Musical Discovery

One of my coworkers decided a few days ago that she was sick of the music on her iPod. (She used the word "hate", but I don't think it was entirely accurate.) So she proposed an iPod swap. I went for it, and we've spent a few hours on each of the last few days listening to each others' collections.

This is a wonderful exercise, which I highly recommend to anyone who is in a position to do it.

My greatest joy of the exercise, so far, has been the discovery of a singer/songwriter named Joanna Newsom. I am absolutely hooked, and intend to buy her albums when funds become available. She has this magnificently unconventional singing voice which she uses to great effect with a unique delivery. Plus, the woman is a rhyme machine!

My favorite lyric goes like this:

I killed my dinner with karate -
kick 'em in the face, taste the body;

This artist is definitely my musical discovery of the year, and I can make no stronger suggestion to you, reader, than this: Listen to Joanna Newsom!

You can find a page of her fantastic rhymes here.

You can get a sample of her sound by checking out the video here.

02009 New Year's Resolutions #21 and #22: Optimism and Gratitude

I recently found out that I am scheduled to be part of a big round of layoffs from my full-time job. My scheduled date of termination is July 3.

This is the sort of news that could be fairly devastating. (In this case, it is not.)

I am being uncharacteristically optimistic. In fact, I have generally been keeping on the optimistic end of the scale for the last few months.

This is a strange sensation.

I, as you may or may not already know, am a world-class pessimist (despite my "be positive" blood type). This is not a point of pride. It is simply a statement of truth. My longstanding habit has been to always believe that things will go badly. To some degree, this acts as a bit of a built-in cushion. Rarely do things go as badly as I anticipate, and I'm therefore generally pleased with outcomes. However, when outcomes do turn out to be awful, at least they don't come as a shock.

When I was in college, I took an Abnormal Psychology course. My professor was Martin E. P. Seligman, a guy who (a) had the most soothing male voice in the world and (b) wrote a book entitled Learned Optimism. I did not ever get around to reading the whole book. But I read enough to grasp that the basic premises were (a) that it's possible to train oneself to be optimistic and (b) that being optimistic has definite benefits.

Which leads me to my twenty-first New Year's Resolution of the year (and no, it does not involve reading the aforementioned book):

I resolve to be more optimistic than is my natural tendency.

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As it happens, just four days before I learned that I am being laid off, I was hired to a new part-time job. This is a job that I had wanted for over ten months, ever since I first heard of it. The way I heard of it is that Beth told me about it. She had heard about it from a former coworker who had started working for this company a few months earlier and told Beth about it when he stopped in to visit her workplace. So I contacted him in early June of 02008 and then bugged him every few months to ensure that he would not forget to let me know when an opening occurred.

Well, he e-mailed me in April and let me know that an opening was available for a part-time position. I wanted the job to be full-time, but at least this was a chance to get my foot in the door. So I contacted the appropriate people, had an interview, and got hired. I still hope that it becomes my next full-time job. Clearly, with the impending loss of my current full-time job, the ideal timing for the switch would be sometime in July. (See above re: my new optimistic attitude.)

Anyway, this contact apparently stopped in to Beth's workplace yesterday to chat with her about how things are going. As they were talking, he apparently mentioned to her that they (my new employers) are afraid that they won't be able to hold on to me. Apparently, the fear is that I'm "too smart". The implication is that intelligent people need serious mental stimulation in order to stay satisfied in their jobs. Without said stimulation, I guess smart folks are supposed to get restless and feel the need for something more.

Note: I take this "too smart" comment as a great compliment. What I take away from it is that perhaps I comport myself in such a way as to not come across as a dolt. That's nice to know.

Well, the truth is that I have a pretty good sense of what keeps me happy. As far as work goes, it's largely a matter of (a) doing rather than delegating and (b) feeling as if I have actually done something at the end of the day — even if that something needs to be redone the next day. This job definitely satisfies both of those desires.

Beyond that, this new job provides me with lots of additional benefits. Among them:

• No longer spending all that time at work staring at a computer screen. (I've been doing that for over 15 years and I'm tired of it.)
• Getting some fresh air.
• Getting some exercise.
• Getting to see some pretty scenery.
• Having a schedule that allows me to see my darling wife for a significant portion of every day instead of basically having to live for the weekends.
  
• The satisfaction of knowing that I am part of the supply chain for ice cream — which I am convinced is the happiest food there is.
• The knowledge that my job simply can not be outsourced to China or India or Vietnam (which I understand is the new "hot" market for taking American jobs).

You might expect from my long and ever-growing list of New Year's Resolutions that I am the sort of person who likes to set goals for himself. This is simply not the case. I like to get through each day as it comes. Beyond that, my long term goals are pretty simple: 1) I want to spend a larger percentage of my time with Beth. 2) I hope to someday retire. That's pretty much it.

Shorter term goals tend to be merely steps along the way. And in a very real way, this new job will move me closer to both of those goals. The first is obvious, as I will soon no longer be on an opposite work schedule to Beth's. The second is a bit more abstract, but basically it boils down to this: For me, retirement is a situation that brings with it the idea of no longer exhausting my mental capacities as someone else's employee. Which brings me to my twenty-second New Year's Resolution of the year:

I resolve that if/when it becomes a reality, I will be filled with gratitude for something that may seem strange to others: The blessed opportunity to have serious thought be strictly a leisure activity.

I love to engage in serious thought. I always have interesting ideas kicking around my head, and they provide me with a great source of amusement. When my mental energy is assigned to someone else's priorities, this is more a drain than it is an inspiration. To my way of thinking, work should not be what we live for. Interesting thought, on the other hand, is not at all a bad thing to live for. If my mind were not capable of providing me with intellectual stimulation, then I might welcome an intellectually challenging work environment, just to keep me from going batty. I am thankful that I am not in such a situation. My mind does not seem at all in danger of leaving me in a state of endless boredom, thank you very much!

[And no, I am not suggesting that the new job allows me to simply show up and check out. It does require attention. It just doesn't require what might be termed "advanced thinking".]

02009 New Year's Resolution #20: Something About Turning the Self-Deprecation Down a Notch

I should probably make this New Year's Resolutions 20 through 23. There's so much here that it probably deserves to be counted as at least four separate Resolutions. However, I'm going to just combine it all into one big one, so as not to unreasonably inflate my count.

My great tragic secret (which I've never really kept secret at all) is that for the last 20 years I have thought of myself as ugly, stupid, boring, undeserving of praise, and generally unworthy of love. Think of Stuart Smalley's Daily Affirmations and turn them on their head. That's essentially been my internal monologue for the last two decades. [I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. And gosh darn it, there's no conceivable reason why people should like me.]

I am constantly astonished that my darling wife ever fell for me, let alone that every day she's still here, still in love with me. This I have never been able to comprehend. Why me?

Well, 20 years is probably enough.

Being so down on one's place in the world does, I think, tend to skew one's world view, probably in a not-so-healthy way. For one thing, it tends to stifle ambition. Besides that, it probably has some significant social consequences. (When one assumes that others would not want to befriend someone as lowly as I have considered myself to be, that probably becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Somehow, I have managed to make some wonderful friends over the years, but this was probably despite myself.)

My twentieth New Year's Resolution of 02009 involves trying to work on my attitude towards myself.

I resolve to...

• try to keep in mind that I am probably not always the ugliest guy in the room.


• try to remind myself that the IQ tests and SAT scores and school grades, while no guarantee, have been consistently high enough that "stupid" very likely does not truly apply.


• try to be encouraged (by the friends I have and by Beth's persistence in sticking around) that I may not be as boring as I have for so long believed. Perhaps there is something interesting about me after all.


• try to be less dismissive of compliments; try to accept them at face value as being sincere instead of questioning the motives behind them.

02009 New Year's Resolution #19: Be More Prepared

I was driving home today after visiting Beth on her lunch break, when suddenly I saw this bird flying out there ahead of me. It was a jet black bird with an alarming red spot. My first thought was "red winged black bird". I was then immediately and simultaneously struck by two adjustments: 1) Way too big! and 2) The red spot is in the wrong place.

Soon I realised that I was behind a spectacular woodpecker. The red spot was its head. Before I overtook it, it veered to the left and perched on the side of a tree. There was my confirmation: A gorgeous woodpecker, indeed!

Alas, I did not have my camera with me.

So, when I arrived home, I grabbed my tripod and my camera, which already had my longest lens on it, and I drove back out in hopes of getting a shot of the bird. I parked about 1/8 mile down the road and started walking back to where the bird had landed. The bird was gone, of course.

I stood around for a little while and listened for the telltale pecking. I heard it off in the woods, and I started heading in that general direction. But I soon realised that the sound was coming from farther away than I was really prepared to go. I stood there in the woods for a while, listening and observing, hoping that the bird might come closer. No luck there, but I did spot something in the woods that I thought would make an interesting composition. So I set up my tripod, focused the lens, turned the camera on and went to take the shot. It was then that I remembered that my battery was cradled in its charger, safely back at home. "Curses! Foiled again!"

Well, this leads to my nineteenth New Year's Resolution of 02009:

I resolve to try to be better prepared for spontaneity!

That's it. Pretty simple. Sorry if you were hoping for something more substantial.

In the meantime, here are a couple of recent photos. I've mostly been posting photos recently to Facebook. These have already appeared there. But I understand that not all of my readers are on Facebook, so I'm posting these for those. Enjoy!

02009 New Year's Resolution #18: Cogito Ergo Possum, But Accept That I Probably Won't

A longtime friend (who also recently said something that made me think that "longtime friend" is sometimes more politic than "old friend") recently reminded me of an idea that has been amusing me (in a low simmer sort of way) for the last couple of years: Cogito ergo possum.

I'm sure my dear readers are all familiar with Descartes' famous assertion: Cogito ergo sum. (I think; therefore I am.) Likewise, I'm sure that most of you are familiar with Watty Piper's The Little Engine Who Could, who famously asserted, "I think I can."

By mixing the two together, I came up with the following hybrid: Cogito ergo possum. [Note: I'm not fluent in Latin and I am not a qualified translator. But I managed to cobble this together, and I don't think it's ineptly worded.] The resulting phrase translates to: "I think; therefore I can."

Searching the internet, I quickly learned that I was not the first to devise the phrase. In fact, it has been cleverly and humorously translated as "I think; therefore I play dead." (Which I think is genius!) Turns out that Cogito ergo possum is also apparently the motto of Walt Kelly's Pogo.

(I haven't yet taken the time to seek evidence of this in the volumes of Pogo strips that are on the bookcase next to our front door. But I intend to. If I can find said evidence, I'll probably post a scan of the appropriate frame. Walt Kelly was a genius and it seems to me that if I can play some small part in spreading his gospel, that would be a noble act.)

Anyway, Cogito ergo possum is sort of a reasonable credo for my interior mental life. It suggests a kind of belief in the power of thought: If one can think it, then doing it becomes a mere matter of will overcoming sloth. If you accept this idea and embrace it, there comes a certain confidence in your capacity for achieving something important. That's a nice idea. Frankly, it's sort of intoxicating in its ego-boosting capacity.

The problem with me is that while I possess this knowledge and am confident in my own thought processes, I am extremely bad about actually translating the thought into action. That is, my sloth generally overcomes my will.

So I have lots of bright ideas kicking around in my head. But rarely do I make any real effort at turning them into anything tangible. My habit has long been to jealously guard my bright ideas and to keep them secret. This is a bad habit! But until very recently I had not really recognised what a bad habit it is.

This has something to do with intellectual property rights, which I am a big fan of. I like the idea that inventors should be able to profit from their inventions. I believe that theft of intellectual property is every bit as wrong as theft of physical property. However, I must admit that I am unlikely to ever get around to dealing with most of my bright ideas. If I won't see them to fruition, and if I also keep them all as secrets, not only do I not benefit from them but neither does anyone else. That's where the bad habit comes in.

If, for example, I am not ever going to perform the world's first meaningful time travel experiment (and surely I am not), is there some good reason why I shouldn't at least toss the experiment's design out there in case it might inspire someone else to actually perform the experiment? Of course not! There's really no benefit to myself or to anyone else or to society at large if I keep the experiment's design a secret. But if I set it free, there's some slight chance that someone less slothful than myself might take up the baton and run with it. Where's the harm in that?

So, having achieved this new wisdom, I hereby make my eighteenth New Year's Resolution of 02009:

I resolve to not be so senselessly protective of my bright ideas.

I will be less apt to keep them from public scrutiny, finally acknowledging that there is more value in the potential of inspiring others than there is in the smugness of knowing that I possess some special idea that could result in something really cool if only I would get around to acting on it.

I suppose this resolution is at least as much about honestly assessing my own sloth as it is about honestly assessing the brilliance of my best thoughts. Anyway, as with Cogito ergo possum, it generally turns out that my brightest ideas are not uniquely mine. Usually, someone else has already had the same thoughts (or similar enough to qualify). In such cases especially, there is a very compelling reason to add a reinforcing voice to the chorus rather than to keep it under my hat.

02009 New Year's Resolution #17: Support the Arts

I suppose in some sense, one could argue (if one were so inclined) that my photography constitutes a sort of ongoing art project. I would not.

Likewise, I suppose my monthly documenting of my hair's growth could be described as a sort of art project. I would not describe it so.

One might (as a stretch) claim that my t-shirt designs from last summer (none of which sold, sadly enough) could be considered a sort of an art project. Again, I would make no such claim.

Instead, I would assert that I haven't really made any efforts in terms of starting an art project in a very, very long time. This is sad, as I used to think I might try to make a profession of art. Pessimism, lack of self-confidence, laziness, the need to pay the bills...all of these things ended up putting the goal of producing something artistic on the back burner.

I intend to finally get around to changing that, at least a little. Presenting my seventeenth New Year's Resolution of 02009:

I resolve to undertake some sort of new art project.

I'll now describe my current dream project. [Note: I very much doubt that this is what I'll end up starting. Something tells me that it's more likely to be something much less involved, less ambitious, more modest. Perhaps a series of oil pastel or charcoal drawings.]

I would call this current dream project "The Domicile Project". I would like to either build or repurpose an old library card catalog. In it, I would catalog everything in our house, filing it all in alphabetical order, cross-referencing everything by country of origin, name, description, color, ingredients, etc. Each card would include the appropriate "home" location for the item described. So, by necessity, I would come up with a system which assigned a code to each shelf, each drawer, each cabinet, each room, etc. And that code would act as my personal Dewey Decimal System.

Each card would include a printed photograph of the item in question, but the description would be written by hand. Each card would have on its back a place for from and to addresses, and a rectangle for a postage stamp. Visitors to the installation (assuming someone would be willing to exhibit the project) would be encouraged to browse through the catalog and would further be encouraged to find a favorite card and take it with them as a souvenir, and also to take one to send as a postcard to a friend or loved one. The original hand written cards that had been removed would periodically be replaced by computer-printed facsimile cards (without the postcard formatting on the back). The facsimile cards would be somehow clearly marked as copies, with a watermark or a cancellation line through the face or perhaps a hole in the middle. Visitors would be discouraged from taking these, and encouraged instead to try to find a suitable original, until all such originals had been distributed.

And in case you're wondering, I am not obsessively well-organized. To some degree, I think just the opposite is true: that I am obsessively disorganized — at least as regards my personal stuff. But something about the potential for this exercise appeals very deeply to me. Perhaps it's a connection with the outmoded furniture. (I have recently come to understand that card catalogs are largely a thing of the past and that there's a whole generation of folks who don't know what they are.) Perhaps it's the alphabetization aspect. (While I am not organizationally minded, I am profoundly entranced by the invention of alphabetical order and its application.) Perhaps it's the idea of freezing a moment in time. (At some point, the cataloging would be complete. I expect that the final day of cataloging would necessarily involve going through the kitchen to document the perishables.)

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A general note on the nature of my New Year's Resolutions: In case this was unclear, and in case anyone was wondering, I think it's worth mentioning that I do not necessarily intend to perform all of my 02009 New Year's Resolutions during the calendar year of 02009. Instead, I intend to give myself one year from whatever date I make each resolution. If I end up making my last Resolution on December 31st, it would be unfair to expect it to be completed by midnight that night.

April Hair Photos

Happy April Fool's Day!

As you will recall from previous posts, my 02008 New Year's Resolution was to try my best to resist the urge to cut my hair, with the ultimate goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

With just one week left in the year, my resolve to keep my hair uncut was still intact. However, my attention was brought to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths program, with its 8 inch requirement (which is better for me than Locks of Love's 10 inches). I am eager to get rid of the mess on my head. So, I switched allegiance.

Here are the April 1, 02009 photos:


I did end up getting a slight trim on Monday, after Beth told me that I had split ends. This may set me back a bit, but not as much as I expected. I think I may still be on pace for a May or June shearing. I'm really looking forward to it.

02009 New Year's Resolutions #15 and #16: Write Nicely and Write Nicely

My handwriting is terrible. I know this. I have known it for a very long time. IN FACT, I USUALLY WRITE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS IN AN EFFORT TO INCREASE LEGIBILITY. But as anyone who knows about typography will happily tell you, legibility is actually increased by not using ALL CAPS. This is because with ALL CAPS the words tend not to have a very distinctive shape. Lowercase letters have tall parts and short parts and parts that dip below the baseline, which tends to give words distinctive shapes. I almost never use cursive. So rarely, in fact that it feels completely unnatural.

Here's my fifteenth New Year's Resolution of 02009:

I resolve to try to improve my handwriting.

I am increasingly impressed with decent handwriting. This is particularly true of lovely cursive. My mother's handwriting is terrific. And the lady who writes out the appointment cards at my doctor's office has really beautiful cursive. Beth's handwriting is vastly better than my own, and I am a bit jealous. So I'm going to try to improve my handwriting over the course of the next year. Beth tells me that this won't work. She thinks my handwriting is fixed, beyond my control. We shall see. I don't hold out much hope for success, but I choose to go into this with uncharacteristic optimism.

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My sixteenth New Year's Resolution of 02009 is somewhat related, at least inasmuch as it will provide me with an opportunity to work on my handwriting:

I resolve to start writing letters again.

Long ago, I used to write letters. Pretty regularly, in fact. I wrote these great rambling things, sometimes 20 pages or more, to dear friends — to people who then meant the world to me and, frankly, all these years later, still do. Somewhere along the way, I simply stopped doing such. I miss it (and I have gotten a report from one such friend that she misses my letters, which is encouraging). Although the simple truth is that it's been so long that I'm not altogether sure what really went into a lot of those letters, so it's entirely possible that my new letters will be entirely different in both tone and content from what my old letters were. So what?!?

Honestly, given that we're all in such a rush and all so overburdened with "responsibilities" nowadays, isn't it the thought that counts? And what better expression of thought than taking/making the time to commit words to paper, with a specifically targeted audience of one (with no expectation/intention of having anyone else ever read those words, and with no capacity to cut-and-paste the contents to be repurposed into some other document), using a time-consuming and hand-cramping technique?

There's something very intimate and personal about sitting down and writing a letter longhand that is just not matched by typing an e-mail. I miss that. And while I greatly appreciate a good e-mail from an old friend, I do also miss receiving actual letters in the mail. I think sending letters tends to encourage getting letters. So while the blame is wholly mine for discontinuing my own writing of letters, I think it's also fair to say that I am somewhat to blame for the fact that somewhere along the line I also stopped receiving letters.

I'm going to try to break the cycle, at least a little. I'm not setting any real goals for myself. I don't necessarily intend to resume letter-writing correspondence with everyone who I used to write to. I'm not aiming to write, for example, twelve letters in the next twelve months. I'm just aiming to start.

If I manage two real letters in the next year [personal letters (not business), hand-written (not typed), on sheets of paper (not crammed into the confines of a birthday card or holiday card)], I believe that will be more than I have accomplished in the last several years combined. The last real letter I can recall writing was probably in 01998, to an old friend, who (as a result of that letter) figured out before I did that Beth and I should end up as more than just friends.

Note: Do not infer from my mentioning of "two real letters" that I intend to write two and call it a day. I don't. I really want to make letter writing a habit, as it once was. But I do at least have in mind my first two intended recipients. So I'm ready to get going. All I need now is the spark of inspiration, and some time to get rolling.

A New Photograph

One of my New Year's Resolutions this year involves trying to produce five photographs that fill me with unjustifiable pride. Here's my first. I shot this on Thursday.

I rarely title my photographs, but in this case I've made an exception. The title of the photograph: Concerning the Transience of Rainbows.

The rainbows reference has to do with the two arched trees that are central in the image. I don't know why, but up here in New Hampshire there are lots of these thin trees that have bent over into beautiful arcs. I noticed this particular pair a while ago. On Thursday I decided to trek out into the snow and shoot them from the opposite direction. I love how they parallel each other.

I'm truly proud of this shot, so that's 1/5 of the way to fulfilling this particular resolution.

02009 New Year's Resolution #14: Cut Back on the Soda

It seems to me that a fairly good number of my New Year's Resolutions have been aimed, in some way, towards "self improvement" — whether that's in terms of how I view the world (1, 2, 7), in terms of taking more responsibility for my share of the stewardship of the planet (8, 13), in terms of trying to improve my odds of living a long healthy life (6), in terms of trying to improve my lot in life or feel better about my value in it (3, 4, 12), or just in terms of trying to be more accommodating of others (1, 10).

Perhaps the "self improvement" aspect of things is just part of the nature of the exercise. I don't remember ever hearing of anyone making a New Year's Resolution to contract AIDS or to take up crack or to make lots of people cry.

Anyway, I suppose that my 14th New Year's Resolution of 02009 hits on at least a couple of these ideas (stewardship of the planet and working towards improving my own health):

I resolve that I will significantly cut back on my own consumption of soda and opt for water instead, most of the time.

We have perfectly potable well water here at our house. I have a reusable Nalgene-type bottle that I can use to carry about 35 oz. of said well water with me. (It's a rare day when I really feel the need to drink more than 35 oz. of water while I'm out of the house at work, for example). Every time I buy another 2 liter bottle of Tropicana Twister (lately my soda of choice), that's yet another 2 liter bottle that didn't need to be manufactured and that now needs to go through the recycling process. Why not just stop demanding it?

I've been trying to cut back already, with some success. I'm no longer going through two liters every couple of days. I want to get to the point where I just completely stop bringing soda into the house for my own consumption.

I still like a soda (Tropicana Twister, Coke Classic, Mountain Dew, Sunkist), and there's simply no denying that I enjoy drinking it more than I enjoy drinking water. I'm not aiming to go cold turkey. If I'm offered a soda while I'm out, I'll probably continue to accept it. And when I'm out on the road and find myself in need of a fresh drink, given that a disposable bottle is a disposable bottle (no matter what comes in it), I'm likely still to opt for bottled soda instead of bottled water. When we go to the movies, I suppose I'll still go for a big cup of Coke. But there's just no denying that, historically, most of what I've been drinking over the last many years has been in the form of soda that I brought into the house in 2 liter plastic bottles. While it may be yummy, it's also wasteful. So I'm going to try to curtail it.

