1)

This image of you-know-who giving the sieg heil salute to a mob of rock concert fans near the "take-down-this-wall" site of President Reagan's June 12, 1987 remarks at the Brandenburg Gate made our blood run cold. All those mostly pink forearms raised in a cascading lambda of mindless "yes-we-can" bandwagonism called to mind the wizened limbs of the victims of the holocaust. Obama's flip-flopping political antics are par for the course, of course -- we've had his number since December of 2006  when he gratuitously called us a racist -- but there are two things now that haunt us: 1. The timeless hysteria of the history-challenged multitudes and 2. The fellow travelership of the still so-called mainstream media.

“My opponent, of course, is traveling in Europe, and tomorrow his tour takes him to France … a throng of adoring fans awaits Senator Obama in Paris — and that’s just the American press,” quipped John McCain the other day. We'd missed those bon mots at the time but stumbled upon them in our Site Meter stats this morning at Democracy Project. McCain has always been what's termed "problematic" for us, from McCain-Feingold on down to pandering to the anthropogenic-global-warming crowd. At the same time, in years gone by when we were still able to stomach Imus in the Morning on MSNBC, McCain's quick-on-the-uptake sense of humor was always a hoot, something you'd never get from the Obamessiah. As we blogged awhile back, given the alternatives, in "How I learned to stop worrying and love John McCain":

"Nothing in America is inevitable. We are the captains of our fate. We can overcome any challenge as long as we keep our courage and stand by our principles," Super-Duper Tuesday's Republican man of the hour John McCain told supporters and the immediate universe in his Victory Party speech last night [via A Second Hand Conjecture]. The words were what we disaffected freedom-loving, small-government-embracing, invisible-hand-holding types thought we'd never hear from the free-speech-restricting, anthropogenic-global-warming-proseletyzing, economics-challenged frontrunner who is enjoying what Shepard Smith is calling a "monster lead" over rivals Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. Who knew the proprietor of the Fast-Talking Straight Talk Express had principles?

"And when I came to the room with shoes, nothing but empty shoes, I broke down," wrote Jeff Jarvis of his epipany at the Holocaust Museum in DC a few years back. We blogged about it in our post "The city upon a hill shines through."

That sea of mostly pink forearms raised in support of Barack Obama's dreamy "yes we can" chimera echoed ironically the ocean of empty shoes pictured poignantly at the Holocaust Museum in DC.

Posted by Sissy Willis on July 28, 2008 at 07:19 AM in Let's roll! | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Everyday Urbanism will out. "Between 12 and 2 pm next Saturday the USCG will perform a vertical delivery on the salt dock" across the street from us here at Chelsea-by-the-Sea, emails Dan Adams re the highlight of Eastern Salt's Chelsea Maritime Festival 10 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, August 2:

A helicopter hovers high over the ground, and USCG personnel repel down cables onto the dock … It should be a really spectacular demonstration and vision.

"The newest and most powerful tractor tug in Boston is Leo," according to Professional Mariner. Leo will be dockside across the street for tours August  2 for Eastern Salt's Chelsea Maritime Festival.

We're hoping for the totally awesome repro of Darwin's Beagle with state-of-the-art innards for sometime next year, but while we're waiting, the "newest and most powerful tractor tug in Boston," Leo will be lying alongside Eastern Salt next weekend for interested boarding parties:

Boston’s traditional tugboat company, Boston Towing & Transportation, has had to make room this year for an expanded, refinanced and revitalized competitor — Constellation Martitime, acquired by Foss Maritime of Seattle in 2006 …

Out at the end of Pier 1 in Charlestown, near the autoport at the end of Terminal Street, just north of the Charlestown Navy Yard, it’s beginning to look like a Foss Maritime satellite yard with half a dozen green and white tugs tied up around a couple of work barges, one of which houses a maintenance facility and offices. What’s left of the old Constellation fleet — tied up around the corner — is totally eclipsed by the newer and more powerful green and white Foss tugs. While a couple of new Foss tractor-style tugs get the headlines these days, a handful of very capable twin-screw tugs are also there to do the heavy hauling.

Most of them are being renamed after stellar constellations, except the newest and most powerful — the 5,080-hp z-drive tractor, Leo, which arrived in Boston in mid-March already bearing a constellation name. Leo and another Foss tractor, the 3,000-hp cycloidal-drive tug America (just renamed Orion), were both towed around from the West Coast as dead ships, arriving with a disfiguring coating of ice at the tail end of winter.

Boston Towing, with 13 tugs including two LNG-capable, z-drive tractor tugs, still has the majority of ship-assist work in this mid-sized port — estimated to be at least 75 percent market share — but Constellation, backed by an aggressive parent company eager to build itself as a national brand, is sure to be coming on strong in the near future.

We're totally into the USCG these days, our nephew's beloved's being a member of the crew of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Tahoma of cocaine-busting fame. Our exhibition at Pearl Street Gallery just up the street from Eastern Salt will be open for tours during the festival, and for friends of sisu there'll be food and drink at Chelsea-by-the-Sea following the formal event. If you're in the area —or if not, feel free to go out of your way — please stop by.

Posted by Sissy Willis on July 25, 2008 at 07:43 PM in Chelsea Projections | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Tiny relaxes mid morning surrounded by the English ivy that covers the neighbor's house.

"Hoo, boy - thems is some kittehs," comments ailurophile par excellence Elisson re the Chelsea Grays. Here's lookin' at you, kid.

A bristling specimen of common burdock (Arctium minus) — Old World invasive biennial forb of waste places and member of the daisy family (Compositae or Asteraceae) — has set up shop just under the forsythia by the side steps at Chelsea-by-the-Sea, a perfect place for our camera's eye to study its progress from flower to seed. The first-year rosette of basal leaves went unnoticed by us, but this year's bushy crop of stunning magenta and pink flowerheads surrounded by hooked green burrs (x 4) towering over the stairs is making quite a splash. 

You're probably aware that the "hook and loop fastener" Velcro was inspired by the structure of burdock's fruit, but did you know it all started in the Alps?

Detail of botanical illustration of Arctium minor shows cross section of flowerhead (magenta and pink) enclosed in a prickly burr or involucre, a series of bracts or phyllaries (green turning to brown when ripe) with hooks curving inward. (Flora von Deutschland Österreich und der Schweiz, 1885)

From SwissInfo.org's How a Swiss invention hooked the world:

It was in 1941 that [Velcro inventor Georges] de Mestral had his eureka moment. Walking his dog in the woods, he spotted that his woollen socks and jacket and his dog's fur were covered with burrs — small seeds or dry fruits found in many types of plant including thistles and, in this case, burdock.

Back home, de Mestral slipped a few burrs under a microscope and saw that their barbed, hook-like seeds meshed with the looped fibres in his clothes … in 1955, the hook-and-loop fastener was patented under the name Velcro, which comes from the French words "velours" (velvet) and "crochet" (hook).

Most "flower flies have "yellow-and-black stripes and are excellent mimics of wasps or bees," according to the US Forest Service site. "Flies are considered 'incidental' pollinators," adds the USDA Agricultural Research Service, "moving pollen on their body hairs from one flower to another as they search for nectar." This striking specimen was busy incidentally pollinating flowers of gold of pleasure, AKA false flax (Camelina sativa), another weedy plant of waste places that caught our camera's eye this morning along a seedy stretch of sidewalk during walkies. Camelina has "long been grown in Europe, its oil used as a lamp oil until the 18th century.

Gold of pleasure (Camelina sativa), a weedy member of the  Brassicaceae or Cruciferae (AKA the crucifers, mustard family or cabbage family) of economic plants is another one of those "volunteers" in our own backyard that promises to be a boon to mankind. According to a Journal of Applied Poultry Research study, it is "one of various oilseed crops being studied for its potential value in biofuel production. The resultant by-product of oil extraction, camelina meal (CM), could be marketable as a livestock feed.

Update: Compare profile of burdock blossom, far right, with cross-section of flowerhead in botanical illustration above.

We stumbled onto camelina's virtues the other day when the Professor commented "I certainly agree that non-food-based biofuels are the future. Corn-based ethanol is justifiable, if at all, only as a bootstrapping measure," linking to an AgWeb article by Dr. Don Panter, President of Sustainable Oils, LLC:

Most important to the debate of fuel vs. food is the fact that biodiesel can be produced from non-food crops. Camelina, for example, is a non-invasive, oilseed crop of the mustard family. It can be grown in arid conditions or rotated with cereal crops and requires low amounts of fertilizer and pesticides. Aptly nicknamed “gold of pleasure,” the high-yielding energy-crop boosts farm revenues by creating a food-plus-fuel scenario. The meal produced from crushed camelina can be used to create omega-3 enriched feed for livestock, a significant benefit that has gotten swept away in the controversy. The beauty of non-food crops like camelina is that they are here today and don’t require new technology breakthroughs, just a commitment to see them succeed.

Update II: Burdock receives a gentleman caller, one of those fuzzy flower flies that looks like a bee to the untrained eye, "but there are several features that make it easy to separate [Syrphus sp.] from a bee: the eyes are huge, the antennae are short and stubby with a bristle half-way along, there’s nowhere to carry pollen and there is only one pair of wings." 

And camelina's bounty isn't just for diesel-powered vehicles, livestock and flower flies:

Camelina's other attraction is its possible application in human nutrition. It has a unique fatty acid profile that could make it a good source of omega three and omega six fatty acids. McVicar suggests that the health food industry is currently seeking products that have improved health attributes, which might present new opportunities for camelina.

The biblical parable of the mustard seed comes to mind:

And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

                — Matthew 17:20 (King James Version)

Back to biodiesel, Rudolph Diesel himself planted the seed — a peanut seed — over a hundred years ago, as BioShuttles explains:

Biodiesel has been around for over a century. Dr. Rudolf Diesel actually invented the diesel engine to run on vegetable oil and in fact when he presented his engine at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900, his engine was running on a fuel derived from peanut oil. Prior to his death in 1913 he stated that; "The diesel engine can be fed with vegetable oils and would help considerably in the development of agriculture of the countries which use it."

"The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today. But such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum and the coal tar products of the present time." However due to the low cost of mineral oils at the time his engine was modified to run such oils. However, in European countries since the mid 1990's and in UK since 2002 reductions in biofuels duty has made the use of biodiesel economically viable as is now seen to be the "sustainable fuel of the future".

The Lord and the Invisible Hand move in mysterious ways.

Update: Maggie's links, commenting on the old saying that "The good Lord didn't create anything without a purpose, but mosquitoes come close":

'Toon from Theo. It's wrong, though. Without mosquitoes, we would have no Gin and Tonics.

Be sure to check out all the links. It's a treasure trove, as usual.

Update II:  A treasure trove of links to all things bright and beautiful at Modulator's Friday Ark #201

Update III: Lots more things bright and beautiful at Carnival of the Cats #228, now playing at Cat.Synth.com.

Posted by Sissy Willis on July 23, 2008 at 10:44 PM in Great works, Look to the animals, Plantarum, Science | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (2)

Out on the east drive this morning, Babe inspects the detritus of Tuck's project to reset the posts, restore the fence and reset that part of the brick walk and steps along the side of the house disrupted by the Big Dig two weeks back.

Notice the difference in green between typical New England midsummer brown lawn (foreground and background) vs. spring-green rogue patches of grass growing in amongst the bricks of the drive. Do the bricks set into the soil act as a dry well drawing water towards the roots?

Taking his work seriously, Inspector Cakes leaves no stone unturned.

Update: Artsy Catsy presents Carnival of the Cats #227, "the greatest traveling cat show on the face of the Earth."

Posted by Sissy Willis on July 21, 2008 at 06:05 PM in Look to the animals | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (1)

Looking for love in all the right places. TV screen shot of a young pilgrim basking in the warm glow of BXVIs blessing during Papa Ratzi's triumphant visitation to Australia for World Youth Day 2008.

"Euphoria in politics is an invitation for disappointment," Eckart von Klaeden — a German parliamentarian and foreign policy expert in Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union — said with reference to Herr Obama's imminent visit to the Fatherland:

"One reason Obama is so popular here is that people expect him to break radically with the politics of Bush, without any understanding of what this would involve," said Eckart von Klaeden …

He likened the huge crowds Obama is expected to draw in Europe to those that cheered on former Chancellor Helmut Kohl during the build-up to German unification. Kohl's fans turned against him when his promises of "flourishing landscapes" in eastern Germany failed to materialize.

Benedetto schmoozes down under with youthful pilgrims from the four corners of the earth.

Back on this side of the pond, "Moving abruptly to the center, as Mr. Obama has been doing, may be a smart overall political strategy," notes the WSJ, "But it clearly comes at some cost to his standing among his most idealistic supporters."

ABC's George Stephanopoulos says enthusiasm for the Democratic candidate among young voters "has been dampened" and "all of the questions in recent weeks on whether or not Barack Obama is shifting positions, becoming 'a typical politician,' is turning some of them off."

Thank God. He may not be the anti-Christ, but Obama's line is as old and tired as the hills, his recently astronomical poll numbers the wages of history-free public education and wishful thinking. 'Wonder how much overlap there is between the youngsters who look to the Lord, through Benedetto, for their help and those who look to Barack Obama for their personal salvation? Enough about the unspeakably narcissistic Democratic presidential candidate and the sheeple who bleat to his call. Let's move on to the Vicar of Christ.

"Before the Pope and the crowds arrived, Sydney tried hard to be cynical about the whole affair," says Time, succumbing to the glory of it all in spite of itself:

People asked why the government was spending $80 million on World Youth Day, a Catholics-only event. They grumbled that streets would be closed and traffic disrupted.

Then the pilgrims came. The winter weather turned heavenly — one blue day after another. And the crowds of youths weren't quite the kind party-mad "Sinny" is used to. They were happy, patient, peaceable. They sang hymns and waved flags. When protesters threw condoms at them, they shouted, "Jesus loves you, too."

Throughout the week, attendees filled Sydney’s streets, in groups clearly identifiable by their bright backpacks and occasionally breaking into song. For many, part of the joy had been being with like-minded people, what the organizer of World Youth Day, Bishop Anthony Fisher, called “the ability to say ‘God’ in public, not having to hide it away in church for an hour each week.”

Then there was the NYT, whose "despite" tells everything about the editors' anti-Catholic mindset:

"Despite the presence of hundreds of thousands of young visitors, 125,000 of them from overseas, there was almost no trouble," the New York Times reported.

The police reported only one arrest, of a young Australian Catholic who punched a demonstrator who was throwing condoms into a crowd of pilgrims to protest the church’s stand on birth control and its opposition to the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.

"The world needs this renewal," Benedict said. "In so many of our societies, side by side with material prosperity, a spiritual desert is spreading; an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair."

'Guess the Times didn't have the time to notice the body language of "happy, patient, peaceable" youngsters feeling the joy. It wasn't "despite" their presence but BECAUSE OF their presence that there was "almost no trouble." As Benedetto said, “Our world has grown weary of greed, exploitation and division … of the tedium of false idols and piecemeal responses, and the pain of false promises.” Obama who?

"From the forlorn child in a Darfur camp, or a troubled teenager, or an anxious parent in any suburb, or perhaps even now from the depth of your own heart, there emerges the same human cry for recognition, for belonging, for unity," he told a gathering of 180,000 pilgrims during an evening vigil on the eve of his final Sunday mass.

“A new age in which hope liberates us from the shallowness, apathy and self-absorption which deaden our souls and poison our relationships. Dear young friends, the Lord is asking you to be prophets of this new age, messengers of his love, drawing people to the Father and building a future of hope for all humanity.”

That "human cry for recognition, for belonging, for unity" struck a cord here, where the importance of being noticed is our ur-theme, from the suicidal monsters who terrorized London to the astronauts who flew to "the stars." As we've said before, it's all about whom you choose as your peers.

Update: A chorus of human cries for recognition at Dr. Sanity's Carnival of the Insanities.

Posted by Sissy Willis on July 20, 2008 at 06:31 PM in Pope Blogging, The Oval Office | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Designer Philippe Starck talks about his TeddyBearBand [1998 for Moulon Roty]: "In my opinion, an overabundance of toys fosters infidelity. As an advocate of the one-true-love approach, I dreamt of a single toy that would serve as an apprenticeship for the lasting human relationships that await our children."

"Everything I designed was unnecessary," superstar French designer Philippe Starck told an interviewer last March, bemoaning the state of his art and soul:

"I was a producer of materiality and I am ashamed of this fact," Starck told Die Zeit weekly newspaper … Starck, who is known for his interior design of hotels and Eurostar trains and mass consumption objects ranging from chairs to tooth brushes and lemon juice squeezers, went on to say that he believed that design on the whole was dead.

"In future there will be no more designers. The designers of the future will be the personal coach, the gym trainer, the diet consultant," he said.

Starck said the only objects that he still felt attached to were "a pillow perhaps and a good mattress." But the thing one needs most, he added, was the "ability to love." 

"It seems to have nothing to do with the whole idea of yachting, which is about cruising around at a leisurely pace, and enjoying your friends and the sea," the WSJ quotes leading British yacht designer Donald Starkey re Russian billionaire industrialist Andrey Melnichenko's new yacht, A. "Created by Philippe Starck, the superstar French designer of lemon squeezers and luxury hotels, A is a deliberate slap in the face to an industry known for its classic conformity," comments the Journal.

What's got M. Starck so upset? Maybe it was that yachtspotter.com comment about his design (above photo) for Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko's new yacht:

Starck shouldn't design yachts. It's a monster.

Cherchez la femme. "After the marriage, Mrs. [Aleksandra] Melnichenko turned [the Starck-designed ship] A into one of her pet projects … She downsized the disco and commissioned new more practical furniture with the aim of turning Mr. Starck's 'hotel into more of a home,' according to someone close to the project."

Or was the designer's discomfit induced by the decadence of clients whose idée of celebrating Starck's restoration of a historical Paris hotel was to invite a coterie of celebs to trash the place?

"Yeah, you know, the usual throwing the telly out of the window type of thing," Kanye West (unattributed photo, left) is reported to have characterized a recent VIP "demolition party" in Paris. The rap artist and hip hop producer, "who roamed the corridors with a bemused-looking Yves Carcelle, said that trashing hotel rooms was old hat." West's mascot and trademark is a teddy bear, above on the cover of his singles album "Stronger."

Can you say displacement — in the Dr. Sanity sense of "the separation of emotion from its real object and a redirection of the [usually intense] emotion toward someone or something that is less offensive or threatening in order to avoid dealing directly with what is frightening or threatening." We're thinking of the French housing-project riots. Normally the displacement would involve BDS, but here it was good, clean fun, fiddling while Paris burns:

Hundreds of select guests are invited Thursday night to wreck and smash one of Paris' grandest hotels, the Royal Monceau, in a performance-style "Demolition Party" before it closes for renovation.

From teaspoons to tables, a million euros worth of hotel contents were put up for auction ahead of its year-long makeover by design guru Philippe Starck.

VIP guests, fitted with helmets, are invited to take a hammer and chisel to the rest, walls and left-over furniture included, as concerts and art performances are staged in the hotel's wings.

"The cream of Paris' intellectuals and artists are invited to this festive, ferocious happening," the hotel said in a statement.

The demolition party that went down at the The Hotel Royal Monceau in Paris wasn't just any old party. This is Paris after all. and the hotel managed to make their demolition artistic by inviting 25 contemporary artists and celebs to "artistically ruin" the hotel rooms on the third floor.

"Meanwhile Philippe Starck was on hand at the party dishing about his renovation plans for the hotel," reports Hotel Chatter:

He also said he's more focused on "democratic eco-friendly projects." He even mentioned a green building in LA that he's working on and while he couldn't elaborate he said it was going to be "big."

 A mini-turbine of one's own. It's where market forces lead. Starck knows and goes where the invisible hand leads: "Environment becomes a good business opportunity. In the end, why not? As long as the final result is to help us to survive and to continue the evolution of our civilization that is based on intelligence."

"Philippe Starck’s personal invisible windmill ‘Democratic Ecology’ (above) was introduced at Milan’s Greenergy Design show earlier this year in a vibrant display relaying the intent to enable every man, woman and child on Earth to generate their own power in designer style," reports Inhabitat:

The transparent mini-turbine will be available to all in September 2008 and, in typical Starck style, if everyone’s going to have one he’s going to make sure they all look great.

"If you can't use things for what they're not intended for, you have no business on the Internet," writes poet-in-residence Greg of Sippican Cottage. "The kids like the tinkertoy vibe of the plumbing pipe. I like the kids," he says re building a better mousetrap horsefly trap in his basement.

Closer to home, local superstar designer Greg of Sippican Cottage, a man with a plan, makes "democratic eco-friendly projects" (above) look like child's play.