From what I hear, water is better for me anyway. (Who'd've thunk it?)

March Hair Photos

As you will recall from previous posts, my 02008 New Year's Resolution was to try my best to resist the urge to cut my hair, with the ultimate goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

With just one week left in the year, my resolve to keep my hair uncut was still intact. However, my attention was brought to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths program, with its 8 inch requirement (which is better for me than Locks of Love's 10 inches). I am eager to get rid of the mess on my head. So, I switched allegiance.

Here are the March 2, 02009 photos:


I'm still desperately hoping to be able to get this all chopped off no later than May, although I'm just not certain that it will all have hit that 8 inch minimum by then.

02009 New Year's Resolution #13: Recycle Less

If you read my post from January 27, you already know that I'm a big fan of recycling. I think it's our responsibility to try to damage our environment not so much. However, while recycling is a good thing to do with what's already in the cycle, we're even better served if we combine "recycle" with "reduce" and "reuse". I'm pretty lousy about these latter two. (Of course, we also need to be better about buying recycled products using as much post-consumer content as possible. I guess that falls roughly under the "reuse" umbrella.) But I'm going to try to be better. So, here's my 13th New Year's Resolution of 02009:

I resolve to try to reduce the amount of junk mail that ends up coming in our door, which eventually ends up going to the recyclers. Specifically, I am going to make an effort to get all of the unwanted catalogs to stop visiting our mailbox.

To that end, next stop: http://www.catalogchoice.org/. I invite you all to play along.

Using Real-World Algebra to Establish a Real-World Delusion

Well, I filled my fuel tank for the second time since replacing the engine. The first fill-up was right after I took delivery, so it really doesn't count. Now that I have driven the new engine around for nearly a week, I finally have my first inkling of how it's doing on fuel economy.

The result? A fantastic 38 mpg!

Well, given how much the repair cost, I've been looking for the bright side, and here's how I found it:

I took the initial mileage with the new engine and compared it to the recent mileage of the old engine, and assumed (falsely, of course) that the difference will be constant. Then I built an algebraic equation to suit my whims, and determined that the new engine will pay for itself. Specifically, if we assume that the average price of gas will be $2 per gallon, it will pay for itself over the course of 194,746 miles. At an average of $3 per gallon, it will pay for itself over the course of 129,831 miles. And if we assume that the average price of a gallon of gas over the next several years will be $4, it will pay for itself in just 97,373 miles.

Hooray for algebra!

In case you're wondering, here's the equation:

price per gallon(x/old mpg)-price per gallon(x/new mpg)=installed price of replacement engine

Solve for x and suddenly I feel like a winner!

So, to all of you who've said "algebra is useless in the real world", I say "HA!"

02009 New Year's Resolution #12: Shoot to Kill

A few years ago, Beth got me a fancy Canon digital SLR and some lenses for it. For some reason, she saw me as having the potential to be a pretty good photographer. Well, I really enjoy using my camera, but I tend to be pretty lazy about actually getting it out and shooting. As a result, I don't really take nearly as many photographs as I probably ought to. The downside of that is that the number of especially good images that I produce tends to be pretty small.

For my twelfth New Year's Resolution of 02009, I'm aiming to work on that. (Modestly.)

I resolve to try to produce at least 5 photographs, in the next year, of which I am unjustifiably proud.

Unjustifiable pride is really my only measuring stick. I never have a clue as to whether my pictures are genuinely good or not. All I know is whether I am proud of them. If so, I consider them a success, even if nobody else sees them as worth the effort.

Five in a year may not seem like a lot, but that would be a pretty darned good year for me, photographically.

02009 New Year's Resolution #11: Get Religion (Not Really)

I'm currently in the middle of reading The Troll Circle, By Sigurd Hoel. I have multiple Hoel books in my collection, but I haven't yet read them all. Despite not having read The Troll Circle or Meeting at the Milestone or Sinners in Summertime all the way through even once, I did get around to reading The Road to the World's End for a second time recently. It's really a beautiful book. Beautiful in the way I think of poetry in its most idealized state. Maybe the most beautiful book I've ever read. If you can get your hands on a copy, I highly recommend it.

Anyway, as the receipt that's tucked in the book can attest, I have been in possession of The Troll Circle for over 12 years. I bought it as a special order (with a fairly steep $35 price) on January 13, 01997. And I'm just now getting around to reading it.

I am also rereading The Catcher in the Rye for the first time since high school.

On top of that, I am very lazily making my way through my hardcover copy of Blindness (purchased before Saramago won the Nobel). (I also have several other Saramago novels, long in my possession, just waiting to be read).

Given all of this information, you might guess that my next New Year's Resolution would be something along the lines of "I resolve to buy no more books until I have caught up on those I already own." No such luck.

Instead, I have told you all of the above about what I'm reading merely to establish (a) that I have fallen far behind on my reading list and (b) that I have no objection to reading old books, even when newer ones are available. If something about a book interests me, I'm happy to put it on my list, although I am fully aware that I will die with a large collection if books that I have simply never found the time to read.

So, now you may wonder what my next New Year's Resolution really will be. Well, I'll tell you. My eleventh New Year's Resolution of 02009 is as follows:

I resolve to take a genuine stab at reading Holy Bible, by assorted dead guys.

From what I've seen of it so far (during multiple halfhearted starts and the occasional leafing through), this will not be easy. The thing seems unwieldy and just plain dull as dirt. Nonetheless, I'm really going to make an effort this time. I've owned a copy for a very long time (much longer than I've owned my copy of The Troll Circle), and I figure I might as well try to discover for myself whether it has any literary merit.

I'm not really expecting to get through the whole thing within the next year. But I am, at the very least, aiming to get through the first few books. Let's say from Genesis through Deuteronomy. If I can get even farther, great! And if my King James version proves to be too unpleasant, I'm even willing to commit to switching to a different translation in hopes that it will be more penetrable.

Note: I will begin this little endeavor after I've completed The Troll Circle, not before.

February Hair Photos

As you will recall from previous posts, my 02008 New Year's Resolution was to try my best to resist the urge to cut my hair, with the ultimate goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

With just one week left in the year, my resolve to keep my hair uncut was still intact. However, my attention was brought to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths program, with its 8 inch requirement (which is better for me than Locks of Love's 10 inches). I am eager to get rid of the mess on my head. So, I switched allegiance.

Here are the February 2, 02009 photos:


There should be just a few more of the self portraits before this series reaches its conclusion. I fear that my hair growth may have slowed its pace. Nonetheless, I'm still desperately hoping to be able to get this all chopped off no later than May.

02009 New Year's Resolution #10: Allow You To Steal My Soul

Long, long ago, I used to pay little to no attention to the cameras that were out in the world, stalking unwary souls.

Then one day I came to believe that there was no good reason why my image should be captured for posterity, and I began to shy away from cameras. My strong preference, for quite a lot of years, was to avoid being photographed. When film was in, I was convinced that there were better uses for it than to freeze my ugly mug in time. So, not including surveillance photographs, it's probably true that over the course of the last two decades, more photographs of my hand were taken than were clean shots of my face (as I made a habit of thrusting my hand up in front of my face whenever someone pointed a lens my way for a "candid" shot).

Well, it's a new age. Film is dead and pixels are free. And in my advanced age, I have come to realize that I possess very few photographs of the people who have meant something to me during my life, and suddenly I can appreciate why someone might want to collect images of their loved ones. Jogging the memory of good times, for example.

Do I think there's any particularly strong reason why possessing my image would hold any appeal for someone else? Not really. However, I've had an epiphany: It's really not up to me to determine the value of such things. One man's trash is another man's treasure. So, in response to this epiphany, here's my tenth New Year's Resolution of 02009:

I resolve to stop putting up resistance to having my face photographed.

From now on, if you want to shoot me, all you have to do is to track me down and have a camera ready. I'm no longer going to make efforts to block the sight lines between your camera lens and my face. I don't know whether this will make anyone any happier or not. I kind of doubt it. But if it does, great! I'm a big fan of the idea of increasing the amount of happiness in the world.

02009 New Year's Resolution #9: A Social Networking Policy

This is dumb, but with such a high target for the number of resolutions I plan to make this year, some of them are bound to be duds.

I joined Facebook several months ago. I find that it's much too much of a time-suck. But I keep going back every day. There's something nice about the idea (even if it is only an idea) that there's a place where I can go to find out if anything important has happened in the lives of old friends and that if anything important happens in my life, I can let my old friends know in case it matters to them (and where they can guiltlessly ignore it in case it doesn't).

In practice, at least in my experience so far, Facebook is just a collection of mild amusements, where you get to daily see the faces and names of people you know or used to know. Thats fine. It's still pleasant, even if it's largely devoid of any real substance.

Anyway, so far I have not asked anyone to be my Facebook friend. All of the "friends" I have gathered are people who have invited me to be their "friends". I'm half tempted to resolve to maintain that pattern. But I won't. There are people out there with whom I would like to "reconnect" and I'm sure that some of them (who have not already sought me out) are on Facebook. So, I'm going with a more "genuine" policy towards gathering Facebook friends. Here's my ninth New Year's Resolution of 02009:

I resolve that I will not make efforts to become a shameless "friend accumulator" on Facebook. Anyone I invite to be my Facebook friend will be someone who I remember and for whom I have sincerely fond feelings. I won't indiscriminately invite random people who just happened to be in my high school class, or who just happen to live in my town, or who just happen to work for the same company as me.

Note: I'm not saying that those are invalid approaches to Facebook. I have no objection to people doing those things, if that's the way they want to conduct themselves. In fact, I think that such "openness" is sort of admirable. Why not reach out to people you were too shy to approach in high school? Why not show those who you used to exclude that you've grown past the cliquishness of the old days? Why not reach out to a jock if you were a nerd (or vice versa) and discover that you really aren't all that different after all? Why not just try to expand your social circle?

All admirable.

Hence, I will not refuse an offer of friendship from someone I don't remember or someone I barely remember or someone I never really seemed to have much in common with in the past.

But I am not going to be the one to make that first step. If you receive a friendship request from me, it will be because I remember you and I have genuinely fond feelings for you. That's all. However, if you want to be my Facebook friend, you shouldn't wait for me to invite you. And if you don't get an invitation from me, you should not consider it a slight. Know that I have a terrible memory, and know that I will probably not spend lots of time searching for people to be friends. If you want to be friends, great. Go ahead and ask. (But if I really can't remember you, and if you can't establish that we have some link -- even as tenuous as merely having attended the same elementary school, I probably won't accept that invitation.)

25 (vaguely) Random Things About Me

I got invited by some Facebook friends to participate in this sharing exercise. To participate, you make a list of 25 random facts about yourself and share the list, inviting 25 friends to do the same. I found it an entertaining and challenging exercise. Just for fun, I figured I might as well also post my list to my blog. Here's what I came up with:

1) I tend to think in long, rambling sentences or even paragraphs, rather than simple declarative statements.

2) I have an astonishingly bad memory. This is especially true when it comes to remembering people's names, but that's certainly not the end of it.

3) I have started in the last few years to remember certain things about my childhood that I had thought were lost. For example, I now remember that at various times I thought I might like to become a stuntman, a lawyer, and a philosopher. These were never dreams, rather just ideas.

4) I am quite certain that I never had any desire to be a fireman, police officer, or soldier.

5) When I was young, I was interested in/fascinated by the following ideas (listed in no particular order): vampires, sasquatch, werewolves, wolfmen, the Loch Ness monster, time travel, immortality, aliens (specifically, those who would visit the Earth in their spaceships), ghosts, the dangers of the Bermuda Triangle, whirlpools that could swallow boats, underground habitable worlds in which there was an ever present danger of being burnt to a crisp by lava, ESP, telekinesis, pyrokinesis.

6) I understand (and probably pretty much always understood) that the vast majority of these ideas are unlikely to the point of absurdity.

7) Nonetheless, I have a sentimental soft spot in my heart for at least a few of these ideas even to this day, and would generally prefer to listen to someone discussing these things at length than have to spend even a few minutes listening to someone prattle on in earnest about God or Jesus or Allah or any other deity that he or she thinks is worthy of worship. In fact, . . .

8) I have very little to no patience/tolerance/appreciation for much of anything that's religiously motivated.

9) However, I love religious tracts. (If you send me one, you're sure to be on my good side.)

10) If I ever told you that I never smile, never laugh, or have no sense of humor, you should know that that was a bit of a joke.

11) My favorite color is pink, and I am secure enough in my masculinity that I'm not embarrassed to say so.

12) I find it difficult to compile this list. The reason is that something in my nature demands that I try to come up with something more interesting (to my way of thinking) than that my eyes are brown or that I have one sister and no brothers. However, . . .

13) My feet are really quite small relative to my height, as has been the case for as long as I can recall.

14) While I am extremely comfortable expressing myself in writing, I am considerably less so in person, and even less so on the phone. I get nervous when speaking before an audience. This nervousness manifests itself in the primary symptom of shaking. I do not tend to put myself into such situations very frequently, although I have for years been considering joining Toastmasters, because I think it would be genuinely good for me.

15) Not only am I nervous in front of an audience, I am also generally uncomfortable in a crowd. I have no fondness for parties because this discomfort tends to make them less than enjoyable for me.

16) The discomfort in a crowd is selective, however, depending (I think) on the size of the crowd and its purpose. I can be fully at ease as an audience member at sporting events, and I used to comfortably participate in enormous rallies (pro-choice, housing now) on The Mall in DC. I think the vastness of these gatherings makes for a kind of anonymity that is very soothing to me.

17) If I live long enough, I will be the last unapologetic carnivore on Earth.

18) It's fair to say that I am a man without ambition. I'm simply not interested in career advancement, I'm not looking to start or lead a movement. At this point, what I wish for more than anything else is to spend my remaining years with my darling wife.

19) This is not to say that I have no unfulfilled dreams. Surely, I have dreams. Right? Right!

20) My greatest fear in life is, as it has been for decades, becoming homeless.

21) Still, sometimes I think it might be nice to just get rid of all material possessions and become nomadic.

22) I used never to sing within earshot of anyone else. This was policy. Beth has changed me, to the point where I actually enjoyed taking the microphone at a (small) party a few months ago for several songs playing Guitar Hero World Tour on the Wii. This was in the presence of some people I have known for a quite a while and some people I barely know at all. That's progress.

23) If I have a hero, that hero is Erno Rubik.

24) I have competed in boomerang tournaments, not because I like competition, but because I like throwing boomerangs.

25) My eyes are brown and I have one sister and no brothers.

02009 New Year's Resolution #8: Not So Lazy With the Saving of the Planet

I find that the recycling has become a bit more of a chore since we moved to Newport, NH. We have no curbside recycling pickup here. [I'm still peeved that the voters here turned down a brilliant proposal at town meeting a couple of years ago for a pay as you throw (PAYT) plan that would have encouraged recycling, in a town that ought to be deeply ashamed of itself for its embarrassingly low recycling rate.]

In Maryland, we used to have curbside recycling pickup, and we lived in a county that achieved and maintained 50% recycling rates a few years ago. (However that's calculated, it's obviously better than the <15% recycling rate that's cited for this town.) Carrying the blue bin out to the curb once a week as I walked to my car before heading off to work was much more convenient than loading up the car for a special trip between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. on a Saturday. Without that convenience, I allowed myself to get lazy about getting the recyclables out of the house. So, here's my eighth New Year's Resolution of 02009:

I resolve to get more on top and to stay more on top of our household recycling. Specifically, I will make the trip to drop our recyclables off at least once a month.

Note: This will not result in an increased amount or an increased percentage of household waste being recycled. I already recycle what I can, and I'm confident that it's a much higher percentage than is achieved by my fellow citizens. What it does mean is that our recyclables will be less prone to gathering into great collections awaiting transport. Our kitchen will be littered by fewer empty bottles and cans, and the junk mail bin next to our front door will not continue to overflow onto the floor nearby.

This will surely result in a happier Beth, which is a universal good.

02009 New Year's Resolution #7: Learning From Past Mistakes

My seventh New Year's Resolution of 02009 is pretty basic:

I resolve that no matter how sensible they may seem at the time, I will keep in mind that certain "experiments" ought never to be repeated. [Cinnamon and steak are two great tastes that do not go great together! Lemon Pledge is not, even in a pinch, suitable for cleaning spills on the Pergo floor!]

There are people in this world who would innately know ahead of time that these experiments are unwise. Not being blessed with such foresight, the best I can do is to avoid trying them again.

I'm still trying to figure out why it is that kitchens don't ever seem to explode when people are experimenting with new recipes. (Mix stuff together, apply heat, shouldn't there be the occasional explosive reaction?) Perhaps it's best for me to stick to recipes that other people have already tried. As for that Pledge thing, trust me. Unless you want your own little indoor ice rink, don't try it.

02009 New Year's Resolution #6: A Cliche, You Say?

I've never really been one to judge myself on my physique. I think perhaps that's at least partly because for most of my life, I was fairly trim (if not downright skinny) without investing any effort in it at all. I ate food and I stayed thin.

Well, in recent years, I've become somewhat more pudgy than I used to be. It's not really all that bad, but what bugged me was when I looked at a BMI chart in the doctor's office and realised that I qualify as "overweight". BMI is really a meaningless number because it doesn't take into account whether a person is muscular or just fat. It's basically just a ratio between height and weight, without regard to the different densities of various tissue types, and without regard to whether someone is broad shouldered or not, etc. Nonetheless, "overweight" isn't fun to think about, because it carries with it some increased risk of bad health. My cholesterol is all out of whack (way too little good, a wee bit too much bad), so improving at least one small aspect of my health might be a good goal for the year. I figured "why not go for the banal?" for my sixth New Year's Resolution of 02009. So, here it is:

I resolve to get my weight down at least as low as 175 lbs. and to try to keep it that low.

I started the year at around 186.5 and got sick a couple of weeks ago. The sickness knocked me down from 188.6 to 181 in about 3 days. So I'm off to a pretty good start. (Granted: that's really not the ideal approach to losing weight!) As of this morning, I was at 180.

Anyway, if I get down to 175, and if (as I have long believed and asserted) I am 5' 11" tall, then a weight of 175 will put me right on the edge between normal and overweight, according to that chart. That'll be a bit better than where I have been. And maybe I'll be able to fit comfortably into my 34 x 32 jeans, instead of having to use the 36" waists.

02009 New Year's Resolution #5: More Resolutions Than Reasonable

In 02007, I made exactly one New Year's Resolution: To be more willing to try new foods. That was the first year in recent memory during which I made a resolution. I kept that resolution. Sadly, in that year during which Beth and I took to calling me "Super Mr. Adventure Eater", there was only one new food that I tried that really knocked my socks off. It was some Indian food. Chicken Korma, perhaps? (I don't think it was Lamb Biryani, although given my longstanding love for the flavor of lamb, that would have been a more predictable choice.) I have continued my willingness to try different foods since then. This week, for example, I have started eating yogurt. It's not great, but I think I can get used to it.

Anyway, the thing about that resolution is that I didn't get around to making my New Year's Resolution until June. I'm not sure that it happened exactly on the summer solstice, but I am quite certain that it wasn't more that a week removed from it. So, that establishes that I have absolutely no objection to the idea of making New Year's Resolutions at what may seem like inappropriate times.

So, here's my fifth New Year's Resolution for 02009:

I resolve to try to make at least one New Year's Resolution for every week this year.

That means that if I'm successful, I will end the year having made at least 52 New Year's Resolutions! Can you imagine? I'm off to a great pace so far, and up till now all have been fairly serious resolutions that have some meaning for me. [This one ranking lowest by those measures.] I expect that some will be interesting and some will be profound in some way. I also expect that lots of them will be very silly. It's an experiment, and we'll see how it goes.

Keep reading this blog to monitor my progress. And wish me luck!

02009 New Year's Resolution #4: A Positive Step Forward

The fourth in my series of 02009 New Year's Resolutions is one that will be very easy to measure my success at. It's a binary proposition. Either I will fulfill it or I won't. There's no grey area here. So, here's my fourth New Year's Resolution of 02009:

I will finish typing and formatting my non-fiction book proposal and I will try to get at least one suitable publisher to entertain it. [The first publisher on my list is Oxford University Press.]

My idea is a stroke of genius. I'm confident in that.

However, there's some possibility that I arrived at it a few years too late. Not, as has happened with some of my best ideas, because somebody else beat me to the punch. Rather, because it is actually starting to look like there's some real chance that the age of the printed book is coming to a close. (Emphasis on "chance".) If "dead tree technology" is on its way out, then my book proposal has a very limited window of time to be of any value whatsoever. My odds of selling the idea to an appropriate publisher is, in my view, highly dependent on that publisher's confidence in the longevity of the book as we know it (printed paper pages bound together). If the publisher is willing to concede defeat to electronic media, then the fight is lost before it begins.

Ah, but there's my famous pessimism creeping in. New Year's Resolutions are about looking forward, full of hope for the future. So, I'm not going to let my pessimism deter me from fulfilling this resolution.

02009 New Year's Resolution #3: A Conditional Resolution

My third New Year's Resolution of the year 02009 is conditional:

If I get a new full time job in 02009, my new employer's main phone number will not end in "0330".

Two in a row is strangely coincidental. [And it took me about 10 months at the current job to even realise it.] Three in a row would be downright creepy!

02009 New Year's Resolution #2: A Charity of Thought

My second New Year's Resolution of the year 02009 is similar to my first, inasmuch as there is really no measurable action to be taken as a direct result. It is again a resolution to try to improve my attitude towards the world. Unlike the first, this one would probably not be the sort of resolution that could reasonably be undertaken with any sincerity by most people. I think instead that it is applicable only to those of us who recognise our own snobbishness. If there is any real benefit to come from this resolution, it will be merely that I end up a little less of a sourpuss. So, here's my second New Year's Resolution for 02009:

No matter how insipid I may think someone's music is [here I am thinking of acts ranging from Creed, Live, and Smashing Pumpkins (and The Smashing Pumpkins (why the nonsensical addition of "The", I will likely never comprehend)) to Steely Dan, Britney Spears and Celine Dion], I resolve that I will try to keep in mind that everyone who has ever been signed to a recording contract [even William Hung and Wesley Willis (don't get me wrong: I love what I've heard from Wesley Willis)] has a kind of talent that I simply do not possess and has developed a skill that I would likely never be able to achieve.

My own lack of rhythm is profound. I may not appreciate all music, but I should certainly be more respectful of those who produce music that is capable of appealing to an audience, no matter what audience it may be.

02009 New Year's Resolution #1: A Change of Mindset

For the first in my series of 02009 New Year's Resolutions, I'm going with something not very tangible. It's about trying to be a better person in a vague sort of way. I think it's the sort of thing that most anyone could resolve to try, and might make just about anyone feel a little bit better as a result. So, here's my first New Year's Resolution for 02009:

Whenever somebody makes a request of me, particularly if it is something that will cost me nothing but perhaps a little bit of time and effort, I resolve to try to ask myself the following question: "How would I respond to this request if it were being asked by a woman who told me that her son had been killed before his time and that this was his dying wish?"

This is a thought exercise, and to my mind there's a series of questions that then follow quite directly from the initial one: "Does this change my attitude towards the request?" "Does this perspective conflict with my natural tendency?" "If so, how?" "Which response is the better response?"

Note: I am not resolving to respond positively to every request that comes my way. Ultimately, my resolution is to merely think about whether I am treating every request with the respect that it deserves. If this means occasionally inconveniencing myself a little bit more than I otherwise would be willing to do, and the result is that someone has a little bit better of a time of things, then great! The world is a better place. And if it turns out that I don't end up changing my behavior or attitude one bit as a result of this exercise, then at least I will have thought about my place in the world a bit more (perhaps with a bit more empathy or sympathy). And I can live with that.

January Hair Photos

Welcome to 02009!

Well, I made it through all of 02008 without [much] breaking my New Year's Resolution. Sadly, a full year was not enough time to hit the target!

As you will recall from previous posts, my 02008 New Year's Resolution was to try my best to resist the urge to cut my hair, with the ultimate goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

With just one week left in the year, my resolve to keep my hair uncut was still intact. However, my attention was brought to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths program, which has an 8 inch requirement, rather than a 10 inch requirement. I've made no secret of my eagerness to get rid of the mess on my head. So, I have switched allegiance. I have no qualms about this, for at least two reasons:

• In my view, women with cancer are at least as deserving as are children with alopecia.
• I have heard that Locks of Love charges the kids for the wigs. Pantene, on the other hand, gives the wigs away.

Here are the January 2, 02009 photos:

Now it's time to come up with my New Year's Resolutions for 02009. (Yes, there will be more than one. Keep watching this space for details.)

And Happy New Year!

December Hair Photos

As you will recall from previous posts, my New Year's Resolution this year is to try my best to resist the urge to cut my hair, with the ultimate goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

Here are the December 9, 02008 photos. During November, I passed the one-year mark since my last haircut. Sometimes I feel as if my hair is actually starting to look better, almost as if it's a style rather than just a mess. But really, that's all self-delusion. The truth is: It's a mess. But at least now I can mostly keep it out of my eyes. So in that sense, it's improving.

As a best-case scenario, I may be on pace for meeting the 10-inch minimum by May of 02009. I'm really not sure that I can manage to last that long. Time will tell.

A (Brief) Hopeful Thought For the Day

I have recently been thinking of how nice it would be for the Most Dangerous Person in the World to no longer be the President of the United States of America. Obviously, there are basically two different scenarios whereby this could come true:

• The POTUS could become significantly less dangerous.
• Someone else could become even more dangerous, thereby surpassing the POTUS.

Here's hoping the first of these scenarios comes to pass.

Worst...Hair...Ever! (A double shot)

As you will recall from previous posts, my New Year's Resolution this year is to try my best to resist the urge to cut my hair, with the ultimate goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

Here are the October 6, 02008 photos, followed by the November 5, 02008 photos. My apologies for posting them so late. And my apologies for how horrifying they are.

September Hair Photos

As you will recall from previous posts, my New Year's Resolution this year is to try my best to resist the urge to cut my hair, with the ultimate goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

Last week, my hair started really annoying me because it keeps getting into my eyes. Grrrrr...

Anyway, here are the September 2, 02008 photos. My apologies for posting them so late.

For those few of you who will get the reference, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror a couple of days ago while I was wearing a baseball cap. Suddenly, I'm thinking of dressing up as a member of the Baseball Furies for Halloween.

A Neologism (and a half), After Much Rambling Buildup

Surely there are people who spend their time trying to devise neologisms (new words or expressions). I suspect that there is a whole subculture of these linguistic hobbyists. I think it's fair to say that the most blatant (and for a time, the most famous (and possibly the most prolific)) of these neologists in recent memory was Rich Hall. His "sniglets" (words that don't appear in the dictionary but should) were featured for a time on Saturday Night Live and he published a few volumes of them, which I believe were bestsellers.

[Note: Hall was a cast member of Saturday Night Live during at least one of what I think of as "The Forgotten Years". In recent years, when I have sporadically caught reruns of SNL on E!, I don't believe I have ever seen one of the episodes from this era rerun. These were actually my favorite SNL years (probably more than for any other reason because they're the years when I started watching, and they therefore have a real nostalgic value for me). Besides Rich Hall, the cast of this era included Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Brad Hall, Eddie Murphy (although I don't think Hall and Murphy actually shared a season), Tim Kazurinsky, Gary Kroeger, Mary Gross, Martin Short, Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest, and Billy Crystal. Some of these people went on to stellar careers, some faded from the public eye. All were great in their own way, and it's a shame that those SNL episodes don't seem to be in syndication.]

Anyway, as I've mentioned before, I've been trying to think on a 10,000 year scale instead of thinking in terms of decades or centuries. This is daunting. Especially if you also think in terms of trying to leave some sort of literary legacy. Which I do. ("Odd," you might say, given that I have never published a novel nor is there any real reason to believe that I will ever manage to do so. I won't dispute that it's odd. I also will freely admit that I have no such grandiose aspirations for what I post on my blog. It's easy to spew out lots of words if you are not trying to write for the ages.)

When I took my first real stab at writing a novel, I was not seriously thinking in 10,000 year terms. But I was thinking much more vaguely in terms of literary "immortality". And to some degree, this really acted as a hindrance to me, though perhaps not in the sense that you would expect. I wasn't frozen with fear at the prospect of trying to write something great. Instead, I was stymied by the certainty (certainty!) that much of what we deal with in our daily lives is (in the longish term) mere ephemera.

What will last?

"Telephone" will be an obsolete term soon. "Internet" will probably be obsolete even sooner. Already there's a generation of people for whom "Walkman" is meaningless, I'm sure. It's been superseded by "iPod" or "MP3 player", both of which will be virtually forgotten within 50 years. I'm pretty confident in saying that. Heck, even "computer" may fairly quickly become an archaic term, as what we think of as a computer becomes obsolete, replaced by some sort of I-don't-know-what. When faced with this knowledge, and motivated by the desire to write something timeless, what's an author to do?

In my case, the answer is challenging, and limiting: try your best to avoid including references to those things that you're sure will soon be memories, soon thereafter be quaint curiosities, and soon thereafter be lost to the realm of human experience. Limiting, indeed! If the phone is off limits, surely e-mail is too. IM and text messaging -- meaningless and (to me in my novelistic aspirational mindset) useless! What's an LP? What's an album? What in the world does vinyl have to do with music?

Anyway, the more I try to think on a 10,000 year scale, the more convinced I become that the idea of literary immortality is an unattainable goal. Here's what else I've concluded about the exercise: 1) Your best shot at literary longevity is inextricably linked with accepting anonymity. 2) The shorter your contribution (assuming it's really good), the longer it is likely to last.

So, if you want to leave a lasting literary legacy, your best bet is to accept that it will not be associated with your name for very long, and to make it as snappy as possible. Aphorisms, proverbs, and neologisms are really the way to go, if "immortality" is your goal.

Neologisms are actually probably the worst of these three forms, for the simple reason that the others can be translated to other languages with ease and (assuming they're really effective) they won't lose any value in the translation.

So, after there's no longer any such thing as a "penny" and after Ben Franklin is completely forgotten, "a penny saved is a penny earned" can still have meaning to any culture (and in any language) that has grasped the concept and adapted the saying to its particular vernacular. "Penny" is just a variable, easily replaced by "dollar" "yen", "peso", or "yumyum". "Save" and "earn" are simple concepts, easily translatable into almost any language. Assuming it still has cultural value, "a penny saved is a penny earned" can easily be imagined as having the potential to outlast the English language.

Neologisms are a trickier business. A neologism is only a neologism for a short time. If it catches on (a big if, always), it soon ceases to be a neologism and instead simply becomes a word. Words are really tied to the language in which they originate, with rare exceptions. ("OK" has somehow become fairly universal.) Generally speaking, if the language dies, so does the word. This doesn't even take into account the natural evolution of language that dictates the constant, gradual alteration in meaning that occurs to many (if not most or all) words. If you originate a new word with a particular meaning today and in 50 years the word is still used, but with a somewhat different connotation (or worse, a somewhat different denotation), can you still take credit for it? How about in 300 years, when your original definition is so far removed from the current one that there isn't even any readily obvious connection between what it was and what it has become?

I mentioned Rich Hall earlier. Turns out he was apparently Matt Groening's inspiration for the character of Moe Szyslak. Mentioning Matt Groening is a handy tool for tying neologisms to literary legacies. (I am, of course, using a very broad definition of "literary", here.) If we were placing bets, my money would be on "d'oh" as Groening's lasting literary legacy. I'm guessing that people will widely respect and appreciate (perhaps revere) The Simpsons (and, I hope, Futurama) for a few decades to come. I suspect that in 100 years, those shows will be as well known and loved as are the films of Harold Lloyd today. Which is to say that there will be a small group of devotees who fight hard to keep the legacy alive, while the vast majority of the population will suddenly be overcome by a blank stare (at best) when presented with a reference to them. By contrast, I'm guessing that "d'oh" stands a very good chance of lasting and being widely used as an expression of anger or frustration or revealed stupidity for at least a couple of hundred years. If I had to put my money on how long "d'oh" will be in common parlance, I'd bet somewhere between 300 and 600 years. (That's me being extremely optimistic, which is rare.)

Assuming "d'oh" lasts that long, will Groening's name be associated with it in any way? Not a chance! But it will still be his legacy, and I'm pretty sure that if it does last that long, it'll likely be his only (directly attributable) contribution to whatever has become of society.

Which is great!

I don't think Jose Saramago or Toni Morrison or Kenzaburo Oe or V.S. Naipaul or Orhan Pamuk is likely to have inserted anything so powerful as that one word quite so far into the future. This is not a commentary on their literary genius. Merely a thought about what likely lasts and what likely doesn't through the coming centuries.

It's fair to say that I am not one of those neologism hobbyists I mentioned at the start of this entry. It's also fair to say that I do not have any expectation that my offerings in this field will catch on, let alone last. However, having stated as much, I figure I might as well throw a neologism or two out there into the internet as see if I get any traction at all.

So, without further ado, one and a half neologisms for your consideration:

intrarogative - adj. Characterized by self doubt. n. One who is characterized by self doubt.
intrarogative question - n. A question, typically rhetorical and usually pessimistic, about one's own place in the universe.

I am an intrarogative (I think), always questioning my own choices in life, rarely certain that I have acted as wisely as I should have done.

"Why me?" is the mother of all intrarogative questions. Others include: "How did I get here?", "Why did this happen to me?", and even vaguer questions like "What else can go wrong?".

Some Thoughts on the Olympics

First, Michael Phelps was spectacular. There's no denying that. What he did was amazing. Congratulations to him and his teammates. (Note: The most impressive moment of all of the swimming events that I saw was Lezak chasing down and passing Bernard in that 4 x 100 m freestyle relay.)

However, given the coverage and praise that has been heaped upon Phelps, Usain Bolt has not gotten nearly enough attention in the television coverage here in the U.S.

Once again (as happens every time the Olympics comes around), I am reminded that our televised Olympics coverage really is way too America-centric. I wonder what the coverage in Jamaica has been like. I hope Bolt has been getting his due there!

Unfortunately, it seems that half the commentary I have heard about Bolt has been disparaging remarks about his poor sportsmanship (exuberance) and showboating (premature celebration). I feel somewhat cheated by not seeing what he would have done in the 100 m if he had really given it his all. But I will not pile on with the criticism. He left me wanting more. That's all.

Here's my take on Bolt: What he did in the 100 meter race may have been the most jaw-dropping performance I have ever seen in sport. It was utterly astonishing! Basically, the guy coasted for the last 15 meters and he still beat the rest the best in the world have ever offered.

Here's the analogy that came to mind when I saw it: Imagine a 50 meter freestyle race, in the final round of the Olympics, in which someone was so far ahead of the field that he could roll over and take his last two or three strokes on his back, still win the race, and still break the world record. It's unthinkable!

The 100 meter run record is a slow dropper. In the last 25 years, the world record in the event has now dropped, on average, just under 0.01 seconds per year. In the last year, Bolt has been responsible for fully 1/5 of that entire drop. And in establishing the new record in Beijing, he wasn't really trying! The guy didn't push until the end. Not even close. He knew he was going to win, and he relaxed. It was absolutely phenomenal.

For comparison purposes, consider that in the last 25 years, the 100 meter dash record time has dropped by just 2.4%.

The 50 meter freestyle long course record time has dropped by 5.51%.
The 100 meter butterfly long course record time has dropped by 5.69%.
The 100 meter breaststroke long course record time has dropped by 5.69%. (This shocks me! Given the complete change that the stroke has undergone, I would have though this would be more like a 10-15% drop.)
The 100 meter freestyle long course record time has dropped by 4.68%.

But winning the 100 meter run wasn't the end of it. Bolt then went on to break the 200 meter running record, which has been an even slower dropper than the 100 meter running record! In almost 29 years, the record for the 200 has now dropped by just 2.1%. Based on these record progressions, it's entirely reasonable to assume that runners are closer to reaching the limits of performance than are swimmers. And Bolt has shown that he is closer than anyone, although watching his performances, it's very difficult to assume that he has come close to reaching his own potential.

Again, I'm not saying that Phelps has not been absolutely spectacular. He has. Period. And in terms of what he has done to shatter records, it's absolutely true that Phelps is head and shoulders above anything Bolt has done. For example, in the 200 meter butterfly, Phelps has singlehandedly dropped the record by as much in just over 7 years as it had been previously dropped in just under 25 years. That's incredible! But in terms of strictly what's happened in Beijing, I would argue that Bolt's performance has been every bit as astonishing as Phelps' performance.

(And just for a bit of snarky nostalgia, I'll throw this in: Michael Phelps will always be an underage drunk driver to me.)

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There's an often uttered saying in the sports world: "That's why they play the games."

The idea is that on any given day, anyone can be beaten. However, with the women's beach volleyball competition, I really felt as much as ever that there was a foregone conclusion in play.

I could hardly have been less enthusiastic about my role as a spectator in this event. As the tournament was happening, I watched minutes here and there, but I made no real effort to tune in and pay attention. I would stop watching matches long before their conclusions, paying little attention to where the scores stood. I simply assumed that May-Treanor and Walsh would prevail. And, of course, they did not disappoint.

There was no surprise in learning that they had gotten to the gold medal match. There was no surprise in learning that they had not dropped a set. Did I watch the gold medal match? Yes. Start to finish, with almost no enthusiasm. I was awed! I won't deny that. What you're watching when you watch Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor play together is simply the best there has ever been, doing what they do best. You should be aware of it and you should marvel at it. It is a genuine privilege. But sadly, it's just not edge-of-your seat, "anything can happen" competition. It's as much like watching destiny unfold as the sports fan can experience.

The Bell Ringer Joke Revisited

or:

If I'm Destined to Get a Pulitzer Prize for 02008, This is the Line of Thought That Will Earn It For Me

I'm pretty sure that it's been at least two decades since the idea of The Bell Ringer Joke started knocking around in my head. (I've mentioned the joke in a previous blog post.) There has been hope and despair, laughter and great disappointment, spread out over more than half my lifetime!

On Thursday morning, out of the blue, I had a few epiphanies regarding the joke for all of these years.

Epiphany #1: The first and second parts of the joke are spectacular, and if I had not been told at the time that I first heard them that there was a mysterious third part floating about in the ether, those two known parts would have been deeply satisfying. There would have been no disappointment associated with The Bell Ringer Joke whatsoever. The two parts stand together as a complete and brilliant story, riotously funny. Which is to say that the third part is only relevant if you know it exists. It is profoundly unnecessary to the success of the other two parts.

Having tracked down the missing third part, (since the internet made all such information readily available to all who seek it), I was precisely as disappointed by the third part as I had been warned I would be. For so many years, the rumor was not merely that there was a third part. Instead the rumor was that there was a third part and that it was a terrible disappointment to everyone who heard it. ("How bad could it be?", thought I, naively. The answer: Every bit as bad as everyone said it was.

This is why it took so many years to get to the third part: It was so bad that nobody who had heard it was willing to repeat it. In fact, there were claims of its being so bad that people completely excised it from their memories.)

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Epiphany #2: There is a reason why the third part is so horribly disappointing. And it's not really an intangible -- "you know it when you hear it" -- reason. On Thursday morning, I determined exactly why the third part is so disappointing. And I can articulate it simply. But first, as I tend to do so very frequently in this life, I feel the need to preface what I'm about to say.

Preface: I've never written a thesis on humor. I'm not very interested in doing so -- although I suppose if someone were to offer me a doctorate for doing so, I think there are certainly less appealing thesis topics to try to tackle.

I'm sure that many theses have been written on the topic of humor. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that The Bell Ringer Joke plays a fairly central role in at least a few of them. To be honest, I'm not terribly interested in reading any such theses. Although again, I suspect these would hardly be the most unpleasant theses to have to wade through.

It may well be the case that the more you try to figure out what makes something funny, the less funny it becomes. (This is the "dissecting a butterfly" argument, which applies also to poetry and beauty (and probably lots of other things).) That's not my point here. I'm not trying to provide a template that can be used to devise new jokes. Nor am I saying "if a joke doesn't fit this criterion, it's not funny". Rather, I'm pointing out where the disjoint is between the two successful parts of the joke and the unsuccessful third part.

So, here it is: The structure of the punch line in each of the two successful parts of the joke plays with the congruence of the literal and the figurative meanings of the idioms used. (In the first part, "I don't know, but his face rings a bell". In the second part, "I don't know, but he's a dead ringer for that other guy".)

This is not the same structure as the third part. The third part has nothing to do with bridging the literal/figurative gap. And for that matter, it has nothing to do with idiom. Frankly, I don't remember the third punch line, and I was so disgusted by it that I'm unwilling to look it up right now. But here's what I remember of it:

It was a pun.

Now, I've written before of my general distaste for the pun. I think it's a pathetic approach to humor. Rarely is it clever and almost never is it genuinely funny. That's my own bias, and I'll freely admit to that. However, that's not where my case against the third part rests.

Nor does it rest in my assertion that it is a horribly convoluted and horribly contrived pun. (Which it is!)

My case against the third punch line rests merely in its not being of the same type as the first two punch lines.

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If we can agree that the horrible third part should be thrown on the scrap heap [and I think all reasonable people can agree on this], we're left with the question of whether there should be a better third part that's properly designed and better fits with the other two parts. I am of the opinion that this is the case. Perhaps it's just based on years of frustration and pent up longing, but I really do believe that there should be a third part of the joke. That would provide closure, assuming that it's worthy of being matched with the others.

Epiphany #3: (This is the real shocker of the bunch.) I've been looking in the wrong place for the missing part. What's missing is not, in fact, the third part. What's missing is the first part! Logically, this makes sense.

The "second" guy is a dead ringer for the other guy. That's established by the fraternal relationship. The "first" guy's face rings a bell. Why? That deserves a set-up. Obviously, it's all in the telling, and it's easy enough to start out by establishing merely as a part of the narrative that the guy whose face rings a bell was taking over for a brother who died or retired or went missing. But I've come to understand that that's a cop out! "Easy enough" isn't necessarily right. Wouldn't it be better if there were a funny story to establish what happened to the first brother?

Of course it would!

So, now the task is not to establish not a new third part, but rather to establish a new first part, which would bump the other parts into the second and third slots. The end result is that you end up with a three-part joke (which, in my view, it deserves to be). And if it's built correctly, it will actually feel related to the other two parts, which is really what all of this longing and disappointment have been about.

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When I was in high school, I took a career assessment. The idea was that by asking a series of questions about a person's interests and personality tendencies, it was possible to make reasonable recommendations about what line of work that person might be best suited for. Much to my surprise, I was judged most suited to being a stand-up comedian.

Funny, that.

I think I could probably come up with a funny routine and get some laughs if I were to put some real effort into it. Doing an open mic night is something that I've long contemplated but never bothered to look into. Maybe I'll get to that before I die. Maybe not.

I don't think anyone who knows me actually thinks of me as being "Mr. Funny". I'm not a cut-up and I've never really put much effort into my joke-telling skills. I hardly ever actually tell a joke, and when I do, it tends to be a very simple joke--largely because I have such a terrible memory, it's just so difficult for me to remember any very complicated story jokes. I'm not terribly comfortable in front of crowds -- I get nervous. And I am naturally a very reserved person, largely keeping quiet and not saying a lot. I am not what you would call a raconteur. (I write at length, but I really don't talk a whole lot at all.)

All of this suggests that if you want me to provide you with a new joke, you're probably looking in the wrong place. However, that's just what I'm about to do.

Again, this must come with some warnings.

1) I'm actually just going to provide you with an outline of a joke -- a skeleton, if you will. In order to become a genuinely good joke, it would need some flesh on its bones. Part of that is simply having a joke teller who knows how to "sell" the story. But part of it is in the actual wording, and (at the moment) I'm just not ready to invest the effort in trying to perfectly craft it.

2) Part of what makes The Bell Ringer Joke so special is that it isn't in the least bit blue. That is, there's no bawdiness in it at all. Now, if you know me, you probably know that I rarely ever cuss. Frankly, I came to realise a lot of years ago that cussing is just a lazy habit. It's easy to do, hard to avoid once you establish the habit, and really doesn't accomplish much. So a long while ago, I decided to make an effort to get out of the habit. In realizing just how lazy a habit it is, I think I came to really appreciate people who don't use it as a crutch for expressing themselves. This has extended to an overall appreciation for civility and a bit of disdain for crassness. You may call me old-fashioned, or call me a prude, or accuse me of being against free speech. That's your right. But the truth is that I think people can do better and I believe that the Jerry Springerification of America is one of the worst things that has happened in our society during my lifetime. I'm not as old as some, but I'm old enough to remember when adults were generally responsible enough to not expose children (in public, anyway) to foul language. I think that was a better time.

This is not to say that I can't appreciate a well-placed cuss word. One of my favorite movie quotes of all time comes from Friday, when Smokey says, "You got knocked the f*** out!" That's a hilarious line! Part of it is Chris Tucker's delivery. But delivery alone does not make the line. If you take the F-bomb out, it just isn't funny, no matter how well delivered it is. I understand this, and I appreciate it. I'm not "above" foul language, I just think it's altogether too overused in today's society. The unfortunate downside of this is that it loses its power and just becomes so much noise instead of providing any real emphasis.