Posted by Sissy Willis on July 18, 2008 at 09:06 PM in Great works, Idiotarianism | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Technorati Tags: Aleksandra Melnichenko, democratic ecology, Kanye West, Melnichenko, Royal Monceau, Starck, Yves Carcelle

"They are like bookends. They will bring you many years of pleasure," a veterinarian's assistant predicted years ago of then kittens Tiny (above) and Baby (below), out in the side yard this afternoon assuming full bookend posture.

Googling a half-remembered quotation [see caption, above] from our post "An exultation of adolescence" of a couple of years back, we had a eureka moment this evening — unrelated to the quotation itself — reading the words of Dr. Joy Bliss of Maggie's Farm:

What if the part of human nature which wants paternalism, or maternalism, in the State is sometimes, or often, stronger than the part that wants freedom and self-determination?

It called to mind our imail conversation with Goomp yesterday morning as we shared thoughts on Thomas Sowell's latest essay, "Are Facts Obsolete?" First, here's Tom:

As the hypnotic mantra of "change" is repeated endlessly, few people even raise the question of whether what few specifics we hear represent any real change, much less a change for the better.

Raising taxes, increasing government spending and demonizing business? That is straight out of the New Deal of the 1930s.

The New Deal was new then but it is not new now. Moreover, increasing numbers of economists and historians have concluded that New Deal policies are what prolonged the Great Depression.

Babe mirrors Tiny's leonine pose in the countdown to supper.

"It is depressing how ignorant people are of how the world works," Goomp wrote, responding to Dr. Sowell's point that "A politician's problem is how to look like he is for 'the poor' and against those who are 'exploiting' them. The facts are irrelevant to maintaining that political image":

Goomp [channeling Dr. Bliss's question]: It is all because they want to escape from personal responsibility.

We: They want to continue to suckle at the maternalistic udder.

He: And be told how wonderful they are.

And politicians are only too happy to oblige. Flirting dangerously with Godwin's Law, we summed things up awhile back in "What's wrong with the utopianist left world view," our post linked by Dr. Bliss in her own post referenced above:

As we've blogged early and often, the totalitarian instinct runs deep and dark in our species. It is forever raising its ugly head on both ends of the political spectrum, and cheating your way to victory is precisely where it's at. Ends justify the means. That's why commies and Nazis -- not to mention Islamofascists -- parrot the same party line: We educated elites know what's best for you plebes. Bill and Hill's "What if you spend your money wrong?" and "We are going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good" come to mind.

Then there's "libertarian paternalism," a subliminal approach to political persuasion that has "caught the imagination of top politicians" including Barack Obama, according to a breathless London Times interview of behavioral scientist Richard Thaler, co-author with Cass Sunstein of Nudge:

So why the political interest? Because you can influence people's choices without being accused of "nannying" and it is cheap. Or, as the authors put it: "If incentives and nudges replace requirements and bans, government will be both smaller and more modest … In short, libertarian paternalism is neither left nor right, neither Democratic nor Republican. In many areas, the most thoughtful Democrats are going beyond their enthusiasm for choice-eliminating programs. In many areas, the most thoughtful Republicans are abandoning their knee-jerk opposition to constructive governmental initiatives."

Considering ourselves among "the most thoughtful Republicans," we are skeptical. So is David Gordon of the Ludwig von Mises Intitute, who notes that "Tocqueville long ago warned against the policies of which libertarian paternalism is an example." Blogger Cassy Fiano gets it just right in her post — with video link — on GWs press conference this morning where he tells mewling reporters that "Americans are smart enough to figure out whether they're going to drive less or not."

Liberals just can’t seem to grasp the fact that people don’t need their all-knowing wisdom-filled genius to live happy and full lives. When President Bush said that it was presumptuous to tell Americans how to live their own lives, I wanted to cheer. It’s something that liberals aren’t able to understand. They think that the American people are idiots who can’t be trusted to be intelligent enough to figure things out on their own, and therefore need liberals to come in and do everything for them.

And now back to Dr. Joy Bliss for the final word:

State parentalism is one step from totalitarianism. And not just psychologically, but also in reality. First, you get the people used to the idea that they can depend on the government to take care of you and to solve your problems (rather than simply to defend you, and to keep life reasonably fair), and, having slowly softened them up, you build on that until you can't smoke a cigarette in your car without getting fined, or find a decent fried chicken take-out in NYC.

We're smart enough, Barack Obama. Oh, and we're not a racist.

Update: Congratulations to the blogosphere's own Noah, our good blogfriend Steve of Modulator, for launching the Friday Ark on its 200th outing!

Update II: Lots more smart talk at Dr. Sanity's Carnival of the Insanities.

Posted by Sissy Willis on July 17, 2008 at 12:08 AM in Idiotarianism, Look to the animals, The Oval Office, To market, to market, What does a Democrat want? | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (1)

Alan, Tuck and Carol degli spiriti last evening on the terrace.

"This duality, which is familiar in the work of such important twentieth-century American photographers as Ansel Adams and Walker Evans, is linked to photography's ambivalent posture — as tool and product, means and result, reportage and artistic work," writes Gary R. Hilderbrand in the introduction to Alan Ward's totally awesome American Designed Landscapes: A Photographic Interpretion, a signed copy of which we were gifted with last evening when longtime blog commenter extraordinaire Carol Ward and her significant other came to break bread with us at Chelsea-by-the-Sea. We never read books at home — That's Tuck's job. He reads everything — the tininess of the type usually sending our fading eyesight careening to the internet, where you can increase the size of type with a click or two of the mouse. But for Alan's book and Gary's introduction, we make an exception. Gary was one of the best teachers ever during our Harvard School of Design days last century. We remember thinking of it in these terms: Gary was rather modest of physical stature, but when he came to your studio desk to look at your project to date and challenge you to be the best that you could be, his empathetic heart and historically-charged critical mind expanded to fill the entire universe for a few magical moments, when everything seemed possible.

Gary Hilderbrand's deep, dark and delicious professorial exposition on "photography's ambivalent posture" called to mind by contrast the egregious excesses of fauxtography, from al-Durah on down to the latest photoshopped gunboat-diplomacy travesties of the missile-happy Iranian dictators.  Our dear friend Scott Ott of ScrappleFace catches the conscience of the thing with "Iran Threatens to Photoshop Israel from Map":

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his nation’s missile tests this week are part of a previously-secret plan to “Photoshop Israel from the map.

”Images of the missile tests showed apparently-real, as well as computer-generated duplicates of Shahab missiles, which Iran claims have a range of up to 1,250 miles — long enough to strike Israel — a claim which has since been questioned by Western arms experts.

Mr. Ahmadinejad said that while it may take years to produce actual weapons that could strike “the Zionist state”, Iranian scientists and graphic artists have already demonstrated the ability, using Adobe® technology to “completely obliterate” Israel from the map.

Tiny of the tethers. She and the Babe were all over Carol and Alan, totally honest and true cat people. Usually when new folks drop by, the Chelsea Grays head for the hills. With the Wards, they just sat there, made eye contact and started to purr.

A couple of fascinating addenda. First this totally clueless, damned-by-faint-praise 1998 NYT "review" of Alan's book:

Nature happens but gardens don't, and the pleasure of large illustrated garden books is greatly increased if you can adopt a Bourbon indifference to the matter of labor and gaze over your demesne, like Louis XIV while Versailles was still a construction site, without noticing the little people at work upon it. And, of course, the invariable convention of large illustrated garden books is to show completely uninhabited gardens, as if the camera were king and everyone had suddenly ducked out of its regal path. Three very different but worthwhile examples of this genre.

Pathetically all about the reviewer with not an inkling of Alan's heart-grabbing vision of a "poetic balance between architecture and landscape; they are inseparable." And now, for something completely different relevant, Boss Tweed's insightful take on how to fool most of the people most of the time:

"Stop them damned pictures," Mr. Tweed complained. "I don't care so much what the papers say about me. My constituents can't read. But, damn it, they can see pictures!"

One of them is worth a thousand words.

Posted by Sissy Willis on July 13, 2008 at 09:50 AM in Great works | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (1)

"From our house to the White House, the People's Choice is now the President's Choice," we captioned this image of the late Tony Snow back in April 26, 2006, rejoicing that "The host of The Tony Snow Show will now host Helen Thomas, David Gregory and the other strange bedfellows of the White House Press Corps at weekly briefings, the President will announce today. (Aljazeera file photo)"

"The main thing about Tony Snow is that he had character," former boss Roger Ailes is telling Fox & Friends this morning as we mourn the loss of that incandescent light Ailes remembers as "a simple guy, with all of his intellect … but he was the epitomy of somebody who would say it's God, country and family." And from George H.W. Bush, another former employer:

He was a kind man. He was a generous man who wanted to help others. He was just a good person. He could disagree but do it agreeably, and so I think we can all learn from this good man.

Barbara Bush adds:

He was loyal to the core, and to a mother, that means the world. He didn't have a mean bone in his body.

In fond memory of this Renaissance man, full of humor and grace, we republish our post of April 26, 2006:

"That’s another thing that’s tremendous about Tony’s becoming the White House Press Secretary," writes blogfriend Laura Lee Donaho, using a personal anecdote to reveal something important about "Good Natured Tony Snow," who has officially answered the President's call:

This person was talking to Tony [on his radio show] about the weapons of mass destruction that hadn’t turned up in Iraq and explaining to him that while he had been stationed in Europe he had been on the V CORPS Headquarters staff and had seen a great deal of classified information that had convinced him that Saddam was a threat whether or not the WMD were ever found. Tony engaged him in conversation for quite some time, and as I listened I realized that it was my husband Tony was speaking to.

. . . The man has spoken to so many Americans through his many broadcasts on the Fox News Channel and Radio Network. He understands our viewpoints and possesses similar opinions. He will represent us to the Bush administration and to the national media better than any elected official ever could.

Aljazeera gives a fair and balanced report:

The Washington Post said Snow decided to accept the job after top officials assured him that he would not be just a spokesman but an active participant in administration policy debates.

The Post quoted sources as saying that Snow views himself as well-positioned to ease the tensions between the Bush White House and the press corps because he understands both politics and journalism.

Snow has written and spoken frequently about the current president -- not always in a complimentary way. The Center for American Progress [a great place to meet up with all the usual suspects], a liberal think tank, has circulated unflattering observations by Snow about Bush. 

We agree with Michelle Malkin that "He's exactly what the White House needs." Besides, Mr. Bush isn't afraid of a little constructive criticism. His choice of our beloved Tony is more proof, if it were needed, of the President's character -- not to mention his street smarts.