The reason why I mention this is that my joke, while quite tame by today's standards, is still considerably bluer than is appropriate to be a truly good match for the other two parts of The Bell Ringer Joke. This is part of its downfall. I'm putting this out there right up front because I want it to be absolutely clear that this is a flawed "attempt". There should be no confusion about this point. I am not providing this outline of a joke as a proposed addition to The Bell Ringer Joke. Rather, I'm putting this out there as a bad example of how easy it is to do better than what's currently out there, and as a provocation in hopes that somebody out there will take up the challenge of doing even better than this.

3) My outline does take the approach of using the literal/figurative interpretation of an idiom as the basis for its structure. So here are a couple of other parts of its downfall: (a) The literal interpretation isn't literal enough. (b) The idiom I have gone with is too obscure and outdated.

For the existing two successful parts of the joke, the literal interpretations of those punch lines are absolutely literal. My punch line is not truly literal. It's close, in its own way. But it's not quite there.

As for the idiom, I think "his face rings a bell" is very widely understood. I suspect the phrase "dead ringer" is probably a bit less widely understood (and probably becoming ever less widely understood with each passing year). But for now, I think it's probably in common enough parlance to count as being part of the general American vernacular, and will probably remain such for quite a long while. My idiom was probably pretty widely understood 30-50 years ago, but I think it has pretty rapidly dropped out of common usage, and I suspect that in 50 years, it will be considered archaic usage. If I am right about these things, my joke simply does not have the appropriately broad appeal that The Bell Ringer Joke deserves for all of its parts to have.

So, here's my sketch:

Just after the start of the year, the bishop was at the cathedral to interview candidates for the position of bell ringer. The ancient bell ringer had decided to finally take his pension. He had served for quite a lot of years. His back could no longer handle the constant pulling of the ropes and his legs could no longer handle the constant climbing of the stairs that were requisites of the job.

One candidate stood out among the rest. He was young, but had an impeccable résumé, great references, and was a member of the most well-respected family of bell ringers in all the land. His father, grandfather, great grandfather, and great great grandfather, as well as countless uncles, were all widely known to have served the church with distinction over many years. The man was hired, without audition, and the bishop left the cathedral with confidence in his choice.

The next day, as scheduled, the new bell ringer did his duty, ringing the bells exactly at the turn of the hour, every hour. Over the next months, he never missed a chime, never struck a wrong note, performed spectacularly for every mass, at every holiday. He was widely regarded as the best bell ringer in anyone's memory.

About ten months after the new bell ringer arrived, the church's old housekeeper retired and was replaced by a pretty young lady, who again had a wonderful résumé and unimpeachable references. The new housekeeper was diligent in doing her duty, and the church had never before been cleaner. Everything was spotless and sparkling. When the bishop came through on his annual visit, he was extremely impressed by what he saw and heard. He was even notified that church attendance had been steadily increasing in recent months, and was pleased.

But then one spring day, things started to go a little funny. In mid-afternoon, there was a surprise ringing of the bells. The priests had such faith in the bell ringer that they took this as a call to prayer, perhaps a special mass that they didn't realise was on the calendar. The quickly scrambled to prayer and did their duty.

A week later, there was another "special mass" at the same time of day.

And then the next week.

After that, the special masses started to occur still more frequently. It got to where there was a special mass every day, and their times started to vary.

One day, there were two special masses, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

One of the younger priests couldn't take it any longer. He had consulted every calendar he could find and was convinced there was no justification for these unscheduled bell ringing sessions. "Glory be to God, and the more prayer the better. Nonetheless, we have a schedule for a reason", he told the head priest. So the next day, with the head priest's blessing, he snuck up the bell tower and hid in a little closet one floor below the bells. He showed up early, before the bell ringer arrived for the day. And he waited.

He heard the bell ringer arrive right on time. Every hour, on the hour, the bells were rung, just as scheduled. The priest said his prayers as scheduled, there in the closet. Then at about 3.30 he heard some light footsteps outside the door, heading up the stairs. "Who could that be?" he wondered. And he peeked out, too late to observe the visitor. But he did notice that the banister seemed slightly shinier than it had been earlier in the day.

A couple of minutes later, the priest started to hear some whispering voices, one female and one male. He heard some giggling, which gave way to muffled grunting. The grunts intermingled with squeaks and then moans, getting slightly louder as the minutes passed. Just as they were reaching their crescendo, the bell rang, almost completely drowning out a scream in praise of the glory of God, still 12 minutes before the hour!

The priest cracked open the door to the closet yet again and peered out, waiting for the visitor. When she did pass by, he saw that it was the pretty young housekeeper. She was tidying her hair and straightening her skirt as she headed downstairs. When the hour came, the bells rang on schedule, flawlessly. By this time, the snooping spy had already arrived at the office of the head priest to make a report on what he had seen.

Early the next day, a local man was surprised to see the head priest wandering through the city posting signs in shopkeepers' windows announcing that a new bell ringer was needed for the church, and applicants should come to the bell tower the following Thursday.

The man walked into one of the shops and asked the shopkeeper if she had spoken with the priest. She confirmed that she had.

"So what's the story?", he asked. "The bell ringer we had was so good! Everyone agreed he was the best in our city's history. And especially in recent days, he has had such a big smile on his face when I have seen him going to work. Always so cheery, like he really loved his job."

"Well," said the shopkeeper, "it seems they had to fire him for making time with the housekeeper."

This, of course, leads pretty naturally to the next part of the joke, with some slight adjustments for a proper segue:

The following Thursday, the bishop arrived at the base of the bell tower to perform the interviews, hoping to redeem himself for his previous lapse in judgment. When he got there, he was surprised to see only one applicant. "You look very familiar", said the bishop.

"The last bell ringer was my kid brother" responded the applicant.

"Ah, I see. I must say, I do have some reservations about hiring you", said the bishop.

"Please", said the applicant. "I must restore my family's honor. My brother was a bit of a black sheep, who had strayed from the flock. He was always a bit of a rebel, which is why he was home schooled. Unfortunately, he never really got proper exposure to society before he came here. As you can see, I graduated with honors from bell ringing college. I had perfect marks in all my classes, and my Theory professor has provided you with a letter of recommendation testifying that I was the best student he has had in forty years of teaching. Plus, unlike my brother, I am happily married and would never cheat on my wife. I am a good Catholic, and I want to serve God. Ringing bells is my way of doing this. Please give me the opportunity to restore my family's honor."

"You make a convincing argument," said the bishop, "but I cant help but notice that you have no arms. Won't that be a problem?"

"It's never been a problem before", responded the applicant. If you won't take my word for it, perhaps we can climb the tower and I can audition for you. It's almost time for the hour to turn, anyway."

[. . . .]

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As I said, my own contribution above is meant at least in part as a provocation. I'm sure it's not a great joke, and I'm sure someone out there can do better. I advise you to keep in mind the guidance I have provided in terms of what makes the existing third part such a failure, and in terms of the failure points that I have already identified in my own joke. And so, with that, I invite (I implore) you to put on your thinking cap and please try to outdo me. Please contribute your own "missing first part" of The Bell Ringer Joke. I'm sure someone out there can do a bang up job! And I am desperate to read your offerings. So please post them here as comments to my blog. I look forward to reading what you have to offer. I can't promise fame or fortune. But if you do really well, I can promise you undying gratitude!

Welcome to the Seventies (August Hair Photos)

As you will recall from previous posts, my New Year's Resolution this year is to try my best to resist the urge to cut my hair, with the ultimate goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

I'm officially one of the long-haired freaky people now.



I had been getting very pessimistic about managing to get to the 10 inch minimum. I was especially worried that for the hair at the front of my head to just get long enough to reach the back of my head to join the pony tail, it would have to get to at least 13 or 14 inches! That just is not going to happen.

But I recently took another look at the Locks of Love web site and discovered this little gem:

Hair that is shaved off and not in a ponytail or braid is not usable. If shaving your head, first divide hair into multiple ponytails to cut off.

There's my salvation! Instead of having to gather all of my hair into a single pony tail, I can separate it into multiple pony tails. This gives me new hope of actually seeing this thing through.

I figure my hair is at about 5 inches now. I'm hoping that puts me on pace for getting it cut sometime in the summer of 02009. If I'm really lucky, I might be able to get it done in the late spring. That's still a very long way to go, but I think it's within reason.

My Career in Spelling Bees — Part 2 of Recollection of Childhood — and other things

I can't begin to tell you why I have been thinking of this recently, just that I have.

I remember in third grade, we had a classroom spelling bee, which I won. My winning word was "government". I remember pausing after the "R", considering whether the "N" belonged or not. It did not occur to me to ask for a repeated pronunciation or for alternate pronunciations, and it occurred to me that when I had heard the word spoken, it was most often the pronunciation in which the "N" is dropped — which is a legitimate alternate pronunciation in the dictionaries I consulted this morning before starting this blog entry. I opted to throw in the mysterious "N", and I won the bee. Surely my finest moment in this life.

Presumably, winning the classroom spelling bee would have qualified me to go on to compete against all of the other classroom champions in a school-wide bee. However, I have absolutely no recollection of any such thing. I would be almost willing to bet that it did not happen. Almost, but not quite.

Skip forward a year. No longer attending Fields Road Elementary School in Gaithersburg, MD. Fourth grade was spent at Peter W. Crump Elementary School in Montgomery, AL. This time, no recollection whatsoever of a classroom bee. (Again, me almost willing to bet that there was none.) But I do recall going to the auditorium for an all-grades bee. I believe participation was strictly voluntary, and I think it was after the school day had ended — but I wouldn't testify to or bet on that.

My first and only word: "eavesdrop".

I blew it.

However, that's not the interesting part of the story from my perspective, now. The interesting part is that, at the time, the word "eavesdrop" held absolutely no meaning for me. As far as I knew (as far as I know), that was the very first occasion on which I had ever heard the word. How strange is it that I could have gotten to age nine, living in American society, living in a house with an older sister, and managed to never hear the admonition (aimed at either myself or at someone else), "don't eavesdrop"?

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I've mentioned my horrible memory in previous posts. (My last "Recollection of Childhood" post garnered a comment, by an anonymous poster, that sounded vaguely like an insult. That poster called me "Captain Lou". That, of course, was an homage to "Captain Lou Albano", professional wrestler and professional wrestling manager extraordinaire. [Note: I think it's fair to say that I resembled Lou Albano in no way whatsoever, except that we shared a first name.] As if to illustrate my point (and, actually, the point of said anonymous poster) about my horrible memory, I do remember having been called "Captain Lou" by someone in my adolescence, but I can't recall who. Eric, maybe?

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In other news, Google has yet again re-indexed and the end result is that a copyright infringing web site is now receiving the traffic that should be sent my way for folks seeking my bleeding heart flower photograph:

This upsets me, and I have now sent two e-mails to the administrator of the offending site. Unfortunately, there seems to be absolutely no way to contact Google directly to get them to make adjustments to protect copyright owners from having their traffic diverted to scofflaws. Harumph. Anyway, I've just posted it again, in hopes of getting Google to re-index, thereby bringing the traffic back to me. And in case anyone is interested in buying the image on a t-shirt or mouse pad, such things are available at Cafe Press.

The Repeal of Gravity Store, back from hiatus

I have had a recent fit of "creativity"--although you surely wouldn't have guessed it based on my lack of recent blog posts. Anyway, the result is that I recently re-launched my online store, with a boatload of new t-shirt designs. Won't you check them out? They're mostly humorous designs. (Although I guess humor is a subjective thing. They amuse me, anyway. Perhaps they will amuse you as well. Perhaps even enough that you'd be interested in buying some?)

Here's an example:



Of course, my old designs (previously posted here on my blog) are there as well, and I've also included both a t-shirt version and a mouse pad version of my "world famous" Bleeding Heart photograph. (I say "world famous" because the image has spent quite a lot of time as top image search result on Google for the search phrase "bleeding heart". I figure that's as close to world famous as anything I've ever been associated with is likely to get.)

More will come in the future.

Have a great day!

July Hair Photos

As you will recall from previous posts, my New Year's Resolution this year is to try my best to resist the urge to cut my hair, with the ultimate goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

To my eye, the July pics (shot on July 1, 02008:) don't seem drastically different from the June pics. However, I have to live with this stuff on my head, and I can tell you with a great deal of certainty that my hair has, in fact, continued to grow. Anyway, here are the July photographs:

The Long Now and Why Nuclear Power is a Bad Idea (Maybe)

Oftentimes, it is a mystery to me why my brain goes off in a particular direction. I have written before, on this blog, about having read an interesting book entitled The Clock of the Long Now. Having read that book is the reason why I try to use a 5-digit year in writing dates (for example, 02008 instead of 2008). It's a technique for trying to train myself to think on a longer term time scale. To think in terms of millennia instead of decades or centuries. I haven't yet fully trained myself on the 5-digit years (which is why sometimes I'll post a blog entry that mentions a 4-digit year and then go back and edit it afterwards--and I suspect there are times when the 4-digit year has simply slipped past my notice).

Anyway, I've recently been thinking about nuclear power, but I've been thinking about it with that "long now" mindset. So, where previously I had mostly taken the view that nuclear power is actually a good idea (better for the environment than burning fossil fuels, for example), I've recently been thinking about how fundamentally bad an idea it is. Not because of the potential for nuclear accidents (such as Three Mile Island or Chernobyl). I think that in that sense, nuclear power is actually pretty safe. We've been powering submarines with nuclear fuel for decades and to the best of my knowledge, there's been no consequence in terms of life or limb--and surely there has been less damage to the oceans from all of those thousands of miles travelled in nuclear submarines than has been caused by more conventionally powered boats covering the same number of miles.

What's been on my mind about the hazards of nuclear fuel is just how long they take to degrade. If we assume that it takes nuclear fuel 10,000 years to become inert, think of just how long that is, in terms of human history.

Let's take a quick look back at what wasn't around 10,000 years ago.

10,000 years ago:

There was no Islam, no Christianity, no Judaism, no Buddhism, no Jainism, no Hinduism, no Taoism.

Zeus, Odin, Thor, Quetzalcoatl, and Ganesha had not yet been imagined, let alone risen to prominence and (in most cases) fallen from grace.

There was no religion that you've ever heard of. This is not to say that religion did not exist. Humankind has an extraordinary capacity for making up stories to explain the unexplainable (and the frightening). It is my belief that humankind's default instinct is to explain thunder (a large-scale scary phenomenon) by making up a god. If I'm right about that, then in its most basic form, religion probably predates just about anything else in the history of human thought. Doesn't mean it's sensible, just means it's old.

10,000 years ago:

There was no Rome, no Greece, no Egypt, no China, no Inca Empire, no Mayan culture. There were no Vikings or Mongols or Visigoths or Olmecs or Toltecs. 10,000 years ago predates every great civilization you've ever heard of (except perhaps for some imaginary ones).

While armed conflict between tribes has probably existed since before the fully modern human emerged, the oldest war you've ever heard of happened less than 10,000 years ago. (Again, excepting for fiction.)

While bullies and chieftains and kings have surely existed for as long as people have congregated in groups (and pack leaders are prominent in much less socially "advanced" species than our own), the oldest ruler you've ever heard of had not been born 10,000 years ago.

10,000 years ago:

The cow had not been domesticated. Sure, there was farming, but it was very primitive.

10,000 years ago predates the English language (modern English, Middle English, Old English). That long ago, there was no French, or Spanish, or Russian, or Basque, or Chinese, or Japanese, or Hindi, or Roman, or Greek, or Navajo, or Hebrew or Aramaic. You've never heard of any language as old as 10,000 years ago (except perhaps some imaginary ones--anybody know how long a time ago Huttese was supposed to exist in a galaxy far away?).

10,000 years ago, there was no Iliad or Odyssey. There was no Code of Hammurabi. There were no Bible, no Talmud, no hieroglyphics, no Sanskrit or cuneiform writing. The book had not been invented, nor had the scroll. Most likely, nothing resembling paper had been invented.

Not only was there no recorded music. There was no way of recording music. Musical notation had not been invented yet. I suspect it's probably fair to guess that people have been playing something akin to drums and bamboo flutes and maracas for at least a few tens of thousands of years. However, with the exception of those and similarly primitive examples, it's pretty safe to assume that almost every musical instrument you're familiar with has been invented in the last 10,000 years. Surely the guitar, piano, harpsichord, trumpet, violin, lute, serpent, tambourine, and cymbal are extremely new developments.

10,000 years ago, metalsmithing was likely not a widespread art. Stone knapping existed, and people made weapons. Hunting was a widespread practice.

Clothing existed, but probably not any clothing you'd be willing to wear in public.

The great pyramids of Egypt had not been built 10,000 years ago, nor had the ziggurats. The ruins of Catal Huyuk may be approaching 10,000 years old at this point.

And that brings me to the important word here: Ruins. There is no structure built by human hands that has remained intact for the last 10,000 years. The closer you get to that age, the more completely ruined are the fragments. I'm not saying that people that long ago were not inventive. I'm not saying that they were not clever or sophisticated or advanced (whatever that means). I'm not saying they were not industrious and capable of doing great things. I'm simply saying that 10,000 years is an extremely long time to expect anything to last. Societies rise and fall. Religions rise and fall. Buildings rise and fall.

What we know for sure about people from that long ago is basically what we can infer, simply from our own existence: 10,000 years ago, people were able to find food and eat it. They congregated in close enough proximity that they were able to find mates. They had sex and made babies and raised children. They migrated. In a nutshell, that's probably the majority of what we know, for certain, of human society 10,000 years ago.

What we know of human nature is probably as true today as it was then and it will probably remain just as true 10,000 years from now. What does that mean? For the purpose of this train of thought, it means this: people are inquisitive and imaginative. That alone is enough to establish the danger of trying to store nuclear waste anywhere.

It is hubris to believe that the USA (or any other current nation) will still exist in 10,000 years. It is extremely unlikely that anyone will still use any language that is currently spoken. At best, there will probably be just a few experts who can decipher any of our languages in any meaningful way.

In the intervening centuries, surely there will be periods of increasing war and increasing peace. Surely there will be periods of increasing tribalism and increasing unity.

It's reasonable to expect that archaeology will to some extent go in and out of fashion. But surely, as long as people continue to exist, people will be digging and exploring.

Where on Earth humankind will migrate is anybody's guess. Historically, societies have tended to rise in areas with easy access to water. However, there's no telling how influential our current and future technologies will be in changing that trend.

The end result of that is that there's no place on the planet that we can be sure won't be explored. Which means that you can't simply "hide" your nuclear waste and reasonably hope that it won't be discovered and cause harm.

And you can't simply put up a sign saying "DANGER" and hope it will be heeded. Going back to the death of languages and the pattern of birth and death of religions and beliefs, it's absurd to believe that a sign, no matter how carefully and strongly worded, will be heeded. In fact, it's probably the case that the more warning you post and the more effort you put into making your stash inaccessible, the more effort will be taken in the future to get at it. Human nature means that the more difficult you make it to get at a treasure, the more valuable the treasure will become in the minds of future generations. Even if they understand the warnings, they may think those warnings to be pure hyperbole. It's possible that people in 2,000 years will doubt our ability to create nuclear power just as much as we doubt the ancient Egyptians to have done so.

If someone today digs up a chest of doubloons (and you know that people are searching), nobody is harmed. If someone in the future digs up a mountain full of thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel, the downside is potentially pretty disastrous.

So what's the solution?

I have no idea. Ethically, our policy makers should probably be thinking about such things. I wonder whether they do.

I guess that we could simply take the short view: that our responsibility is limited to the few dozen generations that are likely to still have any philosophical or emotional or intellectual connection at all to us. If we take that view, then yes, we can reasonably think that we have the power to protect our descendants. But if we take the long view, that becomes an increasingly absurd idea.

The Hair Continues Growing

It occurs to me that people who stumble upon these hair picture posts might not know what they're all about if I don't explain them with each new posting. So, for those of you who don't know, my New Year's Resolution this year is to try my best to resist the urge to cut my hair, with the ultimate goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

In just a few short months, my relationship with my hair has gone past the stage of bargaining and past the stage of forced submission. It's now at the stage where I wash it and dry it and brush it once a day to ensure that it doesn't get knotted. Beyond that, I am now allowing it to do as it sees fit. It's a big mess and it keeps getting bigger. Recently I looked in the mirror and was reminded of Andre the Giant in his heyday. Soon, I expect I will look like I ought to be on the cover of an MC5 album. Anyway, here are the June pics, shot on June 3, 02008:

Speculation

It's been a while since I posted anything political. Tonight, I'll change that. Understand that it's late and I'm a bit sleepy. Here's what I'm thinking, since tonight's primary results came in, the primary season is over, and Hillary Clinton has made her "I will be making no decisions tonight" speech:

Part one: If Obama chooses to make Hillary his running mate, she will work hard to ensure that they win. The ticket will win. Hillary will take credit for delivering the victory. She will spend two years doing what is asked of her as Vice President, all the while "secretly" dealing with an exploratory committee to "help her decide" whether to run for the presidency in 02012. Meanwhile, she will be even more secretly praying for that assassin. [Oops! Is it impolitic of me to suggest such a thing?]

Two years into the Obama administration (assuming said assassin has not appeared), she will announce her candidacy for the presidency. She will claim credit for the Obama administration's successes and disavow its failures. For the next two years she will take every opportunity to pursue the presidency, regardless of Obama's intentions as regards the possibility of a second term for himself.

Part two: If Obama does not choose to make Hillary his running mate, she will halfheartedly "assist in any way possible" to ensure that the Democrats reclaim the White House. She will maintain her sour grapes, will wink to her supporters and continue to suggest in not so subtle terms that Obama can't win over her constituency. She will try her best to ensure that, at best, it's a crap shoot whether her supporters will turn out to vote for him in the general election. Either he will win or he won't. If he does, she will then have to start the next generation of her political calculations. If he doesn't win, she will take this as affirmation of her own rectitude and will revel in his defeat. At that point, her next campaign for the presidency will begin in earnest.

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Note: It would be absurd of me to claim that I am not cynical, just as it would be absurd of me to claim that I am not a pessimist. So keep that in mind when you evaluate my predictions. Also, bear in mind that I have a well-established history of making inaccurate predictions. (Heck, I even thought the Patriots would win the Super Bowl this year!)

May Hair Photos, Late

Here are the hair photos I shot on May 2. Sorry they're so late to be posted. I have been terribly busy, and I have been having and trying to fix some technical issues on the blog. This partially has to do with my porting of the host, and partially (I think) with a glitch in Blogger's software. Anyway, here are the photos. Enjoy. (And I aim to get the June photos up much closer to the start of the month.)

Technical Issues

My apologies to my visitors. The site is having some technical issues. Images are not automatically loading--at least not internally linked images. I will try to sort this out within the next few days. In the meantime, if you see a spot where there should be an image, you should be able to load it by right clicking and choosing to view it, using whatever command your browser allows for doing such.

Things Worth Sharing

There are a few things I would like to share with my readers today:

For the last couple of years, I have been enjoying listening to the tail end of the Vinyl Cafe on CBC Radio, when I get out of the book store on Sunday afternoons. I don't think I've ever caught an entire episode, which is a shame. I was thrilled to hear a couple of months ago that they are making weekly Vinyl Cafe podcasts. It's a free subscription, so of course I subscribed as soon as I learned that the podcasts were happening. I'm a bit disappointed that the podcasts are not the entire shows. However, they're absolutely worth listening to. If you've never listened to the Vinyl Cafe, you really should give it a try! And with podcasts, it's easy to fit the listening into your schedule, rather than trying to fit your schedule around listening. This Stuart McLean fellow is a truly amazing storyteller. Really, a Canadian national treasure, in my opinion.

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If you've spent years using one of these:


. . . (especially if you have found the experience rather unsatisfying, as have I), you really should make an effort to track down one of these:


I don't know where we got ours, nor can I tell you who the manufacturer is, as it has no identifying marks on it that I can find. But here's the thing:

I don't really consider myself to be an Anglophile. Sure, I tend to use -ise instead of -ize. But that's simply a matter of finding it to be a much more elegant solution. And while I think it's wiser to use "zed" than "zee", I really only do so when it comes up in conversation with a Brit (which is extremely rarely). I have absolutely not adopted the British habit of (what in my opinion is) overuse of the word "brilliant". Instead, I have fallen into the dopey American habit of overusing "cool". However, in this one case, I have no better word to use than "brilliant". The orange-handled peeler pictured above is absolutely brilliant! It is somehow so vastly superior to the other style, that it seems somehow insulting to claim that they're really the same utensil. After years of hearing people say that there's a real difference between using a genuinely good tool and using a readily available tool, it's strange that this is the best example I have of experiencing the phenomenon for myself. Well, maybe the second best. Using the one instead of the other is akin to using a good dictionary instead of using a bad dictionary. And frankly, the difference is much starker than the superiority of the Mac over the PC. Gosh, that's weird to say! Anyway, bottom line: When I use the orange handled peeler, I end up wishing I had need to peel more! When I use the other style, I can hardly wait for the experience to be over. The orange handled peeler is an absolute joy to use! It is brilliant on potatoes and brilliant on carrots. If I objected to eating apple skins, I expect I would find it to be brilliant on apples too.

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We have two friends who recently gave birth, which means that they and their husbands recently went through the process of deciding what to name a child. Surely a daunting task. I neglected to mention to them the Name Voyager. Shame on me!!! The Name Voyager may or may not be helpful in choosing a child's name. I have found it useful in coming up with character names for writing fiction, at least. Whether you have need for it or not, I find it difficult to believe that you wouldn't appreciate its sheer beauty and elegance. It is a magnificent example of how it's possible to display complex data sets in our new digital world. In that respect, so far I have found its only rival to be Thinkmap's Visual Thesaurus.

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There was one more web site that I was eager to share with you, but it seems to have disappeared. So sad. Anyway, I hope you enjoy what I have shared today. Have a wonderful week!

A Walk in the Woods

I went into the town forest this afternoon, because it was such a spectacular day and I wanted to get out there and enjoy the weather. It was an interesting experience for several reasons.

First, I noticed lots of scat. I assume it's deer scat, but I'm no expert. This was interesting to me primarily because I have an established history of not noticing scat in the woods. So to notice so very many piles of it today was unusual.


I suppose it might be moose scat, but I doubt it. It's rare to see a moose in this neck of the woods. I think they mostly only come down this far south when they're forced to (by flooding, for example).

I spent most of my hike climbing. I ascended over 400 vertical feet, covering a distance of just about 0.7 miles. That's pretty steep, especially when you do as I did and pretty much just aim up, instead of aiming for the most convenient paths. I saw several frisbee golf holes as I was hiking today. I had either not known or forgotten that there is a frisbee golf course up there. Nice to know. Maybe we'll go frisbee golfing one of these days. I think we still have our discs somewhere.

When I got to the top of the hill, I heard this odd mewling noise coming from some pine trees. I first figured that there must be some sort of baby bird up there calling for food. Then I started to think that wasn't right, as I couldn't see a nest and there didn't seem to be a mama bird anywhere in sight. So I started to consider other options. It was definitely not the sound of the wind whistling through the trees. However, it did turn out to be an interesting result of the wind hitting the trees. What I discovered after some observation was that branches of two of the trees were touching each other, and as the trees swayed, one branch was "playing" the other like a bow playing a violin string.

I had started out thinking that this was not mosquito season. Why I though that is something for which I have no explanation. I sure was wrong! There are lots of mosquitoes, they are quite large and very thirsty, and they seem to think I am quite tasty. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the wildlife I saw today was in the form of mosquitoes.


So, now I get to hope I didn't catch the Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) that seems to have been popular among the mosquitoes here in New Hampshire in recent years.

April Hair Pics

Apologies for my tardiness in posting this. I've been keeping very busy and I've been burdened by a persistent cold which has lasted all month, so far. These photos are being posted well behind schedule, but they were actually taken right on schedule (April 2). I was feeling genuinely sick on that day, so I didn't make any effort to focus the camera well or ensure proper exposure.

That does not explain the change in hair style.

What does explain the change in hair style is that sometime in March I came to the realisation that when it is long, my hair will not submit to my will. So instead of slathering in the goop to try to keep it down, I decided instead to allow it to do what it will. So basically I just towel dry and shake now. It's a different look. More wild. But somehow, I think it's a bit less ridiculous than what happens when I brush my hair.

On with the photos:



Enjoy!

Watching Hair Grow

As I mentioned in a previous post, my New Year's Resolution for 02008 is as follows:

To at least make a valiant attempt at resisting the urge to cut my hair, with the eventual goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

In the last month, my hair has definitely crossed over into the silly range. I think it's hovering on the ridiculous precipice, but I don't think it's quite crossed over. Certainly, it will have done so a month from now.

Here are the March 2, 02008 photos:



The last time I shaved was on February 1. That has nothing to do with the resolution. It has more to do with its being winter, and my having gotten through the itchy time, which is what usually keeps me from not shaving. I fully expect to shave by the end of this month. That will, of course, serve to amplify the difference between the March and April photos.

The Pledge of Allegiance--a Brief Recollection of Childhood

For some reason, I've recently been thinking much more about my elementary school years. I had gone quite a lot of years without having thought much at all about them. Interesting that I should have recently started remembering bits of childhood that I thought were forgotten. Strange that I've actually been pondering them.

I remember that we used to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of every school day. I participated with as much vigor as did each of my classmates. It was a recitation that was learned by rote. Participation was expected, and there was no question as to whether to participate or not. (That came later.)

What strikes me as the most interesting aspect of this phenomenon is that, as far as I can recall (and I firmly believe this to be true), we were never taught what it actually means. Big words involved there!

Why were we taught to use the word "allegiance" in kindergarten (or first grade at the latest), without being taught its definition? We could all use it in the context of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, but I really don't think that I could have used it in any other context at age 6 or 7 or 8.

I must admit, the distinguishing characteristic of a "republic" has been an elusive concept for me to grasp. I think I have it now, but I can't guarantee that I won't have forgotten it a year from now and need to look it up again.

What kind of craziness is involved in pledging allegiance first to a symbol and then to its object (either as a school-age child or as a grown-up)? I have no problem with reasoned pledging of allegiance to the republic. . . . But to a flag?!? That's just bizarre.

"Indivisible"...pretty self-explanatory, I guess. Unable to be divided. And I think I grasped that pretty early. But is it reasonable to expect young children to comprehend that without having it explained?

"Liberty" equals "freedom". But I don't think anyone ever told me so when I was a child. "Freedom" would surely have had deep conceptual meaning to me a lot earlier than "liberty" did. It's more common parlance.

"Pledge" equals "promise". Simple enough.

"Justice" equals "fairness". I think this was the most accessible definition of the bunch, but I really think it should have been explained and discussed in class, before we were ever expected to recite it on a daily basis. In practice, the daily recitation was a mindless exercise, until (years later) I (and I hope my classmates) got around to really pondering what it meant. Maybe everyone in my class got it right away. But I doubt that very much. I hope by now, all of my classmates have really pondered it. (The cynic in me kind of doubts it.)

Anyway, if you are a teacher or a parent of elementary school students who recite the Pledge of Allegiance on a regular basis, I suggest that you poll those children to determine whether they can explain, in their own words, what the Pledge of Allegiance means. If they can, great! If they can't, I strongly suggest that you make a point of discussing it with them.

And, of course, I invite you to share your results with me. I'm interested! I would also be curious to know whether your own experience (whether you have/teach children or not) parallels mine or not. I would be greatly heartened (and surprised) to learn that I was the only child who was clueless in those early years.

Cornish-Windsor Bridge (A New Photograph)

I went out yesterday for a little bit of photography. Here's a photograph of the Cornish-Windsor Bridge. [I guess Vermonters call it the Windsor-Cornish Bridge, which actually has a nicer ring to my ear, but since I'm living in New Hampshire, I'll call it "Cornish-Windsor".]

What you see is the Connecticut River, not nearly frozen over, but covered with a lot of floating ice. The long horizontal thing is the bridge: the longest wooden bridge in the U.S. and the longest two-span covered bridge in the world. There's snow on the roof. In the background, I believe that's Mt. Ascutney (VT), but I could be wrong about that. I have no idea of what mountain it would be if it's not Ascutney, though.

As always, comments are welcomed and encouraged.

02008: A Nightmare Scenario

Since my last political post, three noteworthy (from my perspective) things have happened in the U.S. presidential nominating process:

• John Edwards has dropped out of the race. That's OK with me. I'm sad it had to come to that, but the writing was on the wall, and it was obvious that the Democratic race was not available for him to win.
• Super Duper Tuesday has come and gone, seemingly establishing that the Democratic race is too close to call (note the great discrepancy between CNN's delegate tracker--currently showing Hillary ahead by 96--and Newsweek's delegate tracker--currently showing Obama ahead by 4), and that Huckabee is still alive on the Republican side--although he's still in third place in the delegate count.
• Most interesting of all is yesterday's announcement that Romney is out.

Why is this last bit so interesting? Because of the potential nightmare scenario it sets up. Before I describe my nightmare scenario, let's keep in mind what happened in the West Virginia caucus. Round 1: McCain was ahead. Round 2: Huckabee won, by virtue of Romney supporters deciding it was better to support Huckabee than to give McCain the victory.

Now for the nightmare scenario:

Suppose that the McCain supporters in the remaining states basically assume that it's a foregone conclusion that McCain will get the nomination. After all, he's established a pretty sizable lead and his closest competitor has dropped out. These voters may get complacent in the nominating contests, and just not show up to the polls.

Suppose that Huckabee supporters in those remaining states get energized by Huckabee's wins on Super Duper Tuesday and by the removal of Romney. They may all come out to vote.

Suppose that all of this "conservatives won't support a McCain candidacy" talk turns out to be true and that all of the Romney supporters in the remaining states decide it's better to go with Huckabee than to go with McCain.

Suppose a bunch of those McCain supporters decide to vote in the Democratic contests instead of the Republican ones. Remember, this is a group who wants McCain to not only win the Republican nomination, but also wants him to win the general election. The conventional wisdom is that in a McCain-Clinton race, the independents will break for McCain, whereas in a McCain-Obama race, the independents will be largely split--which is to say that Obama takes a large chunk of the independent voting block away from McCain. So the assumption is that McCain has a much easier time defeating Hillary than defeating Obama. So these primary ship-jumpers are most likely to support Hillary in the nominating process, in hopes that she will be crushed in the general election. Essentially, the fair assumption of the McCain supporters is that Republican voters will all rally around McCain ("conservative enough"or not) when faced with the choice between him and Hillary.

If all of this plays out, McCain may end up going into the convention without enough delegates to win. Hillary may end up going into the convention with an easy majority of delegates. Huckabee may be close enough to McCain that the Romney delegates can put him over the top. Suppose that they do just that (either instructed by Romney to do so, or actually using their own free will).

What we'd end up with is a Huckabee-Hillary contest. To me, that's a nightmare scenario. On the one side, you have a fundamentalist religious nut job. (Who, flawed as he is, is still far superior to Brownback, or Santorum--whose decision to not run is something I'm endlessly grateful for.) On the other side you have Hillary, who is at least as off-putting to me as is a fundamentalist religious nut job.

If this happens, where do I place my hopes? I guess in the possibility of a Michael Bloomberg independent candidacy. Do I know enough about him to support him? Not yet, but if he jumps in, there'll be plenty of time for that before the election. I just hope that if he does jump in, he doesn't somehow manage to turn out to be as unpalatable as Huckabee and Hillary are.

New Year's Resolution, 02008

Cracking a nut is not really an art, and therefore no one would ever dare to call together an audience and crack nuts in front of them in order to entertain them. If he does it anyway and he succeeds in his intention, then it can certainly not be a matter of nut-cracking alone. Or it is a matter of nut-cracking, but it becomes clear that we have ignored this art because we have mastered it too completely and this new nutcracker shows us its true nature for the first time, in which case it might even be useful for the effect if he were even less skilled at nut-cracking than most of us.

-Franz Kafka, as translated by Kevin Blahut
from the story Josephine, the Singer
or
The Mouse People

I made a New Year's Resolution this year, and I actually did it at the start of the year. (I made last year's resolution in June.) My resolution for 02008:

To at least make a valiant attempt at resisting the urge to cut my hair, with the eventual goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

The last time I got a haircut was in November, so my hair has already grown longer than I'm accustomed to. The last time it was long enough (or close, anyway) to meet Locks of Love's 10-inch minimum length was in August of 01990. I moved onto the Penn campus, got my student ID photo taken (now that's a funny picture!), waited until the first Saturday morning, walked to the nearest barber shop, and got a respectable hair cut. If I recall correctly, I even had the barber give me a shave. Since that day, my hair has not been significantly longer than it is now.

I am aiming to shoot a series of self-portraits on or near the first of the month, each month until I either crack under the pressure (Beth has already started pointing and laughing) or succeed in achieving my goal.

Here are the February 1, 02008 photos:

A Photo of Autumn! (just a few months late)

Well, this past autumn was absolutely spectacular here in New Hampshire! (By far, the best we've seen since moving here.) However, I was largely lazy about taking my camera out to shoot it. Mostly, I just gazed in wonder, without any thought of my camera. I did take a few shots, though, and I think this one is the most interesting:

This shot was taken at night, using a compact fluorescent light source. As always, I welcome any feedback.

Star Wars, Nothing But Star Wars....

I recently watched all six of the Star Wars movies, in the order that George Lucas prefers. That is, episodes I-VI, rather than in the chronological order of their production. Here's what I came away with, as far as opinions are concerned:

1) The saga holds up very well, in terms of a narrative flow. To some degree, I think this is a bit of a feat. On the other hand, there was plenty of time between the production of Episodes VI and I, to ensure that the plot points were all ironed out in a way that keeps things consistent. I'm not really all that sure of just how much tinkering Lucas did to alter Episodes IV-VI to achieve that end. I did notice, with a bit of disgust, the insertion of the Christensen ghost and the appearance of celebratory Gungans at the end of Episode VI. Neither insertion improved the movie in any meaningful way.

2) Hayden Christensen is a phenomenally awful actor. He's dull on the grandest of scales, rivalling Kevin Costner--and that's no small anti-praise!

3) Episode VI is really quite a terrible film! Yes, it wraps up the story arc very neatly. But it's just not a good movie. I loved it as a kid, and I think it probably still has an enormous appeal for children--all those cute little Ewoks scurrying about. But as an adult viewer, I think it's a terrible disappointment.

4) Watching the films in sequence is quite a fun experience. It's a nifty way to spend a bunch of hours. My view is that the movies rank from best to worst in the following order: V, III, II, IV, I, and VI. Given that Christensen is in Episodes II and III, I'm really quite surprised that they both rank above the original movie (IV). But there it is. All opinion. I think those two really do stand out. I think episode V is the best by a pretty wide margin. The margins between III, II, and IV are pretty small. Then there's another fairly large quality drop to I. But the biggest gap of all is between VI and the rest. Every time I've watched it in recent years, I've been really shocked at how awful that final episode is. Too bad it's an essential link in the chain. If you stop watching at Episode V, I think you miss a lot of important stuff. Too bad it has to be couched in so much frivolous muck!

Responding to Some Early Democratic Primaries

Well, I must admit, I was fairly crushed by what the Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire did. Michigan was an aberration (thanks to Obama and Edwards and others choosing to stay off the ballot). Nevada was surprising, inasmuch as Edwards got such a teensy slice of the pie--but at least Obama likely came away with more delegates than Clinton.

I'm still supporting Edwards, in principle. However, it's become quite apparent that his chance of getting the nomination is approximately as good as is my chance of winning the general election. Which is to say, approximately nil.

So, I've got to say that my political spirits are greatly buoyed by yesterday's results from South Carolina. Why? Because my preference for Edwards over Obama is only about the width of a dime. Whereas my preference for either over Hillary is as vast as the Pacific Ocean.

I am unaffiliated with any political party, and yes, I do consider myself to be a true political independent. Nonetheless, it's fair to say that I should be a reliable vote for the Democratic nominee. However, unless something changes my mind, I will not vote Democrat if Hillary is the party's nominee. I absolutely can not stomach the idea of voting for Hillary.

I have been deeply bothered (sickened) by Bush 43's policies. I am terribly distraught about us now being a nation that invades and occupies other sovereign nations. Particularly when we have done so for no good reason, then justified it by applying yet another rationale, then continue to justify it by throwing an ever increasing number of excuses at it in hopes that one of them will stick. I am deeply upset by what Bush 43's administration has done to destroy our standing in the world. (This goes to that "moral authority" that was discussed in my last post.)

I firmly believe that the best thing our next president could possibly do for our national security would be to take the oath of office and then to immediately issue an apology to the world for what we've done to the Iraqi people. Admit that the invasion was misguided and unjustified. Correct the seemingly endless chain of distorted motives, restoring the historical truth that we went in because of faulty intelligence that said that there were weapons of mass destruction. Stress that the intelligence was faulty. Erase the post-applied lie that we went in to free the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein's rule. Stress that that justification was a lie, fabricated when we discovered that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Repeat, unambiguously, that there were no weapons of mass destruction, and make it clear that the new administration understands that truth. Erase the convenient lie that we're there to spread democracy. Explicitly state that Iraq had no connection whatsoever to the attacks of 9/11, thereby crushing that persistent implicit lie. Admit, officially, what we all know: That there was no connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda until we invaded Iraq and destroyed their infrastructure and occupied their land and otherwise did things that gave their millions of citizens very justifiable reasons for resenting America and being angry with, and yes, even hating Americans.

When the sitting POTUS has done that, then some degree of sincerity might show through when he/she then says that we want to try our best to put things right. And saying so should be the very next step in the process! We don't need to spread democracy to Iraq. We need to make reparations to the Iraqi people. We owe them as much, because we have done them wrong.

And the next step after that? Ask, request, plead!!! Beg the other nations of the world to do what they can to ensure the peace and stability of Iraq! Let them know that we want to get out. Plainly state that we understand that as long as there is a U.S. occupation in Iraq, there will be hostility and anger and fear and resentment, all at or just below the boiling point in Iraq. Make it clear that on behalf of the citizens of the U.S.A., the POTUS is begging for other nations (preferably nations that have not previously been part of the invasion/occupation) to volunteer to help the Iraqi people establish their own peace and functional government. Firmly establish that we are willing to provide funds or necessary equipment, but that our troops will be leaving. Promise that we will not maintain any military presence in Iraq; our mercenary forces (Blackwater, et al.) will leave; we want for Iraq to heal and to survive and to thrive. State, as official U.S. policy, that we hold no ill will towards the Iraqi people, and humbly request their forgiveness. Explain that we understand that we do not deserve their forgiveness and that we have absolutely not earned their trust. But ask for it anyway. Let them know that if they are able to forgive us, they will be setting an extremely admirable example for us and that we will be in their debt.

This is all fantasy. The next POTUS will do none of the above. I know this. To some degree, I actually understand it. Nonetheless, I firmly believe it would be the absolute best course.

Why did I go off on that huge tangent? Because I want to make it clear why I said that I should be a reliable vote for the Democratic nominee. It's not because I believe that the Democratic Party has a monopoly on good ideas. It's not because I stand behind the Democratic Party. It's because I am so deeply opposed to what the Bush 43 administration has done, and because I believe firmly that the Republican nominee will be altogether too close to Bush 43's position. Whoever the Democratic nominee is, I believe that he/she will be farther from wrong on Iraq than whoever the Republican nominee turns out to be.

I'm getting sleepy now, so I'm going to wrap this up quickly now. For those of you who may be Hillary supporters, you may be glad to know that I'm trying to understand where you're coming from. While I was at the book store today, I spotted a book on the new hardcovers table called Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary. On my lunch break, I started looking through it. And I think I'll be borrowing it just as soon as I finish the little Kafka volume that I'm currently reading. You see, part of me keeps desperately hoping that I will hear/see/read anything that could make me think that she's not an astonishingly horrible role model for my niece. That's really what it comes down to. I've admitted in the past to being an idealist. I want to live in a world where only respectable people get elected to public office. I fantasize about that world. And yes, I want a woman to be president. I think that would be wonderful! Just not that woman. I think we could do better. And we should aspire to do better!



Yeah, I'm bothered by some things about Obama. For example, I'm bothered by his admitted dabbling in hard drugs. (And I'm bothered by Bush 43's alcoholism and possible cocaine use (which, as far as I know, he has never admitted to nor denied) and I was bothered by Clinton's marijuana smoking (whether he inhaled or didn't).) I want for our leaders to be people who lead by example, and yes, to me that does mean people who seem to have behaved properly in both their public and private lives.

Ultimately, I would rather have my niece looking to Obama than looking to Hillary, as a role model. When we elect our first female president, I want her to be someone who seems worthy of respect. And the same is true for our first African American president. Right now, Obama seems to me far more worthy of respect than Hillary.

Am I Really the Enemy? (Politics, Morality, Miscellany)

Okay, so it's been a while since my last post. This has had nothing to do with the unhappiness at work that had previously coincided with my absences from blogging. I'm between full-time jobs, and I've been working more hours at the book store in the meantime. I've actually been having a blast! Working in retail during the holiday season provides a bizarre sort of thrill, and I've enjoyed it immensely. The new job starts in about a week.

I believe it was the day after my last post that Mitt Romney gave the world his fantastic speech about how his religion would or would not influence him as president. From what I heard, he really gave a stirring, impassioned, convincing, honest, and reassuring speech. Really great! Congratulations, Mitt.