Update: "That there are already voices from the leftist sewer vilifying the man tells you everything you need to know about the left," writes Gaghdad Bob:

Naturally they've had to shut off the comments at Huffington Post, so that we can't see just how depraved they are. They are not just evil, but gutless. Everyone knew Tim Russert was a liberal, but I didn't see a single conservative say an unkind word about him.

I don't know why there aren't more people who are able to convey the joy, excitement, creativity, expansiveness, optimism, hope, compassion, decency, humor, spirituality, and love that animate conservatism. Maybe they just don't get it the way Snow did, and connect all the dots, both horizontal and vertical.

Be sure to read the whole thing for a take that is both depressing and uplifting at the same time.

Update: "A class act all the way," avers Dr. Sanity.

Posted by Sissy Willis on July 12, 2008 at 08:51 AM in Great works | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

"Leptin [computer-generated image of its structure by Vossman above] signals to the brain that the body has had enough to eat, or satiety," according to Wikipedia, which adds "A very small group of humans possess homozygous mutations for the leptin gene which lead to a constant desire for food, resulting in severe obesity." A new study suggests it isn't just the obese but all of us who are driven by the leptin imperative.

"They have essentially reinvented themselves, and they are worthy of the utmost admiration and respect," says Michael Rosenbaum — lead author of a brain-scan study by scientists at Columbia University Medical Center published in the July issue of Journal of Clinical Investigation — re folks like us who have "lost weight and kept it off." Melinda Beck of the WSJs Health Journal explains:

So, you ate less and exercised more and lost weight. But now the pounds are piling back on. You're hungrier than ever, and you can't seem to resist food. Once again, it's all your fault, right?

Wrong. Blame evolution, and the fact that for the vast majority of human history, famine was a bigger threat than flab. Even your seeming lack of will power is part of a complex biological system that drives humans who have lost weight to regain it …

"Loosely put, after you've lost weight, you have more of an emotional response to food and less ability to control that response," says Michael Rosenbaum …

The key driver of this system is leptin, a hormone secreted by fat cells. When humans (and rodents) lose 10% or more of their body weight, leptin falls rapidly and sets off a cascade of physiological changes that act to put weight back on. Skeletal muscles work more efficiently, thyroid and other hormones are reduced … all so the body burns 15% to 20% fewer calories, enough to put back 25 pounds or more a year.

"It's only been in recent decades that this mechanism is contributing more to obesity than survival," writes Beck, quoting Rudolph Leibel, a co-author of the Columbia study who helped discover leptin in the 1990s at Rockefeller University:

Now, anyone can summon an unlimited amount of food just with a cellphone.

"How do some people manage to overcome the leptin effect and keep weight off?" ponders Beck:

Generally by watching their food intake very carefully and continuing to increase their physical activity. "Anybody who has lost weight and kept it off will tell you that they have to keep battling," says Dr. Rosenbaum.

We don't know about increasing physical activity, as we've been walking about an hour a day through all the years of trim, tubby, trim, tubby, trim, tubby, obese and now normal BMI.  But "mindful eating" is where it's at. As we wrote in the comments of Beck's "Putting an End to Mindless Munching" two months back:

It's mind over matter, and it worked for me.

Just under a year ago I jumped on the "mindful eating" bandwagon and started blogging about my experience in the The Cold Turkey Cookbook. It took about 5 or 6 months to lose 40 pounds, and I've never looked back.

The key is to treat yourself to a host of small portions of delicious and colorful, sweet and savory dishes, including fruits, veggies, a mini muffin and a small bit of meat or fish.

That and a little of the bubbly, as George Will asserts in "Survival of the Sudsiest":

The development of civilization depended on urbanization, which depended on beer. To understand why, consult Steven Johnson's marvelous 2006 book, "The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic — and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World." It is a great scientific detective story about how a horrific cholera outbreak was traced to a particular neighborhood pump for drinking water. And Johnson begins a mind-opening excursion into a related topic this way:

"The search for unpolluted drinking water is as old as civilization itself. As soon as there were mass human settlements, waterborne diseases like dysentery became a crucial population bottleneck. For much of human history, the solution to this chronic public-health issue was not purifying the water supply. The solution was to drink alcohol.

"Often the most pure fluid available was alcohol — in beer and, later, wine — which has antibacterial properties. Sure, alcohol has its hazards, but as Johnson breezily observes, "Dying of cirrhosis of the liver in your forties was better than dying of dysentery in your twenties." Besides, alcohol, although it is a poison, and an addictive one, became, especially in beer, a driver of a species-strengthening selection process.

We'll drink to that.

Posted by Sissy Willis on July 11, 2008 at 09:01 PM in Cold Turkey Cookbook | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Technorati Tags: cold turkey cookbook, leptin, mindful eating

Outside early morning inspecting the site of yesterday's dismantlings and excavations, the Chelsea Grays were drawn to the garden gate, lying dismembered across the lawn in a favorite spot of theirs near the English ivy. Each in turn took the high ground (Babe, above left) atop the curiously located structure to survey the scene and then retreat to lower ground (Tiny) for rest and relaxation.

He caught wind of something cats smell that we don't, coming in on a river breeze from the south. Tiny, on medium alert with eyes mostly closed, kept a well-turned ear tuned in to sound cues upwind beyond the yard.

When something stirred above the retaining wall behind the house, Baby pulled an about face while Tiny — pehaps unaware of whatever it was her brother had heard because of her location behind the sound barrier of the gate post — continued to maintain a low profile.

Back inside, Tiny was not amused by the thank-you card we'd made for Ellen of Grove Street featuring Wheatland Terrier Barkely the Bighearted blending in with his surroundings at Ellen's elegant ladies' luncheon Wednesday. Neither was Tiny amused outside after dark on her tether yesterday when she had another run-in with a member of the local skunk community. Fortunately we had on hand the ingredients for an antidote, the "Skunk odor remedy" we'd linked in our post "Whatever is once polluted by it, is for ever useless" last March. Forget about tomato juice or products with names like "Nature's Miracle Skunk Odor Remover."  They don't work. Instead, try drenching your sweet little pussycat's muzzle, ruff and front legs with paper towels soaked in a mixture of baking soda, hydrogen peroxide and a little dishwashing liquid. The recipe calls for adding water, but we didn't bother. The straight sodium bicarbonate, H2O2 and Ultra Ivory Dish Liquid did the trick. It took a few hours for her silky fur to dry off and fluff back up, but the relief — for her smarting eyes and our nettled nose — was immediate.

Note: Hydrogen peroxide could damage the eyes. Tiny naturally closed hers while we were washing her face, but be sure to avoid wiping the eyes directly, instead daubing away from them upwards, downwards and sideways. Happy cat, happy mother of cats.

Update: "Tiny is just odorless," remarks Tuck this afternoon. "Amazing."

Update II: Elisson links with a soulful portrait of his blue-eyed beauty, Hakuna.

Update III: Lots more creaturely portraits at Modulator's Friday Ark #199.

Update IV: Carnival of the Cats #226 joins with the 53rd Edition of the Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos! for an all-cats-all-the-time supershow.

Posted by Sissy Willis on July 10, 2008 at 03:57 PM in Look to the animals | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)

Technorati Tags: chelsea grays, skunk odor remedy

The day the Deere men came. It will be remembered with much joy and celebration in these parts. How many months — years? — has it been since we dreaded every flush and tried to space every washing of dishes and clothes for fear of evoking evil fluids and vapors out of the ancient failed concrete pipes that run just this side of the east wall of the basement, site of Tuck's shop? It only got worse with time. Recently it was unmentionable. We will say no more at this time but only Hallelujah for our salvation this day. Above Tuck chats with miracle worker Jimmie Caron at the controls of the totally awesome John Deere backhoe that delivered us from evil.

Jimmie drove the backhoe up the east drive and set to work in the area beside the basement window at the southeast corner of the house. Above, the view from the front porch. Tuck had weeks ago removed bricks and set them aside on the east drive (just behind dirt pile) in preparation for their arrival.

Unto us this day in the city of Chelsea came the brothers Caron, Jimmie (orange shirt) and Paul (blue shirt), the very embodiment of those hard-working Americans our facile politicians are forever evoking in tremulous tones. The Carons used to employ perhaps twelve workers, but, they told Tuck, they're down to just the two of them, having realized they were doing all the work while their employees were watching. Their earnest and steady devotion to the task at hand called to mind "Christ Carrying the Cross" by Hieronymus Bosch (right). 

They're so darned good that they're usually occupied with big-time, public-related works. Our good luck today in getting them to work on our project was someone else's bad luck in having had a major piece of equipment break down. Above the view over our border garden towards the front of the house, porch at right.

Digging first with the backhoe and then by hand with shovels as they got down deeper,  the Carons carefully spared our precious plants — day lilies above on the precipice of the black hole beyond, and even the weedy milkweeds we treasure as nursery and nectar bar to so many interesting insects and arachnids throughout the growing season.

Speaking of watching men work, it was mesmerizing. The two brothers' having dug a grave-sized hole perhaps nine feet deep and the length and width of a casket, they ferreted out useless shards of the old, decrepit sewer pipe and laid in a shiny green PVC replacement (below just to right of Jimmie's head). Above Jimmie holds the water supply pipe they had installed years ago in his left hand while probing with shovel in his right for the remains of the sewer pipe.

They came, they saw and they conquered. Filled up the big hole before they headed out. Above Jimmie checks out stream of stuff now freed up and flowing from the basement as Tuck, pretty in blue, looks on, ever at the ready to lend a  hand. They'll finish up the details inside next time there's a rainy day. According to NOAA, all sun all the time for the next period of time.

"You sure work hard," we ventured, thanking the brothers for their awesome efforts and congratulating them for their ultimate success at the end of the day. Our contribution had been to flitter in and out with camera in hand as documentarian. "We're not fat," answered Jimmie.

"You won't have to go to the gym today," quipped Tuck.

Posted by Sissy Willis on July 09, 2008 at 08:31 PM in By the sea, Great works | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Living off the fat of the land. A delightful Ladies Luncheon at Ellen of Grove Street's this afternoon. The house she lives in was rebuilt by her grandfather following the Great Chelsea Fire of 1908, and every room is a revelation of craftsmanly carpentry — a mixture of old and new — and personal touches. Here a note-card reproduction of a local artist's watercolor of her ancestral home.

Above, the raised tin ceiling of her recently renovated kitchen lends a feeling of airiness, referencing ceilings of yore but in a fresh, up-to-the-minute iteration.

Perfect host Barkely, lord of the manor, is a Wheatland Terrior par excellence. He tried to keep his kisses to himself but couldn't resist giving Tuck's hands a good washing under the table.

Dueling salads, chicken and potato, with asparagus on the side, made for a coolly elegant menu on a muggy, muggy day. The chicken was based upon the Café at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's signature dish studded with pistachios, cranberries and chunks of apricot. Deelish!

Recently retired from a richly rewarding lifetime of teaching music to kids from K-4,  Ellen regaled us with tales of soothing the savage breast of the young and restless. Her bottom line: You don't let them get away with being uncivilized. Obama and the appeasers could learn a thing or two from our friend's wise counsel.

Her house was full of eye candy — everything seemed designed to complement our own white linen with mint green outfit, the same one we wore to the gallery opening two weeks back —  and original paintings by her father and a famous relative who'd studied in Paris and limited-edition 19th-century lithographs.

The dazzling centerpiece was fashioned of all things bright and beautiful from Ellen's own garden: Orange daylilies, pink and purple hydrangeas, delicate panicles of Coral Bells "Palace Purple" white flowers.

Even the desserts came off the land, a delicious cobbler with raspberries picked that morning in her lower forty. She hadn't planted them herself, but the neighbor's Rubus strigosus preferred her sunny garden to his shady one and jumped the fence. She sent us home with a bagful. Raspberry soup, anyone?

What a good dog.

Posted by Sissy Willis on July 08, 2008 at 07:26 PM in Great works | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (1)

If you're known by the company you keep, our own Betsy Ross Secret Soup (left) and Pajamas Media A-List blogger Roger Kimball (right) were caught with their pajama bottoms down this afternoon:

Who's that hussy, left, pretty in black, drawing the viewer's eye away from our patriotic bowl of soup? A super-sized-me lingerie model for Catherine's Plus Sizes 16W – 34W, that's who.

Same gal, together with a colleague, pretty in white, who's making our head spin as Roger Kimball's dapper image goes head-to-torso with the kind of thing that used to be hidden away in our day in the back pages of movie and women's magazines. Beyond the visual shock, shock, was the humorous disjunct between blogger's and advertiser's copy.

Take our own post, for starters, where we interspersed excerpts from the Declaration with anectodal reportage of our festive Fourth-of-July family gathering down east. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" vies with "Buy one, get one 50% off. 18 Hour Comfort Strap bra: A favorite for the comfort it delivers." But come to think of it, isn't that what the Founding Fathers were after? "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," however defined by the individual. Not to mention that the business of America is business. We say, bring 'em on!

Then there are Roger Kimball's cogitations on the undermining of American identity under fire from the cacophonous chorus of the cacodemons of pc and so-called multiculturalism — "really a form of mono-cultural animus directed against the dominant culture":

These various agents of dissolution are also elements in a wider culture war: the contest to define how we live and what counts as the good in the good life. Anti-Americanism occupies such a prominent place on the agenda of the culture wars precisely because the traditional values of American identity — articulated by the Founders and grounded in a commitment to individual liberty and public virtue — are deeply at odds with the radical, de-civilizing tenets of the “multiculturalist” enterprise.

Public virtue? When it comes to those Catherine's ads, the jury's still out, but if you're taking talking individual liberties, they're downright uplifting.

Update: Is that a Freudian slip bra?" asks Dr. Sanity in the latest Carnival of the Insanities, now open for business.

Update II: Is nothing sacred? Roger himself gets upstaged by the larger, lovelier "comfort strap bra" woman:

"Ah, the sophisticated voice of the Zabar’s Zeitgeist."

Update III: A pretty girl may be like a melody, but that ubiquitous plus-size model is to our eyes like unwelcome elevator Musak to our ears:

Gentlemen. There are ladies present.

Posted by Sissy Willis on July 05, 2008 at 08:48 PM in Blogging, Girls just wanna have fun, Why we fight | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

"Perhaps nowhere was patriotism so downplayed or deplored than among intellectuals in the Western democracies in the two decades after the horrors of the First World War," writes Thomas Sowell, noting that "Our media are busy verbally transforming American combat troops from heroes into victims, just as the French intelligentsia did — with the added twist of calling this 'supporting the troops.'" Tiny, above atop the Independence Day groaning board down east this afternoon, is not amused.

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

"It's the best dish you've ever made," declares Tuck re Betsy Ross's Secret Soup, the latest entry in our Cold Turkey Cookbook, debuted at family Fourth of July festivities down east at Goomp's this afternoon.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Cool and breezy, a combo of Silky Cauliflower Soup, Roasted Beet Soup and sour cream. We'd been thinking of using red and blue food coloring for an all-cauliflower concoction, but thanks to our sis we bumped it up a notch. "What if you used puréed beets for the red part? Borscht Belt. Color, unless it's a different taste sensation, is just color. Maybe put some tiny dollops of sour cream on as stars for Old Glory." Which we did, to elegant effect. But when it came to blue, the blueberry soup we tried didn't make the grade. Color was muddy and too red, so we colored a bit of the cauliflower soup for the field of blue.

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The usual beauty in unexpected places showed up in the sink, where a container of water-diluted beet soup with blue cover and pale yellow pastry decorating tube caught the light fantastic filtering through the red oaks outside the kitchen windows.

"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Inside-Out Cheeseburgers were first among equals of our mixed grill of Spring Chicken Delight, Kayem's red dogs and brats. Suzi's was filled with blue cheese. For the rest of us it was a combo of parmesan, goat cheese and cheddar. Wicked good.

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

The bold renegade carves a "T"  with his teeth, a "T" that stands for Tuckman. Update: Speaking of corn, Feed Folks, not Ferraris: "Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis" [via Instapundit].

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

When it's time for supper, the Chelsea Grays lay down their weapons and join forces to accomplish the task at paw.

"Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

Goomp frames the view from the terrace, where boats large and small, under power, sail and paddle, ply the mouth of the York Harbor River.

"The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world."

Let freedom ring.

Update: When in the course of surfing the web it becomes necessary to view large numbers of pictures of cute animals, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should head over to Modulator's Friday Ark #198.

Update II: A dazzling 225th Edition of Carnival of the Cats now open for business at the deep, dark and delicious House Panthers.

Posted by Sissy Willis on July 04, 2008 at 11:19 PM in By the sea, Cold Turkey Cookbook, Look to the animals | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (1)

• Index to Recipes
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  In case you were wondering, yes, Sissy does "got sisu," in abundance.
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  That soup would be suitable to be served at the White House at a state dinner.
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  Sisu is informative and innovative and refreshing.
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  BTW, that photo of Tiny is remarkable. Those eyes sparkle with life. And who but Sissy Willis can ennoble life's detritus, finding beauty in a Midden-Heap? Unexpected places, indeed.
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  The biological metaphor makes this a brilliant post.
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  Richard Landes and the France2 trial in a superb piece by SISU. Read it, or you will be beheaded.
• 
  Hillary Needs a VacationThe amazing SISU.
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  Sigmund, Carl and AlfredSissy Willis is smart. No news there. Sissy Willis is also a sharpshooter and Sissy Willis hits the bullseye.
• 
  

  Garrett Dash Nelson
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  Dem Apples doesn’t have to be a mere repository of apostrophic debates about liberalism and ironically amusing comments by slightly off-kilter cat women

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  One more nose-bite to you, Blogmother.

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  Sissy Willis at sisu puts on her psychological hat in this excellent post.

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  If you work really hard and write a really great blog, you get found out, too.
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  I am just stunned by that shot of the little leaves and petals with the sun rays hitting it. You are the mistress of beautiful little moments.

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  enrevanche
  Sissy Willis . . . just generally hits it out of the park.

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  Bill Quick
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  Sissy Willis's blog is much more than a repository of luscious foody goodness. It is also stuffed full of even more luscious Sissy goodness on politics, current events, personal experience, and just plain common sense.
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  Sissy's blog is excellent.
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  Tiny and Baby rule.
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  Sissy Willis has a great blog. Read her post on the convergence of the Islamicists and the Feminists -- two of my favorite suicidal movements.
• Roger L. Simon
  Sissy is one of my favorite bloggers because she is so skilled at moving from the personal and the cultural to the political and back again, something I think often gives a blog its authenticity.
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  This blogger writes with panache; you will also find her point of view fresh and sympatico.
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  I love the way you mix punditry, pets and party food!
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  Sissy is always coming up with connections other people don't see. It is one of her most delightful blog-traits.
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  Great post.
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  PERFECT IN EVERY WAY. WHAT A POST!!! BOFFO!!!DYNAMITE!!! A MUST SEE!!!
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  Huffington's Toast
  You KNOW Arianna adores you . . .
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  Today's BlogTruth on that fool Galloway
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  ANYBODY can report on Terri . . . only YOU can blend current events with poody footage.
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  You doll. Now I have a new site to read. Grrrrrr, but thanks.
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  Not bad. What's the brand?
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  People like you and your fellow bloggers are an important reason for hope.
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  Somehow I find myself heartily approving.
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  Er, you're welcome! But it's only a blog link.
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  Ed Moltzen
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  Two great tastes together: Sissy Willis combines political blogging with the growing phenomenon of cat blogging.
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  Absolutely, the best-looking blog, and not just a pretty face, either.
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  Sissy rules. She has a passion for mixing humor and politics that is inspirational.
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  The denial of "life's dark side in ourselves" is the key to what's wrong with the utopianist left world view.
• A Flag for Fallujah
  
• Whomping Willow
  Your synopses are dead-on, and I really like that you include images into your posts.
• Mrs. Cormier:
  Your blog has it all. Serious discourse and antic moments of great levity . . . a really nice balance of the sublime and the ridiculous.
• Ben
  "I particularly love the cat blogs.'A strong voice in the Kitchen Cabinet' is fabulous."
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  "If I were with you, I would rub your head."
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  "Sisu and JWR cover the waterfront."
• Daniel W. Drezner:
  "Sissy Willis makes me laugh."
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  "Your blog is always sharp and punchy. Makes me wonder: Who are you in non-blog life?"
• Susis
  "You ARE the curve, as well as being ahead of it."

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  Big Meows to Sisu, who I rely on for my regular cat fix.

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Adam MacBeth

1. Many sites don't want you to take your data with you to other sites as they see this as their crown jewels. Certainly this is true with Facebook as we've seen in their tizzy with Google over Friend Connect, though there's also Facebook Connect, which purportedly is all about data portablility.
2. A lot of these services don't expose RSS, either because their data is too "complicated" to be expressed in RSS, or they're just interested in trying to build a dependence on their API.
3. RSS is essentially one-way. Sure, you can use Atom or POST RSS in some cases, but it's not a widely deployed use like simple syndication is.