However, as magnificent as his speech was, he made it clear that I and my ilk are what he considers to be the enemy. Truly. I think it's really that stark. The enemy.

Why? Because I really do believe that we are better served if we take religion clearly out of the governance equation. I have no religious faith, and I think that scares the hell out of Romney. A true separation of church and state is something that I wish we could achieve. I believe Romney wishes for a true integration of church and state. And that scares the hell out of me. However, I really don't view Romney as my enemy.

----

I have now been to three stops on the Edwards campaign trail. I'm supporting him. I've done some volunteer canvassing and made some phone bank calls on his behalf. Perhaps that seems strange when you consider that I am running for president. It may seem entirely inconsistent that I don't consider him to be an opponent, to be defeated. I'm not bothered by any such concerns. I think he's a fine candidate, and I could easily vote for him in the general election. The same is not true of several of the other candidates, and I fear that I really might be put into the undesirable position of having to vote for myself.

Edwards does talk about restoring America's "moral authority" in the world. That bothers me, but only in a semantic sense. I consider myself to be amoral. Amoral is not the same as immoral, and I think that confusion is what has Romney so bothered by people like me.

I view the word morality as being tied deeply to a misguided belief that our better tendencies are somehow tied to god or godliness. I prefer to think in terms of ethics rather than morality. To me, the word ethics has absolutely no tie to religion or belief in a deity. Ethics has to do with behavior towards others and does not depend on a belief in any ties to the supernatural. Otherwise, as far as I'm concerned, the two terms are essentially interchangeable.

But the [pedestrian] religious-minded train of thought that I imagine holds sway in Romney's mind goes something like this:

• Without [belief in or existence of] God, there is no morality.
• No morality means immorality.
• Immorality is bad.

The second bullet is incorrect. Correcting it requires just the substitution of a prefix: "No morality means amorality."

If you understand that difference, the third bullet is rendered completely irrelevant.

If you look at my life, the way I behave, the way I treat others...[and assuming you are among those who view the world through a religious prism] you would likely reach the conclusion that I am an extremely moral person. (Especially if you were allowed to assume that I go to a house of worship and that I pray.) I behave ethically, or at least I try to. And that keeps my behavior consistent with those who try to behave morally.

If you are a believer and if you take that second bullet as truth, then of course you would view me as the enemy. But that's wrong. There are many atheists out there who behave extremely well. We do so with an understanding that we have a choice. We have the good sense to not blame our failings on the work of the devil, and we therefore don't use superstition as an excuse. We are responsible for our own actions, and we understand as much. If you want to call this spiritual humanism, have at it. What it amounts to is that morality is unnecessary, except for those who need it as a justification for their own actions.

As for "restoring our moral authority", the phrase is troublesome to me. But not so much so that I view it as a detriment to Edwards. I've been thinking a lot about it, and I think it's just vernacular usage. We never had "moral authority". Not any more than anyone else had, anyway. Note: I'm NOT suggesting that Edwards is an atheist. He isn't. He's a man of faith. A believer. A God-fearing Christian. But I don't hold that against him.

What I think is the sentiment behind the notion of "moral authority" is this:

We should behave in a way that, in our moments of deepest clarity, we can and should honestly hope others will take as an example.

That's wordy. But it's a very good guiding principle.

And it's a principle that the Bush administration has ignored completely.

So the idea of "restoring our moral authority" is an idea that I believe in firmly. It's a noble goal. It's worthwhile. And it should be an extremely high priority for our next president. What I fear is that it is phrased in a way that comes across as arrogant and condescending. That's not setting a very good example. And I don't need to believe in a god to allow me to understand that.


---

I went to see John McCain this evening. I missed his speech, but I caught most of the question and answer session. After it was all done, I approached him (with my John Edwards campaign sticker on my coat). He made some comment about my sticker. I shook his hand and told him that I can't possibly support him. But I thanked him (sincerely) for his service to our country and for his sacrifice. I told him I hope that if he does get the job, he will have a few epiphanies.

He thanked me (sincerely) for coming out and participating in the democratic process. He said [paraphrasing! Please don't quote!!!!] that having young people participate in democracy is really the important thing. To which I agreed.

----

The Iowa caucuses are just 4 days away, and our New Hampshire primary is just 5 days after that. Let's hope for good outcomes.

A Rant on Romney and Religious Fundamentalism

I was listening to NPR's "All Things Considered" the other day when they aired part of an interview with presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The interviewer (Robert Siegel) asked about Romney's belief in the literal truth of the Bible, and Romney very slickly evaded the question while trying to make Siegel feel somehow dirty for asking the question. What follows is the feedback I provided to NPR:

Shame on Mitt Romney for trying to make Robert Siegel feel ashamed for asking a legitimate question and, by extension, trying to make NPR listeners feel ashamed for caring about the answer.

Does it matter to me which specific book(s) of the Bible a candidate takes more literally than others? Nope. But does it matter to me whether my vote supports someone who believes in superstitious hokum, to the exclusion of reason, logic, science, sense, and critical thought? You bet!

It's terrifying to me that Romney can, in one sentence, decry the "global jihad" that's threatening our way of life and in the next sentence say "My point is the Bible is the word of God". I hope I am not alone in seeing absurdity here.

Blind faith in religion is blind faith in religion, regardless of which particular religion is being used as justification. And it is dangerous.

Fundamentalists in the Middle East are out to destroy America. And fundamentalists in this country are out to win the White House. A fundamentalist led us into invading and occupying Iraq, destroying their infrastructure, and making our nation responsible (directly or indirectly) in the deaths of tens- or hundreds of thousands of innocent people there (depending on whose estimates you believe). That latter fundamentalist is also directly responsible for our country's loss of respectability in the eyes of much of the rest of the world.

It is absolutely legitimate for me, as a voter (and for Robert Siegel, as a reporter) to want to know just how trustworthy a candidate is in making important judgments of serious consequence.

I'm Back

Well, it's been a very long while since I've posted, but I'm back now. I noticed that my tendency has been to not blog any time while work had me miserable. I was miserable at work recently. Well, as of this past Wednesday, I've left that job behind. I'm optimistic that I will be considerably more in a cheery mood in the future.

Here are some things I've neglected to mention:

1) This year, Beth and I became baseball fans. Strange, that. I think it means we're getting old and our brains are slowing down. When I was younger, I just couldn't understand how anyone could be a fan of such a slow and dull game (I still refuse to consider it a sport). But now I actually find that it's somehow exciting. There are things about it I despise. (For example this business about "checked swings". As I recall, when I was a kid, I never saw the "checked swing". Is it really a new innovation, or am I imagining things? As I recall, in the past, if the bat left the shoulder, it was a swing. None of this business about whether the wrist snapped or not.)

Anyway, we became baseball fans in general and Red Sox fans in particular. So we're thrilled that the Sox won the series again!

2) Brownback got out of the race. Hooray!

3) I've chosen a candidate to support in this primary season. I'm behind Edwards. I've seen him speak a couple of times. The main thing I take away from him is this: Edwards is the candidate who's seriously and consistently talking about implementing some democracy in our "democracy". That's something I'm passionate about. I think he's right on a lot. I don't think he's dead wrong on anything. And I believe he's sincere and trustworthy. (At least as trustworthy as any politician out there.)

I went around canvassing for him (as a volunteer) a few weeks ago, and today I'm scheduled to do the same. I sincerely hope he pulls out the nomination. And if not him, then I'm hoping for Obama. I think an Edwards/Obama ticket is the best idea I've heard in a while.

While I've slightly softened on Clinton, I just can not get behind her, whatsoever. The more I see her, the more my opinion is solidified that she's entirely calculating and her motive is pure, unbridled ambition. I don't believe for a second that she actually cares about anything beyond what's politically expedient. I don't trust her at all. (Some "softening", huh?)

4) The following is not original content but it tells of a change I made to my blog (feedback is welcome, of course):

Introducing Snap Shots from Snap.com

I just installed a nice little tool on this site called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and Amazon products, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more.

Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you "look ahead," before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.

Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

Considerably Less Funny...

Now, this is scary....

A little later in the conversation, Brownback (a U.S. Senator) actually said, "We declared war," in relation to the invasion of Iraq.

Unbelievable!

Let's make this clear: WAR WAS NOT DECLARED!!!!!!!!!!!!

When I was a kid, there was this word I sometimes heard: "Yutz".

As in "What a yutz!"

Well, I propose we bring it back, specifically for Brownback. Yutz!

Just Thought This Was Funny

I tuned in the Republican presidential candidates' forum on PBS, in time to see Ray Suarez ask a question. Apparently, Sam Brownback thought the question came from someone named Race Juarez, as he said, "thank you, Race."

I just thought it was funny.

Orwell's 1984 -- A Book Review

A few weeks ago, we were watching Jeopardy, and one of the questions was about George Orwell's 1984. I said, "I really should read that one of these days." A few days later, we were at a tag sale and Beth spotted a paperback of the book for a buck. So she bought it for me. Now I've read it, finally, quite a lot of years after I should have done. I had read Animal Farm a long time ago, but I had just never gotten around to reading 1984. Now I'm sad that I let it wait for so long.

So I provided one of my little capsule reviews to the book store on Wednesday. But since the blog allows me to spend as many words as I want, I'm going to publish a somewhat longer review here:

Stylistically and structurally, Orwell's 1984 is a masterpiece. In addition, it is a triumph of imagination. Orwell imagined a world so thoroughly as to make it seem less a fictional setting than an alternate reality. His book, while fairly short, is as complete as could be hoped for. The novel is brutal, unpleasant, and offers no hope of a happy ending. Despite these characteristics (or perhaps because of them) the book is utterly satisfying. It left me satisfied, perhaps, in a way that no other book I've ever read has done.

Entirely without suggestion, Orwell got me to wonder, at first idly, and then more and more desperately, what was really going on. The big question: What's going on outside Oceania? More pointedly, is there really a war happening at all? (Perhaps Oceania is really no larger than the island of Great Britain, and perhaps it is merely isolated from, rather than in conflict with, other nations.)

Just when I could barely stand the strain of this question, Orwell asked it. And then he answered it. Having done so, he then answered it yet again, only this time from what seemed a much more trustworthy source within his narrative. And then the twist: He systematically stripped away all of that source's legitimacy. And finally, the master stroke... Orwell did to me exactly what the Party does to its members: He left me with only one possible conclusion--a logical checkmate, in which I was absolutely forced to accept one harsh truth: If the Party says there is a war, then there is a war. Beyond that, there is nothing. Whatever the Party says is absolute truth.

The upshot: Orwell converted me from reader into participant.

Wow!

If you haven't read this book, I suggest you do. It's amazing!

Another Candidate Visit... John Edwards in Concord, 8/25

Last Saturday, I went to a White Park in Concord to listen to John Edwards as he made a campaign stop. Elizabeth was there and said her piece before the John spoke. Their kids were all there too.

Going back... I started my day with Beth turning on the DVD of Bobby. It was early, and I didn't really want to be awake yet, so I was sort of fading in and out of consciousness. I wasn't paying especially close attention to the movie, but I was able to basically follow the beginning of it, and I was able to get a bit of a sense of RFK, from the interspersed footage of him on the campaign trail. I got enough of a sense of RFK that I was thinking that he really reminded me of Kucinich. (Or is it the other way around?)

I'll be the first to tell you that I don't know a whole lot about RFK. I know he was the brother of John and Ted. I know that he was JFK's attorney general. I know he was running for president and was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan. And I know that he did a "poverty tour". That's about it.

What I got from those clips I saw in the morning was that RFK seemed to be a guy who was about optimism and hope. That's where the parallel with Kucinich comes in.

I happen to have caught a couple of minutes of Kucinich's appearance on that Logo Network "debate" that they aired earlier in the month. I was struck by just how contagiously upbeat the guy is. I was actually wondering how much of it was really his character and how much of it was a front. I wondered whether he was all smiles when the cameras were off or whether he goes home, turns the lights down, and sits down for a good cry every night. (Or perhaps instead of a good cry, maybe a round of banging his forehead against the nearest wall.)

You see, I like Kucinich. I like him a lot, and I think he brings something very real to the debate. I also think he's small in stature and just a little too funny looking for the electorate. I think it's a real shame, but I think his appearance is really what's going to once again keep him from getting anywhere in the Democratic primary. I'm not saying that the primary voters will vote strictly on the basis of perceived "electability", but I am saying that I think that a perceived lack of electability will act as a deterrent in their voting choice. So, while I think they'll give Clinton, Obama, Edwards, and Richardson a fair shot (all perceived as being able to possibly beat the Republican candidate), I don't think they'll give Kucinich the same benefit of the doubt.

Anyway, when I finally really woke up, we got showered and dressed and went out to breakfast. There was something happening on the town common, so we went to spend some time wandering around there. The weather was oppressive, so from there we went home and relaxed until it was time for Beth to go to work. A few hours later, after I had sufficiently cooled down, I decided to make the trip to Concord to see Edwards.

This time around, I didn't ask any questions. I snapped some photographs and I listened. I was impressed by Edwards. He seems earnest and he seems to care about people. Frankly, he seems more genuinely caring than any of the other candidates. Of course, this raises the question of whether the sincerity is a well-rehearsed act, or whether it's absolutely honest. Who knows? I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. I have no reason to believe that he's uncaring. (I don't have any real reason to believe that Hillary's uncaring, either. No reason but my gut instinct, that is. But I won't give her the benefit of the doubt.)

After the event, I came home and watched the movie that had started my day. This time, I watched it from beginning to end, and I paid attention. My verdict: A really solid piece of work. If I hadn't seen it for myself, I would never have guessed that Emilio Estevez could have been responsible for such a terrific film. I was actually extremely impressed. And I strongly recommend the movie.

Anyway, this time around, I was struck by how RFK-like Edwards is. Of course, to some degree, this is a conscious decision on Edwards' part. That is, he's chosen to make himself in the image of RFK. Of this, I have no doubt. The "poverty tour" is the obvious tip off, and I'm certainly not the first to have pointed it out. Well, if he's going to choose to model himself on someone else, there are certainly worse options available.

You Can Say Anything With Words

Of all the pithy sayings I've ever devised, the following is surely among my favorites:

You can say anything with words.

If one keeps in mind what I wrote a few days ago about original ideas, one might wonder whether I was the first to formulate this sentence. I'm quite certain the answer is no. A quick Google search shows that whether I was the first or not, I'm surely not the only, although the sentence does appear surprisingly infrequently in the Google database.

I think the statement is true, although it may sometimes be difficult to find the appropriate words, and it may (on rare occasions) be necessary to invent new words to achieve the objective.

An interesting side-effect of this ability to say anything with words is that it's possible to say things that make no sense. Even more exciting: It's extraordinarily easy to say things that nobody has ever said before. This, despite many people's claims that "there's nothing new under the sun" or that "everything's already been said".

Take, for example, what was said by Miss Teen USA competitor, Lauren Caitlin Upton, during this year's pageant. If you haven't yet seen or heard the clip, click here.

Part of me thinks that her response is very sad (almost as sad as the statistic cited by the questioner). Part of me thinks it's extremely funny. And part of me is just astonished by the utter uniqueness of the response. While I'm sure Miss Upton's statement has been quoted many times since she made it, I'm every bit as certain that she was the first person in history to have ever assembled that combination of words in that order. There's not any chance at all that it had ever been done before.

Marvellous!

It's just more proof that plagiarism is an unnecessary art form. Why resort to plagiarism when the potential for original wording is so limitless?

Hanging On For Dear Life (A New Photograph)

I came home the other day and the sun was setting and there was a very bizarre light out there. I decided to wander out to the flower garden that's in our side yard. I don't go out there very often, which means that when I do go out there, I'm almost always pleasantly surprised by what I find. All summer long, something is blooming, and I never know what it will be. There were some flowers out there this time that were obviously past their prime, and I just found this shot to be irresistible:

That last petal was just holding on for dear life. It was this incredibly vivid color, contrasting with this bizarre hub which used to contain so very many petals and had become so very barren. I think it's lovely. Let me know what you think of it.

Having Original Ideas (even when other people had them first)

I'm always disturbed by people claiming that Columbus did not "discover" America, on the grounds that people were already here. (There are other grounds on which to argue with the Columbus discovery myth, like (a) where he landed and (b) that there seems no good reason to call him Columbus. (Cristóbal Colón seems more likely the guy's name.))

Discovery does not require being the first to discover something. All it requires is finding something when you weren't already certain it was there. Although, even that requirement is a little sketchy. I think you can "discover" the truth, even though you were already aware of its existence. Anyway, I've gone off on a tangent even before I've started with the topic of this post.

Today, I thought I'd mention some original thoughts I've had. They were original thoughts, because as far as I knew, nobody had previously had them. I've since discovered that I was not the first person to have them, however. Meaning that other people have had the same original thoughts before I have had them. This does not mean that my thought process is diminished by not having been the first to get there. A good idea is a good idea, no matter who has it.

A few years ago, I had the original thought of setting up wave turbines to harness the power of the oceans. Turns out that other people already had that thought and industrious people were already working on implementing it. Now, it may turn out that the idea of harnessing the power of the tides is even better than the idea of harnessing the power of the waves. (I can make no claim to having thought of using the tides instead of the waves for electricity generation.) But still, the wave turbines idea is a good idea, and I'm proud to have thought of it.

I also had the original thought a while ago that we really should implement some system of having a national referendum. We have no such system in place, and I think that's a horrible strike against our system of government. As it turns out, Mike Gravel had already had the same idea. I don't know for sure whether it was an original idea in his case, or whether he borrowed it from someone else. I think Gravel has some crackpot notions, and I won't be voting for him. However, on this issue, he has a good idea, and I'm proud to have thought of it.

A long while ago, I was working out (as a thought experiment) how one would go about setting up a local currency. I had never heard of anyone doing it, and as far as I knew, it would be utterly illegal to do within the confines of the U.S. borders. I've recently discovered that not only is it legal, but that there are places where it's been done. Certainly, I wasn't the first to think of it. But I did think of it, and I did so without suggestion from other sources. So I would argue that in my case, it was an original idea. Whether it's a good idea or not, it's certainly an interesting idea, and I'm proud to have thought of it.

Now, I'm sure that most everyone has the "why didn't I think of that?" moments. And I'm sure that lots of people have the "I could have come up with that" moments. There are also lots of us out there who have the experience of having the "hey! I already thought of that" moment(s). It's easy to get discouraged by such moments. I would argue that getting discouraged it not the appropriate response...even if someone else is getting rich off of your bright idea. Just because someone else thought of it (whether they got there first or not), that doesn't mean that you didn't think of it. It doesn't mean that it wasn't your own original idea. And it doesn't mean that you shouldn't take pride in having come up with it.

I've also had this other fantastic idea kicking around in my head for several years. I'm not sure whether anyone else has ever considered it. But I'm sure it was an original idea of my own. I'm fairly desperate to try it out. Sadly, I'm an employee rather than an employer, which takes its implementation far out of my hands. At least for now. If you're in a different position, I encourage you to try it out and see how you like it. If you try it, please let me know how it goes. The idea: Switch from the seven-day week to the twelve-day week. Switch from the five-day work week to the seven-day work week. Switch from the eight-hour work day to the ten-hour work day. Keep the years at their current 365/365/365/366-day schedule, but instead of having each new year start on a different day of the week, the new year always starts on the first day of the week.

What you end up with, instead of 52 seven-day weeks (and one or two spare days left over) is thirty twelve-day weeks with five extra days at the end of the year (or six, in the case of leap year). Those five (or six) days can be used as bonus vacation days.

Seven ten-hour work days for each of 30 twelve-day weeks works out to 2,100 business hours. That's really close to the 2,080 hours that you get from five eight-hour work days, but you get the wonderful benefit of having five-day weekends! Factor in the extra five (or six) bonus days at the end of the year, and figure that when you take a week-long vacation, you actually end up with 17 consecutive days off, and I think you'll quickly see the advantage of my system. Basically, even though your work days may be slightly longer, you get many more free days with which to live your non-working life. Where you might now feel that your measly two or three weeks of vacation per year are just not enough, a one long-week annual vacation, combined with those year-end bonus days, combined with those five-day weekends may actually feel like just enough time off, no?

Now, here's the kicker: If you switch to this system, you suddenly find that you do not need to take days off just to attend doctors' appointments or to have conferences with your children's teachers or to go renew your driver's license or to take your pets to see the veterinarian or to do any of the many other chores that can only be done during normal business hours. This is because your "normal" business hours no longer coincide with everyone else's "normal" business hours. You can get cheaper airfare or hotel rates when you decide to leave town, because you don't have to schedule your travel according to peak travel dates and times. Sure, some weeks, you'll be working from Sunday through Saturday. But on other weeks, you'll have Monday through Friday off, just in the normal course of your life. You can go to see a midweek afternoon baseball game without having to "play hooky" from work, if that's how you like to spend your time. You can visit the museum to see that touring exhibit while there are no crowds, instead of having to go during the weekend like everyone else.

Oh, to dream!

Now, back to my main point: If you have an original idea, don't be devastated if you discover that someone else already had it. And don't let anyone tell you that it wasn't an original idea. If you thought of it all by yourself, then yes, it is your own original idea. Be proud to have thought of it. Just think of how many billions of people didn't think of it!

Meet the Donkephant! New T-Shirt Design

Well, after many months, I've finally put a new design on my on-line store. If you like the design, and want it on a shirt (or even if you don't especially like the design but want to show that you're a free thinker), you're invited to go there and order.

As always, comments are welcome.

Some Insect Photography

Today I spent a couple of hours in my kayak on Willard Pond in Antrim, NH. This was my second visit to this particular pond. It's not very large, but there's an island towards the east end. To the east of the island, there's a field (for lack of a better term) of these aquatic purple flowers. Being no botanist, I don't know what kind of flower they are. What I do know is that the bumblebees seem to love them. So there I sat, surrounded by hundreds or thousands of bumblebees (none of which made any effort to cause me any harm--way too busy going about their pollination activities), probably a few dozen dragonflies, a pretty good number of damselflies and a few lovely butterflies. I had brought my camera with my longest lens, which I set to Macro mode and fired off a bunch of shots. I think I got a few good ones, some of which I'll share here. I hope you enjoy!

I also got to see a couple of fish jumping out of the water. If I had to guess, I'd probably guess perch. But it would be a wild guess. Anyway, they were quick, and of course I didn't get any shots of them.

Another Swig from the Linguistic Trough, and Another Poll

I also happened to invite the Linguistic Mystic to have a look at my July 31 post. He did so and was kind enough to give me a nice credit as the inspiration for his latest post, an interesting discussion of the mysteries of whether "tomorrow" begins at midnight or at wakey-time. Thanks, Linguistic Mystic.

Today's the third in my little series of linguistic discussions, again inspired by newscasters:

Why would you say "an historic event"?

I believe Peter Jennings used to do this. I always considered Peter Jennings to be the perfect exemplar of accent-free American English, despite his Canadian origins (Eh?). (Of course, it's all accents, really...and what I think of as "accent-free" is just as much an accent as is Apu-speak from The Simpsons. At the very least, however, Jennings didn't drop his R's or his H's and there was no chance of confusing the white race with the white rice.)

So why Jennings (and others who don't drop their H's) would use "an historic event" always seemed an inexplicable oddity to me. The best explanation I could come up with is a bizarre Anglophile motivation to try emulating The Queen's English by adding that "n".

Here's the rule I learned in school, which has always served me well:

Use "a" before any consonant sound or a long "u". Use "an" before any vowel sound except a long "u".

The a/an choice is based entirely upon pronunciation of the following word, not ever based on spelling.

So, for example, we get:

an egg -- vowel sound (short e)
a house -- consonant sound (h)
an umbrella -- vowel sound (short u)
a unique experience -- long u (the specified exception in the consonant sound versus vowel sound divide)
a potato -- consonant sound (p)
an honest man -- vowel sound, as the "h" is silent.

So to me, "an historic event" sounds just as wrong as "an potato", unless it's coming from someone with a British accent (for example), where historic is pronounced 'istoric.

If you don't drop your H's, then why would you use "an historic event"? Would you also use "an house"? How about "an halfhearted attempt"?

Note: The use of "an historic event" is certainly not isolated to Peter Jennings. And it's not isolated to spoken usage. I've noticed it in writing as well. And it always puzzles me, especially when I know the author is American.

Comments are invited. If you say "an historic event" and you pronounce the "H", what's your justification? If you know of other examples of people making different exceptions to the rule, please share. If you learned a different rule, what is it?

Here's my second poll:

Linguistic Discussions

This morning, I invited most of the authors of the Language Log blog to take a look at my last blog entry. (Most, not all, only because there were a few whose e-mail addresses I was unable to locate.) Anyway, what has ensued is a fairly fascinating discussion that's been carried on via an e-mail thread rather than as comments to my blog. Oh well. At least they all included me in the e-mails, which have been most edifying. (They're a bunch of professional linguists, and I certainly am not.)

So here's the gist of what seems to be the consensus:

• Both usages are in common parlance.
• This does cause confusion when people of one camp converse with people of the other camp (especially when scheduling, as the "next Wednesday" issue is just as much a problem as is the "last Wednesday" issue).
• The rift does not seem to be a recent development.
• This has been previously studied from a linguistic perspective.
• Such divergent dialectical usages are probably more common than most of us think.

In addition, I've gotten to learn two nifty words today: ideolect and ecolect. (Interestingly enough, both trigger the Blogger spell-check alarm.)

Amateur though I may be, I am much amused by linguistic topics. So today I will add yet another linguistic topic to my blog:

What I've learned from working in bookstores for so many years is that sometimes book covers have proofreading errors. Sometimes, these are especially interesting, including misprints of book titles on the spine. A few years ago, for example, I noticed the spine of a paperback edition of William Gaddis' novel, entitled A Frolic of His Own. The title on the spine read as follows (in two lines):

A FROLIC OF HIS
OF HIS OWN

This is especially interesting because sometimes the mind lets us see not what's actually there, but rather what it seems should be there. Most people, seeing that spine, would read the title the way it should have been printed rather than the way it was printed.

I'm sure the linguists have a scientific name for this phenomenon.

Anyway, on to tonight's discovery:

I found a Phonics book in the Spectrum series from McGraw-Hill. It's for Grade 3. The spine reads:

PHONCIS Grade 3

So I asked a coworker, "What does that say?"

His response: "Phonics, grade three"

So I asked again, "What does it really say?"

Same response.

Now, of course, this reading error is not any indication of stupidity. My coworker is quite literate and quite intelligent, and I don't mean to suggest otherwise. The point is that the mind plays tricks on us, and it's purely by chance that I happened to notice the printing error. Nine times out of ten, I might've read it incorrectly just as he did.

I bring this up, however, specifically because I find this to be an especially funny printing error. After all, it's a book about phonics!

My favorite t-shirt of all time had the following text:

Hukt on foniks wurkt fur me!

(If you're too young to get the reference, ask your mother!)

So, for the kids who have to spend their time plowing through this particular book, I think the final payoff is that they can claim, "I lurnt my fonciss!"

Our Evolving Language?

Last week (a phrase that I believe pretty much always means "the week before this one"), I was listening to the radio, as I do regularly while at work. The day was Wednesday, July 25, and I was reminded of something that's been bothering me (mildly) for quite a while now.

The radio announcer mentioned the YouTube Debate that happened "last Monday". That debate had happened on Monday, July 23. That's a mere two days before the report I was listening to.

When I'm speaking, if it's a Wednesday, and I say "last Monday", what I mean is "the Monday of the previous week". That is, "9 days ago".

This is the idiomatic usage that I grew up with, and I believed that within the English speaking world, it was pretty much universal usage.

On a Wednesday, if I want to speak about something that happened two days earlier, I am happy to say "two days ago" or "on Monday". (Using a past tense verb in conjunction with this phrase clarifies that I'm speaking about the most recent Monday, rather than the upcoming Monday). I might even say "Monday", without using any sort of qualifier. But you won't catch me saying "last Monday" unless I'm mistaken about just how long ago the event happened.

Later the same day, again on the radio, I heard two mentions of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal that occurred in March 02007. Remember, I was listening to this report in July 02007. And twice in this one report, the scandal was mentioned as having broken "last March".

If it's July, and I say "last March", I do not mean "the most recent March". Instead, I mean "March of last year". If I mean to indicate "the most recent March", I will likely say "this March" or "in March", or "this past March". But I certainly would not say "last March". To me, "last March" means specifically not the March that occurred during this calendar year.

I started noticing people (mostly newscasters on both television and radio) using this (to me, bizarre) phraseology several years ago. More than about 15 years ago, I'm pretty sure I had never thought that saying "last Monday" or "last March" was an ambiguous usage. And now I'm pretty convinced that it's entirely ambiguous.

So my question to you, dear reader, is this:

Am I mistaken in believing that the usage and meaning of "last" has been undergoing an unnecessary and confusing transformation in recent years?

And here's The Repeal Of Gravity Blog's first poll ever:

My First Mention in the Mainstream Press

After Richardson was finished at yesterday's event, as we were filing out of the restaurant, I was stopped by a reporter for the Eagle Times, a fairly local daily newspaper. He asked what I thought and so I gave him some opinions. When he asked for my name, I handed him one of my business cards, mentioned that I'm running for president, and encouraged him to check out my web site. He expressed some interest and asked a couple of follow up questions. Well, in today's edition of the Eagle Times, the top story is about the Richardson event in Claremont yesterday. And guess who got mentioned at the end of the article. That's right...little old me.

The following snippet is, of course, copyrighted material...and I encourage everyone to try to track down their own copy of the paper to read the full article. (Sadly, the Eagle Times' web site only includes the start of the article rather than the whole thing.) So here's the closing snippet, which amounts to my first mention in the mainstream press:

And even some opponents were happy with what Richardson had to say.

Louis J. Cassorla said he was "pleased" at what Richardson had to say and would be happy if he ended up as the president.

Cassorla is running for president in the primary, though he said he is running only to raise issues.

"I probably won't get any votes," he admitted. "But I'm against the two party system."

A bit of an error, as I'm not running in the primary, but rather in the general election. But that's fine. Any press is good press, right?

The byline on the article is By JOHN KELLEHER, Managing Editor, and I assume that's who I spoke with. He said they'd be in touch in the future, and I certainly hope that turns out to be the case. A little coverage of the "also rans" might be nice.

Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I might as well mention that as he was shaking hands on the way out, I shook Bill Richardson's hand, gave him one of my business cards, told him that I am also running, told him not to worry--that I don't expect or want to take any votes from him--and told him that I would write something about him in my blog, and that it would be positive. I think I managed that in yesterday's post, right? I certainly hope it came across as a positive assessment. I think Richardson deserves it. He impressed me quite a lot. If he means what he says, I can easily see him as a very good choice indeed.

Bill Richardson in Claremont, a Campaign Event

Well, Beth was working this morning, so I was left to my own devices. After taking the recycling to the local recycling center, I popped into Shirley's Restaurant in Claremont for a Bill Richardson "Meet and Greet", which I knew from the local paper was scheduled for this morning.

The owner of the restaurant, Dan Fillo, was quoted in the paper as having said, "We've been told by the campaign not to expect a question and answer format. He's probably just going to come in and speak, giving a brief 10- or 15-minute speech about his platforms."

So I was quite pleasantly surprised when after giving his talk, Richardson did open the floor to questions. In my last blog post, I mentioned that Beth got in the last question from the floor at our session with John McCain. I didn't say anything about what she asked him, however. So here I'll mention that she asked him about Darfur. We were both bothered that it took until she got in (right under the wire) for Darfur to be mentioned. McCain did respond pretty passionately, and it was clear that the genocide in Darfur was something he has thought about and that he does seem to care and want to do something about it. But still, it seemed clear from his not having taken the initiative to mention it himself that it is not terribly high on his agenda.

Well, I'm pleased to report that Richardson mentioned Darfur as part of his opening remarks. No prompting required. There's a point in his favor.

I was very disturbed by one thing Richardson said this morning. (In regards to what to do about illegal immigrants, he mentioned something about whether they were embracing American values/culture, and he mentioned as part of the criteria on which that judgment is to be made, "Do they go to church?".) I called him on it. (Frankly, I view that as a horribly scary test. "Do you go to church?" being one small step removed from "Which church do you go to?", which (in terms of whether someone is embracing American values/culture) is terrifyingly close to "do you worship the way we want you to worship?". (See: sectarian violence in Iraq, Sunni vs. Shia, religious persecution, Holocaust, Salem witch trials, Pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock, the Crusades, etc.,...)). To be honest, I was disappointed that when I called him on it, he didn't take a stronger position and admit that it was the wrong thing to say. Instead, he justified mentioning it, by citing that it's one of many criteria in already existing legislation. There's a point against.

HOWEVER...

Calling him on that was secondary to the real question I posed to him, which was about not only reducing our dependence on foreign oil (emphasis on foreign), but rather on reducing our dependence on oil. I'm very concerned about using up our natural resources. If reducing our dependence on foreign oil means simply shifting our focus to more domestic drilling and refining, well that's no solution at all, is it? To his credit, Richardson is firmly in the camp of those who want to move to renewable resources. "New sources of energy" rather than old. He's pro-coal, but pro-responsible-coal. That's a step in the right direction, as the current administration isn't pro-responsible-anything. Richardson is clearly very much pro-solar and pro-wind. I'm guessing (although he didn't state it) that he would also be pro-tidal/wave energy. And if not, then I would at least feel reasonably comfortable in assuming that he's not anti-tidal/wave energy. (Point in favor.)

Richardson is opposed to "No Child Left Behind" (he calls it "an unfunded mandate"). Another point in favor.

He's making real a point of being boldly, strongly pro-education, particularly in science and math. (Multiple points for.)

He's pro-science in general, and I believe if he gets elected, there will be a 180 degree turnabout in our electoral branch's stance on science. That is, I believe the war on science would come to an end. (Point for. (Exuberantly!))

He's also pro-arts education, as he sees the arts as a vital way to open young minds! (Another point for.)

He requires no prompting to talk about autism. (Point for.)

I'm not really on board with Richardson's views on illegal immigration. But then again, I haven't heard much I do agree with on that topic from any of the contenders.

In the end, I've come away from this morning's event as more a Richardson fan than I had been going in. I'm still not endorsing him. But at the moment, I'm thinking that I could imagine being happy with him as our next president. I think he's a pretty solid choice.

This Morning's John McCain Town Hall Meeting, Claremont, NH

We went to our first presidential campaign town hall meeting today. This time was an event for John McCain at the American Legion hall in Claremont. I was surprised to get the phone invitation the other day from McCain's people. I guess he's courting the independent vote. As this will be our first presidential election cycle since moving to New Hampshire, I'm still not altogether certain of the process. From what I gather, we'll be allowed to choose which primary we want to cast our ballots in (assuming we wish to cast our ballots in either primary).

If you've read my campaign web site, you'll probably already be aware that I am, on principle, opposed to the whole two-party system. By extension, I'm also of the opinion that there ought not to be a primary election cycle. I think we'd all be much better off if we just went straight to the general election. Stop playing this game of trying to determine which of our like-minded people would best represent all of our fellow like-minded people when it comes time to vote against whichever of the like-minded people the opposing group of like-minded people has chosen to represent themselves in facing our like-minded representative. (Gorgeous sentence structure, no?)

What we should have is individuals, standing on their own beliefs, taking their own stances. If you want to run for president, run for president. Don't run for the opportunity to be chosen to run for president.

Ah, but that's my idealism poking through, isn't it?

The reality of our current system is that we have to work from within rather than from the outside. So, despite my opposition to the principles of giving political parties the power to determine who gets to be on the ballot in the general election, I very likely will end up voting in a primary election this time around. And frankly, I'm not at all sure which primary is likely to get my participation.

So I got invited and we went. I'll be happy to go to plenty of these events in the upcoming months, assuming I have the opportunity. The crowd was pretty small. My quick estimate put it at probably under 300 people. I figure that's reasonably intimate, considering the stakes. Beth got to ask the last question of the session. Overall, I'd say McCain's positions stood up to the sniff test better that I anticipated. He seems to be a reasonable guy who's willing to think about things and capable of thinking about things. That's vastly better than the guy who's in the White House right now.

I agree with McCain on some things, I disagree with him on others, and I respect his views on lots, regardless of whether I agree or disagree with him.

I'll probably blog more about specific issues in the coming days. At the moment I'd like to pick up on what may seem like a minor point in what he said.

He said that we need a line item veto.

I've gone through my own periods of thinking that the line item veto is a grand idea. I won't deny that. But I've since reconsidered. One big problem with the line item veto is that it will always seem like good idea when your guy (or gal) is in office. And it will always seem like a horrible idea when you're in the opposition.

Here's what I've been thinking more about recently:

What we need is to elect a president who will plainly tell congress (and mean it) that if they give him 200 individual (focused) bills that all make sense, he'll pass them. If they give him one bill that has 170 things that make sense and 30 things that don't, he'll veto the whole thing.

And we need to start electing congresspeople who agree to that principle.

If an idea can't stand on its own merits, it shouldn't be allowed to sneak in as a rider to some overarching bill.

McCain says that when the first pork barrel bill crosses his desk, he'll veto it and he'll make its authors famous. That's a pretty decent start. But what concerns me is this: What about the second one? What about the third?

You know they'll keep coming. I'm pretty sure McCain knows they'll keep coming. Until we have a meaningful shift within our legislative culture, I think we're doomed to having the bridge to nowhere and its kin.

If Bush had a line item veto, his war on science and reason would be much farther along at this point than he's managed to push it without the line item veto. He's hardly vetoed anything. When he has vetoed something, it's mostly been because it had provisions for funding stem cell research. He can justify that because he has that "conservative base" that supports such despicable positions. But if he faced dozens of smaller pro-science, pro-reason bills and kept consistently vetoing them, as he likely would love to do, I think even the support of that "conservative base" would begin to erode. It's one thing to take a stand on one issue (stem-cell research). It's quite another to take a stand on dozens, as I'm sure he would love to stop funding for a broad range of sciences, from evolution to mathematics to chemistry to physics. I'm pretty confident that Bush would consider quantum physics to be pure evil voodoo and the work of the devil, if he were aware enough to consider it at all.

Whether the ideas that currently hold sway in the world of theoretical physics will eventually pan out or not, there's certainly value in the exercise. There's benefit to working them through and pursuing them to see where they lead. If Bush had a line item veto, I'm pretty sure he would have gone a lot farther toward curtailing our brightest minds' progress in figuring out where they lead.

I figure that's enough for tonight. Sleep well.

Back for more, finally

Okay. So it's been well over a month since I've posted anything here. Very sad. Here's my list of excuses:

1) I was saddened to see the drastic drop-off of traffic to the site, once Google did whatever it was that resulted in the majority of my photographs no longer bringing search engine users here. I still have no idea what happened or why. I know that several people on the web have placed links to my bleeding heart flower photograph elsewhere. But given that they've not copied the photograph to other locations, and instead just left the photo on my server and used a link to display it elsewhere, I'm baffled as to why Google would treat those sites as the home of the image, rather than treating this site as the home of the image.

I suppose I could stamp my URL across all of my photographs, but frankly I don't like that sort of thing.

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UPDATE (July 17, 02008): Well, it happened again a couple of days ago: a sudden drop-off in traffic to my blog as a result of Google's sending traffic to another site that's using my bleeding heart flower photo. I sent an e-mail to the administrator of the other site. In the e-mail, I requested some simple courtesies (being given credit for the photo, for one), given that I am the copyright holder. In the meantime, Google seems to have done something to adjust itself. However, at the moment, it's sending people to a subpage of my blog where the image in question isn't actually visible. Odd! Anyway, if you appreciate this photograph, you might be interested in knowing that I've made it available on my newly re-launched online store both on a t-shirt and on a mouse pad (with somewhat different crops).

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2) Also related to that, I've been less interested in posting my photography here since all those photographs disappeared from Google. Maybe they're still searchable, but I just don't know what search terms to use to find them. Frankly, I'm really disappointed in Google, and I'm wondering why they can't get their image search to be anywhere near as useful as their text search. And I'm pretty disgusted about the way they've chosen to make it impossible to provide feedback to them or to get meaningful information from them about how to get their image search to behave as one would hope.

3) I've been thinking a lot about political issues recently. I've been trying to avoid letting this become a political blog. Or, more accurately, I had been trying to avoid letting this become a political blog. After wrestling with this issue, I've finally come to the conclusion that I should no longer make an effort in that direction. So as of today, I've come to accept the premise that if political thought is what's occupying my mind, then I might as well allow political thought to be what occupies my blog.

4) Time seems to have escaped me. More accurately, I've found more compelling ways to occupy my time than by sitting at a computer and typing. I got to do the photography for some friends' wedding. (Congratulations, Christina and Jimmy!) Beth started a new job that allowed her to be home during the evenings rather than working during the evenings. So we've been able to spend more time together, which has been really nice. She just left that new job yesterday. (It wasn't the right fit.) She'll be going back to work where she had been working (where she enjoyed the job, but was dissatisfied with the schedule), but it looks very much like her schedule there will be better, and so we'll still be able to spend our evenings together. Hooray! One door opened up and then another door opened up. This is better than that business about closing a door and opening a window.

Anyway, I'm back, and again I hope to post something new on a fairly regular basis.

Blog Reviews, a mixed bag

In my ongoing attempts to increase the traffic to my blog, I got it into my head a few weeks ago to seek out free blog review sites. I found a few and submitted my blog to them. So far, three such sites have published their reviews of this blog.

The first is the worst:
http://www.theweblogreview.com/review/3333/...In which the reviewer was kind enough to spell my name incorrectly twice (in different ways) and correctly zero times.

The second is considerably better:
http://blogs.qoody.net/reviews/the-repeal-of-gravity-blog/...In which I got some good advice. I'm not sure whether it will truly influence my blogging habits, but at least it's food for thought.

The third is my favorite:
http://reviewmyblogforfree.blogspot.com/ This one is very brief (which is neither criticism nor praise, rather just observation), and complimentary (which is flattering). I scored pretty well on this one, which is nice.

Unfortunately, none of these three reviews has resulted in a substantial increase in my traffic. So in that sense, getting my site reviewed was a bit of a failure. However, I have now cracked the top million(!) blogs, as listed in Technorati, which seems to rank blogs by the number of other blogs that link to them. I have no idea how many blogs are in Technorati's database, but I'm looking at a ranking in the top million as being a significant milestone.

Moose — some vacation photos

We took a vacation last week to a different part of our lovely state. We saw several moose, a fox, a couple of tom turkeys, and I spotted our first-ever live, non-captive porcupine. I only got photos of moose.

Corbin Covered Bridge, Newport, NH — a photo

Here's my "picture postcard" view of the covered bridge that's just down the road from our home.

Getting a Little Political -- Part 3

I watched some of the Republican debate the other night. There was a point at which the questioner asked for a show of hands of who does not believe in evolution. Much to my disgust, some hands went up.

I didn't catch whose hands those were, but I checked the New York Times online edition for the transcript, and they reported that the hands that went up belonged to Brownback, Huckabee, and Tancredo.

Assuming that the NYT transcript is correct, and assuming that the question's intent was clearly understood*, and assuming that we're not dealing with a semantic issue of what "believe in" means...these three men should automatically be deemed unelectable.

So here's where the semantic issue comes in:

Does "believe in evolution" mean "accept that evolution is a process that actually occurs"?

or...

Does "believe in evolution" mean "put your faith and trust in evolution"?

If it means the former, then Brownback, Huckabee, and Tancredo are addled. If it means the latter, then that's somewhat acceptable.

Here's where things get tricky: If you ask me whether "I believe in George W. Bush", my answer will be "No! No! NO!"

Does that mean that I am a denier of his existence? No. Certainly not. I believe he exists. I believe he's a dangerous ass. But I don't deny his existence.

So in that sense, I also don't believe in evolution, right? I don't put my faith in it. I don't believe it's working for my betterment. I don't believe it will provide any salvation to me or anyone else. I don't believe it will lead to an Eden here on Earth (or anywhere else). That's just dumb. But it is a process that happens in nature. So in that sense, you bet I believe in evolution. Just as I believe in fire. Just as I believe in gravity. Just as I believe in sexual reproduction among the mammals.

But I think that in common parlance "Do you believe in George W. Bush?" takes on one meaning and "Do you believe in evolution?" takes on another. It's a matter of semantics.

So, do we give them the benefit of the doubt? No way! Particularly not Brownback, who is a known fundamentalist religious nutjob. (For the record, I'm not saying that or casting any other aspersions on anyone's character here or anywhere else as a statement of fact, actionable as slander or libel. For the record, I'm saying it merely as a literary device. Call it parody. Call it satire. Call it what you like, but don't call it slander or libel, please!)

* Reading the transcript, the question seems less clear in its intent than it seemed as a spoken utterance. The questioner stumbled a bit on his phraseology. But having listened to it in real time, I believe the intent of the question was really quite apparent.

Getting a Little Political -- Part 2

Second topic: How is it possible to be willing to vote for Hillary? To use a gender-inappropriate term, Hillary was cuckolded. She was cuckolded more publicly and more embarrassingly than anyone else has ever been cuckolded in the history of the world.

That's not her fault.

Her husband is (or am I to believe that he's reformed and should I change that "is" to a "was"?) a lecher. That's no secret. It never was. I think we pretty much all knew it going in.