So is it possible to have neutral parties implement aggregation services? It seems that the natural tendency for these services is to add value through annotation, sharing, and the like to increase stickiness and hopefully make money. Google Reader is doing this, for quite a large user benefit I believe. However, once the point of aggregation becomes a point of stickiness it also becomes a point of control and thus another potential constriction of the free flow of a user's data. So far very few companies have made any money on aggregation (RSS or social) so it will be interesting to see how this plays out. FriendFeed and Twitter don't appear to have any revenue yet and Facebook is making money, but very little in proportion to its valuation.

• AtomDB - Oracle's response to Gears Mobile
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    • The MobileMe Lockdown
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Maybe the report from two weeks ago was some sort of data hiccup borne of the transition from one MLS to another. In any event, the slowdown that seemed to be beginning at that point isn’t in evidence this week either.

Sales of single-family detached homes in Maricopa County were at 4,478 for the past 30 days, slightly higher than the 30-day rolling total from a week ago. And inventory in the Phoenix real estate market was down be literally a handful of homes, for an overall absorption rate of 8.26 months.

Bank owned homes continue to move at a brisk pace. Inventory of REO properties in Maricopa County actually fell slightly to 5,491 while there were 1,622 closed sales over the past 30 days. The result is a brisk absorption rate of 3.39 months.

There are three sellers’ markets in the Valley based on the most recent numbers - Queen Creek at 4.65 months of inventory and Tempe and Ahwatukee each at 5.00 months on the nose. The latter two cities are of note because neither is a hotbed of bank-owned sales. In fact, Tempe’s showing only 29 REO listings out of 540 homes for sale and only 12 of the 92 sales were of bank owned homes.

Below are the full numbers for the week, minus the typo from a week ago when I failed to update the previous week’s numbers. As always, all data is provided by the Arizona Regional MLS and is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.

Technorati Tags: Phoenix real estate, absorption rate

Popularity: 1% [?]

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Tags: Phoenix Inventory, Phoenix Market // Add Comment »

I’ve been told on occasion that I need to try and make the blog more visual. This isn’t my forte as I’m a writer by background. Ask me to describe something I see and I can do it with little trouble. Ask me to photograph something with the hope of conveying it’s beauty and I’m lost.

My standard joke … a picture’s with 1,000 words but I get paid by the word.

But I still try. Here’s the view of downtown Phoenix from the top floor of the parking garage just south of Chase Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Looming to the left is the Summit at Copper Square, a luxury condo high rise across from the ballpark.

I had debated making this the new header for the blog but was vetoed “because it doesn’t look like Phoenix.” Even though it is Phoenix.

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: Phoenix real estate

Popularity: 3% [?]

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Tags: Phoenix Market, Phoenix Neighborhoods // 6 Comments »

Looked at the exchange rate widget recently? The U.S. dollar is at $1.49 to the Euro (down from high $1.50s) and $1.06 to the Canadian dollar.

I’m hoping to have more on this as the week progresses and particularly how this impacts Canadians looking to the Phoenix real estate market for second homes and investment. In the interim, check out Noah Rosenblatt’s just-posted take over at Urban Digs.

[tags]Phoenix real estate, Canadian buyers Arizona real estate)

Popularity: 4% [?]

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Tags: Canadian Buyers, General Real Estate // Add Comment »

No, we’re not going to break into an ad for Match.Com or eHarmony or another one of those online dating services. You’re on your own there. Rather, here are a few rather rhetorical questions borne of actual questions and situations over the past month …

If you believe the best value you can find is a short sale (and it’s probably not, but that’s a different story for another day), and your agent refuses to show you short sales, why are you working with that agent?

If you have time to look at homes on a Sunday and you want to look at homes on Sunday, why are you working with an agent who doesn’t work on Sunday? (Actual quote - “My REALTOR doesn’t work Sundays so I don’t want to call and bother him, but I want to see this house so I called you.”)

If you’re working with an agent to find a home in a given area, why are you using the search on another agent’s site to find a home?

Put another way, why aren’t you searching on your agent’s website instead of mine if you already have decide they’ll be assisting you? And if they don’t have a useful homes search on their website and can’t meet your needs, why are you working with them?

This last one came up twice yesterday … anyone who wants to do is welcome to use the Phoenix Homes search here. But I do sell real estate for a living, as some of you may have come to realize. I don’t think it’s inappropriate to ask for the chance to earn your business, especially when it’s clear a need of some sort’s not being met.

I’m just saying …

Technorati Tags: Phoenix real estate

Popularity: 4% [?]

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Tags: General Real Estate, Marketing // 1 Comment »

Let’s talk about a great new feature that has been added to the Phoenix MLS since the change to flexmls from Tempo, the kind of thing that can save you hours of sorting through listings from everywhere when you want to focus on a certain area.

Last week I had a client ask about the Montage Condominiums in northeast Phoenix, right next to the Scottsdale border near the Princess resort. Options were few for townhouses in this particular complex. But thanks to the new MLS, I could take the MLS number for any one of the properties in Montage and search within the radius of our choice for other similar townhouses.

This far surpasses the methodology available in the old Arizona Regional MLS, where a similar search would be conducted by searching for a given elementary school or by the clunky and largely random “areas” as defined in 1734 by the original mapmaker.

Think this is cool? Wait … don’t answer yet!

Once the search is established, I can set up what flexmls calls a “portal” … an individual website that will show you all of the listings that match your criteria and fall within the blue circle. We had this in the old MLS but the upper limit was 75 properties. Now? There is no limit. If it’s in the Phoenix real estate market, fits your criteria and falls within the area you like, it will appear whether that means 12 properties are 120.

Want to see the search in action for yourself? Let me know what you’re trying to find through the contact form on the top right and see for yourself.

Technorati Tags: Phoenix real estate, flexmls, real estate search

Popularity: 6% [?]

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Tags: Phoenix Market, General Real Estate, Tips for Buyers // Add Comment »

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Aug 07 2008

Published by Art Gelwicks under web sites

• Remember the Milk Tool

  Remember the Milk is my favorite todo application and here’s just one more way to get those nasty little items loaded into the system.

  tags: RTM

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Aug 03 2008

Published by Art Gelwicks under web sites

• Public Speaking Tips: The Lost Art of Oratory | The Art of Manliness

  tags: oratory

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Jul 30 2008

Published by Art Gelwicks under Hacks, gadget

I followed the directions supplied in this video from CNet about setting up Orb.com to allow streaming directly from my computer to any other machine. It does actually work and allow you to stream from your machine to your internet connected Wii. Follow each of the steps and you’ll be up and running in about 30 minutes. I’m finding I like it for showing photos just as much as anything else since my camera uses an xD card rather than an SD card (that the Wii uses.)

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Jul 25 2008

Published by Art Gelwicks under web sites

• Why We Banned Legos - Volume 21 No. 2 - Winter 2006 - Rethinking Schools Online

  tags: no_tag

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Jul 23 2008

Published by Art Gelwicks under Presenting, Speaking, Toastmasters, training

Here’s a technique I recommend people use when they have a long commute or quiet time away from others (I suggest away from others since you may feel a little silly doing it around other people.) Turn on your radio and turn to a talk or news program. Find a story or topic and listen to about five minutes on that topic. Now turn off the radio. For the next minute (you can time yourself using the car clock) talk out loud on the topic. Try to recall as many facts and details as you can while weaving your words into a cohesive and coherent oratory.

This exercise will:

• Challenge your listening skills
• Test your recall
• Force you to think dynamically
• Practice “buying yourself time” when speaking to link your thoughts together
• Encourage thinking “one sentence ahead”

Taking advantage of opportunities to push yourself out of your comfort zone as a speaker is the only true way to grow and develop. Give it a try…you may surprise yourself.

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The Guardian have a great set of recent George Bush images after the LOLcats treatment…

Posted in humour, politics | No Comments »
Tags:GeorgeBush, georgia, lolbush

Interesting links for August 10th 2008 through August 11th 2008:

• having “exclusive rights” in a region is a remnant of the twentieth century’s mass media [jill/txt] - “The tyranny of digital distance is most often experienced by people outside of the United States. … Another aspect of these cultural blockades where being outside of the US has been an advantage is baseball. In the US, if you’ve moved away from where the team you support is based you often won’t be able to watch their games because the local television stations won’t broadcast them. So MLB.tv lets you subscribe to watch all baseball games - except local ones, because the local television stations have exclusive rights to them. If you live outside of the US, you have no local games - so you can watch every baseball game live, no holds barred.”
• Wizard People, Dear Reader by Brad Neely (NOT Harry Potter) [Illegal Art] - Brad Neely’s hilarious “unauthorized re-envisioning of Harry Potter and the Philosophers/Sorcerer’s Stone”, released in 2004. It’s a long audio parody to be played at the same time as the DVD of the first Harry Potter film. Like a DVD commentary for evil! [YouTube Version] [Script] [Wikipedia Entry]
• 1.8 million hits in four days for grocery pricing website. [WA Today] - “The new GROCERYchoice website received 1.8 million hits in its first four days, showing consumers are interested in the information it provides, federal Assistant Treasurer Chris Bowen says. GROCERYchoice was launched last week by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to provide consumers with more information about grocery prices.”
• How to Get Your Indie Film on iTunes (…It’s Not Easy) [CinemaTech] - Scott Kirsner’s really useful guide to distributing independent films via iTunes and (more feasibly) via their main competitors like Amazon Unbox. For the upcoming filmmakers of tomorrow, this is essential information! (Especially if you’re already planning your own Dr Horrible!)
• Amazon Adds Universal Wish List [Micro Persuasion] - Amazon.com’s Wish List feature has been around a long time - over 10 years in fact. However, recently the e-commerce site expanded it with a new feature called The Universal Wish List. Using a simple bookmarklet … you can now add any item to your list from anywhere on the web.” (I use Amazon’s wish lists a lot, both for purchases and to fill out bibliographies of new books, so this looks like a really useful little addition to me!)

Posted in australia, convergence, del.icio.us links, fan culture, film, humour, participatory culture, politics, tv, tyranny of digital distance, youtube | No Comments »
Tags:amazon, apple, digitalculture, distribution, harrypotter, itunes, nbc, olympics, usa, wishlist, youtube

Interesting links for August 9th 2008 through August 10th 2008:

• Barack Roll [YouTube] - Barack Obama gets … or possibly embodies being … rickrolled.
• Tape Delay by NBC Faces End Run by Online Fans [NYTimes.com] - “NBC’s decision to delay broadcasting the opening ceremonies by 12 hours sent people across the country to their computers to poke holes in NBC’s technological wall — by finding newsfeeds on foreign broadcasters’ Web sites and by watching clips of the ceremonies on YouTube and other sites. In response, NBC sent frantic requests to Web sites, asking them to take down the illicit clips and restrict authorized video to host countries. As the four-hour ceremony progressed, a game of digital whack-a-mole took place. Network executives tried to regulate leaks on the Web and shut down unauthorized video, while viewers deftly traded new links on blogs and on the Twitter site, redirecting one another to coverage from, say, Germany, or a site with a grainy Spanish-language video stream. As the first Summer Games of the broadband age commenced in China, old network habits have never seemed so archaic — or so irrelevant.”
• Twitter Down for Hitler [Blip TV] - DownFall Hitler parody: “Upon hearing tragic news, Hitler decides to tweet his sadness only to learn it’s down. ” LOL
• So what if you give most of it away?: The Bikini Concept. [The Road To Attversumption] - “I found out the age-old concept of the bikini to apply. That by giving away 90% of the concept, and keeping 10%, the attraction factor was just as strong, if not twice as strong (there are reasons for me saying ‘twice as strong). And yes, what the bikini didn’t reveal, was the part the audience most wanted (naturally), and was the part they were willing to pay for.”
• Hamlet Retold Via Facebook (PNG Image, 1254×1608 pixels) - “Hamlet became a fan of daggers.” Clever little retelling of Hamlet using Facebook stories.

Posted in advertising, copyright, del.icio.us links, humour, marketing, tyranny of digital distance, youtube | No Comments »
Tags:bittorrent, digitalculture, facebook, freemium, hamlet, hitler, meme, nbc, Obama, olympics, piracy, play, rickroll, shakespeare, socialnetworking, Twitter

Interesting links for August 7th 2008 through August 8th 2008:

• Steal This Hook? Girl Talk Flouts Copyright Law [NYTimes.com] - “Girl Talk, whose real name is Gregg Gillis, makes danceable musical collages out of short clips from other people’s songs; there are more than 300 samples on “Feed the Animals,” the album he released online at illegalart.net in June. He doesn’t get the permission of the composers to use these samples, as United States copyright law mostly requires, because he maintains that the brief snippets he works with are covered by copyright law’s “fair use” principle …Girl Talk’s rising profile has put him at the forefront of a group of musicians who are challenging the traditional restrictions of copyright law along with the usual role of samples in pop music.” Girl Talk’s latest album Feed the Animals can be downloaded for whatever price users choose to pay (including choosing to pay nothing).
• MisUnderstanding YouTube by Joshua Green [Flow TV 8.05] - “… popularity on [YouTube] revolves as much around what is “Most Discussed” or “Most Responded” as it does what is “Most Viewed.” … Understanding this is crucial to effectively accounting for YouTube as a diverse media space. This is not to suggest everyone comes to the site to post a video blog, but rather to come to terms with the fact that YouTube is built as much through practices of audience-ing as it is practices of publishing, and to realize the two as intimately linked. As much as the video blog, YouTube is ruled by the clip and the quote — the short grab or edited selection; these videos are evidence or demonstration of active audience-hood.”
• Human rights group broadcast ‘pirate’ radio show in Beijing [Radio Australia] - “A human rights group has broken China’s tight control of the media by broadcasting a radio show calling for freedom of expression in Beijing. At 8.08am local time, the Paris based group Reporters Without Borders began a twenty minute pirate broadcast on Beijing’s airwaves.” [Via @mpesce]
• It’s public so what’s the privacy issue with Google’s Street View? [The Courier-Mail] - Peter Black tells it like it (legally) is regarding Google Streetview in Australia: “What Google did was perfectly legal. They took photographs of houses, buildings and streets from a public place. If anyone can legally walk up and down your street taking photographs of houses, why can’t Google? They can. Once this is accepted, the argument then becomes one about people randomly caught in the lens of the camera. “Surely they don’t have a right to take a photo of me?” Yes they do. You can have no reasonable expectation of privacy, let alone a right to privacy, when you are in a public area, such as your street.”

Posted in Google, australia, copyright, creative commons, del.icio.us links, mashup, participatory culture, youtube | No Comments »
Tags:audience, china, ethics, fairuse, girltalk, googlemaps, metric, mp3, music, olympics, pirateradio, privacy, radio, remix, streetview, surveillance, viacom

There have been a lot of memorable memes in the last decade, and this fantastic meme timeline captures almost all of them:

There are a few in there that are new to me, but everything up to 2005 is provoking flashbacks aplenty.  Indeed, the first substantial blog post I ever made was about our old friend the Star Wars Kid!  How many of these are familiar to you?

[Via The Guardian Tech Blog]

Posted in fan culture, humour, web2.0, youtube | No Comments »
Tags:memes, tehinterwebs, timeline

Henry Jenkins’ keynote from the recent CCi conference Creating Value: Between Commerce and Commons has been posted as a series of quicktime movies. In his talked, entitled ‘What Happened Before YouTube?’, Henry builds a bridge between the participatory culture he argued was most prevalent before the internet in fandom (see his book Textual Poachers for details) to the culture now vibrantly apparent for the world to see in the clips and communities of YouTube. It’s an engaging talk, and one well worth listening to. And watch for the self-referential lolcats/loltheorists humour being used! [Via Jean]

Posted in fan culture, participatory culture, youtube | No Comments »
Tags:henryjenkins

Interesting links for August 5th 2008 through August 6th 2008:

• Thailand bans Grand Theft Auto IV [BBC] - “Copies of Grand Theft Auto IV have been pulled in Thailand after a teenager confessed to murdering a taxi driver. The 18-year-old high school student is accused of stabbing the cab driver to death by trying to copy a scene from the game. The biggest video game publisher in the south-east Asian country, New Era Interactive Media, has told retailers to stop selling GTA IV. “
• Trees die as first iPhone bills released [SMH] - Australian “Environmentalists have railed against mobile carriers for sending iPhone bills to customers that, depending on the plan, could contain more than 100 pages of non-recycled paper. The high page count stems from Optus and Telstra unnecessarily itemising each individual piece of web data downloaded using the phone, instead of having a single usage figure for each day.”
• When Google Owns You [chrisbrogan.com] - A cautionary tale about Google, power and losing your life in the cloud: “Nick Saber isn’t happy now. Monday afternoon, after lunch, Nick came back from lunch to find out that he couldn’t get into his Gmail account. Further, he couldn’t get into anything that Google made (beside search) where his account credentials once worked. When attempting to log in, Nick got a single line message: Sorry, your account has been disabled. [?] That’s it. ” (After much drama, Nick’s account was eventually restored after he managed to accurately complete this insane form.)
• Current Analysis and Future Research Agenda on “Gold Farming”: Real-World Production in Developing Countries for the Virtual Economies of Online Games [ Development Informatics Working Paper No. 32 ] - Abstract: “…a new form of employment has emerged in developing countries. It employs hundreds of thousands of people and earns hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Yet it has been almost invisible to both the academic and development communities. It is the phenomenon of “gold farming”: the production of virtual goods and services for players of online games. China is the employment epicentre but the sub-sector has spread to other Asian nations and will spread further as online games-playing grows. It is the first example of a likely future development trend in online employment. It is also one of a few emerging examples in developing countries of “liminal ICT work”; jobs associated with digital technologies that are around or just below the threshold of what is deemed socially-acceptable and/or formally-legal. This paper reviews what we know so far about gold farming, seeking to provide the first systematic analysis of the sub-sector. …”

Posted in Google, australia, del.icio.us links, videogames | No Comments »
Tags:apple, banned, enviroment, games, goldfarming, gta, gta4, iphone, moralpanic, telco, thailand

In sad news for Community Television in Australia, and in Perth in particular, it seems that community broadcaster Access 31 has shut its doors in Western Australia. As TV Tonight reports:

Access 31, Perth’s community television station, has this afternoon gone off air. The closure follows ongoing financial difficulties for the volunteer-run station. Despite promises of government support and securing of a financial backer, today it closed its doors at 5pm. TV Tonight understands a number of staff have been resigning in recent weeks, leaving the place dangerously under-manned. … Sources say none of the independent program producers, who comprise the bulk of production, were informed ahead of time.

Oddly, though, despite the goodbye message currently being broadcast, the Access 31 website still makes it look like they’re open for business.

Update: There is a vitriolic article on PerthNorg today, suggesting the Board may have played a large role in Access 31’s demise.

Posted in Perth, australia, tv | No Comments »
Tags:access31, channel31, communitytelevision

Interesting links for August 3rd through August 4th 2008:

• Chinese netizens rail against Great Firewall [watoday.com.au] - A look at the heavy hand of internet censorship in China and the lengths China’s netizens have to go to to avoid being blocked. A recent example shows a meme that the phrase “I’m just doing push-ups” after the line was used by allegedly corrupt communist officials. The meme is going strong, one example being these photoshopped images of a popular Chinese TV host doing push-ups in various locations across China.
• Kind Strangers, Comicons, and the People that Need a Hug. [Nathan Fillion MySpace Blog] - Nathan Fillion, sees the future in Dr Horrible (despite being Capt Hammer!): “I think it can be said that Dr Horrible was a tremendous success. More than just an incredible project to enjoy, but a more than important view of entertainment to come. This is the future, everybody. This is a window into how things will be when the control is finally wrested from the moneyed claws of big business and placed, nay, returned to the caring hands of the creators.”
• Postmodern path to student failure By Justine Ferrari [The Australian] - In a new anti-postmodernism book, The Trouble With Theory, by Gavin Kitching, “insight” such as this appears: ‘Students equate the way language is used with the meaning of words, so that the word “terrorist” always means a person using extreme violence for political ends, and anyone called a terrorist is actually a terrorist. But he said such thinking excluded sentences such as: “Calling these people terrorists distracts attention from the justice of their cause. “They have a very narrow idea of how we use words. (They believe) words have given meanings, and these meanings have certain biases or prejudices. If you use words, you have to accept the biases or prejudices - you’re stuck with them. That you can use words ironically is not something they can take seriously. Clearly that’s not true. We use words to refer to things, but we can refer to them ironically, we can refer to them sarcastically, doubtingly, aggressively.”
• Britney and McCain in 2008 - Barely Political [YouTube] - New running mates: John McCain and Britney Spears. Not the most technically exciting YouTube political mashup, but the rhetoric matches perfectly!
• Notes on Cult Films and New Media Technology [zigzigger] - Interesting thoughts: “My basic point is that the availability of films to own on videotape, disc, or computer file marks a transformation in the way audiences engage with the film text, and that this transformation makes the cult mode of film experience much more typical, more available to more viewers and to more movies.”