I remember having a conversation with a friend who was volunteering for his campaign in 1992. I asked her whether she thought he was merely the best of the available choices or whether she honestly believed in him and trusted him. (Her answer surprised me greatly. To me, even then--before he was elected, before all of the scandals broke--it seemed quite obvious that he should not be considered a fine, upstanding, decent member of the community, worthy of admiration and respect. To put a word on it, he was a slimeball. That has no bearing on how well he governed or what he was or wasn't able to accomplish while in office. But it's fair to note, as a matter of historical record, that it was out there.)

I repeat: That's not Hillary's fault.

However, she didn't divorce him. And that's not even what really bugs me about Hillary--not exactly. I'm not terribly concerned that she didn't divorce him at any given moment during that whole mess. I'm not terribly concerned that she didn't divorce him the second after his second term in office ended. What concerns me is that every day that goes by is yet another day when she hasn't divorced him.

That is her fault.

And when I say "her fault", I don't mean "a consequence for which she is to be blamed". What I mean is "her flaw". Namely, by not divorcing him, every single day that goes by, she demonstrates quite clearly that she has no sense of self respect.

Don't get me wrong. I'm certain that she has a great (maybe overblown) sense of her own value and importance. In fact, I'm sure that she's downright arrogant and cocky. That's simply not the same thing as having self respect, in my book.

I can't get past it. I can't imagine ever being willing to vote for somebody who has and who so proudly exhibits such an utter lack of self respect. There's no dignity there. And frankly, I can't stomach the idea of voting for her as long as she wakes up every day and again decides not to end that marriage.

Giuliani is a lecher, too. We all know that. Gingrich is a hypocritical lecher. I think we all know that too--and shouldn't forget it if/when he decides to jump into the race. John Kennedy was a lecher too, although I suspect it was less well known when he was elected--because the media didn't make a point of reporting it. Jefferson was a lecher too, apparently. I guess we have a long history in this country of electing people who are slimeballs in their personal dealings.

Frankly, I'm sickened by the culture of nosiness that has made sexual dalliances and proclivities a part of the political decision making process. I wish we could go back to judging candidates on their substantive ideas or lack thereof rather than on where they decide to "stick it". I blame the shift on the media, looking for stories wherever they can find them. And now that we've crossed that line, I don't think there's any going back.

In the past, I think we were allowed to believe (because we weren't told any better) that our elected leaders were admirable and worthy of respect. Now we are no longer given the opportunity to hold onto that illusion. Too bad. I think it was a nice illusion to have--healthy, in its way, for the nation's collective psyche.

But at this point, the "electable" candidates' lives are exposed too thoroughly to give them the benefit of the doubt.

So now, if we want to be able to respect our leaders, we must consciously choose to only elect respectable people to office. If we want to believe our leaders are decent, we can't simply assume that they are decent until proven otherwise. Instead, we have to take our impressions of their decency (or lack thereof) into the polling booths with us, and consciously choose to elect only those people who we believe to be decent.

Will that happen? I don't think so. We'll keep electing slimeballs. Frankly, because of the popularity W.J. Clinton retains, despite his thorough exposure as a world-class slimeball, I think lechery has become "the new normal". It's no longer considered a character flaw by the voting public. Instead, I think it's considered as merely a trait. I fear that "He (has/doesn't have) a southern accent" and "He (likes/doesn't like) to wear a jacket and tie while delivering his stump speeches" are now the ethical/moral equivalent of "He (can/can't) remain faithful to his wife". That's a shame.

I really don't want to vote for a slimeball. I'd rather have the slimeballs forced to step aside (or choose (of their own accord) to stay out of the race from the start).

But somehow I do see a difference between (a) disrespecting your wife or disrespecting your marriage and the vows you took and (b) disrespecting yourself enough to not even care when your husband disrespects you and your marriage and the vows he took.

Option (a) is vile, reprehensible, and disgusting. Option (b) is pathetic.

If you think you can convince me that I shouldn't be so thoroughly put off by Hillary's flaw, please do try. I doubt you'll succeed, but I'm eager to entertain your attempts. In the meantime, I'll go on believing that I will never be willing to vote for her--at least not until she chooses to end that marriage.

Getting a Little Political -- Part 1

I happen to feel like breaking from my usual routine on the blog today and stepping from apolitical posts to political. I'll probably get it all out of my system in a few rapid-fire posts and then be done with it for a few more months. At least I hope so, as I really don't want this to become a political blog. My apologies for this break from my usual programming.

First topic: Abstinence only sex education programs and "pro-life" rhetoric. Frankly, I don't want to hear it. And I don't want to hear about how RU-486 and abortions are wrong. I don't want to hear about how adoption is a wonderful option.

Right now, in America, if your daughter (or your sister, or your niece, or any young woman who is dear to you) goes to college, her odds of being raped are very close to your odds of rolling a six on a single die roll. I don't want to hear the anti-abortion rhetoric until those odds are a lot closer to your odds of winning the lottery.

And I also don't want to hear it until the backlog of kids in the system who nobody is willing to adopt is depleted to something very close to zero.

Winter Thorns — a new photograph

I'm going back to wintertime for this photograph. It's not quite as good as I would like, but I think it's interesting enough.

Elevating the Pun to an Art Form

According to Samuel Johnson, the pun is "the lowest form of humour". I've always been inclined to agree.

To me, the pun has always seemed like a character type.

A Lyle Lovett lyric goes like this:

You are a lonely, weak, pathetic man.*

My favorite lyric from any Smiths song goes like this:

So you go and you stand on your own
And you leave on your own
And you go home and you cry and you want to die.**

If puns were people, these are the kind of passages that would seem entirely appropriate for describing them.

I have no real pity for the pun, no matter how much disrespect is thrown at it. The pun seems desperate, but not especially pitiable. I'm not saying that there aren't clever puns out there. Surely, there must be. But on the whole, as a class, puns are insipid. Is there a better word to describe them? I doubt it.

However, there is one area of human endeavor where I truly believe the pun has been raised to an art form: The mystery novel title.

There seems to be an entire subgenre of mystery novel that has sprung up around the punny title. Consider the following:

Diane Mott Davidson

• Sticks & Scones
• The Cereal Murders
• Chopping Spree
• The Main Corpse

Nancy Fairbanks

• Crime Brulee
• Truffled Feathers
• Chocolate Quake

Laura Durham

• Better Off Wed
• For Better or Hearse
• Bride and Doom
• Acts of Violets

Charlaine Harris

• Grave Sight
• Dead Over Heels
• Club Dead
• Last Scene Alive

Maddy Hunter

• Norway to Hide
• Top O' the Mournin'
• Alpine for You
• Pasta Imperfect

Gillian Roberts

• A Hole in Juan
• Till the End of Tom
• Adam and Evil
• Claire and Present Danger
• Helen Hath No Fury

...and the queen of the subgenre (in my opinion), Mary Daheim

• Saks and Violins
• Dead Man Docking
• Fowl Prey
• September Mourn
• A Streetcar Named Expire
• Legs Benedict
• Dune to Death
• Wed and Buried
• Suture Self
• Creeps Suzette
• Silver Scream
• Murder, My Suite

It's not that the puns in these titles are especially rich. (Mostly they aren't.) Rather, it's just the hokiness of the whole thing. A punny book title like these is almost guaranteed to belong to a mystery novel. Seeing all of these titles makes me seriously wonder what's going on.

• Which comes first? The title or the book idea?
• Do the authors maintain title lists for years, just waiting for the opportunity to cross the items off their lists?
• Are the titles really tied to the stories? (I'm almost tempted to grab a few of these books and read them just to check on this one.)
• Do publishers or agents provide the titles as writing prompts?
• Do publishers salivate at the prospect of a new punny-title mystery series? Or do they all groan at the idea of yet another punny-title mystery series?
• Are there punny titles that are rejected?

* Her First Mistake
** How Soon is Now

Crocuses — a new photograph

Here's one of those shots from a couple of days ago. Beth has identified the flower variety as crocus. We have white ones and purple ones in bloom at the moment. I really like that they're on such short stems. Staying so close to the ground, I think they seem a perfect flower to "peek" out from all of the winter deadness, early in the spring season (relatively speaking). It's a nice contrast, I think.

Self-Healing Technology

I love self-healing technology! It's kind of like skin. Cut it and it bleeds. But if you wait a while, it repairs itself. The mechanism is a mystery to most of us. But the results are the same: effortless repair, often just about as good as new.

Three examples:

1) My Sirius satellite radio receiver: A few months ago, I left it plugged into my car's lighter outlet overnight, and I forgot to turn it off. Three unfortunate things happened:

1. It drew down all of the power from my car's battery, thus requiring me to get a jump from Beth's MINI.
2. It blew one of my car's fuses, thus requiring me to replace an automotive fuse for the first time ever.
3. The display died. So I spent a few months driving around with no visual indicator telling me which station I was tuned to, who was singing or talking, what song was playing, what the current score of the hockey game was, etc.,...
   

Since then, I have made a real effort to remember to turn off and unplug the receiver after each trip (less because of the fuse and the display issue than because having a dead battery is a real bummer).

However, one day last week, I forgot to unplug it. (But I did remember to turn it off, so at least it wasn't draining power from the battery. Not much, anyway.)

Guess what happened.

Self-healing!

Most exciting. The display is now working like a charm. Now I can see what I'm listening to.

2) My car itself: I spent a week or two driving around with the "Service Engine Soon" indicator constantly lit. This was a little troubling, as I really don't want to have to invest money in a costly repair. But I checked the manual to see what this indicator really means. It turns out that it seems to tie into an emissions monitoring system. If the emissions go funky, the light comes on--presumably because the car isn't operating as well as it's supposed to. I guess it really means that it's not burning fuel as efficiently as it's supposed to do.

Anyway, as I was driving home from the book store the other night, I was fretting about this light, but I was also calculating (as the fuel gauge needle passed 1/2 tank at about 215 miles since my last fill up) that if this pace holds up, my mileage for this tankful is going to end up at somewhere north of spectacular.

Lo and behold, when next I looked down at the dashboard, the indicator had been extinguished. Self-healing technology! Hooray!

3) Beth's MINI's driver's side door lock: A few months ago, it stopped wanting to let her out when she wanted to get out. Instead of just being able to take the standard two pulls on the handle (the first to unlock, the second to open), she found herself needing to use the toggle switch on the center console to unlock the doors before it would let her out. Then at the beginning of last week, things got even worse! Now the toggle swich refused to do the trick. So when she got to work, she ended up having to crawl out through the passenger's side.

Actually, it seems that the toggle switch did unlock the door, but the door handle refused to actually disengage the latch, so the effect was the same. Luckily, this knowledge did lead to a somewhat less strenuous solution than crawling out the other side of the car: She could roll down her window and reach out to use the exterior handle to release her.

We contacted a mechanic friend to see whether he could fix the problem. He said he'd need to diagnose it and order any necessary part(s) and then he'd be able to fix it when the part(s) arrived. So that's a two day affair, and it's a pretty good trek from here to there. So we didn't make the appointment. (Beth came down with a nasty cold in the meantime, anyway, so she spent some days in bed, not worrying about the car.)

Over the weekend, we did some significant driving (as far as Long Island). You'll never guess what happened...

Self-healing! The MINI fixed itself.

Did I mention that I love self-healing technology?

Spring Thaw — a new photograph

The daffodils in the back yard started opening a couple of days ago, and today I noticed some other flowers (species unknown to me, of course) on the front lawn. I've taken some shots of them, but before I start posting the flowery bits, I figured I might as well post a shot from a few weeks ago: melting ice on a calm stretch of a local waterway. I've actually done more color experimentation on this one than I normally like to do. I happen to like this version best:

I killed the color and then enriched the black with a little hint of blue. If you'd like to see an alternate version, with the color actually punched up pretty significantly from how it was shot, click here.

Critiques, as always, are welcome. Let me know which version you prefer...and whether you think either is any good or whether they're both just awful.

Capsule Review: The Ice Storm

Here's another of those little "Staff Recommendation" reviews that I write for the book store:

The Ice Storm, directed by Ang Lee.
Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Kline, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Tobey Maguire, Joan Allen, Katie Holmes. If you're a movie fan, these names should mean something to you. This low-key gem may actually be the best piece of work any of them has ever been associated with. We named our first dog after the Katie Holmes character. "Libbets? What kind of a name is Libbets?!?" The movie is centered around a couple of families during a strange and tragic Thanksgiving weekend in the 1970s. It probably won't make you cry, it may not make you laugh, but it might just leave you in awe.

Another Photo I'm Proud Of

I'm also pretty proud of this photo:

This is the New Hampshire state amphibian, the spotted newt (Notophthalmus viridescens).

Maybe My Favorite Photo

Of all the photographs I've ever taken, this one very well might be my favorite:

For some reason, it just strikes me as being particulary gorgeous, albeit pretty limited in its color range. I hope you like it. As always, comments are welcome--pro or con.

Another Keiko Photo available

In case anyone wants to see a fifth photo of Keiko, one has been featured on today's installment of the Bird A Day Blog. Thanks, Bird A Day!

New Blogging Strategy, Newton Baby Picture, Two Reviews

I know that I haven't been the most regular blogger. I would like to do something about that. I doubt that I'll get to the point where I'm posting something new on a daily basis. But I would like to post something new at least a few times a week. So, I've devised a new strategy.

While I certainly don't want to turn this into a photo blog, I have come to realise that my photography is what's getting me more hits than anything else. (Why doesn't my dictionary project seem to capture anyone's attention? I don't know. I've found it absolutely fascinating!)

So what I'm going to start doing is posting photographs more regularly, particularly when I don't have anything else to contribute for a few days. Some of these will be old photos that I haven't previously posted, but that I happen to like a lot. Some will be new photos. For today, an old picture of Newton, from when he was still a little baby, 4 1/3 years ago.

Strategy shift number 2:

For the book store, I sometimes make staff recommendations. Instead of just telling our merchandising supervisor, "I like this", I generally provide a brief review. It's almost certain to be a positive review. (Why recommend something I don't like?) But it's a review nonetheless. I figure I might as well make dual-use of these reviews. So I think that in addition to posting more photographs, I'll also start occasionally posting these reviews. Surely I won't always post both on the same day, but as today is the launch of my new blogging strategy, I figure I'll make it a super-bonus day. In fact, I'm going to give you two reviews today!

---

The Princess Bride, by William Goldman. Having loved the movie for over a decade and a half, I finally got around to reading the book and was surprised to find that I loved it just as much. The two are different, but they very much share the same spirit and I find that they can happily coexist in my mind as two parts of the same beautiful dream.

---

The Princess Bride, directed by Rob Reiner. So far, the only thing that dates this movie is the antiquated video game played by Fred Savage in the framing story. Eventually, the line "When I was your age, television was called books" will date it as well (as the word "television" drops out of common parlance). Beyond that, this is one for the ages…a timeless classic. This is undoubtedly of the most quotable movies ever made. I'm convinced it's also one of the most flawless. And it's suitable for the entire family.

Pictures of Keiko

My sister requested that I post some pictures of our bird, Keiko. So here he is:

He's a blue headed pionus. Actually quite pretty. He's camera shy, though. I took over 70 shots and ended up with only about 20 that I thought were any good. From those, I chose to post these four.

The Dictionary Project, Status Update

It occurred to me recently that some of the dictionaries in my testing are out of print. For example, the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition is no longer available. So I checked the Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition, which I believe is just a slightly updated version of the same dictionary, with a name change stemming from a merger. The results of that test: the same. So #15 is basically just #2, renamed. I've gone back and color coded the titles in previous blog entries to indicate which are currently in print and which are not. Blue indicates in print. Dark red indicates out of print.

I've also checked a few more dictionaries in the last couple of weeks. A couple are "on the record", meaning that I had my list with me and was therefore able to take an official count. Others are "off the record", meaning I worked from memory and don't have official tallies. In all cases, I have been satisfied that the dictionaries tested are inferior to the New Oxford American Dictionary (NOAD), which still stands as the winner of this little competition.

Among those I checked "off the record" was Webster's Third New International Dictionary Unabridged, which I just checked today. It's a pretty immense volume, and with a sticker price of $129, it's more than twice the price of the NOAD. Sadly, it missed on multiple counts: geographical entries, Goombah, ninja and ninjutsu, Scientology. Really, it was quite a disappointing showing for such an expensive offering. And it should be noted that I did not check all of the words on my list (again, working from memory).

As the table was already as wide as could fit comfortably into my blog layout, I've stripped out the out of print dictionaries from the new version of the table here:



Key:
1. Webster's New World Dictionary, Fourth Edition. Copyright 2003
5. The Oxford American Dictionary. Copyright 1980
6. The New American Webster Handy College Dictionary, 4th Edition. Copyright 2006
7. The American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Edition. Copyright 2001
8. The American Century Dictionary. Copyright 1995
9. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition. Copyright 2006
11. The New Oxford American Dictionary, Second Edition. Copyright 2005
12. Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition. Copyright 2006
13. Encarta Webster's Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition. Copyright 2004
14. The American Heritage College Dictionary, Fourth Edition. Copyright 2004
15. Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition. Copyright 2005

Special note: Dictionary #13 gives the definition I was seeking for habanero, but it lists it under habanera, which I view as an error, rather than a suitable alternative. I'll leave it to you to judge whether I am correct in this assessment.

And I've still not found kayfabe in any dictionary. So sad.

We Have a Winner! And We Have a Winner!

It's been an extraordinarily long time since I last posted. Let's just say work has been hell and has sapped me of what energy I would have invested in blogging. I hope things will be improving soon.

Good news: I made a pledge to New Hampshire Public Radio, which earned me entry into a drawing to win some fabulous prizes. Lucky me! I was the grand prize winner. The prize: A vacation to Moab, Utah (airfare and fancy lodging included). We were just in Utah last year. From what we saw, it's a stunningly beautiful place. We didn't go to Moab, though, so this will be a different experience. We're looking forward to it. We'll probably go a bit later in the year, so it's not quite so warm during the days.

On the Dictionary Project front, we have a clear winner now. The New Oxford American Dictionary (which I had previously reported having high hopes for) managed to include all 26 of the non-bonus words. From what I've seen, it's a spectacular piece of work--definitely the next dictionary I want to own. I still haven't come across kayfabe in any dictionary. I guess we'll give it a few more years.

So here's the updated table:

Key:
1. Webster's New World Dictionary, Fourth Edition. Copyright 2003
2. Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition. Copyright 1993
3. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Copyright 1993
4. The Random House College Dictionary, Revised Edition. Copyright 1988
5. The Oxford American Dictionary. Copyright 1980
6. The New American Webster Handy College Dictionary, 4th Edition. Copyright 2006
7. The American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Edition. Copyright 2001
8. The American Century Dictionary. Copyright 1995
9. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition. Copyright 2006
10. The American Heritage College Dictionary, Third Edition. Copyright 1997
11. The New Oxford American Dictionary, Second Edition. Copyright 2005
12. Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition. Copyright 2006

In related news, I've come across two additional flaws in the terrible car dictionary within the last week or two.

The first of these is forgivable: The omission of the word fenland. I came across this word in my reading, as we were riding around, and didn't know what it meant. So I consulted the dictionary and came up blank. As it turns out, it's actually absent from more of the better dictionaries than I would have expected.

The second newly discovered flaw is just astonishing and should be an embarrassment to the lexicographers at Webster's. The only definition listed for tenement is as follows:

a building divided into tenements; now specif., one that is rundown, overcrowded, etc.: in full tenement house

That's a circular definition! Shame, shame!

In slightly related news (I report this because I find it to be quite amusing)... I took an online IQ test yesterday, which I sometimes like to do because I think it's a fun pastime. The Analysis report that was provided offered the following two sentences in the "Strengths and weaknesses" section:

Your highest score was in Verbal

Your lowest score was in Verbal

I'm not making this up!

Blithering

1) I discovered the other day that the car dictionary does not include another of my favorite words: Luddite. Beth was unfamiliar with this word. (She claimed it was a fake word, just as I claimed that bumf was a fake word when she first introduced me to it. I have since come to greatly appreciate it.)

2) Part of me wonders whether I should provide definitions for the words in question here in my blog. More of me thinks: (a) You're reading this blog on the internet, where information is always available to you. You can find it yourself with a few mouse clicks and keystrokes. (b) Maybe if you don't know any of my test words, you'll check your own dictionary (or dictionaries, if you have multiple). Maybe you'll get your own ire up if you discover that the dictionary you've trusted for years is really quite inadequate. I'll admit that there may be nothing terribly outrageous about a dictionary's editors choosing to omit anhedonia. On the other hand, I can't bring myself to justify the omission of pariah from any dictionary that doesn't have "Children's" or "First" in its title.

3) Nobody's commented about the new look of my blog. I changed the background color and the header graphic so that The Repeal of Gravity Blog no longer looks like the thousands of other blogs that started with the same Blogger template as I chose. I wonder what you think of the new look. Please comment. In fact, I like getting comments about anything I post. So please comment.

4) Part of the reason why I started this blog is just for personal amusement. Part of it, however, was to try to increase the number of hits to my Official Campaign Web Site. Frankly, regardless of how that site's hit counts are doing, I'd really like to see the hit counts increase on the blog. I try to make it interesting. I try to write well and to spell correctly. I try to provide interesting photographs. What am I doing wrong? How can I find a larger (interested) audience (given that I have no budget with which to pay for advertising)? I know I tend to get wordy when I get rolling, but I would think that would be counterbalanced by the infrequency of my posts. Advice, anyone? Maybe the way to go is to put out a call to other bloggers: Link to my blog and send me an e-mail saying that you've done so, and I will add a link back to your blog. Could I do this in good conscience? I suppose it would require some sort of disclaimer: This offer only good if I'm not in some way opposed to or inappropriately disturbed by your blog. Oh, what the heck? Why not? The offer (with disclaimer) is hereby made!

5) As mentioned earlier, it seems that many of my recent visitors have been coming from Google's image search showing my bleeding heart photo. The photos I posted on November 23, however, still don't show up in Google's image search. They all have alt text behind the scenes. (For example, the first , third and fourth all have "Zion formation" as their alt text. but searching Google's image search for that phrase (using quotation marks) only results in one hit. And it's someone else's photo.) Does anybody have any good advice as to how to get those images into Google's image search database? I happen to think that all of those pictures are of an equally good quality as my bleeding heart photo. Perhaps getting them into Google would serve to bring in more gawkers. Gawkers are good! Welcome gawkers!

6) I didn't have my word list with me last Sunday, but I flipped through another dictionary on my lunch break. I have high hopes for this one: The New Oxford American Dictionary. In fact, I also plan to check it out tomorrow to start on a new secret project, inspired by my current research project. (One of the perks, which I rarely use, of working for a book store is that I'm allowed to use it as a lending library for any hardback or trade paperback that we have multiple copies of in stock. I should really take better advantage of this perk, but I have tons of books I already own that I just don't have time to read. I'm not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's literally tons. Very sad!)

Ants!