Posted in convergence, del.icio.us links, fan culture, mashup, participatory culture, politics, student engagement, teaching and learning, tv, web2.0, youtube | No Comments »
Tags:censorship, china, drhorrible, highered, josswhedon, meme, usa

Yesterday at the Social Networks stream of the conference attached to GO3 at the Perth Convention Centre I gave a fairly rough version of a new paper called “What Dr Horrible Can Teach TV About Participatory Culture.”  As readers of this blog will be well aware, one of my ongoing interests is the way that traditional media forms, especially television, engage with participatory culture and their immediate fan networks.  In my past writing on the Tyranny of Digital Distance I’ve looked at the way shows like Battlestar Galactica have harnessed a global fan network only to have that network turn sour as national media distributors insist on broadcasting shows at different times (implicitly encouraging fans to participate in peer-to-peer downloading of TV).  While Joss Whedon’s Dr Horrible had a few similar teething issues, it looks like a very promising model for web-based media that can actually be a fan favourite and make a decent profit in the process.  My thinking on this very much in process (as, indeed, is the ongoing story of Dr Horrible’s success), but my first stab at drawing a few ideas together was in this paper.  I didn’t get a chance to record my talk, but I’ve uploaded the presentation onto Slideshare if you’re interested.  There’s a fair bit not on the slides, but they should give you at least an outline of the argument:

Any questions, feedback or criticism would be most welcome!

Posted in conference, fan culture, participatory culture, tv, tyranny of digital distance, web2.0 | 1 Comment »
Tags:drhorrible, go3, josswhedon, webisode

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If the unlamented Privacy Bill, 2006 were to make an unwelcome return from limbo, the Oireachtas could do worse than to revise it in the light of a recent Australian example.

First, the balanced and detailed Privacy Act, 1998 (Cth) (as amended and consolidated) is an excellent starting point for any legislative development of Irish privacy law. The range and detail of its coverage, and its focus on protecting against invasions of privacy across the board, and not merely by media, make it a far more compelling protection of privacy than the flawed Irish Bill.

Second, that Act created a strong and independent Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Australia, similar to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (see also Michael Geists’s privacyinfo.ca site); and an important lesson which these offices teach us is that it the proper protection of privacy in modern society requires just such an office. The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner is a good starting point, but its remit is far less extensive than its Australian and Canadian cousins.

And third, the Australian Law Reform Commission has just completed a two-year assessment of the operation of the Act. Its report For Your Information: Australian Privacy Law and Practice (ALRC 108), was launched last week by the Attorney General. The three-volume, 2700 page report is the culmination of a prodigious research and consultation exercise: an Issues Paper in late 2006 led to the formal commencement of the review in January 2007 and Discussion Paper later that year (noted here by TJ). Though there are gaps in its analysis, the final report recommends nearly 300 changes to privacy laws and practices, including:

• a basic restructuring of the Act, focused on high-level principles of general application, to be supplemented by dedicated regulations governing specific fields, such as health privacy and credit reporting;
• a uniform set of Privacy Principles, developed in the report, to be embodied in the Act, and to apply to all government agencies and the private sector;
• a rationalisation of exemptions and exceptions from the Act, which only should be permitted where there is a compelling reason;
• a duty on government agencies and business organisations to notify individuals — and the Privacy Commissioner — where there is a real risk of serious harm occurring as a result of a data breach (a matter much in the news nowadays, as this week’s story of the theft of a Department of Social Welfare laptop shows); and
• a cause of action for a serious invasion of privacy, in circumstances where the person had a reasonable expectation of privacy and where the publication was grossly offensive. The ALRC’s recommended formulation sets a high bar for plaintiffs, having due regard to the importance of freedom of expression and other rights and interests.

It is unlikely that this report will be left to gather dust, as so many of its predecessors the world over have been, as the Australian Government has undertaken to review the ALRC’s recommendations in two phases over the next 12 to 18 months, and to legislate on each of these as necessary. The Irish Bill really only covers this last point (as difficult a line to draw, and as contentious, controversial, and overstated a proposal, in Australia as it is in Ireland), and then in a far less balanced fashion. If we are to have a Privacy Act in Ireland, then why can we not follow the Australian example? By all means, then, let there be an Irish Privacy Act; but let it be balanced, let it be the result of a proper consultation process, and let there be a Privacy Commissioner with teeth. Is this too much to ask?

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Whenever I hear discussions of the funding of universities, my thoughts turn first to a classic Yes Minister (BBC | imdb | wikipedia) episode (imdb | synopsis | wikipedia | YouTube) in which the worthies in Sir Humphrey’s Oxford College lobby him against the pernicious effects of government funding policies. Much of that sketch is relevant to the current debate in Ireland about third-level tuition fees (Irish Times | RTÉ News), where it seems to me that two separate issues have been conflated (or confused) in some quarters. Moreover, one of these issues needs to be resolved before any of the other elements of the current debate can be properly addressed.

In 1996, when the Government “abolished” third-level fees, what actually happened was a little more complicated. Before that, the Government set a basic fee for each Irish (and EU) student; it paid about two-thirds of that basic fee; and it required the student to pay the remaining third. In 1996, the Government decided no longer to require the student to pay even that amount. If the “return” of third-level fees is simply a matter of cost-cutting on the part of the Government, then it will simply require the student once again to pay some portion of the basic fee. And this seems to me to be where most of the debate is being conducted.

However, the Minister for Education has said that, although the current economic climate is a reason to examine the re-introduction of fees, the main justification being put forward at present is a different one. It is that the current funding to the university sector is inadequate, a point that has long been made by the university sector. But the main cause of this situation is that the basic fee is too low. This can be seen quite clearly in the difference between the basic fee currently set by the Government for Irish (and EU) students and the fee charged by the universities to international (ie, non-EU) students. The international fee is about three times higher than the Government-set basic fee. In other words, when Irish students were paying fees, they were paying a sum about one-ninth of what international students were paying.

Now, one way to remedy the inadequacy of the basic fee would simply be for the government to increase it. Of course, that won’t happen: even when the exchequer was in good shape, the government was reducing that fee in real terms. To meet the third level funding inadequacies, the government will need to do more than re-introduce fees: it will need also to allow the universities set the fees. If it does not do that, if the government simply re-introduces the pre-1996 position, then there will be no change to the universities’ fee income. If the fee payable by the student continues to be the amount set by the government, the fee income received by the universities will remain inadequate, and all that will change is the source (students [at least in part], rather than government) of that inadequate income.

So, when the Irish Universities Association (following the OECD’s 2004 recommendation) call for the re-introduction of student fees and welcome (Irish Times | IUA press release) the Minister’s statement), they must be asking for two things. First, they want to be able to set the basic fee charged to students; that is to say, the universities want to be able to set the fee for Irish (and EU) students themselves, rather than having to accept the fee set by the Government (though they may settle for the government continuing to set it, provided that they can be involved in the process by which it is calculated and that the process does indeed result in a more adequate fee structure). And second, since this university-set fee is likely to be (much) higher than the current government-set fee, and since they accept that the government will not pay (all of) this higher fee, the universities want to be able to charge the students this higher fee.

If the government is simply concerned with reducing its payments to the universities, and if political calculations allow, then it will simply revert to some version of the pre-1995 position. However, if it is concerned with ensuring that the university sector is adequately funded, it will allow the universities a role in the setting of the fees charged to students. It is only after this basic decision of principle is taken that the issues currently being discussed (how much of the basic fee should be paid by the government and how much by the student; who should and who should not pay; what mechanism of ex post or ex ante payment should be used; whether and how student loans and/or graduate taxes might be part of the package; and so on) can be properly assessed. Moreover, the issue of student fees is not the full solution to the universities’ funding problems; it is only one element of a much more broad-ranging approach to the future funding of the Irish University Sector (see, for example, the CHIU 2003 report, pdf, and the RIA 2005 Report Cumhacht Feasa). For all of these reasons, therefore, the question of the return of fees should not be conflated with the much larger questions of adequate funding for the university sector.

Finally, Ferdinand von Prondzynski, in a blog-post welcoming the Minister’s initiative, express his

… admiration for the Minister for having the courage to raise an issue which, as a country, we really do need to address.

Whenever I hear the word “courage” applied to a Minister, my thoughts turn to another classic Yes Minister episode (imdb | synopsis | wikipedia | YouTube) in which the best way to damn a policy is to describe it as “courageous” (a trope to which the series returns several times thereafter).

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Some own goals are comical; others are crucial; but rarely are they as wilfully self-inflicted as the three own goals which the press has recently conceded to privacy. Read the rest of this entry »

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Even if no kid ever actually pleaded with ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson (pictured) (”Say it ain’t so, Joe; say it ain’t so”) to deny his involvement in throwing the 1919 baseball World Series (dramatized in the movie Eight Men Out), it’s still a good line, and entirely apposite to title a post mourning the passing of the best copyright blog on the net.

Last Friday, William Patry announced the demise of his wonderful blog (including - I am sorry to say - the deletion of his hugely informative archives):

I have decided to end the blog, after doing around 800 postings over about 4 years. I regret closing the blog and I owe readers an explanation. There are two reasons. Read the rest of this entry »

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From today’s Guardian:

… The “Hollywood heart attack” is dangerously misleading and because of it, many of us ignore the real symptoms until it is too late. … The Hollywood heart attack … involves dramatic chest clutching and collapse. But in reality, symptoms vary. They can be woolly, ambiguous and easy to ignore. It is very common to have a central chest pain that can spread to the arms, neck and jaw. You may feel sweaty, light-headed, sick or short of breath. You may simply feel a dull ache, mild discomfort or heavy sensation in your chest that makes you feel ill. Or there may be a chest pain that spreads to your back or stomach. Some people say the pain was like bad indigestion. …

Read more here.

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The controversy about the article by Kevin Myers in last week’s Irish Independent rumbles on. And as I said in my last post, that is all to the good. It is the frank and open debate of the points he makes in the article that will best serve his critics, not an over-reaction to his rhetoric.

Here’s a sample of the online reaction: Read the rest of this entry »

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